Tainted Ground

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Good,’ Patrick said, still a bit breathless, appearing by my side and appraising the situation.

  ‘What about the other one?’ I asked.

  ‘Handcuffed to a large chunk of scrap steel.’

  Carrick finished using his mobile as we approached. ‘Well, I don’t know who you are but I’d like to thank—’ he began.

  We had removed our helmets halfway through this.

  ‘But – but you didn’t look like you!’ he protested. ‘You didn’t even move like you. I actually glanced round and there was just a couple of blokes slouching along.’ He surveyed his trophy, who was fully conscious but had thought it safer to stay put. ‘So, it looks as though we’ve got the churchyard hit squad or even accessories to murder. In my view, if they run they’re usually guilty.’

  ‘Still want us on the job?’ Patrick queried.

  ‘Yes, I think I need you.’

  He was in pain, holding his side.

  Eight

  Telltale clues were found on the JCB that was parked in the gully. The small mangled branch of a bay tree and large splinters of preserved new fencing timber of a type used at the rectory were jammed into the bucket mechanism, together with obvious damage to the machine where it had been used as a battering ram were not conclusive evidence that would stand up in a court of law but it was a start: enough anyway for Carrick to get to work on the Tanner brothers. I was still not sure if he was totally convinced there was a link with the Hagtop murders but as hardly anything of a horrible nature had happened in Hinton Littlemoor since two men were hanged in an orchard by Judge Jeffreys as punishment for joining the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion it was a safe enough bet.

  Carrick asked Patrick to help with the questioning but I was barred, ostensibly on account of my trainee status in what would be a difficult situation. Carrick elaborated by saying he was worried that I might be targeted by the detainees with foul language or, as he put it, that of a sexual discriminatory nature. More to the point, I had an idea that if I was not present those doing the asking would feel more free to utilize similar turns of phrase if they so chose. As far as Patrick was concerned, the Tanner brothers might learn a few new words.

  They were questioned separately and, memories of the circumstances of their arrest no doubt still as fresh as a daisy in their minds, soon started talking. Other than blaming each other for everything they were eager to give the name of the man who had hired them. He had not said who he was at the time: they had recognized him from a photograph in the Bath Evening Chronicle.

  Keith Davies, who was now dead. We had our link.

  ‘They were told to choose a night as soon as possible when there was little or no moon and when it was windy or raining hard so there would be less risk of them being heard,’ Patrick told me, continuing with his account of what had transpired. ‘When you think about it they could have waited months for the right conditions.’

  We were at ‘home’ at the rectory that same evening.

  ‘So this must have been set up, at the very latest, a couple of weeks ago,’ I said. ‘Obviously, before the murders. Did they reveal what was in the coffin?’

  ‘They said they didn’t get involved with that part of it. It needed two people to dig out the last of the soil and lift the coffin from the grave – Davies was adamant that it was not to be damaged so they couldn’t use the digger for all the work – and then they both rode in the cab to a piece of spare ground half a mile away marked on a makeshift map they had been given where they met another bloke with a van. They helped load the coffin into the van and were then paid and told to bugger off and say nothing. They swear they didn’t question that anything other than a body was inside the coffin as it was heavy and were not happy with what they had been asked to do. The promise of five hundred pounds each appears to have helped alleviate their consciences slightly but they admit they got semi-plastered before they did the job.’

  ‘Davies was dead by then. Who was the one with the van?’

  ‘They don’t know. They hadn’t seen him before. I think I believe them – their stories tally and they’re too thick to make up anything elaborate. Needless to say they’re also terrified someone’s going to come after them next.’

  ‘It goes without saying then that if Barney was never interred in his coffin something else was, something valuable. But as James said, that means undertakers were involved and Heaven knows who else besides. Who were the funeral directors?’

  ‘I asked Dad to look in his records and it was an exceedingly respectable and long-established firm from Bristol, Littlejohn and Makepeace. Enquiries are progressing, as they say.’

  ‘Perhaps someone packed whatever it was in tea to stop it moving around or rattling.’

  ‘But according to forensics it’s used tea, Ingrid. You’re not telling me someone saved up old teabags in order to use them for that when all they had to do was go out and buy some bubble-wrap. And why would some be in that box at the Manley’s flat?’

  ‘It might not have come from the same source as that in the coffin.’

  ‘No, and we won’t know until we get more forensic findings and hear from the botanist at Kew. But it’s a bit of a coincidence.’

  ‘Are we baffled?’

  ‘Baffled.’

  One of the burned-out cars was confirmed to have belonged to the Manleys due to the just readable part of a number plate, so to assume that the other had been Keith Davies’s did not appear unsafe. There was no evidence of any kind to be found in the hulks, not even when the boot lids had been forced open. The vehicles had been pushed into the quarry from the higher ground above it, the strands of wire of a flimsy fence having been cut. We were assuming that the same people, or others, had then made their way to the cars and set them ablaze. No useful tyre tracks of any vehicles that might have been involved, not even the ones about to be destroyed, were found above the cliff as the ground was very dry and stony. The softer terrain in the rubbish-choked quarry below might have yielded information but the search for the missing child by upwards of fifty people had obliterated everything. The only shred of good news to come out of all this was that the polluted mess was going to be cleared up.

  The rectory garden had been repaired, the gifts of plants incorporated therein and volunteers and the PCC had made good most of the damage to the churchyard. But there was still a gaping hole where Barney Stonelake’s coffin had been, and according to John and Elspeth that evening, it was giving rise to some local unease.

  ‘It’s the old folk,’ Elspeth explained. ‘They don’t like things like that. Restless spirits and so forth.’

  ‘But the poor old man was never there and even if he had been he’d surely be haunting the Tanner brothers, not the village,’ Patrick said with a grin.

  His mother had entertained the WI to tea; some thirty ladies, all home baking, their sole topic of conversation the murders and the raid on the graveyard. ‘It’s not funny, Patrick,’ she snapped.

  John said, ‘Jimmy Reeves told me that people have been looking in their sheds and old outhouses in case the undertakers stashed Barney somewhere like that.’

  His wife surveyed him closely for signs of similar levity and seemed to find none. ‘Surely not!’

  Whereupon Patrick could contain himself no longer and left the room, his rude laughter, however, regrettably still audible. Moments later the laughter ceased when his mobile rang.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked when he had called me out into the hall.

  ‘That was Carrick from home. A man’s body’s in the process of being fished out of the Avon. There might be a connection – his throat’s been slashed too. James is on his way but thinks we ought to attend as well.’

  A crowd of gawpers clustered along the balustraded esplanade that overlooks the river had a good view of the weir by Pulteney Bridge, which is illuminated at night, hence the ease with which the body had been spotted. The fire brigade had been called out to assist and were utilizing hooks on long poles that they use to
pull straw from burning thatched roofs to drag the corpse to dry land. This had still meant venturing out on to the top of the slippery weir but fortunately the river was low and the flow of water over it gentle.

  By the time we arrived and Patrick had been apprised of this information the body, wearing what looked like a dark T-shirt and jeans, had been placed face down on the concrete walkway at the bottom of the gated steps one had to descend in order to gain access to the weir. At least, it should have been face down for it was lying on its front but the open eyes were actually staring sightlessly straight ahead, the chin flat on the ground, the neck virtually severed.

  ‘For God’s sake get the whole thing back from the edge,’ Patrick ordered. ‘Or we might lose the head.’ He turned to me. ‘D’you want to wait up top?’

  I rather felt that I did. Besides, there was not enough room for everyone on this narrow access path just above the water. I went back up the steps, got back in the car and switched on the radio to try to take my mind off what I had just seen.

  Dead fishlike eyes.

  It seemed that I sat there for a small eternity, not really listening to a symphony concert, while the blue lights on the nearby vehicles revolved mesmerically, radios yammered and, gradually, the bystanders began to drift away. Carrick arrived, going from sight down the steps. Soon afterwards an ambulance that had attended the scene was driven away: they are never used once death has officially been certified. A little later the body was collected by undertakers in a fibre-glass ‘shell’ coffin and loaded into a plain van. Then Patrick and Carrick came into view and approached the Range Rover. I switched off the radio.

  ‘Another nasty one,’ James said to me through the open window.

  ‘How long had he been in the water?’ I asked, really for something to say.

  ‘The pathologist thought no longer than twenty-four hours but obviously won’t know more until he does the PM.’

  Patrick said, ‘No ID on him, just like the others.’

  ‘Pure delaying tactics,’ Carrick commented. ‘But it’ll do the bastard no good at all – we’ll get him.’

  Someone called to him and he went off, his parting remark to us, ‘That was the kind of lowlife face that might be in a mugshots file.’

  ‘We might be looking at a copycat killing,’ Patrick observed as he climbed aboard.

  ‘Or he could have been the man who drove the van and helped push the cars into the quarry,’ I said.

  ‘We mustn’t be in too much of a rush to make that link.’

  Carrick’s instincts were proved to be sound and the dead man was soon identified – initially from police records and then as a result of enquiries undertaken the following morning – as Peter Horsley, aged twenty-nine, from the district of Totterdown in Bristol. From truanting at school he had progressed to a life of petty crime and was known to Bristol CID for breach of the peace, assault and social-security fraud. In between short-lived jobs he had served a total of three years in prison, in bite-sized chunks, as Carrick put it when we met up with him just before noon. The local grapevine, in the shape of a snout referred to only as Taz, was insistent that Horsley had got above himself by becoming caught up in a turf war.

  ‘I’m cautiously leaning towards it being a copycat crime,’ Carrick went on. ‘The method of killing does appear on the surface to be the only similarity to the Hagtop murders and, as far as I can ascertain, Horsley never drifted into the Bath area – from a criminal point of view, I mean.’

  ‘Could he have been an old oppo of Keith Davies’s?’ Patrick said.

  I said, ‘But Davies came from London.’

  ‘Horsley could easily have visited London. It’s quite possible they met there.’

  ‘Do you want to dig a little deeper?’ Carrick asked him.

  Patrick knew precisely what he was being asked to do. ‘OK,’ he replied.

  Carrick waggled a finger. ‘But Ingrid isn’t in on this, and that’s an order.’

  ‘Ingrid’s been on far more dangerous assignments than drifting around a few iffy pubs, whether it’s near Bristol docks or in the East End of London.’

  ‘I don’t care. I wasn’t responsible for her in those days. I am now and she’s not going. Right?’

  ‘James, she’s supposed to be under training.’

  ‘These were your Commander Brinkley’s orders, one of the conditions. Didn’t you have to take orders from him when you were with MI5?’

  ‘Like hell I did! No, never.’

  Right from the beginning of this new venture Patrick had been keeping his temper beautifully, if not heroically. I now ratted things up by completely boiling over.

  ‘I’m bloody fed up with you discussing me as though I’m a loaf of bread!’ I yelled. ‘Just allowed to follow along, nanny your bloody pathetic fragile egos, drive the car when you’re over the limit, take notes and do the washing up. Balls to the pair of you!’

  I stormed out.

  ‘Attagirl!’ said Derek Woods from the desk with a big grin, presiding over a reception area awash with strangers all wearing funny looks that pointed in my direction.

  It would be satisfying to report that I went away, performed stunning undercover detective work, solved the crime and then swanned back into the nick with a bulging, neatly typed file and tossed it, with enormous nonchalance, on Carrick’s desk. Real life is not like that. What actually happened is that I consoled myself with a lunch consisting of hundreds of cal-ories in very upmarket surroundings and then went back to the rectory for a feverish afternoon’s writing.

  At some time during the afternoon Patrick returned – he was still, with Carrick’s permission, taking time off to help John with parish matters – by taxi, for I had ‘purloined’ the car. This particular afternoon his task involved nothing more than taking his father to a meeting and then on to see an old friend, thus freeing Elspeth to have time for herself, who told me of the arrangement when I went down to make some tea.

  ‘I’m sort of dreading seeing him and James again,’ I confessed, filling the kettle. ‘I sort of told them to go to hell this morning.’

  ‘Good for you!’ she declared stoutly.

  ‘Worse, the entire police station heard me.’

  She giggled. ‘Perhaps that’s why Patrick came in a bit warily earlier on. I take it the case is a difficult one and everyone’s tempers are getting a bit frayed – not that I want you to think I’m prying, of course,’ she hastily added.

  It was not giving away sensitive information if I revealed one aspect of the inquiry. ‘Elspeth, what do you know about tea?’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Dried used tea was found in Barney Stonelake’s coffin. And in a box containing documents in the Manleys’ flat.’

  She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘How strange. What sort of tea is it?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. Some samples have been sent to a professor of botany at Kew.’

  ‘But used tea.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose they know that because the leaves have unrolled – I mean, Earl Grey has huge leaves and we put them on the garden because they block the sink.’

  ‘Yes, it had been in water.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it’d been used to make tea to drink.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I’m just quoting what the initial forensic report said.’

  ‘In Victorian times used tea was dried again by the big houses and given to the poor. Or even sold cheaply.’ She brooded. ‘And now you say some was in the coffin and a box at the Manleys’. Coffins, boxes … You know, this reminds me of something but I don’t know what. Perhaps I’m just thinking about the old tea chests in the loft …’

  I worked until just before dinner, feeling all bloody-minded about continuing with the police work. OK, I thought, I’ll stick out the initial period and then go home to Devon to write and help Patrick out over the phone, but only if he asks me to. To swing between two careers was madness and I would not see the children anywhere near often enough.
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  I had heard him return with John but stayed where I was for a while and then went down. There was no question of our having words in front of anyone.

  My husband gave me a winning smile, a glass of wine and a kiss, in reverse order, and a little later after some general conversation we all sat down to dinner.

  Elspeth was serving the dessert when she suddenly froze.

  ‘China!’ she exclaimed, staring at the bowl containing fresh fruit salad. ‘That’s it!’

  ‘What is?’ John asked blankly.

  ‘Tea! China – only it was porcelain – was packed in crates of tea. And when divers went down it got into their air hoses and masks, even though it was hundreds of years later.’

  ‘Sunken wrecks, you mean?’ I said. ‘The Nanking cargo and others like it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s worth following up,’ Patrick mused.

  John said, ‘There have been quite a few wrecks found since – one of the chaps involved with several of them was Michael Hatcher if I remember rightly – but surely the china that was found wouldn’t be so valuable that people would stash it away and be prepared to commit murder for it.’

  I said, ‘Some of the larger pieces of porcelain might have been worth a lot of money. Were there any warehouse raids at Heathrow while Christopher Manley was a security guard there?’

  ‘No,’ Patrick replied. ‘I checked. But I only had those wage statements we found to go on. He could have worked there a lot longer.’

  We drove back into Bath after dinner as Patrick wanted to check on the post-mortem findings. He had announced his intention before we sat down to eat and had only consumed one glass of wine with his meal. Preparing to leave he had, however, glanced in my direction with a questioning look on his face.