Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County.
Page 1
A DCI CALEB CADE MYSTERY
Bitter
Pastoral
John R Goddard
‘A first-rate contemporary mystery thriller of England’s idyllic countryside with twists and turns that baffle and stun’
Phil Cosker, Mystery and Thriller Writer
First published Great Britain in 2018 by
The Malvingham Press
www.malvingham.com
Copyright © John R. Goddard 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under
copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means (printed form, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of both the copyright owner and the
publisher of this book.
The characters, events, places and organisations in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is
coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN 978-0-9929562-4-0
Bitter Pastoral Cover Photograph © Ali Inay
Lies Fall Like Leaves Cover Photograph © Clem Onojeghuo
People
Arden, Jai Li
Head of Scientific Services, Ancaster County Police
Aystrup, Sam
Ancaster Country Roads Garbage Collector, former D’Eynscourte Estate land worker
Baines, Daniel
Owner, Supervising Trainer at Merian Boxing Club
Bartlett, Michael
Professor at Cambridge University, UK
Bull Junior
D’Eynscourte Estate Manager
Cade, Bess
Doctor, wife of Caleb Cade
Cade, Caleb
Detective Chief Inspector, Head of Major Crime Team 2, Ancaster County Police C.I.D., husband of Bess, father of Grace
Cade, Frank
Caleb’s deceased father, husband of Marion
Cade, Grace
Daughter of Bess and Caleb
Cade, Marion
Retired Director of Nursing, Caleb’s mother
Creel, Calvin
Detective Chief Superintendent, Head of Ancaster County Police C.I.D.
D'Eynscourte, Rupert Fitzroy
Deceased father of Valentine
D'Eynscourte, Lord Valentine Fitzroy
23rd Earl
Farrell, Jerry
Caleb’s friend at and since University
Fenwick, Tom
Detective Constable, Major Crime Team 2, Ancaster County Police C.I.D.
Fletcher, Harry
Detective Chief Inspector, Head of Drugs Squad, Ancaster County Police
Balfour-Forsythe, Lucinda
Head of Communications, Ancaster County Police
Gadd, Tony
Detective Constable, Major Crime Team 2, Ancaster County Police C.I.D.
Grayling, Amy
Acting Detective Inspector, Director of Intelligence, Ancaster County Police
Greene, Robert
CEO of The D’Eynscourte Bank
Hakluyt, Charles
Senior Vice President of The D'Eynscourte Bank
Hakluyt, Rebecca
Writer, American wife of Charles Hakluyt
Hamnet, Mary
Assistant Chief Constable, Ancaster County Police
Langstaffe, Phillipa (‘Pippa’)
Journalist and film maker
Loam, Martha
Elderly former Primary School Head Teacher. Born, bred and lifelong Ancaster County resident
Marshall, Paul
Police Constable, Ancaster County Police
Miller, Andrew
Scientific Services Officer, Ancaster County Police
Odling, George
Detective Chief Inspector, Head of Major Crime Team 1, Ancaster County Police C.I.D.
Parsons, Jean
Sergeant, Major Crime Team 2, Ancaster County Police C.I.D.
Rankin, Steve
Accepted as the local ‘Godfather’ in Ancaster County’s criminal underworld
Rudd, James
Father of Duane and Wayne
Rudd, Duane (‘Cat’)
Younger brother of Wayne
Rudd, Wayne
Elder brother of Duane
Smith, Ronnie
Police Constable, Ancaster County Police
Stephenson, Derek
Friend of the Rudd family
Sunley, Josh
Trainee Officer, Scientific Services, Ancaster County Police
Tasker, Joe
American Professor
Verity, Polly
Academic, friend of ‘Pippa’ Langstaffe
Whittle, Marcia
Detective Constable, Major Crime Team 2, Ancaster County Police C.I.D.
Yen, Bai
Daughter of Shi, Executive of The D'Eynscourte Bank
Yen, Shi
Mother of Bai, Senior Vice President of The D'Eynscourte Bank
Monday December 10th
1
A wheeling flight of starlings catch the winter wind and soar high. ‘Dark shapes so free, against dawn’s rosy tips that spread like fingers slowly reaching from the glooming horizon.’ My student translation of Homer’s ancient Greek poetry comes unbidden, obscenely wrong here, now. Snow falls soft, white layers floating down to the fields and woodlands of the frosted valley like a shroud. My eyes linger on the whirling murmuration of a thousand birds as they dance across the sky in perfect unison. I can only imagine the cheery bright detail of their winter-starred plumage as they swoop out of sight. My gaze returns from the joyous to bleak horror at the bottom of the eight-foot ditch. I long to look away but cannot.
The woman is truly beautiful, long honey coloured hair like whirls of burnished wheat, cascading wildly to frame a face born for love and laughter. Once. Not now. Sam’s torch beam reveals the left side of her face, a delight of soft skin and freckles. The light almost rears away from the bloodily raw right profile, death staring from its eye. One leg protrudes out at odd angles, broken, trousers ripped, bloodied. Laid on her back, arms akimbo, she hangs just perilous inches above the mire of slime in the deep dyke. Only two thick stakes, jutting out from the sides like stanchions, have saved her from being lost in that morass for months, perhaps forever. Perhaps that was the intent.
The remote country road is empty of traffic for now, but that will change even here as the day proper begins. Only the imposing spike-topped iron gates of Albion House sixty yards away, and the grandeur of D'Eynscourte Manor’s silhouette, shimmering on its hill three miles distant as in a fairy tale bedecked with its countless Christmas lights, bear witness to any human life hereabouts.
My eyes tear up. From the cold; in angry sorrow at this waste of a life; at my being here at all.
Instinctively I follow official procedure. My trusty iPad smoothly captures mid and close up images of the location, the state of Sam’s van, nearby verges, hedgerows, and the ditch and body in situ from above.
Donning a crime suit, latex gloves, a mask and midriff high waterproofs I slide down, crackling the thin ice with sharp shards swirling. Immediately I am up to my waist in the greedy sucking mix of these dark depths as clumps of frozen soil clunk against my legs, I am grateful for Sam’s solid strength as he clutches tight above to the rope attached aroun
d my waist.
The woman’s brown eyes, once liquid with life, stab in stark accusation. Yet I have to intrude and confirm she is dead. She is. Her face a lifeless shell, skin smooth, still youthful yet clammy cold to the touch. Striking in life, her mouth wide and beautiful, forehead well modelled, a woman of resolution, caring for fashion but only to her own lights. Respect demanded and received. Her secrets previously kept close, but now I have to tease them out.
I shudder despite already seeing enough tragedy to last a lifetime. You never get fully used to sudden or violent cessation of life. Death’s look, touch, smell, taste is distinct and final. In the very air, always lurking with you after. Regular contact brings a sickness of the soul; a desperation to be elsewhere. I am overwhelmed by that now, even as my very breath crystallises in the cold and fades to nothingness.
I could escape, easily. Indeed, I should. Climb rapidly out, call the incident in, wait for the whole panoply of uniformed police constables, the assigned C.I.D officer, doctor, forensics, pathologist that will all turn out for ‘a suspicious death.’ It is not my business this day. I should not be here. Indeed, it is foolish. I trust few. My enemies will use anything to crush me further, finally, irrevocably. My breaking protocol like this, my being here at all and unofficially is just such a weapon.
Yet here I am. Sam phoned; he had found a body.
“Yas ter come lad, on yer oawn, wi’out t’others, wi’out fail, afore I tells ‘em official.”
I came. In Sam, I trust.
***
The only problem being that he will not now explain why it has to be me. When pressed this solid unemotional countryman silently shakes his head. Tears fill his eyes and he turns away, embarrassing us both. He will not tell until I have done my job; studied the scene objectively, fully. A wise man who I love, the nearest thing to a father I have ever known, yet as stubborn as the proverbial mule. But right now, I want to shake answers from him about this woman neither of us know. And have him tell: why me?
It is not as though I am at the height of my powers or authority. Detective Chief Inspector Caleb Cade, born and bred in Eastern England’s ancient Ancaster County, I have been buried in a desk job as Head of Intelligence with the area’s police for seven years. In effect, a demotion after heading up a prestigious Major Crime Squad for this most English of rural counties. Building Intelligence had come with a warning from the Head of C.I.D.: ‘Stay out of any and all live investigations’. I have obeyed, save for one; today makes two.
I shrug. Do I really care? Since I am not really here, why not break all the rules? After all, this death must affect me and mine somehow, for Sam to be as adamant as he is.
Like swimming, you never forget how to detect. I stand quiet, water up to my waist, balanced. Shut my eyes, concentrate, in and of myself alone. A cliché but first impressions at a crime scene are crucial, once missed often never to be recovered. My senses seek to sink into any remains of the event and its aftermath. Without vision, you gather in unprompted impressions of smell, sounds, even taste. Sight is the dominant sense. Seventy per cent of our information comes through our eyes, the theorists say. But the other thirty is too often neglected and can offer much that may otherwise be missed.
Birds, robin to the forefront, create the lilting chatter of the dawn chorus all around as a great dank mist truly shrouds the Greek poet’s lost colours in the sky. The wind rips at my white crime scene suit as I turn slowly in a full circle, away from and then back towards the body. Eyes shut, I take in the purity of the icy frost above, clashing with the stench of decaying manure, grass, mud, toxic chemicals as the congealed mixture sucks once more at my legs.
I almost wretch at the stench. But there is too a trace, the slightest whiff of a distinctive bewitching spice. I sniff in all directions again and then lean close to the woman. It is perfume, lingering on her neck and clothes, softly alluring even within this background cacophony of foul odours.
With eyes wide open, I repeat the three hundred and sixty degree turn, using the beam of my torch now. Soaking in, memorising the details of the dead woman’s position, looks, clothes and the surrounds. ‘Sink yourself into the colours as though it is a Van Gogh,’ my mentor and first Detective Chief Superintendent chanted as her mantra.
I turn again, recording video on my iPad. If possible, reach for potential scenarios and test the evidence against them from the very start, some say. I do so now. A hit and run? She is cold, going rapidly rigid, and could have been flung here by the impact from up to a hundred yards away. I have seen such before. Metal mashing human flesh and hurling it high afar. But if she died a few hours ago, what was she doing walking on this lonely road at all in night’s deep darkness. How did she get here? Who is she?
Or was she killed elsewhere, neck broken as in a car accident, and the body just dumped in the ditch? The perpetrator not realising it had failed to sink without a trace as he or she would assume it would. The inevitable ‘but.’ If they deliberately dropped her here, why are there no obvious footprints or tyre marks on the roadside nearby?
It rained hard last night, only in the last hour has frost and ice frozen everything while Sam was here working. If she was dropped before the freeze, the marks should be visible even if below the snow that came with my arrival.
Sadness overwhelms as I look up to the heavy sky framed above by the ditch sides. It is like being laid in a coffin, waiting for the top to seal out all life forever. I peer up and around the lip of what feels like my grave to the tall thick hedges intertwined with wild blackberry bushes next to the field beyond. Unchecked my mind speeds far away from this cold dark oblivion. To scorching sunlight when people would be here cheerfully scouring those very bushes for the succulent black berries to use in home-made sponge puddings, fruit pies and jams. Just as I had picked elsewhere with my mother every summer as soon as I could walk. As I had done with my own wife and young daughter, picking then in a welter of laughter, cooking up pudding delights. To be devoured oh so quickly with dollops of ice cream or custard. My hand goes to my face at such memories, dizzy I stumble before Sam rights me, pulling the rope tight from above.
A grunt, “All reight lad, deap deyke of kelter this ‘un.”
‘Kelter', a local word meaning, what? It comes to me: decaying rubbish. I flick my hand to show I am in control. In truth, he must know I am lost, an empty husk that drifts, battling to retain any feeling in a land of depression as icy black as the mighty clods of Ancaster soil hewn by the recent sharp plough beyond the hedge.
***
Detecting - meeting people, interacting, empathising, clashing, watching, being out and about in the world - will not, surely cannot, work for me now. Such reminders of good times long gone will be everywhere I go, stabbing, lancing, wounding, at anytime, anywhere. Memories should be cherished. Many of mine are. For a moment. But then the reality of now snaps and gorges like a blood lusting shark devouring bliss. Good times never to be mine again, naught but shadow now.
Until last Friday, as the Detective Chief Inspector heading Intelligence, I had control of my every moment. As far as possible. I wandered a set protected path each and every day: home, the drive to work, in my office almost alone all day, reading files, writing them, exercise, home again. Meeting only my own few staff, seeing none else unless I wanted to. Isolated in body and mind, surrounded by the familiar, safe in a void of my own creation.
Not so from tomorrow, Tuesday morning. I will no longer be cocooned. I am to be back in the world, full throttle, as Head of the newly created Major Crime Team 2, with work to do on behalf of victims. Inevitably enveloped by memories, scudding in like missiles of joy and then exploding with the dizzying pain of loss.
We have still not called this death in. Not being officially involved here, procedure says I should not touch or move the body. I do, examining it in detail, taking photographs and samples. The woman is dressed all in expensive black: walking boots, cord jeans, thick fisherman’s jumper, scarf, long overcoat, leather gloves.
She did not want to be easily seen this night. She wears no watch, ring or jewellery, and has no item at all in any pocket beyond a solitary tissue. Has she been robbed? Before or after death? No sign of sexual attack with all her clothes intact.
Minutely, slowly, respectfully, I examine her face, hair, neck, ears, shoulders, arms, wrists then hands. Intent on the detail of fingers and nails, I look up suddenly at the body’s face. A bittern cries harshly, a dying moan of wind, slanting snow renews, chills my face until I brush off the icy flakes. Any sunlight has died. Another flashback, a shard of a time gone by stabs. An image of this woman’s infectious laughter, within a group, carefree in a summer dress amidst sunshine, clinking wine glasses in the greenest of gardens. She smiles vivaciously at me in my mind, and is befogged instantly. Did I know her? She is likely my age, slightly younger. Impossible. For I have lived the life of a cloistered monk these past seven years; never looked at a woman save my wife the previous decade. I look up at the sound of a vehicle slaloming past behind Sam, its lights momentarily blinding him before crow black gloom envelops us again.
With tweezers from my tools in the satchel over my shoulder, I take minute samples of what look like thick windscreen glass and some silver paint. There are traces of both in her clothes, in the wounds of her mutilated face, in her hair. I bag them in small evidence envelopes. I steel myself and sniff at the clothes, face and hair again, noting the distinct perfume once more. It is a question for the pathologist but there is no blood, a broken neck or smothering are the obvious possible causes of death.