by Jack Benton
He gave a wry smile. Wishful thinking, but nope. He was a one-man band, and the heavy lifting was his chore alone.
As he began to read, he realised he wasn’t sure what he was even looking for. Instead, he simply let his mind drift, waiting for something to stand out.
An hour later, he put down his pen and stared off through the leaves of the trees backing on to Worth Farm’s lower side, to the hills of Bodmin Moor beyond. The Amos Birch case was a tangled mess, and he was aching for a drink.
To put his mind off the temptation, he climbed over the stile and walked down through the field to the gurgling stream at the back of Worth Farm, keeping an eye out for the farm’s aggressive owner as he did so. A line of gnarled trees about ten metres high overhung the hedge lining the farm’s lower slope, their upper branches bent by the incessant wind to make the muddy bank down to the stream into a tunnel. Slim’s footing was uncertain, at the mercy of loose clods of peat and hidden rocks until he reached the far end, where the line of trees became abruptly less encroaching, as though the two halves of the row had been planted at generational intervals. These shorter trees were more spaced apart than the others, almost ordered.
Slim frowned. They were only just budding with spring leaves, but he found a couple of dried fallen ones lying on the ground. He picked them up and stuffed them into his pocket.
Back at the guesthouse, he knocked on Mrs. Greyson’s living room door. He was answered with a groggy ‘come in,’ and opened the door to find her watching an old Cheers rerun on Channel Four with a glass of amber liquid in her hand. The urge to snatch the brandy and drink it himself was so strong Slim took a step back. Taking a deep breath, he concentrated on the old clock ticking lethargically on the mantel, each second such a shuddering labour it seemed set to quit at any moment. It read a little after three, which surprised Slim, who thought it was a lot later.
‘Don’t mind that; it’s slow,’ Mrs. Greyson said, noticing his gaze. ‘It never has run on time. Can I help you with something, Mr. Hardy? I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit?’
‘I wondered if you had a book on wildlife I could borrow? Flowers and plants?’
Mrs. Greyson sighed. ‘Do I look like a librarian?’ Before Slim could answer that she did indeed resemble one every bit as much as a guesthouse owner, she flapped a hand at a bookshelf beside the TV. ‘There’s one there. That tall one with the white spine. The hardback.’
‘Thanks.’
With Mrs. Greyson’s disapproving gaze following him, Slim took the book and went up to his room.
The leaves he had picked up off the ground were in such a state of decay it was hard to tell what their original shape had been, but by a process of deducting all the leaves they definitely weren’t, Slim became quietly confident that the trees backing onto Worth Farm were lime trees.
From the genus tallia, lime trees were known in Germany as linden trees, where they were commonly used for the construction of cuckoo clocks, their wood being light and easily carved. Even though the incessant moorland wind had distorted their distinctive pyramidal shape, it was clear that Amos had planted the trees to create his own supply.
But, with the lime trees being a hardwood, and therefore with a slow growth rate of a foot or two per year, Amos must have known it would be decades before they were large enough for the wood to be useable. Slim estimated that the shorter trees were in the region of twenty-five years old, meaning Amos had planted them not long before his disappearance, banking on them becoming a long-term materials supply for his projects.
Slim allowed himself a small nod of satisfaction. It was a small break, but a break nonetheless.
‘You planned to come back, didn’t you?’ he whispered, staring at a small pen picture he had found of Amos Birch on a clock review site. ‘Wherever you went, you planned to come back.’
33
Plymouth had far more to offer than either Tavistock or Liskeard. After being told by the receptionist in the registrar’s office that his request would take a couple of hours to process, Slim found his way up to Plymouth Hoe, where he resisted a sharp wind to gaze out at Drake’s Sound. Far out in the English Channel, a couple of container ships moved on what looked like a collision course, the distances between them skewed by their relative sizes and the choppy expanse of grey water.
Dressed in a brand new jacket Slim felt becoming of his status as a private investigator and wearing a woolen beanie hat which definitely wasn’t, only now understood the pervading sense of claustrophobia that came as standard in a tiny moorland village like Penleven. It was no wonder Celia had needed to escape. Each time he walked past the shop or the pub, he felt the draw of the booze on sale stronger than ever. Only the night before, after Mrs. Greyson had gone to bed, he had sneaked downstairs, and, accompanied by the lethargically ticking clock, taken a bottle of brandy out of a cabinet in her living room and turned it over in his hands. Half full, everything about it had appealed: the sound of the liquid sloshing against the glass, the feel of the cap, the colour of the brandy … his hands had shook as he put it back. He had found the strength to turn and walk away, but it wouldn’t be much longer before he cracked again. The ghost of Amos Birch was calling him, invisible fingernails scraping at his resolve.
He was meeting Celia again after lunch. She had cancelled their previous meeting due to unforeseen circumstances, perhaps to do with her job, although she hadn’t specified. He wanted to give her good news, but aside from a few vague ideas, he had little to go on. Celia, he felt, held all the cards. Something she said would be the key, but he still couldn’t clear her of suspicion. She was the centre of everything.
An hour later, back at the registrar’s office, he picked up the document he had been waiting for—a copy of Mary Birch’s death certificate. To his frustration there was nothing suspicious about it. Mary Birch, née Merrifield, born October 9th, 1949, had died of a urinary tract infection attributed to complications due to multiple sclerosis, on June 14th, 2006.
Slim pulled out his notebook and did all his customary checks, but there were no significant connections to any of the dates, and the cause of death was a common complication of her overreaching illness. He had also printed out some information about commonly available chemicals that could be adapted as poisons, but poison-related deaths were usually heart or respiratory failure.
It looked as though, for all the intrigue it would otherwise create, Mary Birch had died a painful but otherwise mundane death.
Slim bought fish’n’chips then headed for the harbour, where he was sitting on a bench and looking out to sea when Celia arrived. She sat down heavily beside him, sighed, and immediately pulled out a cigarette. She leaned over to pull a lighter out of her pocket, then dropped both on the floor. As she leaned to clumsily scoop them up, she let out a little bark of frustration.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
Unsure as to what she was referring, Slim said, ‘Busy day at work?’
Celia shrugged. ‘Someone was sick.’
‘I made a few enquiries,’ Slim said. ‘Nothing much to go on. I wondered if you could find a list of old employees at your father’s farm. One of them might have seen something.’
‘I doubt it,’ Celia said.
‘What about Michael?’
Celia’s head snapped around. ‘What about him?’
‘I talked to him.’
Without a word, Celia stood up and began walking away. Slim thought for a moment that she was leaving, then she stopped, waved her hands as though shaking off water, turned and marched back, eyes wild.
‘Don’t go talking to people like that without asking me first.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s all lies. He doesn’t know anything. He thought he knew me but he didn’t know anything.’
‘He loved you. He told me that. I think he still does.’
Celia turned away, and when she turned back, tears shone in her eyes.
‘Don’t taunt me, Slim. Don’t taunt me wit
h what I could have had. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know any of it.’
He wanted to shake her, but he forced his hands into his pockets where they had less chance of betraying him. ‘Then tell me. I can’t find your father unless you tell me what you know.’
Celia, sobbing, sat down on the bench. Slim handed her a tissue, feeling a little guilty that it had occupied the back pocket of his jeans for at least two weeks.
‘I was only nineteen, I know,’ Celia said. ‘After everything that happened, I felt so much older. I’d not been with Michael all that long but I felt so sure about him. Something clicked between us, and when he asked … of course I said yes. I told my parents together, and my mother flew into such a rage … I was stunned. She called me every name under the sun. She called me a slut, told me I was crazy, no one would marry a nutjob like me. I told my father to take Charlotte out of there, so he went out to his workshop. He never liked our arguments and I could see that he was happy to leave. It was always me and Mother. I’d fight back until she ground me down, but my dad, he always wanted to get out of the way, and Charlotte rarely left his side. That was the last time I saw either of them.’
Slim nodded. ‘So you think that’s why he left?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your mother’s anger drove your father to run off with Charlotte, and yet you blamed Michael? The man who loved you?’
‘After my father disappeared, Michael became a suspect. It shames me to say it, but I suspected it too. You see, he was waiting outside for me that night. I was going to call him in after I’d told them about our engagement, but I argued with my mother for hours, and when I finally walked out, I couldn’t find him. He must have heard the shouting and run off. That was when I decided to find my father, because it was time to put Charlotte to bed. His workshop was empty, both of them gone.’
Slim put up a hand. ‘So, wait a minute. Michael was outside when your father disappeared?’
‘Yes.’
‘So he could have seen something.’
Celia shrugged. ‘Sure, he could have done. When I spoke to him a couple of days later, he said he got tired of waiting and went home. He was interviewed by police but had nothing to tell them. To be honest, I wondered, but it was stupid to think it. Michael was a pub bruiser, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to kill an old man and a child. He was rough on the outside but soft on the inside. That’s why I liked him. In all the time we were together, he never so much as raised his voice to me.’ Celia sniffed, wiping away a tear. ‘And I used to get after him sometimes, too. With me he was a perfect gentleman.’
‘He said you’ve only spoken once since he asked you to marry him.’
Celia waved a hand as though to dismiss the question. ‘I called him to break it off a few days later. That’s when he told me he went home.’
‘But not right after?’
‘I was angry. I blamed him for everything, and after my mother gave his name to the police, he was taken into custody. They had nothing on him but a loose motive, so he was released. My mother did her best to have him rearrested on multiple occasions, claiming he had to be responsible in the absence of any other possibilities, but as time passed, and no sign of my father or Charlotte turned up, the case against him went cold. For me, though, it changed everything.’
‘You associated Michael with your father and daughter’s disappearance so you couldn’t go back to the way you were before?’
Celia clicked her fingers. ‘That’s exactly it. You should be a counselor.’
Slim smiled. ‘I’ve been told that before, but I get enough death threats in this line of work to risk getting any more. So Michael continued working at Worth Farm?’
‘Ha, no way. My mother fired him. He never came back.’
Slim nodded slowly. He tried to picture the scene: a blazing argument, Amos Birch picking up a young girl and carrying her out of the room, but instead of taking the girl up to her bedroom, he went out to his workshop, and then out to the moor. With the girl in his arms, he walked halfway up Rough Tor, buried a clock in the peaty earth, then walked away, neither of them to be seen again.
No.
It was impossible.
‘You said they found footprints,’ he said.
‘The police? Yes. So they told my mother.’
‘But only one set? Your father carried your daughter? The whole way? It must have been hard for him. I mean, that clock I found is heavy, and a three-year-old child would weigh, what, a couple of stone at least. In those videos he looks quite thin—’
‘He was stronger than he looked,’ Celia said. ‘He was wiry rather than bulky, but farming work, and all his hobbies … they took a lot more effort than you might think.’
‘But to carry her and that clock—’
‘Look, I don’t know how he did it. Perhaps someone snatched Charlotte and he went after her.’
‘Do you really think so?’
Celia shrugged, then fixed Slim with a hard glare. ‘If I knew the answers, I wouldn’t be here talking to you, would I?’
Before Slim could reply, Celia abruptly looked at her watch. She gave a little shake of her head as though the time itself was frustrating her then stood up, simultaneously pulling a cigarette out of her pocket. ‘I have to go. Keep in touch. And thanks, Slim.’
‘I haven’t done anything yet.’
‘But you will, I’m sure of it.’
As he watched her walk away, Slim frowned. Celia was like a pressure valve being flexed, letting out information in sudden rushes, but keeping a lot hidden inside. It was too early to make her a suspect, but if there was anyone to suspect, it was Celia.
34
In an attempt to avoid invoking Mrs. Greyson’s wrath yet again, Slim pulled a rain-soaked business card out of his wallet and dialed what was left of the Lakeview’s number, leaving a message on an automated voicemail to say he was staying overnight in Plymouth. Then he wandered about until he found a cheap hostel near the Hoe, taking a private basement room.
The library opened later than the last buses ran, and also contained a far greater newspaper archive. After getting a sandwich and an espresso for dinner, Slim searched a computer database for Amos’s name then refined the search by date to pinpoint the articles dealing with the investigation. This time he was after specific information and he got it.
Mentioned in several articles was a significant police-led search of the surrounding moorland. And in each case it was noted that nothing of interest was found.
Bodmin Moor was a sizable place, but it was no Dartmoor or Lake District. That a casual hiker had failed to turn up the buried clock in the last twenty years was feasible, but that a full police investigation had turned up nothing?
Unlikely. Slim shook his head. More like impossible.
Which left him with an unusual possibility: that the clock and the letter hidden inside it had been buried at a later date, after the search had concluded.
Either Amos Birch had returned to do it, or someone else had.
Someone who likely knew about his whereabouts after his disappearance.
There was something else that kept recurring too: the name of a detective inspector linked to the case, Mark Cassell. On a whim, Slim consulted a phone book and found only three Cassells with an M initial. The first call was answered by a lady who accused him of wanting to sell her something, but the second by a gruff voice who confirmed he was a retired police officer and agreed to meet him.
Unexpectedly, Slim found himself in a pub near the harbour, sitting opposite a man in his seventies whose stern features and hard eyes left no doubt to his former profession. With an Alsatian lying with its head over the man’s feet who growled every time Slim met its eyes, he had taken a sip of the pint already bought for him before he could think what he was doing.
‘You’re a journalist, are you?’
‘Documentary filmmaker,’ Slim said, using the old alias. ‘I’m trying to assess the possibility of a film on the disappearance
of Amos Birch—’
Cassell flapped a hand. ‘You said on the phone. You’d be wasting your time.’
‘You were the investigator in charge?’
‘I was indeed. The man ran out on his wife. That’s about it. Happens all the time. It was only so high profile because he was well-known and he left no trace, but it got more attention and used more police resources than it deserved.’
‘You’re sure he ran off?’
‘Absolutely. And it was hard to blame him. I sat through several interviews with his wife, and she was as ghastly a human being as I’ve ever met. And I don’t mean just the way she looked—she was no oil painting, believe me—but everything about her. She swore worse than we did in the academy, she had nothing good to say about anyone, and she treated his disappearance as a business issue rather than a personal thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was a minor celebrity, and she liked the wealth that came with it. Their house was full of junk, all sorts of rubbish she was buying off the TV and online, back when it was a new thing to do that. She told us she’d kill him for real when we tracked him down. Showed no concern for his welfare other than how it might reflect on her.’
‘You don’t think there’s a chance she was responsible for his murder?’
Cassell laughed. ‘Not a chance. Even had she been physically capable, it would have defied all motive. She simply had no reason to kill him.’
Hardly aware of his actions but regretting every step, Slim found himself at the bar, ordering a second round of drinks. When he sat back down he said, ‘What about the daughter?’
‘Celia Birch? She wasn’t much better. Seduced one of the junior officers. He had to be disciplined. Nearly lost his job, but we’d have been screwed if there was a case to be made. Compromised witness and all that.’
Slim gaped. ‘She slept with one of the police on the case?’
‘The girl was loose, let’s put it that way. And not in her right mind. She was rambling, barely legible. We had to use special liaison officers to interview her. One of the trainees got too close.’
