Grave Stones

by Priscilla Masters

  PRAISE FOR PRISCILLA MASTERS

  ‘It’s always a joy to discover a crime writer with a

  sure touch and the capacity to shock.

  More please and soon’

  Peter Lovesey

  ‘Expertly crafted’

  Good Book Guide

  ‘A powerful novel well anchored in contemporary events’

  The Guardian

  ‘One of the most respected and prolific writers of crime fiction in Britain’

  Shropshire Star

  ‘Something of a small masterpiece of crime writing’

  Sherlock Holmes Magazine

  ‘Terse and tense and utterly involving. Masters is highly skilled at building tension… Highly recommended’

  iloveamystery.com

  ‘Highly recommended. This is one of those books that every so often makes you look up and around the room to confirm to yourself that you are safe!’

  Mystery Women

  Grave Stones

  PRISCILLA MASTERS

  Who else could I dedicate this to but Henry, my beloved grandson?

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  By Priscilla Masters

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Sunday, 16th September

  Pools of rain trickled down the limestone wall, licking its way over lichen and mosses, filling up crevices before spilling onto the mud, liquefying it further. It treated the usual and the unusual alike, rivulets coursing towards the barns, the cowshed, the door of the farmhouse, which stood ajar. Everything was damp and dripping, covered by a moving sheet of water which almost drowned an ant scurrying frantically to find its lost tribe. A slow worm slept in almost the one warm, dry place, between two stones, protected from the elements by an overhang; the Scarlet Pimpernel had closed her petals and the lichens and mosses flourished. Finally the ant was reunited with the rest of its kind and they marched in grim and narrow formation across the drab colours: the pale grey of the limestone, the sopping green of the moss. The only hint of colour was in the splashes of another, brighter hue, which had once been scarlet but was now changed to blurred and watery flecks of rust-red. Specks of it spattered the wall, a larger patch on the ground mixing with the mud and something else that had once been human tissue. Brain tissue: thinking, loving, hating, knowing – finally fearing – brain tissue. A person’s personality, character and memories, now carelessly spilt over the ancient stones. It could think no more. As the batter of rain continued, the pattern changed, too, becoming less defined while the wall stood motionless and imperfect. For like a damaged row of teeth, something was missing, spoiling the line. The copestone was still near, lying at the foot of the wall, almost touching the still shape on the floor as the rain continued its rinsing of the scene.

  About nine hundred miles away Joanna Piercy was lying on a striped velour beach towel that had been carefully laid over a wooden slatted sunlounger to keep the gravelly sand from sticking to her body. She was reading – or trying to read – a paperback while Matthew chattered and attempted to distract her. Finally, in desperation, he grabbed the book and held it aloft, like a trophy.

  ‘Matthew.’ Joanna made a vain attempt to snatch the book back. She was laughing. ‘This is so unfair.’ She put her hand out again to attempt recovery but Matthew was tall; his arms were long and he wasn’t going to give it back. He held it away from her, his face both merry and challenging.

  ‘Come on, Jo,’ he said, bending over her now, grinning. ‘How can you possibly lie there reading when the sea is so inviting?’

  She glanced over his shoulder at the sparkling water. He spoke the truth. The sea did look beautiful. Cool and clean and bright. She made another swipe at his hand – and missed again. ‘The book’s exciting,’ she protested. ‘The heroine has just been shot and I can’t bear—’

  He stood up before her, tall, tanned and slim, hands on his hips, black swimming trunks, honey blond hair, bright green eyes and that wonderful eager, inviting expression. It was too much. She abandoned the idea of reading – for the next hour at least. Matthew was right. It was time to frolic.

  She sat up, fastened the halter-neck strap of her bikini around her neck, peeled off her sunglasses and jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll race you,’ she said and before he had a chance to respond ran helter skelter down the beach, Matthew in hot pursuit.

  They had finally given in to the terrible English ‘summer’ weather and escaped to Spain – Mojacar, in Almeria, the south east corner where both the Moorish influence and the sun were at their strongest.

  Joanna felt happy. Ecstatically happy. She had felt like this from the moment she had stepped off the plane. After days and days of heavy skies and thunderous rain at home the Spanish sunshine had dazzled, the colours seeming almost too bright for her eyes. On that first afternoon she had squinted up at the bluest of skies, the whitest of walls, the brilliant reds of the geraniums in their terracotta pots decorating the balconies, and felt as though a giant weight had rolled off her chest. All towns in England can seem dreary at times under leaden skies but the incessant rain in the Staffordshire town of Leek, the malicious floods that had drowned parts of the country and the persistently cold temperatures had seemed to leak her happiness away, making her disgruntled and irritable. Something her colleagues – particularly Korpanski – had both noticed and commented on. She’d felt a certain dissatisfaction with her life, feeling she was simply treading water as the years slipped by without really going anywhere. So when Matthew had suggested they take a break she had gladly agreed. They’d spent a fruitful hour on the Internet, hiring a small apartment near the town of Mojacar and a jeep for the duration. They had spent their days sunbathing, swimming in the sea and reading paperbacks and the evenings strolling hand in hand through shops and restaurants.

  Like her, Matthew was in buoyant mood.

  The sand here was coarse and gravelly and hot underfoot; the beach shelving steeply making the rollers high and powerful, their breaking over the beach providing the perfect background music. They ran straight into the waves, hardly pausing as the surf hit their knees then their chests. They were both good swimmers and enjoyed the challenge of a fearsome current. Matthew bent his head towards her, eyeing her with lascivious amusement. ‘I hope you didn’t pay more than fifty pence for that scrap of a thing you’re wearing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there isn’t more than four square inches of material in it.’

  ‘It’s the latest thing,’ she said unperturbed, ‘and I’m not even telling you how much per square inch I paid, Matthew Levin. It’s none of your business. I shall get a lovely tan and be the envy of everyone back at the station.’

  ‘I sincerely hope not,’ he said. ‘If you start flashing your white bits I would fear for your morals.’

  In the flippant holiday mood she was in she was tempted to stick her tongue out at him. Instead she dived underneath the waves, tasting the salt water against her lips.

  At that very moment, Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski was queuing up to go on Oblivion at Alton Towers. And as he watched a c
ar of previous passengers scream, white-faced, and disappear into the black hole, he wasn’t absolutely sure that this was where he wanted to be. But Ricky was tugging at his arm, coaxing him and pleading, without realising that his father, for all his toughness, was not relishing testing his response to G-forces.

  The trip to Alton Towers was an annual treat that he and Fran promised their children. Normally they enjoyed it. But this summer, queuing in the cold and rain, it didn’t seem much like a treat to him. For two pins he would have vanished into one of the restaurants and left Ricky and Joss to their own devices. But he was a father and so he grinned at the pair of them and was about to be hurled into Oblivion.

  Less than ten miles away in the town of Leek, Queen of the Moorlands, the rain had stopped, luring Hilary Barnes out of her house on the Prospect Farm Estate with a basketful of washing, looking up at the sky, willing it to hold off raining just long enough for the sheets to dry. As she pegged the laundry to the line she sniffed the air cautiously. That smell.

  She used the rotary line, holding the plastic pegs in her mouth and pinning the clothes neatly in rows, socks paired together, a line of knickers, a couple of shirts, all the time eyeing the overcast sky with a malevolent challenge.

  You dare rain – again. She felt like shaking her fist at it – or taking a deep breath and puffing the clouds out of the way like the portrayal of the North Wind in a child’s picture book. But it was no use. The sky remained obstinately heavy and grey, threatening to soak yet another line of washing, without even a glimpse of blue. Not even enough to make the fabled sailor’s trousers.

  She sniffed again, screwing up her face. It is sometimes hard to know whether our memory stores smells, retrieving them at inopportune times. Was it there, in the air, or simply remembered, a chemical flashback? Hilary paused, hardly daring to breathe. Should she get the drains checked again? Was it worse? She breathed in tentatively and believed it was. This was not her imagination but an invasive, pervasive stink, which was fouling the air all around. She put an experimental hand over her nose and mouth and gave a sharp sniff. At the same time her eyes drifted towards the bottom of the garden. The boundary of her house and all the houses on this side of the Prospect Farm Estate was a dry stone wall, beyond which was probably the most decrepit farm in the whole of Staffordshire. Her lips tightened. Ignoring the fact that the farm had been in existence more than two hundred years before the estate – or development – as the brochure had called it – she could not understand why the council could seem to do nothing about Prospect Farm itself. The animals looked skinny and emaciated, covered in sores; the yard was nothing but a quagmire – particularly after all this rain. The entire place was a breeding ground for flies and rats. She’d seen a large, brown rodent scuttle from her wheelie bin only last week. Sometimes she fancied the filthy spillage actually seeped beneath the stone wall to pollute her own garden. There were certainly brown patches on the lawn nearest the wall. The barns were dangerous, about to collapse, with gaping holes in the roof. The house was – her eyes narrowed in disapproval – a disgrace. Broken windows, doors falling off their hinges, peeling paint. It was a tribute to nothing but neglect. It was hard to imagine that it could ever have been anyone’s pride and joy. Certainly not now. She pursed her lips.

  And as for Grimshaw. She practically shuddered as she pictured the farmer, bent with arthritis, in navy dungarees, hardly acknowledging her greetings. The question was – what was to be done? Her eyes slid over her garden fence towards her next door neighbour’s house.

  Ten years ago Jakob Grimshaw had started selling off small pockets of land around his farm. A portion of field here to a local farmer, a larger sliver there to a couple who had a daughter and a pony but nowhere to keep it. As he had sold the land a local property developer named Gabriel Frankwell had watched and plotted for his own share. He stepped in at exactly the right moment, bid for and bought a parcel of land, obtained planning permission for nine houses with suspicious speed and employed architects to maximise his profit. Finally he had built the Prospect Farm Estate: nine luxury houses, all five-bedroomed, three-bathroomed, double-garaged and individually designed. It was common knowledge that Frankwell had banked on procuring the farm itself and finishing the job before retiring to Rio de Janeiro, where he had a twenty five year-old mistress named Lucia, but old Grimshaw had proved stubborn – quite a thorn in his flesh – and the deal that would have secured Frankwell his final million had proved tantalisingly out of his reach. He, as sharp a wide-boy as existed, had been thwarted by someone he considered a simple Staffordshire farmer. Frankwell was humiliated and furious but he too was stubborn, persistent and sometimes, when the stakes were high, he could also be patient. It had been these qualities that had lifted him out of his native Liverpool estate to the position of one of the wealthiest men in Leek. While waiting for the farmer to cave in he had sold seven of the houses, given one to his ex-wife, Charlotte, as part of their divorce settlement and lived in the ninth while it was on the market.

  Next door to Hilary Barnes, Frankwell was nibbling his lip. It was sheer bad luck that the housing market had crashed at the very moment that he needed to sell the final property quickly. Frankwell was a man who did not like to be thwarted and he imagined the farmer laughing behind his back, which added to his fury. His patience was wearing thin now – partly because he needed to be with Lucia and partly because he was uncomfortable with the proximity of the neighbours, who never missed an opportunity to voice their disappointment with their purchases. Almost every time he put his nose outside the door one of them would complain. It was wearing him down, depressing him. Then there was his ex-wife, who could be vindictive and unpredictable at times. One never quite knew with her. One day she could be saccharin-sweet, the next spiteful and sour enough to turn the milk, as his daughter had wittily said. In fact the first reason was the most pressing; Charlotte and he had usually managed to see eye to eye. They were both practical realists. But he did not exercise the same control over the other reason for wanting to move. Lucia was due to give birth in five weeks’ time. Nothing would stop this and he had decided early on that he wanted to be present at the birth, which had surprised even him. He certainly hadn’t wanted to be at Phoebe’s birth; neither would Charlotte have wanted him there. But the relationship with Lucia was different in every single detail from his relationship with his first wife. He loved Lucia with a sentimental, maudlin absorption that made him putty in her hands. He had a feeling this child would be a son and that his future life with sweetheart and son would achieve perfection, the zenith of his entire existence. For the first time in his tricky life he would live in financial security and tranquillity. He simply needed a bit more money. Frankwell ground his teeth. It all depended on two things: selling this final property and acquiring the last three fields that belonged to Grimshaw’s farm, the farm building itself and selling it all on with planning permission, which he had already secured by way of a little palm-greasing. Friends in the council offices were to be nurtured. Frankwell peered through his patio doors, scowling at the decrepit barn. That eyesore, he thought angrily, was why none of the viewers had translated their obvious admiration of the house into a firm offer. With the property market being so much tighter now, people wanted perfection. Odd how he’d bought the land (cheaply) and built the houses without realising just what a problem it was. But it had hit him right in the solar plexus the second he actually lived in one of his own properties. He had quickly realised that, while the farm and its traditions initially appeared pretty, almost like a Victorian pastoral painting, the reality was something else: cow byres bred flies, animals left excreta, everything either smelt or made a noise. Instead of revelling in the rural idyll – as he had promised his buyers when they needed subtle persuasion – the inhabitants of the estate resented the farm and blamed him for its problems. Worse, Grimshaw had turned stubborn. The last time he’d spoken to him the farmer had grimaced with his toothy grin. ‘If I sell that to you, Mister Fra
nkwell, I’ll have no farm left. It’ll be the end.’ There had been a note of mockery in his tone. Malice sparkling out of the pale eyes.

  Frankwell ran his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t afford for this final part to go wrong. He didn’t want to fall at the last jump. He didn’t take failure well. To cheer himself up he conjured up the vision of Lucia to comfort him. But he could only seem to see her standing, hands on hips, thick black hair a storm cloud around her face, mocking him. She was not comforting him but taunting him instead.

  He opened his eyes, glared at the crumbling wall and the wrecked farmhouse beyond. That had been the biggest mistake of all. It was responsible. He was responsible.

  Hilary had finished pegging her washing out and mercifully the weather had remained dry. She turned away from the wall to return to her house. But after two steps she frowned. Something was not right. It wasn’t just the smell. It was quiet – too quiet. There was none of the usual farmyard activity. She could not hear any of the normal everyday sounds – the dog, Ratchet, barking or growling. There was no rattle of the chain he pulled after him.

  It was not natural. Why was he so quiet?

  She listened, her face tensed, her head on one side, the pupils of her eyes small and sharp. She was an intuitive and inquisitive woman. The cockerel was quiet too. And the sheep and the cows. Even the pigs. She peered across towards the farmhouse, frowning.

  Were they all sleeping? The farmer too?

  She knew then that it was all too still. And overlying the abnormal torpor there was that unpleasant, rotting smell. Already she had a sense of foreboding. It was not right. Nothing was right.