Grave Stones

by Priscilla Masters

  Mostyn had shrunk away from the defeat in the old man’s voice. The pale eyes had fixed on his face with a sneer. ‘This farm’ll be gone afore too long, dunna you worry. Your investment will make good.’ He’d stomped back into the cowshed leaving Mostyn to wonder. When would his investment make good? The farmer might live for years. Sometimes he wondered whether Grimshaw had made a monkey out of him, that his stupidity and simplicity were a front and really he was laughing at him. At all the inhabitants of the Prospect Farm Estate and their mean little tricks: leaving gates open, chucking weedkiller over his fields, leaving plastic bags to blow over the wall knowing that they were potentially lethal to his animals, fishing line strung across the gateways when no one from Prospect Farm fished, as far as he knew. But none of their tricks irritated Grimshaw as much as his farm annoyed them. So he had the last laugh.

  Mostyn had turned around and returned to his house, reflecting. The old farmer spoke the truth. He would never leave. He might be getting on a bit – well into his seventies – but these moorlands folk were tough. He might last for years. On the other hand… As for the daughter, again Grimshaw spoke the truth. He couldn’t imagine Judy the witch going in for farming. Whenever she visited her dad it invariably led to a blazing row. She’d ask for money. Scream, more like, and Grimshaw would dig his heels in. Mostyn could remember plenty of incidences of raised voices, shouting, fury followed by the little red car skidding back down the farm track, anger spilling out of it.

  Judy wouldn’t want to do anything with the land except sell it. She’d want to take the money and run. Mostyn put his fingers over his mouth and chewed his nails as he stared into the computer screen, willing the figures to dance across the columns and produce something a little more healthy. He typed out a few figures – an optimistic top price for the field – and watched all the DR in the bank statement turn magically to CR. Credit. If Grimshaw was out of the way he could realise his investment quickly and bingo. Mostyn snapped his fingers cheerily. Problem solved. He smiled, saved his workings out and switched the computer off.

  The wall was in darkness. Clouds drifted shadows across the stones, a field mouse scuttled along its foot, a bat flew towards it, suddenly rising in the sky to clear the top, a hedgehog foraged around its base. From far above a barn owl scanned the stones for its evening meal and spied the field mouse. It swooped. The spattered stains were almost invisible. Inky black against grey.

  Leaning against the wall is something strange and foreign. Farmers do not, as a rule, lie motionless, in their own yards, for hours, days at a time, right through the night.

  Steven Weston was standing at the window, frowning at the scene. He didn’t like being made a fool of. You’d think with his training to present things well he would have realised. But he’d rather liked the outlook onto the farmyard, been seduced by Frankwell’s oily blurb. He dropped the muslin curtain with a curse. He who wrote the bloody stuff for a living, had been taken in by someone else’s spiel. Which made him hate Gabriel Frankwell even more. Kathleen had mocked him as they’d viewed it. ‘Didn’t you realise,’ she’d said in that condescending tone she habitually used when addressing him (only him, he’d noticed; she kept that special tone specifically for him), ‘farmyards are smelly places; they breed flies and animals are noisy. We could have bought no end of places for the price we paid for this. I told you you were being a fool.’

  Along with Frankwell his wife was good at making him feel a fool. Which was why he’d taken up with Faria. She made him feel something else. Something quite different. Subconsciously he straightened his shoulders, puffed out his chest, flexed his muscles and drew in a long, deep breath. He morphed into someone powerful, sexy, interesting. Fascinating. He fished his mobile phone out of his pocket. As he’d thought, the little envelope icon was flashing a message at him. ‘He’s out 2night!!?’

  He tapped one back. ‘What time?’

  She must have been keeping an eye out for his response because her reply was almost instant.

  ‘8’

  He tapped back a quick, ‘C u then.’

  Before deleting all messages.

  Then he smiled. She was hot stuff.

  Chapter Two

  Tuesday, 18th September. 10 a.m.

  Joanna looked at her suitcase, which seemed to have shrunk over the holiday, and wondered how on earth she would fit it all in. On the other side of the room, Matthew was more successful. He had already fastened the huge bottle-green Berghaus rucksack he’d had from his student days.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could squash in a couple of pairs of shoes?’ she asked hopefully. ‘These wedges take up an awful lot of room.’

  He opened the top, gave her a severe look and held out his hand. ‘I don’t know why you have to bring so many pairs of shoes,’ he grumbled. ‘Surely hiking boots and one pair of evening shoes is enough?’

  ‘Oh my word,’ she said, mocking. ‘One day engaged and we’re already having a domestic about shoes?’

  Matthew took a sideways look at her and burst out laughing. ‘Do you know how good it feels,’ he confessed, ‘to see that black pearl on your finger?’

  She looked down at it. ‘Yes, I do know,’ she said. ‘It feels good to me too. I love it. It’s so special. Thank you.’

  ‘Come on then, give me the shoes.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure, my lady,’ he said, still grinning. The holiday levity was staying with them both. She wondered how long it would last when they were home and she was back to work with its irregular hours and stiff demands.

  10.30 a.m.

  The smell was worse. Kathleen Weston knew it. She didn’t care what her husband said. It wasn’t simply an obsession or her imagination. It was worse. She could even smell it on the pile of washing she’d just ironed.

  ‘Steven.’

  He looked up guiltily. ‘Darling.’

  Now it was her turn to look suspicious. Why would he call her darling? He’d stopped calling her that years ago. She narrowed her eyes and gave him a sharp look. Intuitively, she knew that particular word was well-oiled. It had slipped out without him even thinking. She put a finger on her chin. Now what could that mean? She knew about the lustful looks he’d given that belly dance teacher who lived at the end of the road. The one who exposed her rather plump midriff between low-slung jeans and crop tops and wiggled her backside like a randy grasshopper.

  The witch, she called her privately. The wiggling witch.

  But now looking at her husband’s face, startled because he’d realised what he’d said, she changed the epithet to whore. Wicked whore. Well, she thought. The whore had better look out because she had her in her sights.

  Kathleen Weston was a deeply vindictive and vengeful woman. She was patient too. It was a potentially lethal mix.

  ‘The smell,’ she repeated tightly.

  ‘What smell?’ But his face betrayed him. Steven Weston was a poor liar, which was lucky for his wife because it kept her informed of what he was up to. She stared back at him, waiting.

  ‘I think it’s coming from the farmyard,’ he said finally. ‘An animal must have died or something.’

  Even as he said it he could have bitten his tongue off. She would be bound to want to investigate. He watched her, knowing. He should have remembered her love of animals. This tough, brittle woman was as soft as marshmallow where animals were concerned. He’d seen her cry when stories came on the television about dogs or cats being neglected. She’d driven into Leek once to take an injured hedgehog to the vet, had sobbed uncontrollably when she’d hit a rabbit with her car – even though it had bounded straight back into the hedge. He’d watched her free flies from spiders’ webs and then worry what the spider would eat for lunch. She’d stopped the traffic once to retrieve a dead cat from the middle of the road. Her love of animals didn’t stop there. She spent three days a week helping at the animal charity shop in Stanley Street. In contrast, her toughness towards the human race was little short of Draconian. Sh
e was for hanging, castrating, flogging, cutting ears off. All her pity was focused on the animal world.

  ‘You think an animal’s died?’ Her face twisted in alarm.

  He twitched.

  And as he had looked at her, she now studied him. A thin, worried, guilty face, thinning hair – just like his father. Bowed shoulders, which made him look years older than his early forties. Fast on the heels of these observations came a further thought. What the dickens did Faria Probert see in her husband?

  Sex? Was the woman a sex maniac?

  Faria’s husband, George, was equally as unexciting as Steven. In fact there was little to choose between them. Maybe the explanation was that Faria was simply addicted to bland, middle-aged men. In spite of herself, Kathleen smothered a giggle, turning it into a cough. Perhaps Faria had a secret source of Viagra and turned these unexciting men into something else. The thought conjured up images too funny to contemplate.

  Kathleen frowned and looked again at her husband. Yes, there were traces of the man she had fallen in love with – honest, hard-working, affectionate and loyal. Steven had had all these attributes together with a soft, sweet, private smile. But the years had intervened cruelly. Perhaps if they’d had children their marriage would have entered a second stage. But she had failed to conceive. How was it that it was she who had failed? Why didn’t they say that he had failed to impregnate her? But that was never the way. It had been she who had earned the looks of pity while he had merely smirked and said jauntily, ‘Not for want of trying,’ which had earned sniggers from both men and women.

  Her lack of a family had, in turn, isolated them from their friends, who never quite knew whether to chat about their own offspring or pretend they didn’t exist. But the very worst thing about being childless was that they were exclusively together. In an undiluted form. Like too strong a cordial they’d needed water. As it was they had each other – or no one. But perhaps now he did have someone. Someone who was as fertile as rich farmland. Kathleen shivered and felt suddenly very alone. She plunged her hands deep into the pockets of the zip-up sweater she was wearing with jeans faded at the seams and reflected. Perhaps her love of animals was nothing short of an outlet for the love she would have lavished on children. She couldn’t help a weary sigh. She’d mentioned the word adoption to Steven only once. He had looked horrified. ‘Bring up some whore or drug addict’s kid?’

  So she’d dropped the subject but felt her insides twist with grief at the thought of the thieving, fertile Faria, who had five children – and a lover – as well as teaching belly-dancing.

  How did she find the time? The energy?

  She looked up to see Steven eyeing her uncomfortably and the silence between them grew thicker.

  ‘The worst thing about holidays is the hours wasted hanging around at the airport,’ Matthew grumbled. ‘Why do we have to be here three hours early?’

  He knew the answer, of course, as did everyone. The spectre of terrorism was enough to make travellers obedient to the rules. From removing their shoes at the security check to not taking liquids on board, putting lip-glosses in their suitcases and spending three fruitless hours at an airport. People stuck to the rules.

  Joanna looked up reluctantly from Second Shot. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind the hanging around. At least you can’t drag me off to the sea for a swim and I can read my story in peace.’ She waved the book around. ‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I quite welcome the interlude once I’m holed up in a nice little corner with a good book.’ She bent her head then lifted it. ‘Why don’t you go to the bookshop and find yourself something to read?’ she said pointedly.

  ‘I’ve got my sudoku.’ He pulled the book out and licked his pencil with intent.

  Joanna bent back over her novel.

  Minutes later Matthew stood up again. ‘Want a coffee, Jo?’

  She almost threw the paperback at him until she read the glow in his eyes, pleading. Reluctantly she inserted a bookmark, tucked the novel inside her bag and stood up.

  Shit – she’d just been at the point where Charlie Fox was walking right into the enemy’s house. The book was as hot as a roasted chestnut.

  Together they sauntered towards the coffee shop. Joanna tucked her arm in Matthew’s, gave him an amused kiss on the cheek. ‘You can buy,’ she said. ‘Make mine a large cappuccino.’

  He bent his head and kissed her.

  Finally it was Kathleen Weston who investigated – alone. The thought of an animal suffering or even dead haunted her so she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It was no use expecting Steven to accompany her. He’d suddenly remembered ‘an important appointment’ for which he needed to go to the office, urgently.

  She walked slowly down the garden, making each step count, listening to the silence that wrapped her in the cold, damp day and seemed all the more sinister under the heavy sky. Now Steven had voiced his opinion she was apprehensive. What if a cow was slowly rotting in the September sunshine – or a pig? What if it was Ratchet, the dog. She smiled. Ratchet was a hound with a snappy foul temper; it was difficult to feel any affection for him. It had always amused her and once Steven too that old Grimshaw had probably named his dog after the scary Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest without even knowing it. This was just one of the casualties of the broken relationship. Since his affections had shifted towards Faria, nothing amused them both, at least – not at the same time.

  She’d reached the wall. And now she was so close she could not think how she could ever have wondered what the smell was. It was so obvious. She remembered seeing people on the TV covering their noses and mouths with scarves after 9/11. At the time she had wondered why then assumed it was because of the dust thrown up by the collapsing towers. Now she knew. It wasn’t only the dust. It was the scent of rotting body parts.

  It was then that she noticed something else; one of the copestones was missing from the top of the wall. And now she wondered why she had not noticed it before. It drew the eye as surely as a missing front incisor.

  Dry stone walls are not made for climbing, which is why all through the Staffordshire moorlands the farmers are careful to maintain the stiles for the ramblers, discouraging them from clambering on the stone walls and destroying the environment. Once a dry stone wall starts to crumble it soon dissolves back into its natural state – a pile of stones; as Kathleen was quickly realising. She put her foot in a crevice between two stones only to feel her foothold immediately start to rock. She put her hands on the top, clambered up and watched the stones scatter behind her. She had started a small avalanche. Even when she was astride the wall she could both feel and hear the stones shifting. And the smell was overpowering.

  She glanced across at the farmhouse, only partially visible behind a huge oak tree the roots of which had lifted the concrete in the yard. The house had a look of careless neglect, with peeling paintwork and moss smothered brickwork. It had not been touched for years – merely inhabited. Boards had been put over windows broken by a few young vandals from the town. The panels of reeded glass in the door had cracked, and it stood ajar. Yet it didn’t appear to be inviting entry, rather daring it. Challenging.

  Kathleen could see no animals, hear no sounds, spot no movement. Which was odd. The farmer had cows, two Tamworth pigs and a dog. So why were they all quiet? She knew they were not out in the fields. Only the sheep grazed in the far field. In fact, now she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any other animals on the farm for more than a week, which was in itself curious. The cows had not been in the fields, grazing as they should have been. The fields had been empty except for the sheep. Strangely so, she now thought. She shifted her weight uneasily, frowning at the oddity of the situation. She had not even heard the dog for some time.

  ‘Hello,’ she called.

  Silence met her. Not even an echo replied. She shouted louder. ‘Hello. Hello. Mr Grimshaw. Hello. Are you there? It’s Kathleen Weston, your neighbour. I wondered if you were…’

 
; The words ‘all right’ seemed suddenly fatuous.

  She looked straight down, beneath her, realised her foot was within inches.

  The wave of nausea washed over her almost before she had assimilated the cause.

  Sometimes our eyes see things seconds before our minds do.

  Then she retched and was sick, thus sullying the crime scene.

  She staggered back to the house, and dialled 999.

  In the moments immediately before the call, Korpanski had been feeling virtuous. He was catching up with the inevitable paper work, tidying up loose ends, when the telephone rang.

  Detective Constable Alan King took the call, his long arms reaching right across the desk, bony elbows projecting like old-fashioned traffic indicators. He listened. ‘Put her through,’ he said, without consulting Korpanski. King listened for a few more minutes before covering the mouthpiece. ‘Sounds like there’s a body, Sarge.’

  Korpanski felt the hairs start to prickle at the back of his neck. ‘Where?’

  ‘Prospect Farm.’

  Korpanski frowned. ‘On the estate?’

  ‘No, Sarge, on the farm.’

  ‘Natural causes?’

  King shrugged. ‘She didn’t get near enough.’ He spoke again into the mouthpiece. ‘Just you wait where you are, Mrs Weston. Someone’ll be with you in a few minutes.’