Grave Stones

by Priscilla Masters

  Joanna faced him warily.

  He began nicely enough. ‘How are your investigations progressing?’

  ‘Slowly, sir.’

  ‘Any sign of a breakthrough?’ She knew he hated the tabloid talk as much as she did but she smothered a grin. ‘Nothing confirmed and certain, sir, but we do have a few lines of inquiry we’re exploring.’

  ‘Ah.’ Colclough’s eyebrows could have been sold on the Internet as a wig they were so long and thick, curling and black. It made him look a formidable character – which he was.

  He cleared his throat noisily. ‘I understand congratulations are in order, Piercy.’

  It felt puerile to blush but blush she did. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And when is the wedding to be?’

  ‘December – January – not sure yet. We haven’t booked.’

  ‘I see,’ Colclough said. ‘And what effect will this have on your career aspirations, Piercy?’

  ‘None, sir.’

  ‘You know that there’s been talk of promoting you to chief inspector?’ He smiled. ‘Chief Inspector Levin.’

  ‘I shan’t change my name, sir. I intend to remain Piercy.’

  Colclough looked faintly disapproving. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘One of these…’ he paused, ‘feminist types.’

  She was bound to protest. ‘No…sir.’

  The pale eyes twinkled. ‘It’s OK, Piercy. I was only pulling your leg – knowing you’d rise to the bait.’

  She took a risk then. ‘And if it’s all the same with you – sir – I like being out in the field. A desk job would depress and bore me.’

  Colclough gave her a real smile then. Warm and kindly. He stood up, threaded round his desk and patted her shoulder awkwardly, like a shy grandfather. ‘Good for you, Piercy,’ he said warmly. ‘We need more people like you.’

  * * *

  Judy Wilkinson was at least prompt. Bang on five thirty Joanna’s desk phone rang and Judy’s presence was announced.

  She looked sly, Joanna thought, and prepared herself for trouble.

  ‘Why do you want to fingerprint me?’ she demanded. ‘Should I be getting a lawyer? Am I a suspect?’

  ‘A lawyer won’t be necessary. We simply need to exclude your prints from our crime scene,’ Joanna explained smoothly.

  ‘And then will they be destroyed?’

  Great, Joanna thought, Human Rights as well.

  ‘Naturally.’

  Mrs Wilkinson looked sceptical.

  ‘Tell me, Judy,’ she said, conspiratorially, as though they were the best of friends, ‘what do you really think happened to your mother?’

  Grimshaw’s daughter looked taken aback but not before Joanna had read a spark of something in her pale eyes. Deceit?

  ‘You know about my mother,’ the woman snapped.

  ‘Do we?’

  This time Joanna was certain there was a level of duplicity in the woman’s eyes.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Joanna could sense the unease – almost smell it.

  ‘You’ve no evidence as to what happened to your mother,’ Joanna pointed out, ‘apart from your father’s word.’

  For the first time, Joanna saw Mrs Wilkinson lose her control. She was struggling to hold back her tears.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea.’

  It was like peeling back layer after layer of an onion. Tears and a strong smell.

  When she returned with some tea one of the Specials had brewed, Judy was openly sobbing. ‘I couldn’t understand,’ she said, ‘why Mum never ever contacted me. Why did she leave without a word?’

  It was the old chestnut of abandonment.

  ‘So?’ Joanna prompted gently.

  The woman’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘I found a letter,’ she whispered. ‘I read what he’d done to her. I knew he’d killed her and…’ The look of horror on her face could not have been affected by even the best actress. It was all there, the round whites of the eyes, the open mouth, the sharp intake of breath. Straight out of a Hammer House horror movie.

  Joanna waited for the woman to continue.

  It took all of five seconds. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I didn’t murder my father.’

  Joanna was silent.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ she said again.

  ‘When did you find this out?’

  ‘Summer before last,’ the woman whispered. ‘Dad was out in the fields. I’d come over to visit him but was waiting a while.’ She gulped. ‘I thought I’d look for the postcards. I found the box and – well, you know the rest.’

  ‘Did you confront him?’

  Judy shook her head. ‘No. I stuck the envelope back up and put it in the jewellery box. I didn’t want him to know I’d found it. I just watched him and wondered how he could have done such a thing. I found it difficult to visit him after that.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone?’

  She looked up. ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  It seemed the truth.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’

  For the first time the woman looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if I wanted my dad to… I couldn’t bear the thought of him going to prison. But…my mum…’ She looked stricken.

  ‘I think you should get yourself a solicitor, Judy,’ she said gently, ‘before we go any further. But I think it would be a good idea for you to write down your movements between, say, Sunday the 9th of September and Thursday the 13th.’

  Judy gulped and nodded.

  ‘You’re free to go now.’

  When she stood up for a moment Joanna thought the woman’s legs would not hold her. She staggered then made her way towards the door, paused for a moment, then bolted.

  Joanna listened to her footsteps tapping swiftly along the corridor. Fleeing. Then she sat and thought.

  * * *

  It was nearly ten o’clock when she finally arrived home. Matthew was dozing over a medical journal, slumped across the couch. He murmured something as she walked in and kissed the top of his head. He struggled to sit up. ‘Hi, Jo.’

  She felt a surge of warmth towards him. ‘Hello, you,’ she said, slipping her shoes off and sitting down next to him.

  He studied her face. ‘You’re looking pleased with yourself. Are you cracking the case, Inspector Piercy?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. But all the while she was warning herself, just because you want someone to be guilty does not necessarily mean they are. Moderation, Piercy, she exhorted herself. Moderation.

  Matthew cleared his throat. ‘Do you want the bad news or the good news first?’

  ‘The good,’ she said, ‘of course.’

  ‘There’s a bottle of Chablis chilling in the fridge.’

  She sank down beside him. ‘That is good news,’ she agreed. ‘And the bad?’

  ‘You mother wants you to ring her,’ he said, ‘whatever time you get in.’

  ‘About the wedding?’ she asked warily.

  He nodded.

  ‘Did you tell her we’d more or less sorted it?’

  ‘I did. To be honest, Jo…’ He disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a small silver tray bearing two wineglasses and the promised bottle of wine, ‘I think she approves. But there is one sticking point.’

  She already knew what it would be. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘She wants Lara to be bridesmaid.’ She sipped the wine slowly, eyeing him over the rim of the wineglass. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it. My sister’s daughter is nine years old and a law unto herself. I’m going to ask her direct. If she wants to be a bridesmaid she can be. If not, I won’t have one.’ She took a sip of the wine. ‘I take it Eloise wouldn’t be seen dead in a puffy pink dress carrying my flowers?’

  Matthew suppressed a smile. ‘I think that’s correct.’

  ‘So whatever my beloved moth
er says that’s what I’m sticking to. She must leave it to us.’

  She took a long draught of the wine, braced herself and picked up the telephone.

  Chapter Ten

  Saturday, 22nd September

  She was in early, Korpanski too. No briefing today, just the two of them, working doggedly through the statements, trying to piece together what was fact and what was carefully contrived fiction.

  Korpanski spoke first. ‘So Judy admitted she knew what had happened to her mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When? I wonder.’

  ‘Sorry?’ She spoke lazily. Last night had turned into a later night than she had planned and she felt distinctly sleep-deprived.

  Korpanski, it seemed, did not.

  ‘Two summers ago.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Korpanski absorbed the fact. ‘Let’s try another angle,’ he suggested energetically. ‘Let’s look at the man Mrs Grimshaw was supposed to have had an affair with.’

  ‘Except she didn’t have an affair, did she? That was obviously a fantasy Grimshaw dreamt up to explain Judy’s mother’s disappearance.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ He held his hands up. ‘Maybe.’ His eyes were on her. ‘So why did her husband kill her then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Joanna was exasperated. ‘Maybe she didn’t feed the cows right or knocked the milk churn over. Or maybe he needed the pigs fed. Maybe he was just fed up with her. There’s all sorts of reasons why a man might kill his wife. Anyway, Mike,’ she continued, ‘you’re getting side-tracked. We’re not investigating the murder of Judy’s mother. We know who killed her.’

  Mike stood up, agitated. ‘Do we?’

  ‘We have a written confession from old Jakob himself,’ Joanna pointed out. Then she was silent. Korpanski had a point.

  ‘Handwriting?’ He didn’t need to say anything more.

  It was worth checking.

  In all cases there is a moment when you start hearing answers to questions. There is no warning. It often comes quite out of the blue. A small statement that seems to unlock a door. A door that leads to a room in which there is a window that overlooks a completely new vista. Perhaps it is a chance encounter. Putting the right question at the right time in the right way to the right person. Perhaps not. Dogged determination, checking, checking, believing no one, taking no one at face value, waiting and moving in the right direction at the right time.

  These are what solve cases. All of that plus the little bit of luck so frequently sung about in musicals.

  They drove out towards the Ashbourne road, both pondering the issues.

  Mike turned into the now familiar Prospect Farm Estate.

  Their first call of the day was Teresa Parnell.

  The apparent collusion between her and her neighbour was not a coincidence. In fact, police take an awful lot of convincing to believe in coincidence at all.

  She met them at the door in a faded pink towelling dressing gown and grubby beige fur slippers. Without make-up, she looked less like a mystic medium and more a tired, middle-aged woman.

  But she was slippery to deal with. The straighter the questions put to her the more devious she became.

  Joanna opened the questioning. ‘You seem to believe that Mr Grimshaw was murdered on the Tuesday, at around eleven. But all you actually heard was some noise.’ She met Teresa’s eyes, tried to read what deviousness was behind them. ‘What made you hone in on that particular date and that time?’

  Mrs Parnell looked positively sly. ‘The forces.’

  ‘What forces?’ Mike burst out, scepticism making his voice sound harsh, which only made Teresa look smug. ‘If you don’t understand,’ she said in a mocking voice, ‘there’s no point me explaining.’ She folded her hands across her lap.

  ‘Try me.’ Joanna’s voice was low and controlled. Anyone who knew her even superficially would have recognised the danger signs. Like a cobra, she was at her most still in the seconds before she struck.

  ‘It was an auspicious time,’ Teresa said strangely.

  Don’t give me ‘the stars were in Jupiter,’ Joanna thought. Per-lease.

  ‘I was in the front room, in a trance,’ Teresa Parnell continued, wrapping the dressing gown tightly around her, ‘when I was aware of an evil, violent presence.’

  Both Joanna and Korpanski were well aware that Teresa Parnell’s sitting room faced the road, across and beyond which was the farm.

  ‘Were you sitting or standing?’

  ‘Sitting,’ Teresa said. ‘One can’t enter into a trancelike state—’

  ‘Did you actually hear anything?’ Joanna interrupted impatiently.

  ‘A rush of wind as though a presence was moving within my soul.’

  Joanna hoped that only she had heard Korpanski’s muttered, ‘Garbage.’

  She could have thought of a few interesting alternative interpretations to this rush of wind but resisted the temptation to smirk.

  ‘Carry on,’ she said.

  ‘Later on in the week I was talking to my friend, Mrs Barnes,’ Teresa said. ‘And I realised that she had experienced a similar feeling.’ She gave a slightly proud smile. ‘We’re in tune, you know.’

  ‘Harrumph.’ Joanna cleared her throat and squirreled the fact away. So Hilary Barnes and Teresa Parnell had swapped their experiences, which made coincidence fly straight out of the window.

  ‘Anyway,’ Teresa resumed, ‘it was more than a week later that we could translate these feelings into what had probably been the very moment of the poor man’s murder. God rest his soul.’

  Joanna eyed her curiously. Surely the last thing a medium wanted was for a soul to rest? Didn’t the entire practice rely on souls wandering around communicating, restless and searching?

  ‘Can you remember any other sounds – a car, the dog barking, the animals?’

  Teresa Parnell shook her head. ‘No. Only that, sounds of someone shouting, a scuffle and that dreadful, icy wind.’

  To emphasise her words she wrapped the pink dressing gown around her and gave a theatrical shudder.

  ‘Is there anything else you can add to your statement, Mrs Parnell?’

  Teresa shook her head sadly. ‘I wish I could help,’ she said. She put her large, bony hands in front of her, wringing them in a gesture of distress.

  ‘So – genuine or not?’ Joanna asked Korpanski when they were safely outside.

  He shrugged. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said.

  Joanna stood still for a moment. ‘If she did really hear something,’ she said, ‘it leaves Judy in the clear. She has an unshakeable alibi for the entire Tuesday morning. If, on the other hand, Teresa Parnell is leading us astray, deliberately or not, we can keep Judy Grimshaw as our chief suspect.’ She turned to face Mike. ‘My instinct is that we should keep a very open mind.’

  He grinned at her. ‘Suits me,’ he said.

  They crossed the road. ‘We’re missing something, Mike,’ she said suddenly, halfway across, ‘some connection.’ She looked up and down the peaceful estate. ‘Some underbelly of this little bit of suburbia. It all looks so peaceful, so innocent, so…’

  He was watching her. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘Someone,’ she said softly, ‘is playing a game with us. The question is, who?’

  Korpanski said nothing. He gave a little snort.

  As it was a Saturday, most of the inhabitants of the Prospect Farm Estate were at home, catching up with house-chores, cleaning the car, polishing windows, pruning bushes.

  Gabriel Frankwell, in jeans and a navy polo shirt, was polishing his Porsche Boxster with a vigour that made him look a much younger man. Though Joanna knew he’d seen them, he ignored them until they were right behind him.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said. ‘You made me jump.’

  Was nothing real about this man? She studied the suave face, white-toothed smile and smooth tan, and decided probably not.

  Except it seemed that he did feel some devotion for Lucia. She looked closer at the man. He was
older than she had first thought and around his eyes there were sharp lines of tiredness. She had a sudden insight. He was sick of all this. He simply wanted Elysium, his mistress and their child, in the bright sunshine of Brazil.

  She glanced at the car. ‘You’ve had the scratch resprayed,’ she commented.

  Frankwell’s fingers instinctively stroked the paintwork. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to sell it otherwise,’ he said regretfully.

  So the Porsche was to go as well. He really was scampering away from the UK as fast and as completely as he could.

  ‘Quite,’ she said and followed him indoors.

  ‘Explain to me,’ she asked when they were sitting on his leather sofa, cups of coffee in their hands, ‘just how this land deal works?’

  Frankwell’s eyes flickered. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

  Joanna leant forward, placing her coffee mug on the glass coaster provided. ‘Try me.’

  ‘OK.’ Frankwell seemed resigned. ‘Initially, I bought the acreage on which this estate is built without planning permission. It’s a chance you take and I was able to buy it substantially cheaper than if I had waited for the planning applications to be granted.’ He gave her a smile that had a tinge of sadness about it. ‘I obtained planning permission and built the houses. To be honest, it was all a bit speculative. The estate…’ he smiled, ‘or development, as I called it, is four miles out of Leek. I wasn’t sure how that might impact on the price. Also, I was aware that at the time Mr Grimshaw defined himself as a farmer and was unlikely to sell the farm in his lifetime. Even beyond that there was a daughter who might have wanted to farm. Naturally, all this would also make a difference. People who’ve paid a lot for a smart, modern house, don’t, in general, want to overlook a fairly scruffy farm.’ He gave a wry smile and Joanna realised that the purchasers of the properties had possibly made Gabriel Frankwell’s life difficult – to say the least.