Grave Stones

by Priscilla Masters

  She hardly noticed the barn door open. All she felt was a rush of cold air and the softest of creaks. An officer was moving forward, bulky in Kevlar. He reached the gun and spoke into his mouthpiece.

  ‘Safe,’ he said.

  Joanne felt tears fill her eyes and sank back against Korpanski’s body.

  The cuffs were on their assailant. Then suddenly all was activity and light, the barn filled with police. Her colleagues. Ambulances backed against the barn and the slim man was carted off, Korpanski strapped to a stretcher and taken gently down to a second waiting ambulance. She climbed down the ladder and followed the stretcher, watched the paramedics slide a drip into Korpanski’s arm, clamp an oxygen mask over his face. His eyes were closed and he looked white and vulnerable. It was a picture that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

  She touched his hand. ‘Thanks, Mike,’ she said. ‘I owe you one. I won’t forget this. Ever.’ Then the ambulance drove off, lights flashing, siren screaming. She listened as the sound faded into the distance and the light was no longer visible.

  Someone threw a blanket around her shoulders, asked her if she was all right, if she needed medical attention.

  Yes to the first, no to the second. She wanted to write down her report in detail before she forgot.

  They took her back to the station.

  She rang Matthew and told him she was safe but would not be home tonight. And now she had her own demons to deal with. How to tell Fran and her children that she had placed her husband deliberately in the path of danger. She hadn’t needed to do this with just him as back-up. She could have done it properly, taken a full team, suitably armed and equipped. At the same time, she knew that Fran Korpanski was fully aware that her husband would have followed Inspector Piercy anywhere – into the jaws of…

  No not there. She wouldn’t go there. Not death. Nor hell.

  The reason she hadn’t followed procedure had been because she had really known so little and she had worried she would never know, that nothing would be proven and that Jakob Grimshaw’s murder would remain a mystery.

  The gunman was admitted to hospital with a police guard. Initially incognito. It was PC Bridget Anderton who identified him as Tim Bradeley, employee at Farrell’s Animal Feeds. And so the link had been uncovered but not the entire story. That would come later. For now she had to face up it. She was responsible. Colcough would hold her responsible. But not as responsible as she would hold herself.

  She recalled Korpanski’s moving in front of her, shielding her from the blast of the gun.

  Every man wants to be a hero.

  Every man wants to be a hero. It would comfort her later when she had to recount every single event that had led up to that terrible night.

  Worse, she had to admit to herself that she had made the decision to bring Korpanski along because she was used to having him at her side. He was a powerful physical presence that she had used, and whatever she said to the subsequent inquiry, everyone at the station would know it. It was indefensible. Somewhere deep inside her was a fact she did not want to face. She had always known that if she stared down the barrel of a shotgun and Korpanski was by her side, he would risk his own life to save hers. Korpanski would shield her. She had known it and taken advantage of it. That had been why she had brought him along tonight.

  But back to that night.

  It was seven in the morning when they took her to the hospital where she ran the gauntlet of Fran Korpanski’s cold stare. ‘I won’t forgive you for this, Joanna,’ she said. ‘He would have followed you to the ends of the earth. Your opinion of him mattered more than anything. Even his life, his family. You wilfully took advantage of him. We could have lost him. I could have lost him. Ricky and Joss could have lost their father. We all still could. The doctors are waiting for his condition to stabilise before they operate.’

  Joanna began to apologise but got no further than, ‘I’m so—’ before Fran Korpanski cut in.

  ‘No apology can make up for this,’ she said, her eyes drifting down to her husband’s still face. ‘Nothing.’ Then, ‘You can have a couple of minutes alone with him. I’m going to ring the children.’

  When the door had closed behind the furious woman, Joanna sat down by the side of the bed and touched Korpanski’s hand. ‘Mike?’ she appealed. ‘Mike.’ But he did not respond and she felt nothing but a cold silence that seemed to isolate her from the rest of the world.

  She tried her old sarcasm. ‘Come on, Korpanski, don’t try and swing the lead with me. No more sickies.’ But the humour had gone from the old teasing.

  She heard Fran’s shoes clipping back towards the room and stood up. It was time to leave, time to go home, face Matthew’s wrath and then…

  It was much much later that she could at last do what she had wanted to do for hours, drop her head into her hands and cry.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was weeks later that Joanna was finally able to piece the whole case together. Tim Bradeley turned out to have been stunned. Nothing worse. And from his hospital bed he was anxious to explain events.

  So most of the gaps were filled in with his help and verified by a thorough search of the barn. The animal feed sacks had indeed contained animal feed. As well as packets of cigarettes, a few thousand at her estimation.

  Bradeley’s had been a minor role; he had been little more than a carrier. Poorly paid.

  ‘But not as poorly paid as being a driver for Farrell’s,’ he said grimly. ‘My wife and I could hardly afford decent housing, let alone holidays and a car. And we’ve got kids.’

  According to him, the extra money had simply melted away in everyday living expenses. He gave a wry smile when Joanna questioned him about this. ‘Put it like this,’ he said, ‘it made the difference between having the heating on or not, holidays camping in the rain or a fortnight at Benidorm. It didn’t exactly buy me a yacht or a private jet.’

  ‘But why risk so much?’ She leant in, anxious to discover the truth. ‘You would have got a couple of years inside – at most. Not worth trying to kill a copper for.’

  Bradeley stared beyond her. ‘She told me different.’

  ‘Who told you? What?’

  Bradeley’s eyes grew stormy and resentful.

  ‘That demon woman,’ he said. ‘Judy. She said I was the only real link between the goods coming over and their distribution, said that I would be charged as an accessory to Jakob’s murder, if not charged with it. She said that the police,’ he looked straight at her, ‘knew that I’d seen his money and I would be chief suspect, that I’d never see my wife and kids again. I was desperate,’ he finished.

  It struck Joanna then that Bradeley might not be very bright but Judy Wilkinson and her mother had known exactly which buttons to press and had turned Tim Bradeley from an innocent into a dangerous and desperate man. Put a gun in his hands and he was very dangerous indeed because he panicked.

  She charged him anyway.

  Even though he’d led her straight to Judy Wilkinson and her mother, Avis.

  Arresting both the Grimshaw females gave her one of the most pleasurable moments of her career. And how they talked, each one blaming the other.

  Nice family, she thought. Avis, Judy and Jakob. The three of them had deserved each other.

  Two weeks later she faced her team and debriefed them.

  ‘It was Avis Grimshaw who hatched the plot five years ago, soon after she moved from Spain to Eastern Europe. She muscled in on a fake cigarettes business run by a Slovakian crime baron who needed a means to get his goods from Eastern Europe into the heart of England and a distribution point from there. The trail was followed back to Bratislava, where the police have made three arrests.’ She smiled around the room.

  ‘Avis contacted her daughter.’ She scanned the alert faces. ‘Not through maternal affection, you understand, but with a business proposition. The animal feeds supplier was ideal. Great big smelly sacks of animal food, lorries driving over here on a daily basis. Th
e farm, too, was ideal. People can come and go without attracting attention: lorries, cars etcetera. A few sacks of “animal feed” going into a car boot would attract no undue interest. Even we have a low index of suspicion of farms and farmers. The only hurdle was Tim Bradeley, the driver. Luckily, he was poorly paid and with a family to provide for even a few thousand a year made enough difference for him to cooperate. The cigarettes were packed in the animal feeds sacks. All Tim had to do was to make sure that the sacks marked with a certain code found their way into Grimshaw’s barns. Judy would see to the rest. And as Bradeley told me, if the crime was uncovered there was always the chance he could plead ignorance.’

  A few of the officers started fidgeting. She knew what they were anxious to know. She held her hand up. ‘Patience,’ she said.

  ‘The trouble started when Brian Young, a smalltime criminal recently out of prison, tumbled into the very bar that Mrs Grimshaw, alias Maureen Dudson, had bought and was running with her ill gotten gains. She’d thought she was safe, that she’d “disappeared” completely. How many people from Leek were likely to drop into a bar in Eastern Europe? It was her bad luck that she was recognised. She’d enjoyed being incognito. She quickly realised the danger that Young posed and decided to set him up. In the background, Jakob Grimshaw was ignorant both of the fact that his farm was being used as a premises for the illicit trade and of the true fate of his wife. In fact, he’d been so convinced that she had vanished with another man and would never return that he played a cruel trick on his daughter, planting the evidence, which he knew very well she would find with her talent for nosiness.’

  Joanna paused. She could well imagine Judy’s giggles, shared with her mother, when she read the letter, detailing Avis’s supposed fate. ‘Judy replaced the letter in the box, both mother and daughter thinking it might come in useful some time later. A little bit of talented play-acting and she could easily convince everyone of her horror at her mother’s “terrible death”. But then things became increasingly unstable. The farm was running at a loss. Jakob was selling off land; the housing estate was built. He double-crossed Frankwell over the sale of the field and then talked of packing in the farm altogether. And there was always the chance that he might uncover some of the fake cigarettes. Judy and her mother decided he had to go. But they needed a patsy. Enter Young, the garage mechanic just out of prison who was ready to muscle in on the smuggling business, right up to his sweaty armpits, and if he didn’t get his way was not above a bit of blackmail. The man with no real motive to kill the farmer suited their purpose only too well. If they could pin the murder on an ex-con and dispose of Grimshaw, it would kill two birds with one stone. And they could always fall back on poor, gullible Bradeley. But oddly enough, the fact that the body lay undiscovered for about a week worked against them. It meant that we didn’t know the date or time of death, which in turn meant that carefully laid alibis were useless. Still – it had been worth the risk. Take Jakob Grimshaw out of the equation as well as Young, and Avis could return from the dead and take over the farm, reunited with a daughter who would “forgive” her for playing dead for so long.’

  It was DC Alan King who asked the question on everyone’s lips. ‘So who did kill Jakob Grimshaw?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we don’t actually know. Avis blames her daughter while Judy says it was her mother. We can’t do firearms tests as too much time has passed. They’ve had ample time to destroy any clothes that might contain forensic evidence.’ She paused. ‘So we decided to charge them both. The CPS is happy with that. Who knows,’ she said smiling, ‘they might even be lucky enough to share a cell.’

  The dissatisfaction at her initial statement gave way to smiles and finally a burst of laughter.

  She joined them, needing some lightness before she faced the necessary inquiry into her behaviour on the night Korpanski was shot. There’d be no offer of Chief Inspector either Piercy or Levin now. It would be a blot on her career, no longer the blue-eyed girl of the Leek police force.

  She recounted the same story to Korpanski, giving the sling a cursory look. ‘Unfortunately, Mike, although we barked up the right tree…’

  He grunted and she continued. ‘I put you in danger. Maybe the squad of clumsy-footed coppers wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.’

  Korpanski closed his eyes and she knew the arm was as painful as it looked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mike.’

  He opened his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when Fran comes visiting.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  October

  Weddings take a lot of planning. The venue, the food, the dress, the bridesmaids.

  Bridesmaids?!

  Honeymoon. Date. Sometimes Joanna felt dizzy with the planning of it all. Her sister and mother, however, were in their element and enthusiastically took her shopping.

  The trouble was that none of the wedding dresses was right for her. Unlike many little girls, Joanna had never visualised herself waltzing up the aisle in a float of white netting and pearls. But neither could she picture herself in some of the stiff, cream, tailored dresses that clung to the contour and flared out in a fishtail. As September moved towards October she began to panic. They had only allowed a few months’ engagement and she had to wear something.

  Veils, tiaras, even hats and fascinators, which failed to do as they’d promised.

  Matthew offered no help beyond telling her that Jane had worn a ‘traditional’ dress and he would love her whatever she wore, which didn’t help at all, particularly as Matthew looked quite soft and sentimental as he spoke the words. He was looking forward to being married. He wasn’t thinking about the detail at all.

  Finally, like all good friends, Caroline came to the rescue. Sporting an impressive baby-bump that seemed to play a non-stop game of football, she took Joanna to a small, exclusive dress shop in Knightsbridge and watched as she worked her way along the rack.

  As she glanced through the dresses, Joanna began to feel depressed. The trouble was that she simply wasn’t a “wedding person”. Left to her own devices she might not have wed at all – ever – but Matthew wanted it so very much. He had left his wife and daughter for this. She owed it to him.

  She turned to Caroline in despair. ‘I don’t have to wear white, do I? Or ivory?’

  Caroline shook her head. ‘But remember, Jo,’ she warned, ‘Matthew is a traditionalist. He won’t appreciate you turning up in red…’ her face darkened as she saw the hanger Joanna was fingering, ‘or black.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Joanna turned again to the rack of dresses until she found one that caught her eye. It was…

  For that you’ll have to wait for her wedding day.

  Author’s Note

  If you want to share Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy’s reading habits try Second Shot by Zoë Sharp and you’ll see why Matthew had trouble tempting her away from it.

  With acknowledgement to Hilary Barnes who paid a princely sum to be a character in this book, donated in aid of the Maer Hills Preservation Society.

  About the Author

  Born in Yorkshire and brought up in South Wales, PRISCILLA MASTERS is the author of the popular series set in the Staffordshire moorlands featuring Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy. She has also written several medical stand-alone mysteries. Priscilla has two sons and lives in Staffordshire. She works part time as a nurse.

  By Priscilla Masters

  Joanna Piercy series

  Winding up the Serpent

  Catch the Fallen Sparrow

  A Wreath for My Sister

  And None Shall Sleep

  Scaring Crows

  Embroidering Shrouds

  Endangering Innocents

  Wings Over the Watcher

  Grave Stones

  Martha Gunn series

  River Deep

  Slipknot

  Other

  Night Visit

  Disturbing Ground

  A Plea of
Insanity

  The Watchful Eye

  Buried in Clay

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  13 Charlotte Mews

  London W1T 4EJ

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2009.

  This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2012.

  Copyright © 2009 by PRISCILLA MASTERS

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

  the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1113–0