Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  ‘You do that, and in the meantime, Sergeant Lewis here will go in the escort wagon to the nick with Mrs Naylor and stay with her until I decide what we do with her – got that, Sergeant?’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘Good. And this time you will not allow her out of your sight. Capiche?’

  Another nod, but Hennessey was determined to ram her message home. ‘And that means even if she wishes to go to the toilet or wash her hands, you will go with her, like a bloody shadow.’

  Roscoe snorted. ‘I can’t see that being necessary in the nick,’ he growled. ‘Lupin wouldn’t have the nerve to try something there.’

  Hennessey’s face was grim. ‘Is that right? Well, I for one wouldn’t like to put money on it,’ she replied.

  *

  Police constable Bill Adams had been in the force for twenty-eight years. A tough ex-army man, he had a reputation for a no-nonsense approach to his job and he was not averse to dishing out summary justice when the situation warranted it. His short fuse had given rise to a number of complaints from disgruntled, badly bruised ‘clients’ over the years, two of which were still being investigated, and he was certainly not a strong contender in the popularity stakes at police headquarters. But despite his track record, he did have other uses, a fact which the ever-pragmatic Ted Roscoe had recognized in detailing him to act as Iris Naylor’s unofficial minder.

  As for Iris Naylor herself, while she could not possibly have known anything about Adam’s reputation or his past history, his comforting bulk would have been enough on its own anyway and, as Kate followed the comic ill-matched pair through the back door of the bungalow and along the moonlit path – the tiny woman completely submerged in the shadow of her muscular escort – she could not help but appreciate the humour of the moment and she was unable to hold back a smile in spite of the situation.

  Her smile did not last long, however. Just as they got to the garden gate, Iris Naylor suddenly stopped dead and swung round to face her.

  ‘I’ve forgotten my vanity case,’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t leave without that.’

  Kate threw a quick glance past her at her colleague, who had also stopped and had set down the suitcase he was carrying for the old woman.

  ‘I’ll bring it to the station for you later,’ Kate said with undisguised irritation.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the other wailed. ‘I have to have it with me now. It has all my toiletries in it – plus all my money. I must have left it on the bed.’

  Kate took a deep breath and once more stared past her at her colleague, only to be treated to a resigned shrug.

  ‘All right, all right,’ she snapped. ‘Go with this officer and I’ll get it for you.’ Then to Adams, ‘I won’t be a minute, Bill.’

  In fact, it was ordained that she was going to be a lot longer than a minute. The case was certainly where Iris Naylor had said she’d left it, but Kate never got to take it out to her. The heavy-set figure in the ill-fitting coat that suddenly materialized at the bottom of the stairs, barring her way, put paid to that.

  Hayden’s face was flushed and perspiring, his hair even more awry than usual, his blue eyes wide and staring.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she exclaimed, making to push past him. ‘This is a crime scene. You shouldn’t even be in the place.’

  A hand seized her arm in a surprisingly strong grip.

  ‘I heard a wopsie had been … had been—’ he blurted. ‘I thought—’

  She glared at the hand clasping her arm, angered by the attempt at restraint and also the use of the long-outdated colloquialism for a female police officer.

  ‘No, it wasn’t me, Hayd,’ she grated. ‘Disappointed, are you?’

  He released her arm and shrank back from her as if she had struck him. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say,’ he choked.

  ‘Is it?’ she retorted. ‘What did you expect me to say?’

  ‘But there is no other woman. You have to believe me.’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything, Hayden,’ she replied. ‘So, why don’t you just clutter off back to your bit of spare?’

  She was conscious of him shambling after her and desperately calling on her to ‘wait’ as she headed for the back door. But she ignored his entreaties and instead quickened her pace as she strode up the garden path to the gate.

  Once there, however, she had a lot more to think about than Hayden and his other woman. The patrol car, which had been parked across the back gate, was now gone – called to a fatal accident she later learned – and a few feet away, lying in the space previously occupied by the long wheelbase Ford Transit, was the prostrate figure of Bill Adams. As for Iris Naylor, she was nowhere to be seen.

  *

  Bill Adams was swearing like a trooper as Kate and Hayden helped him to his feet and he shook them both off angrily.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he snarled. ‘Just a crack on the head, that’s all. Bastard was crouching in the shadows by the side of the Transit. Belted me with something, then nicked the wagon—’

  ‘And Iris Naylor?’ Kate demanded, peering about her in the moon-splashed shadows.

  ‘Dunno, I was away with the ruddy fairies, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Shit!’ Kate breathed. ‘George must have her.’

  Spinning round, she shouted a quick instruction to Hayden – ‘Stay with him,’ she said,– then headed back towards the bungalow at a stumbling run.

  She almost bowled Roscoe over as she ran down the hallway.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ the DI yelled after her.

  ‘George has snatched Naylor,’ she threw back over her shoulder, ‘and nicked the Transit.’

  Then before he could say anything else, she was out through the front door – scattering a small crowd of local residents and reporters being kept at bay by a couple of uniformed policemen on the front gate. But even as she tore open the door of her CID car parked a few yards away and scrambled in behind the wheel, the passenger door was flung open and Hayden piled in beside her.

  ‘Get out!’ she ordered, starting the engine and hovering in first gear, with repeated revving. ‘I told you to stay with Adams.’

  ‘No way,’ he retorted. ‘You’re not going there on your own.’

  ‘You have no idea where I’m going. So, get out of the car.’

  ‘There’s only one place you could be going.’

  ‘I said out!’ she yelled. ‘I don’t want you anywhere near me.’

  ‘Tough, because I’m staying where I am.’

  ‘Then on your head be it!’ she blazed and took off with a screech of tyres.

  CHAPTER 26

  Iris Naylor was terrified. The confident, hard-nosed attitude she had adopted since turning up at Highbridge police station was now no longer in evidence. Clinging to the front passenger seat of the Transit listening to the staccato bark of the police radio, she was shaking fitfully as the van was powered through the empty streets at breakneck speed, with a succession of crunching gear-changes and sudden braking – mounting the kerb at one point and demolishing a number of traffic bollards as they went.

  George had said nothing since attacking the police escort, roughly bundling her into the vehicle and driving off, but the old woman was acutely conscious of her abductor darting glances at her as they drove, the moonlight highlighting the grotesque bald head and revealing the thin lips drawn back over bared white teeth in a grin of malevolent satisfaction.

  She had made no effort to resist or try to escape – it would have been futile at her age anyway – but she was mystified as to why George had not killed her straight away, as she had poor Elsie and Mabel, and now they seemed to be heading out into the countryside without any slackening of speed.

  George seemed to read her thoughts and laughed suddenly, but without humour.

  ‘Wondering where we’re going, Auntie, are you?’ she mocked. ‘Well, you’ll have to work that out for yourself, but I’ll tell you one thing, it’s somewhere very special, for I’ve got an equally special
punishment reserved for you.’

  ‘Please don’t do this,’ the old woman pleaded. ‘At my age, I have very little time left to me now anyway.’

  The Transit swerved again, clipping a hedgerow under heavy braking that, but for the seatbelt, would have put her through the windscreen.

  ‘So, I should wait for you to die peacefully in bed, is that it?’ George snarled. ‘After everything you and those other bitches did to me, I should just let the Grim Reaper do the job in his own time?’

  ‘Believe me, what we did was for your own good. We … we all thought we were doing God’s work and could save your soul …’

  George laughed, a high-pitched, unbalanced sound. ‘Save my soul? Is that why you said I was the devil’s child a few hours ago and tried to put a bullet in me?’

  ‘I … I was frightened. I was just trying to protect myself.’

  ‘Set me up, you mean. Well, it didn’t work did it? And now you’re going to pay for all the years of misery you subjected me to – and pay in full.’

  George emitted an unexpected sob. ‘All I ever wanted was to be understood,’ she choked. ‘To be treated as the person I knew I should have been. I was never a girl, I had been born into the wrong body and my real self was screaming to be let out – but you,’ and she hammered the steering wheel violently with the palms of both hands, sending the Transit careering across the road towards the double gates of a large house before managing to haul it back on course, ‘you and your bloody harpy sisters treated me as some kind of unclean weirdo, to be reviled and tortured.’

  ‘It … it was your father and mother who made us do it. They said it was the only way. We were trying to help you.’

  ‘Help me?’ George shrieked. ‘The only thing you helped was yourselves – to my inheritance. What did you do with all the money and the proceeds from the house sale when I was orphaned, eh? Put it towards nice bungalows for each of you?’

  ‘No, I set up a trust fund for you—’

  ‘You did that all right, but as a solicitor, you knew all the wrinkles, didn’t you? Like how you and Edward Grace could milk it without getting caught, while all the time I was being screwed every which way by him and his pervy cronies.’

  ‘I … we didn’t know what they were doing to you. Edward was a committed Christian and—’

  ‘Shut it, you evil old cow. I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.’ George leaned towards her for a moment, her eyes smouldering with hate. ‘Just enjoy the ride – it’s the last one you’re ever going to have!’

  *

  ‘So, where’s the Transit?’ Hayden challenged as Kate pulled up in front of Talbot Court with a swirl of gravel. ‘I see no cars.’

  She treated him to a contemptuous glance, ignoring his facetious play on the words of Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen.

  ‘Could have dumped it somewhere close by,’ she muttered, scanning the surrounding woodland, but seeing only trees. ‘Doesn’t prove anything.’

  The derelict building towered over them, its broken windows like dark, haunted eyes that had already borne witness to decades of the unspeakable and now anticipated the tragic sequel.

  Hayden was so close behind her when she pushed through the front door that she could feel his breath on her neck.

  ‘Be careful,’ he said unnecessarily, wincing as he crunched on the broken glass that the beam of her torch had picked out and she had avoided.

  The house seemed to be holding its breath and the silence hung heavy in the air, its ethereal weight almost tangible.

  Kate moved forward, her torch probing every room in turn, but without success. ‘Next level,’ she snapped, heading for the wide staircase. ‘Maybe George took her up to the dormitory.’

  But she was wrong. The dormitory was empty, as were the rest of the rooms upstairs, and a visit to the basement shortly afterwards found nothing but rubbish-strewn rooms, dripping walls and the same eerie silence.

  Demoralized and fearful for Iris Naylor’s welfare, Kate returned to the hall, with Hayden hard on her heels desperately trying to offer her words of reassurance. They were met by a confusion of flashing blue light and armed uniformed figures pouring into the hallway through the open front door.

  ‘Great minds think alike,’ Roscoe growled as they finally joined him on the forecourt outside. ‘Guessed you’d head here.’

  Kate emitted a strained laugh. ‘Mind not so great, it now seems,’ she said. ‘Place is empty.’

  The DI scowled. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Then our nasty neighbourhood psycho could be anywhere.’

  ‘Not anywhere, guv,’ Hayden corrected drily, receiving a scathing glance from Kate. ‘Everyone has to be somewhere.’

  Roscoe ignored him. ‘So, where the hell could she have taken Iris Naylor?’ he said savagely. ‘Time’s running out for her.’

  ‘May already have run out,’ Kate retorted grimly. ‘All we can do is to keep searching.’

  ‘Searching – where?’

  Kate shrugged and turned away from him. ‘I’ve left my crystal ball at home,’ she muttered under her breath.

  And as she climbed into her car, her heart felt like a cold lead weight.

  *

  The village was still fast asleep, despite the breaking dawn. The Transit passed through it at speed, then braked heavily to turn off the main street into a narrow lane.

  ‘Know where you are?’ George said, pulling up before a pair of high wrought-iron gates and climbing out of the vehicle to open them.

  Iris Naylor felt the acid surge up into her throat and she stared at George in disbelief as she climbed back into the vehicle, then drove through the opening on to a long driveway.

  ‘You’ve brought me back here?’ she whispered. ‘What possible good can that do?’

  George cut the engine and emitted a sneering laugh. ‘Oh, I don’t know – a bit of nostalgia, perhaps? After all, you had fun here, didn’t you? You and the other old harpies? You certainly must have looked forward to coming here to do your “Christian” duty all those years ago.’

  ‘You are so very sick,’ the old woman ventured softly. ‘You need help, you really do.’

  George laughed again. ‘Oh, I’m sick all right,’ she said bitterly. ‘But no one can help me now. I’m already dying, you see. But at least I’ll see you go before me.’ She climbed out of the car. ‘Now, come on, let’s see if we can stir up a few happy memories.’

  *

  The answer hit Kate well before they reached the main road and she braked so hard that they were both propelled violently forward to the limits of their seatbelts. The doors separating subconscious thought from active consciousness had suddenly and unexpectedly flown open, producing a sense of clarity that took her a few seconds to articulate.

  ‘That’s it,’ she exclaimed finally, ignoring Hayden’s protests at the sudden braking. ‘George said it herself – a place that had come to symbolize the beginning of her mental and physical degeneration. Of course, that must be where she’s taken her – to where it all began.’

  Hayden frowned. ‘Forgive me for a lack of clairvoyance,’ he said drily, ‘but I seem to have missed the point of your emergency stop.’

  For the moment she forgot all about her antagonism towards him.

  ‘When George held me at gunpoint in that farmhouse,’ she explained excitedly, ‘she went on about the fact that the aunts had turned her home into a place where nightmares were born and where her mental and physical degeneration had begun. Don’t you see? We’ve been barking up the wrong tree. It wasn’t Talbot Court she was taking Naylor to – it was her old family home.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But I know a man who does.’

  And this time Hayden was slammed into the back of the seat as she roared away with her foot hard to the floor.

  *

  Unsurprisingly, the Reverend Glover was in bed when Kate pounded on his door at the rectory.


  ‘Goodness,’ he exclaimed, poking his head out of the bedroom window, ‘whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘Police!’ Kate shouted. ‘Can you come down? It’s urgent.’

  The minister opened the door just minutes later, concern etched into his lined face.

  Kate didn’t beat about the bush. ‘When we chatted before,’ she said breathlessly, ‘you told me that, before their marriage, Elsie Lupin and her sisters all lived in a house out on the Levels and that they had a brother who inherited the place?’

  He nodded, looking puzzled. ‘That’s correct, yes.’

  ‘We need to know the address of the house – and it is a life and death situation.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘My, my,’ he replied, without asking for any further information. ‘Well in that case, you had better come in. The register of all marriages at this church are in the rectory for safekeeping. It should be easy enough to find the address you are seeking.’

  In fact, it took a lot longer and several registers later to turn up the information, but then there it was, the name of the house and the village written in a neat, if slightly wavering hand.

  ‘Down End House!’ Kate breathed. ‘And that village is only a stone’s throw from here.’

  ‘You said it was a life and death situation,’ Glover said, closing the register with a frown. ‘What did you mean?’

  But Kate didn’t answer. She had already thrust Hayden aside and was heading for the door at a run, en route to their car.

  *

  The sign on one of the open gates read ‘Down End House’, but a wooden notice had been attached to the other gate, warning ‘Keep Out. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.’

  Iris Naylor shivered. She had not been back to her old home for decades and she was surprised it was still standing. The property had been sold following the death of her brother, John, and George’s subsequent removal to Talbot Court, and she and her sisters had been glad to see it go. She’d heard that there had been a succession of different owners afterwards, each bringing their own peculiar modifications with them, like the long Edwardian-style conservatory which had been erected along the front of the house before the big Victorian building, with its pseudo-Gothic embellishments, had finally been abandoned. Pity it had not actually been razed to the ground, she thought.