Riddled on the Sands (The Lakeland Murders)

by Salkeld, J J

  Riddled on the Sands

  The Lakeland Murders, number four.

  By J J Salkeld

  HERRINGBONE Press

  © copyright J J Salkeld, 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Proof-read by Ross Baverstock.

  Friday, June 14th

  Jack Bell always enjoyed this part of the job best, walking round the tractor and the trailer in the yard before he set off, checking that everything was as it should be. His gear was old, some had been his father’s before him, but it was reliable. ‘No bloody silicon chips here’ he said out loud, and only the ever-hopeful seagulls heard him. He sometimes wondered if these exact ones followed him out on to the sands. It wouldn’t surprise him. ‘Clever buggers, aren’t you?’

  High water was only an hour ago, so he still had plenty of time before the sands of the Bay would be firm and dry enough to drive across, or at least until they became as firm and dry as they ever were in this state of the tide. And Jack never rushed when he was checking the gear anyway, because that was how mistakes happened. And far out there on Morecambe Bay, often all alone and always with the sea rushing back in when the tide turned again, one mistake could very easily be your last.

  So he checked that he had all the gear he needed once more, and then had a good look at the fuel trap and filter. It looked clear, and the diesel clean and red. He glanced up at the sky, and decided that it would a grand night. There was a warm westerly breeze right enough, and the cloud covered the sky like an old eiderdown. But it wouldn’t rain, and it wouldn’t blow too hard, and the tide wouldn’t turn, far out in the Bay, until after 2am. And he’d be safe home and in his bed by then.

  Five minutes later he started the old red Nuffield, now faded pinkish by the sun and sand, watched the diesel smoke blow dark then clear from the exhaust, and pulled out of the yard on to the village street. He waved and called out to a couple of people he passed, one of them his cousin, and he felt the familiar excitement building. It was out on the very edge of his consciousness, but it was there all the same. What would he find in his nets tonight? Just a couple of baskets of flukes, or a couple of perfect early-summer salmon? He’d been asking himself the same question every day for donkey’s years, and he’d never once guessed right yet.

  In fact Jack had been net-fishing on Morecambe Bay since he was just a lad, when he’d gone out with his old dad, and his grand-dad too, and he was addicted to it. He knew that well enough. It’s why he was one of the last of his kind, still heading out onto the sands between the tides, setting his nets for fluke, fishing for prawns and netting salmon in season, and usually a little bit outside of it too. Because the fish couldn’t read a calendar, even if the fishery boys could.

  When he was in his twenties there’d have been a traffic jam of tractors heading out from the village and onto the bay, between every high tide. But tonight there was only one ahead of him, just turning down the track that led to the bay itself. Even from a couple of hundred yards away Jack knew whose trailer it was, even though he couldn’t have told you how he recognised it. He just did.

  As he passed old May’s garden he smelt the scent of her roses, already in flower, and Jack looked down at the little cottage garden as he passed. He loved the view from up here, much higher than any Chelsea tractor, and he loved May’s garden. It looked like she’d done no more than give nature a bit of a helping hand. Then he slowed down, looked over his shoulder to check that nothing was behind him, and turned down the lane to the foreshore. His trailer missed May’s fence by inches, just as it had done many thousands of times before.

  At the bottom of the track Jack stopped, and listened to the old tractor’s lumpy engine note. He wasn’t worried, because it sounded exactly as it had for the previous twenty years. Jack could make out some of his nets out on the sands, or at least the poles that supported them, and he watched the other tractor making for a set of nets further out, which had only recently been revealed by the ebbing tide. Trust Pete to push his luck , thought Jack, as he pushed open the hand-throttle and followed the tyre tracks out on to the bay.

  Half an hour later he’d emptied his first nets, reset a couple of poles and sorted out a tangle or two. He knew without looking in the basket what weight of flukes he’d got, and it wasn’t such a bad start. It was just a week or so short of midsummer, so he’d be able to check the rest of his nets and maybe even do an hour’s cockling before it even started to get dark. That’s what he still loved about the fishing job, the fact that twice a day the Bay was remade by the tide, and if you knew where to leave your nets you had a good chance of a decent catch.

  But it wasn’t as easy as it looked, or as safe. The sand looked hard as concrete, and in most spots it was, but that wasn’t always the case. Usually the chances were small, insignificant almost, but sometimes a river channel would shift overnight, or quicksand might appear in a place where the sand had been as solid as stone just the day before. Over the years even Jack, born to the fishing job, had lost two tractors out on the sands, one that got bogged down and couldn’t be freed and another that had suffered gearbox failure when he was out on his own. But he’d had plenty of time to walk off the sands before the tide came in that time, even though he’d been about to leave anyway when his gearbox packed up. Because Jack was cautious, and he respected the sands.

  He drove the old tractor to one of the cockle beds, got his gear off the trailer and set to work. He quickly settled into a rhythm, treading down on the footplate of the old jumbo and rocking the tall handles backwards and forwards. The action turned the hard sand to a semi-liquid. It was hard work, but it did the trick. After a couple of minutes he stopped, and raked up the cockles that had been brought to the surface. When he’d put them in the basket he stood up, and scanned the Bay. All he could see was Pete’s tractor much further out, just a dot on the flat Sahara of sand that the tide had revealed. As he started to rock the jumbo again he wondered what Pete was doing out there. Had he got into a decent run of shrimp again, the old bugger?

  Years ago the tractors used to follow each other around the sands, so it was impossible to keep a good place secret, no matter how hard you tried. And back in those days it wasn’t often that Pete stole a march on Jack. Never had, and never would. Both men were fifth or six generation fishermen, no-one really knew for sure, but Jack had an instinct, an intelligence, or maybe just a competitive nature which ensured that he ended most years with the biggest catch of flukes and shrimp. And he had the trophies on his mantlepiece to prove it too. It wasn’t the greatest proof of a life’s work perhaps, but it was more than most.

  The cockles were plentiful where he was working and twenty minutes later Jack had hit his self-imposed target for the evening. He looked up at the sky, rather than down at his watch, and thought about getting home, taking a shower and slipping into bed beside his sleeping wife. After all these years of marriage he reckoned he could have driven his old Nuffield right into the bedroom without waking her.

  But what was Pete getting into right out there? He didn’t seem to have moved very far in ages. So it had to be shrimp he was getting, and plenty of them at that. So there’d be plenty for the two of them, wouldn’t there? Jack loaded his jumbo, his rake and the baskets of cockles onto his trailer and walked back to the tractor, still idling away. As he climbed up he knew that he’d done a decent night’s work, and he’d already deducted the cost of his diesel from the value of his catch, so he knew to within a pound or two what he’d earne
d. He should head home, but even before he reached for the hand-throttle he knew that he wouldn’t. It wasn’t the money, even though a decent haul of shrimp would double his profit for the night. It was the fact that Pete Capstick knew something that Jack Bell didn’t. And that would never do.

  Monday, 17th June

  DC Jane Francis was smiling as she walked back into the open CID office. Not because she was looking forward to opening yet another case file, but because she was certain that DI Andy Hall would be intrigued by the story that the bloke down in the interview room had just told her. Three months ago she wouldn’t have been quite so certain, but then three months before she and Hall had been colleagues, and nothing more. She knocked on Hall’s door and walked in.

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a blast from the past downstairs, Andy’ she said, pausing for effect. ‘So I think it might interest you.’

  Hall laughed. Jane was a few years younger than him, a couple more than he cared to remember in fact, and she did make a point of reminding him occasionally. But she didn’t need to. He already felt fortunate.

  ‘Don’t tell me. Someone has come in with that Talking Heads album that I lost in 1978.’

  ‘Better than that.’

  ‘Nothing’s better than that.’ Jane didn’t laugh, and Hall was briefly disappointed that she’d missed his little joke. He was rather pleased with it. Perhaps the age gap was greater than he thought.

  ‘So what is it then?’

  ‘We’ve got a bloke downstairs who’s had a threatening letter. Came in the post, no less.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I know, how old school is that?’

  ‘Is it made of cut-out letters from a 1967 copy of the Daily Express? If not, I’m not interested.’

  ‘No. It’s just printed, from a computer, but even so it does make a change, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I should say so. Most of our complaints consist entirely of drunken texts, voice mails or emails, full of incomprehensible abbreviations and wall-to-wall swearing. They even abbreviate the swear words.’

  ‘Well this one is as grammatical as fuck, in its own way.’

  Hall laughed again. ‘Really, you promise?’

  ‘Seriously, it’s perfect. Like being threatened by a mad English teacher.’

  ‘All right, you’ve got me hooked. I doubt one in a hundred of our collars could even spell compassionate, let alone define it. So who’s the complainant?’

  ‘Name of John Perkins, local bloke, sounds like some kind of digital Del Boy. Flogs stuff online.’

  ‘How disappointing. What sort of stuff?’

  ‘Whatever he thinks he can sell. CDs, perfume, second-hand books, small electrical items, all sorts.’

  ‘Any previous?”

  ‘He says not. Shall I check it out before we go down?’

  ‘Yes, and I bet you he has. Full of shysters, the internet is. There should be a law against it.’

  ‘You’re still feeling sore after buying that fake bracelet for Alice’s birthday.’ Hall pulled a face and Jane laughed. ‘That’ll teach you for being a cheapskate.’

  ‘It will. I’m too trusting, that’s my trouble. Have you got the letter?’

  Jane passed Hall a copy. ‘The original has been dusted. One set, which will be Perkins’. He said he’d handled it.’

  Jane Francis turned to go.

  ‘One other thing, Jane. Is this the first one he’s had?’

  ‘There’s a reason why you’re a DI, isn’t there, Andy? No, it’s not the first. He’s had a few before, over the last few weeks, but this one bothered him more for some reason.’

  Hall nodded, and read the letter.

  Dear John

  This is my fifth and final letter. I intend to make an example of you, on behalf of me and my kind. You have systematically laid waste to everything that we value, without compunction or punishment: and it will not stand.

  Can you escape your just desserts? You cannot. I will destroy all that you hold most dear, no matter how much it pains me to do so.

  There will be no more letters.

  He read it again, then walked out to Jane’s desk.

  ‘By hand or in the post?’

  ‘By hand. No prints on the envelope. Perkins is shitting himself because he knows our man has been right up to his front door.’

  ‘Does anyone who know what ‘compunction’ means ever commit a crime?’

  ‘You’re a snob, Andy. Of course they do. Look at the bankers’

  ‘I don’t think they know what compunction means either.’ Hall looked doubtful. He was hard to read, but Jane knew that expression now. It was just something around the eyes. ‘I don’t know about this one, Jane. It just reads like it was written by an octogenarian. Someone who couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding.’

  ‘Ageist too then, are we? If you’d said it read like it was written by an eighty year-old woman you’d have got the set.’

  DC Ray Dixon caught Sergeant Ian Mann’s eye. They sat at back-to-back desks, just a few feet away from Jane.

  ‘I hate that sexism’ said Dixon, to no-one in particular.

  Ian Mann was bored, and more than happy to join in. ‘I know you do, Ray. And I bet you also know what gets easier to pick up the heavier it gets.’

  Dixon laughed. ‘I do, Ian, and it’s not a man, is it?’

  ‘Belt up you two’ said Jane. ‘There’s no help for dinosaurs like you. But then you actually remember the dinosaurs, don’t you, Ray?’

  ‘I nicked one for D&D once. Outside one of the clubs in town. Of course it was all just swamp round here then.’

  Hall laughed loudly. ‘Come on then, Jane. Let’s go and see your online entrepreneur. Any form?’

  ‘Not a thing. He’s a model citizen, is our Mr. Perkins.’

  The model citizen was looking impatient.

  ‘I need to be out of here in twenty minutes. I have to catch the post. A lot of people will be waiting on packets from me, and I don’t want any negative feedback.’

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Perkins’ said Hall, sitting down. ‘But DC Francis wanted a more senior officer to listen to what you have to say. I’m DI Andy Hall.’

  Perkins nodded. ‘Good. Glad to see you’re taking it seriously.’

  ‘Well your letter’s a bit more than negative feedback, isn’t it?’ said Hall, smiling. ‘In fact the writer has committed a criminal offence, so yes, we’re interested. Have you kept the previous letters?’

  ‘Nah. I binned them.’

  ‘Can you remember what they said?’

  ‘Not really. I get a few shitty emails, comments about my goods, you know. Happens all the time, like. But it’s all online, anonymous like. This is different. This one knows where I live.’

  ‘So you don’t think it’s from a disgruntled customer then?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A pissed-off punter?’

  ‘No way. Come on mate, I hardly sell anything over ten or twenty quid, tops. It’s not enough to start a war about, is it? Mind you, it is amazing how wound-up some punters get over a few quid.’

  ‘I can believe it. But you still don’t think it’s from a customer?’

  ‘Nah, ‘course not.’

  ‘So can you think of anyone else who might have a grudge against you?’

  Perkins looked across at Jane. ‘A few angry husbands, maybe.’

  Jane didn’t smile back.

  ‘Mr. Perkins’ said Hall, ‘you want to get your mail sent, and we want to get on with our work, so let’s try to answer the questions, shall we? Then we can all get on with our work.’

  ‘No, I don’t know anyone who might hold a grudge.’

  ‘Someone you’ve had a relationship with?’

  Perkins shook his head.

  ‘Are you sure? That’s usually what’s behind this sort of thing.’

  ‘No. I’m sure. The business has kept me so busy I’ve had no time for...you know, anything like that. Not lately. Not for a good while, in fact.’
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  This time Jane did smile.

  ‘OK’ Hall continued, ‘so how about business contacts?’

  Perkins thought for a moment, then shook his head again.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not really. Aye, I’ve had a few good results, buying and selling, but that’s the game, isn’t it? Buy low, sell high. Not the other way round, like.’

  ‘Have you ended up in dispute with anyone because of that? When you bought low from them, and then sold high to someone else? Because it sounds like there might be two aggrieved parties in that case.’

  ‘No. And my average selling price isn’t high, remember, like I said it’s usually just a tenner or twenty quid. I’m into volume, like. I buy a lot of bankrupt stock, from shops closing down, all that. People are usually glad to get rid of the stock. Bit of a public service, I am, in a way.’

  Hall glanced across at Jane, who shook her head slightly. She didn’t want to take it on from there. So Hall pushed the letter across the table.

  ‘All right, Mr. Perkins, let’s take a look at this letter, shall we? What do you make of it?’

  ‘Not a lot. He says he’s going to destroy me. As if.’

  ‘Not quite. He says that he’s going to destroy ‘all that you hold most dear’, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘So what do you hold most dear then, Mr. Perkins?’

  ‘Don’t know really. My car, maybe? Not my house because I’m selling that. I can afford something much nicer now. It reminds me of when I was young and just starting out, see.’

  ‘How old are you?’