Riddled on the Sands (The Lakeland Murders)

by Salkeld, J J

  ‘So am I, I mean is my Warrant Card, the real thing then, do you think?’ Jane was smiling as she asked.

  ‘I can’t be certain. But since I took the precaution of calling Kendal police station twenty minutes ago, and discovered that Jane Francis was indeed on duty, but was out at present, I think I can be reasonably sure that you are, indeed, a Police Officer.’

  The old man stepped back into the darkness of the hallway, and swung the old door open. Jane walked in and followed him along the passageway to the kitchen. The cottage was old, very old, and the hall was lined with watercolours and drawings, but it was too dark to make them out properly.

  She sat where he suggested, on a window seat looking out over the garden, while the old man made tea. It was obviously going to take some time.

  ‘I suggest Darjeeling’ he said as he worked, ‘is that acceptable?’

  ‘Lovely, thanks. We have catering packs of tea bags at work, and I think they’re just the sweepings and the dirt.’

  ‘How very distressing for you.’

  ‘Are you by any chance related to Eric Robinson? He used to be one of the bosses at work. The boss, in fact.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear that Eric, who very probably is a distant cousin, achieved such an exalted rank and no doubt brought honour to the family name. But no, I don’t know him personally. Robinson is a very frequently occurring name locally, and to the best of my knowledge my family has been hereabouts for centuries.’

  ‘Have you studied your family history?’

  ‘Yes, I have. Since my shop shut I’ve had a good deal of time on my hands, and the internet is a great source of genealogical information. I think that’s probably all that it’s good for.’

  ‘So you have a computer at home?’

  ‘Of course I have. I believe I’m what you young people insist on calling a silver surfer. Though how one is expected to surf a web, I have no idea. Still, I doubt that you’ve come to talk to me about my level of engagement with modernity. When you telephoned you mentioned that you wanted to ask about someone with whom I had business dealings. Milk?’

  ‘Just a splash, thanks.’

  Robinson removed the strainer from the top of a porcelain cup, and added just the tiniest amount of milk.

  Jane put her cup and saucer down on the white painted wooden seat next to her, having checked that a coaster would not be required.

  ‘Do you remember selling some stock to a man named John Perkins, from Kendal?’

  ‘I do, yes.’ The old man didn’t seem to react at all to the name. Nor did he seem inclined to elaborate.

  ‘And what did he buy from you?’

  ‘At first, nothing. But, when I needed to clear my remaining stock, he bought virtually everything.’

  ‘And did you achieve a fair price?’

  ‘The price was the last thing on my mind.’

  Jane nodded. She hoped that the old man would go on, but once again he didn’t.

  ‘Why was that, Mr. Robinson?’

  ‘The shop was the last connection with my old life, with my late wife, with many friends, with so many books. It was all just swept away in a few weeks.’

  ‘And what did you make of John Perkins?’

  ‘In what regard?’

  ‘What impression did he make on you?’

  Robinson paused. Jane could here a cat mewing softly, somewhere not far away.

  ‘Very little. I couldn’t describe the man to you, if that’s what you want. Has he done something terrible?’

  ‘Not at all. He has been the victim of a serious crime, arson in fact. It was on the local news.’

  ‘Was it? I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m not sure that I can help you, Detective Constable Francis. My dealings with the man were, as I say, fleeting.’

  ‘Not to worry. Tell me, do you have a record of exactly what you sold to Mr. Perkins?’

  ‘Oh yes, it will be on the computer. Would you like a print out?’

  ‘Yes, please, but there’s no need to do it now. If you’d just email it over to me that would be great.’

  ‘Certainly. I will do it as soon as you have finished with me.’

  Jane had the sense that Robinson was just a little less friendly now, and a little more guarded.

  ‘Do you remember what Mr. Perkins paid you? Roughly, I man.’

  ‘It was £2,500, precisely.’

  ‘And was that a fair value, would you say?’

  The old man laughed. It didn’t sound as if it was something he did often.

  ‘For a lifetime’s labour? I’ll leave it to you to decide that, DC Francis.’

  Wednesday 26th June

  Andy Hall never slept well when he had an early alarm call, and his dreams were vivid. When he woke, just a minute or two before five, he realised that he had been dreaming about some huge fish, in some kind of display tank, chasing each other and sinking their teeth into each other’s tails. When he awoke he could still see the lumps of flesh in the water.

  He looked across at Jane, her back turned to him. As he got ready to leave she either remained asleep, or else pretended to. And for the first time in their relationship Hall wasn’t sure which was more likely.

  He couldn’t face anything to eat, and he felt a bit queasy when he reached work at dead on 5.15. The search team were sitting waiting in an unmarked car, and Ian Mann was standing chatting to the driver. When he saw Hall pull up he jogged over, and climbed in.

  ‘Morning, Ian. Not many of them, are there?’

  ‘They’re alI I could round up that’ve had the training. I had to pull in a few favours to get it up to five. Good thing it’s a small house then, eh, Andy?’

  ‘Don’t forget his shed, and any other outbuildings. If his place is like Jack’s he’ll have a big fire and a pot in one of them, where he boils up the shrimps, so we’ll need to take ash samples for analysis.’

  ‘Got you. I’ll tell Charlie when we get there.’

  ‘Great. How’s he handling his demotion?’

  ‘All right, but he’s changed, as you’d expect. He’s just counting the days ‘til he can go, he says, and I believe him. He’s got no confidence in the bosses at all.’

  ‘Ray used to say much the same, and look at him now. I keep having this mental picture of him hanging on to the front door by his fingernails and trying not to let go, on his last day, you know.’

  ‘Will you be like that, do you reckon, Andy?’

  Hall was driving up the hill, towards the by-pass, with Charlie Coward’s car behind. Coward had turned the headlights on, and with all the weight in the back the lights kept flashing in Hall’s rear view mirror. For a second or two he wondered if Coward had done it intentionally.

  ‘Will I miss the job when I retire? Yes, I’m sure I will. But I’m not one of those people where you can’t tell where they stop, and where the job begins. You know what I mean? And anyway, that’s not the real question here, is it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘What Ray’s thinking about is what he’s going to do with his time. That’s what he’s afraid of. He’s not even fifty-five, so he’s too young to retire really, and his pension is decent, but not quite decent enough to keep his tan topped up as well as it is now. So there’ll have to be cutbacks, I reckon.’

  ‘Have you seen his wife lately? She’s had her hair dyed ginger. I swear it clashes with her skin.’

  Hall laughed. They drove in silence for a while.

  ‘So what do you reckon you’ll do?’ asked Mann. ‘When this is all over, like?’

  ‘Well I’ll have a lie-in, for a start. But I really don’t know. What are we really qualified for, other than this?’

  ‘But you’ve got a degree, Andy.’

  ‘That’s true, but Adam Smith was still alive when I was at college.’ Mann didn’t laugh. ‘What I mean is that I’m so far out of date that I’d never get another job that wasn’t connected to policing, and even if I could get one I’d have to move away, I expect. And I don’t want
to leave here, not after all this time. So I reckon I’ll just have to work out how to live on half a pension, because remember my wife will get the other half. Anyway, how about you?’

  ‘It’s years away yet. All I’m thinking about for now is getting your job when you go.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘It’ll be you searching his bog, then, you cheeky bastard’ said Hall.

  The roads were quiet, and they were soon parked up outside Capstick’s house.

  ‘We know that he’s home, do we?’ asked Hall.

  ‘Aye, Geoff said he watched him go in after the pub. About midnight that was. He was really far gone again, Geoff said.’

  ‘OK, Ian, do me a favour and nip round the back, just in case he decides to scarper.’

  ‘Not likely, is it though, Andy?’

  ‘No, but until they make me retire I’m the DI, and so you’re the one who gets to pick your way through all that rusty old scrap iron in his back yard.’

  Mann grinned and got out of the car.

  ‘Oh, Ian’ said Hall, before Mann could close the door, ‘your tetanus jab is up-to-date, isn’t it?’

  The search took hours. Hall phoned Gorham, explained the position, and she managed to persuade her opposite number in north division to send a couple of extra bodies down to help. By lunchtime nothing of the slightest interest had turned up, and Capstick was fast asleep on his sofa, snoring loudly.

  Hall and Mann were standing in the kitchen.

  ‘How many sets of his fishing clothing have we found? Waders, that sort of stuff?’ asked Hall.

  ‘Two’ said Mann. ‘And before you ask we’ve spoken to other fishermen already. As far as they knew he had two sets, that’s it.’

  ‘Bugger. So he hasn’t got rid of any by the looks of it, then. And have we taken samples from the ash under that big pot in his shed?’

  ‘Aye, that’s been done. One of the lads will drop it in to SOCO on the way to Kendal. But let’s be honest, Andy, we’re going to get nothing here. Either the bloke’s clean, or he’s good at covering his tracks.’

  ‘He’s had enough time to do that, though, hasn’t he? But you’re right, we’ll get nothing here. Because unless he was close to Jack Bell when he was shot, which I very much doubt, there’s not going to be any spatter or other forensic evidence to link him to the killing anyway. And I’m not sure that building the pressure, letting him know that we don’t believe he’s not involved, will help us much either. He’s in pieces already. I’m beginning to regret doing this, Ian, I really am.’

  ‘Come on, Andy, that’s not like you. You’re usually so sure you’re in the right.’

  Mann grinned and Hall ignored him. He wasn’t in the mood.

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever get anywhere with this one. It’s just my bloody luck to get a case where the locus isn’t covered by any of the five million bloody CCTV cameras that there are in the UK now. It’s true, I read it somewhere. Five million, but not one can help us. All we’ve got is evidence that Capstick talked to someone on a sat-phone on the day that Jack Bell died. And so what if he lied to us about it? That’s not enough for a conviction, not remotely enough, and the rest of his electronic trail is clean as a whistle.’

  ‘I know, mate. It’s a bit of a bugger all round.’

  They stood in silence for a while.

  ‘Come on’ said Mann eventually, ‘let’s go and get some lunch in the pub. Don’t know about you, but I’m bloody starving. Must be all this fresh sea air. Ozone, or whatever they call it nowadays.’

  They’d barely ordered their drinks when Geoff Atkinson came in.

  ‘What are the chances?’ said Atkinson, looking surprised.

  Pretty high, thought Hall, especially since you’ve been standing watching what’s been going on from your front window all morning.

  They sat together at a table by the window. The pub was quiet.

  ‘No luck?’ asked Atkinson.

  Mann shook his head.

  ‘Well, you’re not finished yet, are you? Your lads are still searching. Something might turn up yet.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Hall, and Mann was surprised at the edge in his voice. ‘An assault rifle, a shed-load of drugs, Jack’s bloodstained clothing? They’re all long gone, Geoff.’

  ‘So where does it go from here?’ asked Atkinson. ‘You can’t be giving up on Pete Capstick?’

  ‘Of course not. Give up on him and we might as well close the file right now. We’ve got bugger all else to go on. But we’re just going to have to accept that we’re not going to be able to link him forensically to the killings. My guess is that whoever did it was careful to keep him well away from Jack’s body, and from any drugs or whatever it was they were shifting. We’ve bagged and tagged all his outdoor gear, and anything that looked like it might be worth examination, and it’ll probably keep the lab busy for a month. But we’ll get nothing, I’ll bet you. If I’m right, Pete was just small-fry, if you’ll excuse the pun, and his only job was to drive the stuff back to the shore, nothing more. And I still think it’s possible that this was his very first time, in which case he may not even have seen what was being smuggled.’

  A waitress brought over their lunches, and Mann and Hall ate fast and hungrily. Hall went and ordered coffees for them all from the bar, and Mann nipped out to check on progress at Capstick’s cottage. He wasn’t gone long.

  ‘Nada. The lads are just packing up. I said thanks.’

  ‘OK, thanks’ said Hall. ‘I feel like a total tit, but there’s nothing to be done now. So let’s assume that we turn up nothing on Capstick today, maybe because of the reasons I said. How do we nail him? That’s the question, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, if we’ve got no forensic or information trail then we’ll have to connect him to someone else who’s involved’ said Mann. ‘I can’t see any other way.’

  ‘Exactly. All we’ve got left is that we know Capstick’s connected to what happened to Jack, even in some relatively insignificant way, so we have to go back to him. Ian, when we get back to the office let’s start to look at Capstick’s activity in the weeks before Friday the 14th. Did he go away anywhere? Did he meet anyone? Was anyone new seen around the village?’

  ‘That hasn’t happened since 1968’ laughed Atkinson. ‘And it turned out that bloke was lost.’

  Hall smiled, but Mann didn’t. ‘Ray’s already looked at that, Andy. He’s got nowt.’

  ‘Then he needs to look harder’ said Hall. This time even Atkinson picked up his tone. ‘I’m sorry’ Hall apologised immediately, ‘it’s just the bloody early start talking. You’re right, Ian, of course you are. Ray will have done a thorough, careful job. So let’s look at this another way. Capstick doesn’t have any history of criminal activity, and other than Geoff here he’s never mixed with the wrong crowd. As far as we know he’s just fished for money, and drunk for England. Correct?’

  ‘Aye’ said Atkinson. ‘That’s about it. Although he wasn’t always a drinker, mind.’

  ‘Fair enough. So let’s ask ourselves this question: it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking drugs, human trafficking, whatever it is that he’s mixed up in, the question we have to ask ourselves is how did he get involved in the first place? What was the process? Did he approach someone else, or did they approach him?’

  ‘Got to be the second one’ said Mann. ‘It’s much more likely that someone tapped him up.’

  Hall turned to Atkinson. ‘Geoff, what do you think?’

  ‘I agree with Ian. Pete’s no bloody criminal, not by nature anyhow.’

  ‘Yes, I think so too. A pissed up, almost reclusive net fisherman living and working in a little Cumbrian village just doesn’t make connections with serious organised criminals, even if he wants to. So we can safely assume that he was approached, can’t we?’

  ‘Aye’ said Mann, ‘but where does that take us?’

  Hall pushed away his coffee cup. ‘I think the gang must have a local contact, maybe even a local me
mber. Someone who knows the patch, the people, and who knew that Pete was perfect for the job. He’s weak, vulnerable even, but he knows the sands like the back of his hand, and he has every reason to go on and off the Bay. He doesn’t need to do anything remotely covert. So how easy would it be for him to bring whatever it is off the sands, and then this other gang member just collects it later?’

  ‘But Andy’ said Atkinson, ‘we’ve got a few bad lads round here, I won’t deny it, but there’s no-one in this league, is there? I certainly don’t know of any.’

  ‘You’re right, Geoff. There’s no-one. So two possibilities occur. One is that someone has gone up in the world, so we need to look again at all the usual suspects who live within five or ten miles of here, and the other is that we’ve got a clean skin. Someone with no record, but who is somehow properly connected to whatever’s going on here.’

  Mann nodded.

  ‘So which do you think is more likely?’ asked Atkinson.

  Hall turned to him. ‘Well, the whole lot is conjecture, isn’t it? I may just be pissing in the wind here. But given that we’ve been swarming all over this place for a fortnight, and that there’s a fifty grand reward from the fisherman’s co-op for information, the total lack of progress tells me that we’re dealing with a cool customer. Someone who knows how to keep their head down, and their mouth shut. But I’ll tell you one thing. If I’m right, that person knows Pete Capstick pretty well.’

  Hall was looking at Atkinson as he said it, and Atkinson realised that Mann was too.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, lads’ he said, and they all laughed.

  ‘Come on, Ian’ said Hall. ‘Let’s go and wake Capstick up. Let’s get a list of everyone he says he knows, and we’ll talk to the whole bloody lot of them.’

  ‘Even me?’ asked Atkinson.

  ‘Especially you, Geoff. Especially you. Seriously, then we need to do the usual. Ask everyone on the list who else Capstick knows, or has seen recently, and let’s see if we make any interesting connections. You never know, we could get lucky. And the other thing is to keep the pressure on him. He’s bound to realise how much attention we’re paying him and why, no matter how much he tries to drink it all away, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he owns up, and soon.’