by Ann Granger
Pearce thought about this for a while. Eventually he said, ‘What’s it got to do with Hester Millar’s death?’
‘As far as we know, nothing. But it explains why Ruth offered a home to her friend. She owed Hester a debt.’
Pearce brightened. ‘Perhaps Hester Millar was about to go public and tell about the child!’
‘After thirty-five years? Would it matter now? Anyway, tell whom? There’s no one the slightest bit interested now except you and me,’ Markby pointed out.
‘And the kid,’ Pearce countered. ‘Wherever it is. He or she might have been asking around. Was it a boy or a girl?’
‘Dr Fichett thinks it was a boy, but isn’t sure.’
‘So, he’ll be thirty-four now, this lad, you say? Perhaps he has been trying to trace his mother? Perhaps he’d got as far as Hester Millar? Perhaps—’ Pearce began to sound excited. ‘Perhaps he thought Hester Millar was his mother! He tracked her down in the church and accused her of having abandoned him. She denied it and—’
‘Calm down, Dave,’ advised the superintendent. ‘This isn’t East Lynne.’
‘Who’s she?’ queried Pearce.
‘It’s a book, Dave,’ Markby said with a sigh. ‘A Victorian story which was made into a successful stage play containing the line, “Dead, dead, and never called me Mother!” The only line anyone remembers. Well, enough of that. The murder mustn’t make us forget the bones found in the woods. Perhaps we could concentrate on that for a moment. You’ve seen Dr Gretton’s report?’
Pearce indicated that he had. ‘We’re doing our best to trace that fancy tooth filling.’ He paused to explore the side of his own mouth with his tongue.
‘Got a bit of tooth trouble of your own, Dave?’
‘Nothing to speak of,’ lied Pearce.
‘Right, then think about this.’ Markby ticked the points off on his fingers as he enumerated them. ‘Twenty-two years ago the Potato Man was active in Stovey Woods. The bones are of a young male and have been lying in the woods for twenty or so years. We know they aren’t one of the Potato Man’s female victims, so—’
‘Are they the bones of the rapist himself?’ Pearce finished. ‘He did disappear from the scene sudden-like, you said.’
‘He did, but we mustn’t leap to conclusions. In addition to following up that dental implant, have someone check missing persons. See if any young male disappeared in the area between twenty and twenty-five years ago.’
‘Young males are always disappearing,’ said Pearce gloomily. ‘Like looking for a needle in a haystack.’ He then looked himself very like a man who wished he hadn’t mentioned the word ‘needle’.
‘By the way,’ said Markby casually that evening. ‘Ruth wasn’t quite right in saying Hester Millar had no living family. We’ve traced an elderly uncle.’
Meredith looked startled and then puzzled. ‘Oh? Ruth couldn’t have known about him.’
‘Possibly. Or, given that he’s ninety-one and hadn’t been in touch with his niece for twenty-seven years at least, Ruth might reasonably have supposed he was dead, if she ever knew about him. Or,’ Markby added, ‘she might know about him and not have wished us to talk to him.’
‘Why not?’ Getting no reply, Meredith asked, ‘Alan? Is there a secret in Hester’s past?’
‘Yes and no,’ he told her aggravatingly. ‘And it’s confidential information.’
‘Do you or do you not want me to help?’
‘I told you I’d be grateful if you could worm anything out of Ruth. But now that we’ve successfully traced the uncle, perhaps you needn’t worry about it. We’ll manage without your undoubted sleuthing skills!’
‘Sometimes,’ Meredith told him, ‘you sound positively smug!’
‘That’s because I’m pleased with myself for finding the old boy. Oh, I saw Ursula Gretton today. She it was, actually, who put me on to Hester’s uncle, via a friend of hers. Ursula dated the bones in the woods for us.’
‘Ursula did? How is she?’
‘Got a new career but not, I gather, a new love in her life.’
‘That’s a shame.’ Meredith shook her head.
‘Yes, yes it is a shame. She’s a very attractive woman. We had lunch.’ Markby wondered if he was overdoing the casual tone. He feared he was beginning to sound idiotic.
‘Oh? Right. Well, that’s nice.’ This enigmatic reply told him nothing.
Their eyes met. There was a quizzical look in Meredith’s. Rumbled! thought Markby.
‘So,’ asked Meredith, ‘how old?’
‘How old what?’
‘Was the man whose bones were in the woods?’
Markby abandoned his laid-back manner. ‘They are the bones of a man in his thirties and have been lying around in Stovey Woods for about twenty years. Scientists always allow themselves leeway when dating things. The bones might have been there as long as twenty-three or four years but probably not less than eighteen or nineteen. Don’t ask me if they belong to the Potato Man because I don’t ruddy well know!’
Chapter Ten
‘You want to see about that tooth, Inspector,’ said Ginny Holding reproachfully on Tuesday.
‘Don’t you worry about my tooth,’ retorted Pearce, ‘you worry about the teeth in that jawbone and tracing that Christmas Tree implant. Mr Markby wants to know who our mystery man of the woods is.’
‘Oh that,’ she replied unruffled. ‘I think I’ve got something on that.’ She tapped her computer keyboard. ‘You know you asked me to chase down missing persons as well?’
Pearce edged closer and peered at the screen. ‘What have you got?’
She pointed. ‘Him,’ she said. ‘Simon Hastings. He was a thirty-five-year-old botanist on a walking holiday.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Pearce muttered. ‘He was walking the old drovers’ way.’
‘That’s right, all on his own. I pulled the file from records.’ She tapped a folder on her desk. ‘On the evening of the twenty-third of August he stopped off at the Drovers’ Rest and took a room for the night. The Drovers’ Rest is a pub in the middle of nowhere which does B & B and makes its trade from the people who use the old way for recreational purposes. Robert and I have been in there.’
Robert was Ginny’s partner. A police-dog handler by profession, he rejoiced in the nickname of ‘Snapper’ but no one used it in Ginny’s hearing. Both Snapper, sorry Robert, and Ginny were keen cyclists. Pearce could imagine them pedalling merrily along the old way.
‘Nice place, is it?’ Pearce asked blandly. He’d given up riding a pushbike the moment he’d got old enough first for a motorbike and then a car. Not that the machines ridden by Snapper – must remember to call him Robert – and Ginny merited the derisory name of pushbike. Space age technology they were.
‘Yes,’ she returned brightly. ‘It’s a pretty nice spot. You and Tessa would like it. Of course you can’t get up there by car. It’s actually on the old drovers’ way itself, donkey’s years old, really atmospheric. You know, creaky and creepy. The sort of place you’d really expect to see ghosts. But you could park near the way and then walk. You’ve got a dog, haven’t you?’
Pearce felt vaguely insulted by the implication that neither he nor Tessa would go anywhere they couldn’t visit by car nor take a walk voluntarily unless accompanied by Henry, the lurcher. Perhaps they should take more exercise, he and Tess. Tessa went to her aerobics class, of course. But that didn’t involve fresh air. One of these weekends, when the weather was nice, he’d get Tessa to walk a little along the old way. Where they’d probably be overtaken, as they slogged along on foot, by Snapper and Ginny, ringing their bells as they swooped past.
Ginny had got back to the matter in hand and recalled Pearce from his imaginative detour.
‘Hastings was unmarried but had recently become engaged. He made two telephone calls that evening from the Drovers’ Rest. One was to his fiancée. They talked about their forthcoming marriage. The other was to his mother. He told them both he was feeling fine and
enjoying the fresh air and the scenery. There was absolutely no indication of any problems. He talked of going to visit Mum when he got back from his walking break. The following morning he set off again. The landlord saw him leave. It was the last anyone ever saw of him. He disappeared into thin air. He’s never turned up since, nor any trace of him.’
Pearce was interested enough to forget the insistent throb in his gum. ‘Where did he live?’
‘He lived in London. There’s his address. He lived in SW 19. That’s Wimbledon. He worked for and was a shareholder in a company producing herbal beauty products.’
‘Poor chap,’ commiserated Pearce.
‘Those companies make a packet,’ said Holding knowledgeably. ‘So he had no business or money worries. No reason to do a bunk.’
Pearce grunted. ‘Well, see if either his fiancée or his mother is still around. The fiancée is probably married and has got another name. You might have trouble running her down. Try his mum. She’ll probably be in her seventies but it’s more likely she’s still going by the same name. If you find her, ask her if she remembers the name of his dentist.’
‘I’ve got the name of a good dentist,’ offered Holding, giving him a wicked look.
‘Thank you, Ginny, there’s nothing wrong with my teeth!’
As sometimes happened, two lines of enquiry turned up trumps at the the same time. Simon’s erstwhile fiancée proved untraceable, as Pearce had feared, but Mrs Hastings was contacted easily enough in Goldalming. She hadn’t moved house since her son’s disappearance. She remembered he’d always used the family dentist, a local practice, even after he’d moved away to live in his own place. The dentist had retired, but his son ran the practice and, an unexpected bit of good luck, had kept a lot of very old records, stuffed into boxes in the attic. A diligent search by local officers and the shifting of a great deal of dust had discovered Simon’s dental records, yellowed but complete. As a result of an injury playing rugby, Simon had required extensive dental work. It had included a blade implant of the Christmas Tree type.
At the same time, the manufacturer of the distinctively shaped implant was traced and the hospital where the operation had been carried out. The record had been kept because of the rarity at that time of the treatment. X-rays of Simon’s jaw were still used as illustration of the technique when lecturing to students. So not only had they dental records, they had actual X-rays of the teeth to compare with those surviving in the jawbone. The match was unmistakable.
‘That seems about it, then,’ said Pearce to Markby. ‘Our bones belong to the missing hiker, Simon Hastings.’ He gave Markby a somewhat apologetic look. ‘But it doesn’t seem likely he was your Potato Man, sir. I mean, he lived in London. He was in the area just briefly on his walking holiday. He couldn’t have been miles away in London during the weeks beforehand, making his herbal facepacks, and roaming Stovey Woods, looking for women on their own, at one and the same time. I did check the dates of the attacks. I thought, if they’d all taken place at the weekend, it might just be possible that Hastings had something to do with them, but they didn’t. Some were in the morning, others in the afternoon. The village women were attacked on weekdays, mostly late in the day. The same goes for the two girls from outside the area, the walker and the cyclist. They were there in vacation time and they were attacked on weekdays. In fact,’ concluded Pearce thoughtfully, ‘it’s as though the rapist avoided the weekend. Why do you think that was?’
‘Too many people using the area recreationally,’ Markby said shortly. ‘Strong chance a woman’s scream might be heard or he’d be seen in the area.’
‘Or he had a job which kept him busy at weekends? Anyway,’ Pearce shrugged. ‘It rules out Simon Hastings who spent his weekdays, nine to five, in his laboratory working out how to stop women’s faces wrinkling.’
‘I take the point,’ Markby returned irritably. ‘But when he disappeared, the Potato Man disappeared, and don’t tell me there isn’t a connection. We just don’t know what it is, that’s all.’ He then added more mildly, ‘Well done, anyway. And tell Holding, good work.’
In view of their success, the inquest on the bones, which had been opened and adjourned to allow police to follow enquiries, was reconvened.
The night before it was held, the gusting wind, which had been absent since the onset of the rain, returned and rampaged until the early hours of the morning. In Lower Stovey its wild rattlings and whistlings echoed with particular savagery. Perhaps it was that which kept the inhabitants from their slumbers, or it may have been other things troubling their minds, as the wind troubled the roof tiles and chimney stacks and even succeeded in bringing down a tree on the edge of Stovey Woods themselves.
Ruth Aston lay awake and listened to the wind howl round the eaves of the Old Forge. At one point she got out of bed to close the window because the curtain billowed crazily and the bar threatened to spring loose at any minute and let the casement fly open and slam against the outer wall. She pulled it shut and the noise of the wind was lessened. From her window she could see the clouds scudding across the night sky and the garden and fields beyond bathed in pale moonlight, bounded by the mass of the woods. Squatting on the horizon as they did, it seemed too easy to feel Stovey Woods possessed a single personality, a dark force from an ancient past. Ruth imagined how the wind must roar among the trunks and bring down debris, branches and birds’ nests. Into her head unbidden came the old nursery rhyme: When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, down will come baby, cradle and all. Something was about to come tumbling down. She felt it, sensed it, heard it in this wind, a force which would tear aside every pretence and reveal old secrets, large and small.
She knew that in view of the inquest there was something she ought to do and knew, too, that she lacked the courage to do it. She went back to bed with a wretched conscience.
Billy Twelvetrees lay awake in his cottage and wondered if the rotting straw above his head would withstand the buffeting. The roof needed a complete re-thatch. But the owner, Jones, who farmed under Stovey Woods, steadfastly refused to entertain the idea, though he had put the wire net over it to hold it together. Landlords were supposed to maintain property in a fit way, Billy grumbled mentally to himself. But he was in no position to cross swords with Jones who could turn him out of here if he took a fancy to. He’d promised, of course, he’d promised Billy could live here until he died, or had to leave for some kind of residential home, something Billy would be hanged if he’d ever do. But promises had a way of being forgotten and at the very least, Jones might increase the rent which was a nominal amount. He’d worked for Joneses all his life, thought Billy angrily. This Jones who was young Kevin and before him for his father old Martin Jones, who was still alive but did nothing very much about the farm now. And that was the problem. The promise had been made by Martin, but the decisions these days were being taken by young Kevin.
The noise of the wind made Billy uneasy. He could barely hear the ticking of the ancient alarm clock on the table by his bed. The groaning of the roof timbers didn’t quite blot out the snores of his daughter in her room across the passageway. Take more than this to keep Dilys awake, he thought in disgust. She always slept like a log. Another gust of wind rattled the crumbling windowframes. Billy pulled the sheet up over his head and gave himself over to rancorous thoughts about Kevin Jones until he fell asleep.
In their private flat on the top floor of the Fitzroy Arms Norman and his wife both lay awake in their cramped bedroom. They argued fiercely but in low voices as if there were anyone to overhear or the wind itself might seize their words and hurl them into the night sky for anyone to catch. After a while, Evie began to cry in an awkward, unattractive fashion, snorting and gulping. Norman told her to stop her noise, for goodness’ sake.
She mumbled resentfully, but as one who knew her point of view would always be disregarded. ‘It’s all your fault. You don’t have cause to blame me. They’ll find out.’
‘No, they bloody won’t if�
�n you don’t tell them!’
‘It’s disgusting. In the church, too.’
‘It wasn’t in the church,’ said Norman wearily. ‘It was in the tower.’
‘Well, that’s part of the church, isn’t it? And that stupid girl, no better than she should be. Young enough to be your daughter.’
‘Oh, stop belly-aching,’ snapped Norman. ‘It was only a bit of fun.’
‘She might go gossiping.’
‘Don’t be daft. Who’d she tell?’
‘Kids boast. They tell each other things you mightn’t tell anyone because you’re not a kid,’ Evie said waspishly. ‘Sex in the church, that’s something she might brag about.’
Norman told her again not to be daft, but he sounded less confident. ‘I’ll have a word with her.’
Evie returned, with a wisdom which startled Norman, ‘If you do that, you’ll never get rid of her. She’ll have you pinned down like a cat with a bird. She’ll know how scared you are.’
‘I’ll fix it, I tell you! Go to sleep.’
