‘D’you do all your business that way?’
‘Really, Chief Inspector, I don’t think you have any call to ask such questions about the estate’s business.’
‘Do you know, Mr Prosser,’ McKenna said, ‘I’m beginning to think the estate’s business might bear a little scrutiny. All this strikes me as being somewhat irregular, to say the least. How could Ms Cheney, or anyone else come to that, know the cottage was for rent?’
There was a silence at the end of the telephone line. McKenna waited patiently. ‘Well,’ Prosser volunteered eventually, ‘she probably saw an advertisement.’
‘Where do you advertise?’
‘I don’t advertise anywhere.’ Smug satisfaction coloured Prosser’s voice.
‘Mr Prosser, are you aware I could arrest you now for obstruction? How d’you fancy swapping your cosy office for a cell?’
Prosser’s laugh tinkled over the line. ‘Oh, Chief Inspector, no need to be like that. Indeed, no … always willing to help. Why not call the trust headquarters? They deal with all the advertising. A lot of properties are let out during the summer months, and again from autumn until Easter. Quite normal procedure, I do assure you.’
‘Why did Ms Cheney pay in cash?’
‘Did she?’ Prosser asked. ‘I really couldn’t say, Chief Inspector. Why don’t you ask her?’ McKenna heard Prosser put down the receiver very gently.
Clearly implying errands for other forces were of minimal importance, Derbyshire police grudgingly promised a response on Robert Allsopp’s current whereabouts by the end of the week, by which time, McKenna thought, the investigation would have lost what little impetus remained. Curiosity about the dead woman nudged at him, posing questions to which he had no answers: why had no one missed her, how could she be so solitary that her disappearance had gone totally unremarked. If she was indeed the erstwhile tenant of that haunted cottage, she had spent thousands of pounds on a place she would never own simply to live in comfort for a few months.
* * *
Jack returned empty handed from his visit to Special Branch. ‘They weren’t exactly helpful.’
‘They never are,’ McKenna said. ‘Unless they want something. What did they say?’
Jack’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Well, apart from implying we should go forth and multiply instead of bothering them, nothing! Who the bloody hell,’ he added, jaw muscles bunching, ‘do they think they are?’
‘Special Branch.’ McKenna said. ‘With the emphasis on the special bit. We’re just old PC Plod….’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Rude, were they?’ he asked.
‘Rude?’ Jack almost shouted. ‘Bloody insulting!’
‘Oh, well,’ McKenna said. ‘Our turn will come.’ He grinned at Jack. ‘I’d like you to fax the package about our body to the police in Ireland. On both sides of the border.’
‘Why?’
‘She doesn’t seem to be missing in Britain, so she might be missing from Ireland, mightn’t she?’ McKenna said. ‘It’s but a short hop over the Irish Sea.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Jack frowned. ‘D’you think the body’s this woman from Gallows Cottage?’
‘I hope so,’ McKenna said. ‘If she isn’t, we may as well stop bothering now.’ He eyed Jack speculatively. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Ms Cheney at Gallows Cottage doesn’t appear on any missing list, does she?’ Jack said. ‘Ms Cheney’s most probably happily going about her usual business somewhere, in total ignorance anybody’s looking for her. She rents that dump for a while, spends pots of money on it ’cos she’s not short of a bob or two … and who’s to say it was her money anyway? She might’ve rented it for the specific purpose of having a nice little place in the middle of nowhere for her dirty weekends … her and a married boyfriend … both of them married. Having it off when they got the chance down in the woods and nobody any the wiser. Beats the back seat of a car any day.’ Jack grinned. ‘Then, back home on a Monday morning, all respectable. That’s probably why she paid the rent in cash. No records that way, no cheques to be explained to her husband or his wife.’
Disgust with Jack’s graphic analysis of Ms Cheney’s weekend sport pulled at McKenna’s face. ‘We’ve still got a body,’ he said. ‘And unless we can put a name to it, we’ll never find out who killed her.’
Dr Roberts telephoned, excitement sparkling in his voice. ‘I removed various organs, Michael, and tried to reconstitute them for section,’ he said. ‘With some success, I might add, even though I do say so myself!’
‘Oh, yes?’ McKenna sounded sour. ‘And what have you found?’
‘No heart disease, no liver disease, no kidney disease.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ McKenna commented. ‘We know she was healthy until somebody decided to string her up. Should aid the identification process no end.’
‘God, McKenna, you’re a sarcastic bugger! I gave you the bad news first,’ Eifion Roberts snapped. ‘I actually called to say the woman had had at least one, and possibly more than one, pregnancy.’
‘Are you sure?’ McKenna asked. ‘How could you possibly tell from the state she was in?’
‘You don’t listen, do you? I reconstituted the organs. You may not know the uterus is the last one to decompose, because it’s made as tough as old boots … came up almost as good as new…. So good, in fact, it set me thinking of a way to provide donor organs.’
‘Donor organs?’
Eifion Roberts’ throaty laugh rumbled in McKenna’s ear. ‘Hundreds of graveyards choc-a-bloc with bodies, and their innards all going to waste.’
Dewi, too, returned empty-handed, and long before dusk.
‘I told you to stay there until dark, Dewi Prys,’ McKenna said. ‘Why are you back so early? Have you found the buckle?’
‘No, sir,’ Dewi muttered. ‘I don’t reckon anyone’d be able to find anything down there.’
‘Why not?’
Dewi looked at Jack, who stood feeding sheet after sheet of paper into the fax machine, then back to McKenna. ‘Well, sir, I mean, we don’t even know what this buckle looks like, do we?’
‘So?’
‘So, it makes things a bit difficult….’ Dewi paused. ‘And,’ he added, ‘the whole place got really trampled about on Saturday, sir. If the buckle was around in the first place, it’s probably under a load of mud by now….’
McKenna looked at the mud and grass-stains streaking Dewi’s jeans. ‘How did you get so dirty?’ he asked.
‘Because it’s filthy dirty down there, sir,’ Dewi said. ‘You haven’t seen it, have you? All mud and dead leaves and God knows what.’
Looking up from the fax machine, Jack said, ‘Did you fall in the river, Prys?’
‘No, sir,’ Dewi said.
‘Get lost then, did you?’ Jack asked.
‘Sort of,’ Dewi admitted. His face flushed. ‘Some stupid bugger’s moved all that tape we left at the weekend, haven’t they?’
‘There’s your answer, then,’ Jack said to McKenna. ‘He’s back early because he was scared of getting lost in the woods. And I don’t blame him, either.’
Chapter 7
Bored and irritable, convinced the woman in the woods and her death would remain forever a mystery, Jack spent Wednesday morning dealing with the paperwork accumulated since Saturday. Frowning over duty rosters for the coming month, he listened to Dewi Prys, at his most efficient, say over the telephone to Trefor Prosser, ‘If you wish to be less than co-operative to an important investigation, sir, we can always obtain a court order to retain the ledgers. We have that power, sir, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Of course, it also gives us the power to obtain any other documents which might be relevant…. What other documents, sir? Well, we wouldn’t know that ’til we had them, would we, sir?’
Returning from the canteen after lunch, Jack met a man walking along the corridor towards McKenna’s office, a man of medium build and nondescript appearance, a grey sort of man, almost a ghost of a man.
‘Ca
n I help you?’
Grey eyes flicked over Jack’s face, and away. ‘No, thank you.’ He continued on his way, reached McKenna’s room, opened the door and walked in without knocking. The door closed quietly behind him.
Jack hesitated, then followed.
McKenna stood by the window, his face striped with shadows from the Venetian blind. The grey man sat on an upright chair in front of the desk. ‘Who are you?’ he asked Jack.
‘This is Inspector Turtle,’ McKenna said. Turning to Jack, he added, ‘This gentleman is from Special Branch, Jack. It appears our enquiries in Ireland have caused a little anxiety. Special Branch feel we might be treading on their toes.’
The grey man smiled. A most unwholesome smile, Jack thought. Like the wicked old woman in Hansel and Gretel. ‘I said nothing about treading on toes, Mr McKenna. Do you have connections in Ireland, by the way? In the Republic?’
McKenna sat down. ‘Why?’
‘Why did you send details of this dead woman to the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Garda in Dublin?’
‘Because,’ McKenna said, with a warning glance at Jack, ‘she doesn’t appear to be reported missing in Britain. Quite feasible she’s Irish.’
‘Oh, come now, Mr McKenna!’ the grey man sneered. ‘You can do better than that! You know as well as I do this killing has all the hallmarks of an execution. Death by hanging, in a remote spot, and the hands strapped up behind her back? Don’t tell me you hadn’t made the connection.’
‘Then why didn’t your mates say as much to Inspector Tuttle yesterday?’ McKenna asked. ‘He went all the way to Caernarfon to talk to you.’
‘Don’t play games, McKenna. You know the score, and you damn well know the procedure! You get told what you need to know, and nothing more.’
‘Quite,’ McKenna agreed. ‘I therefore presumed there was nothing to know.’
‘You,’ the grey man insisted, ‘have absolutely no right to contact police in Ireland. Thought you were being clever, did you? Thought you’d stir up the shit for us, did you?’
‘I didn’t think anything at all, as a matter of fact.’ McKenna was smiling slightly. ‘All we have done,’ he continued, ‘is to treat this as we would any other suspicious death. And of course, unlike you, we have not indulged in any paranoid over-reaction. As a matter of interest,’ he added, lighting a cigarette, ‘how did you know we made enquiries in Ireland?’
‘Mind your own business!’
‘Oh.’ McKenna looked bored. ‘I suppose one of your stooges over there rang up in a panic. Pity they’ve nothing better to do.’
The grey man stood, leaning his fists on the desk. ‘You obviously haven’t yet learned your place, McKenna. Rogue bloody coppers we can all do without. Particularly Irish ones!’
McKenna opened the door, and stood aside for the man to pass through. ‘You know where the chief constable spends most of his time,’ he said. ‘I’m sure your boss will be getting together with him soon enough. They’ll be able to have a nice little chat about it, won’t they?’
‘I don’t know how you keep your temper!’ Jack exploded as soon as the man was out of earshot. ‘I thought the Gestapo’d been outlawed years ago.’
‘He’s just a playground bully.’
‘What’s he called?’
‘I believe he’s called Jones.’ McKenna smiled, although Jack noticed a tremble in the hand holding McKenna’s cigarette. ‘They’re all called Jones. They all look the same as well, so nobody can identify them.’
‘His sort gives the security services a bad name,’ Jack said. ‘God knows where they dig ’em up.’
‘D’you know, Jack,’ McKenna sighed, ‘I wish that bloody John Beti’d minded his own business! But for him, the woman could’ve stayed happily swinging from that tree until she turned to dust, and nobody any the wiser.’
Walking down to the canteen for coffee, Jack thought about the man from Special Branch, and about the dividing line, at times almost non-existent, between those who made evil, and those whose job it was to fight the wickedness. He was in the canteen queue, standing behind a pretty policewoman with the scent of fresh air on her uniform and in her hair, before he realized McKenna had quite deliberately provoked Special Branch with the Irish enquiries.
Wil Jones the builder, one of those Joneses whom God must have loved because He made so many of them, McKenna thought, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln on the ordinary people of this world, turned up at the police station at precisely 16.57, according to the report made out by the duty officer. Covered in dust, his shoes gritty with sand, Wil sat on the edge of a chair in McKenna’s office.
‘You’re not going to be too happy about this, Mr McKenna,’ Wil offered. ‘I reckon we’ve found you another body. In the ground where we was digging the trench to the septic tank that isn’t there yet. You’ve no idea the trouble we’re having digging, which is why I reckon nobody bothered before. We started off in one direction yesterday, got so far, and the bloody sides of the trench kept caving in. All sand, you see, once you get a bit away from the cottage. Anyway, this morning, I said to Dave, we’ll go another way, p’raps find better ground. So we did. Been at it all day,’ he went on, glancing at the wall clock. ‘Then Dave, he jumps out of where he was digging, like he’d been bitten by a snake, and starts yelling fit to wake the dead! I looks, and there it was. A leg, as far as I can make out. And a foot on the end of it.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Will?’ McKenna asked.
‘I’ll have a quick one. Don’t want to be too long away. I left Dave on his own, and it’s not fair on him.’ Wil shivered. ‘Not in that place, fair play.’
Dr Roberts looked with some pleasure at the foot and lower leg extruding from the right side of the drainage trench. ‘Well preserved, Michael,’ he said. ‘Most interesting. No doubt because of the acid nature of the soil.’
‘Well, you might be able to reconstitute some organs for donor use, then, mightn’t you?’ McKenna snapped. ‘Save a bit of grave robbing, won’t it? Especially if nobody owns up to this body either!’
The doctor regarded McKenna, a little smile lingering around his mouth. ‘D’you know, Michael, people say Jack has a sharp tongue at times,’ he observed. ‘Could strip paint with yours, you could.’
McKenna stalked off. ‘Oh, get on with it! Dig it up, or whatever you intend to do, and tell me when you’ve finished.’ He stopped, then walked back. ‘And its hands had better not be bound. I’ve had enough of executions to last me a long time.’
He disappeared into the cottage, while Jack stood by the trench, watching as the pathologist instructed Dewi, another officer, and two of the forensic team, on ways and means of disinterring the body without causing further damage.
The work was made easier for them by the same factor which frustrated Wil. Peaty, crumbly soil trickled away from the trench side, exposing the other foot, then more of each leg. Patiently and carefully, the soil was brushed away, pushed into heaps well away from the body. Bits of fabric came with it, shreds of some thick cotton, bereft of any colour. Jack stood with Dr Roberts, watching and waiting.
‘What’s wrong with your boss these days?’ Roberts asked. ‘He’s always been one to speak his mind, but he’s really on a short fuse at the moment. Give himself a heart attack if he’s not careful. Trouble with that flighty wife of his, is it?’
‘Denise? Flighty?’ Jack asked. ‘Plain bored, more likely.’
‘Well, happen you don’t know her so well.’ Dr Roberts chewed his lower lip. ‘Flighty and frivolous, our Denise. Takes after her mother in that way. Not right for McKenna at all. Too shallow. He needs a woman with a bit of bite to her.’ He paused. ‘A woman with fire in her belly, like him. There’s the heat of a lot of passions in that man, Jack.’
‘Well, it doesn’t give off much warmth for others most of the time,’ Jack commented.
Eifion Roberts stared. ‘It won’t, will it, with only Denise for company,’ he said. ‘It’ll just burn up McKenna to a cinder. I reck
on it’s the end of the road for those two.’ The pathologist peered over the side of the trench. ‘Best thing, too, if you want my opinion. That marriage was doomed from the start. Denise only married him because he was a good catch, so she could climb up the social ladder on his back.’
‘McKenna’s not exactly socially prominent,’ Jack said.
‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Denise thought she’d be getting something she wanted, and now things aren’t going her way, she wants out. You mark my words, Jack,’ the doctor went on, walking forward to look properly over the lip of the trench, ‘within six months or so, our Denise’ll have found herself somebody more to her liking. Golf-club type, with a fancy house and big posh car. I’ll put money on it.’
McKenna sent Wil and Dave home, taking the keys to Gallows Cottage. Night cloud gathered in the east, drawing a blanket over the day, as he made his way back to the trench, and stood with Jack and Eifion Roberts as more and more of the body was exhumed from its resting place. A drift of woodsmoke scented the dusky air, gulls screamed, a flock of birds streamed out over the sea to their night’s roost on Puffin Island. Save for the slither of soil against shovel, the heavy breathing of the four men in the trench, the gardens of Gallows Cottage lay swaddled in silence. McKenna heard a noise behind him, a crepitation of leaves, and turned. A figure slid from view into the woods, the figure of a man, garbed in a white flowing shirt, long dark hair framing a thin, sallow face. McKenna made as if to call out, but when he looked properly, there was no one there.
‘SHIT!’
Dr Roberts plunged forward. ‘What is it? What’ve you done?’
The four men in the trench stood pressed against its far side, watching as earth cascaded, bringing the body with it. She fell out of her grave at their feet, a small pathetic thing, and rolled on to her side, coming to rest with her head against Dewi’s boots. Her neck was stretched and thin, the head pulled hard to one side by the remnants of noose and rope. Her hands were behind her back, their fingers clenched and clawed. A thick strap bound her wrists, and began to crack and crumble to powder as they watched.
Simeon's Bride Page 5
