The Mushroom Man dcp-2

by Stuart Pawson

  I wished I was with them. A feeling had come over me that I didn't immediately recognise. I did my deep breathing exercises; always a good stopgap when you're lost for ideas. It was fear. Not for myself, but for what I might find.

  At the side of the road was a big board, listing the various facilities at the mine, with arrows pointing in the appropriate directions.

  Lorries dashing backwards and forwards had showered it with mud, but now the rain was washing it clean again, revealing enough for me to understand. I silently read them off: Manager's Office, No. 1 Winder, No. 2 Winder, Stores, Stockyard, Surveyors, Weighbridge, Pithead Baths, Canteen, Electricians, Fitters, and, right at the bottom, barely visible through the streaming mud, Blacksmiths.

  The arrow was still covered. I got out and wiped the mud away with my hand. It pointed straight ahead.

  Most of the buildings had been reduced to piles of rubble. There was no sign of the once-proud head gears but half of one of the giant wheels was propped against a wall. It would have been as tall as a house when it was whole. No more would its spinning be an indicator of the prosperity of the community. It had been cut down to size.

  The headlights shone on a long, low building with three big sliding doors evenly spaced along the front. It was red brick, dark with age, with a slate roof and small windows, all broken. I swung the wheel slightly to the left and crept towards the first door. Outside were piles of discarded cables, some as thick as a man's arm, heaped up like writhing serpents. As if to confirm my deduction a sign on the door read: Electricians.

  The middle door was the fitters' workshop. Pieces of rusting machinery stood outside, like dinosaurs bristling with teeth and chains and cogs.

  I swung the lights across until they illuminated the third door. There was no painted notice on this one, but the language was universal. In the middle of the door, nailed to it, was a single horseshoe. The ends were pointing upwards; the way, they say, that provides a seat for the devil.

  I switched off the engine and headlights and the darkness enveloped me like a magician's cloak. It would have been easy to sit waiting for the others to catch up with me, but I didn't. The rain had almost stopped, and the car made soft clicking and hissing noises as I found my flashlight in the boot. Picking my way through the mud and the puddles, I approached the blacksmiths' workshop. There was a small door let into the large one, fastened with a sneck one of those old-fashioned catches operated by your thumb. I pressed and pushed, and the door swung inwards.

  Everything inside was the same colour a greyish-red amalgam of a hundred years of oxidised iron and carbon. I swung the torch round.

  Along the far wall were four big hearths, where the blacksmiths had heated the metal, and next to each was an anvil. I remembered something I'd read somewhere. The gist of it was that to the man who can work steel it can become anything he wants; to the man who can't, it will become everything except what he wants.

  I found some ancient light switches, but the cables were chopped off just above them. The beam from the torch was feeble, and a thick layer of dust over everything softened the outlines, blurring shadows and making shapes indistinct. The door slammed shut and something inside me did a five-point-nine somersault.

  I steered a course gingerly across the floor, which was littered with bits of metal, heavy pieces of chain and a variety of blacksmiths' tongs that looked like instruments of torture. Once the place would have rung with the sound of hammers on iron, illuminated by dancing fires and showers of sparks. Now it smelt of corruption.

  The workshop was alive with ghosts, but there was nothing there to interest the policeman in me. Except the door in the end wall. I walked towards it and shone the torch. Stencilled neatly in the middle was the word Office. Someone with a black felt-tip had added a few additional comments. He'd also had a go at the page-three girls who adorned the wall. He wasn't very good at spelling. Or anatomy. Well, I hope he wasn't.

  The door pushed open against a spring. The office was about six feet wide and ten feet long. A high desk that looked as if it belonged in a Dickensian orphanage ran the full length of the long wall, with a bench beside it for sitting on. I let the door close behind me and shone the torch around.

  More big-busted ladies adorned the walls. Underneath the bench were four plastic bin-liners, fastened round the tops with string. I pulled the bench out of the way and dragged the first bag into the open. There was a movement and a rustle near my feet. I pointed the torch down and saw a rat run over my shoe. I let out a yell and jumped on to the bench, like a woman in a cartoon. Two rats were scurrying round the bottom of the wall. I'd heard people say they could be dangerous when cornered, but it was me that felt cornered. I reached down and pulled the door handle. It would only open a few inches, because the bench was now in the way, but it was enough. The rats ran out to terrorise someone else. This time the gymnast inside me scored straight sixes, right across the board.

  When the door was firmly closed again I stepped down and repeated my deep-breathing exercises for a few seconds. There were no stabbing pains in my chest or pins and needles in my left arm, so I decided I'd survive. I shone the torch back on the bag.

  The small blade on my Swiss army knife is the one I don't use much, to keep it nice and sharp. I placed the torch on the bench so I had two free hands to work with, and sliced through the plastic.

  The bag was full of books. I pulled one out. It was soft-backed and damp, with a characteristic musty smell, but more powerful than I'd ever experienced before. The title on the cover read: Mines and Quarries Form no. 277; Reports of Examinations of Winding Ropes. Each page was a separate certificate, filled in at about monthly intervals in an immaculate script, saying that everything was in safe working order. They were done with a fountain pen and proudly signed. A lesser penman had countersigned each page. All the books were the same, and must have represented countless years of conscientious endeavour. I pulled the bag to one side and dragged the next one out.

  It contained more books. So did the third one. I grabbed the final bag and immediately knew it was different. For a start it was made from much less substantial plastic than the other three household grade rather than industrial and the contents were less angular. I held the top with my left hand, the knife poised and the shadow of the blade dancing from side to side in the torchlight. As soon as the blade was steady for a second I plunged it through the thin plastic and drew it downwards.

  Chapter 15

  To this day I thank God that she was facing the other way. I widened the slit with my fingers and a mop of dull black hair tumbled out. I'd found Georgina.

  Holding the torch again I could see the curve of her cheek, as lifeless as alabaster. I stretched out my reluctant hand and touched it. The skin yielded under my fingers, but didn't spring back when I removed them. I let my hand fall on to her bony little shoulder and squeezed it. It was like holding a paper bag with a few dry twigs inside. I wanted her to know that not all hands were as evil as the last ones that had held her. Or as callous as the next ones would seem.

  Outside, I retraced my steps to the car as best I could and reversed it about fifty yards back down the lane. I leaned on the car boot, waiting for Nigel and Sparky to arrive. The water on it soaked through the seat of my pants and the drizzle ran off my face and down my neck, but I hardly noticed it. I wanted to curse the moon and the heavens and any so-called omnipotent being who lived up there, but I didn't have the energy. It's just another body, I told myself. Another kid whose luck ran out. Just another job. And you're a bloody liar, Charlie Priest, I thought.

  For the next day or so only the experts would be allowed anywhere near.

  We'd hit the scene with every scientific aid known to us. Photographs, plaster casts and samples would be taken, followed by a fingertip search of the blacksmiths' shop and the approaches to it. Everything found would be labelled, catalogued, analysed, dissected and turned inside out. Then we'd have the results of the post-mortem on little Georgina. Somewhere among
st all this there would be, hopefully, a tiny atom of evidence that would lead us to her killer.

  The headlights came creeping unsurely down the lane. As they swung round the last turn and shone on me, Nigel switched them to dipped beam and then off. He's very considerate about things like that. They drew right up to me, stopped and got out.

  "Hi, boss. Find anything?" Sparky asked.

  I gestured behind me with a jerk of the head. "She's in there," I told them. They were both stunned to silence.

  "Georgina?" Nigel asked, very quietly.

  I nodded.

  "Poor kid. What's happened to her?"

  "She's in a bin-liner. Probably been there since May."

  "Jesus."

  "You're soaked to the skin, Charlie," Sparky declared. "Go sit in our car with the heater on. We'll do the necessary."

  "I'm OK. Did you bring the Almanac?"

  The Almanac is the Who's Who of the police force, listing everybody down to the rank of inspector. Strictly speaking we should have let someone know that we were coming into their area. Apologies were due.

  "Right here, boss," Nigel replied.

  "Good. Then let's ruin the Regional DCS's lodge meeting tell him we've found a body on his patch and he's going to be on telly in the morning, explaining it to the nation."

  Thirty minutes later the clouds above the colliery were pulsing like the intestines of a living creature, reflecting the blue lights of the police vehicles lined up in the lane. The whole area was cordoned off except for a path leading to the position of the body, and a constable was appointed to log all visitors. When the local detective superintendent was convinced that we weren't a trio of loonies, he sent for the police surgeon. The doc confirmed what we already knew and told his favourite pathologist to scrub-up for a rush job.

  We were drinking tea at Divisional HQ when the message came that the coroner had given permission for Georgina to be removed to the mortuary at the local teaching hospital, where the PM would take place. I rang Gilbert to bring him up to date, and suggested that Miles Dewhurst be organised to identify his daughter's body. It was broad daylight outside and the rain had stopped. Looked as if it might be sunny, later.

  Nigel agreed to stay behind for the post-mortem, and I let Sparky drive the two of us back in my car. We'd done about fifty miles before I broke the silence.

  "Oh, I nearly forgot. Consider yourself bollocked," I said.

  "Thanks," Sparky replied, preoccupied with the driving and his own thoughts. Six miles later he looked across and said: "What for."

  "Insubordination."

  "Oh." Another long silence, then he said: "Sorry if I go too far now and again, Charlie. What did I call you this time?"

  "Not me, prat. Oscar Peterson. He's complained to me about you.

  Threatened to report you to the Rubber Heel boys."

  "Oh, 'im. Now he is a prat. The old school. Nobody does things as well as they used to. Modern methods are a load of hocus-pocus. Do you know, he thinks a DNA test is what you have to pass to get into the National Association for Dyslexia?"

  I looked out of the side window, pretending I hadn't heard. The barley in the fields was ripening well. I said: "Just leave him alone, Dave.

  He's a lot on his plate."

  "We've a lot on our plates."

  We were turning off the Al on to the M62 when Dave said: "I'll have a little bet with you, Charlie."

  "What on?"

  "This Mushroom Man that Peterson's after."

  "You mean the Destroying Angel. Did you know that the Book of Revelations has inspired more serial killers than Michael Winner has had free dinners?"

  "Gerraway. OK, you know this Destroying Angel?"

  "What about him?"

  "I bet you a tenner we get him before Peterson does."

  "A tenner. A tenner we catch the Angel?"

  "Yes."

  "Heckley CID? We're not even on the case."

  "Take the bet, then."

  "OK, it's a deal."

  It's been said a million times but it' st rue the waiting is the hardest part. We had a fruitless chat with Gilbert at the station, just so he didn't feel neglected, then went home to bed. The news that Georgina's body had been found was broadcast on the morning radio and TV news. Saturday it would adorn the tabloids. They'd be annoyed that the story had broken on their slowest day, but no doubt some creative journalism would stretch it through to Monday.

  Slowly, bits of information came filtering through to us. If you could call it information. Nigel reported that the preliminary examination found no apparent cause of death; we'd have to wait for analysis of internal organs. There was no sign of sexual interference.

  Capstick is in North-East Division. They had agreed that all the forensic stuff could go to the lab at Wetherton, which was more convenient for us. I had a word with Professor Van Rees who is in charge there and told him what we might be looking for in short, anything. We were grasping at dandelion clocks.

  Saturday morning we held a big meeting. We now had, in theory, a couple of reports to work on. The first one told us that Georgina had been given a massive dose of a barbiturate compound prior to her death.

  According to the pathologist this could possibly have suppressed her respiration sufficiently to kill her on its own, but he'd added a note saying that he suspected a little manual assistance had been applied.

  No alien fibres were found in her respiratory passages, so a plastic bag was the likeliest culprit.

  The other one was a very preliminary report listing the various samples that had gone to Wetherton. The mud that so generously coated the area was a mixture or clay, coal and industrial lubricants, all stirred together for a hundred years. It was as unique as an English summer, but we had nothing to match it against. The fingertip search had failed to reveal any broken bracelets bearing the owner's name, or dropped credit cards.

  "In short, gentlemen," said Gilbert, 'we still haven't a bloody lot to go on. Sod chuffin' all, in fact."

  I'd been listening with my arms folded and my chair rocked back so I was leaning on the wall. Nobody wanted to speak, so I said: "In all my years ' "Which is quite a few," Sparky interrupted.

  I threw him a glare and tried again: "In all my considerable years I have never been on a case which has thrown up so little evidence. We haven't unearthed a single clue pointing us towards the kidnapper. It can't all be down to luck; he must be very clever. A lot of planning went into this one."

  "Or else he's been under our noses all the time," Sparky suggested.

  "I think Dave's right," Gilbert said. "We've plenty of circumstantial against Dewhurst, but it's hard to imagine what it would require to really put the finger on him. As far as we're concerned he's still the girl's dad, so finding a few fibres linking them together is a waste of time."

  I turned to DC Madison. "Maggie, how did Dewhurst react when he ID'd the body?"

  She shook her head. "Distraught. He was wrecked. We were both in tears. If there was nothing else to go on he'd have convinced me that he didn't do it."

  "So what do you think?"

  "I'm not sure. Maybe he did it but regrets doing it. It'd be the same emotion."

  "I can believe that," said Gilbert. He went on: "OK, on Monday the Acting Chief Constable's deadline runs out. I'm not interested in furthering his promotion prospects, and certainly have no intentions of jeopardising an enquiry to do so, but unless anybody comes up with a reasonable argument I'm suggesting we lift Dewhurst and his girlfriend, Parkinson, on Monday morning. Our main weapon will be surprise. Let's see how Ms Parkinson behaves when the cold light of reality hits her.

  Any objections?"

  There were a few murmured no's and shaken heads. Gilbert turned to me, inviting my comments. "Charlie? I know you're not keen."

  I pushed off the wall, dropping my chair on to all four legs. I felt weary about the whole job. I didn't know what we could hope to find that would incriminate him. The kidnapper had already demonstrated how clued-up he w
as about not leaving forensic evidence, and Dewhurst was hardly likely to break under cross-examination. He'd just play the grieving father and keep his mouth clamped shut. We'd be the villains.

  The girlfriend might sing to save her skin, if she knew anything.

  Probably would. And maybe our boffin could dredge something from the recesses of his computer's memory. There are specialists who can do that sort of thing, even though the information has been erased. It might be worth a try.

  "No objections, boss," I said.

  "The ayes have it then. Let's organise the details now, and then maybe we can all have a day off tomorrow. We'll meet here six-thirty Monday morning. Now, who do we need and where are we going?"

  He made it sound like a democratic process, which it wasn't. Going home I called in the pub for a sandwich and a couple of pints. I watched sport on television in the afternoon. England were struggling to avoid the follow-on against Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Later I rang Annabelle, but there was no answer.

  On Sunday morning I called in the office and read most of the file on Miles Dewhurst. Then I shopped to restock the freezer and did a few of the more desperate chores around the house and garden. I urgently needed a cleaning lady, a gardener and a window cleaner. An alternative solution would be to move in with someone who either already had these or who managed to complete such menial tasks with consummate ease. I dialled Annabelle's number again. She still wasn't there. On a few occasions in the past Annabelle had disappeared for the whole weekend. Ah well, she was a big girl. It was none of my business how she spent her time. I had a shower and a sulk.

  Gilbert and Ellice bowled underarm, so England managed to hold on sufficiently to save Monday's gate receipts. I had Sunday lunch at dinner time, in other words tea time, as is the modern practice. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, peas, carrots, and sprout.

  Singular. All frozen. For pudding I had blackberry and apple pie from a local bakery. That was the best bit. I was settling down with a large pot of tea and Biggles Flies East when the phone rang. It was Gilbert. My superintendent, that is, not the island.