Shadows and Sins (The Falconer Files Book 13)

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘To be honest, sir, she’s feeling pretty awful. I’m quite worried about her.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but we’ve got to go down to The Manse again. You’ve got your mobile, haven’t you, so that she can contact you in an emergency? And you can take your own car in case something does arise. It’s a lot closer to Castle Farthing from The Manse than it is via Market Darley to pick up your car. And afterwards, I’d like you to accompany me to an estate agents in town called Leavitt and Quitte.’

  Carmichael’s face had dropped at the word ‘emergency’, but he nodded, and Falconer explained about Tomlinson’s latest round of information. ‘We need to know when the interview was – although Tomlinson could find that out if he dug hard enough – we have to know whether she turned up for it, and we’re going to have to be on the look-out for signs of lying. If she did arrive, did she leave again?’

  ‘I can believe a lot of things of Grammaticus, but I don’t really see him as a killer, sir.’

  ‘I’m with you on that one, but we have to be sure, and we need to establish a date for her disappearance, even if it’s only a date when she didn’t turn up for something. Come on, Sergeant, let’s get this over with so that you can be on hand if anything develops with Kerry. Perhaps she’s just coming down with a cold or ’flu.’

  ‘I hope that’s all, sir.’ Carmichael’s face was lugubrious as he about-turned and prepared to leave the office once more.

  Chapter Eight

  The Manse really was a bit swish, and it looked imposing as they turned through the enormous – and no doubt very expensive – metal gates. It had the look of a stately home about it, but a friendly one, and wasn’t in the very imposing Gothic revival style which was common in the local area: it was softer and considerably more welcoming. The gravel drive wound through immaculately manicured lawns and well-kept flower beds to the large studded oak double doors that led to the interior.

  This time they had the element of surprise, and Jefferson Grammaticus was astounded to see them back in his hotel so soon. ‘What is it now, gentlemen? Has another body been traced to my premises?’ he said, arising from behind his huge desk and holding out a chubby hand to greet them as they entered his office unannounced.

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ Falconer reassured him. ‘It’s just that the remains we recovered before have turned out not to be those of the person we were looking for, but are of a totally different young woman. Look, I’m not explaining this very well, so I’ll just cut to the chase. We have reason to believe that you had an appointment to interview this young woman for a live-in post when you were setting up your hotel, and we’d like to know if she kept the appointment and was deemed unsuitable.’

  ‘Give me her name and I’ll check with my records. Mind you, that’ll only tell us if she was interviewed. I suppose you want to know whether she turned up or not.’ Damn, the man was quick.

  ‘She was referred by an employment agency in Market Darley, if that helps to jog your memory,’ added Falconer, still not letting go of her name.

  ‘There was someone. I’ll just check with my diary. There was so much going on at the time that I can’t recall the details.’

  Opening a desk drawer and pulling out an A4-sized 2010 diary the hotelier leafed through it to when he was hiring staff, just prior to the opening of the establishment, and pointed excitedly at an entry not long before they had received their first guests.

  ‘Melanie Saunders,’ he stated. ‘Didn’t turn up for the interview. There it is in black and white. Is that who you’re after?’

  Falconer gazed over and glanced at the entry. This, in itself, didn’t prove anything, and the man could have prepared for this eventuality in advance if he was responsible for the remains found on the edge of his drive, but Falconer didn’t think so. If he had been, why would he have allowed the workmen to uncover what was left of her, and then phone the station in such a temper? No one was that devious – were they?

  ‘The agency was hopeless, as I recall, and only had one client on its books who was willing to undertake domestic work. I wasn’t at all surprised when she didn’t turn up for her interview.’

  ‘So you never met her? She wasn’t one of your ex-cons?

  ‘Never, and no she wasn’t! And if she wasn’t reliable enough to turn up for an interview, she wouldn’t have been reliable enough to employ.’ Grammaticus’ world was very monochrome: there were no shades of grey with him.

  ‘She may not have even been alive by the time of the interview,’ Falconer suggested.

  ‘God, I hadn’t thought of that.’ The man was appalled at the thought. ‘And you think she may have been out there since then?’ In his distressed response, he ran his stubby fingers through his tightly curling hair, their progress halting suddenly as they re-encountered a recently acquired bald patch. A fleeting moment of surprise washed across his face at this rediscovery.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation. She told her neighbours she was going for the live-in job, and when they didn’t see her again, they thought she’d got it and moved in.’

  ‘How ghastly! Obviously, neither I nor my staff had any idea.’

  Falconer sighed heavily before he voiced his next request. ‘I would like you to provide the names of all the contractors who would have had access to this site immediately before she was due for interview.’

  ‘It’ll be a pretty long list. We were nearing opening, and there were all sorts of snagging jobs and last-minute work going on.’

  ‘And a list of your employees at the time.’ Falconer thought that the body had not been interred by someone who would go on working there, but he had to be sure – especially since Grammaticus, with his experience of the legal profession, had employed a cabal of former criminals of his acquaintance. It seemed to him highly likely that someone, who had or was working there at the time, had taken advantage of the disturbed earth that creating the drive had entailed, and used this to mask the hiding of the body.

  ‘I’m going to have to email that lot to you. I can’t just produce it at the drop of a hat. And it’ll be a long list. I presume you want Ms Ironmonger’s name left off?’

  ‘Not at all. One never knows,’ replied Falconer with a little frisson of horror that it could have been Meep’s previous owner who was responsible for this body, as well as the other souls she’d previously polished off.

  ‘You’re right, of course. One should never make assumptions. Do you want to speak to anyone else while you’re here?’

  ‘I think we’ll leave that until after we have all the names, but thank you for the offer, Mr Grammaticus.’

  Falconer sighed. This could have been done with a phone call, but he’d been so upset by being carpeted in the superintendent’s office that he had wanted to be seen to be doing his job.

  As they exited the building Carmichael’s mobile rang, and he answered it to find a near-hysterical Kerry on the other end. His body seemed to snap to attention, all the colour drained from his face, and his bottom lip began to quiver. He ended the brief conversation before turning to the inspector and saying, in sepulchral tones, ‘That was Kerry. She seems to have gone into labour weeks early. I have to go. Now!’ He hared off immediately to his battered old Skoda as if all the hounds of hell were after him. That didn’t sound good. Falconer may not have been any good at dates, but he knew Kerry’s due date wasn’t this month.

  Falconer dropped in at the station to pick up Tomlinson for his visit to the estate agents, and made the mistake of asking the DC about himself. The man had been a fairly quiet soul until now, but he had obviously reached the stage where he felt he could open up to his new superior officer – and boy did he open up!

  Carmichael drove back to Castle Farthing with his right foot on the floor of his car. Fortunately, being an old Skoda, it didn’t travel at very high speeds and, although his driving was erratic, he wasn’t really in any danger.

  He threw himself out of the driving seat and barged into Jasmine
Cottage in a total panic, and found Kerry in a similar condition. Now, during his time in plain clothes, he had learnt to control his outward expression of feelings, with the exception of the reaction of his stomach to certain stimuli, and found that he was able to exude a false aura of calm. After calling an ambulance, having ascertained that the signs of labour had not abated, he sat his wife down and made her a cup of tea, speaking to her soothingly.

  Kerry was terrified that she was going to lose their babies. Carmichael spent this intervening period persuading her that she wasn’t: that everything would be fine, and that they would survive, even if they had to be born this early. He must have been very convincing, because Kerry soon perked up and began to look on the bright side.

  Her husband collected the birth bag she had already packed for her stay in hospital, and loaded this into the ambulance with her when it arrived, promising that he would follow behind in the car. He couldn’t go in it with her, because he’d have no means of getting home, as regular public transport wasn’t a thing that existed in village life. He also needed to drop Harriet at his mother’s house, and arrange for his parents to collect the boys from school.

  It was a cumbersome arrangement that meant that he would have to have his mother staying in the village if Kerry was admitted and kept in. Not giving a fig for how complicated life was going to get, he merely drove, his daughter strapped into the baby seat in the back, and finally gave way to his feelings.

  As he made his way to the town, he had tears of distress pouring down his cheeks, and his body heaved with gigantic sobs. How could fate be so cruel as to threaten their expected children’s lives?

  ‘Why didn’t you just drop her at the shop with Rosemary and then give us a ring?’ his mother asked, as he dropped off his young daughter, and suddenly he felt a complete fool. That would have been the sensible and logical thing to do, and through all his feigned calm he had not even thought of this.

  He left his childhood home with a promise from Mr and Mrs Carmichael senior that they would head straight back to Jasmine Cottage, and that he should leave everything to them. It was just a pity that his mother didn’t drive, or she could have managed on her own. With a mental ‘duh’, Carmichael got back in the driving seat of his jalopy and set off for the hospital.

  When he arrived, he found Kerry on a labour ward with a cannula in her arm, and a clear fluid dripping down into it. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ was his immediate reaction, with a quick glance to check that she still had her huge bump.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she reassured him. ‘It’s to stop the labour and keep them in there a bit longer, and the pains are lessening, so I think we’ll all be all right.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘A lot calmer, and not in so much pain. Davey, whatever will we do if we lose them?’ She had experienced a quick volte-face in mood.

  ‘Come on, I thought you sounded upbeat. Where’s that famous “always look on the bright side of life” outlook that you usually have?’

  ‘I think it got drowned in fear.’

  ‘That’s no attitude for a mother who’s carrying twins. You don’t want them born depressed, do you?’

  ‘I don’t want them born at all at the moment.’

  ‘It’ll all be fine,’ he said, but without much conviction. Maybe it wouldn’t. Such things happened to other people – why not to them? Why would God consider them special? He didn’t really believe in such a supreme being but, in times of extreme stress, reverted to a faith he once had possessed as a child.

  The two of them stared into each other’s eyes and both burst into tears attracting a nurse to come over and reassure them that everything that could be done was being done and, for a while, they believed her.

  ‘We’ll have to keep Mrs C in to monitor what’s happening, so if you have any arrangements to make, I suggest that you do that now,’ she said, in a calm, soothing voice.

  ‘The kids are already sorted out, but I have to phone my boss and let him know that I won’t be back, at least for today,’ he replied.

  ‘You get off and do it then. Your wife will be just fine here.’ The nurse said this with such confidence that Carmichael, feeling suddenly more positive, went outside to use his mobile phone.

  ‘… and I seem to have settled in quite well here, but I do miss the dramatic scenery of Cornwall. I mean, it’s all very pretty round here, but where are the craggy hills, the walled narrow lanes? And I miss the old, abandoned tin mines and the wildness of the sea. And my mother. And my brother. And the accent’s so bland up here. At least in Cornwall it’s got a bit of character,’ Tomlinson rambled in his West Country voice.

  ‘I don’t know if I could settle long-term up here. Eventually, I’d like to go back down west and take Imi with me. It’s a great place to raise children – loads of open countryside for them to ramble in, and the beaches are fabulous. Then, when they’re older, there’s surfing and sailing, and climbing. All that exploring. Grand place it is, and I miss it sorely.’

  This had been going on for the last ten minutes, and the DC seemed to be having a fair ramble of his own, as they approached their destination. ‘Here we are,’ declared Falconer, not adding, ‘… at last. Now, shut up’. He admired enthusiasm and honesty from his officers, but this was a bit much.

  ‘Sorry about going on a bit, but Imi’s free time hasn’t coincided with my hours much, and I miss having someone to talk to.’ Suddenly, the inspector missed Carmichael. The sergeant would have appreciated someone with such a love of their native soil, as he was a natural advocate for ‘round here’, and would have given Tomlinson a good run for his money, as well as not finding the subject boring. And where was Monkey? The little cat intruded into his thoughts once again as the car pulled up outside the estate agents.

  Mr Quitte, one of the original partners, was on holiday at the moment, but Mr Leavitt Jnr was available if they’d just wait a minute. Mr Leavitt Jnr proved to be a man well on in years but still with an enthusiastic twinkle in his eye. He beckoned the two officers to the other side of his desk in an office off the main area and asked them how he could help them, as they held out their warrant cards. ‘Moving in together are we?’ he asked. ‘Moving out of the station house?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ spluttered Falconer. ‘We’re making official enquiries about a property you have recently sold.’

  ‘So sorry if I’ve offended you,’ retorted the elderly man, ‘but so many gay gentlemen are investing in joint properties now. I think it may be to introduce a stabilising effect on their relationship.’

  ‘We’re just colleagues,’ added the inspector, just to get things straight, only to be answered with,

  ‘Oh, very coy. I won’t be shocked, you know. I’m very broad-minded.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’ Falconer was getting rather flustered at the estate agent’s insistence. ‘Now, can we give you the address that we’re enquiring about and get this thing started?’

  ‘Oh, dear! I try so hard to be understanding, and now I’ve upset you.’

  ‘Copse View in Shepford Stacey,’ Falconer almost yelled in his frustration.

  ‘Copse View, eh?’ Mr Leavitt cogitated for a moment. ‘Now, that’s rather difficult.’

  ‘How? We only want to know who was responsible for putting it on the market.’

  ‘It’s still rather difficult.’

  Well, did you sell it or not?’

  ‘Yes, but the work was carried out by our Mr Quitte.’

  ‘And your problem is?’

  ‘Mr Quitte was originally my father’s partner and has not yet got to grips with computers, given his age. He conducts all the sales that he supervises on paper and through telephonic communications, and he writes everything down in a paper file.’

  ‘Can we have the file, then, so that we can ascertain who the vendor was?’

  ‘Well, that, in itself, is the problem. He took that particular file home with him, as it was due to complete just the day before he went away on holi
day, and he hasn’t brought it back yet. It did complete on time, and he let us know to put up a sold board but, as yet, I don’t have any details of who sold the property, or who bought it.’

  ‘Has anyone come in to collect keys?’

  ‘Not as yet, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So, you’ve sold a property. You don’t know the name of the vendor or the purchaser, you’ve erected a board, and all without you having any knowledge of such important data?’

  ‘That would seem to be the case. It’s never been a problem in the past.’ Mr Leavitt looked a little crestfallen.

  ‘Do you have a contact number at Mr Quitte’s holiday address?’

  Mr Leavitt actually blushed as he replied, ‘I’m afraid we don’t. We just bumble along, and we’ve never had any problems before.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘Not for another fortnight. He always takes a long winter holiday because he says he can’t stand the weather here.’

  ‘Absolutely bloody marvellous – I apologise for my language, sir. I didn’t mean to say that aloud. Please get in touch with us when he returns,’ spluttered Falconer, passing over a business card.

  As they left the building, he could just hear a low mumbling from Tomlinson. ‘Bloody batty old fart. How he and Quitte haven’t run the business into the bloody ground is un-bloody-believable.’

  ‘Did you say something, Constable?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good. I don’t approve of bad language.’

  Chapter Nine

  Falconer’s mobile rang and, on answering it, he found Carmichael on the other end. ‘I wonder if you could do me a favour, sir?’ he asked meekly.

  ‘Carmichael, whatever’s going on? Is everything all right? How’s Kerry?’

  ‘They’ve put her on a drip to stop the contractions, and she’s fine, but I’m going to stay over in Market Darley and I don’t have anything with me. I need a bag of stuff.’

  ‘Where are you going to stay?’