The Missing Earring

by David Beard

  The Missing Earring

  By

  David Beard

  KINDLE version

  Copyright © 2013 David Beard

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored, in any form or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  CHAPTER 1

  Monday morning June 26th 2006

  Monday morning was always a rush in the Tiley household and Detective Chief Inspector Smalacombe’s call had come at a most inconvenient moment. Avril Tiley was finding the early months of her first pregnancy so uncomfortable she had already decided that one child would be enough. Clive was covering his chin in shaving soap when his wife burst into the bathroom with a bout of morning sickness. He abandoned his original task, half way through, and started to organise a clean towel for her and a large glass of water. As he fumbled in the cabinet for some liver salts he became aware that the telephone was ringing downstairs. When he finally answered it he heard the familiar voice of his superior officer. Smalacombe’s suggestion that the delay may have been caused by indulgences in the more pleasurable side of married life did not improve Tiley’s humour.

  By the time his boss had arrived to pick him up, the household’s early morning routines had been chaotically accomplished and Avril had recovered sufficiently to prepare for her day, teaching at the local primary school.

  Dexter Smalacombe and his sergeant were soon driving furiously along the open road that cut through the wilderness of Dartmoor. As yet he had not assembled his own team, apart from Tiley, because he didn’t know the full circumstances.

  It was a cloudless morning in late June and a gentle breeze ruffled the unkempt manes of the moor’s ponies. The tender fragrance of the gorse, its first flush of bright yellow florets now fading, rose into the air and above it lonely skylarks twittered incessantly in glorious isolation against an azure background. It was a journey he would have preferred to execute leisurely in order to enjoy the landscape; to have time to reflect on his childhood memories, when he roamed the moors during idyllic summer holidays with his boyhood friends.

  In the far distance he could see a ragged crocodile of ramblers on the horizon. Soon the humped backed silhouettes, laden with their haversacks, would disappear from view as they descended into the gullies of the old tin mines before reappearing again close to the cross that mapped the Monks’ Way. He knew the route the ramblers were taking, as he had followed it himself a hundred times before. This was much too beautiful a day to be compromised by a suspicious death in one of the most glorious rivers in England.

  Detective Sergeant Clive Tiley, who had recently arrived on the force from a previous post in Bristol, was sitting bolt upright wondering if they would ever get to their destination. He was not so enamoured of the countryside as his superior and he had no connection with it. All he could see was desolate emptiness in the distance. Then there were ponies, close up, grazing by the roadside, with their foals, now leggy, strong and as energetic and unruly as teenagers. They were blissfully unaware of danger and were liable to take off at any moment for more luscious greenery on the other side of the highway. He eyed them suspiciously. As Tiley feared, DCI Smalacombe suddenly hit the brakes hard and they slewed to a halt just short of a pony and her foal.

  Tiley looked across to his boss but said nothing.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ Smalacombe warned.

  ‘I never said a word, sir,’ answered Tiley indignantly with an emphasis on the formal address to his superior. He was still smarting over his bad start to the day.

  ‘No! But, you were going to.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Anyway, the problem with ponies is well publicised. You should have known better...sir.’

  ‘I’ll remember that in future.’

  They drove along in silence for a while. Smalacombe had slowed down considerably and was now nervously watching every animal as he drove past it. What infuriated him was that his sergeant was right and he would have been quick to censure him if he had been behind the wheel and driving as he was.

  ‘And when it’s just the two of us, it’s Dexter for goodness sake. All right? It’s easy to organise. It’s the same as avoiding saying fuck in the presence of your mother in law.’

  ‘OK, Dexter for goodness sake,’ said Tiley, taking his boss’s suggestion literally and trying hard to lighten up as he realised he had come close to insubordination. ‘And you can call me Sergeant,’ he added with a wry smile. They glanced across to one another and Smalacombe afforded a broad grin. Tiley laughed aloud as much through relief as through amusement. His boss was human after all.

  ‘Cheeky bugger!’ Smalacombe knew that they were going to make a good team.

  There was another pause before Tiley broke the silence again. ‘Tell me Dexter,’ he began, trying out the new address.

  ‘Tell you what, Sergeant?’ Smalacombe answered, deliberately emphasising his companion’s rank.

  ‘Remember we are the Serious Crimes Branch of the Major Crimes Investigation Team.’

  ‘Well, I’m not serious all of the time.’

  ‘Like now?’

  ‘Somebody on my team once complained, during an investigation, that I was too-,’ he searched for the right word, ‘flippant, I think they said,’ Smalacombe confided.

  ‘Eases the stress, Dexter.’

  ‘That’s what I think. I reckon, if we couldn’t smile once in a while, we’d be in a bloody mad house within a fortnight. What would they rather we do, get pissed every night?’ the chief inspector moaned in his familiar westcountry brogue.

  ‘We could do both.’ They laughed and the detached observer would have noted that although Tiley also spoke with a pronounced westcountry accent it was much different to the Devonshire vowels of his superior. Tiley was a Bristolian who had moved to Devon because his wife wanted to be closer to her parents who had retired to the coast. ‘Take no notice of the critics,’ he added.

  ‘I don’t!’

  ‘What I want to know is, how much do you know about this case?’ Clive Tiley asked, getting the conversation back to business.

  ‘Not a lot! Suspicious death, female, probably murder I’m told. ‘There’s a young woman who’s been found dead in a river. That’s all I know.’

  Smalacombe’s mobile rang. ‘Damn. I haven’t got the hands off thing. You answer it, Clive.’

  Tiley looked across and mouthed, ‘The boss.’

  The Senior Investigating Officer responsible for the Major Crime Investigation Team had been listening to the local news bulletins as she prepared her breakfast. Detective Superintendent Sheila Milner’s concentration was mainly with food preparation and an item on Devonport Dockyard left her auditory senses on the second register, as did another report on European Objective One monies for Cornwall. It was the third article of the “news just coming in” variety that caused her to change her priorities.

  She switched off the grill to avoid burning her toast and immediately rang her second in command, Detective Chief Inspector Dexter Smalacombe.

  Smalacombe nodded, pulled in on the grass verge and he was ready to receive her call.

  ‘Dexter, it’s Sheila Milner! Have you heard the news this morning?’

  ‘What news is that, mam?’

  ‘They’ve f
ound a body in the Dart at Longtor village.’

  ‘Oh that,’ he acknowledged dismissively in engineered tones.

  ‘What concerns me, is how the hell did the press get hold of it so quickly and before we did? Are we on line on this one?’ she carried on, as the significance of Smalacombe’s artificially nonchalant reply had not registered.

  ‘Yes we are and I’m not sure they knew before us, mam,’ he said giving a clear answer to both questions. ‘Trouble is I think there’s a BBC news editor who lives out there.’

  ‘You know Longtor?’

  ‘Childhood haunt!’

  ‘So, you know about the body?’ Sheila Milner seemed somewhat confused. If he knew then why wasn’t he doing something about it? More to the point, why didn’t she know?

  ‘The duty sergeant rang me an hour or so ago. Look, I’ve taken the case on myself and I’m on my way. I have Sergeant Tiley with me.’ There was silence at the other end of the line and Smalacombe could not decide whether that meant approval or disapproval.

  From his superior’s point of view it was due to her ambivalence. She was pleased that he had taken the initiative; after all it was something she encouraged. Dexter Smalacombe was without doubt the best detective in the southwest with a clear up rate second to none but he was no diplomat. Indeed, she had often spent her time repairing relationships that had been damaged by his indiscretions. The truth was that she was wondering whether someone with a little more circumspection in their dealings with authority and the press would be better placed to conduct a case already attracting the media’s attention. Initiatives or not, it was her prerogative to assign people to cases, not his.

  ‘The local constabulary has been there for some time roping it all off. I’ve organised SOCO, forensics, police surgeon and mortuary and I’ve informed the lab as the pathologist will want to see the body in-situ.’

  ‘Police Surgeon as well?’

  ‘I’ve found in the past that he is excellent with SOCO and we need all the expertise we can find, mam.’

  Milner was relieved and impressed, but it was no more than she had come to expect from her highly efficient subordinate. She was, nevertheless, unhappy that things had moved forward without her authority. However, with all this going on, other considerations immediately came to mind. ‘Wait a minute, Dexter, have you thought of the expense? It’s a bit premature isn’t it? What if it’s natural causes or something?’

  ‘The local bobby has informed us that the body is naked and has no face. That certainly wouldn’t be self-inflicted and it doesn’t sound to me like natural causes.’

  With the Major Crime Investigations Unit there was always a crisis with manpower and budgets. Detectives were tied up in long term investigations all over the place. DI Wilson, who would have been Milner’s preferred option, was entrenched in a drugs case in the far west of Cornwall, another DI was on long term sick leave, yet another on annual leave. Indeed, everyone capable of dealing with this case was already involved in serious criminal investigations that required their undivided attention or were indisposed. She knew that Dexter was the force’s best chance of a quick result but with the press already poking its nose in she was worried that his ultimate success would be preceded by goodness knows what in the local papers. Besides, he had many other administrative duties to perform and she knew, if he became immersed in a murder case, all of that would go by the board.

  ‘Why wasn’t I informed?’

  ‘I didn’t want to bother you at seven this morning. I’ll keep you informed, mam,’ said Dexter and he switched off the phone.

  Milner looked at her dead handset, put it back to her ear, then threw it on the table and shook her head.

  The detectives settled down, drove on in silence once again and Tiley idly looked out at the vast expanse of wilderness on either side of him. Clifton Downs was his idea of the country and these wild open spaces were alien to him. The road descended and gradually a few cultivated fields came into view with homesteads scattered irregularly on either side. Up ahead he could see a small hamlet.

  It was Smalacombe who broke the silence. ‘Hi-up, we’re here, look.’ Ahead they could see blue flashing lights and fluorescent jackets of policemen patrolling an area by the bridge that crossed the East Dart. They drew up and stopped next to a blue and white plastic cordon. He lowered his window, as he knew a constable would come to him immediately. Smalacombe didn’t recognise any of them as they had all come from the local constabulary.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t stop here,’ said the young constable as he bent down to peer in the car. It was his first tour of duty at such an incident and he was determined to get things right. But was it the correct thing for the constable to do? It riled Smalacombe to think that the man had not used his imagination. Surely, to begin with, he should have asked who he was. He must have been briefed that people like him would be turning up to take over. He decided to play along.

  ‘Oh, why not?’ he goaded.

  ‘Because there is a police investigation going on…’

  ‘Is there?’ Smalacombe asked in mock surprise, looking around, over both shoulders. ‘Where?’ The paraphernalia of the local police force surrounded them and a pack of patrol cars was untidily parked on the grass verges. Clive Tiley was slowly shaking his head as he listened to the wind up. Smalacombe removed the car keys from the switch.

  ‘If you don’t move on, sir, I will have to arrest you for obstruction,’ explained the constable as reasonably as he could. ‘I cannot emphasise enough that this is a very serious matter.’ Smalacombe got out of the car. ‘Can I have your name please, sir?’ Smalacombe showed him his ID. The constable blushed and was abjectly apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realise…’

  ‘Of course you didn’t lad. You’re doing a good job. Now where is this body?’

  ‘Down river, sir, over there. sir, where the screen is, sir,’ he answered hurriedly with far too many ‘sirs’ for Smalacombe’s liking.

  Smalacombe and Tiley hurried down to the scene. The river incongruously roared with laughter, with its continuous babble, as they kept pace with its flow. ‘There’s half of the force’s coppers here, Clive, trampling over everything. Fat chance of finding clues.’ A uniformed inspector singled himself out and came towards them.

  It was Inspector Johnny Johnson and it was the first face Smalacombe recognised. He knew him well. They shook hands and he introduced him to his sergeant.

  As they approached the screen he saw another face he knew well. ‘Hello Doc, how’s things at the OK Corral today?’ Jerry Holliday, the police surgeon, looked up. He was always known as Doc, not just because of his qualifications but also because of his American dentist’s namesake. The OK Corral stuff bored him stiff but he took it in good part as he had done a thousand times before and certainly every time he came into contact with the chief inspector. Members of SOCO acknowledged Smalacombe with a nod and carried on with their detailed investigations.

  ‘Not much yet, Chief Inspector,’ the police surgeon called over.

  ‘You’ve worked out she’s dead I take it.’

  Holliday gave him an old fashioned look. He felt sure that Smalacombe usually made these inane remarks to ease the tension and not to be offensive. ‘Yes, I have,’ he said, ‘and as a result of some pretty bloody violence by the looks of it.’

  The body was that of a young woman in her early thirties. It was lying on its side in shallow water that dribbled noisily underneath. It was naked. She appeared to be tall and slender and when Smalacombe walked around the body to view it from the other side he could see that her short dark hair was matted with blood. The riverbed concealed most of her face, but he could see sufficient of it to know that it was seriously damaged. There appeared to be no other injuries. A photographer was busy taking shots from all angles.

  ‘What about her clothes?’ Smalacombe asked Johnson.

  ‘Nothing! In fact, they have already started combing the area as you can see.’ Smalacombe nodded.
‘There’s sod all; not even a fag end up to now!’

  Smalacombe pursed his lips and answered with an audible ‘Mmm.’ He and Tiley studied the body and the surroundings for some time. When he felt he had absorbed all he could he looked to Doc.

  ‘I think you’ll find her face is a mess, Dexter, but I can’t say much more until the pathologist arrives. She’ll blow her top if we disturb anything.’ The reference to a female pathologist gave Smalacombe a jolt; it would be Angela Marriott, the only woman who had ever tempted him to stray. The fling was short and passionate but his betrayal of Freda left him scarred for much longer. It was he who broke off the relationship and he vowed never to wander again. The two met from time to time in the course of their duties and the flame was still there, especially on the part of Angela, but she respected his decision and had long since accepted it. She was now married herself and it had helped Smalacombe to be more relaxed in her company.

  ‘The ground is so bloody dry, Clive, there isn’t a footprint or anything. It’s usually pissing down out here,’ Smalacombe said as they moved away from the body and walked back to the bridge. He dislodged a triple X peppermint from its paper tube with his thumb and offered it to Tiley and then took one for himself. His wife had persuaded him to give up smoking. ‘I don’t know which is worse for my health, Clive, these bloody things, or a packet of twenty.’

  ‘I think you should give these a try,’ he advised.

  ‘Freda knows best.’

  There was a small group of people on the bridge leaning on the parapet looking across at the activity. A border collie ran excitedly around them sniffing anything that took its fancy but interrupted this activity at regular intervals to urinate against the granite wall.

  ‘There hasn’t been so much excitement out here since Tom Cobley fell off his horse,’ Smalacombe observed.

  ‘Just our luck that there’s nothing for us to go on yet,’ Tiley answered. ‘I took a close look. Did you notice she only had one earring?’ Smalacombe nodded. ‘And the other lobe is ripped. Don’t know what that proves.’