by Roz Watkins
‘So they both have a motive.’
‘Unless they have huge wealth from somewhere else – which we need to check. Felix and his wife, Olivia, knew Peter at university as well. I get the feeling there’s a bit more to that.’
Jai looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Between Peter Hamilton and Felix’s wife?’
‘Possibly. There was something about his photographs of her. And she hesitated when I asked her if she knew him well.’
‘Interesting. We checked alibis for Monday and also for Sunday night. They think that’s when the casket was placed in the tree trunk.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Everyone’s pretty solid for Monday. Sunday evening Kate Webster was watching TV with Peter. Felix Carstairs and Edward Swift were also at home watching TV and their wives back them up.’
I sighed. ‘So the alibis are rubbish.’
‘Well, yes, you could say that. Wives aren’t as bad as mothers, but they could be covering for their husbands. They could even be in on it.’ Jai leant back and knocked over one of my stacks of paperwork.
‘Bloody hell, Jai, there was a system in that.’
Jai pushed the papers back into a pile, shuffling them all together. ‘Sorry, am I mixing the Jurassic with the Cretaceous period of your filing system? This one’s actually bleached from the sun. You’ve only been here a few weeks. How did you manage that?’
‘I think Richard’s passed me all his crap to deal with. I assume you couldn’t find Susie and her special cakes? She could have a viable niche business there, you know.’
‘There definitely doesn’t seem to be a “Susie’s Cakes”, so it looks like it was just to make the cake look shop-bought and safe to eat.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘No Susie. What else?’
‘You smell of wet cat.’
‘Thanks a lot, Jai, that’s good to know.’ I shifted away from him.
‘It’s not so bad. Better than wet dog.’
I spun my chair round to warm the other side of myself but the radiator had gone cold. ‘Christ, aren’t we even allowed heating now?’
‘Public expenditure cuts. They’ll be taking the chairs next and making us jog on the spot or dance to keep warm.’
‘Don’t make me imagine Craig and Richard dancing.’ I rubbed my hands over my arms. ‘Did the forensics around the body show anything?’
‘Nope. No alien hairs or whatever. Nothing that didn’t come from the victim. But there’s more about the casket they found in the fallen tree.’ Jai examined a note on the table. ‘The combination was the word HENRY.’
‘HENRY. Does that mean anything?’
‘Not so far,’ Jai said. ‘And the plot thickens. Inside the casket was another closed box, also with a word-based lock.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. But there seemed to be a clue in the outer casket, which possibly led to the combination for the inner box. A piece of paper with some weird riddle on it.’
‘What did it say? Look, I want to go again to the quarry – approach it from the direction Peter Hamilton would have done and see where this casket was found.’ I glanced out of the window. Couldn’t see much but decided to adopt a positive mental attitude. ‘It’s stopped raining now. Do you want to come with me and you can tell me this stuff on the way?’
Jai jumped up, always happy to leave the Station.
Once in the car, I stuck the heater on full and we set off for Eldercliffe. I’d park near Hamilton’s house so we could walk down the footpath into the woods.
‘Wipe the windscreen for me, can you Jai?’ I shoved a cloth into his hand.
‘My God, what have you been doing with this?’ He smeared the admittedly grubby cloth over my windscreen. ‘You need to clean the glass every few years or so, you know.’
‘Yeah, yeah, you can still see through it, can’t you?’ I peered through a small, non-misty area of the screen. ‘So, there was a second, smaller box inside the casket?’
‘Yes, and they found a trace of the cake in there – like a smear of chocolate that must have got onto the outside of the wrapper.’
‘So, the cake could have been in the smaller box and that was inside the casket.’
‘Yes, and it also backs up the cake being home-made and put into the plastic wrapper.’
‘Of course Hamilton could have got the cake from somewhere else and opened the casket up with traces of cake on his fingers.’
Jai sighed. ‘I know. He could. But there’s no trace of cake on the outer casket. I think we should explore this. We haven’t got much else.’
‘I agree. But let’s not get obsessed with it. Anyway, what else?’
‘Well, there was a cheap compass inside the inner box, with Peter Hamilton’s fingerprints on it, and a piece of paper with the date of his death and the word Hamster22.’
‘And you said there was a piece of paper in the outer casket with some kind of riddle on it. What did it say?’
‘Can’t remember. It was gibberish. They’ve sent it off to some weirdo who doesn’t wash but can solve these things. We keep him in the basement.’
I laughed, although I was frustrated Jai had forgotten the riddle, which I was itching to hear. ‘Oh yeah, I think I met him nicking my milk once. So, Hamilton found the casket and he opened it, which means he knew the outer code, HENRY, and he found the piece of paper with the clue to the lock on the inner box, solved that, opened the inner box and took the poisoned cake. And possibly left the compass in it?’
‘Looks like it. There are no fingerprints apart from his.’
‘And he might have left the Hamster piece of paper in there, or it might have been in there already.’
‘Yes, it had his fingerprints on, but of course he could have just looked at it.’
‘So, let’s suppose the killer invented “Susie’s Cakes”. Printed off the label and packaged up the cake to look like shop-bought. And left it in the inner box, inside the casket, for Hamilton to find and eat. But why would Hamilton even go to the casket?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘You’re not fooling me, Jai. I do realise that’s what parents say when they can’t answer their kids’ why questions.’
‘Okay. Busted. Truth is I have no idea why he would have gone to the casket and taken the bloody cake.’
‘Well, we know he was a greedy sod who wouldn’t turn down cake, if he found the casket for some reason. Have we any way of tracing the printer the cake label came from, or the plastic wrapper?’
‘They’re looking into it, but it seems he used a black-and-white printer without the steganography markings. And there’s not much to go on with the wrapper.’
‘The murderer was clever. What about tracing the source of the cyanide?’
‘They’re working on it.’
I pulled up on the lane, not far from the parking spot outside Peter Hamilton and Kate Webster’s house. It was still blessedly dry outside but the sky was black so we donned waterproofs and set off to find the footpath down to the quarry.
Kate Webster had said Hamilton would have cut through a tiny alleyway between two houses, to access a path which led down to the woods at the base of the quarry. This area of Eldercliffe was known for its confusing arrays of tiny stone cottages, dotted seemingly at random on the sloping hillside. The cottages, alleys and gardens were thrown together according to no obvious plan, and you could never follow the same route twice.
We took a path with a drop on the left so steep we could see down the chimneys of the houses below. I glanced over the side and remembered crashing down the steps outside Mum’s house. I leant against the wall and breathed out slowly through my mouth.
‘Are you okay?’ Jai said. ‘Is it your head?’
‘It’s alright.’ I took a step away from the wall.
Jai squinted at me. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’
I kept my gaze fixed ahead and started walking. ‘I’m fine. Come on.’
We spotted the alleyway, which w
as more like a tunnel, since the first floors of the two houses were joined together, forming a little bridge. Instinctively hunching over, we crept through and were surprised to find a grassy path which took us down a steep slope straight to the woods in the base of the quarry. We followed the main path, as we assumed Peter Hamilton would have done. Although it had stopped raining, water fell off the trees in fat globules, and a musty, loamy smell thickened the air.
‘Were there any traces of cyanide on the swabs from Hamilton’s house?’ I asked.
‘Not that we could find. The wife’s got to be a possible though. We found evidence on his laptop that they’d recently increased his life insurance to nearly a million. He’s worth a hell of a lot dead, that man. And there’s evidence of arguments. In one email she says she’s not sure she can take it any more.’
‘And she’s been pushing us towards the cursed house thing. Maybe that’s to distract us.’
I skirted around a muddy patch on the track. A path to our left had been fenced off, and a sign shouted DANGER and featured a flailing man. I looked through the trees, and in the distance saw a lake of the most vivid turquoise, against a backdrop of sheer cliffs. I nudged Jai. ‘Look at that.’
‘It’s the old quarry that’s filled in. Idiots die swimming there every now and then. A kind of local natural selection.’
‘It’s so… blue,’ I said. ‘Even though the sky’s grey. I can see why people are drawn to it.’ The fencing wouldn’t have stopped me in my younger years.
Jai obviously wasn’t tempted. ‘Chemical pollution,’ he said.
‘Okay, the wife. She did mention arguments, but claimed it was normal marital stuff. Of course she would say that. What about the brother, Mark? I wondered if there was something going on between him and Hamilton’s wife. And there’s the comment the student made at the health centre. Something about typhus and the police sniffing around. Why would Kate Webster have made that comment if she had nothing to hide? And what about the client who he was doing free work for – Lisa Bell? You talked to her, didn’t you? Could she have poisoned him in a cold-blooded fit of jealousy?’
‘I grilled her pretty hard about the possible affair and she was all astonished denial. She seemed more pissed off that he’d died in the middle of the patenting process than anything else. She’s not a top scorer on rapport-building, that’s for sure. She was alibied for Monday, but she was another solitary TV watcher on Sunday night.’
‘What did she say about him reducing his charges?’
‘Just that he’d been slow recently, so he’d agreed to charge out fewer hours than he put in. She did seem a bit evasive though. I definitely got a sniff of something odd going on.’
‘Jesus, it’s complicated.’ Water was running down the back of my neck. ‘Is everyone putting everything into HOLMES?’ You had to admire whoever contorted the initials of our crime-busting computer system into that acronym.
‘Yes, I think so.’ Jai splashed through a puddle.
We were nearing the cliffs where Peter Hamilton had been found. The wind was getting up, rattling the branches above us. We approached the taped-off area, and a thick-necked uniformed officer nodded us through. ‘Good to see some human life,’ he said. ‘There’s more people on the moon than in these woods.’
We were about ten feet from the fallen tree. The hollow where the casket had been found was obvious when you were close, but you’d have had to look for it.
The uniform put his phone in his pocket. ‘Found the bastard who did it yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, don’t you worry, I’ve stopped the seething hordes rampaging through the crime scene.’
Jai snorted. ‘Yeah, not the most exciting spot for you.’
‘Christ, no. Can’t even get a sodding coffee. I did fend off a couple of young idiots this morning though. Tried to get to the fallen tree, you know, where they found that box thing.’
I looked at him with more interest. ‘They’d come past the outer tape?’
‘Yeah. Ghouls I suppose.’
‘We haven’t released anything about the fallen tree,’ I said. ‘What made you say they were trying to get to that?’
‘Seemed to be looking on their phones, like they were following something on there. I wondered if it was that stupid Pokemon thing. They didn’t see me at first, and I didn’t see them until one of them said something about the tree.’
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘Something like, “Near that fallen tree, I think”. Then their heads popped up from their phones and the other one said, “Holy crap, is this where they found that body?” Then they saw me, I shouted at them to stop and they pissed off. I didn’t want to leave here to chase after the little bastards.’
‘That’s weird,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t sound like Pokemon. So, why would they be following directions to come here, and yet be surprised that it’s where the body was found?’
The uniform shrugged and turned slightly away, as if he had something more interesting to do.
‘Come on, Jai,’ I said. ‘You should have a look in the cave.’
I walked to the cliff where the steps led up to the cave house. ‘You go first. I’m slow with my ankle.’
Jai climbed nimbly up the steps and I followed, less nimbly.
We flashed our torches around the walls and floor, and breathed the uniquely cave-scented air – a musty mix of damp and bat droppings. I directed my torch up, hoping to see bats sleeping, but there were none. Just a tiny spider, which scuttled away from the light.
Jai was more interested in the carving. ‘Oh. My. God.’ He stood and gazed. ‘That is so damn spooky. How the hell could it predict Peter Hamilton’s death?’
I walked further into the cave, feeling the temperature fall. Looking at the carving made my lungs feel tight, as if the air had gone viscous. ‘It can’t,’ I said, then added helplessly, ‘Well, I don’t know. It has to be relevant in some way. If he found out about it and thought he was cursed? Or the killer found out about it and thought it was a good distraction.’
Jai swung his torch around the rest of the cave. ‘I’m not sure it would be my choice of place to come and relax and read philosophy.’ He stepped towards the lighter area near the entrance and switched his torch off. ‘Shall we get going?’ He turned towards me. ‘Holy shit!’ He leapt back, eyes wide.
‘What the hell?’ My heart banged against my ribcage. ‘What is it, Jai?’
Chapter 16
‘Look behind you.’
I took a step towards Jai and turned slowly. I gasped and felt my hand go to my mouth.
A skeletal woman was running from the Grim Reaper. I stared at the cave wall, blood rushing in my ears.
‘It’s the ghost,’ Jai whispered. ‘The woman who starved to death.’
Once I’d calmed down, it was clear what it was. ‘It’s the shadow from the tree in the window, isn’t it?’
Now our torches weren’t shining on the back wall of the cave, it was lit only by sunlight from the cave door and the window. Jai was blocking most of the light from the tiny doorway, and the position of the sun must have been just right to beam through the window. A tree had grown across, and it cast a spindly shadow on the cave wall, next to the carving of the Grim Reaper. The shadow looked like a stick-thin body, which moved when the tree was battered by the wind.
‘Yeah,’ Jai said. ‘It’s a shadow. But I can see why people don’t come here. That’s uncannily like a person. Let’s get out of here.’
‘Okay, okay. You go down first.’
Jai squeezed through the entrance and shuffled round to descend backwards. Just as his head was about to disappear, he froze and looked up at me. ‘Oh my God. I think I know how the killer got Peter Hamilton to the casket.’
I stared at him, silhouetted in the cave entrance, and spoke softly. ‘So tell me.’
‘Let me get out of this hell hole first.’
‘Go on then. Hurry up.’
Jai navigated the
steps down from the cave house, with me following as fast as I could.
Once Jai was safely at ground level, he turned to me. ‘Geocaching. Have you heard of it?’
I’d heard Hannah mention the term, but couldn’t remember what it meant. Possibly I’d been drunk when she told me. ‘Not exactly. Let’s head back and you can tell me.’
We set off along the path, and Jai continued in a smug tone. ‘Basically it’s a way of getting your World of Warcraft types to venture out in the daylight for a change. It’s like a treasure hunt. You log on to these websites and they give the GPS co-ordinates of a place where the treasure – the cache – is. Then you go out and try to find it. Or something like that.’
I paused before a particularly muddy spot. ‘So that could be a way to get someone to go to a specific location in the woods?’
‘Well, that’s what I’m thinking.’
‘And open a casket?’
‘Indeed.’
*
We arrived back at the Station in the early afternoon. As we walked down the corridor towards my office, Craig popped out of a doorway and blocked our path. ‘Richard won’t like the idea of two detectives going off to the woods, will he now?’
It was just as well we didn’t have guns because I would have taken mine out and shot him right between the eyes. Twice. I suspected it wasn’t healthy to feel this way about my colleagues.
Jai took a step towards him. ‘Oh give it a rest, you slimy little—’
Craig puffed up like a poisonous snake. ‘Our role is strategic, isn’t that what Richard says? We’re not paid to blunder around in—’
‘I’m not sure he meant you when he said that,’ Jai said. ‘We all have to play to our strengths.’
Craig looked baffled for a moment before his potato-head flushed pink.
Jai adopted the tone of someone speaking to a backward child. ‘Oh, sorry, Craig, was that too subtle for you?’
Craig righted himself and turned to me. ‘How are you feeling after your little accident? It’s a shame your limp makes you prone to falls.’
