Pale Horse, Dark Horse (The Lakeland Murders)

by Salkeld, J J

  ‘So do you think that your promotion will change much in the office?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it will now actually be my job to compile the monthly report.’

  Gorham smiled at the modest admission of guilt by association.

  ‘So where do you see yourself in five years time?’

  Jane laughed. ‘Give me a chance, Val. I’ve only just made DS.’

  ‘How about DI?’

  ‘I think that position is occupied.’

  ‘It is. But five years from now Andy will have done his thirty, and he’ll be gone.’

  Jane Francis put down her coffee cup. It was a long time before she spoke again. ‘I can imagine the Police without Andy in it, of course I can. But the trouble is I can’t imagine Andy as anything else than a Policeman. I honestly believe it was what he was born to do.’

  ‘And you, Jane? How about you? Is it what you were born to do too?’

  ‘Of course it is, Val’ said Jane, just a little too quickly and a little too brightly.

  Professor Wilkins was enjoying himself. The students were soaked, the trenches were waterlogged, but the finds tent was nice and dry. And he’d always thought that these summer digs really sorted out the potential field archaeologists from the rest. As he’d said to Tony Robinson, when he was trying to get an invitation to the show, these summer digs sorted out the people who would one day be on Time Team from the people who would merely watch it. Tony had smiled at that, he remembered, but he’d still never heard back from the production team about his idea. But archaeologists could be such stick-in-the-muds.

  He glanced across at the finds table. It wasn’t doing much business. In truth, the finds on this dig so far were nothing to write home about. The County Archeologist was still hanging about too, and Wilkins knew exactly why that was. If anything of interest did turn up she’d want to make sure that her name was on the paper just below his, but Wilkins reckoned that she was probably wasting her time, or more accurately the Council Tax payer’s time. The general public, or the audience as Wilkins now liked to think of them, always thought that stone circles would be crammed with burials, grave goods and possibly evidence of human sacrifice.

  But he knew better, and she should too. So Wilkins had been surprised when the initial geophysical survey of the site, carried out by a younger colleague whose work he regarded with some suspicion, had shown up some clear anomalies, within just a few feet of Long Meg herself, the largest stone in the whole circle. Wilkins’ colleague couldn’t explain them, despite all his gizmos and computers, and try as he might Wilkins couldn’t either, so permission had been given to open up a small trench over the anomaly itself. Because of the site’s high level of protection the grass had been removed by hand a few days before, and now the students were a foot or so down. And there was already clear evidence of soil disturbance, and some kind of pit. Wilkins had nipped out of the tent not five minutes before to see for himself, and there was no doubt. But it made no sense, because the site had been Scheduled for many years, so there’d have been no other excavations in modern times. Couldn’t have been.

  Wilkins was just deciding against asking one of the students to make him another coffee, because the last tasted mainly of Cumbrian mud, when he heard his name being called. And before he had so much as opened his brolly he heard his name again, louder this time. He never hurried, he regarded it as one of the perks of the job that a century was a short time interval, so he was only half way to the trench he saw one of the students try to stand up and turn away, and then be loudly and violently sick on the grass. And something told Professor Wilkins that it wasn’t a skinful the night before that had caused her sudden indisposition.

  One glance told him all he needed to know. It was a body, recently buried too. In archaeological terms it had happened just seconds ago, so it was of no interest to Wilkins, and he knew that meant the end of the dig. Still, he thought, looking down at the clumps of dark hair that were just visible in the trench, at least he’d make the news now. He wondered briefly which jumper he should wear. That dreadful stripey one had been the absolute making of Mick Aston.

  Andy Hall couldn’t quite believe his luck. The bloke from the Home Office had been there all day, and he showed absolutely no signs of heading back to London. And they were running out of things to talk about. Hall had long since established that Jeremy Watson had no first-hand experience of Policing whatsoever. His only interest seemed to be statistics.

  ‘It’s the trends that matter, Andy, that’s what you pick up from the crime reports. From my office I can see the patterns emerging, and help guide Forces at a national and even a local level, so that they deploy their resources more effectively. The rest is just noise, that’s what I always say.’

  Before lunch Hall had taken Watson down to the custody area in search of some noise, and had been rewarded with the sight of two PCs, helped by a DC who happened to be down there, attempting to get a blue-tattooed and red-faced young man over to the custody desk. In the end Hall had joined in, and quite enjoyed the exercise.

  ‘What has he been arrested for, Sergeant?’ Watson asked the Custody Sergeant, who had looked amused when Hall got involved.

  ‘Watch your suit, sir’ he’d said, before politely asking who Watson was. ‘This is Mickey, sir, he’s one of our regulars. What is it this time, John?’

  One of the PCs, who was still trying to fix an arm lock on Mickey, looked up. ‘Criminal damage, Sarge. Put one of his size thirteens through his girlfriend’s TV because she wouldn’t turn over to Top Gear.’

  ‘But don’t they live together?’ asked the Sergeant. ‘So in effect he bust his own telly.’

  ‘Oh aye. They live together all right. That’s why we’re down there nicking one of them all the time. But she says it was her money that paid for it, so that’s why we nicked him this time.’

  As they left a minute or two later Hall saw Watson looking over his shoulder, and now the female PC was sitting on Mickey’s chest, while the DC tried to get him to stop lashing out with his feet. The Custody Sergeant still hadn’t moved from behind his desk.

  It took Watson a few minutes to regain the power of speech when they were back in Hall’s office.

  ‘Why did he struggle like that? Won’t he be charged with resisting arrest as well, now?’

  ‘Probably’ said Hall, ‘but it won’t make any difference. Would you care to take a guess at how much previous our Mickey has, and how much jail time he’s done?’

  ‘He’s obviously a regular customer here, so I’ll go for twenty, no, fifty convictions, and let’s say two years in jail.’

  Hall looked Mickey up on the system.

  ‘You’re a fair way out, Mr. Watson. Mickey is 22 years of age, and he already has 173 convictions in total, ranging from D&D to ABH. Oh, and that one was on his mother. As you saw, he’s a right little charmer. And he’s done a total of, let’s see, four months inside. We keep nicking him, and the courts keep letting him go. But on the positive side he’s a walking 100% detection rate is Mickey, because if his brains were dynamite he couldn’t blow off his ears. So from a statistical standpoint he’s a Godsend I’d say, wouldn’t you agree?’

  But there’d been no further entertainment after lunch, and Hall had long since given up listening to whatever is was that Watson was saying. Instead he was playing a few games with himself, like keeping a running total of how many times Watson said ‘algorithm’ and ‘proxy’. Before he’d started the game, almost an hour before, Hall had decided that proxy would win easily, and so far he would be proved right. He took no pleasure in it, though. And so when the call came through he was pleased to have even a moment’s distraction, but by the time he put the phone down on the Deputy Chief he was absolutely delighted. And the smile on Hall’s normally impassive face was utterly unmistakable.

  ‘I’m sorry Mr. Watson, but I’m going to have to leave you. Would you like me to arrange a car to drive you to the railway station?’

  ‘What’s happened
? Good news, I hope’

  Hall managed to suppress the smile. It wasn’t easy, and it took a few moments. ‘Human remains have turned up at a stone circle not far from here. And they’re more like two years old than two thousand, by the sounds of it.’

  ‘Which stone circle?’

  ‘Long Meg and her Daughters, just outside Little Salkeld. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I know it. I read Ancient History at university, and the Neolithic was my specialism. I take it that you’re going to visit the site now?’

  ‘I am, along with SOCO, the Police pathologist and a whole herd of other people. Would you like to ride along with me, then?’

  Watson said that he would like to come, and Hall didn’t mind at all. He’d be able to leave the man in the care of some poor PC, who would end up having to drive him back to the station later on. Before they left Hall tried to call Jane Francis, but found that she was still out with the Super, so he tried DS Mann, also unsuccessfully, before eventually making contact with DC Ray Dixon. Hall arranged to meet Dixon at the locus, and since Ray was hoping for yet another three month contract extension he didn’t even raise the topic of overtime.

  Hall drove towards Little Salkeld at his usual sedate pace.

  ‘Shouldn’t we have the blue lights on?’ asked Watson, and Hall smiled.

  ‘I don’t think so. The victim has been in the ground for some considerable time, so I think it’s a reasonable assumption that the killer is no longer hanging about the stones, murder weapon in hand. Don’t you agree?’

  Watson did agree, and as they drove he told Hall all he knew about the stone circle. It was quite a bit, and Hall was impressed by the feat of memory. Watson looked like he was well into his forties, probably a few years younger than Hall, so he’d probably been at college twenty years before.

  ‘Long Meg is set in an important Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age landscape, and Long Meg is actually one of the largest stone circles in Europe. If I remember rightly Long Meg is the largest stone, a tall piece of local sandstone, and it has some fascinating cup and ring marks on it. It will be good to actually see it, in the flesh as it were. Are you interested in pre-history, Chief Inspector?’

  Hall was, though he wasn’t sure quite why, and over the past few months he had dragged Jane round most of the circles, monuments and henges in the county, usually with the sweetener of a pub lunch thrown in. His wife had never been interested, and the kids certainly weren’t.

  ‘I am, Mr. Watson, and Long Meg is quite a place. Not as spectacular a setting as Castlerigg perhaps, but still mighty impressive.’

  ‘And do you know the legend about the place?’

  ‘No, what is it?’

  ‘That if you can count all the stones correctly, or at least get the same answer twice, and whisper the answer to Long Meg herself, then she will whisper something back to you.’

  ‘Like what? Congratulations on passing your numeracy module?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But I think something bad happens. That’s usually the case with these old wives’ tales.’

  ‘With a bit of luck you’ve cracked the case, Mr. Watson. Our man may well have been able to count, and as result of reaching the correct answer he was struck down where he stood. In which case all we need to do is nick Long Meg and take her to the station. But I bet she’ll just try the old stony silence routine.’

  Watson groaned at Hall’s pun, and Hall couldn’t blame him. ‘But didn’t you say the body had been buried, and had been there for some time?’

  Hall laughed. ‘You missed your vocation, Mr. Watson. I don’t suppose the legend says anything about Long Meg having access to a shovel of some kind, does it?’

  Because the stone circle was so close to HQ, or perhaps because it was also close to knocking off time for the nine-to-fivers who reckoned that a bit of overtime would come in handy, there was already a decent Police presence at the stone circle. Less than a Royal Visit, but plenty more than you’d see on a Saturday night on Botchergate in Carlisle. A narrow lane ran right through the site, an intrusion that Hall reckoned would surely have enraged Meg, given her apparent dislike of even having her offspring enumerated. Hall parked on the grass just after the Police barrier, but well short of the stones, and asked Watson to stay in the car for a few minutes.

  A uniformed Inspector from HQ, who Hall now knew slightly, was in command on the ground, and looked slightly peeved that a more senior CID officer had arrived so quickly.

  ‘The scene is secure, Andy. I’ve got lads at both ends of the lane, one where you came in and the other near that farm entrance over there. SOCO is setting up their tent now, and I’ve set a ten metre exclusion beyond that. Do you want me to make a start on the house to house?’

  Hall laughed, then realised that it was a serious question. All he could see was a farmhouse a couple of hundred yards beyond the stones.

  ‘No, not for now. Let’s wait until we know a bit more. It’s always possible that this is an unauthorised burial, rather than a suspicious death.’

  ‘How do you figure that, then?’

  Hall didn’t need to explain, but he did. ‘Well, the way I hear it there was no obvious cause of death, because all the students uncovered was a patch of skull. So maybe some hippy types, showing scant regard for the protection afforded by Scheduled Ancient Monument status, decided to bury Uncle Bob out here after he smoked one too many joints and went to meet his maker, or the great Druid in the sky.’

  ‘If you say so, Andy.’

  ‘Tell you one thing you could do, though. If anyone turns up and starts asking questions, or taking an interest in general, make sure you capture their details, please. And make sure that no-one, other than SOCO, gets anywhere near that tent. I don’t want any of our people rubber-necking, OK? Now, can I borrow your radio? I want to talk to SOCOs for a sec. Who’s in command?’

  ‘It’s Sandy Smith’ said the Inspector, ‘and she’s not happy.’

  ‘That makes a change. About anything in particular?’

  ‘I don’t know. Men. Me. Coppers. The world in general.’

  Hall held up his hand.

  ‘Sandy, it’s Andy Hall. Can you spare me a minute, sometime fairly soon?’

  ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Out here, at the control point. I don’t want to come in and start trampling about on your crime scene for no reason.’

  ‘I wish you’d tell your mates that. When we turned up one of your lot was virtually standing on the body, the fucking plank.’

  Hall glanced up at the Inspector, who was staring intently in an entirely different direction.

  ‘Tell you what, Andy,’ Sandy went on, ‘why don’t you beat a confession out of someone for half an hour or so, and we’ll meet up then. I should have a bit more to tell you by that time.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’m going to have a quick chat with the students, and after that I’ll pop over to that farmhouse over there. So I won’t be far away.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Andy. I’ll just follow the fucking blaze of glory. You’re always underneath it somewhere, aren’t you? Knowing you this will all be neatly squared away by the time we’ve got the body out of the ground.’

  Hall returned the radio and the Inspector led him over to the University minibus, which contained half a dozen bedraggled students and a bearded man wearing a disturbingly bright sweater. Hall didn’t get a chance to ask him a question.

  ‘Will we be on the news?’ asked Wilkins.

  ‘The news? No, I doubt it. We’ve got all of your contact details already, I take it?’ The uniformed Inspector nodded, ‘So I think the best thing is for you all to get off home now. But if I could just borrow you for a moment first, Professor.’

  The two men moved a few yards from the minibus, and Hall told the Inspector to ask the County Archeologist to join them. In five minutes Hall understood the sequence of events, and that a geophysical survey had more or less found the body for them.

  ‘I knew it’ said Wilkins, ‘I knew th
ere was something wrong, even though some people didn’t believe me.’ He shot a look at the County Archeologist.

  ‘There was no evidence of other recent disturbance, was there?’ asked Hall. ‘I mean anything in the immediate area here?’

  ‘No. No, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘OK, that’s good. And you will send everything you have on the site straight to us, as soon as you can please? That’s both of you. And Professor Wilkins, you did explain to our SOCO team exactly what your methodology was? Where you placed the excavated soil, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, I did. The lady I spoke to didn’t seem very impressed at all, though. She called us ‘amateur wankers with mad beards’ if I remember rightly.’

  Hall smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it, Professor. She calls me much worse, I promise you that.’

  DCI Hall knew that Sandy’s half an hour could easily turn into three or four hours, so after he’d said his goodbyes to the Professor and the County Archeologist he walked along the lane towards the farmhouse. The drizzle had stopped and the cloud was lifting, but not breaking up. When he reached the gate he saw that as well as what looked like a working farm in front of him there was also a country house, a quarter of a mile or so further along the lane. Hall had promised himself years before that he wouldn’t even think about joining the National Trust until he was drawing his pension, so he couldn’t tell how old the big house was. But the word Jacobean popped unbidden into his head, and he decided to settle for that for now. He hesitated, mid-stride, while he decided which to call on first.

  The farmhouse was closer, as well as less intimidating, so he crossed the yard and knocked at the door. The uniformed Inspector had told him that the family was called Plouvin, and that none had any previous. As he waited for the door to open Hall looked round the yard. He was no expert on farming, but everything looked extremely well kept. And the Range Rover parked a few yards away was virtually brand new, and clean with it. Hall heard voices from inside the house. The accents didn’t sound local, more like Home Counties. Hall started to wonder if the house was a holiday let.