by Kate Ellis
Kate Ellis was born and brought up in Liverpool and studied drama in Manchester. She has worked in teaching, marketing and accountancy and first enjoyed literary success as a winner of the North West Playwrights competition. Keenly interested in medieval history and archaeology, Kate lives in North Cheshire with her husband, Roger, and their two sons.
The Blood Pit is her twelfth Wesley Peterson crime novel.
Kate Ellis has been twice nominated for the CWA Short Story Dagger, and her novel The Plague Maiden, was nominated for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2005.
Also by Kate Ellis
Joe Plantagenet series:
Playing with Bones
Wesley Peterson series:
The Merchant’s House
The Armada Boy
An Unhallowed Grave
The Funeral Boat
The Bone Garden
A Painted Doom
The Skeleton Room
The Plague Maiden
A Cursed Inheritance
The Marriage Hearse
The Shining Skull
The Blood Pit
For more information regarding Kate Ellis
log on to Kate’s website: www.kateellis.co.uk
COPYRIGHT
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-12662-0
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
Copyright © 2008 by Kate Ellis
All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.hachette.co.uk
To Gillian Green, Sarah Molloy and Euan Thorneycroft with thanks
Contents
Copyright
Also by Kate Ellis
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter One
Things that frighten the devil away.
The killer grabbed a cheap biro from the box on the table and started to make a list.
Garlic … or was that just vampires?
Church bells. Everyone knew they drove evil away. The killer stood on the city walls by the cathedral each Tuesday night while the ringers practised, bathing in the mellow music of the great bells. Safe.
Charms. Coral. And crucifixes. And the sight of an open Bible. And holy water.
With trembling fingers that could hardly form the letters, the killer continued the list. It had to be finished. There would soon be more work to do.
More death to bring to the evil ones.
Carmel Hennessy hurried home, hugging her cardigan around her to ward off the unseasonable chill in the air. As she emerged from the crazy maze of ancient streets on to the cathedral square, she turned her head to stare up at the towers, intricately carved in pale-gold stone, soaring up to heaven like arms outstretched in prayer.
Carmel – who had been raised in Liverpool before moving with her mother and stepfather to a town of concrete and straight lines – loved the centre of Eborby with its network of cramped, medieval thoroughfares where the past hung in the air like a heavy smog. History, from peaceful trade to violent rebellion, slithered through the winding streets and passageways, tending at times to overshadow the present. But then that was why she was there … the Heritage Industry. Carmel Hennessy owed her living to the past.
Her flat in Vicars Green stood just a few hundred yards from the great cathedral itself. When she’d moved to Eborby she’d expected to be exiled to the outer suburbs, or to one of the less salubrious streets near Kingsgate, but her new landlady, Peta Thewlis – who was also her boss at the Archaeology Centre – had been looking for a reliable tenant for her vacant flat. Carmel’s grandmother, being a great believer in fate, would have said that it was ‘meant’.
Carmel was grateful to Peta of course, but she couldn’t say in all honesty that she liked the woman. She found Peta cool and uncommunicative. However, she was sure that they could maintain an amicable working and landlady-tenant relationship. No problem.
The Vicars Green flat couldn’t be more convenient, but living so close to Eborby’s chief attractions did have a few drawbacks. Carmel didn’t so much mind the stream of tourists who trudged across the triangle of grass, passing the Roman column standing at its centre without a second glance, as they made for the quaint National Trust tearoom fifty yards along the street. But the ghost tours were a different matter.
They arrived each night at eight o’clock on the dot. A band of tourists marching like a ragged army behind a tall man with a long, pale face who wore a voluminous black Victorian cape and a tall silk hat. He reminded Carmel of an extra from a Jack the Ripper movie. But rather than moving through the swirling mists of Whitechapel, this particular Ripper stalked the summer streets of Eborby recounting tales of spooks and grisly executions. There seemed to be no end, Carmel thought, to the public’s appetite for horror. But, as far as she was concerned, the ghouls were welcome to it. After what had happened to her father, she had had her fill of violent death.
One evening she had looked out of her window to see the guide pointing directly up at her flat. And sometimes, if the window was open, she could catch the odd word drifting upwards on the evening air – plague; girl; face. She had no idea what the man she had begun to think of as Jack the Ripper was telling his audience but she was beginning to find his regular visits a little unsettling. If people were staring at her window, she would have liked to know the reason why.
So far she’d discovered that number five Vicars Green had originally been one wing of a larger house, the former home of some prosperous city merchant, built in the late fifteenth century. Her flat, on the first floor of number five, was small – one bedroom, living room, minuscule kitchen and a tiny shower room off the bedroom – but she loved the way the bare floorboards creaked and no two walls stood at exactly the same angle because the house had twisted and settled with the centuries.
If she lay in bed at night and thought about all the people who had lived and died there, her imagination supplied a thousand stories, happy and sad. There were nights when she lay awake listening to each groan of the timbers and each thump of the plumbing. And sometimes there were nights when bad dreams made her wake up in terror – when she saw her father’s dead face smiling at her, a trickle of blood dribbling from his lips.
But although the past held terrors, the present too had horrors of its own. The papers were full of Eborby’s two recent murders and each day the headlines screeched out more grisly speculation. They had called them the churchyard killings at first. Then some bright spark in a newspaper office had named the killer the Resurrection Man, a catchy label that had caught the public’s imagination … and stuck.
Carmel did her best to put all this unpleasantness, past and present, out of her mind as
she made herself something to eat. Something warm and comforting. Beans on toast – childhood food. Then at ten past eight she looked out of her small, leaded living-room window on to the green below. Jack the Ripper was there again, talking, gesticulating and pointing up at her bedroom window. Carmel fought a sudden impulse to rush downstairs and find out exactly what it was about her new home that these ghoulish tourists found so very fascinating. Perhaps she’d pluck up the courage to ask Peta Thewlis one day at work. Or maybe she’d join the tour herself one night. She might even learn something about the hidden history of her newly adopted city. The bits they didn’t put in the guide books.
After ten minutes the ghost tour moved on, making its way to the Fleshambles, the ancient street of the butchers where the shops’ overhanging upper storeys almost blotted out the sky. That thin street, which must once have reeked of blood and rotting flesh, was gloomy even when the sun was shining. No doubt there’d be something nasty there to keep the ghoulish tourists interested, Carmel thought, switching on the TV and settling down on the sofa. As she watched the flickering images she planned the rest of her evening. She would have a shower and an early night curled up with a good book. Then she gave a snort of derision. She was twenty-three – perhaps she should be putting some energy into getting herself some sort of social life. But things are never easy for a stranger in a strange town. And besides, she knew that sometimes she wasn’t good company.
At ten o’clock she heard the cathedral clock striking the hour and she turned off the TV before making for the bedroom, wondering why she always felt a thrill of something akin to fear when she crossed the threshold of that small, low-beamed room with its cool blue walls. Ignoring her gut feeling of apprehension, she walked over to the window and lifted her arms to shut the flowery curtains.
Suddenly something caught her eye on the green below. A movement. A figure stepping out of the shadows. A man in a tall silk hat was standing there quite still, looking up at her. His expressionless face pale as the moon.
Carmel let the curtains slip from her grasp and took a step back, her heart pounding. He looked like death. And he had come for her.
Detective Inspector Joe Plantagenet’s eyes were drawn to the photographs pinned on the notice board that covered one wall of the incident room. They held a terrible fascination … like the sight of a car crash. After a few seconds he looked away.
Because the victims had been left naked in churchyards, the killer had been dubbed the Resurrection Man by a gleeful press. But the men and women who wrote the reports hadn’t seen the pictures on the wall. They hadn’t seen the corpses, looking as if they had just emerged from the grave. They hadn’t seen the look of horror and despair on those dead faces; the wide, terrified eyes; the gaping mouths set in a silent scream as if they had glimpsed some unspeakable horror before their souls had quit their bodies. Joe had always believed in evil. But he had rarely encountered it before in such a palpable form. So close he could feel it.
The pathologist, a woman of science, had delivered her verdict in a cool, matter-of-fact sort of way. The victims had probably been stunned and tied up before being buried alive. She had shown no emotion as she spoke and perhaps, Joe thought, she had the right idea. Professional detachment was the only way to deal with something like this. You couldn’t spend too much time dwelling on the victims’ agony. If you did, you’d go mad.
‘You OK, Joe?’
The words made Joe jump and he swung round to see Detective Sergeant Sunny Porter standing there. Sunny was a thin, wiry man in his early forties with a prematurely lined face, the consequence of a lifetime’s dedicated chain smoking. He had been christened Samson by his optimistic parents but he had only reached five feet eight and the nearest thing he’d ever encountered to a Delilah was a WPC in Traffic who, it was rumoured, had sapped his strength for a few months back in 1995. Samson hardly seeming appropriate, he had been Sunny from childhood, by name if not always by nature.
‘I’ll feel better when we catch the bastard who killed these two,’ Joe said, trying to sound positive.
‘Madam wants to see you,’ said Sunny with an emphasis on the word ‘madam’.
Joe smiled to himself. Sunny was still coming to terms with the fact that the new DCI was female. She was the replacement for DCI Miller, who had been forced to retire suddenly after suffering a heart attack. Whoever had taken over was bound to encounter resentment as Miller had been popular, one of the boys. But Joe was willing to give DCI Emily Thwaite a chance. After all, she had only been in the job a week and it wasn’t easy taking over the investigation of two high-profile murders – identical and almost certainly linked – at such short notice.
Joe took a deep breath and made his way to DCI Thwaite’s office. After giving a token knock, he walked in and Emily Thwaite looked up and gave him a businesslike smile. ‘Joe. Sit down … please. I’ve just seen the Super,’ she said. ‘He wanted to know if we’ve made any headway.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘The usual. Enquiries are progressing. We’re making a fresh TV appeal tonight … keeping it in people’s minds. We’re doing all we can with the manpower available. I’ve asked for more overtime to be approved.’
‘And?’
She smiled bitterly. ‘It’s being considered.’
Joe looked at her. She was an attractive woman: fair, a little on the plump side and touching forty. Her pale curls framed a pretty, almost doll-like face, and Joe knew that this would count against her with some. But he was determined to keep an open mind.
He looked around the office and saw that she had added some personal touches. Photographs on the desk and an ornately carved letter rack, possibly the souvenir of some exotic holiday. A child’s painting had been pinned up on the office wall: five figures of varying sizes, two females – one big, one small – in triangular skirts and three stick-like males stood stiffly in a row. Emily’s family, he guessed, although she hadn’t made any mention of them so far. The picture, with its enthusiastic innocence, looked somehow incongruous in a place where brutal murders were being investigated. But perhaps they served as a reminder that in the world outside the police station, not everything was dark.
Emily interrupted his thoughts. ‘Anything new come in?’
‘Nothing important. We’ve had a team doing house to house near where Uckley’s body was dumped but it seems that nobody heard or saw anything unusual.’
Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’
Joe Plantagenet looked at his watch, wondering whether to ask the next question. Perhaps the suggestion wouldn’t be welcome. But he decided to make it anyway. ‘It’s lunchtime. Do you fancy something to eat at the Cross Keys? They serve a good ploughman’s lunch … and it’s about time you were introduced to the watering holes of Eborby.’
She hesitated for a few moments as though she was assessing his motives … and the wisdom of accepting the invitation. Then she smiled. ‘Why not?’
Joe thought he saw a flicker of something akin to gratitude in her eyes, swiftly concealed. He knew it wasn’t easy for her coming in as DCI, newly transferred from Leeds and appointed over the heads of men who thought they deserved the post more than she did. But he’d heard good things about her – that she got results. And he’d also heard rumours on the flourishing station grapevine that she was married to a teacher and had three children of school age. If this was so, she had a lot on her plate and if anyone was going to give her a hard time, it wouldn’t be Joe. But then he had a reputation for being soft. Too soft sometimes.
The police headquarters stood near the railway station, outside the towering grey bulk of the city walls built in the Middle Ages to protect Eborby’s citizens – to keep violence out – not that they worked very well these days. As they left the building, Joe saw some young children playing on the steep banks that sloped up to the walls, rolling down the slopes laughing, under their mothers’ watchful eyes. Joe had heard that plague victims had been buried b
eneath these banks in the seventeenth century and he wondered whether the mothers would have let their children play there if they’d known. Probably. The past was the past.
Joe and Emily crossed the bridge over the river and followed the wide road that led into the heart of the city, passing the Museum Gardens and the Victorian red-brick library, dodging the heavy lunchtime traffic: cars, coaches and open-topped tourist buses. The stench of petrol fumes hung in the air until they slipped down a narrow side alley, making for the web of narrow streets at the city’s heart – now a pedestrian haven – with their medieval shops and worn stone pavements. Once an unremarkable urban landscape, Eborby’s old town was a bustling tourist attraction these days. History sells and city centre pubs took advantage of this fact by retaining their original charm. Theme pubs were banished to the outskirts.
The magpie-timbered Cross Keys had stood at the end of a thin cobbled alleyway for many centuries, quenching the thirst of Eborby’s citizens. But the new Thai menu on offer was a recent innovation. Joe, set in his ways, ordered a ploughman’s while Emily opted confidently for a Thai chicken curry.
The low ceilings and lighting to match made for an intimate atmosphere. ‘Nice place,’ Emily said, breaking an awkward silence. She looked at Joe, studying him as she would study a suspect in the interview room. He was younger than she was – around thirty she guessed – with wavy black hair, blue eyes and a pale complexion that suggested Irish blood somewhere in his family tree.
‘I suppose we should talk about the case,’ Joe said, businesslike, as though he wanted to keep a barrier of formality between them.
Emily pulled a face. ‘Not while we’re eating, eh. I could do with a bit of a break.’
Joe had to acknowledge that she was probably right. They were getting too bogged down in the details of the case. A rest would do them both good.
There was another silence while Joe searched for something appropriate to say. Small talk to oil the wheels. ‘How are the family settling in?’
