Seeking the Dead

by Kate Ellis

Emily’s expression softened. ‘OK. It’s the school holidays so my husband’s got a few weeks before he starts at his new school. He teaches history.’

  ‘I’d heard he was a teacher. Can’t keep much quiet round here.’

  ‘So I gathered,’ she said as the food arrived. Joe noticed that she started eating straight away as though she’d suddenly realised she was hungry.

  ‘New house OK?’ he asked.

  She nodded, her mouth full.

  ‘Whereabouts is it?’

  ‘Near the racecourse,’ she answered, playing with her fork. She suddenly looked up. ‘Did I hear you used to be a priest or something?’ The question was sharp and she looked him in the eye as though he were a criminal under interrogation.

  Joe hesitated, wondering how much it was wise to say. ‘I was training to be a priest but … Well, life has a habit of surprising you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Or kicking you in the teeth,’ Emily muttered under her breath. ‘So what happened to change your mind?’

  ‘A woman happened,’ Joe said after a few moments’ silence.

  ‘Is she still on the scene?’

  Joe shook his head.

  ‘But there is someone?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’ He gave her a wary smile. She hadn’t given much away about her own private life but she seemed to want to know all about his.

  She tilted her head to one side. ‘Do I detect a Liverpool accent?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I was brought up there. My dad was from Eborby and my mum was from Liverpool. Her parents were Irish and she was a devout Catholic. That’s why I …’ He let the words trail off. Some things were hard to explain to a woman he hardly knew in a busy lunchtime pub.

  ‘How long have you lived in Eborby?’

  Joe didn’t answer for a few seconds. A shadow of pain passed across his face. It was barely perceptible. But Emily noticed.

  ‘Almost five years now. I used to be in the Merseyside force but … There was an incident. A colleague of mine was killed. I was with him.’ He bowed his head, avoiding Emily’s eyes. ‘He was shot. So was I but they didn’t do the job very efficiently in my case … only got me in the shoulder. Kevin wasn’t so lucky.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Emily said quietly. She understood. She too had had colleagues – friends – who had been killed in the line of duty. It was never easy to come to terms with. And the anger, the sense of loss and injustice, lasted for years … maybe even for a lifetime. You never forget.

  ‘I stuck it out in Liverpool for a few years afterwards but then I decided to transfer to Eborby because I wanted a fresh start. And I’ve got roots here.’

  Emily looked around the pub. ‘Yeah, I can understand that.’ There was an awkward silence then she gave Joe a shy smile. ‘Plantagenet … isn’t that …?’

  When Joe returned her smile it was as though a shadow had lifted. ‘My dad was from Eborby and Richard III operated in these parts so there are old family stories that we’re descended from one of his illegitimate children. But I don’t know how true it is. Maybe one day I’ll do some research and …’

  ‘You should,’ said Emily, looking at her watch.

  Joe looked down at her empty plate. ‘Good curry?’

  Emily nodded and arranged her knife and fork neatly before pushing the plate to one side.

  ‘Sorry to talk shop,’ he said. ‘But I think it might help to go over what we’ve got so far while we’re away from the incident room.’

  Emily sighed. They’d had their break and she knew Joe was right. ‘OK. I’ve read all the files but I still need to get my head round the facts. Get them clear in my mind.’ She pushed her hair back off her face, preparing to get down to business.

  ‘Right,’ said Joe. ‘First victim Carla Yates, aged forty-five. Single. Lived alone. Worked at a travel agent’s on Westgate and reported missing by her work colleagues. Five days later she was found dead in a village ten miles north of Eborby, lying against the wall of the churchyard. She was naked and there were marks on her mouth, wrists and ankles indicating that she had been bound and gagged with some sort of adhesive tape. There were also contusions on the head which, according to the pathologist, had been sufficient to stun but not to kill. Cause of death probably suffocation. It’s likely she was left somewhere, probably in a confined space until the air ran out.’

  Joe imagined the unfortunate woman coming round, bound and unable to move, trapped somewhere until death came as a release. It was too horrible to contemplate. He had seen the look of terror on her decaying face. As though she had seen a vision of hell itself.

  ‘Last seen?’

  ‘She’d been to the pub after work on a Friday night with some of her colleagues. She left them to catch the bus home at the nearest bus stop by the Museum Gardens. She lives off the Hasledon Road … not far from the university. She was picked up on a couple of CCTV cameras in the city centre and everything seemed normal. We’ve traced the bus driver and some of the passengers and they didn’t notice anything unusual – nobody following her or anything like that. We think she must have been abducted after she got off the bus – the bus stop’s about a quarter of a mile from her home. No cameras on the route unfortunately.’

  ‘Private life?’

  ‘Divorced. No significant other. I’ve got the team making enquiries on that one.’

  ‘Good. Now I’ve taken over, I’d like to talk to all her friends and colleagues again. There might be something that’s been missed. What about the second victim?’

  ‘A man. I suppose that rules out any kind of sexual motive.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  Joe took a deep breath. ‘His name was Harold Uckley. Aged fifty-six. Worked at the head office of the Eborby Permanent Building Society. He was married with two grown-up sons and he appears to have led a blameless life. The word dull springs to mind. But then dull people can sometimes have hidden depths.’

  ‘Mmm. You can say that again. In Leeds the Vice Squad uncovered a network of prostitutes. Most of their clients were solicitors, chartered accountants and tax inspectors. I saw the photographs. I’d never have thought people like that could be so imaginative.’

  Joe popped a piece of crusty bread into his mouth and noted that Emily was smirking as if she found the peccadilloes of the upright citizens of Leeds highly entertaining. No doubt they’d provided hours of not-so-innocent amusement for the officers at her last nick.

  She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. Joe could smell her perfume, something floral and French. ‘Remind me of how Uckley disappeared.’

  ‘He came home from work as usual, had his tea, then he got a phone call and told his wife he was going out to the local pub for half an hour. We traced the call. It was made by a friend of his, a fellow fisherman. He’d expected to meet Uckley for a quick drink as he often did. Only Uckley never turned up. He left home and never came back. The theory is he met someone near the house and got into a car with them. But who and why we don’t know. The friend’s certainly in the clear – he was waiting for Uckley in the pub with two other men. Uckley turned up dead five days later in another churchyard. Well, you’ve seen from the photos up on the office wall how he was found. Exactly the same as Carla Yates – naked with marks indicating that he was bound. Same cause of death. Asphyxiation, as if he’d been closed in somewhere until the air ran out.’

  ‘Nothing from family and colleagues? He’d not been behaving as if there was something worrying him? He’d not indicated that he intended to meet anyone?’

  ‘Nothing. He was a quiet man who kept himself to himself.’

  ‘Aren’t they all? Funny that our two victims are so different, don’t you think?’

  ‘They must have had something in common. Something they were both involved in, say. We’re going through their private lives like my gran used to go through her kitchen cupboards every spring.’

  ‘I had a gran like that.’ Emily smiled at the memory. ‘Expert on surveillance she was and all. I sometimes
wonder whether MI5 have ever considered the effectiveness of the net curtain.’

  ‘So what exactly did you tell the Super about our progress?’ Joe asked, dampening the mood.

  ‘What could I tell him? All the usual questions have been asked. The victims’ last movements have been traced. But there’s nothing that makes much sense. And so far there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the two victims apart from how they died.’

  ‘Do you think they were random attacks?’

  Emily looked him in the eye. ‘Do you?’

  ‘The killings are well organised. He’s keeping them somewhere … watching them die slowly.’

  ‘Or he leaves them and comes back when he thinks they’re dead.’

  ‘Oh no, I think he likes to watch them. There’s something sick about all this.’ Joe pushed his plate away. Suddenly he’d lost his appetite.

  ‘Forensic haven’t come up with anything to indicate where he keeps them till they die,’ he said. ‘However, traces of wood shavings – oak to be precise – were found on both bodies. It’s good quality wood but I’m told it’s readily available.’

  ‘They’re kept in a sawmill? Or somewhere furniture’s made? Or coffins. An undertaker’s?’

  ‘Could be anything. But I’ve got people checking it out. Just our luck if the killer turns out to be a DIY enthusiast.’

  Emily sighed. ‘As far as I can see, every lead’s been covered and we’re no nearer to finding this lunatic than we were when Carla Yates’s body turned up four weeks ago. I’ve really jumped in at the bloody deep end, haven’t I?’ She suddenly looked unsure of herself, afraid. But the glimpse of vulnerability only lasted a split second.

  Joe gave his new DCI a sympathetic look. ‘You look as though you need another drink, boss. Want one?’

  Emily shook her head. ‘No. We’d better get back.’ She gave Joe a sly grin. ‘Or people might start talking.’

  Joe tried to ignore the remark but he felt his cheeks burning. He suspected that she was rather enjoying his embarrassment. She had a sense of mischief, he thought, which could come in useful in the gruelling days to come … if only to distract them from their failures.

  She stood up, her mouth set in a firm line, and looked at her watch. ‘We’d better get a move on,’ she said before making a beeline for the door.

  Joe followed her out of the crowded pub, weaving through the lunchtime drinkers, wondering fleetingly whether one of them might be the Resurrection Man. Killers, after all, look the same as anyone else.

  Carmel Hennessy arrived back at her flat at six.

  It had been a satisfactory day, as far as she could tell. She had demonstrated the basic techniques of dating fragments of pottery to a group of visitors and they had looked interested – or perhaps they were just being polite. Anyway, Carmel had carried on regardless because that was what she was being paid for. She knew she was lucky to have the job, especially in a place like Eborby where the relics of previous generations were all around you. Coming back to a lonely flat, miles from friends and family, was a price worth paying – at least for now.

  So much talking had left her mouth dry and on her way home she had found herself dreaming of a hot mug of tea like a parched man dreams of water in the desert. As she passed the newsagent’s in the little tree-shaded square between the Fleshambles and Marigate, she noticed a board outside bearing the words ‘Resurrection Man latest’ in scrawled black marker pen but she hurried on without buying a paper. There were some things she preferred not to think about.

  She took the quickest route home. She knew the way now. When she’d first arrived in Eborby she’d often got lost in the labyrinth of winding streets. But now they’d become familiar, with their quaint pubs and their quirky little shops. She stopped and gazed in the window of an antique shop at a Moorcroft vase which she knew only too well she couldn’t afford – not on her salary. Then she carried on down the street, the golden towers of the cathedral always in view, peeping over the rooftops like a beacon to guide the lost.

  When at last she reached Vicars Green, she let herself in with her Yale key and made her way up the steep, carpeted stairs, glancing at the door to the ground-floor flat as she passed. Peta Thewlis had said that Carmel’s downstairs neighbour was a quiet old gentleman who’d once had some connection with the cathedral. Carmel wondered whether she should call and introduce herself. It might reassure the old gentleman to know that somebody friendly was living upstairs … and make her feel as if she wasn’t absolutely alone in that place with only the domestic ghosts for company.

  As soon as Carmel reached the top of the stairs she realised that she had forgotten to check if there was any post in the oak letter box fixed to the back of the front door. Not that she was expecting anything important but you never know. Fortune might be smiling in the shape of some invitation or letter from an old friend. Or frowning in the form of a bill.

  She hurried back down the stairs and flipped open the lid of the box marked with a large number two, the number of her flat. There were three letters inside. The first was a credit card statement which Carmel stuffed into her pocket, intending to face the awful truth once she’d been fortified by a mug of tea. The second was a letter from her mother enclosing a cutting from her local paper about the glorious deeds of one of her old sixth form college classmates, a young woman who had trekked through the Himalayas for charity in between setting up her own web design company and raising money for some Eastern European orphanage. Carmel had never liked the girl and she seethed with feelings of her own inadequacy as she reread the letter, trying to read between the bland lines.

  There was no mention of her stepfather but that was hardly surprising. Carmel had been close to her father – until a bullet had taken him away from her for good – and she had resented Steve, the interloper, from the moment her mother – a widow of less than one year – had brought him home and introduced him to her like a coy teenager. Steve could never be a match for her father, Kevin, the policeman hero who’d died in the line of duty. And Carmel – with the judgemental certainty of the young who have never known loneliness and grief – had almost despised her mother for accepting second best. She put her mother’s letter aside and picked up the third envelope.

  The address was handwritten, something increasingly rare in the era of junk mail and statements churned out by distant computers. Carmel was about to tear it open when she noticed the name on the front. Miss Janna Pyke. The writing, in bright blue ink, had a certain flourish about it and the thick, cream-coloured envelope looked expensive. She stared at it, turning the envelope over in her hands, wondering who Janna Pyke might be. Perhaps she was the last tenant – Peta Thewlis had never mentioned her name, referring to her only as ‘she’. She would ask Peta the next day at work if the opportunity presented itself.

  After replacing the letter in the wooden box, Carmel made her way upstairs and opened the door. The flat was just as she’d left it. Clean and tidy. But she always felt slightly apprehensive when she arrived home, remembering what she had seen when Peta had first showed her round the place. Peta had evaded Carmel’s inevitable questions about the smashed lock. The last tenant, she said, had left without paying the rent and her things had been put up in the loft, the implication being that the errant tenant had returned and broken in to retrieve her possessions. But Carmel hadn’t been altogether convinced. She’d sensed that Peta had been holding something back. Maybe something she’d rather keep hidden.

  Carmel made herself a cup of tea and switched on the TV to catch the local news. The sound of voices made the flat seem less empty but the news was hardly cheerful. The police were appealing for more information about the last movements of the Resurrection Man’s two victims. Their naked bodies had been dumped in country churchyards and the very thought made Carmel shudder. As both victims had lived in Eborby, it was too close to home for comfort.

  She watched the news to the end before switching off the TV and making herself a microwaved baked potato
, topped with half a can of tuna – it was hard to put much effort into cooking for one. As soon as she’d finished her solitary meal, she was seized by a sudden need to speak to another human being; anyone who’d make her feel less alone. The faint sound of a TV was drifting up through the floor from the flat below. Perhaps it was time she made the acquaintance of her neighbour.

  Careful to lock the flat door behind her, Carmel made her way down the stairs, her heart thumping and her hands tingling with nerves as they always did when she was faced with new people or situations. It was something she put down to the shock of losing her father so suddenly and so violently at the age of fourteen. But over the years she’d found ways to conceal her terror of the unknown and by the time she had reached the hallway she was wearing a friendly, confident expression, hiding the fear inside.

  She took a deep breath and knocked on the door of the downstairs flat. Her excuse for calling was going to be the letter addressed to Janna Pyke. She would ask her neighbour if Janna Pyke was indeed the last tenant of Flat 2 and, if she was, whether there was any forwarding address. She stood at the door with her speech prepared and waited.

  After a few moments the door opened slowly with a sinister creak: the hinges needed oiling. The elderly man who stood on the threshold was tall with a shock of white hair and the face of a gentle eagle. He wore a checked shirt, grey trousers, tweed tie and new-looking carpet slippers on his feet – and he assessed Carmel warily, as though he was unsure whether to greet her with friendliness or hostility.

  ‘Sorry to bother you. My name’s Carmel Hennessy. I’ve just moved in upstairs.’ She knew she was speaking too quickly, her well-rehearsed words coming out in a gush. ‘Er, I hope I don’t disturb you. I try to keep my music and TV quiet. You must tell me if it ever …’

  The initial suspicion vanished from the man’s face. ‘Oh no. I can assure you, I’ve heard nothing.’ He stood aside. ‘Please … please come in. I’m Conrad Peace. Delighted to meet you.’ He held out a large hand, mottled with brown liver spots. When Carmel shook it, she was struck by how soft it was. This man was no horny-handed son of toil. In fact by the look of his long, sensitive fingers, Carmel guessed he might have once been an artist or a musician. He looked friendly, benevolent and certainly unthreatening, and Carmel suddenly felt silly for being so afraid.