Seeking the Dead

by Kate Ellis

  ‘And Jane?’

  ‘She admitted it … eventually.’

  ‘What happened to the teacher?’

  ‘They said he could go back but he never did and I can’t say I blame him. I heard he got a job at another school.’

  ‘Do you remember the teacher’s name?’

  Gemma thought for a while. ‘Timmons … Mr Timmons.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He were right dishy, like I said. Tall and blond. He were all right.’

  ‘Not once Jane Pyke had got her claws into him he wasn’t,’ mattered Joe under his breath.

  The shop at the Archaeology Centre sold strange and fascinating things: things unavailable on your average high street, such as reproduction Roman Samian ware bowls and imitation medieval tapestries, reduced to a size that would fit into the modern home. Carmel Hennessy loved this Aladdin’s cave of unusual treasures but the only things she had purchased there so far were a small stone gargoyle for her mother’s birthday and some wrapping paper decorated with medieval script.

  On her way from the office to the education room, she halted at the shop’s entrance, full of curiosity. A pair of uniformed constables were talking to the girl at the counter. Normally, Carmel would have assumed there were problems with shoplifters or dodgy credit cards, but she knew they’d come about the murders. The thought that the Resurrection Man had used the shop’s distinctive carrier bags to dispose of his victims’ clothing made her shudder. It meant the killer was close at hand. It could be anyone: one of the archaeologists, perhaps; or one of the men who dressed in costume to demonstrate ancient crafts to the visitors; or the friendly security man who always bade everyone a cheery goodnight at the end of each day. It could be any one of them. And the thought brought a chill to her heart.

  It was coming up to lunchtime and she was starting to develop a headache. If she nipped back to her flat, took a couple of paracetamol and lay down for half an hour, she knew she’d be OK.

  As she hurried toward the entrance, Peta Thewlis came out of her office. Her face was pinched and drawn as though she’d not slept, but then there were police crawling all over the place asking questions and wanting to see sales records and CCTV footage. Peta was in charge so it wasn’t surprising that she was feeling the strain.

  Carmel walked back to the flat, hoping the fresh air might clear her head. But the narrow streets were packed and the hubbub of noise trapped in by the shops’ overhanging upper storeys only made the throbbing in her temples worse. When she reached the quieter expanse of Vicars Green she walked across the grass, making straight for number five, her key to the ready.

  But as she opened the front door she sensed that something wasn’t right. The door to Conrad Peace’s flat stood open and she could hear a sound – a faint moaning like a small animal in pain. Her headache suddenly forgotten, she stepped over the threshold, calling Conrad’s name, softly at first, then louder.

  The sound seemed to be coming from the living room. Carmel took a deep breath and pushed the door open. There, on the floor in the small neat room, she saw Conrad Peace lying on the patterned carpet, curled up in the foetal position, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow, a set of keys clutched in his hand as though he had collapsed as soon as he had reached the safety of home.

  Carmel took a step towards him. ‘Conrad. Are you all right?’ She knew as soon as the words had left her lips that it was a stupid question.

  The man moaned softly and moved his hand a little. Carmel leaned over and touched his wrist, feeling for a pulse. Being no expert in medical matters, she reckoned he was alive but only just, so she mumbled something banal and soothing and searched for a telephone. She needed an ambulance.

  The drama of the situation having driven her headache away, she waited with the old man, talking to him gently, unwilling to leave his side in case he took a turn for the worse. She guessed that he had suffered some sort of stroke or heart attack and she glanced at her watch every few seconds, wondering what was keeping the emergency services.

  Suddenly it struck her that she should tell Elizabeth. She would want to know as soon as possible and, she thought with a twinge of guilt, it would take the responsibility off her shoulders. Leaving the patient’s side, she hurried into the living room and, as luck would have it, she found a battered address book lying by the telephone. As she began to turn the pages, she realised she didn’t know Elizabeth’s surname, but she gambled on her number being either at the front in a place of importance or under E for Elizabeth. Fortunately she was right on the second count. Elizabeth’s name was there beside two numbers, one with the word ‘work’ in brackets beside it.

  She guessed Elizabeth would be at the hospital at this hour of the day, so she dialled the work number and a female voice answered.

  ‘Is that Elizabeth?’

  ‘She’s just popped out of the office. Can I take a message?’

  Carmel hesitated. Should she blurt out the whole story to this stranger or should she wait and tell Elizabeth direct?

  ‘When do you think she’ll be back?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s around somewhere. She shouldn’t be long.’

  This decided Carmel. She would wait to break the news. ‘Can you ask her to ring me back as soon as possible on her uncle’s number. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Hang on. I’m just trying to find some paper.’ Carmel heard the scraping of wood on wood as a drawer opened. ‘OK. Go ahead.’

  ‘My name’s Carmel Hennessy and I live at five Vicars Green.’ She recited the phone number. ‘Please get her to call me. Tell her it’s very urgent.’ She could hear the girl – she presumed it was a girl as the voice sounded remarkably youthful – repeating her words as she wrote them down carefully. ‘Carmel Hennessy. Five Vicars Green. Urgent.’

  Carmel, suddenly doubting the girl’s reliability, thought she’d better have another go at emphasising the importance of her call. ‘Look, can you try and find her. Like I said, it’s really very urgent.’

  The girl hesitated. ‘OK. I’ll do that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Carmel, hoping the girl would keep her word. As she replaced the receiver, she heard the shriek of the ambulance siren. Then, just as she was letting the paramedics into the flat, the phone began to ring. Her message to Elizabeth had got through.

  Emily was out of the office. She was attending a press conference, urging anyone with any information about the Resurrection Man murders to come forward. Appeals like that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. But it was worth a try. Someone was out talking to everyone employed by the Archaeology Centre and Sunny was following up the supplier of the carrier bags. Things were moving. Joe Plantagenet only hoped they were moving in the right direction.

  When he returned to the incident room, he found Jamilla sitting staring at a TV screen, her chin resting on her hands, a glazed look in her eyes.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  She glanced up, then returned her gaze to the screen. ‘CCTV footage from a shop that was on Carla Yates’s route home. We were lucky to get it. Someone had shoved some of the old tapes at the back of a cupboard so they weren’t recorded over.’

  ‘Seen anything interesting?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Keep up the good work,’ he said lightly before making for his desk.

  On his way he passed the open door of Emily’s office and peeped in, just in case she’d returned from her press conference without letting him know. He wanted to tell someone what he’d discovered from Gemma about Janna Pyke’s background … although he really couldn’t see that it was relevant that she’d made some teacher’s life a misery all those years ago.

  The office was empty but the sight of children’s pictures on the wall made him smile. There had been two new additions to DCI Thwaite’s little art gallery: a creature that bore a passing resemblance to a rabbit and a figure with yellow hair and an unnaturally large head labelled ‘Mummy’.

  Then it struck him like a thunderbolt
. The young artists’ full names were printed underneath this new handiwork. Matthew Timmons and Daniel Timmons. Timmons. Emily’s surname was Thwaite. But then women often kept their unmarried names in their professional life. According to Gemma, Jane Pyke had persecuted a teacher called Timmons in Leeds. Emily’s husband was a teacher. And she had come to Eborby from Leeds.

  His heart beat faster. He had to speak to her. He had to ask her if her husband was the man Jane Pyke persecuted. But he must be. Joe didn’t believe in coincidences. And Emily had seemed worried recently … ever since Janna Pyke’s body had turned up.

  Jamilla interrupted his thoughts. ‘Sir. I think I’ve found something.’ There was a hint of excitement in her voice which made Joe hurry over to her desk.

  ‘What is it?’

  Jamilla pressed a button and the picture rolled forward slowly, frame by frame. ‘I think that’s Carla Yates. Look.’

  ‘You’re right. I recognise the clothes.’ Carla Yates was hurrying down a street that Joe recognised as Goldgate, a street of cut-price stores and heavy traffic just outside the city’s pedestrianised area. She was walking purposefully, clutching her shoulder bag as though she feared it might be snatched at any moment. Joe couldn’t make out the expression on her face but the body language told him that she intended to head straight for her destination. No stopping; no deviation. The pub where she spent her last evening was nearby and she was on the exact route Joe would have expected anyone to take who was heading for the Museum Gardens to catch the Hasledon bus. But as Jamilla let the tape roll in slow motion, he spotted something. A white transit van parked at the side of the road. A few seconds after Carla had passed it and had disappeared from the camera’s range, the van began to move after her very slowly, almost at a crawl.

  ‘That’s it,’ Jamilla whispered. ‘The van. It’s following her.’

  Joe reran the tape. It certainly looked that way. ‘

  But if the killer’s in the van, we still don’t know whether he’s targeting her or whether he’s just been waiting for any likely-looking victim to come by. If it was that van he must have followed the bus … waited till she got off and …’ Joe stared at the screen. ‘Is that something on the side of the van?’

  ‘There is something but I can’t tell what it is.’

  Jamilla let the tape roll forward a few frames. ‘There. It looks like the edge of a letter but the rest of it seems to be covered up by something.’ She leaned forward. ‘I can just see the outline of the driver.’

  ‘Is it my eyes or has he got a good head of hair?’

  Jamilla smiled. ‘Certainly looks like it.’

  ‘Could it be a woman?’

  Jamilla frowned. ‘A woman couldn’t do that. Surely.’

  Joe said nothing. He knew that in this world anything was possible, any evil, any depravity. And the female of the species wasn’t exempt. But somehow this didn’t seem like a woman’s crime. And whoever manoeuvred the bodies around and dumped them in churchyards had to be physically strong … powerful even. Unless he – or she – had help.

  He looked at his watch. He had rung first thing to check when Dr Oakley would be available to talk about Gloria Simpson. He was awaiting a call to say the doctor was free but he wanted to speak to Emily first – to put his mind at rest.

  ‘See if there are any cameras on Boargate,’ he told Jamilla. ‘Some of them might have picked up Janna Pyke’s last journey.’

  Jamilla nodded, resigned to more tedious viewing.

  Joe waited in the office for Emily’s return. He needed to talk to her, to find out whether her husband was the same Timmons who’d been involved with Jane Pyke in Leeds. But before he had the opportunity, he received a call from Dr Oakley to say that he was available at last. He hadn’t been an easy man to corner, busy as he was with his patients and the hospital’s bureaucracy. However, when Joe told him that he had some important information, something he should know, he was happy to spare him ten minutes.

  This time Joe made sure he was parked in a legal space – he had no wish to relive the humiliating experience of being clamped. When he arrived at Dr Oakley’s office, the seat normally occupied by the doctor’s secretary was vacant and Joe had to give a bold rap on the psychiatrist’s office door to announce his arrival.

  Oakley shook his hand heartily and invited him to sit down and make himself comfortable.

  ‘Elizabeth, my secretary’s been called away, I’m afraid – a family emergency – but I’ll see if I can track down a cup of tea,’ he said, making for the door before Joe could protest that tea wasn’t necessary. But Oakley appeared again after a couple of minutes with a ‘mission accomplished’ smile on his face but no cups.

  ‘Now then,’ he said as he sat down again. ‘You said you had important information for me.’

  Joe proceeded to relate George Merryweather’s discovery. ‘I think that’s why Gloria Simpson reacted the way she did when John Wendal introduced himself – she associated him with this historic Jack Devilhorn whose real name was Wendal. Do you agree?’

  Oakley’s eyes flickered with something akin to recognition. Then he rearranged his features into a mask of neutrality and nodded sagely. ‘I think it’s very possible.’ He paused for a few moments, staring at the pen resting in his hand. ‘I’m beginning to gain Gloria’s trust at last and she told me …’ He suddenly stopped, as though he’d just remembered the small problem of patient confidentiality. ‘Well, of course I can’t repeat what she said but …’

  ‘Was a place called the Black Hen mentioned?’

  Oakley raised his eyebrows. ‘It might have been.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking she’d witnessed something there? And that she received threats to ensure her silence?’

  ‘Possibly’ was the tantalising answer.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Traumatised. But we hope that given time and the right medication …’

  Joe had a sudden thought. ‘Have you any other patients who are involved in the goings-on at the Black Hen?’

  Oakley expression gave nothing away. ‘I might have.’

  After taking out his notebook, Joe found the page on which he’d copied the symbol he’d found in Gloria’s flat. He pushed it across the desk towards the psychiatrist. ‘Is this symbol familiar?’

  Oakley hesitated, then nodded. ‘I’ve come across it on a number of occasions, yes.’

  ‘Through your patients?’

  There was a long silence before Oakley spoke. ‘I can’t give details, of course, but a few of my patients who have been involved in the occult seem to use it,’ he said with distaste. ‘I believe it’s a local symbol used by a certain kind of Satanism. Some appear to use it as a sort of badge and others seem terrified of it.’

  ‘Including Gloria Simpson?’

  ‘You know I can’t discuss individual patients, Inspector.’

  ‘Do you think it’s linked to the Black Hen?’

  There was another long pause. ‘Possibly.’

  They were interrupted by the arrival of a young woman bearing two cups of tea. As soon as Oakley had thanked her she told him that he had a patient waiting. He’d turned up early for his appointment.

  Joe spent a few minutes trying to tease more information out of Oakley without much success. If ever the questions became awkward, Oakley pleaded patient confidentiality. Resigned to the stalemate, Joe stood up to go as soon as he’d finished his tea.

  As he left the office, he saw a young man waiting outside, his shaved head bowed, staring at his trainers. Joe sneaked a surreptitious look. The young man was tall and strong and his large hands bore the signs of manual labour. His hands and arms were decorated with a variety of self-inflicted tattoos. A skull, an inverted cross, a pentagram. Then Joe noticed that the skin on his right forearm was a mess of cuts and angry scabs as though he’d tried to obliterate one of his tattoos. Joe’s eyes were drawn to the injuries and he couldn’t help noticing that the shape of the affected area was similar to the symbol he’d just
been discussing with Dr Oakley.

  He was almost tempted to sit down beside the young man and ask him about it. But the man looked up and the pale-blue eyes that met his were blank and hostile. And there was something else behind his stare. Fear perhaps … Joe couldn’t tell.

  Emily Thwaite stared at the telephone for several minutes trying to summon the courage to call Pickby police station to ask if there had been a fight at the Drayman’s Arms the previous night. But she decided against it. There was no reason to suppose that another victim had been attacked on the night Jeff turned up with blood on his shirt … no reason at all. She was being stupid. She was letting her imagination run away with her. But the discovery that one of the Resurrection Man’s victims was Jane Pyke, the onetime scourge of Jeff’s life, had thrown her off balance.

  Jeff was her husband. She trusted him. However, in the course of her career she’d known enough model husbands who’d been driven to do unspeakable things. Emily had never actually met Jane Pyke in life but, from what she knew of her, she imagined that she could have driven a saint to murder. But even if Jane had made contact somehow and goaded Jeff again until he lost control, there was no way he could have harmed the others. They were innocent people. And then there was the way they were killed.

  She shook her head and opened the file that was lying in front of her on the desk. She must be crazy if she thought, even for one second, that Jeff was involved. But even so, it would probably be wise to keep quiet – not to mention his link with Jane Pyke to the rest of the team. The last thing Jeff needed was for the most traumatic time of his life to be resurrected, for old wounds to be picked at by probing questions until they became raw and painful once more. It would only complicate matters. Silence was best.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  Sunny Porter’s voice made her jump. She took a deep breath and looked up. ‘Yes, Sunny. What is it?’

  ‘I’ve been on to the company that makes the carrier bags for that Archaeology Centre. When they come off the production line they’re automatically wrapped in plastic in packs of a hundred or so. They don’t just have spare ones floating about. And besides, the firm’s in Manchester.’