by Jo Bannister
‘All right,’ said Daniel, not quite steadily. ‘Good. You’ve made your choice. I don’t suppose you can forget this happened, but you can make a conscious decision to put it behind you. For what it’s worth, I think you’re right not to tell Jack. If nothing happened there’s nothing to tell: you’d be hurting him for no good reason.’
Brodie squirmed. ‘He may have guesed there’s a problem. I let him think it was that time of the month, but even Jack started wondering after three weeks.’ Daniel chuckled and Brodie cast him a wry grin. ‘Listen: I’ll sort this out. I feel better for talking to you about it. I always feel better for talking to you. I guess that’s why …’ She stopped abruptly.
He knew he probably shouldn’t ask. ‘Why what?’
‘Why it never occurs to Jack there could be another man in my life. He thinks there already is.’
By Monday afternoon Norman Wilmslow the builder was already having a difficult week.
His seventeen-year-old son Jason had looked at him with a new respect when he mentioned one suppertime, between passing the salt and declining to fund a round-the-world trip in a gap year between doing nothing and doing nothing with a sun-tan, that he’d won the contract to renovate Jared Fry’s house up on the Downs. The only-begotten Wilmslow had volunteered to mix cement and push wheel-barrows for a few days in the hope of meeting the demon rocker, until he realised Fry wouldn’t arrive for weeks, at which point honest toil lost its appeal.
Until Wilmslow happened to remark that Fry had now moved in and given instructions for the building of a swimming pool. Nothing more was said, but Jason appeared at breakfast on Monday morning and by eight o’clock was waiting in the pick-up with his guitar on his knee. The builder said nothing. However much Jason wanted to be discovered – snatched away from his home, his family and the occasional urge to get a job, and projected into an alien world of raw music, rapacious women and foreign travel – his father wanted it more.
But immediately the work began he hit problems. Excavating beside the stables as per instructions he found both pipes and cables. He tried digging a few metres out into the garden and hit the septic tank, which was not where it was shown on the deeds. He looked around. Digging too close to the house would risk disturbing the foundations, which on old buildings can be a bit rudimentary. Mostly what kept The Diligence up was habit. Anything which caused the ground to dry and shrink, or to get wetter and swell, could have disastrous consequences.
Most of the day passed in bad-tempered consultations with the client, the surveyor and the building control officer. Wilmslow remained phlegmatic. It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t his house, and it was only his problem if he was getting paid for it to be. Finally the decision was taken to relocate the pool further down the garden, far enough from the house that there should be no associated structures lurking under the soil. It would mean piping the water further, but Fry would be able to swim without fear of the gable-end of his house falling on his head. While Jason strummed hopefully in the back of the pick-up, Wilmslow began to dig.
You need a big hole for a swimming pool. Long before there was a deep end Wilmslow had shut down the digger and he, Jason, the surveyor and everyone else on the site were peering into the gritty trench.
‘Hm,’ said the surveyor. ‘Well, you know what that is, don’t you?’
Norman Wilmslow nodded glumly. ‘That’s my crew sitting on their arses for the next three days, that’s what that is.’
‘Shall I call the police?’
If he’d been here alone the builder would have been tempted to fill in the hole and try again somewhere else. He probably wouldn’t have done it, but he would have been tempted. ‘Go on then. Tell them we’ve got a body.’
Given the age and history of The Diligence, Detective Superintendent Jack Deacon thought there was every chance the murderer had escaped justice by three hundred years. It wouldn’t be the first time a murder squad had been assembled only to be shooed off the site by archaeologists. It wouldn’t be the first time a murder squad had been assembled to investigate the death of a sheep.
But as soon as he moved through the screens he knew it wasn’t a sheep. He didn’t think it was archaeology either. The remains were skeletonised and there was nothing identifiable as clothing, but to his policeman’s eye – which was less scientific than other tools at his disposal but could see the whole picture and make an informed guess in a way that, say, a proton magnetometer could not – the grave just looked too new. Not a week last Wednesday new, but not fifty years old.
‘One for me?’ he asked the Forensic Medical Examiner.
Dr Roy, a big man in baggy white coveralls, straightened up and nodded. “Fraid so. She’s been here a few years, but probably no longer than you’ve been in Dimmock.’
‘It’s a woman?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Roy, ‘and no.’
Aditya Roy was the bane of Deacon’s life. Not because he wasn’t a good FME: he was. He was meticulous, intelligent, articulate and helpful. Deacon knew FMEs so fresh from medical school they knew less about cadavers than the policemen they were advising, and others so set in their ways they hadn’t opened a textbook in years. He knew of some who were clever and didn’t want anyone to know, and others who were deeply ignorant and underlined the fact every time they opened their mouths.
Dr Roy wasn’t any of these things. But he was incurably jolly, and though Deacon wasn’t the most sensitive soul on the planet even he cringed sometimes when the big Asian speculated on the tragic last moments of some poor soul’s existence as if commentating on a village cricket match. He laughed often, gesticulated, made inappropriate witticisms – mainly because there are so few appropriate ones – and would one day hold up a skull and shout, ‘Howzat?’
And today he wanted Deacon to search Missing Persons for hermaphrodites? ‘What do you mean?’ asked the detective with heavy patience.
Roy smiled sunnily, untroubled by Deacon’s glower. ‘I mean, she may have been a young woman or she may have been a teenage girl. It’s not a fully mature skeleton.’
‘How did she die?’
‘Not sure yet. There are no obvious injuries. I’ll know better when I’ve cleaned her up.’
‘But we’re probably talking about murder?’
Roy shrugged white plastic shoulders. ‘Couldn’t say, Superintendent. People do commit suicide. Of course, they don’t often bury themselves in an unmarked grave afterwards.’
Deacon reminded himself that over the next two days this man would give him most of the information he needed to work out who the girl was, how she came to be buried here and who was responsible. As long as he kept that firmly in mind he could resist the urge to hit Roy with a plank.
In the trench opened by Wilmslow’s digger, Sergeant Mills – the Scenes of Crime Officer – was already on his hands and knees, scooping samples into little bottles and evidence bags and labelling them. Neither man needed Deacon’s help. All they asked was to be left to get on with their jobs. ‘Let me know as soon as you’ve got anything,’ said Deacon.
Detective Sergeant Voss had gathered everyone at The Diligence in the big kitchen: the builders, Fry, his housekeeper and PA, a couple of gardeners and someone called Mike who was wiring up a sound studio. He’d spoken to each of them but expected the superintendent would want to question them in more detail. So he was surprised when Deacon stuck his head through the kitchen door and said, ‘Wrap it up, Charlie Voss, we’re heading back to town.’
‘Er – fine,’ said Voss, shutting his notebook. ‘OK, everyone, thanks for your help. We know where to find you if we’ve any more questions.’
Once in the car he said to Deacon, ‘You don’t think any of them’s involved, then?’
Deacon shook his head. ‘She’s been there too long. Fry’s been here a month and the builders not much longer. We should be talking to people who were at The Diligence in the late nineties.’
‘I’ll get a list together.’
‘Don’t trouble yo
urself, Charlie Voss, I know someone who already has one.’ As he turned for Dimmock Deacon added, with what can only be described as a smirk, ‘And I mean that in the Biblical sense.’
When Deacon told her that evening what had been found at The Diligence, Brodie’s immediate reaction was to be glad she’d cashed the cheque as soon as she got it. She didn’t see how this could be considered her fault. But if Jared Fry already blamed her for not guessing that, along with the items on his long list of requirements, he’d meant to include a swimming pool, perhaps he’d feel that the removal of sitting tenants before completion was also her responsibility.
‘Who was she?’ she asked. ‘Have you any idea?’
Deacon shrugged. ‘When Roy can tell me a bit more about her I’ll look for a match from Missing Persons. Until then the goal’s too wide. All I know for sure is that she’s been there longer than the present owner – so if you’re worried I’m about to arrest your client, relax. There is something you can do for me, though. I need details on all the people who lived at The Diligence until you made them offers they couldn’t refuse.’
Brodie thought for a moment, but there was no reason she shouldn’t help. The information was a matter of public record, she was only saving him – or more likely Charlie Voss – the trouble of collecting it. Moreover, a girl was dead. There were times when she had to remind Deacon she didn’t work for him, but this wasn’t one of them. ‘You stay with Paddy while I nip back to the office.’
Deacon wasn’t a man who was comfortable with children, even sleeping ones. ‘I’ll come too. Marta’ll sit with Paddy.’
Marta Szarabeijka in the upstairs flat would always sit with Paddy, even if she had better things to do. And it was an opportunity to do a little fence-mending.
From her desk Brodie called up the Diligence file and printed off the list of former owners while Deacon sat on her sofa, filling it.
He glanced at the list but the names meant nothing to him. He folded it into his pocket. But he didn’t get up and head for the door. He was waiting for her to ask what was on his mind.
Brodie knew what was on his mind and didn’t really want to broach it. They hadn’t talked much recently. He wanted to know why and she didn’t want to tell him. She hoped her restlessness would pass and leave them where they were before, comfortable with a relationship which – surprising as it was to on-lookers – had met both their needs for nine months now. She knew Deacon: when he mood passed he wouldn’t enquire too deeply into the reasons for it. She left the desk and squeezed onto the sofa beside him, and wished he’d stop thinking and jump her bones.
He hadn’t got to be a detective superintendent without developing an instinct for secrets. He had the scent of one now. But he knew better than to corner her. ‘Typical, isn’t it? I’ve seen nothing of you for three months because of all the time you’ve spent at The Diligence. And I’m going to see nothing of you now because of all the time I’ll be spending there.’
He saw a flicker of disappointment cross Brodie’s face; which would have pleased him but for the knowledge that – this being Brodie – it should have been more than a flicker of annoyance. She was tiptoeing round him. That had never been part of their relationship before and he wanted to know why. ‘What?’
‘I was hoping we might go out some evening. It seems ages.’
‘It is ages,’ he agreed, a shade gruffly. ‘But not because I’ve been too busy.’
‘I know.’ Her smile had a wistful quality. ‘It was a big deal for me – not just for the commission but for the contacts it might bring. I had to pull out all the stops.’
Deacon knew about pulling out stops. More than once he’d left Brodie alone in a restaurant and run out the door so quickly he’d left her with the bill. He had no right to criticise.
That didn’t stop him. He shrugged dismissively. ‘A nice fat cheque and some good contacts is what pulls your chain. Well, a body in the ground pulls mine.’
‘Of course.’ Brodie let her gaze drop to her lap, leaving Deacon feeling he’d somehow won a battle and lost a war.
He backtracked awkwardly. ‘Mind, it’s different when the killer fled the scene anything up to ten years ago. Er – when you saw Marta, did she ask you to hurry back?’
‘No.’
‘She didn’t say she was heading out anywhere?’
‘No.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded and just went on sitting there.
A slow smile spread across Brodie’s features. ‘Why?’
‘Stay with me tonight.’
Chapter Seven
By Tuesday afternoon Dr Roy had firmer information on the girl at The Diligence.
‘She was aged between eighteen and twenty-five and 163 centimetres in height – about five foot five; lightly built, with short fair hair – natural, not dyed – and good teeth. Good for her,’ he added with an avuncular smile Deacon could hear all the way across town, ‘not for you, because you’re not going to identify her from dental records.’
‘DNA?’
‘That won’t tell you who she was, only if you’re right when you find a candidate.’
‘How did she die?’
‘I’m not sure. The soft tissue is gone so the only injuries I’m going to see are those serious enough to affect the skeleton. Knife-cuts on the bones, fractures, that sort of thing. All I’ve found so far is some minor damage in the right temple area. I doubt it killed her but it might suggest she was involved in a struggle. It might only suggest that she walked into a door.’
‘You don’t bury people in secret because they walked into a door!’ Deacon said forcibly.
‘Not usually,’ agreed Roy, cheerfully unabashed. ‘Superintendent, I don’t know how she died but I can tell you some ways she didn’t. She wasn’t the victim of a frenzied attack with either a blunt or sharp instrument. She wasn’t pushed off a building or run down by a car. She wasn’t strangled, she wasn’t burned, she wasn’t in an explosion …’
Deacon scowled at his phone. ‘Are you saying she may not have been murdered?’
The FME clucked at him. ‘You know that isn’t my province. She could certainly have been murdered. She could have been asphyxiated – by gas, smothering or drowning. Someone could have stabbed her really carefully so that she bled to death. The blow to the head may have been to stun her so the killer could take his time. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m going to know. I don’t think this body’s going to tell me much more.’
His tone brightened. ‘Except maybe where she came from. I’m running a test that’ll give us some idea where she grew up.’
Deacon appreciated the help he got from the forensic laboratory but not understanding how it all worked made him uneasy. You shout at a man until he tells you the truth, you know where you stand. But all this business of atoms and elements and Therefore you’re looking for a left-handed Irish Guard with a fondness for cheroots, Superintendent – it was all black magic to him. ‘You’ll be able to say where she grew up before you know who she was?’
‘Probably,’ said Roy. ‘The proportions of certain elements in the environment vary from place to place. These differences are recorded in our teeth. We can take a thin section from a tooth and be fairly sure that this person came from the south coast and that one came from the Welsh borders. Of course, it’s harder when people feed their kids baked beans and fish-fingers rather than local produce. But it’s pretty difficult to avoid the local water. I’ll get you an idea of where she came from – at least if she was local or not.’
‘When?’
‘Leave it with me,’ said Roy; as if Deacon had a choice.
‘The other thing I need pretty soon is when she died.’
It was the question policemen always ask and FMEs hate answering. Science is about trends, not moments: to a detective the moment is everything. Roy did his best. ‘The grave fauna are proving helpful’ – Deacon was horribly afraid he meant maggots – ‘but you’ll have to be patient while I work out what they’re telling us. If
you want my best guess, she’s been there between five and ten years. If you want science you’ll have to wait a little longer.’
Deacon knew things about this girl now that he hadn’t half an hour ago. Enough to call up the long sad lists of missing persons and rule out most of the people on them. A young woman in her late teens or early twenties, of average height, with short fair hair and good teeth. Though this was his job and he didn’t get emotionally involved, he was aware that there was a middle-aged couple out there somewhere who, before this week was out, would have the news they’d been waiting for, and dreading, for years. ‘OK, Dr Roy, thanks for your help. Get back to me if there’s anything new.’
‘Rest assured,’ said Aditya Roy jovially, setting Deacon’s teeth on edge.
Brodie lived in fear that one day Mrs Campbell-Wheeler would discover the junk-shop at the top of Fisher Hill; or else that Miss Timoney who ran the junk-shop would learn of Mrs Campbell-Wheeler. Because at that point Brodie would lose what’s known in the trade as a nice little earner.
She’d got away with it thus far because the women moved in different circles. Mrs Campbell-Wheeler didn’t go to junk shops. Mrs Campbell-Wheeler didn’t even go to antique shops. She occasionally went to antique galleries, but that was all right because there wasn’t an antique gallery on the south coast that would let Edith Timoney through the door.
She looked like a tramp. She looked, in fact, like a mad tramp, in her twin-set of ill-matched woollies, the cardigan always buttoned up wrong, and her ancient kilt that ended two inches of grubby ankle above where her men’s socks began. On her feet were either galoshes or trainers, depending on the season. Her long grey hair was usually tied up with a scarf though at different times Brodie had seen a row of beads, a length of upholstery fringe and a piece of orange baler-twine pressed into service. She claimed to have Romany blood. It may have been true, though if she had the aquiline features of the true Gypsy they were hidden under the doughy complexion of a pie-eating champion from Wigan.
