Catch the Fallen Sparrow

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Or else,’ she prompted.

  ‘Or else the Leeches were lying.’

  ‘Exactly. But why would a respected MP lie and claim his house was broken into? Why call the police at all? And just where does the dead boy fit into all this?’

  She picked up the telephone directory, thumbed down the list of L’s until she came to A. Leech, Rock House ... But she was greeted only with a curt telephone message in a female voice to say that Gilly Leech was not in, at present, but would return the call as soon as was convenient.

  Joanna made a face at Mike. ‘Answerphone,’ she said, then glanced at her watch. ‘Now for the bit I hate. Press conference.’

  But it went better than she had hoped. The questions were predictable and easy. She found herself relieved that Caroline Penn was safely in London, working for a national newspaper. When she had worked locally she had always had an uncomfortable knack of asking the most awkward questions – the type of penetrating missiles that were the most difficult to evade. Without her the assembled Press were well behaved and contained their questions to the more acceptable. Who was the boy? How had he died? Did they have a description – of the boy, of the assailant? What did they know so far?

  And it was very little. But, as Joanna said to Mike later, twenty-four hours ago that boy was still alive.

  She asked the two detective constables to question the owners of the eight fish and chip shops in Leek. If he had eaten here last night it implied he had been in Leek, probably came from Leek. She would find him soon. The lunch-time edition of the Evening Sentinel reached Leek just after two. She had arranged for a photo-fit picture of the dead boy to fill the front page.

  Why had no one reported him missing yet?

  The Evening Sentinel was delivered to her office just before three and Joanna looked at it eagerly. This had to bring someone forward who had known the boy. She scoured the front page. The artist’s impression was excellent. This was how the boy must have looked when he was alive. There was a detailed description of his clothes. She ran her finger down the list. Yes, it was all there. She blessed the local reporters. This would find an identity. She grinned at Mike. ‘Are we betting?’ she asked. ‘Twenty-four hours and we have a name.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’ll find no takers. We’ll have his name.’ His face clouded. ‘Trouble is,’ he said, ‘we’ll have people who knew him – relatives.’

  She glanced back at the artist’s impression. ‘If he was loved,’ she said slowly, ‘why hasn’t anyone come forward? It’s struck me this case is all the wrong way round. Usually with children we are informed they are missing. We hunt and find a body – or not. It’s rare to find a child’s body without hunting for it.’

  Mike agreed.

  ‘So where are his parents?’

  ‘I suppose you think it’s funny – or clever.’ Mark Riversdale was confronting Jason and Kirsty in the kitchen of The Nest. ‘Not telling me he’d gone – again,’ he said in disgust. ‘How infantile can you get.’

  Neither of the teenagers said a word but glanced at each other. After a pause Mark carried on. ‘I suppose he’s gone off again.’ He wagged an index finger at them. ‘Where does he get to when he sets off like this?’

  Again, neither of them spoke.

  Mark sighed. ‘Well, at least tell me this – and I expect the truth. When did you last see him?’

  Jason heaved a long sigh. Wherever he was Dean would be safe now. He, Jason, had bought him twenty-four hours to get where he was going. Covering for him wouldn’t help. He gave a quick glance at Mark Riversdale, and saw the warden was furious. ‘Yesterday morning, sir,’ he said.

  ‘So he could have been gone a day and a half. Thirty-six bloody hours. Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The warden looked sceptical. ‘You know,’ he growled. ‘You’re just not telling. Where is he?’

  The boy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know, sir,’ he repeated mechanically.

  Mark gave a loud sigh and a groan. ‘More damned paperwork,’ he said. ‘I really thought he’d stop absconding. I gave him a talking to last week. I thought we’d connected. He’s disappeared less in the last year. I was a fool to imagine he’d settle down. Kirsty,’ he appealed, ‘where is he?’

  As the girl stared at the floor he coaxed her.

  ‘Come on, love — you can tell me.’ Then his patience snapped. ‘Kirsty, when did you last see Dean?’

  ‘Yesterday morning,’ the girl said. ‘Early. I think he left early – before I was up anyway.’ She shrugged her shoulders and blinked. ‘I didn’t actually see him go.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You know Dean has been in trouble for absconding.’ He bit his lip. ‘And I suppose he wasn’t at school today?’

  Both teenagers shook their heads. There was no point trying to cover for him. Rivers would soon ring the school and find out he had skipped it.

  Mark Riversdale paused before leaving the kitchen. ‘What I’d like to know is where does he get to on these jaunts? Who looks after him? Someone does ... someone gives him things. They can’t all be nicked ...’

  As the door closed after him Jason looked at Kirsty. ‘Sue Whalley told me they found a body on the moors early this morning. It was a boy. Her dad told her. He’s a copper.’ His eyes grew round and frightened. ‘What if it’s Dean?’

  ‘Hah.’ Kirsty gave an explosive, disdainful sound. ‘It won’t be ’im. It won’t be the nipper. I never knew a kid what could look after ’imself better Dean –’e always lands on ’is feet. Bloody clever -for a little un.’

  Kirsty had a small, heart-shaped face, pale with freckles, but her prettiness was marred by a thin, mean mouth with an ugly twist to it. It twisted even more now. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘lands on ’is feet – every time. Lucky little bleeder.’

  Jason kicked the leg of the table thoughtfully. ‘Do you know what I fancy doin’?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ The girl looked only mildly interested.

  ‘Tattoin’ little Timmy.’

  ‘Old Man Rivers’ll kill you.’

  The boy kicked the leg of the table even harder. ‘Two more bloody years in this dump,’ he muttered. ‘Treat us like kids they do.’

  ‘And then what?’ the girl asked scornfully. ‘Two years – then what?’

  ‘A place of my own ... somewhere where no one’ll interfere.’

  It was the list of objects stolen that intrigued her. Why take a photograph album? Easily traced, valueless ... It was the same with the ring. She stared at it, the looped ‘A’ that ran into an equally flourishing ‘L’, watched by an almost Masonic eye. Why leave money and the easily sold things – television, video, cameras ... a clock. Damn, she thought. It didn’t make sense. But if the house had not been burgled why would a family call the police and report a burglary? Could they have been mistaken? Forgotten? She leafed through the report again. Then there was the broken glass.

  And now the ring had turned up on a murdered boy...

  She rolled her pen between her fingers.

  Mike wandered in and perched on the desk and she looked up at him. ‘There’s something funny about this.’ She indicated the report. ‘I can’t quite see the connection but I bet a pie and a pint that there is one.’

  He picked up the folder and nodded, then asked in a casual voice that didn’t fool her for a minute, ‘Where is Levin anyway?’

  ‘Cephalonia,’ she said sharply. ‘And he’s probably having a wonderful time.’ She met his eyes. ‘So can we drop the subject now?’

  Chapter Four

  Joanna fingered the folder but Mike’s question had conjured up an unwelcome image – Matthew on a family holiday with his daughter and his wife. She had met Jane Levin twice. The first time had been at a restaurant. She had burst in on them, her guilty husband and his mistress, vengeful, furious, mad with jealousy. Matthew had followed her home, a penitent sheep, leaving Joanna to pay the bill and abandon the restaurant under the curious gaze of the other diners. />
  The second time she had met Jane she had been under control, investigating the murder of a nurse. Matthew had been involved – more involved than he had at first admitted. She had had to question him further – and to save him embarrassment and suspicion, and herself from an unenviable ‘bringing him in for questioning’, she had driven to the farmhouse at the foot of the moors. There she had met Jane again ... Thin and unhappy-looking with a sharp edge to the clean and Nordic beauty that encased her like ice – and a child who mirrored her insecurity and clung to her like bindweed.

  Matthew’s wife she may have been but Joanna had never quite learned to hate her ...

  Mike was still watching her. ‘Thirteen hours,’ he said.

  ‘Thirteen hours since we found his body. And no one’s come forward. Why not?’

  ‘Maybe he hasn’t been missed,’ she ventured. ‘Parents away on holidays ... think he’s elsewhere – with a friend? I don’t know.’ She ran her fingers through her hair and frowned. ‘I don’t feel we can get anywhere in this investigation, Mike, until we know who he is. Somebody will come forward soon. Let’s clock off now,’ she suggested, ‘and have an early start in the morning. Maybe tomorrow will bring us an identity.’

  But tonight, as she neared home, she couldn’t face spending another evening alone. So instead of entering her own home she knocked on the next door, a stout old-panelled thing with a wrought-iron knocker.

  Tom Fairway opened it, still in his navy solicitor’s suit. He gave a broad grin when he saw her. ‘Jo,’ he said delightedly. ‘My prayers have been answered. A beauty has arrived to share my evening. Brilliant. Come in – have a drink.’

  Tom’s cottage was hazy with a warm smell of wood-smoke, and there were two deep armchairs either side of the fire. He poured two tall glasses of red wine and raised his glass to her with a grin.

  ‘What brilliant luck,’ he said. ‘I was just wishing for company. The night is young; I’ve a fresh salmon in the fridge, given by a grateful client impressed by my skills as a defence counsel.’ He glanced at her severely. ‘You know you lot really can be quite cruel to elderly gentlemen with clean licences ... You ought to pick on someone your own age and size ...’

  She let him rattle on, watching his thin, intelligent face, the gold-rimmed glasses that caught the light of the fire, his restless, fidgety hands that displayed his nervous quick personality. They had lived next door to one another for more than four years, had slept together just once and immediately realized they would remain friends for life but never make love again. It had intruded on a deep, close friendship. They had witnessed each other’s disastrous affairs, watched each other break hearts and have their own broken in turn. Tom’s particular Achilles’ heel was Caroline, recently removed to the London tabloid, with whom he had lived in uneasy turbulence for four years. Joanna’s had been Matthew Levin. While Tom had moved up the legal ladder to a senior position in Manchester she had taken the right exams, kissed the right hands and been rewarded with the title of Detective Inspector. And they had remained living with a thin wall separating their homes.

  It was not until their second glass of wine that Joanna broached the subject that had brought her here. He listened while she related all the details of the boy found on the moors.

  ‘I need your cleverness,’ she said.

  Immediately Tom set his glass down on the small occasional table to his side and settled back in his chair in what Joanna laughingly called his ‘Legal Position’. His thin face almost quivered with alertness and intelligence.

  ‘What is it?’ He studied her carefully. ‘Is it something to do with the case?’

  She nodded. ‘Why would someone fake a burglary?’ she asked.

  ‘That one’s easy, Jo,’ he said quickly. ‘People fake burglaries for financial gain.’ He stopped. ‘To claim off the insurance.’

  ‘But if they didn’t claim off the insurance? If the pieces were intrinsically valueless?’

  ‘I think,’ he said, then laughed, ‘this one’s more tricky. I would venture to suggest that there are one or two possible reasons. Either to explain the absence or presence of an object.’

  She looked at him. ‘Translate,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Well, either ... Either to explain the fact that something was missing,’ he said, ‘or to explain away the fact that it was in the possession of someone in whose possession it should not have been.’ He grinned. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so.’

  But her mind was still pondering that strange mix of objects.

  ‘And why hasn’t anyone come forward to claim the boy?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Tom said, ‘because no one knows he’s missing.’

  It was late in the day when Mike took the car out on the moor. He pulled up at the lay-by and stared out. Miles and miles of nothing. No houses or trees. Nowhere for anyone to hide – just the dark, menacing moor guarded by the craggy outcrop. And already, late on this gloomy September afternoon, the scene looked grey and menacing. A fitting setting for a violent crime, a graveyard of nature’s making. He shivered. Though it was warm in the town he knew the minute he swung open the car door the wind would almost tear it off its hinges and the damp chill rising from ground that never dried out, summer and winter alike, would seem to penetrate his bones. This scene had been his own private nightmare, uncharted ground, unexplored and remote. He had always visualized undiscovered bodies on this high ground.

  He got out of the car and immediately the elements beat around him. He walked slowly towards the navy van and found the uniformed police sergeant with his hands cupped round a beaker of steaming soup. He grinned and accepted one himself.

  The sergeant winked. ‘Courtesy of the publican,’ he said. ‘Reckon he has a guilty conscience?’

  Mike shook his head. ‘Probably nothing worse than serving after hours. Up here they seem to think the law doesn’t apply.’

  The sergeant peered through the windscreen of the van at the bleak surroundings. ‘You can see what they mean, can’t you? It seems a lawless sort of place.’

  Mike tightened his lips. ‘Nowhere is outside the law. The DI wants to know – have you found anything?’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘Hardly anything, sir. A couple of burnt-out matches, a plastic bottle that smelt of petrol. That’s been bagged. Those plastic bottles can be quite good at holding prints. That is, if he didn’t wear gloves.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Plenty of used Durexes. We didn’t find any recent tyre marks near here – and that is puzzling us. Am I right in thinking he was murdered elsewhere?’

  Mike frowned. ‘We can’t be absolutely sure. I’ll have to talk to DI Piercy about it. I do know from observation that the soles of his shoes looked clean. We don’t think he walked here. As soon as we get the forensic report in writing we’ll let you have it.’

  ‘Did you get a lead on the shoes yet, sir?’

  Mike shook his head. ‘Haven’t had a chance to speak to anyone about that yet,’ he said. ‘I was anxious to see whether you’d found anything.’

  The sergeant gave him a quick look. ‘We’d feel a lot happier if we knew who he was and how the hell he got up here.’ He sighed. ‘We haven’t found any tyre tracks that look recent and the ground’s soft. You’d have thought a car would have skidded ... maybe got stuck. We’ve got the soil samples. But ...’ he paused, ‘we could almost think he was dropped from above. We can’t see how he got here. It doesn’t make sense, sir and it’s nearly half a mile from the road. Carrying a dead body would have weighed him down.’

  Mike frowned and scratched his head. Then together the two policemen climbed the hill towards the point where pink plastic tape was marking an area. He looked down at the scorched, flattened grass, a short length, not much more than four feet. In a long line, stretching right across the hillside, the police were hunting for something – anything that would lead them to the ... he voiced the word ‘Bastard’... who had done this to the kid he had seen lying with a pale
face in the damp heather. Mike had a healthy, policeman’s dislike of the criminal, and as though in answer a sheet of heavy, grey rain suddenly blotted out the sky and thundered on to the moor.

  Chapter Five

  Alice sat at the edge of the cave early that morning, watching the figures in their clean white overalls as they combed the moist heather and scrub. She wrapped her topcoat around her and fastened it with the piece of string. The moors would yield little to their unpractised eyes. Only she and Jonathan were able to read the signs. She shifted a little; the wind was biting this morning. She pulled the scarf over her face. In the gloom of the dull day she looked like a huge, immobile scarecrow. The boy had already been dead when he was brought to his torching. Alice, Queen of the Roaches, held her hand over her eyes to shield a sudden glare – a hole in the low clouds and a silver streak of sunshine as though the Lord was offering a silver pathway for the boy’s soul to climb heavenwards. She turned to Jonathan. ‘I never seen so many people up here,’ she said. ‘It’s been a bad thing, the child being put here.’ Her voice took on a grumbling, self-pitying tone. ‘It’s took our privacy.’

  Jonathan too was crouched in the entrance to the cave. ‘They’ll be gone,’ he said, but Alice was not to be consoled.

  ‘And then the trippers will start,’ she said. ‘Lookin’ to see where the boy lay.’

  He too watched the men in their white suits hunt the ground. ‘Maybe you should tell them,’ he said gruffly.

  Alice turned on him fiercely. ‘Tell them what?’ she challenged.

  ‘What you saw.’

  She gave a sudden low laugh. ‘You don’t know what I saw, Jonathan. You was sleepin’.’

  ‘But I do know,’ he insisted, and he looked at her sideways, scratching the side of his mouth. ‘You saw it all, didn’t you?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What business is it of yours, Jonathan Rutter? Or of theirs either?’ She jerked her head towards the slope of the mountain and wiped her nose on her filthy sleeve. ‘And do you think, Jonathan, that they will leave us alone if I tells them? Do you think that will be an end to it all? No. No, I tell you, I would have to go to the court – like when they had a go at evicting us from here. I would have to testify and identify and the newspaper people would be taking pictures and then they would all know we was livin’ ’ere.’