MORE DEATHS
THAN ONE
Marjorie Eccles
CHIVERS
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available
This eBook published by AudioGO Ltd, Bath, 2012.
Published by arrangement with the Author
Epub ISBN: 9781471310591
Copyright © 1990 by Marjorie Eccles
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
Jacket illustration © iStockphoto.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
ONE
“Vengeance begins; Murder, I see, is followed by more sins. ”
THE DAY WAS DYING as the hare ran home through the stiff, frosty fields. He came to the forest and though timid of men he raced along their tracks, his powerful haunches propelling him with primordial instinct towards his form and his mate. Then he felt, rather than heard, the thrum of hoofbeats behind him. Ahead he smelt blood and corruption and laid his ears back. His exophthalmic eyes swivelled, but fear pushed him forward towards the man in the parked car.
It used to be considered unlucky, and still is by some, to have your path crossed by a hare. Old Wat had run this way once before, but the man was past caring about that. He was indifferent now to luck, either good or ill.
The day was also John Culver’s seventieth birthday. A day for celebration, no doubt, had there been anyone to celebrate with.
A little thing like that was unlikely to bother him, though. He wouldn’t have remembered it was his birthday at all if he hadn’t received that single card, he told himself, almost believing his own lie.
Happy Birthday to a Dear Father it said in gold letters on the front, the words she couldn’t bring herself to write. Inside, the single name, Georgina, quickly scrawled as if she might soon regret the impulse that had caused her to acknowledge him for the first time in seven years. Just Georgina. Not Georgina and Rupert, she’d had enough sense for that. His face darkened as he stood by the edge of what Evelyn had always insisted on referring to as the lake – though it wasn’t in all conscience much more than a large pond with a rocky outcrop in the middle that she’d called the island – his shoulders hunched like some old brooding cormorant as he stared out across the water and nourished thoughts of the man he had spent several years of his life hating.
But despite this there was a warmth stirring inside him again, which took no account of the harsh bitter wind that slapped the water at the margin of the lake against the little skiff he used for fishing, and whistled round the grey stone house on the mound behind him. John Culver, for the first time since Georgina had gone off with that bastard, felt he had reason for hope. He pushed aside the thought that in some odd sort of way the card, breaking the silence, had shamed him. Beneath the triumph that after all she’d been the one to give in was a feeling he was doing his best to ignore, that in some inexplicable way he’d been diminished.
The sun was going down in a cold flare of red against a pale green sky. There’d be a frost again tonight. He was a strong old man, fit for anything, nothing wrong with him except for a bit of creakiness in his knees, but there was no sense in staying out here too long in the cold. It slowed up his reactions and his movements. He’d missed the hare because of that, and missing his quarry was something he rarely did. He whistled to Minty who was running round the edges of the lake, her belly low to the ground in true collie fashion, tail between her legs. Shouldering his shotgun, he walked stiffly back towards the house, shivering despite himself. The cold spears of the daffodils that spread every year beneath the birches here by the lake had taken one look at this spring and decided to go no further for the moment. Most of the huge old Atlantic cedar with its dark sheltering branches which had stood firm for years on the windward side of the house had gone down in one of the wild storms of the winter, making the house look lopsided, giving it a naked, unprotected appearance that he couldn’t get used to. The rooks were nesting again in the old walls of the ruined tower they’d colonised, and cawed bad-temperedly as the wind hindered their work.
He took a diagonal route across the grass, feeling it already crisp under his feet, and Minty, sheep-dog trained, brown and white with light untrustworthy amber eyes, kept at his heels until suddenly she stiffened and let out a sharp bark. Culver turned and saw a car coming up the long drive, an unusual enough occurrence to make him pause and watch. His heart began to knock at his ribs. Georgina?
TWO
“A master sin, imperious murder.”
IN DEATH, the man in the Porsche was seen to be tall and slimly built, with dark brown, longish hair, dark hairs sprinkling his forearms, nicotine stains on his fingers. There was nothing much else left to tell what he’d looked like in life. The shot had been fired at close range and his face was missing.
He was wearing a heavy dark blue woollen sweater and jeans, and a Rolex Oyster on his wrist. His fashionable grey suede jacket had been thrown onto the seat beside him and was now spattered with the rusty stains of dark, dried blood. He had fallen half across the steering wheel. The shotgun lay on the floor of the car which had been parked in a small clearing under the beeches in the forest, away from the road which wound through it but just off the chief ride where horses were regularly galloped. It had been a late afternoon rider going home who’d found him: a woman, who’d dismounted to point out the notices forbidding parking and got more than she bargained for.
There’d been no real attempt to hide the car, other than the fact of it having been driven away from the road. The immense old trunks of the beeches grew tall and close but afforded little actual cover, even in summer when thick with foliage, since their branches grew high. Now, on this bitter March evening the forest known as Scotley Beeches was bare and even in the dusk the scarlet car stood out like a beacon. Powerful lights had been strung up around it, making a stage-set in the surrounding darkness and from a distance the policemen moving between the trees had an unreal air, like figures at the beginning of a pantomime scene: another part of the forest.
One more car joined those already assembled round the edges of the clearing, their blue lights slowly revolving. A young plainclothes sergeant unfolded his skinny length from it and walked quickly over to the centre of the scene, where Dexter and the Scenes of Crime team, closely watched by the Detective Chief Inspector, Gil Mayo, were doing their best within the constraints imposed by the close confines of the car and the necessity not to touch the body. Every now and then, brighter lights flashed as Napier took his camera shots from every conceivable angle.
“I came as soon as they rang,” Kite told his chief, stamping his feet and waiting for his briefing, reckoning on Mayo already having the situation weighed up. Never a man for snap judgements, unlike Kite, the D.C.I. should all the same have made his own observations by now and decided what needed to be done. He was leaning against the trunk of one of the beeches, arms folded, frowning at nothing in particular. A big, dark, sparely-spoken Yorkshireman, quiet and determined, with a strong, uncommu
nicative face, he had a vitality and energy about him, not at first apparent but making itself felt when it came to making decisions.
“Thanks for coming in, Martin,” he said, looking up and giving Kite the benefit of his smile, rare enough for the sergeant to guess Mayo was aware of the size of the favour he’d been asking. Not liking having to ask, either. Nevertheless it was a smile, lighting grey eyes that could otherwise be disconcertingly cold in their regard, especially to those at the sticky end of the law. “Spoilt your leave, I’m afraid, but it would’ve meant calling somebody in from outside – or throwing Farrar in at the deep end. Hope you weren’t doing anything special.”
Kite shrugged in a so-so manner. If Mayo wanted him it wasn’t his to question why, though Farrar wasn’t likely to be feeling over the moon about it. Sweating on the promotion which was in his own opinion long overdue, a chance to prove himself, and the gaffer calling in Kite off leave! Kite sympathized, but not a lot; he’d been in the same position himself and it hadn’t done him any harm in the long run.
“You weren’t, were you?” Mayo quizzed. “Doing anything special? Hadn’t planned to take Sheila out or anything?”
“Nothing that mattered. Only being self-indulgent.”
Some slight economy with the truth here, but never mind. The reality was too boring to interest anyone else. Seizing on the chance of a comparatively slack period at the station, Kite had decided to make headway into at least some of the time off due to him, promising Sheila he’d make a start on the long-awaited do-it-yourself extension to the back of the house and give some time to the kids. And instead he’d been forced to spend his entire leave crouched in front of the fire nursing a streaming cold and aching limbs, bored out of his mind, his eyeballs burning with reading too much and his ears ringing with too many aspirin. Now, his cold almost over, he felt slightly guilty at the alacrity with which he’d jumped at the chance to come back. No point anyway in beginning on the extension work with only two days of his leave to go, he’d told Sheila, avoiding her eyes.
“Bit of a cold as a matter of fact,” he admitted, feeling some explanation was needed but not elaborating. Not much point really. Mayo, who’d nobody to please but himself, since his own wife was dead and his daughter had flown the nest to make a career for herself, might understand about the domestic stress but would certainly feel it was up to Kite to cope with it. Which he would, of course. Two hours ago he wouldn’t have given much for his chances of being able to knock the skin off a rice pudding, but the call out had pumped the necessary adrenaline into him. Surprising where it came from when you needed it. “I’m okay now,” he said, bracing his shoulders to show himself capable of anything.
Mayo gave him a sharp look. “Let’s hope you are. Don’t want you passing out on us.”
“No fear of that.” Kite jerked his head towards the car. “They told me there’s some bloke shot himself, that right?”
Without comment, Mayo waved Kite towards the Porsche, which had been carefully hauled backwards for several feet clear of the area in which it had rested. That place was now taped off and would be thoroughly and minutely gone over in the morning when it was light. There was little point, he’d decided, in wasting time and resources until his searching men could see what they were doing properly.
Approaching the car, Kite had a word with Dexter, who stood back to let him view the interior. Hands in his pockets so that he wouldn’t accidentally touch anything, he thrust his head in, smelt first the stench, then saw the shotgun and the bloodied, clotted mess that had been the head. “Christ!”
Thick frost was already riming the tree trunks and in the clearing the stiff dead bracken sparkled as though sprayed with Christmas glitter. Beech mast and leaf mould made a thick, springy mat underfoot. The air felt as though you were breathing razor blades. Kite took in several lungfuls and wondered briefly if he hadn’t seriously overestimated his recovery rate.
Regarding his sergeant quizzically, Mayo restrained himself from making any remark. He had a lot of time for Kite who was able, shrewd and cheerful – and not ambitious enough to be about to kick his chair leg from under him. Besides, his own initial reaction had been precisely similar to Kite’s, only no one had been there to observe it. However experienced you were, however many mangled corpses you’d viewed before, the first glimpse of the next one was always a nasty experience. And Kite, resilient as he was, was obviously not up to the mark tonight. Despite his assurances he was looking decidedly peaky. Though give him his due, he was almost visibly getting a grip on himself.
“Any idea who he is?” the sergeant asked.
“Not yet. But we’ve already been on to Swansea. They ran the registration number through the computer and came up with a Rupert Fleming. Presumably that’s him. It’s a local registration and Spalding seems to think he’s seen it around.”
Kite nodded. There weren’t all that many Porsches in Lavenstock. “No note?”
“Stuck on the dash. Take a look.”
Mayo handed Kite a small plastic envelope through which could be seen a leaf torn from a yellow self-stick memo pad. The handwriting, though far from illiterate, was disjointed and difficult to decipher. Resembling a kind of shorthand, it looked like the hand of one whose thoughts ran faster than his pen, possibly made even more illegible in the present case by haste or despair. The message was brief: I’ve had enough. I’m packing it in. Sorry it didn’t work out. It was signed, R.
Poor devil, had been Mayo’s first thought on seeing the note.
What hopelessness and anguish brought anyone to this mess? But that had been before he’d really looked, before Ison had spoken.
Kite seemed to pick up his thoughts. “Doc Ison been yet?”
Mayo informed him, his breath coming cloudy on the freezing air, that the doctor had been and gone. “He left an emergency at the Cottage Hospital when he got the call to come here and he’s slipped back to see how things are while we’re waiting for Timpson-Ludgate.” Not that he needed to come back. He’d certified death and that was all that was strictly necessary, and some would have been content to leave it at that, packed their bags and been off, sure of their fee. But Ison was cut from a different cloth.
Timpson-Ludgate was the pathologist and the significance of his being sent for wasn’t lost on Kite. “Not suicide, then?”
“Somebody wants us to think so.”
“What about the note? Not easy to fake a fist like that ... hello, here is the doc. And talk of the devil, His Nibs an’ all.” Kite had spotted another, very recognisable car arriving close behind the police doctor’s sedate blue Vauxhall, the elderly gleaming Rover belonging to the pathologist.
“About time. We’ve hung about long enough.” The doctor climbed stiffly out of his car and approached the Porsche. “Everything all right at the hospital, Doc?”
“Nothing to worry about now. Mother and baby both doing well.”
Funny job, his. Violent death one moment, birth the next, in its way just as violent but concerned with all that mattered, really, the essentials of life, its beginning and its end.
“Evening, Mayo, evening young Martin!”
This was the pathologist, following close on Ison’s heels, scattering greetings around like largesse, eminent enough to be affable with everyone, especially those not in a position to contradict his pronouncements. “Bit nippy for this sort of thing, but at least it’ll keep the flies away, eh? Hm, more than an hour or two since he shuffled off this mortal coil!”
The last part of this was muffled, issuing from inside the Porsche, into which he had already plunged his head, clearly not expecting a reply, which was perhaps just as well in view of Mayo’s expression.
They didn’t come better than Timpson-Ludgate when it was a question of his job. Moreover, anyone prepared to tackle one like his could be forgiven a lot in Mayo’s opinion ... but he found this morbid humour, peculiar to doctors, pathologists and policemen, hard to take at times. All right, it was one way of coping with the vi
le and sordid muck they all had to deal with, but God, there were limits!
He suspected Ison was another who didn’t care much for it either. A sensitive and humane man underneath the reticent medical exterior, he lifted a shoulder before turning away to begin a token grumbling to Kite about the inadequacy of the lighting. “Can’t expect us to examine him very thoroughly in these conditions, Sergeant. A few more lights wouldn’t come amiss.”
“I’ll see the D.I. about it.” Kite went off to find George Atkins.
“Cheer up, we’ll do our best, Henry, as always,” Timpson-Ludgate answered the doctor breezily, withdrawing his head to address Napier. “Finished with your photographs, sonny? Okay, but don’t go away, I shall need you.” Turning to Mayo, he said, “If you’ve anything else to be doing meanwhile, I should get on with it. We shan’t be finished here in five minutes.”
“I know, I know, but I need a statement from the woman who found him and I’d like to have a look at that jacket before I go, as soon as you’ve finished with the body. I want to confirm who he is.”
“No problem, you can have it once your man’s got some photos of it for me and I’ve had a dekko. Not going to be easy, the state he’s in, you know.” The pathologist nodded to Napier, who adjusted his lens and began flashing the video camera again. Atkins, walking with his elephantine tread, came across with a couple of technicians and started superintending the erection of more lights. Mayo thrust his hands into his pockets and counselled patience to the inner self clamouring to get on with the job.
“Thanks. If you want me, I’ll be over by the S.O.C. van but I’m going to take a look round the back first. Martin?”
The sergeant accompanied Mayo as he walked round to the back of the Porsche, following the delineated access path, keeping clear of the taped-off area. There had been heavy rain the previous week, which had left soft mud under the frost of the last two nights, but the springy layer of beech mast covering it had precluded the possibility of finding any footprints. The weight of the car, however, had sunk clearly visible tracks.
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