And None Shall Sleep

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Yes, I mean, not really. I mean. I ...’

  The two detectives waited.

  Selkirk swallowed. ‘We sometimes take the children beetle-spotting there. And once we saw the badgers too.’ He looked proud of himself. ‘I joined the badger protection society.’

  Mike gave a loud sigh.

  ‘Mr Selkirk,’ Joanna said slowly. ‘We need someone to formally identify your father.’

  ‘Isn’t it usually the next of kin?’ he squeaked. ‘Have you asked my mother?’

  Behind her Joanna heard Mike give an expression of disgust.

  ‘Your father isn’t a pretty sight,’ she said sharply. ‘He was shot in the head. We thought you might want to spare your mother,’

  Selkirk drew himself up to his full tiny height. ‘Of course,’ he said, now acting the gentleman. ‘Now?’

  Joanna nodded. ‘We can take you to the mortuary in the police car,’ she said, ‘or if you prefer you can follow us in your own vehicle.’

  Selkirk nodded. ‘You’ll have to wait a minute, I must tell Lou-lou.’

  They watched him through the wired glass speaking to the tall woman. Her face was tender with concern as she gave him a quick hug.

  The children seemed to sense something was wrong and an unhappy wail started like a factory siren. Justin lowered himself to their height and spoke for a moment or two. It must have had some effect. The children’s wailing faded away. One or two of them clapped their hands.

  Justin stood up, gave a fond glance around the room, then approached the door. Joanna and Mike stood back.

  ‘I’d rather use my car,’ he said. ‘My poor mother. I must go to her.’

  The morticians had laid Jonathan Selkirk out very carefully, a sheet hiding the missing portion of his face. To her surprise, when Joanna lifted the top sheet Justin Selkirk stared without emotion.

  ‘That is my father,’ he said, before picking up his lines. ‘May God rest his soul.’

  It was Mike, standing directly behind Justin Selkirk, who noticed his fingers were weaving in and out of each other in frenzied activity.

  Joanna only saw the beads of sweat on his brow and the frightened expression in his eyes when he finally stopped staring at his father.

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘A lot,’ she said shortly. ‘We have to perform a postmortem. Then there’ll be an inquest, a police investigation.’ She watched him curiously. ‘Do you know anyone who would have wanted your father dead?’

  Justin Selkirk gave a convulsive twitch. ‘Someone must have wanted to kill him,’ he squeaked. ‘Unless ... a psychopath ?’ he finished lamely.

  ‘Wandered into the hospital, picked on your father, got him into the car, bound his wrists, pushed him through the wood, persuaded him to kneel and shot him in the back of the head,’ Mike said brutally. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Selkirk.’

  Joanna thought Justin would faint.

  ‘My father’s funeral?’ he murmured.

  ‘Not just yet,’ Joanna said. ‘We’ll let you know when the body will be released for burial.’ She paused before adding, ‘Do you recognize his pyjamas?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Your mother said she bought them new, a couple of days ago.’

  Selkirk looked perfectly comfortable. ‘My mother and I often go shopping together,’ he said. ‘We’re very close.’ He hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Is that all? May I go now? I should visit my mother and my wife.’ He sounded like a polite little boy asking whether he was allowed to get down from the table.

  ‘Yes, for now,’ Joanna said. ‘Of course we’ll want to come round to your home and talk to you and your wife.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Joanna said patiently, ‘the more we know about your father’s life the better the hope that we will find out who wanted him dead.’

  Selkirk moved closer. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘I absolutely adored my father. And he adored me,’ he finished defiantly.

  Joanna didn’t even need to look at Mike to know his expression.

  Selkirk looked at one then the other and bolted.

  The minute he had gone, Mike had a field day. He put his hand in a duck bill and strutted around the room with his bottom sticking out. ‘Oh, I often go shopping with my mummy,’ he mimicked in a falsetto, then, in disgust, ‘what a lady’s blouse.’

  But Joanna held up a finger. ‘A married lady’s blouse,’ she said, ‘who’s fathered a child.’

  ‘Which only goes to show,’ Mike said, ‘how appearances can be deceptive.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘Whatever you may think, Mike, don’t go jumping to conclusions.’

  Mike shrugged his shoulders. ‘My instincts tell me, Joanna,’ he said, grinning, ‘and I know how fond you are of instincts. I think he could have hated his father, who packed him off to school with no mercy. He could have hated him for years. But he couldn’t have killed him himself. So he got someone to do it for him.’

  She looked at him shrewdly. ‘You think it was Selkirk?’

  He nodded. ‘Could be. I’ve never seen such an awful pretence of grief,’ he said. ‘Pathetic little creep.’

  ‘Mike,’ Joanna said slowly, ‘you don’t think Justin Selkirk had to act the part of grief because he’d felt nothing for his father – no love and therefore no grief – rather than that he hated him?’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘A feeling of indifference rarely leads to murder, Mike, even if you get someone else to do it for you, but if he hated his father,’ she sighed, ‘it’s possible.’

  Mike grunted and glanced down at the shrouded body. ‘I don’t know about all that,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to stay for the PM, or do you want Levin all to yourself?’

  ‘Along with half a dozen SOCOs and a couple of morticians?’ She shook her head. ‘Go back to the station, Mike. Matthew will drop me off later. Tell someone to look into Mrs Selkirk’s plans for the day. I suppose I’d better speak to her this afternoon, and then we’d better get back to the hospital and check up on those statements, find out whether Selkirk did make a phone call.’ She sighed. ‘I have a feeling this is going to be a difficult nut to crack.’ Then she voiced her main fear, ‘If I’m allowed to keep it.’

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t have much experience in this sort of field.’

  ‘What sort of field, Mike?’ She paused, her eyes fixed on his face.

  ‘Contract killing,’ he said and she nodded.

  ‘Yes. Me neither. Ugly and professional. If I’m not very much mistaken, money has changed hands. Someone paid to have Selkirk executed.’

  Matthew was as usual in good spirits. He loved his work, loved the challenge of a corpse, loved the way it yielded up its secrets to his skilled fingers.

  He was already dressed in his theatre green, gloves snapped on tight, scalpel blade fixed in its holder. He watched the mortician do the preliminary measurements before he examined the bullet hole.

  ‘One hell of blast,’ he said. ‘Done a lot of damage.’ He looked up at Joanna. ‘Found the bullet?’

  She nodded. ‘Nine millimetre. Handgun.’ She grinned at him. ‘Bagged up and sent to forensics but one of the guys who knows a bit more about firearms has laid a bet it was a Beretta 92F. And there’s something strange about the bullet.’

  ‘Very good.’ Matthew’s eyes were bright with appreciation. ‘Would it be a hollow point?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘So that explains the extensive destruction of the face. You took some specimens from the trees?’

  ‘Quite a nature walk,’ she said.

  ‘I was reading in an article the other day,’ he said, watching the mortician sawing through the skull with the electric drill, ‘written by some American guy with lots of experience in firearms, that the pattern of brain tissue can tell you exactly at what angle the person was to the assailant. Even how tall the assailant was.’

  Joanna thought she was going to be
sick.

  ‘Sorry.’ Matthew quickly apologized. ‘How’s the arm?’ he added cheerfully.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Hardly hurts at all. In fact,’ she added, ‘if it wasn’t for this,’ she rapped the plaster cast, ‘I’d have forgotten about it by now. But it has its uses. It rakes in plenty of sympathy and I get a free chauffeur.’

  ‘Doesn’t life get a bit claustrophobic being cooped up in a car with Tarzan all day?’

  ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘Anyway, I told him you’d take me back to the station.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ he said. His face softened and he rested his arm on her shoulders. ‘I’m just glad it’s all right and that you weren’t worse hurt. It’ll be perfect again soon. The wonders of modern medicine,’ he crowed.

  ‘More like the wonders of ancient nature. Isn’t it that that knits the bone?’ She gestured to the corpse. ‘And now shall we return to the wonders of modern forensics?’

  Matthew’s attention was already back with his work. ‘I think,’ he said as he weighed the brain, ‘about nine tenths of it’s missing. You’ll find it in the forest...’ He shot her a mischievous look, ‘or on the bottom of a policeman’s shoe.’

  He worked quietly now, turning his attention back to the brain before giving a low whistle. ‘It never ceases to amaze me,’ he said, ‘what a lot of damage is done by one small bullet. Nine-millimetre sounds so tiny, doesn’t it? But just blunt that point...’

  She was silent, the overpowering smell of disinfectant bringing on the familiar nausea.

  An hour later Matthew summed up his findings. ‘Death was due to a single shot to the base of the brain,’ he said. ‘Our killer couldn’t have chosen a better spot.’ His green eyes were luminous. ‘Death would have been instantaneous. Got the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata.’

  ‘Don’t get technical, Matthew,’ she pleaded. ‘What are you saying in plain English?’

  ‘As I suspected in Gallows Wood,’ he said. ‘An expert job, Joanna.’ He washed his hands and rasped them dry on the paper towel. ‘The man who shot Jonathan Selkirk knew his job as well as I know mine and you know yours. The injuries were sustained with the one small bullet.’ His face was sober.

  ‘A Beretta?’

  ‘I can’t commit myself,’ he said. ‘All I can say is that it was a small handgun with a nine-millimetre bore. The injuries were incompatible with life. It was a neat, professional execution.’

  She blinked, watching him manoeuvre the elbow taps back.

  ‘Even the rope used was good-quality yachting rope, nonslip and very strong. The killer came prepared. And the knots were vicious, cut right into the flesh – a slip knot looped around, pulled tight and fastened. He wouldn’t have got out of those in a month of Sundays.’

  He turned and grinned. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he said. ‘Just as an added twist, Selkirk had had an MI.’

  She looked enquiringly at him. ‘MI?’ she said. ‘Plain English, please.’

  ‘Myocardial infarct,’ he said cheerily. ‘Heart attack. Quite a big one too, clot the size of a mushroom lodged in one of the coronary arteries. He wasn’t going to make it anyway.’

  Matthew started filling out the PM form. ‘Whoever it was who wanted him out of the way could have saved themselves a lot of money.’

  ‘Matthew, we don’t know that it was a professional job yet. We –’

  Jo, I know I’m just a humble thick pathologist, and you’re the clever police. I carve the corpse, tell you what they’ve done. You find out who and why and make a nuisance of yourselves to the CPS. But in my humble opinion, the villain who abducted Jonathan Selkirk from his much needed – hospital bed only to drive him to Gallows Wood and pop a bullet in the back of his neck was paid to do it. This is as professional as I’ve seen in my entire career. The question you’re going to have to address, my darling, as you know full well, is who picked up the bill? And who do you know with no morals but expertise. How many professional killers do you know, Joanna?’

  She looked at him. ‘None.’

  Chapter Six

  Colclough’s face sagged like a bloodhound’s as Joanna related the findings of the post-mortem. ‘I don’t like it, Piercy,’ he said. ‘This is a peaceful town. I’ve lived here all my life. I was born here. My mother came from Leek.’ He got out of his chair and wandered across to the window. Unlike the view from her office, his stretched right across the town, taking in the spire of the church, the war monument, the cobbled market square. He watched umbrellas scurrying along the High Street, people sheltering in doorways.

  ‘This is a traditional town,’ he said. ‘People are brought up here, live here, die here.’ He turned around and she saw traces of an idealistic young copper, almost obliterated now by time. ‘This is a safe place. A little old-fashioned and traditional. When you arrest someone here you know their stock.’ He gave Joanna the ghost of a smile. ‘You’re a newcomer here, Piercy.’

  ‘Six years, sir,’

  He nodded. ‘A newcomer, so let me tell you, contract killing is a shocking thing. An evil mind hiring an evil hand. Jonathan Selkirk was an unpleasant man, but this ... to be dragged from a hospital bed and shot.’ A look of pain shadowed his face.

  ‘Did you know him well, sir?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Not as well as I do his wife.’ Colclough flopped down in his seat. ‘He was an outsider. She met him at university.’

  Joanna was mildly surprised. ‘She was at university too?’

  ‘She was cleverer than he, got an honours degree but she never practised. As soon as they were married she gave up and stayed at home. A waste, Piercy, of a very good brain. It was a shame their son took after neither of them,’

  ‘Why did she give up?’

  Colclough shrugged. ‘Who knows? Some men prefer their wives to stay at home. It seems Jonathan Selkirk was one of them. After all, they weren’t short of money. Jonathan’s practice was flourishing.’ Colclough hesitated. ‘Between you and me, Piercy, I rather think he liked the control. A wife who works ...’ His bulldog chins wobbled disapprovingly, as he picked up his pen. ‘Now then, about this case. It’s out of our league, you know.’

  She’d been afraid he would do this – take the case away from her. ‘But, sir ...’

  ‘Out of our league,’ he repeated. ‘Out of your league.’

  He thought for a minute, stroked his chins. ‘And out of mine. Contract killings affect internal security, Piercy. I think I’d better inform the Regional Crime Squad. I’ll make a couple of phone calls. Leave it with me.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you up to now?’

  ‘I’m going to interview Selkirk’s widow,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘For now you’re in charge.’

  And she could guess the rest.

  There was no sign of mourning outside the Georgian red brick house. As the car drew up both she and Mike noticed lights blazing out into the dull September afternoon.

  ‘Looks more like Christmas,’ Mike observed. ‘Perhaps they’ve cause to celebrate.’

  ‘You’d think they’d draw the curtains at least, as a mark of respect. She’s just lost her husband.’

  ‘I don’t think they did respect him,’ she said quietly and waited while he parked the car neatly next to a maroon Jaguar. ‘They do know he’s been found?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mike said. ‘A couple of uniformed guys called round earlier.’

  They walked round the Jaguar, peering in through the windows. All was neat and in order. A well-kept car with this year’s registration number.

  They approached the house and immediately there was another surprise. A child’s peal of laughter could be heard ringing out from the garden.

  ‘It’s a different house,’ Joanna said. ‘I feel as though we’ve come to the wrong place. It’s alive.’

  They were drawn towards the laughter. Instead of knocking on the front door they skirted the house to the broad green lawn speckled with early fallen leaves. The Shirley Temple lookalike and Jonathan Se
lkirk’s widow were raking them up. Joanna and Mike watched them for a while, scraping the lawn and forming tiny heaps of damp leaves. Especially the child. She was a laughing, chattering little thing, a pretty, picture-book toddler in scarlet anorak and elf-green trousers running around in tiny red wellies and tossing her thick mop of golden curls. And as she laughed she held up her hands to try to steal the leaves from the wind’s gusts. Then Sheila Selkirk stopped and leaned against her rake, the heap of leaves quickly dispersing as the wind found them again. She was watching the child with such a look of absorbed happiness that Joanna was reminded of classical paintings of Madonna with Adored Child. This scene was so far removed from the ugly site of execution at Gallows Wood that she was reluctant to remind Sheila Selkirk of her husband’s murder and instead stood stock still. She glanced at Mike and knew he too was lured by this captivating picture.

  At length she cleared her throat. ‘Mrs Selkirk.’ Sheila Selkirk froze. The spell was broken. The child stopped laughing and ran to her grandmother, flung her arms around her legs. Her face was sharp and frightened. Selkirk’s widow stood, paralysed.

  ‘Inspector Piercy,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d come.’ Her voice was strained and held a faint tinge of guilt. For what? For enjoying herself? Or was there some other reason?

  Sheila looked from one to the other and must have read some of their disapproval. ‘Whatever else I may be, inspector,’ she said defensively, ‘I am no hypocrite. I have here,’ her hand rested on the child’s bouncing curls, ‘my consolation.’

  Her lips worked nervously. ‘There is no use my sitting and mourning him, pretending. Jonathan’s dead. In my heart of hearts, from the moment he went missing from the hospital I knew he was.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘I was just wrong in some of the details. I imagined ...’ She stopped and looked past them at two gnarled trees at the corner of the lawn. ‘I somehow imagined that pressure of work and financial problems combined with a certain pessimism in his character had driven him to take his own life.’ She stopped. ‘I was wrong. Someone came round from your station earlier. They’ve already given me most the details.’ A shadow crossed her face. ‘I know he was shot. And Justin came round straight from the morgue.’ She swallowed. ‘I think I know most of the facts.’ She stared boldly at them, challenging them.