Ashes to Ashes

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘No one’s been inside the place,’ he reported. ‘It was securely locked up when someone last checked and there were no grounds to issue a search warrant. That was around a month ago so someone’s obviously been in since. If we want to have a look round that’s up to us and they’ll be interested to know if we find anything interesting.’

  ‘As in booby traps, corpses and stuff like that? That’s real cooperation,’ I grumbled.

  ‘Perhaps you need some lunch.’

  ‘Yes, I do. I had a very early start.’

  ‘Diddums. Needless to say, they’re hoping he was the one who ended up at the crem. I asked about getting his medical records as that’s the clincher, but the DI I spoke to said that as Judd had lived in Harrow when he had his prang and to her knowledge there are no hills big enough around there to hang glide off – she might be wrong, of course – only the good Lord knows where he was treated for his injuries.’

  ‘But the hip replacements might have been done locally, to here, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, but this man has, or had, several aliases. I suppose we could email all the doctors in the area. Not now, though.’

  My mention of the possible presence of hidden dangerous devices had been deliberate, as even though we hadn’t the slightest proof that he was involved I was haunted by my working partner’s descriptions of O’Connor’s methods. A door was open where previously it had been locked …

  Patrick pushed the back door open as far as it would go and we stood well clear. Gazing within a few moments later, all there was to be seen was just a dated and grubby-looking kitchen, the number of footprints on the worn and once-white tile-effect vinyl flooring suggesting that it had not been washed for months, if ever. The worktops within our sight were cluttered with yet more bottles and beer tins and the remains of take-away meals. The smell of rotting food wafted out.

  ‘I hadn’t expected there would be a bucket of water on top of the door,’ Patrick murmured to himself as he crossed the threshold. Then he stopped, moving this way and that, seemingly looking at something about a foot from the floor roughly his own height in front of him. Then I saw it, a tiny flash as something caught the light streaming in behind us.

  ‘Fine gauge fishing line,’ Patrick said, still mostly to himself. ‘I have no intention of cutting it to see what happens; I’ll just try to see what it is.’ He glanced back at me. ‘Please go right away, around the corner of the house, and don’t move until I say so.’

  Around a quarter of a minute later, there was a bang like a small firework going off.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I yelled from my place of safety.

  ‘Fine,’ he called back. ‘Just nudged the only full can of lager off the worktop.’

  Moments later, Patrick appeared. ‘I don’t feel like being blown up today so I shall call out the experts. That thing’s a trip device designed to set off something that’s in one of the lower kitchen units. Should the whole place be stashed out with explosives half the district’ll go up with it.’

  It was, plus the body of a man we knew as Dougie Baker, one of those who had abducted Joanna.

  In addition to the device in the kitchen, the corpse, in a bedroom with the door shut, had been wired with explosives similar to the method used by suicide bombers, and arranged so that they would detonate when the door to the room was opened. Members of the Bomb Squad who attended – they had to cope with the fact that large numbers of floorboards had been ripped up right through the house – were familiar with similar traps for the unwary and first of all carried out an examination of the room courtesy of a tiny camera inserted through the gap beneath the door. Entry was then gained via the window. The explosion, had it taken place, possibly setting off other devices that were found in the house, if they hadn’t exploded already, that is, would have done dreadful damage to the houses nearby, causing injuries and possible fatalities.

  The whole road was evacuated before any investigations could begin, and it was not until quite late the following afternoon, when householders and their families had been permitted to return, that Patrick was invited by the DI to whom he had originally spoken to view the body, which was still in situ, but, of necessity, minus the explosives. This gesture by the local constabulary, together with heartfelt thanks, paid off for them when he immediately identified the deceased. This author stayed away, decomposing human beings not being my strong point and, besides, my presence wasn’t necessary. There was also the question mark over the ripped up floorboards. Obviously those responsible had been looking for something.

  ‘Whoever organized that probably went off feeling very pleased with themselves,’ Patrick commented when we met up again at just after seven that evening. ‘But, in fact, it’s provided links, admittedly some a little tenuous, between just about everything we know so far.’ He counted off on his fingers. ‘Joanna was checking up on the crematorium manager’s secretary’s background when she was accosted by Joe, Will and Dougie. Later, Dougie told us that he knew that the man who issued orders was referred to sometimes as JC, possibly Jinty O’Connor, known for his imaginative ways of getting rid of the opposition. Dougie’s now dead – did someone hear what he said just before they flung up the door to that lock-up garage we were in? We’ve found Dougie’s body – he’d been shot once through the head, incidentally – in the home of a man who could possibly fit the bill regarding the bits and pieces left over from what should have been Archie Peters funeral. Archie Peters’s body appears to have been blown up with his own home. There are a lot of links here. But where’s the woman, his wife, and what’s her connection with all this?’

  He flung himself into an armchair in our hotel room.

  ‘Perhaps she’s related to O’Connor,’ I suggested.

  ‘What, and content to be stuck down in Wellow married to an old misery who’s slowly falling apart?’

  ‘Perhaps he was loaded and she didn’t want there to anything obviously iffy about his demise so she could have the money no bother.’

  ‘Then told people that she had suspicions about the cremation to cover herself should the real story subsequently emerge when the dosh was safely in the bank. That hangs together.’

  ‘I take it we’re assuming that the bullet holes in the skull were done afterwards to Archie’s corpse, to make it look as though it was his wife who had died.’

  ‘Yes, but in my view, that was unnecessary. A bit desperate.’

  ‘But this is about money – more than he had, surely,’ I said. ‘Money, money, money.’

  After a little pause, Patrick said, ‘A man after midnight?’

  ‘Wrong song. OK, but only after you’ve wined and dined me and generally told me how wonderful I am.’

  ‘Shower,’ he suddenly decided, getting up and starting to throw off his clothes. Then: ‘If I do the last thing now can we postpone the others and …’ He gave me a big hopeful smile.

  I shook my head. ‘Nice try.’

  There was progress the following morning when the news came through that DNA from the skull and other human remains found at the Peterses’ bungalow matched that on an old and greasy cap found on a top shelf in the shed at the bottom of their garden. While not cast-iron proof that the remains were those of Archie Peters, James Carrick thought that was as good as it was likely to get.

  ‘The Peters woman must have been closely involved in the body swap,’ Patrick said quietly, thinking aloud after the call. ‘All that stuff about, “Where’s my Archie now?” too. And as you said, she was probably paid. But why the Peterses? Why them? You’re also probably right about there being every chance that there’s some connection between her and the perpetrators. If we could only discover what that is and prove that Judd was the one cremated it would be extremely helpful. But why did whoever it was do it? What was so important about him that he had to disappear without trace?’

  ‘And it looks as though Hereward Stevens was murdered because he went back to the Peterses’ house for his phone,’ I observed. ‘I wonder if he
spoke to anyone about it that night.’

  ‘Such as his ex-wife, Sandra? Oliver Stevens said they’d got back in touch so it’s worth a try.’

  We were in Patrick’s office at HQ and while he rang Oliver, the deceased funeral director’s brother, hoping to get Sandra’s phone number, I got to grips with the new coffee machine. It appeared to require a degree in electrical engineering to make it work but I finally succeeded in producing two full, steaming mugs after searching for a few minutes around the corridors for a source of water to refill it.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Friday, when we can go home,’ Patrick announced in the manner of someone who had just discovered an amazing truth. ‘Sandra Stevens now lives in Bath and I’ve arranged to talk to her on Saturday morning at ten thirty.’

  ‘This is good coffee.’

  ‘It should be; that thing cost a small fortune.’

  ‘No one else from the police has wanted to interview me,’ said Hereward Stevens’s ex-wife.

  ‘I’m sure there was no real need to at the time,’ Patrick replied.

  We had been invited to seat ourselves in the sunny and large living room of the city centre second-floor apartment, the room overlooking a square with a plane tree in the middle. This meant that, leaning back where I was seated on a black leather sofa for two, all I could see through the window was blue sky, foliage and the top of one of the spires on the tower of the abbey. When I’m old, I thought, something like this will do me very nicely.

  ‘And there’s need now?’ asked Sandra.

  She looked like a model: tall, slim, fair and wearing the kind of clothes, cream-coloured linen skirt, matching jacket, rose-pink silk blouse, that this parent of five children can only countenance when without them on holiday. She also seemed nervous – nothing to do with our presence, I hoped, as my husband was all charm and smiles. He had no reason to be otherwise.

  ‘There’s fairly strong evidence that’s emerged now that might point to it having not been an accident,’ Patrick told her.

  Wiltshire Police, when pushed for news, had come up with the information that although enquiries were ongoing, they had fully investigated the area that Patrick had surmised was where a gunman had waited and discovered a couple more cartridge cases together with a cigarette butt. There was nothing to connect any of these findings with the death of Hereward Stevens, although it was hoped that the remains of the cigarette would yield some DNA despite several weeks having passed.

  ‘Not an accident!’ the woman gasped. ‘But what then?’

  ‘Were you in contact with him?’ Patrick went on to ask but giving her another smile instead of answering the question.

  ‘Well – yes. We rang each other sometimes, when we felt like a chat.’ She coloured. ‘A newspaper reporter asked me that, although I don’t see what it has to do with anyone.’

  ‘You were interviewed by someone from the local paper?’

  ‘No. Someone knocked on the door and started asking questions. I refused to speak to her. But something was printed anyway, which made me absolutely furious.’

  ‘I’m not after any private life details,’ Patrick assured her. ‘I’m not here to dig out things like that. I just need to know if, shortly before he died, he rang you, possibly one evening, and mentioned that he’d had to go back to an address near Wellow after taking a coffin there as he’d left his mobile phone behind.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Sandra replied, frowning.

  ‘Apparently he was doubly annoyed as he’d missed a football match on TV and had forgotten to record it.’

  ‘Oh! Yes! The match, the semi-final of something. Heaven knows what, I loathe football. Rugby’s much more of a man’s game, don’t you think?’

  ‘I might agree with you there. Can you remember exactly what he said?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Please try; it’s very important.’

  She sat back in her chair, a swivel one that matched the two sofas, and crossed her legs, somehow contriving to show him rather a lot of them. Ye gods, she was flirting with him now. And, to be fair, I had been introduced, as was the norm in this kind of situation, as just the assistant.

  ‘That might have been the time when he said everything was a bit strange,’ Sandra said after about half a minute’s silence while she thought about it. ‘The deceased was an old man and his widow rather unpleasant.’ She pulled herself up in some alarm. ‘This is all strictly confidential, you must understand.’

  ‘Nothing of what you say will come out unless what I’m working on ends up in a court of law,’ Patrick smoothly promised, possibly thinking the same as I, that it hadn’t been that confidential if the man had shared details with his ex-wife.

  ‘I remember now,’ the woman continued. ‘He was asked to take the coffin to the house the night before. That’s uncommon now, although I understand does happen more in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. And, as you said, he had to go back for his mobile. Very cross about that, he was, but of course he couldn’t do without it as he was on standby that night.’

  ‘Did he tell you anything else about it – about people at the house when he returned, for example?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Only that the woman was annoyed when she saw who it was at the door.’

  ‘Had he left his phone in the room with the coffin?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Did the widow fetch it for him or did he do that himself?’

  ‘Sorry, he didn’t say.’

  ‘Did she ask him in?’

  ‘No, she didn’t – she left him standing in the rain. Oh, she must have fetched it for him then.’

  ‘Is there anything else at all that he said about it?’

  ‘Only that there was a van and another couple of cars parked outside the place and he had to walk from some distance away, which made him even crosser as it was really pouring.’

  ‘What sort of van?’

  ‘Hereward didn’t say. He probably wouldn’t have noticed in that weather.’

  ‘Did he notice if anyone was sitting in it, or in the other cars?’

  Sandra stared into space for a few moments. ‘He said something …’ she began slowly. Then shook her head. ‘No, sorry. I simply can’t remember.’

  Not one ever to give up easily, Patrick leaned forward in his seat and said, ‘Let’s try to picture what happened. It was raining heavily but presumably not dark.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she agreed. ‘It would have been around seven thirty by then as he rang me at a little after eight fifteen when he got back home. I only noticed because the ads were on in the middle of a TV programme I was watching.’

  ‘And he would have hurried because of the rain so perhaps wouldn’t have glanced at the vehicles as he went by. But on the return journey, mission accomplished, he might possibly have noticed someone and—’

  Several things happened very quickly and without warning. The front door of the flat was battered in, there were pounding footsteps and I got a fleeting impression of men in the room before I was flung down on the carpet and several shots were fired, a couple seemingly only a matter of inches from my head. There was the crash of breaking glass. Someone – Sandra? – screamed as I headed, on all fours, behind the cover of the sofa I had been sitting on, grabbed my bag from the floor where it had fallen and dug out the Smith and Wesson.

  ‘I don’t normally shoot to kill before the introductions have been made so you’re safe – for now,’ Patrick said a little shakily. ‘But as I have a good idea who you are it doesn’t really matter. You’re under arrest.’

  A man with a deep voice laughed and then murmured, ‘A cop! It’s easy, shooting a blind cop. I might do it, in a little while, when you’ve wriggled a bit.’

  Sometimes you have to make decisions. I jumped out from behind my chair, fired at a man holding a gun standing over by the door and then at another, also armed, his weapon aimed at Patrick, whose right arm was hanging uselessly by his side. Amazingly, my shot blasted t
he gun from the man’s hand and the weapon fell to the floor. Mouthing hatred, this individual – big, with long, matted black hair and unshaven – ran at me so fast that my next shot missed. I threw myself to one side as he blundered by.

  ‘Out!’ he boomed and he and his henchman, clutching his shoulder, almost collided in their rush to get away, dragging another man I hadn’t noticed on the floor by the collar of his shirt.

  NINE

  Patrick was trying to wipe the blood from his eyes, his face a sheet of red. I had no idea how badly he was hurt and steered him, on reflection not all that gently, backwards into a chair, then found and tossed in his direction a towel from the bathroom. I then dialled 999 on Sandra’s landline phone. She was slumped forwards in the swivel chair in which she had been seated, but with no visible sign of injury. I thought it best not to move her and had a horrible feeling that she had taken a bullet in the chest and was dead. But when I checked there was a faint pulse. I still didn’t feel I ought to move her.

  ‘Like a bloody blind coming down,’ Patrick was muttering, accurately as it happened, when I went back to him. Then, ‘Are you and Sandra all right?’

  ‘Sandra isn’t,’ I replied. ‘I’ve called the police and an ambulance.’

  ‘Have they gone?’

  ‘It would appear so.’

  ‘Is the top of my head still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  I got another towel, wetting it this time, and endeavoured to clean him up. The long gash on his forehead was still welling blood – head wounds always bleed a lot – but it was possible to hold one end of the towel firmly to it while cleaning his face. There was broken glass everywhere, including dagger-like shards, one of which was probably the cause of Patrick’s wound, the source of it what had once belonged to a large, and very expensive, light fitting hanging from the ceiling.

  Finally able to open his eyes properly as I cleaned off his eyelashes, Patrick took the towel from me and got to his feet, swearing under his breath as he tried to move his right arm. He went over to Sandra.