Murder in the Goblins' Playground (DCI Arthur Ravyn Mystery Book 1)

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Where are the woods being redeveloped?” Ravyn asked.

  “Over that way,” Smith said, gesturing casually, not slowing.

  “Nowhere near Cutter’s caravan?”

  Smith shook his head without turning. “But too near me for any sense of comfort.”

  “So, if the redevelopment plan goes through?”

  Smith shrugged. “I got a cottage that’s really a shack and don’t have much more than my traps, a cooking pot, another set of clothes, and a few books. I can put all I own in a sack. Won’t be any loss if it gets knocked down.” He was silent a moment. “But I hope it doesn’t come to that. A man gets set in his ways.”

  “You don’t think that…” Ravyn paused, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the question loitering on his tongue.

  “What?” Smith prompted. “Do I think the forces that call the forest home will prevent the forest’s destruction?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’ll tell you, Mr Ravyn, I really don’t know,” Smith admitted. “If we were talking about any other place in England, I’d say the forest is history, my shack is firewood. But you’re born and bred in Hammershire, same as me. If anything can be said about this land, it’s that it resists change, at least the wild parts of it.”

  “And the ‘forces’ that live here?”

  Smith chuckled. “If I were to say elves or fairies, most people, even folks hereabout, would think me daft. But what if I said the village goes so far and no farther? Or that anyone trying to cut trees where no one had cut trees before was just asking for trouble? The same people would nod in agreement. The modern world penetrates even to Ashford, but while people listen to the news from London or watch a test match from Johannesburg, they still listen for the sounds of the elves in the woods. People grown old here have a taproot that goes straight down to the heart of the earth.”

  “Have you seen the Red Caps?” Ravyn asked. “Some do, you know, they claim it. I heard stories when I was young.”

  “You can take it from me, Mr Ravyn, if anyone ever said they saw elves dipping their caps in the spilled blood of travellers, they were lying,” Smith said. “I won’t say they exist or not, but I will say that if anyone were to see them, well, he would keep his mouth shut, one way or another.”

  “You don’t look for them, I take it?” Ravyn asked.

  “Those given lease to be in these woods have more sense than that,” Smith said.

  “How do you know you have lease?”

  “Because I am allowed to go my way,” Smith said. “Perhaps it will be found that Oscar Lent does not have lease.”

  Ravyn snorted a short, breathy laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing, really,” Ravyn said. “Peter Woodcock told me you were a man of few words.”

  “A Hammershire man, him, but you’d never know it by the way he cuddles to outsiders,” Smith said. “If you’ve talked with him, then you know why I have few words for him.”

  They travelled for several minutes in companionable silence, no sounds accompanying them other than the breath of the wind in the trees. Ravyn felt strangely at ease with Smith, even though he was still on the growing list of suspects.

  “You’re a funny sort of policeman,” Smith said.

  “Oh?” Ravyn looked up, startled by the broken silence. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re walking alone with me, in woods that are unfamiliar to you,” Smith said. “Or do you not consider me a suspect in Allan’s murder?”

  “I do,” Ravyn replied. “At least until I can eliminate you.”

  “Then why…”

  “If you were to try to kill me, then I would know for certain.”

  “I’d think that small consolation.”

  “I said, try to kill me,” Ravyn pointed out. “And even if you were guilty it would be a right daft thing to do.”

  “Ah,” Smith said, nodding. “And, of course, there are people who know we met this morning.”

  “There are,” Ravyn confirmed.

  “I didn’t kill Allan,” Smith said, “if that’s any consolation.”

  “As you say, a small one,” Ravyn said. “What else?”

  “You’re easy to talk to,” Smith continued. “I’d say that some have found out too late that you’re too easy to talk to?”

  “Some loquacious lags have permanent accommodations at the Queen’s pleasure because they found me easy to talk to,” Ravyn admitted. “Even some villains, their briefs sitting beside them, have talked themselves into the nick.”

  “It’s natural that a man wants to talk to someone who wants to listen,” Smith said.

  Ravyn laughed. “Surely all policemen share that quality.”

  Smith shook his head. “Coppers ask questions, and they want answers, but they don’t listen, not really. I’ve had more than my share of encounters with coppers over the years, and right ponces most of them have been, especially the cretin Monty Spooner. You, you’re not the same, and not because we’re both of this land. It’s like I can feel you are waiting for me to say something, and feeling that makes me want to talk to you.” He thought a moment. “Were I a guilty man, that quality would make you dangerous, and I’m not sure that it doesn’t make you dangerous anyway.”

  Ravyn smiled faintly. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It’s just ahead,” Smith said.

  Abruptly, the two men emerged from darkness into grey light, as if passing through a curtain. The clearing was not much wider than the caravan in its midst was long. Thick wood grew all around. It was hard for Ravyn to imagine how anyone could have pulled the caravan into place. Abruptly, Ravyn was with Aunt Dorcas, an inveterate wanderer on the byways of England, looking through brochures from caravan manufacturers. He opened one.

  “That’s Fairholme New Dawn 15,” Ravyn said. “Circa 1967.”

  “What it is,” Smith said, “is a wreck gone to wrack and ruin.”

  * * *

  DS Leo Stark looked about the incident room in the village hall. WPC Anna Stevens was answering the phone and imputing data into the computer. At least she was when not being pestered by PC Monty Spooner. Stark shook his head. The man was the oldest police constable he had ever seen, sixty if he was a day. Stark had not realised such men existed outside of cosy mysteries written by blue-haired old ladies and under worked Oxford dons.

  Stark thought about interfering, then discarded the idea. The old boy’s mood had brightened considerably after the arrival of WPC Stevens. Initially, Spooner was almost surly, about something Woodcock had done or not done, he gathered.

  He looked at the information board Spooner had set up before his arrival. The map on the left half was hand drawn, but it showed the work of an expert draughtsman, one intimately familiar with the village and its environs. As far as Stark could see, all the landmarks were in the proper scale and in relationship to each other. A photo of Cutter headed the centre of the board, and on the right were the names of witnesses from the Three Crowns and the cottage dwellers he had talked to the night before.

  Stark erased the names of the Weird Sisters, then wrote them, in a less precise hand than Spooner’s, under Cutter’s photo. After a moment, he added Raymond Smith, then, after a longer moment, wrote in Gwen Turner. Moving back to the right, he added Oscar Lent. There was, of course, no connection between Cutter and Lent, but if Stark had learned anything it was that when murder and money were present there was usually a link, eventually.

  “PC Spooner,” Stark called.

  The village constable looked up, irritated. He felt he was very much on the verge of securing a dinner companion and resented the interruption. Then he recalled the setting and that he was not alone as was his usual wont.

  “Yes, sir,” Spooner said, ambling forward. “What can I do for you, Sarge?”

  “Oscar Lent,” Stark said, gesturing toward the name. “Does he come to Ashford often?”

  Spooner frowned brie
fly at the erasures and additions on his board, but made no comment. Even had it not been well known that DS Stark was a City man, Spooner would have known in an instant that he was not bred and born, even before he opened his mouth. It was obvious, to PC Monty Spooner at least, that DS Stark did not have what he called the Hammershire cast.

  “Now and then, Sarge,” Spooner said. “Been several meetings in this here room ‘bout what they want to do to the woods, and he makes clear to be at every single one, spreading oil on the water, you might say.”

  “And oil is necessary?”

  “Quite necessary,” Spooner said.

  “Oil equals money?”

  “Well, I don’t know I would put it that way, Sarge,” Spooner said. “But I don’t know that I wouldn’t. Mr Lent is a generous man, that’s for certain. People always appreciate a generous man.”

  “Yes, they do,” Stark said. “A tie between Lent and Cutter?”

  “Not much between Cutter and anyone,” Spooner said. “He was always a yob, but I don’t know that being raised by Miss Nettle didn’t have a lot to do with that.” He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially: “Quite a dragon, that one.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Stark said. “Enemies?”

  “No friends, that’s for sure,” Spooner said with a snort. “It was a good day when he left, a bad one when he came back.”

  “And pulled a caravan into the woods.”

  “Faith no, lad,” Spooner said. “That caravan was there yonks before Cutter took it. Abandoned it was.”

  “Did you have trouble with it?”

  “Not before, nor after Cutter set up,” Spooner said. “People gave it as wide a berth as they gave the woods.”

  “Haunted by elves, is it?”

  Spooner’s mouth took on a grim set. “What may tickle you is what others take serious, and I’ll mind you to…” The PC paused, lowered his eyes a moment, and pursed his lips. “I don’t mean no disrespect, Sarge, and I’ll assume the same about you. Let us just say, it got a reputation for nothing good and leave it at that.”

  “Who originally lived there?” Stark asked.

  Spooner removed his cap and scratched his head. “Been a long time, more than forty years. It was an outsider, I recall that, and the commotion it raised when people realised he was living in Red Cap Woods, right cheek to jowl with the Lord of the Forest, as they say. Now, what was his name?” He frowned until Stark thought the old boy’s head might explode from the effort. “Trentmoore, that’s it. Christian name was Douglas—Douglas Trentmoore.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Just a bloke who wasn’t there, then he was,” Spooner said. “I recall talking to him, told him to not cause trouble, but since there was no law being broke…” He shrugged. “He was inhospitable.”

  “Didn’t invite you in for a nip?”

  “Not a bleeding drop, Sarge,” Spooner said. “People said he would come to no good end living there.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He came to no good end, didn’t he?” Spooner said. “Vanished with no trace ever found.”

  “What did your investigation reveal?”

  Spooner looked at Stark as if he had suddenly grown two heads, neither with a brain. “Investigate what? That a man who wasn’t there one day was gone the next? Travellers move on, and he did.”

  Stark made note of the name. The disappearance of Trentmoore so long ago could hardly have any bearing on Cutter’s murder, but if Ravyn found out about the old case, and he would, Stark did not want to be caught unawares, again.

  “I take it, villagers like things as they’ve always been,” Stark said. “Not a chap putting a caravan in the woods, not a rich bloke wanting to change everything.”

  “Some do, some don’t,” Spooner said. “There are always a few, like that ponce Woodcock, who think anything they might profit by is something good.”

  “But on the whole?”

  “People here don’t take easy to change, no reason they should,” Spooner said. “Don’t need a big store that will put honest folk out of work, and not anymore outsiders than are already here.”

  “Outsiders like Oscar Lent?”

  “You won’t see him leave his big house in Stafford,” Spooner said. “To us, he’s a thistle on the wind, as the saying goes.”

  “How about Major Westerham?”

  Spooner pulled a sour face. “Major, my left foot. Jumped up quartermaster more like it. Been here twenty years and he’s still just a stuffed sausage.”

  Stark suppressed a smile. Whatever PC Spooner might be, it was not politically correct. It was no wonder they kept him in a dorp like Ashford. It also dawned on Stark that Spooner could help him get a leg up with Ravyn.

  “Have a seat, Constable Spooner,” Stark said. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  Spooner sat down, confused. “That would be nice.”

  Stark returned with a cuppa. “Let me ask you about some of the folks around here.”

  * * *

  Wreck, wrack and ruin—Smith was being charitable, Ravyn decided. The exterior of the caravan, once white and smooth, was streaked with rust and battered in dozens of places, as if someone had taken a mallet to it. Its two tyres were flattened, cracked beyond any hope of repair. Its hitch was sunk deep in soil. The body of the caravan was only approximately level. The wide front window and the four along the sides were all covered with light brown cardboard on the inside. The door was unlocked.

  “Nothing to steal, I suppose,” Smith said. “Besides, who would come into the heart of these woods?”

  “You,” Ravyn said. “Anyone else?”

  “No one with any common sense.”

  “Common sense is uncommon.”

  Smith laughed. “You got me there, Mr Ravyn, but you can’t fight fear. The young ones may scoff the most, being brought up on tellies and tall tales, say they don’t fear what scared those who came before, but they do. Common dares—touch the stones of the Druids or whistle in the heart of the woods. They say they do it, but they don’t; others know they don’t, but they don’t reveal the lies, lest their own brags get lain bare.”

  Memories of beatings received when lies were pierced returned to Ravyn, but he shrugged them off.

  “Me, I lived in and around these woods all my life,” Smith said. “I don’t fear anything in them because I have no reason to fear.”

  “Did that sit well with Miss Mayhew?” Ravyn asked. “I recall that when she spoke about legend and lore, it was with the same belief most people reserve for the Nine O’clock News.”

  Smith sighed. “Strong in her beliefs, weak in everything else.”

  Ravyn glanced from the caravan to Smith.

  “Yes, Miss Mayhew took me in and raised me when my own mum had no use for me, for that I’m grateful,” Smith said. “But she also raised me to not turn a blind eye to the world around me and the people in it.”

  “Is that world a pagan world?” Ravyn asked.

  “The world is what it is, Mr Ravyn.”

  “Any idea who your mum was?”

  “It never troubled me none.”

  Ravyn touched the door’s handle. “Would you mind if…”

  “Never been in before, don’t need to now,” Smith said. “In fact, I’d rather be on my way, if it’s all the same to you. You can find your way back?”

  Ravyn nodded. “I’ll still need to interview you officially.”

  “I’m not hard to find.”

  Smith turned and walked out of the clearing, but in a different direction to how they came in. Ravyn watched him vanish into the blackness of the woods. He had the impression of a great ravenous beast devouring a small and insignificant morsel. It was just a forest and nothing more, he told himself, but the image refused to leave him. He opened the door and entered.

  If anything, the interior of the caravan made the exterior look almost pristine. The place was cluttered beyond belief. Ravyn, who felt a constant need to surround himself with order and
regularity, fought an urge to retreat from the tsunami of chaos in which Allan Cutter had dwelt.

  Leaving the door open helped lessen the severe claustrophobia assailing him. Taking some of the cardboard from the windows to let in dim forest light helped even more.

  Ravyn reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of latex gloves. He made a circuit of the caravan, letting his gaze wander over every scrap of paper and household item, every map and photo mounted on the walls, much as anyone else would survey the scene with a video recorder. Nearing the nook at the front of the caravan, where brochures had shown a happy mid-century family enjoying a traditional English breakfast, he saw a thin, pale strip of cardboard. Carefully, he pulled a folder from between the seat cushions.

  Sitting at the table would have been the easiest way to survey the papers and clippings within. He considered the stained and taped seat cushions, then opened the folder flat on the table and stood at the end looking down.

  The yellowed clippings had been cut from Hammershire papers more than three decades ago, most a paragraph or two about reports of public drunkenness and disturbances by one Douglas Trentmoore, at times listed as a resident of Ashford, often termed a Traveller or tinker. Ravyn’s eyebrows lifted slightly when he saw official police reports. All were the same vintage as the clippings and all had been signed by PC Monty Spooner. Some mentioned Trentmoore in acts of ‘public disorder,’ while others were about noises and lights in the forest, animals left dead on doorsteps, and prowlers along Hob’s Lane and nearby roads. Last was a one-page missing person’s report on Trentmoore, filed by Maratha Chandler. On it, Spooner had scrawled: ‘Scarpered—no investigation.’

  Ravyn closed the file, pursed his lips, then again examined the maps and photos. The maps were of Ashford and surrounding area, with a special emphasis on Red Cap Woods, marked with lines and annotations, as if Cutter had been searching for something. Most photos showed locations from the maps and several cottages, but a few were older and showed a brooding, handsome man. Trentmoore? It was likely, he thought. He considered adding it all to the file, but decided to leave everything in place till the forensics team gave the caravan a good going over.