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

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “I was just about to call you, Guv,” Stark said without greeting or preamble. “I just…”

  “I’m at the Goblins’ Playground,” Ravyn interrupted. “That’s the old megalithic henge in…”

  “Sorry, Guv, but I’ve got to tell you,” Stark said.

  Ravyn’s jaw tightened at the interruption. “What is it, Stark?”

  “SOCO just called from Cutter’s caravan,” Stark explained. “It is burned to the ground and Spooner is out cold. Concussion it looks like. They’ve left one technician on site to see if he can get anything out of what’s left, but the rest are bringing Spooner in. Seems in bad shape, they say. I’ve already summoned an ambulance. It’s going to meet them where they left their vehicle.”

  Thinking of Monty Spooner’s condition, Ravyn fought off a twinge of guilt. True, he had warned the old fellow of a possible lurker, but that was small comfort. The investigation had to progress quickly, but it would have been of little inconvenience for him to remain at the caravan with the constable till SOCO’s arrival. In fact, some might criticise his decision to post Spooner as guard at all. He could have stayed himself or summoned a younger officer from Stafford. Was his decision to post Spooner motivated by the need to secure the caravan without delay or was it poor judgment?

  And Superintendent Heln would likely have other questions.

  “Sir, are you still there?” Stark asked.

  Ravyn looked back to the body seated against the stone. The man’s arms were loose at his sides, hands open. Above him was a long red-stained incision in the stone, like an arrow pointing toward him, as if someone wanted to make sure he was not missed. His pale shirt was stained crimson. The head was bowed, features partially hid, but Ravyn had no trouble recognising the dead man, not with a face that appeared often in the financial and social sections of the Stafford Times, famous enough to show up occasionally even in City newspapers.

  “Oscar Lent is dead,” Ravyn said. He called up the SatNav app and again relayed his location to Stark. “Contact Dr Penworthy, tell her to get here soon as she can. Let SOCO know about Lent and that I’ve found the primary crime scene for Cutter.”

  “Judas Priest,” Stark said, his voice whispery as tissue.

  “You might be right at that, Stark.”

  “Sir?”

  “Are the interviews set up?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” Ravyn said. “I’ll be in soon as I get everything sorted with SOCO and chat with the good doctor.”

  Chapter 7: Deep Secrets

  “I don’t know why you’re asking me of Allan Cutter, I do not,” Marion Stone said. She stared across the tiny table sullenly, her brow furrowed to shadow deep-set eyes. Her hands clasped each other hard enough to make them bloodless. “He was a bastard who grew into an even bigger bastard. I had nothing to do with him.”

  “Except to warn him away from Gwen Turner, as I understand it,” DCI Ravyn said. “That what you told DS Stark?”

  The onyx eyes beneath the beetled brow shifted to Stark. “Not exactly, but near enough, I suppose.”

  “Were Gwen and Allan intimate?” Ravyn asked.

  Bloodless hands grew paler, marble on the verge of shattering.

  “Miss Stone, please answer the question,” Stark said.

  She shook her head.

  “For the record, Miss Stone indicated there were no intimate relations between Allan Cutter and Gwen Turner,” Ravyn said for the digital recorder. “Of which she is aware.”

  “You’re a bastard too, Mr Ravyn,” Marion said. Her voice was low, guttural, more like the warning growl of a mad dog than that of a human being. “Not surprised much that Althea Haven’s unwanted little brat grew into such a bastard.”

  Ravyn regarded her blandly, with no more emotion than if she had asked him about the weather. She stared back at him as if she were a manikin in a tableau about Stone Age life, eyes glinting like volcanic glass, jaw jutting like the ram of a Roman warship. Her arms bulged with corded muscles. He remembered those muscles bunching as she hefted carcasses and drove a cleaver through flesh and gristle like they were air. Time had not weakened her one whit. If anything, she was stronger now than when she ran the butcher shop alone as a young woman.

  Alone, except for a large-eyed waif moving silently among all the dead things, Ravyn reminded himself.

  “How often did you see Allan Cutter?” Ravyn asked.

  “As little as possible,” Marion replied. She tried to drop it there, but Ravyn’s gaze was as unrelenting as it was mild. “I didn’t go out of my way to avoid him, if that is what you’re thinking. I don’t fear anyone, certainly not a mite like Allan.”

  “No, certainly not,” Ravyn agreed. “But your contact with him was…what?”

  “Mostly he stayed at that ratty old caravan, did odd jobs here and there, what needed doing—none for me, mind you—or lazed about the Three Crowns drinking.” She grinned. “When he wasn’t barred, that is, which was often.”

  “He ever come into your shop?”

  “Rarely. Only for the odd sausage he couldn’t get on his own.”

  “And he was forbidden at your house?”

  “He was.” She unclasped her hands, made them into belligerent fists, and pressed them against the table top as she inclined toward Ravyn and Stark. “And I made that very clear to him.”

  “Where did Gwen and Allan meet then?” Ravyn asked.

  Marion pushed herself back against her chair. “I told you there was nothing between those two!”

  “There was at least admiration on Gwen’s part, was there not?” Ravyn asked.

  “She seemed extremely upset about his death,” Stark said. “She was quite distraught.”

  “Soft heart, soft head,” Marion said, as if that explained all.

  “When I told you Cutter was dead, you didn’t seem surprised.”

  Marion shrugged. “All his life, he been skating on the edge of an abyss. Stands to reason he would fall in, sooner or later. You see a man walking down the middle of a busy road, you’re not surprised when he gets run down by a lorry, are you?”

  “Tell us what your movements were last night,” Ravyn said.

  “Gwen and me, we closed up shop, went home and ate supper,” Marion said. “We watched telly, then went to bed.” She glared at Stark. “To our own rooms, you dirty-minded bastard.”

  Stark bit back a reply, then noticed a subtle shake of the head from Ravyn. “It’s possible, you could have gone out later without Gwen’s knowledge.”

  “It’s possible, her being a stupid cow,” she said. “But I didn’t.”

  “If we ask Gwen, she’ll confirm that?”

  “That’s exactly what she’ll confirm.” Marion’s eyes narrowed. “She’ll say it, but she can’t swear to it.”

  “Just as you cannot swear Gwen did not go out after she was supposed to be in bed,” Ravyn said. “After all, if she was fond of Cutter, she might have made plans to meet him.”

  “I am a light sleeper,” Marion said. “I would have heard.”

  “Cutter was older than Gwen?” Ravyn asked.

  “By a few years,” she said. “At least we think so.”

  “Ah, yes, Cutter was a foundling, wasn’t he?” Ravyn said. “He was left in a dustbin at the library.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Not according to Lillian Nettle,” Stark said.

  “You’d have to ask Lillian about that,” Marion said. “She took him in, not me.”

  “But in time you took in a foundling of your own,” Ravyn said.

  She nodded. “Common knowledge.”

  “Tell us about that.” Ravyn urged.

  “Nothing to tell, Mr Ravyn,” Marion said. “I opened the shop one morning and there she was. No one wanted the pitiful cow, so I kept her, gave her a home, taught her a trade.”

  “And loved her like a mother?” Ravyn asked.

  “In my own way,” Marion replied. “I’m hard, but I’m fair.”

&n
bsp; “Not like Lillian Nettle?”

  “Lillian Nettle has nothing to do with Gwen.”

  “No, she had Allan,” Ravyn said. “Didn’t she?”

  “If you want me to say Allan became such a bastard because of the way he was raised, I won’t say no,” Marion said. “Lillian is hard, and she’s also more than a little mean-spirited, harsh to them she doesn’t like. That’s no less than I would say to her own face, ‘cause if there’s any good thing about Lillian, it’s that she doesn’t lie to herself about herself. But she did her best with Allan.”

  “And Dylwyth had Raymond Smith to raise,” Ravyn said, as if he had not heard a word she said.

  “What’s Dylwyth have to do with anything?” she demanded.

  “Are the three of you friends?” Ravyn asked. “You, Lillian and Dylwyth?”

  “We’ve known each other a long time, if that’s what you want to know,” she replied.

  “I’m asking if the three of you are friends.”

  “When you live in the same village for…”

  “Close,” Ravyn interrupted. “Like sisters?”

  Marion Stone glared at Ravyn much as she would a whole hog, wondering where to start. “We used to be.”

  “And now?” Ravyn asked.

  “When you’ve been friends with someone more than fifty years, it’s not something you easily give up,” Marion said. “We used to be closer than we are now, but we were younger, and we were prey to the fires of youth.” She paused. “As well as the follies.”

  “You, Miss Nettle and Miss Mayhew had much in common?”

  “We did,” Marion admitted. “To an extent, we still do.”

  “Including the raising of three foundling children.”

  Marion nodded. “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think it unlikely?” Ravyn asked. “Three women in a small village, all friends with each other, each put into a situation where she is raising another woman’s child?”

  “We thought maybe the mums knew each other,” Marion said. “Raymond appears the eldest, so we thought that maybe his mum told the other two how she come to find a home for him.”

  Ravyn shrugged noncommittally. “Three friends, a village not known for visitors, over a period of several years. Unlikely.”

  “Unusual, but not unlikely,” Marion said.

  “How do you figure that, Miss Stone?” Stark asked.

  She looked at him as she would the village idiot. “Anything that has happened cannot be considered unlikely.”

  “I think you mean, anything that happens cannot be considered impossible,” Ravyn said. “Either way, that is Miss Nettle speaking, isn’t it? A justification of circumstances?”

  “What are you inferring, Mr Ravyn?” she asked.

  “How do you feel about the redevelopment planned in Red Cap Woods?” Ravyn asked.

  “It’s an abomination!” she blurted. “I mean, it’s not good.”

  “And a threat to your livelihood,” Stark suggested. “After all, a new Tesco going in—what would happen to the butcher shop?”

  “I’d still have customers,” she asserted. “Only a few would go there, mostly outsiders with no more sense than you.”

  “Everyone else would know better?” Ravyn said.

  “Goes to say, them knowing the right path,” Marion replied, resorting to an old Hammershire figure of speech.

  “They’d know they don’t have lease to be there,” Ravyn said.

  “No, they don’t have…” She stared at the two detectives. To Stark: “You, I don’t expect to have the brain of a turnip, you being a strapper.” Then, to Ravyn: “But you I’d expect to have more sense than to mock powers that were old when humanity was young, who will endure long after we are but a memory.”

  “One of my aunts habitually goes skyclad and occasionally dances around bonfires in forest glens,” Ravyn said.

  Marion snorted and slapped the table. “Not Althea!”

  “Oh no, that would be Aunt Rose,” Ravyn said. “A couple of years ago, she chained herself to Stonehenge.”

  She stared at Ravyn, eyes conflicted, but dark with suspicion. “I did not kill Allan Cutter and I did not kill Oscar Lent.”

  “You were not happy about the relationship between Cutter and your girl,” Stark said.

  “Can’t you keep your pup tied up, Mr Ravyn?” she said. “There was no relationship, but if there was, Gwen is old enough to speak for herself, though she hasn’t the brains of a mouse.”

  Stark waited a moment for Ravyn to speak, then, when he held silent, said: “What about Oscar Lent?”

  “What about Oscar Lent?” she countered. “He was consumed by a lust for material gain, blind to the powers that rule the world, especially in a place like Ashford. He is dead, but no human hand did the deed. He sought to violate a realm he had no business being in, and he paid the price for it.”

  Stark blew a derisive snort out his nostrils.

  “You believe what you want to believe,” Marion snapped. “I know Oscar Lent was killed by the Lord of the Woods, else why was he found within the ring of goblins? I also know Allan’s evil ways brought upon him doom previously held in abeyance. He reckoned he had lease to live in the heart of the woods, in a cursed place, but he was wrong, wasn’t he? So, if you want to find the killer, don’t look in the realm of men, but in the domain of the powers you mock so foolishly, Mr Ravyn.”

  “Allan Cutter should have known better?” Ravyn asked. “Are you saying he should have shown more respect?”

  “Much more,” she agreed. “Born here and raised right, he knew what was allowed, what was not.”

  “There were signs and portents?” Ravyn asked.

  “There are always signs and portents,” Marion said. “That’s the way of them who dwell in forests deep.”

  “Not words of course,” Ravyn suggested.

  “Not human words,” she said.. “They speak by the wind in the trees, the ripples in the streams. Allan Cutter was a fool not to ken to their sayings. Then he might not be dead, mightn’t he?”

  “And there was also the example of Douglas Trentmoore.”

  Marion’s animated face collapsed into blandness. “Who?”

  “You’ve not heard the name before?”

  “No, Mr Ravyn,” Marion replied. “Can’t say I have.”

  “He vanished some time ago.”

  “If you say so,” she commented. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’m told he formerly lived in Cutter’s caravan,” Ravyn said. “More than a generation ago. You must have heard of him, at least.”

  “It was an abandoned caravan,” she said.

  “But before that?”

  She shrugged. “It’s always been abandoned, as far as I know.”

  “But someone must have moved it into place,” Ravyn said.

  “It’s there, so stands to reason someone did,” Marion agreed.

  “Forty years ago, maybe more, when the forest around it was not quite as thick?” Ravyn suggested.

  Again, Marion shrugged, this time shaking her head, arching her eyebrows and sighing. For all her interest, he might have been discussing the distance from Earth to Mars.

  “Perhaps Trentmoore was the Lord of the Woods,” Ravyn said.

  All her trappings of apathy fell away.

  “You are a fool, Mr Ravyn!”

  The look on her face made Stark glad the woman did not have in hand one of the cleavers from her butcher shop. He looked to Ravyn for guidance of some sort, whether he should tackle the mad bitch and wrestle her to the ground, but Ravyn seemed completely at ease, a beatific smile light upon his lips.

  “Thank you for your cooperation in our enquiry, Miss Stone,” Ravyn said. “Please keep yourself available and refrain from speaking to others about your interview.” He reached across to the digital recorded. “Interview terminated at 1127 hours.”

  Marion’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “I can go?”

  “This way, Miss Stone,” Stark said, walking her
to the door of the office. He watched her cross the village hall, like a dreadnaught making for deep water. He returned to his chair, sat and sighed. “Got up her nose a bit, didn’t you, sir. I got worried at the last.”

  “It’s often the best tactic with insular people,” Ravyn said. “I’m sure she walked through that door fully intending to not say one blessed word. Touch a nerve, though, and see how the floodgates open. What do you think, Stark?”

  “I think I sat through a French film with Lithuanian subtitles,” Stark replied. “Sorry, sir, but…”

  Ravyn laughed. “Between the dialect and the mindset, it can be rough going for an outsider.”

  “I’ll try to do better, sir,” he said, a hint of frost in his voice.

  Ravyn laughed again. “Don’t think for a moment that Marion Stone doesn’t count me an outsider as well. I stayed a season with Aunt Althea, and most people remember me for that, but I wasn’t born in Ashford: I was born in Abofyl.”

  Stark frowned.

  “A village even smaller than Ashford, near the confluence of the Rivers Orm and Dresal,” Ravyn explained. “It’s relatively near Ashford, actually, but to Marion and the others, it might as well be China, Timbuktu or London. It’s all foreign to them.”

  Stark shook his head. “Hard to get my mind around it. I’ll tell you one thing for sure—she was lying.”

  “Yes, she was,” Ravyn agreed. “But about what, I wonder?”

  “Or she’s mental,” Stark said. “Either way, she’s in the frame.”

  “For which one?”

  “Both, of course,” Stark replied. “Cutter for his attentions to her girl, Gwen, and Lent for his scheme to ‘defile’ the woods and deprive her of her livelihood.” He paused. “But…”

  “But…what?”

  “If she wanted to kill someone, I can’t see her using anything but her own bare hands. She could crack walnuts with those arms. I thought she was going to come across the table at you.”

  “Yes, that was an interesting reaction to my question.”

  “It rather caught me by surprise too, sir.”

  “Are you planning on a return to the Met?”