Table of Contents
Cover
A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler
The Lina Townend Series
DRAWING THE LINE
SILVER GUILT *
RING OF GUILT *
GUILTY PLEASURES *
GUILT TRIP *
GUILT EDGED *
The Frances Harman Series
LIFE SENTENCE
COLD PURSUIT
STILL WATERS
BURYING THE PAST *
DOUBLE FAULT *
GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND *
The Jodie Welsh Series
DEATH IN ELYSIUM *
* available from Severn House
GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND
A Fran Harman Mystery
Judith Cutler
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world edition published 2014
in Great Britain and 2015 in the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2014 by Judith Cutler.
The right of Judith Cutler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cutler, Judith author.
Green and Pleasant Land. – (The Fran Harman series)
1. Harman, Fran (Fictitious character)–Fiction.
2. Ex-police officers–England–Worcestershire–Fiction.
3. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)–Fiction.
4. Missing persons–Investigation–Fiction.
5. Detective and mystery stories.
I. Title II. Series
823.9’2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8465-7 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-568-1 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-616-8 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,
Stirlingshire, Scotland.
For John and Marion Bench, with love, and to West Bromwich Albion, a team which delights and frustrates in equal measure its army of loyal and dedicated fans
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I could not have written this without:
Paul Bethel, ex-Detective Chief Inspector, South Wales Police, who inspired and encouraged me, and provided invaluable information on cold cases;
Ex-Detective Superintendent Mick Turner, now Director of Sancus Solutions, equally inspiring, encouraging and informative;
Lynne Masters, from West Mercia Police Press Office, who provided me with invaluable information about Hindlip Hall and was discretion itself about the people working there;
the staff of West Bromwich Albion Football Club, especially John Simpson, always cheerful and positive however dispiriting the weekend results, and the chair of the Supporters’ Club, Alan Cleverley, who is even more charming and knowledgeable than he appears in the novel;
Ivor Higgins, constantly on the watch for typos and other infelicities;
the staff of the Vine pub in Wombourne, who responded to a casual enquiry about their pub sign as if it was as serious as finding the God particle, and also provided lovely food;
all the inhabitants of the Wyre Forest area, none of whom are at all like their fictional counterparts.
PROLOGUE
I was driving from Cleobury Mortimer to Bewdley. The twenty-first of January. Any other day I’d have taken the main road – yes, the A road. The A41. But there were a lot of road works where it joins the Tenbury Road, so I thought I’d risk the B roads, although they’re much slower, aren’t they? But you couldn’t go fast anyway, not with all the fog. Although it was supposedly still daylight – about three o’clock in the afternoon – you could hardly see your hand in front of your face, and I kept thinking I ought to turn back. But my aunt – she was nearly eighty – would have been really worried if I didn’t go, not when I’d promised. And I’d got a dozen fresh eggs for her.
Anyway, I was picking my way through the forest, and wishing I’d started earlier, because now the light was going too; if I put my headlights on it didn’t really help. So I tried putting them on main beam; that made it far worse. And then I saw this car – one of those big ones, like a young tank – pulled up at the side of the road just past Buttonoak, although there are double white lines down the middle and it’s quite dangerous to overtake.… The forest clears a bit then it thickens up again. It’d be about a mile in – just before the Hawkbatch Valley car park – and I wondered why whoever it was hadn’t pressed on another hundred yards. Or, come to that, stopped a few yards back on the other side of the road – Withybed, I think that one’s called. Anyway, this big car was parked, and it had its emergency flashers going. I wasn’t going to take any notice – I’d actually driven past – but when I looked in the mirror I realized a door was open on the passenger side. The rear one. Don’t ask me why I didn’t notice before; I suppose I was too busy worrying about pulling on to the wrong side of the road. No, I’d not long passed my test – never needed to drive till my husband died. First husband, that is – he never liked my being independent. I thought how odd it was. And I stopped. I got out and – it was so still and quiet. Everything. As if someone had switched off the sound.
I went round to the driver’s side to see if I could help. No one in the driver’s seat. But in the back there was a baby strapped into a child seat. I’ll swear I knew straight away there was something wrong with it, poor little mite. Something strange about its head. And its poor face. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. So I went round the other side (where the door was open, remember) and peered in. What a mess! There was a sea of toys and crisp packets an
d goodness knows what else, with another child seat in the middle. I had to put my hand on it to lean across to the baby; it was still just warm. The seat, I mean. And the baby – that was still warm too, but not warm enough. It was as floppy as a rag doll. I’d once been taught CPR, but I couldn’t find any pulse. And – yes, I was reluctant to interfere … to bring so damaged a child back … In any case, it wouldn’t have been any good, or that’s what they told me later.
So what should I do? I didn’t have a mobile or anything, not in those days. Half of me wanted to stay with the baby, for all it was dead. The other half wanted to go for help. But then someone on a Forestry Commission tractor came along, and he’d got a radio and called for help. We just stood there waiting. Neither of us could think of anything to say. So we just stood side by side looking into the woods. That was when I noticed the footprints in the grass.
ONE
‘So this is Hindlip Hall,’ Mark Turner said, passing between impressive modern walls announcing the fact – the corporate equivalents of gatehouses, but with no gates directly attached to them. ‘It’s somewhat grander than where we worked in Kent.’
Fran pointed through the streaming passenger door window. ‘Did you see that notice? Telling folk they enter at their own risk?’
‘What? Abandon hope all ye who enter here?’
‘Almost. Should we chicken out now? Hey, didn’t I read that the place was supposed to be haunted?’
‘That would be this building’s predecessor,’ Mark said. ‘Priest’s holes and Catholic plotters and such in the first, which burned down. You don’t get ghosts in elegant nineteenth-century gentlemen’s residences. Or gentlewomen’s, for that matter.’
Fran sniffed to show she was rightly ignoring the equal opportunities dig. In his time as Kent’s assistant chief constable, Mark had done more than most to promote and support women. He’d never made it to chief constable, and would probably have hated such a managerial position even more than he’d hated being ACC. At least in that post he’d managed to make enough time to be reasonably hands-on in dealing with people and crime as opposed to policy and statistics.
‘How on earth did something like this become a police headquarters?’ she demanded.
He waited for the security barrier to rise. ‘More to the point, how on earth, in the current economic climate, have they managed to hang on to it?’
Fran nodded. ‘It’s great real estate. I’ll bet my teeth someone wanted to sell it off when West Mercia Police merged with Warwickshire. It would make a wonderful high-end hotel – extensive grounds, too.’
‘I wonder what it’ll be like to work in.’ He put the car in motion.
‘Do you mean that in the literal sense: will they have made proper office space in what’s probably a listed building?’ Fran asked, as they peered through the driving rain for the signposts to the car park to which they’d been despatched. ‘Or the abstract: being parachuted in to solve another force’s unsolved crime?’ She pointed. ‘It’s over there, I think.’ By now the rain was bouncing so high it was hard to tell.
‘We’re hardly being parachuted,’ Mark objected, parking as neatly as he could, given that it was impossible to see the white lines between bays. ‘We’re not enemies invading someone’s territory. We came because Gerry Barnes invited us.’
‘Invited you!’
‘But you were part of the deal; he might have asked me first, but you were his choice as lead investigator. Something to do with your solving a few crimes,’ he added with a grin.
‘He’d never have chosen me for my administrative skills, that’s for sure. Or my tact and diplomacy.’ As for Fran herself, the very mention of her own likely promotion to ACC had made her grab at overdue retirement with both hands. Admittedly, at the time she’d been on sick leave, needing crutches for even the most trivial errand round the house, but while her leg hadn’t been working her mind certainly had and she’d not regretted her apparently impulsive decision for a second.
The windscreen was awash the moment he cut the ignition. ‘Shall we wait a few more minutes and hope the rain eases or grab a brolly apiece and make a run for it?’ he asked.
‘And arrive with no dignity and hair in rats’ tails?’
He squeezed her hand. ‘And when did you ever worry about dignity, Ms Harman? No longer Detective Chief Superintendent Harman, of course,’ he added, anxiety creeping into his voice. Though why should he worry about her? She had natural authority by the bucket-load. ‘I’ve had long enough to get used to being plain Mr Turner, not to mention the times the media called me Mr Harman …’ With a grin, he squeezed her hand to show he found it amusing, now at least. Back then, however, it had grated. ‘But it’ll be strange to be civilians in a police world. We’ll be neither flesh nor fowl—’
‘Nor good red herring,’ she concluded for him.
The rain beat more heavily on the car.
‘Do you suppose they’ll sir and ma’am us? No, let’s be Fran and Mark.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘I’d better not call you sweetheart.’
‘You can call me all the other things in private, though,’ he reminded her, with a deep chuckle. ‘Look, we could sit here all day waiting for the rain to ease. Let’s make a dash for it.’ He reached for and passed her an umbrella and her bag before retrieving his own.
‘I’ll race you!’ She was already halfway out of the car.
‘In your dreams!’
So no dignity there, and he’d swear she’d cheated. But it was more or less a dead heat, and if anything he was too busy being relieved that her leg had recovered from its injury to make more than a token complaint. Dignity or not, it was time for a quick hug.
Fran and Mark had had a wonderful spring and summer. She’d forced herself to toil through endless physiotherapy sessions and exercise plans so that she could walk up the aisle at their wedding – heavens, she’d even broken into a very swift canter as Mark turned to greet her at the altar. Thereafter they’d had a magic honeymoon in springtime Crete; could you have a honeymoon after living together for so long? You bet your life you could. Then there’d been a summer filled with tennis and gardening and the delights of Mark’s grandchildren (hers too now, and she couldn’t have loved them more dearly had they had a blood relationship). With the children back in school, autumn had brought more travel.
But she’d sensed in Mark, once the garden was tidied up in readiness for the winter, a restlessness that even building a wonderful 00 railway layout in the loft hadn’t been able to assuage. Once she’d detected it in him, she had to admit to herself that perhaps she too lacked an intellectual challenge; certainly she’d missed the team she’d worked with for so many years. She still saw many of them as friends, of course, when they had the time, but somehow team fun wasn’t the same as team work.
Which now awaited her and Mark.
New year, new challenge.
Having wet hair and soaking clothes was one thing, but she suspected it was quite another to leave wet and muddy footprints on the carpet of the grand entrance hall. Mark dumped their brollies in a bucket already occupied by several others. Then, as one, they headed for the big reception desk, where they were greeted by a laughing woman with a strong Midlands accent. Iris Day, her badge said. ‘I’ve got your IDs here.’ She burrowed in a drawer, her face puckering in defeat. ‘I’ve got one for Mr Turner and one for Mrs Turner, but nothing for a Mrs Harman.’
‘No problem, Iris: I’d best be Mrs Turner for a bit, hadn’t I? But since legally my name’s still Harman, maybe you could arrange another one for me? Sorry to put you to extra trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble at all.’ She made a note. Looking up, she added archly, ‘So are you really Mrs Turner or are you living in sin?’
Fran responded to the twinkle in the woman’s eye rather than the abrupt and old-fashioned question. ‘We’re living in Kent! I’m sort of Mrs Turner in that we’re married. But I’ve been Harman so long I clean forgot I should sign a different name. So n
ow I’ll be Fran Harman for the rest of my life.’
‘Not a bad name,’ Mark added.
The woman put her head on one side. ‘So you’ll be a Ms on the ID, not a Mrs, won’t you? No problems. Now, if you don’t mind my saying, you’ve still got rain dripping off your hair and on to your nose and your mascara’s running riot. There’s a ladies’ loo just down there – and a gents’, Mr Turner. Quite nice but not as Downton Abbey as the rest of this place. Then I’ll get someone to take you along to see Mr Webster.’
‘Mr Webster?’ Mark prompted. ‘We were expecting to see Mr Barnes.’
Iris leaned confidentially towards them. ‘Not here today. Redundancy, I reckon. With this merger, there’ll be a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, you’ll see. Anyway, it’s Mr Webster, the new Assistant Chief Constable (Crime), who’s expecting you. The chief constable’s busy.’ Even she grimaced at an official faux pas, if not a snub.
Mark nodded: no problem. At least he hoped there wasn’t one. Gerry Barnes had brimmed with enthusiasm for the project, promising both a skilled team of serving officers and unlimited back-room support. Would a replacement deliver the same commitment? Without such back-up, their job would be very difficult – and extremely time-consuming. But if anyone was used to police politics, he was, so he must negotiate the best deal he could. He smiled at Iris. ‘Just checking: with all these changes, is the chief constable still Andrew Barwell?’
‘Of course. No, not of course. He has been for the last six months, but with things the way they are … Do you know him?’
‘We might have nodded at each other at a few conferences, but that’s all. Fran?’
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