Every corner in the house seemed to tingle with awareness of her daughter – the entire White House vibrant as though it was humming. She reached every corner, her voice, her belongings, her clothes strewn around the place, the scent of her perfume which followed her through the rooms, the sound of her music wafting round the house, light, quick steps everywhere, because Sukey was one of those women who never did anything slowly and because of her lightning speed she seemed to be in more than one place at a time. And yet she was elusive. One was always a couple of steps behind her, her scent the only hint that she had just passed through. Except in the kitchen, where her presence was solid and tangible. Food was very important to her so the scent and sound of cooking drew her to it like a bee to nectar. For a young woman with a very slim frame she was capable of eating very healthily. No anorexia for her. She wolfed down her meals but she was particular of the ingredients and would sit, thoughtfully chewing, making comments.
‘I think a bit stronger cheese on the topping, Mum.’ Or sometimes, ‘This is nice. This is really, really nice,’ which made Martha feel the trouble had all been worth it. She might be a coroner but her happiest role was simply being mother. However, as Martin had died so young, leaving her with twin toddlers, she had no option but to be the breadwinner. Whatever her own personal desires she had had to sweep them aside to work and support her family.
This was her life. And she wasn’t complaining.
Even Bobby, who was getting on in years, bounced around Sukey like a puppy, wagging his tail non-stop, his tongue hanging out for walk after walk. Both twins were more than happy to oblige.
And as for Sam, he too looked happy to have his twin sister around again, even if it was only temporarily. There was no sight Martha loved more than seeing Sam’s reddish hair bent over Sukey’s long blonde locks while they shared confidences. There was another reason for Sam’s lift in spirits. He had confided in Martha that he was having a chat with the manager and the manager’s mate, someone called Jack Arrowsmith, and they’d been pretty encouraging about his plans to resume his studies.
‘Good,’ she’d responded. ‘That’s good.’
Martha loved it. She had her family back – for now.
There was another reason why her own spirits soared. She was getting an inkling that the family, rather than shrinking, leaving her alone in the empty nest of the White House, might, at some time in the future, do the opposite and expand. Sukey now had a boyfriend, a nineteen-year-old called William Friedman who was the diametric opposite of her. Studious, introverted and quiet, he used his eyes a lot, watching everything and saying little. Martha wasn’t too sure about him but he adored her daughter, was polite to her and seemed to get on OK with Sam.
Sam, who was making life-changing decisions. And even he was apparently not quite immune to the opposite sex. He’d said, in his gruff voice, during one of their early morning chats, that his friend’s sister, someone called Rosalee, wasn’t too bad.
And as if that wasn’t enough of a clue, the look he had given her had been distinctly enquiring. She knew that look. He was searching for her approval.
THIRTEEN
Wednesday, 17 September, 10 a.m.
Monkmoor police station.
It was PC Lara Tinsley who communicated the news to Randall. She found him bent over the computer screen. He was looking for similar assaults on homeless people in the last few years. Apart from the fatal assault on Joseph Gallagher there had been two other attacks on tramps but they had both been in the south of England – one in London three years ago and the other six months ago in Bournemouth.
In spite of himself, Randall felt amused at the location. He’d always thought of Bournemouth as the home of gentle, retired folk, not somewhere where they went tramp-bashing. Obviously nowhere was immune from prejudice. But Bournemouth? However, the only similarity in the three crimes was that the two other victims were also vagrants. All the assaults had been beatings with fists and feet. The crimes had been committed late at night, alcohol fuelled and in full view of well-placed CCTV. They did not have the subtlety or the cruelty of the murder of The Man; neither had had their throats cut and both had survived, though the London victim had died two months later, his injuries almost certainly a major contributory factor. The perpetrator in that case was still in prison appealing against the charge of manslaughter, while the other had been convicted of GBH and was also still in prison. Randall sat still and thought. The police are very sensitive to the MO of a crime and these three cases (including the Shrewsbury assault) were inherently different. They could not help solve this case. There was one other glaring difference. The three previous assaults on the homeless had all taken place in town centres. The assault in Moreton Corbet was something different. A secretive, rural location well away from CCTV, bright street lights and witnesses.
He looked up as Lara entered his office space. Two years ago the force had gone open plan which was good in one way, for communication, but not so good for privacy. It was very difficult to have any sort of private conversation whether in person or over the phone. News or scandal swept around the office like an Australian forest fire in the height of summer.
‘Sir,’ PC Tinsley said tentatively. He looked up, met the big cow-brown eyes set in a face that even her best friend would only have described as pancake plain: a turned-up nose and small mouth.
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve had news from the forensic lab looking at our man’s clothes.’
She fidgeted and Randall instinctively knew why. She wanted to call their victim something. Not just The Man. And not John Doe, which was clichéd and suggested no real identity at all, but someone whom they were content to remain forever anonymous. She wanted him to have a name. Dignity. Identity. He warmed to her and smiled at the diffident PC.
‘And?’ he prompted gently.
‘They found something weird stitched into the bottom of the coat pocket wrapped up in a handkerchief.’
His eyebrows formed the question.
‘They appear to be war medals, sir. Four of them.’
He could not have been more surprised. ‘War medals?’
‘Yes, sir. We believe they’re Second World War medals.’
He felt his hopes rise. ‘Is there a name on them?’
‘Apparently not, sir.’
Randall sat silent, rolling his pen between his fingers. Cases were all like this, he reflected. Peaks and troughs like those formed by waves in a choppy sea. One minute you were on the crest, looking down, and the next plunged into murky depths, looking up.
Again, a clue as to the man’s identity but, like the ancient child’s shoe, this didn’t make much sense either. Randall did some swift calculations. The Man was estimated to be around forty-five years old. That would mean he would have been born around 1970. His father may have been born in 1940 or even 1950 – still too young to have served for His Majesty in WWII. His grandfather then? Had this anonymous man taken the trouble to stitch his grandfather’s medals into his trousers when he travelled so light? What on earth was all this about? A child’s shoe from more than a hundred years ago and war medals about seventy years old?
He looked at the PC, bemused. ‘Tinsley,’ he said, ‘take that shoe up to the museum, will you, see if you can get it dated and we’ll take it from there. And we’ll get someone else to examine the war medals and see if we can get some clue as to who …’ he hesitated, ‘… this gentleman is.’
Or why he carried these two apparently unrelated objects.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And have we circulated his dental records to the dentists?’
‘I’ll check, sir.’
‘I think we’ll talk again to the local press. I’ll speak to the coroner – see if we can leak out a few more facts. We’ll need to open and adjourn an inquest. Can you get a press meeting sorted out for later today?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Time we went public, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir.�
�
‘And then at nine we’d better have another briefing.’
Tinsley tried to hide her dismay. A nine p.m. briefing meant another late night, which her husband would not appreciate. He would resent her ‘devotion to the force’ superseding her devotion to him. Greg Tinsley had his own cruel ways of showing his disapproval of his wife’s career, which he interpreted as a dangerous independence. And there was always another willing woman to provide diversion and compound the punishment. He was a good-looking hunk or thug of a man, depending on your point of view.
Randall watched her go. He knew a little of her home life, of her husband’s infidelity which had left her nervous and unhappy. He’d seen her wince at the late hour of their briefing, but he had a case to solve and all his officers deserved equal consideration for their home circumstances. He couldn’t send her home at five o’clock every afternoon just because her husband was a philanderer any more than he could send Talith home to be with his pregnant wife or Roberts home to make whatever it was up with Flora, his girlfriend. Randall missed little of his officers’ changing lives.
When PC Tinsley had drifted off with her list of tasks and instructions, Randall was left wondering. What if the medals and the shoe were nothing at all to do with the man and they were reading too much into them? What if he’d just found them somewhere, maybe in a skip or on a rubbish dump or something and they’d taken his fancy? He’d just pinched them, maybe not even going to sell them? Second World War medals probably had little value anyway. Had he stitched them into his coat purely to stop others from stealing them? But what if none of this led them to discover the man’s identity?
Ever?
Then they would have to bury him, anonymous and in an unmarked grave.
It was something Alex Randall did not want to have to do.
FOURTEEN
Wednesday, 17 September, 1.30 p.m.
PC Tinsley pulled up outside Shrewsbury Museum, the shoe safely in her evidence bag. She’d looked at it on the way over – it was a strange piece of footwear, a worn wooden sole, almost like a clog. She could imagine a child clattering over cobbles in something like the Hovis advert. It had yielded little forensic evidence, which wasn’t surprising. It must be a hundred years since it had been worn.
She parked up. She was to meet a young lady named Cindy Lopez who was apparently their best bet for information, and she had agreed to meet her here. Earlier on in the year Shrewsbury Museum had moved from Rowley Hall, a lovely half-timbered building near the Welsh bridge to the Music Hall, another interesting building, in the centre of the town near the old Market Hall in the square. Lopez was a small, stocky woman somewhere in her forties with unmistakably Spanish origins and a pleasant, effusive manner. She seemed eager to help and once they were in her office held out her hand for the evidence bag and spent some time studying its contents closely before she pronounced judgement.
‘Turn of the last century,’ she said decisively. ‘At a guess, round about 1900.’ She peered even closer and looked pleased. ‘The sole …’ she fingered it, ‘… is probably elder.’ She looked up. ‘Popular in Wales and the West Country.’
Tinsley squirrelled the fact away.
Cindy Lopes rattled on. ‘For instance,’ she said, ‘the yew tree is symbolic of transformation, death and regeneration.’
Tinsley stared. Transformation, death and regeneration. The phrase had hit home. She couldn’t have put it better herself. A man who had once enjoyed skiing and had had an accident had decided to go underground, for whatever reason. How better to describe this process than as being one of transformation and regeneration? He had transformed himself from a person who could afford skiing holidays to a homeless wanderer.
‘Really?’ she said, intrigued.
Cindy Lopez nodded. ‘And represents exorcism, prosperity, banishment and healing. I could go on.’
And I could carry on listening, Tinsley thought, but I don’t think any of this is getting us answers. So she gave the curator a polite smile and Cindy Lopez took the hint.
She fingered the bag. ‘I wonder where this has been kept?’ Her dark eyes fixed on Tinsley’s. ‘It’s in remarkably good condition.’ She looked at the PC. ‘Nothing to do with that poor man who was found dead at Moreton Corbet Castle?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Tinsley said awkwardly.
‘I know,’ Cindy replied in a sing-song voice, mocking her a little. ‘You’re not at liberty to divulge.’
PC Lara Tinsley gave her a beatific smile.
Lopez focused back on the shoe. ‘Well, I suppose I can help you a bit more. I don’t think the shoe has been buried – the leather would have rotted and the sole wouldn’t be in such good condition.’
‘Can you tell me anything about where the shoe might have been made?’
Lopez gave her a sceptical look. ‘You are grabbing at straws, aren’t you?’ she asked perceptively.
‘Perhaps from the leather?’ Tinsley asked hopefully.
Lopez shrugged. ‘It is just ordinary cow leather,’ she said.
‘Or from the nails?’
‘Again, these are handmade iron tacks. They used the same method all over the country – even abroad – like the Dutch clog.’
‘Then the wood the sole is made from … perhaps? Didn’t you say Wales or the West Country?’
‘Yes, but not exclusively. Elders grow anywhere – near a stream.’ Cindy Lopez peered at her then took out a magnifying glass to look even closer. ‘There are certain regional differences in the wood they used for the sole of a clog but you can’t be absolutely certain. They’d use whatever was available.’ She examined the shoe more carefully.
And then Lopez made the most obvious of observations. ‘Although this shoe would have belonged to a child of humble origins there is very little sign of wear, which is surprising. Shoes were handed from child to child. They weren’t fussy about sizing correctly and boys and girls wore the same footwear. If there had been no use for the shoes they would have been sold. Money was tight, conditions harsh. And …’ She looked up. ‘Though it’s been well and probably carefully preserved, you only have one shoe. We don’t have its partner.’
Tinsley felt her head spin. Half a pair? Where was its partner? Over a hundred years old, not terribly well worn. Had the child only had one leg? Their tramp had had a limp. Was there a connection there? Or had the child died and the shoe been preserved as a keepsake? One shoe would be of no use to other children. Did this have any actual bearing on their case? How much could you glean from one small child’s shoe over one hundred years old?
Cindy Lopez’s other observations were more musings. ‘Not a dainty little lady’s shoe but a country child who walks through mud. A clod hopper, I think, is the phrase you use here,’ she said, a bright twinkle in her dark eyes, ‘and I suppose that it would have belonged to a little girl or boy about six. A sweet little child.’ She lifted her eyebrows but Tinsley remained silent. Following her husband’s spell of infidelity she had been thrilled to find herself pregnant and dismayed when only three short, happy, anticipatory, blissful weeks later, she had lost it. Since then – nothing. She sighed.
A sweet little child? Not, it seemed, for her.
Ms Lopez appeared not to notice.
A thought struck Lara Tinsley. ‘You haven’t had a shoe like this one stolen from the museum, have you?’
‘No. Our stuff here is mainly Roman and Celtic.’
‘Is there a museum around here that has had a shoe like this stolen?’
‘Not that I’ve heard. There’s Blists Hill. They might have a little shoe like this in their collection but I haven’t heard of one being stolen. If they have quantities of costumes I suppose it’s possible that your gentleman just pinched it and they haven’t noticed.’
Gentleman, Tinsley thought. She liked him being called a gentleman.
‘But surely …’ the curator queried, ‘… why? Why would he steal it? It’s practically valueless. And it’s hardly an object of beauty, is it?’
And that, Tinsley thought, was just another question. She proffered only one explanation. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘it reminded him of a child – possibly his own.’
Lopez looked unimpressed and she was starting to lose interest. ‘And I suppose you’re not going to tell me a few more snippets about the background?’
‘Sorry.’ Tinsley tried not to sound rude but she had no wish to leak any more of the story to Cindy.
Besides which, what did they know? They were still at the asking questions stage.
FIFTEEN
Wednesday, 17 September, 3 p.m.
It was later that day that the first of their quests bore fruit. A lorry driver arrived at the station early in the afternoon. He was a big man, drawn in, it seemed, by the boards placed at the side of the A53 Shrewsbury to Market Drayton road via Hodnet. His name, he said awkwardly, was Nelson Futura, and he was a driver for a cattle feed company. He delivered to farms.
He was overweight with a beer gut the size of an eight-month pregnancy and was obviously uncomfortable at finding himself at the police station. He kept looking around him and fiddling with the waistband of his jeans, which lay beneath his swelling gut.
‘I’ve come,’ he said awkwardly, ‘in response to the boards you’ve put out on the road about the tramp. You see, I think I might have picked him up.’
Sandy Mucklow looked at him excitedly. ‘Last Thursday?’
Futura nodded.
‘Between Shrewsbury and Moreton Corbet?’
‘I had a delivery, see.’
Mucklow nodded.
‘Some animal feed at the farm opposite the castle,’ he said. ‘It were a filthy night but the rain had stopped for just a bit. I saw this poor man at the side of the road and I thought it was about to chuck it down again. And I thought, why not? My employers,’ he said, ‘would go ballistic at me. I’m not supposed to pick up hitch-hikers but the sky was threatening thunder.’
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