The Mechanical Devil

by Kate Ellis

  ‘Ian wasn’t privy to Southwark’s financial dealings and he was very discreet about work matters but I do remember him saying something about Southwark and a young temp who worked there – a student I think. He used the words droit de seigneur.’

  ‘You mean Southwark was guilty of sexual harassment as well as fraud,’ said Rachel with disapproval.

  Diana shrugged sadly. ‘According to Ian, the girl was flattered. Sometimes people are their own worst enemies.’

  ‘Anything else you can tell us?’ Wesley butted in before Rachel could vent her indignation. Then he had an idea; a long shot but worth a try. ‘Did Ian ever mention the name Mary Tilson? She was an elderly lady murdered by her carer in nineteen ninety-five.’

  Diana frowned, trying to retrieve a memory. A few seconds later she spoke. ‘Yes. Ian had only just started and Southwark sent him to see her and pick up some documents. As you can imagine he was shocked when he heard she’d been murdered. A few weeks after she died her nephew came into the office but Ian was told to take an early lunch so he never found out what he wanted.’

  Wesley took a deep breath. ‘Was the nephew called Alcuin Garrard?’

  ‘That’s right. I remember because the name was so unusual.’

  ‘Garrard was found dead shortly after the incident you mentioned. Accidental death according to the coroner.’

  ‘Yes, I remember Ian saying the nephew died in some sort of freak accident but I didn’t know any details.’

  Wesley paused. ‘Ian’s body was found near the place Alcuin died.’

  Diana stared at him as if the revelation had robbed her of the power of speech.

  ‘What did Ian say about Southwark’s arrest?’

  ‘He wouldn’t talk about it. I begged him to confide in me, but it was as if a light had gone out inside him. I couldn’t get through to him any more.’

  ‘Can you think why he’d want to visit the scene of Alcuin Garrard’s death?’

  At first she shook her head but after a few moments she spoke again, almost in a whisper.

  ‘Ian was always conscientious. If he suspected Garrard’s death wasn’t an accident and he’d found new information he might have thought he could do something… I don’t know.’

  As Wesley left the bakery, an idea was forming in his head. A letter from Ralph Detoram, the owner of Princebury Hall, had been found in Alcuin Garrard’s pocket. According to the file, Mr Detoram had been asked about it at the time but he’d insisted it was a personal matter of no importance and nobody had bothered to dig further. As Wesley recalled Detoram’s claim that Alcuin was mistaken about some unspecified matter, he was becoming more and more convinced that Alcuin Garrard’s death wasn’t as straightforward as everybody had assumed at the time.

  Belinda Crillow felt the cold metal of the blade being drawn across her flesh and let out a loud sob.

  As if in answer she heard another sound; an insistent crying that sounded like a hungry baby in its urgency.

  Five minutes later it was over.

  38

  Wesley was returning to the police station with Rachel when he received Belinda Crillow’s call.

  He passed his phone to Rachel. ‘Will you answer?’

  She gave him an enquiring look before taking it from him. ‘Inspector Peterson’s phone.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a while until a cracked, faint voice uttered Wesley’s name. Rachel pressed the phone close to her ear, trying to make out what was being said, but she couldn’t decipher the whispers that sounded like the voice of a suffering ghost.

  She turned to Wesley. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘She’s at the B and B, isn’t she?’

  Rachel made a couple of calls. After the second she turned to Wesley, worry clouding her face.

  ‘According to the landlady she insisted on going back home earlier today. I think she’s in trouble, Wes.’

  They picked a car up at the station and drove to the little cluster of cottages that made up the hamlet Belinda Crillow called home, using the blue light on the unmarked car to clear the way. When they arrived Wesley banged on Belinda Crillow’s front door with his fists.

  The curtains were drawn across, hiding the interior. It looked like a house in mourning and Wesley’s senses screamed that something was badly wrong.

  ‘Are we going in?’ said Rachel.

  Wesley hesitated. ‘Hold on a moment. I want to check something.’

  He moved out of earshot and called Pam’s number. He had that feeling again, an icy grip of alarm on his heart. He waited for five seconds. Ten seconds, the grip tightening with each passing moment.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked in a breathless rush.

  ‘Yeah. What time will you be home?’

  The normality of the question almost brought on tears of relief.

  ‘I’ll do my best to be back before the kids go to bed.’

  ‘I’d better go. Someone’s at the door. Could be Neil – he said he’d call in if he got the chance.’ The line went dead before he could utter a warning: check who it is before you answer the door.

  He could hear Rachel battering her fists on the front door and when there was no reply she pressed her face to the window, trying to peep through a small gap in the curtains.

  ‘Does she have a car?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘An oldish Fiesta. Dark blue.’

  ‘It’s not here now.’

  Wesley said nothing for a few moments, weighing up the implications. Then he made a decision. ‘We should break in. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed. We can’t take any chances.’

  Wesley darted around the side of the house, seeking out its weaknesses. For a woman who claimed to have been threatened she was remarkably lax with her security, he thought as he lifted a plant pot by the back door and found a key underneath. He tried the key in the back door and when it opened smoothly he stepped into Belinda Crillow’s kitchen, Rachel following close behind.

  There wasn’t a thing out of place and the room had been scrubbed clean; the kind of clean Pam would have called obsessive.

  Rachel headed for the hall and he followed, first into the living room where he’d been before and then into the dining room where a table was set for two; an intimate dinner à deux with sparkling glassware and tasteful white crockery.

  ‘She’s expecting company,’ Rachel observed. ‘Or perhaps it was her dinner companion who caused the trouble – if it is trouble.’

  ‘No sign of cooking.’

  ‘Takeaway?’

  Rachel’s suggestion was feasible. Even high-end restaurants delivered nowadays. He began to climb the stairs with a growing feeling of dread. There was a faint sound, perhaps of a baby crying in one of the nearby cottages.

  He made for the front bedroom, uncomfortable about intruding on such an intimate space. But it had to be done and, besides, Rachel was with him. When they searched the room they found nothing out of the ordinary. Belinda’s clothes hung in a wardrobe that seemed remarkably empty compared to Pam’s tightly packed space where clothes emerged so creased they needed ironing twice. The drawers were the same: everything arranged with a precision that verged on the military.

  The small bedroom yielded nothing and by the time they reached the room at the back they were satisfied Belinda Crillow wasn’t at home. If she was in trouble she was in trouble somewhere else.

  The sound of the crying baby was there again, muffled and faint, and when Wesley approached the back bedroom door he realised the noise was coming from inside the room. He tried the door but it was locked.

  He put his shoulder against the door and pushed. Once. Twice. On his third attempt the door gave way and he staggered into the room.

  To his astonishment a cat shot out; a dark furry blur dashing past his legs before vanishing down the stairs. When Wesley looked inside the room he saw that it was empty apart from an expensive-looking cat bed and a litter tray at one end and a small double bowl of food an
d water at the other. A carrying basket stood on a chest of drawers by the window.

  ‘Did you know she had a cat?’ said Rachel.

  Wesley didn’t reply. He was too busy calling the cat, using her name: ‘Moriarty.’

  He began to descend the stairs and saw Moriarty in the hall looking up at him as if to say, ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure that’s Moriarty?’ asked Rachel from the top of the stairs after he had scooped the cat up in his arms.

  ‘She’s wearing her collar,’ he said, burying his face in the soft fur as the cat’s loud purr vibrated through his hands.

  ‘What the hell’s Belinda Crillow doing with your cat?’

  Wesley’s hand froze on the black fur. ‘That’s what I’d like to know. I’ll have to take her home. The kids are going frantic.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should find Belinda first and ask her what’s going on?’

  Without answering Wesley returned to the back bedroom and looked around, still with the cat nestled in his arms. The alcove to the right of the chimney breast was curtained off; with his free hand he tugged the curtain to one side and heard Rachel swear under her breath behind him.

  Wesley stared at the photographs pinned to the wall with drawing pins, too stunned to speak. Some had been taken in the police station car park and others outside the incident room in Lower Torworthy.

  ‘You’ve got a bloody stalker, Wes,’ said Rachel. ‘She’s been following you. And these photos of Pam – isn’t that outside your house? This is getting weirder by the minute.’

  Wesley felt as though he’d been punched; as though he couldn’t trust his own judgement any more. ‘Our neighbours are overfond of those bloody leylandii, which are a security hazard in my opinion,’ he said, trying his best to keep calm. ‘Whoever’s taken these pictures has hidden themselves in the bushes.’

  He studied the pictures with growing horror: Pam leaving the house, dangling her car keys; Pam opening the passenger door for Amelia; Pam opening the front door to Della… and Neil. Wesley kissing his wife goodbye on the doorstep with Pam in her dressing gown. This was their private life but an intruder had been there watching their every move from the shadows, even taking their pet. What if it was one of the children next? The thought made him feel sick. Belinda wasn’t here and his family could be in danger.

  The cat wriggled from his arms, only to be scooped up by Rachel who, having been raised on a farm, was used to animals of all varieties. She instructed Wesley to retrieve the carrying basket. They didn’t want to risk this particular prisoner making a run for it.

  Once Moriarty was safely incarcerated in her basket, protesting loudly at the indignity, Rachel called for back-up. Wesley wanted Belinda Crillow’s house searched and secured. And he wanted her picked up.

  Once their work in Lower Torworthy had ended for the day Neil returned with Lucy to his Exeter flat and found a message on his answerphone.

  He listened to the disembodied voice floating through the silent air as Lucy staggered into the flat with the bagful of shopping they’d bought on the way home.

  ‘This is Professor Laurence Harris for Dr Neil Watson. Can you contact me on…’ He went on the recite a telephone number – a landline with a local code. ‘I need to speak to you urgently. Thank you.’

  The professor’s feeble voice trailed away. When Neil had visited his office he hadn’t looked well but he’d been confident, even aggressive. Now, however, he sounded like a different man and Neil wondered what had happened to bring about the dramatic transformation.

  His curiosity made him phone straight away and his call was answered after two rings, as though Harris had been sitting by the phone waiting for his response.

  An hour later Neil was sitting in the living room of Professor Harris’s Victorian semi ten minutes’ walk from Neil’s flat. The professor lived alone, he explained. His wife had left him several years before and his two children had grown and fled the nest long ago. All of a sudden Neil found himself feeling sorry for the man who lived in cluttered bachelor solitude in a house far too large for one.

  ‘I expect you want to know why I’ve asked you here,’ the professor began. He didn’t give Neil a chance to reply. ‘I did something in the past that I’m rather ashamed of and now I need to make my confession.’ He inhaled deeply, as though hungry for air, and immediately fell into a paroxysm of coughing, turning his head away.

  ‘Alcuin was a brilliant student,’ he continued once he’d recovered. ‘When I became his supervisor for his doctorate I admit I was looking forward to it. Then he showed me his work.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘He’d chosen a subject I’d wanted to research myself. I’d found the records kept by Sir Matthew At Wood, the parish priest of Lower Torworthy, in the cathedral archives several years before and I was planning to write a book on the subject.

  ‘It felt at the time as though he’d stolen my idea, although I’m sure it was just coincidence because Sir Matthew’s writings were available to anybody who cared to search for them.’

  ‘I’ve read them myself.’

  Harris bowed his head and when he looked up Neil noticed that his eyes were bloodshot, as though he’d been crying. ‘I watched Alcuin Garrard produce a brilliant thesis on a subject I’d thought of as my own, even discovering an account of a bizarre crime that wasn’t mentioned in Sir Matthew’s records. I hadn’t realised that professional jealousy could be such a fierce emotion.’

  Neil remembered that Alcuin Garrard had been found dead in Manor Field and although the authorities had treated it as an accident, he’d harboured a niggle of suspicion that there might be a more sinister explanation. His heart rate quickened as he wondered whether he was about to hear a confession to murder.

  But instead the professor stood up and walked over to a mahogany chest of drawers on the far side of the room. It was a heavy piece of furniture, Victorian to match the age of the house, and when the bottom drawer was opened Neil heard the grating of wood against wood. Harris took something from the drawer, a cardboard folder bulging with papers, and handed it to Neil.

  Neil opened the file and when he scanned the contents he realised he was holding Alcuin Garrard’s thesis. The name Oswald DeTorham caught his eye along with mentions of Oswald’s younger brother, Simeon, and the steward, Peter. Then he noticed the word ‘monk’ cropping up with increasing frequency.

  ‘Alcuin found other sources apart from Sir Matthew’s records,’ Harris said quietly. ‘Contemporary letters and a journal. Pure gold.’

  ‘What became of them?’

  Harris hesitated. ‘They’re in the drawer if you care to have a look. Alcuin became friendly with an old gentleman who lived at Princebury Hall on Dartmoor – a descendant of the DeTorham family, I believe. He allowed Alcuin access to his muniment room. I’d have given anything for such an opportunity.’

  Neil delved into the drawer and pulled out two large box files filled with ancient documents, too fragile to be stored in such a haphazard manner. With great care he began to read snatches, still legible after five centuries. Then, tempted though he was to continue, he placed them carefully to one side, resolving to give them into Annabel’s care at the earliest opportunity.

  He picked up Alcuin’s thesis again and turned the pages until he came to an account of the fire which destroyed the manor in 1534. Aware that Harris was watching him, he closed the file. ‘I’d like to show the documents to a friend at the County Archives if I may.’