The Coffin Trail

by Martin Edwards

  ‘We know that he fancied Gabrielle.’

  ‘And that he’d made a play for a number of girls in the village, most of whom turned him down flat. Sometimes mockingly. Each time he crept away with his tail between his legs. He must have felt wounded, but he didn’t threaten any of them, let alone harm a hair on their heads.’

  ‘One witness said he was a Peeping Tom.’

  ‘Okay, so he might have liked to hide in the bushes and wait for a pretty woman to take her clothes off without bothering to draw the curtains. Not very nice, but it doesn’t mean that he was a murderer.’

  ‘His body was found near the scene.’

  ‘He was the sort who was always likely to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If that’s what happened here, someone took advantage of him to get away with murder.’

  * * *

  ‘Penny for ’em.’

  Lost in the past, she hadn’t even heard Les Bryant march up to her table. He plonked down his polystyrene cup and sat down opposite her without asking if it was all right. As yet she hadn’t made up her mind how to play things with him. He was leaving it to her to speak first. Elbows on the formica surface, jaw cradled in his palm, studying her face as if it were a cipher that he’d been tasked to decode.

  Pushing her plate aside, she said, ‘We had a call about a case I once worked on.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. You and Ben Kind.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Our paths crossed a long time ago.’ Bryant pondered and for a moment she wondered if he was teasing her, making her await his verdict. Had he – somehow – picked up on gossip about her and Ben? It seemed unlikely, but after all, he was a detective. ‘Yeah, he was all right. So – what do you think he would’ve made of Sandeep Patel?’

  The question knocked her off balance. She took a breath, telling herself not to let this man rattle her. That was his game, for sure. He’d been asking questions, checking up on the woman he was supposed to report to. He meant to see what stuff she was made of, test her out. No way would she let him walk all over her.

  ‘He’d have wanted to see him put behind bars. If you mean, would he have taken the risk of staking so much on Ivan Golac’s confession, God only knows. I think he’d have done the same as me.’

  Bryant shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  The smart thing was to leave it there. She didn’t want to be forced on to the defensive, but he’d succeeded in needling her. She couldn’t help saying in a cold, flat tone, ‘Hindsight’s wonderful, but someone had to take a stand. No regrets.’

  Swinging on his chair, he said, ‘Suppose that’s right. Tell you the truth, I’d have done the same myself.’

  He had this knack of taking her by surprise. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘What was there to lose?’

  ‘Vast amounts of public money.’ She hesitated. ‘Credibility. Career progression.’

  Did she detect the glimmer of a smile? ‘So you think that this new job is all about keeping you out of harm’s way?’

  ‘The thought’s crossed my mind.’

  ‘Mine too.’ He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s still an opportunity.’

  ‘You’ll be telling me to think positive next.’

  A bite of cynical laughter. ‘I don’t give a toss for all that motivational crap.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  He jerked a thumb in the direction of his heart. ‘If you ask me, a detective’s either got it here or he hasn’t. You wanted Patel locked up. It didn’t work, but I’ll bet you had him wetting himself for a few months.’

  ‘That’s not the object of a prosecution.’

  ‘No, but it’s not a bad consolation prize.’

  She laughed as she thought back. ‘You should have seen his face the day he was arrested. Sheer panic. That’s when I thought – yes, you’re guilty! For a while I believed, I actually believed, we were going to get the right verdict.’

  ‘You know what they say about the judicial process.’ He made a face, as if spitting something out. ‘A system designed to find out which is the better of two lawyers. Tell you this, though. I don’t see it as a game.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning, I don’t see this as a way of competing with the poor sods whose inquiries got nowhere in the past. Like your old boss and that murder up on the fells. We’ve not been put on this review team to see how clever we can look, thanks to all the modern forensic stuff. That’s not what I’m about.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  He belched comfortably. ‘Thought not. You ask me, this is more like a chance for us to put things right. I’ve never been keen on loose ends. Let alone the thought of people getting away with murder.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Driving home through a spring storm, Hannah wondered about coincidences. First, Ben Kind’s son had moved into Barrie Gilpin’s old cottage; then a nameless woman had suggested that Barrie was innocent of murdering Gabrielle Anders. Hannah could not imagine what might connect the two events, could not conceive what had brought Daniel Kind to the Lake District now that his father was dead.

  Rain pounded her windscreen. She swore and screwed up her eyes as the lights from an oncoming heavy goods vehicle dazzled her. As the lorry lumbered away into the distance, she pictured Daniel in her mind. Although she rarely watched television, she’d caught a couple of his programmes. She’d been curious about the boy she’d heard Ben speak of. The physical similarities between father and son were subtle, the resemblance more apparent in their quick, urgent movements than in physical build or shape of jaw. They shared a sharp sense of humour and she guessed that they would laugh at the same jokes. Daniel’s thesis that a historian was a sort of detective intrigued her. He must care as passionately about uncovering secrets of the past as Ben had about solving crimes.

  Passion. Yes, that was the word that came to mind when she thought of Ben. He was a tough, demanding boss but fiercely loyal to his team. Hannah had been devoted to him. The drift of thought made her shiver, even though the inside of the car was warm. She and Ben had never had an affair. There had been times when she’d speculated about what it might be like, moments when he’d given the impression that he thought of her as a woman, rather than just as a loyal and industrious subordinate. Once or twice he’d touched her on the arm or back. Maybe it was accidental, but she’d found the frisson scary as well as exciting. He’d never gone further and she’d never given him any encouragement; Marc’s jealousy of the time she spent with Ben weighed her down enough without an additional burden of guilt to bear. Besides, Ben already had one broken marriage behind him, and Cheryl back at home. She had Marc. Why spoil everything for the sake of a quick fling?

  Sometimes she wondered whether the careful way in which they avoided flirting with each other was in itself a sign that their relationship might easily trespass beyond the professional boundaries. But nothing ever happened; after he retired she kept in touch, but didn’t often find the time to see him. When she’d heard of Ben’s death, she’d sat cross-legged on the staircase at home and surrendered herself to a good old-fashioned cry. Thank God Marc had been out that day. He’d have been sure that he’d had good cause to suspect her of infidelity. Even now, in lonely moments she interrogated herself, wanting to know if it really would have hurt anyone, if she had just slept with Ben once or twice. She still wasn’t sure of the right answer.

  She slowed to a crawl as the lane bent first one way and then another. In this downpour it would be so easy to skid and go through a hedge or smash into a stone wall. At last she could see lights in front of her and she knew that she was almost home. Marc would be absorbed in his catalogue; it was her turn to cook their meal. Not so many years ago, she’d ached to see him even after the shortest separation and to this day she loved to stroke his fine hair, to run her fingers along the smooth contours of his naked back. This evening, he was more likely to fall asleep in front of the television than to start kissing her all over as a prelude to making love. The trouble was that life
kept getting in the way. Her job, his job, pointless arguments about who had more time to deal with a flooded washing machine or a blocked drain. Maybe every couple went through these phases, but it reminded her of being stuck in a traffic jam. No sign of movement on the road ahead.

  * * *

  Over coffee, she decided to tell Marc about the anonymous call. In their early years together, whenever she talked about her latest case, he’d been as rapt as if she’d been describing the discovery of a fabulously rare first edition. Sometimes she worried that she said too much to him, but a couple shouldn’t have taboos, and she had to trust the man she loved.

  ‘Attention seeker,’ Marc diagnosed after she recounted the conversation between Maggie and the woman. ‘Craving the lime-light but too frightened of being found out as a liar to go through with it.’

  Even if he were right, Hannah was sorry that he wasn’t intrigued. The Gabrielle Anders killing had been the first murder case she’d been involved with after meeting Marc. They had only been sleeping together for a few weeks and she hadn’t yet moved in here, the house that he’d been born in and inherited after his parents’ death. She’d confessed to him – and to no one else, certainly not Ben Kind – that blended with her horror at the brutality of Gabrielle’s killing was not only a grim resolve to see justice done but also a shivery excitement from being at the heart of the investigation.

  Taking advantage of his knowledge of the area, she’d speculated aloud about the significance of the draping of the body over the Sacrifice Stone the night after its discovery. They’d stayed up most of the night while he recounted all he knew of the history of the ancient landmark and the obscure legends about virgins slain each year in return for a guarantee from the old gods that the valley would remain fertile forever. Life coming out of a death, he’d told her, is the most potent myth of all.

  ‘Maggie’s not soft,’ she said stubbornly. ‘When I quizzed her, she was convinced the woman was genuinely wanting to help, and genuinely afraid.’

  ‘What would she be afraid of after so long?’

  ‘Suppose she’d seen a husband or a lover behaving in a way that made her suspicious. Or a former husband or lover, someone who’s fallen out of favour in the meantime. How about a work colleague or neighbour? That’s the upside of cold case investigations. Witnesses may be tempted to come out of the woodwork when they wouldn’t have contemplated talking to us at the time of the original investigation. I’ll never forget the sight of poor Gabrielle Anders and comparing the photographs of her when she was alive. She’d been so pretty once. Not too difficult to understand why our caller might be frightened, is it?’

  ‘Where do you go from here?’

  ‘To the old files, and the original exhibits. I’ll crawl over the statements while Nick sees if any of the evidence can be improved forensically with the new techniques.’

  ‘I thought you never had much luck with forensic stuff linking Gilpin to the crime?’

  ‘Clothing fibres were found at the scene. A few hairs. He’d been up by the Sacrifice Stone on the night of the murder, we were confident we could prove that. The fact he’d gone missing and his body turned up nearby seemed like a bit of a giveaway.’

  ‘To say nothing of the murder weapon.’

  ‘The most damning evidence we had. If you remember, the pathologist reckoned that Gabrielle was killed by a blow to the head and then post-mortem her face was struck and her neck cut by the axe we found.’

  Marc nibbled at a hangnail. ‘He’d hidden it near a cairn on the fell-side, hadn’t he?’

  ‘Someone had hidden it. Even Mrs Gilpin couldn’t deny that it was Barrie’s axe. The only question was whether it had been stolen to commit the crime. Not impossible.’

  ‘But unlikely.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened. Ben kept pointing out that if you wanted to frame someone for a murder, Barrie was an ideal candidate.’

  ‘He didn’t like to be proved wrong.’

  ‘Nothing was proved either way,’ she snapped. At once she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Why must she always rise to the bait whenever he had a dig at Ben? In a calmer tone she added, ‘He wanted everyone to keep an open mind, that’s all. Which is precisely what we ought to do now.’

  He yawned and stretched out a hand for the TV remote control. ‘Best of luck.’

  ‘You might like to rack your own brains.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he murmured.

  ‘Well, you were walking in Brackdale yourself that day, remember? Gabrielle was staying at The Moon under Water. Was there anything you noticed, anyone you saw, that was a little out of the ordinary? You might not have paid attention at the time, but with hindsight…’

  The theme tune of his favourite quiz show was playing on the television. ‘I’m sure I’d have mentioned it,’ he said absently, his eyes shifting to the screen. ‘It was just a normal afternoon as far as I was concerned. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.’

  What if she’d been my sister?

  Half a dozen file photographs of Gabrielle Anders were fanned out on her desk, but instead of inspecting them, Hannah was staring through the rain-streaked window. In her head she could see her father’s pale face as he bent to whisper bad news in her ear. On the morning of her fourth birthday, her mother had miscarried. Years later, Mrs Scarlett told her that the baby had been a girl. Hannah had longed for a younger sister, not least as an ally in the daily skirmishes with her insufferably superior elder sister, but Mum had never been able to carry a third child to term. Had the lost child lived, she would have been the same age as the dead woman.

  That thought had sneaked into Hannah’s mind during the dreadful afternoon up at the Sacrifice Stone. Gazing at Gabrielle’s ruined face, she’d dug her nails into her palms, fighting to suppress her anger at such cruelty. A detective needed to remain detached. Soon she would have to attend the post-mortem, when the cold flesh would be cut to the bone, when organs and tissues would be explored with relentless attention to forensic detail. But Hannah could not bring herself to think of Gabrielle Anders as an exhibit and a source of clues. A few hours before, Gabrielle had lived and breathed.

  She might have been my sister.

  Who was she trying to kid? Turning back to the photographs, Hannah was forced to admit that she and Gabrielle were scarcely lookalikes. No point in bitching that it was wonderful what you could do with make-up, subtle lighting, and cosmetic dentistry. There was a gulf between them in attitude. You could see it in Gabrielle’s almond eyes and in her high cheekbones, you could see it in the way she held her head. She was a predator. In one of the studio photographs, taken when she’d been an aspiring model, she gazed straight into the lens while her tongue peeped out and touched her upper lip. This was a woman savouring power, the power to stop a man in his tracks and make him do her bidding.

  Hannah had always lacked that confidence. She could never tease men into watching her every move and the thought of screwing her way to the top made her gorge rise. Anything that she achieved in her career would be thanks to her own efforts. The wild life hadn’t been kind to Gabrielle in the long run. Easy to imagine that she had acquired the dangerous habit of thinking herself irresistible and that in the end it had cost her life. If the two of them had ever met, they’d have had nothing in common. Probably loathed each other on sight. They weren’t sisters at all – yet Hannah could never quite rid her mind of the notion that fate had forged a bond between them. Victim and detective, thrown together by sudden death.

  The door swung open, rocking on its hinges as Les Bryant strode in. As usual, he dropped into a chair without being asked. The little discourtesies were a habit, gestures to make the point that she might be in charge, but he had no intention of tugging his forelock to her. Fair enough, as long as he stayed on-side.

  ‘Nice bit of stuff,’ he muttered with a nod at the photographs.

  ‘Not when I saw her,’ Hannah said, sliding out of a plastic wallet a set of photographs taken at the post
-mortem and shuffling them on to the desk. The corpse’s face was scarcely recognisable, the lovely hair matted with blood.

  He winced at the wounds on the swollen face. ‘Vicious bastard. If Gilpin did kill her, what happened to him was poetic justice.’

  ‘And if he didn’t, then he’s another victim.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting he was thrown into the ravine?’

  ‘We never found a scrap of evidence that suggested his death was anything other than an accident. Suicide was an outside bet, so was murder. But the verdict at the inquest was accidental death and Ben Kind didn’t disagree. He wondered if Barrie might have had a close encounter with whoever had killed Gabrielle. There were traces of her blood on his hand and sleeve…maybe he’d come across the body during a nocturnal ramble and fallen to his death while he was running away in panic.’

  ‘Speculation,’ Bryant said.

  ‘Yeah, Ben had to admit he was pissing in the wind. Apart from any other consideration, Barrie was a strong, fit young man. Even if he’d stumbled across someone armed with an axe, he’d have had a good chance of showing him a clean pair of heels. But if Barrie was set up, we never came close to showing who did it, or how. We couldn’t argue against the decision to run down the inquiry.’

  ‘So what’s changed? Yesterday’s phone call doesn’t take us too far.’

  Us. At least he was thinking as a team member, not a devil’s advocate whose first priority was to scoff at any fresh initiative. ‘All I’m doing is taking a second glance. Nothing more. I can’t justify devoting too much resource to something as nebulous as the message that Maggie took.’

  Les Bryant leaned back in his chair. ‘Time to look at the case from a different angle, then?’

  ‘I think so.’ Hannah pointed to the photographs. ‘Starting with the victim.’

  ‘How much do you know about her?’

  ‘Not a lot.’ Hannah sighed. ‘Born and raised in the East End. Home a tower block, mother an occasional prostitute. She was one of four kids with three different dads. Before her tenth birthday, she was bunking off school. At fifteen she moved out and no one kept in touch. She seems to have followed a boyfriend up to Yorkshire.’