‘Of course. I think I’ve watched you deal with enough homicide cases to have gleaned the way you work.’ He leant across the desk impulsively. ‘Let’s have dinner tonight.’
‘Oh, Matthew. You know what the hours are like during a major investigation. It’s impossible.’ But he carried on looking at her, his eyes bright, happy and pleading and she gave in. ‘Oh go on then,’ she said. ‘I’ll come late to the Mermaid. And you’d better tell them to keep my dinner hot.’
12.30 p.m.
‘Surprise surprise,’ she said to Mike, finding him sitting in her office. ‘Gunshot wound to the chest.’ And quickly she filled him in on the other, unexpected findings of the post mortem.
She had the pleasure of watching Korpanski turn green as she told him about Aaron’s stomach cancer. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘The way Matthew chops up those bodies with such relish turns my stomach.’
She felt a compulsion to defend him. ‘Well, just think of the number of times he’s helped us convict the guilty. Or release the innocent,’ she added.
She leant on her elbows across the desk. ‘No one’s said anything about Jack being strange, have they?’
‘Well I got the feeling there was something there. You know, people made suggestions, didn’t they?’
She thought for a moment ... and remembered Shackleton’s comment on the day of the killings.
At the time she had not picked up on the remark. Only now was she wondering about the significance of the question. ‘Did Jack finally flip?’ And later on that day Hannah Lockley’s, ‘So the idiot son finally went berserk?’
She crossed to the window of the caravan, feeling tired in the unaccustomed heat. ‘They did tell us, didn’t they, Mike? They were all feeding us clues. It’s simply that we didn’t really understand what they were saying.’
Mike broke into her thoughts. ‘I know everyone claims that brother and sister were devoted,’ he said slowly, but I can’t help wondering if ...’
He had her full attention. ‘What?’
‘What if Jack became violent for some reason and went for her?’
She shook her head. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle.’
‘She could have tidied up afterwards. What if he picked up the gun and pointed it at her. There was a struggle. It went off, killing him and then she turned the gun on her father.’
‘No. Everything’s wrong with that theory. The range, the sequence of events. However it happened it was not like that.’
But his thoughts had put another picture in her mind. She had said this before at the previous investigation of another shooting, accidental that time. Whoever picks up a loaded gun should remember. In unpractised hands it can go off, possibly accidentally. It might kill someone.
‘More likely is that Aaron was about to go for the cows. One boot on, one boot off. Our killer comes to the door, picks up the gun. Aaron backs off, the killer fires. The sound brings Jack down. He gets it too.’ She gave Mike a swift glance. Aaron must have been near the gun when our killer arrived but he felt no need to protect himself. The person who picked up the gun aroused no suspicion in Aaron. So I think that points to someone he knew well. And that as we know, is a narrow field. There are not too many people in their circle of familiars. And if the gun was wiped clean afterwards I suppose it reduces suspicion on Ruthie. Her prints would have belonged there.’
‘And the sculptor bloke who spent a few minutes explaining why his dabs would be found on the gun.’
‘Hmm.’ Joanna was unconvinced.
Mike tried again. ‘Perhaps one of them, maybe Aaron, picked up the gun. Ruthie tries to take it from him. It goes off, killing her father.’
‘So what about Jack?’
Mike frowned. ‘Well.’
She fixed him with a frank stare. ‘When we get the right answer, Mike, you know as well as I do that the whole thing will fit quite perfectly into place. Until we do every other theory will leave discrepancies and unexplained events. So let’s just plod our way through a normal investigation beginning with this afternoon.’ She smiled and touched his shoulder. ‘What time have we fixed the briefing for?’
Mike wiped some sweat away from his brow. ‘Two thirty.’
‘In that case we’ve got time to visit Mr Pinkers first.’
Martin Pinkers’ farm was a neglected old house, stone built, like his neighbour’s and surrounded by dry-stone walls. There was an extensive range of farm buildings which again looked less dilapidated than the outbuildings at Hardacre. The surrounding fields were dotted with plump Friesian cows with bulging udders and Joanna noted a second field full of healthy, energetic young heifers who butted the hedge as they passed. Two more fields held the oblong hay-bales and in the yard stood a full range of farm machinery, JCBs and plenty of trailers, rakers and muck spreaders as well as a new looking combine harvester. Obviously business was good for Martin Pinkers. Underneath the dilapidation there was undoubted prosperity. Unlike his neighbour’s farm. So what was the difference between the two farmers?
They made their way round to the side door, accompanied by a cacophony of noise, dogs, hens, cockerels and a few anguished groans from some cows in a shed.
Pinkers himself opened the door, still dressed in the navy dungarees, tied around the middle with a belt of string. And his thin, weasel face was even less attractive the second time around.
He gave a toothy leer. ‘I thought I’d be seein’ you sooner or later.’
‘Have you got time to answer a few questions?’ Mike asked casually.
Pinkers gave the burly policeman a searching glance. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, ‘I got time all right.’ He gave the yard a fond glance. ‘Farm’s quiet now,’ he said, ‘and it’s too hot to get the ‘ay in until the sun goes down a bit. The lads can turn it. Come in, won’t you. It’s cool in the ‘ouse.’
He led them into a small, smelly room dominated by a huge television set and settled back into a wide armchair covered in stretch nylon covers, filthy cream with pink roses. Cats had caught their claws in the threads and pulled them down in long trails. Even now they were prowling around the base. One leapt up and Joanna put it firmly back on the floor. Since James had deserted her almost three years ago she had felt no affection for cats.
Pinkers was watching her.
‘You should just throw it,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt them. The cheeky animals. They got nine lives anyway.’
Joanna couldn’t resist it. ‘Unlike your neighbour, Mr Pinkers,’ she said drily, ‘who did not have nine lives.’
‘More’s the pity,’ Pinkers growled. ‘He would have been able to tell us then who shot ‘im and saved you a lot of time with innocent people who got nothin’ to tell.’
‘Quite.’
Pinkers’ eyes flicked across to the other side of the room towards Mike, and Joanna knew he was pondering the question. Who was the greater threat, she or Korpanski?
She settled back on the sofa, smiled and crossed her legs. ‘Now tell me, Mr Pinkers,’ she said briskly. ‘What really happened yesterday?’
‘Nothin’,’ he said.
‘We don’t mean about the murder,’ Joanna said easily. ‘Just tell us your movements yesterday. What did you do?’
Pinkers scratched his sparsely covered scalp. ‘Woke around five. I always do. You’ll find most farmin’ folk wakes early.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘And your neighbours at Hardacre?’ She was having to drag the statement from him.
‘I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly. ‘As I said. Most farmin’ folk do waken early.’
Joanna shifted on the sofa. ‘And then what?’
‘I has a cup of tea.’
‘Right. Live here alone, do you, Mr Pinkers?’
‘I got a wife and I got two sons but I does most of the work here.’
‘Do your sons actually live here?’
Pinkers nodded.
‘And their names?’
‘Emery and Fraser. But they was aslee
p in bed I can promise you.’
‘How old are they?’
‘Seventeen and fourteen,’ Pinkers said reluctantly. ‘They’re just boys. They got nothin’ to do with this.’
‘And you’re sure they were asleep?’
Pinkers glared at Korpanski. ‘Yes I am. My wife and I can give testimony to that.’
‘OK,’ Joanna said. ‘If we need to interview them at some later date we’ll let you know. So let’s get back to yesterday morning, shall we?’
‘Suits me.’ A note of surliness had crept into Martin Pinkers’ voice. ‘I gets the milkers in nice and early. And there was a couple of calves I wanted to take to market. Not that you get much for them these days. Hardly worth it, price has gone down so much. And they always takes some separatin’ from the mother.’ He thought for a brief moment. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t nearly seven when I started the milkin’. Ask anyone. Anyone. They’ll have heard the machines.’
It was a neat trick. But they could not ask anyone anything. There was no one around to ask. Except his family and the animals.
‘So did you take the calves to market?’
He hadn’t been expecting that. His big hands fumbled. ‘I didn’t quite manage it yesterday. Like I say. They takes a lot of separatin’ from their mothers.’
There was something here but Joanna did not know what.
‘What time do you normally leave for the market?’ She was edging closer, but blindly.
Pinkers’ sunburnt face looked suddenly bleached. ‘Not so early as you’d think.’
The three of them all knew this would be an easy statement to check.
‘But not so late either, Mr Pinkers. It was after ten when Shackleton called. Surely that would be a little too late?’
The question shook him. His thin mouth worked painfully.
Joanna’s eyes were fixed on him. ‘It’s a fine farm you have here, Mr Pinkers.’
Something furtive moved across his face which made him look even more weasel like. ‘I been lucky,’ he said. ‘That and hard work.’
Mike spoke up. ‘And how did you get on with your neighbours, Mr Pinkers?’
The farmer looked from the burly detective back to Joanna and they both knew instinctively that the farmer was trying to gauge how much they already knew.
‘We had our disagreements,’ he said finally.
‘About anything in particular?’
Pinkers cleared his throat noisily. ‘He blamed me for everything that went wrong.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Oh some cows went missing one day. He got the idea set in his head that it was me what took them.’
‘How unfortunate.’
Pinkers wasn’t fooled by the mock sympathy.
‘So who did you think had stolen the cows from Hardacre?’
‘Oh rustlers,’ he said, ‘people from the city.’
And what would city people do with a couple of cows, Mr Pinkers?’
He looked surprised at the question. ‘Why – sell them, of course.’
‘Where?’
‘There’s abattoirs that won’t ask questions.’
Joanna gave Mike a swift glance. Cattle rustling? This all sounded more like the Saturday Western than rural Staffordshire. Mike smiled and hunched his big shoulders.
Joanna moved on. ‘When did you last see the Summers, Mr Pinkers?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Well, I haven’t seen Ruthie for a while. Not for a month or more. But Aaron – why I saw him only last week. He was at the market, selling a couple of barren cows he had no more use for.’ He scratched his wispy grey hair. ‘Fetched a good price they did too.’
‘And Jack was with him?’
‘No. Jack must have been back at the farm, minding things.’
‘I would have thought Ruthie would have done that.’
‘Oh, Ruthie, she liked comin’ to the market. Enjoyed it she did, more than usual she’d have a couple of dozen eggs she could sell. Bit of pin money.’
‘But she wasn’t there last week?’
Again Pinkers thought back for a moment. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘she weren’t there.’ Then his face took on an enlightened look. ‘Mebbe,’ he said, ‘there was no eggs.’
But there had been. Joanna recalled the young constable, his face rueful, staring down at his shoes, covered in egg yolk and broken shell. So whatever the reason that Ruthie had not been at the market it had not been because she had no eggs to sell.
Joanna gave Mike a swift glance.
‘Do you mind if we take a quick look around the farm?’
Pinkers shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why should I? I got nothin’ to hide.’
The barns were cool but clean, recently hosed down. There was a vague smell of disinfectant, a much stronger scent of fresh cow dung but it was not unpleasant. It reminded Joanna of childhood days, spent hanging round a local farm, feeding lambs from babies’ bottles.
She and Mike tramped through each barn with their huge, high roofs, the breeze whistling through the eaves. They were home to darting swallows, feeding their young from fragments of insects in their beaks. Bales of straw were stacked in the corner, giving out a sweet, strong scent of the field. Again Joanna breathed in and was reminded of her childhood. Until the shadows of herself and Sergeant Mike Korpanski, huge against the barn wall, jerked her back to the present. Then their shadows were joined by a third shadow with a dog stuck to his heels as though by a short string. A couple of times Pinkers’ dog turned to look at Mike and gave a low, warning growl. Mike shook his foot at him. He had a healthy dislike for dogs having fed one or two with his ankles as a junior policeman. They walked to the end of the final barn which had been partitioned off. It was from here that the bellow was coming from an anguished animal. Joanna peeped over the bales and came face to face with a dribbling cow, the whites of its eyes rolling. It gave a painful grunt and Joanna looked enquiringly at Pinkers. ‘Her first calf,’ Pinkers said without sympathy. ‘They always have a difficult first birth. That’s why we pair them with a Hereford. After that ...’
Joanna glanced back at the wild, unhappy animal.
Motherhood in its least glamorous pose. Surely nothing at all to do with the double murders? And yet. She glanced again at the wretched animal.
But there was nothing else to see so they left the barn and returned to the yard, passing the bright, new combine harvester.
Mike put his hand on it. ‘Cost a lot of money, did it, Mr Pinkers?’
‘I bought it secondhand.’
‘Still expensive though.’
The farmer nodded. ‘But worth it,’ he said grudgingly.
‘How much?’
‘A lot.’ His horny hand caressed the shiny red paint.
Joanna watched him carefully. There was real avarice in the gesture. ‘Tell me, Mr Pinkers,’ she said suddenly, ‘do you have a gun?’
‘Course I do. Most farmers do. I got a licence for it. But I thought ...’
‘What did you think?’
The farmer’s face froze.
‘You thought that they were shot with their own gun? We haven’t had the forensic report yet, Mr Pinkers.’
Pinkers recovered himself. ‘Shackleton told me,’ he said sullenly. ‘He said it was their gun was on the floor.’
Joanna gave him a sunny smile. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Shackleton told you. Dear me. My colleague, Detective Sergeant Korpanski and I were beginning to get horribly suspicious of you.’
The farmer gave them both a dark scowl and mumbled something unintelligible.
It was Mike’s cue. ‘Do a lot of shooting, Mr Pinkers?’ The farmer nodded reluctantly.
‘And what do you shoot?’
Pinkers gave them both another hard stare. ‘Crows,’ he said.
There was little to report at the briefing. House to house interviews had merely reinforced the picture of a family who had guarded their privacy and discouraged friends or visitors. Most local people seemed to feel
that the shootings were somehow connected with the fact that Jack was ‘strange’. No one had ventured how.
Joanna frowned. ‘What did they mean - strange?’
Police Constable David Timmis read from his notebook. ‘A Mrs Rowan from a neighbouring farm said that most of the time he’d be fine but he had an unpredictable streak in his character. Her dog had bitten him one day. Accidentally, she said, when they had been playing. Jack had pretended to take the dog’s slipper and had been teasing him with it. When the dog bit him Jack kicked it so hard he broke a couple of ribs. And it had to be put down. She said it was as though Jack didn’t know his own strength.’ Timmis faced Joanna squarely. ‘I got the impression she was really fond of this dog. It seemed she hated Jack for what he’d done.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she say anything else?’
Timmis glanced back at his notebook. ‘She said he had a fascination with fire. Aaron and Ruthie had to watch him all the time. They were afraid one day he would set the barns alight. And with all that hay ...’ They could all fill in the details. Blazing ricks, a year’s abundant harvest, the result of hours of work, months of the right weather conditions, years of managing the land, all destroyed in minutes.
‘Apparently they found him one day lighting sticks and paper in the middle of the floor. He said he was cold and needed to get warm. He’d burnt the rug.’
So that explained the scorched mark that had commanded Barraclough’s attention.
‘Go on,’ she prompted Timmis.
‘Because of his unpredictability with fire Jack wasn’t allowed to smoke, according to Mrs Rowan.’ Timmis smiled. ‘When he went to market he’d try to cadge cigarettes off the other farmers. But if Aaron or Ruthie saw him smoking they’d take it off him and the person who’d given it to him would be ticked off “good and proper”. But Mrs Rowan said she’d noticed something. Jack wouldn’t smoke his cigarette, not properly. He’d puff away at it until the end glowed red and then he’d simply stare as though he was in a trance. And poor old Aaron and Ruthie were frightened to let him out of their sight for what he might do. Mrs Rowan said that all that watching took its toll on Ruthie.’
‘She seemed to know the family very well,’ Joanna observed.
Scaring Crows Page 9
