Under a Silent Moon

by Elizabeth Haynes

  Lou looked across at the faces earnestly taking in the bloody scene on display and trying not to show emotion. They’d all seen stuff like this before, but it didn’t mean they were unaffected by it.

  “Postmortem hopefully tomorrow. We’ll have to wait until then for the first thoughts. Guv.”

  “Thanks, Barry.” Lou resumed her place and flipped on to the next slide. “This is where we are now. We have an initial witness statement from Felicity Maitland. Sam’s been in touch with Miranda Gregson, who is our FLO. She’s been with the family all afternoon. How are they, Sam?”

  Sam Hollands, stockily built with a sweep of heavy blond hair, spoke up from the back. “Felicity Maitland is in a bad way and her husband keeps feeding her alcohol, which isn’t helping. Flora, their daughter, has been looking after everyone, not saying much. She’s got a flat in Briarstone.”

  “What about Polly’s parents?”

  “The mother, Cassandra Leuchars, died a few years ago. I asked about Polly’s father but nobody seems to know who that is.”

  A hand went up at the back. “Ma’am?”

  “Yes?” Lou didn’t know this one. A brown-haired chap, older.

  “DC Ron Mitchell. We just had reports come in of another body being found this morning, might be linked to this—did you get that already?”

  Lou hated to be wrong-footed, especially in a briefing. “Thanks, Ron, could you enlighten us, please?”

  “I got a report from Briarstone nick. They’ve been dealing with a suspected suicide, complicated by the husband of the deceased keeling over with a heart attack when a patrol went round to break the news. Dog walker saw a car had gone over the quarry cliff at Ambleside, called it in. Initial patrol and paramedics went down via the access track. Too ropey for cars, unfortunately, so they got down there on foot. After that it took a while to get the rescue team to get some climbing gear down there. Anyway, there’s a woman’s body in the driver’s seat of the car. Bit of a mess. The car’s a silver Corsa, late model. Registration in the name of a Mrs. Barbara Fletcher-Norman, address Hayselden Barn, Cemetery Lane, Morden—right across the road from Hermitage Farm.”

  That got everyone’s attention.

  “What happened with the husband?” Lou said.

  “They got to the address and the old man was getting out of the shower. Said he thought his wife had gone out early, that he got back from work late last night and went to bed, assumed she was out with friends. So he hadn’t seen her since yesterday morning when he left for work.”

  “Right,” said Lou, not sure where this was heading.

  “Well, then it gets interesting.” Ron, loving the attention, flipped over the pages of his notebook with a flourish. “They went into the kitchen with him, and there’s what looks like blood in there. Not all over the place, but the kitchen’s a mess, and there’s blood on a tea towel by the sink. Husband seems dead shocked by this. Claims he never went into the kitchen last night or this morning. Pretty soon he starts having trouble breathing, then all of a sudden he goes gray and collapses. They called for Eden District Ambulance Trust and did CPR in the meantime but it was a few minutes before the ambulance got there. I think it was the one that had been up at the cottage.”

  Lou looked across the faces for someone reliable and unfortunately alighted on Andy Hamilton. The call from Buchanan must have been about this. What were the chances? Two bodies from adjacent properties, on the same morning, in a tiny place like Morden? They had to be linked.

  “Andy, they’ll probably open a second case for this, even though it might be part of our job. Can you find out who’s in charge and see if you can take it on? We won’t be able to get a search team or CSI in there but we need to make sure the Barn is sealed off until we can treat it as a scene. We don’t know it’s linked, but I think for now we should assume it is.”

  “Ma’am.” Andy smiled warmly, clearly pleased with himself for landing a juicy job.

  “Ron, anything else?”

  “Briarstone ran a next-of-kin check through the old boy’s work and the only name they came up with was a Mrs. Taryn Lewis, daughter of Brian Fletcher-Norman, the husband. Turns out she’s not spoken to her father for months. That’s about where we’ve got to.”

  “Where is this place in relation to our cottage, exactly?”

  “A hundred yards or so away, no more.”

  “Right.” Lou digested the information, working out the best step forward with it. “Thanks, Ron. How’s Mr. Fletcher-Norman doing, do we know?”

  “He’s in intensive care in Briarstone General. Not looking too bright. Be lucky to get an interview anytime soon.”

  “And what about the body in the car?”

  “Waiting for PM.”

  “Thanks, Ron. I’ll leave that one with you.”

  Ron was slightly red in the face. Lou guessed it had been a good few years since he’d been able to play a trump card in an initial briefing. “Barry? Back to you. How’s the intel looking?”

  Barry Holloway was the most experienced member of her team as far as Major Crime was concerned. He’d been the reader in more MIRs than she could count.

  “Thanks. Right. Pin your ears back, chaps. We’ve got a witness who thinks he saw a car going over the cliff last night. That came in on the box while you were talking, ma’am. And something from Crimestoppers. An anonymous caller saying Polly Leuchars was having an affair with someone in the village. Another Crimestoppers call suggesting we might want to look closer at the Fletcher-Normans—well, we’re ahead of the game on that one. Mrs. Maitland says that Polly went on a shopping trip to Briarstone yesterday lunchtime, was gone three hours or so. We’ll get CCTV, see if we can track her movements. I had a look on ANPR for Polly’s plates—no results unfortunately, but then the back road into Briarstone isn’t covered unless the mobile camera unit happens to be there. We’ve got a sighting of Polly in the Lemon Tree last night. She left before closing time, so we’ll need to interview the regulars, see who she was meeting. And two reports of a car revving and driving away at speed during the night not far from the cottage. We’ll get more tomorrow morning after the press conference.”

  “Right.” Lou had almost forgotten that she was going to be broadcast to the nation tomorrow morning and felt a lurch of nausea at the prospect. It would be nice to be able to go to the press conference with a firm picture of what had happened to their victim.

  “Can we see what the latest is on Nigel Maitland?”

  “Already checked that,” Barry said. “Nothing recent. I’ve got a source tasking in.”

  “What about the house-to-house?”

  “Jane Phelps is organizing that; she’s still out there with Les. I spoke to her before we came in, and it’s all village gossip so far, no dramas. She said she’d ring in when they’re done. Patrols did most of it this morning before we got there, anyway. She’s going round again to make sure.”

  “Thanks. Well, that’s about it for now. Any questions?”

  Murmurs, everyone itching to get on with it.

  “Right. Next briefing tomorrow morning, eight sharp. I’m talking to the press at nine, so let’s see if we can stay ahead of them. Okay. Let’s go.”

  A moment of quiet, and then the shuffling of chairs, rustling of papers, laughter, voices. A few handshakes, people who’d been off working other areas and found themselves back on the team together.

  Lou let out a long, slow breath, dealt with the few people who came up to her afterward with comments, suggestions, or ideas that they hadn’t felt brave enough to pipe up with in the briefing.

  Then there was only one person left, someone she didn’t know, leaning casually against the back wall, arms crossed, giving her his complete and undivided attention. He had dark hair, broad shoulders, and—most disconcerting of all—a black eye.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, wondering with a snap of fear if someone had been in the briefing who shouldn’t have been.

  “I’m Jason Mercer.”

 
; She’d forgotten the name but there was no mistaking that accent. Shit! Had she been really rude to him on the phone earlier? A warm flush spreading across her cheeks, she decided there was only one way to play this: pretend it never happened.

  “Hi. Did you have any luck finding me an analyst?” she asked, shaking his hand. His was warm, his grip firm. He looked her in the eye, held her gaze. The dark bruise, a smudge across the bridge of his nose, made the green of his eyes more striking.

  “Yes and no—I’m afraid you’ve got me.”

  “Well, thank you. I’m glad you’re here. Did you get everything you needed from the briefing?”

  “I think so. Presumably you want a network, timeline, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “What about the phones?”

  “Jane Phelps is going to be the exhibits officer. When she’s back later I’ll get a list of them for you. She’s already put the applications in for the records of all of the phones we have. We didn’t find Polly’s phone at the cottage, unfortunately, but we’ve got the number from the Maitlands.”

  She led him out of the briefing room, stopping at Barry Holloway’s desk to introduce them. But they had worked together on a case before and shook hands briefly.

  “We’ve got you a desk sorted out and the workstations all loaded and ready to go,” Barry said.

  “Can you brief me tomorrow morning?” Lou asked. “Before the press conference?”

  Jason looked her straight in the eye once again. “Sure. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Turning away, walking back to her poky little office, Lou wondered why her heart was pounding and her skin felt as if it were on fire.

  16:10

  When Flora got back, Miranda Gregson and Petrie were nowhere to be found. She began mucking out the stables, managing to hold herself together as long as she didn’t think about Polly doing this and now never doing it again. She kept her eyes on the wet straw and horseshit, shoveling it into the wheelbarrow and then over to the heap.

  “Flora!”

  Flora groaned. He was back. Connor-bloody-Petrie.

  “Where have you been?” she said, not looking up until his green Wellingtons appeared in her line of vision, directly in her way.

  He was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking casual and jolly as if he owned the stables and felt the need to supervise his own personal shit shoveler. “I was giving that nice police lady a tour of the farm,” he said. “None of you lot bothered to do that, did you?”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Back in the kitchen.”

  “You’re in the way,” she said.

  He didn’t move, but his weasel smile dropped from his face, making him look decidedly nasty—which he was. But as well as being an evil bastard, he was also a foot shorter than Flora and she wasn’t afraid of him.

  “What you doin’ here, anyway? You don’t even live here.”

  She put down the fork and leaned on it. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Looks like you’re taking your time about it, if you ask me,” he said.

  “I’m not,” she said. “And you should be doing this. It is your job. Grab the barrow and give me a hand.”

  “Not me. Your dad’s got important stuff for me to do today.”

  “What important stuff?”

  He tapped the side of his pointed nose conspiratorially. “None of your business, Flora. You keep mucking out like a good girl and I’ll come back later and check you done it right.”

  That was it. Enough.

  She dropped the fork. It clattered and bounced off the concrete yard, but Flora didn’t even hear the noise because by that time Petrie was facedown in the muck, Flora’s knee in his back. She had him by the scruff of his too big, hand-me-down waxed jacket that made him feel so self-important. He was shouting as best he could, calling out: “No, no! Lemme up! You stupid bi-bi-bitch!”

  “Flora! Let him up.”

  She took her knee off his back and turned to see her father in the yard.

  “Nige!” Petrie was shouting, wiping his face and pulling bits of straw and manure from the front of his jacket. “You see what she did? Did ya see? Bitch!”

  He made a move toward Flora, but Nigel stepped forward and Petrie backed off immediately.

  “You’re fine, Connor,” he said, calmly. “Go and wash your hands and face.”

  Petrie complied, looking daggers at Flora as he made his way round the yard toward the offices at the end. “Fuckin’ cow,” he muttered.

  “Feel better?” Nigel asked, when Petrie was out of the way.

  “He’s a piece of crap. Why do you bother with him? He doesn’t want to work, he’s a lazy little bastard.”

  “I know. But he has his uses.”

  “Polly hated him,” Flora said, and then stopped short.

  “Polly tolerated him,” Nigel said.

  A single tear fell, taking her by surprise. She turned back to the stables, wiping her face angrily. She wasn’t going to cry in front of him, that was for sure.

  “Come on, Flora. Let’s go and have a drink. All right?”

  “I need to get this done,” she said. “Nobody else is going to do it, are they?”

  He stood for a moment watching her, haunting her peripheral vision, and then he turned and left her to it.

  One more stable to do, and then she could go and walk. Clear her head.

  17:54

  Over the course of the afternoon, police came and went at Hermitage Farm. Flora finished at the stables and left Connor to bring the horses in. It was dark by that time, so she gave up on the walk and stayed in the kitchen, making endless cups of tea.

  Felicity sat holding court as various neighbors came to call and talk about the trauma. Miranda Gregson loitered, making detailed notes of all the visitors, who they were, where they lived, taking contact phone numbers should the police wish to ask them further questions.

  At a quarter to six the one Flora remembered as Sam came back again. She had an air of kindness about her, patient with Felicity despite all the dithering and rambling.

  When the madness had isolated itself into the room that held her mother, Flora slipped upstairs to the bathroom and tried to phone Taryn. She wanted to tell her about Polly, but also that it seemed something was going on at the Barn too. None of the police officers had said anything, but there had been an ambulance and police cars over there since late morning. Maybe Polly had been the victim of a burglary or robbery that went wrong and the same thing had happened over at the Barn?

  It was pointless to speculate. Taryn’s phone number went unanswered, and her mobile phone was switched off.

  “Flora? Flora?” shouted her mother. “Flora? They want to take our fingerprints—and our DNA!”

  She returned to the kitchen, heart thudding.

  “It’s fine,” said Sam, gently. It was as if she could tell that Flora was feeling the loss more than the rest of them. “It’s routine. We expect your prints to be in the cottage; it’s the ones we don’t expect to find that we’re interested in. We need to take yours for elimination purposes.”

  And there, on the table, an ink pad, a roller, sheets of paper, plastic sealable bags. Her mother at the sink, already scrubbing at her fingertips with the Fairy Liquid and a pan scourer.

  Nigel came in as Sam was explaining the process to Flora: fingerprints, then cheek swabs for the DNA.

  “You can forget about taking mine for now; I want to speak to my solicitor first,” her father said and went to the office to make a phone call. By the time he came back Flora was washing her hands.

  “I’d like it to be noted that I’m cooperating fully,” he said to Sam.

  “I’m happy to note that.”

  Flora watched her father as he allowed the officer to manipulate his fingers, one by one, against the ink pad. He must be hating this, hating having them here. He was hiding it well, though, and it was something she had always grudgingly admired—the more dif
ficult the circumstances, the more he turned on the charm, the easy, relaxed confidence.

  And the oddest thing: Flora, with nothing at all to hide, felt nervy and guilty and afraid, while Nigel, with the most to fear, was as relaxed and confident as she’d ever seen him.

  * * *

  MG11 WITNESS STATEMENT

  Section 1—Witness Details

  NAME: Richard John HARRISON

  DOB (if under 18; if over 18 state “Over 18”) Over 18

  ADDRESS: 35 Priory Acre

  Morden

  Briarstone

  OCCUPATION: Retired

  Section 2—Investigating Officer

  DATE: Thursday 1 November

  OIC: DC 8745 Alastair WHITMORE

  Section 3—Text of Statement

  I am a retired accountant and I live in the village of Morden. On the morning of Thursday 1 November I was walking my Jack Russell, Lima, on the Downs outside the village. Our usual walk takes us across the fields to the old quarry at Ambleside, skirting round the top of the quarry, and then back home.

  I left home at around 6.30. It was still quite dark but by the time we reached the quarry it was fairly light. I estimate that we were there no later than seven.

  When we reached Ambleside quarry Lima ran off into the bushes, barking. I believed she was chasing a rabbit and I followed her because I didn’t want her to go over the edge of the quarry. When I cleared the bushes I noticed that there was a car lying on its roof at the foot of the cliff on the far side of the quarry. I believe this is directly under where the car park is situated.

  I could not see what make of car it was, except that it was silver in color. I do not believe the car had been there yesterday when we took our walk as I would have noticed it.

  I called out in case someone was trapped in the car, shouting that I was going to get help.

  I walked back to the path where I found Lima waiting for me. I attached her lead and walked quickly home, where I phoned for the police and an ambulance.

  Section 4—Signatures

  __________________________

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