Pollard agreed. George Akerman’s lifestyle clearly demanded plenty of space. At the far end of the room was a large filing cabinet, and an enormous working table at the moment covered with Ordnance Survey maps. Bookcases lined the walls and books were stacked on sundry small tables. The room also had wall-to-wall carpeting, central heating, exceedingly comfortable armchairs and a colour TV set.
A reference to Isabel Dennis established a friendly atmosphere, and the conversation moved on easily to the Possel Way. As George Akerman talked, Pollard observed him closely. It was a narrow face with a determined chin, and hazel eyes which gave the impression of careful concentration on the matter in hand. It lit up attractively with an occasional smile, but in general its expression was guarded, Pollard thought, and he wondered briefly about the wife alleged to have walked out.
‘Well, Mr Akerman,’ he said pleasantly, taking advantage of a pause, ‘we know you’re a very busy man and mustn’t take up your time. It’s quite a small matter. We’ve been told of all your work for the preservation of Cattesmoor, and especially of its prehistoric monuments which you inspect regularly. Were you by any chance up on the moor doing just this on the Monday or Tuesday after Easter last year?’
‘I can say right away that I was on the Monday,’ George Akerman replied. ‘I make a point of it on bank holidays. Unfortunately, some of the youngsters who come down to these parts on holiday are bloody little vandals, smashing things up just for the hell of it. We’ve had trouble, so I feel it’s worth being around, although one can’t be everywhere at once, of course. I’m not sure about the Tuesday offhand: I’ll just look up last year’s diary.’
‘Do you close the works for both days?’ Pollard asked.
‘Yes. The chaps like the good long weekend, and we knock a day off the summer closure in lieu.’ George Akerman extracted a bound desk diary from a shelf and stood flicking over the pages. ‘No, I didn’t go up on the Tuesday. I worked at home, partly down in the office, and partly up here.’ He replaced the diary and returned to his chair.
‘Of course you’ll have followed the Press reports of the enquiry,’ Pollard went on, ‘and will realise that we’re doing our utmost to trace the youth seen at the old lookout, at about a quarter to one on that Easter Monday. He was making for Biddle Bay along the cliffs, and when next seen — except by a person or persons at present unknown — had been reduced to a skeleton and deposited in the kistvaen at Starbarrow.’
‘You’re absolutely satisfied on the identity question?’ George Akerman asked.
‘Absolutely. And although the pathologist’s further report won’t be officially out until later today, we’re also absolutely satisfied about where the poor blighter spent the interval between death and premature resurrection: in a disused well at Starbarrow Farm.’
‘Good God! The old well?’ George Akerman, who had been following with the closest attention, stared at Pollard. ‘Hence the miscellaneous deposits on the bones, of course.’
‘You know about this well?’
‘Yes. I knew Danby Blake a bit — the chap Ling bought the farm from — and he asked me out to lunch once. He told me he’d tried to get a better water supply by deepening an old well, but that it would have had to go deeper than he could afford to bore, and he’d had to scrap the idea and fill in the shaft.’
‘Can we go back to that Easter Monday again?’ Pollard asked. ‘Did your tour of inspection take you anywhere near where our chap would have got to? And if it did, have you the slightest recollection of seeing a smallish long-haired type humping his gear on his back?’
‘I’d have noticed him all right if he’d been within sighting distance,’ George Akerman replied. ‘He sounds just the sort one tries to keep an eye on. But if he didn’t leave the lookout until a quarter to one, he couldn’t possibly have got to the Biddle area where I was by early afternoon. Come and look at a map.’
They all migrated to the far end of the room, and George Akerman showed them his route up on to the western end of Cattesmoor. He had driven to Biddle Bay and gone on through the town, along the cliff road and past the outlying farms to where the surfaced road ended. He had then parked his car, and continued on foot to inspect a stone circle.
‘This one,’ he said, indicating it with a pencil.
‘The Wanton Wenches,’ Pollard read aloud. ‘Sounds all right.’
‘One of our best local names, I always think. It’s interesting historically, too. Puritanism interpreting a Bronze Age monument about two and a half millennia later. The usual bit of folklore about girls dancing on a Sunday and being literally petrified by an irate Almighty. It’s a lovely circle, although two of the stones have had to be re-erected. Well, I ate my sandwiches, and went on another half-mile to look at a standing stone, and then, as nobody was about, I decided to push off. At that point I was about twenty miles from the lookout.’
‘Did you call it a day and go home?’
There was a slight pause. George Akerman let the pencil he was holding drop on the table.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I drove back as far as Churstow, and then up on to the moor again, and along to Starbarrow. Then I —’ He broke off at the bleeping of a telephone and strode down the room to answer it. Pollard gave Toye a quick look, and appeared absorbed in map study while listening intently. He learnt nothing of the caller’s identity however. George Akerman merely gave his number, and after a couple of seconds said without a trace of interest or pleasure in his voice that he had callers and would ring back shortly. As he returned to the table Pollard looked up at him.
‘About what time was it when you got to the farm?’ he asked.
‘Roughly about three, I think. I was up there for half an hour or so.’ George Akerman rested a foot on a rung of his chair and contemplated Pollard. ‘I expect you’re wondering why I went there. Partly to vet the kistvaen, but the main object of the exercise was to spy out the land for the late Miss Grant. She was President of the Friends of Cattesmoor, and as secretary I worked closely with her. She had been keen on reopening the Possel Way for walkers for years, but the difficulty was that parts of its route were only vaguely known. Then, a few years ago, a fellow doing historical research found a document which established that it ran behind Starbarrow Farm, and that there was a chapel there used by the pilgrims.’ George Akerman paused to smile reminiscently. ‘Well, Miss Grant simply took the bit between her teeth. She had left the Friends £5,000 in her will, and privately decided to make them an immediate donation of the money instead, to spend on re-establishing Possel if it was practicable. Unfortunately, in the meantime Geoffrey Ling had bought the farm, and it was soon perfectly obvious that we’d have to take him to court to get a right of way through his land. Naturally neither Miss Grant nor I were anxious to do this unless we’d got a really good case. She found out that the Lings were away over Easter, and asked me to go up and see exactly where the path would have to go, and what chance Ling would have of pleading invasion of his privacy and so on.’
‘Did you by any chance notice the well?’ Pollard asked.
‘Yes. I came on it when I was looking round in the newtake.’
‘This is important,’ Pollard said. ‘Try to visualise it, will you? Did the sheet iron covering it look as though it had recently been moved?’
George Akerman stared hard at the wall behind the table.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Definitely not. I can see it quite clearly. Chunks of rock were piled on it, and the grass and stuff had grown over the edges.’
‘Returning to our hiker who was going to end up there,’ Pollard said. ‘If you were only at Starbarrow between three and half-past, he obviously couldn’t have made it. Did you by any chance see any other walkers about?’
‘Nobody at all. I was rather relieved, to tell you the truth, as I was blatantly trespassing. I was surprised that I didn’t meet anyone, but it was an early Easter, and there are never so many people around when that happens.’
Pollard looked at the map again.
>
‘Have you got the sheet that shows the old tin workings?’ he asked. ‘It’s been suggested that our chap may have spent the Monday night there.’
George Akerman hunted out another map from the assortment on the table.
‘They’re on this one. It seems a reasonable idea. Some of the buildings would give you quite a bit of shelter.’
‘He could have hiked on to Starbarrow easily on the Tuesday, I suppose?’
‘Oh, yes. It would only be about half a dozen miles. But I should have thought it would have been more likely that he’d go back to the cliffs and try to make Biddle. Types like that usually hang around towns when they can.’
‘The police over there are trying to pick up his trail,’ Pollard said, ‘but no luck so far. It’s the heck of a long time ago for people to remember a stray youth... Well, Mr Akerman, you’ve cleared up some points for us, anyway, and we’re grateful. We’ll press on and leave you in peace.’
A few minutes later they drove out of the gates into an empty street flanked on both sides by blank-eyed factories.
‘Anything strike you?’ Pollard asked Toye.
‘It’s as deserted here as out on the moor on a Sunday morning.’
‘And quiet as the grave after working hours, Akerman said, didn’t he? Not to mention bank holidays, of course. Miss Grant’s dead, and there’s not a soul to contradict his story about how he spent those two days. Not that there’s the least suggestion that he was involved with the hippy... Oh, hell, if only we could get a breakthrough of some sort, and find out what this bloody case is all about.’
‘There’s young Grant coming along in half an hour,’ Toye suggested hopefully.
‘Somebody else who’ll freely admit having been up at Starbarrow at the critical time, and with a perfectly good innocent reason,’ Pollard retorted gloomily, and relapsed into silence.
Canteen coffee did nothing to boost Pollard’s morale, and it was only with an effort that he roused himself to find a fresh slant on the enquiry while waiting for Peter Grant to arrive. Slowly he began to work backwards along the line of the people they had interviewed, as though they were standing before him on parade. George Akerman, geographically isolated and socially detached in the midst of his many activities. Davina Grant, ambitious for status, determined, almost comically immature and quite oblivious of the fact, poor girl. Probably developing a crush on Akerman. Kate Ling. A grand girl there, and the most improbable product of her brilliant clown of a father and oddly detached mother. Ted Callington of the Mayfield Garage, whose personality and sales patter Toye had conveyed so well. Danby Blake, philosophical and undaunted. The Hawkins troupe, voluble but quite unshakeable and Mum-dominated. The local chaps: Henry Landfear, Crookshank...
At this point he halted. Pollard, suddenly alerted, concentrated on the saturnine countenance of the dour but basically likeable superintendent. He waited, but memory remained obstinately silent, and moved on again. Aunt Is, bless her. Right back to the beginning now, and the group standing ill at ease round the kistvaen. Davina Grant again, throwing her weight about, and the grey-headed Bill Worth with his barbed comments...
‘Mr Peter Grant to see you, Mr Pollard, sir,’ a constable announced from the door.
‘Damn!’ Pollard exclaimed, so vehement at the interruption that Toye looked at him in astonishment. ‘Show him in, will you?’
The physical resemblance between Peter and Davina Grant was striking at first sight. They had the same rounded and rather full type of face, hazel eyes and dark hair. But there was nothing pursed or secretive about his mouth, and nothing of her latent tension in his open expression, although at the moment he looked worried.
‘I suppose I’ve been a complete fool not to come and see you off my own bat, Superintendent,’ he said. ‘My girl says so, anyway. She’s Kate Ling, as you know. Perhaps you’d take a look at these.’
Pollard mentally awarded Kate Ling an accolade, and read the two letters. They were all in the now familiar block capitals and on the same unidentifiable stationery. The envelopes were marked PERSONAL. One informed Peter Grant that his visit to Starbarrow Farm on 31 March 1975 was known to the writer, and that it was obvious why he had got rid of his car so quickly. The other was abusive and asked when he had hidden the body.
‘When and where did you get these?’ Pollard asked.
‘The one about going out to the farm and the car came to the office by the second post on Friday, and the other one on Saturday. We don’t open on Saturdays, but after getting the first one I was a bit het up, and went along to see if another had come.’
‘Are these letters the only reason why you haven’t been along to see us, Mr Grant?’
‘Well, no.’ The young man shifted his position and looked embarrassed.
‘Suppose we help you out a bit. I suggest that when you first heard that a skeleton had been found in the Starbarrow kistvaen, it may have crossed your mind that it could have been a practical joke carried out by your prospective father-in-law.’
‘Well, it did actually. Then when there were those broadcast appeals for information about the chap those people saw at the old lookout, I got a bit rattled. I mean I didn’t think for a moment that — that Mr Ling had bumped anyone off, but it did look as though the skeleton had come from the farm. It would have been damned difficult to get it to the kistvaen from anywhere else without being seen, let’s face it. Then the next day — Friday — I got that letter myself, and it was a pretty nasty jolt. You see, it was true.’
‘What was true?’ Pollard enquired.
‘I have been out to the farm on that Easter Monday when the hiker bloke whose skeleton it is, according to the papers, was last seen, and I was there pretty late, too.’
‘How late, Mr Grant?’
‘About six. I’d been playing in an Easter Monday tennis tournament at Biddle Sports Club and went up on the way back, just to see that the house was O.K. I’d promised Kate and her mother.’
‘About six,’ Pollard said thoughtfully. ‘Did you see anyone around up on the moor?’
‘Not a soul. It was beginning to get dark. I just tried the doors and vetted the windows and came away.’
‘About your car,’ Pollard went on after a short pause. ‘I see no harm in telling you that we have had an anonymous letter advising us to ask you why you were cleaning your old car in your garage up to midnight on the night of 1 April last year.’
Peter Grant stared at him appalled.
‘My God!’ he said hoarsely. ‘That’s true, too. Who on earth is it who’s got it in for me like this? I’d have said I hadn’t an enemy in the world.’
‘Why were you cleaning it so thoroughly?’ Pollard pressed him.
‘I was going to trade it in the next morning. I’d been wanting a new car for ages, and when I heard I was being taken on by our firm as a partner a couple of weeks before Easter, Aunt Heloise was so bucked that she said she’d foot the bill as soon as I saw something I really liked. It wasn’t a particularly good time just over Easter, but on the Tuesday evening — 1 April, I mean — I went to fill up with petrol at the Mayfield, and George Fry, a foreman who’s an old buddy of mine, came out and told me that a super BMW had just been delivered from the works. We went to look at it, and I decided on the spot that I’d have it. So of course I put in the evening tarting up my Marina... I suppose you won’t believe a word of this,’ he concluded desperately.
‘Why not, Mr Grant? It’s a perfectly credible story, and can be checked by the foreman if necessary. Before you go, how did you spend Tuesday, 1 April? Did you go over to Starbarrow again by any chance?’
Peter Grant shook his head.
‘We started up at the office again on the Tuesday. I remember it quite well because it was my first normal day as a partner, and it felt rather good. I coped with my mail, and then my secretary helped me shift into my new room, and I had an early snack and went off to a site meeting at a place called Candlebridge, where we’re building a factory. It’s about thir
ty miles east of Stoneham. The meeting went on until about four, and then I came back to the office to finish things up, and then knocked off and went to the Mayfield for petrol, as I told you.’
‘Did you go out to Starbarrow again before the Lings came back on the following Friday?’
‘No, I didn’t. Naturally I can’t remember at this distance of time what work I was doing, but there’d be a record at the office. I realise you’ll have to approach the senior partners, but they’re jolly decent chaps, so it’s O.K. by me.’ Pollard glanced across at Toye.
‘Got all that, Inspector? Well, Mr Grant, we’ll have a statement typed out for you to read over and sign if you consider it’s a true record. Perhaps you’d look in tomorrow morning? You’ll understand that we have to check up on what you’ve told us, but it’ll be done discreetly. And one more thing. As you say, someone does seem to be out for your blood, so watch out within reason.’
Peter Grant drew the back of his hand across his forehead.
‘You’ve been awfully decent,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot. It all seems so unreal, somehow. I can hardly take it in.’
‘I suppose you’ve no idea who this someone could possibly be?’
‘Absolutely none. It simply doesn’t mean a thing to me.’
‘When are you and Miss Ling getting married?’ Pollard asked more conversationally as they got up.
‘There’s a bit of a hold-up over the house,’ Peter Grant said, frowning slightly. ‘Our aunt left Upway to my sister and myself jointly, and the obvious thing is to divide it into two. I’ve done plans and got them through the district planning committee, and given them to my sister to study in detail, but she’s not at all keen on the idea, and doesn’t want me to buy her out. In fact, she’s offered to buy me out, but that just isn’t on. There’ve been Grants at Upway for two hundred years, and I hope a son of mine’ll carry on some day. However, I expect we’ll get things sorted out in time.’
Suddenly While Gardening Page 10
