Where Death Lies, page 1
part #1 of Megan Rhys Crime Mystery Series
WHERE DEATH LIES
Lindsay Ashford
Where Death Lies
© Lindsay Ashford 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover photograph and design: Isabella Ashford.
Where Death Lies is a new and revised edition of a novel originally published by Honno in 2006, entitled Death Studies.
Chapter 1
It was the girl who found the body.
Griff had sent her into the cold, still water while he waited on the muddy bank. As she edged forward the silver stud in his sleek, black eyebrow crept upward. His eyes were fastened on her thighs. Delicate slices of soft white flesh squeezed between dirty green waders and cut-off jeans. The frayed denim trembled as the wind hissed in the reeds. She bent over. Now he could see the top of her knickers. A black thong with a diamante butterfly. Its wings glinted in the sunlight as she moved her hips. Was this for him?
‘Griff!’ Her child’s voice cut through his fogged mind. ‘There’s something in the water!’
She moved sideways and the sun blinded him. He blinked, shading his eyes with his hand. ‘What?’ His tone was impatient.
‘Something big and heavy. ‘ She half turned, one small breast silhouetted against the sky. ‘The line’s snagged up in it.’
He sighed and rose lazily from the blanket on the grass.
His long black hair fell over his eyes as he spat out the dog-end of a roll-up. He flicked his head back and pulled a band from his wrist, scraping the dark mane into a pony-tail. Then he kicked off his walking boots and wriggled into the waders lying at the edge of the pool.
A skylark fluttered from the reeds as he splashed into the water. In a few strides he was level with her. ‘Give me the line,’ he said, his hand brushing her thigh as he reached forward. He tugged the fishing twine hard and it snapped.
‘Shit!’ He staggered back, almost losing his balance. Then he put his hands beneath the surface, feeling for the thing that had snagged it. There was a loud slosh as he dislodged something flat and hard. As it slid sideways a slick of mud bubbled up from underneath.
The girl let out a shrill cry that sent sheep thundering across the hummocky field beyond the reeds. Griff stood transfixed as a bright, tangled mass broke the surface. It was a vivid orange, like the piles of frayed lobster lines that washed up on the beach. But this was not a fisherman’s flotsam.
It was human hair.
Chapter 2
Megan Rhys caught her breath as she glimpsed the huge curve of Cardigan Bay beneath her. She had driven along this road so many times, but that first sight of the sea always filled her with a childlike sense of wonder.
To the north she could see the Lleyn Peninsula with Bardsey Island basking like a fat seal off its western edge. Looking straight ahead she could see Snowdon and Cader Idris, and to her right was the vast, flat expanse of Borth Bog. At this time of year its colours were a vivid mix of green, yellow, purple and cinnamon.
She squinted in the sunlight, trying to make out the cottage.
It was perched with a string of others on the narrow strip of shingle that separated the sea from the marshland. From this height the village looked tiny; vulnerable. Amazing that it could defy the sea, she thought. And strange that this was the place she had always felt most safe.
She had been glad to get away from Birmingham, if only for a couple of weeks. It was the tail-end of the summer vacation and the police conference in Aberystwyth had given her the excuse she needed for a holiday. It would be good to spend time with her sister and the children. She would dig sandcastles and take them fishing in the rock pools. Let their laughter rub out the hurt Patrick’s news had brought.
She caught herself imagining what he was doing at this moment. His email had announced the arrival of a baby girl. No name yet, he had written, but they were thinking about Krista - a shortened version of her mother’s name. Megan grunted as she shoved the gearstick into third to begin the steep descent to the village. He had ended the email with: ‘Best wishes, Patrick and Kristina’. Megan wondered how she could have loved a man capable of such crass insensitivity. Did he really think she would be pleased for him?
*
The wind was getting up now, rippling the dark water on the seaward edge of Borth Bog. The girl was doubled over, throwing up against the weathered wooden wall of the bird hide. Griff was kneeling beside the body, panting from the effort of dragging it out of the water. A slimy raft of something black and solid had trapped it on the bottom of the pool. Now it rested face-down on the bank. Naked. Skin as brown as the mud that caked his waders.
The girl’s retching was getting louder.
‘Shut the fuck up and get over here! ‘
She whimpered as she staggered towards him, clutching her stomach. Her yellow nylon bomber jacket was spattered with flecks of vomit and her face was the same colour as the marsh grass under her feet.
‘Get up that end!’ Griff thumbed at the matted ginger mass of hair at the head end of the corpse.
The girl stared at it then at him, her lips trembling as she opened her mouth. ‘Griff...please!’
But he wasn’t listening. There was a hard gleam in his black eyes. ‘Get your hands under his chest and when I say the word, we roll him, okay?’
‘Griff,’ she bleated, ‘I can’t touch it! I can’t!’
‘Oh yes you can!’ Without looking at her he reached out and stroked her long, blonde hair, pausing when his fingers reached a sick-matted lock that was sticking to her neck. ‘It’s all right, baby.’ His voice was gentle now. ‘He can’t hurt you - he’s been dead for a long, long time.’
Her blue eyes, large and trusting, fixed on Griff ‘s. ‘How... do you know?’
The silver stud in his eyebrow flicked upwards. ‘This could be something really, really big for me, Alice.’ He nodded his head slowly, his fingers moving from her hair to the wet skin of the corpse’s left thigh. He ran his finger up and down the slippery flesh, his touch like a caress. ‘You see?’ He held his finger up to her nose. ‘It’s fine - doesn’t smell of anything but mud, does it?’
The girl bit her lip and inhaled. ‘No…I s’pose not.’ She swallowed hard.
‘So come on, then - let’s see what he looks like, shall we?’
She gave a barely perceptible nod.
They pushed on a count of three. He didn’t really need her help to roll the body onto its back and he knew that she knew that. It was part of the act. The game of Griff and Alice.
As he had expected, she snapped her eyes shut the moment the corpse turned. What he saw made his mouth go dry with excitement. The cheeks were leathery and the nose pushed to one side from having lain face down on the pool bottom. The eyes were empty sockets topped by wild orange brows and the jaw sprouted a mud-caked beard of the same colour. But it was none of these features that made him catch his breath. It was the expression on the dead man’s face. There was no mistaking it. It was a look of utter, abject terror.
‘Oh Griff! Oh my God!’ The girl’s voice startled him. She had opened her eyes but they were not on the dead man’s face. ‘Look!’ She stuck her finger out, shielding her face with her other hand.
Griff’s eyes travelled down the body to the groin. ‘Oh, you poor bastard,’ he whispered.
Chapter 3
Megan let herself into the cottage and stood for a moment in the hallway, breathing in its familiar smell. It triggered so many memories, this bittersweet scent of wood smoke mingled with beeswax polish and the damp, salt tang of the sea.
She dropped her keys on her grandmother’s ancient Welsh dresser and listened for the waves. In the quiet house they sounded louder than ever. The wash of the tide on the shingle and sand had been her comfort as a child. In her room at the back of the house she would lie awake on summer nights with the window wide open and her eyes closed. In the moments before sleep the sea became a living thing, breathing in and out.
She glanced at her watch. Ceri was at work and the children at nursery. They wouldn’t be home for another three or four hours. Plenty of time to unpack and sort out her presentation for tomorrow’s conference. She opened the door to the kitchen but a sudden draught snatched it from her hand. There was a huge hole where the kitchen window used to be. No wonder the sea had sounded so loud. Megan groaned. Ceri had said she was having some work done, but she hadn’t conveyed just how drastic her plans were.
As Megan stood staring at the jagged brickwork a man’s face popped into view. He looked as surprised as she did. He was wearing a lumberjack shirt, its collar caked with something pinkish white. Plaster, she guessed. She took a step towards him.
‘Er...are you the builder?’
He grinned, showing white, even teeth. His face was tanned and his round cheeks had a coral tinge. His short blond hair stuck up from his forehead - the kind of hair that looked as if it would never lie flat, no matter what you put on it.
In a split second she ran a mental checklist, weighing him up. It was something she was unable to help doing. It had become automatic after years of prison visits to men whose minds she was paid to probe. Any man she held a conversation with got the same treatment. Occupational hazard, she had joked to Patrick when they were getting
‘Double-glazing.’ The man was looking at her. His mud-coloured eyes were unblinking. Cocky, she thought. Fancies his chances. What was he? Early thirties? Possibly younger. Patrick’s age? Ceri had laughingly described Patrick as a toyboy, which was a bit of an exaggeration as the age difference was only five years. Megan hadn’t thought it would matter. That was something else she’d got wrong.
‘Dai Powell.’ He was holding out his hand to her. ‘I’m doing the patio doors.’
She gave a brief shake, feeling the calluses on his palms as his hand closed over hers. ‘Megan Rhys,’ she said. ‘I’m Ceri’s sister.’
‘Thought so,’ he winked. ‘Same eyes.’
Megan grunted a laugh. His flirting was so obvious. ‘Like the stud!’ He was staring curiously at the tiny diamond in her nose. ‘Very cool!’
She wondered if he was like this with all the women he worked for. She hoped not, for Ceri’s sake. Her sister was so raw, so vulnerable after the split from Neil.
Dai turned away from the hole in the kitchen wall and began hammering something outside. Now his profile was silhouetted against the sky. He was not unattractive. In the state Ceri was in, it wouldn’t take much flattery, she thought grimly. And he was bound to be married. Her train of thought was interrupted by the trill of a mobile phone. It was coming from outside. Dai was groping inside his shirt.
‘Alice?’
Megan watched his face. The expression of amiable cockiness vanished. He looked pale. Pale and rattled. When he spoke again his voice had dropped to a gruff whisper. ‘Don’t move - I’m on my way. Just hold on, sweetheart, you hear?’ As he shoved the phone in his pocket he caught Megan’s look of concern. ‘Sorry, got to go,’ he mumbled. ‘My girl - got to fetch her home.’
*
Trudy Morgan was the editor of the West Wales News and could sniff a good story a mile downwind. An archaeologist, she said, as Ceri scribbled down notes. Found a body at the bottom of a pool in Borth Bog. Reckoned it could be Iron Age. Wanted the paper there so the police wouldn’t cock things up.
‘Stuff that!’ Trudy sank her teeth into an Apple Danish and a drop of pale yellow sauce slid down her chin. ‘Odds on it’s a murder victim.’ She was unable to conceal her glee. Given the current state of the front page it was manna from heaven.
Ceri was given strict instructions to play along with the archaeologist. It irked her, taking orders from a woman two years her junior. Though she hated to admit it, it wouldn’t have mattered so much if Trudy had been a man.
‘Humour him,’ Trudy was saying. ‘Get what you can and phone it through. We’ll run the academic bollocks later.’
*
Ceri spotted Megan’s car as she drove through Borth village. She would have liked to say a quick hello, but there was no time. The front page had to be done and dusted by three-thirty and it was already ten to two. This was going to be tight.
She had a rough idea where she was headed. Behind the golf club, Trudy had said. She’d been to a few functions there but hadn’t been aware of a bird hide and pool that evidently lay a few hundred yards to the north-east of it. As she turned into the car park she spotted a familiar white van pulling out. She waved, but the man at the wheel didn’t seem to notice her. Neither did the person in the passenger seat. What was Dai Powell doing at the golf club, she wondered? He was supposed to be doing the new doors at the cottage.
She parked her car and jumped out, shading her eyes against the sun. She spotted a tall, grey-haired man leaning on a silver Alpha Romeo. He was kicking off a pair of golf shoes. She strode up to him.
‘Excuse me - I’m looking for the bird hide. Would you know where it is?’
He gave her an odd look. Not surprising, really, she thought. She didn’t exactly look like the bird-watching type in her pink linen jacket and wedge-heeled espadrilles. She opened her mouth to make some sort of apology for her appearance, but checked herself. She didn’t have to justify herself to him or anyone else. Not any more.
To her surprise he broke into a smile, the skin above his eyebrows creasing into tiny, criss-cross lines. ‘It’s a bit muddy over there,’ he said, cocking his head towards a large corrugated metal shed a few yards from the clubhouse. ‘Would you like to borrow some wellies? My daughter’s might fit you.’ He leaned into the boot and produced a pair of green Wellingtons. ‘Size six,’ he said, holding them out to her. ‘You’re Delyth’s grand-daughter, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Ceri frowned. ‘I’m sorry...I...’
‘Geraint James,’ he said. ‘I was your grandmother’s solicitor. ‘
‘Oh!’ She blushed in confusion. ‘I’m sorry, I should have recognised you.’ He probably lived in the village. She took the boots. ‘This is very kind of you. I’d love to have a chat about Gran but I’m afraid I’m in a terrible rush...’
‘I know.’ He folded his arms and leaned back against the car. ‘You’re with the paper, aren’t you?’
This really floored her. It was something she hadn’t yet got used to, the bush telegraph that seemed to operate in the village. He obviously knew all about her. With an Indian mother and a Welsh father, she and Megan had been objects of curiosity in the village since their childhood. The place was still ninety-nine per cent white, so perhaps their novelty value was still fairly high.
‘Would you like me to show you where it is?’ Geraint James pushed his feet back into the golf shoes. A few minutes later they were level with the big shed he had pointed out to her. Beyond it was the railway line that cut across the bog and round the back of the village. ‘Go over the track by the crossing and you’ll see the bird hide down on your left,’ he said. She shaded her eyes and caught sight of a low, pitched roof almost hidden in the clumps of bulrushes that sprouted up from the marshland.
She turned to thank her guide but he was a receding figure on the gravel track that led back to the clubhouse. She wondered what she should do with the wellies when she’d finished. He hadn’t said. Oh well, she thought, glancing at her watch, no time to worry about that now.
She pushed open the kissing gate that led onto the railway track. Glancing left and right she crossed over, the unfamiliar boots slowing her down somewhat. They were a couple of sizes too big but she hadn’t liked to say anything to Geraint James. It would have seemed churlish to refuse his offer. And he was right. It was very muddy. She slipped as she stepped onto the grassy bank on the other side of the railway line. She cursed under her breath, attracting the attention of three ponies that were munching the coarse, spiky turf. They moved towards her as she walked towards the bird hide, blocking her way. Suddenly the largest of them tossed its head and snorted. She froze. She had never been keen on horses. As children she and Megan had often been taken pony-trekking by their grandparents, but while her sister had loved it, Ceri had always been afraid of falling from what had seemed a very great height.
There was a loud whinny and the ponies were suddenly off. They cantered down the causeway that led across the marsh, muddy divots flying in their wake. As she watched them Ceri caught a flash of something moving in the reeds down on her left. There was someone in there. She took a couple of steps down the bank, taking care not to lose her footing. Through a gap in the reeds she could see a man. Tall and slim with long, black hair tied back in a pony-tail. He was rolling a cigarette and looking at something on the ground. Could this be the archaeologist? She had been expecting someone old, but this man looked about her age, or possibly younger.
From somewhere behind her she heard the wail of a siren. She glanced over her shoulder. It was coming from the direction of the golf club. The police had arrived then. She had better get in there before they did.
The man with the pony-tail wheeled round at the sound of her boots squelching down the bank. His face startled her. It was a beautiful face. Almost too beautiful for a man. His eyes were as dark as hers and framed by black brows that were so neatly arched they might have been shaped in a salon. One eyebrow sported a silver stud which caught the sunlight as he looked her up and down. His jaw and chin were dark with stubble. She held out her hand but he lifted his to his mouth, taking a drag on the roll-up dangling from his fingers. The muscles of his face tightened, revealing finely sculpted cheekbones.
