Blood on the Rocks, page 15
The room was very quiet now as each officer tried to make sense of the version DI Piercy was giving them.
Joanna drew in a deep breath. ‘There is another point that has puzzled us in this case. How did a frail old man with limited mobility manage to travel so far from the residential home where he’d lived happily for a year and a half that we have not been able to find him?’
She waited before speaking. ‘The night sister, Joan Arkwright, thought she might have heard a car. Again, she couldn’t be certain, neither could she give us any idea of time. But it would explain the anomaly in this case, i.e. that we have been unable to find Mr Foster in spite of his limited mobility and confused mental state.’
She noted a few were nodding their agreement.
‘So …’ She scanned the officers. ‘We now have two lines of enquiry, but neither is definite. We don’t have times and we certainly have absolutely no idea of why he went. But the fact remains that we haven’t found Mr Foster yet.’ She turned back to the board, met the rheumy old eyes and made a silent apology to the elderly gent. Then she turned back into the room. ‘Come on, guys,’ she said, ‘let’s find out what’s happened to this old chap. He must be confused and frightened. That is if he’s still alive. If he is, let’s bring him home.’
At the back of the room, Korpanski was doing a silent clap. He grinned at her and did a thumbs-up. As she reached him, he said, ‘Well done, Jo.’
But her response was muted. ‘We still haven’t found him, Mike. And you must see as well as I do that neither of these statements is exactly proof of anything.’
‘It’s the best we can do, Jo. You can’t do more.’
And she had to be content with that.
TWENTY-ONE
Friday 12 October 2 p.m.
Mill Street
One of the cellmates Kath had shared with was a woman in her forties called Marjorie, though if you called her that she’d probably break your nose – or worse. She liked to be called Lakshmi after the Indian goddess of good fortune, although Marjorie suited her much better. She had very pale skin, freckles and frizzy ginger hair, though again nobody would have described it as that unless they fancied facial surgery. Kath never knew what ‘Lakshmi’ was in for and she never asked. Some people boasted about the crimes which had resulted in them being banged up. Many – no, most – protested their innocence or at least claimed they had only had a peripheral part in the crime, or else they’d been provoked beyond human tolerance. But Marjorie, or rather Lakshmi, never said a word. Not even how long she was in for or when she was eligible for parole, which intrigued Kath. Kath would have liked to have known what she had done. After all, she’d shared her confidence. And to know she was a killer or a sex-mad lesbian would at least have put her on her guard. But on the subject of her crime Lakshmi kept schtum – unlike on practically all other subjects, particularly philosophy. Her own brand of this branch of science was spouted out on all available occasions. During their sentence the prison had been in lockdown for almost a month after an inmate accidentally set fire to his mattress. The result was that Kath and Lakshmi spent rather a lot of time together.
Because Kath didn’t know what crime Lakshmi had committed, she was a little wary of her and put up with behaviour she wouldn’t have tolerated from anyone else on the planet. Lakshmi had a habit of sitting for hours cross-legged, humming or chanting or, more interestingly, spouting out words of wisdom. And for some reason, probably connected with her cellmate’s silence about her crimes, or maybe just because she’d been a captive audience, instead of scoffing, Kath had listened to her stories, even though instinct told her that Lakshmi’s stories were more attributable to her own particular brand of philosophy than that of the real Indian goddess. One of the stories she had been fond of telling was the tale of a man who’d brought a poisonous snake home after he’d found it run over on the road half dead. Feeling sorry for the reptile’s plight, the man had picked it up, taken it home, put it somewhere warm, given it a saucer of milk and a dead rat to eat. (Lakshmi wasn’t absolutely certain about some of the detail so, she said, she’d had to fill it in.) To the man’s delight the poisonous snake had recovered. And when it was strong it crawled out of the warm comfortable place and bit the man. Just before he died, the man, justifiably pissed off, said to the snake, ‘I rescued you. I took you home. I fed you and kept you warm. I gave you milk to drink and a rat to eat. And now you are recovered you’ve bitten me. And I will jolly well die.’
Again more Lakshmi’s words than the original story.
The snake replied, ‘Whatever you did for me you should not have forgotten. I … am … a … snake.’
At which point the man died. She and Lakshmi had practically wet themselves they’d laughed so much over this story. And, periodically, when they were about to do something particularly bad, they would make eyes at each other and whisper.
‘You should not have forgotten. I am a snake.’
Out loud, to herself, as she tried to work out the logistics of her plan, Kath said it now.
‘You should not have forgotten. I am a snake.’
And, this Saturday lunchtime, ‘I am a snake’ had a sixth sense that something was going on behind her back. She leaned back in her chair and stared at her friend. ‘Not working today, Chi?’
‘Later,’ Chi said, not looking at her. ‘I’m doing the evening shift.’
Kath nodded, her skin prickling with the instinct that there was something different about Chi these days. Her face looked different. Practically cheerful. Which was worrying. She was even walking differently these days. There was a positive spring in her step. She was bloody bouncing along. What right did she have to be so frigging happy?
Chi should not have forgotten – she was a snake.
She tried again to get to the bottom of this.
‘You in love?’
Chi stiffened, on her guard. ‘No.’
Kath moved forward, perching her ample rear on the very edge of the chair, resting her elbows on her knees and fixing her mate, possibly soon to be her ex-mate, with a stare. ‘Well, something’s up,’ she said in her snake-voice. ‘Something’s different about you, my friend.’ She half closed her eyes and waited until inspiration found her. In the silence she heard Chi give a noisy gulp, which told her something but not enough. ‘You’re plotting something, aren’t you?’
‘No.’ Chi felt sick with apprehension. Kath could so easily ruin this. Kath could ruin anything. She hardly had to try. And when Kath was thwarted … She didn’t even want to think about the bloody nose, the shattered knee, the way Kath Whalley could wield a baseball bat. She was going to have to draw on all her acting skills and divert her. Head her off at the pass, as her dad used to say.
Kath appealed to her trusty team of cheerleaders. ‘What do you think?’
Fifi took a couple of noisy cow-chews at her gum as she angled her gaze towards Chi. ‘See what you mean, Kath.’
Debs said nothing but her eyes slid down her like a cobra’s. And she was bending her head forward so her hair partly concealed her face. Chi felt the calculating falseness radiating from her, the secrecy, and knew Debs was hedging her bets. Already working out how she could use this to her advantage, wondering which side of the fence she should fall. Debs always was the smarter one. She would back the winner. Chi met her gaze fearlessly. It wasn’t Debs she worried about. The question was, who would be the winner? And what would happen to the loser?
Having so far failed to flush her out, after a prolonged stare, Kath moved on to something else and Chi breathed again. At least Kath quickly got bored and moved on to some other scheme.
But Kath was not going to let go.
Half an hour later she stumbled to her feet. ‘I’m going out,’ she said.
How and why do places acquire a bad reputation?
Geography? Folklore? History? All are capable of giving a place a bad name. Legend begets legends, attracts poets and story tellers and in the end no one can really separate fact from fiction. Stories stick like flies to fly paper. Lud’s Church, a silent, damp crevice in the rocks of the Peak District, is just such a place.
Somewhere the sun doesn’t ever shine and ice has been recovered as late as July, a hidden area deep in the moorlands. A narrow entrance leads to a flight of steep, slippery steps which descend along a path lined with dripping, overhanging, moss-covered stones, seeming to close the intruder in a grave. The walls are decorated with ferns and overseen, oddly enough for this place more than sixty miles from the nearest sea, by a ship’s figurehead, the female form reminding one of a bloody event, the martyrdom of the beautiful daughter of a Lollard preacher who died for her father’s faith. This is, apparently, fact.
Walking along the floor of Lud’s Church you cannot be unaware that you are trapped; the escape route is even narrower than the entrance which itself is concealed. You do not stumble across Lud’s Church by accident, which is why the Lollards used it for their illegal services, hoping to avoid being burnt at the stake as heretics, the result of an edict passed by Henry IV. Even today if you visit Lud’s Church do you still pick up the faint scent of burning flesh on the wind? Interpret stains on the dripping stones as the blood that sprang from the martyrdom of Alice, the Lollard preacher’s daughter? Killed by a bullet from an arquebus?
Friday 12 October, 2.50 p.m.
Kath recced the spot and almost rubbed her hands.
Perfect.
At school, when she’d bothered to go, stories had been read so she was aware of its history. The one she’d liked best was the story of Sir Gawain, knight of King Arthur’s, who made a vow to the Green Knight (who, unlike Piercy, could replace his head when removed with a sword) that he could return the blow in a year. Kath stomped down the steps, slipping on the moss and hurting her back. Oh, this place was so perfect. All she had to do was get Piercy here alone. Without that Polish thug, the body-building detective sergeant. Kath could handle a pregnant Piercy but not him as well. So first he must be incapacitated. That was taking a bit of working out. She was still missing one ingredient, but she had a feeling that the problem would soon be solved.
She turned to go, away from the stories and legends, away from the Vikings, the Lollards, the summer snow and the headless knight.
And now Lud’s Church would acquire another gory story to join the rest. But this one would be 100 per cent true.
The Legend of Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy.
In the future, grannies would terrify their kids with threats. ‘You know what happened to that policewoman lady. If you don’t behave, I’ll take you to Lud’s Church and leave you there.’ And the children would melt into good behaviour.
She just had to work out how to remove DS Korpanski.
She’d spent the last week staking out Joanna’s sidekick. Well over six feet tall and with bulging muscles, she needed to have a careful think about how to remove him from Piercy’s side because she was never going to be able to take him on. Watching him and his family had given her some ideas. There was Korpanski himself, a wife who was half his size, petite and pretty. She seemed to work irregular hours, whereas the two teenage spawn, a lanky boy and a girl who was a clone for her mother, attended school, neat in their Westwood College red and black. DS Korpanski spent Wednesday evening at his gym, though sometimes he went for a run with the lanky boy. They seemed close, laughing together as they jogged side by side. She watched them all with interest but not hatred. She was conserving that for Piercy. However, it was unarguable that DS Korpanski was an obstacle. A large one.
Time she called in a favour.
A few days after Kath had found her perfect spot, she wandered up to The Cattle Market – a pub perhaps named so farmers needn’t lie to their wives. When asked why they were so late home they could respond truthfully. ‘I were just at Cattle Market, love.’ And the wife would sniff and accept their version.
Kath pretty much knew if she headed there on a Wednesday, Leek’s market day, when deals were struck, wallets could be pinched and information traded, she’d bump into a couple of her dad’s mates. And Angus and Chad would do just about anything for money. It was time to see just how far she could push them.
As anticipated, the pair were huddled over pints in the corner, looking wonderfully seedy and wary as they raised their heads and recognized her, lifting their hands in greeting.
‘Kath?’
To their discomfort she crossed the crowded bar and sat down opposite Chad Newick, a skinny, ill-looking man with grey hair too sparse even for a comb-over and Angus, a tubby, red-faced man with a permanent scowl.
‘What’s up, Kath?’ It was he who addressed her, a note of anxiety in his voice making it sound plaintive.
She sat down, thumped her elbows on the table, face in her hands and glared. ‘Fancy earning some money?’
They exchanged glances, worried. While earning money was a permanent problem for the pair of them, they had their limits, and both knew Kath was the sort of person to stretch those limits. But needs must. They needed money which was in permanently short supply. Not bright enough to work the benefits system and with a zero chance of securing gainful employment, their options for earning were limited. The labour market wasn’t exactly wide open to them. No skills, and if they got as far as an interview, their technique put off almost all employers, particularly when accompanied by either Angus’s scowl or Chad’s toothy leer. Angus’s last job had been hedge-laying for a local farmer – cash in hand. And that hadn’t ended well – the cash had been less than he’d been expecting and had ended with the farmer having a bloody nose and vowing Angus would never work again in the farming community, a prophesy which had more or less come true. The hedge didn’t do too well either after a liberal dose of Pathclear.
So they might be worried but they were also broke. They didn’t have to ask Kath whether this would be cash in hand or whether it was strictly legal. She would already know they didn’t work any other way. Chad didn’t even have a bank account. And nothing Kath ever did was legal.
But, anxious glances exchanged, Kath’s job might prove … complicated. Ah, well. Complicated meant more money, surely? Chad gave her a sideways glance and responded. ‘What for?’
Kath gave them the best smile she could manage. It sat on her face like grease on the surface of the water in a washing-up bowl. ‘Just a little job,’ she said. Then, addressing Angus, she asked casually, ‘Still driving?’
He nodded, wary.
‘Good,’ she said, the smile still sitting on the surface of her face, not reaching her eyes or reassuring either of them. ‘Little driving job.’ Then even more alarming. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’
They were going to need it.
Eight minutes later Chad exploded. ‘You are fucking kidding.’
But when she told them how much money this little jobby was going to earn them, they looked at each other and smiled then nodded.
Angus bit his thumbnail. ‘Don’t suppose, Kath, you’d consider just a little bit more?’
She chilled him with a look and a shake of her head. ‘I don’t think so, Angus.’
He took refuge in a long swig of beer and she stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
TWENTY-TWO
Monday 15 October, 10 a.m.
Diana Sutcliffe sounded curt when Chi eventually managed to speak to her, opening with the tentative, ‘I don’t know if you remember me.’
‘No.’ Her response was flat and unfriendly.
‘I work at Rosemary’s.’
‘Oh, the waitress.’ It wasn’t a great start but Chi ploughed on. ‘I think you might be interested …’
And then Diana Sutcliffe listened.
Chi had her story ready and trotted it out, word perfect: a great-great-aunt, terribly affected by the tragedy, who had bought it for her great-grandmother. But even to her it sounded thin, suspicious, amateurish and totally unconvincing. It wouldn’t fool this canny, sour, greedy businesswoman for a minute. Even if they were right and Ms Sutcliffe ran with the story, she had no doubt that when she produced the item the dealer would run rings round her. In the background she could hear the sound of an auction taking place.
‘Give me fifty … sixty I have … Seventy? No? Sixty. Sixty-five …’
She started on her spiel. ‘It was my gran’s. It belonged to her mum’s mum.’ Too late, she realized she should have been blurrier on the detail.
‘Her name?’ Her voice was razor sharp.
Chi had to improvise. ‘She shouldn’t want me to give it.’
There was a long pause. In the background the auction was still going on. She heard the gavel knock down twice but Diana was still silent while Chi fretted. They’d been worried the dealer would try and cheat them, but at least they’d counted on her giving them ready cash. The silence stretched. Maybe she was checking the internet on her phone?
Chi’s mouth was dry with anxiety. They’d pinned everything on this.
‘I need to see it before I can verify it.’
Chi tried to sound nonchalant. ‘Yeah. Of course.’
The dealer’s voice was crisp. ‘And without provenance and proper documentation the price will be affected.’
Chi could hear a distinct lack of enthusiasm in her voice.
‘Right.’ A prickling of interest began to replace the initial boredom. ‘I’m in London at the moment but I can meet you in Leek on Friday. I’ll see it then. If it’s genuine we can talk about the money.’
Chi was panicking. ‘You couldn’t make it tomorrow, could you?’
‘My …’ A mocking tone. ‘We are anxious, aren’t we?’
Well, you would be bloody anxious if you were me – with all the baggage this is dragging in.
The sarky old cow couldn’t resist adding, ‘Even I can’t fly on my broomstick and be with you tomorrow.’ And then Chi revised her opinion of her as Diana Sutcliffe added, ‘particularly with all the cash you might want. It’ll have to be Friday.’
