Rooted in Evil: Page 6

  He went back into his office and, as the squeal of Bennison’s rubber soles receded, wandered over to the window and stared down into the car park, his hands resting on the windowsill. It was just over three years since he’d worn a wedding band. Yet, whenever he caught a glimpse of the back of his left hand, he fancied he could still see the faint impression in the skin of the ring finger. Imagination, of course. Trees fringing the parking area were bending and swaying before the stiff wind that swept across the area and sent the clouds above scudding across the sky. ‘Driving away the rain’, he’d heard people say of a wind like that.

  Christmas and New Year had receded into memory. It seemed ages since he had returned his daughter, Millie, to her boarding school for the spring term. It was Millie’s first school year as a boarder, having begun the previous September at the beginning of the winter term. The decision to send her to board had been largely that of Sophie, his former wife, who had now moved to live in France with her second husband, Rodney. Ian hadn’t been happy about it at first. But he’d realised that at least it meant that Millie was still in the country. He was able to see her more often than he’d done when Sophie and that smug blighter Rodney had been living here. Moreover, Millie had settled in well and seemed happy.

  ‘All for the best,’ said Ian aloud. ‘Or as much as can be.’

  ‘What is, sir?’ asked a voice behind him, and he spun round to find that Jess had arrived and was standing by his desk.

  ‘Thinking aloud!’ he said quickly. ‘We need a chat about this shotgun case. Sit down.’

  When they had seated themselves, he indicated a scuffed leather wallet and a plastic envelope holding a paper driving licence of the type being phased out lying on the desk. ‘According to these items, found in the deceased’s inner coat pocket, our body is that of someone called Carl Finch.’

  ‘Yes, we’re assuming that to be his identity,’ Jess said. She paused. ‘Tom Palmer, who found him, thinks he was killed elsewhere and the body moved to the woods. We are looking for a cyclist who may have been in the area and seen something. Tom’s certain there was a bike in the parking area of the woods when he got there. It was gone by the time we arrived. Unless he or she comes forward, we may never trace the rider.’

  Carter made a muffled sound that mixed suspicion with derision. ‘What was Palmer doing in the woods? I understood he was sick and off work. Sounds to me as if he was making one of those hiking trips he’s so keen on!’

  Jess hastened to defend Tom. ‘He really is off sick. He’s got a very bad cold. But he wanted some fresh air, he says, and thought a stroll in the woods might clear his head. Now he’s sorry he didn’t stay home.’

  ‘That’ll teach him!’ commented Carter with satisfaction. ‘So what was Mr Finch – if our dead man really is Finch – doing in the middle of the countryside, dead in a wood? His driving licence gives an address in north London.’ Carter tilted forward over his desk so that Jess was looking at his thick, iron-grey hair. He touched the items on the desk gently and then looked up. ‘You remember children’s parties when you were young?’ he asked unexpectedly.

  Startled not only by the question, but by being caught in the sharp gaze of those hazel eyes, which sometimes, as now, took on a greenish shade, Jess heard herself blurt, ‘I’m a twin, as you know. My brother and I had a joint birthday party and two sets of guests make a big crowd. There were balloons and cakes with coloured icing on them, lots of screaming and yelling and nearly always someone being sick. It was great.’

  ‘Millie enjoyed birthday parties,’ Carter said, leaning back in his chair again. ‘I suppose she still does. But after Sophie and I parted, and since Rodney came into the equation, I haven’t been there. Rodney has.’ He had been unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. He paused, and resumed more briskly. ‘I remember there was one game she liked, because she was good at it. There was a tray with various objects on it, lots of them. The kids had three minutes or so to study them and commit them to memory. Then the tray was taken away and they had to write down all the objects they could remember. Millie had – still has – a memory like the proverbial elephant. She could usually remember every one.’

  ‘I remember that game,’ Jess said.

  He pointed at the desk. ‘This time, it’s easy. There are only two objects here to remember. Where are the rest? Where’s his smartphone? He must have had one. Where are his car keys and, come to that, where’s his car? He either drove to the woods himself, or he died elsewhere – and Tom Palmer believes there is a possibility he did. In that case, his body was transported to the woods in another vehicle. But he’d come down from London so his own car must be somewhere.’

  ‘He could have travelled from London by train,’ Jess suggested, ‘and someone else drove him, alive or dead, to the woods. We’ll know more about that when Maurice Melton has given his findings.’

  ‘Fortunately,’ said Carter, ‘Melton doesn’t disappear every time he gets a cold. I understand he’s coming in later this evening, especially to do the post mortem.’ He picked up the wallet. ‘If Finch came by train, it would be to Gloucester railway station. To get from there to Crooked Man Woods, way out in the country, he’d need a car. Or someone must have given him a lift. There’s no return train ticket in this wallet, by the way. Where are his house keys? He might have left his car keys at home if they weren’t required. But he would need his front-door key to get back inside when he returned home.’ Carter uttered a sort of discontented growl. ‘There aren’t enough items in that wallet.’

  ‘There are credit cards and some cash! Oh, and we have the driving licence!’ Jess protested.

  ‘Yes, I know. But where are all the other bits and pieces that find their way into a wallet? No photo of a loved one or a pet. No receipts for fuel or the last time he used his Visa or credit card. My wallet’s stuffed full of odd bits of paper and photos of Millie.’

  ‘Perhaps Finch didn’t have a loved one, or a child, or a pet.’

  A quick succession of agonised squeaks from outside in the corridor was growing louder.

  ‘Can’t someone do something about that floor?’ Carter complained. ‘I know it’s been given a facelift and a special polish, but surely—’

  He broke off as someone rapped at the door. Sergeant Phil Morton’s unmistakable outline filled the space.

  ‘Thought you’d both like to know, sir, we’ve had a phone call from a Captain Guy Kingsley who lives at a place called the Old Nunnery. He reckons the dead man in the woods could be his brother-in-law.’

  Both Ian Carter and Jess stared at him. ‘How does he know about a body in the woods?’ Jess asked.

  Morton gave a rare smile. ‘You recall that woman with the dog, the one who came along and marched all over the scene? Well, it seems that she got to thinking after she left us there and she decided she did know the deceased, after all. She is now pretty certain it is Carl Finch, as that driving licence shows.’ Morton pointed at the desk. ‘So she went to the house, this Old Nunnery, because that’s where Finch’s sister – actually, stepsister – and her husband live, and told them.’

  ‘Why the dickens didn’t she come here and tell us – or phone?’ demanded Carter, pushing back his chair with a noisy scrape as he got to his feet.

  ‘She thought a friend ought to break the news of Finch’s death to the family, not the police,’ explained Morton. ‘She told this Captain Kingsley – he’s no longer a serving officer, by the way – and together they broke the news to Mrs Harriet Kingsley. Then Captain Kingsley’ – Morton rolled the title off his tongue with a malicious relish – ‘phoned us.’ Morton’s smile became positively demonic. ‘He thought it was the correct thing to do.’

  There was a silence. Then the expression in the hazel eyes hardened and Carter said quietly, ‘Jess – and you, Phil – I do so hope this isn’t going to be a case of someone playing silly games.’

  Chapter 5

  Ian Carter outlined their strategy as Phil Morton drove him with Jess to
the Old Nunnery. ‘You talk to Finch’s sister, Harriet Kingsley, Jess. I’ll take the husband outside, or into another room, and ask him what he can tell us about Finch and if he has any objection to viewing the body with regard to making a positive identification. It’s unreasonable to ask the sister to look at the remains. But Guy Kingsley was in the army at some point, so he ought to be up to it.’

  ‘What about Mrs Briggs, the woman with the dog?’

  ‘Your job, Phil!’ said Carter.

  Morton, glowering through the windscreen, said, ‘If she’d spoken up back there in the woods and identified the dead man, we would have come here directly, without Mrs Briggs making herself a go-between. I can’t get on with people like her, the old county type. They used to run things, and think they still do – or should do! She’s a law unto herself. She can’t be trusted to tell us everything, even now. She thinks we’re a bunch of clod-hopping peasants. We’ve got no business poking our noses into the private business of our betters!’

  ‘She was trying to protect a friend,’ Carter returned mildly. ‘She says she wanted to break the news to the family. She didn’t want it left to us. There’s logic in that. OK, she should have come to us first. But you know as well as I do, Sergeant, that people put family loyalties and friendship first. So you can put away the red flag!’

  ‘But we are treating this as a suspicious death, sir?’ Morton persisted.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want the family alarmed. It’s bad enough that they have to cope with a shocking death. They don’t yet need to know we think the body may have been moved. Or that some other person fired the fatal shot. Until the post mortem’s been completed, we can’t be sure of that ourselves.’

  ‘Tom wouldn’t have suggested it, if he wasn’t sure,’ Jess said.

  ‘We need the coroner’s go-ahead, even so. So, kid gloves on, right? We are sympathetic, but we try to find out everything we can about the family. Something is wrong. Someone, possibly Finch himself, filleted the contents of his wallet. What is it he, or someone else, didn’t want us to see?’

  They had reached the Old Nunnery and turned into the drive.

  ‘Nice place,’ muttered Morton.

  A muddy jeep was already parked before the house and, as they climbed out of their car, muffled barking sounded from it. A hairy canine face bobbed up and down at a window, bright, round eyes either side of a long, white muzzle in a thick mane of golden tan hair.

  ‘Fred!’ said Jess. ‘That means Mrs Briggs is still here!’

  ‘Ruddy woman,’ muttered Morton from the rear. ‘Is she going to be under our feet every minute?’

  ‘Relax, Phil,’ advised Jess.

  Morton remained unmollified. ‘We are taking her word for it, ma’am. I mean, Mrs Briggs now says it was Finch back there in the woods this morning. But she wasn’t sure enough to say so at the time. Suppose she’s wrong? Half the bloke’s face was gone. The items found in his pocket could have been planted there. We could all be charging off down the wrong path.’

  A faint whine came from the jeep followed by a frantic scrabbling at the windows as Fred tried to persuade them to release him.

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Morton, answering his own question. ‘The ruddy dog identified him.’

  The three people they’d come to see were gathered in a large, comfortable room. The walls were painted jade green below a white plaster frieze. Against the wall facing the windows, oak bookcases had been built in at least a hundred years ago. They were in three adjacent sets of shelves. Two of the shelves were filled with modern books but the remaining third, on the right of the group, held very old books, with cracked and peeling dark leather spines, packed closely together. Another frieze of oak leaves and animal forms ran along the top of the wide stone hearth, in which a log fire crackled and spat. This room, thought Jess, must be one of the oldest parts of the house and had survived pretty well intact.

  Harriet Kingsley was a pale figure in a blue wool sweater and jeans, snuggled into a leather-covered, Queen Anne-style chair. Jess judged her to be an attractive thirty-nine or forty. It was hard to tell because she had that girlish look some fair-skinned, fair-haired women keep long after girlhood. A blue-and-pink silk scarf was wound round her neck and fell in two crumpled ribbons down the front of the sweater. Her fingers played nervously with the trailing ends. Her long hair had been brushed back and tied with another scarf at the nape of her neck. The sweater and jeans looked very clean, as if they had just been taken from a drawer. Her hair looked freshly arranged. Jess thought, someone has tidied her ready to see us, got her to change into clean clothes and brush her hair, probably got her to wash her face. Why? What was wrong with the clothes she had been wearing?

  Her husband, Guy Kingsley, hovered protectively at the side of the chair, with one arm along the back of it, above his wife’s head. Otherwise, he stood very straight, staring at the visitors, as if about to deliver a report to a senior officer.

  Mrs Briggs looked much as she had done in the woods earlier. She stood in front of the fireplace with her hands thrust into the pockets of her well-worn gilet. With more time to study her, Jess noted her wide-set hazel eyes, snub nose and lack of lipstick. Her untidy, greying hair suggested that she’d chopped it off herself. Nevertheless, thought Jess, she’s younger than I judged her to be back there in the woods. She and Harriet are much the same age. Tessa Briggs doesn’t bother about how she looks and probably never has. No one has mentioned a Mr Briggs. Is he dead? Divorced? Decamped? Away on business? With luck, Phil Morton will find out.

  After expressing an apology for troubling them all at such a distressing moment, Carter turned his attention to Guy Kingsley.

  ‘Captain Kingsley, perhaps you and I could have a word in private?’

  Kingsley hesitated and looked down at his wife. She reached up a hand to pat his arm. ‘Go ahead, Guy, I’ll be all right. Tessa is here.’

  ‘Well,’ Carter said mildly, ‘I’d like Mrs Briggs to go and have another talk with Sergeant Morton. We saw your dog in your car, Mrs Briggs. He doesn’t like being left out of things, I fancy. Perhaps you and Sergeant Morton could release him and take him for a walk in the grounds, if that’s all right with you, Captain Kingsley?’

  ‘Someone should stay with Harriet!’ Tessa Briggs said belligerently.

  ‘Inspector Campbell has a lot of experience talking to the recently bereaved,’ said Carter.

  Kingsley, recognising an order, however gently expressed, said, ‘Come along, Tess.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Harriet said, when she and Jess were at last alone. ‘They wanted to call a doctor to me, but I don’t need one. I’m upset, of course I am. Carl and I – I was very fond of Carl.’

  ‘The body has yet to be identified officially,’ Jess said quietly.

  Harriet twitched. ‘I can’t do it, look at him. Too horrible.’ Her hands tightened on the silk scarf ends. ‘Horrible,’ she repeated.

  The disjointed response wasn’t unexpected. Jess assured her: ‘We weren’t going to suggest you did. Superintendent Carter is asking your husband if he’ll take a look at the body.’

  Harriet didn’t reply for a few moments, staring past Jess towards the bookcases on the far wall. Then she whispered, ‘He did shoot himself, didn’t he?’

  ‘We’re not sure.’

  ‘No one else would shoot him!’ Harriet now looked Jess full in the face. ‘No one else would shoot Carl,’ she repeated firmly. ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about your brother?’ Jess suggested. ‘Did he have a partner, wife or ex-wife? Because she’ll have to be told.’

  ‘No, no wife. I don’t know about his love life. It wasn’t something he ever mentioned. There are things about Carl I don’t know, because he never told me. He wasn’t my blood brother. He was my stepbrother, not related at all, strictly speaking. Dad took him on when he married Carl’s mother. But we grew up here together, for the larger part of our childhood.’ Harriet shifted in the wide d
epths of the big leather chair into which she seemed to have retreated like a sea creature into its shell.

  That chair, thought Jess, is a place of safety for her. She’s afraid to leave it because she might fall apart. They are all hiding something. Or she is – and that woman Briggs. Not sure about the husband. But he’ll be a much tougher nut to crack if he is.

  The far wall still seemed to hold Harriet’s attention. Now she raised her arm and pointed towards it. Jess turned her head, looked across the room and saw, to the right of the bookcases, a portrait in oils of a pretty woman in a blue dress.

  ‘Your mother?’ she guessed.

  ‘Yes. She was driving home alone one dark evening. A gate had been left open to a field and horses had got out into the lane. She drove straight into one of them. She and the horse were both killed. I was four years old.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Jess quietly.

  ‘After she died I would come in here and stand in front of that painting. I’d imagine she was smiling at me.’ Harriet gave a brief, sad smile.

  ‘That must have been hard for your father, to be left with a very young child.’

  Harriet nodded. ‘Dad was shattered by it, but he was determined to create a happy family life for me. It wasn’t easy, of course. He had to be away a lot. I had a succession of nannies. Most of them were young and they didn’t stay long. The Old Nunnery was too remote, more so back then than it is now. Being on their own here with me, when Dad was away, really spooked them. We had a daily cleaner, Mrs Walsh, but she went home early, just after lunch. Sometimes Dad was away for two or three days at a time, so you can understand why the nannies soon decided they’d had enough. There’s quite a lot of old wood in the rafters and wainscoting. At night it moves, creaking and squeaking. Perhaps the squeaking was mice. Mrs Walsh didn’t take too much trouble over the cleaning. Then Dad remarried. He wanted me to have a mother, or at least a permanent female figure in my life.’ Quickly, she added, ‘Of course, that’s not the only reason he married Nancy. I mean, he was lonely, too.’