DEAD & BURIED a gripping crime thriller full of twists (14 page)

Eliza King shook her head. “You’re wrong. I’m just doing my job.”

“Don’t speak to that young man alone,” Birch warned as she left the office. King was lying. There was more to this than she was telling. “There is to be a briefing in fifteen minutes. Make sure you’re there.”

Chapter 16

DI Calladine, Rocco, Imogen and DCI Birch were seated around a table in the large meeting room. Joyce was taking notes.

“DCI King should be here,” grumbled Birch. “I don’t like her lone-ranger tactics and I’ll tell her so when she turns up. She hasn’t been near Archer, has she?”

Calladine shook his head. He passed round copies of a short report on their progress so far.

“I’ve spoken to Superintendent McCabe. He thinks it’s a good idea if someone speaks to Costello. I think that someone should be you, DI Calladine. DCI King is too personally involved in my opinion. Though don’t ask me how because she’s not saying.”

Calladine’s stomach jolted. Interview Vinny Costello. He wondered how that would pan out. His nerves began to jangle.

“You okay, Inspector?”

“Yes, ma’am, why wouldn’t I be?” He winked at Imogen. “Apologies for the report being a little sparse. We have to gather a lot more background information. We need to know about Tanya Mallon’s past for a start. She has a connection to Emily and to Costello. I don’t buy what she told us about finding Emily’s body. My gut feeling is that she’s from around here and knew Emily. So who is she? We should also ask if she’s the woman Archer told us about.”

“I’ll look into her past, sir,” Imogen offered. She checked the notes Rocco had made when they’d interviewed her. “Her husband’s name was Greg. I should find her maiden name from the marriage records.”

“She may not have married in this country. She’s lived for a while in the US.”

“No worries.” Imogen was scribbling on a pad.

“We now have an old school satchel belonging to Carol Rhodes. It’s gone to forensics. I’ve asked them to look at the diary first and pass on anything that will help the case.”

“Annie Naden read it, sir. The final entry was on the sixth of May, 1969. Carol wrote that she was pregnant.”

“We know Clough Cottage was where girls went for an abortion. You’ve been told that, Imogen, and I was too by someone who lived in the town at that time. Is that what Carol did? Is that why her satchel was there?”

“There is no one left to ask, sir,” Rocco pointed out. “The woman who lived there — Mary, or Granny Slater as she was known, is long gone. Even if she’s still alive we’d have to find her.”

Rocco was right. But there was someone who might have the answer to this — Costello. He’d been Carol’s boyfriend. What was the betting that he was also the father of her unborn child?

“Forensics?” He looked at Imogen.

“The Nadens are not happy, but that kitchen is being taken apart as we speak. The satchel was found in a cupboard built into the wall panelling. Finding it at all was a piece of luck.”

At that moment Eliza King entered the room. She nodded at Birch and sat down.

“You can start compiling a list of things I need to speak to Costello about,” Calladine told the team. He looked at DCI King. “Nothing heavy. We simply want information about Carol Rhodes and what happened to her.”

Eliza King cleared her throat. “Gavin Trent has let me down. I can no longer reach him on the mobile number he gave me.”

“We don’t need him. McCabe will sort things for us,” Birch told her.

“When did Trent first contact you?” asked Calladine.

“A couple of months ago.”

“And Archer?”

Eliza King’s eyes went wide. She grimaced. “Yes. About the same time,” she muttered.

“It could have been Trent who recruited Archer for Costello. Did you ever meet him?”

“No. We only ever talked on the phone.”

“Is this important?” Birch asked.

“Could be, ma’am. He could be the mystery man who’s missing half a finger.”

“We will liaise directly with Costello’s legal team. And DI Calladine will do the talking,” Birch said in no uncertain terms.

“I’m not sure we should speak to him at all, Tom.” Eliza King spoke directly to Calladine.

Rocco nudged Imogen. She’d just called him
Tom
. Was she coming round?

“Why are you so concerned about what happened to this Carol?” Eliza King asked him. “Surely something that happened forty-odd years ago can have little bearing on Emily Blackwell’s murder.”

“It’s a line of enquiry Ruth Bayliss suggested. Personally, I think she’s right. I don’t know what, but something happened in the past that has a direct bearing on recent events.”

“There is nothing in Emily’s life that offers a clue. She was spotless,” Imogen added.

“Well, there’s the money from Jet Holdings,” Birch reminded them. “The payments started in June 1969. We have no idea what the money is for and neither does her family. But Jet Holdings is Costello. When DI Calladine speaks to him perhaps he’ll clear that one up too.”

“I’ll be sure to ask him,” he said. “I’ll be surprised if he’s very forthcoming. But something happened in that cottage back then. My gut instinct tells me that whatever it was led directly to Emily’s murder a few days ago.”

Birch nodded. “Very well, Calladine. We’ll run with this for now. But don’t forget we also have two dead young men. Again, no motive and no suspects. If we don’t clear that one up soon we’ll have the super on our tails.”

Rocco was checking his phone. “Tanya Mallon’s car was driven last night, sir. The CCTV caught it returning to the hotel, just as you thought. The quality of the footage isn’t good. All we got was a shadow of a figure.”

Calladine explained to Birch. “She spun us a tale about her car being taken and returned.”

“When will you speak to Costello?” Eliza King asked.

“As soon as he agrees,” said Birch. “He is merely being asked to provide us with information. He is not under suspicion, so I see no reason for him to refuse.”

* * *

“It’s done through Joe, the odd-job man. He picks up the flowers from the shop and brings them to the grave. You should talk to him. He’s been here far longer than me. Before him, it was his father who did all the jobs around the churchyard.”

“So the flowers thing was sort of passed down?” Ruth asked.

“That’s right.”

“But no one knows who they are from. Don’t you find that odd, Reverend?”

“I can’t say I’ve ever really thought about it. Families do all sorts of things. There is a grave in that far corner that has tomato plants growing on it for most of the summer.”

“I’ll find him and see what he knows,” Ruth decided.

Ruth pushed Harry around until she spotted Joe. He was tending a flowerbed full of glorious blooms. “You have green fingers,” Ruth said.

“And you have your hands full,” he answered, peering into the pram. “Having him christened here?”

Ruth nodded.

“You local?”

“Yes. I’ve got family going back to the nineteenth century in here somewhere,” she replied. “Plus two on the war memorial.”

He smiled. Her answer seemed to please him.

“Agnes Jackson. Do you know who leaves the flowers?”

“I do.”

“Did you know her — Agnes?”

“No, but the flowers aren’t for her. They’re for Doris, her mother. I collect them from the florist every week. But I expect that’ll stop now she’s dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mrs Blackwell paid for the flowers. That woman that got shot up on the hill. I just chose them, picked them up and put them on the grave.”

“Did you ever speak to Mrs Blackwell? Ask her about the grave?”

He shook his head. “I knew her of course but it was her business, not mine.”

“And this has gone on for some time?”

“All the way back to when her mother died.”

“What about the card, Joe? Who decided what should be written on it?”

“Mrs Blackwell did. The florist wrote it. It was always the same words.”

“Weren’t you ever curious, Joe? Did you ever talk about this to anyone else?”

“It was none of my business, Miss. Mrs Blackwell paid me and I did as she asked.”

Ruth took another look at the grave. “How do you know the flowers were for Doris?”

“Who else could they be for? There’s only the two of them in there.”

“When was this dug?”

“The date’s on the headstone. May 1969 for Doris. My father will have dug it.”

“Once they’ve been prepared are the graves ever left open and unattended?”

“We put a barrier up overnight.” He smiled. “Stop people falling in.”

“Thanks, Joe. You’ve been a great help.”

This mystery went back years. Whoever started the flowers thing didn’t want their identity known, so they’d got Emily to organise it. She rang the nick and Imogen answered. “The graveyard in Leesdon Church,” Ruth told her. “Flowers are left regularly on the grave of a woman, one Doris Ludford. This has gone on since 1969. She’s buried with her daughter, Agnes Jackson, who died about a year ago. The interesting bit is that during all this time the flowers have been paid for by Emily Blackwell. She didn’t do it herself though, she paid the odd-job man here to pick them up for her. Would you check if there’s any connection between Doris Ludford and Emily?”

“1969, you say? What date exactly did Doris die?”

Ruth checked her notes. “May Seventh.”

* * *

The first thing Imogen did was to check with the florist in Leesdon. Emily Blackwell had paid for the flowers by direct debit each month.

She handed Calladine the information from Ruth. “You should see this. I don’t know what it means. I’ve checked if Emily knew this Doris or had any connection with the family, but I can’t find anything.”

Calladine looked at the date. “The entry in Carol Rhodes’s diary?”

“The last entry was the day before, sir. It was one word — ‘pregnant.’”

“Great work, both of you. Anything on Tanya’s past yet?”

“I’m still searching. How old would you say she was?”

“Fifty or so. But she’s well preserved. She’s done some maintenance — not like me.” He rubbed at his stubble. “I’m nipping home in a bit for a proper shave. It was a bit of a rush this morning and I’ve got DCI King staying.”

Imogen shot him a speculative look.

“No, you don’t,” he warned. “The rumour mill is bad enough around here. Before you get any smart ideas, she was staying at the Wheatsheaf before. What was I supposed to do?”

“Sir!” Joyce interrupted, holding out the office phone. “Professor Batho.”

“Tom, the gun has been used before. Way back in the late sixties it was used in a robbery at a post office in Oldston. No one was killed but a customer was winged in the leg. The bullet was retrieved from the wall and has been kept in storage ever since. The striation marks were on the database.”

“Why, if no one was killed? It wasn’t a murder investigation.”

“The investigating team at that time believed the gun belonged to Vincent Costello. He was in on the robbery. A witness statement has him wielding the thing but the details are sketchy. Other evidence that would have convicted Costello was botched or disappeared, including the gun. So he walked. They hoped to gather further evidence if the gun was used again. But it never was. Not until recently.”

“When in the late sixties?”

“November ’68.”

“So it wasn’t definite that Costello owned the gun or that he’d used it?”

“No, Tom. The team made mistakes. Once the case got to court the defence made mincemeat of them. However, there is one interesting fact. The gun was reputed to have Costello’s name written on the barrel.”

“Now why would he do that?”

“Bravado, showing off. Possibly it was the first gun he owned. There could be a hundred and one reasons. Costello was young and foolish back then.”

So where had the gun been all these years? This case just got more complicated as information came in. “Thanks, Julian. I’m sure it’ll be useful somewhere down the line.”

Something else to ask Costello about? Calladine wasn’t sure. It would change the interview from being an affable information-seeking exercise into something else entirely. A gun from Costello’s past? If they could prove that, and prove he’d used it, then they would have him. But how likely was that?

Calladine spent the next few minutes updating the incident board. He still couldn’t make sense of it. An event in the past involving Carol Rhodes had led to the death of Emily Blackwell a few days ago. Somehow Tanya was involved, but he’d no idea how. And why did the two lads from the Hobfield have to die? On top of all this was Kayne Archer and the information he was supposed to have. His head ached.

“I’ll be back in half an hour. I’m on my mobile if anyone wants me,” he told Imogen and Rocco, and left.

* * *

The walk home took him down Leesdon High Street. Calladine spotted Ruth coming out of the chemist. She was on her own.

“Where is he?”

“With Jake — inset day. Harry came to the church with me but now I need to do some serious shopping.”

Calladine didn’t like the way she was looking at him. Her tone was even, but there was something on her mind.