A Painted Doom (16 page)

‘And that address I left on your desk earlier, sir – Angela Simms. She was sitting in a small blue car opposite Shellmer’s
cottage. The neighbours said someone in a blue car visited Shellmer and …’

‘Oh, aye, thanks, love. It might be worth having a word with Ms Simms some time.’

‘Well done, Trish. Thanks,’ said Wesley. A bit of encouragement never went amiss.

As Trish left the office, Wesley saw that Steve was watching her long shapely legs.

‘Could this Angela Simms be the woman we saw hanging around Shellmer’s place in Whitely?’ Wesley asked when Trish had closed
the door.

‘Jonny Shellmer was a rock star,’ said Steve. ‘Do you reckon he might have had crazed fans who followed him around – or a
stalker?’

‘It’s always a possibility,’ Wesley answered. ‘But I found a card in Shellmer’s bedroom drawer. It was from someone called
“Angel”. Angela – Angel?’

‘Very nice. Wish some angel’d send me a card,’ Heffernan said wistfully. He put his feet up on the desk and sighed. ‘I think
we’ll have to put Ms Angela Simms on our visiting list.’

After a late lunch of a single cheese sandwich, eaten rapidly at his desk, Wesley Peterson answered his telephone. He mumbled
an absent-minded ‘hello’ into the receiver, only to be answered by a voice enquiring whether he was busy. He
took a deep breath. He’d recognise Neil Watson’s voice anywhere.

‘Of course I’m busy, Neil. What is it?’

‘I thought you’d like to get down here. The coroner’s on his way.’

Wesley took a deep breath. This was all he needed. ‘Is it a body?’ he asked, thinking with dread of Lewis Hoxworthy.

‘It’s a skeleton, buried on our site. Headless – I think we’ve found the rest of the body to go with that skull.’

Wesley hesitated. ‘Any indication of how old it is?’ He hoped that it was old, the more ancient the better, so it wouldn’t
add to his workload.

‘An Elizabethan coin was found in the soil above it and the ground hadn’t been disturbed. I’d say it was very old. From the
context I’d say it was medieval, contemporary with the building we’re excavating.’

Wesley sighed. ‘In that case it’s not my problem. But I’ll call the pathologist out to have a look at it … just to make absolutely
sure it belongs to the head and it’s not some modern murder victim.’

‘Aren’t you coming to see it yourself?’ Neil sounded disappointed.

‘No time, Neil. We’re rushed off our feet here. We’ve got a major murder investigation and a missing boy.’

‘Terry Hoxworthy’s lad? I heard. What do you reckon’s happened to him?’

‘It’s possible that he’s got in with a bad crowd at school, so he might be off somewhere getting up to no good. That’s what
we’re hoping anyway.’

‘Yeah. When I was down at the old barn again having a word with Emma from the museum I saw Terry Hoxworthy wandering around
like a lost soul. He saw me but he didn’t say anything. Poor sod.’

Wesley smiled to himself. It wasn’t often Neil noticed what was going on around him. Normally during a dig his mind would
be focused on what he was uncovering. Terry
Hoxworthy’s problems had obviously made an impact, and he was sure that Pam would consider Neil’s new-found sensitivity a
change for the better.

‘Look, Neil, if I’m down that way I’ll come and have a look at your skeleton. Okay?’

‘Don’t leave it too long if you want to see it
in situ
,’ Neil warned.

Wesley put the phone down. Perhaps he’d nip over to Derenham and pay Jill Hoxworthy another visit. Kill two birds with one
stone.

From the details provided by Jill Hoxworthy they managed to track down Lewis’s friend Yossa, also known as Joseph Lang.

Rachel decided to take PC Paul Johnson with her to see him. When she had found Wesley unavailable she had considered taking
Steve, but she was afraid that his macho attitude might cause tension. Then she had thought of Trish but, although it went
against her feminist principles, she knew she’d feel far safer with a six-foot-tall man on the Winterham estate.

She’d looked Lang up on the police computer. At fifteen he had climbed the first few rungs of the criminal ladder. Joy-riding,
theft from a motor vehicle. And two months ago he’d branched out into breaking and entering. No wonder he didn’t have much
time for his schoolwork, she thought. And based on what she knew of Lewis Hoxworthy, she wondered what the two boys had in
common. But then who knew what power the likes of Yossa could wield over a vulnerable boy from a sheltered background – or
what fascination he held? Something made her think of rabbits and snakes.

There was no twitching of curtains as the patrol car drew up outside 5 Carter Gardens. The neighbours probably regarded visits
from the police with the same nonchalance as more law-abiding neighbourhoods regarded visits from the postman.

Number five was at the end of a terrace of pebbledashed, flat-roofed houses, built in the sixties when urban planners had
been a little carried away by what they considered to be their own revolutionary brilliance. The results were depressing.
Nothing ages faster than modernity.

The cars and vans parked in the street and the garishly painted front doors provided the only splashes of colour among the
dirty grey pebbledashed walls and the matching grey of the littered pavements. Rachel and Paul Johnson opened the rickety
wooden gate. The house looked empty.

A grubby sticking plaster stuck over the doorbell indicated that it might be better to knock. Johnson rapped on the door glass
five times with his knuckles. Then another five. At his third attempt the door was answered by Yossa himself. He looked them
up and down with distaste then, when Rachel told him why they were there, he stood aside reluctantly to let them in.

Yossa was short on the social graces. He led them into the lounge, then stood there staring at them. Rachel moved aside a
pile of tabloid newspapers, turning brown with age, and sat on the edge of the stained settee.

‘Are your parents in?’ she began, aware of the rules on interviewing minors.

He shook his head.

‘We’ve come about Lewis Hoxworthy.’

He stared at her and folded his arms. He was five feet seven, skinny with close-cropped hair and a slightly bulbous nose,
and Rachel might have taken him for a little angel if she hadn’t been told otherwise.

‘I don’t know nothing about Lew. Haven’t seen him since school broke up.’

‘His family are very worried. Have you any idea where he might have gone?’

‘Nah. I told his mum when she rang. I’ve not seen him. He never came here.’

‘Is there anywhere he might have gone, anywhere he talked about?’

Yossa shook his head, smirking unpleasantly. ‘He was into castles and battles and that. Kid’s stuff. And he was always going
on about his computer: how good it was; how much it cost; all the people he’d talked to on the Internet. Always bragging,
trying to impress us. We took the piss but he still hung around us. Couldn’t get rid of him. We had a laugh, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

Yossa shrugged. ‘He’d fall for anything – do anything we told him.’

‘And you found that funny?’

Yossa grinned. ‘Yeah.’

Rachel noted the casual cruelty in Yossa’s manner. She found herself feeling desperately sorry for Lewis Hoxworthy.

‘Did you see Lewis on the day he disappeared?’

‘Nah. Like I said, I’ve not seen him since school broke up.’

‘So you haven’t seen him over the Easter holidays?’

‘I got better things to do.’

She looked into his eyes. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Yossa.’ She hesitated, glancing at Johnson. ‘Look, if
it’s something that’s against the law maybe we can use our discretion, eh? At the moment all we want to do is to find Lewis.’

Yossa hesitated, weighing up the options, and decided that it wouldn’t do any harm to give them something. And it’d get them
off his back. ‘He sent me an e-mail: he was bragging that he had something that was worth a lot of money – something he was
going to sell. He reckoned he was going to be rich.’ He looked at Rachel, watching her reaction. ‘And he said he had a gun.’

‘Did he tell you anything about this gun? Where he got it? How long he’d had it?’

Yossa smirked and shook his head. ‘Nah. He was bullshitting. He said he found it. But his dad’s a farmer so I reckon he was
talking about his shotgun. It was all bullshit.

He was always trying to impress us, like I said.’

‘Can you remember anything else he said?’

‘He said a load of stuff. All bullshit. Look, we didn’t want him around but he kept trying to get in with us.’

‘I bet you teased him,’ said Johnson, who was young enough to remember the cruelties of adolescence. ‘I bet you played some
tricks on him, made him do some daft things,’ he added with a conspiratorial grin.

Yossa grinned back unpleasantly but said nothing.

‘Did you have anything planned for him the day he disappeared?’

The grin disappeared as Yossa realised the implications of Johnson’s question. ‘Nah. I told you, I’ve not seen him since school
finished.’

‘That was a couple of weeks ago?’

‘Yeah, but I’ve not seen him, honest. He’s sent me e-mails but I’ve not seen him.’

‘Can you get us a print-out of these e-mails?’ asked Rachel sweetly.

Yossa thought for a moment. ‘Don’t see why not. Wait there.’

He disappeared and returned a few minutes later with some sheets of paper. Rachel suspected that he hadn’t wanted them to
see his computer equipment. It was bound to have fallen off the back of some lorry or other, she thought uncharitably.

She took the sheets of paper from him. ‘Thank you, Yossa. You’ve been very helpful,’ she said formally. There was no way anyone
was going to accuse her of browbeating a defenceless minor. Not that she’d ever class the likes of Yossa Lang as defenceless.

In view of what Rachel had learned from Yossa Lang, Wesley thought it might be worth seeing what other e-mails they could
find on Lewis Hoxworthy’s computer. The world of high technology was a mystery to many parents, so it was possible that Terry
and Jill hadn’t thought to look.

The e-mails Lewis had sent to Yossa had been intended to impress. He boasted of finding something which he intended to sell
for a lot of money. He also boasted that he had a gun in his possession which he offered to show to Yossa and his mates once
they were back at school. He didn’t specify the type of gun. Perhaps, Wesley thought sadly, it was all a fantasy to attract
Yossa’s friendship. A lonely boy desperate to be accepted by those who would bully and tease him if the mood took them.

Wesley’s heart went out to Lewis Hoxworthy; the odd one out. As the only black boy in his form at school, Wesley had sometimes
felt isolated. But then he had always possessed a more sociable disposition than he imagined Lewis to have, and his natural
amiability had ensured a steady supply of friends to render any racists and bullies powerless. And whereas at Wesley’s academic
private school a keen interest in history was considered quite acceptable, at Caraton Comprehensive, Lewis’s alma mater, it
probably marked an odd, sensitive boy out as different … as a potential victim.

The overwhelming feeling of pity for the missing fifteen-year-old worried Wesley slightly. He was getting too involved, losing
his professional detachment. But perhaps it just meant he was human, he told himself by way of comfort.

Wesley knew the basics of computers, but if Lewis had deleted anything he wasn’t confident that he could retrieve it. But
there was someone in forensics, a young man called Tom who looked no more than sixteen, who was reputed to know all there
was to know about the things. Wesley could consult him if all else failed.

While Gerry Heffernan took Steve Carstairs with him to the interview room to have another go at Paul Heygarth, Wesley and
Rachel drove out to Hoxworthy’s Farm.

Wesley felt a little uneasy on the journey. Heffernan, normally affable and easy going, seemed to be stepping up his efforts
to prove Heygarth’s guilt, and Wesley was
beginning to wonder whether his boss knew something about Heygarth that he wasn’t sharing with his colleagues.

He’d looked Heygarth up on the police computer and found that only a trio of speeding offences blotted an otherwise pristine
record. Perhaps Heygarth had let the boss down badly on a house sale. But then Wesley knew that he had lived in his house
on Baynard’s Quay since he had married about twenty-five years ago. A long time to bear a grudge against an estate agent,
and it was very doubtful that Heygarth was in business all that time ago. Gerry Heffernan was not normally one to harbour
resentment, so perhaps he genuinely believed that Heygarth was the murderer. Perhaps Wesley was reading too much into it.

Rachel was quiet during the journey, concentrating on driving.

‘How are things at the farm?’ he asked, breaking the silence. ‘Still looking for a place of your own?’

‘Perhaps. But the holiday season’s coming up soon. The apartments need to be cleaned and I don’t like to leave Mum with all
the work at the moment. Maybe in September.’

Wesley smiled. She had talked about moving away from the family farm ever since he had known her. But there was always something
to keep her at home – and no sign of any knights in shining armour riding down the track to Little Barton Farm to whisk her
away. But then her last foray into romance had ended in disaster and she had been extra cautious ever since.

He watched as she brushed her shoulder-length fair hair away from her face. She was an attractive young woman, and if Wesley
hadn’t been a married man he might have allowed himself to be interested. But he knew that anything other than friendship
would end in tears. He had seen it so many times among his police colleagues, and it always led to grief for all concerned.
However, sometimes a little devil on his shoulder whispered that Rachel might be interested – but it was a little devil he
knew he must ignore.

‘Turn right and head towards the church,’ he said.

Rachel signalled, and they were soon driving through the village of Derenham; steep and picture-postcard pretty. Many of its
houses were thatched and painted in pastel colours, and the narrow main thoroughfares led down to the waterfront where yachts
bobbed steadily on the high tide.