Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder (21 page)

‘No,’ George said. ‘ Not quite that, I think.’ And he explained that he thought someone at Gorse Hill was organizing the thefts. ‘Both Frank Oliver and Kerry Fenn had the hotel’s phone number,’ he said, ‘and while we were away my wife took a phone call from someone who said he had been recommended to the place by Kerry Fenn and he wished to discuss a business matter. Don’t you think it’s possible that Eleanor Masefield found out that the racket was organized from Gorse Hill, demanded to see the culprit and was killed when she threatened to make the thing public, if it wasn’t stopped?’

‘Yes,’ Pritchard said. ‘ I suppose that’s possible. If you’re right we only have to discover who was organizing the theft and sale of the birds and we have the murderer. The boy might have some idea who was employing him. Come with me and we’ll talk to him again. I’d like your opinion of him. Frank Oliver will certainly know who was running the agency, so it’s still a priority to find him.’

His mood of self-pity forgotten, he pushed the car into gear and drove fast down the drive.

The police station was Victorian red brick, built near the cattle market next to the magistrates’ court. Mrs Oliver was sitting on a bench in the gloomy waiting area near the desk. She sat crouched with fatigue, her back round, her elbows on her knees, fat as a toad. As they came in she looked at them with hatred, as though she would like to spit at them. Yet George thought too that he saw triumph in her eyes as if she sensed the investigation had gone wrong for the police and that soon they would have to let her son go.

‘Have you seen Stephen?’ Pritchard asked. He felt sorry for her. He was used to being disliked and took no notice of her hostility.

She nodded towards the desk sergeant. ‘He let me speak to him through the cell door,’ she said. She felt no gratitude for the favour.

‘Would you like me to arrange a lift home for you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for him.’

‘You could have a long wait.’

‘All the same I’ll stay,’ she said. ‘You can take us both home when you’ve finished.’

She seemed quite confident that Stephen would be released.

Pritchard arranged for the boy to be brought into an interview room. He was as small and dark as his father, his hair cut like all the other youths of his age. His clothes which he had probably once thought smart were dirty and crumpled. He seemed weak and frightened and very tired. The customs officer had said he had been in a poor state when they found him. It had been a rough crossing and he had been sick all the way across the Channel. Perhaps in this small town on his home territory he could be cocky and arrogant – he would know all the angles – but tonight there was no sign of that jaunty, bullying self-confidence. Beside Pritchard’s massive bulk he seemed a child.

Pritchard sat opposite the boy and shook his head sadly.

‘You’re in trouble, lad,’ he said, fatherly and concerned. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to you.’

‘I didn’t know about the old lady,’ the boy said, his eyes wide with the effort of convincing them. Pritchard assumed the expression of one who has heard it all before. ‘ I didn’t know she was dead until I saw a newspaper on the boat coming home. I couldn’t believe it when it said the police were looking for Dad.’

‘So why did you run away?’ Pritchard asked.

‘I didn’t run away,’ the boy said, bewildered. ‘ I was doing a job for my father.’

‘I think,’ Pritchard said gently, ‘you’d better tell me all about it again.’

‘He needed a messenger,’ the boy said proudly, ‘to take something to the continent. He knew I needed the money so he asked me.’

‘Was that all he asked you to do?’

‘No,’ Stephen said. He still seemed unsure how much to say. He had promised his father he would keep quiet and although he had already told Pritchard everything, the words seemed a kind of betrayal.

‘You helped him to steal some peregrines?’

The boy nodded. ‘They were only birds,’ he said. ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ There was a trace of the old cockiness.

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘Dad went down the rope,’ Stephen said. ‘I’m no good at that sort of thing. I stayed at the top and kept a lookout. Two old ladies came up the lane and walked right past us but they thought we were rock climbing. Dad was really cool. When he got back up the cliff he stopped and chatted to them, and the chicks were in his rucksack all the time.’

‘When did you take the birds?’ Pritchard asked.

‘On Sunday afternoon,’ Stephen said. ‘Dad helped Mr Fenn with the display and then met me by the barn. Mr Fenn was expecting him back to put the birds away, but Dad said it wouldn’t hurt him to do it by himself for once.’

‘Was he in his blue van?’

‘Yes. He’d parked it by the barn earlier that afternoon. It was hidden by the building so you couldn’t see it from the lane. He’d told Fenn the tax was out of date and he didn’t want to leave it at the hotel.’

‘What happened when your father had brought up the peregrines from the eyrie?’

‘We got off the hill as soon as we could get rid of the old ladies. The adult birds were going wild, making a terrible noise. The ladies didn’t seem to notice but the noise really got on my nerves. I wanted to get away from there.’

‘What did you do with the birds?’ George asked quietly.

‘Dad looked after them. He had a special box for them. I didn’t have anything to do with them until I got to Dover. The woman looked after them until then.’

‘What woman?’

‘The woman who drove me to Dover. When we got there we wrapped the box in pretty paper to make it look like a present. No one asked me about it when we went through customs.’

‘Where did you meet the woman?’

‘At Shrewsbury station. She was going to come with me all the way to France, but something seemed to have gone wrong. She and Dad talked at the station. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Dad seemed to want to call the whole thing off, but she said we ought to go ahead anyway. I suppose she’d heard that the old lady had been killed.’

‘What was the woman’s name?’ Pritchard demanded. But if he were hoping to discover the Gorse Hill connection he was disappointed.

‘Dad called her Kerry,’ Stephen said. ‘ I don’t know her other name. She wasn’t much older than me.’

‘Did your father go with you to Dover?’

Stephen shook his head. ‘ We left him at Shrewsbury,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what he did then. I thought he must be going to Wolverhampton.’ He paused. ‘I was going to go and live with him,’ he said, ‘when I got back. He said there’d be more chance of a job in the town and I could work for him again, perhaps do other trips to Europe.’

‘Why didn’t you tell your mother where you were going?’ Pritchard asked sternly. ‘ She’s been worried about you.’

‘Dad told me not to. Anyway I thought I’d only be away a couple of days and she’s used to me going off for weekends with my mates. She was only worried because of what happened to the old lady;’ He was beginning to regain some of his old disagreeable nonchalance. ‘She knows I can look after myself.’

‘What happened when you got to Calais? Did someone meet you?’

‘Someone was supposed to meet me at the railway station on the Monday evening,’ he said. ‘I hung around all day. Dad had given me some food for the birds and I looked after them just like he told me. I wanted to do everything right.’

They could imagine him in the foreign land, lonely and unsure of himself, wandering around the unfamiliar streets, carrying his peculiar parcel. Perhaps he had drunk too much on the boat to boost his confidence and was feeling ill. He had never been abroad before. Stephen continued his story:

‘I got to the station in plenty of time and waited in the café, which was just as Dad described it.’

‘What was the person like?’ Pritchard asked. ‘Was he English?’

Stephen Oliver shook his head. ‘No one came,’ he said simply. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I waited for hours until the café shut.’

‘Where did you stay?’

‘With some English people,’ Stephen said, ‘who had a small hotel. Dad had fixed it up. I think he had stayed there before.’

Pritchard became excited by this, demanded details, the address, the names of the owners, but George thought it was unlikely now that Frank Oliver had left the country.

‘I didn’t know what to do then,’ Stephen said. ‘I was supposed to take the ferry back the next day. I didn’t have much money. Dad had given me some, but I didn’t have a lot to spare. I still had the birds. I thought perhaps there was some mistake and the bloke would turn up the next day. I was really knackered but I went back to the station that evening.’

‘Did the falconer turn up?’

‘No,’ Stephen said. ‘ I was getting desperate. I thought I’d cocked the whole thing up. So I decided to come home.’

‘Did you have no means of contacting your father in an emergency?’ George asked.

The boy shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘ Dad said there would be no problem. If my contact couldn’t meet me at the station he would get in touch with me at the hotel. But there was no message, no phone call. I just wanted to get home. Then on the ferry I saw the newspaper and realized the police were looking for Dad.’

‘What did you do with the chicks?’ Pritchard asked.

‘I threw them away,’ he said. ‘I was sick of the whole thing. I threw them into the sea.’

They sat in silence. Outside a drunk was being brought into the station. They could hear him shouting and swearing at the desk sergeant.

‘When you were on the hill,’ George said, ‘did you hear anything unusual?’

‘Dad thought his van was being nicked,’ the boy said, with a sudden return of memory. ‘He’d left his keys in it and he thought he heard it being driven down the lane. But when we got back it was still there.’

‘You didn’t see anyone?’

‘Only the old ladies on the hill.’

The drunk in the corridor launched into a rousing version of Onward Christian Soldiers’.

‘Where’s your father, Stephen?’ Pritchard asked. ‘Just tell us and you can go home.’

‘How should I know?’

‘Did he get in touch with you in Calais? Is that why you spent so long in France?’

‘No,’ Stephen insisted, angry and frightened. ‘I told you what happened. I haven’t heard from him since we dropped him in Shrewsbury on Sunday.’

‘Why would your father want to murder Eleanor Masefield?’ Pritchard asked.

‘He wouldn’t want to murder anybody,’ Stephen said. ‘He was happy. He said he had a good business. He enjoyed working at Puddleworth and making a little bit on the side. He wouldn’t do anything to upset all that.’

The point was so obvious and so logical that there was little they could say. George could sense Pritchard’s defeat and asked one last question, knowing as he asked it that he was unlikely to receive an answer.

‘Did your father tell you who they were all working for?’ he asked. ‘Did he say who organized his business?’ But the boy shook his head. He was exhausted. There was nothing more he could tell them.

They let him go then. There was no reason to hold him. He would be charged with theft of the peregrines and with taking them illegally out of the country. He would appear in a magistrates’ court, plead guilty and be fined. George doubted if he would pay the fine himself. It would be paid, like his other expenses, by his father’s employer.

They all left the interview room together. Mrs Oliver was still on the bench, motionless, kept awake by her anger. Pritchard sat beside her and spoke confidentially to her as if they were alone.

‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘We’re letting your son come home to you. If you know where Frank is, tell him we want to talk to him. We don’t think he killed Mrs Masefield, not any more. But we think he may be in danger. We can give him the protection he needs.’

She stood up stiffly to be beside her son. She ignored Pritchard and though she said nothing they could tell she did not believe him.

George fell asleep quickly and slept deeply, but woke very early in the morning. It was just getting light and there was a clear burst of bird song from the trees outside the window. Molly was still sleeping. She lay on her back with her arms outstretched, palms up, fingers curled in relaxation.

He trusted Molly’s judgement about Eleanor Masefield. How could I have been so wrong about her? he thought. He had seen her as the charming, beloved matriarch, devotedly keeping her business and the weaker members of the family together. Now it seemed they would be happier without her. Does it matter that I was wrong about her? he thought. I found her compelling, beautiful. Do I really care that she was insensitive to her family’s needs? It was what she thought of me that counted and I’ll never know that now.

He got out of bed and dressed without disturbing Molly, then went downstairs. There was a cold, grey light and a gusting wind which rattled round the chimneys. Inside everywhere was quiet. The office door was unlocked and he went in. He told himself that he was looking for evidence that someone at Gorse Hill was involved with stealing and selling falcons but that was not entirely true. He was hoping to find some relic of Eleanor, a letter, a photograph, a diary, which would justify his infatuation for her, which would re-create her as the woman he had known. The fact that the office door was unlocked led him to suppose that he had little chance of finding anything incriminating. Besides, it had been Eleanor’s place. She would have come across any records or accounts for the sale of birds which might be hidden there. But because it had been Eleanor’s place he went in and began to look around.

The room was still dark, because it faced on to the hill, so he had to switch on an electric light. It was more functional than it had been in Stuart Masefield’s day. The photographs of birds of prey remained on the walls, the shelves of dusty, leatherbound books were still there, but the stuffed birds and the eggs had gone. He wondered if Eleanor kept the books and the photographs in memory of Stuart or if she used them like wallpaper to give colour and warmth to the room. The shotguns, with which Stuart had played country gentleman with Theo Williams’ father, were still in the room, but put away discreetly in a wall cupboard.