Tainted Ground (10 page)

I was given a big grin. ‘You're never superfluous but I know you want to go home, see the children and get on with the film script.'

Later, when we were on our own, I said, ‘Has anything really been solved by this move?'

‘No. Despite what I said just now I've no intention of completely dropping the murder inquiry and want to find out more about the victims. I hate going behind James's back but I don't think the man's at all well. He's had a nasty bit of news in the past few days too; been told by the docs he shouldn't play rugger again, or not for a pretty long time. By then, of course, he'll be too old. He'd started training again in a quiet way too.'

‘How awful for him. Did James tell you so himself?'

‘No. Sergeant Woods beckoned me aside just before I came home this evening. Carrick had mentioned it to him but not gone into any more details. Life's cruel sometimes. Anyway, I'm going to delve into the rural-crime side of things as well, as Stonelake's no doubt into all kinds of scams. So first of all I intend to interview the bloke who used to work for him, Shaun Brown. He may be involved with Stonelake – or know a few people who are.'

‘I might stick around for a couple more days,' I said in off-hand fashion.

‘Good.' One eyebrow quirked, Patrick then whispered, ‘Fancy an early night?'

‘Expecting a famine in that direction soon, then?' I teased, having detected a certain gleam in his eye.

‘Emails do have their limitations.'

Our lovemaking that night brought to my mind that first time under a hot summer sun on Dartmoor. He had been eighteen, I fifteen and until that moment we had been as children, quite innocent of one other, holding hands as we walked home with the dogs, Patrick with the bag that had contained our picnic lunch. His main attraction to me was his ability to make me laugh, that is until that afternoon when we had laughed until we cried, hugging one another and I had felt the warm wiriness of his body flowing beneath my fingers through the thin material of his shirt. Children then one moment and as close as it is possible for two people to get the next.

Perhaps it was to be expected that when we finally rolled away from one another, replete, we slept deeply and dreamlessly, the window closed against a cold northerly gale roaring through the treetops, hearing nothing of the destruction that was going on not very far away outside.

The shock of seeing what had taken place during the night could very well have killed John Gillard. As was his habit he arose early, made himself and Elspeth a pot of tea and then, while it brewed, slipped on a jacket and went outside, the gale having eased, for a short stroll down the drive, which had a newly refurbished border on either side.

I felt Patrick jerk awake at his father's shout and then there were hurrying feet on the landing and, moments later, Elspeth urgently called Patrick's name. We both shot out of bed, threw on dressing gowns and went downstairs.

John was seated on a kitchen chair, gasping for breath, hands shaking. Elspeth had her arms around him.

‘What is it?' Patrick said.

John waved speechlessly in the direction of the door to the outside and then had the unusual experience of having his son go down on his knees before him.

‘Dad,' Patrick said softly, enveloping John's hands in his own, ‘calm down. You'll do your new ticker arrangements no end of harm. What's happened?'

John panted, ‘It looks as though someone's driven a tractor into the drive … and then through the hedge into the churchyard. The new shrubs … the fence … all your mother's work planting bulbs. A lot of it … utterly ruined. Who could … do such a thing to us? I think there's … damage to the graves too …'

Still kneeling, Patrick said, ‘I'll have the garden fixed. Today. Please don't upset yourself.'

Then proceed to track down the perpetrator before hanging, drawing and quartering them at the nearest crossroads, I thought grimly.

Patrick went out to have a look, came back directly and hurried upstairs to get dressed. Donning boots he then returned to the garden to fully assess the damage and was gone for such a long time that I threw away his tea as it had gone cold.

Elspeth, fearful for John as he was shivering uncontrollably, had persuaded him to get back into bed and phoned the doctor. All I could do was have a quick shower and get dressed then make myself useful by staying around in case Elspeth needed me and lay the pine kitchen table for breakfast.

Then I heard a police siren, realized Patrick had called out the cavalry and went outside.

The devastation about three-quarters of the way down the rectory drive was appalling, a huge swathe of damage cut through turf, border, new hedging and post-and-rail fence. Whatever had done it – the gap was wider than the small tractors that the local farmers used to negotiate the neighbourhood's narrow lanes and gateways – had carried on into the churchyard, knocking over gravestones, breaking a branch off a tree, even scattering the flowers covering a new grave, ploughing them into the torn ground. There was a large pile of earth over on the far side and that was where several people were clustered.

I noted in passing as I walked round and entered the churchyard by the lychgate, which was roofed and totally impassable to vehicles, that the tracks of the digger, or whatever it had been, which had caused the damage suggested it had also exited through the rectory garden.

‘The headstone's over there,' I heard Patrick say, pointing, as I approached the group.

The damage was even worse than it had appeared when viewed from the adjacent driveway. Everything impeding whatever had gone on here had been ruthlessly smashed out of the way. Even a little row of what I knew to be babies' graves had been bulldozed flat.

There was also a large hole in the ground.

‘It's an exhumation,' Patrick said to me.

‘What, you mean someone's actually dug up and stolen a coffin?' I exclaimed.

‘Barney Stonelake's, no less,' Carrick murmured. ‘That's not to say we won't find it dumped just down the road somewhere.'

I said, ‘So whoever it was gained entry through the rectory drive because they failed to knock down the churchyard wall?'

‘You're probably right, Ingrid,' Carrick said. ‘Yes, that would explain it. Why would anyone want to desecrate the grave of that poor old man? A grudge against his son?'

‘There was the chap whom he sacked because he thought he was stealing diesel,' Patrick pointed out. ‘Shaun Brown.'

Frowning into the hole, the DCI said, ‘There's a list, I assure you, of folk Brian Stonelake's upset, assaulted, sacked, short-changed and almost certainly stolen from over the years. It's disgusting, though. The people who do things like this are filth.'

‘I called you because I think there might be a connection with our current investigations, including the murders. There
has
to be: everything going on round here has Stonelake written all over it.' Patrick gestured angrily in the direction of the upended headstone.

‘There could well be a connection,' Carrick agreed. ‘Or is it vandalism, pure and simple?'

Normally, I knew, we would not have so closely approached what was, of course, a crime scene for fear of destroying valuable evidence, footprints and so forth. But the despoiler had done his work well, seemingly obliterating any possible incriminating traces by scraping up the turf surrounding the excavation into a small pile and then driving over it.

‘Is there much damage at your parents' place?' Carrick asked Patrick.

‘It's quite bad,' Patrick answered. ‘The new borders were only finished last week. If you'd be good enough to have SOCO take pictures I'd like to arrange to have it put right, today if possible. My father's pretty cut up about it.'

‘There's nothing to stop you having it put right today even if I don't think it serious enough to call in SOCO – but you might invalidate any insurance claim.'

‘Bugger insurance,' Patrick said quietly.

Shortly afterwards Patrick and Carrick departed in the latter's car and the house went quiet. I had thought I would work on the screenplay but found myself unable to concentrate on it. All I could see in my mind's eye were those three ghastly still figures hanging in the barn. Later again, the doctor having come and gone, I made sandwiches for everyone's lunch. John was all right but had orders to rest for the remainder of the day: apparently he had run full tilt down the drive with the bad news, not yet recommended. Then, at just after three, I asked Elspeth if I could use the phone and rang Patrick. I had had an idea.

‘Gillard,' said that well-remembered voice.

‘What's happening?'

‘James and I are just outside Shepton Mallet at a roadside cafe having a well-earned mug of tea and a bun. Someone's found the coffin.'

‘Really? Where?'

‘In a ditch. It's empty, though – there's no body.'

‘That's ghastly!'

‘We're on our way back to the nick now. D'you want to drive into Bath?'

You bet I did.

We arrived almost together, the men mounting the steps at the rear entrance as I was cruising around looking for a parking space. Carrick waved me to a slot nearby with someone's initials painted on it, explaining afterwards that whoever it was was on leave.

‘A woman walking her dog on the outskirts of Oakhill found the coffin,' he said to me when we were seated in his office. ‘She immediately rang the police as it obviously wasn't a new one that had fallen off a lorry delivering stuff to an undertaker.'

‘Surely someone didn't drive a JCB all the way from Hinton Littlemoor to Oakhill in the middle of the night with a coffin in the bucket!' I said, or rather, hooted.

Patrick said, ‘No, a van or pickup must have been involved as well. Plus a couple more blokes, of course.'

I was finding this all too fantastic. ‘But that must have made the whole exercise even more expensive. Just to get even with Brian Stonelake? It doesn't make sense.'

‘And where is poor old Barney?' Carrick said.

‘Perhaps something valuable had been hidden in with the corpse,' I suggested.

‘Your loot theory,' Carrick said dubiously. ‘Well, it has to be borne in mind for, as you say, digging up the churchyard wasn't cheap. Unless someone
really
hates Stonelake.'

‘Have you had any unidentified human remains found in the area?' I asked. ‘I mean, there's always the thought that Barney was never buried at all.'

‘Ingrid, that would mean that undertakers were in on the scam and Uncle Tom Cobley and all,' the DCI retorted, his Scottish accent more pronounced than usual.

To Patrick, I said, ‘I've been thinking and have a proposal to make. You and I have worked together for several years now and I think we make a good team. I think I've something to contribute now and if you'll have me I intend to apply to join the scheme. They may not want me and of course I'll have to go through the selection process but—' I broke off because Patrick was smiling at me.

‘Brinkley asked me if you'd be interested,' he said. ‘Even if it was only on a consultancy basis. In other words if I ran out of ideas I'd get on the blower to the oracle.'

I found myself under Carrick's frosty blue gaze.

‘Before we discuss this further I have to tell you that I had a complaint,' he said. ‘From a Mr William Brandon, who lives at the mill. Remember him?'

‘Of course,' I replied.

‘He told me that a woman who had been described to him as Patrick's training adviser made offensive remarks to him during an interview at his home. Is that correct?'

‘No, what I said to him wasn't offensive and it wasn't during the interview. I told him to fix his sick wife some lunch.'

‘Is that all?'

‘Yes.'

‘You took a dislike to this man?'

‘He's like something you haul out of a long-blocked drain.'

‘Ingrid, you can't behave like that, however you feel. I had to apologize and I think you ought to go round there and do the same. If you're going to be involved with law enforcement you must learn that there are rules of behaviour.'

‘I understand,' I said.

Carrick turned his attention to Patrick. ‘And you're still behaving as though you're working for MI5. Ingrid isn't your training adviser. You simply can't lie and con your way through this job. If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times – it's more
accountable
than what you're used to.'

Quietly, Patrick said, ‘Ingrid
is
my training adviser and since we got back together again after being divorced for a while some years ago – she slung me out because I was turning, no, had turned, into a supercilious prig – she's the only reason I've recovered and become a half-decent person after being blown up in the Falklands. One of her bad faults though is that she gets very shirty if she thinks anyone or anything is being neglected, in this case, Mrs Brandon. I wasn't present when the remarks were made but I'll try to keep her under control in future.' Into the silence which followed this he said, ‘Does this mean you're against what Ingrid is suggesting?'

Predictably, Carrick now looked embarrassed. ‘No, not at all,' he said. ‘OK. It's actually a good idea and I'm happy to have her along on condition that you both bear in mind what I've just said. But I insist that she doesn't get involved in any potentially nasty situations.'

So he still needed me as a buffer but it would be difficult to explain to higher authority if I got the smallest bit dented.

Patrick said, ‘I shall have to clear it with Brinkley. If it's all right with you I'll endeavour to do it now.'

This he did and permission came with the same proviso; I was to learn, assist and advise where appropriate – something Brinkley assumed, wrongly, had been my only role with MI5 – and not on any account get mixed up in anything dangerous or in which firearms were involved.