Tainted Ground (18 page)

Something caught me a glancing blow to the head and my world revolved. I curled down, ears ringing, into a protective ball and then a leg thumped backwards into me as someone in reverse gear sort of flew over, obviously trailing bits and pieces, to smash head first into a hand basin. I stayed where I was, no longer required, as the remainder were, as the saying goes, mopped up.

Patrick, gasping for breath, hauled me to my feet. He then staggered into a cubicle and threw up. All floor space seemed to be occupied by bodies, heaving and still, but I managed to step between them, grabbed a handful of paper towels, soaked them under a tap and when Patrick emerged, thrust them into his hands. But he retched and had to turn to continue helplessly vomiting.

In the end I cleaned him up and we both walked fairly tall to the car. There was an unspoken agreement between us that the incident would not be officially reported, the six left as a reminder that Carrick's troops were not to be trifled with, whether they were on home ground or not.

The questions remained, though: who, and why?

Unofficially the DCI's reaction the following morning was predictable. As Patrick had once put it in another similar situation, he ‘hooted and skirled'. For quite a long time. It was only my repeated insistence that I was absolutely, quite, completely and
utterly
unscathed – besides, he was hardly likely to demand that I remove my top and bra to reveal my bruised ribs – that mitigated things a little.

Carrick fired at Patrick what was hopefully his final salvo. ‘And here's me thinking you were invincible in the hand-to-hand stuff.'

Patrick, who was also bruised in the body, if not a little in the spirit, replied, ‘Six against one when you're in the middle of a pee is some odds. But up to a point I agree with you – I am a bit rusty.'

‘Who were they? Any idea?'

‘Not the first clue. Rent-a-thugs. Someone smashed almost all the lights so I couldn't even see their faces.'

‘You might at least have brought one in so we could have found out.'

‘In the heat of the moment,' Patrick said grimly, ‘I probably forgot that I was a copper.'

And I had wanted to get him out of there before any more of them rolled up. Patrick had been in no fit state to deal with anyone else.

Carrick looked shocked, perhaps not having realized how bad the situation had been. Then he said, ‘I simply can't believe it has any bearing on the cases we're investigating. I trust Calvin too, he's the landlord, by the way. He wouldn't have been in any way responsible.'

‘God, I thought his name was Blackbeard,' Patrick muttered.

‘Did you recognize anyone in the pub?'

‘Half of Bristol was in the pub.'

‘I keep forgetting you've not been here long.' Carrick shot to his feet. ‘I'll go over there. No one takes apart people who work for me and gets away with it.'

‘They didn't and it's a distraction,' Patrick said, also getting up, only with a wince. ‘Possibly a deliberate one. It might be more worthwhile to go and call on Horsley's mother.'

‘
You
go and see the old lady. Who knows, she might know who he was working for. Then interview the funeral directors.' He made for the door.

‘We have an appointment with Littlejohn and Makepeace at ten,' I reminded them both.

‘OK, do it the other way about,' Carrick snapped.

The door slammed.

Patrick smiled serenely. ‘Good. We're just part of the team now to be bawled out if necessary, bless his tartan reach-me-downs.'

‘I do have one question for you, though.'

‘What's that?'

‘Has anyone shown the Tanner brothers a photograph of Peter Horsley with a view to them identifying him as the van driver on the night they dug up the coffin?'

‘You know, I don't think we have.'

I blew a loud raspberry at him.

The partners were the grandsons of the original founders, both in their early forties. They were exceedingly sombre, the situation being a dreadful one for them.

We discovered that the first to greet us, Neil Makepeace, lived with his wife and two children in a hamlet two miles from Hinton Littlemoor; the other, David Littlejohn, was unmarried and had a flat in Bath. The headquarters of their business, where we had come to talk to them, was in the west of the city of Bristol, and as Neil himself observed with a very brief smile, neither of them had the inclination to live over the shop.

‘My first question,' Patrick said, when the introductions had been made, ‘is how is it that you conducted Barney Stonelake's funeral when there are any number of funeral directors much nearer to home, in this case, Hagtop Farm?'

‘Oh, that's easy,' said Neil. ‘Mrs Stonelake's brother, George, and our fathers, set up the Hinton Littlemoor Clay Pigeon Shooting Club. Some time in the fifties, I think it was. Their people originated from round there and a couple of months ago I moved back into the area. Your father is one of the members. So, in a way, it was family. It would have been unthinkable for them to have asked anyone else to have done it.'

He looked a countryman; ruddy of complexion, bright blue of eye. David on the other hand was of slighter build, more quiet and thoughtful-looking.

‘How is your father?' he now enquired.

‘Well on the mend, thank you.'

‘He's a fine shot. Do you shoot?'

‘Sometimes,' Patrick replied. ‘Just for the pot.'

Sometimes he's been known to poach pheasants with a Smith and Wesson too.

Neil then asked someone to make us coffee and the questioning resumed.

‘I do understand that this is very embarrassing for you,' Patrick continued, ‘but the situation is this. The coffin was removed from the grave, as you're aware, and was found empty near Oakhill. According to our forensic people no body had ever been in it, at least not for any length of time, hours perhaps but certainly not days. How could this happen?'

The partners exchanged glances. ‘We simply can't explain it,' Neil said. ‘The only possible explanation is that someone with access to keys got into our premises during the night on the day before the funeral. It had to be an insider, there were no signs of a break-in, which would obviously have alerted us to a problem.'

‘There's no actual staff presence during the night, then?'

‘No, our staff, or David or I, take it in turns to be on call. People would only be in the building if we had received a call-out.'

‘Was a man called Peter Horsley working for you at that time?'

Again, there was an exchange of glances. ‘I shall have to go and look that up,' Neil answered.

‘Brian Stonelake intends to sue,' David said quietly when Neil had gone out of the room. ‘It's a ghastly business – could ruin us when you think about it.'

Patrick got up and looked out of the rain-streaked window. The business was housed in what had been an early Victorian stables and carriage house which had belonged to a mansion long since demolished. It was a smart red-brick building that had had a sympathetically designed but modern office extension added quite recently. The original high wall to the front remained with spikes along the top to deter trespassers and access was gained through a handsome archway furnished with new, heavyweight oak doors that led into the paved yard.

‘There's a fairly new and sophisticated security system,' David said into the silence, perhaps wondering if Patrick was checking the position of CCTV cameras.

‘No, it had to be an insider job,' he said.

‘I can assure you that neither Neil nor I were involved in this scandalous affair.'

Patrick turned to face the speaker. ‘It never crossed my mind for a moment that you were.'

The other smiled nervously and said, ‘Like your father, you're a slightly daunting man.'

‘Oh, I can be a hell of a lot more daunting than this,' Patrick said and then mitigated the remark with a smile and soft chuckle.

‘Yes,' Neil announced, returning with the coffee. ‘Spot on. We were going to get rid of him anyway as he was so scruffy and downright unpleasant to everybody but he failed to turn up the following Monday.'

‘And the funeral was on …?'

‘The previous Thursday. At nine thirty. Both David and I officiated. It seemed the right thing to do.'

‘I understand that coffins are transported on trolleys these days.'

‘Sometimes but not always. We carried Barney.'

David said, ‘But he wasn't in there, Neil.'

‘God, no. I'd forgotten that for a moment.' He served the coffee.

Patrick said, ‘But was it the right sort of weight? You didn't notice anything different one way or another?'

‘I can't remember noticing. But you must understand it would have been the last thing we were expecting.'

‘All that it contained when it was found was a small quantity of tea – used, dried-out tea leaves. A sample has been sent away for proper identification. Now, is there any way that this substance could have originated here?'

‘Not a chance,' Neil said emphatically. ‘No food or drink is permitted anywhere near the chapel of rest or where human remains are stored, for obvious reasons. Everything else apart, the health and safety people would go berserk.'

I said, ‘People do sometimes request that items be placed in coffins, though. Did anything like that happen with the Stonelake burial, a keepsake, something Barney treasured? Anything that could have had tea leaves in its folds or pages?'

‘No, there was no such request,' Neil said.

I opened my mouth to ask them about possible contamination from clothes the body had been dressed in but Patrick spoke first. ‘Assuming, then, that Horsley – I'm not sure that you're aware of it but his body was fished out of the Avon a couple of days ago – somehow got hold of the keys. Would that have been easy for him to do? Could he have coped with the alarm system? What about the cameras?'

‘Good heavens! No, I wasn't aware of that. We didn't have an alarm system then. Just lots of old-fashioned locks and bolts and I'm afraid bunches of keys were literally hung on nails in an office without much of a check being made on them. We'd held back until the new extension was finished so the whole place could be done, cameras and all, at the same time. There was no money kept overnight on the premises, you see.'

‘And then? He would have had to arrive with transport of some kind, say a van, entered the building, surely with an accomplice, taken the body from the coffin where it been placed – what? – overnight?'

‘That's right.'

‘And then substituted something else of a similar weight, but we don't yet know what.'

‘The funeral was early, the first that day, so we tended to get everything ready. But the casket wouldn't have been screwed down, just in case there were any last-minute instructions along the lines of what we were talking about just now – items to be placed in with the deceased and so forth.'

‘They took a huge risk.'

‘No, it
was
screwed down when we went to collect it,' David suddenly recollected. ‘I raised hell and no one knew who had done it. But in the event it didn't matter.'

‘Did you ever see Horsley with anyone else? Did he get a lift to work?'

Neil said, ‘No, he just appeared. I never saw anyone drop him off. Did you, David?'

‘No.'

‘Did he ever mention his mother?'

Neil grimaced. ‘We're talking about a man who for the most part remained sullenly silent. When he did speak it was to swear at someone or demand some kind of rights. Full of their rights, these yobs of today, aren't they? But you feel obliged to give them a chance.'

‘Did you see any change in him just before the Stonelake funeral? Was he nervous? Jittery?'

But neither man had noticed anything different, Neil muttering that he might have seemed a bit more shifty-looking than normal but then again it could have been his imagination.

We had, at least, had our suspicions confirmed and established some kind of timetable.

Sitting in the passenger seat of the car Patrick looked up from making notes. ‘Lunch. Loads of gravy and mashed spuds, bangers, liver, fried onions.'

‘I'm glad you're feeling better.'

‘Actually I hurt all over – but I'm still famished.'

‘You're unlikely to get anything like that in a pub.'

‘No, I've had my fill of pubs for a while. Whither to then, wench?'

‘Home, I'll cook it for you.'

We had said nothing to Elspeth, or John, about the fracas of the night before but little escapes her. No questions were asked just then and, as I had half expected and shopped accordingly, both were glad on this dank and chilly day to exchange their lunch of cheese and fruit for a large plateful of hot comfort food.

‘I didn't expect to see you until tonight,' Elspeth said afterwards. ‘Is everything all right?' She fixed Patrick with unswerving gaze.

‘Yes, but we were both hungry and cold and—' I began lamely.

‘I got a bit roughed up last night,' Patrick interrupted. ‘It was my fault. I'm not as fit as I used to be when I worked for D12. But Ingrid is, she rescued me and is now West Country champion of the noble sport of throwing grown men into lavatory pans.' He whooped with laughter, holding his ribs, and as he has a very infectious laugh we all ended up cackling until the tears ran down our faces.

Sometimes you have to get your laughs where you can.

‘Mrs Horsley?' Patrick said to the elderly lady who anxiously peered at him around a door held on a security chain.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm Detective Superintendent Gillard and this lady is Ingrid, my wife and assistant. May we come in and talk to you about Peter?'

‘That's a rather funny arrangement.'

‘I agree, but I assure you, it's perfectly genuine.' He showed his warrant card and she took it and closed the door. When it seemed that she had decided to keep it and phone the police, fearing us to be bogus callers, the door was opened again with the chain removed.