The Blood Pit (31 page)

Wesley was rather surprised at this sudden rush of concern for his lady friend’s elderly mother. After all, she had been an
impediment to his relationship with Joyce since they’d met almost a year ago. Suffering from Alzheimer’s, Edna Barnes had
caused problems for them at every turn.

‘Joyce is really upset,’ Heffernan said softly. ‘I wanted to
stay with her at the hospital but …’ He waved his arm to indicate the pile of paperwork on his desk.

‘She’ll understand,’ said Wesley unconvincingly.

‘Does Pam?’ the DCI replied quickly, looking Wesley in the eye – he’d know if he was lying.

Wesley gave his boss an enigmatic smile, giving nothing away. ‘Did you tell Rosie where you’d gone last night?’ he asked out
of curiosity. In his opinion the fact that his boss went to desperate lengths to keep Joyce’s existence a secret from his
daughter, was ridiculous. Rosie wasn’t stupid. She was bound to find out sooner or later.

‘This job provides the perfect alibi, Wes. I told her there’d been a new lead in the case.’

Wesley sighed and shook his head. ‘You’re going to get found out one of these days. And talking of new leads, are we paying
Darren Collins another visit this morning?’

‘I suppose we should. If he was up in Chester at the time Christopher Grisham was killed …’

‘And what about this Celia Dawn – the woman who gave Marrick his quail lunch?’

‘Rachel’s been checking that one out. Ms Dawn was telling the truth about where she got the quail – it’s part of Winterlea’s
new gourmet range apparently.’ He snorted with derision. He was more of a fish and chips man himself.

‘And we need to have a word with this Norman Hedge. He’ll be at Neil’s dig so we can call there after we’ve seen Collins.
Okay?’

‘Anything new come in from Forensic on those letters Neil’s been getting?’

Wesley shook his head. ‘Nothing useful.’

‘Think there’s a chance our Spider could have written them?’

Wesley opened his mouth to say something but his train of thought was interrupted by the urgent ringing of the phone on Heffernan’s
desk. The DCI picked it up.

It’s always hard to judge what’s being said from hearing one side of a conversation and Heffernan’s contribution seemed to
be a series of affirmative grunts. But Wesley could tell by the expression on his face that the news was good … if not exciting.

When he’d put the receiver down, he looked up, a smile of smug satisfaction on his face. ‘That was Luton police. I told them
about the initials on that ring – BI – and they went through their records. We’ve got a possible identification for our skeleton
in the woods. They’ve come up with a character called Barry Ickerman who hasn’t been heard of since 1989. They assumed he’d
just left the area – wife said he’d walked out and she didn’t know where he’d gone. Turns out he was a suspect in that rape
they mentioned – only they didn’t have the DNA technology in those days.’

‘But at least they kept the samples.’

‘Too right.’ He rubbed his hands together gleefully. ‘It’s great this. Run a few samples from unsolved cases through some
machine at the lab and it comes up with a name. Just like magic isn’t it.’

Wesley had to smile at the DCI’s childlike enthusiasm.

‘They’re faxing us everything they’d got on Ickerman. His ex-wife’s still living in Luton so at least we can hand the body
over for burial.’

‘So we’re not treating it as suspicious?’ Wesley said hopefully. Getting rid of the bones in the wood would be one thing less
to worry about. And with the Spider about, they could do without distractions.

Heffernan shook his head. ‘There’ll be an inquest and my money’s on an open verdict. End of story unless new evidence comes
our way.’

That was it. They could forget about the bones in the wood and concentrate on more urgent matters.

Wesley was about to leave the office when he hesitated
at the door and turned round. ‘Wonder what Ickerman was doing in Devon,’ he said.

Heffernan gave a dramatic shrug. He didn’t know. And he certainly didn’t care. The man had been a pervert. Good riddance.

It was just routine. At least that’s what Rachel Tracey and Paul Johnson told the headmaster of Belsinger School. At his morning
briefing Gerry Heffernan had told them to go to the school and ask any teachers who had known Marrick, Tench and Grisham some
pertinent questions.

Someone must know something, Rachel said to Paul as they drove out to Littlebury. The three victims must have something in
common besides the fact that they were in the same house at the same school at the same time. Or perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps
the Spider, for some reason best known to himself, harboured a murderous hatred of all boys who had been in Tavistock House
that particular year.

Bullying was the first thing that sprung to Rachel’s mind. What if another boy had been bullied beyond endurance by Charles
Marrick and his cronies and had resorted to the ultimate revenge? If this was the case, Paul Johnson pointed out, it meant
that Tench and Grisham must have been Marrick’s accomplices. Rachel had a good feeling about this theory. Bullying could blight
lives. She felt a little uncomfortable as she recalled her own school days. She was only too aware that she had been bossy
and intolerant of the weaknesses of others. But had she been a bully? Perhaps she’d been a borderline case. And that was something
she wasn’t exactly proud of.

They were expected, which relieved Rachel of the burden of awkward explanations. A fearsome secretary in half-moon glasses
showed them into the headmaster’s study. Somehow it was exactly as she’d imagined a headmaster’s study in a public school
to be – oak panelled and masculine with an array of gleaming silver sports trophies on display amidst the
old school photographs. It was like something out of an old film, she thought. Hardly real. And quite unlike the comprehensive
school she and her brothers had attended.

Dr Wynn was all co-operation. He’d already had a visit from a DCI Heffernan and a DI Peterson and was prepared to help in
any way. He’d mentioned the enquiry to some of the longer-serving members of staff who’d been there at the time the victims
had been pupils and they were happy to share their reminiscences, even though they doubted whether they could be of much help.

Dr Wynn announced that they could use the staff room to conduct their interviews. He spoke as though he was doing them a special
favour and Rachel guessed she was supposed to sound duly grateful for the gracious concession. But she didn’t. It was a murder
investigation and she was calling the shots.

The staff room was like a larger, untidier, version of the headmaster’s study. Dark oak panels and venerable leather armchairs
gave it the feeling of a gentleman’s club. Rachel felt like picking up one of the felt-tipped pens that lay on the table by
the window and scrawling some obscene graffiti about the place. It was too smug by half.

There were four teachers in all who’d been serving at the chalk face when the three victims were schoolboys. Physically they
were all quite different but Rachel thought they all looked similar somehow with their dusty black gowns flapping behind them. There
was something semi-monastic about them, absorbed over the years by living in an atmosphere of male scholarship. It would do
Belsinger good, Rachel thought, to go co-ed. Or better still, to be absorbed into the state sector. But that, she knew, would
never happen.

She could sense these men weren’t comfortable in the presence of a woman in authority. She had passed younger teachers in
the corridor, of course – the new generation. But the men she was interviewing were as extinct as the
dinosaurs, hanging on to their posts by their fingertips until retirement loomed. Which surely couldn’t be far off for any
of them.

They answered all the questions she put to them politely, of course. Yes, they had known the boys in question but not well
– apart from Marrick who’d been a notorious troublemaker. If anybody had known them well, it would have been their housemaster,
Mr Dean. He’d have been aware of everything that went on. That was his job.

The four men seemed to be speaking from the same script, almost as if they’d concocted their story between them beforehand. When
they had gone, Paul pointed out that there might be nothing sinister about the similarity of their statements – it might just
be the truth. But this wasn’t what Rachel wanted to hear. These men were hiding something. Closing ranks.

In the end it seemed there was nothing more they could do at Belsinger School. Rachel Tracey had to acknowledge that it was
hardly worth getting a search warrant and tearing the place apart just to satisfy her prejudices. If there had ever been any
evidence on the premises, it would have disappeared years ago. But there was one thing she wanted.

She asked the fearsome secretary as sweetly as she could, for a list of all the pupils who’d been at Belsinger at the same
time as the victims. Fortunately in this at least, Belsinger seemed to have bowed to the twenty-first century and Rachel was
presented with a computer printout. The secretary said proudly that she’d given herself the task of putting all the school
records on her database and she’d got back as far as the 1950s. Rachel allowed her a grateful smile. The woman’s single-minded
industriousness had made her job much easier.

It wasn’t until she returned to Tradmouth police station that Rachel bothered examining the list she’d been given. And when
she read it, she noticed one name in particular
in the year above Marrick and his contemporaries. Bartholomew Carter.

Barty Carter had never once mentioned that he’d known Simon Tench from his school days. And Rachel wondered why.

‘I hope we get coffee. I had a look at the menu last time we were there – do you realise a small cup of coffee costs three
quid?’

‘So Darren Collins hasn’t given up robbery after all,’ Wesley grinned.

Gerry Heffernan stayed silent for the rest of the journey. Whether he was anticipating the coffee at Le Petit Poisson or planning
what he was going to ask the Great Chef about his trip to Chester, Wesley wasn’t sure.

Normally, Wesley would have suggested walking to the restaurant but there was drizzle in the air and time was tight. Besides,
they were due at Neil’s dig straight afterwards to speak to Norman Hedge, the victims’ old history teacher.

The restaurant was shut but they rang the bell. Jean-Claude Montfort greeted them like old friends, which Wesley thought rather
surprising as they’d brought nothing but trouble to Le Petit Poisson. Perhaps he was just doing his bit for Anglo-French relations.

The chef was in his kitchen. It was remarkable, Wesley thought, how he kept up the French accent, even under the severest
pressure. But then the new identity had probably become second nature. As far as he was concerned Darren Collins no longer
existed.

He ushered them into his office. Coffee wasn’t offered.

‘I thought you’d finished with me,’ he said, rather peeved. ‘I’ve told you everything I know. And I never knew that other
bloke … the vet.’

‘You were in Chester on the sixteenth of June,’ Wesley said, watching his face.

‘That’s right. I was up there for The Best Food Show. Did a TV recording there. What’s that got to do with … ?’

‘Another man was murdered on that day.’ He paused for effect. ‘He was killed in exactly the same way as the others. And he
lived in the centre of Chester.’

He let the implication sink in.

Darren Collins – better known as Fabrice Colbert – shook his head vigorously. ‘I don’t know anyone up there. And I was never
on my own. It was bloody hard work. We stayed in a hotel near the venue – a couple of my chefs here and the TV crew. Ask them
– they’ll all tell you the same thing. When I went into the city centre I was with someone all the time. We were a team.’ He
sounded anxious, eager to be believed. But then anybody would if they were suspected of murder.

‘Have you ever had any connections with a public school near Littlebury called Belsinger?’

Collins snorted. ‘Public school. Do me a favour. I was a failing comp man.’

‘Charles Marrick went there. And the other victims.’

‘That figures. So who was murdered in Chester? I never read anything in the papers about a murder up there.’

‘We’re keeping it low key. We don’t want to start a panic. You sure you’ve no connection to Belsinger School?’

‘None whatsoever.’

‘We’ll check and double check,’ Heffernan said, a slight threat in his voice.

‘Check then. But you’ll be wasting your time.’

Either Darren Collins was a remarkably good actor or he had nothing to hide. But Wesley couldn’t help remembering how he’d
fooled the entire country with his change of identity – he himself would never have realised Fabrice Colbert wasn’t French
unless he’d seen the evidence. Which meant Collins’ acting ability was second to none.

‘How’s Annette?’ Collins asked. He sounded genuinely concerned. But that might have been an act too.

‘As far as we know she’s okay. I was wondering if you’d decide to visit her … now she’s on her own.’

Collins shook his head. ‘I’ve gone back to the straight and narrow – Marie never knew about Annette, by the way, and I’d like
it to stay like that. I don’t think it’ll take Annette long to get someone else to keep her warm at night. And whoever it
is, he has to be an improvement on Charlie.’

Wesley sensed the man was in the mood to talk. And he might as well make the most of it. ‘You’ve met Annette’s daughter, Petronella
Blackwell?’

‘No. I never met her.’

‘Did Annette talk about her?’

The chef shrugged. ‘A bit. She said she had this thing about finding her real mother – about blood being thicker than water.
And Annette said she was very clingy … needy, which seems a bit odd at her age. If you ask me, she sounded a bit unbalanced.’

‘She claims Charles Marrick raped her,’ he said, watching Collins’s reaction carefully.

Collins swore under his breath. ‘That’s sick … his own stepdaughter.’