The Flesh Tailor (11 page)

Dave was squatting in the trench they’d created, scraping away at the ground. Neil stepped cautiously into the area beside
him and adjusted his kneeling mat before lowering himself to his knees and taking his trowel from his coat pocket. At first
they worked without speaking until Dave broke the expectant silence.

‘I’ve got something here.’

From the way he said it, Neil knew that his fears were about to be confirmed. ‘What is it?’ He leaned across to look at the
place where Dave was digging and saw something like yellowed ivory emerging from the darkness of the soil. Bone.

‘Could be animal of course,’ Dave said, trying to sound optimistic.

Both men carried on digging. Soon another piece of bone appeared beneath Neil’s trowel.

‘We’ll photograph this,’ he said quietly, reaching for the digital camera and the measuring stick that lay on a plastic tray
at the edge of the trench.

Carefully recording every new bone that emerged from its shroud of Devon earth, they continued in silence.

Then, as the sun began to set and the rooks started
crying from the trees that stretched their bony branches up to the darkening sky, the skeleton appeared, whole and articulated
as before. It lay grinning up at them as though it was pleased to have some attention at last; as though it had kept its secrets
for many years and now wanted the truth about its fate to come out into the light.

‘How many more of them are down there?’ Neil said softly and he put down the camera.

Dave sat back on his heels and shook his head.

All patrols were on the lookout for the hire car driven by Brian and Syd Trenchard, or rather the two men who were calling
themselves Brian and Syd Trenchard.

When Wesley returned to the incident room at Neston Police Station, the first thing he did was to examine their witness statements.
They’d certainly said nothing that aroused suspicion. The two men had hardly known Dalcott; had had no relationship with him
whatsoever as far as anybody knew. They’d claimed to have been out visiting friends at the time of the murder and returned
to find the floodlit circus of a full crime scene investigation had landed on their doorstep. Bit of a shock, they’d told
the officer who’d spoken to them. But now it looked as if they might have been lying. Especially as the address they claimed
they were visiting in Morbay didn’t exist.

It was five o’clock and dark outside and Wesley could see car headlights passing the window. The view was very different here
in the open-plan ground floor office at Neston to the vista they enjoyed in the CID office at Tradmouth – the view over the
Memorial Gardens to the River Trad with its bobbing yachts and the steep town of Queenswear on the far bank. He found that
he missed it:
he hadn’t realised it before, but staring out at the river helped him think.

When his mobile phone rang he looked at the name of the caller and discovered that it was his sister.

‘Hi. How are things?’ he said.

He heard Maritia sigh. ‘Everyone’s in shock at the surgery. The receptionists have started a charity collection in his memory.
Everyone – all the patients – have been coming in. Some have been in tears. Nobody’s talked about anything else all day.’

‘How’s Evonne?’

‘She was here this morning but she had to leave at lunchtime. She was too upset.’

‘Understandable.’

‘Mind you, Keith Graham …’ She hesitated.

‘What about Keith Graham?’ Wesley hoped he didn’t sound too eager, but he really hadn’t taken to the retired senior partner.
Or his wife, for that matter.

‘He’s covering for a few days – just till we can arrange a locum to replace –’ She paused. ‘To tell the truth, Wes, he’s been
getting on my nerves. He’s been talking as if James’s absence is just an inconvenience; as though he’s chosen to go off on
holiday or something.’

‘Want me to arrest him then?’

His sister gave a small giggle. ‘And leave us shorthanded with this new virus going round? No thanks. Mind you, there are
some in the practice who think he’s past it.’

‘Including you?’

There was no answer.

‘Did you ring for any particular reason?’ he asked. It wasn’t like Maritia to call for a chat in working hours.

‘It might not be important, but I had to go into James’s
surgery earlier. I was looking for an instrument and I knew he had one somewhere. I had to look in his desk drawer …’

‘And?’

‘Well, I found something odd. Well, it wasn’t really odd – it’s just that I didn’t know about it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I found some pay slips. They were from this private clinic.’

‘The Podingham Clinic near Podbury? He did some private work there.’

‘You know about it?’

‘I’ve just found a report on my desk from one of the team. We’re following it up.’

‘So long as you know.’ He could hear the disappointment in his sister’s voice.

‘Thanks anyway. If you discover anything else, do let us know.’

As he ended the call it occurred to him that it could be useful to have a contact at the victim’s workplace. And Maritia had
always been observant. If there was anything suspicious, she was bound to sniff it out.

He turned and saw Gerry Heffernan marching towards him. ‘So what’s this about Trish finding someone who knows Dalcott?’

Wesley picked up Trish’s report and held it out. Gerry almost snatched it from his fingers and studied it for a few moments.
‘So this Ken Mold lives next door to Adam Tey and Charleen Anstice and he’s a handyman at this Podingham Clinic where Dalcott
worked part-time?’

‘He says he only knew the doctor by sight. If he’s telling the truth …’

‘If Mold was close to Tey and Anstice he might have felt driven to take some sort of revenge for their kid who died.’

‘But according to both Tey and Mold there’s no love lost between them. Something to do with a dog called Tinkerbell.’

Gerry snorted. ‘It might still be worth having a word.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And tomorrow we’ll visit this Podingham place
and see exactly what Dalcott did there.’

‘I’ve been wondering that myself. My sister’s just called to say she found some pay slips from the Podingham Clinic in Dalcott’s
desk at the surgery. It doesn’t sound as if his colleagues in the practice knew about it. Wonder why he kept quiet?’

‘Moonlighting. It always leads to problems. I remember a DC years back who had a sideline as a bouncer at a Morbay nightclub.
All ended in tears.’

Wesley’s phone began to ring and Gerry plonked himself down heavily in a nearby chair.

When the call was ended Wesley turned to his boss who was sitting with an expectant expression on his face. ‘That was Neil.’
He paused. ‘They’ve turned up another skeleton, probably female. Neil says the bones look old but we still have to get a team
down there, just to make sure.’

Gerry closed his eyes and issued a loud sigh. ‘He’s sure they’re old, is he?’

‘As far as he can tell.’

Gerry’s eyes suddenly flicked open and a mischievous look passed across his face. ‘By the way, Wes, you’re in for a treat.
I found a message on my desk from the Nutter – he wants you to do a TV appeal about Dalcott’s murder. And we’re to get a grieving
relative for maximum impact.’

‘Why me?’

Gerry’s lips curved upwards in a wicked grin. ‘Have you got to ask, Wes? You’re just the right colour to make us look “inclusive”.
Or at least that’s what Nutter says.’

Wesley squirmed in his seat. The last thing he wanted was to be used to make a political point in order to keep Chief Superintendent
Nutter happy. ‘And where do we find a grieving relative? I don’t think Dalcott had any. Only Roz, and she’s hardly the distraught
widow.’

‘It’d be a good way of seeing how she behaves under the spotlight.’

‘She’s pregnant, Gerry. We don’t want to be accused of putting too much pressure on her,’ Wesley said quickly.

He saw the DCI shrug. ‘What about that Evonne, the practice nurse? She seems more cut up about his death than anyone.’

Wesley nodded slowly. If anyone was devastated, it was Evonne. He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better get someone down to Tradington
to have a look at what Neil’s found.’

‘You’re not going yourself ?’

Wesley surveyed the heaps of paperwork on his desk. ‘Wish I could.’

Gerry touched his sleeve. ‘If you’re staying here let’s see what we can find out about George Clipton.’

‘George Clipton?’

‘Remember? The name Dalcott substituted for his father’s on the family tree. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before and I
thought we could Google him or whatever you call it.’

Wesley saw that the DCI was looking at him with the innocent enthusiasm of a puppy who’d just been promised a walk. Gerry
and computers had never really got on and
he usually delegated their use to colleagues and underlings. Wesley had once suggested that he went on a course but he’d pretended
not to hear.

Wesley leaned forward and typed the name George Clipton into the computer on his desk. To his surprise a whole list of sites
flashed up on the screen and he selected the first.

The site was about murderers of the twentieth century and George Clipton featured prominently.

It seemed that George Clipton had strangled his wife and had been hanged for his crime in 1957.

Transcript of recording made by Mrs Mabel Cleary (née Fallon) – Home Counties Library Service Living History Project: Reminiscences
of a wartime evacuee.

Mary wore a sort of uniform and someone said that she was a land girl but I didn’t know what a land girl was back then. I
found out later that there were other land girls working at the farm next door but Mary was the only one who lived at Tailors
Court. I think the others were billeted on the farm and Mary often said to me that she wished she was with them. She didn’t
like it at Tailors Court, she said. The place gave her the creeps.

Anyway, on the day I arrived she showed me where I was going to sleep. It was a little room at the end of the house and she
told me she slept next door which made me feel a bit better. She laughed a lot and she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen
with fair hair and freckles and a turned-up nose.

Once I’d put my things in my room, Mary told me that Miles slept in the other part of the house. Well away from us. And I
felt relieved because I was scared of him, even then.

Wesley arrived home at eight that evening to find Pam nodding off in front of the TV. But after a few seconds she roused herself
and gave him a welcoming kiss before directing him to the kitchen where a spaghetti bolognese awaited him in the microwave.
Having put the children to bed and prepared most of her work for the following day, she looked exhausted – which was exactly
how Wesley felt. However, when she asked about the search for James Dalcott’s killer, she sat forward in her seat, eager for
information. But Wesley just said it was early days. He didn’t feel like discussing the case. Besides, he was hungry.

He took the laptop into the kitchen with him and, as he forked the spaghetti into his mouth, he brought up the list of websites
that mentioned George Clipton’s crimes. He and Gerry had learned the basic facts of the case back in the office. But Wesley
wanted to see what else, if anything, he could discover.

He clicked on a site called ‘Murderous Medics’ and found that it was dedicated to all those members of the medical profession
who had turned to murder. Dr Crippen was there, of course, along with Dr Buck Ruxton, Dr Bodkin Adams, Dr Neil Cream, Dr Harold
Shipman and all those other rogue physicians who had used their medical skills to kill rather than heal. As Wesley scrolled
through the pages, he was struck by the fact that there seemed to be rather a lot of them. Dr George Clipton, a self-effacing
and well-liked general practitioner in a Dorset
village in the 1950s, seemed to be only one of a long line of doctors turned bad.

According to the website, Dr Clipton – like Dr Crippen before him – had only claimed one victim – his wife. But it was hardly
surprising, Wesley thought, that James Dalcott’s adoptive parents had gone to such lengths to keep the truth from him.

Wesley read on. George Clipton had never been confident with women and one day a young teacher called Isabelle Haslem had
come to work at the village school. There followed a tentative courtship between the shy local doctor who’d seemed destined
for eternal bachelorhood and the vivacious new schoolmistress, blonde, lovely and so much younger than he was.

The wedding followed and a son was born two years later but it seemed that Isabelle soon tired of domestic bliss. She hired
a nanny and began to spend most of her time with the local cocktail, golf and bridge set. Then the laughter she shared with
her new friends turned cruel and cynical and her husband was increasingly excluded from her life. Her son ended up seeing
more of his nanny than he did of his mother but, because George loved his wife with the devotion of a faithful dog, he’d said
nothing and refused to listen to the whispers of the local gossips. When all this came out in court, of course, the jury concluded
that it was a classic case of the worm turning. The gentle doctor had been driven beyond endurance and had ended up a murderer.

Wesley began to read the details of the crime itself. Clipton told the police that when James’s nanny had found Isabelle lying
in the quiet lane just a few yards from their house at dusk one evening, he’d been reading in his
study and he claimed he hadn’t heard the nanny when she’d come looking for him. While the nanny rushed to a nearby cottage
to raise the alarm, he went out into the lane to look for Isabelle and found her body, the face battered beyond recognition.
He’d carried her indoors with tears streaming down his face, laying her on the bed and covering her up as though she was asleep.
He claimed that he was in such mental distress that he hadn’t been thinking straight. He’d left the nanny, a Miss Enid Buchanan,
to call the police.