The Shining Skull (5 page)

He stood up to go.

‘You off already?’ Houldsworth almost sounded disappointed.

‘I’m afraid so. My wife’ll be wondering where I am.’

Houldsworth stared into what was left of his beer. ‘Mine always used to wonder that and all. There comes a time when they
can’t be bothered asking any more.’

Wesley took his leave. The last thing he wanted was for that time to come.

Suzy Wakefield had made the call to the mobile number she had. But she had been told what she didn’t want to hear. Leah wasn’t
where she thought, where she hoped, she might be.

She’d waited an hour before locking the house up. After she’d switched on the alarm she walked as fast as her stiletto heels
would allow her to the triple garage fifty yards from the front door,
her progress lit by the banks of security lights, bright as theatrical spots, installed by her estranged husband, Darren,
when they’d first moved in.

She drove the Mercedes down the steep hill towards the twinkling lights of Neston. She knew where Leah was likely to go: the
only pocket of urban sophistication in the town mainly populated by New Age hippies and elderly ladies. She would be propping
up the bar of the Castle Top Hotel, the best hotel in town with a Michelin starred restaurant.

The Castle Top was the place where the rich kids hung out – the ones from London whose parents owned second homes in the area.
On a few occasions Leah had invited them back and, after one impromptu party, Suzy had had to call in a firm of cleaners.
Suzy had never taken to that crowd of rich kids with their arrogant braying and their lack of respect for other people’s property
but she hoped Leah would be with them now, safe. Although the state she was in, she’d probably be flat on her back being screwed
in the back of a Mercedes by now. Suzy suspected that chivalry wasn’t their strong point.

But it seemed her journey was wasted. None of the bright young things at the Castle Top had seen Leah that evening and she
hadn’t booked into that hotel or any other in the vicinity. Suzy wandered through the narrow, winding streets of Neston looking
into every pub she passed. But she saw nobody who remotely resembled Leah.

She had to think. Leah must have called a taxi with her mobile – which was now, frustratingly, switched off. Suzy hurried
back to the Mercedes and drove back home. That nutcase was about – the one they called the Barber. She had heard about it
on the local news. But the possibility that Leah had fallen into his hands was something she didn’t like to contemplate.

She had calls to make. Darren. Brad. Any of Leah’s ex-boyfriends she could think of. Leah Wakefield had to be somewhere. And
she wasn’t an easy girl to miss.

At nine thirty the next morning Wesley telephoned the guesthouse and asked to speak to the man who was claiming to be Marcus
Fallbrook. He was using the name Mark Jones and Wesley wondered how many other names he’d used in the course of his life.
But then he had a suspicious mind. The job had made him that way.

He had ordered the case files and they had arrived on his desk first thing. Glancing through them, he caught the gist of the
bare facts. The seven-year-old child disappearing from his exclusive prep school one lunchtime: the nanny, Jenny Booker, driving
there in her Mini to bring him home at three thirty and finding he wasn’t there.

The school had been criticised for not informing the parents right away that he wasn’t in class. They’d said it was a regrettable
breakdown in communication – Marcus had been due for a dental appointment that week and the teacher taking the register that
afternoon had assumed she’d marked the day down wrongly. And besides, Wesley thought, this was in the days before people saw
paedophiles behind every bush – things had been more relaxed back then.

The family had received ransom notes and phone calls from public telephone boxes but nothing had yielded any solid clues.
In fact, the file was surprisingly thin. The ransom of fifteen thousand pounds was left in the specified place and it was
picked up. But the child was never returned and the pessimistic view at the time was that young Marcus Fallbrook was dead,
although a body had never been found.

Reading through the file, Wesley found that, in addition to the bare facts, he wanted to find out about the gossip surrounding
the family and the suspicions of the officers working on the case at the time. He knew only too well that not everything finds
its way into official statements and reports . . . especially in a sensitive case like the abduction of Marcus Fallbrook.

Mark Jones had offered to meet at ten thirty on neutral ground and Wesley had suggested the waterfront next to the old cannon.
He’d been about to quip that he’d be wearing a carnation in his button hole and carrying a copy of
The Times
but he’d thought better of it. This matter was no joke. For the Fallbrooks it was deadly serious.

He looked into Gerry Heffernan’s office before he left the police station.

‘I’m going to meet this bloke who’s claiming to be Marcus Fallbrook. Want to come with me?’

Heffernan looked up and scratched his head. He had the look of a trapped animal. ‘Sorry, Wes. Got to go and see the Chief
Super – he wants to know how we’re getting on with the Barber case. He says we have to reassure the public.’

Wesley rolled his eyes to heaven. ‘Reassure them? Surely we should be warning them to be on their guard. Good luck. Fancy
coming with me to talk to Houldsworth at lunchtime?’ Somehow he didn’t relish the prospect of venturing into the Bentham Arms
alone again.

Heffernan’s eyes lit up. ‘Try and stop me. See you later.’

He watched the chief inspector disappearing through the office door. He knew that the boss would much rather be interviewing
Mark Jones. And Wesley would have valued his opinion too. He looked around the office and saw that Rachel Tracey was out.
She was talking to local taxi firms, trying to trace ex-employees. Everyone would feel relieved once the Barber was caught.

He would have to meet Mark Jones – or Marcus Fallbrook – alone, which was probably for the best. After all, he didn’t want
to frighten the man off by arriving mob handed. He sat at his desk for a while wondering how to play the situation and eventually
he decided that he’d let Jones do all the talking. Awkward questions could wait until he had all the details of the case at
his fingertips. And the more people were allowed to talk, the more they gave themselves away.

He left the police station and took a short cut through the Memorial Park. It was almost deserted apart from a couple of council
employees sweeping the pathways. The fine drizzle had stopped but a veil of mist hung over the river that rippled, battleship
grey, in front of him. It was the sort of day the Irish described as ‘soft’. As far as Wesley knew, Devonians didn’t have
a word for it, which was surprising because such days were as common there as sunny ones were in his parents’ native Trinidad.

He walked on down the esplanade. Moored yachts bobbed on the river to his left, not as many now as in the height of summer.
The town seemed quiet as he carried on past the ferry’s landing stage and the harbour master’s office.

The streets and waterfront that had been invaded by an army of tourists throughout the summer now belonged once more to the
town’s inhabitants, to the relief of most except those who made their living by the holiday trade. The local police usually
breathed a collective sigh of relief in September. But not this year. Not with the Barber about.

Wesley could see the cannon ahead. It dated from the Crimean War and stood proudly at the end of the esplanade, overlooking
the place where the car ferry plied to and fro. In the summer, children swarmed over it but now that part of the esplanade
was deserted apart from a solitary figure. A man in early middle age; average height; thin with cropped hair; a pale face
and full lips. He wore jeans and a sweatshirt that had seen better days and a pair of scuffed trainers. If this was Adrian
Fallbrook’s brother, he had slid several rungs down the social ladder.

Wesley slowed his steps, studying the man who was leaning against the cannon, staring at the yachts bobbing at anchor on the
high tide. It was him all right. In spite of the differences in height, age and colouring, the resemblance to Adrian Fallbrook
was remarkable. The shape of the face, the set of the jaw, the shape of the eyes. Surely no impostor could achieve the subtle
family likeness, Wesley thought to himself as he walked forwards, his eyes fixed on his quarry.

‘Mark Jones?’

The man swung round, his face wary. Suddenly Wesley’s resolution to let the man talk himself out of his inheritance faltered.
He wanted to ask questions. He wanted answers.

‘Mr Jones, I’m DI Peterson, Tradmouth CID.’ He glanced up at the leaden sky. If they stayed there much longer, it would start
to rain. ‘I know a place that serves a good cup of tea.’ He smiled to put the man at his ease and began to lead the way to
the Scone and Kettle, a place he judged to be relaxing and unthreatening despite the establishment’s reputation as the most
haunted café in Tradmouth.

Once they had ordered tea, Wesley studied the man sitting opposite him awkwardly, like a gangling teenager at a family party.
He noticed that his green eyes were watchful and wary. But then, if his story was true, that would hardly be surprising.

‘I know this isn’t easy for you but Adrian Fallbrook had no choice. He had to tell us about your visit. Your – Marcus Fallbrook’s
– kidnapping was a very serious crime.’

‘Yeah. I know’ Wesley was surprised that the man had a Manchester accent: somehow he had expected him to be well spoken .
. . or even to have a faint West-Country twang. ‘Look, thanks for meeting me. I didn’t know what to do and . . . ’

‘That’s OK,’ said Wesley. ‘Do you feel up to talking about what happened?’

Jones nodded. ‘It’s all a bit hazy. I had an accident about six
months ago. I got knocked down by a car. Hit and run . . . just banged my head. No bones broken.’

The words ‘how convenient’ sprung into Wesley’s mind, but he suppressed them swiftly.

‘You went to hospital?’

‘Yeah. I thought I’d better get it checked out and they said I had concussion and kept me in overnight. I thought I was OK
but then I started to have these headaches . . . and flashbacks.’

‘You saw a doctor about the headaches?’

Suddenly Jones looked uncomfortable. ‘Not once I’d left the hospital. The headaches got better on their own, like. No need
to bother the quack. Don’t like doctors. Don’t know why, I just don’t.’

Wesley began to pour tea from the white china pot into the cups, watching the man’s face while he played mother. ‘Look, why
don’t you just start at the beginning and tell me everything you remember?’ he said as he slid the cup towards his companion.

Jones took a sip of tea and sighed. ‘I never remembered anything about when I was very young. The first thing I remember was
living in a caravan. It was in Ireland. I remember being happy. And climbing trees and that.’

‘Do you remember your parents?’

He frowned. ‘There were lots of grown-ups. Don’t know which were my parents.’

‘It was a sort of . . . commune?’

Jones looked at Wesley and nodded. ‘Yeah. I suppose it must have been. They went round in old caravans . . . and old buses.
I remember the old buses.’

‘Can you remember how you came to be there?’

There was a long silence. Then he shook his head. ‘It was only after the accident I started to remember things. Like I said,
I started having flashbacks . . . dead vivid. I was at this school where we had to wear these shorts and blazers and ties.
We had these lessons. Maths. And Latin. Honest to God, I’d never been to a school like that in my life.’

‘Then you started to remember more?’

‘Yeah. These flashbacks come at any time; when I’m walking down the road; or lying in bed trying to get to sleep. I’ve been
having dreams too . . . about this house and these people who had a boat. And I was taken to the school every day by this
girl with
blond hair. She had a Mini – a blue Mini. And people were calling me Marcus. And there was a piano that played by itself.
And I had a tree house. I remember the tree house. Then there was the smell . . . the river and the seaweed. When I hired
a boat and went on the river, it all came back. That smell . . . salty, like.’

Wesley noticed that the man’s eyes were starting to fill with tears.

‘So how did you find out where the Fallbrooks’ house was?’

Jones smiled, showing a row of uneven teeth. ‘That was the lucky bit. There was this article in the paper about unsolved crimes
of the nineteen seventies. There was a picture of a kid and it was like a bell started ringing in me head. I knew it were
me when I was little. Marcus. That’s who I was. There was a picture of the house and all – Mirabilis. It all clicked.’

Wesley nodded. Houldsworth had mentioned this particular article.

Jones continued. ‘Then I decided to come down here and . . . Well, I took a motor boat out on the river and I saw the house
on the bank through the trees. And I knew . . . But knocking on that door was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in me life,
believe me.’ The man spoke with such sincerity that Wesley’s initial scepticism was fading.

‘Do you remember anything about your abduction?’ Wesley suddenly realised that he was speaking to Mark Jones as though his
story was genuine. But perhaps he’d known from the moment he’d clapped eyes on him, from the moment he’d seen the resemblance
between him and Adrian Fallbrook, that he was indeed Marcus Fallbrook, the child returned to life.

‘I remember the school and living with the travellers but the rest is just all vague. Sorry.’

‘You might remember one day.’

‘Now I’m down here things are coming back to me all the time. And I want to remember. I want to know what happened to me.’
Mark Jones sounded as though he meant it.

‘How long were you with the travellers in Ireland?’

‘I don’t know. It seemed like a long time but . . . I think they were more New Age travellers than the traditional type. One
of them – Carrie she was called – took me to Manchester with her. I remember going on the train. She left me there with Aunty
Lynne and I lived there till I left school and got a job in a supermarket.
Then I worked at the airport – baggage handling – but I got sick of that so now I work in a garden centre.’