The Shroud Maker (36 page)

‘So what went wrong?’

‘One night I went to Miles’s house as arranged. I didn’t tell my friends where I was because he said Chris didn’t want anybody to know. Before he started working we had some wine but he must have put something in it because when I came round I found myself in that room.’ She shuddered and looked away. ‘He told me he was going to keep me there. He loved beautiful things and he didn’t intend to let me go.’

‘Did he… assault you?’ Rachel asked carefully.

Jenny shook her head. ‘He said he wanted to keep me there like a manikin and he came to me when he wanted to draw or paint me. Nothing else.’

‘Did you try to escape?’

‘Yes but he’d made sure the place was secure. He used to bring me food. And things to read. Books about medieval life. And there was this old book by Josiah Palkin-Wright. He said he was his great-great-uncle or something. He said Josiah used to keep women in the attic but they died. There was always that threat. If I didn’t behave myself I’d end up like Josiah’s women. He used to bring me wine every night. I knew it was drugged and a couple of times I tried not to drink it but he forced me.’ She shuddered at the memory and tears began to fill her eyes.

‘You must have been terrified,’ said Gerry.

Jenny looked straight at him. Her glistening eyes seemed huge against the thinness of her face. ‘He said he wanted to collect beautiful things and I was the first thing in his collection. I was just an object to him. Hardly human.’ The panic began to rise in her voice. ‘I didn’t think I’d get out of there alive.’

‘Did you ever see anyone else with Miles?’ Rachel asked.

Jenny’s eyes widened. ‘I saw him with Chris’s wife once. But that’s not surprising because he’s her brother. That’s how he got the job illustrating Shipworld. He told me all about it.’

Gerry and Rachel looked at each other. Pixie had been right all along. Miles and Chris were related. By marriage.

‘Did Chris’s wife know about you and her husband?’

‘We were very discreet. As far as I know Astrid just thought I was Miles’s model.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I’m tired. Can we do this another time?’

Gerry stood up. ‘We’ll leave you in peace, love. Thanks for talking to us.’ He nodded to Rachel. They’d learned enough for now.

‘Do you think Astrid manipulated Miles Carthage?’ Rachel asked as they walked down the corridor. ‘Was she pulling the strings all along?’

‘It’s something we’ll have to look into. On the other hand his behaviour was hardly normal, was it? Who’s to say he saw nothing wrong in holding a woman captive just because he wanted to paint her.’

‘He painted Kassia Graylem too. I wonder if he feared Jenny would die on him and he was preparing Kassia as her replacement with his sister’s encouragement.’ She paused. ‘Strange to think that if he had imprisoned her, she might still be alive.’

Gerry raised his eyebrows. ‘The lesser of two evils. Although I’m not sure Jenny Bercival would agree with you.’

‘But something went wrong and Kassia died. We just have to find out why.’

Astrid Butcher had told herself that Chris stayed with her because she was different from the others, those girls with their russet tresses and simpering faces who were so devoted to Chris’s weird fantasy world that they were willing to disfigure their flesh with tattoos. But the fear that he might abandon her for one of them was always there, and life without him would be a kind of death so she’d taken steps to protect herself. Self-preservation is no crime whatever the law might say.

In some ways she’d felt responsible for her little brother since they were children – Miles with his obsession with beauty and their family connection to Josiah Palkin-Wright.

It had started when he was fifteen and he’d become fixated on a girl called Laura who’d been a year his senior. Laura with her long copper hair and cat’s face. At first their parents had imagined that his obsession was connected with his prodigious artistic talent… combined with the natural preoccupations of an adolescent boy.

Then there had been the incident. Laura had agreed to meet him and he had locked her in a shed, saying he wanted to keep her for himself. The girl had been frightened but unharmed and Astrid had leaped to her brother’s defence, saying it had been a harmless prank, although Miles himself had been unable to see that he’d done anything wrong.

Their parents had managed to persuade Laura’s family not to take things any further and nothing more had been said. Much later on, when Chris’s infidelities grew too much for her to bear, she remembered Laura and wondered if she could turn Miles’s obsession, his lack of empathy with the human beings he chose to collect, to her advantage.

Miles had left home to go to art college in London and later he’d moved to Tradmouth to the house he’d inherited from their great-uncle – the house that had once belonged to Josiah Palkin-Wright. Astrid had persuaded Chris to give him work but she’d always known that one day he might be useful to her. Poor damaged Miles was like a loaded gun. All Astrid had to do was to provide the ammunition and let him take her revenge for her.

She heard a knock on the door of her hotel room and hurried to answer it. There was nothing they could accuse her of. If Miles had chosen to deal with the girls who were making his sister’s life a misery, that was nothing to do with her.

It was the big Liverpudlian DCI and the cool blonde. At least she wasn’t Chris’s type, she thought as she invited them to sit.

‘We’d like to talk about your brother, Miles Carthage.’

‘I don’t have much to do with him. We fell out when he inherited my great-uncle’s house and I was left nothing. You know what families are like,’ she said, confident that she had taken the wind out of DCI Heffernan’s sails.

He went on to outline what they’d found at North Lodge and what Jenny had told them and Astrid put her hand to her mouth, feigning horrified amazement.

‘Miles was always obsessed with collecting beautiful things. When we were growing up he had problems but I never realised…’ She shook her head, hoping she sounded convincing. Then it suddenly occurred to her how foolhardy her plans had been. How had she imagined it would end? With the girls’ deaths? With Miles in jail? Perhaps she’d been so blinded by jealousy that she hadn’t thought beyond that first, glorious revenge.

‘Where’s Miles now?’ she asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the blonde. ‘He jumped into the sea. The lifeboat was called out but there was no sign of him. I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

Astrid put her head in her hands. Sometimes collateral damage was inevitable. Besides, she was sick of feeling responsible for her brother. And, although she’d placed the ideas in his head and fed his fantasies, she could never be blamed for what happened if he wasn’t in a position to point the finger.

But she was puzzled by some of the accusations the police appeared to be making against him. The Miles she knew was incapable of strangling Kassia and there was no way he’d have murdered the sailor from the
Maudelayne
. Or the man in the holiday park swimming pool. Miles had only wanted to look, to collect and possess.

‘Miles wasn’t a killer,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do the things you said.’

‘Tell that to Jenny Bercival,’ said the blonde with a look of sheer contempt.

Wesley had left the search and returned to the station. There was nothing he could do, and even though it looked as if the case was solved he wasn’t inclined to celebrate. Miles Carthage was probably dead and Wesley kept asking himself whether he’d really been responsible for his actions. The news that he was Astrid’s brother had come as a surprise, although he did recall Butcher saying something about his wife having relatives in Tradmouth. He just wished he’d made the connection.

There was always the possibility that Miles had been manipulated by his sister but, without Miles’s evidence, that would be almost impossible to prove in a court of law.

Gerry and Rachel had gone to talk to Astrid Butcher and they’d probably bring her in to conduct a formal interview. After the events of the day, Wesley didn’t want to see her. Fortunately there was plenty to do in the CID office, plenty to take his mind off the memory of Miles Carthage running headlong down that rock and plunging into the swirling water below.

He had just returned to his desk when his phone began to ring. When he answered the caller’s voice was unfamiliar.

‘DI Peterson? Do you remember you asked if there have been any similar murders to your girl in the boat, here or abroad? It’s taken some time for the various forces to get back to us but now information’s come through that there’ve been several similar cases in France. I’ll get the details together and e-mail them to you.’

Wesley thanked the caller. Now that it looked as though they had their killer, the matter lacked urgency, but he was curious all the same.

He noticed a yellow Post-it note stuck on the edge of his computer screen. Ring Mrs Betham. Someone must have left it there while he was out of the office.

While he was waiting for the information about the French cases to appear in his in-box he dialled Mrs Betham’s number, wondering what she had to tell him. In a short conversation he learned that she’d found some photographs her husband had taken of the Graylems and the Wentworths shortly before the terrible accident. Would he like her to e-mail them through? Wesley had said yes, he’d be grateful. Then she’d told him that her husband had remembered the Wentworth boy’s name. Rory.

When he saw that the e-mail from Mrs Betham had arrived, he opened the attachment. He scrolled through the photographs, concentrating on the faces. Then he called Trish over to his desk.

‘Does he look familiar to you?’

Trish stared at the screen. Then she studied the pictures arrayed on the noticeboard at the far end of the room.

‘It certainly looks like him.’

‘Only in those days he called himself Rory Wentworth.’

Wesley studied the image on the screen more closely. The face was younger, fuller, and the hair was shorter, but the smile was the same as he stood on a quayside for posterity, stripped to the waist.

‘I take it he’s still in Tradmouth?’

Trish nodded. ‘As far as I know.’

‘I think we should have a word.’

He could see from the keen look on Trish’s face that she was longing to go with him. Nevertheless he wanted to be sure of the facts before he acted.

‘I need to have another look at the report into the accident that killed Kassia’s parents.’

‘I’ll dig it out again.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. He had always been able to rely on Trish.

The Palkin Festival was reaching its climax and the town was packed in anticipation of a fly-past by the Red Arrows followed by a grand firework display as soon as darkness fell, all in honour of John Palkin.

The report on the boating accident which had resulted in the deaths of Kassia Graylem’s parents raised some interesting questions, as did the death of a young girl in a boating accident on the south coast the year before – a girl who went out alone in a sailing dinghy and disappeared, her body swept away by the tides, never to be found. A witness speculated that she’d probably hit her head on the boom of the boat and fallen into the sea and the story had been accepted at the time because that witness had been Carlton Wentworth, a widowed barrister on holiday with his teenage son. Unimpeachable. Wesley googled Wentworth’s name and when he saw the results he smiled.

He’d also read the e-mails forwarded from police forces in France after he’d contacted them to request an e-fit of their suspect; when the information came through he cursed himself for not checking sooner.

When Gerry returned from his interview with Astrid Butcher, he told him not to worry about it. However, Wesley, a natural worrier, couldn’t help it.

Wesley hurried to the office of Tradmouth Charters, and after he found it closed and empty he made a couple of phone calls and obtained the number of Jonathan Petworth, the owner of the business.

Petworth sounded surprised when Wesley introduced himself and explained that he’d decided to close the office for the final day of the festival, same as he did every year. They hardly did any business with all the commotion going on and besides, he always joined in on the final day. It was a sort of tradition.

‘Do you know where we can find Jason Teague?’ Wesley asked.

‘He said something about going to the festival. Why?’

‘Have you known him long?’

‘We were at school together.’ Wesley detected something guarded about the answer, a caution which suggested there was something behind the simple statement. He wished he could see the man face to face.

‘You must trust him if you’re going into partnership with him.’

There was a short silence on the other end of the line before Petworth spoke again. ‘Is that what he told you?’

‘Isn’t it true?’

Petworth hesitated. ‘He said it suited him to stay in Tradmouth for a while and he asked if I had any work for him. I said he could make sure everything was OK when the punters returned the boats. That’s it.’

‘He was in your office when we called a few days ago.’

‘He’d come in to return some keys.’

‘You sound as though you don’t trust him.’

Another silence.

‘I think we should have a word, Mr Petworth.’

Petworth agreed meekly to come down to his office to meet him. He lived nearby and he’d be there in two minutes. As Wesley waited by the entrance to the converted warehouse, those two minutes seemed to pass slowly. He needed to speak to Jason Teague’s school friend in order to learn all he could about the man. After all, knowledge was power.