Beneath the Soil (6 page)

There was a glimpse of sunlight ahead beneath overarching trees. Dave was already standing at the roadside, holding out an arm.

She saw the red bus come to a halt. Dave was scrambling aboard. Tom waited by the open door, holding the bus up until she got there. Breathless, she clambered up the steps and showed her ticket.

She collapsed thankfully into a vacant seat. If they had missed this bus, they would have had to wait another hour.

Tom grinned at her from the seat across the aisle. ‘Well done, Mum. I didn't know you could run that fast.'

She watched the farmland flow past on the way back to Moortown. Tom and Dave were chatting away, with no thought to keep their voices down.

‘What do you think's going on, then?'

‘No idea. Do you suppose they've hit on something underground? Coal? Oil?' Dave wondered.

‘Out here in the middle of a farm? Is that likely?'

‘Search me. Maybe it's the site for an archaeological dig. Plenty of that around here – Bronze Age, Iron Age, medieval.'

‘Think about that little car that pulled out from the verge ahead of us,' said Tom, ‘It didn't say “archaeologist” to me. I'd have expected something a bit more rugged.'

‘And why would he shoot his wife over some Bronze Age village?'

Suzie felt the woman in the seat beside her stiffen.

‘Are those your boys?'

‘One of them is,' Suzie admitted. ‘The black-haired one.'

‘They ought not to be speaking ill of Philip Caseley. He's got enough on his lap, poor man.'

‘You know him?'

‘Most of us round here know Philip. And Eileen, God rest her soul.'

‘And what do you think happened?'

‘It's not for me to say. You've been on Philip's land then?'

‘We …' Suzie looked sideways at the woman. About her own age, or a little older. A broad, strong face. She had a clutch of carrier bags on the floor at her feet. She must have been shopping in the bigger market town further south. ‘Last Saturday, we were taking a walk in Saddlers Wood. We wanted to see where my ancestors lived. We met the Caseleys. First Philip, then he sent us up to the farm to see Eileen. So when we heard … Well, there was someone else in the woods that afternoon. We just thought … well, there could be something there that might help Philip.'

‘Another man? I don't see what good that's likely to do him.'

‘No. Unless … But why should anyone else want to shoot her?'

‘You'd be better off minding your own business. But you can tell those boys they're wrong if they think Philip would allow those mining people on to his land. He's like the rest of us. Wouldn't want anything to do with them. Tearing up the countryside, turning the place into an eyesore. And all those lorries and the dust. There's some that will do it for the money, but not Philip.'

‘Mining? For what?'

But the bus had drawn up in the square at Moortown. The woman hurried to gather up her shopping bags. Suzie stepped out into the aisle to let her pass. Her question was left hanging in the air, unanswered.

‘You did
what
?' Nick exploded.

‘Give us a break, Dad.' Tom was flourishing the survey point nail he had brought back as a trophy from their expedition. ‘We found this, didn't we? Something's going on there. It's not just the run-down, back-of-beyond place we thought it was. If whoever was using this is right, Philip Caseley could be sitting on a gold mine. Well, not literally … though, come to think of it, why not? Who knows what might be lying under that granite? Anyone here know about geology?'

The rest of the family looked back at him blankly.

‘It could just be someone with enough money to pick himself a site for a one-off house out in the country,' said Nick. ‘From what you say, it was outside the woods. Great views, I should imagine. One survey nail is hardly proof that he's prospecting for minerals.'

‘You're an architect. You would say that,' Tom retorted.

‘I'm a sensible enough bloke to know that building a house is a far more likely explanation than what you're suggesting. And just supposing for the sake of argument that you're right, what would that have to do with Eileen Caseley's murder?'

Tom let the nail fall on to the kitchen table with a sigh. It rolled in a half circle before it came to rest.

‘You've got me there. Mum tried to tell the police before that there might be something going on in the woods, but it doesn't look as if they've followed it up. No police tape across the footpath, or round the old cottage. We could just come and go as we pleased. And, of course, she was telling them to look in the woods nearer the farm. We didn't know then that the really interesting stuff was further on.'

‘And further away from the farmhouse where Eileen Caseley was shot.'

‘You think it was just domestic violence, don't you, Dad?' Millie spoke up from the door of the conservatory. ‘You think she was having it off with somebody and he took a gun to her.'

Nick paused before he spoke. Suzie saw how he was struggling to envisage this.

‘It's hard to say. I only saw him for a few minutes, and Eileen Caseley for – what? – half an hour. I wouldn't say either of them was behaving normally. We've no way of knowing whether they were upset because of something that had happened between them, or whether the fact that there was someone else on their land besides us had anything to do with it.'

‘He might have fired that shot to warn her,' Millie said.

‘Whatever it is,' Suzie put in, ‘this is evidence. The police can't work out what happened unless they have the whole picture. We need to tell them.'

Nick threw up his hands. ‘I know when I'm beaten. If you'd asked me, I'd have told you to stay away from a crime scene and not go muddying the waters. But what's done is done. You've trampled all over the area around the cottage, and now that surveying site you found. So, yes, you'd better go ahead and tell the police what you've done.'

‘And what we've found,' Suzie argued. ‘And if I hadn't been there, that woman on the bus wouldn't have told me about someone wanting to open a mine in the area, and how the locals are up in arms against it. Philip might have stood to gain from it, but from what she said he was dead set against mining too.'

‘Do we march round to police headquarters waving this at them?' Tom asked, brandishing the large nail again. ‘Or ring them up first?'

‘A phone call would be best,' Suzie suggested. ‘Make sure we get to talk to the right person.'

She realized they were all looking at her. She coloured.

‘I don't know why I let myself get dragged into this. I tried to tell Tom not to go. But then I thought, well, maybe there ought to be someone there with their head screwed on.'

‘Thanks, Mum,' Tom grinned, ‘for that ringing vote of confidence in your offspring.'

‘It's
because
you're my offspring,' she said darkly. ‘I know you too well. All right then. I suppose it'll have to be me.'

She picked up the telephone in the hall with reluctance. ‘Could I speak to someone about the Eileen Caseley case? The murder at Moortown? …'

She came back to the kitchen to report.

‘They're still over at the incident room in Moortown. We must have passed it on the bus. But she'll see us at the police headquarters here at nine tomorrow morning.'

‘She?' asked Millie.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Brewer.'

T
om and Suzie marched up the steps of the police headquarters; Tom juggled the large survey nail in his hand. Halfway up he stopped. He looked back. Suzie turned as well.

Dave stood at the foot of the steps. His face, below the ginger hair, was pale. Suzie saw the scared expression in his eyes as he looked up at the police station entrance.

Tom was at his side in a few strides. ‘It's OK, man. You're on their side now. Queen's evidence. No one's going to hold the past against you. It never was your fault, anyway.'

Dave gulped. Suzie's heart ached with sudden realization. Two years ago, a teenage girl had died. Tom had fallen under suspicion of her murder, and Dave had concealed vital facts that could have cleared him. In the end, the verdict had been accidental death. Dave had received a suspended sentence for withholding evidence.

Suzie could see him now reliving that nightmare as the police station loomed above him.

Slowly, reluctantly, he let Tom lead him up the steps.

‘Can't you see, it will work in your favour?' Tom was saying. ‘Another murder … Idiot! I mean another violent death, and you're bang on the nail with evidence. They can't criticize you this time, can they? Don't worry. I'll do the talking.'

Tom has this sunny confidence, Suzie thought, that he has only to flash those bright blue eyes at anyone and throw them that engaging smile and they'll fall at his feet. To be honest, people usually did.

Chief Detective Inspector Alice Brewer was intimidatingly tall. The impression was heightened by her long, thin face and the even longer, fairish hair which fell straight to her collarbones. She was beanpole slim.

She looked at the three of them, seated before her. Her eyes settled on Suzie. ‘I'm told you have information concerning the death of Eileen Caseley. Do you want to tell me about it?'

Suzie had half expected this, whatever Tom's assertion that he would speak for them. She had been the one who made the phone call to book this appointment. For all Tom's ready confidence, she was his mother, a generation older.

‘I suppose I ought to start with last Saturday. We … that is, my husband and I and my son and daughter, were out in Saddlers Wood …'

‘Your husband has already signed a statement about that,' DCI Brewer said crisply. ‘Shall we get to the point?'

Suzie was beginning to feel not so much a mature adult as a chastened schoolgirl.

‘Tom, my son, and Dave thought there might be more to the incident in the woods. They wanted to have another look. I tried to dissuade him at first, but when I saw he was set on going I decided it might be better if I went too.'

‘So. You tried to dissuade him. You obviously thought it was a bad idea.'

Suzie felt herself colouring. ‘Nobody seemed very interested in what we said about someone else being there in the woods, possibly hiding from us. But I couldn't be sure that you weren't taking it more seriously than you let us know.'

The chief inspector's fingertips drummed on the table.

‘But then,' Suzie went on, ‘when we got near the farm, we could see that there was no police tape across the footpath that led to that clearing. And there was none when we got to the ruined cottage. It didn't look as though you were treating it as part of the crime scene. But Tom and Dave went on further than we did on Saturday. They found this area outside the wood, like a small piece of moorland. And somebody, probably more than one person, had certainly been there, trampling all over the place.'

‘So you thought you would trample all over it too? How did you know it wasn't the police who had been there?'

‘I found this!' Tom exclaimed, lifting up the long, broad nail he had been holding under the table. ‘Doesn't look as though there'd been a police search, does it? You could hardly have missed this.'

DCI Brewer took a tissue from a box on the table. She reached across and took the nail from Tom, holding it carefully in the paper. She examined the raised lettering on the head, then laid it on the table in front of her. When she leaned her long thin neck towards Tom her eyes were steely.

‘I
see
. You thought you'd play detective in a murder case. You decided the police weren't up to the job. So all three of you trample in with your footprints all over the scene. You pick up what, by your own admission, you believed to be vital evidence. With your grubby hands. You make no attempt to preserve any fingerprints that might be on it. A single phone call was all it needed. I was only two miles away in Moortown. I could have had a squad of officers over there in minutes. We could have done a
professional
search.' The adjective was loaded with scorn. ‘But no, you knew better.'

Suzie saw Tom blush fiercely as her words hit home.

‘It was my fault,' she protested. ‘I found it first.'

Tom ignored her. ‘You didn't seem to be taking our first report seriously,' he countered.

‘How did you know what we might or might not have done yesterday morning? The police are not obliged to report to the Fewings family on how they are handling this case.'

Suzie felt herself growing smaller in her chair.

She tried to defend Tom – all of them. ‘It could be significant, couldn't it? You've arrested Philip Caseley. I've no idea what went on between him and Eileen. But I talked to a woman on the bus back to Moortown. There
is
someone interested in opening up mining in this area, and the local people are dead against it, including Philip. It may have nothing to do with his wife's death, but it suggests evidence that there was some hostility, doesn't it? We saw Philip going down that path on Saturday. And we're pretty sure there was someone else in the woods.'

‘Yes. I have your report in front of me. And why, precisely, would that be a motive for that person to kill Eileen Caseley?'

Her voice was icy. She went on relentlessly.

‘And if there
was
any evidence of value in this area you're talking about, you seem to have done your best to ensure that there will be nothing left for the police to find. One phone call. That was all it needed. You didn't even have to
touch
this nail. I'll get an officer to take your statements.'

They were dismissed like naughty children.

‘I told you I didn't want to come!' Dave burst out at the foot of the steps.