Catch the Fallen Sparrow (14 page)

‘Not carrying a body,' he said.

‘Our murderer might even have still been on the moors when the army trucks arrived,' she said. ‘We didn't ask the soldiers whether they heard vehicles on the move after they began their exercise, did we? Only whether they met anything on the road.'

‘True,' he agreed. ‘True.' He gazed at her. ‘You know, Jo,' he said, ‘I've been thinking. The boy's death – what if it was an accident? A game that suddenly went wrong?'

She nodded. ‘It could have been – according to Cathy Parker. It could have been just a shock ... Vasovagal inhibition she called it.' She grinned. ‘If I remember rightly, she said it would have been rapid, not accompanied by congestion and haemorrhaging, which is why he looked so beautiful and peaceful. A quick and sudden death.'

‘Very good,' he said with a touch of sarcasm. ‘Doctor Levin would be proud of you.'

‘You can't resist an opportunity to dig at him, can you?'

Mike grunted.

She shot him a meaningful look. ‘Perhaps the real crime we're investigating ought to be the abuse – year after year ... Maybe he was the villain.'

‘But the fact remains,' he said, ‘someone did kill him – put their hands around his neck and drag his body up here, douse it in petrol and set it alight. Until we know who, we can't know why or how serious the crime is. We have to catch this person to understand the motive.'

The evening turned to deep dusk. The light was fading and in the blackest part of the crag Joanna saw a movement. She clutched Mike's arm. ‘What the bloody hell is that? Surely the SOC boys have clocked off by now. It's too dark to see anything.'

He laughed. ‘Spooked?'

She peered into the gloom. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘I bloody well am.'

‘Shall I tell you a story?' he said. ‘It's why I find this place so threatening. It was about eight or nine years ago — before you got here. Four people were travelling from Leek to Buxton. The snow blew up and they were trapped in their car. Their bodies were found four days later, frozen. Their car had been so smothered in snow, nothing – not even the aerial – was showing. Friends in Leek assumed they'd got through. The Buxton friends assumed they'd never set out. Telephone lines were down. It was only when the snow plough touched metal that they realized. They told me the four bodies were so frozen together the undertakers had to break their bones to get them apart.'

Joanna shivered. ‘What a horrible story,' she said, looking around at the deepening gloom closing in on them. It would be difficult to find their way down. ‘Let's go, Mike. Come on, I'll buy you that drink.'

Alice watched them stumble down the side of the ridge, heard them roll loose stones. Then she crawled back into the cave.

Chapter Nine

After the hostility of the moors the bright warmth of the pub was welcome. The Winking Man was an old-fashioned pub, untouched since the late nineteen fifties. It consisted of a large, square lounge bar lit by one electric light bulb which swung in the centre of the room from a long, brown plaited flex. Bench seats, covered with wine-red plush reminiscent of 'tween-wars railway carriages, sat uneasily on bumpy stone flags. The tables were round with wooden tops stained with beer rims and stood on wrought-iron legs. Apart from two men huddled in the corner and the barmaid it was empty. All three looked up briefly as the two police officers walked in and Joanna and Mike both knew they had been recognized. It was not a pub for strangers.

Joanna approached the bar. ‘A pint of Theakston's,' she said, ‘and a glass of wine, please.'

In the corner the two men sniggered.

The barmaid was a pleasantly plump lady with strong-looking arms and plenty of wrinkles around her eyes. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, ‘we don't serve wine by the glass. Would cider do?'

Joanna nodded and when the barmaid slid the glasses over the Formica counter she broached the subject. ‘I suppose you've already been questioned by the police,' she said. The woman's eyes grew round. ‘About the dead boy,' she said.

‘We have.' Her face seemed to sink in sadness. ‘Poor little thing.' Her eyes narrowed. ‘You police, are you?'

‘I'm the detective in charge of the case,' Joanna said. ‘Do you live on the premises?'

The barmaid nodded vigorously. ‘With my husband,' she said. ‘We have a few sheep and run the pub.' She chuckled. ‘It don't make us rich but it does us a livin'.'

‘What time do you usually rise in the mornings?'

‘Late.' She grinned. ‘Sometimes not long before eleven. We keep late hours, you see – pub hours. I always clears up before going to bed.'

‘I suppose you've already been asked whether you heard a car on the morning the boy's body was found.'

‘I didn't.' She spoke forcibly. ‘But I heard those ruddy army trucks. Noisy bloody things they are.'

Mike lifted his beer glass to his lips, took a long swig and set it down again, then glanced at Joanna. ‘What about the Flash road, Miss?'

She looked with undisguised pleasure at the tall, muscular policeman with his black hair and dark eyes, then she gave him a coquettish smile. ‘Nobody's asked me about the Flash road,' she said. ‘The main Buxton road was what I was asked about and nothing – only the army lorries – went along there.'

‘I'm asking you about the Flash road, Miss,' he said.

‘I'm Mrs.' She giggled. ‘I did hear something along the Flash road, I remember. It was Monday morning. And I thought, Herbert's taking his cows to Newcastle market a bit early. It was four o'clock. I said to my husband, “What's he going so early for?”'

‘And what did he say?' Joanna asked quietly.

The barmaid gave a look of disgust. ‘He said it weren't Herbert's Land Rover at all. He said it were a car what had gone up a half-hour or so before. And not Herbert. My husband – he don't sleep too well, you see. He gets arthritis – and terrible wind. The doctor's given him some medicine.' She shook her head. ‘It 'aven't done him no good – no good at all.'

She paused and Mike prompted her. ‘The car?' he said.

‘Well ... it's that quiet up 'ere we notices any noises.'

‘I'm sure.' Joanna found it hard to contain her excitement. She glanced triumphantly at Mike and his lips moved. She knew what he was saying. She had been right. The vehicle for some reason had approached from behind the crag not in front. The driver had left the car blocking the Flash road.

‘Did your husband note anything about the car?' she asked. ‘What sort of noise it was, rattles, silencer, noisy?'

The barmaid leaned right across the stained lemon Formica. ‘I thinks it was Herbert's,' she said, still looking Mike Korpanski full in the eye. ‘It sounded exactly like his old thing.' Then she fluttered her eyelids in a gesture meant to convey all that sex might offer but instead managed to look comic. ‘Heavy and slow, if you know what I mean, just like my husband.' She chuckled chestily. ‘And noisy. It was definitely noisy.'

‘Would you both be prepared to come down to the police station and make a statement?'

The barmaid reluctantly peeled her eyes away from Detective Sergeant Korpanski and looked instead at Joanna. ‘Course we would,' she said. ‘Anything what'll get the bastard what did that to the little kid.' Her doughy face dropped. ‘Fancy settin' him on fire. Poor little thing. Do you know who the little beggar was yet?'

‘His name was Dean Tunstall,'Joanna said. ‘He was from the children's home along the Ashbourne road. He was just ten years old.'

‘Poor little mite,' the woman said. ‘Poor little mite.' She looked again at Joanna. ‘What I want to know is – where was his mother?'

It was an important question but one that no one so far had any answer to.

They drank in silence for a while as outside the moors darkened for the night, then one of the men who had been sitting silently in the corner cleared his throat. ‘I'm surprised,' he said gruffly, ‘that you haven't come across the King and Queen yet. They could 'elp you,' he insisted, looking around the room. ‘They could.'

His companion nodded solemnly into his beer glass. Both were dressed in moorlands best – ancient, ill-fitting matted suits covered in suspicious farming stains, exposed braces, collarless shirts and strong, practical boots as durable as clogs. It was hard to be sure from their complexions what was owed to dirt and what was pure weather but their skin had a dark, prickly look.

Mike shot Joanna a sideways look. ‘Nutters,' he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

But Joanna crossed the room. ‘Sorry?' she said politely.

The man gave a toothy chuckle. ‘Didn't know, did you?' His voice held a note of triumph. He had scored – knew something the police didn't.

Joanna sat down opposite him on the plush seat. ‘No,' she said gently, ‘I didn't know.'

She could almost hear Mike snort his scorn from his place at the bar. She knew what he was thinking – that she was a sucker, listening to nutters.

‘Alice and Jonathan.' The man was going to take his time over his story. Without hurrying he took a small drink out of his pint glass, swilled it deliberately around his mouth then swallowed it. He pointed in the direction of the dark crag barely visible through the tiny window at the back of the pub. ‘They lives there,' he said. ‘If anyone saw something it will be Alice. She don't miss nothin' what happens on these moors.'

‘Hang on a minute,' Joanna said, frowning, turning away from the man and staring out of the window. ‘Lives where?'

‘Right by the ridge,' the man said impatiently. ‘In the cave.' He took another deep swig out of his pint pot. ‘Don't tell me you didn't know.'

‘Somebody lives up there?'

The other man cleared his throat now. ‘Calls themselves the King and Queen of the Roaches they do.'

Joanna sat back and gave a deep sigh. ‘Mike,' she said, ‘do we really know
anything
about this case?'

Joanna cycled into the station car park the following morning and glanced at her watch. Not bad – seventeen minutes and thirty-five seconds. She took a deep breath of undisguised pleasure. The day was warm and balmy, the sunshine bright. There had been roadworks on a bad bend between Leek and Cheddleton with long queues either side. She had cycled straight along the pavement and known again she had been quicker than a car. She stretched her arms, ran her fingers through tousled hair then headed towards the station door. A wash, a change, a cup of decaffeinated coffee.

Then her good humour evaporated. A gleaming red Honda was standing in the visitor's space near the entrance. Caroline had arrived.

She was waiting for her as Joanna walked in through the double doors. She moved forwards with the controlled elegance of a cat, in black ski pants and a beautiful white sweater.

‘Jo, darling. It is so good to see you.' She gave a swift glance at the cycling shorts, baggy T-shirt and bare legs. ‘God,' she said explosively, ‘I wish I had my cameraman with me.'

Joanna gave her a wary look. She had not forgotten a particular case where Caroline had used friendship and an intimate dinner party to leak details in the Press. She would never again trust her as a friend.

‘The Press conference is tomorrow,' she said formally. ‘Saturday at eleven.'

‘Oh come on.' Caroline raised her shaped eyebrows a little, threw back a handful of sleek pale hair. ‘We're friends, Joanna. We know each other's little secrets.' She smiled. ‘And a few big ones too.'

It was a distinctly unsavoury warning and although Joanna had been half-expecting something like this she felt as though she had been punched hard in the chest.

‘I can't say much,' she said. ‘We're still in the early stages of the inquiry.'

Caro looked sulky. ‘But I don't want to battle in one of those dreadfully overcrowded Press conferences. Uncivilized – that's what they are – un-civ-i-lized.' She pouted again. ‘Of course,' she said airily, ‘if I can't get enough of a story from this case I might just decide to take a holiday in Greece, follow up a few leads there. You have to admit,' she said with one eye firmly on Joanna, ‘it sounds an interesting story. Scandal of a married, adulterous pathologist. Hint of scandal in female police inspector.' She gave Joanna a sideways glance. ‘I could have a damned good holiday running an exclusive on that one. 1 think it has a lot of mileage. Don't you?'

Joanna thought how very easy it was to hate Caro. Human interest, child abuse, rape and suffering were nothing but valuable, tradable commodities to her.

‘You utter bitch,' Joanna said under her breath. She stared at Caro for a minute. How light and flippant her tone was over something so vital. She sighed. ‘You'd better come into my office. Just wait for me to get changed.'

‘Good.' Caroline looked pleased. ‘My editor knew I'd get far more out of you alone than with that pack of piranhas.'

‘If they are piranhas,'Joanna said as they passed along the corridor, ‘you are the original great white shark. You are so perfect for your job, you know, Caro.'

Caro smirked. ‘I know. Marvellous, isn't it?'

They reached Joanna's office and she shut the door. ‘Just give me five minutes,' she said.

They sat facing one another. ‘God, Jo, you look as though you haven't slept for a week.'

Joanna said nothing.

Caro switched on her tape recorder and settled back in the chair. ‘Now what can you tell me about the dead boy?' she asked.

‘He was a ten-year-old.' Joanna paused. ‘A rather pretty, blond ten-year-old. His name was Dean Tunstall. He came from a local children's home, had been there for practically all of his life.' She passed one of the photographs of Dean across the desk.

Caro looked at it then put it down. ‘Yes, he was rather sweet, wasn't he?' She paused. ‘But I could have read all that yesterday in any one of the tabloids.' Her eyes were sharp and intelligent. ‘What about his mother?'