Cursed Inheritance (27 page)

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‘I’m not stupid,’ he said before turning out the light.

Pam Peterson was in
much better mood after a good night’s sleep. She woke up before Wesley and watched him sleeping, regretting that she’d been such a bitch the night before. Wesley awoke when Michael rushed into the room and flung himself, laughing on to their bed.

‘Why have they got to be so bloody lively in the mornings?’ Pam muttered rhetorically as she shuffled downstairs in her dressing gown to make some tea and toast.

She returned ten minutes later to find father and son cuddled together and she stood in the doorway with the breakfast tray and smiled. Michael’s bowl of cereal was waiting for him downstairs. But Wesley might as well have breakfast in peace.

She ate her toast, watching Michael spoon the sugary cereal into his mouth, then she switched on the computer. Since Neil had left for the States she had carried out this ritual every morning, awaiting his emails with eager anticipation. And this morning she wasn’t disappointed. There was a long one waiting. She printed it out, read it through then ran up the stairs to show it to Wesley .

‘Hi Pam and Wes,’ it began. Wesley knew he hadn’t long so he scanned the details of the dig and the latest forensic tests on the skeletons they’d found. It seems the two skeletons shot by musket balls were related, according to DNA tests. Possibly brothers. But it was the third para-graph that caught his eye. ‘I’ve been in a bit of a fight. Well, not a fight exactly because I didn’t punch him back - it was only me who ended up with a bloody nose. Max’s son has got it into his head that I’m after the old boy’s money. He’s warned me off in no uncertain terms and I’m wondering what to do next. Max intends to donate some old documents to the museum and he wants me to help him go through them. I’ll let you know how I get on.’

‘Sounds like he’s in trouble,’ Pam said. She sounded worried.

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‘I’m sure Neil can take care of himself.’ Wesley’s mind was on other things. On automatic pilot, he dressed and left the house, kissing Pam goodbye and promising to be home at a reasonable hour. He only hoped it was a promise he’d be able to keep.

He arrived at the office before Gerry Heffernan. Punctuality had never been the chief inspector’s strong point.

As soon as he’d sat down at his desk Steve Carstairs swaggered over, still wearing his leather coat over a black shirt and a pair of well-cut jeans. ‘I’ve been checking on Jeremy Elsham. In 1992 he bought a garden centre in Glastonbury. Then he set up a small healing centre, specialising in regressions and auras, whatever those are. Then five years later he bought Potwoolstan Hall at a knockdown price and went upmarket. The place is doing quite well, apparently.’ He grinned, as if he was saving the best until last. ‘Anyway, I did a bit more digging and it turns out that Elsham married a lady called Pauline Black back in 1989. Wasn’t there a Pauline Black connected with the Potwoolstan Hall case?’

‘You’re right.’ Wesley thought for a moment. Elsham’s wife was called Pandora. Did he trade Pauline in for a newer model? If so, where was Pauline now?

‘No record of a divorce or a remarriage. What if Pandora is Pauline … sort of repackaged?’

It was certainly a possibility. If Pauline had reinvented herself with plastic surgery then it was quite likely she’d have wanted to change her name along with her image. It was something he’d look into - when he had the time.

‘Have you found out what Elsham did before Glastonbury? ‘

Steve shook his head. ‘Haven’t been able to find a thing.’

‘A man with no past, eh? Well done. Keep on digging. Rachel in yet?’ he asked, trying to sound casual.

‘She’s somewhere about.’

‘Can you run a check on Pauline Black? See what you

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can find under the name Pandora Elsham … or Pauline Elsham. If you can do it as soon as possible … please.’ He looked at Steve and gave him a businesslike smile, as though he had no doubt that he would carry out his orders there and then. It was like training a dog, he thought: act confident and you’ll earn their respect.

As Steve wandered away, Rachel appeared at the office door.

‘That theft at Potwoolstan Hall - Jack Wright’s just called to say “Mr Smith” rang and he’s happy with Jack’s valuation of the ring. He’s coming into the shop some time this morning to pick up his money. The boss isn’t in yet. Will you let him know?’

Wesley looked at his watch. ‘Sure. With any luck we might get this one cleared up today,’ he said with some relief. He wanted the team’s full attention on Evans’s death and Gwen Madeley’s disappearance. Distractions he could do without.

As Rachel walked away, he opened the file on the desk in front of him, hoping for inspiration. The Potwoolstan Hall case: the brutal murders of six people on the 29th March 1985. He had read it over and over again, dreamed about it: he knew it so well he felt he could recite some of the witness statements off by heart. There must be something there in that file he’d missed. He began to read it again.

It was all there. Martha Wallace had met Nigel Armley in the hall where she had shot him with a shotgun that was normally kept in the gun cabinet, before going on to shoot the rest of the family with a rifle, then shooting herself. He sat back and stared at the words on the page. She had taken two weapons from the cupboard: the shotgun, holding two cartridges, and the rifle that held ten bullets. She emptied both barrels of the shotgun into Nigel Armley’s face before using the rifle on the others. Had she worked it all out? If she used two weapons then she wouldn’t have to reload. It seemed very calculating for a woman in an agitated mental

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state. But then who knows what goes through people’s minds in extreme circumstances?

He read on, flicking through statements until he came to Victor Bleasdale’s. A local constable up in North Yorkshire had interviewed Bleasdale in his small tied cottage in the grounds of his new place of work, a stately home that opened its doors and its gardens to the public five days a week. Bleasdale had expressed shock at what had happened but he had been able to tell the constable very little. He had left the morning before the killings and stayed the night at a motel in the Midlands, arriving in North Yorkshire early the following afternoon. Nobody had bothered to check out his story at the time, and Wesley feared it was too late to correct this omission now. Bleasdale had described Martha Wallace as rather unstable - Wesley wondered if those were his exact words or if the constable had paraphrased his description to sound more formal. He had expressed concern for Martha’ s little girl and had hinted that the tragic events didn’t exactly come as a surprise, considering the state Martha had been in over the past weeks. He had asked what had happened to Emma but the constable obviously hadn’t been able to tell him.

Wesley wriggled in his chair. There was something wrong here but he wasn’t sure what it was. He asked Trish to find him the number of the nearest police station to the Yorkshire stately home: he would ask someone there to check out whether Bleasdale still worked there. Or, if he’d moved on, where he had gone. But if Patrick Evans had been up to Yorkshire, that’s where he would have started. And as far as he knew, he hadn’t found him. Or perhaps he had.

Maybe Victor Bleasdale was closer than they thought. Who was to say he wasn’t back in Devon? Who was to say he hadn’t killed those people all those years ago and had returned to cover his tracks, alerted by Evans’s enquiries? After all, Emma Oldchester had named him under hypnosis.

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He hadn’t seen a picture of Bleasdale: all he knew was the little Richard Gibbons had told him. Bleasdale could be anyone. Or anywhere. He had to speak to Gibbons again. He was their only link to Bleasdale. Albeit a tentative one.

He heard a familiar voice. Gerry Heffernan had arrived, pleading a faulty alarm clock. Wesley stood up so quickly that for a few seconds he felt light-headed, and hurried to Heffernan’s office, arriving just as the chief inspector was taking off his coat.

When Heffernan heard what Steve had discovered about Jeremy Elsbam’s marriage to Pauline Black, his eyes lit up. He had that hound on the scent look again.

Then he gave him the news about Jack Wright’s call. The thief was on the move.

‘Tell Rachel to see to it, will you?’ He peered out of his window into the CID office. ‘And she can take Darren. He looks as if he could do with some fresh air.’

There was a single knock on the office door, heralding Steve Carstairs’ arrival. ‘I’ve run a check, sir,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Pandora Elsham used to hold a firearms licence. She was a member of a shooting club.’

Heffernan grinned; ‘Let’s go and open Pandora’s box, eh? But before we do, let’s have a word with Emma Oldchester’s dad. I want to see what he has to say about Patrick Evans.’

He took his anorak off the coat stand and marched out of the office, Wesley behind him. No time for leisurely musings about the whereabouts of Victor Bleasdale over a cup of station tea.

Jack Wright’s jewellery shop was on the wrong side of the large seaside resort of Morbay. When Jack’s grandfather had begun the business in the era of late-Victorian optimism, it had been a rather classy establishment and the name V. Wright and Sons had been engraved in boastful gold aboveˇ its glittering window displays. Blushing Edwardian brides had selected their wedding rings in its

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plush interior and guilty husbands had bought diamond bracelets to appease their suspicious wives.

The district had been a haven of bourgeois respectability back then. But after the Second World War the world had changed and the grand Victorian villas were divided into flats and bedsits. With the opening of Morbay’s university, the students moved in beside the recent immigrants, the single mothers, the hostels for the homeless and those far too poor to afford Devon’s rising house prices.

The engraved name still stood proudly above the shop but, like the area, V. Wright and Sons had gone down in the world and its grimy plate-glass windows displayed rows of skinny silver chains and cheap digital watches. Times were hard. And sometimes Jack Wright was tempted to ignore the warning bells that sounded in his head when someone who came in trying to sell quality items was prepared to accept a fraction of their true value. Desperation can blur the lines between honesty and dishonesty. And as far as his business was concerned, Jack Wright was a desperate man.

But today he was all cooperation. Especially since the detective sergeant they sent was a rather attractive young woman: a natural blonde with a no-nonsense manner. Rachel Tracey was the stuff of Jack Wright’s fantasies.

Jack himself was in his fifties but he still wore his greying hair long, thinking it made him appear younger. When Rachel entered the shop, followed by Darren Wentworth, he greeted her with an obsequious leer, assuring her that he was anxious to do anything he could to help the police. Rachel wondered whether he’d have been so keen to aid the fight for law and order if he hadn’t been caught in possession of stolen goods in the first place. But she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and smiled sweetly as he cleared a place for them to sit in the cluttered office behind the shop, a dusty room dominated by an imposing oak desk that was a relic of a more prosperous age.

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Promising to give a discreet signal when “Mr Smith” arrived, Jack left Rachel and Darren alone, sipping strong tea from chipped mugs in awkward silence. Rachel didn’t feel like making polite conversation. And besides, she said to Darren, they should be trying to listen to what was going on in the shop. Perhaps Rachel’s years in CID had made her suspicious, but she didn’t altogether trust Jack Wright: he seemed just a little too eager to please.

Being closeted in the small office with Darren Wentworth, whose anti-perspirant wasn’t as effective as the advertisers claimed, was hardly Rachel’s ideal way to spend the morning: if she’d been with Wesley Peterson, it might have been a different matter. And when Jack Wright finally gave his signal - three soft knocks on the office door - she was relieved that the boredom was over. When Wright resumed his place behind the counter, making a great show of examining a ring through an eye glass, Rachel bustled out from the back of the shop, trying to look as though she worked there and was going out for a break. But she positioned herself at the shop door as Darren emerged from behind the counter.

The couple in the shop glanced at Darren nervously.

The man, short with thinning, greasy hair, was a stranger but Rachel thought she had seen the woman somewhere before but she couldn’t quite remember where. She was average height, slim with short brown hair and she might once have been pretty in a chocolate-box sort of way. She was well dressed but her clothes were from chain stores rather than designer boutiques. The couple looked ordinary, hardly like thieves. But then this was probably the secret of their success. .

Then it suddenly came to Rachel why the woman was so familiar. ‘They obviously work miracles up at Potwoolstan Hall,’ she said. ‘You were in a wheelchair last time I saw you.’

Mrs Beatrice Carmody swung round, and gaped.

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Joe Harper’s small semi-detached house on the outskirts of the village of Stokeworthy boasted a bright white UPVC front door and a fine display of daffodils in the immaculate front garden.

Wesley rang the doorbell and waited.

‘Nice garden,’ Heffernan commented, shifting from foot to foot.

Wesley didn’t reply. As he raised his hand to ring the bell a second time, the door was opened by a man in his sixties: well built with a thick shock of grey hair, a neat grey beard and a complexion that suggested he had spent most of his working life out of doors.

The two detectives showed their ID and Wesley asked politely if they could have a word. Harper stood aside to admit them, his eyes downcast. But Wesley was used to people being nervous when the police turned up on their doorstep.