Grave Stones (9 page)

In broad daylight then.

‘Do you mind if we take a look at the bottom of your garden?’

Charlotte shook her head then gave a swift glance, for the first time looking upset. ‘He was there, wasn’t he? I’ve seen the little white gazebo you’ve erected. So near,’ she mused.

Neither of the two police could deny it. It was a fact, which Charlotte was too shrewd not to recognise. She shuddered. ‘It could easily have been me who found him,’ she said, ‘or worse – it could have been Phoebe.’ She actually paled. ‘She’s just ten years old.’

She then looked up again, her face stricken. ‘I
suppose as he was lying so near my property I’m a suspect?’

It was Korpanski who found some sympathy for her. ‘Not exactly, Mrs Frankwell,’ he soothed. ‘
You
don’t have a motive. Besides, he was actually behind the Weston’s part of the wall.’

The comment seemed to make Charlotte smug – arch, even.

‘Right,’ she agreed. ‘Come on then.’

Even from her patio doors the police activity was all too obvious. Joanna could hear voices and police radios, see arc lights and a lot of people walking around purposefully. Then there was the white tent, the cars, the general air of busyness.

Charlotte slid open the patio doors and they stepped outside.

Approaching the murder scene from the opposite side it seemed different. A mirror image of the view she had taken in earlier. But Joanna noticed other things, too. The cowshed looked huge from here, dwarfing the farmhouse to its right. From this angle, the farmhouse appeared less run-down, less ramshackle. Prettier. Almost quaint. The yard that surrounded the house looked picturesque, with the oak tree spreading shelter over almost its entire span. As she and Mike walked up the garden path with Charlotte two steps behind, she was aware of this new approach to the murder scene, the curving path, the neatly clipped sides of the lawn, a climbing rose ambling its way lazily over the wall. As she stood and studied this reverse angle, she
began to realise how many blind spots there were. The back door to the farm was hidden, the area between the farmhouse and the barns, the far side of the barn. Perhaps the killer had been safer than she had thought.

She made a mental note to visit the Weston family in number 1 before the day was out. She wanted to assess the view from their garden in the daylight too.

The longer she stood and gazed, the less like a crime scene the vista appeared. She was almost lost in the scene. Until Korpanski touched her arm and broke into her thoughts.

‘Jo,’ he said softly. When she turned she realised she could have stood there, eyeing the farm for hours. There is something tranquil and timeless about a farmyard. Even when it is both devoid of animals and is a murder scene.

They left Charlotte Frankwell and returned to the farmhouse. Mark Fask met her at the gate, red in the face and obviously angry. ‘We’ve had a bit of trouble with Grimshaw’s daughter,’ he said. ‘She seems resentful of the fact that we’re doing such a thorough search of the farmhouse.’

Korpanski gave a grunt and an apologetic shrug in Joanna’s direction. ‘That’s her all right. Told you she was tricky.’ Joanna looked along the track to see a slim woman in her forties, dressed casually in cargo pants, olive green sweatshirt and wellies, striding towards her. Even from thirty yards it was
easy to see she was angry too. Her wellies slapped through the mud, splashing it behind her. ‘Are you Inspector Piercy?’ she called when she was ten yards away.

Joanna admitted that she was.

Grimshaw’s daughter reached her. ‘Is all this…’ she waved her hands around, ‘really necessary?’

Joanna was already irritated. It was hard to believe they were investigating the murder of this woman’s father. ‘Sorry?’ she said bluntly. And anyone who knew Joanna Piercy at all – let alone well – would have recognised the steeliness and hostility in her voice. All the warning signs of an approaching storm.

Judy Grimshaw looked at Mike, who spoke for her. ‘This is Mr Grimshaw’s daughter, Judy.’ He sounded apologetic, as though it was somehow
his
fault that she was so angry.

Joanna gave the woman another chance and held her hand out. ‘Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy,’ she said with a pleasant but bland smile, ‘Leek police. I’m the senior investigating officer in your father’s murder case. I’m glad to have met you.’

But Ms Grimshaw didn’t bother returning the civilities. ‘Is it really necessary for your little terriers to go right through every single cupboard and drawer of my father’s house? What on earth do you think you’re going to find?’

‘We don’t know, Miss, Mrs—?’

‘My married name is Wilkinson,’ Judy Wilkinson snapped.

‘Mrs Wilkinson. I would have thought you would have wanted to unearth
anything
that might lead to the apprehension of your father’s killer.’

‘I don’t think this,’ she waved her hands at the activity all around, ‘will lead you any nearer his killer.’

Joanna simply regarded the angry woman without replying. The truth was that she wanted her removed from the crime scene before she exploded. She wanted to re-enact the actual murder, and that wasn’t possible with Grimshaw’s daughter looking on. Even if she hadn’t been a difficult, stroppy cow. This was tiresome.

She looked at Mike, knew he was reading her thoughts exactly, and hoped he would come up with some solution. But he simply stared ahead, as though trying to block out the mini drama.

So it was up to her.
Thanks, Mike
, she thought.

‘It’s intrusive.’ Judy Wilkinson carried on the tirade. ‘An invasion of human rights.’

Yeah, yeah, Joanna thought, trying hard not to roll her eyes heavenwards.

‘Mrs Wilkinson,’ she said, dragging out the last ounce of her politeness. ‘We have our job to do. We also need to isolate the crime scene for the afternoon. I wonder… Do you think? Would you mind?’

The farmer’s daughter gave Joanna a sour look. ‘It’s all right, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I have to be at work anyway.’

Phew
, Joanna thought, slightly surprised that she had not taken compassionate leave.

Once Judy Wilkinson’s little red car had shot off down the road they could proceed with the
reenactment
of the actual crime. She used Korpanski as the farmer and Hesketh-Brown as the perpetrator, with Mark Fask timing the action.

Fask was at his best doing this sort of thing, threading forensic clues through post-mortem evidence and working out the sequence of events.

He stood at the back door. ‘I think our perpetrator began the attack here,’ he said. ‘This is where there was a large pool of blood and some fresh splintering on the back door frame. We found blood on some of the splinters and underneath, where the wood had been broken. They were consistent with the baseball bat injuries. I thought it was likely that it was during this initial assault that Grimshaw’s arm was broken. We found traces of blood going down the path and towards the cowshed. It’s possible that Grimshaw was thinking of barring himself in at this point. If that was what was in his mind, it’s possible that the broken arm made him unable to lift the bar.’ To illustrate his thesis, he pushed open the bar that held the barn doors together. ‘It’s quite stiff and heavy and our victim would have been weakened by the attack.’

Joanna nodded. So far it was making sense.

‘We found spots of blood in many places in the yard,’ Fask continued, while Mike and Hesketh-Brown ‘slugged it out’. ‘Particularly behind the cowshed.’

They moved behind and took the path Fask was
suggesting. ‘Concealed from the estate,’ Joanna observed.

‘Just a theory, Jo,’ Fask continued, as they moved around the back of the cowshed, ‘but there is a pink rambling rose here. Dr Cray removed a rose thorn from Grimshaw’s hand. There are also a number of blood spots here. I wondered if Grimshaw was shouting by now, trying to make his way around towards the wall and attract the attention of the people whose gardens back on to his land.’

Joanna rubbed her chin. ‘It’s possible,’ she said slowly. Her eyes drifted across to the dry stone wall, the boundary between the two civilisations. Old and new.

She stood at its base and peered over at the row of houses with their neat garden furniture, tidy flowerbeds and immaculate lawns. There could hardly be a greater contrast. So now she was looking at the correct, rather than the reverse angle. The way Grimshaw must have looked at it in his final moments. She was silent as she collected her thoughts. Then she studied the spot where Grimshaw’s body had been found and marvelled. It might have been slumped against the back of the wall but it was only a few feet away from the Weston’s house and Charlotte Frankwell’s garden. The killer had taken a risk.

She turned and looked back at the farm.

Something was…

‘Tell you anything, Jo?’

‘Not sure, Mike. Not sure.’ She met his dark gaze. ‘I know one thing. To understand this crime it is necessary
to stand both in the farmyard and the neighbours’ gardens.’ She smiled. ‘Come on, Mike, let’s go and interview the Westons.’

Steven Weston was at home alone, looking distinctly uncomfortable to see them. Joanna wondered what he had been doing. She could see no book out, no computer on; the TV was switched off and the radio was silent.

‘Mr Weston?’ He looked nervous. He was a
thin-faced
, ferrety-looking man with small, pale eyes and a nervous tick in the corner of his right eye. He peered around the door, nose and right eye twitching. ‘Hello?’

Joanna went through the repetition of who she was and what she was doing there. He stretched out a big hand warily. ‘Yes, they said you’d probably want to talk to me.’ They followed him into a sitting room with a brown leather corner sofa and a large plasma screen TV.

‘It was my wife, really. Not me. She noticed the smell.’ A nervous, silly smile. ‘She’s always had sensitive nostrils.’ Sillier than the smile was his giggle. Joanna
hated
men who giggled. She felt her toes grow cold.

‘When did she first mention the smell?’

‘I don’t know.’ Weston waved those big hands around. ‘Some time in the week, I expect. I can’t remember precisely.’ His glance was constantly shooting back to the window. Once or twice he pulled his sleeve up clumsily to glance at his watch.

The answer was soon apparent.

‘Better that she tells you herself.’ Another glance at his watch. Less surreptitious this time. ‘She’ll be home in a bit. Any time now. The shop closes at four thirty. She doesn’t usually work on a Wednesday but one of the other helpers is on holiday and they don’t like people to be there on their own. Safety, you know.’

Right on cue they heard a car pull up outside and the door slam, footsteps treading the path, a key in the door. Then Kathleen Weston stood before them.

She was a plump woman, tall and big-boned, with penetrating dark eyes, and a fury of fading red hair. She wore no make-up and exuded an air both of power and of motherliness. Joanna and Mike stood up and introduced themselves. Joanna eyed Mrs Weston. There was something familiar about her. Some retained memory of an event in which this woman had taken part. She frowned, irritated that her power of recall had temporarily deserted her.

‘It was a good job I did investigate,’ she said. ‘I wish I had sooner. Maybe then some of the animals might have survived. I can’t bear the thought that, had I just peered over the garden wall, some of the animals might not have died.’ She looked up. Her brown cow eyes were brimming with tears. ‘How is Old Spice?’ she asked.

Joanna looked helplessly at Korpanski. ‘Last I heard, he was doing all right, Mrs Weston.’

‘Oh good,’ she said.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I put it off but then I had to
look. I’m glad I did or poor old Jakob would have lain there for ever.’

Not for ever, Joanna thought, but for a lot longer, and she wondered what difference it would have made. Another day…or two?

‘When did you first notice the smell?’ Joanna asked.

Kathleen thought for a moment, dug into a capacious handbag, consulted her diary then focused her eagle gaze on Joanna. ‘I was at work on the Tuesday,’ she said slowly, glancing down at her diary. ‘Last Wednesday, a week ago, I had my hair done. I don’t remember noticing a smell then. But when I came home from work last Thursday I did notice something. It got stronger, you know? Does that help you?’

‘I think so,’ Joanna said. ‘I think you’re probably one of the few people who can give us any sort of clue as to when he died.’

‘It must have been in the early part of last week,’ Kathleen said. ‘Bodies don’t smell straight away.’

Of course. She was an animal woman. No fool.

‘We’ll probably want to interview you again,’ Joanna said. ‘Is there anything you want to add?’

The Westons exchanged a glance and both shook their heads.

Joanna left them her mobile and direct dial number and they left.

When they were safely back in the car she gave vent to her feelings. ‘So tell me more about Old Spice.’

Korpanski grinned. ‘He’s a particularly handsome
Tamworth boar.’ He gave Joanna a sly, sideways look. ‘I suppose he’s a widower now. Poor old Old Spice.’

‘Yes. An innocent victim. A bystander to our crime. Shame he can’t talk to us and give us a few clues.’ She and Mike smiled as she handed him the phone. ‘Well, even if he can’t talk to us we’d better find out how this princely boar is.’

‘The pig is doing fine,’ Korpanski said in a voice almost quivering with merriment. ‘The vet’s fed him and watered him and he’s going to be all right. He’s letting Old Spice stay at another farm in the district, where he’ll be well looked after.’

‘Not lodging with our Judy, then?’

Korpanski made a face. ‘Being as her address is some tiny little town house, I don’t think so. The neighbours might complain.’ They both chuckled at the vision of a neat suburban house with a pig snorting and foraging in the garden.

The levity about the pig made them both feel better and Joanna promised herself a visit to see Old Spice.

It was almost six o’clock by the time they were ready to call on number 4 Prospect Farm Estate. As they got out of the car, Joanna studied the house. Even from the outside, it had a different air around it. Silly, Joanna thought, but it felt distinctly cooler. It was as though
what sun there was simply didn’t reach this property.

She frowned and tugged Korpanski’s sleeve as they approached to draw his attention to an upstairs window. They both looked up. All the windows were shrouded. But in this central window there was a small, twitching gap in the curtains. A woman was watching them. She looked pale-faced, with long grey hair and staring eyes.

Joanna told herself not to be so silly. This was a modern house in the middle of a small housing estate, yet it alone had an air of mystery; it appeared sinister and mysterious. But apart from the drawn curtains, the face watching them from the window and the sunless state of the house, it was hard to see why it was infused with such an air of intrigue.

She watched the two people approaching the property, knowing already that they were detectives. The woman, who exuded life – health, strength and vitality – and the large man who walked at her side. She resented their presence. She didn’t like visitors. She descended the stairs slowly.

Joanna got a shock when Mrs Parnell opened the door, even before she’d got around to knocking. She stared at her, thinking what a bloodless, Gothic creature she was. Somewhere in her forties, she was dressed from head to foot in black, in trousers and a polo-necked sweater. There was only one bright spot of colour; a thin slash of red across what passed for a mouth.

Morticia, Joanna thought. Morticia Addams.

‘Yes?’

Even her voice was strange, flat and distant.

Joanna was even more taken aback.

‘I know who you are,’ ‘Morticia’ said. ‘I don’t need to see your identity cards. I knew you would come.’ She ignored Joanna’s outstretched hand. No, not ignored. She knew it was there but looked at it with distaste, disgust, as though it had been covered in slime and bypassed it. Even Joanna looked at it and wondered why it was so repulsive to this odd woman.

‘Excuse me,’ ‘Morticia’ said as she walked back into the house, leaving Joanna and Mike uncertain whether they should follow. Hesitatingly, they did.

The interior of the house was equally bizarre: dark red walls, doors stained mahogany. They walked through a long hall lined with gilded mirrors, wondering where she had disappeared to. They heard the sound of running water ahead.

She stood framed in the doorway and led the way into the kitchen, surprisingly modern in white. No other colour but white. Clinical white. White walls, white units, white worktops, even a white, tiled floor. The stark, bright white of an operating theatre. It was a complete contrast to the rest of the house.

For once Joanna was lost for words. She couldn’t decide what sort of woman Mrs Parnell was: eccentric, affected, simply odd or stark staring completely barking mad. Her inability to get a handle on her interrogatee stopped her asking the first question.

Luckily for her, Teresa Parnell took the lead.

‘I expect you’re here about the poor dead farmer,’ she said in her pancake voice.

‘Yes.’

‘You know he polluted the atmosphere?’

Again Joanna felt at a disadvantage. ‘Sorry?’

‘He was filth,’ Teresa said. ‘Filth.’ Her eyes swept round the operating theatre room.

‘In what way?’

Joanna looked around the kitchen for clues as to this woman’s character. There were no jugs or kettles, weighing scales or any of the other paraphernalia of a normal working kitchen. She found only one clue. The sole ornament. On the wall hung a print of Christ tearing open his garment to expose his bleeding heart.

Teresa Parnell got up without a word and began washing her hands. Methodically, like a surgeon, in the way that Joanna had watched Matthew scrub and glove-up for a post-mortem. She watched, fascinated, as the woman rubbed her palms, hands, up and down the fingers, not missing the thumb, a careful rinse and drying off thoroughly with a towel.

Mrs Parnell seemed to find nothing strange in breaking off a conversation purely to wash her hands.

‘He was…’ Her pause seemed to go on for ever. ‘Malodorous,’ she said. ‘And evil gives off an odour.’

Joanna and Mike exchanged uneasy glances. This woman ought to be on medication or an inpatient in a mental hospital – if there were such places any more.

It was time to cut to the business and get out of
here. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘Morticia’ was stroking her long grey hair. It made a rasping sound. Wiry and dry. There was something repulsive about the texture. ‘See him?’ she said. ‘I don’t see him. I
smell
him. I know he is there when I
smell
him.’

Joanna was losing patience with this woman. Her oddness, she had decided, was surely an affectation?

‘OK,’ she said briskly, thinking, I can play this game. ‘When did you last
smell
him?’

‘Dead – or alive?’

Joanna and Korpanski exchanged another glance.

‘OK, let’s start with alive?’

‘I don’t know.’

Was this purely a tease?

‘Dead, then?’

‘He died at eleven o’clock on Tuesday the 11
^th
of September. The same date as the twin towers tragedy,’ ‘Morticia’ said, with more than a touch of melodrama.

Joanna fixed her eyes on her. ‘How do you know that?’

Teresa Parnell had an asymmetrical face; one eye that slanted while the other lay straight, a mouth that curved on one side and was straight on the other. Joanna found her so odd it was difficult to concentrate on her words. ‘I am psychic,’ she said solemnly, holding her newly washed hands out.

I’m not buying this, Joanna thought, and met Korpanski’s eyes with a sceptical lift of her eyebrows.

‘I can close my eyes and I simply know things,’
Teresa continued. ‘I am sensitive to the sufferings of people. I can
feel
their unhappiness.’ She looked straight at Joanna. ‘As I can recognise your uncertainty, Inspector. I knew you would be coming. You
had
to.’ She turned her head towards Korpanski, wafting her grey hair around her face like a free-floating spider’s web. ‘I wasn’t so clear about you, though.’

Thank goodness for that, Korpanski thought, distinctly uncomfortable at the thought of being in this woman’s head.

‘It could have been somebody else.’

She stood up and they knew the interview was at an end. Joanna gave it another shot. ‘What do you actually
know
about Jakob Grimshaw’s murder?’

‘Morticia’ stared past her. ‘He was a long time dying,’ she said.

‘Just for interest, Mrs Parnell, where were you on Tuesday the 11
^th
of September, around mid-morning?’

‘Here.’

‘Did you hear anything, see anything?’

Joanna was frustrated, believing that the woman was hiding behind her strangeness. Her temper was getting the better of her. ‘We’re investigating the savage and cruel murder of an old man. An old man who had worked hard all his life and didn’t deserve such a dreadful end. If you really know anything or can help us in our investigation you must tell us.’ She fixed the woman with a hard stare. ‘Withholding information from the police in a murder investigation is a serious crime. Now then, I’ll ask you again: is there anything
concrete
that you can tell us that might help us track down this evil killer and prevent him or her from ever doing anything like this again?’

Teresa Parnell rose to the anger in Joanna’s voice. ‘You might not have noticed,’ she said, ‘but I keep my curtains tightly closed.’

‘And peep out of the windows.’ Joanna was aware that this was turning into a slanging match but she wanted to flush the woman out of her mystic, affected, nebulous comments.

‘I saw nothing,’ Teresa said, ‘except in my mind.’

‘We will be asking you to come down the station to make a formal statement,’ Joanna said. ‘I suggest you try to document anything that you saw, heard or smelt.’

Annoyingly she was tempted to ask her straight out who had killed old farmer Grimshaw but even though she thought this woman was talking rubbish she was aware that it could still influence the police investigation. She was equally aware that keeping an open mind was a vital ingredient in police work. Lose that and you can make false arrests, have the case rejected by the Crown Prosecution Service or even if they passed it, have it thrown out of court. It had never happened to her yet but she had watched plenty of colleagues fall into this pit. She didn’t want the same to happen to this case.

Teresa Parnell shook her head, walked with them to the door, then engaged Joanna once again. ‘Just remember, my dear,’ she said. ‘Pearls are for tears. And black ones – well…’

Joanna couldn’t stop herself from touching her ring superstitiously. Ignoring Mike’s sudden look of sympathy, she headed for the car.

‘I hope you didn’t take any notice of that,’ he said when they were safely out of earshot. ‘She’s just a weirdo.’

‘I know.’ She was still fingering her ring. ‘I know that. But the trouble is, Mike, how much of her statement should we ignore on the grounds that she’s strange? Possibly deliberately so. It could even be a cover for her own guilt.’ She felt like banging her fist down on the dashboard. ‘What we need is some good, firm forensic evidence. A clue. A lead. We’ve got nothing.’

Korpanski touched her arm. ‘Steady on, Jo,’ he said. ‘It’s early days yet.’

Joanna turned to look at him, a thought seeping into her mind. ‘What if she did hear something on the Tuesday, something that made her wonder? What if she then tucked it away into her subconscious and interpreted it as a psychic insight?’

Mike, as always, was reassuringly blunt. ‘Why not simply come out with it then?’

To that there was no answer, except that this was a woman who hid behind a wall of oddity.

They sat in the car for a while without switching on the engine. It was as though they both needed something to galvanise them back into action. Joanna looked around the estate. It looked so normal, peaceful, so thoroughly twenty-first century. So why did she feel as though it was one of those film villages – little more
than a hollow façade, two-dimensional? Never the most patient of people, it was frustrating her. They must make a move.

In the end she took the initiative.

‘The last person we know who definitely saw and spoke to Grimshaw appears to be the Mostyn girl. The children will be out of school by now. Let’s talk to her father and see if we can arrange an interview.’

They were in luck: Richard Mostyn was at home. He’d been peering frantically into his computer screen when he heard their knock. And Rachel was downstairs, watching television.

Mostyn came out into the hall just as Rachel was opening the door, looking shyly up at the tall policeman.

‘Is your daddy in?’ Mike was good with children. Much better than his inspector.

Mostyn sidled up behind his daughter. ‘Can I help you?’

They introduced themselves and his eyes narrowed. ‘So we’d like to ask your daughter a few questions.’

The little girl looked up at her father for guidance.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘If it’ll help solve this unpleasant business I don’t see any objection.’

‘Good.’

They sat in the sitting room. The light was fading and Mostyn flicked a couple of lamps on before settling down beside his daughter.

Joanna opened the questioning, addressing the child.
‘You like riding?’ The question conjured up an image of the ten-year-old Eloise, neat in jodhpurs and Pony Club sweater, and a pony named Sparky. She brushed the memory away.

The girl nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh yes.’

‘And the farmer let you ride his pony?’

The girl looked suddenly distressed. ‘Daddy told me he’s had an accident, Mr Grimshaw.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is Brutus all right?’

Brutus, presumably, was the pony. Korpanski stepped in to fill the breach of knowledge. ‘He’s fine, love. He was safely up in the top field and has looked after himself ever since then.’

Phew, Joanna thought. She wouldn’t have liked to have broken the news that the pony was dead too.

She continued. ‘You last rode Brutus on the Sunday, a week and a bit ago?’

The girl nodded, happy now. ‘We didn’t go far,’ she said. ‘He liked me to trot around the field so he could keep an eye on me.’

Mostyn nodded his agreement.

‘He said,’ she was laughing now, ‘that I reminded him of his daughter when she was little and nice. He said it was a long time ago.’ She looked proud of herself for relating this conversation and looked to her father for approval – which she got. Mostyn smiled at her and nodded.

‘Was anyone else there?’

The girl shook her head. ‘There was never anyone
else there.’ She paused and said with childish insight, ‘He was quite lonely, I think.’

‘Did he tell you that?’

The girl nodded. ‘Oh yes. He really liked it when I went to see him. He
said
,’ her eyes opened very wide, ‘that he looked forward to my visits.’ She looked very pleased with herself now and with that pride came confidence, which Joanna intended to try and use to her advantage.

‘Did he say if anyone had been annoying him or hanging round the farm and making a nuisance of themselves?’