Midnight Murders (24 page)

Bill was standing in the drive, directing the outdoor search operation and talking to Tony. Trevor approached them.

‘Do either of you know where I can find Spencer Jordan?' he asked.

‘We moved his class into the day room of the drug and alcohol abuse ward,' Tony replied.

Trevor moved on and saw Spencer through the ward window. He was leaning over Lucy Craig's chair, studying her sketchbook.

‘Come to join our class, Sergeant?' Spencer asked when he saw him in the doorway. It was the first time Spencer had addressed him by his title, and Trevor detected a condemnatory note.

‘Not at the moment,' Trevor said quietly. ‘But could I have a private word with you?'

Spencer joined him in the corridor and closed the door on his class.

‘I'm sorry to interrupt… '

‘I bet you are,' Spencer said bitterly.

‘We're all having a hard time… ' Trevor was taken aback by his vehemence.

‘Some harder than most. Have you any idea what it's like being interrogated by that man?' Spencer demanded.

‘Who?' Trevor asked.

‘Your bloody superintendent.'

‘Bill? Oh yes.' Trevor lifted his eyes to meet Spencer's. ‘I know. And I also know what happened to your family. I'm sorry.'

‘You're sorry?' Spencer repeated caustically.

‘If we rode roughshod over you, I apologise, but we're trying to save Lyn Sullivan's life. And we don't believe we have much time. You, more than anyone here, know what it's like to lose someone to senseless violence. Her brother is frantic. Her parents are travelling back from France… '

‘I'll help in any way I can,' Spencer replied. ‘Just tell me how.'

‘Was Roland in your therapy class this morning?'

‘Yes. Surely to God you don't think it's Roland now?' he demanded wearily.

‘We don't know. He attacked Jean Marshall.'

‘I heard about that. But attacking Jean Marshall isn't the same thing as kidnapping and burying women alive.'

‘We're fumbling in the dark, and hoping our fumbling doesn't cost Lyn her life,' Trevor replied honestly.

Spencer thought for a moment. ‘Roland came in this morning at half past nine, along with everyone else. I remembered him tripping over Alison Bevan's easel.'

‘And afterwards?'

‘He stayed with me all morning, even through break. They all did. Lucy Craig and Alison were upset. They wanted to sit and talk.'

‘Did Roland join in the conversation?'

‘Oh, yes. I don't have to tell you what he's like.'

‘When did he leave?'

‘He went with the others at lunchtime.'

‘It was just after lunch he attacked Jean,' Trevor reflected. ‘Did he leave the therapy room at any time?'

‘He might have gone to the toilet. I don't clock people in and out, you know that.'

‘But he could have left the room?'

‘If he did, and I'm not saying he did, I doubt that it was for longer than five or ten minutes. He and Alison were making papier-mâché models at the sink in front of the window, and I seem to remember non-stop conversation in that area. You could check with Alison Bevan and Lucy Craig.'

‘I will. And thanks.'

* * *

Trevor spoke to Lucy and Alison then went to HQ to find out which constable had been posted closest to the therapy room. The officer corroborated Spencer's story. No one had walked in or out of the door he'd manned all morning.

The last sighting of Lyn had been by Alan in the hostel at ten. And, as she was already carrying her suitcase out of her room, the chances were she'd been waylaid shortly afterwards. Otherwise her car wouldn't have been left in the car park – someone had called her back into the hospital.

Trevor returned to the secure unit to find Roland slumped in a torpor, and Peter fending off a verbal attack from Dotty Clyne.

‘You cannot intimidate patients in this fashion, Sergeant. You have no idea of the long-term damage you could cause… '

‘I do have a fair idea of the damage he has already caused,' Peter retorted.

‘Sergeant, as a patient in this institution, Mr Williams is entitled to certain rights… '

Peter turned and saw Trevor standing in front of the door.

‘Roland?' Trevor spoke softly, pitching his voice below Dotty's in an effort to gain Roland's attention. ‘Where were you all morning?'

‘Therapy,' Roland answered.

‘And afterwards?'

‘Went to eat lunch.'

‘And after that?'

‘In the office with… '

Trevor turned to Peter and shook his head.

‘Confirmed?' Peter asked.

‘By staff, patients and police.'

‘You see, Sergeant Collins,' Dotty crowed triumphantly.

‘There's still the matter of the assault charge.' Peter gathered his papers together.

‘Sister Marshall won't press charges,' she announced.

‘Do I take that to mean that she won't have a job here if she does?' Peter enquired before he and Trevor left the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-
FOUR

Bill was too calm, Trevor thought as he stepped into the crowded back room of HQ. Experience had taught him that whenever Bill was this composed, it was the still before gale-force ten struck.

‘We start interviewing,' Bill began, before the last of the team entering the HQ had time to find a seat. ‘There'll be four teams. Sarah Merchant is looking at the staff who are still on the premises. Dan, you take one team; Peter, another; Trevor a third. I'll lead the fourth myself. The priority is to establish everyone's movements and whereabouts between the hours of nine-thirty and twelve this morning.'

‘And if it's an outsider, like the milkman or the laundryman?' Peter checked.

‘We've searched every vehicle that has entered the gates since Vanessa Hedley's disappearance.' A frown creased Bill's forehead as he glared at the hospital security chief and the officer he'd put in charge of traffic flowing in and out of the hospital. ‘There's been no let up in security since then?'

‘None,' the security chief assured him. ‘Nurse Sullivan couldn't have been taken out of this place this morning, without us knowing about it. I'm willing to stake my reputation on it.'

‘You just did,' Peter opened the door.

Trevor watched the dietician as she left the dining room where he was conducting his interviews alongside Sarah Merchant. In the opposite corner Peter was working in uneasy tandem with Michelle Grady. He waited while Sarah keyed the essential information from their last interview on to her laptop.

‘Name – age – position held in Compton Castle?'

‘Herne, Jimmy Herne. Fifty-eight. Head gardener.'

‘Where were you this morning between ten and twelve?' Trevor was bored with the tedium of repeating the same questions. He wanted to do something more constructive towards finding Lyn.

‘Let me see now… ' Herne scratched his bald head thoughtfully, trying Trevor's frayed patience. ‘I cut the lawn first thing. I never trust the boys to make the early cuts, when the grass is still tender… '

‘What time did you finish cutting the grass?' Trevor interrupted, thinking of the fifty-two other people waiting to be interviewed.

‘About ten, I think.'

‘And what did you do then?'

‘Had second breakfast with the maintenance men, like I always do.'

‘What time did you finish this second breakfast?'

‘Half past ten, same as always.'

‘And afterwards?'

‘I worked on the flowerbeds with those damned useless boys who can't tell a… '

‘Until when?' Trevor cut him short again.

‘Dinner time.'

‘Which is?'

‘Half past one.'

‘Those boys you were with – did they eat second breakfast with you?' Trevor wished he could rid himself of the feeling that all of this was a waste of time. That the people – the computers – the interviews – wouldn't bring them any closer to solving the mystery of Lyn's disappearance. He glanced at his watch. Nearly six o'clock. Lyn had been missing for eight hours.

‘Is there any truth in the stories you told Jean Marshall and Lyn Sullivan about tunnels in the grounds leading from the cellars to the folly?'

‘Yes,' Jimmy snapped, piqued at the implication that he'd lied.

‘Could you lead me to them?' Trevor asked.

‘Well, I could… then again I couldn't… not exactly.'

‘Explain.' Trevor ordered.

‘They were all blocked off years ago,' Jimmy admitted. ‘When the therapy blocks were built.'

‘How long ago was that?' Trevor pressed.

‘Let me see… it must have been sometime in the sixties. Builders went round the grounds and the old block, plugging all the tunnel entrances.'

‘With temporary shuttering?' Trevor asked hopefully.

‘Nothing temporary about what they did. They had cement mixers and they concreted the holes. Tons of cement and rubble they poured in. Tons and tons,' Jimmy emphasised.

‘Could you show me where they poured it?'

‘Now, let me, see… I think I could find the spot, if you wanted me to.'

‘Take the rest of Mr Herne's statement.' Trevor said to Sarah. ‘I'll be back after I've found a plan of this place.'

‘There has to be someone who can take over from me,' Trevor begged Bill.

‘These interviews might be our only chance of finding Lyn Sullivan alive.' Bill looked at Trevor and saw that he remained unconvinced. ‘How often have you said, the only way to catch villains is through routine police work?'

‘Never!'

‘Then it must have been Peter.' Bill was nonplussed.

‘While we're standing here talking, she could be suffocating… '

‘All right,' Bill conceded. ‘Get Andrew to take over from you and check out the bloody tunnels if you're convinced they exist. And while you're about it, find out if those rookies have come up from the police college and if they have, deploy them in the grounds.

‘I'll do that.' Trevor walked away. Even if the tunnels had been sealed off as solidly as Jimmy Herne had said, there was always a possibility that a gap might have been left. A loose side brick – a plug that had worked loose and fallen out – possibilities wormed through his mind. A small gap, that's all he needed. One just big enough to take a crawling man, dragging an inert, drugged, lifeless body behind him.

‘Sealed off, just like I told you.' Jimmy Herne pulled back a hydrangea that had spread its branches within the decaying walls of the folly. He exposed a concrete plinth set below the original floor level. Balancing on his stick, Trevor leaned over and inspected the concrete. He ran his hands around the edges and picked up a fistful of wood chip.

‘We use that to keep down the weeds,' Jimmy informed him.

Trevor signalled to the recruit behind him. The girl hadn't even finished her six weeks training, but with experienced officers thin on the ground, he hadn't felt justified in taking anyone else on what could turn out to be a wild-goose chase.

‘See if you can find any gaps around that concrete,' he ordered.

The girl dived forward and ran her hands around the edge of the plug.

‘It's set in solid Georgian brickwork, that,' Jimmy declared. ‘I watched them fix it. Six men worked for two days just on this plug. The tunnel was open both ends before then. That was the problem; people kept trying to walk through. Student nurses out for a lark, you know the sort of thing.'

‘I can imagine,' Trevor said.

‘One of the nurses got caught in a fall of earth. Halloween it was. Lucky they pulled her out before she snuffed it. After that the Authorities ordered the tunnel sealed.'

‘Where was the other end?'

‘The cellar.'

‘It seems solid enough, sir,' the rookie ventured tentatively.

‘Let's go.' Trevor used his stick to propel himself swiftly forward.

‘Where?' Herne protested. ‘I can't hang about with you lot all day. I've a garden to run, and this is the busiest time… '

‘Your work can wait,' Trevor countered. ‘I need you down the cellar.'

The constable who was still standing on the cellar steps, in exactly the same position Trevor had left him, nodded, ‘All quiet, sir.'

Trevor handed Herne and the rookie torches from the pile heaped at the foot of the stone steps. He took two for himself. ‘Where was this entrance?' he asked Jimmy.

‘Bearing in mind that I only walked down the tunnel once and that was when I first started here… Did it for a bet,' he wandered off on yet another digression. ‘The older lads were always egging us youngsters on. Well, there was a lot more of us in those days. Twenty experienced gardeners and fifteen boys… '

‘Can you find the tunnel end?' Trevor stepped forward and flicked a switch. A single row of dim-wattage light bulbs flickered on overheard, shedding a leprous glow over the grimy concrete floors and dusty pipes that snaked around the walls.

Jimmy made his way uncertainly through the cellar until he came to the electricity sub-station. ‘I seem to remember it was here. Yes, this is it,' he patted a large cement patch on the wall that hadn't gone unnoticed by the search teams. But, after tapping it to ensure that it was solid, they had ignored it, not realising that there had once been anything behind it.

Trevor knocked at it. It looked solid, but what if there was something they'd missed? A side-tunnel perhaps, that opened out somewhere else.

‘Constable?' Trevor shouted back to the man on duty.

‘Sir?' The boy leapt forward, bright-eyed and eager.

‘Go upstairs and fetch a pickaxe. And – ' Trevor looked at the fragile, blonde, petite rookie who stood next to him , ‘another man. A dog-handler if you can find one.'

Fortunately, both the constable and the dog-handler he'd commandeered were in better physical shape than Trevor. They took it in turns to wield the pickaxe, and within twenty minutes of hard, banging graft that shook the cellar, they broke through the thick covering skin of concrete to reveal a gap plugged with rubble.

The first hole was barely two inches wide, but it was a start. With Trevor's chivvying, both men managed to enlarge the hole to a rough three-foot square in a matter of minutes.

‘That's the beginning of the tunnel you remember?' Trevor turned to Jimmy Herne.

‘Yes, but you can't be thinking of going in there. It was sealed up because of earth falls. No one's been down there in more years than I care to remember. It's dangerous. You could get killed ...'

‘Did you ever hear of any side-tunnels? Anything leading off from this end or the other?' Trevor persisted.

‘Plenty,' Jimmy said flatly. ‘The usual sort of buried treasure nonsense. These tunnels were supposed to have been built as secret passages leading out from the dungeons of the old castle. There are stories that a Medieval king stashed his gold here. An Edward or perhaps it was a William. I can't remember the details… '

‘But there were rumours of side-tunnels?' Trevor repeated.

‘Legends, yes. But nothing that I ever saw.'

‘Give me a hand to get in here.' Trevor beckoned to the constable and propped his stick against the wall.

‘Sir?' The constable looked at Trevor's leg as he stood awkwardly in front of the hole. ‘You can't be thinking of going in there?'

‘Why not?' Trevor asked.

‘It's not my place to be saying this, sir,' the lad ventured diffidently, ‘but… '

‘You're quite right,' Trevor stripped off his jacket. ‘It's not your place. You're out of order.'

The tunnel was damp, icy-cold, and crumbling. After the constable had helped him in, Trevor inched forward, propelling himself on his elbows. He pushed the two torches in front of him, one lit, the other held in reserve. Every time he slithered forward, clods of wet earth fell on his back, soaking his thin shirt. After ten feet of painstakingly slow crawling, the tunnel widened. He pushed himself forward and fell, in a clatter of torches and shower of earth and rubble on to a stone floor. The torch went out and he fumbled blindly in total, terrifying darkness for five panic-stricken minutes before his fingers closed around it again and he found the switch. He pressed it downwards, and a blessed warm glow of light dispersed the gloom.

‘You all right, sir?' the constable's voice echoed down the tunnel. Trevor shone his torch back into the hole.

‘Fine,' he rubbed his legs. ‘I've broken through into an area high enough to stand in.'

‘Do you want me to follow you, sir?'

‘Not much point until I've had a look around,' Trevor shone his torch upwards and his heart missed a beat. A bulge of earth, held precariously in place by a network of tree roots loomed barely inch above his head. He tried to ignore it and looked for a continuation of the tunnel. A few large stones were set at the foot of the walls, presumably put there at some time to contain the earth falls that had covered the outer edges of the stone floor with a layer of mud. Dark, crumbling walls of earth met his torch beam at every turn. Starting at the point at which he'd entered, he walked slowly around the open area.

He'd almost worked his way around the chamber when he thrust his hand against the wall, lost his balance and plunged headlong into a hole. He tried to cry out, but dirt clogged his eyes, his nose and his mouth as he fell downwards, unable to save himself. Again, he tried to shout, but he couldn't breathe, let alone speak.

He'd been careful to keep a tight grip on his torch but there was too much earth between his hands and his face for him to lift it into view. Choking, coughing, spluttering, he remembered the victims who had been buried alive, and wondered if that was going to be his fate as well.

He summoned every ounce of energy he possessed and fought to propel himself upwards, out of the dirt. Pushing up with his hands, he finally managed to create a little space around his face. It gave him the impetus and air, he needed to fight his way back to the chamber. After what seemed like eternity, he collapsed on the stone floor, in inches of freezing, sticky mud. He was filthy, soaked to the skin, icy-cold. But he was alive. And as his scalded lungs heaved in more damp, stale air, he was grateful for that much.

A fat worm slithered across his legs. Then he realised, the air was chill only because of the layers of insulating soil above and around him. He could feel no fresh draughts. The earth he'd tumbled into had obviously fallen and blocked the tunnel. If there were any side shafts, or networks of secret passages, he could see no sign of them. He rose slowly and with great difficulty to his feet.

‘I'm coming back.' He turned to where he thought the tunnel should be and saw only a blank dirt wall. He spun the beam of his torch around. All he could see was walls of earth. He breathed in and forced himself to remain calm. If he took it slowly, inch by inch, he was bound to find his entrance point. It had to be there. Even if it was covered, that covering wouldn't be very deep. It couldn't be…