Soul Seeker (18 page)

‘Get out the way, can't—' she began, but she did not finish the sentence, for she had seen what had caused her mother to stop in such an inconvenient place.

It was a hooded man and he held a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun on them as he stood at the bottom of the stairs.

Two large spiders watched Eisenmenger with sixteen eyes from their webs, one in each corner of the rickety, cramped shed. He did not like spiders and he found them distracting, almost as if they were judging his competence. The mouse droppings under the camp stool on which the body sat were much less disturbing to him; he felt more at home with mammals, preferring their standard blueprint of symmetry about a single plane with all the external organs and appendages coming in pairs. He kept knocking over things, too. A stainless steel garden spade, fork and hoe; a rusting watering can hanging precariously from an equally rusting nail; an aged Thermos flask; all went over as he tried to examine the body. There were odours though, and not just from the body which had started to decompose, perhaps in protest at having to sit in a shed on an allotment for several days. Potash, manure, creosote and perhaps many other things smote his olfactory membranes. The day being humid, it all added up to being not a pleasant place to be. He went about his job with his accustomed dedication, though.

When he emerged into the bright sunlight, he was perspiring freely. It was with something approaching Schadenfreude that he nodded to the forensic team that they might now perform their tasks in the shed. Beverley was occupied talking to Mr Dearlove in the back of a police car, so he went to his own car, took off his oversuit, put it and his bag in the boot, then sat in the front seat to make notes, the car door open. After fifteen minutes, Beverley appeared, looming over him. ‘Well?' she demanded. She was curt, clearly under pressure and he knew better than to be anything other than professional and brief in his reply.

‘You'll have spotted that she hasn't been beheaded.' If she were going to react to that, he pre-empted her. ‘Nor has she been cooked alive.'

She was in no mood for frivolity. ‘Can you tell me anything useful?'

He considered; it was so characteristic of him, she thought, to be so careful, unlike some of his colleagues; it was not, she knew, because of cussedness but because of a desire never to be wrong. ‘She was bound in the same way as the others – there are abrasions around the wrists, ankles and neck, but there are also burns to the wrists and forehead, in a manner similar to Willoughby.'

‘But you're sure she wasn't cooked?'

‘No, not cooked, but I think she might have been electrocuted. A sudden high current, this time.'

She shook her head. She couldn't see how this particular maniac was thinking, and it bothered her. ‘Anything else?'

‘Been in that shed a while. Some days, I'd guess.' This was about as precise as Eisenmenger ever got when judging the time of a death.

She nodded. ‘Mr Dearlove has been unwell. Hasn't tended his vegetables since a week ago Tuesday.'

‘Apart from that, very little more at the moment. I'd estimate her to be late middle-aged, perhaps in her early forties, and no other obvious injuries of significance. Other than that . . .'

‘Wait for the autopsy?'

‘Exactly.'

THIRTY

R
ebecca Lancefield let herself into her house at about a quarter to eight, tired and feeling slightly sick because she could not get the thought of the body out of her head, seemed to hear the sounds of his death, the stench of it, even; she now found herself suddenly understanding how ghosts could perhaps come into existence, how they might be resonances of such awful, horrid death. The house was darkening and seemed emptier than she had ever known it before. It was a north-facing terrace house in Longlevens; she did not like it, but she hardly ever seemed to be in it, at least not when she was awake.

She ought, she knew, have called in on her parents on the way home, but she couldn't face it; not tonight. Accordingly, having taken off her coat, slipped off her shoes and made herself a cup of strong instant coffee, she phoned instead. Her father, of course, answered.

‘Dad?'

‘Hello, Becky.' He sounded just as he always did, and just as tired.

‘Sorry I didn't look in. I've only just got in. We're in—'

He cut her short. ‘Don't worry.' If she had ever hoped that her relationship with her father was a thing that could be repaired, she had long ago given up, but all the same she found now that he still had the power to wound her. Her mother's condition had only worsened the schism; indeed she could chart a direct correlation between the severity of her mother's dementia and the degree of sullen hostility that enveloped all her dealings with her father.

She took a deep breath both physically and mentally. ‘How's Mum been?'

‘Oh, not too bad.' She knew that he was lying; there were never any good days with her mother; not now. He was telling her that he could cope, that she was surplus to requirements.

‘Has she been eating?'

‘A little.'

‘Has she been happy today?'

He hesitated. ‘She was until she saw something on the television that upset her. Something about horses.'

‘Oh, Dad . . .'

‘It wasn't my fault.' He sounded at once defensive. ‘It was one of those midday magazine programs and I was in the kitchen clearing the lunch things when they started this piece about point-to-point racing.'

‘What did she do?'

‘She began to scream and threw her coffee cup at the television. Luckily it missed, but there was a bit of a mess on the wall and on the carpet. Nothing serious.'

Becky's brother, Tim, had been killed when he had been thrown from a horse thirteen years before; now in the corrosive grip of severe Alzheimer's disease, her mother relived the pain at the smallest reminder. Ironically, she could date the degradation of the father-daughter relationship to that event; not that it did her much good to know why and when, not when she could do as little about it as she could about her mother's illness.

She asked, ‘Is she calmer now?'

‘Yes, thank God. She had an accident, though.'

An accident
. Becky almost laughed; her mother was now so far beyond continence, these were no longer accidents, they were normality. ‘Have you done anything about respite care?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Dad . . .'

‘I don't see the need.'

He always said that, although she could see quite clearly that he was completely exhausted caring for his wife, he was locked into the behaviour, as much a prisoner of the situation as his wife was. She was locked in by disease, he by pride, though; both were strong, too strong to be fought successfully.

‘You must do, Dad. You badly need a break. Just for a few days.'

‘No.'

‘Why don't you let me do more? I'm a bit busy at the moment, but in a couple of weeks, I could take some leave. I'm due some.'

He said immediately, ‘I saw on the news that you've got a couple of murders on the patch.' Beverley had given a news conference that afternoon; to Rebecca's disappointment, she had done a good job. The grislier details of the deaths had been skirted round. ‘Your career comes first.' He didn't mean it, she knew. It was a way of changing the subject because he was trying to shut her out. She wasn't going to be put off so soon.

‘Even so, I promise I'll try to get over tomorrow evening, to give you at least a brief rest.'

‘There's no need. She won't recognize you.'

Lancefield suddenly found tears; she knew of course that her mother would not recognize her, but that wasn't the point, and he also knew it. She would be visiting as much for herself as her mother, and his insistence that she was not required was just dull spite. ‘Whatever, Dad. I'll be over as soon as I can.'

‘If you want.' His voice had become cold.

She resolved to make the time at all costs, no matter what.

In the end, events dictated that it was a promise made in vain; Rebecca Lancefield would be too busy to visit her unloving parents.

Fisher made the first breakthrough. He had been given the task of searching the files for likely candidates amongst the missing persons, a tedious job but not nearly as tedious as it had once been, before computerization. Then it would have meant pulling physical files, relying on a complex system of cross-referencing that required a degree to understand and a genius to administer, yet that had had only a police sergeant looking after it. Even now, after a two-year procurement process and a six-month bedding-in period in which the system had crashed seven times and they had somehow missed three victims amongst the many thousands in the database, Fisher suspected that he had been given this task because no one would be surprised if he cocked it up, that he was once again being used as a patsy, but he had come to accept his fate. He had made it to sergeant, after all, which was one rank higher than he'd ever expected, than most of his colleagues had ever expected him to make, and all he'd ever seemed to do was take the shit squarely in the face whenever it came; it might not have been the kind of strategy employed by a high-flyer, but he reckoned it was worth persevering with, at least for the time being.

And so he spent some hours contentedly, if not happily, at his task. He had to input the details of each of the victims, as far as they were known, then the program would produce possible matches. It was useful to a certain extent, but he was rapidly coming to appreciate the truth underlying the IT aphorism, GIGO – ‘garbage in, garbage out'. They knew so little about the victims that the ‘matches' were loose, still requiring a huge amount of trawling through tedious details, something that was far from Fisher's forte. He was therefore pleasantly surprised when he came across the description of Malcolm Willoughby, who had been working as a barman in Swindon Village until a few days before. It was his widowed mother who had reported him missing when he had failed to answer his mobile on numerous occasions; when she had rung the pub, she had been alarmed to be told that he had disappeared without notice and left no forwarding address. Her description of him included the fact that he had a tattoo on his back of a dragon.

Fisher had the feeling that this might just be the first step on the ladder of promotion.

But then, every week he had the feeling that he was going to win the lottery and have people to do everything for him, and he was still wiping his own bottom.

They stood side by side over the corpse that was now turned on its front, as Beverley held a photograph out at arm's length that they were now both peering at. Lancefield stood to Beverley's left and slightly behind, Fisher in a symmetrical position to Eisenmenger's right; there was an air of triumph about him, one that was difficult to define but that was undoubtedly present, like a faint whiff of body odour. Lancefield had the distinct impression he was anticipating some fairly hefty thanks. When Beverley said, ‘It's the same tattoo,' Lancefield thought that the atmosphere became noticeably more oppressive.

‘I would say so,' agreed Eisenmenger.

She turned to Fisher immediately. ‘Right, I want to know everything about Malcolm Willoughby by this time tomorrow, by which I mean
everything.
I don't give a shit if you think it's irrelevant, because I don't give a shit what you think. Got that?'

Which was all that Fisher got by way of congratulation.

Sammy Carter was cooking tea when his son, Shaun, came in. Sammy was short and burly; although he had endured thirty-five years of working outdoors, and his face and hands were consequently weathered to leather, his eyes were still as bright and blue as the day he had married, and he had still retained a kindly smile. His cooking repertoire was not broad; neither was it wide; indeed, it could not be said to be anything other than shallow. Eggs, rice, oven chips and things in tins tended to form the outermost parameters of his culinary horizon; when he was planning to spend the evening in the local, this horizon contracted to a frozen, ready-cooked meal for two out of Lidl.

Shaun was taller than his father, but just as burly. He was also less easy-going and, his father admitted to himself sometimes as he worked, more arrogant; just like his mother, he thought. During the course of the year, Sammy spent a lot of time alone in his job – in the tractor or perhaps fencing – and he thereby had a lot of time to consider matters; over the years he had done a great deal of consideration of a good many matters. This was not deep, philosophical rumination – he did not, for instance, wonder about the significance of the God particle, or why increasing economic prosperity did not result in increasing personal contentment – but he did wonder about his lot in life, about how his life had changed so dramatically fifteen years before when Carol had died, leaving him to bring up Shaun on his own, about how difficult things had been, about how Betty had helped him through the early days, become something of a grandmother to the boy. He had always been a difficult youngster. Sammy knew well that, in his absence whilst he worked on the estate, Betty had had trouble bringing Shaun round to something even vaguely resembling proper behaviour at the start, and he knew that she had not succeeded entirely; there still remained in Shaun's eyes a glimmer of defiance, spark of contrariness. He contented herself with the knowledge that it was only a glimmer, only a spark, that without Betty's guidance, Shaun might have gone seriously wrong.

He did worry, though, that his son had yet to find his place in life. A job on the estate had been his for the asking, but aside from an interest in shooting, Shaun had never really been interested in agricultural pursuits. He had gone through a series of false starts – car mechanic, work on a building site, mortician and, most recently and disastrously, charity worker – and was now employed as general labour in Silverstone's, a local junk yard.