Soul Seeker (4 page)

‘Josh, please don't tell fibs.' She showed him the photograph that was displayed on the back of the camera, the one that showed Darren making a silly face; close behind him was a chain-link fence and beyond that could be seen the upper, ruin storeys of the Grange. He looked surprised, then shocked, then crestfallen. He dropped his head.

‘We were only in the outer grounds, not the inner,' he said by way of defence. If entering the outer grounds of the Grange was bad, entering the inner – and thereby potentially getting into the building itself – was akin to heresy.

She said severely, ‘It's still trespassing, and that's against the law. You don't want to be labelled a criminal, do you?' Before he could answer, presumably in the negative, she continued, ‘You were lucky the last time that it went no further when you were caught.' Some months before, they had been caught trespassing there by Alan Somersby, the estate manager. He had been quite angry and gone on about health and safety, although, thankfully, Wallace Parker, owner of the estate, had taken a lenient view. ‘Please don't do it again. Understand?'

‘Yes.' His tone was as sincere as he could make it.

She looked long and hard at him, searching for a lie. Uncertain, but wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt, she nodded slowly. ‘Very well, Josh.'

FOUR

H
 
e's lost weight
.

Beverley had no problem with slimming but John Eisenmenger, she judged, had gone too far. Her contact with pathologists had taught her the meaning of the word cachectic, and whilst he had not quite achieved this, he was looking worryingly thin. She could not blame him, however. Not for the first time, John Eisenmenger had suffered trauma in his personal life. The first time had nearly destroyed him and she had been afraid that this most recent event would do the job properly, but she was surprised and pleased to see that, whilst it might have marked him, it had not done its worst.

He was walking around the side of the farmhouse, following her path unconsciously, accompanied by a young uniform. He was wearing wellington boots that seemed too big for him and she wondered if this was another sign of his weight loss. When he caught sight of her, she saw that his eyes were more sunken than she remembered but, more than that, they were more distant yet seemed to see the world more acutely; it was as if they were unclouded by optimism and therefore saw more things. His shirt collar, too, had stretched, she noted, and his smile was real but weak.

‘Hello, Beverley.'

She felt almost like hugging him, but restrained herself. ‘Hello, John. It's been quite a while.' Which, of course, led only to painful remembrance for him so she had to say at once, ‘We have a head.'

He was surprised enough to lose the slightly lost expression. ‘Just a head?'

She nodded to Fisher who had produced the plastic bag with its curious and curiously heavy content, placing it on the bonnet of the car by which they stood. Eisenmenger's face showed part interest, part surprise and part dismay at the accompanying manure. ‘Where was it found?' She gestured to the slurry pit where various lowly constables toiled unhappily.

‘Over there. By the farm dog.'

He said, ‘Ah. Hence the teeth marks.' Which, even though it was difficult to see exactly what had been done, was clearly something of an understatement.

‘We're searching for the body, but no luck so far.'

Eisenmenger looked around at the fields that surrounded the farm. ‘Might be tricky.' She didn't bother replying and he asked, ‘Can I take a closer look at the pit?'

She shrugged;
do what you like, John.
She didn't accompany him as he trudged to the slurry pit where three policemen in boiler suits were being supervised by DI Lancefield; supervised at something of a distance, he noted, and could not blame her when the miasmic stench hit his olfactory membranes. The slurry pit was clearly ancient and, now that the top layers had been disturbed by the less than enthusiastic shovels of the constabulary, the true viciousness of what decay does to all natural things was there to be fully appreciated by all. Eisenmenger felt a twinge of sympathy for the toiling policemen as he asked Lancefield, ‘Do we know how deep the head was found?'

She shook her head. ‘It couldn't have been too far in, because the dog wouldn't have smelled it out.' Which, given the almost solid wall of odour through which he was moving, Eisenmenger felt unable to dispute.

The slurry pit was about half emptied, a growing lake of displaced cow faeces to its right which was being raked by two more constables, looking for anything and everything that might be significant. Eisenmenger had the feeling that all six of them were going to be disappointed. He turned and walked back to Beverley or, rather, the head.

He was loathe to open the bag until he got it back to the mortuary and therefore he could little more than peer through the plastic and the brown organic matter that coated both the inside of the bag and the head itself. Doing so did little to add to the sum of his, or indeed human, knowledge; there was just too much shit.

‘I'd better take this with me.'

‘Can't you give me anything to go on now?'

‘Beverley, look at it,' he replied. ‘Given the amount of faecal spoiling and predation by man's best friend, and the fact that it's been shaved, I can't even be sure at the moment if it's a man or a woman. Please be reasonable.'

Beverley was used to pathologists refusing to give her concrete and useful information but she did not have it within her to castigate John Eisenmenger as she might once have done. ‘I had a feeling you'd say that.'

Lancefield came back over. ‘There's nothing in the slurry pit,' she announced gloomily, as if she had been promised presents that had failed to appear. The policemen behind her just looked relieved to have finished their job.

Beverley failed to summon sympathy. ‘Then make sure that the search of the fields is going well, while I have a chat with Farmer Giles.' To Eisenmenger she said, ‘Can I assume that I'm not going to have to wait days for you to get around to looking at that thing?'

He smiled. It was tired but appreciative. ‘No more than five, I promise.'

She nodded slowly and with a perfectly straight face. ‘Welcome back.'

FIVE

M
alcolm Willoughby had had his eye on the delightfully chubby Sharon Thomas for some weeks. She had the blonde curls and the slightly rosy cheeks that excited him; she also gave the sense that when she jumped, various parts of her continued to wobble for a very short time after they should have stopped, and he kind of liked that. Her blouses always seemed just a little too small, which no red-blooded male like Malcolm was going to miss, much less dismiss.

She usually came with a girlfriend, a scrawny thing with no figure and greasy skin who smelled of cold, greasy burger, but today he was to be surprised. As he made sure that he was out front, ready to serve them at their usual time, she came in alone. His heart did a double beat whilst his brain crowed a silent,
Hallelujah!

‘Hello,' he said brightly. He was good at brightly, because he had practised it a lot, but he didn't need to act it that time.

‘Hello,' she said with a small, polite, insincere smile; one that lasted little longer than a spark from a struck flint.

‘Usual?'

‘Please.'

He was already moving to get down the glass, then turned his back to fetch the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the shelf at the back of the bar. He thought, She's really asking for it, drinking alone.

She had the exact money ready for him, as she always did and, again as she always did, she was taking her first sip before the money was in the card-controlled cash till. She was about to go to her customary seat in the far corner of the pub when he said, ‘You're Sharon, aren't you?'

She paused. ‘Yes.' The smile this time lasted longer, was less guarded.

Before she could ask, he explained, ‘Stan told me. You know him.'

‘Oh, yes. Of course.' He had told Malcolm a lot more, too – an awful lot more – which maybe explained why she suddenly seemed bashful. She asked, ‘How is he?'

‘He's fine. In the Algarve at the moment.'

‘Nice.' She sipped her wine. Malcolm helped himself to a pint of Stella. ‘Should you do that?'

‘Oh, yes. Stan said I could have the odd one.' It was his sixth of the day. ‘He's a pretty easy-going employer.'

Her reaction suggested she was a bit surprised at that – as well she might have been, considering that Stan was well known to be a tight bastard – but she said nothing; it was no business of hers if this gawky, spiky-haired twat was rooking Stan; she had seen others who had tried to fool Stan, and generally they eventually learned. ‘You in charge, then?'

Malcolm thought about lying, decided not to. ‘The brewery got in a temporary landlord,' he admitted.

‘Oh,' she replied, her voice so bored it was almost asleep.

‘You work at the Nationwide, don't you?'

‘I can't get you a cheap mortgage, if that's what you want to know.'

He laughed; he was quite proud of his laugh, thought it sounded really genuine, and sometimes it was. ‘Don't worry. I'm renting for the foreseeable future.'

‘Spanner' Spanswick came in and Malcolm had to serve him his usual pint of Strongbow, so Sharon was left alone for a while. She didn't leave the bar, though, and he did not fail to notice this. When he returned, she asked, ‘You haven't worked here long, have you?'

‘Three weeks.'

‘Is this all you do?' This was in a voice that might have been sneering, might merely have been curious; Malcolm wasn't bright enough to tell.

‘Oh, no,' he hastened to assure her. ‘This is temporary, while I find my feet.' Before she could ask what he was talking about, he gave her his usual line. ‘I've just been discharged from the navy.'

He was particularly fond of this lie; he was not unathletic in appearance and the various jobs he had had during his twenty-six years – mechanic, undertaker, hospital porter and steward on board a cruise liner – gave his patter a fairly realistic patina. Girls fell for it and, as everyone including Malcolm knew, all the nice girls love a sailor.

‘Why? Bugger the admiral, did you?'

It wasn't a particular clever joke, but that didn't matter to Malcolm; he laughed uproariously. ‘Nice one,' he enthused. ‘No. I was invalided out. Smack on the head; got a skull fracture.' He had perfected the precise tone of nonchalance to make this sound quite heroic. He had, in fact, had a skull fracture once, but it was when he had fallen off a skip whilst drunk, the result of a ten pound bet. It produced the required reaction, though. She was impressed.

A group of businessmen came in – they weren't regulars and were slightly incongruous in the surroundings of The Grey Goose where standard dress was either work boots, shorts and builder's crack, or overalls – and he was occupied for ten minutes serving them, by which time she had finished her drink. He gave her the next one gratis.

Over the course of the next four hours he chatted to her – or, more precisely, he chatted her up – and even managed to do his job. He discovered that the reason she was alone was because Deirdre, her companion, was unwell (actually hung-over following a birthday bash), Sharon had no immediate boyfriend because the last one had just been remanded for falsifying MOT certificates, she no longer watched
Britain's Got Talent
because she thought Simon Cowell was a twat, and she was allergic to strawberries and goat's cheese. Occasionally, the temporary landlord came through – he demonstrated an enviable ability to delegate and an insatiable appetite for soap opera – but Malcolm always managed to look both sober and busy every time he did so.

Sharon managed neither. She became very drunk but also, he knew, very willing; it was with a practised eye that he judged this, and it was with a practised tongue that he suggested how the evening should proceed. There was perhaps a moment when heworried that he had misjudged the cast, but only a brief one; her smile this time was altogether different, a thing of crass coquettishness.

Malcolm had to do all the clearing up after hours while Stan's replacement indulged his passion for TV quiz shows; normally he would have been done by half past midnight, but Spanner had thrown up in the gents and not told anyone, and someone else had pulled the condom machine nearly off the wall, so he was half an hour late for his rendezvous with Sharon; he missed her by five minutes.

What he didn't miss was the cosh on the back of the head, the one wielded by the man who had been watching him, when he could, for four days.

SIX

T
he next morning and Eisenmenger had taken his unusual baggage to the mortuary, where the senior mortuary technician, Clive, was his old friend. Clive had seen most things and a head that had been badly chewed by a dog, was covered in cow faeces and put in a plastic bag held neither surprise nor shock for him. He was a short, stocky man with a devilish yet attractive grin, and hands and a face that were grizzled, as if he had sailed the seven seas, or perhaps just done a lot of living.

‘That's some hand luggage, Doc. Try getting that on an aircraft.'

Eisenmenger had arranged for Scenes of Crime to attend in an hour's time, giving him and Clive time to drink black coffee and chew some fat. As it was a Sunday, there was no one else around to disturb them. Clive, a bluff but kind man, knew all about Eisenmenger's recent history and his conversation was accordingly tactful. ‘You coping these days, Doc?'