The Altered Case

Table of Contents

Cover

Recent Titles by Peter Turnbull from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

The Hennessey and Yellich Series

AFTER THE FLOOD

AFTERMATH

ALL ROADS LEADETH

THE ALTERED CASE

CHELSEA SMILE

CHILL FACTOR

THE DANCE MASTER

DARK SECRETS

DEATHTRAP

DELIVER US FROM EVIL

FALSE KNIGHT

FIRE BURN

INFORMED CONSENT

NO STONE UNTURNED

ONCE A BIKER

PERILS AND DANGERS

THE RETURN

TREASURE TROVE

TURNING POINT

The Harry Vicary Series

IMPROVING THE SILENCE

DEEP COVER

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First world edition published 2012

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Trade paperback edition first published

in Great Britain and the USA 2012 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

Copyright © 2012 by Peter Turnbull.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Turnbull, Peter, 1950–

The altered case.

1. Hennessey, George (Fictitious character) – Fiction.

2. Yellich, Somerled (Fictitious character) – Fiction.

3. Police – England –Yorkshire – Fiction. 4. Detective and

mystery stories.

I. Title

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-238-2 (Epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8154-0 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-419-6 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

Friday, 15th September, 17.30 hours – Sunday, 17th September, 15.37 hours.

in which two men in their middle years return, with the police, to a scene of their youth.

C
yrus Henry Middleton had first realized that he had entered adulthood when, one afternoon during an early spring day, he and three friends had sat at a wooden dining table, which stood by the rear window of a small terraced house, and they had partaken of tea and Dundee cake. Their conduct and their table manners had been impeccable, and their conversation had been polite, restrained and sensible. At the conclusion of the afternoon tea Cyrus Middleton had quietly made the observation that that was the first time in his life he had conducted himself with such faultless propriety without at least one of his parents' generation being present, and then, following his observation, a very profound silence had fallen on the group as each of the three others realized that they too could say the same thing. The youngest member of the small group was but twenty years of age and the eldest was a venerable twenty-two years old. They had, they had realized, just entered adulthood.

It was in much the same way that Cyrus Middleton realized he had entered his middle years of adulthood when he and a childhood friend agreed to meet each other in central York for the first time in many years. In keeping with the arrangement, he and his friend, Tony Allerton, had rendezvoused early one evening at the Starre Inne on Stonegate (which, dating from the mid-seventeenth century, laid claim to be the city of York's oldest licensed premises). On that first meeting their conversation had been about their children's progress at school and university, their daughters' apparent absence of taste and also absence of downright common sense when it had come to choosing their boyfriends. ‘He spends all day playing computer games now that he has lost his job and every evening he's out with his mates drinking in the pub, so what on earth she sees in him confounds me,' and then the conversation would turn to the purchase of their first Volvos and the merits of Volvos over Audis, and then of their pension plans. It was the talk of two men in their middle years. They had then settled into a routine of meeting once a month, on a Friday, at the Starre Inne.

At the conclusion of one such rendezvous, Middleton had turned to his friend and had said, ‘Well, Midland bound for Cricklewood?' and Tony Allerton had smiled and replied, ‘Hartly Dells and Sale and Co.,' to which Middleton had responded, ‘One more, then I'll go.' He had then levered himself with no little difficulty from the corner seat he and Allerton had occupied. The pub was beginning to swell with loud youth who were most eager to kick-start their weekend and he weaved his way to the bar to order two final pints of real ale. He paid for the beers and negotiated his way through the heavy press of youngsters, carrying the glasses back to the small round table at which Allerton sat, glancing at the framed prints of Old York. He placed the glasses gently down on the polished surface of the table.

‘That day,' he said, when once again he was settled in the tight corner seat, and found he had to raise his voice somewhat so that it could still carry to Tony Allerton, ‘that long, long day.'

‘Yes, when we found a ruin covered with ivy, a green stump of a thing.'

‘Has anyone rescued it, do you know? Seems unlikely.'

Tony Allerton raised his glass in a gesture of thanks.

‘Yes, I doubt it too; it really was too far gone, wasn't it? Just low walls remaining.'

Middleton raised his glass in response and then turned and glanced in annoyance at a young man who was standing close to where he and Tony Allerton were sitting and who was talking loudly on his mobile phone, apparently to a friend, and telling said friend about the problems he was having with the conveyancing of the house he was evidently hoping to buy.

‘Doubt it,' Middleton replied, glancing with annoyance at the loud-mouthed youth and his mobile phone. ‘Even then, you could only just make out the lines of a building, all overgrown and covered in moss and ivy. I remember that there was an old stone gatepost there as well, in the middle of the wood. There must have been a road there, or a driveway or something, though it was all overgrown back then and it will be more so now. But . . .'

‘But?' Allerton sipped his beer.

‘Well . . . you know, Tony, of late I have found myself thinking about it more and more frequently.'

‘Thinking of that day? There was nothing that was particularly special about it.'

‘Wasn't there?' Middleton held eye contact with Allerton. ‘I mean, I suppose you are right.'

Allerton put his glass of beer down on the table, just as the youth with the mobile phone terminated his call, and he said in a softer voice, ‘You know, I have thought about it too, probably not as often as you seem to have been thinking about it . . . but yes . . . supposing I was right?'

‘I now think it was a grave after all, probably still is.'

‘So do I.' Allerton spoke softly, looking at his beer rather than at Cyrus Middleton. ‘We laughed at it and then ran away.'

‘It was a grave at the edge of the field, just beyond the wood.'

‘Yes.' Allerton's eye was caught by a slender blonde-haired girl who weaved gracefully and confidently through the patrons, and who held a drink in one hand whilst pressing a mobile phone to her ear with the other. She left a distinct yet delicate scent of perfume in her wake as she passed by their table. ‘Yes,' he said again, ‘a grave . . . right size . . . just the right sort of place for one.'

‘Yes, you couldn't dig a grave within the wood; you couldn't get past the root system.'

‘Plate,' Allerton replied softly, ‘it's called the root plate.'

Cyrus Middleton glanced at Allerton and did so with an anger, which he found difficult to control. Middleton had once described concrete as ‘setting' during a very sensitive conversation about some home improvement work his recently deceased father had undertaken, to which Tony Allerton had indelicately responded, ‘Concrete doesn't “set”, concrete “cures”. That's the correct term.' It was similarly not the right time or place to correct someone on a wholly unimportant turn of phrase, but Middleton chose restraint and diplomacy and remained silent as Allerton continued. ‘You couldn't get past the root plate, but a spade is all you would need to dig a hole in a field, especially an arable field, regularly ploughed and irrigated . . . and it was just this time of the year. The harvest had been gathered, only the stubble remained.'

‘Yes . . . yes . . . I remember. Stubble was being burned in the neighbouring fields because smoke wafted over towards us and for a brief period we couldn't see or breathe.' Middleton tapped his fingers on the tabletop. ‘I remember that because you commented that that had once caused a major car crash in which a relative of yours had been injured.'

‘My Uncle James.' Allerton nodded. ‘He sustained head injuries. He recovered, others were not so lucky. Three fatalities in that pile-up due to smoke from burning stubble in a field at the side of the road wafting over the road causing sudden zero visibility. The wind had veered, apparently; but, yes, I remember telling you that as we coughed and floundered about in the dense smoke, then it cleared and that encouraged us to move away from the field.'

‘That's right, that's why we left the scene, we didn't want to get another lungful of smoke.' Middleton sipped his beer. ‘But in all honesty you'd think the farmer or one of the farmhands would have noticed an area of disturbed soil. I mean to say, if we noticed it, two fifteen-year-old town boys, then surely the blokes who worked those fields would have noticed it . . . certainly so.'

‘You'd think so, but perhaps they had no reason to return to that field.' Allerton shrugged. ‘I mean, when all was safely gathered in, the stubble could then have been set on fire at the far side of the field and left to burn across the ground to where the disturbed soil was. There would be no need to pay any more attention to it until it was time to plough before sowing the winter wheat and by which time the area of dug up soil wouldn't be so obvious . . . not so obvious at all.'

‘Yes,' Middleton murmured, ‘that would explain it; it would explain it quite neatly.' He paused and held eye contact with Allerton. ‘So what do we do, Tony? Something or nothing?'

Allerton briefly looked to his left and then to his right, and then he looked back at Cyrus Middleton. ‘There's only one thing we can do, one solitary and sole thing, and I think we both know that.'

‘How old were we?' Middleton asked.

‘Fifteen . . . you just said so.'

‘So I did. Yes, it was the last few days of the summer holiday in the year we went to Scotland with the school.' Middleton nodded with a smile.

‘Aviemore . . . tenting . . . yes, it was that summer, it was a very good holiday. We went with the advance party, two members of staff and the older boys, to put the tents up and prepare the field kitchens . . .'