The Shroud Maker (30 page)

‘You seeing Butcher tonight?’ he asked before suddenly realising that he hadn’t been meant to overhear the conversation. His question must have sounded impertinent. But he wasn’t particularly bothered.

‘Is that any of your business?’ she snapped.

He didn’t answer, and he was left listening to the dialling tone. She’d put the phone down on him.

The digging had just about finished for the day and some of the trenches had already been covered with tarpaulins because rain had been forecast. A few of the team had headed into the centre of Tradmouth to get something to eat – fish and chips had been mentioned – giving Neil a chance to read Butcher’s offering in peace. He turned the pages of
The Sea Devil
until he came to a section about John Palkin’s will. Palkin-Wright had copied the will verbatim and it appeared that everything John Palkin owned had been bequeathed to his brother, Henry, apart from a generous legacy to St Margaret’s Church.

Neil read on. He’d read many medieval wills in his time and they were all similar. Full of piety and ardent requests that the prayers of the faithful living should shorten the deceased’s time in purgatory. Palkin’s didn’t vary from the formula, until the next to last sentence.

‘And I pray my brother, Henry Palkin, will be relieved of that which is sent by Satan to torment him. May the Lord have mercy upon us. Amen.’

Neil frowned, pondering the kind of torment that might have afflicted the younger brother of this rich and successful man.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. He ignored it at first, thinking it was one of his fellow diggers who was too lazy to fish the door key out of his or her pocket. But when there was a second, louder knock he stood up reluctantly and went to answer it.

He was surprised to see Chris Butcher’s wife Astrid standing on the doorstep. On her previous visits she’d always looked immaculate in simple stylish clothes that had, no doubt, cost a fortune. Today her hair was loose around her shoulders and she wore jeans and an anorak. Neil thought she looked younger and more vulnerable.

‘May I come in?’ she said.

‘It’s your house. Be my guest,’ he said, following her into the living room. She looked as if she could do with a coffee so he offered one, which was accepted gratefully.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked once the coffee was made.

He hadn’t expected her to confide in him, given that she’d hardly said two words to him before. So he was surprised when she sank down on to the sofa, warming her hands around the coffee mug as if seeking comfort, and asked him if he’d seen her husband.

‘He was here earlier. Isn’t he on the boat?’

She shook her head, then looked him in the eye. ‘That woman, the one on TV. Is he seeing her?’

Neil didn’t answer for a few moments. There was no way he wanted to get involved in someone else’s domestic squabbles. ‘What makes you think that?’

She took a sip of coffee and Neil could tell she was suppressing some strong emotion; jealousy probably, or simple anger.

‘I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about with Sacha,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘She’s only got eyes for one person, and that’s herself.’

‘Women like that don’t know how much pain they cause,’ she said almost in a whisper as she stood up to leave.

Neil tried to look as if he understood. But sometimes the human heart was a complete mystery to him.

After Hungerford had left the interview room, Wesley met Gerry out on the corridor.

‘What do you think?’ Wesley asked.

‘He didn’t tell us that he’d known Kassia before he met her in Neston. And it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would slip your mind in the circumstances, does it?’ Gerry looked at his watch. ‘I’ll get someone to confirm that the gay story holds water. Then I suppose someone should speak to Rosie again to try and break Gorst’s alibi. And will you tell Trish to contact the Met and all to see if they have anything on Hungerford?’

‘Already been done. There’s nothing.’ He sighed. ‘And in a way I can understand why he didn’t want to get involved. He’s focused on his music and he doesn’t want distractions.’

‘Bit like Carthage with his art. This case is full of ruddy obsessives. What about Mrs Darwell? Someone keeping an eye on her?’

‘The family liaison officer’s still with her. She says she might go home to Manchester tomorrow.’

‘Good. Pity Butcher was talking to us around the time of Eric’s murder. And you and Rachel were interviewing Carthage that afternoon as well.’

‘Butcher could still have made it up to the holiday park after we saw him. His car’s parked in the Marina Hotel garage so he can’t be ruled out yet. Same goes for Carthage, I suppose. Even without a car he could have caught the park-and-ride bus up there and walked the rest of the way.’

‘The question is, why would either of them want to dispose of a private investigator from the Manchester suburbs? And why did Darwell tell his secretary that he intended to stay on here for a while to follow a lead. What was all that about?’

‘If we knew that, Gerry, we could all go home.’

They’d reached the CID office. Wesley knew he’d have to call Pam to tell her he’d be late again.

As he walked in Rachel glanced up from a report she was reading and gave him a questioning look. He hovered by her desk for a moment but when she said nothing he returned to his computer to check his e-mails. The awkward silence had made him feel uneasy; besides, he had work to do.

When he’d finished he looked at the noticeboard where pictures of Eric Darwell and Kassia in life and in death were displayed as well as ones of all the suspects whose names had come up in the course of the investigation – and also several of a smiling Jenny Bercival. Jenny’s mother hadn’t been in touch since her desperate attempt to make them take notice had been revealed as a deception. He wondered how she was doing and he was tempted to suggest to Gerry that they visit her. But what had they to tell her? Nothing.

He stared at the photographs, hoping for inspiration, for that elusive idea that would lead him to the truth. Kassia had definitely known Hungerford and there was always a chance that Jenny had too. Both women had unquestionably been under the spell of Chris Butcher, a wealthy and charismatic older man who’d involved them in his created fantasy world. But had this had anything to do with their fate? And where did Eric Darwell fit in? Because Wesley was as sure as he could be that his death was somehow linked to Kassia’s.

A pile of witness statements taken from the guests and staff at Newlands Holiday Park lay on his desk. He picked them up and began to sift through them, hoping for inspiration. It had been raining on that fateful day so there hadn’t been many people around, which meant that the statements seemed uniformly unhelpful.

However, near the bottom of the pile he came to one which varied from the rest and suddenly he felt a frisson of excitement. An eight-year-old girl had been looking out of the window of a chalet near the pool where Eric Darwell’s body had been found, waiting for the rain to stop. She told her mother that she’d seen a man in a suit walking towards the pool with somebody at his side. When she’d been asked to describe this person she’d done even better than that and named him.

The man in the suit had been walking through the holiday park in the drizzle accompanied by John Palkin himself.

When Gerry told Wesley to go home and get some sleep because they had an early start tomorrow, he hurried eagerly out of the office. Gerry told Rachel to go too but she didn’t move, even though her housemate, Trish, was putting on her coat. It was almost as if Rachel was reluctant to go home and the sight of her sitting there, tapping the keys of her computer, engrossed in her work, made Wesley uneasy. When he repeated Gerry’s order that she should go and get some rest she didn’t acknowledge him.

It was eight o’clock when he set off, his mind still on the child’s strange statement. The man in the suit was walking towards the open-air pool with John Palkin. Mind you, there were any number of people in Tradmouth dressed as Palkin, disguising beard and all. Either the little girl had seen one of them, or she had an overactive imagination. He’d sent a woman DC to have a word with the little girl and he hoped she’d get at the truth.

When he arrived home he was surprised to find Neil in his kitchen, sitting at the breakfast table with Pam and the kids, tucking into a Chinese takeaway. Michael was listening with rapt attention to Neil’s pronouncements about a community dig he was organising during the summer vacation and, in spite of an unexpected pang of envy at the sight of his wife, kids and best friend sitting there in such relaxed harmony, it was gratifying that his son was displaying so much enthusiasm. A few months ago he would have been more interested in hanging out with his mates, the ones who’d encouraged him to take part in a shoplifting spree. Wesley said a silent prayer of thanks that his fall from grace seemed to be a phase; yet he knew that as the teenage years were approaching like an oncoming bulldozer, he couldn’t relax. Perhaps parents never can.

Once the children had disappeared upstairs to their rooms, he opened a bottle of wine. Pam took hers into the dining room, saying she had reports to write before the new half term started. Wesley knew she was deliberately leaving him and Neil to talk.

‘We weren’t expecting you,’ said Wesley.

‘Something’s cropped up and I thought you should know about it.’

Wesley felt a sudden twinge of panic. Perhaps he’d been too quick to put the discovery of the bones at Chris Butcher’s house out of his mind.

‘Is it the skeletons? Have you had the results of the tests?’

‘Better than that. I’ve been talking to a witness… well, the son of one. There’s this old guy who’s been hanging around.’

‘Breton cap?’

Neil nodded. ‘I thought he was just interested in the dig but earlier today he plucked up the courage to speak to me. He told me his dad built the bungalow in the late nineteen forties on the site of a derelict boathouse and came across the skeletons when he was laying a sewer pipe. He didn’t want a fuss so he reburied them, which explains why the ground was disturbed.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Wesley. But the expression on Neil’s face told him there was more to come. ‘You look worried. What is it?’

‘I’ve just had a strange visit from Chris Butcher’s wife, Astrid. She’s worried that her husband might be up to something with Sacha.’

‘And is he?’

‘He’s definitely been coming on to her and she’s been encouraging him – flirty phone calls and all that. I thought you’d be interested, seeing as you’ve been interrogating him.’

‘I’d hardly describe it as interrogating but thanks anyway.’ He already knew about Butcher’s inability to keep his trousers on and his double life as William de Clare so what Neil had just told him wasn’t really news. As far as he was concerned, it was natural that Astrid should be concerned. Butcher was a charmer, a risk-taker who probably got his thrills from living on the edge of danger.

Wesley turned over the possibilities in his mind. Kassia Graylem had spent the night with Chris Butcher and Astrid was a woman scorned. Perhaps she hadn’t been in London that night as she’d claimed. Maybe she’d returned to Tradmouth early and found them together. Maybe she’d followed Kassia and killed her. Colin said a strong woman could have done it. Perhaps the same thing had happened a year ago when she’d found him with Jenny.

He took a sip of wine. It tasted good as it slipped down his throat, warming and relaxing. He hadn’t realised until that moment how much he had been looking forward to his small evening vice. He took a second sip. ‘I’d like to speak to Astrid. Do you know if she’s still on the boat?’

‘She said she was sick of it so she checked into the Marina Hotel.’

Neil produced a slim cardboard box from his pocket. Wesley recognised it as the kind of acid-free box museums sometimes use to protect ancient books. Neil passed the box to him. Before he opened it he washed his hands at the sink and made sure the table was clear of any sticky remnants of the meal that might damage old paper. When he took the book out he saw the title.
The Sea Devil
by Josiah Palkin-Wright, the man who’d once owned the house where Miles Carthage rented a flat.

He turned the pages carefully, reading a passage here and there. ‘I detect a strong whiff of hero worship,’ he said as he neared the end of the book.

‘It was his life’s work. Butcher’s been in touch with Annabel. She’s found Palkin’s will but none of the correspondence Palkin-Wright refers to in the book. I’ve given her a call and asked her to find out what she can – go through old local auction catalogues and all that. If the correspondence still exists, she’s sure to unearth it.’