Green and Pleasant Land Page 9

  ‘A bit far north for you, isn’t it, Fran?’

  ‘It is indeed. And I’m not really here at all, not officially: Mark and I are just consultants on a cold case.’ She gave the briefest of explanations.

  ‘Brilliant. How’s married life suiting you? No need to ask, actually: you’re absolutely blooming.’

  ‘Blooming what, that’s the question.’

  ‘That’s my Fran. OK, we’ll do supper tomorrow, the four of us? No, three. Jill’s up in Sheffield for some conference. Got your phone? This is my number. Best leave it till tomorrow to fix a place – we don’t want to choose somewhere only to find it’s under water or about to be.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘Fine weather to find a pair of damned skeletons. Why doesn’t the sun ever shine on these gigs?’ He pulled down his naturally comic features into a mask of tragedy.

  ‘Because it would make your investigations a lot smellier. Now go and be an expert!’ She waved him off. Having achieved rather more than she’d set out to do she walked quite purposefully back to Mark and the others, who were obviously ready to head dispiritedly back to Hindlip. Tucking her hand into Mark’s she whispered in his ear, ‘Gold dust!’ Which is what a good forensic pathologist always was – especially one as indiscreet as Hugh generally was with his friends.

  Before she could explain, however, a familiar face appeared. That of Sandra Dundy. Now what was someone as exalted as a commissioner doing at a crime scene? But she could scarcely nip over and ask, could she? Actually, what she might have asked was why even Dundy’s boots had high heels.

  Iris raised her eyes heavenwards as the soaking quartet trudged through the entrance hall. Stu, who’d bummed a lift out to the scene with a CID mate, had returned with Paula; Fran had shared with Mark. This time she’d been able to make the phone call she’d postponed since lunchtime, to Desmond Markwell, Fi’s ex-lover. He’d seemed disconcerted at the very least, and disinclined to talk. However, most people succumbed to Fran’s persuasion sooner or later, and he agreed to meet her in Birmingham on Friday morning.

  The coffee machine was the most popular item in their incident room, bar the radiators, to which they were drawn like iron filings to magnets. A general air of depression mixed with the damp of their waterproofs. Fran caught Mark’s eye. It was time to raise morale. Should she speak first?

  ‘Let’s put into some order what we’ve found today. Then at least if the MIT takes over the skeletons, you both have information to take forward as part of your claim to be included in the team.’ She’d put money on Mark and her being given their marching orders, of course.

  ‘When do you think they’ll let us know?’ Stu asked.

  ‘Given we still haven’t heard officially about the landslip, I wouldn’t even guess the answer to that,’ Mark said. ‘Come on, let’s think positive. Paula and Fran – anything useful?’

  Fran gestured: Paula should respond.

  ‘Natalie’s abandoned vehicle. We have a witness that there were footprints leading from the car when she discovered it. And the footsteps led to the road, not the undergrowth.’

  ‘That’ll be the old bat,’ Stu observed doubtfully.

  ‘Old bat? Mrs Roberts’d run rings round you,’ Paula jeered. ‘And me, actually. I’ll get her statement transcribed soon as I can.’

  Fran smiled her thanks. ‘I sensed very strongly that she’d rather we left things well alone. Marion’s clearly convinced that Natalie and Hadrian didn’t die in the open that night. If we continue to hunt, we may put in jeopardy what she hopes is their new life.’ She looked around. Did they agree with Mrs Roberts? And if they did, did they have the moral right to do as she wished?

  ‘It’s just her opinion, not founded on any evidence we’ve found so far,’ Stu observed.

  ‘Is non-evidence evidence?’ Fran asked. She had an idea it might be.

  Mark said, ‘I might just have acquired something useful – though I admit it took me far longer than I like to get it. I had lunch with a one-time West Bromwich superintendent, the match commander, Joe Swallow; he’s given me a useful contact. I still haven’t had time to put together the complete profile of Foreman I promised. I’m sorry. But I gather he wasn’t the most gentlemanly of players.’

  ‘You mean he collected red and yellow cards all the time,’ Stu concluded.

  ‘Quite. He sold up his Edgbaston place when he moved to Millwall. He had a relationship with a high-profile model a couple of years after that. They split up. Then there was a girl who did TV voice-overs … He never remarried, and interestingly never made any attempt to get Natalie declared dead.’

  Stu scratched his head. ‘That’s quite odd. What about money? Don’t you need that to get at her bank account? Her savings?’

  ‘Perhaps they had joint accounts in everything,’ Fran said doubtfully.

  ‘Joe pointed me in the direction of the Professional Footballers’ Association. Stu, you’ve got police authority, which I haven’t; can you get on to them to see his medical records?’

  Stu nodded. ‘Right. I wonder if he left his violence on the field? But in the UK he’s never even been charged in connection with any incident.’

  ‘Not even road rage?’ Paula asked.

  ‘Not even a speeding ticket. I checked and double-checked. Nothing about him on file at all.’

  ‘Well done – and thank you for doing what I promised to do.’ Mark caught the expression on Fran’s face. ‘Go on,’ he prompted her.

  ‘A year or so ago I’d have laughed at myself for making such a silly suggestion. But in view of certain Top People’s recent activities with their speeding points, I’ll ask anyway: any charges against Natalie? Traffic violations, anything like that?’

  Stu blinked. ‘Ah, you mean like Huhne and Pryce. Yeah, good idea.’ He made a note. ‘As for evidence, I did look, gaffer, but I didn’t find so much as a rusty button. Thing is, we were only looking for corpses, not live motorists, weren’t we? And CCTV wasn’t sprouting out of every bush like it is nowadays, even if the gaffers then had wanted to look. But I did manage something. I managed to talk to my cousin, the school teacher. About Ted Day. At least, I told her I wanted to talk about him. She said I could buy her a drink on her way home from school tonight. Which isn’t as early as it sounds, by the way. I always thought it was a nine till three job. Seems she always works till gone six, and later if there’s a parents’ evening. So I’ll see her about six thirty. I’ll hang on here, do a bit of sniffing round on the Net myself.’

  ‘Thanks. And you can claim for expenses, remember.’

  ‘What’s a vodka-tonic between friends? Go on, I can shout for that myself. Don’t want to blow our budget, do I?’

  The phone rang. As one they froze. Was this the call from the ACC to tell them to disband?

  NINE

  It was actually Colin Webster’s secretary. Mark and Fran were invited to meet the ACC at six thirty to discuss developments. She did not divulge which party was expected to announce developments, even when, extremely casually, Fran asked her.

  ‘Hang on, you’re freelance,’ Paula objected as Fran, pulling a face, cut the call. ‘It’s part of our contract to have a flexible working day. But you two? I’d have thought you’d be nine till five.’ Then she added, with a grin that made Fran want to hug her, ‘Actually, not you two. My first gaffer said she’d never ask us to do anything she wouldn’t do herself, and you’re like that, aren’t you?’

  ‘But there’s nothing to stop you leaving at a reasonable time,’ Mark said with a smile. ‘See a bit of your family.’

  She looked at her watch. ‘It wouldn’t feel right, with the rest of you still here. I’ll sort out that transcription – it’ll be a good start for tomorrow.’

  At least Colin Webster seemed to have been working late, not just wilfully exerting authority, if the heap of files on his desk was anything to judge by. His office was rich with antacid fumes; he was still chomping when he called them in and invited them to sit.
<
br />   ‘We’ve had some interesting news,’ he began, stopping as they exchanged a glance. ‘Two skeletons have appeared after a landslip north of Bewdley. It looks as if at last we have evidence. That being the case, I’m assuming your work here is done and we can terminate your contract.’

  ‘Assuming the remains are indeed those of Natalie and Hadrian Foreman, of course we’re happy to hand over our findings so far to your MIT. But we would put in a plea for the other members of our little team, DS Stu Pritchard and DC Paula Llewellyn, to join the MIT. They’ve worked very hard and have a real grasp of the background.’

  ‘Not DC Marlow? I thought she’d volunteered, too?’

  So he was more on the ball than he sometimes looked. Impressed, she continued, ‘She did. But she spent today in court, and may have more days to come. We’ve absolutely no complaints about her; we were as disappointed as she was when she had to leave us. We’d have welcomed her back, no doubt about that,’ Fran declared, adding with a touch of malice, ‘We still would, if the remains prove to belong to other victims.’

  ‘I can’t see any likelihood of that – far too much of a coincidence.’ But Webster looked furtive – guilty, even. He was clearly dying to ask what Fran knew about the find.

  She obliged without forcing him to prompt her. ‘I agree, quite a big coincidence. But the people I spoke to at Bewdley seemed to have doubts about the age of the remains.’ There was no need to point out that these weren’t forensic scientists, just railway enthusiasts with a lot of common sense and local knowledge.

  ‘You’ve been out to the scene?’ He popped another couple of Gaviscon and chewed hard. He also scribbled a note.

  ‘Only as members of the public, of course. We headed over as soon as we picked up the information on the BBC News page,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I was with DC Llewellyn at the time; I notified Mark, of course. And DS Pritchard joined us, naturally. We were expecting an official summons, to be frank.’

  ‘Didn’t you get one? I must have a word.’ He jotted, as if it was news to him.

  Which, given the sentences with which he’d opened the conversation, it clearly wasn’t. But this time they didn’t exchange a glance, each entirely sure that the other was thinking the same thoughts.

  ‘What makes you think the remains aren’t those of the Foreman family?’ he asked quickly. ‘Whose opinion is it?’

  He wasn’t getting an answer to that question. ‘Just a process of deduction. The railway cutting has been there for over a hundred and fifty years. The line and the line side must be checked regularly by people who get to know every stone, every blade of grass. They’d notice any unusual activity, like a grave being dug.’

  ‘Natalie disappeared in a blizzard,’ Webster objected. ‘And snow lay for weeks. Any traces would be covered up.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mark agreed smoothly. ‘But I bet the members of the railway – all dedicated volunteers – would be out and about anyway. I bet there’d be a lot of photos in their archive. Photographers love snow scenes.’

  Fran added, ‘I’m sure there are plenty of the big landslide they had back in 2007.’ Not that that was relevant, but it would show they’d been doing their research. ‘And I’m sure once the forensic teams have finished with the scene this time, the snappers will be recording each stage of the repairs to the line. MIT will have lots of easily accessible evidence,’ she concluded as breezily as if she was in charge of the enquiry. To her embarrassment, because she loathed having any sort of meeting interrupted electronically, her phone warbled, as if the arrival of a text gave it android joy.

  As if the mobile tone was a cue, Webster’s phone rang. Fran took his preoccupation, indeed anxiety, with his call, as a chance to check her message. It was from Hugh Evans: ‘You may be here a bit longer. X.’ She showed it to Mark, who held the phone at arm’s length – he’d left his reading glasses in the incident room, no doubt.

  Webster’s responses to his interlocutor were terse in the extreme. At last, cutting the call, he turned to them and said, ‘We shall have to continue this conversation tomorrow morning. Shall we say eight?’

  He could have suggested any time he liked, and in normal circumstances Fran and Mark would have presented themselves bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. However, even Webster might have found it hard to be enthusiastic about an early start if he spent the evening as Mark and Fran did. The straightforward journey back to Ombersley became a nightmare. Trees were down, fellow motorists were stranded awkwardly at junctions and, as they watched, ditches started overflowing on to the road in front of them. As for the cottage, a quiet evening googling information was clearly off the cards. Despite Mark’s improvised dam, the water inside was three inches deep. Even though this wasn’t their own home, Fran gasped at the pathos of it – items chosen carefully, even lovingly, now dross. Wordlessly, they worked to save as much as they could, filling the pretty bedrooms with everything they could carry upstairs. The sheepskin rug ended up upside down in the bath, but Mark feared it would never recover.

  To do him justice, Alex Fisher, the letting agent, was there in response to their phone call even before the emergency services arrived. A gangly man in his thirties, he emerged with difficulty from his four by four, already wearing not just a sou’wester but also waders over his business suit. In other circumstances the effect might have been laughable. He agreed they should leave as soon as they could. They’d done all they could, after all.

  But he didn’t stop at sighing over the sodden cottage itself. Armed with a portable floodlight – to call it a torch would have insulted it – he set off upstream. Curious, and knowing Mark would finish packing their belongings at least as well without her, Fran followed him. Her waterproof was already streaming, and she reckoned a little more water wouldn’t hurt.

  ‘This is above and beyond the call of duty,’ she said with a grin. There was no point in yelling at a man in a suit prepared to go to such lengths. Delivering heaters was one thing; trudging through a torrent was another – even if it was only eight or ten inches deep, not yet threatening Fran’s wellies.

  ‘I’m just curious. Nothing like this has ever happened before – and we’ve had some serious weather over the last few years. There’s a culvert up here designed to divert water round the property.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be doing its job very well! Whoops!’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Alex asked, grabbing her as the surge, shallow as it was, threatened to wash her feet from under her. ‘Here, take my hand.’

  Treading more carefully, his grip on Fran firm if bony, he sheared off to his left. He raised his torch. ‘That’s interesting.’

  It was. The mouth of the culvert was completely blocked – plastic sacks, great lumps of timber, a few bits of scaffolding.

  ‘You’d expect a build-up of debris after all this rain,’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘But that looks more organized than debris,’ she concluded for him.

  ‘Quite. Could you hold this lamp? I need a few snaps. I’ll need to report to the owner – big insurance claim coming, I should think. And a bit of photographic evidence is always useful.’

  ‘The police might find it interesting too,’ Fran observed. ‘Criminal damage. Come to think of it, we’ll take it in turns,’ she said grimly. ‘I shall need some too.’

  By the time they got back to the cottage, Mark had just finished loading the car, now intermittently illuminated by the blue lights of a fire service vehicle. ‘Where’s the best place to stay round here?’ he asked Alex.

  ‘On a night like this it’s hard to tell which roads’ll be open and which not. Look, my aunt runs a B and B about four miles from here. Usually she’s only open in the summer, but if I have a word …’ He paddled away to find a signal. Soon he was back. ‘Would you like her to feed you? It’ll be out of the freezer, but she’s got some soup. OK? I’ll lead you there and then come back here and lock up.’

  If the letters B and B had for a moment brought to Fran’s mind the ter
ror of an unyielding seaside landlady and equally unyielding beds, she thanked heaven that she’d not voiced her doubts. A tall, elegant woman whom they would have placed in her sixties, had not a row of helpful birthday cards declared she was seventy-five, Edwina Lally welcomed them to her solid early Victorian house as if they were old friends. ‘I’ve just had the rooms in the main house redecorated and they smell of paint, so I’ve put you in the extension – there are more mod cons there, and you look as if you could do with a bit of a pamper. On sunny days you can even step right out into the little patio garden – it used to be the walled kitchen garden, I think. But I doubt if you’ll be doing sunbathing for a couple of days.’ Almost unconsciously, they somehow surrendered to her all responsibility for their well-being: boots and wet-weather gear disappeared. Edwina ushered them down a couple of steps, across a passageway with doors at either end and into their new quarters, where she left them to get acclimatized.

  Thick towels and bathrobes hung in a bathroom warm enough to grow orchids (several growing on the window sill and vanity unit proved it); and a range of delectable toiletries tempted them to the environmentally incorrect but infinitely desirable power-shower. Fran nursed a suspicion that their self-contained unit might once have been a double garage, but felt it would be beyond churlish to ask their host.

  They soon found themselves clutching glasses of Prosecco in front of an open fire and tucking into nibbles; there was nothing like paddling round in flood water containing goodness knows what to stimulate an appetite. Then they were given the promised home-made soup, not to mention home-made bread, with a local white wine to wash it down. Local cheese to follow. Perhaps after all they’d both drowned and found themselves in the same mansion of heaven.