Cross had asked Mackenzie to examine the grounds of Coxton Hall on the Ordnance Survey map for other buildings. The GPS in the van was no use. They looked through Davis’s map apps on his phone but couldn’t find a local postcode in the history. She also did a land registry search for nearby properties. It transpired that the Cubitt family owned several properties in the nearby area. Three of them on the estate grounds and another four in the surrounding countryside. Two of the houses on the estate were currently occupied but there seemed to be one which was quite isolated towards the south end of the estate. It had been unoccupied for some years. It was a few hundred yards off a track which petered out before it reached the property. This was enough for them to get a search warrant, which they executed the next day.
Cross and Ottey followed Swift’s SUV down a tarmac country lane which eventually became a rutted mud path with two deep tyre channels. In the middle was a strip of overgrown grass. The hedgerows on either side were exactly as Luke Davis had described. Overgrown and stretching across the lane, they scraped along the side of Ottey’s car with a high-pitched squeal. They travelled over a cattle grid, just as Luke had remembered. In August and September, it would be a fabulous place to come and pick blackberries. Beyond the hedgerows there were acres of farmland. It was owned by Cubitt, but leased to a local farmer. Cross was interested to see that the farmer had built in margins of wild meadow flowers and uncultivated land. He was obviously interested in encouraging biodiversity. The cottage was at the end of the lane which went no further. There was a rusty iron gate lying at a drunken angle against the hedge, more discarded than opened.
Swift pulled up before he reached the gate and they parked behind him. He obviously didn’t want them to add all of their tyre tracks to the ones on the ground in front of the house.
It was incredibly peaceful. Other than an orchestra of birdsong in full swing and the occasional rustle of leaves in the trees, it was completely quiet. The windows of the cottage were intact, but filthy. The entire building had been untouched by anything other than the elements for however long it had been abandoned. It was so far off the beaten track that vandals and thieves hadn’t managed to find it. Slate tiles that were missing from the roof lay in smashed piles at the foot of the walls. Moss clung to the tiles that remained in place. A buddleia was growing out of the chimney stack. From the size of the thing, it had been there for some years.
They walked round the edge of the parking area at the front of the cottage. There was a carving of a pig above the front door in a limestone brick.
‘A pig, not a cow,’ commented Ottey.
‘Possibly goes some way to confirming that Luke stayed in the car,’ observed Cross who was looking for a key under any nearby pot. There was none.
‘I’ll go round the back and see if anything’s open,’ said Swift, promptly disappearing.
‘So, this is definitely part of the estate?’ asked Ottey as she looked at the decrepit state of the building.
‘It is,’ confirmed Cross.
‘Why is it in this condition then? All the other properties are let to tenants,’ she said.
A Land Rover Defender arrived noisily and at speed, crunching the loose ground as it braked behind Ottey’s car. A purposeful-looking Rosemary Tate strode towards them.
‘She’s really stylish this woman, even in wellies, don’t you think?’ asked Ottey.
‘I think she’s pretty quick, if nothing else,’ replied Cross.
‘What’s going on? This is private property and I have no recollection of granting you permission to be here,’ she proclaimed as she neared them.
‘This is a warrant,’ said Cross holding it up. ‘Which means we have no need of your nor anyone else’s permission.’
‘How did you know we were here?’ asked Ottey.
But she ignored her and stretched out her hand for the warrant. She looked at it briefly before handing it straight back. Cross often wondered whether people actually read search warrants when they demanded them. They seemed to read them awfully quickly. Did they even know what they were looking for in order to judge their authenticity? Or even know what a genuine one actually looked like?
‘So, what exactly is going on?’ she then asked.
‘As yet we have no idea,’ said Cross. ‘But we should do soon enough.’
Swift then reappeared round the corner. Tate looked up at him, alarmed.
‘Who is this?’ she demanded.
‘Dr Michael Swift, our forensic investigator,’ Cross informed her.
‘Would you all mind retreating behind the vehicles?’ said Swift pointing to their cars. ‘This is now a crime scene.’
What?’ exclaimed Rosemary.
‘Mrs Cubitt, you’ll need to sit in your vehicle while we speak to our colleague,’ said Cross.
She was temporarily lost for words and did not remonstrate with him. Ottey took her gently by the arm.
‘Why don’t I take you back to the car and I’ll answer any questions you have, that I’m able to,’ she said, guiding the distraught woman away.
‘Something definitely happened in there. Do you want to come back when I’ve had a closer look, or do you want to suit up with me and come inside?’ Swift asked Cross. The resultant expression of disdain was just long enough for Swift to instantly regret what he’d said. He actually swore at himself, but before he could apologise, Cross was off on one.
‘Tell me, what do you think the purpose of my being here this morning is, exactly? Why was my presence required? Simply to confirm that this was the correct address? To help DS Ottey navigate her way here, perhaps? Or simply to accompany her as she led you to the cottage safely? When a simple entry of the appropriate postcode into your car’s navigation system would’ve achieved exactly the same result without the need of my presence?’ Cross asked him without a hint of sarcasm.
‘I was actually thinking the very same thing at the very moment I opened my mouth and uttered my banal enquiry. Let’s go to the car,’ he said.
Cross followed, not imagining for a moment that his young colleague was actually congratulating himself for having witnessed, no, been the actual subject of, one of Cross’s legendary dressing-downs. He couldn’t wait to tell Mackenzie when he got home.
They suited up in brand new white paper suits and hoods, then headed back to the house. They went in through the back door, which gave Cross a chance to look at the garden to the back of the building. It looked like it had once had a great deal of care, planning and thought given to it. The remains of a herbaceous border was now a jungle of twisted, mostly dead plants, while ferns and hostas seemed to have weathered such hostile neglect. The back of the house was entirely covered in a rampant wisteria which threatened, Triffid-like, to swallow the building in one gulp. What was once a lawn was now a four-foot high meadow with flowers floating above the top of it. There was something rather beautiful about it, Cross thought. How nature had reclaimed it for itself.
They went in through the back door. Swift strategically laid out small plastic platforms for them to walk across. The air was fusty, having been entombed in there for years with the added iron-like tang of blood, which often accompanied a violent crime scene. The dirt on the windows, and closed curtains on others, made the interior dark and quite sinister. Peering through the gloom it appeared that the place was ordered, but abandoned. Swift led Cross into the kitchen. Again, the place was completely tidy and ordered. There were recent dried stains on the floor.
‘Blood?’ Cross asked.
‘Yes. You can see how the chair was placed there. The blood formed a pattern around it,’ replied Swift. ‘I’ll request a team to come down and help, but it’s going to take a couple of days to gather evidence. Minimum.’
‘A confirmation that it’s our victim’s blood would be extremely useful,’ replied Cross.
‘Sure.’
Cross felt it was better for Swift and his team to continue their work undisturbed. He went upstairs and looked at the three bedrooms. Two of them seemed to be children’s bedrooms, but were empty of any possessions. The main bedroom’s wardrobe was open. In it were a couple of men’s suits, their shoulders covered in thick dust. All men’s clothing, Cross noted. No women’s items. The bathroom had dusty bottles of shampoo and shower gel.
He took off the forensic suit outside and threw it into the back of Ottey’s car. He would dispose of it later. He walked over to Rosemary’s SUV.
‘We need to speak to you and your husband again,’ he told her.
‘Why? What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘It’s unconfirmed as yet, but the indications are clear. Brother Dominic was murdered in this building,’ Cross replied undramatically.
The woman went white and held onto the armrest in between the front seats as if it might stop her toppling over.
‘Shall I drive you back to your house, Mrs Cubitt?’ asked Ottey.
‘Yes please.’
Ottey and she got out of the car to change places. Ottey gave her keys to Cross.
‘Can you bring my car round to the house, George?’ she said.
‘I can,’ he replied, slightly anxious at the prospect, and trying his best to conceal the ever-growing terror that was enveloping him. He could drive. He just chose not to and it was something he normally had much success in avoiding.
He arrived at the house a full five minutes after Ottey, having endured a slow, white-knuckle drive back. While the odometer never went over seven miles an hour, the terrified concentration had made Cross break out into a sweat. He walked into the kitchen looking like he’d just been the recipient of some truly terrible news. His face was pale and clammy. Ottey couldn’t help but smile at the same time as reprimanding herself for being so uncharitably amused.
*
Julian Cubitt sat still for a good few minutes after Cross told him the grisly news that someone had recently been murdered on his estate. They sat in the kitchen, Cross, Ottey and the Cubitt couple, as Charlotte made tea and coffee.
‘Why is the cottage in such a state of disrepair?’ Cross began.
‘It belonged to Nicholas. That is to say, he had use of it until… until he went to prison,’ Rosemary began.
‘Rosemary,’ Julian muttered pathetically.
‘Enough, Julian. We need to be as helpful as we can here. This is obviously another nightmare situation of that boy’s making, and I will not have us drawn into it.’
‘No one has said it was him,’ her husband pleaded.
‘They don’t have to,’ she replied.
‘Do you know it was him?’ he asked her. ‘For a fact?’
‘You know I don’t.’
‘Well then, don’t jump to conclusions,’ he chided her.
‘I’m not. I was merely answering the sergeant’s question about the cottage. It was Nicholas and his family’s. Not officially, but they spent a lot of time there when they weren’t in London. Sarah and the kids eventually stopped going there. We didn’t ask them to, but it was what she wanted and who could blame her?’ she said. ‘No one’s been in it since.’
‘Except to turn off the electricity and services,’ said Julian.
‘Yes, except for that.’
‘Why not renovate it and let it out like the other properties on the estate?’ asked Ottey.
‘A good question,’ said Rosemary looking at her husband. ‘Julian can’t bring himself to do it for some reason, known only to him.’
‘When was the last time you had any contact with your son?’ asked Cross.
‘Like I told you before. Not since he was convicted and went to prison,’ she replied for her husband. ‘But to be fair to him and for the sake of full disclosure he has tried to call Julian a few times. On his birthday. At Christmas. But Jules wouldn’t take the calls, and so in the end he just gave up.’
‘Where were you both on March the thirty-first of this year?’ Cross asked.
‘I’m pretty sure we would’ve been here. We don’t go out anywhere much these days. Poor Rosemary has suffered the fate of all younger wives, where they become carers for the old crock who once promised never to get old,’ he said.
‘Did you notice anything going on at the cottage?’ Cross went on.
‘You mean a monk being murdered inside?’ asked Rosemary, still upset. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You were there pretty promptly after we arrived this morning,’ Cross pointed out.
‘That’s only because Adam, the farmer who rents the fields, saw your car coming and called me,’ she replied.
‘Does he often do that?’
‘No. No one’s been down there for years. He just happened to be working in that field when you arrived.’
‘Sergeant,’ interrupted the old man, ‘may I ask exactly what it is you think has happened here?’
‘I don’t know exactly. But we do know that Brother Dominic, aka Alexander Mount, was abducted by someone who claims to have done it at the behest of your son, Nicholas,’ replied Cross. ‘That he left Brother Dominic at a country cottage on March the thirty-first when he was still alive. A few days later his body was found in this locality.’
‘The body of Alexander Mount, who you know to be the whistleblower who brought down the family bank, just to be completely clear. The man who destroyed a three-hundred-year-old business,’ Ottey elucidated.
‘Oh, dear God,’ the old man muttered to no one in particular. ‘What will happen now? With Nicholas?’
‘We have a warrant for his arrest which the Met is attempting to carry out for us. He’ll then be transported down to Bristol for questioning,’ Cross explained.
‘Do you have any means of contacting Nicholas?’ asked Ottey.
‘No, we don’t have his current contact details,’ answered Rosemary.
Ten minutes later, she showed them to the door, leaving the shrunken figure of her husband staring at the kitchen table.
‘I don’t know if he’ll survive this,’ she said.
‘You’d be amazed what people can get through,’ replied Ottey.
‘The bank business about did for him. He had a coronary. Do you really think Nicky could have done this?’ she asked.
‘It certainly looks that way.’
‘But why? What on earth for?’
‘That is the key question,’ Cross observed.