| |
CAREFULLY CLOSING THE TT’s door again, Bill retraced his steps, this time swishing the branch over where he’d walked to clear any imprint he’d left in the dust. It wasn’t likely to withstand a minute forensic search, but hopefully, if whatever boot prints he’d left didn’t look fresh, they might be taken for the perpetrators’, or after all of these months, maybe even Bose’s own. Then back at the quarry’s entrance, he walked back a few paces to the dip in the track, and the thin line of woodland snaking its way uphill, following the line of yet another streamlet as it trickled down off the hillside. Were there crab apples up there? Was this why Bose wasn’t in the quarry?
With a sigh, Bill knew that he was going to have to scramble up there, and was just glad that in the absence of any kind of track, that at least there were plenty of branches on the steep slope to help haul himself up by. It was hard going, and by the time he’d been going for fifteen minutes, he was already sweating hard. The distance to the top of what was barely a wooded gully couldn’t have been more than half a mile, and yet it took a huge amount of effort before Bill emerged out onto the open hillside.
At the top of the gully he found a spring. Only a tiny one, barely issuing a trickle of water at this time of the year, but it must have been enough over the centuries to erode the rocks he’d just clambered up. And up here the slope was less steep, affording him a fair view across the hillside. But he could also tell that you wouldn’t be able to easily walk down to the edge of the quarry’s rim – unlike some of the quarries on the Malvern Hills, for instance, where the local council had had to put in protective fences to stop people from walking off the edge. No, up here you wouldn’t risk the slippery grassy slope for a start, and anyway, there wasn’t a footpath in sight or on the map that might have people trying to take a shortcut back to the road from.
“You certainly picked your spot, Tufty,” Bill puffed, as he dragged air into his lungs. Damn, he was getting unfit! He really must get out more. This climb shouldn’t have left him quite this winded, but then even he didn’t normally set out to make quite such a rough and steep scramble off-track.
He scanned the hillside, and decided that if he headed east, the tops of the trees he could already see had to be in the next gully heading downwards. It made more sense to do that than to fight his way back down this one only to climb up the other one. And so with care, Bill walked across the hillside, mentally apologising to the farmer whose sheep fence he had to bend the top wire of a little to climb over in order to reach the trees.
At the top of this gully there was another spring, and pausing to look at the map again, Bill noticed that the whole hillside was covered in them. Quite aside from them feeding into the maze of streams which eventually entered the River Teme, something else was jogging Bill’s memory. Places like these, where water bubbled up out of the ground despite being high up on a hill, had often been considered sacred places in the past. How many Celtic saints had their own spring or natural well dedicated to them in such spots?
And that turned his thoughts back to that little altar at the Mulligrews’. Was this vigilante someone who saw themselves as some kind of hark back to an earlier, purer time? A person who had quite deliberately turned their back on the modern world, seeing it as tainted and wicked? That might well explain why they hadn’t taken the cars if they saw them as part and parcel of the problem. After all, without vehicles of some description, the gruesome scene down in the quarry could never have happened, and neither would any of the other victims’ crimes aside from Thomas’.
Is that what happened? he wondered. Were you in retreat from the world out here when you stumbled across Grace and Hannah? But then kept coming across these perverts polluting your sacred space? Was it as much about that as rescuing the women? Because you’ve actually not managed to save any of them, have you? Not unless Grace and Hannah are with you.
And that sparked another train of thought. If Grace and Hannah were still alive, might they not be motivated to help their rescuer? Bill seriously doubted whether either woman would be physically fit enough, or in the kind of mental state, where they could be one of the killers, but could they have helped to carry Bose’s body up here, for instance? That might make a difference if he was looking for somewhere where an avenging female plus two others might have carried someone. They wouldn’t have got up the way he’d just come, but then with three of them, they would have been faster over the open countryside if they already knew where they were going. He’d been searching as he went, they wouldn’t have, they’d have known already where they were heading to.
That got him on his feet again from where he’d temporarily hunkered down on the springy turf, opening the map out wider on the ground to prevent it being snatched out of his hands by the stiff breeze up here. Another barrier then had to be negotiated, but this time it was a dry-stone wall and easy enough to clamber over, and then he was at the edge of the wood. Most of this was conifers, although it didn’t look to be big enough to be a proper Forestry Commission plantation, and there were also deciduous trees around the perimeter at least.
A rather stunted silver birch waved its delicate fronds in the breeze, and Bill could see at least two hawthorns, already red with their haws which were being feasted on by the birds. But then he heard the distinctive caw of a magpie. Now that was unlikely to be interested in haws, or the hips from the tangle of a wild rose that had draped itself over part of the wall. They would eat carrion, but like all of the crow family, they were also terrible thieves, attracted to anything sparkly, and likely to carry them off to hoard in their nests. Having seen the state of the bodies down in the quarry, Bill was sure that what still drew the corvid family of birds back there now was things like shiny buttons and earrings, which would gradually come to light as the clothing, hair and flesh fell away. So did that mean that there was someone up here too? If it was, the odds were that it was Bose.
Edging his way around the first rank of spruces, and keeping to the wood’s edge since few other varieties would flourish under the dark canopy of the rest of them, it didn’t take Bill long to see it. A wild crab apple, and a big old one it was too. Sheltered from the prevailing winds by the spruces, it had managed to grow to more of a mature size than the birch had, and like the hawthorns, was laden with its fruit except for those that had already dropped. And there at its foot was Bose, or rather what was left of him. Bespattered with overripe crab apple remains and bird droppings, it was hardly surprising that nobody had spotted him, because where he was slumped, he was below the level of the stone wall.
“Oh shit! How do I call this one in?” Bill groaned aloud. It was hardly fair to leave it to some poor unsuspecting farmer or lumberjack to stumble across, quite aside from the professional considerations, and yet this time Bill couldn’t think of any way for him to make the ‘discovery’ which wouldn’t sound suspicious. The only thing he could hope was that if he could prod Likesh into finding the Audi, and they came and found that, but no Bose, then that might prompt a combing of the hillside. About the only blessing was that this was hardly the time of year for any farmer to be out rounding up sheep, both lambing and shearing being long over and done with, and that was the only reason Bill could think of that might cause someone to come right over to this wall. If a sheep got in when they were being rounded up, then yes, someone would come and look, but not otherwise.
“God, I hope you’re as bright as you sound on the phone, Likesh,” Bill sighed, “otherwise my career might be coming to an abrupt end. Because I can’t just leave this here.”
For now, though, it would have to be left. There was nothing that Bill could do to secure the crime scene, and nothing that would make a jot of difference after Bose’s being out here in the open for so long anyway. Instead, he needed to think carefully about how he was going to make that call and from where. And that brought up something else. When he’d gone to Hawthorn Hall, he’d not for one moment thought that another body might be there on that site. Hadn’t expected a body of any sort, to be honest. But now he realised that him lingering there when it was so obviously not the kind of place he would normally frequent, wasn’t going to look much better. Luckily the hotel had only taken his card details in order to confirm the booking, and he’d not been charged for anything as yet, so it ought to be easy enough for him to return and check out.
With that in mind, he made his way back down the slope, this time keeping to the field edge where the going was easier. At the bottom he reclaimed his car and drove as fast as he could to the hotel. When he got there, he pulled in to the car park then heard a large pump at work as he got out, and going to investigate, he found that the gardener must have decided that the only way to get to the roots of the rushes was to substantially lower the level of the pond. That was good, because it meant that he was probably a good couple of days away yet from getting to where the woman had been dumped. Plenty of time for Bill to make his exit.
He really did think that his guardian angel was watching over him, though, when he got into reception and realised that the reason why the car park had been so full was because a large group of Dutch tourers on bikes and in camper vans had turned up unexpectedly, and were trying to find rooms for all of them. Managing to attract Kerry’s attention, Bill gave her the good news that he wanted to leave, saying quite truthfully that he wasn’t a fan of the food, even though the room had been very comfortable. And so with a harassed housekeeper almost on his heels, Bill went up to his room, grabbed his bags and left, grateful that by the time anyone would come to the hotel from the force, there would be a whole raft of other names registered, and taking the leather bound register over to another page. Not that that would stop his colleagues from getting the computer printouts if need be, but Bill knew that they’d hardly be interested in recent guests for a body which might be years old. What it did do was stop some bright-eyed DC from casually looking at the register while at the desk and spotting his name on it, and for that Bill was grateful. He also paid in cash, thereby removing the chance of a card receipt being tracked back to him, and since Kerry the receptionist didn’t bat an eyelid at that, he could only hope that he wasn’t the only customer who did that.
Nor did it take him long to go back into Knighton and book into the pub he’d eaten at at lunchtime, although it did heighten the sensation of going around in circles. How many more times was he destined to make this loop of the roads? But having settled into a corner table with a pint from one of the four hand-pumps of tempting local ales, the jovial background noise was just what Bill wanted for his call to Likesh.
“Hello, it’s Bill Scathlock,” he introduced himself when Likesh answered his mobile phone, clearly at home by now. “Look, I’m not trying to poke my nose in,” ...hmphf! Not much! his subconscious interjected. “...but I’m out in the wilds doing a bit of walking, and a thought occurred to me.”
“Go on,” Likesh said genially.
“Well I presume that in your search for Vijay Bose and Tufty Harbottle, you’ve tried to put a trace on their vehicles? That would be normal unless you didn’t know what they were driving.”
“Oh yes,” Likesh readily admitted, “we had the registration of Harbottle’s car and Bose’s – though how those rogues got the money to pay for them is a whole other matter. Harbottle’s comes off the line at well over thirty grand, and you can add another ten on for Bose’s, which is pretty good going for guys with no discernible income. On the other hand, Harbottle did pay cash to a normal dealer for his when it was three years old, and although it was checked out at the time, he did seem to have been saving up for it. Bloody Bose’s was brand new, though!”
“How the hell did he afford it then?”
Bill heard Likesh’s sniff of disgust. “It helps that another’s of Bose’s tribe of relatives is a car dealer – mostly legit’ and acting as an agent for a bigger dealership – but our least favourite gangsta made a large cash deposit, and the cousin was able to wangle Bose the loan on that basis. There’s just enough going through the bank accounts that we know about to stand that, or at least there is until you realise that those accounts service nothing but the loans he had.
“What he actually lived off is another question altogether, because Bose certainly never went short of anything he wanted. Flash clothes, jewellery, watches, you name it he bought it. And I don’t mean from some cousin’s knock-off stall on the market, either! He used to take his various short-term girlfriends shopping in all of the big malls in the West Midlands, dropping fifty pound notes like they were fivers. We know he’s dirty, it’s just catching him at it!”
That gave Bill a lead into where he wanted this to lead, though. “So if the cars were bought legitimately, then you should have no trouble with the tracking devices. I can’t imagine that either of those two personally had the technical knowhow to be able to disable them? Although no doubt some dodgy relative would have. And they’d want to be able to get their cars back if some other thieving git nicked them, for once being able to play the upstanding citizens?”
“Oh they did, and we did try, but wherever those cars are, they aren’t in the wider West Midlands, and they aren’t at any airport, either. There’s no record of them going through customs at any of the docks, and up until Bose and Harbottle were reported missing, we had no reason to try and trace them beyond watching for their illegal dealings.”
“But did you look at Wales?”
“Wales? Why on earth would we look there?”
Bill felt the relief starting to wash over him as he explained, “Well Costa was found out on the border, wasn’t he? And you can’t convince me that the wide open Radnor hills were his natural stamping ground. Sanay Costa was a city boy if ever I saw one. And everything I’ve come across about him says to me that even for the sexiest of women, he wouldn’t have trekked all the way out here if he hadn’t had some kind of familiarity with the place already.
“And that set me off on a different line of thought. I’ve been on leave and doing a bit of hill walking, and thinking back to some of my other forays into Wales, it occurred to me that this might be where your missing working girls have ended up. Not that I think that they’re alive and well and working in some café in Llandudno! Far from it. I think you were right to think that they were disposed of somehow. But then where are the bodies? You guys have scoured their own patch without a result, so they had to have been taking them much further afield.
“Now you might not know this, Likesh, but Wales is riddled with things like old mines, and I’m not just talking about the well-known coal mines of the Valleys down in the south, either. In north and mid Wales there are mines for all sorts of minerals, pretty much all of them defunct now, and while quite a few of the coal and slate mines there were open cast, there were still a fair few that were underground. A few are open as tourist attractions, but the vast proportion are sealed off and abandoned.”
“Oh crap,” Likesh sighed, “I don’t like where this is heading, but you’re making a lot of sense.”
“Good, because thinking about Harbottle and his Territorial exploits, they mean that he’d probably been taken quite legitimately out across some pretty wild parts of Wales. If he remembered that, and for instance some convenient open mine shaft where all they’d need to do was snip some wire fences out of sight, then wouldn’t that make for a very convenient deposition site? And let’s not forget my far from lovely discovery in that quarry only a few miles further south from where we found Costa. The old stone quarries are even more numerous than the old mines, and most of them were small enough that you’d only know they were there with a large-scale map, the same as the mines.
“So what’s the betting that Harbottle had come up with a site like those – a mine or a quarry – and that’s why you’ve never found the women’s remains? And if that’s the case, then isn’t it more likely that those two charmers have actually fallen victim to this unknown place becoming unstable? Because I can’t imagine that they had the wit to think that a roof might collapse in and trap them too.”
“In which case, we’re only ever going to find them by their cars!” Likesh exclaimed, already with Bill. “So where do we look first?”
“Maybe get in touch with those Territorial Army units Harbottle joined, and ask them where they took their training during the time he was with them? I doubt he went scouting on his own all the way up into Snowdonia just to find a site for the bodies. I think he would have gone for somewhere he knew better to start off with. If the T.A. says they went to the Brecon Beacons, then I’d start there. If they say more towards mid Wales and Cader Idris, then I’d go with that.
“The thing is, Likesh, from where you are, to get to north Wales it’s easier to go up the motorway, or head for the A5, and that’s another reason why I don’t think they’re up somewhere like Snowdonia – there wouldn’t have been any reason to have ever brought Sanay Costa to somewhere like Knighton. But from the West Midlands into the mountains of Powys or the Brecons, there’s no direct route. You pretty much have to take the local roads which twist and bend around the mountains and steep hills. So depending on which way they came out, they could well have come through Knighton, which is where I am now, and what gave me the idea.”
“Thank you,” Likesh said gratefully. “Without those reasons, I don’t think we’d have ever thought of searching that far west. We always thought of them running for the ports if they went anywhere. The idea that they might have come to grief in a genuine accident hadn’t crossed our minds – or at least not beyond them being in some pile up on a motorway, or similar. Goodness, what a facer it would be if they’ve been trapped by their own deviousness!”
“Well good luck with the search,” Bill responded. “Personally, I’m off to the bar to get another pint of this glorious Shropshire Lad while I’ve got the chance and I’m not having to drive.”
“Lucky sod!” Likesh laughed. “I have to take my holidays when the schools are off, and then I get dragged to some place full of everyone else’s screaming brats.”
“Take up rugby,” Bill advised. “It’s a wonderful excuse for the odd weekend away, and if you play for one of the force’s teams, it’s even better.”
“Not with my knees, I’m afraid. Too many marathons did for them years ago. I’m lucky if I can manage a game of tennis these days.”
“Don’t talk to me about knees,” Bill sympathised. “The one I had to have done is reminding me forcefully tonight that it doesn’t like all this going up and down hills anymore.”
On that shared sympathy, Bill left Likesh to the rest of his evening, but having had just one more pint, and discovering that he had a key to one of the outer doors with his room keys, Bill went to get a nap. Only just before the landlord locked up around eleven-thirty did he slip out and drive off again in the direction of Mulligrew’s farm. He’d done all he could for now to ensure that Bose and Harbottle’s victims got found, and what he was going to do if Bose himself didn’t get discovered was something for another day. But tonight he wanted to see who, if anyone, appeared up at that shrine, because Bill hadn’t forgotten Grace and Hannah Mulligrew, and there was just the tiniest ray of hope that they and their rescuer might put in an appearance tonight.
