They drank their champagne, yawned through the usual announcements about turbulence and duty free, then it was, ‘Return your seat to the upright position.’ Joanna peered out of the window. Manchester looked its usual grey, half smothered in a damp, chilly looking fog, the airport impersonal. They stood up and reached for their hand luggage in the overhead rack, and it suddenly hit her how different things were from their outward journey. She might simply have slipped the ring on her finger but the reality was that it meant so much more than that. She knew that tacitly she had agreed to a wedding; and that was the first of the list of problems.
Joanna Piercy had always been unlike other little girls. Encouraged by her father, she had been a tomboy, the son he had not had, disappointed with two daughters. She simply hadn’t ever had the dream of being princess for a day in a cloud of white chiffon, to the sound of church bells and bridesmaids in pink. But her mother and her sister would want exactly this. They would try to persuade her towards the traditional. Not a beach wedding barefoot in Bali or a simple civil ceremony in a hotel or registry office. That would be battle number one.
Next she would be, in title at least, stepmother to Eloise. She drew in a deep, sighing breath. Eloise, sharply intelligent, openly hostile. Theirs had been an uneasy relationship from the first. Matthew’s daughter blamed Joanna for the break-up of her parents’ marriage, and though Matthew had sworn the relationship had been damaged before they had ever met, Joanna had certainly been at the very least the catalyst for the split. Problem number two.
Thirdly, Matthew had never made any secret that he wanted another child. When she had had a miscarriage the year before he had grieved – more than she had, which in turn made her feel guilty and wrong-footed. It wasn’t only that Matthew wanted a child. His desire was more specific than that. Like her own father, he wanted a son. The trouble with that particular wish was that it was something not even the most devoted wife in the entire world could possibly guarantee.
She filed behind him along the aircraft aisle and felt a moment of sheer panic. She actually moved forward to touch his arm and tell him that it was all too much. She could not go through with it. She bumped into his rucksack and took a step back before lecturing herself. This was silly. ‘Get a grip, Piercy,’ she whispered, knowing that she could not imagine a life without Matthew Levin at her side.
So…
She did touch him then, reaching forward so he turned his head and brushed her lips with his own.
Sealed with a kiss.
Roderick Beeston was the vet the police invariably used in cases where animals were involved. Familiar with both large and small animals, he had looked at dog bites, neglected animals, poisoned dogs, victims of road accidents, deflected a man-eating Alsatian and so on. His talents were useful to say the least.
At three in the afternoon he turned up in a battered Land Rover, looking every inch the country vet. Green wellies, a Barbour oilskin, corduroy trousers. Ignoring the rain that tumbled incessantly from the sky, he strode towards Korpanski, his hand already held out. He gave Korpanski’s outstretched hand a vigorous shake. ‘Hello, Mike,’ he said. ‘What have we got here?’
‘Not sure, really. The farmer’s been bashed over the head and there are some dead animals around. A dog…’ They both turned as Korpanski indicated the stiff body of Ratchet. ‘And there’s more,’ he said. ‘In the barn. A couple of cows, some pigs.’
Roderick Beeston looked serious. ‘And Grimshaw’s dead, you say?’
Korpanski picked up on the note of enquiry in the vet’s tone. ‘You knew him?’
‘Yeah. Not well.’ Beeston gave an open, friendly grin, brushed some of the curly black hair out of his eyes. ‘These moorland farmers don’t like paying my bills but I’ve been here a few times. He had a problem with some sheep a couple of years ago. Nasty case of Footrot. We had the devil’s own job getting rid of it. Just when we thought we’d won, another damn ewe would start limping. Poor old Grimshaw. He was one of those people who seem to have no luck. And now this. Well…’
He returned to the Land Rover, slipped on a pair of latex gloves, removed a large black bag from the back and approached the body of the dog, unmistakably long dead.
‘Dear, dear.’ Roderick Beeston sniffed at the dish. ‘Looks like poison,’ he said, fingering a sliver of foam around the dog’s mouth. ‘Probably barbiturates. He would have just gone to sleep. Dogs are easily disposed of with a dose that would simply ensure a human a good night’s sleep. Poor old thing. Not the nicest of hounds. These old farmers’ dogs know their place and guard their area with what could be called aggressive vigilance. Had my trouser leg in his teeth a couple of times.’ He patted the head of the dog. ‘Not any more though, eh, Ratchet? I’ll take him with me, Mike, do a post-mortem and let you know.’ Together, he and Mike loaded the body bag into the car. Ratchet had not been a large dog but he was surprisingly heavy. ‘I can do an analysis on this stuff but at a guess it is simply barbiturates.’
‘We’ll want to run our own fingerprint check on the dish first,’ Korpanski warned. ‘It just might give us the break we need. Who knows?’ He slid the dog dish and contents into a plastic sleeve and sealed it before spooning some of the dog’s vomit into a second bag and sealing that too.
‘OK, but I’d like to do an analysis on the stomach contents,’ Beeston said, ‘if it’s all right with you. And I can titrate the doses of whatever was in Ratchet’s dish, if you get your guys to pass it on to me when they’ve finished with it.’
Korpanski nodded and the vet straightened. ‘So what else?’
‘In the barn.’ Together they rounded the farmhouse and opened the barn doors wide to peer inside. It was like a scene from a Doré engraving of Hell. Animals’ skinny bodies were strewn around the barn. All dead. There was a stink of death around the entire place, heightened by the gloomy interior. Beeston bent down to study a black and white cow, lying near a calf. The cow’s brown eyes were sunken, wide-open, appealing for something. ‘My initial guess is dehydration,’ he said.
Appealing for water, then.
They walked to the back of the barn where two pigs lay. Beeston bent over one, touched its flanks. ‘Still alive,’ he said, crossing to a large bucket of water and carrying it back, sloshing over the barn floor, to splash on the animal’s head. The piggy eyes flickered; its tongue lolled out. The vet continued trickling water into its mouth. ‘It might just make it,’ he said, ‘but the other one,’ he glanced briefly across, ‘she’s obviously had it.’ He sighed. ‘Lovely pair of Tamworths, they were. Grimshaw had them for years. Had one of his few pieces of luck last year with a really big healthy litter from this pair. I gave him the name,’ he added cheerily, ‘years ago, when Grimshaw bought him because of the red colour. This is the boar. Old Spice. Judy named the sow. Posh.’ He turned around, full of merriment and mischief. ‘Get it? Posh Spice? One of the few amusements his daughter contributed to the farm.’
Korpanski smothered his grin.
‘You see, if the animals were shut in here,’ Beeston continued, ‘even though the weather was cool, they would have needed to drink. Lots.’ He scratched behind the pig’s ear then stood up. ‘This is a bad business, Mike,’ he said grimly. ‘I don’t know how much you can tell me about what’s happened to Grimshaw…’ He accompanied the probe with a frank, enquiring grin. ‘Bashed on the head, you say?’ He waited for the detective’s explanation.
‘It looks like murder,’ Korpanski said awkwardly. He hated breaking protocol and was uncomfortably aware that whatever it looked like they didn’t know – not for sure. ‘We haven’t done the post-mortem yet. It’s later on this afternoon. But it has to be homicide.’
‘Poor man,’ Beeston said, then, looking around him, ‘I wonder why on earth anyone would want to kill Grimshaw.’ Then, ‘No Inspector Piercy?’
‘She’s on holiday till tomorrow.’
‘This’ll bring her right back down to earth with a bump.’
‘Sure will,’ Korpanski agreed.
‘I’d better go up the field and just make sure the sheep are OK,’ Beeston said, ‘then I’ll come back and look after Old Spice.’ Korpanski watched him open the five-barred gate and stride up the field, the vet’s purposeful step underlining his feelings.
It seemed an age before their luggage came through on the carousel, Matthew’s battered green rucksack and her huge black suitcase. Next came the trip back to their car in a van laid on by the parking arrangement. And then there was the matter of locating Matthew’s BMW. They heaved their luggage into the boot, started up and joined the traffic out of Manchester.
The post-mortem was arranged for four o’clock. It was a grim afternoon, chilly enough to warn of the approaching winter.
Korpanski and PC Timmis parked in the lot outside the anonymous brick building, the scene of so many dramas played out under the white arc lights angled over a mortuary slab.
Doctor Jordan Cray was already in his scrubs, gloved-up and waiting.
There followed the usual procedure, the cutting off and bagging up of the clothes to be examined by the forensics team, the weighing and measuring of the body before the initial examination and taking and labelling of samples – blood, hair – giving them to the scenes of crime officer. The entire body was x-rayed and the pictures displayed on a computer screen.
Next came measurement of the injuries, the external damage done to the head and the rest of the body, photographing the injuries with a rule next to them. It would all be needed as evidence, finally to come before the courts and the coroner.
Then it was time to begin, starting with the head. The mortuary attendant used the Stryker saw to remove the skull cap while Cray made comments as he worked.
‘Fragments of bone embedded in the brain,’ he muttered. ‘Fractures of C1 and C2.’ He looked across at Korpanski. ‘He had more than one potentially fatal injury. The high spinal fractures would have rendered him quadriplegic, unable to either move or breathe. And the extent of the skull fractures – they’re embedded deep in the brain. Death would have been quick and, looking at the copestone, I’d say that is your murder weapon.’
Korpanski nodded.
It was an hour later that Jordan Cray was documenting his findings.
Cause of death: respiratory failure due to extensive skull fractures particularly in the occipital area, together with cervical spinal fractures which caused fatal and irreparable damage to the Circle of Willis.
Then he described the sequence of events, as he saw them, to the detective. ‘What happened was this,’ Jordan Cray said slowly. ‘There was a fight during which Mr Grimshaw tried to protect himself.’ He indicated the injuries on the under side of the victim’s forearms, then held up his own to illustrate his opinion. ‘I think the weapon then was something like a baseball bat, judging both by the marks and the fact that there’s no debris in the wounds. One of these blows was forceful enough to break his left ulna. This is typical of a defensive injury.’ He crossed to the x-ray screen and traced the bones with his forefinger. It didn’t take five years in medical school to see the displacement of the smaller of the two forearm bones.
Cray moved back to the body and continued. ‘Our victim fell backwards, indicated by bruising and lacerations on the sacrum and lumbar region of the back. I think he probably fell against the wall. This happened shortly before death. You saw the green stains on the clothing? I think if you consulted a botanist he would confirm that the moss was the same. And then when our victim is hurt and helpless on the floor, our killer sees his or her chance and topples the copestone right on our victim’s head, fracturing two cervical vertebrae.’
Korpanski felt queasy. ‘Oh,’ he said, seeming to taste the formalin on his tongue even though the air exchange was turned full on.
‘I’d say that did it.’ Cray finished with a flourish of satisfaction. ‘And incidentally, Sergeant Korpanski, I removed a rose thorn from Grimshaw’s right palm. That should give you some clue to the location of the initial assault.’
* * *
All this time, back at the farm there was activity. The copestone had been removed to the laboratory for DNA analysis. The entire wall and murder scene had been photographed from all angles, an arc light illuminating the darker areas. The fingertip search of the scene was ongoing, as were the disposal of the animals’ carcases and the search of the farmhouse.
Roderick Beeston had taken Old Spice to his surgery and was drip-feeding the animal.
Hesketh-Brown had moved to the other side of the road and was interviewing more inhabitants of the Prospect Farm Estate.
Amongst them was Hilary Barnes.
He’d found her in the garden, secateurs in her hand and a weed bucket at her feet. He flashed his card and asked her whether she’d noticed anything out of the ordinary.
She looked him up and down before replying as though her answer somehow depended on what type of person this detective was.
‘I was dead-heading my roses when I noticed some flies,’ she said. ‘Nasty big bluebottles. There have been more of them recently, as well as a particularly offensive smell.’ She looked severely at Hesketh-Brown as though it was all his fault.
‘Have you noticed anything else?’
The woman looked at him now with wise eyes and a touch of humour.
‘Apart from the police cars screaming round the place, do you mean? Or the house-to-house interviews going on across the road all afternoon? What specifically, Constable?’ Her mouth actually twitched.
So she’d actually read the ID card.
‘There’s been an incident,’ he said carefully.
‘So I gathered.’
‘At the farm. I’m afraid the farmer’s had an accident.’
‘An accident, Constable? Do you mean he’s fallen off the haystack or turned his tractor over?’
Hesketh-Brown felt hot. There was no fooling this woman, was there?
He hid in the cloak of protocol. ‘I can’t tell you any more than that, Mrs Barnes. When did you last see Mr Grimshaw?’
Hilary Barnes thought for a minute. ‘Certainly not in the last week,’ she said. ‘Before that…’ Her face was taut in concentration. ‘I think probably about a fortnight ago. He was driving his tractor very slowly along the road. There were quite a few cars behind him getting very impatient.’ Again that touch of wry humour.
Hesketh-Brown gleaned nothing more from Mrs Hilary Barnes. He moved next door.
Korpanski had fiddled for a while with a phone. He was torn. Joanna wouldn’t want to come home and walk straight into a murder investigation but she would play merry hell with him if he didn’t tell her as soon as he could. Tomorrow, he argued, surely, would be soon enough, but he could picture her frown when she asked, sarcastically, when, exactly, had he planned on telling her. In the end he deferred the decision. Front desk had told him Grimshaw’s daughter was sitting outside, waiting to speak to him.
Joanna and Mike were stuck in a queue, fuming alongside a hundred other motorists. A lorry had shed its load on the M6 causing tailbacks, they heard, when they tuned in to the local radio station. Matthew came to a halt, put his hazard lights on and slid his hand into hers. ‘Back with a bump,’ he commented good-humouredly. Joanna nodded and put off switching her mobile back on, feeling that for now she, too, was still in holiday mode. The minute the phone was on she would be back in the swing of things. Work, her mother, her sister. She could almost hear their overexcited shrieks when she told them about the engagement. She eyed the phone in the bottom of her bag with malevolence and left it switched off.
Judy Grimshaw had changed beyond all recognition and yet the shell was the same – colourless, nondescript, thin rather than slim, shoulders hunched and rounded. Glasses that gave her a goggle-eyed look. But what Korpanski observed had changed most about her was an unattractive and cynical twist to her thin lips emphasised by a strange choice of deep orange lipstick, which made her mouth look like a garish gash. Korpanski surmised that life had not treated Judy Grimshaw as well as she had anticipated when they were at school together. She had always worn the air of a woman who was going places. How often do these people lead ordinary lives, doing mundane jobs, living within a few miles of their birthplace? He glanced at her wedding-ring finger and noticed not only was it bare but there was no tan line or little bump where a wedding ring had been recently.
‘Hi, Judy,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’
‘Mike?’ Her expression moved swiftly through pleasure and embarrassment, settling into tight-lipped anger.
So she did.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Let’s go somewhere more private, shall we?’
She nodded and followed him down the corridor to an empty interview room, where they both sat down. ‘I’m sorry, Judy,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have to break it to you like this.’
She watched, curious, silent and unafraid, waiting for him to speak.
Korpanski swallowed. ‘I’m afraid it’s your dad. He’s met with an accident.’
Her pale eyes met his and her mouth twisted even more out of shape. ‘An accident? What sort of accident?’
‘It looks like murder. I’m sorry.’
She brushed the apologies aside. ‘Don’t keep saying you’re sorry, Mike. What’s happened? Tell me.’
‘He was found on the farm – near the wall that borders the estate.’
The mouth, which he now thought ugly, twitched but she stayed silent, leaving the entire burden of speech with him.
‘There isn’t a nice way to say this, Judy. He’s dead. His head had been smashed in.’
She was uncomprehending. ‘Who by?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘Of course,’ she said sarcastically. ‘It’s a bit soon for you to have made an arrest.’
‘We just don’t know, Judy.’ He could hear the defensive tone in his voice. ‘Put it like this: there isn’t anyone obvious.’
‘Was it theft?’
Had circumstances been different Korpanski might have chortled at the question. From that pathetically poor and neglected farmhouse? What would anyone steal? The family silver?
He tried to say it nicely. ‘I don’t suppose there was a lot to take.’
‘Not the thousands of pounds he kept in his mattress?’
‘Sorry?’
Judy Grimshaw crossed her skinny legs encased in faded jeans. ‘Come on, Mickey, surely you’ve heard about farmers who don’t trust banks.’
He hated being called Mickey. It had been a schooltag, a mockery of his Polish father who had always had trouble speaking the Queen’s English though no problem at all fighting for King and country through the Second World War. The teasing had also been one of the reasons he worked out at the gym three times a week. If he didn’t want to be called Mickey then he wouldn’t be. His height had helped. Six foot four inches topped most men.
He eyed Judy Grimshaw and couldn’t decide if the money-under-the-mattress yarn was simply that or the truth. He settled on blunt confrontation.
‘Did he?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I hardly went near the place.’
Korpanski nodded. It fitted in with what he’d already been told.
‘Can I see him?’
‘If you want to, I can take you to the mortuary. We need—’
‘Identification,’ she supplied.
Concern about the state her father was in must have leaked into his face because Judy gave the ghost of a smile. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m a nurse. Remember?’
‘Yeah, but surely it’s different – being your dad and all.’
‘I’ve seen it all before,’ she said wearily.
‘OK. But before we go, I have to ask you,’ Mike said, ‘if you know of anyone who had a grudge against him? Anyone who might want him dead?’
The second ghost of a smile. ‘Apart from the inhabitants of the estate who paid grossly over-inflated prices for an exclusive view of the scruffiest farm in Staffordshire?’
If only police too could hide behind the phrase No comment.
Korpanski felt the muscles in his neck stiffen. He stood up and led her out to the parking lot.
During the journey he made an effort at conversation. ‘Married, are you?’
‘Divorced.’ She almost spat the word.
‘Kids?’
‘A daughter.’
‘And your mum?’ He remembered a thin woman with untidy hair and a worn face, who always wore an apron around the farm so that once when Judy was in the choir he hadn’t recognised the woman attending a school concert in a black skirt, smart green box jacket and high-heeled black shoes as her mother.
‘Ha.’ There was venom in the expletive. ‘My mother? Left Dad years ago. Having a fine old time with her lover. Spain, London, New York. You name it.’
She turned and looked at Korpanski. ‘She was young when she met my dad. Just nineteen. Fell pregnant with me practically straight away. Had all these illusions about being a farmer’s wife. She didn’t know how hard farmers expect their wives to work in this part of the world. Years later, when she’d milked and got up at dawn day in, day out, stunk of animals all the time and catered for all the farmhands, she finally saw the light and moved out. Met another man.’
She sat back, folded her arms, pleased with herself. ‘Had a lot of sense, my mum.’
Korpanski struggled to find something to say.
‘Do you see much of her?’
The mouth distorted. ‘Not since the day she left. Too busy making up for lost time to get in touch with her daughter.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, don’t be.’ Judy’s face was hard and bitter. ‘I prefer to think of her living it up at the high spots of the world rather than drudging around on that blighted place.’ There was something brave about the words that didn’t quite ring true.
Again Korpanski could find no suitable response. He almost shrivelled in the face of so much venom. He knew he should be asking a significant question but it had slipped out of his mind. He was stuck, which gave Judy the opportunity to take the lead, eyeing him as he drove. ‘You always were a hunk,’ she said. ‘Look after yourself, don’t you, Mickey?’
She put her hand over his on the steering wheel.
‘I’m married, Judy,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The hand slid away slowly, back to her lap. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said, ‘so was my husband when he took up with…’ She held her fingers up. ‘Now, was it four or five different women? Not always in succession. He liked more than one at a time. It fed his ego when I wasn’t enough.’
Korpanski was glad when they arrived at the morgue.
In his time, Korpanski had watched plenty next-of-kin identifications. He had never seen one without some form of emotion – sorrow, grief, anger – some sign that there had once been a connection between the dead and the living, the person who was deemed to be close enough to the deceased to tick the box of next of kin. Judy Grimshaw (he must find out her married name – or rather the name she went under these days) stared down at her father. ‘That’s him,’ she said, then pulled the cloth back over his face and walked out. Korpanski watched her. Not a muscle had twitched for the old man. Even he felt more sympathy for the old farmer now.
He was glad to drop her back at the police station to pick up her car and find himself alone, back in his office.
He rang the team of scenes of crime officers.
‘Found anything?’
‘Nothing further of significance except that the mattresses in all the bedrooms have been ripped apart. Probably with a knife. Your assailant must have been in quite a mess. Foam and horsehair and stuffing all over the place. One of my lads had an asthma attack and has had to go home.’
‘Any money there?’
‘Little cash box in the sitting room, forty pounds in it. Nothing else.’
Korpanski put the phone down and wondered then if Judy Grimshaw’s story was true. Surely, surely people didn’t really hide money in mattresses these days? Korpanski allowed his mind to wander. In these days of Internet banking, holes in the wall and credit cards? Surely not.
Or had someone merely thought there would be money there? Plenty of people know there doesn’t have to be real cash – just the storybook kind that villains believe in. And act on. The Chinese whispers that feed legends. And at some point, in one person’s ear, legend becomes fact.
In this case it might be difficult sorting out fact from fable.
Korpanski came to a decision. He’d put it off long enough. He checked his watch. A little after six. He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Hi, Jo,’ he began, when he was through to the landline answer phone.
It was around half an hour later that Matthew and Joanna finally dropped their luggage onto the floor of Waterfall Cottage, Joanna feeling the familiar sinking feeling we all have on our return from a dream holiday.
Back to the nightmare. She had sometimes wondered whether it is better not to have escaped in the first place because, however humdrum it is, we all have to return to our daily lives.
Bills.
The washing.
A leak?
The answer phone flickering. And that was before they a) checked their mail, picked up their emails and switched on their mobile phones and b) told anyone that they were engaged.
There were eight messages. Joanna pressed the play button.
Eloise. ‘Hi, Dad. Just wanted to tell you I have an interview next week at Staffordshire University Med School.’ She was already picking up the abbreviations that mark the chosen few from the rest of the populace. ‘Just wondered if I could stay with you the night before. Dad,’ her childish voice rose an octave, ‘I’m so excited. Well – excited and nervous. Anyway, hope you’ve had a great holiday. You did the right thing getting away. The weather here’s been foul. Love.
She didn’t need to leave her name. Our nearest and dearest don’t.
Joanna’s mother was next, reminding her not to forget her nephew’s birthday. ‘You are Daniel’s godmother, Joanna.’ No hope you’ve had a nice holiday or anything pleasant or civilised, Joanna noticed, and she hadn’t forgotten Daniel’s birthday anyway. She pressed delete.
There were a few more, Tom and Caro inviting them out to supper. ‘They had some great news.’
And lastly: ‘Hi, Jo.’ Korpanski’s gruff voice. ‘Hope you’ve had a good holiday. No need for you to worry. Everything’s under control. But I thought you’d want to know right away there’s been a murder. Old farmer bashed around the head round about a week ago. Out at Prospect Farm. No one in the picture yet. Cray’s done the PM. Cause of death: head injury caused by one of the stones from the wall. Heavy old thing. Some animals involved. The vet, Beeston, suspects the dog was poisoned and the animals probably died of thirst, basically. One pig seems to have survived. Name of Old Spice. I’ll buy you a drink if you can guess the name of his wife.’ A dry chuckle before he continued. ‘Anyway, see you tomorrow.’ A pause. ‘Umm – I’m looking forward to having you back.’
Joanna looked at the ring on her finger and touched the black pearl, smooth as milk, an omen. A murder investigation. Straight back into the thick of it. Late nights, broken dates. Total absorption and commitment. And Eloise coming to stay next week. She looked across the room at Matthew. His mouth was straight.
She lifted her eyebrows and held her hands out in a what-can-I-do? expression, and Matthew’s face didn’t change a bit as he dialled Eloise’s mobile.