Malice On The Moors (12 page)

“We
are
conducting a police investigation,” he pointed out.

She was beginning to get annoyed. “That did occur to me, which is why I decided to broach the subj ect with Mr. Walker when I got back from the Settles'.”

“Brilliant!”

She searched his demeanor for any hint of condescension and, to her relief, could find none. She could forgive many things, but never that. If anything, her companion
appeared to be in a slightly manic mood. “As I was saying,” she continued patiently, “I had a word with Mr. Walker about the Settles. Mrs. Walker is still suffering from migraine,” she added as an aside. “I discovered something rather interesting … Emma Walker is the Settles' daughter.”

Powell sipped his beer with exasperating precision. “I'm not surprised,” he said casually. “There's a photograph of the Settles on the desk in the Walkers' office. I noticed it when I first arrived.”

Sarah was dumbfounded. “But how could you have known that it was Mr. and Mrs. Settle in the photograph? You've never met them and—” Realization suddenly dawned on her. “How would you like a G-and-T shampoo?”

Powell laughed. “I deserved that. It's a technique I picked up from Merriman: Take credit for everything, and give none to your rivals.”

She gave him an odd look. “I wasn't aware that we were rivals.”

He met her gaze. “How
would
you characterize our relationship?”

“Er, drinking buddies is closer to the mark, I think.”

Powell smiled. “I'd better get us another, then.” He got up and walked through the French doors into the pub.

Sarah experienced a whirlwind of conflicting emotions as she looked out over the emerald green fields beyond the river. She could no longer deny that Powell interested her greatly. There was something about him that she found strangely attractive—it was difficult to explain, but he seemed to have a certain intuitive quality that at times was quite disconcerting. She knew, however,
that she could never do anything to compromise either herself or her career. She had always been scrupulous in keeping her personal and professional lives separate, and she wasn't about to change now. Neither did she wish to jeopardize her chances of working with him again by complicating their relationship. She chided herself for being so coldly calculating. She knew he was married and her own intuition told her that he was basically a decent bloke, but she would have to be careful not to encourage him. Her reverie was interrupted by Powell returning with the drinks.

“Now, then,” he said, “where were we? Ah, yes, you were about to tell me about your conversation with Mr. Walker.”

“The whole thing has upset the family terribly, as you can imagine,” she began. “Particularly Mrs. Walker. Mr. Walker reckons the stress has brought on her migraine. According to him, the Settles are in a pretty precarious state financially. They've lived in the gamekeeper's cottage all of their married lives—it goes with the job of head keeper, apparently—and they don't have any savings to speak of. Losing their house, their livelihood, has come as quite a blow.”

“I take it that Mick Curtis will be moving in as soon as the Settles have vacated the premises?”

Sarah nodded. “There's no love lost between them, I can tell you that. Anyway, they've found a small flat in Scarborough that they can just manage on their pension if they scrimp. The Walkers offered to put them up here or rent a cottage for them in the village, but Mr. and Mrs. Settle wouldn't hear of it. Too proud, apparently.”

“A hell of a way to end up,” Powell commented. “Anything else?”

She thought for a moment. “There is something …” She frowned, as if unsure how to put it into words.

“What is it?” Powell prompted.

She looked at him. “I have a feeling that the Settles are hiding something.”

The next morning, Powell drove up to Blackamoor Rigg. He'd given Sarah Evans the task of interviewing the five others who had occupied the butts on East Moor the afternoon of Dinsdale's death. He didn't expect anything new to turn up, but one could never tell, and it would keep his assistant usefully occupied. For his part, he felt as if he needed to tread water on his own for a while, to get his mental bearings.

He pulled off at the car park at the junction of Blackamoor Bank Road with the main road to Eskdale. There was one other car parked there and a man stood on the moor about fifty yards off with a small dog frisking about him. Powell retrieved his trusty Ordnance Survey map from the glove box, unfolded it carefully, and soon located the track leading to the shooting box on East Moor, which took off about a quarter mile down the main road by the looks of it. He decided to walk.

It was a bracing autumn morning and a herd of skittish black-faced sheep were grazing on the grass along the edge of the road. Occasionally a passing car had to toot its horn to hurry a jaywalking beast on its way. He located the track without difficulty and followed it for about a hundred yards up a slight rise and then down into a depression in the moor, in the center of which
stood a small stone building with a corrugated metal roof and stovepipe chimney. The door was locked, so he peered through one of the windows into the murky interior. He could see a long wooden table with benches piled on top, a small cooker at one end with shelves and cupboards arranged on either side. He stepped away from the window and walked around the cabin. Approximately twenty-four feet long by sixteen feet wide, rustic but serviceable.

A rough track, consisting of not much more than two muddy ruts, continued past the shooting box in an easterly direction over a slope of burnt heather and disappeared over the skyline. According to the map, the track terminated at the western end of a line of butts that ran on an east-west axis from a point just beyond the shooting box to the crest of the ridge separating Rosedale from Brackendale. Powell reckoned that the westernmost butt must be just out of sight over the rise. The one that was occupied by Harry Settle on the day of the farmers' shoot, he remembered. He decided to retrace Katie Elger's steps as closely as possible when she'd set out in the fog on that fateful afternoon.

He started off on the track and then veered off it to the right, heading southeast as Katie must have done. Eventually he came to a patch of boggy ground. He skirted it and then walked up a gentle slope towards a heather-topped mound silhouetted against the sky. A few seconds later, he could see that the mound was in fact a shooting butt, its low stone walls capped with cut blocks of heather. As he climbed to the crest of the ridge, he was greeted with a most fetching prospect: The green swath of upper Rosedale below him dotted with scattered
red-roofed farms; off to his left the line of grouse butts with the west side of Brackendale as a backdrop; to the north and south, as far as the eye could see, an unbroken expanse of rolling moorland. He could still see the main road in places, as well as Blackamoor Hall in the distance.

He consulted his watch. It had taken him a little less than ten minutes to get to this point after leaving the shooting box. He recalled that Katie Elger had said that she'd been wandering about in the fog for about twenty-five minutes when she heard the gunshots. Given the poor visibility, she'd no doubt followed a less direct route than he had, which could explain the time difference.

He walked over to the nearest butt to have a closer look. Laid out like an H, oriented north and south, so it could be used to shoot grouse driven from either direction, the drystone walls were about four feet high with heather growing on top for camouflage. Based on Katie's account, Powell reckoned that the beaters had been stationed to the north of the butts on the afternoon in question. He stepped into the butt.

The ground enclosed by the walls was slightly depressed and covered with short turf. He crouched down below the heather-topped ramparts then straightened up and swung an imaginary shotgun in an arc across the sky. He wondered what it would be like to shoot in the grand style. He still enjoyed his fishing and the odd bit of rough shooting, but he had noticed that his appetite for blood sports had waned in recent years. There had been no dramatic moment of realization, no ethical or political transformation, as far as he could tell—there was just something about the finality of it all that made him increasingly
uncomfortable about taking the life of another creature. He was, however, no vegetarian, and had often argued the hypocrisy of the anti-blood sport position— at least as espoused by the majority of its adherents. These were usually the same people who, whilst objecting to the shooting of game for sport, devoured with relish the pallid carcasses of factory chickens bought from their local Sainsburys.

Powell's philosophical musing was suddenly interrupted by the intrusion of a chilling thought. Not that long ago, a human being had lain, alone and helpless where he now stood, suffering an agonizing death. And even more chilling was the possibility that Dinsdale had not been killed by an adder. Powell was becoming convinced that the local police were on to something, but for the wrong reasons. Too many things didn't add up and it was becoming increasingly evident that Dickie Dinsdale had potential enemies. The Settles, the Walkers, the El-gers, for instance—and that was just for starters.

He examined the enclosing stone walls of the butt. The stones fit closely and there didn't appear to be a gap that was more than two inches wide. Hardly big enough for an adder to squeeze through, in his estimation. Nor did there seem to be any place in the wall where a cavity could exist that was large enough for a snake sex orgy (as Sarah had so vividly put it) or even a single individual of the onanistic persuasion. He walked around to the other side of the butt and conducted a similar inspection, with the same result. As he came around to the south side again, he noticed a spent shotgun cartridge on the ground, half concealed in the heather. He picked it up and examined it. An Eley Grand Prix No. 6. He looked
around the immediate vicinity and soon found another identical red case. He put them both in his j acket pocket.

Powell set off towards the next butt—the one that had been occupied by Mick Curtis—pacing off the distance. It turned out to be nearly fifty yards away. Far enough that Curtis may well have had difficulty hearing anything of his employer's distress, particularly in light of the fact that Dinsdale was drunk and might not have realized exactly what was happening to him. Powell had a quick look around the butt, which was similar in every respect to the first one, and found nothing of interest. Ahead, the moor began to fall away into Brackendale; he could see the next butt and just the heather top of the one next to that, but the remaining four were hidden from view. When he reached the third butt he looked back; the first two butts were hidden behind a hummock of heather. He continued along the line of butts, making a cursory examination of the next two. From his vantage point, he could see the last four spaced out ahead of him. Up to that point, the distance between the butts had varied from forty to fifty yards.

A movement overhead caught his attention. A hen harrier was circling above him, effortlessly riding the air currents searching for prey. Powell unzipped his jacket and headed for the next butt, keeping an admiring eye on the harrier. If he'd been paying attention to where he was stepping, he might have noticed the wire strung tautly through the heather about six inches off the ground.

As it was, he caught it with the toe of his left boot. A deafening explosion rang in his ears and he experienced an odd sensation of detachment as he went down, everything
seeming to happen in slow motion. He found himself lying facedown in the heather with a sharp pain in his right knee. After he realized that he was more or less in one piece, he lay still, his heart pounding wildly, and tried to get his bearings. There wasn't a sound, just the wind rustling in the grass and the acrid smell of cordite. He rolled over with a painful grunt and looked around. No one was in sight. Just his old friend the harrier circling complacently overhead. He looked down at his leg— there was no sign of blood or any obvious damage. Relief suddenly gave way to anger. He swore aloud. He'd probably reinjured his bloody knee—twisted it when he fell. He struggled awkwardly to his feet. The pain wasn't too bad, he decided, so he did an impromptu slow-motion jig to verify his diagnosis. When he was satisfied that his knee was basically sound, he began to look around.

He quickly located the trip wire stretched across the track he'd been following and discovered that it was anchored on the right side, about six feet off the path, by a steel post driven into the ground. He then followed the wire on the other side of the path to a simple device, consisting of a metal tube, pointed skyward, with a shotgun cartridge inserted and a spring-loaded firing mechanism, through which the wire was strung to another steel post.

Wincing slightly, Powell bent down and cocked the firing pin. Then he stood up and tripped the wire with his foot. There was a loud
click
as the spring was released and the striker hit the head of the spent cartridge. “Bloody hell!” he said aloud, feeling slightly foolish. The contraption had obviously been designed to frighten poachers and bring the gamekeeper running. Now that
he thought about it, he was rather looking forward to having a word with Mick Curtis.

Limping slightly, he continued down the track, keeping a sharp eye on the ground ahead of him, until he came to the last of the butts. He walked past it another few yards and, as he'd expected, was able to look down on the shooting box. He heard the clashing of gears and the sound of a vehicle coming up the track from the main road. A few seconds later a Land Rover lurched into view.

CHAPTER 11

Powell set off down the track towards the shooting box. The Land Rover had stopped beside it and a man got out. He was carrying a shotgun. Powell waved but the man did not respond. He stared, stone-faced, as Powell approached.

“This is private land,” the man said in a belligerent manner, when Powell arrived at the shooting box. “Clear off.” Medium build—in his mid-thirties, Powell guessed—with longish blond hair, rugged good looks, and a superior air about him. He was wearing an old waxed jacket and fingerless shooting gloves.