Murder in My Backyard (19 page)

“No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that. I’ll call back later when he’s home from school.”

Disappointed, she stood on the concrete path that divided her immaculate lawn into identical halves until he disappeared from the crescent and onto the green.

I suppose, he thought wryly, that was the neighbourhood watch in action.

The second address given to Hunter by the boys in the bus shelter was Grey’s Farm. Ramsay recognised the name. Robert Grey was the man who had been drinking heavily in the Castle on the evening after Alice Parry’s death, and Ramsay had turned into the farmyard by mistake, in the snow, when he was looking for Henshaw’s bungalow. Ramsay came to a five-bar gate and swung it open a little nervously, expecting the dogs to bark again. The house was square, built of grey stone, and had a grey-slate roof. The cobbled yard was covered in mud. By the side of the house was a barn, and approached by a track to the side of the house was a cowshed and a large, open building containing farm machinery and an ancient tractor. An empty Land Rover with the engine still running stood in the yard. As Ramsay approached the house, Robert Grey appeared on the storm porch and almost ran to meet the policeman. He was shaking and Ramsay wondered if he had been drinking again. His behaviour was erratic and bizarre.

“Come with me!” he bellowed. “Where’s your car? You can park in the farmyard and I’ll take you up in the Land Rover. You’d not make it in a car. Man, you were quick. I’d just left Celia in the house phoning the police.”

He sprinted towards the Land Rover and turned to Ramsay, expecting him to follow. Ramsay joined him, carefully trying to avoid the worst areas of muck.

“Mr. Grey,” he said. “What is this all about?”

“Didn’t they tell you then?” He had a broad accent, but he was not local. Ramsay, who had never travelled and did not have a good ear for these things, guessed that he came from Yorkshire or Cumbria. “I’ve found Charlie Elliot.”

“Where is he?” Ramsay asked.

“In my barn up on the hill. I keep spare feed up there for when the weather’s bad.”

“Does he know you saw him?” Ramsay asked.

“No!” The man looked at him as if he were mad. “He knows nothing. How could he? He’s dead.”

He pushed a lever to put the Land Rover into four-wheel drive and turned the vehicle quickly. He followed the track between the house and the shed, through two enclosed fields and out onto the open hill beyond. The land rose steeply. On the hill there was heather and bare rock and the track petered out into a couple of tyre marks. As they climbed, the patches of snow spread into each other and the sunlight was reflected from it.

The barn was at the head of a small valley, sheltered from the east winds by a fold in the hill. It might have once been a shepherd’s cottage. The solid stone walls had gaps for windows, but the slate roof had been replaced by corrugated iron. One wall had been taken down to allow a tractor inside and there was a roughly made wooden door in its place. The door had been opened as far as it would go.

“Was the door open when you found him?” Ramsay asked.

“No, I opened it to see how much hay was left.”

“Did you touch anything else?”

“I don’t think so. When I saw him, I went straight back to the house to phone you people.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said absent-mindedly. “Of course.” He turned back to face the farmer and spoke more briskly.

“I’ll not need you anymore now, Mr. Grey,” he said. “I’d be grateful, though, if you could bring my colleagues up when they arrive. If your wife phoned Otterbridge, they’ll be turning up soon. I’ll need to speak to you and your family later, so it would be helpful if you could stay around the farm today.”

He thought for a moment that Grey would argue and insist on staying, but he nodded and drove away.

Ramsay went back to the barn. There was still snow on the side of the roof that was in shadow, but it was beginning to melt and water dripped on his head and down his neck as he paused at the entrance to get an overall view of the scene inside. Most prominent was the powerful motorbike, stolen from the industrial estate in Otterbridge. The body was in a corner, poorly lit by a gap in one of the boarded-up windows. Ramsay took off his shoes and stepped carefully into the barn. He did not want to confuse the scene of crime team with the mud from his shoes or his prints, but he wanted a closer look at Charlie Elliot. He was lying, facedown, on a makeshift bed of a sleeping bag spread over paper fertiliser sacks half filled with hay. He had been stabbed in the back and the knife had been removed, so there was a lot of blood.

Had he been stabbed when he was sleeping? Ramsay wondered. If so, why was he lying on top of the sleeping bag instead of inside it?

He straightened and looked around the barn. Because it was the end of winter, most of the feed was gone. It had the domestic tidiness of a child’s den. There was a Primus stove, a saucepan, a spoon, and a tin mug. On a rough shelf nailed to the wall were neatly stacked tins of beans, soup, and beer, a box of tea bags, and small jars of coffee and powdered milk. There was even a small bucket and a bottle of washing-up liquid in one corner. He was expecting to stay there, Ramsay thought, for some time. On the floor, next to the bed, the only sign of disorder: an empty beer can. Ramsay looked more closely at the shelf and realised that most of the beer cans stacked there were empty, too. Had Charlie drunk them all himself? Or had he shared them with a guest?

Ramsay put on his shoes and walked out into the sunshine. He stood, leaning against the rough stone wall of the barn to wait for his colleagues. Above him the brown heather moor stretched to the distance, the skyline broken occasionally by a shooting butt where the gentry would come in the autumn to shoot grouse. Below was the improved land, grazed by sheep, the short, cropped grass sprouting in damp places with juncus grass and soft reed. Beyond that, down the line of the valley he could see the village. There was Henshaw’s monstrous bungalow, Grey’s Farm, and to the north, as much a part of the landscape as the rock and the moor, was the Tower. On the horizon, a thin line of reflected light, was the sea.

Ramsay could see that the Land Rover had arrived at the farm. Soon it would begin to climb the track again with Hunter and the scene of crime team. Before then, before the concentration on detail, he wanted to order his thoughts.

When Hunter arrived, he was driving the Land Rover himself. He had enjoyed the trip from the farm to the hill immensely. Action was what he had joined the police for. He had imagined high-speed car chases and midnight stakeouts. He had received the call about the discovery of Charlie Elliot’s body on his return to his car after talking to Mary Raven’s friend. He had driven straight to Brinkbonnie, jumping red lights, scaring old ladies on pedestrian crossings. Manoeuvring a Land Rover too fast up a slippery, occasionally dangerous track was action, too, and provided some compensation for the hours of boredom and routine.

When he got to the barn, Ramsay was still outside, deep in thought, apparently surprised to see them though he must have heard the noise of the engine miles away.

“You were right then,” Hunter said angrily. “Charlie Elliot didn’t kill Mrs. Parry.”

“I don’t know!” Ramsay said. “ I don’t think we can be certain of anything at this stage.” He saw that Hunter was wearing green Wellingtons that had remained miraculously clean.

“What do you mean?”

“That we must keep an open mind.”

Hunter walked past him and stood at the entrance of the barn, looking inside. The scene of crime team had begun their work.

“He was stabbed then,” Hunter said. “ Just like Mrs. Parry.”

“All the same,” Ramsay said. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Charlie Elliot had enemies in his own right. It could be a copy-cat murder committed by someone with an alibi for the time of Mrs. Parry’s death. The murderer might have thought we’d assume both were killed by the same person.”

“It doesn’t sound very likely,” Hunter said.

“Perhaps not,” Ramsay said. “ But as I see it there are three possibilities. The first is the copy-cat theory—someone wanted to be rid of Charlie Elliot and saw Mrs. Parry’s death as an excellent opportunity to cover it up.

“The second is that Charlie Elliot murdered Mrs. Parry and he was killed as an act of revenge. Mrs. Parry was popular. Her support for the Save Brinkbonnie campaign stirred a lot of emotion in the village.” He remembered Olive Kerr, red-eyed and desolate, and Fred Elliot’s moving description of his affection for Mrs. Parry. He could imagine a sense of outrage so ferocious that it led to murder.

Hunter yawned theatrically. He had never taken to being lectured.

“And the third possibility?” he asked.

“Obviously that Parry and Elliot were killed by the same person. That’s probably the most likely theory. Elliot saw something or discovered something, which made him dangerous to the murderer, so he was killed, too. As you say, both were stabbed with a wide-bladed knife.”

“How did anyone know he was here?” Hunter demanded. “It’s miles from anywhere. It’s not the sort of place you’d come across by chance. Especially in this weather.”

“No,” Ramsay said absent-mindedly. “It’s not the sort of place you’d come across by chance. But Charlie Elliot turned up here, I wonder why? We’ll have to find out if he was friendly with the Greys.” He remembered the noise made by the farm dogs when he had disturbed them. It was impossible to think that a noisy motorbike could have gone up the track without the Greys being aware of it. It would be important to check if there was another way onto the hill.

“He can’t have brought all that stuff with him when he first came,” Hunter said. “He left the village in too much of a hurry. He must have gone back for it.”

“Perhaps,” Ramsay said. “ Or perhaps he had help. What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Hunter said. “Not yet. But your Mary Raven can’t have killed Mrs. Parry. She was at that party in Newcastle by midnight on Saturday night.”

“But she could have killed Charlie,” Ramsay said, almost to himself. “He saw her in the churchyard.”

Hunter did not reply and hardly seemed to be listening. He was eager to get down to practicalities, to see the blood, to discover if the scene of crime team had found anything to work on. Ideas always made him impatient. Why was Ramsay standing there, rambling away to himself, when there was so much to do?

The inspector seemed suddenly to come to a decision.

“Look,” he said. “ You look after things here. I want to talk to the Greys. There’s something odd going on there. I’ll send Grey back to fetch you later.”

Hunter watched the Land Rover move over the hill and shook his head.

Promoted beyond his competence, he thought again, and turned with relish to the body in the barn.

Ramsay stood on the storm porch at Grey’s Farm and knocked on the door. He could see Robert Grey in the tractor shed, bent over the engine, but although the farmer must have seen the return of the Land Rover, he made no move to come into the house. Ramsay thought his feet were wet enough and refused to cross the muddy yard to fetch the man. The door was opened by the woman who had come into the yard when he had strayed into the drive by mistake. She was tall, attractive, rather grave. Her dark hair had a streak of grey along the centre parting. Behind her he saw a wide hall with uneven flags on the floor where eggs were stacked in trays.

“Yes?” she said, imperious, ready to send him away though she must have guessed who he was.

“I’m Inspector Ramsay,” he said. “Northumbria police. I’ll need to speak to you and your husband.”

“We’ll not be able to help you,” she said.

“A man was murdered on your land,” he said. “You can see it’s important that I talk to you.”

She opened the door wider to let him into the hall, then stood outside and called to her husband.

“Robert. Come here, please. The policeman wants to speak to you.”

It was the voice of a woman speaking to a child or an employee, not to an equal. Ramsay wondered what sort of relationship they had. He presumed that the farm had been inherited from her family and thought she might have married Grey to do the work. The man walked to join them. He was shorter than she was, slightly bow-legged. At the door he stopped and took off his boots.

“We’ll go into the kitchen,” she said. “ It’s the only warm room in the house.”

She must have been in the middle of baking. There were bowls and trays on the table and the smell of cooking in the air. On one chair there was a pile of unironed clothes, but the woman did not apologise for the mess.

“You’d better sit down,” she said.

“I won’t disturb you for long,” Ramsay said.

“Well,” she said. “You’ve done that already.”

He ignored her and turned to Grey.

“What time did you find the body?” he asked.

In his wife’s presence the man seemed even more awkward and inarticulate than he had before. It was not, Ramsay thought, that he was stupid. He had difficulty expressing himself as accurately as he wanted and that frustrated him.

“I don’t know,” Grey said. “ Not exactly. I went up the hill to see how much feed was left. In case there’s another cold spell. Quarter to twelve perhaps. It must have been about midday when I met you.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “When was the last time you went to the barn?”

Grey shrugged. “About a week ago,” he said. He turned to his wife. “That would be right, wouldn’t it, Celia? It was about a week ago.”

“I can’t remember,” she said indifferently.

“You’ve not been up there since Charlie went missing?”

“No,” Grey said. “Certainly not since then.”

“Was Charlie Elliot a good friend of yours?”

“Not exactly a friend. I’d met him in the Castle, of course. He bought me a few drinks.”

“Did he know you well enough to ask you a favour?”

“I don’t understand,” Grey said. “What sort of favour?”

“Did he ask you if he could camp out in your barn?”

“Of course not,” Grey said. “I wouldn’t have allowed that. He was wanted for murder.”

“What were you doing on Monday evening?”