Scaring Crows (12 page)

It was a neat trick. But they could not ask anyone anything. There was no one around to ask. Except his family and the animals.

‘So did you take the calves to market?'

He hadn't been expecting that. His big hands fumbled. ‘I didn't quite manage it yesterday. Like I say. They takes a lot of separatin' from their mothers.'

There was something here but Joanna did not know what.

‘What time do you normally leave for the market?' She was edging closer, but blindly.

Pinkers' sunburnt face looked suddenly bleached. ‘Not so early as you'd think.'

The three of them all knew this would be an easy statement to check.

‘But not so late either, Mr Pinkers. It was after ten when Shackleton called. Surely that would be a little too late?'

The question shook him. His thin mouth worked painfully.

Joanna's eyes were fixed on him. ‘It's a fine farm you have here, Mr Pinkers.'

Something furtive moved across his face which made him look even more weasel like. ‘I been lucky,' he said. ‘That and hard work.'

Mike spoke up. ‘And how did you get on with your neighbours, Mr Pinkers?'

The farmer looked from the burly detective back to Joanna and they both knew instinctively that the farmer was trying to gauge how much they already knew.

‘We had our disagreements,' he said finally.

‘About anything in particular?'

Pinkers cleared his throat noisily. ‘He blamed me for everything that went wrong.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘Oh some cows went missing one day. He got the idea set in his head that it was me what took them.'

‘How unfortunate.'

Pinkers wasn't fooled by the mock sympathy.

‘So who did you think had stolen the cows from Hardacre?'

‘Oh rustlers,' he said, ‘people from the city.'

And what would city people do with a couple of cows, Mr Pinkers?'

He looked surprised at the question. ‘Why – sell them, of course.'

‘Where?'

‘There's abattoirs that won't ask questions.'

Joanna gave Mike a swift glance. Cattle rustling? This all sounded more like the Saturday Western than rural Staffordshire. Mike smiled and hunched his big shoulders.

Joanna moved on. ‘When did you last see the Summers, Mr Pinkers?'

He thought for a moment. ‘Well, I haven't seen Ruthie for a while. Not for a month or more. But Aaron – why I saw him only last week. He was at the market, selling a couple of barren cows he had no more use for.' He scratched his wispy grey hair. ‘Fetched a good price they did too.'

‘And Jack was with him?'

‘No. Jack must have been back at the farm, minding things.'

‘I would have thought Ruthie would have done that.'

‘Oh, Ruthie, she liked comin' to the market. Enjoyed it she did, more than usual she'd have a couple of dozen eggs she could sell. Bit of pin money.'

‘But she wasn't there last week?'

Again Pinkers thought back for a moment. ‘No,' he said slowly, ‘she weren't there.' Then his face took on an enlightened look. ‘Mebbe,' he said, ‘there was no eggs.'

But there had been. Joanna recalled the young constable, his face rueful, staring down at his shoes, covered in egg yolk and broken shell. So whatever the reason that Ruthie had not been at the market it had not been because she had no eggs to sell.

Joanna gave Mike a swift glance.

‘Do you mind if we take a quick look around the farm?'

Pinkers shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why should I? I got nothin' to hide.'

The barns were cool but clean, recently hosed down. There was a vague smell of disinfectant, a much stronger scent of fresh cow dung but it was not unpleasant. It reminded Joanna of childhood days, spent hanging round a local farm, feeding lambs from babies' bottles.

She and Mike tramped through each barn with their huge, high roofs, the breeze whistling through the eaves. They were home to darting swallows, feeding their young from fragments of insects in their beaks. Bales of straw were stacked in the corner, giving out a sweet, strong scent of the field. Again Joanna breathed in and was reminded of her childhood. Until the shadows of herself and Sergeant Mike Korpanski, huge against the barn wall, jerked her back to the present. Then their shadows were joined by a third shadow with a dog stuck to his heels as though by a short string. A couple of times Pinkers' dog turned to look at Mike and gave a low, warning growl. Mike shook his foot at him. He had a healthy dislike for dogs having fed one or two with his ankles as a junior policeman. They walked to the end of the final barn which had been partitioned off. It was from here that the bellow was coming from an anguished animal. Joanna peeped over the bales and came face to face with a dribbling cow, the whites of its eyes rolling. It gave a painful grunt and Joanna looked enquiringly at Pinkers. ‘Her first calf,' Pinkers said without sympathy. ‘They always have a difficult first birth. That's why we pair them with a Hereford. After that ...'

Joanna glanced back at the wild, unhappy animal.

Motherhood in its least glamorous pose. Surely nothing at all to do with the double murders? And yet. She glanced again at the wretched animal.

But there was nothing else to see so they left the barn and returned to the yard, passing the bright, new combine harvester.

Mike put his hand on it. ‘Cost a lot of money, did it, Mr Pinkers?'

‘I bought it secondhand.'

‘Still expensive though.'

The farmer nodded. ‘But worth it,' he said grudgingly.

‘How much?'

‘A lot.' His horny hand caressed the shiny red paint.

Joanna watched him carefully. There was real avarice in the gesture. ‘Tell me, Mr Pinkers,' she said suddenly, ‘do you have a gun?'

‘Course I do. Most farmers do. I got a licence for it. But I thought ...'

‘What did you think?'

The farmer's face froze.

‘You thought that they were shot with their own gun? We haven't had the forensic report yet, Mr Pinkers.'

Pinkers recovered himself. ‘Shackleton told me,' he said sullenly. ‘He said it was their gun was on the floor.'

Joanna gave him a sunny smile. ‘Of course,' she said. ‘Shackleton told you. Dear me. My colleague, Detective Sergeant Korpanski and I were beginning to get horribly suspicious of you.'

The farmer gave them both a dark scowl and mumbled something unintelligible.

It was Mike's cue. ‘Do a lot of shooting, Mr Pinkers?' The farmer nodded reluctantly.

‘And what do you shoot?'

Pinkers gave them both another hard stare. ‘Crows,' he said.

There was little to report at the briefing. House to house interviews had merely reinforced the picture of a family who had guarded their privacy and discouraged friends or visitors. Most local people seemed to feel that the shootings were somehow connected with the fact that Jack was ‘strange'. No one had ventured how.

Joanna frowned. ‘What did they mean - strange?'

Police Constable David Timmis read from his notebook. ‘A Mrs Rowan from a neighbouring farm said that most of the time he'd be fine but he had an unpredictable streak in his character. Her dog had bitten him one day. Accidentally, she said, when they had been playing. Jack had pretended to take the dog's slipper and had been teasing him with it. When the dog bit him Jack kicked it so hard he broke a couple of ribs. And it had to be put down. She said it was as though Jack didn't know his own strength.' Timmis faced Joanna squarely. ‘I got the impression she was really fond of this dog. It seemed she hated Jack for what he'd done.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did she say anything else?'

Timmis glanced back at his notebook. ‘She said he had a fascination with fire. Aaron and Ruthie had to watch him all the time. They were afraid one day he would set the barns alight. And with all that hay ...' They could all fill in the details. Blazing ricks, a year's abundant harvest, the result of hours of work, months of the right weather conditions, years of managing the land, all destroyed in minutes.

‘Apparently they found him one day lighting sticks and paper in the middle of the floor. He said he was cold and needed to get warm. He'd burnt the rug.'

So that explained the scorched mark that had commanded Barraclough's attention.

‘Go on,' she prompted Timmis.

‘Because of his unpredictability with fire Jack wasn't allowed to smoke, according to Mrs Rowan.' Timmis smiled. ‘When he went to market he'd try to cadge cigarettes off the other farmers. But if Aaron or Ruthie saw him smoking they'd take it off him and the person who'd given it to him would be ticked off “good and proper”. But Mrs Rowan said she'd noticed something. Jack wouldn't smoke his cigarette, not properly. He'd puff away at it until the end glowed red and then he'd simply stare as though he was in a trance. And poor old Aaron and Ruthie were frightened to let him out of their sight for what he might do. Mrs Rowan said that all that watching took its toll on Ruthie.'

‘She seemed to know the family very well,' Joanna observed.

Apparently Ruthie used to clean there a couple of times a week.'

‘She did?'

‘Mrs Rowan's got a thriving business going with barn conversions and holiday lets. Ruthie used to clean up after the visitors had left.'

So. Not such an isolated family. Ruthie went elsewhere twice a week.

Joanna turned to Mike. ‘I think we'd better see this Mrs Rowan ourselves. She obviously knew our missing person very well.' She spoke again to PC Timmis. ‘Did you have a good look around?'

‘I did.'

‘And?'

‘There was no sign of Ruthie and Mrs Rowan said she hadn't seen her for nearly a month.'

Joanna drew in a deep breath. There was something in Timmis' statement that disturbed her. She smiled at him. ‘Well done, Timmis. Now tell me. What did Mrs Rowan think of Ruth Summers?'

‘She seemed fond of her. She just said what a nice, quiet person she was, reliable, kept house for her father and brother. She did say Aaron and Jack couldn't have managed without her.'

Joanna felt she must check on the most significant fact. ‘But she hadn't seen her for about a month?'

‘No.'

‘And the last time she actually did see her?'

‘She'd popped up to Hardacre to give Ruthie her week's wages, said she'd been short of change. She said Ruthie seemed perfectly normal, herding the cows in and singing.' Timmis gave a sheepish grin. ‘Mrs Rowan said Ruthie had a “sweet” voice. She said she was always singing.'

Again the words conjured up a pretty, idealized, almost Victorian picture, a milkmaid, collecting eggs in a basket, herding cows, singing. Guarding her brother, protecting her dying father, singing. Aiming a shotgun at them, squeezing the trigger. Still singing? That thin, sensitive face, the deep, dark eyes that had stared out of the photograph. Life had been a struggle for Ruthie Summers. How old had she been? Judging from the photograph late twenties. Had she known her father was dying? Yes, Joanna thought so. She would have seen that he was slowly starving to death as the cancer stole his nutrients. Joanna struggled to shake herself free of the conviction. This girl was not a singing killer. Whoever had called at the front door that morning, stood in the bright, hot porch and raised that heavy gun to their shoulder to murder first the old man then the younger, it had not been Ruthie. It had not been she who had watched Jack collapse against the wall, watch him slowly bleed to death before calmly putting the gun down and walking away from Hardacre, leaving the Landrover still standing in the drive.

Or had she?

Timmis continued. ‘She hadn't come to work since then. She'd rung in sick. At least, her father rang.' Timmis hesitated before saying the next sentence. ‘I got the impression Mrs Rowan was none too pleased at Ruthie's bunking off.' He grinned self-consciously. ‘It's the height of the season.'

‘Yes,' Joanna said. But her mind was speeding through the facts. Guilty or innocent where the hell was Ruthie? And tagged on to the tails was a more personal question. Why was she more intrigued over the fate of the farmer's daughter than finding the real killer?

The answer came back clearly, shining bright. Because to solve one part of the puzzle would lead to the solution of the other. And ...

‘Mike,' she said, ‘do you realize no one's actually seen Ruthie Summers for about a month?'

Mike thought for a moment. ‘It could be chance.'

‘It
could
be,' she said slowly.

‘We've searched the house and grounds thoroughly.'

‘We should search again.'

‘What do you think you're going to find?'

‘Something,' she said confidently. ‘Something.'

She glanced around the room at the tense faces. They needed a breakthrough, something to pull them along and convince them they would succeed in finding the killer. She addressed them. ‘Did anyone you interviewed seem to hold a grudge against the family?'

A sea of blank faces. No one had.

She tried another avenue. ‘Did anyone mention a place where Ruth Summers might have gone?'

Again nothing.

‘Have any other farmers had animals go missing?'

Blank faces and shaking heads.

‘So, we're left with this.' She held up the posters she had had printed. ‘We must find this girl. We need to find out exactly when she went missing. Date and, if possible, time. We'll keep interviewing neighbours but I want you to focus your questioning on Ruthie Summers' disappearance.'

She caught sight of a familiar shock of brown hair. ‘McBrine, cleaned your shoes yet?' He grinned. ‘I have but there's still a damned awful stink. Rotten eggs,' he said. ‘I can still smell them.'

‘That's not the eggs,' one of his mates quipped and she could sense the briefing was in danger of descending into gutter humour. But the mention of eggs made her thoughtful.