Souvenirs of Murder (31 page)

The drug seems to have had a disastrous effect on him, either that or he panicked when he left that room and saw Patrick talking to Leanne. Overpowering him for the second time that day, he had taken Patrick's gun, shot the child – because she was screaming – and then cold-bloodedly shot all the others. It had probably taken only a couple of minutes. He had then realized that someone was banging around in the cupboard on the upstairs landing and found the cleaner, Rosa Jerez, who had indeed seen Hulton earlier. She had begged him not to kill her and for some reason – had he been sickened by what he had done already and terrified the sound of the shots would quickly bring people to investigate? – he had released her after making her swear to tell the police that Patrick had committed the murders. He had then snapped her wrist as a reminder of what would happen to her if she broke her word. Making his escape he had again come upon Patrick, outside, and dumped him at the end of the garden when he had collapsed after throwing the knife at him.

Of course, hardly any of this had been established when our part in the case was over. Except, that is, the new account of what had happened from Rosa Jerez after Beckovic had been arrested, to the effect that she had been forced to lie. He had told her he would find and kill her, wherever she tried to escape to, if she implicated him. The irony of all this is that if Beckovic had left her in the cupboard and gone away instead of letting her out, his hands still apparently having been covered in blood from smearing it on the walls, she would have been none the wiser as to the identity of the killer. To be quite sure on this matter Patrick had been suddenly introduced into the room where Miss Jerez was making this statement. She had practically fallen on his neck, weeping, thanking him for hiding her away and thus, and despite her coming face to face with Beckovic, probably saved her life as he might have otherwise, in a frenzy, killed her with the rest.

We had stayed a further two days in London, endeavouring to play our part in unravelling what had been a complicated case and were now on our way home with the golden knowledge of Patrick's innocence. He actually had a copy of the statement in his jacket pocket in the event of any more visits from Complaints, which organization remained as silent as a grave. Officially, he was still on sick leave.

‘Hilik though?' I said, breaking what had been a long silence on the drive home, Hinton Littlemoor a matter of minutes away.

‘Better than Hilik,' Patrick murmured, imitating Beckovic's voice, making me shudder. ‘Mladan's a big man now. Mladan can gun people down with the best of them.'

‘You really think that's what it was?'

‘Yes, after he'd killed Pangborne, his original target, he thought he'd prove himself. And, don't forget, he'd been hoist by his own petard, the whisky which had to have affected any judgement he had left by then.'

By this time it was around four thirty in the afternoon and we had already decided to go to the rectory first. I had told Patrick he owed his mother a very large bouquet of flowers and these were residing fragrantly on the rear seat of the car together with a gift for John that my husband had promised me faithfully he would not, if offered, even taste.

It was teatime in the annex kitchen, Matthew and Katie with their grandparents just about to sit down to cold chicken and salad sandwiches and home made cakes – no pot noodles ever here. They were not expecting us.

‘Oh! Oh!' Elspeth cried when presented with a walking flower bower. ‘Oh, thank you. How wonderful!' she said when her son was revealed. ‘You look happy. Is it all all right now?'

‘It's all right,' Patrick assured her.

‘You're not still under suspicion?'

‘No. We caught him.'

There was then a mass hug, Patrick unashamedly in tears, Katie clutched to his chest, one hand resting on her bright chestnut hair.

We moved into the rectory, in more snow, and for a few days – no, I must be honest here, the best part of the fortnight – we strove, with Elspeth and Carrie's help, to gain some kind of domestic order. Patrick was still not back to full health and had to go to bed early but his blood readings were improving. Then, on day fifteen after the move, James Carrick rang to ask if he could call in for a chat and Patrick immediately invited him, and Joanna, to dinner that night.

The cook battered off in the 4 x 4 through the still snowy lanes to the shops.

James, we discovered, had had the flu and was still suffering from a racking cough. There had been the ghost of an idea in my mind that he might be in need of help in connection with the local murder investigation, which was soon proved to be the case.

‘I'm under a hell of a lot of pressure to get a result with the Blanche case,' he said not long after being in receipt of a pre-dinner glass of wine.

Joanna sighed. ‘Can't you forget work just for a couple of hours?'

Patrick gave her a sympathetic smile and then said to James, ‘Commander Greenway's offer of help does extend to his troops, you know.'

‘I don't want you actually to
do
anything as you're still recovering,' the DCI hastened to say. ‘But a few ideas . . .'

‘The weather seems to have put a stop to any black magic antics although they've probably been driven indoors. Did you have any luck with forensics as far as the samples of wood that Ingrid took from the church and the axe in our local woodcarver, Stewart Macdonald's, workshop were concerned?'

‘Not enough to hang a charge on anyone. They were both oak of some age and
probably
from the same source.'

‘Pity.'

‘Does your father intend to ask him to quote for repairs or replacements?'

‘No, not now. Macdonald called in to see him a few days ago and virtually asked for the job. He's not a churchgoer and probably expected to find a doddery old pushover. He didn't get one. Dad took an immediate dislike to him and told him that the church couldn't afford to employ a craftsman to make things from scratch and he would suggest to the PCC that second-hand replacements would be cheaper. The idea had just popped into his head. Since then someone went on the Internet and arrangements have been made to buy stuff from a chapel that's being demolished in Bristol. A couple of members of the congregation are sufficiently skilled in woodwork to adapt it for our use.'

‘What was Macdonald's reaction to your Dad's reply?'

‘He was very rude and slammed out.'

‘So, perhaps then, even if there's no prosecution to be had there – and I have no intention of abandoning that crime – we can rule out that particular episode as relevant to the murder case.'

‘I think that would be fairly safe.'

Carrick just smiled wryly and took a sip of wine.

‘It's fairly certain that Frank Crosby dropped the rock on the car surely?' Patrick went on to say.

‘Yes, but again I can't prove it.'

‘And his wife was banging on Barbara Blanche's windows.'

‘She was, and as you probably know, Ingrid was a witness to that. Was this in an effort to drive the woman from the village do you think?'

‘No idea. But all in all, they're a pretty poisonous pair and they might have murdered Blanche because he'd found out something about them. Ingrid reckons the woman had come through the churchyard and into the garden and not up the drive when she came round that morning, ostensibly about the flowers. She could have thrown the murder weapon, the hammer, into the rectory garden then.'

‘But the pathologist reckoned that Blanche had been killed a while before that.'

‘Yes, but they might have worried, if they'd just left it lying around, that some evidence that could connect them with the murder might be on it. People know all about DNA testing these days. The woman might have gone back for it with the view to chucking it away somewhere.'

‘Hardly very far away though if it was in your garden,' Joanna commented, obviously having kept abreast of the case.

‘People panic,' Patrick said. ‘She would have been terrified someone would see her, any number of people: the postman, the newspaper boy, anyone. The Crosbys are your best bet.'

Carrick said, ‘I shall have to prove exactly what it is they're up to. But I can't really see them being involved with satanic practices.'

‘Blackmail?'

‘You mean they might be running something anonymously and blackmailing those who are drawn into dancing around naked and sacrificing animals or whatever other nonsense? That's a bit of a long-shot.'

‘Possibly, but like Blanche, they might be hooked on the power it gives them over people.'

‘One would have thought that someone in the village would have come forward by now – if not to the police then to your father.'

I said, ‘We already have a name, although not from the village, the father of Clem Huggins who's in Matthew's class at school. He's supposed to mess around with black magic.'

‘Carlton Huggins,' Carrick recollected. ‘I went out to their particular rats' nest and no one was at home. That family is really bad news – not the sort the Crosbys would normally associate with. It just doesn't add up.'

‘There has to be a common denominator,' Patrick muttered.

It was over coffee after dinner that the discussion continued.

‘OK then,' James said. ‘How long has this black magic caper been going on for?'

‘Only for a couple of months as far as anyone can tell,' Patrick answered.

‘How many people do you think are involved?'

Patrick shrugged. ‘No one really knows but it can't be many. Perhaps no more than a dozen.'

‘Let's change tack and work on the presumption that the black magic bit's a front. Leaving blackmail on one side for a moment but bearing in mind that if a Huggins is involved there's money in it where does that get us? Following a phone call, your father, Patrick, went down to where dodgy goings on appear to take place at the bottom of the village on some spare ground. He was roughed up. Rightly, he's been preaching against this sort of thing in church. Is it a distraction and other members of the Huggins clan are otherwise gainfully and illegally employed nearby somewhere?'

‘That could be it,' I said. ‘Winter months, long, cold, dark nights. Law-abiding folk kept mostly indoors, especially the elderly, except for visits to the pub, or events and meetings in the village hall. Otherwise they get in their cars and go farther afield, to Bath perhaps, for a meal out. What finer further incentive to keep people firmly at home than the prospect of rough characters getting drunk and killing things down on the site of the old station? People would have asked themselves who these people are. Would they bump into them and possibly be attacked if they went for a walk after dark, as John was? He might have been lured down there for no other reason than for the resultant publicity.'

‘Go on,' Carrick encouraged.

To Patrick, I said, ‘You know this area really well. What kind of target for criminals might there be round here? Any big and remote country houses that would be worth breaking into where the owners are away? Old buildings in the middle of nowhere whose roof lead might be worth stripping off that aren't checked very often, if at all?'

‘There are quite a few properties but people don't tend to leave them unattended these days. The best thing to do would be to dig out the OS map. James, do you have any recent burglary cases involving country houses?'

‘One, but it was a good twenty miles from here. As far as this immediate area's concerned there's Priston Manor. The Lord Lieutenant of Somerset lives there, and I happen to know they're not away. I also know that the place bristles with security devices and there are live-in staff.'

‘What was Frank Crosby's job before he retired?' Joanna asked.

Patrick did not know and went through to see if his father did. When he returned there was an enigmatic smile on his face. ‘He had an antiques business in Midsomer Norton.'

‘Wow!' Joanna exclaimed.

‘
Now
can you see why I fell in love with my sergeant?' James said.

She threw a cushion at him.

‘If this theory is anywhere near the mark we're talking about a lot of money being involved,' Patrick said. ‘If they're going to the bother of arranging so-called satanic meetings, where I should imagine the real draw is booze, probably free booze, then that costs money. They must regard whatever their own returns are for this scam as worth it.'

I said, ‘Matthew told us that Clem invited him to wherever he lives – I take it the whole lot don't live under one roof—'

Carrick interrupted me. ‘Sorry to butt in, but they do. In a corner-site one-time council house with tatty extensions erected without planning permission surrounded by several caravans parked in what used to be a large garden. Their forebears were either tinkers or what used to be referred to as gallows-fodder. You say Matthew was
invited
there?'

‘Clem wanted to show him his Dad's magic stuff. Apparently Clem goes to some of these meetings but isn't allowed to attend others. I'm wondering if this man really is involved with devil worship.'

‘Which mostly involves booze, drugs and sex,' Patrick said dismissively. ‘I'll go and ask Dad about other possible targets where parishioners are away.'

When he came back he reported, ‘Old man Huggins once stripped lead off this church roof, probably the nearest he'd ever got to the place so there's a bit of family history of that. He made the mistake of leaving something behind that had his name on it.' He added, ‘Before your time though, James. Then there's the old mill at Wellow which is apparently empty and up for sale. But it's in a pretty bad state with not much worth taking, Dad doesn't think. And the Harley-Brownswords, who live at a house by the name of Fir Copse, are on holiday in the West Indies – although his brother is house and dog sitting.