The Blood Pit (12 page)

At first he’d decided not to tell his father the truth … then later he’d changed his mind. Somehow it had seemed right to
relate the brutal facts to the man who’d let him down all those years ago. He’d also told him that he was innocent … that
Carl Pinney had been lying through his crooked, rotten teeth. And Robbie Carstairs had seemed unconcerned … which probably
meant he believed him. Or that he didn’t give a damn.

In his unfilled hours, he found himself wondering what his colleagues in CID believed. Whether Gerry Heffernan would give
him the benefit of the doubt. Or Wesley Peterson. He’d given Peterson a tough time over the years they’d worked together because
of the colour of his skin.

Steve knew that Peterson owed him no favours – that he’d probably be there in the front of the queue to condemn him
– and his resentment began to rise like yeast, fuelled by his feeling of helplessness. He’d only done to Carl Pinney what
anyone would have done – the little bastard had only got what he deserved. He was innocent. It was unfair. And he was starting
to think of himself as the victim.

He felt he had to get out of the flat. And he had a sudden desire to see his father so he drove out to Tradmouth, taking the
car ferry across the river.

There was a fine drizzle in the air, casting a gossamer veil over the town as the ferry chugged across the grey water. The
clang of the ferry docking at the slipway shocked Steve back to reality and he drove off automatically, circling the streets
until he found a free parking space.

But as soon as he arrived at the open doorway of Burton’s Butties, he knew that his journey had been a mistake. A long queue
snaked to the counter and his father seemed to be rushed off his feet. As was Joanne Beeston who had abandoned her basket
for the day and was serving behind the polished glass barrier – sandwich delivery orders dried up on Saturdays; for most office
workers it was a day of rest.

When Joanne spotted him she gave a shy wave and whispered something to Robbie who glanced over without a smile. Steve’s heart
lurched. His father, so long lost to him, looked irritated that he’d turned up unannounced. He experienced a few moments of
indecision, considering what to do, before mouthing to Joanne that he’d meet her in the Flying Pig at eight and leaving the
shop. He shouldn’t have come. He knew that now.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and returned to the car, numb and hurt. It was no use telling himself that his father
had reacted that way because he was busy – the expression on his face had told him otherwise. The novelty of having a son
was wearing off … and the fact that that son was in trouble didn’t help.

As he walked with his head down, eyes on the pavement,
he heard a familiar voice saying hello. He looked up and saw Trish Walton.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How’s things?’

Trish gave him an embarrassed smile, unsure what to say. Should she discuss work? Nobody had told her she wasn’t supposed
to talk to him. ‘Okay,’ she said warily.

‘How’s the Marrick case going?’ He was trying to sound casual, to keep the anxiety out of his voice.

Trish hesitated. Then she decided that it wouldn’t do any harm to share what she knew. After all, Steve might be cleared …
and then he’d have to take up where he left off.

‘Forensic reckon the knife Carl Pinney used to attack you was the one that killed Charles Marrick. They found traces of Marrick’s
blood on it.’

Steve swore softly under his breath. ‘So he bloody did it.’

Trish shook her head. ‘He claims he found the knife. The boss and Inspector Peterson are going round to interview him this morning.’

‘He got bail?’ The leniency hit him like a kick in the teeth.

Trish nodded. ‘The accusation against you didn’t help.’

‘I didn’t do it, Trish. I didn’t beat up that little piece of shit. I’d have liked to but …’

Trish made a great show of looking at her watch. ‘Sorry, Steve. I’ve got to go.’

‘You believe me, don’t you?’

Trish didn’t answer. She turned and walked away.

He watched her go. If she felt like that, she could go to hell. At least he had his date with Joanne that evening. And he
clung to that pleasant thought for the rest of the day.

Wesley Peterson wasn’t answering his phone. Neil had tried to ring him the night before – the night he’d sat up brooding about
the latest letter he’d found when he got home from work – but the phone had been engaged. He’d spent the
evening in his flat alone, thinking, with a couple of bottles of beer for company. Someone out there had chosen him as the
recipient of their sick ramblings. And this made him nervous.

Even though it was Saturday, he knew Wesley would probably be working. But Pam would be home and he felt a sudden need to
speak to another human being. Things had been awkward between him and Pam for a while, ever since he’d discovered that she’d
had a short-lived fling with another man. Perhaps it was time he made an effort to mend things and he had the perfect excuse.
It was her wedding anniversary and he knew Wesley had booked a meal and a hotel room for that night. He’d call round to offer
his congratulations.

Before he set out, he called Annabel, his contact in the archives, to see whether she’d discovered anything more about Stow
Barton. He already knew that the site had belonged to Veland Abbey and, after Henry VIII had grabbed all the country’s monasteries,
that all the abbey’s lands had been sold to a family called Pegram – thrusting nouveau-riche members of the king’s court.
New men who had been the future back then. But, in view of the letters and the strange pit he’d found, he wanted to know more
– and to discover whether a Brother William had featured in the abbey’s history.

But all he got was Annabel’s disembodied voice on her answering machine and he suddenly remembered that she’d told him she’d
be away for the weekend, probably indulging in some country pursuit – Annabel tended to hang round with the hunting and shooting
set in her leisure hours. It would have to wait till Monday.

An hour later, Neil arrived at Wesley’s house and Pam answered the door, looking wary, as though she didn’t quite know whether
she’d been forgiven. But when he asked if he could come in, she offered tea.

‘I believe you and Wes are off out tonight,’ he said as he
slumped down on the sofa, avoiding eye contact with the two young children playing near him on the floor.

She smiled. ‘Yes. My mother’s even promised to stay the night with the kids … which is a first. Things are looking up.’

He nodded, slightly envious of the decent meal and hotel room Wesley would be enjoying that night, painfully aware that he
himself had nobody to share such treats with even if they were available.

When Pam left the room to make the tea, he made an awkward attempt to help little Amelia with a jigsaw which seemed rather
advanced for her tender years, and felt rather pleased with himself when her elder brother Michael, addressing him as Uncle
Neil, asked him what he knew about castles and he was able to give the lad some pointers for the model he was making at school.
But all this intellectual activity was brought to a halt by Pam’s arrival with a couple of mugs filled with steaming tea and
he was relieved. He’d never felt entirely at home with children.

‘Did Wes tell you I’d had an anonymous letter?’ he said as Pam handed him his drink.

‘He mentioned something.’

‘I found another one when I got home last night. I tried to ring Wes but I couldn’t get through.’

‘My fault. I was on the phone most of the evening trying to persuade my mum to babysit tonight. She kept coming up with excuses.
Have you brought the letter with you?’

He had stuffed the plastic freezer bag containing the letter into the inside pocket of the combat jacket he was wearing. He
handed it over and Pam read it in silence.

‘Well? What do you think?’

She considered her answer. ‘I don’t really know. Whoever’s written it seems to have a thing about monks … and blood.’

‘A weirdo.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s literate … well thought out. The subject’s important to him … or her.’

‘Think it could be a woman?’ Neil sounded incredulous. He’d always thought of his tormentor as a man … as one man in particular.
Lenny. He told Pam about Lenny and his strange view of the world.

‘I wouldn’t jump to conclusions if I were you,’ she said after considering the facts. ‘Does your site have any connection with
monks?’

‘It does as a matter of fact. It was owned by Veland Abbey.’

‘And blood-letting?’

Neil pondered the question. ‘Monasteries often sent monks to outlying houses to be bled … a sort of holiday, just like it says
in the letters. Stow Barton might well fit the bill but that’s only one possibility among several and I need to be sure before
I say anything … especially as it’s going to be all over the TV. I don’t want to make a fool of myself professionally.’ He
felt his cheeks redden. ‘The TV people want me to do another slot on the local news. They say there’s been a lot of interest.’

‘Good.’

A silence fell between them, an amicable silence between old friends. After a while Neil spoke. ‘There could be some evidence
for the blood-letting theory. We found a metal object, very corroded but it might be a lancet – I’ve sent it for x-ray. And
there’s a pit on the edge of the site with a dark deposit inside. I’ve done some research myself and found out that in York
barbers who did blood letting got into trouble for dumping blood in the streets. They had to get rid of it somewhere, didn’t
they?’

‘A blood pit?’

‘I’ve sent samples off to the lab in Exeter and if the material in the pit does turn out to contain human blood …’

‘The monks went there for their holidays.’

She handed the letter back but he returned it to her, asking her to give it to Wesley. Then, after an awkward pause, he looked
her in the eye. ‘You’ve not seen that Jonathan
again have you?’ he asked in a low whisper, glancing at the playing children.

Pam shook her head vigorously. She never wanted to see Jonathan again in her life. Her whole being shrivelled with embarrassment
at the very thought of her brief lapse from the straight and narrow.

Neil took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Give Wes my regards, won’t you?’

He gave Pam a swift kiss on the cheek and left.

Carl Pinney lounged on the sagging Draylon sofa and grinned unpleasantly. Up till now he had enquired about Steve Carstairs’s
whereabouts, peppering the conversation liberally with references to ‘his brief’.

Both Wesley and Heffernan could have cheerfully punched the smirk off his pale, spotty face. But that wasn’t what they were
there for. They knew they mustn’t rise to the bait.

Attack is probably the best form of defence – and at that moment Wesley reckoned they needed all the defence against the likes
of Carl Pinney and his ‘brief’ that they could get. ‘We sent the knife you used in the attack on DC Carstairs to the lab for
tests.’

The expression of contempt on Pinney’s face said ‘So what?’, but Wesley let the concept of the forensic tests sink in for
half a minute before he spoke again.

Pinney scratched his crotch in a virtuoso display of boredom and contempt. Then he yawned and slouched back on the sofa, closing
his eyes.

‘The tests confirmed that your knife killed a man called Charles Marrick in Rhode, near Tradmouth. Someone stabbed him in
the neck and he bled to death.’

Wesley watched Pinney’s face carefully. But his expression still gave nothing away. The only thing he saw was what had always
been there. Studied boredom and utter contempt for the police.

It was Gerry Heffernan who spoke next. ‘What happened, Carl? Did you go to the house to rob Marrick? Did you threaten him …
ask for money? Then things got out of hand, didn’t they, Carl? You lashed out and stabbed him in the neck and he started to
bleed. The bleeding wouldn’t stop and you got scared, didn’t you? You did a runner back to Morbay and …’

Pinney snorted. ‘How did I get out to Rhode? It’s miles away. And I ain’t got wheels, have I? Use your bloody brains. I found
the knife, didn’t I?’

‘We’ve only got your word for that,’ said Wesley leaning forward. ‘And I’m sure lots of your friends have access to cars …
or aren’t afraid to pinch them. Let’s face it, Carl, in the exalted circles you mix in, nicking cars is a skill learned in
primary school.’

‘Reading, writing, arithmetic … taking without consent,’ Heffernan said. ‘All part of the curriculum on the Winterham Estate,
isn’t it, Carl? The excuse that you don’t have a car hardly applies around here, does it? If you want one you just smash the
driver’s window, hotwire the thing and Bob’s your uncle.’

Carl Pinney looked from one man to the other, quite unconcerned. ‘You can’t prove nothing.’

‘What was it like, killing a man? How did it feel, Carl? Why don’t you tell us?’ Wesley watched his eyes and saw a flicker
of something that looked like excitement. ‘I bet it was good killing that rich bloke. Watching him bleed to death … seeing
the fear in his eyes when he saw your knife.’

The two policemen watched for a reaction. But Carl pressed his lips tightly together. He was staying silent. They couldn’t
prove he didn’t find that knife just like he said. They couldn’t prove anything.

‘We’ll need the clothes you were wearing on the night of Charles Marrick’s murder.’

‘They’ve been washed, haven’t they?’

‘What about your shoes?’

‘Chucked ’em out, didn’t I?’

‘Why?’

‘They got a hole in. Mum put ’em in the rubbish.’

‘That’s very convenient.’

Pinney shrugged his shoulders.

‘Did Marrick offend you in some way, Carl? Did he deserve all he got? Or did he have cash that you needed for drugs? Did he
refuse to give you any?’

Carl Pinney shifted his body until he was sitting up, stiff and straight. He looked Wesley in the eye. ‘No fucking comment,’
he spat before folding his arms across his chest and slumping back.

While Wesley and Heffernan were encountering the low life on the Winterham Estate, Rachel Tracey and Trish Walton were living
the high kind in their quest to confirm Annette Marrick’s alibi. First of all they’d called at Betina’s – an exclusive little
boutique on Foss Street set amongst the art galleries, bistros and expensive gift shops. Foss Street was narrow, quaint and
pedestrianised. And it was where the well heeled shopped.