The Blood Pit (17 page)

Wesley could see tears welling up in her eyes. He reached out and touched her arm gently. ‘We’re pretty sure he didn’t take
his own life, Mrs Tench … Emma.’

She began to cry, taking in great, gulping breaths. Rachel rushed to her side and put her arms around her while Mrs
Crimmond clucked comfortingly, stroking her hair as if calming an animal. Wesley guessed there was some relief in her tears
– relief that Simon hadn’t chosen to abandon her. Suicide, he knew, was the hardest thing for relatives to come to terms with
– that a loved one could choose death over a life spent in their company. But Wesley was certain Simon Tench hadn’t chosen
his exit from this world. Someone else had chosen it for him.

‘Are you feeling up to giving DS Tracey here a statement?’ he asked when the sobs had subsided a little.

Emma nodded. ‘There’s nothing much I can tell you but …’

Wesley thanked her and asked Mrs Crimmond if he could have a word in private. The old lady led the way into the kitchen, shuffling
along in a pair of men’s slippers, supported by a stick.

‘It’s so terrible,’ she said once they were alone. ‘I’ve become quite fond of Simon and Emma, you know. I know they only rented
the cottage and they were looking for somewhere to buy but it’s nice having a young couple next door. And they’re thoughtful
… not like some. Emma does bits of shopping for me and …’

‘I know, Mrs Crimmond. It must be a terrible shock for you.’ He knew he had to come to the point before she rambled on for
hours about the virtues of her late neighbour and his wife. He smiled encouragingly. ‘It would help us catch whoever was responsible
for Simon’s death if you could recall anything unusual you heard or saw last night. Anything at all.’

Mrs Crimmond sat herself down heavily on a folding stool that stood next to the sink. ‘I’ve been thinking but I’m afraid I
can’t help you. I saw nothing and I heard nothing. But then I am a little bit deaf.’

‘You didn’t look out of the window and see a car outside at any point in the evening?’

The old lady looked at him sharply. ‘Do you think I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I had? There’s a passing place down the
lane. If someone wanted to visit next door unobserved they could have parked there.’

Wesley made a mental note to get uniform to check the side of the road there for tyre marks. The Tenches’ cottage was fairly
isolated, well on the outskirts of the village. If someone had murder on their mind, it would be easy to park well away from
the house and walk.

‘I don’t spend all my life spying on my neighbours, you know.’ The old lady sounded quite offended. ‘I have better things
to do. I’ve joined the silver surfers at the library and last night I sent some e-mails before watching a repeat of Inspector
Morgan on the television. I need the volume on quite loud so I wouldn’t have heard any sounds outside, I’m afraid.’

Wesley forced himself to smile. It was just his luck to find a silver surfer who had abandoned the pleasures of net curtain
surveillance for high technology.

Simon Tench was a popular and blameless man who, as far as anyone knew, hadn’t an enemy in the world. But someone had killed
him. And the last thing Wesley Peterson and Gerry Heffernan needed was a motiveless crime. They were always the most difficult
kind to solve.

As they returned to Tradmouth police station, Heffernan made a call on his mobile. Carl Pinney was to be picked up and brought
in again. He’d be summoning his solicitor, of course, but that wouldn’t stop them. He’d been in possession of the knife that
had killed Charlie Marrick and he’d been on the loose when Tench was killed. At the moment he was number one on their list
of suspects, even though Wesley wasn’t convinced the murders were his style at all. As to their number two, Fabrice Colbert
might have had a grudge against Marrick but there was absolutely nothing to connect him to Simon Tench … yet.

Gerry Heffernan felt in his pocket. ‘I found a DVD of that property programme at the Tenches’ place. Thought it might be worth
having a look at it.’

Wesley said nothing. He couldn’t really see how the Tenches’ half hour of fame would be relevant. Unless the killer had seen
it and chosen Tench as his next victim for some twisted and unfathomable reason. But then Charlie Marrick, as far as they
knew, had never made it on to TV.

‘I’m going to ask someone to have a word with the owner of the horse Tench treated,’ Wesley said. ‘There might be some sort
of bad feeling there or …’

Heffernan shook his head. ‘Sam didn’t say anything about the owner taking it badly. These things happen. But I’ll ask him …
get the details.’

Wesley said nothing. It was a long shot. And probably irrelevant. He pulled into the police station car park and suddenly
remembered Neil Watson’s strange anonymous letters and their mention of blood. The murders of Charles Marrick and Simon Tench
and now the discovery of the bones in the woodland next to Sunacres Holiday Park had driven Neil’s little problem from his
mind. But he wanted to have a closer look at those letters when he had a moment. With their mention of blood, they might have
some connection to the case. But on the other hand, they might be completely irrelevant. Another long shot.

They entered the police station, nodding to the sergeant on duty, and climbed the stairs to the CID office. The fact that
it was a Sunday made no difference – it was buzzing with purposeful activity like Fabrice Colbert’s kitchen.

Wesley found a report waiting for him on his desk – eagerly awaited news from Fingerprints. He smiled to himself as he read
it and half walked, half ran to Gerry Heffernan’s office.

Heffernan looked up as he entered. ‘Nothing from missing persons on that skeleton yet,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked for a list of
all men of that age who’ve gone missing in the area over the past fifty years.’

Wesley said nothing. The skeleton had been there a long time by the looks of it so a week or so would probably make no difference.
But it was possible that the person who’d killed Marrick and Tench might decide to kill again. That was their priority for
now.

‘The list might be a long one,’ Heffernan continued. ‘There must be lots of blokes over the past fifty years who’ve decided
to up and leave. I can think of a couple it could be – men who’ve disappeared without explanation – but …’

Wesley nodded. The boss had a point. And of course it was always possible that the dead man hadn’t been reported missing in
their area. He could be from anywhere. ‘Once we’ve sorted out these murders we’ll make this skeleton our priority,’ he said
optimistically. ‘I’ve just had an interesting report from Fingerprints.’ He smiled. ‘I asked them to do it urgently but, as
it’s the weekend, I wasn’t expecting such good service.’

Heffernan looked up, curious. ‘Go on. Don’t keep us in suspense.’

‘Those prints I lifted off the pen Fabrice Colbert used have been checked. And my little bit of rule breaking’s paid off.
They match the ones found in Charles Marrick’s bedroom.’

Heffernan frowned. ‘But weren’t they … ?’

The grin on Wesley’s face widened. ‘From the fingerprint evidence it looks like our Frenchman’s a phoney. Fabrice Colbert is
Darren Collins.’

Heffernan’s eyes widened with disbelief. ‘You’ve having me on.’

‘The prints match. I wondered why that picture of Collins seemed so familiar. He was much younger … and thinner … and he had
less hair – and a bigger nose. But when I studied it again I could definitely see the resemblance. With a bit of plastic surgery
…’

‘You said Collins had a tattoo.’

‘Tattoos can be removed. Especially if you want to start a new life.’

‘As a Frenchman? There are French staff in his restaurant – that wine waiter for a start – wouldn’t they twig? You might be
able to fool an Englishman with a fake French accent but a Frenchman …’

Wesley had to acknowledge that the boss had a point. His own schoolboy French – although considered quite good in his time
– would never convince anyone east of Kent. But he wanted to see Fabrice Colbert and find out the truth … whatever that was.

‘We could always have Sunday lunch at Le Petit Poisson … in the interest of our enquiries, of course,’ Gerry Heffernan said
with a hungry look in his eyes.

Wesley trusted he was joking. Neither of their bank balances would run to it. They’d have to make do with a quick bite at
the Fisherman’s Arms to feed the inner detective before their rendezvous with the great chef. If he wasn’t who he said he
was, he was back as joint top of their list with Carl Pinney. All they had to do was establish some link with Simon Tench.
Perhaps he’d eaten at Le Petit Poisson and complained about the food.

‘I’ve just been thinking about the quail,’ said Wesley. ‘We’ve had people asking round all the local eating places and we still
don’t know where Marrick had lunch. If the quail was the source of the hemlock, it’s always possible that a contaminated meat
was kept frozen and used for the purpose. Colbert got all huffy when we suggested he used frozen food but people have been
known to lie to us from time to time. If he did use the quail to poison Marrick, it makes a brilliant murder weapon, don’t
you think?’

‘If he’d left it at that. Why all the blood? Why mess up his neat little MO.’

‘To put us off the scent? Or sheer sadism? I’ll be interested
to see whether any hemlock’s found in Simon Tench’s body. There were no defensive wounds there either …’

‘So you reckon our Great French Chef could be a villain who’s changed his identity and does a nasty little sideline in hemlock
takeaways delivered to the doors of Charles Marrick and Simon Tench?’

Wesley didn’t answer. When it was put like that, it sounded far-fetched.

‘We’ll have a word with him anyway … see if he’s got an alibi for Tench’s death. Let’s hope for his sake it’s a better one
than he rustled up last time.’ He paused. ‘Anyone heard anything from Steve Carstairs?’

Wesley shook his head. The last thing on his mind was DC Carstairs. And he wanted it to stay that way.

Sunday had never been Neil Watson’s favourite day. Sundays usually meant not working and to Neil a day without work – without
digging up the past or writing reports about it – was a day wasted. He sat alone in his flat on the ground floor of a large
Victorian house which stood on a leafy road not far from the centre of Exeter. It was a spacious flat with high ceilings,
ornate cornices and an original fireplace in each of the main rooms. He loved it, loved its airiness.

The one thing it lacked was another human being. This didn’t normally bother Neil as he was usually working or socialising
with his archaeological colleagues. But sitting there at his old pine table, that bore the rings left by a thousand coffee
mugs, with his books and papers spread out before him on a quiet Sunday listening to the distant bells of Exeter Cathedral
drifting in through the open sash window, he felt lonely and suddenly envied Wesley Peterson his growing family. But he’d
had his chance with Pam when they were at university and, fearful of involvement, he’d let things drift. There had been women
since but all his relationships had fizzled out somehow like fireworks in the rain. What woman,
he always wondered, could compete with his trenches and artefacts and the camaraderie of the dig? But the training excavation
at Stow Barton felt different somehow. He didn’t know whether it was the strange letters he’d received, but he felt uneasy
about it and wished he had someone to discuss it with … someone to share the load.

He’d rung Wesley but there’d been no answer. But then he remembered their planned anniversary treat – the meal and the night
in the hotel – with a twinge of envy. He walked into the small kitchen, took a frozen meal for one out of the freezer and
popped it in the microwave. When it was ready, he switched on the TV and ate his meal on his knee in front of a repeat of
House Hunters
– a wealthy gay couple from the Midlands in a quest for a mansion to call their own and house their extensive collection
of objets d’art. Neil ate hastily, taking in sustenance rather than taking pleasure in the taste and texture of the food,
and when he’d finished he returned to the table and opened a book he’d bought in a secondhand bookshop. A battered volume without
a dust jacket that had cost him five pounds. A book about medieval monasteries.

He flicked through the pages until he came to the section on monastic medicine. The monks, the book informed him, were bled
every six to seven weeks and the purpose of this blood letting was to prevent them from falling ill. He read on, thinking
how his mysterious letter writer had been spot on with his facts. The monks had indeed enjoyed the experience of being bled
and they’d looked forward to it as a holiday from the daily grind of work and prayer.

Monastic houses, it said, often had manor houses well away from the main complex where the brothers could go to be bled and
live the comfortable life for a few precious days. In 1334 the Abbott of Burton, according to the book, granted five days’ indulgence
from the blood-letting ‘from mid day on Easter day until vespers on the fourth day after in that
place known as the Seyney House with increased allowance of bread and beer beyond the usual corrody.’ Rest and extra beer.
Sometimes, the author told him, the monks took the relaxed régime of the seyney house as an opportunity to indulge in lax
behaviour and idle gossiping. No wonder they liked it.

He switched on his laptop and brought the pictures he had taken of the site at Stow Barton up on the screen. He studied the
ones he had taken of the strange pit and smiled. He had sent samples off to the lab but he was as sure as he could be that
he knew exactly what it was. It all fitted. It had been used for the disposal of blood. Human blood. Blood from the monks
who had come to Stow Barton for their six-weekly treat.

The trouble was, his letter writer had known all this before he did. And he wondered how.

Ten minutes passed before his reading was interrupted by the urgent ringing of his doorbell. The sound made him jump and set
his heart thumping against his chest. He hadn’t been expecting company.