The Plague Maiden (12 page)

Janet Powell had made an official statement, reiterating her claim that Chris Hobson was with her at the time of the Reverend
Shipborne’s murder. And the governor of Hammersham Prison was expecting Detective Chief Inspector Heffernan and Detective
Inspector Peterson to arrive around lunch-time the next day to interview Hobson. Wesley was dreading the visit … he hated
prisons; hated
the smell; hated that atmosphere of repressed violence. He wished he could get out of it but it seemed that Gerry wanted him
there.

He knew it was time to announce the bad news. He cleared his throat. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

‘I’ve just come back from the mortuary. A body’s been found buried in a field in Belsham …’ He noticed that some of his colleagues
who knew about Neil’s dig and the supposed plague pit were looking sceptical. ‘A recent body with modern dental work … a young
woman. I want details of any women aged between twenty and twenty-five who’ve been reported missing in the area in the past,
say, twenty or thirty years.’ Heffernan mumbled something under his breath and slapped Wesley on the back. “I’ll leave it
in your capable hands then, Wes,” he said before disappearing into his office.

As officers began to scurry off towards desks and filing cabinets, an idea began to form in Wesley’s mind. What if the person
who pushed Neil into the trench hadn’t been interested in archaeological treasure? What if he – or she – had been trying to
find the body he or she had buried years ago and remove incriminating evidence? If the killer knew about the dig perhaps he
had decided to take action before the archaeologists found his victim, and if this was the case it meant that the killer was
still around. It was a tentative, half-formed theory … but it was worth bearing in mind.

As he returned to his desk Rachel followed him.

He sat down and she perched herself on the edge of the desk. He looked up and smiled, expecting her to say something. But
she didn’t.

Wesley looked at his watch. It was six o’clock already and, as he hadn’t eaten since he had grabbed a cheese sandwich from
the station canteen at midday, he began to feel pangs of hunger. He thought of Pam, pregnant and looking after a tired toddler,
waiting for him to get back. Perhaps he’d ring her to say that he’d bring back a takeaway from the Golden Dragon. Appeasement
was sometimes the only way.

He looked up at Rachel. ‘Can you see if anyone’s turned up anything on those missing women yet?’

She slid off the desk and strolled over to Trish Walton, who was earnestly tapping away on her computer keyboard. Wesley watched
Rachel, mildly surprised that he needed to remind her there was work to be done. It was almost as if her mind wasn’t on the
job. Perhaps Dave’s imminent return was responsible for this unusual state of affairs.

Trish Walton had left the statement she had taken from Janet Powell on his desk and he picked it up and scanned it but found
nothing new. She hadn’t changed her story, and he wondered whether that was a good sign or a bad. He picked up the telephone,
and he was about to dial his home number when Trish bustled over to his desk. There was excitement in her large brown eyes,
as though she was about to impart some momentous news.

‘Eight young women have been reported missing in this area over the past thirty years,’ she began breathlessly. ‘One of them
disappeared from Belsham about a week after the Reverend Shipborne was murdered. Her name was Helen Wilmer … aged twenty-one.
The report states that she went out one evening saying she was going to a friend’s in Neston but she never made it and she
was never seen again. Do you think … ?’

Wesley smiled at her. Trish was a good officer, bright and keen. And now that she had made it quite clear to Steve Carstairs
that she wasn’t interested, the fear that she would fall into bad company had been removed. In fact there were rumours that
she had been seen in the Fisherman’s Arms with Paul Johnson on more than one occasion. There was nowhere like a police station
for salacious gossip.

‘It’s a good place to start. Get me everything you’ve got on her disappearance, will you? The sequence of events, who her
friends were, who was interviewed at the time – that sort of thing.’

As Trish marched off purposefully towards her desk Wesley made his phone call. Pam assured him that she was
fine: her mother was there and they had just eaten, leaving his share in the microwave. She said she’d visited Neil in hospital
that afternoon and was shocked to see him looking so bad. Wesley mumbled some cliché about not being able to keep Neil down
for long – the first thing that came into his head – and told her he’d see her later, taking care not to give a specific time.

He stood up. Rachel was sitting at her desk, staring into space. She didn’t look to be in the mood for paperwork. Wesley went
over to her and bent to whisper in her ear. ‘Fancy coming for a drink in Neston?’

She looked up at him, surprised, then pleased. ‘Why not? Where did you have in mind?’

‘The Cat and Fiddle near the castle. I’ve been told it doesn’t do to look too smart.’

‘Why there?’ She was beginning to suspect this wasn’t a social invitation after all.

‘A bloke called Big Eddie is supposed to hang out there. He might know something about what happened to Neil.’

Rachel was careful to hide her disappointment. Maybe a tête-à-tête over a drink after work had been too much to hope for …
but she had hoped.

‘Or perhaps you want to get home …’

‘I’m in no hurry, honestly. I’ll get my coat.’ She seemed too keen. Wesley heard faint warning bells. But it was too late
now to do anything about them. He poked his head around Heffernan’s office door and told him he was off. The answer was a
preoccupied grunt. The boss was still wrestling with paperwork.

As Wesley walked out of the office just ahead of Rachel, he saw Steve Carstairs smirk and nudge one of the other young DCs.

Rachel said nothing as they drove out to Neston. She sat in the passenger seat staring ahead, a faint Mona Lisa smile on her
lips. When they turned into the carpark nearest to the Cat and Fiddle, Wesley broke the silence.

‘Any more thoughts about your little problem?’

‘Not really. I’m still looking for a place of my own but I’m taking each day as it comes. At least we’ve got all these cases
to keep us occupied. With any luck I’ll be able to work till midnight most nights and not see Dave at all.’ She hesitated.
‘Do you find that? The job’s useful when you don’t want to go home.’

He had attended enough court cases to recognise a leading question when he heard one. And it was a question he preferred not
to answer. He opened the car door. ‘We’d better go and track down this Big Eddie.’

They walked into the Cat and Fiddle, a small drinking establishment with a dark, narrow frontage, squeezed between two terraced
cottages on the steep road leading up to the castle. Wesley hadn’t been in there before, and as soon as he stepped over the
threshold he knew he wouldn’t be going there again if he could possibly help it.

The clientele was almost exclusively male, with checked shirts, shaved heads and an interesting display of tattooed flesh.
The place full silent as Wesley walked in, like a saloon in the old cowboy movies when a stranger rode into town. It wasn’t
only the colour of his skin which set Wesley apart, it was the fact that his clothes were what is usually described as ‘smart
casual’. The rest of the men in the bar were casual to the extreme, but by no stretch of the imagination could any of them
have been described as ‘smart’. Rachel too was out of place, the other two females in the place being a barmaid – in her thirties,
bottle blonde and with the sort of plunging neckline that gives barmaids a bad reputation – and a thin woman who Wesley guessed
was probably Neston’s oldest lady of the night – fifty if she was a day with thick caked make-up, a dyed black mane of hair
and a skirt that left nothing to the imagination. This apparition was perched on a high stool by the bar with a leather-clad
biker’s hand resting on her knee.

Wesley took a deep breath and walked to the bar. It was nearly seven o’clock and the place was already comfortably full. The
crush would most likely come later, nearer closing
time. It was smoky, his eyes were starting to sting and he longed to be out of there: it wasn’t his sort of place at all.
In fact he was surprised to find such an establishment in such a New Age place as Neston – a town more accustomed to vegetarian
cafés, healing centres and cards in newsagents’ windows advertising didgeridoo lessons. But then those inhabitants who preferred
less peaceable pastimes had to congregate somewhere.

Fortunately the hum of conversation had resumed by the time Wesley leaned across the bar and ordered a half of bitter for
himself and a lager for Rachel. When the barmaid was pouring the drinks, presenting a fine display of cleavage, he asked whether
Big Eddie was in. She looked at him suspiciously but seemed to soften a little as he handed his money over and explained that
he was a friend of an archaeologist Big Eddie helped out from time to time. Satisfied that his credentials explained why he
didn’t fit the Cat and Fiddle’s usual customer profile, she pointed to a large man in a checked shirt, sitting on what looked
like a church pew in the corner with a large, neatly clipped poodle sitting obediently at his feet.

Wesley was never too sure about dogs, but this one looked no problem. He walked confidently over to Big Eddie, Rachel following
behind awkwardly, trying not to spill her lager.

‘Big Eddie?’

The man looked up from his pint suspiciously. ‘Who wants him?’

The poodle began to emit a low growl.

‘My name’s Wesley Peterson. I’m a friend of Neil Watson. You know Neil?’

‘Aye. I’ve helped him out. What do you want? Shut up, Fang.’

The poodle gave his master a reproachful look and obeyed.

Up until now, Wesley had been reluctant to utter the word ‘police’, fearing that it might not go down too well in
the Cat and Fiddle, but now was the time to come clean.

But as soon as he’d admitted that he and Rachel were representatives of the law, Big Eddie stared at him morosely. ‘I’ve already
had two of your lot round today asking questions.’

Wesley must have looked puzzled because Big Eddie began to expand on this statement. ‘I used to work at Huntings and they
came round asking me about threats … I didn’t know nothing about no threats … don’t know why they asked me.’ He sounded indignant.

The light was dawning. ‘You’re Edward Baring.’

‘Who else would I be?’ he asked accusingly.

Wesley was unprepared for this, and as he assumed that no new information about the Huntings case would be forthcoming, he
explained that he was interested only in the possible attack on Neil. Obviously Big Eddie hadn’t heard about it … either that
or he was a good actor, which Wesley doubted. Wesley explained that whoever had attacked Neil had been using a metal detector
but he didn’t mention the body they’d just discovered. He wanted to keep things simple for now.

But Big Eddie hadn’t heard anything … and he claimed that no metal detectorist he knew would resort to physical violence.
Wesley had to take his word for it and, with Big Eddie’s assurances that if he heard anything he’d let them know at once ringing
in their ears, he and Rachel made a hasty retreat from the Cat and Fiddle.

‘Remind me to put that place in my bad pub guide,’ Wesley said lightly as they reached the car.

‘I reckon most of the blokes in there were known to Neston nick. I think I recognised a few myself. I was hoping you wouldn’t
go in flashing your warrant card.’

‘Credit me with more sense.’ Their eyes met. ‘You want a lift back to the farm or …’

‘Drop me off back at the station. I’ve got some work to catch up on. I’ll start going through the files on missing girls.
Trish found one called Helen Wilmer who lived in
Belsham. I’ll start with her and see what I can come up with. What about you?’

Wesley looked away. ‘I’d better get home. I’m going up to Bristol to see Chris Hobson tomorrow … and Pam’ll be expecting me
back.’

Rachel didn’t say a word for the rest of the journey.

At eight the next morning Wesley was in that limbo between sleeping and waking. He had heard the alarm clock but had put his
head under the pillow, trying to ignore it.

‘It’s eight o’clock. Are you going into work today? Or have the criminals all decided to mend their ways and start helping
old ladies across roads?’ Pam sounded wide awake. But then she had been roused by Michael’s demanding cries at six, so sleep
was a distant memory for her.

Wesley turned over and groaned. He couldn’t face humour at that time of the morning.

‘They say they might discharge him later today.’

‘Who?’

‘Neil. As soon as they can get out of bed they send them home. I don’t know how he’s going to manage.’

Wesley swung himself out of bed. He couldn’t think of the practicalities of Neil’s plight at the moment: he had other things
on his mind.

But Pam wasn’t going to let the subject drop. ‘He’s sharing a place with Matt and Jane while the dig’s on. But they’ll be
out working. They won’t be in a position to look after him … I can’t see him going back to his flat in Exeter. It’s on the
second floor and I don’t think he’d be able to get himself up the stairs, never mind shopping and feeding himself. What do
they think people who live alone are supposed to do?’

Wesley turned to her. ‘Don’t worry about Neil. He’ll fall on his feet, he always does. You should be more concerned with yourself.
When’s your next appointment at the hospital?’

Pam ran a hand over her pregnant stomach, feeling as
ungainly as a hippopotamus with a weight problem. ‘It was yesterday. I went after I’d visited Neil. I did tell you when you
got in last night but I don’t think you were taking it in,’ she answered with a hint of reproach in her voice. ‘Everything’s
fine. No problem.’

‘Good. I’ve got to drive up to Hammersham … near Bristol … today so I might be late again.’ He leaned over and kissed her
on the cheek. As he glanced at the bedside clock, he realised he’d better get a move on. There was no sound from Michael’s
room, indicating that he’d probably gone back to sleep, so he told Pam to stay in bed and grab some rest while she still could.