The Shining Skull (6 page)

‘What about Aunty Lynne? Perhaps she’ll be able to throw some light on . . . ’

‘She died last year.’

Wesley should have known the lead was too good to be true. ‘I don’t suppose you know where we can find Carrie?’

He shook his head. ‘Never saw her again. Never saw any of them again.’

‘Did you ever ask about your birth certificate? You must have needed it to apply for a passport . . . ’

He shook his head. ‘Never needed one . . . never been abroad.’

‘Did Aunty Lynne have any other relatives who might help?’

‘No.’

‘When she died did you find any papers or . . . ’

‘I went back to the house and one of the neighbours helped me clear out her things. I remember looking for Carrie’s address
but I never found it.’

‘Were you close to your Aunty Lynne?’

Jones’s expression gave nothing away. ‘She wasn’t the sort of woman you got close to. She provided me with the basics but
she wasn’t the motherly type. I don’t think she had anything to do with the kidnapping – or Carrie. I don’t know why, but
I think they might have found me wandering or something, the travellers that is.’

‘Where do you live now?’

‘When Aunty Lynne died the house was empty so . . . ’ He shrugged his shoulders by way of explanation. ‘Look, I don’t want
all this to mess my life up.’ He put his head in his hands.

Wesley poured another cup of tea for both of them. Mark – or Marcus – looked as though he needed it. Wesley watched him sip,
nursing the cup as though trying to warm his hands.

Mark Jones took a deep breath and sighed. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have come here . . . I should have left well alone. But I had
to know.’ He gave Wesley a shy smile. ‘I’m thinking of getting married. You wouldn’t think all this would matter at my age.
But you have to know where you come from, don’t you?’

‘If you can prove you’re Marcus Fallbrook, you stand to inherit quite a bit of money. Marcus’s father was a very wealthy businessman.’

Mark Jones shook his head vigorously. ‘I didn’t know about that. And I couldn’t give a toss about the money. Finding my real
family’s more important . . . finding out who I really am.’

Wesley watched him, wondering whether he was protesting too much. But then he thought he might just feel the same if he was
in his shoes.

‘I told Adrian that I’ll take a DNA test, you know. His wife, Carol, is arranging it all.’

Wesley nodded before asking the passing waitress for the bill. It looked as though the man might be telling the truth after
all.

It was the largest memorial in the graveyard.

Neil Watson read the inscription beneath the strange symbol that had so intrigued him. Sacred to the memory of . . . There
were so many Benthams listed. Two Marys. A Sarah. A George. A Charles. Four Johns. Three Edwards. Two Katherines. And one
Juanita, probably a Spanish rose who had withered in the English chill. Neil imagined the exotically imported wife, regarded
with suspicion in life by her in-laws but laid to rest beside them when the time came. She was family after all.

The Bentham vault was topped by a tall granite obelisk, an all too solid reminder of their wealth and standing in the community.
From the little local research Neil had conducted – mainly by chatting to the Rector – he had learned that the Benthams were
the local squires who had lived from the fifteenth century onwards in Bentham Hall. The original hall had been burned down
and rebuilt in the fashionable classical style in the eighteenth century. After the Second World War the family had moved
out due to hard times and inheritance tax and the hall had been transformed recently into an upmarket hotel. The last of the
Benthams, Miss Worth, whose mother had been the family’s only daughter, had died childless in a tiny cob cottage with a smallholding
attached, not far from the pub that bore her mother’s family’s proud name. Neil supposed that this turn of events was a blow
for social equality.

He found himself staring at the symbol carved boldly in the centre of the obelisk. The seven-pointed star with the seven rays
and the rose at its centre. The Shining Ones. He wondered how it had come to dominate the Bentham family’s last resting place.
Had they been ‘Shining Ones’? Who exactly were the ‘Shining Ones’ and what did they believe? What, if anything, had set them
apart from their more conventional neighbours? He resolved to find out one of these days. But in the meantime he had work
to do.

He watched as the crane began to lift the Bentham obelisk, slowly at first, then the thing began to rise into the air, swinging
to and fro on its chains.

Once the monstrous monument was clear, Neil walked over to the small digger that was waiting to disinter the bones beneath.
It was time to start.

Soon the brick vault was unearthed and the workmen, under the supervising eyes of the archaeological team who were photographing
and recording the proceedings, began to dismantle the structure revealing two rows of coffins beneath, some stacked on top
of others. There seemed to be an awful lot of Benthams down there, some tall, some small, some only babies and children. A
family group.

The first coffin to be lifted out of the ground belonged to a Charles Bentham and the dates on the plaque fixed to the lid
told Neil that he had died in 1898 aged eighty-two.

After that they came thick and fast. These coffins, belonging to the gentry, seemed to be far better quality than the ones
that had split apart so disturbingly the other day. Class distinction even in death.

Neil watched as the coffins were moved and stacked, ready to be reburied in the plot prepared for them at the other side of
the churchyard. This was a job for the contractors: when it was finished, Neil’s team would look for older remains beneath.
And maybe, with luck, they would find traces of an earlier church.

He was musing on the most efficient way of completing the work, watching the hoist swinging the coffins out of the ground,
when all of a sudden there was a thud.

A slight misjudgement by one of the contractors had caused one of the coffins to land heavily. As rusted nails gave way, the
coffin lid slid to one side and Neil, through a combination of duty and morbid curiosity, rushed over to where it lay.

First he noted the name on the lid. Juanita Bentham. The Spanish bride. According to the metal coffin plate she had left this
uncertain and perilous existence in 1816 – at the time when the Prince Regent had ruled England in place of his poor mad father,
King George III. And she had been twenty-seven years old when she died. No age at all.

Neil’s eyes were drawn to the inside of the coffin, to the grinning skull. He averted his eyes. It seemed almost indecent
to stare. But then he looked again. He hadn’t imagined it.

He hadn’t imagined the second skull tucked beneath the first, grinning out from behind the first in a macabre game of peek-aboo.

Suzy Wakefield bashed the off switch of the radio with a violence that surprised her estranged husband Darren who was helping
himself to a drink from the mirrored cocktail cabinet that stood in the corner of the room.

Darren swung round, almost spilling the contents of his glass. ‘Hey, I was listening to that. It was the news.’

Suzy swung round and stared at him. ‘It was about that bloody lunatic who’s going round assaulting women in taxis. Do you
think I want to be reminded of what could have happened to . . . ’

‘My little girl can take care of herself. No problem. She’ll be lying low for a bit to teach you a lesson.’ Darren Wakefield
smiled in the smug way that had always infuriated his ex-wife.

Leah Wakefield’s father was well built with dark hair and a penchant for gold chains and shirts unbuttoned to reveal his tanned
chest. He had always fancied himself but his tendency to narcissism had increased with the realisation that he had produced
a beautiful and talented daughter who would make them a fortune. He had been lured from Suzy’s side by a young PR woman many
years his junior and, with the woman Suzy termed ‘the Bimbo’ in tow, he had developed a taste for the high life. Suzy suspected
that it was only a matter of time before Leah pulled the financial plug on his exploits. And that thought had given her a
warm glow of satisfaction in her darkest hours.

Suzy began to pace up and down. ‘I’ve been ringing round everyone she knows. Nobody’s seen her.’

‘And you think they’d tell you if they had? Give the girl some space, will you.’

Suzy Wakefield looked into her former husband’s unworried eyes and what self control she had left suddenly snapped. She gave
him a stinging slap across the face before launching herself at him and pummelling his chest with her fists.

Darren stood quite still, a smirk of amusement on his face, holding off the assault with one hand as he had done so often
during
the course of their marriage. At five foot nothing, Suzy was no match for him, a goldfish attacking a shark.

He waited until Suzy subsided to the thick piled carpet in tears of frustrated rage before speaking again. ‘This isn’t going
to bring her home, is it? This is why she left in the first place,’ he said before walking out of the door.

‘I never particularly liked Barry Houldsworth,’ Gerry Heffernan said thoughtfully as Wesley locked the car. ‘He was an insensitive
old bugger. Once told a woman whose daughter had been raped to pull herself together.’

‘Not in tune with the caring, sharing ethos of the modern force then.’

Heffernan chuckled. ‘You could say that. I reckon our DC Carstairs would take on the role of his spiritual successor given
half the chance.’

‘Too right,’ said Wesley with feeling. Steve Carstairs was hardly his favourite underling, although he had to admit he’d been
behaving himself of late. ‘So Houldsworth wasn’t popular then?’

‘He was popular enough with a certain type – the ones who joined the force to model themselves on
The Sweeney.
The ones who watched more telly than was good for them. There were quite a few coppers like that around in those early days.’
He gave a wide grin. ‘I had the reputation of being the station softy at one time.’

Wesley raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’ It was hard to see the ex-merchant-navy man who had put the fear of God into so many
villains as the station softy. Perhaps it said something about Houldsworth’s régime back in the nineteen seventies. Wesley
was only glad he had only been a tot playing cops and robbers with plastic handcuffs at the time.

‘I suppose you could say Houldsworth was one of the old school.’

‘Was he at Tradmouth till he retired?’

Heffernan shook his head. ‘Nah. He moved on to Morbay. Not sure why. Clash of personalities with his superiors probably.’
He tilted his head to one side. ‘I sometimes wonder whether me and CS Nutter are compatible, you know,’ he added thoughtfully.
‘I’m interested in catching villains but the only things that seems to turn him on are meetings and shuffling paper about.’

Wesley smiled and said nothing. They had reached the Bentham
Arms and the door to the lounge bar stood open invitingly. ‘Well, here we are. What are you drinking?’

Heffernan looked at his watch. ‘As the sun’s over the yardarm and you’re driving, I’ll have a pint of best.’

Wesley made a beeline for the bar and ordered the drinks while his boss went off in search of Houldsworth. Balancing the beer
and his own orange juice, he wandered over to the corner where he’d found the ex-DCI the previous night and sure enough, there
he was, waiting with a pair of notebooks on the table in front of him. Wesley was relieved that he’d remembered his promise.

Gerry Heffernan had sat down beside him and now the two men were exchanging grunted pleasantries; enquiries about old colleagues
and the current goings on at Tradmouth nick. Wesley let them get on with it until they ran out of things to say, which wasn’t
very long – Gerry Heffernan had never been one of DCI Houldsworth’s blue-eyed boys.

The former DCI looked alert and sober, unlike the night before. But the pint of beer in front of him suggested that he might
not stay that way for long. They had to make their enquiries while the going was good.

Wesley came straight to the point. ‘What would you say if I told you that Marcus Fallbrook’s just turned up out of the blue?’

‘I’d say someone’s having you on. The kid’s dead.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Call it gut feeling. I think that poor lad was dead before the ransom was dropped. Anyway, if he was alive, where has he
been all these years?’

‘He says he was found wandering by New Age travellers.’

Houldsworth sniggered. ‘Away with the raggle-taggle gypsies o. You don’t believe that fairy story, do you?’

‘He’s offered to take a DNA test.’

Houldsworth looked at Wesley as if he was a particularly stupid child who needed everything explaining in words of one syllable.
‘Well he would, wouldn’t he? If he refused it’s as good as admitting he’s a fraud.’

Heffernan had been listening intently. ‘You’ve got a point there, Barry,’ he chipped in.

Houldsworth prodded Wesley’s shoulder with an unsteady hand. ‘What do you bet that he’ll find some reason not to take the
test when the time comes? He’ll be called away urgently or develop an allergy to needles or something. You’ll see.’

Wesley glanced at his boss. From the expression on Gerry Heffernan’s face, it seemed that he didn’t altogether consider the
scenario Houldsworth described as far fetched.

Wesley tried again. ‘But what if his story’s true. There are things we can check out. We can ask Manchester police to check
out the addresses he talked about. And we can try and trace the travellers who found him.’

Houldsworth snorted. ‘Fat chance. They’ll be long gone.’

‘He said he was knocked down in a hit and run and was admitted to
A and E. He had concussion and that’s when he started having flashbacks . . . when he began to remember his early childhood.
We can check out his story about the accident. The hospital will have records.’

Houldsworth gave Gerry Heffernan a theatrical wink. ‘Ah, the naivety of the young. As soon as you start checking this stuff
out, he’ll be well away.’