The Unquiet Grave (38 page)

‘I know,’ said Brook. ‘He’s still consumed by her death after all these years.’

‘And that’s unhealthy, right?’ snapped Rosie, defiantly.

Again Brook didn’t rise to the bait. ‘What did your father say about it?’

Rosie became hesitant. ‘He told me he felt guilty because he was in a bad way when she disappeared – it was a few days after Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary and he was off work, drinking a lot. Walter Laird pretty much ran the show solo though he got Dad to sign all the paperwork to keep up appearances.’

‘How did your father feel about that?’ asked Brook.

‘Bad. But Walter Laird was already a DS and Dad rated him to do the case justice. Unfortunately, because Laird knew the girl, it became more personal for him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Dad couldn’t help and Laird resented it more because he couldn’t make any headway on it. It was around that time he started losing faith in Dad.’

‘You can see his point, Rosie.’

‘I suppose,’ she conceded. ‘I do remember one thing Dad said about that case.’

‘What?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you.’

‘That’s why you should,’ replied Brook.

She considered. ‘A few days after they discovered Matilda Copeland’s body, Dad made an effort and drove up to the lake where they found her.’

‘Osmaston Park.’

‘That’s right. Dad had just parked up and was walking over to talk to Walter and DS Bell, who were interviewing the estate’s two gamekeepers. I don’t remember their names.’

‘John Briggs and Colin Ealy.’

‘If you say so.’ Again she hesitated. ‘Don’t take this wrong but Dad spotted one of them looking over at him.’

‘Looking over at him? How?’

‘I don’t know, sort of funny somehow. Staring. Dad wondered if he knew him from somewhere but he was pretty sure he didn’t. And neither gamekeeper had a criminal record so he didn’t know them from work.’

‘Maybe he recognised your father from the crime scene,’ said Brook, bracing for a reaction.

‘Oh, so now Dad killed Matilda Copeland as well,’ said Rosie angrily. ‘I might have known you’d twist it. It’s a good job I know you’re wrong.’

‘You have to admit it’s pretty odd.’

‘Why couldn’t he have seen Dad in the papers?’ argued Rosie. ‘Dad was always getting his picture in. That’s how I knew you.’

‘Which gamekeeper?’ said Brook, to change the subject. ‘Briggs or Ealy?’

Rosie took a sullen slug of white wine. ‘I don’t know the names,’ she finally answered, ‘but it was the young one, the one that ran off.’

‘Colin Ealy?’ said Brook. She shrugged. ‘What happened then?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘That was it. Though Dad knew then the lad was suspect. When he disappeared the next day that seemed to confirm it.’

‘Did your father think Ealy had killed Matilda Copeland?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘He reckoned it was some weirdo neighbour living on the Mackworth Estate. And Walter Laird was pretty keen on him too.’

‘Trevor Taylor?’ offered Brook, rubbing his eyes, lack of sleep beginning to catch up.

‘I can’t remember. But Laird got nowhere with it. See, he was nothing without Dad there to do the thinking.’ She was beginning to slur her words. She raised her wine glass to her lips but then put it aside. ‘You look tired,’ she said to Brook. ‘You should take a nap. There’s a bed in there.’

Brook studied her. The adrenalin had left her and she seemed to be brooding. ‘I’m OK. And I’m sorry you’ve had to confront unpleasant thoughts about your father.’

She didn’t reply for a while. ‘How about a coffee then?’ When Brook nodded she slid off her chair and left the shed.

Sharmayne moved her thumb expertly around her iPhone keypad, sometimes grinning, sometimes laughing at texts and pictures from friends. The building was quiet and she had the night to herself, her headphones thumping and her head moving to the beat. A light on her panel distracted her. With a sigh, she removed her headphones and depressed a button. ‘Are you OK, Mrs Pinchbeck?’

A querulous voice answered. ‘There’s a man again.’

‘What’s that, dear?’

‘He was here. The prowler. Outside my window. I saw him. Hurry.’

‘OK, my love. Craig’s on his way.’ Sharmayne blew out her cheeks and flicked at another button. ‘Craig. You there? Get your arse over to Jessica’s room asap and throw a bucket of water over the daft cow. The old bat thinks she’s seen a prowler again.’

Brook drained his coffee, not taking his eyes from the document-covered wall. The bulk of the papers belonged to the 1963 Stanforth case because Bannon was the SIO on that inquiry and had better access to the files.

The papers under the other dates on the Pied Piper’s five-year cycle were much less dense and consisted mainly of local newspaper articles. Under the label for 1968 were several front pages reporting the tragic death of Francesca Stanforth on 22 December and her funeral in January 1969. As her death wasn’t the subject of a murder inquiry, there were precious few police reports although Bannon had managed to obtain a copy of the autopsy report, declaring her death an accident.

The same paucity of documents was true of Jeff Ward in 1973. By now Bannon had retired from the force and had been compelled to rely exclusively on newspaper stories and whatever he picked up on police frequencies. Brook sifted through all the newspaper content, examining the different photographs, trying to find something of interest. The grieving family took centre stage in most pictures, as did snaps of both dead Ward boys, smiling into the camera.

‘Not much here,’ mumbled Brook, comparing it to the Ward file he’d read the night before.

Slumped on a chair, Rosie stirred at the sound of Brook’s voice. ‘Like I said, Dad was out of the loop and couldn’t get his hands on police papers. He tried to tell them Ward was killed by the Pied Piper but they wouldn’t listen.’

Brook returned his gaze to the wall. The next date label, five years after Jeff Ward, was 1978. Three more labels were arranged in columns around the wall and rose in five-year intervals until 1993. Each label had a Missing Persons leaflet pinned underneath, a young teenage boy frozen in time on the cover. Police documents were conspicuous by their absence.

Brook moved to the 1978 section where there were two sets of newsprint, one front page dealing with ex-DCI Bannon’s accidental death in a fire, the larger batch concerning the continuing search for a missing boy, Harry Pritchett, who’d vanished the week before.

‘Missing persons,’ said Brook. ‘No body. No murder inquiry.’

‘Clever, right?’ Rosie grinned. ‘After Jeff Ward, the Pied Piper must have known Dad was getting close. He changed his MO. Instead of killing the boys, he abducted them and killed them later but kept the corpses hidden. Or else he destroyed them with acid or something.’

‘Nineteen seventy-eight, Harry Pritchett. Nineteen eighty-three, Davie Whatmore. Nineteen eighty-eight, Callum Clarke,’ Brook read aloud. He flicked up a stray newspaper covering the Callum Clarke photograph before letting it fall. ‘So all these boys are technically still missing.’

‘Correct,’ answered Rosie. ‘And with Dad gone, no one will ever know they were killed.’

‘Copeland was listening to him at least,’ observed Brook. ‘He knew about Harry Pritchett.’

‘What did he say?’

‘The general feeling was Pritchett’s father abducted Harry and took him to London when he couldn’t get custody.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Rosie. ‘There’d be a trail. Pritchett’s dad wouldn’t have the skills to hide his son forever. The Piper took him.’

‘And hid him?’

‘Exactly,’ she replied emphatically. ‘Harry Pritchett disappeared the week before Dad died. And when Dad realised what was happening, he found as much background on Harry Pritchett as he could and told everyone who’d take his calls.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘And that’s why he died. Coincidence?’ she challenged Brook. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘So all these papers after nineteen seventy-three are your work,’ noted Brook.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘The day after the fire, I bought all the newspapers carrying reports of Dad’s death. And when I rebuilt the shed ten years later, I hunted down all the back issues for the other cases. After that, everything you see was collected by me. All the way to nineteen ninety-three – when the killing stopped.’

‘Stopped?’

‘Actually it stopped in nineteen eighty-eight,’ said Rosie, looking at the floor. ‘I just didn’t realise for another five years.’

Brook fixed his eyes on the 1993 column. LUCKY JIM FOUND SAFE AND WELL screamed the headline.

‘James Stroud was the only Derby boy who went missing that December,’ explained Rosie. ‘They found him wandering the streets of London, stoned off his tits.’ She shot Brook an apologetic glance. ‘As we ex-junkies used to say.’

‘So he hadn’t been killed or abducted, he
had
actually run away from home.’

‘Right.’ Rosie nodded briefly at the previous column. ‘The Clarke boy was the last.’

Brook turned to the 1988 disappearance. Callum Clarke. Went missing on 22 December 1988 and was never seen again.

‘December the twenty-second?’ said Brook. ‘That’s late.’

‘What do you mean?’ mumbled Rosie.

‘In nineteen seventy-eight, Harry Pritchett disappeared on the fifteenth. Five years later, Davie Whatmore went missing on. . .’ Brook squinted at the fading newsprint with difficulty in the dim light, ‘December the twelfth, nineteen eighty-three. But Callum didn’t vanish until the twenty-second, the day the Pied Piper is supposed to kill his victims.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Rosie.

‘Callum Clarke went missing on his way home from school after breaking up for the Christmas holidays,’ read Brook.

‘Tragic case,’ said Rosie, tight-lipped. ‘His family lived not far away. The final victim of the Pied Piper.’

Brook glanced at her then at the brand-new column, headed 2012. Scott Wheeler’s face stared back at him. ‘Until now.’

‘It’s getting late, of course you must stay,’ insisted Rosie, nodding at the small room off to the side. ‘The bed’s already made up.’

Brook thought about trying to sleep in the gloom of his windowless office at St Mary’s. He didn’t want to drive back to his cottage, especially with an unknown gunman on the loose. ‘You’d trust me with all your father’s papers in here?’

Rosie smiled. ‘I have copies of everything.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

She grinned and handed him the shed keys. ‘So? What do you think?’ She waved an arm at the wall.

Brook looked beyond her to the new batch of papers assembled under the date label 2012. On crisp newsprint, the headlines, ‘WHERE IS SCOTT?’ above a picture of the missing boy and ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?’ beside a picture of grizzled ex-con Brendan McCleary.

‘I don’t know, Rosie, and that’s the truth,’ said Brook, untying a shoe. ‘Twenty-four years is a long time between kills, never mind five.’

‘Maybe the Piper moved away for a while,’ she suggested.

‘Unlikely. In a series like this, wherever those bodies are, the killer will want to be near them.’

‘Why?’

Brook considered her curious face. ‘A variety of reasons. And none of them pleasant.’

She nodded slowly at him, assimilating his meaning, deciding not to press for more information. ‘There’s always prison. He could have been out of circulation.’

‘You’re quite good at this, aren’t you?’ said Brook.

‘I’ve had to be,’ she said, moving to the door. She nodded at the picture of McCleary on the wall. ‘And if my dad was right. . .’

‘Then our current suspect is innocent because he was behind bars when all the boys were taken,’ said Brook, removing his other shoe.

‘You’re quite good at this, aren’t you?’ Rosie smiled.

‘Why
twenty twelve
?’ said Brook.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if this is the Pied Piper, he’s a year early,’ said Brook. ‘By rights, he shouldn’t be striking until
next
December.’

Rosie shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s starting a new sequence.’

‘Or maybe he’s getting too old and this is his swansong,’ said Brook. ‘It’s also possible—’

‘Inspector,’ interrupted Rosie, moving to the door. ‘Get some sleep.’

Brook nodded. ‘You’re right.’ She left a little unsteadily and Brook sat at the desk for five minutes, his mood grave. It was nearly one in the morning. ‘I may not be as good as I used to be, Rosie. But even I know your father didn’t have a crystal ball.’ He turned off the lamp and padded through to the tiny single bed and, with a huge sigh, lay down on it fully dressed.

Twenty-Three

Wednesday, 19 December 2012 – early hours

In the middle of the night, Brook felt the vibration of his phone. After the second pulse, he realised it wasn’t a text but didn’t move to answer. Eyes closed, he was prepared to ignore it when he realised it might be Terri ringing about Christmas.

He opened his eyes, blearily checking the display. It wasn’t Terri or Noble, the only two numbers on his contact list. He sank back on to the pillow, yawning.

Against his better judgement, but in accordance with parents everywhere, Brook pressed the answer button. Terri could be calling on a friend’s mobile even at that time. Of course, it might also be his
Good Friends
at BT ringing from India to hammer home their Season’s Greetings with an unbeatable offer.

‘Hello.’ There was a pause before he received an answer.

‘Hello,’ replied a male voice. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Don’t you know what time it is?’ answered Brook, moving his thumb to ring off.

‘Brook, is that you?’

Puzzled, Brook returned the phone to his ear. ‘Who is this and what are you selling?’

‘It is you, Brook. I’d recognise your toffee-nosed voice anywhere.’

Now Brook recognised the caller. ‘Ford? How did you get this number?’

‘Nice to talk to you too.’

‘What the hell do you want?’

‘That’s a very good question, Brook.’

Brook let himself out quietly and double-locked the door. Instead of returning to the house, he walked across the damp lawn to the drive that would take him back to the street. Once on the asphalt, Brook glanced up at a light at the top of the house. Framed in the glow was Ollie Shah, staring down at Brook as he picked his way towards the road.