Shadows and Sins (The Falconer Files Book 13) Read online

‘In one of the relatives’ rooms at the hospital.’

  ‘But what about the children?’ asked Falconer, hoping, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, that Carmichael wasn’t going to ask if they could stay at his house.

  ‘That’s what I was about to explain. My mother’s in Castle Farthing taking care of that side of things and I’ve already phoned her to ask her to throw some things into a bag for me, so I wondered if you’d mind collecting it and bringing it over to the hospital. My mum doesn’t drive and I don’t want my father driving more than is necessary, but I don’t want to leave Kerry on her own at this stage. She’s very fragile in her state of mind.’ He didn’t add what a similar position of fragility he was in, too. He could cover his agitation and worry for a short while. ‘Please, sir.’

  ‘No problem, Carmichael. And you stay with her as long as you need to; I’ve still got Tomlinson to work alongside me – although I shall miss your unique company.’ That was a bit below the belt, but he was worried too, on his sergeant’s behalf, and a little unmindful of what he was saying. ‘I’ll get the bag to you as soon as I can.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Tomlinson had had some responses to the notes he had left through the letterboxes of the houses in Drovers Lane; he could spend some time working out who needed talking to in person, and whom he could deal with on the telephone. He was perfectly capable of making appointments for himself, and could take himself off there to carry out the interviews without the inspector holding his hand. So distracted was he by Carmichael’s situation, that he never called to mind the fact that he and the sergeant always worked together.

  It wasn’t long before Falconer found himself outside Jasmine Cottage and knocking at the door. There was a deep baying from the other side, which aroused his forgotten fears about Mulligan, followed by a high-pitched whining, and Mrs Carmichael senior opened up. ‘Ah, the great detective arrives,’ she announced, in tones that he could not positively identify as sarcastic. ‘Come on in and I’ll get Davey’s bag for you.’

  Falconer stepped gingerly into the main room and, to his surprise, saw Mulligan lying on the floor by the kitchen doorway, his face a mask of longing as he gazed at his beloved. ‘Whatever have you done to that dog?’ he asked, perplexed. He’d never seen the huge hound so subdued before.

  ‘I’ve given him a good telling off about his behaviour and, so far, he’s being a good boy, aren’t you, Mulligan dear?’ She pronounced the second half of this sentence with her head turned over her shoulder, a wolfish smile slapped across her face. Mulligan panted with fear, and gazed with apology at the object of his affections, as if to say, I’d love to come over and give you a good licking, but this lady has told me off about being over-demonstrative.

  ‘Hello, Mulligan,’ he ventured tentatively, and the dog hung his head, as if he were ashamed of his subdued behaviour.

  ‘Mulligan’s a good dog now, aren’t you, boy?’ she announced, as she headed for the stairs to collect her son’s overnight things. ‘And you stay where you are.’ Falconer didn’t know whether this was directed to the dog or to himself, so he just stood where he was and waited.

  When she returned with a holdall, she stared at him, by the door and asked, ‘Why didn’t you sit down?’ So, it was to the dog she had been speaking.

  ‘Oh, I spend too much of my working life in a chair. Just stretching my legs, sort of,’ he replied, lamely, taking the handles of the bag from her. She only came up to his chin but she was like Russian vodka; a short went a long way. ‘Well, I’ll be off now. I don’t want to disturb you any longer than I have to.’

  Accepting the pathetic excuse for why he had not moved a step, she said ‘Give my love to Davey and Kerry, will you?’ and dismissed him from her mind, allowing him to see himself out and shut the door behind him. As it closed he heard another whine from the Great Dane, as if in apology. Falconer was with Mulligan on this one: the woman terrified him, but then she must have had to be quite strict with so many children to bring up. He could have done with a lot more like her when he was in the army. They would have terrified the enemy.

  When he returned to the office, still completely stunned by the dog’s reaction to Carmichael’s mother, he found it empty, and a note from Tomlinson telling him he had now heard back from all the residents of Drovers Lane, and had considered it more time-efficient to actually go over and speak to them in person. Ha! thought the inspector, a way of getting more cups of tea and coffee, more like, and then sloping off for a prolonged lunch without returning to the office.

  Taking this as a sign that he could do the same himself, he put on his answerphone and rushed off home to have another check for whether or not his pet had returned home. Chivers would have a fit if he knew that the three CID officers were AWOL, but Falconer simply didn’t care. He would watch the public appeal that night on television and then appear as if he was up to speed.

  Tomlinson had made arrangements to visit the residents of Drovers Lane in one fell swoop, receiving assurances that those who had not been there on his previous visit spoke to him either on their lunch break or in an extended version of it.

  He started at number eight, his summons at the door answered by a bald-headed man who introduced himself as Mr Brixton. He was a farm labourer and lived alone. On being asked, he said that he had only lived in the cottage for six months, since his job had commenced, and had no knowledge previously of Annie Symons – in fact, had never heard the name before. He was a non-drinker who had never frequented the local pub and was, therefore, not conversant with village gossip. The DC believed him and moved on to number seven.

  Number seven revealed a Mr Cassidy who was semi-retired, and admitted to being able to recognise the previous occupant of number two, but claimed that he had never spoken to her. He was divorced and lived alone. No luck so far.

  Mike Mortimer, as the resident of number six introduced himself, claimed to be a general builder and odd-job man. He also declared that he had not known Ms Symons – but there was something about the way he avoided eye contact that Tomlinson didn’t take to, and he decided that this character could do with some checking out.

  He asked if the man had a card he could take, noted that he had a website, and determined to check him out as soon as he got back to the office. If there were any recommendations on it, he could contact some of his previous clients to get their opinions on the trustworthiness of this Mortimer.

  Number three housed a man of similar employment. Simeon Perkins stated that sometimes he and Mortimer worked together on jobs, but this was not often, as most of his work consisted of fairly small jobs, and he only infrequently got involved in bigger works that needed more than one man. Of Annie Symons, he declared virtually no knowledge. ‘I used to say good day to her, that’s all, if we were out in the back or front gardens at the same time,’ the man stated.

  There was something about this man also that disturbed the DC, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it was probably because so many of his friends back in Cornwall had been duped out of more money than they had been expecting to spend by one of this ilk. He also claimed to be contactable via the internet, and Tomlinson thought that here was another one he could check out from his previous clients. How strange, he thought, that little one-man-bands like this were computer-contactable, when the established estate agents he had visited earlier lacked this necessary modern facility to business.

  Perkins, after claiming to have been barely on nodding terms with Annie Symons, ended the conversation quite abruptly, saying he had to get to an appointment with a client.

  In his enthusiasm for his impending internet-searching task, Tomlinson got back to the office rather earlier than he intended, and was therefore present when a call came in to let the police know that a cache of handbags had been uncovered on some scrubland by a metal detectorist.

  Meanwhile, Harry Falconer had trailed disconsolately round his house and garden again, feeling rather subdued and convinced that his pet was dead or sto
len. There could be no other reason for her to disappear. After a rather unappetising sandwich of ham that needed using up, he got to his feet, ready to go back to the office and the case in which he, at the moment, had little interest.

  In the Market Darley hospital, Carmichael sat by his wife’s bed, following a scan that had revealed that the twins were well-developed and of a good size.

  ‘Are you certain that your contractions have stopped, love?’

  ‘There’s absolutely nothing now, Davey. Don’t be such a worry-guts. They said they’ll keep me in for a few days, and then I should be able to go back home, as long as I rest.’

  ‘I’ll get my mother to stay on. You can’t go running around after three kids and rest.’

  ‘Much as it goes against the grain, I’ll agree.’ Kerry visibly winced. ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘What’s wrong? Is it the pains starting again?’ Carmichael’s voice and face were filled with concern, as her hand began to tremble in his.

  ‘I’m not incontinent yet, Davey, so that means that my waters must have broken. Quick! Get a nurse. This is serious.’

  Carmichael fumbled with the call button until he managed to summon somebody to their aid. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ said Kerry in a husky voice. She drew back the covers and revealed the wet patch on the bottom sheet as he looked on with horror.

  ‘No! Tell me.’

  ‘It means that I’ll have to deliver them. It’s like the seal’s gone on a jar, and they’re susceptible to infection. It’s going to have to go ahead, and we’ll just have to hope that they’re both OK.’

  For the second time that day, Carmichael felt a deep depression and panic rush over him, despite the doctors’ reassurances that the twins were likely to be fine. Sometimes he felt that he and Kerry had been too lucky thus far in their marriage. Everything, in retrospect, looked too easy.

  In fact, he had never been so overwhelmed with such a swirling mass of conflicting emotions. He was excited and elated to think he was finally going to meet his children, worried about Kerry and how she would fare with a double birth, and terrified and preparing for grief in case something went wrong. He was full of such strong feelings that he felt his heart would surely burst. Without any effort on his part, his eyes began to leak again.

  As Falconer sloped back to the office DC Tomlinson came rushing out, a look of eagerness on his face. ‘A metal detectorist has uncovered a stash of handbags on some waste ground. Now, it may have nothing to do with our case, but it’s evidence of some crime or another. Proper job! People don’t just bury handbags for the fun of it, me old lover,’ he crowed.

  Falconer perked up at this and was in full agreement, deciding to forgive this Cornish endearment – this time. It was probably just because the lad was excited about a possible development, but he shouldn’t try it again or Falconer would have to have words with him. He wasn’t anyone’s old lover – yet! As they rushed down the stairs, though, Tomlinson seemed to be blissfully unaware of the casual manner in which he had referred to his senior officer.

  ‘Where were they found? When were they found? How many of them are there?’ Falconer was back in the game, glad at this distraction from his unhappiness. ‘They could have been taken as trophies, and now our murderer knows we’re on to him – or her, but that’s rather unlikely – he’s got rid of them.’

  The stash was waiting for them about a mile outside Coldwater Pryors, guarded by the metal detectorist who had found them and who introduced himself as Jonas Preston. He explained that he was a student who passed his free time looking for ‘buried treasure’; quite apt as he was studying archaeology. It had taken Falconer some fancy footwork to get over the rough ground from the road, made more difficult by trampled lengths of barbed wire fencing and large tussocks of unyielding couch grass, and he had had to fight to keep his balance.

  After introductions had been made and warrant cards displayed, Falconer asked, ‘How deep were they buried? How did you come to find them?’

  ‘They weren’t very deep,’ replied the student with the red hair and beard. ‘Only about a foot down, but I noticed the earth had been disturbed. I wouldn’t normally come out here, as I live in Nether Darley, but I have a colleague online who said he’d found some Roman coins down here. It was sheer luck that I chose this bit of ground. And that’s when I saw a disturbance to the grasses and the earth.

  ‘One of the reasons I decided to dig here was because I thought maybe someone had already found something here, but might not have dug deep enough, and sure enough, I got a bleeping straight away, so I knew there was metal down there. I just didn’t expect it to be handbag buckles and zips.’

  Falconer pulled out his mobile phone and then broke all the rules. He put on some gloves and lifted one of the handbags out of the hole. He then photographed it, and did the same with the rest of the cache. Then he put them back where he had found them.

  ‘Now we’ve got something to work with, I’ll summon some CSIs.’

  ‘Sir, should you really have done that?’

  ‘No, Tomlinson, I should not. But then, I didn’t, did I?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Hey, you’re a cool dude,’ commented Jonas Preston, seemingly impressed with this maverick attitude to rules and regulations.

  ‘Well, you carry on checking out the ground round here while we wait for someone with another car to come and take you back to the station, and we’ll go and look at these photos in my car.’

  ‘Chilly, Boss,’ replied Jonas, who had never had any positive dealings with the police before and was finding them more human than he expected from what his fellow students had told him.

  Sheltered from the biting wind, Falconer held his camera out and went through the photographs one by one, sharing the small screen with Tomlinson. ‘What do you think, Constable?’

  After a few moments silence while Tomlinson got his thoughts together, he announced, ‘I think they were trophies, but that the finding of two of the bodies has panicked the murderer, and he doesn’t want to be found with these bags in his possession.’

  ‘That’s very good reasoning, Tomlinson. Now, why would we find them?’

  ‘Because it’s someone who thinks we’re going to call round?’

  ‘OK, let’s go through any suspects we have. We might as well do this out here, instead of just wasting time waiting around.’

  ‘We could do with checking out the landlord who’s supposedly in France. I only have a French mobile number for him, so he could actually be in the UK.’

  ‘Good thinking, lad.’ Tomlinson, apart from his eulogies on Cornwall, was proving to be a steady and thoughtful officer. ‘And I rather fancy the other landlord, our Mr Colin Bridger. He was a bit too good to be true.’

  ‘And there are those two guys who are builders in Drovers Lane, one the neighbour of Ms Symons. They were both very shifty, to my mind.’

  ‘That’s a fairly good start. We can question those four again, but in the station this time. So, what have we got as far as these trophy bags go? No expensive makes. A red fake crocodile skin, a pink plastic model, by the looks of it. This brown one I considered to be of fairly good-quality leather. And there was a denim one and a green suede one. We’ll have to wait to see if any fingerprints turn up on them, and I bet they’ve been emptied of all their contents. Life couldn’t be that generous to us.’

  ‘We’ll just have to rely on the fact that he was probably in a panic when he disposed of them, and was a bit careless.’ Not only was Tomlinson efficient, but he was also optimistic. This partnership could work well in the absence of Carmichael. DC Roberts’ replacement was certainly an improvement on the original model.

  Staggering over, once more, to Jonas Preston, they explained that they would now leave him to the tender care of the soon-to-arrive CSIs until a uniformed officer arrived, who would not only take him to the station to make his statement, but bring him back to this site. They then began to make their way back to the car.
>
  ‘I can see the CSI car coming down the road. I’ll just go and hand over to them, and then we can get back to the station, while you phone in and arrange for our man to be picked up,’ said Falconer, pointing at a vehicle approaching from the direction of Market Darley.

  As Falconer and Tomlinson continued to head towards the road to pass on their witness, the DC suddenly found he was walking on his own, contemporaneously with the sound of a voice exclaiming, ‘Bum!’

  Turning round, he discovered the DI flat out, face down, and wearing a fair covering of cow dung. He had slipped on an elderly cow pat which had not washed away in the recent rains, and was now retching into the grass at the smell.

  Damn it, thought Falconer, as soon as I don’t have Carmichael, I begin acting like him. He suddenly really missed his DS for a second or two. Carmichael may seem sloppy but, in actual fact, the DI knew, he was anything but.

  Fortunately, one of the CSIs removed a newspaper from the boot of the car and passed it silently to the now noxious detective, and intoned, ‘I always carry a couple in case of accidents that I don’t want to transfer to the car’s upholstery.’

  ‘Thank you. I wouldn’t want to soil the inside of my car.’ Falconer took the proffered periodical meekly. ‘Perhaps I ought to nip off home when I’ve dropped you at the station, and get cleaned up and changed.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Tomlinson could barely speak for trying to smother his laughter.

  Chapter Ten

  When DC Tomlinson got home that night, Imi was, as usual, baking like a demon. She didn’t seem to be able to stop since he had moved in – probably some sort of subconscious desire to feed her man – and had so far, managed a dozen fairy cakes, which she was icing when he came through the door, sixteen scones, a fruit cake, and three quiches.

  Smiling with delight, he said, in a mock-serious voice, ‘How on earth are we going to be able to cope with all this?’

  ‘You never put on an ounce. You’ll cope,’ she replied, turning round to smile at him. ‘Come here and give me a kiss.’