Death in High Circles (The Falconer Files Book 10) Read online

  ‘Carmichael!’ he called. ‘Come and look at this.’ When the sergeant had read the short missive, Falconer asked him what he thought it meant.

  ‘It looks to me as if Mr Dixon was having a clandestine relationship with Mrs Maitland,’ he speculated.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Falconer with a sour smile. ‘Another faithless bitch in a world without hope.’

  ‘I say, sir! That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not from my point of view. Hello, what’s this on the hearth tiles? Looks a bit like blood to me.’ On the base of the fireplace there was a smear of something brown that looked as if it had started out as red.

  ‘Take a sample of that, Sergeant, and get it straight to the forensic lab as soon as we get back. I’ll grab a hairbrush I saw in the bedroom for them to get comparison DNA. We need to know whether this is his blood or someone else’s.

  ‘Our Mr Dixon’s been gone for some time, though,’ Falconer declared. ‘I think we’re going to have to visit some of the neighbours, to see when he was last seen. If nobody’s seen him since before last Monday, we’ll probably have to report him as a missing person. They seem to be all the rage at the moment,’ he commented, thinking of Bonnie Fletcher. ‘Let’s try Black Beams, see what the Maitlands have to say.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be a lot of life in there, either,’ commented Carmichael, focusing on curtains half-drawn and windows all shut up tight on such a lovely day.

  But they could raise no answer there, either, and there were no conveniently unlocked doors to this house to grant them ingress. The curtains in the kitchen and what they presumed to be a utility room were fully drawn, and they were thick enough to obscure any details of the interior.

  ‘We’ll have to leave it for now. Perhaps we can get a search warrant, which will allow us to gain entry. There’s not much point in doing that till after the weekend, and they might just come back, and the problem will be solved.’

  On the drive back, Falconer once more lapsed into an introspective silence, the only comment that passed his lips, being when they arrived back at the station and, just when they were about to get out of the car, he said, ‘The trouble with me, Carmichael, is that I can only do black and white. I’m simply no good at shades of grey,’ apropos of nothing that Carmichael could identify. ‘Oh, and don’t forget to hand in that blood sample and hairbrush, and tell them I want the result yesterday.’

  Carmichael kept his lip buttoned. The inspector would talk when he was ready. He could wait till then, when the man had decided whether or not he wanted to share whatever had knocked the stuffing out of him and left him subtly altered.

  The DS dealt with the process of reporting Lionel Dixon missing, submitting a photograph he had half-inched when they went through the house. They’d only have had to go back for one, if he hadn’t managed to acquire this one on the sly, and Falconer didn’t seem at the top of his game at the moment.

  In the B&B in Carsfold, the couple who had registered to stay for a night or two announced their intention of leaving in the morning, as their car would be ready, then retired to their room to discuss plans that needed to be carried out before the next day.

  ‘We ought to have all three with us,’ one of them said. ‘It’s always handy to have a spare.’

  ‘But where are they?’ the other replied, ‘And we’ve still got that other little job to finish off. We can’t leave that undone, or it’ll be our undoing. Did you bring the letters?’

  ‘Shit, no! I completely forgot about them. We’ll go back later and get the job finished. That’s got to be done before dark. Then I think we’d better come back here and make sure we’ve got everything planned as it should be,’ said the first.

  ‘We’ll go back again in the early hours and do the searching. That won’t require much light, and I doubt if anyone would notice a torch in the middle of the night. And there’s something else I must pick up that I forgot before, but I’ll do that on the first visit.’

  Before the two detectives had got settled at their desks, Carmichael gave a hoot of despair, and said, ‘We forgot to visit Roberts!’

  ‘What a pair of callous bastards we are,’ replied Falconer, hardly lifting his head from the paperwork that lay on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Oh, come on, sir. Don’t take out whatever’s eating you on him. He’s had a really nasty experience, and I don’t think he’s made a lot of friends locally, yet. He’ll probably be really glad to see us.’

  Falconer sighed a sigh of the terminally weary, and dragged himself into an upright position. ‘All right, St Francis, let’s go and get some grapes and flowers, and go listen to him describe his operation in minute detail. I can’t think of anything better to do, and at least it’ll pass the time.’

  As the day wore on, the sun disappeared behind the heavy dark clouds that threatened a storm to come, before the day was out, and within an hour, large drops of rain began to fall, turning the scene from the office window from one of almost continental brightness to one of grey tarmac, drab mackintoshes and a sea of umbrellas, all viewed through the obscuring curtain of heavy rain.

  No one was strolling now, but became just figures hidden under large circular protectors, scurrying about their business so as to spend as little time as possible outside. The wind was getting up, too, and the odd umbrella turned inside out when hit with an unexpectedly strong gust of wind.

  The sky darkened much earlier than it should have done at this time of year, and the street lamps were reacting to this reduction of light by coming on early. All in all, it had turned into an absolutely filthy late afternoon, and the call from Mabel Wickers was not welcomed by either man.

  ‘Looks like we’re going out again, instead of packing up to go home. That was that Wickers woman on the phone again,’ explained Falconer, who had answered the call. ‘She says she has just seen a light moving about in The Retreat, as if there’s someone in there with a torch. She doesn’t want to go over herself, in case she gets attacked, so she’s decided that we can rush over there, probably arriving much too late or, if in time, to get attacked on her behalf.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s eating you, sir, but I’ll be glad when it leaves off. I’ve never known you so hard-hearted and abrupt as you’ve been today. You’re just not yourself.’

  ‘Nor do I want to be, for the time being, so you’d better keep your neb out until I’m ready to spill the beans. OK, Sergeant?’

  ‘OK, sir. If that’s the way you want it to be,’ replied a hurt and crestfallen Carmichael.

  ‘And we’ll take separate cars, too, so that we can just go home afterwards, without having to come back to this dump, and I won’t have to listen to you drivelling on about how wonderful life is – because frankly, at the moment, it isn’t, for me, even if it is for you and all the hundreds of other little Carmichaels that make up your narrow little world.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  The storm was fierce when they left the station, and it took them an unprecedented half an hour to reach the village of Fallow Fold. Only cresting the femininely curvaceous hill on which it was situated revealed how exposed the place was, as the wind suddenly howled across the un-wooded land, buffeting both cars with a ferociousness that neither driver had expected. The rain up here didn’t fall, but was almost horizontal, driven by such a fierce gale.

  On arrival, separately and miserably, they went straight to Sideways, to see if Mabel Wickers had a further update for them. She was soaked through and drying her rats’ tails hair with a towel when she opened the door to them, explaining that she had, of necessity, had to go outside a few steps down the road to get a good view of the property.

  From this damp vantage point, she had kept a constant eye on the supposedly abandoned house, and was able to inform them that the light stopped flickering about ten minutes ago. She’d seen no one leave, but then she’d seen no one arrive either. Promising them a hot drink when they’d investigated, she left them to get on with looking over the hou
se, while she made hot tea and put out a plate of jam tarts.

  ‘Hello?’ shouted Falconer, as they entered by the still unlocked back door. ‘Hello? Is there anyone in here?’

  ‘Sir!’ Carmichael hissed. ‘Are you asking for trouble? If there’s still someone here, they’ll know we’re here too, and exactly where we are. And you know we haven’t got a search warrant yet.’

  ‘I don’t care, Carmichael. If there’s anyone here looking for a rumble, then I’m their man. I’m just in the right mood for it, today.’ Raising his voice once more, he shouted, ‘Hello? Police! Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ But answer came there none. Whoever had been here was long gone, and all they could do was look around to see if anything had been moved or taken, then summon a SOCO team when they’d got the official go ahead, should they think there’d been foul play.

  There were no bodies to find, no weapons, and no real clue to what the searcher had been looking for. Everything seemed exactly as they’d left it earlier that same day and, eventually, they had to admit defeat, and go back to Sideways.

  Falconer left Carmichael there, happily drinking the terribly sweet tea that he favoured, and gobbling jam tarts as if they were an endangered comestible. He had refused all offers of hospitality, and driven off towards Market Darley, still in the foul mood that had haunted him all day. He knew he’d taken it out on Carmichael, and he’d just have to make a grovelling apology the next morning when he saw him at work.

  How easily one’s simplest plans are pulled, like a rug, from under one’s feet, leaving one sprawling, and unable to understand the new perspective, from where life has dumped us.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Saturday – The Early Hours

  ‘I phoned Carmichael first,’ said the voice of Bob Bryant, while Falconer was still searching for his wits. He had taken a sleeping tablet before he got into bed, so that even if he had nightmares, he would get a sound night’s sleep in which to dream them.

  Suddenly, he realised he was sitting bolt upright in bed with the telephone in his hand, and a voice was squawking from it, un-listened to. ‘Sorry, Bob, what was that? I didn’t catch it.’ Good grief! The clock said three o’clock!

  ‘I said I’ve sent Carmichael off to Fallow Fold. He’s nearest, so I rang him first, but I want you to get over there a well. Some old dear’s reported at least two people, or at least two torches, in a house that’s been unoccupied for probably a few days now. I want it checked out, even if it’s a waste of time. You never know, and I know you’ve had some dealings over there, so there might be a connection.’

  By the time Falconer had dragged his still half-drugged body out of bed, Carmichael was dressed and about to leave his house. ‘I won’t be long, sweetheart, and I’ll take Mulligan with me, just in case I need a miscreant licked to death.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t be much use as a guard dog, would he? He’s much too friendly. And I wouldn’t recommend him as a bloodhound either. He simply hasn’t got the looks for it,’ Kerry Carmichael laughed up into her husband’s face, then kissed him goodbye.

  ‘See you for breakfast,’ she said, and waved him out of the house. He was somewhat delayed in his departure as Mulligan had decided he didn’t want to sit in the back seat, and suddenly became a canine eel who slipped out of Carmichael’s grasp every time he thought he had the dog defeated.

  The dog won, of course, as dogs tend to, and his temporary guardian compromised, with the huge animal lolling upright in the passenger seat, seatbelt sensibly about him, his full attention on the road ahead, and one huge paw on Carmichael’s left leg, which he used for expressing his opinion of the man’s driving.

  The sergeant was unable to take the empty country roads as fast as he would have liked because the storm had not yet abated, and was still rumbling round this part of the countryside, rain still pouring from the heavens like a cataract. As he drove higher into the downs towards Fallow Fold, the wind seemed to increase its force considerably, and his vehicle was shaken from side to side with its wild buffeting, reminding him of his earlier trip there.

  He really would have to get a new, or newer, car, he thought as he drove. His old Skoda had been on its last legs for a couple of years, now and, although it had proved to be reasonably reliable, his luck couldn’t last forever.

  It was, after all, mainly held together with rust, and when that gave out he could be left driving along with no body-work whatsoever, naked from the steering wheel up. Maybe he’d ask Falconer’s advice as to what to buy, when the black mood his boss had been in today finally lifted and he returned to being his pompous old self.

  After a somewhat precarious drive through the tempest, he stopped the car just short of Black Beams and parked it outside The Retreat. It was doubtful that anyone inside the house would have heard the car’s engine, as the gods seemed to be practising ten-pin bowling up above, and crash after crash of thunder followed lightning as vivid as a laser show.

  Undoing Mulligan’s seatbelt, he told the dog to be a good boy and not to make any noise, in the simple belief that the monster canine understood every word that was said to him, and the two of them approached Black Beams, keeping to any shadow cover that they could.

  As soon as they had left the shelter of the car, the wind took them, and nearly bowled both of them over. It was as wild a night as Carmichael could remember, and they could only make any forward progress by leaning into the wind and forcing their way through its onslaught.

  There were no signs of life from the front of the house, so they worked their way slowly round towards the back, step by careful step. Carmichael kept hold of the dog’s collar, and thus was aware of an almost silent rumbling in the animal’s throat, above the shrieking of the storm, but it reached him more as a vibration, such was the racket from the wind and rain.

  A slight pull on the collar halted the dog, so that Carmichael could listen. A momentary lapse in the lightning showed a weak light coming from the very back of the property, and in the few seconds’ silence, he heard voices coming from the same direction, raised against the superior voice of nature. So there was someone here. There was no sign of the inspector yet, so he’d better take this slowly and carefully.

  When he indicated that he wanted to move forward, Mulligan suddenly dug in his paws, the hackles on his neck and all down his back rising, and the growling in his throat grew a little louder and more menacing.

  ‘What’s up, Mulligan? What’s making you so agitated?’

  Carmichael’s sense of unease grew, but he didn’t falter and, letting go of the dog’s collar, moved as quietly as he could towards the rear entrance of the house. Any noise he made would be covered by the sound of the few trees in the garden thrashing their branches in the wind, and the groaning they made as the onslaught hit them with every fresh gust.

  Anything that wasn’t fixed down became ammunition for the wind to toss at the unwary, and he could hear the sound of metal dustbins jangling on concrete paths, as the wild weather played them like a musical instrument.

  Empty crisp packets, soft drink cans, wrapping papers, empty dinner-for-one microwave boxes: all hit their mark as they danced maniacally to nature’s tune, but Carmichael preserved his concentration, not allowing anything to distract him from his undetected approach to whoever was in the rear of the property.

  It was an act of sheer bad luck that led to his discovery. As a sheet of flapping newspaper, seeking an avian life of its own, was deposited on Mulligan’s head and over his face, the dog let out a howl of fear and surprise.

  There was a shout from a rear room of the house, Carmichael shot round the corner, realising that his cover was blown, then stopped dead in his tracks, unable to believe what his eyes were telling him was right in front of him. He really should have obeyed his first instinct, which was to flee.

  On the floor of the utility-cum-garden room was a severed arm, amidst a lake of blood, beside it, a woman holding its twin. He opened his mouth to shout ‘police’, but nothing
happened. He was mute with shock.

  A powerful torch was suddenly shone in his eyes, and while he was still blinded, something lunged at his body, and he felt a paralysing pain across his gut and sank, still silent, to the floor, clutching at where the pain was most acute, but there seemed to be something in the way, something sticking out of him and, although he had no idea what it was, he knew he was in serious trouble.

  For a second or two, a light was switched on, and the prone figure looked down at himself, to see a garden fork, apparently growing out of his middle, his lower half slowly soaking with blood that flowed now, unchecked, from his wounds.

  He tried to call for help, but could still not utter a sound. Almost immediately, his vision began to fade to black and white, and the last thing of which he was aware before slipping into unconsciousness, was Mulligan, barking and growling in fury.

  Across Ploughman’s Lays, Stella Christmas roused her husband, to alert him to the furious barking and baying of what sounded like the hound of the Baskervilles, across the road at what was, presumably, Back Beams, for Mulligan’s bark was commensurate with his frame, in volume. ‘Phil, get up! There’s something going on over the road,’ she urged her husband.

  ‘It’s just a dog,’ he mumbled, turning over and tying to slip back into the rather pleasant dream he had been enjoying.

  ‘But there aren’t any dogs over there, and this one sounds as if it’s going to attack someone. At least take a look out of the window.’

  Doc Christmas did as he was bidden, knowing there would be no more sleep for him that night if he didn’t satisfy Stella’s curiosity, although why she couldn’t go to the window herself, he didn’t know.

  No sooner had he parted the curtains, than he began to behave like a lunatic, grabbing at items of clothing, almost tearing them in his rush to get them on. He grabbed his mobile phone from his bedside table, and told Stella to keep an eye out on what was going on across the road.