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

  ‘Bloody long holiday, then. It’s been over six weeks, maybe more, since I’ve seen her. I’ve even phoned her office, when I saw her job being advertised in the local paper on Saturday, and they just said that she’d broken the terms of her contract of employment, so was deemed to have left their employ.’

  ‘Does she have any relatives you could get in touch with?’

  ‘None that I know of. I know her grandmother left her the cottage, but I’ve never heard her mention any family. I think there’d been a bit of a serious falling out, if you ask me, and she’d cut all ties.’

  ‘I’ll wait for any details you can give us about her, with maybe a recent photograph, and I’ll get things moving our end. Thank you for following up the lack of response to your previous call, and may I apologise on behalf of the Market Darley police.’

  The inspector sighed in exasperation as he ended the call, and became aware of Carmichael’s mighty lurking presence behind him. Turning round, he started, and asked abruptly, ‘Good God, Carmichael! What the hell are you wearing?’

  The DS looked down at himself, and shrugged his shoulders in incomprehension. It was a little early in the year, temperature-wise, for his personal ‘sartorial silly season’, and he gazed in puzzlement at his navy jacket, white shirt, and sober tie. Whatever was the problem?

  ‘The jeans, Carmichael, the jeans! Where are your suit trousers?’

  ‘Oh, those. I’d forgotten I’d even got these on. They’re Mulligan’s fault.’

  ‘What did he do, eat your matching trousers?’

  ‘No, but he certainly ate something. I came down this morning, not fully dressed, because I heard this dreadful noise of an animal in distress, and it turned out to be poor old Mulligan choking on something.

  ‘Just as I got downstairs to him, to see if I could help, he chucked up all over my trousers. I was worried sick, because there seemed to be a squeaking noise coming from his throat, but when I looked at what he’d brought up, it was only the squeaky toy that Mistress Fang used to act out being mother to, before she whelped. For a moment, I actually thought he’d eaten a puppy.

  ‘So that was the end of my trousers, until they’ve gone to the dry cleaner’s. You could never just sponge out anything that Mulligan brought up. He’d just had his breakfast and, boy, was he loaded. Never mind! That’s the joy of pets, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed sir, even during his current hiatus in peaceful living.

  ‘All ready for Wednesday?’ asked the DS, suit trouser crisis already forgotten, and a proud and happy smile on his face, at the thought of the forthcoming celebrations.

  ‘Of course I am, as godfather-in-chief to all three,’ Falconer replied, ‘but at the moment I find it necessary to hunt down DC Roberts and scrag him, yet again. Do you know if he’ll be in today, or whether he’ll be continuing his little holiday in traffic?’

  ‘When did he transfer to traffic?’ asked Carmichael, who had not been party to the story of Chivers’ surprise weekend raid on the station.

  ‘When “Jelly” caught him in here listening to his music and chair-bopping, with an almost empty desk in front of him. One of Chivers’ surprise Saturday raids. It’s all right; I’ll just give Bob on the desk a ring, and see what’s happening.’

  ‘What’s he done now, if you’re after his hide?’

  ‘Do you remember that white witch from Shepford St Bernard? Wanda Warwick was her name?’

  ‘How could I forget her?’ replied Carmichael. ‘She was a pretty spooky person. Why?’

  ‘Apparently she called the station on Saturday morning to say that her friend Bonnie Fletcher was still missing. If you remember, she was worried about her when we were working a case in the village. And the young woman still hasn’t turned up. Ms Warwick phoned it in, and spoke to Roberts, who promised she’d be contacted again later in day, but she’s heard absolutely nothing from him. Why the cloth-head just couldn’t have taken down the details himself, I’ve no idea.’

  As he explained the situation, he was rustling through a collection of little notes and notelets on Roberts’ desk that were the only things that marked it out as ‘in use’. ‘Here’s his note about the call, with a piece of used chewing gum stuck to it. Lazy, thoughtless little devil. This is just about the end. He’s a complete waste of space.’

  ‘Who is?’ asked a voice from the door, and the subject of Falconer’s contumely shuffled into the office clutching his right side, and groaning.

  ‘You are, and what the hell’s up with you?’ asked the inspector, not feeling very charitably disposed towards the department’s newest member.

  ‘Bloody awful pain in the side. I was all right when I woke up, but it came on when I was parking. It just comes and goes, and I’ve no idea what it is, but it sure is a pain in the arse, and I’ve had it for days now.’

  ‘Language, Roberts! Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘I saw enough of them to last me a lifetime since I moved here. I seem to spend all my time in the hospital, and I don’t plan on returning there any time soon.’

  Flopping into his chair, he groaned with pain, and exclaimed, ‘God, it hurts bad!’

  Falconer sent him to the canteen for a cup of tea and a couple of paracetamol, to see if he could ease the pain before his superior set about him for his lack of attention to detail and devotion to duty. He could hardly discipline the man if he was physically suffering. Not only would it make Falconer feel like a heel, but Roberts wouldn’t take in any of it, because he was distracted by how bad he was feeling.

  Half an hour later, now immersed in paperwork, Falconer became aware of the sounds of a siren approaching the station, and looked out of the window to see an ambulance just pulling up outside the main entrance. What the hell was occurring? Was there someone in the drunk-tank from the night before, who needed urgent medical attention?

  He soon found his answer, as DC Roberts was carried past on a stretcher covered with a snow-white sheet and groaning with pain. Within a few minutes, Bob Bryant had already tapped into the station grapevine and ascertained that the DC was suffering from a burst appendix. Falconer’s wigging would have to wait some time before he could vent his spleen on the officer, who was on his way back to the hospital for his third stay since joining the department: third case, third emergency.

  After all, he could hardly stand in the operating theatre beside the surgeon and give him a good verbal going-over, could he? He’d be unconscious; and no nurse would tolerate the bollocking of one the patients in her care, from a senior officer standing at the sick man’s bedside, while he lay in his bed of pain.

  But at least he hadn’t been swinging the lead, which the inspector had begun to think he was. He supposed he ought to feel bad, but he just didn’t. That young man was capable of spending most of his working life in hospital for one thing or another, and still come out at the end of it with a respectable pension.

  When he returned to the office, Carmichael asked, seemingly with no relevance to anything Falconer could think of, ‘Do you watch South Park, sir?’

  ‘Never heard of it. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  For the rest of the day, the inspector was to keep hearing people talking about someone called Kenny, but no one of that name worked at the station, and he remained puzzled as he went about his daily duties.

  That Monday in Fallow Fold, at Black Beams, panic reigned supreme. There had been a telephone call during the morning from the income tax office. Luckily, Marilyn had fielded it, found out who was calling, and told the caller that there was no one by the name of Melvyn Maitland living at the address, and she was just a local cleaner who had been called in to clear up the house after their departure.

  No, she admitted, with her fingers crossed behind her back, she didn’t know where they’d gone; she just knew that they weren’t coming back. She had no idea who their anonymous informant had been, and she didn’t know the man whom they were calling at all. S
he had just got a message through her door with an envelope of cash, asking her to make everything look tidy for the next tenant.

  She didn’t know whether the letter was from the owner or the tenant, but a small amount of money was enclosed, there were instructions for where to find the key, and she had gone round there to do it, as she had been paid for the job.

  Promising to pass on any information, and pretending to make a note of the phone number, she gave a false name and address in Carsfold, and rushed off in great anxiety to Melvyn, to tell him that someone had rumbled them and turned them over to the authorities.

  Melvyn had not quite recovered from his night on the tiles the night before, and was just emerging from the shower, looking a little bit, but not a lot, more human. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he advised her in a laconic voice. ‘It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again. Do you remember that time we had someone round snooping – that big place up north – and we both hid under the grand piano, because no one could see under there from any of the windows? Ah, those were the days, eh?’

  ‘No, they bloody well weren’t, Mel. I thought you were glamorous when I met you, with your hippie looks and laid-back attitude to life, but for me, it’s been one long nightmare.’

  ‘Sure, you’ve had fun. Admit it: it’s been exciting,’ he countered.

  ‘Maybe for you, but I’ve just spend my whole married life in fear of exposure, and I don’t find that very relaxing or enjoyable. We have to settle down properly. I’m getting too old for all this skipping around. I need some stability.’

  ‘Sure, you do,’ mumbled Melvyn, still towelling his thick, long grey hair and long untidy beard. ‘You’ll get over it once we find somewhere new, and the game starts again. I’ll sit down at the computer now, and find a likely area for us to head for; somewhere we’ve never been before, where no one will know us from Adam.’

  ‘You do that. I’m going for a walk!’ stated Marilyn, grumpily, and left him to his own devices.

  ‘If you don’t like the heat, you should stay out of the kitchen,’ he called after her. ‘You should’ve stuck with that nice boy from college. You’d probably be contemplating a nice retirement bungalow by now, and be taking holidays in Spain, like all the other people who never really achieve anything in life.’

  ‘At least they achieve a happy life, which is more than I’ve had. We’re just like criminals on the run all the time, and what have you actually achieved? You’re no spring chicken, we own no property, and we have no kids to enjoy. Tell me, just what have you achieved?’

  ‘I’ve never been bored, and that’s something not a lot of people can say.’

  ‘No. You’ve never been bored, so that’s all right then, isn’t it? Melvyn Maitland has never been bored, so all’s right with the world.’

  ‘And I’ve never been boring, either!’ he stated with absolute conviction.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Your life’s always run to exactly the same pattern, really: get established somewhere, live undetected, do a lot of dodgy dealing, then move on, no further forward and no better off. You are boring and predictable, and now it’s happening again. And exactly where do we get the money to move on with?’

  ‘That’s all in hand. Don’t worry your pretty little head about the money.’

  At this, his wife made her final exit down the stairs and out of the back door to seek some private solace. She, at least, had one friend in the village to whom she could turn in times of trouble, and she made her way there with as much haste as she could muster, knowing she would receive tea and sympathy, and maybe more solace than she had reason to deserve, if she were lucky. But cruel fate had more in store for the hapless couple before the day was out.

  Mabel Wickers, a little further down Ploughman’s Lays, was also in a turmoil of mind that Monday morning. She had slept badly, owing to what Lionel had not only told her, but had hinted, at their pre-luncheon sherry the previous noon.

  While noting what he did say, she had also been able, to a certain extent, to read between the lines, and she had an idea there was more mischief going on in Fallow Fold than was identifiable on the surface. There was something, so far, secret, going forward, and there was something she could do which might act as a catalyst.

  Settling down at the dining room table, she contemplated a blank sheet of paper, put her mind into cunning mode, and began to word her short missive. This should, at least, generate some interest, and it might flush everything else up to the surface, so that life in the village could be resolved, and return to its old, peaceful pace of life. She would remain anonymous, however, as she wanted to keep herself at a distance from such activities, and remain aloof as to the final outcome.

  Within half an hour of DC Roberts being taken away by ambulance, the two detectives made their way to the hospital, realising that the situation, for Roberts, was once again, serious.

  There was no sign of the patient in A&E, but a passing nurse enquired, and told them that their colleague had been prepped and was already in theatre, due to the grave nature of his problem. There would, unfortunately, not be a doctor or surgeon for them to converse with until the patient was in the recovery ward.

  ‘You can take a seat, if you like, and wait, but I think it’ll be some time before there’s any news. Let me make a note on his file of your contact numbers and, if there’s any news before you come in again, I’ll get someone to ring you, and keep you up to date with his situation.’

  ‘Come on, Carmichael,’ said Falconer, after they’d sat for a while with a cup of truly disgusting lukewarm coffee. ‘Let’s get ourselves off to Shepford St Bernard, and just have a look round Bonnie Fletcher’s property. We can call in on Ms Warwick while we’re there, and save her a trip into Market Darley. Then we can get the details of where she worked, and see if there’s been any contact, maybe suppressed, with her colleagues.’

  Wanda Warwick was not at home when they called at her cottage, but they found her in Robin’s Perch actually looking for a fairly recent photograph of its owner. They had intended just to have a look round the back and through the windows, but found the back door wide open, giving the place a bit of an air.

  ‘Hello,’ she called out to them. ‘I thought I’d see what I could find for you, and whether there was anything that might indicate that she intended to go away. I haven’t found anything so far, but she’s got an awful lot of mail.

  ‘I was going to go through it before coming into the station, so that I could sort the wheat from the chaff, and only pass on personal mail, and not the junk.’

  ‘That’s unusually thoughtful of you. If you don’t mind, we’ll have a look round ourselves. We might notice something that might not mean anything to you, but might give us an indication of what her intentions were. Of course, once she’s officially reported as a missing person, we can have a forensic team look over the place. They’re very good at picking up clues that are invisible to the naked eye.’

  ‘I’ve cast her tarot cards several times since she’s gone missing,’ Wanda informed them, ‘but they’re just a jumble. It almost looks like they’re empty readings, with nothing to tell me. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. Sometimes I get this terrible empty feeling that she’s just not there any more: that she’s dead.’

  ‘Don’t worry yourself unnecessarily. If she’s alive, we’ll find her; you can rest assured of that,’ Falconer reassured her.

  ‘And if she’s dead?’ asked the worried woman.

  There was no answer to that.

  Bonnie Fletcher was posted as officially missing later that day, and a local radio appeal went out, as did a piece in the local paper, with a reproduction of the most recent photograph to be found in her home.

  Her workmates said they had not heard from her since the day she had, presumably, disappeared, when she was looking forward to a hot date that night, but would give no details, merely promising to give them a blow-by-blow account after the event. There had been no contact or sightings since.
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  When the members of the Bridge Circle turned up at The Retreat that evening, the curtains were open, but there were no lights on inside. There was no answer to their rings and knocks at the front door and, one by one, they gathered on the garden path, wondering what on earth could have happened to distract Lionel Dixon from his beloved bridge.

  He may not be the sociable sort, or even very interesting, but he was a demon card player, and they thought it highly unlikely that he would just miss a meeting without either a courtesy telephone call, or an urgent matter that distracted him to the extent that he had forgotten what day it was.

  One of the more adventurous members went round to the back of the house, and called down the side of the property that the back door wasn’t locked, and that they’d better just check inside to see that he hadn’t taken a tumble, or something similar, and was actually lying in there, undiscovered and injured.

  That was a fantastic idea, to have a bit of a gander round his home without him there to restrict their movements, and all the members piled in at the back door, full of curiosity to look for Lionel in any of the rooms that they had not previously been admitted to – just in case he was unconscious and in need of help.

  The little tables he used for the meetings in the dining room were not laid out as usual, and the card boxes were nowhere to be seen, and there had been no tasty little titbits prepared in advance in the kitchen for their delectation. In fact, there had been no preparation inside the house at all for this evening’s meeting, and it looked as if he had been gone for some hours, as he wasn’t to be found anywhere in a distressed state, not even in his wardrobe or his hitherto private underwear drawers.

  Eventually, when the majority of them had finished poking and prying where they had no business to be, a note was spotted propped against the mantel clock and, on opening, proved to read: Had to go to Mother. Urgent. Sorry.

  ‘Who’d have thought he still wore boxer shorts,’ was one comment, as they left the property, having searched every cubic inch of it for their missing leader. ‘Do you think we ought to lock the back door and take the key?’