The Echo of Crows, page 8
He hurried to get back into the Land Rover and switch on his mobile. The soft phphhhhhphut also powered up his old life, his regular consciousness.
No signal. He had to drive downhill and into Longtown before he found one. Noting, as he drove, how different the atmosphere became as the housing thickened in its old-fashioned way and modern life intervened with the unusual appearance of two police cars. Why had the population of Longtown continued to increase while there were probably more people living in Clodock in the days when Clydawg was King of Ewyas?
Was Clodock village – hardly populous enough any more to call itself anything more than a hamlet – somehow choosing who it was prepared to admit? When he found a signal, Huw rang Ledwardine Vicarage, but it was engaged. Ten minutes later it was still engaged. No one there to listen and no one here either, save for a perching crow staring pointedly into his windscreened eyes before flying off swiftly in the direction of the castle ruins.
14
Strung up
AT FIRST, BLISS thought Vaynor looked uncomfortable, in the way of someone who’d been trying to deal with an extraordinary focus of enquiries: a woman who wasn’t helping so much as being in need of help.
They were standing like strangers either side of the farmhouse doorway until Bliss broke the uneasy silence between them and dragged out a grin.
‘I should’ve phoned you, Darth, only I didn’t know how close I was gonna be till I saw the sign in Ewyas Harold. Always gets me, that name, like, You arse, Harold.’
Vaynor kind of smiled. Hell, he was young. Probably fifteen years younger than Bliss and the best part of a foot taller. Hard for Bliss to explain to himself why he tolerated him. As for liking this novice detective, this local hick with an Oxford degree… Why did he?
‘Which means the village down there must be Longtown,’ Bliss said. ‘Correct? You know your way round here?’
‘No, city boy,’ Vaynor said. ‘This bit is more like North Wales than the pastoral Herefordshire I know. A bit off my beaten track – all these medieval stone buildings, the castle ruins…’
‘North Wales is only a half day out from where I grew up on Merseyside,’ Bliss said. ‘Yeh, a bit like this, only more crowded.’
He didn’t recognize these misted hills on the rim of his adopted county. Since leaving the road going west from Hereford, Bliss had found narrow lanes linking the scrapings of centuries – former medieval settlements that still had historical names. The Harold in Ewyas Harold apparently wasn’t the Harold but maybe a relative of the last English Saxon king; the one whose resistance to William the Conqueror had collected him a fatal eyeful of arrow in 1066.
He vaguely recalled snippets from a guidebook, including that some bloke named Harold had a castle here but all that remained now, as far as he could see, was a heap of soil and stones on the skyline. Unlike Longtown, which at least had the substantial remains of a proper stone fortress, and the Harold apparently had a part in building that. The crime scene was not far past the impressive castle ruins, before the road abandoned Bliss to lumpy countryside. Up here, the fields were green but he could sense the underlying stone making the ground flex like muscle beneath the medieval chainmail of scattered rocks.
Barriers and police tape showed him where the killing had happened – in front of a pile of stones and a farmhouse that looked old but quite recently done up, with just a few stone jigsaw gaps apparent. Two uniform cops, a man and a woman, were leaning on a five-barred gate not far from where Bliss had left his car.
‘Karen filled me in on the basics,’ he said to Vaynor. ‘You both need some sleep but, first, we gorra do a bit of unscrambling.’
Vaynor asked, ‘The girl, Autumn Wise. Is she still not talking, boss?’
He was trying hard not to look overtired, doubtless hoping Bliss was going to keep him in place for this inquiry – likely to be a big one, with the lottery jackpot angle emerging in the media. And there would be a lot more to come out, as always.
‘Norra word,’ Bliss said. ‘Well, nothing useful for us. She’s troubled and very confused, so I’m waiting for the medics to report back on test samples. Need to check for any drugs, prescribed or otherwise. She’s quite cooperative but mostly in a daze. Seems she’d rather be with us than back here, though.’
‘Yeah, she did seem keen to leave. Strange woman, but then she’s been through more traumas in a year than most people would in several lifetimes. More than enough to bring on mental illness.’
Bliss nodded. ‘Well, forensics, et cetera, are doing their bit so let’s crack on with trying to fathom what happened. And where Miss Wise fits into the picture.’
Vaynor led the way into the farmhouse, explaining that Len Davies had readily offered it for police use. The house, apparently, had been rapidly renovated, along with conversion work on the various outbuildings. Big money oiled wheels. Len, who seemed upset by the death of his brother, was the likely beneficiary of all the property and wealth and had been anxious to cooperate. He’d said to take Eddy’s laptop and anything else of use. He wanted Eddy’s killer ‘strung up’, Vaynor said. ‘How often do you hear that from victims’ relatives?’
‘Len been interviewed yet?’ Bliss asked.
‘Not in much depth so far,’ Vaynor said. ‘According to him, it was the village’s Hallowe’en supper last night and he was there.’
‘He say if Autumn ever went out shooting?’ Bliss asked as he walked around the ground floor.
‘Clay pigeons,’ Vaynor told him. ‘Her dad taught her.’
Bliss said, ‘So we know she could use a shotgun.’
He’d been expecting Vaynor to know more about people in this area than he seemed to. Their boss, Annie Howe, didn’t seem to know much about Longtown either, and, as senior investigating officer, she’d probably have to be available for a brief press conference before lunch, under the TV cameras. Before which, Bliss would get the hell out of here. He and Annie tried never to be seen working a case together. It was the safest way to keep a potentially inflammable situation under fireproof wraps and preserve two careers at Hereford nick. Across the field, he could see some TV people unloading their gear from a car boot.
‘You’ll be seeing a lorra reporters, Darth, pretty soon,’ Bliss said. ‘Lorra people generally. I counted seven holiday caravans in a nearby field and all occupied by the looks of it. Lorra walkers, too, I imagine, all wanting peace and quiet, which is normally what you’d get round here.’
‘It’s the value of peace that’s boosted property prices,’ Vaynor said. ‘Patti Calder told me that at least one chap recently clocked the way it was going and bought up every bit of masonry he could get… for what local people saw as silly money. Property’s an increasingly safe bet here.’
‘History, too,’ Bliss said. ‘Lorra history everywhere and that adds to the price. Good for folks on the make.’
‘You’ve got it, boss. With the exception of Eddy. From what we’ve gathered so far, he seemed keen to help his mates get properties round here they’d otherwise not be able to afford.’
‘Humm,’ Bliss said. ‘So could he have been unwanted competition? Did he rub someone up the wrong way? With his money, he could outbid anybody, no doubt. Who’s this guy in the property business?’
‘Highgrove, Oliver Highgrove,’ Vaynor said. ‘His name came up when I was talking to a few locals who saw Autumn leaving with Karen. One mentioned Autumn working at his shop in the village – another of his acquisitions. Seems he was in his father’s property business in Brighton and he’s now branched out on his own here. I imagine he’s made a lot of money quickly, seeing the way things were going.’
Vaynor frowned and continued. ‘That could apply to several parts of the county, but he, apparently, found something unique here… something uniquely powerful, if you like… Bit like hippies did in the old days but now they seem to be into the esoteric and it’s connected to being in the right place.’
‘Meaning?’ Bliss said. ‘Bit highfalutin for me.’
‘Well…’ Vaynor thoughtfully pinched his forehead. ‘They probably think this area is uniquely special. It’s, er… complicated. I can sense something… something happening a lot faster than it does where I live.’
Bliss didn’t know what he meant but didn’t tell him. Darth had said things before that he didn’t at first understand and knew that most of his colleagues would waste no time in bringing the lad back to the point… and missing the point.
‘Stick with it, eh, if you don’t need a break,’ Bliss said. ‘Everybody who was here last night is being checked out. Autumn Wise might put us onto something if we get her in the right place and thinking straight.’
‘She was certainly keen to get out of here,’ Vaynor said, ‘even if she seemed so sleepy and faltering.’
15
Love and blood
‘ALL RIGHT, TELL me again how you got the gun off Miss Wise,’ Bliss said to Vaynor, waving him back to the living room.
He wanted all this to be concrete for Ma’am, when she came in, so he was underlining key points. The shooting could have been accidental, but a one-shot fatality usually implied careful aim or negligence by an inexperienced shooter.
Vaynor shrugged.
‘Like I said, boss, I didn’t have to do anything. She kept the shotgun pointed at herself as she was lowering it to the floor.’
Bliss wrote gun kept pointed at self in his old-fashioned notebook, gratified by the way Darth always picked up on apparently insignificant details that might later illuminate something.
‘…and slid it with a foot across to the DS,’ Vaynor added, ‘who picked it up – with a tissue round her hand – and laid it on an opened-out newspaper.’
‘And was she saying much?’ Bliss asked.
Vaynor shook his head.
‘Not a word. Uncanny, somehow. Like I said, boss, all happened in complete silence.’
‘Her attitude?’
‘Compliant. Totally compliant, I’d say. She actually seemed relieved. After the gun was passed onto Crime-scene Slim, PC Calder and the DS took Autumn out to one of the cars. No resistance at all. In fact, she needed their support to keep her upright. She… she seemed… almost grateful. Grateful to be going anywhere protective.’
‘Hmmm. Did she live here with Eddy Davies?’
Vaynor started to shake his head then looked uncertain.
‘Not with him, but she’s actually just moved into a very small dwelling he had converted from part of an outbuilding behind here. She’s only renting it, so it was still his property. Patti Calder heard that he wanted to give it to Autumn but she insisted on paying rent. Which suggested to me that she wanted to keep things on a business footing rather than becoming, perhaps, beholden or a tenant with benefits, if you know what I mean.’
‘Maybe Eddy was hoping for something more personal,’ Bliss said. ‘She’s on the lovely side… and a bit mysterious. Let’s assume he fancied the hell out of her. And if she wasn’t interested in taking it any further, she could’ve thought she was facing what you might call a nuisance situation. Say she fancied his house but not him and his… his shooting obsession.’
‘So she took action to get him permanently out of her hair while securing the dwelling?’
Bliss shook his head.
‘Doesn’t seem that likely to me either, Darth. But she didn’t object to becoming his tenant. Do you think, when she was taken in, she realized she could be accused of using a gun to get him out of her life for good?’
‘She’d been cautioned by Karen, boss, having more or less convicted herself.’
‘Of killing him?’
‘She said, “Will I be hanged?” Karen and I both heard it.’
‘Let’s get this right. She actually said that, her exact words?’
‘And then she put the gun down, as if to say, “Go on, do it… I deserve to get the big one – I’m a killer, aren’t I?” At the same time looking, as you yourself saw this morning, as if she couldn’t step on an insect.’
She thought she deserved to be hanged? Bliss found an uneasy smile, asking if Autumn had explained why she was setting herself up as a killer from another era? Vaynor shook his head. Clearly he didn’t know.
‘Sounds like she felt guilty… of something, if not actually murder. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know, boss. If she’s a murderer, she’s not like any murderer I’ve… imagined. She seems to come out with the unexpected. I guess there are… lots of things about her to discover before we take this any further. Odd things. The crows attachment is probably the least of it.’
‘Yeh. You wanna do that?’ Bliss smiled thinly. ‘You might gerra new thesis out of it.’
Vaynor pushed his chair back and didn’t conceal his wearied sigh at another mention of his past life.
Bliss said, ‘Darth, before she went for a bit of shut-eye, Karen underlined Eddy’s two great loves: number one, Autumn Wise, who Len claimed the lad had been attached to – kind of – if only for a short time; and, number two, guns.’
Karen had been told that Eddy had been really into Autumn, in an unusually polite way for him. She was quite a bit posher than he was but hadn’t thrown it at him. Len had admitted he’d wondered if he might be seeing a wedding on the cards, but it hadn’t even reached a physical stage, far as he knew. Nothing further than desire, a stage that Eddy had left behind long ago.
‘And number two,’ Bliss said, ‘Eddy’s other great love is not an unusual passion here in the sticks.’ Bliss had skipped a couple of firearms courses himself, but he knew a Purdey was serious quality.
Like Autumn was. Best of everything for the big lottery winner? Thought he could buy his way into love? But did Autumn and guns fit together? Not if she only did clay shooting.
Bliss said, ‘Eddy Davies – and this is significant – didn’t want Autumn to interfere with his other passion, but he didn’t want to lose her because of it. He wanted her to accept his love of shooting as a blood sport. Which could explain Purdey Two.’
Vaynor said, ‘I just don’t see the words “love” and “blood” ever fitting together in any kind of harmonious way. Maybe I’ve not been in this job for long enough. You know about her parents, I assume. What happened to them.’
‘Yeh. That was awful. I looked up the details. She must feel very lonely and vulnerable. Which is probably an insufficient assessment of what it did to her, but…
‘Give some thought to this, Darth. If we assume that Eddy Davies, to gratify his love of wild shooting, buys himself what he rates as probably the best shotgun on the market, what’s he do next?’ Bliss put both hands flat on the table in front of Vaynor. ‘He buys another for the woman he’s starting to see as the love of his life. Imagining how highly she’d rate somebody who’d bought her a brand new Purdey.’
‘Boss…’ Vaynor looking reluctant to contradict Bliss, ‘buying her a top-class sporting gun would only work if he didn’t know she had a positive dislike of blood sports…’
‘But did she? Did she really have an active hatred of killing wildlife, including shooting predators like foxes at night, which most people find preferable to having them pursued by hounds in broad daylight?’
Vaynor sighed as Bliss continued to speculate. ‘If she did find that more acceptable, why didn’t she join Eddy Davies out hunting last night, or any night, as he’d evidently hoped she eventually would?’
Vaynor shook his head.
‘More questions here, boss. He’d presented her with the second shooter, but must have been happy for her to do her own thing. A few people apparently went with her into Eddy’s farmhouse, and she told them stories… local history stuff, which she knew a lot about, and probably Hallowe’en customs, too. Several people told me that on calls I made this morning. Then, at some point, she was left alone here, with the shotgun she hasn’t denied using on Eddy. And it was fired, according to Slim. But I don’t see how she would have had the opportunity with Casey Whitcombe around.’
‘And there’s another thing. You’ve only got his account. He could be lying about what happened when it was just the two of them. Or he could have missed what she was up to. You need to talk to him again, soonest.’
*
Vaynor gave up his seat and turned away as he stood up. What if Autumn was involved and was putting on a good act as a cover? He’d come close to telling Bliss the rest of what he’d noticed last night: flashes of fear in Autumn’s eyes.
Was some kind of fear really what he’d glimpsed? It was certainly something different from being weighed down by guilt and shock and terrible regret at what she seemed to think she’d done. Different from having to play it over and over in her head, in the struggle to accept that she’d become a killer. And worse, Vaynor thought, if she wasn’t sure she understood what had happened or feared being found out.
Bliss said he needed time to do some thinking, ask Autumn a few of the questions that Annie would eventually have to ask.
‘Incidentally, boss,’ Vaynor said, ‘somebody mentioned she’d got into TV work.’
‘Got the looks for it,’ Bliss said. ‘Go on.’
‘PC Calder, being local, heard that, until her parents died, Autumn was going back to university to continue her course on medieval British history. But a TV offer would change things.’
‘That could figure.’ Bliss tossed his pen down. ‘OK, Darth, you know a lot about this stuff. Tell me, a non-uni feller, why Autumn Wise didn’t, in the end, go back to her history course but may’ve gone straight into telly.’
Vaynor shook his head. He didn’t know how anybody could land a glam TV job without some serious college behind them.
‘She’s certainly not given up on history, boss. Seems she’s an expert on local stuff. Gets paid, in a small way, to talk to tourists, which, apparently, could be how she was spotted by independent TV.’ He sat up; something had struck him. Hard.
‘Actually, I know somebody who might be able to tell me about that. I’ll… enquire. And get back to you.’
