The Advent of Murder (A Faith Morgan Mystery) Read online

CHAPTER

  13

  Whiteness sprang up from the bridge. Someone had turned on an arc light. Getting out of her car, Faith could hear the generator chugging. The river here was deeper, the water faster flowing than further down by the Markham place. Ben stood at the end of the bridge. Harriet Sims had just moved beyond him onto the walkway carrying a metal forensic case.

  Ben’s gaze fell on Faith. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. He strode toward her, his eyes, his whole posture, crackling with energy.

  “We’re in business,” he said.

  “You’ve found the attack site.”

  Ben grinned. He did love it when investigations started moving.

  “It was obvious, really. Even with the recent flooding, the currents in this stretch of the river aren’t strong enough to carry a body more than a few yards, unless…”

  Faith glanced down at the water running under the bridge. “It falls into mid-stream,” she concluded for him.

  “And since this isn’t the time of year for boats…” He flipped out a hand toward her, palm up, inviting her to supply the answer.

  “Bridges,” she answered, to indulge him.

  “So I sent out a couple of teams to check bridges and points overlooking the faster currents upstream from Markham’s place, and…”

  “Routine police work and the hard graft of others found you your attack site,” she teased.

  “Only took them a day and a half,” complained Ben.

  The old bridge was made of roughly shaped pillars of weathered wood in rustic style. This must be private land. It looked as if it had been neglected for years. A technician was examining the downriver rail.

  “I see the logic, but why this bridge? There’s nothing obvious that I can see…”

  “No,” Ben leaned over the rail and pointed diagonally back toward the bank, “but that is easier to spot.” Down below in the mud and reeds, a scene of crime officer was taking pictures of an expensive-looking bicycle.

  Peter Gray struggled up the steep bank, his wellington boots slipping on the frosty mud. He made a final long-legged stride and came up to join them.

  “We’re lucky it wasn’t nicked.” His smooth cheeks were flushed from the cold. “It’s a good machine. Custom-built. Italian hand-crafted carbon frame with FAR 240 tubular carbon wheels – nice. Very sleek. I asked Santa for one of those…” Faith couldn’t help smiling at his enthusiasm.

  “I had no idea you were a bike man, Peter. How much would something like that cost?”

  “Two to three thousand.”

  “Pounds? Wow! Where would Lucas get that sort of money?”

  “That’s a good question,” said Ben. He looked over at the uniformed search officers being briefed by one of his team, a soberly dressed young woman with hair scraped back in a severe bun. She finished her speech and the officers fanned out along the bank.

  Ben and Peter walked across to consult with their team member. Faith’s curiosity drew her onto the bridge.

  Harriet crouched down near the further end, beyond the forensic technician concentrating on a warped join at a roughly midway point on the downriver handrail. It was six days on and there had been rain and frost and snow between. Faith wondered what they could hope to find.

  Harriet glanced up at her sideways. Ben and Peter might be sufficiently distracted by the discoveries at hand to overlook the last time they’d met at that disastrous dinner but, given the way she’d been eyeing her on Thursday night, Harriet Sims seemed unlikely to. Faith was trespassing on her crime scene, and she had every right to ask her to leave. Crouching down there in her overalls, with her hair held back in a ponytail, the pathologist suddenly seemed vulnerable. It was a desperately awkward situation for her. Harriet Sims had fallen for Ben Shorter’s charms without realizing what came with the package, whereas she, Faith, was a veteran. Faith found herself smiling reassuringly as she approached, and was met with a baffled look in return.

  “Faith.”

  “Harriet.”

  Harriet straightened up. “Ben tells me your insights can be useful,” she said, with her eyes lowered. “I understand the victim was connected to your church?”

  “Loosely, yes,” she said. Harriet nodded, and seemed uncertain what to say next, so Faith spoke instead. “This can’t be an easy surface to work, especially six days on with all the rain and frost.”

  “I don’t have high hopes of much in the way of viable traces – but if the victim went over here, we may get lucky.”

  “You’re not sure he did?”

  “The chances are this is the place. See…” Harriet bent her face to just above rail height, indicating along the surface down to where the technician was working. At that angle Faith could see a distinct split in the rail.

  “There’s a recent break there – it gives at least four or five inches if you push against it.”

  “How tall was Lucas?”

  “Five feet eight, and a bit.”

  “Just a touch taller than me.” Faith measured herself against the height of the wooden rail. It was relatively low. “Someone five feet eight and a bit falling against this rail – they’d be struck about here, would you think?” Faith marked the place on her body with her hand, allowing for an inch or so.

  “That would explain the bruise on his hip,” said Harriet.

  “And the broken phone,” Faith added. Harriet nodded slowly.

  “Yes. So…” She moved to face Faith, who turned instinctively to keep her in sight. She felt the rail in her lower back. “Lucas had a contusion on the upper right temple. Say someone hits him with the proverbial…” Faith recoiled as Harriet’s pantomime swipe passed uncomfortably close. The movement unbalanced her and she turned with it, catching herself on the rail. It was so low, for a second she thought she might go over. She froze, clutching the rail. The water swirled and eddied glassily beneath.

  She turned back to Harriet and looked her in the eye. “You think this is the place?”

  Harriet nodded, and gave the broken rail one more experimental push before crouching again to resume her search for any missed evidence.

  Faith’s winter coat and city boots weren’t enough against this cold. She really should get in her car and leave them to it. The rest would be painstaking, boring graft. She had work of her own to do.

  Just wait a little longer, whispered her old self. Ben’s junior, the young woman with the scraped back hair and sensible shoes, was approaching him to report from the search team.

  “Nothing of interest so far, sir. Just litter, looks like – but it’s being bagged anyway.”

  “Keep at it,” Ben instructed.

  “Want a look?” the junior asked.

  “Pete,” Ben detailed Sergeant Gray off with a jerk of his head. He turned to Faith. “You look like you need to warm up. I owe you a coffee. I’ve a Thermos in the car – join me?”

  “That would be welcome,” she admitted. “Just for a few minutes…”

  As they turned toward the cars she noticed a right of way sign and a footpath running alongside the river back upstream.

  “Where does this go?” Faith asked.

  “It’s a short cut,” said one of the uniformed constables, looking up. “It ends up in the car park of a pub just up the road.”

  “The Lion’s Heart?”

  “That’s right. Five minutes’ walk or so.”

  They sat in Ben’s Astra with the engine running and the heater on full blast. The coffee tasted of Thermos and was way too strong. Faith wrinkled her nose.

  “Pete keeps some packs of sugar in there,” Ben nodded toward the glove compartment. “He doesn’t appreciate my coffee, either.” His eyes scanned the operation of his team outside. “By the way, Oliver Markham’s in the clear.” Ben took a swig of coffee. “Hotel housekeeping confirms seeing him over the weekend. There’s CCTV footage of the whole family in the lobby leaving for the theatre just before 18:30 on Saturday night.”

  Around the time Lucas was going into the
river sixty miles away. So Oliver could get back to his life.

  “And that’s it?” she asked.

  Ben looked at her, nonplussed. “Well, we have several lines of—”

  “No, I mean, with Oliver. You put the man through hell and—”

  “Just a moment,” said Ben. “You’re hardly the person I thought would misuse that word. We treated him fairly.”

  Faith’s blood was boiling. “We must have different ideas of fair.”

  “Didn’t we always?” said Ben, rolling his eyes. “You know we have to pursue the lead. The bloke waved a firearm at a bunch of nuisance kids a couple of months back.”

  Faith simmered. She knew there was truth in his words, but did he have to be so… so… complacent about it?

  They sat in silence for at least a minute. Faith swirled her cup in an effort to dissolve the sugar. There was no spoon, and the coffee was too hot to stir with her finger. Her black mood passed.

  “What did the Markhams go to see?” she asked irrelevantly.

  “Wicked”. According to his wife, he fell asleep.” Ben looked at her sideways, his eyes twinkling. “That’s one you never dragged me to.”

  “I knew you better than to try,” she said. “As I recall you, too, had the tendency to sleep in theatre seats.” Ben had never shared her love of musicals. But he had taken her to them once or twice when they were together. She focused on him in her peripheral vision, looking ostensibly into her coffee. Was he the same still? Those odd little chinks in his armour.

  He chuckled to himself. “I’ve told you a hundred times, there’s no street cred left to a DI caught humming show-tunes over a corpse.” He shifted in his seat, leaning against the driver’s door, adjusting his legs. Now he could watch her face as she drank his abominable coffee.

  “So what’s the Saturday timeline so far?” she asked.

  “Lucas left his home in The Hollies around 12:30 or soon after – we have him on traffic cams on his bike at a couple of junctions. Looks like he was heading into town. After that, we lose him – too much CCTV footage to go through without some clue as to direction. According to Vernon Granger and Anna Hope, the victim was due at the Lion’s Heart at 3 p.m. or thereabouts. But he never showed. Said Vernon has a text timed at 14:46 sent from Lucas’s phone to the effect that something had come up and he’d catch up with him later, but no more than that.”

  “You’ve canvassed the Lion’s Heart?” Ben gave her a patronizing look. “Of course you have,” she amended quickly.

  “According to staff, Lucas never showed, but Vernon and the girl were there for an hour and a bit. Landlord is certain they had gone by 4 p.m.”

  “The time of death?” Faith asked.

  “After five and before 7 p.m. – as near as we can figure. The immersion in freezing water confuses things a bit.”

  “And the attack site is just a few minutes’ walk from the Lion’s Heart,” she pondered. Ben grunted. “Was Adam Bagshaw seen at the pub that afternoon? I understand the Lion’s Heart was a favourite watering hole of his.”

  “Not that anyone has reported. Bagshaw had been in on Friday lunchtime. The landlord said he was doing some serious drinking, in for the long haul… He got into enough of a state to be asked to leave. According to bar staff, Bagshaw senior wasn’t seen back after that.”

  “Isn’t there any CCTV in a big pub like that?”

  Ben grimaced. “Only in the car park. Inside the pub, the system is down for repairs – has been for some time.”

  Faith picked up on his emphasis.

  “Deliberate, d’you think?” Her mind shifted to Keepie. No dealer wanted electronic eyes on his place of business. “Do you know a man they call Keepie?”

  Ben flashed a look on her. “Sebastian Keep? Local drug dealer – low level, but known to carry knives. You’re very up to speed, vicar.”

  Faith shrugged. “I just met him this lunchtime – when I went in for a drink. He saw me chatting to the landlord. He told me to keep my nose out of where it doesn’t belong.”

  Ben sat up. “He threatened you?” His jaw set.

  “No need to get all protective. I can look out for myself.”

  Ben’s face was a picture of scepticism. “You know addicts. They’re unpredictable and Keepie’s a skunk. You’re a woman and you haven’t kept up your training – have you? You’re bound to be at a disadvantage, and as a vicar you’re easy to find. Try to stay out of his way, will you?”

  “I have no plans to get acquainted,” she reassured him. “But Keepie’s stage warning did make me wonder. It could just have been routine territorial stuff, but could Lucas have run across him? According to Anna, he was quite anti booze and drugs, and they both were regulars at the Lion’s Heart.”

  “A teenager, in this day and age?”

  “You’re too cynical. You can’t assume things about real, live individuals – not even teenagers. Remember the context. Lucas had been a carer for an alcoholic uncle from an early age.” Jim had told her Lucas was mature for his age, but then, Thursday night being such a tender subject, it probably wasn’t diplomatic to mention the choirmaster by name. She edited her words. “Lucas was said to be mature for his years – it’s possible, isn’t it?”

  Ben’s attention had wandered. He checked his watch.

  “It is strange that no one saw Lucas at the pub…” she mused, thinking of the elephant picture on the bar. “Did you know about Stewie?”

  Ben swung his full attention back to her. If she hadn’t been familiar with his intensity, she might have found it intimidating.

  “Who’s this?”

  “A barman at the Lion’s Heart who left to go round the world just this Sunday, but he was filling in for a sick colleague on Saturday afternoon.”

  Ben frowned.

  “Says who?”

  “The landlord – Rick Williams. There’s a picture up on the bar – I saw it this lunchtime. Stewie must have posted it on Facebook or something – the picture is a computer printout. It looked to me like he was in Thailand, I think.”

  “Oh, great! Tracing a backpacker on the opposite side of the world; that’s going to be fun. I suppose I’ll have to get someone onto it.”

  “If Uncle Adam was drinking heavily…” Faith remembered Adam’s tearful guilt and his admission of a blackout. “What if Adam went on a bender; you don’t know if he came back home on the Friday night – do you? What if Lucas went out looking for him on Saturday?” Ben was wearing his “you and your imagination” expression. She pressed on. “Anna Hope – the Dot? She told me that…”

  “When? When did she tell you?” Trust Ben to pounce on the irrelevant bit.

  “Earlier this week. I saw her at Mavis Granger’s florist shop on Thursday…” She was about to add, I was buying a house gift for Sandy and cut herself short just in time.

  “You’ve been busy, haven’t you?” She couldn’t tell if he was cross with her for butting in or just for not updating him sooner.

  “Stop interrupting,” she scolded. “As I was saying, Anna told me that Lucas spent much of his life looking out for his uncle; fetching him home when he drank too much. That could be an explanation for his movements that afternoon.”

  Ben thought about it. “Possibly. But then he would surely have checked the Lion’s Heart first – it being Uncle Adam’s favourite watering hole.”

  “Maybe he did – and the now nomadic Stewie was the only one to see him.” Ben obviously didn’t like the idea, but she could see him turning it over. His bright blue eyes fixed on her, pinning her back against the car seat.

  “And do you think Lucas might have found him?” He was asking the question she didn’t want to ask herself. In the confined space of the car she couldn’t get away from it, or him.

  Did she think Adam Bagshaw might be guilty of murdering his nephew? She focused her memories of the shell of the man she had encountered in that empty home.

  “I think Adam Bagshaw is self-destructive,” she said slowly.

&nbs
p; “OK – but he might lash out in a drunken fit.”

  “Yes – he might. But here?” She gestured out at the isolated, frozen bridge before them. “What reason would the pair have to meet here? It’s not on the way to their house. And if they did, and by some terrible accident, Lucas was hurt and fell in the water, I can’t believe Adam wouldn’t try to pull him out. They were family. Lucas was all he had left.”

  “Maybe he passed out.”

  “If he had, I think you would have found him here too. I don’t see Adam Bagshaw as a man with the wherewithal to cover up murder.” She waited. Ben was contemplating the bridge; thinking it through. At last he nodded, briefly.

  “I agree with you. Adam Bagshaw is a messy drunk, and whoever did this is organized enough to cover their tracks.”

  “So who’s left? Suspect unknown? I presume V and the Dot have alibis for the time of the murder?”

  “Sort of. Anna was with friends; two girls back her up – but teenage girls lie for one another as a matter of course, don’t they? Mrs Granger gives Vernon his. Ma Granger says she was doing the Christmas baking while her son was playing some video game in the lounge.”

  “Not what you’d call unbreakable alibis.”

  Ben raised his eyebrows in agreement.

  Faith’s mind slipped back to the tension between Vernon and his mother at the Civic Service on Wednesday. Did Mrs Granger know, or suspect, something about her son? She saw again Mavis Granger’s painted and wistful face and heard the dead weight of her words as she gazed after him: “My pride and joy.”

  “What?” Ben used his low, seductive voice; the one he used to tease things out of her. She should have averted her face. He was too good at reading her, and at this distance, cramped together in a car, he became a living, breathing lie detector.

  “It’s not evidence – just hearsay.” She had to give him some of it. “Something the landlord told me at lunchtime,” she said.

  Ben rolled his forefinger at her to say go on…

  “The landlord said that Lucas and Vernon were tight; good mates – all except one time they had this fight in the pub.”

  “A fist fight?”

  Faith nodded. “They were thrown out of the bar and continued it in the car park.”