Skeleton Plot Read online

  It was in the twilight that he walked out alone to look at the place where the skeleton of Julie Grimshaw had been found. That was over the fence at the end of his pasture field, the poorest land on the farm. Old Joe Jackson, the man who had bought the land from him to add to his small garden, had put up a fence, but not a high one, to mark the new boundary of his garden plot. The scene-of-crime tapes and the screens which had masked that sinister square of ground were gone now. The spot looked once again quite innocent – like the newly dug vegetable plot it had been intended for, in fact. He wondered if old Joe would feel like growing stuff there now, after what had happened. Jim decided that he wouldn’t feel like planting cabbages there himself, in view of what had been dug up from that ground when Joe had begun to work it.

  Jim Simmons couldn’t see Joe Jackson using that land if he wouldn’t himself. Jim had been brought up to work the land, to get used to it containing all sorts of things, both useful and unpleasant. It was only soil, after all. In fact the man who had taught him most of what he knew, Daniel Burrell, would have said with a grin that rotted human remains would have made the soil all the richer, all the more likely to produce excellent vegetables. Jim smiled at the memory of old Dan and his sturdy common sense. He could hear Burrell’s voice now, telling him that he’d received a good price for a small, almost useless patch of land, and that this finding merely proved that he was well rid of it.

  Simmons frowned as he gazed at the place where the skeleton had been found, wondering for just a moment whether Daniel Burrell could possibly have known anything about how those bones had got there. But old Dan surely wasn’t that sort of fellow. Jim wondered how much they would talk about the skeleton when he next visited Dan in the care home. Then he shook his head and turned away, walking slowly and with a sudden weariness back to the farm and Lisa, and to Jamie and Ellie and that other, more innocent world in which children lived.

  Kate Clark, MBE, was more shaken than she cared to admit by her short meeting with Detective Inspector Rushton. She had a good relationship with her PA and she often swapped irreverent thoughts with her about the people who had come to see her, but on this occasion she said nothing.

  She had a full day before the meeting she had arranged by phone with Chief Superintendent Lambert. Usually time fled from her all too quickly, but these hours seemed to drag by in a long series of anxieties as she wondered what they would ask her, how she should respond and how much she could afford to conceal. She was used to exchanging ideas. She enjoyed challenging herself, whether it was with senior colleagues, more junior employees or members of the public. She was pretty good with people, she thought, and exchanges normally stimulated her and made her work and her life interesting. But she could talk to no one about this. She was alone with her thoughts, with her guilt, and with her speculations about how much the police knew and how much they would have to know.

  Harry Purcell was coming to her place tonight. They usually managed one night each week with each other and they tried whenever possible to alternate their venues. They were both divorced, both wary of the commitment of a second marriage. They were moving closer together, but they were quite a way yet from even living together. Kate felt that; she wasn’t quite sure how Harry felt.

  Harry had tried to push things on when they’d met at his place last week. She’d said, ‘It’s working well as it is. Let’s just leave it to take its course. Give it another few months – until the autumn, say – and then we’ll review it. Meanwhile, we’ve both got busy lives and we’re both ambitious. This friendship should help us along, not get in our way.’

  He’d accepted her logic, or appeared to accept it. Kate had been flattered by his desire to get closer to her. She wished she’d told him that, once she was back here with time to reflect upon the matter. Men needed reassurance, didn’t they? Especially men who’d been hurt once, as Harry had. She didn’t know how much the failure of his marriage had wounded him, how deep were the scars it had left behind. That was the kind of thing you discovered when you lived with someone, she supposed. She was finding that she didn’t know quite as much about life and its workings as she knew about business.

  Now, when her thoughts were full of the police and what they might or might not already know, she almost cancelled Harry’s visit. It would be easy enough: she could say that she had to be away for some business meeting that had been arranged at short notice. But she didn’t like lying to Harry. That was surely a good thing, wasn’t it? A sign that there was mileage in their relationship? When he rang her on her mobile at four o’clock to check that tonight was still on, as he usually did, she told him that it was and that she was looking forward to it. She spoke quite formally; even though they were both on their private phones, she was never convinced that only he could hear her. She never breathed sweet nothings or sexual encouragements on the phone, even in response to the outrageous things Harry Purcell sometimes said.

  It was a strange evening. She didn’t want to tell him about the police and that erected a barrier between them. Couples all had their secrets; all people kept some things strictly to themselves. But her fear of the coming police visit was so great and so immediate that she felt guilty concealing it. Their conversation during the evening seemed to her stilted, though Harry didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. There were rumours of an American takeover of his company, and he spent quite a long time talking about that. Asking her advice, in fact, which Kate supposed was flattering. He was very much dominated by his work and his worries about it. They were two of a kind really, she thought wryly.

  The sex was good, as it always was. She forgot about the police and gave everything to it, in her usual way. She was quite abandoned in bed, screaming out her pleasure, ordering him to do things violently (which she knew he was going to do anyway), flinging out the four-letter words of command which she never used elsewhere. She wondered sometimes whether she used sex as a counterbalance to the rest of her life, to the rational decisions and the rational accounts of them which occupied most of her days. It was the only time in her life when she enjoyed being subject to anyone else, when she enjoyed pleasuring a man and indulging his every physical whim.

  Harry Purcell loved it. Perhaps even loved her, Kate thought, as he lay panting with his head upon her breasts. She stroked his head gently as her spirit crept unwillingly back into the real world. She’d been lost in her own wild, scatological demands, but she was pretty sure that he’d said somewhere in the early stages that he loved her. That was surely a good thing. Yet she didn’t welcome it. Not now, when the problems she had cast aside were reasserting themselves.

  Harry had to leave early in the morning. She was glad of that. She knew she wouldn’t have been good at conversation over the breakfast table, with the day she had to face. He left after hurried toast and coffee, taking with him her assurance that they would meet at his place as usual next week. She wondered as he left what her position with the police would be by then, what the next seven days might have in store for her.

  She had a meeting in Oxford at ten thirty. She was as usual well prepared for it, but she went over her papers again before getting into the car. It was a good thing that she had this meeting to occupy her, she told herself unconvincingly, as she fought her way through the Oxford traffic to the venue. It would keep her thoughts off the interview with the police in the afternoon, prevent her from going over and over the same ground that she had covered so thoroughly yesterday.

  The meeting followed its agenda and was from her point of view quite straightforward. She made a few contributions, rather more muted than usual. Then, more quickly than she wanted to be, she was driving the Mercedes coupé back along the A40 and into Gloucestershire. She stopped first for lunch at a small place she’d used before in Burford. The food was good and the owner was friendly but didn’t insist on making conversation whilst you were trying to eat and rest.

  Today the woman was more attentive than usual. ‘You’re sure that all you want is soup and
a roll? We have some tasty sandwiches. Baguettes, if you prefer them; most people seem to, nowadays.’ And then when Kate replied in monosyllables and forced a smile, she said, ‘You look very pale today. Not sickening for something, are you?’

  Kate was back in her flat in Tewkesbury long before the police were due. Give yourself plenty of time to get ready for any important meeting: that was her policy. Except that for this one there was no agenda, so how did you set about preparing yourself? Two thirty, they were due to arrive. She wasted three quarters of an hour in useless speculation about the attitude they would take and the direction in which the conversation would go.

  Two big men, one very tall and the other burly and powerful. The older and taller one introduced himself as Chief Superintendent John Lambert and his companion as Detective Sergeant Bert Hook. She’d heard of both of them, John Lambert as the man the papers called a ‘super-sleuth’ and Sergeant Hook as that rare police phenomenon, a man who’d taken an arts degree with the Open University. She told them that: it gave people a lift and got you off on the right foot when they realized that you’d heard of their exploits and their claims to fame.

  On this occasion, it didn’t seem to help her.

  Lambert said bluntly, ‘We’re here in connection with the discovery of human remains in the grounds of a bungalow on the Brenton Park housing estate in Herefordshire. I don’t suppose that surprises you, Ms Clark.’

  His last words were a challenge which she chose to ignore. ‘I read about the skeleton which was dug up there. I can’t imagine why you would wish to speak with me about it.’

  ‘It is because we think you may be able to give us information about those remains. I should tell you that we are now speaking of a murder victim.’

  She was already finding his unflinching scrutiny disconcerting. She was used to dominating face-to-face exchanges. More often than not it was not she but the people she spoke with who dropped their eyes or looked away from her. Kate said, ‘I’m sorry about that. The murder, I mean. But I don’t see why you should think that I have anything to offer to you in the way of information. Do you know who this woman was?’

  ‘She was a young woman who was twenty-one when she died. Her name was Julie Grimshaw.’

  Kate was studiously untroubled. ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  ‘We can be quite positive. We have a DNA sample from a parent which confirms the identity. Modern DNA analysis tells us quite certainly that a body which was buried under a car park in Leicester was that of Richard III. In the light of that, you will appreciate that we are absolutely positive about the identity of this woman. Now we have to discover who killed her and buried her body in that spot in the Brenton Park development.’

  ‘I want you to discover who killed this woman. That goes without saying. Until now all I knew was that the skeleton was that of a youngish woman.’

  ‘And now you have an identity. This is a woman whom we have reason to think you knew quite intimately at the time of her death.’

  There was no escaping the challenge this time. She said as firmly as she could, ‘I think it is high time you enlightened me about exactly what you’re thinking, Mr Lambert.’

  She had deliberately omitted his police title, but he gave no sign of irritation. He did not respond directly to her request. Instead, he threw another question at her. ‘Where were you living twenty years ago, Ms Clark?’

  ‘I cannot recall that precisely. I don’t suppose many people can.’

  ‘But I think that in your case you know exactly where you were. Our information is that you were at that time living in a squat at seventeen Fairfax Street in Gloucester. Do you deny that?’

  Kate tried hard to remain calm. She had been over this a dozen times as she anticipated their visit, but it seemed more stark and infinitely more damning as it emerged like an accusation from the mouth of this calm, experienced man. ‘Who is the source of your information?’

  ‘We don’t reveal our sources. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect us to. Just as whatever you are going to tell us this afternoon will not have your name attached to it if we need to use it elsewhere. Unless you are about to provide us with a confession, of course.’

  This should have been said lightly, Kate thought, with a small laugh to follow it to indicate that it was not intended seriously. But this grave-faced man delivered it as if he thought it was a serious possibility. Kate Clark gathered herself to give of her best, to give the performance of her life which she felt was now needed. ‘I have come a long way since those days, Mr Lambert. I think you will understand why I do not care to recall my time in that squat. It would provide salacious material for the popular press if they found out that one of the women who has broken the glass ceiling and entered senior management with a great national company lived in a squat as a twenty-one-year-old.’

  She had put on her most formal grey suit for this meeting, in a futile attempt to gain the respect which such dress seemed to bring to her in her normal working life. It did indeed seem amazing to the CID men that this formally suited and patently efficient woman could ever have been one of the pathetic and often criminal creatures who usually peopled squats. Yet they too were professionals. They would behave as if this were a situation they met regularly, even expected.

  Lambert said, ‘We have no wish to expose your days in Fairfax Street to your present colleagues. Some people would say that it is very much to your credit that you have progressed from there to here. But that is neither our business nor our concern. We are interested only in the assistance you can offer us in a murder inquiry.’

  ‘I don’t remember much about those days in Gloucester. I think perhaps I have deliberately shut them out as I have made my way to my present post.’

  Yet her very clear grey eyes and the agile brain so obviously at work behind them belied that. If she put her mind to it, this woman could remember all sorts of details about the life she had lived in the squat and the people who had lived it with her. Lambert watched her as intently as ever as he said, ‘We have been told of a Kathy Clark who was a leading figure in the squat. A friend, in fact, of Julie Grimshaw. That was you.’

  ‘I suppose I was a friend of hers, yes. I’d still like to know who told you that. It might help me to remember other things.’

  Lambert ignored the blatant attempt to trade information. As a woman now well experienced in business dealings, Kate Clark must recognize that she was playing a very weak hand here. ‘How long did you spend in that derelict house in Fairfax Street?’

  ‘I couldn’t be sure. Months, I think. Certainly not years. I moved on to another place in Bristol when the pigs made it too hot in Gloucester.’ She gave them an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry. I stopped thinking of you lot as pigs a long time ago now.’

  ‘And was Julie Grimshaw with you throughout the time you spent in Gloucester?’

  She paused, apparently anxious to be as accurate and helpful as possible in her reply. In fact, her brain was working furiously to decide how much she had to tell them and what she might safely conceal. ‘I knew Julie. I can just about remember her. We weren’t bosom friends. You don’t have bosom friends, in a squat.’

  ‘I appreciate that. Our information is that you were quite close.’

  ‘Then your source is ill-informed.’

  ‘Were you on horse or cocaine at the time?’

  She was shaken by the question and by its matter-of-fact delivery, as if it was taken as read that she had been a user. ‘I wasn’t on anything.’ Then, as she saw the disbelief on their faces, she added, ‘You picked up whatever you could in a squat, and Fairfax Street was no exception to that. Food from wherever you could, drink from wherever you could. Even water from wherever you could.’ She shuddered involuntarily at the memory of it, and congratulated herself on doing so. Her shudder must have added verisimilitude to an otherwise less than convincing narrative, she thought. ‘Occasionally you picked up drugs – mostly just pot. The occasional spliff was very welcome, if it helped you to forge
t reality for a few hours. And in the squat, you were like scavengers – like carrion birds, really, picking up whatever enabled you to carry on living. If you got the chance of drugs, you didn’t refuse them, simply because you scavenged by habit.’ She shuddered again, this time by design rather than instinct.

  ‘Julie Grimshaw was a regular user. In danger of becoming an addict.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about her. Far more than I can remember as I strive to assist you. Now that you have reminded me, I remember that she was on horse. Maybe a little coke too, when she could get it. But she wasn’t an addict; not when I knew her.’

  ‘But in danger of becoming one. Was it you who introduced her to drugs, in your days as Kathy Clark?’

  ‘No! Emphatically it was not. I resent the suggestion.’

  ‘We think that at the time of her death someone was inducing her to become an agent. Probably to secure her own supplies free in return for selling her quota of illegal drugs to others. That is a common method of recruiting new dealers, as you are no doubt aware.’

  ‘I didn’t try to get Julie to sell drugs. I wouldn’t have done that, even then. And I wouldn’t have known how. I had no connections with drug dealers.’

  ‘It is difficult for us to accept that. We know that drugs were being used in that squat. And we’ve been told that someone was trying to persuade Julie Grimshaw to become a low-level dealer. You’re too intelligent not to have known most of what was going on.’

  ‘Perhaps I didn’t want to know. Drugs are dangerous things, life-threatening things. I think I realized that even then, however stupidly I was behaving otherwise.’