Malice On The Moors (5 page)

No bloody doubt, Powell thought with a sinking feeling. “Will there be anything else?” he said, carefully controlling his voice. He'd be buggered if he'd give Merriman the satisfaction of seeing how furious he was.

“Your contact in Northallerton is Superintendent Cartwright…”

Powell was already on his way out the door of Mer-riman's office. He slammed it behind him, his face burning.

CHAPTER 3

After explaining the situation to a grumbling Sergeant Black, who was clearly miffed at being passed over for Evans, Powell left a brief message for Marion on their answering machine. He then rang up Barrett to break the news. Before he could say anything, Barrett launched into a paean to the pleasures of grouse shooting: “Ah, the bracing moorland air, comely lasses beating through the heather, the clatter of wings over the butts, the smell of cordite, and the merry yipping of spaniels. And later, after a wee dram or two in front of the fire, a climax of roasted fowl washed down with a bottle of good claret— I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to this week, Erskine,” he expounded heartily. “Brings back memories of my lost youth.”

A number of things went through Powell's mind (he didn't have the heart to interrupt) as he listened to Barrett wax eloquently, as only a Scotsman could, about his national bird. First off, driven grouse shooting, of the type described by Barrett, was an elitist and expensive
pursuit. From what he knew of his friend's middle-class background, he thought it unlikely that he'd have had the means to pursue the sport. However, Barrett, who was blind in his right eye, had once let slip that a stray pellet taken while grouse shooting as a lad was the cause of it. Perhaps he'd preferred his grouse poached in those days, Powell speculated.

When Barrett eventually paused to take a breath, Powell interjected abruptly, “There's been a change of plans, Alex. I can't come. I'm sorry.” The direct approach was usually best with Barrett.

An ominous silence followed on the other end of the line, an imagined lit fuse to be followed at any moment by an explosion of expletives. The seconds ticked by. Then Barrett spoke in a surprisingly measured voice. “You'd better explain yourself.”

Powell did his best, complete with an unsolicited diatribe about Merriman. “And that's not the worst of it,” he concluded glumly. “I'll be right in the middle of the best grouse-shooting moors in Yorkshire—bloody working!”

This seemed to catch Barrett's attention. “Oh, aye?” Then a significant pause. “What about the lassie?”

“Sarah Evans?” Powell shrugged. “She's all right. Young, bright, ambitious. Not exactly my choice for a traveling companion, though.”

“Well, not to worry, Erskine,” Barrett said brightly. “I'll just have to carry on without you. I've got the time booked off anyway, and I know a lassie who might enjoy a wee taste of the, em, sporting life.”

No bloody doubt, Powell thought, feeling a bit put out.

“And Erskine …”

Powell steeled himself. “Yes.”

“You owe me. You can put me up the next time I come down to London.”

“Great,” Powell replied unconvincingly. He was hardly in a position to object.

Several hours later, Powell left the A64 on the outskirts of York and pulled into a filling station for some petrol. Before leaving the Yard, he had rung Superintendent Cartwright in Northallerton and suggested that they meet at the police station in Malton the day after tomorrow, giving him a day to poke around the moors first. He had then spoken with Detective-Sergeant Evans, who planned to follow in a company car tomorrow.

After paying the attendant, he parked his battered green Triumph beside a shiny red VW van in front of the adjoining transport cafe and went in for a cup of coffee. There was a young couple in the next booth: the lad with bright orange hair in a moth-eaten jersey, and his waif-ish, nose-ringed companion looking distinctly unhappy. (A lover's tiff? Powell wondered.) The coffee was un-drinkable, but the spirited exchange at the counter between the only other customer—a lorry driver—and the couple who owned the place more than made up for it. From what Powell was able to gather, the cafe had once been a favorite stop for long-distance lorry drivers, including, apparently, this fellow. It had recently been taken over by the couple, who had apparently decided to improve the tone of the place. Powell had noticed that quiche and “fresh garden greens” figured prominently on the menu, rather than the egg and chips and stodgy meat pies that one would normally expect in such an
establishment. He reckoned that the pastel salmon-and-avocado decor was a dead giveaway.

The lorry driver was becoming increasingly agitated as he complained about the minuscule order of chips served up with the pale, crescent-shaped object (which might well have been the spinach and feta croissant) that lay beside a sprig of something green on the stark landscape of his plate. His face grew redder and redder as the husband foolishly went on about the dire consequences of dietary animal fat. Powell was becoming concerned that he would have to intervene to prevent an assault, when the wife interjected irritably, “For God's sake, Jim. Give him some more frigging chips!”

Her husband flushed then disappeared through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

“Tha's better,” the lorry driver grunted.

The pinched-looking woman rolled her eyes, picked up the coffee pot, and began to walk towards Powell. He raised his hand politely. “No, thank you, I've heard that excessive caffeine has a tendency to inflame the baser passions.”

The young man in the next booth sniggered.

After a late breakfast at his hotel in York, Powell continued on to Malton, where he was to meet Sarah Evans the following morning, then north on the A169. At Pickering, he turned west on the A170, and after a short drive through green and pleasant farmland, he was wheeling his car into the roundabout at Kirkbymoorside, a small market town situated, not surprisingly, on the edge of the North York Moors. The cobble-edged Market Place was lined with quaint village shops and a number of hotels
that had once been coaching inns in the days when the town was on the main road fromThirsk to Scarborough. The old stable yards, access to which was obtained through narrow archways, had been converted to car parks. There was even a Chinese restaurant, he noticed, but (here, a twinge of disappointment) not a curry house in sight. He drove past tidy red-roofed houses into the open countryside, Long John Baldry blaring on the tape player. It was a glorious morning with the top down and the wind in his face, the throb of the TR4's engine and just a nip of autumn in the air. He felt as if he'd been reincarnated, the normal routine fading from his consciousness like the dim memory of a past, slightly unsavory life.

The road rose gradually as he left Kirkbymoorside and the gentle valley of the River Rye behind. He had learned from a guidebook that he'd picked up in Charing Cross Road the day before that the North York Moors National Park was essentially an uplifted plateau, broken along the southern edge by an irregular line of limestone scarps, through which a number of south-flowing streams cut channels to the River Rye. The resulting headlands, called “nab ends” by the locals, gazed stonily northward like sphinxes. Thus, as he climbed almost imperceptibly out of the Vale of Pickering into the Tabular Hills, the ground suddenly fell away, revealing a “surprise view.” And few were more spectacular than the view from the village of Farnmoor, through which Powell now drove.

At the edge of the village, where the road began its plunge to the valley bottom, he was treated to a most fetching prospect: the green sweep of lower Brack-endale, sheep-dotted fields, crisscrossed by drystone
walls, giving way on the tops to vast tracts of brown-and-green moorland, tinged with purple, as far as the eye could see. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the bracing air enlivened his senses. Directly below was a cluster of farm buildings set on the wooded banks of the River Merlin.

He started down the steep, narrow road, hugging the inside bank and keeping his eye out for places to pull off in the event of oncoming traffic. He reached the bottom of the hill without mishap, turned up the West Daleside Road, and drove for about a mile until he came to the picturesque hamlet of Brackendale. The village consisted of a row of tidy stone houses, each with its garden sloping down to the river, a general village shop, a teahouse, and a promising-looking pub and inn called the Lion and Hippo. Powell searched his memory for more guidebook lore and recalled that in the early 1800s, workmen quarrying stone for a road at Kirkdale Cave, not far from Kirkbymoorside, had uncovered the ancient bones of animals, including tigers, rhinoceroses, and hyenas—the source, one presumed, of the pub's intriguing name. Pleasant, Powell imagined, to contemplate over a pint a time when lions roared in the forests of Yorkshire and hippos basked in the warm waters of Ryedale.

Powell drove slowly through the village. Just past the pub, a stocky gray-haired man stood on a white-painted bridge over the beck, staring into the gravelly shallows. A woman, who seemed to be waiting for him, stood on the far bank with a Labrador retriever. Powell pulled off to the side of the road and unfolded his Ordnance Survey map. Beyond the village the road crossed over
the river and climbed steeply to the east to the top of Blackamoor Rigg, the narrow ridge of moorland between Brackendale and Rosedale. Marked on the map at several locations were lines of dots, perpendicular to the axis of the ridge, labeled
GROUSE BUTTS.
And there, dead center on the moor, was a tiny rectangle with the notation
BLACKAMOOR HALL.
The country seat of Ronnie Dinsdale, the supermarket magnate. Powell felt the familiar thrill of anticipation that signified the start of a new case, forgetting for the moment the circumstances that had brought him there.

He returned the map to the glove box, eased the car into gear, and set out for Blackamoor Rigg. The road followed the river for half a mile or so, crossed over, then began the steep climb up to the skyline ridge. At the foot of the incline, a road branched off, continuing northward along the east side of the river, a faded fingerpost indicating the way to Dale End Farm. Powell geared down and urged his car up the 20 percent grade. Near the top he had to pull over onto the verge beside a stone-walled sheep enclosure to let a car coming down the hill pass by.

The transition from pasture to heather was sudden and dramatic as the road climbed up onto Blackamoor Rigg. Powell turned north on the main road and pulled off to the side to get his bearings. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud and Powell felt a sudden chill. In contrast to his earlier view of the sunlit tops, the vast expanse of moorland now seemed desolate and slightly menacing. The ribbon of road linking Eskdale and Ryedale disappeared over the horizon, and just ahead, perched dramatically on a rock promontory overlooking upper Brackendale, stood a large house. Blackamoor
Hall, no doubt. Off to the west, he could see the green fields of Farndale in the distance, and to his right the moor dropped off gradually into Rosedale. Powell glanced at his watch—it was ten past one—and wondered what he should do next. There was no point in putting in an appearance at Blackamoor Hall until he had been fully briefed, and that wasn't going to happen until tomorrow morning when he met with Sarah Evans and the locals in Malton. Hardy black-faced sheep grazed at the edge of the road and a curlew cried persistently, as if urging him to make a decision. His stomach grumbled and his thoughts suddenly turned tropical. The Lion and Hippo was, after all, the local pub, and in his long experience as a policeman (he reminded himself, as if by way of rationalization) he had learned that there was no better source of local information. He gunned the motor, spun the little roadster around, and plunged back down into Brackendale.

Except for a man with black hair slicked neatly back, who was behind the bar reading the
Ryedale Times
when Powell walked in, the Lion and Hippo was deserted.

The man looked up. He seemed mildly surprised to be interrupted by a customer. “Afternoon, sir,” he remarked pleasantly. “What'll it be?”

Powell sat down at the bar and surveyed the row of hand pulls. “A pint of Tetley's, please.”

The man slowly pumped the pint glass full of bitter, allowing an alarming quantity of the creamy beer to overflow into the drain. Then he set the glass on the bar and examined it critically. When the foam had settled, he topped it up and placed it in front of Powell. “We like a
good head up North,” he said pointedly, implying that the same couldn't be said down South. “That'll be one pound fifty-five.”

Powell paid and then raised his glass. “Cheers.” He took an appreciative sip. “You the landlord?”

The man nodded. “Robert Walker, at your service.”

Powell quickly sized up the fellow and decided to take his chances. He was hoping that he would find in the publican a knowledgeable but reasonably objective observer who could provide some useful background information. “I'd be interested in your thoughts about what happened to Dickie Dinsdale,” he said.

Walker looked wary. “What's your interest in it?”

Powell handed him his card.

The landlord whistled softly. “I see. It's difficult to know where to begin, Chief Superintendent.” He hesitated for an instant. “One doesn't like to speak ill of the dead, but I suppose it's safe to say that Dickie Dinsdale wasn't very popular in these parts. It was different with his father. Old Ronnie Dinsdale is well respected in the dale. He was fair with his employees and tenants and didn't put on any airs. When he got sick—he's got Alzheimer's, or something like it—he handed over the running of his supermarket business, as well as the estate, to Dickie. Both enterprises have been on the skids ever since.”

“Do you know how Dickie died?”

“They say he was bit by a bloody adder during the farmers' shoot last Saturday.”

Powell raised an eyebrow. Merriman hadn't said anything about an adder. He wondered if he had come all this way for nothing.

“There's quite a few of them round the moors,” Walker volunteered, “but the bite's not usually fatal.” He wiped the surface of the bar with a towel. “Perhaps Dins-dale had a weak constitution,” he added, as if by way of an afterthought.