The Death of the Elver Man (14 page)

From the distance came a scream and the sounds of panic as the birdwatchers reached the hide and made their grim
discovery
. Derek waited for a few minutes knowing they would run around a bit and stare out over the Levels, frantically searching for the perpetrator. When the noise died down again he risked a quick look and spotted them beating a hasty retreat along the footpath. He tried to count heads but they were too far away to be sure they’d not left someone behind. He decided it was too risky trying to get back the way he’d come. They’d stop at the first building they got to and ring for the police, so it was time to get as far away as possible. He rose to his feet and began to lope over the land, careful to keep the mounds between him and the hide. The Shapwick Rhyne was between him and the other footpath but it wasn’t far to the footbridge and on to the main road. He reckoned he’d be halfway back to his cottage to change his clothes before the coppers got there.

The first policemen to arrive peered round the door and recoiled in horror at the scene. Two of the birdwatchers had stayed behind and they were taken off to one side to be
questioned
as witnesses. The police worked quickly to preserve the scene and waited for the crime techs to arrive with the police doctor but they were hampered by the remoteness of the hide. They’d left their car on the drove, unable to get beyond the tiny bridge except on foot and they had been in a hurry to get to the scene, leaving even the minimum amount
of equipment they carried back in the patrol car. Standing outside the hide they tried in vain to get a clear signal on their radios, the occasional squawks and clicks only
increasing
their frustration.

‘Looks like it’s clouding over,’ remarked the senior officer, eying the sky. ‘Better get the plastic sheet out of the car before it starts to rain.’

The junior PC opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it and set off at a jog across the water meadows.

‘Put some effort in! Go on, you can do better’n that,’ shouted the senior after him, before turning his attention to the two birdwatchers who were hunched together miserably a few yards away.

The main party arrived along the Moorlinch road and were able to get their flotilla of vehicles within a few hundred yards of the crime scene. The doctor entered the hide, pronounced the victim dead and left very quickly, looking a lot more pale than when he’d arrived. The cause of death was obvious and the time wasn’t in much doubt – as the pathologist pointed out, the body was still slightly warm and the pool of blood surrounding the corpse hadn’t even congealed.

‘Single knife slash across the throat, from behind I’d say. Almost certainly right-handed from the angle. It looks as if the victim was kneeling at the time. No bindings on the wrists or ankles but there are signs of a blow to the side of the head – here, see – delivered a few minutes before death. There’s more bruising on the forehead at the front, possibly from falling.’

The dry, analytical tones of the pathologist painted a
chilling
picture of Big Bill’s last few minutes and the officers from the newly formed Special Action Group from Taunton stood in a semi-circle outside the hide, glancing at one another and occasionally out over the Levels in case the perpetrator of this horror still lurked amongst the witheys.

‘Any idea who he is?’ the pathologist asked.

‘I know him,’ said an older PC standing on the fringes. The Taunton officers turned to look at him. ‘It’s William Boyd. Big Bill he’s called.’

This information was greeted by silence.

‘Go on,’ prompted the Special Action Group Sergeant.

‘He’s Derek Johns’ right-hand man. Just released from Dartmoor – on Friday I think. There’s going to be hell on about this, if someone’s going after the Johns gang.’

‘We don’t know that yet,’ said the Sergeant,’ so let’s just do it by the book. Right, whoever did this arrived and left on foot – no-one heard a motor vehicle so he must have been close by when they arrived.’ He jerked his thumb at the birdwatchers.

‘Lucky they weren’t five minutes earlier then,’ said the young PC who’d returned from the car with his now-
redundant
piece of sheeting.

‘Lucky for who, lad?’ asked the Sergeant. ‘Not lucky for Mr Boyd here, that’s for sure. Five minutes might have saved his life.’

The junior PC ducked his head, wishing the ground would suck him down into it, away from the stares of his colleagues.

As the clouds closed in, the specialists moved quickly to photograph and record as much of the scene as they could. An Inspector arrived to take charge and the PCs were dispatched in pairs to scour the immediate vicinity, looking for anything that might show where the killer had made his escape.
Meanwhile
, the birdwatchers were finally allowed to leave, having given their initial statements. Just as a fine drizzle began to fall there was a shout from the team out by the two humps.

‘What have you got?’ demanded the Sergeant, peering at the ground.

One PC was hunched over a patch of mud and crushed grass trying to shelter it from the rain.

‘Looks like a footprint sir,’ his companion said.

‘Well, go and get a photographer will you? We can’t cast it in this and it’ll be gone it in a minute. And you … ‘He pointed to the hovering PC. ‘Don’t you dare move an inch.’

‘Right Sarge,’ came the muffled reply.

Back at the hide the junior PC shuffled around the outside
of the structure trying to keep out of everyone’s way. His partner spotted him and, taking pity on him, called him over to the door.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘look around here, see if there’s anything useful.’

The junior scanned the ground but there was nothing to be seen. Besides, he thought, there’s been a whole party of birdwatchers and a load of specialists, police and doctors, not to mention the staff from the mortuary waiting off to one side with their gurney. The area around the hut was
hopelessly
compromised and he was just wasting time, especially as the drizzle continued to fall. Still, at least he could hear what was being said inside. Eager to learn, he looked round the entrance.

‘Smooth, single edged blade, extremely sharp from the look of the wound. Possibly a curved blade, at least five inches long I’d say,’ said the pathologist.

‘Like a fishing knife,’ said the PC. The group around the body turned to stare at him.

‘A filleting knife,’ he went on, ‘and I think it was a Normark.’

‘How the bloody hell do you come to that conclusion,’ snapped the Inspector. The young PC swallowed nervously and pointed to a scrap of leather shaped like a fish tail caught on the rough wall near the door.

‘That’s off the sheath to a Normark knife,’ he said.

‘Could have been dropped by anyone,’ said the Inspector gruffly.

‘With respect sir, it’s got no blood on it but the wall behind has so it got here after the murder. Of course, we can check but I can’t see any birdwatcher carrying that sort of fishing knife.’

The ensuing silence was broken by the pathologist.

‘Well done, I think you may be right. The wound
certainly
seems to fit.’ He nodded at the PC as the Inspector ordered a member of the team to photograph and bag the little emblem.

‘Yes, well spotted, Constable …’

‘Constable Brown, sir.’

‘Constable Brown – well, good work. I think we’re almost ready to get Mr Boyd out of here. Tell the chaps from the mortuary to come in will you?’

Brown stepped out of the hide, grateful to be away from the glare of unwanted attention and the thick, metallic stink of the body. His hands were shaking and he was desperate for a cigarette. It was his first murder, for serious violent crime was rare out on the Levels and he was relieved to have
survived
this far without throwing up or disgracing himself. He jumped as his partner appeared from round the side of the hut.

‘Reckon we should be going now,’ he said. ‘We’re not needed and there’s so many coppers here the villains’ll think it’s Christmas in town.’

Together they made their way back across the fields, now sticky with mud as the rain began to fall in earnest.

‘What do you think then?’ Brown asked. ‘Some sort of
vendetta
against the Johns gang?’

‘Who knows. Maybe they’ll all kill each other, make our lives a bit easier. Come on, I’ll buy you a sandwich when we get back to town.’

The search began to wind down as the rain persisted and even the most optimistic of officers acknowledged their quarry was miles away. The hut was scoured one last time for trace evidence before it was cordoned off in an attempt to keep the idly curious and the vicarious thrill-seeker away. The
mortal
remains of Big Bill Boyd made the journey back to the mortuary at Taunton as the Special Action Group headed off to their new headquarters to draw diagrams and flow-charts and type up their notes on their new computer terminals. Out on the Levels, Derek Johns stripped off his dirty clothes, cut them into pieces and fed them into the fire one bit at a time. When he’d finished he boiled a tub full of scalding water and scrubbed himself to remove any trace of Big Bill or the bird
hide. When he’d done he sat brooding in front of the dying embers of the fire, a glass in his hand as he tried to erase the memory of Bill’s face as he pitched forward in a fountain of blood. Finally, half way down the bottle, the glass fell from his hand and rolled away into a corner and Derek slept.

Alex opened her eyes on Wednesday morning and lay for a moment in her warm bed, puzzling over the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. For several blissful moments she searched her memory in vain before she realized it was
that
Wednesday, the day she had been dreading for a month.

She struggled out of bed trying not to groan as she looked around her room and realized she was not ready. Despite all her intentions, she’d managed to avoid packing her overnight bag and from the look of the laundry bin that overflowed onto the floor in the corner she was probably going in shorts and T-shirt. There was a knock on the door and Sue peered in, up uncharacteristically early and bearing a cup of coffee.

‘Here you go. I thought you might need this.’

‘You’re a life-saver.’ Alex took the beaker and sank back onto the bed sipping the caffeine-laced drink with gratitude.

‘You’re not packed, are you?’ said Sue. Alex shook her head, her attention on the hot coffee.

Sue sighed heavily. ‘Avoidance is not a coping strategy you know.’ Alex glared at her but did not reply.

‘Do you want me to sort out your papers and stuff while you’re in the shower?’ she said.

Alex put down her empty mug and groaned. ‘What I want is not to have to go,’ she snapped.

An hour or so later and they were on their way. Sue had elected to drive, partly as Alex was ‘not really a morning
person
’, as she so delicately put it, and partly as her car was both more comfortable and more reliable. It was a beautiful day as they bowled through the Somerset countryside. Alex, though, appeared a picture of misery as she stared out at the fields and trees.

‘Come on, it might not be that bad,’ said Sue. ‘We may just have a couple of days of crashing boredom interspersed with someone else’s cooking.’

‘I like cooking,’ Alex grumbled. ‘And if we’re unlucky we’ll have two days of crashing boredom interspersed with Garry ranting about team players and the need for objective
professionalism
. Or blatant indifference as I call it.’

‘You really are a miserable cow in the morning,’ said Sue. ‘It’s an away-day not a public execution.’

Alex returned to looking moodily out of the window,
wishing
she could get out of the car and walk on the grass or sit quietly beside the stream she could see running away into the distance. She was working too hard, she knew.

‘Well yes, we all know that,’ said Sue.

‘Did I say that aloud?’ Alex said anxiously.

Sue laughed. ‘Better now than half-way through the
meeting
,’ she said as she turned the car off on to a gravel drive and they jolted across the forecourt to park at the Hall.

Inside it was chaotic as people milled around with
overnight
bags, briefcases and various items of what Alex
mentally
termed ‘comfort luggage’. Her own comfort luggage consisted of her Walkman, six tapes of operas and three
novels
, just in case she got enough time and privacy to enjoy them. Sue’s, she knew, contained two bottles of red wine, a corkscrew and a short-wave radio. Gordon was leaning on the reception desk smiling calmly at the mob as it swirled
around the space. He raised a hand in greeting as the two women ploughed across towards him.

‘Morning,’ he said, ‘Glad to see you. I wondered if you’d make it or manage to be mysteriously ill.’ He looked at Alex as he said this and she felt herself flush. She hadn’t realized how obvious her dislike of the whole idea had been.

‘Actually,’ she countered, ‘I woke up about six and decided I wasn’t coming. I was going to get Sue to tell Garry I’d
broken
my ankle but when I woke up a bit later I realized that probably wasn’t the best of plans.’

Gordon burst out laughing. ‘Well, if you’d actually broken an ankle just to get out of this then I guess we would have to take your reservations seriously,’ he said. ‘Oh, hold on, stand to attention everyone.’

The door swung open once more and Garry swept into the lobby dragging a set of matching luggage on wheels – large case, round sports bag and matching shoulder bag, all neatly clipped together with a tartan luggage strap.

‘Guess who didn’t have to pack his own bags,’ Alex
murmured
to Sue.

‘Neither did you,’ she retorted.

Garry pulled up at the desk and looked around, holding up his hand for silence. The cheery hubbub died away and the group waited to see what he would say. Somehow everyone knew this little speech would set the tone for the rest of the stay.

‘Right, welcome to you all,’ he began, almost as if he owned the Hall. ‘Now we’ve a lot to get through so perhaps you could collect your room keys and we could all meet down here in, oh say, 20 minutes? Please remember your Priorities files – I hope no-one has forgotten to bring them.’ Here he glanced at Alex. ‘And we will begin with coffee and introductions in the Seymour Room – over there on the right.’ He pointed to an imposing doorway on the far side of the lobby.

Alex shuffled over to the counter, collected her key and began a long tramp up the grand (but fake) medieval
staircase
, around an impressive (but also fake) minstrels’ gallery,
through a rather gloomy smoking room decorated with stuffed animal heads (unfortunately not fake) and finally to the end of a dim corridor where two rooms stood side by side. She wondered who was next door as she jiggled the antique-style brass key in the lock before finally flinging the door open to reveal a slightly disappointing interior decorated in a style best described as ‘hotel bland’. She unpacked her case and was peering out of the window at the parkland that stretched away into the misty distance when her door was flung open and Sue burst in and flopped on to the bed.

‘Well, it’s all right, I suppose, but I was rather hoping for roaring open fires and a four-poster bed after that trek through architectural history,’ she said.

Alex smiled at her friend. ‘I’m so glad you’re next door. I was dreading finding Alison – or even Garry.’

Sue shivered at the thought, ‘Don’t worry about him,’ she said. ‘I expect he’s got a nice perch, hanging upside down in the attic.’

Giggling like a couple of naughty children they made their way back towards the stairs, stopping in the smoking room to stare at the hunting trophies. ‘Just nasty,’ was Sue’s verdict.

As they emerged onto the balcony of the heavy-beamed entrance hall they heard the sound of voices coming from the training room.

‘Better hurry,’ said Sue. ‘We don’t want to be the last ones in. They always get picked on.’

‘One thing’s bothering me, you know,’ mused Alex. ‘He was doing quite well until the end of that little speech. We all know each other so why do we need to do ‘introductions’?’

After the debacle of the previous day, Derek knew it was only a matter of time before the inevitable man-hunt arrived at the cottage door and there was a lot of stuff to get rid of before that happened. He was tempted to just burn the place down immediately and make his escape, but he’d put a lot of thought into his plans and he wasn’t going to let a little run of bad luck destroy it all. Anyway he knew fire was extremely
unreliable when it came to hiding evidence, especially where dead bodies were concerned. The police and fire brigade had all sorts of tricks – dental records, measuring skeletons and stuff like that – so even a badly burned corpse could still be identified. He couldn’t risk them finding out about Frank, not before he was finished.

There was definitely an odd smell in the kitchen even with the freezer locked tight, and when he lifted the lid the stench increased dramatically. Derek screwed his face up in disgust but he made himself lean over to examine the contents. There was still an awful lot to get rid of, he thought, and there was the problem of the bones, but he’d been thinking about that. More urgent was the need to make it hard to identify the remains. Head and hands, he thought, that’s the key to it. Head and hands – without those they had no chance. He dropped the lid and went into the kitchen to fetch his
butcher’s
saw and a block of wood to prop under the neck. The freezer was definitely not doing its job properly and Frank was looking very much the worse for wear. After a moment’s hesitation he fetched a plastic bag. Getting it over the lolling head was a difficult and messy task but finally he was ready to cut. The smell was just as bad, but at least he didn’t have to look into those watery grey eyes as he worked. Derek had hunted all his life, butchering his own catch without a second thought and laughing at those soft or squeamish folk who turned away from fur coats or stuffed animals, but that cold, empty gaze seemed to stare at him accusingly from the freezer. He shook his head as if to clear it and bent to his task.

‘Hello everyone, I’m Sally, Sally Forbes and I’m your
facilitator
for the next two days.’

‘What the bloody hell is a facilitator?’ whispered Sue.

‘Haven’t a clue but I have a ghastly feeling we’re about to find out,’ replied Alex. Garry turned his head, searching for the person responsible for this insubordination and they both slid a few inches further down in their hard plastic chairs.

‘Now,’ continued Sally brightly, ‘you know who I am so
let’s all introduce ourselves shall we?’ There was a horrible silence as the whole group stared fixedly at the floor, willing themselves somewhere else.

‘Well, I’ll pick someone to start, shall I? Let me see, how about you?’ She pointed at Sue, who gave a tiny groan before shrugging and saying, ‘I’m Sue, I’m a probation officer.’ There was a pause before Sally trilled, ‘Tell us a bit about yourself and could you stand up please so we can all see you.’

‘Okay, my name is Sue …’

‘And I’m an alcoholic’ came a voice from the other side of the room.

‘Not yet but soon, probably,’ countered Sue as a ripple of laughter swept around the room. Garry scowled and looked as if he wanted to get to his feet but Sally stopped him with a gesture.

‘I understand you might all be feeling a bit nervous and humour is an excellent ice-breaker but let’s focus on the
process
shall we.’ She turned back to Sue with a patronizing smile. ‘Go on.’ Sue glanced sideways at Alex. It was going to be a very long day.

Derek waited until it was fully dark before slipping out of the back door, locking up carefully before making his way over the marshy land to the lay-by on the back road where he’d left his car. He dumped the two carrier bags in the back on a tarpaulin that lined the boot, sealing it against
accidental
spillage. One of the bags was leaking a bit and seeped out onto the tough fabric; Derek muttered a curse, making a mental note to clean it on his return. He drove through the darkening landscape using dipped headlights as he wove his way through a maze of narrow tracks and by-roads with the ease of one native-born. There was no-one else on the road at this hour between people going out for the evening and the pubs throwing them back into their cars at the end of the night. Most cars used full lights to navigate the tiny roads with their screens of earth banks and witheys and it was easy to spot another car from the splash of lights up to a
mile away. He pulled over almost into the hedgerow a couple of times, turning off his engine and waiting as the occasional vehicle drove past in the opposite direction, the driver
oblivious
to his presence.

Finally he reached his destination, out past Edington where the Avalon marsh stretched away in bleak emptiness.
Gathering
his burden from the boot he tramped over the broken earth until he reached the leading edge of the peat cuttings. Here the rich land was sliced and removed in wedges to make compost for greenhouses and sometimes used to revive exhausted soil. It had been a local industry for centuries but now it was coming to an end as conservationists and wildlife experts raised concerns about the damage to the land, the loss of wildlife and the impact on the flocks of birds who lived there. Operations were being scaled back, planning
permission
for new digging was routinely denied and the
existing
cuts were abandoned to lie fallow and recover.

At the edge of one of these Derek stopped and looked around before stepping into the shallow pit left by the
diggers
. The bottom was already beginning to ooze as the water from the low-lying table began to reclaim the area. He pulled out a short handled spade, purchased from the Army and Navy surplus store in Bath, and began to dig. He dropped the hands in the smaller of the two holes and covered them with about nine inches of soil. Peat was notorious for preserving just about anything buried in it but it was very unlikely
anyone
would disturb this area for a number of years now it was set aside and he doubted the fingerprints would survive long in the moist conditions. Still, he pondered the problem of the head. There had been that body found somewhere, pulled out of a bog after thousands of years. It was all leathery and dried up but the people who found it had been able to tell how he died and even what sort of things he’d eaten by looking at the teeth … He really did not want to have to look at the head again but it was too risky just burying it. The world was full of nosy dog walkers – and unexpected birdwatchers, he remembered. He tipped the head out on to the bottom of the
cutting and rolled it over with the tip of his boot. The eyes stared at him as he picked up the shovel, set it against the mouth and smashed the teeth. As he felt the tip of the shovel bite into the mouth he was overcome with nausea and turned away, struggling to control himself. After a few moments he turned back to his task and pushed the mutilated head into a deeper hole a few feet away. ‘Bye Frank,’ he muttered,
shovelling
the dirt down on to it. It amused him briefly to think of Frank pickled in the bog long after everyone he’d know was gone. When he was finished and had done his best to remove all trace of his presence he made his way shakily back to the car that waited hidden under the trees lining the road.
Somehow
revenge didn’t make him feel better. It was hard work and at the end of it he’d still lost his son.