Grave Stones (21 page)

‘Hello.’

Matthew managed a smile. Eloise simply regarded her steadily, dislike sharpening her small features so she looked even more like her mother. It didn’t help. ‘Hello, Joanna.’ Eloise spoke finally. ‘Looks like you’ll be seeing even more of me in the future.’

Joanna couldn’t dream up a suitable response.

Matthew stood up. ‘Shall I pop some lasagne in the microwave?’ he said awkwardly.

She answered without turning her head. ‘That’d be nice. Thanks.’

He disappeared into the kitchen and Joanna settled into the armchair opposite. ‘So,’ she said to Eloise, ‘how did your interview go?’

‘They’ve offered me a place.’

Joanna’s heart sank. ‘Will you take it?’

Eloise was watching her. Too much perception in the green eyes. Her father’s eyes. Her father’s beautiful eyes.

She nodded. ‘I haven’t had the formal offer yet,’ she said. ‘There are the tiny fences of A levels. They’re bound to want high grades for entry, but I would like to go there. I was impressed with the university campus and the quality of teaching. It’s one of the best for practical medicine. Besides…’ Her eyes were still resting on Joanna, challenging her. ‘I’d like to be near Dad. He can help me with my studies and things.’ She smiled. ‘I’m going to struggle with chemistry and they’ll insist on that to gain entry.’ She hesitated before her next sentence. ‘Don’t worry, Joanna, I’m not about to try and intrude on your little Arcadia but he is my dad and I’ve missed him in the time since he left. I’d like to stay close to him.’

Right on cue, Matthew walked in with a tray of food and three tall glasses.

‘So,’ he said, with hearty jollity. ‘Shall we toast?’

‘It could be a bit premature, Dad.’

‘No,’ Joanna said softly. ‘Let’s toast. To you, Eloise, to the grades that you need and to having your father near you.’ She felt happy, relieved. It would work out – surely?

Matthew popped the cork from some sparkling wine and the three of them drank, more companionable than they had ever been before.

Eloise sipped from her glass. ‘And to you, Joanna,’ she said. ‘Congratulations.’

The green eyes looked perceptively deep into hers and Joanna flushed then drank the toast.

It was later when Matthew asked her about the events of the day.

‘Extraordinary,’ she said. ‘I don’t want any of this coming out.’ She gave a warning glance at father and daughter. ‘But Grimshaw’s wife turned up, right out of the blue.’

Matthew threw his head back and laughed, and she knew he wasn’t laughing because of what she’d said but because he was happy. Genuinely happy. After a second or two she and Eloise joined in.

‘Is nothing safe, nothing predictable?’

Joanna took a thoughtful sip of the wine. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘this has been the last straw. For a simple homicide it is proving to be the most frustrating of cases. Every time I think I know something it turns out to be false. It’s pissing me off, quite honestly.’

‘How does this affect the daughter’s inheritance?’ Eloise asked the question slowly.

‘We-ell,’ Joanna pondered the point. ‘Mrs Grimshaw will be the next of kin. Grimshaw died intestate. It might go to court for an expensive argument. Judy doesn’t strike me as the forgiving sort and there’s patently very bad blood between mother and daughter. Unless she and her mother have more to tell me and they
have
been in touch, this has been nothing more than a pointless charade. I’d say that they’d be well advised to come to a private agreement and keep it out of the courts. Of course, there’s no predicting what will actually happen.’

‘Hmm,’ Matthew said, grinning. ‘A three-pipe problem?’

She was tempted to aim a cushion at him.

But sitting, drinking quietly as father and daughter chattered, she rolled a few possibilities around in her mind. Was it possible that Judy had shown Dudson the letter to provoke him? To murder? Had Mrs Grimshaw returned out of the blue coincidentally or to claim her inheritance?

Was her reappearance cause or effect? Had she killed her husband?

They were questions she badly needed the answers to.

Breakfast was a stilted affair with Eloise appearing, yawning, pushing the blonde hair out of her eyes, wrapping herself tightly in a dressing gown over a pair of pink pyjamas. She looked very young, much younger than her eighteen years, almost the small girl Joanna had first met when she had visited Matthew’s farm once to question him about the murder of a nurse. Eloise accepted some cereal and fruit juice and swigged away at an enormous mug of coffee Matthew had brewed.

‘Well,’ Joanna said awkwardly, standing up and clearing her dishes into the dishwasher. ‘I have to go now. Good luck,’ she said to Eloise. ‘I hope you get your place.’ She gave a sly peek at Matthew. ‘Your father will love to see more of you.’

Eloise’s green eyes gave her a look so transparent Joanna could read their message:
Not you, though.

The two women smiled at each other and Matthew
looked happy, taken in by the charade.

Joanna kissed his cheek, then, feeling a wave of affection at the scratchy bristles, his mouth. ‘Bye, darling,’ she said. ‘See you later.’

He nodded. She ran upstairs to clean her teeth and minutes later was on her bike, which Mike had managed to stow in the back of his Volvo last night.

As she cycled across the moors her mind was as furiously busy as her legs. Question after question presented itself. Who was the friend who had recognised Mrs Grimshaw? she wondered. Because this supposedly chance encounter had set in motion a train of events. If Mrs Grimshaw was telling the truth, her discovery, living under an assumed identity, had been the key that had led to her return home. What bearing might this have had on her husband’s murder? There was one way to find out.

Even though Joanna shared one characteristic with most other police officers – a mistrust of anyone’s statement – the answer was inescapable. Ask her.

Mike almost groaned when she put her suggestion to him. His dark eyes rested on her with a look of impatience. ‘I don’t see where that’s going to lead us, Jo,’ he said grumpily. ‘The murder was committed here, not abroad. It’s a local thing. A squabble about land, resentment about the intrusion of a farm on a posh housing estate, a false claim of murder of our victim’s wife, a daughter who stands to benefit from her father’s death. It all happened in Leek. So it’s here that we need to look for motive and method. Not some
bar in Eastern Europe. Grimshaw had never even been out of the country. So why would there be a foreign connection?’

She was surprised at Korpanski’s outburst. Whatever her line of inquiry, he generally went along with it. Not opposing. He tended to trust both her judgement and her decisions. Unbidden, a vision of the inside of the barn at Prospect Farm swam in front of her eyes. Plastic sacks of animal feed, the rope, dangling free, the oblong bales of hay, neatly stacked. ‘There is a foreign connection,’ she said stubbornly, ‘but we won’t know what it is unless we probe a bit more.’ She attempted to retrieve Korpanski’s missing good humour. ‘You know how I hate loose ends, Mike.’ She picked up the phone.

Mrs Grimshaw was in an equally negative mood when Joanna put her question to her. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she snapped.

‘Mrs Grimshaw,’ Joanna said. She was getting fed up with all this. ‘Just give me the name and let me decide what, if any, bearing this has on your husband’s death.’

There was a long pause, so long that Joanna was on the point of asking the question again, but Mrs Grimshaw finally grunted and provided the name. Reluctantly. Joanna had the impression that she had caught Grimshaw’s widow on the hop. Whatever questions she had expected, this had not been one of them. Ergo, she did not have an answer prepared.

‘Brian Young,’ she said, the name being dragged out of her. ‘He was an old school friend of mine, years and years ago. He wandered into the bar where I was
employed and – well – he recognised me. I knew then that the game was up, that he would soon spread the gospel.’ The bitterness in her voice was a puzzle to Joanna. Avis Grimshaw could easily have moved on to another city, another country, even, and vanished again even if her cover
had
been blown. It would have taken the police years to catch up with her; she would have been a low priority on the long list of criminals.

Avis continued. ‘He never could resist being the centre of attention and seeing me there, going under the name of a neighbour he knew to be dead – well – I didn’t have a chance, did I?’

‘His address?’ Joanna repeated, unwilling to be deflected. Sulkily, Mrs Grimshaw gave it to her. ‘I don’t know the actual address,’ she said, ‘but he owns a garage on the Ashbourne road. He lives above it – on his own – in a flat. He and his wife split up years ago. I don’t know who his current partner is. When he was in Bratislava, he came alone.’

Joanna thanked her and put the phone down. ‘Brian Young,’ she said thoughtfully to Mike. ‘Now why does that name ring a bell?’

Korpanski supplied the answer. ‘He came out of prison eight months ago.’

‘What was he in for?’

‘Drugs. Quite the little baron. He had a ring that extended down to the south of Spain, using the back door of Morocco, smuggling in marijuana. Made a nice packet out of it right up until he got busted by the Drugs Squad.’ Korpanski nibbled the top of his
pen. ‘Now, I wonder what he was doing in the Czech Republic.’

‘Right.’ Joanna was thoughtful. ‘What did we discover about this end of the operation?’

‘Not a lot,’ Korpanski said, then added, ‘not enough really. We tracked down some of his accomplices but never felt we had the full story. And he wasn’t telling. In the end they banged him up for eight years. He was out after three.’ He gave a long, heartfelt, regretful sigh. Had it been up to Sergeant Mike Korpanski, the entire parole system would have been scrapped.

Joanna stood up. ‘Well, Korpanski, let’s go and visit this Mr Young.’

They tracked Young down to the workshop at the side of a very busy and prosperous-looking site. Queues of cars were waiting to fill up with fuel. There was a rumour of yet another price hike in the oil industry so customers were taking no chances. Young was standing with his head under the bonnet of a blue Honda Jazz and looked up warily at the two police, recognising them instantly. It’s a talent most ex-cons have – the ability to recognise police personnel at forty paces – even if they’ve never met before. It’s a useful instinct in the criminal fraternity.

He didn’t even question their identity or wait for them to flash their ID cards before speaking. ‘I’ve done my time,’ he said. ‘You’ve nothing on me now.’

Joanna decided to play him along.

‘Your visit to Bratislava,’ she began.

Young looked instantly even more wary. ‘So, what of
it? I’m allowed a legitimate holiday, aren’t I?’

‘Of course,’ Joanna said soothingly. ‘I’m only really interested in someone you met over there. An old school friend?’

Young looked bemused.

‘A Mrs Grimshaw.’

‘Oh.’ His brow cleared. ‘Her. What of it?’

‘You didn’t know she was there?’

Young wiped his hands on an oily rag. ‘Not only did I not know she was
there
,’ he said. ‘I understood she’d vanished. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I walked into the bar and there she was, serving at tables. She’d walked out on her husband years ago. No one knew what had happened to her. Like most people round here, if I thought about it at all I just assumed she’d gone off with a man. She always was a feisty sort of woman. Not your typical farmer’s wife. It gave me a shock to see her. And I don’t think she was too pleased to see me either. She started off asking me not to say anything to anyone at home.’ His eyes were pale blue and surprisingly shrewd with tiny, sharp pupils. He smiled with his teeth without it even grazing his eyes and Joanna guessed that he had not reassured Mrs Grimshaw that he would keep quiet. He was more likely to have tried to blackmail her. She returned the smile, noticing that he had omitted to mention that his old school friend was living in a foreign country under an assumed name. ‘Next thing I knew,’ Young finished, ‘I heard she was back. And then—’

‘Her husband gets bumped off,’ Korpanski supplied.

‘Exactly.’

And that, Joanna thought, was that.

She decided to rattle Young. ‘And how did you enjoy your…’ her pause was deliberate, ‘holiday, Mr Young?’

Young scowled.

She tried one more tack. A blind leap. ‘What was the name of the bar? Where exactly was it? Who owned it?’

‘It’s called Posh.’

Joanna couldn’t resist a smirk at Korpanski.

‘It’s in the Old Town just behind the main square. Fantastic place, it is. Must be worth a fortune. It was packed every night I was there. Heaving.’

Now Joanna was curious. ‘What sort of a place is it?’

Young shrugged. ‘Bit of everything. Music, cabaret, food, drinks. And round the back is a sort of motel extension. Must be twenty or thirty rooms. And the grounds. Well…’ He narrowed his eyes.

‘Who owns it?’

Young looked surprised. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Avis does,’ he said.

This was food for thought. Joanna and Mike exchanged startled glances. It wasn’t exactly how Avis had portrayed her missing years. ‘Really?’

They left Young to his mechanics then and returned to the station.

As soon as they were safely back in their office, Joanna began to speak. ‘Not quite the penniless barmaid then, was she?’

Korpanski shook his head.

She continued. ‘What bearing this’ll have on our investigation I don’t know, Mike. But it is significant.’ She met his eyes. ‘Where did she get the money from, Mike? How did she make so much?’ She hesitated for a moment before adding a question. ‘Do you smell a rat, Mike?’

‘Property’s probably done well over there since the mid-nineties. She could have done it legitimately.’

Joanna said nothing.

He tried again. ‘She’s obviously a good businesswoman. She could have borrowed the money and made the whole thing work.’

‘Under a false name. Open to blackmail,’ she continued. ‘But if her business over there was legitimate except for her assumed name, she could still have continued. She’d have to have come back here, assumed her own identity, had her wrists slapped. But if on the other hand she was up to something more…’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘There’s something else, Mike. Something we’ve missed out on.’

For no apparent reason the image of the barn was still in front of her eyes, nagging for her attention. The neat bales of hay, the plastic sacks of animal feed, the rope swinging, almost beckoning her to follow.

She knew the clue was there. Right in front of her eyes.

When she looked up, Korpanski was watching her with a strange, almost worried expression in his eyes.

‘There’s something in this that intrigues me, Mike,’ she said.

He perched on the corner of the desk, swinging his muscular legs to and fro. ‘What exactly?’

She met his eyes with a hard, confident stare. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said slowly, ‘except coincidence. Mrs Grimshaw remains hidden for years, a fellow from Leek finds her. She returns and the next thing her husband’s dead. She openly tells us she was on his premises on one of the days that he could have died. This knowing she would be chief suspect. Why? Why? All along I’ve felt time of death was significant. A false trail was laid deliberately to lead us to believe that Jakob Grimshaw died on the Tuesday, in which case Avis could have spoken to him. But we’ve surmised that the Tuesday was a false trail.’ She frowned. ‘Why? To give Judy an alibi? One we could never break – a list of patients waiting to see her. Did mother and daughter have contact in the intervening years? Is their apparent hostility nothing but a clever device to make us believe they could not have worked together, covered for each other? How did Avis Grimshaw make all that money? A lot of evidence leads us towards Jakob’s wife and daughter but it isn’t the entire story. The farm is encircled by a ring of hostile neighbours who all have their own reason for wishing the place off the map. The Westons, for animal rights reasons; Mrs Frankwell, to get a good price for her property; Mostyn, who stands to gain if his land beyond the farm is granted planning permission; Frankwell, who is desperate to sell his house and has been deceived by the old farmer.’ She couldn’t resist a smirk, remembering the deep scratch that had scored
the side of the Porsche. ‘I can’t see Gabriel Frankwell being too pleased at being made a fool of by Grimshaw, can you? Then there is the wild card, that after years, generations, of clinging on to the farm, Grimshaw may have been about to sell up. And we have more. A daughter who has believed her mother dead for eight years, that her father murdered her and disposed of the body in a most barbaric way. If her story is true, Judy Grimshaw held this story to her heart for more than a year before she divulged it to Dudson, the neighbouring farmer, the man she’d believed her mother might have had an affair with but who fairly obviously had not eloped with her.’ Her eyes met Korpanski’s. ‘I don’t have to tell you; these are all powerful ingredients for catastrophe. But did one event cause the next, were they a sequence of events, a pack of cards, and if so, which circumstance is the most significant?’

She reached for the phone again. ‘Mrs Grimshaw.’ The snappy tone of the returning voice made Korpanski wince.

‘I just wondered whether you’d met up with your daughter yet?’

‘I don’t see that it’s any business of yours, Inspector,’ Avis replied acidly. ‘It has no bearing on the murder of my husband.’

‘I simply wondered what her response to you might have been.’

Avis’s response was swift and unmistakable. ‘Mind your own bloody business.’

Joanna replaced the phone and gave a wry smile at
Korpanski. ‘Friendly as ever,’ she said. ‘Nice family.’

Korpanski simply grinned. ‘Flea in the ear, Jo?’

‘If I wasn’t such a lady,’ she said, ‘you’d be getting the two-fingered salute, Sergeant. Now concentrate.’

She frowned. ‘We’re still missing something, aren’t we?’

Korpanski nodded glumly. ‘The whole bloody lot if you ask me.’