Scaring Crows (2 page)

‘All right. But.'

‘Besides that, Matthew.' She wiped a peephole in the window to peer along the empty valley. ‘It's just too isolated.'

He stood behind her, criss-crossing his arms around her body. ‘I know. That's what makes it so wonderful.

The whole valley, all to ourselves.' He spoke into her thick, dark hair.

She was still facing the window, watching how the dusty glass blotted out the sun. ‘And in the snow?'

She felt him squirm. ‘I know it'll be a bit tricky in the winter but in the summer ...'

‘A bit tricky?' She moved away, crossed the room and shoved the kitchen door open. ‘We'd be cut off down here, stuck, in the valley. The snow will drift and lie for weeks.' Her voice was a hollow echo rolling around the room. It sounded disapproving, dismissive.

Matthew gave a brave smile. ‘Four-wheel drive?'

‘Even with a four-wheel drive we'd be stuck. You know as well as I do these isolated homes need helicopter drops for their groceries in a really bad winter.'

‘Great.' He followed her into the kitchen. ‘Four days, log fires. Steamy sex by the fire.'

‘Yes,' she said, exasperated now at his complete lack of practicality. ‘We could play snowballs or go sledging, make love until the snow melted. What might be a bit more difficult is your work as a pathologist and mine as a Detective Inspector. You think they'd send a chopper out for me every morning or for you for every urgent post mortem?' She didn't allow her eyes to rest on the cracked sink, the leaking tap, the horrible poky smallness of the place.

He was beginning to look disappointed so she modified her disapproval. ‘Maybe we could manage it if we were nine to five but we're not. We could be called in at any time of the day or night. Matthew,' she appealed to his reason, ‘we have to be available.'

He lounged against the door, a shaft of sunlight catching the thick, honey blond hair and she knew he had yet to concede defeat.

Matthew could be stubborn. He found her hand. ‘Let's go upstairs.'

But the first floor proved even more of a mistake. Once they had negotiated the steep, narrow staircase with a couple of slats missing, they found a tiny bedroom painted navy blue and another one pink. Just two rooms and no bathroom. Empty except for a white china potty standing in the middle of the floor underneath a blast of sky blue where both roofing slates and plaster board were missing.

Joanna had an overwhelming desire to escape. ‘I've seen nicer cells in Her Majesty's Prisons.'

Matthew looked disappointed but he tucked the details back into his trouser pocket. ‘All these little cottages with land are getting snapped up,' he said, ‘if they come on the market at all. The families hang on to them for generations. Handed down from father to son. You know what farming people are like. They never let go of property or land. It's like a superstition with them. And if they do have to sell their farms they get bought by speculators who wave their magic wands and hey presto one small, isolated cottage becomes valuable prop, with barn conversions, holiday flats and rural setting. And then they're unaffordable.'

But however right he was she had no desire to live here. It was a relief to clatter down the stairs and walk back out through the door into the blaze of sunshine. Staffordshire, this summer, was as hot as the south of Spain. Joanna took a deep gulp of the air and raised her face to the sun, glad to leave behind the fustiness of the derelict cottage.

Shackleton had pushed the door open a little wider and was staring into the room as though it was the set of a horror-film.

But not all the bloodthirsty movies spewed out of America, or the clever effects of make-up artists or contortions of stuntmen could ever have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes.

Death is much uglier than the filmmakers dare to portray.

It took him a fraction of a second to back out of the door, through the porch, down the steps, carve a way through the distressed cows and into his tanker. Too panicked to manage his usual three point turn he reversed all the way back down the lane to the neighbouring farm half a mile away.

She knew the time had come for her to be brutally honest or Matthew would continue to hope.

She didn't want to live here.

She found his hand and pressed it to her cheek. ‘It isn't for me, Matthew. I don't want to live so far from civilization.'

He smiled at her and for the first time she knew he did understand her misgivings. His smile was warm. ‘Not even with this nice little stream?'

She shook her head.

‘There'll be kingfishers,' he said, ‘ducks and wagtails.'

She smiled back at him, knowing he was teasing her now. ‘Well, the only birds I can see at the moment are a couple of magpies and a hedge sparrow.'

‘You're hopeless,' he said. ‘Where is your soul, your poetry, your imagination?'

‘Waiting for a nice little house on the edge of a village,' she said, ‘within walking distance of the local pub, cycling distance of work and not too far from the main road in the event of snow.' Matthew closed his eyes for a moment. She knew he was disappointed and she felt the familiar guilt that she had let him down, again. ‘We'll find somewhere soon. I promise.'

‘Will we?' There was more than a simple question in his face. There was doubt too. ‘It's taking longer than I thought. It's been two years since I left Jane. And we're still not really together, are we? I'm sick of being on the top floor of Alan and Becky's. I want a home, Jo.'

Shackleton had managed to pull the milk tanker on to the yard of Fallowfield and sat, too dazed to move, until finally he acknowledged the hum of the milking machine. Here was one farmer whose daily habits were not disturbed. Pinkers was late with the milking again.

Shackleton staggered into the milking parlour and ran the gauntlet of swinging tails until Martin Pinkers saw him, straightened slowly and pushed a cow out of the way. ‘Hello, Dave. Anything the matter?' In response to Shackleton's dazed terror he put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Dave,' he said. ‘What the hell is it?'

‘Get the police,' Shackleton mouthed hoarsely. ‘Get the police.' Panic was making him breathless.

‘Dave?' Pinkers tried again. ‘What's up?'

‘Hardacre,' Shackleton gasped. ‘Aaron and Jack. Lying in the sitting room. Martin,' he said. ‘Somebody's shot them.'

They were heading back to the car when Matthew stopped her. ‘You do want to be with me, don't you?'

‘Of course.'

‘Only every time we look at somewhere you find fault with it.'

A light breeze stirred the leaves and a tiny, wispy cloud blotted out the sun for a brief second. The magpies began a chorus of harsh, scolding squawks. ‘Because I'm beginning to wonder,' Matthew continued quietly, ‘if it isn't the house that there's something wrong with.'

And in a flash of perception he added, ‘Could it possibly be that to share a home with me might sometimes mean sharing it with Eloise too?'

Matthew could be so perceptive but she could never afford to be a hundred per cent honest with him. So she evaded the issue, glanced at her watch again. ‘I have to go.' She started towards the car, ignoring Matthew waving a sheaf of estate agents' details. ‘There are others you know.'

Right on cue her radio phone crackled and with a feeling of relief she held it up to her ear.

‘Detective Inspector Piercy.'

‘Sorry to interrupt your search for paradise.'

She recognized the voice at once. ‘That's all right, Mike. Was it anything special?'

‘There's been a shooting at one of the moorland farms. First reports suggest two people dead. The bloke that phoned said it was the farmer and his son.'

She recognized the familiar surge of excitement even while she gathered the early details.

‘Whereabouts?'

‘Hardacre Farm. Just off the Buxton road towards Flash. And while you're at it I suppose you'd better bring Leek's answer to Bernard Spilsbury with you.'

She took the jibe on the chin. ‘I certainly will.'

‘I'll see you there then.' And he gave her brief directions.

Matthew was watching her. ‘What did Korpanski want?'

She was always uncomfortably aware of the antagonism between the two men, at the same time powerless to do anything about it. ‘There's been a double shooting at one of the remote farms.'

Already she could sense his excitement as he slipped the maroon BMW into gear. ‘Fill me in on the details of the case, I'll drive if you can give directions.'

He bumped the car up the unmade track, wincing as it struck a stone. She caught his eye and smiled but said nothing. At the top of the valley they travelled along the high ridge, across the moor until they came to the Mermaid Inn then they dropped down towards the town, turning right along the main road to Buxton.

‘What details have we got?'

‘He just said a double shooting, sounded like father and son.'

Matthew jumped to the same conclusion she had. ‘Murder and then suicide?'

She bit back a smile. ‘Give Korpanski a chance,' she said. ‘He's just on his way over there now. Even Tarzan can't solve crimes until he's been to the scene.'

She was quiet for a moment, thinking private thoughts. Murder was always like this, a tightening of the stomach, a combination of excitement, exhilaration and nausea. And then there was the further worry, of getting it right.

Glancing across to Matthew she knew his mind was moving along the same tracks. He too would have his role to play.

They turned off the main road and approached the remotest part of the moor, high farmland. Full of secrets.

11.05 a.m.

They could have found the farm without Mike's directions, merely by following the police car screaming along the ridge until it turned off along a narrow lane.

Matthew made a face. ‘How they do love the drama and the noise. And what's the point? The poor sods are dead anyway and all the police cars in the world aren't going to bring them back to life.' He took his eyes off the flashing blue light for a moment to give her a wry smile. ‘Almost certainly some poor, isolated chap has flipped his lid and blown his son's head off then realized what he's done. Or the other way round,' he added.

‘You're prejudging. And you're being unfair.'

He shook his head. ‘No. I just prefer to play things down, rather than up. It isn't drama. It's just life and a rather sad end to a life at that.'

She said nothing but watched his long fingers wrapped around the wheel, steady; yet she knew inside he was excited. As a forensic pathologist, this unravelling of a person's last hours was his obsession. It brought him alive, as her work did to her. They might see the case from different angles, his from tangible evidence yielded by the body and hers from that of the killer and the evidence left behind at the scene of the crime. But underneath the flow of adrenalin was the same and she knew had they not been lovers they would still have worked twin-close to solve cases. Their relationship merely made it easier – sometimes.

Abruptly Matthew twisted the wheel to follow the police car which had turned left and disappeared behind clouds of dust and flies.

And then they were forced to stop.

A milk tanker was partly blocking the way, slewed half across the lane, drunkenly parked. Already the crime was creating visible evidence. Matthew pulled the BMW up and they climbed out and walked between the clusters of still flashing cars to the clumps of people; uniformed officers plus a couple of casually dressed men who Joanna took to be the tanker driver and possibly a neighbour. She picked Mike Korpanski out easily, blocking the doorway to the farmhouse, built like a gladiator and a couple of inches taller than the rest. She walked briskly towards him and registered the relief on his face when he saw her.

‘It's a bit of a mess in there, Jo, what with the heat and all that.' He was staring across the fields as though to abstract himself from what she knew must be carnage inside. It had to be that to have made his face so fish-green.

She gave him a quick, sympathetic nod. ‘Two bodies, you said?'

He grimaced his answer.

‘Father and son?'

‘Looks like it.'

‘So what's your first impression, Mike, a murder followed by suicide? A crime of isolation? A quarrel?'

His eyes still held that haunted, abstracted look even though he spoke casually. ‘I dunno. At least I wouldn't like to say, not yet.' And some of the old Mike peeped out. ‘It isn't something you can guess at, Joanna, but the furniture's not tipped. There's no sign of a struggle.'

He moved aside and she glanced ahead at the porch.

It was a Victorian addition to the stone farmhouse, perhaps intended to sweeten the plain facade, or merely to bring it up to date. Inside was both hot and brightly coloured, the sun streaming through blue and red-leaded glass, turning it to sapphires and rubies, stirring old memories of church singing, chanted psalms, windows peopled with the Saints. Had it not been for the clouds of buzzing flies she might even have been tempted to linger and postpone the moment of entry. But one landed on her arm. Huge, fat, iridescent blue. She shook it off in disgust and spoke to the nearest uniformed constable.

‘Get some fly spray, Scott, for goodness sake. Get rid of these damned flies.'

Maybe it was apprehension. Perhaps a portent of certain things to come or even more probably it was a natural loathing for the flies and their lack of respect for dead bodies. But they repulsed her to an extent which she knew even then was unreasonable.

She led the way into the room beyond.

It was a small, dark living room, square, with a couple of doors off, a window opposite and a chill, damp atmosphere, even on a blistering hot day. At first sight it seemed dark shadows striped the walls, the floor, the furniture. It took her eyes a moment of adjustment to realize the stripes were from splattered blood – and worse.