The Shadow Collector (8 page)

‘God, it’s horrible.’ Harriet stepped forward and reached down to touch it, something Neil hadn’t cared to do.

‘Be careful of the pins.’

She withdrew her hand quickly as though she’d been stung. ‘I made one at school once,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘I made a doll out of candle wax and I stuck pins in it. It was supposed to be a girl who was giving me a hard time. I even
got hold of some hair from her comb and stuck it on the doll’s head.’

Neil looked round. ‘Did it work?’

‘She broke her leg so I’d say that was a result.’ There was a hint of satisfaction in her voice. ‘What shall we do with it?’

‘I’ll need to show it to an expert.’

He walked away from the table and stood by the trapdoor looking down into the cellar. The builders had been working down there,
digging out the section nearest the steps and he could now count thirteen stone steps leading down to the newly uncovered
flagstone floor. The space was about seven feet deep now but there was little more he
could do until more earth had been dug out. He wanted to find out how big the cellar was … and discover what was down there.

‘I want to find out when this basement was filled in,’ he said, suddenly businesslike. The sight of that doll had shaken him
but he was trying his best to hide it.

‘You think there’s a connection with that thing behind the panelling?’

‘Well if there was witchcraft going on here maybe something happened in the cellar. Maybe it was connected to Alison Hadness
and her family filled it in after she was hanged.’

‘So that doll thing might have belonged to her?’

‘It’s unlikely there was more than one witch in the house.’

‘I don’t know. What about the Pendle witches up in Lancashire? A lot of them were related, weren’t they?’

Neil didn’t really feel like speculating until he had more information. ‘Have you got a clean box I can put that thing in?
I’ll take it to Exeter and show it to someone at the museum.’

Harriet left the room and once Neil was alone with the doll in the coffin he experienced a feeling he’d heard described by
more imaginative souls as ‘someone walking over your grave’. It seemed to be smirking at him as if it knew some evil secret,
and he looked away, avoiding its mocking gaze.

He heard Harriet returning with a cardboard box. He couldn’t help fancying her and he suspected that the feeling was reciprocated.
But his survival instinct, honed over the years, told him that acting on that primitive physical attraction would be a grave
mistake. Besides, he’d seen how she
flirted with the builders. She was probably the sort of woman who liked to have power over men. A tease.

She placed the box on the floor and began to rummage inside, spilling snowy polystyrene packing beads on the floorboards.

Neil watched as she thrust her hand inside the box, feeling around amongst the soft white spheres. Then she suddenly frowned,
as if she’d made an unpleasant discovery.

‘I thought it was empty,’ she said. ‘Evan must have left this inside by mistake.’

She brought her hand out slowly and he saw that she was holding something that glinted in the light from the window, withdrawing
it from the box and holding it aloft like the Lady of the Lake wielding Excalibur. It was a knife, shining and sharp. And
the blade looked lethal.

Although his parents and sister were all members of the medical profession, Wesley had always found the business of postmortems
unsettling. Colin Bowman’s habit of providing appetising refreshments afterwards and a pleasant social chat usually made the
situation bearable. But today Colin wasn’t there and, from the impatient look on her face, Jane Partridge wasn’t going to
make allowances for a squeamish detective inspector who really should have developed a harder shell by this stage in his career.

He was glad that Morbay Hospital’s white-tiled mortuary was state of the art, so he and Gerry could stand behind a glass partition
with speakers and microphones instead of at the heart of the action near the smells and sounds of death.

For a while Jane Partridge stood staring at the woman on
the table. Then she began to work, swiftly and efficiently with the minimum of chat, unlike Colin who always kept up a running
commentary of his observations. Wesley found he missed it.

She examined the dead woman’s abdomen and as she delved into the single wound, measuring its depth and angle before studying
the edges with a magnifying glass, she began to speak. ‘I’m sticking to my initial conclusion that the weapon was a long flat
blade, sharpened on both edges so not a carving knife. Possibly something like a hunting knife. Or even a short sword. The
wound is clean and deep so the blade was quite sharp. But even so it would have taken her a couple of minutes to die.’

Wesley found her words chilling. The woman must have been aware that she was dying there in that cold, damp field, away from
all possibility of help with only her murderer for company. She must have lain there knowing that the life was seeping out
of her.

‘Anything else you can tell us?’ Gerry asked.

‘Only to be patient,’ she said sharply.

Gerry bowed his head like a scolded schoolboy and she carried on working in silence, cutting into the body, withdrawing and
weighing the internal organs. The stomach contents were emptied into a bowl and Wesley saw her examine them, sniffing then
wrinkling her nose.

‘She’d eaten a hearty meal an hour or two before death. This might not be entirely accurate but I think she had steak and
all the trimmings. Then some kind of sponge pudding … sticky toffee pudding perhaps.’ Wesley saw her lips turn upwards in
a grim smile. ‘My favourite. I’ll get the stomach contents analysed, of course, but it’s my guess she ate in some pub or restaurant.
This isn’t the kind of food
you usually bother preparing for a solitary lunch, is it? And I know all about solitary lunches, believe me.’

Wesley noticed that a shadow of sadness passed across her face, there for a second then gone and replaced by her usual severe
mask. Eventually she finished her work and as her assistant began to sew up the incisions she’d made in the dead flesh, Wesley’s
phone rang. As he answered it he could see Jane scowling at him.

It was Paul Johnson. And he sounded excited. ‘Sir, the lab’s just been on. That handbag we sent over … they’ve found something
trapped in the lining. It’s a business card. Someone called Dan Sericold – describes himself as a freelance press photographer.
There’s a phone number.’

He glanced at Gerry who was watching him expectantly. ‘Can you read it out?’ he asked, taking his notebook from his jacket
pocket. With no luck so far from Missing Persons and the team’s round of the local hotels, he’d begun to despair of identifying
the dead woman quickly. But Dan Sericold might be the answer to his prayers.

Paul recited the number and as soon as Wesley had made a note of it, he ended the call, relayed the news to Gerry and keyed
in Sericold’s number, switching on the speakerphone so Gerry could hear. After a few moments he heard a voice on the other
end of the line. A growling male voice, the sort that told of a lifetime’s dedication to cigarettes and whisky.

‘This is Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson, Devon and Cornwall police. Is that Dan Sericold?’

There was a long silence before the man replied. ‘Yeah. What can I do for you, Inspector?’ Sericold sounded cautious, but,
in Wesley’s experience, an encounter with a police officer affected a lot of people that way.

Wesley explained. As the man was a press photographer, there was probably no need to dress it up in tactful words. On the
other hand, he didn’t want to say too much and give Dan Sericold a premature scoop.

‘This is in connection with a murder enquiry. The victim had your business card on her when she died.’

Another silence, shocked this time. ‘I must have given my card to hundreds of people in my time and I won’t remember most
of them. What did this victim look like?’

Wesley gave a description of the dead woman, half expecting to draw a blank. But when he heard a note of recognition in Sericold’s
voice he knew he was in luck.

‘It could be Boo Flecker. She called last week and said she was going to Devon to try and get something on some celebrity
taking part in one of those reality TV shows. She’d got a sniff of a scandal and she wanted to arrange an interview … an exclusive.
She specialises – specialised – in investigative stuff.’

The news that the dead woman was a journalist surprised Wesley. She had looked small, vulnerable and fragile, not really his
idea of an investigative reporter. But he supposed they came in all shapes and sizes and he, of all people, knew the perils
of believing in stereotypes.

‘She was freelance but we often worked together. She was good, always on the lookout for a new angle.’ His voice sounded a
little unsteady now, as if the full horror of Wesley’s news had begun to dawn.

‘Did she tell you the name of the celebrity?’

‘Only that he was down to the last two in this show, whatever it was. Something to do with farming, I think. I don’t watch
things like that myself,’ he added with a hint of distain.

Wesley felt a glow of satisfaction. Maybe this would be easier than he’d imagined.

‘Do you know where we can find her next of kin? We need a proper identification.’

‘No idea. Sorry. But I think she came from Yorkshire, judging by her accent. It wasn’t something we ever discussed.’

‘Was she married?’

‘No. And before you ask, I don’t know if there’s a boyfriend on the scene just now … although she was no nun. Boo was a woman
with a healthy appetite.’ Something in Sericold’s voice suggested that he might once have been on the receiving end of Ms
Flecker’s carnal largesse.

‘Is Boo Flecker her real name?’

‘As far as I know. I asked her once what Boo was short for and she said it was Boudicca. Apparently her father was some kind
of historian.’

‘Can you remember anything else about her or the story she was working on down here?’ he said. ‘Anything at all.’ Through
the glass screen he could see the mortuary assistant wheeling the body away to lie in refrigerated peace until someone came
to claim her.

Sericold didn’t answer for a few moments, as though he was trying to dredge something from the depths of his memory. ‘Actually
she did leave a message on my voicemail a couple of days ago but it was a bit vague. I was to stand by. She might need me
to get down there. She said she thought she could be onto something new.’

‘About the celebrity?’

‘That’s what I assumed. She said she’d let me know when she knew for definite. I’ve been waiting for her to
get in touch but she hasn’t. That’s all I can tell you, I’m afraid.’

‘Have you got an address for her?’

He heard a shuffling sound, as if Sericold was looking through a diary or address book. After a while he recited an address
in Southwark and when Wesley asked him whether Boo had lived alone, he said he didn’t know.

‘Have you got a photo of Boo Flecker by any chance?’ he asked, hoping the answer would be yes. The sooner they had a positive
ID, the better.

‘I can arrange to e-mail you the photo she uses for her column. Would that be all right?’

‘That’d be fantastic.’

Once Wesley had recited his e-mail address he ended the call. And a few minutes later the image came through on his iPhone.

There was no doubt about it now. The dead woman was Boo Flecker, daughter of the historian who’d named her after the vengeful
queen of the Iceni. And that meant they had to find out exactly what she was up to in Devon as soon as possible.

It was all too likely that Boo Flecker’s investigation had been about to uncover a secret that somebody was determined to
keep hidden. And men had killed for less.

Written by Alison Hadness, September 11th 1643

I hear that the army is led by Prince Maurice who is nephew to the King himself. I have heard say that his brother, Prince
Rupert is most handsome but I have heard little of Maurice. I wonder if I shall see him
.

They are camped at Hilton Farm, having claimed the place for their headquarters. It is not far from Mercy Hall and I fear
they may come at night, bent on conquest of our town. William says I am foolish to have such fears as his musket is ever beside
him and he will fight to the death to defend our household
.

The weather is foul, all rain, wind and mist. It is to be hoped the King’s soldiers will yield to this sign of God’s displeasure
.

Yesterday I went into the town with my maidservant, Dorcas. The people there no longer smile, rather their faces are stern
and determined, like the puritans many of them are
.

It is said that soon there will be scant food in the market if the farmers cannot bring it from the countryside around. Each
road into the
town is guarded by Prince Maurice’s men and the King’s ships blockade the harbour. I fear what will become of us
.

My husband came to my bed again last night. He complains that there is still no sign that I am with child. It may be that
Elizabeth has put a curse upon me but William will hear no bad word against her
.

Alexander Gulliver wished his mother hadn’t insisted on him taking his stepfather’s name when she married. When they’d studied
Jonathan Swift at school he had been the butt of his classmates’ brand of cutting wit. Going on your travels, Gulliver? Where
are you off to now … Lilliput? Bloody hilarious.

His mother had married Shane four years ago and, after almost three years in London, Shane had made the unilateral decision
to move to the Devon countryside. Gwen had resisted strongly but Shane insisted that he was finding it increasingly hard to
write in the chaos and noise of the metropolis, so he presented his wife with a fait accompli. He’d found the perfect house,
and the payment he received when his first book was made into a major Hollywood film – the action transferred from the East
End of London to a trailer park in Alabama – would fund the move.

Alex, however, saw nothing perfect about the house Shane had chosen. For a start it was in the middle of nowhere, stuck on
the very edge of a very dead village halfway between Tradmouth and Dukesbridge with a twice-daily apology for a bus service.
Shane was a pain in the neck with his insistence on silence in the house when he was working and his intermittent draconian
discipline. And he never let anyone forget what a miserable upbringing he’d had. He’d made a fortune from it with those dreary
books of his. Not that Alex had ever read one. He was
forced to live with the man. He didn’t want him inside his head too.

He’d asked his friend Ben’s dad to drop him off at the end of the lane because he wanted to see what was happening at Jessop’s
Farm. Things had started to look up when the TV people arrived and Jackie Piper’s nubile female fans had begun wandering through
the Rectory garden to avoid the security that had been put on the farm gate while the singer was in residence. Alex had summoned
the courage to talk to a couple of the girls; he’d even asked one out for a drink, although he knew no pub in the vicinity
would be likely to serve him. But once again Shane had put paid to his fun by calling the bloody police. Sometimes he wanted
to kill the man. He’d become a Goth to show Shane that he was different, that he didn’t belong in his world. But Shane had
said nothing. He probably didn’t even care.

At least the murder next door had livened things up a bit. He’d heard the victim was a young woman and he wondered if it was
the one he’d seen a couple of days ago. He remembered her because she’d looked so out of place with her smart red coat and
her shiny boots. At the time he assumed she was something to do with the TV people but now it seemed she’d had a different
agenda. Perhaps he should have told the police about her. At least it would be something to talk about at school. It wasn’t
everyone who became involved in a murder enquiry.

As soon as he’d mumbled goodbye to Ben’s dad, he dawdled down the lane, aiming occasional kicks at the tufts of grass that
grew down the centre of the rough tarmac, the bit untouched by the tyres of passing cars and farm vehicles. He kept his eyes
on the ground. There was no point
looking around because all you could see here were high hedges growing like walls either side of the road. Alex couldn’t imagine
why people from cities raved about the countryside. Maybe it was because they didn’t have to live there and they didn’t know
how boring it was. A bit like death.

When a police car roared past he flattened himself against the hedge and the twisted branches grabbed at his coat. He brushed
them off and carried on walking, his footsteps slowing as he neared the Rectory gate.

If he let himself in quietly he could get his metal detector from his room without his mum and Shane knowing. He’d do a bit
of detecting in one of the fields on the other side of the lane before the light went, anything rather than go home and face
Shane’s unpredictable temper. And he’d heard of people finding hoards worth millions so there was the chance that he might
find some treasure that would earn him a fortune so he could get a place of his own. With Shane around, that couldn’t come
a moment too soon.

He opened the front door and crept upstairs on tiptoe to dump his school bag in his bedroom and retrieve his metal detector,
along with the small trowel he’d pinched from the garden shed. He carried them downstairs and shut the front door carefully
behind him. Once outside he ran down the drive and when he glanced back, he half expected to see an angry face watching him
from the window. But it seemed his arrival and swift departure had gone unnoticed so he carried on past the gate and walked
towards Jessop’s Farm.

He didn’t know the farmer – his mum and Shane had never had anything to do with him – but he’d seen him on his tractor with
his sheepdog sitting up beside him, a brown
and white border collie with keen eyes and an intelligent face. Alex would have loved a dog of his own, a creature to keep
him company and greet him with a wagging tail and an unconditional love he felt he’d never known. But Shane hated animals.

He was almost at the farm gate now and he could see a bored-looking constable standing there on guard. He ignored him and
hurried on, taking a left turn down a narrow lane. When he’d gone a few yards he saw a pair of gateposts on his left, one
leaning at a precarious angle. Beyond the gateway was a dark tunnel of bushes and trees, bending over the drive, blocking
out the light as if it was a place of permanent night. Alex knew this was the witch’s house. They’d been talking about it
at school. People had gone in there and never come out.

He stood for a few moments, staring in horrified fascination. But he knew this wasn’t somewhere you hung about if you were
alone.

He went a little further down the lane and when he spotted a metal farm gate to his right he stopped and leaned on it, gazing
into the field beyond. This was somewhere he hadn’t detected before; virgin territory potentially full of precious things:
coins, golden torques and Viking silver hoards. There were grazing cows in there, black and white and vaguely menacing. When
he climbed onto the first rung of the gate the cows continued chewing like a gang of bored youngsters hanging around the village
bus shelter. Alex knew how they felt.

He lowered the detector down carefully onto the grass on the field side of the gate before clambering over, keeping a wary
eye on the cows who seemed to be edging nearer … or maybe that was his imagination. He switched on the
machine and for a while he was disappointed when the low whine didn’t change pitch as he swept it over the ground. But in
the detecting game patience was everything.

There was a patch of bare soil to the right of the gate, which looked as if it had been disturbed by something, wild animals
maybe. Alex’s idle curiosity got the better of him and when he passed the detector over the area, it began to scream. He crouched
down to investigate with his trowel and when he’d dug down a couple of inches, he saw a glint of shiny metal so he carried
on, heart beating, hands trembling with anticipation.

When he’d finished digging he pulled the object out and placed it on the grass. It was a knife, sharp and lethal. And the
smooth surface of the blade was crusted with something that looked like rust.

The little wooden coffin lay in a cardboard box cushioned with polystyrene packing beads supplied by Harriet Mumford. She
had a lot of packaging around the house, she said – something to do with Evan’s import business. Neil hadn’t taken that sinister
wax doll from its resting place. Instead he had replaced the top carefully and left it lying in situ like a tiny corpse. He
thought it best if the experts who were used to handling old and fragile artefacts, dealt with it. Besides, he didn’t really
fancy touching the hideous thing.

He’d put the box on the back seat of the Mini and, even though he’d always prided himself on rejecting superstition of any
kind, knowing it was there made him uncomfortable.

Making a great effort to concentrate on the road, he tried not to think about his strange back-seat passenger. Instead
he went through his plans in his head. He’d take the doll to Exeter for conservation and then visit a couple of colleagues
at the University who were reputed to know about such things.

He had just reached the difficult right turn onto the Neston road by the petrol station when he put his foot on the brake
pedal, ready to bring the car to a halt. But nothing happened. He pumped the brake again, jamming his foot to the floor, but
the car kept on going, out of control. Foot pumping. Adrenaline pumping. Time suspended.

Then came a bang like deafening thunder and the impact jolted his body sideways. For a few seconds he sat, numb with shock,
before daring to look round. Another car, a small grey hatchback, had collided with him, crumpling the Mini’s front end into
an unrecognisable tangle.

He felt an agonising pain in his ribs and when he looked down he saw he was bleeding and that his legs were trapped beneath
the steering wheel. If he hadn’t been wearing a seat belt he knew he would have been dead.

The woman driving the hatchback emerged slowly from the driver’s seat. He could see that her car had sustained minimal damage,
just a broken headlight and a mildly crumpled bonnet. But the Mini – his faithful Mini that had served him so well over the
years – was a write-off.

The woman was opening his door. She was elderly with a hairdresser-fresh grey coiffeur and the tears trickling down her face
made dark tracks in her thick foundation. ‘Are you all right?’

He didn’t reply because he didn’t know the answer.

‘You just shot out in front of me. I couldn’t stop in time,’ she said, full of breathless apology.

He was confused, unsure what to do, what to say. The
woman looked as stunned as he felt. Thank God it wasn’t some bloke full of testosterone and road rage.

‘I think my brakes failed,’ he gasped.

‘Keep still. Don’t move. I’m calling an ambulance.’ She took a tiny mobile phone from her shiny leather handbag and punched
out 999. Neil could see her hands were shaking.

He put his hand down to his abdomen and felt round tentatively. He was hurting like hell now and when he lifted his hand away
he saw that it was covered in blood. As he listened to the woman making the urgent call he felt light-headed, as if he’d had
too much to drink, and he tried very hard to focus on his surroundings because he knew that if he didn’t stay conscious, he’d
be finished.

He turned his head painfully and caught sight of a small pale figure lying next to the gear stick, grinning up at him, malevolent
and triumphant.

Then he lost his fight and felt himself drifting into oblivion.

As soon as he’d left Morbay Hospital, Wesley called a former colleague at the Met. He needed somebody to visit Boo Flecker’s
address in Southwark. Then her next of kin had to be found. Dan Sericold said he was coming down to Devon and would get in
touch as soon as he arrived. Everything was in hand but Wesley felt impatient for a result. He wanted to know more about Boo
and what, if anything, she had discovered while she’d been in Devon.

Jane Partridge hadn’t hazarded any opinion about the killer’s nature or state of mind. Unlike Colin Bowman who was always
happy to share his theories, she’d only given them the bare facts so it had been up to Gerry and Wesley
to speculate, using each other as a sounding board for each possibility, wild or mundane.

They were making for the car park when Wesley’s phone rang and, for once, it was good news. Zac James had just been picked
up speeding on the M4, heading for London. He was being brought back to Tradmouth and would be at the police station by six.
Another late night. Another takeaway in the office.

‘Chinese, Indian or fish and chips?’ Gerry asked, as if he’d read Wesley’s mind.

‘We had Chinese last night,’ he replied absentmindedly, just as his phone began to ring again.

After a brief conversation, he ended the call. Gerry had begun to walk ahead and Wesley quickened his pace to catch up.

‘That was Traffic. There’s been a crash on the Neston road. It’s Neil …’

Gerry’s features rearranged themselves into a worried frown. ‘Is he OK?’

‘They’ve taken him to Tradmouth Hospital and he’s asking for me.’ He looked at his watch.

‘If you want to go …’

Wesley hesitated. ‘He’s got no family nearby so … I’d ask Pam to go but she’ll have the kids.’

‘You go, Wes. But don’t be too long. Zac James’ll be in Tradmouth in an hour or two.’

Wesley felt dazed as he drove back to Tradmouth with Gerry sitting silently beside him in the passenger seat. He steered automatically
down the familiar roads, hardly aware of his surroundings, the news about Neil dominating his thoughts. He dropped Gerry off
at the police station and continued on to the hospital, dreading what he might
find. Neil had been a constant in his life since his student days. Always the same, mildly unworldly and slightly anarchic
with an almost religious dedication to the world of archaeology. Friends like Neil seem indestructible. But fate can play
unpleasant tricks.