Witchmoor Edge

Witchmoor Edge

Mike Crowson

Millicent Hampshire and the
Witchmoor Edge CID

Copyright 2000 Mike Crowson

Smashwords Edition 2010

Witchmoor Edge

Chapter 1: Sunday 12th August

A narrow boat doesn't go very fast, but it doesn't
have brakes. The Lucky Lady eased round the bend in the Leeds and
Liverpool Canal, where Witchmoor merges indecisively with the
Shipley area of Bradford, and Joe Davis at once pushed the gear
shift into reverse.

If you have any ideas of the Lucky Lady
screeching to a halt, like an old time steam train, engineer in a
panic at some obstacle on the line - forget it. The boat simply
slowed from a quick walk to a slow walk, to an amble, and the craft
drifted slowly towards the scene attracting Joe's attention.

Ahead firemen on the left bank were directing
two jets of water across the canal at the burnt out shell of what
appeared to have been a warehouse on the right bank. There were
signs of activity on the other side too, behind the building. A jet
of water could be seen arching through the morning sunlight,
creating a little rainbow over the smoldering ruin. You couldn't
see the source of the stream of water though.

More water was running from the smoking
building, onto a small stone quay and thence into the canal. Close
to the left bank, a ladder appeared to have fallen into the water
and a fireman was vainly attempting to retrieve it. Joe shifted the
engine into neutral and let the Lucky Lady drift idly towards the
towpath at that point, and bump to a halt a few feet away.

He strolled to the bows and propelled the
boat along by pushing on the bank with his hands until it was
within an arm's length of the ladder, before he tied it to an
unevenness in the towpath. Joe noticed that only one end of the
ladder was floating and wondered why both ends hadn't either sunk
or floated.

"Morning," he said.

"I dropped the ladder and it fell in the
water," the fireman said unnecessarily. "Now it's just out of
reach."

"Watch you don't drop your helmet in as
well," Joe remarked , and leaned over the side to catch hold of the
floating end of the ladder.

"Here," he said, passing the end of the
ladder up to the man on the bank.

"Thanks," the fireman said and pulled. "Seems
to be stuck," he added a moment later.

Joe reached down from the 'Lucky Lady' and
pulled as well, grasping the ladder nearer the water. It did seem
to be stuck.

"Together," Joe grunted. "One, two, three
..." They pulled together and the ladder came up, pulling with it a
body, arm and shoulder stuck through one of the rungs.

"Well," Joe said ruminatively, "that's what
were stopping it. Think yon body has anything to do wi' t'
fire?"

"Maybe," the fireman answered. "Be quite a
coincidence if there was no connection at all. I'd better notify
the police. They might want to look for any more bodies if they've
got the divers to spare."

"Nice day for a dive," Joe remarked and
started to light up his pipe.

Joe was not old. He was barely 50, but he had
the mannerisms of an older man, phlegmatic and unhurried. He had
seen drowned men before and helped two of the firemen to get the
body onto the towpath. The dead man was in his early 40s, of medium
height, dressed in a formal shirt and tie and dark trousers. He
looked like a casually but elegantly dressed professional man of
some sort. He had a visible head wound where he had been hit with
something hard and heavy. Joe didn't think he'd got that bang
falling into the water, but he didn't comment on it.

When the man was laid out on the towpath and
the police called, the fire brigade turned off one of the hoses and
began packing their equipment away.

"When did it start?" Joe asked, standing a
few feet from the bows of his narrow boat and leaning against the
bank. He nodded towards the burned out shell.

"Someone called us about half past midnight
this morning," the fireman said. "It was well alight by then. The
fire must have started on the other side of the building, because
it was all but gone when we got here. Woman over this side called
us."

"I thought it was all empty and boarded up,"
Joe remarked. "It was due for demolition any time."

"Then it might have been workmen left
something behind," the fireman suggested. "Anyway, the police might
want to look into it and see if the body's connected."

The siren of a police car could be heard
approaching. "Sounds like they're here now," Joe said, and took his
pipe from his mouth to examine it. It had gone out, so he took a
lighter from his pocket to relight it.

* * *

Detective Inspector Millicent Hampshire propped
herself up on a pillow and took stock. Sun was streaming through
the curtains and the room had a pleasant, rather dappled feel to
it. Millicent was feeling this patchwork of colour appropriate to a
meandering and rather aimless patchwork of thoughts and memories.
Her mother had been from Belfast while her father had been - still
was in fact - Afro-Caribbean. She was approaching forty and a
detective with one hell of a reputation and a driving, rather
obsessive need to succeed. She was quite tall for a woman at over
5'10", which is a respectable for a man, and looked a little prim.
She was easy on the make up and straightened rather curly hair to
make it no more than wavy and she did not tint out the odd grey
strand. However, she did visit the gym regularly and she was both
trim and fit.

The prim image was misleading. For a start,
Millicent was much more approachable than she seemed and, apart
from a fiery temper when roused, easy to get on with. She was
popular with colleagues and subordinates and a good leader, who
drove herself harder than she did others.

What Millicent was considering now was
another reason why one would not call her prim, and perhaps
contributed to why she was such a good detective. Ever since she
could remember there had been insights or visions, in which puzzles
and problems became transparent and she was almost always able to
spot a lie.

It was not something to talk about too much, and over
the years Carlos was the only person she had discussed her psychic
insights with, but her late Spanish policeman husband had been
blown up in an ETA car bomb incident years ago. Her daughter Ana
had been brought up by Carlos's parents in Seville. Millicent
regretted too late that she had not shared her daughter's
childhood, and let the years wash past her. She sighed.

The phone rang. Even in August at a weekend a
detective was liable to be called from her headquarters, and no one
else was likely to be calling her.

"Blast," she muttered and picked it up.
"Hampshire," she said.

"D.S. Gibbs here. Sorry to bother you off
duty, but I wanted to check an idea I had with you before I okayed
it."

Millicent knew that he didn't really like
deferring to a black woman who'd been fast tracked up the force. He
regarded her a bit as a token woman and felt that he had deserved
the promotion. Or rather, he had felt like that, but Millicent
Hampshire had the army background to give her a thick skin and she
was a good cop, for which he could take a lot. She preferred to
delegate where she could and at least what he was calling about now
didn't sound like something that needed her to go into work this
morning.

"Yes?" she queried.

Gibbs told her of the fire and the body. "I'd
like to get a couple of divers down there to take a quick look for
anything else. What gave him that blow to the head and so on. If we
wait till the post mortem report it might have gone cold."

"Nice day for a dive," Millicent observed.
"Go ahead if there's anyone available right now."

When Gibbs had rung off, she stirred herself
and climbed out of bed, crossing the carpeted floor of the cottage
to the bathroom. It was one of those well modernised eighteenth
century houses that are so prized by estate agents and their
customers: stone built and mellow, just small enough to merit the
description 'cottage' and the images that go with it, but large
enough to be practical when modernised. The corner of Baildon it
occupied was quiet on a Sunday morning.

As Millicent put the kettle on to make coffee
and slipped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, she
thought she would like to go up on the moors that afternoon, to try
and find the twelve apostles - a stone circle that was shown on
maps but which she'd never actually visited.

* * *

It was, as both Joe Davis and Millicent Hampshire had
observed, though in rather different circumstances, a nice day for
a dive. Two constables with appropriate training from the Leeds
Police HQ were wondering how they could spend a lovely day on duty
when the request for a diver came in. Now they were both quite
enjoying the work in the canal.

The fire brigade had gone, to be replaced by
Detective Sergeant Gibbs and a couple of uniformed officers in
shirt sleeves, relaxing in the sunshine. There were tapes across
the towpath, blocking off the work area, but that hadn't prevented
several onlookers from gathering and two more boats had joined the
Lucky Lady. There was another barge with a smart looking young man,
a girl in shorts and tea shirt and an older woman. There was also a
small motorboat piloted by a scruffy looking teenager and an old
man. Joe Davis still leaned against the bank and smoked.

The divers weren't looking for anything in
particular and DS. Gibbs was just fishing so to speak. Then one of
the men broke surface, dragging something behind him. He swam to
the bank and took the breathing tube mouthpiece from his mouth.

"You'll be interested in this," he called up
to Gibbs, who came across to investigate.

"What?" Gibbs asked.

"Another body," the diver said.

Gibbs called over the two uniformed men.
"Give him a hand," he ordered.

The second diver surfaced and swam over.
Together the 4 of them heaved the dripping body out of the water.
The corpse dragged up and laid on the towpath was that of an older
teenager.

"It
is
interesting," Gibbs remarked to
Davis. "I wonder what the connection is between the two
bodies."

It was a rhetorical question and Joe didn't
answer it, at least not directly.

"And what the connection is between t' fire
and t' bodies," Joe said.

"That too," Gibbs agreed.

* * *

The moors above Baildon are Ilkley Moors and they
were neither quiet nor still. The wind was only light but it
stirred the heather and whispered through the rough grass. Bees
hummed softly and the cry of the odd curlew and bleating of sheep
provided a soothing background to the sound of Millicent's stout
shoes on the path. The weather was as glorious as August can be:
dry, sunny, gentle.

The moors, though alive with sheep, birds and
insects, were empty of human life. Millicent had seen nobody for
some time but she was mildly surprised to someone among the
standing stones. As she approached she watched the man walking
round the outside of the circle, arms stretched out in front of
him.

Closer to him she watched with a frank
interest and saw that he was holding a bent metal rod in each hand.
The rods were steady most of the time but swung inwards suddenly.
As they did so, the man turned outwards and began looking for
something far away on the horizon. He nodded as if satisfied and
turned towards Millicent.

"Good Afternoon," he said with an almost
pedantic politeness.

"Hello," Millicent answered. "I didn't mean
to be rude, but I take it those are dowsing rods."

"Exactly so," he said, holding both rods in
one hand and holding out the other. "Tobias N'Dibe," he added.