Witchmoor Edge (3 page)

Lucy pulled a face. "You'd think the killer
would stick a label on him," she said. "What happened to his
driving license?"

"No wallet, empty pockets," said Millicent
shortly.

"I suppose," Tommy remarked, "that Musworth
didn't have it?"

"Unfortunately not," Millicent said. "but
that's an idea, though. Maybe Musworth had it and dropped it in the
fire."

"It'll be fried then," said Lucy, and went
out to talk to missing persons.

"Baked," Millicent said to Lucy's back. "Now
get on with it," she told the other two.

In less than ten minutes Lucy was back. "I
think I may have a name for your corpse," she said.

Millicent looked up. "Listed as missing?"

"I drew a blank with missing persons, but
when I tried the front desk for recent reports, the desk sergeant
remembered a very insistent woman coming in late afternoon Sunday,
towards the end of his shift. A Mrs. Shirley Hunter. She was trying
to report her husband Simon Hunter missing. I've got you an
address." She opened her notebook but Millicent interrupted.

"I think we'd better talk to this Mrs.
Hunter," she said, rising from her desk, "And you can come with
me."

* * *

Millicent rang the doorbell and waited.
Detective Sergeant Lucy Turner stood a pace or so behind. The house
was modest for the area, but it was an expensive, luxurious area,
not quite Witchmoor, more up towards Cullingwoth. There was quite
an extensive garden, at least at the front, and a double garage
with the doors open. A small red Fiat was parked inside one bay,
but the other was empty.

"Looks like there's someone home," Lucy
observed in her slightly Birmingham accent. She had only been with
the Division a couple of months and Millicent was sometimes
irritated by her weird sense of humour. She was, however, a
promising addition to strength of the department, and Millicent
could put up with a lot, if it meant another good detective.

Hampshire was about to ring the bell again
when the door was opened by a woman in her late thirties. She was
tall and slender with short mousy hair which looked expensively
styled. Millicent showed her warrant card and introduced
herself.

"I thought they told me to wait until Tuesday
to see if he turned up," the tall woman said.

"You are Mrs. Hunter," Millicent asked, and
the woman nodded.

"Shirley Hunter," she answered.

"We're making enquiries about a fire
alongside the canal on Saturday night," Millicent said.

"You're not from Witchmoor Police Station,
then?" Mrs. Hunter observed.

"Oh yes," Millicent told her. "We heard from
the front desk that you had reported your husband Simon as missing
yesterday?"

"I haven't seen him since Saturday," Shirley Hunter
said. "I tried to report him missing, but they said wait a couple
of days and see whether he turns up."

He probably had, Millicent thought. "I see,"
she said. "Do you have a photograph of him? May we come in and ask
a few questions?"

The woman held the door wide without saying
anything and shut it behind them.

"Go through into the lounge," the tall woman
said.

"You said you were Shirley Hunter I think?"
Millicent said, as they settled themselves in a light and airy but
somehow soulless room overlooking a medium sized rear garden,
mostly lawn. Lucy took out a notebook and sat ready.

"That's right," the woman agreed. "Shirley
Hunter."

"And your husband was Simon Hunter?"

"That's right. There’s a fairly recent
photograph there." She pointed to a framed picture on the wall.

Millicent stood up and walked over to get a
closer look. There was no doubt at all that it was the same man as
the one pulled from the canal.

"I'm afraid," Millicent began, turning back
to Mrs. Hunter, "that his body was pulled from the Leeds and
Liverpool Canal on Sunday morning."

Shirley Hunter didn't say anything, but
Millicent didn't think she looked particularly shocked or
upset.

"I shall have to ask you to formally identify
the body," Millicent continued, "but there's no doubt in my mind
from the photograph that we're talking about the same man. You said
you tried to report his disappearance at Witchmoor Police Station.
When was this?"

"Latish on Sunday afternoon." Shirley
replied, looking silent and subdued, but still not visibly upset.
"Simon was violent and bad tempered and after what happened on
Saturday I though it might help calm him down if I could say I was
looking for him."

Millicent was interested. "And what did
happen on Saturday?" she asked.

"Simon decided we were going for a picnic up
on the moors," Shirley began. "We left about eleven thirty, drove
up there and set out a meal beneath a few trees overlooking the
reservoir. Simon got into a rage about a mosquito bite. He was
throwing things around in a temper and some of them at me, so I
locked myself in the car. When he fetched a lump of wood to break
in, I drove the car at him and knocked him down. I got out of the
car to see if he was all right and he got up and chased me off. I
went back a bit later and he was gone and so was the car. I haven't
seen him since."

"How did you get back home?" Lucy asked.
"Walk?"

"I didn't go home, at least, not until
Sunday. Simon had dropped his mobile phone, so I used it to call a
friend from work who picked me up. I went shopping with her, then I
stayed the rest of the night with her and her partner."

"You said 'a friend from work'. What do you
do for a living?" Hampshire asked.

"I'm a charge nurse at the Bradford Royal
Infirmary," Shirley said.

"And your friend's name?"

"Ellen Barnes."

"She’s a nurse too?"

"She's a ward sister."

Millicent considered. "You said you hoped to
calm him down," she said. "Was he often violent tempered?"

"Often. He'd fly into a rage at the least
little thing. Not just with me, either."

"A mosquito bite wasn't much," Lucy
observed.

"It was enough," Shirley answered. "It bit
him, but it would have been all the same if I'd bitten him."

"You didn't seem altogether shocked that he
was fished from the canal," Millicent said, changing the
subject.

"Shocked?" Shirley Hunter seemed to consider
this for a few seconds. "When I was much younger," she said, "Just
a girl. I had a dog. It was very old at the end, and had heart
problems and couldn't see. When he died it was something of a
relief and no surprise at all, but it was still a shock. I feel
that way about Simon. I can't pretend I'm sorry; I'm not surprised
considering the way he went missing, but I'm a bit shocked all the
same."

"You were not surprised to hear of his death,
then?"

"Not really. He was mean and bad tempered. He
exploited people. I think he was having an affair, or had been. He
was very grasping in his business. It's no surprise that he pushed
somebody too far. I'm a bit surprised at the canal though, because
he could swim. Perhaps he’d been drinking."

"Was he often drunk?" Millicent asked.

"Not usually," Mrs. Hunter said. "He
sometimes went on a bender and got really drunk, but not often.
Oddly enough he was usually less violent when he was really
drunk."

"How long have you been married?"

"Four years. Simon was my brother's business
partner and seemed charming. I only found out afterwards what he
was really like."

Lucy Turner looked from her note taking and
asked, "Why didn't you just leave him?"

Mrs. Hunter hesitated again, but Millicent
thought she was reflecting rather than inventing.

"I had decided to go into the nurse's hostel
temporarily. It was all arranged and if you'd come tomorrow I might
not have been here," Shirley Hunter said. "As to why I didn't do it
before ... Partly, I suppose because he was my brother's partner
and it seemed like letting my brother down. Partly because you just
hope things will change. After last Saturday I realised they
wouldn't."

Millicent decided against any mention of the
morphine at this stage, better Shirley should not be put on her
guard if she had any involvement at all. She realised, of course,
that an ill treated wife who was a nurse would have both a source
of morphine and the knowledge to use it. As to motive, maybe the
worm had turned.

"Could you take us to the picnic spot?"
Millicent asked.

"I'm not sure about driving straight to it,"
Shirley replied, "but I could certainly find it again. The place is
pretty well etched on my memory."

"Then I think we’ll go there if you can spare
the time."

Shirley got up. "Can I get us a cup of tea
before we go?" she asked. "I don't know whether you need one, but I
certainly do. Whether or not I looked shocked, I am rather."

"Good idea," Millicent conceded. Shirley
Hunter had paled a little under her make up and her hands were
white and trembling a little, so perhaps it had been a shock, as
she said.

Lucy Turner stood up, very short - only just
tall enough to qualify for the police - her height emphasised by
the tallness of Mrs. Hunter. "I'll go with you, Mrs. Hunter," she
offered.

Millicent gazed out of the window at two
magpies on the lawn. She remembered the old children's rhyme about
magpies that began ‘One for sorrow, two for joy...’ Two for joy.
Who was going to be lucky this time?

* * *

DC Gary Goss crunched through the rubble in the
street behind the burnt out shell of the warehouse. DC Tommy
Hammond picked his way more carefully after him, flicking off the
dust settling on his neatly creased trousers.

"I wasn't able to get into the building until
first thing this morning," Ted Johnson from the Fire Investigation
Branch was saying. "The 999 call came in just after 20 past
midnight Sunday morning from a Mrs. Evans at 47 Edward Mews, just
across the canal. The fire seems to have started on this side, so,
by the time it could be seen from across the canal, this side was
well away. The building isn't safe in places and we'll need
demolition immediately."

"What are these road works," Tommy asked,
stepping over a short trench.

"I gather," Johnson said, "that it was
Yorkshire Electricity who dug up the road in the process of cutting
off power before demolition. That makes one of my discoveries very
interesting indeed."

"How d'you mean?" Goss asked.

"Someone had taken a power line from that
street light to the building." He pointed to a lamp standard less
than a foot from the building at one corner, and quite with reach
of a window.

"Why?" Tommy asked.

"There are two possible reasons I can think
of," Johnson replied. "Firstly, somebody may have needed light for
something they were doing and some sort of interruption or accident
started the fire."

"And the other reason?"

"It might have provided power for a timing
device, so the fire could be started when no one was around, but in
that case it failed."

"There was some one around?"

"There was a body in the stairwell leading
down to the lower floor and the exit at canal level. It was a young
black or mixed race male of uncertain age. The fire spread up
rather than down, so he probably died of smoke inhalation before
the fire got anywhere near him. He was taken for autopsy an hour or
so ago."

This was the third death around the fire. What on
earth were the connections between the bodies and the fire. What
the hell had Simon Hunter and the two youths been doing?

Detective Constables Goss and Hammond went
next to see Mrs. Delia Evans, who had reported the fire. Number 47
was the end house and the garden reached virtually to the canal.
Tommy strolled to the end of the street, where a low wall was
broken by a few steps leading down to the towpath beside the canal.
He peered down, mostly to get his bearings and size up the lie of
the land before listening to Mrs. Evans.

There was somewhat more cloud than there had
been on Sunday, but the view was still pleasant and the scene calm.
A slight smell of old ashes hung on the air, drifting across from
the ruin on the other side of the canal, and a barge chugged its
leisurely way along the canal, rippling the glassy quality of the
water. A little to the left was a road bridge over the water. Was
it possible that the bodies had been dumped from a vehicle?
Probably too far he thought.

Tommy turned and walked back to number 47 and
Gary Goss rang the bell.

A sudden yapping indicated what Mrs. Evans
might have been doing so late on a Saturday night and she opened
the door. She was elderly - late sixties or older, rather plump and
rather jolly.

She told the two detectives that she had been
out at her daughter's all Saturday evening and chatted amiably as
she led them into a small and crowded lounge.

"You live here alone, Mrs. Evans?" Hammond
asked.

"That's right," she explained. "My husband
died of cancer two years ago."

"And you had been out for the day?"

"At my daughter's, yes."

"What time did you get back?"

"My daughter Jane drove me home just after
midnight," she said. "I'm not usually that late, but we had been
watching a DVD and didn't notice the time."

"And you saw the fire as you arrived back?"
Tommy asked, thinking there was quite a gap between arriving home
and making the call.

"We could smell burning then, but I didn't
notice anything. I let Rusty out for a wee and run about quarter
past and I could smell it even stronger. I could see flames too. I
thought I'd better ring in case it hadn't been reported, so I
phoned."

"Was anyone else about?" Tommy asked.

"Not then," she said. "But earlier, just
after Jane left as a matter of fact, there was someone. I saw a
youth climbing from the canal, dripping wet. He went up the street,
probably going home to change. It wasn't a cold night, of course,
but he'd been right in the water, I think."