Murder Among Us (2 page)

Ms. Mapple threw out her hand towards her television set. On the top of it was a photo of the three dogs. "They will be there on Saturday!" she announced dramatically.

4 'Not the dratted pekes!" Grimsby exclaimed unwarily.

"No, not my poor boys! They'd be terrified by all those strangers! Really, Charles. No, I mean the television people. Schuhmacher and the forces of mammon may have won in a sense, but they haven't heard the last of us! We shall go out in a blaze of glory, not abjectly, not beaten by base commercial interest! We'll show 'em! We'll demonstrate! On their opening day with the TV cameras to show our protest to the nation!"

"All right!" said Grimsby, sitting up straight and inadvertently nudging the pekinese which growled. "And a real bunch of twerps we'll look! Ten to one security will be laid on with all those celebs there. Some thugs with no necks and wall-to-wall shoulders will grab us before you can say knife! Certainly before we can get our banner unfurled! We'll never get it or a placard into the grounds so how will the TV viewers know what we're demonstrating about?"

"Thought of that. I'll smuggle the banner in," said Ms. Mapple. "I'll wind it round my midriff beneath my Batik shift."

Stunned silence fell on the committee.

"Would that be practical, Hope?" Zoe ventured. "I mean, how would you get it out?" Robin began to shake in a silent mirth but Zoe went on, determinedly ignoring him, "You can't undress on the lawn and unwind the banner from your middle."

There was another silence. Robin's shoulders stopped heaving and he looked up, his face appalled. "Gawd, Hope! You wouldn't?"

"Oh yes I would!" cried Ms. Mapple in ringing tones. "What's more, I intend to go the whole hog!"

"Hope!" they yelled in unison.

"I shall streak!" cried their leader.

Sensitive perhaps to the sheer power of emotion in the room, all three pekes awoke and began to yap frantically.

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"Well, I think you've been slighted!" said Laura Danby fiercely.

Her husband, placidly making mayonnaise at the kitchen table, looked up and smiled affectionately at her as she stood arms akimbo in the doorway. She'd departed for her office that morning a picture of legal efficiency but a long busy day and supervision of the younger children's bath-time had taken its toll. Her blonde hair had fallen out of its neat pleat and tumbled round her flushed face. She'd changed out of her solicitor's severe tailored costume into shorts and a striped French matelot's shirt.

"You look very sexy," Paul said.

"Denis Fulton!" She wasn't to be distracted. "What does he know about cooking? He pinched your recipe."

"He asked my permission and I was happy to give it. After all, once you've given out a recipe it's common domain. You're a solicitor, I'm surprised at you throwing wild accusations around."

"Wild, my eye! Not illegal perhaps, but shifty. He picked your brains. He ought at least to have given you credit. A man who doesn't own up to a thing like that is likely not to own up to other things!" She nodded vigorously.

"He's pretty good, actually, knowledgeable and a big name."

"You're as good! If he's such a whizz, let him think up his own recipes!"

He knew better than to waste time in confrontational argument when she was off in full cry like this. Diversion was the best option. Paul tapped his mayonnaise spoon against the side of the bowl.

"Tell you who's better than either of us. That chef of Eric's, Ulli Richter. I for one am looking forward to Saturday night even if it will be a bit of a busman's holiday! I hear Eric's made a wonderful job of the interior of the house. He had Victor Merle, the art historian, to advise him, you know. Nothing but the best in

every department! It'll be a memorable evening! Yodel-ay-i-dee!"

"How can you talk like that? How can you joke about

itr

The cry came not from Laura but from behind her. Emma Danby burst into the kitchen with all the passionate fury of eleven years old. She was wearing muddy jodhpurs and a sweatshirt with a horse's head depicted on it. Her freckled face was red with emotion and the faint odour of horses which had entered with her suggested she had just come from her stint at the Alice Batt Rest Home. Both her parents stared at her in consternation.

"We're not laughing about it, darling," said Laura hurriedly. "Dad and I know how you feel ../"

"No, you don't! All you talk about is food!" Emma invested the word with a power of scorn which made her father wince. "That horrid man is closing down the rest home!" Tears began to flow copiously down Emma's cheeks. "All the animals will have to be put down because no one wants them! They're too old and ugly and can't work! You just wait till you're old and ugly and no one wants you and you can't work! I hate Eric Schuhmacher and the an person, all of them! I hope something dreadful happens on Saturday to spoil their whole rotten opening night! I hope someone drops dead and they blame it on the cooking!"

Two

"Can I have a word sir?"

"Is it urgent?" Chief Inspector Alan Markby kept going towards the staircase to his office.

Wpc Jones was tenacious. "Yes, sir, I think it is!"

He halted. She was an officer for whose judgement he had a healthy respect. "Go on, then. Only make it snappy."

"He's back," said Jones calmly. "That creep who was hanging round the schools last year, trying to pick up the children."

"Oh, is he?" Markby said grimly. "Yes, quite right, Jones. It is important!"

Perverts of all kinds appeared on charge sheets or were the subject of enquiry more or less every day of the week in most police stations. They ranged from the fantasisers, flashers and whisperers on the telephone— pathetic, inadequate or plain mentally ill—to hard-core vice circles of sickening depravity.

Particularly dangerous were those who preyed on children. They were often present in an area for some time before anyone reported their activities. These were the ones who lurked around school gates and playing fields, watching for the child alone. Or who prowled the streets in cars, offering children lifts or even attempting to drag them into the vehicles, and they were every policeman's nightmare. Only too often, such things ended with a battered little corpse and a family devastated.

The previous year worried parents had reported a man seen waiting near school entrances and watching children at play in parks. No sophisticate in a car, this one.

He was on foot and had been described as scruffy, in his late forties with thinning hair, wearing a navy nylon bomber jacket with red and white stripes on the sleeve and jeans. Twice witnesses said he had an old haversack with him of the type bought in army surplus stores and the inference was that he was sleeping rough.

Despite a diligent search following up all reported sightings, they had failed to find him. But they had, it seemed, frightened him off because he hadn't been seen for some time. They'd passed on his description to neighbouring police forces and assumed they'd seen the last of him. Apparently, not so.

"The headmaster of King Charles the Martyr school phoned about it." Jones waved a notepad. "It's the same man, he thinks. He's still wearing that navy jacket with the stripes, although it's even dirtier. He's also got a flat cap now. He did speak to some children—the old tale about going to see some puppies, but a parent hove into view and he ran off. The parent, a Mrs. Mayhew, told a teacher at the school about it. Also ..."

Jones turned over a sheet of her notebook. "One of the local farmers called in this morning and said he's found a rough shelter, a sort of hide, built on his land. Someone had been living there recently. He wouldn't have thought much of it—there are a lot of people wandering about the country sleeping rough. But a man came begging at the door and the farmer's wife, who saw him, didn't like the look of him at all. She fancied he was actually looking to see what he could pinch and when she appeared, he quickly pretended to be a beggar. The thing is, she described him as middle-aged and scruffy, unshaven, wearing a very dirty and greasy dark blue jacket with stripes on the sleeves. Sounds like the same man, sir."

"Damn!" said Markby forcefully. "All right. All officers on the beat are to look out for him and to report anything which might seem relevant. You're in charge of co-ordinating all that, Jones. Tell Sergeant Harris I want an officer at the gates of all primary schools at

going home time. And we'd better run that school exercise again, send someone round to talk to the children, warning them about strangers. Someone had better go out to that farm and take a look at this shelter or hide or whatever it is. Phone round the other farms and ask them to keep an eye open. And get on to divisional headquarters and ask them to check known sex offenders to see if anyone of that description has been active elsewhere in the area."

"Hope we pick up the pervert this time!" muttered Jones. "Pity we couldn't have found him last time!"

"So long as we get to him before there's trouble. On the other hand, we don't want him frightened off out of the district before we can nab him, like last time. This time I want him!"

He sprinted up the stairs and burst into his office where he discovered Sergeant Pearce studying the football pages of the local paper.

"Time on your hands?" Markby asked politely.

Pearce jumped to his feet, hastily folding up the tabloid sheets. "No, sir... well, just at the minute it is a bit quiet."

"Let's hope it remains so. I've just seen Jones downstairs and she tells me our child molester is back in the area! Too much to hope for a quiet weekend, I suppose!" Markby went to the window and peered out at the sky.

"Doing a spot of gardening, sir?"

"No, I'm going along to the opening of the Spring-wood Hall Hotel. Best bib and tucker job."

"Wish I was," said Pearce wistfully.

"Actually, that kind of thing isn't really my scene. However, I ran into Schuhmacher in town a week or two back. I had met him briefly years ago, but I assumed he would have forgotten me and I doubt I'd have bothered to remind him. But he greeted me like a long lost brother and pressed two invitations to his gala opening into my hand."

"Two..." muttered Pearce.

"One for me and one for the lady of my choice, Pearce. By no stretch of imagination does that qualify you."

"No sir." Pearce grinned. "Is the Foreign Office lady, Miss. Mitchell, coming down from London for this shindig, then?"

"Yes, she is."

Truth to tell he was feeling a little guilty. He had not been entirely frank with Meredith over the phone. Inviting her down for the Springwood Hall gala opening had been easy. It was the other problem he had on his plate which wasn't easy to discuss on the phone, and he wanted to talk it over with her when she arrived. Not on Saturday, though. That would be eat, drink and be merry day at Eric's expense. No, on the Sunday, when things were quiet again, police business permitting, as always!

Pearce, still continuing their conversation, now said, "I hear the old Hall's been changed beyond belief!"

"Eric's had advice from that fellow Merle, the art historian. He had a TV series, Channel 4, if you saw it."

"Don't watch Channel 4 much," Pearce confessed. "I remember how the Hall used to look. Like something out of the Hammer House of Horrors it always seemed to me. All those turrets and stone heads." He frowned. "There was something in the local rag about it, the alterations I mean. A local society kicking up a fuss ..."

"The Society for the Preservation of Historic Bam-ford," Markby supplied.

"Never thought of Bamford as being historic," Pearce observed.

Well, it wasn't, Markby thought. Not in an obvious way. It wasn't on the tourist maps at least and for that he was thankful. But it had its old buildings and its High Street might qualify as quaint if one ignored modern shop fronts and fixed one's eyes on the upper storeys of its Queen Anne buildings. He liked Bamford. That was why he'd steadfastly resisted all attempts to prise him away from it although by virtue of seniority he ought to

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be stationed somewhere bigger and busier.

Aye, there's the rub ... That's what he wanted to talk over with Meredith, anxious to hear what she had to say.

Though what many people would call a career woman, Meredith still appreciated the important if little things which made up personal satisfaction in a job. She combined the rare double of being both sensible and sensitive, and she knew how he felt about Bamford. He wished she also felt that way about this quiet country town and would move back to live here. But he supposed there was no way of dislodging her from that flat in London. It was, after all, so much more convenient for her, going daily to Whitehall as she did.

The pressure was on to move him from his familiar patch at Bamford and pitchfork him, suitably promoted, into some larger and busier theatre of operations and possibly, eventually, to glory at divisional headquarters. He had done too well: he was too senior. Upward and onward, was the cry: from others, not from him. He was resisting fiercely.

It was all a deadly secret. As far as he could tell no hint of this possible cataclysmic change in his life had leaked out. There had been no knowing glances in Bamford station when he hove into view. Wpc Jones, indefatigable passer of the hat, was not, as far as he could tell, furtively organising any whipround for a goodbye presentation. Pearce, surreptitiously perusing his sports pages again, was looking deceptively innocent and slightly thick... which was a pity because Pearce was an exceptionally bright young man. The vacant expression which often glazed over the sergeant's face had its uses, however, and had in the past lulled unsuspecting villains into a fatal confidence. Pearce wanted promotion. Pearce no doubt one day soon would be given it. But he, Markby, just liked being what he was, Detective Chief Inspector and in charge of his own little subdivision in this old but unromantic country town. He didn't want a change. Not in that area of his life, anyway.

The only change he really wanted to see concerned

his relationship with Meredith and that, perversely, was not on the cards. Sod's law at work again.