The Wages of Desire (3 page)

“Did the vicar say that he had seen anyone in the cemetery or that he'd found the gun used to shoot the woman?” Lamb asked.

“No. But then, I didn't ask him. Saw no reason to. Had he seen anyone or found the gun, I reckon he'd have told me.”

“Did he tell you that he knew who had shot the woman, or that he suspected that he knew?”

“No.”

“How far is your farm from the church?”

“Half mile.”

“How long did it take you, then, to walk from there to here?”

“Less than ten minutes.”

“So is that ten minutes for you to put on your guardsman's outfit
and
to get here? Ten minutes total, in other words?”

Confusion clouded Built's eyes for a moment. “No,” he said. “It took me a couple of minutes to get into my uniform.” Built nodded at Tigue. “And I telephoned Mr. Tigue and told him what were happening.”

“So, can we say it took you fifteen or so minutes for you to get to the church from the time the vicar alerted you?”

“I suppose,” Built said.

“And what did you do when you got here?”

“I went into the cemetery to look at the girl, as I said. It were the vicar who said we couldn't allow anyone from the village in to look at her. It'd become a circus, he said. Then he told me that his wife had had a shock and that I should guard the gate while he went in and called you lot and saw to her. I took my place at the gate, just as the vicar ordered. Then the people from the village started showing, as word spread. Then you arrived.”

“And where is the vicarage, exactly?”

“Around the other side of the church, toward the back.”

Lamb turned again to Tigue. “And when did you arrive, sir?”

“Shortly after Mr. Built and the vicar. When Mr. Built called I was still in bed, I'm afraid.” Tigue smiled, as if this fact mildly embarrassed him.

“I wonder if you wouldn't mind turning over your pistol to us,” Lamb said.

Surprise flared in Tigue's eyes. “My pistol?” he said.

Lamb smiled. “Yes, sir. Just so we can check it for forensics and eliminate it from our inquiries. It's merely routine, of course, but it would prove helpful.”

Tigue smiled in return. “Of course,” he said. He removed the pistol from its holster and handed it to Lamb, who in turn handed it to Larkin.

“Thank you,” Lamb said to Tigue.

“Me, too?” Built asked.

“Please.”

“I'll get it back then, won't I?”

“We'll keep it only as long as we need to.”

Built broke open the shotgun and removed the cartridges before handing everything to Larkin.

Lamb nodded. “Very well, then, gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for your service. You may go home now.”

“If you need assistance I hope you'll call on us,” Tigue said.

“I will, sir, thank you.”

Lamb turned from the two men and, limping slightly on his tender left ankle, pushed open the gate to the cemetery.

FOUR

LAMB AND THE OTHERS FOUND THE POLICE SURGEON, ANTHONY
Winston-Sheed, leaning casually against the rear fence of the cemetery and looking at the sky in a contemplative manner, a cigarette smoldering between the fingers of his left hand.

A woman's body lay on the ground to the doctor's left, in front of a weathered headstone. About fifteen meters further to the left of where the doctor stood, a gate in the rear fence opened onto a dirt-and-gravel footpath that came from around the rear of the church and led toward the center of Winstead. On the other side of this path lay a wood. About ten meters to the left of Lamb and his troop, as they crossed the cemetery in Winston-Sheed's direction, a freshly dug open grave yawned.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Winston-Sheed said when Lamb and the others reached him.

Lamb nodded. “Doctor.”

Winston-Sheed handed Lamb a small brown leather shoulder bag. “She was wearing this,” he said. “I think you'll find its contents interesting.”

“Thank you,” Lamb said. He took the bag and found within it, among other items, a large sum of cash rolled into a kind of tube and secured with a rubber band. He removed the wad from the bag and held it up to the sun for a better look.

“How much?” Rivers asked.

“Fifty at least, I'd say,” Winston-Sheed said.

Impressed, Wallace whistled. “If the killer was after money he bloody well bollixed it, then,” he said.

“Maybe the vicar's approach interrupted him,” Larkin mused.

Lamb handed the bag to Wallace, with a request to search its other contents for something that would identify the woman who lay at their feet. He then knelt next to the body to examine it closely.

The dead woman lay facedown next to the grave of a woman named Mary Forrest, who, Lamb noted, had parted the veil in 1927. Fresh foxgloves and daisies lay scattered between the body and the grave. Lamb wondered if the dead woman had known Mary Forrest and had meant to lay the flowers at Mary's grave. The woman was dressed in denim overalls and thick-soled hobnailed leather work boots—an outfit Lamb recognized as the type the government issued to the small army of citizens it had conscripted into the war effort. A bullet wound the size of a tea saucer oozed, blackish-red, just beneath her right shoulder blade. Blood and bits of body tissue stained her hair and shoulders and the weathered gravestone of Mary Forrest—some of it sticking to the moss that had grown in the stone's cracks and fissures.

“Preliminarily, it appears that she was shot in the back with a high-caliber weapon at point-blank range,” Winston-Sheed said. He nodded toward the path on the other side of the fence. “The bullet exited her chest and is out there beyond this fence somewhere, I should imagine.”

“You don't like the vicar's story,” Rivers said to Lamb. Neither did he.

Lamb peered at the woman, nearly squinting, as if he hoped that something about the nature of her killing that he couldn't quite yet see might come into sudden focus. “I don't know,” he said. “When he called the nick, he said nothing to Wallace about having heard the shot. And he had fifteen minutes between the time he called Built and when Built arrived.” Beside the fact that the vicar, by his own admission, was up and about at the time of killing, and the girl had been killed in the church cemetery, next to the vicarage—two facts that put the vicar very much in the picture regardless of who found the woman—standard procedure insisted that you considered as a suspect whoever discovered the body and reported the crime.

Wallace held up an identification card issued by the Women's Land Army that he'd found in the bag. “Here we go,” he announced. “Ruth Aisquith.”

He handed the card to Lamb, who studied it for a few seconds. The woman in the photo had dark hair; a sharp, prominent nose; and intense, dark eyes. Her face was unsmiling. The card listed her date of birth as June 7, 1905, making her thirty-six years old. Lamb recalled how he and Marjorie had sought, unsuccessfully, to convince Vera to join the Land Army. Mostly, the Land girls did farm work, difficult but healthy labor. More importantly, though, the work was safe, far from combat. And yet here was Ruth Aisquith, dead well before her time.

“A Land girl, then,” Rivers said. “Probably from the prison camp. But where does a Land girl come by fifty quid?”

“Maybe she comes from money,” Larkin said.

“Yes, but why bring it to the bloody cemetery?”

“If she does work at the prison camp, maybe she didn't trust leaving it in her barrack. Too easy for someone to nick.”

“Or she owed a debt,” Wallace said. He nodded at Mary Forrest's grave. “Her grandmother, then?” he asked. “Or an elderly auntie?”

“Maybe,” Lamb said. “Given that
this
was the grave she intended to visit. She might have been intending to visit someone else's grave. Or she might not have intended to visit any particular grave at all. She might have picked the flowers for herself or someone living.”

Lamb asked Wallace to check the other grave markers in the cemetery to see if any bore the name of Aisquith.

As they spoke, the Rev. Gerald Wimberly fumbled in the kitchen of the vicarage as he endeavored to make a pot of tea for his wife, Wilhemina. He took the kettle from the boil and began to pour water from it into the pot; some of the hot water splashed onto the fingers of his left hand. He drew his hand quickly away from the pot and cursed. He went to the sink and put his fingers under a trickle of cold water, which only slightly eased the pain of the burn. He thought again of how thoroughly he despised Wilhemina. She'd always been a burden to him. All the same, he must make her bloody tea—must endeavor to calm her, especially now that the police had arrived. Using a pestle he'd crushed three sleeping tablets—more than he needed, really—in a small ceramic mortar, the contents of which he poured into the pot.

Lamb and Rivers rolled the dead woman onto her back, exposing the ragged exit wound just beneath her heart.

“Less than an arm's length,” Rivers said, guessing at the range from which the killer had shot the woman.

Lamb checked her hands, pockets—in which he found nothing—and shoes, including the soles. He stood, turned, and limped a couple of paces from the woman's body toward the center of the cemetery. He gestured to Larkin.

“Come around here, please, Mr. Larkin, and stand in front of me.” The forensics man did as instructed. Lamb turned to face the dead woman. “Raise your hand and pretend to shoot me in the back,” Lamb said. Larkin raised his finger and said, “Bang!” Lamb took a couple of steps forward, which brought him again to the woman's feet.

“So she's shot and stumbles forward from the impact before she dies and falls against the headstone of Mary Forrest,” Lamb said, thinking aloud.

Lamb bent to look at the grass at the place where he calculated the woman had been shot. The grass still was moist from the predawn rain. “Here are the impressions left by her boots,” he said. He stood. “And what have we coming toward her, then?”

He took another two steps forward, then went to a knee to examine a small bare spot in the grass in which he saw what appeared to be a print left by a woman's shoe—though a shoe that was different from the government-issued boots the victim wore. The print had a distinct square impression at the heel.

Larkin kneeled next to Lamb and peered at the ground. “I see it,” he said, squinting. Lamb pointed to another set of prints that appeared to have been left by a man wearing boots who also had approached the grave. These were roughly a foot away and parallel to the woman's prints.

“See if you can get photographs and casts of those, please,” Lamb said. He stood and looked again at the dead woman. “There's nothing on her hands,” he said quietly. “No sign that she struggled with anyone. I wonder if she had any idea that her killer was behind her.”

Lamb turned in the direction of the vicarage and thought over several questions that needed answers, including why Ruth Aisquith had come to the cemetery so early in the morning, and alone. And why was she carrying nearly fifty pounds? And why didn't her killer take the cash? He wondered again about the vicar's story. Had Gerald Wimberly merely forgotten to tell Wallace that he'd heard the fatal shot, even though he had told Built and Tigue that he had? Most people became befuddled when forced to face sudden, violent death. Then, too, he had to consider the fact that lay at the foundation of most cases of murder: People overwhelmingly killed for three primary reasons—greed, jealousy, and vengefulness—and the most common triggers of these emotions were money and sex. They'd found a wad of cash, but what of the sex? Did it matter here? He thought again of the Rev. Gerald Wimberly, a man of God. Ostensibly, such men did not kill, and they especially did not harm innocents, which caused Lamb to ask himself two additional questions that he believed pertinent.