Watching the Ghosts (21 page)

She put the book down, switched off the light and pulled the duvet around her shoulders, making herself a cosy nest. Sleep had almost come when a sound jolted her back to wakefulness.

It came from downstairs. A tinkling sound of breaking glass. She hugged her duvet around her for protection and sat up, listening. She heard the distant shriek of an ambulance siren heading for the bypass. And the wind rustling the trees at the foot of her garden.

Then the soft, muffled tread of footsteps on the carpeted stairs. She switched on the light and swung her legs to the floor, feeling around for her slippers. She picked up the phone extension by her bed but there was no dialling tone. The line was dead. She had a mobile phone which she rarely used but that was on the hall table downstairs.

The intruder was on the landing now. She could hear him.

She switched off the light and slid down to the floor. As she squeezed underneath the bed, the rough woollen carpet dug into the bare flesh of her arms and cheek but she hoped that if she lay still, he might not come for her.

T
hat night, after they'd made love, Joe had fallen into a deep sleep, only to wake again in the early hours. As he looked at Lydia sleeping peacefully like a child free of cares, he experienced a hollow feeling of unease. Maybe he'd been too impetuous; maybe he shouldn't have let his urgent desire for communion with another human body override his misgivings. In those dark, silent hours he lay awake, trying to get things straight in his head, before succumbing once more to a fitful sleep.

He woke at seven the next morning and opened his eyes to see Lydia, propped up on one arm watching him as a mother watches a sleeping child. She smiled, kissed him gently and rested her head on his chest. She'd slept well for the first time in ages, she said. And she hadn't dreamed that the clock with eyes was pursuing her into some terrible abyss.

He lay quietly for a while, absent-mindedly stroking her hair, until a glance at the alarm clock told him it was time to move. With an apology to Lydia, he sat naked on the edge of the bed and picked up his mobile phone to call Emily to check whether there'd been any developments in the Daisy Hawkes kidnapping case and to tell her about his intended visit to Mrs Dodds. It was time they had a breakthrough in the case which was becoming more complex and elusive by the minute.

Emily sounded alert as usual. Sometimes Joe didn't know how she coped with her family and working all hours on two murder cases, not to mention the kidnapping. But some people were just born that way. On occasions he'd heard Sunny calling her Wonder woman – he sometimes wondered whether Sunny had a nickname for him, too.

He learned that they were still waiting for Daisy's kidnapper to get in touch again. His gut feeling told him that something about it didn't quite ring true. Perhaps the lack of viciousness in the half-hearted threats, as though the kidnapper couldn't quite bring himself or herself to utter the appropriately heartless words. He mentioned this to Emily but she said nothing, which meant she probably disagreed with him. She told him to find out what he could from Mrs Dodds and ended the call.

Lydia had lain back on her pillow and she was staring upwards with a slight smile on her lips.

‘We'd better go and see Mrs Dodds,' he said.

She rolled over to kiss his back. But when he turned round the smile had vanished.

‘Do you think she's in any danger?' she said.

Joe didn't know the answer so he said nothing and began to get dressed.

‘Do you think I'm in danger?'

Joe froze. It was something that had been at the back of his mind, something he had barely liked to acknowledge.

‘I wouldn't worry about it,' he said, forcing out a comforting smile.

She climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom as Joe finished dressing. As he looked at himself in the mirror he suddenly realized that there'd still be a police presence downstairs dealing with the scene of Karl Dremmer's murder, still sealed off with blue-and-white tape. He'd have to exercise all the discretion he could muster if he wasn't going to be the talk of the police station.

But his plans went awry when they bumped into Sunny Porter as they were leaving the building together. Sunny gave him a knowing smirk and said good morning, the words loaded with innuendo.

Joe felt eyes watching him as they walked to the car and he experienced another wave of uncertainty, so sharp it almost hurt. Perhaps the speed of his relationship with Lydia had been a mistake. They had been two lonely people seeking comfort and now he feared the situation might raise more problems than it had solved. But he tried to put it out of his mind as he drove down the road to Hilton.

He parked outside Judith Dodds' house and he walked to the front door with Lydia by his side, feeling a tingle of anticipation that he might be about to learn something about what went on in Havenby Hall all those years ago. He'd heard talk and rumour about Dr Pennell – none of it good – but now he needed to get at the truth.

He left it up to Lydia to ring the doorbell but there was no answer. She tried again. And again.

‘Her car's there.' Lydia sounded slightly worried.

Sure enough, a small blue Peugeot was parked in front of the detached garage which stood to the left of the house.

‘She might have walked to the local shops or gone to see a neighbour.' Joe tried to sound positive. However, looking up at the house with its closed curtains, he sensed that something was wrong. ‘I'll have a look round the back. Stay there in case she comes back.'

He walked slowly around the side of the house until he reached the back. Here a large kitchen extension jutted out from the main building. He could hear the sound of running water from a stream that flowed past the bottom of the well-kept garden, shaded by mature trees.

He returned his attention to the house and noticed that one of the glass panes in the back door was broken. He walked over and looked inside. Glittering splinters were spread out on the kitchen floor and he waited there for a few seconds, his heart beating fast, wondering whether to call for back up.

Suddenly remembering that Lydia was waiting round the front, he hurried back to her and told her to get back in his car and stay there. The tone of his voice meant that she didn't question the instruction. But she looked frightened and he felt a new tenderness for her.

‘I think there's been a break in. I'm just going to have a look.'

‘Be careful.'

He didn't reply.

Once he'd returned to the back door he put on the plastic gloves he'd taken from his pocket and tried the handle. The door was unlocked so he pushed it open, avoiding the glass as best he could, and crept on tiptoe through the kitchen and morning room. When he reached the hall he peeped into each of the downstairs rooms but nothing seemed to be out of place. If the glass had been broken by a burglar, he'd left many items of value that could have been disposed of easily in any number of shady pubs.

He stood in the hallway, listening to the silence and staring at the thickly carpeted staircase. If there was anything to find, it would be up there.

He climbed the stairs slowly, pausing every so often to listen, and, once on the landing, he went from room to room but found nothing amiss. He'd left the room at the back of the house till last. The door stood ajar and when he pushed it with his gloved hands it creaked open to reveal a large, tastefully decorated master bedroom, dimly lit by sunlight seeping in through the closed floral blinds. The double bed was unmade as though somebody had just got out of it a few seconds earlier. There was a telephone extension on one of the matching pair of bedside tables and Joe picked it up, only to discover that the line was dead.

A feeling of dread snatched at his heart as he stood and observed the room as he'd been trained to do. The stool by the dressing table had been knocked over and a book and a pair of reading glasses lay on the floor by the bed as though they had been dislodged in a struggle. Something had happened here but it wasn't until he noticed the smear of blood, drying russet on the pink carpet that he knew for sure that the room had been touched by violence.

Stepping out on to the landing he noticed two parallel lines in the pile of the carpet as if a body had been held beneath the arms and dragged from the master bedroom, across the landing and down the stairs. There were a couple of faint smears of blood on the parquet hall floor and when Joe retraced his steps into the kitchen he saw that the parallel tracks continued through the broken glass.

Avoiding the glass again, he stepped outside and started to look round the garden. It was a pleasant day, warm and dry but with clouds that occasionally scudded across the sun. The garden was in full bloom with its well-established bushy shrubs, any of which might conceal the dead.

He searched systematically, finally reaching the foot of the garden where a row of trees shielded the lawn from the stream. To his right a willow dipped its delicate branches into the stream. And, caught in the fronds, he saw a naked human body.

Words he had learned by rote at school popped unbidden into his mind – ‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook.' Then there was something about ‘fantastic garlands'. It was almost as if the woman's killer was familiar with Shakespeare's words because the corpse was indeed lying beneath the willow, but rather than being garlanded with flowers, the blooms had been stuffed into her mouth, a white rose protruding from the side like a cigarette.

Just like Peter Brockmeister's victims.

The undercroft of the abbey. Two o'clock. It was an appointment etched on Alan Proud's brain. He was about to come face to face with Peter Brockmeister. His hero.

His excuse was that he needed the letters authenticating. But the truth was that he longed to meet the man. He already felt he knew him so well. It was just the physical meeting that would give Alan the thrill he craved.

I met Peter Brockmeister. I shook the hand of a famous killer. It was something to boast about . . . if there was anybody willing to listen.

J
oe had been reluctant to ask Lydia to confirm that the body was that of Judith Dodds, but she had insisted. She wasn't afraid, she'd said, although he'd seen the colour drain from her face when she'd gazed down at the dead woman. He suspected that she was being brave to impress him – but he couldn't help admiring her a little for it.

He had taken her home straight afterwards. A crime scene was no place for her. Besides, she had to be at work, although he wasn't convinced she was in any fit state to face the public after what she'd just witnessed.

He was standing in the front drive, waiting for Sally Sharpe to arrive and examine the body which had been photographed and videoed in situ before being pulled out of the stream to lie on a plastic sheet in the garden. The CSIs were in the house and garden and now he was alone. As he stared at the front gate, now covered in fingerprint powder, he imagined the killer opening it and holding it carefully so the sound of it clattering shut wouldn't wake Judith Dodds or her neighbours who, frustratingly, hadn't seen or heard anything suspicious.

A car rounded the corner and parked down the road at the end of a line of police cars and CSI vans. When the driver emerged, he saw that it was Emily and, for some reason he couldn't quite fathom, he felt relieved.

As soon as she spotted him she waved and he raised his hand in a tentative greeting. She looked determined. He knew the signs: the pursed lips; the swift walk; the focused eyes.

‘Any word from the kidnapper?' he asked, fearing bad news.

‘We're still waiting for him to get in touch again. Paul Scorer's been calling us to ask if there's any news. He seems more worried than Hawkes does. And so he might. It's been so long now, Joe. I can't help thinking the worst. What happened here?'

Joe brought her up to date.

‘So you were here with Lydia when you found the body? Anything I should know?'

Joe felt the blood rise to his cheeks. ‘How do you mean?' Emily seemed in a better mood now, especially with the spice of gossip on offer.

‘You and Lydia.' She gave him a look of mock disapproval. ‘Sleeping with witnesses . . . tut, tut. What would the Chief Constable say?'

Joe felt awkward enough without the whole station knowing, so he ignored her words and stuck to work matters. ‘Judith Dodds gave Lydia an old record book from Havenby Hall that her father had kept. Lydia's grandfather got a mention in it. I think these murders are linked to that place. Melanie's, Karl Dremmer's and now Judith Dodds'.'

‘A Peter Brockmeister connection?'

‘Dremmer wasn't killed using Brockmeister's MO. I take it there have been no developments on that front?'

Emily shook her head. ‘There was nothing useful on those tapes he made down there, only the odd bang and crash, a lot of scraping noises and the door opening. No voices. Creeny was supposed to have installed CCTV and a decent security system in the building but it's not up and running yet. Place is only half finished. Our bloody luck.'

Joe led the way round to the back of the house. Emily needed to see the body and Joe wanted to take another look inside the house. If Judith Dodds had been killed because of something she'd found, the killer had probably taken it. But there was always a chance.

He left Emily deep in conversation with Sally Sharpe. He had no wish to hang around Judith Dodds' pale, naked body for longer than was necessary and, besides, there was something he wanted to check back at the house.

Joe had helped in the search of Oriel House. But there was no sign of anything that would throw any light on why Judith Dodds was killed so, after telling the search team that he was to be informed immediately if anything mentioning Dr Pennell or Havenby Hall turned up, he returned to the garden to see if Sally had come up with any new conclusions.