Watching the Ghosts (29 page)

‘I've had a look in all the usual places,' Emily said. ‘And there's nothing taped behind mirrors or at the back of drawers. I think we've drawn a blank.'

Joe nodded. He too had looked in all the hidden places known mainly to the police or to professional burglars and found nothing. No suggestion that Mrs Newson wasn't who she'd claimed to be and no clue to Beverley's whereabouts.

He heard a knock on the open door. ‘Sir, ma'am. We've come across something hidden under a loose floorboard in Proud's living room. He must have used it as his hidey-hole.'

Joe hurried out into the hall and Emily followed. The young DC from Proud's flat was standing there, holding an evidence bag containing a sheaf of papers triumphantly.

He handed the bag to Joe who took the contents out carefully, scanned them and passed them to Emily. They were more letters from Brockmeister, this time addressed to someone called Jason, and it wasn't surprising that Proud hadn't wanted to display them on his wall because they contained detailed descriptions of his crimes. They'd been posted from various places abroad and they were all dated after his supposed death.

A brief perusal gave Joe the gist of their contents. He knew he'd have to read them in detail sooner or later and the prospect made him feel a little sick. The detail was vivid but it was the way he wrote with such relish that Joe found hard to bear. As Emily handed them back to the DC a couple of photographs fell out of the bag. And when Joe picked them up he saw that they were grainy and blurred, as if they'd been taken with a mobile phone. But the person in them was clear enough to recognize.

‘George wasn't mistaken,' he said quietly. ‘We've got to get over to Hilton.'

They pounded on the Rev Kenneth Rattenbury's front door but there was no answer. Emily tried to peer through the thick lace curtains but, having been made for privacy, they fulfilled their purpose well.

‘Round the back?'

Joe nodded. They'd taken the precaution of bringing a search team with them and they were now hanging around their cars, attracting the attention of the neighbours.

As Joe stepped back from the front door one of the neighbours emerged, full of curiosity. ‘Is something the matter?'

Joe saw Emily's eyes light up at the prospect of gossip. She hurried over to the neighbour – a woman of battleaxe proportions with cropped grey hair and a floral frock.

‘Do you know him well?' Emily asked.

The woman shook her head. ‘He keeps himself to himself. Doesn't even say hello. I heard he used to be a vicar or something but I've never had much Christian charity from him, and that's the truth.'

‘What can you tell us about him?'

‘When he first moved in I took him a cup of tea round – trying to be neighbourly, like. I asked him where he were from but he were right cagey.'

‘Have you seen any visitors coming to the house?'

She shook her head again. ‘I don't reckon he's the type to be entertaining friends.' She raised her hand as though she'd just remembered something. ‘I tell a lie. I did see a young man go into his house. He had tattoos on his arms like a lot of them do nowadays and very short fair hair. Mind you, this was late last year. I haven't seen anyone since.'

Joe caught Emily's eye. The tattooed young man could well have been Sebastian Bentham and he'd already admitted that he'd interviewed Rattenbury while he was researching his play. This wasn't helping.

‘Mind you, a few days ago I could have sworn I heard a woman's voice. In the back yard it was but the walls are too high to see over.' She sounded disappointed.

‘Did you hear what they were saying?'

‘Afraid not.'

‘What did this woman sound like . . . young or old? Local?'

She suddenly seemed unsure of herself. ‘I couldn't hear very well. I just knew it was a woman.'

‘Thanks,' said Joe, suspecting she'd done her best to listen in and been disappointed with her failure. ‘If you think of anything else . . .'

‘What's he done?' The woman folded her arms, hoping for a dramatic revelation.

But Joe had to disappoint her. ‘We don't know yet. We just think he might be able to help us with our enquiries. Thanks for your time.'

He walked away and Emily followed, leaving the neighbour facing another disappointment.

‘I want to take a look inside,' Emily whispered as they reached the front door.

Joe knew at once what she was thinking. ‘We should check the doors and windows . . . just to make sure the place is secure.' He lowered his voice. ‘We can get a warrant later if we need it.'

‘Well, he might have Beverley in there so we'd be neglecting our duty if we didn't check, wouldn't we?' She nodded to him and he hurried round to the back alley, counting the back gates until he was sure he'd got the right one. The black-painted wooden gate was locked but Emily caught up with him and pointed at the brick wall. ‘Go on then. Up you go.'

Joe knew he was out of practice but he managed to scale the wall without sacrificing too much dignity. He unbolted the gate to let Emily into the back yard which was neat but lacking flowers or any other personal touches. He tried the back door but it was locked. But the kitchen window was open half an inch. Just enough.

Joe had learned the fine art of burglary through observation over the years and his examples had been amongst the finest in the profession. He knew just how to edge the window open and lean in to open the lower window to gain access. He clambered into the kitchen easily, landing on the worktop near the sink and jumping down. He opened the back door for Emily, wondering whether they should summon the team waiting round the front. But Emily decided to wait until they found the evidence they needed. If they were wrong they might be making fools of themselves. They might even be in trouble.

The kitchen was clean and tidy, as though the occupant of the house hardly cooked there, or was obsessively neat. The spacious back room was gloomy with barely any natural light coming in through the small sash window and Joe resisted an urge to switch the light on as he looked around. There was a small pine dining table with two chairs standing beside it and a big oak sideboard.

Joe began to search through the sideboard and, in the left-hand cupboard, behind the utility bills, the balls of string and the manuals for long-forgotten electrical appliances, he found a cardboard box.

When he took it out and placed it on the table to examine it, Emily stood behind him expectantly. He prised the lid off and when he saw photographs inside he began to sort through them, looking for familiar faces.

And one face was very familiar indeed. They'd seen it in newspaper reports and on police records. Peter Brockmeister smirked out at them from the faded coloured rectangles of glossy paper. Peter on his own. Peter in the grounds of a large building that Joe recognized as Boothgate House, then Havenby Hall. Then there was Peter with a woman. She was wearing a dark nurse's uniform and a frilly cap, and they were standing close to each other, almost touching.

But now he had Brockmeister's image in front of him he saw that he bore little resemblance to the Reverend Rattenbury he'd spoken to. The height and the eyes were similar but the nose was much smaller, as was the chin. He said as much to Emily and she stared at the photographs, asking if he was sure.

‘He told me he'd been living abroad. He might have had cosmetic surgery . . . changed his appearance,' Joe said.

‘Wanted to start a new life with a new face and a new identity,' said Emily. ‘It's possible. And if he'd been in on some scam killing off unwanted relatives with Dr Pennell, he'd probably be able to afford it and all.'

Joe pointed to the picture. ‘You can change a lot but you can't change the ears. I noticed that Rattenbury had unusually small ear lobes and Brockmeister's are identical.'

‘OK, Joe, I can accept that the man who lives here is Peter Brockmeister. But what happened to the real Rattenbury?'

‘That's what we need to find out. And look at the woman with him in this picture. Does she look familiar to you?'

Emily stared at the picture and after a few seconds she nodded slowly. ‘Well, I've only seen her dead but it could be a much younger Mrs Newson.' She turned the photograph over. There was writing on the other side and Joe cursed himself that he hadn't thought to look there himself. ‘Me with Christabel. Wasn't that Mrs Chambers' name?'

Joe stood there, considering the implications. ‘But if Mrs Newson is really Mrs Chambers, where does Beverley come into all this?' he asked after a long silence.

‘Is she Mrs Chambers' daughter? Or could she be the child of one of the inmates and Chambers adopted her? There was no birth certificate back at the flat. And the certificates we had for the old woman were all in the name of Newson.'

‘But they were recent copies. It's simple to get a new identity,' said Joe. ‘What's the betting that if we look hard enough we'll find that John Newson's widow, Katharine, died some time ago. Or . . .' A possibility had just occurred to him. ‘We have to find out if Katharine Newson was a patient at Havenby Hall.'

He took out his mobile and put in a call to Jamilla. She was still working on Pennell's records and she sounded a little relieved at the distraction. He asked her if the name Katharine Newson appeared on Pennell's list of patients and the answer was yes. It was in a section Jamilla had just deciphered and there was a note beside Katharine's name to say that she'd given birth to a baby girl while she was in Havenby Hall and she was suffering from post-partum psychosis. But there was no record of what had become of the baby. The last entry concerning Katharine Newson merely stated the cold fact that she had died from a cerebral haemorrhage six week after the baby's birth.

When he passed the information on to Emily she shook her head sadly. ‘I don't suppose it was so well understood in those days. I had a spot of post-natal depression when I had our Matthew so . . . There but for the grace of God . . .' she said quietly.

Joe looked at her. This was something he'd never heard before and he felt touched that she'd confide something so personal to him. ‘Katharine must have been pregnant while she was in there,' he said. ‘And if so, she could be Beverley's real mother. Maybe they killed Katharine Newson but they couldn't bring themselves to kill her baby.'

‘And Chambers took Katharine's identity when she needed to disappear? How many did they kill there, Joe?'

Joe didn't reply. He didn't know the answer. But he was beginning to fear that when the truth came out it would reveal horrors beyond their imaginings. Horrors hidden over the years.

‘Let's have a look upstairs. I want all patrols to be on the lookout for Rattenbury. When we find him, I think we'll find Beverley . . . if it's not too late already.'

T
he shop door opened and Sebastian Bentham looked up. He'd just begun to sketch out his next play and he resented the intrusion a customer would bring. But business was business and he'd promised his uncle that he'd keep things ticking over until he could take over the reins again.

He pushed his notepad to one side and stood up, preparing to fix a smile of greeting to his face. Shopkeeping, he kept telling himself, was almost a branch of show business. Give the punters what they wanted and make them leave satisfied and smiling.

‘Hello,' he said, recognizing the newcomer. ‘Looking for anything in particular? Thanks for helping me out, by the way. Did you get to see the play?'

The man he knew as the Reverend Rattenbury didn't reply. He was scanning the shop and his eyes rested on the clock. ‘I'm interested in your clock. How much is it?'

‘I think my uncle wants five hundred for it. But I'm sure that's open to negotiation,' he added, eager to make a sale. And keen to get the thing out of the shop.

‘Have you had a look inside it?'

Seb nodded. ‘A detective came to look at it because he found out it came from a house connected with a murder they're investigating. He found some kind of notebook inside and took it away. There's nothing in there now.'

The clergyman said nothing and stared at the clock. Then he turned to Sebastian. ‘Thank you but I think I've changed my mind now I've seen it close up.'

‘I've heard it originally came from Havenby Hall. Did you recognize it or . . .?'

‘Yes. I recognized it,' the man said. ‘How is your uncle?'

‘On the mend,' Sebastian answered.

‘Give him my regards.'

‘I didn't know you knew him.'

But before Rattenbury could say anything more the shop door opened.

There was no doubt now that Peter Brockmeister hadn't died in the sea all those years ago. He had changed his identity and now he'd returned to Eborby to continue what he'd started.

Emily had received a call from Sunny to say that the police in Cape Town, South Africa had dealt with a number of similar deaths around fifteen years ago but they had stopped suddenly. There had been several cases in Germany after that and the police in the Burgundy region of France had a few unsolved murders that bore a strong resemblance, the last of which had been a couple of years ago. Perhaps Brockmeister, under assumed identities, had moved from country to country, killing as he went. But for the past two years there had been nothing . . . until now.

The most chilling thing of all, in Joe's opinion, was a photograph of Beverley, obviously taken without her knowledge, standing propped up in pride of place next to the others on the dressing table. If he wanted confirmation that she was the next victim, they had it now.

He made a call to Lydia, just to make sure she was all right. The last thing he wanted was for her to become Brockmeister's prey as well.

The shop was busier than it had been for days, Seb thought, as Lydia walked in and shut the door behind her. She was in her working clothes with a large bag slung over her shoulder.