Ashes to Ashes Read online

  ‘Just you and the coffin,’ Patrick was saying. ‘Where, in here?’

  ‘No, in the dining room, always the dining room,’ Mrs Peters replied, sounding shocked.

  ‘Show me.’

  Flustered, she led the way down to the end of the short hallway into which we had first stepped and into a room slightly smaller than where we had come from. The table and four chairs were more utility-type furniture, and to one side of the room was an unbelievably old brown leather sofa with the horsehair bottom dropping out, and a bent standard lamp with a fringed shade lowering over it like a vulture in a tree waiting for something on the ground underneath it to die.

  ‘All this got moved to the sides of the room,’ Mrs Peters explained, gesturing impatiently towards the table and chairs.

  Patrick went over to examine the catches on the aluminium windows and returned with an impatient shake of his head. ‘Anyone could have got in here. Did you notice if any of these windows had been left open the next morning?’

  ‘No, but I’d opened one of the top ones as it was rather warm in here.’

  ‘It was even easier then, as someone could have reached in and opened one of the others. Were there any signs of distur-bance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention before that the coffin was in here overnight?’

  ‘Why should I mention it? It’s a perfectly normal thing to do.’

  ‘Surely it must have occurred to you afterwards that if anyone tampered with the coffin that was the perfect opportunity.’

  ‘I’ve never thought of anything like that. It happened somewhere else or I’d have heard noises during the night, wouldn’t I? As I said, some kind of fiddle’s going on.’

  Patrick turned away from her dismissively to open one of the large lower windows and looked out, examining the ground below it. ‘The plants in the border here are flattened as though they’ve been trodden on,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh dear. I hadn’t noticed that. You mean someone could have …’ She floundered to a halt.

  I found myself wondering whether this woman was monumentally stupid, as mad as a spanner or actually quite clever and we were being presented with a stinking red herring.

  ‘I don’t think I personally can help you any more with this,’ Patrick told her, closing the window. ‘But there might be grounds for you to take your concerns to the local police.’

  ‘I was under the impression that you were a policeman,’ Mrs Peters protested.

  ‘I am. But I normally work in London trying to catch serious criminals.’ He flicked a little smile in my direction; I took the hint and we left.

  ‘We really wrong-footed her,’ I commented when we were back in the car. ‘Her default position seems to be damned rude.’

  ‘We’ll come back – tonight. I want to have a look in those sheds in the garden.’

  To call the open space to the rear of the house a garden was paying it a huge compliment as it consisted of little more than rough grass, overgrown and weed-filled borders and a couple of ancient apple trees, the whole area enclosed by brick walls in a poor state of repair. Patrick had noted, as he looked out of the dining-room window, that there were two sheds: one quite large, around fifteen feet by ten, and an older, smaller one at right angles to it; the former near the house facing the garden, the other at the far end facing the house, both on the right-hand side. The one near the house appeared to be nearly new, the other much older.

  There was no good reason for me to tag along but Patrick made no objection to my doing so even though I have the unfortunate habit of succumbing to the giggles when creeping around in the dark on surveillance and search missions. I can only blame my imagination.

  ‘It’s really important that she doesn’t hear us,’ Patrick muttered in my ear as we got out of the car parked in a lay-by several hundred yards away on the Wellow side from our target, perhaps speaking with my weakness in mind.

  It was just before one a.m. and fully dark – there were no street lights here – the sky partly clouded over, just a few stars visible, no moon. We were dressed in our navy-blue tracksuits that hopefully made us almost invisible, and carried matching balaclavas. Going down a little track that led through the trees at the side of the road which Patrick had noted earlier, we stood silently for a couple of minutes to allow our eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. All we would have was Patrick’s little ‘burglar’s torch’ to pick out any obstacles. A couple of cars whooshed passed on the road but we were out of the range of the headlights.

  ‘If you remember, there’s a short distance to be covered where there’s no choice but to walk along the road,’ Patrick informed me. ‘If you hear a car coming, lie face down on the verge.’

  ‘Dog poo,’ I moaned.

  ‘Can’t be helped.’ He then chuckled. ‘Sorry, I’m joking. Just don’t let anyone see your face.’

  ‘I shall run anyway.’

  ‘Please yourself. Stop when you get to the postbox.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘About as far as you can run flat out without having to slow down.’

  Having run a hell of a long way in the past when pursued by mobsters, I staunchly made no comment and, as soon as we emerged and I had listened carefully for several moments, I tore off. Sure enough, just as I was getting seriously out of breath, no cars, I made out the post box a few feet in front of me set in a stone wall, which just goes to show what adrenaline can do for you. Patrick strolled up not twenty seconds later, still no cars.

  ‘You jogged down there somewhere,’ I panted.

  He chuckled again and gently cuffed my shoulder.

  Patrick had carried out a reconnoitre on the return journey that morning while I waited in the car, and now turned sharp right into a narrow lane between houses, or rather between the walls bordering the wooded grounds of two large houses. It was very dark here but I could just see him outlined against something lighter ahead. This turned out to be a side gate painted white where the lane turned left. We left the walls behind and walked between fields. I started when a horse grazing near the fence to our right snorted in alarm and galloped off. We stopped, listening, but nothing happened so we walked on.

  I already knew that the small estate of bungalows, covering what was once the market garden, jutted into one of these fields, suggesting that a far larger area of land had belonged to the previous owners. Perhaps their descendants still owned it. I thought that the fact these properties virtually surrounded the house owned by Mrs Peters would be a problem for us, as was the possibility of there being dogs.

  My arm was taken and I was guided round to the left towards what proved to be a gate. We climbed over it and went down a gentle slope, emerging on what had to be the same road. Twin searchlights approached as a vehicle came towards us around a bend, and we both flung ourselves into an overgrown hedge.

  Our guardian angels must be smiling on us tonight: no thorns.

  A single street light half hidden by the foliage of trees hardly illuminated a crossroads some fifty yards away and affected us not at all, although one of the bungalows nearest to the road, which turned out to be the one for sale, had an exterior lamp switched on by the front door. By the light from it we found the entrance into Mrs Peters’s front garden. As we had discovered that morning, the gate was either missing or buried somewhere in the all-pervading hedge. There were no lights at the front of the house.

  Patrick switched on his tiny pencil-beamed torch again to illuminate anything we might trip over and we made our way down the side of the house. My trained-to-burgle companion, I knew, had made a mental map of the layout indoors on his previous visit, and I too had noticed, through doors that were open, signs of present use within, and that her bedroom was at the back. Emerging into the open space at the rear, we saw that there were no lights on here either.

  I almost fell over then, having to grab hold of Patrick’s shoulder, when a cat, black and even more invisible than we were, came from nowhere
and commenced to rub around my legs, purring. I spent a few moments stroking it, hoping that it would then be satisfied and go away. Otherwise, I had an idea I would be falling over it for the duration of our stay.

  We moved on, the cat happily chasing Patrick’s tiny torch beam along a path of sorts, forcing us to walk very slowly. We went the full length of the garden, quite a long way, to the smaller of the two sheds, which proved to be more dilapidated than it had looked from a distance. The door was padlocked but the wood into which the hinged hasp had been fixed was rotten. It was comparatively easy for Patrick to prise out the screws with a little tool on the ring with his set of skeleton keys. These are fine for old-fashioned locks but not most modern ones.

  I was only partly aware of this going on as I had my back to him, keeping watch. Then, nudged, I moved aside as he opened the door. It juddered on its hinges as though it might fall off them at any moment and then there were a few seconds silence as he gazed within.

  ‘Well?’ I hissed.

  ‘Nothing, rusty garden tools, an ancient push mower, two deckchairs, an old bike, a rotary washing line, stuff on shelves – the usual junk sheds are filled with.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t let the cat go in there.’

  ‘It’s already tried. You shut the door.’

  This I did, and then realized that it was in his arms, still purring. He put it down and made as good a job of re-securing the door as possible.

  We went back to the first shed which we already knew was in much better condition. Not only that, it was only a matter of yards from Mrs Peters’s bedroom window, which, luckily, was closed. But the shed had stable-style doors with padlocked bolts top and bottom.

  ‘No,’ Patrick whispered and investigated the side nearest the garden, forcing his way into a shrub of some kind that was growing up against it. I fretted – no, sweated – at the slight sounds he was making, then jumped out of my skin when there was the snarling and shrieking mother of all cat fights somewhere behind us, flinging myself into the bush Patrick had already disappeared in.

  Seconds later, a window was flung open and a woman’s voice shouted, ‘Bloody cats! Sod off!’ There was the sound of something heavy crashing into the plants and this was followed by a wildly aimed rain of objects, one of which landed on the shed roof, tumbled down and hit me. Perhaps a shoe with a sharp heel, I thought inconsequentially, rubbing my head and hoping the old cow would go back to bed. Patrick must have grabbed the shoe, for when the next missile landed he broke a window that I could not see, timing tapping out some more glass as there was one last short barrage of the contents of the room before the window was slammed shut.

  ‘Surely she was drunk!’ I whispered into the leaves.

  ‘You’ll never guess what’s in here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Coffins.’

  ‘Coffins?’ James Carrick said incredulously. ‘D’you reckon there was anything in them?’

  ‘Or anyone?’ Patrick said, pulling a face. ‘Probably not as they were standing on end, not laid flat.’

  ‘How many were there?’

  ‘Seven or eight – they looked brand new too. But not polished, just plain wood – pine, probably.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ the DCI muttered. ‘But it isn’t illegal to have that kind of thing at home.’

  ‘No, of course not. But it’s odd in the circumstances.’

  ‘She might just be storing them for the local undertaker.’

  ‘Oh, get real! When did funeral directors farm out that kind of thing to people’s garden sheds?’

  ‘You must know that I still can’t do anything.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone to do anything – I’m just providing a little interesting info over a friendly pint.’

  They held their tankards aloft in silent acknowledgement of this.

  Joanna joined us – it was the following evening and, for a change, we were at their local pub. Her husband went to the bar to fetch her a drink.

  ‘You’ve bruised your forehead,’ she said to me sympathetically.

  I explained what had happened, then finished by saying, ‘But at least Patrick was able to use the shoe to break the window. I can’t imagine them being hers unless she’s kept them from her teenage years.’

  ‘As ammo for the local cats?’ Patrick suggested.

  ‘Has James told you that he checked up on Sarah Dutton’s husband?’ Joanna enquired in an undertone.

  ‘The manager’s secretary at the crem?’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘He’s a Londoner, name of Paul Dutton, and from the same area where she lived when she was younger – Woodford. He’s not squeaky clean – was had up for dangerous driving some years ago after the driver of another car was forced off the road and through a hedge. Fortunately the other man wasn’t injured but his car was a write-off. There was also another charge of driving while not insured.’

  ‘Doesn’t add up to serious crime,’ Carrick said, returning with a glass of white wine.

  ‘Giant oaks from little acorns …’ I murmured.

  ‘Anyone in the car with Dutton?’ Patrick went on to ask Joanna.

  ‘Records didn’t say.’

  ‘Any theories about where the late Archie’s remains might have ended up?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’ve been trying to track down missing people, or criminals, who had survived car crashes or similar but suffered serious head injuries. It’s a waste of time bothering with the hip replacement side of things as quite a large percentage of the population over sixty has them. Also, as you know, one only has knowledge of people who have gone missing if someone tells the police.’

  ‘Quite,’ Patrick agreed. ‘And as far as mobsters go that’s the last people to inform if they’ve been tidied away somehow. Any luck?’

  ‘I’ve a list of three possibles on the missing person’s register and have written down the names. Two are female. One was in her seventies and in a nursing home due to dementia brought on, it was thought, by her having survived a plane crash in which she was badly injured. She walked out one night from the home in Weston-super-Mare, and despite searches being made was never found. Who knows? She could have just walked into the sea. I don’t think she’s of interest to us.

  ‘The other woman, who lived in London, had been shot in the head during an attack by terrorists while on holiday in Egypt. She subsequently underwent surgery and had largely recovered although, according to a neighbour, she suffered from bouts of depression and was sometimes suicidal. Perhaps that was the reason for her disappearance – she went out one day and didn’t come back. She’s interesting insofar as she had a criminal record – for trafficking young women from Poland and Romania for prostitution. That appears to have come to a stop after her holiday disaster.’

  ‘That is interesting,’ James said. ‘And the man?’

  ‘He’s an army officer who was invalided out of the Royal Engineers after being severely injured in a road accident when the Land Rover he was travelling in rolled off a track and ended up upside down in a gully during a training exercise. It happened quite a while ago. The driver was only slightly injured but the major had multiple fractures and serious head injuries from which he almost died. He recovered, after a fashion but, according to his family, his character changed completely and, after a while, he suffered from arthritis and had hip replacements. Not long after this his mental health went and he became a virtual dropout. He ended up living rough and consorting with what his family described as ‘undesirables’ and they, of course, were at their wits’ end by this time. Finally, after several months had gone by, they gave up trying to track him down themselves and he just disappeared. That ticks quite a few boxes.’

  I could completely understand this anxiety, living as I do with an ex-army officer who sometimes lives rough, very, and consorts with undesirables in the course of his job.

  ‘I think I might have heard about that,’ Patrick said thoughtfully. ‘Where was he living rough?’

  ‘London, plus
round and about. They lived in Staines. Which, as I don’t think the woman who was shot in Egypt is a possible even though trafficking is a serious crime and she might have been the target of a mobster, leaves criminals,’ Joanna continued. ‘I asked James to check up on that.’ This last remark with a broad smile in his direction.

  ‘And I haven’t had time.’ Her husband sighed.

  ‘I’ll do it, if you like,’ Patrick offered. ‘Through the NCA’s files.’

  I said, ‘We haven’t really thought about kidnap victims where the ransom hadn’t been paid or someone off their head but with no criminal record starting up this racket targeting people with no criminal records who they just don’t happen to like. If there even is a racket.’

  ‘It’s endless when you think about it,’ Joanna concluded dismally.

  A fire engine howled passed on the main road nearby and then the pub windows rattled as an explosion followed not all that far away.

  Patrick, who, it goes without saying, is inured to things that go bang, muttered, ‘Those bloody coffins have gone up,’ and we all laughed until we practically cried.

  They had.

  More correctly, the site of the explosion had been the bungalow, the resulting blaze spreading to the shed nearest to it and threatening neighbouring properties, some of which had been slightly damaged by the blast. By the time the fire brigade had arrived, the crew by a miracle escaping serious injury, the whole place was an inferno. They had been called out by the woman whose home was for sale – now with two broken windows and some missing roof tiles – she having spotted smoke coming from an open window before the explosion occurred.

  The fire took over twenty-four hours to cool sufficiently in order to allow investigating fire officers to ascertain the cause and discover if anyone had been in the house at the time. At first there was no sign of the owner, and enquiries nearby did not result in any clue as to her whereabouts that night as she spoke to hardly anyone and never, to people’s knowledge, entertained. It was only on the following day when it was possible to rake and sift through the ash and wreckage that fragments of human bones and what were described as ‘small body parts’ were found in several areas beneath the timbers and the remaining slates of the roof, which had collapsed. Work continuing the next day and a blackened skull was found in the general area of the kitchen. It had two bullet holes in the forehead, most of the back of the cranium blasted away.