‘Congratulations.’ Neil did his best to look impressed, but the ends of his lips twitched upward, amused at the young woman’s
pomposity. ‘So what’s been happening?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked defensively.
‘Well, I presume you don’t call out half the local force to look for a couple of missing hens. What’s been going on? And when
will Wes be back?’
Rachel noticed that Steve was scowling by her side, his usual reaction when Wesley’s name was mentioned.
‘I thought everyone would have known by now. There’s been a suspicious death. A man’s body was found in a field near here
yesterday, so I’m afraid Inspector Peterson will be tied up for quite a while.’
‘Well, if you see him, tell him I’ve got something to show him. Something he’ll be interested in.’
As Neil spoke two men and a woman emerged from the barn doors, staggering under the weight of what looked like half of some
gigantic round table-top, big enough to accommodate King Arthur and a fair number of his knights. They shouted to Neil to
give them a hand, and he trotted over and took hold of a corner. Carefully, with great concentration, they manoeuvred the
great awkward thing and propped it up against the barn wall.
Steve, who was quite content to see other people work, folded his arms and watched. Then, when the huge board was standing
against the rough stone wall, his mouth gaped open. ‘What’s that?’ he muttered, looking at Rachel. ‘Looks like something that
would interest the Vice Squad.’
He edged a little closer, staring at the painted images on the wood. Rachel glared at him disapprovingly. She didn’t want
to waste valuable time while Steve salivated over a filthy old painting of naked, writhing figures.
Neil and his companions stood back to look at the thing they had brought out into the light. Unlike Steve’s, their excitement
didn’t seem salacious; in fact their eyes were alight with wonder, as though they had uncovered some great treasure.
Rachel tried to sound casual. ‘What is it?’ It was time to move on, to conduct more interviews, but her curiosity was conquering
her sense of duty.
Neil’s female companion answered. She was in her thirties, slim and unadorned with make-up. She wore old jeans and a shapeless
brown jumper. Her hair was flyaway brown tied back in a makeshift ponytail. She looked at Rachel with keen blue eyes. ‘If
I’m not mistaken, this is an important piece of late-medieval art. It’s better painted than most examples I’ve seen before
– almost reminds me of the work of Hieronymus Bosch. Extremely rare.’
Steve mumbled something incomprehensible, then asked how much it was worth. The woman ignored his question.
‘So what is it exactly?’ asked Rachel, hoping she wasn’t displaying undue ignorance.
‘In the medieval period it would have been displayed at the front of a church above the chancel arch to remind the congregation
just what was in store for them if they didn’t behave themselves in this life. It was commonly known as a Last Judgement or
a Doom.’
‘Bloody hell,’ was Steve’s only comment. ‘Exactly,’ said the woman with a smile of triumph.
‘This is it.’ Wesley Peterson stood at the garden gate, staring at the thatched, whitewashed cottage.
It had been easy to find the place. A ring around the local estate agents who dealt with rented property had produced quick
results. A Tradmouth estate agent called Jones and Carlton in Lower Quay Street had admitted to renting Warwick Cottage in
the village of Whitely, three miles inland from Derenham, to Mr Shellmer on a three-month lease. All dealings with Mr Shellmer
had gone smoothly, the young woman had assured the constable who rang, and now he was looking for a permanent home in the
area.
The keys to Warwick Cottage were obtained and the secrets of Jonny Shellmer’s life would, Wesley hoped, soon be revealed.
If the body did indeed belong to Jonny
Shellmer – until he was properly identified they couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure. And experience told Wesley that it wasn’t
always wise to jump the gun.
First thing that morning they had replayed the tape of Ray Davenport’s interview with Shellmer. According to the singer, the
motive for his move was a desire to get out of London and live life at a slower pace. He was concentrating on composing and
his solo career, but a Rock Boat reunion tour couldn’t be ruled out. He had chosen Devon because he liked it, he stated in
a Liverpool accent watered down by years of exile. There had been no hint of any past connection with the area: like many
others he had simply fallen in love with the place.
Wesley was still going over Shellmer’s words in his head as Gerry Heffernan pushed the gate open and strode up the crazy-paved
path. They had already spoken to the next-door neighbours – two elderly ladies, one with cropped white hair wearing manly
tweeds and the other a fluffy, doll-like creature – and the pair had seemed quite happy to share their knowledge of Jonny
Shellmer’s comings and goings.
Shellmer had lived in the cottage for about three weeks and had led a life, according to the ladies, of quiet contemplation.
As for visitors, they had seen a small blue car parked outside on more than one occasion. And at weekends they had observed
an attractive blonde female arriving in a red hatchback and then driving off in the passenger seat of Shellmer’s yellow sports
car. They had a key to the cottage next door, but they would only use it in case of emergencies, they assured him earnestly.
They never pried. Wesley wasn’t sure whether to believe them.
The interior of Jonny Shellmer’s cottage was dark in the gloom of the dull spring day. Wesley flicked a switch and the long,
low room was immediately bathed in light. There was a faint whiff of cigarette smoke in the air, and a full ashtray stood
on the dark wooden coffee table in the middle of the room.
‘It’s not really what I expected,’ Wesley said, looking around.
Heffernan stood, arms folded, in the centre of the room. ‘I don’t know why but I thought all pop stars lived in pads covered
in leopard skin with sunken Jacuzzis and wall-to-wall blondes.’
Wesley could tell that his boss was mildly disappointed in Shellmer’s whitewashed walls and velvet curtains. The pair of plain
claret-coloured sofas and the Victorian cast-iron fireplace hardly shrieked out drug-induced decadence. But it was a rented
place, a temporary stop hardly worth stamping the personality on. And Shellmer had probably left his wild days behind. Like
most people, he had, no doubt, mellowed with age.
The only clues to Shellmer’s past were four framed gold discs propped up on the mantelpiece and an electric guitar resting
against the arm of one of the sofas. If Wesley’s parents had been less inclined to keep him on the straight and narrow path
of worthy education and classical music, he might have recognised it as a Gibson Les Paul. Gerry Heffernan, who hadn’t had
Wesley’s advantages in life, picked the instrument up lovingly, like a mother with a new baby.
‘Beautiful,’ he purred. ‘What I wouldn’t have given for one of these little beauties when I was in my group.’
‘You were in a group?’ Wesley had a sudden mental picture of the overweight chief inspector in studded vest and skin-tight
leather trousers caressing the neck of a gleaming electric guitar as he cavorted across a spotlit stage.
‘Don’t sound so surprised, Wes. I’ve had me moments, you know.’
Wesley smiled to himself. ‘We’d better search the place, I suppose,’ he said, focusing his mind on the task in hand. ‘Let’s
face it, we don’t know much about Jonny Shellmer. We don’t even know where to find his next of kin.’
‘The old dears next door mentioned a blonde woman who
appeared at weekends and another visitor who had a small blue car. Do we assume that Shellmer didn’t have a wife or – what
do they call it these days – a partner in tow?’
‘There doesn’t seem to be any sign of one.’ Wesley thought for a moment. ‘Pam’s mother used to be a fan of his at one time.’
‘How is your mother-in-law, by the way?’
Wesley raised his eyes to heaven. ‘No change, unfortunately.’ He looked around the room, planning his campaign: he liked to
be well organised. ‘We’d better make a start. If you do in here, I’ll take the bedrooms.’
Heffernan nodded. It seemed that Wesley had everything under control. A good education was a wonderful thing. So was delegation.
The perfunctory search didn’t tell them a lot about the dead man. There wasn’t much in the way of personal possessions in
his rented cottage, just the bare basics needed for a comfortable existence. Wesley strongly suspected the furniture wasn’t
Shellmer’s style, and deduced that most of his stuff might be in storage somewhere.
There were two bedrooms. The smaller was obviously used as a spare and had the neat, empty look of a hotel room. The larger,
the one occupied by Shellmer, contained the usual assortment of personal items – clothes, toiletries, a couple of paperback
thrillers, passport, credit cards, the stuff of everyday life.
Wesley opened the top drawer of the dressing table and found a card lying on top of a collection of snowy-white T-shirts:
on the front was a picture of an angel painted in delicate medieval colours. For a few seconds Wesley stared at the picture’s
unearthly beauty, then he turned it over to discover that the artist was Botticelli. He opened the card. Written inside in
gold pen were the words ‘To Jonny from Angel. Thank you.’
Wesley put it back in the drawer. It was probably from a girlfriend of his … or even from a fan. He resumed his
search and discovered two photographs nestling underneath a pair of neatly folded black boxer shorts.
Wesley took them out and examined them. In the first a pretty, fair-haired young woman holding a bonny-looking baby smiled
out at the camera. Wesley turned it over and found the words ‘to my darling Jonny with love from your Liz and William’ written
in neat square handwriting on the back.
He returned it to the drawer and studied the second: a group of young teenagers on the cusp of adulthood. The scenery looked
local. He recognised the shore at Derenham with a huddle of cottages in the background. The children, three boys and a girl,
were frozen there in the fuzzy, anaemic hues of the early colour photograph, enjoying a perpetual summer.
A holiday snap. Happy times. His parents had similar photographs featuring him and his sister, Maritia, now a junior hospital
doctor in Oxford. It was the sort of photograph found in the forgotten drawers of most houses in the land. Somehow Wesley
had never thought of rock stars as having happy, innocent childhoods, but here was the evidence. He assumed that one of the
boys in the picture must be Jonny, probably the dark, lanky lad at the end of the group. For a split second he experienced
a deep sadness that a carefree, innocent young boy sitting with friends on a Devon beach could, years later, end up lying
in a damp field against a hedgerow with a bullet through his brain.
But his boss’s voice distracted him from these thoughts of mortality. ‘Come on, Wes. I’ve not found anything out of the ordinary,
but we’ll get someone to give the place a good going-over later. I found some estate agent’s details – that place called the
Old Vicarage in Derenham; Ray Davenport mentioned it.’
‘Well, he was house-hunting. Anything else?’
‘I couldn’t see an address book and there’s nothing to say if he was married or if he had any kids or other family.’
‘I found a picture of a young woman with a baby in his
drawer – could be his wife and kid, I suppose.’
‘But there’s no sign of them round here, and we need a positive identification of the body. How about the two old dears next
door?’
‘Good idea,’ said Wesley. ‘We’ll pay them a call on our way out.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Where’s his car?’ he said rhetorically.
‘It isn’t here and it wasn’t parked near where he was found. The neighbours said he drove a yellow sports car: not easy to
miss. Where is it?’
‘It’s bound to turn up eventually – unless it’s been nicked.’ Heffernan looked at his watch. ‘We’ll call next door, then we’d
better get back to Tradmouth. The post-mortem’s in an hour. You wouldn’t think an attractive young lass like that Dr Kruger
would want to go round cutting up dead bodies, would you?’ he mused. ‘You’d think she’d want to be a GP like your mum or work
in baby clinics or something.’
Wesley smiled and said nothing. As many female officers at Tradmouth police station had discovered, Gerry Heffernan wasn’t
the most politically correct of creatures. But Wesley knew that there was no malice behind his unfashionable opinions. And,
unlike many colleagues Wesley had come across in the course of his career, Gerry had never treated him any differently because
of the colour of his skin and came down hard on any that did: he’d had sharp words with Steve Carstairs on more than one occasion.
But Wesley feared he might find it difficult to convince Laura Kruger of his virtues, especially if they were late.
He began to make for the door, looking around to make sure that everything was as they had found it.
‘What the hell’s that?’ Gerry Heffernan’s urgent question made him jump.
Wesley looked round. The small leaded window near the fireplace was blocked by a dark shape, a human face. Someone was watching
them through the window, a blur of a face shadowed by some sort of hood. It was Heffernan
who reached the door first. He was a big man, a little over-weight – or so his doctor kept telling him – but he moved swiftly.
He flung the door open and ran outside. Wesley, slimmer and theoretically faster, followed him. But when they reached the
garden gate they could see nobody about.
Wesley opened the wooden gate and ran into the lane. Then he saw her. A small figure swathed in a hooded black coat was disappearing
round the corner. Wesley began to follow, cursing his lack of fitness and the fact that he’d used the car too much over the
winter months. He caught sight of her again, but when she reached the main village street she flitted off down a tiny side
lane.
Wesley reached the lane and stopped. The village was deserted: those who worked were out; it was too cold and damp for the
elderly to venture forth; and the holidaymakers wouldn’t be arriving for another month at least. In the stillness the only
sign of life was a ginger cat strolling arrogantly across the road. The woman had gone. He walked down the lane slowly, getting
his breath back, looking into gardens and through gates.