Healers (4 page)

They had arrived at the farm before the hordes who always attended a suspicious death. The only other person present was the area’s community policeman, a comfortable middle-aged man, who had been despatched before all the details of Ernie Bowles’s death were known.

“He used to live here with his mam,” the policeman said. “Don’t want to speak ill of the dead, like, but she was a right old tartar. There weren’t many round here who were sorry to see her go.” He looked around him. “Mind you, at least she used to keep the place clean.”

“When did she die?” Ramsay asked. This was what he enjoyed most about an investigation, the digging into the victim’s background, piecing together a picture of the live individual. Hunter hated it. He thought it was a waste of time.

“A few months ago. Just before Christmas.” The constable pulled a face. “I don’t think this floor’s been washed since then.”

“So Bowles lived on his own?”

“In the house, aye. Of course there are those two hippies in the caravan.”

“Oh?” Hunter was immediately interested. Ramsay saw he was preparing to indulge another prejudice. New Age travellers were social security scroungers who had never done a day’s work in their lives. They should be rounded up and deported. And they certainly could all be considered as potential murderers.

“Aye, the girl found him.”

“Girl?” Ramsay asked.

“Well, young woman we’d have to call her now. She’s in her twenties, I suppose. Lily Jackman. Pretty lass. She and her boyfriend have been Bowles’s tenants since last summer. We’ve got a fair few of them round here.”

“Them?” Ramsay asked, dangerously.

“You know. Hippy types. They don’t do much harm. That crew at the Old Chapel in Mittingford seem to attract them. They could all do with a good wash but apart from that

Ramsay heard the words with Prue’s ears. She had her own prejudices. She thought all policemen were narrow-minded bigots.

“When did Ms Jackman find the body?” he asked, emphasizing the “Ms’, a gesture at least.

“She was on her way out to work,” the constable said. “She called in at the house to tell Bowles that the Calor Gas cylinder needed changing. Knocked at the kitchen door and when there was no reply she went in. She used Bowles’s phone in the living room to call us.”

“Where does she work?” Ramsay asked.

“At the Old Chapel in Mittingford. In the health food shop.”

“Is she there now?”

“No. I thought you’d want to talk to her. She’s in the caravan with a WPC and that boyfriend of hers.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Not much,” the policeman said, ‘though I’ve seen him about. He seems to be a great one for wandering. He must walk miles. He doesn’t have any work, not so far as I know. I think a couple of farmers took him on as casual labour at the end of the summer but he wasn’t much use. Not much of a worker, they said. A dreamer. Not quite all there. I don’t think anyone bothers to ask him now, or even if he’s looking. He survives on the dole, I suppose.”

Hunter looked smug but said nothing.

Ramsay turned back to the body. It had the waxy pallor of a tailor’s dummy.

“What about a next of kin?” he asked.

“None, so far as I know. He was certainly an only child. And he never married.”

“His father’s dead too?”

“I presume so. If there ever was a father.”

“Why man, there must have been a father,” Hunter said. “Unless you still believe in the gooseberry bush out here in the sticks.”

“I meant a father living with the family,” the constable replied stiffly. “For as long as I can remember old lady Bowles and Ernie lived here on their own. Perhaps that was why they were so odd the two of them. Even when he was a grown man she used to treat him as a child. They never mixed much with the other farming families.

Reclusive, you could say. Illegitimacy mattered fifty years ago. Perhaps that’s why they kept themselves so much to themselves. It might explain her obsession with religion too. She was a great one for sin was Cissie Bowles. Saw it everywhere. I was called out to a disturbance in Mittingford once. She’d called some lass a harlot because she wore a skirt like a pelmet and walked through the town with her arm round her boyfriend.”

“Bonkers,” Hunter interrupted.

“I don’t think she was really mad. Not loopy. You’d not get any doctor to lock her away. But she was eccentric all right.”

“Perhaps you could find out the family background,” Ramsay suggested. “It’s probably not relevant but I’d be interested to know who the father was. Ask around the district. People will talk to you more freely than to us.”

“Aye,” the constable said, ‘though I don’t know what use it’ll be. All rumour and gossip. Lots of the kids in Mittingford were brought up to think of Cissie Bowles as some sort of witch. You’ll get nothing objective.”

“All the same,” Ramsay said, ‘it’ll give us something to work on.”

“She used to come into town on market day,” the policeman said. “To stock up for the week and pay her bills, even if she had no business. She always wore black. Great black boots like men would wear down the pit. A black coat which was too big for her and flapped around her ankles when she walked. And a black scarf round her head. Wor lass always said she looked like a Russian peasant.” He paused for a moment in memory. “While she was alive everything was paid for in cash. The story was that she wouldn’t trust banks. When they bought the Land-Rover even that was paid for in cash. So the story went.”

“I suppose that provides some sort of motive,” Ramsay said.

“From what I hear Ernie Bowles didn’t make enough to have piles of money around the house. And he’d surely have opened a bank account by now.”

“It wouldn’t really matter, would it?” Ramsay said. “If the murderer believed that there was a secret hoard of cash in the house that would be motive enough. For breaking in at least. Ernie could have surprised the thief.”

Hunter was dismissive. He had two credit cards and a permanent overdraft. In the modern world that was how things were done. He wasn’t going to be taken in by a fairy story about a wicked witch and a pot of gold. “There’s no sign of a search here,” he said. “It’s all pretty mucky but nothing’s been disturbed.”

“And we’ll keep it that way until the SOCO and forensic have been in.” Ramsay said. Most murders were simple: an explosion of family pressure, the loss of control in a fight. Most were aggravated by alcohol and macho self-delusion. But this wouldn’t be simple. He’d need all the help he could get. He turned back to the policeman.

“You’ve spoken a lot about Cissie Bowles,” he said. “I’ve got a clear picture of her. But you’ve not told us much about the victim. What was he like?”

The policeman paused. “He was in the old lady’s shadow. He wouldn’t fart without asking her first. He didn’t have any personality of his own.”

“But when she died, what impression did you have of him then?”

“There was something creepy about him,” the policeman replied. “Something you couldn’t put your finger on.” He smiled awkwardly. “Wor lass always said he was like something that had crawled out from under a stone.”

“So he wasn’t a pleasant man,” Ramsay said.

“No.” the constable assured him, ‘he certainly wasn’t that.”

“The sort of man to make enemies?”

“I wouldn’t have put it as strong as that. But the sort of man to get up your nose.”

They stood for a moment looking down at the body. It wasn’t much of an epitaph, Ramsay thought. Not the sort of thing you’d want inscribed on your headstone.

“And whose nose, specifically, did he get up?” he asked.

There was a pause. “It was all something and nothing,” the constable said at last.

“But?”

“There was a bit of a scrap in the pub a few weeks ago. Peter Richardson’s a local lad. Finished at agricultural college last year. His dad farms the land next to Laverock and they’ve never been friendly. Peter’s always been a hot head and he’d had too much to drink and not enough sense to be quiet. He started throwing a few punches.”

“Why?”

The constable shrugged. “No charges were brought in the end but the story goes that he didn’t like the way Ernie was looking at his lass.”

Hardly a motive for murder, Ramsay thought, not after all this time, but all the same the boy would have to be seen.

“We’ll take a statement,” he said easily, ‘along with everyone else.” He recognized the policeman’s divided loyalties. “Would you mind staying here and waiting for the scientists? We’ll go to the caravan and talk to the woman who found the body.”

Chapter Five

In the yard there was a smell of muck, coming from a heap of manure and straw in one corner. A couple of scrawny hens scrambled out from behind a pile of weeds and began to peck at their ankles. Ramsay saw with amusement that Hunter was ridiculously put out by the birds.

“Don’t be scared, Sergeant.” he said. “They’ll not hurt you.”

“Aren’t they all supposed to be kept in batteries these days?” Hunter said. “It doesn’t seem very hygienic letting them scrabble around in this filth.”

Ramsay thought that the livestock at Laverock would cause him another headache. Someone would have to look after the animals or he’d have the RSPCA on his back for neglect. Perhaps the hippy couple would take responsibility for the place until he could sort out something more permanent. Or perhaps he should ask someone more competent, like a neighbouring farmer. Peter Richardson’s father?

From the corner of his eye he watched Hunter surreptitiously kick out at the bantams.

The farmyard was bounded on one side by the house and garden with a track to the road and the rest of the land. Two others were made up of barns and out-buildings. The fourth, and shortest side, had a stone wall and a five-barred gate leading to a field. The gate had sunk on its hinges and they had to lift it.

In the night there had been rain and the grass was still wet. By the time they reached the caravan their trousers, socks and shoes were soaking. A pale-skinned young man with thin hair pulled back in a pony-tail was sitting on the caravan steps. At first it seemed to Ramsay that Sean was watching their progress through the cow-parsley with enjoyment, but as they got closer he said, vaguely, almost apologetically:

“I’m sorry about that. I keep meaning to cut a path …”

He stood up and opened the door for them to go inside.

When Ramsay saw that Lily Jackman was the attractive girl from the health food shop he was not surprised. He had known, somehow, that she would be. Behind him he heard Hunter mutter something appreciative under his breath and turned to warn him. Lily looked up and stared at the two men but did not recognize Ramsay. She was sitting listlessly on the padded bench which ran against one wall and which, presumably, they pulled out each night to make a bed. In the confined space he felt clumsy and awkward. A WPC was sitting impassively and unsympathetically on an identical bench beyond a pull-down table. She too, it seemed, did not care for travellers. Ramsay sent her back to the farm. “We can manage now,” he said. “Thank you.” She stood up sulkily and went out without a word.

“Miserable cow,” Lily said, under her breath. Ramsay pretended not to hear.

Sean slid in beside Lily and Ramsay and Hunter took the opposite bench. It was very cramped and their knees were almost touching under the table. Ramsay was aware of Hunter staring at Lily, but she seemed not to notice. Perhaps she was used to it. He introduced himself, briefly.

“I’ll have to ask some questions,” he said, trying to be gentle, remembering that she had probably never seen a body before. “Mr. Bowles was murdered, you see. Perhaps you realized. There’ll be a police investigation.”

Lily stared back at them blankly. Hunter lowered his eyes.

“Yeah,” Sean said. “Right. Of course.” He took her hand.

“We didn’t have anything to do with it.” Lily said, suddenly. “You can’t pin it on us.”

“It’s not my job to pin it on anyone,” Ramsay said. “My job is to find out what happened.”

He spoke briskly, with what Prue called his schoolmaster voice, and he realized he must have sounded pompous.

But Lily blushed. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that people like us always seem to get the blame. We’re natural scapegoats.” She took a tobacco tin from her pocket and, began to roll a very thin cigarette.

“People like who?”

“Unconventional people, travellers.” She paused and added mockingly: “Hippies.”

“But you haven’t done much travelling recently,” Ramsay said. “Have you? I understand that you’ve been living here since last summer.”

He couldn’t place her social background. Her voice was without accent, deep, rather throaty. An actress’ voice, he thought, then wondered if the huskiness was caused by cigarettes, not a desire for effect. Perhaps he was being unfair to her.

“You have been living here since last summer?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said bitterly. “Nine bloody months.”

“Haven’t you been happy here?”

“Would you be?” she snapped back, then seemed to regret her rudeness. “Look,” she said, ‘we were glad to move in. It seemed perfect. Right out in the country. You know.”

“But not so much fun in the winter,” Ramsay said easily.

“Bloody freezing, she agreed. “But it wasn’t only that …” She paused.

“What is it then? The inconvenience?” Hunter spoke for the first time and she looked him up and down before answering, sarcastically:

“Yes, the inconvenience.”

Of course it was more than that, Ramsay thought. He waited, hoping she would explain why she really disliked the place so intensely.

“It isn’t that bad here,” Sean said awkwardly. “Not really. I’ve lived in worse places.”

“You’re just soft,” she said. “I think you’d be happy anywhere.”

“I would,” he said. “Anywhere living with you.” The words were so sentimental that Ramsay thought he was teasing, but he was quite serious. Lily seemed infuriated by the remark.

“Then you’re a bloody fool,” she said.

“You could have moved on,” Ramsay said. “Couldn’t you?” He directed the question at Lily, sensing that she was the one who took all the decisions.