He continued digging in silence until a small, dirty white shape appeared and suddenly his heart began to race. He froze for
a few moments then he began to scrape more carefully.
‘It’ll be an animal,’ said Chris who’d started working a few feet away.
Neil took a deep breath. ‘Stop what you’re doing and get Dave over, will you? Tell him to bring the camera.’
Chris hurried away. Neil continued scraping the clinging soil away very carefully. When the skeleton was half
uncovered he made the decision to put on a crime scene suit and do things by the book. He placed a plastic tray at the side
of the trench and asked Dave to take photographs.
Dave stood there, recording the whole thing without a word while Neil carried on working in silence. This skeleton seemed
different to the others. The chances were that this was a child, buried in the cold damp earth and forgotten for many years.
‘Should we call the police out again?’ Dave asked tentatively.
‘They’ll be getting sick of us,’ said Chris who was now standing watching, hands in pockets.
‘I know they will but we’d better be on the safe side. And we’d better get Dr Bowman back here as well.’ Neil pointed to a
rotted shape just next to the skeleton’s right hand. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘It’s wood,’ Dave answered. ‘Half rotten by the look of it.’
‘Yes. But what does it look like?’
‘Are those wheels? A wooden car? It can’t be.’
Neil didn’t answer. He started to brush the soil away from the small pelvis then he picked something up very carefully and,
once he’d cleaned it a little, replaced it so that Dave could photograph it
in situ
. Then he climbed out of the trench and took his mobile phone from the plastic box.
When he’d made the two calls he stood by Dave and Chris, staring down at what had been uncovered.
Dave spoke first. ‘If that’s a toy car, it means …’
Neil looked up. ‘It means we could have a child murder on our hands. I say we wait for Colin and the police.’
‘Poor little sod,’ said Dave bowing his head.
Transcript of recording made by Mrs Mabel Cleary (née Fallon) – Home Counties Library Service Living History Project: Reminiscences
of a wartime evacuee.They say you can get used to anything, don’t they? Even being in prison so I’ve heard. I had to do a lot of cleaning and polishing
and Mrs Jannings didn’t allow me out to play till I’d finished. Even though she seemed better she still stayed in her room
a lot. I don’t suppose they knew much about depression and that sort of thing in those days but I think that’s what she had.
She never smiled or laughed and I tried to keep out of her way.Tailors Court wasn’t a proper farm because it didn’t have enough land but now there was a war on they kept a few pigs and
a couple of cows and what land they had was ploughed up and planted with crops. We had to dig for victory after all. Mary
worked on the farm next door
but her and the other land girls looked after the land and the animals at Tailors Court too.I liked Mary. She showed me lots of things. How to put rollers in my hair, how to put gravy browning on your legs so it looked
as though you had stockings on and how to draw a line up the back of your leg with an eyebrow pencil to make it look like
a seam. I’d never had a big sister but I think Mary was the next best thing.I was glad when Miles went off back to his unit. He gave me the creeps hanging around like that watching me and Mary. Sometimes
Mary used to ask me to stay with her so she wouldn’t be alone with him and I didn’t blame her.Then one day a car arrived. It was the lady who’d brought me to Tailors Court. She asked me how I was and I remembered my
manners and said very well thank you. Then I saw that she had a girl and a boy on the back seat. The boy was crying and clutching
a toy car like his life depended on it.When Mrs Jannings came out she didn’t look pleased. And when I ran upstairs to tell Mary, she said there’d be trouble.
From the fingerprints they’d left in the rented house next door to James Dalcott’s, it was soon discovered that the two men
who’d called themselves Syd and Brian Trenchard were known to the police under the names Syd Jenkins and Brian Carrack. Wesley
observed that they hadn’t even had the imagination to change their first names, which suggested that they were hardly criminal
masterminds.
Jenkins and Carrack had done time for robbery – mainly from security vans – but the most interesting piece of new information,
from Wesley’s point of view, was that
the last time they had been resident in one of Her Majesty’s prisons, their fellow guests had included one Harry Parker. Gerry
Heffernan – who was no believer in coincidences – had become rather excited when he’d heard this news and sent a patrol car
to Tradmouth to pick Parker up.
When Wesley returned to the incident room, he made straight for Gerry’s desk and sat down. ‘So Roz Dalcott’s fancy man was
in jail with a pair of armed robbers who were renting a house next door to her estranged husband.’
‘And if anyone knows how to use a firearm, it’s an armed robber. I reckon Parker paid these two to get rid of Roz’s inconvenient
husband before he had a chance to change his will.’ He sat back with a beatific smile on his face. ‘I think we’ve cracked
it, Wes.’
‘What about the other things: the Podingham Clinic and the father who was hanged for murdering his wife?’
‘What about them?’
Wesley didn’t answer. Gerry was probably right. This case was far more straightforward than he’d imagined. A simple case of
greed.
Wesley’s mobile phone began to ring. He looked at the display and saw that it was Neil.
‘We’ve found a body,’ were Neil’s first words.
‘Is this number five?’ Wesley answered with a sigh. Although it was all very interesting, as things were, he really didn’t
have the time.
There was a long pause. ‘This one’s different, Wes.’
Something in Neil’s voice made him pay attention.
‘How do you mean, different?’
‘It’s a child. And it was buried with a toy car.’
Wesley’s mouth formed an O. He looked at Gerry who
was busy sorting through his paperwork, pushing it from one side of his desk to the other.
‘A car. Are you sure?’
‘Course I am.’ Neil sounded a little hurt.
‘Have you called Colin?’
‘Yes. He didn’t sound too pleased. I reckon he thinks it’s just another old one.’
‘I’ll have a word if you like.’
‘I’ve told him already. He’s on his way. We’ve sealed off the trench.’
‘I’ll be down right away.’
Gerry looked up. ‘What is it?’
‘Neil’s found a child’s skeleton at Tailors Court. He says he thinks it’s fairly recent. Colin’s on his way there now.’ He’d
just taken off his coat and flung it across a vacant chair but now he picked it up. ‘You coming?’
Gerry stood up, knocking a file onto the floor. He left it there. ‘Parker should be here soon but it’ll do him good to wait.
An hour or so in the cells and a few cups of the bilge-water they call tea from that infernal machine concentrates the mind
wonderfully.’
When the two men arrived at Tailors Court Colin Bowman was already there, hunched over the trench with Neil squatting by his
side. A pair of uniformed constables were standing at either end of the trench like bookends, watching the proceedings with
interest and stamping their polished boots on the sparse, yellowing grass to keep warm.
‘So what have we got?’ said Wesley as he reached the spot.
Neil stood to one side. ‘Look for yourself.’
The small bones lay there in the damp earth, the eye
sockets in the skull staring up at him. The child had been buried on his or her back and a chunk of rotting wood, with what
looked like wheels at each corner, lay by the right hand. Neil had been right. It looked like a roughly made toy car and the
sight of it made him feel a little sick. These sad little bones had once been a child – someone’s son or daughter.
He addressed Colin. ‘Any obvious cause of death?’
‘Nothing obvious, I’m afraid. But I can tell you this poor little chap’s had an amalgam filling at some time in his life.
I’m afraid this one’s yours, Wesley.’
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ Gerry asked. He was hovering behind Wesley, staring down at the trench.
‘Difficult to tell at this age, Gerry,’ Colin answered. ‘I think he or she is about nine or ten, judging by the teeth.’ He
didn’t say anything for a few moments. ‘If I were you, I’d be getting my missing persons files out.’
‘So how long has it been there?’
Colin looked at Neil. ‘Any ideas?’
Neil bent down and took a small, soil-caked object from the plastic tray at the side of the trench. He handed it to Wesley.
‘I found it resting on the pelvis.’
Wesley examined the thing carefully before passing it to Gerry. ‘Corroded metal. Looks like a letter S, or a snake,’ he said
softly.
A middle-aged constable who’d been standing near by sidled up to Gerry and peered over his shoulder, fascinated. He was a
large man with a beer belly to match the Chief Inspector’s own. ‘I used to have one of those when I was a nipper.’ He looked
at Gerry. ‘Don’t you recognise it, sir?’
Gerry nodded and turned the thing round in his fingers. ‘It’s one of those belt clasps shaped like a snake. All the little
lads used to have them at one time, isn’t that right?’ He looked at the constable for confirmation and he nodded obediently.
‘You’ll be too young to remember them, Wes.’
Wesley took the object from his boss and stared at it. It did nudge a vague and distant memory – cub scouts and climbing trees;
carrying penknives in your pocket before the time when the possession of a bladed weapon took on sinister connotations. He
rather thought he might have worn such a belt at one time in the dim and distant past. Or perhaps Gerry was right and they
had gone out of fashion long before he was born and he recognised it only from old photographs of childhood innocence.
‘The toy car and the snake belt clasp point to this being a boy,’ Wesley said quietly.
‘We need to do a DNA test to be sure,’ said Colin. ‘Neil, if you can lift and record these bones, I’ll examine them properly
back at the mortuary.’ His face was solemn.
As Neil got down to work, Wesley spoke quietly, staring down at the grave. ‘I think the first thing we need to do is to find
out more about the people who used to live here,’ he said.
‘I’ll leave that to you, Wes,’ Gerry said as he turned away.
‘So where are they?’
Rachel Tracey sat opposite Harry Parker in the interview room. There was a small, smug smile on his lips which was starting
to annoy her. His solicitor, a serious young man with dark curly hair who looked as though this might well be his first case
since leaving law school, sat
quietly by the suspect’s side. Every so often he had opened his mouth then closed it again, as though he had been about to
intervene then thought better of it.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Detective Sergeant Tracey.’ He leaned towards her and she looked away. He was a suspect
in a murder enquiry and she told herself she shouldn’t find him attractive. She pursed her lips together and gave him a cold
stare.
She was relieved when Trish Walton took over the questioning. DCI Heffernan had asked them to keep Parker occupied until his
return and had suggested that the female touch might loosen him up a bit. But Rachel really couldn’t see it working. Parker
wasn’t that stupid. Quite the opposite.
‘You do know Syd Jenkins and Brian Carrack. You met them in prison.’
Parker gave Trish a charming smile. ‘I keep telling you, I’ve put all that behind me. I’m an artist now and I’ve got a beautiful
fiancée and a baby on the way. Why should I get involved in anything criminal and risk going back inside? It doesn’t make
sense.’
Rachel exchanged a look with Trish. If Parker had disposed of his partner’s husband before he had a chance to cut her out
of his will, it made perfect sense. And how much better if somebody else – two old prison acquaintances, for instance – did
the dirty deed for him?
‘Let’s face it, Detective Sergeant Tracey – or may I call you Rachel? – you can’t prove anything. And where are these two
alleged hit men I’m supposed to have hired to dispose of Roz’s ex, eh? And even if you could produce them, there’s no way
they’d say I was involved.’
‘I think my client’s told you everything he knows,’ the
solicitor piped up in a voice that could only be described as timid.
The door opened and a young constable scurried in and whispered something in Rachel’s ear. After announcing that she was absenting
herself for the benefit of the machine that was recording every word for posterity, she left the room, returning a few minutes
later with a sheet of paper in her hand.
She looked at Harry Parker for a moment then sat down. With a charming smile of her own, she went straight for the jugular.
‘In your last statement you told us that you and Rosalind Dalcott were in your flat in Tradmouth together on the night of
James Dalcott’s death.’
‘That’s right,’ Parker replied with confidence. ‘We were together all that night.’
‘Did anybody borrow Mrs Dalcott’s car that night?’
A look of uncertainty flashed across Parker’s face, there for a split second then gone. ‘I don’t think so. Why?’
Rachel took a deep breath. ‘A lot of people complain about surveillance cameras and the Big Brother society, Mr Parker, but
I must say that there are times when it comes in useful. We’ve got some hi-tech new traffic cameras up on the main junction
on the way in to Neston. Number plate recognition, the lot. A blue Toyota registered to Rosalind Dalcott went through that
junction at quarter to seven heading towards Tradington on Saturday evening.’
She sat back and watched as Harry Parker looked in desperation at the young solicitor who was shuffling his feet as though
he wished he was somewhere else.