Trish sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
He suddenly had an idea. ‘As well as seeing what became of Cheshlare afterwards, can you find out what he did before he went
to work with Clipton? Perhaps we’ll be able to trace him through someone who knew him back then. Get all you can about him.’
Wesley could see the scepticism in Trish’s brown eyes as she turned away.
‘And check any deaths in that name too. It’s always
possible that he’s no longer with us,’ he added as an afterthought.
As Trish hurried back to her computer to continue her desk-bound investigations, he looked round the incident room. Rachel
Tracey was over in the far corner talking to Nick Tarnaby.
He watched Tarnaby walk away, head bowed, before he caught her eye and waved her over. She pressed her lips firmly together
and marched across the room.
‘Are you ready to visit Pat Beswick?’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘It might be nice to put her in touch with Mary when this is all over.’
He could have sworn he saw Rachel’s cheeks redden a little. Perhaps, he thought, Mary Haynes wasn’t the only person of interest
at Gorfleet Farm.
Rachel swept out of the room and Wesley watched as she lifted her heavy coat off the rack in the corridor outside. He hadn’t
had time to take his coat off since his arrival so he pulled at the zip to fasten it against the weather. He could see the
rain landing in rivulets on the window. It was cold and wet out there and he wasn’t taking any chances.
On the drive out to Buckfastleigh the windscreen wipers were working overtime and Rachel observed that it would be even bleaker
when they reached the edge of Dartmoor. He knew she was making conversation but he didn’t really want to talk. His mind was
still churning over the facts of the two cases – the child at Tailors Court and the shooting of James Dalcott. He hoped that
Pat would help him solve the first. As for the second, he was starting to experience that feeling of frustration he sometimes
had in dreams when he was being held back from his goal by
some unseen force. There’d been so many possible leads but none of them had come to anything. Perhaps the Clipton angle would
be the same.
When he reached Buckfastleigh he saw that some shops had started to put Christmas displays in their windows, reminding him
that time was speeding on. And the powers that be would be expecting results sooner rather than later.
Rachel found Pat’s address easily enough. It was a small pink-washed semi-detached house of indeterminate age on a side road
not far from the main street. The woman who opened the door was small and thin and reminded Wesley of a sparrow. Presumably
she was in her seventies but the sprightly way she moved made her seem a lot younger. She also had the alert look of a good
observer.
They were invited to sit and tea was offered and accepted.
‘So you stayed in Devon after the War?’ Rachel began. She tilted her head to one side, genuinely interested. Wesley knew that
the woman would soon be telling her her life story.
‘My late husband was in the navy and he was based in Plymouth. Then he got a job in admin at Devonport. We moved here when
he retired. He died two years ago. Heart attack.’
Rachel made the appropriate noises of sympathy before asking her next question. ‘You’ve kept in touch with Mabel all these
years?’
Pat hesitated. ‘No, we only found each other recently. My son got me on the Internet and I Googled some names. You know, from
when I was evacuated. I only found a couple. A lad called Otto Kramer I knew from the village – he was Jewish and his dad
was a doctor: they’d
managed to escape from Germany somehow. Anyway he became a professor over in America so I e-mailed him and got a lovely reply.
Then I found Mabel’s name on a library website. She was taking part in some project – writing down her memories of being evacuated.
There was a photo of her but the actual thing she was writing isn’t on the website yet so …’
‘Go on,’ Rachel prompted gently. She glanced at Wesley who was sitting on the edge of his old-fashioned armchair, perfectly
still.
‘Well I e-mailed the library and they passed on my message. She wrote to me and I wrote back and invited her down here.’
‘And now she’s gone off sightseeing to Cornwall. Do you know where exactly?’
There was a short silence. Then Wesley heard a sound coming from the direction of the kitchen. Something being dropped on
the floor.
Then suddenly the door opened. A small thin woman with grey curls and a beak-like nose stood in the doorway. Wesley recognised
her immediately from the photograph her daughter had provided. He put his tea cup on the table by the side of his chair and
stood up.
‘Hello, Mabel,’ he said quietly as Rachel put her cup down with exaggerated care and sat forward, her eyes fixed on the newcomer.
Mabel gave Pat a feeble smile. ‘It’s all right, Pat. I can’t have you getting into trouble. You can get locked up for telling
fibs to the police.’
‘We’ve been looking for you,’ said Wesley, immediately aware that he was stating the obvious but they were the first words
that came into his head.
‘I didn’t know there’d be all this fuss and I didn’t mean to upset our Sandra. I just wanted some time back in Devon with
Pat. We’ve not seen each other for years.’
‘But why the lie about you moving on?’
Wesley saw Pat and Mabel exchange a worried glance.
‘Will we get into trouble for lying? Will we be prosecuted?’
Wesley could tell she was deadly serious. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said gently. ‘We’re just glad to find you safe. But I
don’t understand why you didn’t tell us you were still here.’
Mabel took a deep breath, suddenly more relaxed. ‘It was our Sandra,’ she said. ‘Always fussing, she is. I thought if Pat
rang and said I was OK and I’d be back when I’d finished my travels … If Pat had said I was here, I thought Sandra might come
and spoil things.’
There was a long silence and the two women sat there like a pair of schoolgirls outside the headmistress’s office, fearful
of a scolding.
‘You’ve no idea what she’s like’ Mabel continued. ‘She calls round every day and then she rings me to ask what I’ve been eating.
I have to hide the sherry bottle – she found it once and confiscated it. Said it was bad for my health. I mean to say, if
you can’t enjoy a tipple at my age, when can you enjoy it? I just got sick of it all so I came to see Pat.’ She pouted defiantly.
‘And now she’s got the police looking for me.’
Wesley couldn’t help feeling a modicum of sympathy for this woman with her bossy, controlling daughter. But there was something
he needed to clear up. ‘Well, Sandra’s not entirely responsible for us being here, Mrs Cleary. I need to talk to you about
a murder enquiry we’re working
on. I told Pat over the phone that some human remains have been found at Tailors Court – the skeleton of a boy aged around
nine or ten buried near the paddock.’
The defiance disappeared from Mabel Cleary’s eyes and she nodded slowly. ‘I remember the paddock.’
‘We think the child was buried there in the early nineteen forties – around the time you were living there. Pat says she knows
nothing about it but you were there before she arrived so I wondered …’
It was difficult to read Mabel’s expression as she sank into the nearest chair and grabbed a tissue out of the box on the
table by her side. She dabbed at her mouth absentmindedly before twisting the tissue in her fingers.
‘Did Miles Jannings kill the child, Mabel?’ he asked gently, hoping the answer would be yes. If it was the long-dead Miles,
then he could close the case and concentrate on James Dalcott’s shooting. It had to be Miles, surely.
He held his breath and watched Mabel’s face. She looked agitated, as though she was reliving painful memories, then she looked
him in the eye. Her own eyes were the palest blue and he could see uncertainty there, even fear. ‘I put it all out of my mind
until I started doing the project at the library.’ There was a long silence but Wesley knew she was thinking; wondering how
best to put what she knew – what she’d suppressed all these years – into words. Rachel and Pat were sitting quite still, listening
intently, neither wanting to break the spell.
‘I didn’t like it at Tailors Court much. Some bits were all right. There was a nice land girl called Mary billeted there –
she was courting the son of the farmer she worked for.’
‘Mary married John Haynes and she’s still at Gorfleet Farm.’
Mabel gave a weak smile. ‘That’s nice. I would have liked to keep in touch with her but you go back home and … Lives change,
don’t they?’
‘Tell me about the other people at Tailors Court,’ he said gently.
‘Well, Mrs Jannings was in bed most of the time. Sickly she was. And Miles. I kept well away from him, and his girlfriend
– Ugly Esther us kids used to call her. They got married not long before he was killed.’
‘Tell me about the other children.’
She frowned. ‘There was me and a boy called Charlie. He was a bit odd. He used to follow Miles around like a little dog and
sometimes they’d disappear for ages together.’ She hesitated. ‘It was a long time before I found out what they got up to,
and then I wished to God I hadn’t.’
Wesley said nothing. He let her carry on.
‘Then there was Charlie’s cousin, Belle. She was a spiteful bit of work – the sort who’d pinch you and tell tales to the
teacher. I was a bit lonely there until Pat came, although I did play with some of the children from school.’
‘I expect Charlie played with the other boys,’ said Rachel.
Mabel shook her head. ‘He just wanted to be with Miles. Hero worship I suppose. Then Charlie disappeared one day and Belle
said he’d gone to another village; found another billet ’cause he wasn’t happy. Perhaps one of the teachers at the school
took pity on him.’
There was something in the way Mabel was talking that
made Wesley uncomfortable. Her voice was too bright, too positive. As though she was trying to convince herself of something.
He decided to take a chance.
‘That’s not true, is it, Mabel? I think you know what really happened to Charlie. Charlie had a wooden car and a wooden car
was found in the grave. I think Miles killed him. John Haynes saw Miles with blood on his hands around the time he disappeared.
Perhaps it was an accident.’
Mabel’s face contorted in horror. ‘No.’
Pat stood up, walked over to her friend and put a liver-spotted hand on her shoulder in a gesture of comfort. ‘It’s all right,
Mabel. Just tell them.’
Mabel breathed deeply and continued. ‘Otto saw him too … only they said they’d have him and his dad locked up if he said anything.’
‘Who did?’
There was a long silence.
‘Otto’s safe in America. Whatever it is, it can’t hurt him now,’ said Pat. ‘What did you see?’
Mabel buried her head in her hands for a few seconds. Then she looked up.
‘It was a Saturday so there was no school. I was playing outside and I saw Charlie and Belle going into one of the outbuildings
– the old slaughterhouse they called it. Then I went into the village for a while and met up with Otto and when we came back
we saw Miles with a wheelbarrow – there was something wrapped in old sacking inside it. Belle was with him and they were going
towards the paddock. Otto asked what it was and Belle said it was none of our business.’ She shuddered. ‘And then she threatened
to tell the policeman that Otto’s dad was a spy
if he didn’t go away. She said she’d say she’d seen him signalling to ships and he’d be hanged as a traitor. It was all lies
of course, but we knew that she was spiteful enough to do it.’
‘What about Charlie?’ Wesley was afraid he already knew the answer to that question but he felt he had to ask it anyway.
‘I never saw him again after that. Belle told me and Otto to go away so we went back to the village. I think Otto was a bit
shaken by what she’d said. After what he’d left behind in Germany I suppose he just wanted the quiet life.’
‘It could have been an animal in the wheelbarrow,’ said Pat. ‘It must have been an animal.’
Mabel shook her head. ‘That’s what we tried to tell ourselves, me and Otto. That’s what I’ve been telling myself ever since.
Until I read in Pat’s paper that they’d found some child’s bones.’ She looked up at Wesley. She looked like a woman who’d
just seen a vision of hell.
‘That’s why you never saw Charlie again,’ said Pat quietly, putting her arm around Mabel’s shoulder and giving her a comforting
hug.
Children who kill. It was something Wesley found difficult to contemplate and as he and Rachel drove back to Neston in the
fine misty rain, neither of them spoke. Even when they reached the police station they walked to the incident room in silence.
Miles’s accomplice, Belle, might still be alive somewhere. Had it been a deliberate act, Wesley wondered. Or had Charlie’s
death been an accident and they’d panicked and attempted to cover up what had happened? Then he
remembered the cut marks Colin had found on the bones and the whole scenario changed.
Somehow Miles had drawn Belle and Charlie into his dark and gruesome world – he had passed on the legacy of his twisted search
for knowledge to a pair of young apprentices. And it was Wesley’s job to find out the truth.
When he reached the incident room Gerry Heffernan was sitting at his desk, the file on James Dalcott’s murder open on the
desk in front of him. Wesley saw that he was flicking through it, deep in thought, and when he reached the crime scene pictures
he stopped to stare at the images of the dead man, his face solemn.
Wesley sat down at the other side of the boss’s desk with a heavy sigh. At least he had one piece of good news to impart.
‘I’ve found Mabel Cleary.’
Gerry looked up. ‘Good. You told the daughter yet?’
Wesley pulled a face. ‘To tell the truth I think Mabel’s come down here to get away from her. Let’s just let her know her
mum’s safe and give Mabel a few more days of freedom, eh?’
Gerry touched the side of his nose. ‘I get the picture.’