He hesitated. “You mean…?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I saw Mary’s brother, Paul on Sunday.”
“I tracked him down,” Sammy put in.
Souter carried on, “And what you said about the cast on his arm … it was true.”
Susan’s lip began to tremble and her eyes moistened. “They’re down there,” she said quietly, “I’m sure of it. Lying here, I’ve had a lot of time to think. It was so real.”
Souter and Sammy exchanged glances.
“They were frightened. They just wanted to go home.” She looked earnestly at him. “Did I tell you they were both bare-footed?”
“No you didn’t.”
“Have you ever had any experiences like this before?” Sammy asked.
Susan looked off into the middle distance for a moment. “My mum … just after she died. I thought I heard her voice one night. I was in bed. I thought I was asleep but … She just asked me to look out for Dad. And a few years later, I knew what she meant.” A tear trickled down one cheek.
Sammy took hold of her hand.
Susan turned to Souter. “Are the police going to search? I mean, what Mary’s brother said … it all adds up.”
He shook his head. “Paul’s been trying to see Colin, DCI Strong, but he’s tied up at the moment on a murder case where a body was discovered down in Suffolk.”
“But there must be someone else he can speak to. Mr Strong can’t be the only detective in Yorkshire.”
“No, but he would be the best one because of how this has come about. I had a big enough job trying to convince him you weren’t delirious in the first place. And there are inexplicable elements to it all.”
“If I could get out and about, I’d search the place myself. Why don’t you look?”
“I’ll come with you,” Sammy added.
“You’ve got your interview to prepare for, young lady,” Souter said.
“But …”
“No buts. Alison’s gone out on a limb to get you this opportunity.”
“What’s this, Sammy?” Susan asked.
“Alison’s managed to get me a meeting with her boss to see if I’d be suitable for a junior post in their office. Secretarial type stuff but using computers too.”
“Sounds good, especially after all that’s … well … Good luck for that. When is it?”
“Twelve o’clock.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
“Sorry to interrupt you guys,” the nurse from the ward station said, approaching with a medical trolley, “but I need to attend to the patient.”
“That’s okay,” Souter said, “we need to be off anyway.”
“Yep, I’ll see you later.” Sammy gave Susan a hug.
“Look after yourself, and do what they tell you,” he warned.
“Best of luck.” Susan held up both hands with crossed fingers. “And you get back out there,” she said to Souter.
41
Souter stood in the middle of the farmyard and looked up at the dilapidated stone-built house. This was the first time he’d been back since he had found Susan. The day was overcast but bright. A warm breeze blew a plastic bag around the abandoned yard. Thoughts of spaghetti westerns and tumbleweed drifting down the main street passed through his mind.
The house had once been a substantial home on two floors. Intricate stone details to the windows and door openings combined with the porch and bay window above gave a pleasant symmetrical look. Substantial chimney stacks adorned each gable with a red tiled roof between. Some of the tiles were missing and the lead had long since been stripped by some enterprising thieves. Walking around the side, there were more vacant windows, guttering hanging down and buddleia growing out of the stonework in several places where the downpipes had fractured. At the back, a flat-roofed, single-storey extension to the kitchen marred the building’s appearance. Chunks of render had spalled from the grey blockwork and the back door was missing. Completing his circuit revealed similar deterioration to the other elevation. Finally, standing back outside the front porch, he checked his torch and took a careful step inside.
The building was exactly as he’d last seen it when the paramedics brought Susan out. He bent down and peered through the large void in the hall floor to the basement. Carefully retracing his steps of a week ago, Souter made his way around the perimeter to the open door leading to the basement. Once more he ventured down the stairs. A musty, stale aroma permeated the room. He stood and looked up at the gaping hole in the floor above and wondered how Susan’s injuries hadn’t been more severe. It was a drop of over six feet and he could only think that the way the timbers had failed, in a slow progressive manner, had saved her from a more catastrophic result.
As his eyes got used to the darker conditions, he began to gauge the position of the external wall at ground floor level relative to the front wall of the basement. So far as he could tell, they lined up. He walked over and stood with his back to it before switching on the torch. Straight ahead was the wall Susan had ended up leaning against. Taking his bearings once more through the gap in the floor above, he estimated this to be in line with the back wall of the hall. Panning the beam to the right, he picked out the side wall, more or less where he expected it to be, below the outside wall. To the left, another brick wall ran across, in line with the dividing wall between the hall and a front room above. In the middle of this, was a panelled door that he hadn’t noticed before.
He walked over, turned the handle and pushed. After a bit of resistance, it opened. The room behind had the benefit of some light from a small grille that had probably been a coal chute when first built. This also allowed a slight breeze to waft through, bringing with it an odour of dust and decaying timber. With the benefit of his torch, he could see that the room ran the full depth of the house front to back. This left the area behind the room where Susan fell and the rear of the house, assuming the basement ran below the total footprint of the building.
Then the beam picked it out. A doorway, or it had been a doorway, now closed up with grey blocks and rough mortar. This was in stark contrast to the other brick walls.
He walked around the room, empty apart from the dust of decades and an array of spiders’ webs. In the room where he’d discovered Susan, he looked all round once more. Apart from the stairs, no other way in to that level and no signs of any other blocked up doorways. There must be another room to the rear, he thought.
Making his way back through the doorway, he approached the blocked up opening and began to examine it. He took a key from his pocket and scraped at the surface of one of the blocks. It seemed relatively soft, like those used more for insulation than solidity. He’d need something bigger.
He returned from his car with a screwdriver. It was the largest he had with him. He began to scrape away at the surface of a block at eye level. It would be a slow process, but it was working. After a few minutes, he’d excavated a pit the size of a golf ball, after five, beaded in sweat, a cricket ball could have been forced into the void. Finally, after about ten minutes, he’d broken through, a hole about two inches in diameter. He raised his torch and peered inside.
* * *
In the front interview room on the ground floor of Wood Street Police station, Strong and Souter sat either side of the table.
Half an hour earlier, Souter had finally tracked him down by phone. “We need to talk,” he’d said. “This is important.” Souter appeared agitated.
“So what’s so urgent, Bob?”
“Did you ever manage to speak to Paul Duggan?”
“Not yet, I’ve only just got back from Suffolk. Things are moving fast.”
“Any further developments you can tell me about the Albanian girl, then?”
Strong paused and looked at his friend. “I told you more than I should have the other day. Look, I’m up to my armpits with what’s now a murder enquiry …”
“Well things are going to get a whole lot busier for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’d seen Paul Duggan, he’d have told you that he broke his arm when he was thirteen.”
Strong was puzzled.
“You didn’t get back to speak to Susan either?” Souter rolled his eyes then took a deep breath. “Okay, this is what Susan told me when I saw her in the hospital.” He proceeded to relate Susan’s encounter in the basement, this time including the comments from Mary regarding her brother’s broken arm, the cast and what they’d done to it. “And when I spoke to Paul on Sunday, without leading the witness, your honour, he confirmed he had indeed broken his arm and that Mary and her friends had drawn funny faces on the cast. That’s what I wanted him to tell you. As far as I can ascertain, that bit of trivia had never been reported in the media.”
Strong was silent for a few seconds. “Okay, I’ll take a couple of officers with me and have a look round the old farmhouse myself.”
“Already done it.”
He shook his head. “Bob, you haven’t been interfering again. You know it makes …”
“They’re there.” Souter interrupted. “Like you, when something nags at me … I couldn’t let it go any longer. I went there this afternoon. There’s a blocked up room. I scraped through one of the blocks, shone a torch in and … well, you need to see it.”
An hour later, Meadow Woods Farm was a busy scene once more. The whole farmyard area was taped off, white suited SOCO’s were coming and going and specialists were setting up lights from a hastily installed generator. A mobile toilet unit was making its way slowly up the track. Strong and Detective Chief Superintendant Flynn were standing by the side of Strong’s car where the track joined the road.
“This Souter character Colin, I don’t want any of this in the public domain yet.”
“He’ll keep the confidence, sir. All I’ve said is that he’ll get priority when we can announce this.”
“We need to be sure. It’ll take some time for these boys to work their way through to gain as much forensic evidence as possible.”
“I was talking to them before you arrived,” Strong said. “They reckon it’ll be tomorrow morning before they can remove the bodies.”
“You reckon it’s them?”
“Seems so.”
“So how did this Souter fellow know?”
Strong looked over the fields into the distance as he considered his answer. “This isn’t a conventional one, sir. And I’m not even sure I believe it myself.”
“Try me.”
He puffed out his cheeks. “The young woman who fell into the basement, Susan, Susan Brown … she had an encounter.”
Flynn looked puzzled. “Are you trying to tell me she saw their ghosts?”
“I’m not sure what happened but the trail of events led Souter here.”
“How old is he? He couldn’t be considered a suspect?”
“No sir.” Strong turned away.
By way of timely intervention, trundling onto the scene at that point, Strong was pleased to see a familiar pair in the cab of a green tractor. He held up his hand. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, turning back to his boss. “I just need to have a word with this lad.”
The black and white dog was jumping around excitedly in the cab. Simon Clay, still below the flat cap but dressed in a different tee shirt, ordered it to calm down. “Now then,” he said through the cab window. “Tha’s back then.”
“Something else has come up,” Strong said.
“I ‘eard about young lass that fell through t’floor. Bloody lucky she were found.”
He winced. “Er yes she was, Mr Clay.”
“Must be summat serious now.” The farmer nodded up the track. “All them white suits. Tha dun’t bring them out for nowt.”
“When we spoke here last time, you told me about the last occupants of Meadow Woods Farm.”
“Aye. The Collinsons. But best person to talk to would be me Dad. He knew all about them goin’ way back.”
“And where could I see your father?”
“’e’s up in Twenty Acre Field ploughin’ at moment. But ‘e should be back in for ‘is tea about seven, unless ‘e’s carryin’ on wi’ lights t’gerrit finished.”
“Whereabouts is home, Mr Clay?”
“About two mile up here.” The farmer pointed up the road. “The farm’s on the right. Moorends Farm. Tha’ can’t miss it.”
“Alright, thanks. I’ll probably pop up myself later.”
Strong walked slowly back to rejoin his boss. “Local farmer, sir. His father knew the previous tenants,” he said, nodding towards the farm.
“I’ve spoken to the top brass, Colin and I’m bringing in another team from Leeds on this one. You’ve got your hands full with your Albanian murder.”
“What about Halliday? You know what he’s like. And I’m sure Helena’s murder is linked with the shooting of Baker.”
“I’ll speak to the ACC. We can’t be working against one another here.” DCS Flynn walked back to his car.
Strong watched him get into the Jaguar and drive off. He had turned towards his Mondeo when his mobile rang.
“Bob,” he answered.
“It’s them, isn’t it?”
“Can’t say, yet. Forensics will take some time. Listen, you’re going to have to answer some questions on this.”
“I know,”
Souter sighed.
“You will let me know when I can report this?”
“Flynn said so and I’ll try and let you know but it’ll be a separate team investigating, not me directly.”
“Appreciate that, mate. In the meantime, what’s happening with your murder enquiry?”
Strong thought for a second. “Well, you probably know she was found in the boot of one of the stolen cars Baker and Chapman knocked off.”
“So there’s a connection between Baker’s murder and this Albanian girl?”
“I’m treating it that way.”
“No sign of those two yet?”
“Gary Baker and Chapman, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“No. Wherever they are they’re doing a good job of lying low.”
“Don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting an interview with Baker’s widow? Halliday’s team are keeping her under wraps.”
“I had to endure the bastard’s wrath when I went round there yesterday,” Strong chuckled.
“How’s she doing?”
“In bits. She’s got her father-in-law stopping with her, Robert Baker.”