Deadly Company

Book 0: Mitchell & Markby

by Ann Granger

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

No one feels safe when there's a murderer in their midst...

Ann Granger returns to her fan favourite series with the gripping sixteenth Mitchell and Markby novel, featuring her trademark strong and appealing characters, gentle wit and engrossing intrigue.

Superintendent Alan Markby and his wife Meredith have retired for the night when they are disturbed by a visitor. It's not the first time someone has called at the Old Vicarage in search of a priest, but in this case, having just found a dead body in the churchyard, Callum Henderson needs the police. Accompanying Callum to the graveyard, Alan declares that this has all the hallmarks of a murder scene.

News of the incident travels fast in the market town of Bamford, but no one seems willing to admit to knowing the dead man or how he ended up in the cemetery. As Alan and his team search for clues, Meredith becomes convinced that something must have been overlooked. Meanwhile, despite Alan's warnings, Callum appears to be in cahoots with the team's latest recruit, DS Beth Santos. While every lead points to yet more foul play, nothing can prepare Meredith and Markby for the shocking truth behind this mystery...

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: July 21, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

It was early Monday evening and Meredith was on a train, on her way home. Alan might have spent his day viewing a corpse and trudging round a murder scene. She’d spent hers blamelessly, if less interestingly, at an office desk. These last few years Alan, too, had spent much more time at a desk. She knew he hated it. He wanted to be out there where the action was. She understood and sympathised. But it was the price of promotion. She felt the same way. The train rocked slightly. Nearly half of the men in the crowded compartment had their eyes closed. The women were somehow managing to resist dozing off. The early winter evening had set in and it was already dark outside.

I’m not going to be doing this for much longer, she comforted herself. Alan will be retiring at the end of this year. It could be a good time for me to retire, too. I’ve already had enough and I’ve dropped enough hints around the office. Perhaps Alan could retire earlier, and we’ll get to spend some quality time together. It will mean a new life for both of us. Alan will devote himself to his garden in retirement and I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to write a whodunit.

‘You need to write a series,’ a friend to whom she’d confided her ambition told her. ‘Readers love a series.’

The longest journey starts with a single step, thought Meredith. Let me write one book first. Of course, planning this new career and actually making a success of it, when the time comes, well, that’s the tricky bit.

Yet, ironically, she had no need to imagine murders. One had taken place on Saturday night, and a body found in the churchyard behind her house: a salutary reminder, if any were needed, that in real life murder is unparalleled in its sheer nastiness. But, although shocked, like her husband she also felt angry. How dare someone carry out such a dreadful crime not far from her own back garden? Almost in her back garden. Because that was what the churchyard adjoined.

From this to thinking about the woman who’d called demanding to see the vicar seemed a logical enough mental progression. It was a mystery and Meredith wondered what lay behind the curious visit. The woman hadn’t just been worried about something. She’d been frightened and had screwed up enough courage to seek advice. Unfortunately, she’d run into a brick wall. I don’t mean Alan was unkind to her, thought Meredith, but he did dismiss her pretty briskly. Perhaps I should have asked her in. I wonder if she went to see James Holland at his new address in his smart new-build vicarage in the middle of an estate of new-build houses. The woman in the beanie hat rang the doorbell of what she believed was still the vicarage. She’d done so because the house had been an emblem of stability and principled guidance in the town for nearly two hundred years. That made it considerably younger than the church itself, but church and vicarage together still gave the appearance of authority. It had therefore seemed to their visitor to be the place to take her troubles, to ask what she should do about whatever worried her. Somehow, thought Meredith wryly, I don’t see her wandering round a brand-new estate of identical properties, trying to find the vicarage there.

Further back down the carriage, solicitor Jeremy Hawkins was more than alert. He had been travelling up and down this line for nearly twenty years. Yes, the commuting was repetitive and stifling and sapped the soul. But tonight there was no need to fight the urge to doze off. Tonight, his brain was churning.

The seats were arranged in groups of facing double banquettes, either side of a central aisle, so travellers were perforce arranged as cosy foursomes, whether they liked it or not. Jeremy had a window seat. He could at least look out, even if it was already too dark to distinguish much. A string of stationary lights indicated a street; moving lights a roadway. That would be filled with cars now, driven by people making their way home after a day that had been either boring, or interesting, or a bit of both. Whichever it had been, the chances were strong that it had been exactly like the week before. Tomorrow, they’d do it all again. Only for Jeremy, probably, was this evening’s homeward trek different.

He shifted in his seat, as much as he could, and sighed. It helped to pretend his travelling companions weren’t there. He was all too aware of them, of course. He could smell the stout, sweaty chap beside him, in the aisle seat, who had nodded off. The passenger in the window seat opposite was working on his laptop. The aisle-seat occupier by him was also a busy bee. He was doing the crossword. Jeremy wanted to tell them that they needed to relax; disengage from a long day tackling problems. But they couldn’t and he couldn’t. Even those who were staring fixedly at their mobile phones had a dreadful intensity in their body language as their thumbs tapped out text messages.

Jeremy wasn’t thinking about problems at work. His mind was dwelling relentlessly on problems at home. Tonight, the worry was worse because this journey was different. Jeremy had spent a rare weekend away from home, without his wife, Laura, and he was haunted by the fear that he’d get back to find the already unsatisfactory situation had deteriorated further.

What if it had? He had no idea what he was going to do. Rob, their son, was depressed. Jeremy didn’t have any medical training but didn’t need it to diagnose that his son had some sort of mental health issue. Laura stubbornly refused to agree. She wouldn’t even talk about taking their son to see a psychiatrist or the family doctor, even if the boy agreed to go. The problem was, he wasn’t a boy. He was twenty.

Laura was afraid, that was the reason. She knew that there was a problem but couldn’t face it. Robert was perfect in her eyes. He’d been the perfect baby, and a perfect pupil getting top grades. Then it had all gone wrong. He’d refused to try for any university. He’d gone travelling abroad for a few months but then turned up on the doorstep, having run out of money. He tried a couple of dead-end jobs and hadn’t stuck with either of them for more than a few weeks. Nowadays, Rob either slept late, got up and hung round the house doing nothing, except stare at his computer, or rode off on his motorcycle to a mysterious meet-up with people his parents knew nothing about, and came home long after they’d gone to bed. Asked how he’d afforded the motorcycle, given his patchy employment history, he’d claimed to have bought it at a knock-down price from a friend who’d wanted rid of it.

Laura insisted all this was ‘only a phase’. Rob would settle down when he’d decided what he ‘really wanted to do’. In the meantime, this was Rob’s ‘gap year’. That’s what she told anyone who asked what their son was doing.

Gap years were meant to be enjoyable. Their son was monosyllabic, sulky and looked like a ghost. The worst part of it, for Jeremy, was that he sensed that, deep down, Rob was deeply unhappy, perhaps even frightened. Knowing this made Jeremy afraid, too, and also made him feel inadequate. He couldn’t talk to his son. Rob couldn’t talk to his father. If ever Rob did confide . . . Jeremy felt panic rising in his chest. What would he, Rob’s father, do? Ask Jeremy a question regarding the law, he’d know the answer, or he’d look it up. This fell outside his professional ken. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t be able to handle it, Laura wouldn’t, and most importantly of all, Rob would continue to drift away from them.

As if problems in his own home life were not sufficient, another branch of the family was doing its very best to drag him into theirs. Jeremy’s trip north had been to visit his aged uncle, who was also his godfather. In addition to these ties, he was a client of the firm. The firm itself was an old and prestigious one in the City.

Old Uncle Philip Liddell had just turned ninety and had been, until now, a remarkably hale and hearty old fellow. But recently he’d suffered a minor heart attack during which he’d taken a bad tumble down some steps. He was now at home, taking prescribed pills, and supposed to be resting. But his son, Marcus, who handled most of the old fellow’s business, had contacted Jeremy last Thursday in a panic. Marcus was not a chap who panicked easily and so Jeremy knew this was a genuine emergency.

‘The old man wants you to draw up an entirely new will. He asks, will you come up and see him pronto? Stay over the weekend.’

‘Entirely new will? Or insert new clauses?’

‘He says a whole new will. The thing is, and it’s downright embarrassing to say it, he’s taken a fancy to his doctor’s receptionist. She’s a nice enough woman but well, she’s about thirty. He’s heading towards ninety-one; and he’s worth a bit. It’s quite possible he means to leave her the lot!’

‘You suspect your father of being of unsound mind?’

‘Jerry! The last thing I want to do is ask a court to find my dad totally incapable of understanding what he’s doing. The trouble is I don’t know what he’s doing and he won’t say. He just taps his finger against the side of his nose and says, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” But he drops hints; and sits in his favourite chair with a silly smirk on his face, saying how every cloud has a silver lining. I’ve insisted the doctor visit him at home. I refuse to drive Dad down to the surgery. But that, of course, is what he wants me to do, so that he can leer at the receptionist and pay her fatuous compliments with everyone else listening!’

‘Very trying,’ agreed Jeremy. ‘I dare say the receptionist understands. They must have other elderly patients who occasionally act oddly.’

‘Those other old fellows aren’t worth what Dad is worth. Losing my mother hit him hard. But it’s been ten years since she died; and he’s got us, and his grandchildren. Recently he’s started saying he needs to update his will. Last night was the final straw. I was sitting with him, watching television. It was some commercial channel carrying an advert for a dating site that caters for the over fifties. It’s one thing to be over fifty and quite another to be over ninety! But Dad got a dreamy look on his face and said, “It’s quite right, you know. It’s never too late for love.” Jerry, you’ve got to come up here immediately, this weekend, and talk to him. He’s not safe.’

So, instead of going home last Friday night, Jeremy had travelled by train to a windswept corner of the Lake District. He had dined ‘en famille’ with his godfather, Marcus, and Marcus’s wife, son and daughter-in-law. At the end of it they’d drunk an excellent port.

He spent the Saturday discussing business, and chatting to his client, his godfather. The old fellow had opened the conversation.

‘Good of you to come all the way up here at the weekend, Jerry. Marcus has been bending your ear, I suppose?’

‘He’s naturally concerned about you, since your fall and the little problem with your heart.’

‘It’s not my physical health he’s worried about. Thinks I’m potty, doesn’t he? Marcus is a good fellow, excellent son and all that. But he’s so bloody predictable. Does him good to have me stir him up a bit.’ Philip Liddell chuckled.

‘What’s all this about a new will?’

‘Oh, that . . . well, I thought I’d leave a bit to one of the donkey charities. Always been very fond of donkeys, plucky little fellows. Only a modest donation, mind you, couple of thousand. I leave it to you to find a suitable charity.’

‘As you wish. Just the one new clause?’

‘For now. The rest of the will can stay as it is.’ Uncle Philip paused. ‘At least, for the time being.’

‘Is there any possibility you might remarry?’ Jeremy asked as casually as he could.

‘Oh, a bit late for me to take plunge again, Jerry. I’ll let you know if ever I do!’ Philip Liddell cackled merrily. ‘In the meantime, I don’t need a wife. Hester Wills is a tartar, but she is a very good cook.’

Hester Wills was his housekeeper, who came in daily. She was a formidable figure of entrenched opinions. ‘I’m a plain woman!’ she would say if anyone ventured to protest. She certainly was that. But her roast dinners were the stuff of dreams.

‘You might consider setting Marcus’s mind at rest.’

‘Why? Watching him work himself into a frenzy is the only thing I’ve got to give me a laugh.’

Glad he’s only my uncle, and the firm’s client, thought Jeremy. I don’t envy Marcus having him as a father. He really can be quite a spiteful old devil.

That evening they’d dined again, very well. On Sunday Marcus had loaned him some boots, and dragged him out for a healthy hike around the snow-decked scenery. During it, he grumbled about his father; warning his cousin not to be taken in by the old man’s misplaced sense of humour, and demanding Jeremy ‘do something’.

‘Have you spoken to his doctor about his state of mind?’ asked Jeremy.

‘Much good he was! They ought to retire him.’

Jeremy interpreted this as meaning that the doctor had declared Philip Liddell perfectly clear in his mind. Having failed to get the medical profession onside, Marcus had turned to the legal brain of the family. Sadly, for him, he would be disappointed there too.

‘Frankly, Marcus, your dad seems pretty clear in his mind when it comes to his estate,’ Jeremy retorted, as he and his cousin battled uphill against a raging wind, under the sullen gaze of sheep huddled in the lee of a drystone wall.

‘Indeed?’ was the frosty reply.

‘Look here, Marcus, have you considered that the old chap might be having a bit of fun with you?’

‘FUN!’ howled Marcus. The wind snatched at the word and whirled it away. The sheep pressed themselves even closer to their stone shelter.

‘Well, you’ve made it pretty obvious you’re worried. Uncle Philip isn’t muddled, not in my view, anyway. He’s pulling your leg.’

For a moment, Marcus had looked on the verge of a coronary episode himself. His face turned bright red. ‘What has he asked you to do? That’s what I want you find out, Jerry! Is he going to leave her the lot? If he does, I shall challenge it in court.’

‘Well, you know, a conversation between a solicitor and his client . . .’

‘Don’t throw the rulebook at me! Well, if you won’t help, I shall have to hire a private detective. This femme fatale may have played this game before with other old gents!’

‘For pity’s sake, Marcus! Don’t suggest that without any proof. Or the lady will take you to the cleaners, if you’re wrong. But yes, if you’re seriously worried, we could ask an inquiry agent to check out her background. She’s probably married with half a dozen kids! All I can say is that he hasn’t asked me to make any changes you need to worry about.’

‘Humph!’ said Marcus. ‘I don’t trust him.’

‘Look here, have you considered that your father is a mischievous old devil, and what’s more, he’s bored.’

Marcus looked puzzled. ‘Bored?’

‘Let’s face it, since his physical health has deteriorated and he can’t go out much, of course he’s bored.’

As advice, it wasn’t what Marcus wanted to hear. But it had been Jeremy’s honest opinion. Perhaps luckily, at that moment he’d put his foot into a snowdrift that had masked a ditch, and fallen in. Marcus had been forced to abandon family problems to tackle the practical one of pulling Jeremy out. They’d struggled back to the house in silence and spent an hour drinking hot toddies while Marcus brooded about his father and Jeremy contemplated the next day’s long journey back to London and day at the office. Only after all that would he be going home in the evening. He’d be lucky to stay awake during it all.

‘Randy old blighter!’ said Marcus, gazing into the golden depths of his glass. ‘Don’t tell me he oughtn’t to be in some sort of care.’

‘Stop fretting, Marcus, or you’ll have a breakdown.’

‘I was relying on you!’ retorted his cousin with a baleful glare.

Naturally, during his absence from home, Jeremy had phoned his wife. Laura had assured him no problems had arisen in his absence. She hadn’t sounded too convincing, at least not to Jeremy. Years dealing with a variety of clients had fine-tuned his antennae in matters like this. Between Uncle Philip, Marcus, Laura and whatever ailed Rob, could things get any worse?

‘Damn,’ muttered Jeremy now, more loudly than he’d intended. The fellow doing the crossword glanced up and then, meeting Jeremy’s eye, looked down again quickly. The train had slowed. The man opposite Jeremy abruptly closed down his laptop, stood up and retrieved his coat from the overhead rack. The attractive brunette, across the aisle and ahead a bit, was getting ready to leave the train, too, wriggling her arms into a dark-blue coat. She was a regular. Jeremy had seen her often on this train. She looked as if she were successful at whatever she did. But there was humour in the set of her mouth. The workaholic with the laptop, too, was a familiar sight, as was the overweight sweaty man asleep beside him. That chap was due to get off here and would miss his stop unless woken by a Good Samaritan. Jeremy decided to take on the role and tapped the man’s arm. The guy awoke with a start, stared resentfully at Jeremy, then out of the window. They were entering the station, the end of the platform coming into sight. The train had slowed right down and the aisles had filled with those who were getting out here.

‘Your stop, too, I think?’ said Jeremy.

‘Oh, right! Thanks.’

The three of them squeezed past the crossword addict, who scowled at them. They shuffled along the aisle in single file, the brunette, now buttoned into the blue coat, slightly ahead of them. Jeremy retrieved his overnight travel bag from the luggage racks at the end of the compartment. Then they all came to a stop to allow a younger man, who’d travelled with his bike in the open space by the doors, to get off first. They watched him tenderly lift his metal steed out and down to the platform. He was serenely unaware that he was any kind of obstacle to his fellow travellers, and probably would have resented anyone pointing it out to him. They all melted into the throng and jostled their way out of the station building into the car park. Apart from the cyclist, who had already turned into traffic going past the station and disappeared, nearly everyone was heading for a car. But the brunette had set off at a brisk walk away from the car park. She must live in the town itself, near enough to walk home from the station. That meant she lived in an older building, not in one of the outlying estates.

Jeremy lived a mile out of town at Abbotsfield. They’d bought the house when it had been one of a pair of newly converted barns and it had appeared, as they say, a good idea at the time. Their son was young. They wanted space, unpolluted air to breathe, country living. Or, as Jeremy now thought wryly, country living as depicted in glossy magazines. The people in the other barn conversion were called Baxter and ran a wine import business. They were away a lot, visiting vineyards on the Continent, or discussing business with producers there. For them, moving to Abbotsfield must have been ideal, because they didn’t have to stay there all the time. OK, Jeremy conceded, I go up to London every working day. But it doesn’t compare with wine-tasting in beautiful locations or spending time deciding where to lunch or dine in nice little restaurants.

The only other business in Abbotsfield belonged to a landscape gardener who was out nearly every day, presumably creating or maintaining gardens that were a delight to the eye. It was a pity he didn’t take more care of his own place. When he returned, the fellow parked his muddy van in the narrow road before his cottage and left it there all night. This meant that when Jeremy set out on his drive to the station, quite early in the morning, his view was blocked as he pulled out into the road. There would have been room to park the van behind the cottage in the cluttered yard, if the gardener tidied the place up a bit, or got his shaven-headed henchman to do it. Jeremy had spoken to him, asking him not to park in the street, very politely, but to no avail. As for the muscular employee, he appeared to live nearby but Jeremy had yet to discover where.

Apart from the landscape business, Abbotsfield was quiet to the point of being comatose. Few people lived there, just a few old folk in some poorly maintained dwellings, and a fellow by the name of Finch who lived in the best of the cottages. True to his surname, Finch spent a small fortune stuffing the trees and bushes in his front garden with wire hangers. These, and a wooden bird table, Finch kept supplied with nuts and seeds for local birdlife. He was by occupation a maths teacher, said Laura, commuting to and from his school. If Jeremy wanted to know anything about Abbotsfield, he asked his wife. She lived there all the time. Jeremy, like the feathered friends that visited the maths teacher’s bird table, flew in and out on brief visits. Otherwise, Abbotsfield was devoid of activity. He had Laura’s word for that. ‘Quiet as the grave,’ she said. Each morning, Jeremy drove to the station in town, the bird-fancier drove off to his teaching post and Henderson to his gardens. The old people seldom showed their faces except once a week, a Wednesday, when, apparently, a volunteer-run bus service came to take them all into town to shop.

‘They all shuffle out to their minibus, chattering like sparrows,’ Laura had told him, ‘and in the mid-afternoon come back laden with supermarket bags.’

Then she would add, ‘Of course, Rob wants to spend his time somewhere livelier! You can’t blame him for going off every evening to find his friends.’

Sure enough, when Jeremy had driven himself from the station that evening, the van with the legend C. Henderson Landscape Gardening was inconveniently parked as always, just where it would block Jeremy’s view of the bend in the road the following morning.

‘Hello, darling,’ said Jeremy, hanging up his coat and walking into the kitchen.

Laura was arranging chops on the grill pan. She was wearing jeans and a floppy shirt and, from behind, looked like a teenager, instead of the forty-eight-year-old woman she was. She turned away from the oven to welcome him with a kiss. Her fine fair hair curled around her face and, when she smiled, dimples appeared in her cheeks. At moments like this, loving her was almost painful. He thought how absurdly young she still looked, at least to his eyes. It’s like the portrait of Dorian Gray, Jeremy thought. She stays young and I age. Nevertheless, perhaps she did look a little tired around the eyes.

‘How was life at Uncle Philip’s?’ she asked.

‘Ruddy madhouse, but the old chap keeps a decent port, and Mrs Wills still dishes up first-rate nosh. Glad to be home. I see that wretched gardener has left his van blocking the view again.’

‘His name is Callum,’ Laura reminded him. ‘He’s very pleasant.’ There was a hint of reproach in her voice.

That irritated her husband. ‘If you get on with him so well, you might ask him about parking the van somewhere less inconvenient. When I tried, he just grinned at me and said, “Right you are!” After that he did nothing about it.’

‘He leaves it there in the evenings because he walks everywhere,’ said Laura.

‘What do you mean, he walks everywhere?’

‘In the evenings he likes a drink after work; and there’s no pub here. He can’t risk losing his licence, so he doesn’t drive to a pub. He comes home, leaves . . .