Missing Pieces

Book 13: A DC Smith/Kings Lake Investigation

by Peter Grainger

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

As the first anniversary of the formation of the Kings Lake murder squad approaches, there's a problem—they’ve run out of murders. As a result, they are given the task of reviewing unsolved cold cases. One of these comes back to life in unexpected ways as the team tries to discover the identity of the young woman whose body was found in the Norfolk countryside two decades ago. And even if they can give her a name, how can they possibly find her killer after so many years?

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 320

Sample

A few miles south-east of the town of Kings Lake, the Norfolk countryside changes. Low hills begin to rise out of the flat, fertile lands of the fens to the west, and the soil becomes lighter, sandy and full of flints left behind by the last of the glaciers, twelve thousand years ago. There is still farming because man is a tenacious being, one who will scratch a living out of almost any landscape, but the range of crops that can succeed in the dry, stony soil is small: some cereals, some vegetables where the watering is easy and the soil a little more forgiving, and livestock have traditionally been a more reliable source of income. Rabbits were farmed in great medieval warrens, and once there were many thousands of sheep on the grassy heaths but today they are few in number and of little importance. Early in the last century, someone discovered that foreign conifers would grow as well as the native Scots pines, and huge plantations began to cover the region known as the Brecks, creating great dark, dry shadows over the land, in which little else could grow. Later, as the many threats to our wildlife became more obvious and urgent, the unique character of the remaining unspoiled places led to more and more of them becoming areas of nature conservation. Today, more than forty per cent of the Brecks are protected for their rare species.

But there were woods here long before the Forestry Commission imported Sitka spruce – native heathland woods of birch and pine and stunted oak, which thrive on the shallow, flinty soils. Some of these remain, on the nature reserves or as parts of the many private sporting estates which once controlled much of the land – and a few of these estates linger on; large, quiet sandstone houses at the ends of long private drives, behind walls, screened from the prying eyes of the public as they drive along the B roads and wonder who owns all this, and why.

Wissingham Hall on the historic Swaffham Heath is one such place. The owners, in residence only a few weeks each year, are rumoured to be foreign these days, the Cranwich family having sold up some time in the 1980s to pay taxes and death duties, but in other respects life continues much as it has for the past century. There is a small staff to run the house and the estate, and a manager keeps watch over the tenant farmers, some of whose families have worked this land since the original great house was built in the eighteenth century. That sugar plantations in the West Indies played a part in that building does not seem to have troubled too many, even today.

All told, the estate commands almost two thousand acres, and the western side contains several of those ancient Breckland woods, of which Spring Covert is the largest. It is a quiet, solitary sort of place. There are thickets of old blackthorn and broad sunlit rides where butterflies abound – White Admirals and Silver-washed Fritillaries, lost from so many English woodlands, have maintained a foothold here for longer than anyone would care to remember, and they were certainly known to the gentlemen who collected in Victorian times. There are no public footpaths, and the nearest single-track road, the one which runs between the little villages of Stone Warren and Langford Tofts, never comes closer than three hundred yards. The eastern edge of the wood contains a short stretch of Drovers Way, one of the oldest of our ancient tracks, used to move cattle around the country and even down to London many centuries before the invention of railways and tarmac. Occasionally a keen amateur historian wanders this way, determined to follow the exact route of those drovers for reasons of his or her own, but mostly Spring Covert is left alone by the rambling British public.

Those blackthorn coverts hold another secret, another rarity, and on this late May morning it is singing, unseen as always, hidden in the thickest of the thickets – a Nightingale. It is late in the season for daylight song. Perhaps he is without a mate this year. It is surely the most beautiful of our birdsongs and yet it has always a note of melancholy, and those who gave the bird its scientific name felt this too, for he is Luscinia, which in the old Latin means a lamentation.

Between the blackthorn where he sings and the oaks at the edge of the covert is a small clearing, a little grassy meadow edged with pink and purple foxgloves and studded with ox-eye daisies. In the late morning sunshine there is a hum of bees at the foxgloves, and white butterflies dance in and out of the wood, into and out of the sunlight. There is just one sign that people ever come to this place; on a mossy, square stone slab is a simple glass vase. Inside, it is green with algae. It contains no water – there has been no rain to speak of for weeks – only a few dried stems of flowers that someone must have put there a long time ago.

At a few minutes after noon, the glade had fallen silent. The bird was still there but invisible among the thorns, waiting because there were voices in the wood now, people coming towards the little clearing, and creatures hear us long before we imagine they might do so.

An old man entered first, a walking stick in his right hand, the left parting the stems of the sallow bushes growing beneath the last of the oak trees. The man held the branches aside, allowing a much younger woman to pass through, and after her came a tall man, also young but polite – he said thank you and stepped forward into the clearing.

The old man, Jim Goodrum, limped a little as he followed them, and said, ‘So… Here we are, then.’ The accent was local and as strong as it ought to be – he had already informed them with some pride that he’d lived in this parish every one of his eighty-two years.

The two strangers looked around and then the young woman said, ‘It’s a beautiful spot,’ but there was a note of surprise in her voice, as if for some reason it should not be. The young man put his hands into the pockets of his smart grey trousers, looked thoughtfully around and then said, ‘Where exactly, Mr Goodrum?’

The pair of them were far too dressed up for coming through the woods but Jim knew they’d been to see the vicar at St Mary’s in Stone Warren – that would be why. He lifted the walking stick and pointed with it towards the other side of the clearing, to the edge of the blackthorn thicket which was now casting a little shade where the foxgloves grew. The young man began to walk in that direction, and the other two followed him.

When they halted again, Jim Goodrum cleared his throat, half-pointed with the stick and said, ‘As you can see…’

What they could see now was the stone slab and glass vase in amongst the meadow grass and the delicate white haze of the cow parsley flowers. The girl looked up at her companion, frowning, and said, ‘Odd, if no one knows who she was.’

The man gave the slightest of shrugs and turned to look at Jim, as if he already knew. Jim Goodrum said, ‘Ah, well… That’s me, see. When all the fuss died down – when I first come back up ’ere, I thought there oughter be something. You know? Just to mark it – the place.’

The man nodded and looked at the little shrine again, and a silence grew in the glade. Somewhere in the blackthorn thicket, the bird would have been watching this odd little gathering.

Jim said to neither of them in particular, ‘I kept it up for years, whenever I was up this way. No one knew ’cept my missus. She came with me a time or two… Now she’s gone, and tha’s a long old walk, but… I oughter’ve done it, and I’m sorry.’

He was looking at the little piece of stone as if it marked a neglected grave, as if he was apologising to her, whoever she might have been. The young woman was looking at him now. She said, ‘It was a very nice thing to do, Mr Goodrum. A nice gesture. And it’s helping us, isn’t it, to see the exact spot?’

She looked up at the tall man again, and he nodded. Then he took a few more careful steps until he was looking down at the tiny monument. He said to Jim, ‘And this is the exact spot?’

Jim nodded. The man looked around again, slowly and systematically in all directions before he said, ‘Has it changed much? Twenty years is a long time.’

He had a level, unassuming sort of manner, not like some of the people Jim remembered from the first time; kinder about it all. He seemed like someone you could probably trust.

Jim answered, ‘Not greatly. Bit more overgrown maybe. But it was always a isolated spot, always… Years and years ago you’d get the odd courting couple in here from Stone Warren or the Tofts. Nowadays they don’t need to sneak off, do they? No shame in anyone no more… Anyway, like I said, it’s pretty much as it was and always ’as been, I’d say.’

The young man had half-crouched for a moment as if there had been an inscription and he was trying to read it, but the face of the stone was covered only in patches of grey and green lichen. When he straightened up, he said, ‘Mr Goodrum. If your answer to my next question is no, we’ll fully understand. You’re under no obligation to anyone, as I said when we met this morning, and we’re only here informally at present. I’m wondering whether you’d mind answering a few questions about what you saw that morning. Would you mind?’

The old man said it was a long time ago but there are some things in life you’re not likely to forget. He’d do his best to answer any questions.

‘Thank you, Mr Goodrum. From what you’ve already said, you were living in the same cottage where we met you just now?’

He was, yes, been there almost forty years.

‘And what brought you up to this spot that morning?’

Jim shifted his weight and leaned on the stick – arthritis had twisted him a little but he hadn’t complained once on the walk from their car. He said, ‘I were more keeperin’ than labourin’ in them days. We used to rear all our own birds – now they buy ’em in from God knows where. I had some pens on the other side o’ Spring Covert. There was always a fox earth hereabouts, so I used to keep ’em in check.’

The youngster was in charge and asking the questions, but the girl was watching and listening just as carefully. She was from away, not a local accent at all, and Jim wondered how people ended up where they did in that job.

‘Thank you, Mr Goodrum. On that morning, did you approach from the same direction we’ve just taken?’

‘I did, yes. Tha’s always been the way. The other side is arable, all the way down to the road.’

The young man had a funny, faraway look sometimes as if he wasn’t really taking note of what you said, but the questions were methodical and logical enough.

‘And how far away is the road from this spot?’

‘A good three hundred yards. I can show you where, if you like…’

‘No, that’s fine. So you entered where we did just now, where we first stood. What did you see?’

In the tiny moment of quiet that followed the question, a large, solitary bumble-bee flew between them, circled the old man as if curious about him, and then travelled on towards the foxgloves. Jim said, ‘I could see someone were here.’

The man looked back to the edge of the glade and he seemed to be puzzled. After a moment he said, ‘You found the body on the 25th of June, Mr Goodrum. That’s almost a month later than today. We couldn’t see the stone and the vase from that spot over there. And surely in another month the grass, all the vegetation will be even longer, won’t it? Are you certain you could see the body as soon as you came into the clearing?’

He might look as if he’s away with the fairies but that wasn’t a question Jim had been anticipating from the man who was now watching him closely. He gave it due consideration before he said, ‘Yes, I am. This is dry land on top of the hill. This grass don’t get much longer. I knowed this spot as well as I know my own garden. I could see someone lying in the grass, right ’ere,’ pointing with the walking stick at the slab of stone.

His questioner seemed satisfied, and said, ‘What time of day was this?’

All of this would be in the notes, which you’d assume these people would have read – Jim guessed his memory was being tested. He said, ‘Around ten o’clock in the morning. It were already hot, I remember. That were a blisterin’ summer.’

‘After you saw someone was here, what did you do next, Mr Goodrum?’

He told them – he’d approached a few steps closer and said out loud that they were on private property, and they’d better leave. Then he said it again louder because he thought it was someone sleeping, some vagrant come up off the road last night. When there was no response, he went closer. As soon as he could see her face, he knew what he was looking at.

The man said, ‘What was it about her face?’

This time the answer took a few seconds to come – ‘She’d been there a day or two at least. Long enough for me to see she were dead…’

His feelings had been sensed by the man, who said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Goodrum. I know when you got up this morning this was the last thing you thought you’d be doing today. Stop whenever you like. What did you do when you realised the young woman was dead?’

Jim said, ‘Well… Nothin’ prepares you for it. I mean, I seen plenty of dead things in the woods, but another human…’

He paused – that sounded an oddly detached word to use. Then he continued, ‘I s’pose I took another step or two. I didn’t really know what to do for a minute. But I remember that’s when I noticed her hands were tied. Her two wrists, like…’

The young man was looking down at the ground again as if he could see her for himself. Keeping his gaze there, he said, ‘Were they tied in front of her or behind?’

Jim’s memory was being tested again; the police had brought him back up here later that day, just to the edge of the clearing, and he’d seen all sorts going on, including a bloke taking a lot of photographs. They’d still have all that in their files, wouldn’t they? He leaned the walking stick against his leg and showed them, holding his wrists together in front of himself – ‘Like this they were.’

‘Thank you. And you didn’t touch the body at all?’

No, he said. He thought, do people touch dead bodies when they find ’em? The police at the time had asked him that as well.

‘What did you do then, Mr Goodrum?’

He’d gone back down to the cottage and told his wife. Then he called the farm office and told them what he’d found up in Spring Covert. The manager told him to phone the police and give them directions to his own cottage first, otherwise they’d never find it. Then the farm manager said he’d drive up to the wood across the top field and see for himself, not that he doubted what Jim had just told him.

The woman had been silent up to that point, but now she said, ‘That was Clive Brand, wasn’t it?’

Jim nodded – all on the files and they’d read ’em all right. He added for good measure, ‘But you won’t be talkin’ to him about it. He died a few years later. In France, on holiday. A car crash it was. Bound to ’appen, drivin’ on the wrong side of the road.’

The two of them exchanged a look before the man said, ‘You said the body had been there for a day or two at least. The reports say it could have been up to a week. Is that right, Mr Goodrum?’

It is, he said, and he knew that conclusion was based mainly on his statements to the police at the time – he’d been in that clearing the week before, on the Saturday. It was a Friday when he found her. Friday the 25th of June.

‘And you could see her face, you said. So she was lying on her back?’

‘No. On her side – her right side but she was sort of slumped a bit. I reckon she’d been there a few days, I said it at the time. Like I told you, I was a keeper mostly in them days. You gets used to how things… You know, the process? And it were hot that year, like I said to you.’

That seemed to be it. The young man turned and gave Jim a smile that was part sympathy, part gratitude – and he said, ‘If she was lying on her side, Mr Goodrum, were her legs straight or bent at the knee?’

It wasn’t easy to hide your surprise at a question like that, but it was easy enough to answer – he only had to close his eyes to see it.

‘Bent right up. She were in the… What do they call it? The something position, like a baby.’

‘The foetal position?’

‘Tha’s it. Like a kid sleepin’. Sort of made it worse. If you get what I mean… She weren’t no age, see.’

After that, they went back through Spring Covert to the car they’d parked on the other side of the wood. Jim got into the rear seat and they took him home. The girl got out as well as the young man, and she opened the car door for Jim – it’s the twisting that’s awkward when your hips are going. He said thank you to her, and then all three of them were standing at his garden gate. She said it was a pretty place to live, charming was the word, and Jim said it was all right, not as tidy as it used to be, that’s all. When he told them it wasn’t his but still part of the estate, she seemed surprised. He said, ‘They’re letting me stay on ’til I snuffs it – easier’n getting me out. And I still do odd jobs most days. June always said they’ll find me cold up in the woods with a saw or a shovel in me ’ands.’

That was an innocent enough thing to say normally, but of course it struck them all as awkward after where they’d been and what they’d been talking about. After a second or two, the man said, ‘One more thing, Mr Goodrum. I meant to ask you this earlier. I’ve got a map on my phone which shows ancient earthworks in the area. Are there some close to where we’ve been this morning? It’s just something I’m personally interested in.’

Jim snorted as if the question was a little ridiculous and said, ‘Close to where we were? I should say so – about fifty yard away there’s one o’ them mounds in the Covert. There’s lumps and bumps all over the estate, and I’ll bet your map don’t show ’em all. There’s been archologists over the years. They come and measure ’em sometimes. Never been no digging that I knows of. The old boss wouldn’t ’ave it. Then there’s the Drovers, that’s ancient history as well. The place is riddled with it…’

The man said it was fascinating, and he looked as if he was serious. Then he reached into a pocket, took out a piece of card and handed it to Jim. He said, ‘Thank you very much for your time, Mr Goodrum. As I said earlier, we are looking into the matter again. Someone might be in touch with more questions, but this is all for now. You can always say you’ve spoken to us this morning – this is Detective Constable Butler and I’m Detective Sergeant Waters. We’re both from Kings Lake Central police station.’

Waters studied the map on the satnav screen for a few moments before he pulled away from Jim Goodrum’s cottage. At first the track was mostly grass but after a short distance it became more solid. They reached the upside-down Y of the junction they had turned right at about an hour ago; from here the other road led up a slight hill towards Wissingham Hall. There was a curving avenue of old lime trees in blossom, and the house itself could be glimpsed through them as they headed away from it towards the public road.

He heard the sniff before Serena said, ‘Very nice…’

Nothing else was needed. Detective Constable Butler’s politics sometimes seemed a little at odds with the need to enforce the laws of the land, but as far as her sergeant was concerned, she had never let the fact interfere with the way she did her job. At the T junction he took the left turn, signposted to Stone Warren.

Serena said, ‘You’ve seen more of the files on this one than me. I assume they had a close look at Mr Goodrum?’

Waters was focusing on the road though there was no traffic at all – he was obviously looking for something in particular. As he drove, he said, ‘Yes, they did. He has his own entry on the list of possibilities but he never made it to being a person of interest.’

‘And what about this time? Will we be looking at him again?’

Waters took a right-hand bend slowly, still with one eye on the screen as the map kept their vehicle in the centre and the world rolled by beneath it. He said, ‘If we get that far, yes. Everyone will be back on the list. A lot depends on an order for exhumation, and according to the DI that’s not a given. It’s quite a process.’

Serena gave a short laugh as she said, ‘If it was down to the vicar of St Mary’s, it would be a pretty short process. He wasn’t happy!’

Visiting the Reverend Gray of St Mary’s, Stone Warren, had been Detective Inspector Tom Greene’s idea; he thought it might help smooth the way towards getting the exhumation order quickly if the local vicar – and the man who had buried the girl almost twenty years ago – was on board. Greene had sent his most diplomatic officer, DS Chris Waters, but to no avail; Gregory Gray had said immediately that the young woman’s body should be left to rest in peace, and nothing they said had dissuaded him from that view.

Serena said, ‘One of those old-fashioned Assume Nothing, Believe No One, Check Everything sort of detectives might wonder whether the vicar has a reason for keeping the body buried in his churchyard.’

It was Waters’ turn to laugh – ‘If this does go live, we’ll be as short of leads as they were last time, probably shorter, but that’s a bit of a stretch! I think the Reverend Gray has more confidence in his faith than he does in modern forensic science, that’s all.’

After the next tight bend, Waters could see what he’d been looking for – there was a passing place on the left-hand side of the road, and he pulled into it and stopped the car. A hedge of sorts separated the verge from the land beyond but it had gaps, and through them one could see two fields that sloped gradually up towards a wood at the top of the hill. The nearest had a crop of feed beans just coming into flower, and the next field was a strip of luminous chrome yellow across the landscape – oilseed rape in full bloom. Waters pressed buttons and the two front windows of the car wound down.

Serena said, ‘That stuff gives me chronic hay fever.’

Waters took out his phone and opened a map, enlarging it with finger and thumb until he had what he wanted – then he glanced out of the passenger window a couple of times and back at his phone screen, making sure before he said, ‘The wood you can see at the top is Spring Covert. We were standing quite close to this side of it, just a few yards from the edge of the field.’

Serena stared at the map he was showing her. She said, ‘If you’re planning another visit from this direction, boss, for health and safety reasons I should stay in the vehicle. With the windows closed.’

The “boss” was one of her occasional acknowledgements that Waters was her superior officer; she didn’t like to overdo this aspect of their relationship but these days would admit that although she had considered his promotion somewhat premature at the time, he had sort of proved himself on a couple of occasions since it took place.

He said, as if she hadn’t spoken a word, ‘One question has to be, how did she get into the wood? Did she walk there before someone strangled her? If she was attacked somewhere else, someon. . .