The Cadaver Game

Book 16: DI Wesley Peterson

by Kate Ellis

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

When the decaying body of a murdered woman is discovered following an anonymous tip off, DI Wesley Peterson has problems establishing her identity. But as he digs deeper, he has another more disturbing case to investigate – the naked bodies of two teenagers have been found with shotgun wounds at the foot of a cliff. Both cases become stranger when Wesley realises they are linked to a sinister manhunt, mirroring events from the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Then a skeleton is found near the place where the dead teenagers were last seen alive and Wesley finally has to face a terrible truth...and a hunt to the death.

Release date: April 19, 2012

Publisher: Piatkus

Print pages: 301

Sample

Run as fast as you can, because captivity means certain death. Oblivion. No mercy is ever shown to those who fail and no second
chances are given. That is The Game.


Barney has played The Game over and over again in the cocooned comfort of his room, but the real thing is different. In the
real thing your feet squelch and skid on mud and stinking cow pats. In the real thing your muscles throb with tearing pain,
adrenalin pumps through your body and makes your heart thump like a drum. In the real thing your burning legs are filled with
molten lead, slowing you down as the hounds close in.


In the moonlit darkness everything is in half-seen silvery shadow and the familiar landscape is transformed and twisted into
a fearful alien world – the world of The Game.


He can hear the throaty roar of quad bikes and the eager barking of hounds in the distance, a little louder with each passing second. They are getting closer and closer and if he doesn’t run they’ll catch him.


He has to move quickly. He has to outrun them. It is all uphill now, through the glowering trees and then across a stream.
But he needs to rest, so he stops and bends double, catching each breath. With the confidence of youth he’d thought he was
invincible. He’d thought this would be easy. No problem.


‘I can’t go any further. Wait for me. Hang on.’

He turns, and in the light of the full moon he can see Sophie’s slender body quite clearly, her pale flesh glowing like alabaster.
She has slumped down on to the grass a few yards behind him, her head bowed in defeat over her splayed knees, and he feels
a stab of anger because she should have waited until they reached the shelter of the trees. He knows that when they are still,
they’re vulnerable. This is no time to take a rest, not while they’re exposed to the enemy.


‘We’ve got to get a move on or they’ll catch us. Can’t you hear them?’ When there’s no reaction he barks an order. ‘Get up.’

Sophie shakes her head slowly. She looks utterly exhausted and her fine, fair hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat.

‘My new trainers are ruined,’ she whines. ‘Whose idea was this?’

‘Just shut up, will you.’

‘Where’s Dun?’ He sees her look round anxiously but there’s no sign of the other boy. ‘Maybe he’s been caught. Maybe the dogs
have got him.’


She sounds close to tears and he knows that involving her was a big mistake.

‘You’re talking crap. Dun went off in the other direction. He’ll be fine.’ He feels like slapping her but that would never
do.


‘I want to go home,’ she moans, like a tired child.

‘No way. We carry on. Just try and keep up. It’s not far to the stream now – me and Dun reccied it yesterday. Come on.’

He retraces his steps and holds out his hand to her. His hand is scratched and filthy but she snatches it and he hauls her
to her feet. Then he hears the shot, sharp and sudden, exploding in the night air.


‘What was that?’ He can feel her body tense with fear.

‘It’ll be some farmer after vermin. Come on.’

‘They’ve got guns. You never said they’d have guns.’

There is panic in Sophie’s voice now and he knows she’s losing it. He grabs her wrist and she cries with pain as he drags
her forward. The sheltering trees are close now and if they can get to the stream there’s a chance that the water will put
their pursuers off the scent.


‘Of course they’ve not got guns, you stupid bitch.’

‘You told me this was meant to be a game.’

He doesn’t answer as he pulls her onwards. They have to keep going and once they cross the stream maybe they can relax a little.

They stumble on, making for the cluster of trees looming ahead against the grey, starry sky. Sophie tries hard to keep up
but somehow she always falls behind. She is a liability, and all the desire Barney ever felt for her is evaporating. He can
hear her breathing, wheezy as though her lungs are about to burst. He’d asked her here because he thought it would be a chance
for them to be alone. Stupid idea.


‘What was that?’


Sophie has stopped again and she’s standing quite still, frozen as if she’s been turned to stone by some magic spell. If she
carries on like this, he knows he’ll have to abandon her … leave her to the mercy of the hunters. ‘What are you on about?’


‘That noise. There’s someone here. One of them’s caught up with us.’

‘You’re imagining things. Come on or I’ll have to leave you behind.’

As she starts to move towards him, he hears it. A crack, like a foot on a rotten twig. Sophie was right. There is someone
there.


‘Dun,’ he calls. ‘Is that you?’

No answer. Of course it isn’t Dun. He headed off half an hour ago, making for the chalets to fool their pursuers. Dun ran
for the school; he was fast and knew what he was doing. Maybe they should have ignored instructions and stuck with him.


Suddenly Barney wants to be out of there. He grabs Sophie’s hand and pulls her towards the trees, ignoring her squeaks of
protest. But as soon as they reach the wood, he hears the sound again – a rustling and soft footsteps somewhere ahead of them.
And something else. The distinctive double click of a gun being cocked.


Then comes the light – so bright that it dazzles his eyes. He hears Sophie gasp as he puts a defensive hand between himself
and the beam. It is focused on him, blinding him, so that he can’t make out what or who is behind it.


‘Stop it!’ he hears Sophie shout with a new found boldness. ‘Stop messing about, whoever you are. We surrender, OK? You’ve
won.’


But there is no answer and the merciless beam still burns into their eyes.


‘Please,’ Sophie whispers, her grip tightening on Barney’s arm.

Then two shots echo through the woods – and two bodies hit the cold undergrowth.

The entrance hall was neat and clean with nothing out of place. Only the rotting flowers standing in a vase of brown water
by the telephone, the pervasive smell of decay and the distant hum of buzzing flies suggested that something was amiss.


‘What did the caller say?’

‘Just that there was a dead woman at this address. He hung up without giving his name, but the call was from a mobile so we
might be able to trace who it’s registered to.’


The man who stepped into the hallway was tall, black and smartly dressed, with handsome features and intelligent eyes. He
was followed by an older, slightly smaller man, well-built with grizzled hair, and a girth that suggested a love of the wrong
type of food. Both men instinctively put their hands to their faces. They knew the signs from long experience. Death was present,
hiding somewhere in this unpretentious Victorian cottage in a quiet Morbay suburb.


‘You go first, Wes.’ Both men knew from the constable’s initial report what they were about to see. A woman, dead a week or
so; her discoloured flesh crawling with maggots and flies. The constable had gone upstairs and peeped into the bedroom before
slamming the door and throwing up in the bathroom.


DI Wesley Peterson was reluctant to move. ‘Maybe we should wait for Colin and the team. They’ll be here any minute.’

‘Could be natural causes.’

Wesley knew that it was in his boss’s nature to be optimistic.

‘Sad that she’s been dead so long and nobody’s missed her.’

DCI Gerry Heffernan nodded. ‘Yeah. All the lonely people, eh. According to the neighbours, she was probably in her late thirties
but they hardly saw anything of her. They didn’t even know her name. Lived next door and never spoke to her. Should be a law
against it.’


‘If the house is rented the landlord should be able to provide her details.’

Before Gerry could say anything else, there was a commotion outside the front door. The circus had arrived.

They opened the door wide to admit their colleagues before struggling into their crime scene suits. There were procedures
that had to be followed.


The pathologist, Dr Colin Bowman, came into view, pushing past the forensic officers and photographers. He was a tall, thin
man with an aquiline nose and hair that had receded over the years, leaving a monk-like fringe around his shiny pate. ‘Good
to see you Gerry … Wesley. What have you got for me today?’ he asked, shaking hands as if they were attending a pleasant social
gathering.


‘A woman … in her late thirties according to the neighbour.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid she’s been there a while.’


‘I might be getting on a bit, Gerry, but I haven’t lost my sense of smell,’ said Colin as he donned a surgical mask.

The pathologist climbed the stairs and Wesley and Gerry followed behind. They waited on the landing while he disappeared into
the room at the end. Ten minutes later he emerged, closing the door behind him and yanking off his mask so that it dangled
around his neck.


‘Because of the state of decomposition, I’m afraid I can’t give a final verdict until I’ve done the post-mortem, and maybe
not even then if I have to wait for toxicology tests and all that.’


‘But you can make an educated guess?’ Gerry said with a hint of impatience.

‘There are some signs that it could be strangulation but, as I say, I can’t know for certain until—’

Gerry slapped the pathologist on the back. ‘Thanks, Colin. That’s all I need to know. Mind if we have a quick shufti?’

‘Be my guest. But watch out for the insect life.’

Wesley watched his boss’s eyes light up with the excitement of the chase. Gerry put a chubby hand on his arm and steered him
towards the scene of all the activity. The door stood open now and Wesley could see the team inside going through their well-choreographed
routine, illuminated by the photographer’s flash bulbs.


As Wesley took a deep breath, he realised that he’d grown accustomed to the smell of death. He let Gerry enter the room first,
hanging back a little, bracing himself for what he was about to see.


Once inside the room, he forced himself to look at the thing that had once been a woman. She was lying on the bed, hands neatly folded across her chest, face upwards, staring at
the ceiling, mouth gaping. The first thing that struck Wesley was that the victim looked surprised. But then her face was
distorted and bloated so it was hard to tell.


Putrification and maggots had done their grim work and, at first sight it wasn’t obvious how the woman had met her end, but
Colin’s theory of strangulation seemed as likely as any other. She was fully dressed, wearing a very short skirt; too short
perhaps for a woman beyond the age of thirty. Or perhaps she was only in her twenties; given the state of the body, it was
impossible to tell. The thin blouse she wore was low-cut, but you could see worse on any high street. Wesley could see an
embroidered, red push-up bra through the diaphanous black material and he turned away. It somehow seemed disrespectful to
notice something like that. But he knew his wife Pam wouldn’t wear such a bra under a blouse like that. Badly groomed, perhaps.
Or just blatantly sexual.


There was an intricate silver knot ring on the swollen middle finger of the dead woman’s right hand and another delicately
crafted ring with a large red stone on her left little finger. Wesley had seen similar rings, individually designed and hand-made,
in local jewellers and upmarket gift shops, so there was always a chance that they might help in her identification.


‘We’ll need to get this place searched thoroughly,’ said Wesley quietly. ‘We need to find out who she was and what she did
for a living. What do you think of her clothes?’


Gerry snorted. ‘Who do you think I am? Fashion correspondent of the Tradmouth Echo?’


‘I meant, do you think she was all dressed up for a date?’

‘Undoubtedly. There’s a man in this somewhere and we need to find him.’


‘Our anonymous caller?’

‘Probably.’ He stared at the woman on the bed. ‘Do you reckon it could be a domestic? She invites her fella round, they have
a row and he ends up strangling her in the bedroom?’


Wesley considered the possibility for a few seconds. ‘You could be right. After all, it’s the oldest story in the book. All
we’ve got to do is find out is who he is and where we can lay our hands on him.’


Gerry sighed. ‘If my theory’s right it shouldn’t be difficult.’

‘Our man waited a while before reporting it.’

‘He might have been wrestling with his conscience.’ Gerry spun round and began to stride towards the door. ‘I’m going to have
another word with the neighbours,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘With any luck someone might have been watching through the
net curtains and seen the killer visiting the house.’


Wesley followed him out, glad to get away from the flies and the stench of the grave.

Friday the thirteenth hadn’t been DC Trish Walton’s best day. She had visited the supermarket first thing because supplies
of bread, milk and ready meals in the cottage she shared with DS Rachel Tracey were running perilously low, and when she’d
gone to pay, found that she’d lost her credit card.


In the panic that followed she’d made several frantic phone calls before finding the card nestling in the dark depths of her
handbag. She’d felt a fool. But she often felt like that. At least her boyfriend DC Paul Johnson had been sympathetic. She really didn’t know why she wasn’t nicer to him,
but sometimes he reminded her of a faithful dog.


She looked up and when she saw Paul hovering beside her desk, she tried to smile. ‘Anything new?’

‘That suspicious death in Morbay. The boss says it’s probably murder but there’s a chance it could be a domestic.’

‘Let’s hope it turns out to be straightforward then.’ She saw he was frowning, as though there was something on his mind.
She hoped he wasn’t going to go on about their relationship again. She wasn’t in the mood and if DCI Heffernan found out that
they’d brought their personal life into the office, they wouldn’t hear the end of what passed for his cutting wit. ‘Anything
else?’


‘I’ve had a call from … from someone. It’s already been reported to Uniform but …’

‘What is it?’ She knew from the expression on Paul’s face that it was bothering him.

‘A girl’s gone missing. She went out last night and didn’t come home.’

‘A girl? How old?’

‘Eighteen. Just finished her A-levels.’

Trish sighed. For one moment she’d feared he was talking about a missing child … and that was something she didn’t like to
think about. ‘What’s her name?’


‘Sophie Walter. Her mum says she was meeting her boyfriend.’

‘Touch of the Romeo and Juliets then. Her parents are probably panicking. I got up to all sorts when I was that age. Didn’t
you?’


Paul shrugged. She knew he hadn’t had a particularly adventurous youth, preferring to dedicate himself to athletics. ‘Her parents are worried.’


‘Parents always worry. It’s their job. If they’ve just left school they’ve probably decided to go off somewhere; a music festival
maybe. Has the boy been reported missing too?’


‘Not officially, no. But he isn’t at home and his mother hasn’t been able to contact him.’

‘They’ll turn up when they run out of money and condoms.’

‘Sophie’s parents said she was very secretive about what they were up to.’

‘There you are then. They’ll have been planning this for a while. Nothing to worry about.’

Paul looked unconvinced as he cleared his throat. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Sophie’s my cousin. Her mum’s my mum’s sister. She rang me after she reported Sophie missing. She’s in a bit of a state.’

Trish looked into his eyes. This wasn’t just another missing person; this was family – one of his own. She tried to find the
right words, something that would convey her concern, but her mind went blank and she cursed her own inadequacy. ‘I’m really
sorry,’ she said after a few moments. ‘But you know as well as I do that most kids that age who go missing turn up safe and
sound after a couple of days.’ She knew this was the sort of routine phrase the police used day after day, probably true but
not much real comfort to an anxious relative. ‘I’m sure she’ll be back after the weekend, but if she isn’t we’ll mention it
to the boss, eh.’


‘If you think so.’

Trish turned her head away, wishing, not for the first time, that he wouldn’t leave it up to her to make all the decisions.


Wesley was glad that Colin had agreed to fit the postmortem in at four o’clock that afternoon. The sooner they knew what they
were dealing with, the better.


As the neighbours hadn’t been able to give them a name for the deceased woman, their first port of call was the agency that
dealt with the letting of the house where she was found. The office of Morbay Properties was in the centre of the large resort,
a couple of streets back from the seafront. It was a converted shop with wooden blinds at the windows and the company name
freshly painted on the glass in cream letters, with a stylised blue seagull painted beneath – presumably the company logo.
It looked fairly upmarket, which was only to be expected as the cottage was in a good area and wouldn’t have come cheap. When
they arrived the office was closed for lunch and they had half an hour to kill.


Wesley had almost forgotten that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast but Gerry claimed to be hungry, so, on his suggestion,
they bought fish and chips to eat on the promenade. They were lucky to find a vacant bench because the first week of the school
summer break had brought holidaying families out in force. In spite of a cloudy sky, children ran about with buckets and spades,
their excited cries drowning out the seagulls circling in the eternal hope of a discarded chip or pasty.


Gerry sat in the midst of this scene of mayhem with a beatific smile on his face, popping chips into his mouth one by one.
He looked contented, like a man who wasn’t going to allow a little thing like murder to ruin his pleasures. Wesley, however, picked at his fish, impatient to discover the dead woman’s identity. He felt he owed it to her to give her
a name at least.


‘I thought you were trying to lose weight,’ said Wesley as he watched Gerry screwing up his empty chip paper. The chips had
been good, crisp and hot, but Wesley had been unable to finish them.


‘Fish is health food, Wes. Thought you’d have known that what with your sister being a doctor.’

‘Not when it’s fried in thick batter and served with a generous helping of chips, it isn’t.’ He stood up. It was half past
one now and Morbay Properties should be in business again.


Gerry stretched himself and followed Wesley to the office and this time the blinds were open, giving a glimpse of a cream
and sky-blue interior which matched the sign on the window. When they pushed the door open a bell jangled loudly, denying
them the advantage of surprise.


A plump young woman wearing a cheap, black trouser suit and a bored expression asked if she could help them. When they showed
their warrant cards she raised her eyebrows but her expression didn’t change.


‘We need the details of the tenant of Lister Cottage on St Marks Road,’ said Gerry. ‘I’m sure you know where to lay your hands
on the file,’ he added, leaning forward and favouring her with an encouraging smile that showed the gap between his two front
teeth.


The woman stood up and walked slowly to the filing cabinet, extracted a thin cardboard file and placed it in Gerry’s outstretched
hand.


He handed it to Wesley who put it on the desk and opened it. ‘Her name’s Tessa Trencham,’ he said. He turned to the woman who was watching them with wary eyes. ‘Have you ever met Ms Trencham? Did she come here to pick up the
keys?’


‘We have a lot of properties on our books. I can’t remember all the tenants.’

‘But do you remember this particular woman?’

‘Why? What’s she done?’

‘She’s dead,’ Gerry said.

The bluntness of his statement seemed to have some effect, because the woman’s bored expression vanished and her hand fluttered
up to her mouth. ‘Oh my God. Why didn’t you say?’


‘What’s going on?’

Wesley turned to see a man standing in what would once have been the door to the rear of the shop. He was dressed in an immaculate
pinstriped suit, snowy shirt and perfectly knotted tie, and he had a thin moustache that reminded Wesley of a wartime spiv.
Somehow he wouldn’t have trusted this man with his life savings.


‘Kris, these men are from the police. They’re asking about the tenant in Lister Cottage on St Marks Road. She’s dead.’ She
almost mouthed the last two words as if uttering them out loud might give them some destructive power to spread death to any
listener.


‘I’m sorry to hear that. If you gentlemen would like to come through into my office.’

Once they were seated, the man who’d introduced himself as Kris Kettering arched his fingers and assumed an expression of
co-operation as Wesley pushed the file across the desk in his direction.


‘What can you tell us about Tessa Trencham?’

‘Nothing much. She took Lister Cottage about three months ago. I believe she’d moved to Morbay from London and rented a flat here for a while, but she wanted somewhere bigger.
I think she was intending to look around for something to buy. We get hundreds of people like that. We tend to deal with the
middle to top end of the market – no benefit claimants or student lets.’


‘So you actually met her?’

‘Briefly, but I don’t remember much about her. They all blur into one after a while.’

‘Who do?’

‘Tenants. We’re a large agency dealing with a lot of properties. Ms Trencham never made any complaints or needed anything
repairing in the house so I wouldn’t have much cause to remember her.’


‘Can you describe her?’

Kettering frowned, puzzled. ‘Why? If she’s dead haven’t you—?’

‘Just describe her, please, sir.’

Kettering shrugged. ‘As far as I can remember she was dark-haired, average height, quite attractive, probably in her late
thirties. That’s about it. I only met her once when she came to sign the lease and I wasn’t paying much attention. How did
she … ?’


‘We don’t know for certain yet, sir,’ said Wesley. ‘But we’re treating her death as suspicious.’

Kettering nodded solemnly as though he dealt with violent death every day and it hadn’t come as a shock to him.

‘Is there anything else you can tell us? Who provided her references, for instance?’

‘That should be in the file.’ He began to turn over the papers in the cardboard folder and Wesley noticed that his hands were
shaking a little. He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Wesley. ‘These are the references she provided.’


‘Did you check them?’

‘Somebody will have done. It’s routine.’

Wesley asked for a copy of all the documents in the file and Kettering disappeared.

‘Once we know who gave her the references, we might make some progress,’ Gerry whispered once they were alone.

Wesley just hoped he was right.

Paul’s cousin Sophie had always been the adventurous type, but she’d never done anything like this before and that worried
him. Perhaps the boy she’d been with had led her astray. The opposite sex, in Paul’s experience, could have a strange effect
on even the most level-headed teenager. That was how nature worked and how the human race continued.


The disappearance of two young people was a routine matter for Uniform who had given his aunt and uncle the usual spiel about
errant kids turning up with their tails between their legs within forty-eight hours. Paul had heard it all before; he’d even
said it himself to parents worried out of their wits. But when it’s someone close to you, somehow the words seem hollow and
patronising.


He went off duty at four and he knew that the DCI and Inspector Peterson would be over in Morbay attending the post-mortem
of the woman found earlier that day. If Dr Bowman delivered a verdict of murder, the whole team would begin working flat out and spare time would be a rarity, so he
decided to seize the opportunity to visit his Aunty Carole that afternoon, just to see what was going on.


Over the years Carole and Brian had risen above the rest of the family in wealth and social standing. His mother’s sister
had married a man with an agricultural equipment hire business, which had prospered over the years, and now they lived in
some splendour – or so it seemed to Paul – just outside the village of West Talton near the road to Dukesbridge. The house
was a large barn conversion with galleried landings, an indoor swimming pool, a snooker room and five bedrooms, all surrounded
by an acre of well-tended garden. Sophie and her brother Jack had wanted for nothing and had been sent to what Paul’s mother
described as ‘posh schools’, while Paul had attended the local comprehensive.


Paul arrived at the house and parked his ten-year-old VW Golf on the gravel drive next to his aunt’s new Range Rover. When
Carole opened the door he was struck by how pale she looked, as though the worry had drained all the blood from her normally
rosy cheeks. As she stood aside to let him in, he reached out to her and gave her an awkward embrace. She gave his shoulder
a grateful squeeze before leading him into the massive kitchen with its hand-made oak units and central island.


‘Any news?’ Her anxious eyes searched his face for any tell-tale signs and he felt bad that he didn’t have something good
to tell her.


‘Not yet. Sorry.’ He looked round. ‘Where’s Uncle Brian?’

‘He’s gone to work. He said he wants to keep busy.’

‘How long has Sophie been gone now?’


‘She went out last night to meet Barney – that’s her boyfriend. She promised she’d be back by midnight but …’ She spread her
hands in a gesture of desperation. ‘I’ve tried her mobile but there’s no answer. Jack’s tried texting her and we’ve been in. . .