The Funeral Boat

Book 4: DI Wesley Peterson

by Kate Ellis

Genres: Police Procedurals

Synopsis

When a skeleton is discovered on a Devon smallholding, DS Wesley Peterson, a keen amateur archaeologist, is intrigued by the possibility that it is a Viking corpse, buried in keeping with ancient traditions. But he has a rather more urgent crime to solve – the disappearance of a Danish tourist. Wesley finds disturbing evidence that the attractive Dane has been abducted. His boss Gerry Heffernan believes that Ingeborg's disappearance is linked to a spate of brutal robberies and that she witnessed something she shouldn't have. But is her disappearance linked to far older events? For it seems that this may not have been Ingeborg's first visit to this far from quiet West Country backwater…

Release date: January 6, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 240

Sample

July 1980

The boy’s heart pounded rapidly as he searched for a place to hide. He ran on through the field, the tall grass cool against
his legs, caught between terror and thrill.


He knew they were coming after him; he could hear their teasing calls, their excited laughter mingled with the sound of the
rising lark. He pressed himself against the hedgerow but jumped away swiftly as the nettles stung his bare legs. He looked
down, fascinated, as the raised red weals formed on the pale skin above his socks. But there was no time to register the prickly
pain of the nettle stings. He had to hide.


He saw the wooden outbuilding ahead, the planks flaky grey and weathered. The place looked sheltering, inviting. He stared
for a moment, summoning the courage to go in. Then he heard a yell, like a fox-hunter’s cry. With trembling fingers he pulled
the great door open a little, just enough to slip through.


But he wasn’t alone. The stench of fumes from the throbbing engine made him put his hand to his nose and cough. They kept
a tractor in here sometimes. But this didn’t sound like a tractor. He saw the car through the fug of exhaust smoke … and the
figure in the driving seat.


The boy made his way round to the driver’s door, choking, sobbing. She sat quite still, her familiar, beloved face flushed
red; her sightless eyes wide open in a parody of life. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound emerged. He tried to cry
but no tears came.


When the other children found him he was sitting on the path, rocking to and fro, staring ahead with empty, terrified eyes.


It was six months before the boy uttered another word.

Twenty years later

Ingeborg Larsen drove cautiously down the single-track road towards Tradmouth, hoping she wouldn’t meet an oncoming vehicle
and be forced to back her car up into a distant passing place. It was with some relief that she looked in the rearview mirror
and glimpsed a car following close behind: any car she met now would have to back up for both of them. The other vehicle followed,
almost on her bumper, seemingly impatient to pass. But passing wasn’t an option on this road. The driver would have to be
patient.


The first impact came as a shock, jolting Ingeborg forward so that her seat belt locked, only just preventing her chest from
hitting the steering wheel. Her heart began to beat faster. An accident. She should stop … exchange insurance details: she
knew that was the way things were done here.


Taking a deep breath, she put her foot gently on the brake pedal, only to be thrust forward again by a second push from the
car behind. What was the idiot doing? People like that shouldn’t be on the roads. Perhaps they thought that a foreign car
was fair game. She sat for a few seconds collecting her thoughts as she slowly unfastened her seat belt.


She didn’t have time to look round as the car door flew open and the evil-smelling pad was pressed firmly to her face. Then
her wide, blue eyes flickered shut as she drifted into oblivion.


AD 997

The Danes ravaged in Cornwall, Wales and Devon and did much evil by burning and slaying many. Word has come to our house that
they went up the Tamar, slaughtering and burning. Then they burned Ordulf’s monastery at Tavistock and took much plunder.
We pray the Lord to defend us against this evil.

From the chronicle of Brother Edwin, monk of Neston Minster

Daniel Wexer looked across the flowery pillow at his young wife, reached out his hand and gently touched her thick, fair hair.
He was a lucky man. Little had he imagined when she had come to the farm to help with the accounts that he would now be lying
beside her in the huge iron bed that had belonged to his parents and their parents before that. The thought made him smile;
a small, sly smile of satisfaction.


He could still smell Jen’s perfume – the stuff he had bought her for her birthday, the stuff he liked – and he felt the stirrings
of desire. He reached over, slid his hand beneath the duvet and began to caress her firm, youthful body. ‘Jen’ he whispered
in her ear, his voice low and thick with yearning. ‘Do you fancy … er …’


‘Not now, Dan. I’m tired.’ She turned over, as if to make the point, and closed her eyes tightly.

Daniel Wexer lay still for a while, coming to terms with his disappointment. Then something made him hold his breath and listen.
He was used to the noises of the countryside but this was different … man-made. There it was again – a vehicle engine outside, gently throbbing. Daniel left the bed; careful not to disturb Jen, and slowly, carefully, made his way to the window.


But his consideration was in vain. When the crash came Jen sat up with a start. ‘What the hell was that?’ she asked, panic
in her sleepy voice. ‘Dan …’


The sounds from downstairs were now distinct. The door had been forced open and the intruders were moving from room to room,
smashing, opening drawers.


‘I’m ringing the police.’ Daniel reached for the phone on the bedside table as his wife sat, her eyes wide and fearful, clutching
the duvet to her chest in defence. Daniel stabbed at the buttons with his index finger. Again and again he tried. Then he
turned to his wife. ‘They’ve cut the bloody wires, Jen. They’ve cut us off.’


‘The mobile …’

‘It’s in my coat downstairs.’ He reached for the towelling dressing gown on the back of the door. ‘I’m going down.’

‘No, Dan. It said on the telly that they’re armed. They threatened that farmer over at Dukesbridge.’

‘It might not be the same ones.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Dan. They could kill you.’

‘Not if I’ve got this they won’t.’ He picked up the shotgun propped against the wall by the bed, placed there each night since
the farm robberies began. Over the past couple of weeks alarming tales had been reported on the local TV news: isolated farmhouses
had been stripped of valuables by the audacious robbers, desirable vehicles taken, and the hapless farmers and their families
threatened with a sawn-off shotgun to ensure their acquiescence.


Jen leaned over and grabbed her husband’s arm. ‘No, Dan. Please …’

‘I’ve had enough, Jen.’ He pushed her restraining hand away. ‘It’s about time they learned their lesson.’

He marched from the bedroom, his eyes blazing with righteous fury. His farm was threatened, all that he had inherited from
his father and built up. His only livelihood, for so long jeopardised by economics and regulations, was now under siege by
mindless, grasping thugs. He flicked the safety catch off. This was war … and Daniel Wexer wouldn’t surrender without a fight.


He kicked at the parlour door and it flew open.

They had switched the main light on, making no pretence of stealth. His opponent stood there, black-clad, his face hidden by a knitted ski mask.


Daniel felt no fear as he pointed the shotgun. ‘Get out,’ he shouted, his voice cracking with fury. ‘Get out of my house and
off my land.’ The robber didn’t move. ‘Now!’ he screeched, increasing the pressure of his finger on the trigger.


Daniel Wexer felt a tearing pain in his left leg which sent him hurtling backwards. The shotgun seemed to leap from his hand
and he heard a second shot which sent a shower of plaster fluttering down from the ceiling onto his balding head.


Still conscious, he reached down to his leg, gasping with pain. His hand was wet with blood. His head swam as he listened
to the retreating footsteps and the noise of the car engine – something big, a Land Rover … his new Land Rover. The sound
faded as the vehicle drove away.


A nervous scampering in the doorway announced Jen’s terrified arrival. She looked down at her husband’s prone body and screamed,
the scream echoing in Daniel’s ears as he fell into unconsciousness.


The two men pushed open the swing-doors to Tradmouth Hospital’s C Ward, trying their best to look purposeful.

‘I still don’t know why we had to come down here, Wes,’ said the larger of the pair, a big man in his late forties with tousled
hair, a badly ironed shirt and a noticeable Liverpool accent. ‘I thought Stan Jenkins’s sergeant was going to deal with this
one. Stan did offer his services when we were pushed.’


‘He’s away at a conference … Policing for the New Millennium. Apparently he was very keen to go.’

The big man emitted a sound of disgust. ‘I’ll start going to ruddy conferences when the villains start holding ’em. Couldn’t
Rachel or Steve have done this?’


‘Rachel offered to come but I wanted to have a word with Mr Wexer myself while the events are fresh in his mind.’

‘That’s very noble of you, Wes, but don’t forget Heffernan’s fifth rule of life.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘Never volunteer.’ Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson suppressed a smile as they reached the ward’s desk. ‘Morning, love.
Police,’ said Heffernan cheerfully.


The plump, navy-blue-clad sister at the desk looked up at the newcomers: the large, scruffy one and the well-dressed young
black man, rather good-looking with an air of confident intelligence. She might have taken the latter for a new doctor assigned
to the ward … if it weren’t for the company he kept.


Heffernan flashed his warrant card. ‘We’re here to see Daniel Wexer, love. Have we come to the right place?’

The sister pushed her paperwork aside and managed a weak smile. ‘Yes. He’s over there on the right.’

‘How is he?’ Wesley enquired politely.

‘He’s comfortable,’ said the sister in an official tone. ‘And the doctor thinks he’ll make a good recovery.’

The inspector turned to his colleague. ‘Right, Wes. You lead the way. Do you think we should have brought some grapes?’

‘He might not like grapes.’

‘I didn’t mean for him, I meant for me. I didn’t have any breakfast this morning. Remind me to get a bacon butty on the way
back to the station, will you.’


Daniel Wexer wasn’t hard to find as his position was marked by a young uniformed constable who had made himself comfortable
on a bedside chair. The constable looked relieved to see them, a welcome distraction from his tedious vigil.


Heffernan looked down at the sleeping patient. ‘Has he said anything yet, Wallace?’

‘He hasn’t made a proper statement yet, sir. He was in an awful lot of pain before he went down to the theatre so he couldn’t
say much … just that he’d disturbed an intruder who fired a shot at him and made off in his new Land Rover. That’s about all.’


‘Nothing else?’

‘Not really. Do you think it’s the same lot, sir?’ He looked at Heffernan anxiously.

Heffernan turned to his sergeant. ‘Well, Wes. What do you think?’

‘Same modus operandi,’ said Wesley thoughtfully. ‘But it’s the first time they’ve actually fired at someone. Perhaps they
panicked.’


‘It’s possible. Let’s just hope they’re caught before their aim improves,’ Heffernan said with sincerity.

A small groan from the bed made the three policemen look round. Daniel Wexer’s eyes had opened and he was attempting to sit up. Wesley, the son of two doctors, rushed to the patient’s aid. ‘Take it easy now. Take your time,’ he said gently.


‘I’m okay,’ Wexer gasped. ‘I’ll be all right.’ With Wesley’s help he managed to sit, propped up by a trio of plump hospital
pillows. PC Wallace handed him a glass of water and drew the curtains around the bed.


‘Is Jen okay?’

‘Your wife’s fine,’ Wallace assured him confidently. Wesley and Heffernan exchanged looks. This young lad would go far.

‘I want to make a statement,’ said Wexer, his voice gaining in strength. ‘I don’t want to see the bastards get away with it.’

Gerry Heffernan and Wesley Peterson listened carefully as the farmer made his statement while Wallace dutifully wrote it down.
It was a familiar story. Isolated farmhouses in the area were being systematically raided for valuables and vehicles … and
the robbers were armed and unpredictable. With the summer tourist season and its associated problems rapidly gaining momentum,
this was the local force’s worst nightmare.


Exhausted by his efforts, Wexer lay back and closed his eyes. He had thinning hair and the rugged complexion of one who had
spent much of his life out of doors. Wesley found it hard to guess at his age, which could have been anything between forty
and sixty.


Gerry Heffernan nudged his sergeant. It was time to go. They mumbled a few words of encouragement to PC Wallace and were about
to leave when the curtain drawn round the bed parted.


A girl, dark-haired, skeletal and aged about sixteen, rushed to the man in the bed. His eyes followed her with loving anxiety.
‘Dad … are you all right?’ she asked before looking up at Heffernan. ‘Are you the police? Do you know who did this? Have you
got them?’


‘We’ll do our best to find ’em, love,’ Heffernan assured her. ‘Did you see anything last night?’

The girl shook her head. ‘I wasn’t there. I live in Neston with my mum.’

Heffernan nodded. There was nothing more to be learned from the newcomer.

‘We’ll be off now, love, and leave you to talk to your dad.’

The girl sat on the bed, peering anxiously into her father’s face. ‘Mum sends her … well, she asked how you were.’

Before the farmer could reply the curtain parted again, this time to admit a fair-haired woman. She was in her late twenties,
tall with a turned-up nose and freckles. There were dark shadows beneath her green eyes. She looked as though she hadn’t slept.


‘This is Mrs Wexer, sir,’ said Wallace helpfully.

Wexer’s daughter’s facial expression changed dramatically. Concern for her injured father was replaced by a glowering of deep
hatred directed at the newcomer. ‘I’ll be off,’ she announced curtly, standing up. She pushed past Jen Wexer and left, her
father’s eyes watching her helplessly, pleading with her to stay.


‘What was all that about?’ asked Gerry Heffernan bluntly. Wesley looked at the inspector, uncomfortable: sometimes tact wasn’t
his boss’s greatest asset.


Jen Wexer sighed. ‘We, er … don’t get on. My husband split up with her mother, his first wife, and Penny and her brother seem
to blame me.’


‘Oh, Jen, come on, it was hardly your fault. The kids’ll come round,’ said the optimist in the bed weakly.

‘Let’s not talk about it, Dan. How are you feeling? How’s the leg?’

Wesley and Heffernan looked at each other. It was time to leave. They had done their bit.

‘Not much love lost there,’ Heffernan commented as they left the hospital.

‘You can say that again. It can’t be easy for these kids when their parents …’

The electronic buzzing of the mobile phone in Wesley’s pocket announced that he was needed. When he had finished his brief
conversation, he turned to the inspector, not quite knowing how to break the news.


He decided on the direct approach. ‘A body’s been found at a smallholding just outside Stoke Beeching, place called Longhouse
Cottage. Call came in from a lad who turned up a skeleton while he was digging a drain. I said we’d be straight over.’


‘Longhouse Cottage?’ Gerry Heffernan pursed his lips and let out a long low whistle. ‘It’s my bet the chickens have come home
to roost.’


‘Chickens? Well, it is a smallholding,’ said Wesley with a smile. It wasn’t often that Heffernan’s pronouncements were so cryptic.


‘If a body’s been found there, I reckon I know who it belongs to.’

‘Really?’

Heffernan took a deep breath before embarking on his story. ‘Jock Palister was a farm labourer who came into money about twenty
years ago and bought Waters House, a big place on the hill above Longhouse Cottage … origin of windfall unknown. I was a young
constable at the time and I remember there was talk … and a couple of bank robberies in Plymouth that went unsolved,’ he added
meaningfully.


‘So?’

‘Jock led what seemed like a blameless life for a good few years – in other words he didn’t get caught – then he disappeared
suddenly leaving his loving wife, Maggie, and sixteen-year-old son, Carl, in the lurch with a load of debts. They had to sell
Waters House and most of their land and move into an old farm worker’s cottage down the hill … tatty old place called Longhouse
Cottage. Now they just about scrape a living from three or four acres with some hens and a few scraggy sheep … if you can
call it a living.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think old Jock’s turned up again.’


‘Buried on his own land?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. His disappearance was always a bit of a mystery.’ He sighed. ‘Why did old Jock have to choose now
to pop back up, eh?’ He rolled his eyes to heaven in an uncharacteristically theatrical manner. ‘Oh, Wesley. What have we
been doing to deserve all this?’


As Wesley drove out of Tradmouth past the low glass and concrete comprehensive school and the architecturally uninspiring
swimming baths, he tried to organise his thoughts.


Just under a year ago, Wesley and his wife Pam had needed little persuasion to leave the cosmopolitan bustle of London and
settle in the ancient Devon port of Tradmouth with its quaint quaysides and steep, narrow streets tumbling down to the river.
But Wesley had been kept busy since his arrival and something told him that things were going to get worse. Criminals, unlike
the invading army of tourists, did not come to Devon to take a holiday.


It was a glorious day: the temperature was in the seventies and the sky was a spectacular shade of unbroken sapphire blue.
To Wesley’s right the ground rose to hilly, hedged fields. To his left the pasture sloped down to meet the sparkling sea.
This was hardly the landscape he’d known in London. And it wasn’t the sort of day to contemplate violence and murder … but
he feared that was what waited for them at Longhouse Cottage.


Gerry Heffernan slumped back in the passenger seat with his eyes closed, seemingly asleep, while Wesley slowed the car down,
peering out of the window, searching for the gateway to the smallholding. He noticed two driveways a few yards apart; the
first bearing a rustic wooden plaque with the name ‘Waters House’ in bold letters, the second a home-made sign with the barely
legible words ‘Longhouse Cottage’. A pair of gateposts, covered in flaking blue paint, loomed up on his right. He flicked
the indicator and executed a right turn onto a track that would make any self-respecting car owner fear for his suspension.


He wasn’t sure whether the low stone building he eventually reached was Longhouse Cottage or some sort of outbuilding, such
was its dilapidated state. There was an ancient and disreputable-looking Land Rover parked in the stony rectangle that passed
for a yard. An array of half-dismantled vehicles at the side of the house, perched on bricks, made the pair of gleaming police
cars parked beside them look positively Space Age in comparison.


Wesley studied the building with its protruding central porch. Longhouse Cottage – the name should have told him. He judged
that it had enjoyed a few additions in its long lifetime, but the central section had remained relatively untouched. A fine
example of a classic Devon medieval longhouse – with accommodation for the farmer at one end of the building and the animals
at the other – dating back to … he hardly liked to hazard a guess. It had probably been abandoned at some stage in its history
by the farmer of the land, who had built himself something more fashionable and allowed his workers to live in the old building.
It wouldn’t have survived in this form otherwise – unmodernised and apparently unloved. He looked up to the top of the gently
rolling hill where a large white house stood, half hidden by trees. presumably this was Waters House; home to Jock Palister
and his family in wealthier days.


Heffernan had woken up with a jolt when the engine stopped and now both men climbed out of the car, amazed to see Detective Inspector Stan Jenkins walking slowly towards them, a look
of relief on his face.


‘Hello, Stan. Wasn’t expecting to see you around this morning,’ said Gerry Heffernan. ‘I thought you had a hospital appointment.’

‘Yes, I did, Gerry. I went first thing and I was in and out in half an hour. Saw the consultant private,’ he added in a whisper.

‘Everything okay?’

Stan looked down and shuffled his feet. ‘Well as can be expected, Gerry.’

‘What’s wrong exactly?’ Gerry Heffernan always believed that beating around the bush had never advanced the sum of human knowledge.

Stan’s face reddened. ‘Oh, er … the old trouble,’ he muttered mysteriously. ‘I’m due to go in on Friday so I’m afraid I’ll
have to leave you to deal with this one. Don’t want to start a case then have to drop it after a couple of days, and with
my sergeant away …’ He shrugged his shoulders apologetically. ‘Did you see that farmer who was shot last night?’


‘Yeah. He didn’t tell us much we didn’t know already. Looks like the same lot, all right. His leg’s in a bit of a mess … but
so would yours be if it was blasted with a sawn-off shotgun.’


Stan Jenkins shook his head in disbelief. ‘Terrible,’ he mumbled. Stan always seemed amazed at the extent of human wickedness
… an odd reaction, Wesley always thought, for a policeman of so many years’ experience.


‘So what have we got here, then?’ Heffernan asked bluntly. ‘This body, is it Jock Palister’s?’

Stan pushed back his thinning grey hair, a worried expression on his face. Wesley had heard rumours of Stan’s imminent retirement
ever since he had arrived in Tradmouth – and there were those who said it was long overdue. But something – perhaps the fear
of long days spent in the company of Mrs Jenkins, if station gossip was anything to go by – kept Stan at his post. ‘I really
don’t know, Gerry. It was Carl Palister who called us: that’s him over there in the field with his mum. He was digging a drain
near the edge of the field when he turned up a human skeleton. I reckon Carl and his mum look worried about something … especially
her,’ he said significantly. ‘But if they’d known the bones were there, surely they wouldn’t have called us out.’


‘Yeah, Stan. You could be right.’

‘And Jock only disappeared three years ago,’ continued Stan. ‘This body looks as if it’s been in the ground a lot longer than
that.’


‘Has Dr Bowman been called?’ asked Wesley.

‘He’s on his way … should be here any time.’ Stan turned to Heffernan, a look of relief on his face. ‘Well, Gerry, I suppose
this one’s yours. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck.’


‘Thanks, Stan.’ Heffernan tried to sound as if this fresh addition to his considerable workload didn’t bother him in the least.

‘The body’s over in the field,’ said Stan, climbing wearily into one of the police cars. ‘Go and have a look for yourselves.’

Gerry Heffernan led the way. Wesley, following behind, hoped he wasn’t about to witness anything too gruesome. He came from
a medical family – his parents had both come to England from Trinidad to train as doctors and his sister had read medicine
at Oxford – but his stomach for such things was weak.


They made their way across the field, carefully avoiding the molehills and sheep droppings that littered the uneven ground.
A gang of dirty-looking sheep watched them, chewing grass insolently. They reminded Wesley of the bored adolescents who hung
around outside the amusement arcades of Morbay.


A pair of uniformed constables stood in the far corner of the field, peering down into a hole in the ground. A well-muscled
young man, with dark curly hair and minus his shirt, stood nervously to one side, talking to a middle-aged woman who wore
a shabby, flowered frock. She watched Wesley intently as he approached and whispered something in the young man’s ear.


Heffernan nodded to the woman. ‘Morning, Maggie. Still keeping us in work, then?’ The woman said nothing but glowered at the
inspector.


The two constables stood aside and watched as Wesley reached the hole, a gash in the earth; ten foot long and five foot deep.

The young man spoke, glancing nervously at Gerry Heffernan. ‘There were a load of stones down there … put there deliberate,
I reckon.’ He regarded Wesley with anxious eyes, as though desperate to prove that this gruesome find had nothing to do with
him.


‘Carl,’ said Heffernan, in a friendly tone. ‘How are you keeping?’

‘Okay, thanks, Mr Heffernan,’ Carl replied with a tentative smile. He leaned on his spade, the sweat glistening on his muscular
torso. There were many who forked out good money in Tradmouth’s flashy new gym to achieve a body like Carl’s. But the demands
of the smallholding saw to it that his fitness regime came free of charge.


The niceties over, Carl’s mind returned to the matter in hand. ‘I found t. . .