The Shroud Maker

Book 18: DI Wesley Peterson

by Kate Ellis

Genres: Police Procedurals

Synopsis

A year on from the mysterious disappearance of Jenny Bercival, DI Wesley Peterson is called in when the body of a strangled woman is found. The discovery mars the festivities of the Palkin Festival, held each year to celebrate the life of John Palkin, a 14th-century mayor of Tradmouth who made his fortune from trade and piracy. Could there be a link between the two women? And is there a connection to a fantasy website called Shipworld, which features Palkin as a supernatural hero with a sinister faceless nemesis called the Shroud Maker? When archaeologist Neil Watson makes a grim discovery on the site of Palkin's warehouse, it looks as if history might have inspired the killer…

Release date: January 2, 2014

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

She loved this time when the town was still half-asleep. The time before the cacophony of a thousand alarm clocks dragged people from their beds.

At this hour the shops were shut and silent and there were no drinkers spilling from the town’s pubs, glasses in hand, puffing with desperate concentration on half-smoked cigarettes. This was her time, when she could be alone with the memory of the flames.

She walked along the quayside slowly, watching the diving, shrieking gulls. Anybody who saw her would probably wonder what she was doing in her long velvet gown carrying her battered black instrument case. But there was nobody around to see; it was just her and the gulls. And the fishing boats chugging back up the river, bringing in the night’s catch.

Suddenly she sensed that she was being watched but when she turned her head there was nobody there, although she thought she saw a slight movement in the bushes fringing the Memorial Gardens; there for a second, then gone. Probably the breeze blowing in off the water.

She stared out at the river, at the hordes of boats bobbing at anchor. She had spent her childhood on the water and it had once felt so safe. Until the day that still haunted her nightmares, the time of destruction and loss.

She shut her eyes and was back there, running along another waterfront, running home. Then the world had exploded in a flash of red fire and she had stood there, shaking, unable to scream, unable to weep, unable to feel, as all that had been precious to her was destroyed.

When she opened her eyes again the sun had emerged from behind the clouds, dazzling her momentarily, making her squint. Shielding her eyes, she focused on the boat. No, she hadn’t been imagining it.

She wasn’t sure what made her do it. Curiosity? Revenge? A desire for the truth? Or some unacknowledged longing for death? Further along the quayside she quickened her pace as the flight of narrow stone steps came into view.

She hooked up the sweeping skirt of her velvet gown in trembling fingers and began to descend into the world of the unknown.

As DCI Gerry Heffernan observed in the CID office on Saturday morning, even though John Palkin had been dead six hundred years, the old bugger was still causing trouble.

At last year’s Palkin Festival there’d been a mass brawl of drunken lads from Morbay, who’d at least had the decency to join in with the spirit of the proceedings and dress as medieval peasants. Two visiting yachtsmen had been mugged and a girl from London had vanished, never to be seen again. The cells had been full on that occasion and this year it looked as if history was set to repeat itself.

Gerry had just emerged from his office, scratching his head. His grizzled hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed and one of the buttons on his shirt had given way under the strain, leaving a glimpse of pale torso peeping through the gap.

‘Anything new on our knight in shining armour?’ he asked. Even after so many years in Devon, he hadn’t lost his Liverpool accent. ‘Is the victim’s statement any help?’

One of the young detective constables sitting by the window shook his head. The festival had only been going for a couple of days and he already looked tired. Last night a woman had been robbed at a cashpoint in the centre of town, the perpetrator dressed as a medieval knight. So much for chivalry, Gerry had lamented when the report came in.

The Palkin Festival was a matter of civic pride and the chief superintendent was concerned that the upsurge of crime it brought with it didn’t reflect well on the town. The fact that Jenny Bercival had disappeared without trace at the last festival had irked the team for a year. The last thing they needed was for yet another incident to cast a pall over the event.

The phone on Gerry’s desk began to ring so he hurried back into his office. After a short conversation he returned to the main office, heading for the desk of a man in his late thirties with dark-brown skin, warm eyes and a fine-featured, intelligent face. The man turned in his seat as Gerry approached.

‘Fancy some fresh air, Wes?’ Gerry looked at his watch. It was ten thirty and a beautiful day outside.

DI Wesley Peterson stood up, as though he was eager to go. He was taller than Gerry by a couple of inches, and considerably slimmer around the waist. ‘Why? What’s up?’

‘That call I’ve just had. It’s someone we need to see.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ll tell you on the way.’

As Wesley followed the DCI out of the police station the church bells started ringing. But they had competition in the form of distorted pop music blasting out from the fairground rides in the central car park. The heady aroma of hot dogs had begun to scent the air. Gerry pulled a face and muttered something about feeling hungry. Wesley, who had grave misgivings about the hygiene standards of the hot-dog stalls dotted around the town for the duration, couldn’t share his boss’s weakness.

The crowds were gathering, meandering along the streets, many in improvised costumes. Some had made a real effort but most had just donned an approximation of medieval garb and hoped for the best.

‘So are you going to tell me where we’re going?’ Wesley asked.

‘George Street. To see Jenny Bercival’s mother.’

Wesley had been on a course in Exeter when Jenny disappeared but he remembered the case all right. And he remembered the newspaper headlines. Where is Jenny? Puzzle of missing London girl. Have you seen Jenny? The missing persons inquiry had dominated the papers for a week or so until the press, both local and national, became weary and moved on to something fresh.

‘I thought the mother owned a holiday place in Millicombe.’

‘Maybe she’s sold it.’

Gerry said no more as they passed the boat float and headed down the High Street where tall half-timbered buildings shaded the pavements. George Street was steep and narrow and led upwards from the little square dominated by St Margaret’s Church. Here the upper storeys of the pale stucco cottages jutted out over the thoroughfare. Anyone foolhardy enough to take a car up there would have a difficult time.

They reached number thirty-two, a pretty white cottage, smaller than its neighbours with the slightly soulless look of a holiday let. There was no bell so Gerry used the large cast-iron knocker.

The woman who answered was unhealthily thin with a helmet of immaculate blonde hair and a face that, despite a thick layer of make-up, couldn’t conceal the fine lines caused by age or maybe by a year of grief and anxiety.

Gerry stepped forward, his face suddenly sympathetic: the caring side of the police force.

‘Mrs Bercival. Can we come in, love?’

The woman closed the door behind them, plucking nervously at the silk scarf she was wearing, then stood with her back to the door, looking from one man to the other.

‘This is DI Wesley Peterson, by the way,’ Gerry began.

Mrs Bercival gave Wesley an absent-minded nod but said nothing.

‘You said you wanted to speak to me?’

For a while she stood in silence. Then the words came out in a rush. ‘Jenny’s still alive.’

Gerry stared at her for a few seconds, stunned. ‘What makes you think that, love?’

‘Last week I received a letter saying she’s here in Tradmouth. I’ve come here to find her. I thought I’d better let you know.’

Wesley saw a film of tears forming in her eyes, as though she found it painful to believe that her daughter was alive and hadn’t made the effort to contact her.

‘What did the letter say exactly?’ Wesley asked, careful to keep his voice soft and unthreatening. The last thing this woman needed was to feel she was being interrogated.

She took something from the handbag that stood on the coffee table – an envelope with a typewritten address. Her hand was shaking as she passed it to Gerry who took it and studied it as if memorising every word.

Before extracting a sheet of paper from the envelope Gerry donned the crime scene gloves that he kept in his pocket. He read it and then held it up for Wesley to see.

The single sheet had five words written on it in bold letters. JENNY’S STILL ALIVE IN TRADMOUTH. There was no other information and no signature.

Gerry turned to Mrs Bercival. ‘I’m sorry, love. I don’t really think this helps us much.’

He glanced at Wesley, who gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘You were here with Jenny last year when she went missing?’

She nodded. ‘I thought at the time that perhaps her father walking out on me had unsettled her. She’s in her twenties but they still feel things like that very deeply, don’t they? And Jenny was fragile. She needed certainty.’ She shook her head and sniffed. ‘If she is still alive I need to find her.’

‘Extensive inquiries were made at the time,’ said Gerry. ‘But there was very little evidence so we drew a blank. Can you remember anything that might help us? Anything she might have said or anyone she might have mentioned?’

Mrs Bercival sat up, her back ramrod straight. Even her daughter’s disappearance hadn’t robbed her of some degree of self-assurance. ‘Over the past year I’ve been over and over every detail, trying to remember anything that might help make sense of what happened.’ She paused. ‘Jenny did say something shortly before she… disappeared. I wasn’t taking much notice but —’

‘What was it?’

‘She said she’d met someone from the past and that she was going back in time. I presume she meant someone she knew from school or university.’

‘Possibly,’ said Wesley.

‘And then there was the tattoo. That was completely out of character, not the sort of thing I thought she’d do at all. But she was an adult so I felt I couldn’t say too much.’ She frowned. ‘Did I mention that at the time? I don’t remember.’

‘Yes, you did tell us, love.’ Wesley saw Gerry lean forward. ‘Wasn’t it a ship tattooed on her shoulder?’

‘That’s right. An old-fashioned ship. Medieval. Like that one on the waterfront.’ She looked at Gerry with hope in her glistening eyes. ‘I couldn’t really understand it because she’d never shown any interest in that sort of thing. I asked her what it was but she wouldn’t tell me. Do you think it’s important?’

‘It might be,’ said Gerry.

Wesley knew she was clutching at any possibility, any clue as to why her daughter had vanished on that late May evening a year before. When he’d returned from his course he recalled Gerry saying that the girl was probably dead, fallen in the river after having a few too many drinks during the Palkin Festival and swept out to sea by the River Trad’s lethal currents. The anonymous letter had raised the mother’s hopes. And he wasn’t entirely sure whether that was a good thing.

Mrs Bercival continued: ‘When she disappeared I searched for her phone but she must have had it with her.’

‘The phone never turned up,’ said Gerry gently.

‘But that’s good, isn’t it. It means she still has it.’

‘It’s been switched off. Impossible to trace. I’m sorry.’

Mrs Bercival didn’t seem to have heard. ‘She knew several people in Millicombe but no one in Tradmouth, as far as I’m aware. But that doesn’t mean she hadn’t met someone here, someone she went off with. Oh, I wish to God she’d confided in me.’

Gerry looked down at the envelope in his hand. ‘I see you still live in London?’

‘My former husband allowed me to keep the house in Hampstead but the holiday home in Millicombe had to go. That’s why I’ve had to rent this place,’ she added with a hint of bitterness. ‘I need to find my daughter.’ She looked Gerry in the eye. ‘I know you failed last time but now we have this letter… Will you help?’

Gerry bit his lip and Wesley knew he was torn between uttering comforting words and spelling out the truth. ‘We’ll do our very best, love, but I can’t promise…’

‘She’s still out there somewhere, Mr Heffernan. I know she is.’

 

The small inflatable dinghy bobbed in the shadow of the cliffs. At first it had floated near the river-mouth for a while, weighed down by its grim cargo. But now, with the tide turning, the currents had started to transport it out into the open sea.

The young woman had been laid out with some reverence in the bottom of the flimsy craft, her hair in a halo of auburn curls around her head and her wide, unseeing blue eyes gazing upwards at the cloud-specked sky and the circling gulls. In a short time the birds might gather the courage to peck at those eyes but for the moment they wheeled around the boat, keening their mourning song.

Her blue velvet gown was neatly arranged and her hands were folded across her breast. If her face hadn’t been contorted in agony and her tongue hadn’t protruded from her cyanosed lips, she might have come from a Tennyson poem – the tragic lady floating away to some distant Camelot. But this death had nothing to do with poetry; it had been savage, the cruel curtailment of a young life.

The dinghy floated smoothly past the cliffs, out into the cold, frightening world.

Many say that John Palkin was Tradmouth’s greatest son. Three times mayor and buried before the altar of St Margaret’s Church in the heart of the town, he presided over one of the most prosperous periods in Tradmouth’s history, revered in life and honoured in death.

However, I have found no evidence that John Palkin was a good man. In fact it was said of him during his lifetime that he sold his soul to Satan for riches and a fair wind to carry his ships back to port.

His symbol, later to feature on his coat of arms, was a cog, the ship that was the seaborne workhorse of the medieval period, used in the port of Tradmouth to carry cargos to France and return with fine wines from Bordeaux. Cogs had a large square sail and a rudder attached to the stern post. They were also built up at bow and stern into ‘castles’ where sailors could take shelter to shoot arrows during the sea fights that were so frequent at that turbulent time. Palkin was the owner of a number of such vessels and they brought him the wealth that enabled him to control the town in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

John Palkin married the daughter of another prosperous merchant in 1375. Her name was Joan Henny and they had a son, Richard. Joan died in childbirth as was common in those days, and the fact that John failed to marry again until many years later at a time when custom dictated that, after a respectful wait of a year, a wealthy man would be bound to seek another wife, may indicate that he held her in some affection. Richard himself was to die tragically at the age of eighteen leaving John’s brother, Henry, as sole heir to the Palkin business interests.

Throughout his life Palkin had a reputation for an almost supernatural amount of good fortune in business. While his rivals lost ships to French privateers and the merciless storms that blow up around the Devon coastline, John Palkin’s cargos always arrived safely in port and his wealth grew.

Perhaps it was because of this that he was habitually surrounded by dark tales. But, in the opinion of one who can claim descent from the great man, I consider that verdict does him an injustice. John Palkin was a genius.


From ‘The Sea Devil – the Story of John Palkin’ by Josiah Palkin-Wright. Published 1896


 

The coastguard received the call from a yachtsman who’d spotted the body of a woman floating in a dinghy near the mouth of the River Trad. By the time the Bloxham lifeboat was scrambled, along with a rescue helicopter, the tide had caught the tiny craft and was carrying it out into the English Channel.

When the youngest member of the lifeboat crew was attaching a towing line to the little boat, he caught sight of the dead woman’s twisted features. He stared for a moment at the pecked-out eyes, the bloody holes in a face that had once been beautiful, before leaning over the side to vomit into the calm grey water.

 

As Wesley and Gerry walked back from George Street to the police station the crowds were pouring into Tradmouth, dropped off by the park-and-ride buses that were working overtime for the festival, shuttling to and fro between the town and the car park. When Wesley had first moved down to Tradmouth from London, the festival had been a half-hearted affair. But over the past three years or so more people had made the effort to dress up in costume, especially the teenagers – just the group he would have expected to avoid anything that smacked of the uncool. And it wasn’t just the locals and the organisers who seized any opportunity to do so; people whose accents and behaviour marked them out as tourists, outsiders, joined in with equal enthusiasm.

Some of the young people were wearing badges – a black medieval-style ship on a white background – and Wesley wondered fleetingly if they belonged to some sort of society. But he had other more pressing things on his mind, like the meeting with Mrs Bercival. He asked Gerry what he made of it.

Before the DCI answered he sidestepped around an overweight couple and their two corpulent children who were licking large ice creams with studied concentration. ‘I find it hard to believe that Jenny Bercival would have disappeared of her own accord without telling anybody,’ he said once he was back on the pavement.

‘Her mother said she was in a fragile state.’

‘But even if she was upset by the break-up of her parents’ marriage, surely she’d have let her mum know she was safe. According to Mrs Bercival Jenny had always been a considerate girl.’

‘Parents usually think the best of their kids. Maybe Jenny Bercival wasn’t the paragon of thoughtfulness her mum liked to imagine she was.’

Gerry shook his head, as though he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.

‘She’d had a tattoo; her mother thought that was out of character too.’

‘Lots of people have tattoos,’ said Gerry. ‘It’s probably irrelevant.’

‘Jenny was a student, wasn’t she?’

‘She’d left London University the year before she disappeared. She’d studied English and she’d been hoping to go into publishing. She’d done an unpaid internship but nothing had come of it so she’d taken a series of temporary jobs in bars and cafés, filling in until something came up. Back then her family still owned a holiday cottage in Millicombe where they spent every summer and she’d come down to join her mother there a couple of weeks before she vanished.’

‘Not short of a bob or two if they can afford a second home in Millicombe.’

‘Mr Bercival was a banker who traded his wife in for a younger model about six months before Jenny went. He must have had a conscience because the wife got the house in London, even if she wasn’t allowed to keep the holiday cottage.’

‘Remind me what happened on the night she disappeared?’

‘She’d arranged to meet some friends at the Palkin Festival on the Friday evening.’

‘What friends?’

‘A few rich kids who spent most of their summer holidays at their parents’ second homes in Millicombe. Jenny hung around with them but, according to Mrs Bercival, they weren’t particularly close. Jenny was crazy about the whole Palkin thing and went to the festival every year. She borrowed her mother’s car to come over to Tradmouth and she left it in the park and ride. There was some kind of rock concert at the boat float and once it was over she parted from the friends and made her way back to the bus stop. But she never got there. And the car was still in the car park the day after.’

Wesley frowned, puzzled. ‘But the park-and-ride stop is almost next to the boat float and there must have been crowds of people about. Surely someone saw her.’

‘That’s the thing that doesn’t really add up, Wes. A witness saw her walking towards the market square. What she was doing there, I’ve no idea. That was the last sighting though.’

‘Who was the witness?’

‘A lad who’d just finished his shift serving behind the bar at the Tradmouth Castle Hotel. We put an appeal out at the time and he answered it because he recognised her. She’d been in the hotel bar earlier that evening with her friends. She was in costume – a green dress. Quite distinctive.’

‘He was sure it was her?’

‘He seemed pretty sure at the time but who can say.’

‘Any chance he might have had something to do with it? Saw her, fancied her, tried his luck and things got out of hand?’ Wesley sometimes regretted the fact that his years in the police force had caused him to think the worst of his fellow human beings.

‘Immediately after he saw her he met some mates in the Porpoise by the market. Stayed there with them till after midnight and staggered home with a couple of them. His story checked out.’

They had just reached the police station. Wesley glanced up at the hanging baskets decorating the façade that some wit had created out of old-fashioned policemen’s helmets. The chief super had considered it a good PR stunt. Showed the force had a sense of humour.

As he made his way up the stairs with Gerry trailing behind him, he tried to visualise Jenny Bercival’s journey. To get from the boat float to the market square Jenny would have had to make a detour past the Memorial Gardens and then take the side road past the Butterwalk up to the market. If she was supposed to be heading to the park and ride it didn’t make sense, unless she’d arranged to meet someone there.

He stopped on the stairs and waited for Gerry. ‘Were the friends from Millicombe eliminated?’ he asked.

Gerry halted to catch his breath and it was a few seconds before he spoke. ‘Oh yes. They all went off for a drink immediately after the concert. One lad we talked to had known Jenny for years because their families were always down here at the same time, and to give him his due, he did offer to walk her to the park-and-ride stop and wait for the bus with her but she refused.’

‘He didn’t know if she’d arranged to meet someone else?’

‘She didn’t mention it. But he did say she’d been acting strangely, as if she had a secret. I think she was up to something.’

‘A man?’

‘Possibly. If you ask me, she was good at keeping her cards close to her chest. When she didn’t arrive home that night, Mrs Bercival thought she’d probably spent the night with friends – or a boyfriend – so didn’t report her missing till the following evening. An appeal was put out and a few witnesses came forward but, apart from the sighting near the market, there was nothing much to go on and no useful CCTV once she’d left the town centre. The market area was searched and we made house-to-house visits to all the properties in the streets round about but we drew a blank, Wes. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air.’

When they reached the CID office they stopped by the door.

‘So what do you think happened to her?’ Wesley asked.

Gerry sighed. ‘Suicide maybe. She’d been fragile since her dad left home so she might have chucked herself in the river or she might have fallen in by accident and her body never turned up. As you know, it happens from time to time. The currents are lethal around here.’

Wesley hesitated. ‘Of course she might have been abducted.’

‘Or she might have chosen to disappear. Trouble at home and all that. What do you make of the anonymous letter?’

‘Could be someone playing mind games. Some sick people get a thrill out of things like that.’

‘I don’t know how her mother thinks she’ll find the truth at this bloody festival. Only thing she’s guaranteed to find here is a load of drunks and show-offs who like dressing up and making fools of themselves. And the sailing of course. The regatta attracts the crowds.’

‘But I can understand why she’s grasping at any glimmer of hope,’ said Wesley. ‘She’ll want to feel she’s doing something.’

They entered the office. DS Rachel Tracey was sitting at her desk and as soon as she saw them she stood up, an eager look on her face, as though she’d been waiting for them with important news. She’d lost weight recently and now she was slim, almost to the point of thinness, and her dark trouser suit and recently cut fine blonde hair gave her a businesslike appearance. Wesley had preferred her hair long, although he hadn’t commented on her new style. At one time there’d been a frisson of attraction between them. But he was a married man and the diamond solitaire ring on Rachel’s wedding finger announced to the world that she was engaged, although her enthusiasm for the wedding arrangements had hardly reached bridezilla proportions. Wesley briefly found himself wondering why he found her apparent lack of interest in her forthcoming nuptials so gratifying.

‘I was just about to call you,’ Rachel began. ‘Bloxham lifeboat’s been called out to a dinghy drifting near the mouth of the river. It contained the body of a young woman. Looks suspicious.’

‘Where’s the body now?’ Wesley asked, looking at Gerry.

‘The lifeboat’s towing the dinghy round the headland to Bloxham. In view of the Palkin Festival they thought it’d be best to avoid Tradmouth.’

Wesley nodded. In normal circumstances, Tradmouth would have been the obvious destination but the lifeboat crew had shown initiative. ‘We’d better get over there,’ he said.

‘Just hope we can get on the car ferry,’ Gerry said with uncharacteristic pessimism. ‘Good job this bloody festival only happens once a year. Robberies, disappearances, dead women in dinghies. What next?’ he added to nobody in particular.

Wesley caught Rachel’s eye and she gave him a coy smile. He almost asked her how Nigel, her fiancé, was. However, the discovery of a body made social chit-chat seem somehow inappropriate.

As he drove out of town with Gerry in the passenger seat, the crowds were thronging on to the embankment to watch a rowing race on the river, the participants in an approximation of medieval clothing. A couple of the vessels had painted dragon prows more in keeping with Viking longboats. But the festival spirit allowed a few historical mix-ups.

‘Wonder where they get all these costumes from,’ Wesley pondered, steering the car away from the thronging river. ‘And what are these black-and-white badges people are wearing?’

‘No idea,’ Gerry replied as they passed another park-and-ride bus crammed with passengers.

‘Shouldn’t be hard to find out.’ Wesley frowned, concentrating on the crowded road. ‘Medieval ships. Mrs Bercival said Jenny had a tattoo in the shape of a medieval ship. Might be worth looking into.’

‘Might be, Wes. I’ll leave it to you. Did you know there was a special service at St Margaret’s yesterday evening – I was singing in the choir. A thanksgiving to commemorate the life of John Palkin. I reckon an exorcism would be more appropriate. The old bugger still haunts the place, bringing all sorts of trouble with him.’

‘We don’t know that this body in the dinghy has anything to do with the festival.’

‘If I was a betting man I’d put good money on Palkin being involved somewhere along the line.’

The queue for the car ferry wasn’t as bad as feared and they were soon driving past fields and woods down the network of narrow lanes that led to the fishing port of Bloxham. He’d been told that the pathologist, Colin Bowman, had already been summoned, along with the crime-scene team. Once the body had been photographed and carefully removed to the mortuary for the postmortem, the inflatable dinghy would be minutely examined in the hope that it might yield some useful information.

When they arrived in Bloxham they found that the lifeboat had towed the dinghy to a quiet part of the harbour, well away from the fishing boats and the bobbing yachts. Normally tourists would be milling around the waterfront but the Palkin Festival had lured everyone away into Tradmouth, leaving the quayside almost deserted. This wasn’t a bad thing because gawping sightseers would have impeded the work of the team gathered around a wood. . .