Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery

Book 0: The Cornish Detective

by W.J. Burley

Genres: Mystery; Cozy Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A high-profile murder investigation for Wycliffe, in Cornwall's heartland. Cochran Wilder disappeared fifteen years ago while on a walking holiday in Cornwall. Recently released from a psychiatric hospital after being convicted of indecent assault, he had been a serious embarrassment to his father, a prominent MP. Now his body has been found, buried in the dunes. It is clear that he was murdered. Wycliffe suspects the involvement of six people, now well-established figures in the community, who at the time had been spending an illicit weekend at a chalet near where Wilder's body was found. All are disturbed by Wycliffe's interest and by a series of threatening anonymous communications. But then a second murder is committed and the investigation takes on a new urgency. Why readers love W.J. Burley: 'First-class, old-time, hyper-ingenious whodunit.' Observer 'You can always count on Wycliffe ... he inevitably guarantees a good story, convincing characters and appealing landscape ' Financial Times 'Wycliffe teases out the truth with delicate skill that leaves the reader intrigued and convinced.' Mail on Sunday 'Gripping.' The Times Fans of Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid and Peter Robinson will love W.J. Burley: 1. Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy 2. Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat 3. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi 4. Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place 5. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street 6. Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat 7. Wycliffe and the School Bullies 8. Wycliffe and the Scapegoat 9. Wycliffe in Paul's Court 10. Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase 11. Wycliffe and the Beales 12. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks 13. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin 14. Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue 15. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web 16. Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death 17. Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist 18. Wycliffe and the Last Rites 19. Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery 20. Wycliffe and the House of Fear 21. Wycliffe and the Redhead 22. Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine * Each Inspector Wycliffe novel can be read as part of a series or as a standalone*

Release date: December 16, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 224

Sample

The holiday chalet was perched on the fringe of the foredunes, nearer the sea than most of the others. Built on stilts for the view, as well as for protection against the invasive sand, it was reached by a long flight of wooden steps.

The weekend was GG’s idea. ‘Let’s make it a manic weekend, something to remember.’ Manic was her current in-word, which was odd in view of what was to happen. The arrangements had been delicate; parental concern had been allayed by ingeniously vague fabrications, and without knowing it GG’s mother was contributing the use of her chalet. So early in the season there were few if any other people on the site.

There was a sense of occasion. During their five terms in the sixth form the three boys and three girls had somehow gelled into a group – almost an institution, regarded by the rest of the sixth with puzzled tolerance. Now it was almost over; in a matter of weeks A-level examinations would mark the end of their schooldays and they would be caught up in the last round of the scramble for college places or jobs.

They had just arrived at the chalet and were still lumbered with the stuff they had brought. At least the weather was holding – almost a May heatwave, and according to the pundits it would see them through the weekend.

‘Let’s take a photo.’ Barbara, plump, fair and commonsensical, had already developed a maternal instinct for ordering and recording her chicks.

‘Dump your bags and make a group by the steps … No, sit down, for God’s sake! You look like a bus queue.’

Barbara had her camera on a tripod and it was fitted with a delayed action trip.

‘You could look a bit more affectionate, GG; I dare say Julian could stand it. And push your hair back, I can’t see you.’

GG had red hair to her shoulders and half the time her view of the world was mediated by a curtain of red strands.

‘Tuck your feet in, Paul! You can cuddle up to Lisa but there’s no need to look as though you’re going to rape her.’

Paul was a long, lean, bespectacled youth with the solemnity of an owl.

‘Julian! Try not to look like cold pudding – and Alan, make room for me, I’m setting it going … Ready? … Ten seconds!’

And so the photograph was taken which, fifteen years later, would affect all their lives.

That evening, her arms resting on the veranda rail, Lisa looked out across the bay and watched the sun go down behind St Ives. The sky was cloudless and the sea shone. As the last remnant of the disc vanished, the whole coastline was transformed into a dark and strangely fashioned cut-out.

In the room behind her the radio pumped out pop with a heavy beat. Lisa turned her head to look through the open window. GG was playing the fool, her red hair swinging about, hiding her face. She contorted her body, wriggling her hips, sticking out her breasts and bottom and making supposedly lascivious gestures with her hands and arms.

Julian, squatting Buddha-like on the sofa, watched her with more tolerance than interest.

The two were alone in the room. Barbara, in the kitchen, had volunteered for the short straw taking charge of the evening fry-up; Alan and Paul were in town shopping for a few cans of beer and a couple of bottles of wine.

In the afternoon they had played games on the deserted beach. Alan and Julian had wet suits and boards; Paul and the girls fooled about in the surf, but the water was cold. Afterwards there was a fair amount of boisterous sex play. Now they would drink a little and eat a lot and eventually it would be time for bed.

Which made Lisa uneasy; there were three cubicles, each with a double bed and room for little else. Lisa was not a virgin but she was troubled at the prospect of a whole night spent with that bony body in the intimacy of a double bed. Yet it would be assumed that she and Paul …

Lisa sighed and wondered if she was normal.

The sky over the dunes had turned from deep blue to green and in the distance there was a vague mist, a first intimation of approaching dusk. She was mildly surprised to see a lone figure, a man, trudging across the sands from the Gwithian direction. He was young, with a mass of lank black hair; he carried a rucksack and wore an all-weather outfit of jacket and trousers which seemed slightly absurd in a heatwave. He stopped short of the chalet and looked up at her; he was very pale.

‘Hullo! I don’t suppose there’s a chance of a glass of water? I’m parched.’ A pleasant voice and an easy manner but for some reason Lisa did not care for the look of him. His deep-set eyes? Or the puckered little mouth?

‘You’d better come up.’

He climbed the steps. ‘Kind of you … I’m Cochran. I’m supposed to be walking the coast path …’

‘I’m Lisa.’

He followed her into the living room.

‘Meet Gillian, known to all as GG. And this is Julian … Cochran has come for a glass of water.’

She left the three of them together and joined Barbara who was frying onions in the kitchen. ‘We’ve got a visitor; he wants a drink.’

‘Is he expecting to stay for the meal?’

‘God! I hope not.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty, give or take. He’s a rambler of some sort. Student type. I suppose he’s all right but he looks a bit odd to me. Anyway, all he asked for was a glass of water.’

‘Up to you. There’s enough if he does stay. Hang on, I’ll take him his water.’

When Barbara entered the living room, Cochran was sharing the sofa with GG while Julian lounged in the wicker chair.

Cochran was saying, ‘Only a short stint today – from St Agnes, but hard going.’ He took the glass of water and drank it off. ‘Thanks, that was wonderful.’

Barbara said, ‘You’re on your own?’

‘I started out with a friend but I ditched him. You know how it is.’

Barbara was thoughtful. ‘I think I must have seen your friend earlier on, fair and on the plump side. He was looking for somebody who sounded like you.’

He grinned up at her. ‘Really? that was a good miss, then.’

GG laughed and drew attention back to herself. ‘Cochran, that’s a rather unusual name.’

‘You can say that again! My mother’s maiden name, wished on me by my father. At school they called me “the Cock”.’

Alan and Paul returned with the drinks and were introduced. Alan, a rugby type, was naturally gregarious, while Paul had little to say.

GG said, ‘Well, Barbie, can you stretch it to include Cochran?’

Barbara and Lisa exchanged looks. If the newcomer protested he was not heard.

Barbara said, ‘All right. If you lot fix the table it will be ready in ten minutes.’

GG had the last word. ‘What about getting us a real drink, Alan, while we do the table?’

After the meal they talked, and Cochran did tricks with coins and glasses, with playing cards and with a ring on a string.

‘A chap I got to know in hospital was a professional and he taught me.’

‘You’ve been in hospital?’

A shrug. ‘A sort of hospital – a place where they’re supposed to iron out one’s mental kinks.’

Julian was thoughtful. ‘Is your name Wilder?’

The little mouth twitched into a grin. ‘You’ve rumbled me? “Son of MP on Theft Charges.” The hospital was a cosy alternative to jail.’

Lisa thought: he wanted us to know. It’s all part of the act.

‘Now the witch-doctors have let me out, Papa thought it would be good for me to, as he put it, “Face some physical challenge”. In the old days it would have meant the colonies, now walking the coastal path is more practicable. Of course, I had a minder but I shook him off.’

At some time after ten he looked out of the window. ‘God, it’s dark! I must push on; I’ve got to find somewhere to stay in Hayle.’

GG said, ‘You can’t go now. At least we can make up some sort of bed on the floor – or there’s the sofa.’

It was settled.

Julian produced a cigarette pack. ‘Smoke?’

Cochran fished in his pocket and came out with a slim plastic box. ‘I roll my own. Like to try one, anybody?’

Julian said, ‘Hash?’

‘Not any old rubbish, the very best resin. I get it from—’

Julian finished for him. ‘A chap you knew in hospital.’



On almost every morning since his retirement Jerry Cox had taken his dog for a run and a forage in the sand dunes. It had become a ritual, and when onshore gales whipped the sand off the foredunes into blinding, stinging clouds and forced them to stay indoors, they felt cheated and their whole day was spoiled. They had experienced three days of it, with westerly winds gusting above fifty knots, battering the coast, raising tremendous surf in the shallow bay, driving sand and salt before it.

Now it was over; the surf still tumbled and there were white horses out to sea, but the sun shone, the sky was an intense blue and the wind was as if it had never been. It was warm, the air was balmy, it was spring.

Smudge, an English setter, showed such impatience as was consistent with dignity and they wasted no time among the landward dunes. Stabilized by vegetation, they had been spoiled by a rash of huts and chalets built for the holiday trade and unoccupied at this time of year. The gale had changed little here; just a sprinkling of newly blown sand over the fescue grass, and little heaps of the stuff piled against the sun-bleached and sand-blasted planks of fences and walls.

Man and dog made for the sea, for the marram-grass hillocks and foredunes rising from the beach. There were new slacks and blow-outs; one dune had been sliced through, exposing a face of darker sand and a veritable delta of marram-grass roots which penetrated many yards into the mound. Jerry plodded, and picked his way between the slopes rather than pursue a punishing roller-coaster course up and down the dunes. Now and then, through a fortuitous sequence of gaps, he glimpsed the white surf and the turbulent sea beyond. Smudge lolloped ahead, diverted sometimes by a fresh scent, but anxious for that romp on the fringe of the surf which would crown their morning.

Suddenly, out of sight, Smudge started to bark – and kept it up, which was unusual. Jerry called him to heel but there was no response and the barking continued. Jerry followed the sound and came upon the dog in a shallow, recently formed blow-out. At first sight Smudge seemed to be barking at the sand itself but bending down, Jerry saw the abraded face of a watch protruding slightly from the sand, and the vague form of a hand, still buried. Gingerly, and with distaste, he brushed the sand away and exposed a leather watch-strap attached to a shrivelled and mummified wrist.

Jerry said, ‘No beach for us today, Smudge.’

The time was half past eight.

At nine-fifteen Sergeant Coombes concluded, ‘I reckon this one belongs to CID.’

His newly fledged constable said, ‘You think it’s a man, Sarge?’

‘It’s a man’s watch. I’m not too good at sexing withered wrists.’

‘And you think he was murdered?’

‘Well, somebody buried him and this isn’t the place I’d choose as a last resting place for a dear departed.’

The dry sand was fluid and even cautious movements on the slope set it flowing in rivulets and cascades. Coombes growled, ‘We’d better get the hell out of here or Scenes of Crime will be shouting about flat-footed wooden-tops.’

It was eleven before the area was cordoned off and the full coven assembled. Policemen in shirt-sleeves played at being archaeologists, cautiously removing the sand from around the body. The aim was to expose it for examination in situ and to discover anything in the immediate neighbourhood which could have been associated with the dead man.

A police surgeon and a Scenes-of-Crime officer attended and Detective Inspector Gross was in charge. Three or four opportunist herring gulls kept watch from neighbouring mounds in the hope that there might be something in it for them. DI Gross, new to his rank and to the division, brooded on the prospect of sand and sky and reflected that it was just his luck to be landed with a long-dead stiff in the middle of a desert.

The man had been buried on his left side and a sheet of some sort seemed to have been put under him. Presumably it was of nylon or a similar fabric for it appeared almost unaffected by burial and the lapse of time. The body had probably been naked when buried and the degree of putrefaction varied greatly. It was almost complete in the trunk, where the skeleton was largely exposed, but minimal in the extremities where mummification had occurred and the skin, though shrivelled, was almost intact. The head hair itself, straight and dark, was scarcely affected though it had parted company with the blackened skull from which all traces of skin had disappeared. The lips, too, had vanished, exposing apparently perfect but gumless teeth.

DI Gross surveyed the body with all the professional detachment he could muster. Dr Hocking, the police surgeon, an irritable little fellow with red hair and freckles, was complaining, ‘I’m not taking the responsibility for shifting him. Franks should be here.’ Franks was the pathologist.

Gross was deferential. ‘Can’t you tell me anything, Doctor?’

The little man frowned. ‘He’s dead, but perhaps you can see that for yourself. It’s obvious that his skull is fractured but if you ask me whether the injury was inflicted before or after death, your guess is as good as mine. As to when it all happened, God only knows. This is blown sand – a tricky medium for burial; one to be avoided if you want a pathologist to tell your friends exactly what happened when they dig you up again.’

The doctor added as an afterthought, ‘And I’m not even a pathologist.’

The Scenes-of-Crime officer was taking pictures when one of the policemen, still shifting sand, said, ‘There’s something here.’

The man had uncovered a small area of blue-grey canvas-like material. ‘Looks like a rucksack, sir.’

‘All right, dig around but don’t shift it.’

It was a rucksack and it had been buried close to the body. The material had stood up well and the bag bulged with whatever it contained.

Gross had already noted the untarnished gold watch and was thinking that this chap could have been no loner, unmissed and unmourned. He would certainly have appeared on somebody’s missing persons list, perhaps locally. Gross would check before the big boys moved in and it would help if he had some idea of how long since. He tried again. ‘Can’t you give me any idea, Doctor, of how long he might have been here?’

‘I’ve told you – not my job. Certainly many many months, quite possibly years. You’ll have to get Franks in. Maybe he’ll treat you to a lecture on mummification as against the formation of adipocere – I’m not going to try. Anyway, he’ll need to be on the table before anybody can begin to give an opinion.’ The doctor looked about him at the omnipresent sand before adding, ‘Even then, coming out of this stuff, it will be no more than a guess.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Wycliffe was trying to decide how long it would be before he could decently go to lunch. For almost three weeks there had been nothing to take him away from the office and he had kept office hours. For the first few days it had been a novelty, now he was bored. He sat in his executive chair, swivelled gently from side to side and tapped his teeth with a ball-point. With supreme distaste he regarded the fat pink file on his desk: Proposals for a Revision of the Command Structure with a View to a More Efficient Use of Resources. A note clipped to the file read: ‘For suggestions and detailed comment. EAP.’ Which last, in translation, meant ‘Early attention please’.

‘Bloody hell!’

Wycliffe rarely swore but, for some reason, this seemed a special occasion.

He looked around his office, air-conditioned, double-glazed and sound-proofed, and wondered by what strange, and presumably auspicious twists of fate he had got there. Many years ago, when he was nineteen and naïve, he had joined the police: his ambition then, to become a CID sergeant. Now he was a chief super. Some climb the ladder, others take the lift, and he supposed that he must have been one of the others. The thought did not please him and, when he had nothing more pressing to think about, his plush office troubled him.

Once or twice he had tried to share such misgivings with his wife, but her reaction had been brusque. ‘Don’t be absurd, Charles! You worked damned hard for what you have, surely you should find the self-confidence to enjoy it.’ Perhaps she was right. Women usually are.

He opened the pink file and decided that he needed a scratch pad on which to draft the predictable puerilities required of him. He looked in the top drawer of his desk and ten minutes later he was still absorbed in the complex and largely speculative history of some of the things he found there. Among the dried-up ball-points, pencils and paper clips, there was a cotton reel, a broken comb, a couple of foreign stamps torn off an envelope, several newspaper clippings and a boiled sweet still in its wrapping …

Even Diane, his personal assistant, pretended ignorance of the contents of ‘his desk’.

She came in now, on cue. ‘What’s this, then? A spot of archaeology?’

‘You wanted me, Diane?’ Tight-lipped.

‘Mr Kersey would like a word.’

‘Ask him to come in.’

He swept the random assortment of objects off his desk-top, back into the open drawer, closed it, and so ensured their preservation for another season.

DI Kersey arrived, carrying a rolled-up map. Kersey was lanky, loose, and big-boned, with deeply lined features, and the look of a man who has slept in his clothes. Differences of temperament and disparity of rank had never hindered their close relationship.

Kersey unrolled his map and spread it on the desk-top. ‘St Ives Bay area, sir. Gross, the new boy down there, has inherited a corpse buried in a sandhill.’ He pointed to a pencilled cross. ‘That’s his map reference. It’s in the dunes running along the east side of the bay, not far from a bunch of holiday lets. The body was found early this morning by a dog-walker, partly uncovered by the recent gales.’

Wycliffe studied the map. ‘Any clue as to who he was, what he died of, or how long he’s been there?’

Kersey grinned. ‘I fancy old Hocking has been giving our new boy the run-around; he won’t commit himself to much more than the fact of death. But it seems obvious that the body was deliberately buried, and there’s a skull fracture, though no certainty that he collected it before death. They found a rucksack. . .