Murder Unsolved (Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates Book 18) Read online

  Murder Unsolved

  Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates

  Bruce Beckham

  Lucius

  Copyright © 2022 Bruce Beckham

  All rights reserved. Bruce Beckham asserts his right always to be identified as the author of this work. No part may be copied or transmitted without written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and locales is entirely coincidental.

  Kindle edition first published by Lucius 2022

  Paperback edition first published by Lucius 2022

  Hardcover edition first published by Lucius 2022

  For more details and Rights enquiries contact:

  [email protected]

  Cover design by Moira Kay Nicol

  United States editor Janet Colter

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Editor's Note

  The DI Skelgill Series

  Glossary

  PROOFS

  1. APPEAL

  2. HQ

  3. BOWSCALE TARN

  4. PLAN B

  5. RECONNAISANCE

  6. DOCKS

  7. SLAG BANKS

  8. CODLING

  9. HAYSTACKS

  10. CONNECTION

  11. MEGAN

  12. DOUGLAS

  13. UNDER FIRE

  14. CLUES

  15. JADE

  16. SOLUTIONS

  17. PITFALLS

  18. KINGPIN

  19. A BLIND EYE

  POSTSCRIPT

  Next in the series ...

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  Editor's Note

  Murder Unsolved is a stand-alone mystery, the eighteenth in the series ‘Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates’. It is set in the English Lake District, in the isolated northern parish known as Mungrisdale, and also the Cumbrian coastal town of Workington.

  While it is not necessary to have knowledge of earlier episodes, the reader may wish to consult book twelve, Murder on the Run, for references to earlier events concerning DI Skelgill’s cousin by marriage, Megan Graham, and her daughter Jess.

  The DI Skelgill Series

  Murder in Adland

  Murder in School

  Murder on the Edge

  Murder on the Lake

  Murder by Magic

  Murder in the Mind

  Murder at the Wake

  Murder in the Woods

  Murder at the Flood

  Murder at Dead Crags

  Murder Mystery Weekend

  Murder on the Run

  Murder at Shake Holes

  Murder at the Meet

  Murder on the Moor

  Murder Unseen

  Murder in our Midst

  Murder Unsolved

  Murder in the Fells

  Glossary

  SOME of the Cumbrian dialect words, abbreviations, British slang and local usage appearing in Murder Unsolved are as follows:

  A&E – accident & emergency department

  ANPR – automatic number plate recognition

  Allus – always

  Alreet – alright (often a greeting)

  Any road – anyway

  Arl – old

  Asda – a supermarket chain

  Ba’be – baby

  Bait – packed lunch, sandwiches

  Bang to rights – positive proof of guilt

  Beck – mountain stream

  Bewer – girlfriend

  Bleaberry – bilberry

  Blether – to chat or gossip

  Bob – shilling

  Boozer – pub (also heavy drinker)

  Bottle – nerve (bottle & glass, Cockney)

  Bowk – vomit

  Bricking it – feeling uneasy

  Butcher’s – look (butcher’s hook, Cockney)

  Butty – sandwich

  Chippy – fish and chip shop

  Cock – mate, pal

  Crimbo – Christmas

  Coo-clap – cow dung

  Deek – look

  Dog and bone – phone (Cockney)

  Dole – unemployment benefit

  Donnat – idiot, good for nothing

  Fish supper – fish and chips

  Flait – frightened

  Flicks – cinema

  Frae – from (Scots)

  Fret – worry

  Game (the) – prostitution

  Gattered – drunk (inebriated)

  Gay – very

  GBH – grievous bodily harm

  Goolies – testicles

  Half-inch – pinch/steal (Cockney)

  Hank Marvin – starving

  Happen – maybe

  Haud – hold (Scots)

  Hersen/hissen – herself/himself

  Hey up – hello, look out

  How! – cry used for driving cattle

  Howay – come on

  In-bye – enclosed pasture near the farmstead

  Int’ – in the

  Isnae – is not (Scots)

  Itsen – itself

  Jack Jones – alone (Cockney)

  Laal – little

  Lamp – hit

  Lug – ear

  Marra – mate (friend)

  Manx – from the Isle of Man

  Mash – tea/make tea

  Met (the) – Metropolitan Police (Greater London)

  Mind – remember

  Mither – bother

  Moot hall – meeting hall

  Muckle – large

  NFU – National Farmers’ Union

  Nickt int’ head – having extravagant fancies

  Nowt – nothing

  Offcomer – outsider, tourist

  Ont’ – on the

  Oppo – associate

  Pagger – fight

  Panto – pantomime

  Parkin – gingerbread cake made with oatmeal and black treacle

  Parky – cold

  Pash – sudden short, sharp shower of rain

  Patty – battered deep-fried mashed potato

  Pre’s – drinks at home prior to going out

  Rake – channel in a rock face

  Reet – right

  Sagging – playing truant

  Sommat - something

  Sub – loan (unlikely to be repaid)

  T’ – the (often silent)

  Tarn – mountain lake in a corrie

  Tattie howkin’ – potato picking

  Tea-leaf – thief (Cockney)

  Tek – take

  Think on – remember

  Tip the wink – warn in advance

  Thon – that/those

  Thee/thew/thou – you, your

  Tod – alone (Tod Sloan, Cockney)

  Trap – mouth

  Us – often used for me/my/our

  Wether – castrated sheep

  While – until

  Whistle – suit (whistle and flute, Cockney)

  Wukiton – Workington

  Yard – small paved area at rear of house

  Yourn – yours

  PROOFS

  Six months earlier

  ‘Mummy – he says they’re going to rape us!’

  It is beyond Sally’s worst nightmare.

  She has the gun.

  But the stocky, greasy-haired one has Lily. Hungry eyes, leering mouth. And a knife.

&n
bsp; The other one, the tall one. There were the cold eyes of a killer in the slit of the mask. The foetid breath. The iron grip on her wrist.

  The heavy steps are on the landing. A cry of rage! He’s seen the ladder.

  The fear in Lily’s eyes is almost overwhelming. Sally’s legs are shaking at the knees. Her heart feels ready to explode in her chest.

  Will Lily know what to do? Everything Sandy told them. Will she remember?

  When she heard them breaking in, why hadn’t they made a dash for it? Sandy would berate her. She could have got Lily to the loft. They would have pulled up the ladder. With a mobile phone and the Wi-Fi they could have summoned help. And they would have had the gun.

  The gun.

  She’d known she had to get the gun.

  Leaving Lily for those few moments was like having her wrenched from her womb, ripped from her arms, stolen from her side – all of those fears accumulated, hallucinated down the years, a cascade of horror seething in one black maelstrom.

  Lily’s desperate scream of ‘Mummy!’ when she had broken away from the tall one. Wrenching free of his grasp as he momentarily relaxed. Taking with her the rank odour of exhaled beer and stale smoke and ammonic sweat.

  “I’ll give you my jewels! My valuables! Please don’t hurt her – she’s thirteen! I’ll get them – you’ll never find them!’

  The words echo in her brain. You’ll never find them – the corollary – that they would kill them first and then ransack the house. Or bind and torture them. And worse. Lily has just said it.

  There are no jewels. Why would anyone keep jewels in a holiday home? It was the guilty thought that consumed her as she lurched from the room, striving to appear calm, trying not to hear Lily. But Lily’s cries had turned to a despairing whimper. He must have put his hand over her mouth right then. Now there is a trickle of blood where Lily has bitten him, to pass on the dreadful warning. Brave little Lily. Precious Lily.

  And she had thought again about Sandy. ‘Anoraky Sandy’ she secretly used to call him. That he had been right. One day, something like this could happen. Improbable – but better safe than sorry. Just as when they went to stay in the villa at La Garde-Freinet and he’d insisted on buying an emergency tooth repair kit from Boots at Edinburgh airport. The very next morning she had broken a crown on a baguette; it was a public holiday and the local dentist was all shuttered up.

  About the gun – as usual she had humoured him. She had only half paid attention. Like when he showed her how to turn off the stop-cock if there were a burst pipe. She left those things to him, she wasn’t practical. But she remembered his little metaphor. Don’t try to put your finger in the dam. Eventually the crack will widen. The dam will burst and drown you. Suffer the immediate flood. Stop it at source.

  Lily – the immediate flood. How could she have left her? But she did.

  And she’d had to remember how to get the gun.

  Sandy’s words. They won’t expect you to have a twelve-bore. Not in England. Not a woman on her own. An old farmer, maybe – but not a middle-class metropolitan type that drives a sports car.

  And she can see in the burly one’s evil eyes that Sandy was right. He didn’t expect her to appear with a double-barrelled shotgun. But he’s sly, and he has Lily, and the knife.

  Lily’s blouse is pulled out of her jeans, a couple of buttons are missing. She can’t speak but tears are running, diluting the blood from the bite.

  The footsteps are on the stairs.

  When she left the room, the tall one had followed her. Her heart sank. But she had begun to remember.

  Sandy’s words again. Just a couple of yards head start. Enough to lock the en suite bathroom door. She’d called out, her voice had seemed disembodied, a note of hysteria.

  ‘They’re hidden in a safe behind the door – there’s no room – I have to close it!’

  Turn the lock at the same time as the handle to disguise the sound. Open the window wide to make it look like she had fled. Climb on the bath. Push up the little hatch. The vanity shelf as a foothold. Pull up. Replace the hatch. Step on the joists – use the rafters for overhead grip and spacing. Straight ahead for the gun safe – the seventh joist. Click the light switch. Two keys beneath the fibreglass insulation. The gun – in pieces. Lock, stock and barrel. He’d made her practise. Forget the saying: it’s stock, barrel and lock. Fumbling, shaking, she’d finally done it – it had seemed an age before the three parts clicked into place. Then two cartridges. The safety catch.

  The banging had started – the bathroom door. And impatient shouting. But it told her the landing must be clear. The main hatch – the Ramsay ladder that silently unfolds.

  The bathroom door had splintered.

  But she had slipped past the bedroom and down the staircase.

  Into the living room.

  This confrontation. What had she hoped? That he would let go of Lily and back away? Run from the cottage?

  But he is too sly for that. He has a human shield. It is Sandy’s “worse-case scenario”.

  And he is too drunk or drugged – too greedy to give up what they have come to take.

  The steps are in the hall. She has five seconds.

  Would Lily remember?

  ‘Jump, Lily – JUMP!!’

  *

  ‘Mum? What are you doing?’

  ‘Sorry, darling? Oh – I’m just – proofreading.’

  ‘You looked –’

  ‘No. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Here’s the pizza.’

  ‘I didn’t hear the bell.’

  ‘I was waiting.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘It’s alright, Mum – they sent a text.’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Am I at Dad’s this weekend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Aw.’

  ‘Darling, I must get through these proofs. Janet will go apoplectic if I miss the publisher’s deadline.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Now, you’ll remember, won’t you?’

  ‘Mum! There’s no need to nag.’

  1. APPEAL

  Carlisle, 11.30 a.m., Monday, December 21st

  ‘Danny – wait!’

  Skelgill spins on his heel, producing a piercing squeal of protest from the polished tiles of the atrium that turns several heads. One or two remain watching, curious for reasons known only to them.

  ‘Hey up, Sheryl.’

  His inflection conveys a question, far more complicated than the greeting might sound to said eavesdroppers. Indeed, as she approaches he turns and continues towards the exit, causing her to hurry to reach his side, and falter as they descend the rain-washed stone steps. However, it is not solely to escape scrutiny that he sets this pace, apparently indifferent to her plight, but also to buy a few moments in order more precisely to place her. Sheryl Graham, a second cousin – or third – once removed, perhaps; Graham generations tend to be shorter than most. And to assess her. Anxious, certainly. Why is she looking for him? More to the point, what is she doing at the courthouse?

  Skelgill catches sight of DI Alec Smart, smoking in a doorway, sheltering from the downpour. Skelgill is too late to avoid eye contact. DI Smart, weasel features exaggerated as he sucks in smoke and squints to avoid the tendrils that simultaneously escape from his slit-like nostrils, raises the cigarette in a smug two-fingered salute. His furtive eyes appraise Skelgill’s companion.

  She is unsuitably dressed. Never mind for the weather – she shows too much flesh. Get her out of sight, is his inclination.

  ‘Fancy a mash? There’s a café just by the Crescent.’

  Skelgill does not seem bothered by the rain, despite the lack of any overcoat. To her credit the girl does not complain. There is the effort of keeping up, and of managing an inadequate compact umbrella fished from her bag.

  Five minutes brings them to Blackfriars Street; seated; mugs of tea ordered and delivered.

  ‘Why were you there, Danny?’

  ‘You’ve not forgotten
what my job is, lass?’

  ‘Nay – that’s why I want to speak with thee.’

  Skelgill regards her censoriously. He has long kept at bay petitions of a potentially nepotistic nature, dispensing oblique platitudes when accosted at family gatherings. Yet, she can only have acted on the spur of the moment. His last-minute decision to attend the hearing was predicated on its convergence with a forty-mile round trip to Carlisle for lugworms.

  He is tolerant, however, of the girl’s question.

  ‘I was a witness in the original trial. Nowt significant, like. I was fishing at Bowscale Tarn. I saw the smoke. Thought it were the heather – offcomers with a barbecue. Got there too late – as if it’d have made any difference – the pathologist reckons they were dead before the fire were set.’ He grimaces in a macabre way, though without satisfaction. ‘It were a barbecue, alreet.’

  Perhaps the girl’s own local accent, and his grisly reminiscences have him lapsing into the vernacular that rumbles never far below the surface of his generally moderated manner of speaking. She does not know him well enough to recognise the irony in his tone, and smiles, as if she might be expected to do so.

  He gets a glimpse of her in a different light; she is quite attractive in a naïve kind of way. But why the caked-on make-up and fake tan; no one Skelgill has ever met is naturally that colour. Regardless, naïve and attractive are not words he has come to associate with the bulk of the Grahams. A man himself with hardly a mirror in the house, there have been get-togethers when he has been glad of the dominant Old Norse genes of his paternal line. Among the Grahams there are suspicions of inbreeding, a dubious survival strategy for a clan shunned down the generations – although perhaps this charge is taking things a bit far.

  But the girl – she must be about twenty-three, he would guess – has a lazy eye, and now he is not entirely sure if she is engaging him earnestly or half-sheepishly looking away. Her long brown hair is damp and lank, and her nails are bitten and she has stained smoker’s fingers, and he guesses he would already be conflicted if this were a blind date.

  ‘Where are you living these days, Sheryl?’