Murder in the Woods Page 7

  ‘There’s a new album for each month – but if we go to the main directory I can find the beginning of September and run a slideshow from there.’ He is adept with the trackpad and Skelgill notices that his nails are clean and neatly trimmed, and the backs of his hands tanned from exposure to the sun. ‘That’s it – just press the arrow keys if you want to go quicker – or to reverse.’

  To the accompaniment of some light background jazz a series of photographs now begins to unfold. Skelgill watches as the images dissolve one into the next, each lasting about three seconds. Occasionally there is a shot that he recognises from the blog, but mostly they are unfamiliar, and trace the gradual progression of autumn into winter. There is a late red admiral basking in rich golden sunshine on the trunk what might be an oak; the striking yellow foliage of a maple; damp grass with a crop of pointed-hat mushrooms that look to Skelgill suspiciously like the magic variety; a skein of geese against a dawn sky, skimming above the darkened silhouette of Catbells; a Scots pine trunk, snapped clean off at six feet by a ferocious gale; a spider’s web, frosted with dew; a huge yellow full moon hanging like a Chinese lantern amongst bare treetops; and animal tracks in the snow, five-clawed which tells Skelgill they belong to a badger.

  Skelgill does not avail himself of the arrow keys, but sits motionless and rarely blinking, like he might watch a float from his boat, moored in a quiet bay on Bassenthwaite Lake. Only once does he exhibit any reaction – and that must be imperceptible to Marvin Morgan – for it is an urgent flicker of his eyes as his gaze darts about, hurrying to take in the detail. The particular image is a telephoto shot of a roe deer in a hillside clearing, framed by blurred foliage in the foreground; Skelgill recognises the location as the picnic spot patronised by himself and DS Jones, though on this occasion the surrounding bracken is brown and decaying.

  Into the contemplative silence Marvin Morgan inserts the occasional explanatory remark, however he seems to sense that Skelgill will not take kindly to being treated as some novice naturalist in need of constant edification. After five minutes’ watching – perhaps a hundred photographs – he gestures with an outstretched hand towards the screen. The shot is a close-up of a daffodil, a bright yellow star set against a powder blue sky.

  ‘We’re into February now – that one’s on my blog – I always remark if they flower before St David’s Day.’

  He pauses the slideshow and the music stops with it. Skelgill gives the chair a quarter turn, so that he can look directly at Marvin Morgan. He leans back, as they are rather close.

  ‘Are you Welsh, then?’

  Marvin Morgan makes a noise in his throat; it is a chuckle of resignation.

  ‘Just by name – my father’s family were from Glamorgan – I was born and bred in the East Midlands.’

  Skelgill purses his lips; this perhaps explains the man’s hard-to-place accent.

  ‘What brought you here?’

  Marvin Morgan indicates loosely towards the trophies.

  ‘For over 20 years I ran my own advertising agency – based in on the Wirral. We were reasonably successful and I was able to retire – in a modest fashion. It’s a young person’s game – I sold it on to the next generation of management. Let it go for a bit of a song, really. But I’d always promised myself I’d pack in at 50 – come to the Lakes for good. I managed to make it permanent at 52 – five years ago.’

  ‘You don’t work now, sir?’

  ‘I do some occasional lecturing and tutoring – I’m still affiliated with my old industry institute, non-executive director – I set and mark some of the questions for their post-graduate diploma in advertising practice.’

  ‘So it’s mainly your photography that keeps you busy, sir?’

  Now the man makes a self-deprecatory gesture, raising both palms.

  ‘Oh, well – the photography’s incidental, really.’ He reaches for the camera from the windowsill. ‘I mean – it’s just this compact I use – tremendous zoom they have on them these days. It’s more about having it handy in my pocket – with birds you only get a couple of seconds before they’re gone. The resolution can be variable – but it does the job. My only skill is being outdoors often enough for things to happen.’

  The photographs on the blog do in fact exhibit a greater level of talent and a better eye for composition than Marvin Morgan is admitting to, but Skelgill is not one to bestow compliments blithely, or without some ulterior motive, so he makes no attempt to gainsay the man. He swivels the chair further around, to look at the Labradoodle, which has unobtrusively trailed them and settled in a tartan-lined basket.

  ‘Aye – that’s the thing about having a dog.’

  ‘Yes – rain or shine – he gets me out – and it is a luxury to be able to stride directly onto the fell, no car journey needed.’

  ‘Happen he takes a bit of work – with that long coat – what with the mud and the wet.’

  ‘Oh – I have a hose and a tub at the back – then I let him dry off in the little scullery before admitting him into the house proper.’

  Skelgill nods reflectively. It does not smell like a home with a scruffy dog.

  ‘You must get to know the other dog walkers?’

  ‘On Harterhow?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Marvin Morgan inhales in a way that suggests he realises his answer will disappoint Skelgill.

  ‘What few there are, they come in from the end of the lane, right over the far side from here. It’s unusual for me to meet anyone – I tend to keep off the paths – it’s better for finding birds, and the dog’s happier that way.’

  Skelgill cannot argue with this explanation, it is in line with his own preferred dog-walking strategy. But he persists with his point.

  ‘Over a period of five years, though – you’d recognise the regulars?’

  After a pause for thought Marvin Morgan nods.

  ‘Yes – I would say so – but my impression is that people come and go – you know, they frequent the place for a while, six months, a year, eighteen months – and then drop off?’

  ‘What about in the last year – anybody you’ve seen that would strike you as unusual?’

  Marvin Morgan squints pensively out of the window; the creeping afternoon sun is beginning to slant into his face.

  ‘I can’t honestly say there’s anyone – anything, even – that springs to mind. If I sat and pondered long enough, I might be able to conjure up a list of vague descriptions – but I believe I’m more likely to have noticed the dogs than the people themselves.’ He shakes his head rather ruefully. ‘You may be better off with the friends group – there’s two chaps that run that – they copy material from my blog for their newsletter.’

  Skelgill does not appear enthused by the idea; however he declines to elaborate.

  ‘Do you do guided walks for them?’

  Now Marvin Morgan looks rather blank.

  ‘It’s not something I’ve been approached about.’ He ponders for a moment and his eyes drift to his ornithological books. ‘I suppose I could – but birds are notorious for not showing up when you need them – it wouldn’t be easy to please the paying public.’

  Skelgill nods rather broodingly – this is something he knows all too well in relation to fishing. Whenever police work is going through one of its troughs and the rebellious notion of setting up as an angling guide infiltrates his thoughts, he is quick to remind himself of these twin perils – their corollary being the substitution of one form of enchainment for another. He casts about somewhat fractiously and then indicates towards the stuffed bird on the shelf.

  ‘You could always stick that one in a tree – that would set the cat among the pigeons.’

  Marvin Morgan grins – but then he makes a reproachful clicking noise with his tongue.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t have that, Inspector – I picked it up on my travels in my student days.’

  Skelgill responds with a disinterested shrug.

  ‘If we confiscated everything that contrave
nes some new law or other we’d never get our day job done. So long as you’ve not got an egg collection tucked away in your attic.’

  Marvin Morgan responds with a little laugh that confirms the improbability of Skelgill’s half-joke, though his gaze drops away and there is a slight furrowing of his brow. Skelgill on the other hand rises as though he means to leave. His sudden movement causes dog to rouse itself and it patters out into hallway, Skelgill and Marvin Morgan following. Skelgill notices that it makes no attempt at a break for freedom as he opens the door. He turns on the threshold.

  ‘Thanks for your assistance, sir. We’re at an early stage of the investigation. It’s always possible that there’ll be something in your photographs that might help us in due course. Perhaps I could take a telephone number for future reference?’

  Marvin Morgan grins; his manner is somewhat self-congratulatory.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have a phone – mobile or landline – it was something I promised myself after 30-odd years at work, slave to the device.’

  Skelgill seems to disapprove of this state of affairs, though his reaction may be tainted by a certain amount of envy.

  ‘Well – we know where to find you, sir.’ He begins to step away – and then hesitates and turns back. ‘You’re on your own, I take it?’

  Now Marvin Morgan looks doubly contented.

  ‘It has ever been thus, Inspector.’

  *

  So he’s not a reporter – but a police officer, too. CID – Coppers In Disguise. That’s what they are. And they were on Harterhow before the screaming started – before the body was found – why? Was it just a coincidence – did they come along like all the rest do, because it’s a secluded spot? The inspector sounds like he’s a local – he must know the place better than he makes out. Makes out – hah! Why wouldn’t he pull rank on his sergeant? Detective Sergeant Jones.

  Marvin Morgan stares greedily at the enlarged image on his screen. Emma. His lips seem to mouth the word – the name – several times over. After half a minute he clicks onto the close-up he took of the two of them – they’re standing just inches apart – but they’re conferring about something serious – they’d found the body by then, of course.

  What does she see in him? He must be a good ten years older – and he looks more than that, while she looks younger. And hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer – he’d glazed over when he watched the slideshow. What did he expect? A shot of someone sneaking into the woods with a rolled-up carpet over their shoulder! It was like he was going through the motions. Did he come to see the photos just so he could nose around? Is that how he operates – by blundering?

  But what of his joke about birds’ eggs? Was it an off-the-cuff remark – or a little tester? If he’s from around here he might have been in the cottage during the tenure of a previous owner. He might notice the alterations.

  Cautiously Marvin Morgan straightens up; he has to keep low to avoid the rusty copper tile nails that protrude from the sarking boards. He peers through the slit of the air vent that overlooks the front. The driveway is still empty. But who’s to say that the inspector won’t abruptly return – to catch him out – on the ruse of having remembered another question and not being able to phone him. There’s a downside to that – maybe a few extra precautions are called for.

  One last look at the laptop. Emma. Was that where the inspector was off too in such a rush? Another little rendezvous with Detective Sergeant Jones. A tryst in a back lane before going home to his wife – if he has one, that is. He’d not hung about, that’s for sure. He’d jumped into his mud-encrusted shooting brake and roared off, seatbelt unfastened.

  *

  Skelgill leans into one bend after another. He throws caution to the wind, threading his car through these tight curves in the tourist season, when the traffic trebles. Never mind that confronting him around the next turn there might be a flock of sheep, or a broken-down tractor, or a ponderous trudge of tramping ramblers.

  His eyes are unblinking and his jaw set, his nostrils flared and his knuckles white on the steering wheel. His faculties might be focused on the road, but his mind wrestles with a conundrum: why has Marvin Morgan just lied on at least three counts?

  8. DOG WALKERS – Thursday

  Skelgill is a man troubled by the protocols of in-groups. It is bad enough that he might be considered part of any such coterie without his consent. But to add insult to injury there is the matter of the in-group determining how he ought to behave. Fisherman, fell runner, occasional motorcyclist, Skelgill plainly errs towards lone pursuits. But even these hold their perils. For instance, the minute he rolls out his old Triumph from the garage he becomes a ‘biker’. His hoped-for hour of solitude is continually invaded by passing strangers – for he is obliged to perform the ‘biker’s nod’ to fellow enthusiasts – half of whom he would probably lock up were he ever to get to know them.

  And now, an inadvertent recruit to the cynophile community, his patience has been tested further. At least on a motorbike he can sail blithely by, affecting not to have noticed the oncoming ‘blood brother’ (or sister) – and they are hardly likely to perform a U-turn and come after him for his surliness. But dog walking offers no such easy escape (although it is not unknown for him to pretend Cleopatra is up to no good and take off at a tangent). Generally he must endure the requirement to be in good humour, optimistic about the weather, and prepared to bluff convincingly upon subjects ranging from the exorbitant price of grooming to the hidden pitfalls of pet insurance exclusion clauses.

  That said, one particular aspect of dog walking has aroused Skelgill’s interest: what he regards as its shift system. The early shift, he observes, runs between 6am and 7am. It is staffed mostly by men: purposeful, dour, head down and legs pumping, keeping close control of their hounds and plainly on a mission to get the job done in good time for work. Skelgill admires this group, and sees himself in their image – ascetic by nature, religious in their adherence to the daily task. Greetings are rarely expected or exchanged. Dogs tend to be lurchers, whippets, terriers and other working breeds.

  The next distinct shift begins around 9am, shortly after the school run, and there could hardly be a more vivid contrast. The personnel are predominantly female: gregarious and loquacious they converge with designer pooches – the likes of Muggins and Puggles – that gambol unsupervised, copulate freely, and terrorise the local geese. Skelgill was recently called upon by one such ‘yummy mummy’ to free a Bichon Frise from a barbed wire fence with the minimum of lost fur.

  Finally come the professionals. ‘The Dog Whisperer’, ‘Doggy Daycare’, ‘Bark ‘n’ Ride’. Rolling up in their air-conditioned vans at around 10am – having spent the last hour collecting – they disembark with practised aplomb. There is perhaps a commanding “Charlie, quiet!” or “Willow, sit!” – until calm prevails and the pack moves off as one, a fistful of leashes. An occupation equally divided between males and females, many of this group know of Skelgill in his own professional capacity; if asked, he would say they are law abiding and take their responsibilities seriously.

  Today Skelgill has beaten every shift to the draw – even the most dedicated of the ascetics. He arrived on Harterhow on foot just after 5am. By the time a yawning PC Dodd appeared two hours later to resume his post at the end of the lane, Skelgill was long past his second breakfast.

  He has stationed himself in the now familiar clearing. It is 9.45am and he is brewing his umpteenth tea, eking out the last of the water in his Kelly kettle. The weather is holding fair – for more than a week an unseasonal easterly drift has brought sea fret and frustration to holidaymakers on Britain’s North Sea coast, but no such complaints over here in the west. Skelgill squints at a scolding Meadow Pipit that parachutes out of the morning sun and reminds him he has forgotten his hat.

  While he waits for various experts to provide what may prove decisive forensic evidence, his strategy is to stay close to home. This morning’s tactic is to ‘stake out’ Ha
rterhow, and see just whom he intercepts. While PC Dodd’s presence is ostensibly to reassure the public, he is equipped with a two-way radio in order to alert Skelgill to any arrivals via the main point of access. Skelgill is anticipating that the dog walkers’ grapevine will be abuzz with the news of “The Body in the Woods” – and is intent upon witnessing what effect that has upon visitors to the underused local amenity. The clearing offers a good vantage point for him, and public utility as one of the few open spaces on the hill where it is possible to toss a ball or a stick.

  However, if he had hoped for a stream of early arrivals he has thus far been disappointed: not a soul has come his way, and – unless PC Dodd has suffered battery failure (or fallen asleep in his car) – no one has yet entered through the gate. Indeed, now at long last that Skelgill espies through the steam wafting from his mug a figure emerge from the woodland fringe, he sees that it is DS Jones. Looking tanned and suitably summery in a sleeveless top, the sun’s rays glinting off her fair locks, she makes her way lightly through the long grass. As she nears, Skelgill rises – but in doing so he seems to aggravate his troublesome back, and he turns away to face up the slope and flex his spine. He grimaces – but then, fleetingly, another expression takes possession of his features – it is more akin to alarm, and his eyes narrow. But it passes as quickly as it comes – and now it seems to be the catalyst for an entirely unexpected action. He swivels to face DS Jones; he steps close and grasps her upper arms. In the same movement he bends to kiss her. Whatever her feelings – taken unawares she acquiesces, and for a moment sinks at the hips into the forced embrace – but two, maybe three seconds pass and propriety descends upon her and she hops backwards from his grip. Staring wide-eyed at Skelgill she makes a frantic fanning motion with a hand in front of her face and simultaneously puffs air from flushed cheeks.

  ‘Guv!’

  But there is more than just a note of surprise in her tone – and she urgently jerks a thumb over her shoulder. Skelgill, whose expression is a conflicted mixture of glazed determination diverts his gaze to look in the direction of her warning. Not twenty yards away, and rapidly closing, arm outstretched by the pull of her eager dog comes an open-mouthed June Collins. A pair of aviator sunglasses hides her eyes.