Chapter 1

Detective Chief Inspector Susan Cousins sat at her desk in the open office and thought about the last couple of months. It had been a whirlwind of interesting events, the least of them being the winding up of the Shields case.

It had, finally, been wrapped up and filed away in the records. His house had been searched, finding boxes of completed models of the Coal Mining Museum winding gear, along with a letter from them, telling him that they had too much unsold stock, so would not be ordering any more. That, she thought, was enough to leave a dead girl at their door.

His doctor had verified that the man had a heart problem but had refused to do anything about his health. A keen-eyed FSI man had noticed a chair, made into a wheelbarrow, that sat in front of the pub. They found Shields’ fingerprints on the handles, so surmised that this was how he transported his last victim to the Tar Tunnel.

The last loose ends were sorted out when a search into the records at the closest police station at Wenlock found entries of two, unidentified, bodies of girls found in the lake, some ten or more years ago. They were severely damaged, and it was now thought that they had, indeed, been dumped into the underground river below Andrea’s Den, as the far cave was now called. Another one of Andy’s hunches.

She looked around, seeing the desks where Andy and Maria sat to solve that case, and seeing two, new, detectives there. They weren’t a patch on their predecessors, yet, but they were doing all right. She had been sad when her brightest ‘resigned’. She, alone in the office, knew that they hadn’t actually left the service, merely transitioned to a more secretive version of it. She did see them, on occasions. One of those being the opening of the Boat House, not to the public, but only to qualified archaeologists, with caving and cave diving credentials.

Of course, the official opening had to take place in the open air, with Andy declaring the Barton Cavern well and truly open. Alex was next, opening Anderson’s Ledge, with Andrea declaring the opening of Andrea’s Den, the cave that she had said was behind the Ledge. Sue had seen some pictures, taken by the first to properly look into that cave, and she had seen a veritable carpet of animal bones, with some mammoth tusks showing clearly.

Janet had been put in charge of the dig, which was expected to last many years. Both she, and Andrea, had undergone dive training with Joe, in Sheffield, so that they could explore the far cave at their convenience. Andrea, after her short, but profitable, brush with fame, had moved to Cresswell Village to be close to the site, with the Visitor Centre making full use of her image in their advertising. Andrea had drawn the line at being photographed in skimpy furs, looking like a cavewoman. She had threatened the person who had suggested that with the club that he had given her.

The entry fissure had been widened, with a new door fitted, and the whole complex was now lit by low-voltage lamps, powered by the mains through a transformer. They had run a pipe through the tunnel, to the Ledge, and a power cable, along with a communications cable, was put though it. Andrea had told her that the place held no fears for her, as it was the focus of her new career. Sue’s team, and both dive teams, had each been presented with a framed photo which Janet had organised, of the wall painting. It was called ‘Janet’s Jumbo’ with a plaque that was dedicated to the fine police officers who had led to the discovery of the ‘find of the last two centuries’.

Andy and Maria had married, with the men of her team forming a guard of honour as they came out of the church together. The Assistant Commissioner had stepped up to walk Maria down the aisle, a rare honour. He had told Sue that the honour was his, escorting a woman who had solved nearly thirty murders, along with the team. Alex had been Best Man, with his sister-in-law, and Maria’s friend, Jenny, as the Maid of Honour, with Andrea, and Sally making up the group of very well-dressed women at the altar. Sue smiled; there were a lot of well-dressed women there, that day, thanks to a generous discount offered by Jolene’s Dress Shop.

They all utilised the dresses at various functions and were becoming regular visitors to Jolene’s. Maria and Collette would take extra care with the selections for them. They now had a regular booking at ‘Off The Bone’, with Jim calling it an anniversary dinner. It was pencilled into her diary, now, every three months, in honour of the young men who had died in that building. Sue smiled; it was odd how things work out. Andy and Maria had come into the office, had flourished, and then were gone, like a pair of tornados passing by.

She pulled her mind back to the current situation. She had been given a new case to look at. It looked on first sight, like a straight-forward suicide, but emails, sent by the dead man, only hours before his death, had been setting up a series of appointments with his doctor, his bank manager, and his lawyer. It had been those three men who had raised their concerns with the police who had first taken the case.

She looked around to see who she could give it to. Lean Skinner, and Super Henderson were working on a series of robberies. Jack Brownlee and Lee were looking into a series of arson cases. Sky Walker was back in hospital, for further repairs to his lung. His wife had told her that she was organising a move to the sunny south, where the air is fresh. She would be sorry to lose another good detective.

Sally Brown was winding up a forgery case. That had been an odd one, and she was glad that Sally had learned to think outside the box. It had been fake pottery, mainly Egyptian and Grecian, and had come to light when one had been accidentally broken at a gallery in the city. They had thought that the clay was the wrong colour, and Sally had sent it to a laboratory to be analysed. The report had shown that it was from a local clay mine. From the mine, she had traced all the customers of the potters suppliers, right through to a regular customer who never seemed to show, or sell, his output. He had separated himself from the end users by using cut-outs, not expecting an investigation coming from the clay he used.

Sue decided on a course of action. If there was anything odd about this suicide, Sally would be the one to spot it. She took the file and went to Sally’s desk.

“Sally, I have a new case for you. It’s a bit odd, and you can see if there’s anything suspicious. I’m going to put you in charge of a small team, to give our new recruits some experience with using their imagination.”

She turned to the two new boys, who had lifted their heads from the files they were looking at.

“Jerry and Harry. You’re to help with this case. It may be nothing, but it may be something. Sally will be your leader and she’ll report to me. You can work with her after you finish those files that you’re getting ready for the storage.”

They both said “Yes, Boss.” in unison.

Sue was smiling as she went back to her desk. These two had come into the team from different places, yet they had immediately bonded, almost like twins. They couldn’t be further from looking like twins if they tried. Jerry Britten was lean and tall, with dark hair and pianists hands. He had been dubbed Ben, by the team, after Benjamin Britten, the composer. The other, Harry Parker, was short and muscular, with a buzz-cut, but had been given the nickname of Charlie, by Lean Skinner, a devotee of the jazz player Charlie Parker. Oddly enough, Harry did play the saxophone in a dance band, when he wasn’t working. Both had come to her from the uniformed branch, where they had shown enough promise to be added to the CID. They were, she had to admit, both hard workers and very good with details.

Sally finished what she was doing, then picked up the file to look at what Sue had thought odd. At first glance, it was a straight-forward suicide. The man, Harrison Prentice, had written a suicide note on his laptop, then gone out to his back garden, tied a rope to a tree limb, added a noose around his neck while standing on a kitchen chair. The last thing was evident by the kitchen chair, a little way away, on its side. She looked at the photos, then took a magnifying glass out of her drawer and looked closely. The picture that showed the full scene had been taken from the body camera that the first squad car on the scene had captured. Following ones were taken by FSI when they had taken over, after the body had been cut down. There was one picture that caught her eye, so she found it, in the electronic version of the file, enlarged it and sent the picture to the printer.

She then looked at the toxicology report, which had nothing unusual except for a high level of alcohol in the blood. That was backed up by a half-empty bottle of scotch on his office desk, next to the laptop. There was one thing that stood out to Sally, at first glance. The laptop was connected to a printer, but the note had not been printed. To her, it meant that you couldn’t totally trust the fact that the dead man had actually composed the note. A copy of the note, printed later, was in the file.

There were notes about the three complainants. All three were well respected in their field, the doctor, she knew, had his office in Burton-on-Trent. The bank manager was at a branch on Burton Road, Castle Gresley, very close to where the man had lived, on Mount Road. The lawyer was the last appointment that he had made, in an office in Birmingham City.

Then she stopped and wracked her brain, thinking back to the time she had been working as a WPC in uniform, in Burton. There was something that she should remember. She didn’t recognise the man’s name, but as she read the report, written by an officer she knew, she realised that she had met the wife. That brought it back to her. It had been a Saturday night and she had been checking the pubs. The woman had staggered out as she was approaching a pub. She had been, Sally now remembered, very beautiful, very well dressed, and extremely drunk.

She had staggered to the kerbside and tried to open the door of a Jaguar when Sally had stopped her, while calling the station to rustle up a cab to meet her outside the pub. When the taxi had arrived, she had needed to look in the woman’s bag for her address – on Mount Street, Castle Gresley.

She made a note of the address of the lawyer, rang him, and made an appointment to have a word, then stood.

“I’m going out for a while, lads. When you get a chance, have a look at this file. When I get back, we’ll talk about it. See you in a couple of hours.”

They nodded and she went to the printer to collect her picture and then out to her car. Her first stop, on the way, was going to be a camping store that she knew. In the store, she aimed at the section which catered to hikers and climbers. She showed her picture to the ‘expert’, asking him if he knew what the particular knot was. He scratched his head a bit.

“Look, I’m not a big climber, but I think that this is a Buntline Hitch, which you use when you want to be certain that it won’t come undone. Come on over to my mate who sails, he may have a better idea.”

He led her to another section, one that looked after snorkelers and fishermen.

“Bill, take a look at this picture for us. The lady wants to know what sort of knot it is.”

Bill looked at the picture, then closed his eyes as if he was trying to work through tying the knot in his mind.

“On first glance, it looks like a Buntline, but there’s an extra bit. It’s not one that I’ve seen with climbers, but it sometimes has a place in sailing. It’s called the Estar variation. The normal Buntline is used by climbers when you don’t want it to ever come loose, like making a permanent camp, but usually as the terminal knot for carabiners. This variation is used when you have a very slippery thing to secure. We have a couple of rich guys in the sailing club with very new sails, made from something called Dyneema. It’s a material that floats but is fifteen times stronger than steel. The knot is also used when you have slippery rope, and you don’t want it to come undone.”

“Is this Dyneema rare.”

“Oh, no. You’ll see it everywhere, these days. We have lots of it here, in the store. There’s a rack of ultra-light backpacks that are made from it, and you’ll find it in some of the hiking jackets.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. You’ve been very helpful.”

As Sally sat in the car, there were some questions that she now wanted answers to.

At the lawyer’s office, he sat her in an easy chair and asked her if she would like a tea. When she said she would, he used his intercom to get two teas in his office. He sat opposite to her and asked her if she was taking the death of his friend seriously.

“I’ll tell you if you answer one simple question. Did your friend sail, hike or climb mountains?”

He laughed.

“Never, he was one of the most scared guys I’ve known. He ran and cycled to keep fit, but those three? He wouldn’t be seen within miles of a yacht unless it was sailing by as he was sunbathing on the beach.”

“Thank you, Sir. I can tell you, right now, that I believe that your friend was murdered. Now, do you know why he was coming to see you?”

“He was going to sign divorce papers. He had, finally, enough of her drunken ways. If you’d met her, you would know what I am talking about. The woman is a lush, and I expect the local bike for the studs around Burton. But don’t quote me on that bit, I’m supposed to be impartial as the lawyer for both of them, although I think that she’ll be finding another, after we’ve read the will.”

“Why is that Sir?”

“Keep this to yourself. He had already changed the will, only leaving her the house. It’s probably worth a million, or so, and will be a good pick-up, but his money has already gone to a charitable trust. There’s no way she can fight it, as he did leave her some cash, but not a lot. The meeting that we were going to have was also meant to finalise the paperwork on a small place that he was buying, further north. I’m wondering if she had listened in on his calls and thought she was about to be written out.”

“We can’t imagine scenarios, Sir, but we will look at where she was in the hours before he was found. Was he ill, he had made an appointment with his doctor.”

“Last time I spoke to him, he told me that his wife was having morning sickness, even on mornings when she hadn’t gone to bed drunk. He was going to get the doctor to take blood, and whatever they do for a paternity test. Harrison was fit, didn’t do booze, and took care of his body.”

“The toxicology report shows that he had half a bottle of scotch in him when he died.”

“No way! I was with him, a few years ago, when someone gave him an orange drink with vodka in it. The poor sod collapsed before he’d got it all down him. He could not, and would not, be able to drink scotch.”

“Thank you for your help, Sir. We may need you to make a statement around what we’ve spoken about. I’m sure that you understand the procedure. If I have any other questions, would you mind if I give you a call?”

“Not a problem, officer. I’m just glad that you’re taking this seriously.”

She went back to the camping store and sought out the guy with the sailing experience. When she found him, tidying up a display, she took out her notebook.

“When I was here, earlier, you told me that you had some people you know who had those special sails. Can you tell me where they sail?”

“Nowhere near here, there aren’t big enough lakes for yachts that size. I expect that you’ll find a few up in the Lake District. The ones I’ve seen have been sailing from a marina down on the south coast, which is where I go to crew other people’s boats. Maybe there are some who sail from the Welsh coast, they’d be a bit nearer.”

“All right, then. Where is the closest place where I would find the sort of cliffs where I would need a carabiner?”

“That’s an easy one. You only have to go into Wales, there’s plenty of climbs there, you would need that sort of kit on a five- or six-hundred-foot cliff if you want to be safe. You don’t even have to be going up mountains.”

“Thank you, again, you’ve been very helpful.”

Back in the office, Sue asked her what she thought of the file.

“Murder, Cuz, most definitely. The guy couldn’t hold his drink. I’ve been told that half a finger of that scotch would have seen him on the floor, rather than climbing a tree to top himself. He was about to divorce the wife. I met her, once, had to pour her into a taxi to take her home. There’s an oddity about the rope that was tied to the tree limb; it’s a very special knot. I’m going to have a good look at the FSI report, again, to find out what sort of rope was used.”

“Good work, Sally. Go and see what the musicians have come up with.”

Sally had to chuckle at that one as she went to her desk.

“OK, my bright young lads. What have you gleaned from that file?”

Ben spoke first, as usual.

“It doesn’t feel right. With that amount of booze in the blood, he would have had a hard time standing on the chair, let alone reaching up to tie a knot. The body had been cut down by the uniformed before FSI and CID turned up. The report says that they had taken a wooden stepladder from the garden shed to use when they cut him down, but there’s a note in the FSI report that says that there were marks in the lawn that had been made by a metal stepladder with tubular legs.”

“That’s odd. Anything else?”

“Yes, Sally,” added Charlie. “FSI noted that the rope was a very new one, very slippery, and the noose was a standard hangman’s one, something not every businessman would be able to create. The thing that they pointed out was that there was no other rope like it in the garden shed, but plenty of clothesline.”

“Time of death?”

“Sometime between two and four in the afternoon. The wife says that they had a light lunch and then she went out. She came back about four and didn’t go looking for him until six. She had been to her salon to be ready for a dinner that they were going to, that evening. They have a cook, but she had been given the day off, seeing that they would be eating out.”

“So, we have unusual rope, an unusual noose, signs of another stepladder, too much alcohol, and a wife with an unshakeable alibi. What does that say to you two?”

“A murder, done by clowns.”

“A murder, made to look like it was done by clowns.”

“I like the thinking. Now, there’s another thing. This is an enlargement of the knot that was used on the tree limb. It’s a very special knot, called an Estar, a variation of a Buntline, used on slippery rope – so the clowns knew what they were doing. I spoke to the lawyer and our victim had already changed his will to leave the wife nothing but the house and a small amount of cash. He was in the process of buying a small place further north, and the divorce papers had been drawn up. He thought she was pregnant, and it wasn’t his.”

“Then why make the murder so blatant?”

“Lads, you may not have attended many suicides when you were in uniform, but not every suicide gets looked at, like we are doing now. There’s usually a quick look at the body, some notes taken, and that’s it. FSI don’t get called unless the dead person is a celebrity, a sports star or rich. They had a look and made a report because he was rich. It’s only having three well-respected professionals asking questions that caused this to come our way. This file, in ninety percent of the time, would have been shelved and waiting for the coroner declaring the balance of mind was disturbed.”

“What now?”

“Now, lads, we wonder whether this is a one-off or part of a series. There’s no way that there are going to be similar murder cases, but we should check records, here and around the area. My thought is that we should look at coroner’s records of suicides by hanging, then pull any records on those first. That could take a week or more. But, first, we need to talk to the doctor and the bank manager, and then talk to the wife. How about you two getting us the first two appointments and I’ll join you. I used to work out of Burton so will get a meeting with the first uniforms on the scene, I know the guy who signed off on the report.”

“And then?”

“Then, my fine fellows, together we go and find who killed him. We have a lot of oddities to work with. We will leave talking to the wife until we have something to ask her that she doesn’t want us to be asking. I’m going to ask Doggy if he can pull the pictures in the area.”

She went and knocked on the office door where Doggy had his head behind a screen. He looked up and beckoned her in.

“Doggy, old pal, I wonder if you can pull up pictures from the A444, between northern Castle Gresley, the roundabout by the Appleby Glade and the big roundabout at Highcross. I’ve written the date here, for you. The time scale will be between midday and six, with someone coming and then going, with an hour or more between them. It’s speed limited and I think there’s a camera. No rush, we’re only on the first day of the case.”

“All right, Sally. How are you going, now?”

“Good. I think that this one may be a turning point, for me. Sue has put me in charge of the two lads, she calls them the musicians.”

“As long you conduct them with your usual aplomb, I predict that you’ll be making beautiful music, together. Many would pay to watch you perform.”

“You’re an old smoothie, Doggy. I’ll have you know that I did learn the recorder, in school.”

“Just leave it at home, I think that the recorder is a bagpipe without the bag.”

Marianne Gregory © 2023