Rack, Ruin and Murder Read online

  As Morton hesitated, someone else did. A figure came plodding down the track towards him and stopped on the other side of the gate. She was an elderly woman and appeared, to Morton, to be quite square. Short, broad, with straggling grey hair framing a sunburned face, she stood on stumpy legs, slightly spread to balance her weight. She wore a grimy tent-like patterned frock and carried a bucket.

  ‘Who are you, then?’ she asked. The question startled him, not because of the words themselves, but because of the timbre of her voice. It was as deep as a man’s, with a hoarse quality that suggested a lifetime’s addiction to gin and strong tobacco. Before he could reply, she went on, ‘Copper, I dare say, come about that business at Balaclava.’ She jerked the grimy thumb of her free hand in the general direction of Monty’s home.

  Morton produced his ID but she barely glanced at it. ‘Are you Mrs Colley?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m one of them,’ she said. ‘My daughter-in-law, Maggie, is the other.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to your family,’ said Morton. ‘Are they all at home?’

  ‘They’re about the place. You can come in. I’ll take you.’

  Morton opened the gate and looked past her apprehensively. She had already turned away from him and was stomping back down the track. She looked over her shoulder without pausing.

  ‘Dogs is in their pen,’ she said.

  Morton followed her, curious to see the place the Colleys called home. It appeared as he turned a shallow bend in the track and he was surprised to see it consisted of several buildings. What a jumble they made! Something of everything, Morton told himself. Without knowing much about architecture, he realised the various parts had been constructed at different times and in some cases probably for different purposes.

  The smallest construction, and the nearest to him, was the dog pen. It was a large cage made of chicken wire attached to rough wooden posts. Probably it had started out as a poultry run. In one corner of it stood a ramshackle hut, serving as a kennel. The dogs themselves were three in number, Alsatians with, Morton judged, a touch of something else in their bloodline. They were big, powerful creatures and he doubted that the wire run would hold them for very long if they really wanted to get out. They crowded together, snouts pressed against the wire, watching him with unfriendly yellow eyes. A slight shift in the breeze brought him the rank smell of pack animals kept out of doors. Morton turned his gaze away deliberately, recalling that staring a strange dog in the eye can be read as a challenge.

  Mrs Colley, he was not altogether happy to see, had disappeared into the house that lay directly ahead of him, leaving him alone. It had originally been a honey-yellow stone cottage typical of the area. But over the years it had been added to in a piecemeal fashion, bits in brick, some in a different sort of stone, and a lean-to in wood tacked on the far end.

  To his left were empty brick pigsties. He wondered where the pigs were. To his right, beyond the dog pen, stood a building of quite a different class. It was larger, both long and higher, brick-built with care, decorated with a fancy pattern of different colour bricks at intervals along the façade. The far end had dusty windows and a stable door. The nearer end, windowless, was pierced by a large doorway, closed now by wooden doors of a more modern and rougher construction than the rest of the building. It was two-storey; the upper floor showed twin openings, about the height of a man, beginning at floor level. A rusted pulley system protruded from the wall by one.

  Old hayloft and stables, thought Morton, now a general storage area. I wonder what happened to the original doors? I suppose they use some of it as a barn or farrowing shed. Even in these reduced circumstances, the whole building was a cut above the rest. It was like seeing an elderly, tattered but dignified gentleman tramp, sitting on a bench with a group of less distinguished winos. It made him think of Monty Bickerstaffe himself.

  While he had been studying his surroundings Mrs Colley had gathered her clan. They emerged now, some from within the house; others came round the corner of it from some area to the rear. They moved in a solid mass towards him and stood silently, waiting for him to open any conversation.

  Mrs Colley senior no longer held her bucket but her fingers were still curled as if a handle rested in them. Next to her stood a belligerent-looking woman in early middle age. Her features and figure were lumpy and her skin weather-beaten and prematurely lined. Her lank, badly dyed black hair was dragged back from her face and fixed in a ponytail. She wore gold hoop earrings, but no make-up, and her bare arms were decorated with tattoos. She glared at Morton with small dark eyes as she drew on a cigarette. That must be Maggie, the daughter-in-law, Morton thought. Fancy waking up every morning and seeing that on the pillow beside you!

  The husband who had that honour stood next to Maggie: a burly, bearded man in grimy jeans and quilted body-warmer worn over a plaid shirt. Then came the younger members of the family. There was Gary, with a wary grin on his face and, beside him, an overweight blonde wearing tight black leggings that did nothing to disguise her plump thighs and bulging calves. A loose garment draped the top half of her body. Lastly, a small child emerged from behind the blonde and stood staring unblinkingly at Morton. It was female, and between three and four years old, so Morton guessed. Her hair was uncombed. She was dressed in pink leggings and purple top, and grasped a grubby stuffed toy Morton thought he could identify as a Teletubby, though he couldn’t have said which one.

  ‘Mr Colley?’ Morton asked the bearded man briskly.

  The man stepped forward and nodded. ‘Dave Colley, that’s me.’ He indicated the woman with the cigarette. ‘My wife.’

  Morton acknowledged the introduction with a nod. The woman ignored it and drew silently on her cigarette, still glowering. The expression was probably permanent.

  ‘You’ve already met my mother,’ continued Dave Colley. ‘This is my son, Gary. You’ve met him, too, I reckon, yesterday. And my daughter, Tracy. That little ‘un is my granddaughter, our Katie.’

  ‘Hello, Katie,’ said Morton to the child, since none of the others had moved a muscle.

  ‘‘Ello,’ said the child and sniffed noisily. She rubbed the Teletubby across her nostrils.

  ‘Where’s Mr Monty, then?’ asked Dave Colley. ‘What have you done with the poor old bugger?’

  ‘He’s staying with relatives,’ said Morton. ‘I’d like to ask you all about yesterday. You’ve probably heard by now that a dead body was discovered in Balaclava House by Mr Bickerstaffe, when he returned from a shopping trip to town.’

  They showed no surprise at the news so they had heard about the existence of a body. Now, where had they heard it? That was another question that needed an answer.

  ‘None of us know anything about it!’ growled Grandma Colley. She had taken up a defensive stance, head lowered, shoulders hunched. Perhaps she thought that Morton, for some inexplicable reason, was going to rush her and tackle her to the ground.

  ‘All right, Mum,’ said Dave to her.

  She wasn’t so easily silenced. ‘Old Mr Monty, he wouldn’t know anything about it, either. Not his fault he found it. Anyone can find anything, doesn’t make ‘em responsible, does it?’ She had a grievance now and having found voice, was getting into her swing.

  There was an odd moment in which Morton and the Colleys were united in trying to ignore her. It was quickly over. The Colleys stood together, literally and metaphorically.

  ‘You’ve been neighbours all your lives, you and Mr Bickerstaffe,’ said Morton, more in dismay at the thought of anyone having to live next door to this bunch than anything else.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dave. ‘My granddad, old Jed Colley, he knew Mr Monty when Mr Monty was a kid. Bickerstaffes and Colleys been living here for years.’

  ‘You’ve always kept pigs?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Colley. ‘This is our place, passed down father to son.’

  ‘I see,’ said Morton. ‘Were you all here yesterday?’

  ‘Off and on, I reckon. Ga
ry went into town.’

  Dave Colley was either telling the truth, or smart, thought Morton, and wished he knew which it was. Gary had told the inspector yesterday that he was on his way into town. Now his dad had backed his story.

  ‘We particularly want to know if you saw any strangers, or even one stranger, in the area. Or an unknown car, in the lane out there.’

  Colley shook his bushy head. ‘No, no one. Pretty quiet down here, most of the time.’

  ‘What about the rest of you?’ Morton asked the family, since they seemed happy to let Dave do the talking with occasional contributions from Grandma Colley.

  ‘Never seen nothing,’ they chorused.

  ‘How about you, Katie?’ Morton asked the child suddenly, stooping to her level. He was aware of a rustle among the crowd of Colleys, perhaps surprised at his questioning a small child.

  ‘Did you see anyone you don’t know yesterday, Katie? Someone in the lane? A man or a lady, or lots of people?’

  ‘No,’ said Katie.

  Morton fancied a collective relaxation of tension among the assembled Colleys.

  ‘You can see for yourself,’ said Dave. ‘The track bends round from our gate. You can’t see the lane directly from here. You’d have to be down there.’

  It was a fair point. ‘Where are the pigs?’ asked Morton. Dave blinked and surveyed him for a moment. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said. He turned away and gestured Morton to follow. They set off towards the corner of the house. The other Colleys, with the exception of Gary, melted back indoors. Gary followed his father and Morton.

  The smell of the pigs increased as they rounded the cottage. There, before him, was a large field full of the animals. They rooted about happily, pigs as far as the eye could see. Little corrugated iron huts were dotted about the field as shelters. They all looked in very good health. The house and other property might be ramshackle, but the pigs were well cared for. Morton supposed they had to be, or they wouldn’t fetch a good price. In a further, smaller, enclosure, two horses grazed side by side, tailend on to the pigs, as if blocking out the indignity of being kept alongside them.

  Morton turned his attention back to the pigs. ‘What sort are they?’ he asked.

  Gary, who had been silent until now, answered. ‘Large white.’

  ‘It’s the kind of meat shoppers want,’ his father explained, ‘on the lean side, not too much fat. My old granddad, Jed Colley, he wouldn’t have touched bacon that wasn’t mostly fat, but tastes have changed.’

  ‘I’m not keen on fat bacon, myself,’ said Morton.

  ‘Ah…’ chimed both Colleys, shaking their heads.

  ‘So, easy to rear, then?’ asked Morton. If the Colleys were willing to talk about pig-rearing, it might make them chattier on other topics.

  ‘Straightforward enough. You have to watch them in a hot summer. They can get sunburn.’ Morton must have looked as though he thought his leg was being pulled, because Dave continued, ‘It’s those pink skins of theirs.’

  Morton eyed the nearest pig. Its skin, beneath its white hair, was certainly very pink and vulnerable-looking. ‘So,’ he said, ‘good business?’

  Both Colleys immediately made noises of dissent. ‘You’ve got your work cut out to make a decent living,’ said Dave. ‘But we keep afloat.’

  It was time to bring the conversation back to the body found in Balaclava House. ‘You see,’ said Morton, ‘our problem is this. There must have been someone – or some persons – around yesterday. The dead man was carried into the house, so we think. He may not have been dead at the time, but he was almost certainly dying and was very unlikely to have walked in there unaided.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ asked Dave Colley. ‘Well, none of us saw anything.’

  ‘Nothing,’ corroborated Gary. ‘First we knew of it was when I walked past Balaclava on my way into town. I saw you lot outside the house and poor old Mr Monty being pushed into a police car.’

  ‘But you walked on into town? You didn’t turn back and come here to tell your family about the disturbance?’ Morton didn’t give up easily.

  ‘I rang ‘em,’ said Gary. ‘On my mobile.’ He fished in his pocket and held up a phone. It looked like one of the latest models. ‘This one, here.’ Gary gave Morton what could only be described as a triumphant grin.

  Morton made one last effort. He turned to Dave Colley. ‘None of you was curious enough to walk up the lane to Balaclava House and find out what all the fuss was about, after Gary phoned you?’

  ‘We were busy,’ said Dave. ‘And things had got behindhand. The pigs broke out earlier on the far side of the field there and got on to Sneddon’s land. My boy and I had to round them up and fix the broken fencing. Then young Gary, he went off into town, and I got going on the paperwork. I should have been doing that when I was chasing the bloody pigs. Any kind of farming now is snowed under with paperwork. When Gary phoned in the news, I told my wife, but we didn’t have time to go running round to Balaclava. We reckoned we’d hear all about it sooner or later.’

  ‘Yes, that makes me wonder just where you did hear about the body, Mr Colley,’ Morton said blandly, ‘since Gary, your son, only saw Mr Bickerstaffe getting into a police car.’

  The two Colleys exchanged glances.

  ‘Well,’ Dave said slowly. ‘Later that evening, my mother walked up the lane and took a look. She wanted to check on the house and Mr Monty, you see, in case he needed anything. She saw the undertaker’s vehicle just drawing away. There were still cops there. Ma came back and told us about it. So that meant someone had died, hadn’t they? And it wasn’t Mr Monty because Gary saw him with you lot.’ Dave looked pleased with his own logic.

  Gary’s smile had broadened. Whatever Morton asked them, they’d have an answer.

  Morton fixed Gary with a look to let him know the smile hadn’t gone unnoticed. ‘I’ll probably be round here again. In the meantime, if you think of anything at all, let us know, will you?’

  The Colleys mumbled indistinctly.

  ‘By the way, whose are the horses?’ Morton asked, nodding at the further enclosure.

  ‘My lad’s,’ said Dave Colley. ‘He’s always kept a horse or two, since he was a nipper. Sometimes he grazes them in the paddock there and sometimes down in the field by the road.’

  Gary Colley struck Morton as being more a motorcycle person than a horse one. He wondered if there was gypsy blood in the Colleys.

  They walked back, all three, to the main area in the front of the house.

  ‘That building.’ Morton indicated the large brick-built block. ‘When was that built?’

  ‘Oh, the old barn there,’ said Dave dismissively. ‘That’s been here longer than any of us here now. That was built when Balaclava House itself was built. It used to be the coach house and stables for the big house. This…’ He waved a broad callused hand at his surroundings. ‘This was originally the stable yard. Our cottage there was for the use of the head groom. The Bickerstaffes gave up the carriage and the horses after the First World War. They bought a motor car. They had money in those days, Bickerstaffes. They had a new garage built nearer the house and a flat for a chauffeur over it.’

  ‘I didn’t notice a garage with a flat over it near the big house,’ objected Morton.

  ‘No more you would. It fell down years ago. I went up and took the bricks away to build our pigsties, doing Mr Monty a favour, like.’

  Doing yourself a favour, you mean, thought Morton.

  ‘Well,’ Dave began again, showing signs of impatience at the interruption, ‘my great-grandfather had been their coachman and head groom since before Queen Victoria died, but now he was out of a job. He reckoned he wouldn’t find work again, times having changed. He wasn’t so young, either. Motor cars were coming in everywhere and he didn’t see himself learning to drive one. The story goes that he did try, but he could never remember not to turn his head and talk to his passengers. After he’d driven a whole car full of Bickerstaffes into a ditch, they told him they’d
get a younger man.

  ‘So he went to the then Mr Bickerstaffe and asked if he could rent the stables, the yard, his tied cottage and the two paddocks between Balaclava and Sneddon’s land. Then he could start a smallholding, since he was about to lose his job. After all, the family had no use for them any longer. Old Bickerstaffe agreed. Felt he owed it to him, I suppose. Later, my grandfather, Jed Colley, got the money together to buy it all. Bickerstaffes let him have land and buildings for a knock-down price. Land was cheaper in those days. No one had started putting brick boxes all over the countryside. Bickerstaffes weren’t doing so well with their biscuit business by then, and even a bit of money, cash in hand, from my granddad was welcome.’

  Morton walked past the dog pen on his way out, still avoiding the baleful yellow gaze of the penned animals. But he was aware of it, as he was aware of the gaze of Dave and Gary Colley watching him leave. From inside the cottage, he was sure, the women watched him, too. He was equally sure they knew something but they weren’t prepared to tell him whatever it was. He just had to hope he had better luck with Peter Sneddon, the farmer.

  Chapter 6

  Monty sat in Bridget’s back garden where he’d found a secluded spot, shielded from the wind by the junction of high dry stone walls. There was a white-painted metal seat here. It wasn’t any more comfortable than the average church pew, but he was glad to be out of the house. He could relax, as he couldn’t indoors: nobody could be at ease with Bridget hovering over him. He felt uncomfortable even out here, probably because of his new clothes. They had been bought during a humiliating visit to the nearest Marks and Spencer’s in Cheltenham. Bridget had marched him around like a harassed parent of a six-year-old, ticking off items on a list. His only original possessions left were his shoes. He had pointed out to Bridget that it took time to break in shoes to the shape of his feet. She’d given way on that, but on nothing else. Everything else had an obstinate newness about it, fighting his shape. So the waistband of his trousers was too tight. His shirt collar was too stiff. The sleeves of his woollen sweater were too long. It was reliving his first day at his new prep school, wearing a uniform intended to ‘let him grow’. He didn’t feel he was himself but someone else. Perhaps that was why, when he dozed off, he began to see himself as a boy. Events unrolled in his dream world as if he watched a film and actors played out the story. Monty was a young boy in shorts and an Aertex sports shirt. He toiled up the steep rise of Shooter’s Hill and Penny followed behind, complaining that he went too fast. He was carrying a brown paper bag containing a hardboiled egg, with a pinch of salt in a screw of paper to season it. The bag also held fish paste sandwiches made with a lot of bread and very little paste filling. To supplement this unappetising fare, he had a box of broken biscuits from the Bickerstaffe factory.