PART FIFTEEN

He crossed to the bed and ripped the sheet from her hands, exposing her nakedness.

'We didn't do anything! He was too drunk!' she lied.

He removed his clothes slowly, methodically, carefully folding his trousers and hanging them over the chair. He sat with his back to her, removing his shoes and socks, then stood up to pull down his underpants.

'We didn't do it!' she said in a whimper, and began to cry.

He pushed her back against the sheets, pulling them over the two of them, and began to caress her with long, sweeping strokes. He turned her away from him and stroked her back, then her buttocks, finally sliding down the bed to turn her back over to kiss her stomach and thighs.

She moaned, still crying, but she was now fully aroused by the touches and kisses of the older man. This was different, this was not how it was with Bellamy. This was what she imagined it should be like. All of the time. She allowed herself to be submerged by her feelings, and began to drift towards a youthful orgasm, something she was not really old enough to appreciate fully.

Nine

Desperately, she found herself wanting to tell her mother what had happened over the weekend. Desperately, she wanted to tell someone, anyone, even the police, what happened. But she could not.

She could not.

She was so terribly afraid of what might happen if she told anyone who it was that had sneaked home during the night and turned young Bellamy out onto the street.

She shivered, and fell into a fitful and uncomfortable sleep.

FOUR

KEENE AND MOORE

One

Keene and Moore's interview with the police officers who had been chasing Clitheroe was brief and unhelpful. They had already described the exact location where they had lost him to the officers who had been called to assist in his apprehension, and a full-scale search had been started but had so far drawn a complete blank. The man had simply disappeared off the face of the earth. There were few buildings in the vicinity; a ruined church, in which North Norfolk is particularly rich; a farmhouse, a row of council houses, all four painted uniformly pink on the instructions of a parish councillor who himself inhabited one. No store, no garage, no village hall, no school. Clitheroe had somehow managed to melt into the North Norfolk countryside. His trail had simply gone cold.

Only three and a half miles from Holkham Hall, the ruined church was testimony to the fact that there had once been a thriving village in the vicinity, and in the field beyond the church it was believed that there were buried the remains of several village buildings, probably deserted at the time of the plague.

The church was described by the East Anglian Archaeological Society as dangerous, and to be approached only by bona fide archaeologists and supervised students on account of the pSallypect of falling masonry.

The ruins had, of course, been searched. On the altar there was evidence that something, some material or other had been laid there, and there were minute traces of a substance which could have been blood. A full forensic test would reveal whether or not the blood belonged to Clitheroe. There was, however, no other evidence that Clitheroe had been there.

Two uniformed police were detailed to make a thorough search of the fields and the surrounding woods and hedgerows, but the prospect of finding anything to do with Clitheroe diminished daily. He had simply vanished.

Keene decided that they would take a look for themselves on their return from the Cromer hospital. They took the coast road, passing along the top of Sheringham and Weyborne, then Wells-next-the-Sea, until they came to the long drive that heralded the entrance to Holkham Hall. They drove through the Hall grounds, genuinely impressed by the house and its surroundings, then out by the North-west gate where they saw the signpost for Quarles. This they recognised as being the name of the church that had already been searched.

The church ruins were visible for a short distance, then came the entrance to the field in which it was situated, and beyond that, on the left, the row of pink council houses. Keene stopped the car at the entrance to the field.

'Shall we take a look, Mickey?'

Moore nodded unenthusiastically. He was bored with Norfolk already. There had been a murder. A gruesome, unnecessary murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. They knew perfectly well who had done it, it was simply a matter of time before he was picked up. He wanted, more than anything, to be done with Norfolk, to be heading back to the met. where crime was real, and serious, and frequent, and the chances of making an impression on the force hierarchy that much greater. He was not altogether sold on the idea of moving permanently to Norfolk, and hoped it was not too late for him to change his mind.

Nevertheless he followed Keene across the ploughed field, wishing he had thought to bring wellington boots, until they stood at the foot of the stunted tower.

'Are we going inside?'

'Don't see why we shouldn't take a look. The carrots might have missed something. You never know.'

They stumbled through the fallen masonry and stood on the ancient stone floor, green with moss, perforated with wild flowers and weeds.

'Looks pretty sound to me,' Keene observed. A rook cawed noisily. They looked up to see it sitting high above them. Keene assumed it was a rook. He couldn’t remember if the ones you saw on their own were rooks or crows. Rook. He was fairly certain it was a rook.

'Wonder if he saw anything.'

'Wouldn't tell, even if he did.'

They looked around. The altar seemed the most likely place to start.

'Aren't there usually burial places in churches? For local dignitaries and so on?' Moore asked.

'Sometimes, yes, in the bigger parish churches. Why?'

'I was just thinking, Clitheroe was in the SAS. He'd know about survival and so on, wouldn't he?'

'I suppose so.'

'He'd know if there was somewhere he could hide? He'd find somewhere.'

'Are you suggesting he might still be here?'

'No! I just thought he might have found somewhere to hide early on, when they were still on his tail, like, then high-tailed it after the heat was off.'

'And you think he might have hidden somewhere in here?'

'Don't you think so?'

Keene spread his hands.

'All right. Where? It’s been searched. Thoroughly.'

'Like I said. Some churches have tombs in them. Set into the floor.'

'Yes, and I said, 'in larger parish churches'! What's the matter with you, don't you listen?'

Moore ignored the sarcasm.

'Quarles was a large village.'

'What?'

'Quarles was a large village.'

'How do you know?'

'I read about it. The desk sergeant has a book about Norfolk churches and their villages. A ruined church more often than not means a village, probably deserted, usually at the time of the plague. There are loads of ‘em, all over Norfolk.'

'You're saying this is a large parish church?'

'Was,' Moore corrected softly.

'Okay. Let's look for a tomb.'

There was evidence of inscriptions on the floor, sure enough, and after a while Moore spotted a flagstone that looked slightly higher than the others. He bent down to take a closer look, and rubbed gently away at the stone surface with the palm of his hand to reveal some kind of writing, worn right away because of the long exposure to the elements. Suddenly, he straightened up with a grimace.

'What?'

'It stinks.'

'Old churches usually do.'

Moore shook his head.

'It stinks like something's gone off. Rotted. It stinks, you know, really stinks!'

'Probably a dead rat, or something.'

Again Moore shook his head.

'That stone's loose. I'll get the tire lever.'

He returned a few minutes later with the lever and a handkerchief tied around his nose and mouth, and began to lever the loose stone out of the grip of its companions.

The sudden release of foul air hit Keene like a punch in the face. He reeled backwards, his chest heaving, his lunch defying gravity.

'Christ!' he muttered.

Moore at last had the corner of the stone up.

'Give me a hand!' he cried, and Keene reluctantly came to his side to help him with the six feet by three feet concrete slab. After several minutes they managed to slide it out of the way, just enough to reveal the fact that it was an ancient tomb. Keene retrieved his torch from the car and now that the awful gaseous stench was diluted by the relatively fresh air they were able to breathe easier. He shone the torch down into the ancient burial place.

At first all they could make out was the skeleton of the original inhabitant, together with some pieces of cloth and what looked like a shiny sword.

Then the beam found something else. Moore screwed his face up in disgust and turned away. Keene continued to stare, open-mouthed.

'We'd better call for some assistance,' he muttered at length. He switched off the torch and they walked slowly out of the old building. They gulped in the fresh air, uncaring, not noticing that it was full of the familiar stench of fertiliser, made surely worse by the torrential rain of the past few days.

He reached inside the car and lifted out the radio handpiece.

'This is Detective Sergeant Keene. Message for Superintendent Wilson. We have found a body in the ruined church at.......?'

He turned to Moore for confirmation of the name.

'Quarles,' Moore said.

'.......Quarles,' Keene finished. 'Please send some men out to help lift a large flagstone out of the way. Forensic as well, and pathology. Over. We think we may have found Donald Clitheroe.'

By three o'clock the mutilated body had been lifted out of its resting place and laid on the floor of the ruined church. There was no mistaking who the murdered man was. They were able to identify him easily from the photographs they had been issued with. It was definitely Donald Clitheroe.

At ten minutes past three the pathologist arrived and within a few moments confirmed what they already suspected, that Clitheroe had bled to death after being stabbed more than twenty times with the sharp knife Keene and Moore had mistaken for a sword, thinking it had been buried with the original occupant of the mediaeval grave.

The two young detectives sat in their car drinking coffee from a flask one of the uniformed officers had brought for them. As the sun began to disappear over the western bank of trees, a cheerful young bobby climbed into the back seat.

'Anything on the knife?'

'Blood. Lots of blood. Must be his.'

'Clitheroe's?'

'Yes. No prints, though. Wiped clean.'

'Did you find anything at all?' Keene asked, the first stirrings of exasperation beginning to make themselves felt in his ordered mind.

'Nothing to speak of. Only.....'

'Well?'

'Clitheroe was injected with something before he died.'

'Something?'

'Well, he's been dead a while. Tuesday evening is the current thinking.....'

'Tuesday evening?'

'Not for me to say, but I did hear the doc. say something about Tuesday.'

'But the body....'

'Yes, that tomb was probably airtight. It's going to make the doc’s job more difficult, but I would be surprised if he was murdered this side of Tuesday. As I say, it's not for me to say.'

'And he doesn't know what the injection was?'

'No, Sir. Just a puncture in the lower arm. Maybe he gave blood last week, or something, in the nick. Or he could have been pumped full of hallucinogenic drugs.'

Keene shook his head with a frown.

'It was probably something to keep him from getting away while they killed him.'

'They?' Moore queried.

'He's a big bloke. I can't see one person being able to hold him down, inject him and lift that slab. Can you trace the knife?'

'It's not unusual, Sir, I'm afraid. Any fishing tackle shop would stock something like this, but it has been specially sharpened, if you want an honest opinion. Oh, yes, the pathologist also thinks Clitheroe was struck on the head from behind.'

'Is there anything on the knife, apart from blood?'

'You mean a maker’s name or something like that? Nothing to speak of. Looks like someone tried to scratch his initials on the blade, here, look.'

'I don't see anything,' Keene said, but then he saw the faint line just above the line of dried blood, and nodded.

'Could be a 'T', or a 'Y', I suppose. Or a ‘P’, maybe.'

'Could be anything. I don't think we're going to get far with the knife.'

'No manufacturer's name?'

'Probably was, but the blade's been sharpened so well, and the surface polished so as to remove it, I should say.'

'But you will try to trace it?' Keene observed drily.

'Of course. We'll take it along to one of the shops, see if we can't match it, then we'll know who made it, and away we go. But if you ask me, it's old, probably about ten years old, probably not made any more, probably not going to get us anywhere.'

'Any sign of Clitheroe's clothes?' Moore asked.

'Nothing whatsoever. Thought there might have been some evidence of a fire, something like that.'

'Anything else you can tell us?'

The bobby shook his head. He was still smiling. Keene desperately wished he had access to one of his own team. You country policemen are fine until you have to deal with the technological side of murder, he thought. The bobby looked as though he didn’t have a clue as to what was going on.

'I don't think so, Sir. Wait here while I see if the pathologist can tell you anything more, will you, Sir?'

He climbed out of the car and strolled back into the church swinging the plastic bag and tossing the knife and catching it several times over. Five minutes passed. The pathologist emerged.

He wore a battered trilby hat, a light green corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches, and faded corduroy trousers. He removed his hat and, as the forensic officer had done, climbed into the back of Keene's car. He was totally bald, and wore dark-rimmed spectacles.

'I gather Robson has told you more or less everything I told him, gentlemen?' he drawled. His speaking voice was slow, lazy, almost, stemming from a need during his university days to make lecturers and fellow students slow down so that he could take everything in thoroughly.

'Shall I summarise for you? Probably killed between nine-o'clock and midnight on Tuesday. Hit from behind, possibly with a brick, a large stone, something of that nature. Definitely injected with something or other, bled to death from multiple stab wounds. Seen anything like this before, either of you?'

Keene shook his head.

'No ritual killings, anything like that? We've had a few out this way. One or two. Laid out on an altar and all that sort of thing.'

'What are you suggesting, Doctor?'

'Suggesting? Nothing, why?'

'You said ritual killings......'

'No, no, no, this was not a ritual killing, I'm sure. There would be other evidence of the - er - ritual. But it's the sort of thing you might expect from a ritual killing, isn't it? You're the experts.'

'You're sure about the time of death?'

'As sure as I can be. Definitely not recent, anyway. Definitely Tuesday night. Could have been earlier, but in my opinion he was dead before midnight on Tuesday.'

'Killed in situ?'

'There is evidence that he was dragged off the altar and hurled down into that pit, but otherwise, yes, the answer to your question is that he was most certainly killed inside the church.'

'So how was he brought to the church? Did he walk to the church across the fields, was he hit on the head when he got here, or was he attacked somewhere else, then brought to the church in the back of a car, or what?'

'I'm afraid I can't help you with that one, Sergeant. I can only examine the body and tell you when he was killed, where he was killed, and how he was killed. The rest you will have to piece together for yourselves. I will be performing a post mortem on the corpse this evening, and I will convey the findings to you as soon as I have completed my examination. You know where to find me.'

He got out of the car, thrust his hat back on top of his head, and walked back into the church.

'Well, that's blown a hole in a nice little theory. Thought we'd have this one wrapped up quickly. Now we're looking for two murderers.'

Moore looked up sharply.

'But did Clitheroe kill the girl?'

'If that bloke's right, no, he did not. Kim Catchpole was murdered between two and three Wednesday morning. You heard what he said. Clitheroe was dead before midnight on Tuesday.'

'So who killed Clitheroe?'

'Beats me. And I don't want to be the one that tells Thompson, either.'

'Thompson?'

'The bloke that's on desk duty. The one who should have been handling this case.'

'He thought it was Clitheroe?'

'Apparently he knew something about Clitheroe's first murders, thirteen years ago. Said it proved beyond any doubt that Clitheroe murdered Kim Catchpole. But he wouldn't say what it was.'

'So why shouldn't he be told about Clitheroe?'

'Mickey, he's on paperwork, suffering from some kind of depression. You were there, weren't you, when Wilson briefed us?'

'I didn't catch that bit. Why does he need to be told, anyway? If he's not handling the case?'

Keene shrugged his shoulders.

'Not up to us to tell him, is it?'

From the corner of his eye he had seen the approaching Land Rover. He watched it come to a halt behind the row of police vehicles, and the driver get out.

'Looks like we've got company, Mickey.'

They got out of the car and walked over to where the newcomer stood.

'Can we help you, Sir?'

'I'm the estate manager. My name is Hegan, Mark Hegan. Can I ask what you're doing on my land?'

'A body was discovered in the church over there, Sir.'

'My God! Not another murder?'

'Another murder, Sir, yes.'

'Not another young girl?'

'No, Sir. We believe it to be the body of the man wanted in connection with the murder of the girl, Kim Catchpole.'

'Oh, Christ! It's Don Clitheroe, isn't it?'

'Do you know him, Sir?'

'Everyone knows him.......'

'Detective Sergeant Keene and Detective Constable Moore.'

'......Sergeant. I understand he escaped from prison sometime during the week.'

'That's right, Sir, yes. It was in the papers yesterday, I believe.'

Hegan nodded.

'Are you saying he didn't kill the girl? Do you know who did, then?'

'We're following several lines of enquiries, Sir. As you are the estate manager, perhaps you would be kind enough to answer a couple of questions?'

'Of course.'

'Were you aware that Clitheroe was on your land?' Moore considered this a somewhat strange question from his colleague. If Hegan had known that Clitheroe was on the estate he was either a) an accomplice or b) he should have informed the police. But even as this thought flashed through his mind, Hegan answered.

'No, of course not. The estate is heavily fragmented. An acre or two here......no, I had no idea. He could have been anywhere.'

'How often do you visit this part of the estate?'

'At least once a week.'

'And do you ever go into the church?'

'Certainly not. It's dangerous. There should be a sign somewhere.....'

Keene nodded.

'Can I ask you to write down your name and address, in case we need to talk to you again, Sir?'

'I have a card....'

Hegan took his wallet from his coat pocket, took out a business card and handed it to Keene.

'Thank you, Sir. We'll be finished here shortly. If you do think of anything?'

'Yes, of course, Sergeant. Good day to you.'

Hegan climbed back into his Land Rover and started the engine. They watched him go. It was precisely four o'clock. By four-thirty they were back at the police station.