Lights Out for Granddad

By Charles P. Helmsville

Stephanie Golding takes licentious advantage of men. Or so it seems. Is that why she is brutally murdered at the crest of a quiet ravine, and with a weapon suggesting more torture than passionate death? Her fiancé vehemently denies involvement, so does everyone else.
The murderer in this apparently vengeful killing is investigated relentlessly by Detective Chief Inspector Charles Merstowe and his team of police and medical experts. Voyeurs, opportunists, friends of the victim, a mysterious white-haired man, shadows: all are suspect. Secrets must be uncovered, foibles exposed and explanations ruthlessly delved. Merstowe knows this, but the case fast becomes a losing challenge. Not much adds up. And what about upsetting machinations and revelations closer to home? There are unwelcome surprises there too. Even the police are disturbed.
An eventual ownership of the crime raises more fog than it diffuses. Perhaps only another death will clear the air completely of jealousy, hatred, blame, retribution and revenge. In the meantime, the veteran Merstowe is forced to question his own skills as a detective. His protégé questions his morals as well. His own doubts cast shadows over himself. Is he remotely on the right track? Was the victim in fact an angel? Or was she instead a cunning devil, too clever by half? Who were really her friends, and who her enemies? Most importantly, what’s wrong with the evidence? Stephanie Golding suffered in death. But why? It needs to be sorted out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781398412286

Charles P. Helmsville

Charles P. Helmsville was a practising barrister for almost 40 years, before graduating in life to become an introspectionist and writer. His interest in philosophy, current world affairs, his three Canadian granddaughters and his American grandson, continues unabated. His travels have taken him to six continents. Born in rural England, then having lived in Perth and Melbourne, Australia for almost five years, Charles settled in Toronto, Canada with his Canadian wife. They have two married sons, one practising law in Toronto, the other in San Francisco. He holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London, and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto.

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About the Author

Charles P. Helmsville grew up in the Vale of Evesham, between the Cotswold and Malvern Hills, England. He had sailed around the world by the time he was 27 years old, punctuating the journey with work in the legal profession in Perth and Melbourne, Australia. He now lives with his Canadian wife in Toronto, where he practised law as a barrister for almost 40 years. They have two sons, both practising lawyers, one living in Toronto with his family, the other in San Francisco, California, with his.

Charles continues to renounce the R word and since leaving law has become variously an introspectionist and a writer.

Charles earned his Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London, England, and his Doctor of Jurisprudence from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. He is an associate of the Australian College of Theology and an Officer of the Order of St. John.

Dedication

To Nigel, most cruelly taken from us on April 27, 2020 by the evil virus:

IN MEMORIAM

As heaven’s timeless clouds come creeping,

Softly, for thy spirit’s reaping,

Cloaking death’s desires, steeping,

Smothering the pale sun peeping:

Our lost souls are gently weeping,

For thy precious life blood, seeping –

Drifting up to heaven’s keeping,

To its home, eternal sleeping.

How our souls do gently weep

For thine end’s eternal sleep.

Copyright Information ©

Charles P. Helmsville (2021)

The right of Charles P. Helmsville to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398412279 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398412286 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

To my former law partner, still my great friend, I owe more than I can thank her for. Once my junior at trials, now a leader of her own standing, and always the great organiser, she has helped me again with formatting and suggestions that have enabled me to pull yet another trial together. Thank you, Gaynor.

To my wife, Barrie Anne, thank you for your continued support and perseverance in vetting what I wrote here. We soared into a higher level of our seemingly usual trivial discussions of grammar and word origins and spelling while discussing, sometimes with ardour, the better rearranging of words and phrases to make or convey a point in this book. All of that, yes, and notwithstanding our usual differences over how to say something better: the imperious lawyer versus the calm montessori head-teacher. This exercise brought us to new heights of almost consensus. A delight as always. Thanks so much for the verbal scraps, and for the inevitable enlightenment of both of us. (I still think certain common nouns should be capitalised).

Other Books by Charles P. Helmsville

ROMANCE

THE BRICKEN ARCH

The lives of two teenage sisters and their cousin boyfriends are forever changed by the mores of their time, by separation to different parts of the world, by relationships with others and by a cruel tragedy. When, after 17 years, there are reunions and liaisons over two decades, in furtive circumstances, none can imagine that the questionable and consequential actions of one of the lovers will lead to savage repercussions for all: repercussions that risk fulfilment of their enduring loves as a foursome.

CHILDRENS’

TALES OF THE FOREST, THE MOUNTAIN AND THE GARDEN

One Unicorn, Two Dragons, Three Little Girls, Four Goldfish and Other Numbered Stories

Tales is a storybook of allegories where animals and humans confront and overcome hard decisions. The Unicorn is feared by other animals until a forest fire gives him the opportunity to show that he is not only one of them, but also their Saviour. In Nine Wild Piglets, the runt of the litter, through cleverness and cunning, overcomes all odds and becomes the leader of his siblings. In One Hundred Squirrels, three armies, Red, Gray and Black, are set to fight to the death for a cottage-sized section of the Forest, until four yellow squirrels convince them of the futility of war. In the last story, One Million Beetles, all the animals of the forest, and their hunters, meet on the night of The Moon of Blood and, through the intervention of the light of these million fireflies, form an understanding for everlasting peace between them.

DYSTOPIAN

DANISTAN (to be published in 2021)

A terrorist Regime, The Following, has gained de facto Control of Denmark by gradually imposing its religious radicalism on all the population. Billy Farrow and pregnant wife Jenny attend a compulsory assembly where a woman is to be punished by a cruel and unusual method. Jenny can’t control a sneeze and accidentally causes her face to be exposed. A revolutionary guard sees this, and moves to arrest her for revealing it in a public place. She escapes the scene and from then is pursued by the state relentlessly, only to commit ever more serious breaches of the new laws. Jenny faces the death penalty and public execution; one in which husband Billy has already played an unwitting and unwilling hand. When the new law catches up with her, the European union and elite British forces are at hand, and also an unexpected family connection. But is it enough? A fire-fight, confusion and consequences follow that are profound and fatal. Can Jenny be saved? Billy? Can Denmark be saved?

Part One

Chapter 1

Albert Thorpe loved his binoculars. His father brought them home from the war, a trophy seized from a Nazi soldier he’d shot in battle. The lenses worked perfectly well, though the binoculars and the solid case themselves were heavy and often awkward to handle. It was hard to turn the lenses for a proper focus for example. They stuck sometimes. They needed to be oiled or greased, but Albert wasn’t a practical person in those terms and so he had to use them as best he could, despite the inconvenience.

In any event, Albert had no money for that sort of thing. He never had any spare cash. Everything he possessed had been given to him, or stolen, even the binoculars. Yet everything had a purpose. For example, the mattress he acquired was a dark blue groundsheet, silver on the upside, but touted by the outdoorsman who donated it as a body-saver. It resisted the damp from the earth, so it suited Albert’s purposes. He also had what another donor called a space blanket. It was silver too and had some sort of property that kept him comfortable in the perennial darkness he willingly endured. He found it cosy enough every night, except when the winter snows came with the wind or when the runoff that seeped into his hideaway froze, like the rest of the earth around.

On his travels, he always carried a small trowel and some sharp spikes. These were to dig out a dip in the earth where he was going to lie for the night. It became his artwork: to match the contours of his body. The trowel and spikes were the only possessions he’d ever stolen. He slipped into a nursery one night. The fencing at the back of the lot hadn’t been properly secured and he was able to find these one or two used things. He hadn’t stolen anything since, nor had he a conscience about his one-time action. That was three or four years ago now. Here, in the wood, once he knew he’d found a comfortable resting spot and sculpted out a satisfactory contour in the earth, he started to build his hideaway and lay down the groundsheet appropriately on the bare earth. He collected broken branches and twigs and whatever else might be around and made a sort of cover-all using the ripped and sometimes threadbare fabrics he carried around with him to drape the structure. They formed the roof. His long spikes acted as stakes to these various materials that enveloped his homemade bivouac.

His toil was coming to an end in this new location when he heard voices. They must have been farther away than first thought, because he couldn’t see anyone. Also, being early spring, canopies were out on some of the trees. In this part of the wood, the high ground turned into a steep slope and a ravine that, bisected by a fast-flowing stream over shallow rocks, went up again the other side and then flattened out. It was like a distant valley, across which he could hear two voices talking, though he couldn’t for the moment make out what was being said.

He took no notice at first. Sitting down, in silence, he ate a sandwich someone had given him a few hours earlier. After all, it was about lunchtime. Time also to reflect. His hideaway was virtually complete, built about a mile out in the wood from the town he’d last come from. It would be easy to walk back there every day he wanted to stay here. What he could get out of the local population would keep him going for a while. Despite modern day selfishness, there were still a lot of people who handed over money to salve their own consciences. And in the wood, this was a good spot to be: quiet, sheltered now, secluded. It would take a search party and sniffer dogs to find him, hidden as he was from any local trail through the wood.

If there was something Albert Thorpe was attuned to more than anything else, it was sounds. He could hear a good distance from here and be more aware of movement in the woods. He loved the birds singing and fluttering about, the squirrels scampering up the trees and jumping across the branches; sometimes the bigger animals around. They all made a noise, however quiet it might seem. Yet he fine-tuned his hearing for this particular minute. That conversation across the valley was becoming a bit more heated. He opened the low, makeshift, cardboard door of the bivouac, scurried under the woven arch of pliant twigs and found his binoculars in a bag of clothes. He shuffled with them to get back outside the skeletal frame that was to be his temporary home for a week or two, then played with the lenses, which seemed to stick even more now. They were tighter by the day, it seemed. He managed to wrench them to a reasonable focus and took in the view from where the loud shouting came. There were echoes down and around the ravine and it took a few seconds to find the target.

Chapter 2

A few minutes earlier, a car was driven off the overgrown track the other side of the ravine, from where Albert Thorpe worked away at his bivouac, and brought to a halt deep in the woods. A car behind it kept its distance all the way, mostly just out of sight. The occupant had followed the first car into the no-man’s-land, then veered off to the left into a small clearing of thick cedar bushes at the edge of the ravine. Once there, its front door was opened. The occupant got out, careful to look around before following on foot along the trail now made by the car in front. The occupant of this second car, the follower, became the watcher of the occupants of the first, hiding behind a tree and a low thick bush to observe at fifty yards. The car observed, with all four doors and windows wide open, remained less than that distance away from a curve in the steep slope of the ravine.

It was getting warmer throughout the wood, the trees smothering the landscape from cool breezes errantly wandering around the top of the ridge. To stop and listen was to hear the sounds of lovemaking. To advance and walk in stealth around the side of the vehicle, keeping far enough away, was to see two heads, one brown haired, one blonde, the one hovering over the other, bodies swaying together in a rhythmic thrust, coming into contact from time to time with kisses and voices uttering all the sounds of intense passion. Dogs barked somewhere away, down the ravine, behind the watcher. The lovers stopped for a second or two to listen, to assess the proximity of any intruders, before carrying on.

The watcher kept still and silent, not approaching. All that needed to be seen was seen. The passion and the movements and the sounds of ecstasy came to an end. A woman shuffled out of the back seat on the far side of the car naked and a man stepped out of the near side. He immediately turned around to face the car, his back to the watcher. He made some frontal adjustments – the watcher couldn’t get a good look – took up his underpants and trousers from the floor at the back seat, put them on deliberately, then tucked in his shirt. As a final act, he appeared to raise his zip before walking around to the far side of the car to help the woman finish dressing. They talked together but the watcher had to strain to hear anything.

The woman stepped back to speak to her lover, louder now and with a perceptible discordance. The man stepped backwards, too. Lines were drawn. Neither one moved closer, the body language obvious. The recent passion, unbridled a few minutes, even seconds, ago, had metamorphosed. Now a solid barrier divided the lovers – invisible, but there, something keeping them apart. The watcher strained to hear, too far away to read moving lips. Facing him, the woman had appeared to be telling the man there was something he should know. The watcher had seen that much, but now the sounds were discordant. The woman spoke on. By that time, she and the man had both moved away from the car a few steps towards the top of the ravine, though no closer to each other.

Hands and arms were raised intermittently. The voices of the couple rose to higher pitches, with occasional pointing of fingers, shrugging and pursing of lips. Something was deeply amiss. The man now shouted a sentence or two. The watcher heard the blurred end of the exchange – the man utterly distraught now.

Albert Thorpe from the other side of the wide ravine, looking through his father’s Nazi binoculars, also heard, but only snippets that were loud enough to reverberate through the trees, then echo across the top of the empty ravine.

I’m going. I’m not…any more today.

I can’t deal with…

Why did you…happen?

The response was not heard or understood by the watcher.

Though Albert Thorpe didn’t hear either, he saw the body language through his father’s binoculars, and he understood.

I can’t deal… the man repeated. This…kill me.

The man walked off through the trees, obviously in a huff, then dipped farther away down the side of a hill, seemingly knowing which way to go. The woman followed a few yards at a distance, then stopped and moved away from the ridge. She was left with her car to get out of this place on her own.

The watcher waited a few minutes. The woman didn’t move as she fixed her eyes on her erstwhile lover, now some distance away down the wooded slope. Then, bowing her head slightly, and with the palm of one hand shielding her eyes, she shuffled back to the car and got in. She sat there for a few minutes, her shoulders heaving, sounds of anguish coming through the still open windows. The shadow in the trees heard her sobs and crept back to the car hidden within the tall cedar bushes.

A few minutes more brought the sound of an ignition switching on and a running engine. The shadow peered out from behind the cedar trees to see the woman trying her best to drive back along the indistinct trail the car had initially made. She managed, although her driving turned erratic. There was no flat surface and the car shuddered as it went forward. She put her foot down on the accelerator all the harder in spite of the bumps in the trail. The car now swerved a little off the flattened grass and earth that bore the imprint of the car’s arrival. Near the cedar trees, the left front wheel struck a sapling beech tree, stopping the car dead in its tracks. Some rain from earlier in the day had collected here in a rut and hadn’t soaked into the ground or evaporated. Three of the wheels spun as the woman revved up the car to try and get out of the predicament but only made worse at each try.

In frustration, she got out of the vehicle, walked away from the cedar bushes and propped herself up against a wide beech tree, breathing heavily in distress. For a moment or two, she seemed to be palpitating. To calm herself, she took out of a side pocket a large packet of cigarettes and shook it vigorously. All of the contents fell to the ground, save two cigarettes which fell out into her other open hand. She accidentally dropped one of them and the packet itself, and felt into her pocket again, and produced a lighter. She flicked it a number of times. The shadow saw the difficulty she had. At last, she managed and lit the lone cigarette in her hand. Standing upright, spine against the tree, she tilted her head back and slightly towards the side. She looked up into the sky. It was barely late lunchtime, but the firmament darkened.

From the elevated ground here she could see some distance into the wood. In the quiet, that was a relief. And there were other creatures around. That was a relief too. Or was it? Some birds flew from tree to tree. But it looked as though they were having a squabble. A trio of disturbed squirrels sounded their kok alarm and an unidentified bird flew up into the sky and away. The woman twitched, but just once, upon hearing the snapping of a twig. Her hand shook and sometimes, as she drew the cigarette up to her face, it seemed uncertain as to whether she would find her own lips.

Behind the cedar bushes, the shadow opened a back door of the car which was perfectly hidden there from the place where the woman stood alone, though on a slope that led to a close plunge down towards the ravine. The sound of barking reverberated all along the hollow of the valley. Somebody was out walking dogs. The shadow reached into the back seat beyond a pile of books, papers and discarded coffee cups and grabbed a green windcheater shell and some gloves. These were yanked off the seat with a handful of the books, a small ball and some loose sheets of blank paper in tow. Some of the articles fell out to the earth, others to the backs of the front seats. The ball rolled slightly down the incline. Some blank sheets of paper spread themselves around the damp undergrowth. Polyethylene coffee cups started to roll away in the slightest of a breeze but were caught in some of the bushes that peeped over the edge of the ravine. There was a quick attempted retrieval. Items were returned to the back seat. The shadow was unnerved for a moment or two. Collecting the errant item was a distraction from the main chance. A mild curse was uttered and the figure now froze for a few moments, hoping that the noise hadn’t caught the attention of the woman. Seeing nothing the other side of the cedar bushes and hearing no noise or movement of surprise, the shadow put on the windcheater shell and gloves. Nervous hands carefully rearranged the various articles put back into the car. The back door was pushed to, gently, not to closing. That would make a noise that no one could misinterpret.

There was an intentional pause for a minute to listen to a recurrence of sobbing from the other side of the cedar bushes. The woman was still in distress. The shadow looked away momentarily down and across the valley. The sun had moved to a point where it now shone between a gap in the clouds, on what looked like a mirror reflection. The shadow pulled the car door open again and reached in under a pile of old clothes to take out a small case. Opened, it contained binoculars. The shadow looked across to where the sun had been glinting, adjusting the glasses from time to time to get a better look. A tarpaulin with a shiny patch appeared in the lenses atop beams forming a bivouac. It glinted again when a breeze aligned it with the sun. No one was around. Dogs still barked from somewhere down in the valley. Albert Thorpe had moved away.

The shadow kept still, though from time to time looked through the cedar bushes and watched the woman smoke her cigarette. The afternoon droned on another twenty minutes amidst intermittent barking and yelping down below. The shadow donned the hood of the windcheater shell, opened the front passenger door as quietly as could be, pulled down the handle of the glove box and took out a bottle and a cloth.

The woman exhaled smoke, ready to sob again when she heard from behind her another snap of a dry twig. The shadow heard the snap as well and crouched behind a wild forsythia bush. After a minute or two, the shadow sensed yet other movement and retreated behind the cedars back into the dirty car, pulling the car door to just short of closing it. Any words from a short distance away were muffled now, indistinct, except for one definite cry. Was that arguing? Was it fighting? Scuffling? Pain inducing? What was going on? Perhaps the man who had walked away and left this habitual smoker, this Casanova, had come back. The shadow was inquisitive but just wanted not to be seen, for the moment.

A little time passed. No more movements. No more perceptible sounds. The shadow floated undetected across to where the woman brooded in silence. Then, for the woman still standing, her back against the tree, there was a rush of nothingness – no more sound at all, no more smell, no sight.

The shadow walked furtively towards the victim’s car, noticed something in the undergrowth and, with gloved hands, bent down to pick it up and put it in the largest pocket of a green windcheater. A quick look was had through the windows of the love-car. Then the shadow moved back towards the inert body of the smoking woman and looked down on her.

Chapter 3

There was more laughter this Sunday afternoon than there had been for years. In fact, a Sunday here had never been so raucous. It might be a weekend, everything clean and tidy, ready for Monday work, but no one would know it from inside the small hall. And no one recalled for one minute that a coroner’s inquest had been held in this very place only last week. There was nothing sombre here now. It didn’t even look like a Coroners Court today. There were banners everywhere, and black and white balloons hanging from the ceiling. Most balloons were black, of course. One banner had been hung across the back of the room. It was red background. That was part of the joke, and the words, in black: Goodnight Sweet Prince. Everyone was there: some local doctors, nurses from the hospital, medical specialists, half the detective chief inspectors of the county it seemed, with a sprinkling of detective sergeants and detective police constables.

Hugo Norton, the local pathologist, was retiring at last. He was only 64, but he wanted another life now, something a bit more upbeat. That was not to say that he hadn’t had a brilliant career. He was respected by everyone and that was why so many people were here today. He was still on duty until the end of this coming week when he would serve his last hours. Then be off with his wife on a quick one-week holiday to Spain – to punctuate one life of happy morbidity with a new life of happy who knows what. Also, he had to admit, to satisfy his wife’s desire to be taken to Spain for her birthday. His was the most noisy of all the laughter heard so far today, especially after a drink or two which, by the rules, was never allowed here. It was one particular detective chief superintendent who had nevertheless arranged to sneak in a few bottles to keep them under wraps, yet have them available for anyone who wanted to be at one today with the retiring pathologist. Norton had always been a heavy drinker. People patted him on the back, told him how much they would miss him and hoped he would keep in touch somehow. He and his wife would move away sometime to be nearer their family, but they planned to stay around for a while.

Norton gave his speech. He couldn’t resist an opening joke.

Well, as King Henry the Eighth said to all of his wives. He paused for effect: ‘I won’t keep you very long.’

There was a loud laugh and one or two shouts of corny. It set the tone for the laughter to come.

Norton said how proud he was to have been a pathologist here for over 35 years. He’d enjoyed the company of everyone, even in a work context, and hoped that people would forgive him for his black humour of the past and the jokes he made much of the time to keep people thinking clearly. There were a few catcalls from some of his close friends, drawing laughter throughout his speech, and re-doubled laughter when he responded to each catcall with jibes of his own,

And there’s somebody here today I want to introduce you to. Where are you, Thomas?

A hand was raised sheepishly from near the back of the room by a man about 30 years old. Norton pointed to him.

That’s Tom Marshall, my new assistant, he said, pointing to near the back of the room. He’s only my assistant for this week of course and then he’ll step into my shoes for all you Sherlocks to get your Moriarty claws into. I hope he’ll always be able to forgive your total inadequacies as I always have.

More laughter, and many more catcalls. He stretched out his hands in front of him, turned their palms down and lowered them slightly. He waited until there was complete silence.

You see, Thomas, what aggression and emptiness you have to deal with sometimes.

More laughter.

Very seriously though. Thomas Marshall, Tom, comes here with the highest of qualifications and I don’t doubt that he will meet the great and wonderful, and until now unsurpassable, standards that I set for you in this community, even though most of you never lived up to them.

You couldn’t be serious if you tried, came a voice from the front, one whom Norton had always respected above everyone else: Detective Chief Inspector Charles Merstowe.

Norton smiled at his old friend.

Well, I leave at the end of the day on Friday no matter what, but I intend, as you well know, to keep working right up until then. Hopefully not much will happen and I can rest in peace for this week.

There was raucous laughter again, and for a few seconds chants of Rest in Peace, Rest in Peace, followed by more laughter.

During the loud applause that followed, a latecomer detective sergeant hurried in and spoke with DCI Merstowe. Merstowe’s smile turned to a frown. He nodded and dismissed the messenger. He looked up to the rostrum and saw Norton in conversation with another DCI.

We really are going to miss you and your black humour. I hope the new guy will be half as good as you were. Then at least we’ll have a bit of merriment in our lives, you old codger.

"I’m not that old. And it’s gentle black humour, if you don’t mind. And as for old, if you look closely, you’ll see a black hair or two still on my head."

Sure, Hugo, that’s humorous in itself: a couple of black needles in a white haystack.

Grey haystack, you mean, said Norton.

Don’t you wish, said the DCI, pretending to scour Norton’s head.

Norton instinctively reached up to his crown.

That’s where your argument has worn a little thin, I think.

They both laughed.

Excuse me, George, said Merstowe, I have to speak to Hugo. A body’s been found in the Buckdeer Woods.

George, the other DCI, knew what to do immediately. He clapped his hands to get the attention of everyone and shouted above the lowering voices.

Quiet! Quiet everyone! Thank you. Dr Norton’s got something to tell us.

Sorry everyone. Duty calls. I’ve just been told a body’s been found in the Buckdeer Woods and I have to go out with DCI Merstowe. You’ll have to forgive me. Sorry I can’t wait for the massive toasts you were going to make. And the rhubarb pie which I know was made especially for me.

He spoke the last words as he stepped down from the rostrum. There was a murmur of disappointment. Norton would be leaving his own party, which he was the life and soul of.

DCI Merstowe stepped smartly out of the room followed by his detective sergeant and a detective constable. Norton followed, looking for Tom Marshall. He saw him and shouted out.

Tom, you’d better come too, he said.

Marshall didn’t know what was happening, but he saw the urgency in Norton’s face. He immediately cut off his conversation with two nurses and followed along.

A hushed silence remained, but after a few seconds, the noise level grew again with people raising glasses and carrying on as if Norton were still around in all his glory. After all, it was Sunday and most people didn’t have to be at work again until tomorrow. There was still a lot of free alcohol around.

Chapter 4

It had been raining that Sunday morning. Everything was quite wet now and there were some puddles in the Buckdeer Woods. Spring bluebells appeared here and there and birds, chirpings for mates, could be heard all around. Hugo Norton and Tom Marshall got there in Norton’s car, following fast on the tail of a police siren, sounded from a police car driven by Detective Constable David Gardiner, with DCI Charles Merstowe in the front passenger seat and Detective Sergeant Michelle Woodward in the back.

By the time they all got there, a large area around the site was already cordoned off. The two cars stopped just short of it and everyone got out. A woman constable waived the detectives through, followed by the two pathologists who stopped at the tent that was erected for storage of equipment, and each of them put on coveralls. They continued up the trail to the crime scene where there was an abandoned car in sight and a body, presumably inside a newly erected tent enclosure. Norton stopped Marshall in his tracks.

"Forgot my case. Sorry. Too much going on today I suppose. Go and get it, Thomas, there’s a good chap. It’s in my car in the