Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

‘Look, I’m sorry about last night. I can’t explain now, but... I was wrong, OK? Call me.’

Ending the call, I’d screwed up my face. Bloody fool, is that the best you could do? But it was done now. I’d been about to call Lundy next, but he beat me to it. He was on his way to Edgar’s house to view the damage, he told me. Could I meet him there?

‘You can tell me all about it then,’ he’d said.

I’d got to the house first, and been kept behind a new cordon of police tape by a PC until Lundy arrived. He’d seemed subdued, and still did now as he regarded the burnt-out house.

‘Were there any animals still inside?’ I asked.

‘No, the RSPCA and RSPB came out yesterday morning and took them away. And the ones he’d kept in the garden. They said it was like he’d triaged them, keeping the sickest inside and the ones that weren’t so bad out here.’

That didn’t sound like the behaviour of someone who’d rescue a girl and then turn into a crazed killer once he got her home. ‘What about Coker? Will he be charged?’

Lundy sighed, regarding the house again. ‘No way round it after what he did.’

‘There were mitigating circumstances. I saw him; he wasn’t in his right mind.’

‘Doesn’t change what he did.’ He shrugged, as though realizing he sounded uncharacteristically harsh. ‘I’m sure it’ll be taken into account. But we can’t ignore something like this, regardless of what state of mind he was in.’

‘And the angle grinder I saw in his truck?’

‘The lab hasn’t found any blood or bone tissue on it, and it’d be a bugger to clean off if he used it on someone’s face. There’d still be traces. And Coker having power tools is neither here nor there. So do I, come to that. We’ll search his yard, but I doubt we’ll find much.’

‘Has he said anything?’

‘Only that he’s sorry Holloway wasn’t in the house. As a father I can’t say I blame him. The problem is he’s taken it out on the wrong man.’

I looked at him. ‘Is that official?’

‘We’re not telling anyone yet. But there’s not much doubt that whoever strangled Stacey Coker had smaller hands than Holloway, and they were savvy enough not to leave so much as a hair or fingerprint behind. The psychologists doubt he’d be capable of anything like that, and probably not of murdering her either. At least not as he is now,’ he added. ‘There’s still a question mark over what happened to his daughter, but I don’t think we’ll ever know the story there.’

‘So what’s going to happen to him?’

Lundy took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘I expect he’ll be sectioned. We can’t just release him, he’s not fit to fend for himself. He might not have murdered Stacey Coker, but she wouldn’t have crashed if he hadn’t been wandering in the road. So there’s that, as well. However you look at it, he won’t be coming back here.’

I looked at the burnt-out shell that had been Edgar’s home for decades. ‘Then what’ll happen to this place?’

‘That’s where it gets interesting. You remember I wondered what the connection could be between Holloway and Leo Villiers? I couldn’t understand why Villiers would even know this place existed, let alone feel confident enough to keep a shotgun here. Well, we looked into it and guess what? Turns out the house is owned by the Villiers estate.’

‘Edgar’s their tenant ?’

Lundy smiled, more like his usual self. ‘The estate owns land and properties all over this area, but I didn’t twig that this was one of them. And it gets better. Sir Stephen handed the local tenancy side of the business to Leo a few years back. Nice independent income, and he probably hoped it’d get his son more involved with the running of things. Didn’t work out, but it means Leo Villiers is Holloway’s landlord.’

I looked at the blackened house, remembering its squalor and dilapidation. ‘He was charging him rent for this?’

‘That’s the thing. He wasn’t. Holloway wasn’t claiming benefits and didn’t have any income we’re aware of. He can’t have been paying rent for Christ knows how long. We found a gull nesting on a pile of old bank statements, and according to them he used to get publishing royalties from the text books he wrote. But that wouldn’t have been enough to live on, and it must have dried up long since. I dare say the family lawyers will try to tell us it was a charity case, but I can’t see Villiers letting anyone live rent free from the kindness of his heart.’

Neither could I. Whether he’d intended all along to take advantage of his vulnerable tenant or not, it wasn’t a kindness to let Edgar live alone out here anyway. Villiers might not have harmed him directly, but he’d allowed him to exist in barely animal conditions, slowly starving as his mental health disintegrated along with his home. That was a form of cruelty in itself.

‘When are you going to let people know it wasn’t Villiers in the estuary?’ I asked.

‘That’s down to the chief. There’s an argument in favour of keeping quiet so we don’t tip Villiers off, but that’s running out of steam fast. After everything that’s happened word’s bound to be getting out, and after Stacey Coker I don’t know how much longer we should keep a lid on it anyway. The priority now is finding the bugger before anyone else gets hurt. Anyway,’ Lundy said, glancing at his watch, ‘you said you’d got something on Mark Chapel?’

I’d forgotten about that for the few moments we’d been discussing Edgar, but now the heaviness settled on me again as I remembered the previous night. ‘Rachel found a photograph her sister took of him. He has a cleft chin, the same as the mandible we found with the remains from the barbed wire.’

‘I noticed that myself,’ he said. ‘You could have parked a bike in it.’

‘You’ve managed to trace him?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Not exactly. He went missing seven months ago, around the same time as Emma Derby.’

Even though I’d been expecting it, the confirmation was unwelcome. I didn’t like the way any of this was beginning to look. ‘That can’t be a coincidence.’

‘No,’ Lundy agreed. ‘Unfortunately, because he lived in London no one made the connection. And the dates don’t quite tally. Last time anyone saw Chapel was the Friday before Emma Derby vanished on the following Monday. He got fired from the music video producers the year before so he was working at a place that makes videos for corporate websites. Pretty low-end stuff. Said he was going away for the weekend but didn’t say where, and then never showed up for work the next week. No one thought much of it because he’d been having a lot of time off anyway. Dental problems, he claimed. We can probably take that with a pinch of salt, but it meant it was another week before he was reported missing. His boss only bothered then because Chapel had taken video equipment with him. He’d been threatened with the sack already, so when he didn’t appear everyone assumed he’d nicked it.’

‘What sort of dental problems?’ I asked, thinking back to the skull I’d examined.

‘No idea. Is it important?’

‘An abscess or infection could have weakened the bone around the front teeth, and made it give way when he was hit. If Mark Chapel was being treated for that it’d be something else pointing to it being his body we found in the creek.’

‘If he was it’ll be on his dental records,’ Lundy said, not sounding particularly impressed. ‘Either way, the timing’s much too convenient to ignore. With Trask away on his work trip, Emma could have arranged to hook up with her boyfriend without worrying about being caught. Chapel drives over here on his bike, and then whatever happened to them happened.’