

Witchmoor Edge

Mike Crowson

Millicent Hampshire and the Witchmoor Edge CID

Copyright 2000 Mike Crowson

Smashwords Edition 2010

Witchmoor Edge
Chapter 1: Sunday 12th August

A narrow boat doesn't go very fast, but it doesn't have brakes. The Lucky Lady eased round the bend in the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, where Witchmoor merges indecisively with the Shipley area of Bradford, and Joe Davis at once pushed the gear shift into reverse.

If you have any ideas of the Lucky Lady screeching to a halt, like an old time steam train, engineer in a panic at some obstacle on the line - forget it. The boat simply slowed from a quick walk to a slow walk, to an amble, and the craft drifted slowly towards the scene attracting Joe's attention.

Ahead firemen on the left bank were directing two jets of water across the canal at the burnt out shell of what appeared to have been a warehouse on the right bank. There were signs of activity on the other side too, behind the building. A jet of water could be seen arching through the morning sunlight, creating a little rainbow over the smoldering ruin. You couldn't see the source of the stream of water though.

More water was running from the smoking building, onto a small stone quay and thence into the canal. Close to the left bank, a ladder appeared to have fallen into the water and a fireman was vainly attempting to retrieve it. Joe shifted the engine into neutral and let the Lucky Lady drift idly towards the towpath at that point, and bump to a halt a few feet away.

He strolled to the bows and propelled the boat along by pushing on the bank with his hands until it was within an arm's length of the ladder, before he tied it to an unevenness in the towpath. Joe noticed that only one end of the ladder was floating and wondered why both ends hadn't either sunk or floated.

"Morning," he said.

"I dropped the ladder and it fell in the water," the fireman said unnecessarily. "Now it's just out of reach."

"Watch you don't drop your helmet in as well," Joe remarked , and leaned over the side to catch hold of the floating end of the ladder.

"Here," he said, passing the end of the ladder up to the man on the bank.

"Thanks," the fireman said and pulled. "Seems to be stuck," he added a moment later.

Joe reached down from the 'Lucky Lady' and pulled as well, grasping the ladder nearer the water. It did seem to be stuck.

"Together," Joe grunted. "One, two, three ..." They pulled together and the ladder came up, pulling with it a body, arm and shoulder stuck through one of the rungs.

"Well," Joe said ruminatively, "that's what were stopping it. Think yon body has anything to do wi' t' fire?"

"Maybe," the fireman answered. "Be quite a coincidence if there was no connection at all. I'd better notify the police. They might want to look for any more bodies if they've got the divers to spare."

"Nice day for a dive," Joe remarked and started to light up his pipe.

Joe was not old. He was barely 50, but he had the mannerisms of an older man, phlegmatic and unhurried. He had seen drowned men before and helped two of the firemen to get the body onto the towpath. The dead man was in his early 40s, of medium height, dressed in a formal shirt and tie and dark trousers. He looked like a casually but elegantly dressed professional man of some sort. He had a visible head wound where he had been hit with something hard and heavy. Joe didn't think he'd got that bang falling into the water, but he didn't comment on it.

When the man was laid out on the towpath and the police called, the fire brigade turned off one of the hoses and began packing their equipment away.

"When did it start?" Joe asked, standing a few feet from the bows of his narrow boat and leaning against the bank. He nodded towards the burned out shell.

"Someone called us about half past midnight this morning," the fireman said. "It was well alight by then. The fire must have started on the other side of the building, because it was all but gone when we got here. Woman over this side called us."

"I thought it was all empty and boarded up," Joe remarked. "It was due for demolition any time."

"Then it might have been workmen left something behind," the fireman suggested. "Anyway, the police might want to look into it and see if the body's connected."

The siren of a police car could be heard approaching. "Sounds like they're here now," Joe said, and took his pipe from his mouth to examine it. It had gone out, so he took a lighter from his pocket to relight it.

* * *

Detective Inspector Millicent Hampshire propped herself up on a pillow and took stock. Sun was streaming through the curtains and the room had a pleasant, rather dappled feel to it. Millicent was feeling this patchwork of colour appropriate to a meandering and rather aimless patchwork of thoughts and memories. Her mother had been from Belfast while her father had been - still was in fact - Afro-Caribbean. She was approaching forty and a detective with one hell of a reputation and a driving, rather obsessive need to succeed. She was quite tall for a woman at over 5'10", which is a respectable for a man, and looked a little prim. She was easy on the make up and straightened rather curly hair to make it no more than wavy and she did not tint out the odd grey strand. However, she did visit the gym regularly and she was both trim and fit.

The prim image was misleading. For a start, Millicent was much more approachable than she seemed and, apart from a fiery temper when roused, easy to get on with. She was popular with colleagues and subordinates and a good leader, who drove herself harder than she did others.

What Millicent was considering now was another reason why one would not call her prim, and perhaps contributed to why she was such a good detective. Ever since she could remember there had been insights or visions, in which puzzles and problems became transparent and she was almost always able to spot a lie.

It was not something to talk about too much, and over the years Carlos was the only person she had discussed her psychic insights with, but her late Spanish policeman husband had been blown up in an ETA car bomb incident years ago. Her daughter Ana had been brought up by Carlos's parents in Seville. Millicent regretted too late that she had not shared her daughter's childhood, and let the years wash past her. She sighed.

The phone rang. Even in August at a weekend a detective was liable to be called from her headquarters, and no one else was likely to be calling her.

"Blast," she muttered and picked it up. "Hampshire," she said.

"D.S. Gibbs here. Sorry to bother you off duty, but I wanted to check an idea I had with you before I okayed it."

Millicent knew that he didn't really like deferring to a black woman who'd been fast tracked up the force. He regarded her a bit as a token woman and felt that he had deserved the promotion. Or rather, he had felt like that, but Millicent Hampshire had the army background to give her a thick skin and she was a good cop, for which he could take a lot. She preferred to delegate where she could and at least what he was calling about now didn't sound like something that needed her to go into work this morning.

"Yes?" she queried.

Gibbs told her of the fire and the body. "I'd like to get a couple of divers down there to take a quick look for anything else. What gave him that blow to the head and so on. If we wait till the post mortem report it might have gone cold."

"Nice day for a dive," Millicent observed. "Go ahead if there's anyone available right now."

When Gibbs had rung off, she stirred herself and climbed out of bed, crossing the carpeted floor of the cottage to the bathroom. It was one of those well modernised eighteenth century houses that are so prized by estate agents and their customers: stone built and mellow, just small enough to merit the description 'cottage' and the images that go with it, but large enough to be practical when modernised. The corner of Baildon it occupied was quiet on a Sunday morning.

As Millicent put the kettle on to make coffee and slipped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, she thought she would like to go up on the moors that afternoon, to try and find the twelve apostles - a stone circle that was shown on maps but which she'd never actually visited.

* * *

It was, as both Joe Davis and Millicent Hampshire had observed, though in rather different circumstances, a nice day for a dive. Two constables with appropriate training from the Leeds Police HQ were wondering how they could spend a lovely day on duty when the request for a diver came in. Now they were both quite enjoying the work in the canal.

The fire brigade had gone, to be replaced by Detective Sergeant Gibbs and a couple of uniformed officers in shirt sleeves, relaxing in the sunshine. There were tapes across the towpath, blocking off the work area, but that hadn't prevented several onlookers from gathering and two more boats had joined the Lucky Lady. There was another barge with a smart looking young man, a girl in shorts and tea shirt and an older woman. There was also a small motorboat piloted by a scruffy looking teenager and an old man. Joe Davis still leaned against the bank and smoked.

The divers weren't looking for anything in particular and DS. Gibbs was just fishing so to speak. Then one of the men broke surface, dragging something behind him. He swam to the bank and took the breathing tube mouthpiece from his mouth.

"You'll be interested in this," he called up to Gibbs, who came across to investigate.

"What?" Gibbs asked.

"Another body," the diver said.

Gibbs called over the two uniformed men. "Give him a hand," he ordered.

The second diver surfaced and swam over. Together the 4 of them heaved the dripping body out of the water. The corpse dragged up and laid on the towpath was that of an older teenager.

"It is interesting," Gibbs remarked to Davis. "I wonder what the connection is between the two bodies."

It was a rhetorical question and Joe didn't answer it, at least not directly.

"And what the connection is between t' fire and t' bodies," Joe said.

"That too," Gibbs agreed.

* * *

The moors above Baildon are Ilkley Moors and they were neither quiet nor still. The wind was only light but it stirred the heather and whispered through the rough grass. Bees hummed softly and the cry of the odd curlew and bleating of sheep provided a soothing background to the sound of Millicent's stout shoes on the path. The weather was as glorious as August can be: dry, sunny, gentle.

The moors, though alive with sheep, birds and insects, were empty of human life. Millicent had seen nobody for some time but she was mildly surprised to someone among the standing stones. As she approached she watched the man walking round the outside of the circle, arms stretched out in front of him.

Closer to him she watched with a frank interest and saw that he was holding a bent metal rod in each hand. The rods were steady most of the time but swung inwards suddenly. As they did so, the man turned outwards and began looking for something far away on the horizon. He nodded as if satisfied and turned towards Millicent.

"Good Afternoon," he said with an almost pedantic politeness.

"Hello," Millicent answered. "I didn't mean to be rude, but I take it those are dowsing rods."

"Exactly so," he said, holding both rods in one hand and holding out the other. "Tobias N'Dibe," he added.

Tobias N'Dibe was darker than Millicent and more obviously of African origin, somewhat older and had a cultured air, but the same pedantic preciseness about him.

"Millicent Hampshire," Millie said, taking the proffered hand.

"You are interested in dowsing?" NDibe asked.

"I suppose so," Millicent answered. "I find the whole topic of ... of.." She struggled for an appropriate phrase.

"Psi talents?" NDibe suggested.

"I find the whole subject interesting, yes."

N'Dibe was looking at her, not appraisingly in any sexual sense, but weighing her up nonetheless.

"But you are interested because you have some talents yourself, I think," he said at length.

Millicent thought about Carlos again and how she had not admitted her feelings to anyone since his death. "Well," she said, finding the cultured black stranger easy to talk to, "I have had some ... err ... experiences over the years. Insights into problems where I seem to know for a fact things for which there are not established facts at all. What you might call visions. But they're not something a detective should admit to following."

"I see." N'Dibe nodded slowly. "I thought detectives were allowed their hunches. So you are a police woman?"

"Detective Inspector Millicent Hampshire. You don't sound like a farm labourer yourself."

N'Dibe smiled. "I rather hope not," he observed. "I am a moderately senior civil servant at the Regional Development Office. However, senior civil servants do not generally experiment in dowsing, any more than detectives admit to visions."

"What were you dowsing for?" Millicent asked.

"I was about to have some tea from my flask," N'Dibe said. "Would you care for a cup?"

"I'd rather have coffee, if you don't mind," Millicent said. "I have a flask with me too."

The afternoon was pleasantly warm without being unpleasantly hot. Sitting on a fallen stone in the August sunshine with the soft breeze holding the temperature down a little made it a delightful day. Millicent luxuriated in calmness and peace like wallowing in a warm bath after a hectic day's work.

"Do you come up often onto the moors like this?" N'Dibe asked.

"I rarely have time," Millicent answered. "Do you?"

N'Dibe shook his head, watching Millie and frowning slightly. "Not often," he said, and added, "That we should both choose this afternoon is perhaps an interesting synchronicity, rather than mere coincidence."

Millicent thought he might be right, though she couldn't see where he was leading. He continued to study her.

"I think you drive yourself too hard," he said at last. "There is something obsessive about you. A crusade. I detect a certain sadness about you too and a connection with the military. Did you serve in the armed forces?"

Hampshire shifted a little uncomfortably. "Yes," she said. "I was in the army for a few years. In the bomb squad."

N'Dibe sipped his tea but continued to watch Millicent, nodding again slowly. "Yes. I think some one close to you was hurt by a bomb."

For some time Millicent said nothing. At length she said, "My late husband." And added, "You never told me what you were dowsing for."

N'Dibe noted the change of subject and did not pursue Millicent's problem. Not there and then anyway.

"From the heel stone of circles like this," NDibe said, "there are sightlines to distant markers showing the sunrise and sunset lines at the solstices. For reasons not entirely clear to me such lines are easily found by dowsing."

"What I don't understand," Millicent remarked, looking around at the rolling vastness of the moors around them, "is why anyone should build a stone circle up here, so far from anywhere."

"Ah," NDibe answered, "At one time these moors were all woodland. This stone circle would have been in a clearing. The soil beneath the woodlands was too poor to sustain agriculture when the trees were cleared."

"I suppose the people just moved away?"

"To the valleys," N'Dibe agreed. "Now about your visions. I am involved with a little group, which could help to control them. Make them, perhaps, come to order. I think I will contact you again in the next few days."

Was N'Dibe was being deliberately enigmatic, Millicent wondered, and he did nothing to ease the obscurity of his remark. He stood and stretched.

"I have almost finished what I came to do," he remarked. "I was thinking of a leisurely walk back to 'The Craven Heifer' public house on the East Morton road for an early evening meal. Would you care accompany me?"

Millicent had likewise been at a loose end. "That would be rather nice," she agreed. "But would you just demonstrate those rods to me again?"

"With pleasure," N'Dibe said. However, I suggest that it may be more enlightening for you to try it yourself." He stood up and added, a trifle obscurely, "For me too, perhaps."

* * *

Late on Sunday afternoon, a long-suffering desk officer at Witchmoor Edge Police Station reluctantly took down some details.

"You can't say he's missing just because he didn't come home last night," the desk officer said.

Shirley Hunter, though, seemed to want to tell her story.

"Like I said," she repeated to the man, "We went on a picnic yesterday. We had a row. I locked myself in the car and when he made to break in I drove the car at him and knocked him down. When I got out of the car to see if he was all right he got up and chased me off. When I got back to the place, the car was gone and I haven't seen him since."

The desk sergeant had heard it all before. "He probably drove off in a temper, had a drinking binge and he's sleeping it off somewhere," he told her. "You come back on Tuesday if you haven't seen or heard from him by then."

"Aren't you going to make a note of his name and the car number?"

"He'll turn up," the policeman said. "They usually do."

"Well, note down that I reported it," Shirley Hunter insisted. The officer gave a sigh and noted it down in the day book, but he didn't give it a crime number or enter Simon Hunter on the computer as a 'missing person'. He was certain the man would turn up.

Chapter 2: Monday 13th August (pm)

Monday morning began with what Detective Inspector Hampshire had thought might be a long and boring meeting of senior staff. It tuned out not to be as bad as she had feared - not quite, but nearly.

The Divisional Commander had passed on the hierarchy's worries about a declining crime detection rate. The Home Secretary was worried about public perceptions across the country, and the Commissioner of the West Yorkshire Police was worried about the figures for the County as a whole. Quite what good would be done by wasting the time of senior officers, when the real problem was recruitment, completely escaped Millicent, but it had provided enough material for a meeting long enough to make the pleasant weekend seem a distant memory.

By the time she returned to her desk on Monday afternoon, Millicent was faced with several new folders waiting her attention, and turned to her real interest of solving crimes with some relief. The first folder contained the beginnings of what she realised was probably going to be a very substantial investigation. It was the autopsy report of the man pulled from the canal on Sunday.

The man had not drowned - he was already dead when he entered the water. The blow on the skull, Doctor Millard thought, would probably have killed him, but that too was done after death. There was another blow to the front of his head which he had received while alive, but that wouldn't have killed him, though it might have knocked him unconscious. He also had extensive bruising and a crack, though not a fracture, to one thigh. Millard thought a minor traffic accident might have caused either or both of the injuries before death, or perhaps a fall. As to what had actually killed him there were no doubts. There was enough morphine and pure heroin in his blood to have killed two or three people. After consideration she picked up the phone and rang Doctor Millard.

"Afternoon Brian," she said. "Millicent here. I just got your report on the body from the canal."

"Strange one, that," Millard said. "Talk about overkill. Enough blood in his morphine stream to kill an army, hit over the head hard enough to kill him and then drowned."

"I thought you said he didn't drown."

"I was joking. He was quite definitely dead before he entered the water. I think, incidentally, he got the second blow on the head while he was lying down. That would be lying down dead, of course. The wound didn't bleed because he was already dead."

"Anything else you can tell me?"

"You mean that isn't enough?" Millard snorted with laughter. "Well, he died lying on his left side - lividity, the blood drained to that side. The morphine was injected and the knock out blow and bruising were on the right and right front. Actually, he'd several skin punctures in his arms. I wouldn't go so far as to say he was a regular addict, but it wasn't a single injection. I know the morphine was injected, because there was none in his stomach but lots in his blood."

"I see. Any thoughts on the time of death?"

"Sometime Saturday," Millard said. "Probably about the middle of the day. A bit too long dead to be precise about it, but if you looked at between eleven and three Saturday you'd probably be in the right area."

"What I really rang you up to ask was whether the fire would have disguised the death from morphine."

"Aha," Millard teased, "The detective brain at work." There was a short pause. "The answer is that it would depend on the severity of the fire, but probably. From what I hear of the fire in the warehouse, it was pretty fierce, so in this case it would have disguised the cause of death as completely as a cremation. Besides, I looked for evidence of drowning and only did a blood test when I was sure he didn't die from drowning or the cracked skull. If he'd died in the fire the cause of death would have seemed pretty obvious, so I might not have done all the tests, even assuming there was enough there to test."

"Thanks very much, Brian. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I think the morphine is the connection between the fire and the body."

"You may very well be right," the doctor agreed, "but in that case, what's the connection between the canal and the body?"

"Good question," admitted Millicent.

"Now, what about the other body you dragged from the canal?"

"I hadn't got around to that one yet," Millicent said, opening the second folder and reading aloud. "Late teens or early twenties ... drowned ... consumed a lot of alcohol ..."

"Yes," Millard said, "He was drunk or close to it. Of course, he may have nothing at all to do with the other body of the fire but..." The doctor left the sentence in mid air.

"It would be a hell of a coincidence," Millicent agreed. "And I don't believe in coincidences."

That was not entirely true. Some things just happened at the same time by what Carl Jung had called synchronicity and Millicent knew that she had more than her share of what the world would call luck, but she found there was usually an explanation for events like this, and she preferred to find it. That was one of several strengths she had as a detective.

"You're a bit of a cynic," Millard said cheerfully, "But I'm inclined to agree with you on this one. Well, I wish you the joy of it."

Millicent said her goodbyes and rang off.

Before she called in several members of her department, Millicent glanced at the third new folder. This was a report from the Fire Investigation Branch of the fire brigade, to the effect that the fire had started suddenly and fiercely with some kind of incendiary agent or accelerant and that a body had been discovered in the ruins.

A third body. Millicent was still inclined to think that the three deaths were connected, though there was no evidence to that effect at this stage. She rang for her secretary to fetch her a coffee and sent for Sergeant Lucy Turner and Constables Tommy Hammond and Gary Goss. Sergeant Gibbs had the day off, but she would probably need him as well.

"This will probably be a big one," Millicent told her team as they gathered in her office. She went through the main points of Sunday's events and the autopsy findings.

There was nothing on the body to identify the kid from the canal, but his prints were on file. "They identified him as Kevin Musworth," she said. "According to his record, he's a minor vandal and a thug known to this division. He was nineteen, but the record was light on convictions, other than a handbag snatching count."

"There's nothing connecting him with the fire, but I'd be surprised if he wasn't connected with it somehow," Millicent continued. "Tommy, start with the fire and the woman who reported it. See if she saw anything else. Get a statement from her. DC. Goss, you talk to the barge man who was there when the first body was found, then find out what Musworth was up to on Saturday night and who he was up to it with. Work in tandem with Tommy."

She paused a moment as she opened the other file.

"We don't have an identification of the man at all," she went on. "His prints aren't on record and there was no wallet or anything. Lucy, see if there's anything reported to missing persons. If there isn't we'll have to do a door to door and see if the face clicks, or perhaps enlist the help of the Witchmoor Argus." She glanced at the face, photographed in death the victim had been a handsome man in his early forties. Handsome, yes, but something else. Petulant or spoiled, perhaps?

Lucy pulled a face. "You'd think the killer would stick a label on him," she said. "What happened to his driving license?"

"No wallet, empty pockets," said Millicent shortly.

"I suppose," Tommy remarked, "that Musworth didn't have it?"

"Unfortunately not," Millicent said. "but that's an idea, though. Maybe Musworth had it and dropped it in the fire."

"It'll be fried then," said Lucy, and went out to talk to missing persons.

"Baked," Millicent said to Lucy's back. "Now get on with it," she told the other two.

In less than ten minutes Lucy was back. "I think I may have a name for your corpse," she said.

Millicent looked up. "Listed as missing?"

"I drew a blank with missing persons, but when I tried the front desk for recent reports, the desk sergeant remembered a very insistent woman coming in late afternoon Sunday, towards the end of his shift. A Mrs. Shirley Hunter. She was trying to report her husband Simon Hunter missing. I've got you an address." She opened her notebook but Millicent interrupted.

"I think we'd better talk to this Mrs. Hunter," she said, rising from her desk, "And you can come with me."

* * *

Millicent rang the doorbell and waited. Detective Sergeant Lucy Turner stood a pace or so behind. The house was modest for the area, but it was an expensive, luxurious area, not quite Witchmoor, more up towards Cullingwoth. There was quite an extensive garden, at least at the front, and a double garage with the doors open. A small red Fiat was parked inside one bay, but the other was empty.

"Looks like there's someone home," Lucy observed in her slightly Birmingham accent. She had only been with the Division a couple of months and Millicent was sometimes irritated by her weird sense of humour. She was, however, a promising addition to strength of the department, and Millicent could put up with a lot, if it meant another good detective.

Hampshire was about to ring the bell again when the door was opened by a woman in her late thirties. She was tall and slender with short mousy hair which looked expensively styled. Millicent showed her warrant card and introduced herself.

"I thought they told me to wait until Tuesday to see if he turned up," the tall woman said.

"You are Mrs. Hunter," Millicent asked, and the woman nodded.

"Shirley Hunter," she answered.

"We're making enquiries about a fire alongside the canal on Saturday night," Millicent said.

"You're not from Witchmoor Police Station, then?" Mrs. Hunter observed.

"Oh yes," Millicent told her. "We heard from the front desk that you had reported your husband Simon as missing yesterday?"

"I haven't seen him since Saturday," Shirley Hunter said. "I tried to report him missing, but they said wait a couple of days and see whether he turns up."

He probably had, Millicent thought. "I see," she said. "Do you have a photograph of him? May we come in and ask a few questions?"

The woman held the door wide without saying anything and shut it behind them.

"Go through into the lounge," the tall woman said.

"You said you were Shirley Hunter I think?" Millicent said, as they settled themselves in a light and airy but somehow soulless room overlooking a medium sized rear garden, mostly lawn. Lucy took out a notebook and sat ready.

"That's right," the woman agreed. "Shirley Hunter."

"And your husband was Simon Hunter?"

"That's right. There's a fairly recent photograph there." She pointed to a framed picture on the wall.

Millicent stood up and walked over to get a closer look. There was no doubt at all that it was the same man as the one pulled from the canal.

"I'm afraid," Millicent began, turning back to Mrs. Hunter, "that his body was pulled from the Leeds and Liverpool Canal on Sunday morning."

Shirley Hunter didn't say anything, but Millicent didn't think she looked particularly shocked or upset.

"I shall have to ask you to formally identify the body," Millicent continued, "but there's no doubt in my mind from the photograph that we're talking about the same man. You said you tried to report his disappearance at Witchmoor Police Station. When was this?"

"Latish on Sunday afternoon." Shirley replied, looking silent and subdued, but still not visibly upset. "Simon was violent and bad tempered and after what happened on Saturday I though it might help calm him down if I could say I was looking for him."

Millicent was interested. "And what did happen on Saturday?" she asked.

"Simon decided we were going for a picnic up on the moors," Shirley began. "We left about eleven thirty, drove up there and set out a meal beneath a few trees overlooking the reservoir. Simon got into a rage about a mosquito bite. He was throwing things around in a temper and some of them at me, so I locked myself in the car. When he fetched a lump of wood to break in, I drove the car at him and knocked him down. I got out of the car to see if he was all right and he got up and chased me off. I went back a bit later and he was gone and so was the car. I haven't seen him since."

"How did you get back home?" Lucy asked. "Walk?"

"I didn't go home, at least, not until Sunday. Simon had dropped his mobile phone, so I used it to call a friend from work who picked me up. I went shopping with her, then I stayed the rest of the night with her and her partner."

"You said 'a friend from work'. What do you do for a living?" Hampshire asked.

"I'm a charge nurse at the Bradford Royal Infirmary," Shirley said.

"And your friend's name?"

"Ellen Barnes."

"She's a nurse too?"

"She's a ward sister."

Millicent considered. "You said you hoped to calm him down," she said. "Was he often violent tempered?"

"Often. He'd fly into a rage at the least little thing. Not just with me, either."

"A mosquito bite wasn't much," Lucy observed.

"It was enough," Shirley answered. "It bit him, but it would have been all the same if I'd bitten him."

"You didn't seem altogether shocked that he was fished from the canal," Millicent said, changing the subject.

"Shocked?" Shirley Hunter seemed to consider this for a few seconds. "When I was much younger," she said, "Just a girl. I had a dog. It was very old at the end, and had heart problems and couldn't see. When he died it was something of a relief and no surprise at all, but it was still a shock. I feel that way about Simon. I can't pretend I'm sorry; I'm not surprised considering the way he went missing, but I'm a bit shocked all the same."

"You were not surprised to hear of his death, then?"

"Not really. He was mean and bad tempered. He exploited people. I think he was having an affair, or had been. He was very grasping in his business. It's no surprise that he pushed somebody too far. I'm a bit surprised at the canal though, because he could swim. Perhaps he'd been drinking."

"Was he often drunk?" Millicent asked.

"Not usually," Mrs. Hunter said. "He sometimes went on a bender and got really drunk, but not often. Oddly enough he was usually less violent when he was really drunk."

"How long have you been married?"

"Four years. Simon was my brother's business partner and seemed charming. I only found out afterwards what he was really like."

Lucy Turner looked from her note taking and asked, "Why didn't you just leave him?"

Mrs. Hunter hesitated again, but Millicent thought she was reflecting rather than inventing.

"I had decided to go into the nurse's hostel temporarily. It was all arranged and if you'd come tomorrow I might not have been here," Shirley Hunter said. "As to why I didn't do it before ... Partly, I suppose because he was my brother's partner and it seemed like letting my brother down. Partly because you just hope things will change. After last Saturday I realised they wouldn't."

Millicent decided against any mention of the morphine at this stage, better Shirley should not be put on her guard if she had any involvement at all. She realised, of course, that an ill treated wife who was a nurse would have both a source of morphine and the knowledge to use it. As to motive, maybe the worm had turned.

"Could you take us to the picnic spot?" Millicent asked.

"I'm not sure about driving straight to it," Shirley replied, "but I could certainly find it again. The place is pretty well etched on my memory."

"Then I think we'll go there if you can spare the time."

Shirley got up. "Can I get us a cup of tea before we go?" she asked. "I don't know whether you need one, but I certainly do. Whether or not I looked shocked, I am rather."

"Good idea," Millicent conceded. Shirley Hunter had paled a little under her make up and her hands were white and trembling a little, so perhaps it had been a shock, as she said.

Lucy Turner stood up, very short - only just tall enough to qualify for the police - her height emphasised by the tallness of Mrs. Hunter. "I'll go with you, Mrs. Hunter," she offered.

Millicent gazed out of the window at two magpies on the lawn. She remembered the old children's rhyme about magpies that began 'One for sorrow, two for joy...' Two for joy. Who was going to be lucky this time?

* * *

DC Gary Goss crunched through the rubble in the street behind the burnt out shell of the warehouse. DC Tommy Hammond picked his way more carefully after him, flicking off the dust settling on his neatly creased trousers.

"I wasn't able to get into the building until first thing this morning," Ted Johnson from the Fire Investigation Branch was saying. "The 999 call came in just after 20 past midnight Sunday morning from a Mrs. Evans at 47 Edward Mews, just across the canal. The fire seems to have started on this side, so, by the time it could be seen from across the canal, this side was well away. The building isn't safe in places and we'll need demolition immediately."

"What are these road works," Tommy asked, stepping over a short trench.

"I gather," Johnson said, "that it was Yorkshire Electricity who dug up the road in the process of cutting off power before demolition. That makes one of my discoveries very interesting indeed."

"How d'you mean?" Goss asked.

"Someone had taken a power line from that street light to the building." He pointed to a lamp standard less than a foot from the building at one corner, and quite with reach of a window.

"Why?" Tommy asked.

"There are two possible reasons I can think of," Johnson replied. "Firstly, somebody may have needed light for something they were doing and some sort of interruption or accident started the fire."

"And the other reason?"

"It might have provided power for a timing device, so the fire could be started when no one was around, but in that case it failed."

"There was some one around?"

"There was a body in the stairwell leading down to the lower floor and the exit at canal level. It was a young black or mixed race male of uncertain age. The fire spread up rather than down, so he probably died of smoke inhalation before the fire got anywhere near him. He was taken for autopsy an hour or so ago."

This was the third death around the fire. What on earth were the connections between the bodies and the fire. What the hell had Simon Hunter and the two youths been doing?

Detective Constables Goss and Hammond went next to see Mrs. Delia Evans, who had reported the fire. Number 47 was the end house and the garden reached virtually to the canal. Tommy strolled to the end of the street, where a low wall was broken by a few steps leading down to the towpath beside the canal. He peered down, mostly to get his bearings and size up the lie of the land before listening to Mrs. Evans.

There was somewhat more cloud than there had been on Sunday, but the view was still pleasant and the scene calm. A slight smell of old ashes hung on the air, drifting across from the ruin on the other side of the canal, and a barge chugged its leisurely way along the canal, rippling the glassy quality of the water. A little to the left was a road bridge over the water. Was it possible that the bodies had been dumped from a vehicle? Probably too far he thought.

Tommy turned and walked back to number 47 and Gary Goss rang the bell.

A sudden yapping indicated what Mrs. Evans might have been doing so late on a Saturday night and she opened the door. She was elderly - late sixties or older, rather plump and rather jolly.

She told the two detectives that she had been out at her daughter's all Saturday evening and chatted amiably as she led them into a small and crowded lounge.

"You live here alone, Mrs. Evans?" Hammond asked.

"That's right," she explained. "My husband died of cancer two years ago."

"And you had been out for the day?"

"At my daughter's, yes."

"What time did you get back?"

"My daughter Jane drove me home just after midnight," she said. "I'm not usually that late, but we had been watching a DVD and didn't notice the time."

"And you saw the fire as you arrived back?" Tommy asked, thinking there was quite a gap between arriving home and making the call.

"We could smell burning then, but I didn't notice anything. I let Rusty out for a wee and run about quarter past and I could smell it even stronger. I could see flames too. I thought I'd better ring in case it hadn't been reported, so I phoned."

"Was anyone else about?" Tommy asked.

"Not then," she said. "But earlier, just after Jane left as a matter of fact, there was someone. I saw a youth climbing from the canal, dripping wet. He went up the street, probably going home to change. It wasn't a cold night, of course, but he'd been right in the water, I think."

"You didn't report this?"

"No." Mrs. Evans hesitated. After a pause, which was a prolonged hesitation, she added, "It doesn't pay to see too much where young toughs are concerned. They'd be round here throwing bricks through the window and bothering Rusty, if they thought I'd told the police. Anyway, he might have just fallen in or something."

"Did you think the youth was connected with the fire?" Tommy asked.

"When I saw the fire later and reported it, I thought then he might have started in on purpose, but the building was all boarded up and they were going to demolish it anyway. Besides it wasn't my business."

Tommy thought it had been very much her business, but he was tactful enough to realise that this elderly lady had to live alone in her community and said nothing.

"Did you recognise him?" Tommy asked.

"It was too dark."

The answer came so quickly this time that Tommy was sure she had a very good idea who was involved. They could probably get a name from the dead boy's family, so he didn't pursue the matter. Not yet, anyway.

"Would it be possible for you sign a statement about this?" Tommy asked. "DC Goss will type up what you've said to us and you can sign to say that it's what you told us."

The old lady nodded. "When shall I come in to the station?"

Tommy thought about. "We won't be back before 5 or 5.30 at the earliest," he said. "If you ring this number any time tomorrow morning we'll fix a time." He handed her a card with the number of the direct line to the CID divisional office.

"Down by the Market Square?" the old lady asked.

"That's right," Tommy said. "You give us a ring and well send an unmarked car to fetch you."

He stood up. "Now, we must be off," he said.

"Would you like a cup of tea before you go," Mrs. Evans asked.

"No, thanks all the same," DC Hammond replied. "We've more calls to make before we report back to the boss."

"All right, dear," said Mrs. Evans, and rose to let them out.

As they walked back to the car Tommy said, "I reckon she knew who it was climbed out of the canal. At least she had a pretty good idea."

Gary Goss nodded.

"What d'you say we find a decent pub with food and have a late lunch, then you go get a statement from Joe Davis, the bloke who found the first body, while I go and talk to the dead boy's family and see if I can find out what he was up to and who he was up to it with. Try and get our names the other way."

"Why didn't you just press the old lady for some names?" Goss asked.

"Come on, Gee Gee, she has to live here after we've gone and we can probably get the names easily enough anyway. We can always come back again if we draw a blank."

DC Hammond, straightened his tie, unlocked the car and they climbed in.

Chapter 3: Monday 13th August (evening)

The moors might have been woodland far back in the stone age, but there are not many trees there now. Still, there are a few places, in hollows around reservoirs and the like, where there are clumps of trees, and there are plenty side roads which meander into areas where a family picnic could be held in pleasant surroundings or a lovers' tryst completed in comparative secrecy.

Shirley Hunter guided them without much hesitation along the road from Bingley over the top to Menston, but when Lucy turned off onto a side road towards East Morton she began to hesitate.

"I'm fairly sure this is the right road," she said, "but slow down because I've got to look for the track up onto the moors. It isn't this tarn here because there aren't any trees around and the picnic tables were under some trees."

Lucy slowed the police car down to just over 30 and Mrs. Hunter watched.

"There's loose gravel for about 20 or 30 metres," she said. "There, I think that's it!" She pointed excitedly to a gravel track leading into the woods just ahead.

"Take it easy, Lucy," Millicent said, thinking that this sounded like remembering rather acting, but reserving judgment. "We don't want to wipe out any tracks that might be left."

"The gravel runs out after a bit," Shirley Hunter said.

"P'raps we'd better stop on the gravel and walk the rest of the way, if it isn't far," Lucy suggested, turning the car onto the gravel track. "How far is it?"

"I'm not sure, but not far from the end of the gravel."

"I never asked, but what sort of a car were you in?" Millicent asked.

"Simon's Porsche," Mrs. Hunter replied.

"Here's the end of the gravel," Lucy announced, pulling to side of the track, though it was unlikely that there would be another vehicle.

The three of them walked on the grass at the side of the dirt road, gradually dwindling to no more than a wide path. There hadn't been rain for a few days, but the ground had been soft on Saturday from rain a couple of days before. Up ahead Millicent could see three wooden picnic tables under the trees. They were of the type frequently found in country parks, rectangular with bench seats and built all in one piece, so nobody could move or walk off with a bench.

"Where were you parked?" Millicent asked.

"Over here, on the right, just at the edge of the clearing. We used that nearest table."

Millicent looked at the ground and could make out some car tracks, but not clearly. She thought the scene of crime team might make something more of them, and avoided walking over them.

"What did you do first?" the detective asked.

"I put a cloth on the table and Simon brought a basket of things from the luggage thingy in the front of the car."

Millicent remembered that a Porsche has an engine at the rear. "A proper picnic basket?" she asked.

"Yes."

"And then?"

"I'm not certain the order things happened in," said Shirley Hunter. "I know I started to unpack some of the items. Then Simon got cross because a mosquito bit him and he started criticising things I was doing. I answered him back, which was asking for trouble really and he threw something at me. A jar of jam or something."

"Did it hit you?

Nearly," Shirley said. "It sort of brushed through my hair."

"Has he hit you before?" Lucy asked.

'Yes," Shirley said.

"Give us an example,". Lucy persisted.

Millicent did not really think it was an appropriate moment to bring this up, or a suitable place either, and determined to have a word with Lucy later. However, her Sergeant had started now and Millicent listened with some interest, wondering whether the man's behaviour amounted to provocation for murder.

"I told you," Shirley said, visibly distressed, "He could be violent". She paused, and then said in an embarrassed rush, "A couple of weeks ago he was in such a rage about something quite trivial that he took a stick and held me down while he pulled my knickers down and caned my bottom."

Lucy looked angry and was about to say something more when Millicent stepped in.

"Okay," she said, "I think we get the picture. He started throwing things at you?" It was a statement but there was a questioning tone.

"I told you, I jumped in the Porsche and locked the door. Simon went to pick up a heavy post to break in. I've seen him angry before, but this was a much worse rage than usual, so I just started the engine and drove the car at him. I wasn't thinking about anything but his violent temper. I was afraid he was going to go too far this time."

"The keys were in the ignition?" Millicent asked.

"Yes."

"And you knocked him over?"

"Yes, but I wasn't going very fast. He went down and I thought I'd injured him seriously, so I got out of the car. I should have guessed he was all right. Anyway, he got up madder than ever, so I ran off. I must have hurt his leg because he soon gave up the chase."

Shirley Hunter was getting close to hysteria.

"Lucy, take Mrs. Hunter back to the car and call up the scene of crime team. Then try and calm Mrs. Hunter down a bit," Millicent said.

After Lucy and the Hunter woman had gone, Millicent continued her look around. She thought that most of the story was plausible enough and that Simon Hunter sounded an obnoxious and violent tempered man, but she tried to suspend judgment until she had some evidence. The story didn't feel entirely true and at this point there was only Shirley Hunter's version of events. While the overall picture could be more or less as she told it, Millicent needed evidence before assuming the woman had not put her own gloss on events.

As she looked around the site, something glittered in the bushes. Whatever it was turned out to be rather hard to reach, but closer inspection showed it to be a full jar of jam. She didn't touch it, leaving it to the scene of crime officers, but it did possibly support the story. A brief search of the same sort of area turned up two unopened tubs of yogurt. These too she left for a properly equipped team. Although she tried to be open, Millicent couldn't escape an inner certainty that the story, if not completely untrue was, at least, incomplete. Admittedly Shirley Hunter could have invented a better story if she was fabricating the whole thing, but it bothered her psychic side all the same.

Millicent wandered over to the hardened dirt track. The ground had been softer Saturday, a couple of days after a significant rain. The detective examined the ground: it may have been softer on Saturday, but it was rock hard now. There were several car tyre tracks. Judging by the way in which different treads appeared over the top of others, it was possible to make out a sequence of events. First a bicycle had come through. Then had come something with very wide tyres, probably a sports car and possibly the Porsche. After that had come two vehicles which had stopped on the track itself. One was another widish tyred vehicle and the other had a narrower tread. The second vehicle had turned round at that point but the third appeared to have reversed out. Then came the that which might have been the Porsche and finally the bicycle again.

The bicycle tyre prints looked identical in both cases, but there was no guarantee they had anything to do with the events of Saturday, or even that both sets of prints were from the same bike. In fact, it was very far from certain that any of the treads were related. However, if the wide tyres really were the Porsche, it had left after the other two vehicles, which might be significant. It was clearly urgent to trace Hunter's car and she made a mental note to get the details from Mrs. Hunter and put out an interest report straight away.

Millicent concluded there was little more to be learnt from just looking and decided they would leave as soon as the scene of crime staff arrived. If they could find the car it might be possible to pick out the Porsche tread marks.

She took another look at the tread marks as she left. If they could be certain the wide tyres belonged to Simon's car there was a puzzling sequence of coming and going. What were the other two vehicles and what were the drivers doing? Had Simon Hunter been alive to drive his own car away? Was the bike in any way connected? Shirley hadn't said where Ellen Barnes had picked her up, so that question needed an immediate answer.

Lucy was sitting in the rear of the car with Mrs. Hunter when Millicent returned. She got into the driving seat, but before they set off back she asked, "Where did Ellen Barnes pick you up?"

"I walked out to the main road, you know, the one from Bingley to Menston," Shirley said. "Ellen picked me up at the corner of the two roads. She backed into the side road to turn round."

In that case, Millicent thought, none of the treads would be from Ellen's car, since she hadn't been within half a mile of the picnic site.

"Did you call SOCO team?" she asked Lucy.

"They're on their way," she said, "but I don't know whether they'll find us that easily.

"I'll drive down to the start of the track, so they'll have less chance of missing the turning," Millicent said, and started the car.

It was more a seven point turn than a three point turn and Hampshire was regretting not just reversing out before - car unscathed but driver shredded - they eased out onto the road. Millicent parked the car, switched off the engine and waited.

* * *

Kevin Musworth lived, or rather had lived, in a walk-up block of mixed flats and maisonettes on a council estate up towards the Bradford Road from the canal. To be precise, it had been a council property and had been passed to a Housing Association which was trying to improve the properties. Unfortunately it wasn't having much luck improving the residents.

Stairs, lifts and hallways were more frequently washed and rubbish cleared more effectively, but youths still urinated in stairwells and walls were still covered with graffiti as soon as they were painted.

In the sunshine the place didn't look too bad and some of the trees were big and solid enough to survive the younger kids. Off street parking had been improved by inserting lockable posts into the tarmac and charging rent for spaces. This meant fewer abandoned vehicles and a tidier overall appearance. It might still be a depressing area on a wet day in November, though, Tommy thought.

The detective found the right floor and the right flat - number 307 - and knocked at the door. A slovenly looking youth in jeans and a dirty T-Shirt opened the door.

"Is this the home of Kevin Musworth?" he asked.

"He ain't in," the youth said, "He ain't been in since Saturday."

"I'm aware of that," Tommy said mildly. "Is his mother or father around? Are you related?"

"He's my younger brother, not that it's your business."

"I'm really sorry to tell you that it is my business," Tommy answered. "I have some bad news."

Something about Tommy's manner communicated itself to the young man and he grew a little less wary.

"Mum's in the living room watching the repeat of Home and Away," he said. "Are you police?"

Tommy showed his warrant card. "I'm a detective at the Witchmoor Edge Branch and I sometimes get jobs I'd rather not do. This one of them."

He followed the youth inside and shut the door behind him, before walking into the lounge. A blonde woman of about forty and quite presentable switched off the television. Both the woman and the room were past their best, but still had a semblance of what they once were. The woman was tidy and groomed and must have been young when she had the older boy. The room was clean and carpeted, but you couldn't say a great deal more for it.

"Nice timing," she said, "I'd just finished my daily dose of envy. I'd really like to live in a nice house in a place where it's always summer. Still," she said brightening, "I don't suppose it's like that all the time."

"This man's come from the police to talk to you about Kevin, ma," said the scruffy young man.

"He's been missing since Saturday tea time," Mrs. Musworth said.

"I'm afraid he was pulled out of the canal drowned on Sunday morning. He had nothing with his address on it and it until now to track him down from his fingerprint records. Nevertheless, although were confident of the identification, I'd appreciate it you would make a formal identification."

Mrs. Musworth looked faint. "Dead you say?"

"I'm afraid so," Tommy said gently. Musworth might have been a young thug, but even most young thugs have mothers who care.

"I wasn't worried about him not coming home on Sunday," Mrs. Musworth said, "Especially as Wayne Sansom from next door disappeared at the same time." Then she added with a hollow emptiness. "I thought he might have got into trouble with the police again, but I figured I'd have heard by now. I was just starting to get a bit worried that he hadn't contacted me at all, but he was always a thoughtless little bugger. Not like Barry." She nodded at her elder son.

She took a paper hanky from a box on top of the TV and blew her nose.

"He were running out of control since their dad up and left me. I couldn't keep him out of trouble and he were thoughtless, like I said." She wasn't really talking to either Tommy or Barry directly - just talking in general.

"Now he's dead, you say. Thoughtless to the end."

Then a thought seemed to strike her and she looked puzzled.

"Fell in the canal?" she asked. "Funny thing is, he could swim quite well. He had medals for swimming at junior school."

Tommy thought Kevin probably hadn't been very good at swimming while drunk, but he didn't say anything. "Did Kevin say what he was doing or where they were going Saturday night?" he asked.

"He was going to a disco somewhere. I think it was at that youth centre down the bottom of Bingley Road towards Saltaire. He went with Wayne Sansom and an older boy called John something. John ... something Polish."

"John Koswinski," said Barry. "He's around, because I've seen him. He might know what happened."

Tommy thought he probably had a name for the body in the ruin and for the one who climbed dripping from the canal. He made a note of the two names and addresses and thought this was quite a good afternoon's work.

"I'm afraid I have to ask you to identify the body, make sure it is Kevin for official purposes. The coroner will want to know its all been done properly."

"I think I'll make myself a cup of tea," Mrs. Musworth said bleakly, the facts seemingly striking home.

"I think that's a grand idea," Tommy said encouragingly.

When she'd gone into the kitchen, he said to Barry, who seemed to be a lot more human than he looked, "I'll slip off now, but I'll ring to arrange for someone to take you and your mum to identify the body. I'll try and find a woman constable to help her through it. We'll also need a signed statement. I'll type up this little lot and she can check it and sign it at the same time."

Barry Musworth just nodded, so Tommy made a note of the phone number and Barry let him out in silence.

Detective Constable Gary Goss was making heavy weather of Joe Davis. It wasn't that he was elusive or reluctant to talk, more that he rambled off on irrelevant side roads of thought and reminiscence. Moreover, he had actually seen very little and reports from both DS Gibbs and the Fire Brigade had already covered everything Joe knew.

The one possible exception to that was a remark that he had seen two or three youths on the concrete quay below the boarded warehouse, now a ruin. He was not sure when - the last week or two was the best he could manage - or how often - more than once was a bit vague.

DC Goss put that in his report to be included in the statement, but it was probably unimportant and might well refer to a quite different bunch of youths.

As he was pretty well next door to the Sansoms's flat, Tommy knocked at that door as well. The contrast with the Musworth's was considerable. Mrs. Sansom was a big woman of Afro-Caribbean extraction and a girl of about five came to the door with her mother. She stood cautiously eying Tommy and sucking her thumb.

Tommy was more sensitive than a lot of officers to how intimidated by the police black Britons can be and how this often manifests itself as surly and suspicious, so put on his best smile and said politely, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I need to speak to Wayne. He was with a boy who was pulled out of the canal drowned and I was sort of hoping he might be able to throw some light on it."

"Wayne's not been around since Saturday night." She sounded alarmed. "It wasn't him that fell in the canal was it? He never was no good at swimming"

That, thought Tommy, might be why he had tried to escape the fire without jumping in the water. He kept his thoughts to himself, however.

"It was a white boy fell in the canal," he said. "We think it was young Kevin Musworth."

"Oh my gawd," Mrs. Sansom said. "They was together on Saturday night. Wayne don't usually cause me no trouble and he hadn't never stayed away from home like this. You don't think he's hiding?"

Tommy was pretty certain Wayne had died in the fire and he knew he'd have to break the news to her sometime. This, however, was not the moment.

I don't think so," he said. "I'd better get a search started for him though. Do you have a photograph."

"There's the photo he had took the last term at school," Mrs. Sansom said. "You can only borrow it though. I want it back."

DC. Hammond felt sure this fairly pleasant looking boy, now only a year or so older, was the body from the burnt out ruin. He knew he was only postponing the moment of grief for the Sansom family, but let them learn the truth as gently as possible. Not that it was a very gentle truth.

But what had Kevin Musworth, Wayne Sansom and John Koswinski been doing in the boarded up warehouse, and where did Simon Hunter come into it. Perhaps Millicent Hampshire had some idea. His boss was a smart cookie, when it came to detective work, and not bad as a boss either.

Goss and Hammond typed up their various reports and the statements for signing and arranged for a switchboard operator to call up both Joe Davis and Mrs. Evans in the morning. He also asked for someone from the uniformed branch to pick up Mrs. Musworth and get her to identify Kevin's body. Lucy Turner arrived back at the station to type up Mrs. Hunter's statement. Tommy, on the other hand, rushed off to keep a date.

That young man, Millicent thought, was a nice catch for some young lady, but he wouldn't be easily caught. He was tall and sturdy, always immaculately groomed and dressed and really quite handsome. He was, however, always rushing off to see some woman, and she had a feeling it was a different one each time.

Millicent herself had several jobs to do before she went home. First, and most urgently, she put out an interest report on Simon Hunter's red Porsche. Now every officer of the West Yorkshire Police would know the car was wanted and her interest would show on any computer enquiry about the car as well. It was only a matter of time.

Next she opened a new folder lying on her desk. It was a request from the Divisional Commander, via the Chief Inspector, for figures relating to all deaths over the last four years which the department had investigated, and a similar request relating to violent attacks on the person which they had investigated. It would be easy enough to have civilian staff get the records and it might not take her long to provide an analysis, but what a drag.

For a while she gazed gloomily at the file, then rose with a sigh from her desk and made her way out.

There was no urgency to hurry home, because she lived alone and, before she drove away, she toyed with several cassettes, selecting one with care. Her taste in music was an interesting idiosyncrasy, since she liked three wildly different varieties of music under different moods and circumstances. Her short 6 year sojourn in Spain, almost 15 years ago, as the wife of a Seville policeman called Carlos Aguila, had left her with a taste for the folk music of the Andes and South America generally, which he had loved. On the other hand, she liked genuinely mediaeval music and instruments especially as a background to thinking out a puzzle - and then she liked nice, beaty country and western music when she was doing housework.

Tonight she felt just a bit nostalgic. Her brief marriage to Carlos Aguila had been happy, very different from that of Shirley and the late Simon Hunter, and ended tragically with a car bomb. The Hunter marriage had ended, she thought, with a specific and targeted murder by someone who wanted to kill Hunter as an individual, while Carlos had just been in the way of a group of indiscriminate terrorist killers. She sighed and steered the car out of the walled car park, through the security gates and into Tolpuddle Street to the haunting tone of Inti Illmani and the pan pipes.

Millicent turned into the driveway in front of her very desirable stone built, early eighteenth century cottage, and let herself into her empty but not quite lonely home. She had just hung up her jacket and was putting away the few groceries she had stopped for on the way home, when the phone rang.

"Hampshire," she said.

"Hello mum, it's Ana," a voice said. It was a pleasant voice, speaking very good English, but her daughter had been brought up by her husband's parents in Seville. Ana was not English and you could tell.

"Hola Ana. Me alegro de oirte. Its nice to hear from you. How are you and how are Nanny Sanchez and Grandpa Aguilar?"

"They're both well, but I wanted to ask you about University. I think University in the UK would be nice. I wondered what you thought about the course Leeds has on European Law and whether I could get to Leeds from your house. If you'd have me, of course."

"Have you? Of course you'd be welcome here. There's nobody but me, though I come and go to work at odd hours. Leeds is about fifteen or twenty minutes by train. What does Nanny Sanchez say?"

"Ah, well. That's the problem. Whether I go the University in the UK or Belgium or Spain there'd be the fees. Can you help?"

Millicent was mildly affronted. Granted, she hadn't been the best of mothers in giving time to her daughter. The shock of Carlos's death had sent her into the army and the bomb squad, and there was no place in the army for a child. On the other hand, she had always provided financial support.

"I'll pay your fees," Millicent said a little shortly. "You apply where you really want to go and I'll find the cash."

"Thanks mum. I knew you'd help, its just that Nanny Sanchez was worrying."

"Well tell her not to worry. Now. Tell me how the exams went."

After the phone call and a makeshift meal of mushroom omelette and chips, Millicent settled back in an armchair to think. Tobias NDibe had unsettled her and Ana's phone call reinforced the mood of self examination.

N'Dibe had been both right and wrong: she did drive herself hard but it was not so much her job as her personal demons. She had married young but been very happy with Carlos and had been driven slightly insane by his murder. Her time in the bomb squad combined an urge for revenge with an urge to come to terms with the facts. She had moved into the police to find refuge from her demons, but they had followed her. Perhaps the meeting with N'Dibe was some kind of turning point. She might try to track him down and contact him again.

Millicent became DI Hampshire again and put on a CD of the music of 11th century composer, Hildegard von Bingen. She turned down the volume and began to consider possible connections between the fire, the drownings and the murder. She also thought over Shirley Hunter's story, about which she was still mildly uneasy, and how it might be verified or otherwise!

Chapter 4: Tuesday 14th August (am)

Tuesday morning might well have been a country and western music morning for the drive to work, but Millicent wasn't really in the mood for music of any kind. She had work uppermost in her mind. Her first job was to instruct DS Gibbs, who was back today, that he was to establish an incident room devoted to the case. Feeling sure that the three cases were related in some way she could see no point in delay.

Millicent parked her car in the walled car park and went straight to her office to see whether anything more had landed on the desk, before going to see Chief Inspector Cooke to get his approval for her decision. Waiting for her when she walked in her office was a preliminary report by the scene of crime team staff on the picnic area, Joe Davis's statement already signed and DC Goss's report, Mrs. Evans's statement (not yet actually signed) and DC Hammond's report.

She read Tommy's report with interest and agreed that Wayne Sansom had probably died in the fire. She had encountered Koswinski before. He was a young thug who was well known to be behind a lot of trouble - a knifing, a gang rape, several muggings and burglaries and some car thefts. The trouble was finding proof that would stick in court - so far he had just managed to stay uncharged, mainly by intimidating potential witnesses.

Millicent drummed her fingers absently on the desk. There was little point in going to Koswinski's house, or talking to him on his own territory. He clearly hadn't murdered Hunter, but if he was picked up on a pretended suspicion of murdering both Hunter and Musworth there was just the slimmest chance he could be shaken into talking and giving the details about what had really happened. Tommy was quite good at bluffing he knew more than he did, so he could see to picking him up for questioning later in the day. She had something else for him first.

There wasn't an autopsy report on the body from the fire yet, so that could wait, and Gary Goss could check up with the East Witchmoor Youth Centre and see if Koswinski, Musworth and Sansom had been there Saturday night. Hampshire had a feeling they must have been somewhere else between the Centre and the burned out building at Cartwright's Wharf, unless they'd been in the building for two or three hours before the fire started, and that seemed unlikely.

Millicent got up and went in search of Cooke. She found him in his office, as she hoped to do first thing.

"The fire, the bodies in the canal and the murder of Hunter all seem to be connected somehow," she said. "It looks like being a substantial investigation, so I'd like to use the Incident Suite."

Cooke nodded. "I glanced through a copy of the autopsy report on the main victim," he said, "Blows to the head, various injuries, an overdose of morphine, then thrown in the canal for good measure. You think its related to the fire?"

"The drowning victim was with a missing boy and Koswinski on Saturday evening, and we have a probable identification of Koswinski by the woman who reported the fire. It was probably him climbing out of the canal at half past midnight, dripping wet." Millicent said.

"It sounds involved and does look to be connected. I think you'd better go ahead." Cooke decided. "Who have you in mind for the team?"

"I thought DS Turner and DS Gibbs, DC Hammond, DC Goss and maybe DC Bright," Millicent suggested.

Cooke nodded again. "Don't take more uniform staff than absolutely essential," he ordered, "God knows we're short staffed as it is. Use the new girl, Gail Downing, on your reception the experience will be good for her - but take a civilian secretary and a civilian IT person."

"Okay," Millicent agreed, "Now, what about the press. They'll only just be onto it, of course."

"Hmm. But this murder victim will probably catch the attention of the nationals in the silly season. I can just see the headlines - poisoned, battered, drowned!"

Millicent took his point.

"Well," Cooke said, "The Witchmoor Argus carried the fire as a story last night, but it only mentioned the deaths in passing. By tonight they'll have the autopsy report, so the nationals will pick it up tomorrow. I'll stonewall them for a day or so, but we may need a press conference by Thursday."

"Okay," Millicent said. "We'll need some progress by then, so I'd better get on with it."

Cooke nodded again as she left.

On the way back to her office she went via the canteen to collect a coffee and then put her head round her secretary's door and reminded her about the figures for the Chief Inspector's report and told her to assemble her little team in the incident suite in a quarter of an hour. Then she went with her folders on the case and coffee to the suite and settled herself in the tiny office reserved for whoever was in charge. Her coffee was only half drunk when the team started arriving.

"Morning Lucy," she said, looking up as DS Turner walked in.

Lucy looked around. "This must be bigger than an elephant's ass if we've got a separate incident room," she remarked.

"It's big," Millicent agreed. She was just going to add a quiet word about the cross examination of Shirley Hunter the day before, when Tommy Hammond and Gary Goss wandered in, so she left it.

When everybody had gathered, Hampshire filled the team in with the position as it stood. "Okay," she said, looking up from the folder she was reading. "The preliminary report from the scene of crime staff on the picnic area is in already. They found a jar of jam, a jar of pickles and two full yogurts amongst the undergrowth round the picnic site, all lending some support to the story, to judge from the locations in which they were found. They're all being fingerprinted still, but the story looks as if it might be essentially true."

"The wide wheeled vehicle which left tyre imprints at the site is almost certainly the Porsche. It went much further into the picnic area than the other vehicles, but there's no evidence either way as to whether the accident took place as described. For now we'll very cautiously assume that it probably did."

"There was no sign of a tablecloth or any picnic gear, so they must have gone back into the Porsche assuming they were there as stated, but SOC confirm that the two other vehicles left before Simon Hunter's car."

"Any ideas from them about the other vehicles?" Tommy asked.

"They think one was a substantial, perhaps sporty, saloon and the other probably a light commercial vehicle. They confirm my own quick impressions but suggest no solution to the puzzle."

Inspector Hampshire closed the folder. "Tommy," she said, "This afternoon you can pick up Koswinski on suspicion of murdering Hunter and Musworth, and try and scare some further information out of him. You can come with me for the morning and do that later. DC Goss, you go to the Youth Centre now and try and find out what Koswinski, Musworth and Sansom were up to and anyone else associated with them. Follow up the question of what time they left and where they went, but report back after lunch. Look for anything that will help DC Hammond. This afternoon you can work with him in trying scare Koswinski."

"Lucy, I want you to look into the background of Ellen Barnes and the alibi. Take one of the uniformed women with you and go easy at first. The story may be entirely true, but I want it checked out. "

"Right-O. You'll have your answers."

"Sergeant Gibbs. Tony. I'd like you to spend an hour or so making sure everything's in place in the incident room. After that I want you to go and snoop around the hospital. See if you can find out how tightly they control access to morphine and anything you can about the personal affairs and background of Shirley Hunter, but be discreet. I want to avoid word getting back and putting her on her guard if I can. She may be an innocent victim or she may have been provoked into murder. Get me anything to will help me make up my mind. DC Bright, you familiarise yourself with the story so far, then keep DS Gibbs company this morning. This afternoon I want you to go door to door around the Hunter's house and see if any neighbours saw anything to support the story."

Gibbs and Bright just nodded.

"This morning, Tommy Hammond and I will visit Hunter's place of work and try to find out something more about him," Millicent added.

As they walked out to the car park, Millicent said to Tommy, "According to Mrs. Hunter. Simon Hunter worked for an Investment company in which he's a partner. The senior partner is her brother, Bernard Knowles. I need somebody to bounce impressions off."

"Whereabouts?"

"Bradford. Just up from Foster Square Station. Why?"

"Nothing really, but we might be best off with a marked patrol car, since we might have trouble parking." Tommy grinned.

"Good idea," Millicent agreed.

Cowper Street was a dead end street which should have led off Cheapside, except that it had been closed off. Tommy drove into the bottom end of Westgate and turned left and left, to enter it from the other end.

KHS Investments occupied only one floor of number 16 Cowper Street - a five-story building - but they were pleasant enough offices and it was a good location with a prestigious sounding address.

Shirley's brother was senior partner, of course, and Millicent asked for him by name, but he was clearly expecting them. Millicent was not surprised: Shirley Hunter would naturally have phoned her brother the previous night to pass on the news.

The receptionist stood up from her desk and showed them into a roomy office and Bernard Knowles rose to greet them. He was older than his sister, slightly built and greying. He was in shirt sleeves and tie and the trousers from a dark suit, the jacket of which hung over the back of his chair.

"Sit down," he said. "I usually have a coffee mid morning, so I assumed you'd want a coffee yourselves and asked Mrs. Waite to bring three."

He sat down again. "I'm aware of what you've come about. On Monday, when Simon wasn't here, I rang Shirley and heard he was missing. She phoned last night to tell me he'd been found murdered."

"Then I'll come straight to the point. Who, apart from Shirley, might have wanted Simon Hunter dead?" Millicent asked.

Bernard Knowles sighed and put his hands together. "I should think there would be a long, long queue."

Millicent was interested and intrigued. "Go on," she said. "Explain!"

"Quite apart from his treatment of Shirley, the man was an obnoxious scoundrel who was involved in some schemes of doubtful morality A few things he did were, I suspect, outright illegal. He was a liar and a cheat and he wanted to take over this perfectly respectable little firm as a front for his fraudulent activities."

"You sound as if you'd be in the queue yourself," the inspector observed.

"Oh yes," Knowles said. "I didn't kill him, but I easily could have. He was leaving me no option to report him to the regulatory bodies and starting a process which might have brought this whole company down."

"Okay," Millicent said, "Let's have some specifics."

"We handle investments for trusts and individuals. He was borrowing money from client accounts and speculating on the futures markets. So far we were considerably in the black, but you will recall the whole banking crash and the various individuals who got their companies into trouble. I only found out last week, during a snap audit, so the murder couldn't have happened at a more opportune moment from my point of view, before we lost millions. As I said, I didn't do it, but I'm grateful to whoever did."

"You said Hunter was up to other immoral or illegal things," Millicent reminded him.

"He was, or at least had been, supplying something nasty, hard drugs I think, to a woman IT specialist at one of the investment banks, in exchange for insider information. I think he was having an affair with her but either taking drugs or passing information got her the sack a week or two back and he just dropped her, now that she was no use to him."

"Do you know her name?" Millicent asked, thinking that she might be hurt and angry enough to add to the list of potential murderers.

"Rosie something or other. I remember him remarking on the information he got from her smelling just as sweet by any other name. I don't think I ever heard her last name, but you could try Sheldon Shields, he may have heard it."

"Anything else about our nice friend?"

"I've hardly started yet," Knowles said. Tommy was watching in silence and making notes, and he didn't think Knowles was joking.

"On the basis of some insider information," Knowles continued, "Simon landed Shields and a friend of his in a multi thousand pound loss. I think it was deliberate because, in exchange for bailing him out, Hunter wanted some of his shares. Between his own shares, the ones he got from Shields and Shirley's, he owned half the shares in the company and was all set to start making the corruption institutionalised by blocking any internal investigation."

At this point the tirade was interrupted by the receptionist bringing in the coffee, and Millicent had a few seconds to organise her thoughts and decide what specific line to take. Clearly, the first thing was to check what Knowles had been doing on Saturday afternoon and evening.

By the time Mrs. Waite had left them and the coffee, milk and sugar had been passed round, Bernard Knowles had cooled down somewhat, though he didn't attempt to play down any of his earlier remarks.

"Can you account for your movements on Saturday?" Millicent asked.

"I'm not sure about the morning," Knowles replied thoughtfully. "I had some work to do at home, so my wife took the car to get the tank topped up. That would be around eleven thirty or twelve. After lunch, say two o'clock or so, we set off for Herefordshire and had an overnight stay at a hotel in Ludlow. You could ask them what time we checked in, because I'm not sure."

"What kind of a car do you drive?" Hampshire asked.

Knowles seemed surprised. "A Saab," he said. "Why?"

"There are three sets of tyre treads at the picnic site where Hunter's car disappeared," Millicent explained. "I just want forensic to check you car tyres for elimination purposes."

"Did you say Hunter's car is missing?" Knowles asked.

"At the moment," the inspector agreed. "The car seems to have disappeared more completely than the man did."

"Funny business, that," said Knowles. "Do you know how he got into the canal?"

Millicent was wary. She didn't want to give too much away to someone clearly on the list of suspects.

"He might have been intended for the fire," she said, "but how he got into the canal instead is an issue we're still working on. I think I probably know who was involved now, but I don't know why or how yet."

"Funny, that," Knowles said again and shrugged the problem aside. "The Saab is at home with Mrs. Knowles, as I said. I come into work on the Ilkley train from Guisley to Foster Square. You have our address?"

Tommy had been writing notes of the interview without comment. Now he nodded, thinking that Knowles might be less co-operative if he had anything to hide.

"You suggested Mr. Shields might know this IT woman's name," Inspector Hampshire said.

"Don't build up your hopes too much," Knowles told her. "I said it's possible because Simon Hunter talked him into a very bad deal on the basis of information he said came from her. Sheldon Shields is a Canadian and not naive, but Simon took him in and did the dirty on him."

"I think I'll speak with Shields in a few minutes," Millicent said. "First I'd like to check through Hunter's desk."

"He doesn't have a separate office," Knowles remarked. "Nor does Shields. There's a private Client Interview Room and you could speak to Shields there. I'll show you Hunter's desk and cabinet as soon as you've had your drinks, but finish your coffee first."

Hunter had a desk with locked drawers, a side table on which there was a computer and a filing cabinet. Millicent sent Tommy to ask about keys. He returned with a key ring of filing cabinet keys.

"These are copies of the keys to every filing cabinet in the place," he said. "Knowles has a full set of copies, but not of desk keys."

"Well, there probably won't be anything private in the cabinet then," Millicent said, taking the bunch of keys. "He wouldn't keep anything important where Knowles could see it any time."

While she was trying the various keys, Tommy was looking at the desk drawers.

"These are the type of locks where a catch just swivels up and hooks behind a pin on the wood just above the drawer itself." Millicent glanced up as he was taking out a penknife. "I think I may be able to push the lever back with the blade," he added.

As Millicent flipped aimlessly through the files, looking for she didn't quite know what, Tommy slipped the knife blade into the gap above the desk drawers and eased back the catches.

"Good job these are not meant to be top security," he said and started to flip through the contents of the drawers.

After a few seconds he stopped and stood back, looking puzzled. "I'd say somebody has been through this lot," he said.

Millicent turned. "What d'you mean?"

"There's absolutely nothing personal here at all."

"Diary?"

"No."

"Address book?"

"No. But he might have an agenda programme on the computer, with contact addresses on it, I suppose."

Millicent stood back and thought about it. "I think we'll leave it," she said at last. "He may not have kept anything personal at the office. We'd better check his work area at home. I think I'll ask the fraud squad to take an quick glance over things and see if they can see anything untoward."

"Shields next, then?" Tommy asked.

"I think so," Millicent answered.

* * *

Lucy Turner phoned Ellen Barnes before calling. This was nothing to do with consideration for the finer feelings of the witness, but she saw from the file that Barnes was a nurse. 'Nurse' often meant even stranger shift patterns than a police officer, and Lucy wanted to be sure Ellen was neither at work nor asleep. She was neither. She was on late shift, leaving home just after one, so DS Turner went round straight away.

The flat was on the third floor of a clean and recently built block, which might have been built for private sale. Lucy rang the door entry bell, was identified and the door lock released by remote control. Secure if everyone was sensible about letting strangers in, the detective thought, mounting the stairs.

Ellen was holding the door open on a chain and opened it as soon as Lucy showed her warrant card.

"Detective Sergeant Turner," Lucy said. "I'd like to ask a few questions connected with events last Saturday."

"Come in," Ellen said. "It's just that two women need to be that extra bit careful."

DS Turner had been thinking that mid-morning in a respectable sort of area with a security door and an advanced warning that she was coming, Ellen seemed unduly cautious. She followed the woman into a small but elegantly furnished living room, with two large oil paintings on the wall. Both were of Ellen herself, naked or nearly so, both originals and, though well executed, both somehow a good amateur standard.

Ellen Barnes saw her looking at them. "That's me, nearly twenty years ago," she said. Alice did them. "That's how we met. I was a life model to eke out a student nurse salary and she was taking the course."

On closer inspection, Lucy could tell that Ellen was a good deal older than she had assumed at first glance. She must be in her early forties at least, which made her older than Shirley Hunter by between five and ten years. Did that make a difference? Probably not.

"Alice," the detective said. "What's her family name?"

"She's Alice Dent."

"You share the house with Alice?"

Ellen nodded. "We're buying it on a shared equity scheme from a Housing Association," she said. "There's not much scope for buying outright unless you have a substantial salary."

DS Turner knew that very well, and had several times been glad that Julia had landed an IT job sufficiently high flying to pay most of a substantial mortgage. Since both drove to work from some distance away, the relationship was unknown to colleagues, not that Lucy cared that much. She nodded.

"Okay," said Lucy, "As I explained, I'm part of the team investigating the murder of Simon Hunter and, since you apparently picked up Mrs. Hunter from Baildon Moors last Saturday and spent the rest of the day and night with her, you are her alibi. I want to check her story and get any other details I can."

Ellen nodded and waited.

"When did Mrs. Hunter phone you?"

"I knew that's what you would ask first and I'm really not sure. It was after one, but not long after. Can't you get the time from the mobile phone company?"

"We'll sort out the exact time later," Lucy said.

"What did Mrs. Hunter say over the phone?"

"She was talking in a panic - really gabbling gibberish at first. When I calmed her down a bit, I gathered she and Simon had had a real row. She seems to have thought he was going to kill her and had run off. When she crept back to the spot both Simon and the car had gone."

"What were you doing when she phoned?"

"I was washing up after dinner, thinking about going shopping."

"What did you do then?"

"I drove straight to the moors, where she said she was. I told her to wait on the main road and she was there when I arrived."

"Did you go to the picnic spot?" Lucy asked.

"No. I just accepted Shirley's story - I still think it's the truth - and drove up to where we arranged to meet."

"And then?"

"I drove us back to the Morrison's Supermarket in Bingley and we did some shopping, then we went home. Alice was there by this time. The three of us sat and talked for a while. Then we went out for a meal in a restaurant in Shipley. An Indian place at the bottom end of Saltaire Road. After that we came home again and Shirley stayed the night."

"Mrs. Hunter was with you all the time?"

"Yes."

"Have you proof of any of this?"

Ellen was silent for a time, thinking about it. "Alice phoned and booked a table at The Last Days of the Raj," she said. "They would probably have a record of the booking."

"Anything else?" Lucy persisted.

"I've got the till slip from Morrison's, I think. We have to be careful about keeping a record of what we spend."

"That should show the time," the detective observed.

At this point there was the sound of a key in the door and Alice Dent let herself in. She was, perhaps, a shade tall for a woman, wore an overall and no make up and was holding a motorcycle helmet. She was somehow reminiscent of Millicent Hampshire, in that she was about the same age and contrived to have the same friendly competence about her, though Alice was perhaps a touch more ... what? Defiant or defensive, Lucy thought. Was that a general attitude to life or was it something more immediate?

"This is Sergeant ..." she turned to Lucy.

"Detective Sergeant Turner," Lucy said.

"She was asking about Saturday," Ellen said. "When Shirley rang me from Morton and things. "

"I had finished getting the main details down," said the detective. "I was just going to ask how well you knew Mrs. Hunter."

"She was a friend," said Alice, rather heavily. "Just a friend."

There was an unmistakable emphasis in the word friend.

"You know her at work as well?" Lucy said to Ellen.

Alice frowned but didn't say anything.

"She's worked at the same hospital as me for quite a while," Ellen said. "seven or eight years at least."

"You knew her before she met Simon Hunter?"

"Yes."

"What was your opinion of him?"

Ellen paused, looking vacantly out of the window. At last she said, "Its easy to be wise after the event, but I really didn't like him very much from the very first. What's more, he didn't like us and he was rude to Alice."

"In what way?"

"He made a pass at me once and Alice told him we had a steady relationship. He called us a couple of Dikes and said all Alice needed to cure her was a good screw with a half decent bloke, but he couldn't think of one who'd be willing."

"I don't suppose your kind would think that was much of an insult," Alice said, even more heavily.

There was a dangerous pause as DS Turner looked up slowly and, while keeping her place with her finger, closed her notebook as if to indicate an off the record remark, said, "If I made assumption about your sexuality, I suspect you'd be very quick to put me in my place, and rightly so. I'd appreciate it if you would stop jumping to conclusions about mine."

There was a silence as Alice looked her over, as if seeing her for the first time.

"I'm sorry," she said at last. "I just assumed that life in the police force would make it impossible to be anything but straight."

"It makes you bloody careful about advertising that you're not, I'll say that," Lucy agreed. "My boss has a pretty good idea that my partner's a woman - in fact, I'm sure she knows, though I haven't told her - but she doesn't seem to care All the same I'm very careful about who else knows."

"Okay," Ellen said, looking a little more relaxed than she had, "Going back to what I was saying about Simon. Before he married Shirley, I thought he was a smarmy toad and I didn't like him, but it only took a few months after the marriage to realise he was violent and nasty with a cruel streak. He often physically mistreated Shirley - hit her and so on - Add to that he seemed to take pleasure in humiliating her in public whenever he could and he had a very bad temper if he didn't get his own way. He was altogether unpleasant to be around."

"Could she have been driven to murder?" Lucy asked.

"I'd have killed him after the first month," Alice said, "but I don't think she did, more fool her."

Lucy tapped her pencil against her notebook reflectively and said, "My dad was a detective with Warwickshire Police all his life and a Freemason too. He said that in all his years in the force he'd only ever come across one guy who dropped all kind of hints that he was a Mason. My dad said that he figured that, if the bloke had to call on being a Mason, he must have something to hide, so he gave him a much more thorough going over."

"It's a bit different from being gay and him being a Freemason though," Ellen said. "They've got secret handshakes and things you can say."

"Baloney," Lucy replied. "You don't shake hands with a suspect and we all understood each other without being explicit, just because we wanted to understand."

"Now you know, however accidentally, that I'm in a lesbian partnership too," She continued, "I'm going to have to check out everything you say more carefully, just to offset my own feelings and prove to myself I'm being fair. You understand?"

"I think so," Alice said. Ellen nodded.

"You've come in from work?" Lucy asked.

"When I'm on a job nearby and Ellen's on lates, I come home for lunch," Alice said

"You ride a motor bike and Ellen drives a car?"

"We have a car between us," Ellen said, "But I use it for work, especially coming home late at night."

"Makes sense," Lucy observed. "Where do you work?" she asked Alice.

"Wainright Simpkins, electrical contractors."

"Right," Lucy said. "I'll check those times and maybe talk to you again later. For now, I'll leave you to your lunch."

Chapter 5: Tuesday 14th August (pm)

Sheldon Shields was a bulky, balding man of about forty-five. He shook hand with a firm, friendly manner and sat down in the Client Interview Room opposite the two detectives.

Outside, in the street, it was just about lunchtime and the warm, sunny weather continued. Women from the various offices were beginning to wander out in summer dresses and Tommy Hammond was distracted by the view from the window. He watched speculatively as a couple of particularly attractive young women with skirts more mini than usual strolled into a sandwich shop. With an effort he pulled his attention back to the job in hand.

"I'm investigating the murder of Simon Hunter," DI Hampshire began. "I take it you knew of the death."

"Sure," Shields said. "I guess everyone in the place knows It's a small staff and anyone could see he wasn't here. Yesterday everyone wondered why. Today they know."

"And how did the staff react to the news?"

"He wasn't popular. I don't see folks crying."

"But would anyone want to kill him?" Hampshire asked.

"Most people, me included," Shields answered with a wry smile. "He was often rude and sarcastic to the receptionist. He got through a secretary every two months or so. He led me on with some insider information he was raving about and when I let greed get the better of me and I was sucked in over my head, he bailed me out at the price of some my shares in the business. With his shares, his wife's shares and those he got from me he was making life difficult for Bernard." Shields shrugged helplessly. "I guess a lot of people would like to have murdered him. The question is, who did?"

"That," Hampshire said dryly, "is what I'm trying to discover."

"Don't expect the help to be too enthusiastic. We're all grateful to whoever it was."

With little to record, Tommy was letting his attention wander again, and was watching three more office girls or women turning into the sandwich shop, However, DI Hampshire's next question drew him sharply back to the job in hand.

"According to Bernard Knowles, Hunter was getting his insider information from an IT specialist in some banking organisation. She was called Rosie something or other."

"Rosie O'Connor," Shields said. "She worked for the Leeds office of the Frankfurt-Manhattan Merchant Bank."

"Was he having an affair with her?" This was of course just hearsay, but Millicent was fishing.

"Who knows? He never said so, but I'd guess he was, as long as she was useful to him anyway. He could be cruel, a liar and a thief, but he could be charming when it suited him."

"Bernard Knowles thought he had some other hold over her." Millicent was fishing again.

"I don't know, but I'd agree with Bernard that it looked that way," Shields nodded.

"Drugs?"

"Maybe. I just don't know." Shields said.

"What did Hunter offer you that appealed to your greed?" Hampshire asked.

"He said that Frankfurt-Manhattan had agreed to finance a defence contract to sell armoured cars to Pakistan because the Government had agreed to underwrite the deal. He thought we should buy into Alpha Systems before the news got out. In the event it was the other way round. The Government refused to underwrite the deal, Frankfurt-Manhattan pulled out and the contract fell through. The share in Alpha Systems fell sharply. I lost money and so did Gary Leverett, but not Hunter himself, because he didn't buy any shares."

"And that left you short of funds?" Hampshire asked.

"You bet. Then Hunter offered to help me out by buying some of my shares in the business. That's when I knew I'd been taken on purpose."

"Nice," Tommy murmured.

"Real nice," Shields agreed. "He made quite a bunch over time from insider trading. Sure you slip up once in a while, but he didn't buy shares himself this time."

"Where were you between midday and midnight last Saturday?" Hampshire asked.

Shields thought about, then counting the time off with his fingers, said, "I had a late breakfast or early lunch going up to midday. I did one or two bits of writing - letters and things - for an hour or an hour and a half. Then I washed the car and did some gardening. I had a bath and changed and about six thirty or so the two of us went out for the evening with Gary Leverett and his wife. Before meeting up with Gary I'm not real sure of the times. In the evening we went to the Alhambra in Bradford and then had a meal. I guess it would be about eleven-thirty when we got in."

"Can anyone vouch for this?" Hampshire asked.

"Janine - that's Mrs Shields - was coming and going and a neighbour, a Mr Stevenson talked to me while I was washing the car mid afternoon, but I don't know how much of the afternoon it all accounts for. I wasn't expecting to need an alibi." Shield grinned boyishly, but Millicent made no comment. Tommy Hammond thought the man sounded genuine enough, though he seemed to have a sufficiently strong motive to be a suspect.

"We'll talk to Mr. Leverett and to Rosie O'Connor as well," Hampshire asked. "What car do you drive, Mr Shields?"

Shields looked puzzled. "BMW," he replied. "Why?"

"Just checking, that's all." Hampshire said. "Well, I think that's about all for the moment, Mr. Shields. As I said, I'm just trying to get an overall picture at this stage. I may need to talk to you again."

"Be my guest," Shields said, rising.

On the way back to the station at Witchmoor Edge Millicent's mobile rang. She unhooked it from her skirt waistband to answer.

"Hampshire," she said.

"Good day to you," rumbled the deep, pleasant voice of Tobias N'Dibe. "I was wondering whether you could get away from work in reasonable time today. Say about half past five or so. Not later than six."

"By six I might. Why?"

"Tonight there is a Public Meeting of that group I mentioned. We will be gathering at the Public Library in Bradford. I thought we could meet at that restaurant four doors up from the filling station in Manningham Lane and have an early meal before proceeding to the meeting."

"You mean the filling station opposite the entrance to Lister Park?"

"The same."

"Where shall I meet you and what time?" Millicent asked.

"Say six fifteen at the restaurant?"

"Okay," the detective agreed.

Tommy Hammond looked quizzical, but didn't say anything. Millicent didn't say anything either, and it wasn't until afterwards that it occurred to her to wonder how N'Dibe had got hold of her mobile number, which wasn't public knowledge.

* * *

DC Gary Goss had been making his own advances to the overall picture as well, although his visit to the East Witchmoor Youth Centre was almost a little less than productive.

"We had a disco Saturday night," youth leader Tim Cruikshank recalled. "There were between fifty and sixty people. A lot of noise, some alcohol but no drugs that I know of. Why do you ask?"

"Was Kevin Musworth here that you noticed?" Goss asked.

"Let me see ... Musworth ... Yes I think so."

"Was he with Wayne Sansom?"

"How would I know? It was nearly dark in the centre. Wait a minute. Yes, he was with Sansom. A real yob called Koswinski tried to get in. Nasty bugger. I banned him from the youth club for fighting and giving drugs to someone a month or two back. He tried to sneak in under cover of the dark, and when I threw him out, Musworth, Sansom and a kid called Barker - I don't know his first name. They all left with him."

"What time was this?" Goss wanted to know.

"Not sure. Eight thirty, nine oclock."

"You can't be more exact?"

Tim Cruikshank was not exactly unhelpful in his attitude, though Goss hadn't seen or heard any reports of the drugs incident, but he was evidently impatient to get on.

"No," he said abruptly. "I was busy."

"I don't suppose you know where they went."

"I was inside and they were outside. As far as Koswinski is concerned, that's the way I like it."

"Well, thank you Mr Cruikshank. Unless someone saw them after they left here I'm afraid it looks like a dead end."

"You could try Gloria. She was at the door selling tickets. She may have seen which way they went. It would still have been light."

Cruikshank went to the office door and called his assistant, a wide-eyed, bleached haired woman of thirty-something.

"You remember I threw out Koswinski last Saturday and he left with three others?"

"Yeah."

"I don't suppose you happened to see where they went."

"No. I didn't see them go," she said. Then, just as Goss had that sinking feeling, she added as an afterthought, "But I remember Koshwinski did say summat about the Apocalypse having a better disco anyway. He gives me the creeps, Koswinski does. They say he was behind that gang rape of the girl in Shipley and I wouldn't be surprised."

"I told you he was a nasty bugger," Cruikshank remarked.

"We know all about Koswinski, but we can't seem to get any evidence against him, "DC Goss admitted. "Well, that's a useful lead. I'll try the Apocalypse next."

"If you don't mind me asking, why do you want Koswinski?" Cruikshank asked.

"I don't think we're exactly looking for Koswinski, but Musworth was pulled out of the canal drowned on Sunday morning and Sansom is missing. There was a body in that fire and we have to investigate the possibility that it was either Sansom or this other youth, Barker."

"Jody Barker?" Gloria asked.

"Probably," Goss said, "Do you know where he lived?"

"Naw," Gloria said shaking her head.

"Or his age?"

"Naw. He's left school though. About seventeen I'd guess."

"Well, I've done better than I thought I would," DC Goss said. "Thanks for your help."

At the Apocalypse there was only a manager around at that time of day and he was a little wary of the detective. The Apocalypse was a full blown nightclub with a no under 18s policy and a reasonable reputation for co-operating with the police and for keeping drugs under control. Inside they seemed to have things fairly well under control, but there sometimes fights outside.

The manager was a dapper little man with a moustache called Norris. He was in his late thirties and a reasonable sort of bloke. Goss was shown into the office and sat in a comfortable chair, while Norris settled himself behind the desk.

"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked the detective.

"I'm trying to trace the movements of four youths who may have tried to get in here last Saturday evening," Goss explained. Norris relaxed a little to discover his part was at most indirect.

"I always ask the bouncers for a full report of any incident," he said. "It's just a case of fireproofing my ass if anything goes wrong."

"Last Saturday the four set out to come here. They left the East Witchmoor Youth Centre about nine and I wondered if they'd turned up here."

"Photos?"

DC Goss pulled out a print of the school photo of Sansom and the scene of crime shot of Musworth. "That's two of them, he said. "One is tentatively identified as Jody Barker, but I don't have a photograph yet."

"They look too young," Norris said shaking his head. "I don't think they'd get past the bouncer at the door."

The fourth was Koswinski.

Norris brightened. "Oh well," he said. "I can tell you about him. I banned him three weeks ago after a fighting incident. The bloke at the door stopped him coming in on Saturday. Apart from the ban he was pretty well loaded."

"Drunk?"

"Yeah. He'd had too much. He's a belligerent little bugger when he's sober, but drunk ..." Norris shrugged meaningfully.

"What time was this?" DC Goss asked. "We're trying to piece together the movements of the four of them on Saturday evening."

"Well I only know for certain about Koswinski. You'd have to speak to Brash, the bouncer, but if they left the Youth Centre together they may well have still been together."

DC Goss agreed. "Do you have a time for this?" he asked.

"I'll check it in the incident book," he said, and pulled a hardback book from his desk drawer. "Let's see." He flipped through the pages and then ran a finger down the entries.

"Here we are. About ten thirty," he said triumphantly.

It was a bit later than Goss had expected but he was pleased with progress. He thought it was time to go back to the station, have a bite to eat and type up the report, so he thanked Norris and left.

Gary Goss was feeling decidedly hungry by the time he reached the canteen and found himself behind DI Hampshire and Tommy Hammond, newly arrived back from Bradford.

"There's just salad left," a plump, jolly assistant behind the counter was saying. "I've cheese, tuna and one egg salad left."

"A salad is fine this weather," Millicent said. "I'll have the egg. Have you got a roll?"

"I'll have the cheese salad with two rolls," Tommy decided.

At that moment Lucy Turner arrived back and stood in the line.

"And I'll have a tuna salad and three rolls," Gary Goss added. "I'm hungry"

"Am I right in thinking there's nothing left but salad," Lucy remarked.

"'Fraid so," the assistant agreed.

"You can have cheese salad, tuna salad or cheese and tuna salad," Tommy joked.

"Wow, that's a difficult choice," Lucy said. "But I'll be really awkward and have a tuna and cheese salad instead of cheese and tuna one."

"It's the last of the tuna," the assistant said, "You may as well have what's left." She piled Lucy's plate high.

The four of them carried their plates and drinks to the same table. Lucy's was enormous.

"You'll need a doggy bag for that," DC Goss observed.

"Catty bag," Lucy corrected.

"Should that be 'pussy bag'?" Goss wondered aloud.

"That sound faintly obscene," said Tommy. "But are you going to save some tuna for your cat," he asked Lucy.

"My cats do all right," Lucy answered. "It's a cats world: I'm just there to open the tins for them."

"We can't have cats," DC Goss said. "The children are allergic to them."

"My cats are allergic to children," Lucy responded. That's why me and Julia haven't got any children!"

By an unspoken agreement there wasn't much talk of business over the food - business was saved until they got back to the Incident Suite.

The uniformed officer on the dedicated reception, PC Gail Downing, had settled herself in and established a database, but there wasn't a lot on it yet. Gail was not long out of training and looked up in awe as Millicent entered. DC Bright was also in the room.

"Inspector Hampshire, ma'am," Gail Downing said.

"Yes."

"Chief Inspector Cooke rang and said he'd like you to pop into his office as soon as you got back, to have a briefing on how it's all going."

"Ring him up now. We're about to meet and compare notes, so if he can get in here right away it would save us going over the same ground more than once."

"Okay," She turned telephone Cooke.

"Right," Hampshire said, "Grab yourselves a chair each and sit in a circle. Gail, unless the phone goes you'd better listen in. We may need you to know where something fits in and who'd be interested."

PC Downing flushed slightly but joined the circle feeling important.

"Now," Millicent began. "You all know more or less what's in the autopsy reports, but look at them again if you've any doubts. DS Turner and I spoke to the wife." Hampshire explained the story. "Now DS Turner was going to talk to Ellen Barnes. Did you find her in?"

Chief Inspector Cooke came in as Lucy was giving her account of her talk with Ellen Barnes and Alice Dent.

"Is there anything to support the alibi?" Cooke asked.

"I've got a till slip from the shopping expedition. Date's correct and the time is shown at 2.51pm. I've asked Vodaphone for a print out of the calls, so I can check the call time against the till slip."

"That should tell us how reliable the story is," Hampshire remarked. "It's a pretty strange story but it may well be broadly true." She paused and looked around. "Or of course it may not. Shirley Hunter is a nurse, and that puts her high on a list of suspects as regards means, and she's pretty high as regards motive, considering the kind of man Hunter was. However, I talked this morning to two other people who admitted wanting him dead."

She told them of her conversations with Shields and Knowles. "They both have pretty powerful motives and this IT specialist we have yet to speak to may have at least as good a motive," she concluded.

"DC Goss was starting from the other end. What was Musworth doing Saturday night?" Detective Inspector Hampshire continued. "How did you get on?" she asked, turning to Goss.

"According to what DC Hammond learned yesterday, Musworth was definitely with Sansom and possibly with Koswinski and the word was that Sansom was going to the Youth Centre, so that's where I began," Goss explained, and recounted his finding at the Youth Centre and the Apocalypse.

"So they were together at around ten thirty," Cooke observed.

"I'm going to check with the doorman at the Apocalypse, but it looks that way," Goss agreed.

"Musworth drowned, Koswinski swam ashore and there was an unidentified body in the rubble," Hampshire said. "It looks virtually certain the body in the burnt out building was either Sansom or Barker. We'd better try and identify Barker and trace him, before we tell Sansom's family he's dead. On the evidence so far, I'd say they - some of them or all four - threw the body in the canal and the fire broke out and cut them off. What the four of them were doing only Koswinski knows." She turned to Cooke. "What I'd like to do is have DC Goss and DC Hammond pick him on suspicion of murdering Hunter and Musworth."

There was a slight shuffling. "Oh I know he isn't even a suspect," Hampshire said hastily. "But he's getting to be a hardened nut and he won't tell us anything if we ask him nicely. Hammond and Goss can give him something of a grilling and just maybe he'll come out with the story. This time we're not actually after him, at least I don't think we are."

"Worth a try, I suppose," Cooke said at length.

"How did you get on at the hospital, DS Gibbs?" Hammond asked, moving the agenda on.

"Nothing very concrete, I'm afraid," Gibbs said. "Shirley Hunter is a nurse, like she said, and seems reasonably well liked. She would have had access to morphine, but drugs are fairly well controlled. When something out of the ordinary is prescribed for a patient, supplies are sent up from the pharmacy, enough for a day at a time."

"You spoke to the pharmacy?" Millicent asked.

"Yes. Youngish bloke called O'Connor runs it and seems well in control. One thing I did come across, though ..." He hesitated.

"Go on," Cooke urged.

"It's probably not important, but there was a rumour linking the Hunter woman to a Doctor Patel in Respiratory at Bradford Royal. He was on duty all weekend and seen regularly all day Saturday doing different jobs. I think you can rule him out, but it may give her even more motive."

"Right," Hampshire said, "DC Bright was checking with neighbours for anything to confirm Shirley Hunter's story or call it into question. Find anything?"

"Nothing useful," Bright answered. "The next door neighbour says they were always quarrelling and that he used to hit her, but we knew that anyway."

"Take someone with you," Hampshire said, "Keep at it. I'd like to find someone who saw them leave at around eleven thirty."

"Okay," she continued, "DC Hammond and DC Goss can pick up Koswinksi tomorrow and try to put the frighteners on him to find out what happened between ten thirty and twelve thirty Saturday. DS Gibbs. First I want you to go to Hunter's house and go through his work area for anything personal. Use Matthew as a witness and then he can get on with the door-to-door enquiries afterwards. After you've done that, take someone from scene of crimes and take a cast of car prints from Knowles's car and Shields's car and compare them to the casts taken at the picnic site."

At that moment she had one of her flashes of uncontrolled insight and nearly fell off the chair. She dropped her notebook and folder and clasped a hand to her forehead.

"You all right?" Cooke asked.

"Yes," Millicent said faintly. Then more strongly she said, "Yes, I'm OK. DS Gibbs. When those items of food from the picnic scene come back from forensic, check them against that till receipt. DS Turner, you and I will go and talk to the IT specialist tomorrow. I've just remembered that she was called Rosie O'Connor. Its very odd that someone with a strong motive for a murder using morphine should share a surname with a hospital pharmacist."

Chapter 6: Tuesday 14th August (Eve)

N'Dibe smiled benignly and, perhaps, a touch complacently. Although he was quite a big man, he was not noticeably overweight nor was he a big eater. However he did seem to have a fondness for ice cream. He ordered an especially large one with chocolate syrup and cream. Millicent thought it looked rather sickly, but N'Dibe finished it with an obvious relish and pushed the dish away with a sigh of contentment. He wiped his mouth almost daintily with a napkin and pulled his coffee towards him. He must, Millicent thought, be approaching sixty if he had not already reached it. He took a sip of coffee and continued as if he had not paused for the ice cream.

"At our public meetings we have a range of speakers and discussion topics intended to attract as wide an audience as possible. From those attending the open meetings we can select those we invite to join the inner circle."

"Select?"

"It would hardly be appropriate to work at close quarters with others about whom you entertain unease or doubts."

"That cuts both ways, surely," Millicent objected.

"Of course it does," N'Dibe agreed, smiling again. "We meet people. We decide whether they would fit in and whether we would enjoy their company. Then we try to get as close to them as possible, to see whether they like our company before we invite them."

"I see."

"You are privileged. It is rare that anyone learns of even the existence of the inner group before we invite them to join."

"Why am I so special?" Millicent asked.

"N'Dibe was thoughtful and took another long drink of coffee before answering. "First," he said at length, "I felt you were out of the ordinary from the moment I met you at the twelve apostles stones. A silly name, by the way, since they pre-date Christianity by three thousand years. Second, because you told me of your second sight when you had not previously mentioned it to anyone but your late husband."

"And you made up your mind because of that?" At that point Millicent realised she hadn't actually mentioned second sight to the man, though perhaps she had implied it. "How do you know that anyway?"

"On the question of how I know, I know many things not put into words. It was in any event a little more than that which was decisive. Firstly I spoke to the others and they will study you for themselves this evening. Secondly, much as it may upset a detective to be on the receiving end of investigation, I checked up on you."

Millicent was not sure whether to be offended. "How?" she demanded.

"I made one or two phone calls, consulted a crystal and so on." N'Dibe was smiling benignly again and Millicent could not tell to what extent he was being serious. She was still not sure whether she was offended. The large black man glanced at his watch.

"The meeting at the Central Library is at eight," he said. "If we leave at once there should be plenty of parking space just behind, off Manchester Road. That will give us just enough time to get up to the fourth floor."

The meeting was a mildly interesting one, about the pendulum dowsing experiments conducted by Tom Lethbridge. He had been an archaeologist and museum curator at Cambridge who had retired to Devon and conducted as a hobby a series of experiments, which had honed the accuracy of pendulum dowsing. He had irritated fellow archaeologists before his retirement by dowsing the most suitable places to dig and been right more often than them. Millicent thought that Lethbridge's eccentricity had probably irritated his colleagues less than being right more often than they were.

Lethbridge, it seemed, had discovered that, if you had a long cord, adjustable by winding it round a pencil or stick, and a weight on the end, you could hold it out over various items and get a rate for a length of cord at which the pendulum would swing or rotate for various materials. For instance, with a cord length of twenty-two inches a pendulum circled a silver object twenty two times.

The speaker in the room at Bradford City Library had urged them all to try it for themselves and Millicent had found a silver ring hidden beneath one of six sheets of paper, each with an item of different material concealed underneath.

"That's pretty good for a first try," an auburn haired woman commented. She was rather striking with very green eyes, which suggested the auburn might be at least partly natural. Her hair was slightly longer than shoulder length and tied back with a pewter clasp at the nape of her neck. "Assuming it was a first try," the woman added.

"Can anyone do this kind of thing?" Millicent asked.

Tobias NDibe was watching and it was he who answered the question. "According to studies by the Stanford Research Institute in the US," he said, "About 95 to 98 percent of people can learn to do psi things like remote viewing, though, of course, some have more natural talent than others. Some of the human race need a lot of practice to be any good at all."

"Yes, Toby," said the auburn haired woman, "but Tom Lethbridge thought that only about 60 or 70 percent of people could dowse, and your new friend looks like a natural."

"I tend to agree, Judith," N'Dibe nodded. "But with the question of natural talent at least I side with the Stanford Research Institute rather than Tom Lethbridge."

Millicent wondered which of those present were part of the inner group sizing her up. She thought that Judith was probably one of them and quite liked the woman. Of the others she could not be certain. She thought the speaker was probably one and he certainly seemed able to dowse and there was a tall, dark haired and vaguely Italian looking woman in her late twenties who seemed somehow another likely candidate.

As the twenty or so people drifted away at the end of the meeting, Millicent decided that she was sufficiently interested in the outer group to come again in a months time, if pressure of work allowed. She also decided she was interested in knowing more about the inner group as well.

They had driven in separate cars from the restaurant so there would be no need for them to see each other further that evening.

"Just a moment," N'Dibe said as they went out into the street. "I want to talk to one or two others before we go our separate ways."

Aha, Millicent thought. Out loud she said, "I want to get back and sort out one or two work related things before the night is out. Can you spare ten minutes to drive up to Baildon when you've finished."

"I think there would be time," N'Dibe agreed, "If you give me the address."

Millicent went into the house, picking up the mail as she did - she had left that morning before it arrived. She laid out cups, saucers and biscuits and filled the kettle, before glancing through the envelopes. There was a bill from Yorkshire electricity, a circular from a local estate agent offering to get a good price for her house with a low commission charge, a begging letter from a charity and some company offering her the chance to win £100,000. She threw the letters unopened on the counter top and went into the living room, where she sat down in an armchair.

Millicent recalled the little incident at HQ that afternoon, when she had the sudden flash of insight. The actual correctness of the idea was yet to be tested, but these ... whatever you called them ... these ideas had been right before. How did these sudden flashes square with what she had been listening to and seeing tonight? Clearly the human mind had access to information it didn't have at a conscious level. Her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the front door bell.

Millicent let in Tobias N'Dibe and he entered the sitting room politely and sat down on the settee when invited.

"Tea or coffee?"

"Tea I think. I have to ration myself to coffee, the caffeine is bad for me."

"I have de-caff."

"Then coffee will be most welcome."

Millicent went into the kitchen and switched the kettle on before returning to the living room.

"You are concerned about something?" N'Dibe said. "I detected it earlier, during the meal, but it was not at the front of your mind then."

"It was something trivial that happened at a briefing session in the incident room," Millie said, and described what happened.

N'Dibe nodded slowly. "What you described could almost be your training as a detective coming through. Millicent started to object that it was a flash of knowing but N'Dibe held up a hand to silence her.

"I did not say that it was such a thing," he said, "Only that could almost be that. At the stone circle last week you described what I felt was an involuntary psychism. Tonight you displayed considerable natural talent in dowsing. I suspect that your training as a detective exerts some control over your talent."

"For twenty two years the American military and the Stanford Research Institute cooperated in an experiment in remote viewing, some of which was spectacularly successful. They had remote viewers who had no more than a well-defined target and a lead in period of relaxation before a project. I usually use a process of relaxing an individual then raising their thought until they are in contact with their own higher self. In your case it may be in order just to relax and view."

"Where did you learn all this?" Millicent asked.

N'Dibe smiled. "Some things are just a matter of reading - many books over many years," he said. "I also belong to the SRIA".

"SRIA?"

"It stands for Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. They are what you might call Masonic Rosicrucians. They are the body to which the original founders of the Order of the Golden Dawn belonged first. The SRIA is Masonic and does not initiate women, so many members are involved with other organisations which do."

"It sounds like black magic or something."

N'Dibe smiled again. "The SRIA requires members to be Christians as well as Masons," he said. "Now I think I can help you with your ... err ... insights. Call me when you really need to know something. Using your talent to order will help to control it."

N'Dibe handed her a business card. "You have e-mail?" he asked.

"Both at Police HQ and here, though I don't use it much here."

"Then you can contact me easily. Here is my e-mail address." He passed her a business card.

Millicent glanced at it, and then put it in her handbag, which was on the floor beside the chair.

"Now, N'Dibe continued, tell me, have you ever taken drugs recreationally?"

"No. Why?"

"Probably a little cannabis does no harm, but the consciousness changing drugs bring on the kind of very undesirable uncontrolled psychism I mentioned. Other hard drugs change the personality completely. We would not wish to work with anyone who has partaken,"

"I see," Millicent said. "I'm a pretty awful hostess. I boiled the kettle without making the drinks,"

She got up and went back into the kitchen, switched the kettle on again, made the coffee and carried a tray into the living room where N'Dibe was checking something in a pocket diary.

"The Monday just gone was the new moon," he remarked obscurely. "Could you arrange to be free on the Sunday of this week?"

Millicent thought briefly. "I don't see why not," she said. "Why?"

"Several of the group saw you at close quarters tonight and would like to work with you. It is now up to you to decide whether you would like to work with us."

Millicent was not clear in her own mind afterwards why she had simply said, "Yes, I would."

Chapter 7: Wednesday 15th August (am)

DC Tommy Hammond, DC Gary Goss and the three uniformed men didn't exactly rehearse their little play, but they did discuss what they intended to do before they left HQ at Witchmoor Edge.

Millicent's instructions, approved by CDI Cooke, were to make the pick up of Koswinski on supposed suspicion of murder as realistic as possible. Her idea was to try and put the frighteners on the young villain, using police bail if necessary. Although she didn't really think the yob was guilty of a crime beyond breaking and entering, there seemed no other way to find out what had happened in the old warehouse between eleven o'clock and just turned twelve on the night of the fire.

The two police cars swerved into the parking area in front of the walk-up flats, blue lights flashing, and screeched to a halt. The two detectives jumped from the cars and started to run for the stairs, followed by the two uniform men. The fifth PC stood watch over the cars, standing with doors wide open and lights still flashing.

The four policemen stormed up the steps to the second floor and banged at the door of number 32. A scruffy youth of about twenty or twenty-two opened the door. He was wearing a stained T-shirt, jeans and rather seedy Nike trainers. He stood there blinking.

"John Koswinski?" Hammond asked, though he knew full well it was .

"Yeah. Why do ..."

"Get your coat. We're taking you in to answer questions about the murders of Kevin Musworth, Simon Hunter, Wayne Sansom and Jody Baker."

"But I never even met ..."

"I said get your coat," Hammond snapped. "We'll talk about it at the station."

Koswinski fetched a jacket and was marched down the stairs between the two uniformed men, Goss leading and Hammond following at the rear. In the back of one car he was seated next to a uniformed PC with a silent Hammond in the front with the driver. The others used the second car.

At Witchmoor Edge HQ Koswinski was marched to an interview room and left there with a different officer. Hammond and Goss entered and Goss set the tape recorder going.

"DC Hammond and DC Goss," Hammond said into the microphone. "First interview with John Koswinski about the murder of Simon Hunter, suspected murder by drowning of Kevin Musworth and an unidentified male at about midnight on August 11th. Time is nine fifteen a.m. on Thursday 16th of August."

"Now," Hammond said. "Where did you go with Musworth, Sansom and Baker last Saturday between ten thirty, when they wouldn't let you into the Apocalypse, and arriving at the warehouse on Cartwright's Wharf?"

Koswinkis jaw dropped slightly. He was taken aback by Hammond's apparent knowledge and uncertain just how much was guesswork. He stalled belligerently.

"I don't have to tell you nothing," he said, shaken by the speed of events and sullen. "And you can't prove I was there," he added

"Look son," Hammond said. "You were seen together near the warehouse just before the fire. You were seen from the bridge climbing out of the canal, dripping wet, the bloke saw you close to, just three minutes later. Musworth could swim, but he was drowned and they pulled Hunter out of the canal with his head smashed in. "

The remark about the bridge was a lie to cover for the old lady and the bit about them being seen earlier was a downright lie, but it was not a serious one, he thought, and anyway, witnesses might be found.

"It doesn't matter anyway," the DC said, "We know you were there, but I was just curious."

Hammond pressed on. "What am I supposed to think?" he said. "You're seen with three live blokes and now one of them is dead and one is missing. Either you did it or you didn't. If you didn't do it, tell us what happened and we'll try and prove you didn't do it."

Koswinski weighed up Hammond's words. He thought they wouldn't be able to prove anything, but they could give him a lot of hassle and grief. Moreover, they didn't seem to know anything about him being there earlier in the evening and he needed to keep that quiet. Since he didn't do anything, at least nothing much, later that night, maybe he could get rid of them by telling them more or less what happened.

"All right," he said. "I didn't do nothing so I may as well tell you what happened, though it were a bit funny in places."

"Funny?" Goss queried.

"Odd. Like the fire. That wasn't nothing to do with us. There was this sort of deep bang and a huge blaze started everywhere at once."

You think someone started it deliberately?

"Sort of," Koswinski said. "More like a terrorist bomb."

"I think," said Hammond, "that you'd better begin at the beginning. You went from the Apocalypse to the warehouse?"

"We stopped by an off-licence for some more cans, but yeah, we went more or less straight to t' warehouse."

"Why?"

"We hadn't nowhere else to go," Koswinski said. "They wouldn't let us in the Youth Centre, but that's a crap place anyway. Then this bouncer wouldn't let us in the Apocalypse."

"Why not?" Hammond asked.

"He said Sansom and Barker were too young and Musworth and me were too drunk."

"Did he say you were banned?" Goss asked.

"I never gave him chance. Drunk? I give him drunk. Then another bouncer came and joined him, otherwise I'd' ve creamed him."

Goss agreed with Cruikshank and Norris, who had both described him as ... 'an aggressive little bugger, even when sober' ... All the same, he prudently said nothing.

"So what happened at the warehouse?" Hammond asked.

"We got in through a ground floor window and sat in a corner having another bevvy."

"How did you know about the window?" Hammond asked.

Koswinski swallowed and tried to sound casual. "Musworth knew about it," he said. "He'd been in there before with Sansom. The whole thing was his idea."

Hammond rather doubted that, especially as neither was likely contradict Koswinski. It was possible anyway. "Go on," he prompted. "What happened next?"

"Musworth starts wandering around. He says he's found some tramp dossing in a corner and starts kicking him. Barker and Sansom went to have a look and joined in."

"But you didn't?"

"I were finishing my can and I'd had a few anyway. I was pissed off with t' whole evening."

"But you did go and look?" Hammond insisted.

"In the end I did, just as Musworth hit this bloke over the head with an iron bar."

"Then what happened?" Hammond prompted again.

"I had a close look at this bloke and saw he was dead. No pulse nor nothing. I told them they'd really done it this time. Sansom was scared and said maybe they could drop him in t' canal and everyone would think he'd cracked his head falling in or summat."

"And they dragged him to the canal door?" Hammond suggested.

"Sort of. Sansom and Barker ran off to Sansom's uncle Olu. For owt I know they're there still. I had to help Musworth drag the body and I had to force the doors open. I thought it was a pretty crap idea, but I couldn't think of owt better and anyway it wasn't me what done it."

"So you dumped him in the canal," Hammond mused. "You didn't think he was a bit too smartly dressed for a tramp?"

"It were dark," Koswinski said. "I couldn't see much, Musworth were scared and t' other two were so scared they'd run off. I wanted out of there in a hurry as well, though I hadn't done nothing to be scared of."

"And when did the fire start?"

"I ain't exactly sure, because everything happened real fast. There was a bit of a splash as this bloke hit the water and I think I'd started closing the doors, when I heard the bang or the boom or whatever you call it. It was more a feeling than a noise. Anyway, flames spread out where this bloke had been and all along the street side. I said we'd better jump. Me and Musworth jumped out through the loading doors where we'd dumped the body. I swam to the far side and climbed out. I don't know what happened to Musworth."

"Too drunk to swim?" Goss suggested.

"Happen so," said Koswinski. "But he were a good swimmer."

"And Sansom and Barker had gone before the fire started?" Tommy asked.

"Aye," Koswinski agreed. "They'd be away five minutes or more before t' fire."

"What was Sansom's uncle called?" Goss wanted to know.

"No idea," Koswinski said offhandedly, his confidence returning a little. "He just said Uncle Olu."

"Where did he live?"

"How the hell; should I know?" Koswinski said belligerently. "I've told you all I know."

"Right son," said Hammond. "Your story fits in with what we know, so I believe what you've told us is pretty near the truth. I'll have the statement typed up from this interview and once you've signed it you can go. I'm not promising we won't want to ask any more questions later, though."

Koswinski let out a sigh of relief. He'd bent the truth a bit here and there, but the story was more or less true, as Hammond had said. About the other matter earlier in the day, the police seemed ignorant and he wanted to keep it that way.

* * *

Rosie O'Conner let Detective Inspector Hampshire and Detective Sergeant Lucy Turner into a flat that had been allowed to get untidy in the last week or so. Underneath it was clean and showed signs of having been well decorated and nicely furnished. Now there were unwashed coffee cups on the small table by the sofa, along with old magazines and unopened post. The wastepaper basket was overflowing, un-cleared dinner things littered the table and ironing was piled high on two chairs. She moved one stack of ironing to the table and invited Lucy and Millicent to sit on the sofa.

Rosie herself was a red haired and freckled, vaguely outdoor type, in her late twenties. Her face lacked animation, her top was creased, her jeans dirty, and she looked generally un-groomed and apathetic. Millicent had a distinct impression that the change was fairly recent and wondered whether the end of an affair with Hunter or the sacking was responsible, or something else. Rosie didn't look at first sight like a potential murderer, but was there a recognisable type? Perhaps a fiery temper went with the red hair and Hunter had pushed her too far.

"You knew Simon Hunter, I believe?" said Millicent blandly for openers.

"Yes."

"And you know he died last Saturday night?"

"Yes," Rosie said again. "I didn't know until my brother told me a detective was asking questions about his murder though."

Straight to the point Millicent thought. "Your brother?" she asked.

"He works at the same hospital as Simon's wife."

"What does he do there?"

"He's a pharmacist."

Millicent wondered whether she knew Hunter had died of a morphine overdose. Unless the woman had killed him herself she almost certainly didn't know. Everyone on the enquiry had been told to keep that fact confidential if they could, and Gibbs wouldn't have said anything, though asking questions about access to drugs would have given clues. Hampshire listened for any sign of giveaway knowledge.

"How well did you know Hunter?" the detective asked.

"Too well for my own good and not as well as I thought I did," the woman answered obscurely, a little bitterly but otherwise quite unemotionally.

"Would you mind explaining that," Millicent said.

Rosie shrugged vaguely. "I met Simon a year or so ago through work," she said. "He was a frequent visitor to the bank's offices and when he asked me out to dinner I was flattered. I didn't know he was married then."

"You were an IT specialist of some sort?"

"Yes. Team leader for a team of IT services staff at the bank."

"Which bank is that?"

"Frankfurt-Manhatten," Rosie answered with a sigh. "It's a merchant bank in Leeds."

"Doing what there, exactly?" Lucy interposed.

"Seeing that there were no problems with external or internal IT communications."

"Had you access to confidential information?" Lucy asked.

Rosie hesitated, and Millicent could see what Lucy was driving at.

"Access, yes," the red headed woman answered. "I could theoretically monitor anybody's email, though I didn't do that," She added hastily.

"Did Hunter ask you for information to do with your work?" Hampshire asked.

"Sometimes." Rosie was silent for a while then, just as Millicent was about to probe a bit further, added, "I know now that all he wanted was the information. I suppose I should have known then."

"You were dismissed from your job, I believe," Millicent said, approaching the potentially damning part of the interview casually.

"Yes."

"And that's when he broke off the affair?"

"Of course."

"Why were you dismissed?"

Rosie didn't answer Millicent's question for even longer this time.

"Did Hunter have anything to do with that too?" Millicent asked.

"What, and kill the goose that laid the golden egg?" said Rosie, still without much animation, and without visible rancour either. Then she added, "I suppose he was responsible indirectly, though."

"I don't follow, "the detective said.

Rosie shrugged again. "I suppose you could find out easily enough, even if I didn't tell you myself," she said. "I'm not very proud of it."

Millicent waited and Rosie gave a sigh and began.

"Simon offered me heroin and I indulged. Don't tell me I shouldn't have, because I knew that then and I know it even better now. I don't know why I accepted, but he was very persuasive, very charming and very attractive. Before I knew it, I was hooked. About six or eight months ago I decided to try and dry out. I got my doctor to prescribe methadone and went for a stay in a clinic. The bank agreed to keep me on after I came back, as long as I didn't touch the stuff again. Simon was trying to get me started again and he left a dose on my desk. They found it and I got the sack."

Hunter seemed to have been a thoroughly nasty, corrupt, cruel and violent individual, Millicent thought. She felt rather sorry that it was her job to track down the murderer.

"Who's your GP?" she asked.

"Doctor Leverett. Why?"

"I may want to verify your story with him."

"Her."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The doctor is a woman," Rosie explained. "Not that it make any difference. You can go to her if you like." She had a bleak, defeated expression. "I can't stop you anyway," she added.

"What did you do last Saturday?" Hampshire asked.

"A friend dragged me off on a cycle race," Rosie said. "I used to be a cycling fanatic before I met Simon. Always off on road races every weekend in summer, Gloria thought it would be good for me. Get me out of myself or something."

"You have a bicycle of your own?" Millicent asked, thinking of the tyre tracks at the picnic site.

"Yes. I did have an expensive one just for racing, but I got rid of that before I went into the clinic. I've just the one now."

"What time did you set off?" Hampshire wanted to know.

"We met about 9 at Bingley. The start was 9.15 and the race was supposed to end about 4 o'clock, but I gave up about halfway through. It was a shortish road race, but I wasn't fit after a year off, I suppose."

Lucy's brain was just ticking over as she listened to the woman. "What was the route?" she asked.

Good question, Millicent thought, and listened to the reply with interest.

"Up through East Morton, then by the back lanes to Burley Woodhead and Ilkley and back by way of Bolton Abbey and Silsden."

That would have taken her right over the other side of the moors at the time of Hunter's disappearance at the picnic site, Millicent thought, assuming she had actually got that far before giving up.

"Where did you drop out?" she asked.

"Ilkley," said Rosie. "I had lunch with Gloria in a café in the town, then I caught the train back and Gloria cycled on."

"What time was this?"

Rosie shrugged. One. One Thirty," she said. "Who knows? Ask Gloria."

"DS Turner will take down details of the race and of Gloria ...?"

"Gloria Cullen," said Rosie. "She lives on the far side of Bradford, nearly in Pudsey."

Lucy noted down the address and phone number and they got up to leave.

Outside, Millicent said, "I'd like you to check out Gloria Cullen now. Concentrate on where the O'Connor woman dropped out of the race and where she went. I want to know whether she had time to have got back to the picnic site, so treat the Cullen woman as giving her an alibi. Get details of the race organisers and check whether she passed checkpoints and when. I think I'll have Tony Gibbs go round and check her bike tyres against the casts we took at the scene."

"Right," Lucy said. "You think she's another suspect then?"

"Oh she's up there. First we go over her alibi in detail, then we check with her former employers exactly why she was fired and when. Finally, we check her bike tyres and very carefully check out the doctor."

"Why?"

"That doctor has the same surname as Shields's partner who was cheated by Hunter. It may be a coincidence, but Leverett's an uncommon name."

"Hey," Lucy said, "This whole thing's running away with us. First the mistreated wife is a nurse, so she could have got the morphine. Second, there's Shields and Leverett, and it could be that they had access to the drug from Leverett's wife or sister or something, then there's the O'Connor woman with plenty of motive and a brother with access to morphine and possible contact through the GP, maybe related to another of Hunter's victims."

"Don't forget Knowles," Millicent reminded her. "So far there's no evidence of method, except that his sister's a nurse, but he had as much motive as any of them. More maybe. Anyway, you take the car, I'm going to walk back along the canal bank and think it all through. Then I'll see how Hammond and Goss made out with Koswinski."

There was nobody around the canal towpath that lunchtime, so Millicent enjoyed an unhurried peace as she walked in the midday sunshine. The weather was still the gentle, mild, sunlit day one associates with childhood memories of summer in England, as it had been up on the moors at the stone ring the previous Sunday. Though earth and air were dry and for a couple of weeks there had been no more than the odd light shower it was not yet a drought.

Millicent in her mind compared August in Witchmoor to August in Seville and the airless shimmering heat that rocked buildings, dried plants, cracked the earth and drove those who could afford it to the relative cool of the coast. There was no wonder that southern Spain closed down each day between one and five and came alive at night.

It had been months since she'd even thought of Spain, until this last week. Was it her age or something? Probably not - it was more a facing up to her demons; to beginning to control her visions and to search for a realistic purpose to her life, rather than simply burying herself in her job. After almost fifteen years of suspended animation, perhaps she was waking up.

The slow chug-chug of a narrow boat broke into Millicent's rather abstract thoughts and a gaily-painted holiday barge slipped past, barely rippling the water or disturbing her soul.

Opposite the burnt out shell of the warehouse, Millicent stopped and became the detective again. In what way was Hunter's body connected with the fire? To disguise the morphine probably, but who had injected the morphine and dumped the body? Who had made the timing device? Some of the story could be guessed at, but where was the Porsche?

Some scaffolding had been erected around two of the walls and there was a bulldozer there. There was no sign of any workmen, but they would have gone for lunch. The thought reminded Millicent that she was now rather hungry herself, so she walked on towards the town centre cafes and the Witchmoor Edge Police Head Quarters. On the whole, a café seemed more tempting than the canteen, or the George and Dragon pub in the Market Square did good food.

Chapter 8: Wednesday 15th August (pm)

Millicent read through Koswinski's statement as a triumphant Hammond and Goss stood waiting. At length she said, "That sounds like more or less the truth."

She drummed her fingers absently on the desk for a moment or two, and then added, "Well done, I think you pulled that off quite neatly. It doesn't tell us anything we hadn't guessed, of course, but it confirms it. Well, no. It tells us Sansom and Barker may still be alive. Tommy, check up on Uncle Olu's address as soon as you can and we'll follow it up. However ..." she paused. "If it wasn't either Sansom or Barker who died in the fire, who the hell was it? Did you sense anything held back?"

Goss shook his head, but Hammond said, "I think Koswinski may have been bending the truth a bit about his own part in it all. I think kicking a tramp around is more his line than the younger kids, especially as he was already in a foul mood with the world, but I'd say the general drift of it all was true. And ..." He hesitated.

Millicent looked quizzically, waiting for the rest of the sentence.

"Oh, I don't know. I felt that there was something more, but it seems complete and I didn't think he was lying."

Millicent nodded. "The fire starting suddenly with a bang or a boom ties in with the fire investigation branch's belief that it started with a flammable agent and a timing device," she remarked. "But it certainly does nothing to explain the third body."

"Koswinski said the fire was all along where they'd found the body," Hammond observed. "That has to be the connection between the fire and the morphine."

D.I. Hampshire slipped the statement into the growing file. "This has been noted on the database, I take it," she said. When Goss nodded again she continued, "Gail. Chase up the autopsy report on the fire victim."

"Yes ma'am."

"Now Tony, any word on either the tyre treads or the items from the picnic site?"

"Picnic site first," D.S. Gibbs said.

"Pull up chairs all three of you," Hampshire said. "Sorry. Go on Tony."

"I went through the till receipt," Gibbs said, perching on the edge of a table opposite. "Two yoghurts and a jar of diabetic jam were on the list. I checked with Mrs Hunter. Neither she nor her husband is or was - diabetic. According to forensic, all of the items turned in had nobody's prints but Hunter's."

"Wiped clean?"

"Looked that way to forensic," Gibbs agreed. "They also said that the prints were too clear to be natural if he'd thrown the various items."

"It sounds as if Mrs. Hunter's version of events is not true, then?" Millicent asked.

"Seems like it could be that way."

"And of course," Hampshire added thoughtfully, "it throws Ellen Barnes's story into serious doubt as well. Anything on the tyre tracks yet?"

"Yes there is. That's interesting too."

"In what way?"

"There's no match for two sets of car tracks or the bicycle, but the other matched Shields car."

"Did it, by God! What's the evidence?"

"No doubt about it," Gibbs said. "There's a nick in the tread here." He jabbed his finger at a point on one of the two photographs and passed them both over. He pointed again to the mark as Millicent held the pictures.

"Add to that there's a very slight wearing towards the outside of the front nearside tyres in both pictures."

Millicent took a magnifying glass from her drawer and studied the two shots, moving from one print to the other.

"There's not much doubt that the two are the same tyre," she said. "So Shields was there and his statement was deliberately misleading."

"By the over laying of prints, he must have arrived after the Porsche and left before it as well."

Millicent considered the news.

"I want you and Gary Goss to go and pick up Sheldon Shields and bring him in for questioning. I'll talk to him myself and confront him with the evidence. I'll have Tommy with me for the interview if he's back and DC Goss can go chase Uncle Olu, Sansom and Barker. DS Turner can have another go at Barnes and Dent and try and get them to shift their story, when she gets back from seeing Gloria Cullen."

"Tony," she added, "I'd like you to go and check out Rosie O'Connor's bike tyres and then check out the background of a Doctor Leverett, without talking to her or letting her know that the check is going on. Then have a quick look at how Bright is doing with the door to door enquiries."

Millicent addressed all three. "So far," she said, "we're uncovering loads of motives, several suspects with access to morphine and several lies, half truths and deliberately misleading statements. Let's see if we can narrow it down a bit."

When the others had gone Millicent still sat at her desk, fingers drumming softly. "Where the hell is the Porsche?" she said out loud.

The only other person within earshot was PC Downing, entering data. She thought Hampshire was talking to her. "Beg your pardon ma'am," she said.

"Nothing Gail. I was just talking to myself. I was wondering what had become of the Porsche. There's nothing on my interest report is there?"

"Not so far," she replied. "Do you want me to renew the report?"

"Yes," Millicent said, "And put it as urgent."

She picked up her phone and dialled Chief Inspector Cooke.

"Ah, Bob, Millicent here. Can I go to the press and get them to cover the need to find the Porsche? The Interest Report hasn't turned anything up yet."

"I had them on an hour or so ago asking for an update," Cooke answered. "It would help relations to ask for their help. I've also had a couple of the nationals on."

"You're thinking about that Press Conference, I take it."

"Precisely."

"There's not a lot clear cut to say, but I guess we could say enough to keep them happy for the time being."

"I was thinking of early afternoon tomorrow. Say, two o'clock. As the officer in charge I'd need you there."

Millicent pulled a face at the phone, but her tone didn't change.

"And the Porsche?" she asked.

"We don't have a photo, I suppose, but they'll either mention it in passing or use a stock picture," Cooke mused. "I think you could ring them yourself. Ask for Adam Sutcliffe at the Argus. He's the editor and a golfing friend."

"Okay," she said, and rang off.

She got an outside line and dialled the Witchmoor Argus.

"Argus, can I help?" asked a neutral female voice.

"Adam Sutcliffe, the editor," Hampshire said.

"I'll see if he's available," said the receptionist. "Who's calling?"

"Detective Inspector Hampshire, Witchmoor Edge Police Headquarters. Tell him Chief Inspector Cooke asked me to call."

"Just a moment."

Sutcliffe was available - probably the name dropping did the trick, because he answered with alacrity. "What can I do for you inspector?" he asked.

"You know that strange fire and the even stranger murder victim at the weekend?" Millicent asked.

"Oh yes?"

"The victim was last seen in or around his car," she said. "He turned up in the canal, but there's no sign of the car. I've put out an interest report, so everyone in West Yorkshire police is looking for it and the report will show up whenever there's any computer enquiry about the vehicle, anywhere in the country, but it hasn't turned up. Bob Cooke was wondering if you could run a 'have you seen this car' type story in the Argus."

"Love to," said Sutcliffe. "Any theories as to where it's gone?"

"We dragged the canal to see if it was there, with the body. It was claimed to have been seen, up on the edge of the moors near East Morton around two on Saturday. I think you can safely say the police are baffled, though personally and off the record, I think both car and victim might have been intended for the fire."

"Okay, I'll run a story in the Main Edition today. The Early Edition's already gone to press, but there's nothing earth shattering in it. I'll write the story myself right now."

"Thanks very much. My Chief Inspector will be duly grateful, I think."

"My pleasure. Keep us abreast of any developments."

Next Millicent rang the Leeds office of the Frankfurt-Manhattan Bank and asked for the personnel department.

"Sue Gaines, personnel," a voice said.

"Detective Inspector Hampshire here. I'm calling from Witchmoor Edge CID," she said. "I'd like to make some enquiries about a former employer. As it's confidential information I'm after, perhaps you'd like to ring back and satisfy yourself that it's a genuine call. It may be a good idea for me to talk to the Personnel Officer, if I'm not already doing so."

"You are!" Ms. Gaines said. "Who did you say you were?"

"Detective Inspector Hampshire. If you call the Witchmoor Edge Police number given in the telephone directory you'll get through to main switchboard and you can ask for me. My direct line would be quicker and more efficient, but of course it wouldn't prove who I was."

"I'll call you back immediately."

It actually took several minutes for Ms Gaines to look up the number and get through the switchboard, but Millicent was waiting for the call.

"Sorry about all the performance," Millicent said. "But I wanted confidential information quickly and this seemed the best way to get it. I didn't want to write or call at this stage, because what you say may simply confirm what your former employee tells us."

"I'm intrigued," Ms Gaines said. "Whom are we talking about?"

"Rosie O'Connor. She told us that she got hooked on heroin, dried out in a clinic at the end of last year while you kept her job vacant and then was fired about a week or so ago."

"Yes. It's pretty hard to find good IT staff, so we put up with more from her than we would have done from most employees."

"Why did you dismiss her?"

"It was a condition of taking her back that she did not touch drugs again. We found her with some and dismissed her." Ms Gaines paused. "I was looking for an excuse to get rid of her anyway," she continued. "The silly young woman gave me the chance."

"Why did you want rid of her."

"I don't like to be categorical because I can't prove it, but I believe she was passing confidential information to a man called Simon Hunter."

"We're investigating his murder," Millicent said.

"Yes. I read about in the paper. For obvious reasons, I normally support law and order," Ms Gaines said, "On this occasion, however, the world is well rid of him and so is the foolish Miss O'Connor. I hope the murderer gets away with it."

Millicent snorted but did not respond directly.

"However," Ms Gaines added, "If you ask my opinion - and I know you didn't - Rosie O'Connor was too enamoured of him to do such a thing, even in spite of him being the ruthless rogue he was."

After the call Millicent thought that the position really was much as Rosie herself had painted it. All the same, she could not afford to remove her from the list of suspects.

* * *

Millicent had the photos of the tread with her when she strode into the interview room. Tommy was sitting there with Sheldon Shields, neither looking at the other, neither speaking. Hampshire switched on the tape recorder.

"D.I. Hampshire, DC Hammond and Sheldon Shields," she said. "Interview in connection with the murder of Simon Hunter. Wednesday 15th August at ..." She glanced at her watch. "3.25 pm."

"Now," she said, turning her attention to Shields. "The statement you gave me yesterday was not accurate. You missed out an important detail."

"What was that?" Shields said.

"That you were at the picnic site sometime Saturday afternoon. You arrived after Hunter and left before he did."

"I was nowhere near the site, wherever it was," said Shield, smoothly and almost convincingly.

"Your car was certainly there," Millicent said heavily. "One of these photographs is of the left front tread marks of the tyre of a car at the picnic site. The other is the left front tyre of your car. They look the same to me."

Hampshire passed the two prints to Shields and waited while he studied them. Eventually he sighed and passed them back.

"Okay," he said. "I was there with Gary Leverett. I followed Hunter's Porsche at a distance. We parked a bit back from the picnic site and walked closer. We saw Hunter's Porsche with the front luggage space open and Hunter lying inside it. He didn't answer when we spoke to him, so Gary felt his pulse. He reckoned the guy was dead so we got out of there in a hurry."

"Why?"

"Isn't that obvious? Here was us wanting him dead and there he was dead, in suspicious circumstances. I thought we'd kept in the clear and we hadn't any information about his killer, so I kept quiet."

"What time was this?"

Shields shrugged. "Not sure," he said. "Before 2 probably, but not much."

Millicent thought he was leaving out a lot, but didn't say so. Apart from anything else, he'd lied to her once and there was no guarantee any of this was true.

"I think I ought to decide whether you can add anything to the information about the murder," she said. "Why were you following Hunter?"

"I overheard him on the phone Friday. He told somebody he had enough shares now and they'd discuss the matter at the usual place at two Saturday."

"That could be vital information for a start," Millicent said. "When and where did you start tailing him."

"We were parked up the road from his house from around twelve fifteen. Just as we arrived, the Porsche shot out of the drive. I nearly lost it, but I followed it to Knowles's. It was there in the drive for a while."

"How many people in the car?"

"It came roaring past me and I didn't get close again. I thought there was just one guy and I assumed it was Hunter."

"Go on."

"The Porsche turned into the drive and stopped. It was almost out of sight - Knowles has a tree lined drive - but I could see the red. We waited down the road a bit, then, about one fifteen or so the Porsche pulled out of the drive again. I followed it at a discreet distance, through Baildon and East Morton to the picnic site. Like I said, I followed it a little way before I stopped and we walked."

"Hold it a minute," Hampshire said. "The Porsche. Was Hunter still driving?"

"I guess so," Shields answered. "I only saw it close the once and I was behind it, but I guess it was him. Who else would it have been?"

"Was Mrs Hunter in it this time?"

"Well ..." Shields thought about it. "She easily could have been," he said. "Those head rest things look like a person and I never thought about it. If she said she was there I'd have to say maybe and if someone swore he was alone, I'd still have to say maybe."

Millicent thought this was unhelpful and the frustration showed in her expression. Was Shields still hedging his bets or was he genuinely unsure? At any rate, his story and Shirley's could not both be true. Either the Hunters drove to the picnic site at eleven thirty or they drove to Knowless at twelve fifteen: both could not correct. Which, if either, was the truth? She turned her attention and the interrogation to the picnic site.

"You said you got out of your car," she said, and asked, "Did both you and Leverett get out at the same time?"

"Sure."

"Then what?"

"We walked up to the site. We found the Porsche, like I said. Hunter was lying in the front of it, dead."

"How far would you say you were behind Hunter?"

"Not far."

"How long?"

Shields hesitated. "Just round the corner from Knowles's place I nearly ran into him, so I pulled a bit further back. I almost lost him in Baildon I was so far behind, but I saw him from the crest of a hill. He turned towards East Morton. At that point I'd say he was five or six minutes ahead of us, no more."

Hampshire sighed. "That's another thing. If you saw him drive there and you followed five minutes behind, there was just five minutes for someone to kill him and that's not long."

"I guess not," Shields admitted, "but that's the way it was."

"You didn't see anyone?"

"I told you, one of the reasons we decided to keep quiet was because we didn't see anyone or anything."

"Were the doors of the Porsche closed?" Hampshire asked, again changing the subject slightly

Shields thought about it. "The doors were closed I think, but the hood was up. That is, the front luggage compartment lid was up."

"Interesting," Hammond observed. "I'd forgotten a Porsche has a rear engine. Were there picnic things out on the picnic table?"

Millicent thought that was a very good question indeed, considering that the story Shirley Hunter had told was looking increasingly untrue.

Shields hesitated. "I didn't really notice," he said slowly. "But I'd say not. I don't think there was any sign of a picnic and I don't think there would have been time to set things out, but I wasn't looking, you know"

"Was there any damage to the front of the Porsche", Hampshire asked.

"Again I can't say I noticed. If there had been anything much I'd have seen it, I think."

"Any sign of injury on Hunter?"

Shields shrugged. "You don't look that hard when you're in a panic! When Leverett said he was dead we lit out of there pretty quick."

"Did you see any other vehicle?" Tommy Hammond asked.

Shields shook his head. "A couple of cars passed me going the other way as I was driving out of Baildon. There was nothing in the picnic area. Just after I pulled back onto the road a red saloon pulled off the grass verge at the side of the lane."

"Was it there when you arrived?" Millicent asked.

"I don't think so," Shields responded, vague as much of his statement on this occasion had been.

"What make was it?" Tommy asked.

Shields shook his head again. "It was just a glance and I was driving. Try asking Leverett."

"Had you seen it before?" Tommy persisted.

Shield shrugged but he looked worried. "There are a lot of red cars," he said, "I don't reckon so. Ask Leverett."

Hampshire thought abut the possible implications, and where Shirley Hunter and Ellen Barnes could possibly fit into a revised story. As Shields had remarked, there are plenty of red cars and this was probably nothing to do with the crime. Only probably, though. Hampshire decided to leave this unresolved for the moment and turned to the question of Leverett's wife.

She tried to sound casual as she asked a key question. "What does Leverett's wife do for a living?"

Shields looked surprised at the question, but in no way worried. "She's a doctor," he said. "I think she's involved in that group of doctors on Bradford Road. In the Health Centre there. Why?"

"Just wondered," Millicent said, thinking that Shields and Leverett would certainly have had a route for acquiring morphine and there was only Shields's word for it that he'd overheard a conversation at all. On the other hand, if he was telling the truth it sounded as if Hunter went to the picnic site for an appointment with the murderer. Why had he gone to Knowles's house though, and why had he been driving like a madman to get there? That was a thought.

"When Hunter drove to Knowles, do I gather he was driving differently from driving from his house?" she asked.

"I'll say," Shields answered "I couldn't keep up with him jumping lights and cutting corners. Later on he was driving much better and more moderately. That's how come I nearly smashed into him and had to drop back."

Millicent nodded, unsure of the significance. The evidence certainly pointed to Shields being at the murder scene, but his revised statement covered that. There was - so far anyway - nothing else against him. She decided to let him go for now.

"Detective Constable Hammond will transpose this interview into a statement. After you've signed it you can go," Hampshire said. She stood up. "But we may have more questions for you later and we'll certainly want to talk to Mr Leverett," she added and went out, leaving Hammond to it.

By the time Millicent had returned to the incident suite Lucy Turner was there, just arrived back from interviewing Gloria Cullen.

"Nothing helpful," Lucy said, in answer to Millicent's enquiry about what she had learned from Ms. Cullen. "She's about thirty, married with a husband who's as cycling mad as she is."

"What does the O'Connor woman's alibi look like?" Hampshire asked.

"Good as far as it goes, but not complete," Lucy said. "They were together from about eight thirty until around one thirty."

"That would given her a maximum of half an hour to get back to the picnic site, assuming Shields's story is true the second time around."

"You caught him out telling porkies, did you?"

Millicent told her the story.

"It's a bit thin but hard to disprove," Lucy observed. "D'you believe him?"

"I don't actually believe any of them completely," Millicent said. "I'll leave it as possible for the moment and look for anything to prove or disprove it. I hope Bright strikes lucky with neighbours. Someone must have seen them leave. I'll have to talk to Knowles again and to Shirley Hunter, but it would be nice to have something more than Shield's story for leverage."

"I got the Cullen woman to sign a statement before I left," Lucy said. "There's one thing not in the statement I think you ought to be aware of."

"And what's that?"

"The Cullens have at least four bikes between the two of them, maybe more. Rosie O'Connor could've used one of their bikes."

Millicent thought about it. "Bikes are easier to borrow than cars," she said. "The O'Connor woman said she used her own and she probably did, at least she did if she's innocent. If she used someone else's bike to cover her tracks we'd have the very devil proving it."

At that moment Tony Gibbs returned, so Lucy wandered off to type up her notes and enter Gloria Cullens statement in the database.

Lucy stopped just behind PC Downing, who was still entering notes from earlier.

"Bloody computer crashed, didn't it," Gail Downing remarked. "I lost nearly an hour's work and all the IT support technician did was switch the damn thing off and switch it back on again. Smug git."

Lucy laughed. "Listen," she said. "Car was speeding along the motorway. There were three passengers. An electrician, a motor mechanic and an IT technician. Suddenly the engine cut out. No warning: it just cut out dead and the car rolled to a halt. The electrician said, 'The engine just cut out so it must be electrical.' The mechanic said. 'It may be the belt driving the overhead cam shaft.' The IT technician said, 'I can fix it, no problem. Close all the windows and everybody get out of the car. So they all got out. Then he said, now get back in again. They all got back in again and he aid "Now see if it starts." The driver tried the ignition and the car started OK."

Gail Downing laughed. "It's a bit too close to the truth," she said.

Millicent was listening from across the room, but she was addressing Tony Gibbs at the same time.

"So, what did you turn up about Doctor Leverett, Tony?" Millicent asked. "Anything interesting?"

"Not really, no," he answered, pulling out his notebook and consulting it. "Her name is Doctor Gwen Leverett. She's part of the practice at the Health Centre on Bradford Road. She's in her late thirties and fairly popular. She seems to have a good reputation. She has cautiously dabbled in drug rehabilitation, but it's all above board, as far as anyone knows."

"We now know she's Gary Leverett's wife," Millicent remarked, "Because Shields admitted that Mrs Leverett was a GP at the Bradford Road Heath Centre. That's not proof of anything, though."

"Nothing of note there, I'd say," Gibbs agreed. "Do you want me to start going through her records?"

"Very time consuming to go through her records and the hospital records and the very devil to provide solid proof of anything. I think we'll leave that for a day or two and see whether any alternative shows up first."

Gibbs looked relieved. "I wasn't looking forward to the job," he admitted.

"Her involvement with drug rehabilitation ties in with what Rosie O'Connor said," Millicent remarked. "OK, she continued. Tommy and Tony, go pick up Leverett, cross examine him thoroughly, especially any discrepancies between his story and Shields's. Get a full statement. Lucy!"

DS Turner looked up from the computer. "At your service," she said.

"Go round and have another go at Barnes and Dent. Firstly, Shirley's story looks thinner and that casts doubt on Barnes's version of events. Second, several of the items on the till slip are identical with items found at the picnic site. Read the report from forensic and see if they change their story."

* * *

When everyone else had gone, Millicent let Gail Downing and the civilian IT operator go and sat at her desk, drumming her fingers and thinking. Finally she took out Tobias N'Dibes card from her handbag, got up and crossed to the computer.

At the computer she fed it with her private password and clicked on the appropriate icon to compose mail. She typed in 'ndibe@yorkshire.gov.uk', gave the subject as remote viewing and composed her message:

To: ndibe@yorkshire.gov.uk

Subject: Remote Viewing

Message:

Hello,

I think I've reached a position where there's something I really need to know. Give me a call so we can discuss it.

Millicent

When the message had gone, Millicent looked vacantly at the screen for a few moments, before she wiped off all traces of her time online, and went back to her place with the card, which she replaced in her handbag. She sat down at her desk in her office again, and drummed her fingers absently on the desk.

The phone rang and Millicent picked it up. "Hampshire," she said.

"Tony Gibbs here," came his voice. "Leverett is away today and doesn't come back until late tonight. It'll be eleven thirty to midnight."

"Pick him up first thing in the morning," Millicent said. "Knock off now, it's getting late anyway."

"Tommy Hammond will be pleased about that. He wants to eat out with some female."

"Tommy usually has impeccable taste in ladies," Millicent remarked. "So she'll be a looker, whoever she is. Take the night off while you can."

Millicent had no sooner put down the phone than it rang again.

"Hampshire," she said.

"Good afternoon," N'Dibe's deep voice rumbled politely. "Would the same restaurant at seven suit you?"

Millicent glanced at her watch. It was five thirty and she wanted to pay Dr. Leverett a quick call. There should be plenty of time for that before meeting Tobias.

"The time is fine," she said.

"Very good. I will see you there," N'Dibe said and rang off.

Millicent looked around the empty incident suite and yawned. She picked up her handbag and walked over to the switchboard to make sure that calls for her were forwarded to her mobile and all other calls routed to the main switchboard, then headed for the car park.

She was walking out of the building when she realised that N'Dibe had used her direct line. Last time it was her mobile. Did he know every phone number she had?

* * *

Dr Leverett had just finished her evening surgery when Millicent arrived. The receptionist was about to say that she was too late, but a quick flash of her warrant and ID were enough to change her mind.

"The doctor has had a long day," the woman said defensively. "You shouldn't be bothering her now."

"I'm investigating a murder," Millicent said. "And I've had a long day too - and I'm still working. I could ask her to come into the station, but I thought I'd make life easier for her."

"I really don't know ..."

"Look. Either you phone Doctor Leverett now or I have her picked up for questioning."

If looks could kill, Millie would have dropped dead, as the receptionist reluctantly picked up the phone. "Doctor Leverett? There is a police woman asking for you. Shall I let her through?"

Millicent snatched the phone and said smoothly, "Doctor Leverett? This is Detective Inspector Hampshire from Witchmoor Edge CID investigating the murder of Simon Hunter. I'm sorry to bother you at work, but we may be able to save you a lot of time this way."

She passed the phone back to the receptionist and waited. The woman said, "Very well doctor," and hung up.

"The Doctor will see you now," she said primly. "Second door on the left."

Doctor Gwen Leverett appeared rather severe: her spectacle frames were too heavy and her hair was cut short. She was rising forty and wore a white coat, hospital style and smiled pleasantly at Millicent when she walked in.

"Sorry to bother you, Doctor Leverett," Millicent said. "I'll try and be as quick as I can, but I'm investigating the murder of Simon Hunter."

"So I gathered, inspector. I'm not sure how much help I can be - he wasn't my patient you know, although I did see him occasionally."

Millicent was caught off guard. "I didn't realise he was a patient of this group, as a matter of fact," she said.

"Mrs Hunter is registered with me. Mr. Hunter was registered with someone else in the practice - Doctor Wells, I think."

"I was going to ask you some questions about another of your patients, but the new information raises some interesting possibilities."

"I'm not sure how much I could tell you about a live patient," Doctor Leverett said. "Probably very little without breaking confidentiality. However, about a dead one I may be able to be a little less scrupulous. What did you want to know?"

Millicent rearranged her thoughts. "You said you saw Mr. Hunter occasionally," she said. "When did you last see him?"

"Wednesday of last week, to give the results of some tests taken at hospital ten days before that."

"Do you know, or had you any reason to suppose, he was a regular drug user?"

"Recreational drugs you mean. Not that I'm aware of. I do have a reputation for work in the field," Doctor Leverett said. "I think I would have heard."

"What, as a matter of interest," Millicent asked hopefully, but not really expecting an answer, "were the hospital tests about."

The doctor paused. She took of her glasses and tapped the end of the frames on her mouse mat thoughtfully. "I suppose there's no harm in telling you since he's dead," she said at last, "Though I certainly couldn't tell you if he was alive unless he gave permission. He had advanced prostate cancer which had already spread to various organs and was terminal."

Millicent was stunned. Whether it made any difference to her investigation depended on who else knew. Prostate cancer is a big killer amongst men; though early forties are definitely on the young side to be a victim. "I see," she said and continued, "More confidentially, do you know whether Mr. Hunter was violent towards his wife?"

"I won't go into any details without my patient's consent," the doctor said, "but yes He had offered physical violence on a number of occasions."

"And finally," Millicent said, "Are you currently prescribing methadone to Rosie O'Connor?"

"Yes," Doctor Leverett said. "And I certainly will not say anything more than that without her consent."

"I'm simply confirming something she already told me," Millicent said. "Her statement was to the effect that she became a heroin addict, dried out in a clinic and was using methadone to ease a final withdrawal."

"I can confirm the statement in general terms," the doctor said.

"You've been helpful to me," Millicent said, and got to her feet.

"There is one thing more," Doctor Leverett said. "I am aware that my husband and Sheldon Shields saw Mr. Hunter dead, up on the edge of the moors. I am aware that both the man and his car disappeared after they saw him. I read my papers. As Hunter lay dead but uninjured he must have been poisoned with something and I do not have to be Sherlock Holmes to realise that, with me as a doctor, my husband cannot fail to be a suspect" She smiled ruefully. "I can only say that I didn't help him and I don't believe that he did it anyway."

Millicent smiled back. "You've been frank as well helpful," she said. She held out a hand. "Thank you for your time."

They shook hands and Millicent left to meet Tobias N'Dibe.

Chapter 9: Wednesday 15th August (Evening)

Lucy Turner pulled up her car outside the block where Alice Dent and Ellen Barnes had their flat, parked it and went to ring the security buzzer.

Ellen Barnes was on late shift at Bradford Royal Infirmary and consequently not home, but Alice Dent was there and let her in.

"I have to check on some of the things you told us," Lucy began, as she sat down in the lounge and took out her notebook. "I told you I would have to be extra thorough to satisfy myself, and my boss turned up a couple of anomalies I can't explain."

"Go on," Alice Dent said, quite neutrally.

"You are diabetic - yes?"

Alice nodded. "Well," She said, "Not me but Ellen."

"But Shirley Hunter isn't and Simon Hunter wasn't."

"I wouldn't know."

"Yet among the items on at the picnic site and on the till slip from Ellen's shopping expedition with Shirley Hunter was a jar of diabetic jam."

Alice shrugged. "Our jar is still here, in the kitchen." She got up and went into the kitchen. Lucy heard her rummaging in a cupboard and returned with a jar of jam, opened and about a quarter used. Alice held it out.

"As you see," she said. "Opened and partly used."

There was no way of telling whether it was the same jar, of course, but it was the same jam and could easily have been opened since Saturday.

"Diabetic strawberry jam," Alice said. "Ellen gets through a fair amount. I don't. I'm a peanut butter person myself."

Lucy wrote down the brand, variety and net weight and glanced at the best before date. Unsurprisingly it told her nothing.

"Okay," she said. "There were other items at the scene that appeared on that shopping list as well."

"Such as?"

"There were a couple of tubs of yoghurt."

Alice shrugged again. "Supermarkets sell an awful lot of yoghurts. It's just coincidence."

"Let's leave that for the moment. When the jar and the tubs were fingerprinted they had no fingerprints but Simon Hunter's on them. No cashier at the supermarket, no Shirley Hunter's, it looked to the Scene of Crime people as though they had been carefully wiped clean before Hunter"s prints were put on them."

Alice waited.

"This casts some doubt on Shirley Hunter's version of events and, therefore, on Ellen's story," Lucy said when the pause had become long enough to need filling.

"Ellen picked up Shirley Hunter on the main road." Alice sounded a little irritated. "She never saw the picnic area or commented on it."

This was true. Ellen's statement had said nothing about the picnic site and claimed never to have been there.

"Did you check the time of Shirley Hunter's mobile phone call?" Alice asked.

Lucy checked her notebook, where she had indeed written down the time, to check it out.

"14.08. 8 minutes past 2, and the call lasted just over 4 minutes."

Alice didn't comment and Lucy looked at the other time involved: the time on the till receipt. 14:46.

"How long would it have taken Ellen to drive to where Shirley was waiting," Lucy wondered out loud, not really asking a question.

"I've no idea," Alice said shortly. "You'd have to ask Ellen."

Of course she would, Lucy thought. There were serious holes in Shirley's story, but the inconsistencies didn't amount to proof. Not yet, anyway.

"You said you were an electrician."

"Yes."

"What are you working on at the moment?"

"We've just started the wiring of a new factory in Guisley."

"And before that, did you have anything to do with the old warehouse in Canal Street?"

"A couple of us popped in there last week to cut off all electrics before Yorkshire Electricity cut off the whole building. It was going to be demolished."

"You were inside the building?"

"Of course."

"When?"

"Thursday afternoon last week."

Lucy changed tack, covering the other point worrying her, though her boss hadn't specifically mentioned it.

"You said you drive?"

"Yes, though I use a motorcycle most of the time."

"Do you drive at work?"

"Occasionally. There are vans for tools and equipment. I sometimes drive one and I'm sometimes a passenger. More often I ride the motorbike."

"But you have access to vans?"

"I could drive one if I arranged it, but I didn't do last Saturday, if that's what you're getting at. Check with the transport foreman."

"I think I will, just as a matter of eliminating possibilities. I told you I was going to be extra thorough, so nobody could accuse me of going soft on you, not even me."

Alice nodded. She understood, even she didn't like it.

"Thanks for your cooperation," Lucy said, rising. "I think that's all for the moment, but I may need to speak to Ellen again."

Alice Dent got up too, and let her out without further comment, just a polite 'goodbye'.

* * *

Millicent turned in at her drive and pulled up to the house. A restaurant was fine for a meeting, as she had said over the phone, but it was too public for anything more than a chat.

Tobias N'Dibe pulled his car up at the side of the road a moment later and walked in after her. Millicent thought that the lawn could use another mowing at the weekend, and considered again the possibility of getting a gardener. She let herself into the house and held the door open for the big African.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"Decaffeinated, please," said N'Dibe, and he sat down as Millicent went into the kitchen to put on the electric percolator. She put a couple of scoops of decaff coffee grounds into the metal basket and wondered again whether to splash out on one of the combined machines that froth the milk as well. She flipped the switch and turned.

"Okay," she said from the kitchen door. "I've told you I need to locate the Porsche, but you haven't told me how you're going to find it."

"I am not going to find it," NDibe said. "You are. It is possible I could do it. I have experimented with various peripheral skills and have done such things quite successfully in the past. However, it is you that has an uncontrolled psychism which disturbs you and probably your colleagues as well."

The coffee finished perculating and Millicent put the perculator on a tray with the cups, milk and sugar. She carried the tray into the living room and poured without saying anything. There was a slight tension in the atmosphere that didn't lend itself to conversation but, as Millicent sat down, she said, "All right. So what do you intend to do?"

N'Dibe was always slow and measured. Now he took a sip of his drink, added a little more sugar, stirred it and took another sip to satisfy himself. Only when his drink was to his satisfaction did he look at Millicent and reply.

"Remote viewing, as done by experienced viewers in the US Army experiments, required no special preparation or equipment," he said. "Just around fifteen minutes of relaxation into the right frame of mind. However," he continued, "we want to bring your natural talent under control at the same time. I am going to use music and a theta pulse, against which background I intend to give some accompanying instructions and commentary to put you in touch with you own higher self."

"You mean hypnotism?" Millicent said doubtfully.

"Not at all," N'Dibe answered. "Apart from any question of efficacy in these circumstances, we are trying to establish your control over your experiences. To do that you must be in full charge of your own consciousness."

He produced a CD from the diminutive briefcase by his side. "In a minute or so I shall play this CD. The music has a pulse under it and the rhythm of your brainwaves will follow it. You have a player handy?"

"The music centre," Millicent said.

N'Dibe nodded. "Put the CD in, but don't start it yet," he said

Millicent took the CD, turned on the music centre and put it in. "All you do is press the play button," she said, indicating a clearly marked button. "Now what?"

"I want you to sit down in an easy chair and relax completely."

Millicent sat down and leaned back. She didn't feel all that relaxed. "What do I do with my hands?" she asked.

"Place them one on each thigh. Now screw your muscles up as tensely as you can. First you lower legs, then your thighs. Now relax them. Tighten all the muscles in your stomach and back, then let them go."

Millicent obeyed, tensing herself and knotting her muscles, then relaxing them.

"Now your shoulders neck and face. Tense all the muscles and then relax."

N'Dibe crossed to the music centre a pressed the play button. Soft, rather aimless music and a steady pulse began.

"You are going to relax no more than actors before an improvisation or Accelerated Learning students before a language class," N'dibe said. "The pulse you can hear is about that of a normal waking brain wave. We're just going to slow it down a little."

"Breathe in and hold it ... Let it out slowly, feeling all the tensions in your legs drain away. Breathe in and hold it ... Let it out slowly, feeling all the tensions in your arms drain away."

NDibe had a deep and pleasantly melodious voice and Millicent did as he said, feeling luxuriously relaxed, but in no way surrendering control. The pulsing sound was slowing.

"Close your eyes and imagine you are walking along a path in the warm sunlight," he said. "Birds are singing and there is the sound of insects. There are trees and flowers and there is the sound of water flowing somewhere off to the left. The path runs through a valley and you follow it, but it turns uphill, gently at first, then more steeply."

The pulsing sound was much slower now and it was easy for her to see the images in her minds eye.

"The path climbs steadily now, with steps at the steeper points. 1! You are climbing up the side of a high hill or low mountain. 2! You are still relaxed and climbing the path requires no effort. 3! Ahead of you, higher up, is the wall of a building or enclosed garden and the path ends at a door. 4! The door is slightly open and a doorkeeper stands watching your approach. 5! He or she is silent but friendly and welcoming. 6! You are nearly at the top, still relaxed and enjoying the climb. 7! As you approach nearer you make a gesture of greeting and the doorkeeper bows slightly in acknowledgement. 8! You are there. 9!

"You do not need to explain, but you do. The door is a portal to many places and you explain that tonight you wish to go to where this vehicle, about which you are concerned, can be found. The doorkeeper bows again and holds the door open wide. You go through. Beyond all is blue. You can come back to the here and now at any time by counting from 1 to 3 and saying "Wide awake" twice. You are surrounded by a blue nothingness and you sink slowly to the ground, through the blueness and the clouds to a reality."

"Now," N'Dibe said, "Keep your eyes closed, but look around you in your mind and tell me where you are."

Millicent was faced with a haze of images and impressions. "Inside, I think," she said. "In some kind of workshop."

"Do you see shapes or patterns around you?"

"Yes. There are T shaped things and ... cars. Yes, cars on the T shaped things. They're ramps." Millicent sounded excited. "I think I'm in a garage."

"Good," he said. "Better than we had any right to hope at the first try. I'm going to ask your impressions about various things and I want you to answer without rationalising.

First, what city do you think you are in?" NDibe asked.

"Bradford, I think."

"When?"

"Now I imagine." Millicent sounded surprised by the question.

"So your victim's vehicle is in a garage in Bradford?"

"Yes," she said, rather taken aback that she was so sure.

"And is it there legally?"

Millicent paused this time. She looked around in her imagination. No, this was not legal. There was something dark about it. She still hesitated.

"Don't rationalise," N'Dibe advised her again. "Our conscious minds try to find the logical and explicable to hold onto. This isn't either logical or explicable in ordinary terms, so your logical mind may well be wrong."

"I don't think I'm rationalising," Millicent said. "It's just that I'm getting more than one impression. I think it's something criminal and it either has been, or will shortly be, raided."

"Very good," N'Dibe said. "I think you have enough to go on. You can ask around whether anyone in Bradford Division is planning a raid on a garage, or has recently raided one. I want you to count up to 3 and say wide awake twice."

Millicent counted under her breath but said "wide awake" audibly. At the second saying of the words, N'Dibe switched off the tape and she sat there, blinking but relaxed and unmoving.

"So," N'Dibe said, "You have completed your first deliberate remote viewing session. I think it has been much more successful than either of us had reason to hope."

"It wasn't a nice simple answer, but it does explain why the interest report didn't produce anything."

"From my own impressions and feelings," N'Dibe said, "it would not surprise me if the car was stolen and is being re-sprayed."

"It's given me something to work on, anyway. More coffee?"

"Mmm," said NDibe. "I'd rather have ... err ...ice cream, if you've got it. I find it very good after Remote Viewing."

"I think I have some left," she said, going into the kitchen and opening the freezer to investigate. "Yes, there's nearly half a tub of strawberry ripple."

"Oh very suitable," NDibe remarked.

Millicent scooped some into a glass bowl, popped in a spoon and carried it through to Tobias, who sighed with contentment.

"Does ice cream help remote viewing?" she asked.

"Ice cream? Good gracious no, not as far as I know. I just happen to like it, that's all."

"But you said just now that it was very good after remote viewing.

"So it is, my dear, so it is. In fact it's very good at any time."

He dug into the ice cream with a smile of pleasure and added, "I think we have earned it this evening."

"Tell me," Millicent said over the second cup of coffee, "Why were you concerned about psychedelic drugs, when shamans of every variety use drugs as a way of achieving the visions of other worlds they seem to need. Are they somehow primitive?"

"We all sprang from the creative source and every path - Shamanic, Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and so on - every path back to the creator, has union with the divine as its objective. We each must choose the correct path for us. Too many fundamentalists of every religion think that, because it is the right path for them it is the right path for everyone."

"What you have to recognise," N'Dibe continued, "is that the rules of life for a particular path are not necessarily rules of life for any other path. You cannot easily control involuntary psychism however you deal with it. The shaman controls it in ways that do not fit at all with the Western Mystery Tradition I follow. I will not consider working with anyone who has used hard or psychedelic drugs recreationally. That is not true of other people on other paths."

"So someone who experimented with LSD in their teens is barred for life from your path?" Millicent said doubtfully.

"I said recreationally," NDibe pointed out. "To experiment once is not the same thing as regular use for recreational purposes or even regular use for medical purposes. Nevertheless, it would make their way upon the path I follow more difficult."

"I see," Millicent said, nodding slowly. "But I don't see why it is that so many different paths all work? Why do we need more than the one path? After all, the destination is the same."

N'Dibe showed no sign of impatience. "The best simile I can find is water," he said. "Water will always find its level. It will use an existing channel if there is one or cut its own new one if none exists. The reason the cult of the Virgin Mary was so immediately successful is that it used the same channel as the worship of Isis. It is not in the least sacrilegious to point out that the emotions felt by followers of either cult were similar to the emotions felt by followers of the other."

"I feel as if I'm waking from a long dream," Millicent remarked.

"Perhaps you are at a good age to wake up," N'Dibe observed. "According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the whole purpose of life is to become aware that material existence is a dream and that you must live repeated lives until you waken from the outer reality and become aware of the significance of the inner reality."

"Hmm," said Millicent. "And Sunday is part of the wakening process?"

"You might indeed say that," N'Dibe agreed. "Now, about Sunday. I will leave you these papers to read through and Judith and I will call round to see you Saturday evening for about an hour or so to talk through the details, if that's convenient. On Sunday I will call for you about six pm, if that is agreeable to you."

* * *

Julia was waiting for Lucy and rose from her chair as she walked into the lounge.

"Busy?" she asked, giving Lucy a perfunctory kiss.

"A bit," Lucy answered. "I've been interviewing that couple I told you about, for a second time. Well, one of them. The other was working. She's a nurse and has worse shifts than me."

"Have you eaten?"

"Not really since lunch, but I don't want much."

"Drink? I was just about to get one for me," Julia said, going into the kitchen. "You said 'a second time'", Julia continued, raising her voice slightly. "Do you think there's something wrong with their story?"

Lucy had taken off her jacket and replaced her lowish-heeled court shoes with sandals more appropriate to August.

"I'm not sure," she said going into the kitchen after Julia. "It's beginning to look as if there's something wrong with the strange story the victim's wife is telling, but the story those two are telling may be okay. I think I'll make myself a cheese sandwich," she added. "You ate at work, I take it."

"Staff canteen," Julia said.

"How is work?"

"It's going really well. There are five IT support staff on my team and they all seem decent people who work reasonably hard. Most of what we do is related to solving immediate problems, but it's interesting. How are you finding your boss?"

"It's ironic really," Lucy said. "We've had to get where we are in spite of being women, she's got where she is because she's a woman and black. She's a bloody good detective though."

"Does she know about us?" Julia asked.

"I think so," Lucy said, "But I don't think she cares. She's got a good attitude: it doesn't matter a damn to her as long as I do my job."

"Talking of jobs, what does it look like for the weekend?"

"I'm on duty Sunday this week. I have tomorrow off in lieu, but I might pop in for an hour to file this report and see what's new."

"Don't go getting yourself lumbered on your day off."

"I don't think that will happen," Lucy answered, taking sliced bread from the packet. "Anyway, I'm trying to make a good start at this station and it's an interesting case. There are too many suspects with too many dodgy alibis."

Julia poured boiling water from the kettle over the teabags in the two mugs and smiled.

"It was a good move this," she said, turning to Lucy. "A fresh start with new jobs in a new area. I like it here."

"Anywhere's all right with you Jules, but I like it up here too."

Chapter 10: Thursday 16th August (am)

Millicent wove through the traffic to the accompaniment of the driving country beat of Mi Vida Loca, driving like the singer's boyfriend - as if she were herself a little mad. She behaved as if there was a blue flashing light on her car, turned across the oncoming traffic with far too little room to spare, roared into the secure yard behind Witchmoor Edge Police HQ, with a careless abandon which would have made her wince in a more normal mood and screeched to a halt.

She slammed the car door behind her and triggered the self-locking from the key fob with complete lack of attention and mounted the back stairs of the station two at a time to enter the interview room before any but Gail Downing had arrived.

"Anything new?" she asked as she bustled past.

PC Downing was just saying, "Just the autopsy report you asked me to chase, and one from the Fraud Squad", when she realised that Millicent wasn't listening - she was already on the phone to CDI. Cooke.

"Sorry to catch you in such a rush," she was saying, "but I wanted you to do me a favour before you got started on anything else ... Yes, it's in connection with this enquiry and it's urgent, and sort of delicate."

"Explain!"

"Someone in Bradford Division has either just pulled a raid on a suspect garage and car sales place, or is about to. I have reason to believe that's where the Porsche is."

"How do you know?"

Millicent swallowed. "Err ... Let's say I've tapped some fairly unusual sources."

"Why can't you ask around yourself?"

"It may not have actually happened yet. I thought it might be easier for you to get wind of it."

Cooke sounded a bit reluctant. "I could try, I suppose. No harm in asking."

Hampshire took a breath and added. "If it hasn't happened yet, I'd like to join it, and I thought you might be able to pull it. Favour to you from some other senior officer."

Cooke snorted, but he had already more or less agreed by not refusing outright earlier in the conversation. "All right, I'll ask around," he said. "But you owe me. And have you got that analysis done for the Divisional Commander?"

Millicent smiled to herself: after Tobias NDibe had left the night before, she had stayed up late finishing it.

"Yes," she said. "I'll send it through with PC Downing immediately. ... Gail! Take this file to the Chief Inspector right away."

She held out the folder for Gail Downing to take and tried to imagine Cooke's face - she was usually pretty tardy in dealing with matters like that.

"Must rush off to read through the latest reports on the canal murders," she said sweetly, "I want to be bang up to date for your press conference this afternoon." She rang off before he had time to comment.

Next she glanced at the folder PC Downing had been referring to: the body that did not appear to be that of Sansom or Barker after all. It had apparently been that of a fully grown young adult male, whose skull had been fractured by a blow to the left side of his head and neck broken. Time of death not known but almost certainly before the fire.

Unless this new corpse had nothing to do with the murder or arson or the doings of Koswinski, it just complicated the whole story. Had Koswinski lied? Quite possibly! Had the arsonist killed as well as trying to start a fire to hide a murder? That was possible too. Was the arsonist a very clever murderer or was the fire an afterthought? No way to tell yet. Of course, if there was no connection with case there was an even more difficult identity problem.

The report from the Fraud Squad said that some potentially fraudulent dealings had been uncovered, but these were mainly between KHS Investments and Hunter and were the subject of an internal audit. As regards a murder investigation, there didn't seem to be anything helpful.

DC Bright came into the office at that moment.

"Found 'em," he said triumphantly as he approached Millicent.

"Sansom and Barker?"

"And Uncle Olu," Bright agreed. "I got an address in Leeds from Mrs. Sansom. Leeds Division picked them up and did some preliminary interviews. We got them last night. I took statements and let them go to their families. I hope that was all right." He added.

"What were their stories?"

"I've got the full statements here," he said, waving a folder, "But they've not a lot to add. They say Koswinski and Musworth started kicking the tramp around and they took off scared. They don't know anything about the body in the canal, except that Koswinski was talking about dumping it in there. They claim he threatened them with the canal too, which is why they ran off to Uncle Olu."

"The reverse of how Koswinski told it, but it's much the same story," Millicent mused. "Tommy Hammond did wonder whether Koswinski was putting a gloss on it all. No mention of anyone else or another body, I suppose?"

"No. They knew about the fire and got even more scared, though," Bright said. "They heard of Musworth's death on the TV news and were convinced that Koswinski did it."

Millicent frowned but shook her head. "Possible," she said, "But there was no evidence of foul play in the autopsy, so I think the chances of proving it would be zilch."

She changed the subject. "While you're here, get your notes on the door to door around the Hunters. We need more than ever to throw some light on the times the Porsche left the house."

DC Bright fetched his file of typed notes and handwritten sheets and handed them over. Millicent started to flip through.

"I can't make sense of these," she complained. "What order are they in?"

"The handwritten notes are in the order I saw the witnesses," Bright said, "Sort of, anyway. The typed notes are a type-up of the handwritten notes, but I wasn't finished before you sent me chasing after Sansom and Barker."

This was true, Millicent thought, but she still found the notes only semi-coherent. In particular, a lady on the other side of the road had been watching her husband washing the car and had seen the Porsche leaving with one person in it around twelve thirty. She hadn't seemed absolutely sure about either the time or the vehicle and Bright hadn't typed up the note yet.

"If this Mrs. Hutchins is right about the time and the vehicle, It shoots even more holes in Shirley Hunter's story," Millicent remarked.

"She wasn't sure about anything," said Bright, "but it might be worth trying Mr. Hutchins. Trouble is he's away until tonight at a conference. She said he'd be back late Thursday, off work tomorrow and home over the weekend as well."

"I think I'll visit him this evening, then," Millicent said, flipping through the papers. "Where does it say he'd be back Thursday night?"

"I didn't write that down, I don't think," Bright answered, "I remember her saying it though."

"For goodness sake include a written note of things like that. If you carry important information like that in your head and the killer bumps you off with a morphine overdose, at least someone else can follow it up."

The idea that anyone should try to bump him off seemed to startle Bright and Millicent was mildly amused by his expression. She hadn't exactly meant that Bright was at risk - he was more likely to be run over by a bus than poisoned. As she'd made her point she didn't pursue the matter.

"Finish typing these up," she said, handing back the notes. "Well done about Sansom and Barker, though it doesn't bring a solution to the crime any closer or make it any simpler. I'll have to talk to Mr and Mrs Hutchins myself and, if Leverett tells the same story as Shields, we're going to have to do a door to door around Knowles' place as well."

* * *

DCs Hammond and Goss picked up Leverett early and had him in the interview room by not much after nine o'clock. Hammond started the tape in the usual way and began the interview.

"We need to have an account of your movements between eleven and two last Saturday," Tommy said. "In particular, how you and Shields came to be in the same place as a murder victim around two o'clock."

"If you mean Hunter, he might have been murdered, but I doubt if he was a victim," Leveret said bitterly.

"You wanted him dead?" Tommy asked.

"I don't know about dead, but I wanted my money back. He'd ripped me off for fifteen thousand and Sheldon for a lot more than that."

"How had he ripped you off? Was he guilty of some kind of fraud?"

"No. Well, not on us. It was our own greed, I suppose. He just led us to believe information he knew full well was untrue. He was out to get Sheldon's shares, I think, and I was just caught in the crossfire."

This sounded to Tommy like common sense. He couldn't see any gain in it for Hunter, the shares aside.

"What did your wife think?" he asked.

"My wife was not best pleased with any of us," Leverett answered.

Tommy thought that was probably an understatement, but it didn't take him any closer to gauging her reaction. He changed tack.

"When did you decide to hang around his place and follow him?" he asked.

"Friday evening Sheldon phoned me," Leverett said. "He told me how he'd overheard Hunter on the phone telling someone that he'd got enough shares now and how they were to meet at two on Saturday in the usual place."

"So you agreed to follow him?"

"Not right off. Sheldon said that he was going to try and get to the bottom of this and would I keep him company. I'd had a row about it with my wife and it was getting me down so I thought 'Why not?' and agreed."

"Where did you meet?"

"Sheldon picked me up at about quarter to twelve."

"In the BMW?" Tommy asked.

Leverett nodded. "Yes," he agreed.

"Can anyone verify the time?"

"Pardon."

"Any witnesses? Your wife for example."

"Gwen has a Saturday morning surgery and doesn't get in until about one."

"All right. Shields picked you up. Then what?"

"We drove to Hunter's house and we'd only just pulled up against the kerb: I don't think Sheldon even had time to switch off the engine, when Hunter shot out of his driveway, driving like a maniac. Sheldon turned the car and followed him, but we had a devil of a job keeping up with him."

"Where did he go?"

"To Knowles's place in Guiseley."

"You knew the house?"

"Actually no. I don't know Knowles's or Hunters' car or house. I know Hunter, of course. No I went by what Sheldon said, but there's no reason to doubt him."

Tommy didn't think there was either, but it was important to verify his story as far as possible.

"Hunter was driving the Porsche?"

"Yes."

"Was anyone with him?"

"No, I don't think so."

"What time did you get to Knowles's house?"

"Around quarter to one, I'd say. We weren't watching the time exactly."

"What did you do next?"

"We sat and waited. It must have been half an hour or more. I suggested to Sheldon that it looked like Hunter and Knowles had cooked something up together. He said no way. He thought that maybe they were arguing or something. Anyway, a woman that Sheldon said was Mrs. Hunter pulled out of the drive. About five minutes or so Hunter's Porsche came out of the drive and turned away from us. Sheldon started the car and we followed."

"It was Hunter driving?"

"A bloke on his own, wearing Hunter's straw hat and sunglasses and driving Hunter's car? Who else would it be?"

That, Hammond thought, like Millicent before him, is a very good question. Maybe the story was essentially true with just the times wrong. And maybe it wasn't.

Gary Goss had not said anything at all since the start of the interview and, as Tommy seemed to be doing all right, didn't see any point in joining in. He was listening, though, and wondering whether Tommy was going to follow up the red car Mrs. Hunter was driving when she left Knowles's. Was it the same red car seen later?

"So you followed the Porsche again. Where did it go?"

"From Guisley down towards Shipley then right, up through Baildon and onto the moors."

"And you had it in sight all the time?"

"No. We saw it turn up towards Baildon, but we were held up by the lights. By the time we got up the hill we'd lost it completely. We drove around the centre for a few minutes then Sheldon decided to check the moor top road. From the crest of the hill we saw it in the distance, turning towards East Morton. We'd have lost it for sure, except that I saw it again from the top of the next rise, turning onto the track to the picnic site."

"You followed it there?"

"Sheldon stopped the car a little way down the track and we went in on foot."

"What did you find?"

"The Porsche was there, on the grass with the front thingummy open I don't know whether you still call it a bonnet when the engine's at the back. Anyway, the luggage compartment was open and Hunter was inside. It didn't take much medical skill to see he was dead."

"You checked his pulse?"

"Yes."

"Was there any sign of injury?"

"He'd been bleeding a bit from a cut head, but that didn't look to have killed him."

"What did you do next?"

Leverett snorted. "What do you think?" he said. "We'd had it in for him and here he was dead. There was nobody about so we beat a hasty one."

"You didn't see Mrs. Hunter?"

"No one."

"Or her red car?"

Leverett opened his mouth to say no, then hesitated. "Just as were leaving the area, a small red car pulled away from the grass verge, but a bloke was driving. Anyway I don't even know if it was the same make." He paused. "Similar shade of red, though."

"Could it have been Knowles?"

"I didn't recognize him. Maybe Sheldon noticed him. You'd have to ask him."

Tommy recalled Sheldon saying that he didn't see the driver of the red car. That might not have been true, of course, but it was at least temporarily a dead end. "What happened then?" he asked.

"We drove straight to my place. Sheldon dropped me off. I mowed the lawn and then had a shower and changed before Gwen and I went out with Sheldon and his wife Janine for the evening."

"I think," Tommy said, "That we'll get all that typed up into a statement and as soon as you've signed it you can go."

He stood up, scooped up the papers and the tape in his right hand, flicked his jacket casually over his left shoulder, nodded to Goss to join him and went outside.

"Get someone to sit with him and offer him a tea or something, while I get this lot typed."

"It'll take you ages," Goss objected.

"No problem," Tommy answered. "That civilian secretary they've borrowed for the incident room. She's just getting over a difficult divorce. I'll simply smile sweetly, chat her up a bit and then ask her nicely."

"She's a bit old for you, isn't she?"

"Listen, me ole mate, if I chat up a woman and she's a pretty young thing, it makes me feel good. If she's not so young and not so pretty, it makes her feel good. Anyway, Donna's all right, all she needs is her ego boosting, so I'm about to boost it in a good cause. See you in the canteen in ten minutes!"

Back in the incident room Lucy Turner had arrived on her day off and Millicent was reading through her report.

"I still think Alice Dent was involved in dumping Hunter's body in the warehouse and starting the fire," Millicent said, "but you're right to say there's no evidence, because there isn't any."

"As soon as Tommy and Gary have finished with Leverett I'm going send everybody out to do a house to house around Knowles's place. All I want is some independent verification of times."

"Inspector Hampshire, ma'am!" PC Downing called at that point.

"What is it?" Millicent called back.

"The Chief Inspector would like you to drop into his office for a moment."

Millicent got up. "I was just going to go to the canteen anyway," she said to Lucy. "I can call in on my way."

"I tracked down your raid," Cooke said as Millicent entered. "It was planned for tonight about sixish, but it was very hush hush in the planning stage, so they want to know your sources."

For obvious reasons Millicent hesitated - she wasn't keen on admitting to remote viewing.

"Come on," Cooke said. "Who's been talking out of turn?"

"Nobody has," Millicent said.

"Don't come that," Cooke said. "Have you been taking advantage of your ethnic background again?"

Millicent bristled, but she bit her tongue. On the whole Cooke was a good boss and they worked well together.

"Sorry," Cooke apologised, seeing her face. "But how did you know?"

"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you. I'm not sure I believe it myself."

"I'm waiting, but you're making me curious."

Millicent still hesitated, searching for the words. "Last night," she said at last, "I concentrated on the Porsche and put myself into a sort of trance. I came up with a dodgy car sales place in Bradford about to be raided."

There was a silence.

"And you led me on with no more than a lucky guess?" said Cooke.

"Half of the guess, as you call it, was right. Let's see if the other half was."

"Well," Cooke said, "I used up a lot of Brownie points to get you included in the raid, so you'd better be right. Be at Divisional HQ in Bradford at five forty-five tonight and ask for Superintendent Walker."

"Thanks for your help," Millicent said, rather humbly.

"Hmmf!" Cooke snorted. "How's it going otherwise?"

Millicent brought him up to date with the latest developments.

"You're ready for the Press Conference?" Cooke asked.

"As soon as I've eaten," Millicent replied. "I was on my way down to the Canteen for lunch."

"See you in an hour then," said Cooke.

* * *

The Press Conference was in a meeting room next to the incident suite. Witchmoor Edge Headquarters had been purpose built and the architects had been relatively true to the purpose, so the room was fairly suitable.

In the event, there were reporters from the regional dailies, the regional Radio and TV stations but only one national daily was represented, which was a relief. Millicent began by going over the main points of the fire and bodies.

"As you already know, we have an identity for the murder victim," Millicent began. "We have established how he got the fractured skull and ended up in the canal, neither of which killed him, because he was already dead. We have several suspects for the poisoning which did kill him, but an arrest is not likely within hours, so to speak. We have a lot of elimination yet to do."

The woman from the local BBC TV in Leeds was an obviously assertive little climber. "Have you traced the third body from the fire?" she asked.

"We had an almost certain identification but, I am very pleased to say, we have been able to trace the missing young man very much alive. This means we still have no idea who the victim really was."

"Do you think the arsonist was also a killer?" the BBC reporter asked.

"It seems possible but unlikely. It looks as if the extra fatality may be nothing to do with the other crimes, but time will tell."

"Do you think the fire was intended to disguise the poisoning," the reporter from the Yorkshire Post asked.

"Without a doubt."

An earnest young man from the Witchmoor Argus asked, "Are you still looking for the car we mentioned in the story last night?"

Millicent thought he was Alan Ghyll that she'd encountered before, and he sounded much younger than the CDI Cooke's friend, the editor. "Yes," she said. "It seems to have vanished completely, though your story has produced some rumours."

"Why are you looking for a car," The young woman from the BBC asked.

Millicent explained that, according to several witnesses, the dead man had been seen lying in or just in front of a Porsche. Both the man and the car disappeared at around two on Saturday. The man turned up in the canal Sunday morning but the car is still missing.

"Is that in the canal too?"

"We've had divers down and they haven't found anything. Not even a wheel, much less an entire car."

Several people sniggered in mild amusement, including Chief Inspector Cooke.

"Of course," said Millicent, "there's plenty of canal we haven't searched and I imagine sections of the river Aire are deep enough to hide a car, even at this time of year, but we still hope to find it on dry land. Even if we can't find it, someone must have seen it."

"How can a man disappear when there are witnesses and surely access to a poison ought to be limited enough to make catching the person who administered it easy?" The assertive young woman asked.

Millicent was cautious, partly because she needed to be careful not to name suspects and spoil the chances of a fair trial. "There are several witnesses and several persons involved who have legitimate access to the poison, as well as several possible routes of obtaining it illegally," she said. "I think I will have to decline to be specific as it would hamper our investigation and prejudice any subsequent trial."

From this point on the Press Conference began to wind itself down. When the reporters and cameramen had all left, Cooke relaxed a little.

"Splendid," he said. "I thought that all went very nicely."

"It went better than I expected," Millicent agreed, "It was the absence of the national dailies that did it I think."

She picked up her files and folders.

"Now I'd better sort out the odds and ends before I drive over to Bradford," she said.

Chapter 11: Thursday 16th August (Evening)

"We've had our eye on the place for weeks and we've had our suspicions for months," Superintendent Walker said. "I thought we'd been successful in keeping our suspicions to ourselves."

"I didn't get it from your end," Millicent said. "It was more a lucky guess."

"Don't give me that," said Walker. "When I find out who talked I'll have his guts for bootlaces."

Millicent thought it wiser to say nothing.

"But now you know about the raid you may as well be part of it. Anyway, We have to get started," Walker continued. "Timing's all important. The past few weeks several suspect vehicles have left the place Thursday evenings after the front business closes but not long after. Sit in with Inspector Close and remember, you're along for the ride because Bob Cooke is an old friend and I owe him."

"Okay," she said, remembering Cooke's remark about it costing him a lot of Brownie points. She hoped it was going to pay off. If it did, though, that said something about remote viewing which she'd really rather not face. The US army seemed to have bought the idea, but not the political element in the CIA. NASA had joined in the programme, but the US Navy - more probably one or more senior officers - hadn't approved. In fact, proving accurate probably said something about the nature of reality a lot of people would rather not face!

Millicent sat in the back of the second car with Inspector Close, as she had been instructed and noted that there were four cars, mostly of plain clothes, CID people, as well as a couple of vans and At least one police dog she could see.

"Big one, this," she said to Close, indicating the extent of the party.

"We've been trying catch this bugger for a while," Close said. "Walker means to get him this time and God help us if he gets away with it."

"Can you fill me in on the background?" Millicent asked as the convoy swept out of Bradford Divisional Headquarters.

"The guy that owns this garage is called Stone. Danny Stone. He's been buying up wrecks from road accidents legit. They've got to be new and expensive models. Then he steals the same model cars, puts the legit plates on the stolen vehicles and sells them on with the logbooks and everything. Very hard to spot if it's done quickly and the sale is well away from the accident. Often it's not even the same country. We think he exports some of them."

"And Bradford CID's been watching him?"

"Stone runs this end of the racket, but there's a lot to it. Thursdays the buyer comes up with a couple of low loaders and trailers. The Super is hoping we get them all."

"I hope he does get them," Millicent said, "but all I want is the Porsche a murder was committed in. I want my evidence."

"I hope you get that too," said Close, and they fell silent as the convoy swept through back streets, avoiding the tail end of the rush hour traffic.

"Here we are," said Close as the car pulled up, completely blocking a back alley. "We get out here and stand by. Everybody goes in together when all the exit routes are sealed."

He took out his mobile phone and rang in.

"Car two ready," he said into the phone. "You wait with the car and make sure nothing gets past," he told the two uniformed officers.

Close and Millicent strolled easily up the alley, stopping short of the back entrance to a car sales lot. The other end of the alley was blocked by a van and four officers were walking towards them with a dog straining quietly at the leash.

Close's mobile buzzed. He glanced at the message and called out, "Go!" At the same time the four approaching officers broke into a run. At the back entrance one of the uniformed officers took out a huge pair of bolt cutters and cut through the padlock and chain securing the back entrance. Two officers and the dog stayed at the gate while the other two ran on behind Close and Millicent, into the back of the building.

A silver Porsche, two Jaguars and a BMW stood ready to load onto the vehicles and trailers. Walker and several other plain-clothes officers were in the office, where the logbooks and keys had apparently been set out ready to go with the vehicles when the police team had arrived.

"Wrong number plate and wrong colour," Millicent said, disappointed as she looked at the Porsche.

"It'll have been re-sprayed and the plates changed," Close said. "Look around outside. I'll bet you find the plates from your vehicle on a wrecked silver Porsche."

It took Millicent only seconds to find the wrecked vehicle and head back to the office. Inside Superintendent Walker was confronting a defiant Danny Stone.

"I don't have to tell you nothing 'till I get my solicitor," Stone was saying. "And he'll have me out in no time."

"Fine," said Millicent breaking into the party. "You can answer through him as to why you stole a red Porsche in which a man was murdered. He'll not get you out too easily when the charge is conspiracy to murder."

"I don't know nothing about a murder."

"If you don't tell us right now where you got that vehicle you're obstructing the police in a murder enquiry. That's conspiracy."

"I told you, I don't know nothing about a murder."

Stone was getting rattled, Millicent was getting angry and Walker and Close were staring open mouthed.

"You may or may not know about the murder," said Millicent with menace and growing anger, "but you do know where you got that fucking car and you're going to tell me. Now."

Stone was shaken but sullen. "I bought it off a bloke called Koswinski," he said. "All fair and above board."

"Where's the log book?" Millicent demanded.

"He hadn't no log book that's why I swapped the plates over, but he had the keys."

Millicent turned to Walker. "Do you mind if the Porsche goes to forensic straight away?" she asked. "You can keep the car itself as evidence, but I need the forensic report the day before yesterday."

"That's fine as far as I'm concerned," Walker agreed. "We need a full report on these vehicles anyway. We'll just make your one that bit more thorough and have two copies done."

As they strolled outside Close remarked, "That was superb. I think we had all the evidence we needed but you broke him down in seconds."

"You don't know how much I wanted to get my hands on that vehicle," Millicent answered. "Now I need a ride back to Headquarters and I'll go get myself an unpleasant little yob called Koswinski. I've had that little bugger in once, or rather one of my DCs has, and he forgot to mention one or two little things in his statement."

"If you treat him like you did Stone you should get some answers."

"Stone was a complete stranger who just happened to have some information I needed," Millicent said. "Koswinski is an aggressive little bastard behind gang rapes, drugs and fights. I've wanted the little turd for a year or two and this time I think I've got him." Millicent's dark eyes were flashing.

Back at Bradford Divisional Headquarters, Millicent arranged for officers from Witchmoor Edge to go out and pick up Koswinski and then went for a bite in the canteen before driving back to her base. By the time she arrived Koswinski was in the interview room with a uniformed constable.

"Wait in with us. I'm going to need a witness," Millicent said and started the tape rolling. "DI Hampshire interviewing John Koswinski in connection with the murder of Simon Hunter, arson at Cartwright's Wharf and theft of a vehicle used in the murder."

"Now, "she said, "How about you tell me the rest of what happened at Cartwright's Wharf last Saturday. The bits you didn't mention to DI Hammond."

"Don't know what you're talking about."

"I've just come from interviewing Danny Stone of Stone's Autos in Bradford and I've taken all the crap I'm taking in one day."

"Don't try to bully me, you black bitch."

"My dear little boy," Millicent began dangerously" Danny Stone admitted buying from you a Porsche in which Simon Hunter was murdered." She continued with increasing volume and venom, "I want to know where you stole it, who was around when you stole it. How you came to kill somebody at Cartwright's Wharf during the afternoon of last Saturday. In short, everything. Every detail. If you don't tell me now, nice and easy, I'll charge you with conspiracy to murder, car theft, arson and murder of a person unknown and I'll question you through your solicitor."

Koswinski was taken aback but he was, in the famous words, shaken not stirred.

"You may as well know," Millicent continued with rising anger, "that I know you were behind that gang rape in Shipley last New Year. You got off because you intimidated witnesses. You probably only planned it because no decent looking woman would want to have it away with a prickless little creep like you. I've been waiting for you ... now you're here. Tell me what I need to know or I'll enjoy nailing both you and your dodgy solicitor."

She got up, saying to the officer. "If he decides to talk I'll be in my office. If he hasn't talked in ten minutes, charge him with theft, conspiracy to murder and obstructing the police then lock him up until his solicitor comes."

With that she walked out, leaving Koswinski stunned and open-mouthed.

In the event it was seven minutes before Koswinski agreed to talk, but once he did Millicent got most of what she wanted.

"Where was the car?" she demanded perfunctorily, before she had even sat down.

"Outside the warehouse, up an alley at the side."

"What time was this?"

"About half past five or six oclock. No, half past five or a bit before, because I must've got to Danny Stone's by just turned six or he wouldn't have been there."

"Regular client, were you? Bradford CID will be interested. How did you find the car? Was it easily seen?"

"Not really, no. I only saw it from inside the warehouse. I were meeting Jason Oyawinde."

"Jason Oyewinde? Are you sure about the name?"

"Yeah. He's half-black same as you. Anyway he was selling some stuff, but he wanted too much for it. We sat around for a while listening to his ghetto blaster ..."

"What?"

"CD player".

"I know what a ghetto blaster is. What had he got it plugged into?"

"How d'you know it were plugged in to owt?"

"Because I think I understand something that has been puzzling me," Millicent said obscurely, thinking of the wire from a street lamp the fire investigation branch had found.

"He had a wire from a street lamp to this CD player. Real smart it were. Anyway we sat around and listened to music for a while and I bargained with him, but it were no use. He wanted too much, so I grabbed at it and he ran off down the steps. They must've been rotten or something, because the steps broke up and he fell. He wasn't moving or nothing and I couldn't get down, so I went outside to try and get at him from the canal side. That's when I saw this fancy car with the keys in it. I took it to Danny Stone because he wouldn't ask no questions."

"What did you do about Oyewinde?"

"Yeah, well," Koswinski, having the grace to look a little shame faced. "I forgot about him until later on. That's why we went back to the warehouse that night."

"So you went to look for him eventually?"

"Well, I sort of had that in mind when we went there to have another bevy. When Musworth found the tramp I forgot about Oyewinde again."

"You left him to die, did you?" Millicent asked. "Great mate you are."

"I think he were dead already. He fell a long way," Koswinski said. "Anyway, he weren't no mate of mine."

Millicent didn't comment, instead she changed the subject to something that had occurred to her before, but was now a real interest. "Think very carefully," she said, "The conspiracy charge could rest on this. Did you see or hear anyone while you were in the warehouse?"

Koswinski shook his head. "No. But as I were just going there to meet Oyewinde a bloke passed me on a motorbike."

"Out of the side street by the warehouse?"

"Yeah."

"Would you know the motorcyclist again?" Millicent asked.

"He were wearing a helmet, so I never saw him."

"What else was he wearing besides a helmet?"

"Bike jacket and jeans, I think. I weren't taking much notice."

"What was the bike like?"

"Medium sized. Not big and flashy nor an old wreck. Reddish I think. Like I said, I weren't taking much notice. I were thinking about Oyewinde. I thought it were probably one of his customers."

And maybe not, Millicent thought. It might have been Alice Dent fixing the timing device. I bet the fire was meant to destroy the car as well as the body. Clever scheme, whether it was a scratch plan to cover up a spur of the moment murder or part of a thorough plot. Unfortunately for the plotter or plotters, Koswinksi had happened around and Musworth had drowned. It sounded as though the death of Oyewinde was part accident, part Koswinski and nothing to do with the arsonist, though.

"All right," Millicent said. "I'm charging you with theft of a car. The CPS can decide whether there's a case to answer over Oyewinde's death." She turned to the officer. "I'll charge him and we can keep him overnight. DC Hammond can deal with statements and things in the morning."

Millicent still wasn't finished, though time was getting on. She went back up to the incident suite and rang Bradford CID to let them know about Koswinski's apparent familiarity with the Stone set up. Close was still there and she agreed that they could have young thug in Bradford as soon as Tommy Hammond had finished with him next morning.

"And thanks for letting me join your raid," she said to DI Close.

"We got all we needed," Close said. "I'm glad you got your evidence too."

"We have to get lucky once in a while," Millicent said, and rang off.

All that remained was to glance through the results of door-to-door enquiries around the area where Knowles lived and decide that next morning had better start with a whole team review of where they were at. On the way out she left a note for Chief Inspector Cooke in case he wanted to join the briefing.

She selected a tape by the medieval music specialists Fifth Element and drove home in a much calmer mood, reflecting on her remote viewing success and the implications.

Chapter 12: Friday 17th August (am)

It had taken a long time for Millicent to get to bed the night before, and then she'd been a while getting off to sleep. She had dreamed of things faintly connected with her reading and the case and she had breakfasted and driven to work still thinking about them.

Before going to bed she had been reading a book loaned to her by Tobias N'Dibe. It was called Footsteps in the Psychic Wilderness and was by the man who for twenty-two years had been in charge of the US Army's Operation Stargate into Remote Viewing. The man who wrote it had a scientific background and training but an open-minded approach, which led him to challenge the accepted scientific world view. He had come to the conclusion that Quantum Physicists who postulated that the whole universe was connected, at a deeper level, in a somehow holographic way were, at the very least, on the right track.

Millicent had not realised that the negative of a hologram is just a pattern of interlinking circles, like ripples on a still pond when you throw in two pebbles at once. Once a laser is shone at the same angle as the original, a 3D holographic image of the subject is projected. She had vaguely known how the image was produced but had definitely not realised that every part of the negative contains every part of the image: if you take a holographic picture of an apple and cut off a corner of the negative, you don't have the corner of a picture of an apple \- when you shine a laser through it, an image of the whole apple is projected.

What the writer of Footsteps in the Psychic Wilderness, a man called Dale Graff, suggested was that, if creation really is a holographic-type projection, then Millicent was part of that projection and, as a part of the holograph, she contained every part of it, and that is a mind-set shattering idea.

What Remote viewing (or, by inference, any other psychic skill like dowsing or precognition) is doing she thought, as she drove abstractedly but carefully through the rush hour traffic, is tapping into what all of us already know.

The implications of this are shatteringly unsettling and most of us refuse to believe this version of reality. Whatever Millicent's logical mind thought, however, it is an inescapable scientific fact that most of reality is an illusion.

Take this car, she thought. It is composed of atoms of metal and various other things. The biggest part of any atom is the nucleus. If a single atom was the size of my car, the nucleus - and that's the biggest part - would be the size of one of these specks of dust dancing in the morning sunlight. The illusion of a solid atom only comes because that nucleus is vibrating so fast the whole atom appears solid. In reality any atom is mostly just space!

Millicent reflected that the leading edge of quantum physics was uncovering a reality so strange and full of illusions that it was rather arrogant of any scientist to say that any faculty however strange was actually impossible.

It was only when she turned into the secure yard behind Witchmoor Edge police station that she even turned her mind to the case and the briefing she planned to start with.

Chief Inspector Cooke came up to the incident suite and settled himself into the circle of chairs, which the whole team joined. Millicent again had PC Downing join the circle, with easy get out to the switchboard in case she needed to respond to the phone. The civilian staff also joined the meeting. As Millicent said, it was much more efficient if everybody knew where everything fitted into the investigation.

"Right," she said. "We have an identity for the body in the ruins of Cartwright's Wharf and we've found the Porsche." She explained the raid of the evening before and Koswinski's confession.

"I want Tommy Hammond to take statements and charge him, as soon as this meeting's over," she said. "Then you can arrange to have him sent to Bradford, so that they can interview him about his previous dealings with Stone's Autos. We have him on car theft and the CPS can decide whether there's anything over the Oyewinde affair. I think, on balance, that he didn't have anything to do with fire itself. Failure to report a body is an offence against the one of the acts surrounding the coroner, maybe complicated by the fact that he may have believed they killed Hunter. I think well leave that to the CPS as well."

She turned to the matter of the car. "The vehicle is with forensic now. Bradford Division promised a thorough going over as a high priority. They were doing it last night, so I expect the preliminary report any time now. That concludes what I have to contribute: Tony, How did the door to door around Knowles's house go?"

DC Gibbs shifted in his chair and flipped open his notebook. "We didn't have a lot of luck," he said, "A lot of people were away on holiday and most were out on the Saturday anyway. However, a Mr. Peters - Norman Peters - was mowing his front garden and saw a BMW with two men in it pull up outside his house and stay for about half an hour just after half past twelve. He remembered the time, because his wife rang up about twelve thirty from shopping and having her hair done, saying she wouldn't be back till 1.30 or so. He decided he'd just time to mow the grass, which is why he went out there. He saw the BMW arrive."

"Shields and Leverett?" asked Millicent.

"It's about where they claimed to be, at the time they said they were there. We don't have a specific identification of either the vehicle or the occupants, but it is the right make and colour."

"It sounds as if Shirley Hunter was lying and Knowles telling less than the whole truth," Millicent observed. "I've got to see a Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins today and see if we can finally nail the story."

At that point a uniformed officer came in. "Desk Sergeant sent these up," he said, holding out a file and two evidence bags. "Some one brought them over from Bradford Division saying they were very urgent."

Millicent took the files and plastic bags.

"What've they sent you?" Cooke asked.

Millicent held up the bags, one in each hand. "A letter addressed to Simon Hunter," she said, "... and a syringe. Well, well." She put down the two bags and opened the file.

"Short and sweet," she said. "The car had been re-sprayed silver and cleaned. There were no prints other than Stone's people and it seemed to have been given a good general clean, but they slipped up and missed the driver's side door pocket, where forensic found the letter. The syringe had slipped down into the spare wheel compartment. Text of the letter is here."

She read from the file.

"9th August

Dear Simon,

I managed to get the stuff you wanted. I'll meet you Saturday in the usual place around 2pm, unless I hear otherwise.

Rosie."

There was a stunned silence as everyone considered this new information.

"Well," Millicent said, breaking the silence. "That syringe is going for analysis so urgently you wouldn't believe it, and we're bringing in Rosie O'Connor for questioning as soon as this meeting is over. Tony and Lucy, you can go pick her up, but I'll sit in on the interview if I'm back in time. DC Bright, Matthew, you can come with me to interview Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins and then see Shirley Hunter again. Gary," she continued turning to DC Goss, "I want you to take this syringe to forensic and stand over them while they tell you what was in it and whose prints are on it. Then come running back with the report. Stand over them and breathe down their necks if you have to."

She turned to Cooke. "Could you phone as well, tell them how urgent it is and that Goss is on his way over and will wait?"

"They won't like it," Cooke said. "But I'll do it anyway," he added hastily as he caught Millicent's eye. He was well pleased with his Detective Inspector, but she could sometimes be a cross between a bulldozer and a road roller. It was best to get out of her way if you could!

"Okay," Millicent said, rather like an American football coach ending a time out, "let's go, go, go and get on with it. This complicated little crime's starting to crack open."

DC Bright pulled the car up outside 15 Coldicott Crescent and followed Millicent to up the drive to the Hutchins' house. There was a low hedge over a waist height stone wall, but the ground rose quite steeply behind it, so anyone washing the car would have had quite a reasonable view of the Crescent. Millicent turned and looked around. The Hunters' house was on the other side of the crescent and Mrs Hutchins' must have been standing on the edge of the lawn to see their drive at all. Perhaps she had been. Millicent turned again, walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

A man of about fifty of fifty-five, dressed in casual trousers and a short-sleeved shirt came to the door.

"Mr. Hutchins?"

"Yes."

Millicent showed him her warrant card. "Detective Constable Bright, here, was making door to door enquiries earlier in the week, in connection with the murder of Simon Hunter. He spoke to your wife, but you were away at a conference."

"That's right," Mr. Hutchins agreed. "I've been at a conference for Trustees and Board Members of Housing Associations. However, I did read of the murder. Spoke to my wife, you say?"

"We were trying to establish a timetable of events for last Saturday. Find out what time Mr. Hunter was last seen alive and so on. Mrs. Hutchins said she saw him drive out of his drive while you were washing your car, but she wasn't sure of the time." Millicent smiled her most friendly smile. "We were hoping you might be able to remember the time."

"You'd better come in a moment while I think about it properly," Mr. Hutchins said, holding the door open. He led them into the front room, overlooking the front garden."

"Let's see," he ruminated as they sat down. "I generally come in and listen to the repeat of the News Quiz on BBC Radio Four at 12.30, so I try to finish whatever I'm doing by then. Mrs. Hutchings usually gets a snack ready at that time and we have it listening to the one o'clock news. I'm such a creature of habit that I can say with reasonable confidence that I was washing the car between twelve and twelve thirty, because I put the bucket and sponge away and came in just in time for the programme."

"Did you see Mr. Hunter leave?" Millicent asked

"My wife commented on his shooting out onto the Crescent. I looked up just in time to see his car pass at very high speed."

"Was he always a fast driver?"

"It was a fast car and he often drove it fast and carelessly, I thought," Hutchins replied carefully. "On this occasion. My wife thought he was chasing Mrs. Hunter. She left about five minutes before, maybe less. Now, I did see her. I was washing the rear end of the car. I could just see their drive as she pulled out in her little red car and drove past our driveway."

"What was Mrs. Hutchins doing while you were washing the car?" Millicent asked, though she knew the answer from DC Bright's notes.

"My wife is a gardening fanatic. From about half past eleven on she had been mowing the lawn with our motor mower. By the time I was half way through washing the car she was finished mowing and just stood watching me."

"What made her think Mr. Hunter might be chasing his wife? Did they quarrel a lot?"

"I think she was just joking on this occasion but, yes, the Hunters were always arguing noisily and he could be violent as well. I've seen him hit her."

"Well, thank you Mr. Hutchings," Millicent said. "You've been very helpful. I'll get these notes typed up into a statement and someone will arrange to call and get it signed."

To DC Bright she said, "I think we'd better have another talk to Mrs. Hunter before we go back to the station, so we'd better get a move on."

* * *

Lucy Turner took the lead in questioning Rosie O'Connor, mostly because she had been present when Millicent had taken her first statement. DS Gibbs simply watched and listened with a steady attention to detail.

"You never told us you were still in touch with Hunter right up to the time of his murder," Lucy observed.

"We didn't really discuss it," Rosie said. She showed a little more animation than before, but not a lot. "I didn't make a secret of it. At least, I didn't mean to."

"What was the stuff you had for him?"

"A couple of books he wanted back and some Cannabis he left with me."

"You got drugs for him?" Lucy asked. "I thought it was him that supplied you?"

"It was, mostly. I did get Cannabis sometimes, because I knew a bloke who sold it. This wasn't mine, though and I didn't buy it. Simon left it in my flat."

"Why did you say managed to get the stuff then," Lucy asked. "It sounds as if this was a special effort."

"Did I say that?" said Rosie, rather disinterestedly. "I meant managed to find the stuff. Anyway, It was what he asked me to get."

"How did he ask you?"

"He wrote."

"Have you still got the letter?" Lucy asked.

"I've probably got it somewhere," Rosie said. "I haven't cleared up much in the last couple of weeks."

"When was this?"

"I guess it was just after the row," Rosie said. "A couple of weeks ago. I didn't do anything about it so he rang me up."

"And you hunted these things out for him, even after what he'd done to you?"

"I had nothing else to do and anyway I didn't rush to do it."

Lucy was sceptical. She caught Gibbs's eye and thought that he was sceptical as well, but wasn't sure whether he was doubting it was cannabis or doubting it was Hunter's. Doubting both probably.

"And where was the usual place?" she asked.

"We used to meet quite often in the the 'Bulldog' at Burley Woodhead," Rosie said.

"And that's where you meant?"

"It's where I meant and where Simon would have understood."

"And did you meet there?"

"I went there as arranged. That was why I left the cycle race early. I waited for more than hour, but Simon didn't come."

"I thought you dropped out because you weren't fit enough for a road race," Lucy reminded her. "That's what you told DI Hampshire."

Rosie smiled wanly and a little ruefully.

"Gloria talked me into joining the road race. I couldn't keep up I'd been so long out of it. I had lunch with her in Ilkley and had nice time to ride to Burley Woodhead. When Simon didn't come I rode down to Menston and caught the train home, like I told her in the first place."

"Why didn't you say that the first time we talked to you,"

Rosie just shrugged. "Nothing happened. Nobody came. There was no point in drawing attention to myself when there was no need."

"Why did you write to Hunter after what he'd done to you?"

Rosie shrugged again. "Some people, mostly women I guess, though not exclusively, seem to slip into the role of victim," she said. "I don't know why I let him humiliate me then come back for more. I'm not proud of it, you know. That's another reason I didn't say anything to your inspector."

"You say you were regulars at the Bulldog?"

"Yes."

"So, if we show your picture to the bar staff, they'll know you?"

"Yes."

Lucy weighed her up. She seemed to have no hesitation about what was, in effect, an alibi. Perhaps Rosie was bluffing.

Lucy paused the tape and got to her feet, signalling Tony Gibbs to follower her into the corridor. "D'you think she's bluffing?" Lucy asked him.

"She tells it like she's telling the truth," Gibbs admitted. "Still, we'll have to check out the story. It should be easy enough. Just call in the pub with a photo and see if they know her and whether she was there last Saturday."

"And if so, what time," added Lucy. "Okay, do you want to have a go at her while I drive to Burley Woodhead, or would you like to have the drive out?"

"I think it might be better if you were to keep on at her," Gibbs said, a little doubtfully. "I don't actually think there's much to be gained until we check out the story anyway."

"Let's see if she has a photo handy," said Lucy, and they went back into the interview room.

* * *

Shirley Hunter was in, which was a little surprising to Millicent. Quite apart from the question of shift patterns, Shirley had been about to move into the nurses' hostel. Obviously the murder of Simon had made the move conveniently unnecessary.

"This is Detective Constable Bright," Millicent began by way of small talk as Shirley showed them into the living room. "We wanted to check with you something that one of your neighbours said."

"Which one?" Shirley asked.

"It wouldn't be proper for me to disclose that at this stage," Millicent said, "But we have information that you went out in your own car just after twelve last Saturday."

"It was much earlier than that," Shirley said. "I did go out to the shops for about half an hour, to get things for the picnic. I was back about Elevenish. Eleven fifteen maybe. I wasn't taking any notice of the time, but it must have been about that, because it wasnt much after eleven thirty when Simon and I set off for the picnic."

"Our information is that you left about ten past or quarter past twelve and Simon followed five minutes later in the Porsche."

"By that time, my car was in the garage here." She pointed. "And we were well on our way to the picnic site."

Shirley was sounding irritated rather than worried or strident and was giving no ground to Millicent, who changed tack.

"The forensic department checked the items we found at the picnic site," Millicent said. "They said that Simon's prints were unnaturally clear for those things to have been thrown."

Shirley shrugged. "Well, they were thrown," she said

"And several of the items were also on the till slip for the shopping you and Ellen Barnes did that afternoon."

"I needed more yoghurts and more jam," Shirley said. "Simon had been throwing them around."

"Why was it diabetic jam? Are you or Simon diabetic?"

"My brother is. Simon had the jam at Bernard's and liked it, so I bought more. If Simon liked something, that was reason enough to buy it."

Millicent was thinking that she was getting nowhere with the interview and that perhaps it would be better to have Shirley in and confront her with the evidence. She wondered whether either Shields or Leverett would be able identify the woman. Perhaps it would be worth having a go at Knowles again, see if he could be persuaded to change his story.

"Thank you Mrs. Hunter," Millicent said, getting up. "I think that's all for the moment."

Outside in the crescent DS Gibbs observed as they go into the car. "She's lying."

"What makes you say that? Millicent wondered.

"What Mrs. Hunter said and what Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins said can't both be true, and the time difference is too great for it to be a simple error. The Hutchins have no reason to lie, ergo it must be a deliberate lie on the part of Mrs. Hunter."

"I agree with you," Millicent, "but we have to prove it and I'm curious to know why she's lying. What really happened? Let's get back to headquarters and have some lunch."

Chapter 13: Friday 17th August (pm)

Burley Woodhead is a wide spot in a very narrow back lane. Along the valley bottom run the river Wharfe and the Ilkey to Leeds main road, the A65 - fast, wide and busy. Running roughly parallel to it, winding along the edge of the moors, often with heather sweeping right down to the road on one side, and farm fields on the other, is a country lane. Along that country lane is a short string of stone built farms and houses and a pub that together make up Burley Woodhead. The old school house has become a middle class conversion, as have the old village shop and a couple of barns.

The 'Bulldog' is a small pub, not quite turned into a tourist attraction, though doubtless it would see plenty of tourists on summer weekends. Still, DS Gibbs thought it still looked more like a village local.

Gibbs left his car in a small car park and looked around. The moors swept down to wall at the back of a small beer garden, comprised of a couple of picnic tables, a children's slide and swing and a set of goalposts with a sagging net. On the other side of the car park a stream came down from the moors and passed underneath the lane in a small culvert. At least the bed of the stream did: the water itself had disappeared in what was fast becoming a drought. The day was hot and sunny and the sky cloudless.

The detective turned and went inside the low stone building. Inside was rather gloomy but much cooler, with a low ceiling, dark stained oak beams and dark panelling. The bar was highly polished dark oak with towels over one set of pumps and the walls of the saloon were decorated with aged and fading photographs of men with sheep dogs and stern expressions.

Behind the bar the landlord sat reading the Daily Star. The sleeves of his red pinstriped shirt were rolled halfway up hairy arms and his beer belly oozed over the edge of the bar.

"Good Morning," DS Gibbs said, and the man looked up.

"What can I get you?" the landlord asked. He didn't do more than look, but his tone was friendly.

"Just an orange juice, please. I'm working." He flashed his warrant card at the man, put it away and took out his wallet to pay for the drink.

"I was wondering if you could help," Gibbs said as the fat man shook the bottle of juice, levered the cap off and poured. "Do you recognise either of these two," he added, putting down photographs of Rosie O'Conner and the late, unlamented Simon Hunter, on the bar top.

The landlord took Gibbs's note, rang in the price of the drink and counted out the change, before he picked up the photographs to study them.

"Yes," he said. "Quite regular they were one while. They've been in less often recently."

"Was the girl here Saturday?"

"About two or just before, she came in. Looked like she was waiting for someone. Probably him. She stayed on her own, though. She'd be here for an hour, give or take."

"She definitely arrived by two oclock?"

"Just before. Say ten to, but I'm not sure."

"And she was here an hour?"

"Until just after three oclock, I think. Again I'm not certain."

"And she was alone the whole time, you say?"

"I couldn't swear she didn't speak to anybody, because I was coming and going. I wasn't watching her the whole time. But she didn't sit with anyone nor nothing like that."

"If I get that typed up as statement will you sign it?"

"I suppose so, if it's important. Why d'you want to know?"

"If she was here," said Gibbs, "She wasn't murdering the bloke."

"Oh," said the landlord, not seeming all that interested. "Well she was here all right."

DS Gibbs finished his orange juice

* * *

Millicent snatched a sandwich and a coffee and took them up to her office in the Incident Suite, leaving DC Bright to eat a more leisurely lunch in the canteen. She had no sooner settled herself at her desk than there began a succession of callers.

DC Goss came in waving his notebook. "Hot from the presses," he said. "In fact, so hot it hasn't even been to the presses yet."

"The syringe?" Millicent demanded eagerly, and Goss nodded.

"So what do forensic say about it?"

"Very odd," Goss said. "There were no prints on it but those of Hunter himself, and they were entirely natural as if he'd used the syringe himself. Thumb print on the plunger and so on."

"That is odd," Millicent agreed. It had upset her calculations completely. She hadn't been expecting any particular prints at all, but the one set she hadn't expected were those of Hunter."

"Very odd," Millicent repeated. "What had they to say about the contents?"

"Morphine," Goss said. "There were traces of other substances but they were too similar to be certain of either the proportions or the quantity, but they thought the mixture would have been effective in anything from two or three minutes to about twenty minutes, depending on dosage."

Millicent leaned back, tapping her fingers absently on the desk as she tried to make sense of the new information.

Could Hunter really have given himself a fatal dose of a dangerous mixture like that? Obviously he had done, but had he done it knowingly and willingly? In spite of Doctor Leverett's remarks, he was possibly a drug user himself. At least he was closely aware of them, so it was very unlikely that this was a conscious decision or risk. If he was dying of cancer suicide seemed a possibility, but he had continued to act like an obnoxious thug to the very end, which didn't seem suicidal. Why had he done it? And when? His mad driving at quarter past midday on Saturday suggested a high. So why had he gone to Knowles's to die?

She was still miles away when Lucy Turner and Tony Gibbs walked in.

"How did you make out with the O'Connor woman?" Millicent asked.

"On the Saturday she was in the 'Bulldog' at Burley Woodhead from before two until after three," said Gibbs. "She and Hunter were regulars, the landlord identified them. Her story is that this was the usual place that she mentioned in the letter and she went there as arranged to meet Hunter but he didn't turn up. "

"What does she say about a phone call?"

"Denies there was one." Lucy said.

"And did you believe her?

Lucy hesitated and considered. "I'm not sure," she said, "but unless Rosie called from home we might have trouble proving it, even if she was lying."

"Yes," said Millicent. "Well, leave me to think this one through. All three of you go and get some lunch."

Goss, Turner and Gibbs trooped out to get their lunch. One of Millicent's strong points was that she always thought about the welfare of her troops, as it were, even though she drove herself hard at times. The army had taught her that leadership and command are as much about responsibility for others as delegation to others: both are absolutely essential in the right mix.

Once on her own, Millicent began to go beyond considering the various elements of the crime as a detective solving a puzzle, to an individual deliberately allowing her own higher self a chance to resolve it. Instead of waiting for a flash of uncontrolled insight to come of its own accord, she decided that she would try and induce the kind of trance N'Dibe had induced two days earlier.

It is, however, easier to decide something like that than to do it. Dowsing with a pendulum, gazing at a crystal ball, casting the I-Ching or studying Tarot cards all, in their different ways, do nothing more than allow the user to tap into the hologram of what we already know. The question was, which route to follow.

Millicent decided that she would get all of these items and try them at home over time, to see which worked best for her. In the mean time the safest thing to use at Witchmoor Edge Police Headquarters was nothing at all. She would attempt the remote viewing she had done with N'Dibe. As she was less likely to be disturbed in her own office, she went there, telling her Secretary she was not to be disturbed.

Sitting back in her armchair with the office door locked and her eyes closed, she scrunched up her muscles in turn and let them relax. With deep breathing relaxing was easy, but visualising was not quite so straightforward in broad daylight. She broke off the pulled down the blind, and then relaxed again. This time she was able to see the narrow valley and follow the path up to the portal to other worlds where the guardian stood waiting.

Without realising she was doing it, she consulted the guardian. He, she or it led her through the gate to a quiet, chapel-like room, calm and still, where the whole problem might be considered. On a wall of the silent room, as on a TV screen, there flickered images. Suddenly she saw clearly how the crime might have been committed. The death of Simon Hunter and the various side problems seemed to be no problem, though proving any of them undoubtedly would be.

Millicent relaxed calmly back to the gate, thanked her own higher self and counted to three, as N'Dibe had taught her. As she sat there in the dimly lit office she reflected on the new experience. What she had done was, at one level, no more than concentrate on the problem. She had read somewhere that the human brain is so powerful and underused that the problem does not exist which could not be solved if sufficient concentration was directed at solving it. At another level she had controlled her involuntary psychism and produced an insight to order.

She opened the blind again and, on the way back to the incident room, collected another cup of coffee.

Millicent waited quietly in the incident room until her team drifted back from lunch, sipping her coffee and thinking about the crime, the probable solution and how she might prove her ideas. As Lucy came back into the Incident Suite, she called her over.

"Lucy," she said, "I want you to get in touch with BT and check the numbers called from KHS Investments on Friday the 10th."

"What needle might I be looking for in that particular haystack?"

"It's possible that Hunter called Rosie O'Connor, not the other way round. If he did, he probably phoned from the office."

"You mean that's what Shields overheard?"

"Right. Though I think he may have overheard Hunter saying he wouldn't meet her in the usual place."

"I don't get it," Lucy said. "She went to the usual place. Why do that if she knew he wouldn't be there?"

"That is a very good question. It suggests to me - assuming she did know he wouldn't be there - that she had a good reason why people should think she didn't know. Now run along and do that checking. Have BT email or fax the record of all calls made between twelve and three for a start. And on your way out, ask DS Gibbs to look in."

Tony Gibbs came in immediately.

"I want you to get a search warrant and go over Knowles's garage," Millicent said.

"What, for the warrant application, do you hope to find?"

"A blunt instrument."

"Eh?" Gibbs looked puzzled.

"Hunter was alive when he drove to Knowles's house at twelve thirtyish," Millicent said. "He was dead when Shields and Leverett found him at the picnic site at two. Between twelve thirty and two, while he was still alive, he got a blow on the head with something hard and heavy."

"And you think that the something hard and heavy is still in Knowles's garage."

"If were very lucky we'll find it," said Millicent. "And if we're very sharp, we'll recognise it when we do find it."

"Okay, I'll apply for the warrant."

"And you're in charge of the operation, but I think I'll join the search party, though I'll just stand there and look and think."

It was as Millicent had said. She drove herself and pulled in behind the car driven by Tommy Hammond, in which there were also DS Gibbs, DC Goss and DC Bright.

Gibbs rang the doorbell. Bernard Knowles was still at KHS Investments in Bradford, of course, but he showed the search warrant to Mrs. Knowles and she let them into the garage.

"I don't know what you think you'll find there," she said. "I'd have let you search without a warrant, because there's hardly anything there."

Gibbs wasn't sure what he thought he'd find there either, but he wisely said nothing.

The garage was roomy: almost but not quite a double. It was clean and well kept and, as the Saab was outside on the drive, almost empty. There was a workbench and drawers at the rear, in front of a window overlooking the back garden. Next to the bench was a trolley jack on wheels. There were a few tools in the cupboards, the drawer held only a few fuses and bulbs. The floor of the garage had been painted with concrete floor paint in the last year or two and the car had dropped very little oil since. Millicent wandered in.

"I don't see a blunt instrument, unless you mean that jack handle," Gibbs said to her.

"I wonder why the jack has two handles," Millicent remarked. "And why the one that doesn't fit has a name on it."

It didn't have a name on it, but it did have the initials SK and it was too long and too square to fit properly.

"Pity didn't have the initials SH," Gibbs said.

"Put it in an evidence bag and pass it on to forensic," Millicent instructed. "SK could be Shirley Knowles. We know nothing about where she lived before she was married, but her things would have gone with her to her new house when she married."

"Would she have had something like a jack, though?" Gibbs asked.

Tommy Hammond looked up from the drawers he was checking.

"Using things like jacks or screw drivers and doing car or household repairs isn't something sexual," he said "Admittedly more men than women tend to do jobs like that, but what really counts is some kind of aptitude or ability. I wouldn't get oil under my fingernails doing something like that and, as for DIY, you can do it yourself! But my current girlfriend: she's a looker, but she's really good at practical things."

"Shirley Hunter is a nurse," Millicent remarked. "She must be fairly practical."

"Well, we'll see what forensic make of it," Gibbs said, putting the jack handle in a plastic bag. "Can we go now you've found a blunt instrument?" He added grinning.

"No point in staying, is there?" Millicent replied solemnly. "Get that thing to forensic as soon as you get back to HQ. Draw lots on the way home to see who does it."

* * *

"You were right," Lucy said. "I searched a haystack of phone calls and found the needle. Somebody called Rosie O'Connor's number from KHS Investments at 14.14 on the 10th and they talked for nearly a quarter of an hour. Like you said, that'll be the call Shields overheard."

Millicent was back in her office and Lucy was looking pleased with herself, as well she might.

"It begins to fit," Millicent said. "I'll talk to that young lady again myself and ask her why she lied. I also want to know when they did meet and why she kept an appointment she knew he wouldn't keep."

Lucy looked up sharply as she added, "Though I think I know."

She got to her feet. "Come on, we'll visit Miss O'Connor before we go home," she said and grabbed her handbag and car keys. "Take your own car as well, then you can drive straight home."

* * *

Rosie O'Connor let them into a flat that had been tidied up somewhat. She'd washed up, done the ironing and vacuumed the carpet and the mail had either been answered or, at the very least, tidied away. Rosie had tidied herself up as well. She was wearing a crisp looking blouse and clean jeans. Lucy looked her over and decided she had quite a nice figure too.

"Now," Millicent said. "You told Detective Sergeant Turner that you didn't speak to Simon Hunter on Friday the tenth."

"I didn't actually. She asked me whether I rang Simon. I said I didn't, which is true. He phoned me."

"You're splitting hairs. You could have told us you spoke to him."

"Look," Rosie said. "This has been a pretty dismal two years. I dried out in a clinic and then lost my job ..." She paused, looking near to tears. "And here I was, still making a fool of myself over this man. Surely you don't wonder that I don't want to let you know how stupid I was, if I could avoid it."

"Somebody murdered Hunter by giving him an overdose of morphine. I don't think you realise how potentially dangerous your position is."

Rosie smiled wanly. "It's probably a good thing for me that someone did kill him or I'd still be making a fool of myself. I was sort of in love with him, even after everything."

"You talked for fifteen minutes or so," Millicent said. "What did you talk about?"

"I wanted him to meet me in that pub in Woodhead, but he wouldn't."

"What was the stuff you had for him?"

"I had some heroin for him. I'm on prescribed methadone myself and drying out, but he uses still. Or he did until someone murdered him. I don't know for a fact that he shoots, but he gets through a steady trickle."

"So where did you meet him to give it to him?" Millicent asked.

For a moment it looked as if Rosie might deny the meeting altogether, and it would have been almost impossible to prove.

"He came out of the office for a few minutes and met me in a café in Broadway. He took the stuff, but he brushed me off."

"What time?"

"You're going to think me deliberately unhelpful, but I don't know. It must have been about a hour and a quarter after he called me."

"Come on now," Millicent said. "What time did you arrange to meet?"

"The arrangement was to phone from a call box when I got to the City Centre, which is what I did. We spent about fifteen minutes together and I just sat there on my own for another half hour or so feeling really low. Then I went home."

"So why did you still go to the 'Bulldog' in Burley Woodhead on Saturday?"

Rosie shrugged. "I tried to compete in the bike race, like I said. When I dropped out, Gloria and I had something to eat. After that I rode back via Woodhead and stopped off for a while in the pub, feeling sorry for myself."

"Now. The stuff you gave Simon killed him. Did you deliberately give him something rather more pure than usual?"

"It wasn't cut as much as usual, but he knew that," Rosie said.

"We only have your word for that."

"What I gave him could have been cut to provide three or four shots at least and he knew that. If he died from what I gave him it was either because he gave himself a shot knowing he hadn't cut it or done anything to dilute it, or ..."

"Yes?"

"Or he cut some of it and someone else switched the cut stuff and the uncut stuff."

"And who would do that?" Millicent asked.

Rosie shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "Shirley?"

Lucy thought that, in Shirley's place, she might have done it.

"I think that's about it for the moment, Miss O'Connor," Millicent said, getting up. "We will have to bother you further, I'm afraid, but that will do for now."

* * *

Lucy did not usually talk about the specifics of her job to Julia, but she had already talked about Alice Dent and Ellen Barnes because of the similarity between their relationship and her own and Julia's. Now she told Julia of Rosie O'Connor, doing no more than thinking out loud.

"You don't think she did it, do you?" Julia remarked.

"This bloke had led her a dance," Lucy said, "got her hooked on heroin, lost her a job and then tossed her aside. Here she was, still breaking the law for him after all that. He takes the stuff and gives her the brush off. It would have been easy to omit to tell him the stuff was purer than usual and let him give himself an overdose." She paused and thought about it, then added, "Funny though, I don't feel she did that and we'd never prove it anyway, even if she did."

"If she didn't forget on purpose to warn this nasty little get," Julia remarked, "Who gave him the overdose?"

"That's the problem. Either, one: Rosie didn't tell him. Two: he forgot the warning and it was an accidental death. Three: he did it on purpose, which is suicide, or four: some one swapped doses and murdered him. It's going to be the very devil to prove which."

* * *

Tommy Hammond did not usually talk to his girlfriends about his work at all. He had long since discovered that policemen often have difficulty with their private lives in that area. Many women don't like a relationship in which so much quality time is taken up with work and other people and in which personal and family relationships have to take a back seat.

On this occasion Francesca Sapori was presenting a problem he did not usually have. She was slender and elegant and Italian looking, as her name and parentage suggested, though she was as English as he was himself.

Francesca was getting to him more than most women did. Tommy himself was smart, clean cut and quite a handsome bloke. He possibly looked like a policeman once you knew his background, but that wouldn't have been your first thought. Now he was thinking that something more than a casual relationship with Francesca might be possible. First, though, he'd have to acquaint her with his profession. He wondered how best to do that - a candlelit dinner on Saturday perhaps. Not that, come to think of it, an August evening was quite suitable for a candlelit dinner.

* * *

Millicent let herself into the cottage in Baildon and gathered her post as went in. She dumped the post, turned on the music centre and put in a CD. She tidied up a bit, made herself a tuna salad and buttered a crusty bread roll she had bought on the way home, tossing the salad in olive oil and cider vinegar, in time with the beat of Blanket on the Ground.

Until she had finished her meal and washed up it was quite definitely a Country & Western evening she ate to the accompaniment of Dolly Parton, Don Williams and Mary Chapin Carpenter; cleared the plates to Loretta Lynn and made a coffee to Johnny Cash. The singers and the songs belonged largely to her teenage years, but her mother and brother had both been Country and Western music lovers and, though that part of her life was gone as surely as her life with Carlos, the music remained.

Once her work was done, she changed the CD to one of the Chilean group Quimantu, turned the music down very low and sipped her coffee reading more of Footprints in the Psychic Wilderness.

Chapter 14: Saturday 18th August 2001

The next morning Millicent arrived at her desk in the incident suite in good time, but already Tommy Hammond was reading the report from forensic about the jack handle. Another report from forensic about the syringe lay on her desk.

"Both Knowles's prints and Hunter's were on the jack handle," Tommy read, "and there were traces of skin and blood. They're trying to match the DNA."

Millicent nodded. "And what do you conclude from that?" she asked.

"Maybe no more than that Hunter left it behind and Knowles moved it," he said. "But ..." He shrugged.

"But it could be that Hunter attacked Knowles with it and Knowles grabbed it from him," said Millicent. "You're absolutely right. Without knowing where the blood came from we can't even guess. However," she added, "We could have another go at Knowles and see if he sticks to the same story."

"And," Tommy said, grinning, "We could try a bit of bluff."

"Such as?"

"We could let him think we know whose skin and blood."

"We would have to be careful not to say anything we have to unsay later," Millicent pointed out. "On the other hand, if we go round now he probably hasn't gone out anywhere yet. I think we'll go now and you can drive."

Tommy handed the forensic report to Millicent. She took it, but was skimming through other folder.

"I'd forgotten we hadn't had a written report on the syringe yet," she remarked. "It's a good job Gary Goss brought us the detail."

She read through the brief report on the syringe, put down the folder and led the way out, saying, "Remind me to ask Shirley Hunter whether Simon was left handed!"

Shipley wasn't busy yet, and the main road up to Guisley still had little traffic either. The sky was a cloudless blue and Millicent pressed the electric window button and breathed in warm August morning, the scent of cut grass and garden flowers from the houses they were passing, the petrol fumes of a major road and the slight background smell of the heather moors as they slipped out of the town. The day was doubtless going to be hot. Up on the moors there might be a slight breeze, but here in the valley only the draught of the car's travel disturbed the still air.

Bernard Knowles was washing his car on the drive when they pulled up outside his house. Millicent noted as they walked up the drive that it was largely invisible from the road. Knowles was watching them arrive and emerged from behind the car with a fairly neutral expression, turning off the hosepipe as they approached.

"Another week without rain and there'll be a ban on hosepipes and washing cars," he remarked.

"You don't seem surprised to see us," Millicent observed in passing.

"My wife told me of your visit yesterday, and that you left with a jack handle. I imagine you've come in connection with that."

"Yes," Millicent agreed. "Forensic told us that there were your prints on it, which is not surprising since it was in your garage. They also told us that Simon's prints were on it too. That also is not so surprising, since the initials SK would seem to imply that it was his wife's - your sister's - before they married. There are, however, three odd things about it, and an interesting coincidence."

Millicent counted off on her fingers.

"First, it is odd that the jack handle was on the bench in your garage. Second, many possible explanations for that oddity require the rest of the jack to be in your garage, and it wasn't. Three, there are traces of skin and blood on the jack handle. I have asked forensic to check whether they are those of Simon Hunter. I did that because there is the coincidence. Shall we call it a fourth oddity?"

Knowles said nothing and his face betrayed nothing. He was a pleasant man, looking pleasantly interested.

"The fourth oddity is that Simon Hunter received a blow to the head while alive. The doctor at the autopsy is quite certain it did not kill him, but it may have knocked him out. I think, Mr. Knowles you know how Simon Hunter received that blow to the head between twelve thirty and one last Saturday, and it would save us a lot of time and trouble if you would tell us what happened."

Knowles looked down, face still impassive and breathed a deep sigh.

"Very well," he said. "You'd better come inside and sit down."

Bernard Knowles took Tommy and Millicent into his study. It was a spacious room, with desk and easy chairs, a computer and shelves of books. He looked older and wearier than he had been when they had interviewed him at his office, less than a week before.

"It was something of a surprise and a relief when the autopsy showed he died of a morphine overdose," Knowles began. "I thought I'd killed him."

"Tell me what happened," Millicent said.

"I told you that Hunter was a vicious crook and quite unscrupulous. He lied and cheated at every turn and he was wantonly violent towards my sister. He was a brute. Last Saturday, about 1.45 - I've no idea of the exact time so don't ask me - Shirley drove into the driveway in great agitation. She said Simon had been more than usually violent. He had threatened her with a jack handle. In fact, he threw it at her but missed. She jumped in her car and when he tried to break in the car she knocked him out of the way and drove here.

We were wondering whether we ought to drive back to her house and see whether he was seriously injured, when he arrived here in the Porsche. He drove right into the driveway; half staggered, half leapt out of the car and attacked us with the jack handle. I wrenched it from him and hit him with it. He went down unconscious. Shirley felt for a pulse and said he was dead. We looked around carefully. The house is hidden from the road and there was nobody about, so we put him in the luggage compartment of the Porsche and took the body up to the picnic spot by the reservoir. Shirley said there were a few picnic items in her car and we could make it look like a picnic."

"Let's go back a bit," Millicent said. "You said 'half staggered, half leapt'. What did you mean?"

"I suppose," Knowles said, "that he had been injured when Shirley's car hit him. He was limping a bit, but he was staggering as if he was drunk."

"He was a younger man than you. Were you surprised you wrenched the jack handle from him?"

The question seemed to surprise Knowles and he hesitated before answering. "I was too busy panicking at the time," he said. "I supposed that desperation lent me strength. Now you ask me and I think about it, I think I am surprised." Knowles paused, and then added, "I'm convinced he meant to kill us though, he was in such a rage."

"Why didn't you just plead self defence?"

"Of course that's what I should have done, but I only saw that afterwards."

"Okay," Millicent said. "Now tell me what happened at the picnic spot."

"I drove the Porsche," Knowles explained. "Shirley drove her car up and parked it on the grass verge, while I drove Simon's car right in, where we would not be seen from the road. We opened the bonnet but we heard another vehicle approaching. Shirley said to take her car and she'd get some friend to pick her up. I ran out through the bushes and climbed over a dry stone wall to Shirley's car."

"What did she do?"

"I didn't see."

Millicent drummed her fingers absently on the chair arm and considered the story for a moment.

"Concealing a body is a criminal offence," she said, "because the body is the property of the coroner until he has discharged it for burial. It's much the same offence as teenage girls commit when they hide the body of a still born child they don't want their parents to know about."

She continued drumming her fingers. "I don't think a court or the CPS would consider the affray as anything but self defence, but we still haven't ascertained how Mr. Hunter got the overdose."

"I'm afraid I can't help you there," Knowles said with a gesture of helplessness.

"No. Your story doesn't throw any light on that," Millicent agreed. "Well, you'll have to come into the station and make a new and detailed statement. I'll arrange for Sergeant Gibbs to do that this morning, while we go and talk to your sister."

Millicent stood up and took her mobile phone from her belt.

Shirley Hunter was not at home, so Millicent and Tommy drove to Bradford Royal Infirmary and tracked her down to the neurological ward, where she was just about to take a break. The two detectives and the nurse went into an empty day room.

"We're sorry to disturb you at work," Millicent said. "We've just come from talking to your brother. He told us what happened last Saturday, in particular why he thought he'd killed your husband. Now I'd like to hear the details which he couldn't give us."

"You mean, what happened before I drove round to his house and after he left?"

"Among other things, yes."

"Simon said he wanted a picnic, like I told you. I went out to get some bits and pieces around eleven. When I got back he was already in foul mood about something. I said something - I don't know what - to make matters worse and he threw the jack handle at me. It missed me and I threw a tub of yoghurt at him. That missed too, but he flew into an awful rage. I got back into the car and turned it around. He came at me with the jack handle so I drove the car away, hitting him as I left, but I don't think it was very hard."

"Anyway, I drove round to Bernard's and I was just telling him about it when Simon drove up in the Porsche. He got out of the car ..."

"How did he get out?" Millicent interrupted. "Did he jump out?"

Shirley looked as surprised as Knowles had. "N-o-o," she said slowly. "He was acting sort of drunk, I suppose. Staggering around. Perhaps he got more hurt than I thought when I knocked him down."

"Was he drunk or could he perhaps have taken a morphine overdose?"

Shirley Hunter looked puzzled rather than relieved. "He looked all right when I left him," she said.

"But it could have been an overdose?"

"Obviously."

"Were you aware that your husband had been diagnosed as having a terminal cancer?"

Shirley Hunter looked so surprised that Tommy thought she couldn't be faking.

"I knew he'd had hospital tests about something," she said. "But I didn't know about that."

"Didn't you ask him what the tests were about?" Millicent asked, a little sceptically.

"If Simon didn't want to tell me something there was no use in me asking."

"Was your husband a drug addict?"

"My husband was a great many unpleasant things," Shirley Hunter said. "I'm not aware that he used any drugs beyond cannabis. It wouldn't surprise me that much, but there was no sign."

"Was his rage last Saturday out of the ordinary?" Millicent asked.

"He was often violent and bad tempered, always in a rage about something. Saturday he excelled himself. I've never seen him quite so bad, but often nearly as bad."

"Okay," Millicent said. "Let's turn to the other important area you can throw more light on. What happened after your brother left the picnic spot?"

"Not much," Shirley said. "When Bernard had gone, I climbed over a wall and walked through some trees and hid well out of sight. I saw my car go that would be Bernard. I heard the other vehicle start up and drive off. I went back to the Porsche. Or to where it should have been, but it was gone."

"Gone?"

"Gone!"

"Did you hear it start?"

"No. But it was quiet when it was just ticking over, so I possibly wouldn't have heard it."

"Did you hear or see anybody?"

"No."

"So you phoned Ellen Barnes?"

"The rest is as I told you right at the beginning."

Tommy Hammond had been listening in silence. "Where was the mobile phone?" he asked now.

"In my hand. When I ran off, I took my handbag and mobile phone with me."

"And what about the yoghurts and things Inspector Hampshire found at the site?" he asked.

"I thought Bernard had told you," Shirley said. "Bernard wiped them free of fingerprints with a cloth from the car and I held them against Simons hands and threw them into the bushes. I was going to put out the things for the picnic when I heard this other car."

Tommy turned to Millicent. "Won't be a minute," he said. "I'm just going to the toilet. Is all right to use the one just by the day room entrance?" he asked Shirley.

Shirley nodded.

Millicent waited until the door had closed behind him and then asked Shirley, "Was Simon left handed."

"No," she answered, evidently surprised by the question.

"Then why did Simon use his left hand to inject himself with morphine?"

Shirley did not answer.

"I'll tell you what happened," Millicent said, "and you can confirm the story while there are no witnesses."

Shirley still did not answer.

"After you knocked him down Simon gave himself a dose of heroin and then came after you at your brother's house. The syringe was still in the car and so was the heroin or, more probably some morphine, and I think I know where that came from. The brawl between Simon and your brother took place more or less as he told it, except that your husband wasn't dead. Up at the picnic site he started to come round. You mixed the heroin with water from the car radiator and gave him the overdose. You probably used disposable gloves or just wiped the syringe clean and put Simons prints on it. You know well enough how to use one."

"You were interrupted by Shields and Leverett arriving. What you intended to do was make it look like a picnic, but you hadn't time."

"The picnic things were still in the Porsche," Shirley said. "But I didn't inject him. The bit about him coming round is wrong. He was dead?"

"Are you quite certain of that?"

"I know death when I see it - it's my job."

Millicent remained sceptical. "I still think it happened the way I described it but I can't prove it - unless you want to make a formal confession in front of a witness."

At that moment Tommy Hammond came back into the room and Shirley shook her head dumbly.

"All right," Millicent told her. "You can finish your shift, but you'll have to call in to the station and make a revised statement. You realise that concealing a body is a criminal offence and the CPS may consider that you've obstructed the police?"

Shirley nodded. "I must get back onto the ward," she said. "We're short staffed this weekend. I'll call in about the statement. I come off shift at two."

As they went back down in the lift Tommy noticed Millicent shuddering.

"What's the matter," he asked.

"Memories," Millicent said shortly, and then added. "Hospitals always smell the same, whether you're in Bradford or Seville."

Tommy didn't say anything, but he was shrewd. He knew that Millicent had lived in Spain and that she was a widow. He didn't know the details, but he could guess a lot.

As the lift reached the ground floor and the doors opened, Millicent remarked, "I think we'd better check with Doctor Leverett whether she actually prescribed morphine to Hunter and how much."

"Doctor Leverett?"

"Hunter saw her last Thursday. She told me he had a terminal prostate cancer. I was so taken aback that, like a fool or a complete rookie, I forgot to ask whether she prescribed Hunter any morphine."

"It could be where he got it, I suppose," Tommy agreed as they walked out to the car park. "But it's potentially suspicious that Shields and Leverett were the last ones to see him."

"The probability seems to be that Hunter got the overdose about twelve twenty, between Shirley leaving their house and him leaving."

As they got into the car Millicent was silent and far away. When Tommy asked he where next she didn't answer.

"Where next?" Tommy repeated.

"What?" Millicent demanded startled, then smiling added, "I'm sorry. I was miles away. It's thirteen years ago, almost to the day, since Carlos was blown up in a car bomb incident. I was with him when he died in hospital and they always seem to get me that way. Drive us back to Witchmoor Edge Headquarters. I'll see if I can get the information over the phone from Doctor Leverett."

"We could stop off there you know," Tommy said. "I remember Leverett saying his wife had a Saturday morning surgery and the Bradford Road Health Centre isn't out of the way."

"Okay," Millicent agreed, just a shade reluctantly. "Let's try the lady herself, though the receptionist is a bit of a dragon."

"Leave her to me," said Tommy.

Millicent smiled to herself, but said nothing.

"I'm really sorry to bother you when you're obviously so busy," Tommy said, giving the severe looking receptionist one of his most charming smiles. "We need to get one more tiny piece of information from Doctor Leverett. We won't keep her or you from your real work for more than a moment."

"I'll see if the doctor can fit you in," said the woman, defrosting slightly for Tommy but giving Millicent a glare.

"Thank you so much," Tommy said sweetly.

The receptionist behind her glass screen picked up the phone and rang through, presumably to the doctor. After a moment she said to Tommy, "Doctor Leverett is just finishing with a patient right now. You can go through as long as you don't keep her long."

"We won't, Tommy promised and gave her another knee-weakening smile.

Doctor Leverett looked busy and slightly harassed. She was keying some information into the computer and pushed a strand of hair out of her face as she looked up.

"Sorry to barge in on you again," Millicent said. "This will really only take a few seconds."

"Go on then," Gwen Leverett said.

"When we talked last I was so surprised by what I learned that I forgot something so obvious a beginner should have thought of it."

"What's that?"

"Mr. Hunter was seriously ill. Did you prescribe any drugs?"

"Yes. He was in quite severe pain at times and should have been hospitalised."

"Which drugs?"

The doctor turned to her computer and made several mouse clicks, saying as she did so, "I rather think it was a propriety brand containing methylmorphine as the active ingredient ... Let's see ... No. I prescribed the codeine before, but the last one was straight morphine in tablet form. I advised him not to drive after taking them."

"Was there enough to kill him?"

"It's certainly possible if he took the lot straight off. Two thirds would have been enough to make him seriously ill within an hour or less, but a shot of Naloxone would have cured him. Cured him of the effects of the drug, that is. It wouldn't have had any effect on the cancer."

"How imminent was his death from the cancer?" Millicent asked.

"A month or two at the most," the doctor replied.

"Thank you Doctor Leverett. Once again you've been helpful. Thank you for seeing us at such short notice."

They got up. Tommy gave Gwen Leverett the kind of smile he had given the receptionist and they turned to go.

"Your colleague has a very good bedside manner," Doctor Leverett remarked. "Good morning to you both."

Outside Millicent said, "Doctor Millard said the morphine had been injected and we found the syringe with Hunters fingerprints. You can't inject tablets unless you dissolve them."

"Like Heroin?"

"Suppose he started feeling some pain as a result of throwing that metal thing at Shirley and being knocked down."

"Sounds likely," Tommy agreed.

"Then he gave himself a shot of morphine before chasing after her. He would have been on his last legs when he got to Knowless and died there."

"Could be, I suppose."

They arrived at the car and Tommy let his boss in.

"Back to Witchmoor Edge Headquarters," she said.

Back at the station, Chief Inspector Cooke was hovering on his day off and several of the team were around. Millicent bustled about.

"I think we have this more or less wrapped up," She said to Cooke. "But it's not going to be nice and neat, I'm afraid. Tony, I want you to go out, pick up Knowles and charge him with concealing a body. Take a full statement and do the paperwork. Lucy. You're on tomorrow, so what you can do is pick up Rosie O'Connor this afternoon and charge her with either possession of, or procuring heroin. There's no evidence against her except her own word, so take a full statement. Take Matthew Bright with you, but once you've dealt with it, you can leave Matthew to take her back and leave yourself. You can type up the statement and do the paperwork tomorrow."

Millicent picked up a new folder from her desk.

"DC Goss. Gary," she said. "There are new cases coming in and this one is over except for the tidying up. Here's a new one. I want you to zip over to Saint Luke's Hospital in Bradford and get a statement from a hit and run victim. She handed DC Goss the file. I've no idea why they took her there from Witchmoor town centre, but seemingly they did. Her name is Sandia Begum and she apparently has a broken leg and pelvis. Get a statement from her and have a snoop round for witnesses. Lucy can take over tomorrow, so make sure your notes are legible. This looks like a time consuming job on Monday."

She began to shoo her team out. "Go on," she said. "Grab a quick bite if you haven't had one, then let's get this enquiry finished and out of the way."

When the others had gone either to the canteen or the car park, Millicent turned to Chief Inspector Cooke.

"I'll wait around for Shirley Hunter to come in. We have evidence and her confession to concealing a body, so I'll charge her with that. However, that's all we can charge her with."

"You sound as if you think there's more," Cooke commented.

"I'd say she knows who took the Porsche and the body to Cartwright's Wharf and I'm pretty sure she knows who started the fire, but we're not going to prove it."

"Hmm."

"Look, the real crook is dead, a young thug is drowned, a drug pusher killed in a fall and we're going to do another thug for car theft."

"Oh yes," Cooke said, "Tony Walker called from Bradford. They have some evidence that Koswinski dealt with Danny Stone over a couple of years, so he may well go down. They're pretty pleased all round."

"It's time I followed the troops and grabbed myself some lunch," said Millicent. "I was thinking of a pub lunch at the George and Dragon down in the Market Square. Have you eaten or do you feel like joining me?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Cooke said and they left together, going down the stairs and out into the August sunshine.

Chapter 15: Saturday 18th August (pm)

Julia lay back in the heather and sighed contentedly.

"What a glorious evening," she said. "It was a great idea to picnic up here."

"Beats the Bull Ring in Birmingham, anyway," Lucy Turner answered lazily in her noticeably Birmingham accent. "That's some view," she added.

It was early evening and they were on the moors, above the Cow and Calf Rocks at Ilkley. Lucy was sitting, arms round her knees, gazing out over Wharfedale and the moors beyond, dividing Wharfedale from Nidderdale. The air was warm and heavy, the skyline crystal clear and the moors across the dale fading into the purple distance.

"You know," Lucy said suddenly, "She's all right."

"Who is?"

"Our Millie. She drives herself too hard and she's a bit of a loner, but she seems to care about everybody else."

"Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself..."

"Eh?"

"A bit of the Desiderata."

"Oh, yeah. Everybody brought up in the sixties had a copy hanging in their loo a few years ago. Some probably still do. Still, it's a good thought really. Millie has quite a temper when she's roused, but apart from that she's easier on the discipline towards everybody else than she is to herself. A bit unwholesome really. She let me go early today but she was going to stay on herself to wait for Shirley Hunter to finish her shift."

"Don't knock it," Julia said. "A lot of bosses would have it organised the other way round. And some of them wouldn't have waited until the end of her shift to charge Shirley Hunter either, hospital or not"

"That's what I said," Lucy agreed. "She's all right really. And Tommy Hammond's not bad for a bloke."

"Who's Tommy Hammond?"

"A detective constable in the department," Lucy said. "He's a cop with a conscience."

"What d'you mean," Julia asked.

"He really seems to care about what he's doing. Do you know, he wouldn't even press an old lady for Koswinski's name, because she was scared of retaliation if she told."

Lucy was silent for a time, gazing out over the stupendous view, then added, "He's too nice to be a cop really. He'd make a good partner for some girl who's into men." She paused again, and then added. "But I'm not. I prefer you, Jules."

* * *

Millicent, Tobias NDibe and Judith Easterman sat in the still calm of Millicent's small garden, sipping at long drinks. It was a warm evening, just right for relaxing in garden chairs. Tobias and Judith were drinking Pimms gin slings, but Millicent was drinking a mixture of red wine and lemonade - what the Spanish call tinto de verano or summer red wine. Baildon was quiet. Many people were away on holiday and this was a quiet neighbourhood anyway.

"Well," Millicent said, stretching luxuriously. "It's nice to unwind after a major investigation, but it wasn't a very satisfactory end."

"On the contrary," N'Dibe said. "In terms of the universe as a whole, I think the conclusion was entirely satisfactory."

Millicent started to protest, but N'Dibe continued. "This Hunter individual was a highly undesirable person. He will have to be born again and again as he seeks union with his God, and he really does have a long way to go. The only option his immortal soul can have, when it sets itself lessons to learn in the next life, is to find something a little more challenging than a middle class male with no real handicaps in life."

"Are you suggesting that we set ourselves challenges in our lives?" Millicent asked

"Oh, indeed so." N'Dibe was listening sharply and got to his feet. "A moment," he said, and hurried down the path and out of the gate.

"What's wrong?" Millicent asked Judith, who was laughing.

"Listen!"

Millicent listened, but she could hear nothing beyond the faint tune of an ice cream van bell, playing a couple of bars of Greensleeves.

"I can't hear anything," Millicent said. "Only the ice cream van."

"That's it. Our great leader, the famous Tobias, has a great weakness for ice cream. He's like a kid with it."

As Millicent took another sip from her glass, thinking about the meal in the restaurant in Manningham Lane and the night of the Remote Viewing. N'Dibe came back into view. He was holding three large cornets each with a milk chocolate flake stuck into the ice cream, one dripping with chocolate sauce.

"Here we are, ladies," he said as he turned into the gate. "I didn't ask for sauce on yours because I didn't know your tastes."

N'Dibe handed a cornet each to Millicent and Judith, and took an enormous lick at the other cone, to prevent it dripping down the side, then licked the chocolate from his hand.

"Ahh," he said, nodding. "Not bad. Not bad at all for a van."

"Toby is a connoisseur of ice cream," Judith remarked. "Aren't you Toby?"

"I know what I like," N'dibe agreed, taking the flake bar from the cornet and biting into the chocolate. "And I know a good ice cream when I eat one. Very pleasant taste, this particular brand - a little sweet but otherwise very acceptable."

He had licked down to the edge of the biscuit and took a bite from the cornet itself. "Yes, indeed," he added, and said again, "I know what I like." He finished the flake and returned to the ice cream.

"I thought we were going to talk about tomorrow night," Millicent said, between licks at her own ice cream, "but the esoteric doesn't seem to mix with ice cream."

"No reason why not," Judith answered. "Ritual and ice cream don't mix, possibly, but ..."

"Ritual and ice cream do not mix, definitely," N'Dibe corrected pedantically. "But this evening we are only talking. As I understand it, you are uncertain about the probity of the step you are about to take?"

"I'm very uncertain," Millicent said. "Pentacles and things."

"Ahh. Very interesting, the origin of the pentacle," N'Dibe remarked. "Both the Pentagram - the five point star - and the hexagram - the six point star made up of interlocking triangles, like the Israeli flag - are very ancient symbols. Nobody is quite certain how old, but many centuries BC. I will put to you how I think they arose and give you a conundrum to consider."

"Venus orbits the sun at about the same speed as the earth, but it is nearer to the sun than the earth, so it gradually pulls ahead, like an athlete on the inside track in a race. If you take a starting point when the Earth, Venus and the Sun are in line - a conjunction is the proper name for it, both astronomically and astrologically - it actually takes eight earth years until the two planets arrive back at the same starting point together. In that time, Venus has completed ten orbits. You follow me so far?"

Millicent nodded. "It's fairly clear so far", she said.

"I'll draw it I think," said NDibe. He took out a small pocket book from the inside pocket of his jacket, hanging on the back of his garden chair, and drew something like this:

"It follows that in ten orbits there are five times when Venus the Sun and the Earth are in Line with Venus between the Earth and the sun. There must also be five occasions when the three are in line with Venus on the far side of the sun like this drawing. You are following me?"

"So far," Millicent said.

"You're doing better than I did when he first explained it to me," Judith remarked.

N'Dibe frowned ever so slightly and continued, "If you can imagine a circle and you draw on that circle where the five lesser conjunctions occur, and the order in which they occur, and then take another circle and do the same for the superior conjunctions, then join up the points in the order in which they occur - one to two, two to three, three to four, four to five, and five back to the starting point, six, you have a perfect pentagram each time. Like this. He drew another diagram in his pocket book."

Millicent sucked in a breath as she took in the implications of N'Dibe's explanation, but she said nothing.

"There is, however, more," N'Dibe said. "Mercury is much nearer to the sun than earth, so it orbits much more quickly. Three times in a little less than a year, in fact. If you were to mark your circle with the six conjunctions - three inferior and three superior and, again, the order in which they appear. Then for each of the sets of three you join the points one to two, two to three, three to one, and you have two exactly interlocking triangles like the Israeli flag, the Star of David or the Seal of Solomon."

N'Dibe finished his ice cream with a flourish and wiped his mouth and hands on a large hanky. He took a sip of Pimms and continued, "It seems to me that there are four possible explanations for the phenomena I am describing," he said. "Firstly, there is the scientific solution that it is mere chance that a modern discovery should discover that these ancient symbols illustrate something entirely real."

"I don't know the odds against chance of ancient symbols being the same as conjunctions of Mercury and Venus," Judith said, "but I should think the odds must be astronomical, if you'll pardon the expression."

"I should think so too," Millicent agreed, laughing.

"In deference to science, however, that must remain the first possibility," N'Dibe said. "The second possibility is that this is the last remnant of the learning and wisdom of an earlier civilisation now lost. Even the Bible tells the Noah story in such a way that it seems that much learning was lost. That, interestingly, is the old medieval Masonic belief too, in some of grades of the Scottish rite. There are many other such stories too."

"For example?" Millicent asked.

"The story of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh for one. Then there are references in the Vedas of Manu being warned about the flood and climbing high into the Himalayas to avoid it. The Vedas tell that Manu came down from the Himalayas to restart the human race."

"And there's always Plato's Atlantis," Judith added. "And the Mayas believed that civilisation had been destroyed not once but four times. They called the current age the 'fifth sun'."

"I've heard the expression El quinto sol," said Millicent. "What's the third alternative explanation?"

"Thirdly", N'Dibe began, "I would draw your attention the idea Carl Jung had of meaningful coincidence - synchronicity he called it. The traditional scientific view is that events are linked by cause and effect or they are not linked. It seems possible to me," he continued, taking another sip of his drink and wafting away a fly, "that these symbols reflect something about the nature of reality. Jung speculated that events could be connected by something other than cause and effect. The interesting thing is that some modern quantum physicists - David Bohme for example - are thinking along similar lines. Thus, the third possibility is that these symbols reflect a synchronistic view of reality."

"I think you're losing me," Millicent said.

"No matter at this stage," NDibe said equably.

"And the fourth explanation?"

"The experiments into dreams conducted by Rhine University and some of the experiments of the Stanford Research Institute arising from Remote Viewing both imply without much doubt that what one might call future dreams are possible. The fourth possibility is that these symbols were a dream insight into what we now know to be reality."

N'Dibe downed the last of his drink and added, "There you have it. Four absurd explanations for this phenomenon. These phenomena, I should say," he said, hastily correcting his usually impeccably correct grammar. "I am interested in knowing which you think the most likely and why."

Millicent frowned in thought and tapped her fingers absently on the arm of the chair.

"Well," she said, "I think the least likely is mere chance. I have a scientific background which is sufficient to tell that the odds against chance are huge." She paused, still drumming her fingers.

"I can't really accept the idea of future memories, at least, not on that timescale." Millicent continued. "That leaves lost civilisations and synchronicity. I think both sound plausible but I'll go for lost civilisations, simply because I don't know enough quantum physics to consider the alternative. Which do you think?"

N'Dibe did not answer, instead he observed obscurely, "According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the physical world is a dream and we must each go on living life after life, until we discover how to awaken. This brings us neatly to the nature of events tomorrow night."

"I wondered when we'd come to that," Millicent said.

"You will need a magical name or motto, by which you will always be known within the temple," Judith said. "What do you feel sums up your intentions for yourself?"

"I see all but control myself," Millicent said. "Something like that."

"Video omniam sed me coerceo," Judith said.

"She's very good at Latin," N'Dibe remarked. "And her Greek, Hebrew and Coptic are not too bad either. I believe she's correct, by the way. but she manages to make everything sound impressive."

"She does," Millicent agreed. "Now, about tomorrow?"

"The first step is as a neophyte," N'Dibe said. "If you find that it is not for you and you drop out, there is no harm done. The next steps are the four elemental initiations \- earth, air, water and fire, in that order. I strongly suggest that, once you take the first, you take all four. If you do not you may be forever slightly out of balance. Even if you decide after one or two that this path is not for you, I would urge you to stay on and take them all."

Millicent nodded. "Shall I refill the glasses before we get down to details?" she asked.

"That's a nice idea," Judith said.

"Yes indeed," NDibe added.

* * *

Haworth High Street is a much painted, steep and cobbled, pedestrianised living museum and considerable tourist attraction. In summer it looks like a picture post card of itself. Tommy thought it could be very different on a chill and rainy November evening, though. He'd seen it on such a day and considered it not at all surprising that Branwell Bronte had drunk himself to death or the sisters written novels - there was damn all else to do in the place in winter but drink or write, and if you didn't have the talent to write ...

Francesca looked lovely. They were sitting at a table outside the Three Sisters restaurant and she was wearing a head turning, figure flattering, off-white top and loose white trousers. In the valley a steam train on the Worth Valley railway chuffed smoke and steam, though one couldn't see the train itself.

"I was able to get away in good time," Tommy remarked into the interval between main course and dessert. "I can't always," he added, swallowing hard. "Being a detective can be a demanding job. Any police job can be."

Francesca did not appear either surprised or put out. "You're a detective at Witchmoor Edge?" she asked, but in such a way that implied she already knew the answer.

"Yes," Tommy answered. "Why?"

"Nothing really, except I think I know your boss."

"Detective Inspector Hampshire or Chief Inspector Cooke?"

"Millicent Hampshire. A very interesting lady. Extremely good at dowsing."

Tommy was stunned, but he didn't want to talk about Millicent or work. "What are you doing tomorrow?" he asked.

"Filling in as a waitress in one of our restaurants."

Tommy's face fell: he was aware that the Sapori family had their money in a chain of restaurants, but it sounded like a brush off.

Francesca laughed chidingly. "Actually, I'm free all day," she said, "I will be tied up in the evening. A meeting which will involve your Inspector. All day though, I'm free and I'd really like to go somewhere with you. Where do you suggest we go?"

"I thought we might drive up the dales somewhere."

"Stump Cross Caverns," said Francesca. "I have wanted to visit the caves for a while."

"Your wish is my command, as long as I'm off duty," Tommy said, and Francesca Sapori laughed.

Chapter 16: Sunday 19th August (Evening)

Standing in the anteroom Millicent could smell the incense and it took her back to her early childhood in Northern Ireland, before they'd been forced to come to Bradford. Her mother had been a Catholic, but once they'd been obliged to come to England, she hadn't gone to church again. All the same, it was a pleasant scent and it took her back to the strife-torn streets of Belfast, the religious bigotry and the racial tension that had threatened to drive a wedge between her parents.

In the silence of waiting she had nothing to do but think and, though she tried to prepare herself for what was to come, her thoughts were centred on what had passed: her parents had run to Bradford; when she met Carlos in her pre-university gap year in Spain she had been relieved to run to Andelucia; when Carlos had been killed by the ETA car bomb she had run again, leaving her daughter behind in Seville to be brought up by Carlos's parents. Had she run from the army to West Yorkshire police? Undoubtedly - she was running from her 'demons'. She thought that now she would confront them.

Tobias had brought her here - here being a converted church in a Bradford back street. It was a small, stone built former Methodist chapel, a yellowish sandstone, blackened by the grime of years. There was wire mesh over the windows and an air of neglect about the exterior. As N'Dibe had remarked earlier, if you clean it up and make it look prosperous, any building then needs much more spending on security.

Inside, however, there was no air of neglect. There was a small modern kitchen and toilets, changing rooms, a comfortable, carpeted lobby, which was also a meeting place adjoining the hall in which the real business of the order was conducted.

She had waited in the lobby until the group had all entered the main body of the temple. Then she had been allowed into this anteroom and given a plain black robe, tied at the waist with a black cord. The only other person was a similarly dressed man, tall and thin, wearing a collar of office in about three inches wide black material, not quite waist length, with a silver sword insignia about four inches long hanging from it.

"I'm the Guardian," he said, "and strictly speaking I'm supposed to wear a mask until after you've given a pledge of confidentiality. It all looks a bit off-putting to a neophyte and my job isn't threatened by you knowing about my free-time activities, because I'm self-employed anyway, so I don't bother."

He didn't say what he was self-employed as, and Millicent thought it might not be entirely proper to ask him. Nor did the man volunteer his name, and Millicent thought she'd better not ask that either. Apart from that, she remembered the discussion of magical names and mottos from Saturday evening.

Through the door she could hear muffled voices, but she could make out no words. She heard three knocks and then a series of words and knocks.

"They've opened," the Guardian said. "In a moment I have to blindfold you. It's partly because you're not supposed see other members until you've taken a pledge of confidentiality and partly because the blindfold itself and the act of ritually removing ritually removing it are symbolic, but I won't spoil it by telling you what they're symbolic of."

The door opened a crack, a female voice whispered "Ready!" and the door closed. The Guardian knocked, and the door opened.

"Whom have you there?" the same female voice demanded clearly.

"An aspirant in the darkness seeks the light," the Guardian said.

"Wait while I report to the Soror Initiator."

The door closed and the Guardian tied a blindfold over Millicent's eyes.

"There is a symbolism connected with this," he said, "but personally I think the custom probably goes back to a time and place when it was dangerous to belong to a group such as ours, and members protected themselves from a newcomer until they were certain of him or her."

Millicent heard the door open and she felt her arm grasped firmly. She walked through the door, into the main hall and immediately felt the difference. In part it was the lack of light and in part it was the scent of incense, but it was more than that. There was a tension in the atmosphere, as if she was surrounded by 100s of people. Or perhaps 100s of presences.

"Do you vow that within this mystic sphere, you will henceforth lose your name and be known in this temple as Soror Video Omnia Sed Me Coerceo?"

The voice of the sister Initiator was clear and ringing, vibrating around the room. At the same time as she was marvelling at the power and resonance in the voice, she recognised it as Judith's.

"Answer, I do," whispered her guide.

"I do," Millicent said.

"Why do you come here?" the Initiator asked.

Her guide answered, aloud and firmly, "I inhabit a world of ignorence and darkness: I seek the light."

A different voice, which Millicent recognised as that of Tobias N'Dibe, boomed from somewhere in the same direction, "Un-purified and un-consecrated you cannot enter our Sacred Hall."

"Lead the aspirant around the hall to the West," said the Initiator.

Millicent felt herself led by her guide, probably in an elongated circle: she walked slowly preceded by a faint metallic sound - the censor no doubt, because the scent of incense was strong.

Suddenly, the circuit hardly begun, she was stopped. Someone traced a sign on her forehead. She thought the design was a triangle, but she wasn't sure.

A voice said, "You are purified by Earth," and the slow walk continued.

She was stopped again and Millicent felt a draft of air in her face. A different voice said, "You are purified by Air." and again the slow perambulation continued.

She was halted a third time and Millicent could feel the warmth of a lamp, or possibly a candle, close to her face. She thought it might be tracing another triangle. "You are purified by fire," a voice said

The slow perambulation continued. The silence was heavy, the atmosphere alive and electric. She wondered how large the room was, for they seemed to have been walking forever.

Again she was stopped and a triangle was traced on her forehead with water. A fourth different voice said, "You are purified with water."

Millicent's guide turned her round and she lost all sense of direction.

"Let us pray to the Creator," the Initiator said. "Let the Aspirant kneel."

"There is a kneeling stool just in front of you," the guide whispered. Millicent felt around for it and was helped to her knees.

The voice of the Initiator rang out: "Lord of the Universe and Creator of all, ruler of Light and Darkness! Look with favour on this Aspirant who now kneels before Thee. Grant Thine aid unto the higher aspirations of her soul, so that she may prove a true and faithful Soror Neophyte. To the glory of Thine Ineffable Name. Amen."

"An obligation is now required of you," said the initiator, "for all details of membership and meetings membership and some of what we teach is confidential. Understand, however, that in that obligation there is nothing contrary to, or subversive of, your civil, religious or moral duties. Are you willing to take that obligation?"

There was no prompt, no pressure, only an expectant silence, into which Millicent said, "I am."

Then you will remain kneeling, hold this volume of the sacred law in your left hand, place your right hand upon it; state your several names at length and say after me. I ..."

"I, Millicent Kathleen Hampshire ..."

"In the Presence of the Lord of the Universe ..."

"In the Presence of the Lord of the Universe ..."

"Who eternally creates and sustains all reality ... "

"Who eternally creates and sustains all reality ... "

"Who works in silence within..."

"Who works in silence within..."

"And of this Hall of Neophytes ... "

"And of this Hall of Neophytes ... "

Millicent pledged to keep confidential the names of the members of the group in all lawful circumstances, not to abuse any knowledge she gained from her studies within the order or to use her knowledge for evil purposes, to respect all religions without exception and to maintain a kindly and benevolent attitude towards all other seekers of the Light.

Finally, the Initiator continued, "I solemnly promise not to flaunt or parade ... any knowledge I may acquire ... to those who are not ... true seekers of the Light."

"I swear to observe all these things ... without evasion ... equivocation ... or mental reservation of any kind."

There didn't seem to Millicent to be anything unreasonable in the pledge she had given, or anything with which she could have the least difficulty. She remembered reading somewhere that Alistair Crowley wrote that 'They swore me to secrecy with terrible oaths and then taught me the Hebrew alphabet". Was that just an excuse to himself? There were no terrible oaths here just a pledge of fidelity to things which were reasonable and high-minded. Her thoughts were interrupted by the voice of the Initiator."

"Arise, Neophyte of the Order."

Millicent got to her feet.

"What do you seek?"

"Answer Light", whispered the guide.

"Light!" Millicent repeated.

"The path is long, but the dawn is breaking in the East. Let the neophyte see the first light of dawn."

The guide released her arm and Millicent felt somebody unfasten the blindfold.

It was dimly lit in the hall. Several candles gave an illumination and two larger flames, in sconces high in the walls, gave some light. The temple room or hall (or whatever its proper name) was not as vast as she had thought while blindfolded. At each side of the hall, midway along the wall, there was a robed figure with a different coloured robe beneath a plain black cloak, seated behind a small table on which was a lamp. On a dais at one end, behind what she assumed was the initiator, for she recognised Judith, there were three additional figures, austere and remote, one of which was Tobias N'Dibe. In all there were perhaps a 15 or so people present. Millicent wondered who had paid for all this.

N'Dibe stepped forward slightly and said: "Inheritor of a dying world, we call thee to the living beauty. Wanderer in the wild darkness, we call thee to the gentle light. Long hast thou dwelt in darkness - quit the Night and seek the Day! Follow your conductor and step out onto the path that leads to light."

With that the ceremony continued with more perambulation; walking slowly along a path which was in her own mind, but real nevertheless, like the path along which N'Dibe had led her in the remote viewing session. Remote viewing! It was only four days previously, but it now seemed very remote indeed.

Part of Millicent knew that she had hardly started the difficult task of controlling her own psychism and of releasing the personal demons that had driven her ever since the death of Carlos. Before that probably. The threats which had forced the family to leave Belfast, the hatred of her kin towards a mixed marriage, mixed in more senses than one, had hounded her mother to death. For the first time she recognised that Carlos had provided no more than a brief but beautiful respite from what lurked below the surface of her soul.

"You cannot pass unless you know my name, a robed figure with a black banner was saying,"

"Your name is Darkness," said the Conductor.

"Pass, Seeker of the Light. Pass, for it is morning."

Nevertheless, another part of her reached to great heights and knew that she could find her answers and her peace, control her insights and her visions and bring out the powers within her soul. This might not be, to quote Churchill in circumstances of which he might well have disapproved, the beginning of the end, but it was certainly the end of the beginning.

Mike Crowson – Former teacher, former Secretary of the Green Party in its early days - is an Occult and Esoteric Consultant, offering free and unconditional help for those in genuinely occult or psychic difficulties, based on some 40 years of study and research. He is a Mason, a Rosicrucian and an Adept of the Western Mysteries, and can be found and contacted at: http://www.mikecrowson.co.uk

His books include:

Witchmoor Edge Series:

Witchmoor Edge

On Edge

Outside Edge

Over the Edge

Edgeways On

Female of the Species (Short Stories)

All are (or will shortly) be available as ebooks through Smashword)

Occult Novels:

The Rings of Poseidon

Only the Darkness

Heat Stroke

The Flag and the Flower

The Riddle and the Key

Wytchmoor Peak

(and 'Sealed Entrance' coming shortly)

Parallel Loop (Short Stories)

The first three are available free as .pdf from obooko.

All will eventually be available as ebooks through Smashwords, some as free downloads)

Non-Fiction:

Psychic Lifeline

(Recognizing and Managing Psychic & Occult Harm)

Poetry & Plays

What's Left for Tomorrow (Poetry)

All This Homework's Killing Me (Play)

The Poser in the Porsche (Play)
