Chapter 4
Sycamore House was a Victorian villa built in the Gothic style that was fashionable in the nineteenth century.
It was set in more than three acres of land, and a sizeable proportion of the grounds was given over to woodland.
Wesley suspected that when she’d bought the place, Helen had imagined herself floating among the trees collecting fuel for her new wood burner; living the rural dream.
Shortly after the sensitive builder had given his statement to uniform, he’d driven away fast in his van.
It was time for Wesley and Gerry to take their leave too.
There was nothing much else they could do there apart from allow the CSIs to carry on with their mysterious work and hope that their efforts produced something useful that would help them solve the puzzle of the man in the wall.
As Wesley drove slowly towards the gates, doing his best to avoid the potholes in the drive, a figure appeared in front of the car. Wesley slammed on the brakes and wound the window down.
The young man rushed forward. ‘What’s going on? We heard this terrible scream and then all these police cars and vans started arriving. Is everyone OK? Only I was going to take the tea mugs back to the house for the lady, but when I saw . . .’
He looked genuinely worried, and Wesley took pity on him. ‘If you mean Mrs Jones, she’s fine. She just had a bit of a shock, that’s all. And you are?’
‘Darren. I’m a surgeon.’
Wesley and Gerry looked at each other.
‘Been doing a spot of gardening between operations, have we?’ said Gerry, leaning across Wesley to speak to the man.
Darren’s cheeks turned red. ‘Tree surgeon. We operate on trees.’
‘You must need a strong stomach for all that sap.’
Darren seemed unsure how to take Gerry’s witticism. ‘Er . . . it’s more a head for heights really.’
Wesley opened the car door and climbed out, sensing there was something Darren wanted to tell them.
‘You’ve been working here in the garden, I take it?’
‘That’s right. With George.’
‘And where is he?’
‘Gone into the woods for a pee.’ Darren shuffled his feet nervously. ‘We’re taking down some leylandii – bloody nuisance, those things are. I wanted to tell Mrs Jones we’ve found something.’
‘What have you found?’ Gerry said as he emerged from the car.
Darren suddenly looked unsure of himself, as though he regretted starting the conversation. ‘It’s a wall. Looks old. And there’s some carved stone things. Weird statues or something. George said to ignore it, but I thought Mrs Jones ought to know. It’s in her garden, so . . .’
The mention of carved stone caught Wesley’s attention.
He’d studied archaeology at Exeter University and still took an interest in the subject whenever the opportunity presented itself.
He’d once told Gerry that archaeology and detective work had a lot in common.
Gerry had looked sceptical, but Wesley believed the statement was accurate.
Both professions involved removing layers of dirt until the truth was finally revealed.
‘Mind if I take a look?’
‘Come on, Wes, we haven’t got time for that.’
‘That’s what George said,’ said Darren. ‘But I thought somebody ought to see it. In case it’s got something to do with . . . what happened in the house.’
‘Now why should you think that?’ said Gerry, arms folded.
Darren shrugged as though he couldn’t think of an answer, and Wesley suspected that he just wanted to tell someone in authority what he’d found; someone who might not dismiss it as a pointless distraction.
Wesley turned to the DCI. ‘That body looks as though it’s been there for years. Another few minutes won’t do any harm.’
‘Body?’ Darren’s eyes widened in alarm.
‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ said Wesley quickly.
Gerry looked at his watch. ‘OK. You go, but don’t be too long.’
The DCI waited by the car, arms folded impatiently, while Wesley followed Darren down a narrow path branching off the drive.
It was uneven and littered with exposed tree roots.
He seized the opportunity to ask Darren a question as they walked.
‘I believe the house stood empty for a while. Any idea who lived here before?’ As the Joneses had only just moved in, the obvious place to start their investigation was by tracing the property’s previous owners.
‘Dunno. But whoever they were, they really let things get out of hand. We’ve already been here for a few days seeing to the trees.’
They reached an area that appeared to have been cleared of vegetation.
Large leylandii lay chopped up on the ground, ready for the chipper that stood nearby.
A wiry man with close-cropped hair, an array of tattoos on his bare torso and a world-weary expression emerged from the nearby trees smoking a roll-up.
‘Who’s this?’ he said with a hint of aggression as he looked Wesley up and down with barely concealed disdain.
Wesley produced his ID. ‘Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson, Tradmouth CID. We’re here investigating human remains found in the house and your colleague says he has something to show me.’
‘Human remains? You mean a dead body?’
‘That’s right.’
The man raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s not that Mrs Jones, is it?’ He glanced at Darren. ‘She hasn’t paid us yet.’
‘Mrs Jones is fine. She had a bad shock, that’s all. We think the body’s been there for some time.’
‘Was it buried in the cellar?’ Darren asked. He sounded as though he was beginning to enjoy the drama of the situation.
Wesley ignored the question. ‘Do you know anything about the house? Who used to own it?’
‘No,’ was George’s monosyllabic reply.
‘My grandad knew the people who lived here,’ Darren chipped in. ‘Well, he didn’t exactly know them, just recognised the name, that’s all. When I told him we had a job here, he said that the man who used to own it turned it into a hippy commune.’
George took a last drag of his roll-up and threw it to the ground before stamping it out contemptuously. Wesley suspected he’d like to do the same to Darren.
‘What was the previous owner’s name?’
Darren considered the question for a few moments. ‘I think it was something double-barrelled. Posh. Fortescue-Barnes, something like that.’
‘And you don’t know anything else about him?’
He shook his head.
Wesley decided it would be useless to enquire further at that moment, but he made a mental note that it might be helpful to speak to Darren’s grandad at some point. ‘Mind if I take a look at this wall you’ve found?’
‘Help yourself. But we’ve got another job in Whiteley this afternoon, so we can’t be long,’ said Darren, leading Wesley to a spot a few yards away where felled tree roots had torn up the earth to reveal what lay beneath.
Wesley was wearing his smart working clothes, so he fought the temptation to scrape the soil away with whatever came to hand.
He’d expected to see the remnants of some abandoned Victorian garden feature.
But his instincts told him that this was something far more interesting.
He felt a tingle of excitement. The wall, or what was left of it, looked medieval, although he knew he could be wrong.
Darren lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Those carvings I told you about are over there.’ He indicated a pile of rotting logs. ‘I hid them because I didn’t want George to get his hands on them. I wouldn’t trust him not to flog ’em to the garden centre for ornaments.’
‘Well done.’ Wesley thought the young tree surgeon deserved some praise for his initiative.
He made his way over to the logs. This time he yielded to temptation and squatted down to take a closer look.
The carvings were around three feet tall, and were possibly gargoyles from some ancient building, though they were so coated with moss and filth that it was impossible to make out what they represented.
But his instincts told him they might be historically important.
‘I’d like to get an archaeologist friend of mine to have a look at these, Darren. Can you make sure they stay put?’
Darren winked conspiratorially. ‘Will do. I’ll take them into the woods and tell George they’ve been smashed up.’
Wesley thanked him. It was time he returned to the car – and the investigation. Gerry would be growing impatient.
They needed to find out everything they could about Dr Aleric Donnal – and the house’s previous owner. With a name like Fortescue-Barnes, he shouldn’t be hard to fine.