Death on Dartmoor Read online

  Death On Dartmoor

  A West Country Crime Mystery Book 2

  Bernie Steadman

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2016 B.A. Steadman

  The right of Bernie Steadman to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2016 by Bloodhound Books

  Re-printed 2018

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Print ISBN: 978-1-912604-36-4

  1

  Crouched behind a hawthorn hedge in full bloom, in the early June moonlight, all Detective Inspector Dan Hellier could hear was the rapid breathing and fidgeting of trainee Detective Constable Adam Foster. Dan held his hand in up in front of Foster’s face. ‘Wait, Foster. Be still.’ He glanced at the rest of the team, calm and unruffled, and wished Foster was somewhere else.

  In his ear, Detective Sergeant Duncan Lake gave instructions to his armed response unit. They had the battering ram and the bolt cutters ready to go.

  Dan scanned the lane leading down to the abandoned waterside warehouse. All was quiet. Three filthy white vans were parked outside tall doors which were locked, chained and bolted. Above his head, a makeshift set of wires stole electricity from the grid. Shafts of yellow light escaped through cracks and fissures in the old wood, and the unmistakeable smell of thousands of marijuana plants made the air heavy. He blinked and shook his head. The combination of weed and hawthorn flower was sending him to sleep.

  Using heat-sensitive cameras, the force helicopter had made several passes earlier in the day. The crop had glowed orange under huge heat lamps. Four life-signs had been busy in different parts of the building, no obvious booby-traps had been spotted.

  Dan yawned, cracking his jaw painfully. This was his second drugs raid in as many nights. The chief constable was on a mission, and everybody was suffering.

  Into the quiet hiss of his earpiece, DS Lake gave the ‘go’ signal. Dan held his arm out in front of his team, just in case anybody got a bit carried away and wanted to join in.

  Six armed officers moved silently to the doors. Bolt cutters made swift work of the chains. The first crash from the battering ram echoed around the river basin, disturbing a flock of seabirds. The second crash started the men inside running. Lake shouted from the doorway, ‘Armed police! Stand still. Do not move.’ He nodded at his team and they entered the warehouse at a run.

  Outside, in the still air, Dan could hear his heart beating an irregular rhythm as he waited for the all clear. As the thought formed, he heard the rattle of gunfire from an automatic weapon inside the warehouse. Beside him, Foster drew in a sharp breath. Intel had warned them to be armed; the gang running the marijuana factory was down from London and the news from the Met had all been bad.

  Lake sent the ‘man down’ message and requested paramedics. Dan winced. Bad news.

  A return pair of shots echoed round the river basin. A lone scream and then only the peculiar silence that follows a shooting. Suspect dead, then. Idiot. Dan made himself breathe again and rolled his shoulders. The wait for Lake to tell him about the downed officer was hard. He wondered who it was, whether he was dead or just injured, and thought of the paperwork, and the investigation that would land on Lake’s desk, and the family of the officer, who lived with the fear of such an event.

  A telltale squeal of un-oiled hinges announced the departure of some of the gang from the warehouse heading down towards the water. There should have been a man on that door. Dan watched two men running low and fast towards the water. The need to be up and doing something was making him jittery. He shuffled and flexed his knees, bringing back the pain in his healing left foot. ‘Two suspects making off towards the river,’ he said into his radio, and trusted that DS Sally Ellis was ready on the river with her coastguards. Three down…

  A side door flew open and a fourth man ran straight towards the trees where Dan and his team waited. Where was the man on that door? He spotted an armed officer from Lake’s team in fast pursuit, blood dripping from a hand injury. The gang member carried a long sword, of all things.

  Dan had to make a fast decision. There was no point hiding now. Any second the dealer would stumble into them and he could do serious damage with that sword. Dan leapt up, waving his arms and yelled, ‘Stop! Put down your weapon and stand still.’ He directed his flashlight straight into the man’s face, blinding him for a second.

  The armed officer ran up behind and slapped both hands around the man’s head, hard against his ears. In shock the man dropped the sword and screamed. The officer took him to the floor and cuffed him, nodding his thanks to Dan.

  Lake radioed to his team, and gave the all clear a few minutes later. Dan, heart still pumping, led his team out to the front of the building. Effective technique, bursting someone’s eardrums. He must remember that.

  They couldn’t go much further than the front door until forensics had cleared it, so he set his team to guarding the extremities. The dead dealer lay in the middle of a corridor of cannabis plants that must have been two meters high. There were at least another dozen rows of plants in there. The heat, intensified by silver foil reflecting it back from the walls, made it unbearable. Dan moved back to a safer distance. They’d have to wait until the doctor and forensics had finished before they could catalogue the contents of the warehouse. He sighed. Another long night. The phone call to ask for support took mere seconds, but how long they would have to wait for someone to come out was anyone’s guess.

  Even from the door, the smell threatened to overwhelm him. Dan could feel his reactions slowing. He hated cannabis, hated it. Had done ever since his eighteenth birthday when some kind person had spiked his birthday cake with skunk. The hallucinations and paranoia that followed made it a very long, unpleasant night, and he could no longer even smell the drug without feeling sick. Aversion therapy had certainly worked on him.

 
Sally Ellis radioed in a few minutes later; ‘Got them, boss,’ she said, ‘not much fight in ’em.’

  Duncan Lake strode out of the warehouse and stood next to Dan, thumbs in his belt. ‘Look at the size of this operation.’ He held his arms wide and took in a deep breath.

  Dan worried for a moment that he was going to launch into a song. Or an aria.

  ‘I reckon this lot would be worth millions on the street,’ Lake grinned. ‘That’ll look good on your nick’s statistics, Dan.’

  Dan grinned back. ‘Too right. A good night apart from the casualties.’

  ‘Our man will be fine; his vest took the brunt of the shots, and I’m not going to lose any sleep over one dead drug dealer.’ He gave a high whistle, which brought his team running to stand next to him. ‘Right, building is secure. Over to you, Detective Inspector. At least we don’t have to clear this lot out before we go home.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, back to saving the world for you; clearing up other people’s crap for us.’

  ‘At least you haven’t got Police Complaints to worry about. More paperwork than you can shake a stick at, and for what? A low-life drug dealer.’ He turned on his heel and departed.

  ‘Thanks, Duncan,’ Dan called after Lake’s retreating team. A long night indeed, but a bloody good one. He rang the specialist removal team, on standby at Exeter Road station, and told them to have another coffee.

  Left alone he wandered out into the clear night and took several deep breaths. The operation had gone well, but he was tired. Two night shifts in one week wasn’t nice. He smiled. Listen to yourself, Hellier. Not that long ago, night shift was what you did, over and over, week in, week out. Getting soft.

  He listened to young Adam Foster’s voice coming loud from the river, commenting on the heat, and the smell roiling out of the warehouse. Foster was a bit too impulsive for a DC; it was like holding back a spaniel on the scent of a cat. He had to be aware of Foster all the time. Pain in the neck when they were so busy. Maybe a couple of weeks at another station would sort him out and calm him down. He’d get Sally onto it tomorrow.

  Dan called in the result to HQ as the ambulance and crime scene van arrived. There was little need to rush. It was close to midnight and they had a crime scene to investigate, and a warehouse full of marijuana to dispose of before they could go to bed.

  2

  The phone rang just as Doctor Neil Pargeter took a huge bite of his hummus and carrot sandwich. He picked up the receiver, chewed, swallowed, and coughed ‘Hello?’ into the receiver.

  ‘Hello? Is that Professor Ballard, Archaeology Department?’

  ‘No, but this is his office. I’m Doctor Pargeter. Who’s speaking, please?’

  ‘Oh, hello Doctor Pargeter, Elspeth Price here. You’ll be just as good as Professor Ballard, I’m sure.’

  Neil suppressed a groan. Elspeth Price, amateur archaeologist and thorn in the department’s side. ‘Hello, Miss Price, what can I do for you?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, it’s so very exciting. I know I should have phoned the police first, but it is an archaeology find, and I thought you should be the first to know. Well, the second really, because I was the first. Well, of course, Topsy was the absolute first because she spotted it.’

  ‘Hold on Miss Price, you’re going a bit fast for me, here. What have you found? And where?’

  ‘You must listen better, young man. I’m trying to tell you. A body. A body in the bog on Dartmoor!’

  Neil laughed, he couldn’t help it. ‘A what? There are no bodies in the bog on Dartmoor, Miss Price, only rumours of them, and they’re all unlikely.’

  ‘Until now, Dr Pargeter. Until now. So, do you want to come and have look or shall I go straight to the police?’

  * * *

  A glorious spring sky greeted Neil Pargeter as he swung down out of the old Land Rover. Clouds hurried to drop rain on other folk, and the wind stayed gentle, promising a warm afternoon. It had been a cool, dry, cloudy spring and he was ready for some sun. He stretched and breathed in deeply. ‘Oh, but it’s good to be outdoors.’

  His companion, Miss Elspeth Price, a good foot-and-a-half shorter than his six foot five, chuckled and clambered out of the passenger side. ‘It is a beautiful day,’ she said, ‘a beautiful day to discover a body in the bog!’ She clapped her hands together and pointed a couple of hundred metres to the south-west. ‘It’s over there, just where the land dips down towards the River Swincombe. So close to the road – and we never knew it was there!’

  Neil’s heart did a little skip. What if there really was a body in the bog? The rumours about Foxtor Mires being the ghostly resting place of many an unwary Dartmoor traveller had rarely proved true. No one had any evidence of bodies found. Until now? Elspeth was always claiming she had seen something in the bog, but her ‘sightings’ had never come to anything. Neil had decided to take this claim seriously when he compared the pile of paperwork on his desk with the brilliant blue of the sky outside his office window. A drive onto Dartmoor had sounded perfect.

  He picked up Elspeth’s dog and placed her into the rear of the Land Rover. ‘No, girl,’ he said to the muddy Jack Russell terrier. ‘No, you stay here this time. Good Topsy.’ He patted her on the head.

  Elspeth waved at her little dog. ‘Back soon, darling,’ she said, zipping up her waterproof jacket.

  ‘And the police are on their way?’ asked Neil as they set off across the springy grass.

  Elspeth shrugged, extending her walking pole. ‘Apparently.’ She threw him a conspiratorial grin, ‘I felt obliged to ring them but said I couldn’t get here to show them where it is until half-past one. I thought that would give us a bit of time to examine the site before they put their size elevens all over it!’

  ‘Good for you, Elspeth.’

  The walk to the blanket bog of Foxtor Mires took moments. In more usual weather conditions, he thought, the water would have been high in early summer, making the crossing dangerous and slow. At the least, a slip from the path would mean a soaking up to the knees or thighs. At worst, a complete ducking. Now, after one of the driest winters the south-west had ever enjoyed, the water was shallow and completely gone in places. Neil jumped from tuft to tuft of bouncy moss, eyes alert to any anomaly.

  Elspeth followed using her stick to push at the ground before she took a step. She stopped once to get her bearings and make a small change of direction. ‘Here,’ she said, then shook her head in annoyance. ‘No, I think… Yes, over here, Doctor Pargeter.’ Elspeth nodded and turned to the east. ‘I’ve got it now.’

  Neil watched her keenly. Please don’t let this be another wild goose chase, he thought. I really should be marking end of year papers.

  Elspeth walked a little further towards the River Swincombe. Brown water seeped up towards the top of her boots. Finally, she struggled up a small incline and perched on a hummock of sphagnum moss. She poked at the peat directly in front of her with her stick, pushing the creeping moss aside. ‘Ahh,’ she said, with satisfaction, ‘I think we have our find. Look, Doctor Pargeter, look!’

  Neil craned over her shoulder. The water was shallow here, and brown with peat. He stared hard at the spot she indicated, seeing nothing except sphagnum moss, water and soft peat. Then, once he’d got his eye in, he yelped. ‘There, I see it!’ Crouching beside a jubilant Elspeth Price, oblivious to the water seeping into his boots, he leaned over as far as he dared and peered into the mossy pit. It looked like a bone. Two bones to be precise. In the shape of what could be a human elbow. He felt faint. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God, Elspeth, I think you’re right. I think we’ve got ourselves a body in the bog!’

  3

  Dan sat in his office and put the final touches to his drugs bust report. He’d called it Operation Django after his father’s favourite jazz musician. Three of the people he’d arrested were foreign nationals, two from Pakistan and one from Afghanistan. They had the experience to grow the crops. The Afghan was lying in the hospital. The other man, who had tried to escape by boat,
was a Londoner, well known to the Drugs Squad up there. He had apparently decided that moving down to Devon might give his business a better chance of success. It had been Dan’s great pleasure to disabuse him of that notion. Once a solicitor had spent a few minutes with him in the interview room, the guy had given up more dealers than they knew what to do with, in exchange for leniency.

  Dan checked his spelling one more time, and read it all through again before pressing the send key. ‘Wahey,’ he said. ‘Another Team Two bust is biting the dust.’ Stretching his arms up and folding them behind his head, he looked forward to a couple of quiet weeks ahead where drugs did not raise their very ugly heads.

  His thoughts drifted to Claire Quick, the teacher he had grown to like during his last major case. They had been going out for a month, and it was good. Very good. She was lithe and blonde and gorgeous, and she really liked him. Well, she seemed to. He had stayed over at her little house in Pinhoe, and she had stayed at his flat on the Quay. They liked movies and music and he had introduced her to cycling. She hadn’t persuaded him that reading was a pleasure yet, but they certainly were compatible in other ways. He grinned at the quick heat low in his belly.