The Devil's Chair Read online

  She waited. Jericho was not great at keeping secrets. He would soon spill the beans. And so he did.

  ‘Car rolled down the Burway late Saturday night, early Sunday morning,’ he said, almost accusingly. ‘I heard it this morning on Radio Shropshire.’

  Oh, this was a disaster. For Jericho to learn of such dramatic news on the local radio station? Oh dear. No wonder he was in such a deep and intractable sulk.

  She cast her mind back to Saturday night. It had been a wet, cold spring night, dark before eight, the weather threatening a terrible summer even before it had begun, with whispers of dark events lurking in the future: floods and landslips, disasters that were brewing in the clouds, waiting to drop on an unsuspecting, vulnerable, but ever-optimistic population who dreamed of the balmy season promised in the word summer. But the word altered in meaning when you inserted the adjective British in front of it. On Saturday night she had been glad to draw the curtains to shut out the mist that tried to roll right into the house and, in spite of the month, she had lit the log burner. Some time during the night there must have been a drop in temperature. By Sunday morning the damp rain had turned into treacherous ice and on higher ground a powdering of snow.

  ‘Little girl’s missin’,’ Jericho continued. ‘Seems to have vanished into thin air. They’s been lookin’ for her all through yesterday. No sign of the child.’

  ‘And the driver?’

  ‘Drunk, they say. She’s in intensive care,’ Jericho deliberated, ‘in a coma.’

  Martha hid a grimace. Ah … so this explained it even clearer. A woman in intensive care was not yet a candidate for the coroner – or for her assistant. Once she had reached the haven of the hospital staff who were trained to pull people back from the brink, the chances increased that their driver would survive. And Jericho would feel he had been cheated. She eyed him closely and read resentment in his eyes – and something more. His eyes were not quite meeting hers, and his face had a heaviness about it that wasn’t explained by the car wreck followed by a hospital admission. Her curiosity was stirred. She herself knew nothing. After the rigours of the working week she had long ago decided that Sundays were to be a family day and news-free, whether the events were good or bad. So unless there had been a major catastrophe on a Sunday she would remain unaware of it until arriving at an empty office on Monday morning, serenaded on her journey in by Classic FM. She needed, even for one brief and contrived day a week, to see the world as a place of harmony and peace, without grief. It was an old habit, one she had inherited from her mild mannered, chapel-going Welsh father.

  Keep Sundays sacred.

  So whatever had happened on Saturday night/Sunday morning on the Burway, she knew nothing about it.

  But now Jericho would soon enlighten her – to the best of his ability.

  ‘She seems to have vanished into thin air,’ he said again, his eyes now lifting to hers, still holding a heavy and puzzled grief. ‘Daisy, her name is. It were her mum who were driving. Four years old, Mrs Gunn. That’s all she was. She were in the car and now she’s missing, they say. They can’t find ’er anywhere.’ He shook his head before continuing. ‘People’s been lookin’ since early yesterday mornin’.’ He paused for breath before speaking again, his frown deepening. ‘I’d ’ave joined ’em if I’d known.’ He shook his head, his grey locks twitching. ‘That Burway.’ He practically spat the word out. ‘Nasty bit of road that. Narrow and treacherous. Made for accidents.’

  ‘Even late at night when there’s unlikely to be much traffic up there?’

  ‘Unlikely. Not impossible.’ He paused for a moment. ‘When it’s misty the Devil himself’s sittin’ up there in his own chair laughin’ at us, it is said, and it would have bin misty that early Sunday mornin’ round about two a.m.’ He glanced quickly across at Martha, wondering how far he could push it before she told him off for his superstition. ‘Some say it’s Him that deliberately rolls in the mist and the wicked weather to ’ide ’imself when he’s sittin’ in his chair. It’s a devilish place, Mrs Gunn.’

  She wanted to scold him, to tell him not to be so ridiculous, but she had driven up the Burway towards the Long Mynd late one evening, not long after Martin had died. The twins had been howling in unison, almost as though they had absorbed some of her grief and feelings of hopelessness and panic. How on earth was she going to cope with life in the future? As they had wailed in misery she had known they would not settle. And so she had strapped them into their car seats and taken them up the Burway to sit on the wild and blustery top and try to calm herself with the huge, 360 degree panoramic view, as though sitting on top of the world would help her. But instead of calming her and the twins they had started screaming even louder, a note of terror in their little voices which had made her aware of the raw menace of the place. She had recalled the ancient legends and had driven back down the narrow, winding road in even more panic. She had not stopped until she had reached home and had not relaxed until the twins had stilled and were safe and asleep in their cots, and all the doors were locked and bolted. Checked twice. Three times. And even then she had fancied that something of the chilly evil of the Long Mynd still seeped underneath the door and clung to the air in the house.

  So how could she laugh off Jericho’s superstition when she knew how easy it was to believe in myth and magic in such an area?

  Jericho carried on, determined to say his piece. He stuck his chin out and put his face close to hers, his eyes bouncing superstitiously off the walls as though he was afraid someone was listening in. ‘It might belong to the National Trust these days, Mrs Gunn,’ he said in a whisper, ‘but that don’t civilize a place, do it? You get two stroppy drivers what won’t give way on the Burway and you tumbles all the way down to Carding Mill Valley and almost certain death. You’d have to be as lucky as the Reverend Carr to survive that.’

  The story of the Reverend E. Donald Carr was an interesting one. It was no myth or legend but the honest and true story of a minister who had walked between his two parishes, Ratlinghope and Wolstaton, over the Long Mynd, and was caught up in a vicious snowstorm. Miraculously, some would say, he had survived in spite of snow blindness and losing his shoes, and was found the next morning by children in Carding Mill Valley who were terrified by the sight of a snow-clad man emerging from the mountain. Encouraged by friends, the Reverend Carr had written down his story of the surreal Disney colours of snow blindness and losing both shoes and gloves, using the frozen body of a mountain pony as a landmark and witnessing hares who bobbed in and out of his vision before he plummeted down near-vertical snow walls clutching his Bible. The story had subsequently entered into the folklore of Church Stretton and the Long Mynd.

  ‘But our driver did survive it,’ Martha pointed out. ‘She’s in hospital.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jericho conceded, his eyes gleaming with drama and anticipation, ‘she’s in intensive care. But the real problem, Mrs Gunn, is where is little Daisy?’ He paused for effect before continuing. ‘The police and the public have been looking for her for more than a day and a night and they haven’t found her. Not so much as a hint of her. So where is she?’

  ‘Is it certain she was in the car?’

  ‘The woman’s partner says so.’

  ‘She might have been thrown from the vehicle.’

  ‘She’d have to have been thrown a mighty long way for them not to find ’er. Them’s searched the area and is still searching,’ Jericho said.

  ‘Then they’ll find her.’

  ‘Not if—’ But even Jericho had the sense not to complete this sentence.

  He shrugged and left the room, while Martha crossed to the window. Her view was north, towards the town of Shrewsbury, but in her mind’s eye she looked south and saw instead the rounded humps of the Long Mynd rising from the Shropshire plain like whales basking in a flat sea rather than, as legend suggested, piles of earth dropped by an angry giant. Though sometimes it is easier to believe in myth rather than the fact that the Shropshire hills are th
e result of volcanic activity millions of years ago. Martha stood for a moment, tossing her thoughts around, recalling the night when she had imagined herself and the twins exposed to the malevolence of the place, and shivered when contemplating the fate of the little girl. So far, it was another sinister mystery which could be laid at the foot of the Stretton Hills.

  Like Jericho, she wondered what had happened to her. She pictured a small body thrown from the car, finally discovered yards from the crash site, and squeezed her eyes shut. Before the days of compulsory child car seats she had known children thrown up to eight hundred yards from the point of impact. The origin of the ‘Child on Board’ notices was a tragic crash where the children had not been found until the next day, dead not from the impact but exposure after being thrown over a hedge into a field. In the inquests she had held on children who had not been strapped in she had been torn between sympathy for the parents and anger at their neglect. In such cases she could never point the finger but she had read in their guilty faces that she did not need to. They’d pointed the finger at themselves.

  ‘Daisy,’ she muttered to herself, liking the name and mentally preparing herself to meet the little girl in tragic circumstances. She knew the drop from the Burway into Carding Mill Valley. A four-year-old could hardly have survived such trauma if she’d been thrown from the car, nor a second night out on the Long Mynd, undiscovered by increasingly desperate and despondent searchers. But then, even if Daisy had been strapped into her car seat, she still might not have survived the impact.

  Her eyes lost their focus and her mind shifted to the driver, the mother, who had made it to hospital, and must have driven up one of the most treacherous roads in the county late at night with a small child – drunk, too, if what Jericho said was true.

  She turned away from St Mary’s Spire, which rose over Shrewsbury. She had enough problems to deal with on a cold spring Monday morning without fretting about two people whose fate may or may not lie in the coroner’s court. So she put the events to the back of her mind and concentrated on the morning’s work, but her mind disobediently kept wandering back to the puzzle of the missing child. She was relieved when, at lunchtime, Jericho knocked on the door. Instead of calling him in Martha went to open it herself. Jericho Palfreyman was standing there, scowling and making a futile attempt to block the unmistakable, gangly form of Detective Inspector Alex Randall who was standing behind him, eyebrows raised in mute appeal for an audience. She smothered a smile. ‘It’s all right, Jericho,’ she said, trying to keep her face straight and block the gladness she felt at the detective’s presence. ‘I was going to stop for lunch now anyway.’

  Her officer couldn’t resist a soft ‘harrumph’ of disapproval but he stepped back all the same. A moment later Alex was in the room, his restless form bringing turbulence in his wake. He was frowning and she caught some hesitance in his manner. ‘Hello, Martha,’ he began, then grinned sideways at the door. He was only too well aware of her assistant’s antipathy towards him. He was also aware that it stemmed more from protectionism than any real dislike for him personally. A coroner has many demands on her time. Jericho simply tried to minimize them.

  Which was his job.

  No sooner had she shut her assistant out than the detective began to apologize. He shuffled awkwardly. ‘Bit embarrassing this,’ he said, ‘consulting you when there is no body.’ His hazel eyes flicked up to meet hers. ‘I know you have more than enough to do without …’

  ‘Ah,’ she responded, indicating her computer screen where the latest news headlines were displayed. ‘The little girl who was taken by the fairies.’

  Randall’s grey eyes scanned the screen. ‘Told you it was embarrassing,’ he said drily, then seemed lost for words.

  ‘Well?’ she prompted.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know I really shouldn’t be bothering you with …’ His voice trailed away and he tried again. ‘I mean, it’s nothing to do with …’

  She took over. ‘I take it this visit is connected with the car that rolled down the Burway early on Sunday morning and the little girl who is currently missing?’

  Detective Inspector Alex Randall looked relieved. ‘It is,’ he said quietly, his mouth still open as though ready to continue.

  It was obvious that he needed to unburden himself.

  ‘Then sit,’ she invited. She sat down in one of the two armchairs in the bay window, Alex in the other. Somehow the town of Shrewsbury, with its violent and dramatic history seemed a fitting backdrop for his story, witness as it had been to such dramas. ‘Fill me in.’

  She was fully aware that the detective would be confiding in her facts about the case that were not in the public domain. She was equally aware that he hadn’t paid her the insult of asking her to keep these facts quiet.

  ‘OK,’ he said, relaxing a little. ‘Briefly. We have Tracy Walsh, the thirty-two-year-old partner of forty-year-old Neil Mansfield. They’ve been together for two years.’

  Martha interrupted. ‘Neil Mansfield is not Daisy’s father, then?’

  ‘No. Tracy had actually been married, briefly, to Daisy’s father, an Allistair Donaldson, but the couple split up not long after Daisy was born. Daisy has her mother’s surname, which Tracy reverted to on the break-up of her marriage. Donaldson lives near Inverness. He’s a fish farmer and has had little to do with his daughter. According to the local Scottish bobby who interviewed him his contact was little more than a tenner at Christmas. Tracy had had a few partners since Allistair but she and Neil met two years ago and have lived together for a little over a year. It is, apparently, a volatile relationship. They live in Church Stretton and are well known for their public drunken arguments. The local police have been called in several times.’ He sighed. ‘And as is usual in these cases, Piggy in the Middle is little Daisy, four years old, not surprisingly a rather quiet, withdrawn little girl.’ He looked up, his eyes soft, knowing she would want his sources. ‘Again, according to the neighbours. Anyway …’ He sighed. ‘On Saturday night the couple had yet another drunken argument after a bout of drinking that had started at lunchtime.’ His eyes met hers in weary cynicism. ‘They were pissed out of their brains. Tracy’s blood alcohol level was three hundred milligrams and that was hours after she’d left the house. No alcohol was found in the car so …’ He left her to draw her own conclusion.

  ‘Crikey. Three hundred milligrams? That’s quite a few ciders,’ Martha commented.

  ‘Yeah. And somewhere nearing four times the legal driving limit,’ Alex said. He continued: ‘At sometime around two in the morning Tracy runs upstairs and grabs her daughter, saying she’s had enough of Neil and is leaving him – she’s going to stay with a friend. She takes the car up the Burway towards the Long Mynd and the rest …’ He opened his palms. It was as though he had run out of words.

  ‘What about Neil? Why didn’t he try to stop her?’

  ‘He says he thinks he did – before he passed out. He pleaded with her to leave Daisy with him.’ A shadow crossed Randall’s face. ‘He says he was going to ring the police but …’

  He shrugged, his face bleak. ‘It’s an awful story,’ he said, ‘but not exactly uncommon.’

  Martha put a hand up as though to ward off his words and the images they conveyed. ‘Don’t,’ she said. Then, ‘So where does Neil Mansfield think she was heading?’

  ‘She has a friend, a girl called Wanda. He thought he heard her name being mentioned. Those two are pretty thick. Wanda lives in Ratlinghope. It’s possible she was heading for there,’ he paused, ‘but never made it.’

  Martha eyed him. There was something else. She waited, knowing her silence would give him the opportunity to say what was really troubling him.

  ‘There are some puzzling facts,’ he continued quietly. ‘In fact, the entire event is a series of anomalies.’ His eyes met hers. ‘I’ll start with what we know for certain. The accident was reported somewhere around six on Sunday morning.’

  ‘Yes?’

 
‘The call was made from a local cottage.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Hope Cottage.’

  Martha was bemused. ‘What’s so puzzling about that?’

  ‘The cottage was empty at the time,’ Randall continued. ‘It belongs to a single woman who works mostly abroad. Her name’s Charity Ignatio and she’s currently in Dubai. Last night she was at a public dinner in the city. I’ve spoken to her this morning and she has assured me that when she is away no one goes into her cottage. Not even her cleaner. So …’ His eyes locked into hers. ‘Who made the phone call? Who reported the accident?’

  Martha made no comment, so he continued: ‘When the local police and air ambulance arrived the car was surrounded by a group of girls doing their Duke of Edinburgh Award. Wisely, they hadn’t tried to remove Tracy from the car. She was unconscious at the time with a broken neck, a head injury and various other broken bones.’ Alex looked less than sympathetic. ‘Daisy,’ he said gravely, ‘is still missing. There is absolutely no sign of her. The Duke of Edinburgh girls plus members of the general public familiar with the Stretton Hills have helped us look for the little girl but we haven’t found her.’ He leaned forward, his face strained. ‘She’s vanished,’ he said simply, baffled.

  ‘Could she have survived the accident and wandered off?’

  Alex sat back in his seat, watching her from beneath lowered lids. ‘Of course, it’s possible, Martha,’ he said, ‘but we’ve searched every square mile of that immediate area. She’s only four years old and would have been in shock. Possibly injured. The people who have helped us search know these hills, the valleys, the streams and the vegetation like the back of their hands. They could walk it blindfold. We’ve found a soft toy but have yet to identify it as Daisy’s.’

  ‘Then is it certain she was in the car in the first place?’

  Randall’s expression was grave. ‘According to Neil.’ And she could hear the doubt in his voice.

  ‘Well, Alex,’ she said softly, ‘you know the old adage: “When you’ve discounted the impossible, whatever remains …”’