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  The coffin is ready then to be transported back to the mortuary. It is a sort of reverse funeral.

  Martha’s eyes rested on each person for a while. Impassive faces, grim but all with one strong purpose – to make sure that justice was finally done.

  Why are exhumations invariably carried out at dawn? Because you need light and there are fewer people around. But in the first light of day a natural drama exists in spite of the flattened colours. Maybe because of this draining of colour in the same way that a sepia photograph has more atmosphere than a colour snap. The exhumations were carried out on subsequent days, one in Chester, the other in Oswestry. Both corpses were returned to Shrewsbury mortuary, neatly tagged. The funeral directors who originally conducted both funerals identified the coffin lid, confirmed the coffin plate. The lids were removed. The funeral directors next studied the internal coffin fittings – the fabrics and the shroud. And finally the faces themselves.

  There was no need for a second post mortem. Sullivan’s had been thorough and accurate enough. But they used dental records and DNA evidence. Two days later the tests were conclusive and the tags were switched. Haddonfield became Bosworth and Bosworth was, once again, Haddonfield. Clarke Haddonfield had been stabbed through the heart and his body found at Marine Terrace, while Gerald Bosworth had somehow arrived at the ignominious temporary grave of Aldi’s clothing bank after having his throat cut.

  It was going to be a long and complicated police investigation. Forensic evidence was difficult to unearth and the burden of proof lay across the shoulders of the police force. Alex Randall kept Martha up to date. Although they confiscated Cressida’s entire designer wardrobe they failed to find any trace of Haddonfield’s blood on either her clothes or shoes. She’d had ample time to dispose of her murder ensemble. And that traditional giveaway, the lethal weapons, proved equally elusive. In fact they never did find them.

  Two weeks later evidence was still a bit thin. The guest book at Lilac Clouds was not as helpful as it might have been. There were a few couples of the name of Humphreys but none of them appeared to have the same address. And there was no record of Freddie Bosworth having been there at all. However, as Martha pointed out, she lived near enough to attend for a day – as she, herself, had done.

  Fake names are so simple when you use cash and don’t need to prove your identity. When you plan a smart crime more than a year in advance, it gives you ample time to anticipate investigation and baffle it.

  Martha found herself shuddering when Randall told her all this over a morning coffee. Women, she reflected, were so much more thorough than men. When women committed as many crimes as men she feared the police may have difficulty proving their cases. Women are so good at cleaning up messes. At being tidy. Physically and mentally.

  So the focus turned back to Bosworth. And at first the police were hopeful they could construct their case from this point. There was absolutely no reason for Gerald Bosworth to have ever been anywhere near Lindy Haddonfield. There had been no apparent contact. But when his body was discovered he had been naked, his clothes destroyed or lost which reduced the chances of forensic evidence, and they still didn’t know where he had died or where his body had been kept. In the end it was Sullivan who came up with the solution. “I think it’s possible,” he said awkwardly, “that the body had been kept in a deep freeze, wrapped in a bin liner which could easily then have been burnt on a garden bonfire.”

  It was the beginning of the break the police had been waiting for. The chest freezer stood at the back of Lindy Haddonfield’s garage. Although sixteen cubic feet large it was empty. Not even a bag of oven chips. Then the investigation hit the doldrums. The police stripped Lilac Clouds and came up with nothing. They questioned the three women extensively and hit a brick wall. They charged the women anyway and all three were admitted on remand. It was three weeks later that they made their second breakthrough.

  They found a hair belonging to Cressida Humphreys in Haddonfield’s van, behind the seat. A fingerprint belonging to her on the underside of the table the telephone stood on in his house. She had been bright enough to use gloves. But it is so hard to remember everything. All the time. And they needed to connect all three women not only with each other but with their crime. Watkins was dragged back to an identity parade again and wavered when he faced Cressida Humphreys. But he couldn’t be sure – until he heard her speak. Then he frowned, closed his eyes tightly and nodded.

  And the final breakthrough – staff at a small, smart country hotel in Beeston, a town a few miles from Chester and not too far from Oswestry, recalled the pink Porsche – the woman who had climbed out of it and the man she had been with who had driven up in a white van. They recalled fragments of the number. They matched Haddonfield’s Hyundai. Randall charged them with obstruction. It was a start.

  In the end Martha was proved right. It was the fact that the three women were virtual strangers that made them unable to trust their partners in crime. And the story was coloured with yet more hard forensic evidence. The identification of the hotel staff was enough to put Freddie Bosworth in the dock. And she knew it. When Alex Randall told Martha this she sighed, thinking of that beautiful pink Porsche Boxster which had concealed evidence which would put Freddie behind bars for a long, long time. She wouldn’t come out of prison still a babe. Although a clever lawyer might just get her off the charge of false identification and wasting police time on the grounds of distress, even a babe has to face the music when there is such irrefutable evidence to connect her with the very worst of crimes. In the end it was her very notability which would convict her.

  But while Freddie was making her sobbing, heart-rending confession, accusing her husband of infidelity, cruelty and blatant meanness, Lindy and Cressida proved much more difficult nuts to crack. Both were strong women with powerful characters. Both killers had no intention of ending up in prison and they knew that the burden of proof lay on the police. So, they still argued, Lindy had made a mistake identifying the wrong man as her husband and Mrs Bosworth had met Haddonfield. It didn’t prove anything but the knot was tightening. Hindered a little when, eight hours later, David Khan arrived at Monkmoor police station and started creating havoc, claiming harassment – even alleging racial discrimination – which was funny because Lindy Haddonfield was pure Caucasian. It was a measure of how desperate the case had become.

  And in Martha’s mind the song still played, “The king has lost his crown!”

  26

  It was almost three months later, when summer was in full swing, that Martha re-opened the two inquests. The confusion had caused Jericho no end of trouble. Following the exhumations there had been extensive tests to prove without a shadow of a doubt which man was which.

  Without a precedent Martha opened the new inquests in an unusual way: “Fortunately murder in this part of the country is rare. A double murder rarer still. This is the inquest on the body found at Marine Terrace on Wednesday 13th of February, initially identified as Gerald Bosworth but subsequently proved by dental records and DNA analysis as being Clarke Haddonfield from Oswestry.”

  She was forced to recall Mark Sullivan and Alex Randall as expert witnesses. But this time no wives were present. The press were full of questions.

  On the following morning she repeated the procedure, re-opening the inquest on the body found in the clothing bank of Aldi’s store in Oswestry, again relying on expert witnesses and dental and DNA records.

  No wife. But the stocky man in the puffer-jacket sat at the back with his arms folded, nodding as she spoke.

  At the end of the second inquest it was her job to sum up. She put the cap back on her fountain pen, leaned back and addressed the court, studying her polished nails with a faint interest, almost curiosity.

  “The identity of a corpse is a hugely important thing. Deliberately misled we may, as in both these cases we were, lose a person beneath the wrong headstone. Mourners will focus their emotions in the wrong spot.”

  The man
in the puffer-jacket wiped his eyes.

  “In this case identity was concealed. I can only comment that in cases of homicide it is often identity which leads the police to the killer.” Her eyes slid across the front row, across Mark Sullivan, Alex Randall, Wendy Aitken. “It was only through persistent police investigation that the truth was unearthed and the misinformation corrected. I feel that it was terribly important that it was.”

  Alex’s eyes flickered and warmed. His mouth moved slightly, curving into the suspicion of a grin.

  She knew when the inquest was over that he would speak to her, make some comment about the part she had played.

  He did. But life is neither easy, tidy or simple. Loose ends draggle, waiting to be snipped or threaded back into the complicated tapestry that is a human life. In her own life mysteries may not so easily be solved. She may never be able to read the future, the destiny that had been hinted at.

  The hidden, tantalising Message for Martha.

  27

  Gathering evidence, bringing cases to court, the case itself. It was complicated enough to ensure months went by before the skeins were finally untangled, the cases finally tried and sentences passed.

  Martha had kept her eye on the Shropshire Star and read what she could but long months of silence had inevitably followed as the facts were protected by the Sub Judice ruling. It was only when Alex called in late one spring morning in the following year that she could finally close her files.

  It was another bright day when the trees were just turning green and her room was filled with the fresh, clean air of spring. She’d picked some daffodils from the garden and stuck them in a jar on her desk. They cheered her – as this time of year never failed to delight. Early in the afternoon there was a knock on the door and Jericho flung it open. “You have a visitor,” he announced ceremoniously.

  Alex’s huge grin appeared behind Jericho and she beamed at him, unable to hide how glad she was to see him. She shifted moved some papers from the chair to the floor as an invitation for him to sit down.

  She’d followed the court case closely. Yesterday had been the day of reckoning for the three women. She knew from the evening news that all three had been found guilty. Sentencing had been this morning.

  “Well?”

  “We’ve got the result we wanted,” he said, tilting back in the chair, his hands folded behind his head. “Guilty verdicts for all three on dual charges of conspiracy and murder.”

  “So what did they get?”

  “Cressida Humphreys, for the murder of Clarke Haddonfield at Marine Terrace on or around the 10th of February”, he quoted. “She got life with a recommendation that she serve not less than fifteen years.”

  Martha nodded, unsurprised.

  “Lindy Haddonfield was found guilty of the murder of Gerald Bosworth and got life too.” He smiled to himself. “Nice little bit of summing up from the judge, that the three women had conspired together in a plot reminiscent of the Hitchock film, Strangers on a Train, with the intent of committing the murders for each other, thus providing alibis and ridding them of two cumbrous husbands and implicating the third, James Humphreys. He called it a cold-blooded and heartless action, master-minded by Lindy Haddonfield but entered into enthusiastically by the other two women.”

  She nodded again. “I do read the newspapers.”

  Randall hesitated then gave a long sigh. And sensing the reason she prompted him. “Freddie Bosworth, Alex?”

  “He said that she was morally implicated in the death of both Clarke Haddonfield and Gerald Bosworth, that she was, therefore, an accessory to the double murder and as such he held her equally responsible.” He paused before adding, “She got life too, Martha.”

  She read a ripple of sympathy in his face, heard the same in his voice.

  “You don’t think it’s fair, Alex?”

  “She didn’t actually commit any crime.”

  “Oh come on,” she protested.

  “She broke down completely in court,” he said. “Sobbed like a baby.”

  Men, she thought, with affection and exasperation. Unwitting, willing victims always happy to be dragged in by sirens. There was no hope for them. And, woman-like, she could not find it in her heart to feel any sympathy towards Freddie Bosworth however vulnerable she might appear. She had lured Haddonfield to a cruel death. And yet, like Alex Randall she was transfixed by the vision of the pink Porsche and the tiny, child-woman tripping towards the mortuary in her spiky heels. She had not looked like a killer. And that had been her forte. Haddonfield would not have been lured by anything less when he had Lindy at home.

  So the three women were now just beginning the next stage of their lives. Prison.

  Randall stayed a while longer, drinking coffee and chatting and she felt restless when he had gone.

  She watched Jericho tidy away the files with a huge elastic band and put the computer discs in the filing cabinet with a feeling satisfaction tinged with regret. She would never have described herself as a romantic but to watch marriages crumble, relationships sour and love turn into homicidal hatred made her sad – particularly when she could only wonder how exactly her own marriage would have turned out had it only had the chance.

  Besides … She glanced across at the pile of new files waiting to be completed. She had enjoyed her brief spell as a private eye. Her fingers rippled down the spines as she read the names. Steven Bowler. Solomon Blizzard. Fortuna Kriss.

  Maybe another time. It was all in the future.

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  OTHER TITLES BY PRISCILLA MASTERS

  BURIED IN CLAY

  JOANNA PIERCY SERIES:

  GRAVE STONES

  MARTHA GUNN SERIES:

  SLIPKNOT

  About the Author

  Born in Yorkshire and brought up in South Wales, PRISCILLA MASTERS is the author of the popular series set in the Staffordshire moorlands featuring Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy. She has also written several medical standalone mysteries. Priscilla has two sons and lives in Staffordshire. She works part time as a nurse.

  By Priscilla Masters

  Joanna Piercy series

  Winding up the Serpent

  Catch the Fallen Sparrow

  A Wreath for My Sister

  And None Shall Sleep

  Scaring Crows

  Embroidering Shrouds

  Endangering Innocents

  Wings Over the Watcher

  Grave Stones

  Martha Gunn series

  River Deep

  Slipknot

  Other

  Night Visit

  Disturbing Ground

  A Plea of Insanity

  The Watchful Eye

  Buried in Clay

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2004.

  This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2014.

  Copyright © 2004 by PRISCILLA MASTERS

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-7490-1634-0