Chapter Three

Adam was pleased when Robin arrived home on Tuesday evening at a reasonable time and sympathetic when he confessed he'd rather have been back later and have more to show for it. He briefed Adam—as he always did—on what they'd found out so far, but the process didn't seem to be as fruitful for him as it usually proved. Too early, too few facts. The only positive was that Henry, Robin's contact in the specialist fraud section, had said he'd have a dig into the mysterious inheritance business and hoped to report back by Friday about whether Mrs. Bright was getting into something dodgy. They had an early night in bed, both weary from a busy few days, and woke to a wet Wednesday when their alarms sounded.

While the weather was dreary, the news that Robin received over breakfast clearly wasn't, and it appeared to brighten his mood considerably. The duty sergeant at Abbotston had rung at seven o'clock, apologetic that he was so early, to say he just received a call from a distressed mother confessing that her son and his friend might have some important information about the dead man found in Kings Ride Woods. The sergeant had calmed her down and arranged for them all to come in at nine thirty. Robin thanked him and reassured the officer that ringing so early was never going to be a problem if he was bringing news like that.

"Sounds encouraging," Adam said, once Robin had updated him on the call. "Did she say what this information was?"

"No. She was in too much of a state, apparently. Maybe the lads found the body earlier than our midwife did and have been keeping quiet about it. They're only ten."

"Oh heck." That would mean the usual protocol for child witnesses having to be put in place. "Perhaps they're the ones who nicked whatever he was carrying in his pockets." Adam stared into his tea. Boys that age weren't too young to mug someone.

"I've been having the same thought." Robin crunched away at his granola. "On the positive side, it would mean a chance of getting an ID for the victim and maybe an address, assuming the items haven't already been disposed of."

"I hope this pair aren't any of my pupils. I'll be keeping an eye out for absences today in years five and six." Because that was the way the universe seemed to enjoy working where Robin's murder cases were concerned.

"I think you're okay this time. They're local to Kings Ride, and I don't believe your catchment goes that far?"

"It doesn't and I don't think we've got any families who've moved there and still bring their children back to Wickley." It happened, especially when the pupils only had a year or so left at primary before going up to secondary school. Less disruption to their education and their friendships. "I'll also get Hamish to keep his paws crossed that these lads aren't related to any members of my staff."

Robin snorted. "I wouldn't bother. Crossing his paws didn't work on Sunday, did it?"

By half past nine, Robin knew that if Hamish had been crossing his paws, he'd been effective this time. Neither of the boys—Kyle Simmons and Archie Hill—were pupils at any school Adam had been associated with, as he and Pru had discovered when they'd chatted to them as part of putting them at ease. A process not helped by the presence of two livid mothers who evidently wanted to get to the point as soon as possible, although they weren't letting out any hints about what that point was. They'd clearly decided that their sons were going to have to do all the talking.

Once the preliminaries were done, Mrs. Simmons said, "Tell Mr. Bright what you did."

"We were in the Kings Ride Woods on Sunday afternoon." Kyle kept his eyes fixed on his hands. "We weren't supposed to be because we're only allowed to go as far as the play park or the rec."

"Too right you're not to go any farther." Mrs. Simmons shook with anger.

"I'm sure we all did things when we were ten that we shouldn't have done," Robin said, before she could pitch in again. Interviewing children was a delicate business. "Helpful" parents were no help at all. "What happened at the woods?"

"We went for a walk, to see if there were any trees we could go climbing on. We found that dead bloke."

"Okay." Robin nodded. "What time was this?"

Kyle shrugged. "I don't know exactly. In the afternoon. We'd had football in the morning."

"You didn't tell anyone that you'd found him?" Pru asked.

Both boys wagged their heads, Archie adding, "We didn't want to think or talk about him anymore. It was horrible. I was sick."

That probably explained the pile of vomit. Robin assured the lads that lots of people were sick when they saw a body. He got Pru to make a note of what the lad had eaten that day and carried on. "You told us he was dead. Did you know that at the time you found him?"

"Yeah. See, I felt for his pulse and there was none. We learned that at school." At last Kyle looked Robin in the face. "I know he wasn't breathing, either, because we both watched his chest. We'd have gone and got help if we thought it would have saved him."

Mrs. Hill couldn't keep quiet any longer. "Like good little citizens. Then, instead of finding a phone and ringing for an ambulance or the police, you went in his pockets, nicked his wallet and scarpered to leave him for the foxes to eat?" She reached into her handbag and produced a Tupperware box with a mobile phone and wallet in. "You could have made an emergency call from this."

"I told you, Mum, those things weren't in his pockets," Archie protested. "They were lying next to him."

"And then all of a sudden they were in this tub, under your bed?" She slammed the box onto the table, none too gently.

Robin snatched it up before damage could be done to the contents. "We'll take that for our forensic people to go over. We'll have to get all of your fingerprints too, for elimination purposes. Did you find this under the bed, Mrs. Hill?"

"No," she conceded. "Archie brought the two items down this morning and told us what had happened. I put them in here to keep them safe."

"I'd heard about that guy on the local news. I had to come clean." Archie avoided Kyle's gaze. Was there some tension between the two—one the instigator and the other the obedient lieutenant? Although if Kyle had been the one doing the egging on, Robin would have expected him to have been the one in possession of the stolen items.

"So, let's get this clear." Robin produced a rough sketch of the scene, which he'd had the foresight to prepare prior to the interview. "If this is the dead man, where exactly were the wallet and the phone?"

Archie indicated a point to the left of the body, then checked with Kyle, who said, "That's right. Archie was sick around here." He pointed to another spot, which matched where they'd found the vomit.

"Could the wallet and phone have fallen out of the dead man's pocket?" Pru asked.

Kyle, who'd probably expected a bollocking, was beginning to blossom, maybe as a result of being taken as a serious witness. "I don't think so. Not unless he'd moved all weird when he fell down on the ground."

Archie nodded. "My dad keeps his wallet and phone in his back pocket so they're safe. This guy was on his back, so they couldn't have fallen out from there."

A decent piece of logic. Could the killer—or another person who'd come across the body—have removed the items? Although, in that case, why rummage them out and not take them?

"Was there anything else lying by the body?" Pru smiled encouragingly. "Every detail you can think of will help us find who killed him."

"No, honest. Apart from one of those little packs of biscuits, like you get in your lunchbox. It looked full, but I didn't want to touch it." Kyle eyed the Tupperware box. "We didn't spend any of the money in that wallet, either. Everything should still be in there."

Robin asked, as gently as he could and aware of their mothers' scowls, "Tell me and Pru why you took the wallet and phone."

"We thought they'd be safer with us," Archie said. "We were going to tell our mums and dads what we found, but then we got scared. We knew we'd get told off for being in the woods and then we were worried that people might think we'd done it."

The explanation could be partially if not the whole truth: the classic situation that the longer you left off doing something the harder it became to do it, although Robin would guess the full story was more complex. Perhaps a dare that had gone too far or a split-second decision that had soon been regretted. Still, the two youngsters had appeared to have done the right thing, albeit a touch late. And if they'd ensured that these personal items had been kept safe, rather than ending up in the possession of someone who would have spent the money and sold on the phone, the police should be grateful.

"Did you look in the wallet at all?" Pru asked. "Get us a name for the man?"

"We were going to, then Archie thought about fingerprints. We only opened it, then shut it again. Didn't poke about." Forensics would see if Kyle was telling the truth on that, unless they'd had the sense to wear gloves when they'd done it.

"Okay." Robin nodded. "Did you see anything else that was suspicious when you were in the woods? We're not trying to catch you out. We all want to find who did this and the more reliable information we get, the better."

Kyle shook his head. "There's nothing else. There were some people out jogging and a woman with a dog, but not near where he was."

Mrs. Simmons broke her silence with a curt "You shouldn't have been there, either. I've told you about the snakes."

Robin ignored the interruption; that scolding could carry on at home. "And nothing else? Archie?"

"No. Mr. Bright," Archie added, either remembering his manners or deciding he should make a better impression. "I've been thinking about Sunday ever since, and I can't think of any clues. Sorry."

"Did the foxes eat him?" Kyle suddenly asked, referring back to Mrs. Hill's earlier rebuke.

Pru, who'd confessed prior to the interview to being torn between being sympathetic and giving the boys a right royal telling off, said, "Well, he certainly wasn't in pristine condition. Look boys, Mr. Bright and I have decided that we aren't going to punish you, because I'm sure by now you know you've made a lot of wrong choices, but I want you to promise me that when you leave here, you'll think about what I'm going to say. What if that had been your dad or your grandad lying there, and then two people came along and found him, took his stuff, and just went off? How would you feel?"

Robin watched as the chastening words sunk in, both boys' lower lips starting to tremble. "You can go a long way towards making things better by making sure you tell Pru everything you can about what you saw and heard in the woods, like a description of those people jogging and the lady with the dog. Even if you think it's trivial, tell her anyway, because she's really good at picking out what's important. Then we need your fingerprints, as long as your mums say that's okay, and we also need to ask what you were both doing on Saturday." Suspecting he was about to get a blast of maternal anger, he hurried on. "It's nothing but routine. If I didn't ask everybody who's concerned with the case where they were then, my boss would tell me off."

Robin would also be remiss if he didn't consider the possibility of one or both of the boys being the killer. Everyone in the room would have been aware of high-profile cases, like the murder of James Bulger, in which children around Kyle and Archie's age had committed unthinkable acts.

"We were coming home from our holiday," Mrs. Simmons said. "We were late starting, and then the A303 was a nightmare, so we were very late getting back, and then we had to be up early on Sunday to get his majesty here off to his football training."

That accorded with Saturday's fatal crash which had made a road that was notoriously prone to delays almost grind to a halt. Adam's mum had been caught up in the tailbacks too. "Thank you. If you could give Pru your holiday details later, we'd be grateful. Mrs. Hill?"

"Archie was out with his dad most of Saturday, fishing, so I could get on with the housework. He'll be able to confirm that. Mind you, that'll be the last fishing trip or any other treat for you for a while." She shot Archie a withering glance. "I'll be watching you like a hawk."

Both lads fixed their gazes on their hands again; Robin really wouldn't want to be in their shoes for the next few weeks. "Last couple of things. Archie, you said your dad keeps his wallet and phone in his back trouser pockets. Make sure you warn him to keep them buttoned, because there's a lot of thieves out there and you never know when they might strike. Does he also carry his keys with him, when you're out?"

Archie looked up, evidently happier to be addressing the police than his mother. "Yeah. Or else he couldn't drive the car or get in the house. Why?"

"The dead man had no keys on him. Did you see any near his body?"

Archie shook his head, as did Kyle, who then said, "I've been thinking about that. I have, Mum," he protested, at a snort from Mrs. Simmons. "Because I want to help, I really do. There weren't any keys. We'd have picked them up if we'd seen them."

"And that leaves just one silly little thing that's bugging us," Pru said. "That packet of biscuits. Party Rings?"

"Yeah, miss." Kyle, frowning, seemed puzzled at the question.

"We won't get angry, whatever the answer is, but are you sure you two didn't eat them?"

Her question made Kyle wince. "Ew. No way. Not from next to a dead bloke."

"I couldn't have eaten anything, because I was being sick," Archie reminded them.

On which intriguing note, Robin left Pru and the family liaison officer who'd been in silent attendance to complete the statement taking and the rest. If the lads hadn't picked up the keys, what had happened to them, and if they'd not eaten those biscuits, who the hell had? And when?

Robin entered the incident room with the Tupperware box in hand.

"Is that your lunch, sir?" Ben quipped.

"Cheeky sod." Robin grinned. "It's Gary's wallet and phone. Those two lads we've been talking to had found him and taken them." He summarised what Kyle and Archie had said, the key bits of which Danielle jotted on the board. "So, still no sign of his keys. Incidentally, the lads say they didn't eat the biscuits, and I'm inclined to believe them. Their mothers are going to have that pair on a very short rein for the foreseeable future, so any further lies and it'll be no treats for months. Hopefully the experience will put them off crime for life."

"That empty packet is bizarre," Ashok said. "If it was full on Sunday afternoon, who ate it in between then and Tuesday? Do you get homeless people living up there, the sort who could be desperate for food?"

Ben shrugged. "It's possible. We do get people camping out in odd places. I can't see the killer revisiting the scene only to eat Party Rings, though, no matter how yummy they are. I could murder a packet now."

"Solve this crime and I'll buy you a big pack of them, not merely a snack size." Robin had a feeling he'd be held to that.

Danielle tapped the incident board. "I'd have my money on these biscuits being a red herring. I've been on the beach and had seagulls open a packet of Iced Gems I left when I'd gone for a paddle. They snaffled the bloody lot. You get gulls everywhere these days and not just on the coast."

"You could be right to put it down to furry or feathered friends. Hopefully forensics might show something up. As they could with this." Robin waggled the box. "Much as I want to peruse those cards and get his name, I'm going to wait. Ashok, can you nip this down now to the clever mob and say it's top priority?"

"Will do."

As Ashok set off, a phone rang and Sunita, one of the civilian support staff, answered it. Immediately she waved her hand, before covering the mouthpiece. "Got someone down in reception who says he thinks he knows who the victim is, although the desk sergeant isn't sure if it's another dead end. He says the witness is called Ryan French and he's recently back from a cruise, where he seems to have caught a dose of verbal diarrhoea."

"Ben," Robin said, "that job sounds right up your street. I'd like to join you, but I've got to give Mr. Cowdrey an update. Danielle, when Pru's finished, can you both get back to Kings Ride and have a shufti round the car parks? Talk to people who walk their dogs there regularly or whatever. You know the score. Don't worry if you haven't got his name by then."

As Robin turned to go to his office, a text came through to inform him that Cowdrey would be delayed by at least half an hour because a big drug raid a bit off their patch was at risk of spilling onto it and he was being briefed on that fast-moving situation.

"It's your lucky day, Ben. We can see this Ryan chap together."

Within a few minutes of meeting him, Robin was wishing he was in the drug briefing, or on a raid, or anywhere else than in the same room as Ryan. Before they'd asked any questions, the witness leaped in.

"I'm afraid I didn't contact you yesterday because I didn't know you'd been making an appeal. You see, I've been on a short cruise to western Europe—into Zeebrugge for Bruges, then St. Peter Port on Guernsey, all very nice—with my great aunt. She was supposed to be going with her friend Anne, but she's been taken ill, so I had to substitute. Internet on the ship was too expensive, and Aunt Josephine wouldn't let me do what she calls ‘playing on my phone' too much when we were in port, because it was supposed to be a holiday for both of us. We had a lovely, relaxing time, so when we got in this morning and I read the news, I felt poleaxed. I drove straight up from Southampton." As an explanation it was entirely plausible, if long winded. Over egging the pudding to cover something up or just the bloke's style?

"Who do you think the dead man is and why?" Ben asked. "I'm asking that second bit because we've had too many false starts."

"Mark Bircher. The picture looks right and that's definitely the same T-shirt he has. He got it at one of the Saracens home games before the team slipped into disgrace. Not that it was the players' or fans' fault, but they have to bear the brunt of the stick, don't they? Mark was very upset about it because he's supported them since he was a boy. He had supported them, I should say. I can't quite get my head round the fact he may be dead."

Robin took advantage of a momentary pause to dive in. "How did you know him?"

"As a client, initially, although I'd like to think that he became a friend. We got to know each other quite well, despite the fact that I'm a fan of the Mighty Quins, which can lead to a bit of tension, I promise you, especially when it's game day. I've done it again. Could lead to a bit of tension. Mark contacted me after his wife died—too young, really—a few months back, which is when he started researching his family history, probably as a reaction to being widowed and needing a project to throw himself into. There were some things he'd wanted cleared up but hadn't had the chance to ask his mother while she was still alive—something he always regretted—and his dad wouldn't or couldn't talk about them. Mark had never had the time to devote properly to the job before, especially with Suzy having apparently been so ill for so long."

Another brief pause for breath, into which Ben leaped. "You said he was your client. What do you do?"

"Silly me, I should have explained." Ryan gave a shamefaced grin. "You see, while I work in IT, I have a side line in helping people discover their family's past, because often they're either too busy or too short of tech knowledge to be able to do it themselves. I only charge a nominal fee because it's a hobby as well as a job."

Robin fleetingly considered whether his mother could make use of Ryan's service, and whether she'd be able to cope with the tone of voice, which was the most monotonous he'd ever come across. The bloke could make a fortune doing tapes for insomniacs. Robin mentally shook himself and refocused before he nodded off. "Did Mark have any enemies? I know that sounds dramatic, but we're trying to find out why he was attacked."

"Not that I know of. He told me he didn't get on that well with Suzy's parents, although I wouldn't say they were enemies of his. There were the usual strains that can happen in any family, especially when Suzy was ill. They're into new-age stuff and didn't want her having chemo or anything like that. Crystals and oils are more their line, which is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, they're all right as an adjunct to conventional treatment but not as an alternative. Mark hinted to me that he'd suspected one of the reasons she'd not gone to get a diagnosis from a traditional medic until it was too late was because of family influence, which is awful. Aunt Josephine's had cancer, and she's right as rain now, because—as she says—‘You have to catch the bugger early, Ryan.' Mark wished Suzy had got help when she needed it." Despite the loquaciousness and the boring tones in which he spoke, this witness was providing valuable information. "I think he had some stuff off Suzy's phone that backed up this theory about adverse parental influence, but he didn't really want to talk about it. Her death was too painful, still."

"Where did he live?" Ben asked, stifling a yawn as he did so. Ryan's voice was clearly proving soporific to him too. "And did he go to Kings Ride Woods often?"

"He lived in Lindenshaw, which is a very nice village—well, it's a small town now—although, as you'll know, it's a fair way from there to Kings Ride, so it's a mystery why he should have been in those woods at all. He's never mentioned the place, I don't think, and I'm not aware that he was a runner or a jogger or a twitcher or involved in anything that might have taken him there. He never struck me as the outdoor-type in any way, unless you can count travelling to rugby matches. However, I must point out that I don't know every detail of his life."

Robin caught an eye roll from Ben, which seemed to communicate that a simple Lindenshaw and no, he didn't, would have done as an answer.

"Did he have a car?" Robin asked, then immediately added, "Sorry, have to check this," when his message alert went off. "I'm afraid I've got to go and brief my boss. Ben, can you take a proper statement?"

Ben winced, but he managed a polite "Yes, sir."

Robin escaped, grateful to have something concrete to report about the victim, despite how painful it had been to obtain.

Back in the incident room half an hour later, with Cowdrey properly updated, Robin noticed that the name Mark Bircher had appeared on the board, next to the picture of the victim. As Ben didn't seem to have returned, that information had surely come from the contents of the wallet, as Ashok soon confirmed. Nothing else of any note had turned up among those contents, which included the bog-standard bank cards, driving licence and a less bog-standard out-of-date EHIC, or whatever they were called now, post-Brexit.

"Maybe he hadn't bothered to update it because he'd not been travelling recently. His wife was very ill and only died a few months back." Robin waved his hand in the vague direction of the interview rooms. "Ryan told us. I'll let Ben update you on the rest when he gets here, only be kind to him. Don't ask."

"I won't." Ashok grinned. "The phone's battery is dead as a dodo, so those two lads mustn't have recharged it. The people in the lab can do that and then we can take it from there. Ben's good at the tech stuff, isn't he?"

"Yep. And he'll deserve a treat when he's finished downstairs. I hate to give people nicknames, but Ryan nice but deadly boring gives you the idea." Robin jotted the name—but not the nickname—on the board, near Kathy Hartley's. "Again, not a likely suspect and he's given us a solid alibi."

"I've got some news on Kathy," Pru said. "She's the same, alibi-wise. Been away on a fortnight's holiday in Majorca and only got back on Sunday evening. One of the reasons she was out on a run was to start countering the effect of all the carbs and the pi?a coladas. Unless she's working in concert with the person who did the killing because they needed to stage the discovery, I think we can count her out as well."

Robin nodded. As far as he was concerned, she'd never really been in the frame but if they weren't thorough, these things could come back to bite them. "He had a driving licence, Ashok, so do we have an address for him and did he keep a car?"

"Tumulus Gardens, Lindenshaw, and according to the licence people, he had a red Yaris, a couple of years old," Ashok said. "I've put out an alert for it."

"Isn't Lindenshaw your old stomping ground, sir?" Pru knew damn well that it was, so the question must have been for the benefit of the others.

"It is. I think Tumulus Gardens is part of a fairly new estate, on the east side. Near where there's some Bronze Age remains, hence the street names featuring things like Tumulus or Flint. The locals call it the Barrows. He can't have lived there longer than three or four years, because it used to be fields." Robin studied Mark's picture again. "Long way to go to Kings Ride when there are perfectly good woods nearer to home. Ryan reckons it wasn't a place Mark habitually went. So, what was he doing there?"

"Meeting his killer, or is that too obvious?" Danielle asked.

"Not too obvious at all," Robin said, glad that she was already feeling confident enough to pitch in. "Never ignore what stares you in the face. Why there though? If you had any doubts about the person you were going to meet, wouldn't you choose somewhere safer?"

"Which suggests he knew whoever he was meeting and felt safe with them," Pru said. "It also speaks against this being the kind of attack where a mugger knows their victim uses a certain route at a certain time. If the lack of articles taken hadn't already ruled out a mugging."

Ashok raised his hand. "I wouldn't rule out a random attack, though. Mark's there, waiting for whoever, then somebody comes along and chances their arm, thinking he's an easy target and the location means there'll likely be no witnesses. The mugger hits Mark, he goes down and matey cleans out his pockets. He—or she—gets the fright of his life when he realises he's hit his victim too hard, so he leaves everything, to avoid being connected to the crime scene, and legs it."

"What about his keys, though?" Pru said. "I've been researching bus services, and the Kinechester to Kings Ride route goes nowhere near Lindenshaw. While I wouldn't swear to it, I think you'd have to change at least once to use public transport between the two places, so he'd likely have driven or been given a lift."

Robin nodded. "You can ask about that Yaris when you're lurking in the car parks."

"Is that an unsubtle hint for us to get down there, sir?" Pru quipped, fishing out her own car keys as she did so. "Come on, Danielle."

Before they could leave the incident room, Ben entered it, face as strained as Robin had ever seen it. "Have you told them what Ryan's like, sir?"

"I left that pleasure to you. Anything else emerge after I left?"

"Not really, although I might have missed it, if it did. I kept zoning out." Ben held up what must be the statement. "I got the whole story again, in greater detail, including Aunt Josephine's medical condition."

"Talk the others through the bits about his wife, then get them written on the board. We need to look at family tensions, so contact details and background on both Mark and Suzy Bircher's families are a priority." Robin aimed the last part at Sue and Marcus, the two admin members of the team. "It seems like Ryan had all the info about Suzy secondhand, therefore some direct statements would help get things straight. Oh, and you'll soon have a nice mobile phone to tinker with, Ben. Consider it a reward."

With that, Robin headed to his office, to have a think about how odd it was that his mother and Mark had been in a similar position and whether he could inflict Ryan and his services upon her.