Page 128 of Worse Than Murder

Philip shakes his head and rolls his eyes. He’s seriously outnumbered. He unfolds a step ladder and places it in the corner of the room. He climbs up, hammer and chisel in hand, and begins chipping away at the cement between the bricks.

It’s a slow process, but once he gets started passing the bricks down to me one by one, a large hole is soon revealed. He takes a torch from me, turns it on and looks inside.

‘It only goes back a few metres. If that,’ he says. He reaches inside. ‘I can almost touch the back wall.’

‘Can you see down to the floor?’ I ask.

He leans inside and tries to look down. ‘No. Not yet. I’ll need to take more bricks out.’

‘Why would you build another wall so close to the existing one?’ Sally asks Adele from the back of the room.

‘I don’t know. Unless… is it possible it’s a load-bearing wall? Could the structure be weak so that was built to hold up the ceiling?’

‘And we’re calmly taking it down while sitting beneath it ready to get crushed?’ Sally asks, fear entering her voice.

‘We’re not exactly being sensible, are we?’

‘When we bought the place, the surveyors said the structure was sound,’ Philip reassures them.

‘They didn’t notice the false wall, though, did they?’

More bricks are removed and handed down to me. I hand them to Carl who is placing them, neatly, in the corner of the room. When the hole is large enough for Philip to lean fully into, he asks for the torch once again.

‘Well? Anything?’ I ask.

Philip looks back at his wife. ‘Sal, maybe you should take Carl up.’

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘No. I’ve been waiting for this all night. I want to see what’s behind there. Is it anything valuable?’

Philip descends the steps, hands me the torch and tells me to take a look. Reluctantly, I do. On the top step, reaching up on tiptoe, I lean over and look into the black. I shine the torch down and look into the empty eyes of a leathered skull. I look up and down the small space and see a mummified body laid out on the ground.

‘Iknew she was going to be trouble the first time I heard she was in the area. You know what they’re calling her online– the angel of death.’

Inspector Gill Forsyth is seething. She has received a call from Sally Meagan at Nature’s Diner telling her a skeleton has been found in their basement. Gill has just sunk her third glass of Rioja and doesn’t feel she should drive. She calls her sergeant, Alan Stokes, and asks him to come and pick her up. She knows he won’t be happy about being called out, but he’s a teetotal and has no choice.

‘First the storm, then the girls in the lake, and now a bloody body in the cellar.’

‘I hardly think she can be blamed for the storm,’ Alan says.

‘No. But I can blame her for bringing her bad karma to my doorstep. Why couldn’t she have stayed in Sheffield where she belongs?’

Alan pulls into the restaurant car park and finds a space next to a marked police car and a CSI van.

‘So, who do we reckon this body belongs to?’ Alan asks as he climbs out of the car.

‘I’ve no idea. But seeing as Matilda Darke is involved, it could be anyone from Lord Lucan to Jack the Ripper. I’d even put money on it being Jesus,’ Gill says as she makes her way to the steps of the restaurant.

* * *

We’re sitting at different tables. Philip and Sally at one, Carl at another with the two dogs excitedly wagging their tails and, at the next table to him, me and Adele are sharing a bottle of wine. Gill enters the restaurant. Her eyes fall on me straight away and give me a dirty look.

‘Mr Meagan, I don’t know what to say. I’m incredibly sorry,’ Gill says.

‘Thank you.’

‘Just to be clear, why were you hacking away at a solid brick wall late into the night?’