Page 44 of The Chapel of Bones

The image of a man on horseback wearing a ten-gallon hat flashed into Wesley’s mind. ‘Cowboy?’ Then the word suddenly made sense. ‘You mean a cowboy builder?’

‘That’s right. The hippy in charge said some work had been done in one of the downstairs rooms; this was before my grandad started on the cloakroom. He said that one of the walls looked a mess, so whoever did it must have been a cowboy.’

‘What sort of work? Which room?’

‘No idea. It was just something he said in passing. He didn’t show Grandad what the problem was or anything like that.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Grandad asked him if he wanted a quote to put it right, but the chief hippy said to leave it because they only used that room to store things. It was cool, he said.’

‘By the chief hippy, did he mean Timothy Fontescue-Burns?’

‘That’s him. The one who died of drugs. Grandad read about it in the paper.’

‘Let me get this straight. This cowboy work was done while Fontescue-Burns and his friends were there?’

‘Grandad got the impression it was done before they bought the place.’ Darren suddenly sounded uncertain. ‘Mind you, he sometimes gets hold of the wrong end of the stick.’

‘If he remembers anything else, will you let me know?’

‘Sure thing. And there’s something else – don’t know if it’s important. He said he recently saw one of the hippies in Neston, on a stall at the Tuesday market. She used to call herself Juniper and it turned out she remembered him. She’d been quite friendly when he was working there, he said – unlike some of the others. He ended up having a good chat to her.’

‘What was she selling on the stall?’ Wesley asked, hoping she wouldn’t be hard to trace.

‘She wasn’t selling nothing. She was handing out leaflets about some healing place near Tradington. It had goats.’

That caught Wesley’s attention. ‘Goats. Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. Thought it was a bit odd, but each to his own.’

Della had spoken about a June who’d gone into partnership with her at her goat retreat. Wesley felt the thrill of excitement he always experienced when new possibilities opened up in a case. He wanted to speak to his mother-in-law’s business partner sooner rather than later.

Once the call was ended, he sat there for a while staring at the flickering screen of his computer. It was possible that the body in the wall had nothing to do with Timothy Fontescue-Burns and his little commune; that the work of sealing up the alcove and plastering the wall had been done before they moved in. There might have been a window of a couple of weeks in May 2011 between Donnal borrowing the bestiary from the archives and Fontescue-Burns moving into the property he renamed Casa Mirabilis. And surely if Fontescue-Burns or one of his friends was responsible for Donnal’s murder, he wouldn’t have drawn attention to it by mentioning the plastering to Darren’s grandfather.

He made his way to Gerry’s office to share this new information, and the DCI greeted it cheerfully. ‘Good. I’ve a feeling in my water that you’re on to something here,’ he said, rubbing his hands together gleefully.

‘If Timothy was referring to the alcove where the body was hidden, it was most likely a DIY job,’ said Wesley. ‘The perpetrator would hardly have called in a builder to help cover his tracks. We’d better pull out all the stops to try to find out who was living there either just before or just after Timothy moved in. It’s possible the work was done without his knowledge.’

He went on to tell the DCI what Darren had said about Juniper and the goat healing, and Gerry’s eyes lit up. ‘So she might be on our own doorstep.’ He grinned. ‘If she’s a mate of your mother-in-law’s, I’ll leave this one to you, Wes.’

‘I’ll call the retreat and see if she’s available to talk.’ Wesley suddenly wanted to change the subject. ‘Any more thoughts about Sue Potter?’

Gerry shook his head. ‘We haven’t found anyone who has a bad word to say about the woman, apart from Jim Baker.’

‘And that note about the lanzani suggests it was personal.’

‘Baker bore a grudge against her, and his alibi’s shaky to say the least, so I think he’s our best suspect so far. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’ Baker did seem to be the obvious candidate. But given the possible link with Aleric Donnal’s death, Wesley couldn’t help thinking that there was still a lot they had yet to find out.

‘I vote we get Baker in and question him properly under caution. And send someone round to have another word with Gadson; see if they can pin him down about the events of Friday night.’

Wesley returned to his desk. There were so many leads to follow, and they seemed to be no nearer finding out who had killed Sue Potter than they had been when her body was first discovered.

He was about to call Della to ask whether June was there when Rob came rushing over to his desk. He was puffing and blowing.

‘Been running, Rob?’