‘How on earth did we ever manage to do anything before Health and Safety regulations, I wonder?’
Joe allowed himself a chuckle. ‘Used common sense, and got on with the job.’
Charley was taken aback when she stepped through the grand doorway. Something about the atmosphere changed. She chided herself silently for being silly, but the sense of freedom and space that the outside afforded was now overshadowed by a feeling of dread and foreboding.
The large entrance hall was dark and smelled badly of mould and cat pee. There was an underlying odour of rotting cabbage. Charley put her hand to her mouth and Annie held her nose, but the smell didn’t seem to bother Joe Greenwood. He forged ahead, sweeping his work boots from side to side, to clear any fallen debris from the detectives’ path. ‘Be careful where you tread,’ he warned.
On hearing an altercation outside, Charley frowned, looked over her shoulder and saw James Thomas running towards her. A uniformed police officer was directly behind him, calling out his name.
‘No, I insist,’ Thomas was shouting. ‘I absolutely insist!’
Charley retraced her steps and blocked his way into the house. ‘You can insist all you like, Mr Thomas, but it won’t get you anywhere. Now, are you going to leave the site of your own free will, or do you want to be arrested for obstruction, and escorted back to the nick to wait for me in a cell?’
James Thomas’s body language told her he was far from happy. It appeared he wasn’t finished. Angrily he jabbed an outstretched finger towards the Joe Greenwood, but the question was directed at Charley, ‘What gives him the right?’
Annie cringed as she waited for Charley’s reaction. Anyone who knew her boss knew he was making a big mistake by antagonising her. Annie was a relative newbie to CID, but she had been told by the team about her superior just before Charley’s imminent arrival at Peel Street Station. Physically fit, and as tough as her bare-knuckle-fighting father before her, Charley’s right-hand punch was one that any professional fighter would have been proud of.
Charley’s voice was quiet, and devoid of emotion. ‘Mr Greenwood was the one to make the discovery. He’s already been into the scene. Now, will you please calm down? I won’t stand here being shouted at.’ Her voice rose, but was steely. ‘Do I make myself clear?’
Thomas’s eyes resembled those of a raccoon, so black were the circles around them. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do, this is my land you’re standing on!’
Charley stared Thomas straight in the eye, and lowered her voice to a threatening whisper. ‘Do as you’re told or I will personally throw you out, and I’m sure you don’t want the others to see you squealing like a stuck pig, do you?’
As she readied herself for his response, she didn’t anticipate seeing the quivering of his lower lip, as he took a step backwards and pointed a finger in her direction. ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Sherlock. I’ll be having words with your boss, you mark my words.’
‘Good, it’ll save my updating him,’ Charley shouted to his retreating figure. Annie wasn’t the only one to see the expression on Charley’s face as she indicated that the uniformed officer should follow him.
After their departure, Charley stood for a moment, quietly soaking up her surroundings. She turned to the others. ‘Right, now where were we?’ she said.
Although she had never been inside the property before, she could see why Crownest had long held the interest of so many historians down the generations. There was a lot to take in even where the walls, now lifeless and cold, had crumbled; in their place stood beams of wood, blackened and charred where the flames had licked them. The odour of smoke and ash filled Charley’s mouth, nostril and lungs and she began to cough.
‘You okay?’ Asked Joe.
Charley nodded. The glass littering the floor where the remains of the once beautiful stained-glass window had fallen crunched under the sole of her shoes, and the metal base of the hall chandelier lay blacked and twisted at her feet. After a moment or two Joe Greenwood moved slowly and quietly towards one of the doors leading off the ornate grand entrance hall to the dining room. When he reached it, he cast a look over his shoulder with eyes that invited her to follow him. When Charley joined him, he spoke to her in a reserved tone. ‘I can’t think what’s got into James. I’ve known him a long time. We grew up on the same estate, Irish Catholic workers. He went to Rome to become a priest, but he didn’t qualify in the end.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to do my job.’
Chapter 4
Joe automatically reached down for the handle on the door. Realising it had already been removed in preparation for the demolition he looked down at the round hole through the old door that showed them the thickness of the wood, and finding Charley’s face, his lips turned up at the corner. ‘Habit,’ he said, ‘the handles are of value, the doors, not.’
The dining room was dark, with a minimum of light, more so because of the outer branches of the dense tree just outside, which had forced themselves through gaps in the broken boarded-up windows.
‘Just tell me this, how could any decent human being want to move the bones of another found in suspicious circumstances, without trying to find out who they belong to, how they got there, and why?’ Joe said.
There was no answer Charley could give that would satisfy Joe Greenwood, because she couldn’t decipher it herself. ‘I’ve spent most of my life trying to understand people,’ she said in response.
Free from any furniture, the floor space in this room was littered with bricks, smaller stones, rubble, wood, and debris of all shapes and sizes. Adjacent to the door lay the would-be
