Magpie: The gripping psychological suspense with a twist Page 12

  He came to me one day and pushed a brochure across the table.

  ‘Take a look,’ he said. ‘I’ve found the perfect solution.’

  The words encouraged me. He was listening after all. I took the glossy pages into my hand and eyed the cover – there was a photograph of a green field with views over the valley and water in the distance. On the far left was a tumbledown pile of stones that might once have been the corner of a building. I squinted.

  ‘I don’t understand, that isn’t a house.’

  ‘No, but it could be – don’t you see?’

  ‘What, you want to build a house? Are you serious? That would cost a fortune and where would we live in the meantime?’

  ‘We’d carry on living here. I’ve worked it all out. We can get one of those self-build mortgages; they loan you the money in stages as the build progresses. It’s a stunning location, overlooking Belston Reservoir. You love the reservoir. Commuting will be really easy. There is a house but it’s unliveable, a complete wreck. What really caught my eye is the barn. It’s even more of a wreck, but that means we can do whatever we want with it. It could be absolutely stunning. There’s already planning permission for a three-bedroomed bungalow, so the precedent for a domestic development is set.’

  ‘I don’t know, Duncan, it sounds like an awful lot to take on …’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ve had a chat with the planning office and they’re open to a bigger project, with all the right considerations.’

  Eco-friendly stuff, that’s what he meant, as it turned out. If we installed a water recycling system, generated our own electricity with solar panels or a wind turbine, and used all the appropriate materials, then they’d consider a more substantial reconstruction of what the original barn might once have looked like.

  ‘We’d have the best of both worlds, a character building with all the mod cons and space we could dream of. I’ve already put in an offer on the site.’

  ‘What?’ My voice squeaked. I couldn’t believe he’d made such a big move without discussing it with me first.

  ‘And it’s been accepted!’

  He whipped out a bottle of champagne and set it on the table between us. I stared at it, wanting to knock the bloody thing over. He seemed to cotton on then, his face creasing to a frown.

  ‘It’s a chance to start afresh, Claire. Think about it. You and me. And Joe would love it in the countryside proper. It’s the perfect compromise between old and new, isn’t it?’

  I felt hope surge. He was right, I did love the reservoir – it was our special place, where Duncan and I had fallen in love. Once it began to sink in, once he’d convinced me the finances would work, I realised he might be right. He couldn’t have chosen a better spot. And he was like a man obsessed, as if this would fix everything. Fix us.

  It’s no good, I can’t relax. The cottage is cold and damp and in spite of myself, right now I really miss the easy comforts of the Barn. I can’t believe that Joe is sleeping rough, not for more than a night or two. He’d want a roof over his head and food. I think again of Joe’s supposed friend, Callum. Who else does Callum know? I torment myself with visions of drug dealers and city gangs.

  I reach for my phone on the bedside cabinet and I press the button to bring it back to life. I dab on the icon to make a call and then the one with Joe’s photo. His picture fills the top half of the screen. His head is tilted to one side and he’s pulling a face. The tone gives a rhythmic buzz.

  I wait. But it kicks over to Joe’s answer machine, exactly like it did before.

  ‘Hi, I’m Joe. If you can be bothered, leave me a message, and if I can be bothered, I might call you back.’

  Where is he? Why doesn’t he answer my calls? I’m angry with him now – how could he put me through this?

  I throw the phone back onto the cabinet and sit up in the bed. A gale rumbles around the house, battering at the windows. The trouble with a view is that it comes from being high up. That means you catch the wind, too. I hear a slate sliding off the roof over my head and crashing to the ground below. And another one. I look up towards the ceiling and my anxiety levels shoot.

  Now all I can think of is why Joe might not be able to answer the phone. I can only imagine the worst. That he’s been walking on the lane and the wind has blown a tree over, crashing on his head. Or he’s been run over by a car, his body left lying in a ditch twitching in the muddy water. Perhaps he’s gone up onto the moors, some remote corner of the Peak District where not even the walkers want to go. I see the tangled mess of his arms and legs, like the mangled tyres and broken spokes of a bike, crushed at the bottom of a cliff. A body could lie up there for months and never be found. Or maybe he did go and see Callum, and got punched by some maniac in a back alleyway behind the supermarket in Belston, kicking Joe’s exposed belly, blows raining down on his nodding head, swearing, cursing, leaving him to bleed out. His body prostrate amongst the yellow skips. Black plastic bin bags spilling their contents out along the tarmac like guts.

  Does he even have any ID on him? He could have been wheeled into an A & E department weeks ago, or worse, and I’d never know.

  The walls of the cottage tremble again and something bangs about on the ground in the garden outside. A flower pot or a bag of rubbish or … I don’t know, something else.

  I was trying so hard to forget.

  CHAPTER 27

  CLAIRE – BEFORE

  It’s a new morning, bright and cold and windswept. Outside the kitchen window, the bare trees whip sideways in the gale and twigs and branches roll across the grass to rest like broken mannequins.

  ‘Mum!’

  Joe – he’s back. Hurrah!

  I hear the harsh rasp of his breath and the kick of his shoes against the floor. Arthur’s legs are covered in mud and he sits down with his tail swishing slowly against the floor tiles.

  ‘I saw them,’ says Joe, struggling to drag his arms from his coat.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The guys, they’ve been out there. I think they’re following me. I think they know.’

  I realise then that Joe’s face is damp with beads of sweat and his eyes dart from the door to me to the door again.

  ‘Joe, you’re not making any sense.’

  ‘I was on the chat site yesterday, on my phone, and someone began talking about puppetriders. Right out of the blue. Asking questions about where they’ve been found, how many and when. Then he started on about Tutbury.’

  ‘Tutbury?’ Here we go, I think.

  ‘I think someone may have hacked into my account and seen my search history. They can do that, you know.’

  I roll my eyes. He’s unaware of my expression, twisting his body one way and then the other, pulling off the rest of his coat one-handed. It’s oddly endearing, his paranoia, indicative of how much this means to Joe. He lifts his head, mentally catching up with my question.

  ‘The Tutbury Hoard,’ he says.

  He stops there as if I should know all about the Tutbury Hoard, whatever it is. He pushes the fingers of one hand through his limp hair, dangling his backpack from the other.

  ‘Joe, I’ve no idea what—’

  ‘Fucking shit!’

  He stares at me like I’ve landed from Mars, then dumps his bag in the middle of the kitchen floor. He ignores me and races out into the hall. He mounts the stairs at full pelt and the door slams overhead. There’s even a waft of dust drifting down from the structural beams that support the mezzanine.

  I sigh and Arthur sighs with me, dropping onto the ground and resting his head on his front paws. I look down at him.

  ‘Is he like this with you, too?’ I say.

  His lifts his big brown eyes towards mine, in what I can only describe as the canine equivalent of a philosophical shrug.

  Joe won’t come down. I’ve called him for tea and even knocked on the door. All I can hear is manic typing on the keyboard and the squeak of his office chair tipping back and forth. I eat on my own, th
en clear away and pour hot water onto a teabag in a mug, warming my hands against the heat of it. I breathe in its sweet peppermint smell. It clears the pathways of my nostrils, filling my mouth and lungs with the astringent taste of home.

  I fetch my tablet and sit down again at the dining room table. It blinks into life and I nurse my tea and shuffle forwards to tap into the search line: Tutbury Hoard.

  I scan down the search results. There it is – there are loads of entries. ‘The Biggest Find in the UK,’ one headline boasts. ‘Three hundred and sixty thousand coins discovered in 1831 right on the Derbyshire border with Staffordshire, near Tutbury.’

  Wow! That’s a lot of coins and from the sound of it, dramatic stuff. Especially in those days. When you consider that one gold coin can be worth several thousand pounds now, depending on its history, of course. I tap on another likely looking article, reading quickly through and tapping on another.

  The first coins turned up in a clump, found by workmen in the millrace of the River Dove. Then more appeared in ones and twos, lying on the riverbed. The news triggered a mini gold rush. So many opportunists gathered in the area to dig in or near the banks, up and down the river, that all the local boarding houses filled up. There were arguments with the locals, brawling in the pubs – even, apparently, a murder.

  I read on. There’s a story about the Earl of Lancaster and Derby who in the fourteenth century rebelled against the king. The Earl retreats to Tutbury Castle, there to await his Scottish allies, but they fail to turn up. So he flees across the River Dove. But he’s caught and not long after executed. The Tutbury Hoard was thought to be part of the funds he planned to use to pay his armies.

  There’s a description of some of the coin types that comprised the discovery. One word jumps out at me: puppetrider. Amongst the coins found scattered across the river was an unusual pair of puppetriders.

  I lean back in my chair, pondering this fact. Puppetrider coins are much older than the fourteenth century. I’m not sure they’ve got anything to do with the story about the Earl of Lancaster and Derby. Perhaps there was a second hoard that got confused with the first. Could there be more than one hoard?

  I lean forwards again, peering at the screen. I can’t stop myself from checking on that murder. I’m no better in that respect than anyone else – intrigued by lascivious tales of true-life crime and death. I tap onto the screen again: Tutbury Hoard murder.

  In 1852, more than twenty years after the first coins emerged, a reclusive farmer and his wife were killed. John and Jane Blackburn. They had an isolated farmstead on the gentle slopes overlooking the River Dove. Their house had been found burning. People did their best to put out the fire, but given the limited resources of the time, without much success. When they were eventually able to enter the house, they found the couple’s charred bodies slumped one over the other in the kitchen and a single ancient coin clutched in one of their hands.

  That was when the rumours started: of a second stash of coins further up the river. The two grown-up sons of the couple said their parents had once mentioned finding their own hoard on a patch of land near the riverbank. Instead of handing it over to the authorities, they’d kept it hidden all those years on their farm. This hoard, if it existed, was never recovered, but four men were accused of the farmer and his wife’s murder.

  One of them, their own son.

  I feel the tension in me abate then ratchet up again. I’m sharply aware of the reality of what Joe has found. His coin could be connected, that’s what he’ll be thinking. The River Dove flows down past Ashbourne, just a few miles from here. It’s one of several waterways that help to feed the reservoir. He’ll be thinking maybe his coin belongs to a second hoard left undisturbed further upstream. And if so then he’ll know that if word got out, the whole metal detecting community would arrive here in force looking for it. One coin, especially a rare one, could be worth quite a bit, but a whole pile of them? We’re talking life-changing sums of money here. No wonder he rushed upstairs like that.

  I search the term night hawkers – that was the word he used. Finding a hoard is the Holy Grail of metal detecting and whilst clearly most metal detectorists are completely legit, I still find loads of stuff about thefts from archaeological sites and landowners waking up to find their fields dug over. Earlier, it had all seemed a bit far-fetched. But with so much potentially at stake, Joe must be worried about stirring up the interest of illegal treasure hunters.

  I lean back, letting my eyes drift over to the window with its view out over the valley. He’ll go digging again, I know that for sure, despite what we agreed. Though, he didn’t actually agree, did he? And how could he resist?

  I can’t let him go digging anymore. I can’t bear to think of the lengths to which he might go, what he might find. When he first got into metal detecting it never occurred to me for one moment that it might lead to this.

  CHAPTER 28

  CLAIRE – AFTER

  The nightmares are getting worse. Not just at night but by day too. My whole body clock is out of sync and I doze off by day and lie awake at night. I’m not well, it’s clear to me now. The headaches, the anxiety, the sense of confusion. Some days drift by without me having the will to do a thing. I’m all tied up in knots in my head and I’m crying every day. Maybe this is what they call a breakdown, triggered by the stress of leaving Duncan and losing Joe at the same time.

  The sun lowers in the sky and I feel the tension in me increase until I can’t stand to stay indoors anymore. I jump in the car, crash the gears and speed along the lanes.

  Burnished copper sweeps down the slopes on the far side of the valley. Above the darkening trees, a cloud of rooks caw and clatter, swirling like giant bees. I slow down through the old village. There’s no sign of life, no curtains closed at the windows nor lights on by the front door. No Range Rover, no cars at all. I accelerate along the straight flat road beside the reservoir hardly aware of the colours spreading like an iridescent oil slick across the smooth water.

  I reach the cattle grid at the far end of the road, the one that marks the juncture with the main road. In one direction it goes to Belston, in the other Derby. The gate is wide open. Pausing only long enough to shift gears, I trundle over the grid too fast. A lorry gusts past, headlamps blazing, horns blasting. I jam on the brakes and the car lurches to a halt. I roll the car backwards and stop to catch my breath. The lorry has gone, hurtling round the corner in a rush of dead leaves and broken twigs. I look left and right and left again, and pull out onto the road. I gather speed – thirty, forty, fifty miles per hour – leaning into each bend as if I’m on a motorbike.

  The quiet patchwork of fields and lanes soon give way to the lurid flare of suburban Derby. Traffic lights, house lights, upstairs windows lit up from within by the flashing colours of a TV. A garage forecourt zooms past my eyes with its red-and-yellow fluorescent strips. Streetlamps alternate with the huge trees that line the boulevard, punctuating the pavement with pools of amber light. It reminds me of all that Duncan and I sought to escape.

  I pick up the ring road, traversing the city to the eastern side, where the police station is situated at Chester Green. By now, I’m in such a state I don’t even know what I’m going to do or say. I imagine myself pushing through the main door, storming over to the desk and thrusting one of my posters at the receptionist.

  ‘Here!’ I’ll say. ‘Take it! My son’s missing!’ I’ll scarcely pause to draw breath. ‘I don’t care how old he is or how busy you are – I want help!’

  Please, somebody, help me find my son.

  Nothing makes any sense to me anymore. I’m not driving on the road to Derby. I’m not at the police station. I’ve got no further than the cattle grid. The tyres of my car are only inches from the steel frame and the engine purrs quietly, hiccuping every once in a while. I’m convinced of it now – I must be going mad.

  There’s a magpie on the road – two of them. Their bodies bob up and down as they strut around in a circle a few
feet from the car. I sit there in a daze, my hands locked onto the steering wheel. My eyes are caught by their strange little dance. They seem more interested in each other, but every now and again one of them throws me a curious sideways glance.

  They’re not like other birds, magpies, they’re far more intelligent. I did a study of birds once, as part of my university course. I was looking at brain size and levels of intelligence. The magpie is one of the few birds with a nidopallium (a part of the brain that determines higher cognitive tasks) the same size as chimpanzees and humans. Magpies can recognise themselves in the mirror and they demonstrate elaborate social rituals. They’ve even been known to express grief. These two seem to be a couple, the male flashing his wings in a high-speed fanning movement every few seconds. She looks impressed. Sometimes the couples stay together from one season to the next. Sometimes they don’t.

  My fingers flex against the steering wheel, debating what to do. There’s no one in the valley. The hills on the far side are a dark mass of black. The surface of the reservoir is now pitted by falling drops, constantly moving. It makes me feel sick just looking at it. The rain pings against the bonnet and steam rises from the metal carcass of my car. Still the male magpie does his dance. As the light fades, it’s getting colder. On the main road, another car flies past, oblivious to my presence, swishing round the bend until it’s gone. The birds suddenly, too, are both gone.

  I don’t know what I’m doing here. That headache’s back, pounding in my skull. On the opposite side of the road, through the gaps in the hedging, there’s movement – a herd of cows seeking the warmth of their fellows. The metal grid buried in the road is like an electric fence – tangible but almost invisible, a barrier that holds me back.

  My hands shake as I push the gear lever into reverse. I do a clumsy three-point turn until the car points back the way I’ve come. The dashboard is lit up red and I turn on the radio to calm myself. Music floods the cabin, a folk song from the 1970s. It’s a woman’s voice, soft and sweet and pure.