Past Praying For

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Be careful, sir,’ the hovering fire chief cautioned. ‘These beams are smouldering still, and the fog’s lifting; if we get a gust of wind they could go up again in a moment.’

  Vezey gave no sign of having heard him. Ducking under one beam and stepping over the end of another he reached the back of the skeletal chair. The bed, its water-saturated mattress and covers scorched but not burned away, concealed most of the body from him, but by crouching and craning his neck and flicking on his powerful torch he gained a foreshortened view from the feet in their brogues, up the scorched cavalry twill trousers as far as the edge of the cashmere sports jacket.

  The fingers of the right hand, the arm and the part of the shoulder protruding from below the hanging covers on one side, had not escaped the fire, and he averted his eyes. Years of criminal investigation had cured him of excessive squeamishness, but the detail was the job of the scene-of-crime unit and he never chose to dwell needlessly upon horrors. He had registered the stench of charred flesh when he came in, but the olfactory characteristic which means that any smell is blunted after a few minutes was a mercy for which he had frequently been grateful.

  From what he could tell in this position, it looked as if McEvoy was lying on his front, his right arm at least in a position which suggested that he had fallen forward on to his face.

  Squatting back on his haunches, Vezey frowned. He lowered his torch for a moment; the waiting shadows dipped and gathered once more in the gruesome cavern beneath the bedstead.

  The instinctive feel for something not quite right, which is the shrewd detective’s greatest talent, gripped him now as he scanned again such details as he could see without disturbing anything.

  In policework it was not uncommon to have to deal with the victims of fire. Often they were drunk; sometimes they were drunk and incapable, and these you found still sitting in the chair where the fatal stupor had transfixed them. If they were sober enough to move at all, there would be obvious signs of some attempt at escape, like poor Tom so pathetically trapped by the unyielding garage doors. Even under the effects of extremely toxic fumes, Margaret Moon had made it to the threshold of her bedroom.

  But not McEvoy. McEvoy, it seemed, had stood up and immediately pitched forward on to the hearthrug. That was strange.

  He forgot his anger now in concentration. The itch to understand all mysteries might, without charity, be as nothing, but it was most surely the core of his professional being. That, rather than a grand and abstract passion for justice – whatever that might be – was why the abuse, the violence and the squalor did not send him hunting for a desk job. This was what it was all about.

  Oblivious to the watchful fire chief and the sergeant, still murmuring nervously behind him, he leaned forward as far as he could. Beneath the man’s body was a Persian rug – a Qashgai, beautiful and valuable – burned around the edges, blackened and stained with water. It was hard to tell in this unreliable light, but surely that deeper stain, which seemed to have seeped out round the fallen body, was neither water nor soot?

  Ignoring the fire chief’s protests, he climbed round to the other side, penetrating deeper into the ruins of the study. He was conscious of the heat still lingering there; automatically he loosened the collar of his shirt. But he gained the vantage point he wanted at the farther end of the bed.

  It was darker here, of course, away from the lights directed in at the window. But when he pointed his torch under the head of the bed, he saw what he was looking for.

  Piers McEvoy’s head was turned to one side, his left hand and arm flung up in reflection of the position of his right. His face was drained of colour, greyish-pale, and the upper part of his jacket, his shirt and his tie were so saturated with blood that there was no longer any pattern to be seen. From the side of his neck protruded a skewer; a long, thick barbecue skewer with a handle like a Spanish sword’s at the end.

  ***

  Robert Moon was waiting at headquarters when Rod Vezey arrived back. He had believed he felt terrible when he retired to bed two hours ago; now he realized that, compared to his state at the moment, he had been feeling terrific.

  They had shown him to Vezey’s office and given him a cup of coffee; in his own interests, he was trying very hard not to drop off to sleep again when the door was flung open and Vezey strode in.

  ‘This had better be good,’ Robert said with quiet menace, but Vezey hardly heard him.

  ‘She’s killed him,’ he said savagely. ‘She’s run a barbecue skewer through his neck and she’s killed him, and she’s talked to us for hours without even mentioning it.’

  ‘Ah. That’s – unfortunate.’

  ‘Unfortunate!’ Vezey exploded. ‘Is that all you can say – unfortunate?’ Then he stopped.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said tiredly. ‘I know that was deliberate understatement. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I’m just raging with frustration at the incompetence of the moron at the other end who didn’t take any steps to investigate where McEvoy really was, and the moron at this end who is supposed to be leading the enquiry and failed even to elicit the fact that a murder had taken place.

  ‘But she was pouring her heart out, I thought. How come she didn’t even mention it? And a skewer; something long enough so that there wouldn’t be blood on her hands to give her away. Is it all a front, and she’s actually not half as loopy as she seems?’

  ‘The Hamlet syndrome, only mad north north-west, you mean? No, I don’t think so. In my opinion she couldn’t tell a hawk from a handsaw if one of them pecked her on the leg.

  ‘What does strike me, though, is that what she was doing was answering questions, not volunteering information. She responded very fully to what we asked her, but not once did she instigate a topic. And we simply didn’t ask the question.’

  ‘Well, we’re going to ask it right now. Come on, I’m sorry to have dug you out of bed, but I’m keen to continue with the same social dynamics as before – that’s the jargon, isn’t it?’

  When they reached the interview room once more, Smethurst slipped out to talk to them. The tiles on her roof, he explained graphically if inelegantly, had started slipping. She had become restless during their absence, talking about games and surprises, and looking for someone who wasn’t there, which had distressed her. He had sent for a policewoman who was with her at the moment; she slipped discreetly away when they went in.

  Missy was looking different now; the bright eyes had become opaque, the jaunty air replaced by a brittle nervosity. She was tired, naturally, and on the waxy pallor of her skin the crusted scars stood out.

  Forestalling Vezey, Moon asked her gently about Piers, and for a moment the eyes danced again, she clapped her hands and, shockingly, laughed.

  ‘Oh, well done! That was my surprise, and I won, because you didn’t guess, did you? He was in the games room, wasn’t he?’

  Vezey nodded, unable to speak for the revulsion that choked him as he remembered the body, the charring, the pool of blood.

  She was delighted to tell them that she had known Piers was at home; she had set fire to the house, and killed him. But she denied, with increasing vehemence and indignation, all knowledge of the skewer.

  He had died in the fire, she told them again. She had waited till he came home, then she had locked him in and killed him. ‘Just like that stupid old man,’ she said more than once.

  ‘And he just sat there while you broke the window and lit the curtains,’ Vezey sneered. ‘Why would he do that?’

  She stared as if the idea had not occurred to her, then faltered. ‘I – I don’t know why. Because he was drunk, I expect. I didn’t look, but I listened and there wasn’t a sound.’

  ‘Because he was dead.’ He pressed home his advantage. ‘You knew he was dead, because you had killed him before. With a skewer.’

  ‘No! No! What skewer? Why do you keep saying that? You’re trying to upset me. I killed him, I killed him in the fire, because if he was dead Dumbo couldn’t just go on the same
way. But there wasn’t any skewer. I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘So are you saying that it wasn’t you? That somebody else killed him?’

  ‘No! No! I did it, and you shan’t say I didn’t!’

  The voice was becoming higher, louder, hysterical, and she began beating her small fists on the table.

  Moon’s hand, vice-like, gripped Vezey’s in warning before he could speak again.

  ‘Now don’t worry, Missy. We’ll get all this sorted out. You say you don’t know anything about a skewer. Could Lizzie have done it, do you think, to help you?’

  The soothing voice had an effect and she became calmer, though her expression was still hostile. ‘Dumbo?’ she said, a world of contempt in her voice.

  ‘Would you have seen her if she did?’

  ‘Well, of course I would. She can’t see what I do, but I can see her any time I like. Dumbo couldn’t skewer a fish finger if it squeaked. I’m the one who does exciting things. You shan’t say she did it, you shan’t!’

  ‘Missy,’ Moon said, ‘could we – would you let us speak to Dumbo?’

  At his side he felt Vezey draw in his breath. Missy stared at him for a moment, then, ‘Oh, why not?’ she said dully. ‘I don’t like this, anyway. She’s welcome.’

  The tension in her body suddenly seemed to disappear, as if a puppet-master had let go of the strings. She sagged in the chair and closed her eyes.

  Moon found that he too was holding his breath. A long, long silence followed.

  Suddenly her eyes flew open, wide and blank. ‘She’s not there,’ she said in a strange flat voice. ‘She’s not there. Dumbo’s not there. She’s dead, she’s dead.’

  And then she began to scream, scream upon endless scream.

  ***

  Once the paramedics had gone, they walked back, shaken, towards Vezey’s office.

  ‘And what do we make of that?’ Vezey demanded despairingly. ‘I’m out of my depth here. Why would she be desperate to take the credit, as she sees it, for murdering him, but deny the skewer?

  ‘Perhaps it’s a social thing. Perhaps People Like Us don’t skewer their husbands, they just kipper them. That class has all sorts of taboos that normal people couldn’t begin to understand.’

  Moon looked at him shrewdly. ‘I would have thought you would be as likely as anyone to know what they were, Rod?’

  Vezey coloured, then said defensively, ‘I’ve spent my life forgetting everything of that sort that my mother tried to instil into me. But never mind that – it was only a throw-away remark. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Back to the drawing board?’

  Vezey looked at him aghast. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting she – they – didn’t do it?’

  Moon shrugged. ‘You heard her. She wanted us to think she’d killed him – though it seems to me, from her account, that if he’d been alive he could easily have escaped – and was outraged at the suggestion that she hadn’t. She was totally certain that Dumbo hadn’t done it either. Why should she lie?’

  ‘How the hell would I know? I’m just a humble copper. You’re the shrink – you tell me! But it seems a touch unlikely that we’ve found the person behind all this – one death, one attempted murder, three fires – and now there’s suddenly some other homicidal maniac who just happens to be passing by pure coincidence and nips in and does this, presumably just to put Missy’s nose out of joint. Do me a favour!’

  They had reached Vezey’s office by this time. Moon said, ‘Would I be very wide of the mark if I suggested that you are what is fashionably termed “in denial”; that you are simply refusing to entertain the thought that you are at the beginning of a new investigation, and not at the successful conclusion of the old one?’

  Vezey had sat down at his desk.

  ‘Dear God!’ he said, almost reverently. ‘Please not. Please, please not!’ and bending forward he banged his head on the blotter in front of him.

  15

  As a small gesture towards his bodily needs, Rod Vezey went down to the canteen in the basement of the police building and had breakfast.

  He had sent both Moon and Smethurst away. Robert had gone thankfully, without even a token protest, but he had needed to be much more forceful with his junior officer.

  ‘You’re no use to me when you’re clapped out, Dave,’ he said brutally. ‘You’re infinitely replaceable, you know, and you’ll see things a lot straighter when you’ve had a few hours’ sleep.’

  He did not encourage friendships with his sergeants, but he worked more often with Dave than the others, and they worked together well: both taciturn men, who were blunt if they must speak.

  Now Dave said, ‘And doesn’t the same apply to you, guy?’

  ‘Cheeky sod,’ Vezey said without heat. ‘The difference is, you’re replaceable and I’m not. Go to bed.’

  But he was aware of the light-headedness of extreme tiredness as he shovelled down the greasy, undercooked bacon, the frizzled egg and the baked beans without actually tasting them. He stared ahead unseeing as he ate, his mind racing over this latest problem.

  He must at least make his own mind up about what he thought before he reported to his super later today. If it was still unresolved, Our ‘Enery would get twitchy about perceived importance as denoted by rank and insist that one of the divisional chief inspectors took over the running of the investigation. Reasonably enough, to be fair, but if it was the one he was afraid it would be, it would make life distinctly uncomfortable. Much easier just to say that their murderer was even now in a secure ward under serious sedation.

  Perhaps she was. He accepted Robert’s logic, though whether you could usefully apply logic to Elizabeth McEvoy’s thought processes was another question alto-gether. He was less convinced than Robert appeared to be that Missy knew everything done by Dumbo. He was no expert, but it seemed conceivable that Missy might believe she did, while Dumbo hid somewhere in the thickets of their psyche and refused to come out to answer awkward questions.

  By now the SOCOs should be coming up with some hard evidence. If he drove across there it would be a two-birds-with-one-stone job. He would find out sooner what they had to tell him, and he would be out of reach of any superior officer until he was in possession of a few more of the facts.

  Vezey opened the window as he drove, despite the chilly drizzle that blew in. He had cleared up after too many accidents caused by people who believed they could function without sleep, including one of his own colleagues, now wheelchair-bound, who would infinitely have preferred that the crash had killed him.

  There were still a lot of police vehicles at the scene, as well as the usual crowd of gawpers and a couple of newspaper stringers hanging about. They hadn’t put out a statement yet; they couldn’t hold off much longer, but since that would inevitably bring the whole of Fleet Street down on them, the more stalling they could do the better. He strode past them with a nod to the constables on guard, ignoring shouted pleas for information.

  Men were still working in the study, where debris had been carted away and McEvoy’s body was now lying exposed. They directed him round to the back of the house when he asked for the man in charge.

  The back of the house – kitchen, dining room and bedrooms above – was not seriously damaged by the fire. One or two windows had cracked with the heat and there was the inevitable smoke damage, but in contrast to the devastation elsewhere, the normality was somehow macabre: the dishwasher, waiting to be emptied, the table providently set for a meal which would never now take place. The only incongruity was a rickety, old-fashioned typewriter which was sitting in an open, dusty black plastic bag beside the espresso coffee machine.

  Nolan, the officer in charge, was a big man run to seed, with fleshy jowls and a soft paunch sagging over his waistband. He had thinning black hair draped hopefully across a bald patch, and plump hands. Vezey found him personally repellent, but held him in enormous professional respect. He was famous for what he called his ‘two-minute job’; a precis
e analysis of the features of a case most likely to repay immediate attention.

  With him was the police pathologist, a Scot with fair hair and baby-blue eyes veiled by gold-rimmed spectacles. He had a reassuring bedside manner – wasted on his clientele – and the shrewdness of his judgement and astringency of his tongue belied his mild and youthful appearance.

  He found the pair sitting drinking coffee at the kitchen table in a parody of domesticity. Vezey, with a mixture of distaste and impatience, would not join them.

  ‘The two-minute job? Right.’ Nolan clasped his pudgy hands, flexed his fingers till they cracked, and considered.

  ‘First thing – position of the deceased. No attempt at escape. You noticed that?’ as Vezey nodded. ‘OK. Next thing, the weapon. No problem about provenance – seven others identical on that rack over there.’

  Vezey followed his pointing finger. Attached to the kitchen wall was a decorative rack made of wrought iron with brass trim, and across it, in fitted spaces, were laid the barbecue skewers with their Spanish-style hilts. One space was eloquently empty and the rack showed the metallic traces of fingerprint powder.

  ‘You can have a look at one if you like. They’re all the same – sturdy, well-made, lethal. No problem about getting purchase for the thrust.

  ‘No fingerprints on the skewer that was used, though. Smudges which we haven’t analysed yet, but Chummy definitely wore gloves.’

  ‘What?’ Vezey, who had taken down one of the skewers and was fingering it thoughtfully, spun round.

  Nolan cocked an eye. ‘Touched a nerve, have we?’

  Missy had no gloves with her. And there had been no glove smudges on the matchbox.

  ‘What about the brandy bottles she used to start the fire?’

  ‘Oho, we are well-informed, aren’t we? Spoiled one of my little surprises, that has. They’re covered with prints, though we haven’t had time to check whose.’

  Vezey knew whose they would prove to be. And could he really believe that she was organized enough to use gloves for murdering her husband, then conceal them somewhere before carrying on bare-handed with the bottles and the box of matches? It seemed unlikely. More than unlikely.