Murder on the Menu

by Fiona Leitch

  So if you want to look at the crime scene again you’d better do it now. There was that little voice again, getting me into trouble. But I had to admit it had a point. I shut the back of the van, looked around, and then headed over to the crime scene.

  The tent was gone, although there was still police tape around the bench area. That was all that was left to show that poor Mel’s life had ended here. I looked around at the ornamental pond; there were some big, heavy rocks, just as I’d remembered, and they were scattered around the edge of the pool to make it look less formal, more natural. It was hard to tell if any had been moved; they’d been placed quite randomly. But when I looked closer, there was an indentation in the mud. Something heavy had been here until recently. I squatted on my heels and peered into the pond; I suspected it wasn’t particularly deep, but with the waterlilies and some kind of pond weed growing in it, giving the koi carp who lived there shade and something to nibble at, it was dark and shadowy and impossible to see the bottom. I was sure all of this had occurred to Withers anyway; as much as his insistence on seeing Tony as the only possible suspect (until I had hopefully inserted a few doubts in his mind) had irritated me, I had to admit that from what I’d seen, he was a good copper and he knew what he was doing. Not good enough that I would step back and let him get on with it, of course…

  I stood up and looked over at the faint pathway in the grass Germaine had led me down the other day. The days of summer sunshine and the heavy dew in the mornings meant that the tall grasses and sedges had already sprung back to life and the pathway had all but disappeared. The only way I could tell where it had been was from the two metal stakes that had been shoved into the ground and wound around with more of the police incident tape. I skirted them and trailed through the long grass, some of it tall and wispy enough to tickle my hands, which hung by my side.

  The rest of the grounds were perfectly manicured, Mother Nature teased and combed and styled to within an inch of her life, but this corner of the garden had been left as a wildflower meadow. In amongst the long, fluffy white tufts of the grass seed heads wove deep purply-blue cornflowers, sunny yellow marsh marigolds, and the tiny palest pink, almost heart-shaped flowers of enchanter’s nightshade. Bees buzzed in and out of the undergrowth, at this time of day not yet having to compete with the constant hum of summer holiday traffic from the A39 that by midday would penetrate even here. It really was idyllic, if you blanked out the fact it was the scene of at least one murder. The trail had, I’d thought, been created by someone dragging a body; but could something else have caused it? Maybe a suitcase on wheels, being tugged along the uneven ground? Cheryl had left a suitcase in her car, but maybe that had been a decoy, a stunt suitcase, designed to throw people off the scent. Tony had said she’d been selling possessions; maybe she really had been putting together an escape fund, and had brought a second piece of luggage – an escape kit – with her? A really large suitcase could possibly have made the trail. And yet…

  I didn’t believe it. Someone had dragged a body along here. Whether it had been a dead body, or an injured one, or even a drugged one, I had no idea. It all just felt wrong. The murders I’d been involved in during my time in the Met (only on guard or escort duties; I’d been uniform, not a detective) had all been straightforward. Nine times out of ten it was an ex-husband or partner killing a woman who had had the nerve to leave them. Depressing, but simple. Occasionally we’d had gang killings, but they were simple enough too – a drug dealer getting greedy and being taught a lesson by the boss, or someone trying to muscle in on a territory. But this one made my head hurt. And my heart.

  I walked to the end of the trail, listening to the birds singing. I had no idea what birds they were, but I liked to hear them anyway. I stopped at the wooden fence and looked over at the lay-by beyond, not wanting to touch the rotting wood and get another splinter.

  Holy moly. The tarmacked lay-by was clean(ish) now, but I suddenly remembered where I’d seen an oil stain like the one outside Roger Laity’s house…

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I couldn’t stand around there all day cogitating, not with a Gimpmobile full of organic sausage waiting for me (not a euphemism), so I walked thoughtfully back to the van. I was so deep in thought that I didn’t notice the black car parked nearby.

  ‘Oh my God, you just can’t leave it alone, can you?’ Withers’s voice brought me out of my trance. He was standing on the hotel steps with his hands on his (snake-like) hips.

  ‘I’ve got a genuine reason to be here today!’ I protested. ‘I came back to get my’ – for some reason, saying the word sausage in front of this man made me feel intensely uncomfortable, a situation which could only be made even more mortifying by adding the word organic – ‘organic sausages,’ I finished, failing miserably to avoid saying either word. He grinned.

  ‘You and your sausages. Are they real sausages or are you using imaginary ones as an excuse to come back here, hoping to bump into me?’

  ‘You’re very sure of yourself,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Detective Chief Inspector Withers, but if you’d care to mount an interior inspection of my vehicle you’ll find it’s practically wall-to-wall pork.’

  He laughed loudly at that. ‘I can honestly say that’s the least enticing invitation I’ve had in a long time.’ He walked alongside the van, studying the decals. ‘Interesting artwork for a caterer…’

  ‘I thought so at first, but it’s growing on me. Not literally, obviously,’ I said. ‘That would be anatomically difficult.’

  ‘It certainly makes you easy to spot and hard to forget.’ He leant against the bonnet of the van. ‘Not that I ever get a chance to forget you, because every time I turn around you’re at my crime scene.’

  I sighed and sat on the hotel steps. ‘I’m not doing it on purpose.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, all right, I am. I can’t help it. I guess I’m just…’

  ‘Nosey?’

  I laughed. ‘That was my nickname at school. Nosey Parker. I wasn’t then but I have to admit I probably am now.’

  Withers sat down next to me. ‘Something we can agree on, anyway. So, Nosey Parker, do you want to know what I just discovered?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just spoke to the staff member who was behind the bar and he said that after you broke up the bitch fight – which I would really like to have seen, by the way – and the party got started again, Cheryl and Craig Laity had words.’

  ‘What sort of words?’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘That would’ve been nice to know, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately he didn’t hear what they were talking about. He said they weren’t exactly arguing, but they didn’t want anyone else hearing because as soon as Tony joined them, Craig walked away. And there’s more.’

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘Craig left the party early. He didn’t see when exactly, but he thinks Craig and Roger had both left by half ten, quarter to eleven, whereas most of the guests didn’t leave until closer to midnight.’

  ‘Hmm…’

  ‘What does “hmm” mean? Come on, Parker, out with it.’

  ‘The lay-by, near where Cheryl’s earring was found. There was an oil stain there.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s a lay-by. Cars break down and pull over, they have leaks, oil, brake fluid, all sorts.’ He grinned. ‘Bodily fluids sometimes, too.’

  ‘Eww, eww, eww. Anyway, it wasn’t some historical whatever-it-was stain, because it was there on Saturday and it’s not there now. It was fresh and now it’s dried up.’

  ‘You went and looked at the lay-by? Just now? You need a hobby.’

  ‘I’ve got a hobby: interfering in police investigations. There was a similar stain on Roger Laity’s driveway, right where his car was parked when we went there on Sunday.’

  ‘And you saw this during your unofficial visit yesterday?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hmm…’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  Withers looked at me t
houghtfully. ‘I’ll have to check that scene of crime took photos of the lay-by, not just where the earring was found. I don’t know that it could be used as evidence, but…’

  ‘But it gives you something to think about.’

  He nodded.

  ‘So does this mean you finally accept that Tony didn’t do it?’

  Withers looked at me steadily. ‘No. But I do accept that he’s not the only one with a possible motive, and he’s not the only one who had opportunity. That’s the best I can say at the moment.’

  I smiled. ‘Then that’ll have to do.’

  I left Withers talking to the hotel receptionist – whom I could see, through the hotel doors, looking at in him in doe-eyed adoration as she answered his questions – and drove home. I unloaded everything, leaving Mum and Daisy to work out the logistics of how to get a hundred or so vanilla panna cottas and chocolate tortes in the fridge (I suspected that their solution would involve eating several of them), not to mention those blasted sausages, which were in danger of becoming the bane of my life. Then I headed straight back out again. I had an appointment.

  ‘So this is the famous van?’ Rob Trevarrow wiped his hands on an oily rag in the gesture beloved of all small-town mechanics since time immemorial – it was probably part of the City and Guilds Car Mechanics course – and inspected the Gimpmobile. I’d been to school with Rob, who, at the age of six, had wanted to be an astronaut but at the age of sixteen had realised he was probably more likely to succeed in life if he just went and worked in the family garage. Luckily, he’d always been good with his hands (certainly according to my friend Helen, who had gone out with him in the sixth form) and he soon discovered that being able to fix just about anything with a motor would stand him in good stead down here, where people tended to hold on to their old bangers (and tractors and muck spreaders) pretty much until they fell apart. ‘Yeah, I can see why you might want a re-spray…’

  I laughed. ‘I quite like it, but I think it might give clients the wrong impression.’

  He nodded. ‘The MOT’s still got a while on it, so I reckon if we give it a service and a general check over we can let you know if there’s anything on the way out, and then we’ll get Gary in the body shop to take all the decals off and spray it. It’ll be good as new. Do you want to leave it now? I’ve got a few things booked in over the next week, but I can do the service in between them if you like. You’ll probably get it back quicker that way, to be honest.’

  I decided to leave the Gimpmobile in Rob’s capable hands. I could walk home from here and I still had my car. He showed me where to park so it was out of the way.

  I walked over to his office to hand over the keys but then stopped. There was a familiar looking Range Rover parked in a bay. I found Rob.

  ‘Here you go,’ I said, handing him the keys to the Gimpmobile. ‘Is that Roger Laity’s Range Rover?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rob. ‘I didn’t realise you knew him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was talking to him the other day.’ That much was true. ‘He said he was after a mechanic, because he had a leak or something…’

  ‘In the radiator, yeah,’ said Rob.

  ‘I mentioned it to him because I saw there was, like, an oil stain or something where he’d been parked,’ I said, screwing up my face as if I was trying to remember our conversation.

  ‘Yeah, probably. It’s leaking anti-freeze. I expect one of the hoses has split. It happens a lot round here, with all the pot holes and untarmacked roads.’

  ‘Does that stain? I remember I had an oil leak once and it really stained the concrete in my garage.’

  ‘Nah, it normally dries up and goes away.’ Like the stain in the lay-by, I thought. Interesting.

  I left the garage and walked through Penstowan. It was almost midday and I thought about picking up some pasties for me, Daisy, and Mum for lunch, but I’d eaten rather a lot of them since moving back and I had the feeling I’d look like one if I carried on at this rate. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have a fridge full of food at home, even if it was just as fattening and unhealthy as a pasty.

  I had just reached the end of Fore Street when I got a phone call from possibly the last person I was expecting: Tony.

  ‘Tony? Are you all right? Where are you? Have they let you go?’

  ‘If you stop asking questions for a moment I might be able to tell you,’ he said. He sounded exhausted. ‘I’m at home. You busy?’

  Tony opened the front door of his house, stared at me for a second, and then pulled me into a massive bearhug. I was surprised, but at the same time I rather liked it.

  I finally pulled away and followed him inside.

  ‘How come you’re out?’ I said. ‘I thought they had until one o’clock?’

  ‘So did I,’ he said. ‘But DCI Withers said they didn’t have enough to charge me and that I was lucky to have such loyal friends.’ He turned to look at me. ‘I take it he meant you?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not just me. Callum and Debbie, and your parents…’

  ‘But mostly you.’ He smiled. ‘I heard Old Davey talking to one of the older blokes – the desk sergeant? – and he said Withers had been dead certain it was me to start off with, but he seemed to have had a change of heart. And that he’d been seen in the company of a certain person who had just come back to Penstowan…’

  ‘He might’ve been…’

  Tony looked serious. ‘If it was something you did, I can’t thank you enough. Sitting in that interview room, Withers got me so confused I almost started to think I had done it.’ He sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. ‘My head’s all over the place. I don’t understand how any of this happened. I keep thinking I’ll wake up in a minute and everything will be okay.’

  ‘’Fraid not, my lover,’ I said, in my best Cornish accent. I’d kind of lost it over the years. I heard him laugh gently.

  ‘Spoken like a true local.’ He sat up. ‘I know you didn’t like Cheryl…’

  I shook my head. ‘That’s not true. I didn’t know her well enough. You liked her, and that’s the only thing that matters.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t, because if I ever do get married again I want all my friends to like her, but anyway … I met Cheryl when she came to work at the shop. She was very polite, good at her job and that, but a bit aloof. I thought she was a snooty cow at first, to be honest. But then I saw her one day, when she thought no one was looking, and it was like her mask had slipped. And underneath it she was a bit sad, a bit lonely.’ He turned to me. ‘I just wanted to stop her feeling sad, and make her realise she didn’t need a mask.’ That was typical Tony. He looked like your average scrumpy-swilling pasty-eating football-watching Cornishman (except, actually, he didn’t anymore; I had to admit he was pretty fit in both senses of the word these days), but inside he was much deeper and more sensitive than you’d think. A big softy, in fact. I couldn’t for the life of me remember why we’d only gone out with each other for two weeks.

  There was a knock on the door. We looked at each other, both remembering the last time we’d sat here and there’d been a knock. It had been Withers, coming to arrest him.

  But it wasn’t this time. There was another knock and a ‘Cooee, love, are you in there?’ It was Brenda.

  Tony got up and answered the door. I smiled as I heard muffled voices; there was obviously another big bearhug going on.

  Brenda and Malcolm came in, all relieved smiles, followed by Callum and Debbie. Tony looked happy, but a bit overwhelmed, to see them all.

  ‘Tea,’ I said firmly. ‘Let’s have some tea.’ I left them all to sit down and talk while I went into the kitchen.

  My phone pinged as I picked up the kettle. Withers.

  Tony’s trousers covered in dog hair (like you said). No sign of blood so not enough forensic evidence to charge him or keep him in custody. Happy now?? NW.

  I felt a little surge of triumph. Withers had actually admitted I was r
ight, and I had it in writing, and I was never going to delete that text. And NW? I wonder what his first name is? Neil? Nigel? Please don’t be a Nigel.

  I looked up to see Tony looking at me curiously. I put my phone away. ‘It’s nothing. I was going to make some tea.’

  He smiled. ‘I’ll do it. I just wanted to get out of everyone’s way. It’s nice of them to come round, but…’

  ‘A little bit too much all in one go.’

  He nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  He took the kettle from my hands and filled it at the kitchen sink. He looked completely washed out and swayed for a moment, so I reached out and put a hand on his arm to steady him.

  ‘You look done in,’ I said. ‘When did you last eat something?’

  ‘I dunno. They did feed me in there but I couldn’t make myself touch it.’ His stomach rumbled.

  ‘If only I’d known, I’d have brought you a sausage,’ I said. He looked at me and we both began to giggle uncontrollably.

  ‘I bet you say that to all the boys,’ he said, gasping for breath. ‘I’ve seen your van.’ That started me off as well, and pretty soon we were clutching each other for support.

  ‘Oh, stop, stop!’ I cried, still laughing. ‘Ooh, my pelvic floor muscles…’

  ‘Everything all right?’ Brenda stood in the doorway watching us, smiling. Tony nodded but he was in no position to actually speak.

  We finally got ourselves under control, although every now and then we’d catch a glimpse of each other and start giggling hysterically again. Brenda and I carried the tea out to the living room and Tony got out a packet of biscuits, which he demolished almost singlehandedly.