Deadly Admirer

by Christine Green

  Whoever had killed her hadn't been clumsy or had tidied up afterwards. The tablets were varied: a diuretic, analgesics – mild, glycerol trinitrate for angina and digoxin to control her erratic heartbeat. It was really only the diuretic that interested me. Diuretics increase the output of urine and are always taken first thing in the morning. That meant I would have to inspect the commode and feel the bed if I was to make a calculated guess about the actual time of death.

  At that moment I heard the police car draw up and I thought I'd have time to have a quick peek in the commode. I managed to open the lid of the chair to find the plastic lid and bowl underneath. It was empty. I then tried to replace the seat of the commode chair but it slipped to the floor. As I bent down to retrieve it I heard heavy footsteps, but it was too late, I was caught – incommoded. And that was how I felt and looked.

  ‘What the hell?’ said the square-faced man who entered the room first. He looked rather like an extra from a Godfather film, black-haired and swarthy, attractive, if you like the type who wears a gold bracelet with his name engraved on it and expensive mohair suits. Not that he wore either, but they would have suited him. Instead he wore a dark brown belted raincoat with matching brown shoes and on his face a hint of designer stubble.

  ‘What's going on?’ he demanded.

  I had two options, I thought: I could either lie or tell the truth. I lied. ‘I felt faint,’ I said, trying to sound pathetic. ‘I only tried to sit down but the seat lid fell off.’

  There was no offer of sympathy forthcoming and now I became aware that DS Roade and DI Hook were crowded into the tiny room and were sending me signals of gloat. I attempted to smile at both of them. Even if they were gloating I did at least know them, and in the past they had tolerated me with an amused detachment. This CID person I suspected was the new broom at Longborough police station, the last senior CID man having been pensioned off with the DTs some months before.

  ‘Did you find the body?’ asked Mafia-man.

  I shook my head. ‘The district nurse found her – Inspector?’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector,’ he said tersely. ‘Finbar O'Conner. And your name?’

  I told him.

  ‘I hope you haven't touched anything else,’ he said. ‘You bloody country people are all the same. Anyone would think you never read a crime novel or watched the box. There's always someone who has to have a poke around.’

  Finbar O'Conner was an angry man. Obviously a conscript and not a volunteer. Now I knew he was Irish and not Italian I half expected to see a twinkle in his brown eyes. But Irish eyes obviously weren't smiling today so I put a hand to my forehead and hoped I looked pale and wilting. I certainly wasn't going to admit to touching the bowl in the kitchen. My acting ability didn't strike any chords though, because all three now surrounded the bed, and I was left in the middle of the room like the last weed in the garden waiting for the chop. It came soon enough. I heard Hook whisper something about private detectives and the surly Superintendent turned angrily.

  ‘You,’ he said disparagingly, ‘can go. There's no space here for hangers-on. Once the Scene of Crimes people get here plus the police surgeon we won't be able to scratch ourselves in comfort. Where's the person who found the body?’

  I looked towards the window about to point them in the right direction when I saw the red Mini driving away.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said slowly, ‘she appears to have just left.’

  ‘Get after her,’ he shouted at Roade.

  I had to admit he was decisive.

  Roade shrugged and looked at me as if somehow I were to blame. He rushed out of the cottage and I mumbled, ‘I'll be off then.’

  O'Conner looked up from the corpse. ‘You do just that. We'll be in touch.’

  As a car chase it had been a non-event. I'd had trouble keeping up with Roade but as far as I could see he was speeding for the sake of it, for Vanessa's red Mini seemed to have disappeared. I imagined she had found another route to Longborough or she had managed to give Roade the slip by taking a different direction entirely. Either way, it seemed she was determined to get away. But why? If she wanted evidence of persecution then surely this was it. Or was it? I thought about that as I drove along Percival Road looking for her red Mini. I didn't really expect to find it there, but it pays to do the obvious first – well, in theory anyway.

  Humberstones' car park seemed active as I drove in. Two men were giving the hearses the once-over although Hubert doesn't like the word ‘hearse', he just refers to them as the ‘Daimlers'. Both men gave me a cheery wave with their polishing rags as I walked in the side entrance. I had one foot on the stairs when I heard a whispered ‘Kate'.

  Vanessa sat, or rather crouched, on the jumble sale chair. My eyes hadn't quite accustomed themselves to the half light but I didn't need to see her well to be aware of her fear: I could almost smell it.

  ‘The police are after me,’ she said, looking at me as pleadingly as a dog desperate for a walk.

  ‘Not all of the police,’ I said, ‘just DS Roade and I suspect he'll be here any minute. You'd better come up to my office.’

  She followed me up and although my office needed a light on I left it gloomy in the faint hope that Roade might suspect I was out.

  ‘I had to get away. I just had to,’ Vanessa was saying as I peered out of the office window to the street below. ‘I couldn't face their questions. When I feel better I'll talk to them.’

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ I said distractedly, expecting to see Roade's car zoom up at any moment.

  ‘You're not listening to me.’

  Turning reluctantly from the window I said, ‘I am, Vanessa, but I'm trying to plan what to do next. Have you got any ideas?’

  ‘I could hide here, couldn't I?’

  ‘Well you could, but it would have to be very temporary. The police must consider you a very important witness – you did find the body after all.’

  She nodded. ‘Where shall I hide?’

  ‘I'll ask Hubert,’ I said.

  Hubert surprisingly didn't ask any questions but he did give me the benefit of one of his ‘Are you sure you know what you're doing?’ expressions. I flashed him a confident smile but he wasn't convinced and merely scowled in response.

  ‘Put her in the chapel of rest,’ he said. ‘There's a large cupboard in there.’

  I had to admit I'd never noticed a cupboard, but then coffins tend to dominate the eyes in such places.

  I led Vanessa down the stairs and into the chapel but really it was a case of push and shove. Anyone would have thought she was going to the gallows.

  ‘I'm claustrophobic – I don't think I can go in a cupboard,’ she said as we entered.

  ‘You'll have to stand behind the door, then,’ I said, ‘and hope he doesn't come in.’

  I was beginning to get a little irritated but the sight of the chapel was surprisingly soothing. One covered coffin stood before an oak table on which stood a silver cross on a white circular cloth. Light from a high stained-glass window mottled the table and sparkled on to the silver cross. And everywhere there were flowers and bowls of pot pourri, perfuming the air like incense.

  ‘Oh God,’ murmured Vanessa.

  ‘I won't leave you here long,’ I promised. ‘I'll fob Roade off and he won't want to miss the action. He'll be rushing back to the scene of the crime as fast as he can.’

  Taking Vanessa by the arm, I had to push her behind the door and position her reluctant body. Her unease seemed to be filtering through to me and now I noticed how grey her face looked in the muted light, but it was her mouth that worried me most. Her lips moved as though she were talking to someone. For a moment I stared at her and it was as if I saw her for the first time. And suddenly I wasn't scared just for her. I was scared for both of us.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Just hang on, Vanessa,’ I urged, but she didn't seem to hear me and I thought about bundling her into my car and driving off, somewhere – anywhere. Bu
t then I heard a car draw up and I guessed it was Roade. I tore up the stairs, threw open a file on my desk and tried to look casually inert, even though my respiratory rate would have done credit to an eighteen-stoner doing their first 500-metre sprint.

  Hubert opened the door to Roade and in deeper tones than usual announced, ‘Detective Sergeant Roade is here to see you, Miss Kinsella.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Humberstone,’ I mumbled with my hand over my mouth, trying to disguise my heavy breathing and keep myself from laughing.

  He glared at me and said, ‘Mr O phoned again.’

  Hubert was, I thought, trying to get me rattled. I continued to breathe deeply, only too aware of the rise and fall of my undersized breasts, which I refused to restrict with a bra, just in case one day they might start to grow.

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ I said.

  Roade strode in then, looking round the room sulkily like a four-year-old who'd just had his Plasticine model trodden on by the kid next door.

  I smiled with as much charm as I could muster, while Hubert shut the door with a bang.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Do sit down. Have you found my client yet?’

  ‘There's no need to be funny. I know she's here somewhere. She's left her car in the town centre. I don't know what you're playing at, but we'll have you both down the station if you're not careful.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ I repeated. ‘I do know where she is.’

  ‘You do?’ he said as he sat down.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I said I knew where she was but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell you – yet.’

  Roade tightened his tie with slow deliberation as if it were around my neck and then he leant forward in his chair and tried to look menacing. It didn't work. Youth, acne, and a face not much bigger than a teacup meant he just looked slightly put out.

  ‘When are you going to tell me?’

  ‘I'm not trying to be difficult,’ I said. ‘It's just that Vanessa Wootten is still in shock. She's being followed. A murder, it appears, has been done on her behalf, she's made a recent suicide attempt, and all in all, she's a wreck.’

  DS Roade shrugged as if to say none of it was his fault. ‘We've still got to speak to her.’

  ‘Of course you have but I hope you'll agree to my suggestion.’

  ‘Which is?’

  I didn't answer for a moment and once he had relaxed back into the chair I knew I was winning.

  ‘We'll come to the police station tonight,’ I suggested. ‘She'll be calmer by then and she can make a proper statement. Vanessa does need protection you know—’

  ‘From herself more like,’ interrupted Roade.

  ‘What's that supposed to mean?’

  He stood up. ‘You'll find out,’ he said. ‘Just make sure you do turn up though, because O'Conner will have my nuts pegged out on a washing-line if you don't.’

  ‘We'll be there, I promise.’

  By the heavy thump of his departing footsteps he wasn't too pleased to be returning to Little Charnford sans Vanessa but I was delighted. Perhaps now, I thought, Vanessa would open up to me and I could begin to acquire a list of possible ‘admirers' or just possibles. Including the most possible of all – Paul Oakby. As soon as I heard Roade's car drive away I went to the chapel of rest.

  ‘He's gone, Vanessa,’ I called. ‘You can come out now.’ I opened the door gently and peered behind it. Like standing on a drawing pin my brain got the message immediately but my mouth took a second to engage sound. ‘Oh. shit!’ I shouted, which I thought was restrained in the circumstances.

  Hubert came rushing along the corridor. ‘Keep your voice down, Kate. I've got grieving clients in the office.’ Hubert was talking in his downstairs voice, a serious, almost sanctimonious whisper.

  ‘She's disappeared,’ I answered, in a furious whisper.

  ‘Well, there's no need to swear in the chapel.’

  ‘Shit is not a swear-word, Hubert, it's only slang. I promised the police I'd take Vanessa to the station tonight and now she's run off—’

  ‘I can't talk now,’ interrupted Hubert. ‘I'm in the middle of selling one of my most expensive packages. My business is very competitive, you know. I could lose them to the Co-op.’

  All the whispering seemed to have calmed me down. ‘Sorry, Hubert, I just don't know what to do next.’

  Hubert was silent for a moment but then he took my arm and led me towards the side door. ‘Either,’ he said, ‘she's gone back home, or she's gone back to work just as if nothing's happened.’

  ‘I had thought of that, Hubert,’ I said quietly. But then in a loud voice that I hoped would carry to his office I called out, ‘Thank you so much, Mr Humberstone. You really are the best funeral director in town. I'll be sure to recommend you.’

  He was only slightly amused and he practically pushed me out into the courtyard, where I stood coatless, wondering exactly what my next move should be.

  After a few moments I began to shiver and I thrust my hands into the pockets of my favourite baggy green cardigan, drew it around me and then walked quickly to my car.

  I decided I had three options: I could attempt to find out who her patients were for the afternoon and try to find her on her rounds; simply drive round aimlessly looking for her, or, and the most obvious of all, see if she had yet returned home.

  I was driving back towards Percival Road thinking how selfish my client was being to go missing and put me in a very poor light with the CID when I realised … missing … She was missing! Disappeared, gone, abducted, kidnapped?

  The side door of Humberstones was always open during the day. Perhaps she had been followed through the town and HE had simply snatched her from behind the door. By the time I'd parked my car outside the Health Centre I'd begun to change my mind, though, for it seemed very far-fetched. Surely she would have struggled, made some sort of fuss. But then she was already in shock and perhaps she had tried to scream but no sound came. It was no good guessing, I told myself. I would just have to find her. I drove first to number thirty-six Percival Road and knocked very loudly on the door. There was as much response as if I'd been knocking on Hubert's cold-room door. Then I did a swift tour of the town centre but could see no sign of any abandoned red Mini.

  Finally I decided to see Vanessa's immediate boss. The Assistant Director of Nursing Services (Community), Frederic Tissot, sat in a box-like office with a large rubber plant on the floor next to his desk and a squash racket propped up in one corner of the room. On his desk were an assortment of papers, two phones and a photograph of a wide-eyed pretty woman with an equally wide-eyed baby. Was it an affectation to have family photos on a desk? I wondered. Did it make a statement about working long hours, so long that you forgot what they looked like, or was it merely a form of boasting. This is my wife and child – aren't they beautiful? Either way it made me uneasy about Mr Tissot.

  He'd stood up as I entered; he was fractionally taller than the rubber plant and as brown as its stem. He wore a fawn-coloured suit and a shiny cream shirt that made his eyes appear darker in contrast. His features seemed as neat and newly pressed as his clothes. When he spoke, his voice had been steam pressed too, with a French accent, which if I had closed my eyes I would have found incredibly sexy. I didn't close them, I just listened carefully.

  Not that he said much. When I explained my presence and that I was a Registered General Nurse his first words were a muttered, ‘That girl!’ He paused then, to rearrange the papers on his desk and smile at me. ‘Has a very bad sickness record. She is a little unstable, you know. Very emotional.’

  ‘Well, she did find a dead body this afternoon.’

  Tissot shrugged and I noticed that his cream shirt was pure silk, like his accent. I explained that it was murder and that she was being pursued.

  He seemed to find that funny. ‘Ah! Vanessa has that effect on men. She is very attractive.’

  ‘Perhaps I'm not making myself cl
ear, Mr Tissot. I believe Vanessa Wootten is in great danger. She's my client and it's my job to find her and protect her.’

  ‘Of course, of course. But you must understand I have all my community staff to worry about. With Vanessa … absent … we will have to find a replacement. At the moment we are very overburdened. Winter is a time when we have many deaths and twice the caseload we have in the summer months.’

  ‘You don't seem very concerned about one of your nurses being in danger, do you?’ Sexy accent or not this little man was beginning to irritate me.

  ‘Miss Kinsella, if you knew the whole story,’ he said, ‘I'm sure you would not say that. We have tried very hard to be supportive to Vanessa. She seems to have a penchant for violent men and a psychiatric history.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means,’ he said, ‘that your client has had to be hospitalised twice.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Depression, paranoia. She seems to be deluded that there is a man after her, although no one else has seen him. That's very odd, is it not?’

  I nodded. Of course it was odd. But then she would have been the only one knowing he was there. The only one scared enough to be always on the alert. If her colleagues only half believed her story they would be less than rigorous in watching for him.

  Eventually I managed to persuade ADNS Tissot that Vanessa could well be visiting her usual afternoon patients and if he could give me their names and addresses I would be able to find his district nurse and perhaps even manage to keep her working. That suggestion seemed to do the trick.

  ‘Everything will soon be on our new computer,’ he said proudly. ‘But in the meantime we rely on lists. If you want I can probably manage to work out who she's likely to see on a Friday afternoon. We do have our regulars, of course, who have been on the books for years.’

  The list didn't take long. She had five regulars and she always started with May Brigstock because she was the furthest out of town. The others were in Longborough itself.