Quick and the Dead

by Susan Moody

  It was a hypothesis which only led on to further questions. Why was the dead woman in Helena’s house in the first place? Why had she removed her clothes? Had it been a consensual act, or had she been forced to? And if so, why? It was inconceivable that she and Helena had been having sex; nonetheless, I tried to visualize a scenario where this had happened, a jealous husband or partner forcing his way in and finding the two women in the midst of lovemaking, seized with rage and striking the nearest one with a heavy instrument of some kind.

  I frowned, my stomach clenched, muscles knotted. My overriding feeling, over and above the questions, the impact of violent death, the sight of flesh from which the life had been brutally snatched, was fear.

  I longed to know whether the victim had been identified yet. I hesitated, finger above the relevant buttons, then pressed ahead.

  A voice said, ‘Detective Inspector Fairlight here.’

  ‘Fliss, it’s Quick here.’

  A silence. Then, ‘Quick as in former DI Alexandra Quick?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Tell me you’re going to come back to us.’ Felicity Fairlight had been on my team, back in the day, a bright and extremely perceptive copper, seeming almost psychic on occasion.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘If I told you that Jack the Love Rat has applied for a transfer to Wales, would it make any difference?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Nonetheless, I did feel a faint rousing of interest, small shoots of curiosity stirring beneath what I liked to pretend was total indifference to my previous career. With my former husband gone, it might alter how I felt about rejoining the force.

  ‘I shan’t give up trying to persuade you,’ Fliss said. ‘So … how can I help?’

  ‘There was a homicide last night – or possibly this morning – in a house near Canterbury, and I’m wondering if they’ve identified the vic yet.’

  ‘I don’t think so. It was Alan Garside’s team who copped the call, not mine – but I think we would have heard. I can make enquiries, if you like. What’s your interest?’

  I explained the connection. ‘And now Helena’s disappeared. I feel like I need to find her because although she has lots of friends, she never seems to have anyone looking out for her.’

  ‘And if you knew who the vic was, you might be able to track her down?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘And you’re certain your friend isn’t the perp?’

  ‘About as certain as anyone can be.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll do my best.’

  Early the next morning, logging onto the internet, I found a site which listed all the art galleries in the British Isles. Narrowing my search down to the south-east, refining further to the area round Canterbury, I was dismayed at how many there were. It seemed as though every tiny community had its own gallery, selling not just original art, but prints, etchings, cards, handmade paper, even pottery and glassware. At first glance there was nothing which indicated a place run by either a Mona or a Guillaume. That meant I would have to telephone every one of them, unless I could narrow the search. Anglo-French Gallery would provide a good clue, I thought. Or GuilMon. Or Monguil. Or something. But most of the places on the list were called things which indicated the village or small town where they were situated.

  After what I presumed would be opening hours, around ten o’clock, I called the first one. No answer. The same at the second. The third one yielded a voice that would have sounded just right for Rip van Winkle on his awakening from a twenty-year sleep. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m looking for Mona or Guillaume,’ I said.

  ‘Dunno nobody by that name, mate.’ A huge yawn.

  ‘That is the Woodsbourne Gallery, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Another yawn.

  I ended the call. Talk about dozy. Literally. The next three calls yielded nothing, but the one after that provided the information I wanted. ‘Mona and Guillaume? They’re out at Upper Horton. The Horton Arts Centre. Nice people.’ The voice hesitated, then added, ‘On the whole.’

  What the hell did that mean? ‘Do you have a number for them?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll get it for you.’ The voice went, and came back, recited the number, wished me good luck.

  I dialled the number, listened to it ring a dozen times and was about to abandon the call when it was answered. ‘Hello, yes? Horton Arts Centre. Mona speaking. How may I help?’

  ‘I don’t know if you can, but I hope so.’ Once again I explained that I was supposed to meet Dr Helena Drummond the previous morning but she hadn’t shown up, that I was now trying to find her and understood that Mona herself had been with Helena the evening before that, and I wondered if she had given any indication of where she might be going?

  ‘I don’t think so, no,’ Mona said doubtfully. ‘She mentioned a meeting she was going to the following day – that’s yesterday, of course – and that she was expecting it to be productive. Nothing else. We were talking mostly about the concert – and the cathedral itself, of course. Guillaume – my husband – is on the Cathedral Appeal Fund committee and people always seem delighted to hear how it’s all going. So much is needed, as I’m sure you know. Bell Harry Tower, the precious stained glass, Christ Church Gate – oh, I wish I was a multi-millionaire, what more worthwhile project could there be than to pay for all the necessary repairs? Especially when you consider that it’s the mother church of the Anglican community worldwide, of course, as well as the seat of the Archbishop himself.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. Ironic that God should have such need of Mammon. ‘But you can’t think of anywhere at all Helena might have gone?’

  ‘It was some place in Surrey, I believe. Bathurst Manor or something similar.’

  ‘Barnsfield House?’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right.’

  So, another dead end. Thanking the woman profusely for precisely nothing at all, I managed to get away. Damn. I still had no idea where Helena was.

  FOUR

  I sat slumped in front of some mind-numbingly moronic quiz programme (‘Which Shakespeare play is set in Denmark?’ ‘Uh, Richard the … uh … Fourth?’ – cue triumphant look at the audience) while the successful contestants squealed with hysterical excitement over winning some small amount of money and the studio audience cheered. Switching over, for ten minutes I watched a drama featuring skeletal women emoting in an emaciated plot until I felt like sawing off my own head with a nail file. There was nothing else I could bear to watch for even a couple of minutes. Two or three layers of emotional insulation seemed to have been flayed from my brain, leaving me ultra-sensitive, prey to unnameable terrors. It wasn’t just the horrific sight I had endured in Helena’s bedroom yesterday afternoon: the blood, the wounds, the attempt to rip the body apart. Where on earth was Helena? I was haunted by hideous images of tasers and jugs of bleach forced down throats, of fingernails pulled out with pincers and broken bottles rammed into anuses. I’ve always read too many misogynistic thrillers.

  Eventually I ran myself a bath and lay steeping in it, trying to scour away the vile images swamping my mind. I was particularly bothered by the bizarre remembrance of the bloodied papers pushed into the dead woman’s body. Why would someone do that? Did it have some wider psychological significance or was it only meaningful to the murderer?

  Although I was sure I would be unable to sleep, I got into bed and opened a book, until the words danced and blurred across the page, making a mockery of the story. I was about to turn off the light when the phone rang.

  ‘Sorry it’s so late, but you asked me to let you know.’ It was DI Fairlight.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ Newly alert, I sat up further against my pillows.

  ‘Your body: so far, they haven’t been able to identify her. No clues at all as to who she is. Best guess, she’d been dead for anywhere between six and twelve hours when you found her.’

  ‘So it could have happened between Helena leaving the house in the morning and me arriving ther
e that afternoon – except no, it couldn’t, because Helena’s car was still outside her house, ergo, she left the night before, but never made it home.’

  ‘You sound doubtful.’

  ‘Well for starters, the lights were still on, curtains closed, implying it happened the previous night, rather than in the morning. And how did the victim get into the house in the first place? And why?’

  ‘Doctor Drummond must have invited her in, I suppose.’

  ‘What do we know about her so far?’

  ‘She’s forty plus, slimmish, blonde. Her prints aren’t on record. There was no handbag found at the scene of crime, so no means of identifying her. No car which might have been hers was found unaccounted for in the vicinity. They’re hoping someone will call in a misper, but so far nobody has.’

  ‘She must have had a bag.’

  ‘No sign of one.’

  ‘So the killer probably took it away with him.’

  ‘Seems logical to assume so.’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it, that you can’t establish identity.’

  ‘Is it? If you’re not in a relationship with someone – family, marital, flat-share, whatever – and if you’ve never come to the attention of the authorities, you’re very unlikely to be in the system.’

  ‘What about work? If she hasn’t shown up at the office or wherever today, won’t they start wondering where she is? Especially if she hasn’t rung in to say she’s sick or whatever.’

  ‘Maybe she hasn’t got a job. Or she’s self-employed, or works from home. There wouldn’t be any work colleagues to call you in as missing, or to arrive at your door wondering why you hadn’t shown up for work.’

  ‘What about – God forbid – kids waiting at home for her?’

  ‘Kids are pretty savvy these days. I’m sure by now they’d have contacted someone if Mum hadn’t come home, even if it’s only the next-door neighbour.’

  ‘Suppose they’re too young.’

  ‘Then they wouldn’t have been left alone.’ Fliss sighed. ‘Probably.’

  I sighed too. ‘Tell me about it.’

  In my years on the force, I had seen any number of instances of careless parents leaving their young children alone in the house while they went off to the pub for several hours, occasionally with tragic consequences, as happened with little Madeleine McCann, though in her case her parents were only gone for thirty minutes, which in my opinion was twenty-nine minutes too long. Sometimes, unbelievably, I’d even seen parents go off on holiday abroad, leaving their young kids behind to fend for themselves. Fliss and I had worked together on a case where the parents had gone away for a week, leaving girls of eight and six alone. The elder girl had decided to make chips for supper and managed to tip a pan of boiling fat all over her little sister. The damage to the child was horrific: she’d been reduced to little more than raw hamburger, her face melted into her chest, limbs fused to her body. The worst thing was that when we arrived, she was still conscious, though mercifully not for long. The parents seemed bewildered at being arrested and subsequently given prison sentences, protesting that they’d left plenty of food for the children. My colleagues and I had never been able to comprehend such levels of stupidity, combined with such complete indifference to the children’s welfare.

  After finally switching off the light beside my bed, I lay sleepless, staring up at the darkened ceiling, while every now and then the headlights of a car ran across it from one side of the room to the other. I should have been indulging in a feeling of satisfied triumph after yesterday’s meeting with Clifford Nichols, which I was ninety-five per cent certain would result in a fulfilling contract. Instead, I was trying to imagine what circumstances would have led Helena to abandon her home and her routine. And maybe – though I couldn’t conceive of the possibility – even be complicit in some way in the death of the woman discovered in her house.

  Another scenario presented itself: Helena leaving in the morning for the appointment with Clifford Nichols, and being snatched off the street by some maniac, without even knowing about the corpse in her bedroom. But that was surely impossible. If she had been abducted, it would have to have been the night before, after the concert and the restaurant meal, possibly before she got home. In that hypothesis, she would probably not even have got inside the house. Because surely, finding a dead body in her bedroom, she would immediately have called the police. It seemed proof enough to me that the corpse had materialized without Helena knowing anything about it. Unless the killer/abductor was inside, waiting for her. But none of that made sense. Which implied that we were dealing with a killer clever enough to close curtains, switch on lights, in order to deliberately mislead as to the time of death. New scenario: Helena leaves for the evening, victim arrives, followed very shortly by enraged killer, who sets about his grisly work with blunt instrument and awl, before driving off again, taking the victim’s handbag with him. So what happened to Helena after she said goodbye to her friends?

  And there was no means of identifying the victim, with her gold-painted toenails … which was when an idea struck me. The more I considered it, the more possible it seemed. And even if I was wrong, and I could actually see no reason why I should necessarily be right, it was a suggestion warranting someone looking into it. The fortyish, slimmish blonde woman might be, as I myself was, someone who worked from home. Someone who knew Helena, had been one of her students, and therefore might quite legitimately have called at her house. Someone who had recently produced a book on Masaccio. Someone called … Amy Morrison.

  Worth a try. Excited, I got out of bed and hurried along to my office since I didn’t have Fliss Fairlight’s number on my phone. I brought it up on the screen and made a call.

  ‘Fliss,’ I said, when the DI picked up. ‘This is just a wild shot off the top of my head, and I know it’s not even your call, but I’m wondering if the vic found in Doctor Drummond’s house could possibly be Amy Morrison.’

  ‘And she is …?’

  ‘An art historian and author. I know nothing about her except that she had a book published two or three months ago. And back in the day, she was one of Doctor Drummond’s students. And frankly, she’s a prize bitch. But she fits the physical description you gave me.’

  Fliss digested this. ‘Thanks, Alex. If it is this woman, I’d say things don’t look very bright for Doctor Drummond, do they?’

  ‘Whoever it is, it’s not looking very bright for her.’

  ‘True.’

  Back in bed, I switched the light off again and lay looking into the darkness. The sea was calm tonight; through the open window I could hear the swish, swish of waves, the crunch of shingle.

  I thought back to the one occasion I’d met Amy Morrison, about two months ago. Helena and I had been working on Ripe for the Picking, which we thought would go down well with the Christmas market, when she said, ‘Have you had an invitation to the launch of the new Masaccio book?’

  ‘No.’ I studied a Flemish flower-piece. ‘Should I have?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Who’s publishing it?’

  ‘Lewis & Barton.’

  ‘I’ve done some work for them in the past. Picture editing and stuff. But nothing to do with Masaccio.’

  ‘In the dim and distant past, the wretched Amy Morrison was one of my students,’ Helena had said, picking up a reproduction of one of Cezanne’s apples. ‘Oh, the appleness of these apples, Quick!’

  ‘“The golden apples of the sun”,’ I quoted.

  ‘Exactly. Anyway, I imagine I’ve been invited so La Morrison can gloat. She was a right little cow back then, and I very much doubt that she’s changed. Tell you what: the invitation is for me and a guest, so why don’t you come with me?’

  ‘Love to,’ I said.

  I bought a copy of the biography before we went up to London to celebrate the publication of this definitive study of Masaccio, his life and works. It was amazingly good, a tremendous undertaking, and would have involved years of research and
labour. ‘You must be an inspiring teacher for this woman to have produced such a great book,’ I said, as Helena and I stood together in the crowded room, waiting for a few words from publisher and author.

  ‘Huh! As far as Amy was concerned, nothing could be further from the truth.’ Helena lowered her voice but not enough to be discreet. ‘Frankly, she was as poor a student as I’ve ever come across in twenty years of teaching. Lazy and unmotivated. Possessed of an entirely unoriginal mind. Mind you, she’s had a complete makeover since those days. Totally reinvented herself. Outwardly, at least, though I’d lay a hundred to one on that she’s the same cold-hearted bitch on the inside.’

  ‘In what way?’ I glanced over at the woman for whom we were gathered here.

  ‘It’s not just her appearance, it’s her attitude, her manner,’ Helena said. ‘She used to be brash and vulgar, unashamedly on the make. Now, you’d think she’d come out of the very toppest of top drawers – though I’m sure she’s still not exactly a beacon of truth and honesty.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  Helena raised sardonic blonde eyebrows. ‘More than once I suspected her of stealing work from other students. Especially if they were male. Such a pity men tend to think with their dicks. Talk about honey-traps! It was all very subtly done, of course. Nothing that anyone could prove – not even the poor lads she stole from!’ By now, people nearby were turning to look admonishingly at the two of us.

  ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘Well, sometimes she came up with insights and ideas which I simply couldn’t believe were her own. Especially when some of my brighter students offered the same hypotheses. To tell you the truth, I’m absolutely staggered that she could have produced this book – which I understand is actually very good indeed. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but when I do, I hope I haven’t read it all before, under someone else’s name.’