by Susan Moody
‘A mile?’ I frowned. ‘There’s something odd about this, Fliss. Helena was not into country walks. Nor exercise of any kind. Life’s too short, she used to say. And on top of that, she was hydrophobic. So why would she be walking along the river path?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Any idea of when she died? Or even how? Just because she’s been found in the river doesn’t m-mean she d-drowned.’ I could feel my composure slipping.
‘The ME says she’s been dead at least several days. Though as you know, these estimates can’t ever be entirely accurate. Especially after immersion in water.’
‘How long had she been in the river?’
‘Not that long. Obviously whoever killed her eventually dumped her a little higher up and she slowly floated down to where she was found. That river doesn’t have much of a flow.’
‘I know.’
There was silence between us. Daylight was beginning to filter into my room. I don’t think I have ever felt as bleak as I did that early morning. I tried to repress a sob but couldn’t.
‘Oh Alex,’ Fliss said. ‘I’m so very sorry, she was a lovely lady. I only met her once, when she was giving a lecture at the uni, but she was so lively, so full of fun – and of course, I know how very close you two were, how—’
‘Stop, Fliss, or I shall start bawling my head off, and I don’t want to do that. Not yet, anyway, not until I’ve nailed the bastard who’s …’ My voice tailed off. I swallowed hard. Slammed the duvet cover. Swallowed again.
‘Look …’ Fliss gentled her voice. ‘As her closest friend, you may have to come in and identify her if we can’t find someone who—’
‘Why me? What about her colleagues at the uni?’
‘You were closer.’
‘Her husband is here, over from Australia. He could do it.’ If there was one thing I did not think I could cope with, it was seeing Helena dead who had always been so very much alive.
‘And who would the husband be?’
‘He’s called Professor Liam Hadfield, he’s currently in Oxford, and I can give you his telephone number because I have it right here in front of me.’
‘Okay, let’s have it.’ I heard keys tapping. Then, ‘But if he won’t do it, you’ll have to.’
‘Oh, crap …’
Fliss called me back almost immediately. The bastard wouldn’t do it. ‘Said he had a series of lectures to deliver, students to tutor and colleagues to liaise with. Besides, he – and I quote – hadn’t seen the blasted woman for years, wouldn’t know what she looked like now, and would therefore be unable to identify her.’
I decided that were I ever unfortunate enough to meet this guy, I was not going to like him. ‘That must be a lie,’ I said. ‘He rang me only a few days ago hoping to be able to stay with her for a night or two while he delivered a lecture down here at the arts faculty of the University of Kent.’
‘Nice voice, though.’
‘Like the very best eighty-five per cent chocolate,’ I agreed.
‘But not nearly as scrumptious. He seemed to lack any compassion at all. I was amazed. None of those conventional little niceties that one expects to hear in these circumstances.’
‘I only spoke to him briefly,’ I said, ‘but I got the clear impression that Professor Hadfield doesn’t do conventional. Nor niceties.’
‘If you’re worried, Alex, she wasn’t in the water that long. And it’s winter. So there won’t be any … um …’
‘Decomposition?’
‘Precisely.’
‘I’m not going to do it. I can’t.’ But after some pressure from Fliss, and with great reluctance, I finally agreed to go down and identify Helena’s body the following morning.
Call ended, I stared up at the ceiling. Got out of bed and looked out of the window. Watched the sea moving, calm and drab this morning. Saw the glint of frost on the shingle. Felt tears on my cheeks.
Then I called Sam Willoughby to ask if he would come with me.
We showed up at the police mortuary the following morning around half-past seven. I hung back at the door. I’d attended many post-mortems in my time on the force. I wasn’t even particularly bothered by death. But I had never had to look at the dead body of someone I’d known and loved.
Sam held my hand. ‘I’m here,’ he said. That was reassuring. Part of my mind wondered at the way this unassuming man had begun to play such a considerable role in my life.
We were led to a window, through which we could see a gurney covered in a purple sheet, a grotesquely faux-sacramental colour with which to conceal the militantly atheistic woman lying beneath it. Made of some synthetic fabric, it gleamed faintly in the light from the overhead fixture and I knew how Helena would have shuddered, how much she would have hated the sleazy feel of it in real life. To add extra insult, the front of the material had been embroidered with a gold cross. Non-believing Helena would have been outraged.
An unseen hand folded the material forward so it lay on her chest, and we were able to see Helena’s strong, intelligent face supported on some kind of pillow. Her blonde ringlets were spread out around her, matted but at least not bloodied, and her eyes were peacefully closed. Her hands were folded on her chest and I could see the four-leafed clover tattooed at the base of her thumb. She looked as though she were having a quick kip, and I wanted to rap on the glass, shout at her to wake up, we had work to do. There was a large grey-black bruise on the side of her face furthest away from us, and some areas of discolouration on her neck.
‘Can you confirm that this is your former colleague?’ the attendant standing behind us asked quietly.
I nodded.
‘Could you say so, just for the record, please?’
‘Yes,’ I said firmly, squeezing Sam’s fingers tightly. ‘Yes, that’s Hel— Doctor Drummond.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Absolutely.’ I turned away. If I could just have touched her, rested my cheek against hers, I knew that she would wake up, but I could not. She was cold now, unliving, out of my reach – and from now on, always would be.
Before we left, the police intimated that they would not be releasing the body for burial until they could determine the circumstances of the death. Nor were they prepared to discuss the nature of the injuries at this stage.
‘So there were injuries?’ I said.
They agreed there were.
‘Injuries not consistent with someone falling or jumping into the river?’
‘We cannot discuss them at this stage.’ After that … They spread their collective hands in a commiserating gesture.
After that, what? Did I have to organize funerals and flat-clearings? Was it up to me to contact lawyers? The absurd thought struck me that it would have been so much more fun if Helena were there to help me. And then I was gulping back tears, wiping my gloved hands across my wet cheeks as we crossed the car park to Sam’s car, sobbing as he handed me into the passenger seat, resting my head against the dashboard, at last forcibly struck by the forever absence of my dear friend.
‘There are no words,’ said Sam, his voice gentle.
‘I know.’ I brushed at my face. Sniffed horribly. Wiped my eyes with a screwed-up wad of tissue. ‘I’ll get over it,’ I said. ‘Eventually.’
I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket. I fished it out. ‘Yeah?’ I said.
‘Fliss here. Look, Quick, you’re not going to like this, but all the indications are that your friend killed herself. There’s all sorts of—’
‘No. Not poss—’
It was her turn to interrupt. ‘Listen. There were stones in her pockets. And that bag thing slung over her body was full of them. There were no signs indicating that she might have lost her footing and skidded down the bank. The path wasn’t muddy. It wasn’t cold enough for slippery frost or ice. Add to that her state of mind … the police are after her for murder, she has nowhere to turn. Maybe, sad as it is, she felt that suicide was the only option.’
‘No,’
I said again, louder this time. ‘With a huge stretch of the imagination, I could just about envisage the possibility of her taking her own life. But I can tell you absolutely categorically that if she did, it would not be in a river. She was like a cat. She hated water. I don’t think I would say she was scared of it, but she certainly kept well away from it. Didn’t even like crossing bridges over water in case she fell in.’
‘That doesn’t—’
‘So don’t try to convince me that she killed herself by jumping into the river,’ I shouted. I slammed the phone shut. Not exactly polite. I would ring later and apologize, but she was a good enough friend to understand. By now I was boiling mad, my grief temporarily displaced. ‘Sam,’ I said, ‘would you be kind enough to drive me over to Dovebrook?’
He made a quick phone call to the bookshop and then we set off. I didn’t trust myself, with my emotions running high, to get behind a wheel.
I didn’t feel like talking, which he seemed to understand. My head swirled with half-formed ideas. I remembered my mother’s mention of the two of them, Edred and Mary, going away, her off-hand remark to the effect that I shouldn’t bother going to the house since they wouldn’t be there, the fact that she had never said anything similar to me in my entire adult life. So what had inspired her to do so now? Why had she stepped so far out of character? Was it possible, or even likely, that Helena had sought refuge with my parents? The more I considered it, the more plausible it seemed. There was no reason for the police to connect them with Helena, at least not initially. Through me, the three of them had developed a close friendship. She might well have chosen them to run to. And they lived close enough to my own place for her (or one of my parents) to sneak in and push that imok message into my postbox in the lobby. Why hadn’t I considered it before?
When we reached the quiet road where Edred and Mary lived, Sam parked and we both got out of the car. It was obvious that they weren’t at home, even if I hadn’t known them to be away. As we walked up the garden path, I could see, in among the gobbets of packed snow, patches of snowdrops under the leafless trees, and tight-budded crocuses like golden exclamation marks dotted about the lawn, which had grown unexpectedly early because of the cold weather. Behind the house lay the tidy spread of Mary’s vegetable garden, nothing but a stretch of earth, turned over and composted, and frozen hard.
I pulled my keys out of my bag and let us into the house. I breathed in the familiar smell of my childhood home while a thousand half-forgotten memories swept through my brain. I called out, but there was no reply. Nor had I expected there to be.
‘What exactly are we looking for?’ Sam asked. ‘And how do you think I can help?’
‘I don’t know yet. Perhaps you can’t, except as back-up. As support.’
‘That’s all there for you already, Alex.’
I gave him a watery smile. ‘Thank you, Sam. I just thought if we look hard enough, we might find some clue to why Helena died. Because if she was here, if this was the last place she was before she died, she might have left some indication as to why. Which I’m telling you was not by her own hand.’
‘Trouble is,’ Sam said apologetically, ‘I don’t really know what I’m looking for.’
‘Just observe.’ I put my hand on the elaborate newel-post at the bottom of the banisters. ‘If Helen was staying here, she would have used one of the spare bedrooms, so I’ll go up and see what I can find.’
My suppositions were correct. It was immediately obvious that Helena had been in residence, and equally obvious that she had not been planning to leave just yet. I tried to imagine her walking along the river bank (almost impossible) and suddenly deciding to jump fully clothed into the water (equally impossible), having first weighted her clothes down with stones (totally impossible). The room was the usual familiar Helena-jumble of glorious colours, rich fabrics, books scattered across surfaces, a spill of talcum powder on the carpet, tangled strings of beads and entwined chains lying on the cushions of a disgraceful old armchair upholstered in tattered red velvet, which for years my mother had been meaning to have recovered as soon as she got round to it. Helena and Mary were two of a kind: it was no wonder that they had gotten along together so well.
Although I had been in Helena’s home many times, I had never poked around her private papers and possessions. Now, in my parents’ home, I opened bags and drawers, suitcases and boxes. Before leaving her place the night of the concert, Helena had gathered together a few personal documents and, remembering the interview with Clifford Nichols to which she had never arrived, a set of her favourite clothes – which included several pairs of knickers in pastel colours decorated with hearts or kittens, and a satinized bra with tiny roses all over the straps. I would have felt staid and inadequate, recalling the unexciting undies I was currently wearing, if I hadn’t reminded myself that during my marriage to Jack I too had possessed stuff like this. Now I had no one to titillate, what was the point of filling drawers with silks and satins in exotic colours and fabrics? Some of the items still had labels attached, which must indicate that they had not yet been worn, but had recently been bought – by whom, my mother? Hard to imagine.
Or had she had some new man in mind? This Peter Preston bloke, for instance?
It struck me then, not for the first time, how alike she and Amy Morrison had been, as far as their choices in men were concerned. Young, lusty, appreciative. Helena had once told me that there was no aphrodisiac as potent as appreciation. ‘Even in these days of casual sex,’ she’d said, ‘and despite their boasts down the pub, most young men aren’t getting nearly as much as they would like.’
‘Which is where you come in,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’ She had grinned at me. ‘But you, now you’re much too young for that sort of thing.’
I doubted I would ever be old enough for it, either.
I picked up one of the three books beside the bed. Two of them were paperback thrillers, from my parents’ own bookshelves. The third was The Magic of Illusion, Amy Morrison’s book. I wondered why Helena would have taken that with her for the evening. Flicking through, I saw that several sentences, even paragraphs, had been heavily underlined. Helena (I recognized the writing) had even scrawled ‘bitch!!!’ in the margin against a few sentences, though from a quick glance through, I couldn’t see why.
The book opened easily at page 104, because Helena had been using a photograph as a bookmark. I examined the picture, which showed two men standing together in a clematis-festooned doorway, an older one with his arm across the shoulders of a younger one. Two men, easily identifiable as Ainslie Gordon and Laurence Turnbull.
Questions, questions. A whole raft of them. Like, where did the photo come from? What significance, if any, did it have? It looked very recent to me: how current was it? Why did Helena have it beside her bed? Why, for heaven’s sake, why was she reading Amy’s book? Not only reading but taking notes? Had the woman I thought I knew so well been keeping a whole load of crucial facts from me, and how true was the version she had given me of her life and circumstances? I began to wonder if I had concentrated on Amy Morrison at the expense of Helena.
I longed to know, too, why she had been staying with my parents, and why they hadn’t informed me, even when I had told them how distressed I was at her disappearance? Perhaps that was what had triggered the imok note.
I went downstairs again. ‘Look at this.’ I handed the photograph to Sam. ‘Any comment?’
‘I don’t know either of them, but I’m assuming they must be father and son.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, for a start – look how alike they are.’
I snatched the photo back from him and stared at it intently. He was right. Ainslie and Turnbull: the likeness leaped out at me. ‘Why didn’t I notice that when I was down there?’ I asked.
‘Could it be that your investigative techniques aren’t as finely honed as mine?’
‘I would remind you that I was once a police officer.’
&n
bsp; ‘I rest my case.’ He dodged out of my way as I aimed a light blow at his bicep.
‘But don’t you see? If the two are related, that puts a whole new complexion on things.’ I sat down at my parents’ scrubbed-pine kitchen table. ‘Look, what about this scenario? Suppose Ainslie and Helena got divorced and then she found out that she was pregnant, too far gone for a termination. Raising a child on her own was never going to fit in with her lifestyle. Suppose she had the boy, Laurence, and handed him over to the authorities, whoever they would have been thirty years or so ago. Suppose Ainslie, who hadn’t known about the pregnancy at the time but found out much later, went looking for his son – or the son went looking for him, of course – and picked him out of the gutter, took him back to France, tried to clean him up, etcetera, etcetera.’
‘Good, yes, I can accept that.’
‘Suppose Turnbull then nurtures a deep and murderous hatred of the mother who abandoned him until he can contain it no more, comes back to England, breaks into my house since Helena’s is still wrapped round with police tape, to see if he can find any clue as to where she might be, returns when I’m back home, possibly intending to use violence to force the truth out of me, but is thwarted.’ I recalled the slim figure in black leathers who had wrested himself out of my restraining arm and run downstairs, taking the steps two or three at a time, and out into the forecourt. ‘Breaks away,’ I added. ‘Jumps onto his motorbike and roars off.’
‘Extremely plausible. I wonder if that’s what happened. But we could probably come up with other scenarios where the lad is innocent and nothing to do with Helena.’
‘I know he’s got a motorbike, because I saw it in France,’ I said. ‘Though whether he’d ride it all the way to Calais …’
‘But if he is the one who killed Helena, how do we bring the vicious little sod to justice?’
‘If this time round the little sod actually gets justice. Or rather, his victims do.’ I explained Laurence Turnbull’s previous brush with the law, and its unsatisfactory outcome.
‘It seems to me that someone needs to go back to Ainslie Gordon and question him in more depth.’