Almost Love

by Christina James

  There was a police car and a battered Citroen parked in front of the house. Tim parked his own car – a BMW and also battered – at some distance from them and walked up the slight slope to the house. The front door was wide open. A police cordon had been looped through stakes set in a box shape around the entrance. Wary of contaminating evidence, Tim shouted out ‘Hello?’, feeling faintly foolish as he did so.

  A uniformed policeman appeared from somewhere behind the house. He was carrying a plastic bag and was followed by a slightly-built man of about fifty who held up his head with an almost aristocratic bearing, although he was dressed in very shabby, dirty clothes. Tim recognised the policeman.

  “PC Cooper?” he said. “Have they sent you out here as well? Don’t City of Peterborough Police have any coppers of their own, for God’s sake?”

  Gary Cooper grinned. “It was Superintendent Thornton’s idea, sir,” he said. “He thought you would appreciate working with one of your own team, so to speak.”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “Heaven preserve me if the Superintendent has started getting in touch with his feminine side. What next?”

  “When you’ve finished your banter,” said the slightly-built man quietly, but with unmistakable, if contained, hostility, “my aunt has disappeared and I think that you should lose no time in setting about finding her. If you are able to, that is. It is already several hours since I first called for help and nothing at all constructive appears to have happened yet.”

  Tim took an instant dislike to the man, but he knew he must guard against showing it. Both Katrin and Juliet Armstrong had told him that his opinions of other people could often be read only too clearly in his face. Not a good trait in a policeman.

  “Mr Maichment?” he said, extending his hand. “Detective Inspector Tim Yates, South Lincolnshire Police.”

  Guy Maichment placed his slight and none-too-clean hand in Tim’s and let it linger there limply for a moment before withdrawing it.

  “Delighted,” he said. “Now, if you will come into the house, I’ll show you what I found when I arrived here during the night.”

  “About what time was that, Mr Maichment?” Tim asked.

  “Just before 1 a.m. Why do you ask?”

  “Rather late to be visiting an old lady, wasn’t it?”

  “I’ve already explained several times that I was trying to reach my aunt by telephone during the whole of yesterday evening. She’s in quite good health for her age, but obviously not strong. She usually has someone with her – Jane Halliwell, a sort of companion and secretary rolled into one – but Miss Halliwell is not here this week.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I believe that she is on holiday abroad somewhere.”

  “So you haven’t been in touch with her to ask if she might know where your aunt could have gone?”

  “I haven’t been in touch with anyone, except you people,” Guy Maichment said peevishly. “The policeman whom I spoke to on the telephone told me just to stay here and not touch anything until someone arrived to help.”

  “Which policeman was that?” asked Tim, directing his question to Gary Cooper.

  “Superintendent Little, of the City of Peterborough force, sir. Mr Maichment’s call was taken very seriously. Superintendent Little was alerted and dealt with the matter personally. He sent a panda car here straight away.”

  “I would expect Roy Little to take a call from me ‘very seriously’,” said Guy Maichment. “He is a friend of my aunt’s.” He almost preened himself.

  “Presumably there was a policeman – or even two – from Peterborough. Where are they now?”

  “There was a policeman and a policewoman, sir. I’ve written down their names. They left just after I got here. They asked Mr Maichment some preliminary questions, I believe, and now they’ve gone to check the hospitals and old people’s homes in the area.”

  “I see.” Tim didn’t actually see at all. If Superintendent Little was so keen to help, and a friend of the family to boot, why involve South Lincolnshire Police? And why had Superintendent Thornton agreed? Tim was here now, however, and there was work to do. He would get to the bottom of whatever Thornton was up to later.

  “Let’s go into the house now, shall we, as Mr Maichment suggests?”

  Gary Cooper produced some white overshoes from his plastic bag.

  “Best to wear these, then, sir. SOCOs haven’t got here yet.”

  “You’ve called the SOCOs in? That was a bit precipitate, wasn’t it?”

  “You’ll see why, sir.”

  Tim took the shoes and eased into them. PC Cooper lifted out more shoes for himself and Guy Maichment, who made quite a palaver of putting them on. Tim had the strange feeling that he was enjoying himself.

  Gary Cooper ducked under the police cordon. Guy Maichment hopped over it nimbly, close on Gary’s heels. Tim himself hurdled it in rather an ungainly way and followed them both through the open door of the house. They each halted abruptly and stood a few paces back from the left-hand wall in the poky, corridor-like entrance hall. Both turned simultaneously to face the wall itself, as if to signpost to Tim what he was supposed to be looking at.

  Tim prided himself on not being easily shocked, but the spectacle that confronted him made his heart turn over in disbelief. At first he could see very little: the entrance hall to the cottage was dark and gloomy. It was dingily painted and unlit by external windows. After a few seconds, his eyes adjusted a little, enabling him to make out the crescent of colour that arced across the wall as if daubed by an abstract artist or a naughty child. Exactly what he was looking at dawned on him at the same moment as PC Cooper switched on the light. The low wattage bulb cast shadows, distorting the daub so that the smear appeared to stand out from the wall like a bas-relief.

  “Christ!” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Gary Cooper. “There can’t be much doubt about what it is. The SOCOs will take swabs, of course, but I’d say that the fine spray of little droplets nearest to the door confirms it pretty well.”

  “A trajectory of blood consistent with someone having staggered towards the wall after the cutting of a major artery – possibly in the throat?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gary Cooper responded again. “That would be my opinion.”

  “I’m glad that you both agree,” said Guy Maichment sardonically. “What I want to know is, whose blood? Is it my aunt’s? Did she hurt herself while running away from an attacker? And where is she now?”

  “Whether it was your aunt or someone else who sustained the injury that resulted in that, Mr Maichment, it is unlikely that they were able to run anywhere. In all probability they collapsed or were on the point of collapsing as soon as it happened. As you see, the mark is quite high on the wall. Is your aunt a tall woman?”

  “She’s well-built, but not particularly tall. I suppose that there’s a chance that the blood isn’t hers?”

  Tim spent a second appraising Guy Maichment before he answered – not enough time to worry him, but long enough for Tim to note his expression and try to understand his demeanour. Despite his posh haughtiness, which Tim was beginning to think might be assumed, he seemed to be inappropriately excited, even gleeful, about the mystery that he had found himself caught up in. Correction, thought Tim: Guy Maichment had actually announced the mystery, though there was plenty of evidence, of course, to support the action that he had taken. Not everyone would stir themselves to visit an elderly aunt in the middle of the night simply because she wasn’t answering her telephone; measured by the norms of civilised society, someone who did so would normally be praised for sensitivity, not suspected for motive. Certainly, most responsible people would have telephoned the police, just as Guy had done, if they had found the old lady’s house empty, the front door open and what was apparently a significant quantity of blood smeared on the wall. There was something strange about
Guy, nevertheless. Perhaps he was just behaving unnaturally because the adrenalin was still surging. Unlike PC Cooper and me, he can’t have had much experience of missing persons, let alone lurid blood stains, Tim thought. His innocence could be believed in; for now.

  “We can’t even be certain that it is blood until some tests have been done,” he said, continuing to meet Guy’s eye. “But I agree that it looks like it. It will take more tests to establish whose blood – and then we shall only be able to use the results to eliminate people, rather than pinpoint the actual individual. Unless, of course, they have a criminal record and their DNA is recorded on the national database. I imagine that someone will know what your aunt’s blood group is?”

  “She doesn’t like doctors very much, but I’d say that her doctor is bound to have a record of it, because she travelled abroad so much. She will have had to agree to injections, possibly blood tests, both before and after some of the expeditions that she went on.”

  “Do you know her doctor?”

  “Not personally, but I know her name. It is Dr Rentzenbrinck. I believe her first name is Marianna, but I can check. Her telephone number will probably be in my aunt’s address book.”

  “Do you know where to find it?”

  “Oh, yes. She keeps it by the telephone in the parlour. Ringing people up is one of her great pleasures: she has many friends throughout the world and she doesn’t sleep well. And she virtually never goes out in the evenings. That’s why I thought it so odd that she didn’t answer the phone last night.”

  “How many times did you try?”

  “Oh, several. At least four. On the first occasion, the phone was engaged, which made her later failure to respond even odder. Of course, it could just have been someone leaving a message via BT callminder, or whatever it’s called. I use an old-fashioned answering machine myself. My aunt is surprisingly up-to-date in some ways.”

  “Has anyone checked for 1571 messages?” Tim asked PC Cooper.

  “No, sir. Would you like me to do it now?”

  “No. Leave it until the SOCOs have tested it for prints.”

  Guy Maichment’s swarthy face changed colour.

  “But my fingerprints will be on it,” he said. “I used it when I telephoned the police. In any case, why would an intruder want to use the telephone?”

  “I don’t know why – they probably wouldn’t, in fact. But it’s our job to check. We can eliminate your prints, Mr Maichment, and those of your aunt. So don’t worry about that.”

  “I don’t know how long fingerprints last. If it’s more than a few days, Jane’s will be on it as well.”

  “We can eliminate any of the fingerprints of people who have used the phone legitimately, if we know who they are, and then see what, if any, we have left,” Tim explained patiently. “What else did you touch? I’m assuming that you didn’t put your hands on the wall – this wall, I mean?” He waved a hand at the red smear.

  “Good God, no.” Guy Maichment recoiled. “I can’t stand blood, actually. Why would you think I’d touch that?”

  “Just checking,” Tim said again. “You might have been groping for the light switch, for example. Did you turn the light on? Could you tell us exactly what happened, and what you did, in the order in which you did it, if you can remember? I’m sorry if you have already been over it with PC Cooper,” he added, as Guy Maichment began to look affronted again.

  “We didn’t talk about it in detail,” Gary Cooper said quickly.

  “Well, I’d like to understand the detail now,” said Tim. “Should we stand outside again? We can’t sit down here, but we can go and sit in my car if you like; or in the panda car.”

  “I don’t mind standing, but I should like to get away from that,” Guy Maichment said, gesturing at the wall. “It gives me the creeps.”

  They filed out into the sunshine. Guy Maichment bent to remove the overshoes.

  “I’d leave those on for the moment, Mr Maichment. We’ll need to go back into the house eventually. When you’re ready, PC Cooper will take notes.”

  Guy Maichment cleared his throat.

  “I came in the car. I have a Land Rover as well, but it needs some rep[airs after a problem when I was on my latest landscaping contract. I drove up the track quite slowly; the car is quite noisy, and if my aunt had been asleep I didn’t want to alarm her by waking her up suddenly. When I reached the house everything was in darkness. As you can imagine, it is very dark here in the woods at night, even when there is a full moon. There was a crescent moon last night, so it wasn’t bright. I dipped the headlights and drove as near to the front door as I could – to about where the panda car is standing now. I’m not sure what I intended to do next. I have a key, but I should have been reluctant to alarm her by unlocking the door during the night. I know that sounds stupid, since I had made the journey on purpose to check that she was OK, but I suppose that really I’d hoped to find the downstairs lights on. She sometimes stayed up half the night and often slept in a chair rather than going to bed.

  “I was still wavering about what to do when I saw her cat. I had parked to the right of the house, you understand, so I didn’t have a direct view of the front door. But I saw the cat slink round the side of the building. He was approaching from the back garden. I watched him closely; I like cats and I thought I was probably watching him hunt. When he reached the front wall of the house, he crept along it, keeping in very close. I could still make him out – by the light of the dipped headlights I could see the front of the house and a few feet beyond it – when suddenly he disappeared. I was sure it wasn’t simply because I’d taken my eye off him; one moment he was inching along the wall, the next he had gone. I thought that perhaps my aunt had opened the door to let him in, so I got out of the car to see if she was there.”

  He paused and swallowed, then passed the back of his hand across his forehead. It was an affected gesture, Tim thought, as if Guy Maichment were trying to conjure up some more appropriate signs of emotion than the ones he had shown so far.

  “You don’t happen to have any water, do you? My throat is very dry.”

  “I’ve got an unopened bottle of water in my car,” said Gary Cooper.

  “Would you mind getting it?” said Tim. He was quite pleased to have the opportunity to observe Guy Maichment out of role, as it were, for a few seconds.

  “You must be feeling tired, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry that I have to put you through all this. You will appreciate that in order to find your aunt I need as much detail as I can get from you while it is still fresh in your mind. As you pointed out, time is of the essence.”

  “I quite understand. I suppose it has just hit me, that’s all.”

  Tim gave him a casual look. Guy’s eyes still glittered unnaturally brightly, like a child’s at a birthday party. Perhaps this was genuinely his way of coping with stress. It seemed odd, somehow, but no doubt a psychologist would say otherwise. Tim might contact one to see, or consult one of his many psychology books. It was a subject which fascinated him.

  Gary Cooper came back with a small bottle of Evian water. Guy took it from him – not so much as a murmur of thanks, Tim noted – wrenched the cap off it and drank thirstily. He supposed that was fair enough: the man had been here for several hours and had presumably consumed nothing since the previous evening.

  “So,” he said, “you got out of the car. Did you lock it?”

  “No. I wouldn’t have locked it while it was parked at my aunt’s, but as a matter of fact I rarely do. It’s such an old heap that I’m pretty confident that no-one will try to steal it.”

  Tim inclined his head. This wasn’t the right time to give a lecture on the dangers of ‘twocking’.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I took the torch from the dashboard and switched it on. Then I left the car and followed where the cat had gone. I walked in close to the side of t
he house, as he did.”

  “Any particular reason for that?”

  “Not really. I suppose that I felt that what I was doing was quite eerie; to follow in the cat’s footsteps made it seem a bit more . . . normal.”

  “Indeed,” said Tim. Whatever the state of Guy Maichment’s psychological health, he was not great on logic. “Did you find the cat?”

  “No. But when I reached the door, I found it open. I was right in my assumption that the cat had been let into the house. Just not by my aunt.”

  “That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shit, Tim thought. I’ve put him back on the defensive again. He tried to smile reassuringly.

  “Oh, nothing much: you must forgive me, I’m obsessed with terminology; it’s a bit of a hobby of mine. If I had been telling your story, I’d probably have said that the cat had got into the house and when I reached the door I found that it was open. Do you have any reason to believe that the cat was let in?”

  Guy Maichment shrugged. “Someone must have left the door open.”

  “I agree: but the question is, when? Do you have any reason to believe that the cat was let in by someone while you were watching it? Did you notice whether the door was open when you first arrived?”

  “The answer is ‘no’ to both questions,” said Guy huffily. “If I’d seen that the door was open to start with, naturally I shouldn’t have wondered whether it was the right thing to do to go into the house. I’d have jumped out of the car as quickly as I could and gone to see what was wrong. My aunt may be a little eccentric, but she certainly isn’t in the habit of leaving her door wide open in the middle of the night.”

  “Did you see or hear anyone else at all?”

  “No. No-one.”

  “So you went into the house. You say that you didn’t turn the lights on. Why was that?”

  “I thought that if there was an intruder inside I would stand a better chance of apprehending them if they didn’t know where I was.”