Wednesday's Child ib-6

by Peter Robinson

  There was an implied criticism in his tone. Why on

  earth, Loder seemed to be asking, did you want us to leave the body? But Banks ignored him. He always liked to get the feel of a scene; somehow it told him much more than photographs, drawings and reports. There was nothing morbid in his need to see the body where it lay; in fact, in many instances, this included, he would far rather not. But it did make a difference. Not only did it give him some sort of contact with the victim, the symbolism of having touched the corpse, something he needed to fuel him through a murder investigation, but it also sometimes enabled him to enter the criminal’s and the victim’s minds. He didn’t think there was anything particularly psychic about this; it was more a Holmesian manner of working back from the little things one observed to the circumstances that created them. There was no denying, though, that sometimes he did get a true feel for the way the killer thought and what his next moves might be.

  From the disapproval in his tone, Banks formed the impression that Loder was a highly moral man, outraged not only by the murder but by the delay in getting the corpse to its proper place. It was a woman’s body, too, and that seemed to embarrass him.

  Slowly, Banks walked over to the bed and picked up the pillow. Gristhorpe stood beside him. The woman’s long blonde hair lay spread out on the undersheet. She had been beautiful, no doubt about that: fine bone structure, a clear complexion, full lips. Apart from her head, only her neck and shoulders were exposed, alabaster skin clouded with the bluish tinge of cyanosis.

  Her left hand grasped the top of the sheet and bunched it up. She wore red nail polish, but Banks thought he could also detect traces of blood around the tips of her fingers and smeared on the white sheet. He lifted the sheet. She was naked underneath. Carefully, he replaced

  it, as if to avoid causing her further embarrassment. Loder wasn’t the only sensitive one, no matter what he thought.

  Gristhorpe opened one of her eyelids. “See that,” he said pointing to the red pinpricks of blood in the once-blue eye.

  Banks nodded. It was a petechial haemorrhage, one sign of asphyxiation, most likely in this case caused by the pillow.

  Banks touched her right hand and shivered; it was cold and stiff with rigor.

  “We’ve got the skin and blood samples, of course,” said Loder, when he saw Banks examining the nails. “Looks like she put up a bit of a struggle. We should be able to type the killer, maybe even do a DNA profile.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Gristhorpe said. “This one’s got to be stopped fast.”

  “We-ell,” said Loder, in his slow burr, “at least it’ll come in useful in court. Is it her, the one you’re looking for?”

  “We didn’t have a very good description,” Gristhorpe answered. “Alan?”

  “Couldn’t say.” Banks turned to Loder. “She was with the man, though, you said?”

  “Yes. The one with the nice smile. You mentioned it specifically in the papers. That’s why we called you boys in.”

  “Any identification?” Gristhorpe asked.

  Loder shook his head. “Nothing. Whoever did it took everything. Clothes, handbag, the lot. We tried her fingerprints but they’re not on file.” He paused. “It looks as if she was killed here, and the doc says she certainly hasn’t been moved since she died. He’s anxious to get to the PM, of course, but ruling out drugs, his findings so far are consistent with asphyxiation.”

  “Any idea of the time?”

  “Doc puts it between six and nine in the morning.”

  “Anything else we should know?”

  Loder glanced towards the body and paused for a moment before speaking. “Nothing else unusual about the body,” he said, “unless you count the fact that she’d had sex around the time she was killed.”

  “Forced?”

  “Not so far as the doc could make out.” Loder walked towards the window, leaned on the sill and looked out over the Esplanade lights. “But it probably wouldn’t be, would it, if she was sleeping with the bloke. Now, if you gentlemen are through, could we possibly get out of here? I seem to have spent far too much time with her already today.” He sounded weary, and Banks wondered if he were not only tired but ill; he certainly seemed unusually thin and pale.

  “Of course,” said Gristhorpe, looking over at Banks. “Just a couple more questions first, while they’re fresh in my mind.”

  Loder sighed. “All right.”

  “I don’t suppose the chambermaid actually cleaned the room, did she, given what she found here?”

  “No,” said Loder, a thin smile on his lips. “No, she didn’t. I’m sure you’ll want to talk to her yourselves, but the one odd thing—and I noticed it, too—was that room looked as if it had just been cleaned. The SOCO team tried to disturb things as little as possible. They took their samples, dusted for prints and so on, but you can see what it was like.”

  Indeed they could. The room looked spotless, clean and tidy. Under the thin patina of fingerprint powder, wood surfaces gleamed with recent polishing. Gristhorpe glanced in the small bathroom toilet, and it was the same, as if the fixtures and fittings had been scrubbed with

  Ajax, the towels hung neatly on the racks. There wasn’t a smear of toothpaste or a trace of stubble stuck to the sides of the sink.

  “The cottage the Manleys left in Eastvale was just the same,” Gristhorpe said. “What do you make of it, Alan?”

  Banks shrugged. “Partly getting rid of evidence, I suppose,” he said. “Though he kindly left us semen samples, not to mention blood and skin under her fingernails. Maybe he’s got a pathological obsession with cleanliness and neatness. I’ve heard it’s not uncommon among psychopaths. Something to ask Jenny about, anyway.” He pointed to two thin, glossy leaflets on the dressing-table. “Were those there when the chambermaid came in?”

  “No,” said Loder. “Sorry. One of the crime-scene boys found them and forgot to put them back.”

  “Would you show us where?”

  Loder opened one of the drawers, which was lined with plain paper, and slipped the brochures under. “Like this,” he said. “I thought maybe he’d forgotten them, or they slipped under the lining by accident. The chambermaid said she cleans out the drawers thoroughly between guests, so they can’t have been there before. They’re ferry timetables, see. For Cherbourg and the Channel Islands. We reckon that’s where he must have gone.”

  “What time do the ferries start?”

  “Early enough.”

  “Did he have a car?”

  “Yes, parked out back. A white Fiesta. See, he wouldn’t need it to get to the ferry dock, and once he gets over to the Channel Islands or France, well … Anyway, our lads have taken it to the police garage.”

  “Is there anything else?” Gristhorpe asked.

  Loder shook his head.

  “All right, let’s get out of here. Tell your boys they can get her to the mortuary. Will the pathologist be able to

  start the autopsy tonight?”

  “I think so.” Loder closed the door behind them. “As I said, he’s been chomping at the bit all day as it is.” The police guard resumed his post and Loder led the way downstairs.

  “Good,” said Gristhorpe. “I think we can leave it till morning to talk to the hotel staff. I trust your lads have already taken statements?”

  Loder nodded.

  “We’ll see what a good night’s sleep does for their memories then. Anything else you can think of, Alan?”

  Banks shook his head, but couldn’t prevent his stomach from rumbling.

  “Oh, aye,” said Gristhorpe. “I forgot we hadn’t eaten all day. Better see what we can rustle up.”

  II

  “Is this the place?” Susan Gay asked.

  Richmond nodded. “Looks like it.”

  Rampart Street sounded as if it should have been situated near the castle, but instead, for reasons known only to town-planners, it was a nondescript cul-de-sac running south off Elmet Street in Eastvale’s west end. One
side consisted of pre-war terrace houses without gardens. Mostly they seemed in a state of neglect and disrepair, but some tenants had attempted to brighten things up with window-boxes and brass door-knockers.

  The other side of the street, with a small Esso garage on the corner, consisted of several shops, including a greengrocer’s with tables of fruit and vegetables out front; a betting shop; a newsagent-cum-video rental outlet; and the incongruously named Rampart Antiques. However one defines “antique,” whether it be by some

  kind of intrinsic beauty or simply by age, Rampart Antiques failed on both counts.

  In the grimy window, Susan spotted a heap of cracked Sony Walkmans without headphones, two stringless acoustic guitars and several dusty box-cameras, along with the occasional chipped souvenir plate with its “hand-painted” scene of Blackpool tower or London Bridge wedged among them. One corner was devoted to old LPs—Frank Sinatra, the Black Dyke Mills Band, Bobby Vinton, Connie Francis—covers faded and curled at the edges after too long in the sun. An old Remington office typewriter, which looked as if it weighed a ton, stood next to a cracked Coronation mug and a bulbous pink china lamp-stand.

  Inside was no less messy, and the smell of dust, mildew and stale tobacco made Susan’s nose itch.

  “Can I help you?”

  The man sat behind the counter, a copy of Penthouse open in front of him. It was hard to tell how tall he was, but he certainly had the short black hair, the squarish face and the broken nose that the woman in Johnson’s building had mentioned.

  “John Fairley?” Richmond asked.

  “That’s me.”

  Richmond and Susan showed their warrant cards, then Richmond said, in his formal voice, “We have received information which leads us to believe that there may be stolen property on these premises.” He handed over a copy of the search warrant they had spent all afternoon arranging. Fairley stared at it, openmouthed.

  By then, both Richmond and Susan were rummaging through the junk. They would find nothing on display, of course, but the search had to be as thorough as possible. Susan flipped through the stacks of old 45s on wobbly tables—Rai Donner, B. Bumble and the Stingers, Karl

  Denver, Boots Randolph, the Surfaris, names she had never heard of. One table groaned under the whole of Verdi’s Rigoletto on 78s. There were also several shelves of books along one wall: Reader’s Digest condensed editions; old Enid Blytons with torn paper covers that said 2/6 on the front; books with stiff pages and covers warped and stained by water-damage, most by authors she had never heard of. She doubted whether even Banks or Gristhoipe would have heard of them, either. Who on earth would want to buy such useless and smelly junk?

  When they were satisfied that there were no videos or stereos hidden among the cracked figurines and rusted treadle sewing-machines, they asked Fairley if he would show them the rest of the premises. At first he hesitated, then he shrugged, locked the front door, turned the sign to read CLOSED, and led them through the moth-eaten curtain behind the counter. Silent so far, he seemed resigned to his fate.

  The curtain led into a corridor with a filthy sink piled with cups growing mould from old tea leaves. Next to the sink was a metal counter-top streaked with rust, on which stood, among the mouse-droppings, a bottle of Camp coffee, a quarter of Typhoo tea, some curdled milk and a bowl of sugar lumps.

  The corridor ended in a toilet with a stained bowl and washbasin, flaking plaster and spider-webs in the corners. It was almost impossible to open the door to the other room on the ground floor, but slim Richmond managed to slip in and discover that it was packed mostly with collapsed cardboard boxes. There were also some books, video cassettes and magazines of a slightly suspect eroticism, though perhaps not the more prosecutable variety of pornography.

  After he had finished there, Richmond pointed to the other door off the corridor. “Where’s that lead?” he

  asked.

  Fairley tried to bluff his way out of opening it. He said it led nowhere, wasn’t part of the premises, but Richmond persisted. They soon found themselves following Fairley down to a cellar with whitewashed walls. There, lit by a bare bulb, stood what looked like the remnants of the Fletcher’s warehouse job. Two television sets, three videos and a compact-disc player.

  “Bankrupt stock,” said Fairley. “I was going to put them in the window when I’ve got room.”

  Richmond ignored him and asked Susan to check the serial numbers on the cartons with the list that the manager of Fletcher’s had supplied. They matched.

  “Right,” said Richmond, leaning back against the stack of cartons. “Before we go down to the nick, I’d like to ask you a few questions, John.”

  “Aren’t you going to charge me?”

  “Later.”

  “I mean, shouldn’t I have a solicitor present or something?”

  “If you want. But let’s just forget the stolen goods for the moment, shall we? Have you got any form, John?”

  Fairley shook his head.

  “That’s good,” Richmond said. “First offence. It’ll go better for you if you help us. We want to know about Carl Johnson.”

  “Now look, I didn’t have nothing to do with that. You can’t pin that on me.”

  It was interesting to watch Richmond at work, Susan thought. Cool, relaxed and looking as elegant as ever in the dingy room, careful not to lean against the wall for fear of marking his suit, he set Fairley at ease and led him gently through a series of preliminary questions about his relationship with Johnson and Poole before he got to Chivers. At the mention of the name, Fairley be

  came obviously nervous.

  “Carl brought him here,” he said, squatting miserably on a box. “I never liked him, or that girlfriend of his. They were both a bit doolally, if you ask me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that look he got in his eyes sometimes. Oh, he could be pleasant enough on the surface, but when you saw what was underneath, it was scary. I couldn’t look him in the eye without trembling.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Couple of weeks ago.”

  “Did you ever think he might be concerned with Carl’s death?”

  “I … well, to be honest, it crossed my mind. I don’t know why. Just the kind of person he seemed.”

  “Yet you didn’t come forward?”

  “Do you think I’m crazy or something?”

  “Did you know of any reason he might have had for killing Johnson?”

  Fairley shook his head. “No.”

  “There was no falling out over the loot?”

  “What loot?”

  Richmond kicked a box. “The alleged loot.”

  “No.”

  “What about the girl? Did Johnson make a play for her?”

  “Not that I know of. She was sexy enough, and she knew it, but she was Chivers’s property, no mistaking that. NO ENTRY signs on every orifice. Sorry, love.” He looked at Susan, who simply gave him a blank stare. “No,” he went on, turning back to Richmond, “I don’t think Carl was daft enough to mess with her.”

  “What about Gemma Scupham?”

  Fairley looked surprised. “The kid who was abducted?”

  “That’s her.”

  “What about her?”

  “You tell me, John.”

  Fairley tensed. A vein throbbed at his temple. “You can’t think I had anything to do with that? Oh, come on! I don’t go in for little girls. No way.”

  “What about Chivers?”

  “Nothing about him would surprise me.”

  “Did he ever mention her?”

  “No. I mean, I had heard of her. Les complained about her sometimes and Carl sympathized. Chivers just seemed to be standing back, sort of laughing at it all, as if such a problem could never happen to him. He always seemed above everything, arrogant like, as if we were all just petty people with petty concerns and he’d think no more about stepping on us if he had to than he would about swatting a fly. Look, why are you asking me about Ge
mma? I never even met the kid.”

  “She was never in this shop?”

  “No. Why should she have been?”

  “Where is Chivers now?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. He’s bad news.”

  Richmond sat down carefully on a box. “Has it never struck you,” he said, “that if he did kill Johnson, then you and Les might be in danger, too?”

  “No. Why? We didn’t do nothing. We always played square.”

  “So did Carl, apparently. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me. It doesn’t seem to matter with Chivers, does it? Why do you think he killed Carl, if he did?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. He’s a nutter. He always seemed to me like he was on the jdge, you know, ready to go off. People like him don’t always need reasons.

  Maybe he did it for fun.”

  “Maybe. So why not kill you, too? Might that not be fun?”

  Fairley licked his lips. “Look, if you’re trying to scare me you’re doing a damn good job. Are you trying to warn me I’m in danger or just trying to make me talk? I think it’s about time I saw a solicitor.”

  Richmond stood up and brushed off the seat of his pants with his palm. “Are you sure you have no idea where Chivers went after he left Eastvale?”

  “None.”

  “Did he say anything about his plans?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “Dunno. He never talked about himself. Honest. Look, are you winding me up about all this?” Fairley had started to sweat now.

  “We need to find him, John,” said Richmond quietly. “That’s all. Then we’ll all sleep a little easier in our beds.” He turned to Susan. “Let’s take him to station now and make it formal, shall we?” He rubbed the wall and held up his forefinger. “And we’d better get a SOCO team down here, too. Remember that whitewash on Gemma’s clothing?”

  Susan nodded. As they left, she noticed that John Fairley seemed far more willing to accompany them to the station than most villains they arrested.