China Roses

by Jo Bannister

  ‘I have no reason to arrest him, let alone charge him. If he can’t give us any more information, and no one steps forward to accuse him of murder, we may have to accept that we’re never going to know exactly what happened.’

  It was far from satisfactory, but Hazel could see that with nothing to go on there was little more they could do. ‘His brother’s going to want to take him home. What should I tell him?’

  Gorman thought a moment. ‘I don’t want to have to drive to Cambridgeshire if he remembers something else. Can he stay with you for a couple of days? I know it’s an imposition, but …’

  Hazel had spoken to the ward’s lead nurse, who’d expressed – in fairly forthright terms – the view that someone who could evade his carers and make his way into town from the ring road probably didn’t need to be taking up a hospital bed. ‘That’s probably the best solution.’

  ‘If there’s still nothing for us to work with by the weekend, his brother can have him, and welcome.’

  By afternoon, having caught up on lost sleep, David Sperrin was more recognisably himself. Regrettably, this included his characteristic contentiousness. Ash wasn’t interested in arguing with him, was only waiting for Hazel to return so he could go home. But Sperrin seemed to take his reserve as a challenge.

  ‘Why don’t they believe me?’ he wanted to know. ‘What possible reason could I have for saying I’d killed someone if I hadn’t?’

  ‘And yet people do,’ Ash said mildly.

  ‘Loonies.’

  ‘Well – possibly. Sometimes.’

  ‘Is that what they think? That it isn’t just concussion I’ve got, it’s brain damage?’

  ‘Concussion is brain damage. The fact that people very often recover from it doesn’t make it trivial.’

  Sperrin was eyeing him speculatively. ‘Of course, you’d know.’

  Ash sighed. ‘Would I?’

  ‘Weren’t you sectioned once?’

  Ash didn’t lie about it: he had nothing to be ashamed of. It still felt like someone rummaging in his sock drawer. ‘Yes, I was,’ he said patiently. ‘And if you know that, you probably know why.’

  ‘Someone put a price on your head,’ said Sperrin, watching him speculatively from the sofa. ‘And your wife decided she’d rather have the money than you.’

  After a moment Ash said, ‘Another symptom of concussion is having difficulty distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate behaviours.’

  Sperrin barked a gravelly little laugh. His laugh, like his voice, was gruff from too many hours digging on exposed hillsides. ‘That’s not concussion. I’ve always had that problem.’

  ‘I used to have a problem with long division,’ said Ash. ‘Problems can be tackled.’

  Making himself a better person had never been high on David Sperrin’s list of priorities. ‘When do you think Hazel will get back?’

  ‘Soon, hopefully.’ There was no mistaking Ash’s sincerity.

  ‘What happens next?’

  ‘That’ll depend on what they find at Myrton.’

  ‘They’re not going to find a body, if that’s what you mean,’ said Sperrin shortly. ‘Hazel was there yesterday. She found the menhir, she found the Land Rover – I think she’d have noticed if there was a body there too. It must have happened somewhere else.’

  ‘What must have happened somewhere else?’

  Sperrin’s eyes flickered hotly at him. ‘I killed someone. You know that. A girl.’

  ‘I know that’s what you believe. I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t know why you believe it.’

  ‘I can see her,’ said David Sperrin. His voice fell low. ‘All the time. I can see her face, and the life going out of her eyes. Her face was so close to mine, she must have been in my arms. I held her, and she died.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head, dark unkempt hair flying.

  ‘Did you have a gun? A knife?’

  ‘What in hell would I be doing with a gun?’ demanded Sperrin.

  ‘That was going to be my next question.’

  ‘I’ve never …’ He amended that. ‘I haven’t touched a gun in thirty years. I don’t carry a knife. I carry a scalpel, and a small paintbrush, and a trowel in the car.’

  Ash blinked. ‘A scalpel?’

  ‘For winkling artefacts out and cleaning the dirt off them. I’m an archaeologist, yes?’ He gave a savage grin. ‘What, did you think I was doing unlicensed surgery on the side?’

  ‘Go back to the girl. What can you tell me about her?’

  ‘Nothing! I don’t know who she was. I don’t know her name.’

  ‘Do you feel that you should remember? Or that you never knew who she was.’

  About to dismiss the distinction angrily, Sperrin found himself reconsidering. ‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure. But I think – I think – she was a stranger. There’s no echo of familiarity anywhere in my head.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ash, ‘good. That’s something. Describe her.’

  ‘She was … young. Twenty, twenty-two – something like that. Dark hair. Dark eyes.’

  ‘Long hair or short?’

  ‘Long,’ said Sperrin, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Only …’ His good hand sketched in the air beside his cheek.

  ‘She had it tied back?’

  ‘Yes, probably. Yes.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  But Sperrin couldn’t force the iris of his memory to widen. All she was to him, this nameless girl, was a face. A dying face.

  ‘Suppose you’re right,’ said Ash. ‘Suppose she did die in your arms. Does that necessarily mean you killed her?’

  Sperrin stared at him. Ash saw the moment in which hope kindled behind his eyes; and with that hope, the fear that it might yet prove unjustified. ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘Could she have been injured when you found her? Could you have been trying to help?’

  It was extraordinary, the change that came over David Sperrin. Although his only memory of these events was that one moment, that one image, he’d thought he knew what it meant, the only thing it could mean: that the worst imaginable thing had happened, and all he was waiting for was confirmation. The baiting, the arguing, the determined unpleasantness, were his shield against an unbearable reality. Now another possibility had been mooted, it was as if that last defence had fallen, leaving him hopeful but also vulnerable, anxious and afraid.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said yet again, and this time a kind of desperate yearning caught in his voice. ‘I suppose so. I don’t know!’

  ‘No, I know,’ said Ash, immediately contrite. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to grill you. I’m just making the point that, until we know what happened, we don’t know it was your fault. In fact, there’s some reason to think it wasn’t.’

  Sperrin stared at him. ‘What reason?’

  ‘If a girl died, and we can’t find a body, that’s because someone hid it. Either to protect you, which seems unlikely, or to protect themselves.’

  ‘Maybe I hid the body.’

  ‘You weren’t disposing of bodies with a broken wrist. So it wasn’t just you and this girl: there was someone else there. Why didn’t they go to the police?’ Ash took a moment to consider. ‘David, you and I haven’t known one another very long, and I wouldn’t say we know one another well, so I could be wrong. But Hazel’s known you half her life, and she doesn’t believe it either. She thinks there must be another explanation.’

  David Sperrin crushed the heel of his good hand into his eye socket in a gesture of agonised impatience that Ash could not believe was a good idea. ‘Why can’t I remember? Only that – only her face. I must have seen more than that. Maybe a lot more – maybe everything. Maybe everything we need to know is locked up in my head, and I can’t get at it. Maybe I never will. Maybe I’ll grow old and die, and never know if I was responsible.’

  A thought occurred to him. ‘They can do something with electrodes, can’t they? To jog your m
emory?’

  Ash winced. ‘Electro-convulsive therapy? I don’t think it’s used any more. I’m not sure it was ever used for amnesia.’

  ‘It might help break the log-jam.’

  ‘It might fry your brain.’

  ‘It might be worth it.’

  Ash doubted it. ‘Let’s look at it logically. Just suppose for a moment that you killed this girl. That something happened to make you act in a way that people who know you consider wildly out of character, and instead of turning your customary sarcasm on her, you killed her.

  ‘Your next move would have been either to hide the body or to flee the scene. The Land Rover would have been your best bet for either. But you didn’t even go back for your coat and your wallet. Somehow you ended up in Norbold, looking as if you’d been through a meat-grinder. If someone else was there, and he considered beating you up a higher priority than calling the police, isn’t it at least credible that it was he who was responsible for the girl’s death? That you were not the murderer but a witness?’

  Sperrin’s longing to believe was almost tangible. ‘You really think so?’

  ‘It makes at least as much sense as the alternative.’

  Outside in the street there was the sound of a car pulling up. Ash glanced out of the window: Hazel was back.

  On an impulse, perhaps remembering something he’d been told or had read, perhaps venturing a little ingenuity of his own, he said off-handedly: ‘What did you say she was called, this girl?’

  Immediately, without thinking, Sperrin answered, ‘Rose.’ Then his eyes stretched wide as he heard what he’d said. He said it again, in a tone of wonderment. ‘Rose. Her name was Rose.’

  EIGHT

  ‘Her name was Rose,’ said Hazel. ‘I think some part of him knew that all along. In the hospital, when he was starting to come round, he said something about roses. I thought he was looking at the vase of flowers. But it was that, wasn’t it? Rose was the girl’s name.’

  DCI Gorman gave a disapproving sniff. He could get more disapprobation into a sniff than most people can into a sentence. ‘If he knew her name, he knew her. That wasn’t just a random event he stumbled across.’

  Hazel couldn’t argue. She’d already realised that the snippet of information was significant not only because it might help identify the victim but also because it made Sperrin more than a casual witness to a crime. She was sorry, but it didn’t alter the job she had to do. She would regret it forever if these events put an end to her friendship with the Byrfield family, but her first loyalty had to be to the victim of a murder.

  ‘I had another go at Missing Persons,’ she said. ‘The name didn’t raise any flags. All the dark-haired, dark-eyed, twenty-something women who’ve been reported missing in the last month were called something else. Not a Rose among them.’

  ‘It may not have been the name her family called her.’

  Hazel hadn’t thought of that. ‘A pseudonym? A working name? Maybe she was a working girl.’

  ‘A prostitute? Would he be a frequenter of prostitutes, your friend?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve no reason to think so – I’ve also no reason to think he isn’t. Ask him.’

  ‘Maybe he’s forgotten that as well.’

  Hazel frowned. ‘You’re not starting to think there’s something suspect about his amnesia, are you, Chief?’

  ‘I didn’t think that,’ said Gorman. ‘He certainly had the head injury to explain it. Now? – I don’t know. It’s a bit convenient, isn’t it?’

  ‘We were never close so I could be wrong,’ said Hazel. ‘But as far as I can see, he doesn’t think it’s convenient. He’s trying to remember. If he’s putting it on, he’s a better actor than I gave him credit for.’

  ‘How is he today? It’s about time I stuck him in Interview Room 1 and did a bit of serious digging. Is he up to it? It’s four days since he went off that bridge.’

  ‘Ask a doctor,’ said Hazel promptly, ‘that’s not my call. Speaking as his friend, I wouldn’t be too concerned. He definitely seemed better this morning – clearer, more focused. He’s still on painkillers for the ribs and his wrist, but if they’re powerful enough to affect his mind I haven’t noticed. Do you want me there?’

  Gorman considered. There were pros and cons. After a moment he nodded. A familiar face might make Sperrin relax. If he was telling the truth, that might be helpful; and also if he wasn’t, because he might be less guarded. ‘Unless Tom Presley wants to do it, of course.’

  They traded a sly grin.

  ‘How did the interview go?’

  Expecting to work well into the evening, Hazel went out to buy sandwiches at five o’clock, calling in at Rambles With Books to share them with Ash. There were also biscuits in the tin on the long table. Miss Hornblower knew this too: she was leaving as Hazel arrived, discreetly brushing crumbs from the collar of her Harris tweed coat.

  Hazel gave a disconsolate shrug. ‘I think David was doing his best. At least he didn’t set out to be difficult, which I thought he might. But nothing came of it. I’d hoped that having a name to pin the face to would help him remember some more, but it didn’t seem to. In fact, the longer we talked, the less convinced he was that Rose was her name anyway.’

  ‘It came from somewhere,’ said Ash. ‘I didn’t tell him that: he told me.’

  ‘That’s what I said. The trouble is, he’s thought about what might have happened and been asked about it so much now he doesn’t really know what he’s remembering and what he’s piecing together. I told him he’d come up with the name Rose on two separate occasions now. He just shrugged and said he thought he’d been mistaken – that he didn’t know her long enough for them to introduce themselves.’

  ‘He could be lying,’ murmured Ash.

  Hazel wasn’t blind to the possibility. ‘He could. But he’s not behaving like someone who’s trying to cover up a murder. Halfway through the interview, he started getting tetchy with the chief for not making more progress. Wanted him to put more people on the case. We told him Meadowvale CID can’t actually field a full football team, but I don’t think he believed us. He said if we’d more important things to do, maybe he should see what he could find out himself. I told him not to be silly. The chief told him if he interfered in his investigation he’d find himself behind bars whether he’d killed anybody or not.’

  She ate her sandwich, weary and discouraged. ‘Plus, if David hadn’t told us there’d been a murder we would never have known. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to keep his mouth shut. Even if a body turns up at some point, we’d never have made a connection to him if he’d just kept quiet. It makes no sense for him to confess, and then not tell us everything he can remember.’

  ‘It might make sense,’ Ash proposed reluctantly, ‘if the confession was genuine – if at some point that night he remembered what he’d done and needed to tell someone – but by the time he’d recovered his wits a bit more he realised he didn’t have to admit to a crime no one knew had happened. Clamming up at this point could be a way of extricating himself.’

  ‘I suppose. But in that case …’ She recounted the conversation she’d had with Gorman on the bridge at Myrton. ‘So if he killed the girl, and jumped onto the train to escape from these other people, why didn’t they report the murder?’

  ‘That’s certainly suspicious,’ agreed Ash. ‘Which has to be good news.’

  ‘Good news?’ Hazel put her fair head on one side, eyeing him quizzically.

  ‘I’m not a police officer,’ Ash said firmly, ‘I’m allowed to be partisan. Until I have a reason to be something else, I’m on David’s side. I want you to find out what happened, as much for his sake as anyone’s.’

  Hazel took comfort from the fact that, if she couldn’t go in to bat for Sperrin, Ash would. ‘Maybe we can’t be sure that he’s innocent’ – it seemed an odd word to use of a man like David Sperrin, but she was damned if she was going to apologise for it – ‘but if someone got
killed, someone else removed the body. Whatever happened at Myrton – whether David’s telling the truth, lying or remembering wrong – someone else had to have been involved. Someone who didn’t want us to know anything about it. But who that was, we have no way of knowing.’ Hazel blew out her cheeks, disconsolate.

  ‘What will you do next?’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s anything we can do. Unless someone comes forward with an accusation, or reports a missing Rose, or David remembers something more, I think we’ve hit the buffers. The chief says he can go home as soon as Pete can pick him up.’

  ‘It’s not very satisfactory,’ frowned Ash.

  ‘Of course it isn’t. But it’s fairly typical. Most of the crimes reported to us do not result in charges. The ducks never line up.’

  ‘I thought an hour, less advertising breaks, was enough for a decent detective to solve even a complicated crime,’ said Ash, straight-faced.

  ‘Imagine my disappointment,’ sighed Hazel.

  That was when Ash’s phone rang. He hunted through his pockets and turned it up at last with a surprised expression as if at a loss to know how it had got there. It was Gilbert.

  ‘Dad, are you on your way home?’

  Ash glanced at the clock over the kitchen door. ‘It’s a bit soon to shut up shop. I’ll be another half-hour or so.’

  ‘Dad – you should really come home now.’

  All Ash’s warning signals went off at once. ‘What’s happened? Are you all right? Is Guy?’

  ‘We’re both fine.’

  ‘Have you burned the house down? Flooded the bathroom? Where’s Frankie?’

  ‘The house is fine, and Frankie’s’ – the least hesitation – ‘busy. I just really think you should come home now.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ said Ash.

  He didn’t have to ask: Hazel had the car running by the time he’d locked the shop. The four-minute drive was a twenty-minute walk when he’d come down with Patience that morning.