Slipknot

by Priscilla Masters

  He nodded then tried to lighten his tone, the contradiction still making his eyes heavy and anxious.

  ‘Not got a secret admirer, Martha?’

  She tried to laugh. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sure you have.’

  ‘Alex,’ she appealed. ‘I don’t want chivalry from you. I’m consulting you as a policeman. I’m worried. Truly I’m worried. Someone is sending me messages that I can’t read. I don’t know what they’re saying or why they’re saying it. I don’t understand but it feels like a threat. My job brings me into contact with all sorts of strange people undergoing what can be a very stressful experience. I don’t like mysteries, Alex. I live alone, in a relatively isolated house with my daughter and an au pair who is about to leave. Help me. Please.’

  ‘I’ll make some enquiries. Is that OK?’

  ‘Yes. Please. Thank you.’

  As he left he put an awkward hand on her shoulder. ‘Think back into your past, Martha. The clue will be there somewhere. Consider anyone you’ve had bad dealings with. Especially if they appeared strange. If you do have any ideas who this might be get back to me. All right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She felt happier having off-loaded her problem but still fidgety and tense. She sat and pondered over her past cases. There had been tragedy aplenty. Drownings and murders, terrible accidents and suffering. She had seen relatives scream at the verdict or cry or simply sit in the inquest, frozen in their seats. And then there were the suicides. Which brought her straight back to her most recent case, the deaths of the two teenagers. She felt she wanted to do something herself to set the record straight. It is, after all, she argued to herself, part of the duty of a coroner.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Schools came out at four. If she hurried home she could change and be outside the school gates as the children came out. Maybe there she could pick up on something.

  On her way out she thrust the flowers at a startled Jericho. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take these home for Mrs Palfreyman.’

  He looked astonished and pushed them away from him as though they scalded him. ‘I can’t do that. She’ll think I’m having an extramarital.’

  ‘Give them to her anyway.’

  ‘She’ll be very suspicious,’ he said. ‘Don’t you like flowers?’

  ‘Allergies,’ she replied, and as she backed the car out of the drive she thought what a stupid thing to say that had been. She almost always had flowers on her desk. Roses, freesias, daffodils, hyacinths – depending on the season. But she found the sight of the long-stemmed, expensive roses threatening. She knew full well what they were a warning. A beacon. A lighthouse luring her towards rocks. Beautiful as they were they were alerting her to the fact that he was out there, with her in his sights. She couldn’t have taken them home for them to invade her private life. And neither did she want them insinuating their not-so-subtle message from her desk.

  No – let Mrs Palfreyman have the pleasure of them.

  She smiled to herself. Jericho would soon talk his way out of any suspicion. She had never met a more inventive man when it came to stories. Many was the time she’d listened to him relating some incident and hardly recognised it for the embellishment.

  She was home in less than fifteen minutes and changed into her blonde wig, big shades, dark tan make-up and a slash of vivid lipstick. Faded jeans, cowboy boots and a brown leather jacket completed the picture. She grinned at herself in the mirror and reflected how easy it was for a woman to alter her appearance completely.

  No one would have known her.

  She parked a little way from the school and wandered slowly towards it. One or two youngsters were already trickling through the gates – a little early.

  She picked Katie Ashbourne out easily. Partly because the papers had been filled with pictures of her, partly because she was tall and also because of the cluster of admirers surrounding her. She had waist-length straight, brown hair. Her school skirt was halfway up her thighs and she had a rucksack tucked underneath her arm.

  The girl gave Martha a cool, arrogant stare. Martha smiled back at her.

  ‘You Press?’ the girl asked.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Oh.’ The girl looked crestfallen; but she soon recovered. ‘Only that I’ve been plagued by them.’ She tossed her hair and tilted her face upwards, nose in the air. ‘My boyfriend got murdered, see. The Press have been hounding me. In fact they’ve offered me thousands to tell my story but I don’t know. Is it right? Is it wrong? Why shouldn’t I anyway? I’m going to need money some day and the story’ll pass, like any other.’

  She was a child of her time. Streetwise, cool, confident and well read in the ways of her world.

  Martha shed her coroner prejudices to assume the persona of Martha Rees, swaggering private eye. ‘Exactly. I agree. Mind you – I’d be careful what I say to the Press – or even to anyone.’ Even her voice sounded different, cocky and brash with a nasal Thames twang.

  ‘Dead people can’t sue.’ The girl tossed her lovely hair away from her face again. The movement rippled it down her back.

  She had wary dark eyes and an olive complexion and was more than averagely attractive. Martha wondered if she and Gough would have stuck together. She doubted it.

  ‘I suppose you’re Katie Ashbourne then, are you?’

  The girl chewed some gum which must have been parked in the side of her cheek. ‘Yeah. It was my boyfriend who was killed. Roger Gough. DreadNought, we all called him.’

  Martha adjusted her shades to peep over them. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Dead nice bloke. Killed by a psycho, he was. Funny thing is we never realised Hughes was a psycho. Roger weren’t frightened of him none. But then – that were Roger. Brave.’

  ‘Didn’t you realise that the Hughes boy was a psycho?’

  ‘Nah. But they’re good at hidin’ it, aren’t they, psychos?’

  Martha Rees shrugged. ‘Why did Hughes pick on your boyfriend? Was it over you?’

  ‘Not exactly. Well.’ The hair rippled down her back again. ‘Sort of. There was always a bit of trouble between Wilfred and DreadNought.’

  Martha frowned. ‘Wilfred?’

  ‘After Wilfred Owen, the poet. That’s what we used to call him on account of him likin’ poetry and stuff.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Well he did. Used to sit and read the stuff. Anyway,’ she tossed her head again and took a long open-mouthed chew at her gum, ‘Hughes had a sort of thing about me. Used to fancy me somethin’ rotten. He flashed at me once,’ she said defiantly. ‘And DreadNought. Well, let’s just say he didn’t like other people goin’ for me. But DreadNought was safe.’ She smiled. ‘I didn’t fancy the little bleeder. I wouldn’t have gone off with him.’ She grinned. ‘If there’d been me and Wilfred on a desert island surrounded by a shark-infested sea I’d have swum. That’s what I thought of him. He was a creep.’

  Martha nodded and grimaced back. The description was graphic enough to paint the picture of a lonely, isolated boy picked on by his schoolmates, ridiculed for all that he found interesting. The portrait depressed her.

  She turned around to scan the crowd of children streaming out of the school gates. ‘Which one is Chelsea Arnold?’

  Katie Ashbourne didn’t like the attention shifting away from her. ‘You don’t want to speak to her.’

  Martha lowered her shades back over her eyes. She knew it gave her a mysterious look and Katie Ashbourne fell for it. ‘Oh. Well, that’s her,’ she said, pointing towards a small girl scurrying out of the side gate.

  Martha walked along the pavement, turning in and bumping into the girl. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Goodness.’ Even she was impressed by the surprise she managed to inject into her tone. ‘It’s Chelsea, isn’t it?’

  The girl looked up and Martha had an impression of a twitching, brown-eyed, little mouse.

  ‘Surely you know me, Chelsea? I’m a friend of your mother’s dear.’

 
; Martha was taking a gamble. If there is anyone a teenage girl does not remember it is the friends of her mother’s. The women her mother drones on and on about whose names and faces all blur into one.

  The girl fell for it. ‘Oh yes,’ she lied. ‘I remember you.’

  Martha took another gamble. ‘We’re the ones who went to live in Spain, dear.’

  Chelsea Arnold’s face cleared and Martha knew she had struck lucky.

  ‘I’m sure I read about you in the paper the other day,’ Martha continued. ‘Weren’t you saying something about – now what was it? Oh yes. There was some trouble at the school, wasn’t there? Didn’t a friend of yours get hurt?’

  Chelsea looked around her but there was no one within earshot. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A friend of mine died. He was stabbed and he died in hospital.’

  ‘Was he a close friend, dear?’

  Chelsea nodded but no pain crossed her face.

  ‘And what about the boy who did it?’

  This time the girl looked truly upset. ‘He killed himself,’ she said quietly, ‘in Stoke Heath.’

  So Martha had her answer. ‘Dear, dear,’ she said. ‘How awful. And was he a friend of yours too?’

  The girl looked at her, tears making her eyes very bright.

  Martha plunged on. ‘And didn’t your mother say something about an accident? Your wrist – wasn’t it?’

  The girl stared at her, round-eyed. Then without a word she turned and scuttled off.

  Martha watched her go feeling sorry for her. She was very young to have had such tragedy so very near her. And now she was being forced to toe the party line or she would be ostracised.

  We are judged by the people we mix with.

  In the car she removed the blonde wig, ruffled up her own hair and smiled at herself in the mirror. It had been a successful foray.

  But she was still missing something.

  She decided to call in Simon Boyd’s on the way home. The transformation of Martin’s study was just beginning to take shape and colour in her mind. The walls painted with satin ivory emulsion and the windows hung with the same coloured curtains decorated with the darkest of huge red flowers. She was starting to see it. She would have the floorboards cleaned and sanded, buy some new furniture. She was looking over the bolts of material when she suddenly felt unaccountably disloyal and instead of seeing the rolls of material she saw Martin’s face, looking at her and seeming unbearably sad.

  She left the shop and drove home, her mind in turmoil.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At seven-thirty that evening, just as she was putting a chicken Caesar salad on the table, she heard a knock at the door and opened it to Alex Randall. ‘What a brilliant surprise,’ she said

  He hesitated. ‘Sorry for coming unannounced,’ he said, looking oddly bashful. ‘But I was passing and…’

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘No – don’t worry, I love it when people drop by. Are you hungry by any chance? I’m just about to put tea on the table.’

  ‘Yes. It so happens I am. Ravenous.’

  ‘Then I’m glad I made a bit extra.’

  He followed her into the kitchen where Agnetha and Sukey were already tucking in. Martha fished out another knife and fork from the drawer, introduced Alex to her daughter and the au pair who at least did stop eating for a second to say hello. Unlike Sukey.

  ‘Tuck in,’ Martha invited, handing him a plate and the bowl. ‘Truth is I haven’t really got used to Sam’s not being here and I invariably cook too much.’

  ‘His loss is my gain,’ he said. ‘Caesar salad’s my favourite. Particularly when it has both chicken and bacon in it and a nice, strong sauce.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sukey said grumpily. ‘We have it about twice a week.’

  Alex turned towards her. ‘So what’s your favourite then?’

  ‘Lasagne with salad,’ Sukey said firmly.

  ‘And yours, Agnetha?’

  ‘I think poached salmon,’ Agnetha said. ‘The wild ones not the farmed ones.’

  ‘Can you taste the difference?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Randall.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said dubiously.

  They spent the meal eating voraciously (Alex had told the truth when he had claimed to be ravenous) and ragging each other good-humouredly. As soon as they had finished Martha left Agnetha and Sukey to fill the dishwasher and led Alex into Martin’s study. She didn’t want them hearing what he might have to say.

  Alex settled down in the upholstered leather library chair. ‘This is comfortable,’ he said. ‘A real man’s chair.’

  Martha nodded. ‘It was Martin’s favourite.’ She waited for the familiar stab of pain but this evening it did not come. She waited but it was gone. A memory only.

  ‘Would you like a whisky or something?’

  He sighed. ‘Better not. I’m driving. Set a good example. Anyway I thought you’d want to know where I’ve got to with my investigations. The two prison officers are both on their days off,’ he said. ‘Back tomorrow. I thought I’d call round first thing in the morning. I could pop over to your office at lunchtime and let you know what they said.’ He looked around the room. ‘Was this Martin’s study?’

  She nodded. ‘Sukey and I are going to revamp it,’ she said. ‘It’s a much nicer room than my study which is an old dressing room – almost a corridor and a bit dark. This overlooks the garden and is really lovely all the year round. There are views out the back, straight into the woods. We’re going to do the whole lot, new furniture, new curtains, strip the walls, sand the floors.’

  ‘You’re moving on?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s time, Alex. We all need to move on. Agnetha, Sukey, Sam and me too.’

  ‘So,’ he said, smiling. ‘That’s good. That’s what people should do in life. Move on. If they can.’ Something crossed his face and she thought to herself what an enigma he was. She knew so little about him. Almost nothing.

  ‘Now to the other business. The flowers. We’ve made enquiries at the florist’s. They’re from a woman, Martha.’

  ‘A woman?’ She couldn’t have been more astonished.

  ‘Yes. A woman. She paid in cash.’ His face broke into a smile. ‘You can take some consolation from the fact that you don’t come cheap. They cost forty five-pounds.’

  She felt a snigger. ‘And now Mrs Palfreyman has them and according to Jericho is going to suspect him of having an extramarital.’ She mimicked Jericho’s Shropshire burr.

  They both chuckled for a moment. Then Martha asked a leading question. ‘Did the florist give a description of her?’

  ‘Yes. Young, late twenties, early thirties, brown hair, slim build, pale complexion. Dressed in combat trousers and an olive green beaded jacket. Nicely spoken. No regional accent and the girl didn’t know her. Does it fit the description of anyone you know?’

  Martha shook her head. ‘I can’t think of anyone specific. Which shop was it?’

  ‘The florist’s at Harlescott. The one opposite the bus station.’

  Martha knew the place. It was avant-garde, fashionable, selling twigs and orange bulrushes, long blue feathery plants and terracotta pots. She’d ordered bouquets from there herself, tempted by the buckets of blooms which always stood outside, on the pavement, which was a convenient pull off point being wide enough for parking.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I simply don’t understand. The hints and suggestions must be all connected. The message is always the same – message for Martha.’ She could feel her face freeze. ‘It didn’t feel like a threat from a woman.’

  ‘Well there’s no law against sending flowers, you know. Perhaps you’re reading too much into it.’

  ‘But the other things, Alex?’

  ‘It wouldn’t count as stalking until they’ve crossed the line into intrusion.

  ‘It’s a matter of degree and it has to get quite oppressive before you can take out an injunction against them. The whole thing would be very public. An
d the idea of a threat coming from a woman would make you seem—’

  She could imagine. ‘Either a dyke or a wimp who couldn’t cope with a bit of attention from a small, young, gentle female. She wouldn’t be perceived as a threat. And I’d get no sympathy.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So that’s why you wanted to come here rather than in the office where Jericho’s ear seems to pick everything up.’

  Again he nodded, his eyes fixed on hers and she felt helpless. ‘But the voices I heard. It wasn’t a woman. It just wasn’t. I know.’

  ‘But Martha, the flowers came from a woman. This seems a gentle, female message rather than overt, physical threats.’

  ‘But it is someone who bears a grudge against me?’

  ‘I don’t know. No – more like someone wanting you to see things from their point of view.’

  ‘But how can I when I can’t understand what it is that they’re trying to say?’

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘It’ll become bolder. In the end they will expose themselves. Otherwise there is no point to it.’

  She exploded into laughter. ‘Well that I don’t relish, a young woman exposing herself.’

  He laughed with her again. ‘I will ask the bobbies on the beat to keep an eye on the florist’s shop but if she’s any subtlety about her she won’t go there again but to one of the other florist’s. And that’s assuming she pursues the flowers theme. Next time it might be something else.’

  Like a noose around a dead mouse’s neck?

  Alex stood up and put a friendly hand on her shoulder. ‘Wait and see. That’s my advice. I don’t think you’re in any danger.’

  And that, Martha thought, was the traditional trick of the stalker, to appear innocuous. They appear so right up until they are ready to strike.

  Alex was as good as his word. The following morning, a little after eleven, he called round to Martha’s office with transcripts of the two prison officers’ statements.

  Walton Pembroke’s first.

  ‘Callum Hughes arrived at Stoke Heath at a little after ten o’clock in the evening of the 6th of September. He seemed quiet, a bit frightened, not aggressive. Doctor Delyth Fontaine had seen him the evening before and pronounced him fit for detention. He’d been allocated cell 101 and seemed a bit nervous of his cellmate. We introduced them.’