They followed her into a small, neat sitting room which held the faint scent of the White Company’s Flowers, one of Joanna’s favourites.
Erienna spoke first as she sat down in an armchair. ‘I suppose,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on Joanna, ‘you’ve come to ask me about Stephen.’ A wry smile creased her face. ‘And I suppose you’ve put two and two together to make six.’
Joanna was surprised. She had expected Erienna Delaney to assume they had come about the two murders. Instead she had tugged the rug from under their feet by moving straight to her nephew.
Erienna looked from one to the other, waiting for them to catch up. And then, before they could make any response, she spat, ‘I’m not that feckin’ stupid.’
Joanna waited. If Erienna had something to say she was prepared to listen.
‘It was just circumstances,’ Erienna said. ‘Not his fault.’ Her face changed again. ‘And not Stephen’s either. Sometimes you just have to accept things are just fate and that’s that. Maybe Stephen dying like that meant that the council blocked off the road and, who knows, it’s possible it’s saved some other poor child’s life. But I can tell you …’ She folded her hands across her lap. ‘I had nothing to do with Jadon Glover’s death.’
Joanna glanced at Mike, trying to keep her expression neutral. She would say that, wouldn’t she?
‘Did he call here on that last Wednesday night?’
Erienna’s expression changed again and Joanna realized she didn’t know how to answer this. The Sisterhood was sticking together. Joanna prompted her. ‘The truth, Ms Delaney?’
Erienna Delaney was no coward and no slouch either. She didn’t answer but sat motionless.
Joanna felt her attitude harden. ‘There have been two murders,’ she said. ‘Two men have been brutally killed.’
Erienna Delaney’s shoulders shuddered. But she still needed a shove in the back.
‘You understand?’ Joanna said. ‘Jadon Glover’s body was tipped down a toilet. He was still alive at the time.’
She waited for that to sink in before continuing. ‘The pathologist believes he possibly lived for up to a couple of hours, fatally wounded with his head stuck down an earth closet, trying to heave himself out. You understand? Now I don’t like or condone the way Daylight conducted their business but I can tell you this was a horrible end to a man who had been married for just two years. His wife was distraught. She called him a perfect husband.’
Erienna snorted and even as Joanna spoke she recognized the hollowness of the phrase. Erienna’s eyes flickered. It was the only sign that she had heard but her shoulders tensed and she looked as wary as a cat.
‘Look,’ Joanna said, ‘I really don’t want to have to bring you in to the station for questioning but make no mistake, Erienna, I will if I need to. I will get to the bottom of this. DS Korpanski and I will be making an arrest and we will be charging you and your less guilty friends as accessories and obstructing the police in the execution of their duties.’
Delaney was still dumb and immobile.
So Joanna continued, ‘We have you three in our sights. Now I suggest you share a glass of wine or whatever you usually have with your cronies and then come back and tell me the truth.’ She felt her face harden. ‘One of your mates is a killer. Make no mistake about that. Watch your back, Ms Delaney. And by the way,’ she added, ‘we do have some forensic evidence from the crime scene.’ She deliberately did not specify which crime scene. Maybe the dropped button found by the SOCOs would lead nowhere.
She and Mike left.
She stood in the middle of the street. ‘Behind one of those doors, Mike,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘is a crime scene waiting for us to unpick its secrets.’
‘And you think we’ll flush them out?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, turning to him. ‘I’m sure.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Saturday, 19 April, 8 p.m.
They had returned to the station, waiting as reports were now coming in thick and fast. Whether the coven was going to come forward or not, Joanna was gaining evidence and she started drawing up a list. She would, if necessary, apply for a warrant to impound the cars of all three women and to search their properties. They would find blood or mud, a hair or a thread. Something.
During the briefing she brought the team up to speed with the finding of Glover’s notebook, the facts surrounding the death of the little boy on Nab Hill Avenue and the story of Erienna Delaney.
No one could dispose of crime evidence that completely. With modern techniques and microscopic eyes they would find specks of blood, fingerprints, soil, plant life, blood, a weapon, evidence. It was simply waiting for them to pick it up. Connect the body with the crime scene.
Of course, a confession would be nice but it wasn’t absolutely necessary. It would simply make it easier and cheaper to send whichever person had struck the blows to prison. Joanna sat at her desk, her eyes unfocused on the screen. In her heart she knew who it was. She fingered the evidence bag containing the one metallic button.
Monica Pagett had described the person who had asked if she could use her lavatory one day nearly a year ago. It only needed them to show her a photograph. Thank goodness for the sharp eyes and acute memory of that particular ninety-five-year-old. It wasn’t Erienna, or Yasmin.
It was Charlotte Parker. For her money it was ‘grandma’ who had stuck the knife in. From the time she had met the steely woman with her tough, independent character she had recognized something in her. Something which resonated with herself. She was uncompromising. Unforgiving. Unforgetting.
‘We’ve got no evidence, Mike.’
‘Up to us to find it then.’
‘Something else … How could she have man-handled Glover’s body along that path?’
Korpanski simply shrugged.
‘How would she know the cottage was empty – that Monica wouldn’t just return one day?’
Again Korpanski shrugged but this time he had a suggestion. ‘Perhaps she had a friend who worked in the hospital and found out that way. Leek’s just a small town, Jo.’
And so for now the cramped streets with their stories and their secrets would remain. Their debts would be picked up again – just by someone else. They would never quite swim above them but would remain struggling for breath and the sharks would swim as the vultures hovered, ready to pick bits off. They would always be the underbelly. She gave a loud sigh and Korpanski looked up. ‘You’re not feeling sorry for them, are you?’
‘Of course not.’ She was indignant. ‘God, Mike, I saw his body as well as Jeff’s. I saw the savageness of the assaults as well as the suffering of Jadon. And Jeff – well, it was pathetic.’
‘Hmm.’ He returned to his screen but when she stayed motionless he too gave a sigh and turned away. ‘So what’s in your head?’
‘Just sadness,’ she said. ‘That’s all. I just feel sad at the life some people have.’
‘Hang on a minute, Jo,’ he said, ‘it could be worse, you know.’
‘How?’
‘They’re not in some war-torn place, having bombs dropped on them and their families slaughtered.’
‘No,’ she agreed, ‘but they live this grey life, this everyday struggle.’
‘You need an arrest,’ he said, ‘a confession, a nice clean court case and a holiday with your husband.’ He winked at her. But she sat still, frowning. Korpanski, however, had already turned back to the computer and missed her frown.
Sunday, 20 April, 8.30 a.m.
It was the following day, a Sunday – a good day to find everyone at home – when Joanna received the warrants to search all three homes beginning with their hot favourite.
Charlotte Parker watched as Mark Fask and his team scrutinized her house. She leaned against the wall, watching them from the narrow walkway. Without a word she kept watching them as they brushed fingerprint dust, saw them mark and photograph various points along the wall, take samples from the floorboards, swab the back of the front
door and the sitting-room door, inspect her wheelie bin. She watched, resisting attempts to encourage her to leave the scene, simply moving out of the way when the SOCOs drew too close. Her expression was inscrutable as her car was put on a low loader. After an hour and a half, she picked up her coat from the back of the chair and her mobile phone and walked out, speaking into it as she went.
Fask caught the first sentence.
‘They’re here now.’
11 a.m.
Joanna was at her desk, fiddling with her biro, too agitated to concentrate. Tensely she was waiting for a phone call. She jumped when it finally came through.
‘Yes?’
Korpanski looked across at her.
‘Right. I’m on my way.’
And in that one short sentence DS Mike Korpanski caught it – the whiff of excitement. Something at last was happening.
Joanna was standing in front of him. ‘Well,’ she challenged, ‘are you coming or sitting here?’
He too was on his feet.
‘We have lift-off,’ she said. ‘That was Charlotte Parker. She’s at the front desk.’
Whatever Korpanski had been expecting he had not anticipated this.
Joanna faced the woman across the table and studied her. Parker returned her gaze and similarly studied the determined woman who sat opposite.
The DI looked calm and she, herself, felt similarly so. She had been cautioned and remained focused on the questioning blue eyes which remained curious, the gaze steady and her face impassive, hands resting on her lap.
Then Charlotte Parker gave her a small, friendly smile. Almost apologetic. It took Joanna aback. She leaned forward. ‘I think I understand.’
It was meant to sound conciliatory but Charlotte Parker took it coolly. ‘Do you?’ It was a challenge.
Joanna recalled something Colclough had once told her.
When a suspect is ready to confess, whatever the crime, let them talk – and talk – and talk until they run out of words.
Charlotte folded her arms and frowned. ‘This is hard to explain,’ she began. She started looking around her. ‘It wasn’t even born out of hatred, Inspector. Not really.’ She leaned forward. No solicitor at her side. She’d refused one. She tossed her tiger-striped locks as a gesture of complete freedom. ‘What’s the point of trying to justify my actions?’ she said. ‘It’s not going to get me off. It’s time,’ she said, closing her eyes wearily. When she opened them it was to ask a seemingly unrelated question. ‘Have you ever had rats, Inspector?’
Let them talk.
‘No. Mice a couple of times if the weather’s been particularly wet or hard but no rats.’
‘There’s an instinct inside you,’ Charlotte Parker continued as though she hadn’t heard. ‘An instinct to rid yourself of it. No matter how. That’s how I felt about Jadon Glover. Every Wednesday. Every bloody Wednesday …’ she was knocking her palm on her forehead, punctuating the words, ‘… he’d be there knocking on the door. Bang, bang, bang, bang …’ She put her hands now on either side of her head. ‘He knew we were vulnerable, defenceless. Fucking poor as fucking church mice and still he came week after week, bleeding us dry.’
‘Are you saying he took pleasure in that?’
Charlotte looked up. ‘Jadon, take pleasure? Don’t you understand, Inspector? He had no emotions. Not pleasure, not malice. No feelings at all.’
‘But he did,’ Joanna insisted, for some unknown reason feeling bound to defend Glover. ‘He missed calling on Marty Widnes a couple of times.’
‘Guilt,’ Charlotte said, folding her arms. ‘He hounded poor old Frank to death.’ She smiled. ‘It started with me getting taken short out on a hike one day, seeing the house. So remote. And then as though it dropped into my lap, by chance I mentioned it to a friend and she told me about Mrs Pagett being in hospital, told me she’d never return home.’ Grandma Parker smiled. ‘Told me the old lady was stubborn as a mule. She’ll die before she’ll ever sell that place. It seemed like … an invitation.’
Joanna nodded.
‘Had Monica Pagett not decided to sell Starve Crow Cottage I would have got away with it, wouldn’t I?’
‘Possibly, temporarily.’
‘You’d never have found his body, would you?’
‘One day,’ Joanna said, ‘someone would.’
Charlotte ‘Grandma’ Parker was silent for a moment longer before asking, ‘Why did you home in on us?’
‘Sorry?’
‘How did you know to focus your search for evidence on Nab Hill Avenue?’
Joanna had to be honest here. She would like to have said she had worked it out, even that Karen Stanton had seen Glover turn to the right, into Nab Hill Avenue not Barngate Street, but she hadn’t and the truth would all come out in court. ‘Glover kept a notebook.’
‘I know. An electronic one.’
‘No, not an electronic notebook – at least, not only an electronic one. He also had a small, handwritten thing that he kept in his breast pocket. When he’d completed a street he filled it in.’
‘The sneaky bastard,’ Charlotte said softly to herself. ‘The sneaky little bugger.’
What could Joanna say except, ‘Quite.’ She continued, ‘He’d already written the headline “Nab Hill Avenue” so we knew he’d changed his order the last Wednesday he was alive. We knew he’d come to one of you.’
‘So why start with me?’
‘I thought you were the most likely. And this.’ She held up the evidence bag with the button in it.
Charlotte Parker’s laugh rang into the room. ‘Oh, you, the police,’ she said. ‘That isn’t even mine.’
‘But we got there in the end.’
Charlotte’s nod was almost a grudging tribute.
Sunday, 20 April, midday
She wished she could have made a better job of breaking the news to Eve Glover that someone had confessed to her husband’s murder and they would be charging her, but she had an overwhelming feeling of regret. She wished she could have charged Robertson with financing what surely should have been an illegal operation. She wished Eve’s son had not died in such a brutal manner. She wished the Mitsubishi had not roared up Nab Hill Avenue, deceiving a little boy into believing his mother had returned.
She wished she could pay off all the debts. She wished Frank Widnes had not hanged himself. She wished …
And as her prosaic mother would have said, ‘Wishes don’t pay bills.’ No, Mum, and wishes don’t bring back the dead either.
She had a brief meeting with Leroy Wilson and Scott Dooley and suggested they try a change of career plan but had little hope that they would follow her advice.
Eve was eerily calm as she broke the news and Joanna felt admiration for her iron control. She had, in the end, lost both husband and son. And what, Joanna thought as she closed the front door of Disraeli Place, could be more precious than that?
Then her admiration and sympathy abandoned her. A car pulled up and Karl Robertson climbed out, red flowers at the ready. Joanna realized it was not sympathy that Eve deserved but recognition. She was a survivor.
Robertson met her halfway along the drive. She’d never asked what his marital state was – divorced, single, separated or still happily and blissfully married to a Mrs Robertson. ‘I’ve come over to help Eve plan the funeral,’ he said, ‘and to reassure her …’ fat chins wobbling, ‘… that she will be looked after.’
Was Eve Glover really one of those women who just had to have a man around, even one who had probably set her husband (supposedly adored, supposedly perfect) on the business path which had ultimately led to his death and was probably using her in a different way, a sugar babe bit-on-the-side?
Joanna despaired of such women.
In a dry voice she related the facts to him and said that the coroner would soon release the body for burial. ‘And,’ she couldn’t help adding, ‘that of his colleague, Jeffrey Armitage.’
‘Right.’
She clocked off at eight. She�
��d had enough of the world and its tacky little problems. She and Matthew had a leisurely Indian at Abdul Spice and that night she slept for a full eight hours.
TWENTY-SIX
One month later
Joanna stared at the pregnancy test. Pregnant! Written in blue. It shouted it from the tiny stick from the bathroom into the empty bedroom, down the stairs like a puff of blue smoke – or pink. She kept staring at it, hardly able to believe the fable, as many women must have done before. What did this mean? It was already growing inside her. Tiny cells multiplying. Fast. Two, four, eight, sixteen …
She put her hand on her stomach and felt absolutely nothing. It was flat. Someone had once told her they started off like this – invisible. Even after six weeks the cells were a tiny clump no bigger than a fingernail. She looked at her own fingernail then at her face in the mirror. Did she look different?
Yes, she did. There was a glow about her. A glow of knowledge, a glow of success. A glow that knew Matthew would be overjoyed. She couldn’t wait to tell him. She pictured his face, boyish, excited, hand ruffling his hair as he habitually did, almost to suppress exuberant, bubbly news from bursting out of his scalp. And that’s what this was. The very best of news.
In a month they would be in their new house, well in time to decorate a nursery and prepare for this child that Matthew had so wanted. Then she caught sight of her face in the mirror, only this time she was not smug and jubilant but anxious. What if?
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