EVIL CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  ‘Can you remember what she was wearing?’

  ‘I don’t think she was in normal walking clothes. She had a woolly hat pulled down over her head with strands of hair peeping out and blowing in the wind but she was wearing a coat rather than an outdoor jacket. You know, a normal knee-length coat like you’d wear in town. I think it was a reddish colour.’

  ‘Does that path head to anywhere other than Durlston?’

  ‘I’m not really the person to ask,’ Pauline replied. ‘Flick would know a lot more than me, but I think there are smaller paths branching off and heading down into Swanage.’

  Sophie took another sip of her coffee. ‘When you arrived, did you notice any other cars in the car park?’

  ‘We all parked as close as we could to the castle ’cause we knew we’d need the loo when we got back. There may’ve been a small, blue car up at the top end but I can’t be sure. Maybe Flick will remember. She was there first, being the organiser. Wouldn’t she have looked around when she arrived?’

  Sophie shrugged. ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘And that’s it, Chief Inspector. I’ve been trying to think through what I saw in case I forgot something, but I think that’s everything.’

  ‘It’s all very helpful, Pauline. By the way, what were your first thoughts when you spotted the body in the sea?’

  ‘I was shocked, like everyone else, I suppose. Then when the police and rescue squad arrived and got the poor man out of the water I thought, “Shit. I wonder if that Sophie Allen will be round, asking me questions.” So my first thought was to keep quiet about what I’d seen.’

  Sophie laughed. ‘Well it’s nice to know I still have some effect on people. I don’t know why you were worried though. I thought we parted on good terms.’

  ‘It’s the other thing still hanging over me. The Bristol stuff.’

  ‘Well in that case, I have good news for you. They haven’t been able to find any new evidence, so you can rest easy. The investigation has gone back into cold storage.’

  Pauline closed her eyes momentarily. ‘Oh God. Thank you. That means Tony and I can start planning properly. For our wedding, I mean. Will you come? Please?’

  ‘I’ll try. That’s two weddings I’ve been invited to in one weekend. It must be in the air.’

  ‘Who’s the other?’ Pauline asked.

  ‘My mother. Like you, she’s carrying a terrible sense of loss around with her. There’ll be tears of sadness as well as joy.’

  Pauline looked at her. ‘I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I know I don’t deserve it. You must have thought I was some strange kind of she-devil.’

  ‘The thought did cross my mind. But it’s all in the past now.’

  * * *

  DC Rae Gregson was working her way through a list of possible places in west London where the erstwhile Exeter bookshop worker, Daisy Lancaster, might now be employed. This really was a shot in the dark, so much so that her immediate boss, Barry Marsh, had expressed serious doubts when Sophie had allocated the task.

  ‘DCS Dunnett would have had a fit if he’d still been in charge, ma’am. We’re treating this as if it’s a murder enquiry, yet it’s not. Not officially, anyway. Can we justify the cost?’

  ‘Well, our good friend Dunnett is no longer in charge, thank God, so that particular problem isn’t about to arise. And with a tentative link between two suspicious deaths, we have a duty to find out if that link is real or just a coincidence.’

  So here Rae was, crossing out the name of the seventh company on a list of eleven, all financial businesses that had major branches in Uxbridge. She dialled the next number on the list and explained the purpose of the call.

  ‘Yes,’ came the reply. ‘Daisy Lancaster is with us. Would you like me to put you through?’

  Rae sat up with a start. Another voice came on the line and she again explained about the bookshop, the till receipt and the book in question.

  ‘You’re asking a lot, aren’t you? Have you any idea how many customers we used to serve on a Saturday?’

  ‘Oh, I can well imagine. But this wasn’t a Saturday. According to the till receipt it was a Tuesday morning at nine thirty.’

  There was a long silence.

  Finally Daisy spoke. ‘Yes, I do remember now. There was a Tuesday when I covered for one of the other girls. She had an emergency clinic appointment and I had no lectures then, so I did the first part of her shift.’

  ‘So it would have been quieter than normal?’ Rae suggested.

  Another silence. ‘It was so long ago. But one person does stick in my mind from that morning. I think she was a student,’ Daisy replied. ‘She was sneezing and spluttering. I wondered if she suffered from hay fever or just had a summer cold. She had long, red hair. Don’t know her name though. I think I’d seen her before on campus a couple of times. Maybe a bit of an arty type? But I can’t be sure that the book on the receipt you’ve got was hers. That’s just asking too much of me. She might have bought something completely different.’

  Rae scribbled down a few details and thanked Daisy. Was this enough to go on? Rae doubted it. At least it hadn’t been a complete waste of time, but there was still no definite link between the red-haired young woman and that particular book. This meant that it couldn’t be used as evidence. What had the boss called it? Intelligence gathering, rather than evidence gathering. All it did was help build up the background picture. Rae hoped that Barry was making better progress. He was looking into the female suicide victim. If her house had already been cleared and sold by the brother, they would have to rely entirely on the evidence Stu Blackman had already found there. That would mean they were really up shit creek.

  * * *

  ‘So the house has been sold, boss?’ Rae Gregson was chatting to Barry in the office they shared.

  Barry frowned. ‘I suppose it was too much to hope that everything would still be there, untouched and waiting for us. We’re talking months rather than weeks since Stu Blackman first contacted me and from what I can tell, it’s a very attractive cottage on the fringes of Dorchester. Apparently it was snapped up immediately and the new owners moved in as soon as they could.’

  ‘Is it really a problem? I mean, the place was searched pretty thoroughly, wasn’t it?’ She was puzzled by the time being spent on a suicide and an accidental death.

  ‘Yes, I don’t have a problem with that. I expect the family went through the place with a fine toothcomb, along with Stu Blackman. I think Rose Simons and George Warrander were involved as well. But the boss and I always like to visit to get a feel for a place.’

  ‘Can’t you still do that? Ask the new owners?’

  ‘Not easily. We wouldn’t want to let on that a body had been found dangling from one of the ceiling beams in their lovely new home, and that we were still investigating it almost six months later. What kind of message would that send out about us? Anyway, that’s what the boss thinks. She said that we need to keep it very low key. How did she put it? “We live in an age of political policing and we can’t afford to go trampling on the sensitive toes of Joe Public.”’

  ‘She has a way with words, doesn’t she?’

  Barry nodded glumly. ‘But what we can do is chat quietly with the neighbours and friends. And all her workmates. My guess is they hardly touched on that before. Anyway, the boss seems to be treating this almost like a murder enquiry. So we have to give it the full works.’

  ‘Does she know something we don’t?’

  ‘No, but I think she’s convinced herself that there might be something wrong, and she wants to nip it in the bud before we have another death on our hands. If it is the same woman behind these two deaths, then she’s right to push hard. Killers can soon get addicted to what they do. The boss is worried that she might have already chosen another victim. If that’s the case, it’s a race and we’re handicapped because there’s so much we don’t yet know.’

  * * *

  Rose Simons and George Warrander walked out of Dorch
ester police station and made their way towards the car pool. The rain had just stopped falling. By the time Rose had scanned the underside of their vehicle and George had started the engine, the sun was beginning to peep out from behind the previously dark clouds.

  He steered the squad car towards the exit gate. ‘Where to, boss?’

  ‘Winfrith,’ she said. ‘Our holy county headquarters. Your favourite detective in the whole wide world wants to pick our brains about that peculiar suicide at the old cottage. Remember? The one where we did a follow up search a couple of months after it happened. Peculiar or what? The game’s afoot, as her probable ancestor was wont to say back in good old Baker Street. I wonder what’s tickled her interest.’

  George shrugged. ‘Apparently there was a death down on the coast last weekend. Someone was found in the water after a storm. The talk was that it could have been a suicide, though the guys involved thought that it was more likely that he ended up in the sea by accident. The rocks were very slippery from all the rain and surf.’

  ‘So what’s the connection to the suicide we were involved with? You’re a clever laddie. Anything there?’

  George shook his head. ‘No, nothing I can think of. But I did hear that there was a lot of searching going on in the Swanage area, interviewing bus drivers and taxicab people and the like.’

  ‘Beats me, then. But that’s what’s in those files on the back seat. All the stuff from the suicide. And she wants a few minutes picking my brains. That’s what she said. Fat lot of use that’s gonna be. Where most people have brains, I have pickled walnuts. Ask me a hard question and my eyes glaze over. You were there when we did the second search of the cottage. Did anything seem out of place to you?’

  George shrugged. ‘No. How was she found? The dead woman, I mean.’

  ‘Hanging from a beam. She’d also taken an overdose of sleeping pills and paracetamol. She wanted to make doubly sure, I suppose.’

  ‘Isn’t that unusual for a woman? The hanging, I mean? The overdose fits, but usually it’s men who hang themselves, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re the one with the brain, Georgie boy. I don’t know these things. Too morbid for a gorgeous, vibrant creature like me. Now let’s get a move on. We don’t want to be late. We’ve still got our routine work to do once we get out of Colditz.’

  Chapter 13: History Books and Sketchbook

  ‘There’s nothing that links them. Apart from those history books, and the possible sightings of a young woman with curly red hair. What else have we got?’ said Rae. She stepped back from the incident board to inspect the results of her work — the information about the two apparent suicide victims, Edwina Davis on the left side and Mark Paterson on the right. A middle column contained a few sparse details about the mysterious H.

  Sophie came and joined Rae at the incident board. ‘Rose Simons and George Warrander had nothing to add, though we’ve now got the case file to go through. Rose was there when her body was cut down, so that was useful. I’ve just been on the phone to Tom Davis, Edwina’s brother. He got the house cleared as we guessed he would, but he hung on to those history books. He said they puzzled him. He’s driving down today and bringing them, along with the diaries he found. This will be key, Rae. We need to compare the two messages and look for similarities in the handwriting.’

  ‘It’s still all very thin, isn’t it, ma’am? What makes you so sure that they’re connected? Aren’t you staking an awful lot on what might just be a coincidence?’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘It could be the same book, Rae. That’s why I phoned Tom Davis. To check. And the message seems to be written in the same place, on the first page inside, in the top right-hand corner with almost the same wording. What are the chances of that? I know it sounds unlikely, but I think we may have stumbled on something here. Look, I really don’t know what to make of it. And Rose Simons just admitted to me that she felt uneasy about Edwina’s suicide, but it wasn’t anything she could put her finger on. Meanwhile, there’s something you can do. Her brother said he took other books and stuff from his sister’s house to a charity shop in Dorchester. Can you get up there with Barry, once he’s finished what he’s doing, and go through the place?’

  Rae frowned. ‘But how will we identify what was hers?’

  ‘Tom completed a Gift-Aid form. That means his sister’s stuff is all recorded as it sells, so the charity can claim the tax back on the sales. He told me his number and gave me a rough list of what he’d donated. Have a chat with the house clearance people. Come on, Rae, cheer up. You once told me you enjoyed rummaging about in charity shops and the like. While you’re doing that, I’ll be traipsing around the vicinity of her cottage and chatting to the locals, then paying a visit to her workplace. I need to get a feel for what she was like, and the only way I can do that is by talking to people she knew. I’ll need to be back here by mid-afternoon when the brother is due to arrive. If you find anything that could have a bearing, call me. Okay?’

  * * *

  Sophie strolled around the area surrounding Edwina Davis’s cottage, talking to anyone she met. She called at the local corner shop, the pub, the petrol station. Some people remembered the reserved, middle-aged woman who’d lived in Yardley Cottage, some didn’t. A few commented on how helpful and supportive Edwina had been when they’d told her about their problems. A picture was already beginning to emerge.

  Her final stop was a small hair salon next to the local store.

  ‘Eddie Davis? Yes, she was one of my customers,’ the manageress said. ‘It’s only me here so I get to know all the regulars. She was one of the best. A lovely person. Quiet when you first met her, but she was really bubbly underneath. I miss her. What a tragedy. I’m surprised to see you back again. It was months and months ago. I thought everything was all tied up, neat like.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘Yes, it was. But there are one or two loose ends. Did Edwina have any appointments in the months just before she died?’

  ‘Yeah, a couple. She was in every fortnight, on a Saturday morning.’

  ‘How did she seem?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘It was a bit odd, to be honest. There was a spell when she seemed almost high, as if she was on drugs or something. Really chatty, laughing, smiling. It’s not that she was a miserable sod before, but this was seriously upbeat. Then everything suddenly changed. She looked ten years older, really worried, you know? But she wouldn’t talk about it. In a way, I wasn’t surprised when I heard the news that she’d taken her own life. I was shocked at the time but it kind of made sense when I remembered her last appointment, you know?’

  ‘The time when she was so “up,” did she ever say what was making her so happy?’

  ‘It was bound to be a relationship, wasn’t it? What else could cause something like that? A new man maybe? That’s what I wondered at the time. She had someone staying with her but I didn’t see who it was, nor did anyone else. He must have been a bit special to have that effect.’

  ‘Did you ever catch sight of a young woman?’

  ‘Yeah, once. I thought maybe she was a niece or something. Tall and slim with long red hair, a bit wild. The hair, I mean. Eddie mentioned a name once but I can’t remember it now.’

  ‘Please try.’ Sophie crossed her fingers inside her jacket pocket.

  The hairstylist screwed up her face. ‘No, it’s just not coming.’

  ‘Could it have begun with the letter H?’

  ‘Ah, yes, maybe.’ She closed an eye. ‘Hettie? Hattie? Yes, I think it was something like that. Not common names, are they?’

  Sophie returned to her car and drove into the town centre to visit the maternity unit. She spoke to Edwina’s bosses and work colleagues, none of whom had a bad word to say about their erstwhile colleague. Their picture of her was similar to the hairdresser’s — a short period of intense happiness followed by a sudden dip into depression that she wouldn’t talk about. One colleague had overheard Edwina muttering to herself, ‘Why was I so stupid?’ She also thought Edwin
a might have had someone staying with her during some of the happy period, but couldn’t supply any details. Edwina had clammed up when asked about it.

  ‘That was curious in itself,’ she said. ‘Eddie had always been happy to chat about her personal life before. I never got to the bottom of why she wouldn’t do so on this occasion. It wasn’t like her. It was almost as if she was being extra-cautious about it for some reason. You are aware that she was a member of the local board’s ethics committee?’

  ‘Yes. What exactly does that entail?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘They consider things related to professional conduct. They try to sort out problems before they get referred on to a higher authority.’

  Sophie drove back to police headquarters in time to meet the brother, Tom Davis. She met him at reception.

  ‘Why the sudden interest?’ he asked at once.

  ‘I’ll be absolutely open with you, Mr Davis,’ Sophie replied on their way up the stairs. ‘We had another apparent suicide ten days ago, and there are some possible similarities. That’s why I asked for that history book, but as I said on the phone, there was no need to bring it all this way yourself. I’d have been quite happy if you’d posted it.’

  ‘Except that then I’d have been in the dark. I really wanted to meet you and find out what’s going on. Look, Chief Inspector, she was my big sister. She looked after me when I was young, after our parents died. I owe it to her to find out why she died, even if it was suicide. I want to know what drove her to it. I couldn’t live with myself if there was stuff to find out and I wasn’t involved. Can you understand that?’

  Sophie nodded.

  Inside the Violent Crime Unit’s office, she introduced him to Rae and Barry. Tom took the slim book out of his shoulder bag and held it out to her, but Sophie told him to place it on the desktop.