Mark pointed to a glass-fronted cabinet. “Help yourself and pour me a Talisker, if you will. If you want ice, there should be plenty. No ice for me though.”
The house remained dark, and only one small table lamp was lit. The twins sat comfortably, sipping whisky and smiling. “Two days here, then,” Maurice said. “I’ve already phoned in sick.” He sunk his head into the soft rolled neck of his woollen jumper. “I’m tempted never to go back.”
“There’s three million in your Swiss bank account, Moz. Why bother working?”
“As a cover. You know that.” Maurice drained his glass. The Scotch swirled in rich golden tinged darkness, perfumed and mellow.
“Come back to Dubai with me,” murmured Mark. “Leave the woman with the shop and some sort of untraceable allowance and come over to help me expand the business over there. You’d be a great help. A great partner.”
Looking up, Maurice seemed surprised. “I arrange the importation over here. Who does that, if I leave. Kate wouldn’t do it.”
“I wouldn’t trust her anyway. But we both know a couple of possibilities.” He rose slowly, wandered over to the cupboard of gleaming bottles behind glass. “Another?”
“Not yet. I want to see Milton safe before I sleep.”
Mark refilled his own glass and sat again, stretching out his legs. The small light from the dark wooden lamp lit only the underside of cheekbones, the flash of polished glass, the rise of a staircase across the other side of the room, and the golden frame of a painting over the empty fireplace. The heating had already chugged into sweet warmth. Outside there was the strange unreality of utter silence.
“No. Forget about Milton.”
“I never forget about Milton.”
“He sleeps like some half-starved puppy on cold nights. I won’t interrupt him until well into the morning. In the meantime, you need to make a decision, Moz. We know the police have us on the list now. Fairly high on the list, I imagine. I can always keep one step in front, but it’s a damn nuisance running away all the time like some damned naughty child. I can afford to set you up as my partner in Dubai and have someone else run the English side. Sting Hanson, for instance.”
“So you want me to give up the cover altogether? No more school, no more Kate. That’s all easy enough. But I won’t give up Milton.”
The frown turned Mark’s face sinister. “Don’t insult me, Moz. Do you still know me so little? Milton’s never going to be overlooked. We’ll take him with us. I’ll arrange some special hostelry. He’ll feel safer and more comfortable in every damned way. It’s the perfect solution, Moz.”
“Perhaps.” Maurice bit his lip. “And what about the girl?”
“No problem at all,” Mark replied, draining his third glass of Scotch. “The obvious solution.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“I’m making a list,” said Sylvia. “No. Actually, I’m making three lists.” She looked up, waving a note pad. “Forget everything I said. I have to make four lists.”
“What you want for Christmas? What you don’t want for Christmas?”
“Oh Harry, it’s still February.”
“So it’s what I do wrong? What I do better? What I have to stop doing immediately?”
“No. I’ll have to make that list afterwards,’ said Sylvia. “This is Finding Eve – Finding Lionel – Finding Mark Howard – and finding who murdered the bodies in the chimney.” She bit the end of her pen. “But I’m not getting very far. On the chimney murders I’ve written Rohypnol, but we haven’t been able to trace anyone buying it online. Then on the Mark Howard list, I’ve written visiting Kate and Maurice Howard today – and hopefully by this evening, something will have happened. Morrison won’t tell us immediately, but I think he will once it’s all successful.”
“But,” Harry reminded her, “it’s that creep Cramble who came down from the Met to deal with the Howard affair. Morrison won’t know it all.” Harry paused, smiling. “Hopefully he’ll murder Cramble and stuff him up a chimney, and every single copper will cover up for him.”
“That’s not funny, dear,” said Sylvia.
They sat over the breakfast table, the room in a total hush except for an occasional clank as Doreen collected the last of the used breakfast plates where certain of the residents declined to stack and return their used dishes to the trolley.
“I thought it hilarious.”
Sylvia continued to chew on the end of her pen. “Harry, my love, you’re weird. Anyway, we know Eve was picked up when she walked home from that party. It was almost certainly someone she knew, who lived in that vicinity. And if they live more or less nearby, then we could find them.”
“Wildly optimistic, my love.”
“I want to go back to that shed where that monster Lionel was,” said Sylvia suddenly. “I know it’s been dismantled and I know it’s been scoured and dug over and all that stuff. But it’s Lionel’s cave, isn’t it? Wasn’t it? Who knows?”
“Who knows what, dearest?”
“Or maybe his house. That’s empty now because Joyce is in a safe-house. We might find clues.”
Harry shook his head. “The cops have examined every corner, you know they have.”
“Alright.” Sylvia leaned back. “We have very few genuine clues. No evidence, in other words. But we don’t have to arrange any actual trials – so let’s just do what half the police do anyway. Wild conjecture. Guess then it works, or it doesn’t. Jump to stupid conclusions. Make our own decisions based on our own logic and experience.”
“We don’t have any experience,” grinned Harry, “but never mind. We can’t leave all your lists totally empty. So start with the chimney killer. He’s totally crackers, but he’s quite handy with an acro-prop or something similar. So there may be two of them. Partners. Man and woman perhaps. That’s happened often enough before.”
“Maurice and Kate Howard?” But Sylvia crossed out what she had written. “No, that’s silly. Neither of them are the type, and besides, the brother’s a money launderer in Kuwait or something. They can’t be everything. I imagine there are another thousand male-female partnerships out in cosy Gloucestershire.”
“We have to chase a friend who would have been out on that same road when Eve was trekking home in the pouring rain. The old boyfriend certainly could be it. And she’d dumped him before, so he’d have a reason to kidnap and kill her. It’s a common enough motive. They talk about the spurned woman, but the creepy male spurned can be far worse.” She grinned. “I promise I’ll never spurn you, my love.”
Harry wandered into the kitchen, made tea, and brought it back. Sylvia had managed to lengthen her list, but not by much. “I think we should go out for a brisk walk after the tea,” he told her. “Too much central heating and too much vain investigative failure.”
Sylvia poured the tea and sipped. “Out into the snow, hail, hurricanes and tornadoes?”
“Just windy drizzle.”
“Sounds like a description of me and my indigestion.” She finished the tea, regarding her husband. “Alright, we go out in that horrible wintry slush, and we don’t invite Ruby since she seems depressed anyway. We visit the cake shop and buy her a cake, and invite her to chat after we come home. In the meantime, we visit Joyce’s old home. But I’ll let you off the forest and the place where the shed was since it’ll be mud up to our elbows. Then maybe we could drop in on Morrison before we go home, and see if they arrested Mark Howard.”
“He might be at the cake shop. Perhaps we should avoid that.”
“It would all be over by now,” Sylvia said. “If he was going there at all, he’d be really early to avoid being seen.”
Gloves like polar bears, a scarf and an over-scarf, boots on top of thick woolly stockings, a hat like the crest of a cockatoo, and a coat thicker than a bishop’s robes. Within the navy and white drapery, Sylvia, nose and lips blue, trudged the alleys too narrow for the car. The Lexus was left parked in the village square.
“Who thought of this mad
idea?” Harry demanded, stamping his feet to bring back circulation into his freezing toes.
“You did.”
“I was an idiot. And you wanted to go into the forest and look for Sullivan’s shed, or whatever’s left of it. Let’s forget the whole thing and go back to the car.” Harry braced himself for refusal, but Sylvia weakened.
“It’s too cold, Harry. We were both wrong. And anyway, Kate’s shop was closed and no one answered the side door, so either they’ve all gone away fishing, or they’re all in prison. An interesting question and answer.”
“They couldn’t arrest Kate. But I suppose they could drag her in for questioning.”
Which is when echoing, a voice called, “Oh, help. Come quickly. Police. Ambulance. Help.”
Neither Sylvia nor Harry stopped to think. Turning at the same moment, they ran into the wind, Sylvia clutching her hat. It was when they hurried around the narrow corner, that a young woman clutched Harry’s sleeve. “Look, over there. I think she’s dead.”
Harry bent over the bundle indicated, and Sylvia said, “Have you phoned the police? Ambulance?”
The girl shook her head. “I was frightened. If she’s dead, I don’t want to be here. And I didn’t steal anything, honest.”
Sylvia pulled her phone from her pocket. She dialled the three usual numbers. “Ambulance. Someone’s lying half frozen on the pavement. It’s an old woman I think.”
Harry called, “It’s Iris.”
The very small woman lay huddled on one side, her legs tucked up beneath her, the coat collar pulled over her cheeks, and her hands clutching at the top button. A tousled tangled of grey hair peeped from over the thin stained pink, her feet were neat in sensible black leather, but the warm grey stockings were laddered and splashed with rain. Having found a sheltered spot where a pillared doorway was covered by a stone awning, the woman had lain to sleep, or perhaps to die. In spite of those talking around and about her, she did not wake. With a screech of siren and tyres, the ambulance came as directed, and the paramedics made an instant diagnosis.
“She needs life support.” They bundled the oblivious woman into the back of their machine. “Half starved, I’d say. Hypothermia and possibly worse. Does she carry identification?”
“No handbag.”
“Stolen?”
“I doubt she’d have money,” Harry said. “Where will you take her? The local?”
“Cheltenham General Hospital.”
“We’ll follow along,” Sylvia said. “We know her very slightly. Iris Little. Not sure about relatives, nor address.”
The young woman had gone. “I assume she was working the streets,” Sylvia said.
“Who? Iris?”
“No, silly. The young woman who found her. Come on, back to the car.”
It was a long, chilly and dreary wait, sitting in a corridor of hush, sudden footsteps, the rattle of trolleys and eventually a nurse. “Mrs Little is awake, though we want her to sleep shortly. You can see her for just five minutes, and then we’d like to ask you some questions.”
The bed was narrow, but Iris seemed to disappear within it. She wore a hospital gown, and two drips were attached, one to each arm. “Thank you so much,” she whispered. “Did you come looking for me?”
Unwilling to admit it was pure coincidence, and besides, who believes in coincidence anyway, Harry said, “Of course. But now I imagine you’ll be very well looked after.” He paused, watching her, then asked, “Do you have a husband, Iris? Nephews or nieces? Anyone at all we should notify?”
They sat beside the bed, two little plastic chairs pulled up, still covered in the glory of winter coverings, still shivering. Iris was barely awake and seemed unaware of the cold. She shook her head. “Freddy left more than five years ago. I lived with my son and his wife for a year, but it was the gambling they used as an excuse to throw me out. I never really got on with Portia. My brother was sick, poor dear, and went into a Care Home. There are a few nieces, but none of them want a silly old woman with a gambling addiction.”
Sylvia’s answer was interrupted by the nurse. “Time up, I’m afraid.” She took the old woman’s pulse, patted her hand, and helped her lie down, pillows reduced and the blanket tucked around. She turned to Sylvia and Harry, who were both now standing. “If you’d come with me? Just a few basic questions, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“We don’t mind,” nodded Sylvia, “but it’ll be a series of ‘I don’t knows’.’”
Rochester Manor was brightly lit, smiling golden through the drizzled shadows. Sylvia pushed open the door, and the freeze turned to immediate warmth.
Harry followed Sylvia upstairs to their bedroom where they sat to discuss the situation with Iris, and pull off all their outer clothes, then finally to come back downstairs and look for Ruby.
“No cakes, I’m afraid,” grinned Sylvia, sweeping into the larger living room. Amy looked up and waved and said she had decided to give up cake since she had discovered they made her feel cold.
Harry stared. “I don’t think that’s quite the same subject, Amy dear,” he told her. “It’s cold because it’s winter.”
“It may be,” decided Amy, “but just lately I’ve been eating far more cakes than usual, and I’ve been feeling colder and colder. It’s just logical, isn’t it? All that three and three make eight sort of thing.”
Percival peered over the top of his copy of The Lancet and patted her hand. “We’ll try large helpings of Beef Stroganoff this evening, my dear. A well known medicinal cure for the cold within.”
“Have you seen Ruby?”
But they had not, It was Matthew who called across the room, “She’s still upstairs. Went to bed. Had the snivels.”
Since Yvonne was practising her rather odd version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody on the old still out of tune piano, most of the living room crowd were either grumbling, listening quietly or laughing. Sylvia and Harry stayed a while, then Sylvia decided to go upstairs and make sure Ruby wasn’t seriously ill having caught the flu or the plague, while Harry read last week’s Sunday Times, its crumpled remains out on the long bench in the entrance corridor, the place where all mail, newspapers and magazines got dumped until picked up.
Sylvia knocked on Ruby’s bedroom door and received no answer. She leaned forward to open the door herself as usual, but found it locked from the inside. This was most unusual, except at night. Ruby feared strangers wandering the passages at night, murderers and rapists who had found an open window downstairs. But this was five o’clock in the afternoon, and no storm hammered down the chimneys. Sylvia knocked again.
A shuffle and a murmured but undecipherable answer kept Sylvia waiting, but nothing else happened for some time.
“Bluebell, my love, are you alright?” Sylvia demanded through the keyhole.
“No,” said the mumble within.
“Do you want me to phone the doctor? Get you some tea? Or go away?” Sylvia asked.
“No,” said the voice, presumably Ruby, and a crash echoed.
“Have you fallen over? Get this damned door open,” roared Sylvia.
Eventually, although slowly, the door creaked open, and an aged hand appeared near the floor. Sylvia peered down, then bent, her hand on Ruby’s. “Can’t – get up,” whispered the tentative voice behind the groping fingers.
“Oh my God,” said Sylvia. Knowing that if she knelt, she’d never be able to get up again either, arthritic knees constantly disobedient, she bent lower, grasped Ruby beneath her arms, and attempted to hoist her up. But Ruby collapsed, and her weight was too much for Sylvia, back arched and almost bent double. She let Ruby sink back onto the carpet, marched to the top of the stairs, and yelled, “Harry. Lavender. Percival. Arthur. Or anyone at all.”
No one heard, and only the plonk of the piano echoed back. So Sylvia pulled her phone out and phoned her husband. “Harry, I’m upstairs with Ruby. There’s something horribly wrong with her. Tell Percival. He might diagnose some terrible illness. And please come up and help.�
��
Percival and Amy with Matthew and David followed Harry up the stairs and crowded around the doorway. Between them, they managed to carry Ruby to her own bed. Percival, in private, left alone in the bedroom, agreed to make a quick examination, and soon left Ruby sleeping as he trotted out to tell the others what he had diagnosed.
“Depression,” Percival told Sylvia without further explanation.
Voices low, they stood in the corridor outside Ruby’s apartment, worried and eager for explanation.
Sylvia said, “Well, yes, I am. Depressed concerning Ruby. Is she really ill?”
“Not in the slightest,” Percival told her. “Nor did I refer to your depression, Sylvia dear. I referred to the cause of Ruby’s dilemma. She has taken a very large number of mixed medications, possibly with a confused target of suicide, or at the least to attract sympathetic attention. I have no way of telling exactly what pills she has taken, and therefore I have telephoned for an ambulance already. She needs at the least a couple of days hospitalisation. She may need her stomach pumped.”
“Bloody hell,” muttered Harry.
“Shitting hell,” said Sylvia.
“I don’t smell shit,” Amy said vaguely, looking around. “Who did? It wasn’t me, really it wasn’t. I’d have noticed.”
Percival took his wife by her arm and shepherded her downstairs. “Definitely not you, Amy my dearest,” he told her. “Come and have a cup of tea.”
Harry and Sylvia went to usher the paramedics from the ambulance to Ruby’s bedroom and stood shivering until they heard the siren.
“Second time today,” sighed Harry.
“They’ll probably end up in the same ward,” said Sylvia, her sigh even deeper. “We can visit them both at the same time. But what on earth was Ruby so depressed about? I feel horribly guilty because I didn’t realise it was so bad. And poor little Iris is homeless and friendless and half starved, but Ruby is wealthy with a hundred friends and a fantastic home. What did I miss?”
“You can talk to her about it,” Harry told her, “when she comes round. And I’ll sit outside in the cold or go and talk to Iris. Ruby will want you on your own.”
Ashes From Ashes Page 18