A Meeting of Minds

by Clare Curzon

  Almost simultaneously Fanshawe heard a diesel-fired motor in the drive beyond her kitchen window. A car door slammed and she went to open up, greeting the newcomer with a warning, ‘We gotta special visitor’ere today. Come in and meet‘im.’

  A tall, stringy man with a weathered face and tufty brown hair entered wearing ancient jeans and a brightly checked shirt daubed with pale paint splashes. His large feet, in thick grey socks revealed that he had tidily disposed of his boots on the tiles outside.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said, grinning cheerfully, and stretched out a massive, work-hardened hand. ‘I’m Frank Perrin. So what job’s she pulled you in for, then?’

  Beattie clucked in mock annoyance. ‘This young man’s a policeman, Frank. He’s looking into that awful business with Miss Winter.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ All the grinning wrinkles dropped off his face. It was left knobby like an old potato. A sad potato, Fanshawe thought.

  ‘Terrible,’ Perrin said grimly. ‘Have you got anywhere yet, finding out who done it?’

  While Beattie produced a plate of buttered scones with damson jam and a home-made lemon sponge, Fanshawe parried the man’s questions and rolled out the usual neutral clichés: early days yet, pursuing several lines of inquiry, and soon.

  It seemed that the man was a builder of sorts, and he’d been responsible for most of the conversion. Obviously too there was more than a client-tradesman relationship here. The old girl was sweet on the man, though he could be a few years her junior. And he was quite happy lapping up the benefits.

  Fanshawe tried to hide the hunter’s gleam in his eyes. His policeman’s suspicions were instantly aroused. He wondered how much more money the old lady had left. Even if she’d spent a good part of her inheritance on the house purchase, she’d have received more back when she sold off the other six flats. There’d be a bank loan in it somewhere, but she must be worth a pretty penny all the same. And Frank Perrin was in a good position to know all the details. This little story was worth writing up while he was on the Sheila Winter job.

  Could there be a connection? It struck him then that Perrin could have been the intruder Z had disturbed in the Winters’ apartment. He was evidently a regular visitor here. And Beattie had been out that afternoon, at the hairdresser’s. He’d have had a clear run.

  ‘You considered installing alarms here, I suppose?’ Fanshawe asked innocently, as if Crime Prevention was his line of business. (At that thought he reminded himself that the new designation was ‘Crime Reduction’. Not before time: an honest admission of how policing was dropping off!)

  Perrin scratched at his head and the tufted hair stood up more wildly. ‘Thought about it, didn’t we? Decided we’d leave it to the residents to make up their own minds. Individual, like. There’s only one of ‘em went for it. That Mr Wormsley. He’s got a thing about security and no mistake. Never saw so many extra locks and bolts and grilles on the windows. You’d think he was a jeweller.’

  ‘So what is he?’

  ‘E’s got a photographer’s shop over in Luton,’ said Beattie mildly. Not that ‘e does any of it in the’ouse. I asked ‘im if ‘e’d take a snap of the party we all ‘ad together that time, and ‘e said ‘e’d send a girl across to do it. Well, we didn’t want outsiders in, so I said no.’

  ‘Do you employ a locksmith?’ Fanshawe asked Perrin casually.

  ‘Nuh. I’m more than adequate. Did most of the locks meself, with my man Dave helping.’

  The DC nodded. Of course. And Perrin could have had as many keys cut as he wanted, so giving free access at any time to any of the residents’ rooms. DI Salmon would go frantic with joy when he brought this back to the debriefing.

  Frank Perrin would be their prime suspect for the man who’d knocked out poor Z. He had perfect opportunity; the means were to hand in the china table-lamp; his motive was to cover up the fact of his snooping. And his reason for that? Maybe the man was a jackdaw.

  He watched Perrin help himself to another scone and load it with damson jam. ‘What’ll your wife say lunch-time, when you’ve no appetite?’ he asked, trying to sound cheeky-friendly.

  Perrin wiped his fingers on the napkin provided by Beattie. He munched with swollen hamster cheeks until he had swallowed and could reply. ‘Nuh. I’m a sad old bachelor. What good lady could stand me tramping all my mess into her tidy little home?’

  Fanshawe thought he could name one right now. He looked across at Beattie who had a butter-wouldn’t-melt look on her amiable face. He hoped she wouldn’t be taken in by the plausible rogue. But perhaps it was already too late.

  He was starting to make excuses to go when another van drew up outside, behind Perrin’s pick-up. ‘Looks like Jon,’ Beattie said. “E’ll be wanting you, Frank, but ask ‘im in. I’m sure’e could do with a slice of cake.’

  Fanshawe, trained to take note automatically of all vehicles, observed that it was an oldish but well-kept white Ford Transit with a set of aluminium ladders on the roof. In profile and screened by the window, its licence plates were hidden. Perrin went across to the door and held a conversation over the threshold.

  ‘One of his men?’ Fanshawe inquired.

  ‘No, but ‘e uses him sometimes when there’s a rush job on. ‘E’s another nice feller, is Jon.’

  By leaning sideways in his chair the DC could read the name off the van’s side: Jonathan Baker, and underneath Plumber & Heating Engineer.

  So the man ran a private firm. Yes, he supposed Perrin would have used him at times. There could always be rush jobs when pipes burst or tanks sprung a leak. Nothing of great interest there. The man wasn’t a locksmith.

  Frank Perrin came back in and closed the door. ‘He says thanks for the offer, but no thanks. He’s running late as it is. He’s got me that special conduit I was after.’

  Fanshawe, comfortably replete, prepared to take his leave. ‘There’s nobody else here for me to see. Everyone’s gone to work. Except the two in hospital.’

  ‘Young Neil should be coming home today,’ said Beattie. ‘I spect ’e’ll need an eye kept on ‘im if ’is friend’s going away.’

  ‘Is he?’

  But she wasn’t going into details. Instead, ‘Well, there’s Mrs Winter you could look in on, if she’s feeling up to it. Ackshally she might rather like that, if you make a little fuss of ’er, like.’

  She directed him through to the hall and showed him the staircase. ‘Jest go up and ring ‘er bell. It’s the one on the right.’

  Vanessa Winter came to the door in a coral satin bathrobe and her hair in a towelling turban. According to the printout notes he’d received, she was fifty-seven and a divorcee. Catching her barefaced like this he would have thought her older, something like Beattie’s age or even more. ‘Oh,’ she said casually, when he’d explained himself, ‘I’m just dressing. You can come along.’

  A little uncertainly he followed her as far as the door to her bedroom. When she seated herself at the dressing-table, back towards him, he advanced a couple of paces. It was only her face she’d be putting on.

  She touched a button and small bulbs sprang alight all round her mirror. Of course, she’d been an actress. She would have considered this detail essential for her make-up. Fanshawe was ready to be impressed.

  Her manner was offhand towards him, but he was aware of something behind it. The way she scooped the cream and lifted her hand, elegantly poised, flicking back the wide sleeve, while she leaned forward to scan the reflection of her face, with him in the background, was deliberate. A bit of an exhibitionist, he noted.

  Fanshawe stared back, feeling caught out, as if the reflection were a camera shot that could be used later for blackmail. She was toying with him. It was time he took the situation in hand.

  ‘We’ve been hoping you might have remembered something more by now,’ he opened.

  ‘About finding Rosemary?’ she asked. ‘No, I told them what happened. We’d been out. That nice young man offered to drive me. We returned, came upstairs, and the
re she was on the bed, with my room all topsy-turvy. I thought at first she’d done it and then fallen asleep.’

  About as likely as the Goldilocks story, he thought. ‘No, I meant the other occasion, the Saturday night when your daughter drove off in the black Vectra.’

  She frowned and seemed to have trouble remembering. ‘I never saw her leave. I was watching television, I think. Don’t ask me what. It’s all such rubbish nowadays.’

  ‘Have you any idea what she was wearing?’

  ‘Nothing. None at all.’ She sounded confused. ‘I’m not her jailer, you know.’

  ‘Couldn’t you tell, from what was left in her wardrobe?’ Fanshawe, checking on his wife Megan, could quickly tell when she’d gone out tarted up to the eyebrows.

  Having massaged the cream well in, Vanessa began applying peachy powder with a fat, soft brush, making facial contortions to expose each plane of her flesh to the brilliant lighting. The monosyllable which escaped her grotesquely screwed mouth could have meant anything.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said with elaborate politeness, to shame her. This woman could really get on your Bristols.

  She turned on him irritably. ‘How do you expect me to know what she has in the way of clothes. They’re dreary enough, for the most part.’

  This wasn’t the impression he’d got from Z. He remembered well enough that she’d spoken of the older woman sometimes raiding her daughter’s wardrobe, and how they wore the same size, although Sheila’s dresses were longer because she was three or four inches taller.

  Fanshawe stared at her disagreeable face in the mirror. ‘If you should remember anything about that evening – what she ate or if she took away something to eat later; that sort of thing – we need to know. You do want to help us find out exactly what happened, don’t you?’

  She leaned back on her Italian-quilted stool and spoke to her own reflection, enunciating clearly so that they’d catch it right at the back of the stalls. ‘She – just – drove – off. That’s all.’

  There was something else she murmured, which he didn’t quite get. But it sounded like, ‘Out of my life.’

  He felt a little late sympathy for her grief. Despite her staginess, this was an ageing woman who had suddenly, and violently, lost her only daughter.

  ‘I’ll not bother you further for now,’ he said quietly. ‘I can see myself out.’

  Back at the nick, he started in at once typing up his notes, putting in a carbon, since Beaumont had insisted the Boss should be notified at the same time as the DI, ‘just in case.’ Whether that was because Salmon was suspected of holding out until he’d something big worth reporting, or because Superintendent Yeadings wanted to dog his every move, Fanshawe didn’t know. Anyway he’d do as instructed and drop a copy in on the Boss before he left the building.

  He found he’d enough there without irrelevant padding, because he included every detail of the conversation with Beattie and her builder beau. It came to three pages, double-spaced, and, leaving the top copy at the DI’s empty office, he decided to look in at the Incident Room for an update.

  There he found computers humming and keyboards rattling as four young constables transcribed info on to disk. Two printers stuttered, churning out reams of paperwork for the bulging files which computers were supposed to have replaced. Hadn’t there once been a move to save the endangered rain forests?

  He watched unchallenged for a moment, but the office manager was too busy to welcome visitors and nodded towards the door. He went off to deliver the Super’s copy, was diverted by meeting PC Jenny Daler in the corridor, and ended in the canteen buying her a Danish and orange juice.

  He’d no serious intentions towards Jenny, being a monogamous sort of bloke, but she was the target of the moment, and it gave your canteen cred a boost to be seen with her tête-à-tête.

  To ensure she didn’t wander off he put his own tea on the same tray to bear it off to a distant corner. Unfortunately Pip Torrence’s table stood in their path and he managed to stretch out a cramped leg as Fanshawe passed.

  By the time Fanshawe had picked up the broken china and gone for replacements Jenny had been sponged down of any imaginary splashes and was seated beside the broadly grinning Pip. Fanshawe joined them, seething and silently vowing an early revenge.

  He flattened the copy of his report on the melamine tabletop and used his handkerchief to try and remove traces of the disaster. The tea had been strong and the stain had spread all the way through. It was just about legible, but would never do for the Boss as it was. He would need to retype the whole three pages again.

  ‘You owe me,’ he muttered at Pip and ground a heel into the PC’s toecap. Jenny was sweet about the upset, as expected, but already had made some arrangement with Pip to book a squash court when their relief went off duty.

  You win some, Fanshawe reminded himself, and you lose … He stopped in mid-thought. His eyes rested on the ruined report. On the middle page, which recorded the meeting with Frank Perrin, builder, something new had sprung out at him. A tea stain on one side and a smear of orange juice on the other framed part of the word Jonathan. The first two letters were obscured, as were the final three.

  He sat staring at NAT. That was the name, unusual enough, that Beaumont had found in a letter in Sheila Winter’s laptop. There had been no address, and they hadn’t been able to trace him at the prison. ‘Dozens of Bakers,’ Beaumont had said gloomily, ‘but no Nat or Nathaniel.’ And actually he was Jonathan, all this time driving around with his name clearly written across his van; Jonathan Baker, Plumber & Heating Engineer!

  Fanshawe swore at the soggy report. He’d almost met the man, no more than two hours back. Would have done so if Frank Perrin hadn’t halted the plumber on the doorstep. Was Perrin the builder in it with them – the old lags, Childe and Baker? If so, he’d warned Baker off, that ‘the filth’ was present in the kitchen.

  It certainly suggested taking a closer look at Beattie Weyman’s trusted visitor.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Martin Chisholm grinned as he threw the bag of clothes on Neil’s hospital bed. ‘Right then, you’re free to go;’ but the younger man knew him too well. The switch from deadpan as he came through the ward door had been too swift.

  ‘So what’s wrong? ’he demanded.

  Chisholm hesitated. ‘Marching orders,’ he said quietly, and held the other with a steely glance that meant don’t make a fuss, particularly here.

  Sullenly Neil ignored the pulled curtains, grabbed his clothes and went off to change in the bathroom. Chisholm granted him a minor sulk and decided to wait in the corridor. Neil eventually joined him, ‘What about the nurses?’

  ‘I’ve seen to them. A bottle of bubbly and carnations.’

  ‘I’m not going without seeing Rosemary.’

  ‘That’s OK. I can spare twenty minutes. Anyway she’ll be discharged at noon tomorrow. You can manage until then without a Svengali.’

  ‘She’s not … Hell, I’ll just run up and tell her I’ve gone.’

  ‘Take the lift.’

  ‘I meant to in any case. ’Very much on his dignity.

  Touchy, Chisholm reflected, but then he always was as he adjusted to being on his own. This time it was too sudden, though, and it was catching him in a vulnerable state. That had been an unnecessary dig, implying that Rosemary was his stand-in Svengali. Maybe Neil wouldn’t need one. He could activate himself satisfactorily when he gritted his teeth and gave it all he’d got. Nevertheless, Chisholm congratulated himself, it was just as well he’d seen the girl first and warned her. It would do no harm that she knew of Neil’s condition. He trusted her discretion, not to let on to the boy how much he’d told her. She was a policewoman, after all; a sergeant in CID, as he’d confirmed from his own sources. No dozer. She’d understand what a difference having the transplant had made. A lifesaver, but at a price. You never knew when the boy might need a sympathetic ear from that direction.

  Neil returned quickly. ‘She’s just
going off for physio.’ He glared at Chisholm. ‘How did you know she was being discharged tomorrow before lunch?’

  ‘Consulted the ins-and-outs list at reception,’ Chisholm lied easily.

  The boy accepted it at face value. ‘Car keys?’ he demanded. ‘I’ll drive us back.’

  As he casually handed them over, Chisholm just hoped the sulk wouldn’t last long enough to land them in a ditch. But he recognized the gesture of independence, a defiant refusal to be bugged by the nightmare recurrence of panic that still sometimes attacked him behind the wheel. If Neil was starting to take himself in hand, all well and good. His face showed nothing. It was only in his driving, too fast and a little savage on the clutch, that he displayed the state of his nerves.

  ‘When? ’he demanded, pulling up at the rear of Ashbourne House. He had already observed that the indicator showed a full fuel tank.

  Chisholm glanced at his watch. ‘Forty minutes.’ He had no intention of apologizing for the lack of notice. It had been unavoidable. ‘I’ve left a note with Lombard.’

  Neil nodded grimly. To be handed to Neil Raynes in the event of my death or disappearance. And the time scale for waiting would be the usual eight weeks. Everything would be covered up until then and he’d be able to draw on the joint account up to the limit of ten thousand pounds.

  ‘You’ve time for coffee, then,’ Neil ground out. ‘I’ll get some going while you bring your bags down.’

  ‘I’m packed. Everything’s in the boot,’ Chisholm said casually. ‘Yes, coffee’d be fine. Thanks.’

  Fanshawe, returned to catch the other residents at the end of their working day, had already spoken with Miss Barnes, who appeared torn between her conscience’s need to offer more support to Mrs Winter and cowering at the thought of further involvement.