by Peter Helton
“Right, the residents.” Mike snapped his fingers a couple of times. Deeks didn’t seem to mind, was probably used to it by now. He read out the names.
“Linda Kelly. Anne Gosling. Both accounted for. Adrian Febry.”
“Still in hospital with a broken shoulder,” I explained.
“He’ll be out tomorrow,” Gordon added. “Jenny told me.”
“That leaves Gavin Backhaus, absent, and Dave Cocksley, absent,” Deeks finished.
Needham set off again. “So, two of the inmates seem to have absconded from your institution. Or what?”
Both Gordon and I took a deep breath. It was perhaps fortunate Gordon got in there first. His answer showed more restraint than I could have managed.
“First of all this isn’t an institution. Somerset Lodge is a residential home where recovering patients learn to reintegrate, pick up life skills. So they can stand on their own feet again and live independent lives. There are no inmates here. Everyone’s free to come and go as they please.”
“Is that so? Well, that’s just changed. Until I know exactly where everybody is, and more to the point was, nobody is going anywhere without my permission. Any idea where our two absent friends may be?”
Both Gordon and I shook our heads. “Supper is usually served at half past six,” I volunteered. “Most residents show for that, but not necessarily.”
“Too long,” Mike said firmly. “If one of them is a homicidal schizo I want to have him picked up now. Description.”
I let that pass for the moment, not feeling up to discussing mental health issues much further. At this point fainting seemed a more attractive and more likely alternative. “I can do better than that,” I said. “Follow me.” In the hall I showed Mike the picture board Jenny had made, with photographs from our last Christmas party here. There were pictures of all the residents, of me, of Jenny. I took down snapshots of Dave and Adrian, which despite the red eye effect of the flash were good enough for identification.
“Christmas pictures, eh?” Mike said. “You were here at Christmas.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s…that’s rather good of you, Chris. I mean. To give up your Christmas for a bunch of…” He frowned, looking for an alternative word.
“Nutters?” I suggested.
Mike fanned himself with the photographs. “You know what I mean. Can’t have been much fun for you. It’s an admirable thing to do. Really. Didn’t think you were the type.”
I leant against the board for support, feeling distinctly iffy now. “I didn’t give up my Christmas for them, Mike. They were kind enough to have me. If I hadn’t spent it here I’d have spent it alone at Mill House.”
Needham digested that for a moment with a pout and a nod. “Still,” he concluded. “Most people I know would prefer to spend Christmas alone rather than here. I know I would. And I did, too.” He abruptly walked away to hand the pictures to DI Deeks who ran off with them to have them copied and disseminated.
In the downstairs toilet I splashed my face with water and drank copious amounts of it straight from the tap. That seemed to take care of the feathers in my mouth. Now I needed some aspirin for the rockslide behind my forehead.
Outside I slammed into the young constable, so I held the door open for him.
He nearly smiled. “That’s all right, sir.” It dawned on me that he was there to make sure I didn’t flush myself down the toilet. Which I’d have gladly done if at all feasible. Instead I found some codeine tablets in the first aid box in the kitchen and washed them down with some more water, refusing the rather murky results of the constable’s attempt at brewing tea.
Needham and Gordon were trying to establish whether anything had been stolen. So far it seemed everything was in place. I dialled Tim’s number on my mobile. There was no way I could drive home, perhaps he could give me a lift when he finished at the uni.
“Who said you could make phone calls?” Needham snapped over his shoulder.
“Everyone’s allowed one, aren’t they?”
Mike just growled something incomprehensible and continued quizzing Gordon, asking for details on all the residents and everyone who worked here. I got through to Tim. He didn’t ask for explanations, just said he’d be there. Cheers, Tim.
Everyone who worked here? That’s when it hit me. Jenny was a one-woman outfit, with me standing in when she took a rare day off. The rest of the bunch, the support workers and social workers, were a peripatetic lot. So for the moment that left me. It was a sobering thought, unfortunately only in a metaphorical way. The implications had not escaped Gordon either. When Needham finally decided that I could go, not before warning me not to leave Bath without informing him, he cornered me in the hall.
“Quite apart from the tragedy itself, this puts us into a difficult situation. Ultimately the responsibility for looking after the residents lies with the committee members. I’m the only committee member who lives locally, and though I’ll do everything I can to look after the place until we can draft in a replacement for Jenny, one thing I don’t do at all well is cook…”
I can’t have looked too enthusiastic because Gordon instantly amended: “Obviously not for tonight, I’ll get them a takeaway, if anyone feels like eating at all. Perhaps not even tomorrow but…We’ll have to readvertise and after what’s just happened it might take us a while to fill the vacancy.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the expression, considering Jenny’s body had only just been removed in an ambulance.
“And I know you’re a busy man…it would only be for the cooking, and only until we find someone to take over. Please?” It was only then I noticed that Gordon was barely in a better state than myself. His skin looked ashen, his eyes seemed to be restlessly searching for solutions around the wall behind me. I realized he was looking at the pictures on the board, many of which showed a glimpse of Jenny. I promised to ring him at home when my head cleared enough to make decisions again. We had another awkward hug.
House-to-house enquiries had already started. Needham’s boys had a van parked in the street where I could see two uniformed officers doing paperwork. Both looked up when I left the house. Tim’s black Audi was parked nearby. He had Annis with him.
“We know. It’s awful,” she said. “Let’s just get you home. You get in with Tim, I’ll drive the DS.” Our little convoy of appropriately black cars was duly noted by the officers in the van. We made it to the sanctuary of the valley in record time.
CHAPTER III
If Detective Superintendent Needham had hoped to lean on me during my blossoming hangover he had missed his chance. Most likely I had slept through it and felt, if not exactly sparkly, then at least reasonably in one piece. Annis had plonked what she considered a hearty breakfast in front of me — croissant, quince jam and one five-minute egg — on her way to the studio. I took it up to the old oak and ate it there. It’s the best place from which to survey my domain in the valley. Immediately to my left stood the high barn of the studio. Annis had left the double door wide open to make the most of the tiny breeze that had started this morning. In front of me the meadow dropped away gently, Mill House sitting snugly at the bottom between the row of sagging outbuildings on the left, with the yard in between, and the mill pond, half visible behind the willows and the rise of the upper meadow, on the right. This morning I should have felt sadness, regret and the full pain of the realization that Jenny had been murdered, and brutally so. Instead I felt a curious elation at being alive, at simply sitting and breathing. And with it came a kind of guilt, as though I didn’t deserve all this, should work harder, do something — what? — to atone for my unreasonably good fortune.
Shouldn’t I be out there, trying to find Jenny’s killer? Shouldn’t I be tracking the Dufossee canvases before their trail — what trail? — went cold. And Mr Turner’s extended lunch hours and after-work ramblings needed explaining. My easel was still empty, my laurels wilting. Then, too, the shocking state of the outbuildings, especially thei
r roofing, attracted my attention as if for the first time. So did the yard, which had only a few square feet of cobbling left here and there and turned into a quagmire each winter. I bitched about it every year. I promise I promise I promise I’ll do it all, just let me sit here for a while longer and marvel at being alive. Not destroyed, crushed, shattered, pulped.
And that’s what I did. I sat and breathed, listened to the lazy bickering of the birds in the trees behind, to the buzz of insects in the grasses; found and lost again the song of the mill stream. Until a car came down the lane and parked itself confidently in the entrance to the yard, blocking the exit. Old habits die hard. It was a grey Ford that should by rights have looked like any other grey Ford saloon ever made yet curiously managed to scream police vehicle as effectively as a siren. Needham got out, wearing a blinding white shirt and grey tic. He reached back inside the car. If he put on his jacket I’d know I was in trouble. But he just grabbed some papers and his phone, then got lost from view as he crossed the yard. I would let him find me, he knew his way around pretty well by now. After what seemed a very long time he reappeared on the veranda from inside the house, shielded his eyes against the sun with his papers and waved me down. He didn’t feel like trysting under the big oak, it seemed.
Mike turned down my offer of an ice cold Stella, as I knew he had to. I just enjoy torturing him a bit from time to time but made up for it by equipping him with some juice. He drank it back in one long draught so I refilled it for him.
“You don’t know how lucky you are, Chris. Living out here. It’s stifling in Bath. Much fresher out here. You’re bloody lucky,” he repeated. “Look at this place.” Mike was sitting in the blue armchair in my sitting room, the chair my father chose to end his life in, and nodded at the beamed ceiling.
“You do sweet FA all day and you live like a king in your castle out here.”
I wasn’t really in the mood to set Mike straight. My father was a doctor and had used his medical expertise to make sure he didn’t get out of that chair alive. While I swanned around the Mediterranean, pretending to do research for future paintings, he had finally lost the fight against his depression. Deserted by his second wife and uncared-for by his feckless son he took a foolproof combination of drugs. In his suicide note he let me know exactly what he thought of me. He left Mill House to me precisely because I was a callous, uncaring sod who he was convinced would never amount to anything. If I wanted to hang on to Mill House I would have to start putting in an honest day’s work, and if I lost the place it would be a fitting and highly visible monument to my failings. In the end, Mill House hadn’t quite become the albatross he had hoped it would, though it had changed my life. Mike didn’t know any of this, it happened long before he transferred to Bath.
“Did you know my house in Oldfield Park was built as cheap working-class accommodation a hundred-odd years ago? Now it takes all the overtime I can get to pay the bloody mortgage on it.”
I remembered. Mike’s messy divorce had crippled his finances for the foreseeable future. Two daughters to provide for too, and his wife kept the children as well as the house, twice the size of his present one, in a leafy street in a suburb of Bristol.
Mike snapped out of it, slapped his thigh with the folder he had brought. I recognized it as one of Jenny’s. “Right, we’ve been through the house and garden and the neighbourhood. We found no weapon. Much more worrying, there is still no sign of Gavin Backhaus and Dave Cocksley. Tell me about them.”
“I don’t know very much about Gavin. He’s very shy, became very withdrawn when he was still at school, didn’t develop like other kids. Then he had an episode where he was sectioned, at the request of his parents, and spent time at Hill View Psychiatric Unit up at the RUH. Got better, was released home, got worse again. And so on. Everyone thought it was time to try something new. That’s how he got to be at Somerset Lodge. He’s been there a year.”
“Question: is he capable of killing? Has he ever been violent?”
“Not as far as I know. He’s quite sweet really, in a pimply sort of way.”
Mike rolled his eyes and groaned. “Quite sweet, give me a break. What about the other one?”
“Dave?” There was really no way I could avoid telling him about the knife incident
Jenny had mentioned only two days earlier. I had a feeling I already knew how Mike, or any policeman for that matter, would react under these circumstances. And I didn’t feel comfortable about it. “Dave’s very different. He’s quite a nervy guy, paces up and down all day. He interacts with people but only on his own terms. Doesn’t like being challenged on his opinions because he spends all day formulating them in his head, his day’s work. If you contradict him he can get arsey about it.”
“Violent?”
“Until now only verbally.”
“Until now. You’re bloody nonchalant about this. Oh, I forget, you like partying with these guys.”
By now I really didn’t want to tell him about the knife thing but it would look bad later if I hadn’t. So I dropped Dave in it. “There was an incident a few days ago that Jenny mentioned to me on Thursday. Apparently he wandered around the house with a knife one day, you know, holding a knife while he was pacing.”
“What kind of a knife?”
“A chef’s knife.”
“Did he threaten anyone with it?”
“No, Jenny thought he was probably not even aware he was holding it.” Yet she had found it worth warning me about. What else had Jenny said?
“Why the hell didn’t you mention this earlier? Look.” He whipped two sheets of paper out of the folder and waved them around in front of me, not as an invitation to read them but as some kind of proof. “Both these geezers are on all sorts of drugs and also something called Haloperidol. I’ve been told that’s an anti-psychotic drug. These guys are headcases, Chris, they’re psychotic, schizophrenics. And they’re on the loose!”
“Psychotic does not mean psychopathic, didn’t they teach you that at policeman school?” I knew Mike was a lost cause but I had to try.
“That’s splitting hairs as far as I’m concerned. Surely anyone psychopathic starts off as a psychotic.” Mike was getting into his stride now. “Any normal person would have mentioned this knife thing straight away, oh, but not you, Chris. You find your friend brutally murdered but mention nothing about a knife-wielding psycho. What is it with you, Chris, whose side are you on? Can you please make up your mind about that once and for all?”
It was my turn to get huffy. “You know exactly which side I’m on, Mike, I don’t feel I have to prove that to you. But you’ve just confirmed what I was afraid of. You’re jumping to conclusions. Dave and Gavin would not have been referred to Somerset Lodge if they’d been considered dangerous. They’re no more dangerous than you or me.”
“Well, we all know you can be bloody dangerous.” Mike pointed an accusing finger. He was not happy.
Neither was I. “Mentally ill people commit murder no more often than the rest of the population, that’s a fact, Mike. Dave and Gavin are pretty harmless as long as they take their medication.”
“That’s my bloody point! They’ve stopped taking their medication as far as we know. They’ve been missing overnight. Neither of them have taken their pills with them, so the longer they’re out there the madder they’ll get.”
“They’re much more likely to harm themselves.”
Mike shot up out of the chair. “What, are you a sodding psychiatrist now? Where do you get off making pronouncements like that?” He waved the papers about in a wide arc, indicating the size of his frustration. “All I know is that if they had been locked up in the first place I wouldn’t have every officer on my force looking for them now. Those two are top of our list, that should be bloody obvious. Prof Myers says the younger girl, Linda Kelly, may not have been capable, physically, of delivering those blows. I haven’t interviewed either of them but it appears Anne Gosling was with Linda in her room, listening to CDs all lunchtime
and neither of them saw or heard a thing until the police arrived. I got that much from the psychiatric nurse. That only leaves our two missing psychos or an outsider. Oh, and you of course.” He took a few determined strides out of the room on to the veranda as if to leave, then strode back just as determinedly and planted himself in front of me. I’d remained sitting on my sofa as before. “One more thing.” He was speaking very quietly now. “Jenny was your friend, right?”
I nodded.
“Now I know how I would feel. I would want to go after whoever did this. And the Assistant Chief Constable would instantly give the case to someone else because I’d be unable to keep it professional. I want you to stay out of this, Chris. Don’t think I’ll let you do your own separate investigation into Miss Kickaldy’s murder. And don’t for one instant think I’ve forgotten about the little matter of your mislaid gun. If I find out that you’re withholding stuff from me, anything, any information at all, out of misguided philosophy or your so-called client confidentiality, I swear I’ll send Deeks and a few boys down here and let them rip your mill apart until they find it. So remember, you’re in deep shit just as soon as I want you to be.” He wheeled round again and made for the exit.
“What makes you think I haven’t long chucked it in the river?” I called after him. He stopped on the veranda and slowly tuned toward me. He was grinning.
“Because you’re a sentimental fool. Honey-sett. You love that old gun. Even though it’ll probably blow up in your hand one day.” The gun in question was an old army revolver, a Webley .38, which had once belonged to my uncle and came with the house. Perhaps the fact that the cartridges inside were over fifty years old had dissuaded my father from going down that road when he decided to end his life, yet he had kept the thing remarkably clean and well oiled. Needham knows I’ve used it and he also knows I don’t have a licence for it. So I mislaid it and somehow managed to miss the gun amnesty in 1997. It got me out of trouble a couple of times and as Mike said, I’m very fond of it, even though it kicks like a mule and leaves my ears ringing each time I fire it.