Witchmoor Edge

by Mike Crowson

  * * *

  Lucy Turner phoned Ellen Barnes before calling. This was nothing to do with consideration for the finer feelings of the witness, but she saw from the file that Barnes was a nurse. 'Nurse' often meant even stranger shift patterns than a police officer, and Lucy wanted to be sure Ellen was neither at work nor asleep. She was neither. She was on late shift, leaving home just after one, so DS Turner went round straight away.

  The flat was on the third floor of a clean and recently built block, which might have been built for private sale. Lucy rang the door entry bell, was identified and the door lock released by remote control. Secure if everyone was sensible about letting strangers in, the detective thought, mounting the stairs.

  Ellen was holding the door open on a chain and opened it as soon as Lucy showed her warrant card.

  "Detective Sergeant Turner," Lucy said. "I'd like to ask a few questions connected with events last Saturday."

  "Come in," Ellen said. "It's just that two women need to be that extra bit careful."

  DS Turner had been thinking that mid-morning in a respectable sort of area with a security door and an advanced warning that she was coming, Ellen seemed unduly cautious. She followed the woman into a small but elegantly furnished living room, with two large oil paintings on the wall. Both were of Ellen herself, naked or nearly so, both originals and, though well executed, both somehow a good amateur standard.

  Ellen Barnes saw her looking at them. "That's me, nearly twenty years ago," she said. Alice did them. "That's how we met. I was a life model to eke out a student nurse salary and she was taking the course."

  On closer inspection, Lucy could tell that Ellen was a good deal older than she had assumed at first glance. She must be in her early forties at least, which made her older than Shirley Hunter by between five and ten years. Did that make a difference? Probably not.

  "Alice," the detective said. "What's her family name?"

  "She's Alice Dent."

  "You share the house with Alice?"

  Ellen nodded. "We're buying it on a shared equity scheme from a Housing Association," she said. "There's not much scope for buying outright unless you have a substantial salary."

  DS Turner knew that very well, and had several times been glad that Julia had landed an IT job sufficiently high flying to pay most of a substantial mortgage. Since both drove to work from some distance away, the relationship was unknown to colleagues, not that Lucy cared that much. She nodded.

  "Okay," said Lucy, "As I explained, I'm part of the team investigating the murder of Simon Hunter and, since you apparently picked up Mrs. Hunter from Baildon Moors last Saturday and spent the rest of the day and night with her, you are her alibi. I want to check her story and get any other details I can."

  Ellen nodded and waited.

  "When did Mrs. Hunter phone you?"

  "I knew that's what you would ask first and I'm really not sure. It was after one, but not long after. Can't you get the time from the mobile phone company?"

  "We'll sort out the exact time later," Lucy said.

  "What did Mrs. Hunter say over the phone?"

  "She was talking in a panic - really gabbling gibberish at first. When I calmed her down a bit, I gathered she and Simon had had a real row. She seems to have thought he was going to kill her and had run off. When she crept back to the spot both Simon and the car had gone."

  "What were you doing when she phoned?"

  "I was washing up after dinner, thinking about going shopping."

  "What did you do then?"

  "I drove straight to the moors, where she said she was. I told her to wait on the main road and she was there when I arrived."

  "Did you go to the picnic spot?" Lucy asked.

  "No. I just accepted Shirley's story - I still think it's the truth - and drove up to where we arranged to meet."

  "And then?"

  "I drove us back to the Morrison's Supermarket in Bingley and we did some shopping, then we went home. Alice was there by this time. The three of us sat and talked for a while. Then we went out for a meal in a restaurant in Shipley. An Indian place at the bottom end of Saltaire Road. After that we came home again and Shirley stayed the night."

  "Mrs. Hunter was with you all the time?"

  "Yes."

  "Have you proof of any of this?"

  Ellen was silent for a time, thinking about it. "Alice phoned and booked a table at The Last Days of the Raj," she said. "They would probably have a record of the booking."

  "Anything else?" Lucy persisted.

  "I've got the till slip from Morrison's, I think. We have to be careful about keeping a record of what we spend."

  "That should show the time," the detective observed.

  At this point there was the sound of a key in the door and Alice Dent let herself in. She was, perhaps, a shade tall for a woman, wore an overall and no make up and was holding a motorcycle helmet. She was somehow reminiscent of Millicent Hampshire, in that she was about the same age and contrived to have the same friendly competence about her, though Alice was perhaps a touch more ... what? Defiant or defensive, Lucy thought. Was that a general attitude to life or was it something more immediate?

  "This is Sergeant ..." she turned to Lucy.

  "Detective Sergeant Turner," Lucy said.

  "She was asking about Saturday," Ellen said. "When Shirley rang me from Morton and things. "

  "I had finished getting the main details down," said the detective. "I was just going to ask how well you knew Mrs. Hunter."

  "She was a friend," said Alice, rather heavily. "Just a friend."

  There was an unmistakable emphasis in the word friend.

  "You know her at work as well?" Lucy said to Ellen.

  Alice frowned but didn't say anything.

  "She's worked at the same hospital as me for quite a while," Ellen said. "seven or eight years at least."

  "You knew her before she met Simon Hunter?"

  "Yes."

  "What was your opinion of him?"

  Ellen paused, looking vacantly out of the window. At last she said, "Its easy to be wise after the event, but I really didn't like him very much from the very first. What's more, he didn't like us and he was rude to Alice."

  "In what way?"

  "He made a pass at me once and Alice told him we had a steady relationship. He called us a couple of Dikes and said all Alice needed to cure her was a good screw with a half decent bloke, but he couldn't think of one who'd be willing."

  "I don't suppose your kind would think that was much of an insult," Alice said, even more heavily.

  There was a dangerous pause as DS Turner looked up slowly and, while keeping her place with her finger, closed her notebook as if to indicate an off the record remark, said, "If I made assumption about your sexuality, I suspect you'd be very quick to put me in my place, and rightly so. I'd appreciate it if you would stop jumping to conclusions about mine."

  There was a silence as Alice looked her over, as if seeing her for the first time.

  "I'm sorry," she said at last. "I just assumed that life in the police force would make it impossible to be anything but straight."

  "It makes you bloody careful about advertising that you're not, I'll say that," Lucy agreed. "My boss has a pretty good idea that my partner's a woman - in fact, I'm sure she knows, though I haven't told her - but she doesn't seem to care All the same I'm very careful about who else knows."

  "Okay," Ellen said, looking a little more relaxed than she had, "Going back to what I was saying about Simon. Before he married Shirley, I thought he was a smarmy toad and I didn't like him, but it only took a few months after the marriage to realise he was violent and nasty with a cruel streak. He often physically mistreated Shirley - hit her and so on - Add to that he seemed to take pleasure in humiliating her in public whenever he could and he had a very bad temper if he didn't get his own way. He was altogether unpleasant to be around."

  "Could she have been driven to murder?" Lucy asked.


  "I'd have killed him after the first month," Alice said, "but I don't think she did, more fool her."

  Lucy tapped her pencil against her notebook reflectively and said, "My dad was a detective with Warwickshire Police all his life and a Freemason too. He said that in all his years in the force he'd only ever come across one guy who dropped all kind of hints that he was a Mason. My dad said that he figured that, if the bloke had to call on being a Mason, he must have something to hide, so he gave him a much more thorough going over."

  "It's a bit different from being gay and him being a Freemason though," Ellen said. "They've got secret handshakes and things you can say."

  "Baloney," Lucy replied. "You don't shake hands with a suspect and we all understood each other without being explicit, just because we wanted to understand."

  "Now you know, however accidentally, that I'm in a lesbian partnership too," She continued, "I'm going to have to check out everything you say more carefully, just to offset my own feelings and prove to myself I'm being fair. You understand?"

  "I think so," Alice said. Ellen nodded.

  "You've come in from work?" Lucy asked.

  "When I'm on a job nearby and Ellen's on lates, I come home for lunch," Alice said

  "You ride a motor bike and Ellen drives a car?"

  "We have a car between us," Ellen said, "But I use it for work, especially coming home late at night."

  "Makes sense," Lucy observed. "Where do you work?" she asked Alice.

  "Wainright Simpkins, electrical contractors."

  "Right," Lucy said. "I'll check those times and maybe talk to you again later. For now, I'll leave you to your lunch."