‘I was beginning to wonder if you had some kind of allergy to Elgar.’
They were standing in the foyer of the Philharmonic Hall before Tara dared to comment on Jez’s appearance. Until then she’d been covered in a black, full-length overcoat, protection against the cold October rain.
‘You look…’
‘What?’
‘Very different from last time,’ said Tara. ‘If I’d knocked on your door instead of you running out to the car I might not have recognised you.’
‘Oh thanks very much,’ Jez said.
‘Sorry, I mean you look fantastic – just different.’
Jez looked rather striking. Her eyes were heavy with liner and mascara, her face deliberately pale, milky white, in contrast to her black hair. She wore a mid-length, slim-fitting black dress, cut away in front to reveal the edges of a black lace bra and cleavage. Around her waist was a broad leather belt with two shiny silver buckles, and she stood tall on five-inch-heeled, black ankle boots. The thought occurred to Tara that if you passed this woman in a crowded street you would still remember every detail of her four weeks later. Tara had made some effort to look presentable. She wore a maroon off-the-shoulder dress and matching high heels. She noticed that Jez seemed to inspect her in a similar manner.
The auditorium was full, a great venue for music, Tara realised, although she had only been there once before with her mother to see Cliff Richard. She also had to admit that the cello concerto was at least relaxing. She wasn’t as struck on the other composer, she’d forgotten his name, but the time passed gently and as they drove back to Jez’s house, she felt that the evening had been enjoyable.
‘Thank you, Tara,’ Jez said softly. ‘I really enjoyed your company. It’s the first time I’ve been out since Richard, you know.’ A trace of a tear sparkled in her eyes, and Jez again looked vulnerable in the same manner Tara had noticed when they’d first met. ‘I’ve had the tickets for ages; it would have been a pity to waste them.’
‘Thank you for thinking of me. A night out was just what I needed,’ Tara said with a smile.
Suddenly, Jez leaned across and kissed her on the lips. She lingered for a second, enough time to flash her blue eyes at Tara. Then she opened the car door before Tara could react. It was bold and mischievous, but Tara had no clue whether she should read anything more into the kiss.
‘Next time we can do the Foo Fighters,’ said Jez.
‘Definitely.’
‘Goodnight, Tara. Sleep well.’
Jez closed the car door and strode confidently toward her house. Tara was suddenly trembling. As she drove away, her confusion over what had just occurred suppressed her enjoyment of an evening spent with a new friend.
She was on her way home to Wapping Dock when she got a call on her mobile. It was a duty officer from St Anne Street. Another fatality.
CHAPTER 15
The death was suspicious, but she had no idea at this point if it was linked to the spate of poisonings in the city. If it was another such incident, then she was surprised to have been called to the scene. After all, she had been sidelined. That case was in the hands of a specialist team. She turned the car at the next junction and headed to Wavertree.
The rain was coming down in bucketloads. Now close to midnight, it was cold, and she was standing with Murray outside a small terraced house in Bartlett Street. Her jacket and dress were soon soaking wet despite the shelter from Murray’s umbrella, and her heels were impractical for wearing at a crime scene. Two police vans were parked either side of the house and arc lighting had been erected above the front door, from where forensic personnel were coming and going. There was no sign of a team of special investigators in protective suits, so she assumed that it had already been confirmed that this scene was not linked to the poisoning emergency. She was curious to know how such a conclusion had been reached so quickly.
A cordon of fluorescent incident tape sealed off the lower end of the long street, while at the opposite end, and closer to the house, a crowd of more than fifty people standing in the road were held at bay in a similar manner. Tara noticed the looks of shock on the faces of some, horror on others and pure inquisitiveness on the remainder, all sheltering under umbrellas, baseball hats or hooded anoraks. Someone in their quiet little street was dead; the police were involved, so it must be murder.
Wilson ducked beneath the crime scene tape and joined Tara and Murray.
‘Well, John, what’s the story?’ Tara asked him.
‘I’ve just been speaking to the woman who lives two doors down, a Mrs Bailey.’ He paused for a moment and drew a breath. He’d been the first detective on the scene and looked pale and cold for it. ‘She found the body.’
‘I assume it’s not another poisoning incident?’
Wilson shook his head.
‘Not this one, ma’am.’
‘What time did she find the body?’
‘About two hours ago. She knocked on the door, got no answer then took a peek through the living room window. The light was off, but she saw the body lying on the floor. According to her, it is the body of Maggie Hull. She lived alone.’
‘Do we know what happened?’ Murray asked, visibly shivering.
‘I got a quick peek before forensics moved in. Looks like she was battered over the head, what’s left of it. She’s lying on the floor between the living room and hallway. I didn’t get to see much else.’
‘We’ll have a good look around when forensics have finished,’ said Tara. ‘Have a word with some of the other neighbours. Ask if they saw or heard anything. Tweedy will be here soon; he’ll want to know all the biz. Alan, you and I can have a chat with Mrs Bailey.’
An elderly man, Mr Bailey, Tara presumed, was standing by his door, beneath a small porch affording him shelter from the rain. Tara introduced herself and asked to speak with Mrs Bailey.
‘She’s very upset,’ said the man in a flustered tone, his face pinched and his mouth drawing tightly on a cigarette. Despite wearing only a white cotton shirt and dark trousers, with braces despatched from each shoulder, he didn’t seem troubled by the damp and cold. His hair was black, thinning, and greased to his bony head. His eyes seemed to bulge outwards as he spoke.
‘She got a hell of a shock; we all did. I can hardly take it in – that it’s Maggie.’ He shook his head and exhaled a barrage of smoke.
‘I take it that you knew her well?’ Tara asked.
‘Maggie? Of course, we did. We’ve lived here forty-four years. She was only a nipper running about the street when we moved in. Wouldn’t hurt a fly; a kind girl, if ever there was one.’
‘Does anyone else live in the house?’
‘With Maggie?’ He drew back as if astounded by the question. ‘No, no,’ he said, shaking his head each time with increased fervour, dismissing the very notion that his neighbour shared her home. ‘Not Maggie. She never married, you see. Didn’t bother at all with men, as far as I know. You can ask our Betty; she’ll tell you. No not Maggie.’
Tara was about to speak again, but the man hadn’t finished.
‘Now, she did have her mother until about five years ago. She died. Only seventy-two; it was sudden like, you know. A stroke.’
‘Tell them about her brother,’ said a voice from within the dimly lit hallway.
Mrs Bailey, a handkerchief at her nose, wobbled to the door. Her chubby face was flushed from expended tears. She was slow, her ankles and feet were swollen with fluid.
‘Maggie has a brother,’ she said in a croaky voice. ‘He lives in Canada. Kenneth’s his name. He’ll take this badly. He was home last year on holiday, and he told me himself that he wanted Maggie to come and live with him in Toronto. I don’t know how anybody is going to break the news to that lad.’ The woman turned away and disappeared again in floods of tears.
Tara glanced at Murray who had been writing every word said into his notebook. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had gone to the bother of recording every action, including the old w
oman crying her way back into her living room.
‘Is there anyone you know of who would want to do Miss Hull any harm?’
‘Maggie?’ This habit of repeating the victim’s name as a question was beginning to wear on Tara, but she understood that the man was elderly and upset by the evening’s events. ‘I wouldn’t know a soul with anything bad to say about Maggie. Not a soul.’ He seemed to drift away on his thoughts and memories. Tara thought it best to leave things until morning.
* * *
Superintendent Tweedy’s arrival coincided with an opportunity for the group of detectives to have a limited viewing of the crime scene.
‘What’s happening, Tara?’
Tara ran through what information she had so far gathered as Tweedy made it clear that he was eager to see inside. They continued their discussion as they put on the requisite white protective, hooded overalls and blue overshoes. Wilson consulted with an officer from SOCO in charge of guarding the front door and thereby the precious crime scene and vital evidence. He nodded to Tara that it was all right to proceed. He needn’t have bothered because Tweedy was not about to be kept waiting. All three detectives filed inside: Tara, then Tweedy and finally Murray.
The entrance hall, with a staircase to the right, was long and narrow and led to a galley kitchen. Off to the left, was the living room although at that moment none of them could get that far. The body of Maggie Hull lay straddled over the doorway. From where the three officers stood, only her legs were visible. The victim wore dark shoes with a medium heel, black or navy, plain tights on fairly trim legs and what appeared to be a knee-length dress or skirt, also in black or navy blue. The rose-coloured light shade in the hall, although bright and enhanced by the arcs from outside, betrayed the natural colours.
Blood, copious amounts of it, was the sight that hit them when they stepped closer to the threshold. Tara hung back, but she knew that she must look. This evening, she felt as though she could never stand over another corpse. Tweedy sighed, tutted and shook his head. The body lay face down, the back of the head was nothing but a mass of deep-red pulp fused with hair, the colour of which was indiscernible. The beige shag pile carpet of the living room was soaked red around the head and shoulders of the body. There were splatters of blood for several feet beyond. One side of a mink-coloured sofa was darkened red, and a cushion had been pulled from its place and lay close to the victim’s left hand.
They didn’t enter the living room. It would have involved them stepping over the body, and it was clear from the activity around them that the SOCO team still had work to do. Tweedy scanned the scene, absorbing as much information as he could. Tara, reluctantly, did the same. She studied the body, and gazed about the living room, saying nothing. It was a tiny place, filled with furniture and ornaments and a woman’s touch. Little seemed out of place to her, meaning that she didn’t think a long, protracted struggle had occurred. Murray stole a glance at the stricken body as Tara moved away. When they had seen enough, they stepped back into the heavy rain, the droplets a refreshing tonic for Tara’s clammy face.
‘Right,’ said Tweedy, ‘try to put everything together, as much as we can tonight. I’ll see you all in the morning, at nine sharp.’
‘Sir, does this mean we have this case?’ Tara asked. ‘Only, I was getting the feeling that I was being sidelined.’
Tweedy looked sympathetically at his young DI. It was not a conversation to hold in the pouring rain, but Tara was eager for a response.
‘No, Tara, you have not been sidelined. It’s just that I felt that this poisoning emergency would be just too much for you right now. You’re not long back on duty; you’ve had a torrid experience. It can’t have been easy for you. But now, needs must, you have a murder to investigate.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Tweedy strode away, scraping off the white suit before retreating to his car.
‘Right, I’ll see you two at nine sharp,’ said Tara to both Murray and Wilson with a satisfied smirk on her face.
Murray looked peeved, knowing he was here for some time yet.
‘Have a word with some of these onlookers,’ she said, ‘they don’t seem too keen on going to their beds.’
CHAPTER 16
At nine o’clock in the morning in Tweedy’s office at St Anne Street station, Tara watched with Murray and Wilson as the Superintendent worked with his notorious flipcharts. By the time they were finished most of the paper would have something written on it, a word or phrase, a roughly sketched diagram, lists of evidence, lists of people, witnesses or suspects. Every thought from every person involved with the case would find its way onto Tweedy’s charts. That was his way. He had been using them since Babbage was a lad, in other words, long before anyone ever saw the benefit in using a computer. He was not dismissive of new technology, but he did not believe that it necessarily had to replace his tried and trusted methods.
No one in the room looked particularly fresh. Murray and Wilson had no more than three hours’ sleep, a quick shower and down to the station. Despite getting home earlier than her colleagues, Tara was not feeling the better for it, her head throbbing and her stomach crying out for nourishment. Tweedy always looked drained nowadays, although his voice somehow portrayed a brisk and jovial manner. He flicked over the cover of his chart.
‘Right,’ he began like an auctioneer, ‘who’ll start me off?’
‘The latest,’ said Wilson, who’d spent the night in liaison with SOCO, the police doctor and the pathologist in charge of post-mortem, ‘is that the estimated time of death was between six and seven yesterday evening. The post-mortem is to begin at eleven-thirty this morning after formal ID. There were no signs of forced entry to the house.’ Wilson paused while he flicked from one page to another in his notebook.
Tweedy scribbled fervently on his chart with a felt pen. The information was not coming in the manner he would prefer, that is, in a logical order. It meant him having to write the time of death on one page and then turning over several pages before noting facts from the crime scene. He wrote the time for the post-mortem in the bottom-left corner of the first page.
‘Thank you, John. Who’s next?’
Tara looked at Murray who merely returned her gaze. Tara couldn’t help grinning at their playful indecision. Tweedy was oblivious to the silent remonstrating, but finally, Murray felt compelled to jump in.
‘The victim has been unofficially identified as Maggie Hull, aged forty-nine, un-married and lived alone at the house in Bartlett Street.’ He paused, giving Tweedy time to construct his lists. ‘The victim was found by her next-door neighbour at approximately ten-fifteen. The front door had been closed normally; there were no signs of forced entry. So far, there are no witnesses to any disturbance in the area.’
‘Thank you, Alan,’ said Tweedy, always keen on using first names at the office.
‘The victim appears to have been beaten to death,’ said Wilson reading again from his notes. ‘No evidence as yet of motive. No signs of sexual assault. It seems as though the victim had just returned home from work when the attack took place. Her overcoat was found hanging on the bannister, and a handbag was discovered close to the body. Some cash was found inside the bag. Bank and credit cards also, so it doesn’t appear that robbery was a motive.’
Tara was busy making her notes, jotting down reminders to herself to check certain details. At times she was not fully aware of what was being said.
‘No weapon found as yet,’ Wilson continued.
Tweedy quickly devised another table relating to weapons.
‘The victim was found lying face down between her living room and hall, little sign of a struggle except for a displaced cushion from the sofa. From what neighbours say, Miss Hull had no known enemies, no boyfriends and no family, except for a brother in Canada. The victim worked as a secretary in the city centre at the head office of Harbinson Fine Foods in the Liver Building. She seemed to live a solitary existence.’
The mention of Harbinson Fin
e Foods suddenly pinched at Tara’s sides, disturbing her thought patterns. The company where Richard Andrews had been a director. The office also where Jez Riordan still worked. Tara’s mind raced.
‘Tara?’ said Tweedy.
‘Sorry?’
‘Anything to add?’ Tweedy remained at the ready with his marker.
‘Just to remind you, sir,’ said Tara, her attention to proceedings now restored. ‘It seems that Maggie Hull worked for Harbinson Fine Foods. That’s the same company as that jumper at the Liver Building, Richard Andrews. A possible connection?’
‘Or tragic coincidence?’ replied Tweedy. ‘Have a look anyway. It’s a start.’
Tweedy stepped back and examined his handiwork.
‘Right,’ he said, a little perplexed. ‘What we need this morning is a plan of attack and a list of priorities.’
Within a few minutes, a sizeable list of tasks had been committed to paper. Tweedy shared them out among the officers assembled and then called for any further thoughts or suggestions regarding a lead to quickly solving the case.
Tara wanted a second, more detailed inspection of the murder scene before she set about doing anything else.
* * *
A squad of uniformed officers had begun a series of house-to-house inquiries in Bartlett Street and several roads on either side. The home of Maggie Hull remained cordoned off, while forensic examination continued. Another team of uniforms were busy searching the back alleys and gardens of nearby houses for a murder weapon or indeed anything that might shed some light on this dismal case.
Murray accompanied Tara into the house as he had done in the early hours of the morning. On this occasion, with the body removed from the crime scene, they were able to stand inside the living room.
‘There doesn’t seem to be a thing out of place,’ Murray commented.
Tara agreed.
‘And yet there’s hardly room to move,’ she said. ‘Look at all this stuff.’
The pair of them examined the contents of the compact yet overfilled room. A plump three-seater sofa sat against a wall directly opposite a grey-stone fireplace. An armchair, matching the sofa, sat in the bay of the window and another one by the door. A heavy, dark-wood cabinet with glass doors and shelves was squeezed between the wall and chimney breast and housed an extensive collection of glass crystal: Waterford, Edinburgh and Swarovski. Between the fireplace and the window sat the latest in home entertainment: 3D Smart TV, Sky Box, DVD and an iPod docking station. Behind the TV, a bookcase housed a multitude of CDs and DVDs.
THE DARING NIGHT Page 6