The Dead Girl's Shoes

by Arney, Angela

  ‘But I don’t…,’ began Ruth.

  Tom held up his hand. ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘You are going to tell me it’s not got any road tax. But we’ll take a chance. It’s unlikely we’ll meet anyone from the DVLA who will bother to check our number plate on the computer to see if it’s paid up.’

  Ruth sat up slowly. ‘You know I’d rather cycle. I could do with the exercise.’

  Tom put his arms around her and yawned. ‘We’ll argue about that tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You know I’m not as keen on exercise as you.’ He hugged her. ‘Come on, let’s go up to bed now, we’ll get up early tomorrow and make a picnic to take with us.’

  Ruth allowed herself to be led upstairs. ‘I really would like to cycle,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe the old banger won’t go anyway,’ said Tom. ‘I haven’t even turned the engine over lately. You can’t expect miracles from a Citroen which hasn’t had a run recently, but it might, it’s a marvellous piece of engineering.’

  Ruth pulled a face, ‘you really love that old car,’ she said.

  ‘Not more than you.’ Replied Tom with a grin.

  *

  On arrival back at the station, Steve made a quick exit and went home in his own car, while Maguire poked his head into the office to see if there was any sign of Kevin Harrison.

  ‘Not seen hide nor hair of him,’ said the duty sergeant. ‘He’s a good lad, I’m sure he’s not slacking.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Maguire. ‘But I’d still like to know what he’s doing, and where he is.’

  At that moment, Kevin was cycling along the Avon valley towards Salisbury railway station. He’d picked up Steve’s message about reporting in early the next morning, and as he’d collated all the information Maguire wanted, thought he could now count himself off duty until he went in and presented his results the following day. There was nothing more he could do now and he texted Steve to this effect, before changing into his lycra cycling outfit. He was training for the Bournemouth half marathon; one day he ran 15 miles and the other day he cycled at least 20. This evening he intended to cycle 50 miles before going home to supper.

  The railway line from Stibbington to Salisbury had been out of use since the renowned Dr Beeching of the 1960s had had his brutal way and closed the small sideline. The sleepers had been removed years ago, and had been scattered the length and breadth of Hampshire and Wiltshire, now serving as seats in pub gardens, roof timbers and other useful things. The track itself had been resurfaced and was now a walking and cycling path, which led all the way to the back of Salisbury railway station. What had once been a shunting yard for the goods vans was now a car park edging the old ballast hole. In the days of steam trains, the engine used to pull up at this spot and tip out their ballast, the cinders left from their coal fired engines, into the huge indentation in the land known as the ballast hole. It was still called the ballast hole, by everyone, even children, who had no idea of what it meant or what it had once been. Kevin made steady progress towards Salisbury, and was negotiating the downward slope, which led past the old ballast hole.

  As he approached the area, a trio of scruffy small boys appeared on the track. They stood in his way. ‘ere, mister,’ the largest of the boys called out.

  Kevin put his foot to the ground, irritated, as he was timing himself on the special stopwatch he’d recently bought for the purpose. ‘What do you want? And should you be out here on your own? It’s a bit lonely.’

  ‘We’re all right, mister. We’ve only just moved ‘ere. We’re with the fair for the Salisbury carnival.’ The boy jerked his head towards the station.

  Kevin realized they were travellers’ children, which accounted for their grubby appearance. He knew the place they camped. The children had probably been left to their own devices whilst their parents set up the fairground. ‘What do you want?’ he repeated.

  The largest boy was obviously in charge of the smaller ones. ‘We’ve found a car,’ he said. ‘Only it’s not much good, ‘cause somebody’s burnt it. It’s down the bottom of the ballast hole.’

  The three of them stood before him looking important. Kevin dismounted and said, ‘well you’d better show me.’ Leaving his bicycle on the track, he followed the boys down the steeply wooded slope. ‘I don’t know how anyone drove a car down here,’ he muttered as he tried not to tear his new cycling gear on the brambles.

  ‘They didn’t,’ said the biggest boy scornfully. ‘It was rolled down from the car park over there; you can see where it’s broken all the branches’

  ‘I think we should call the police,’ said the smallest boy importantly ‘Then they’ll come with their sirens and blue lights flashing. And maybe there’s a reward.’

  ‘No reward for a burnt out old car,’ the eldest one told him.

  ‘And there won’t be blue lights and sirens,’ said Kevin. ‘They only use those for people, not old cars.’

  ‘ow do you know?’

  ‘Because I am a policeman,’ said Kevin.

  *

  Maguire sat down with Tess at his feet, poured himself a generous measure of Laphraig, picked up the remote and switched on some soothing Mendelssohn. The phone rang just as he put the glass to his lips. For a moment, he hesitated, almost took a sip, then sighed, put the glass down and answered the phone.

  It was Kevin Harrison. ‘I think I’ve found it, sir,’ he said. ‘The red car.’

  Maguire sat up. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the ballast hole at Salisbury. It’s been dumped and burnt.’

  ‘In the what? No, never mind, don’t give me the fine details. Just stay there.’

  Maguire called for the services of the forensic team again. They were not keen, he could tell that, but there was plenty of daylight left and he wanted them to get on to the site before dark. As for himself, he rang Steve, ascertained he not only knew what the ballast hole was, but also knew where it was, so the perfect solution was for Steve to take him there.

  Steve backed the car from his garage, and was about to reverse into the road when Ann came running down the path. She thrust a large paper bag in through the window. ‘Calamari rings,’ she said. ‘All hot. You and Maguire might as well eat them, I can’t manage to eat all of them by myself and they won’t keep.’

  Steve grinned. ‘You’re the perfect wife,’ he said. ‘Give us a kiss.’

  ‘I’m not that perfect,’ said Ann, stamping her foot. ‘Get going before I change my mind and throw them at you!’

  *

  By the time Maguire and Steve arrived at the ballast hole, the calamari rings were eaten. ‘Your wife is a good cook,’ said Maguire, ‘congratulate her for me.’

  ‘I will, if she’s still speaking to me. She wasn’t best pleased at me going out again.’

  ‘All policemen need understanding wives,’ said Maguire, thinking of Rosemary. She had complained sometimes, but not often, and he couldn’t count the number of time she’d been left in the lurch without any warning. He reigned in his maudlin thoughts, no time to dwell on those now. He could see the way down to the burnt out vehicle, it was steep, and strewn with broken branches and undergrowth.

  ‘Down here, this way, sir,’ shouted Kevin, struggling up through the brambles from the bottom of the gully. He saw them both looking at his bright blue and red lycra outfit. ‘I was out on a training bike ride, after I’d finished all the stuff you gave me to do,’ he emphasised, ‘when these three boys stopped me and told me what they’d found. I came and had a look. The ashes are almost cold. Not quite though, and the boys said it wasn’t burning when they found it, so it must have been done maybe a couple of days ago.’

  The three boys in question stood by the charred wreck looking important. They also looked as if they intended staying for the duration. Maguire didn’t want them hanging around, and fished in his pocket. He found a five-pound note. ‘It’s getting late,’ he said, ‘and I think you should go home. Take this as a reward for reporting it to the police. If we need to ask you any questions, I know
where to find you. You’re with the Fairground people aren’t you?’

  The biggest boy nodded, and took the note. ‘Will you be taking the car away?’

  ‘Yes, but probably not until tomorrow,’ said Maguire. ‘If you want you can watch from the top of the slope when we take it, but just make sure you keep well out of the way.’

  With the eldest boy clutching the five pound note, the three of them scrambled to the top of the ballast hole and made off. Steve and Maguire walked around the wreck. ‘It’s a very old Fiat 500,’ said Steve. He looked at the number plate, tapped it into his iPhone and waited. ‘It’s a SORN,’ he said. ‘Been registered off road for a year by a Thomas Maplin, and apparently kept at 22, Riverside Gardens, Salisbury.’

  ‘Thomas Maplin. He’s that boyfriend of Ruth Villiers,’ said Kevin, ‘and…’

  Steve interrupted. ‘Yes, and that’s the address where all the students live.’

  ‘But you didn’t find the car?’ demanded Maguire. ‘Or the garage where the car had been kept?’

  ‘Neither of us looked in the garage, it’s right at the bottom of the garden, and they said that was where they kept their bikes. The fact that a car might have been garaged there just didn’t occur to us, and they never mentioned it, and besides by then the car must have gone.’ Steve and Kevin looked at each other in embarrassment.

  Maguire swore under his breath. ‘Call yourselves detectives!’

  ‘The SOCO team didn’t look there either,’ said Kevin hastily. ‘They searched the house as well.’

  ‘They were told to search the bedroom.’ Maguire was sounding more infuriated by the minute. He drew a deep breath. ‘This is the car used in the murder, no doubt about it. It’s a classic Fiat 500 by the look of it, and worth a pretty penny. We’ve got to fathom out how Harold Villiers managed to use the car, someone else’s car, without anyone knowing he had it, then get rid of it and get back to wherever he was hiding. And we can forget France or China, or any other ridiculous tale he might try spinning in future.’

  ‘He’s probably been around here all the time,’ said Kevin, ‘that would account for me not being able to find any trace of him buying tickets for planes or trains.’

  ‘Yes, but where,’ said Maguire slowly. ‘Somehow I don’t think Mrs Villiers was lying when she said she didn’t know. I think she really was worried. Maybe she had her own ideas of what he’d been up to.’

  ‘Murder,’ said Steve, then paused and said, ‘but surely not. It’s his own family! His own daughter!’

  Maguire gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Steve, don’t you ever read anything? How can you be a policeman and be so naïve sometimes? A family is the place where murder happens most often. Read some Shakespeare.’

  Steve didn’t reply but raised his eyebrows expressively to Kevin.

  Maguire walked across to where the forensic examination was taking place. It was still Dave Harvey on duty. ‘We’ll get the main information over to you first thing in the morning. Tyres first. I’m pretty certain just by looking at them that they are the ones that left the tread marks in the mud at the side of the road. The rest will take a bit longer. Blood, hairs, tissue, whatever. We need to get it back to the lab and collaborate with Dr Merryweather for that.’

  Maguire stood looking at the crumpled heap of burnt metal, and wondered if Lizzie would be able to identify it as the car she’d seen Jemima getting into.

  ‘We’ll need to get Dr Browne to take a look at this when it’s back in the lab,’ said Steve, clambering around to get a closer look. ‘But at least there’s not a body in it.’

  ‘Can we make arrangements to move it now?’ Dave Harvey started packing some of his equipment back in the cases.

  ‘Yes.’ Maguire turned and started trudging back up the steep slope. ‘All I’m hoping now,’ he told Steve and Kevin, ‘is that Harold Villiers survives the night and is able to tell us tomorrow what really happened last Thursday night.’

  Steve climbed up beside him. ‘At least we know where he is,’ he said. ‘He’s attached to a drip under the care of Dr Browne, and he won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.’

  *

  Lizzie paced the bedroom anxiously. The weather had changed again and the evening was very warm and humid; outside the branches of the surrounding trees drooped in the heat. She’d flung all the windows wide open, but the air flowing in was sultry. She worried. My patient needs to be in an air-conditioned ICU, she thought anxiously. Harold Villiers had been absolutely adamant however, he was not going into hospital, and much as she would have liked, she couldn’t overrule his wishes. If he’d been unconscious it would have been a different matter. But conscious and fully in command of his faculties, he had the last word in the matter.

  Now, he lay back on the bed with Janet Hastings at his side. She had made up an iced towel. ‘Like the ones they use at Wimbledon,’ she told Lizzie, and was gently laying it across his forehead.

  Lizzie watched her, she didn’t think it was going to do him much good, but neither was it going to harm him. Janet was certainly looking after him well, and Lizzie wondered if Audrey Merryweather’s gossip about Harold and Janet were true.

  ‘I’ve managed to track down Mrs Villiers,’ said Janet when she’d finished ministering to her patient. She came across to Lizzie and spoke in a low voice. ‘She says she’s gone to visit her cousin in Dorchester and will stay the night there.’

  ‘But her husband is very ill,’ said Lizzie in astonishment, ‘isn’t she coming home?

  Janet shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well really! I’d go to my husband’s bedside if he was dying, I mean very ill,’ she corrected herself hastily, ‘even though we are divorced.’

  ‘You’re not a member of the Villiers family,’ said a voice from the bed. Harold tried to sit up and started wheezing and coughing. ‘We’re a bloody mess.’ His voice faded away and he fell back against the pillows.

  Both Lizzie and Janet rushed over to him. ‘Don’t try and talk,’ said Lizzie gently. ‘Everything can be sorted out later when you’re well.’ Between them, she and Janet packed the pillows up around him so that he could breathe more easily.

  ‘It will never be sorted out,’ he whispered. ‘Never. Never.’

  Janet put her hand on his forehead, and moved the iced towel to the back of his neck. ‘Don’t say that Harold,’ she whispered. ‘Nothing is impossible.’

  She loves him thought Lizzie sadly. I wonder what the future holds for either of them. They seemed an ill-sorted middle-aged couple, but Janet Hastings would certainly be a better bet for Harold than cold-hearted Amelia.

  Outside came the sound of a heavy vehicle on the gravel and Lizzie rushed to the window. It was an ambulance type van drawing up before the front entrance to the Hall. On the side it said URGENT CARE CO LTD in big green letters. ‘The care company has arrived,’ she said to Janet, ‘I’m going down to bring them up here.’

  There was a paramedic and a nurse as well as the driver and Lizzie was reassured when she found she knew the paramedic. She had met Nick Tanner when he’d worked at Stibbington Infirmary as a theatre technician and knew he was well trained and conscientious. The nurse, Fiona Welby, although young was a Consultant Nurse and a prescribing practitioner. She had done plenty of cardiac and ICU work. Between them they had ample experience and seemed a good team, and Lizzie felt sure that Harold Villiers was as well cared for as he would have been in the hospital. Already he was hitched up to a cardiac monitor, and had been given the necessary drugs by Nurse Welby that had calmed his heart rhythm. He was sleeping calmly now, so she persuaded Janet Hastings to leave the bedroom, and go and get some rest herself.

  ‘In the morning you can contact Ruth and Simon,’ she told Janet. ‘There’s no point in doing it now. We know Ruth is in Salisbury with Tom, and Simon is in London for a pharmaceutical conference. You can contact him on his mobile.’

  ‘I wonder if I should ring Simon now.’

  ‘No,’ said Lizzie firmly. ‘
The last thing we want is a tired Simon driving back here to Avon Hall and possibly having an accident on the way. Leave it to the morning, and then perhaps Simon can actually speak to his father and be reassured.’

  ‘You don’t think Harold is going to die in the night then?’

  Lizzie looked at Janet’s anxious face. ‘No I don’t,’ she said. ‘But we can ask Nurse Welby to call you if he deteriorates in the night if you like. Then you can sleep soundly.’

  Janet showed Nick Tanner where the kitchen was so that he could make coffee in the night for the two of them. Nick could also give their patient a hot drink if he awoke and wanted it.

  After that a reassured Janet went to bed. ‘I’m going to take a mild sleeping pill,’ she told Lizzie. ‘I’ve used them before. It’s only herbal, but it does the trick.’

  It was left that Janet would be called on the internal house phone if Harold suddenly took a turn for the worse, and she would call Lizzie and the 999 service. Eventually Lizzie left Avon Hall feeling utterly exhausted and a little apprehensive. She’d never left a patient at home when she thought that the patient in question should be in hospital. This patient, Harold, had won the argument because he could afford to pay the private health care firm. She tried to persuade herself that she’d not had any option to do anything different because Harold had been so determined, but it didn’t help. She still felt uneasy.

  Once at home she collapsed in the kitchen and poured herself a glass of ice-cold milk from an opened bottle in the fridge. Sipping it slowly she enjoyed it, and realized that all she’d had all day was indifferent coffee and Spud Murphy’s dark brown tea. Now she was hungry. Ravenous, in fact. Throwing the fridge door wide open, she peered in. Nothing inside looked appetising, even the skins on the tomatoes were wrinkled. Maybe they’d be all right grilled on toast she thought reluctantly.