There is no Fear in Love: (Parish & Richards #20)

by Tim Ellis

  Kowalski walked to the window, pushed the yellowing net curtain aside and stared out over an overgrown back garden. Beyond was an alleyway and the back gardens of other houses in the next street. On either side, the back gardens were well-tended with patios, climbing-plants and plastic furniture.

  ‘Now that you’ve talked your way in here – what do you want?’

  ‘I want to know where your wife is.’

  ‘If I knew I’d tell you, but I have no idea where she is.’

  ‘Then why have you told everyone that she’s left you for another man?’

  ‘It seemed the simplest answer.’

  ‘Some people think that you’ve murdered your wife and disposed of her body.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a senior food safety inspector for goodness’ sake.’

  Just then, a woman in her mid-twenties with a matching discoloured towel wrapped around her wet naked body, which barely covered her breasts or her crotch, appeared in a doorway looking like a femme fatale in a B movie. Her dirty blonde hair was wet, and there were drops of water running down her neck and breasts into her cleavage. ‘Is everything all right, Lester?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, honey. You’ve had your shower already?’ He sounded disappointed. ‘I thought . . .’

  She pouted and rubbed the index finger of her right hand over her bottom lip. ‘I have to get back to work.’

  ‘Of course. I won’t be long.’

  The woman gave Kowalski a sultry smile and left.

  ‘So, can we make this quick, Mr . . . whatever your name is?’

  ‘Kowalski.’

  ‘As you can see, I have urgent business to attend to.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be too concerned that your wife has been missing since last Thursday, Mr Belmont.’

  ‘I’m not. She left me. She took all her clothes and possessions and just left.’

  ‘Did she leave a goodbye note?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anything at all to indicate where she was going?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did you try calling her?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve tried a couple of times since. I just get diverted to voicemail. I guess she just doesn’t want to speak to me. I also called the accountants where she’s a partner, but the receptionist says she’s not been in since last Thursday. To be honest, I haven’t got a clue what’s happened to her.’

  ‘Do you have a joint bank account?’

  ‘No. I wanted one, but Paige said it would complicate things. When I asked her, “What things?” she didn’t answer. I guessed it was for tax purposes, or something along those lines. I never knew anything about her financial affairs, because she was an accountant she could run rings around me – financially speaking. And she dealt with all her financial affairs online. We split the bills, and she just paid her half. I have no idea what will happen now. I suppose I’ll have to sort it all out when I get time.’

  ‘How do you know that she left you? She could have been abducted.’

  He grunted. ‘If that was the case, they’d have brought her back by now.’

  ‘I take it you weren’t on the best of terms with your wife?’

  ‘You take it correctly. She was a fucking bitch.’

  ‘Did she know about Riley and the pregnancy?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘You have no idea why she left you then?’

  ‘None at all. I got home on Thursday and she’d gone and taken all her things – no note, no phone call, nothing.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

  ‘And say what? My wife’s left me. Can you bring her back? I know I sound like a right bastard, but I didn’t want her back.’ He half-laughed. ‘Not only that, they’d have no doubt asked me some searching questions such as: “Can you think of any reason why your wife might have left you?” Well, it might have been because I’m having an affair with a beautiful woman half my age . . .’

  ‘Who happens to be fourteen weeks pregnant with twins?”

  ‘How . . .?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator, Mr Belmont. Also, until recently, I was a Detective Chief Inspector in the police force, so I have a reasonable idea of how to find things out about people.’

  ‘Yeah well! I wouldn’t have been surprised if they thought I’d murdered her . . .’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No. Oh, there’s no doubt I wanted to sometimes. Like most men, I suppose. But no, I didn’t murder my wife.’

  ‘I already knew that, because you were in Willesden Green last Thursday, and you usually travel there at least four days a month.’

  ‘How . . .?’

  Just then, Riley Quinn came into the room fully dressed and made up. ‘I have to go, babe.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll see you in the office, of course. And we’ll be here on Friday as well.’ She leaned over and kissed him.

  He ran his hand up the back of her leg and under her skirt. ‘We could take the whole day off – call in with food poisoning?’

  ‘I’ll lose my job. You can hold out until Friday.’

  ‘I don’t know. What about tonight?’

  ‘Don’t you have a son called Harry? I’ll see you Friday.’ She gave Kowalski another smouldering smile and flounced out.

  ‘God! She drives me crazy.’

  ‘Crazy enough to pay for someone else to kill your wife?’

  ‘I’ve told you – I didn’t kill Paige or pay someone else to do it for me, but I was planning to leave her.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I think we’d reached the end of our relationship. I started seeing Riley a couple of years ago and Paige found out. I said I’d stop seeing her, but I just hid it a bit better.’

  ‘So you’ve been seeing Riley all this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Surely, if Paige had found out she would have said something?’

  ‘Definitely! She’d have taken great delight in putting my balls through the wringer.’

  ‘So, you didn’t kill her?’

  ‘Haven’t I said that a dozen times already?’

  ‘And you have no idea where she is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about Willesden Green?’

  ‘Ah! You’re not the police anymore then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have to promise not to report me to your police mates.’

  ‘Depends what you’ve done.’

  ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘I have another family in Willesden Green.’

  ‘Another family?’

  ‘Yes. When I met Paige, I was already married with a baby girl. Now, I have three girls with Andrea.’

  ‘So, let me get this right. You have a wife and three children in Willesden Green?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A missing wife here and one son?’

  ‘We would have had more, but Paige had to have a hysterectomy after Harry was born.’

  ‘And now there’s Riley and the twins?’

  ‘That’s right. And she wants me to marry her as well. Is being married to three women still called bigamy?’

  ‘I have no idea, but I’m sure it’s still against the law.’

  ‘I know, but what can I do? You won’t tell anybody, will you?’

  ‘It’s none of my business what you do with your life, Mr Belmont. I’m only interested in finding your wife alive . . . Or should I say, your second wife. I assume you’ve not married any other women, or fathered any more children?’

  ‘No, no.’ He laughed. ‘Only two wives and four children up to now. Not counting the twins, of course.’

  Kowalski stood up. ‘Thanks for answering my questions, Mr Belmont.’

  ‘I didn’t really have a choice, did I? And if you do find Paige, make sure you tell her that it’s not me who’s employed you to find her. And if she wants to stay wherever she is – that’s fine by me.’
>
  ‘I will – if I find her. What about your son, Harry?’

  ‘It would be good if she could come back for a quick visit and say goodbye to him. I think Harry’s devastated that she left without saying goodbye, or telling him where she was going.’

  ‘I can imagine he would be.’

  ‘I know he blames me, and I suppose I am to blame in a roundabout way.’

  ‘You should talk to him, tell him what’s happening.’

  ‘I should, but I still wouldn’t be able to tell him what’s happened to his mother.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  They caught the District Line to Victoria, switched to the Victoria Line to Stockwell and then travelled south on the Northern Line to Balham in Wandsworth. The journey took them twenty-five minutes. Outside Balham station they squeezed into a taxi and directed the Senegalese driver to the retirement home, which took them a further ten minutes around Streatham Park.

  Inkwell House at 54 Conyers Road in Streatham was three Victorian houses joined together. It had skylights, double chimney stacks, and a white picket fence around a neat garden. The whole place looked clean and well-maintained.

  ‘Can I help you?’ A middle-aged woman with “Flora” on her name badge said when they walked through the heavy wood and glass doors at the main entrance. She had pink-tinged bottle-blonde hair, skin like pastry and bulges of fat protruding through clothes that were far too small for her.

  ‘We’d like to see George Hill please,’ Jerry said.

  Flora gave Shakin’ and Joe the once over and obviously concluded that they were escaped convicts. ‘All three of you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think he’s currently involved in the sacred drum-making workshop. Medicine Woman Basilela has come all the way from Caerphilly in Wales to show our guests how to make sacred drums that will catch their dreams. Is he expecting you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘It could, but we’ve also come a long way specially to speak to George.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  ‘Of course. You can tell him it’s about Emily Hobson.’

  ‘Emily Hobson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll see if he wants to see you.’ She wandered off down one of the three corridors leading from the main reception area.

  ‘Do you think he’ll see us, Mrs K?’ Joe said.

  ‘He’ll see us. Emily Hobson is his bogey case. My husband said that every detective has a bogey case – one that remains unsolved and haunts him into his grave.’

  ‘I don’t think I could be a murder detective,’ Joe said.

  ‘No,’ Shakin’ agreed. ‘Seeing all that gory stuff day-after-day.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Day-after-day. No, thank you.’

  ‘I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if it was just men being murdered, but there’s the women as well.’

  ‘The women,’ Joe echoed.

  ‘And the children.’

  Joe shook his head. ‘The children. Those poor children.’

  ‘No, it’s not for me, Mrs K,’ Shakin’ concluded.

  ‘We’ll just prosecute their murdering arses, won’t we, Shakin’?’

  ‘That’s exactly what we’ll do, Joe.’

  Shakin’ spun around on his heel. ‘This place doesn’t seem so bad. What do you think, Joe?’

  ‘I think there are probably nurses here?’

  Shakin’s eyes opened wide. ‘Of course! And carers.’

  ‘Yeah carers! I’d forgotten all about them. Young ones wearing tight uniforms and eager to please the old men.’

  ‘You two live in a fantasy world,’ Jerry said. ‘The nurses are old and fat, and the carers are male.’

  ‘She had to spoil it, didn’t she, Joe?’ Shakin’ said.

  ‘All spoiled,’ Joe agreed.

  A stooped old man, wheeling a Zimmer frame in front of him that had an oxygen bottle attached, and a tube going up to a mask covering his nose and mouth appeared with Flora behind him. He wore a blue dressing gown over red and beige striped pyjamas and had worn-out slippers on his feet.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ Flora said to Jerry. ‘George tires easily.’

  George pointed to a group of easy chairs.

  They all sat down.

  ‘This had better be good,’ George said, sliding the mask off his face and wearing it around his neck like a military gorget. ‘Basilela was just about to interpret the messages that were coming through my sacred drum.’

  Joe leaned forward. ‘Really?’

  ‘Load of claptrap. It gets you out of the room though, and we have a bit of a laugh banging our drums and chanting . . . Not that I do much chanting through my oxygen mask. Sixty years of smoking will do this to you, so my advice to you young jailbirds is don’t even start.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice, old man,’ Shakin’ said.

  George took a few gulps of oxygen. ‘So, Emily Hobson – the one person who could get me out of that sacred drum workshop; my bogey case; the monkey on my back. I guess you’re journalists, or something like that. What do you want to know?’

  ‘No, we’re not journalists,’ Jerry said. ‘We’re second-year law students from Kings College. We have to write a paper discussing the legal issues, problems, implications and citing relevant case law should the murderer of Emily Hobson be caught and prosecuted today.’

  George Hill grunted. ‘There’s not much chance of that nineteen years after the event.’

  ‘We’ve been investigating the case,’ Joe said.

  ‘I thought you were law students?’

  ‘Mrs K likes us to check the facts.’

  Jerry smiled. ‘I’m Jerry Kowalski, and these two jailbirds are Joe Larkin and Richard Stevens.’

  ‘Shakin’ for short,’ Shakin’ said.

  ‘Shakin’ Stevens!’ George said. ‘There’s a name I haven’t heard in a good few years. I never did find out what was behind the Green Door.’

  ‘The happy crowd are behind the Green Door,’ Shakin’ said.

  ‘And I’m stuck in here making bongo drums instead of partying with the happy crowd. Look, I don’t want to rush you legal eagles, but your fifteen minutes is trickling away. And when the lovely Flora says fifteen minutes, you can bet she’ll be back here at fourteen minutes thirty seconds with a face like a bag of onions wanting to drag me back to the pleasure dome, so you’d best get to the point.’

  ‘My husband – Ray Kowalski – was a DCI at Hoddesdon.’

  ‘Name rattles a rusty bell somewhere in the dungeons of my brain, but that’s about all.’

  ‘We found a witness.’

  ‘To the murder?’

  ‘Not exactly. Did you know that Emily climbed out of the ground floor toilet window and through two loose posts in the palisade fencing?’

  ‘We heard something like that at the time, but we didn’t pursue it because we felt that how she left the Nurses’ Home wasn’t really important. She’d gone to a club somewhere, and then was raped and murdered on her way back. Do you know the statistics on rape in the UK?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I do. The figures are seared into my brain. There are 85,000 women and 12,000 men raped every year. That’s approximately eleven rapes every hour. Only fifteen percent of victims report the crime, and ninety percent know the rapist prior to the offence. Of those rapes that are reported, only five point seven percent of the perpetrators are convicted.’

  ‘Those figures are terrible,’ Joe said.

  ‘Yes they are, but in a sense the figures also explain why this case was never solved. Rape is notoriously difficult to prove, especially if there’s no bodily fluids, DNA or witnesses as there weren’t in this case.’

  ‘What about the DNA scrapings belonging to Helen Veldkamp that were found under Emily’s fingernails?’

  ‘Well, seeing as Helen Veldkamp had been dead for three weeks prior to Emily Hobson being murdered, we felt that it had no bearing on the investigation. Emily was a nurse; the p
ost-mortems of both victims were carried out in the same mortuary; there were doctors and numerous other medical people who came into contact with both bodies . . . In the end, we decided that the DNA had been transferred by accident and moved on.’

  Jerry pulled a face. ‘Accidental transfer was discounted.’

  ‘And we ignored that conclusion. We concluded instead that the medics would say that to cover up their mistake.’

  ‘My husband thinks that the DNA link between Emily and Helen Veldkamp is the key to solving this murder.’

  ‘He’s free to think what he likes. As the report makes clear, we examined every explanation for that DNA being under the victim’s fingernails, but came up with nothing. In the end, we opted for the obvious answer.’

  ‘Okay. Well, as I said, we found a witness.’

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘The janitor.’

  ‘The albino? He was off-duty that night.’

  ‘Yes he was, but he didn’t go home. He was in a compound at the back of the Nurses’ Home where they kept the flammables.’

  ‘What the hell was he doing there?’

  ‘Making pottery. He’d made himself a little pottery workshop in a room at the back of the store.’

  ‘Pottery my arse. I always thought there was something odd about him. It’s my guess he was a peeping tom, that’s why he never came forward at the time.’

  ‘He never came forward because he probably would have lost his job for using hospital resources without authorisation, but also because of the way he looked and people’s attitudes towards him.’

  ‘So, what’s he saying that he saw?’

  ‘Emily Hobson climbing out of the ground floor toilet window and being helped by a doctor from the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery on Cleveland Street called Morton Gillespie. He was meant to be on-call as well, but had swapped it to see Emily, and he was cheating on his long-term girlfriend Lisa Porterfield.’