Soft Summer Blood

by Peter Helton

  ‘Or the owner,’ said McLusky.

  ‘Well, that settles it: you’ll have to stay until the morning.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary.’ McLusky produced his warrant card. ‘I’ll be in touch with my colleagues in Wadebridge first thing in the morning.’

  The officer agreed, took their details and told them that they had been very lucky. Moments later McLusky manoeuvred his car past the fire engines and on to the road and, not feeling lucky, began the long drive back to Bristol with Laura pretending to be asleep beside him in the passenger seat.

  NINE

  In the margins of her page-a-day diary on her office desk DI Kat Fairfield drew the figure of a tiny naked woman, seated on a chair. The minute tremor that too many cappuccinos from her own little espresso machine had given her translated to quite a tremble at the end of her biro. She was drawing from memory while thinking of yesterday’s life drawing class. Last night she had thought that despite the lopsided, not always well-proportioned drawings she ended up with, her drawing class was one of the few things she looked forward to each week. She already dreaded the summer break which now loomed close. A knock on the door made her quickly close her diary.

  It was DS Sorbie. ‘Prints came back from the scooter. The idiots who picked the thing up didn’t think for one minute we might want the prints off it, even though they knew it was stolen, so their paws were all over it.’

  ‘I despair,’ Fairfield said matter-of-factly.

  ‘But they got them eliminated and what’s left is a lot of Lamberti’s own prints and a lot of prints by one other person, possibly our thief’s.’

  ‘Or a friend’s or a mechanic’s. Right, go and take Marcus Catlin’s prints. No, wait, I’ll come with you, I want to see his face.’

  In truth, Fairfield wanted to get out of the office, away from the endless bureaucratic tedium, and breathe some turpentine-laced art college air.

  Spike Island studios were busy, perhaps due to the imminent end-of-term assessments. They made themselves known, then went in search of Catlin. Today every studio appeared to have its full complement of painters. ‘It’s probably like last-minute essays – last-minute paintings,’ Sorbie scoffed. They found Catlin at work in front of a new painting, in the same pose as Fairfield had seen him before, e-cigarette in one hand, loaded brush in the other, staring intently at the few dark marks already on the canvas.

  When he noticed the two officers close in on him, he turned to face them, arms by his side, legs slightly parted; like a gunslinger facing the sheriffs, Fairfield thought. ‘Cue tumbleweed,’ she murmured.

  ‘What?’ asked Catlin, whose hearing was excellent.

  ‘Is there somewhere private we could go?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then perhaps your colleagues could leave us for a bit?’ Sorbie said loudly.

  ‘They’re busy,’ said Catlin, addressing himself to Fairfield. ‘And I have nothing to hide. Do you have news about Fulvia?’

  ‘Not for you,’ said Sorbie. ‘We’ve come to take your fingerprints.’

  Catlin lobbed his brush on to the painting table and pressed his hand deep into the pool of paint on his palette. He advanced on Sorbie. ‘Where d’you wannit?’

  ‘Very funny, sir. Would you mind cleaning and drying your hands please?’

  Catlin complied, slowly and thoroughly cleaning both his hands. He frowned at Sorbie’s fingerprint device. ‘What, no ink pads and stuff?’

  ‘We went digital ages ago,’ Sorbie bragged. ‘Perhaps you should try it. Less messy. This will tell us instantly if you’re worth arresting or not.’ One by one, Sorbie scanned all ten of Catlin’s fingers. The match was almost instant. ‘Your fingerprints are all over Fulvia’s scooter. Can you explain that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Catlin. ‘I used to sit on it while having a smoke, when she’d park it here’ – he hooked a thumb – ‘outside the studios.’

  Sorbie knew that this was entirely plausible since, according to his MobileID device, only four of Catlin’s fingerprints matched, while eighteen further prints found on the scooter were by a person unknown.

  Catlin picked up his brush again. ‘That it?’

  Sorbie was about to tell him that it wasn’t when Carol West, the fine arts tutor, appeared in the door. ‘Ah, I’m glad I caught you. Do you think I might have a word?’ She retreated into the corridor.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ Fairfield told Catlin. ‘We’re not finished.’

  In the corridor West beckoned them away from the door until they were out of earshot. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said quietly. ‘I was just thinking of calling you. Another of our students has gone missing – Bethany Hall.’

  ‘Hang on, I’ve met her,’ said Fairfield. ‘Wears really bright clothes, does sculpture.’

  West looked surprised. ‘Yes, that’s her. She hasn’t been seen for days and she’s not answering her mobile. She’s missed an important tutorial and her essay deadline.’

  ‘She shares a house with Marcus Catlin.’

  ‘Yes. I only realized that this morning when I was about to write to her about her absences.’

  ‘Have you contacted the parents?’ asked Sorbie. ‘Perhaps she went home early.’

  West gave him a puzzled look. ‘This isn’t a primary school. Our students are over eighteen. In fact, contacting the parents without the student’s permission would be quite improper. Of course, you probably wouldn’t worry about that.’

  ‘Too right.’

  Fairfield shot Sorbie an angry look. ‘Did anything out of the ordinary happen? Do you have any explanation why she might not come to college?’

  ‘None at all. She’s one of our keenest students. Quite serious. Her work is good; it’s engaged and well thought-out. She goes in for large, ambitious installations, all done from recycled materials. In her first year she made a piece out of tyres for the harbour festival; it was featured in the press.’

  ‘What, the submarine made from old tyres? That was her?’

  ‘That was Bethany. She’s very inventive. All her things are so big we can’t accommodate them at the college at all. She’s always going around on her pink bicycle, scouring the city for empty spaces to place her work. And now I wonder if something has happened to her out there.’

  ‘But you were going to call when you realized she lived at the same address as Mr Catlin. Why is that?’

  West glanced towards the studio where Catlin was working. ‘It’s just … I don’t know. I’m not accusing him of anything, you understand, but that’s the second young woman who’s disappeared, and Marcus was close to both of them, in one way or another.’

  ‘Nothing other than that?’

  West shook her head. ‘Will you go and look for her?’

  ‘Yes, I think I should. Leave it with us. But’ – she handed West her card – ‘you’ll call me the moment you have news of Ms Hall. Or Ms Lamberti, of course.’

  West took the card and stood awkwardly for a moment until she realized that it was she, not the two officers, who was leaving, then she walked off briskly, holding Fairfield’s business card by one corner as though it was something unsavoury she had picked up off the floor.

  Fairfield waited until she had turned out of the corridor. ‘We’ll have another chat with our Mr Catlin, but this time somewhere private. We’ll talk to him in the car.’

  ‘Why not bring him in? Put a bit of pressure on the arrogant little shit?’

  ‘On what grounds, Jack? We’ve absolutely nothing on him and no crime has been committed.’

  ‘Wanna bet?’

  ‘No, I don’t. If we pull him, it’ll be round the college and in the papers in no time, and we’re supposed to be discreet. The super wouldn’t be impressed.’

  ‘Is he ever?’

  ‘Not often, no,’ Fairfield sighed.

  Catlin was exasperated. ‘This is police harassment. How am I supposed to get any work done if you two pop in here unannounced every few second
s?’

  Sorbie loved police harassment. In his book – and it was a very large book – anyone complaining about harassment had definitely something to hide. ‘But you do want to be helpful in any way you can, Mr Catlin, surely.’

  The car was parked some distance from the college, and by the time Catlin found himself in the back of Sorbie’s Golf with the child lock engaged, he was visibly angry. ‘What did you have to drag me all the way out here for?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fairfield said, ‘it’s not ideal, I admit. Of course, we can do it more comfortably at the station if you prefer.’ Catlin subsided and looked out of the window into the traffic. ‘Do you have anything to add to what you told us about the whereabouts of Ms Lamberti? Any idea how her scooter ended up a few streets away from your house?’

  ‘I’ve no idea who pinched the scooter. As for your first question, don’t you think I’d have told you if I had thought of anything?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Bethany Hall, a woman you share a house with, goes missing and you completely fail to mention it, so I must assume that there could be other things you failed to mention. I could be tempted to arrest you and question you under caution. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘It sort of means that if under caution you fail to mention something pertinent to this inquiry or you lie to us, we might consider that obstructing a police investigation. And that’s a criminal offence. But you are happy to assist us in any way – isn’t that right?’

  Catlin suddenly looked and sounded much younger. ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case, why did you fail to mention that someone close to you, someone you shared a house with, had disappeared?’

  ‘Bethany? Bethany wasn’t close to me. She lived in the same house, that’s all. We hardly ever talked.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘What would we talk about? I’m a painter. She takes junk and makes it look like some object or other. She made a sub out of tyres. And a car out of books. It’s quite interesting but it has nothing to do with art; it’s just novelty value, it’s just entertainment.’

  ‘OK, you didn’t like her work. So if she disappears, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You don’t know Bethany. Some of her stuff is so huge she needs a cathedral to show it in. She was forever running around on her bike looking for empty warehouses and buildings about to be demolished so she could stick her stuff in it and take pictures of it.’

  ‘She’s been gone for days. She has missed deadlines, we were told. But you weren’t worried.’

  ‘I didn’t know she’d missed any deadlines; all I knew she wasn’t there to complain about the fridge door standing open or someone using all the milk.’

  ‘You’re not worried about her, then,’ said Sorbie. ‘Or is it because you know exactly where Bethany is?’

  ‘You don’t know her. If Bethany thought there was an empty warehouse somewhere in Norfolk, she’d be cycling there to check it out. Look, I don’t have anything to do with Fulvia disappearing or with Bethany. I don’t know what you think I am – sodding Bluebeard? I’m trying to get over Fulvia dumping me and you’re definitely not helping. Now, do you think I could get back to my painting?’

  Sorbie let him out of the car and they watched him march down the road to the Spike Island studios. ‘We got him a bit rattled,’ Sorbie said with satisfaction in his voice.

  ‘Yes, but that’s about all. Two girls go missing. What do they have in common?’

  ‘They’re both art students and both know Marcus Catlin. One of them intimately.’

  ‘Yes, one thing they have in common is Marcus Catlin. But the same could be said of thirty or forty other young women in that building. The other thing they have in common is art.’

  ‘I don’t see how that’ll help us.’

  ‘Neither do I, but it’s the only other thing that seems to connect them. Fulvia is rich, Bethany is working class. One rides a trendy scooter, the other a boneshaker. Fulvia paints, Bethany does sculpture.’

  ‘Of sorts.’

  ‘Of sorts. She’s constantly on the lookout for derelict houses and empty warehouses. You know what that means?’

  Sorbie started the car. ‘Yes, ma’am. We’re looking for her in derelict houses and empty bloody warehouses.’

  Leonidas Poulimenos gently set down the tray on the long table and began dividing the frothy coffee between the two tiny cups. He had brewed it on a little camping stove, identical to the one in his kitchen, on top of a plan chest at the back of the studio. ‘I can’t be bothered to walk all the way back to the house just to make coffee,’ he had told McLusky. Now he sat down while exhaling noisily. He reached for a half-smoked cigar in the nearest ashtray but it had gone out and he did not relight it. He laid his elbows on the table and looked across at McLusky. ‘You thought I’d be more upset.’

  ‘You’d have every right to be.’

  ‘I was a little surprised myself. When the fire service called to tell me about it, I almost felt relieved. Not immediately – I was too puzzled by it – but after a few hours, after thinking it through. Rosslyn Crag, the past, Port Isaac – it all seemed to be such a significant part of me at one time, but now …’ He looked away towards the bright windows. ‘We never went back there afterwards, not together, not us painters. Elaine and I went occasionally; only very rarely did I go by myself. I would try to paint, but the house and the bay below always distracted me. It felt like a museum in a way; it was as though that day – the day Ben died – had been preserved inside it somehow. It was forever that same day in June as soon as you opened the door.’

  McLusky let a pause develop to make sure Poulimenos had finished before he asked, ‘Did you employ a cleaner or caretaker to look after the house?’

  ‘Yes, why? Local woman – comes in once a month to blitz the house, more often when someone is actually staying. Why are you asking?’

  ‘There was no dust anywhere and I had wondered.’

  ‘Dust, yes. I should have shut it up and let it gather dust. No, I should have sold the house. Bought something else. Somewhere far away from Port Isaac.’ His eyes snapped back to the here and now and he gave McLusky a benevolent, almost amused look. ‘It was insured. It’s gone and I’m glad neither you nor your lady was hurt.’

  ‘You are a very generous man …’

  ‘I can afford to be.’

  ‘… but you shouldn’t have sent me the painting. I will have to return it.’

  ‘I was hoping you might change your mind. I realized you could not easily have walked out of here with a painting under your arm, but sending it to you was more discreet.’

  ‘Is Ben the swimmer in the painting?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘So where’s the boat?’

  ‘I was on the boat. What I remember most, what I see in my mind, is Ben in the water, swimming out to sea.’

  ‘I spoke to Michael Tigur.’

  ‘The skipper’s son? He was very young when it happened.’

  ‘Not too young to remember that all of you were standing together in the stern when Ben Kahn went into the water.’

  Poulimenos appeared unconcerned. ‘Is that how he remembers it?’

  ‘It is. Whereas you told me you were at the front of the boat by the wheelhouse. Which is why you did not see how he got to be in the water.’

  Poulimenos shrugged. ‘I only said that to make sure you knew I didn’t drown him. He jumped. High spirits. Too much wine. You shouldn’t swim if you’ve had too much to drink.’

  ‘Michael Tigur heard one of you shout “my daughter”. Twice.’

  Poulimenos shook his head. ‘I think someone may have shouted “my God, no” or something like that. He jumped in, like a complete ass, from right above the turning propeller. A stupid thing to do.’ He picked up his cup. ‘Your coffee is getting cold, Inspector.’

  ‘Who would want to burn down your holiday home?’

  ‘The Cornwall Liberation Front?’

  ‘Whoe
ver firebombed your house knew someone was in. Let me repeat what I said earlier: whether the arson attack is connected to the killing of your friends or not, I think your life might be in danger. I wish you’d reconsider our offer of police protection.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Inspector. OK, OK,’ he added when he saw McLusky did not like his light-hearted tone, ‘I’ll be careful to whom I open the door.’

  Despite the fact that DSI Denkhaus was still in London at a two-day conference and that therefore the inevitable rocket from upstairs was still a day away, McLusky slunk towards his office like a man who at any moment expects to hear his name called in stentorian tones. But it was an unusually upbeat DS Austin who intercepted him in the corridor. ‘Ballistics have come up with a possible match for the gun.’

  McLusky, standing outside his office with one hand on the door handle, against his better judgement held his breath and waited motionless for the next sentence.

  ‘They think they can match the projectiles to a gun that was used in three incidents over the last eighteen months. One in Knowle West, one in St Pauls, one in Easton.’

  McLusky exhaled. It was something but not the breakthrough he had hoped for. He entered his office and sat down behind his messy desk. ‘No names?’

  Austin looked down at the piece of paper he was holding. ‘None. The first one, in Easton, we know nothing about. People heard one shot fired in the night and the bullet was only discovered days later. It had gone through a wheelie bin and stuck in a fence post. The one in St Pauls was a robbery, of a corner shop, March last year.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember it.’

  ‘One shot fired when the shop owner refused to open the till.’

  ‘Stupid man.’

  ‘It was just a warning shot. Description was male Caucasian, six foot, blue eyes, masked, Polish accent. The gun was described as a “revolver that looked old”. Then nearly six months later the same gun was used in Knowle West. That time it seems to have been some kind of argument over money. One shot fired at a cyclist. Bullet missed and hit a stationary car. This time the man was described as a skinny teenager wearing a hoodie; according to the witness statement, he had a Bristol accent.’