The Edge: A Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mystery (Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mysteries)

by Clare Curzon

  Apart from its computer, the surface of the other matching desk was bare. The unlocked drawers held the expected clutter of pens, paper clips, stapler, rubber bands and stationery. There was even a small leather case criss-crossed with numerous old scratches and a peeling label written in ink that read ‘F Hoad, IV B, New House’. It contained a geometry set: a unique memento of schooldays. There was nothing to show that he’d still used it.

  The far wall between the desks held two steel filing cabinets, both locked, and more office machinery including a shredder and a fax machine. The rear wall was lined with shelves of books. For later examination, Z promised herself.

  Back through the dining room, into kitchen and scullery, where Anna showed interest only in the contents of the dishwasher which she opened with a tea towel covering her hand. It was loaded with clean crockery and cutlery. A red light at the wall socket indicated it was still switched on from previous use.

  ‘Newspaper accounts said that the housekeeper was away. That means the last meal would possibly have been prepared, and certainly cleared away, by the family. Which one of them, I wonder.’

  ‘We could call the fingerprints team back.’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll think about that.’

  Out again into the hall. ‘Gun Room,’ Anna read off a rustic notice on the door overhung by the stairs’ landing.

  ‘It would have been once,’ Z offered, ‘but following present rulings all firearms were properly locked away in the special steel cabinet.’

  ‘Discreetly hidden in the dining room,’ Anna agreed. ‘I wonder how many people knew about the secret interior of the glass cabinet. This sometime gun room appears to be a glory hole, full of golf umbrellas, old slippers, gum boots and garden furniture for the summer. Judging by the scarred floor, I’d say it was the most usual rear entrance and exit. The outer door has a mortice lock as well as the Yale. I wonder how often they forgot to use it.’

  ‘It was found locked when the first patrol men arrived. The whole house was secure. CID had to break in.’

  ‘And the key?’ Anna pointed to a cup-hook up by the lintel. ‘Wouldn’t that be the best place to leave it?’ It was empty now.

  In the cloakroom and shower room they found the U-bends had been removed by the forensic examiners. ‘No blood traces found,’ Z said.

  ‘So the killer, or killers, went elsewhere to clean up.’

  ‘There was a tremendous storm that night. Lashings of rain. It would have destroyed a lot of clues, tyre tracks included.’

  ‘And covered up all sounds of departure.’

  ‘Just the banging door of the old fodder barn.’

  ‘Yes. I read about that. Too melodramatic for the press to miss out on.’

  They passed more rapidly through the unlocked morning room and the drawing-room with its glassed-in conservatory extension. In the TV/games room at the rear, with its table tennis equipment and snooker table, Anna eyed the floor-to-ceiling cupboards. ‘Plenty of space here for an intruder to hide and bide his time after Freddie was alerted. Perhaps the killer waited here while he went for his gun.’

  Upstairs they walked through the bedrooms. Only two were locked, in the south-east corridor. When Z opened the first they met the stale, sickly scent of blood still trapped in there, although all the girls’ bedding had been removed.

  ‘Was any semen found?’ Anna asked stiffly.

  ‘No. It must all have been over in a flash. They were heavily asleep.’

  Anna turned away, briefly looked into the parents’ room, then walked the half circle of the gallery above the hall and went to inspect the two unused guest rooms off the opposite corridor.

  ‘Daniel’s room is across the way. It’s just as he left it,’ Z told her. ‘He seems to have packed a kitbag or something similar. See the marks on the bed?’

  They looked into his bathroom where Anna inspected the contents of the waste bin. Returning to the passage, Anna rattled the handle of a solid-panelled door at its end. ‘What’s through here?’

  ‘Stairs to the housekeeper’s quarters.’

  ‘Have they been examined?’

  ‘Yes, but I haven’t been up there myself.’

  ‘So let’s look before she returns. If, indeed, she ever cares to do so.’

  As they mounted the narrow stairs to the next floor Z explained how she had interviewed Alma Pavitt who had not questioned taking up her job again. ‘She’s staying at the local pub until she’s given permission to move back in.’

  ‘Not an oversensitive person then? Or perhaps lacking imagination?’

  ‘Maybe both. She appeared barely affected by the time I got her back, but different people have different ways of reacting in shock.’

  Z found herself on the point of confiding her impression of the woman, but stopped herself in time. Anna had fitted so well into her familiarity with senior women CID officers that she’d almost been accepting her as a colleague. Now she reminded herself that the ex-Squadron Leader was an outsider, a member of the victims’ family, grandmother to young Angela whose blood still hung sourly on the air.

  The top-floor rooms hadn’t the lofty ceilings of those on the lower floors, but they were of reasonable size. In their early days several servants would have shared sleeping quarters, men at one side of the house and women at the other. The floorboards were bare and the old furniture had been removed except in one of these distempered rooms which held a collection of domestic junk and travel cases.

  Two rooms only were decorated to modern standards, the housekeeper’s bedroom with en suite bath, and her sitting room dominated by a wide-screen television and video player. There was audio equipment but no DVDs, and only a few cassettes, mostly of smooch music.

  The long laundry room was a Victorian museum. A black-painted iron stove at one end supported a robust wire cage in which several heavy pressing-irons hung ready for application to a heated griddle. A broad table some eight feet long was still thickly padded and covered by a yellowed cotton sheet drawn tight and tied at the corners with white tapes. For almost the whole length of the room, which ran from front to back of the house, wooden racks were suspended from pulleys on the ceiling, for the drying and airing of damp linen.

  ‘Either in days past the weather was more often inclement, or the gentry were easily offended by the public sight of bloomers and stays blowing in the wind,’ Anna surmised, gazing up. Her voice was lighter, as though the break from sterner matters had come as welcome relief.

  At the rear extremity was a closed door. Z opened it to disclose a well-equipped darkroom. The developing trays were empty, as was the drying line with its row of clothes pegs. Labels on the bottles of chemicals in the cupboard bore recent dates; so one of the family had been keen on photography.

  ‘Have you seen enough?’ Z asked. Anna was no youngster and apparently she’d been hard at it from the early hours. Time now, surely, to take a rest.

  ‘Enough for the moment,’ Anna allowed. She had opened a door in the outer side wall to view the iron staircase of a fire escape. ‘I think we’ve earned some lunch. Come and join me in my galley. You’ll find I’m not the worst of cooks.’

  DCI Salmon had summoned Bertie Fallon up from Bristol where, in addition to being Hoad’s sole other director, he performed the duty of General Production Manager at the glass furnace foundry. News of the carnage at Fordham Manor had been broken to him by the scanty national television news available at weekends. Relaxing on Sunday with a few fingers of single malt following an abortive visit to his golf club where the fairways were still unfit for play after Friday night’s country-wide storm, he’d been shocked out of his recliner. Incredulous and almost distraught, he had immediately contacted Thames Valley police and had the story confirmed.

  ‘Look, what can I do?’ he demanded. ‘Freddie was the business head, the money man. Our functions were quite separate. Do I try to carry on, or what? Sorry to harp on about the works, but they won’t run themselves. Poor old Freddie. My God, I still can’t be
lieve it. Who’d do a thing like that to him? And the whole family wiped out, you say? Must have been a madman.

  ‘Eh, what? No, Chief Inspector, I can’t just drop everything and come running. There’s a consignment of steel due in at the docks tomorrow. God knows what kind of cock-up they’d make of it if I wasn’t there to oversee.

  ‘No, the delivery can’t be put off. There’d be storage charges and Finance’d go mad at the extra expense. We’re a small operation and run a tight ship, as Freddie always said …

  ‘Freddie …poor old sod; I just can’t believe he’s gone.’

  Voices on the other end of the line had been switched. ‘Mr Fallon, this is Superintendent Yeadings. I do understand what a terrible shock this has been for you, a colleague and friend to Mr Hoad. But we desperately need all information we can turn up on his background, both personal and professional. Who is in a better position to help us than you? The first few days of any murder investigation are of vital importance, so please sleep on our urgent request overnight. If you still find yourself unable to come here tomorrow I will send a CID officer to interview you at your home.’

  Fallon complied. It didn’t suit him to have police disturbing his domestic arrangements. He rang half an hour later to announce he’d made alternative arrangements for tomorrow’s delivery and was already on his way.

  Z, returning from her caravan lunch (garlic button mushrooms followed by a shared cheese and chives omelette; coffee, but no dessert), found the visitor in conference with Salmon and the Boss. Yeadings broke off to introduce her.

  ‘Miss Zyczynski is one of my CID sergeants concentrating on this case. How did you get on at the Manor, Z?’

  ‘Mrs Hoad’s mother is taking it well, sir. She asks permission to employ professional cleaners, if SOCO have finished. I told her about the specialist team we sometimes use. She appeared unfazed by what she saw, but we didn’t get as far as the stables. I felt the house was enough for the present. She intends catching up on lost sleep this afternoon.’

  ‘Good. I want you to keep in touch with her.’

  ‘It’s too soon to dismantle the scene,’ Salmon objected.

  ‘We shan’t until everything’s covered. We can discuss that later. I’ll let you know, Z. Thank you. That’s all.’

  She left and went in search of Beaumont who’d almost certainly be stealing a march on her.

  ‘Mr Fallon, just a few personal details, if you don’t mind,’ Yeadings continued.

  ‘Bertie. Everyone calls me Bertie, Superintendent.’

  ‘For the record, that would be Bertram?’

  Fallon’s fair skin flushed. ‘Norbert, actually. My mum’s French.’

  He gave his age as forty-nine but looked considerably younger, being round-faced with a boyish manner. Yeadings could recall meeting only one man who’d had such ingenuous, wide-open blue eyes, and he’d been a mass rapist.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Mr Hoad?’ he asked.

  ‘In person, that’d be a good fortnight back. More, maybe. But I briefly saw him Friday on my video-phone. We keep in touch that way and I fax him everything that comes in on paper: invoices, bills, receipts, correspondence. That’s to say, my secretary does. Putting pen to paper bugs me, actually. Or finger to keyboard, as it is nowadays. We aren’t a large workforce. Thirty-one in all, but we get through some business. Our name’s getting well known. Just had a big order from Murano, Venice.’

  There was unmistakable pride in his voice.

  ‘And how long have you been with the firm?’

  ‘Twelve years now. But I’ve known Freddie a lot longer. We met at university. He was a mature student doing business studies and I was a first year engineer. We met at Dramsoc. He had a talent for producing and I was into stagecraft. We went our own ways later and chanced on each other at a charity do his wife was organising in London. My sister dragged me there and I’m glad now she did. Freddie and I slunk off into the bar and made up for lost time. I let out that I wasn’t happy working for a big conglomerate in Swindon and he suggested I should take a trip to Bristol and give my opinion on the firm he’d inherited from his dad. I had some ideas on technical improvements and we joined up. Been there ever since.’

  The mention of Swindon brought Salmon out of his slump. ‘Do you know a Miss or Mrs Alma Pavitt?’ he demanded.

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘Or a Mrs Bellinger who also lives in Swindon?’

  ‘Never heard of her. Anyway I didn’t live in the town then. We were some eight miles outside.’

  “‘We” being?’ Yeadings enquired, taking over the interview again.

  ‘My mum and me. My dad scarpered when I was a kid, and my two sisters are married. One’s in Canada and the other’s in Cornwall.’

  Forty-nine years old and still living with his mother; brought up in a family of women. How different did that make him? Yeadings wondered. ‘How did you get on with the late Mrs Hoad?’ he pressed.

  ‘Jennifer? She scared the shit out of me. So bloody perfect. Could do everything better than anyone else. Couldn’t imagine her slopping around in curlers like a normal woman.’

  ‘Uncomfortable to be with?’

  ‘Unless she set out to charm you. She tried with me at first, but quickly decided I wasn’t worth the effort. Pity, because Freddie and I really hit it off, for all we’re so different. Were different. God, I can’t believe he’s been done in. I don’t suppose the poor sod ever hurt anyone in his whole life.’

  At 4.15 p.m. Z returned to the caravan to take Anna Plumley for formal identification of the bodies. She found her sitting on the lowered steps outside, smoking a small brown cigar.

  ‘Detestable habit,’ she growled, throwing the remains of it down and scrunching it under one well-shod heel. ‘I began it as an affectation, purely to annoy. By the time it had served that purpose I found I needed it in moments of stress. Better than hitting the bottle, I suppose. I’d hate to become an alcoholic and be obliged to give up drinking good Burgundy.’

  Her tone was wry, but she looked more relaxed. It was a pleasant face, Z realised; almost pretty in a plumply determined way.

  ‘Time to go?’

  ‘If you feel ready.’

  ‘I’ll never be that.’

  As she rose, her mobile tinkled out the first few notes of the ‘Flight of the Valkyrie’. ‘Plum dear,’ she said, opening it, ‘how’re the fish rising? You did? Well done!’

  She listened, smiling indulgently, then grimaced. ‘No, it’s much as we expected here. Daniel hasn’t put in an appearance yet. A lot of waiting about, but we’re just off to the mortuary. I’ll ring you tonight, lovey. Mind that new speed camera on the hill. One of us must keep a clean licence. Yes, I do. Goodbye.

  ‘My husband,’ she explained, and catching a flicker of surprise on Z’s face, ‘My third. The first didn’t put me completely off marriage. Sadly, the second died.’

  She made shooing gestures. ‘Come on then, if we’re going. Let’s get this over and done with.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Nan cautioned him, placing the hot plate before him at the breakfast table.

  Yeadings glanced up from the newspaper folded beside his coffee cup. ‘Quite sure, thanks.’

  He’d been only twelve days on the Atkins diet and already lost five pounds. So it worked. But Nan, ex-Sister at the old Westminster Hospital, clung to traditional wisdom, only agreeing to supply his dietary demands on condition that their GP monitored Mike’s blood pressure and cholesterol levels frequently.

  But so far, so good. All her earlier efforts to get his weight reduced had petered out, sabotaged at work, she suspected, by doughnuts fed him by his sergeants, like buns through zoo bars to bears. As high carbs, they were now on the strictly forbidden list.

  Yeadings abandoned the Telegraph’s version of the carnage at Fordham Manor and turned with relief to the plate of tongue, beef and a small wedge of mature Cheddar. He poured cream in his coffee and let it swirl artist
ically. Nan couldn’t begrudge him his slight sigh of pleasure.

  But not contentment. How could it be, in the circumstances? Experienced as he was, he was letting this latest case get to him. Vicious murders did happen in leafy Bucks, but not wholesale slaughter, and there were two innocent children involved, one not even belonging to the family almost wiped out.

  He had said nothing on returning that early Saturday morning from the crime scene. Simply slumped back on the bed for a further two hours and stomped off again, silent and dour. Nan had known better than to question him. Her first information on the tragedy came from the television news.

  ‘Will you be going out there now?’ she ventured to ask.

  ‘It’s up to the team. I’m SIO, deskbound.’

  She imagined him padding like a caged lion between office and Incident Room, frustrated at the slowness of info coming in. Not satisfied with the old adage ‘they also serve …’, but impatient to use whatever came to hand, to collate and shape it into some sense – if any sense could come from such diabolical matter – and force some action that would point to a likely suspect.

  ‘But I might go and check up on Mrs Plumley,’ he conceded.

  Nan nodded. He’d told her last night about her arrival: the grandmother who’d served in the RAF. ‘Tell her if she needs anything to give me a ring.’

  ‘Best not get involved, love. I’ve put Z on to nannying her. Not that she’s the sort to need it. A real old warhorse. Nice with it, though.’

  He finished his coffee and patted his mouth with his napkin, comfortably replete. That was the best thing about this new diet. You felt you’d really had a meal. There was something about the abandoned carbohydrates that had always given him a regrettable appetite for more. Now that he’d discovered you could actually eat to lose weight he merely had to resist the carbs’ initial lure.