Seeking the Dead

by Kate Ellis

  ‘Doesn’t look the type. Besides, I had a bit of a look round while I was waiting for the kettle to boil.’ As soon as they stopped at traffic lights Joe put his hand in his pocket and drew out a leaflet. ‘This was on top of the drawers in the garage.’

  ‘You searched the garage?’

  ‘It’s just off the kitchen and the door was open. I wouldn’t call it searching exactly. More being a bit nosey. Killing time.’

  ‘You need a warrant for that sort of thing.’ Emily tried to sound annoyed but didn’t quite manage it. Then, a few seconds later, she grinned. ‘I thought with you having trained to be a priest you’d be whiter than white.’

  Joe’s eyes met hers and he smiled back. ‘I only lasted a year. And the training at the seminary never covered the use of search warrants.’

  ‘So what did you find then?’

  He handed her the leaflet and she studied it. ‘The House of Terrors. Doesn’t seem his sort of thing. Think he had hidden depths?’

  ‘Nothing would surprise me,’ Joe whispered as he switched on the ignition.

  Chapter Four

  Carmel Hennessy had stared at Joe Plantagenet’s mobile number, scribbled in pencil on her pad, trying to summon the courage to call him. But she kept making excuses. He’d be busy. He wouldn’t want to be bothered with her petty problems when he had high-profile murders to investigate. But in the end she decided that she’d call him later – after work maybe. She had received a threat after all … or rather Janna Pyke had.

  She wondered whether to mention the message on her answering machine to Peta Thewlis. But Peta would only advise her to go to the police. Dealing with tenants’ personal problems was hardly in a landlady’s job description.

  Carmel hadn’t slept well the previous night. Apart from the threatening message to Janna, she hadn’t been able to get the ghost girl out of her mind. The girl who had starved to death, trapped in with the corpses of her family. Carmel had stared out of her bedroom window, imagining what it would have been like, and she’d found herself shivering with cold even though the night was warm. She was sure she’d heard a muffled sob. Or perhaps it had been her imagination. The dead, she kept telling herself, had gone into the next world. She had always believed that since she had been old enough to work things out for herself. The girl had gone to a better place – just like her dad, Kevin, had done. She wasn’t there any more. But if that was the case, why did she feel so afraid whenever she walked into that bedroom? And why had she chosen to spend an uncomfortable night on the sofa?

  At least the ghost tour man hadn’t appeared on the green again, as far as she knew. But then since she had seen him in the flesh, as it were, she found that he didn’t frighten her any more. He was just some actor playing a part. Part of Eborby’s tourist industry. Rather like herself.

  It was almost lunchtime when her scheduled session – examining the contents of a Viking rubbish heap with a group of children – drew to a close. And when she returned to the office she found Maddy Owen poring over some plans.

  Maddy looked up and pushed her unruly auburn curls behind her ears. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You look tired. Didn’t you get your early night?’

  ‘I kept thinking about that girl.’

  Maddy thought for a few seconds then shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t take much notice if I were you. The first ghost tour I went on they told us about the blue lady of Swinegate and the headless soldier on the city walls … and the Roman woman who threw her baby in the river. They make them up as they go along.’

  Carmel didn’t look convinced. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about it happening in my bedroom. I slept on the sofa last night.’

  Maddy suddenly looked concerned. ‘Even if the place is haunted – and I very much doubt whether it is – what harm can a sad little ghost do to you? Try and forget it, eh,’ she added with what she considered to be an encouraging smile.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Carmel said. ‘When I got back last night I had a strange phone call. Well, not a phone call. Someone left a message on my answerphone when I was out. It was for the girl who had the flat before me. Janna. It said she couldn’t escape from them … and it was the final warning.’

  ‘Sounds like debt collectors to me. That’s probably why she did a moonlight flit.’

  ‘They said they’d find her and when they do, she’s dead. They threatened to kill her.’

  Maddy’s smile suddenly disappeared. This sounded serious. ‘Look, Carmel, I think you should tell the police. Call that Joe you mentioned. Please. What have you got to lose?’

  Carmel felt her cheeks turning red. ‘He’ll have enough on his plate with these murders and …’

  ‘He won’t mind. Wasn’t he a colleague of your father’s?’

  ‘More than a colleague. He was with Dad when he died. He was shot too but he was luckier than Dad.’

  Maddy fell silent for a moment, lost for words. Then she spoke again. ‘If someone’s threatening this Janna, the police should know about it.’ She paused. ‘What’s Joe like?’

  Carmel felt herself blushing. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen him … but I remember he wasn’t a typical policeman.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  Carmel thought for a moment. ‘He must be in his early thirties now. He’d only just started in the police when … when it happened.’

  ‘So why isn’t he a typical policeman?’

  Carmel shrugged. ‘Don’t know really. He started to train to be a priest when he left university but he didn’t stick it. I remember he spent a lot of time with mum when … She said he was a good listener.’

  ‘So call him. And don’t delete that message. He’ll need to hear it.’

  ‘OK,’ said Carmel. She had been tempted to delete the message right away, but some instinct had told her not to. ‘Should I mention it to Peta?’ she asked.

  But Maddy shook her head. ‘I never mention anything to Peta if I can avoid it,’ she whispered with a grin.

  *

  ‘Sarge.’

  Sunny Porter made his way over to Jamilla Dal’s desk. She had just put the telephone down and she looked excited. And it was rare for Jamilla to show much emotion. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think I’ve found a connection between the Resurrection Man’s victims. I’ve been speaking to Carla Yates’s friends again in case there was something we’d missed. Anyway, one of them said that a few years ago she had a job with a building society and I wondered whether it was the same one Harold Uckley worked for. I called the Eborby Permanent and they confirmed that Carla had worked for them from May 1993 to January 1995.’

  ‘That’s not long.’

  ‘I know, but it’s a connection between her and Uckley. And that man in the car crash, John Wendal – he worked there too, didn’t he?’

  Before Sunny could say anything, one of the young DCs rushed over to him with a report from Traffic.

  A smile spread across Sunny Porter’s face. A car had been found abandoned a mile from the scene of John Wendal’s crash and, according to Traffic, it had been sitting there since the night of the accident. They’d tried to contact the registered owner but had no luck. It had to belong to the mystery woman, surely. It was a little powder-blue Fiat – definitely a woman’s car. And it had apparently run out of petrol. Typical.

  He gave Jamilla a brief homily on the dizziness of women drivers but she thought it best to stay silent in case she said something she’d regret. Sunny was an incorrigible male chauvinist. One of the old school. And she despaired of him ever mending his ways, no matter how many equal opportunities initiatives the powers-that-be threw at him.

  It was Sunny who reported the find to the new DCI when she returned from interviewing John Wendal’s wife. Taking the credit as usual. Jamilla seethed for a few moments at the injustice of it all and returned to her paperwork. But a couple of minutes later she looked up and saw DI Plantagenet making for her desk.

  ‘Sunny�
��s told me about this abandoned car. It’s registered to a Mrs Gloria Simpson. Address in Pickby.’

  ‘It might not be the woman in the crash,’ said Jamilla, introducing a note of caution. Her male colleagues seemed to be leaping to conclusions she considered to be rather wild. ‘Has the car been reported stolen?’

  Joe Plantagenet looked a little hurt. ‘Do you think that wasn’t the first thing I checked?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jamilla muttered. She liked Joe Plantagenet. He didn’t patronise her … not like some. ‘Did Sunny tell you I’d discovered that Carla Yates worked at the Eborby Permanent Building Society for eighteen months in the 1990s? I know it’s a long time ago but …’

  ‘It’s a link between the two victims.’

  ‘Do you want me to go over to Gloria Simpson’s address and see what I can find out?’

  ‘No. The DCI’s quite keen to go herself. I’ll go with her. Wendal works in the same place as Harold Uckley and now we know Carla Yates used to work there too …’

  ‘You think there’s a connection between the crash and the Resurrection Man?’

  Joe smiled. Jamilla was so young and so keen. Or perhaps he was just becoming cynical. Too cautious by half. ‘I’m not saying that there’s a definite connection,’ he said. ‘It’s a line of enquiry, that’s all.’ But he was lying. Emily Thwaite was sure there was a connection. But Joe was reserving judgement.

  Joe and Emily drove to Gloria Simpson’s address in the district of Pickby, a cluster of Victorian streets, just outside the city walls. Many of the larger houses had been converted into B and Bs but Gloria Simpson’s red-brick terraced home bore no tell-tale sign outside. It was a well-kept house which, judging from the two doorbells, was divided into two flats. It had a small front garden, gravelled over to save on the spadework, the original sash windows sparkled and the paint was fresh. Somehow it wasn’t the kind of house Joe expected the blonde woman in the hospital to inhabit and he had an awful feeling they were barking up completely the wrong tree.

  But it was worth checking out. And after satisfying themselves that nobody was at home, their first port of call was the neighbours.

  The house on the right was a B and B and the woman who answered the door greeted them by asking how long they wanted to stay because she had two Canadian ladies booked in on Saturday. When they finally got a word in edgeways, their hostess claimed she knew nothing about the woman next door. In the summer she was always too busy with her guests to bother with the comings and goings of the neighbours.

  But they had more luck with the house on the other side. This belonged to an elderly couple – the kind of couple who have grown to resemble each other over many years of marriage – and, fortunately, they seemed to act as unofficial caretakers for the landlord, keeping a spare set of keys in case of emergencies. And, as the police had come calling, this constituted an emergency in their eyes.

  They were keen to emphasise that they didn’t know the tenants personally. A lecturer from the university had the flat upstairs and a woman lived downstairs. Something told Joe that the lecturer met with the couple’s collective approval whereas the woman didn’t. It was nothing definite, just a look in the eyes and a slight change in the tone of their voices. There was something about Gloria Simpson that they didn’t quite approve of. And he wanted to find out what that something was before they proceeded any further.

  Emily had let him do all the talking while she watched and he wondered whether she had had the same feeling. When she spoke, he knew that she had.

  ‘Tell me about Gloria Simpson,’ she said sweetly. ‘What kind of a person is she?’

  The elderly couple exchanged a glance.

  ‘Well, she’s not really our sort of person. We don’t have much to do with her. I mean, people like to live their own lives, don’t they?’

  That was all the information they were able to extract. Gloria Simpson lived her own life. And the couple hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. In fact her cat had come round to their back door demanding food with characteristic feline imperiousness. It was disgraceful that she hadn’t fed the creature … or, if she had gone away, that she hadn’t made some arrangements for its care.

  Joe’s eyes met Emily’s. This was their woman all right. The cat’s plight confirmed it. Emily asked for the key sweetly, saying there was no need for them to bother themselves. They’d have a quick look around the flat just to make sure everything was all right and return the key later. This seemed to satisfy the neighbours who made it quite clear that they were on the side of law and order.

  As they scurried up Gloria Simpson’s garden path, Emily tossed the keys in the air playfully.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling about this one, Joe,’ she announced before opening the door.

  The hallway was as neat as the house’s exterior. There were tasteful watercolours on the pale walls and decorative encaustic tiles on the floor – original features. A flight of stairs ahead of them led up to the top flat while a stripped wooden door to their right formed the entrance to flat number one: Gloria Simpson’s flat. Emily tried a couple of Yale keys until she found the one that turned smoothly in the lock.

  ‘Here goes,’ she said as she pushed the door open.

  As the room was north facing, the interior seemed dim after the bright sunshine outside. The two police officers stepped inside and shut the door behind them. The first thing Joe noticed was a large photograph hanging over the mantelpiece: a studio portrait of a blonde woman, made up to the nines and airbrushed into an unnatural state of youthful glamour. She must have paid a tidy sum for the makeover and the portrait. And she must, Joe thought, have a fair-sized streak of vanity to display her likeness so prominently. It was the woman from the car crash all right. And now Joe wanted to know what made Gloria Simpson tick.

  ‘A couple of years ago my sister-in-law had one of those pictures done for her birthday,’ said Emily, staring at the portrait. ‘Cost an arm and a leg. Complete waste of money if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, Gloria obviously didn’t think so. Wonder what her game is.’

  ‘You think she’s playing a game?’

  Joe didn’t answer. He didn’t really know what to think. ‘We’d better have a look around.’

  ‘In the hope that we find some love letters from John Wendal?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Joe looked at Emily. ‘And if the car’s registered to a Mrs Simpson, where’s Mr Simpson?’

  ‘Miles away, I should think. She looks the divorcée type to me,’ was the DCI’s snap judgement.

  Joe’s instinct told him she was probably right. The airbrushed portrait spoke of self-absorption. There might not have been room in her affections for a Mr Simpson.

  They began to look around the flat, uncomfortably aware that they had no search warrant. This was to be a perfunctory search, just to confirm the car crash woman’s identity and glean any clues they could about her life. The living room was neat, the cream carpet and the feminine nick-nacks testifying to the lack of a male presence. The bedroom was predictably frilly and the kitchen was show-home tidy.

  ‘You can tell she hasn’t got kids,’ said Emily with a dismissive snort. ‘Doesn’t really look lived in, does it?’

  ‘Wonder where she works,’ Joe mused.

  ‘We’d better have a look through the drawers. I won’t tell if you won’t, eh. And I suppose she is a missing person … sort of,’ she added with a knowing grin.

  ‘Sort of,’ Joe agreed, looking at the bookcase to his right. ‘It looks as if she’s interested in the occult and tarot.’

  ‘Each to his own,’ said Emily, rolling her eyes to heaven. ‘You take the bedroom and I’ll take the living room.’

  ‘What’s in there?’ Joe pointed to a closed door off the corridor.

  ‘Cupboard? Second bedroom?’

  Joe strode over to the door, turned the handle and pushed. The door didn’t budge. ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘I wonder why,’ said Emily before trying all the keys on the
ring in the lock.

  When none of them fitted, she fished in her handbag and drew out a bent piece of wire. ‘Don’t look if you’re squeamish.’

  Joe watched, fascinated, as Emily Thwaite jiggled the wire in the lock until it turned with a satisfying click.

  ‘Just one of my many talents,’ she grinned.

  ‘Do you do safe breaking as well?’

  ‘Naturally.’ She pushed open the door. The room was dark and she flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.

  Joe went in first, pausing on the threshold as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. He could make out a chink of light where the thick curtains didn’t quite meet so he tiptoed across the room and put his hands up to draw them apart. The curtains were velvet, soft and sensual against his skin like the fur of a living creature and, as he flung them open, the room filled with light.

  Emily gave a squeak of surprise before swearing softly under her breath. She turned to Joe. ‘Well, you used to be a priest. You’re supposed to be the expert on this sort of thing. What does it mean? What’s it all about?’

  Joe looked around the small room which had probably been used as a dining room or study in less sensational times. The walls were blood red and the curtains dark-blue velvet. A white pentagram stood out on the black-painted floorboards and the walls were adorned with pictures of hideous horned devils, creatures of darkness and nightmares. A goat’s skull stood on a makeshift altar and an inverted brass cross hung on the far wall above it. On the front of the altar was a symbol, a triangle in a circle topped by a half circle, like a pair of stylised horns.

  ‘I reckon our Gloria’s been in touch with her dark side,’ Joe said. He shuddered suddenly, as though someone had laid an icy hand on his heart.

  ‘You can say that again. I think we should have a word with her, don’t you?’

  Joe had to agree. But somehow he dreaded seeing Gloria Simpson again.

  In the end it turned had out to be a good day for Carmel Hennessy. The school kids had seemed fairly interested in the undemanding tasks she had given them to do. And even Peta Thewlis had defrosted a little and made vague noises of approval, which was more than she had come to expect.