The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

  Rewley noted that her abuse of children earlier had always been of young boys, she had never touched a really young child like Alana. And in any case, had undergone therapy and claimed to have changed.

  The case was never closed because Margaret Drue disappeared. Her past life was documented, but she herself was gone. Then it had looked as though she had turned up, dead, together, horrible as it was, with the head of the dead child. As soon as he had heard this story, he knew there was something wrong with it. He had a way of picking stories out of the air, and it was no surprise to him when he got the hint that the female body was not that of Margaret Drue.

  On that night, two nights ago, the canteen was not crowded but one officer he knew slightly, Jim Towers, was drinking orange juice at the next table. For a moment, they ignored each other, then Rewley moved over to sit at the same table as Towers. ‘All right?’

  ‘Fine. I’ve had too much of my own company.’ He knew he was getting too fond of Dolly Barstow, and taking too much from her; he was trying to keep away, he had nothing to give her and she deserved so much more.

  He knew George Rewley was a friend of Dolly and a fellow worker in SRADIC, he also knew Rewley had lost his wife. That makes two of us, he had thought, as he saw Rewley across the room, Perhaps it was that very thought that had drawn Rewley to him. No, must be psychic.

  ‘I’ve been seeing a bit of your boss lately,’ he said. ‘She was there when the body and the head were found in Flanders Street.’

  ‘I had heard.’

  ‘And her name came up too. One of those coincidences.’ Towers gave a half smile. ‘Threw her a bit, I think, but she’s a resilient lady.’

  Rewley thought he knew that too. He was taking a profound interest in the case because he had been confronted with a stranger who wanted to tell him what he knew. He had been sitting by himself in the park by the river, something he did a lot lately, not exactly brooding but something very close to it; it was dusk, not much light where he was, when the man came up to him. Even if it had been broad daylight, he could not have seen much of him because he was wearing one of those baseball-type caps with the visor right down over his face, on which dark spectacles rested. His body was clothed in a loose black raincoat like a plastic sack.

  ‘Sir?’

  Rewley had looked up. All right, he thought, you don’t want to be recognized.

  ‘I want to talk … I know what you are …’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  The figure, man he had to be, kept his voice low. ‘It’s about a body.’ Then he stopped, and looked around nervously. A bunch of teenagers had just surged into the park so that the surveillance lights came on. A car passed on the road. This was, after all, a public park, green and leafy but not private. ‘ I might need something for it.’

  ‘Money, you mean?’

  ‘Might do.’

  ‘I’ll have to get permission for that. And I will need a good reason.’

  He got no answer; the figure slid away.

  That was their first contact. He said nothing about it to anyone, there was nothing to say.

  On the next day, he had a telephone call. ‘ Sir?’ This seemed to be the chap’s code signal. ‘Sir, if you can get me some money I can tell you about some human remains.’

  ‘Oh come on. I want more than that.’

  ‘Flanders Street … part of that business.’

  Rewley was quiet, but before he could speak, the voice spoke again: ‘I’ll get in touch. I’ll come to the park. I know you go there. Just keep looking for me there.’

  Do you? Rewley thought. So you have been watching me? His informer was a local man, he could tell by the accent, in spite of a poor attempt to disguise it by dropping it.

  ‘I’ll see you, I’ll see you,’ said the voice urgently. ‘Get me that money.’

  This conversation Rewley had reported to Charmian Daniels, and got her cautious approval for the contact. He had not given her all the details of the meeting, which had its horror side, but had sealed them up inside himself to let out later.

  He was thinking about this conversation as he sipped his coffee and listened with half an ear to Jim Towers. He knew he was on the point of opening the mental sack in which he had stored the details about his informer.

  ‘We thought we had the identity sewn up,’ Towers was saying. ‘But now there’s a suggestion that it’s not Drue after all … a big surprise all round.’

  Rewley was interested now. ‘ Must be.’ There was an odd, ironic note in Towers’ voice, as if there was a joke and he knew it.

  ‘Might be a good thing as far as I am concerned,’ he was saying. ‘Because your boss has been measuring me up for handcuffs.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Towers laughed. ‘Nothing, forget it. Heads you win, tails I lose.’ Then he said, ‘Perhaps I did get too close in, you shouldn’t do that, should you? But somehow I couldn’t help it. One thing I will say is that the girl Emily is a mess, and she knows more than she is saying.’

  At that point Rewley knew nothing much about Emily except her name. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Forget it, sorry I spoke. I lose my head sometimes. Forget that too. I’ve had heads on my mind ever since the child died years ago.’ And it had probably ruined his marriage, this obsession, and might do the same for his career. About his life, he did not think. ‘I shouldn’t get so close,’ said Towers again.

  ‘It happens,’ said Rewley. Inside he was saying: we all have obsessions and omissions (although oddly enough this did not make him warm any more to Jim Towers). I didn’t tell all the truth to myself about that first meeting with the so called informer … I sat on it. Now it was coming out.

  What did I see? A strange figure, and I don’t think I would have been much helped by seeing the face. What I could see was coated in thick white plaster so that the features were smoothed out and all expression eliminated.

  I remember leaning towards him – or her – thinking that this was not a funny figure, rather one to haunt the children, and not do much for adults either, something out of a nightmare. Couldn’t be a woman, could it? Too thickset. Or was it padding?

  As I leaned forward, the figure leaned back, didn’t want me to come too close, but I was close enough to notice a strange smell without being able to pin it down. Not a dirty, human smell, as one might have expected, but something else again. Have to think about that, I had thought.

  ‘Why me? Why have you come to me?’

  No answer to that one. The strange figure was shaking, the whole figure on the move, head, shoulders, thorax, legs. Only arms and hands, held rigid, were not moving. All informers were odd, never normal, and this one was no exception. All driven by greed, and sometimes hate, and occasionally fear as well, but a shaking one was unusual in Rewley’s experience.

  Once again, he remembered the smell. It had been a strange scene and viewed in retrospect, now he was letting himself think about it, not a good one. Money for news of more human remains, that seemed to be what was on offer.

  What the informer wanted to tell him related to the deaths in the school, but he was not going to say so to Jim Towers. In the first place, this was his informer, and secondly, there was a certain reserve he felt towards the Inspector. No pooling of information here, until Charmian Daniels said so. If ever. She wasn’t a lady for sharing.

  Towers had finished his drink and stood up. Rewley realized he must have been quiet for some time. What the hell? The two men had parted on polite but not over-friendly terms. Rewley already knew of and did not quite approve of Dolly’s relationship with Towers.

  All this was in Rewley’s mind that night while Towers slept in Dolly Barstow’s bed, and H. G. Horns slumbered peacefully, and the circle of Emily’s friends also slept, and Rewley walked, hoping to find his informer. He recalled Towers’ last remark: ‘ That girl Emily is a mess, and she knows something she is not telling.’

  One more look at the park where no one except a pair of lovers in the
bushes and a drunk asleep on the park bench was to be found. The park never closed, the railings were low, and long since broken down here and there. You stepped over them and walked on. He looked in the drunk’s face, in case it was his informer, but not so. Then, without conscious thought, he found himself walking towards Emily’s lodgings. He knew the address although he had never been there, but the house was in central Windsor and not far for him to walk.

  There was one thing about insomnia, he thought, it did give you long working hours. He closed his mind to thoughts of Kate and their child and let his feet do the thinking. They seemed to be thinking about Emily Bailey.

  It was late, but not too late, just before midnight, there were lights on in the house. Everyone knew students never went to bed. He rang the doorbell. After a pause it was opened by a tall young man in jeans and sweater but with bare feet. You are not my informer, he said to himself, he was mentally examining everyone he came into contact with and crossing them off the list. You don’t smell right. This chap smelt of expensive toilet water.

  ‘Emily Bailey?’

  The door seemed to be closing in his face. He put a foot forward.

  ‘Look, who are you?’

  Rewley showed his warrant card. He held it out silently.

  ‘Look, Emily is not here. You lot have been here already tonight, you know she’s not here and she hasn’t left a message since then. No calls, no Emily. Got that?’

  ‘Can I see her room?’ Why did he ask that? He had no real interest in Emily’s room but he had prescience.

  ‘It’s locked and the big chap took the key. You ask him. I don’t know if he thought I would wash away the blood, but he needn’t have bothered.’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Yes, hers or someone else’s, take your pick.’

  … That was what I smelt on the informer, blood, hot fresh blood.

  ‘But I’ll tell you something for nothing: I think she’s gone for good. Dead.’

  Rewley stared at the young man. ‘Any reason?’

  ‘This came.’ He reached behind him and thrust something at Rewley.

  ‘It’s a wreath.’

  ‘Right. Ten for observation. You have it. I’ve already had an old chap here, Dr Yeldon he said, asking to see her. She’s not here, I said, and whatever she’s got, you can’t cure her.’

  Rewley looked at it, the white blossoms were faded, the leaves shrunken. ‘The flowers are dead.’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘How long have you had them?’

  ‘I know what you are getting at. They came tonight and they came dead. Work that one out. You have ’em. I don’t want them in the house. They are bad luck. Take them to your boss.’

  The door closed.

  Rewley walked away carrying the flowers like a lost mourner at a long ago funeral feast. They would have to go to Charmian. Then she could do what she thought fit with them. As he walked along, his fingers moved around the surface. There was a card. Beneath a street lamp, he read it: ‘With love from Eve, Pete, and family.’

  He passed the park once again, from which even the drunk and the lovers seemed to have disappeared. He collected his car to drive home. Some vandal had attacked the door but failed to get in, that was life.

  At home there was a message on his answerphone. That voice, strange yet compelling because it was so full of fear. ‘Look: I’m telling you this for free.’ A pause, so that Rewley wondered if the caller had gone away, then the voice again.

  ‘I recognized her. I suddenly saw her come out, she popped out of her disguise. There are other remains and might be more. Let me have the money. The price is a hundred pounds and I want it now, I’m scared shitty.’

  Six o’clock tomorrow morning in the park. With the money.’ The voice was changing all the time, breaking, shifting.

  Rewley groaned, suddenly exhausted. He’d be there.

  Early in the morning he shaved and drank some coffee, then he drove to the cash machine in the bank opposite the Castle and prayed it would spill out the money he wanted.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘So what happened?’ said Charmian. They were in her office, she was sitting at her desk and Rewley was walking about the room, in a way she found worrying but was prepared to put up with because she understood his need to release pent-up energy. She sighed but allowed it, following him with her eyes. I’ll be dizzy if he doesn’t stop soon, she thought.

  ‘I waited. And I waited. And then I went on waiting.’ He took a brisk turn up and down the room; he was tired but he could not rest.

  ‘Sit down and have some coffee while we think it over.’ She poured the coffee, looked at his face, and added cream and sugar; her judgement was that Rewley needed all the nourishment he could get. Cholesterol levels need not come into it.

  ‘Let’s go over it, what we know and don’t know. As of yesterday, we know that Emily has gone, and blood was left in her room.’

  ‘No news about her?’

  ‘Nothing so far; as far as I know she’s not back, but it’s early. HG will let me know when he knows anything.’ He might not be quick about it, but he was too professional (and she was too important) to play about.

  ‘And the woman found in the school with the head in her lap is not Margaret Drue?’

  ‘No, we don’t know who she is yet, but it will come out. I don’t believe it will be difficult.’ She had a candidate in mind and she supposed that HG had also, although the motive for this particular murder was not apparent at the moment. Nor why the body had been left in the cupboard, whenever that had happened, and been gifted with the child’s head.

  But the old axiom remained: once the identity of the victim had been established, then the motive would become clear. It was interesting about the head, but painful too, it hardly bore thinking about.

  ‘What about the head? No doubt there?’ He was drinking his coffee, feeling stronger with every mouthful. It was good to be back working again, good to be with Charmian, she had always been a first-class boss. As well as being Kate’s godmother – no, don’t go down that avenue. Turn it off.

  ‘Oh yes, no doubt there, it is the child Alana. Her face is recognizable. The puzzle is the condition of the head. It is too good in one way and ghastly in another.’

  Rewley sat quiet.

  ‘So that’s what we know, and the Investigating Team will have more to tell us, I have no doubt … Now about your informer, he, or she, was frightened?’

  ‘Yes, sex of the informant was a puzzle, the voice was assumed and sounded young with high tones at some times and at others was very deep. So take your pick.’

  ‘What is your pick?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘But the speaker was frightened?’

  ‘Yes, that was real, I believed in the fear. It came out clearly with that sentence about someone in disguise and the real person “popping out”. I think the speaker meant he, I’ll call him he, meant that he saw something of this person’s true character.’

  ‘Did you get the impression that the person who popped out was a woman or a man?’

  Rewley thought about it. ‘I ran the tape back several times, it was a bit blurred but I am almost sure that at one point the speaker said “she”.’

  Charmian drank some more coffee and sat in silence. ‘So, are we guessing that this mysterious entity who “popped out” – graphic phrase – is Margaret Drue? I think we can guess so.’

  The telephone broke into their conversation. ‘Yes, speaking … Morning, HG. What?’ She listened. ‘Thank you, that is very interesting … Anything about the girl? Well, it is early yet … she may turn up. I would like to come round for a talk … I may have something to add … Right. See you.’

  She turned to Rewley. ‘The head of the child was only recently placed with the body; the pathologist says that from all the signs it had been kept in a refrigerator. Frozen, and then …’ she hesitated. ‘After that, it may have been boiled.’

  ‘Someone must have a
strange home life.’

  ‘You’d think that person would stand out so you could say: Must be him … or her. But it’s not like that, is it, as you and I know. Even the most perverted of murderers can have the most ordinary of faces.’

  ‘It suggests something, though, doesn’t it? That the person who kept the head either lives alone, or has somewhere private to keep the head.’

  ‘Or has a willing accomplice.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting that the head has been moved from refrigerator to refrigerator over the years?’

  ‘No, I’m not suggesting that, and you mustn’t either,’ said Charmian sharply. ‘I don’t like what this case is doing to you. I never wanted you near it.’

  ‘I was dragged into it, pulled, not jumped.’ Rewley spoke with force. ‘An informer came to me; I didn’t even connect what he or she had to say with the Bailey school. And now I think: why to me? I think we will know a lot when we find out the answer to that one.’

  ‘All the same, I’d rather you were out of it. There’s a lot of emotion floating around in this case.’ More than she could understand, although she was touched by it herself. She had wasted her own time, going around asking questions about Margaret Drue when now it turned out that Drue was not the dead body.

  ‘This may surprise you, but I am not being emotional about this, I am just trying to do my job on a problem that landed on me. I didn’t go looking for it, it happened. So no emotion; curiosity, yes, a desire to clear a mystery up, yes, that too, and that’s all.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that.’ She too had been dragged into it, if it came to that, because her name was actually on the dead body.

  ‘You’re mixing me up with Jim Towers.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve noticed him then?’

  ‘Spoken to him, and yes, a lot of emotion there and the wrong sort … he’s engaged, immersed in the case.’

  ‘He’s being taken off the case. HG has noticed it too.’ Just give him more time to be with Dolly Barstow, she thought without pleasure. But she trusted Dolly; in the end, Dolly would be sensible.