Footsteps in the Blood

by Jennie Melville

He put in his hand and dragged out a great heavy cape made of some oiled and shiny fabric.

  Army issue, he decided knowledgeably. Keep out anything, that would, from water to poison gas.

  Army issue, last great war or possibly Korea. It looked a mite old-fashioned, he didn’t think the troops wore anything exactly like it now. All dressed in white, weren’t they, against flash burns? Or was that the last video he had seen?

  ‘Surplus army issue,’ he said aloud, as he shook the garment out. It was quite serviceable, with no holes and not torn anywhere. His eyes traced some dark stains on it. Great areas of stain.

  Blood.

  ‘That’s why it’s been dumped,’ he muttered. ‘ Someone’s had a nasty accident in it and doesn’t fancy it any more. But it’s useable.’

  Accordingly, he rolled it up, not without difficulty, then he stowed it away in his container in a private place of his own. It would wash.

  He was not planning to wash it himself, of course. He handed it over to his wife when he got home.

  ‘Got stained with something.’ Better not mention blood, women were funny about blood. ‘Give it a sluice down.’

  Busy with serving the meal, she barely glanced at it. ‘ Put it in the shed outside if it’s mucky, I’ll do it later.’

  She had too much to do the next day because of a wedding in the family to bother with washing anything, but the day after that she remembered it and went out to take a look.

  In the daylight, spread out in the garden, she did not like what she saw. ‘That’s blood. I’m not going to touch that, he can do it himself.’ So she returned the bloody cape to the garden shed.

  In the evening, she said: ‘ You do the washing, Jim. I don’t fancy it.’ Easily, not a man to stir himself unduly, he agreed to do it when he had time. No hurry there.

  Several days passed. One day, two days, three days. The family wedding was comfortably over.

  She was more of a newspaper reader than her husband. She saved up the papers and read them as a batch on Sundays. She said you got more of a story that way.

  She read the gossip columns first, then her horoscope (which was sometimes in arrears, as it were, so she could check if it was right), then the criminal cases. She liked a good murder. The sports and financial pages never.

  She finished her reading for the week, then made a pot of tea. You thought better over a cup of tea.

  This time it took three cups before she came to a decision. The cape had better be delivered to the police, and if Jim wouldn’t take it, then she would do so herself.

  It might be quite a nice trip, she liked a policeman. It was the uniform. She’d always been a girl for a uniform. Not tomorrow though, she was having a perm tomorrow.

  She’d had a boyfriend who was a PC when she was sixteen, he’d done well and risen high. She didn’t think she’d bother Jim; she would walk into the nearest police station and ask for Tony Father. Her hair would be looking nice too.

  Charmian also had an appointment to keep. Not with the hairdresser, that would come afterwards, but with a doctor and a hospital. Only an overnight stay, she had been informed, and she should be out the next day.

  The word ‘out’ evoked unpleasant thoughts of prison.

  But you’re safe in hospital, she told herself. No one can get at you there. Except those licensed to do so, of course. But the thought itself told her how frightened she was.

  She had informed Sergeant Vander of her London address: 20A Moneypenny Road, Knightsbridge, Humphrey’s flat, but she had the uneasy feeling that he knew already and also who owned the lease.

  ‘Don’t expect to find me there much,’ she warned him. ‘But there is an answering machine.’

  ‘I’ll keep you up to date with things, ma’am. I’ll be seeing Elman today.’

  He had nothing much to report, but what he knew, he told her. Cheasey was being searched for Jake Henley. He had certainly been there, been seen in The Grey Man, but at the moment he was not to be found.

  ‘But a man like that can’t hide for long. He’ll burst out, it’s his nature. And then we’ll have him.’

  One small new piece of information he did have, however. It was a negative fact: Jake Henley had once owned several pit bull terriers, he was suspected of organising dog fights. But these animals hat been put down after police enquiries. He had been seen with a greyhound in the last year, but it had not seen around recently. In spite of being a dog owner, he did not have the reputation of being a dog-lover.

  Sergeant Vander was also a man who did not like animals, and he felt that this might be one point of contact with Jake Henley.

  ‘Have you got any idea what he might have against you, ma’am?’

  ‘No,’ said Charmian. ‘ Except that I once gave evidence against a porn ring he was involved in.’ She had not forgotten the photograph of herself in Nella Fisher’s room in Cheasey, which must have some relevance somewhere. Unless Nella Fisher had liked her face. ‘For him that would be enough. If it is him.’

  ‘Elman seems convinced. I’m open-minded myself.’ He remembered something. ‘Oh, ma’am. You’ll be glad to know that Jack Cooper has returned home. His wife reported him back. He’s down at the station being interviewed, so Elman tells me. But it looks as though he’s in the clear about the attack last night.’

  ‘Thank you.’ So Annie had done the right thing. She always did in the end, wise, bold, loyal Annie. But there was no denying that, as a family, the Coopers made mettlesome friends. Yet you didn’t stop loving people because they were trouble.

  She hadn’t told Annie where she was, nor Dolly, nor Kate. For a few days they would have to wonder.

  She made some necessary arrangements with her London office, spent an uneasy day, and then disappeared into the hospital.

  She felt a little triumph that she had kept this fact from Sergeant Vander. You had to have a few secrets.

  No one knew where she was.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tuesday, October 24, to Wednesday, October 25

  And yet Dolly Barstow got through to her. Charmian was sitting by her bed in the small, pleasant room allotted to her in the hospital when the telephone rang beside her.

  ‘Charmian, Dolly here.’

  ‘How did you know where I was?’

  ‘George Rewley told me. He seemed to know. Why didn’t you let me know too? How are you?’

  ‘I didn’t tell George and I’d like to know how he found out. I wanted it kept quiet. And I’m all right. This is just a check-up. I’m in for a new job, as I expect you know, and a clean bill of health is looked for.’ This was the line she had decided to take if she had to talk about the affair.

  Dolly accepted this statement without argument but not without a small inner query.

  ‘And I shall be out tomorrow. So stop worrying.’

  ‘That isn’t why I rang. Listen, they’ve picked up Jake Henley. A contact of Elman’s turned him in. He’s in custody.’

  One up for orthodox police work then.

  ‘You’ll find lots of messages on your answering machine, but I thought you’d be glad to know tonight.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Of course, he’s not admitting anything. But he wouldn’t.’ Dolly sounded confident.

  Dolly knew where she was, George Rewley knew where she was. Probably Sergeant Vander had found out. It was, after all, his job to know, and he had put Dolly on to tell her the news about Henley.

  ‘And look after yourself.’

  Charmian was in the private wing of an old-established London teaching hospital. Her room had a certain austerity to it but she had been provided with a charming nurse who looked in with a menu so that she could choose what to eat.

  ‘Can’t guarantee you’ll get it, mind you,’ she said cheerfully. ‘They do have lapses, but I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Fish, I think, in a cheese sauce. Sounds good,’ said Charmian, not feeling hungry.

  Charmian ate a modest supper, but refused the sleeping tablet off
ered to ensure her a good night’s rest before tomorrow’s activity. She had plenty to think about; sleep did not seem to matter.

  She was glad Jake Henley was back in custody. He was a dangerous man, given to irrational and wanton violence. If he had a pain inside him, he saw to it that the world shared it.

  It might be that he had killed three times in fits of irritation … his victims had got in his way or represented a threat of some sort.

  ‘We aren’t looking for a motive,’ Father had said. ‘With him you don’t need one.’

  Lying back in the hard hospital bed, she studied the shadows on the ceiling (you were never absolutely in the dark in this place) and put together a profile of the killer.

  The killer was quick and neat in the execution of his task. He did not draw back because of a bit of blood, perhaps he even liked it. The murders gave no evidence of any great preplanning so they may have been spur-of-the-moment jobs. He must have known Foggerty because she let him into the house. Almost certainly knew Nella Fisher too. What was the relationship there? Worth thinking about. His third victim he had not known but he had blocked the way to his most hated object: Charmian Daniels.

  She summed him up: a man who used violence easily, who left few clues, not as if careful planning had gone into his crimes but as if it was his very nature to be anonymous; he slid through her life unnoticed. Or wearing a mask.

  A man who lived on his own, and did not have a regular job. Or was self-employed.

  As she tried fitting Jake Henley’s face (you could certainly call him self-employed) into this profile, it became one of the shadows on the ceiling as she fell asleep.

  Anonymity, she thought, was not Jake Henley’s style. No one could call him faceless.

  Next day, while she slept under anaesthesia, Jake Henley sat in his cell which he shared with another man whom he despised. He made the position clear and the man was hunched up on his bunk keeping his feet well out of the way.

  Henley had put up with one night inside a police cell in the Alexandria Road station without doing much sleeping.

  His mind went back in a pleased way to his brush with Inspector Elman as he had arrived. He knew Elman of old, and knew that Elman had been glad to haul him in. Had enjoyed doing it a bit roughly. But he’d got his own back. Elman was a dressy man and had paid for it.

  Elman had brushed the marks of Jake’s hands off his suede jacket in some anger. There were fingerprints on the pale skin, ‘If you’ve damaged this I’ll sue you for it. I paid three hundred for it.’

  ‘You were done. That’s a bit of old horse, not proper suede. I’ve got a better one than that I feed the pigs in. I’ll give it to you; I feel generous.’

  ‘I don’t want anything from you, Henley, but I’m going to see you get something. I promise, and with luck it’ll be a nice long stretch. A lifer, I wouldn’t wonder. Say more than one, a triple stretch to keep you banged up till your balls drop off.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to talk to me like that. Where’s my solicitor?’

  Elman shrugged. ‘It’s a bit late to get him out tonight. He’s not at home.’

  ‘He’s got an answerphone.’

  ‘He’s not answering his answerphone.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t get a message to him tonight if he was. Don’t tell me, I know your tricks.’

  ‘No tricks.’

  ‘That scraggy cow, she’s behind this, isn’t she?’

  Elman had said nothing.

  ‘I hear she’s coming here, in your patch. A boss figure, eh? You’ll have to pull your forelock to her, won’t you?’

  ‘You know more than I do.’

  ‘I’ve got my sources of information. You tell me, and I can tell you more.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘You won’t keep me here, I can tell you that for nothing, I’m clean.’

  ‘Like the lily, I suppose? Lock him up.’ Elman strode away.

  I won that one, thought Henley. And I’ll win the next one. I have a friend here. He thought back with satisfaction to a face he had seen on his way in. The face had aged a bit but the hair was still red. Dyed maybe. The thought of a cop with dyed hair gave him great pleasure.

  In the late afternoon of that day, Charmian had packed her bags, put on her grey suit with the matching cashmere sweater that was a kind of uniform for her at the moment, and paid her bill. She too was clean or so they had told her.

  As she walked out of the hospital, she heard fire alarms ringing. No one seemed to be taking any notice, but suddenly the carpark was full of fire engines.

  She sat in her car thinking about it, then she picked up the telephone and got through to Sergeant Vander.

  ‘I’m in the carpark of the InterCollegiate Hospital in Histon Street, just off the Strand.’ The private wing overlooked the river.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He tried to sound surprised but did not quite manage it.

  ‘As I came out I heard the fire alarm start ringing. All things considered I am wondering if it was anything to do with my stay there.’

  ‘Stay where you are, while I check. I’ll ring back.’

  His tacit admission that he had known of her movements had registered with Charmian.

  In a surprisingly short time, he was ringing back. ‘No, not a crisis. Just smoke from a badly adjusted boiler. It set the alarms going and they always send a fleet of engines to a hospital just in case. Obliged to do it.’

  ‘Thanks for finding out.’

  ‘No problem. All well, ma’am?’

  ‘Everything is absolutely dandy. Thank you.’

  Black mark to you there, Vander, he said to himself, you should have kept your mouth shut.

  She sat where she was for a minute or so more, thinking over the interview with her doctor which had had some prickly moments. One, anyway.

  More than a prickle, she thought, more like a dig with a knife. She still felt sick with the pain of it. Emotional pain can be worse than the physical sort, no anaesthesia there.

  Marian Evans, her doctor, had a sweet face, looked a bit tired, she decided, but after all the woman had been operating for about twelve hours. Her little investigation into Charmian had been a minor episode in the day’s work. She must have had other major operations to perform. But she had had all her attention focused on Charmian.

  ‘I’d like you to stay another night, really.’

  ‘I want to get home.’

  ‘Well, take things quietly for a bit. An anaesthetic is a powerful blow to the brain, however carefully administered.’ She looked down at her notes, shuffling the pages. ‘You will be glad to know that you ought to have no further trouble. We’ve tidied you up.’

  Charmian gave her a wary look. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, at some stage you appear to have had a spontaneous abortion.’

  Not spontaneous, Charmian thought, but carefully arranged. Almost certainly her doctor knew this and was simply being tactful. After all, it had been some time ago, but legal even then.

  ‘It was not quite thorough, a little …’ she hesitated, looking for the right word, ‘a little bundle of tissue remained. Quite …’ She tried to find the right word, ‘quite petrified, of course.’

  Charmian stared at her. ‘Tell me.’

  In her gentle voice, the doctor said: ‘ The pregnancy looks as though it was of two embryos.’

  Twins, in short. One disposed of, one hanging on. Not macerated, not chewed up by the body’s own processes, but staying around. Not growing and developing either, just steadily withering away into a nothing.

  ‘I didn’t know it was possible.’

  ‘It happens sometimes. It was giving you trouble.’ She shook her head. ‘It was causing the bleeding. I dealt with it. You shouldn’t have any more bother now.’ The papers were shuffled gently again, the interview was over, it was time to go. She was an ex-patient. Treated. Cured. Bother eliminated.

  Bother seemed the wrong word for what had gone on. Too trivial. There had been an important event in he
r body in the past of which she had not realised the full significance.

  I am ashamed, she told herself. This feeling inside me is a deep shame. I wasn’t ashamed when I had the abortion, it seemed the right thing to do, but I feel shame now. No, perhaps not shame. Retrospective grief for what might have been.

  What to do now, she asked herself, as she started the car, Go home and get on with life.

  I didn’t check underneath the car before I started it, she thought. But it must be all right, because here I am, moving through the traffic.

  Abstracted. She was in Windsor and driving towards Maid of Honour Row before she remembered that she couldn’t live there now and that she had her stuff in the flat in London.

  She sat in her car for a moment, wondering what to do. Then she drove on to her own house, impelled by a strong need to be there.

  The signs of fire still stood out around the windows and front door. The windows had been boarded up. But the fabric of the house was undamaged. She could live in it. She would live in it.

  Then the front door opened and Kate, followed by George Rewley, came out and walked down the garden path. They were as surprised to find her as she was to come across them.

  ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ said Kate. She opened the car door and stood looking at Charmian.

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Someone has to see about getting the repairs under way. Redecoration too. The upstairs is a bit kippered. I suppose you were insured? And George is the official police presence without which I would not have been allowed in.’ She gave him a friendly smile.

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Kate,’ said Charmian soberly. And looking so much yourself, she thought. The strained, wild air that had marked Kate earlier this season had vanished. She and George seemed at ease with each other.

  ‘And I’m glad to see you too. You look so much better.’

  ‘So you do,’ agreed George.

  And suddenly, it was true. Charmian felt a surge of life and energy. She got out of her car, feeling free and cheerful. The right hormones were moving into action.

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ said Kate.