Falling into Crime

by Penny Grubb

  ‘Ow! What on earth…!’

  A mountainous woman staggered back from her, eyes wide with shock. A man leapt forward. Annie raised her hands instinctively to ward off attack and saw fear light in his face. She’d run into a couple just leaving their flat. The woman was dressed in acres of voluminous flowered cotton that had grabbed Annie shroud-like and knocked her off balance.

  ‘I’m sorry. My fault … wasn’t looking …’ She gabbled out the words, waved her hand in a gesture of apology. The lift? Was that the sound of it stopping or was it just slowing?

  ‘Do you realize …?’ The man puffed himself out maybe to cover the fear he’d shown and set himself in front of Annie to harangue her.

  It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again as she dodged round him and took the stairs in twos.

  Comments followed her up the stairwell. ‘Disgusting … Leave her be … might have a knife …’

  The lift? In an agony of suspense she fought to catch the sound of it. Had it stopped? Was she too late?

  No! Another surge of triumph fought with the fire in her lungs as she leapt up the concrete stairs. It was just slowing now. She’d beaten them.

  Above her was the top landing. She eased herself to the point where the glass wall from the staircase would show her the outline of their legs as they emerged. She would see which direction they took and then creep up and follow. The glass panes in their metal frames were a patchwork of old and new, yellowed and graffiti-sprayed. Perfect cover if she didn’t move.

  A sudden tapping startled her into absolute stillness. Someone stood waiting for the lift to arrive. The steel toecaps of his boots beat an impatient tattoo on the concrete floor. Was he waiting for three men to arrive, or was he an innocent bystander off on some late errand? Annie kept her stare fixed on the impatiently tapping foot, watched it stop as the lift clanked to a halt, saw it anticipate the opening door with a forward step.

  She waited for the feet to step back again to let the lift’s passengers out but they didn’t. They went on in.

  No one got out.

  The doors began to close.

  What! After all that effort! Irrational anger surged through her. They’d stayed in the lift. It was a front, they travelled to the top and down again … hiding their real destination from anyone who watched the dial.

  She was too close to let them get away, and was already scrambling round the corner to spring at the closing lift doors. But too late. They slid shut.

  It was only as she faced the blank metal wall that she realised how stupid a move it had been, but the tide of relief had barely begun to rise, when there was a metallic clunk and the doors slid apart again.

  She stood face to face with a grizzle-haired man whose girth strained a battered blue boiler suit from under which a pair of steel-toecapped boots emerged. He was the lift’s only occupant.

  ‘There you go, love. Just spotted you. Hop aboard.’

  Annie stammered out her thanks and stepped inside, staring into the corners as though they could possibly conceal three large men. Had they followed her out of the lift lower down? No. Impossible. And it hadn’t stopped again until now. It had to be the wrong lift. The contretemps with the couple on the lower landing had disorientated her. She should stay up here on the top floor. She should get out of the lift before it obeyed the man’s command to take them right to the bottom of the tower.

  But she didn’t get out because she knew it wasn’t the wrong lift. The sickliness of the men’s aftershave held in the air. And all the way down Annie was conscious of the sweet tang of the joint they’d smoked on their way up.

  Chapter 13

  Annie blinked her eyes open and lay motionless bathed in the clean white light of early morning. The curtainless window, undersized and high on the wall, let in the dawn that flowed up the Humber with the morning tide.

  Pat had been in bed when she’d returned in small hours. She’d stood and listened to the snores from the master bedroom and considered waking her boss to tell her what happened.

  They vanished into thin air … I was that close …

  Drama queen …

  Pat wouldn’t say that. Pat would say, You got in the lift with them! After all I’ve said to you. After what happened to me!

  Her desperate need for sleep had been overridden only by a greater need to wash the filth out of her hair, which she’d done before tumbling into bed.

  She’d only had a few hours but she’d slept deeply and felt refreshed. Not only that, but during the night, her subconscious had chased away last night’s demons and put together a theory about the vanishing trio. It would rest at the back of her mind while she swapped cases. Later, she would take it out and dust it off; see if it still held solid.

  Her early start had the low sun blazing bright in her face as she drove into Milesthorpe heading for the crescent where she parked outside Tremlow’s house. Yesterday’s visit would be fresh in his mind.

  She walked round to the back of the house, pausing to look at the tiny square of lawn, frayed at the edges, and the borders of weed-dappled soil. It was easy to picture Tremlow out here in his fussy way keeping order in his small plot, though he’d been letting things slide lately. The lower half of the garden rambled wild, a path of sorts forced down one side. A footpath edged the bottom of these gardens so there would be access from down there, a shortcut from somewhere; it was the way the colonel had arrived that night.

  She looked in through the kitchen window as she raised her hand to knock at the door. The sun’s glare created a sharp darklight divide in the small room. Tremlow sat at the table, hands cradling a mug, face immobile. He must have seen her but gave no sign, so she rapped her knuckles on the wood of the door.

  No answer.

  Gingerly she eased open the door and took a step inside. ‘Mr Tremlow, may I come in?’

  ‘I suppose you will, whatever I say.’ His tone was surly.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you again, Mr Tremlow, but I need a bit more information.’

  ‘What? What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like you to take me through the events of that evening just so I can get things straight in my head. There are a few details I’m not clear on.’

  ‘Why should I? What right have you to ask me?’

  Annie kept her voice even. ‘Did you know Terry Martin, Mr Tremlow?’

  ‘I’d seen him about. We’d all seen him hanging about asking questions.’

  ‘What sort of questions did he ask you, Mr Tremlow?’

  Tremlow swung round to throw her a furious expression. ‘That’s none of your business. You’ve no right asking me any questions. You’re not the police.’

  ‘No, but Terry Martin’s mother is very upset. I just want to help her.’

  ‘What’s that to do with me?’

  ‘I’m trying to find out what happened. She needs to know.’

  ‘You know what happened. Everyone knows what happened. Why is everyone going over it all?’

  Annie played a card she wasn’t sure she held. ‘Did Terry try to blackmail you?’

  The reaction from Tremlow was the last thing she expected. He crumbled. Annie looked on aghast as he laid his head on his hands and sobbed. She felt terrible, as though she’d violated him, forced her way into his private space. It wasn’t where she wanted to be. Through the sobs he gasped out something. She had to lean close to hear the words.

  ‘It’s all true,’ he moaned. ‘All of it. I didn’t know what an evil man he was, but it’s all true. Evil. He took money.’

  Her hand reached out as though to touch him, to offer some morsel of comfort, but she felt any contact she made would be a red hot spear through him. The only thing she could comfort him with was her absence and she wouldn’t go yet. She leant closer.

  ‘What happened the night he died?’

  ‘Who?’ he sobbed. ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Terry Martin. What was he doing here?’

  ‘How s
hould I know?’

  ‘But why would he have come round? Had he come to see you?’

  ‘No, no! He was next-door. He wasn’t in my house.’

  ‘But why would he go next-door?’

  ‘Trying to break in, the police said.’ He paused then looked up at her, his face gaunt and tortured but radiating a sly triumph as though he’d got one over on her. ‘He was on that platform, you know. Just where I said.’

  Annie knew she stood at the verge of Tremlow’s secret but couldn’t draw meaning from his words. His tear-streaked face was the mask on a wrecked man. His eyes lost focus as though his thoughts had drifted off elsewhere.

  ‘You saw Terry on the platform,’ she prompted. ‘And then …?’

  He screeched at her, pushing his face close to hers so she felt a spray of spittle, smelt his fusty sour breath ‘I didn’t see him! You can tell his mother I didn’t see him, all right? Satisfied? Are you satisfied? Now get out! Get out of my house!’

  Annie recoiled disgusted as he collapsed again across the table, face hidden in his arms. She hadn’t meant to push him to the edge like this. Yet he still hadn’t told her anything that made sense. Hating herself for it, she knew she could use the state he was in. If he would just calm down a little she’d attack again and he’d give her everything; what really happened that night; what he did and didn’t see; what it was he’d hidden since that night.

  ‘I’m leaving now, Mr Tremlow.’

  She felt his relief as his trembling stilled. She wasn’t leaving for long; she intended returning like a blackmailer who’d sworn to have taken the last ever payment. Then she’d sit down with him and demand to know exactly what it was he was hiding.

  As she pulled open the door, she looked at his immobile form. What if he did something stupid? He needed something to calm him – just a bit. The solidly rational tones of an old friend would do the trick.

  Back in the car, she reached for her phone. A clipped and reassuringly sane voice answered her call. ‘Ludgrove here.’

  ‘Colonel Ludgrove, it’s Annie Raymond. I’m a bit worried about Mr Tremlow. I wondered if you could give him a call.’ She told him about Tremlow’s collapse, implying without speaking the lie, that she’d met Tremlow by chance and taken him home.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ said the colonel. ‘The chap’s highly strung, but a good sort on the whole. I’ll call him on the telephone.’

  Calm him, she wanted to say, just enough to be vulnerable to my questions.

  As she ended the call, she checked the time. Tremlow could have ten minutes on the phone with his old mate, then she’d give him half an hour to settle down. That would allow her time to touch base with Doris Kitson. Today, she would use every second of her time in Milesthorpe. No more being sidetracked into delays and dead ends like yesterday.

  Doris Kitson’s house offered a complete contrast to Tremlow’s. In the middle of a small terrace, its front garden was a nightmare of ordered clutter. Scrubbed paving gleamed between narrow borders where the geometric lines of the flower displays made Annie think of a municipal park in miniature.

  As she climbed out of the car, she plucked her jacket from the passenger seat and tossed it into the boot, before making her way up Doris Kitson’s garden path.

  The door swung open before she reached it. A big woman with an iron-clad grey perm stood framed in the doorway, giving a roguish smile and raising her hand to stop the speech that Annie hadn’t begun to make.

  ‘No need. No need. I know who you are. Annie Raymond, the detective. And I’m Doris Kitson of course. I’ve the kettle on. Now is it Ann or Annette or is it just Annie? … Just Annie? How unusual. Do come in.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Kitson, I–’

  ‘Doris. Call me Doris. I expected you yesterday. Plain or milk?’

  ‘Milk, thank you.’ Annie sniffed appreciatively at the smell of baking that greeted her as she stepped across the threshold into the big kitchen. It looked from the cooling racks of plain and milk chocolate biscuits as if Doris expected a school trip. At one end of the wooden table, ordered ranks of uncoated biscuits waited in line to be dipped. At the other end they sat chocolate-coated and inviting.

  Doris steered her to a seat and pushed across a plate of deliciously crumbly wheat rounds half obscured in not-quiteset chocolate. The kitchen mirrored the garden. Not a spare centimetre of space but everything neat and shining, a kitchen where anyone could safely eat their dinner off the floor. Germs, Annie was sure, were trained to line themselves up for execution with the battery of mops and cloths that stood ready for action in the recess under the stairs.

  Doris busied herself near the sink. She poured boiling water into a tea pot and placed two cups and saucers on to a tray which she carried to the table.

  ‘Help yourself.’ She waved her hand at the plate in front of Annie as she poured tea. ‘Don’t take sugar do you? No, that’s good. Pure poison, you know. I only ever use it in baking. These are for the carnival. You’ll want to know all about young Terry I expect.’

  ‘Uh … yes, if you don’t mind. These are delicious. I talked to Mr Tremlow but he seemed very confused over what happened.’

  ‘Yes, Charles was always highly strung. His mother sent him away to school, you know. I always think that’s a mistake, don’t you? And then when his wife went off like she did … I know it’s nothing to people of your age, look at Frank’s daughter. Mind you, that man she married … Have you come here from Charles’s house just now?’

  ‘Uh … yes.’

  ‘And did you see a car pass you?’

  ‘Well …’ Annie thought back. The road had been quite busy. ‘Yes, several.’

  ‘A small blue saloon?’

  ‘No, not that I remember.’

  Doris tutted and shook her head. ‘You should learn to observe everything around you, you know, if you want to pass muster as a detective. You’ve met young Mally I know, and now you’ve missed the chance to have a good look at her father. Now I know he doesn’t live round here any more but–’

  ‘Um … I understand you were round at Mr Tremlow’s house the night he found Terry’s body?’ Annie tried to haul the conversation back on track.

  ‘Oh yes. I wanted to speak to them both. I saw Charles’s car go by so I knew they were back and I wanted to know what was happening about the church gates. You’ll have seen the state of them. Hanging by a thread. No? They’re the ones you pass when you head for the Green if you come down from the top road by–’

  ‘I know where you mean now,’ Annie lied quickly. This would be hard work but at least there was no problem with getting Doris to talk. ‘So you went round to Mr Tremlow’s?’

  ‘Well, I wanted to know. These church gates have been hanging on for long enough …’

  Annie wanted to say, I thought they were hanging off. The thought made her smile.

  ‘I’d been down to the cemetery. Just to tidy up for Elizabeth. Elizabeth Atkins, you know. She has no one, you see, and you wouldn’t expect men to know what’s what. I’m surprised you people weren’t here then. I went to the police at the time, you know. I told them, she was right as rain only a day ago. And found dead, just like that. Her heart they said. Well, I know she had a heart condition, but that doesn’t mean to say it was natural she just dropped down dead like that.’

  Annie’s head spun. She was torn between dragging Doris back to the night Terry Martin died and finding out more about this previously unsuspected death. Terry Martin, the woman on the cliff top and now someone called Elizabeth Atkins. She remembered Mally’s comment about dead bodies everywhere. She stemmed the flow with a raised hand. ‘Sorry, could you just clarify who Elizabeth Atkins is … uh … was?’

  It’s all good practice, she told herself, squeezing data out of difficult witnesses.

  Annie allowed Doris to go uninterrupted through her last meeting with the mystery Elizabeth Atkins. A misgiving underlay everything that Doris said, her whole tale coloured by an unspoken suspicion of foul play. Was
there anything to it? Annie might have discounted it as the imaginings of an old gossip entirely irrelevant to the case at hand, except that Terry Martin’s name crept in. She’d heard no hint of anything like this before.

  ‘Did you say that Terry Martin had been asking questions?’

  ‘Oh yes, he asked me straight out if I was on the Parish Council–’

  ‘I meant about Elizabeth Atkins.’

  ‘Yes, of course, that’s what I meant. Well, I mean he didn’t ask outright. He couldn’t, could he? He never knew Elizabeth.’

  ‘But he wanted to know how she died?’

  Doris looked puzzled. ‘Not that I know of. Why would he?’

  Annie paused to take a sip of her tea. Reliable as a witness, Scott had said of Doris Kitson, if you could fight through the smokescreen.

  ‘Can I just get this straight? How long ago did Elizabeth Atkins die?’

  ‘Just over three years. It’ll be almost–’

  ‘And cause of death was…?’

  ‘Heart failure they said. Found dead in her bed. I didn’t like it. I told the policeman at the time–’

  ‘And she was a friend of yours?’

  ‘More a friend of my mother’s, but of course–’

  ‘Your mother’s? Uh … how old was she when she died?’

  ‘Let me see. She’d had her ninety-seventh birthday in the April. And she had a lovely cake. It was …’

  Annie struggled not to roll her eyes. Suspicious death from heart failure at ninety-seven. It’d make a good story for Scott, but time was getting on. She mustn’t leave Tremlow too long.

  She sat up straight and cleared her throat. ‘About the night Terry Martin died, the night you went to Mr Tremlow’s…’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s what I was telling you. You’ll never believe who’s just gone down there.’

  ‘What?’ Annie felt the stirrings of defeat as even this direct question led on another detour. ‘Who’s gone down where?’