Dying to Help (Anna McColl Mystery Series Book 1)

by Penny Kline

  ‘You deserve it, mind. All those people at their wits’ end.’ She broke off and gave me a quizzical look. ‘You’re not sure about Keith, are you? No, it’s all right, best to keep an open mind. Only the thing is he couldn’t have done it, not on a Saturday afternoon with a home match.’

  ‘He went to the football? Didn’t anyone see him? Surely the police — ’

  ‘Went on his own, didn’t he? Never had any proper friends. Anyway I know he was there ’cos he told me how a man was taken ill, heart attack or something, carried away on a stretcher. Couldn’t have known about that if he hadn’t been there.’

  ‘But if he told the police — ’

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought of it. I was going to tell them only then it was too late. Anyway, I’m glad he died. If they’d cut him down sooner he might’ve survived but with half his brain gone. I wouldn’t have wanted that.’

  She stood up, stretched, and crossed to the window. ‘Not got much of a view, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘D’you live near here?’

  ‘A few miles way.’

  ‘Near the Downs, is it? I’d like a place in that area. I reckon we could afford one of those new town houses out toward the motorway if they’d take Siobhan at the day nursery and I could go to work.’

  ‘It’ll be easier when she starts school.’

  ‘Want to bet? You haven’t any kids, then. They let them out mid-afternoon. Who’s going to give you a proper job if you have to knock off at three o’clock?’ She sat down again and started searching through her handbag.

  ‘I had a letter, must have left it at home. You know anything about repossession? Only these blokes are after my washing machine. They came crashing on the door first thing. I had to put my hand over Siobhan’s mouth and pretend we were out.’

  ‘You’ve fallen behind with the payments?’

  ‘Only a month or two. Anyway they’re not bloody having it. How am I supposed to wash the kids’ clothes?’

  ‘Perhaps if you talked to the people in the shop, offered to pay back some of what you owe.’

  ‘Yeah, I might do that.’ She stared at me, half smiling, half mocking. I liked her but she made me uneasy. What was it she wanted? Someone to talk to? Someone to find out more about her brother? Someone to help her to hang on to her washing machine?

  She had arrived late for her appointment and in five minutes I would have to tell her it was time to leave. I decided to fix an appointment for the following week. I expected her to protest that it was too long to wait, but she seemed quite happy with the arrangement.

  ‘Right you are, then.’ She zipped up her white jacket, held out her hand, then pulled it back and put it in her pocket. ‘We don’t want to keep shaking hands. Too formal, makes it like a visit to the dentist. Anyway, I’ll see you. Take care.’

  After she left I pulled out my file and made a few notes. How had she known about the man taken ill at the football? She couldn’t have spoken to her brother while he was in police custody. Maybe she was thinking about a different match, or perhaps she had made it up in order to try and convince me of her brother’s innocence. Did she really expect me to look into the case? I had a feeling there was something important that she hadn’t told me about yet. She was testing me out, wondering if she could trust me. Or perhaps I was just imagining it. She liked having someone to talk to and was afraid I wouldn’t go on seeing her unless she provided me with plenty of problems.

  It was two minutes past twelve. My next client, a new one, would be in the waiting room, looking at her watch, wondering if psychologists were like hospital consultants and kept you hanging about for hours. On the other hand she might not have turned up at all. Her first appointment had been for the previous Tuesday but her mother had phoned up, very apologetic, to say her daughter had a bad headache. I suspected the girl had refused to come. Another appointment had been made for today.

  I allowed a few moments for Diane to leave the building, then I ran down the stairs. As I passed the secretary’s office I could hear Martin and Beth talking to Heather. Beth seemed to be telling a funny story. Martin’s laughter turned into a fit of coughing and somebody had to thump him on the back. Didn’t any of them have any work to do? I stood in the corridor wondering what David was doing at that precise moment. Then I took a deep breath and put my head round the waiting-room door.

  ‘Jenny Weir?’

  She was sitting near the window, staring at the brown haircord carpet. Her head moved a fraction but she didn’t look up.

  ‘Hallo. If you’d like to come this way.’

  She rose slowly, wearily, and walked across the room, waiting for me to go through the door in front of her.

  ‘My name’s Anna,’ I said, ‘we’re upstairs, first on the right.’

  Dr Ingram, a local GP, had referred her. The telephone referral had been followed by a cursory note which mentioned psychosomatic symptoms, held out little hope that we would be able to help, but suggested that we were the last resort since he had ‘run out of ideas’.

  Martin had been delighted. Referrals from Dr Ingram were virtually unheard of and a year or two ago he had spoken publicly about the advisability of saving money by cutting down on the Psychology Service. Martin thought something might have happened in his personal life and he had had a conversion. I doubted this but agreed to have a go. If everything else had been tried there was nothing to lose.

  Jenny Weir stood in the doorway of my room, waiting to be invited in and her expression managed to be both ingratiating and resentful. Her hair was light brown, straight, and cut short like an old-fashioned schoolgirl. Her skin was pale with a few freckles on her prominent cheekbones. She was not pretty but there was something attractive about her long thin face and narrow eyes. I smiled at her but she wasn’t looking at me. I took her blue anorak and hung it on the back of the door.

  ‘I expect it feels a bit strange — coming here,’ I said, pointing to a chair and quietly closing the door.

  She sat down stiffly on the edge of her seat. Without the letter from Dr Ingram I would have guessed she was about fourteen. In fact she was nearly seventeen.

  ‘I know a little about you,’ I said, ‘but I hope you’ll be able to tell me more. Your doctor’s been treating you for headaches and muscle pains. He thought it might help if you talked to someone. I think he wondered if you might be feeling a bit low.’

  I waited to give her a chance to speak but she continued to stare at the floor.

  ‘Perhaps there are things that are worrying you, making you unhappy?’

  She looked up briefly, then her eyes flicked away from mine. I tried again.

  ‘I expect you’ve missed quite a lot of school. Did you manage to take your exams?’

  No response. She didn’t even nod or shake her head.

  ‘Perhaps you resent being asked to come and see me. You feel the decision was made over your head, by the doctor, or your parents.’

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She was dressed in a royal-blue corduroy skirt, a white shirt, and a hand-knitted cardigan, also blue but with pink and white flowers embroidered round the buttonholes. Her thick woollen tights were brown and she had brown slip-on shoes with fringes.

  These silent teenagers were always the most difficult. I silently cursed Martin for allocating her to me. He kept telling me to ease up on work, then made sure I had the worst cases. But it was early days yet. Often the most resistant people turned out to be the most rewarding.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘there’s plenty of time. First of all I just want us to get to know each other a little. Later, if there are things you want to talk about I’ll be happy to listen.’

  She sighed deeply and stared at her hands. Even a sigh was a start.

  ‘I want you to know that anything you tell me is completely confidential. I won’t be reporting back to your doctor or — ’

  ‘What’s the point, then?’ The whisper was so faint I only just made it out, but she had
broken her vow of silence.

  ‘Well, the aim is for you to feel safe to talk about whatever you like. I don’t want to ask you a whole lot of questions but maybe you could tell me a little about yourself, your family.’

  She turned her head and gazed through the window at the light drizzle just visible against the outline of a group of beech trees. I wasn’t going to get much out of her this morning. It would be best to just make a few friendly remarks, but no pressure, let her feel in control, then make another appointment and take it from there.

  ‘All right, Jenny, I don’t want to keep you very long this morning.’

  She turned and glared at me and her eyes were cold, unnerving. Now she thought I was trying to get rid of her. She wanted to leave but she also wanted to stay.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know how difficult this is. That’s why it’s best to take things slowly. The headaches, they’re bad, are they? And you also get pains in your arms and legs.’

  She nodded, pressing her lips together.

  I moved my chair back a little to allow her more space. ‘When Dr Ingram wondered if the symptoms might be psychosomatic that didn’t mean he thought you were inventing them.’

  No response. We sat for several minutes in silence. I can tolerate silence better than most people. All the same, I found my throat becoming dry and uncomfortable. It was something to do with the conflicting messages she was communicating. Leave me alone. Do something. Finally she stood up, looking round for her coat.

  I followed her to the door, took her anorak off the hook, and helped her as she struggled to get her arms into the armholes. When she snatched the coat from my hands she looked close to tears.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, touching her lightly on the arm, ‘next time you come it will be easier for both of us.’

  She spun round, surprised that I had included myself in the difficult situation. Then she turned her back on me and left closing the door behind her.

  *

  The postcard was lying just inside my front door. A reproduction of The Harlot’s Progress by William Hogarth. It was the end of her progress. She was lying in a coffin surrounded by a group of unconcerned mourners, one of whom was spilling his drink as he attempted to touch up the woman standing next to him.

  When I turned the card over there was no stamp, no name or address, just a short message in neat block capitals: I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU.

  My first response was anger. Iris must have been round while I was out at work. But why would she do that, especially now that David was going back to live with her? And why was I a harlot? At the time of our meeting she and David were already in the process of getting a divorce. She could hardly accuse me of breaking up their marriage.

  Since I had never met Iris I could speculate indefinitely about what might be going on in her mind. It was a lost cause, and when I calmed down a little, I realized that it was far more likely that the card had been delivered by one of my clients.

  Communications from clients were not that unusual. They found out where I lived and sent me reminders of their existence between appointments. But not anonymous ones. I ran through a list of possible ‘suspects’. Mr Barnes, a bitter unemployed man in his forties, with palpitations and an unsympathetic wife? Mrs Fitch, exasperated that I had failed to find a way of getting rid of the itchy rash that started under her chin and ran up to her face every time she ran into the colleague who had been promoted over her head?

  But whichever way I looked at it one stood out from all the rest. Rob Starkey, angry that I had stopped him coming to see me, was determined to demonstrate that I would not be able to get rid of him so easily. Hanging about near my car, then disappearing down the alleyway only to reappear lurking in the dark outside my bedroom window.

  An intelligent but restless young man who drifted in and out of work, was easily bored, and had a likeness for alcohol and soft drugs. I had tried to help him but felt we were getting nowhere. When I told him my decision he had seemed to accept it, even said he was surprised I had put up with him for so long. But he must have been hiding his real feelings and now resentment had got the better of him. I would have to look him up, talk to him, maybe invite him to return for a limited number of appointments.

  The card was unpleasant but Rob was silly rather than dangerous. There was nothing to get worked up about. It was just part of the job.

  I froze and a prickly sensation ran up the back of my neck. Had I misjudged Rob? Did he feel so vindictive that he was prepared to find a way of breaking into the flat? I pictured him moving from room to room, picking things up and putting them down. Grinning to himself, then — just for a laugh — tucking himself up in my bed and accidentally on purpose leaving a crumpled tissue pushed down between the mattress and the headboard?

  Chapter Six

  The entrance to the library was blocked by a party of primary-school children, milling round their teacher, waiting for permission to go in and change their books. I squeezed past and stood in the foyer, breathing in the sharp sickly smell of floor polish.

  The reference section was on the first floor and I was half-way up the stone steps before I remembered that back-numbers of newspapers were kept in the reading room in the basement. I started back down, circling round and round, made slightly dizzy by the smooth white walls. In under an hour, I had an appointment with Owen Hughes at the university. We had spoken briefly on the phone, during which time he had appeared to be having an argument with somebody in his room. His response to my request had been less than encouraging. Yes, he would have a look at my research proposal but it was not really his field and I would be unlikely to obtain any funding, which would mean registering as a private part-time research student. Yes, he could see me on Friday afternoon. Three forty-five would be best, although he wouldn’t have very long as he had a meeting at four thirty.

  In many ways it would have been a relief to abandon the whole idea but Martin had talked me into going through with it.

  ‘Oh, come on, you’ll enjoy it. Besides it’ll be good for the Psychology Service, help to encourage links with local doctors. And it needn’t take up too much of your time.’

  I had waited for him to point out that my evenings and weekends were likely to provide plenty of spare time, but of course he was far too tactful.

  ‘All right then,’ I said, ‘but this Owen Hughes doesn’t sound my type at all.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to be your type, just a guy with the power to say yes or no to us mere mortals.’

  In the spare forty minutes before leaving for the university I had decided to visit the library and look through old copies of the local paper to see what I could find out about the Karen Plant affair. That way I could persuade Diane Easby that I had taken her request seriously and then, when she agreed that most likely her brother had been guilty after all, I could concentrate on helping her to come to terms with what had happened.

  In the reading room a solitary man sat on a tall stool turning the pages of last week’s Sunday paper. He was dressed in a tweed coat and wore a flat cap of the kind sold in country sports shops. Retired, trying to fill up an afternoon? He looked up briefly, coughed without putting his hand over his mouth, then returned to the section on Style and Living.

  I waited by the counter, wondering whether to press the bell for service then decided against it since the librarian, who was only a few feet away between two dark shelves and well aware of my presence, would be irritated by my impatience.

  Finally she appeared, not smiling, but asking pleasantly enough if there was anything she could do to help.

  ‘The local paper. I want to look up something that happened about two months ago.’

  ‘You don’t know the date?’

  ‘No, not exactly. The middle of December. About then.’

  She disappeared for a few moments, then returned with a collection of unbound newspapers.

  ‘If you need any more let me know.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I lifted the hea
vy pile and carried it to a table in the corner, pulling out a paper at random, checking the date, then starting to read the main stories. The murder might have been headlines. On the other hand, if a bigger story had broken at the same time, Karen Plant’s death could have been relegated to an inside page.

  After ten minutes’ search I found the first relevant story: a brief description of how Keith Merchant had been found hanging in his cell. I skimmed it through but it told me no more than I knew already. Putting it to one side I began searching backwards for an account of how Karen Plant’s body had been discovered.

  Eventually I found it. The newspaper had been torn right across, but I pieced it together and started reading.

  The body of social worker, Karen Plant, twenty-four, was discovered late on Sunday evening by Fleur Peythieu, nineteen, her flat-mate.

  Fleur Peythieu? It sounded French, although quite likely the reporter had spelled it incorrectly. The woman I had seen outside the house was older than that. In her late twenties or early thirties. I read on.

  Miss Peythieu returned to the flat in Belvoir Road after a weekend away, staying with friends. There was no sign of a break-in but the police say cause of death was asphyxia. An unemployed man in his twenties is helping with their enquiries.

  Another report the following day said that Keith Merchant, a handyman, had been charged with the murder.

  It was alleged that he had been doing odd jobs round the flat. A post-mortem on the body had revealed no evidence of sexual assault.

  It was getting late, time to go to the university. I made a note of the relevant dates, told the uninterested librarian I would return in a day or two, and made my way up the steep steps and out into the fresh air.

  I had learned very little, apart from the fact that the flat-mate had a French name and was only nineteen. Perhaps that was all there was to know about the case. Karen Plant had asked Keith Merchant to do odd jobs round the flat. He had tried to take the friendship further, a struggle had taken place, and he had lost his temper, smothered her with a pillow, then run off. The police had no difficulty in tracing his whereabouts. He was the obvious suspect. It was an open and shut case.