by Oliver Tidy
The woman thought. ‘Nineish. Maybe later. I didn’t watch any telly last night, or I could have told you what was on. Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. I don’t suppose the words carry down, do they?’
‘No; just the noise. Voices and sometimes something sounds like it goes over.’
‘And last night?’
‘I’m sorry. I heard some shouting, but that was all I could swear to.’
‘You were going to describe the boyfriend for me.’
The woman described Avery well enough.
‘And after you heard raised voices last night, about nineish, did you hear anything else unusual?’
Again the woman thought. ‘No, but I was in bed by ten. Husband’s away and I’ve got to get up early, get these two ready for dropping off before I go to work.’
Marsh thanked the woman, said goodbye to the children, who ignored her, and went in search of the caretaker. She convinced him to let her back into Claire Stamp’s flat on the premise that she thought she might have left something behind when she was there earlier. He unlocked the door and left, asking her to make sure she pulled it to after her and told him when she was leaving.
Marsh had the idea that while she was in the building she would take another look at the lounge area of Claire Stamp’s flat. Now that she knew there might be something missing – something that might have been used to strike Claire Stamp – she would see if anything was notable by its absence.
She flicked the lights on and wandered down the passageway. It was cold; someone had turned the heating off. She’d only gone a few paces when her sixth sense told her something was wrong.
The flat had been ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled out and upended; clothes from the wardrobe were strewn around; the mattress had been pushed off the bed; the bath panel had been ripped off its fastenings; the laundry basket emptied. In the kitchen a similar scene awaited her. The cupboard doors and drawers were open and packets and tins lay where they had been thrown. The lounge had not escaped. Cushions were scattered, the sideboard cleared and the coffee table upended. The big plasma television was still there. And on the floor was Claire Stamp’s purse. Marsh checked it. There was cash and a couple of credit cards. This wasn’t a robbery. Someone had been searching for something.
Marsh phoned the DI. When he’d finished upbraiding her for being there at all, let alone on her own, he listened to what she had to tell him.
‘Any sign of a forced entry?’
‘No.’
‘Well, we know that Avery has a key, and he would have had ample opportunity,’ said Romney. ‘Speak to the caretaker, see if he saw him, just so we know, but until someone reports that a crime has been committed, you know as well as I do that it’s none of our business.’
Marsh said, ‘Perhaps it was Avery looking for something he had entrusted to Claire for safe-keeping or just kept here. If it was, it must be pretty important, and my guess is he didn’t find it.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Romney, sounding more interested. ‘Perhaps, it was important enough to kill her over.’
The caretaker couldn’t say whether Avery had been there that day. As he told Marsh, ‘I don’t spend all my time spying on the comings and goings or the residents. I’ve got better things to do.’
She thanked him as cordially as she could manage and went home.
*
The ransacking continued to nag at Marsh’s thoughts. It was as she was staring at her ready meal doing laps of the microwave that she thought of Claire Stamp’s mother. Although, according to Claire, Avery didn’t tell her they were through and that she was to vacate the flat until after her mother had left, it was, thought Marsh, entirely possible that the young woman had feared something of the sort. Maybe there were other considerations too: things that they knew nothing about. But if Claire had feared for her security and her position and Avery had left something sensitive, something valuable to him, with her for safe-keeping, something sensitive enough for him to ransack the flat so completely searching for it – Marsh didn’t agree with the DI that he would have or had killed her for it – then it was possible she had given it to her mother for her own safe-keeping, security and protection. Her mother certainly hadn’t waited around long after Avery had arrived back on the scene. Marsh looked at her watch and wondered whether to give the DI a call. She decided it would keep to the morning. And in any case, she reflected, perhaps it would be as well if she slept on the idea.
*
Romney worked late. He had a backlog of paperwork to catch up on. Most of it was pointless bureaucratic nonsense, but, unfortunately, that was no excuse not to do it.
Julie Carpenter had a parents’ evening and was then going out with colleagues for a meal. Romney felt a pang of jealousy at this, which disturbed him. He wouldn’t see her but he would have. If she’d asked him to meet her afterwards, or to go around to her house when she was home, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
They had seen each other on six occasions, made love on three of them, and he felt like a new man for it. It wasn’t just the sex, which was the most engaging, fulfilling, adventurous and satisfying of any he had ever experienced, she was, he realised with something bordering on embarrassment, an infatuation for him.
Romney wasn’t stupid. He understood himself. He understood that this relationship with an attractive, vivacious young professional woman was a boost to his waning ego.
In the last few years he’d dated on and off – dipped his toe in the water now and again. Mostly it was for the promise of sex. He wasn’t looking for anything more permanent. Been there, done that, had the scars. There had been a couple who had interested him further than the bedroom, but eventually such encounters had all boiled down to one issue: his difficulty with women his age.
In Romney’s opinion the passing of years were unfairly harsh to women. While men did bald and sag and line and look every year of their time on Earth they could also, like a good wine, and without great effort, improve with age.
Romney had kept his thick dark curls that now, smattered with grey, gave him a mature and distinguished look. He kept himself fit and his body reasonably trim. The ageing process had weathered his features into something bordering on rugged and this with his height, his natural build and his clear blue eyes encouraged many women to give him a second look, young and old.
On the other hand, time and motherhood, in his opinion, proved an irresistible unkindness to women. Encroaching middle age lined women in a way that could rarely be determined as improving a woman’s looks. Too often, life left its mark in ways that no cosmetics, exercise or surgery could counter or hide. Thighs, backsides, cellulite, paunches, sagging breasts, bingo wings, turkey necks, and the sprouting of facial hair. Romney felt great sympathy for womankind and the constant battles on several fronts they were obliged to fight in their warring with age. Finding themselves on the relationship rubbish tip with their best-before dates something of a distant memory, most that he had encountered were inevitably looking to snare their man for the security and the long term, while they still retained something of their looks.
He’d almost been fooled once or twice into thinking that he’d found an exception, but none had looked so good in the morning after the night before that he could see himself turning the casual into something more permanent.
It dismayed him to admit to himself that he had never met a woman whose conversation, intellect and outlook on life held a greater interest for him than her body. He didn’t know if that was his problem or theirs and didn’t dwell on it because the fact that the issue existed for him was enough. It was his natural inclination, and at his age he wasn’t about to try to reason himself out of the prejudice of his position, however, unreasonable, shallow and narrow-minded it might be considered.
And that is why at nearly forty-three he had a double bed to himself, spent his days off and his money improving his collection of first editions and his property, started his summer Sundays with early morning rides on his motor
bike, ate when, where and what he liked and never missed a Champions League match if he wasn’t working.
The life-style he had chosen for himself was never going to be something he would give up easily, but that’s not to say he wouldn’t consider it if the right person came along. With the surprise of Julie Carpenter he was able to rekindle something of his youthful inner-self; to imagine wistfully that perhaps the ‘one’ had arrived. But he was under no illusions, at the moment it was lust and if she had been ten years older, he probably wouldn’t have looked twice.
*
At seven o’clock Romney extinguished the office lights and headed down to his vehicle. The night was colder by a couple of degrees than any so far that week. A keen thin wind sliced through his clothing and stirred up debris in the car park.
He sat in the refrigerator-like car still undecided about how to spend his evening. He could go to his gym – his bag was in the boot. He could grab a take-away, head home and watch some telly with a beer. He could visit a pub he knew well enough where the food was home-made and filling, and the real ale advertisement outside was not a trading standards concern. He checked his mobile just in case and smiling to himself at his foolishness started the car.
His mind drifted back to Claire Stamp and what she could have had of Avery’s that would make him attack her. It would have to be something personally incriminating and substantial. And what would she have done with it? Where could she have hidden it, if, as Marsh had suggested, Avery hadn’t recovered it from his ransacking of the flat?
He was about to exit the car park when he remembered Claire Stamp’s mother. She could have accepted something from her daughter to hold for her. She hadn’t hung around at the flat once Avery had returned. He stopped the car, took out his phone and dialled Marsh. She answered on the third ring.
‘Hello, sir.’
‘Sorry to bother you this late. I wanted to ask you something about Claire Stamp’s mother.’
‘No problem. I was just on my way out.’
‘Anywhere special?’
‘Only the take-away. Nuked my dinner to oblivion.’
Silence filled the line.
‘I ruined my dinner in the microwave.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Romney. ‘Look, I’m just going to get something to eat myself. Decent pub not far from you, actually. The White Horse in St James Street. Care to join me?’ She thought for a second too long. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d ask.’
‘No, I mean, yeah, sure. That sounds great. Thanks.’
‘Good. I’m heading there now. See you in, what, ten minutes?’
‘Ten minutes,’ repeated Marsh, ending the call.
She checked herself in the hall mirror and didn’t like what stared back. Coming home she’d changed into sweats and taken off her make-up. Looking like that was all right nipping to the chippy, but no good if you wanted to make a good impression on your immediate boss. She checked her watch. She’d got ready in three minutes before.
*
Romney was standing at the bar ordering a pint of ale when Marsh arrived. The wind had whipped the shoulder length hair she normally wore bunched for work, but down tonight, into a dishevelled mess.
‘I didn’t realise there were so many hedges between The Gateway and here,’ said Romney, smiling at her scraping her hair back into some sort of order with her fingers.
‘Thanks for noticing, sir.’
‘What’ll you have?’
She had a white wine spritzer and they took a table near the open fire.
Marsh sipped her drink. ‘It’s cosy in here,’ she said.
‘Haven’t you been in before? Geographically, it must be your local.’
‘I’m not much one for going into pubs on my own.’
‘Of course. I didn’t think of that. How long have you been with us?’
‘Two months including courses.’
‘And before that?’
‘I was a DC at Gravesend. They had all the DSs they needed, so when I gained promotion they offered me a posting down here. I say offered, but you know how it is.’
Romney did. ‘How do you like it?’ He was just realising that he didn’t know anything about DS Marsh.
‘It’s a lot less intense than north Kent.’
‘Politely put. So, two months, what do you do with yourself when you’re not working?’
‘Gym, shop, read, sleep. My family is in London. I usually go up there when I have a few days off.’
‘What do you like to read?’ said Romney, interested as he always was in other people’s reading habits.
‘Don’t laugh, but detective novels mostly. I know,’ she said, misinterpreting his wide smile, ‘it’s a bit pathetic, isn’t it?’
‘Not at all. You know what they say about coppers who read detective novels?’ Marsh didn’t, but didn’t like to say so, so she sipped her drink. ‘Don’t tell anyone down the nick, but I’m a big fan of the genre myself.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. Doyle, Christie, Dibdin, Hill, James, Rendell, Wingfield, Harvey. There are some fine American practitioners. Chandler, MacDonald, and Elmore Leonard takes some beating. Some of the continental crime writers are worth getting to know, too, although I’m not so keen on the rash of Scandinavian stuff that seems so popular at the moment. But that might be as much to do with the translations as the original writing. And then you’ve got the older classics on both sides of the pond, of course.’
‘Dibdin’s underrated. Zen is one of my favourite creations.’
‘I wouldn’t argue with that, but I’d have to say that I found the first few more engaging than the rest,’ said Romney, pleased to have found some genuine common ground with her. ‘You ever read Patrick O’Brian?’
‘Never heard of him. Does he write crime?’
Romney treated her to a look that she found hard to fathom. ‘Patrick O’Brian is one of the finest and most under-rated novelists to have written in the English language in the last hundred years and more. I suppose you’d have to classify him under historical naval fiction, but he was so much more than that.’
‘Oh,’ said Marsh. ‘Boats.’
They ordered food from the specials board and got around to talking shop.
‘I was thinking about the ransacking of Claire Stamp’s flat,’ said Romney, ‘and what, whoever did it – and my money’s on Avery – was looking for. Whatever it is, it must be extremely important and probably portable.’
‘My thoughts exactly. And I think that I have a pretty good idea of where it is, whatever it is.’
‘The mother?’
Marsh nodded. ‘That’s my guess,’ she said, skewering peas. ‘She left soon after Avery turned up and she had a bag.’
‘She lives where?’
‘Ashford. Willsborough, I think.’
‘Did she identify the body?’
‘This afternoon, apparently.’
‘You know how she took it?’
Marsh shook her head. ‘Uniform dealt with it, but I can ask in the morning.’
‘If Avery is looking for something – something he may have killed Claire Stamp for – and he works out that she might have given it to her mother to look after, she is in danger. I think that tomorrow morning you and I should pay her a visit and, if we’re right, hope that Avery hasn’t beaten us to it.’
Romney was savouring a large mouthful of the gravy soaked suet crust of his steak and kidney pudding when he turned to see what the night had blown in with the banging of the door. Three young, nicely dressed women stood on the edge of the carpet. In the centre of them and staring directly at him and DS Marsh enjoying their cosy meal beside the fire was Julie Carpenter. Her companions, who had been chatting away, stopped to see what had grabbed her attention. She said something to them that Romney didn’t catch but understood perfectly from the looks that they turned on him. She strode over to his table and he began to stand. The pudding crust had turned to an expanding chewy mass in his mouth and
he seemed unable to swallow it or chew it down.
‘Don’t bother,’ she said, waving him to sit. ‘I just wanted to say that I hope that you choke on it.’ She turned to Marsh whose own mouth was hanging open a good inch. ‘Watch him; he’s obviously a player. The bastard was in my bed last night.’
Marsh’s eyes widened. The pretty young woman cast one more withering look at Romney, her eyes beginning to swim, turned, walked back to her friends and they all left.
Romney managed a sheepish grin, but with the suet still in his cheeks it came off more as a poor Godfather impression than the expression of an unspoken apology. There was an awkward minute’s silence while they both chewed and swallowed and composed themselves.
‘I’m really sorry and embarrassed for that,’ said Romney, looking it.
He was, thought Marsh reflecting on his reaction, a gentleman at least. The fact that he was seeing someone young enough to be his niece just made him a lucky gentleman.
‘Please, no need. I can see her logic. Look if you want me to have a word with her, put her straight.’
‘That’s good of you to offer,’ said Romney, strangling the suggestion before it drew its first breath, ‘but I’m sure it’ll be fine. I hope that you can forget all about it.’
In other words, thought Marsh, you’d better not say a word to anyone down the nick.
Thankfully, they were both just about finished. They might have had another drink if things hadn’t turned out the way that they did, but in the end Romney settled the bill and with Marsh expressing a wish to have another go at the hedges over the offer of a lift home, they parted in the windswept street outside.
Romney sat in his car feeling that he’d had the rug pulled out from under him. He knew that his meal was nothing more than work colleagues innocently sharing food and discussion of a case, and he’d also reached a time in his life when he felt the need to explain his movements to no man or woman. However, he could see how it must have looked, and he could imagine how it felt for her if she felt something for him. Her behaviour would indicate that she did. The decent thing to do, regardless of how she would take it, would be to try to explain to her her erroneous reading of the situation.