Blood in Grandpont

by Peter Tickler

  ‘At least five, my darling,’ she replied instantly. ‘Now, let’s take a look at this filling. Ah, yes, now there’s the hole! Still, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.’

  Geraldine Payne’s chatter, designed to distract, continued as she got to work. She made the silent decision, based on her past experience of her patient, to skip the injection, and reached cheerfully for the drill as she recounted a recent and rather exaggerated incident involving herself and a traffic warden. She worked deftly and quickly, conscious of the mounting anxiety in Karen. She had had patients turn and walk out of the surgery at the prospect of a filling, so she took these feelings very seriously. She prided herself on making the experience as tolerable as possible. She knew she couldn’t make it a happy one, but for people like Karen smoothness and speed were her watchwords.

  At first Karen tried not to think, but that was hopeless. It blotted out precisely nothing. She tried then to think about Susan. She was worried about her, but lying there worrying achieved nothing. So she thought instead about the case, that is to say her bits of the case. The dead bodies and their manners of death. The clinical knife wounds and the exploded mess caused by the gun. She thought about Dominic Russell lying on the loft floor and the painting of Judas and the two mothers, and the neat slashes in the canvas, two parallel cuts on one diagonal and two on the other. So precise! What the hell was that all about?

  ‘Do you want a rinse, Karen?’

  Opening her clenched eyes, she realized Geraldine was talking to her. She leant to her side, took a sip from the plastic cup, and swilled the minty green solution around her mouth, before spurting it out into the white whirlpool bowl.

  ‘Nearly finished, darling. Just lie back while I do a final check.’

  She lay back. That was it. She hadn’t thought of that. The cuts were neat and clinical, just as the stab wounds to Maria’s heart and neck had been. They weren’t the emotional slashes of a man who had decided to blow his brains out, surely? It had to be murder. She must tell Susan, give her a ring. It might help. Only Susan didn’t want hunches or guesses from her. She wanted evidence, something definitive. And that was something she couldn’t currently provide.

  ‘All finished!’ As soon as Geraldine had uttered these words of release, Karen sat up like a jack-in-the-box, anxious to escape the confines of the chair. Geraldine stifled a giggle. ‘Steady up, I’ve just got to lower the seat.’

  Karen waited obediently, then clambered out and wiped her mouth with the tissue that Geraldine offered. She turned round to look for a bin, but as she did something happened behind her eyes and a surge of dizziness struck her. She staggered and gave a tiny yelp. Geraldine Payne, alerted, grabbed her with her left arm before she could fall.

  ‘Steady!’ Her other arm wrapped round her patient, and she pulled her towards herself. They stood there for barely two or three seconds, locked together. Geraldine could feel Karen’s breasts, soft against her own. She smelt the beguiling scent of her freshly shampooed hair, and memories resurfaced. Then, reluctantly, she released her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said hastily. ‘Look, you’d better come and sit down for a few minutes. Lucy can make you a cup of tea. I know it’s been an ordeal for you. But Susan will never forgive me if I let anything happen to you in my surgery.’

  Karen Pointer nodded, her head still reeling. ‘Sorry if I was rude earlier.’

  ‘Forget it,’ the dentist replied brusquely, leading her by the arm. ‘Let’s get you sat down. Then I’ve got more patients to see.’

  ‘Dr Tull.’ Holden paused, wanting to be sure she had got Alan Tull’s attention. ‘We’re trying to trace what Maria did on that last day, just in case it gives us any clues. I know you were at work, but I wonder if you know what she had planned for that day. Work appointments, or a visit to the hairdresser, maybe?’

  ‘Gosh, there’s a question. To be honest, I don’t know. Not for certain. She might have been going to see Dominic. They’d been as thick as thieves since she returned from Venice. I noticed that. Not that I told Maria I’d noticed. I didn’t like it. It was all to do with stuff she’d sourced for him in Venice, I expect, but I didn’t like it because Dominic wasn’t exactly the straightest pencil in the pack, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Did Maria keep a diary?’ However interesting Tull’s comments were, Holden wanted to keep on her chosen track.

  ‘Oh, yes, a little blue one.’

  ‘Do you know where it is?’

  Tull frowned. ‘Wasn’t it in her bag? You know that nice bag from Venice that you haven’t yet returned to me.’ It was sharpest comment that Holden had heard him say.

  ‘You will get the bag back, in due course, sir. But the diary wasn’t in it when we found it. Maybe it’s lying around the house somewhere.’

  ‘I suppose it could be,’ Tull replied, though he sounded doubtful.

  ‘Your wife used a computer, did she?’

  ‘Yes, I bought her a laptop last Christmas.’

  ‘We need to look at it, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Look at it? What on earth for?’

  ‘In fact, we need to look around generally.’

  ‘Ah!’ Dr Alan Tull hadn’t become a very respected and successful GP by being a complete fool. ‘So that’s why you’ve come in force. Don’t you need a search warrant?’

  Holden nodded, and looked sideways at Fox.

  Fox held his hand out. ‘I’ve got one here, actually, sir.’

  Tull’s face hardened, and the softly spoken politeness drained from his voice. ‘Well, damn you!’

  ‘This is so embarrassing. I must be your worst patient.’

  ‘I wish you were.’

  Karen Pointer was sitting on an upright dining chair in a little room off the main waiting room. It was equipped with a kettle, a tray with four mugs on it, a small fridge that hummed away in the corner, and a sink. There were cupboards on the wall facing her, made of stripped pine with frosted glass doors that obscured their contents. Below them were pine shelves, piled with magazines to the left and formidable dental tomes to the right.

  ‘We’ve got plenty of patients a lot worse than you,’ Lucy added, conscious that that her comment needed some explanation. ‘Late, rude, and always moaning about the cost. And stuck-up gits to boot. Only don’t quote me on that.’ She grinned and poured boiling water into one of the mugs.

  ‘Milk?’

  ‘Please.’

  She added milk, two sugars and stirred. ‘There, that should do the trick.’

  ‘Lucy!’ Geraldine Payne’s voice rang out. ‘If you don’t mind, I need some assistance.’

  ‘Or even if I do mind!’ Lucy winked at Karen. ‘That’s Mrs Pearson. She’s always a two-person job. Take your time. I’ll pop back as soon as I can.’

  Karen sipped at her tea and shut her eyes, leaning as far back as the upright back of her chair would allow. How stupid she was. How bloody, bloody stupid she was!

  Back in Bainton Road, Lawson and Wilson had left the living room to go in search of laptops and diaries and whatever else that might be of interest. And DI Holden had decided it was time to change tack. ‘On Saturday morning, Sarah Russell came to see you. Can you tell me what that was about?’

  ‘Poor Sarah.’ The words of sympathy slipped smoothly out of Alan Tull’s mouth. ‘And poor Dominic. I met him as an undergraduate, you know. Keble men we were. No women in those days. Still, that’s of no interest to you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sarah came to see how I was. At least that was what I thought. But I should have known better. Sarah isn’t exactly the tell-me-all-about-it-and-cry-on-my-shoulder type. Not that that’s a fault. No criticism intended. She was concerned about me in her own brusque way. But what she really came to find out was whether I wanted to pull out of the J.B. Priestley play. You probably know it: An Inspector Calls. Such a good play. A touch old-fashioned, maybe, and the inspector is a male, I’m afraid, but it always goes down well!’

  He chuckled, pleased at his own obser
vation, but Holden did not respond in kind. ‘So she arrived when?’

  ‘Ah, times again. You police, you’re worse than my receptionist!’ He shook his head. ‘I would guess she arrived about nine-thirty and left maybe an hour later, maybe a bit more than an hour. Sorry, that’s the best I can do.’

  She opened her eyes and looked around. She must have dropped off for a moment. She looked down at her mug, cradled in her hands and took a sip. It was still pretty hot. Not even forty winks. When she had finished she would go. Maybe by the time she had walked home she would feel better.

  She looked around the room again, and her eyes alighted on the magazines, this time staying there. She put her mug down, and knelt down on the floor. There must be something to read, something to distract herself until she could face going home. The magazines were, of course, old, rejects from the reception room. Peter Andre stared out at her from the front cover of the top one. Karen made a face, and looked at the one underneath. Different name on the magazine, similar picture. There was easy reading and there was trash. She moved halfway down the pile, to Lewis Hamilton, delayed briefly, and then moved to the very bottom. She yanked it out – an Arts magazine. Nine months old – but then art doesn’t go out of date much. Or does it? It must be one of Geraldine’s. Or do dentists have a budget under the heading ‘Reading material for the distraction and entertainment of customers’? She eased herself back on to the chair, took a sip of tea, and began to leaf through her find. An article on the origins of Art Deco seemed promising, but the first paragraph was of such deadening dullness that she abandoned it, glancing only at the pictures before flicking onwards. Gilbert and George were next, but even at the best of times she couldn’t work up enthusiasm for them, and she moved quickly on. And then she saw an article that stopped her dead. It was entitled ‘Zeus the Serial Seducer’. She read the text slowly, for it was in a sense topical. It traced the Greek god’s sexual adventures through mythology and art. Some of it she felt she knew and some of the paintings illustrated were definitely familiar. She had seen Rembrandt’s The Abduction of Europa in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, but even in her befuddled state the theme struck her with fresh force. The painting whose photo had been on Jack Smith’s mobile and that the police had found at Dominic Russell’s wasn’t illustrated in the magazine, of course. It was far too insignificant, but its theme was the same: seduction or rape, whatever you might prefer to call it. Now what the hell was that all about?

  ‘How are you feeling?’ She looked up guiltily, like a child caught raiding the sweet jar. Geraldine Payne was standing at the doorway, with Lucy Tull at her shoulder. She wondered if they had been there long, for she had been quite oblivious of their presence until Geraldine spoke.

  ‘Not too bad.’ She shut the magazine and put it down, picking up the half-drunk tea instead. It was cold. She hated cold tea, but she drank it down nonetheless.

  ‘Don’t tell me you found something worth reading?’

  ‘It passed the time.’

  ‘You looked engrossed.’

  ‘You’ve been very kind. I’d better go.’ She stood up, but as she stepped forward she wavered, as light-headedness struck her again.

  ‘Hey!’ Geraldine and Lucy both grabbed at her. ‘Steady!’

  Karen felt ridiculously foolish. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Geraldine said sharply, taking charge. ‘Lucy is going to call a taxi, and she will go with you and see you back to your flat.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ Karen replied, but there was no conviction and no strength in her words.

  ‘There’s every need,’ came the firm reply. ‘There’s absolutely every need.’

  The Tulls were a three-computer household. Not that Lawson and Wilson found three of them that afternoon. Joseph’s laptop, like Joseph, was absent, though a plugged-in power cable suggested that wherever he had taken it, he wasn’t planning on spending the whole day working on it. Lucy’s tower PC was on the desk in her bedroom. It was an old one, at least three years, which in computing terms was verging on the unusable, Wilson reckoned. He tried to log on, but it was password protected, so he powered it off, unplugged the tower from its multifarious connecting cables, and tucked it under his arm. ‘You never know what might be on even a museum piece like this,’ he admitted, as they trudged down the stairs in search of the study. Here they found, as Dr Tull had said they would, a much newer laptop. ‘I hardly ever use it myself,’ he had insisted. ‘It was Maria’s really. I get quite enough of the damn things at surgery. Mind you, Lucy’s pretty much taken it over now. She’s been moaning for months about how slow hers was, but I wasn’t going to replace it. She’s been earning good money, so I didn’t see why she couldn’t buy one herself. But now she won’t have to.’

  The laptop was not password protected, and Wilson gave a whoop of excitement as soon as he realized. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’

  A flash of irritation lanced through Lawson. How was it that Wilson had assumed the role of IT expert? She wasn’t exactly a computer dimbo herself, but it wasn’t worth arguing about. At least, not now.

  ‘Yeah, and I’ll see what I can find too!’ she threw over her shoulder as she headed out of the study. It wasn’t just an idle parting shot. If she was a murderer with an even half-functioning brain, and she had got sensitive, incriminating photographs, she wouldn’t leave them sitting on a computer. She’d copy them off on to a pen drive and hide it somewhere safe. Lucy or Joseph – whose room to search first? Well, on the basis of who was most likely to have killed Maria, she’d have to go for Lucy, the stepdaughter. The stepdaughter. It was a term that in these days, when reconstituted families are commonplace, had rather dropped out of fashion. But the concept of the evil stepmother was one that had been implanted in Lawson at an early age when her father had read her fairy stories at bedtime. The story of Hansel and Gretel had always been, for her, the fairy story that had most fascinated and disturbed her as a child. It was the stepmother, not the witch, that was the most disturbing character for her, a manipulative, ill-defined character who schemed to separate a father from his beloved children. She was the figure of nightmares.

  So, it may have been entirely because of the Brothers Grimm that Detective Constable Lawson turned left at the top of the stairs and entered Lucy’s room. There she began to make a methodical search of the room: first the desk, then the chest of drawers, and finally the cupboards. Nothing. She looked around the room again. Where else? There was a glass-fronted corner cupboard with a few china ornaments. She opened that, carefully examining each of these, but there was no pen drive hidden behind or under or in any of them. If there was one, it must have been hidden with great care, maybe taped to the underside of one of the pieces of furniture, or, of course, she might carry it with her in her handbag, or hide it at work.

  She sighed, turned and made her way out of the room and up the other end of the short corridor to Joseph’s room. If Lucy gave the impression of being organized and careful, then Joseph did the opposite. Maybe, if he had something to hide, he was the sort of guy to stick it in the bottom of his sock drawer and think it was safe and undetectable. So, she made her way straight to the chest of drawers next to his bed. The top drawer was indeed his sock drawer, but the expression sock drawer implies a degree of order – socks matched up two by two in neat piles, or rolled together in balls – which was entirely absent from Joseph’s drawer. A sock scrimmage, Lawson thought would be a better description, but at least she could move her hand around all four corners of the drawer without feeling she was making a mess. But there was no pen drive. The next drawer was pants, and the third and last was shorts. She pulled them out. Underneath were a couple of magazines of the sort young men prefer to keep hidden from their parents. On the cover of the uppermost one was a woman with remarkably large breasts pouting at the camera. Lawson didn’t bother to even look at the second, because as she removed them from the drawer she saw that they had been hiding something of much greater potential: a brown en
velope. It was plain, and unmarked, and it was sealed, though not tightly. Lawson carefully eased it open, and gave a grin of delight. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed to the room triumphantly. ‘Yes!’

  She knew she ought to report this to Holden ASAP, but she was aware that she hadn’t finished searching the room. She moved fast now, going through Joseph’s desk drawers and wardrobe, but as with Lucy’s room she drew a blank. Still, given what she had found, this was no big deal. She trotted quickly down the stairs, and breezed into the study.

  ‘How’s it going, Constable?’

  Wilson’s frustration, as the tone his reply made clear, was reaching a crescendo. ‘Nothing,’ he snapped. ‘Absolutely, bloody nothing!’

  ‘Have you checked the desk for pen drives?’ She spoke calmly. ‘There aren’t any in Joseph’s or Lucy’s rooms.’

  ‘Yes I bloody have!’ His face was flushed. ‘Anyway, how come you’re so damn cheerful?’

  Lawson was tempted to take him on, but she had found something and he hadn’t, and besides, there was more than one way to challenge him. ‘If I was wanting to hide a sensitive file on a PC, do you know what I would do?’ She paused, but only briefly. Wilson said nothing, but she was going to tell him anyway. ‘I’d rename the file something really meaningless, and I’d change its extension, and I’d hide it amongst the system files. Wouldn’t you?’

  Wilson looked up at her for the first time since she had entered the room. What she had said made sense, but he had no intention of saying so. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at the envelope that Lawson was carrying.

  ‘It may not be relevant to the case,’ she smiled. ‘But I think I’d better show it to the DI first, don’t you think? Anyway, keep at it.’

  She turned and left the room, pausing in the hall in the front of a long gilt-framed mirror. She inspected herself, ran a hand through her hair, and puckered her face. Not bad, she mouthed silently. At which point, there was the noise of a key being thrust into the front door, and in came a tousled Joseph Tull. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded.