She had only once been to the London flat.
‘Really? I’m surprised that you didn’t go there with Eva. Why was that?’
Senor Starling needed to have his meals prepared, the house maintained. Eva always considered his needs first. In London she ate out, and the flat had a cleaning woman once a week. It was inconveniently small, and it wasn’t necessary for Marianna to be there. She certainly had no wish to go to London.
‘How often did Eva go there?’
It varied. Perhaps twice a month.
‘Did she have many friends there?’
Marianna turned from the interpreter and stared suspiciously at Kathy as she heard the question in Portuguese. Eva made many friends, because she was so charming. But she did not go to London to meet friends. She was a perfect wife in every way.
‘I can understand, then, why Mr Starling would have wanted her to be his wife, Marianna,’ Kathy said, feeling the frustration of this indirect dialogue, ‘but, really, why did she wish to marry him? Surely she could have had her pick of fine young men, Portuguese men?’
That was true, she could have, and many had tried to woo her, although she was still so young. Perhaps, after so many young suitors, Senor Starling’s maturity had appealed.
‘Perhaps? Didn’t she tell you, you being so close to her?’
Marianna hesitated. Yes, that was what she had told her. And Senor Starling was a man of substance.
‘Rich, you mean? But I thought that Eva’s family was already rich?’
The woman swelled up with umbrage. She could not possibly speak of Dom Arnaldo’s affairs. That would be intolerable. It was enough to say that his family was of the House of Aviz, and related to the de Souza Holsteins, the dukes of Palmela. They had been cushioned from the consequences of the revolution of 1910 by Dom Arnaldo’s grandfather’s estates in Brazil, and it would be insufferable to suggest that Donna Eva had married for money.
‘She really was a princess, then, was she?’
Marianna deflated slowly. It was true, though Eva was far too unostentatious to parade her superb lineage generally, that she was of royal blood. Through the de Souza Holsteins, Eva was related by blood to the Princess Helena, wife of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, and daughter of no less a person than Queen Victoria of England herself.
They stopped for a cup of tea. They had heard the authorised version of Eva, Kathy knew, a portrait of perfection painted by a loyal and doting companion. It explained nothing—why Eva had married Starling, why she went up to London, why someone might have hated her so much that they could mutilate her in that way.
‘She has beautiful clothes, Marianna. Do you help her to buy her clothes?’
Marianna pursed her lips in disapproval at the question.
‘No? But, then, who does? Surely not Mr Starling?’ Kathy gave a little smile of incredulity.
Senor Starling was a very generous husband, Marianna said stoutly. Why not Senor Starling?
‘I don’t doubt he’s generous. But he has no idea about good taste, Marianna. Come, now. The house in Surrey is very comfortable, but it doesn’t have the style of Eva’s clothes, or of the London flat.’
Eva bought her own clothes, on her own, Marianna maintained. She bought them because Senor Starling wanted her to be happy and to look nice.
‘Do they go out together much? You know, to functions where she needs to dress so smartly?’
Certainly, they went out, with friends. But, when pressed, Marianna could name only one couple, Mr and Mrs Cooper, who had visited and stayed with them in Farnham, and with whom Eva and Starling had stayed in some other part of London.
Kathy sighed and waited a moment before going on. ‘It wasn’t the clothes that they quarrelled about, then?’
Marianna started at the word ‘quarrelled’, even before it was translated for her, and once again Kathy had the suspicion that her lack of English might be a matter of convenience.
What did she mean? What was she implying? Eva and Senor Starling never quarrelled.
‘Oh, Marianna,’ Kathy shook her head sadly, ‘I think we both know that isn’t true.’
The woman bristled, and Kathy was afraid that she would simply refuse to go on. But then she fixed Kathy with a fierce eye and said, in English, ‘You must say nothing against Senor Starling. He gives her everything, more than everything. He spoils her. Sometimes she is too extravagant. Too much. She is . . .’ and her face crumpled as she finished ‘. . . so young. Sometimes she is lost. No life, no home.’
She dabbed at her eyes, mouth trembling on the brink of sobs.
The phrase struck Kathy, as if it were the first truthful thing Marianna had uttered. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said gently. ‘And this time, before she left, did she give you any idea at all of what she intended to do? Where she might be going?’ Marianna shook her head.
‘A name, perhaps, of a shop? Or a movie?’ Kathy brought out the list of films showing at the Cinema Hollywood. ‘Have a look at these titles. Maybe she mentioned one to you?’
Marianna took the list out of politeness, dubiously. She ran her eye down the page, stiffened and looked up in horror at Kathy. And then the grief, which had been so strangely numbed by the processes of officials, of doctors and police, all in their strange clothes, welled up again in an overwhelming rush, and she began to wail inconsolably.
It took several minutes before she calmed sufficiently for the interpreter to be able to make herself understood to Kathy. She, too, had read the list, and was looking pale.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kathy said, her arm round Marianna, seeing the expression on the interpreter’s face. The woman pointed to a section of the list setting out a programme of the films of the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, her finger resting on the title of the 1970 film Cabeças Cortadas.
‘What?’ Kathy said, vainly trying to follow this as a woman constable tried to help her with Marianna.
‘Cabeças Cortadas,’ the woman gasped. ‘It means Severed Heads.’
Helen Fitzpatrick was on her feet when they reached the waiting room, and hurried forward to put an arm round the sobbing Marianna. She looked searchingly at Kathy.
‘I think it’s best that she lies down for a while,’ Kathy said softly. ‘I’ll get a car to take you home, if you don’t mind looking after her.’
Helen agreed. ‘I’ll take her back to the cottage until we can get something organised. How’s Sammy?’
‘Not good. I’ve got some business here, and then I’ll call on you.’
After they’d gone, Kathy returned to the area of the interview rooms, in the corridor meeting Bren clutching a plastic cup of thin frothy coffee in his big fist.
‘How’s it going with Sammy?’ she asked.
‘Brock called in the doc again to look at him. Can hardly get a word out of him, as if he’s just turned in on himself.’
‘I think he and Eva quarrelled over money. Marianna admitted she was extravagant.’
‘Any idea when this was?’
‘No. She’s fallen apart again. I don’t think we’ll get anything more from her today. I’m going to talk to the neighbours now. I just wanted to let you know.’
‘Brock wants me to pick up Keller, just to make absolutely sure he’s not involved. My money’s on the guys working on the Heathrow passenger lists.’
‘How do they know what to look for?’
‘A couple ticketed but only one checks in, someone with a record, I don’t know. But I’ll bet he’s there somewhere. Why else take us out to the airport?’
‘Why do that to Eva? Why destroy the stamp?’
‘Fury, contempt. Someone who hated Sammy so much that he wanted to take everything Sammy owned and tear it up in front of his eyes, rather than keep any of it himself. Who would hate that much?’
‘Sammy did time for being involved in selling drugs to a girl who died. But that was years ago. Surely it would have to be something more recent?’
‘Maybe that’s where Kelle
r comes in—the killer waited until Keller was released so that the finger would point at him.’
Helen Fitzpatrick was in her living-room alone with the two dogs, Marianna resting upstairs in bed, Toby Fitzpatrick out. ‘He still doesn’t know what’s happened,’ she said distractedly. ‘He has a friend he usually meets on a Sunday morning, and they walk down to the local for a pint. I tried phoning the pub, but they said he’d just left.’ She ran a hand through her hair as if to wipe away her anxiety. ‘Would you like a coffee?’
The Labradors followed them into the kitchen, keeping a close eye on Kathy.
‘I suppose you see things like that all the time, do you?’ Helen said, filling the kettle, keeping her eyes away from the area of freshly mopped floor. Now that Marianna was taken care of, she was suffering her own reaction. ‘That— that head.’
‘Not quite like that.’
‘It’s so bloody unsettling. When you’ve known someone, to see them like that . . . There’s something so, I don’t know, uncanny about it. Horrible.’
Kathy nodded. ‘You’re not a nurse are you, by any chance?’
‘Me? No. Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘The way you took care of Marianna. You seemed to know what you were doing.’
‘Oh.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘I suppose that’s always been my role. Eldest child of a big family or something. I get to take charge in the emergencies. Then fall apart on my own later.’ She reached up into a cupboard for a bowl of sugar and knocked the spoon on the way down, sending it flying to the floor, white crystals spraying across the worktop. ‘Damn!’
‘Don’t worry. Kathy knelt to pick up the spoon while Helen got a cloth to wipe away the sugar. ‘Did you know Eva well?’
‘I don’t know about “well”. Some friends and I play tennis with her from time to time, and I suppose we saw as much of her as anyone else around here.’
‘But you weren’t close friends with her? Or Mr Starling?’
‘To be honest, they don’t have anyone you’d call close friends in this area. Most of the people living up here are retired, their families gone, and she was much too young and lively to be interested in them, while he just seemed content to be with her.’
‘He really doted on her, did he?’
Helen looked sharply at Kathy. ‘You’re wondering . . . Actually, yes, he did dote on her. I remember how he was when she first arrived. It was . . .’ Helen Fitzpatrick pursed her lips ‘. . . touching, I suppose, or, at least, it would have been . . .’
‘You mean the difference in their ages?’
‘Yes, I did find that rather hard to accept, I must admit. I’m sorry, that’s not fair, especially now. It probably just shows my age, I suppose. But I did actually find it rather nauseating, a man like that fawning over an eighteen-year-old girl. I mean, what if it had been your daughter?’ She turned away and began spooning coffee into a pot.
‘That was when she first arrived, you said. Did that change?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, really. I mean, after people have been married a while, their relationship becomes more settled. You know what I mean. But he was still very attentive.’
‘Did they argue?’
‘I—I don’t know.’
‘Helen, it’s really important we understand the background to all this. It isn’t being disloyal to tell us what the real situation was. It may be irrelevant, but we do need to know.’
She met Kathy’s eye. ‘I’m not . . . I’m not trying to hide anything. I just don’t know. We really didn’t know them that well. I always felt him to be . . . well, I’m not being snobby, but a bit socially unsure of himself, even though he had all that money. When he brought home his new wife, they were invited everywhere, of course—everyone was fascinated, them being such an unlikely couple. But she just seemed rather bored, and he said almost nothing, and people gave up.
‘We saw more of Eva because of their tennis court. There are three of us who play, and we’d had our eyes on it for years, but we never dared bring it up when Sammy was on his own, before Eva came. But when Eva arrived, we thought this was our chance. We asked if she played, and then suggested we all had a game, so she practically had to invite us to use the court. I’m sure she saw through us, but she didn’t seem to mind.’
‘Was she keen on tennis?’
‘She was good when she wanted to be, but she wasn’t much interested, really. More the pool. She loved the pool, whereas I never saw Sammy go near it.’
‘So you knew Sammy before Eva?’
‘Yes, but not well. He’d already lost his first wife when we moved here.’
‘When was that?’
‘Five years, no, six years ago now. Yes, it was ’ninety-one when they made Toby take the package—terrible euphemism that, isn’t it? Like a poisoned Christmas gift.’ She spoke bitterly.
‘Nasty, was it?’ Kathy said.
‘Yes, it was actually. Hit us at the worst time. Anyway, in the end it worked out because we found this place. I used to come to the Hog’s Back when I was a small girl. I had an aunt who lived out here, and I had these wonderful memories of hot summer days with her. So when Toby lost his job, and there was no particular reason to stay where we were, I thought back to those days and started to look for something in this area. It took a lot of time and searching to find something we could afford and still leave enough to—’ She stopped, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear all this. You want to know about Sammy and Eva.’
‘So you first met him six years ago.’
‘Yes. He’d been living up here for some time by then, him and the dreaded Sally, his housekeeper. I remember thinking how funny it was, Mr Starling living in the Crow’s Nest. Later I thought it rather appropriate. Anyway, we hardly saw him at first. He was like a hermit. It was probably a year before we did more than nod as he drove past in the lane.’
The two dogs, who had settled into a watchful sprawl, jumped suddenly to their feet, ears straining. ‘Is that Daddy?’ Helen asked, and opened the back door for them. They hurtled out, returning a few moments later with Toby Fitzpatrick.
‘Oh, hello.’ He hesitated in the doorway. ‘Didn’t realise we had visitors.’
‘Something dreadful has happened, Toby,’ his wife said, rising to her feet. ‘This is Kathy Kolla—you remember, from last night? It turns out she’s a policewoman. A detective.’
His mouth opened, but before he could speak Helen went on rapidly, ‘It’s about Eva, darling, Eva Starling.’
‘Eva?’
‘Yes, Eva.’ She was talking very deliberately to him, holding him with her eyes. ‘The most awful thing. She’s been murdered.’
‘Eva . . . murdered? That’s not possible . . .’
Their conversation was oddly stilted and one-sided, like a nursery teacher talking to a child in front of a stranger. The dogs reinforced this, moving to Helen’s heels and examining her husband’s face as if they knew very well which of them was top dog. Fitzpatrick fiddled with his left ear, worried, frowning with concentration.
‘I saw her, darling,’ Helen went on. ‘I actually saw her—her head.’
‘What?’
‘She’s been decapitated. Her head was lying there in the lane. I saw it.’
Toby Fitzpatrick’s eyes widened, his mouth opened and the colour drained from his face as abruptly as if a plug had been pulled. Kathy moved forward quickly, thinking he might pass out, but he reeled back from her against the kitchen sink, turned, ducked his head into it and threw up. It was almost, Kathy thought, as if his wife had done it deliberately, the brutal phrasing, to shock him, or shut him up. She wondered if he wasn’t very bright. Or was there something else, something about Eva, perhaps, that Helen didn’t want him to blurt out?
He straightened, gasping, and turned on a tap, tugging some sheets from a roll of paper towel and wiping his mouth and face. ‘Sorry . . . Sorry . . .’
‘Poor darling,’ Helen said, going to his side and putting an arm round his sh
oulder. The dogs moved in too, trying to get between the two of them, and Helen had to shoo them away.
‘That’s appalling,’ he whispered. He stared at Kathy, his face grey. ‘Really? Her head?’
‘Marianna’s upstairs, resting,’ Helen said. ‘She went to pieces. We’ll look after her until she’s herself again.’
‘Who? Oh, yes, I see.’
‘Well,’ Helen went on, brisk now, ‘the coffee’s ready. Let’s go and sit down, if there are other things you want to ask us, Sergeant?’
They sat in the living-room, a coffee table between Kathy and the Fitzpatricks, and on it a fresh bunch of flowers from the garden arranged expertly in one of the glass vases. Kathy recognised it now as an Iittala design, like one the office staff had given a retiring secretary earlier in the year. It seemed to be the only recent thing in the room, everything else comfortably worn and scuffed, twenty-year-old Habitat and Scandinavian beech.
‘When did you last see Eva?’ Kathy said.
‘Two weeks ago,’ Helen said promptly. ‘We had our regular game of tennis with her on that Sunday morning. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see her during the following week, and then last Sunday, when we called again, Sammy answered the door and told us that Eva had gone up to town for a few days. He said we could use the court anyway, which we did.’
‘Was that not surprising, that she hadn’t told you she wouldn’t be home for your game?’
‘Oh, no. That was the way she was. She’d get an idea in her head and just do it. I told you, we weren’t close.’
‘Sammy told you she was at their London flat?’
‘That’s right, in Canonbury.’
‘Have you ever been there?’
‘No! We weren’t friends like that. I never went with Eva on her London trips.’ Helen slid her hand into her husband’s. ‘All right now, darling?’
He nodded and reached forward for his coffee cup, still looking dazed. He stopped before his hand reached the cup and said, ‘But why? Why would anyone do a thing like that?’
‘We don’t know, Mr Fitzpatrick,’ Kathy said. ‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘Me?’ He looked horrified.
The Chalon Heads Page 14