‘I know. It’s just that—’ She pulled herself together. No point in saying she’d really seen herself simply as a woman, like the corpse. She and Patrick weren’t yet back on those terms. ‘Well, at least we’ve something more to go on, now. Colin won’t just be asking vague questions about missing men of the road – he can be much more specific.’
‘Is he getting any co-operation?’
‘Not a lot. If you give up society I suppose the last person you want to talk to is a copper.’
‘Find someone who doesn’t look like a copper, then.’
‘Funny you should say that, Patrick – I might just have someone in mind.’
Chapter Six
Sue Rowley was working at her desk when Kate popped in to see her. She looked up, interested, like a bird, brown head on one side, ready to dart at any crumb of the arson case that Kate might have missed. ‘What do you think about fraud as a motive?’
She flicked a glance at her watch as she spoke. Like Kate, Sue’d opted to work on the Bank Holiday, and seemed, like Kate, to be regretting it.
Kate couldn’t very well match the gesture, but knew it must be some time after six. ‘Claiming for contents they don’t have? None of the firms I’ve spoken to had their goods over-insured. Not according to the assessors, anyway. And we’ve got different insurers for each of the firms that have been torched. All of them tell me that the claim seems entirely reasonable given the nature of the business. Businesses, that is – they’re all in different lines of country. No individual assessor smells any sort of rat.’
Sue made a note. ‘What about the premises? Were they over-insured?’
‘On the contrary. One firm, in fact – the one involved in the most recent blaze – is likely to lose a lot of money. They can’t afford to pull down the wreckage and rebuild on the same site. They’d have to go somewhere cheaper, if they can find anywhere, that is.’
‘Oh, there are plenty of vacant warehouses around. More’s the pity,’ Rowley reflected.
‘The Selly Oak firm – now they admit they were paying an extraordinarily low rent – old, rather tatty premises, they were. I want to get on to the Health and Safety people about them – just in case they’d been warned to make expensive improvements and had chickened out. But that wouldn’t apply to the other premises. The trouble is, Gaffer, there’s nothing consistent in any of the premises – except the modus operandi. This silly business of someone scrambling on a possibly fragile and treacherous roof, pouring petrol through a skylight and scarpering, just in time.’
‘You’re sure it’s always been just in time? I’d check out the A. and E. departments. There aren’t many hospitals these days doing that sort of stuff – it shouldn’t take you long.’
Kate nodded. ‘It’s already down as Fatima’s first job when she comes in tomorrow, Gaffer.’
Sue snorted with laughter. ‘Trump me, will you? OK, that’s what you’re paid to do, and that’s why they’ve fast-tracked you. Any more thoughts about that yet, Kate?’
She shook her head. ‘Been a bit busy, what with one thing and another.’
‘So I should hope! After all, Kate, we are into a murder inquiry, now. And I’d like to get as much done as we can before an MIT swoops in.’
‘Ah, the Fifth Cavalry! And they’ll no doubt spot there’s one thing we haven’t checked out yet – who owned the land on which those premises were built. I’ll get Colin on to that first thing tomorrow.’
‘Good thinking. Now, are you off home or are you and the lads going for a quick jar?’
‘Not a lot of lads around.’
‘Ah, of course. Bank Holiday. You know,’ Rowley continued as she cleared a neat spot in the middle of her desk, ‘the culture’s changed so much. When I was your age it was assumed we’d be off, boozing and bonding – not that we even knew the word, mind – till we were half-pissed and nowhere fit to drive. Especially us women, if we wanted to get on. Now, they know we’ve got homes, families, even.’ She touched a framed photo on her desk. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ve got this great aunt,’ she said. ‘But she doesn’t worry if I have half a snifter after work. So long as I have a peppermint afterwards and she can’t smell the beer on my breath.’
Aunt Cassie was so full of news she might not even have complained if Kate had rolled up drunk, provided she’d sat and listened without interrupting. In fact, she could scarcely wait for her first glass of gin to impart it all.
‘Mrs Nelmes tells me that son-in-law of hers is in the soup,’ she said gleefully. ‘You know, young Eyore. Oh, he’s not as bad as that, but he always looks fed up. Graham, that’s it. The fair Flavia’s husband.’ The Harveys, man and wife.
Kate sipped her tonic and sat down to wait. Acquiescence was usually the best policy where Cassie was concerned. Moreover, if she tried to stop a flow of gossip, the old lady, balked, would turn to other prey. Kate herself, most likely. And in particular her unmarried state. And maybe Cassie would connect Kate’s unmarried state with Graham’s married one. No. Let Cassie have her head.
‘Apparently he was very late home the other night. Very late. They nearly missed some special do at that church of theirs. And though he was supposed to have been on the bus – and it’s a fair walk, according to Mrs Nelmes, for the bus – he was scarcely damp, despite the downpour. Well, that’s what Mrs Nelmes said. So what do you make of that?’
‘Why was he on the bus?’ Kate asked, straight-faced.
‘Oh, there was something the matter with the car.’
‘I wonder why Mrs Harvey didn’t pick him up. She’s got a car of her own, hasn’t she?’
‘Doesn’t like town traffic or some such. Especially in the rain. So what d’you reckon?’
Kate wouldn’t bite. It was bad enough listening, wasn’t it? ‘What do you reckon?’ She asked at last, taking the old woman’s glass and refilling it.
‘I reckon the obvious thing. That someone gave him a lift. Or he might just have taken a taxi. But apparently he didn’t want to talk about it. Told her he was back in time for that do and that was that. Told? Well, he shouted, according to Mrs Nelmes.’
Good for him! But Kate said nothing.
But Cassie needed no encouragement. ‘Of course, I don’t see what the problem is, and so I told Mrs Nelmes. A man does a long day’s work, gets a lift from a friend, gets to this God-bothering in time – no wonder he gets cross when his wife starts cross-questioning him. After a day like that, he should get a nice warm welcome, no questions asked. That’s what my Arthur expected. And got,’ she added with satisfaction, swigging the gin in one.
Kate reflected silently on the difference between a wife and a mistress.
‘So I told her,’ Cassie continued, ‘I wasn’t surprised the worm had turned. Only it seems that Flavia is the only one entitled to call the poor lad a worm, so Mrs Nelmes is no longer speaking to yours truly. So there you are. So I think I’ll have another – just a finger – to celebrate. What about you?’
‘Why not?’ She helped herself to another tonic. So what was Cassie celebrating? Her spat with Mrs Nelmes or a marriage with a problem?
‘You don’t call that a drink?’
‘I do at this time of night when I’ve got to be up at six tomorrow.’
Cassie cackled. ‘Oh, aye. Got yourself a breakfast date, have you? Oh, not with the worm?’
‘No. With a very attractive young man called Jason. My tennis coach. And we start hitting little yellow balls at seven prompt.’
‘Start low, that’s it, and end high. Let me see the side of that racquet. That’s it. What a shot! Now – just to show it wasn’t a fluke – another backhand.’ Jason sent down another ball. She might be hot enough to have shed her tracksuit and to have started to swig from her water bottle, but he – all six foot one of him – was still cool, not a drop of sweat glistening in his curly black hair.
They were in the tennis centre. The centre – which held eight courts – was divided in two by a high-level walkw
ay, designed to stop people straying on to others’ courts while they were in use. Heavy canvas curtains at the end of each court reduced the echo and deadened the flight of the balls. The other side of the walkway was completely unoccupied and in darkness. Only their court and the next one had lights on. Not that anyone was on the next court. No, as far as Kate knew, she and Jason were the only people in the whole complex, apart from the receptionist, still bug-eyed with sleep, and a cleaner, the only evidence of whose existence was a trolley half-way out of a door marked PLANT.
They’d spent ten minutes or so knocking up, to get the eye in and the joints moving, and had then collected up the tennis balls. Jason somehow transformed the ball basket into a ball-gatherer. Kate simply gathered as many as her racquet would carry.
‘You’d think in a place like this people would dispose of their litter more thoughtfully,’ Jason said, slinging a couple of plastic ball-tubes and a bottle into the bin beside the net. ‘Ugh.’ The bottle was obviously sticky.
Kate was fossicking behind a curtain: five or six balls were lurking behind it. And a couple of empty bottles. She kicked them free. As soon as she’d deposited the balls in Jason’s basket, she went back, and slung the bottles with unnecessary force into the bin.
‘It’s as bad as the bloody High Street,’ she said. ‘Some days you see whole families coming out of McDonald’s and dropping litter. Why can’t they use bins?’
‘Because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves by being different,’ Jason suggested, finding a chocolate wrapper and binning it. ‘Right. Ready to work on your forehand?’
She nodded, heading for the far end of the court.
‘Ready position. Knees bent, remember, take the racquet head down really low – that’s it! How’s that knee?’
‘Protesting a bit. But it might as well shut up because – yes!’ She was getting more and more accurate.
Now all that could be heard, above the constant hum of the extractor fans chilling the place unbearably, was the plop of the balls that Jason fed to her, the clip as she struck them, and then a more distant thud as they bounced off the far end of the court.
So when a woman screamed there was no doubt about what it was. A serious, terrified scream.
Kate hurtled through the door. The cleaner – a redhead in her forties whose skin was so white she might disappear if she got any paler – was yelling at the receptionist, and sobbing. She was pointing, it seemed, at the women’s changing room. Kate pushed her way in. No, nothing in the lavatory area. She checked the individual cubicles. Nothing. So into the changing room itself. No. Nothing. Until, that is, when she ducked round to the shower area.
On the tiled floor, just by one of the drains, lay a woman’s body. Naked.
‘We’ll have to stop meeting like this,’ Guljar said, pushing through the centre’s front doors. ‘What’s up, eh, Kate? Has that budgie of yours started playing tennis?’
The thin constable behind him grinned nervously.
‘I wish. No, a body in the women’s showers. A middle-aged woman, fifty, fifty-five, possibly. Judging by her face, that is. No immediate sign of foul play.’ A woman she wouldn’t mind looking like in twenty-five years’ time. Oh, the flesh wasn’t as firm as hers, but there were no varicose veins, no pads of fat. The hair had been high-lighted – where it had fallen forward Kate had seen more grey than the woman would have wanted made public. Whoever it was had cared for herself.
‘Natural causes? Too much running about – a woman her age, you know.’
‘No, I don’t. I know lots of women aged fifty-five who could run me off the court without raising a sweat. But let’s wait to see what the police surgeon has to say. I’ve just preserved the scene, that’s all. On a temporary basis, of course. I wouldn’t want to offend you Uniform types.’
‘I should hope not.’ There was a flicker of irritation, all the same. Then he grinned, sardonically. ‘I mean, it’s bloody typical, isn’t it, CID muscling in on the only two interesting incidents in this patch this month. Come on, just to show there’s no ill-feeling, show us this corpse, then.’
‘You’re sure? I could just finish my lesson and pop into work?’
‘Another pair of eyes never hurts. Come on, I’ll get young Des here to log us in – just in case we do have a crime on our hands.’
The thin constable swallowed hard and produced his notebook.
The police surgeon, Nesta Holt, was a spruce young woman a couple of years older than Kate. She straightened and shook her head, addressing herself to Guljar. ‘Well, she’s dead, all right. Classic heart failure, I’d have said. But—’
‘“But”?’ Kate put in, looking down at the dead woman, resisting the urge to wipe a trace of saliva from the corner of the slack mouth.
‘Well, it must have had a very sudden onset. I mean, physically she looks fine. Look at the muscles in her arms and legs. I wish a lot of the kids I see exercised as well as this. And no, none of the warning signs of long-term heart failure. No sign of high colour in her cheeks which might have suggested blood-pressure problems. Nothing unnatural here. As for time of death – how long have those heaters been on?’
‘Heaters?’ Kate looked round. The low roar she hadn’t originally registered came from the hair-dryers, both of which had been kept on with, now she looked more closely, Blu-tack between the dab-button and the body of the machine. She pointed. Guljar whistled and made a note. ‘The place was like an ice-box when I was in here last,’ she said.
‘Well, it isn’t cold now! So I’d say – and remember, time of death’s notoriously hard to pinpoint – between twelve and eight hours ago.’
‘Between eight and midnight, then,’ Guljar said.
‘Something like that.’
‘Would they still be playing at that time?’
Kate nodded. ‘Until ten, at least. Then there’s time to shower and have a drink and so on.’
Guljar looked at her under his eyebrows and made another note.
‘Right, that’s that, then,’ Nesta said. ‘I’ve got a surgery to go to. And I bet it’ll be full – all these people with their tennis elbows and their swollen knees. It only takes a couple of hours of tennis on TV to bring them out of the woodwork.’ She turned to Guljar. ‘You’ll do the necessary with Coroner’s Officers and so on?’
‘Sure. See you around, Nesta. And thanks for coming out so fast.’
‘It’s just I’m dying to see all those knees.’ Nesta looked at Kate’s shirt and shorts. ‘If you’ve been playing, you ought to get changed – you don’t want to chill too quickly – not that there’s much danger of that in here, I suppose. But that foyer’s pretty cold.’
Kate nodded. She held the door for her, then ducked back to the changing area. She pointed to the sports bag, in splendid isolation on a bench. ‘Any sign of any ID?’
Guljar looked once again as if he might bridle. Then he shook his head. ‘No ID at all. And it’s expensive gear.’
‘What about house keys, car keys?’
He shook his head. ‘You know, Kate, I have to admit it’s weird. How did she get here? And how was she going to let herself in when she got home?’
Kate leant against a wall, hands in the pockets of her top. ‘It can’t be unknown for a kind hubby to bring the little wife and collect her. But – and it’s a big but—’
‘Why didn’t he kick up a fuss when she didn’t come out? Come charging in here, or something?’
‘Quite. And why did none of the players notice she hadn’t left the building with them – you don’t play tennis on your own, do you? There must have been someone the other side of the net for at least an hour.’
‘Maybe whoever it was was in a rush,’ he suggested, sitting down on the bench.
‘Or they’d had a disagreement about a line call or something?’ she said, straight-faced, sitting beside him.
‘Quite. You obviously play here. What’s the system for recording players?’
‘Everything’s on compu
ter. Whether it’s a private game or a coaching session. You can phone in and book by credit card. Or you can do it in person. As far as I know, you only need give your name if you’re booking in advance.’
‘So even if four people were playing you’d only get one name. Well, player number one would presumably be able to identify the other three. Will you hang on here while I talk to the woman on Reception?’
OK. It was his patch, not hers. But she wished he’d said, Let’s go and talk to the woman on Reception. Guljar was a smashing bloke, and a bright one too, to make it to sergeant so quickly. No assistance from the accelerated promotion scheme, either. But – no, he wasn’t her, and she liked doing that sort of thing herself.
He was soon back. ‘The funny thing is, the computer went down last night.’
‘So there’s no record of any of the players?’
‘Funny little coincidence, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘Like those hair-dryers being jammed on. It’s usually like a bloody morgue in here. Looks as if someone might have wanted to muddy the time-of-death business.’
‘Which brings us to the question of a p.m. Costs more to have a full forensic p.m., doesn’t it? A lot more. He’s always on about his budget, our DI Crowther,’ Guljar said.
She looked up sharply. Some needle there between the two men? But she simply asked, ‘Isn’t everyone budget-crazy these days? It wouldn’t hurt to preserve the scene, would it, while he thought about it? I mean, a place like this – you can see how immaculate it is – must be cleaned every day. All the litter disposed of. All the evidence – if evidence there is – would be completely lost. We can’t afford that.’
She was rewarded by a grin. ‘All the bloody paperwork – if it proves a false alarm, you can bloody come and do it, your next day off.’
‘What’s one of those? OK, you’re on. If we’re wrong, I’ll type up the whole caboodle for you.’
‘What are we waiting for, then? I’ll call our CID and their SOCO friends, and make sure nothing is disturbed, nothing thrown away. That’ll really make the tennis-playing public happy, I don’t think.’
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