Blood Sinister

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Many are cold, but few are frozen

  In contrast to Phoebe Agnew’s unreconstructed seventies pit, the upstairs flat had been through the sort of make-over that wouldn’t have disgraced a Changing Rooms designer. Its tiny fragment of hall was made almost unbearably elegant by a bamboo plant stand bearing a vase of artificial roses, a large mirror in an elaborate gold plastic frame and, dangling from the ceiling, a Chinese lantern with tassels.

  The Chinese theme continued up the stairs with red and gold wallpaper, vaguely willow-patterned. The carpet was crimson, and at the top was a small landing and a glimpse through an open door of a dark and sultry boudoir, with red flock wallpaper and velvet curtains, a double bed covered in a purple and gold brocade counterpane, a velvet chair stuffed with tasselled silk cushions, pierced-work incense burners, and a surprising number of mirrors, including a full-length cheval standing at the foot of the bed.

  The sitting room, by contrast, was furnished in cheap, bright Ikea pine and jolly primary colours, chiefly yellow and lime. There was a window-seat occupied by a row of stuffed toys; the mantelpiece and various tables bore a collection of china animals, mostly pigs, frogs and mice; and on the walls were pictures of winsome puppies and kittens and other adorable fluffy baby animals in agonisingly lovable poses. There were enough moist eyes in that room, Slider reckoned, to have supplied an entire sultan’s banquet.

  ‘The occupant of this flat’, Atherton concluded, ‘is either seriously schizophrenic, or a working girl.’

  ‘Oh dear, how will we ever tell which?’ Slider wondered.

  The occupant was sitting on the sofa before a gas fire, sniffling into a Kleenex. WPC Asher stood at hand with the box, and made an enigmatic face over her head as the two appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Miss Jekyll, I presume?’ Slider enquired.

  She looked up. ‘Eh?’

  ‘What’s your name, love?’

  ‘Candi,’ she said. ‘With an “i”. Candi Du Cane.’

  ‘Real name?’

  She looked a trifle sulky. ‘Lorraine, if you must know. Lorraine Peabody.’

  She had a chubby, snubbily pretty face which gave her an air of extreme youth, though closer examination suggested she was in her middle twenties. Her hair was straight and dyed blonde, pulled back carelessly in a wispy tail; her juicily plump figure was outlined by a black body, over which she wore a tracksuit bottom, and a vast knitted cardigan which looked as if it came from the same needles as Phoebe Agnew’s sweater. It was so much too big for her that she’d had to roll the sleeves into thick sausage cuffs just to get her hands free. Her eyes and nose were red with weeping, and there was a black smudge under her eyes where the mascara had washed off with her tears.

  ‘Lorraine’s a nice name too,’ Slider said, taking Asher’s place on the sofa. Candi/Lorraine looked at him with the automatic alarm of the born victim. ‘I want to ask you some questions – nothing to worry about,’ Slider said. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Slider. You’re the one who found the body, aren’t you?’

  She shivered in automatic reaction, and then excused herself by saying, ‘It’s bleedin’ taters in here. The central ’eating never works prop’ly, but old Sborski – the landlord – he won’t never do nothing about it.’

  ‘You don’t own the flat, then?’

  ‘No, s’only rented. I did talk to Phoebe once about buying a place, but she said for girls like us what was the point? She said you might as well spend your money on yourself an’ enjoy it as tie it up in bricks an’ mortar. But it’s just you can never get nothing done.’ She was talking rapidly, and her voice was tight and too high. ‘I mean, Sborski’s a real old bastard. Last year there was water coming through the roof right over my bed, and he wouldn’t do nothing about it until Phoebe got on to him. She was brilliant. She jus’ stood up to people, you know? If it wasn’t for her—’

  She shivered again and hunched further into her vast jumper, her eyes wide and strained.

  ‘Shall I turn the fire up a bit?’ Slider asked, eyeing it doubtfully. It was a vintage piece with brown and wonky ceramic panels and four flames of uneven height, one of which was yellow and popped rhythmically.

  ‘Nah, it don’t work on the other setting,’ Lorraine said. ‘I’ll be all right. I jus’ can’t get it out me mind – you know, what I seen down there.’ Her arms wrapped around herself, she began to rock a little.

  Slider saw hysteria not too far off. ‘Don’t think about it for the moment,’ he said in his cosiest voice. ‘Tell me about you. You’re – what? – a model?’

  ‘Well, I’ve done modelling,’ she allowed. ‘I do escort work mostly. Hostessing. Promotional. That sort o’ thing.’ She met his eye and, as though goaded by an irresistible honesty, blurted, ‘Well, you know.’

  Slider nodded. He did indeed. ‘Lived here long?’

  ‘Two years, nearly.’

  ‘You’ve done it up really nicely,’ Slider said with his fatherly smile, the one that melted the golden hearts of tarts.

  ‘Ju like it? My mum always said I got a flair for it – colour an’ that. Said I shoulda gone in for it, for a living.’

  ‘I bet you could have. And all these animals – quite a collection you’ve got.’

  A little more of this and she had stopped shivering and staring and was beginning to unwrap her arms. Slider led her gently up to the fence again. ‘So Phoebe only rented the flat below, then, like you?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t think she cared much about stuff like that. Possessions an’ stuff. She was always on about causes an’ everything.’

  ‘You knew her well?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, she was always really nice to me, done things for me, like making old Sborski mend the roof an’ that. I used to go down for a chat an’ we used to sit an’ have a drink an’ a laugh an’ everything. She was great. She always had time for you.’

  ‘You obviously liked her.’

  ‘Yeah, she was a great laugh. You’d never’ve fought she was as old as she was. I mean, I could never talk to my mum, but Phoebe was like as if she was the same age as me. Ever so modern and young in her attitudes an’ everyfing. Except for abortion. Funny, she was really down on that. The only time she ever went for me was when I got up the duff an’ said I was gettin’ rid of it. She tried to talk me out of it – I mean,’ she said in amazement, ‘what’d I do wiv a kid? She wouldn’t talk to me for ages after that. But it blew over. She was a real mate.’

  ‘She lived there alone, did she? She wasn’t married?’

  ‘Nah, she never had time for all that. She said she had enough of dealing with men all day, without having to come home and look after one. She had ’ad boyfriends – she was quite normal in that respect,’ she assured him earnestly, her blue eyes wide. ‘But she said, “You and me, L’raine,” she said, “we know the trouble men cause in the world,” she said, an’ she said, “You and me know marriage ain’t the answer to every problem.” Not like some o’ them daft girls you see on the telly, think gettin’ a man’s the most important thing in life.’

  ‘Did Phoebe have men friends come to visit her?’ Slider asked casually.

  ‘She had friends all right,’ Lorraine said cautiously. ‘I’ve see people go in and out, but I couldn’t tell you pacificly, not names or anythink. Up here, I wouldn’t know if someone come unless I was looking out the window. But she did have someone in yesterday.’ She looked at him hopefully, wanting to please.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Well, I went down to the hall about twelve o’clock time to see if there was any letters. I’d just got up. And as I open me door, Phoebe comes in wiv her arms full of shopping.’

  ‘She came in from the street?’

  ‘Yeah, wiv all bags of food an’ that. So I says, how about a cup a coffee an’ that, because we hadn’t had a good old chat for ages, not since before Christmas, really. But she says no, she can’t stop because she’s got someone coming to dinner and she’s got to get the place tidied up.’

&n
bsp; ‘Did she say who was coming?’

  ‘No, but she seemed sort of excited, so I reckoned it was a man. I mean, she wouldn’t tidy up for a girlfriend, would she? I made a joke about it, because she never normally tidied anything. Me, I like things nice, but her place was always a tip. Tell the trufe, I couldn’t see her cooking for a girlfriend either. I mean, she mostly eats out, or buys a Marks an’ Sparks thing, from what I’ve seen.’

  ‘Did she say what time this person was coming?’

  ‘Nah, but when I was going back up I asked if she fancied coming down the pub later, an’ she said no, she couldn’t, because of this person coming, and she said she didn’t want to be disturbed and not to knock on her door or ring her up for any reason whatever. So I just said pardon me for living, an’ I went. And that was the last time I see her.’ She sniffed. ‘If I’d of knew it was the last time, I’d of never of said that. But she got up my nose.’

  ‘Why did she? Was she bad-tempered about it?’

  ‘Oh no, not really. Like I said, she seemed kind of pleased an’ excited when she said about someone coming; but then when she said that – about not disturbing her – she went all strict and teachery, an’ I just thought, well, I thought, excuse me! I know when I’m not wanted.’

  Slider was accustomed to the habit of the ignorant of taking offence for no reason. She must have been a trying neighbour for the intellectual Agnew – probably forever ‘popping down for a coffee’. A person who worked from home was always vulnerable to the dropper-in with an empty schedule and a vacant mind.

  ‘I suppose you didn’t see the visitor arrive?’ he asked without hope.

  ‘Not as such,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘but I think I heard music playing down there later, so I reckon he must of come all right.’

  ‘What time would that have been?’

  ‘I dunno, really.’ She thought for a moment. ‘It must a’ been about hapass six, summink like that, ’cos I had the radio on before that, but I turned it off when I went to have me bath, and then I heard the music downstairs, that classical shite she likes.’ She made a face. No votes here for Vivaldi and Bach, then.

  ‘What about during the evening? Did you hear any other noises from downstairs?’

  ‘Well I wasn’t in, was I? I went out about seven, down the club.’

  ‘Which club?’

  ‘The Shangri-la,’ she said. ‘D’you know it?’

  He did indeed. It was a well-known pick-up place for prostitutes, and he had always wondered whether it was by design or accident that the illuminated sign over the door had lost its ‘n’.

  He was about to ask the next question when she evidently thought of something. ‘Oh, wait! I dunno if it matters, but I did hear the door downstairs bang. That’d be about sevenish. I was just pulling the curtains in here, ’cos I was going out. So that could of been him going. And now I come to think of it, when I went past her door just after, there was no music playing inside, in her flat. So he must of went.’

  ‘Didn’t you look down and see, when you heard the door bang? You were standing at the window.’

  ‘Well, no, ’cos I’d just pulled the curtains closed. And I wasn’t that interested, tell you the trufe.’

  Slider sighed inwardly. ‘And what time did you come back from the club?’

  ‘It was about – I dunno, going on ten o’clock.’

  ‘Alone?’

  She looked away. ‘Maybe, maybe not. What’s it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters. Look, Lorraine,’ he explained carefully to her stubbornly averted profile, ‘we’re going to have to ask everyone if they saw anyone entering or leaving this house yesterday evening. We’ll get hundreds of reports, and we’ll have to go through them all. Now if we can cross out the ones we know came to see you, it’ll help us find the right one. Do you see?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Don’t you want to help find out who killed Phoebe?’

  She wavered, but said, ‘I ain’t gettin’ meself into trouble. I ain’t getting no-one into trouble.’

  ‘There’s no trouble in it, not for you or your visitors. I just want to eliminate them.’

  She looked sidelong at him. ‘What if I don’t remember their names?’

  ‘A description and the time they came and left will do, if that’s all you’ve got. You’ll have to write it all out for me.’ She still looked far from convinced, and he left the subject for now and went on, ‘Tell me what happened this morning.’

  ‘Well,’ she said cautiously, ‘I just come down this morning to bum a bit of coffee off of her, ’cos I’d run out. I rung her bell and, like, shouted out through the door, “It’s only me, Feeb,” but there was no answer.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘’Bout quart’ to ten, ten to ten maybe.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, and paused. ‘The thing is,’ she went on, and paused again.

  He thought he saw her difficulty. ‘If the door was closed, how did you get in? Have you got a key?’

  ‘Well, not as such,’ she said reluctantly, ‘although she has give me a key from time to time, when she wanted someone letting in, a workman or something, you know?’

  ‘But you didn’t, in fact, have a key this morning?’ Slider pressed.

  Now she looked defiant. ‘All right, if you must know, I slipped the lock. Well, I knew Feeb wouldn’t mind. She never minded me lending a bit o’ coffee or whatever. And it was me what pointed it out to her in the first place, how rotten that lock was and how anybody could get in. I told her she ought to make Sborski get a new one fixed, but she never got round to it. I don’t think she was that bothered. She trusted people too much, that was her problem.’

  Slider nodded patiently. ‘So you went in?’

  ‘I called out, “Are you there, Feeb?”, ’cos the front room door was open and I could see the curtains was still shut, so I thought she might be sleeping in.’

  By ‘the front room’ she meant, of course, the living room. Slider was accustomed to this Londonism and was not confused. ‘Was the light on or off?’ he asked.

  ‘Off. That’s what I mean, it was dark in there, so she might have been still in bed. Well, so I went up to the door and just stuck me head round, and I see her laying there. I could see right away something was wrong, the way she was laying. So I went and pulled the curtains back.’ Another pause. The chubby face was very pale now, and the hands gripping the handkerchief were shaking as she relived it. ‘Then I see her face and everything.’

  Slider prompted her gently. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I jus’ dialled 999.’

  ‘You used her phone? The one in the room?’

  She nodded. So that ruled out last number redial, which might have been useful.

  ‘It was awful, with her laying there, you know the way she was – and her eyes open an’ everything. After I phoned they said to wait there but I couldn’t stay in the room with her like that. So I went out in the hall and pulled the door to. It felt like hours, waiting. I thought they’d never come. And’, the thought struck her, ‘I’ve never even had me cup a coffee yet.’

  ‘Well, I shall want you to come down to the station and make a statement,’ Slider said, ‘so we can give you a cup of coffee there.’

  ‘What, I’ve got to say all this again?’ she asked indignantly.

  ‘For the record,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got to list all your visitors for me. But it’s nice and warm there, and the coffee’s not bad. You can have a bun as well. They do a nice Danish.’ She shrugged and sighed, but had plainly resigned herself to her fate. ‘By the way, did Phoebe ever mention to you anyone that she was afraid of,’ he went on, ‘or anyone that might want to do her harm?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘No, I don’t know about that. There was this bloke I seen hanging about sometimes – Wolsey, Woolley, some name like that. She got him off this charge. He was s’pose to’ve blagged some building society, but he reckoned he was fitted up, an’ she found some evidenc
e to get him off.’

  ‘Michael Wordley?’ Atherton suggested.

  ‘Yeah, Wordley, that’s him,’ Lorraine said.

  Slider nodded, remembering the case. It had been a sore point at the time: Miss Agnew hadn’t hesitated to generalise from the particular. ‘But why would he want to harm her? He’d be grateful to her, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘You haven’t seen him. He’s a right tasty bastard, built like a brick khasi, face like a bagful o’ spanners. He’s a nutter, and you never know what them sort’ll do next. I tell you, I never liked having him come round here, I don’t care what Phoebe said. I mean, you’ve only got to say one wrong word, or look at ’em a bit funny, and you’ve had it. If anyone coulda done – what they done to her,’ she said with a shudder, ‘it was him.’

  Ungrammatical, but emphatic. ‘When did you last see him round here?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly. It would be – I dunno, maybe last week or the week before.’

  ‘Well, we’ll certainly look into him,’ Slider said. ‘Anyone else you can think of?’

  ‘No, but she had been worried lately,’ Lorraine said. ‘She never said what about, but for weeks now she’s been a bit—’

  ‘Preoccupied?’

  ‘Yeah. Yesterday was the first time I seen her smiling an’ happy for, like, a couple o’ months. Well, since Christmas, really. An’ then some bastard goes an’ does that to her! It’s not fair,’ she mourned. ‘I bet it was that nutter.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Slider said, ‘do you know who her next of kin was? Are her parents still alive?’

  ‘I dunno. She never said.’

  ‘Any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘She never mentioned any to me,’ Lorraine said slowly. ‘We didn’t talk about that sort o’ thing much. Maybe Peter’d know – him what lives down the area. He’s lived here longer’n me. He was always in there, chatting away. Real bunny merchant. Bored the pants off Phoebe, if you want my opinion, but she was too polite to say. Always too nice to everyone, that was her trouble.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be in at the moment. I expect he’s at work, isn’t he?’