by Clare Curzon
Alyson assumed she would be notified in advance by telephone, and returned to pin the letter on the kitchen notice board. It was time then to prepare a tray and set out Emily’s puree from the fridge. She put everything ready before lifting the frail little body into the wheelchair for her revue of the collection.
In the hallway Emily gave a little cackle of mirth, pointing at a frame on the wall. It was a tinted ink drawing Alyson had always found distasteful. Among a random assortment of apparently metallic objects a skeletal human form could be discerned. Although fleshless, some muscles and ligaments remained, drawn out and attenuated like strings of chewing gum, to be draped over various angular shapes. Like some Picassos she’d seen elsewhere, there were misplaced features; an ear attached to the side of something resembling a fire iron; a single malevolent eye implanted in the neck.
Nothing remotely comic there: surely the outcome of a tortured mind. Many of the other pictures were dark in mood, but they seemed to give Emily pleasure. Perhaps she remembered the circumstances of acquiring them, when she’d run the Scottish gallery with her son-in-law. That was all Timothy Fitt had ever mentioned to account for the collection.
They were all by modernists. There was a calm, understated Cape Cod house signed by Edward Hopper; a prostrate statue and receding arches which she knew must be a Chirico; a continuous black line that wound through patches of runny colour from which you saw forms gradually emerge – a face, buttocks, a serpent, a flower. Then a broken window with the cracks radiating like a monstrance and, viewed in their sharp angles, the shadowy columns of a great, disintegrating cathedral.
Only at the entrance to the drawing room was there a reassuring patch of vibrant life, where three smallish oils were grouped; two street scenes with a Mediterranean feeling and a small blue bowl of mixed flowers on a white, drawn-thread cloth. On one of these Alyson made out the artist’s name, Anne Redpath. Opposite them Emily put out a hand to stay their progress. She was smiling, but sadly.
‘Some of my favourites,’ Alyson said, encouraging her.
Emily nodded. ‘I – knew – Anne.’
‘In Scotland?’
‘Edin – burgh. She – went away.’
That seemed the sum of Emily’s intention to converse, but Alyson was pleased with her effort. She steered the wheelchair in front of the observation window. ‘Of all the pictures this is what I love best.’ She waved an arm at the darkening view as the winter sun sank into low cloud. A rare silver thread edged the tips of several buildings.
Emily leaned a little forward. ‘Glass – wall. Safe – inside.’
‘Safe and snug,’ Alyson agreed. ‘Let’s have tea, shall we?’
Chapter Twelve
Sunday, February 3rd.
Because in all the months that Alyson had been looking after Emily she had never had an evening out, she was convinced something would force her to cancel Keith’s invitation to dinner. At eleven on Sunday morning, when the phone rang, she was sure this had happened.
It was a stranger’s voice asking for her. His name, he said, was Carlton Merritt. Mr Fitt would undoubtedly have informed her that he was revaluing Miss Withers’ art collection on behalf of her insurers.
It so happened that he was at present in London preparing a new catalogue for the Wigmore Collection but must return to Amsterdam within two days. It was perhaps expecting too much to suggest he call at such short notice, but this afternoon was the only occasion he would be able to offer for at least two weeks. Since the premium renewal would be due by then it was inadvisable to let so much time elapse.
She saw his point. The drawback was that she couldn’t be here herself when he hoped to call. Perhaps he’d assumed that, since it was the weekend, she would be at home to receive him. She explained her position and, picking up her hesitation, he immediately withdrew his suggestion.
His apology was so gracious and heartfelt that she felt loath to make problems. Sheena would be here after all, and the visit had been officially sanctioned by Emily’s solicitor. Refusal could create difficulties with the renewal of the insurance.
‘Could you tell me your time of arrival?’ she asked him. ‘I’ll need to arrange with Miss Withers’ carer who’ll be on duty then.’
He assured her he needed no looking after, apart from an available socket for his laptop computer. He would be no trouble at all, and he understood from Mr Fitt the present circumstances of Miss Withers’ condition. There would be no call to disturb her in any way. Perhaps four o’clock would be convenient?
It was agreed. Alyson wrote out a memo for Sheena, with instructions to provide Mr Merritt with a tray of tea. It could have been worse. The phone call she’d dreaded would have been from Ramón, saying he couldn’t after all cover for her tonight.
Amsterdam, the man had said. It sounded an interesting city to be working from. He hadn’t sounded Dutch; rather upmarket boarding school, with an underlying hint of the anglicized Scot. Which might well be how he’d come across Emily in the first case. Quite proper and a little old-fashioned, he conjured up a well-dressed, urbane, youngish middle-aged image.
With that minor hiccup settled, her spirits began to soar. She cautioned herself that this evening wasn’t really significant: merely a return invitation for meals she’d provided for Keith when he’d turned up late and weary. This would be a one-off, never repeatable treat. In a few days Dr Ashton would have Audrey’s condition sufficiently stabilized for her to return home or go some place where Keith could stay to look after her until the end.
And then? There was no afterwards, just as there never was at work when the patient was finally wheeled away. As far as a nurse was concerned her involvement was over; she must deny any personal loss. When Audrey was no more Keith, however grieving, would go on doctoring. And here there would still be Emily.
She looked through her wardrobe and selected the blue uncrushable silk. It would shake out at the end of her evening shift while her uniform went into in her locker. She pinned on the star-shaped brooch of pearls which had been her mother’s. Simple enough preparations for the most momentous evening of her life.
Idiot, she told herself. It was a long time since she’d felt this way, as a student nurse going out to party in a crowd of youngsters. There had been moments of passion, even times she’d imagined herself really in love. But this was different: no more than a shared meal and the companionship of trusted friends. Nothing spoken between them, all understood.
Superintendent Mike Yeadings had set aside that Sunday morning for turning over the empty vegetable plot and digging in some potent manure. The noisome deposit had been delivered on Friday at the entrance to his drive while Nan had been out shopping. As a result both his Rover and her Vauxhall were now taking up kerb space, both out of range of the hose he needed for washing them down.
Removal of the offensive smell became doubly imperative when Nan declared baking priorities prevented her taking either to the car-wash. It was, he decided, becoming one of those days.
An ice cream van’s dulcet chimes cut across their discussion. ‘Papageno,’ Yeadings announced drily.
‘Pied Piper,’ Nan corrected him with resignation. The children’s noses were already pressed against the window panes. ‘Mike, have you any loose change?’
He paid up grudgingly, fetched shovel and wheelbarrow and resigned himself to the fact that professional gardeners, if not CID superintendents, held their sabbath day sacrosanct from others’ demands. As if to underline this principle the kitchen phone rang and it had to be his DI informing him that they had a body recovered from the river at Barham Marsh.
Salmon was already on the scene and had called in Zyczynski since she had a connection with the deceased. The DI was clearly put out and seemed to be blaming her for the discovery.
How connected? Yeadings asked himself, having hung up on the information. His woman sergeant had a number of friends he wouldn’t care to hear of in the past tense, and certainly not if there were suspicious circumstances.
&n
bsp; If his mind hadn’t already been geared to a different kind of muckspreading he’d have thought to demand a name for the corpse. The obvious thing was to ring Z and ask, solicitously, what had happened.
Her mobile phone was turned off. Nan, returning from the ice cream van with two cornet-licking children in tow, demanded, ‘What’s up, Mike? I thought I heard the phone. They don’t want you to go in, surely?’
‘Not exactly.’ He explained how little he knew.
‘And you couldn’t reach Z? Well, if it’s personal …’
‘You’re right.’ He was way ahead of her. ‘I’ll get over there myself and see what’s up.’
Barham was a fairly new development on the edge of town, with a number of council-owned apartment blocks and a small industrial estate built on reclaimed land. A stretch of greensward had been preserved on either side of the river and some pretence made of establishing a rowing centre.
‘It’s a lad, sir,’ a constable informed him as he slid under the police tape securing the site.
So most likely an accident. There was always a certain amount of fooling about went on down here on a Saturday night.
Yeadings made out Rosemary Zyczynski alongside Beaumont on the opposite bank. She caught sight of him at the same moment, raised a hand and started to clump back over the wooden bridge in her green wellies.
‘Someone known to us?’ he asked in the recognizable phrase.
Her face was whipped red by the easterly wind. He couldn’t decide if the brightness of her eyes was due to unshed tears. ‘Just came across him this week,’ she said shortly. ‘A runaway teenager from Wimbledon called Micky Kane. Discovered locally OD, three days back. I left a report for you last night. His parents are due here tomorrow to see us.’
This was bad. ‘How old?’
‘Thirteen. I haven’t heard yet how he got away from the High Dependency ward.’
‘A runaway twice over. Now he’s managed to drown himself?’
‘It doesn’t look like that. Somebody – something – had beaten his head in.’
Yeadings stared grimly across at the knot of policemen and the white tent being erected over a pitifully small shape on the ground. This day had started with shit and that was the way it was going on.
‘Who identified him?’
‘I did. DI Salmon called me in. They’d just pulled him out and I recognized him as a recorded Misper.’
‘So this is the lad you saw when visiting Mrs Stanford?’
‘Yes. I told you about the key hidden in his trainer. A friend has told me it’s like one he has for a deposit box at his solicitor’s.’
‘Which one? That’s not usual, surely, for legal firms to hold securities accessible by clients’ key. Though I don’t see any reason they shouldn’t.’
‘Callendar, Fitt and Travis. It doesn’t mean they’re the only firm to use the same make of key, but it’s an unusual shape.’
‘Is this Micky Kane known to them?’
‘I hadn’t got that far, sir. I’m hoping to see them tomorrow, before the parents arrive. It’s unlikely a solicitor would discuss anything over the phone.’
‘Go ahead anyway, though it may prove irrelevant. He could have picked the key up off the street. Or from someone’s pocket. Like the debit card you mentioned before.’
Oliver Markham had to accept that, having been labouring in a rut these past few years, once he’d struck out in a new direction all kinds of minor options seemed on offer. He had three times changed his mind that morning about how he would spend the afternoon.
If he’d been able to clinch a deal on the new car yesterday he’d have intended giving it a tryout. Since that was off the cards until the bank opened tomorrow he felt disinclined to use the old one. Now it was spruced up he saw no point in getting it mussed. Unless, of course, to some purpose. For example there was nothing to stop him calling in at the penthouse and having another shufti at those weird paintings that might, or might not, be originals. Or even signed prints.
To do that he’d need some excuse, like inviting the Lump out for a drink and a drive. Then again, once he got her in the car there could be an entirely different act on the books.
It could mean losing his parking space outside his flat over the Oxfam shop, because if he left his traffic cone there more than half an hour it would be swiped as sure as pigeons’ shit, and the council parking area was now barred to him.
So the Nissan would have to take its chances along with all the other garage-less crocks in the over-parked, non-permitted roads that brought in the lucrative council fines. He ruefully considered the drawback of being now on the wrong side of the official desk. So, once he drove off, Sheena Judd would certainly need to make his night out worthwhile, if not memorable.
In the meantime he put on his new leather coat and took himself off to air it along the river. He exited from his doorway between the Oxfam shop and the ironmonger’s to turn left into the alley leading down behind the old Co-op building. There were crumpled drink cans in the gutter and discarded food wrappings soggily blowing along the cobbles, souvenirs of Saturday night junk-food grazers going home on foot. Once the residual stink would have been of fatty salted chips and acrid vinegar. Now, everywhere, stale spicy vindaloo assaulted the nostrils, ironically the new national standby. He made it a point of honour to despise Asian food.
He turned left towards Barham. Despite the biting wind there was a little crowd down by the jetty where the boats were tied up in summer. Mostly they were in the sheds now or padlocked to iron stanchions and upended for repainting. Occasionally some louts stove in the clinkers or sprayed graffiti over the fibreglass hulls. They’d had several cases of criminal damage brought up in court, but of late that novelty had dropped away.
Maybe it had started up again. There were police uniforms among the knot of people on the farther bank. They seemed to be fixing up some kind of screen. A white tent. He realized then he’d walked right into a serious crime scene. Recognizing the mortuary van that now coasted along behind him, he pressed forward, eager to glimpse the body.
Across the water the grass had barely been frosted. Now, even inside the security tapes, the grass was flattened and muddied by constabular trampings. He saw the DI who had replaced Angus Mott, and the man appeared to be fuming. Both detective sergeants were there, and even as he watched them their boss arrived by car on the nearer bank. The brown-haired girl sergeant with the unpronounceable name filed off, crossed over the bridge to meet him. DI Salmon scowled after her. This was intriguing stuff. Markham quietly closed up to catch the conversation.
‘ …just this week,’ Zyczynski was saying.
Yeadings and the woman stood immersed in their discussion. Only an odd word here and there reached the eavesdropper’s ears.
Suddenly the superintendent turned, aware of someone hovering in earshot. ‘Ah, Mr Markham, what brings you here?’
‘A Sunday stroll along the river,’ Markham said with oily familiarity. ‘I imagine it’s different for you.’
There was no response to this. Both detectives were eyeing him warily, unsure how much he had overheard.
‘Business, would it be?’ Markham prompted.
‘Ours exclusively,’ Yeadings said crisply. ‘I must ask you to leave now as we’re shutting this stretch of the river off.’
He wouldn’t have expected more. It was one thing to meet on a level footing in police court – or almost level; at least on the same side – but once outside it coppers played that game of Them and Us. Everyone a suspect. A race apart. So bloody superior. As if there hadn’t been any dirty police linen washed in public of late.
Already more uniforms were moving in on them. Markham gave a wolfish grin intended as sardonic, nodded and turned away. At least his little stroll had proved eventful. He had no name for the body, but in connection he’d caught the mention of a local firm: a fresh conversational topic for his visit to the penthouse.
‘Oh shit,’ Sheena muttered as the entrance buzzer s
ounded. She had been late arriving to take over from Alyson and had won herself a chilly reception. There had barely been time for her attention to be drawn to the kitchen noticeboard before the nurse was away, reminding her that Ramón would take over from her at 8 p.m.
Now, recalled by the buzzer, she hurriedly re-read the note Alyson had left. This visitor must be the man about insuring the pictures. Merrill was it, or Merritt? She looked at the CCTV screen. He was staring up at the camera, cool and collected. Hadn’t buzzed a second time. Nice-looking guy, dark hair greying at the temples, and a camel military-style overcoat that looked expensive.
She put on her fancy voice. ‘Who is it, please?’
He gave the right name and she buzzed him in, rapidly checked her face and hair in the hall mirror, then went out to wait for the lift to come up.
Chapter Thirteen
Sunday, February 3rd 7.38 p.m.
Ramón stood stock-still at the window, working it out. It had been no illusion. A body had actually fallen from up here. In his mind the action ran again like frames of film in slow motion, the body turning over and over, arms outflung, legs splayed, skirts lifted by up-draught. And there had been no scream, unless the traffic sounds below drowned it out.
No. This time no scream, because she had been either unconscious or dead already before she fell. So, no accident; no natural death. There had been that unaccountable smear of blood on the glass that meant more. This was murder.
He leant his head against the glass, allowing his heart rate to slow as normality re-asserted itself around him. He took comfort from the petty domestic sounds of the apartment, the central heating breathing gently in synch as room temperatures began to level out. On the surface nothing showed that a panel of the glass wall had been left gaping to icy wind.
And who exactly had fallen? At first he’d assumed it was the old lady. But he had gone in to find her still in her rumpled bed, asleep on her back, nose upthrust, her face as sharp-angled and bloodless as a chicken carcase. So it was another woman. The one called Sheena, or else Nurse Orme who had given him the job. But she never came back until a little after eight, and tonight he was here to replace her.