by Rachel Green
“My own tea, though,” said Purvis. “You just boiled the kettle. I think the two of you should leave.”
“Aye, if you like.” Keritel swigged back the rest of his tea and gated to the sink to wash up the mug. Tremain, looking puzzled at the reversal of intent, followed suit. “After all, he doesn’t want to know what she really thinks of him.”
“No I…” Purvis frowned. “Wait! What does she really think of me?”
“Oh! Do I hear a change of heart?” asked Keritel. “Can it be that you do want something off us after all?”
“No,” Purvis said. “Well perhaps.” He sighed. “What am I even thinking about? I can’t countenance the thought of marriage. I don’t earn enough. I’d need to be a bishop before I could afford to marry Valerie.”
“How would he get to be a bishop,” asked Tremain, drying his mug with a ‘present from Blackpool’ tea towel.
“Dead man’s shoes,” said Keritel. “The present bishop retires or dies and opens up a vacancy.”
”That’s handy then,” said Tremain.
“Why?” asked Purvis.
“Because, if you’ll pardon the expression, we can kill two birds with one stone.” Keritel put his mug away. Standing before Purvis, balanced on thin air level with the vicar’s face, Keritel pulled out a long piece of parchment in tiny, crabbed handwriting. “Just sign here.” He proffered a pen. “Satisfaction guaranteed.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Pennie was woken by light filtered through unfamiliar curtains. Where was she? Her heart pattered for the few moments it took to register the faded palm-leaf cross against fleur-de-lys wallpaper and the heavy sound of a man in deep sleep.
There was light enough to trace the outline of a broad back and smooth chocolate skin that darkened to pools of shadow, and she could taste the slight hint of salt on her lips. Winston. She was at Winston’s house. Latitia had invited her to stay the night since her flat was wrecked.
Pennie took a deep breath, the slight nip in the air serving to draw her further from sleep. She looked at the clock on Winston’s side of the bed. Twelve minutes past six o’clock. She should go.
She picked up her clothes and went to the bathroom, surprised at the seventies-style rose-tinted suite. Stopping to use the loo but not flush it for fear of waking the household, she splashed her face with cold water and used her finger as a makeshift toothbrush, staring at her hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror. She hadn’t slept well at all.
Dressing quickly, she carried her shoes downstairs and slipped out of the front door, mindful of the empty bottles on the step as she slipped on her shoes. The rattle of glass announced the presence of the milkman. “Doing a runner, are you?” he said, replacing the three empty bottles with two full ones. “Can’t say I blame you.”
Pennie faltered, looking behind her to make sure she wasn’t suddenly standing in front of the wrong house. “Oh?” she said, managing to keep her tone nonchalant, “Why so?”
“They’re a bit of a strange pair, those two. Brother and sister, you ken? They keep odd hours an’ all. Lights and smells at all times of the day or night.” He leaned in close and whispered. “Their parents died at exactly the same moment.” He pulled back again and gave her an exaggerated nod, then tapped the side of his nose.
Pennie half smiled as she scrambled to leave. “Thanks for the tip,” she said, hopping on one foot to tie the other lace and move at the same time. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
“You do that missy.” The milkman stood and watched her leave, then shook his head and walked across Latitia’s flowerbed to the next house.
Pennie hurried up the road, trying to work out where she was. She reached a row of shops with a newsagents and a telephone booth which gave her both the number of a taxi firm and her location. She used her mobile phone to ring for a taxi. There was no point in having a three-hundred minutes-per-month plan, if you were going to stick fifty pence into a phone box when you wanted a taxi.
She waited patiently, her arms folded across her chest until the cab pulled around the corner. There were too many air fresheners when she got inside. She wound down the window to relieve the overpowering scent of pine and the cloying undercurrent of honey and mildew.
“Where to, love?”
She looked into a mirror at dark eyes and an unshaven face and gave him her address. He made her uneasy, this driver. His hackney cab licence displayed the name Tom Blesset and she memorized it, just in case. It wasn’t until she’d got out at her flat and thrust a ten pound note through the window she remembered what the cab smell reminded her of. The day she found her rabbit dead, the day she came back from a week’s holiday. The sweet, cloying scent was decomposition.
Pennie shuddered. She was never using Triple-S cabs again.
She opened the front door and stood for a moment in the hall, looking up the stairs. The flat was eerily silent. Not that she expected anything different, but the atmosphere felt off-kilter, as if it was a gyroscope about to fall. It wasn’t surprising that she felt no calm from the place. It might be best if she booked into a bed and breakfast and hired some professional cleaners and decorators.
With this resolution in mind she ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time and burst into the living room with a shopping list of things she needed to pack in her head. The suitcase from under her bed, three pairs of jeans, three tops, a weeks worth of bras and knickers and socks and…Holy Freaking Shit.
There was a Terminator in her living room.
Not an actual terminator from the actual future, although she wasn’t ruling it out but something that looked very like it. Not the Arnold Schwarzenegger robot but the other one, the shape shifting silver one from the second film, except this one wasn’t as nondescript.
She backed away toward the stairs but it had heard her through its delicately sculpted ears and turned. Heart thumping, she backed away until the door frame dug into her back.
The robot turned its head. From all the talk yesterday it could only be the homunculus Valerie and Winston had been talking about. Why had she expected it to be doll sized? Pennie stared at the perfectly sculpted face, frozen in her memory as surely as it was frozen on the frame. She lost control of her bladder.
“Steven?”
It made no sound but the body flowed around until the chest―the perfectly sculpted chest, matched the facing of the head. It followed and stumbled forward, its feet perfect replicas of her husband’s, she’d know them anywhere, as the feet crushed crockery and pictures into the carpet under the weight of the creature.
“Stop! Steven, please. What’s happened to you?” Pennie could feel the door frame digging into her shoulder blade and tried to edge to one side. The creature made no sound other than the crunching of her personal possessions. Long silver fingers―fingers she remembered from long nights and lazy mornings, reached for her.
“Steven! Stop it. Please stop.”
Pennie slipped to her left as far as the small landing at the top of the stairs. She edged backwards, trying to find the top of the stairs with her foot, her right hand questing behind her for the newel post of the banister. The creature came forward another step and Pennie sucked in her belly and turned her face to the side, just managing to avoid the grasping plastic hands.
It stepped forward again and Pennie took another step backwards. Her foot found no floor but she had already transferred her weight to it. She realized, too sickeningly late, that she had found the top of the stairs. There was nothing she could do but remember the feel of Chase’s arm when he held her, the scent of rain and grass on his skin. She hardly noticed her leg breaking on one stair or her shoulder dislocating on another. The crash as she went through the stained glass of the front door didn’t hurt at all and the sheet of glass that fell in slow motion and sliced her into two roughly equal parts was no worse than a paper cut.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chase’s Jeep roared into Pennie’s parking space at a few minutes before eight. He waited until the beeps of the radio news signalled the hour, then growled and got out, slamming the door behind him and remotely locking it. He stormed around to the front of the house. He’d had to leave early so why couldn’t Pennie at least be ready?
The smell reached him before he’d turned the corner of the house. What now? Had Pennie’s flat been pelted with excrement on top of the burglary? It smelled dreadful. Who would do such a thing?
He stopped as he came into sight of the front door. There was little doubt that what he was looking at used to be Pennie, though mercifully it lay face down. He turned away, bringing up partially digested toast and orange juice into a bed of underachieving herbs. He patted his pockets for something to wipe his mouth and finding nothing, picked a handful of mint and used that.
Pennie was not a pretty sight. She wasn’t a pretty sight at the best of times, he thought, but at least yesterday she hadn’t actually made him vomit. She’d taken a flying header through the stained glass in her front door, presumably after falling down the stairs. If she hadn’t been her own landlord there might have been a negligence claim there. Her legs hadn’t made it through. The broken glass, weighted with a good amount of lead, had dropped down and neatly severed her torso from her pelvis. Blood and stomach contents were spread liberally across the door and surrounding Cotswold flint gravel path. Chase was glad he couldn’t see the other half. He knew where the smell was coming from now.
He peered into the windows of the downstairs flat. Where were they? This must have made a hell of a racket. Why hadn’t they come out? Even making a light shield of his hands and pressing them against the window made no difference. Pennie’s downstairs neighbours were either still asleep, as Chase rapped on the window and waited for a response, or they weren’t here.
He took out his phone. Should he call the police or an ambulance? An ambulance wouldn’t do any good, he could see that much. Police then. They could call the coroner themselves.
Wait a minute.
Chase looked again at the downstairs flat. If her neighbours were out, that meant they wouldn’t have seen anyone getting in through the back door. They wouldn’t see anyone else getting in now either.
He closed his phone and retraced his steps to the gate of the joint back garden. Slipping a hand through the lattice to pull back the bolt, was something a five year old could have managed and the gate swung open. Chase went through cautiously. It was possible the downstairs people slept at the back of the house.
He rapped on their door, in case. If they were in, he could claim a low battery and ask to use their phone. If they were out, then all the better.
There was no reply to his knocking and Chase hurried up the spiral ironwork to Pennie’s back door, pausing momentarily to pull a pair of blue plastic bags out of his pocket. It was a habit now to keep plastic bags on his person when he was working at the sanctuary, as one never knew when one might need to pick up an animal’s ‘gifts’.
A swift jiggle of the handle and the back door swung open. Chase went inside. The place was tidier than when he’d left. Several dirty mugs in the sink testified to Pennie having people over last night though why she hadn’t washed up…
Chase gave a bark of laughter. It really didn’t matter any more whether Pennie did the washing up before bed or left it until morning. It’s not like he could marry her now, however an attractive prospect she’d been.
The living room was much as he’d left it, though the silver mannequin was a surprise. It must have been in one of the rooms he hadn’t looked in yesterday. He trotted into Pennie’s bedroom and pulled her suitcase from under the bed. Moments later he had the old papers in his hand and he pushed the suitcase away again.
Tucking the papers into his jacket pocket he returned to the main room, debating whether to look down the stairs at the other half of Pennie. Good sense got the better of him and he hurried out past the mannequin. Was it in the same position when he came in or had it moved?
Chase shook his head. Being in a house with a corpse was spooking him. He hurried out again, closing the back door and jiggling it so it appeared locked then doing the same with the back gate.
Reassured by the bulk of the parchment in his pocket, Chase took out his phone again.
The number rang once before it was picked up. “Jasfoup?” he said. “You did start up that life assurance for Pennie, didn’t you?” He listened to the reply and punched the air. “Brilliant. Find out how I claim it, will you? She’s dead.” He frowned and took the phone away from his ear. “No, I didn’t kill her. What do you take me for? I just found her like this at her flat when I called for her this morning.”
There was a movement in the bushes to his right, but Chase couldn’t see anything. He looked up at the sky as he talked. This side of the house didn’t get any sun until later but he chose to remain in shadow rather than look at the corpse. “You’re right,” he said. “Of course I’m going to phone the police. Will I be a person of interest?”
The snapping of a twig brought Chase’s attention back to the shrubbery. If it was a dog, it was a silent one. He looked and saw the glint of sunlight through the leaves. He shrugged, it must be reflected from something. “Yes,” he said. “I was with her yesterday. She’d have had a bath I expect. She won’t have any of my DNA on her after this time, surely?”
His face, had anyone been watching, was a picture of disgust. “Well of course I did. We went on a picnic and it rained and we were close…” He listened again. “Well what do you expect me to do? It’s not like I can clean off any trace of me. She’s been cut in two.” He made a great show of pressing disconnect as if that would impress the accountant.
He stalked around the corner to his car, stashing the papers and makeshift gloves under the seat, then sat in the driver’s seat to phone the police.
“Emergency services. What service do you require?” The voice was soft, a Home Counties girl with a penchant for champagne and strawberries.
“Police please. There’s been an accident.”
“You’re calling from a mobile. Would you confirm your number and location, please?”
“Oh-seven-eight-four-one-four-four-one-three-five-five, Charles Spenser,” Chase rattled off. “It’s on my business card. I’m at fifty-four Bobbin Mill Lane. It belongs to…”
“What is the nature of the accident?” The woman wasn’t interested in details. Chase sniffed. She probably wanted to get the details and get rid of him.
“Um,” Chase hesitated. “She’s been cut in two. Fell through a door, I think.”
“Putting you through now, sir. I’ll despatch an ambulance as well.” The phone line hissed and crackled before ringing again. It was picked up by another woman. “Laverstone police. How can we help?”
“My girlfriend has been cut in two,” said Chase, annoyed at having to repeat everything. Fifty-four Bobbin Mill Lane. Oh-seven-eight-four—”
“We have your number, sir. Mister Charles Spenser?”
“That’s right. Could you send someone? It’s a bit of a mess here.”
“I’m sure it is. If you’ll stay where you are our officers will be with you shortly.”
“Super.” Chase disconnected and stepped out of his car again. It was times like this waiting for the police, while a dead body rotted its way out of your life and into your bank balance, he wished he carried an occasional cigar. It was still only a little after eight-thirty in the morning and the traffic, such as it was in Laverstone since the bypass had been built, was in rush hour. The noise of one car hardly died away before you could hear the next one approach.
He could hear the police coming from
a mile away. It was rare that Laverstone police got a chance to use their sirens. Inspector White frowned on their use solely to clear traffic and frighten old ladies. Chase locked his car ready for their arrival and prudently stepped to one side.
The squad car screamed into the parking space and slid sideways into two parking spots, fortunately clear at this time of the morning. The doors opened and two officers got out. “Dead body?” said Mike Brandsford, consulting a clipboard.
“Yes, officer. This way.” Chase led them to the flat where PC Bill Hopkins was promptly sick in the same section of herbage that Chase had been.
Mike looked distinctly green as he radioed the station. “Send the coroner over,” he said, “and tell him to bring two body bags.” He turned to Chase “What was her name?”
“Pennie. Pennie Black after the divorce, though her married name was Lowry.”
PC Bill looked up. “Was she your girlfriend?”
Chase sighed. “Not any more.”
“Look on the bright side.” Mike put his arm around Chase’s shoulders. “At least now you have two half-pennies to rub together.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Winston slammed his hand on the alarm as it began to sound. He blinked sleep-deprived eyes and peered at the dial. Eight-forty-five a.m. Was it really time to get up for work already? His shift didn’t start until ten o’clock.
“Pennie?” he grunted, pulling back the covers and swinging his legs out. “Time to get up. Face the day and all that.” He coughed and blinked a few times, forcing himself upright.
He glanced across at the heaped blankets on the other half of the bed. “We’re late Pennie. Hurry up.”
He stumbled into the bathroom, wrinkling his nose at the smell left there by Jim a few minutes earlier and dropped his underpants to pee, yawning and scratching his bollocks as his bladder emptied. He could hear movement downstairs and hoped Latitia was making breakfast.