She poured another glass and went through to the lounge, where she spread out on the large sofa and started to think of how she could use the upcoming interview to her financial advantage.
If the truth be known, Marion Stanley was a disappointment; not to anybody else, but to herself. Always arrogant and selfish, and being an ‘only child’ of wealthy parents, she had wanted for nothing; the pony, the clothes, the Milner College acting course where everybody except Marion Stanley could see that she had very little talent. After college she had tried to create an acting career for herself with various third-rate agents, and was kept afloat by her parents’ money and topless shoots for foreign magazines done on the quiet. Then her parents saw the light, and the ‘get a proper job’ ultimatum was given. The proper job was in a literary agent’s office, dealing with various celebrity autobiographies, ghosted and otherwise, and that had led her into contact with publishing houses, and the feeling that she could do a better job promoting authors than the company she worked for.
So she took the plunge and went out alone. She was moderately successful by running her business along vanity publishing lines; she soon realised that many aspiring authors would pay for her services, to publish, promote, and get their book or books into reviewers’ hands and onto bookshop shelves; in Marion Stanley’s case, they paid one hundred percent of the costs. Yes, she felt good; it would be nice to have a piece in one of the better Sunday Arts Supplements. Perhaps a few of the publishers that never returned her calls might then start to do so.
Chapter 22
Palmer survived Mrs P.’s blast of rebuke when he got home the next evening, after Benji had told her of their Skype encounter.
‘Well ,fancy leaving it on! I could have wandered into the lounge in my underpants!’
‘Oh? And since when do you wander around this house in your underpants, Justin Palmer? Certainly not when I’m at home!’
‘Okay, well not my pants as such; but I might have had a shower and just had a towel on, or my dressing gown flapping about. Last thing I want to come home to is bloody Benji in the lounge!’
‘No need to swear. And how could you tell him it’s bad enough having him living next door, let alone on the telly. That was a nasty thing to say!’
‘I thought I’d turned the set off. I didn’t say it for him to hear.’
‘Well he did hear it, and he was very upset. All the things he’s done for us.’
‘Only thing I recall him doing for us is flooding your rose garden when his hot tub spilt,’ Palmer said, smiling at the memory.
Chapter 23
It was the following Wednesday.
Palmer’s team were working all hours finding and interviewing the Milner College students from the class of 1984. Many did recall a little clique of bullies who picked on the weakest, but names were not remembered, and most just put the bullying down to the usual pecking order of school and college life. Friday’s Child was obviously not in possession of a strikingly memorable personality that had stuck with her contemporaries; nobody could name her positively.
Claire interrupted Palmer and Gheeta’s review of the evidence, what little there was of it. She had a smile on her face.
‘It’s not a breakthrough, sir, but one name has come up three times on the photo recognition of Friday’s Child. We’ve had three girls from the year thinking she was a Marilyn or Marion, no surname.’
‘It’s a start,’ Palmer said, looking pleased.
‘And the college roll lists three Marilyns and two Marions in that year.’
She passed the list to Gheeta.
‘That’s them, and their addresses at the time.’
Gheeta gave it quick look.
‘Right, let’s go and check if our teams have interviewed any of them already.’
She left with Claire to use the landlines in the team room, leaving the direct lines to Palmer’s office open, just in case. She was back in twenty minutes.
‘All cleared except one, sir: Marion Tolley. Last known address was in Grantham, Lincolnshire. The team did a visit last week and drew a blank; the Tolley family were not known. We’ve done a search of the Local Council Rates List archives, and they do list a Bernard Tolley being resident in 1984, but he moved out in 1992. Claire’s trying to do a nationwide trace on him now. Fingers crossed he’s Friday Child’s parent and can lead us to her.’
‘And lead us to her before our killer finds her,’ Palmer said, looking down at the photo on his desk. ‘If she is Friday’s Child.’
Chapter 24
The trace on Mr Tolley took a few hours due to his being a middle management bank official, and the fact that his bank had moved him around the branches at regional level during his working life; he had then retired to Hayle in Cornwall, and was enjoying a well-deserved final salary-supported retirement with his wife.
The visit by plainclothes police from Palmer’s team was out of his comfort zone. So many dodgy bank operations around the time he was a manager had been brought to light lately: Payment Protection Insurance scam, Libor and interest rate fixing; his immediate thought was that he’d somehow been involved in one without knowing it. But the questions didn’t relate to his career at all, which was a relief; but why did the police want to know where his daughter Marion was living now? They were very secretive, but it was obviously something important. And why did they ask if Marion was the same Marion Tolley who attended Milner College all those years ago? Yes, she was. And the picture they showed him was of Marion and some of her friends, from way back when she was at that College. What a waste of money that had been. He remembered the rows he had with his wife about sending Marion there. She was a spoilt child; a single child and a petulant child. If he’d had his way she would have been packed off to boarding school, not some arty farty college just because she wanted to be an actress. Waste of time and money. Plus all the financial support afterwards, renting a London flat and giving her an allowance.
Then there was the ‘publishing’ business; that would have gone under without Marion’s husband’s support in the financial side. Her husband was a secure civil servant in local government, so pretty bombproof in his job; and if they did want to make him redundant, it would have been a large severance package and an equally large pension to follow. Mr Tolley was convinced, then and now, that marriage was one of convenience for Marion. His wife had flown into a rage when he used the term ‘gold digger’ to describe their daughter’s rather surprising and quick marriage; but he’d never seen any real affection between them, and she treated her husband like dirt even when company was present. However, the publishing business seemed to go well after a few years and then when Marion became financially secure, mum and dad were just about forgotten; shunted into a siding, to be phoned on birthdays and Christmas. God knows how that husband of hers puts up with it.
But what the Devil has she done to have the police looking for her? He’d given them her address, and now he and his wife had the company of a uniformed WPC for the rest of the day at least. What would the neighbours think?
Chapter 25
It was a nice house, detached modern in Georgian style, with a well-kept front garden on the outskirts of Lincoln, and a short tarmac drive to an integral garage and canopied front door. Palmer quite liked it, but not Lincolnshire; too flat and windy. Where had all the forests where Robin Hood had once hidden in gone? All ploughed up for root vegetables, by the look of it. On the journey up he’d noticed the vast fields of leek and carrot crops, all in precise lines broken now and then by a small gang of immigrant pickers following a tractor, throwing the produce into its trailer as they bent against the wind to gather in the harvest. His mind wandered to the Harvest Festivals they had at school, when he was a kid in SE24 attending St Saviour’s Church School; how mum had loaded him down with fruit and vegetables to place on the chancel steps as the vicar beamed down at him; and how Howard Hudson only ever gave a tin of beans and nobody ever said a word because his dad was a copper.
He
pushed the bell.
‘Fingers crossed she’s in.’
‘No car in the drive, guv, and the garage is empty.’
They’d had a plain squad car from the local force sit outside since Mr Tolley had given them his daughter’s address. No phone contact had been made as Palmer didn’t want Marion Stanley – her married name – to behave in any way but normal. The report from the squad car was that nothing had come, and nothing had left. Palmer tried to banish the thought that the killer had beaten them to the house, and that inside he might find –
His thoughts were broken as the door opened, and Mr Stanley’s welcoming smile soon faded when he saw Palmer flourishing a warrant card, and Gheeta and a local officer, both in uniform.
‘Mr Stanley?’ Palmer said with a smile.
‘Oh my God. What’s happened? Has she had an accident?’
The colour drained from his face.
‘Nobody has had an accident as far as we are aware, sir. Is Mrs Stanley at home?’
‘No, no she’s away on business. What’s this about?’
‘May we come in?’
Palmer didn’t wait for an answer and stepped into the hall.
‘There are a few questions we’d like to ask you, sir. Don’t worry, it’s just information. Is there somewhere we could go?’
Mr Stanley had regained a little composure.
‘Yes, yes of course. Come through into the lounge.’
He led him down the hall and into a large lounge, with a conservatory leading off through French doors. Gheeta followed and the uniform officer waited at the front door, quietly closing it.
‘Sit down, please; sit down.’
Mr Stanley waved at a sofa and armchairs.
‘What on earth is all this about?’
His facial expression went from disbelief to acute worry and back to disbelief, as Palmer explained the situation in full.
‘Well, Marion’s always been a bit feisty; but I wouldn’t have thought she was the bullying type,’ he lied, knowing full well that his wife was a prime candidate for that label.
‘Does she have a mobile, sir?’ Gheeta asked.
‘She does, yes; but it’s usually turned off when she goes away on business.’
‘And where has she gone away to, sir?’
Palmer smiled benignly, realising that he had to treat this chap with kid gloves.
‘She’s at the London Literary Review Conference; she’s a literary agent, looks after authors and that sort of thing. It’s at the South Bank Conference Centre.’
‘Would you like to try her mobile, sir, just in case it’s on?’
‘Oh yes, of course, yes, yes…’
He crossed to where a telephone sat on a side table and flicked through the diary beside it.
‘I never can remember phone numbers – especially the mobile ones, so many digits. Ah, here we are.’
He dialled out as Palmer and Gheeta waited hopefully.
‘No answer. I didn’t think there would be.’
‘Okay,’ Palmer said, with a nod to Gheeta. ‘See what you can do, Sergeant.’
He knew full well that by fair means or foul, Gheeta would find out where Marion Stanley was.
‘Do you have the internet in here, sir?’ Gheeta asked.
‘Yes, my wife spends an awful lot of time on it.’
‘And WiFi?’
‘WiFi?’
Stanley was pretty ignorant on such things.
‘A wireless connection to the internet,’ Gheeta explained. ‘No cables and plugs?’
‘Err, no – no, I don’t think so; no cables. Marion sometimes uses her laptop in the garden, though.’
‘Then you have got WiFi, sir. Okay, not a problem.’
She gave him a smile, and opening her laptop and plugging in her mobile to the laptop USB to get a WiFi signal, she went to work. Palmer stood and peered through the French doors to the immaculate garden; not a weed to be seen. This chap and Mrs P. would get on like a house on fire.
Mr Stanley sat watching Sergeant Singh chasing his wife’s whereabouts. Google told her the contact numbers for the London Literary Review organisers, and two calls later, as Palmer was once again assuring a worried Mr Stanley that his wife was probably safe and sound, she was speaking to the Delegate’s List Secretary, who gave her the four most likely hotels that Marion Stanley would have booked into, and promised to have her name put on the reception desk’s ‘message waiting’ notice board.
‘Right then, we’ll leave you in peace, sir, and go and find your wife.’
Palmer walked to the door.
‘If she does contact you, please don’t alarm her; and do give her our phone number if you would.’
He nodded to Gheeta, who fetched a card from her shoulder bag pocket and gave it to him as Palmer continued.
‘There’s a plain squad car from your local police station outside, and the chaps will be keeping a presence here until this matter is all over. So rest assured, your safety is being taken care of. You’ve nothing to worry about, sir.’
No, nothing to worry about, thought Gheeta as they bade their goodbyes and made their way out; just a serial killer on the loose who has murdered three women, and has your wife down as the next target. Other than that, nothing to worry about, sir; have a nice day.
Chapter 26
It was early evening. The gentle knock on Marion Stanley’s hotel room door was barely audible above the sound of her hot bath running in the adjacent room. She hadn’t ordered any room service. She straightened the complimentary hotel bathrobe and squinted through the security peep hole. She could see a lady clasping a shoulder bag.
‘Who is it?’ Marion asked loudly.
‘I’m from The Guardian Arts section to see Marion Stanley. My editor has arranged for an interview with her?’
‘Oh, err… oh yes. Give me one minute please.’
She hurriedly turned off the tap. Tidying the scattered papers and notebooks on the table and bed, she puffed up her hair and opened the door.
‘I’m Marion Stanley,’ she said, shaking hands. ‘Please excuse the bathrobe, I was just going to take a long hot soak. Do come in – I wasn’t expecting you just yet. I expected a call first.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry – yes I should have rung first, really; but so many people to see, and the editor wanted your interview for this Sunday, which means I have to get it to the layout chaps early tomorrow morning.’
She was older than Marion had imagined the general run of reporters to be; well into her sixties at a guess, but well-groomed in a grey trouser suit, and with no attempt to colour away the grey hair tied neatly in a bun at the back of her head. Frameless spectacles and a lack of makeup completed the picture.
‘I’ve done some research already, so it shouldn’t take up too much of your time.’
‘Do sit down please, Miss…? Mrs…?’
Marion Stanley indicated the one guest chair provided by the hotel and sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Bennett, Mrs Bennett. Thank you.’
She sat in the chair and opened her file.
‘I was amazed to see that you went to the Milner College of Dramatic Art.’
‘Yes, I did,’ Marion said, giving a little laugh. ‘I had illusions of grandeur in those days; of setting the theatrical world alight with my talent. Total waste of time, of course; but why were you amazed that I went there?’
‘My daughter went there at the same time as you.’
‘No, really? What was her name? I might have known her.’
‘I’ve a picture actually.’
Bennett pulled a large photo from her shoulder bag, the same one as Palmer had got from the Morrisons checkout lady. She stood and crossed to stand beside Marion Stanley, still holding the bag, and gave her the photo.
‘That’s my daughter, Angela Bennett; she’s the one on the far right. Oh, you knew her alright. You’re second from right. Do you recognise them all? You were all in a play based on the poem Monday’s Child. Do you rememb
er that? You’re the only one left now.’
Marion Stanley didn’t understand.
‘The only one left?’
‘The others are all dead.’
‘Dead? All of them dead?’
This wasn’t the sort of interview Marion Stanley had had in mind. She was feeling very uncomfortable. The figure of this woman standing over her was becoming threatening.
‘Angela…’
Bennett pointed to the far right girl in the photo.
‘My daughter committed suicide after being horribly bullied, by you and those others.’
‘I don’t – I can’t…’
‘So I’ve killed them all, and now it’s your turn.’
From the corner of her eye Marion Stanley saw the bag fall to the floor, revealing that Mrs Bennett was holding a large carving knife, which flashed in the light as it was plunged into her throat.
Pulling the knife back, Bennett stepped away from the bed as Marion Stanley slid slowly off it to the floor, wide-eyed and gurgling, clutching her throat as life slowly ebbed from her body with the growing stream of blood.
Bennett turned and went calmly into the bathroom, plunged the knife into the waiting bath of hot water to clean it, pulled out the bath plug, and after wiping the knife on a towel, retrieved her shoulder bag and photo. Then, placing a small piece of paper with the word ‘Friday’s Child’ written on it onto the bed, she left the room.
She felt an overwhelming feeling of elation, of freedom, and smiled broadly to her reflection in the lift’s mirrored wall as it descended to the ground floor. As she walked through the crowded lobby on her way out, she didn’t notice the two plainclothes policemen at the reception desk asking whether a Marion Stanley was booked in.
Chapter 27
Palmer and Sergeant Singh arrived at the Carlton Tower Hotel as fast as possible, after being alerted on their car radio by the officers who had established that Marion Stanley was the occupant, but that they had gotten no reply to their knocking and had fetched the hotel manager to open the door, revealing the bloody scene within. Mrs Stanley was still gurgling slightly as Palmer and Singh came into the room, and the hotel doctor was vainly trying to save her. It was not to be, and she died with a last, long gurgle. The doctor stood up.
POETIC JUSTICE & A KILLER IS CALLING: The DCS Palmer and the Serial Murder Squad series, cases 3 & 4. Page 7