Dusty Death

by J M Gregson

  ‘You’re good at this, aren’t you? I’d no idea that you’d be so good.’ Now that the time had come to begin, Jane Watson couldn’t find the words to do it.

  ‘You get to know a lot of the old ballads, when you work with the dying. I know all the words to “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen” now. I tend to think of my favourite singer, Kathleen Ferrier, who was a local girl anyway.’ Jo Ingram looked up at the high ceilings of the old Victorian house, as if she wondered whether the immortal Kath might have sung in this very place. Then she turned to the woman standing awkwardly beside her and said, ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘No. No, it’s you I’ve come to see, actually. They tell me you’re Sister Josephine, nowadays. I’m Jane Watson.’

  The nun’s eyes narrowed, but there was no recognition in them. She looked at this blonde woman with the coarse features and the expensively cut short hair and decided that she came from a very different world from her. A professional woman, probably, from the look of her fashionable dark blue trouser suit and the shoes that had probably cost a hundred pounds. ‘I’m sorry. You’ll have to—’

  ‘You might remember me better as Emily. As Em or Emmy, in fact. And you were Jo, then!’

  Josephine Ingram looked at her without speaking for a long three seconds. Then she said, ‘We can’t talk here. You’d better come into my office at the end of the corridor.’

  She shut the door carefully and motioned to the armchair beside the big desk. She did not go behind the desk herself but sat down in the armchair opposite her visitor. ‘Have the police been to see you?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I went to see them, actually. An Inspector Peach and a girl sergeant.’

  Jo Ingram nodded. ‘That was the man I spoke to. Not a lot escapes him, I’d say.’

  ‘I agree. We need to be careful.’

  Jo ought to have asked why they should need to be careful. Instead, she said nothing. They eyed each other up, with two sharp brains working furiously behind their unrevealing faces. Their minds were slipping back thirteen years, to that squat in Sebastopol Terrace, a spot scarcely a mile from this place, but a world away in every other respect.

  They had been chalk and cheese then, and there was no reason for either of them to think that things had changed since then. They were thrown together now as murder suspects, but it was not a natural alliance. It was Jo Ingram who eventually ended a long pause. ‘I didn’t lie to them. I may have been a little – well, a little economical with the truth.’

  ‘You concealed things.’ Jane gave her a mirthless smile. ‘I’d be willing to bet you didn’t tell them about you and Sunita.’

  ‘I didn’t, no. It didn’t have anything to do with her death, so I didn’t see the relevance of it.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t sit easy with the image of Sister Josephine, would it?’

  Jo Ingram felt herself blushing. In this place where she was so much in charge, it was a long time since that had happened. She said quietly, ‘Both Sunita and I were sexually inexperienced. We fell into each other’s arms because she was looking for protection in that squat.’

  ‘And thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I remember the way you used to be with each other, you know.’

  ‘And I expect you told those policemen all about it.’

  It was Jane Watson’s turn to be discomforted. You didn’t grass to the police, in her book. And she had done just that. It had been self-defence, of course, but she couldn’t admit that to this pious cow. She said stiffly, ‘I did, yes. For what it’s worth, I got the impression they already knew all about you hitting the sack with the girl.’

  ‘I see. I didn’t tell them about your trying to recruit Sunita to go on the game. Perhaps I should have.’ Jo was appalled to find how much she relished this waspish rejoinder.

  Jane controlled her anger. There was no point in their falling out. It wasn’t going to help either of them if this exchange descended into a slanging match. She was certain that she could outswear this woman, could beat her in a physical fight, if it came to it. But it mustn’t do that. She said, ‘I got the impression that they already knew about that, as well. I didn’t admit to it, of course. But other tongues from that squat have been wagging. We need to stick together, you and I.’

  ‘And why would that be?’

  This time it was Jane who took her time, gathering her thoughts for a convincing reply. ‘Get real, Jo. We’re both in the frame for a particularly nasty murder. I’m sure I’ve had more dealings with the police than you have. I know that they won’t hesitate to charge either of us with that killing, if anyone gives them a case for it. And remember, they’ve been talking to everyone who was in that house with us. Every one of them will be wriggling like a fish on a hook, looking to implicate someone else. Which might be either of us.’

  Jo regarded this tough street-fighter and told herself she mustn’t underestimate her superiority in the ways of this world, which Sister Josephine thought she had left behind. ‘You might have killed Sunita, for all I know.’

  Jane hadn’t expected her to come out with it, straight into her face like that. She forced herself to speak calmly, ‘And so might you, Sister Holy Josephine. Jealous dykes often turn violent.’

  They regarded each other steadily for a moment, each breathing heavily enough to show the emotion she was trying to conceal. Somewhere in the distance, a piano was being played, exuberantly but inaccurately. ‘They lose their inhibitions, when they’re mortally ill,’ said Jo with a thin smile. ‘The music room is very popular with the dying.’

  Jane refused to be distracted by this glimpse of a world which was totally unknown to her. ‘Who do you think killed Sunita, Jo? You must have been thinking about it.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it a lot, in the last week. Matty Hayward was very cut up when she ditched him. But I couldn’t see it being him, myself. He’s a concert pianist now, you know.’

  Jane smiled grimly at such naivety. ‘You and I both think we know who killed her, don’t we?’

  ‘Wally.’ The word was out before Jo knew it was coming. She should have been appalled at herself. Instead, all she felt was a relief that this other woman should be leading her this way.

  ‘Wally Swift.’ Jane nodded her satisfaction that they should at last be getting to the point. ‘He was the man in that squat who knew what he was doing. He was the one ruthless enough to kill someone who got in the way of his plans.’

  Jo knew she should be asking where the evidence was, asserting that you couldn’t go round making wild accusations like that unless you could substantiate them. Instead, she said tersely, ‘I’ve been thinking that, too.’

  Jane Watson smiled. ‘We’ve got to tell the police what we think. And we’ve got to give them things that will make it stick.’

  Jo felt a belated stirring of conscience. ‘What kind of things?’ She wanted to say that she couldn’t tell lies, even if they were in a good cause, but she knew how prissy that would sound. So she said nothing.

  ‘Nothing too extreme. Nothing they could trip us up on.’ Jane Watson tried to sound as if she was thinking on her feet, as if she hadn’t worked all this out before she came here. ‘We only need to be quite frank about what we know about Wally, about the things he did in that squat.’

  The mention of the squat brought back to Jo the memories of how she had fought with this woman in those days, how she had bitterly resisted Emmy’s attempts to take Sunita away from her, to lead her into the ways of sin. How quaint and holier-than-thou that phrase seemed to her now, when both of them were fighting for their freedom because of the death of that poor, dear, dead girl all those years ago.

  Jo Ingram turned what might have been an accusation into something more neutral. ‘We all did things we wouldn’t be proud of, whilst we were living in that house.’

  ‘Maybe. But Wally’s the one who killed Sunita. I’m certain of it.’ Emily Jane Watson’s lips set into a hard line above the square jaw.

  Jo knew that she should be asking fo
r the hard evidence to prove that claim. Instead, all she said was, ‘So how do we convince the police of that?’

  Jane noted that she had the woman’s agreement now. A nun, on her side, putting her case for her! It was ironic, something she could never have envisaged happening to her. But desperate circumstances needed desperate solutions, and this one seemed to be working. She hastened to nail down the support of this unusual ally. ‘We tell them everything we know about what Wally was up to. About him recruiting Sunita to push drugs for him. About the man who moved in next door with a rival enterprise. About Wally’s fury when Sunita threatened to desert him for this new dealer because he paid more.’

  The accusations came tumbling out so quickly one upon another that Jo was not sure what was true and what was fiction. She made her protest. ‘We can’t be sure of that. Not all of it.’

  ‘I’m sure of it. Most of it is fact. What isn’t fact is a reasonable assumption from the facts. Intelligent deduction, I’d call it.’

  ‘And am I supposed to ignore the fact that you were trying to entice Sunita into whoring?’ Jo put a great emphasis upon the ugly word. It was the excuse for the things she knew now that she was going to accept about Wally Swift. ‘Am I supposed to conceal the fact that you were trying to recruit her as a prostitute?’

  Damn the woman! Damn her good life and her worthy work and her sisterhood! Couldn’t she see the fix they were in together and what they must do to protect themselves? It was all very well being other-worldly, clinging to your integrity, but what did you do when there was a crisis in the real world?

  Jane controlled herself and spoke more calmly than she felt. ‘I didn’t kill Sunita. But I’m no angel. And as far as the police are concerned, I’ve got a record. They’ll fit me up for this, if they can. All I’m asking you to do is to tell them what you know about Wally. And what you know he was capable of. With what they’re getting from other people and what their forensic people are turning up, that should be enough to put a guilty man behind bars.’

  It was persuasive. Especially to Jo Ingram, who wanted to be persuaded. After all, she had always thought Wally Swift was the likeliest man for this killing. She said, ‘All right. I’ll tell them everything I can remember about Wally. None of it’s good. He seemed an evil man to me, even then. Whenever I’ve thought about it over these last few days, ever since I went into Brunton police station to talk to that CID Chief Inspector, I’ve kept coming back to Wally as my murderer.’

  ‘That’s all I’m saying. That’s what we must tell them.’ Emily knew enough to leave it at that, knew that she had got the biggest commitment she could from this very different woman.

  The two women who had survived life in that squat were now united against Wally Swift.

  Twenty-One

  ‘It really isn’t convenient, you know. There’ll be clients visiting the office and I’m really very—’

  ‘We’ll do this at the station, if you like. I can make it clear to your staff that you’re not under arrest when we take you away. Not yet, anyway.’ Percy Peach looked round at the brightly lit estate agency, with its attractive colour pictures of property on offer, its suited young men and women at their desks.

  David Edmonds strove to retain control of his temper. ‘There is no need for that attitude. If you really must do this now, you had better come into my office, Inspector. But I can’t think that Superintendent Tucker would be pleased to hear about your attitude.’

  ‘It’s Chief Inspector, sir. And he’s Chief Superintendent, now. I can give you his work phone number if you’d like it.’

  ‘That’s all right. It’s just that life’s a bit hectic at the moment.’ David Edmonds gave them a wide grin, waved his hand towards the two armchairs, and attempted unsuccessfully to recover the panache he found so easy with clients.

  ‘I expect life must be hectic for you at the moment, yes. I’m surprised you’re able to leave the country for a holiday in two days’ time, in view of that.’

  Edmonds gave him a sickly smile, which he transferred to Lucy Blake when he found that Peach was not responding to it. ‘One needs a break. One of the advantages of being in charge is that you can take a holiday and a little winter sun when you need it.’

  ‘Really, sir. On impulse, as you might say. Well, we’d better get this out of the way before you disappear from the face of the earth, hadn’t we? Or the face of Brunton, at any rate.’

  ‘Of course I want to help. But I told you everything I could remember when we spoke on Sunday.’

  ‘We’ll need to jog your memory again then, sir. I seem to recall that we managed to help you quite a lot in that way, on the occasion of our last meeting. This is a follow-up interview, in the light of information we’ve gathered from other people since we last spoke together. No need for us to record it, though. You’re simply being a good citizen and helping the police with their enquiries, at present.’

  Edmonds wondered just whom they had spoken to and exactly what they had learned in the last three days. Which was exactly what Peach intended. He said, ‘I can’t think what I can add to what I told you on Sunday.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Sunita Akhtar?’

  So there it was, baldly stated, after all the preliminary fencing. The challenge knocked him off balance, though he knew he should have been ready for it. ‘I can’t say. Well, not with complete accuracy, when it’s so long ago. I suppose it would be some time around the end of March in 1991.’

  Peach looked down at the sheet in front of him. ‘That tallies fairly well with the information we have from other people.’ He nodded thoughtfully three times. ‘And where did this meeting take place?’

  David licked his lips. This man could make the simplest statements sound like dynamite. ‘At twenty-eight Sebastopol Terrace.’

  ‘And what was the nature of your exchanges?’

  ‘I – I can’t accurately recall what was said. Not at this distance.’

  ‘No. That is why I asked what was the nature of your exchanges, rather than asking you to recall the actual words said.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t recall that.’

  ‘Then let’s try to prompt you. We established that you were trying to get her to work for you, as a pusher of drugs. Cannabis initially, you said, with a view to expansion into the market for harder drugs in due course. But it turned out that Sunita had already been recruited by the man next door, Wally Swift.’

  David wasn’t sure that they had established all this at their last meeting, not as clearly and unequivocally as this. But he couldn’t find a detail to refute in what the man was saying. He said, ‘All right, I’ve admitted to dealing and to trying to use the girl. That’s all I’ve admitted and all I’m going to admit.’

  Peach gave him a sudden dazzling smile, which blazed like an arc lamp into his face. ‘Badly phrased, that, sir. It implies that there’s more that you could tell us, if you chose to. Did you have an argument with Sunita at this last meeting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you cut up rough when she told you that she wasn’t going to work for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you find out that she’d been talking about your little drugs ring to the man next door, when you’d told her to keep it secret?’

  ‘No!’ He found himself yelling out this third denial, could picture the shocked faces of his employees in the room outside. He tried to control his breathing as he said through clenched teeth, ‘You’re making this up. There was no argument. I never laid a finger on the girl.’

  ‘No one suggested you did, Mr Edmonds. I was just trying to prompt your reluctant memory into action, that’s all. You still don’t recall the date of this last meeting with the dead girl?’

  ‘No.’ Another denial. David sought desperately for something which would make it look as if he was trying to co-operate, without incriminating him. ‘It would be about the end of March in 1991, I suppose, as I said. It might even have been on the last day of the month.’

>   ‘A Sunday, that would be. Did you meet on Sundays?’

  ‘I think we did, yes.’ David was shaken by this detail, even though he didn’t see how it could affect him.

  ‘That tallies with the information we have. No one seems to have seen Sunita Akhtar alive after the end of March.’ Peach paused, letting the simple statement make its full effect.

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Then who do you think did?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Someone in that squat with her. The black boy, perhaps. He was upset when she wouldn’t sleep with him, according to what she told me.’

  ‘Keep thinking, Mr Edmonds.’ Peach stood up. ‘Unless you hear anything from us, you’re free to leave the country on Friday. We have your address in Madeira.’

  David wondered how this man managed to turn the simplest statement into a threat.

  ‘It’s the first of March, Peach. High time things were moving. I’m being pressed by the media for a result.’

  Superintendent Tucker was at his most petulant.

  ‘Thirteen years, sir, that body lay undiscovered. Considering how cold the scent was, I’d say we’ve discovered quite a lot in nine days.’ Peach was understandably testy.

  ‘But you are nowhere near an arrest, despite all the support I’ve given you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, sir. I can’t say an arrest is imminent, but we’ve made considerable progress. I’m pretty sure that our killer is one of the people I’ve spoken to myself in course of the investigation.’

  That sounded impressive. Tucker decided it wasn’t. ‘I really can’t be put off with these prevarications, you know. I’m sure the Chief Constable wouldn’t be taken in by them.’

  ‘Really, sir? He seemed quite impressed by our progress, when DS Blake bumped into him on Monday.’

  Lucy was a member of the same gym as the CC, and they occasionally met there by chance, though they rarely spoke about their work. Tucker did not know what to make of this. He peered suspiciously at his DCI, but found Peach’s expression inscrutable and his gaze fixed as usual on the wall above his chief’s head. ‘But you’ve said yourself that you’re nowhere near an arrest.’