Corpse in Waiting

by Margaret Duffy

  James Carrick had stayed with me and seemed to have abandoned work for the rest of the day, not that there was much of it remaining unless he had planned overtime.

  ‘This is really kind of you,’ I said gratefully as he helped me, still shaky, out of his car.

  ‘I’ve a professional interest in this too,’ he said.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, being as the pair of you have worked for state security departments, are on foreign terrorists’ hit-lists and you’ve told me you can’t remember what happened and no other vehicles were involved I’m regarding your car as a crime scene until I learn otherwise.’

  I suppose I gaped at him. ‘No one else was involved?’

  ‘No, there was no glass, bits of metal, skid marks or any of the other tell-tale signs you get when vehicles collide. So yours is on its way to be gone over with the proverbial fine tooth comb. I’ve told them I want a verbal report today.’

  ‘Patrick loved that car,’ I said sadly.

  ‘Och, he’d rather you were in one piece.’

  I wasn’t too sure about that, murmuring, ‘I must have dozed off at the wheel. I haven’t been sleeping too well lately.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. I shall want a statement from you if you’re feeling up to it.’

  We were slowly making our way towards the front door, my arm through his. ‘You’re triffically senior to do things like statements,’ I remarked.

  ‘It gets me out of going to a deadly boring late meeting.’

  Our eyes met and we both laughed, the aching ribs of the accident victim instantly making her wish she hadn’t.

  ‘You’ve told Patrick about this, I take it?’ Carrick asked casually.

  ‘No, not yet. He’ll only come rushing home and I could do without a husbandly hoo-ha right now. I hadn’t mentioned I was going to see Alexandra’s ex-boyfriend either.’ A memory came into my mind. ‘Oh, I’ve just remembered, I was followed to Warminster by a black Merc. But I managed to lose it.’

  I had given James my keys and he paused in unlocking the front door.

  ‘When did you first notice it?’

  ‘Not far from here. Just past the junction with the main road at the top of the village.’

  ‘Did you get any details of this vehicle?’

  ‘No, I was too busy getting rid of it.’

  ‘And where do you reckon you shook it off?’

  ‘On the outskirts of Warminster.’

  ‘If it’s relevant and not just a coincidence they might have had a good idea where you were heading to by then. And we mustn’t forget that someone pretended to be your nanny saying she was ill. Did this man Kilmartin give you anything to eat or drink?’

  ‘Yes, tea and biscuits. But look—’

  Carrick interrupted with, ‘Perhaps we ought to get some blood tests done on you.’

  ‘But he was lovely. He hates Alexandra now.’

  He grunted. ‘You did get a threatening phone call from a man.’

  ‘James, he has no motive. He said he wished he could help me. But he did give me directions of how to find the office from which the woman runs her agency.’

  ‘OK, BUT DON’T GO THERE ALONE!’

  Several small people, plus Carrie and Elspeth, then investigated why a policeman was bawling me out in the hall.

  I was putting my feet up having given James his statement – although I could hardly remember anything – aware that Elspeth had asked him to stay to dinner as he had mentioned that Joanna would not be at home, attending her Italian evening class. He had thanked her but said he intended to hoover their old farmhouse home while she was out to save her doing it so would leave straight away. I knew he was worried about her having another miscarriage and fully agreed with his intention for if there is one piece of household equipment born with a wish to kill you it is a vacuum cleaner.

  Katie put her head around the open door. ‘May I come in, Auntie?’

  ‘Of course.’ I patted the space beside me on the bed and she came and sat down.

  ‘Is Uncle Patrick coming home now you’re a bit hurt?’

  ‘Probably, but I haven’t told him yet.’

  ‘Because he’ll be cross about the car?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘He’ll be very glad you’re not worse though.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Did another car hit you?’

  ‘No, apparently not. I can’t remember exactly what happened.’

  ‘That’s quite usual. I read it in a book. In detective stories the bad men do something to cars and people go over cliffs. Only no one would want to do that to you.’

  I wondered what she had been reading. If she was anything like me at that age it would be stuff that was rather . . . unsuitable.

  ‘I’ve been reading your books,’ Katie said all at once in the manner of someone keen to get what might be thought of as a transgression off their chest.

  ‘They’re not really meant for people quite so young as you,’ I pointed out but feeling ridiculously chuffed. Other writers whom I have met have grumbled that their offspring, without even picking up a volume, regard their work as though engraved on stone tablets, hopelessly outmoded. Either that or ‘difficult’.

  ‘I read A Man Called Celeste. Is he Uncle Patrick?’

  ‘Yes, he is – with a few small changes.’ Ye gods, what had she made of the somewhat steamy love-making?

  This question and answer was having almost the same effect on me as driving the car off a road at Limpley Stoke. A Man Called Celeste: a tale written when Patrick and I had got together again and I was very, very much in love with him. I suppose delayed shock caught up with me then because I burst into tears. I became aware of a small arm around me.

  ‘Shall I ask Grandma to phone him?’

  I sat up and made a fairish attempt to dry my tears. ‘No, I think I’d better do it, thank you.’

  ‘Auntie, I know Mum’s still alive but . . .’

  She is, in and out of treatment for her drug addiction in York. We monitor the situation and recently had not been disappointed to discover that she wanted nothing more to do with her children. At one time she had tried to gain custody of them purely in an attempt to get her hands on jewellery and a very valuable old watch left to them by their father.

  ‘What, Katie?’

  ‘Can I, or rather Matthew and I, call you Mum? We feel a bit sort of outside because Justin and Vicky do. And then we’ll have a Dad again too. That’s if Uncle—’

  This was something we had never pushed, not even mentioned, because they had loved their father dearly and his death had been an enormous blow to them.

  ‘Of course you may,’ I replied, giving her a big hug and shedding a few more tears.

  ‘I’ll ask him though,’ Katie said decidedly. ‘Not just . . . do it.’

  The problem with living with both the young and the getting on in life is that they all worry about you far too much. I increased the dose of the painkillers slightly and discovered after a short while that I could move around fairly normally, using the comparative freedom from aches and pains to shower and wash my hair. I still had not told Patrick what had happened, which was daft of course as he rang shortly afterwards to find out how Carrie was. Elspeth, who was cooking everyone’s dinner on her beloved Rayburn in the rectory kitchen, took the call.

  ‘Ingrid, I think you’d better speak to Patrick,’ she called up the stairs as I was preparing to descend.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked when I had picked up the phone in the bedroom. ‘What’s happened? Mum sort of clammed up.’

  Pathetically, I was shaking and wanted to cry again. ‘Carrie’s fine,’ I said. ‘It was a hoax.’

  ‘And?’ he demanded to know, aware that there was more to tell.

  ‘I’ve pranged the car,’ I managed to get out.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Just a bit bruised.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I c
an’t remember. It left the road near Limpley Stoke. I must have dozed off.’

  ‘Is is badly damaged?’

  ‘I only know for sure that the windscreen’s broken but it must be. James had it taken away for examination.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  ‘You’re shouting at me.’

  ‘No, I’m not. It’s only just been serviced.’

  Well, yes, I wanted to say, James knows we look after it and we’re careful drivers and have been on all kinds of off-road and handling courses as the vehicle could save our lives in a tight corner. I could have reminded him that I must be the only woman in the world who has driven across a field as fast as a horse gallops and then jumped a three-foot high stone wall, albeit a broken down one, in a Discovery and everything survived. I wanted to say all these things and that Carrick was taking the matter seriously but could not, helplessly weeping instead and quietly putting down the phone.

  I was not hungry after all, apologized to Elspeth and went to bed, not to sleep but to torture myself with the thought that Patrick and Alexandra were in a bar somewhere – he had not come home – she commiserating with him over the damage done to his beloved motor by his silly wife, giving him go-to-bed-eyes, turning him into any man in the street.

  At nine thirty the phone rang. It was James Carrick.

  ‘You had no brake fluid,’ was his opening remark.

  ‘But it’s only just been serviced.’

  ‘No, I mean there was none left. The brake pipes had all been holed so it leaked slowly away. And when you got to that steep stretch of road . . . I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did.’

  ‘I tend to use the gears to slow vehicles down.’

  ‘That might be why then. You didn’t see an oily-looking patch under the vehicle when you got back in it?’

  ‘It was raining buckets. Oh, and there was a drain. I noticed it as I have a horror of dropping my car keys down one.’

  ‘Anyway, we have a crime on our hands. I did look up that female in records, by the way. Nothing.’

  ‘She’s probably never actually broken the law then.’

  ‘Except for a drink-driving charge from the time we first met when it hits court,’ he recollected succinctly. ‘There’s nothing to connect her with what happened to you but bear with me – I’m working on it. Be careful and stick closely with that man of yours. I’ll have a word with him if he’s handy.’

  ‘Sorry, he isn’t.’

  ‘He didn’t come home?’

  ‘No.’

  He said something vivid-sounding in Gaelic – James nearly always swears in Gaelic – told me to rest and rang off.

  I lay there trying to remember what had happened. Although fully aware that it was not unusual for those involved in accidents to suffer from temporary amnesia it made the whole episode all the more upsetting. And all I seemed to have done recently was to get upset.

  ‘No, as I suspected, it’s me who’s lost their edge,’ I whispered into the night. ‘I’ve been raging around, crying all over him and generally behaving like an idiot. Come to think of it, I’ve almost driven him into her arms.’

  OK, I asked myself, what would a newly honed and reborn Ingrid Langley do now then?

  Make like Lara Croft and go and blow Alexandra’s bloody head off, that’s what.

  ‘No, no,’ I keened. ‘Something intelligent.’

  At which point I must have fallen asleep for the next thing I knew was someone coming into the bedroom.

  ‘Stop right there!’ I ordered.

  ‘It’s me,’ Patrick’s voice said.

  I switched on the bedside lamp.

  ‘Please calm down,’ he said, eyeing the Glock.

  ‘Sorry, I’m a bit twitched right now.’ I shoved it back under the pillow.

  He was still gazing at me, appalled, and then remembered to close the door.

  ‘I didn’t want to leave it in the vehicle so asked James to fetch it from the cubby box before it was taken away. I had to give him the security code.’

  ‘You look terrible,’ he blurted out.

  ‘It’s only superficial.’

  ‘But the dressing on the side of your face . . .’

  ‘Just where a biggish smallish splinter went into my cheek.’

  He came to sit on the other side of the bed and in the brighter light I saw that his face was pale and drawn and he was very tired.

  ‘James told me exactly what he thought of me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Some of it was Gaelic so I guessed there weren’t any suitably filthy English equivalents. But I got the general drift.’

  This from someone with a Master’s degree in Creative Swearing.

  ‘He was right. I should have come home as soon as you’d told me what had happened.’

  ‘Someone had holed the brake pipes. James told me since we spoke.’

  He took my right hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it. ‘Yes, he told me too. Thank God the vehicle hit the trees.’

  ‘We shall have to go and see the woman who’s garden they’re in.’

  ‘Yes.’ Then, ‘I saw Alexandra earlier on tonight.’

  I made no comment.

  ‘She rang me to say she was back in London and how about a drink. I told her you’d gone home as the nanny was ill and she said what a shame and we could make it dinner. I played along but suggested something in a pub instead as I was pushed for time. When you and I discussed this before, you remember, I did say I’d have to stay friendly with her if I was to find out anything. We met, had a snack and over coffee I told her about your threatening phone call and she said it must have been Alan Kilmartin who was still madly in love with her after all and was jealous. I got his mobile number from her before I asked her how the hell he knew yours. I knew the answer of course because you’d already told me but wanted to make her admit it. She did and I told her exactly what I thought of her and walked out – leaving her to pay the bill.’

  ‘He loathes her,’ I said, inwardly whooping with joy.

  ‘I know. I rang him and said I was checking up on Alex and he told me you’d been to see him. He felt guilty that he hadn’t warned you that she could be dangerous if crossed. He sounds a very nice bloke.’

  ‘Plus being the most glorious-looking man imaginable.’

  Predictably, this rolled over Patrick’s head. ‘Then James phoned and gave me an earful, plus the news of the car having been meddled with. I’ve come home to apologize for being a shit.’

  ‘You’re not really a shit.’

  ‘I am.’ He kissed my cheek, gingerly, in case everything hurt and then said, ‘I’ve got to go back in the morning as this Capelli thing’s really hotting up.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just after one thirty. I caught the last train.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Starving.’

  ‘So am I. If you hold my hand as we go down the stairs I’ll raid the fridge for something.’

  ‘I’ll raid the fridge. You stay here in the warm.’

  ‘I quite fancy a glass of wine.’

  ‘Do you reckon it would kill me to have a taste?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘I admit I got a bit besotted with her when she turned up again,’ Patrick said when we had mostly finished an already opened bottle of Chablis with our cold roast chicken and salad. ‘Male pride. She made me feel good when I was as good as crippled.’

  ‘That’s not pride,’ I told him. ‘It’s perfectly normal human nature.’

  ‘I simply couldn’t see what you were on about. All I could think of was how she’d cheered me up when everything was black, made me feel there was a future for me after all.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘She didn’t used to be a bitch.’

  ‘Why did you break up?’

  ‘Mostly because I hadn’t got my confidence back and kept chickening out of sleeping with her. Also, I found out she was seeing a married man.’

  I cleared my throat in exaggerat
ed fashion.

  ‘OK, she was a bitch then too.’

  ‘You were on your own though as I’d chucked you out, hadn’t I?’

  ‘But that was before I was blown up. You took me back when I was still as good as crippled. Did you feel sorry for me?’

  I had, deeply. But that was not the entire reason prior to falling in love with him again. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You were still dead sexy even with a bad limp.’

  He poured the rest of the wine into my glass.

  TEN

  Michael Greenway called at six forty-five the next morning and asked me how I was.

  ‘Slightly dented in places,’ I told him, dying to say that a little more sleep would have been nice.

  ‘Only I was wondering if you were well enough to come up with Patrick and give us the benefit of your expertise. No rushing about,’ he added hastily. ‘Nothing energetic.’

  ‘Will it be all right if we catch an afternoon train?’ I queried, eyeing the normally light-sleeping man at my side who was dead to the world. ‘I shall feel stronger by then.’

  ‘Of course. Travel first class if it’ll make it easier for you. Have you found out what caused you to leave the road?’

  ‘Yes, someone had messed around with the brakes.’

  There was a shocked silence. Then Greenway said, ‘That’s serious. We must talk about it. Oh, I double-checked that name you gave me. Nothing showed up.’

  I thanked him. The sooner someone had a good poke around in that architectural monstrosity in Boyles Road, Kensington, the better.

  An hour or so later, when I was dozing, there was a light knock at the door.

  ‘We thought you’d like this,’ Katie said, deeply concentrating on a mug of tea.

  ‘If you watch where you’re going instead of the mug you won’t spill it,’ I whispered. ‘I hope someone else poured the boiling water into the pot for you.’

  She passed it over and then caught sight of Patrick. ‘Oh! I didn’t know . . . Yes, Matthew did. I told him how to.’

  Quite right too.

  ‘Shall I get some for . . . Uncle as well?’

  There were two questions here and one of them was sufficiently important to warrant waking him as Katie would be off to school very shortly and we were returning to London.