The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8
Page 53
Tuesday
Hennessey held the phone to his ear. “They drowned?”
“That’s what I said.” Louise D’Acre trapped her phone between her ear and her shoulder, using both hands to read through her notes. “In fresh water, or they had had a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry, Dr D’Acre, I don’t follow.” Hennessey moved the phone from one ear to the other as he “heard” Dr D’Acre smile down the phone.
“I’m the one who should be sorry, I’m not making a great deal of sense, am I? I was puzzled because the cause of death was apparent upon investigation, both corpses show evidence of vagal inhibition of the heart, which brought on a fatal heart attack. Death from such causes is often associated with shock, especially in the frail elderly, but as I pointed out, both died at exactly the same time. So what caused two young and healthy people to die of shock at the same time? That had me foxed. And if their deaths hadn’t been linked, if their bodies had been found miles apart for example and at different times, I probably wouldn’t have looked for a link, and so put death down to heart failure, cause by vagal inhibition. But they were clearly linked, so I had a closer look and found the answer in the marrow of the long bones.”
Thus far Hennessey had written “heart attack” on his notepad but continued to listen patiently.
“I found diatoms in the long bones.”
“Diatoms?”
“Wee beasties, as a Scotsman might say. Micro-organisms that live in the water, they get into the marrow of the long bones of a drowning victim. They differ from salt water to fresh water, these are fresh-water diatoms. The victims blood has expanded in the veins caused by the fresh water joining the blood stream, salt water doesn’t do that, so they drowned in fresh water. And I would guess a struggle for life induced vagal inhibition, which brought on a heart attack. No signs of violence though, except for small areas of light bruising round the ankles of both victims. Both of her ankles, and one of his ankles.”
“The ankles?”
“They were held face down in a large body of water by someone holding their ankles. The water was clean, not polluted, and heavily chlorinated. A swimming pool, for example.”
“Funny you should say that.”
“Why, is that significant?”
“Very.”
“Well, diatoms differ from one body of water to another; if you could obtain a sample of water from the pool in question, I could tell you if our two friends here drowned in that pool.”
***
“What are you looking for, boss?” Yellich drove out to Oast House, Allingham.
“A swimming pool.” Hennessey sat in the front passenger seat and went on to tell Yellich about Marina Westwood’s hair smelling of chlorine; he also told him about diatoms and vagal inhibition.
The Westwood house in Allingham was a sprawling bungalow set in expansive grounds. A large car and a small car stood in front of the building, saying clearly “his and hers”.
Marina Westwood opened the door almost immediately upon Hennessey ringing the door bell. She looked surprised to see Hennessey. Hennessey remarked upon the fact.
“No … no … ” she stammered. She was dressed fetchingly in faded jeans, leather belt and a blue T-shirt. “Well I suppose I am … I thought that yesterday was it, just identify him. What do you want?”
“Your husband died in suspicious circumstances. We’d like to look at your house.”
“Do you have a warrant? On television … ”
“Do we need one?” asked Hennessey.
“Are you hiding something?” asked Yellich.
“No,” she shrugged offhandedly, and stepped aside, allowing the police officers to step over the threshold.
It was a large, spacious house inside, very light, very airy, with interior walls of unfaced brick.
“Where is the swimming pool?” Hennessey asked suddenly.
“Down there.” Then Marina Westwood’s face paled.
Hennessey saw her pale and he knew a chord had been struck, and he knew this inquiry was drawing to an early close. It was so often the case, he thought, before you look at the outlaws look at the in-laws. “If you’d lead the way?”
Marina Westwood led them down a narrow corridor to the indoor swimming pool. Thirty-feet long, twenty wide, brick walls on three sides, the fourth wall was given over to tall windows which looked out over the rear lawn. Hennessey took a test tube from his pocket and knelt and dipped it into the pool and sealed the contents. “You haven’t changed the water in this pool since they drowned in it, have you?”
“No.”
A pause, a look of horror flashed across her face. Marina Westwood screamed and ran from the poolside into the body of the house. Yellich lunged at her as she ran past him, missed and started to run after her.
“Don’t.” Hennessey placed the test tube in his jacket pocket. “She’s not running from us, she’s running from herself, either that or she’s engaging with life for the first time. Either way, we’ll find her sobbing on the sofa somewhere.”
In the event they found her on the rear patio looking out over the garden, sobbing quietly. Hennessey stood beside her.
“You know,” she said, “this was all going to be mine.”
“Was.”
“Can’t profit from a crime, can you?”
“No.”
“His brother will inherit it all now.”
“But it wasn’t your idea to murder them?”
“No, it was his.”
“Richardson?”
“Yes,” she nodded as she watched a pair of swans, keeping perfect stations with each other like aircraft in formation, swept low over the house. “Won’t see that goal will I?”
“No. No, you won’t. Wasn’t even your idea, was it?”
“No. It was his. My marriage wasn’t good. My husband was carrying on with Wendy Richardson. I found out about it. Went to see Herbert Richardson. He went cold with anger. He said we should do something. I told him that every Sunday afternoon they swim at our house, I’m out then, but I know they do it. I gave him a key. Came back Sunday evening and he was in the house, by the pool, soaked to the skin. My husband and her lying on the poolside. He’d just jumped into the pool, grabbed them, held them by their ankles face down until they drowned. He’s a big man, strong enough to do that.”
“Then?”
“Well, then we dressed them. It’s not easy dressing a dead body.”
“I can imagine.”
“But we managed it. Took them out and laid them side by side in a field. Herbert Richardson said, ‘That’ll fox ’em.’”
“Which it did,” Hennessey thought … “and there lay your undoing.”
“Where will we find Richardson now?”
“At home. He said to carry on as though nothing had happened. So he’ll be at Penny Farm. There’s nothing between us, me and him. We have nothing in common.”
And Hennessey thought, but did not say, “Except double murder. You’ve got that in common.”
***
That evening, with both Herbert Richardson and Marina Westwood in the cells having been charged with the murders of Dominic Westwood and Wendy Richardson, Hennessey drove out to Skelton, taking an overnight bag with him. He walked up to a half-timbered house and tapped on the door. The door was opened, by a woman who smiled warmly at him.
“Evening, madam.” Hennessey stepped over the threshold and kissed the woman.
“The children are in bed,” said Louise D’Acre. “We can go straight up.”
MURDER
Nicholas Royle
WITH THE OCEAN in front of you and waves crashing only a few feet below, close enough for you to taste the salty spray on the air, Canglass Point feels like one of the ends of the Earth. Great black-backed gulls hang steady in the buffeting wind, the bold curly bracket of their wingspan tipping this way and that, while further out gannets cut through the white space like dashes, before one turns into a W as it dives, then a Y and finally, as it drop
s into the sea, an almost perfect I.
If you were to climb the rock ledges behind you, they would eventually yield to a plateau of close-cropped grassland 120 feet above the waves that in turn leads to a gentle climb to the top of Slievagh more than 600 feet high. If you’re likely to spot the blood-dipped beak of the glossy black chough anywhere on the mainland, you’re likely to spot it here, somewhere between hilltop and cliff.
In the middle of the plateau is a hole 150 feet by 100. The only way to approach the edge – on your belly. A sheer drop, the odd grassy ledge from which there’s no route back up and only one way down. Narrow bands of black rock forced by unimaginable pressures into a series of looping curves. A jagged archway at the western end leading to the ocean, the deep water clear enough to reveal rocks at the bottom.
If you walked over the edge one night, no one would ever know. If you ran down the hill on a foggy day, they would never find you. The waves would drag you out into the ocean to become food for fish. Picked clean, your skeleton would disintegrate and sink to the sea bed to be found, maybe, a few pieces anyway, a bone at a time in trawl nets over decades to come.
***
My friends Alice and John stay in a farmhouse in the west of Ireland every year with their friends Virginia and Donald. The four of them are academics with elevated positions in English departments at various universities – in the north of England in Alice and John’s case, while Virginia and Donald live and work in the US.
Academia is meant to be an incestuous world, but if you avoid conferences and turn down ridiculously low-paid offers to work as an external examiner, it can be fairly isolating. I have heard of Humanities departments where nobody knew that a colleague had left, and another where a senior lecturer was challenged on entry to the building since it was believed she had retired. My wife, Diana, is Professor of English and head of department – twin roles that exact a steep price in terms of simple happiness. Nothing pleases me more than hearing her unselfconsciously girlish laughter, whether prompted by TV comedy or dinner party or (still occasionally) something I have said. But laughter is rare; I’m more likely to hear “I could kill that woman” or “I despair, I just despair”. My professional life, as a fractional lecturer in creative writing, is less stressful.
I first met Alice at a conference on motivation in crime fiction held at the University of Verona, which marked one of my few forays from southern England, since when we have enjoyed a regular and stimulating correspondence. At first we would write to each other about books and birds, two shared passions. We maintained a week-long exchange of emails in which we talked about collective nouns for different types of birds. We would also discuss Virginia and Donald. I would lightly tease Alice about what I perceived as her tendency always to defer to them. I knew, for instance, that it was always Virginia and Donald who made the farmhouse booking, after which they would invite Alice and John to join them. Virginia and Donald would accept payment of half the rent, but they would handle all dealings with the owners, and either they gave the impression – or allowed Alice and John to form the understanding – that they were somehow vaguely in control.
Last year, in the early spring, Alice emailed me to ask if Diana and I wished to join them for a week’s holiday in the west of Ireland.
“In the farmhouse? Is there room for six?”
Alice explained that she and John, having heard nothing from Virginia and Donald, had taken the initiative and emailed them to say they were thinking of going to the farmhouse again and wanted to check to see what Virginia and Donald’s plans were before asking anyone else to join them instead.
“We got a noncommittal answer,” Alice wrote. “I inferred that they didn’t really want to go this year, but didn’t want to give offence by saying so straight out.”
After which, Alice had let a few weeks go by before asking Diana and me if we wanted to join them.
“You’d love it,” she wrote to me. “Oystercatchers, rock pipits, even reed buntings. And there’s always a murder of crows in the field behind the farmhouse.”
“How many crows make a murder?” I asked.
We decided on three; two would be pushing it.
I said I would talk to Diana and we would look at our diaries.
A week later, Alice telephoned. Virginia and Donald had been in touch to propose the same arrangement as usual.
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh no, you were going to say you would join us, weren’t you?”
“Well, I know I hadn’t got back to you, but you know how it is,” I said.
“Oh damn! I would much rather we could go with you and Diana.”
“We’ll go another year,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
I didn’t hear from Alice for a while and assumed she was busy, which I certainly was, having agreed to be an external for a neighbouring institution. Plus I was trying to complete a couple of papers for academic journals to bolster my department’s RAE submission.
These two papers finally off my desk and with days of unending rain denting any hopes of a decent summer, I emailed Alice to ask how the week in Ireland had gone. She replied with a brief report on bird species spotted. The reed buntings had materialized, also gannets, great black-backed gulls and lots and lots of crows.
“A murder?” I asked.
“Oh yes.”
It continued to rain and although Diana and I ticked the days of August off the calendar, we never really felt that summer had arrived before the leaves started to change colour and the return to university unequivocally announced the arrival of autumn. The new term and the next were busier than ever and when Alice emailed in the spring to ask if we would like to join them for a week in the farmhouse, I didn’t even have time to enter into banter about their needing to check first with Virginia and Donald.
The farmhouse is situated on a peninsula. You have to drive through the town – a single street lined with shops and pubs with hand-painted wooden signs – then turn left on to the stone bridge. Once over the river, you head left again. There are fewer houses and the hedgerows are alight with a fiery combination of purple and red fuchsias and bright orange crocosmia lucifer.
As you approach the end of the peninsula, the road turns a sharp left in front of a shallow bay and after a hundred yards you have to stop to open a gate. Now on private land, you may take pleasure in leaving your safety-belt unfastened. The way is rutted; grass grows in a line down the middle of the path. Cows amble in the fields alongside. Like clockwork soldiers, jackdaws march.
In the farmyard, hens will scatter. A marmalade cat may be lying on a bale of silage enjoying the low sunlight. Gravel will crunch beneath your tyres and your handbrake will sound a little like the ratcheting cry of a magpie in the otherwise still air of the late afternoon.
They appeared on the doorstep, Alice implausibly attractive for an academic with her long golden hair, hazel eyes and plump red lips, while John’s wide-eyed grin hovered somewhere between boyish enthusiasm and the honest astonishment of a man who still can’t quite believe his luck.
We got out of the car, joints creaking after the long drive from Dún Laoghaire. I stretched theatrically, but necessarily; Diana approached the open arms of Alice and fell into her embrace. I shook hands with John, who was as hearty as ever.
A third person had appeared between Alice and John. Blonde, sun-blushed from working outdoors, she was introduced by Alice as Marie, the owner.
“Ah, it’s grand to meet you, so,” Marie said, surprising and unsettling us with sudden warmth and hugs.
We all moved back inside where Alice resumed food preparation. She was in the middle of peeling vegetables. John put the kettle on for a cup of tea. Personally I would have killed for a glass of Guinness, but four mugs had been lined up on the work surface. Granted they looked as if they were china, but still.
As he removed the spent tea bags from the pot, John turned to Marie.
“So you put these on the flowerbeds?” he said to her.
I helped Alice, gathering the potato peelings.
“What about these, Marie?” I asked. “You must have a compost heap somewhere?”
“Just put them in the back field,” she said. “The cat’ll like them.”
I looked at her and she beamed at me. I turned to Diana, frowning, then looked back at Marie.
“Really?” I said.
“Oh yes, the cat’ll like them.”
Neither Diana nor I had ever owned a cat, but I was pretty sure cats didn’t eat potato peelings.
Marie eventually left and we opened a bottle of wine. The food was good, the company excellent. Night fell softly around the farmhouse almost without our noticing.
I awoke to the cawing of crows in the back field. Diana was sleeping quietly. I eased my body out of the unfamiliar bed, grabbed my jeans and a T-shirt and walked softly out of the room.
As I brushed my teeth, I wondered if Alice and John, who now had the much better bedroom upstairs, had previously been obliged to use the one in which Diana and I had slept. It was a strangely inhospitable room, chilly despite the season. The tiled floor was cold underfoot. The convex mattress precluded a decent night’s sleep.