Guilty Waters

by Priscilla Masters

  Joanna began. ‘First of all,’ she said, ‘I must say how very sorry I am about what happened to your daughters. I also want to assure you that we will do absolutely everything we can to bring the perpetrator to justice.’

  Armand Bellange spoke. ‘Can we see our daughters?’ He spoke for all of them.

  Reluctantly Joanna shook her head. ‘It really isn’t a good idea. The girls have been dead for weeks. Probably since they were last seen in July.’ She met their eyes and hoped they would understand without her having to go into graphic description. ‘Remember them as they were,’ she urged.

  Their faces changed. They had, indeed, read between the lines. They’d drawn mental pictures and it had compounded their grief. Renée Caron dropped her head. ‘Mon dieu,’ she said. ‘Mon dieu.’

  Armand’s voice shook with anger as he spoke in careful English. ‘Do you have any idea who committed this crime?’

  ‘We have leads,’ Joanna said. ‘When we’re sure of our facts we will make an arrest.’

  They were silent now, the shock permeating through them. She continued, ‘Do you want to talk to me separately?’

  Cécile Bellange spoke up. ‘Non,’ she said quickly. ‘Mais non. Our girls were great friends. They played together as small children. They grew up together. They died together. They will be buried together. There will be no secrets between us.’

  ‘How did our daughters die?’ Armand’s voice again, pushing for the truth.

  ‘Annabelle drowned,’ Joanna said.

  Cécile’s face crumpled. ‘She had a fear of water, always,’ she said. ‘She never learned to swim. She had lessons as a child but …’ she paused, ‘water terrified her. It is,’ she finished, with dignity, ‘an irony.’

  Cécile Bellange’s eyes wandered through the window on to the glassy surface of the lake. Inviting, deceitful, guilelessly innocent. ‘Was it there?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t know for sure,’ Joanna said tentatively, ‘but there is a test we can do. When we have the result we will know for certain. But it was almost certainly on the lake.’

  Renée Caron spoke. ‘And Dorothée?’

  This was more difficult. ‘She was hit over the head.’ Joanna hesitated.

  Renée Caron scrutinized her. ‘And?’

  Joanna’s silence spoke volumes.

  Renée Caron’s voice was breaking. ‘She was raped?’

  ‘There was an attempt. No full penetration.’

  The words provoked an outburst of weeping. This was only adding to their unhappiness. Joanna would have loved to have kept this last cruel fact back, but there was a demand for the full truth, unembellished, to be given to the relatives. It only made things worse if they found out something later and particularly if it was from another, unofficial source such as the press.

  She tried to bring this dreadful interview to a close, but first she had to ask: ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Were the girls virgins?’

  Armand gave a wonderfully expressive Gallic shrug. ‘Who can know,’ he said. ‘What man – or woman – truthfully knows that about their daughter?’

  Neither woman added to this. Joanna had to be content with that.

  ‘DC King will take you to a hotel,’ she said. ‘Naturally Staffordshire police will pick up the bill. We will keep you informed of any progress.’

  Armand stood up and put his arm around his ex-wife. Then he extended a hand to Renée Caron. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We take some rest now.’

  Cécile Bellange’s shoulders were still straight and proud but Renée Caron was destroyed.

  DC King held the car doors open and minutes later they were gone.

  Joanna found Mike back at the incident room. ‘Let’s do a recap,’ she said. ‘Barker.’

  ‘Has to be a possibility,’ Korpanski agreed, ‘but he’s looking a bit less likely. I can’t see him taking the girls out on a boat and then hammering one of them over the head with the oar while watching the other one drown.’

  ‘OK. What about the Stuart brothers?’

  Korpanski screwed up his face. ‘I can’t see it somehow,’ he said. ‘I mean, why would they? They could have had their pick of girls. The two barmaids at the Rudyard Hotel were practically gagging for them.’

  ‘I know that. But …’ Joanna crossed the room and pointed to the board. ‘Time frame,’ she said. ‘Saturday night, twentieth of July. Mike, it had to be at night. That’s why no one saw or heard anything. The hotel runs a music karaoke on a Saturday. It would have been noisy. James and Martin invite the girls out for a moonlight cruise. They try to have sex with them. Dorothée struggles. Annabelle, terrified, jumps overboard and drowns?’

  ‘It’s certainly a potential scenario,’ Korpanski said. But Joanna had picked up on the dubious note in his voice. ‘But?’ she challenged.

  ‘I’m just not sure it’s the truth.’

  ‘OK.’ Joanna stood up. Truth was she shared Korpanski’s doubts.

  ‘Let’s go and see how things are progressing,’ she said.

  The water’s edge was still a hive of activity. If anything, it was even busier. A television crew had arrived and were filming a reporter at the water’s edge – or as near as they could get with the police tape strung across, preventing access. There were quite a few voyeurs pretending not to be looking but admiring the scene, though some were craning their necks to see everything.

  Joanna moved in. Jason Spark was examining an oar which was splintered. ‘I think this might be it,’ he said, excited, as Joanna approached. She studied it. It was certainly damaged. But even if it was the murder weapon six weeks’ immersion in and out of the water would surely have washed any forensic evidence away. However, Matthew had collected some splinters. ‘Bag it up,’ she said. It was silly to be pleased about what was a potential find but Jason had started life as a ‘special’ constable and had shown enthusiasm, promise and a certain inspiration that inspired his colleagues. That was why they called him Jason Bright Spark. When he had finally been accepted as a full-time constable she had been pleased. And now here he was, making what was probably a significant find.

  Armitage was eyeing them balefully from his perch.

  Joanna glanced across at him, then turned her attention back to the oar. If this was it, it was hard evidence. They could match up the wood with the splinters Matthew had removed from Dorothée Caron’s brain. She nodded approval at Jason, who couldn’t contain his excitement at having possibly found something which would prove crucial in the investigation. He was almost jumping up and down. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  It was Mark Fask who made the next discovery.

  One of the boats had a broken seat and had been pulled away from the other boats for hire.

  She looked at it first, wondering. Then she approached Armitage. ‘When was this boat taken out of service?’

  He looked mystified. ‘I don’t know,’ he began. ‘Sometime … back in the summer.’ He looked pained. ‘I can’t remember exactly when but I’ve been busy. I usually get around to repairs and things over the winter.’ He appeared to hesitate after speaking, his eyes watching her as though he was evaluating whether she believed him.

  ‘And when you realized the seat was broken did you take it straight out of service?’

  Armitage snorted. ‘’Course I did,’ he said. ‘Think anyone would hire a boat with a seat broke?’ His eyes twinkled. ‘And that’s quite apart from health and safety.’

  It made sense. She watched him for a further minute more then turned on her heel and left.

  It was time to return to Mandalay and her original suspect – Horace Gladstone Barker. He looked less than pleased to see her but tried his best to smile. ‘Inspector,’ he said in his soft flat voice. ‘What a pleasure.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I heard on the …’ His voice died away as Korpanski stepped forward. Barker seemed to shrink into a pale and slack-skinned amorphous heap.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Barker,’ Joanna began briskly. ‘Have you ever taken
a boat out on the lake?’

  Barker swivelled his head to look at her, apparently baffled by the question, so Joanna repeated it. Then he snorted. It was a mocking, incredulous sound. ‘Me? Take a boat out on the lake? I’m as likely to book a trip to Burma. I have a fear of water. I like looking at it,’ he said creepily. ‘Not being on it. And certainly not being in it. And definitely not under it. I couldn’t handle a boat.’

  ‘You mean you’ve never taken a boat out on the lake?’

  Barker turned his attention to the burly sergeant. ‘I haven’t even been on the pleasure cruise, Sergeant,’ he said with a certain amount of dignity which vanished when he added, ‘not even on the Treasure Island pirate’s cruise.’

  Joanna raised her eyebrows at Mike, who was doing his best not to smile. ‘Mr Barker,’ she said, deciding to put her theory to the test. ‘Is it possible the girls left on Saturday night rather than on Sunday morning?’

  He thought about it for a while. ‘I last saw them on the Saturday night,’ he said slowly. ‘They were on their way out. I told them to make sure they had their keys with them.’

  ‘Did you hear them come in?’

  ‘I’m a heavy sleeper,’ Barker said.

  ‘Had their beds been slept in?’

  ‘They always made them so I wouldn’t have been able to tell.’

  ‘Did you hear them go out on the Sunday morning?’

  ‘I did not,’ Barker said.

  Joanna gave Mike a sharp quick look. It shifted the emphasis, made the scenario so much more plausible.

  She studied Barker’s bland face and he stared back at her. But there was something defiant in his manner now. He was almost challenging her to re-arrest him. It was she who dropped her eyes first. Whatever the explanation, she decided, it might not lie here.

  She left Mandalay despondent, still feeling they were fumbling in the dark.

  There was, however, one beautiful, glistening ray of hope. Matthew rang to say the analysis of the diatoms had come through. They confirmed that Annabelle Bellange had died in the lake, and also that microscope examination of the splinters taken from the oar earlier that day matched the splinters removed from Dorothée Caron’s skull.

  She almost did a high-five with Mike. They had their murder weapon and they knew where Annabelle Bellange had drowned. If the boat with the broken seat provided a speck of blood they also had the scene of Dorothée’s murder too. As suspected, both had died at Rudyard Lake, the place they had come to on a pilgrimage. Ironic, or perhaps a fitting tribute? The two girls’ names would now be forever linked with the name of Rudyard. To the great man. Author and poet.

  It was a stroke of luck that the boat had been taken straight out of service.

  But while Joanna felt instinctively that she understood the sequence of events, they still didn’t know who was behind them. She could only hope that their killer had obeyed Locard’s exchange principle – that he had both taken something from and left something at the scene of the crime.

  ‘It must have happened at night, Mike,’ she said. ‘It was the height of summer. There were plenty of people here then.’ She screwed up her face. ‘We need a weather report. School holidays had just begun. It was a Saturday night. The lake isn’t that big. Someone would have seen or heard something. It was risky but we’re assuming this was a spur-of-the-moment action.’

  Korpanski nodded and went on the computer to check the weather report.

  She rang Matthew next. ‘Matt,’ she said, ‘this attempted rape on Dorothée. Is it possible … the bruising and marks. Could they have been done with an object rather than …?’

  ‘You mean rather than attempted intercourse?’

  Delicately put, she thought, mentally slapping her husband on the back. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ he said, and she sensed the impending ‘but’. She was right. ‘Bu-ut,’ he said, drawing out the objection, ‘there was no debris. No glass or wood. No plastic. And the abrasions …’

  Every now and then their working relationship and personal relationship collided. This was just such an occasion.

  ‘An erect penis is a rounded object,’ Matthew said awkwardly. She could sense his embarrassment right down the phone line. ‘It leaves certain marks,’ he continued, just as embarrassed. ‘I don’t think it was a hard object. I think it was attempted penetration.’

  She disconnected. Mike Korpanski was keeping his eye on her, watching her and smirking.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if it wasn’t even as planned as we’d thought. I wonder if, it being a nice evening, the girls packed up on the Saturday night ready to leave early on the Sunday morning, then went out to take a last look at the lake. What was the weather like that night?’

  Korpanski crossed to his computer and tapped on a few keys. ‘Full moon,’ he said. ‘The lake must have looked bewitching. And it was a warm night, hence the shorts.’

  ‘Opportunist,’ she said, pressing her hands to her forehead.

  ‘Right. Let’s go back.’

  Armitage made no attempt to hide his dislike of them and his mistrust at their return. His eyes wandered around the swarm of officers scrutinizing the area and then turned heavenwards in exasperation. After his last encounter with the police his mistrust of them was as obvious as the glowing sun in the sky.

  He didn’t stop fiddling with the boat repairs until they were right up to him. And even then, he kept his back turned on them in contempt and hostility.

  ‘Tell me,’ Joanna asked softly, ignoring his poor manners. ‘What time do you close in the summer?’

  ‘Eight o’clock.’

  ‘And your boats? How do you keep them safe?’

  ‘They’re locked up,’ he said.

  ‘Then who has a key, Mr Armitage?’

  The look he gave them was defiant.

  Joanna continued, ‘When your boat seat was broken, had you had a break in?’ She looked innocently at Korpanski. ‘We didn’t get a report of a break-in here, at the boatyard, back in July, did we, Mike?’

  Neither of them had checked. It was an inspired guess. In reality, Joanna didn’t have a clue, but Mike played along beautifully.

  ‘No,’ Armitage said grumpily.

  ‘So, does anybody take your boats out at night?’

  Armitage was no fool. His sharp eyes showed he knew exactly what they were asking. He licked his lips. Dry and cracked, his tongue seemed to stick.

  Joanna had to repeat the question. ‘Well, Mr Armitage?’

  ‘They’re locked up,’ he said.

  ‘Then who has a key, Mr Armitage?’

  Joanna glanced at Mike. Who was he shielding? And why? Were the pair of them allying themselves against the police because Armitage had previous form?

  ‘Who has access to your craft when you’re closed, Mr Armitage?’ She felt her face harden. He needed the thumbscrews turning. ‘Or was it you who took them out – to show them the lake – and like the allegation made against you before, you attempted to have sex with one of them?’

  ‘I know what you’ll do,’ he said. ‘Just like before, you’ll try to pin something on me. Well, you can’t this time because the weekend those two girls were last seen I was at an eightieth birthday party on the Saturday night. From eight o’clock,’ he finished triumphantly.

  She still needed to push. ‘Two girls are dead, Mr Armitage. Their parents haven’t even been allowed to see their bodies because they’ve been hidden for almost twelve weeks. They’ve decomposed to a disgusting degree.’ She took a step closer. ‘Their mothers and father can’t even kiss their little girls goodbye.’

  Armitage blinked.

  She continued: ‘These were two lovely girls who were bright and adventurous. They’d travelled from Europe to make a pilgrimage to Rudyard Kipling. That’s why they came to this particular little corner of Staffordshire instead of staying in London or Stratford or one of the other more popular tourist hotspots. They should have brought their parents joy, married, had children, careers. Instead �
�’

  Armitage held up his hand as a ‘stop’ sign. ‘They’re locked up,’ he protested, still stubborn, but his voice sound weaker now, almost resigned. They were almost there.

  ‘Then who has a key, Mr Armitage?’

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Just like Joanna thought, Armitage finally caved in. ‘Young Will,’ he said in a voice hoarse with shame. ‘He’s fond of sailing. I don’t mind him takin’ a boat out. He’s careful and always puts it back ship shape. He has a key,’ he said. ‘He helps me every now and again – does a bit of everything round the lake, you know. The van, the café … I think he sometimes takes a boat out on the lake.’ And then he damned him. ‘I think he had the boat out the night the seat was broken,’ he said.

  Joanna looked at Mike, her face reflecting shock. Fresh-faced Will? The boy whose face was lit with innocence? Will, the carer for his mother? Will the ice-cream and café boy?

  Joanna looked at Mike and they both shrugged, palms out. Will?

  They found him standing in the empty café. Mid-week, October, children back at school. It was a disconsolate scene, from the cakes which looked dry and stale to the coffee machine bubbling away quite merrily to the cups lined up, waiting to be filled.

  He eyed them as they walked in and his shoulders drooped. His chin dropped, his eyes regarding them warily. He gave it one last try. ‘Coffee, Inspector?’

  And instinctively, Joanna knew that he was their guilty man. She could see it as clearly as though she had been a witness.

  She saw no point in doing anything but charging him with the murder of the two girls, cautioning him and taking him back to the police station.

  On the way there she rang DC King. The girls’ parents were in her mind and she didn’t want the news that they’d made an arrest to leak out. Not just yet.