Tightrope

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘Did nobody tell you?’ asked the nurse with compassion in his voice. ‘Whoever did this to her gouged them out of their sockets – not even leaving them hanging, but actually ripped them out of her head – and the ambulance crew didn’t manage to recover them. One of them they couldn’t find, the other seemed to have been squashed – trodden on, I presume, when she was picked up by the paramedics.’

  Shuttleworth was speechless with shock and felt a chill run through his body. Whoever had done this to the poor woman was pure evil.

  ‘Could you give us any idea of when we might be able to speak to her?’ asked the DC.

  ‘Certainly not before she’s been to theatre, and probably not for some time after that. We’ll have to keep her sedated while her body tries to recover from the shock of what has happened to her, not to mention the shock of surgery. She’ll definitely need some metal plates inserted to hold her bones together. They’ve been quite badly broken. Given the bruising, I should think it was a baseball bat or something that was used on her, but that’s not really for me to say.’

  The idea certainly raised some terrible pictures in the policemen’s minds. ‘So, she’s not likely to come round?’ Desai wanted a definite ‘no’.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ replied the nurse, rubbing the beginnings of stubble on his chin with the palm of one hand. ‘She’s sedated at the moment and, as I’ve already told you, that’s a state she’s liable to remain in for some time. We can let you know if there’s any change.’

  ‘That’s all right, I’m staying on. We don’t know yet if she’s safe, not even here, and I’ve been given the job of keeping an eye on her.’

  ‘She’ll be off to theatre pretty soon.’

  ‘I’ll just kick my heels while she’s being operated on; maybe get something to eat. It’s just about time for my trough.’

  ‘And a frame like yours must take some stoking,’ said the nurse, batting his eyelashes at the scandalised constable, who gave a sharp intake of breath and looked anywhere but at the member of staff.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to take her fingerprints,’ said Desai, hoping that this would not be vetoed.

  ‘Do you have to?’

  ‘We need to try to identify her. Nobody seems to know her.’

  ‘If you must; but be gentle.’

  ‘We will be. Shuttleworth, have you got that Lantern device? It’s a mobile fingerprint machine,’ he explained, ‘so we’ll only be needing the index finger of her right hand. And after that, do you think you could give us directions to the mortuary?’

  He mumbled some instructions on the quickest route as Shuttleworth gently pressed the woman’s finger on to the screen of the device, the nurse’s eyes still on the constable’s broad back. He then left them to go about his business, and Desai said, much to the uniformed officer’s discomfort, ‘I think you’ve pulled, Shuttleworth,’ in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘Over my dead body,’ the young man replied with an expression of distaste on his face.

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind too much.’ The DC sensed that he shouldn’t push things any further and let it drop. ‘I’ll get back to the station, after we’ve taken a quick trip to the morgue.’

  Maybe the instructions were a little awry, or maybe they’d been misremembered, but it seemed to take them rather a lot of footslogging before they finally arrived at the mortuary.

  One of the mortuary assistants led them to a sliding metal drawer in a wall of similar openings, and slid out a body shrouded in a white sheet, stained with blood about the middle. ‘We need the right-hand index finger,’ said Desai, and Shuttleworth once again brandished the device in front of him like a weapon.

  Wishing them the best of luck, the assistant withdrew the sheet and waited for one of them to comment. The right index finger was missing its top two joints.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Shuttleworth, rearing back as if he’d been bitten.

  ‘Take the middle finger, then do the left index finger just to be sure,’ advised Desai, improvising like hell.

  ‘Do you think we should ring in just to check?’

  ‘We can always come back. It’s not as if he’s going anywhere, is it?’ Desai was nothing if not pragmatic. ‘Then give me the thing. I promised I’d bring it back with me in case it gets half-inched hanging around here. And you, don’t forget to let us know if there are any developments – like a further attempt on the woman’s life, any suspicious visitors or maybe her regaining consciousness. I’ll arrange for you to be relieved of duty at the end of your shift. Now, you get back to that room and stand guard.’

  Lenny Franklin and Lee Oh, already dubbed ‘Leo’ by the team, left the confines of the station on foot, as Gooding Avenue was so close. When it had been built, it had been an avenue of prosperous villas, but now most of them were split up, into what estate agents optimistically referred to as ‘apartments’. Oh, they were flats all right, but when you were trying to sell something as expensive as a home, you had to advertise optimistically.

  ‘So, what brought you down here?’ asked Franklin, who had not worked with someone with Far Eastern origins before and was a nosy old sod.

  ‘My parents,’ the other man replied with a rare economy of words.

  ‘They Chinese?’

  ‘Korean.’

  ‘They retired?’ Lenny wasn’t giving up that easily.

  ‘No,’ came Leo’s retort, and then he gave his colleague a break. ‘They’ve got three restaurants in Yorkshire, but decided they’d like a rather upmarket one down south. The weather is rumoured to be warmer.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, buddy.’

  ‘They want to do outside catering too.’

  ‘Like takeaways?’

  ‘No, like weddings and functions.’

  ‘Well, bloody good luck to them. Are they far away?’

  ‘About ten miles east. The next big town along the coast.’

  By now their leisurely progress had led them to their first destination; number one, Gooding Avenue. To the side of the door there were six doorbells, some with names, some with their little slots empty of any information. ‘I should start with the ground floor, then we’re at least in the building,’ advised Lenny with a knowledge born of long experience.

  ‘Just what I were about to do,’ added Leo, in his rich Yorkshire tones.

  As they waited for an answer to their summons, Lenny asked. ‘So, whereabouts were you born, Leo?’

  ‘Yorkshire. Can’t you hear it in my voice?’

  At that moment, their ring was answered by a grey-haired old woman wearing a baggy cotton sundress and a pair of thick-lensed glasses. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded in terse tones, looking them up and down. ‘If you’re them Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’m not interested,’ and she made to close the door.

  ‘Police,’ stated Lenny firmly, whipping out his warrant card and holding it up towards her. Relenting a little, she snaked out a hand and snatched it from him before he could restrain her, then closed the door sufficiently to put on the security chain. ‘There’s been enough bother round here this morning, what with all that to-do next door,’ she declared. ‘None of us are safe in our beds any more. Is he from the local takeaway?’

  Leo also produced his warrant card and held it out towards the slit, wondering how many times this was going to happen. Arthritic fingers whipped it out of his grasp, and there was a bit of quiet mumbling from the other side of the door, as the old biddy made up her mind whether to admit them or not.

  ‘I’m going to call the station and just check that these aren’t forgeries,’ she called, and shut the door again, leaving them to wait on the doorstep. She was gone three or four minutes, and they spent that time looking around the front garden, which seemed to be well kept.

  When she returned, she bade them enter in a haughty manner, as if she were deferring an honour on them letting them in at all. ‘It was me that phoned the police this morning,’ she informed them, as she led them into
a sitting room which smelled of both dust and damp, and was as airless as a tomb. ‘Can’t stand flies,’ she suddenly exclaimed, as if this explained everything. ‘Filthy little disease-carriers.’

  ‘Can you tell us why you called the police out this morning, Mrs Lucas?’ asked Lenny, who had made a mental note of the name next to the first flat and had observed, however briefly, the presence of a ring on the third finger of her left hand.

  ‘What happened in there?’ She was dying to sticky-beak.

  ‘What was it that alarmed you enough to call for police assistance?’ Lenny wasn’t falling for that one, and Leo was playing the foreigner card and taking notes or, at least, pretending to. ‘What did you hear or see that prompted you to do that?’

  She took the bait. ‘There was all this shouting – which happens frequently enough, I can tell you – but then I heard someone screaming as well.’

  ‘And where did you hear this from, Mrs Lucas. These properties are detached and I wouldn’t have thought sound would carry that well.’

  ‘I was in the front garden dead-heading the roses,’ the old lady replied with an innocent expression. Lenny wasn’t taken in. She was probably out there dead-heading imaginary flowers whenever someone called round to next door.

  ‘Who lives there?’ he asked.

  ‘Some ramshackle couple,’ she replied. ‘I’ve never spoken to them because they don’t seem to want to be neighbourly, but they certainly don’t look English.’ Again, DC Franklin wasn’t taken in. She had probably tried to pump them for personal information as soon as they moved in, and they weren’t having any of it – especially after what had been discovered on the premises earlier that day.

  ‘Do you know their names?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And how long have they’ve lived there?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ How convenient, but then she came up with a bit more useful information. ‘The house is only rented out. The owners moved abroad.’

  ‘Any idea where, or what agency it’s with?’

  ‘Nope.’ This was going nowhere. ‘But I saw the ambulance take one of them away, and the other one was taken out in a body bag. What happened?’

  ‘We don’t have any firm information as yet, Mrs Lucas. What are the neighbours like in this house?’ This was more up her street.

  ‘The old git at the back is as deaf as a post. There’s no point in trying to talk to him. And the other four flats are either students or foreigners. Probably both, if you ask me, coming over here and getting an education they can’t get where they come from.’

  Bigoted old bag, thought Lenny, before asking, ‘Did you see anyone arrive at number three today before the ruckus broke out?’

  ‘I wasn’t quite quick enough to see,’ she replied guilelessly. ‘I had to make a trip to the little girls’ room, and by the time I came out it had all kicked off.’

  ‘Any idea what nationality your neighbours at number three are?’ Franklin used the present tense so as not to give anything away.

  ‘No idea,’ she replied. ‘I hardly ever saw them, and I couldn’t hear the words when they were rowing. These houses were built to prevent noise getting out; not like the flimsy boxes they put up nowadays. Might as well build them out of Weetabix.’

  After this comment she clammed up. There was evidently no more to be got from the old lady so, handing her one of his cards and advising her to call him if she remembered anything that might be useful, Lenny indicated, with a slight movement of the head to Leo, that they were about to leave.

  ‘Have they arrested anybody?’ was her parting question, her curiosity suddenly coming to the fore again. ‘There certainly seems to have been a large number of officers going in and out.

  ‘We’re told nothing, Mrs Lucas. We’re just told to go and ask everybody whether they saw or heard anything.’

  Lenny pulled the door of the flat closed as they went back into the hall, then muttered, ‘Evil old witch. I’d bet my bottom dollar that she’s got ears like a bat when it comes to snooping on neighbours. We’ll have to track down the agency responsible for that letting. I’ll bet you there aren’t any regular inspections on that place. Nice one staying schtum, as if you didn’t understand anything.’

  ‘Playing dumb can come in very handy at times.’

  ‘I bet it does. Leo, you’re turning me into a gambler,’ Franklin concluded as he rang the bell of flat two, knocking on the wood at the same time. If the occupant was as deaf as Mrs Lucas had said he was, they’d have a job getting him to hear them.

  At this double summons a muffled voice sounded through the wood of the door. ‘Hold your horses. I’m coming. I’m not deaf, you know.’

  The man who answered the door was equally as elderly as Mrs Lucas, but he had a merry twinkle in his eyes, and he whispered to them as he indicated for them to enter, ‘Don’t let on to her next door that there’s nothing wrong with my hearing. I just can’t stand her spiteful gossip, so I’ve gradually become “deafer” as the years have gone on. Now, I can’t seem to hear anything at all that she says.’

  ‘Nice one,’ commented Franklin, stepping over the threshold, his warrant card in his hand.

  ‘Mr Spender,’ replied the old man, ‘Not “Big”, any more, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I should think you’ve heard that joke a few times, haven’t you?’

  ‘You could say that. Have you come about all that commotion next door? I did go out to look when the ambulance turned up, and it looked quite serious. Those two were always having words, but nothing like the volume here this morning, and the screaming fair chilled my blood.’

  The occupant of flat two had had no view of the front of the property at all, but had seen two figures streaking through the back garden when the yelling had stopped, and confirmed that they had shinned over the rear fence in their efforts to escape.

  ‘Could you identify them if you saw them again?’ asked Franklin, with hope in his voice.

  ‘Probably not. Although I was out in the sunshine, I was reading the newspaper, and I had the wrong glasses on. The only thing I can tell you was that one of them was definitely white, the other darker-skinned, if that isn’t too racist for today’s policing.’

  ‘That’s fine. Can we show you some faces to see if you can identify them?’

  ‘I doubt I’ll be able to do that, but I’m willing to try, if you think it’s worth it.’ Lenny handed him a card and asked him to call into the station and make himself known.

  ‘Do you know anything about the couple next door?’

  ‘Nothing, except that they aren’t sociable. When they first moved in, I called round to welcome them to the Avenue, but they wouldn’t answer the door. I knew they were in, so I came home, then went back round with a bottle of wine and a note introducing myself, but they never got back to me.’

  ‘And how long ago was that?’

  ‘Must’ve been about the turn of the year. It was cold, that I do remember, so I didn’t stand on their doorstep for too long.’

  ‘That’s very helpful, sir. Do you know anything about the occupants of the first and second floor flats?’

  ‘The first floor flats have got a local couple in one. She’s expecting a baby, and the other has got a Welsh couple in it. The top floor flats are foreign students – Moroccan, I think. I don’t hear a peep from any of them, but they’re mostly out during the day.’

  ‘Are they out now?’

  ‘I should think so. You can ring their bells if you want to try them, but I doubt you’ll get any answer at this time of day.’

  ‘Do you know anything about them – where they work, that sort of thing?’ Leo joined in the questioning.

  ‘Ee, that’s a grand accent you’ve got there, son. But the answer to your question is “no”. I’m not much of a one for socialising. I have a few of my old mates round on a Wednesday evening for some dominoes, and another group round on a Sunday evening for a few games of cards, and that’s about it. What with my bits and pieces of shop
ping, the back garden, the cleaning and getting a bite to eat, I don’t really have a lot of time, and I do like my telly of an evening. That’s enough for me.’

  ‘Here’s my card, sir.’ Leo also offered his at this juncture. ‘Give us a ring if you remember anything else, and we’ll get some officers to come round to speak to the occupants of the other two floors when they’re at home.’

  Number five proved to be a house lived in by an elderly couple who had been there since they were newly married, their grown-up daughter, and her two children who had recently come to live with them after the break-up of said daughter’s marriage.

  This time they were asked in for a cup of tea, and Mrs Denning admitted to being one of the neighbours out on the pavement when the ambulance arrived. ‘There had been an almighty row going on in there – shouting and screaming fit to put your teeth on edge,’ she told them whilst pouring tea from a china pot.

  ‘I know that Mrs Lucas from number one had called the police, because she called across the gardens to me when I went outside.’

  ‘Did you see anyone arrive or hear anything of what the argument was about?’ asked Leo. At that moment an over-exuberant four-year-old boy went past making an ‘ee-ow’ noise and holding aloft a toy aeroplane, while his three-year-old sister stood in front of the officers and pulled the outer corners of her eyes back to mimic Leo’s features.

  ‘Beyonce, Eric, go out into the garden and play,’ she barked. ‘You’ll have to excuse them. They’re full of energy.’

  ‘Should they not be at nursery or pre-school?’ asked Franklin, a moue of distaste temporarily disfiguring his features.

  ‘Our Sara’s not long split up with her boyfriend and moved back here. She hasn’t had the time yet to sort them out with anything suitable. She’s been too busy looking for work.’

  Lenny’s thoughts weren’t very charitable as it crossed his mind that it hadn’t been daughter Sara’s first boyfriend, as Eric was evidently the offspring of a white mother and a coloured father and, if she did find work, it would be the long-suffering Mrs Denning who would end up bringing up the kids until her daughter had sourced another meal ticket, whether she realised it or not.