Looking cross and not bothering to hide it, Morrison clamped his briefcase shut, turned on his heel, and said somewhat curtly, “I asked for questions regarding the latest investigation concerning the murders discovered more than three weeks ago. The escape of Lionel Sullivan is a very different matter.”
As he left and the squash of journalists pushed after him, shouting questions, accusations and opinions, another jostle bulged on the opposite side of the road, where a woman had hopped onto a little two step ladder she’d brought with her, waved both arms, and began shouting, “Well, all of you. I’m quite willing to give an interview. As a woman in great danger, I’ve come here to tell my side of the story. I’m Joyce Sullivan, once married to the evil Lionel Sullivan, but now divorced. Who wants a unique story for their newspaper?”
Joyce wore a new sheepskin jacket, bought with the proceeds of her eBay sales, and looked very small and lost inside, except for her wellington boots which were mud-spattered. A startled silence was immediately followed by so many voices that not one single word could be clearly heard.
“Oh, my goodness,” said Sylvia, staring at the television as she clutched Harry’s hand. “This is crazy.”
Harry clutched back. “She’ll be lucky to stay alive once bloody Lionel sees this.”
“I doubt he’s sitting comfortably at home watching TV.” Lavender crossed to the armchair where Sylvia sat, with Harry on the arm beside her. “But you have a visitor, Harry. And I promise it isn’t Lionel Sullivan. In fact, it’s nothing to do with him. It’s a very distraught woman called Mrs Belinda Daish.”
“But I don’t know anyone of that name,” mumbled Harry.
“An old girlfriend?” suggested Sylvia.
The woman who hurried in was shivering and looked as though she’d dressed as an afterthought. Sylvia stood at once. She saw the tear stains on the woman’s face and the red-rimmed and swollen eyes. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” whispered the woman. “I thought, just thought – though you won’t want to – and I’ll go away and leave you in peace – but I had to try. You see, I have to try everything.”
With an arm each, Harry and Sylvia took the woman to a large couch in front of the fire, sat her in the middle with themselves either side and signalled to Ruby. “Ruby darling, can you get a bottle or tea or something.” Turning to the woman, asked, “It’s bitterly cold outside. Now, would you like a cup of tea or coffee? Or better still wine? Red or white? Or a whisky and ginger? I’m thinking of having a hot toddy myself.”
“I didn’t want to be a bother,” murmured the woman. “Honestly, I just want a moment of your time.”
Sylvia waved again at Ruby, “Gorgeous Bluebell, can you possibly drum up three large steaming glasses of whisky, boiling water, a spoonful of honey and a couple of cloves?”
“Hot toddies?” Ruby winked. “I do know my booze. I’ll bring four of them.”
Sylvia turned back to their visitor. “It’s your daughter, isn’t it?”
She looked as though she might start crying once more. “How do you know? Yes, it’s my Evie. It’s a whole month. I keep having the most tragic nightmares about – you know – chimneys.”
Harry hugged her. He hadn’t hugged anyone except Sylvia for a very long time. Now Belinda Daish buried her head on his shoulder and wept silently. “You find people, don’t you,” she groaned between sobs. “You find people who can’t be found by anyone else. Could you? My Evie? Could you – even just perhaps – to look for a day – or two. I truly don’t want to be a nuisance, but there’s no one else. I’ve begged the police. They think my Evie’s dead. I think she is too. But I want to try and try.”
He kept hugging. Sylvia spoke softly. “My dear Mrs Daish, your daughter may well be alive. Don’t give up hope. Not yet.”
Belinda looked up. Her eyes were blurred and red. “I know she’s alive. But I think she’s dead. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, it does,” said Sylvia. “And you most certainly and utterly and seriously aren’t being a nuisance. I’m afraid you’ve over-estimated our skills, but I’ll try. I promise I’ll try. Just don’t – I beg you – have too much belief in us. Finding that other man was Harry – not me – and it was mostly luck.”
Others in the room heard, but although ears were twitching, not even Ruby came closer. It was Arthur who interrupted, bringing a tray of steaming glasses and a wonderful scent of spice, honey and Scotch. He passed the glasses around, almost too hot to clasp, but also passed paper napkins for an easier grip. Belinda Daish buried her nose in perfumed steam. Everyone sipped, then gulped, and then drank more. Harry cheered up.
“We’ll do our best. But I’m afraid we’ll have to start with questions. Do you mind starting by telling us about the last time you saw your daughter? And where? And then if you could talk a little about her? Boyfriends? Her father?”
Some of the other Rochester residents politely moved away, leaving the three to speak in peace. The hot toddies gradually disappeared.
Two hours later when Belinda Daish left the Rochester Manor, Harry roused himself sufficiently to drive her home. When he got back to Sylvia, they quickly hurried up to bed, but it was a long, long time before they tumbled under the quilt, and even longer before they slept.
“Morrison sent us, well it was a strong hint, wasn’t it, off to that other address. Now this poor, poor woman has come to us.”
Sylvia’s last words melted into his shoulder. “We’ll help. We have to do it. The daughter isn’t dead. The mother knows it, and I know it too.”
39
Morrison looked up from his desk. “Harry? I’m snowed down here. You should have made an appointment.”
“You’d have told me to go to hell.” Harry smiled. “I thought I’d have more chance just turning up.”
“Then sit down, keep quiet, and look at these,” Morrison said and pushed a small folder towards him. Harry sat as invited and began to read a virtually empty pile of reports detailing – or rather not detailing, the results of the autopsies completed the previous week. Every separate collection of remains had been identified, and the relatives informed. But cause of death has not always been possible to define. There were deep engraved knife marks on some of the bones, particularly around the rib cage and back of the neck. “Stabbed to death,” Morrison looked up briefly. “But nothing conclusive. Too much contamination and too much decomposition. Now you know as much, or as little, as I do. So go home, Harry.”
“Thanks for that.” Harry grinned, unmoving. “But it wasn’t actually what I came for. Oh yes, I know you haven’t arrested anyone yet, but is there a suspect?”
Morrison frowned. “Harry, you know me better than that.”
“I met your boy a couple of days ago. Jackson. His teacher was delivering him home, and dropped in at the manor since we’ve got friendly with his wife.”
Shaking his head, Morrison returned to his papers. “Yes, somebody Howards, nice enough though a bit simple. But I advise you not to get involved with his brother.”
“I don’t know anything about his brother.”
“Good. Keep it that way.” Morrison returned again to his open folder.
Harry tried again. “Feel like popping around tonight for a chat?”
“No. Too busy.” He looked up. “Come to me. You and Sylvia, six o’clock. Now go away, Harry, and leave me in peace.”
Paul Stoker had started his second chapter with the words, “There is nothing colder, nor bleaker, than a police cell. The walls sing of misery and whispers of threat and attack slip through the bars, circling within your head. Freedom has never been more precious until you lose it.”
Harry leaned back against his pillows. He’d taken the book from the library just a couple of hours before but was not enjoying it as much as he had expected. He closed the trashy cover, its flimsy colours already creased. He decided he’d had enough of Lionel Sullivan and would read no more. He turned off the small side light, flattened his pillows, and flung a gentle arm over Sylvi
a’s prone back.
He heard the “Mmmm.”
“Less than two years married and already you turn your back on me.”
Sylvia rolled over, smiling. “Make me want to stay facing you then.”
Peggy Morrison made lamb and aubergine meatloaf and Jackson said, “Hello Mrs Joyce and Mr Joyce. My teachers says you’re both really elderly so I have to be polite.”
“Young, old, clever, daft, healthy, sick, you have to be polite to everybody,” Peggy said, dishing out spoonfuls of dinner.
“I’m always polite,” said Primrose, who was the only girl, and the youngest.
Morrison passed around the wine. “Have you seen Joyce Sullivan? Damned nuisance of a woman. It won’t help. Finding that damned husband of hers is what she should be doing – quietly, of course. She was given a safe-house. Now it’ll be harder.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” said Sylvia, “because she came to see us. Asking us to look for him since it was Harry last time. Then – lo and behold – someone else turned up.”
Morrison’s fork hovered. “Who?”
“Mrs Daish. Her daughter disappeared some time ago. She’s reported it and the police have promised a search, but the poor woman’s convinced the girl has been abducted by the same man you’re investigating. Bodies in the chimney.”
“That’ll be Eve Daish. I was talking to the uniforms about her a couple of days back. And abduction, unfortunately, is likely.”
“Do you mind then,” asked Sylvia. “If we try and look for her too?”
“Of course you can,” Morrison said, mouth full, while everyone else around the table stared at him. “This is a missing girl, and anyone and everyone is free to search. But the police are still onto it. Don’t fall over them. And they tend to stamp if you get under their feet.”
Harry scratched his ear lobe. “We’ll keep you informed.”
“You sound busier than I am,” Morrison said. “The murders of at least seven young women and the disposal of their bodies in the chimney of an empty house. The whereabouts of the criminal Lionel Sullivan, the most dangerous wanted man in Britain. And the young girl Eve Daish, who may or may not have been abducted, and might be deceased.” He regarded his visitors who sat at the kitchen table eating his food. The children had gone into the living room to play with various contraptions until bedtime. Morrison rarely spoke of business in front of them. Faint shouts and the sound of machine guns and explosions hinted at television games.
“You’ve taken on even more than usual this time.”
“And just what’s wrong with your teacher’s brother?” Sylvia asked.
A silence was now interrupted only by the sounds of chewing. Finally Darcey said, “Not my job, and not my speciality. International crime- nothing to do with murder or abduction. Whether the teacher has any involvement, I don’t know, but he’s being watched in case. Not by me. I’m homicide, not other stuff.”
Harry leaned forward, fascinated. He hadn’t expected this. “Drugs?”
Morrison shook his head, “Not as far as I know, but I won’t talk about it, Harry, since it’s not my speciality and not my case. Leave it at that. And I think you’ve got quite enough to do already, my friend, without poking your nose into anything else.”
Whether or not these hints and clues, dropped with a resounding echo, had been intentional, neither Sylvia nor Harry could be sure. “But,” Sylvia whispered, “that man doesn’t make mistakes.”
Standing on the doorstep and not yet fully outside, Harry smiled at Peggy. “It’s been a wonderful evening. And most interesting, apart from the excellent food. Odd,” short pause, “about the teacher’s brother.”
It was as Peggy was pushing the door shut that she whispered to Sylvia “Money laundering – big-time. International. Don’t tell Darcey I told you. Personally I like to keep an eye on Maurice, Jackson’s teacher – just in case. He doesn’t talk about any of that of course, but they’re twins. They must be close. But Maurice Howard’s certainly not a rich tycoon, just a sweet fellow in a tweed jacket. Interpol keeps Mark’s business secret until they catch him, but he stays mostly in Dubai. And as he likes to keep reminding us, Darcey’s in homicide, and this money launderer isn’t into murder. But if Kate ever tells you anything about him, do tell Darcey. He’d pass it on to the right people. It might help a lot.”
Sylvia stepped back from the doorstep. “Well, I’ve never met the rich one.”
“Forget what I told you,” Peggy shut the door, but muttered through the last inch, “But I hope you find that poor little girl, Eve. And I hope she’s not dead.”
It was raining, just a light and chilly drizzle. Through the darkness, it spangled the cobwebs and dripped between the tree branches. Harry stood by the car, holding the door open for Sylvia. “I used to like walking in the rain,” he said. “Even when it poured. It felt like washing the brain. But not any more.”
“Hurry up and get in the car then,” said Sylvia as she climbed in.
But he stood a moment, gazing up at the muffled moon and letting the cold water slip over his face. “Perhaps I’m crazy,” he said, more to himself than to Sylvia. “Three completely different things and I haven’t got a clue about any of them. But finding Eve is probably the most urgent.” Then shook his head. “But that monster Sullivan may be after Sylvia and myself – defence comes first too.” He climbed in the car. “I need a drink.”
“You had one,” said Sylvia.
“A small white wine, since I’m driving. Darcey would never have offered me more.”
“I’ll make another hot toddy once we get home.”
In explaining the little she knew of her daughter’s disappearance, the desperate Mrs Daish had described her daughter as old for her seventeen years, and serious about her ambition to go to college and learn veterinary skills, sufficient for an assistant in the nearby clinic. But she had gone to a club one night, keen to dance off her own depression at having been dumped by her erstwhile boyfriend. Brian Orbos was a creep who had picked up another girl instead, telling Eve she was too academic.
So Eve had put on the sexiest clothes she owned and walked down to the nightclub ten or twelve streets away in Cheltenham, taking a small amount of money and a promise to be home early.
“She was never seen again. I mean, she will be because I know – she has to be alive. I’m her mother, and I know. I feel it. But it’s been three weeks. Even that nasty little creep Brian Orbos, and it was his fault in the first place, but he’s walked the whole county by now I think, just searching for Eve.”
Now Sylvia had three notebooks. ‘EVE,’ ‘SULLIVAN’ and ‘CHIMNEY’. There was not a great deal in any of these slim exercise books, but Eve was noted as ‘Average height, 5’4” – slim, pretty, long dark curls, brown eyes, no tattoos, clever, loves animals, doesn’t drink much. No drugs. Good girl.’
Harry found the Orbost boy. In a self-righteous but miserable Gloucester accent, he swore he hadn’t been at the club that night, knew nothing of anything, but had searched the roads between the club and Eve’s house a hundred times, trudging through puddles and poking into bushes. Eve was a bit of a prude, he told Harry. Yes, alright, they had slept together a few times. Well, they’d been together for months. But she never slept around with anyone else. He was sorry now that he’d dumped her, but he was happy with the new girl. He just hoped Eve would turn up soon.
It had been bitterly cold that night, and if the right sort of person offered a lift in a nice warm car, the girl might have accepted. She might have recognised him. Evidently, she had left the nightclub fairly early after dancing and drinking too much and then telling her friends she was tired. But it was too early for anyone else wanting to leave, and no bus skidded around that particular small journey. Usually there were a few taxis waiting outside the club to take the various drunken dancers home, but again it had been too early for that.
No ransom notes, no telephone messages, no clues of any kind turned up. Silence had moved in. H
arry retraced the journey between Eve’s house and the club, and then back again. Nothing screamed danger, rape, abduction. But the same had occurred when Lionel Sullivan found his victims. Offer a lift in the freezing winter rain, be friendly, and one in five at least would accept.
“You know, Morrison couldn’t tell us because it’s not his responsibility,” Harry said. “But I’d bet whoever is in charge of looking for this poor missing girl, thinks she ran away on purpose, because of losing her boyfriend. Even suicide or something. But I’d bet she hasn’t. She doesn’t sound like the right sort of girl.”
“She hasn’t been back to college.” Sylvia was studying a map of the surrounding area including Cheltenham, Gloucester, and the various villages between including Little Woppington on the Torr, which was, the residents often said, smaller than its name. “There are three long roads between the Harlequin Club and Eve’s house, plus a little bridge crossing. She was wearing unseasonal clothes and it was a bitter wet night, but would she have accepted a pick up from some great lout like Sullivan?”
“She was tired and fed up,” Harry spread his hands. “perhaps she felt that life had been such a bloody pig lately, surely nothing else could go wrong.”
“That sounds even more sad,” Sylvia told him. “Come and look at this map. Could it have been her brother? If he’s a bit protective and aggressive – which we don’t know yet, he could have given her a lift home but then hit her, a slap or a punch, and she banged her head back against the car door and cracked her skull. Now he’s hiding the fact, frightened. Ashamed.”
“Or he hit her, and the car door swung open and she tumbled out and got run over.”
“Or – ,”
“Pointless,” Harry said, coming over to join Sylvia staring down at the map. “Too much guessing is distracting. We need to talk to the brother.”
“Niles.”
“I’m sure he won’t object – his mother would kill him if he did. Phone Mrs Daish and ask.”
The Games People Play Box Set Page 36