Harry wandered into the kitchen, made tea, and brought it back. Sylvia had managed to lengthen her list, but not by much. “I think we should go out for a brisk walk after the tea,” he told her. “Too much central heating and too much vain investigative failure.”
Sylvia poured the tea and sipped. “Out into the snow, hail, hurricanes and tornadoes?”
“Just windy drizzle.”
“Sounds like a description of me and my indigestion.” She finished the tea, regarding her husband. “Alright, we go out in that horrible wintry slush, and we don’t invite Ruby since she seems depressed anyway. We visit the cake shop and buy her a cake, and invite her to chat after we come home. In the meantime, we visit Joyce’s old home. But I’ll let you off the forest and the place where the shed was since it’ll be mud up to our elbows. Then maybe we could drop in on Morrison before we go home, and see if they arrested Mark Howard.”
“He might be at the cake shop. Perhaps we should avoid that.”
“It would all be over by now,” Sylvia said. “If he was going there at all, he’d be really early to avoid being seen.”
Gloves like polar bears, a scarf and an over-scarf, boots on top of thick woolly stockings, a hat like the crest of a cockatoo, and a coat thicker than a bishop’s robes. Within the navy and white drapery, Sylvia, nose and lips blue, trudged the alleys too narrow for the car. The Lexus was left parked in the village square.
“Who thought of this mad idea?” Harry demanded, stamping his feet to bring back circulation into his freezing toes.
“You did.”
“I was an idiot. And you wanted to go into the forest and look for Sullivan’s shed, or whatever’s left of it. Let’s forget the whole thing and go back to the car.” Harry braced himself for refusal, but Sylvia weakened.
“It’s too cold, Harry. We were both wrong. And anyway, Kate’s shop was closed and no one answered the side door, so either they’ve all gone away fishing, or they’re all in prison. An interesting question and answer.”
“They couldn’t arrest Kate. But I suppose they could drag her in for questioning.”
Which is when echoing, a voice called, “Oh, help. Come quickly. Police. Ambulance. Help.”
Neither Sylvia nor Harry stopped to think. Turning at the same moment, they ran into the wind, Sylvia clutching her hat. It was when they hurried around the narrow corner, that a young woman clutched Harry’s sleeve. “Look, over there. I think she’s dead.”
Harry bent over the bundle indicated, and Sylvia said, “Have you phoned the police? Ambulance?”
The girl shook her head. “I was frightened. If she’s dead, I don’t want to be here. And I didn’t steal anything, honest.”
Sylvia pulled her phone from her pocket. She dialled the three usual numbers. “Ambulance. Someone’s lying half frozen on the pavement. It’s an old woman I think.”
Harry called, “It’s Iris.”
The very small woman lay huddled on one side, her legs tucked up beneath her, the coat collar pulled over her cheeks, and her hands clutching at the top button. A tousled tangled of grey hair peeped from over the thin stained pink, her feet were neat in sensible black leather, but the warm grey stockings were laddered and splashed with rain. Having found a sheltered spot where a pillared doorway was covered by a stone awning, the woman had lain to sleep, or perhaps to die. In spite of those talking around and about her, she did not wake. With a screech of siren and tyres, the ambulance came as directed, and the paramedics made an instant diagnosis.
“She needs life support.” They bundled the oblivious woman into the back of their machine. “Half starved, I’d say. Hypothermia and possibly worse. Does she carry identification?”
“No handbag.”
“Stolen?”
“I doubt she’d have money,” Harry said. “Where will you take her? The local?”
“Cheltenham General Hospital.”
“We’ll follow along,” Sylvia said. “We know her very slightly. Iris Little. Not sure about relatives, nor address.”
The young woman had gone. “I assume she was working the streets,” Sylvia said.
“Who? Iris?”
“No, silly. The young woman who found her. Come on, back to the car.”
It was a long, chilly and dreary wait, sitting in a corridor of hush, sudden footsteps, the rattle of trolleys and eventually a nurse. “Mrs Little is awake, though we want her to sleep shortly. You can see her for just five minutes, and then we’d like to ask you some questions.”
The bed was narrow, but Iris seemed to disappear within it. She wore a hospital gown, and two drips were attached, one to each arm. “Thank you so much,” she whispered. “Did you come looking for me?”
Unwilling to admit it was pure coincidence, and besides, who believes in coincidence anyway, Harry said, “Of course. But now I imagine you’ll be very well looked after.” He paused, watching her, then asked, “Do you have a husband, Iris? Nephews or nieces? Anyone at all we should notify?”
They sat beside the bed, two little plastic chairs pulled up, still covered in the glory of winter coverings, still shivering. Iris was barely awake and seemed unaware of the cold. She shook her head. “Freddy left more than five years ago. I lived with my son and his wife for a year, but it was the gambling they used as an excuse to throw me out. I never really got on with Portia. My brother was sick, poor dear, and went into a Care Home. There are a few nieces, but none of them want a silly old woman with a gambling addiction.”
Sylvia’s answer was interrupted by the nurse. “Time up, I’m afraid.” She took the old woman’s pulse, patted her hand, and helped her lie down, pillows reduced and the blanket tucked around. She turned to Sylvia and Harry, who were both now standing. “If you’d come with me? Just a few basic questions, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“We don’t mind,” nodded Sylvia, “but it’ll be a series of ‘I don’t knows’.’”
Rochester Manor was brightly lit, smiling golden through the drizzled shadows. Sylvia pushed open the door, and the freeze turned to immediate warmth.
Harry followed Sylvia upstairs to their bedroom where they sat to discuss the situation with Iris, and pull off all their outer clothes, then finally to come back downstairs and look for Ruby.
“No cakes, I’m afraid,” grinned Sylvia, sweeping into the larger living room. Amy looked up and waved and said she had decided to give up cake since she had discovered they made her feel cold.
Harry stared. “I don’t think that’s quite the same subject, Amy dear,” he told her. “It’s cold because it’s winter.”
“It may be,” decided Amy, “but just lately I’ve been eating far more cakes than usual, and I’ve been feeling colder and colder. It’s just logical, isn’t it? All that three and three make eight sort of thing.”
Percival peered over the top of his copy of The Lancet and patted her hand. “We’ll try large helpings of Beef Stroganoff this evening, my dear. A well known medicinal cure for the cold within.”
“Have you seen Ruby?”
But they had not, It was Matthew who called across the room, “She’s still upstairs. Went to bed. Had the snivels.”
Since Yvonne was practising her rather odd version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody on the old still out of tune piano, most of the living room crowd were either grumbling, listening quietly or laughing. Sylvia and Harry stayed a while, then Sylvia decided to go upstairs and make sure Ruby wasn’t seriously ill having caught the flu or the plague, while Harry read last week’s Sunday Times, its crumpled remains out on the long bench in the entrance corridor, the place where all mail, newspapers and magazines got dumped until picked up.
Sylvia knocked on Ruby’s bedroom door and received no answer. She leaned forward to open the door herself as usual, but found it locked from the inside. This was most unusual, except at night. Ruby feared strangers wandering the passages at night, murderers and rapists who had found an open window downstairs. But this was five o’clock in the afternoon, and no st
orm hammered down the chimneys. Sylvia knocked again.
A shuffle and a murmured but undecipherable answer kept Sylvia waiting, but nothing else happened for some time.
“Bluebell, my love, are you alright?” Sylvia demanded through the keyhole.
“No,” said the mumble within.
“Do you want me to phone the doctor? Get you some tea? Or go away?” Sylvia asked.
“No,” said the voice, presumably Ruby, and a crash echoed.
“Have you fallen over? Get this damned door open,” roared Sylvia.
Eventually, although slowly, the door creaked open, and an aged hand appeared near the floor. Sylvia peered down, then bent, her hand on Ruby’s. “Can’t – get up,” whispered the tentative voice behind the groping fingers.
“Oh my God,” said Sylvia. Knowing that if she knelt, she’d never be able to get up again either, arthritic knees constantly disobedient, she bent lower, grasped Ruby beneath her arms, and attempted to hoist her up. But Ruby collapsed, and her weight was too much for Sylvia, back arched and almost bent double. She let Ruby sink back onto the carpet, marched to the top of the stairs, and yelled, “Harry. Lavender. Percival. Arthur. Or anyone at all.”
No one heard, and only the plonk of the piano echoed back. So Sylvia pulled her phone out and phoned her husband. “Harry, I’m upstairs with Ruby. There’s something horribly wrong with her. Tell Percival. He might diagnose some terrible illness. And please come up and help.”
Percival and Amy with Matthew and David followed Harry up the stairs and crowded around the doorway. Between them, they managed to carry Ruby to her own bed. Percival, in private, left alone in the bedroom, agreed to make a quick examination, and soon left Ruby sleeping as he trotted out to tell the others what he had diagnosed.
“Depression,” Percival told Sylvia without further explanation.
Voices low, they stood in the corridor outside Ruby’s apartment, worried and eager for explanation.
Sylvia said, “Well, yes, I am. Depressed concerning Ruby. Is she really ill?”
“Not in the slightest,” Percival told her. “Nor did I refer to your depression, Sylvia dear. I referred to the cause of Ruby’s dilemma. She has taken a very large number of mixed medications, possibly with a confused target of suicide, or at the least to attract sympathetic attention. I have no way of telling exactly what pills she has taken, and therefore I have telephoned for an ambulance already. She needs at the least a couple of days hospitalisation. She may need her stomach pumped.”
“Bloody hell,” muttered Harry.
“Shitting hell,” said Sylvia.
“I don’t smell shit,” Amy said vaguely, looking around. “Who did? It wasn’t me, really it wasn’t. I’d have noticed.”
Percival took his wife by her arm and shepherded her downstairs. “Definitely not you, Amy my dearest,” he told her. “Come and have a cup of tea.”
Harry and Sylvia went to usher the paramedics from the ambulance to Ruby’s bedroom and stood shivering until they heard the siren.
“Second time today,” sighed Harry.
“They’ll probably end up in the same ward,” said Sylvia, her sigh even deeper. “We can visit them both at the same time. But what on earth was Ruby so depressed about? I feel horribly guilty because I didn’t realise it was so bad. And poor little Iris is homeless and friendless and half starved, but Ruby is wealthy with a hundred friends and a fantastic home. What did I miss?”
“You can talk to her about it,” Harry told her, “when she comes round. And I’ll sit outside in the cold or go and talk to Iris. Ruby will want you on your own.”
„Life,“ muttered Sylvia to herself, „can certainly be a tiresome business. Trying to make it blissful and just both for ourselves and for those in need along the way can end up such a hopeless attempt.“
„Hope belongs in the box,“ mumbled Harry without explanation.
52
Five bodies had been found in a reasonably intact condition. Now they lay on the table in the large unheated chamber where Ostopolis continued working.
The first corpse rescued from the chimney in the mock-Tudor house was the least decomposed and the least dismembered. She had offered up DNA on immediate examination and had then been identified as Phoebe Stein, a seventeen year old pupil at the local college, desperately missed by her large family who reported her missing within an hour of her disappearance when she did not return from school. The cause of death was unclear, but almost certainly strangulation.
On the second table lay the burned remains of eighteen year old Vivien Riley who had run away from an abusive home many years ago, and taken to the streets. She had never been reported missing. Cause of death was once again strangulation.
The third recovered victim had been identified as a twenty three year old prostitute named Samantha White. She had also been strangled.
The fourth young woman had been suffocated with a plastic bag which had partially survived her burial higher up the chimney. Portia Lawrence had been a sixteen year old school girl reported missing nearly twelve years previously.
At twenty four years of age, River Crane had been missing for thirteen years. She had worked in the village chemist for two years before disappearing. The cause of death was not clear as there were knife marks on her ribs, but other abuse could not be ruled out.
Identified by the DNA found in three strands of hair caught on the bricks at the base of the chimney, Susan Grant had been nineteen when she went missing, having dropped out of university just two months earlier. No possible cause of death could be identified.
Beatrice Dawn had left only ashes, and her DNA was not entirely positive. Cause of death unknown.
In the gardens, two decomposed bodies had eventually been unearthed from beneath the bushes. Here both Marley Webster and Sharon Bell had been discovered. Both had been twenty one at their disappearance, and both had clearly been strangled. They had each been reported missing fourteen years ago, firstly Sharon Bell, an apprentice hairdresser, and a few months later Marley had left home to report to Social Security as out of work. Neither were seen again until they were found buried beneath the lilac.
Several of the remains also carried the DNA of someone else. The identity of this person remained unknown since the DNA did not fit anyone on file.
Morrison phoned, and when Harry and Sylvia bustled into his office, he tapped the papers on his desk and smiled with smug satisfaction. “A small house over the other side of Gloucester recently resold. The new owners explored their strangely barricaded and locked wine cellar. Two corpses, mangled and dismembered, were discovered in a metal chest. Both have been identified. April Westwood and Lucy Skandermitch. Young women who both disappeared last year.”
Harry was scribbling notes but looked up. “This is a killer who moves house every now and again, presumably when he thinks there’s a danger of getting caught. The last house seems to have been safer. Nine victims. Now another house with only two, but clearly he’s moved on again. But these new owners, do they know who lived there previously?”
“The Real Estate Agency does, but it makes no sense,” Morrison told them. “An old man, retired doctor, rented out to holidaymakers who stayed a couple of weeks at most. He never managed to hobble downstairs to the cellar. Steep steps, I gather. I'm going there this afternoon. I can’t invite you along, though. Latest address and names still secret.”|
With a faint frown of disappointment combined with interest, Sylvia said, “Well, clearly we haven’t the slightest talent at this investigation business, so we’d not be an asset anyway.”
“You had some clear talent tracing Mark Howard,” Morrison sighed, spreading his hands, “but my new companion Cramble used neither brain nor experience, and missed him. But don’t quote me on that. Any more clues you pick up from your interesting friend Kate Howard, please do let me know.”
They promised.
“And Eve Daish?”
Morrison shook his head. “I have every reas
on to suspect that the same killer has taken her, I’m afraid. Although at this stage there’s proof of nothing. She might have run away to London. Or Timbuktu. Although sadly I believe she’s trapped in this killer’s next cellar.”
Harry, who had looked it up, said, “He used an acro-prop, didn’t he? The killer hoisting bodies up the chimney. Can’t you trace that?”
“Believe me, we’ve tried,” Morrison said. “But it’s a common tool, and they sell in their thousands. The few leads that gave us have been well and truly walked over till rubbed out.”
They left, despondent and asked Morrison to pass on their love to his wife, and to his dear friend Cramble. They then drove directly to the hospital.
Unable to risk selling the BMW, Lionel Sullivan abandoned the stolen car in a snowbound ditch halfway towards Stone Henge in Wiltshire, stole a battered blue Ford from outside a tenement flat, drove as far as he could south, abandoned the old banger and stole a nondescript Austin, turned in the opposite direction and drove back to Cheltenham. He had started wearing a pair of gardening gloves stolen from a tiny shop which had closed for the winter. The gloves were magnificently huge, but they were still a little small for him. Uncomfortable then, but that was irrelevant. They kept his fingerprints wrapped.
Besides, he had only one aim. There was no longer the cheerful anticipation. No casual passing young woman, hopefully attractive, could be the future thrill. Once caught, no stranger would make his eyes sparkle and his groin tingle. He was now after one person only, and that was his bitch of a wife who had tried to poison him. She had planned for him to die alone and in prolonged agony from drinking a homemade killer which could eat him away from within, burning out his liver, chewing on his kidneys, and grinding at his heart. The bitch had to die, and he locked other thoughts from his rigid determination.
The Games People Play Box Set Page 47