“And Eve Daish, the poor little girl who disappeared,” said Harry. “We’ve talked to her whole distraught family. And that seemed the most important mystery to solve.”
“And my own personal case,” Morrison said, chin still resting on his clasped hands. “The murder of nine young women by the man they’ve called the Chimney Killer. And now, according to this new information, it seems that all these crimes might be connected. Even connected by the same person.”
“Well, you always said Eve Daish might well have fallen victim to the Chimney Killer.”
Morrison nodded. “However, Maurice Howard, even as the identical twin to an international criminal, always seemed to be a man of normal intelligence with a normal fondness for young children. He’s never been accused of molesting children and has an excellent reputation as a teacher. It’s hard to imagine him as a demented serial killer.”
“I expect,” Sylvia smiled, “most serial killers don’t advertise the fact. The books I’ve read usually say they’re all normal and pleasant. Like Bundy and so on.”
“You read the wrong books,” Morrison told her, leaning back and unclasping his hands. “Remember Lionel Sullivan. A pleasant chap, would you say?”
“Which is the other unsolved case at the moment,” sighed Harry. “But at least we know he’s not involved with the Howards. He’s just still on the run.”
“Even Kate and her teacher have disappeared now,” Sylvia said. “But they can’t know that we know. They can’t possibly know about funny little Iris once living next door to a friend of a friend -----.”
“Or Arthur’s car boot sale.”
“Kate told us ages ago,” said Sylvia suddenly, “that she’d visited that old Tudor fake. Was she giving clues right back then?”
“She has more recently,” Harry interrupted, “specially about the eldest twin. Coming here, going there. Did she want him arrested? I don’t doubt it, not if he’s the killer too.”
“Her husband might be the killer.”
“Or the handicapped triplet.”
“I have every intention of looking into this more deeply,” Morrison once again leaned forwards over the desk. “Birth certificates, and general identity. Don’t worry. We’ll know soon enough, even if Mark Howard is already back in Dubai.”
“I just hope he hasn’t done anything horrible to Kate,” murmured Sylvia.
The official registration of the birth and appropriate certificates for the Howard triplets began a series of explorations and investigations in which Sylvia and Harry played little part officially, but some part privately.
On the twenty-third of October, 1984, Sara Howard gave birth to triplets, born one month early and subsequently premature and sickly. Two of the triplets were identical twins, whereas the third triplet and the last born was fraternal. The birth had been traumatic, and during the first two hours, no medically qualified person had been present. The fraternal twin’s birth had been unnaturally delayed, and this last baby was born malformed and with a suspected brain injury.
The first, named Mark Ivor Howard, entered the world at five minutes past three in the morning. The second baby, later named Maurice Isan Howard, was not born until two hours and eight minutes later. The last of the triplets was finally delivered by cesarean section. Milton Illitz Howard almost died but was immediately removed to a ventilator, and survived. Sara Howard, however, did not survive and died from a massive haemorrhage within the hour. Subsequently, the father felt that his infant sons were to blame. He was also painfully aware that he had very little probability of looking after triplets successfully on his own, especially since one needed special care and might soon die. He handed all three over for adoption. They were put into foster care and for some years remained with the same family. They were well treated and grew extremely close, with special affection for Milton, the small handicapped brother. When the foster father died of cancer and the mother became ill, the children were separated and sent to other homes. Milton was kept in a special state-run home for the disabled. He was manically unhappy having lost his beloved brothers, and the treatment he endured was poor at best. Mark, the eldest, stayed first in a home where he was beaten and sexually abused. Maurice was sent to four different families in quick succession. Once old enough, the triplets reunited. They spent a great deal of time discovering each other, but they did not bother to trace their father.
Iris and Joyce, now living in adjacent bedrooms, stared at Sylvia in amazement.
“Agnes’s friend. And those same little triplets?” Iris quavered.
“And nothing to do with my Lionel for once,” Joyce snorted. “Makes a nice change.”
“There’s too many dreadful, cruel people out there,” Iris said with a sniff. “Murder and mayhem. I thought I was wicked, but at least I didn’t ever kill anyone.”
“I nearly tried to kill my disgusting husband,” Joyce muttered. “And now I wish I had.”
Sylvia said, “Well, I wish we could find Lionel, but most of all I wish we could find Kate and those murderous twins.”
The new hiding place, his safe haven, kept Lionel warm and although the old straw and the collapsed hay bale smelled of rank mould and dead beetles, he considered himself lucky to have discovered such a place, utterly isolated and completely private. Unused and abandoned for many years, the little shed gave him occasional glimpses of the grand house in the valley but was not close enough for interference. Those in the grand house, it seemed, had no more desire to know him than he had to know them.
Lionel was amused, sometimes, to see the grand car and the grandly dressed men arriving at the grand house, none of them aware that they were being watched. He was watching the two tall, dark men climb from their dark car when he noticed something else. A young woman was walking up the lane on the opposite side away from both the grand house and his own small hidden shed. With a stumble of absolute delighted surprise, he ran out into the sunless freeze and waded up the slope to the laneway. The last of the snow had melted some days previously, but icy patches remained like treacherous stepping-stones between the tufting grass and sprigs of daisies, impatient to see the sun.
There was no sun. The sky was granite. With a shout as he slipped to one knee, Lionel hailed the young woman trotting towards the far corner where the lane led to a distant village. She wore exercise lycra, and as she ran, Lionel watched the muscles flex in her legs and the movement of her buttocks.
“Hey, can you wait one minute?”
She looked around. “Not really. I’m in a hurry.”
“You must be exhausted.”
“Not at all. What do you want?”
Lionel stopped, and bent, hands to his knees. Puffing, out of breath, he said, “My little Tumpkins. My puppy. I live in that house down there,” and he pointed to the grand roof of the building below, “but the puppy ran off and my phone’s not working. The wires got snapped in the snow and there’s no reception. I can’t run anymore. Could you see a little black puppy from where you are?”
She looked, looked again, and shook her head. “I expect he’ll run home.”
“I only got him from the Rescue Kennels yesterday. He won’t know the way.”
The woman eyed him slowly. “So you want me to help you find your dog? I seem to have heard that line before, and the warning that goes with it.”
“What, me?” Lionel stepped back. “I’m so sorry. Does that sound suspicious? Well, don’t worry, I’ll just carry on looking alone.” He began to stumble away, then turned. “Can you whistle? You know, that really high-pitched whistle that some people can do, and it echoes for miles.”
The woman frowned. “No. I can’t. And you remind me of someone. Have I met you before?”
“Ah yes, perhaps.” Lionel smiled, success dawning. “A party maybe. Or the local library. I do socialise a bit.”
“I only go to the parties at the Gym.”
He sniggered. “I’m not fit at all, I’m afraid. Which is why I can’t find Tumpkins.” Lionel’
s smile grew. “He’ll be long gone now if I don’t hurry. Are you sure you couldn’t help? All I can offer is a cup of tea, but I’m sure my puppy would be so happy.”
He stretched out his hand. It was a mistake. The woman backed off. “I know who you remind me of. That Sullivan person. That huge hand – escaped from prison.” She gulped, blinked, and turned. “And your face,” she grunted. “Purple spray. Purple over your nose – and more. That’s a – a warning. Someone knew you.” Then she ran. Much faster than the previous jogging, her lycra clad legs disappeared up the lane and were gone. Lionel, not having eaten for two days and now horribly hungry, and after climbing the steep slope from shed to road, had no energy to chase after. He stood and swore with calculated variety. Then slowly he slid and scrambled back down to his shed.
What he would have done to the woman had she accompanied him, continued to dribble through his mind. He thought of the jagged clumps of sharp ended straw he could force inside her. He thought of the rip of lycra, and how he could use the strip once between her legs, to gag her tightly, and bind her wrists behind her. Her hair, curled beneath a hood, had been bleach-blond and long. He imagined gripping it near her scalp and tugging it out, handful by handful as she shrieked into her gag.
But there was only Olga, and another failure. Since his escape, which he counted as a vast and important achievement, he had not been able to discover any moment of lavish delight except during his own day-dreams.
On the way back down the slope, it had started to rain again. At least it wasn’t snow, Lionel had thought, plodding over the icy patches. But he had slipped anyway, for now, the rocks and pebble trails were also slippery, and once again Lionel had landed on his knees. He had cursed so loudly that, like the whistle he could not do, the sound had echoed.
Pushing up from his bruised knees, Lionel found that he was being watched. It was at a considerable distance, but at the same moment, the tall, dark man from the grand house had walked from his back door to where the car was parked. Abruptly, even from so far, Lionel had felt the piercing stare of black eyes, colder than the ice at his feet.
He had thumped away any threats in prison and could do so again. But knowing himself seen, he was troubled. Bending low into the open doorway of the shed, he ducked completely out of sight. He was fairly sure that no one could have seen where he went. The man would know there was a trespasser on his land but could not know that the trespasser was hiding there. Lionel slumped onto the hay and swore first at the unknown woman who had escaped him, then at the dark man and finally at Olga, whom he saw approaching, dressed in shadow.
56
“It’s cuddles more than sex,” Sylvia murmured, almost swallowing his shoulder.
“I have to admit,” Harry muttered, “I like both. But not equally.”
“But when you’re away, it’s your arms I miss, and your hands and the smell of you all cuddly and warm, and it’s like wanting to come home.”
“I remind you of a fireplace?” He was smiling into the top of her hair.
“True. With welcoming light and flames dancing so I want to sit closer. Actually, the light goes on when you come into the room.”
His hand slipped to the crease beneath her breast. “You say gorgeous things, my love.” With no desire to change the subject, his hand moved again, sliding across her breast, his other hand tight at the small of her back. “I feel the same things. Which I never did with poor little Audrey.” Through the soft silver hair, he found her forehead and kissed her. “A wasted youth, but I’m making up for it now.”
But Sylvia changed the subject anyway. Pulling away slightly, she watched Harry’s eyes spelling sex, and said softly, “Aren’t we supposed to be at Morrison’s in about fifteen minutes? We’ll be late.”
Harry groaned and rolled aside, swinging his legs to the rug. “And there was me starting to feel young again. Now I’m reminded of the arthritic hip and the pain in my neck and the frozen left shoulder and the stiff back.”
“I have all that and more,” Sylvia told him. “Let’s see who wins on the self-pity scale. And now I have to brush all the knots out of my hair and find my contact lenses.”
“We’ll be late anyway.” Harry stood, both hands to his back. “And Morrison won’t mind. Nor will Peggy. Their house is always in chaos.”
“It just looks that way,” Sylvia nodded. “But it’s organised chaos.And I want to know where we’re up to with that fluffy rug and the saffron-prop.”
“It’s an acro-prop.”
“I don’t care if it’s a Ring of Mordor. I just want to talk to Morrison about where we’re up to.”
Over the dinner table, Darcey Morrison carved the roast pork and snapped the crackling into eight large steaming pieces. He gave the largest to Harry. “Where I know it’ll be appreciated.”
Dempsey, the eldest child, watched the food bypass his own plate. “Hardly fair.”
“He’s a Pooky-Muncher,” complained Atticus. The two youngest, Jackson and Primrose, had already been put to bed.
“I shall remember that name, and use it to start a new FaceBook page,” Harry told Atticus, then turned to Morrison. “Are we close? Very, very close? What about the acro-prop?”
“Sadly it can’t be traced,’ Morrison said, passing the plates. “Nor can the rug. But the description fits the threads found in two separate cases. We’ve tried to question the teacher’s wife.”
“But Kate’s still missing?” asked Sylvia.
“And the teacher’s gone too. Says he’s not well,” Atticusrelated, acting the detective.
Peggy suddenly remembered he was still there. “Atticus, it’s half an hour since you finished your dinner. Haven’t I already told you to go upstairs, read the end of that book whatever it was, and go to bed.”
“Bannister’s Muster, book four.” He pushed back his chair with a sulky expression.
“Read till the end of the chapter,” his mother frowned, “and then bed. No eavesdropping at the top of the stairs. You wouldn’t understand anyway. And that goes for you too, Dempsy. You know you can’t be here when your father talks business.”
With faint grumbles drifting into the perfumed air, the boys disappeared. Harry crunched his pork crackling.”
“The evidence is circumstantial, but their disappearance brings more suspicion. Maurice Howard certainly isn’t in hospital, and the headmaster admitted he’d spoken of ill health simply because the man had gone missing without excuse. The cake shop’s closed as you know, and whether Mark Howard is still in the country, we have no idea. There’s no other address listed for any of them except the house behind the cake shop, and it’s empty. No bank withdrawals or credit card transactions have been made by any of the three Howards, and the daughter Mia is also absent from school without explanation. Eve Daish, of course, has not been found either.”
“So all that exciting information, and it hasn’t really helped at all?”
“It’s helped a great deal,” Morrison said. He heaped a large cut of meat and roast potato onto his fork but rested it on the plate without eating. “What I need,” he said, “is something – anything – that might lead to an address. Mark Howard was already Number One on the Wanted list and his photo plasters almost every wall in every police station. But we had no information connecting him to murder, multiple or otherwise, until you brought us the link between him, his family, and that infamous white fur rug. The acro-prop is merely circumstantial, but it adds logic.”
“Does your forensic lab,” asked Sylvia tentatively, “say anything about marks from a machine? Bodies forced into tight places, for instance?”
He smiled. Talking to those who had no idea of police procedures was always slightly challenging. “Yes,” he said, “to some small extent. But remember these bodies are in a terrible state of decomposition, and fires have been lit below. For the moment, we don’t have enough on Maurice or Kate Howard to arrest them, but we certainly do on the money laundering and enough on the other two to pull them in for q
uestioning.”
“But you questioned Arthur Simms and his son,” Sylvia pointed out. “Did you get anything else important from them?”
“The son kept saying his father was a good man.”
Harry smiled. “He’s autistic. He used to say the opposite. I suppose he was nervous of being in a police station.”
“But the father was helpful. Answered everything. Then had no more information to give.”
“And the third triplet?” Sylvia was intrigued. “Do you believe that story?”
“The difficulty,” said Morrison, “is knowing whether the third son survived. Oh yes, I believe it alright, and there are three male infants born within the one day to the same mother according to the birth certificates. Mark. That’s our money launderer. Maurice. The teacher. And Milton. Who may or may not have died with his mother.” Morrison finally stuffed his fork into his mouth and leaned back, chewing.
“And which one is the murderer?” Sylvia had finished eating and was leaning forward, but knew she’d be unlikely to get a straight answer.
“Humph,” Morrison said somewhat predictably. “It could be any one of them. But is the youngest living? Was the eldest even in this country when the crimes were committed? Does that leave the middle son as the most likely suspect? Circumstantial as yet – so none of us know.” Morrison was still chewing, his morose expression of disappointment paling into the pleasure of food when the phone rang in his pocket. He mumbled an apology, grabbed the phone, pushed back his chair and disappeared into the passageway outside the dining room. Peggy refilled Harry’s glass and waved the bottle towards Sylvia.
“No thanks,” Sylvia said. “And Harry shouldn’t have anymore either. He’s got to drive home.” Harry obediently pushed his glass away. “I presume that was work?” Sylvia asked Peggy.
“Oh yes,” Peggy sipped at her own refilled glass, “He only ever answers the work phone. He turns the home number off when we have visitors. And,” she began to collect the empty plates, “it must have been important for them to have called him at this hour.”
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