by Alice Castle
York hated himself for thinking of a fellow human being in those terms, especially one who until so recently had been enjoying what appeared to be a purposeful and reasonably fulfilled life. But there it was. A long delay between demise and discovery was not only a human tragedy, but also often resulted in a very unpleasant mess for those who had to deal with a literally sticky end.
Toxicology would confirm the cause of death, but York was reasonably certain that the syringe still hanging out of the boy’s cold, dead arm was to blame. The flat had been furnished in a trendy but, to his eyes, unimaginatively macho-style – heavy on shiny black leather, and with a telly so massive it took up almost one entire wall of the small living room. Looking around, York wondered what devil had possessed the lad. From the looks of the works on the chrome coffee table, the boy had been a regular user, but he’d been doing ok. He was high-functioning, holding down a job, paying his rent and, to all intents and purposes, making his way in life. He wasn’t whacking every penny into his arm. Probably just a weekend user, a hangover from uni days. Maybe he was just sad and lonely, and the drug eased the pain. His death would probably come as the most horrible shock to his family. Maybe not so much to his friends.
There were so many stories like this in the city. York, going outside and handing over to the SOCO team, peeled off his latex gloves, wishing he could slough off some parts of his job as easily.
To distract himself, as much as anything, he fished his phone out of his coat pocket, hunching against the wind as he keyed in his code. To his surprise, a text flashed up. Must have come in when they were battering down the door. It was from Beth. He peered at it in consternation. No! She couldn’t mean what he thought she meant. Not again!
He set off at a run, pushing past the SOCOs and the paramedic team who’d just arrived to certify death and cart the lad off to an even bleaker and more masculine bit of interior design than the one he’d lived in – the refrigerated, stainless steel drawer of the mortuary in King’s College Hospital.
***
‘Babs! Where are you, Babs?’ Beth called, emerging cautiously from the dank passageway and peering round into the garden. It all seemed deserted. The wind was less bitter now, but it was still dark and freezing, with the sort of late autumn chill that crept into your very bones. There might be a frost by morning, leaving what passed for a lawn crunchy and white, but now it was wet and lumpy, pock-marked with piles of decaying leaves.
It was plain, even in this gloom, that Jeff’s plans to revamp the garden had still not got off the ground. Had they left Camberwell? Set up somewhere else? Was that the secret? Had they decided to start a new life somewhere else? But Jen would never leave Jessica behind. There were so many questions, Beth thought, but the most pressing, at the moment, was suddenly something entirely new – where on earth had Babs disappeared to? Drat the woman. Beth had only hesitated for a couple of minutes in front of the house, when Babs had hared off into the garden, but she seemed to have had enough time to vanish off the face of the earth.
‘Babs! This isn’t funny! Where are you?’ Beth shouted. Her voice, to her own ears, sounded thin and strained. Well, no point standing here like an idiot. She’d have a quick look around, then she’d just get going. Babs could play hide and seek if she wanted to, but Beth didn’t have time to join in. She still had to pick up Ben. The men hadn’t turned up anyway, so she couldn’t have the confrontation she’d planned. Well, never mind. She’d reschedule, preferably for a time when Camberwell wasn’t doing a very good impression of Wuthering Heights.
Beth straightened her spine and edged forward into the looming shadows of the house. All was dark inside, again. She didn’t want to press her nose up against the glass, as she hadn’t exactly had the best results doing that last time. She’d just call out once more for Babs, then she’d be off.
But before she had a chance to yell, she heard something that made her blood freeze in her veins. It was a scream, coming from the far end of the garden, over by the railway tracks. She squinted into the distance. She could just see the boundary fence in the darkness, its blacker shape standing out against the dark grey masses of the trees and overgrown shrubs.
Reluctantly, she stepped forward, off the patio and onto the wet, uneven grass. ‘Babs? Is that you?’ she called, as strongly as she could.
There was another muted sound from the end of the garden. Not a shriek, more of a muffled cry. It seemed to be coming from the centre of the darkest patch of tangled trees. She edged forward uncertainly, feeling the wetness creeping into her little boots and start to leach into the fabric of her jeans. Yuck. This was the last thing she needed. She was going to be soaking and she’d have to drive home like this. Blast Babs.
‘Babs, where are you?’ she yelled, and this time she was exasperated rather than scared. Bugger. There was nothing for it now. She was already wet and cold, so she might as well get this over with. She marched as best she could across what had once been a nice lawn, but was now a flourishing collection of weeds and potholes. A couple of times, she nearly lost her footing.
As she reached the tangle of undergrowth, and what looked like a huge pile of mouldering cuttings, she slowed. There was still no sign at all of Babs. It was weird. Could the stupid woman really be hiding? And why, on God’s earth, would she want to do that?
All of a sudden, she remembered Jen’s fear. The hole. The old Anderson shelter. Had Babs fallen down it?
‘Babs! Are you ok? There’s an old air raid shelter round here somewhere, you need to be careful. If you don’t watch your step, you could get stuck down it,’ she shouted out.
‘I know,’ said someone very quietly in the inky dark.
Beth was suddenly stock still, rooted in fear. The voice was right behind her.
Chapter Fifteen
York was cursing commuters, mothers with heavily-laden buggies, people walking their dogs, even the elderly, all littering his route as he hurtled down Mary Boast Walk as though the hounds of hell were at his heels. But most of all, he was cursing Beth Haldane. Why couldn’t she leave well alone? Why couldn’t she steer clear of trouble? Why couldn’t she… just stop being Beth Haldane?
By the time he reached Jen’s house, he was panting and feeling chronically out of shape, cursing all those times he’d meant to go to the gym and had settled instead for re-reading a Ngaoi Marsh Inspector Alleyn mystery with a bag of crisps on the side. He’d called for back-up – or rather, wheezed for it – as he’d done his sprint, so he wasn’t surprised to hear the faint wail of sirens already, though he hoped they weren’t heading to another incident. Blues and twos were part of the background noise of this area, so close to the centre and so teeming with life. Holding his aching side, he saw the garden gate was swinging open in the gusts of wind. He turned his phone to torch mode.
As he advanced, a woman came running out at him. For a glorious second, he thought it was Beth, but this woman was much taller and wearing a smart camel coat, smeared with mud. ‘Thank goodness, I don’t know who you are, but something terrible’s happened,’ the woman gabbled.
York looked at her swiftly. ‘Show me,’ he said, wasting no time.
She led him across a surprisingly long stretch of unkempt lawn into a tangle of trees. ‘Look! There,’ she said, pointing downwards.
With horror in his heart, York could just make out what looked like two small boots and maybe legs, lying crumpled at an odd angle at the bottom of what looked like a tunnel, divided from the lawn by a ragged line of shrubs. Pushed to the side was a sheet of rusted corrugated iron, which he guessed usually covered the drop, plunging at least five feet down into the darkness. The wavering beam of his phone picked out jeans past the boots, but the rest was hidden from sight. There was definitely someone down there, and by the size of those little boots, it could only be one person. Beth.
York swallowed, then flicked into official mode. ‘Wait here. Police officers are on their way,’ he said to the woman, who appeared to be in shock, still and trem
bling, hunched in her dirty posh coat.
He clambered down into the narrow tunnel, feeling for secure footholds and bracing his hands on anything sturdy. The tunnel, once he was in it, seemed to be the entrance to a larger space. One of those old war-time shelters, he was willing to bet. Death traps, and why everyone hadn’t got rid of them, he couldn’t begin to imagine. But that wasn’t the most pressing matter now. He shuffled forward in the cramped space, his back brushing up against the roof of the shelter when he tried to stand. He suddenly realised how precarious the whole structure was. It could easily come down on top of them. The sooner he got them both out, the better.
Inching forward, he knelt down. A thick mass of hair was all over the woman’s head and neck. He smoothed it away carefully and was looking at Beth’s pale oval of a face; with her fringe off her forehead, for once, she looked absurdly young and like Ben, only prettier. He shook his head to keep his thoughts clear, and pressed two fingers into her neck, just below her ear.
The warmth of her skin would have reassured him, even if he hadn’t felt the steady beat of a pulse. She was alive. She was going to be fine. He breathed, and then took stock of her situation. From the way her leg was bent beneath her, it looked as though it was broken. And there was a nasty gash over one eye. But that seemed to be it. He wasn’t going to risk moving her.
‘Is she…?’ came a voice from up above.
‘No, she’s alive! She’s going to fine,’ said York triumphantly. Unseen by him, the figure melted away.
York had other things on his mind. While he was down here, in the gloom only just relieved by the eerie glow of the phone torch, and talking very gently to the unconscious Beth, he had become aware of the smell around them. It wasn’t just the loamy, damp reek of the earth walls pressing around them. There was something worse, overlying the natural scents of a garden busily composting, ready for spring. A heavy, unmistakably unpleasant pungency, redolent of reeking, rotting fish, that meant only one thing. Death.
He looked around, while keeping a hand on Beth’s arm, stroking it reassuringly. In the depths of the far corner, only a couple of feet away, there was a pile of cardboard. Odd. It showed someone had been down here, and quite recently. Though looking sodden, the brown mass was still intact, despite the pervading damp down here.
York edged over gingerly, and pulled at one soggy corner. Instantly, the smell was stronger. He waved his phone into the space, conscious that his battery would be running low. What was that? A bundle of clothes? He pointed the torch. At once, the shape assumed more definition. And much though he didn’t want it to be, he could see it looked like a figure, curled in a foetal position. Preternaturally still. In the cold beam of light, he could see it was wearing a stripy top.
Chapter Sixteen
‘What do you call it when you’ve had déjà vu twice? Déjà vu-vu? Or déjà déjà vu?’ said Beth drowsily.
York, holding her hand across the now familiar over-washed blue coverlet, smiled at her. It was either the look in his eyes, or the strong painkillers they’d given her after resetting her arm, that were making her head swim, and whatever the provenance, she was actually enjoying the feeling very much, thank you. Well, it took the edge off her situation. Back in hospital again, for the second time in a term, having been brutally attacked twice by the same person. When she thought about it like that, she felt like a total idiot.
It had been Babs all along. Babs, whose bitterness at being lumbered with someone else’s child had spilled over into the most corrosive human emotion of all, jealous hatred. And it was something the woman had been unable to vent. She was in the worst possible situation a person can find themselves in – lying in a bed they’ve made for themselves. She had spent years winkling Tim away from his wife, only to find that when she got sole ownership of this great prize, it hadn’t been worth the effort after all. And she’d got an unwanted stepdaughter thrown in. Initially, she’d tried to win Jessica over, but had been rebuffed so many times that she had forgotten to be philosophical and play the long game. Babs’s anger and frustration had her well on the way to losing her marbles. Even then, probably she would just have settled down and developed sour lines down the sides of her mouth, like most discontented women.
But, York had told Beth, one day Babs had driven over to confront Jen and ask her to take more of the childcare burden. For reasons she didn’t understand, Jen had been dumping Jess on them more and more, even though the girl obviously hated spending time with her.
Sitting in the dreary interview room at the Camberwell Green police station, Babs could have remained silent. But she’d wanted to talk, as though what she had to say could possibly ever justify her actions.
Jen, she’d explained, had been stubbornly unyielding, not willing to explain herself, generally unhelpful and, as ever, had had the moral high ground. She’d been the injured party, the victim in the break-up, while Babs had been the evil temptress. The fact that everything had soured now for Babs, made the fact that Jen was still shining with virtue doubly infuriating.
They’d been in the garden, where Jen was attempting to get things into some sort of order. It looked as though someone had recently hacked back some of the most overgrown shrubs in a fit of wild enthusiasm, but had run out of steam. It didn’t take a genius to guess that would probably have been Jeff, Babs had decided. Now Jen was shoving the cuttings into a wheelbarrow and dumping them in one corner of the plot. The perfect wife as usual, Babs thought sourly, clearing up after another man just as she had clung to Tim for all those years. Years when Babs could have been having babies. Busily trundling back and forth, Jen had stonewalled Babs, politely but firmly. All her work seemed to be making no difference, as far as Babs could see. The garden was still a wreck. But the fact that Jen seemed to be putting her heart and soul into tidying up after her husband had goaded Babs that little bit too far.
‘Can’t you leave that for a second? I’m trying to talk to you,’ she’d said, exasperated.
‘I’ve got a lot to do out here, as you can see. And the house is a mess as well. Today isn’t the best day for all this, Babs, I really do have to get on,’ Jen had said with a very brief, distracted half-smile.
‘Look, Jen, I’m begging you. Tim and I want to start a family of our own, and it’s so hard with Jess around the whole time, you’ve got to understand,’ Babs had said, trying to appeal to Jen’s better nature.
That seemed to have got through to Jen at last. She’d stopped the gardening, straightened up, and looked Babs right in the eye. ‘Don’t you know, Babs? Tim’s had a vasectomy. I’m sorry, but you won’t be having any kids.’ She’d turned away, and she’d laughed. That had been her big mistake.
Babs, pushed too far by circumstances, was goaded into shoving in real life. The news that Tim had been lying to her, yet again, and that her dearest dream was never coming true, had proved too much. Like Tigranes the Great, she took out her rage on the messenger. She put her hand between Jen’s shoulder blades and gave her a mighty push. Before she knew it, Jen had missed her footing, whacking her head on the tip of a spade that Jeff had left lying around, and fallen headlong down the tunnel into the Anderson shelter.
Babs, though wary of scuffing her office shoes, had ventured down but had been certain that Jen was dead. In a mad panic, she’d dragged the body into the corner, and covered her up with flattened-out cardboard boxes from her victim’s own recycling bin. Jen’s middle-class determination to do what she could for the planet had unwittingly provided her killer with a handy shroud to cover her body.
But the pathologist’s report made grim reading. Jen, it seemed, had not died instantly, but had been unconscious, bleeding very slowly into her brain from a fractured skull. The injury was incapacitating, but would not necessarily have been fatal, if she’d only had treatment in time.
Unhinged now by her crime, Babs sometimes managed to convince herself that Jen was fine, and just lying low to spite her. Other times, she was sure that she’d killed Jen and woul
d face life in jail. Sometimes she just didn’t know. She had taken to lurking outside Jen’s house on the only night she could, during Jessica’s football practice on Tuesdays. That’s how she’d seen Beth sneaking round into the garden.
She’d been desperate to stop Beth finding Jen, but Beth had had no idea of the horrible secret lurking in the Anderson shelter. Picking up the rounders bat and thwacking the smaller woman with all her might had been another of Babs’s insane impulses. Despite missing the gym, thanks to Jessica, the woman was still strong and wiry, and packed quite a punch, as Beth could attest.
Trying to do away with Beth a second time, having told Tim not to come and trusting to Jeff’s continued avoidance, was Babs’s way of trying, finally, to clear up the mess she’d made.
Tim, meanwhile, self-absorbed and self-satisfied though he transparently was, had started to worry about Babs’s mental state, not least because she spent a lot of time in sole charge of his daughter. Whether he loved Jessica only because she carried his genes, or whether he was truly fond of her for her own sake, was something that even the most sophisticated lie detector test could probably never get to the bottom of. The consequence of his doubts had been that he’d noticed that Babs was behaving oddly, and had decided to keep a bit of a closer eye on what she was up to. That was why he’d turned up at Wyatt’s on the day that Beth’s office was trashed, giving rise to Beth’s suspicions and engendering her almost-fatal plot to induce him to turn up at Jen’s.