Epitaph: a gripping murder mystery

by Anita Waller

  Grace stared at the handwritten list Harriet handed to her, and frowned. ‘Why would Shirley break her silence to ring Melanie Brookes? She goes away and there’s no contact with anybody for five days, but during that time she rings Melanie Brookes on the day of her death. And why would Rosie ring her? I don’t think they were friends, were they? Acquaintances, yes, but nothing stronger than that. I’ll go and talk to Shirley tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘No you won’t. You’re off this weekend. Go and look after Adeline, she’ll be needing her mummy, I reckon, after a week of Daddy.’

  Harriet flashed a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, boss. You want me to ring Shirley Ledger and tell her what time you’ll be there?’

  ‘No, she’s pissing me off a bit. I’ll be there for eight, let’s inconvenience her a bit.’

  It didn’t inconvenience Shirley at all. She was up and preparing breakfast for her boys when Grace appeared at her back door.

  ‘You’re out and about early,’ Shirley said to her visitor.

  ‘I want to finish early, and something’s cropped up that I need answering. Can I come in?’

  Shirley stepped aside, and waved the teapot at Grace. ‘Want one?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks. We’ve been checking Melanie’s phone records and at nearly five o’clock on the day she died you rang her. You spoke for slightly over two minutes. You haven’t contacted anybody else between leaving your house on the Wednesday night and Rosie finding you on the following Tuesday. So, as you can imagine, we’re curious why you rang Melanie Brookes.’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy. You didn’t need to trail out here, I could have told you over the phone. I rang her to tell her I’d left Mark, and she could have him.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Of course I knew,’ she scoffed. ‘I’ve been married to the two-timing rat for a number of years. She wasn’t the first, but possibly the last. I think it was getting serious, and I knew I’d had enough. You want to know what she said?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘She cried. Tried to say she was sorry, she didn’t mean to take him away from his kids, but she loved him. I threw in the name Patrick, and the cold-hearted bitch said Patrick would get over it. She asked if we could meet to talk things through, and I laughed at her. I can’t say I’m sorry she’s dead, but one thing she has done is to give me my freedom. You’re looking in the wrong direction, DCI Stamford, I didn’t kill Melanie Brookes, I didn’t care about her enough to do that.’

  Adam and Seth bounded through the door and sat at the makeshift kitchen table. ‘We still going shopping, Mum?’

  ‘We certainly are, as soon as you’ve eaten breakfast. McDonald’s for lunch?’

  The boys high-fived each other, and pulled their cornflakes towards them.

  ‘Thank you, Shirley, I’ll leave you to enjoy your day with your boys. If you decide to go away during this school break, please let me know.’

  Rosie was surprised to see Grace standing at her front door. ‘Hello. You work Saturdays as well?’

  Grace laughed. ‘I work every day really. When it’s a murder case you never switch off until we’ve locked up the killer. I’ve got something I need to check with you.’

  Rosie held open the door. ‘Come in. Coffee?’

  ‘Thanks, I will. I said no at Shirley’s because she was getting breakfast ready for the boys, but I think I need the caffeine now.’

  ‘You’ve been to Shirley’s already?’ The welcome in Rosie’s voice had died away.

  ‘Yes, I knew she was going out shopping, and I didn’t want to miss her.’

  ‘You could have rung her.’

  Grace shrugged but said nothing.

  Seated at the kitchen table, she said, ‘Thank you,’ as Rosie handed her the coffee. ‘Megan still in bed?’

  ‘She is, but if she hears your voice she’ll be straight down. I think she fancies herself as a proper Miss Marple since meeting Doris and Wendy, and she’s definitely fired up for starting karate lessons. So, what did you want to know?’

  ‘You rang Melanie in the afternoon on the day she died. Just before five o’clock, but the call only lasted thirty seconds. Why did you ring her?’

  ‘Is that it? That’s all you’ve trailed out here for? I rang her to ask if she’d seen Shirley. I was desperately trying to find Shirley, if you remember, despite Mark’s reluctance to admit she’d gone. I disconnected pretty quickly because she was crying, really not our normal bubbly Mel. She said no, of course she hadn’t seen her, but if she decided to, she would let me know, which I thought was a bit strange. And that was it. Conversation over. Not worth reporting to you, is it?’

  Grace scribbled down Rosie’s answers in her notebook, and sat back. ‘No, and I’m sorry I have to do this, but it’s my job. Don’t get pissed off with me, I’m trying to find your friend’s killer and we’re only getting little bits in dribs and drabs. We honestly thought finding out what sort of bag we were looking for would get some response, but we haven’t had one call about it. The divers working the river from where she went in to the spot where we found her have turned up nothing, so they’ve packed up, and we’ve had everybody and their grandmother out scouring the banks all the way up, but still nothing. Either this killer was lucky, or organised. Has Shirley told you Mark was having an affair with Melanie?’

  ‘She has. I’m not surprised. He tried it on with me once. He has a hole in his foot where I stepped back with my stiletto heels. Dirty little man. I really didn’t like him. He told Shirley it was accidental, I’d stepped back without realising he was there, but I knew all right. And so did he. He’s never been near me since then. Does Patrick know about the affair?’

  ‘I don’t know. We took his statement at the beginning, and are set to go and reinterview now that we’ve progressed a bit, but that is going to mean we tell him about his brother. What do you think will happen?’

  Rosie laughed. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t shoot the messenger for a start.’

  27

  As Wendy handed her an orange juice, Doris pushed the laptop away, and smiled. ‘Thanks. I was thirsty. The key to all of this is that damn bag. Somebody’s got it. No, I’m being an idiot. The killer has got it.’

  Wendy laughed. ‘An idiot you’re definitely not. Would a Ferrero Rocher help?’

  ‘Might do. We got any left?’

  ‘No. I only asked if it might help. Didn’t say it was going to.’ Wendy could sense the cogs working in Doris’s brain. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘The thing that I’m thinking is unthinkable, and I can’t see how it was done. Yet. So I’m hoping I’m wrong. How can we interview somebody when we’re not supposed to be interviewing people, and we’d have to do it without authorisation?’

  ‘Is this a rhetorical question? A quiz question? A conundrum? Or are you really asking me?’

  ‘I’m thinking out loud.’

  ‘Oh good. So I don’t need to answer then.’

  ‘Feel free to jump in whenever you want.’

  ‘What have you been checking on that machine?’

  ‘It’s a laptop, Wendy, not a machine. And I’ve been looking at any new reports that have been entered.’

  ‘On what?’ Wendy was curious.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Let’s say I’ve got a friend who can access whatever he pleases. Which is why I can’t teach Luke this part of his job. My friend isn’t his friend.’

  ‘I’m not asking you anything else. I don’t want putting in the Tower of London for treason.’

  Doris sipped at her drink, deep in thought. ‘It’s not cherchez l’homme, as I said many moons ago. It’s cherchez le sac. It seems to me there’s a chatty young woman at Global Systems who might talk to two unauthorised doddery old ladies playing at being private detectives.’

  Wendy rolled her eyes. ‘I knew nothing of a chatty lass at this place. How are we going to do this?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t even know if she’ll be helpful, b
ut we won’t know if we don’t ask, will we? Monday morning we’ll target Imogen North.’

  Sunday was a day of rest. Harriet spent the day being normal with her young daughter, and Daddy was allowed to go fishing as a special treat before heading back to work the following day. Adeline would be returning to her nan now that the spots had stopped itching and were starting to clear – and yet Harriet couldn’t switch off from the case. Once Addie had gone for an afternoon nap, Harriet started to think.

  Okay, Melanie Brookes was small in stature, but she was incredibly fit. She used a gym regularly, and she ran tremendous distances to keep her fitness levels as high as she could, so Harriet was unhappy with the theory that a woman could have done the deed on that Thursday night. If there had been some other injury like blunt force trauma to the head, that would have been a different scenario, but her only injuries had been manual strangulation marks around her neck. Melanie would have been able to fight off one woman, but one man would have been a different story.

  So who did they have? Who were the assorted males in this difficult case? Mark Ledger, how Harriet would love it to be him, but she doubted he would have the guts to do something murderous. Despite his roguish good looks, he presented as something of a wimp. Or did she think that after seeing the video of Doris Lester annihilating him?

  Patrick Ledger came across as a caring person who had loved Melanie, but what if he had found out about her and her assorted infidelities. Would it have been enough to push him into killing her in a rage? Did he know Mark was one of her conquests?

  The obnoxious Kevin Vickers was high on the list. Melanie had seemingly made it clear she didn’t want him, but could it have led to him murdering her? He could have been pushed to extreme limits when Juliet walked out on him, taking their children with her.

  And there was Dan, Rosie’s husband. Did he fit into this jigsaw in any way? They’d only spoken to him once; he seemed to work away a lot, but he was a suspect, nevertheless. He was part of this somewhat-dysfunctional family. Harriet felt she needed to check his alibi for that Thursday night. All they had was that he was away, and didn’t come home till Friday. Who was he with on the evening before his return home?

  Harriet took out an A5 notebook with pictures of butterflies on the front, and made notes, dredging up everything she could remember about each of the men who were involved in the investigation. Writing things down had always helped her, made her focus her thoughts instead of trying to lump together random ideas and information.

  She moved on to the next page and wrote down the women involved, making a special note of their alibis. They all had one.

  Harriet sat back with a degree of surprise. They all had one. Not one of the women involved in this case could have murdered Melanie Brookes. Every single one appeared to have a solid alibi, backed up without a doubt by the people giving them the alibi.

  ‘Well,’ Harriet muttered, ‘who the fuck did kill her then if everybody can prove they were doing something at the time Melanie was killed?’

  Could it be some random person they had yet to discover? She thought not. There had been no sexual assault, Melanie had simply been strangled. This crime didn’t follow the usual pattern for murder by a chancer in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Deep in her heart, Harriet knew what had to happen next. One of these people was lying. One of them had killed Melanie and had given an alibi that wouldn’t stand up to deep scrutiny. Starting Monday morning, she would double and triple check every single one. And she would do it personally, because she doubted anybody else on the team would have spent their Sunday afternoon going over and over the case – this task was hers, and tomorrow she would take the butterfly book with her thoughts and exclamation marks into the office with her, and she would work on it until it became clear who the liar was.

  She made a pot of Earl Grey and fished out her china cup and saucer, then carried her tray through to the lounge. She waited a couple of minutes before pouring out her drink. She was halfway down her first cup when she heard Adeline call out for her mummy.

  Thinking time over, hello Peppa Pig, Harriet thought as she climbed the stairs. She lifted Addie out of the cot and together they counted their way back downstairs. ‘One, two, three, four, five…’

  ‘Eight!’ Addie said triumphantly, and Harriet knew it was definitely Peppa Pig time.

  Rosie and Shirley sat in Shirley’s kitchen, drinking wine. Dan and Megan had gone to the cinema, dropping Rosie off along the way at her sister’s new house, so they decided any excuse for a bottle of wine was excuse enough.

  ‘So the boys spoke to their father last night?’

  ‘Yep. He was… angry, I think is the word, but it wasn’t with them, it was all targeting me. I’m not worrying, he’ll have somebody else soon enough.’

  ‘He didn’t argue for having the boys himself?’

  Shirley laughed. ‘No, but I had no worries on that score anyway. He was always proud of having twin boys, they were a bit of a status symbol to him. Look how virile I am, I can produce two at once sort of thing, but that was the extent of it with him really. He had no involvement in their upbringing, and he’s never done anything mundane like change a nappy. I knew he wouldn’t want them in a situation where he had to do stuff for them. As soon as the schools are back after this break, I’ll be finding one for Adam and Seth, one in which they’ll be happy and can come home every night, and they’ll be my responsibility.’

  Rosie lifted her glass of wine. ‘Here’s to you and the kids. Now, do you need me to help with anything while I’m here? They’re picking me up around six, so we’ve a couple of hours.’

  ‘You’ve not seen the lounge?’ Shirley smiled. ‘It’s a disaster. They delivered my suite first thing this morning, so that’s dumped in there. I’ve a coffee table to erect, that’s still in a box, and I’ve a television to sort out.’

  Rosie moved towards the lounge to see for herself.

  ‘Oh, and there’s a…’

  ‘Kitchen table and four chairs.’ Rosie finished the sentence for her sister. ‘Right, let’s get these garden chairs folded and put outside and we’ll load them into the car when Dan comes back for me, then we can move that old table back out into your garden. This room actually resembles a furniture store.’

  ‘I know. The neighbours will think I’m having an affair with the Argos driver, he’s been that often since Friday.’

  By the time Dan and Megan arrived, order had been restored and Shirley had requested a vacuum cleaner from Argos, for delivery the following day. The lounge was comfortable, although lacking in softer lighting, pictures and other things that would turn it into a home, but overall, it was clear Shirley was pleased with the result.

  Dan connected up the television and DVD player and switched it on. He tuned it in and handed his sister-in-law the two remote controls. ‘There you go, set up for Midsomer Murders tonight.’

  Shirley looked around her lounge, tidy, everything where it should be, and sighed. ‘I’m going to be happy here, I know I am. Thank you so much for your help today. My boys haven’t been exactly helpful, but to be honest I get more done if they’re up in their rooms. They’re in Adam’s room playing on their iPads. They sleep in their own rooms, but gravitate towards one or the other during the day. They’ve always done that. That’s why it must have been so awful for them going to that ridiculous school. It’s stopped now, they’ll become normal little lads and not the manufactured mini-adults Mark saw them becoming.’

  Dan gave his sister-in-law a hug. ‘You’ll be fine, the three of you. And we’re only a phone call and ten minutes away. Faster, if Megan gets on her broomstick.’

  Megan punched her dad and grinned. ‘I’m going up to have a few minutes with the boys before we go home. Go and make a cup of tea for these two, Dad. I would have done it, but in view of sarky comments…’ She disappeared upstairs, and Dan shook his head, wondering exactly where they had found this feisty daughter, and could they swap her for a kitten?
>
  Rosie and Shirley sat in the lounge waiting for their designated slave to appear with cups of tea, and Dan went outside to load the car with the garden chairs. He put them in, then came back inside to make the tea.

  The two women were talking business strategy when he carried the tray through to them. Rosie had briefly touched on the order she had taken, but she was explaining it to Shirley. ‘I’ll make a start on the basic journal, but you’re so much better than me at putting the whole thing into a cohesive collection of the ephemera, and this is a special one. We’ve six weeks to do it, and it’s a bridal theme. She’s given us a budget of two hundred pounds, so we’ll get a special box for it. The customer is buying it for her daughter as a wedding gift. I know we said we wouldn’t work through school holidays, but we’re a bit behind with other orders after your disappearing act. I’ll do some during this week. Megan is getting pretty good at the tiny notebooks and the journaling tags, so I can trust her with those. As soon as you’ve got the twins in a school, we need to get back to work.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’m so sorry I seem to have cocked everything up with my actions, but I think you saw it coming. You knew how unhappy I was, but I couldn’t tell you I was leaving because I didn’t know. I honestly only went out for a drive. But I’m back now, stronger and better.’

  28

  The sun was flexing its muscles by eight on Monday morning, and Grace took off her jacket and put it on the back seat. It would be hot in the car, and wearing something extra wouldn’t help.

  Her first stop of the day was her workplace, where the briefing, the first of the week, was to begin at nine. The main office was already busy, and the hubbub made her smile. She always enjoyed the early morning noise when her team were deciding who was scheduled to do what and in what order, and her face held a smile as she opened her office door.

  Harriet was waiting for her, clutching a notebook covered in butterflies. ‘I’ve been thinking.’