Epitaph: a gripping murder mystery

by Anita Waller

  The laughter stopped as Patrick recognised the truth behind her words. His face blanched. ‘Others? I asked her to marry me, after we had made love on Wednesday night. She said yes.’

  ‘I suspect it was maybe drink talking,’ Grace said gently.

  ‘But… Mark? It doesn’t bear thinking about. Why hasn’t he told me? He must have known it would come out, yet he’s left me to hear it from you.’ Patrick stood and hitched up his joggers. ‘I need to see him.’

  ‘Not this afternoon. First of all, you need to calm down. Secondly, you need to remember he is your brother, but he’s not completely to blame in this. Melanie could have said no, and she didn’t.’

  Patrick wiped away a tear he didn’t want Grace to see, then turned to her. ‘You said others? What do you mean? I was marrying a hooker?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘Not at all, but during our investigation two other names have come to light. I’m not going to give them to you at this stage, but I may have to at some point. We felt it was important that you knew about Mark, in case any of this reaches the newspapers. And I will tell you that you will get either a visit or a phone call from DS Jameson probably today. She’s checking alibis for the night Melanie was killed, and you don’t have one. I suggest you write down a minute-by-minute detailed description of everything you did. She’s like a ferret and she’s doing this with every person connected in any way to Melanie. She’s decided somebody is lying, and she’s going to find out who it is. Do you have anything else to tell us at this time?’ Grace placed her empty cup on the table, and saw Sam was making notes.

  The spin cycle ended with a clunk, and slowly the drum stopped rotating, revealing denim in the concave window. Patrick stared at it, distracted; appearing thrown by everything he had heard.

  ‘I can’t say anything,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say. I loved her, Mel. I thought we would be together for ever, and it turns out she preferred my brother. Oh my God, does Shirley know?’

  ‘She does. I actually thought he would have had the guts to tell you himself because he’s probably guessed Shirley knows, but he seems to be lacking in courage.’

  ‘I thought he was ill when he arrived yesterday, he was limping and didn’t look good. Said he’d fallen down some stairs, so I left it at that.’

  Grace tried to hide her smile. ‘He was in a bit of a rough and tumble. No stairs were involved, but he did end up on the floor, with seriously inflated testicles. If you want some ammunition to give you a bit of satisfaction, a woman put him there, but I haven’t told you that. Have I, Sam?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I heard nothing.’

  She stood and Sam followed her lead. ‘We’re heading over for a chat with Mark now, please don’t ring him and warn him we’re coming. You owe him nothing.’

  Patrick wiped his eyes and nodded. ‘I feel as if she’s died all over again, you know. I’m hurting as much as when Sam first said the body was hers. Does it ever end?’

  ‘The hurting will. Just not yet, not till we can give you full closure with the name of the killer. Take care, Patrick.’

  30

  Grace removed her jacket for the drive to Mark Ledger’s house; the sun was emitting far too much heat for her to handle. She knew she would put the navy blazer back on when she spoke to Mark; it stamped her authority and she felt she needed it with such a snake to contend with.

  ‘Do I have to make a brew here?’ Sam said.

  ‘No you don’t. Not altogether sure I believe he’ll have washed any pots, so we’ll pass on the drink, I think. Isn’t it funny how you can take a real dislike to some people. I can’t see anything nice about Mark Ledger, and yet I don’t believe for a minute he had anything to do with Melanie’s death, not directly anyway. Maybe indirectly…’

  Sam sensed his boss was thinking out loud and he decided not to respond but to wait.

  ‘Indirectly…’ Grace repeated. ‘Who knew about this affair and decided to keep quiet about it? Sam, talk to me.’

  ‘God knows. Shirley Ledger? Rosie Steer?’

  ‘It doesn’t sit easy with me that Shirley knew about it. She left Mark the day before Melanie died and she could have easily used that as her reason, but she didn’t. Nobody would have worried and I wouldn’t have had half of my team out looking for her. I can’t see it being her. They always say the wife is the last to know anyway.’

  ‘Huh,’ Sam said, ‘my wife would know before I did.’

  They reached the Ledger residence ten minutes later, and because Mark’s car was on the drive, Grace shrugged on her jacket. She hoped she wouldn’t be tempted to refer to the hammering he’d received from Doris Lester – and, her mind shouted at her, how the bloody hell did Doris Lester know about Imogen North, and what was she doing in that café?

  ‘Sam,’ she said slowly, ‘when we get back, remind me to check out Doris Lester and Wendy Lucas.’

  He grinned. ‘You have Doris Lester down for a suspect?’

  ‘No, but she’s been on the periphery of this investigation from the start and I get the feeling she knows as much as we do, which is a bit disconcerting. I’d like to know more about her.’

  They walked up the path and rang the bell. There was no response so they rattled on the door knocker, followed by hammering with fists. Eventually Sam bent down and yelled Mr Ledger through the letterbox.

  ‘Let’s look round the back. He may be in the garden.’

  Grace led Sam down the paved path at the side of the house and into the rear garden, but there was no sign of life beyond a bird sitting on a branch.

  ‘Strange that his car’s here,’ Grace said, and banged on the kitchen door.

  Sam shielded his eyes and peered through the window. Mark Ledger was on a kitchen chair, slumped across the table, blood pooled under his feet.

  The crime scene team were there within twenty minutes, and although access was available through the unlocked kitchen door, Sam and Grace knew they couldn’t go in. Sam had offered to find something in the garden shed to place on the floor so he could check life was extinct, but Grace said no. ‘We can’t risk contaminating this, so we’ll close the door, make sure nothing gets in. It’s pretty obvious he’s dead, nobody could be alive with that amount of blood on the floor.’

  Harriet and Fiona arrived and followed Grace and Sam’s lead in donning white suits. The forensic team were meticulously mapping out a splatter pattern, taking photographs, generally keeping the police officers at bay until they had something to report. They had quickly confirmed death, and that it was a slash across the throat that had caused it. The perpetrator would have blood on him or her, that much they could guarantee. There was no sign of the murder weapon.

  The four team members sat around the garden table, with Harriet responsible for taking any notes. There was precious little in her book; no time of death estimate, an identification that any one of them could have given, and no weapon.

  ‘We have to notify Shirley in the first instance, before anyone else. Then Patrick. I have no idea if the brothers have parents, but I’m assuming if they do that Patrick will notify them. What a fucking mess.’ Grace was angry. They were still no closer to identifying Melanie’s killer, and now they had a second murder almost certainly connected to the first one, and no further on with bringing anybody in for questioning under caution.

  Owen Bridger walked over to speak with the four officers, and sat at the table with them. ‘Nasty business. It took two slashes, so whoever did it didn’t know what he was doing, he was hesitant. He did it from behind.’ Owen stood up and moved to stand behind Sam. ‘Like this.’ He grabbed Sam’s hair and pulled his head back, exposing his throat. He drew his hand across Sam’s throat from left to right, then repeated the action. ‘Twice,’ Owen said. ‘He did it twice. He must have been covered in blood – oh, sorry, Sam, you’ve gone grey.’

  ‘Perhaps you can give me some warning next time you cut my throat?’

  ‘I’ll try, lad, I’ll try. I wanted to show your boss how it was do
ne. Whoever’s done it is right-handed, and I would say fairly tall, which is why I’m saying it’s a male, but a tall female could just as easily have done it. It’s not a normal way of killing someone, if you’re a woman. Really rare.’

  ‘Thank you, Owen. Any idea when it happened?’

  ‘I would say between eight and ten this morning. This hot weather is stopping me being more accurate than that, but when I do the autopsy I’ll know more. I think we’re about ready to move the body, and then the scene is yours. See you at two, Grace?’

  She nodded, unsmiling. Maybe she could talk Harriet into going…

  All four of them stood as the body was taken round the side of the house and out to the waiting coroner’s van. The crime scene had been confined to the kitchen, and nobody really wanted to face it. So much blood.

  Fiona and Sam had been despatched to visit neighbours’ houses, asking if anything unusual had happened, had there been any visitors to the Ledger house, or even had they seen Mark that morning.

  The forensic team inside the kitchen were finishing up, and with the body no longer the focal point, the blood was.

  ‘Jesus,’ Harriet said. ‘Whoever did this must have had some blood on him. Surely somebody saw him. Or her.’

  Grace held up a hand. ‘Let me think. My brain’s churning like a whirlwind. Patrick’s house is in walking distance from here, yes?’

  ‘Yes. You think he’s in danger?’

  ‘No, I think he is the danger. Supposing he went down the back garden and through the hedge. It’s only privet, it’s not made of iron. Is it conceivable he could go over the fields without anybody seeing him?’

  Harriet stared at her boss. ‘Are you serious? You think Patrick’s done this? Why? You’ve only just told him about Melanie and Mark, haven’t you?’

  Grace stared down the garden, looking for damage to the hedge. She saw it. Not massive damage, not really damage at all because a couple of days would see it spring back to its normal position, but more disturbed branches. She walked down to it and looked over the top. She could see houses in the far distance, and calculated that Patrick’s house was a minute further on than the ones she had in view. The whole scene as she believed it had happened flashed through her mind like a film.

  Patrick had said Mark had visited on the Sunday – the milk is fresh, Mark brought it yesterday – and she knew with such certainty that Mark had confessed to his affair with Mel. He would have been scared of Shirley telling her version of events in an act of revenge.

  ‘The jeans! The fucking jeans in the washer!’ Grace ran her hands through her hair. ‘When we were there two hours ago the machine was about to finish a wash cycle. It had jeans in it. And a T-shirt. I’d bet a year’s wages they were covered in blood before he put them on a boil cycle.’

  She took out her phone. Her voice was crisp as she relayed instructions for a team to get to Patrick Ledger’s home and take him in for questioning. She wanted forensics on the washer, the tumble dryer and any jeans that could possibly still be in the dryer. And she wanted a bloodstained knife finding.

  They found the knife on the draining board, in the cutlery drainer, washed but with traces of what looked like blood in the crack where the blade was inserted into the handle. The jeans and top had been taken out of the dryer and folded without expertise, and an unconscious Patrick Ledger had been rushed to hospital, with a suspected overdose from a variety of tablets.

  Grace didn’t reach the hospital until after nine that evening. Harriet had accompanied her to Shirley’s house after finishing at Mark’s house, and had spent a difficult hour there telling her of her husband’s death. They had waited until Rosie arrived to comfort her sister before leaving.

  Rosie followed them to the door, leaving Shirley and the twins wrapped in fleecy blankets, cuddling on the sofa and all three crying.

  ‘So it’s definitely Patrick who killed him? You’re sure?’

  ‘We’re sure. I’m dropping Harriet off to get her car, then I’m going to see what’s happening at the hospital. I’ll keep you both informed, but he will be arrested as soon as he comes round. We have enough evidence, he left it in plain sight.’

  ‘And Melanie?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘A completely separate investigation,’ Grace said with a shake of her head. ‘Patrick Ledger isn’t under suspicion for that murder at all. He had no reason to want Melanie dead. In fact, quite the opposite, she’d agreed to become his wife the night before.’

  ‘Please tell me you don’t think Mark killed Mel. It would finish Shirley off, I think.’

  ‘Melanie Brookes’ death is still under investigation. I can’t say any more than that at the moment. Are you staying here tonight?’

  ‘I am. The boys are shell-shocked, I think. I need to support them all, see them safely through this. Adam and Seth must be wondering what’s happening, all this turmoil and upheaval in their lives, and everything in the space of a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Go and make that cup of tea for Shirley, and I suggest a tot of brandy in it, if she has any. She needs sleep, she’s going to need a lot of strength over the next few days.’

  Grace drove back to headquarters and watched until Harriet drove out of the car park, heading home. Adrenaline was still racing around Grace’s body, so she parked and ran up the stairs to her office.

  She switched on her computer and waited patiently for it to come to life. Entering her password, Grace smiled to herself. Right, Mrs Doris Lester, let’s see what we can find out about you, and why it feels as though you’re one step in front of us mere mortals.

  31

  The late-night email that landed in Doris’s private and password-protected inbox had thrown her completely. Mark dead, Patrick unconscious following an overdose, hospitalised and an arrest on the cards as soon as he recovered – her thoughts had flown immediately to Rosie and Shirley and their children, but she had no way of legitimately contacting them. Officially she knew nothing.

  She was awake and downstairs by seven, checking to see if any more information had filtered through, but there was nothing. She knew she could tell Wendy without questions being asked, although she doubted she would get away with withholding answers.

  Wendy appeared behind her, her dressing gown loosely tied around her waist, her dark grey hair a mess. ‘You’re ill?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘But you’re up. It’s only seven. That means something’s wrong. And if you’re not ill, it’s something to do with Hucknall. You think I’m stupid?’

  Doris gave a short laugh. ‘No, you’re spot on. If I tell you something, you have to accept that I know it, and as far as anybody else is concerned, when we hear about it we didn’t know prior to just hearing it.’

  ‘What?’ Wendy sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Doris to repeat it in English instead of double Dutch.

  ‘Something’s happened, and because I know somebody who knows most things in this life, I now know it through that person. Yes?’

  ‘Is it a man? Is it something I should know about?’

  ‘It’s a person. That person knows we have interests in the murder of Melanie Brookes and something has happened that’s linked to it, so my friend has emailed me with the details as far as they go at this moment in time. Do you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly. I might need coffee. No, strike that. I definitely do need coffee. Is it too early for a tot of whiskey in it?’

  ‘Twelve hours too early. You want to go and get dressed while I do breakfast? I’ll tell you everything when you come back down, then I think we should take a trip out to Hucknall. We might be needed and if we aren’t we’ll come back home.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ Wendy stood. ‘Perhaps you can put your brain into gear while I’m having a shower, and tell me everything in words of one syllable only when I get back downstairs.’

  Doris looked surprised. ‘I thought I had.’

  ‘Huh. I wish I’d recorded our conversation. Nobody would credit gobbledegook like it
at this time in a morning. You been awake all night?’

  ‘Most of it. Go on. You want scrambled eggs or bacon?’

  ‘Sausage with tomato dip, on a breadcake. Don’t mess me about with this, Lester, I feel as though I’m going to need maximum fuel today.’

  They were halfway through their sausage sandwiches when the door knocker rattled. Doris glanced at her watch. ‘It’s only eight. It’ll be the postman. He’ll leave it in the blue bin.’

  She took another bite, and the door knocker, shaped as a little mouse, rattled again. ‘Little Mouse Cottage is being invaded,’ Wendy said. ‘It might be Luke. Shall I go?’

  ‘If you must. If it’s a delivery man you have my permission to push him in the blue bin alongside his damn parcel.’

  It proved to be DCI Grace Stamford. She sat at the table with them, and waited while Wendy cooked her a sausage and tomato sandwich. With the back door open, the sun came straight through, glancing off the top of the table and lighting up Grace’s face. And her tired eyes.

  ‘You look tired, DCI Stamford,’ Doris said, sympathy in her voice. ‘I wouldn’t have your job for a pension.’

  ‘And the pension’s not that great,’ Grace said. ‘Tell me, Mrs Lester, what do you call DI Marsden and DS Granger?’

  Doris looked puzzled. ‘Tessa and Hannah unless other police officers are present, then we give them their titles. It’s an unwritten rule at Connection.’

  ‘My name is Grace. May I call you Doris and Wendy?’

  ‘You can call us Jack and Jill if it helps,’ Wendy said with a laugh.

  ‘I’ll be frank with you, I’m jealous,’ Grace said, smiling. ‘I don’t have anybody who calls me by my first name. I’m usually boss, or ma’am, and I speak with Tessa a lot so I know about your friendship with her, and how well you get along. I want somebody to talk with, to discuss cases, and I know she trusts you implicitly.’