A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

‘These two people assaulted me in my room and threatened me with physical harm,’ she said flatly, nodding at the twins, who sneered back at her. ‘I want them charged.’ That, she hoped, would at least give the police something else to chew over, besides her!

  Jennings sighed heavily. Blackmail, assault, threats? What the hell else was this damned case going to throw at them? ‘Sergeant,’ he said wearily. ‘If you would like to interview Mr and Miss Vander, I’ll deal with Mrs …?’

  ‘Ms Raynor,’ Phyllis said reluctantly, wondering if she could possibly get away with it if she didn’t give out her married name. Oh, she knew eventually that they’d track her down through marriage records, but by the time they did, who knew what else might have happened?

  The inspector eyed her knowingly. He hadn’t been a police officer for nearly twenty years without knowing a chancer when he saw one. This one was going to be slippery, he could just tell.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Sergeant O’Grady said. ‘Right then, you two, let’s get comfortable downstairs, shall we?’ Ideally, he would have separated the two, but there was no one else available to help him out with the interviews. WPC Loveday was too young, and Broadstairs too junior for something like this.

  ‘Sir,’ Trudy said to Jennings, as the inspector ushered an unhappy Phyllis into his office.

  He turned to give her a jaundiced look. ‘Constable?’ he said heavily.

  Trudy blinked, feeling nonplussed. ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’

  ‘You?’ Jennings had so many things that he would have liked to have said to this thorn in his flesh, that it was impossible to arrange them in order. Yet he was already feeling too tired to care – and he wasn’t even halfway through his shift yet! ‘Oh, just go and do something useful, Constable Loveday!’ he finally growled, slamming the door to his office in her face.

  Rodney sighed, and slouched over to his desk. ‘What’s eating him?’ he muttered. He limped as he went, because his shins were still sore from the kicking he’d taken, and that at least did a little bit to cheer Trudy up.

  She was just sitting – a shade forlornly – down at her own desk when she looked up and saw Clement, Vincent and a pretty girl with masses of curly ginger hair approaching her desk.

  ‘Hello Trudy,’ Clement said mildly. ‘This is Miss Arles. You remember, she had something she wanted to tell us? Well, apparently, it was the fact that she was a passenger in the car when Mr Parker crashed.’

  And having thoroughly taken Trudy’s breath away and having made her jaw literally drop, he calmly pulled out a chair for Patsy and indicated that she should sit.

  ‘You might want to take notes,’ Clement added helpfully – and in massive understatement.

  *

  By the time she’d taken and neatly typed up the girl’s statement, and got her to sign it, Trudy’s head was reeling. Was it only that morning that she’d wondered just how much she could realistically expect to happen in just a day?

  Realising the outrageousness of Patsy Arles’s testimony would test Inspector Jennings’s patience to the limit, she prudently asked them all to wait, and sent a note to be given to the sergeant that something urgent had come up that needed his immediate attention.

  He duly abandoned the Vander twins and the moment he sat down at her desk, shot a questioning glance at Trudy.

  Both Clement and Vincent enormously enjoyed watching the usually phlegmatic sergeant’s face as he read Patsy’s statement.

  *

  Half an hour later, Trudy, Clement and Vincent were sitting in Clement’s kitchen, drinking hot chocolate. After the sergeant had gone into the inspector’s office with Miss Arles, and they’d heard the subsequent roar from Jennings as he’d been given the latest developments, all three of them had deemed it prudent to leave.

  ‘After all, the inspector has ordered me to do something useful,’ she’d pointed out reasonably as they’d scarpered through the door. ‘And reviewing the case so far is fairly useful, yes?’

  Now that they’d discussed the day’s events at length, they set about trying to make sense of the various strands.

  ‘The twins and Patsy were trying to set up Terrence Parker in some sort of love-sting,’ Vincent recapped. ‘This Phyllis woman – presumably a past or jilted lover or something of the sort – was probably trying to put the bite on him, given her love of acquiring money. His current fiancée or lady-love, who was actually hosting the party, was likely suspicious and curious about her mystery guest, whilst the victim himself must have been desperate to keep them apart. Oh yes, and by the way, one of them, somehow, sometime, managed to slip a heavy dose of sleeping powder into his champagne? Now that’s what I call a party!’ he finished with a wry grin.

  Clement and Trudy had to laugh, although neither of them felt much like celebrating.

  It was Trudy who put their malaise into words. ‘Well, it’s not our problem any longer. It’s Sergeant O’Grady’s.’

  ‘So that’s it? We’re off the case?’ Vincent asked, scandalised, looking and sounding as disappointed as the others.

  ‘Afraid so. Now it’s all got so complicated and convoluted, and it’s clear that we’re dealing with murder …’ Trudy sighed heavily and shrugged. ‘A mere WPC won’t get a look-in anymore.’

  ‘Or a semi-official outsider like me,’ Clement added heavily.

  ‘That’s so not fair,’ Vincent said, sounding like a sulky schoolboy. ‘You’ve done most of the work for them. You even got into a fight,’ he said admiringly to Trudy. ‘And to think, most of the time this was all going on, I was just sitting quietly in the library doing background research. Not very glamorous at all, is it?’ he added wryly.

  Trudy, who had in truth forgotten that she’d handed over the completion of that thankless task to Vincent, felt an onrush of guilt. ‘It might not have been interesting, but basic legwork and painstaking attention to detail is the backbone of policing.’ She trotted out the saying that had been drummed into her throughout her training.

  ‘In that case, you’re welcome to it.’ Vincent grinned at her whilst handing over the notebook she’d given him, which contained the meagre fruit of his morning’s work.

  Idly, Trudy began leafing through it.

  Clement gazed fondly at his son. ‘I thought you didn’t approve of your old man playing sleuth?’ he teased. ‘You thought it was beneath my lofty talents to go poking around in criminal cases. Now you’re all indignant because we’ve been stopped in our tracks. Come on, admit it, you’re as hooked as I am.’

  Vincent flashed him a sheepish smile. ‘All right, let’s say I can see the appeal now … Trudy? What is it?’ he suddenly asked sharply, causing his father to turn and look at her too.

  Clement saw that Trudy had sat bolt upright, staring at a page of the notebook, a look of horror, uncertainty and a flash of excitement in her face.

  ‘Fairweather,’ Trudy said.

  ‘Huh?’ Vincent said.

  But Clement felt only an answering flare of excitement race through his veins, because he’d seen that look on his young friend’s face before, and knew that it spelt something interesting, at the very least.

  ‘What if none of them did it?’ Trudy said, looking excitedly from father to son. ‘I mean, none of the ones who are at the station now? What if there was even something more going on at that party that night? Someone else who wanted Terry Parker dead?’

  Chapter 32

  Katherine Morton didn’t look particularly surprised to see them – not even Vincent, who had insisted on coming along despite having absolutely no worthwhile excuse to be there.

  After they’d made their way to her flat once she’d buzzed them into the building, she simply stood in the door, gave the trio a brief, almost humorous glance, and then theatrically stepped to one side, making a sweeping gesture with her hand.

  ‘Come on in,’ she invited with a smile. ‘I have mulled wine or iced vodka aplenty, depending on your preferences.’

  That the lady had already been generously
imbibing one or the other (or maybe both) beverages was rather apparent by the way she walked very carefully to her chair and sat down. Sure enough, on the little table beside her chair, was a half-full bottle of vodka and a half-full glass.

  The glass she lifted at once and took a sip. ‘Well, don’t hover over me,’ she admonished them with a smile. ‘Sit down. And who is the handsome young Adonis?’ she asked, looking at Vincent, who promptly looked uncomfortable.

  The artist was wearing a long warm woollen gown of various knitted shades that alternately clung and floated around her in a way that he found odd. Her make-up had been applied a little lackadaisically, and her hair was rather mussed, but there was no denying she had a definite sexual allure.

  He reminded himself that she was old enough to be his mother, and glanced at his father, who was watching the artist thoughtfully.

  ‘This is my son, Vincent. I hope you don’t mind me bringing him along, but he was dying to meet you,’ he lied urbanely. ‘He’s an admirer of your work.’

  Vincent, who wouldn’t know a Mondrian from an El Greco, blinked and nodded enthusiastically.

  Katherine regarded both men with a mocking, cynical smile. ‘And that’s why you’ve come to see me?’ she asked, her voice just a little slurred, and a lot more sceptical. She glanced across at Trudy in her uniform and sighed gently.

  ‘Not quite, Miss Morton.’ Trudy, knowing that she couldn’t ask for a better cue, stepped in cautiously. ‘Or should I say Mrs Fairweather?’ she added calmly.

  ‘No, you should not,’ the artist responded tartly. ‘I was born Morton, and go by Morton. Besides, I’m divorced.’

  ‘Yes. But your daughter would have used your husband’s surname.’ Trudy stated matter-of-factly.

  ‘Amy Jean?’ Instinctively, Katherine’s head swivelled to regard the photograph resting on the sideboard that Trudy had noticed during their first visit to the flat. It depicted a pretty teenage girl, laughing straight at the camera. ‘Yes, Amy Jean was very fond of her father,’ the artist said. She sounded, to Trudy’s sensitive ears, a little bitter about this fact. ‘For some reason, we always seemed to rub each other up the wrong way. Even when she was little.’

  ‘I was so sorry to read about her death,’ Trudy said gently. She could feel both men become tense and uneasily alert as she started to get down to the nitty-gritty. ‘She died in a car accident, didn’t she?’

  Trudy, of course, already knew that she had. Vincent had read about it in the library that morning.

  ‘Yes,’ Katherine confirmed with a long, wavering sigh, and took a hearty gulp of her neat vodka. ‘She was only eighteen.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it,’ Clement said softly, glancing at Vincent. ‘I have a daughter too,’ he added.

  For a moment, the artist and the coroner looked at one another in complete understanding. Then Katherine Morton shook her head and looked away. ‘I try not to think about it,’ she said.

  ‘This happened nearly two years ago, didn’t it?’ Trudy continued, carefully feeling her way now.

  ‘Yes, it happened one night. One night that should have been just like any other night. Only it wasn’t. And it still feels as if it happened only yesterday,’ Katherine added, nodding.

  ‘What happened?’ Trudy asked, although, again, she already had the details. The eighteen-year-old girl, who’d only passed her driving test the previous month, had lost control of her MG sports car and crashed into a lorry on a busy main road not far from the market town of Banbury. She had been killed instantly. The shaken lorry driver had suffered only very minor injuries. But what, Trudy wondered with a pang, did such a thing do to someone? She doubted that he was still driving lorries today, even though her colleagues in Banbury had quickly established from the many witnesses that he had in no way been to blame.

  ‘Her father gave her the money to buy herself a car – and of course she chose a silly little low-slung sporty thing in bright red,’ Katherine said, her voice taking on a hard, nasty edge now. ‘I told him she was too young and wild for it, but he always indulged her. And she, the little minx, knew how to twist him right round her little finger.’

  She drained her glass and topped it up from the bottle, her hand shaking visibly.

  ‘So what happened?’ Trudy led her as gently as she could.

  ‘Oh, she’d been to a party and had been drinking too much.’ At this irony, the artist regarded her newly full glass and gave a sudden harsh, despairing bark of laugher. ‘Mea culpa, obviously. Her father, the swine, wasn’t easy to live with and … Well, from an early age she’d seen us both drink liberally. So you see …’ She tossed a defiant, heartbreaking and wretched smile at them. ‘It was all my own fault that I lost my little girl.’

  She took another gulp and leaned her head tiredly back against the headrest of her chair.

  ‘But it wasn’t entirely your fault, was it?’ Trudy remarked calmly.

  Katherine rolled her eyes Trudy’s way, and a small, odd, almost whimsical smile played across her lips. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘No. There was your husband who gave Amy Jean the money to buy it in the first place and, of course, the man who sold her the car.’

  The words hung in the air invitingly. All four inhabitants of the room listened to them echo, each chasing their own thoughts.

  Trudy was thinking that it was now or never. If her hunch about why Terry Parker had been killed was correct, then right now, right here, was the time that she was going to learn if she was right or wrong.

  Clement was wondering if the artist had reached just the right stage of drunken indiscretion to be of use to them, or if, perversely she’d turn belligerent and silent.

  Vincent was marvelling at the delicate skill with which Trudy was handling her witness.

  And Katherine … Katherine hovered on the brink of some kind of precipice that she’d long since wanted to throw herself over, whilst at the same time, was terrified of confronting. It made her both angry, and somehow coolly amused.

  Ever since Amy Jean had died, she’d felt as if she was half-dead too. Oh, her subsequent paintings were fantastic (didn’t they say that all the greatest art came out of great suffering?) but she could enjoy them no longer. The booze deadened nothing. Life dragged and seemed pointless. And all the while, the black cloud of guilt that loomed over her pressed down, a little harder, a little darker, every day, slowly smothering her that little bit more.

  A mother was supposed to succour and protect her child, wasn’t she? Not set a bad example that gave her carte blanche to go and do something so utterly stupid and wasteful as get herself killed before her nineteenth birthday. What she wouldn’t do to have those last few days of her daughter’s life back again. The things she’d do differently …

  She felt something tickle her cheek and raised a hand to it, surprised to find her fingers came away wet. Tears had begun to roll down her face without her noticing.

  Angrily, she wiped them away with her palm, and drew in a deep breath.

  She’d known ever since she’d woken on New Year’s Day that somehow, someday, this moment would come, but had not made any plans for what she would do when it did. Spontaneity was her chosen path in life, be it in her art, her love life, or her occasional forays into gambling.

  She had always crossed her bridges only when she came to them, trusting in her instinct and feelings to guide her. And now she’d come to this, perhaps the last bridge of all.

  She looked at Trudy, feeling almost puzzled. Funny, but a pretty young girl in a smart police uniform was not what she had been expecting of fate. And yet here the pretty young girl was, looking at her so … knowingly.

  Ah well, Katherine thought. So be it.

  It was not as if she had much to lose, was it? Every day was a struggle to get through. What did it matter where the struggle took place? Here or in a prison cell?

  ‘Mr Terrence Parker was the man who sold your daughter that car, wasn’t he?’ Trudy said gently. Yet again, she already knew the answe
r. Before leaving Clement’s house, and after explaining her suspicions about this woman to both men, she’d rung Geoffrey Thorpe. Luckily he’d been in his office, and still feeling thoroughly cowed, had been more than anxious to help. A quick rifle through the appropriate files had soon provided the positive answer that she’d been expecting.

  ‘Yes, the bastard sold her the car,’ Katherine heard herself say. It sounded as if her voice was coming from a long way off. ‘He must have seen how young she was. He must have known from taking down her details that she couldn’t long have taken her driving test. And he knew cars, damn him. He knew that sporty little bit of fluff of nonsense would be too much for any inexperienced teenager to handle. And it was so flimsy – all light and airy and built for speed. It crumpled like tissue paper when it hit that lorry,’ she added horrifically. ‘Amy Jean had no chance,’ she concluded flatly.

  She regarded her glass and took another hearty swig. She wished she could get blind drunk and just forget, just for a few hours … But it was odd. Nowadays, no matter how much she drank, she never seemed quite able to lose touch with reality anymore.

  ‘Did you know he’d be at the party?’ Trudy asked quietly, hardly daring to move in case she distracted the older woman or gave her pause to rethink what she was doing.

  ‘What? Oh, that stupid little New Year’s Eve bash? No, I had no idea,’ Katherine said, and Trudy believed her. ‘I’d met Millie Vander vaguely out and about, as you do. This is a small city, after all, and she was something on an arts council or some such thing. But she wasn’t exactly my “type”. A repressed society matron, with plenty of money but probably bored out of her skull, poor cow,’ Katherine said, with what sounded to Trudy and Clement like genuine sympathy in her voice.

  She sighed heavily and took another, more thoughtful sip of vodka. ‘No, it’s like I said. I had a whole stack of invitations to various parties, but because the weather was so bloody awful and hers was the only party within easy walking distance, I ended up going there.’

  She gave a sudden brief bark of laughter. ‘It wasn’t too bad though, now I come to think of it. The food was good – trust Millie to get the caterer just right. And the champagne was even better – bloody good vintage. I was beginning to pick up a bit of salacious gossip from some of her so-called “friends” at the do that she was making a bit of a fool of herself over a younger man,’ she added with a smile. ‘And I remember thinking to myself that I should congratulate her on living it up a little. But then, when he arrived …’ There was no mistaking who she meant, for her voice became like ice, and all three of her visitors felt a similar coldness crawl over their skin. The venom and hatred in her voice was so powerful and raw it was almost like another presence in the room with them.