‘So now,’ said the detective superintendent gloomily, ‘I suppose you’ll be making a case for a trip north.’
Honey glanced out of the window. The winter had been mild but a few flakes of snow were now promising a change. She sighed. Sorrento would be beautiful just now. Perhaps a little later when Sandy was free of his present caseload. ‘First things first,’ she said. ‘I’d better ask the YWPA warden, or whatever they call them, to identify the girl from the photograph. Then I’ll send Northern a report and a copy of the photographs. Let them do the running around.’
Mr Blackhouse nodded. ‘I like your way of thinking,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
Just in case the relevance of the photographs should ever become proven or somebody around chief constable level was to intervene, Honey had brought the memory card, carefully wrapped, in her shoulder bag. It took her only a matter of minutes to abstract the photographs of the mysterious girl and to incorporate them into an email. Drafting a report and request for assistance took rather longer. She had intended to do no more than to explain that the attached photographs had been found on a stolen and recovered digital camera. But it had been necessary to add an explanation of the young woman missing from the YWPA hostel, in order to ensure that Edinburgh was kept advised of whatever was learned. She decided not to make mention of Jem Tanar yet.
She left the electronic image of her completed email on the typing pool computer, for despatch on her command, and went out. The snow had begun but there was not yet the rise in temperature often associated with the beginning of snowfall and, with a gusty breeze whipping around the buildings, the feeling was of bitter cold. The YWPA hostel was in a street where a previous Range Rover had been vandalized and, moreover, it would be at serious risk of being skidded into by the less experienced drivers of Edinburgh. She had bespoken transport by panda car. She was chauffeured to the door of the hostel by a cheerful woman constable.
The YWPA hostel had been built with some other purpose in mind, perhaps in connection with business or education. A panel over the entrance door looked as though it had originally held a proud statement of the function of the building but had later been chiselled smooth. The frontage was of local stone but elaborately fashioned with carvings that were Grecian in style. As the car pulled up, she saw that the main door was protected by a good security lock and an entryphone system. She hated taking advantage of her seniority but rank has its privileges. She asked the driver, very nicely and politely, to go and obtain admission for her. The driver, now rather less cheerful than before, said something under her breath that Honey pretended not to hear but she got out of the car and slithered over the icy paving to the door. As Honey had suspected, it took some minutes before anyone spoke from inside on the entryphone and longer still for the driver to establish that a very important police person wanted ingress and would be very angry if her driver were kept standing in the falling snow for much longer.
The latch must have clicked at last, because Honey saw the driver push the door open and hold it with her foot. The driver, when Honey reached the door, was looking even less cheerful. ‘Thank you,’ Honey said. ‘Now, go and get dried and warmed up.’ The driver was not used to superiors who thanked her or gave a damn whether she was warm and dry or deep-frozen. She smiled shyly and hurried back into the car.
The door had been opened by a woman in an overall who looked Honey up and down. She had a mean face and a drip on her nose and she obviously intended to be as obstructive as she could manage without laying herself open to a riposte. ‘You don’t look like a policewoman,’ she said. She made no attempt to move aside and let Honey in.
Honey was not amused. She put her identification almost up against the other’s nose, at the same time leaning and stepping forward so that the other was forced to retreat.
‘Satisfied?’
‘I suppose so,’ the woman said reluctantly.
‘I want to see the boss-lady. What is she called? The warden?’
‘This isn’t Miss Morrison’s time for seeing people.’ She closed the door but her manner managed to suggest that this was to keep the snow out rather than to accept that Honey was now inside and intended to stay there. She remained between Honey and the hallway.
Honey had had years of experience with self-important and obstructive people. ‘But it is my time for seeing people,’ she said. ‘Miss Morrison is first on my list; and the requirements of the police take priority. Go and tell her so.’ The woman hesitated. Honey was tempted to take out of her bag, first a notebook, then a pen and finally a pair of handcuffs. It had worked in the past but she thought that this woman might well call her bluff. ‘Get on with it,’ she said.
The woman turned away, sniffing. Bypassing the broad staircase, she set off along a dark passage, her back registering anger and contempt. She turned a corner and left Honey to contemplate the gloomy hall. This had been hung with several pictures of an obliquely religious nature and was dominated by a large, dark painting of several fully clad ladies reclining on cushions around a low table laden with fruit. There was no label to suggest what historical or possibly biblical scene this was intended to represent. The building was old, with high ceilings, Greek key pattern around the cornice and a great deal of dark pitch pine. The floor was of black and white tiles, like a public lavatory. Soon the sound of footsteps returned and Honey was joined by a chubby lady just entering middle age. She had a vague smile overlying a look of surprise. ‘Detective Inspector Laird?’
‘That’s so. Miss Morrison?’
‘Yes. Can I help you? What is it about?’
Honey produced a print of one of the better photographs of the black girl, alive. ‘Do you recognize this young lady?’
The smile disappeared altogether, like that of the Cheshire cat. Miss Morrison took the whole sheaf of photographs and leafed through it. Honey retained only the shot that included the knife. The woman who had admitted Honey was trying hard to look over Miss Morrison’s shoulder but Honey and the warden combined to give her a quelling look and she retreated.
‘I’m just checking to see if she has a sort of birthmark beside her eye,’ Miss Morrison said. ‘The photographer seems to have tried to keep it out of the picture, but she does. That’s Harriet Benskin. She had no papers with her, but she had clearly been brought up Church of Scotland so I could hardly turn her away. Has something happened to her? I know one of the girls reported her missing.’
‘Possibly. So, you can confirm that she had a room here?’
‘Half a room. She still has it, because her rent was paid up in advance. Would you like to see it or would you rather speak to me somewhere private?’
‘Her room isn’t private?’
‘Her room-mate works as a temp and often works from here. I think she’s in the room just now.’
‘She may be able to help quite a lot. But first, please wait one moment.’ Honey produced her mobile and keyed a single digit. She was connected to the typing pool and gave instructions that her email was to be sent. ‘Now, shall we go?’
‘There’s some mail for her. Should I give it to you?’
‘I’ll collect it before I go.’
The room that Harriet Benskin had shared turned out to be both generous and airy, and brighter than the outside of the building would have suggested. The decor was fresh and contemporary. The furniture seemed small in the spacious room; but the bed and chairs looked comfortable, suggesting that they had been chosen for comfort rather than appearance.
The room-mate was a girl named Dorothy Hall. Honey had been born without any tendency to put on weight. She was aware how lucky she had been and made a point of never deriding the overweight even in the privacy of her own mind, but there was no denying that Ms Hall was plump and well on the way towards being fat.
Miss Morrison perched on the bed. Dorothy retained the chair at the dressing table (which served also as a desk), leaving the wicker fireside chair to Honey. It creaked in a way that she found distracting
.
‘What’s this about?’ Dorothy asked. ‘Is this to do with Harriet? I haven’t done anything.’ She was looking only mildly anxious. From the stacks of paper on the dressing table it was evident that she had done quite a lot, but nothing evidently meriting the attention of the police.
‘Something’s happened to Harriet,’ said Miss Morrison. ‘I don’t know what yet. Detective Inspector Laird wanted to see the room and speak to you.’
Honey decided to use a minor euphemism rather than drop a bombshell. ‘To cut a long story very, very short,’ she said, ‘it appears that Harriet may have suffered a fatal assault. We do not have a body although we can be fairly sure where it is. Anything you can tell us about her would be welcomed.’
Miss Morrison and Dorothy Hall exchanged a glance that combined horror with fascination. ‘I saw very little of her,’ said the warden. ‘I interviewed her when she asked for a room, just to be sure that she was eligible – that means a member of a Presbyterian church – and that she wasn’t going to be trouble. She seemed a nice, intelligent, well-read girl.’
‘So she was,’ said Dorothy. ‘She was very neat and clean; not very cheerful, maybe a bit of a depressive. She had a mark on her face and a bit of a port wine stain beside her eye. She seemed a wee bit sensitive about it. Every other way, she was just like anybody. What else do you want to know? She was a good typist and I put some work her way. She was quite friendly but reserved, if you know what I mean, but not exactly a laugh a minute. I’m just the opposite, so I never got to know her well.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘When I left for work, about a week ago. Wednesday morning, it must have been.’
Honey looked at Miss Morrison. The warden looked flustered. ‘I think it was that day,’ she said. ‘Harriet left as though to go to a job but then came back at about lunchtime. There was a man with her. She said that she had only come back to collect some things. I wouldn’t normally allow men upstairs; but in the middle of the day . . . Anyway she didn’t look as if there was anything . . . amorous going on. About half an hour later she came skittering down the stairs and I saw her scribbling something at the hall table, on paper that she took from under her coat. Then the man came hurrying down after her. I didn’t see the papers again—’
‘That was the day all my papers were upside down,’ Dorothy broke in. ‘As if somebody’d been searching for something.’
‘Quite probably,’ Honey said. ‘Was there anything among your papers that related to Miss Benskin? Or anything that could be of interest or value to anyone else?’
‘I wish,’ Dorothy said.
‘Can you describe the man?’ Honey asked the warden.
Miss Morrison looked uncertain. ‘Not very well,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t particularly tall but he was well built. Not fat, but burly. He had a dark coat on. Between thirty and thirty-five, I’d have said and quite good-looking apart from some scars on his face.’ She paused. ‘Glasgow accent, I think, or somewhere round about there. Otherwise, that’s it. Except . . . now I think about it, there was something odd about his face. Not just the scars. There was a change of texture and colour. It was like he’d used that concealer make-up to hide something.’
‘Did he touch anything, do you know?’ Honey asked.
‘He had gloves on when I saw him.’
Honey kept the talk going, in the form of a conversation rather than an interrogation. She had the impression that Miss Morrison had quite fancied the man but nothing further of any use emerged.
Dorothy and the warden watched interestedly as Honey made a quick search of Harriet Benskin’s side of the room. It was obvious that her removal had been complete and probably permanent. What little remained was only fit for disposal, but it would have to be collected and examined. The dead girl’s fingerprints would be obtainable from the discarded make-up containers. At first glance these seemed surprisingly unfamiliar to Honey. Then she realised that a black skin would require a totally different range of colours.
She thanked Dorothy for her help. ‘I’ll send somebody to gather up these odds and ends,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid they’ll have to try to find the man’s fingerprints, although from what you say it’s a forlorn hope. After that, you can clean the room.’ She got to her feet.
‘But you can’t just rush off like this,’ Dorothy protested. ‘What’s really happened?’
‘If we knew that, I wouldn’t have to make enquiries. No doubt it will be all over the papers and the telly within a few days.’
At the foot of the stairs, Honey paused. Harriet Benskin had left her room with papers in her hand that had not been in sight when she left the building. She could, of course, have hidden them again about her person, but then again she might not. If she had been trying to leave a message behind, where would be the best hiding place?
The biggest painting in the hall hung by two chains from a very high picture rail. As is common with heavy pictures hung by the back of the frame, it leaned out slightly from the wall. Honey took hold of the frame and pulled it outward for an inch or so. Nothing fell, but when she ran her fingers along the back of the frame she came upon a wide envelope attached to the backing by adhesive tape. It came away easily into her hand. It was not even sealed, but on the envelope were the handwritten words: Please deliver to the police. It held a number of sheets of typing paper, closely typed but with manuscript notes added at the beginning and – Honey flipped the pages – the end. ‘Is this her handwriting?’ Honey asked.
Miss Morrison was lingering at Honey’s elbow, making surprised noises. She peered through her glasses. ‘It looks very like it.’
‘Let’s go into your office,’ Honey said. ‘I want you to put on clean gloves, which I can provide, and initial each page.’
‘Yes, of course,’ the warden said. Her eyes were bright. Honey felt pleased that she had brought a little excitement into a usually drab life. ‘Are they evidence?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Honey said.
Chapter Eight
There was no panda car immediately available to fetch her, Control advised her with relish. Honey took a taxi, summoned by her mobile phone, back to the office and settled down for a read of the typescript that the missing and certainly dead girl had left behind. Most of it was flawlessly typed and began with a date only two weeks earlier. The first paragraph was handwritten:
I am caught up in something offbeat. It may turn out to have a harmless outcome or I may be heading for trouble. Just in case, I think I should leave a record where it will be found some day. If it turns out to be a storm in a teacup I shall remove and dispose of this, so if anyone finds this more than a few weeks after the above date, please take it to the police.
The text then became typescript.
*
To help you to understand what follows, I must tell something about myself. My name is Cheryl Abernethy. (Honey sighed. She would have to email Northern Constabulary again, to correct the name.) This may seem an improbable name for somebody who is of African race, but my family has been in Scotland since 1870 something when my great-grandfather, after the abolition of slavery, came to Scotland as a gardener in the service of a Scottish ship owner. My great-grandfather had earlier taken the name of his owner, as was common practice.
Skipping two generations, my father did very nicely with a string of corner shops in the general area of Glasgow. A black man was a rarity in those days, but that only made his shops more intriguing. He had taken the trouble to find out and to claim all the discounts allowed in his contracts with suppliers (which very few shopkeepers at the time bothered to do) and in each of his shops a gaggle of housewives dispensed papers and cigarettes every weekend. The shops were very profitable and out of his profits he managed to buy me a good education at a fee-paying school for girls. I remember him as a very jolly man, always free with sweets for the neighbourhood children. He had a remarkable knack of being able to answer any question that I could put to him. His strengths,
I think, were to read, listen and observe, to remember whatever struck him as significant and then to fit it all together into his own philosophy. I try to do the same.
We were comfortably established in a neat semi in a tidy street in one of the many small satellite towns in the central belt of Scotland. But in the end my father made the mistake of standing up to a gang that demanded protection money. I still do not believe that they meant to kill him, but he died of the stab wounds anyway. The shops were sold for what I believe was much less than their value as going concerns.
My mother had never had the same advantage of education that my father and I had. It took me some time to realize that she was far from being the brightest button on the card. She had been working as a cleaner at the College of Advanced Technology when my father met her, engaged her as one of his weekend (and later full-time) assistants and married her. She was, and is, I suppose, a jolly sort of person, capable of laughing immoderately at things no sensible person could find funny, which used to set my teeth on edge.
When I left school shortly after my father’s death, I had all the necessary exam results for university and my headmaster suggested that I could obtain a place and a hundred per cent grant, but my mother was scathing. ‘You don’ want mess with that stuff,’ she told me firmly. ‘Nothing good ever comes of it. I’ve had to do with a dozen educated bastards, professors the lot of them, and a right miserable lot of buggers they are, not a laugh between the lot of them. And work? Work themselves into early graves, if you ask me. What you want to do, my girl, is go out and find yourself a bloke. Or more than one. Just don’t forget to write down their names for the child support bastards. Get a baby or two and they’ll jump you to the top of the housing list and put you on benefit and you’ll be able to retire. Not bad for a teenager!’
If I had persisted, I think that she might have come round about university, but I was not sure of myself at that time. My father would have encouraged me, but my mother had no understanding of a society above street level. With her words for parental guidance, I tackled the world. I had no desire to find myself locked in a world of dirty diapers, noises in the night and the smell of sour milk; nor had I met any young men with whom I felt that it would be a pleasure to indulge in the antics leading into that trap. Even if I had been so inclined, circumstances were against me.
In Loving Memory (Honey Laird Book 3) Page 5