Killing Me Softly (12 page)

Silence fell, broken only by the chug-chug of the SOCOs' emergency lighting generator. Carmody stamped his frozen feet. It was bitterly cold, and the thick, curdling mist had got into the marrow of his bones. He was hungry enough to eat a horse. ‘Like the killer shouting to him, maybe?' he suggested.

‘Right. Ballistics isn't my field, but I know there's a chance that if we can get hold of the cartridge, we can eliminate the probability of it having been fired from his own gun.'

Any search, however, would have to be left until the daylight hours of tomorrow. Darkness had fallen by now, and this, combining with the fog, had made the night as thick as a bag. The locus had been taped off and sealed, some of the arc lights switched off, a couple of luckless PCs put on guard, fore and aft, and that would have to be it for tonight.

‘Mind you,' Abigail said, without much conviction, ‘he could simply have surprised someone who'd no reason to be in the woods, heard a noise, turned to investigate, and the person panicked.'

Possible, just. Mayo turned to Carmody. ‘Find out who these woods belong to, if there's any poaching goes on, and where there's access, other than over this bridge, will you, Ted? Put Pete Deeley on to it. Better still, get Scotty up off his backside – he lives around here, doesn't he?'

‘Next village on.' Carmody privately speculated that if any poaching
was
going on, DC Scott was unlikely to know of it – officially, anyway. It might, of course, have meant nothing that at the last CID whip round for a Christmas raffle, Scotty had chipped in with a brace of pheasant, or it might not. But ... his wife Susan had a brother who had the born countryman's attitude as to what rightly belonged to whom.

The sergeant went to have a word with the duty constables, to inform them that they still had a long time before they would be relieved, and Abigail and Mayo walked round to the front of the house to where their cars were parked. Mayo slid into his seat, wound the window down and leaned out to speak to Abigail. ‘I'll see you back at the station, as and when. Keep me informed.' He looked at his watch. ‘Give me a couple of hours, I've some personal business to attend to.'

Keep me informed,
Abigail thought as she watched him drive off. Since this was routine as far as they were both concerned, and scarcely warranted a mention, it meant: ‘I'm keeping a particular eye on this case.' Hell and damnation. For several reasons she wanted this investigation to be hers alone, to work it in her own way. She could handle it. But it definitely had ‘Handle with Care' stamped all over it: when he heard that it was murder, if murder it was, then Sam Nash wasn't going to be satisfied with anything less than a thorough inquiry, however unpleasant were the things likely to creep out from under upturned stones. It was becoming clear that Wishart had led a far from blameless life, and already the case had a whiff of things unsavoury. If Mayo wanted to take full charge, he took full responsibility, too. So be it.

Carmody appeared from the back of the house, sketched a farewell salute as he sloped off to where his own car was parked and left at speed, in urgent need of sustenance, if she knew Carmody. Come to think of it, she felt peckish herself, now that her stomach had settled. Hot soup. A whisky before bed wouldn't come amiss, either.

A couple of hours, Mayo had said? Personal business, at the crucial beginning of a murder investigation?
Mayo?
She didn't believe it.

Freesias. The favourite flower, favourite scent of Alex Jones, ex-police sergeant, their scent almost shutting out the antiseptic smell. Freesias. Not merely a metric five in a slim, cellophane cone, but fifty at least – oh, how extravagant! Gil Mayo's native Yorkshire caution overcome by his natural generosity. They almost made up for being in hospital. Almost. Self-deception is easy when the alternative is something that can't be borne.

A little miscarriage, they said. Nearly as ridiculous as a little bit pregnant. ‘Wiser not to try again, Ms Jones. Your previous history, your – accident ...' Looking at the long scar of the gunshot wound. ‘Your age.'

Loss and shock were the same whatever your age. Never mind that you hadn't dreamed you were pregnant before being rushed in. Shattering, that. And in a way, the loss was greater, as if you'd been cheated, never having had the joy of knowing, not even for a moment.

A bit off-colour for a few weeks, she'd told Mayo, nothing more, and then this. What a thing! Promise not to tell anyone, except Lois. Blowing her nose hard. Sister says if I'm a good girl and buck up I'll be in the pink and back in harness in two ticks. All right for her.

She felt so – so feckless. She should have managed things better. Had she, subliminally, let it happen? She was capable of that, if the need arose. But there was no question of it in this case, no necessity, either.
She
was the half of the partnership who was hanging back from commitment. Had it been up to Mayo, he'd have made an honest woman of her long since. Given her all the babies she wanted.

It was too late, now. The perfume of the freesias filled the room as she turned her head into the pillow and softly wept.

Abigail's hand was already on the door handle of her car when she noticed, in the circle of light from the lamps outside the front door, someone sitting hunched over the wheel of Wishart's off-road vehicle, which hadn't yet been removed from the front of the house.

‘Hello,' she said, walking across and speaking through the open window. ‘I'm Detective Inspector Moon. And you must be Richie.'

‘Richard,' corrected the youth truculently, looking down at her. ‘It's only my family who still call me that.' He added, ‘I was only going to put this, in the garage, not drive it away, though I
could.
I've passed my test. First time.'

He was about seventeen, she guessed, with a young, unformed, but nonetheless intelligent face, and with the promise of character evident in a determined chin.

‘Mind if I ask you a few questions?'

‘Why?' He shot her a look smouldering with resentment, from under thick eyebrows. ‘Why can't you leave us alone? Isn't it bad enough that my father's just been shot?'

Abigail saw the misery in his eyes, and heard the tremor in his adolescent, as yet not entirely dependable, voice, and liked what she had to do no better than he did. ‘It won't take long,' she said gently. ‘What time did you get back home this afternoon?'

‘I don't know. Ask my mother, she'll know. She always checks me in, especially when she's allowed me to use her car.'

‘Where had you been?'

‘Playing in an inter-school basketball match this morning. Then some of us went into Lavenstock for a coffee and a burger.'

‘Who won?' Abigail asked with a smile.

‘We didn't, but what does that matter?'

She ignored the rudeness. ‘If your mother was at home, it must have been after half-past three. So what else were you doing in town?'

‘We went down to the market, that stall where you can get computer games and tapes cheap, and hung around a bit. You know.'

Abigail nodded. She knew all the spots where the youth of the town hung out, and what went on when they did. Horsing about round the back of Tesco's, kicking Coke cans in the space designated for motorbikes in the Hill Street car-park, smoking outside the bus station caff and other, less salubrious places. And that was the least of it.

‘After you came home, you didn't hear the sound of the shot, or any other sound for that matter?'

He hunched further over the steering wheel, his bony young shoulder blades showing through his thin shirt. He had no coat with him but didn't seem aware of the cold. ‘No,' he said, his voice thick. He avoided looking at her, and she knew he was desperately fighting off tears. ‘I put my new tape on as soon as I got in.'

‘Right, then, that's it,' she said, snapping her notebook shut. ‘Thanks for your help, Richard.'

His head jerked up. ‘Is that all?'

‘For now, yes. We'll probably need to have another chat, later.'

She left him sitting in the car and drove off thoughtfully.

Wasn't it odd – very odd – that Richie had used the phrase ‘been shot'? Wouldn't it have been much more natural to have said ‘shot himself'? Or, if that had been too painful, ‘that my father's just died'?

Sybil Wishart had been drinking, though it was barely ten o'clock when Clare arrived at her flat in Edgbaston the next morning.

Clare didn't feel prepared to criticize her for that, not when her only son had just died, so suddenly and horribly. And it was no secret that Sibyl was drinking steadily these days. The only difference today was that she didn't trouble to conceal the near-empty vodka bottle, or make the effort to pretend that her speech wasn't slurred.

She was dressed as carefully as usual, out of habit, Clare supposed. How long would it be before alcohol got the better of her and habit began to slip, before standards no longer seemed to matter? She'd always been a good-looking woman, who dressed expensively, and today was no exception: a cashmere jersey over a silk shirt and a good, well-cut skirt, with a gold chain and gold-and-pearl ear-rings. She'd have been better advised to do without the make-up, but Sybil would as soon appear naked as without it; her mascara had smudged with tears and left her eyes looking bruised, her lipstick had been carelessly applied, as if her hand had trembled, so that her mouth looked like a bloodstained gash. She lolled, uncharacteristically, against the cushions of the slippery satin-covered sofa, one of the remnants of palmier days with which the flat was furnished.

When the thought of having to tell Sybil that her son was dead occurred to Clare, her first thought had been no, not me, that's too much to ask! and she'd cravenly allowed Sam to take over that task, as well as taking care of so much more. It hadn't, perhaps, been the best of ideas.

Sam had asked Mary Bellamy to go with him, a sensible decision, it had seemed, since Mary's training as a nurse had taught her how to deal with bereaved relatives. Together they'd driven over to Edgbaston, where Sybil had this flat in a quiet, tree-lined road. She'd been so distraught on hearing the news that Mary had offered to stay the night, but even in her distress Sybil had managed to show affront at being expected to accept support from a stranger and had, not very graciously, refused.

In the end, they'd sought out the woman who lived in the next flat, who'd obligingly come in and slept in the spare room, though she'd been unable to stay today.

Little as she welcomed the idea, Clare felt it was her duty to try and persuade Sybil to come and stay at Clacks Mill, at least for the time being. She was Tim's mother, after all, and facing the loss of the son she'd doted on must be utterly devastating to her. She was seventy, and hitting the bottle, and really mustn't be left alone.

However, Sybil's first words disposed of this idea. ‘You needn't have come,' she said. ‘Rula will be here any moment.'

‘Sybil, of course I had to come and see you!' Clare said in distress, but she couldn't hide her relief.

Rula – Muriel Brinsley – was Sybil's closest friend. One of the few who still bothered with Sybil. The two women had known each other all their lives and there existed a strong bond between them, unaffected by their constant falling out and making up. It was a pity she lived so far away. But Rula, though unmarried and with no encumbrances, had steadfastly resisted all Sybil's entreaties to come and live permanently with her, and who wouldn't sympathize? Small and eccentric, but eminently sensible, she declared roundly that if Sybil wanted a dogsbody, she'd better get herself a paid companion. But when circumstances warranted it, she could always be relied on. She had, Sybil said, set off from Scarborough at the crack of dawn in the black Rover they all called Rula's Hearse, which was so old it was practically a vintage model by now. Hopefully, she would arrive in one piece. She could barely see over the top of the steering wheel and charted a middle course down any road whatsoever, refusing to be intimidated into driving at anything more than a steady forty; more by good luck than anything else, she'd never yet had an accident.

Good old Rula. Her sterling presence here could be guaranteed to keep Sybil reasonably sober, if nothing else. ‘I don't know why I didn't think of her before.'

‘I've told her she can't bring that animal with her!' Sybil warned. ‘Nor that painting muck!'

She was presumably referring to Rula's bad-tempered Yorkshire terrier, and her watercolours, which she dashed off at great speed, later to sell in her own small gift shop. She disparaged herself as ‘merely a talented amateur', but the paintings were always quickly snapped up by holiday-makers as pleasant souvenirs of their fortnight by the sea, and she didn't sell herself short, either. She had her head screwed on, and Clare was certain she would ignore both Sybil's injunctions, but didn't think it prudent to comment.

An awkward silence ensued, while she wondered, torn between sympathy and exasperation, what else she could say to comfort the old woman, a silence which Sybil broke by saying, ‘I suppose you're satisfied now!'

The malevolence shook Clare. There had never been any love lost between the two of them, but dislike had never been overtly expressed, either. She looked at the older woman's lined face and the discontented droop of her mouth, the glassy eyes, and read pain there. She tried to put herself in her mother-in-law's place. How would she feel if Richie ... God, no, that way madness lies. She said gently, ‘Don't let's quarrel now, of all times. We're both in the same boat.'

‘How dare you? Presume to know how I feel?' Sybil burst out. ‘Don't think I don't know you were behind all his problems! He was right not to trust you.' She looked sly. ‘It was his mother he turned to when he needed someone to trust.'