Killing Me Softly (28 page)

Abigail said sharply, ‘What do you mean, “her sort”?'

Neale shrugged regretfully. ‘Nice girl, basically, Luce. Respectable family, well brought up. Why
do
these pretty girls choose to dress and do their hair so outlandishly – grotesque, isn't it? And what was she doing associating with that riff-raff down at the Bagots? I tried to make her see sense ...'

‘You talked to her?'

He laughed, spreading his hands ruefully. ‘She talked to
me
,' he corrected. ‘She'd talk to anyone, she'd no inhibitions. Rattling away like that got in the way of her work, but that didn't matter to Luce. In fairness, however little she chose to show it, she was quick and intelligent.' Abigail could see that, despite his disparaging remarks, he'd liked the girl.

She'd worked there for several weeks in a casual capacity, he told them, as so many of them did, at Miller's Wife. Frankly, it wouldn't ever have occurred to him to employ her, not at any cost, but it was Ellie who'd set her on. ‘She thought she brought a bit of sunshine to the place,' he said drily. She'd found Luce amusing, with her outrageous clothes, her chatter and her careless good nature, though not when she discovered the large amounts of food that were going missing. Everyone was entitled to their perks in a place where there was always spare food going begging, but that had been something else. Luce had been sent packing, and that was when Barbie Nelson had appeared on the scene.

‘Didn't you think it strange that she'd confide in you about her private life?' Mayo asked.

‘No, she was totally open about it, to everyone, but I have to say, the more she told me, the more concern I began to feel for her. Some of those she lived with were involved with hard drugs. She swore she never smoked more than cannabis herself, she didn't see any wrong in that and shut her eyes when I warned her how easy it is to get drawn into serious drugs. It's like a vicious, downward spiral. A road to nowhere.' He looked down at his well-manicured nails. ‘I hated to see such degradation, especially in a woman,' he said quietly.

‘Yes, I can understand that,' Abigail replied sympathetically. ‘And why you're so anti-drugs. Damien Rogers, your wife ...'

Seconds passed. ‘My wife?' His facial muscles seemed to have stiffened. ‘What do you know about my wife? You've actually been prying into my private affairs?'

‘And into everyone else's associated with the inquiry,' Mayo said. ‘Nobody can have secrets in a murder case, Mr Neale. We make it our business to know a lot more about people than they ever tell us. Don't worry, it won't get passed on.'

Not if we don't choose to pass it on, he thought. Or need to.

Something was wrong here. Mayo said thoughtfully to Abigail as he left, ‘There's a lot of tension in that place.'

What he'd actually felt strongly was the sort of overheated, claustrophobic emotion generated by women in close communities, but he'd be wiser not to say that, not to Inspector Abigail Moon, or to his Alex, either. They'd accuse him of being sexist. But it was a rum set-up, was the actual phrase going through his mind.

How did David Neale, the only male, working amongst them all every day, cope with that?

When they'd gone, Neale sat immobile at his desk.

He'd tried so many times to make Luce see sense, that in the end she began to avoid him. When she'd been dismissed, he'd felt a sense of personal failure that he hadn't been able to do anything to make her see what a collision course her life was on.

And Jane, he thought. Oh, Jane!

Few people, if any, had any suspicion of what their life together had been like, when Jane was alive. Wonderful, at first. She'd been such a vibrant woman, she'd given him so much, tried to teach him that although life might be real and earnest, it could also be fun. It was a lesson he was not equipped to learn.

They had no children, a deep sadness to both of them, which they'd faced in their different ways. He had always thrown himself into his work, now he became obsessive, successful in his own right, and no longer dependent upon Jane's money. Left to her own devices, she began on the social round: bridge, golf, parties and yet more parties. It took it out of her. Always slim, she'd become thinner and thinner. He began to worry over the bouts of exhilaration alternating with periods of extreme agitation and anxiety. She found strange new friends, and began to dress carelessly. She couldn't sleep, became hyperexcitable, and still it hadn't dawned on him what was wrong. Until it was too late. Until she'd moved on from cocaine to heroin, and become careless about the evidence, uncaring. Syringes, needles left lying about for him to find.

Nothing would induce her to get treatment, and he watched helplessly until the final, inevitable, fatal overdose that killed her and left him alone, lonely, and filled with an implacable hatred against drugs and those who trafficked in them.

The mists had at last cleared from her brain. Her limbs felt heavy and lax, there was an overwhelming lassitude in her body, and she was so weak, but she wasn't muzzy-headed any longer; she was able to remember everything, her mind clear and lucid.

Lucid Luce. Lucinda Rimington, standing at the bus stop, waiting in the fog.

God, why doesn't the bus come? Don't think it's
going
to come. I shall miss the train, and the connection in Birmingham, and I shan't get to Guildford till Lord knows when. Why don't I get myself a car, never mind environmentally unfriendly? I can afford it, twenty cars, when I sell the house. Haven't time to walk to the station, my rucksack's too heavy, too bulky, just shoved everything in, not thinking of anything much except Mum, Jesus, I hope she's all right. Debbie said it wasn't serious, just a bang on the head when she fell against the stair, but you never know, Deb's only a kid, why didn't Mum write, herself? Where is that bloody bus?

Salvation! Who said there wasn't a God? Of all things, looming out of the fog, the twee little white van. Who's driving? Doesn't matter, I can wave and flag it down, whoever's driving will know me and give me a lift to the station. Brilliant! Cheer up, Mum, your bad little girl's on her way ...

The Town Hall clock struck eleven p.m., loudly enough for its unmusical bong to penetrate the double glazing in Abigail's office. It didn't bother the wet and bedraggled pigeons, who were used to it, dozily huddled together for warmth on the ledges, but it caused Abigail to look up, reminding her that she had a bed to go to.

She ran a hand through her hair, then rubbed the place between her brows where a headache had lodged. The rain had begun again, lashing the windows, bucketing down. Clean, steady rain, which might hopefully wash away the last of the dirty fog, though it was bitterly cold and if it began to freeze, there'd be trouble on the roads in the morning. If it went on like this, there might be danger of floods again.

She should have been home hours ago, but the senior staff session in Mayo's office, with the ACC present, had gone on and on. Sheering had eventually left them to it, and at last even Mayo had had enough and called a halt. He'd packed it in and gone home, expecting the rest to do likewise. Abigail had stayed on to sort the notes she'd made. She added another, this time about Barbie Nelson, then pushed the lot into their folder and stood up. She'd been through them so many times she was cross-eyed and no way were they going home with her tonight – except in her head, and that was something she couldn't escape.

She had her raincoat on, buttoned and belted, and her hand was on the light switch when the telephone rang. ‘What? All right, tell him I'll be down in a few minutes.'

She passed through the deserted CID office and looked in at the incident room on her way down; it was humming quietly along this time of night, nothing going on of any significance, nothing that needed her attention. She said goodnight to the lone, yawning constable left to man the telephone and went downstairs to meet the lanky figure hovering by the front desk.

‘Colin? What are you doing here? Is it Luce? Has she turned up?'

‘That's what I came to ask you.'

She shook her head. ‘You'd have been told. I promised, we'll let you know, just as soon as we hear anything.'

His shoulders sagged, his spectacles had misted up in the indoor warmth. His sopping hair dripped on to the shoulders of an ex-RAF greatcoat, already dark with rain, his jeans and trainers were soaked. She took pity on him and said gently, ‘Come in here a minute.' The civilian inquiry officer had gone off shift, and she turned to the PC on the desk. ‘I'm sure you can find us some tea, would you mind?'

‘Ma'am,' said the constable, a surly individual who didn't take kindly to women who ordered him about. He didn't much like women at all. Especially policewomen, dykes or bikes, the lot of ‘em.

Abigail took Col into the nearest interview room and when he'd shrugged off his wet coat and slung it over the back of his chair, she found a wad of tissues in her bag and handed them over, so that he could wipe his face and hair.

The constable's revenge came in polystyrene beakers: weak, grey and milky, scalding hot, already heavily sugared, as she found when she plucked up courage to take a sip. She pushed it aside, managing not to gag, but Col drank like a man who'd been in the Sahara without water for a week.

‘I won't believe she'd go off like this! Something must have happened to her. She wouldn't have disappeared without saying anything, that's not Luce's style.'

It didn't seem to be like Luce, Abigail agreed, from what they'd learned of her, but disappeared she had. Had she hitched a lift somewhere? She seemed to be the sort of girl – sparky, independent, gregarious – who might have done so, and met the sort of trouble that might have been expected. Her physical description had been circulated. Small, slim, crop-haired, dyed blonde, stud under her lower lip. Wearing her best, least way-out clothes when last seen: trailing black skirt, heavy boots, denim jacket, Save the Whale T-shirt.

But nobody remembered her buying a ticket at the station, she hadn't been seen at either Birmingham New Street or Guildford. Since leaving the Bagots, she'd disappeared into thin air.

There'd been no reports received of any unidentified female bodies, or not yet.

Col was persisting. He was an intelligent young man, though she knew his history by now, had been warned how his moods varied, how unpredictable he could be. There was no evidence of this at the moment. He simply looked miserable and unhappy. She also knew the debt of gratitude he owed to his friends, Luce, and Jem Spencer, so that he was bound to feel like this about Luce, even in face of evidence to the contrary. When he'd first been brought in, he'd been questioned in the presence of a psychiatric social worker as a matter of course, and she'd confirmed that he could function more or less normally if he kept up his medication. There lay the problem: he hated to feel he was dependent on it and sometimes rejected the need for it. His eyes, when he took his specs off to rub them clear, were pretematurally bright; she wondered whether this meant he'd been taking his pills or not.

‘Col, she'd had a row with her boyfriend, she'd be upset, maybe –'

He waved that aside. ‘Only a few words, Jem says, about Ginge. Luce would've forgotten about it in a few hours, she never bears a grudge.' His mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘I won't believe she's just taken off, without a word to anybody. She was due to come into big money any time. The house, for one thing ... the developers want it, you know, and she was supposed to be meeting them yesterday. She was planning what to do with the money ...'

Start a commune on a remote Scottish island? Give it to the Animal Liberation freaks?

‘Well,' she repeated, ‘we'll let you know ...'

Col, without seemingly noticing it, had picked up her rejected tea and gulped from it. He plonked the beaker down on the table; light and empty, it wobbled over and the dregs spread in a tiny puddle. He watched in silence as she mopped it up with more tissues. He was so tense he practically vibrated, dangerously on the brink.

‘You're in charge of that murder, aren't you?' he asked suddenly. ‘Tim Wishart, that bloke who was shot. Married to that woman Luce used to work for.'

She looked at him steadily. ‘Yes. What do you want to know about that?'

‘I'm not asking, I'm telling.'

He breathed deeply and then said, ‘I'm telling you he was the one Morgan was getting his drugs from.'

‘Yes, Col, we know.' There was a silence. The fact that his bombshell hadn't had the effect it should have had didn't seem to surprise him. She had the feeling he'd been aware that it was known, that announcing it was the prelude to something else. ‘Are you saying it was Morgan who killed Wishart?'

‘Nah, not Morgan. He's not as clever as he likes to think, but even he wouldn't kill the golden eggs, would he?' he demanded, in some confusion. ‘But listen, what about that crazy, that guy Neale, works at Miller's Wife? The one who's always down at the Centre? He's round the twist, you know, about drugs. Ask any of the kids at the Centre, he's always lecturing them. He drove Luce bananas when she worked at that place, lecturing her and that. It's obvious isn't it? He knew Wishart was supplying Morgan –'

‘What leads you to think that?'

‘He must have known. He was watching Morgan like a hawk. I know, because
I
was watching
him.
I've time on my hands for that sort of thing,' he added morosely. ‘I didn't trust him where Luce was concerned.'

‘A lot of people don't approve of drugs, Col, you've told me you feel that way yourself. But that hasn't made you go around killing the suppliers.'

‘You don't know him, that Neale. He's weird, really weird, sometimes.'