Midnight Murders (16 page)

‘Peter's all right.' When Trevor thought of everything that Peter had done for him since he'd been injured, he felt that “all right” was miserly. ‘He's a good friend, and a good copper. He just needs someone to keep his temper in check now and again.'

‘I'll try to remember that.' Dan stopped his car outside a mini-market with boarded-up windows in the run-down dock area of the town. ‘This where you live?'

‘It is.' Trevor reached for his stick.

‘Place looks derelict.'

‘Only way to stop the locals vandalising it even more.'

‘I hope today goes well for you.'

‘Thank you.' Trevor left the car. Supporting himself on his stick, he pulled his keys from his jacket pocket and went to the side door, but Frank spotted him from inside the shop, and came rushing out.

‘You're back. You look great.' He shook Trevor's hand vigorously. ‘Peter said you might be in hospital for months.'

‘I'm only back for the day, Frank. I have to return to the hospital tonight.'

‘But you'll soon be out for good.'

‘I hope so.' Trevor limped towards the door set in the side wall beyond the shop.

‘I can't leave the shop,' Frank said tactfully, sensing Trevor's need to be alone. ‘You'll call down and see me before you go?'

‘Yes.' Trevor waited until Frank disappeared before inserting his key in the lock. He pushed open the door and, after placing a steadying hand on the wall, negotiated the narrow flight of stairs that led to the first floor. He unlocked the single door facing him at the top, and walked into the living room of his flat. The room was lighter and larger than he remembered, and not so cluttered. The three-piece gold dralon suite, stained and shiny with wear, had been moved closer to the small, double-bar electric fire in the fake mahogany fireplace. The bent-wire magazine rack, which usually overflowed with old newspapers that he always meant to clear out, was empty. He ran his finger over the surface of the imitation teak sideboard. It was thick with grey dust. No one had cleaned the place in weeks, if not months, and yet it was tidy.

Propping his stick against the sofa, he sat down and stared at the scarred surface of the coffee table, bare except for the telephone and directories. Then he recalled that his mother and brother had stayed here during the first traumatic weeks after he'd been injured when he had hovered somewhere between life and death on the intensive care unit of the General. He pictured his mother, small, grey-haired, duster in hand, tut-tutting as she cleaned the battered second-hand sticks of furniture.

Leaving the sofa he limped into the kitchen. It was peculiar; everything was familiar, yet all the time he had been away he hadn't given the place a single thought. The Formica-topped kitchen table stood in the centre of the room. The same strip of ugly, torn wallpaper dangled over the skirting board in the corner, as it had done since the day he'd moved in. Blue tiles, chipped, cracked but clean, framed the sink top. His mother had given the place a through going-over in his absence. He looked out of the window at the moss-covered brick wall that hemmed in the back yard. He'd seen better views out of a prison cell.

He walked into the bathroom, which was as worn and depressing as the kitchen; saw the clean folded towels hanging over the bath in the absence of a rail. The new bar of soap laid on the cracked washbasin, the black patches gleaming dully in the cast-iron bath where the enamel had worn thin. He went into his bedroom. His bed had been made up with clean sheets, blankets and an orange candlewick bedspread.

He recalled the luxurious decor of Jean Marshall's apartment. This flat was past the kind of redecorating he was prepared to do in a place that wasn't, and would never be his own. The rooms were a stop-gap, the sort that students and young people who lived more out than in could put up with for a while. It was no home for a man of his age. He had to do something with himself – with his life. Spencer had been right; what had been enough wasn't any longer. And to think that his mother had actually expended time and effort cleaning this place. His mother! He suddenly realised he hadn't spoken to her in weeks. He walked into the living room, picked up the telephone and dialled her number.

‘Do you think Michael Carpenter could be our man?' Dan asked Patrick as they watched the body shell containing what was left of Michael Carpenter being loaded into the back of an ambulance.

‘Difficult to say.' Patrick pulled off his rubber gloves and threw them into a plastic bin. ‘If you'd asked me, I'd have said that our man wasn't the kind to go scaling three stories of a nurses' hostel in broad daylight. But there's no accounting for people's actions, especially where the insane are concerned. He could have started off when it was dark and become over confident until he believed himself invisible.

‘What I can't understand,' Peter mused, ‘is why a killer should turn peeping tom.'

‘The two aren't usually synonymous,' Patrick agreed.

‘And even supposing he had wanted to kidnap Lyn, he could never have spirited her out of the hostel in daylight. There are too many people around. He couldn't have done it unseen. Not down all those corridors and stairs, and in daylight. And even if he had by some miracle managed it – where would he have hidden her?'

Bill studied the hostel and its surroundings. ‘One of the joys of hospitals is the way they landscape their grounds. Half the poor buggers inside can't raise themselves high enough in their beds to see out of the windows, but they still spend an enormous amount of money on trees and shrubs.' He pointed to a screen of thick, high greenery that fringed the back of the hostel. ‘You could hide the whole nursing staff in there. Supposing he did get her out, he could… ' Bill followed the path and contemplated the side of the building facing the shrubbery ‘… have gone out through that fire door. There's only a narrow gap between there and the bushes.'

‘We've fought our way through every bloody inch of that shrubbery,' Peter pointed out. ‘And we found absolutely bloody nothing. So now what?'

‘We go back to HQ and sift through files,' Bill started walking.

‘Wouldn't it be easier to arrest everyone here, put the whole bloody lot in the cells and watch to see who turns killer?' Peter suggested.

‘We haven't enough cells. And we have to face the possibility that our villain could be an outsider.'

‘But the knowledge of the hospital… ' Peter broke in.

‘A lot of people have inside knowledge of this hospital. Over four hundred staff have been made redundant in the last five years. Nursing – office – catering – cleaning,' Bill's smile tightened. ‘And you're going to rake through every single one of their files with a fine toothcomb for me. Aren't you, Peter?'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘That was a good meal.'

‘A very good meal.' Trevor screwed his paper napkin into a ball and threw it on to his plate. ‘Dessert?'

‘After all I've eaten, you must be joking,' Jean Marshall smiled.

He picked up the bottle of wine they'd shared and poured the last of it into her glass. ‘More wine?'

‘No,' she drained her glass. ‘But I do know what would go down a treat. Coffee and brandy.'

Trevor raised his finger to the waiter.

‘The bill, please,' Jean said, before Trevor spoke. ‘We'll indulge ourselves in my flat. That way I can drink as much as I like without worrying about driving home.'

‘If you're sure.' Trevor had been looking forward to returning to Jean's flat, but now the prospect was about to become reality, he wondered what he, in his present battered and worthless state, had to offer a mature, attractive and confident woman like Jean.

‘I'm sure.' She left her chair. ‘I'll get my coat.'

Trevor handed his credit card to the waiter and flicked through his wallet looking for a tip. He fumbled and dropped it. The waiter picked it up for him. Trevor signed the chit and laid the tip on the waiter's tray. He reached for the stick he'd propped against an empty chair, and waited for Jean. It was ridiculous; here he was, a grown man of over thirty, nervous as a schoolboy because a woman had invited him to her place for a drink. But it had been a long time since he'd been on anything resembling “a date” and the last time hadn't been successful. He could almost hear the brush-off again,

“Thank you, Sergeant Joseph, but I've more man in my life than I can cope with right now… ” Always another man, never him.

Even with Mags. “Not tonight, Trevor. I'm not feeling up to the mark.” One woman in six years, and none at all for the last two, only a pathetic hopeless crush that hadn't, and never could have, led anywhere.

‘Ready?' Jean tapped his arm. Using his stick he followed her out through the door to her car.

Lyn Sullivan didn't return from town until six-thirty. She'd deliberately left herself barely enough time to take a shower, change into her uniform and walk to the ward. And none to brood on the traumatic events of earlier in the day. She needed to keep busy, keep working and get on with her job. But her limbs ached and her eyes were strained from lack of sleep.

She took care to lock the shower room door securely. Even that wasn't enough; she jammed her slippers beneath it, and hung her wash-bag on the door-handle, so she would hear the rattle of her soap dish if someone attempted to force the lock. She showered quickly, glancing from the translucent shower door to the patterned glass in the window. Nerves at breaking point, she turned off the water and dried herself in the cubicle. When she dusted herself with talcum powder, her hand trembled so much she shook most of it over the floor.

She knew she was being absurd. Michael Carpenter was dead – and the dead couldn't walk. There was no reason for her to be nervous. But Michael had been young and, apart from his obsessive behaviour over his ex-girlfriend, naïve, childlike and trusting. Could he really have been a murderer? Had he taken those women and planted them in a hole in the ground, watched while they slowly – ever so slowly – suffocated, fighting for each and every breath, as the blood vessels burst in their eyes?

She expelled the graphic images of lingering death from her mind, and concentrated on cleaning the powder from the floor. Tying her dressing gown cord securely around her waist, she threw back the bolt on the door and stepped into the corridor.

‘All right now, Lyn?'

She jumped as though scalded, dropping her wash-bag.

‘Sorry, didn't mean to scare you,' Richard apologised as he left the adjoining bathroom.

‘I'm a bit edgy,' she confessed as she bent to retrieve her bag.

‘You on night shift?'

‘Yes.'

‘So am I. I'll walk up the drive with you, if you like.'

‘There's no need. I'll be fine.' She recalled what Sergeant Peter Collins had said that morning. If Michael Carpenter hadn't been the murderer, then it could be anyone in the hospital. She looked at Richard's brown hair, his pleasant nondescript features, his brown eyes – could it even be him?

‘Don't be silly. I'd welcome the company – and protection,' he added not entirely ironically. ‘See you downstairs in ten minutes. Mary will be walking up with us. Alan isn't working tonight, and the poor girl is set for a nervous breakdown.'

‘See you downstairs,' she agreed, feeling ridiculous. How could she suspect Richard, of all people?

She returned to her room, hung her dressing gown in her wardrobe, and put everything in its allotted place. If someone entered her room during the night and disturbed anything, she wanted to know about it.

Mary and Richard were waiting for her in the foyer. It was picking with rain, so she pulled the hood of her anorak over her head before following them on to the drive. They walked quickly and in silence, all three glancing uneasily into the twilight shadows that had gathered between the bushes and trees.

‘Sit down, I'll get us a drink.' Jean left Trevor in her living room and went to the kitchen to fetch ice. He walked over to the window and looked out over the marina, watching the pale, soft glow of early evening dim as lights flickered on across the bay.

‘Everyone who comes here makes the right noises about the view, but you really do like it, don't you?' Jean returned with glasses of brandy and ice and handed him one.

‘It's magnificent. There's something hypnotic about the sea.' He held up his glass. ‘Is this wise after half a bottle of wine?'

‘You only drank a quarter of the bottle, and we've been cutting down your drugs for the last three weeks. A brandy isn't going to do you any harm. But, as I warned you earlier, I won't be able to drive you back after this.'

‘I wouldn't expect you to.' He took a tentative sip of the brandy – his first in months. ‘I'll call a taxi. I'm not up to facing a bus. After months of hot-house hospital temperatures, night winds whistling through open bus shelters are likely to bring on pneumonia.'

‘I can give you the number of a reliable firm. My car had to be serviced last week. It was easy enough getting a taxi from here to the hospital, but hopeless trying to arrange one the other way.'

‘They probably thought you were a patient playing a practical joke.' He sipped his brandy and contemplated the mix of Victorian, Edwardian and modern housing that fringed the shoreline below. ‘I hope I'm not offending you by asking, but what do these apartments fetch?'

‘Less than they did when my husband was talked into buying one. As you've probably noticed, half this block is up for sale.'

‘That's why I asked.'

‘Are you thinking of moving here?'

‘Not especially. Just somewhere better than where I live at the moment.'

‘The apartments here are cheap for a reason. This penthouse isn't bad because there's no one living above or to the side of me, but the walls are paper thin in the apartments below. Do you see that terrace?' She pointed to a dozen Victorian bay-windowed houses that faced the sea. The entire row was painted white, with Grecian columns set either side of the front doors, supporting a strip of balconies that ran the length of the terrace.

‘It looks like it's been sympathetically renovated.' He noticed their new roofs, and the long gardens that ran from the fronts of the houses down to the beach.

‘It has. I wanted one, but my ex-husband insisted on buying this because it was “prestigious” whatever that means, and we would have had to wait a year for the renovations on the terrace to be completed.' She fetched the brandy bottle and topped up their glasses. ‘I have a superb view, but little privacy. If I sit in my conservatory, or even in here, with my curtains open I'm on view to the entire marina.' She moved to the sofa and sat down. ‘You can't see past the stained, etched and frosted glass into those houses.'

‘The garden walls are low,' he commented.

‘You can always grow vines on a trellis.'

‘At least four are for sale,' he observed.

‘Eight actually, and you may be able to pick one up below asking price.'

‘Why?' he enquired suspiciously.

‘The builder who renovated the terrace is on the verge of bankruptcy. He bought high, before the last slump, did a no-expense-spared conversion, waited so long for buyers to pay above the going rate, he lost innumerable sales and if he doesn't succeed in off-loading them before the end of the month the bank has threatened to foreclose. And yes, I've put in an offer for two. They'll be a good investment.'

‘How do you know all this?'

‘I have a friendly – very friendly bank manager.' She saw Trevor pull a receipt out of his wallet and pat his pockets in search of a pen.

‘Here,' she handed him a pen and notepad. ‘I take it you want the estate agent's name and number.'

‘Thank you.' He took them from her.

‘It would be nice to have a police officer close by. I'd feel safe knowing that you could look up here any time and check on me.'

‘You make me sound like a peeping tom.'

She shuddered. ‘That isn't funny after what happened in the nurses' hostel this morning.'

‘What happened?'

‘You don't know?'

‘I've been in town all day.'

‘Michael Carpenter climbed up the outside wall of the nurses' hostel, this morning. Lyn heard him, opened her curtains, and saw him trying to look through her window.'

‘Poor kid,' Trevor said. ‘She must have been frightened out of her wits.'

‘Not as frightened as Michael. He lost his hold, fell and broke his neck.'

‘Dead?'

‘Very,' Jean assured him. ‘And rumour has it that your lot have stopped hunting for the killer.'

Trevor tried to think through what Jean had just told him, but the brandy on top of the wine blurred his thoughts. ‘Michael was a nice enough kid, just mixed up. I wouldn't finger him as a killer.'

‘You can never tell with obsessives,' Jean the professional said. ‘They can get peculiar notions unconnected with their original fixations.'

‘You nursed him. Do you think he could be the killer?' Trevor asked.

‘I've been looking at everyone sideways since they dug up the first body. Including the gardener, who's sixty if he's a day. I can't tell you if Michael was a murderer, but I'll still be carrying this.' Jean reached for her handbag and tipped its contents on to the cushion. She picked up a can of cheap body-spray. ‘Better than mace and it's not classed an offensive weapon. I also have this.' She rummaged through the mess and pulled out a rape alarm.

‘Just make sure you don't go anywhere alone,' Trevor warned. ‘And that includes the hospital corridors.'

‘No one's going to have a go at me. I've read up on the psychology of victims. Most announce their vulnerability in the way they walk, the way they… '

‘Don't you believe it,' Trevor broke in. ‘One of the victims was a nurse. And everyone remembers her as being a very efficient, together sort of person.'

‘Including me. That's if the rumours flying round the wards are true. You have found Elizabeth Moore?'

‘No formal identifications had been made when I left the hospital this morning.' Trevor drank the remaining brandy in his glass. ‘Do you mind if I call a taxi now?'

‘Yes.' Jean looked at him and saw the edge of excitement in his eyes. ‘You're working, aren't you? Undercover, in the hospital.'

‘No,' Trevor shook his head.

‘Yes, you are,' she contradicted.

‘Do you think I got myself into this mess,' he looked down at his battered legs, ‘just to go undercover inside the hospital? Besides, I was there before they found the first body.'

‘Harry Goldman wanted to release you a week ago.'

‘A week ago there was no murder hunt, and I wasn't ready to be released.'

‘You've made a rapid recovery.'

‘That's down to a kind nurse who befriended me in a pub, and reminded me that some people have a social life,' he glanced around the room. ‘And live graciously in comfort, luxury and beauty.'

She moved closer to him. ‘It's kind of you to say so.' Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.

His senses reeled. He was engulfed in the warm, moist, sensual feel of her mouth caressing his. He closed his eyes, and attempted to kiss her back, fighting to make the embrace an equal effort, trying to give her something of himself, before he became totally lost, overwhelmed by her rich musky perfume, the urgency and blatant sexuality of her caresses.

She pulled back, away from him for a moment. Seconds later, her naked arm brushed against his cheek as her hands closed once more around his neck. He looked down and saw that she had shed the silk blouse she'd been wearing. He stared at the half globes of her tanned breasts, the nipples hardening as she thrust herself against him.

‘We could go into the bedroom,' she nuzzled his ear.

‘Jean, I… ' he faltered, embarrassed by the injuries that had drained his strength. For the first time since Mags had left him, a woman had undressed for him, yet he felt no more than a flicker of lust that could have been roused by a quick glance at one of the soft porn magazines that littered the station.

Jean leaned past him to press a button on the coffee table. The lights dimmed and the drapes swished together. Before she embraced him again, she sloughed off the remainder of her clothes. She unbuttoned his shirt and flies, and he allowed her to undress him, feeling as though he was back on the ward at the General. The nurses there had dressed and undressed him because he'd been too weak to do so himself, but when Jean's hand slipped down between his naked thighs he realised that he was well and truly out of hospital. That she had succeeded in arousing passions within him that he had almost believed dead.