by James Andrew
‘Did you strike out at Emma?’ Peacock said.
‘I most certainly did not.’
Then Amelia burst into tears, and Blades wondered if this was the last weapon in her armoury. They had her backed into a corner but all they could do was watch her weep. And she still wasn’t telling them what they wanted to know.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
‘What’s this you’ve been upsetting Amelia about?’ Thomas Root’s voice was indignant, his expression authoritative.
Blades glowered in return, as did Peacock.
Thomas had burst in on their interview. As it was taking place in Thomas’s own parlour, he could not be refused entry. Perhaps Amelia’s sobs had been intended as a cry to him.
‘It’s my job to ask questions,’ Blades replied.
‘And the questions are simple,’ Peacock said. ‘It’s answers that can be difficult.’
Before Thomas had the chance to shout as his expression suggested he was about to do, Blades exerted his own authority. He might as well put pressure on Thomas too, as he was there. ‘We know you were having a flirtation with Louisa, Emma had found out about this, and decided to face both you and your wife with it.’
Thomas’s mouth had been open, ready to speak, but he shut it. When he did speak, all he said was, ‘Do you?’
‘It must have been an awkward scene.’
‘Is that when you struck out at Emma and killed her?’ Peacock asked.
Thomas considered his options before speaking.
‘Strike her? I didn’t do that. I don’t know how she died, if she did, or why she disappeared. That has nothing to do with me.’
‘It was quite an argument between the three of you,’ Blades said. ‘And just before Emma disappeared. A coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’
‘All right, all right,’ Thomas replied, and there was a look of defeat on his face. ‘There was an argument. You’re right about that – and that’s it.’
Amelia had stopped sobbing immediately when Thomas appeared. There was consternation on her face now, as if she could not work out what ploy to try next. Blades gave her a commanding look. ‘Mrs Root, we would like to talk to Thomas on his own now.’
Amelia looked questioningly at Thomas.
‘It’s all right,’ he said to her. Then, after a pause while she seemed to be working out whether to do this or not, she departed, with a baffled expression on her face, but also some relief.
Blades turned back to Thomas. ‘So, tell us about it,’ he said.
The anger had left Thomas’s face.
‘Louisa?’ he replied.
‘That’s correct,’ Blades said.
Then, with reluctance, Thomas started to answer the question. ‘I’d been having a bit of fun,’ Thomas said. ‘That’s all.’ Then he stopped.
‘Go on,’ Blades said.
‘It wasn’t supposed to lead to anything,’ Thomas replied. ‘Really.’ And his eyes appealed to be believed. ‘A flirtation. You don’t know Louisa the way I do. If you did, you would realise it was, as it were, passing the time. Harmless.’ Then Thomas stopped talking and Blades had the impression he could not believe what he had said.
‘She didn’t matter, in other words?’ Peacock said.
Thomas glared at Peacock before replying. ‘That’s not what I meant. You don’t get it. She was up for it. She started it. She harassed me.’
‘I see,’ Blades said, not that he did.
Thomas looked from one to the other as if looking for help somewhere. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘I mean. You’re men. You understand.’
But all they did was look back.
‘Don’t you? Well, you should. It was joking about. That was all.’
‘And did your wife agree with that when Emma told her?’ Peacock asked.
Thomas ignored that. ‘You know what women are like,’ Thomas said, looking at Blades. ‘Of course she didn’t. She was livid. I could have killed Emma.’ Then Thomas stopped, as he realised what he had just said.
‘And did you?’ Blades asked.
‘I mean. I don’t mean – oh, it’s an expression. That’s all. Of course, I didn’t.’
‘So, where is she, sir?’ Blades asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Thomas replied, and he spread his arms wide. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated. And he looked from one to the other, before again saying, ‘I don’t know. I tell you. I don’t.’
‘Did Amelia strike Emma?’ Blades asked.
‘Of course she didn’t.’
‘She could have struck out,’ Peacock said, ‘just meaning to give her a bit of a slap.’
‘Or you could,’ Blades said.
‘Just to make her stop talking, that was all,’ Peacock added.
‘Only it went further than that – somehow, didn’t it?’ Blades said.
‘No. No. It wasn’t like that.’
‘So, tell us what it was like,’ Blades said.
‘We just argued. I had to explain myself to Amelia. It was embarrassing. And Amelia was furious. She fairly lashed at me with her tongue, I can tell you. I’ll have to behave myself in future.’
‘So, she was grateful to Emma for telling her,’ Peacock said.
‘She wasn’t grateful for anything at the time. I’ll swear she had no idea before then. That Emma. What she was getting up to with that Alfred Duggan, and she has the nerve to rat on me. And it was about nothing.’
‘You were angry with Emma?’ Blades said.
Root retreated into silence again for a moment or two as he grappled with that question.
‘Of course, I was angry with her, but I don’t suppose I should have been flirting with Louisa in the first place. That wasn’t something I would take out on Emma.’
‘When you’ve time to think about it, you see that,’ Blades said, ‘but in the heat of the moment?’
‘No. No. No. I didn’t do anything to Emma, I tell you.’
And Thomas Root was now completely backed into a corner, and Blades could tell he was not going to get past those denials, but he would continue questioning him.
‘How long did the argument last?’
Thomas thought about that. ‘That’s difficult to say. Half an hour, I suppose, to talk it through with Emma. Fending off Amelia’s accusations took at least the rest of the day.’
‘When did you leave Birtleby?’
‘We were supposed to leave at ten.’
‘In your statement that was when you said you left.’
‘Was it? And we would have done if–’ Thomas now had to think things through again. ‘Well, it held us up. I don’t know. I didn’t look at the clock. We might have left – when? – about eleven, maybe after that.’
‘So, the argument must have lasted about an hour?’ Blades said.
A defeated look was on Thomas’s face again.
‘If you say so.’
‘It still doesn’t take six hours to travel to Ramshead from Birtleby.’
‘I told you what we were doing in that time.’
‘Were you disposing of a body? Were you cleaning up at the house to hide traces of a scuffle and a murder?’ Blades asked.
‘Of course not,’ Thomas said. ‘And you can’t prove that either.’
‘Not at the moment,’ Blades said. ‘But we will need a new statement from you, and from Amelia.’
‘I liked Emma,’ Thomas said. ‘She was a good sort. A bit of a goody-goody-two-shoes, and not half judgemental when she felt like it. But she was young. What do you expect? No experience of the world. She was a well-meaning sort. Not that she needed to worry about Louisa. But I could see why she might. And Emma wasn’t half a good worker. And she had a good way with the customers. And everybody. I liked the girl. I wouldn’t kill her. And neither would Amelia.’
Blades forced patience on himself. He had heard denials like these before, but, if he could turn up some vestige of proof, then he might force a confession out of Thomas – or even Amelia. He had not dismissed her either.
CHAP
TER THIRTY-FIVE
As the search for the missing body had continued in Birtleby, the sky had turned into a mass of brooding clouds that unleashed rain with what felt like venom; drains overloaded, with pools of water stretching out from them; and water ran in rivers from gutters on roofs, all of which made the work increasingly arduous. Boots tramped through muddy puddles, rain dripped from helmets and found its way past coat collars, but constables still probed into back yards and through middens.
For the moment, Blades was standing in his office with Peacock beside him, staring out at the weather.
‘That’ll play havoc with any evidence they come across,’ he said.
‘It won’t melt parts of a body,’ Peacock replied.
‘It’ll destroy any other traces they might find beside them.’
‘We might not need anything else.’
Blades just grunted in reply to that.
Searches were still ongoing between Birtleby and Ramshead as well. Hopes had been raised by some bones, but they had turned out to be animal. Constables had been drafted in from other areas; overtime rotas had been plundered; money had been borrowed from other budgets, and Blades could quite see why Moffat wanted a result or an end to all of this. The searchers’ patience was being stretched, and tempers were fraying as eyes peered, and sticks overturned. On top of everything else, newspaper reporters had started to turn up in unprecedented droves.
The rain continued to thunder down as the weather and the mood became gloomier. Then something was found, and Blades and Peacock were called out to inspect it.
It had been discovered in a midden between two rows of workers’ terraced cottages. Rubbish was brought here before being collected by town trucks. The place was a tumble of bags and bins, the detritus of everyday. Like any such collection of unwanted things it had a random feel to it, as if everything was only here by accident, but there was now an area that had been purposefully marked off, and was being guarded by not one but two constables still with rain dripping from helmets and capes. Peacock had his camera out and ready. Blades’ eyes peered ahead of him eagerly. He came level with the first constable.
‘So, where is it?’
The constable pointed directly behind him.
Blades found himself looking at a pile of empty tins.
‘Is this it?’
‘Over there,’ the constable said, pointing again.
And Blades saw it. There was a recognizable pattern to that arrangement of bones and torn flesh, and it was human; it was a hand.
Blades muttered. Peacock swore. Both of them stared.
‘Could be a woman’s hand,’ Blades said.
‘Or a child’s?’
‘I hope not,’ Blades said. ‘That would mean another victim.’
‘The pathologist will tell us.’
Blades’ eyes searched all around the midden.
‘I suppose this has all been sifted through,’ Blades said to the constable.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you find clothing, or anything else that might suggest a connection with this?’
The constable shook his head.
‘It’ll all have to be sifted through again.’
Oh yes, Blades thought. They would peer for anything else that might give a clue to the identity of the owner of the hand, or the identity of the person who had left it there. Peacock started taking his photographs of the hand in situ, then the greater scene, while Blades pondered his calmness. Peacock was looking at a human hand, unattached to anything, with total professional detachment, when all Blades could feel was horror.
Had the murderer taken the time and trouble to scatter Emma around in various places, a piece at a time? Why? To make it more difficult to find the body, or identify it? If he had completed the task in different places, it ought to make it easier to find someone who had seen him. The killer would have worked that out. Unless he had dumped Emma in one spot, and this hand had been dragged about by some animal. Blades glared at it. They would bag it, have it studied in a lab, and find out as much as they could from it. Blades pondered his assumption that the culprit was a ‘he’. Then he returned to the idea this body part had been brought here by an animal. That would mean the rest of Emma could be somewhere in this general area. Blades would make sure efforts were redoubled.
He became aware of how dark his mood was. This was a triumph, more proof of murder as insisted on by Moffat, and he ought to have been cheerful, but he was still looking at a dismembered hand.
It was then that he noticed the break in the clouds above Birtleby. There was a patch of sky that was lighter just over there. Blades could only hope that held meaning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The report on the hand had come in. Blades and Peacock had both read it by now and Peacock was standing by Blades’ desk so they could discuss it.
‘Moffat can’t drop the inquiry now,’ Peacock said.
‘It’s definitely murder,’ Blades said. ‘And, at some point, we’ll turn up the rest of that body.’
‘And then we’ll know who the murderer is?’
‘Have we dismissed any suspects?’
‘Not that Duggan.’
‘And the Roots look increasingly shifty.’
‘And there’s Russell Parkes.’
‘Whom we’ve to steer clear of,’ Blades said, ‘which we can do, though it won’t stop us investigating, and if we find proof Russell did this, Moffat can take a running jump.’
Blades looked at the report again and frowned.
‘Definitely the hand of a female of Emma’s age. About a week since death is the estimate, which fits in with the time of her disappearance. There are marks that suggest an animal has been at the hand. It’s probably been taken from a pile of other parts, which means the rest shouldn’t be far off even if no one has turned them up yet.’ Blades frowned again. ‘So, you’re definitely dead, Emma,’ he said, and there was a heaviness in his voice.
‘We knew that,’ Peacock said.
‘We could have hoped we were wrong,’ Blades said. ‘We can’t now.’
He continued to look at the report, then pushed it away from him. He took out a Woodbine and lit it. It was something to do while he thought, not that thinking was getting him anywhere. ‘There’s nothing resembling proof against Russell Parkes. We’ve no more against Duggan, and what we have is insufficient. And there’s certainly not enough against the Roots.’
‘Perhaps Musgrave will turn up with more information against someone.’
‘There’s a cheerful thought,’ Blades said, and a thoughtful look came over his face. ‘Or Duggan might,’ he said. ‘Duggan came forward twice with information against Parkes.’
‘And took the chance to ask questions about the course of the investigation.’
‘When someone is being as helpful and inquisitive as that, you do wonder. Is he our culprit?’
‘It has been known,’ Peacock said.
‘There was the Higgins case in London,’ Blades replied. ‘A young woman killed, Higgins a caring teacher and friend who went out of his way to help with the inquiry – or steer it away from himself if he could. It turned out that not only had he murdered that young woman but there was another in his spare bedroom he’d killed since then.’
‘I remember that one,’ Peacock said.
‘What do we really know about Duggan?’
‘Don’t we know quite a lot? They must have investigated him pretty thoroughly before charging him with bigamy.’
Blades reached to the shelf above him for a file and took it down. He leafed through several pages, then muttered to himself. He straightened up and leaned back in his chair. Looking directly at Peacock, he asked him, ‘What did you really make of him in those interviews?’
Peacock gave this some thought. ‘Untrustworthy?’
‘Did he come across as a bit irrational?’
‘I don’t think so. Was he?’
‘If he’s come forward with information to distract us, how
stupid does he think we are?’
‘A lot of people underestimate the police, criminals anyway.’
‘He started off by saying he hadn’t seen Emma for three weeks before she disappeared, then came forward and admitted he’d seen her just the day before, without any pressure from us. I’m trying to follow the reasoning there.’
‘He knew we were asking around and would probably find out?’
‘Maybe. Then he was the one who came forward with information Russell Parkes had been seeing Emma.’
‘Musgrave did as well.’
‘Where did Musgrave get his information from?’ Blades asked. ‘He wouldn’t say. But they were both right. Parkes was seeing Emma.’
‘And they both suggested a motive for Parkes. Parkes had gambling debts.’
‘And Duggan said Emma was coming into money. Did we ever get that inheritance confirmed?’ Blades said.
‘Good point.’
‘Not that it made any sense even if Emma was coming into money. She didn’t have it yet. What benefit is that to Parkes? Either Parkes is muddled in his thinking or Duggan is. And bigamy. That’s a funny game, and difficult not to get caught out on it. How sensibly did Duggan go about that?’ Blades leafed through the papers in front of him again. ‘Not very. Second wife not at the other end of the country – in the next town, which was only a few miles away.’
‘Not the most intelligent of men?’
A thought occurred to Blades. ‘What was Duggan’s war record?’ He leafed through the papers again. ‘It’s not mentioned here.’
‘Did he fight?’
‘Was he wounded? Shellshock? What was he like before the war? Was he anything like he was after it?’
‘They’re good questions, sir.’
‘Or not. Perhaps he’s just annoyed me. I don’t like having my inquiries being led by someone else.’
‘Musgrave was suggesting the same things Duggan was.’
Blades’ look was dismissive.
‘He’s a journalist. He’s looking for stories. I doubt if he even cares if they’re true, just believable. But Duggan, what does go on there?’
