‘DI Charley Mann,’ she said, brusquely.
‘Help me, Charley! Please, help me!’
‘Winnie? Is that you?’
‘I’m at Josephine’s house, the door was open, and she’s lying on the hallway floor, there’s blood, and broken glass.’
Charley headed for the door. ‘I’m on my way. Have you rung for the ambulance?’
Winnie was sobbing.
‘I’ll ring them. Winnie, go outside.’
‘What?’ she cried.
‘Go outside, and stay outside, do you hear me?’
Charley rushed towards Wilkie’s desk. ‘Where’s the fire?’ he asked.
‘Let Mike know we might have a job on,’ she said, edging her way to the door as she spoke. ‘I’ll get back to you asap. Annie!’ she called, ‘Where’s Ricky-Lee?’
Annie looked up from her computer and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Find him now! If he’s at the bookies, he’s a dead man walking. I want you both at Josephine’s cottage now!’
Charley ran down the steps of the police station two at a time. ‘I need a uniform car blue-lighting its way to Bramble Cottage, Cow Lane, Marsden,’ she said to the Control Room operator on her phone as she explained en route what Winnie had told her.
Charley drove at speed. She was concerned not only for Josephine, but for Winnie, too. Unusually for her, she sounded her car horn aggressively, and flashed the car’s lights at anyone or anything that was in her way. She could hear sirens in the distance behind her, and somehow the sound comforted her, and she hoped that the women at Bramble Cottage could hear them approaching, too.
Charley created a swirl of dust as she screeched to a halt outside the old cottage. Running down the path she could see Winnie, shaking uncontrollably, tears running down her cheeks; she looked frantic, helpless, old and frail.
Charley grabbed hold of her and held her tight. ‘It’s okay,’ Charley said, like a mother comforting a child. ‘I’m here now, and can you hear the sirens? Help is on the way. Are you okay?’ she said, watching as the paramedics’ car rocked from side to side as it made its way down the unmade stony road towards them.
‘I’m okay. Please Charley, go see to Josephine. She’s not good.’ Charley approached the door to the cottage quickly but cautiously. Inside she could see Josie on her back, her right leg twisted beneath her. As Winnie had reported, there was indeed broken glass and blood splashes on the wall, and on the floor nearby. On her haunches, the SIO checked Josephine for a pulse. It was faint, but there was no doubting she was still alive. She motioned for the paramedics to join her and put in another call, ‘Can you get hold of Neal Rylatt, CSI supervisor?’ she said to the Control Operator. ‘I need him at the Cow Lane scene.’
While the paramedics worked on helping Josie, an ambulance arrived. Charley sat with Winnie in her car. She bent over and took the old woman’s hand in hers. ‘She’s alive,’ she said. ‘We’ll follow them to the hospital.’
Seeing Annie’s car arrive at the cottage, with Ricky-Lee in the passenger seat, Charley gave Winnie a bottle of water. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Sip this. I won’t be a minute.’
Ricky-Lee looked shifty. ‘I won’t ask you where you’ve been, but be assured I will find out,’ his boss whispered in his ear, as he got out of the car.
Charley turned to Annie as they walked towards the cottage, ‘I guess Control will have filled you in. CSI is on the way. We don’t know what happened, so I am treating it as a crime scene. Make sure they swab the blood, and get glass samples, will you?’
‘Do you think someone tried to stop her talking to us?’ Annie said, straining to see the scene from the doorway.
‘I don’t know, but until we do, we will treat it as suspicious.’ Charley’s eyes were drawn to a posy of flowers on the floor, by the coat stand.
Annie followed the SIO’s eyes. ‘Is that one of Lily’s?’ she said.
‘Have it photographed and seized,’ said Charley. ‘I’m taking Winnie to the hospital to have her checked out. Are you okay with everything here? I’ll contact Mike to join you.’
‘I’ll take her, if that helps?’ said Annie.
Charley looked over her shoulder at the old lady waiting in her car, and her heartstrings pulled her chest tight. ‘No, no, this is something I need to do,’ she said.
Ricky-Lee was speaking to a paramedic, as they put Josephine’s neck in a brace, and fitted an oxygen mask over her face before she was lifted into the back of the ambulance.
‘Tell me,’ said Charley, ‘Where did you find him?’ as she nodded over to Ricky-Lee.
Annie smiled. ‘Not where you think. If he had been there, I’d have decked him for you. Nevertheless, love’s young dream was where he shouldn’t have been while he was on duty… letting his trousers rule his head!’
Chapter 43
Charley flashed her warrant card at the receptionist in A&E and explained the situation. Winnie’s breathing was erratic, her lips pale, her skin clammy to the touch.
‘I’m fine,’ Winnie protested.
‘Humour me; I want someone to check you over. She’s had one of these turns before…’ Charley told the receptionist.
A nurse ushered them into a cubicle and pulled on the curtain.
‘Considering the shock you’ve just had, your symptoms are only natural,’ said the doctor, in a calming, kindly voice as he examined the old lady. When he’d finished he turned round to face Charley. ‘Everything thing seems okay, but I suggest you take her for a cup of tea and a bite to eat in the cafeteria, and I’ll let the nurse know where you are, so she can send someone to update you on her friend’s condition.’
Charley offered Winnie her arm, and she accepted it gratefully. ‘My head feels like I’ve been on a bender,’ she said, as they walked at a slow pace down the hospital corridor.
‘What are you like?’ Charley replied, feeling Winnie’s hand sweating in the crook of her arm. ‘I can’t imagine you on a bender!’
Winnie stopped to get her breath. ‘You young ’uns think you have the monopoly on the good times. Thankfully no one can take away my memories.’
Charley looked down at the smaller woman at her side, and squeezed her hand, knowing Winnie was thinking of Charley’s dad, Jack.
‘Josie was an orphan, you know. She told me that she had been left on the steps of St Anne’s Church as a baby. How anyone could do that I’ll never know. She came to my school when she was adopted. We’ve been the best of friends for over sixty years.’
Winnie sat in the cafe, staring blankly at the untouched toast and pot of jam on her plate, when Charley put down the phone to Mike whom she’d rung to update.
‘An orphan, you said?’
‘Yes, and no wonder she took a tumble, her head was full of talk of her adoption when I saw her last. It has weighed heavily on her mind lately,’ Winnie said.
‘Why now I wonder?’ said Charley.
Winnie shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t think she ever got over finding her adoption papers in her father’s documents when he died suddenly. It affected her that much she put everything on hold, even her work, to concentrate on her personal search to find her real parents’ identities, but even with her vast experience of historical archives and research, she found nothing. I know it was her greatest wish to find out her origins before she died.’ Winnie sighed. ‘Now it might be too late.’ A lone tear ran slowly down her cheek, which she brushed aside.
The news from the neurosurgeon concerning Josie’s condition was not good. Hearing it from the specialist nurse seemed to make Winnie’s sorrow a little easier to bear. The cafeteria was almost deserted, and the nurse thought about moving her to a private office, but it was less formal here, and Charley considered it was all right to talk to Winnie where she was sitting.
‘Your friend is very poorly,’ nurse said, when she sat at the table beside her. She held Winnie’s shaking hand, as she delivered the devastating news that an operation was not an option. ‘All we can do is ma
ke her comfortable as we can, and ensure that she isn’t in any pain.’
‘Is she going to die?’ Winnie asked, aware of what the answer would be.
‘That I can’t tell you, but what I do know is that she is in good hands. The best, in fact.’
Winnie’s eyes were hollows in her face. ‘Can I see her? There isn’t anyone else.’ Her question was more of a plea.
The nurse looked up at Charley to see her reaction. She responded by briefly closing her eyes and nodding her head. At that moment, she was filled with admiration for the nurse: so gentle, so sympathetic, so kind. Nursing indeed was a vocation.
‘I shouldn’t really,’ she said, ‘family only, but come with me, I’ll see what I can do.’
Charley held back the tears as she looked at Winnie broken by the news of her childhood friend and wondered how it was that a heart that had held a lifetime of love didn’t break.
With the nurse by her side, Charley stood outside in the corridor and watched as Winnie talked to her sleeping friend. They saw Winnie cry, then laugh through her tears, and all the time she held on tightly to her friend’s hand, which lay upon the crisp white bed sheet.
Charley leaned towards the nurse. ‘Do you think Josie can hear her?’ she whispered.
The nurse swallowed hard. ‘I know she can,’ she said, putting an arm around Charley’s shoulder and squeezing her tightly. ‘This will be a great comfort for them both.’
‘You have a way with words, a proper angel,’ Charley said.
‘Me, an angel?’ the nurse chuckled. ‘My mum might not agree with you… I understand that Josie hadn’t seen a doctor in the last month?’ she then asked, seeking confirmation.
Charley shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘When she passes, we won’t be able to release the body straightaway. There will have to be a post-mortem,’ she said to Charley. ‘Local pathologist, but, as you know, if they discover any issues it will be stopped, and a Home Office pathologist called.’
Charley nodded her understanding. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell Winnie, she’ll understand.’
As the nurse walked away for a moment to speak to the staff nurse in charge, Charley went to kneel by her friend’s side. Charley reached for her hand and Winnie held it tight.
After a while the two stood as the nurse had signalled that it was time to leave, but as they turned to do so, the alarm monitors around Josie’s bedside starting bleeping loudly. The nurse and staff nurse were quickly alongside them, and Charley and Winnie were ushered outside. They turned the monitors off, and continued to check Josie’s vital signs.
‘She’s gone, hasn’t she?’ Winnie wept.
Charley comforted her.
‘I’m so pleased I was able to say goodbye,’ Winnie sobbed.
* * *
The next day Charley stood on the step of Winnie’s house and knocked at the door. She was glad she could give her the findings of the post-mortem, which showed that there were no extenuating circumstances in her friend’s accident. It appeared that Josie had slipped on the bottom stone step, and in doing so, had fractured her skull badly and become unconscious. It was an injury from which she could never have recovered.
* * *
On the day of the funeral, Winnie checked herself in the mirror for the tenth time. Black gloves in her hand, she wore black shoes on her feet. Funerals were sad affairs. She looked out of her lounge front window, to see Charley arriving.
‘You know what makes me really sad,’ she said, when Charley asked her how she was feeling. ‘I hate to think that Josie will go to her grave never knowing who her mother and father were. If there is one wish that I could have granted her, it was that she knew the answer to that.’
The service at St Anne’s Church was quiet and moving. It had been Josie’s wish to be buried in the graveyard, where she felt she belonged.
Following the service, and back in her office, Charley sat for a moment with her thoughts. Her black wool hat coat hung behind her door. She felt drained. Mike Blake put his head around the door, before walking in. ‘They’re already taking deposits for the new detached houses in the grounds of the old Crownest estate,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy one?’
Charley shook her head. ‘Let’s hope the occupants have better luck, and more happiness than those who lived on the land in the past,’ she replied. Her voice was flat. She sat up in her chair and turned her head to the computer screen.
Mike sat down opposite her. He was smiling.
‘What’ve you got to smile about?’ Charley said.
‘I have news, I had a call from Eira at Forensics whilst you were out. We can rule out Catherine as the body in the cellar.’
‘How come?’ she said.
‘According to her, the comparison of the DNA taken from Mrs Dinah Hayfield, the lady who inherited Crownest from her cousin, Adam Alderman, shows that the skeleton in the cellar is definitely not Catherine,’ he said. ‘They know that because there is no family DNA match between Catherine’s daughter, and the skeletal remains.’
Charley took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I guess we’re going to have to accept that the body in the cellar still remains a mystery.’
‘Feel sad?’ Mike asked.
‘A little, I hate being beaten.’ Charley wrinkled her nose. ‘On another note, do you think the posy that was retrieved from the floor in Josie’s house was made by Lily? It does seem remarkably similar to the one in her home, and the ones that Lily leaves on the graves at St Anne’s.’
‘I wonder if that’s where Lily was going when she left here? To see her childhood pal, after feeling unable to contact her whilst her adoptive father was alive? But why would she?’
‘We’ll go visit her in a while. Ask her about the posy, just for peace of mind.’
* * *
Sunlight was streaming through the stained glass window, directly onto the photograph of Lucinda Alderman that Lily Pritchard held in her hand. She stroked the pagan necklace, the one that the detectives had shown her, taken from the Crownest skeleton, that was hanging around Lucinda’s neck in the picture. In her lap, Lucinda was cradling a young baby. Lily stroked her finger over the photograph. She felt glad that Josie had got to see the photograph of her mother before she died. After a moment or two, Lily carefully slid the photograph back behind the picture of Father Michael O’Doherty, before she put the frame back on the table where it belonged. On reflection, was the true reason that she had not sought out Josie for all these years actually not Josie’s adoptive parents fault, but in fact her misplaced loyalty to her birth father Connor? Because by speaking to Lily about the past, had she feared it would open a can of worms for the church and her own family?
Lily had finally made peace with her old childhood playmate, the one who had questioned her beloved Connor’s inappropriate acts, and the pictures he took. Who’d have guessed that Lily would be the last person who Josie would see? She was glad she had told Josie what Agnes had told her – at least Josie could rest in peace knowing who her parents were. She prayed to God that Lucinda, Josie’s mother, was waiting for her daughter in heaven.
* * *
Charley sat still for a while whilst she was on the telephone to Eira from Forensics.
She had written down what Eira had told her, but Charley kept reading it back several times to take in the enormity of it.
The blood found on the knife that had killed the female skeleton held familial DNA to that of Dinah Hayfield. Acting on instinct Charley instructed a DNA test for Josie to also find a match.
‘We knew that it was likely that Lucinda was Josie’s mother but to have it confirmed by DNA that Seth Alderman was her father is just incredible?’ gasped Charley.
‘In all my career, I have never seen such a fascinating catalogue of events unfold,’ Eira said, ‘I’d run the skeleton’s DNA through our database so many times without a hit, that I literally could not believe it when Josie’s DNA turned out to be a match!’
‘You’re a
legend!’ Charley said, ‘That’s two drinks I owe you.’
‘I’m just glad to be of assistance.’ Charley could tell Eira’s smile was wide by the tone of her voice, and she was as pleased for Dinah who had found out about her Alderman roots, as well as coming inheritance, and Winnie who had realised a dream for her friend to see a photograph of her mother before she died. It was just a shame that Josie would never know her true parentage.
A lump rose in Charley’s throat as she tried to imagine the unimaginable – not knowing her parents or her grandparents. The thought made the blood run cold through her veins. Another thought struck her. Could it have been Lucinda who placed her daughter, Josie, on the steps of St Anne’s Church, knowing that her parents would look after the baby? Even though Lucinda had decided to go back to Seth, she may not have been sure it was safe to take the baby. Did the occupants of the collective church buildings know all along that the child was not an orphan, but Lucinda and Seth’s child? Had they tried, in good faith, to protect her from the Aldermans’ curse?
Ricky-Lee tapped on her door. Charley invited him in, but before he entered, he glanced over his shoulder, and the SIO looked through her window into the CID office where the rest of the team were egging him on.
‘I heard you wanted to see me, and I think I need to clear the air, boss,’ Ricky-Lee said, head bowed. ‘I was out of order, visiting Molly when I should have been working,’ he said. ‘I apologise. I totally understand if you want to send me back into uniform, but I really want to stay.’
Charley leaned back in her chair, hands in her lap. ‘How often have you heard the saying that the next phone call, or enquiry, could detect a crime?’ Charley said.
Ricky-Lee’s expression turned from downcast to bewilderment. ‘Pardon?’ he said.
‘Would you say that a bit of luck was often the key to solving a crime?’
‘As well as hard work,’ he replied.
Charley sat up, and picked up the phone. ‘Tell Mike I need to speak to him, will you?’
Condemned Page 30
