Last to Leave

by Clare Curzon

  ‘Oh, keep going, you silly bitch,’ Marion hissed between her teeth. ‘It wasn’t a heavy dose.’

  ‘Dose.’ The darkened hill above was lurching up and down, swinging in on her and then away. She had never been as drunk as this in her life, even when …

  ‘I can’t. Must – lie – down.’

  ‘Have I got to drag you?’

  Marion let her collapse at the foot of a tree. Her face, where it slid down the bark, opened with a jagged tear. In the light of her torch the other woman examined her closely. ‘You can do it. You know you can. You won’t be beaten by a little climb like this. Where’s your spirit, woman? Tell yourself to do this; if it’s the last thing you do.’

  ‘Drink,’ came the whisper.

  ‘There isn’t any more.’

  ‘Poi – son.’

  The answering laugh was rich with malice. ‘Only the rape-date drug. You should be so lucky at your age, dear Mama! And in six hours not a trace will remain. They’ll just find a broken old doll who tumbled out of the train and rolled down the embankment. Those slam-door trains should have been out of service years ago.

  ‘But then, when you’re found -“The old girl was in trouble with the police, wasn’t she? Maybe she couldn’t take the backwash of what she’d done.”

  ‘Gus rang me about the malicious phone call. They’d guessed it was you. Who else knew where Matthew’s car would be at that time? But you were wrong about Jake.

  ‘Come on, stir yourself. See the starlight up there? That’s where you’re heading. Maybe someone will see you on the track and you can get away. It’s your only remaining hope.’

  Claudia felt herself pulled to her feet again, an arm encircling her waist. Rag doll, someone had said just now – or maybe it was a long time back. That’s what she was, sagging, forced onwards and upwards, her cotton-wool legs mechanically finding ground, but her knees gone to mush.

  Beside her someone’s heavy breathing was offensive. Like a pursuing bear she’d had nightmares of as a child. She had to get away. Uphill. Not be feeble.

  It took an effort, but she could make it. Between the darker trees the open air ahead was jolting nearer. If she reached that level she’d be safe.

  23

  At the St. John’s Wood address Salmon found the house in darkness. He pulled into the kerb, deciding to wait for Arnold to join him.

  It was a tall, rather narrow building with two front gables and a large garden allowed to run rather wild. It stood to reason, with a job like hers she wouldn’t be at home a lot, lecturing at the university in term time then going off on expeditions. She must be worth a few pennies to afford a place like this. Anywhere of any size in a decent neighbourhood could command an astronomical price at the moment.

  She could be anywhere in the world. Salmon imagined the leathery face framed in the fur of her parka hood, eyebrows and chin silvered with frost as she grimly plodded the Antarctic ice floes. Or did she only go for solid rock? What was a geophysicist anyway?

  A rum job for a woman, even if she wasn’t all that feminine. Not the sort to provide a good slap-up meal at Christmas. But then she didn’t go rabbiting on like some women. She knew how to stay stumm.

  It could be she’d have something short and sharp to say at the idea of having her house searched. Not that he had a warrant. It would be a case of asking nicely. So he’d leave that to the Met man. It was the other one’s patch, and a bloody wild-goose chase of Yeadings’ anyway. If she even chose to turn up.

  Arnold arrived twenty minutes after Salmon, locked his car and knocked on the Thames man’s window. Salmon let him in, sourly noticed the disguise of peppermint on the man’s breath and was reminded he’d had neither food nor drink for a good six hours. His stomach rumbled hollowly at the thought.

  ‘It’s a no-go,’ he said. ‘We’ll give it half an hour, then call it a day.’

  So Sod’s Law operated. The silver Nissan appeared just five minutes short of knocking-off time, and they were obliged to go through with the farce.

  She wasn’t a big woman and her shoes were size five and a half. There was no point in taking any of them back.

  Infrared goggles? She appeared amused. ‘I’m not in the SAS, constable. No doubt they could turn up a pair in the department at UCL, if you really need some. I thought the Met would have something of that kind themselves.’

  Arnold didn’t care for the put-down treatment, so, instead of peeling off and letting Salmon get back home, he wanted to examine her car. It took all Salmon’s glowering pulling of rank to dissuade him. By which time the inspector was ready to phone Control and put in a negative report, in case Yeadings was hanging on for news.

  It wasn’t until a little after midnight that a querulous voice was put through from a private number at Cooden Beach, demanding whether Mrs Carlton Dellar was still being questioned. Night duty sergeant Bill Thomson had no information on the matter.

  Carlton explained. ‘An Inspector Salmon asked her to call in yesterday and she left here mid-morning. She should be back by now. She went up by train, you see. On a day ticket. So it would be out of date by now. She wouldn’t have cared to waste it.’

  ‘Right, sir. But I expect you’ll find she did decide to stay over. Why don’t you ring around her friends and find out who she’s with.’

  ‘She wouldn’t do that. There’s nobody she would drop in on like that. And in any case, if she changed her plans she would have rung me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. It has nothing to do with us. I’ve looked her up in the visitors’ book and she was checked out at five-fifty.’

  The thin voice bleated on. An old chap, and more than a tad peevish from the sound of him. Not surprising that his good lady seized the chance for a few hours off the leash. Sergeant Thomson sighed, tempering tact with firmness, and got rid of the caller.

  A note beside the woman’s name showed that her visit related to the murder inquiry for which Superintendent Yeadings was SIO. He was the one who’d spoken to her, because DI Salmon had been out.

  Better make a note of the phone call in that case. Yeadings was a stickler for having everything written down.

  It was eight-fifty next morning when the superintendent checked his desk and found the note. He looked up Carlton Dellar’s Sussex number and put in a call. Within ten minutes he had Claudia listed as a Misper.

  Beaumont, dispatched to Victoria station, made inquiries of morning travellers. ‘Wrong time of day,’ he grumbled to the uniformed man alongside him. ‘They’re all in a blethering hurry. We’ll not strike lucky until the same time she’d have been travelling last evening.’

  They drew blanks at the newsstand and coffee stall where a change of staff was on duty. ‘It’s mostly runaway kids we look for at the stations,’ said the constable disconsolately. ‘They still think the streets of London are paved with gold.’

  ‘More likely that the grass here tastes greener,’ Beaumont punned. ‘And the crack cracker.’

  ‘So what’s with this old girl then? I take it she’s not a junkie.’

  ‘Possible suspect in a double murder,’ Beaumont said gloomily. It had been Z’s idea first, he remembered: that when Sir Matthew died so dramatically, calling Claudia a murdering bitch, he might have meant it literally.

  ‘And that may turn out to have been just an accident after all.’

  ‘Less bother for everyone,’ said the constable comfortably.

  The same inquiries were being made at Warrior Square and West St. Leonards stations, at either of which Claudia might have alighted to take a cab home. Sussex police came up with the same lack of information. Railway police were searching the coaches of all trains that had run from Victoria to Hastings from 18.30 onwards. In view of recent attacks perpetrated on that line, special attention was being paid to lavatory compartments. Sniffer dogs were being employed to detect traces of human blood on doors, seats and floors. And news-hounds, alerted to possible fresh violence, were already hot on the scent.

  Carlton, d
istracted, again rang round the family in case Claudia had, incredibly, taken it into her head to go visiting instead of returning home. His call to Kate came as she was answering the door to Roger Beale arriving to report on Stone’s activities in Venice.

  She tried not to sound alarmed. ‘I’m so sorry, Carlton. No, she’s not been here. Is there anything I can do? How are you and Miranda managing?’ She listened until it seemed his spring had run down.

  Kate replaced the receiver and turned to her visitor. ‘That’s awful. Now Claudia’s gone missing,’ she told him, relieved to be free of Carlton’s complaints. If he’d wanted her to go down and look after them she’d have had to refuse. There was enough to take care of here.

  ‘There can surely be no connection …’ Beale said.

  ‘With Jess, no. But the other business – the car crash which killed Matthew and Maddie – I don’t know. It’s possible.’ She shivered. It still seemed possible to her that the Dellars were being picked off, one by one.

  ‘About your daughter,’ Roger Beale said, declining the offer of refreshments. ‘There is good news and not quite such good news.’ He explained that Stone was correct in his surmise that Jessica had been taken to his wife’s home on Lido, Venice; but she had left again under her own volition. Stone’s son, who lived there with his mother, had been quite frank about the visit, which he hadn’t properly understood but was highly suspicious of.

  ‘You say “taken”,’ Kate queried. ‘She didn’t just decide to go there on her own?’

  ‘It was something rather less than an abduction, according to the Signora. More like persuasion. But I’m sure deception was employed. And the man who arranged this was Jack Mortimer, as Mr Stone guessed.

  ‘Perhaps the Signora wouldn’t have admitted to a connection if she’d known he was wanted here for arson and the killing of young Nicholas.’

  ‘But why take Jess there, Mr Beale? What did this woman intend with her?’

  ‘She pleads it was out of curiosity, but there was certainly more. I think she would have done all she could to break up the relationship. Malicious, but not resorting to open violence. It seems she panicked when Jessica ran off, overnight, by boat.’

  ‘To go where? Surely someone’s seen her since? Or she’s been in touch?’

  ‘We know she crossed the lagoon safely, although the boat was later found wrecked. It seems she joined some other young people hitch-hiking south to Bari. Mr Stone has gone there himself now to hunt for news. There’s every reason to expect he will pick up her trail. She could, of course, have boarded a boat in the south to return to England, or tried for a flight back. In which case you could expect her home at any time.’

  As he’d said: some good news, some not quite so good. Kate didn’t know whether to feel comforted or more anxious. ‘When you’re in touch with Mr Stone,’ she said, ‘please thank him for all he’s doing, and tell him Eddie is getting stronger every day.

  ‘And now I really do insist you stay for lunch. It’s ready prepared and there’s plenty for two.’

  The retrieval of Claudia’s body owed nothing to the precautions Yeadings had set up. It happened by chance. A motorist en route from the Midlands to Haywards Heath had an urgent call of nature, pulled into the lay-by and took refuge among the trees on the start of the incline. The discovery of a human shape grotesquely sprawled some twenty feet in was enough to override his pressing need. He put out an emergency call on his mobile phone before unzipping. Sussex police, already alerted for a missing elderly woman, had a patrol car there in twelve minutes.

  PC Micky Poulsen, fresh from his college course, imagined he saw a flicker of the body’s fingers. In view of the body’s temperature and the amount of blood congealed on face and shoulders, PC Fennell, being more experienced, left him to it.

  But Micky proved right. He detected a feeble pulse; enough to have them covering her with their uniform jackets and summoning an ambulance. On arrival the senior paramedic privately thought her chances were slim, but they’d tackled worse injuries than these and won through. It had been a warm night and she was sheltered between the young trees.

  They worked on her there while PC Fennell alerted the station and Micky made his circuitous way up the embankment, properly mindful of preserving the scene. Within minutes he came crashing back down to announce that he’d found the spot where she’d hit the side of the track and started to roll. It accounted for the surface injuries and flints embedded in the soft skin of the face and arms. ‘Jumped from a moving train,’ Fennell was reporting into his mobile. ‘Or maybe got thrown.’

  There was no ID until the handbag was found by searchers on the bank. It had ended halfway down, and its leather strap was broken. Inside, together with money, a small diary, keys and handkerchief, was the return half of her train ticket. There appeared to be no doubt that she’d intended to return home as previously arranged with her husband.

  ‘I’m distinctly averse,’ Yeadings told the assembled team, ‘to believing this is another case of ill luck pursuing the Dellars. There have been instances recently of similar attacks on travellers, but I want you to approach this as a further murder attempt in the present set.

  ‘Accordingly I want details of the movements yesterday evening and night of everyone we have already been questioning. And, for a start, we’ll have Dr Marion Paige brought in for questioning.’

  He regarded his DI and the two sergeants. ‘Z, I think this one’s for you. Softly, softly. We want her to feel quite confident when she arrives.’

  ‘What about Robert Dellar?’ Salmon demanded. ‘He had the right-sized shoes.’

  ‘Good point,’ Yeadings agreed equably. ‘And he’s the lady’s fiance. Let’s have him in too. Separately, in different interview rooms. DI Salmon and DS Beaumont can sit in on both altemately.’

  ‘Not you, sir?’ Salmon queried.

  ‘I might look in later. But first I’m off to Haywards Heath to see how Claudia Dellar’s faring. She seems a tough old lady and I’m told she’s putting up a good fight. She’s barely conscious and kept incomunicado, but if I’m right about her she’ll soon be rarin’ to get her version of things aired.’

  Bright as a new brass button, Yeadings decided. He envied Sussex force their newly acquired Micky Poulsen. He sat with him in the staff dining-room of the hospital, picking over the details of the young constable’s blow-by-blow account of the discovery. ‘And the main injury, you say, was to the head?’

  ‘Above the right ear. It looked really bad, pulpy. I guess that’s partly why PC Fennell thought she was a goner. There was an awful lot of dried blood.’

  Yeadings decided he should take a look at the scene, but later. ‘Have you ever considered jumping out of a moving train?’ he asked conversationally. ‘No? Let’s do just that. We open the window, lean out and unlatch the door. Go on.’

  Delighted with the challenge, Micky picked up on it. ‘The door opens against the airflow, so it takes some holding. We jump and land, hit the flint track and roll in the direction of the train. The embankment’s steep there. We continue rolling, downhill, hit a few small obstacles and pick up some surface injuries, end against a tree trunk.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  Micky raised a hand to the side of his head. ‘I think I’m unconscious.’

  ‘Try waking up then. Change hands – since you say the woman’s main injury was to the right side of the head.’

  They stared at each other a moment. ‘It was,’ Micky insisted, recalling the sight of her. ‘Definitely the right. So …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Yeadings, ‘it needs explaining. The injury could have been caused by something other than a fall. A blow from some heavy instrument, for example.’

  The young constable waved an arm threateningly. ‘That would connect with the left side of the head. Or else the attacker was left-handed.’

  ‘Not necessarily. In my tennis days my backhand was always stronger than my forehand. I doubt anyone thought to photograph the wound in situ,
since she had to be rushed to hospital. But it may not be too late. I’ll request it when the dressings are changed. Enlargements may give us some idea of the direction of the blow.’

  ‘So it’s not an accident or attempted suicide? It’s a major crime.’ The young constable’s eyes shone. ‘And when she comes round she’ll be able to tell us who did it!’

  ‘If she comes round,’ Yeadings warned him. ‘It’s all hypothetical until then.’

  Back at Thames Valley both taped interviews were proceeding, building alibis for the previous evening and night. There were intervals, intended to be unnerving, when Salmon and Beaumont moved between the two being questioned. Meanwhile, SOCO from the Met were examining both cars at their respective houses. The results were phoned through and reached Yeadings as he arrived back at his office.

  Robert Dellar’s Vauxhall Vectra was almost suspiciously clean, but there was little chance it had been serviced overnight. He had claimed he put it in for valeting two days back and used only the Underground since.

  Dr Marion Paige’s bore signs of recent use. More to the point, a pair of green rubber boots were found under a tartan rug in the boot. Inside them were two pairs of woollen ski socks. The boot soles had traces of peaty soil. They were size eight and narrower than regular wellies.

  Time to make a move, Yeadings told himself. He collected Beaumont and presented himself in the interview room where Dr Paige, watched over by a uniformed constable, was declining vending-machine coffee. The tape was restarted, the interviewers identified themselves.

  ‘Dr Paige,’ the superintendent began pleasantly, ‘are you familiar with the workings of the barrier machines at Victoria station?’