Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mary Feakins took one look at her husband’s face as he hobbled out of the police station at Berebury and made for their car. She waited while he parted from Simon Puckle – apparently without saying very much – and then she hurried round to open the front passenger door and help him in. As he lowered himself with great care onto the car seat she asked breathlessly, ‘Well, how did it go?’

  ‘I think the police believe I’ve made away with Enid Osgathorp,’ he said hollowly.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Apparently she’s been missing for over three weeks now. At least, that’s what they told me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Benedict. Why on earth would you want to do a thing like that?’

  Her husband seemed to sink between his own shoulders. ‘They say they found some blood and hairs on a broken window at her cottage and want to test them against mine. Simon Puckle said I should agree to samples being taken from me as it would look bad if I didn’t.’

  ‘But you hardly know the woman,’ she protested, the real import of what he’d said not yet registering in her mind.

  ‘She knows me though,’ he said elliptically. ‘Well, the family, anyway.’

  ‘What exactly does that mean?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said miserably.

  Her eyes widened. ‘You mean you really did break into her cottage, Benedict? I don’t believe it! Are you mad? Didn’t you think that she might have been in there and that it would have frightened her?’

  ‘They say I knew she wasn’t there. Don’t you remember she told us she was going away? And anyway it wouldn’t have frightened her,’ he added bitterly. ‘Nothing would.’

  ‘But whatever for?’ she asked, still bewildered.

  ‘I was looking for something she said she had.’

  ‘Something of yours? Why should she have anything of yours?’ She swung the car out onto the road to Pelling, hardly paying any attention to other road users. ‘And why should you have gone looking for it, anyway?’

  ‘Not of mine. Dad’s.’ He pushed his foot down hard on the floor of the car as if braking. ‘Watch it, Mary. You’ll hit something in a minute if you’re not careful.’

  ‘Your father’s?’ she said, taking her eyes off the road to stare at him.

  He nodded speechlessly, keeping looking straight ahead and not meeting her eye.

  She tightened her hands on the steering wheel until the knuckles whitened. ‘I don’t understand anything, Benedict. Anything at all. And whatever it is, you haven’t told me.’ Her voice sunk to a whisper. ‘Don’t you remember? We promised not to have any secrets from each other.’ Even if her husband didn’t realise it, Mary Feakins knew that they had just crossed the Rubicon in their marriage. It was borne in on her too, that she didn’t like being on the other side of that particular river.

  Benedict Feakins had other things on his mind altogether. ‘Apparently they’ve got me recorded on one of those street cameras in Berebury High Street too.’

  ‘What about it? You often go in there.’

  ‘It was on the day Enid Osgathorp disappeared not far from the station. They say I was photographed coming out of the ironmongers two doors away from the station with a spade.’

  ‘That’s the one you bought for digging the border,’ she said promptly. ‘Oh, God … they don’t think that you …’

  ‘I don’t know what the police think,’ he said shakily. ‘They don’t ever say, but I know they wouldn’t stop asking me questions. Like whether I’d been a patient of Doctor Heddon’s. Well, of course I hadn’t because the old boy had died before we came to live in Pelling.’ He frowned in recollection. ‘The inspector seemed to lay off a bit after that.’

  ‘That’s something, anyway.’

  ‘But it’s not all.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They asked if I’d got anything left of Dad’s. Anything at all. And I said I hadn’t. They didn’t like that for one minute, I can tell you.’

  ‘Benedict,’ she was the one looking straight ahead now and not meeting his eye, ‘there is one thing in the house left of his.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he shot at her. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘His photograph. The one of him in the silver frame that was in the sitting room. I put it somewhere safe before you could put it on the bonfire.’

  To her surprise he greeted this with a hollow laugh and a shaking of his head. ‘You don’t understand a single thing that this is about, do you, Mary?’

  ‘No,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘That photograph’s not my father’s.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Benedict. Of course, it is. I knew him, remember?’

  ‘It’s only a picture of him.’

  ‘That’s what I just said.’

  ‘But it’s not his in the sense I’m talking about, which is a very different thing.’

  Mary Feakins sighed. ‘I still don’t understand, Benedict.’

  ‘And I can’t explain,’ he said unhappily.

  Police Superintendent Leeyes was more sympathetic about Benedict Feakins having kept silent than Sloan had expected. ‘Happened to me once,’ he said gruffly. ‘I kicked up rough about the interviewee not speaking and got told pretty sharpish that the solicitor can tell his client to keep schtum if the interviewing officer hasn’t disclosed enough about the nature of the case against the suspect for the legal-eagle to advise him properly. Or her,’ he added belatedly. He didn’t like female solicitors or, come to that, female criminals.

  ‘The trouble, sir, is that we don’t know quite enough about it ourselves to disclose very much more,’ admitted Sloan. ‘Besides, I didn’t want to show my hand too soon.’

  ‘But you say two separate entries have been made to that property at Pelling and the old party hasn’t been seen since,’ rumbled Leeyes.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The superintendent shot a suspicious look in Sloan’s direction. ‘You’re not holding off because she might have been up to no good, are you?’

  ‘No, sir.’ This was true. Somewhere at the back of his mind the line about ‘Theirs not to reason why …’ surfaced. He knew what his job was and he would do it; crime was a hydra-headed monster and he knew too that a policeman should not select which parts of it to tackle. A crime was – and remained – a crime.

  ‘The missing person must be somewhere,’ rumbled on Leeyes. ‘Dead or alive. Not that you can dig up half Calleshire to look for her.’

  ‘No, sir. We have good reason to believe that she was a blackmailer, though,’ said Sloan. ‘I’ve got a reliable witness whom she tried it on but who wouldn’t play ball.’

  ‘But presumably no actual proof,’ pointed out the superintendent, a genius for finding the weakness in a case. ‘You can’t prove a negative, you know.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I remember you saying,’ said Sloan. This, he knew, was a legacy from some evening class or other that the superintendent had graced. Had it been Philosophy? Or was it Logic, a class abandoned by the superintendent over a difference of opinion with the lecturer about the nature of Occam’s Razor? He couldn’t remember and went on hurriedly, ‘I have high hopes that Admiral Catterick will be prepared to testify to this. But we still don’t know whose ashes were on that bonfire of Benedict Feakins – and as far as I can see we have no means of finding out since DNA doesn’t survive cremation.’ He put wild thoughts of Enid Osgathorp having been cremated under a false name out of his mind as being quite impractical, the clerical work involved in certifying death being what it was.

  ‘We may never know short of this fellow Feakins telling you,’ said Leeyes.

  ‘And being truthful about it,’ said Sloan, making for the sanctuary of his own office as soon as he could. There was a pile of reports waiting for him there. So was Detective Constable Crosby.

  The first was a message from the forensic pathologist, Doctor Dabbe, stating that as a result of further tests he could now confirm the presence in the body said to be that
of Norman Potts, deceased, of a substance consistent with its having come from a so far unidentified variety of control spray. Sloan tossed the report over to Detective Constable Crosby.

  ‘Bit wordy, isn’t he?’ said Crosby.

  ‘You may say he’s dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, all right,’ agreed Sloan, ‘but remember what he says has got to stand up in court. Mind you,’ he added, ‘he’s quite possibly proving murder on the way but by whom and why we don’t know.’

  ‘Yet,’ said Crosby optimistically.

  Sloan ignored this touching faith in their ability to find a murderer and picked up the next message. It was from Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division. None of his squad had spotted a small runabout truck registered in the joint names of Anna Sutherland and Marilyn Potts of Capstan Purlieu Plants in or around Ship Street in Berebury the night before.

  Or, indeed, anywhere else.

  ‘Not that there’s any reason why either of them would want Norman Potts knocked off,’ said Crosby when he too read this.

  ‘No reason that we know of,’ Sloan corrected him, ‘but it very much looks as if those orchids came from their shed.’

  ‘And from Jack Haines’ place before that,’ said Crosby.

  ‘Much, Crosby, as I dislike being manipulated,’ Sloan said acidly, ‘I can see that someone, somewhere, is behaving as if they wanted us to make the connection – and with Dracula – but exactly why escapes me for the moment. Anyone could have picked those flowers up from that shed after the two women got back from that precious lecture of theirs. It wasn’t even locked.’

  ‘Which lecture Marilyn Potts was delivering instead of Enid Osgathorp,’ Crosby reminded him.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Sloan, picking up the third report. It was from the police constable whose beat included Pelling and several other villages out that way. As requested he had kept a watchful eye on Russ Aqueel, foreman at Jack Haines’ nursery. But at a distance.

  ‘A bit of a drinker,’ ran the text, ‘and not too discreet. Keeps dropping hints in the pub that he might be getting a better job soon. Visits the Berebury Garden Centre a lot, usually taking trays of plants over there. Insists to all and sundry that he doesn’t know who left the greenhouse doors open but that it wasn’t him. His mates aren’t so sure.’

  Sloan tossed the paper over to Crosby. ‘If Bob Steele at the Berebury Garden Centre is thinking of making a bid for Jack Haines’ place then lowering its value would certainly help,’ he said. ‘And a fall in its value must definitely have happened big time after he lost two greenhouses full of plants – especially at this time of the year. With or without the assistance of Russ Aqueel, who may or may not have been promised a better job by him.’

  ‘Steele could have been aiming at making Jack Haines bankrupt instead,’ offered Crosby. ‘Keep the price down a treat that would. He could buy at a fire sale.’

  ‘Or even just destroying all those baby orchids so he could sell his own instead,’ mused Sloan. ‘A shortage could then be met from the Berebury Garden Centre, not Haines’ nursery. That would explain the trouble at Capstan Purlieu as well. Even so, we’d better see this man Steele and have another word with the foreman at Pelling.’

  ‘Turf wars, I bet,’ pronounced Crosby. ‘Fits with garden centres, doesn’t it? They sell turves, don’t they?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan ignored this and replaced the last of the message sheets on his desk. ‘That it, then?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, sir.’ The constable was toying with yet another piece of paper, reading and re-reading it. ‘There’s one here that I don’t understand.’

  ‘From Forensics?’ Sloan hazarded a guess. They were a section that tended to speak in tongues of their own devising.

  ‘No, sir. It’s from Admiral Catterick’s daily woman at the Park. She rang to say that she’s heard from the hospital that the admiral has answered Gabriel’s call. Who’s Gabriel, sir?’

  ‘An archangel, Crosby,’ said Sloan, well-brought up son of a churchwoman.

  ‘An archangel?’ Crosby sounded mystified.

  ‘I’m very much afraid,’ said Sloan slowly, ‘it’s her way of saying that Waldo Catterick has been transferred to Ward 13 at the hospital.’

  The detective constable looked quite blank. ‘So?’

  ‘Ward 13 is a euphemism for the hospital’s mortuary,’ said Sloan sadly. ‘It sounds better if the patients overhear the porters being sent for.’

  Crosby’s face cleared as unconsciously he used yet another euphemism. ‘Oh, he’s popped his clogs, then. Bad luck.’

  ‘It’s bad luck for us all. Our operation and his. His must have been too much for him.’ Sloan paused and added thoughtfully, ‘Especially in his state of health.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Right, Crosby, we need to get going out to Pelling to interview Jack Haines again now we know a bit more background.’ Detective Inspector Sloan was just shovelling some papers into his briefcase when the Coroner’s Officer, PC Edward York, put his head round the office door. ‘And then get back to Norman Potts’ house,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Got a minute, Inspector?’ York asked.

  ‘Have a heart, Ted,’ pleaded Sloan. ‘I’ve only just got back from reporting to the old man on the outcome of conducting an interview under caution to do with a missing person.’ He didn’t suppose for one moment that the Coroner’s Officer was interested in missing persons. Not until they had been found dead, that is. ‘And you know that I can’t even begin to write my own report for the Coroner on the Potts’ case until the doctor’s done his. I haven’t had a full report from Charlie Marsden yet, either. The SOCOs are still at the house.’

  ‘I can see you’re busy,’ said the other officer calmly.

  ‘Yes,’ put in Crosby importantly, ‘besides we think we’re into murder.’

  The Coroner’s Officer said, ‘Oh, really? No, I don’t need anything more about Norman Potts. Not just yet, anyway. The Coroner’ll only be taking formal evidence of identification when the inquest comes up, which won’t be for a bit.’

  ‘And that’ll be adjourned while further enquiries are made,’ chanted Crosby in mocking tones.

  ‘That’s right. To give you guys time to get on with finding out who did it,’ rejoined York amiably. ‘No, it’s not him I’ve come about.’

  ‘Who, then?’ asked Sloan in tones that he hoped implied he didn’t have all day.

  ‘The rector of Pelling’s been in touch.’ As Coroner’s Officer, Edward York was quite used to being seen as the friendly face of the constabulary and approached as such.

  ‘Mr Beddowes?’ Sloan’s head came up and he turned to his constable. ‘That reminds me, Crosby. We need a photograph of Norman Potts so that we can see if any of the street cameras picked him up in Berebury as well as the others the day Enid Osgathorp disappeared. See to it.’ He turned back to the Coroner’s Officer and explained. ‘We caught the rector on CCTV in Berebury that day too. What does he want now?’

  Edward York carried on, ‘He thought he ought to tell somebody about a letter that’s come to the rectory and being a clergyman he wanted to do the right thing.’

  Sloan forbore to remark that he had known a number of men of the cloth who had done the wrong thing, clerical errors not being unknown to the Force. ‘Tell us what exactly, Ted?’

  ‘He’s had a letter – or more accurately, a letter came addressed to his late wife – which naturally he opened. It was from the Calleshire Adoption Support Agency over at Calleford.’

  ‘Ah,’ breathed Sloan, light beginning to dawn.

  ‘The agency said it was providing intermediary services for an unnamed male applicant of theirs. They were asking on his behalf for Mrs Ann Beddowes’ consent to tell them her name and address and for permission for the person concerned to make contact.’

  ‘Bit difficult that, seeing she’s dead now,’ remarked Crosby.

  ‘That explains a lot,’ Sloan let out a long breath. It probably explained why
the rector’s wife hadn’t been at the presentation ceremony on her retirement to Enid Osgathorp too.

  ‘Like what?’ asked Crosby, clearly mystified.

  ‘Like why she committed suicide, I expect,’ said York, adding sapiently, ‘A permanent solution to a temporary problem, that’s what suicide is.’

  ‘Like why she was being blackmailed,’ said Sloan grimly.

  ‘Apparently,’ York continued on his current theme, ‘the system is that at any time after its eighteenth birthday an adopted child can attempt to get in touch with its birth mother through the Adoption Agency. They can only go ahead, of course, if they know who she is and has previously agreed to it.’

  ‘What if she hasn’t?’ asked Crosby.

  ‘I think,’ frowned York, ‘the applicant can be given some sort of info – whether the birth mother’s in good health …’

  ‘But not good wealth, I hope,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, policeman first and last and all the time.

  ‘News of general well-being I think is as far as it goes,’ said York. ‘But not her name or her whereabouts. They can pass on some relevant information, though, such as details about a hereditary disease or an inheritance.’

  ‘Circumstances alter cases,’ observed Sloan dryly.

  ‘Some you win, some you lose,’ said Crosby.

  ‘But it doesn’t work the other way round, does it?’ asked Sloan, rapidly reaching a conclusion. ‘Not vice versa?’

  ‘The birth mother can ask but the child doesn’t have to respond,’ said the Coroner’s Officer. ‘If the child doesn’t want it, there’s no way round. All she can do then is deposit her name and address with the adoption people, leaving the initiative to make contact entirely with the son or daughter.’

  ‘Fair’s fair,’ said Crosby.

  ‘And that’s only after they’ve been given professional assistance and counselling,’ said York, adding wisely, ‘They could be opening a can of worms all round.’

  ‘If you’ve made your bed, you’ve got to lie on it,’ said Crosby with all the assurance of the young and inexperienced.