Murder in the Garden

by Veronica Heley

  Except that … except that …

  No, Ellie couldn't manage to recall exactly what had happened that evening on their return from school when … when …

  She wept.

  For the child that had never been born. Five months she'd carried their child that time and she'd hoped, oh how she'd hoped that this time, surely … five months, over halfway. It should have been all right.

  Only, as they'd returned from their interview with the head, Frank had lost his temper and shouted that this time he was going to teach Diana a lesson she'd never forget. Diana had cowered, afraid of him perhaps for the first time in her life, and then Frank had advanced on Diana, who'd turned and run screaming up the stairs, pushing past Ellie as she'd just come out on to the landing and …

  Thrusting Ellie away from her and …

  Ellie heard herself wail.

  She'd fallen awkwardly, five months pregnant.

  She'd heard Diana screaming defiance at Frank. Frank had cried out in horror, rushed to Ellie's side and tried to pick her up and …

  The pain!

  … and the doctor had said, ‘I'm so sorry, but this time I'm afraid there's nothing for it. Hysterectomy.’

  It was absurd to weep for something that happened twenty years ago.

  The businessman was using his mobile, pacing up and down outside the end house in Endene Close. The Close was deserted, all the workmen gone for the day. From this vantage point he could watch the backs of the houses that interested him. He saw lights switched on in various houses - but not in the one that he was watching. He saw cars rounding the Green and turning into the side roads, parking, people hefting their laptops, locking their doors, walking to their front doors, which often opened as they approached. Welcoming them home.

  ‘… I tell you! I've been backwards and forwards all day. There's been people coming and going, quite a crowd this morning, and then she went off with that big woman I told you about, the local gossip. She only got back a short time ago …’

  ‘I don't understand. Why haven't the police arrested her? You can't have done it right.’

  ‘I did, I did. I have to go home now. My wife's been ringing me. Father's worse. If he has to go to hospital …’

  ‘I'm booked solid all this week. I can't get down again so soon. Tell him … reassure him. You know what to say. We can't have him worried by this now.’

  ‘It's easy for you to say. I'm at my wits' end …’

  * * *

  After a while Ellie mopped herself up, switched on some lights, and went to draw the curtains. The evenings were drawing in.

  A couple of shadowy figures were standing at her gate, looking up at the house. Kate and Armand?

  Ellie threw cold water over her face and went down her own pretty garden to see if they wanted to talk.

  It was Kate and Armand, he with his arm around her. Perhaps Kate had been crying? Armand was very quiet, for him.

  Kate said, ‘Isn't it absurd, Ellie? I was just wishing we'd never thought of having a water feature. Not because of the murder hunt and all the trouble that's caused, but because she must have been so peaceful, lying there covered by wild flowers.’

  ‘Weeds, too,’ said Armand.

  Kate and Ellie did their best to laugh.

  ‘Listen!’ said Kate. They listened to the birds going to roost in the trees around the church, the distant traffic, the cheery ‘Hi!’ of a commuter using the alley to reach his home further along. A bus passed by on the main road. A frog, or perhaps it was a mouse, rustled in the undergrowth. A moth swooped past.

  ‘I can't help thinking she had found a good place to rest,’ said Kate. ‘Peaceful, yet with happy folk around her. Covered over by nature. Birdsong. No one has claimed her, poor thing. And now she's been dug up and made an object of interest and put in a freezer without a name or anyone to mourn her. She was better off in the ground.’

  Armand gave her a hug. ‘Kate, I didn't know you could be so poetic.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Kate, with a return to her normal commonsensical manner. ‘Sorry about that, folks.’

  People took different paths to come to terms with death. Kate had mentally turned a sordid murder site into something rather beautiful. Ellie didn't blame her for it. If possible, Ellie admired Kate even more.

  ‘If no one ever claims her,’ said Ellie, ‘perhaps we could jointly pay for her to have a Christian burial. Perhaps put in a particularly beautiful shrub or rose or something where she was found, in her memory.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘I think I'd like that.’

  So they'd decided to stay. Good.

  DC Honeywell arrived next morning as Ellie was having her first cup of coffee in the conservatory, having fended off Midge, who wanted to sit on her lap.

  ‘May I have one too?’ He seated himself, and Midge immediately jumped on his lap.

  Midge knew when visitors liked him. Ellie fetched more coffee and the biscuit tin. She'd never yet met a man who didn't like chocolate biscuits.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked.

  She was surprised. Did the tears from the previous evening still show? They didn't usually. ‘I'm fine. Lots to think about, looking back, wondering if I'd done this or if that had happened … stupid, really.’

  ‘Good coffee. I must apologize for your having to put up with me. There's been another incident on the other side of the borough, which has mopped up resources. And the boss is still off. Antibiotics, and all that.’

  Ellie shook her head in sympathy. ‘Teeth! You're too young, but just you wait!’

  ‘I know. My partner suffers, terribly. Me, I'm lucky.’

  ‘In more ways than one,’ said Ellie. ‘You have an even temperament.’

  He grinned. ‘Do you mean I'm shallow?’

  They both laughed.

  He put down his cup. To business. ‘Have you thought any more about the past?’

  ‘Yes, I even went with a neighbour to see Ms Cullen yesterday. We wanted to check out her daughter's friends, to see if one of them could be the body in the garden. But they weren't. I still couldn't think of any link between me and the body, though. What makes you think there is one?’

  ‘After every murder, the police get crank calls claiming they did it, or that they know someone who did it. That's one of the reasons why we never disclose all the particulars to the press. But among the host of calls this time we had two emails. That in itself is odd. Cranks usually write in, or phone. The first email accused your husband of having killed a young girl he was having an affair with.’

  Ellie winced.

  ‘Yes, it was laughable, but we had to check it out. It would have been convenient if it had been true. There we were, looking for a murderer … and what do we find? A dead man. Lovely. Case over. Most satisfactory. Get on with the next job.’

  Ellie said, ‘You got an email which tried to involve Frank? But … is it someone with a grudge against him? A neighbour?’ Would Mrs Coppola have gone to such lengths? No, surely not. In any case, Mrs Coppola would have pointed the finger at Ellie, and not at Frank.

  He had an engaging grin. ‘That's what we wondered. But no sooner had we dismissed it as coming from a spiteful neighbour, than the second one came. This time they pointed the finger at you, Mrs Quicke, claiming you killed the girl because your husband was having an affair with her.’

  ‘What?’ Shock, horror. ‘But …’

  ‘As we were ninety-nine per cent sure that your husband hadn't been having an affair with anyone, we assumed this was from the same spiteful neighbour. But we also considered that it might be an attempt to divert attention away from the murderer himself.’ ‘Let me get this straight. You think the murderer might have sent these emails himself? Or herself? Why?’

  ‘In the first place, because they weren't sent from an ordinary home computer. A spiteful neighbour would have used their own home computer, or perhaps another local machine which they could easily access. But this person has gone to considerable trouble t
o avoid being traced. Now, I'm the patient sort, Mrs Quicke. I like looking at photographs. Do you?’

  ‘You've lost me.’

  ‘Whoever sent those emails thought they couldn't be traced. Wrong. We have men and women who can track an email down to a machine in Outer Mongolia if necessary. The first email came from the rank of computers used by all and sundry at the public library in Ealing Broadway. We can pinpoint the machine and the exact time the email was sent. There's a whole row of computers, and people book time on them. They come and go throughout the day, signing in, using the computer, leaving. The records are kept properly, but a squiggly, indecipherable signature is pretty common. Addresses are required, but sometimes not accurate. You follow?’

  ‘Sounds pretty foolproof to me. You can trace the email back to a machine, but no further.’

  ‘Well, yes and no. What the first email gave us was a list of people who might have been using that computer at that time. Many of them are students who come regularly. Some of them notice who's sitting beside them. We've got a policeman at the desk in the library now, watching out for people who might have been using the computer at that time. What our man or woman didn't know was that there's a CCTV camera trained on the main library entrance all the time. So we have a piece of film showing everyone who went in and out at about that time.’

  ‘There must be dozens of people.’

  ‘Of course. But then we got the second email, which was sent from a different library in the borough. Same MO. He went in at a busy time of day …’

  ‘You say “he”? Are you sure it's a man?’

  ‘Pretty sure, yes. There's one particular person showed up on film twice. Would you like to see him?’

  ‘A local man?’

  ‘No. I don't think so. But you see, it must be someone who's had contact with you some time or other. Possibly some considerable time ago. Otherwise, why mention you or your husband in the emails?’

  She was bewildered. It wasn't Mrs Coppola. In any case, Mrs Coppola knew very well that Frank was dead. Ellie couldn't think of anyone who it might be. Unless, twenty years on, the two young lads next door might for some reason …? Oh, nonsense. ‘How old is this man?’

  His eyes sharpened. ‘You've thought of someone?’

  ‘Well, no. Not really. There were two lads next door when we first came. Only youngsters, though older than Diana, of course. They were both under ten when we moved in. Say, eight and seven. Something like that. When they left, the eldest was in the upper sixth at the High School, his brother a year younger. So now they'd be about thirty-seven, thirty-eight. Oh, it's absurd.’ ‘Their name was Spendlove, wasn't it? The father worked for the council? Is that the right people?’

  ‘Yes. They were here for ages. Nice neighbours. The father was great, always joking, very laid back. He'd been in a road accident. He was on his bike at the time and a lorry turned left without seeing him. When we first came, he was still in a wheelchair, but he graduated to crutches and then a stick. By the time they left, he was walking without a stick but he still had days when he could hardly move, and the stairs were a trial to him, which is why they eventually moved on to a big flat somewhere on the other side of the park.’

  ‘You knew them well?’

  ‘No, not really.’ She found she was clutching her mug of coffee so hard that her fingers had gone white. She unstuck herself from the mug. It was stupid to get so upset about something that had happened twenty years ago. It really wouldn't hurt to tell the policeman why she hadn't been a good neighbour, all those long years ago.

  ‘I should explain that we came here when I was pregnant with Diana, my daughter. We'd been living in my tiny flat and we used the sale of that to provide the down payment for this house. But it was a terrible struggle to make ends meet. And the pregnancy didn't go easily.

  ‘Next door - Mrs Spendlove - she didn't understand that I found her boys noisy and destructive. They weren't bad boys, but they did use to kick their football against the fence at the back and, every time, it boomed.’ Ellie tried to laugh. ‘It sounds so stupid, doesn't it? I wasn't used to boys, that's all. And I did need to take it easy. But every time I sat down to rest, they seemed to … Well, they did have a problem. They needed space, growing boys like that, and they didn't have it.

  ‘You see, with their father pretty much disabled, he couldn't do much with the garden and she had a part-time job in the library on the other side of the Green, and wasn't interested, anyway. For a while he managed to keep the top of the garden more or less clear, so that the boys could play cricket of sorts, and a spot of football.

  ‘As soon as Diana could toddle, she was out in our garden, calling to them through the fence to play with her, but of course they were much older and didn't take any notice. Within a year or two, the boys were old enough to go off to the park to play. But I … I had a problem. I kept having miscarriages. I'm really not sure how many, now. Five for certain, but maybe others, too. Yet I had to go out to work somehow, to cover the mortgage repayments. So, I really didn't have time or energy to socialize, and after they left, we lost touch.’

  He was sympathetic. ‘That's why you didn't want to talk about that time?’

  That and Diana's behaviour. She nodded. ‘Is it one of the Spendlove boys?’

  He relaxed. ‘No, this man is much older.’

  ‘Not Mr Spendlove?’ Ellie was upset at the thought.

  ‘No, no. I can't tell you why we don't think it's him, but it isn't. Now, would you like to come down to the incident room? We've got the CCTV films to show you and they're trying to improve the quality of the picture so's we can get some individual pictures as well.’ Ellie mentally reviewed everything she was supposed to be doing that day. The plants would be arriving for Endene Close in an hour and a half's time, and she must be there to supervise their placing in the right positions. She was supposed to be meeting Rose at the Sunflower Café for lunch - a weekly date which both women enjoyed.

  ‘Yes, I'll come right away.’

  The CCTV film footage from the main library was blurred. A policeman was fiddling with the controls, trying to make it clearer. ‘This is the worst tape, and I'm still working on it. What we've done is run the tape from about half an hour before the email was sent, till half an hour after, to allow time for him or her to wander around, find the computers, and maybe have to wait for one to be free before he could use it.’

  He ran the tape a little way. Ellie concentrated hard, but could hardly make out what the individual figures looked like. The policeman ran it back. Did some more fiddling. Was this better? Yes, it was. She watched figures jerkily enter the library. She thought she could just about make out a woman tugging along a reluctant child. Two students in jeans, sex unknown. Someone in a baseball cap, presumably a man. A woman in a sari helping along another woman, large, having difficulty walking. A couple of men who might be Somalis? Pakistanis? A teenage(?) girl in a cropped top.

  After a while Ellie shook her head. ‘I'm so sorry, but it's too difficult. How can you identify anyone from this?’

  ‘Sometimes you can recognize people by the way they walk and hold themselves. We're refining our techniques all the time. The other tape's better. But let's try again.’

  More fiddling. They ran the tape back and tried again. Now the pictures were clearer. Ellie could see that it was definitely a woman tugging along a child, who was probably male. The two students were probably one man, one girl. The baseball cap wearer was definitely a man. The two women in saris were both elderly, but one more so than the other. The men were definitely from some ethnic minority, though she couldn't be sure which. The girl was definitely a teenager.

  The tape went on and on, revealing a cross-section of the multicultural society that was Ealing. The elderly, the young. The middle-aged. Those with shoppers and those without. Women in a hurry. Ethnic people in saris, turbans, headscarves. Students of all nationalities, Chinese, Japanese, Javanese … Africans, Somalis, Australians …

  Elli
e lost concentration. ‘I think I've seen a couple of people I know to talk to, though I don't know their names. Both women who live around here, and I may have met them at some function, possibly at a big meeting at the Town Hall. But I can't possibly be sure. I'm so sorry.’

  ‘Let's try the other tape. I think the images are sharper. This one is taken from a camera trained on the High Street in Acton, but it covers the library entrance.

  They were sharper. A middle-aged woman helping an elderly man along, a boy who probably ought to have been in school. One student, male. An elderly Pakistani. Three foreign students, gesticulating. A woman with a toddler in a pushchair. More students, more women, more …

  She began to blink. The effort to keep concentrating was hard. When it finished, she said, ‘Run it through again.’ ‘You recognize someone?’

  ‘No. But … No.’

  DC Honeywell said, gently, ‘I don't want to lead you, but you did see somebody you recognized, didn't you?’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘Can I see the first tape again, please?’

  They ran it through for her till they came to the two darkerskinned men. ‘Stop. I can't be sure, but is one of those men the same as in the other tape? Or am I imagining things?’

  ‘You recognize him?’

  ‘No, I don't think so.’

  ‘Think hard.’

  Ellie threw up her hands. ‘I have never to my knowledge spoken to or seen this man, but that's the only one I've spotted so far who looks the same in both tapes. I follow your reasoning. It's possible for someone to use both libraries, but not usual. Which doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I mean, someone might go into Acton library and find that the book they want is only available at Central, so they'd go on to Central to take the book out there.’

  ‘It was the other way round,’ said the policeman. ‘He visited Central first, and Acton afterwards.’

  ‘Perhaps he lives in Acton, but happened to be shopping in Ealing Broadway and that's why he went to Central first?’ ‘We've thought of that, too. Mrs Quicke, believe me, we have another very good reason for wondering whether this could be our man. Look again.’