Dead End

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Does Ben know your father's seeing someone else?’

  ‘No, he doesn't know anything about it. You know what boys are like.’ Lucy raised a worried face to Geraldine. ‘You won't tell him, will you? He's only twelve and he worships my dad, God knows why. I guess it's a boy thing. He'll have to find out one day but –’ She covered her face with her hands and began to cry again. Her shoulders jerked with silent sobs.

  ‘Lucy,’ Geraldine broke the silence.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know you have to go home.’ Lucy didn't answer. ‘Your father must be worried about you.’

  Behind her hands, it sounded as though Lucy was laughing. ‘He's probably with her right now. He won't notice I've gone. He never knew where mum was. Even when –’ she broke off sobbing.

  ‘Lucy, who is she?’

  ‘She's called Charlotte.’

  ‘Charlotte what?’

  ‘How should I know? Charlotte. That's all I know.’

  ‘Thank you, Lucy. That's very helpful. Now, we'll give you a lift home.’

  ‘You won't tell Ben, will you?’

  ‘I promise I'll only tell him if it's necessary.’

  ‘How do I know I can believe you?’

  Something about the girl's unkempt appearance touched Geraldine and she felt a rush of pity for her. ‘You don't. But I hope you trust me, Lucy.’

  At home that evening Geraldine thought about Lucy, motherless at such a young age, and sighed. At least Lucy had known her own mother. In her late thirties, Geraldine had only recently discovered she was adopted. The revelation had come shortly after the death of the woman she had believed was her mother. However benign the motive, the thought of the deception that had been practised on her was still too painful to contemplate. She had stuffed the paperwork relating to her birth and adoption to the back of her wardrobe behind a stack of towels, and tried not to think about what she had discovered. It helped that her work kept her occupied.

  Making herself comfortable with a small glass of chilled white wine and a bowl of pasta, she made a conscious effort to focus on something more positive and settled on Paul Hilliard. He was undoubtedly attractive, and intelligent, and appeared to be single. She wondered if his invitation to meet up was motivated solely by a professional interest in the case.

  9

  Shock

  In the quiet room where Abigail was laid out, Matthew Kirby cleared his throat nervously. ‘Can I go over to her?’ he asked, his face pale. Geraldine nodded. ‘That's her. That's Abigail.’ He leaned forward. ‘She looks so peaceful. How did she die?’

  Geraldine hesitated. ‘She was hit on the back of the head,’ she replied tersely.

  ‘Can I touch her? I mean, I'd like to say goodbye.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Matthew reached out and touched his wife's hand. ‘She's wearing her wedding ring,’ he whispered. His voice broke into a sob. ‘I'm sorry, it's such a shock. What's that?’ He pointed to a line of bruising on the dead woman's wrist and his eyes widened. ‘It looks as though she's been tied up.’ Watching him closely, Geraldine was convinced his surprise was genuine. His voice broke as he asked if she had been interfered with in any way.

  ‘There was no sexual assault,’ Geraldine assured him and he broke down, sobbing.

  ‘The bastard,’ he kept repeating. ‘Abi was a good woman, a good woman. Why would anyone do this to her? Find out who did this, please.’

  ‘We're doing everything we can, Mr Kirby.’

  It was important to reserve judgement before gathering evidence, but Geraldine found it hard not to form an impression of Matthew Kirby. She took a deep breath and tried to clear her head as she drove home. It wasn't November yet, cold for the time of year. The sky had loomed white all day. The weather forecast was warning of snow in Scotland and there was a feeling that winter was on its way.

  They had no idea whether the murder had been the result of careful planning or a chance encounter. If her killer was a random stranger, it might be impossible to trace him without any forensic evidence at the scene and apart from the bizarre removal of her tongue, Abigail Kirby's body hadn't been violated. Geraldine sighed. Every moron knew better now than to leave fingerprints behind at a murder scene and so far they didn't even know where Abigail Kirby had been killed. Sherlock Holmes might have lacked sophisticated forensic techniques, but at least his villains had left clues. Abigail Kirby's corpse had revealed nothing about her killer, although her mutilation posed many questions.

  Arriving home, Geraldine kicked off her shoes and shuffled into the slippers waiting for her on the mat. She hung her jacket in the cupboard and gazed around her neat living room. In the kitchen she hesitated by the kettle. After the bustle of the police station, her flat felt silent and empty and she was lonely. There was no one she could call at such a late hour, just to hear the sound of another human voice. Too wound up to sleep, she flicked the radio on and poured herself a large glass of wine before opening the file on Abigail Kirby. She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep with so many questions buzzing in her mind.

  Abigail Kirby was born in Yorkshire. Her first teaching appointment was at a school in one of the outlying villages. She stayed in the area and moved to a different school in York when she married Matthew, a local surveyor. They had a daughter, Lucy, followed two years later by a son, Ben. With no career break to raise her children, she had rapidly been promoted to deputy head of a local grammar school. A year before her death she had taken up an appointment as headmistress of Harchester School and moved with her family to Kent. Her husband, who had been a partner in a firm of surveyors, went with her.

  Geraldine put down the file and tried to block out the memory of Lucy Kirby which was threatening to distract her from Abigail Kirby's history. The question remained. Who would have committed such a terrible atrocity against the mother of those two children, Lucy and her young brother? Perhaps she had been murdered by an ex-pupil who considered his own life blighted by some perceived injustice. It was hard enough to imagine hating someone enough to kill them, but to inflict such excruciating pain on another human being was incomprehensible. Maybe it was no coincidence that Abigail Kirby's death had occurred so soon after her promotion to headmistress, her killer an disgruntled or jealous colleague.

  Geraldine's mouth was dry so she put the kettle on and made a mug of cocoa, still thinking about the dead headmistress. Everything about Abigail Kirby followed a logical progression in relation to her career but, after studying the file closely, Geraldine was no closer to understanding Abigail Kirby as a woman. Successful in her career, married with a son and a daughter, from the outside her life appeared ideal. Despite her premature and horrific death, Geraldine felt an irrational stab of envy as she got ready for bed. Alone.

  Tired and sweaty she showered and ran dripping into the bedroom. As she pulled a towel from the top shelf of her wardrobe, a pile of them toppled down. She wrapped herself in a bathsheet and bent to pick up an armful of towels from the floor. Turning, she looked up at the shelf, empty apart from a battered old shoe box she had kept hidden there ever since her sister, Celia, had given it to her. They had been clearing out their mother's belongings a few weeks after her funeral.

  ‘I thought you'd better have this,’ Celia said. Geraldine squinted down at a faded grey box file and read her own name, handwritten on a peeling yellow label. ‘I imagine she would've wanted you to have it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your papers.’ Celia lifted the box and thrust it at her sister.

  ‘What papers? Celia, I don't know what you're talking about. What's in the box? What papers?’

  ‘Your papers. Birth certificate, adoption papers…’

  ‘You're telling me we're adopted?’

  Celia's blonde head bobbed a nod but she didn't look up. ‘Not us, you.’

  Geraldine stood with an armful of towels and dithered. There weren't many situations that daunted her and she wasn't sure why she was holding back from looking insid
e the box. With sudden resolution she pulled it down and sat on the bed. The brittle elastic band holding the lid in place snapped when she tried to remove it. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the lid to see the box contained a single buff folder.

  ‘You could have told me,’ she whispered. ‘I would have liked to have heard it from you.’ It was shattering that she would never know why her adoptive mother had hidden the truth. Trembling she felt the sharp edge of the dusty cardboard with her fingers, but it was late and she was too tired to face it now.

  It took her a long time to fall asleep and, when she finally dropped off, she dreamt about a young woman with dark brown hair and black eyes.

  ‘You can't be my mother,’ Geraldine protested. ‘You're younger than me.’ The young woman turned away, laughing. Geraldine wanted to reach out but she couldn't move or speak.

  10

  Briefing

  ‘How did Matthew Kirby take the news of his wife's death?’ Kathryn Gordon opened the meeting on Tuesday morning. The mutter of conversation died away and everyone turned to Geraldine.

  She thought about her answer. ‘He didn't appear to know what had happened. He thought we'd come to speak to his wife about one of her pupils. When we told him his wife was dead, his first thought was that she'd had a car accident. He told us she was a careful driver but he didn't seem exactly surprised to hear about his wife's murder, although I suppose that could have been shock. He claimed he was with a work colleague, talking about a work project, on Saturday afternoon and evening. He was obviously lying.’

  Peterson looked at his notes. ‘He said his colleague's name was Miss Jones and he had her address somewhere. It was all very vague. He claims they were working on a project from two or three in the afternoon until late, because they had a lot to discuss. He couldn't be sure what time he arrived at her home. The whole story wasn't exactly plausible even before we asked for the address and he couldn't find it.’

  ‘We'll check once the switchboard opens but I doubt if we'll find this mystery colleague called Jones at his firm,’ Geraldine said. ‘It was a stupid, badly thought out alibi, but I think he was caught on the hop, covering up in front of his children.’ She related what Lucy Kirby had told her. ‘Lucy's convinced her father's having an affair. According to her, Abigail knew about it and refused to give him a divorce. That could be a motive – although a fourteen-year-old complaining about her father isn't necessarily reliable. She struck me as quite immature for her age, troubled and confused.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, under the circumstances,’ a constable said.

  ‘She was probably exaggerating,’ another colleague sighed. ‘Girls that age generally feel aggrieved about something, especially if it's anything to do with their parents.’ There was a murmur of agreement from some of the older officers.

  ‘Maybe, but we have to follow it up,’ the DCI said, ‘and if Lucy's right then we need to talk to the woman Matthew Kirby was seeing.’ She turned to Geraldine. ‘What did Lucy tell you about her?’

  ‘Only that her first name's Charlotte.’

  ‘What else do we know about Matthew Kirby?’

  Peterson slid off his perch on the edge of his desk and flipped open his notebook. ‘We know that his wife took out a life insurance policy under a year ago. Including paying off the mortgage on their house, and a death-in-service lump sum, the whole package adds up to nearly a million. It all goes to her husband.’

  The DCI raised her eyebrows. ‘Let's hear more about what Lucy Kirby said.’

  Geraldine checked her notes. ‘I'm not sure if Matthew realises quite how much Lucy knows about his affair – if he's having one, although it looks pretty certain he is. Lucy told me she overheard her parents arguing, and asked her mother about it. I don't think she talks to her father any more than she has to. According to her, Ben doesn't know about his father's mistress. Lucy asked us not to say anything to her brother, who's close to his father.’

  ‘And he's just lost his mother,’ someone added. ‘A twelve-year-old boy.’

  ‘We need to speak to the man who found Abigail Kirby's body,’ the DCI said. ‘Although he's unlikely to have anything useful to tell us. And we need to check Matthew Kirby's alibi for Saturday afternoon, and see if Abigail Kirby's colleagues at work can tell us anything relevant.’

  They speculated about Matthew Kirby for a few minutes. As the victim's husband he was automatically under scrutiny if not yet a suspect. ‘It sounds as though he was lying to conceal his affair from his children, but that doesn't mean he killed his wife,’ Geraldine pointed out. ‘He seemed genuinely shocked at seeing her body. According to Paul, her injuries were appalling.’

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘Paul Hilliard, the pathologist.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Well in that case could we be looking at a crime of passion? If Matthew Kirby attacked his wife in some sort of frenzy he might well be shocked afterwards at the extent of the injuries he inflicted.’

  ‘I think Matthew Kirby was angry with his wife for refusing to divorce him,’ Geraldine conceded, ‘but this doesn't look like a crime of passion. Matthew Kirby wanted to end the marriage. He didn't care about his wife any more but he didn't have to kill her, he could have just walked away. If he stayed because he loves his children then it hardly makes sense for him to go and kill their mother, and in so brutal a fashion too. At the very least he might have quietly poisoned her so she died in her sleep or something else relatively dull for the children's sake, not this vicious mutilation which is bound to be all over the papers. It's just the sort of thing they love, isn't it? And in any case, Abigail had been cleaned up by the time he saw her. I'm not sure it was the extent of her injuries that shocked him so much as the confirmation she was dead. I don't think he really believed it until he saw her.’

  ‘Well, we've got no way of knowing what he did or didn't believe, or whether he killed her, so we'll start by checking

  Matthew Kirby's movements closely. He might have been caught somewhere on CCTV on his way to see Charlotte, or maybe his car was parked on his drive all the time.’ Kathryn Gordon tapped the picture of Matthew Kirby on the Incident Board. ‘We know the victim's husband has two possible motives for wanting to be rid of his wife, money and her refusal to give him a divorce. We have to know if he also had the opportunity to kill her.’

  ‘And mutilate her corpse,’ Peterson added. There was silence for a few seconds as all eyes turned to the photograph of Abigail Kirby, gazing back at them from the Incident Board. Immaculate, commanding, she looked like a woman in control of her own destiny.

  11

  Interviews

  Geraldine and Peterson's first task was to visit Harchester School. The gates were closed so they phoned the caretaker who glowered at them as he unlocked the gate. Despite his white hair and stooping shoulders, he gave the impression of physical power. ‘You know we're on half term here. I hope this is important.’

  The sergeant was blunt. ‘We're investigating the suspicious death of Mrs Abigail Kirby.’

  ‘Mrs Kirby?’ The caretaker's demeanour changed at once. His jaw dropped and he fumbled with his keys. ‘Mrs Kirby? The head? Dead? I saw her on Friday.’

  He led them to a cramped hut stuffed with filing cabinets and cardboard boxes. One wall was covered with a board holding rows of keys, each on its own labelled key ring. Beside it, an electric kettle and a dirty mug stood on a metal tray on top of an old desk.

  ‘Mrs Kirby's dead, you say?’ he repeated, as though he couldn't believe he had heard right.

  Briefly Geraldine told him that the headmistress's body had been discovered on Sunday morning in the woods beside the recreation ground, the victim of a fatal assault.

  ‘So she's dead?’ he repeated. ‘But it's half term.’ As though that made any difference. ‘What happened?’

  ‘That's what we're investigating.’

  ‘She's got children of her own, you know. Who would do such a terrible thing?’

  ‘We intend to find out.’<
br />
  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Sometime on Saturday.’ Geraldine deliberately kept her responses vague. ‘It would help our enquiries if you would answer a few questions.’

  The caretaker nodded. ‘You read about these things in the papers and see it on the telly. But you never think it will happen to someone you know.’

  ‘How well did you know Abigail Kirby?’ Peterson asked.

  The caretaker considered. ‘I knew her to speak to. She called me George. Everyone calls me George.’ Geraldine and the sergeant exchanged a glance and waited. ‘I wouldn't say I knew her personally. Although she's been here a year last September.’ He sighed and rubbed his stubbly chin with one hand.

  ‘Was she popular here?’ Geraldine asked.

  George hesitated before answering. ‘Mr Hollins, the old head, he was here a long time. Everyone liked Mr Hollins. He was a hard act to follow, if you get my meaning. A real schoolmaster.’ He paused. ‘I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but it was a different story with Mrs Kirby.’

  ‘You didn't like Mrs Kirby?’

  ‘I'm not talking about myself, as such. I'm only the caretaker. I didn't have much to do with her, not really. She wanted lots of changes, and I had to shift a lot of furniture around – quite unnecessarily – a new broom sweeps clean and all that.’

  Geraldine looked up at Peterson who was making notes. ‘Did you have any disagreements with her about all the changes?’

  The caretaker shook his head. ‘She didn't discuss anything with me. She gave her orders through Mr Maloney, the deputy. He was the one who ran around making sure everything got done. Mrs Kirby didn't have time to talk to me, not like old Mr Hollins. She was busy meeting parents and governors, sitting in her smart office, issuing her orders for the rest of us.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘It's not a bad job here but there's always plenty to do when a new head comes in. Now would you like a cup of tea?’

  They sat patiently watching while the old man fussed around, going off to fetch a bottle of milk and clattering mugs onto a tray while the kettle came to the boil. Geraldine had the impression George was quietly very upset by Abigail Kirby's sudden death.