A Date With Death

by Mark Roberts

  Clay watched the hearse at the head of the queue turning left into Springwood Crematorium and saw the white flowers against the coffin bearing the word MUMMY.

  The notion of her own funeral went through her like a cold wind. She imagined Thomas and Philip sitting in the car immediately behind the hearse as it inched up the path to the crematorium.

  She pulled over near the entrance to the crematorium and, as she got out of her car, watched the five cars behind her slow down and stop. The officers emerged from their vehicles in puzzled silence.

  ‘Sorry, everyone,’ called Clay. ‘This is a bum steer. Karl,’ she addressed Stone. ‘Come with me. Thank you to the rest of you for supporting. Go back to Trinity Road and resume other duties.’

  Clay followed the course of the hearses up the path towards Rose Chapel, her knuckles white as she grasped the steering wheel, and turned on to the small car park overlooked by the glass-fronted crematorium.

  ‘God help them!’ said Clay, as two girls, one aged eight years, her sister two years younger, and a man in his early thirties emerged from the lead car. The girls sobbed hysterically and their father stooped to gather both of them into a single embrace at the front of Rose Chapel. He kissed them in turn and whispered words of comfort from the depths of his own private hell.

  Six undertakers shouldered the children’s mother’s coffin, the floral MUMMY desolate in the back of the empty hearse as Clay watched the mourners follow the dead mother into the chapel, and felt the weight of her own mortality like an iron anvil on her heart.

  The music of Gerry and the Pacemakers filtered into the daylight.

  With each breath, Clay felt time collapsing around her and it made the enclosed space of her car shrink, forced her to open the door and get out as the last of the mourners crept into the chapel.

  Clay spotted a gardener pushing a wheelbarrow and walking in her direction. Locking her car, she caught the man’s eye and held up her warrant card. She looked over his shoulder and behind him the sheer breadth and width of the cemetery stood out like an infernal riddle.

  The gardener squinted as he placed a pair of reading glasses on his nose.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘Sixty-six? Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘The cemetery’s divided into plots. The plots are numbered. One of the plots has the number sixty-six.’

  ‘Can you take me to it?’

  He left the wheelbarrow and its load of perished flowers where he stood.

  ‘Follow me…’

  Clay gathered her coat at the collar and she and Stone walked after the gardener into the mean wind and the dying strains of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

  39

  11.30 am

  Norma Maguire’s brain was alive with dark instinct.

  Fran wasn’t answering her landline phone in the office downstairs or her mobile. Three times her landline voicemail kicked in and three times Norma listened with growing impatience to her employee’s voice grinding in the fact that she just wasn’t there.

  Hi, Francesca Christie speaking. I’m currently unavailable. Leave a message after the tone or try again later.

  She dialled Daniel Ball, the office manager, the man who knew everything about everybody.

  ‘Norma?’

  ‘Where’s Fran? She’s not answering her office phone and as far as I’m aware she isn’t out at a viewing.’

  ‘I don’t know where she is, Norma.’ The neutrality in his voice incensed her.

  ‘You’re the office manager, for God’s sake. If you don’t know where my people are, who the hell does?’

  ‘Please don’t shout at me, Norma. What do you want me to do? Follow people down the street?’

  ‘Have you seen her today?’

  ‘Yes, she left the office at twenty to ten. Norma, you were there. You saw me with her when you came downstairs just after half nine.’

  The noise of voices in the office behind Daniel died down and she imagined them all listening in, all knowing what was going on while she was in the dark.

  ‘Oh!’ said Daniel, with a note of levity. ‘Speak of the Devil. Francesca just came into the office.’

  ‘Send her up to me. Now.’

  The familiar tap on the door – the way only Fran’s fingers could connect with glass – didn’t happen and, instead, for the first time, she walked into Norma’s office without warning.

  Norma pretended to be studying a set of papers on her desk and feigned surprise when she looked up and made eye contact with her employee.

  ‘I didn’t hear you coming in, Fran…’

  Francesca Christie looked around the room, as if looking for some other person.

  ‘Fran?’ Francesca touched herself under the throat. ‘Who’s Fran?’

  Norma felt a worm turning in between the hemispheres of her brain.

  ‘What’s wrong, Francesca?’

  ‘I won’t be coming back to work for you.’

  ‘You have a contract with me. One month’s notice.’

  ‘I’m not coming back to work for you. Contract or no contract.’

  ‘You’ve been head-hunted then. Haven’t I been good to you?’ Norma felt hurt translate itself into a blade that cut into all her vital organs in the same moment. ‘What’s the problem? Is it me?’ asked Norma.

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable around you.’ Francesca’s gentle voice stiffened into something much harder, more abrasive.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Norma heard herself match it.

  ‘The way you look across the office at me.’

  ‘You’re imagining it.’

  ‘It’s not just me who’s noticed. It’s the talk of the office. The anonymous Valentine’s Card that arrived at my house. Not a word on it. Block print letters on the envelope but do you know what, Norma? I could smell your perfume on it. Literally. Chanel Coco. There were creases on the card where you’d dripped it on to…’

  ‘Francesca, stop right there! I did no such thing. It was a prank, a prank by one of your colleagues.’

  ‘Why is it, Norma, every time you take us out to eat, you sit at the top of the table and I sit at your side? Why is it when a table is booked, you call the restaurant and give them place settings and those name cards are set out on the table? Why is it your hand or foot always touches me under the table?’

  ‘I’m crippled and have no sensation at all from the waist down.’

  ‘Every picture taken of every night out, your left arm’s around my shoulder and your fingers are hovering over the top of my breasts.’ She pointed at a framed picture on the wall. ‘Look, if you think I’m imagining it. Look, if you don’t believe me!’

  ‘I didn’t know you had this in you, Francesca. There are codes of conduct for estate agents. We have rules. You cannot break your contract.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I am doing.’

  ‘I’m going to take this further, you’ll see.’

  ‘Go ahead. I’ve been talking to a barrister about you and your harassment. If I take you to tribunal, you’ll get roasted alive.’

  ‘Roasted alive? Will I now? Well, if I was you I wouldn’t rely on any support from your so-called friends downstairs. They wouldn’t dare go against me. I’m their bread and butter. You’re just somebody who used to work here. But on that note, on that very sorry note, just who are you going to work for?’

  ‘Mr Doherty.’

  The first stirrings of a storm brewed inside Norma and the new-found hurt shifted into rage.

  ‘Then I’ll take both of you to the cleaners.’

  ‘Leave him out of it. He didn’t approach me. I approached him. And I can prove it.’

  Norma pictured Brian Doherty, pompous and bulbous-lipped, and imagined Francesca Christie fawning over him and working hard to win his affection and admiration.

  ‘Get out! Get out of my office now. Collect together any last pieces of personal tat that you have downstairs and get off the premises.’

  ‘I don’t keep pe
rsonal belongings in that drawer. Someone started going into it and taking my personal items. Who could that be?’

  Francesca Christie stopped at the door.

  ‘You want to watch your blood pressure, Norma.’ She turned and looked at her former boss. ‘Your face has gone purple and your eyes look like they’re about to explode out of your head. You’ll have to excuse me. I have to go to work.’

  40

  11.40 am

  Clay stood in a maze of hundreds of graves next to the head gardener, who had taken her to what looked like the middle of a stone-studded nowhere.

  She turned a full circle and asked, ‘Where does the plot begin and end?’

  ‘The grave you’re standing next to is the bottom right-hand corner of the grid, Springwood 66. Three graves in front of you from there is the top right-hand corner. Three to the left is the bottom left-hand corner. Four rows of four. A square of sixteen in all, DCI Clay. 66 Springwood Crematorium.’

  Clay counted the sixteen headstones set out in a square and asked, ‘Is there anything significant about this plot?’

  ‘No. They were all born, they all lived, they all died. No poets or martyrs that I’m aware of. If you’re looking for their company, try plot 157.’ He laughed, wheezed like an old accordion and smelled of tobacco and earth.

  ‘Mind if I get some pictures?’

  ‘I’m sure none of the residents will object.’ Walking away, he pulled the collar of his coat together. ‘Death’s a demanding mistress. I’m a busy man. If you have any questions, you can contact me through the office.’

  ‘Karl?’ Clay looked at Stone. ‘Get pictures of each grave in plot 66, please.’

  He walked to the bottom left-hand corner of the plot and asked, ‘You want me to check them out with the crematorium office?’

  ‘Please.’

  Clay walked forward, read the headstone of a very old man who had died decades earlier and who had probably not been spared a second thought after his death. She paused at the grave ahead of it and saw three tired red silk flowers in an urn and noted that the person had died before she was born.

  As Stone took multiple shots of each headstone, Clay walked to the white marble angel, the standout headstone on the plot. The angel’s head was inclined to the left, her eyes downcast on the grave beneath her feet.

  Clay read the headstone.

  CATRIONA WEST

  WIFE AND MOTHER

  STOLEN IN AN INSTANT

  1940–2001

  Behind a glass oval in the marble was a picture of a mature and attractive woman, a moment snatched in time. Remember me this way.

  ‘Karl. Lots of shots of this one, please.’

  Stolen in an instant? The words lit fuses in Clay’s head. Sudden death? An accident? Suicide? Murder?

  ‘I’m interested in all of them, but Catriona West’s getting right under my skin,’ said Clay.

  Her iPhone buzzed with an incoming call and Clay felt the temperature take a sudden dip, with the wind whistling from the wide spaces at her back and the black clouds above her spitting out the first notes of what promised to be a heavy downpour.

  In the silent acres of the dead, Stone stood beside her, taking pictures of Catriona West’s headstone. Clay focused on the picture of Catriona’s face, felt her scalp crawl and her face flush, her mind’s eye filling with her first impression of Annie Boyd’s scalped and faceless body. A form of paralysis possessed Clay.

  Answer the phone, she urged herself. Answer the phone.

  She dug deep, shook off the invisible shackles that weighed her down and prepared to connect the incoming call.

  41

  11.55 am

  Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks waited with growing impatience for Clay to pick up as he called her from the landline phone on his desk in Trinity Road police station. He counted the ringtones in his head and, in the final moment before the answer machine kicked in, she connected the call.

  ‘Bill, how are things?’

  She sounded extremely cold, with the wind sobbing behind her, and Hendricks was grateful for the warmth of the incident room.

  ‘Pebbles On The Beach have got back to us on the victim on the footpath linking Menlove Avenue and Allerton Road. Mand-E turns out to be Amanda Winton.’

  ‘Are we sure it’s her?’ asked Clay.

  ‘There are three Amandas in Liverpool who go on their dating site and only one spells her name or refers to herself as MAND-E. I double-checked.’

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘Flat 3, 189 Princes Road, Liverpool 8.’

  ‘Karl, come on…’

  Hendricks heard the sound of two sets of feet moving at speed through gravel.

  ‘The landlord?’ asked Clay.

  ‘I’m still trying to track him down.’

  ‘Then get on to the duty magistrate, Bill. We need a warrant to get into her flat and search it. I’m going there directly.’

  ‘I’ll ask the duty magistrate to send the warrant to your phone.’

  ‘Tell Gina Riley to meet us there.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Go through the National Police Computer. See if there’s anything on Amanda Winton. When you’ve checked out Amanda… It may be something, it may well be nothing, but have a look for anything on a Catriona West.’

  ‘Jesus, have we got another victim?’

  ‘She was born in 1940 and she died suddenly in 2001. Wife and mother. That puts her outside the prey profile for what’s going on in 2021. She wasn’t single. She wasn’t blonde. Karl Stone’s going to circulate a photograph of her when she was middle-aged.’

  ‘Who is she, Eve?’

  ‘She could be a complete waste of time. She resides in Plot 66, Springwood Crematorium. We need backup. 189 Princes Road.’

  Hendricks heard music piped from a loudspeaker. Unforgettable by Nat King Cole. And beneath the music, children crying hysterically, a combination of sounds that went straight through him.

  A car door opened and closed, killed the dreadful sorrow. Hendricks heard Clay turn the ignition on in her car.

  ‘I’ll get on to Gina and the duty magistrate right now.’

  42

  11.59 am

  Francesca Christie walked over the threshold of Doherty Estates and Properties with a sharp mixture of nervous tension and profound relief. It felt like the air in the office was clean and easy to breathe.

  ‘You made it with a minute to spare, Francesca.’

  Sally Manson, a tall middle-aged woman with long black hair, walked towards her, arm outstretched, hand extended and smiling. As Francesca shook hands with her, she felt the ever-present vice of oppression that Norma Maguire could tighten with a glance, unlock around her skull. She looked around the office, saw that they were the only people in the space.

  ‘Hello, Sally,’ said Francesca.

  ‘Office manager and head girl. Pleased to be at your assistance. Step this way, Francesca.’

  Francesca followed Sally to a desk. ‘This is your desk. It’s a rather small goldfish bowl, the world of estate agents in this neck of the woods. Everyone knows everyone. Do you like to keep busy?’

  ‘I like to keep really busy.’

  ‘Well, we can certainly offer you that option. Look at us now. Up the wall. And just wait until new year: January, the busiest month in the year for divorce lawyers and estate agents.’

  Francesca felt the steel clamp that was permanently locked between her shoulder blades in Maguire Holdings vanish. She laughed, felt the glow of the dawn of a brand-new era in her life. New job? Certainly. New man? How she hoped it would work out with James.

  ‘I’ve got your mobile number, Francesca. Brian gave it to me.’ The smile in her eyes dipped. ‘How did Norma take the news you were leaving?’

  Francesca half-shrugged. ‘She was angry. She made all kinds of noises about what would happen to me because I’d walked early from my contract. But I couldn’t care less. I’m just so happy to be here. Away from the oppression
.’

  ‘Yup!’ said Sally. ‘We have heard. Anyway. New chapter and all that. Brian’s delighted you’re on board, we all are. He’s wanted you to join our team for ages, and we’re a tight-knit bunch. You’re going to fit in just fine.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Sally.’

  ‘One thing. It is Francesca, isn’t it?’ Sally checked. ‘Not Franny or…?’

  Francesca laughed.

  ‘You can call me Francesca. You can call me Franny if you like. But please, please, never ever Fran…’

  ‘I’ve got you, Francesca.’

  43

  12.20 pm

  Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay and Detective Sergeant Gina Riley followed Mr McGann, Amanda Winton’s ground floor neighbour, up the staircase to the third floor of a large Victorian terraced building on Princes Road. He stopped on the first landing, out of breath, clinging to the banister, his stained white vest and boxer shorts clinging to his flabby bulk.

  ‘Murdered?’ he wheezed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Clay. ‘How come you’ve got the key to her front door?’

  ‘The landlord pays me as caretaker, so I have the keys in case of an eventuality…’

  ‘I see you’re struggling. How about you hand the keys to me?’ Clay held her hand out.

  ‘Won’t argue with you…’

  ‘Go downstairs, gather your thoughts on what you know about Amanda Winton.’

  Clay and Riley hurried up the remaining two sets of stairs, past the competing sounds of daytime TV and robotic dance music leaking from the separate flats. At the plain door of Amanda Winton’s top floor flat, as Clay slid the skeleton key into the lock she imagined how Pandora felt when she unlocked the forbidden box.

  She turned the key and pushed the door open at the top right-hand corner with her index finger.

  A narrow corridor led into the heart of the attic flat, with rooms on one side of the passageway.

  ‘Nothing in the bathroom.’ Riley checked to the left.

  ‘Nor the kitchen,’ confirmed Clay, inspecting the room ahead of it.