Embroidering Shrouds

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘The milkman? Then that’s where we should be.’ She handed him the squad car keys. ‘You drive, Mike. I want to think.’

  As he turned the car around she couldn’t resist turning back in her seat to study the two contrasting houses that had brought so much pain.

  Tylman was sitting nervously in the anteroom, a ruddy-faced, plump man wearing a royal-blue overall splashed with the name of the dairy, Addison’s. Joanna introduced herself and Mike, and they made themselves comfortable in one of the interview rooms. Tylman looked anxious. ‘I’m not a suspect, am I?’

  Joanna bit back the Clouseau reply, that she suspected everyone and she suspected no one, instead reassuring him heartily and adding her thanks to him for acting so promptly both by alerting the police and by attending for interview.

  Tylman’s face visibly relaxed.

  ‘Let’s take you back to Saturday,’ she began.

  ‘I just left two pints.’ And Tylman explained Nan Lawrence’s regular habits. ‘She always had two pints on Saturdays.’

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual?’

  The milkman shook his head.

  ‘Did you see her?’

  Tylman thought for a moment. ‘Not on Saturday,’ he said finally.

  ‘And Sunday?’

  ‘I don’t deliver on a Sunday.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  Tylman’s face broke into a grin. ‘What half the population do,’ he said, ‘catch up on some sleep.’

  ‘And?’

  Again Tylman looked uneasy. ‘I went to the DIY store,’ he said. ‘My wife’s got this thing about having a dishwasher. It wanted plumbing in. I did that most of the afternoon, then I watched a rugby match. In the evening I watched a film.’

  ‘And that takes us to Monday,’ Joanna prompted. ‘What can you tell us about Monday?’

  ‘There was only the one empty on the doorstep,’ Tylman said. ‘Washed. She always washed them. I picked it up. I thought it was a bit funny, I mean, there was always two empties on a Monday. I’d never known her only leave the one.’

  Joanna cast her mind back to the tiny, old-fashioned kitchen, a fridge had stood in the corner, to the left of the door. She made a mental note to ask Barra what it had contained. Were they to pinpoint the time of death by how much milk was left in the bottle rather than rely on scientific means? Probably. Already she could see that science and social science would together provide answers; if both agreed it would be fixed.

  She spoke again to Tylman. ‘And so to Tuesday.’

  Tylman swallowed. ‘It was still there,’ he said, ‘Monday’s pint, standing on the doorstep. I knew then that something was very wrong. I was worried,’ he said. ‘I turned the engine off and walked right around the house. The curtains were drawn but there was a narrow crack. Then I saw.’ He looked up. ‘You know what I saw.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ Joanna stood up. It all seemed logical enough.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Tylman. Is there anything else you want to add?’

  The milkman shook his head.

  Mike interrupted. ‘Nothing else that you noticed?’ Again the milkman shook his head, more emphatically this time. She put the statement in front of him and handed him a pen.

  Joanna watched the milkman leave with a feeling that there was something else she should have tackled him on. It would be later that afternoon before she knew what it was.

  Lunchbreaks – even late ones – were already a thing of the past. She and Mike wolfed down sandwiches while preparing for the first briefing, washing the bread down with coffee. Neither spoke.

  The assembled officers were waiting for them as they walked in.

  Joanna crossed straight to the whiteboard and penned in the facts of the case. First she wrote the details of the eighteen burglaries that had taken place from January to July. All preying on elderly women, widows, stealing easily disposable goods, money, television, videos, pension books, the odd piece of porcelain. No sightings of the perpetrators. Then in July Emily Whittaker had stood at the top of the stairs to find two youths ransacking her house, one in a bedroom who had pushed past her. She had fallen and broken her hip and that had been the start of a change in the crimes. She had described her attackers as young (a description she had later applied to the consultant who had operated on her – a man of around fifty). When pressed by a gentle DS Hannah Beardmore she had said they were hoys’ of about twenty. Further descriptions had been elusive, she couldn’t remember what they wore, what they looked like, anything, even how many there were.

  Joanna moved on.

  If Emily Whittaker seemed to recall nothing, what Florence Price remembered was equally unhelpful. She had been robbed by a ‘masked gang’. But the money taken had been real enough. Cash. Three hundred pounds saved out of her pension. Money meant to pay for her winter gas bill. A local businessman had donated the money instead. Florence Price may have been badly frightened but ultimately she had not been out of pocket. Joanna stood back from the board and frowned. What sort of a ‘gang’ broke in, robbed and threatened and left no trace of evidence? Beneath Florence Price’s name she wrote Cecily Marlowe in large black capitals. She hardly needed to remind the assembled officers of the details of this crime, the slashing of an old lady was memorable enough. Barely a week after the assault on Cecily Marlowe had been the puzzling robbery of Jane Vernon. Thankfully no violence this time. Her purse had been emptied of twenty-seven pounds, and this time the forensics boys had hit lucky. They had found a long, blonde hair. A natural blonde, the report had said. For the first time they wondered whether a female had been involved. None of the other women had mentioned a woman’s presence, their assailants had been unequivocally male.

  And finally Joanna wrote the last name on the board. Nan Lawrence. Murdered. Battered with what was almost certainly her own walking stick. Joanna recalled the murder scene, Massacre of the Innocent, and they didn’t know yet whether anything had been taken.

  There were plenty of lines of enquiry open to them but the questions she penned onto the boards were: Had Nan Lawrence known her killer? And had the door been left unlocked or had she unlocked it herself?

  Joanna stepped back from the board. Christian had told them a few things, facts that did not exactly deflect suspicion from him. His great aunt had not been deaf. No one therefore could have crept up on her unawares. And Christian’s comments blew Barra’s theory of a deaf and slightly scatty old lady right into the sky. And from the statement given by Nan’s own brother her great-nephew had been the person who had known Nan Lawrence best.

  Chapter Six

  Still puzzling she wound up the briefing but as she was leaving the room Will Farthing caught up with her. ‘There’s something you should know.’

  Will Farthing and Joanna walked along the corridor together. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the case,’ he said earnestly, ‘but you should know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘The milkman.’

  ‘Bill Tylman?’ A more innocent bystander Joanna had never met.

  ‘He was the one. He found that other old lady.’ Then it clicked. Joanna knew what it was about Tylman that had given her the feeling of déjà vu.

  ‘You mean Cecily Marlowe?’

  ‘Yes.’ Will Farthing looked uncomfortable. ‘He found her the morning after the attack. I know there’s absolutely no connection. I mean he’s probably one of the few people who calls round regularly on these old ladies but he did have a big fuss made of him at the time. They gave him the milkman of the year award last month on the strength of it.’

  ‘That’s right. The paper have been running stories about his bravery, haven’t they? Made him quite a local celebrity. Thanks, Will. As you say, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the case but ...’

  Farthing grinned at her. ‘Just thought I ought to remind you.’

  As soon as she was back in her office Joanna asked Mike to get her the Marlowe file.

  ‘There’s only one thing that strikes me abou
t Tylman’s involvement in another incident,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t he mention the fact that this was the second time he’d been involved in a major crime? It would have been the most natural thing in the world. He was first on the scene both times. He was honoured for the first case. He wasn’t exactly evading the spotlight before, so why, all of a sudden, does he hide his light under a bushel?’

  Mike had located the file. He handed it across the desk. ‘Yeah, a bit suspicious, don’t you think?’

  Joanna laughed up at him. ‘You think everything’s suspicious, Mike.’

  Korpanski grinned back. ‘Surely you can’t imagine that Tylman gets a gang to assault old ladies purely for a moment of glory?’

  Their good humour didn’t last long. Cecily Marlowe’s file made grim reading. The photographs were bad enough. Sad eyes peered out from a mournful face criss-crossed with suture lines. The mask of someone who had seen too much, lived too long. And the shock was evident in a fixed stare directed at a cruel world.

  Then there was the doctor’s report. Contusions. Numerous slash wounds across the face, some superficial, some not. Joanna bent over the file and continued reading, sickened to the stomach. A general anaesthetic had had to be given, in spite of the victim’s poor physical state. There was underlying damage to deeper tissue: muscles, blood vessels, nerves. A finger had almost been severed. Joanna stopped reading, too queasy at the thought of the cruelty behind the hand that had slashed, without pity, at a defenceless, scared old woman. For no reason. She stared sightlessly at the wall. There was no mention of the irreparable damage that had been done to the woman’s mind, the fright, the loss of confidence. Joanna knew Cecily Marlowe suffered from permanent terrors since the attacks; her dreams were filled with pain, with knives slashing.

  She leafed through the statements. Yes. A milkman had heard whimpering from inside the house. He had gone to her rescue. He had found her hiding underneath her kitchen table, too terrified to come out, screaming hysterically as he had approached her; someone she had known for years, had seen day in, day out. She had been too frightened to be rational. He had coaxed her from under the table as though she were a small child. He’d rung the emergency services, waited with her until they had arrived. He hadn’t done much but he had been there. The milkman had been commended, singled out as one of Leek’s true heroes. A local charity for the elderly had adopted him as their patron. Leek’s business population had proved generous. He had been voted the Millennium Milkman by a local newspaper. Joanna stopped reading. Tylman peered out from the newspaper cuttings justifiably proud of himself, fitting the caption below of ‘Hero Milkman’ perfectly. So why hadn’t he said that Nan Lawrence was not the first battered old lady he had discovered?

  Joanna moved on to Nan Lawrence’s murder and again asked herself the same questions. Why? There were plenty of motives for murder, plenty more murders that had no connection at all with motive: blind lashings out, unplanned frenzied attacks, usually committed under, the influence of alcohol. In fact, Nan Lawrence’s murder bore some of the hallmarks of such a crime. The weapon had been opportunistic, not one taken to the scene to kill. The injuries had been far beyond those which would have been necessary to kill her. The killer had carried on beating and beating, almost certainly after she had died.

  Was Christian Patterson telling the truth when he insisted she always locked and bolted her doors and had perfectly good hearing? But why would he lie? If anything it heaped suspicion back on him.

  Mike was watching her. ‘Penny for them, Jo.’

  ‘I’m trying to work out the sequence of events, Mike, and I’m not doing too well,’ she said frankly. ‘I can’t think how our killer gained access and I can’t think why. If it wasn’t for the numerous recent attacks on old women I might start turning my suspicions on the brother, if it wasn’t physically impossible for him to have done it. Heaven knows he has motive enough. Every time he walked down those steps to be confronted with that place he must have loathed his sister. I sensed real hatred there.’ She met his dark eyes. ‘That is why it’s called Spite Hall, isn’t it? The entire edifice is a mausoleum to spite, hatred, malice. I mean, it’s an ugly old place, but the emotion that created it and stuck it right in front of her own brother’s front door is even uglier.’

  ‘I don’t know, Jo,’ Korpanski said uncomfortably. ‘It’s just folklore.’

  ‘And how many times does folklore have its origins in the truth, Mike? They hated each other, this brother and sister. Encouraged by their father. They lived as close as it is possible to live, without actually sharing a roof, and virtually ignored each other’s existence. How did that ugly building come to be built there in the first place? I thought there was such a thing as planning permission.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe just after the war they relaxed it – if it was in place at all. I don’t know and besides it won’t have any bearing on our little gang of granny-bashers.’

  ‘We should keep an open mind, Korpanski. Anything we learn – at all – about Nan Lawrence may help in finding out about her death.’

  Korpanski planted himself right in front of her desk, centre vision. ‘It’s a waste of time, Jo,’ he argued. ‘We should be talking to Stockport Police, Manchester; look at parts of the Potteries where they’ve had a problem with break-ins, the Meir for a start.’

  ‘I know that, Mike.’

  He was smiling at her. ‘You’re just being nosey.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Joanna admitted, ‘I concede that. You know me, always want to sniff out the scandal in people’s lives. That’s where crimes are born, Mike, and don’t you forget it. For now I’d like to talk to the third member of the family. The other sister. Besides,’ she fixed him with a stare ‘if you’re so certain this is a random attack perhaps you’ll tell me why you’re keen to lure Christian Patterson down to his great-aunt’s place.’

  Korpanski made a face. ‘You’re usually the one going on about feelings, Jo,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bit of a feeling about Christian.’

  ‘What sort of feeling?’

  ‘That he’s not quite what he pretends to be,’ Korpanski said. ‘I can picture him being quite vicious.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Never more serious,’ Korpanski answered. ‘There’s something about him. Look at half the villains in court, stamping on people’s heads, baseball-batting victims till they need a life-support machine, then put them in court, hair slicked down, in a suit. He just reminds me of hooligans like that. And judge and jury get fooled every time.’

  ‘But not you, Mike.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not me, I know the type too well.’

  The exchange was interrupted by Joanna’s mobile phone.

  ‘I’d better do breakfast in the morning,’ Matthew said cheerfully. ‘PM’s fixed for eight-thirty a.m.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said sweetly. ‘No fry-ups then, Matt, just a light one’ll do. Or none at all?’

  ‘Fine by me. Listen.’ A pause. ‘I’ve cleaned her face up. There’s quite a bit of damage, enough to turn anyone’s stomach. I think it would be kinder to the relatives if we relied on dental records for formal identification.’

  ‘Good idea. I’ll be late home tonight. Bound to be really with everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you when I see you. Hope you’re around to tuck me up.’

  Joanna smiled. ‘Count on it.’

  ‘Bye then, darling.’

  She stood up. ‘PM eight-thirty in the morning. Not that it’ll tell us much we don’t already know. In the meantime let’s go and visit Nan Lawrence’s sister.’

  Rudyard was a straggling village a couple of miles to the north-west of Leek whose centre was a huge reservoir housing a small sailing club. In the summer it would be full of day trippers in search of any large expanse of water, ice creams and the chance of a short ride on the tiny railway. The Victorians had loved the place and a certain Mr and Mrs Kipling had been so impressed that they had named their son af
ter it. Today, however, not a sail was to be seen. The lake looked grey and unwelcoming as the rain bounced on its surface.

  Quills was not easy to find in the fading light, up a muddied track and through a wide farm gate; nothing pointed the way to a home at all. It seemed that Lydia Patterson did not encourage casual callers. If one of the WPCs had not been familiar with Rudyard they might have had difficulty finding the place. As it was they had precise instructions and the description Nan Lawrence’s brother had given them, so they were already prepared for a home somewhat different from the traditional cottage. To be expected considering her brother and sister’s residences.

  It was still a surprise. A 1920s square wooden shack, single-storeyed, small and neglected in the centre of a field. Once emulsioned the paint was peeling. It hadn’t been touched for years. The garden was non-existent. Hens, sheep, even a pig wallowed in the mud outside. Ducks paddled in a huge puddle. Had it not been for a lamp burning in one of the windows a passerby would have thought the place was derelict. No one was to be seen.

  Mike pulled up the car at the gate. ‘You want me to open it?’

  It was only fair that she should do it; Korpanski was driving. But the rain had started up again in a vicious, blustery drizzle and one step out of the car would have put Joanna straight into the mire. Bugger all this feminism, she thought, give me chivalry any time.

  She grinned at Korpanski. ‘Do me a favour.’

  Manfully he stepped out, dirtying the bottoms of his trousers straightaway. Joanna watched him through the windscreen, big, burly, a contrast to Matthew’s slight figure. Korpanski caught her watching him, grinned ruefully, opened the door and sank back into his seat. ‘It’s a mudbath out there.’

  He stopped the car right in front of the two steps that led to Quills’ front door. The scent of the farmyard was strong as Joanna closed the gate, this time accepting that her shoes would be soiled. She didn’t want to antagonize Nan Lawrence’s sister by allowing her animals to escape. Some movement caught her eye. She glanced up at the house; she was being watched. A face had appeared at the window. She had a swift impression of doughy features and pale skin. The next instant the door was flung open and a robust woman was silhouetted in the doorway.