Embroidering Shrouds

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘And Nan Lawrence?’

  ‘It gave her the idea of taking revenge on Cecily Marlowe using her grandson, otherwise we would not have found the two stolen items in Spite Hall. No one else really went there; it has to be him. They were close. He did it under her direction, I’m certain of that. What I can’t work out is why she directed it, why he did it and why she kept the candlesticks as trophies to gloat over them.’

  ‘You’re jumping to conclusions again.’

  ‘Her fingerprints were all over them. He would have worn gloves. She kept them wrapped in tissue paper at the bottom of the wardrobe.’ According to Barra, her prints were not only numerous but unsmudged.’

  ‘So we’re not looking for one lot of criminals any more but a whole bloody bunch of them who all read the newspaper?’ Contempt was evident in his tone.

  ‘I think so.’

  Korpanski drew in a long, whistling breath. ‘OK, Jo,’ he said, the disbelief still making his voice harsh and hostile. ‘The million-dollar question. Who killed Nan Lawrence?’

  ‘I don’t know –’

  ‘A frail old lady obsessional about security and she lets her killer in,’ Mike reminded her, ‘then sits there sewing.’

  ‘I don’t pretend to know everything, Mike.’

  ‘Oh, right. So what’s the evidence to support your theory?’

  ‘I thought you understood. I don’t have any evidence, except for the candlesticks and pension book turning up in Nan’s wardrobe and the detail Barra’s gleaned from the scene of the crime. It’s more to do with psychology. The assault on Nan was a frenzied attack while Cecily’s was coldly done, with a knife and not a bludgeon. And as far as we know nothing was taken from Nan Lawrence.’

  ‘Unless she did have a cache of money lying around somewhere.’

  ‘There’s nothing concrete to suggest that,’ she said.

  Mike was silent for a moment. ‘If you don’t know who, then why was she murdered?’

  ‘Try this for size,’ she countered. ‘What if the reason she was killed was because someone knew she had been connected with the assault on Cecily Marlowe?’

  ‘More revenge?’

  ‘Got anything better?’

  Mike sighed again. ‘If your theory’s even half right’, he said, ‘you might want to think about this. Two of the crimes are connected by the spoils, and who stumbled across two of the bodies? It just might be worth finding out a bit more about Tylman’s milk round.’

  Joanna nodded and pushed the door open.

  The station was a blaze of light, its warmth welcome after the vicious autumn wind which had almost blown them through the doors. As they passed the desk sergeant he slid the window open. ‘I’ve put the evening paper on your desk, ma’am, and you’re not going to like it.’

  ‘He’s damned right about that.’ Mike spread the copy of Wednesday’s Sentinel across the desk and scanned the article. ‘Whatever you say, Jo, the evening paper is homing in on similarities between the cases – not differences.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ She leaned over his shoulder. The face of Bill Tylman stared out solemnly at her. Joanna winced. They’d got him to pose with a milk bottle in each hand, like the Milky Bar Kid. The headline was equally puerile: ‘Hero Milkie Finds Second Victim’.

  ‘And tomorrow they’ll still be running the same story’, Mike said, “but the angle will be different.’

  ‘I can’t wait for my cornflakes.’ She stood up, stretched her arms above her head and yawned. ‘Let’s get started.’

  The room was full. Chief Superintendent Colclough had been generous with resources, pulling all available officers off any job that was not urgent and allocating them to the murder inquiry. A few had been drafted from neighbouring forces. Joanna sat on the corner of the desk, talking casually, inviting comments and observations from anyone in the room who had a contribution to make. These briefings were less formal occasions than a pooling of information. She began by relating the latest discovery at Spite Hall. There was a ripple of disbelief as they all searched for an explanation, none was forthcoming.

  ‘For now’, she continued, ‘we should continue to focus on Nan Lawrence’s murder rather than on the other crimes. If there is a connection – and I believe there is – our investigations should eventually throw some light on the entire picture. Refresh your memories with all the details of the previous assaults and keep them at the back of your minds. Now, does anyone have any comments to make?’

  PC Phil Scott spoke up from the back of the room. Two years ago he had been a young rookie, eager to please with sharp blue eyes. In previous investigations he had always been the one furiously writing down all facts as they came out. His methodical methods and structured, logical thinking had frequently borne fruit. ‘Just a thought, ma’am.’

  ‘Go on, Scottie.’

  ‘Is it possible, I mean, we have plenty of witnesses who saw Nan Lawrence walking home from church on Sunday at lunchtime, considering the fact that the house had not been broken into, could someone have followed her home from church and then jumped her when she opened her own door?’

  Joanna shook her head. ‘Matthew put the time of death as sometime on Sunday evening,’ she said. ‘Christian Patterson, her great-nephew, claims he saw her sewing in a lit window at about six o’clock, later on that evening, if we believe him. When we found her on Tuesday morning the curtains were drawn. She was sewing, so she’d be unlikely to draw them until the light was gone. The lamp had been switched on; lighting up time is about five-thirty. That’s enough evidence even without Barra’s other details. There were no bloodstains anywhere in the house but near the armchair which faced the window, none in the hall. Fairly obviously, if the first blow had been struck in the hall she would have had to stagger from the front door into the sitting room, which is where we found the body. It wouldn’t have taken much force to have broken her bones or draw blood. All the pathological evidence indicates the primary blow was severe if not instantly fatal. There was not one speck of blood in the hall. No.’ She frowned. ‘Nan must have left the door unlocked. Certainly she was sitting over her embroidery when she was struck – from behind – with her walking stick. And then.’ She closed her eyes. She didn’t want that dreadful vision of the pulped face to haunt her. ‘After she had fallen her assailant continued lashing her face with the stick until–’

  WPC Dawn Critchlow spoke up from the back. ‘Did she fall face down or was she rolled over?’

  Barra answered the question for Joanna. ‘She must have fallen face down. It’s the only position that fits.’

  ‘So her assailant ...’

  Barra nodded. ‘Rolled her on to her back so he could aim blows at her face.’

  There were a few pale faces around the room.

  Joanna continued. ‘We might consider the possibility that the assailant hid somewhere around the house only to surprise her later on in the evening, although I think it’s unlikely as she let herself in at least five hours before she died.’

  Barra interrupted. ‘I didn’t find any evidence that someone hid in the place.’

  ‘Right. We have no record of her leaving Spite Hall during Sunday afternoon or early evening and her home help states she rarely left the place. She wasn’t well known for her sociability. Add to that the weather was foul and I think it’s likely that she remained at home after her return from church. But it would be a good idea for you to get a list of people at the morning service and visit each one, maybe they saw someone hanging around the place or following her home, perhaps they spoke to her. Marion Elland was there – for a start – with her husband.’

  ‘I bet her son wasn’t there.’

  Joanna looked up. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Craig Elland.’ It was PC Robert Cumberbatch. ‘Nasty piece of work, that one.’

  ‘Should I know this guy?’

  ‘Just come out of prison, ma’am, a couple of months ago.’

  ‘What was he in for?’

  ‘GBH. He was a boun
cer at a night club. Someone he didn’t like the look of tried to get in to Shaker’s one night. Craig went for him. Built like a sumo wrestler, he is, reckon his mum must have put anabolics in his bottle instead of rusks. A psycho if ever there was one.’

  Joanna met Mike’s eyes and knew he was recalling Emily Whittaker’s description. A big man, strong, arms like weightlifter’s. Head up to the top of the door frame, he nearly fills it, like a boxer. He moves like an ape.

  Cumberbatch had her full, undivided attention. ‘When did he come out of prison?’

  ‘Couple of months ago, sometime in the summer. Tell you what, ma’am, NACRO will have a problem fitting him back into the community.’

  Joanna turned to Mike. ‘Does she have a key?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His mother, Mike, this psycho’s mother, Nan Lawrence’s home help.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then we’d better find out, as well as getting the date of Elland’s release. We don’t want to start charging him with a crime carried out when he was still safely tucked away inside Stafford Jail.’

  ‘Bridget.’

  PC Anderton stood up, in her forties, mother of four children, brown-haired, with a plain, ordinary face until she smiled, which she did now, when her face lit up. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Keep an eye on the Pattersons, will you – young Christian and his grandfather – particularly Christian, such a charming young man. I don’t want to haul him in just yet but equally we don’t want him escaping us. And while you’re at it I would love to know why his mother threw him out.’

  PC Bridget Anderton beamed at her. ‘With pleasure,’ she said. ‘Charming young men are my speciality.’

  Joanna glanced up at the clock. It was past nine and she had a press conference in the morning. She spent some more time discussing the case with the remaining officers before dismissing them. They would meet again at seven in the morning. She could feel a great weariness creeping towards her, murder investigations were always like this, you simply worked, boring, repetitive, exhausting, routine work. You got more and more tired and wondered whether you would come to any conclusion, and then dawn would break through and the days gone before would seem nothing but structured work leading inexorably towards the solution. She wanted to go home.

  Mike put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Personally, I don’t know why we’re not arresting Christian Patterson and bringing him in. And Elland too, he fits Emily Whittaker’s description perfectly.’

  Joanna pushed her hair away from her face. ‘We have no hard evidence, Mike. It’s all circumstantial, no proof at all. We’d have to let both of them go after the usual thirty-six hours. We have to get more on them than that. As far as Christian is concerned although we have evidence that his great-aunt was connected to the assault on her old friend, we have nothing concrete to link him to the crime. The whole thing would get chucked right back in our faces by the CPS; they’d come down on us like a ton of bricks if we tried to pin the assault on Emily Whittaker on an ex-con. So let’s get our facts straight. And we wouldn’t even have half a conviction; I’m not convinced that it was Christian who battered his great-aunt to death. I don’t pretend to understand the relationship between them, but nothing points us towards the assumption that hatred played a part in it.’ She made a face. ‘People have hinted it was an abnormal affection but no one has stated that Christian disliked Nan. Marion Elland thought that he might have held some amusement for her beliefs, mocked them even. If when Barra looks closer he finds Christian’s fingerprints on the candlesticks or some of Nan’s blood on his clothing we’ll go for him, not now, Mike. It’s too soon.’

  Korpanski snorted. ‘I just hope it’s too soon rather than too late.’

  Chapter Twelve

  It was almost eleven by the time she let herself in. Matthew was watching Sky News; he looked up as she entered. ‘Hi, everything all right?’

  She tried to stifle yet another yawn. ‘Not really. No progress, press conference in the morning, some tricky interviewing and I’m tense.’

  ‘So, I prescribe one glass of wine and a neck massage.’ He vanished into the kitchen and she flopped on to the sofa. For a moment she reflected on the contrast between the present and the past, before she and Matthew had finally moved in together. Then she had let herself into an empty house, there had been no one to ask her how the case was progressing, sympathize when things went wrong, pour her a glass of wine. Now she had Matthew and already she would find it hard to return to the past. He put a wine glass into her hand and she smiled at him. Utter contentment.

  ‘Now sit here on the floor’, he ordered, ‘and I’ll take all the tension out of your neck.’ Which he did, his long fingers probing the muscles until they finally relaxed.

  She leaned back against him. ‘Busy day for you too?’

  ‘Not so nice. The pile-up on the M6 yesterday.

  Whole family. Multiple injuries.’ He paused, then added tentatively, ‘Jo.’

  She was instantly alert. She knew that tone in his voice.

  ‘Eloise will be here in a day or two,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope you’ll eventually become friends …’

  She leaned back into his forearms. ‘Don’t suppose anything, Matt,’ she said. ‘Eloise will be here. That’s all.’ Only to herself would she pose the question, how would they weather it? And the usual answer – stormily.

  They went to bed half an hour later. Despite the traumas of his day Matthew slept well. But she did not. She was often like this during an investigation, her mind restlessly probing the darkest corners of the case. Before she and Matthew had lived together insomnia had not mattered, she could pad around the house making endless cups of tea, working things through, alone. Now she had Matthew to consider. She did not want to disturb him. She did try to sleep, or if not to sleep to induce that trance-like state which allowed her brain to consider the case from all angles, but it was hard. She found herself rejecting the idea that any of the old women involved in the case might be deliberately lying. But, she argued with herself, why should they be exempted from normal, human weaknesses because they were old, and like the very young we find ourselves blessing them with clichéd, idealized characters?

  Yet they could be worse. Nan Lawrence had done more than lie; it was almost certainly she who had orchestrated the vicious assault on her one-time friend.

  Florence Price was almost certainly a liar; she’d spent the gas money on other things and lied to gain public sympathy. Someone would pay – had paid – her gas bill. She’d gambled and had won – so far. Jane Vernon had deceived but for different reasons. But as she lay motionless in bed Joanna acknowledged that this was only half of the story, the other part was even more obscure. Why on earth had Cecily Marlowe protected the villain who assaulted her? What did she have to gain? Or was she simply shielding him through fear of further attacks? Had he threatened her so successfully? But Nan Lawrence was dead now. Surely she had nothing to fear?

  Joanna sneaked another look at Matthew; he was curled in the foetal position, his back towards her. He moved his legs slightly, muttered something unintelligible and gave a little snore; he was in deep sleep. Her restlessness would only disturb him.

  She rose as gently as she could, threw a towelling dressing gown on, knotting the cord around her waist and throwing her hair out of her eyes, then she tiptoed downstairs and brewed up a cup of tea. She had an idea, an old idiosyncrasy from when she was a child, disturbed from sleep by her parents’ noisy rowing. Taking the tea with her she sat, cross-legged, in front of her cabinet of china figures. She never had liked dolls as a child, preferring instead her aunt’s collection of Victorian Staffordshire pottery. More real than dolls, they had always meant something to her. Knowing this, when the aunt had died, she had bequeathed Joanna the entire collection, more than forty figures. Joanna still loved them. She had used them before as a focus to aid concentration when a case was more a puzzle than a certainty.

  It was har
d to say what the attraction of the figures was, certainly there was something simple, unpretentious, naive almost, that simultaneously inspired and reassured her. Perhaps it was the sense of permanence hanging over from that most powerful and stable of periods – Victorian England. Whatever it was, she could see in the pieces so much more than crude clay figures. She could see the entire spectrum of personality: good, evil, simplicity, complexity, naivety, deceit. She turned the key and opened the glass-fronted cabinet, and as had happened many times before her fingers selected a piece that seemed to bear some relevance to her current case, an old lady sitting on a rocking chair, the lettering beneath describing it – Old Age. How very appropriate. She studied it closer. Quite cleverly the potters had portrayed the archetypal old woman: grey-haired, bent-backed, wearing glasses. It could have been any old lady – Nan Lawrence or Cecily Marlowe, Florence Price or Emily Whittaker. Joanna frowned. That had been their mistake from the beginning of the investigation. They had lumped all the old ladies – all the cases – together, when they weren’t the same at all. Each crime was individual as were the women themselves.

  Joanna peered closely at the figure. So which one was this really? Nan Lawrence, of course. The old lady was knitting as Nan had incessantly stitched away at her tapestry, a church cloth, according to Christian. Joanna fingered the figure. Pottery, soft as soap, lifeless and cold. It was not the most attractive piece in her collection – Old Age – a dull subject, drably painted in grey and brown with none of the splashing blues or reds, none of the daring of Dick Turpin, highwayman, none of the adventure of Will Watch, smuggler, or the romance of Nell Gwynne, king’s mistress. It was merely a quiet portrayal of old age, an old woman sitting peacefully, rocking in her chair as Nan Lawrence had done until –

  ‘Jo.’ Matthew was standing in the doorway, naked to the waist, black pyjama trousers, bare feet, tousled blond hair catching the light. ‘Jo,’ he said again, ‘can’t you sleep?’