Unnatural Wastage

by Betty Rowlands

  ‘That’s exactly what I need,’ she said, sinking gratefully on to the sofa.

  ‘I guess it’s the Fiddler’s Patch murder that’s kept you so late,’ he said as he handed her a glass of red wine and sat down beside her.

  ‘Right first time – and with the usual caveat.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I know better than to try and pre-empt the official statement,’ he assured her. ‘On the contrary, I might have a bit of info for you. Major Howes rang me this evening and it’s possible what he was saying could be of interest to your people.’

  ‘I’m not sure my brain is capable of taking in any more stuff this evening,’ she said wearily. ‘At least, not until I’ve had something to eat. What are we having, by the way?’

  ‘Lasagne, and it won’t be ready for fifteen minutes so I’ll tell you anyway. Major Howes saw the report in this evening’s Echo and he couldn’t wait to tell me he recalled overhearing a conversation between two women – a carer and a part-time cleaner. He’s certain they mentioned Fiddler’s Patch; he isn’t sure, but he thinks they were talking about buses to Holmwood. He’s wondering if by any chance one of them could be the murder victim.’

  Sukey took a long pull at her wine before saying, ‘I don’t suppose Major Howes gave a description of the . . . either of the women?’

  ‘Aha, so it rings a bell. And you nearly let drop which of the two you think might be of interest, didn’t you?’

  ‘Touché,’ she admitted. ‘Don’t tease, Harry; this might be very important.’

  ‘All right. Howes went on to say that the cleaner wasn’t one of the regulars but one who comes in as a relief from time to time. He’s never spoken to her but from her accent and her colouring he thinks she might be Indian or Pakistani. This means something to you, doesn’t it?’

  Sukey nodded. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it does,’ she said sadly.

  ‘You think you know the identity of the dead woman, don’t you? All right,’ he said hastily, seeing that she was about to protest, ‘I’m not going to ask you any more questions now . . . but if there’s anything you think a dedicated news-hound can do to help I hope you’ll bear me in mind.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised. ‘Now, what about that lasagne?’

  At about the time that DCs Sukey Reynolds and Vicky Armstrong were interviewing Father Burke, Patsy Godwin was relaxing in her sitting room with her feet up and Henry blissfully purring on her lap. She had been watching a quiz programme that had just ended and she reached for the remote and switched off the television. She put her feet on the floor, dislodging Henry, who ceased purring, sprang from her lap and turned on landing to give her a reproachful glare.

  ‘There’s no need to look at me like that,’ she teased him. ‘You know it’s supper time so you’d have had to move anyway.’ The cat immediately made for the kitchen; Patsy was about to follow him when the telephone rang. ‘Oh bother, who’s that?’ she muttered as she picked up the instrument. ‘Hullo? Oh Kate, lovely to hear from you. How are . . . hang on a minute, stop gabbling . . . what’s that? Another murder? Good Heavens! Where?’ She listened for a few seconds and then broke in. ‘Look, just try and calm down and tell me quietly . . . what? You mean now?’ Patsy glanced at the clock. ‘I was just about to have my supper and I’m not sure if I . . . oh, I see, you’ve had yours. Well, all right then, for a couple of nights . . . how are you going to get here? . . . Oh, that’s very good of him. See you in about an hour then. Bye.’

  She turned off the phone and went into the kitchen where Henry was sitting expectantly beside his empty food bowl. ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened,’ she informed him as she spooned food into the bowl. ‘Your Auntie Kate is having kittens – haha! – because a body’s been found about a mile from where she lives and she’s babbling on about a serial killer and she’s afraid to stay another night in Sycamore Park so she wants to come and stay with us for a few days.’ At the mention of Kate’s name Henry briefly looked up from his food. ‘You like your Auntie Kate don’t you? She’s got a soft spot for you as well – you’ll have a choice of laps.’

  She ate her ham salad followed by fruit yogurt and then went upstairs to check that all was in order in her little guest room. She put out clean towels and was on her way downstairs when the front doorbell rang. Kate stood there, ashen faced and trembling. Behind her was John Yardley, carrying a small suitcase.

  Kate flung her arms round her cousin. ‘Oh Patsy, it’s so good of you to have me at such short notice,’ she said breathlessly. ‘And dear John has been wonderful – he dropped everything to bring me.’

  ‘I was glad to be of service,’ he said with what struck Patsy as uncharacteristic gravity.

  ‘Come in, both of you. You can leave that down here for the moment,’ she added, pointing to the case. ‘I’ve made coffee – would you like some?’

  ‘Coffee would be lovely, thank you.’ They followed her into the sitting room; as they entered, Henry emerged from the kitchen and Kate held out a hand. ‘Come and say hullo to your Auntie Kate!’ she cooed. The cat stared for a moment and then deliberately turned and went back into the kitchen.

  Patsy burst out laughing. ‘I think he won’t talk to you because John’s here. I do believe he’s jealous! Never mind him, just sit down while I fetch the coffee and then you can tell me all about this latest murder. I see you’ve brought the Echo – is the story in there?’

  While her guests drank their coffee, Patsy scanned the account of the discovery of the body. ‘This area they call Fiddler’s Patch, Kate,’ she said. ‘Where is it, exactly?’

  ‘It’s an acre or so of wasteland a short distance from Sycamore Park,’ said Kate. ‘There’s a footpath across it; a lot of people use it as a short cut to the shops and the bus stop . . . I used to use it myself, but now John takes me if I need to go shopping.’ She gave him a grateful glance and he nodded and patted her hand.

  ‘It’s always a pleasure,’ he said.

  ‘Just think, if I was still having to walk that way, it might have been me who found . . . it . . . her!’ Kate shuddered at the thought. ‘The minute I read about it in the paper I rang John . . . I was terrified . . . afraid to leave the flat. It was his idea that I ring you.’

  ‘I hope I did the right thing?’ he said with a glance at Patsy.

  ‘Of course you did,’ she assured him. ‘More coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you; I’ll be going now. Goodbye for now, Kate. Try not to worry; you’re in good hands.’

  She grasped his hand and smiled up at him. ‘You’re such a good friend, John,’ she said huskily. ‘You know, Patsy,’ she said when her cousin returned from seeing him to the door, ‘He’s trying to be sensible and reassuring for my sake, but I’m sure he’s as worried about this latest murder as I am.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Patsy. ‘I expect a lot of people are – I’m beginning to feel that way myself. Ah, here’s Henry,’ she added as the cat emerged from wherever he had been lurking. Perhaps he’ll talk to you now his rival’s gone home!’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Sukey awoke on Sunday morning feeling relaxed, happy and at peace with the world. She raised herself on one elbow to check the time; it was just eight o’clock and she lay back on her pillow with a little sigh of contentment. Harry stirred and mumbled sleepily, ‘Do we have to get up?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘it’s Sunday and we both have a day off.’ She snuggled down beside him and closed her eyes, enjoying the smooth warmth of his body and the regular sound of his breathing. She was dozing off when her phone rang.

  ‘Don’t answer that,’ Harry grunted from beneath the duvet.

  ‘I’d better,’ she said resignedly. ‘There might have been some development in the Fiddler’s Patch murder I should know about.’

  ‘If it’s your bossy sergeant, tell him you’re not available,’ said Harry, by now wide awake. ‘He said you weren’t needed till tomorrow, remember?’

  The phone continued to ring and she p
icked it up. ‘Hullo . . . sorry Sarge, I was asleep . . . what? . . . where? . . . all right, give me time to get dressed.’

  ‘Something tells me your day off is off,’ said Harry as she hung up. ‘At least, you’re not going anywhere without some breakfast.’ He got out of bed and pulled on trousers and a sweatshirt. ‘I’ll fix you something while you’re getting ready.’

  ‘Bless you.’ She blew him a kiss on her way to the shower, emerging five minutes later vigorously towelling her body dry before brushing her damp chocolate-brown curls into shape. By the time she was dressed Harry had brewed coffee and put cereal, toast, butter and marmalade on the kitchen table.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ he asked as she sat down, shook corn-flakes into a bowl and added milk.

  ‘Uniformed reported that Ellerman returned home around midnight,’ she told him. She polished off the cereal, buttered a slice of toast and spread it thickly with marmalade. ‘I’m to rendezvous with Rathbone and Vicky at Sycamore Park. We’re going to pull him in for questioning because—’ She broke off and clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, gosh, I shouldn’t be telling you this!’

  ‘It’s the least you can do in return for supplying your need for nourishment,’ he retorted as he filled a mug with coffee, topped it up with milk and put it front of her.

  ‘I suppose I should be thankful the Echo doesn’t have a Sunday edition,’ she said resignedly. ‘Harry, you won’t . . .?’

  ‘You know you can trust me,’ he assured her. ‘I haven’t let you down yet, have I?’

  ‘That’s true,’ she admitted, ‘but in this case it really is very important there are no leaks. There’s been an awful stink over another case – nothing I was involved in, thank goodness – where stuff got into the papers that wasn’t supposed to be published and there’s a suggestion that someone in the police fed them with information incriminating a suspect who turned out to be innocent and is now threatening to sue.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Harry. ‘Our editor has hammered all this into us until he’s blue in the face – he’s just as anxious as you are that we don’t blot our copybook.’

  ‘Make sure he keeps it that way.’ She finished her food, drank the last of her coffee and put on her jacket. ‘I have to go now; I’ll be in touch when I get back.’

  ‘Have a good day. See you later, darling.’ He gave her a quick hug and a kiss before pouring coffee for himself and putting more bread in the toaster. ‘I’ll clear this lot away before I go home. Dad’ll be pleased to see me – he’ll probably suggest golf and lunch at the club.’

  ‘Have a nice day then. Bye.’

  There was little traffic about and within fifteen minutes she had reached the mobile police station that had been stationed close to the Sycamore Park flats ever since the discovery of Fenella Tremaine’s body. She found Rathbone drinking coffee and talking to Sergeant Drury.

  ‘Ellerman came back shortly after midnight, put his car in the garage and went straight to his flat,’ Rathbone informed her. ‘The light came on after a few minutes and went out about half an hour later. We know he hasn’t left the building again because Sergeant Drury has been keeping an eye on the front entrance and young PC Dandridge has been covering the back. Not that we have any reason to suppose he’ll be thinking of leaving. It’s possible, as he was out all day yesterday, that he hasn’t heard about the discovery of the body.’

  ‘Even if he had, he’d hardly do a runner,’ Drury remarked. ‘That would be as good as an admission of guilt. He’s a cocky devil; he’s managed to cover his tracks so far so maybe he thinks he’s done it this time. I gather you and Vicky have a good idea who the victim is, but haven’t found any definite proof of ­identify?’ he added, turning to Sukey.

  ‘Not yet, Sarge. We hope to get more information tomorrow from the owner of the cleaning agency where we think she worked.’ As she spoke there was the sound of a car approaching. She glanced out of the door of the van. ‘Here’s Vicky.’ She felt her pulse quicken with excitement. Her initial resentment at having to leave the warm bed she had shared with Harry was forgotten.

  ‘Morning all,’ said Vicky as she entered the van. ‘Do I take it we’ve got some real evidence against Ellerman at last, Sarge?’

  ‘Let’s just say that uniformed have found a couple of witnesses who remembered seeing a woman answering to the description of the murder victim entering A block some time after midday on Wednesday. One of them – a semi-invalid lady who spends quite a lot of time sitting by her front window – told PC Dandridge she’d seen her before at about the same time on previous Wednesdays and she quite often sees her leave an hour or so later, but—’ Rathbone broke off to take a mouthful of coffee.

  ‘But she didn’t see her leave this time?’ Vicky anticipated.

  ‘Exactly. And not only that, the same lady often sees Ellerman leave at around nine o’clock in the morning; she says he doesn’t normally come home during the day, but on this particular Wednesday she happened to spot him returning at about half past eleven, which she says was unusual.’

  ‘She’s almost too good to be true,’ Sukey chuckled. ‘I assume she’s a reliable witness and not some ditzy old dear with a vivid imagination?’

  ‘On the contrary, she’s a dedicated supporter of Neighbourhood Watch and Dandridge often drops in for a chat with her. Anyway, we already know from Mrs Shilling that Aggie cleans for Ellerman so it looks like Wednesday was her regular day, which ties in with what Minnie told you and Sukey. That’s something Mike and Tim will have to confirm when they see her tomorrow.’

  ‘From what Minnie told us, Sarge’ said Sukey, ‘Aggie was in a pretty agitated state after reading the report about the dagger sheath being found and wasn’t all that happy about her next job, so maybe she already had reason to think Ellerman had something to do with the Tremaine murder. But,’ she added after a moment’s reflection, ‘if she was that scared, why not make some excuse not to turn up?’

  ‘There could be more than one reason,’ Drury pointed out. ‘Maybe she needed the money and was afraid she’d lose her job if she failed to show. But if it was Ellerman she was scared of because she’d seen the dagger in his flat, why didn’t she show any sign of it at the time of the Tremaine murder? It was the lead story in the Echo for days; that was two weeks ago and so far as we know she didn’t get upset over that.’

  ‘Maybe she hadn’t heard about it,’ said Vicky. ‘Maybe she doesn’t normally see the Echo. It could have been pure chance that she spotted the report on the front page of the paper she saw at Holmwood.’

  ‘Or maybe she read about it when she was on her own, so no one saw her having a wobbly . . . but I guess you could be right,’ Drury admitted with a shrug.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Sukey, ‘going by what the witness saw from her window she went straight to Ellerman’s place after leaving Holmwood.’

  Rathbone nodded. ‘I think we can take that as fairly certain. It’s frustrating that Mike and Tim won’t be able to speak to Mrs Shilling until tomorrow to ask whether Aggie was supposed to clean for anyone else after Ellerman on Wednesday. Their understanding is that it’s only the Thursday and Friday clients who reported her non-appearance, but they’ll need to check.’

  ‘At least this should put paid to any possibility of the Seatons’ involvement,’ said Rathbone. ‘Unless,’ he added sardonically, ‘Seaton was making a play for Aggie so Carla decided to nip things in the bud, jumped into her car, followed Aggie’s bus with the intention of grabbing her and throttling her in broad daylight at the earliest opportunity.’

  There were chuckles all round at what they were agreed was an unlikely scenario and they set off to call on Marcus Ellerman.

  ‘This is an outrage!’ exclaimed Jason Pollard. ‘On behalf of my client –’ he indicated Marcus Ellerman, who was sitting on the sofa beside him – ‘I object most strongly to the high-handed manner in which you have come barging into his home on what should be a day of rest and relaxation without giving him a word of explana
tion.’

  They were in Ellerman’s sitting room; he had answered the door at their third ring, unshaven and still in his dressing gown. Sukey guessed from his flushed cheeks and apparent sensitivity to the light that he was suffering from a hangover – an impression confirmed by the fact that he swallowed two aspirins while awaiting Pollard’s arrival.

  ‘The only explanation your client allowed us time to give,’ said Rathbone, ‘was that we wanted to ask him some questions about the woman whose body was found yesterday about a mile away. His first reaction was to try and shut the door; when prevented from doing so—’

  ‘By force,’ Ellerman interrupted.

  ‘I put my foot in the door and threatened to arrest him on the spot if he refused to cooperate,’ Rathbone explained, still speaking to Pollard. ‘There was no question of excessive force; we merely pushed past him when he declined to admit us. He then refused to say another word without your presence and immediately contacted you. And I should like to express our appreciation of your very prompt response, sir, and we apologize for causing you what is undoubtedly a considerable inconvenience.’

  ‘Humph,’ Pollard grunted with little sign of being mollified. ‘I hope you have good reason for this intrusion.’

  ‘We believe we have. We are investigating the suspicious death of a young woman whose body was found yesterday on a piece of wasteland known as Fiddler’s Patch.’ He turned to Ellerman. ‘You have lived here for a considerable time, so I assume you are familiar with that area? We understand quite a few of the locals use it as a short cut to the shops.’

  ‘Of course I know of it, but I’m hardly familiar with it,’ said Ellerman disdainfully.

  ‘So at least you know where it is?’ said Rathbone patiently.

  ‘I’ve driven past it many times but I’ve never walked across it myself.’ Ellerman’s tone was dismissive. ‘Who is this woman anyway, and what has her death got to do with me?’

  ‘We have reason to believe she may be an employee of the Clean as a Whistle cleaning agency. We understand that your flat is regularly cleaned by a lady from that agency – is that right?’