by Jo Bannister
In fact, looking around her, taking in the fresh paint, the bright curtains and the gently prancing animals of the wooden mobile, Liz found herself warming to Sheila Crosbie. She was doing a good job of raising this child. She’d made him a nice home, inexpensively but comfortably furnished; but more important than the decor, she was nice with him. Even a detective watching over her shoulder didn’t make her impatient. She manoeuvred him deftly into his clean clothes; then she made him a bottle, and only when he was nursing contentedly in her arms did she raise her eyes to Liz again. ‘So what did you want to know?’
Liz had her go over it all again. There were no surprises. When they first spoke Sheila was running on a high-octane mix of shock and anger: now they had dissipated she wanted to forget the episode. Her hands had healed, Jason was safe, the man who hurt her had gone on to do worse things to other people. She would repeat what she knew as often as Liz asked but the passion was gone. She didn’t remember anything new. She didn’t think there was anything new to remember.
‘That was a wasted effort,’ said Liz, heading back down four flights of stairs.
Morgan shrugged philosophically. ‘Never know, though, do you? Not till it’s done. You have to finish the jigsaw before you know which bits belong and which were found down the back of the couch and put in the wrong box.’
Liz liked Dick Morgan. When he wasn’t trying to hide the fact he was a thoughtful, perceptive individual with an engaging turn of phrase. ‘You’ve got kids, haven’t you, Dick?’
He nodded lugubriously. ‘Famine, War and Pestilence.’
Liz laughed. ‘What sort of an attitude is that?’
‘It’s not an attitude, it’s a survival strategy. The first thing a parent learns is that kids are trouble. They’re going to dump you in it at regular intervals. You’re not allowed to strangle them at birth, and soon after that you love them too much to leave them on the church steps, so you have to get used to the idea. Recognize that their function in life is not to make you proud, it’s to build your character. Then every day that you don’t commit grievous bodily harm on them is a triumph.’
Liz had known DC Morgan for three years now, she didn’t for a moment believe that his children lived in fear of their lives. It was part of the persona it amused him to have created for himself. He pretended to be slow and a shade dim and not terribly efficient so no one would threaten him with promotion; but behind the smokescreen he was an effective, insightful police officer. She suspected that behind the mock bitterness he was probably a good father as well.
‘Sheila Crosbie doesn’t seem too disappointed with Jason.’
Morgan shook his head sadly. ‘Give her time.’
As he drove Shapiro thought aloud about Miranda Hopkins. Whatever Liz thought of her as a person, he could not ignore the fact that Hopkins had the knowledge and the facilities to culture cholera. Uniquely among those involved; unless you counted Kenneth Simpson, and that really would be paranoid.
Scobie listened politely – DCs always listen politely to Detective Superintendents – but he plainly had doubts. ‘A laboratory like that, you’d think somebody’d notice she was cooking up a deadly disease.’
‘They work with deadly diseases all the time.’
‘All right then, a different deadly disease to everyone else.’
It was a point. ‘So maybe she didn’t do it at the lab. Maybe she took what she needed home.’
‘Kitchen table germ warfare?’ said Scobie with a rising inflection.
Shapiro shrugged. ‘This is not a fragile specimen, constable. This is a bug which can devastate whole communities, which can sidestep most of the defences raised against it and only be stopped by high-tech modern medicine. It kills five million people every year. It can’t be so delicate as to need expert handling and optimal facilities to remain viable.’
Scobie scratched his misshapen nose. ‘I wasn’t thinking about the bug, sir, I was thinking about her. This is the mother of a kid. Would she keep something that lethal in her fridge? She’d be afraid of contaminating their food.’
‘She’d know what precautions were necessary.’
‘The kid wouldn’t.’
Shapiro was saved the search for a convincing rebuttal by the ringing of his phone. He pulled over and answered it; he listened a lot, thanked the caller then rang off. Scobie waited for him to drive on, but Shapiro just kept sitting there. ‘Sir?’
Shapiro drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t think I’d better arrest Ms Hopkins after all, constable. Maybe she does work with botulism, maybe she could get hold of cholera if she wanted, but unless she also moonlights at a greengrocer’s she’s not responsible for what happened to Mr Wingrave.’
He’d lost Scobie entirely. ‘Wingrave?’
‘The man who bought the bottle of flu remedy. Whatever the label said, he never had cholera. He had a nasty case of food-poisoning caused by an inedible mushroom. That was the fever hospital. The results of their tests just came through. They took a while because, naturally enough, they were looking for cholera.’
Scobie was digesting it. ‘So — basically – it could be anybody again.’
‘Well, anybody with an Observer’s Book of Fungi!
There was a long silence while they considered the implications. Finally Scobie asked, ‘So why did he say it was cholera?’
‘To spread alarm and despondency,’ said Shapiro. ‘You can’t start an epidemic with a dodgy mushroom. But you can make it look as if you have.’
‘He still had to get the stuff into the bottle.’
‘Yes. But he didn’t need a Home Office licence to get hold of it. He could find it on a leisurely walk through the woods.’
‘This mushroom: was it actually poisonous? Or just – you know – not very good for you?’
The hospital pathology department had identified the source of Mr Wingrave’s illness as the fungus Russula emetica: the classic red-capped toadstool commonly known as the Sickener and found in mixed woodlands from July to October. ‘It’s inedible, it was always going to make someone ill. But unless they had a particular allergy to it, it shouldn’t have killed anyone.’
They returned to Queen’s Street. Sergeant Tripp was listening out for the Superintendent, caught him at the back door. ‘That call from Forensics, sir. They’ve found something a bit weird.’
‘Weird, sergeant?’
‘That bottle we sent them, that the paramedics picked up at Mr Wingrave’s flat? Seems it wasn’t contaminated with cholera after all.’
Shapiro couldn’t resist the temptation. He smiled knowingly. ‘Do you know, sergeant, I wondered about that. It didn’t seem like cholera to me. I’m no expert, mind, but I considered the possibility of mushroom poisoning.’
Normally SOCO’s expression was all but impenetrable; now sheer astonishment got under his guard. ‘Mushrooms?’ he said faintly.
Shapiro nodded, straight-faced. ‘Nothing too lethal, of course. Maybe – oh, I don’t know – Russula emetica? You can find it in the mixed woodlands round here any time from July to October. It’s known as the Sickener, you know.’
Tripp nodded too, hypnotically. ‘That’s what Forensics said, sir.’
Shapiro gave him a sunny smile. ‘Lucky guess, then.’ He continued upstairs feeling positively restored by the infantile deception.
9
Liz was still trying to make sense of the new development as she drove home at lunchtime. So … nobody ever had cholera. Donovan had a cold, Wingrave had a close encounter with a toadstool. Sheila Crosbie burnt her hands on caustic soda, the hockey team took a shower in raspberry jelly, and lime jelly was the secret ingredient in Sav-U-Mor’s yoghurt special.
The man who was holding Castlemere to ransom hadn’t made a seriously life-threatening move yet.
Maybe he didn’t intend to. Maybe he hoped – expected – to be able to frighten them into paying him off purely on the basis of what he might do if they didn’t. Which, actually, is the bottom line in blackmail anyway. He�
�d got their pulses racing, now he expected them to reach for their wallets.
But the threat had to be credible. If he wasn’t prepared to endanger life in any circumstances he wasn’t going to get paid. He’d cross that Rubicon if he had to, he wouldn’t have started all this otherwise. But he was cool enough and smart enough to realize that the longer he delayed that moment, the fewer boats he’d have to burn. If they caught him today, the worst that could be said at his trial was that he’d given a young mother a nasty case of washday hands.
The school. The school shower block was the one scene they could place him within a narrow time frame – between mid and late afternoon on Monday. At one point they’d wondered if he could have managed that too without actually being there; but that would have meant involving other people in his scheme, and the drawbacks that attended adult co-conspirators went quadruple for children. No, he’d both laid and primed the trap in person. He’d been up in that roof space on Monday afternoon – not under cover of darkness, with no certainty of avoiding witnesses; and therefore presumably with some kind of a cover story.
In the event Mr Duffy had seen no one. But if he had chanced that way at the material time, the blackmailer would have needed some tale that would convince even the caretaker. Oh, and something to cover his face. When the police came to investigate what happened they would ask Duffy for a description of anyone he’d seen. Before this man ventured on to the school campus he’d have had that angle covered. A face mask. One of those dust masks that workmen use. Everyone was used to seeing those, the caretaker’s suspicions wouldn’t be aroused if the man seemed to have a proper reason for being up there.
Well, there were workmen at the school. If he was attired as one of them, complete with face mask, and carrying a bag of tools with Sidgwick & Mellors logo on it, and he said – for instance – he’d been sent to check the roof battens for signs of rot while the builders were on site, Duffy would have seen no reason to raise the alarm. All right, in the event it didn’t happen, Duffy was busy elsewhere at the critical moment. But this man wouldn’t have counted on that. He would have had a story prepared just in case.
It might be just enough to start jogging memories. If she asked people who were at the sports field that afternoon if they’d noticed any of the workmen watching, or else heading back to the school buildings as if from that direction, somebody just might remember. She’d start with Brian. If she got no useful information, at least she could expect a portion of vegetarian stew and a chance to sit down with her husband.
She was almost in time to prevent it. As she drove up the hill towards Belvedere Park she could see the fawn car sitting at an angle in her drive, nose to the road. She frowned. She didn’t recognize it, and there was something odd about the way it was just sitting there, not so much parked as abandoned.
She couldn’t get in while it was there so she parked by the kerb and went to see what was happening. But as she turned around the gatepost four men were coming the other way, and they were in a hurry. They elbowed her aside so violently she ended up, openmouthed with surprise, in the hedge; before she could extricate herself they were in the car and roaring down the hill back into town.
Liz had no idea what it meant, but it wasn’t Hallowe’en yet and anyway they were too big for trick or treating. Her first thought was for Polly. It was already too late to give chase – her car was locked and facing the wrong way, her visitors were halfway home by now – so she hurried to check the most vulnerable and, by a small margin, most easily frightened member of her family. But the mare was fine, still lipping up her morning hay, unaware of the drama at the front of the house.
Belatedly, she thought of Brian. She headed for the back door, calling his name. There was no reply. But he should have been there: the town was shut up, and anyway he had no transport. She called again; still silence.
It wasn’t open-door weather but that’s what she found: the kitchen door standing wide. She stepped inside.
There was blood on the kitchen tiles. Hesitantly, afraid of what she would find, she reached for the door into the hall.
He’d almost made it to the phone before the damage he’d sustained overwhelmed him. Blood pouring from his nose, his broken mouth and one ear had pooled under his face where he lay in a foetal curl on the parquet flooring.
Without Elphie the Turner house was quiet. Donovan could hear Sarah in the kitchen but he didn’t want to go back in there. He needed to keep trying the phone, and somehow Sarah made him feel guilty about that. Anyway, he’d been under her feet long enough – she must be ready for a break from him too.
He wandered round the hall, soft-footed, opening doors. There was a sitting room, a proper dining room for when the company was too smart to eat in the kitchen, and a study lined with books. Presumably that was Turner’s office, he was bound to feel trespassed upon if Donovan poked round in there. He went into the sitting room instead, sinking into deep chintzy upholstery. He thought he’d try the phone again in a few minutes. Instead, tired from his early morning exercise, with nothing to occupy his attention, listening to the distant rattle of pots in the kitchen he nodded off again.
His first thought, stirring dimly half an hour later, was that the family had gathered round to stare at him some more. But it was the photograph: Sarah’s wedding photograph, taking pride of place on a pie-crust table beside his chair. Sarah and Robert and Simon and Jonathan, and the woman who wasn’t Elphie’s mother.
Looking at them Donovan began to see why Elphie had picked this particular young woman as a mother-substitute. It wasn’t just that she was pretty, although she was – a girl of about twenty in a sprigged dress, with a mass of fair curls under a straw hat. There was something about her which the child must have found familiar. She could have been Elphie’s mother. There was a kind of likeness there – not close, because Elphie’s little pointy face was a thing all its own, but enough to make you wonder. Though of course Sarah said …
Sarah. That was what Donovan was seeing, the family likeness he’d recognized. It wasn’t so obvious now that Sarah was twenty years older, but in the photograph Sarah and her bridesmaid, despite the years between them, looked like sisters. That was why Elphie was drawn to the girl in the picture. She was a younger version of the face she knew best in the world.
He thought he’d solved the mystery, went on regarding the little family group with a tolerant eye. And a certain sadness too, because they didn’t stay like this for very long. The big man with the expansive smile and more expansive waistcoat was dead. So was the boy at his side. The girl in the sprigged dress must have gone her own way too or it would have been necessary to explain to Elphie about her mistake. Only Sarah and Simon remained at The Flower Mill, at a fly speck on a map of the fens that even a canal groupie like Donovan had never found his way to before.
But as he went on looking at it, something about the photograph began to trouble him. There was something wrong with it and he couldn’t for the life of him work out what. His eye kept returning to the scowling boy by Robert Turner’s side. There was nothing odd about that. Any photographs of the Donovan family would have shown a teenage Caolan scowling too; it’s what teenagers do at family gatherings. And when that was taken Sarah’s son had no idea what the future held for him. He might have hated The Flower Mill, hated his stepfather and brother, and would have been trapped until he was old enough to leave.
In the event, of course, Jonathan was to make his home at The Flower Mill while Simon went away. College wasn’t an escape, it was just an interlude until he was back here walking in his stepfather’s footprints. So his misgivings had not been justified by events; or at least, not the way he feared.
Donovan looked from Sarah’s son to Robert’s. No worries for the future had spoiled his day: already the relationship that would blossom between him and his stepmother, to the benefit of The Flower Mill and all of East Beckham, was evident in the comfortable way they stood together. Perhaps that was what finally brought him back f
rom his travels: the knowledge that, if he no longer had family at the Mill, he had the next best thing.
Donovan tried the phone again. It was still dead. He wished he had his mobile. He supposed it was still in his jacket pocket, and his jacket was still on Tara and Tara was in Posset. Though never entirely reliable, at least it worked sometimes. That was more than could be said for the phone at The Flower Mill.
Which raised the question of how anyone could run a business in the middle of a fen when their phone never worked.
The ambulance arrived within ten minutes, ten minutes after that Brian Graham was in radiography at Castle General. As soon as the plates were developed the A&E registrar, leaving his nurse to clean up the patient, hurried back to reception. It was a matter of urgency not because of what the X-rays showed but because DI Graham looked about ready to rip the drinks machine off the wall.
Dr Voss came straight to the point. ‘There’s a fair bit of damage but it’s all superficial. He’ll be fine. He’ll be in here a few days, then you can take him home. What happened? – do you know?’
Brian had drifted in and out of consciousness during the ambulance ride. But even without his hazy recollections mumbled through broken teeth Liz could have pieced it together. ‘They thought he was the blackmailer. They tried to beat a confession out of him.’ Now the shock was dissipating and the worst of the fear had passed she was literally panting with fury.
‘Why?’ The doctor stared at her in astonishment. There were eighty thousand people in Castlemere: most of them had to be more promising suspects than a middle-aged art teacher.
‘Because this town is the brain-death capital of Europe!’ Liz exclaimed bitterly. ‘Because everyone here responds to a crisis by kicking the living daylights out of someone else! Because tolerance is a dirty word in Castlemere, and thinking is a hobby for people with nothing better to do, and someone being reasonable in public is always asking for trouble. They were talking about it at school – criticizing my lack of success, actually. Brian pointed out the scale of the problem when most of what was known about the blackmailer applied to him too. It was absolutely true, but in the current climate it was more than enough. Or maybe’ – she remembered the earlier warning, that she hadn’t taken seriously until the paint-stripper attack – ‘someone else was talking out of turn. One way or another Brian’s name got coupled with this, and four of the ignorant bastards thought they’d come round and get the truth out of him. Unfortunately, they didn’t recognize it when they heard it.’
