Changelings

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Do you know who they were?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said tightly. ‘But if four big men come in here with split knuckles and stubbed toes, call me’

  Voss nodded. ‘They gave him a drubbing, right enough. There’s a couple of cracked ribs: we’ll strap those but they shouldn’t bother him as long as he takes things quietly for a bit. He’s concussed but there’s no skull fracture – we’ll monitor him for a couple of days but I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. He’ll need some stitches in his face, and an appointment with a good dentist, and he’ll be as stiff as a board for a week, but after that he’ll be as right as rain.’ He smiled wryly. ‘To use the technical terminology.’

  When they arrived here Liz was too anxious even for anger. Reassurance freed her to give it a loose rein now, and if she couldn’t avenge herself on the men directly responsible she could at least give a piece of her mind to someone who had, however inadvertently, helped arm them for the task. ‘Look after him,’ she said in her teeth. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours. There’s something I have to do.’

  10

  Unsuccessful at Sav-U-Mor, Liz drove round the oddly quiet streets expecting that sooner or later she’d chance on a trouble spot and Mitchell Tyler would be at the heart of it. But even the regular troublemakers, and Castlemere had its fair share of them, were somehow too uneasy to start anything just now. Most of them had lived in this town all their lives, but today it was like a film set – unreal, two-dimensional, too quiet. If someone else had started some trouble they’d have joined in with relief and enthusiasm, but nobody felt like being the first to break that oppressive stillness.

  Liz drove up Brick Lane and round The Jubilee – even here people were staying inside with the doors shut – before admitting that she wasn’t going to find Tyler this way. She turned the car back towards Queen’s Street.

  At that point she saw him, on foot, his sturdy figure distinctive in its unEnglish light grey suit, coming up Brick Lane. She didn’t pause to ask herself where he was going. She drove at him, diving into the kerb to cut him off.

  Tyler broke his stride like a surprised horse, bent on her a look to make strong men quail. But Liz was too angry to back off, and when he saw who was accosting him he took a deep breath and left his hands where they were. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Me?’ She couldn’t stop her voice from soaring. ‘I’m fine. But Brian looks as if he’s gone ten rounds with Frank Bruno.’

  ‘Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘Well, that depends on how you define all right, doesn’t it?’ snarled Liz. ‘If you mean, is his life in danger or will he be permanently disabled then I guess the answer is no, he’s going to be all right. Give or take a couple of teeth, some cracked ribs and a concussion, and even the doctor said it was nothing to worry about. Couple of weeks and he’ll be as good as new.

  ‘Only actually he won’t. Because he isn’t like you. Violence isn’t a way of life to him; it isn’t even a last resort. Something he couldn’t get without violence he’d do without. So when men he doesn’t know break into his house and beat him senseless for no better reason than they’d heard his name mentioned in connection with this blackmail business, that’s going to make an impression. In fact, that’s going to stay with him for the rest of his days. Knowing that, even in his own home, he wasn’t safe from the thugs. If you’re not safe there, you’re not safe anywhere. Have you any idea what that’s going to do to a gentle man?’

  She was causing a twitching of curtains at the shut windows all around. Tyler ignored the attention they were attracting. His voice was low but not entirely sympathetic. ‘Inspector Graham, I realize you’ve been upset by this—’

  ‘Upset!’ she interjected explosively, eyebrows rocketing.

  He hung on to his patience – if she’d known him better she’d have recognized that as a Herculean effort – and ploughed on. ‘I understand that: it doesn’t matter how much you’ve seen professionally, it’s dif ferent when it’s someone you care about. What I don’t understand is why you’re yelling at me.’

  ‘Because you’re to blame for this!’

  She’d managed to surprise him. ‘Me?’

  ‘I want to know who you talked to. After Tony Woodall offered you Brian as an alternative suspect. I want to know where you planted that venomous little thought.’

  Tyler breathed heavily at her. ‘I talked to you. No one else.’

  ‘If you didn’t spread it around, Woodall did.’ She was heading back to her car. He stopped her with his hand: it was like walking into a wall.

  ‘Calm down, Inspector. Woodall saw what was in front of his face: anyone who knows this town could see it too. Your husband’s a teacher, an automatic hate-figure to a thousand kids. A thousand little amateur detectives. Any one of them could have fingered him as a suspect.’

  ‘It wasn’t kids who knocked me into the hedge!’

  ‘Kids talk. They fantasize, and they talk. Somebody’s father has taken the fantasy at face value. It’s unfortunate—’

  ‘Unfortunate!!’

  ‘— Unfortunate,’ he said again, in his teeth, ‘but it’s nobody’s fault fate’s playing games with Brian. I warned you this could happen. I thought you’d get him out of town until the dust settled. You didn’t, and he paid the price. I’m sorry but I don’t feel responsible.’ He let go of her arm.

  Liz went on standing there. Of course he was right. The facts were there for anyone to see. A minimum of research would have shown that Brian Graham had been there or thereabouts for every incident. In the current mood it was enough. The heroin junkie in the hospital had only his syringe and a bar of chocolate to incriminate him: Brian had been at the school, in the store and in the chemist’s. Of course, only a simple mind would infer guilt from the elements of a coincidence; but when a mob is in the ascendant it’s the simple minds that rule. They aren’t inconvenienced by common sense.

  Liz drew the first deep, steady breath she’d managed in some time. She looked Mitchell Tyler in the eye. His were the pale blue found in the hearts of glaciers. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right, I let emotion get the better of me. It was – unprofessional.’

  Tyler shrugged. ‘You’re entitled to your emotions.’

  But she wasn’t an emotional woman. She prided herself on it. Cool, calm, rational: you could say what you liked about Liz Graham but you had to admit she was a pro. When things went wrong she didn’t burst into tears, she swore with the rest of CID. Normally she’d have argued bitterly if someone had accused her of emotion.

  But he was right about that too. The events of the last few days had left her angry and afraid and sickened. She felt out of control, spinning her wheels. In reality, this wasn’t even about what had happened to Brian, or at least not entirely. She was blaming Tyler because she didn’t know who else to blame, either for Brian or for Donovan. Looked at dispassionately, it was doubtful if she should have been working at all: if there’d been anyone to hand over to she’d have gone home. But she couldn’t leave Shapiro to cope alone.

  She drew a shaky breath. Tyler took her arm again, steered her back to her car and into the passenger seat. At first she thought it was a mistake – he’d forgotten about driving on the left. But he got in beside her. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  She wanted to be with Brian, but there wasn’t much point: if they’d finished cleaning him up by now he was probably asleep. That left work.

  ‘Where were you going?’

  He did something with his nose that she’d noticed before when someone asked him a question. Half a sniff and half a sneer, it consisted of flaring one nostril, with a consequent narrowing of the eye above and curling of the lip below; a little like taking a pinch of invisible snuff. It was as if he knew the question was reasonable but his basic instinct was to resent it. It reminded Liz of the way Donovan rounded his shoulders and shoved his hands deep into his pockets so that he looked like six foot of sulky schoolboy. Tyler looked more
like a circus tiger who’s worked out that three metres of whip are all that stand between him and the best-dressed lunch he’s ever had, but the sentiment was recognizably the same.

  She was too slow to hide her grin. Tyler frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was thinking about Donovan.’

  She saw his expression flicker as he weighed that and found it wanting. She was amused by the thought of a colleague who was missing, possibly dead? But she hadn’t the energy to go into it any further, and Tyler seemed wary of doing. Perhaps he thought she was verging on a nervous breakdown. Perhaps she was. But she’d worked her way through crises before, she would do again. She waited for an answer to her question.

  Tyler blinked and remembered what it was. ‘I was going to see Sheila Crosbie, the girl who got her hands burnt. I haven’t seen her yet.’

  Liz was surprised. ‘You want to?’

  Tyler shrugged broad shoulders. ‘If you’ve got a prime suspect you haven’t told me about I’ll go talk to him instead.’

  But she hadn’t. ‘I’ve already interviewed her,’ said Liz. ‘Twice.’

  He did the nose thing again. ‘Nothing useful?’

  ‘No. But don’t let that stop you. She’s happy enough to talk about it.’

  ‘If she’s that happy,’ said Tyler, ‘there’s probably not much point.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Listen, I haven’t eaten yet and I don’t suppose you got much of a chance. Where can we get some lunch?’

  Liz hadn’t realized she was hungry, but in fact she last ate at six thirty that morning. She’d been on her way home when someone pushed her into the hedge. ‘I remember lunch. That’s the one where you put nice things in your mouth and go yum.’

  She was just getting in the mood when she remembered that the restaurants, and even Fast Edna’s under the castle, would be closed. ‘Come on, Mr Tyler, I’ll introduce you to the culinary delights of the British police canteen.’

  When people work together for a long time, one of two things happens. Either they start hating one another’s guts, or their thought processes start to converge. The same ideas occur to them and they process them in similar ways.

  In CID this is a mixed blessing. It saves a lot of time and argument, but what you really need is people who think of things no one else has. It was Donovan’s great strength, as Shapiro had often reflected. However long he spent in CID his thought processes remained resolutely individual.

  Right now, though, Shapiro was reflecting on something else, and though he didn’t know that Liz had been thinking along the same lines it wouldn’t have surprised him. On this occasion, however, he went one step further. Of course, he wasn’t sidetracked by being blown up.

  He too was considering how effectively the blackmailer had succeeded in panicking Castlemere with the contents of the average kitchen cupboard. Jelly, caustic soda, an inedible mushroom … Shapiro knew you could blow up a city with a few household chemicals in the right proportions, but still, there was something quite deliberate about the way this man was using fear itself as his weapon. Fear of what? — nothing very much. Only the possibility of something worse.

  A tap at his door and Sergeant Tripp appeared. He always looked morose: now he looked puzzled as well.

  ‘Now what?’ demanded Shapiro.

  ‘I’m not sure, sir. Forensics have been back to me about the caustic soda in the baby lotion.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘Well, there was caustic soda in the baby lotion.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Shapiro again, heavily.

  ‘But they don’t think there was enough. Not to cause burning. The emollients in the lotion itself would near as damn it have neutralized the soda. It just might have caused a minor irritation, but they don’t understand the actual burning Dr Greaves says he saw.’

  Greaves hadn’t been the only one to see it. And Sheila Crosbie had been in obvious pain when she came to Queen’s Street. ‘And there was caustic soda in the lotion,’ repeated Shapiro pensively, ‘just not enough to cause visible damage.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Sergeant, somebody’s telling me porkies.’

  Sergeant Tripp looked affronted. ‘Well, it isn’t me.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Shapiro cheerfully, ‘of course it isn’t.’

  He called for Mary Wilson and reached for his hat. He didn’t quite say, ‘The game’s afoot,’ but it was tacit in the way he moved, suddenly much more positive, creaks and twinges forgotten.

  ‘Where are we going, sir?’ asked Wilson breathlessly.

  ‘Arrow House,’ said Shapiro, ‘Brick Lane.’

  ‘Sheila Crosbie?’

  ‘I understand that’s where she lives.’

  Wilson wasn’t quite sure how to put this. ‘She lives on the second storey.’

  Shapiro looked her up and down. ‘Never mind, constable, you look tolerably fit to me.’

  Nevertheless, they went in his car. Brick Lane was an easy walk, but not for someone still recovering from a bullet wound.

  Shapiro drove. Wilson tried to find out what he was on to.

  There are senior detectives who think it’s good for their image to keep junior detectives in the dark. Shapiro wasn’t one of them. He didn’t see how anyone was expected to learn without being taught. ‘Think about the timing, constable’

  ‘The timing?’

  ‘The first note we got from the blackmailer was – let’s call it left, shall we? – around two o’clock on Wednesday. Four hours after Sheila Crosbie burnt her hands, and a day after she bought the contaminated lotion. Yes?’

  ‘Yes … ’ She still didn’t see where he was going with this.

  ‘Then think about how hard this man has tried to avoid actually harming anyone. Not because of his sensitive soul, of course, but because if it goes wrong he doesn’t want to have too many real injuries to explain. While unsupported threats would do, he settled for making threats. Why then would he decide to injure someone before he’d even made contact with us?’

  ‘To concentrate minds?’

  ‘Our minds were wonderfully concentrated already.’

  ‘Sir – are you saying he didn’t put caustic soda in that bottle of baby lotion?’

  ‘Let’s say I’m wondering.’

  Wilson stared at him. ‘Well – somebody did.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who else?’

  Shapiro squinted sidelong at his new DC. ‘Constable, what do you know about Munchausen’s Syndrome?’

  If he’d thought to throw her it was a miscalculation. Wilson paused just long enough to sort the information. ‘It’s a psychological condition where people crave the attention that being ill brings them. They get themselves admitted to hospital for a succession of imaginary ailments. They may even undergo surgery because they’d rather have treatment, any treatment, than not. There’s a variation, called Munchausen’s By Proxy, where patients, usually women, claim their children—’

  Shapiro stopped her with a wave of the hand. ‘Constable, constable – if you don’t know, just say so.’

  They traded a grin.

  ‘Suppose,’ said Shapiro, ‘just suppose, that Sheila Crosbie found the note on the bottom of the bottle just as she says she did. But there was nothing inside except what was meant to be there. She could report it – it was obviously part of the blackmail campaign and so something we needed to know about. And we’d thank her, and take a note of her address, and that would be the end of that.

  ‘Now suppose also that Miss Crosbie is that particular type of hysterical personality that needs to be at the centre of whatever’s going on. Why be just another hoax victim when she could be the first victim of an actual attack? That would get our attention. All it took was a solution of caustic soda just strong enough to turn her hands red; then she put some more of the stuff in the bottle with the label on it and raced round to Queen’s Street. Attention, sympathy, involvement – all for the price of a self-inflicted injury about as painful as sunburn.’

  Wilson went on w
atching Shapiro and Shapiro watched the road. Neither spoke. There was no proof, and it was hard to see how there could be any – a box of soda crystals under Sheila’s sink would prove nothing at all. Brian Graham’s kitchen was undoubtedly full of the stuff.

  But if Sheila Crosbie was the author of her own misfortune, the blackmailer hadn’t done half what they’d originally thought. He hadn’t introduced either a tropical disease or caustic soda into a sealed bottle. He’d bought some jelly and picked some woodland fungi. ‘But in that case …’ said Shapiro pensively.

  Wilson waited a moment, but not too long. She wanted to know. ‘What, sir?’

  ‘Why did he change the wording? On the labels. At first he wrote, “This could have been” whatever. Later, he wrote, “This was”. Why?’

  ‘To pile on the pressure? The threats were causing panic; pretending to escalate would cause hysteria. Did cause hysteria.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Shapiro slowly. ‘All the same, how lucky can a man get? He pretended to put caustic soda in a bottle of baby lotion – and it was bought by someone with the precise sort of psychological disorder that made her want to play along? We’re not buying that.’

  ‘Aren’t we, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Shapiro. ‘Are we?’

  They’d reached Arrow House. He parked the car in Brick Lane, sat for a moment longer then got out. ‘Let’s put it this way. There’s something rum about all this. Let’s see if Sheila Crosbie can tell us what it is.’