Cruel as the Grave

by Meg Elizabeth Atkins

  Cruel as the Grave

  Meg Elizabeth Atkins

  © Meg Elizabeth Atkins 1998

  Meg Elizabeth Atkins has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1998 by Flambard Press.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Author’s Notes

  One

  Report in The Chatfieldd Argus, October 1990

  A woman’s body was discovered in the River Chat on Friday. The police have issued a description of the woman and are appealing for witnesses. They say that she had suffered various injuries but are not yet releasing full details, nor will they be specific about the cause of death. The body was discovered in the river early Friday morning, not far from a car park frequented by Hambling courting couples. Mrs Margaret Corning, a local resident, was walking her spaniels when she spotted the body, caught up amongst the branches of a tree on the river bank, face down in the reeds close to the edge of the river.

  Speaking from her home in Chestnut Drive, Hambling, Mrs Corning said that at first she thought it was a brightly coloured plastic bag or sheet that had fallen in the river. She only realised it was a body when the water billowed the plastic to one side and she could see a pair of legs in white Wellington boots.

  At Chatfield police station, the officer in charge of the enquiry, Chief Inspector Sheldon Hunter, said that they had yet to establish whether foul play had been involved, but are treating the death as suspicious. The deceased woman is described as being in her forties, about 5'4" tall, well built, with bleached blonde hair. When recovered, she was wearing a red plastic raincoat, white plastic boots and see-through plastic rainhood. Anybody who has been in the area of the car park or tow path near Miller’s Bridge in the last few days are asked to contact the police on 0113 621111. They would be pleased to speak to anyone who has information which may assist them with their enquiries. All communications, they stress, will be treated in the strictest confidence.

  In his office at Chatfield sub-divisional headquarters, Chief Inspector Sheldon Hunter studied the photograph and description of the unknown woman.

  There was something obscurely troubling about her face — the fuzzy image airbrushed by the sorcerer’s apprentice. On the surface of his mind a comparison formed: Litter Lil, said to hang around street corners for the purpose of servicing the dustbin men. Had she really? Or was that just one of your friendly neighbourhood slanders? It would never have occurred to him to question it all those years ago — as a lad on a tough council estate he was concerned with survival, not the abstract reconciliation of truth and reputation.

  The fleeting likeness disposed of, he turned to conjecture.

  Final cause of death: drowning. Multiple injuries to legs, back and head. Leg injuries before death, others post-mortem — to be expected with her being buffeted about by the water... That made him pause. Something that didn’t quite add up. Wouldn’t it have made more sense the other way around? He made a note to speak to the pathologist.

  Fabric gloves — ripped. Damage to hands — could have been caused as she fell into the water, trying to save herself... Or could they conceivably be defence wounds? Vaginal swab showed she had not recently had intercourse.

  Miller’s Bridge. Hambling. A mellow, prosperous market town. Geographical distance from Chatfield, twenty-eight miles. Social distance, immeasurable.

  What was a red plastic raincoat doing in Laura Ashley country?

  Because she must have gone in the river round about there. Two miles upriver, to the north, the weir would have caught her. South below the weir, the river Chat ran fast and straight to just beyond Miller’s Bridge. There the banks curved, jutted, rose and fell, forming the willow-trailed inlets, the glades, the whispering leafy walks that made the place such a beauty spot.

  It was around this area the search for evidence had been concentrated, yielding nothing. Hunter could not justify throwing any more money and manpower into a situation that could turn out to have a straightforward, innocent explanation. He tried, and failed to imagine anything straightforward about a lone woman on an autumn night of teeming rain wandering about a beauty spot minus her handbag.

  It had to be there, that handbag. To his way of thinking no woman ever went out without one. Not ‘out’ in the sense that undoubtedly applied here — carefully dressed in her cheap, bright clothes, her pathetic jewellery; her face made up, her nails varnished. She had hardworking hands. Her body was slack and spreading — a stranger to aerobic classes. Her brassily dyed hair flaunted its message: look at me. I’m still young. I’m still game.

  Not any more, you poor cow.

  In the urban miscellany of Chatfield she would merely be one of a crowd, but in Hambling — in that part of Hambling — she would be as strident as a fairground on a Saturday night. But no one had seen her. Yet. Hunter looked hopefully at the poster intended to identify her, then absently at Detective Sergeant James Collier, who had just come in.

  Hunter said, ‘There are houses on either side of the bridge. Plenty of passing traffic during the day. Green wellies and waxed jacket no one would notice her. But red and white plastic, for God s sake. So it had to be after dark.’

  Newly promoted — a sideways move from uniformed sergeant — Colliers working relationship with Hunter was brief, but already he had been at the receiving end of a mind in continual conversation with itself. Coming in on cue could be tricky; not on this occasion, fortunately, with the poster prominent on Hunter’s desk. ‘She could have been taken there by car, dropped off close to the spot. Or walked across the fields. There are footpaths... ’

  ‘She’d have been ankle deep in mud, this weather. I know, there’s no way of telling. She wasn’t in the river long but any marks or deposits there might have been on those shiny plastic surfaces had been scoured off by silt and river water. If only we knew who she was we could get started. You haven’t come in here to tell me she’s turned up on the wanted-missing persons index?’

  ‘Not so far, still looking. I wondered about the likelihood of this turning into murder, guv. Just in case we have to get Holmes up and running.’

  ‘Holmes,’ Hunter sighed. Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. ‘I’m beginning to suspect you have an unnatural attachment to the damn thing. I’d never have let you go on that refresher course if I’d known you’d come back besotted.’

  Aware that his DCI regarded computers with mystified respect, Collier settled for looking innocent and saying nothing.

  ‘Oh, well... ’ Hunter growled. He stood up — a big man, a physical presence that could be intimidating or reassuring, whatever the occasion demanded; but always powerful. ‘Come on, time we had a cup of coffee and a talk about starting to make a few contingency plans. At the moment, I’m regarding it as a suspicious death; it wouldn’t take much to step it up into a full murder enquiry.’

  Half a dozen paces down the corridor Hunter halted at the sound of his telephone, audible despite multiple layers of crime files and other debris. He went swiftly back, burrowed for the receiver, ignoring the gravity-induced cascade of papers. ‘Detective Chief Ins
pector Hunter.’

  ‘That body in the river — ’ The voice was androgynous: a light tenor or husky contralto.

  ‘May I ask who’s speaking?’

  ‘It’s murder. And he lives in Hambling.’

  Disguised voice. Crank. But Hunter was suddenly alert. ‘Who does?’

  Two

  A house like a secret. Helen Willoughby’s gift to her goddaughter, Liz Farrell. Helen was doubtful — such an odd little place, but Liz, enchanted, said please, Helen.

  It stood on the edge of Hambling, on a tree-shaded, small road called Bellfield, where the houses had long established gardens retreating behind shrubberies. Liz’s house was the last one, on a corner where the road went out to pasture, woods, the sheltering rise of hills. Every Monday morning during term time she locked up and drove the two hundred miles to teach history at Wilton House Girls’ College in Surrey, returning on Friday evening. At first she worried about leaving the house to itself — not about burglaries or squatters, she had never in her thirty-four years personally known anyone to whom such things happened or, if she had, she preferred not to remember. It was a possessive worry, made up of the pride of ownership and the vulnerable sense of being out of her shell.

  On the drenched October evening when she had, unusually, been away for a fortnight, it was apparent to her on her return that he had been there again.

  Reggie had been entertaining one of his women in her house. Why couldn’t he take them to a hotel? Somewhere? Anywhere... Because there had been some silliness once, just after she’d moved in. — ‘Reggie, I chose this house because I can get away with anything. Orgies. Anything. Don’t tell Helen. She’d be devastated to think she’d financed a knocking shop.’ Liz loved teasing Reggie — the attractive, open face shocked and delighted. ‘I say, Liz... the neighbours, dash it.’ ‘Reggie, the geography is on my side — ’ he was not very bright and always had to have the obvious explained — ‘you drive along Bellfield, most of the houses are set so far back no one can see you, even if they can hear you. You turn the corner here — slip into the drive. But who’s to know? You could have just driven straight on.’ Reggie, painfully thinking it over (well into his forties he managed, always, to stay Helen’s little brother), said, ‘You’ll be telling me next you’re going to rent it out for immoral purposes.’ ‘Who said anything about rent? Free to pals... ’

  Being Reggie, he took her at her word. He knew where the spare key was hidden, knew when she would be away. When she found out she was exasperated but forgiving. His apology conveyed the hurt of the unjustly accused. — ‘But you said no one would know.’

  ‘Dammit, Reggie I know. It’s my house.’ ‘It’s all right about the neighbours, then? I wouldn’t — I mean — your reputation and all that.’ She wanted to shout bugger the neighbours, but with his muddled gallantry he had got hold of the idea that the issue at stake was her good name and was anxious to reassure her it would be his first consideration. She tried to extract a promise he wouldn’t do it again, but Reggie’s promises were all of a piece with his inefficient escapades, his boyish charm. And she had the mad feeling he might make some half-strangulated statement about a Chap Having Needs and she would become hysterical.

  In a context of furtive sexuality it was unthinkable Helen’s name should be mentioned. Reggie and Helen were embalmed in a lost era. They had survived a dictatorial father whose notions of conduct forced them into a straitjacket of behaviour they were incapable of challenging. Freed by the old man’s death, Helen ran the house, mothered Reggie, entertained friends, pursued her interests. She encouraged Reggie in what she called his ‘attachments’ — fleeting social affairs that seemed to Liz devoid of physicality. For a woman whose life had been so restricted, Helen was remarkably broad-minded, referring to Liz and her contemporaries rather wistfully as ‘splendid young people’. But she was mistress of a gracious home; immutable standards governed her every personal circumstance. Reggie, sensitive to her feelings, would never introduce her to anyone she might consider unsuitable — worse still, common.

  ‘Well, Ms Whoever-you-are,’ Liz said aloud in the silence of her trespassed house. ‘It’s a fair bet you’re not one of Helen’s splendid young people.’ Could Reggie’s secret tastes be disgraceful? Sixteen-year-old girls? Raucous old tarts? Perhaps the she was a he? Who cared about that, it wasn’t illegal.

  Mystified, tracking the course of his intrusion, Liz could never avoid the evidence that neither of the two beds had ever been used. Did they do it downstairs? Standing up? Did they just talk?

  Whatever... she was thoroughly fed up with having her domestic arrangements open to the gaze of a stranger. To cheer herself up she went into the third bedroom. This was her workroom, the clutter was inspirational: sewing machine, dressmaker’s dummy, bolts of cloth, garments half made on hangers, draped over chairs. Her joy was the wardrobe work she did for Hambling Amateur Dramatic Society, and in the toybox absurdity of this room, amongst masks, jewelled scabbards, glittering slippers, fans, wigs, she lost herself for hours.

  Content for the moment merely to look, touch, pick things up and put them down again, she went into her bedroom and became absorbed in the routine of unpacking.

  She had a face full of feeling, sometimes treacherously giving too much away: delicate and narrow, long-lidded eyes and beautifully shaped mouth. Her skin had a pale golden tone; her short, softly waved hair a deeper gold. She was too tall and too thin, childhood an embarrassment of barging about and knocking things over — demonstrating her mother’s assertion she would always be clumsy. Helen, wasting no words on sympathy, paid for dancing lessons. In time, Liz’s flying limbs acquired coordination and the distinction of an impulsive grace. Her tendencies were slapdash — jobs half finished, objects in unlikely places — even so, this was her house, her comfort was in its familiar ordering.

  Until she sat down at her dressing table, reached forward to adjust the mirror and then sat immobile.

  The triple mirror was arranged to suit her. It was never moved because no one sat there, except her. Now the centre panel was tilted down, the side panels adapted to someone much shorter, who sat in a different way.

  The creeping unease was disproportionate, chilling, filling the room.

  As if the unknown woman sat there with her.

  Aloud, she said, ‘Damn you, Reggie.’

  *

  The relentless rain was enough to subdue anyone’s spirits.

  In the sitting room, after supper, she switched on the floodlights that illuminated the garden and stood with a glass of wine looking out through the French window. Autumn was depositing its litter in heaps of leaves, tangles of dead branches. Everything was drenched, swamped, drowning.

  The phone rang. It was Paula, Helen’s younger sister.

  ‘Liz, isn’t it frightful?’ Paula had no truck with the niceties of hallo-how-are-you? She used the phone as a form of sandbagging.

  ‘It could be a case of police harassment. It needs looking into.’

  Liz stifled a sigh. Paula lived in the centre of Hambling; she had been divorced, gladiatorially, some years previously; her two storming daughters were packed off to boarding school (not hers, Liz always thanked God). Paula did voluntary work, strenuously, grappling with the Council, or the DHSS, or someone likely to give her a good fight.

  ‘Look, Paula, it’s late and I’m pretty tired. Would you like to tell me in the morning?’

  The sharp intake of breath, suggesting outrage; then, after a short silence, reasonably, ‘Well, of course, you don’t know. We didn’t want to phone you at school and worry you.’

  ‘About what? It’s not Helen, is it? There’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘Depends on what you call wrong. Personally, I don’t see what could be right in a situation like this.’

  ‘What situation?’ Liz’s grip on the receiver tightened. There was nothing Paula enjoyed so much as being the bearer of bad news; it would all be about nothing. ‘Is Helen all right?’

  ‘O
h, Helen... well, you know Helen. Granite gentility. Deal with anything. I should think you’d be more concerned about Reggie.’

  ‘Reggie? Paula, what is it?’

  ‘That woman whose body was found in the Chat, at Millers Bridge. I know it only rated a line or two in the nationals but, after all, it’s on your doorstep.’

  ‘Miller’s Bridge? Hardly. Well, it’s... No, I don’t know anything about a body. What on earth has this to do with Reggie?’

  ‘Well, I’ll take a great deal of convincing he has anything to do with it. The police think differently. When they took him in for questioning — ’

  Liz sat down suddenly.

  ‘ — you know how non-assertive he is. I’m sure he wasn’t properly informed of his rights. I can tell you, if I’d been there — ’

  ‘Paula, what are you saying? Reggie’s been arrested?. I don’t believe it — Oh, God, I must go, Helen, she’ll be — ’

  ‘I don’t want you to bother her at this time of night, she has a bad enough job sleeping as it is.’

  ‘Oh, you mean — you’re there with her.’

  ‘With her? No. Why should I be? I’m at home.’

  ‘But, she’s all alone — ’

  ‘No, she’s not, Reggie’s there.’

  ‘I’m going insane. Paula, you said Reggie had been arrested.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I said he’d been taken in for questioning. They let him out again — well, they had to.’

  Liz yelled, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before.’

  ‘Liz, if you become hysterical, I’ll hang up. This is typical of you, flying off the handle at the least provocation. I don’t know what good you think you’ll be to Helen in this state. You’ll only upset her.’

  ‘Me. Upset Helen,’ Liz snarled.

  ‘She needs kid-glove treatment at the moment. She’s coping marvellously really. And after all, it’s nothing cataclysmic. When there’s a murder the police question everyone, it’s a matter of routine.’