An Accidental Shroud

by Marjorie Eccles

  18

  Lindsay couldn't, however hard she tried, ever remember a more dread evening. As far as she was concerned, scenes of any kind were to be avoided at all costs. Family scenes were even worse. And when they happened in front of other people – in this case the police – they were the absolute pits.

  She woke the next morning feeling worse than if she hadn't gone to bed at all. Her eyes flew open and she was instantly fully awake, every gruesome detail of the night before clear and sharp in her mind, intensifying and adding an extra edge to the misery of the last days. She'd begun to feel so much more as if she were getting a grip back on reality over the last few weeks, almost back to her normal self, and then Nigel had been murdered, and everything had fallen apart again. All her life she'd been plagued by too much imagination and her sleep last night had been filled with dark dreams.

  She could smell freshly brewed coffee and grilled bacon, hear Jake moving about, getting ready for work. How could they? How could they act normally, just as if nothing had happened!

  Her clothes, usually neatly folded the night before, lay thrown anyhow over a chair. She washed hurriedly, scrambled into jeans and sweater, went downstairs and poked her head round the kitchen door. Matthew was there, leaning against the cupboards, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. He looked ghastly, waxy pale under his tan, like old chewing gum. Her mother sat at the table, also drinking coffee. Lindsay was even more shocked at her haggard appearance, though she was already dressed, in a polo-necked green sweater and corduroy trousers, and was even made up, which was a mistake.

  'I'm going for a swim,' Lindsay announced.

  'Watch you don't get cold. It's a chilly morning. Don't forget to dry your hair properly.'

  'Mum!'

  'I'll see she does as she's told. I'll come with you, Lin.' Matthew finished his coffee in one swig and added with uncharacteristic meekness, 'If you don't mind.'

  Once in the conservatory, he dived into a cubicle and emerged a minute or two later, wearing his trunks, to find Lindsay still dressed, sitting on the edge of the pool with her arms round her knees. 'Aren't you coming in?'

  'No, I just wanted to get out of the house. I couldn't handle a repeat of last night's heavy performance.'

  'Add me to that! But now I'm here, I'm going in.'

  He slipped cleanly into the blue water and swam down the length of the pool in a swift, powerful crawl. Matthew, an intensely physical person, was in his element in the water. Once in, he could be counted on to stay there for half an hour at least. Lindsay got up and went to make herself a cup of instant coffee at the bar in the corner, where basic facilities had been installed for the purpose, and took it back to the side of the pool. She didn't really approve of the extravagant waste of resources needed to heat the building and the water, but it was comforting in here, with all the light and colour and a relaxing, steamy warmth that encouraged the exuberant growth of the conservatory plants Christine had brought in, though she disliked that over-sweet, cloying smell from some white-flowered plant or other which climbed to the roof. She sipped her coffee, which she'd made double strength in the hope that it might kick her into life, and watched Matthew's arms punching in and out of the water as if it were an enemy he was fighting.

  She suddenly felt sorrier for him than for herself. If it had been bad for her last night, how much worse it must have been for him. To discover, at one blow, that people you'd only just got to know, really, were your half-brother and half-sister – and that Naomi was your mother! No wonder he'd freaked out.

  His violent and incoherent denials, after his initial shocked silence, seemed to have been echoing in her head all night: 'She's not my mother! I haven't got a mother. She left me when I was eight months old!'

  Poor Matthew. But like it or not, he was going to have to accept it, and that Naomi was Jake's alibi for the night Nigel had been murdered.

  He finished several punishing lengths and then pulled himself out of the water and sat dripping beside her. 'More coffee?' He shook his head. Despite the breadth of his shoulders, his hairy chest and the faint shadow round his jawline due to not having shaved that morning, he looked like a small boy desperately needing comfort. But she didn't know how to give it, even if worries of her own hadn't been crowding in on her.

  He ran his hands through his short, crisp hair, scything the water from it, and sat in a dejected posture, his feet dangling. 'What a mess, Lin. What a bloody, awful mess I've made of everything.'

  'You've made a mess? Sure you don't mean your father?'

  'My father! Oh, yeah, him, too. Must run in the family. Poor old Dad! Imagine being married to that woman –' His shoulders hunched. 'D'you think Joss might be his, really? I know what he said but I mean, he did know her before and she seems to have put it about a bit in her younger days.' He wanted to be as cruel as he could, not troubling to conceal his contempt of Naomi when he spoke. It was going to take something drastic for him to admit to her as his mother. 'She's weird. No wonder they're like they are.'

  'But I thought you liked them – Joss and Cassie?'

  'Well, I do. They're all right ... they're different, I suppose. But I don't want either of them for a brother and sister.'

  She knew exactly what he meant.

  He sat curled into an uncomfortable-looking, almost foetal position, his knees up, his hands clasping his feet, his head down between his knees, like some Indian yogi. Avoiding looking at her, he suddenly began talking. 'I've been pissed off with Dad for months, but I'm sorry now I've given him such a hard time ... I only took the job with Nigel to spite him because he was so bloody-minded about the rallying. And about me not going into the firm with him.'

  Lindsay wondered just how important the rally driving was to him. Hadn't it occurred to him that before long he'd have Nigel's money, and there'd be nothing to prevent him? She caught her breath. A thought occurred to her, so unacceptable that she pushed it immediately away.

  'Let's face it,' he was going on, 'he can be a right bastard when you don't spring to attention ... but lately ... Jeez, I don't know, I've wanted to stop it but somehow I couldn't. You know how it is, you take up an attitude and there's no back-tracking without looking stupid?'

  'No,' said Lindsay, clear-eyed and positive. She simply could not see any point in holding on to a situation like that, just through pride, or from fear of losing face. Perhaps men looked at it differently. Then it struck her that maybe it wasn't as clear cut as all that, that maybe she, too -

  Matthew was speaking again, and suddenly, as what he was saying got to her, she began to feel very frightened.

  'And now ... I only wanted to ... God, Lin, what have I done?'

  He'd begun to shake. Lindsay's blood ran cold. Terrified of what he was going to say next, she scrambled to her feet. 'Don't tell me any more! I don't want to hear! I've done enough for you already and I've too many troubles of my own. I'm sorry, Matthew!'

  And with that, she fled, back to the house, up to her room, on to her bed, where she lay face down until the panic and shame at herself had subsided. Calmer after a while, she sat up and reached out, almost blindly, for her little morocco jewellery box, lifting out the inset tray. Underneath was the flat box containing the first object she'd received. And now also, the heavy intaglio seal ring, too big for her slender fingers. Half frightened, she slipped it on to her thumb and gazed at it for a long time, as if she could will herself to be less uneasy with it: at the lapis-lazuli centre, the deep, intense blue of a butterfly's wing, finely incised with the face of the god Janus, looking both ways. It glowed with a rather sinister light, and as she looked, she knew with a panicky feeling that she'd no choice, really, but to listen to Matthew, however awful what he had to tell her was: she had to help him, whatever he'd done. Her whole self shrank from it but she recognized his dangerous mood and was, quite simply, terrified of what he might do next.

  She bundled the jewellery back anyhow into the box and ran down the stairs. In her agitation, she failed to noti
ce that the seal ring, snatched from her thumb, had fallen off the dressing table and rolled into a corner as she ran out of the room.

  And when she reached the conservatory again, Matthew had disappeared.

  It was raining when Abigail woke up. Seriously, with no immediate prospect of giving up. She hadn't slept well and after making a hurried breakfast of tea and toast, left the cottage still feeling heavy-eyed and despondent, as if in tune with the weather.

  She met the post van at the bottom of her lane. Leaning out of the window to take her mail from the cheery postman, she waved to a figure she thought was the female Fossdyke, shut the window before Fido could push his slavering snout in and threw the bundle of letters on to the seat beside her until she'd drawn up in the station car park. A quick flick through revealed a couple of bills, charity circulars, a letter from a school friend, and a shiny postcard of a despondent frog contemplating a leap up to a mile-high lily pad. When are we going to climb that hill behind your cottage? There's a wonderful view from the top, she read. The writing was bold, impatient, distinctive. The signature was Ben. She felt better.

  A smile was still lifting the corners of her mouth when, half an hour later, she met Jenny Platt in the cloakroom, endeavouring to smooth down the mop of naturally curly hair that was the bane of her life. What sort of power image could she ever hope to project, looking like the fairy from the top of the Christmas tree?

  'Jenny. I've just had a quick look at the statement you got from Callaghan's girlfriend yesterday. How did you get on with her?'

  Jenny pulled a face. 'Some girl! Forty if she's a day.' She hesitated to add that she'd thought Claire Denton a real hard-faced bitch, which was true but might be construed as personal prejudice.

  She was saved as Abigail went on, 'I see he was live on TV until ten-thirty, after which she swears he spent the night at her flat. How reliable is she? Would she perjure herself for him?'

  'She was at pains to show it was an affair with no strings attached, but I wouldn't put it past her to lie for him, depending on what's in it for her. And from what she said, it looks like it was a last-minute arrangement, so he could've set it up to provide himself with an alibi.'

  'Well, thanks, Jenny. As an alibi, it's not what I'd call bomb-proof, but whose is, so far? Not a decent one between the lot of 'em.' Abigail gave her nose a cursory pat with her powder puff. 'After the briefing with the DCI, I'd like you to come out with me to see a woman called Naomi Graham. I have a feeling I'm going to need some moral support.'

  'Right, I'll be ready, ma'am.'

  Abigail knew things were on their way back to normal the moment she put her nose in the door of the incident room and had to fight her way through the rich fug of George Atkins's pipe smoke. 'Good to see you back again, George. 'Flu gone?'

  Officially, that was what the inspector had been off work with-'flu. The station grapevine said he'd been off to have his bunions seen to. Abigail felt he could be allowed his small touch of vanity: he was a maddening old devil at times, but he was invaluable, with his infinite capacity for tedious, detailed work, his knowledge of the locality and his elephantine memory for villains and all their works. He relit his pipe and said in answer to her question, 'Fit as I'll ever be until I leave this madhouse permanently behind, thanks.' George, according to himself, couldn't wait for his retirement. There were those who believed otherwise, predicted he'd last six months, if that, without the prop of Milford Road nick. Still more who believed that it might be Milford Road which would collapse without George Atkins. Observing the backlog of documents which he'd relieved her of and was now steadily working through, Abigail was inclined to come down on the side of the angels. She thanked heaven and went to the table at the front of the room, ready for the essential daily exchange of information and ideas.

  'If we're talking about motives,' Carmody pointed out, after all the usual routine of comment, report and observation had been gone through, and most of the team had dispersed to their various allocated duties, 'we shouldn't forget Matthew Wilding. He's nineteen years old, not getting on too well with his old man, not exactly enthusiastic about selling jewellery as a career and rarin' to be off rally driving. The only thing he was short of before was money. And now, bingo!'

  Jenny arrived with cups of coffee made from the special supply she kept for the favoured few first thing in the morning, and Abigail perched on the edge of the desk, cradling the mug, sipping the hot liquid, black and strong – the only decent cup she was likely to get that day. She'd been through all this and more, over and over again at various sleepless points during the night and got nowhere.

  'Carry on, Ted.' Mayo was interested. It was always worth listening to what Carmody had to say. With his dry native Liverpudlian common sense, if he wasn't always right on the mark, he was usually near.

  Mayo was sitting in on the briefing as usual, reinforcing Abigail's jaded feeling by his quick grasp of every detail. How the devil did he manage to keep au fait with so many cases, juggle so many balls in the air at once? It was a trick – an art – she was trying very hard to learn, and discovering that it didn't come easy. Whereas Mayo would no doubt go away, put on somebody's seventh symphony and have it all worked out by the time it was finished. It never worked like that for Abigail.

  She braced herself to go through yet another rehash of the facts, telling herself there was always the chance of finding some new, unthought-of angle, of coming across some small but significant fact that had somehow been missed.

  Carmody's face bore its usual doleful expression, his brow furrowed like a perplexed basset hound's as he continued. 'If he knew money was coming to him when Nigel died and decided he couldn't wait, he had everything going for him. He knew Nigel would be working late, he had keys, he'd have no problem getting hold of one of his dad's trucks to get the body out of the way -'

  'He was also dead drunk,' Abigail reminded him.

  'So he was,' Carmody said. 'And he knew about that missing box being in the safe.'

  Abigail had already made a mental note that it was time she had another go at old George Fontenoy about the box – and that she wouldn't let him get away without an answer this time. Wasn't it stretching it a bit to believe that he really hadn't known what was in it? Would he have been so cagey all along about it if he hadn't suspected it had played an important part in the murder?

  'We'd better have young Wilding in then,' Mayo said, 'and see what he's got to say for himself. Lean on him a bit, but not like a ton of bricks. His father has connections with too many people with clout in this town to upset him. Kid gloves treatment needed on this one. Without, of course,' he added, 'diluting our efforts.'

  He smiled blandly and, having finished his coffee, went out.

  He's already thinking like a super, thought Abigail, watching him leave the office. She said to Carmody, still feeling mildly bitchy, 'What time does he clock on, for God's sake? I was here at the crack of dawn but he'd beaten me to it. I swear if I arrived at half-five he'd have been here since quarter-to.'

  After Jenny Platt had driven her out to see Naomi Graham and they had received no reply to their repeated knockings, Abigail returned and settled down to a hard morning's work, rereading witness statements, sifting through the information amassed so far, and in between ringing Naomi

  Graham several times but getting no answer. By lunchtime, the early morning euphoria engendered by Ben's postcard had lessened even more. With an increasingly frustrated feeling that something, somewhere, was lacking, some fact which either hadn't yet emerged, or had been missed, she went out to lunch with Carmody.

  19

  If a postcard from Ben couldn't permanently lift Abigail's mild depression, then lunch at the Triangle Café had no chance. Abigail found herself turning to the view from the window, boringly familiar but offering some diversion from the greasy egg, sausages and chips in front of her, a meal which should have come with a suicide warning.

  'Not hungry?' Carmody asked as she laid down her knife and fo
rk.

  'I've suddenly lost my appetite.' She pushed her plate away and peered through the steam within and the rain streaming down the windows outside, in order to try to get a better view of Next on the opposite side of the road. There was a suit she thought she might fancy in the window, but every time she craned her neck to get a better look her attempt was foiled by a passing bus or lorry, their wheels throwing up curtains of spray from the wet tarmac, or by some woman under a large umbrella stopping in front of the window.

  'Better bet than the salads.' This was indisputable. There they sat, ready prepared and limp on the counter, a lettuce leaf with tomato and cucumber, with the exciting alternatives of either a hard-boiled egg smothered in salad cream, an unlikely-shaped rectangle of ham or a pile of grated kitchen soap masquerading as cheese.

  He laughed at the expression on her face. 'Never mind. I'll stand you a doughnut to have with your tea.'

  Abigail smiled and felt better. Carmody had that effect on her. Saddled with an appearance that made him look depressed even when he wasn't, he was tough and experienced and never let things get him down. Probably he'd sensed her impatience and frustration, how conscious she was that her reputation was on the line, knowing that a lot depended on how she showed up in this investigation and knowing how easily she could come a cropper. Carmody himself never worried about things like that, but she was grateful for his unflappable support. They hadn't worked together for very long but, outwardly an unlikely pair, their skills and strengths were beginning to dovetail together, like two halves of a broken sixpence. Something in the thought made her pause, her mind blipped, a sudden light pierced the darkness like a peak pulse on a radar screen, then the image was gone.

  Their table was by the window, overlooking the high street and part of the market. Rain gurgled in the gutters, dripped off the brightly coloured canopies of the market stalls and the noses of pedestrians. The streets of market day Lavenstock, however, were as thronged with shoppers as they always were, seemingly unaffected by the weather.