Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  “I understand you delivered mail to Brook Way Cottage this morning?”

  “That’s right.” Keyes, a stout man with tanned skin and sandy hair, narrowed his eyes a little. “Has something happened there?”

  Lloyd nodded. “When were you there?”

  Keyes blew out his cheeks. “I get there about twenty past, half past ten usually. So I guess that’s when it would—” He broke off, snapping his fingers. “No—no, I tell a lie. It was just after twenty minutes to eleven, because I knew I was running pretty late, and I checked my watch just as I turned into Brook Way.” He sat back. “Between twenty minutes and quarter to—and that’s definite.”

  Lloyd smiled. He was glad something about this case was definite.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised you got involved. They were going at it hammer and tongs when I was there.”

  Lloyd leaned forward a little. “You heard an argument?”

  “Not half. A man and a woman. He was yelling at her about how she had no right to take his daughter out of the country—she was saying he wasn’t the father and I don’t know what all.”

  Lloyd could never have hoped for this. “Did you see them at all? Or hear any names mentioned?”

  Keyes shook his head.

  Ah, well. That was reaching for the moon, he supposed. “Did you see any vehicles there?”

  “There was a car in the garage, but don’t ask me what kind. I’m not into cars. I’m a bike man, myself. That’s partly why I became a postie. Wanted to give me a van a while back—I said no thanks, two wheels and pedal power’s quite good enough for me.”

  “Do you know what color it was?”

  “Red, I suppose,” said Keyes.

  Lloyd frowned. “You suppose?”

  “Well, it’s the post office color, isn’t it?”

  “Ah . . . no.” Lloyd smiled. “Not the van. I was wondering if you noticed the color of the car in the garage.”

  “Oh—no. Dark, that’s all.”

  Not the Alfa, then. “There wasn’t a car on the forecourt?”

  “No. Just the one in the garage. Are they the new owners, or what? The FOR SALE sign came down a couple of weeks ago.”

  Lloyd didn’t answer. “Has the house always been empty the other times you’ve delivered mail since it’s been up for sale?”

  “For the last month or so, yes, I think so. The curtains were always drawn.”

  “And before that—do you know anything about the people who lived there?”

  “A couple. I don’t think there were kids—I certainly never saw any.”

  “Did you know them by sight?”

  “Don’t know him. But I saw her once or twice. Dr. Black, her name is.”

  “Can you describe her?”

  “Late thirties, I’d say. Tall, dark. Quite a big girl. But she wasn’t pregnant; I’m sure of that. So I didn’t think it could be them having the argument about who the father was. I thought it must be whoever had bought the place.”

  That seemed to Lloyd to be a reasonable supposition. And Dr. Black definitely wasn’t the victim, who was five-foot-two, slim, and blond, like Kayleigh’s mother. Dr. Black could, however, be the murderer; he didn’t suppose she would have taken too kindly to Waring moving his fancy woman into what had been her home. But that wouldn’t explain the argument.

  He tipped his chair back slightly as he thought. Without knowing the setup, it was perfectly possible that the argument had been between Waring and Kayleigh’s mother, but the postman hadn’t seen Waring’s car and the two victims certainly hadn’t caused each other’s injuries.

  But the postman had seen a car in the garage that wasn’t there now, and they still hadn’t found the young man seen abandoning the Audi. As Marshall had pointed out, they didn’t know that the Audi had anything to do with what had gone on in Brook Way Cottage at all; it was perfectly possible that this Mrs. Newton had parked her car wherever she worked and wouldn’t know it was gone until early evening. But Lloyd doubted it. The Audi was involved; he was sure of it.

  Lloyd thanked Mr. Keyes for his time and went to what it pleased them to call the rape suite, the room they had had furnished and decorated with the comfort of victims in mind and where it had seemed best to put Kayleigh. He knocked and raised his eyebrows at the doctor, who came out.

  “Can I speak to her?”

  “She seems quite calm. But I think that’s because she can’t take it all in, so I doubt if she’ll give you any answers.”

  Lloyd hoped that she might start speaking, now that he knew a little more about what had been happening. He and the doctor went back in, and he smiled at Kayleigh. “How are you feeling now?” he asked.

  Her eyes followed him as he sat down, but she didn’t answer.

  Lloyd switched on the fan. This part of the station, part of the extension that had been built on, was supposed to have air-conditioning, but it had broken down and despite the stiff breeze, the extension—mostly glass—was heating up like an oven. Fans had been begged, borrowed, and, for all he knew, stolen in order to cool the occupants down a little in the heat wave.

  He sat down. “Kayleigh, believe me, I wouldn’t be asking you all these questions if it wasn’t really important,” he began. “But I’ve just been speaking to someone who was at the cottage this morning, and who overheard an argument between a man and a woman. Do you know anything about that?”

  Kayleigh shook her head.

  Lloyd was certain that she did and carried on as though he had been given confirmation rather than a denial. “We think the row was over Alexandra. Someone didn’t want your mother taking her abroad.”

  Kayleigh’s eyes widened a little.

  “Was your mother thinking of going abroad?”

  She nodded.

  Well, at least he’d got something other than a shake of the head. It had to be regarded as progress of a sort. “Were you there while the argument was going on, Kayleigh? Did you take Alexandra away because of that?”

  She still didn’t speak, but she frowned a little. And then the frown went, and Lloyd saw her eyes widen again, just for a moment. It was as if she had realized something, something she hadn’t understood and now she did. Lloyd tried, gently, to capitalize on that.

  “Did someone come to the cottage? Have an argument with your mother?” He paused, to give her time to speak, but she didn’t. “Did you take Alexandra away because you were afraid?”

  But the brief moments of communication were over; Kayleigh’s face was impassive, expressionless.

  “Would you excuse us for a moment?” Lloyd said, and took the doctor back out into the corridor. “Am I harming her with these questions?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so. But I don’t think she’s going to say anything until she’s ready, so you’re probably wasting your time.”

  Lloyd nodded. “I’d like to ask her just a few questions more.”

  Kayleigh could hear the whispered conversation but not what they were saying. She was in a room with sofas and magazines and a coffee table; she didn’t know they had rooms like that in police stations.

  She was glad Lloyd had put the fan on; her sweatshirt was sticking to her in the heat. She and Andrea had each bought one, like they did most things, and Andrea had been wearing hers when Kayleigh had seen her that morning; she wondered if Andrea was all hot and sticky, too. The sweatshirt had been all right walking about outside in the cooling breeze, but it was too hot to wear inside.

  Kayleigh had been pleased to have the day off school and not to have to wear the awful uniform dress with the flowers on it, but she wished she had one of them now; at least they were cool. She had the clothes that she had put in her case, but she had left it behind in Malworth and she wasn’t telling them about Malworth, not now. She wasn’t going to tell them anything, because there was only one answer to who could have been at the cottage having a row with her mother.

  She had thought at first, when Chief Inspector Lloyd had told her about the argument, that ma
ybe it was Ian—he didn’t want to go to Australia, and maybe whoever had overheard it had got the wrong end of the stick. But Ian didn’t have noisy arguments with her mother; he discussed things with her, quietly, endlessly, and uselessly, because he always did what she wanted anyway.

  It was Phil who got noisy, Phil who shouted, Kayleigh had thought, and then she had realized. Maybe it was Phil. If he had found out about Australia, maybe he had come to see her mother. So she wasn’t going to say anything to them at all, not if it was going to get Phil into trouble. As long as they kept on believing that her mother’s name was Scott and that Alexandra was her sister, they wouldn’t find out about Phil.

  Lloyd and the doctor came back in, and Lloyd gave Kayleigh a little encouraging smile, sitting down opposite her again. “Ian was conscious when we got to the cottage,” he said. “He told us he had seen an intruder. Do you know who that might have been?”

  Phil? Maybe, thought Kayleigh. Ian didn’t know Phil, not as far as she was aware. So if he’d found him there, he would think he was an intruder, she supposed.

  “We think that’s who ran him over.”

  Phil ran Ian over? Kayleigh couldn’t make sense of any of this. She was just very thankful that she hadn’t told them about her mother’s car being missing. If Phil had taken it for some reason, she didn’t want the police looking for it.

  “We think that might have been a young man,” Lloyd was saying. “Blond hair, in his twenties. He was seen driving an Audi Quattro—does that mean anything to you?”

  Dean? That had to be Dean. It wasn’t Phil who had taken the car; it was Dean. Oh, my God. Dean. Had he gone to the cottage? Surely not. She had told him that her mother would be there—she had said that she would meet him at the bridge. Why would he have gone to the cottage? But he must have been there, if someone saw him driving her mother’s car. They didn’t know it was her mother’s car, she told herself, and it could take them a long time to find out, as long as she said nothing. She closed her eyes. It didn’t make any sense. None of it made any sense. Until it did, she was saying nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Kayleigh?” His voice was still gentle, but she could hear the urgency. She had given herself away about the car. “Is that who came to the house? Is that who had the argument with your mother?”

  No, no, no, thought Kayleigh. That had to have been Phil.

  “Kayleigh, I think you left the cottage with Alexandra because something was happening that frightened you. And I know you’re still frightened, and confused, and I don’t want to make it any worse for you than it already is, but if you can tell us anything, it really will help both of us.”

  No, it wouldn’t help. It would just make everything even worse.

  It came on the three-thirty news bulletin.

  “Police say they are treating as murder the death of a woman in the Byford Forest area of Stansfield. She was found shortly after eleven o’clock this morning when officers responded to a nine-nine-nine call to a house in Brook Way in Stansfield.”

  The van slowed to a halt as Theresa stared at the radio. There was only one house in Brook Way.

  “They have not yet released the name of the victim, or that of the injured man also found at the address, who is presently undergoing emergency surgery in Barton General Hospital. Police are appealing to anyone who was in Brook Way at or before eleven o’clock this morning to—”

  The hospital. She had to get to the hospital. Theresa put the van in gear.

  Phil’s train had arrived, on time, and now he was back in his flat, wishing he had never left it.

  If only he hadn’t gone. If only he had taken some time to get over the initial anger. He had told himself, all the way down on the train, that he must not lose his temper, that he must just talk to Lesley, point out the unreasonableness of what she was doing, make her understand that it couldn’t possibly be the right thing to do from Kayleigh’s point of view.

  But you couldn’t just talk to Lesley. He couldn’t, at any rate. Once she had made up her mind, she developed tunnel vision; whatever anyone said or did made no difference. Right or wrong, Lesley had decided, and her decision was final. But that had never stopped him from trying, and sheer frustration would make him lose control of his temper.

  It hadn’t always been like that; toward the end she had gone on at him to take one of these anger management courses, but he didn’t lose his temper if there was nothing to make him lose it, and despite the odd row, the first few years of their life together had been good, even better once Luke came along. They hadn’t tried to have another baby after Luke, so it had remained just him and Lesley and Kayleigh, and even that had worked.

  And it had worked because Phil had worked at it, tried hard to be what Kayleigh needed and Lesley wanted, and he had thought he had succeeded, at least as far as Lesley was concerned; he had always felt that Kayleigh needed more than he or Lesley could offer, but Lesley had disagreed.

  He had succeeded with Lesley, for as far as it went; she’d told him that today. Because what she had wanted then was someone older, someone who could take charge, someone who would help sort out her life, shattered when her husband had died so suddenly and tragically, and Phil had done that; he had been her strength when she needed him. It had never been a bed of roses; Kayleigh had problems, and Lesley was Lesley. There had always been rows, and they had started to become more frequent, until Luke. But Luke’s death hadn’t shaken their relationship; if anything, it had strengthened it, and the rows stopped altogether for a long time.

  It was only after that, as she had slowly pieced her life back together after Luke, that Phil had discovered that the woman he had fallen in love with wasn’t Lesley at all. He had met someone who had been knocked back on her heels, and Luke’s death had occurred before the recovery process was complete, delaying it. But, in the end, the real Lesley had surfaced, and she had begun to want not someone to take charge but someone to take orders. And that wasn’t Phil.

  And she was being the real Lesley with a vengeance today; nothing he said would make her see reason, see that what she was proposing wasn’t going to do Kayleigh any good at all. So he had lost his temper, in the face of Lesley’s unmovable resistance, within two minutes of arriving there.

  He didn’t want to stay here; for one thing, the police might well be looking for him, and for another, he really didn’t want to be alone. There was somewhere he could go, somewhere there would be no questions asked. Well, he amended, yes, there would be questions asked, but no answers would be expected. His mother’s sister, his Aunt Jean in Worthing.

  Time to throw a change of clothes into a bag and consult the railway inquiries people again.

  Ten to four. It was almost an hour since he’d seen it. Tom stood on the riverbank, at the spot where he had seen the baby’s body, and wished that the divers would hurry up and get here. Not that time mattered; what he had seen had been naked and lifeless. But it could still be caught up in the weeds below the water level. If it wasn’t found soon, it might never be found.

  There was nothing he could have done. Even if he could have got into the river from where he was, he could have done nothing to save her, because there was no way that the baby he saw was alive. And yet he felt so guilty.

  He had persuaded Judy to go home; her still-fragile nerves, trying to recover from Charlotte’s birth and her father’s death within two months of each other, had taken enough of a battering today without witnessing this. And he felt guilty about her too. He had argued with her about nannies, and he wasn’t sure if in putting up those arguments he had been reassuring her or trying to make sure that his promotion prospects didn’t take a nosedive by her deciding to stay at home at look after Charlotte herself. He had a horrible feeling it was the latter.

  Today, which had started so well and promisingly, had turned into the worst day he could remember. And it would get worse still, because one way or the other, someone would have to tell the Crawfords. Not him, thankfully. An officer had been assign
ed to them to keep them informed of progress, and it would fall to him or her to break this news. Naturally, it had not yet been communicated to them, but they would have to know sooner or later. And better that the divers found the baby than that the Crawfords had to spend any time hoping against hope. But Tom felt that he would have visited it on them, just by having seen it.

  None of this business made any sense. Whoever had done that had to be deeply disturbed, not criminally or commercially motivated. But who could be so disturbed as to do a thing like that?

  The woman and the artist turned out to be husband and wife, and they were having problems. He had stormed out of the house early in the morning and she had waited for him to come back, but he hadn’t. He had taken his painting equipment, so she had known where she was likely to find him and had gone to the park looking for him. He’d seen her approaching and had packed up his stuff, not wanting to talk to her, but she had caught him up on Bridge Street, and they had gone into the Riverside Inn for a drink and to talk things out. Eventually, they had decided to have a late lunch and had taken a table outside.

  They were still at Malworth Police Station, but if they did have anything to do with it, no one had got anywhere with them. And why would they do a thing like that? What earthly reason could they have? Unless there was something in the Crawfords’ background that the police didn’t know about and it was some sort of sick revenge, but that seemed very unlikely. The Crawfords were just an ordinary family whose lives had been blasted by what had happened.

  So why in God’s name had it happened?

  * * *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He hadn’t been unconscious, not really. Just not quite conscious, he supposed. He had been aware, as if in a dream, of a dog sniffing him, barking; if Dean had been fully conscious, he would have been alarmed, because he had the healthy mistrust of dogs acquired by postmen and sneak thieves. As it was, the sensation of the cold nose examining his face and the pungent breathing close to his own nose had brought him to the state of semiconsciousness that he had remained in until now.