Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  He had been aware of people, of urgency. Of being lifted onto a stretcher. He had thought then, for a few moments, that he had been hurt playing football; that was the only other time he had been on a stretcher, despite his sometimes-violent way of life. He had always been walking-wounded before, even after the severe going-over in prison. He had been aware of the journey to the hospital and the ambulance crew talking to him, asking him his name. He had been conscious enough to dredge it up from somewhere, like trying to remember a film star’s name. And he had been aware of people working on him, putting strapping on his chest, discussing his injuries.

  Now, he was lying on a bed, and he opened his eyes to see plastic curtains and a middle-aged man feeling his pulse.

  “Ah, Dean, you’re with us. I’m Staff Nurse Dixon. Call me Paul. How do you feel?”

  “Terrible.”

  “I’m not surprised. You’ve cracked a couple of ribs, and taken a nasty blow to the head, amongst other things. What happened to you?”

  “I fell.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Paul grinned. “Are you sure? It looks more as though you were in a fight. Did some woman give you those scratches?”

  Dean was used to not being believed. He just wasn’t used to telling the truth, and he wasn’t sure how to do it convincingly. “No,” he said.

  “So where did the blood come from? It isn’t yours, is it? The scratches didn’t bleed that much.”

  Dean didn’t answer.

  “Does anything else hurt besides the ribs and the head?”

  “Everything.” Dean closed his eyes.

  “Don’t go to sleep on me, Dean. I want to check your eyes.”

  He allowed Paul to shine a torch into his eyes and then closed them again. If he was asleep, he couldn’t answer any more questions, could he?

  It was five past four when Theresa at last found a parking space on the sprawling Barton General grounds and made her way to Reception.

  “Are you a relative?”

  “Well, I lived with him for twelve years, if that counts.” She was startled to hear the anger in her voice, and she didn’t know whom she was angry with. Except that her first thought on hearing that news bulletin had been that someone had murdered his wife and tried to kill himself and she had been seeing it as a suitable subject for academic study, an interesting aspect of human nature. Now she was having to come to terms with the notion that Ian might have done something like that.

  “Oh. Sorry. I’ll show you where you can wait.”

  After about five minutes, a nurse came in. “Miss Black?”

  “Yes. How is he?”

  “Holding his own.”

  “I never know what that means. It doesn’t mean anything, does it? Like everything else you people say. Stable. Comfortable. As well as can be expected. Meaningless.”

  “In this case, it means he’s got a fighting chance,” said the nurse.

  Theresa bit her lip and blinked away the tears. Why was she giving this woman a hard time? “Sorry. Please—what happened to him?”

  “We think he was hit by a car.”

  Theresa would never have believed she could hear those words and feel relief above all else. Whatever had happened, Ian was the victim, not the perpetrator.

  “When can I see him?”

  “Well, he’s out of theater now, but he’s in intensive care, and still unconscious. You can sit with him if you like, but he really won’t know you’re there.”

  “Yes, I’d—I’d like to sit with him. Just—you know.”

  “Sure.”

  Theresa was taken to where Ian lay, with tubes and wires attached to his body, little screens monitoring his vital signs, and a machine breathing for him.

  “Don’t let that worry you,” said the nurse. “He’ll be able to breathe for himself soon. But he may not regain full consciousness for a while.”

  “What happened?” Theresa asked. “How did he get run over? They said on the radio he was found outside his own house.”

  “Nobody’s very sure. The police might know more than we do, of course.”

  Detective Superintendent Case, big, bluff, with thick gray hair that Lloyd envied, came into his office without knocking and looked bleakly at Lloyd.

  “I’ve just been to the murder scene,” he said. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but we seem to have a dead woman, a man whose organs are being eyed up for harvesting, and a teenage girl with a baby, and we still don’t know who the hell they are, whether they were moving in or out, or even where they were coming from or going to, never mind who actually caused all this mayhem. Right?”

  Lloyd managed a smile. “We’re a little bit further forward than that. We know the man is definitely Ian Waring, and we believe the murder victim is a Mrs. Scott, but I’d much rather not ask Kayleigh to identify her if we can get someone else to do it. And we know that they were all moving into that cottage, which is owned by Ian Waring, though he seems not to have been living there for the last few weeks.”

  “And he’s the father of this baby, is he?”

  Lloyd shrugged. “According to the postman, that’s a matter for debate. At quarter to eleven, someone was there shouting the odds about taking her out of the country, and whoever that was claimed to be the father, but was told that he wasn’t.”

  “Mr. Scott, presumably.”

  “That’s the premise we’re going on. Waring said the intruder was male. But the man seen abandoning the Audi sounds too young to be Kayleigh’s father, so it might be more complicated than that.”

  Case frowned. “I thought the Audi was registered to a Mrs. Newton somewhere in London.”

  “It is. But the postman saw a dark-colored car in the garage at the cottage that isn’t there now, and it’s my guess that it was the Audi, or it’s a pretty odd coincidence.”

  “So who’s Mrs. Newton? Coincidence or not, her car might have nothing to do with it. Have the Met found her yet?”

  “No. Apparently she moved from that address at the end of January, beginning of February, and the neighbors don’t know where she’s gone. The car still hasn’t been reported stolen—perhaps the driver is Mrs. Newton’s son or husband or something, and he was visiting the cottage.”

  “Maybe.” Case looked unconvinced. “But if this car the postman saw was parked in the garage, that’s not likely to be a visitor’s car, is it? Visitors don’t drive into the garage.”

  “True.”

  “Anyway,” Case said, “the uniforms are looking for him. Our first priority is finding this Mr. Scott, if for no other reason than that we’ve got two children here who need him.”

  Lloyd knew that. But every alley he turned down was blind. He wanted very much to know where the Scotts were living before they moved into the cottage, and he was currently engaged on trying to find Dr. Black, and not just because she was on his list of suspects; if he could just find out something about these people, it would make the murder that much easier to solve, without red herrings muddying the water. He found himself wondering if red herrings could muddy water and was brought back to more immediate concerns by Case.

  “What’s happening about the baby and the girl, anyway?”

  “Social Services are looking after Alexandra, and Kayleigh is here with a social worker, pending a suitable placement for them both. They think they might be able to accommodate Kayleigh in the children’s home in Barton that’s currently looking after the baby, but we’re waiting for confirmation from the director. The doctor thinks Kayleigh will talk when she’s ready, but until we know where they were moving from, finding Mr. Scott is a little difficult.”

  “But what’s really bothering you?” Case asked. “I know you. You’re not happy about something.”

  Lloyd stood up and looked out of the window at the car park, thinking of the positive mountain of little puzzles he now had. He wasn’t happy about a lot of things, and he wished Judy were here; he didn’t like having to work them out with other people. But this one was urgent. “I’m having prob
lems with this baby. She doesn’t seem to fit into the picture.” He didn’t have to look at his superintendent to see his reaction; he knew exactly what expression was on his face.

  “You always want to complicate things, don’t you, Lloyd? It seems nice and straightforward. Mr. Scott left Mrs. Scott, Waring moved in, and in due course Mrs. Scott had a baby. They decide to go and live in his cottage, probably once his ex-partner vacated it. Scott reckons it’s his baby, comes to claim it, but she says he’s not the father. They have a row during which the mirror gets smashed; she tries to get away through the utility room; he kills her before she makes it; Waring arrives there, finds her body, rings us. Then he sees Scott driving off, runs outside, and gets knocked down. What problems?”

  “You mean apart from why did Scott so kindly give him time to phone the police?” Lloyd turned to look at Case.

  “He didn’t want to kill anyone else—he just wanted to get away.”

  “So why do what he did to Waring? Waring didn’t put himself in the path of the car—he was by the front door when he was hit. Scott could have got away without doing that to him. It was deliberate.”

  Case sighed extravagantly. “Waring had stolen his wife. Was claiming to be the father of the baby he believed to be his—he’d been driven to murder over it! Damn it, Lloyd, he’d lost his reason—he just did it. You said it was the baby that was bothering you.”

  Lloyd nodded. His bachelor boss didn’t know about babies. “Babies do not travel light,” he informed him. “Every time Charlotte goes anywhere, we have to lug along a huge zipper bag with nappies and clothes and toys and sterilizing units and formula milk—there’s nothing like that in the cottage. And there’s no cot, no pushchair . . . nothing in any of the packing cases to suggest that a baby was going to live there. No baby food, no feeding bottle. Kayleigh was apparently wandering round for hours, and yet according to Mrs. Spears—she’s the director of the children’s home—the baby still isn’t hungry, so she must have been given a feed very shortly before she left the house. It doesn’t add up.”

  Case came into the room properly then and sat down. “And a baby’s gone missing in Malworth.” He took out the cigarettes he had been trying to give up ever since Lloyd had known him, lit up, and shook his head. “Oh, come on. Are you saying this kid happened to steal a baby the same day someone killed her mother? And wouldn’t that mean that the row was about some other baby altogether? That’s what I call a coincidence. Have you ever considered just taking things at face value?”

  “I am taking things at face value. They seem to be intending leaving the country according to the argument, and it’s clear that they weren’t moving in there for long—they took exactly what they were going to need, and no more. Three knives, three forks, three spoons. No spoon for the baby, but she’s probably being weaned. Two sets of bedding for each bed—no cot blankets. If a baby was moving into that house, there should be some sign of it.”

  Case shook his head. “Not necessarily. She might not be on solids. She might be breast-fed. And she might sleep in her mother’s bed, for all you know. I did.”

  Lloyd was impressed; he had, it appeared, been underestimating Case’s knowledge of babies.

  “And all those packing cases weren’t moved in a sports car, were they? There must have been some more practical vehicle there at some point, and we know there was another car in the garage—which is much more likely to have belonged to someone who lived there than to someone who didn’t—and it could still have had the baby’s things in it, for all we know. The murderer could have driven off in that car, taking the pram and everything else connected with the baby with him.”

  That sounded plausible. Lloyd frowned. He had imagined Kayleigh, frightened by the row, picking up the baby and leaving the house. That was why the lack of a pram or a cot or food had been so inexplicable. But perhaps the baby and her equipment had never made it into the house. He really should have had more sleep—it was a poor do when Case had to outline scenarios for him; he was the scenario man.

  “Do you think they had just arrived?” he said. “That Kayleigh was taking the baby from the car when her mother went into the utility room from the garage and began unpacking? That whoever did it was waiting in there for her, and Kayleigh actually witnessed the attack from the garage, and ran away while it was going on?”

  “Well, no, not having your fertile imagination, I just thought that the baby’s things could have been in the car that’s disappeared. But yes—that’s quite possible. I prefer it to your last theory.”

  So did Lloyd. It would certainly explain a lot of things that had been puzzling him about Kayleigh. But who was having the row, in that case? And was it incidental to the murder? Lloyd was inclined to think that it could be, so Case’s scenario sounded good to him.

  “And if I’m right,” Case went on, “then not only is the baby who Kayleigh says she is, but the Audi is a coincidence, because there wasn’t anything at all in it. And it’s a damn sight more likely than your coincidence.”

  True. But plausible or not, it was still just a theory, and Freddie was right; theories always came to grief. Lloyd’s own theory about Emma and Alexandra being one and the same would doubtless go the way of all theories, but he was pursuing it, just in case. “You’re probably right, sir. But I’ve told McArthur that we’ve got a mystery baby, I’m getting Freddie to check if Mrs. Scott really did have a baby in the very recent past, and I’m going to get a photograph of Emma and take a very close look at Alexandra.”

  Case looked worried. “I don’t like it when you remember that I outrank you—it means you’re serious. And it seems unlikely, Lloyd.”

  “I know. But it won’t hurt to make certain.”

  Case got up. “All I’m saying is, don’t go raising the Crawfords’ hopes.”

  As if he would. Lloyd had only found out when he’d spoken to McArthur that Judy was so involved in the kidnap and that it was Emma Jane Crawford, of all babies, who had been stolen. It wouldn’t be doing Judy any good; he knew that—he’d like to see how she was. As Case left, he glanced at his watch; it was almost half past four and he was already very late for the postmortem, so he couldn’t really go home even if he had his own transport, which, of course, he hadn’t. Anyway, Judy wouldn’t like it if he went home, however much it had affected her; she didn’t much care for being regarded as a damsel in distress.

  He picked up his jacket, walked along the corridor, and popped his head round the door of the CID room. “Can someone ask the kidnap incident room to fax through a photograph of baby Emma? I’m just off to the p.m., if I can cadge a lift.”

  It wasn’t easy; most of the cars were out. Eventually, he was grudgingly given a car and driver, and at twenty past five he arrived in the mortuary.

  “What time do you call this?” was Freddie’s greeting.

  Lloyd held up his hands in an apology. “Extenuating circumstances. I don’t have a car, for one thing.”

  “Your baby theory’s looking good, because the answer is that she has definitely not given birth in the recent past.”

  Lloyd wasn’t at all sure if he was relieved or worried by Freddie’s answer. It strengthened his belief that Alexandra and Emma were one and the same, but that was leading him down a path that could cause the Crawfords even more heartache if he was wrong.

  “So what can you tell me about her death? Could a woman have done it?”

  If the row really was about some other baby altogether, it might have no bearing on the murder. A vengeful Dr. Black could indeed have been lying in wait for her victim. Most compelling of all: she could have a key to the cottage.

  “I think the victim was stooping over the carton, which gave the attacker a considerable height advantage. Bring something that heavy down from a height onto someone’s head, then repeat often enough, you’ll get the job done, whether you’re male or female.”

  “Did she put up a fight? Is her attacker likely to be marked?”

  “She has no ot
her bruises,” said Freddie. “Nothing under her fingernails. I think she would have been out cold after the first blow—no chance to fight back. Whoever did it would in all likelihood be splashed with her blood, but other than that . . .” He shook his head.

  Blood. Blood was producing a great many of Lloyd’s puzzles. “Waring’s clothes had blood on them,” he said. “And it wasn’t his.”

  If Ian Waring had been hale and hearty when Lloyd had arrived, he would have been the prime suspect; it was sometimes grossly unfair, but it was a fact. The suspicion had already been there in the voice of the girl in Dispatch when she had sent the car. And Lloyd wasn’t convinced that Waring’s hospitalized state exempted him from prime-suspect status.

  Freddie shook his head when Lloyd said that. “The man didn’t drive a car into himself, Lloyd.”

  “No, but what did he do? If he came home and found her as he said . . . did he pick her up and carry her, or what? How come he got blood on his clothing? And we’ve had confirmation that he left the footprints in the kitchen and hallway.”

  “Well, I did tell you the body had been moved slightly. He might have tried to see if she was still alive—if he got close to her, he could have got blood on his shoe. And if he turned her over for any reason, the blood would come off on his clothes.”

  “If she was still alive?” Lloyd shook his head. “I know we ordinary mortals don’t have medical degrees, Freddie, but some conditions are pretty obvious even to the layman. He couldn’t possibly have thought she was alive. Her brains, as you pointed out, were visible. You said yourself that no one would have had reason to examine her closely if the light was on, because it was all too obvious that she was dead.”

  “Even so, there are several innocent explanations of how her blood could have got onto his clothes. People react in all sorts of ways when confronted with violent death. He could have cradled her in his arms, for instance. Forensics should be able to tell you how he got it, anyway—whether it splashed or dripped onto him or whether it just came off on him.”