‘You phone him where?’
‘He gave me his number.’
‘Then phone him.’
‘Best to hear what Piera wants first.’
Piera’s nationality was not easily judged. Black, tight, curly hair, darkish complexion and his mannered dressing tended to deny an English background, but provided no definite suggestion. He had been born in Magburaka, Sierra Leone, to the east of Freetown. Noyes himself used brutality as a way of getting what he wanted, but although he would never have admitted it, Piera frightened him. Having driven Melanie to the house, he was glad to leave immediately.
Once in the dark, comfortless room, with just a desk and chair, computer, telephone and large plasma screen TV adorning the wall, Piera demanded to know how Melanie would retrieve the ape.
‘I phone and arrange for him to meet me and hand Georgie over.’
‘Phone.’
‘But ...’
‘Goddamn well phone.’
‘Sure, it’s just I want to explain that what I say to him may sound a bit odd because his wife’s a bitch and if she answers I have to say I’m calling from his office. And today is—’
‘D’you need persuading?’ he shouted.
‘For God’s sake, take it easy. Today’s Saturday. The office won’t be working over the weekend so if the wife answers, my saying I’m ringing from the office won’t sound so bright. I’ll get on to him on Monday.’
‘You’re beginning to bloody worry me.’
‘Why?’
‘Too many answers.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Phone.’
‘All right, all right. I’ll have to get hold of the number from my bag.’
He said nothing as she left. She went into the hallway, upstairs, brought out of her handbag the square of paper on which Ansell had written his home and mobile phone numbers.
The phone was on a small, battered table to the right of the computer. Conscious Piera was suspicious, that his suspicion could very quickly cause him to become violent, her worry shaded into fear. She began to dial, pressed the wrong key because of nervousness, cancelled the call, redialled.
‘Yes?’ a woman answered.
She thought quickly. ‘It’s Helen, Mrs Ansell.’
‘Who?’
‘Helen Taggart. I work in the same department as your husband. I’m having to prepare an idea to present to the project director tomorrow and—’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’
‘I know that this is very unusual, but the board are meeting in the morning. Frankly, it seems to be a bit of a shambles, especially as it leaves me having to spend much of the weekend at work. So if I may have a quick word with David ...?’
‘He’s gone out.’
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘No, but I don’t suppose he will be long.’
‘I’ll ring again.’
‘If you must.’
She replaced the receiver.
‘Well?’ Piera demanded roughly.
‘He’s not at home.’
‘If you’re trying to—’
‘I’m not trying anything. The wife said he won’t be long so I’ll ring back in a bit.’
‘You’d better be lucky the next time.’
She mentally shivered.
Half an hour later, she dialled again.
‘Yes,’ Ansell said.
‘Thank God, David! You’ve got to—’
He interrupted. ‘What’s the problem, Helen?’ he asked, maintaining the cover in case Eileen came out of the drawing room and overheard him.
‘You’ve got to get Georgie to me, fast!’
Eileen did come out. She crossed to the stairs, began to climb them, came to a halt and looked at him. He hurriedly said, ‘What exactly is Lomas demanding?’
She resumed climbing.
‘For Christ’s sake, I’ve got to meet up with you – soon!’ Melanie said, her voice shrill.
Their separation had been brief, but desire made him stupidly believe she was longing for him as much as he was for her. ‘Hang on a sec and I’ll check where I put it.’
He went up to their bedroom. He’d wanted an excuse to check that Eileen wasn’t lingering in the doorway to their room, overhearing his conversation and picking up on every nuance in his voice as he tried to contain his excitement at hearing Melanie’s voice and anticipating seeing her again.
Georgie was not on the bed by the side of his unpacked suitcase. Eileen sat in front of her dressing table.
He said, ‘They want the ape for the latest publicity stunt. I left it on my bed. Where is it now?’
‘While you were out, I burned it.’
As he stared at her, he ridiculously tried to believe she was joking.
‘And I’ll burn anything else of hers you’ve got.’
He returned downstairs, picked up the receiver. ‘Listen—’
‘The bookstall, Charing Cross Station in two hours’ time,’ she demanded.
‘I won’t be able to bring it to the board meeting,’ he admitted, carrying on with the pretence that the monkey was such an important factor in that meeting, but really believing this was just her excuse to get to see him again.
‘You’ve got to,’ she cried, the panic now evident in her voice.
‘My wife’s burned him,’ Ansell admitted, confused by her evident fear and the importance she seemed to be placing on the ape.
Melanie looked up from the phone at Piera, her face etched with fear. He crossed to where she stood, grabbed the receiver out of her hands and slammed it down.
‘It’ll be all right, Piera,’ she said shrilly.
He hit her; she fell backwards against a small table, then on to the floor. ‘He’s found the diamonds,’ he said, stating a fact, not asking a question.
‘He doesn’t know anything about them.’
He kicked her.
‘I swear it’s not like you think.’ She struggled to find words which would calm his anger.
He spoke slowly, his voice rising until he was shouting. ‘You couldn’t bring the sparklers through because you reckoned you’d been sussed. To prove that was right, you say they turned your luggage and you upside down looking for them. Crap! You and your man worked out how to lift them and take off.’
‘You must believe me. They did turn me over. If I’d had one diamond on me, they’d have found it. The diamonds got through because they were in the monkey he carried. But the bitch has burned it—’
‘Diamonds don’t burn, you silly bitch!’ He stamped on her hand and she screamed. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded again, his foot raised for another stamp.
She spoke even more frantically. ‘He never knew there were diamonds in Georgie. If he had, they’d have nailed him on the spot because he’s real straight and would have been so shit-scared. It’s that wife ...’
‘You have a lovely body. Don’t want it to be spoiled, do you?’ He brought a knife out of the sheath on the back of his belt.
She tried once again to make him understand she was telling the truth. He ripped open her blouse, held the blade of the knife against her left nipple.
SIX
In Charing Cross station, Ansell continued to search for Melanie amongst the ever-changing crowd. He looked at his watch yet again and confirmed what he already knew; he had been waiting almost an hour. It was unfortunate Georgie had been destroyed, but hardly the calamity she had seemed to find it. If he managed to buy her another ...
To try to calm his mind, he bought an evening newspaper. He read, but took in very little, eventually dumping the paper in a waste bin. He bought a sandwich and cup of coffee from a vending machine. By the time he had eaten and drunk, thrown the cling and plastic cup into the bin on top of the newspaper, he bitterly accepted she was not going to turn up to meet him. He walked towards the platform from which the next train he could catch would depart, but came to a stop several feet from the gates. The thought crowded his mind. Something had pr
evented her leaving on time, now she would be hurrying to meet him. Were he to go before she arrived, she might believe he did regard those days and nights as no more than ‘light entertainment’. So, he vowed to wait just a little bit longer ...
As he opened the front door of number thirty-four, he heard the full-throated laugh which named Barbara Morley. He entered, shut the door. A man said something: Barbara’s husband. A negative man since no one of character would have made the mistake of marrying his wife.
Ansell entered the sitting room, briefcase in hand; necessary on a trip to the office, of course.
‘Why are you so late back?’ Eileen demanded.
‘There was a lot of work to do.’ He spoke to Barbara. ‘How go things with you?’
Her reply was typical. ‘Same as always when Tom’s not too tired.’
Tom might not have heard. It was difficult to judge whether he was amused or embarrassed by her crude inferences.
‘A long time doing what?’ Eileen asked.
‘Helen had got into a bit of a muddle.’
‘I phoned the office. There was no answer.’
‘We must have been working in the end room which doesn’t have a phone.’
‘Or it was the moment critique?’ Barbara asked.
‘I’ve just remembered,’ Tom said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘I have to meet someone in five minutes.’ He made to pull himself up from the sofa on which he’d been slumped.
‘He can wait.’ Barbara turned towards Eileen. ‘A meeting at the Old Bull and Bush, I suppose. Drinks twice as much as he should, so he can look into the barmaid’s dark brown eyes and see a double bed.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Tom protested but he sank back down into the sofa, resigned to waiting until his wife gave him permission to leave.
They left fifteen minutes later. Ansell went into the hall, opened the front door and tried to conceal his eagerness for their departure.
Tom briefly stopped. ‘Good luck, David, you’ll maybe need lots of it.’ He followed his wife.
Ansell watched them get into their bright red Audi sports car which Barbara often hypocritically disparaged in order to draw attention to the fact they could afford it.
He shut the front door. When he turned round, Eileen was standing in the sitting-room doorway.
‘Liar!’ she said fiercely.
‘Now what?’
‘You never met Helen at the office to do some work.’
‘If you look in my briefcase, you’ll find the papers.’
‘Put there before you left here. You were with that woman.’
‘Which one?’
‘She needs identifying? The woman on the boat who put cheap scent over the monkey’s fur.’
‘I’ve only seen Helen.’
‘You think I’ll believe a lie if you repeat it often enough?’
At Natchfield Farm, a herd of Friesians were driven into their holding paddock. In the shadow of Crastbury Hill, a man refilled the feed trays of the hens he hoped, with little reason, would make him a commensurate income despite the unnecessary import of eggs from the Continent which had been produced in conditions illegal in the UK. In Sudely Woods, the head keeper made his way around the release pen, looking for signs to tell him a predator had been present. He walked up a ride. A hundred yards along, two cock and one hen pheasant rose in a flutter of wings. They cleared the trees and flew towards the large kale field beyond which, in winter, would be good holding ground.
At the end of the ride, he turned into another. Within twenty yards of the road, he noticed newly disturbed brambles to his left. Local and not-so-local young couples favoured the woods during the summer evenings and nights and left visible evidence of their enjoyment on the ground. Dirty young scrubbers, his wife called the females; lucky young sods was his description of the males. Close to the disturbance he saw something which intrigued him until he identified it as the naked body of a woman who had seemingly been savaged by a wild animal.
SEVEN
The area from the road and around the body had been secured by police tape; following a careful search by SOCOs, four pegs, with numbered plastic labels attached, had been stuck into the ground, marking where something of possible significance had been found or noted. Two footprints were being cast with plaster when Detective Inspector Glover escorted the police surgeon, a family doctor who lived near Edlehurst, to the body.
‘Hell!’ the doctor exclaimed as he gained a clear view of the dead woman.
‘It’s way beyond the worst I’ve seen before.’ Glover was newly promoted; although lacking neither ability nor self-confidence, he would have preferred to have gained more experience in commanding the divisional CID before having to deal with a murder of this nature.
The doctor put his case down on a patch of dry ground under an oak tree, brought out white paper overclothing, similar to that which the SOCOs wore, and put them on, together with a pair of surgical gloves.
He walked up to the body, visually studied it, physically examined it. One SOCO recorded his moves on a camcorder; a professional photographer worked to instructions. The doctor spoke into a hand-held tape recorder. His judgement: the wounds had probably been inflicted with a double-edged knife; none of the wounds could have been self-inflicted (a fact that was obvious, but had to be recorded); she had suffered heavy battering to the right side of her body; her face was heavily bruised; three fingers on her right hand had been fractured. He recorded the temperature of the body with a forensic thermometer.
He briefly remained standing as he gazed down at the dead woman. The post-mortem should decide whether she had suffered the violence during sexual assault, but his judgement was that the nature of the wounds indicated torture rather than frenzy.
The doctor returned to where Glover was talking to a SOCO. Glover cut short the conversation he had been having, turned. ‘What can you tell us, doc?’
‘Very little. She suffered heavy bruising and violence to one hand, a knife inflicted the wounds. I’d name it torture rather than straight assault.’
Glover swore. He still found it difficult to appreciate one human could willingly inflict agonizing pain on another.
‘Rigor is spreading, but not yet complete, body temperature is fifty-seven. To answer the question you haven’t yet asked, death was between seven and ten hours ago – figures as open to error as ever.’
Detective Chief Superintendent Abbotts arrived at Sudely Woods, having driven down from county HQ. He was known among the lower ranks as ‘What-if’. Opinions of his subordinates were often met by the question: ‘But what if ...?’
He and Glover watched the pathologist examining the body. ‘There’s nothing to identify her?’ Abbotts asked.
‘No, sir. With no clothing and nothing found to help name her, our hope has to be fingerprints.’
‘You assume she has a record?’
‘Since it seems sex may be ruled out, it’s difficult to believe an innocent could suffer such barbaric cruelty.’
‘The drug trade?’
‘Seems the most likely.’
Eileen had made little attempt to converse that morning before Ansell left to go and buy the paper from the local corner shop. On his return, she continued to read a magazine. Silence had become her weapon of attack and defence.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked.
She might not have heard. He asked again. She shook her head.
As he went through to the larder, he wondered how long it would be before her present resentment dimmed. She still remembered he had laughed at one of the doubtful jokes his best man had made at the wedding party.
He returned, sat. ‘Shall we watch?’ He indicated the TV in the corner of the room; any company was better than his present one.
She shrugged her shoulders.
He switched on the rolling news. It was a day for pessimists. Half the world was in turmoil. The news became more local. Politicians were praising and damning the late
st government proposal. A crash had closed two westbound lanes on the M25. Talks between union officials and arbitrators in the chemical industry had failed to reach an agreement. The wife of a millionaire footballer had been caught shoplifting. A woman had been found dead in woods in Kent. To plump out the last report, Detective Chief Superintendent Abbotts was interviewed by a TV camera team. His answers to the questions were brief and uncommunicative.
‘We do not yet know who the unfortunate woman was.’
‘She had been mutilated, but I am not prepared to say more than that.’
‘It is impossible at this stage of the investigation to judge whether the attacker was mentally unbalanced.’
‘The motive has not yet been determined.’
‘I am unable to confirm or deny that there is evidence of torture. That is all I can say.’
The next item of news was shown.
‘Poor woman,’ Ansell said. ‘Can you imagine her agonized shouts for the cavalry which never arrived?’
Eileen carried on reading as if he wasn’t there.
‘They haven’t identified her so there may be parents with missing daughters or husbands with missing wives, who’ll be in hell until the dead woman is identified. Murder does more than kill its victim; close relations and friends are caught up in the mental pain of death. Yet when the victim can’t be named, dozens of people may be affected.’ He was rambling now, but desperate to get a reaction out of his mute wife.
She finally spoke. ‘Are you trying to be clever?’
‘I hope not.’
She resumed reading.
The post-mortem began. Individual wounds and bruises on the body were verbally positioned by the pathologist and recorded, measured and photographed.
Lengths of hair, scrapings from under the fingernails, were gathered; samples were taken from the genital area.
Glover, the senior SOCO and forensic scientists were asked if there was anything more they wished to be done. The body was washed where its surfaces had been stained by dirt or blood.
The internal examination began. Glover was not the only man present who, as far as possible, divorced his mind from what was happening. When concluded, the pathologist briefly spoke to Glover. ‘Age around twenty-four or five.’ He spoke in short, sharp words, as if rushed; a false impression since when working, he was never in a hurry. ‘Generally healthy despite being a heavy smoker. Sexually active, but no indication of sexual activity immediately before death.
Damned by Logic Page 4
