Sandman

by David Hodges

  Kate shook her head a couple of times. ‘Hayden, we’re investigating a drowning. What has a book with “Sandman 10.30” got to do with anything?’

  He sighed, replacing the paperback on the bedside table. ‘Don’t know, old girl, but I’ve a feeling in my water that it’s very relevant. Maybe it’s an appointment – her mobile rang while she was reading and the book was the only thing she had to hand to write in.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Kate said wearily. ‘We’ll look into it later – just to humour you – but right now, I’d like to have another word with the dragon downstairs to find out when her son is likely to be back from the bookies. It seems he was the last person to see Ellie Landy alive, so maybe he can throw a little more light on things.’

  But, as it turned out, they had no need to speak to Daphne Snell, for Graham Snell opened the front door with his key and strode into the hallway just as they got to the foot of the stairs. There was no doubt who he was either – the resemblance to his awful mother was immediately obvious – and she herself clinched the fact anyway by shouting from the kitchen, ‘Graham, the police are here,’ even as Kate and Hayden stepped into view.

  Daphne Snell treated them both to a sheepish grin. ‘My son,’ she explained unnecessarily and, apparently guessing that they would want to talk to him, waved a bony arm towards a door on the left. ‘You can use the sitting room.’

  Graham Snell appeared to be in his mid-twenties and he was certainly an oddball. Tall and thin, with brown curly hair and a wispy immature beard, he wore large tortoiseshell glasses, like those of his mother, and affected a permanent squint. Dressed in a stained blue fleece, green corduroy trousers and badly scuffed suede shoes which hadn’t been laced up properly, he looked like a refugee from a backstreet soup kitchen and it was plain that he was very uneasy.

  ‘Did you win?’ Kate asked directly.

  He frowned. ‘Win?’

  ‘At the bookies – your mum said you’d gone there.’

  He forced a smile, but it only hovered briefly over the slightly crooked mouth and his gaze slid away from her as he plucked nervously at his fleece with the fingers of one hand. ‘Lost thirty quid,’ he said.

  ‘Mug’s game,’ Hayden declared, looking him up and down critically.

  Snell nodded, but said nothing more.

  ‘Ellie Landy?’ Kate went on. ‘The lodger? I gather from your mother that you were here when she – er – left?’

  He nodded again. ‘Yeah, I’d just come back from the bookies. Saw her drive away in that blue MG of hers as I walked up the road.’

  ‘Which way did she go?’

  ‘Left, I think.’

  ‘Any idea where she was heading?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not the faintest. Don’t know much about her.’

  ‘She didn’t say “cheerio” then?’

  ‘Never said a word. Just drove off.’

  ‘Was she carrying anything – a bag or something like that?’

  ‘Didn’t notice. Guests come and go here all the time.’

  ‘But when she didn’t come back after three days, didn’t you wonder where she had got to?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. That’s why I told my mother about seeing her leave.’

  ‘So why wait three days to do that?’

  ‘Didn’t think about it until Mum asked me if I had seen her about lately and I realized she had done a runner.’

  ‘Pretty girl, was she?’

  He frowned. ‘Didn’t really notice.’

  ‘Fancy her, did you?’

  Even Hayden looked surprised by the question.

  Snell looked confused and his face reddened. ‘No,’ he said defensively. ‘Not – not my type.’

  ‘Was she prettier than me?’

  Now Hayden frowned, darting a swift warning glance in her direction.

  Snell began to stutter and shake his head. ‘N-no, I – I mean, yes – I don’t notice things like that.’

  To Hayden’s obvious relief, Kate didn’t pursue the subject anymore, but smiled at the confused young man. ‘Thank you, Mr Snell. We’ll be in touch if we need to speak to you again.’

  Outside in the street, Hayden rounded on Kate. ‘What on earth was all that about?’ he snapped. ‘You were out of order in there, old girl. You embarrassed the life out of that poor chap.’

  Kate nodded, her eyes gleaming. ‘That was the general idea, Hayd,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see his reaction to the suggestion that he might have had the hots for Ellie.’

  Hayden raised his eyebrows. ‘You think he may have done her in, is that what you’re saying?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘If this job turns out to be more serious than an accidental drowning, he is likely to be a key suspect. He was the last one to see her alive and he’s obviously seriously introverted – the sort of weirdo who nurses unsavoury urges—’

  ‘Oh, poppycock!’ Hayden snorted. ‘He’s just a shy youngster, that’s all. I think you’re getting paranoid in your old age.’

  She sighed as they climbed back into the CID car. ‘You’re probably right there, Hayd, but at this stage in the game we have to consider all things. Talking of which, I think we should head back to the nick to see “Dr Death” and also get the plods out to look for any abandoned blue MG sports cars – that would at least give us an indication of where she went into the water.’

  He grinned at her use of the coroner’s officer’s unfortunate nickname, then glanced at his watch. ‘Lunch first, though, eh?’ he suggested.

  Kate shook her head again. ‘’Fraid you’re out of luck there, Hayd,’ she said. ‘Job first.’ She prodded his stomach with one finger. ‘You can afford to lose a bit of that flab anyway.’

  CHAPTER 3

  The man at the end of the telephone had a loose bubbling cough, and Kate visualized a fat little man hunched over an untidy paper-strewn desk in a dingy office, wreathed in smoke from the cigarette drooping from his mouth. Too much exposure to her father’s collection of Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer books as a child, she decided with a wry smile, waiting for the coughing to stop and for Gabriel Lessing of Lessing’s Global News Agency to recover from the shock of what she had just told him.

  A thorough examination of Ellie Landy’s clothes in the presence of the coroner’s officer had produced nothing of value – just two water-logged biros, a handkerchief and a packet of Polo mints. No mobile, notebook or car keys – not even a tape machine, but at least the business cards in the wallet had given her Gabriel Lessing, whatever that was going to be worth.

  ‘Drowned, you say?’ he wheezed into the phone.

  ‘As far as we know, sir,’ she replied. ‘But there will have to be a post mortem to positively establish the cause of death.’

  Another bout of coughing and an apology. ‘Asthma,’ Lessing explained in just above a whisper. ‘I’ll be OK in a minute – just the shock.’

  For a moment Kate thought he had become overcome with emotion at the news of the tragedy, but he soon put her right there.

  ‘What the hell am I going to do now?’ he wailed. ‘Them floods is big news and she was right there – on the spot. We’re only a small agency and with her dead, I’m bloody stuffed.’

  ‘Nice of you to be so sympathetic,’ Kate said with heavy sarcasm.

  There was an angry snarl and more coughing. ‘Don’t give me that crap, love,’ Lessing threw back, losing his calm for a moment. ‘What do you want – a bleedin’ eulogy?’

  ‘It might tell us a bit about her anyway,’ Kate responded drily. ‘What can you tell us?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ he went on. ‘Single. Used to live in Somerset – Glastonbury, she told me. Left and went to uni ’cause she didn’t get on with her old man. Bit of a hot arse, I reckon – maybe that were the reason. Whole stream of boyfriends. I only took her on ’cause I was desperate – sort of work experience. But she were a good nose. Got some good stories for me—’

  ‘How long was she with you?’

  ‘About a year and a half. Then the flooding busin
ess come up and, as she knew the area, I thought I was on to a winner by sending her down there to cover it. Bloody shit out now, haven’t I?’

  Kate controlled her anger with an effort. ‘Can you give me her home address?’ she said. ‘We’ll need one of her parents to formally identify her.’

  He grunted. ‘Don’t know whether you’ll have much luck there, darlin’. I got the impression that they’d split up, so one or other of ’em might have already pissed off.’

  Kate heard the rustle of paper and a few seconds later, he came up with the address. ‘I might schlep down there meself, Sergeant,’ he said after she had noted the details. ‘Thinking about it, this could be a good story in itself. Where can I get hold of you?’

  Kate put the phone down without any reply.

  ‘Nice chap,’ Hayden commented, having heard the conversation on the speaker.

  Kate threw him a quick glance. ‘I feel like a good wash after talking to that arsehole,’ she replied and stood up. ‘Anyway, I’d better pop over to Glastonbury and break the bad news to Ellie’s dad.’

  Hayden beamed. ‘We could stop for a late lunch on the way back,’ be suggested. ‘I know a nice little place—’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Kate reminded him and nodded towards the closed door of Roscoe’s office. ‘Your appraisal is in five minutes.’

  His grin faded. ‘Couldn’t we tell the boss we had an urgent inquiry?’ he pleaded. ‘I mean, what’s more important? My appraisal or this investigation?’

  She smiled back, and pulled her coat off the back of the chair. ‘Your appraisal, Hayd,’ she replied, and headed for the door, jangling her car keys. ‘Enjoy!’

  The house was set back among trees on the outskirts of the town. A printed yellow Neighbourhood Watch sign on one wall announced, ‘We do not buy or sell at the door’, and someone had added in felt-tip pen underneath, ‘So piss off!’ It took Ellie Landy’s father a long time to answer the bell and when he did, he stood there for a moment staring at Kate with a wild look in his dark eyes.

  ‘What?’ he said, his tone laced with aggression and his hands balled into bony fists.

  He had to be in his early sixties, incredibly thin – almost consumptive – with straggly brown hair down to his shoulders and an unkempt beard streaked with grey.

  ‘Mr Landy?’ Kate queried and produced her warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Kate Lewis, Highbridge police station.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Landy?’ he echoed. ‘What’s that bitch said now?’

  For a moment Kate was completely taken aback. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Landy,’ she said. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Name’s not Landy, it’s de Marr,’ he said, ‘Lawrence de Marr, as you well know.’

  ‘And how should I know that, Mr de Marr?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never met you before.’

  He snorted. ‘Before your time, was I?’ he sneered.

  Kate was beginning to experience some bewilderment. ‘So, Ellie Landy’s not your daughter then?’

  He laughed, not a pleasant sound. ‘Oh, she’s my daughter all right,’ he said, ‘or rather stepdaughter – but only because I inherited her.’

  Kate took a deep breath. ‘Look, Mr de Marr,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but can I come in for a moment? I have some bad news.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Bad news? What sort of bad news?’

  ‘I really think it would be better if I came in for a moment.’

  He looked her up and down, his gaze strangely unsettling, and then he laughed again. ‘Sure you want to?’

  She didn’t answer, but met his gaze with a hard one of her own. In the end, he shrugged and stepped to one side. ‘Your choice,’ he said. ‘First door on the left.’

  He followed her into what seemed to serve as a study-come-music room. The curtains were drawn, so much of the place was draped in gloom, but Kate could see a number of electric guitars displayed on the walls and an electronic organ under shelving crammed with books in one corner.

  Indicating an armchair partially concealed by the open door, de Marr settled on to a swivel chair set in front of a large paper-strewn desk and waited for her to say something, a cynical smile hovering over his thin lips.

  ‘Musician, are you?’ she said, trying to ease into things and reduce some of the tension in the room.

  ‘Used to be,’ he said and laughed again. ‘You really don’t know who I am, do you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Perhaps you’d enlighten me.’

  ‘Rod Tolan?’ he said. ‘At least, that was my stage name.’

  She gaped, her subconscious throwing up the vision of a leather clad man wielding an electric guitar and leaping across a spotlit stage in front of a weirdly dressed group to the screech of tortured acoustics.

  ‘Well, I’m damned,’ she breathed. ‘The heavy metal band, Twisted Lizard. I bought your CDs as a teenager. You were top of the heap.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he grated, no sign of a smirk on his face this time. ‘Well, I was once – but then that bitch, Landy, said I had been abusing her since she was fourteen.’

  ‘I remember the case,’ she said quietly, not really knowing what to say. ‘I was in uni at the time.’

  He jerked a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, shook one into his palm and lit up, staring at the wall through the smoke as if unaware of her presence. ‘I got four years. Wife left me, I went on the sex offenders register and my music career went down the toilet.’

  His body jerked suddenly and his eyes re-focused on her face. ‘Sorry you came in here now, Sergeant?’ he said. ‘I’m a dangerous man.’

  For some reason, Kate didn’t feel in the least bit threatened, merely uncomfortable. ‘Did you do it?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, ’course I did, but the little harlot asked for it. I just gave her what she wanted.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who cares? It’s done now anyway and I have to live with the consequences – as well as the hostility of everyone round here. Got a couple of bricks through my window last week. Didn’t report it. What was the point? Your lot wouldn’t have been interested anyway.’ He turned in his seat to stub out his unfinished cigarette on the edge of the desk, then swung round to face her again. ‘So, Sergeant Lewis, what’s this bad news you’ve got for me? Don’t tell me my ex-wife has been hit by a truck?’

  Kate hesitated, not sure how he was going to take what she had to say under the circumstances. ‘Not your wife, Mr de Marr,’ she said. ‘It’s Ellie – I’m afraid she’s dead. Her body was found in the River Parrett this morning and it appears that she drowned.’

  ‘Ellie? Drowned?’ For a second he just stared at her and then, to her horror, he threw back his head and laughed uproariously. ‘Bloody hell, that’s the best news I’ve heard in months, Sergeant; you’re a star!’

  Kate scrambled to her feet. ‘I really don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to say, Mr de Marr, whatever you thought of her. For a young life to be so tragically lost in this way—’

  ‘Bollocks!’ he exclaimed. ‘That bitch ruined my life and now she’s got her just desserts. What do you expect me to do, cry?’

  ‘No, Mr de Marr,’ she said tightly. ‘But we would like you to come to the mortuary to formally identify the body.’

  He was on his feet too now, the wildness back in his eyes. ‘Me? Identify Ellie’s corpse?’ and he laughed again. ‘Sergeant, I would be delighted. Just say when.’

  Kate bumped into Hayden the moment she walked into the CID office and he certainly didn’t look his usual happy self. ‘Good appraisal, Hayd?’ she sniped with a grin.

  He treated her to a sullen pout. ‘The man is a cretin,’ he muttered. ‘Told me I was a lazy so-and-so who couldn’t even get out of bed on time in the mornings.’ He stared at her accusingly. ‘You didn’t tell him about today, did you?’

  Kate grabbed his elbow and wheeled him out of the office into a small storeroom off the main corridor. ‘No, I did
n’t tell him, Hayd,’ she said. ‘But everyone knows you are always late and you’re not the most dynamic detective, are you?’

  He snorted. ‘I’m a thinker, you know that,’ he huffed. ‘It’s the old cerebral thing with me.’

  She grinned again and squeezed his arm. ‘Maybe you should spend less time thinking and more time doing then, eh?’ she suggested.

  He manufactured a frown. ‘That’s very hurtful, you know, coming from one’s own trouble and strife. It could give a chap a very serious inferiority complex.’

  ‘Balls, Hayden!’ she said pleasantly. ‘You’re not capable of having a complex.’

  He beamed suddenly. ‘You might be right there too, old girl,’ he agreed with a wink, his natural humour suddenly breaking through the contrived resentment. ‘So what about Ellie Landy’s old man – did you manage to see him in the end?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said grimly, and told him of her shock discovery.

  He whistled. ‘A paedophile with a grudge, eh?’ he murmured. ‘Good job this isn’t a murder. What with your suspicions about Graham Snell and now this character, Roscoe would be jumping out of his tree.’ He hesitated and scratched his nose. ‘Er, I’ve been thinking – you know that thing you said I shouldn’t be doing any more – the note I found, “Sandman 10.30”, could be the name of someone she had arranged to meet and it occurs to me that the Sandman in mythology is the chap who comes along and sprinkles magic sand in your eyes to make you sleep.’

  ‘So? What are you saying? She couldn’t sleep, so decided to call up the Sandman?’

  He gave a genuine frown this time. ‘Don’t know really. Just strikes me as a bit odd. Could be a nickname or an alias, even the real name of someone. We should check the electoral role.’

  ‘Which would get us where exactly, even if we found someone with that name?’

  ‘We could ask the question?’

  She snorted. ‘Oh yes, that would be really clever – Sorry, Mr Sandman, but we found the same name in the front of a crime novel left behind by a drowned woman and wondered if you had ever arranged to meet her?’