Headcase

by Peter Helton

  Last Friday it had been Linda’s equilibrium I had feared for most but it turned out that the events had worked their worst for Anne. Her medication had been upped and she didn’t look good on it, her normally rosy cheeks pale and puffy, her eyes slow and dulled, her movements hesitant. The torrent of chat she normally sent forth was reduced to a painfully forced trickle. She was sweating in a lemon yellow cardigan, her normally carefully arranged hair hung tired and uncared-for. But she was unbowed and tried valiantly to talk through the balls of cotton wool the medication had left in her mouth.

  “Nie pie. We din do it.”

  “I know you didn’t,” I said automatically, as if I was comforting a child, yet that was not a professional attitude. Anne and Linda had given each other an alibi, listening to a new

  Missy Elliot CD on two sets of headphones in Linda’s room, something which normally wouldn’t cut it with me. Yet I had played and replayed the frenzied attack on Jenny in my mind, with every person I could think of wielding the sharpening steel and all of them appeared equally unlikely Despite their distress both Anne and Linda had been grilled by Needham in the presence of their social workers and a psychiatric nurse, and apparently Needham was satisfied with the answers he got. Sometimes even Mike had to fall back on his instincts.

  “Is Gav dea?” she asked next.

  “No,” I said without thinking.

  “Where izzithn!?”

  Anne was right, I didn’t know anything for certain, I was just making polite, condescending conversation. “I don’t really know whether he’s alive or dead. I’m hoping he just ran away. Perhaps he saw who did it and now he’s hiding.” Without his medication. “Have you ever seen Gavin when he hasn’t taken his medication?”

  Both Linda and Anne nodded vigorously with a mouthful of pie.

  “What’s he like when he’s off it?”

  Anne widened her eyes. “Wy.”

  “Why?”

  She waved both arms in the air, a blob of mash taking flight from her fork. “Wyyyy!”

  “Oh, wild.”

  “Mm,” Anne agreed. “Soy.” She indicated the mash on the carpet.

  “No sweat,” I said. We’d had worse.

  At seven I handed Somerset over into the care of a young nursing assistant called Mel. Her straight, butter-coloured hair ended spectacularly somewhere around her tiny waist. She was wearing a long black tight-fitting dress and a tired expression. Uncharitably I thought she might enjoy the sleeping part of her job most. She tried to give the impression of being on the ball and ready for anything but when I offered her tea she dropped her bulging holdall on the floor, sat down heavily and gratefully on the nearest chair and turned pleading ultra-marine eyes on me.

  “Three sugars, please.”

  I don’t really care how much of the nasty stuff people shovel into their bloodstreams but my eyebrows must still have twitched because she added, “Sorry, I know I’m the sugar queen, but I need the energy.”

  Anne and Linda had retreated to their respective rooms after supper. Did I need to introduce them, I wanted to know when I joined her for a cuppa and a smoke at the dining table.

  “I met them yesterday, and a Mr Hines? We’ll be just fine. Actually this job is a godsend for me. Can I have one of those? I don’t usually smoke but I just fancy one.”

  “I don’t usually smoke either.”

  We sat and puffed and sipped.

  “I’ve worked all day at the Min,” she continued.

  “Min?”

  “Mineral Hospital. Double shift. Then I did the shopping like a mad thing, cooked Joe’s tea — Joe’s my son — had some myself, told him what he’s allowed to watch on telly tonight, not that he’ll take a blind bit of notice, and then ran for the bus up here. He’s old enough not to need a babysitter now, I hope, he’s twelve. I still feel a bit guilty about it but he’s got my mobile number, just in case. I’m also doing this course, an NVQ in nursing which I find really hard. There’s tons of reading and I’m a bit dyslexic, which I didn’t tell them though, I thought they might not take me. I brought all my books.” She indicated the holdall beside her. “So I hope I can get some studying done during the night. I probably won’t sleep much, I’ve got to pack Joe off to school first thing and rush straight back to the hospital for another shift. It’s mad but I have to, Joe and I are broke again.” She shrugged her shoulders and held out her mug with a tired smile. “Could I have another one?”

  As far as I was concerned Mel could have all the tea and all the sugar in the world.

  Chapter Five

  Never stop painting. Never take a break, always keep working, no matter what, inspired or no. If it’s rubbish paint over it, bin it, burn it, but keep going, that way you’re already in gear when the real stuff starts happening. That’s my advice. I wished I had taken it.

  There were plenty of prepared canvases I could have used, I always keep a few hanging around in case I get a rush on and find I’m cramming too many ideas into one painting. But I hadn’t lifted a brush in over a week and things had been fermenting. Like an overloaded bomber I needed a long runway for take-off, so I decided to start from scratch. Last night I’d put rabbit glue crystals to soak (painting is not for the squeamish). Now, while the evil-smelling stuff simmered slowly on the Primus stove, I slotted my stretcher together, solid kiln-dried pine, 80 inches by 72, my favourite size, cross-pieces fitting snugly like well-made furniture. With a flawless length of Belgian linen on the big work-table at the back of the studio I stretched and stapled, opposite sides then round and round until the tension was just right — not like a drum because the glue tightens it, yet not too soft since later it’ll let go a bit. Outside, with my shirt off and the sun on my back, I fed rabbit glue to the canvas with a short-haired glue brush, a nice, moronic task I always enjoy. A bit like painting only with the brain pleasantly in neutral. In this heat the glue dried in record time, leaving a grey barrier on the linen to prevent the oil from rotting the canvas. Next came the first layer of white primer, applied with a thin, broad brush, quickly and evenly, not half as smelly as the glue. After a quick sanding the final coat went on to my canvas, a dazzling arena of white leaning against the weathered wood of the barn.

  While it dried I lay on my back in the meadow, slurping black iced coffee, trying to concentrate on the images that had begun to pressure the painting side of my brain, but couldn’t. I sat up again, looked around me. A blue tractor ground slowly along the undulating tarmac lane on the far side of the valley, its engine noise floating across in snatches. The wind barely moved in the trees behind the studio. Below, Mill House and its stream baked and sparkled in the sun. This was so bloody perfect. What evil spirit had moved me to introduce the murky world of detective work into this damn idyll? I could just survive on my paintings (and a couple of inspired investments I had made after a particularly successful London show a while back). The extra money Aqua brought in paid for our luxuries, yet right now it seemed an expensive kind of money. The real luxury was this, I thought, the choice to paint or lie on my back in the grass for just a little longer…I felt like ringing the Dufossees to tell them to use their brains and call in the police; to advise Mrs Turner to get up off her spreading behind and follow her own husband. Or possibly ask the sod what he was really up to. How difficult could that be?

  Only Jenny’s murder changed everything. I would stick with it. And after all, Aqua was my own invention and by now there were three of us. I wondered how Annis was getting on in Cornwall. There had been no phone calls, no messages. Surely no news was good news?

  I worked like a wild thing, like some primeval swamp creature trying to fight its way out of a paint shop. The last week exploded across the pristine white of the canvas in a frenzy of slashes and splatters in greys and cool darks, biting cobalt greens and insane shadows. This was an aeon away from my carefully planned and joyful paintings, from Mediterranean light and calm, that restful imagery buyers like Al-Omari found spiritually soothing and uplifting. Fo
r a while I wasn’t sure it was painting at all but I hardly stopped to look. The heat in the studio was tremendous, I sweated half-naked in the fug of stand oil, damar varnish and turps. Scraping off and painting in and through and over again I all but headbutted the thing into submission.

  Only thirst and hunger finally made me stop the slaughter and I walked away from it without giving myself time to appraise the mess.

  “Had a fight with your painter friend? No need to ask who came off worse.” Needham was sitting on my veranda, deep in the big wicker chair, his feet on another, blinking slowly and stretching luxuriously. Then he yawned and grinned sheepishly. Not a pretty sight. He was far too happy, too relaxed.

  “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you just woke up.”

  “Well,” he shifted to a more upright position, still taking in my paint-spattered body, “I might have closed my eyes for a bit. Almost wish I hadn’t opened them now.”

  “Give me half a sec for a shower and get yourself a drink from the kitchen,” I said, walking inside. “Unless you’ve come to arrest me, in which case keep your hands off my fridge.” Not that I was really worried. If Mike ever decided to bring me in against my will he would send Deeks and a couple of constables and Deeks would have drawn a handgun from the stores. I did have a shotgun licence after all, and then there was that missing Webley .38. Even though Needham must have known by now I was more likely to attack them with a French stick. That’s how hard I am.

  When I got back to him, cleansed and cooled from my shower, with a peace offering of bread and olives, he was sucking on a bottle of Stella. I had armed myself with a couple myself.

  “Spit it out, and I don’t mean my Stella.”

  “Matt Hilleker and Lisa Chapwin.”

  “What about them?” I recognized both names, ex-residents of Somerset Lodge. Why bring them up now?

  “What happened to them and where are they?”

  “What do you want with them? Matt got thrown out for doing drugs on the premises and for nicking money from other residents. No idea what became of him. Lisa wasn’t there long. Skin and bone, very jumpy and near catatonic. She went back into full-time care after deteriorating at Somerset. Neither have lived at Somerset for a couple of years now.”

  “Then I don’t think much of the cleaner,” Needham scoffed. “We found both their prints at the house. Matt Hilleker’s were all over the place. In the living room, dining room, on the fridge. Only one set of Lisa Chapwin’s. Could have been old. Hilleker’s were fresh.”

  They had to be if they were on the fridge. Jenny kept it scrupulously clean. “How come you had their prints on file?”

  “Matt got pulled in for possession a while back. Chapwin girl for shoplifting.”

  “So now you’ve got yourself…”

  “…an intruder. We’re trying to pick them up now.”

  Lisa only lived there for a short while and never spoke to me, or anyone else, as far as I could make out, but Matt I remembered well. Then, he had been a gangly, desperately sloppy twenty-year-old with puppy eyes whom everyone instantly felt like mothering. It was the petty pilfering and occasional theft from other residents that got him thrown out. That and smoking so much grass in his room that he rendered himself near comatose. “What kind of drugs was Matt doing when you picked him up?”

  “Anything he could lay his hands on. He wasn’t mainlining then but that was over a year ago. We let him off with a caution because he was booked into the RUH for rehab six weeks hence.”

  “Did he show?”

  “We’ll find out shortly. He probably wandered in through the back door to pull a quick bit of thieving at a place he knew his way around, got surprised by Jenny and lashed out with the first weapon to hand.

  He’s our best bet yet. Everyone else is either dead, missing or has an alibi. Including you.”

  “I have? Everyone has? Do you mind running that past me in more detail? I’ll get you another Stella,” I offered.

  “Nah, I’m driving. But no, I don’t mind. I’m convinced neither Anne nor Linda had anything to do with it just from interviewing them. We would have found some forensic evidence somewhere anyway and there just wasn’t any. You of course had blood on your clothes, that was plain to see. But you were in transit at the most likely time of the murder. We checked.” He gave me a tired smile. “Gordon Hines has no motive and anyway he’s got an alibi.”

  “Who is his alibi?”

  “He ran a red light right in front of a traffic unit in central Bristol. They logged it as 1.08 p.m. and gave him a caution. You made the call at 1.40.”

  “And the quiche was underdone when I walked in so Jenny was alive at around ten past when she put it in the oven,” I supplied.

  “Even I worked that out and I’ve never cooked a quiche in my life. I checked the recipe. That leaves Dave, deceased, Gavin, in hiding, and Matt Hilleker as our best bets and that’s what we’re concentrating on. And when I say we I mean Avon and Somerset, not you and me. I’m only telling you all this to satisfy your curiosity so you don’t get tempted to break our bargain.”

  “We have a bargain?” I couldn’t remember having made one with him.

  Needham spat an olive stone at the barbecue and missed. “You keep out of this investigation and I won’t arrest you for illegal firearms offences?”

  Oh, that old bargain.

  I needed to turn up bargains of quite a different order if I was to feed my Somerset charges on three quid each per day. How had Jenny done it? Shopping around town for the cheapest vegetables, the most economic cuts, the best offers, that’s how. Where shopping was concerned, it only now dawned on me, I was a shove-it-in-the-trolley amateur. If I didn’t change my habits pronto I might end up serving Spaghetti and Pesto three times a week. Fortunately both Anne and Linda seemed to be happy with cereal for breakfast. Perhaps there was something to be said for food that made such a noise in your head that you couldn’t hear yourself think? But what did Jenny usually provide for lunch?

  “Oh, she made soups, quiches and pies,” Gordon had said. “She normally just left them out so people could help themselves.” Now if life’s too short to stuff a mushroom then I feel utterly justified in never going near pastry, unless it’s filo and comes frozen. But soups? Just hand me the keys to your blender and watch me go.

  Damn it all, the red mullet was the best looking fish on the slab today, so I pounced on it. Once I had all the building blocks for supper I had wiped out three days’ food money. Messrs Spag & Pesto were threatening to move in at Somerset Lodge.

  I’d agonized so long over shopping that it was well past lunchtime when I burst through the doors with my bags. Through the kitchen window I could see Anne and Linda sunning themselves on the lawn. Or had they passed out from hunger? How long can a person survive on a handful of bran flakes, I wondered?

  Nothing gets things done more swiftly than guilt. I splashed boiling water over a pound of tomatoes and quickly grated a potato and red onion and sautéed them with crushed garlic; peeled, seeded and chopped the tomatoes and dropped them with oregano, celery and basil leaves, some seasoning and a pinch of sugar into the pan and let it simmer while I sorted the rest of the shopping into the fridge. Then all that remained to be done was blitz it in the blender and reheat it.

  We slurped our tomato soup on the lawn and mopped it up with bits of bread torn from a baguette.

  “Do you remember Matt Hilleker?” I asked Anne, who had been at Somerset for many years.

  “Mm, nishe boy.” Anne’s speech was still badly affected by her sedatives. “Always shtone.”

  “You haven’t seen him lately, have you? Know where he hangs out?”

  “Nn-n.” Anne wiped her bowl clean with a morsel of bread. “Shme im shometie.”

  “You smell him sometimes?” I was getting better at decrypting Anne’s speech.

  “Prolly imagine it. Da awfu perfum oi e wo.”

  “No, you didn’t imagine it.” Linda suddenly came to life. “I’ve
smelled perfume a couple of times. Patchouli oil, isn’t it? Thought it had wafted in from the street.” Now I remembered it too. Matt had doused his manky sweaters with the stuff instead of washing them. “Do you remember when you last smelled it?”

  Linda thought for a moment. “Not long ago. But when exactly…”

  Anne shrugged heavily. Her notion of time was so eroded that weeks, even years blended into each other. And she was aware of it. “You thing es been he?”

  “The police found fresh fingerprints in the house.”

  All three of us looked towards the back door, usually wide open in this weather and hardly ever locked, except late at night. Anyone could walk through the parking bay into the garden and from there into the house. “Better keep the door locked when I’m not here,” I said quietly.

  Linda turned wide-open eyes at me without saying a word. She didn’t need to. Two vulnerable women alone in a house where an unexplained murder had occurred — it was no one’s favourite scenario. At least now that a sleep-over person had been found in the shape of Mel the Sugar Queen they could sleep a little easier. Or so I tried to tell myself, since fear feeds on silence and darkness. Only, Jenny had been beaten to death in what we like to call broad daylight.

  Don’t worry, I’ll stay here and protect you, look after you, soothe your fears until Jenny’s murderer is found. You can stop looking at me like that.

  I fled inside before I made any such promises, under the pretext of preparing supper. In reality I sat down heavily behind Jenny’s desk and rummaged around until I found one of her packs of Camels. I blew a thick cloud of smoke into the solid shaft of afternoon sunlight that burned through the open window, along with the light-hearted smells of summer. Broad daylight. Jenny’s murder. Dave’s death. Mr Turner’s unexplained walkabouts. Gavin’s disappearance. The Dufossee paintings. Somerset