Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  He pursed his lips. ‘We shouldn’t be dismissive,’ he warned. ‘After all, historically, there have been a number of cases of elderly people committing serious crimes or trying to rob banks. You only have to remember the Hatton Garden safe deposit job. Some of the villains there were in their sixties and seventies.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Point taken, but it’s beginning to look more and more like we are dealing with a hoaxer, as Roscoe has already suggested. But the thing is, what do we do next?’

  ‘Wait for a murder?’ he said, unwittingly echoing Kate’s comment to Roscoe.

  *

  Fred Darby had been the village postman for more years than he could remember. Despite all the modernization that had been imposed on the postal service by the Royal Mail, including the policy of uprooting contented employees from delivery rounds they enjoyed and dumping them on others they didn’t, the powers-that-be seemed to have forgotten all about him. As a result, he had been left to carry on driving his little red van around the area he knew so well, without any attempt being made to overrule the local inhabitants’ wishes by moving him on. And it was because of this ‘lapse’ in the corridors of power that Elsie Norman was found much earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

  Fred had been paying Elsie a visit for nearly ten years. Her little chalet bungalow had become his personal tea spot and as regular as clockwork, six days a week, he would turn up on her doorstep at around two in the afternoon for his cup of Darjeeling and a couple of special homemade biscuits.

  However, when the postie left the sorting office in Burnham-On-Sea on the same sunny day Elsie had received a visit from the nice stranger, he was unaware of the fact that there would be no tea or biscuits awaiting him this day.

  To be fair, he did sense something was wrong when he walked up the stone-flagged path through the small cottage garden and found the front door ajar. Elsie usually kept her doors shut, even when she was in the garden – not because she was frightened of burglars but because she didn’t want nosy neighbours slipping into her house uninvited.

  A very private person was Elsie Norman, Fred had decided that long ago, and though he was uneasy about the open door, he didn’t immediately venture over the doorstep, but knocked on the glass panel and called her name several times.

  A rook erupted from the ivy above the porch with a harsh cry, making him jump, but otherwise there was no response.

  Frowning, Fred peered around the door but saw only an empty hallway. ‘Mrs Norman?’ he called more loudly, and pushed the door right back against the wall. Still nothing.

  All kinds of thoughts were going through his head now. What if Elsie had fallen over and was lying unconscious in the kitchen, or had had a stroke in her bed upstairs? He couldn’t just walk away and leave things like this.

  Taking a deep breath, he stepped over the threshold and walked slowly along the hall, glancing through the open sitting room door to his left as he went by to satisfy himself that the room was empty. It wasn’t until he reached the kitchen and pushed the door open that he found Elsie Norman and knew straightaway that he had drunk his last Darjeeling at this particular tea spot.

  *

  ‘Looks like the DI’s crank wasn’t a crank after all then,’ Kate commented. The old woman’s corpse was lying on the kitchen floor, the head turned at an unnatural angle towards her.

  Hayden stared at the contorted body and then at the crude words, ‘Bye, Bye, Auntie Elsie,’ scrawled in big red letters on the tiled floor beside it.

  The young uniformed police constable, standing in the hallway behind the two detectives, gulped. ‘Do you think he wrote that in … in her blood?’ he gasped, peering over Kate’s shoulder.

  Kate shook her head and nodded towards something lying a few feet from the body, something that gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the small window.

  ‘Lipstick holder,’ she said. ‘I would think he used the lipstick to pen his message and applied the stick to his victim either before or afterwards as a final cruel jest.’ She nodded towards the corpse and the heavy red smears over and around the gaping mouth, which gave the face a grotesque, almost clownish look. ‘No woman would put on her lipstick in such a messy fashion as that.’

  Lydia Summers, the forensic pathologist, nodded in agreement. ‘Definitely no blood there,’ she said. ‘She was manually strangled and, it seems, with excessive force.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Kate queried.

  Summers made a disagreeable face. ‘She was an old woman. It wouldn’t have taken much to kill her, but my preliminary examination – which will have to be confirmed or otherwise when I carry out the post-mortem – suggests that the force that was applied ruptured the trachea and may have fractured the hyoid bone in her neck and snapped part of the upper vertebrae, going by the unnatural angle of her head.’

  ‘You mean he broke her neck?’ Kate breathed.

  Summers nodded. ‘I would say that a lot of passion went into this killing. Not that it would be difficult to snap the spine of a lady of her advanced years. Bit like breaking the neck of a pigeon.’

  ‘Hatred, do you think?’ Kate persisted.

  ‘Possibly, but that’s for you to establish if and when you catch the perpetrator. What I can tell you is that from the position of the body, it’s likely that your killer pinned his victim to the floor before strangling her as she lay on her back. Probably applied the lipstick after death.’

  ‘The bastard!’ the constable breathed. ‘An old lady like that? The filthy rotten bastard!’

  Kate threw him a quick, sympathetic glance. ‘Don’t let it get to you, Dean,’ she said. ‘Emotion gets in the way of any investigation. Just concentrate on the scene – pick up anything you can from what you can see …’ she broke off, sniffing the air, then added, ‘and smell. What the hell is that stink?’

  ‘Sherry, if I’m not mistaken,’ Hayden replied, making a face. ‘Smells like someone spilled most of a bottle in here.’

  ‘Not in here,’ Summers corrected and nodded towards the corpse. ‘On her. She reeks of the stuff.’

  ‘What, do you think she was at the bottle prior to the arrival of her killer, or that he plied her with sherry before killing her?’

  ‘Impossible to say, but there does not seem to be any sign of a bottle anywhere and we won’t know whether she actually consumed alcohol prior to her death until the PM has been carried out. However, there is evidence of some nasty injuries to the roof of her mouth, together with significant damage to the pallet of her dentures. It is consistent with something being inserted between her teeth with brutal force, either before or after her death.’

  ‘A bottle?’

  ‘Possibly, yes, and it’s a moot point as to whether she actually choked to death on the sherry or died from the manual strangulation or the snapped vertebrae – and her demise may even have induced a coronary, due to her age. So, there could be several contributory factors.’

  ‘Going by the broken teapot on the floor in the corner there, she was obviously making a pot at the time,’ Hayden commented absently. ‘So, it seems pretty unlikely that she was knocking back the sherry.’

  ‘A reasonable deduction, Dr Watson,’ Summers agreed. ‘Also, I would suggest, evidenced by the presence of two cups on the work surface and an open tea caddy beside them.’

  The sarcasm in the pathologist’s tone brought a faint smile to Kate’s lips and she cast a swift sidelong glance at Hayden’s flushed face, knowing full well from past crime scenes that Summers liked nothing better than baiting police officers. Before he could say anything in reply to cover his embarrassment, there was the sound of rapid footsteps on the garden path outside and DI Roscoe thumped into the hallway, chewing on some gum.

  He slammed to a stop behind them and Kate moved slightly to one side so that he could see the corpse.

  ‘Out!’ he snapped at the uniformed constable. ‘No one but SOCO comes through that front door from now on, got it?’ He turned on Kate. ‘And have thi
s crime scene secured – like immediately.’

  Kate gave him an old-fashioned look and pointed down at the plastic booties covering the shoes of herself and Hayden.

  ‘We’ve stayed by the door, guv,’ she said. ‘Pathologist is the only one who’s been in the room, so no problem, and SOCO should be here any minute with crime scene tapes.’

  Roscoe grunted, studying the room intently, his gaze roving slowly around the walls. ‘Who found her?’

  ‘Postman apparently,’ Hayden said brightly. ‘She didn’t answer the door, so he checked inside and found her like this.’

  Roscoe treated the detective to a scathing look, then turned back to Kate as if he wasn’t actually there.

  ‘Where is this postie now?’

  ‘Outside in the patrol car,’ she said.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Hayden’s face reddening again after what was obviously a deliberate snub. Roscoe had never liked him and he seemed to take pleasure in emphasizing the fact.

  ‘He’s twitching a bit about needing to finish his round,’ she added.

  ‘Tough. Get a statement off him before you let him go.’

  Kate nodded to Hayden and watched him head off down the hallway like a dog with its tail between its legs, then turned back to Roscoe.

  ‘There’s a message of sorts on the tiles, apparently made with lipstick,’ she said, pointing at the ominous scrawl.

  ‘I’m not blind. I can see it for myself,’ he retorted. ‘But what’s that stink?’

  ‘Sherry, we think, guv. And it seems that someone – no doubt our killer – plastered the lipstick on her lips, making a right mess of it too. I can’t see the deceased herself making such a poor job of something like that before she died.’

  ‘So why would the perv apply lipstick to a corpse?’

  ‘No idea, except maybe to make some sort of point, as with the sherry.’

  Roscoe began chewing on his gum for a few seconds.

  ‘Seems that that bloody letter could have been legit after all then?’ he said.

  ‘Has to have been,’ she replied. ‘Too much of a coincidence otherwise – which means we’ve got ourselves another psycho.’

  ‘Boss will love that,’ Roscoe retorted. ‘Especially as he’s up on a chief super’s promotion board at the end of the month.’

  ‘No pressure on us then?’ Kate breathed. ‘At least we would now be justified in getting SOCO to give that letter and envelope the once-over.’

  The DI scowled back at her, but without responding to the blatant, ‘I told you so’ dig, moved aside to allow Summers out into the hallway.

  ‘Time of death, Doc?’ he snapped.

  The pathologist sighed. ‘Impatient as ever, eh, Ted?’ she answered. ‘From the condition of the body and the presence of developing lividity, I would suggest four to six hours – but that’s only a guess.’

  ‘It will do me for starters. Any other thoughts?’

  ‘Well, she was obviously strangled – manually, I would say, going by the bruising injuries which are now beginning to become apparent on her throat, plus the presence of conjunctival petechial haemorrhaging – or blood spots – in the eyes. DS Lewis here can give you my other thoughts.’

  ‘PM?’ he went on.

  ‘Bit busy at the mortuary just now – people dying to be there, you know,’ Summers replied with a grim smile. ‘Probably not until tomorrow at the earliest. I will let you know.’

  ‘Look forward to it.’

  Roscoe followed the pathologist with his eyes as she headed for the street, peeling off her surgical gloves as she went, then he focused on Kate again.

  ‘What did you turn up this morning?’ he said.

  She made a face. ‘Not much time to do anything,’ she replied. ‘I had a long chat with the local intelligence officer to see if he could come up with any ideas, but there’s nothing on file about anyone with a hang-up about the elderly. Lots of crank letters, but nothing that would help us with this one. He’s been the LIO for around five years and before that a beat officer in Highbridge and Bridgwater. Fifteen years’ experience in all, but nothing occurred to him.’

  Roscoe blew a bubble with his gum and nodded. ‘Okay, so do a bit of legwork. A few initial house-to-house enquiries would be a good start until I can get a full inquiry team together. Someone may have seen or heard something.’ He half-turned, then snapped his fingers and wheeled round again. ‘And make sure you get all you can out of that bloody postman. He’s all we’ve got at the moment.’

  CHAPTER 5

  As it transpired, Fred Darby was of little help. He could only repeat what he had already said; that he had found Elsie Norman dead in the kitchen. He had not seen anyone acting suspiciously in the vicinity – in fact, he hadn’t seen anyone at all – and he had no idea who could have wanted to kill the gentle, mild-mannered old lady who had regularly supplied him with tea and biscuits. It was obvious that he hadn’t recovered from his initial shock and his hands were still shaking as Kate tried to tease more information from him after Hayden had obtained his written statement in the back of the police car, but she quickly realized that he had nothing else to tell.

  Finally letting the postie drive away in his van, she got Hayden and a couple of the uniform officers who had turned up at the scene to join her in starting to knock on doors. House-to-house inquiries near a crime scene could sometimes produce useful information, depending on how they were handled, but things did not look very promising as they began the soul-destroying tramp from doorstep to doorstep. Most of the residents they found at home were either elderly, poorly sighted or deaf – or all three – so had not seen or heard a thing, and all, without exception, were more interested in finding out why the enquiries were being made rather than answering pertinent questions.

  Kate had almost given up on things when one of the uniformed bobbies called out to her from the other side of the street.

  ‘Skipper, over here.’ The middle-aged woman with the peroxide blonde-dyed hair and ample girth was peering round the edge of her front door as if she didn’t want to be seen by anyone.

  ‘Tell the detective sergeant what you just told me,’ the policeman said to her.

  The woman hesitated, then shrugged before replying.

  ‘This feller – I saw him walking down the road from up there,’ she pointed to her left. ‘I was sweeping me path and I happened to glance up when he appeared—’

  ‘When was this?’ Kate interjected.

  ‘Dunno. Maybe two or three hours ago – I hadn’t had me morning coffee, so it must have been about ten thirty.’

  ‘Did he get out of a car?’

  ‘No, he seemed to be on foot.’

  ‘Did you see where he went?’

  ‘Can’t really say. All I know is when I turned round again, he had disappeared, so he must have gone in somewhere before he got to me. I’d have noticed if he’d walked past my place.’

  Kate glanced down the road in the direction she had indicated. The police cars parked outside Elsie Norman’s bungalow were only about fifty yards away on the other side of the road.

  ‘Did you see him again later?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No, I went in after that to answer the phone. Me sister rang, you see, and—’

  Kate cut her off. ‘Why did you notice him in particular? Lots of people must use this road all the time, I would think.’

  ‘Nah, not strangers. It’s a cul-de-sac, see. Road ends just up there. Becomes just a footpath leading out across the fields to the next village,’ and she pointed to her left again. ‘You’d have to be calling on someone to be down here and I know all the residents by sight.’

  ‘So, he must have entered the street from the footpath – is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Must’ve done.’

  ‘What did this man look like?’

  ‘Tall and thin, dressed in a long, dark coat. Oh yeah, and he seemed to be carrying some sort of notebook.’

  ‘You di
dn’t see his face?’

  ‘Nah, he kept his head down under his hat.’

  ‘Hat?’

  ‘Yes, he was wearing one of them Fedora hats – a black one –looked funny on him too.’

  ‘Fedora?’

  ‘It’s a bit like a trilby, but with a wide brim – I used to be a milliner, so I recognized what it was straightaway. But it looked too big for him and he was wearing it pulled down low over his eyes.’ She gave a low chuckle. ‘A bit like a gangster, if you know what I mean.’

  Kate’s heart was beginning to race as her mind flashed back to the previous night and the rough sleeper she had disturbed in the basement of the derelict mansion.

  ‘Did you see what colour hair he had?’

  The woman shook her head again. ‘Too far away for that and me eyes ain’t what they used to be. I just recognized the hat.’

  ‘Was he wearing glasses?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, I’m afraid. Again, too far away and his head was bent down as if he didn’t want to be recognized.’ The woman leaned forward a little. ‘So, what’s happened to poor old Elsie? I saw the ambulance there. Did this feller hurt her?’

  Kate forced a smile. ‘I’m afraid I can’t go into that,’ she said, turning to make her way back down the path to the road. ‘But thanks for your help anyway. The officer here will take down your details in case we need to see you again.’

  The footpath the woman had mentioned turned out to be little more than a muddy track. It struck off between the high walls of two bungalows about 200 yards beyond Elsie Norman’s home, then meandered across fields, through scrub and isolated trees to a bridge spanning a sluggishly flowing river. Beyond the bridge, waterlogged fields stretched away to a smudge of houses on the horizon. Kate startled a heron as she stepped on to the bridge, the bird rising in an ungainly way from the riverbank with a cry of alarm and flapping over a hedge into the next field.

  For a few minutes, she lent on the bridge wall, staring about her with narrowed eyes. Not expecting to see anyone, but feeling her skin crawl in this lonely, exposed place, with just the gurgle of the river for company.