Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  ‘Where did you go, you bastard?’ she murmured. ‘Back to your bloody basement, I wonder? Surely not.’

  She turned her head quickly at a faint sound behind her, but relaxed as Hayden lumbered on to the bridge.

  ‘Saw you wander off, old girl,’ he said with a frown. ‘Not a good idea, I thought – not with a vicious thug on the loose.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Hayd,’ she said tightly. ‘I’m not an aunt – not yet anyway – so I’m quite safe.’

  He sniffed. ‘You really think this job has something to do with that letter then?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  He thought for a moment, but didn’t answer her question. ‘I saw the plod call you over to the house just now. Biddy there give you something useful, did she?’

  She told him what the woman had said. ‘The description fits the dosser I told you about,’ she went on, ‘the one I disturbed in the target house – only he had blond hair and was wearing gold-coloured glasses.’

  ‘Any idea what sort of age he was?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no. I only saw his face for an instant and by torchlight. Impossible to say. Why?’

  He grunted and tucked into a Mars Bar he had produced from his pocket. ‘Just wondered, that’s all. You didn’t say much about him before – only that he’d got away.’

  ‘I didn’t think he was of any relevance to us until now. Roscoe suspected he might have been one of the gang, left at the house to guard the stash, but I don’t reckon he was connected with that job. Treated Ferris and me to a clean pair of heels anyway.’

  ‘Ah now, that answers my unspoken question. In short, he doesn’t seem like the sort of person who could have written that letter.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  He pushed the remainder of the Mars Bar into his mouth and pocketed the wrapping, holding a hand up to signify that he couldn’t give her an answer until he had finished chewing the wad he was wrestling with. Then abruptly, he swallowed the lot with a loud gulp and wiped his mouth on his sleeve as Kate closed her eyes in resignation.

  ‘Remember what I said to you before? If the fellow who wrote that letter was speaking from personal experience, he wouldn’t be an athletic youngster, but someone who was getting on a bit – at least into his seventies, as you yourself said to me after reading the letter. If your dosser managed to outrun a fit little filly like you, he certainly wouldn’t be in his twilight years.’

  She chose to ignore his reference to her as a filly.

  ‘So maybe he put all that stuff in the letter to make us think he was older than he actually was?’

  ‘Possible. But why would he do that?’

  ‘To throw us off the scent?’

  ‘That doesn’t hold water. First, we have no idea who he is, so why would he bother? Second, how come he could provide such a vivid account of his childhood except from personal experience? For me, the letter was totally credible in that respect.’

  Kate pushed herself away from the wall with a heavy sigh. ‘Logical as ever, Hayd,’ she acknowledged wearily. ‘My money is still on the dosser, though. The description the neighbour just gave me of the man she saw in the street fits him to a T. There can’t be that many men walking about dressed in long, dark coats and Fedora hats.’

  He shrugged. ‘We can only hope that one of the other neighbours saw your suspect. At least that might give us a bit more info.’

  She nodded. ‘We’ll finish the house-to-house and then I think a trip back to that derelict mansion would be worthwhile.’

  ‘For what purpose? Your man is long gone and he’s not likely to return now that there are plods all over the shop.’

  She shook her head. ‘I gather SOCO have finished there. The brief they had was restricted to gathering evidence in relation to the drugs bust – my man was not in the frame then. Uniform were pulled off to help us here with the door-to-door, so the place is wide open now.’

  ‘But what do you expect to gain from a return trip?’

  ‘In his rush to leave, our man might have left something behind that could help us identify him and anyway, I’d like to take a closer look at where he was dossing. I saw a mattress and a blanket in there and discarded food cartons. Maybe we could get the lot checked out by the lab. There could be prints on the cartons and DNA traces on the mattress and blankets—’

  Hayden screwed up his mouth, plainly unconvinced. ‘Along with the prints and DNAs of every other wino and itinerant who’s dossed there over the past six to nine months, I should think.’

  ‘It’s still worth a try.’

  ‘You’re the sergeant.’

  ‘It’s good of you to notice,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. ‘It’s taken you long enough.’

  CHAPTER 6

  The small churchyard was deserted – except for the irregular lines of gravestones rising from the tangled, ankle-deep grass like broken teeth in the mist, which was spreading slowly but resolutely through the village from the surrounding marshes. The figure in the long, dark coat and Fedora hat pushed through the iron gate and walked slowly up the path, studying the inscriptions on each of the headstones in passing. Reaching the end of the path, apparently without spotting anything of relevance to the visit, the figure paused a moment by the porch over the front door of the church before stepping off the path and moving among the headstones themselves, crouching at intervals to examine each one in turn.

  Within minutes there was a sharp intake of breath and George Lupin stopped in front of a black marble slab, bearing the inscription in faded gold lettering, ‘Beatrix James. 1924–2016. Aged 92 years. Now With The Angels.’

  ‘Angels?’ George snarled. ‘More likely the devil’s own, you nasty old bitch. Sorry I couldn’t get to you myself before you snuffed it.’

  Aunt Elsie had certainly proved to be a mine of information about her elderly sisters, firmly believing that her visitor really was from the council and could help them with the insulation of their homes. She’d claimed that of the other three, Beatrix, the oldest, was dead. Well, here was the proof. She was six feet under, her would-be executioner now almost consumed by an inner rage for being denied the opportunity of being the one to have put her there.

  A motorcycle roared past the low wall in front of the churchyard, causing a brief distraction, and at the same moment George caught sight of a man in a grey raincoat threading his way between the headstones towards what he evidently thought was a solitary mourner.

  ‘Can I help you, my son?’ the man said from a few feet away, the dog collar around his neck plainly visible through the gap in his coat.

  ‘No one can help me, Father,’ came the grim reply and, turning away from him, George walked off briskly between the gravestones, doubling back towards the iron gate and the red VW car parked in the lane beyond.

  The clergyman followed the fast-retreating figure with troubled eyes. ‘Bless you, my son,’ he murmured, half to himself. ‘May God be with you.’ But Beatrix’s last visitor had already started the engine of his car and driven off, vanishing in the mist like a ghost.

  *

  There was nothing of relevance in the derelict mansion’s cellar. The mouldy, evil-smelling mattress and single tattered blanket were soaking wet from the rain, which had obviously found its way into the place down old heating and water pipes from the upper floors, and the detritus Kate had noticed before actually consisted of a few plastic cups, rusted tins and sandwich cartons, which had obviously been there a very long time and were so badly ripped or buckled and covered in so much of the wet filth from the floor, that they were only fit for dumping in the most convenient rubbish bin.

  ‘I don’t think your man was sleeping down here,’ Hayden observed, holding a handkerchief to his nose, ‘not unless he was into leaking, urine-stained “water beds”.’

  Kate nodded in the gloom, flashing her torch around the damp walls and cracked ceiling.

  ‘From what I could make of him, he certainly didn’t look like your usual run-of-the-mill wino, I mus
t admit. But if he wasn’t a dosser or a wino, then what was he doing here?’

  ‘Maybe looking for somewhere he could doss? Or perhaps he really was the third member of the cocaine gang, as Roscoe suggested?’

  ‘Then how do you explain that the man seen in the vicinity of Elsie Norman’s murder matched his description exactly? Bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

  Hayden grunted and walked away from her into the corridor, the beam of his torch stabbing into the gloom ahead of him.

  ‘Come on, old girl,’ he said, obviously anxious to be back in the fresh air, ‘let’s get out of here. I’d prefer a backstreet toilet to this awful pit.’

  Feeling both irritated and deflated, Kate followed him back up the stone staircase, through the kitchen on the next level, and up to the ground floor – only to bump into at the top when he stopped suddenly, staring around him.

  ‘What was this palatial old pile anyway?’ he asked, crossing the hall diagonally to peer through one of a number of open doorways. ‘Some sort of hospital?’

  She shook her head, thinking that Ferris had asked the self-same question the night of their surveillance operation.

  ‘An asylum, an approved school, and then an orphanage, I’m told,’ she replied, joining him in the doorway. ‘It closed after a murder and a major fire in the middle of some sort of investigation into alleged child sexual abuse apparently.’

  ‘Nice,’ he said drily. ‘Sounds a bit like my old public school – well, the sexual abuse bit anyway. And what do you think this room was used for – the headmaster’s study? You know, the place for private flagellations and heinous forfeits?’

  She peered past him into a small, bare room with an open fireplace in one corner and the remnants of wooden panelling still attached to some of the walls.

  ‘Possibly,’ she replied with a chuckle, ‘but maybe without the flagellations and forfeits.’

  Moving on, they found at least half a dozen other rooms. All were devoid of furniture and some were littered with rubbish, from torn, stained mattresses, almost certainly humped up from the basement, to piles of newspapers, discarded tins and plastic food containers. Clear evidence of multiple vagrancy occupation, though deserted now. One long, galleried room still contained a few broken bench seats. Kate guessed it had once been the dining room, maybe furnished with glittering chandeliers, a rich, wall-to-wall Persian carpet, plus a long mahogany table and tapestried chairs, before the more basic furniture of the Victorian asylum and then the approved school and orphanage had taken its place. A grand old house, which had once echoed to the clink of crystal wine glasses and the hubbub of genteel conversation over dinner before this was replaced by the screams of demented patients and, much later, the sobs of emotionally disturbed children. A grand old house, which was now just an empty shell, weighed down with a heavy, haunted and almost tangible stillness.

  ‘I suppose we ought to take a look upstairs,’ Kate said a little reluctantly.

  Hayden made a face. ‘Do we have to?’ he replied. ‘Remember that old horror film, Halloween? Could be Michael Myers is waiting for us up there? You know, white plastic mask and big knife?’

  Kate ignored his attempt at black humour and headed for the upper level, hearing his heavy manufactured sigh as he followed her.

  The top floor landing opened on to a long corridor with rooms on both sides and large, gaping voids in the ceiling, which exposed the roof space into which the grey day thrust tentative fingers through holes in the roof tiles. The atmosphere on this level was even creepier than it had been downstairs and Kate found herself darting uneasy glances around her as they followed the corridor along to the end. There, a narrow doorway, now lacking the door, accessed a communal bathroom, complete with rows of vandalized toilet cubicles, wash-hand basins and three shower rooms. Kate shivered as she thought of why Talbot Court had been closed and what might have gone on in the very room in which they were standing.

  Retracing their steps and checking each of the other rooms in turn as they went, they found that most were empty, as was the rest of the house, except for a couple which bore evidence in the form of blankets, newspapers and the occasional stained mattress that rough sleepers had been in temporary occupation there too. One room, however, still contained half a dozen bare iron-framed beds with rusted and broken springs and curiosity drew them inside.

  ‘Dormitory,’ Hayden declared in a superior, matter-of-fact tone, pinging the springs on one of the bed frames with one hand. He grinned. ‘This place is certainly getting to look more and more like my old public school.’

  Kate shivered again, noting the bars on the windows. ‘I doubt that your public school had barred windows,’ she replied.

  He waved an arm airily around the room. ‘Maybe not, but there are the same sort of testimonials everywhere.’

  ‘Testimonials?’

  He crouched down beside one of the beds, studying a patch of wall. She moved over to his side and bent down to peer over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, the graffiti you mean?’ she commented, noting the faded scrawl on the plaster.

  ‘“Hell is empty and all the devils are here”,’ he read aloud, then turned to stare up at her, still grinning. ‘That’s rather a good quote, don’t you think? William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, I believe.’

  He moved on to the next bed and got down on his hands and knees to study another section of wall. He chuckled.

  ‘“Alistair Scarsfield is a perv”,’ he said, once more reading aloud. ‘That’s an indictment in itself. I wonder if poor old Alistair ever saw it? Maybe he sued—?’

  Abruptly he broke off and emitted a low whistle, adding, ‘Now that really is odd.’

  ‘What is odd?’ she said, joining him again. ‘Alistair Scarsfield being a perv?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, look at this other piece. Like the rest of the scrawls, it has faded a bit with time, but it looks as though it has been written with so much pressure that marks have been left in the plaster.’

  ‘Come on, Hayd,’ she admonished, glancing quickly around her again. ‘We’re wasting time on all this bollocks. And the atmosphere in here is starting to get to me. You can actually smell the misery. It’s like a sodding miasma all around us.’

  He threw a critical frown at her over his shoulder – she guessed it was because of her use of bad language.

  ‘Just listen, will you?’ he snapped.

  She sighed and crouched down beside him as he read the inscription, trailing his index finger slowly over each of the cramped block capitals.

  ‘“GEORGE WILL SEE THAT THE HARRIDANS PAY”.’

  She felt an icy shard twist in her gut as he turned his head again to stare at her.

  ‘George?’ he breathed. ‘Could that be our George? Don’t forget, he used that same word “harridans” in his letter and it’s a pretty unusual term for anyone in this day and age.’

  She slowly straightened up. ‘And the description of the man seen near Elsie Norman’s bungalow just before she was murdered fits the dosser I confronted in the basement. It all ties in.’

  Her jaw dropped as another thought occurred to her. ‘Hayd, that’s why he was here. Don’t you see? He must have once been an inmate. He wasn’t just a dosser – he was revisiting the place.’

  There was an excited gleam in his eyes as he gripped the edge of the bed to haul himself to his feet.

  ‘Bravo, old girl,’ he exclaimed. ‘Even I have to admit that this time it’s all just too much of a coincidence.’

  Her lips tightened. ‘So, let’s get SOCO back here,’ she said. ‘I think we need some pics pdq. After that, I want you to see if you can find out Elsie Norman’s maiden name—’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘I thought that that would be obvious to a clever chap like you. Our killer talked in his letter about hating his aunts. If Elsie was his aunt, his surname is likely to be the same as hers, which, I think you will agree, would narrow down the field considerably as far as likely suspec
ts are concerned.’

  He shook his head. ‘Depends which side of the family her nephew might be on and anyway, it might not be any of his own aunts he is after – they could all be dead. From the drift of his letter, it would seem to me that he is targeting any elderly women he can find who remind him of his own aunts. Don’t forget, the term “aunt” is also used colloquially to refer to anyone who is a friend or relative of someone with children or who looks after children in an official capacity. They don’t have to be old either. Aunts can be any age.’

  She sighed. ‘You always have to complicate things, don’t you, Hayd? Anything to avoid work! But it’s still worth a try. At least there’s a chance we might turn up something.’

  He grunted, unimpressed. ‘Anything else, Sergeant?’ he said sarcastically.

  She smiled. ‘Yes, there is actually. After you’ve done that, you can do some digging on the history of Talbot Court.’

  ‘Me again?’

  She nodded. ‘You again. You see, it’s all about RHP – you know, rank has privileges? And I’m afraid you have drawn the short straw in that respect.’

  *

  Ted Roscoe looked lost in the big club room on the top floor of Highbridge police station, which was still being kitted out with all the necessary furniture and computerized technology for a major incident room. He waved Kate and Hayden towards what had been designated the senior investigator’s office at the far end and deposited himself behind the desk with a heavy gasp that sounded a lot like air escaping from a punctured tyre.

  ‘The SIO’s been appointed and is on her way,’ he growled.

  Kate frowned. ‘Her way?’

  ‘Yeah, all I’ve heard is that our senior investigating officer is to be a woman this time. Probably some bit of skirt no one’s ever heard of. Bully for us!’

  Kate ignored his sexist comment and smiled faintly. A female boss, eh? A dyed-in-the-wool macho man like poor old Roscoe certainly wouldn’t be happy about that, bless him. But he didn’t give her time to savour his discomfort. Slipping a wad of chewing gum into his mouth, he sat back in the chair to study his two detectives.