Grey Ladies

by William Stafford

  “Good work!”

  “Batted my eyelashes, breathed a bit heavy, like, and he was like putty.” Miller hurried to keep up. “He was ever so obliging.”

  “Um.” Brough continued to power walk along the interminable corridors of HQ. He didn’t care how Miller had got her hands on the security discs. That she had them was good enough. And now he couldn’t wait to get back to his bolthole in Dedley to review them.

  Miller followed him out to the car park. The technician, the lank of hair and pasty of face Ian, had given her more than the DVDs from the rest home. He’d slipped her a piece of paper with his phone number and his Twitter name and in return she had made half-hearted promises to use either or both of them.

  While Brough sat brooding over his exchange with the moustachioed wanker, Miller drove them back up the hill to Dedley musing that, given a bath and something other to wear than his faded heavy metal t-shirt, that Ian might not be too bad...

  ***

  Brough surprised Miller by offering to fetch her a frothy coffee while she fired up the DVD player. A brief fantasy flickered across her mind before she could quash it: the detective inspector and the audio/visual technician coming to blows over her!

  Don’t be saft, Mel, she scolded herself. The one’s a wossname, a bender, and the other’s a spindly geek who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if she fell over him. That Ian was most likely a virgin and probably gay as well, knowing Miller’s luck.

  She removed the plastic lid from the cappuccino. No chocolate sprinkles. Was that a sideways swipe at her weight?

  Brough leaned over her shoulder, his hand on the table while she played the first DVD. This one was from outside the Dorothy Beaumont. Miller fast-forwarded through hours of nothing happening. The occasional car arrived and someone got out: a carer turning up for her shift, a cleaner being dropped off...

  “Go back a bit!” Brough nudged her.

  On the screen, in grainy black and white, the unmistakable silhouette of Barry Stibbons lurched into shot. He was wearing a baseball cap and a leather jacket over his vest and tracksuit trousers.

  “Oh dear,” said Miller.

  “Oh dear is right,” said Brough. “You don’t wear shoes with trackies.”

  Stibbons pulled out his mobile and made a call. He had just put it back into his pocket when a fire door opened and Kyrie Billings joined him in the car park. She was holding her phone.

  “He must have phoned her to come out,” observed Miller.

  “Must have,” said Brough, sarcastically.

  They watched the tiny figures perform a silent but evidently heated exchange. Their opinions differed over something and clearly the girl had not been afraid to stand up to her stepfather even though he was twice her size.

  Angry, the girl went back inside. Stibbons stayed where he was, calling after her, swearing it looked like, for quite a while before stomping his way out of shot.

  “Is there any way he could get in?”

  Miller considered Brough’s question. “Not round the back. That door she used, you can only open from the inside. He’d have to go through to reception and get past Janet.”

  “We’ll need to check the footage from the front as well. But let’s see the kitchen.”

  The images on the other disc were even less clear. They were from the night before. In speeded-up monochrome, Paul the cook prepared plate after plate, covering them with cling film and then transferring them to the walk-in refrigerator, which, unfortunately was just off the edge of the screen.

  “Who’s that?” Brough pointed at the screen. He stabbed his finger at the controls, rewinding and pausing.

  He and Miller peered at the stilled image.

  Over the cook’s shoulder, as he wrapped the final plate, a figure had appeared. A small person, little more than a smudge on the screen. Miller went backwards and forwards.

  “Just a shadow,” she shrugged. “Lots of traffic going past.”

  “Umm...”

  They let the recording play on. The cook carried the last of the meals off the edge of the frame. The shadow remained where it was. The image began to flicker. The screen went blank.

  “That’s all there is,” said Miller. “Must have run out just as the fridge door shut.”

  “Play it again!” Brough snapped.

  “As Time Goes By?” Miller tittered. Brough stared at her. Miller gave up and played the recording in reverse.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no...” Brough looked sickly, his face pale and sweaty.

  Miller paused the disc, just as the shadowy figure appeared behind the cook.

  Was it just a shadow? Brough’s mind was in a panic. Or was it, as he suspected, a lady in grey?

  4.

  Miller wrote names and times on the whiteboard - too small for Brough’s liking but he was too shaken to say anything. He watched the detective sergeant as she transferred their notes and findings to the wall. How did she do it? How was she so calm?

  How had she got over the weirdness of their last big case?

  She had been with him every step of the way, had seen what he had seen, and there she was getting on with her life as if it was nothing.

  What was her secret? How had she processed the unthinkable - the un-processable?

  Perhaps he should try to talk to her about it.

  Or would that be opening a can of supernatural worms neither of them wanted open?

  I’d been doing okay, he considered. Up until I went up that bloody castle. Alastair and his ghost stories. They had picked the thin tissue of scab off his psychological wounds.

  All that talk of the Grey Lady just at the time someone was bumping off the staff at the rest home...

  Coincidence.

  Of course it was. He was being silly - or, as Miller would have put it, saft.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Miller’s voice brought him back into the room.

  “Um?”

  She nodded to the desk where his phone was shuddering and buzzing with an incoming call.

  “Hello!” said Alastair. “Have you had lunch?”

  ***

  We wouldn’t have to keep going up and down the bloody hill, to and from headquarters, Miller muttered to herself as they headed back to her car, if he’d give up on that office in the town. Yes, I can claim the mileage but there’s still the wear and tear. And the waste of time. Dedley Police Station was dead and gone - it was little more than a cloakroom for the specials. We must move with the times.

  “Chance for you to sneak the DVDs back,” Brough said cheerfully. Funny how a call from his pathologist could perk him up. Miller envied him. Even if it was a business call. “While I’m in the morgue, I mean,” Brough continued. “And you’ll get to see that your boyfriend again.”

  He laughed. Miller gaped at him.

  “I’m only teasing,” he shook his head. Miller started the engine. “You can do better than that.”

  That was a surprise! But, Miller checked the rear-view mirror before pulling into traffic and caught her own eye, that’s the point: I can’t.

  ***

  Brough hurried down to the bowels of HQ. It was one of the few original parts of the building from Victorian times. There was something reassuring about the dark green tiles that lined these walls, no matter how disturbing the occupants of the morgue might be.

  Alastair, in the white lab coat that accentuated his clear, tanned skin so fetchingly, was waiting, his eyes twinkling. He had the air of waiting for someone to open a special present he had bought for them.

  On the surface, they kept their interaction professional, but even the most casual observer could detect there was something between the detective and the pathologist. The smiles that curled their lips even as they discussed the most gruesome deta
ils. The way they stood a little too close. The eye contact that lingered...

  Brough was less comfortable with this mixing of his work and private lives so Alastair reined in his enthusiasm. For the most part.

  “Come here.” The pathologist jerked his head towards the examination room. His tightly curled hair - all natural, thank you very much - danced. Brough duly followed, assaulted by the antiseptic stench of disinfectant and other chemicals.

  “I’ve been hard at it,” Alastair wiggled his eyebrows. Brough exhaled heavily.

  “Serious face, please, Mr Cartwright,” he said gravely.

  “Yes, sir!” Alastair let the smile drop from his face. “To business!”

  The two victims were laid out on stainless steel examination tables, covered by thin cotton sheets. Alastair managed to rein in his impulse to remove the sheet as though he were a magician. He gently folded the first one back to reveal the unnaturally whitened hair and blackened face of Paul Cook the cook.

  “First victim, although he was the second one found,” Alastair said flatly. He registered the face Brough was pulling. “Oh, he’s thawed out a bit since he came in - our storage units aren’t as powerful as his walk-in fridge.”

  “Which was tampered with?”

  “Well, it was cranked up to the max. Control’s on the outside, see. Shouldn’t be allowed. Anyone who gets trapped has no access to the temperature control. Also, there was no failsafe on the door mechanism. No way of opening it from the inside.”

  “An old model?”

  “Old and inexpensive. But look: you can still see how his arms are raised and the damage to his fingers, as well as the frostbite, I mean. Poor bugger was trying to claw his way out. And look at his eyes. He must have been terrified.”

  Brough made an unconvincing show of peering more closely at the face. He made a humming sound for good measure.

  “Cause of death?”

  “Freezing. Hypothermia, to be precise, and then he froze.”

  “How long...?”

  “Has he been dead?”

  “How long would it take?”

  Alastair whistled as he sucked in air. “Difficult to say. When he realised he was shut in, the frantic activity would have delayed the onset of hypothermia. He’s not a fat lad - what do they say, never trust a skinny chef? - so he hasn’t the blubber to protect him. The freezer has a defrost cycle, where the temperature raises three times a day... So... I’d take a guess at eight hours.”

  “So, overnight?”

  “In effect. Although as time went on and his brain became more sluggish and his body began to shut down, he wouldn’t have been aware of much.”

  Brough’s eyes darted as he took all this on board. The poor bugger had been in the fridge, fighting for his life while upstairs the place was crawling with coppers.

  “But the expression on his face! It looks as though he was in mortal terror right up until the end.”

  Alastair considered this. “I suppose the panic could have brought about a heart attack. I’ll have to go inside to check that out. And check his medical history. Should have something for you later. Much later.”

  Brough couldn’t be sure if this was an overture to something else. He moved to the second table.

  “And this one? Miss Billings?”

  Alastair pulled back the sheet. The knitting needles and the ball of wool had been removed. The girl looked at peace despite her punctures.

  “No look of terror,” Brough observed.

  “Not so much, no. But you saw for yourself, the lack of blood splashes at the scene.”

  “Meaning she was already dead when the needles went in?”

  “Well done, Inspector! You may be given a series of CSI: Dedley yet.”

  “Heh.” Brough walked around the table. “So if the needles didn’t kill her...”

  “The wool.”

  “Choked her?”

  “Strangled her. Observe the lines around her neck. But the killer is so arrogant he or indeed she popped the murder weapon in the poor girl’s gob before he used her head as an oversized pincushion.”

  Brough looked from table to table. “And it’s the same perp? There’s no doubt about that?”

  “Perhaps best not to dispense with doubt completely. But I’d say yes, probably. Same flamboyant abandoning of the bodies. Most murderers make some effort to conceal the body. Not this guy. Leaving the bodies in full view, along with the murder weapons - in the case of Mr Cook, the crime scene is also the murder weapon - well, that shows a remarkable lack of concern - Contempt, you might say.”

  “And forensics?”

  “Preliminary report has come up with nothing. Not a sausage - apart from the pork ones in the freezer, of course.”

  Brough smiled thinly. “I need to question some more people at that home.” He moved to the exit.

  “See you later?”

  Brough stopped and looked back at the hopeful pathologist - the hot, hopeful pathologist - standing between two unfortunates who wouldn’t be seeing anyone later.

  “Yes,” he said.

  5.

  It was a pleasant afternoon - if you discounted the police cars coming and going and all the kerfuffle going on indoors. Harold had managed to persuade that new filly to take a tour of the garden. Piece of cake to get past the sentries, he’d tapped his nose conspiratorially. They’re all a bit preoccupied at the mo, what with the gruesome killings and all the rest of it.

  Sandra, mother of Detective Sergeant Melanie Miller, had agreed. She liked the sound of a piece of cake. She hooked her arm in his and they headed for the garden.

  They sat on the plastic park bench and watched the traffic negotiate the busy roundabout. Sandra sat back to let the sun bathe her face. Too late to worry about its ageing effects; she was already on the old folks farm.

  Harold was content to sit there in silence, enjoying the light breeze and the gentle warmth of the sun. For now. He was aware he hadn’t the time to take things slowly. A couple of afternoons of this and he would make his move. He would show up at her door and suggest they spend the afternoon in her room instead...

  For the moment, he was focussing on not pissing his pyjamas. It was a constant worry, being betrayed by one’s own waterworks.

  A small hatchback pulled up at the kerb. A man got out, followed by the lady driver.

  “That looks like my Melanie,” said Sandra casually.

  “It is your Melanie,” said Harold.

  “Wonder what she’s doing here,” Sandra frowned. “She doesn’t look old enough.”

  “Either she’s come to see you, my dear lady,” Harold patted her veiny hand, “or she’s here on police business.”

  “That’s funny!” Sandra gasped incredulously. “My Mel’s in the police as well.”

  Harold patted her hand again. The old dear might be breeding bats in her belfry but she was still a very attractive woman. They would make beautiful music together - and use Radio 2 on full volume to drown out the noise of that beautiful music.

  They watched Melanie Miller trot up the path behind the handsome but hassled-looking detective.

  “If they’ve come for Mel, she’s not here,” said Sandra, sadly.

  “No, love.” Harold planted a denture-filled kiss on her temple.

  ***

  Upstairs in the second floor common room, Brough and Miller were waiting for the manager to join them. Miller was watching her mother on a bench outside. Found herself a boyfriend, I see. Miller chuckled. Plenty of teasing potential there! But then, she reflected, Mum would only counter with something along the lines of “At least I can get me a fella”.

  It was something else to ask that Fogg woman when she appeared. Does the home encourage... liaisons among inmates? No, not inmates. Residents.

&nb
sp; “What are you looking at, Miller?” Brough came over. Two old farts on a bench. Big deal. He looked beyond the confines of the garden and the traffic island. Across the road on one side was a park. From this angle you couldn’t see a single brick of the medieval priory that stood in ruins there, but Brough knew it was there. Memories of his last big case stirred. There had been a tenuous link to those ruins. He was glad he couldn’t see them.

  But high on the hill stood - not a lonely goatherd - but the imposing tower of Dedley Castle, peering out above the treetops. The memory of his visit there only the day before sprang to his mind. The glimpse of the grey woman. A shiver ran down Brough’s spine and he moved away from the window quickly, tumbling arse over tit over the coffee table that rugby tackled his shins.

  “David!” gasped D S Miller, in an unprofessional outburst.

  “Are you all right down there, Inspector,” sneered Pamela Fogg, standing over him, “or shall I fetch you a pillow?”

  ***

  Half an hour later, the sun was still shining as the detectives left the building, although Brough’s face was like thunder. The Fogg woman was not exactly forthcoming. Like Cook the cook she was living up to her name: Fogg the obfuscator. He rattled the passenger door handle impatiently, waiting for Miller to unlock the car. She was looking at an empty bench for some reason.

  When at last they were in the comparative privacy afforded by the car’s interior, Brough roared with rage.

  “That woman!”

  Miller tutted sympathetically although she didn’t think it was Fogg’s gender that was at fault. Early on in the interview it had become clear things were not going well. David - sorry, Inspector Brough - had requested more information about Cook the cook and the manager’s flawlessly drawn eyebrows had shot up her forehead before dipping in a frown. She had already handed over his file, containing his home address and what few personal details they knew about him.

  To that nice detective with the moustache; what was his name? Stibbons?

  Stevens!

  Brough beat his fists against Miller’s dashboard and swore repeatedly.