by Jo Allen
With a shrug, Phil ripped his attention away from a bunch of relentlessly cheerful daffodils in a jar on the windowsill. ‘Can’t be helped. It happens enough in my line of work as it is. Hers too. Birthday celebrations are moveable feasts anyway. You’ll know that.’
Jude’s rest day the following day, the one he’d planned to spend with Ashleigh somewhere where his phone didn’t get a signal, had already gone the same way as Phil and Tammy’s evening out. A good night’s sleep would make the ultimate sacrifice, too. ‘I won’t keep you too long. Run me through what happened and we can get the formalities done at the station. Then you can salvage what you can of the evening. And you can always contact me. You know that.’
‘Yeah.’ Phil took a blood-stained handkerchief out of his pocket, spat on it, and wiped blood from his fingers. The front of his coat was stiff with drying blood. ‘Not very hygienic, but I’ve got hand sanitiser in the car. Fire away, then. What do you want to know?’
The question, Jude recognised, was meant to buy a few seconds to compose himself. It didn’t matter how many deaths Phil had attended in the past. He would have had a few moments to prepare for most them, whereas the sudden discovery of Gracie Pepper, haemorrhaging her life out in the churchyard, seemed to have caught him by surprise. ‘Begin at the beginning and go on until the end.’
‘I’d arranged to meet Tammy at the pub. I finished my shift at the hospital at six, maybe, and parked in Friargate. I was going to cut through the churchyard.’ He picked up Jude’s questioning look. ‘Yes I know there are other places to park, but you know how it is. You do things from habit. I rarely come down through the town, and we were heading up to Roundthorn for dinner so I’d have had to go all the way round the one way system. And I thought I’d probably spend five minutes in the pub while Tammy finished her drink anyway, so I just parked where there was a space.’
He wiped his fingers for a second time, waiting while Jude scribbled down his notes. ‘Then the churchyard. I walked from the car park and I cut across the grass to the far side.’
‘Rather than go straight up and along King Street?’
‘It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. But actually the reason I went that way rather than the other was that I heard something.’
‘And that was?’
‘A voice. The sound bounces around, you know. And the place was quiet. Usually there’s the odd person cutting through, but there wasn’t anyone about at that end of the churchyard. I heard someone shouting into the phone about a body.’
That would be Claud. ‘Okay. And then?’
‘I ran across the grass. There was a man — I didn’t recognise him at first — kneeling on the ground next to something. I came running up and I could see that it was a woman and that she was badly hurt.’
‘What did the man say to you?’
‘He shouted out something like don’t touch the body, don’t touch the body. But I could see she was still breathing. I went through the whole trust-me-I’m-a-doctor routine but he kept on gibbering about a murder scene, so I shoved him out of the way and got on with it. She was bleeding very heavily and wasn’t conscious. At that point I couldn’t see her face. I tried to staunch the bleeding but there was nothing I could do for her, except hold her while she died.’
His tone was matter-of-fact, but there was the echo in it of the same desolation that had hung over Natalie's description of how she’d failed to save Len Pierce. If Phil couldn’t save a life in those circumstances, how could she have done? If, indeed, she’d really tried. ‘That was rough for you, Phil.’
‘Yes. Then the guy who was there started flashing his torch around. I recognised him then. The Blackwell chap who does those diversity sessions. And I saw who was dead. Gracie Pepper. That was a shock, too.’
Jude allowed himself a slight pause, made a mental note of the inconsistency. ‘Didn’t you say you didn’t know her?’
‘Did I? Maybe you misheard.’
‘Maybe.’ Jude met Phil’s challenging gaze, holding it to remind him who was in charge. ‘Did you know Gracie well?’
‘No, not at all. By sight, only.’
‘But you knew her name.’
‘The nurses all wear name badges.’ His hesitation was fractional. ‘I try and remember their names. It’s good management.’
Jude allowed himself a moment of reflection. It was too much of a coincidence, surely, that two people should have died within yards of the Blackwells. ‘Was anyone else there?’
‘As I said before. The churchyard was quiet. When I realised there was a problem and that someone was hurt I focussed on what was actually happening.’ He paused. ‘I realise that isn’t what you want to hear, but I’m not trained to be the eyes and ears of everyone. I have a job to do.’
Phil would pick a fight with anyone over anything but his attitude to Jude, knowing the requirements of the job and the need for immediate action, was one of bolshie entitledness. Briefly, Jude wondered what kind of words might have passed in the Garner household over Tyrone’s relationships with Doddsy. Perhaps Phil was just too used to playing God, lord in his own home and his own clinic. ‘If you didn’t see anything, you didn’t see anything. It can’t be helped. But at least let me run you through the places you might have seen something.’
Apparently mollified, Phil took a moment to think. ‘The library closes at six, so they couldn’t have gone there. There was definitely no-one in the entrance to the arcade, but I suppose someone could have got away that way.’
‘If they did, someone will have seen them, I imagine. That’s helpful.’ Jude nodded, a quick stroke of flattery to Phil’s ego, a hint that he was adding even more value to his existing public service. ‘Nothing else?’
‘I didn’t pass anyone in the bottom half of the churchyard. Perhaps someone could have got away down to King Street or to the Market Square. I don’t know.’
Chris’s first task the next day would be checking the CCTV in the Market Square to see who might have emerged from the darkness. ‘That’s fine, Phil.’ Jude proffered his notebook, saw Phil scan and sign and took it back. ‘Thanks.’
‘The bloody police station now, I suppose.’
‘I’m afraid so. And then you can get on with what’s left of your evening.’
*
‘Come on, darling.’ Natalie regarded Claud with anxious eyes as he re-emerged into the reception area of the police station. They’d taken his blood-stained clothes away, as if finding a body made you a suspect, and he was dressed in a jumper and jogging bottoms. God knew where they came from. After all she was glad she’d washed her own clothes. She couldn’t have borne being taken to the police station like a criminal and sent home in someone else’s cast-offs. ‘I’ll drive you home. Then we’ll have something to eat.’ Because although she ate little, Claud was a serious trencherman and there was little she could think of that was more normal to him than food.
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’ll be all right.’ She felt the weight of his soul, not just the tug of his arm on hers as they made their way along Meeting House Lane. In reality her repeated concerns were as much for her own support as for his and there was room for debate as to which of them was helping the other, but as long as the two of them kept ploughing on, it didn’t really matter.
‘It’s okay, Nat.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘I’ll drive. It was a shock, but I’m over it. Poor girl.’
The fact that he called a mature woman a girl was a sign of his loss of concentration. Proper respect was a central plank of his mission. Her heart warmed towards him even more at this lapse. ‘I know. Just like it was at home.’ Now they’d been through the same thing together.
‘But the worst thing, Nat… For a moment I thought it was you.’
‘It wasn’t. It’s all right.’
‘But someone… she was someone’s, wasn’t she?’
Another non-Claud phrase. People belonged to nobody in his world, though Natalie liked to think that she belonged to him,
and he to her, exclusively. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s such a mess, Nat. The things that people do to one another. I realise now, I recognised her. From one of the workshops.’
They slowed as they approached Sandgate. Reaching the car meant passing the eastern end of the church close, where they couldn’t avoid the police and the ambulance, the onlookers who didn’t understand how shocking it was to cradle the dying. And now a stranger was approaching them, and even this everyday occurrence seemed a potential trap. Natalie shrank back, pulling Claud aside on the narrow pavement to let the oncoming figure pass.
He didn’t. ‘Mr Blackwell? It is Mr Blackwell, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Shuffling out of the darkest shadows into the streetlight, Claud kept hold of Natalie’s arm.
‘I thought I recognised you there in the churchyard. It’s George Meadows. I was at the meeting after the service a couple of weeks ago.’ Impatient to get home, as she was sure Claud must be, Natalie had no time for the concern of strangers, but Claud was different. He knew everyone, never forgot a face. ‘Of course! George. We were talking about the Rainbow Festival. Thought your input was invaluable.’ He extracted his arm from Natalie’s and shook the man’s hand. ‘Do you reckon it’s a goer?’
That was the thing about Claud. No matter what you put him through, the minute you dangled one of his pet projects in front of him he would switch into a different mode. Perhaps it was a defence mechanism. If it was, it wasn’t working for Natalie. She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, impatient to be away from the town and get the corroding scent of death away from her nostrils.
‘I know you’ll find a lot of opposition to the idea, but there’s a lot of support, too. The problem is that we’re a very traditional society. But there are plenty of people like myself.’ George patted his chest, exactly the point where the knife had struck Len Pierce. Natalie shivered.
‘Glad to hear it, George.’
‘I’m not gay myself, you understand, but I’m definitely an ally. My late wife was very outspoken on the subject. Love is love. The Rainbow Festival isn’t a moment before time and if there’s anything I can do to help, say the word.’
‘Speak at your church,’ Claud responded, with spirit. ‘Traditional doesn’t explain everything. People need to learn that traditional values are those of inclusiveness. It isn’t modern. It’s natural.’
‘Claud,’ Natalie said, ‘should we go home? You’ve had such a dreadful shock. It was Claud who found the body in the churchyard, Mr Meadows. I think I should take him home.’
‘You found the body?’ That stopped him. She looked at him, blinking under the streetlight. ‘I didn’t realise. That’s an awful business. What a terrible shock. Perhaps you want to come back to my house and have a brandy or something to pep you up? I’m in William Street, not far at all.’
All Natalie wanted was to go home. ‘Thank you so much, Mr Meadows, but I really think we need to get back.’
‘That’s probably right.’ Always reluctant to tear himself away from an eager listener Claud picked up the message, but he couldn’t quite disengage himself as easily as Natalie would have liked. It’s great to meet you, though, George. And I’d love to talk to you more about the festival.’
‘You know how it is. Folk listen to gay allies like you and me more than they listen to others. It shouldn’t be like that but it is.’
‘Nat and I’ll be going round some of the other churches in the area to drum up support, but we really need people like you — enthusiastic people within the congregations who can change from within and bring them into the modern world.’
Sometimes Claud got carried away. Natalie wasn’t a churchgoer herself but her parents had been, and her image of the church was formed in the image of her mother, one of gentle tolerance and a judgement only of oneself. Of course, this wasn’t the whole truth, but it was surely no further removed from reality than Claud’s view of the organisation as a brake on the advance of modernity. ‘Claud. This isn’t the time. We need to go home.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’ Once more he turned to her, then back to George. ‘It would be so wonderful to have your input.’
‘Perhaps you could pop round and visit me and we could discuss it. You could come round one evening. Apart from Tuesdays, when I’m bell ringing, I’ll be in. I don’t socialise much since Michelle died. And I’m handy for here. Just on the corner of William Street.’
‘I’d love to.’ Claud fished in his pockets for a pen.
‘Claud!’ said Natalie one final time, as he scribbled the address on the back of his hand. ‘Let’s go.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Claud said to the man, and allowed Natalie to tuck her hand through his arm again and guide him down the street. ‘Nice bloke. I remember talking to him a couple of weeks ago. He’s one of the bell ringers, I think. A really interesting guy. Car mechanic. Not that I know anything about cars. But I’ll definitely follow up and go and see him. He’s the kind of man we need on our side. And Inspector Dodd, too. I really like that man. Though I can’t say I like the phrase gay ally. We’re all just normal.’
Cars, bell ringers, dead bodies in the churchyard. Natalie would have strange dreams that night. Maybe she should take an extra tablet. ‘You’re too good, Claud. Far too good.’
‘But what a nice bloke he was. And so solicitous. Yes, I’ll definitely look him up. Talk to him one evening while you go for your run. He could really help us with the Rainbow Festival.’ And finally Claud gave up on the distractions around them and headed for home.
Chapter 12
‘Okay. Ashleigh. Perhaps you want to tell us what you’ve found out about Gracie Pepper?’ Jude stifled a yawn and reached for his coffee. He’d stolen a few hours’ sleep and hoped she’d done the same, but even making a conscious effort to rest hadn’t been much help and he’d lain awake for much of the few hours he’d spent in bed, running things through, thinking of options, trying out scenarios as to how the murderer had got away. Even in his sleep he’d been weighing up evidence. Now the major early-morning briefing was over, the various personnel deputed to their tasks and his concentration was wavering even further as Faye made her way across the incident room. He kept one eye on her as she wove through the desks, stopping occasionally for a word with one of the detectives, towards the table where Jude had assembled his core team of Ashleigh, Chris and Doddsy.
‘Okay.’ Ashleigh cleared her throat, blinking at the notes in front of her as the only sign of tiredness and spilled a picture of Gracie — long auburn hair in a riot of pre-Raphaelite curls, a serious expression that couldn’t conceal a love of life — onto the table in front of her. ‘We were able to identify her straight away. Phil Garner knew her. She was—’
‘May I interrupt?’ Faye reached them at the dramatic moment. ‘Thanks for the email update, Jude. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to speak to you about it earlier on, but I was in a meeting. The local press. It’s hardly surprising they’re a little over-excited. May I sit in for a moment, to keep myself fully up to date?’
He could hardly refuse. ‘Sure. Do you have any questions on the briefing note before we start?’
‘Not at all. It was admirably comprehensive.’ She bared her teeth just a little as she smiled, a sure sign that the smile was fake, and turned her cool gaze to Ashleigh. ‘Do carry on.’
Normally so confident, Ashleigh seemed to crumble under that stare, fumbling with her notes and picking them apart with such violence that the coffee mug at her elbow nearly went flying. ‘Her name is Gracie Pepper. Last night Chris and I went to Carlisle to break the news to her parents, and they told us as much as they felt able to about her. They were upset, so it’s little more than a broad impression, although I have some officers talking to her friends and colleagues to build up a picture of her. She’s thirty-one and she’s a nurse at the hospital, where she works in the elder care unit. She’s only been there a couple of months. She finished her shift yesterday at four o’clock but stayed
on to help out because the colleague taking over from her was held up. She lives up in Greystoke Park.’
For Faye’s benefit, Jude got up and indicated the various locations on the map that Chris had pinned on the whiteboard. ‘That’s here. The hospital is here, up at Tynefield. The churchyard is here.’
She frowned at the map, as if processing the information. ‘All right. Carry on.’
‘We don’t know what she was doing in the churchyard. You can see it wasn’t on her way home. Jude’s briefing note tells you the sequence of events as regards the body. Claud Blackwell says he left his office to talk to a woman he mistakenly thought was his wife and the woman had gone, but he stumbled across what he thought was a body, lying against the wall of the church near a set of stones known the Giant’s Grave.’
‘A local curiosity,’ noted Jude, aloud. Faye, nodding, wrote that down.
‘He was joined by Phil Garner, a doctor from the hospital who, as it happens, knew her, although he says he didn’t recognise her immediately. Phil is married to Tammy Garner, who’s one of our CSIs, and their son is a probationary constable with us.’
‘How very coincidental.’
The gaze Faye fixed on Ashleigh was so steely that Jude felt obliged to intervene. ‘It’s no coincidence that Phil was there. It was Tammy’s birthday. She was having a quick drink with colleagues — all of us included — and he’d arranged to come and pick her up to take her out for dinner. He’d parked at the back of the church rather than get caught up in the one-way system, as they were heading up to Roundthorn for dinner.’ Tammy wasn’t on the CSI team still working away in the churchyard, and the investigation would be the poorer for it, because she was noted for her thoroughness and her obsession with detail.
‘Mr Blackwell said he thought Gracie was dead,’ Ashleigh went on, doggedly reading from her notes, ‘but according to Phil, when he got to her she was still alive, but bleeding heavily. He tried to staunch the bleeding, with Claud’s help, but he describes the haemorrhaging as catastrophic. There was nothing he could do to save her. She died in his arms about a minute after he reached her.’
