by Ellis, Tim
Stick began to get up, but then fainted across the easy chairs.
‘Oh dear! Call an ambulance, Ulrika,’ Dr Lipsett said to the receptionist, who also resembled a holiday representative that Xena had once hated in Torromolinos.
‘Don’t bother,’ Xena said getting up. ‘What we need to do is haul him into the surgery before he wakes up.’
‘I’m sorry...’
‘No, don’t be sorry, doctor. Think of it as an opportunity.’ She took one of his arms and pulled him onto the floor. ‘Grab the other one and we’ll drag him through into your surgery. Between the three of us we should be able to manhandle him into the chair.’
The receptionist and the dentist hovered, unsure of what to do.
‘Look, Detective Constable Gilbert here hasn’t been to the dentist for nineteen years. His teeth are life-threatening and a serious embarrassment to all concerned. If you don’t help me, I’ll have to arrest you both for obstructing a police officer in the performance of her duties.’
They still didn’t move.
‘In other words ladies, shift your backsides before you become somebody’s bitches in the hellhole they call Hoddesdon Police Station.’
‘Really,’ Doctor Lipsett muttered.
‘Yes really,’ Xena said, choosing the alternative meaning.
Due to Stick weighing less than a starving locust, they managed to position him in the chair without too much trouble.
‘If he wakes up, he’ll want to join the Olympic one hundred metre race, so have you got something to keep him in that chair?’
‘The dentist nodded at Ulrika, who, as well as being a holiday representative, doubled as a dental assistant. Ulrika passed a syringe with a large needle attached to it to Doctor Lipsett.
‘You do realise that this could be regarded as assault?’
Xena smiled. ‘I’ll take full responsibility. Stick... DC Gilbert obviously had a traumatic time in a dentist’s chair when he was ten years old, and he hasn’t been back since. So, you need to make sure this a pleasurable experience for him, if you know what I mean.’
The doctor inserted the needle into a vein in the back of Stick’s hand. ‘Ten milligrams of Valium should slow him down.’ She pulled her mask up and then said, ‘Right, let’s see what all the trouble... dear me.’ She looked at Xena. ‘You should probably pitch your tent in reception. We’ll be here for some time.’
‘If he causes you any aggravation, just shout.’ She wandered out into the reception. The surgery door closed behind her. Dentists weren’t one of her favourite holiday destinations either, but at least she wasn’t a chicken shit like Stick. There was no one else about, so she stretched out across three of the easy chairs and closed her eyes. That Slug had kept her awake most of the night snoring and jerking like somebody with Tourette’s syndrome. Maybe she was desperate, but she didn’t have to act like it. As she drifted off to sleep, she promised herself that she’d be a bit more choosy with her one-night stands in future. People that called themselves after insects, rodents, or animals were to be avoided at all costs.
Chapter Ten
She’d been dreaming of Tom Dougall – the bastard – when the surgery door opened. She jerked upright. Dribble was running out of the corner of her mouth, and tears leaked from her eyes.
‘Once he’s paid you can take him away, but I expect to see him back in a week’s time.’
Stick looked as though he’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson and won. His face was swollen and bruised, and he was still groggy from the Valium.
She stood up and grabbed one of Stick’s arms to steady him. ‘Get your wallet out, Stick. How much does he owe you, Doc?’
‘One thousand five hundred pounds.’
Xena’s brow wrinkled. ‘That’s a conveniently nice round figure.’
‘It’s for three sessions. There was thirty-six pence in there somewhere, but I rounded the whole thing down as a gesture of goodwill.’
‘Very generous, I’m sure.’
Stick pulled out a Bank of the Cayman Islands credit card from a secret compartment of his wallet and passed it to Ulrika.
‘So, that’s where you keep your stash,’ Xena said.
She had to hold Stick’s hand while he signed the receipt, and then the doctor passed her some drugs in a brown envelope, which she slipped into her jacket pocket. ‘Painkillers. He should take two every four hours if required.’
‘See you in a week, Mr Gilbert,’ Ulrika called after them as Xena helped Stick stagger through the door.
‘I suppose I’d better drive,’ she said outside. ‘It looks as though you’re going to be as much use today as a chocolate fucking fireguard. The things I do for Queen and country. I’m too kind for my own fucking good.’
Stick intermittently snored, grunted and moaned throughout the journey.
‘You’re not going to be sick, are you?’ Xena asked him at one point. ‘If you’re fucking sick in the car I’ll make you lick it up. Do you want to be sick?’
He mumbled something, so she pulled onto the pavement in front of a bus stop. He opened the door and puked. As luck would have it, a bus had crept up behind her. The driver beeped the horn because he couldn’t pull into the bus stop with the car parked there.
Xena got out and walked round to the driver’s side of the bus. When she flashed her warrant card he opened the window. ‘I’m wondering whether to arrest you for noise pollution,’ she said.
The greasy-haired driver laughed. ‘Don’t talk daft.’
‘Keep talking, asshole – pretty soon you’ll be draining fucking swamps on Devil’s Island with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.’
The driver didn’t say anything else.
‘Good. Now, if my partner has stopped puking, I’ll get out of your way. Thank you for being so fucking patient.’
When she climbed back in the car Stick had puke around his mouth. She rummaged in her bag and wiped it off with a tissue, which she pushed out of the open window as she drove off. ‘I’m beginning to feel like your fucking mother, Stick.’
‘It’s your fault I’m like this,’ he managed to say.
‘As soon as I saw you were a loser I should have gone to the Chief and asked him for another partner. I try and better your life and all I get is loads of aggravation. Well, don’t talk to me again today, or I’ll thump you in the mouth.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and started crying.
‘For fuck’s sake, Stick, I didn’t mean it.’
After that, she kept quiet and left him to sleep it off.
She parked up outside No. 7 Alderwood Drive and left Stick whimpering in the car.
Mathew Tucker had retired from political life in 2005 to be with his family. In reality, he’d been photographed by a journalist from one of the broadsheet newspapers going into a cheap motel with one of his researchers. The man was half his age. Shortly afterwards, he’d sold the house and he and his wife moved to a four-bedroom detached house in a village called Abridge, which wasn’t that far away from Hobbs Cross along the A113. There were also three grown-up children who all had their own lives in different parts of the country.
‘Yes?’ a woman’s voice came from behind her.
She swivelled round.
A grey-haired woman straddling late fifties and early sixties was standing there with a pair of secateurs in her left hand, a straw hat on her head, and a Barbour jacket.
Xena produced her warrant card. ‘I’m here to see Mathew Tucker.’
‘Dead.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He’s dead.’ She began walking along the path that led round to the rear of the house. ‘You have to cut them back when you can, you know. If you don’t cut roses back during the winter months they’ll spread everywhere.’
‘When did he die?’
‘March 2008 – cancer. We kept it quiet, a family affair. If the media had got hold of it they would have brought up all that business about his researcher again, and we didn’t want that.’
> ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re not, but it’s nice of you to say so. Can I offer you a lime tea?’
‘That would be nice.’
She took Xena into a spacious kitchen, and once she’d made the tea they sat down at the table.
‘You’ve come about the bodies, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I heard it on the news. Mostly women, I believe?’
Xena nodded.
‘It’s hardly likely that Mathew was involved – he only wanted men. Do you know, I didn’t have the first idea that he was a homosexual? He confessed after it had all come out that he’d always liked men. Our marriage was a sham, and the children... Well, God knows where they came from. They say the wives are the last to know. In my case, it was true. I try not to think about it, because if I do I want to cry. My whole life wasted on a man who never loved me.’
‘You have the children.’
‘Does it look as though I have the children? No, they blame me. My children have disowned me. They never come to visit, and I never see my grandchildren. A wasted life, I’m afraid.’
Xena was sympathetic, but she wasn’t there to listen to confessions unless they directly related to the case in hand. ‘During your time at the house you had the patio laid and the conservatory built.’
‘Yes, but the other way round. We had the conservatory built first, and then the patio was laid afterwards.’
‘We know that Arvon Paving put the patio down. Do you recall who built the conservatory?’
‘The same people I believe. I shouldn’t say this, but I suppose it’s all water under the bridge now. Mathew gave them both jobs on the understanding that they would provide inflated invoices, which he could claim through parliamentary expenses for building work on the second home, even though the house was our main home. They were all doing it apparently, had been for years. The recent furore is nothing to what went on back then.’
‘So, Arvon Paving completed both the conservatory and the patio?’
‘Yes.’
‘You bought the house from Judge Boyd. Did you also take on her gardener?’
‘Yes, we kept Ignacio on. He was a genius with roses.’
‘Did you keep him the whole time you were there.’
Mrs Tucker took a sip of her tea and nodded. ‘After the conservatory and patio were in place, everything was a mess. So, then we had to re-establish the garden, which also went on expenses if you were wondering.’
‘And when you sold the house, the Romeros went back to Mexico. Do you know why?’
‘He had a business back there apparently. He didn’t say what, but I believe it was struggling, and he said he missed his family.’
Xena finished her tea. ‘I won’t be taking any action about the expenses,’ she said.
Mrs Tucker laughed. ‘You wouldn’t get anywhere if you did. They’d sweep it under the parliamentary rug as soon as look at you, and there’s some secrets under that rug I can tell you.’
‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Tucker.’
‘It was nice to see someone. I don’t get many visitors now.’
When she banged the car door shut Stick woke up and looked at her.
‘I thought you’d left me here.’ He started crying again and grabbed her left hand. ‘You won’t leave me again, will you?’
She shook him off. ‘I wish I’d never bothered with this dentist crap. I should have left you to rot in your own dental decay.’
He’d already nodded off again like a drunk, and she realised that it was the drugs talking.
***
Katey Lees was the girlfriend of Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Juan Vargas who had cost Harry Redknapp fifteen million Euros. That was, of course, before the implosion of the Eurozone. Now, if Spurs were lucky, he was worth two hamburgers and a fizzy drink. And, as Parish recalled, that was also his value to the team. He hadn’t kicked a first-team football in anger for six months. And although he’d been put up for sale in the January transfer window, nobody wanted to buy.
‘She’s a WAG you know,’ Richards said.
‘What does that mean exactly? Wife at Game? Willing and Generous? Watch and Go? Wiggle and Gaggle?’
‘Stop trying to make me laugh. I don’t think I’m ever going to laugh again.’
‘You will. People get ill. It’s never nice for the relatives, but life goes on. In the end, we all succumb to the ravages of time.’
‘You make it sound as though Mum’s dying. She’s only thirty eight.’
‘You know I don’t mean that. Look, we’ll go and see her tonight, and try and make a difference. Remember, Pandora kept hope in the box.’
‘I feel guilty. We should be doing something to help her.’
‘I’m open to suggestions.’
‘Well... something.’
‘We are. We’re carrying on with our lives.’
They parked on the gravel path outside the mansion and banged on one of the double doors. A knock would have dissipated before anyone had heard it.
Eventually, a woman in her mid twenties with golden brown hair stacked haphazardly on top of her head like straw opened the door. She wore a white bikini top, which left nothing to the imagination, held a half-finished cocktail in her left hand, and had a leopard skin print sarong tied around her waist. Parish turned to check that it was still freezing outside.
He showed her his warrant card, and was about to introduce himself and Richards when she began walking away.
‘I’m in the pool. I’ve been expecting you. Let me see. You went to Nadine’s house. Ally told you we all had threesomes, and that I was her best friend. Now, here you are – like rats following a trail of cheese. Do you want a piña colada?’
She led them in her bare feet through the enormous mansion to an indoor swimming pool where she draped herself on a sun lounger. Parish and Richards sat in white painted wrought iron chairs next to a table with an ashtray and three empty cocktail glasses on it.
‘Apart from the fact that we’re not permitted to drink on duty, it’s only five to eleven in the morning.’
‘Thankfully, I’m never on duty, and I can’t tell the time either.’ She started laughing. ‘As you can see, I’m devastated about Nadine. I heard on the news someone had killed her, and now there’ll be no more threesomes with that Ally. We were training him to be a Greek god, you know.’
‘Do you mind if we ask you some questions?’
‘You could take me to your little police station and search me.’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary, Miss Lees. Can you tell us if Nadine had a written list of her past boyfriends and the Roman/Greek gods that she called them in her diaries?’
‘She was cursed with a photographic memory, you know. She could draw the actual size of all her boyfriend’s erect penises from memory.’ Laughter echoed around the swimming pool.
‘A simple yes or no would have done,’ Richards said.
‘Who rattled your chain, love?’
‘I’m not your love.’
‘Maybe you should be. All three of us could go upstairs now, and get it on.’ She stood up, untied the sarong at her waist and let it fall to the floor. A tug of the bikini string saw her top follow it. ‘Well, what do you think? Are you interested in a threesome?’
‘We’re working, Miss Lees,’ Parish said. ‘Please cover yourself up.’
‘Yeah, I guessed you’d be prudes,’ she said, picking up her sarong and draping it over herself as she lay back down on the lounger.
‘Did Nadine ever change the access code on her security system?’
‘If she did, she never told me the new number – one-seven-zero-nine-four-eight. She’d had that number for at least a year. I asked her about it once, and she said it was her dad’s birthday 17th September 1948. She hated the fact that her dad wasn’t here to see how successful she’d become.’
‘She really missed him, huh?’ Richards said.
‘No, she fucking hated him. You don’
t know about her childhood? The bastard abused her for years, that’s why she was the way she was.’
‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill her?’
‘I know lots of people. How long have you got?’
‘All right, let me ask you this – Why did she get her eyes insured?’
‘If you don’t know about her childhood, I suppose you don’t know about her eyes. Don’t you people do your research before you make fools of yourselves?’
Parish screwed up his face and glanced at Richards. ‘Unfortunately, we’ve had other things to think about.’
‘Yeah well, you should read up on her. She had the most beautiful sea-green eyes, but she was also blind until she was thirteen – that’s how her father was able to abuse her.’
‘Was it a congenital condition?’
‘The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her. When it came out that her father had been molesting his own daughter, they thought it was a psychological reaction to that.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Richards said shaking her head.
‘How did she get her sight back?’
‘Strangest thing – as soon as her father died she was able to see again.’
Richards face became a mask of horror. ‘You mean she’d been blind all those years because her father was abusing her?’
‘That’s what the doctors thought.’
Having buried the memory of his own abuse for thirty years, Parish could readily believe that Nadine Chryst’s blindness was a result of her abuse. ‘Does the term, “Green-Eyed” mean anything to you?’
‘In what way? Nadine had green eyes.’
‘Do you think she was jealous of anyone?’
‘If she was, she didn’t share it with me.’
‘Was anyone obviously jealous of her?’
‘You mean, was anyone jealous enough to kill her?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know of anyone, but she very successful.’ She took a sip of her cocktail. ‘She said no one was ever going to hurt her again, but I guess she was wrong, huh?’
‘Thank you for your time, Miss Lees.’
She stood up and the sarong fell to the floor. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a threesome?’
