The Company She Kept

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘I’ll be off then, if you say so,’ Kite replied, unusually compliant.

  ‘You all right, Martin?’

  ‘Shagged out, but I’ll no doubt live! G’night then, see you in the morning.’

  ‘Mind how you go,’ Mayo said, watching the cars below slide like fish through an aquarium. ‘I wouldn’t turn a dog out in this weather.’

  Neither of them had seen their beds yesterday until the small hours and now, tired to the point where nothing was making much sense any longer, he swept his own desk clear and followed Kite. He drove home through the rain-pelted streets, parked his car in the garage, fell over Moses, his landlady’s cat, and found a letter waiting for him from his daughter, Julie, who was en route to Australia, having jettisoned her catering course in favour of learning about life. He worried and fretted over his motherless child as only a father can, imagining her in the sort of perilous situations only a policeman would. The measure of his exhaustion was that he decided reading the letter could wait until the morning.

  He had a shower, the stinging hot water succeeding in washing away the tension and partially clearing his mind.

  He was morosely viewing the uninspired contents of his fridge and wondering whether he could be bothered to eat or not before bed, when the telephone rang. In his present mood he was ready to contemplate not answering it but his flatmate, Bert the parrot, wished on him by Julie for the duration of her travels, had other views. In several misguided moments, Alex had taught him to shout ‘Shop!’ every time the phone rang. Bert had quickly reached the peak of his learning curve, but this had proved no bar to his strong streak of exhibitionism. Ignoring him made no difference. In the end Mayo had to answer the phone in self-defence.

  It was Kite. ‘Sorry about this. We have a body. Woman found by a lorry-driver in a lay-by on Hartopp Moor. I’m there now and I’ve done all the necessary, contacted the coroner’s officer and so on. Doc Ison’s here and Timpson-Ludgate’s on his way.’

  ‘Right, Martin, I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  After pulling on his clothes and downing a cup of black coffee in the hope of getting the adrenalin going again, Mayo manoeuvred his car out of the garage and started up with as little noise as possible in order not to wake Miss Vickers and her brother, both of them seventy-plus and light sleepers.

  The wipers sluiced the torrential rain across the windscreen, the wet road stretched like an oil slick before him as he slid round the base of the hill that led up on to the moor. Seven miles from Lavenstock and it might have been on the moon, a desolate landscape with nothing for miles except bare hills, a few stunted trees and outcrops of rock.

  Rounding the corner of the hill, he came to the police ‘Slow’ signs and a scene familiar to him from dozens of other occasions: beetle-like figures scurrying about in shining wet capes, the temporary lighting revealing a clutch of police cars, a scenes-of-crime van, plus a huge multi-wheeled low-loader truck with a Birmingham registration number pulled in to the lay-by. The pathologist had beaten him to it; his vintage Rover was parked behind Doc Ison’s car and the truck. Headlights suddenly sliced the darkness as several cars coming the other way swept into view, slowing and craning to see what was going on before being waved irritably on by one of the caped figures.

  Martin Kite came forward to meet him as he got out of his car. ‘Over here, sir.’

  The Sergeant led him behind a mass of red sandstone outcrop that jutted out from the moorland, where plastic screens had been rigged to provide a rough shelter and Ison and the pathologist were waiting for Sergeant Napier, crouched underneath it, to finish with his cameras. Both men looked up and grunted a greeting, the pathologist’s normally cheerful and rubicund face morose under a dripping fisherman’s hat.

  The rain drummed on to the plastic as Mayo ducked under it. A woman’s body lay on the sedge, one leg in a stiletto-heeled shoe lying at a grotesque angle. Prepared as he was for the sight, his gorge still rose, his stomach tightening into its accustomed knots. Death had not been merciful. He looked down at her with pity. However attractive she’d once been, she now looked repulsive, her face congested and bloated, the bruises on her throat making an obvious statement. Most of the make-up she’d worn had been washed off by the rain, leaving only the sticky-looking lipstick intact, a ghastly slash of scarlet across the naked, cyanosed face. A slackness under the chin revealed her as no longer young, the hanks of bleached hair were soaked with rain, its darker roots pitifully revealed. There was no dignity in this sort of death: the short skirt was ruckled up above the thighs, the tights and red silk knickers half pulled down.

  The photographers had finished and the doctors were preparing to examine the body. Mayo hunched his coat collar further round his neck and backed out into the rain to give them room, motioning Kite to join him. ‘Do we know who she is?’

  ‘Not yet. No handbag, nothing in the pockets, but she’ll be identifiable, won’t she?’

  ‘More easily than most.’

  For even the blueing of the face hadn’t hidden the birthmark, the port-wine stain down the side of her face. That was probably the reason she’d worn her hair long, to cover it, but anyone meeting and talking to her would have been bound to have noticed it and remembered her.

  ‘Poor wench.’ Kite’s glance went back in the direction of the body. ‘Occupational hazard, but that doesn’t make it any better, does it? Terrible thing to happen to any woman.’ The situation was familiar: the thick lipstick, the dyed hair, the short skirt and sexy underwear spoke for themselves. It was an easy enough assumption that she’d been on the game, a woman who took known risks and had ended up like many of her sisters before her; unaccountably, the easy conclusion jarred. The clothes, for one thing, wet through though they were, didn’t look cheap, although that in itself meant nothing: she might have been a high-class tart. And the earring she wore – one earring only, mind. Quality there. Ornately worked silver studded with coloured stones, might be worth something. Mayo looked again at the naked, blemished face. ‘Let’s try to keep an open mind.’

  Kite threw him a swift glance and the velcro on his waterproof came apart with a tearing sound as he fished for a handkerchief to wipe his face. ‘It was the lorry-driver found her. He’s on his way home to Birmingham, stopped here to relieve himself and stumbled across her is what he says.’ He jerked his head towards the lorry, where the driver could be seen slumped over the wheel, his head resting on his arms. ‘There’s a pub half a mile back – couldn’t turn his vehicle here, so he walked back and knocked them up to ring us. His cab phone’s on the blink.’

  ‘I’ll have a word. Meanwhile, see nobody goes putting their size twelves where they shouldn’t,’ Mayo instructed. ‘When the medics have finished we’ll let as many as we can go home and get a spot of shut-eye, then we’ll make a search at first light.’ It was counter-productive to thrash around in the dark, possibly obliterating beyond hope anything that might be useful. Daylight and hopefully a better day would improve the chances a hundred per cent. ‘Though what we’re going to find after all this is anybody’s guess,’ he said to his sergeant, as Kite went off to issue his own orders.

  Mayo waited until another car had swished past and then ran, head down, to open the door of the lorry and swing himself up into the steamed-up cab, on to the seat next to the driver.

  Rubbing his eyes and yawning, the driver raised his head. ‘Sorry, mate, couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I’m just about knackered.’ He blinked and said blearily, ‘Oh, you're not the Sergeant.’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Mayo. I hear you found the body. Tell me about it, will you?’

  ‘What, again? Give me a break! It’s not exactly a picnic driving to flaming Poland and back with a load of heavy boilers, mate!’

  ‘I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped.’

  The driver glanced at the politely implacable face next to him, reached for his cigarettes and lit up. ‘Not my day, is it? If I hadn’t been pushing it to get home I wouldn’t still
have been on the road and run into this here how-do.’

  ‘What are you doing on this road at all if you’re in such an almighty hurry? Been a lot quicker on the motorway.’

  ‘Heard further back there’s been a big pile-up south of Coventry, so I made up my mind to miss it – and where d’you think all this other traffic’s coming from?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  The driver’s name was McKinley, a Brummie Irishman employed by a firm of heavy haulage contractors. He was a huge hunk of a man, unshaven, with great muscular tattooed arms and a big belly. A lonely life these drivers led, on the road for days, sometimes weeks, at a time.

  ‘You didn’t pick her up somewhere, did you?’

  The driver gave Mayo back look for look, while the rain went on belting down on the cab roof. ‘No, mate, I bloody didn’t. She was there when I went round the back of that there rock for a run-off.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Around eleven, I reckon. Soon as I found her I walked back to that pub and asked them to ring you. I’d hardly have bothered with that if I’d done for her, would I?’

  He hadn’t troubled to dry his hair and he was steaming like a wet dog, and on the face of it, it was an unlikely scenario, but people overcome with guilt acted in strange and often totally inexplicable ways.

  ‘People do funny things, you’d be surprised.’

  ‘Well, not me, not that kind of funny. And I can do without them kind of remarks, thank you very much. I’ve a wife and kids and I’d like to be on my way home to them right now, if that’s all the same with you. Holy Mother of God, I’ve seen some sights in my time, but that beats all!’ The driver swallowed, wiped his hand across his mouth. ‘I reckon you’re used to it.’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ Mayo said drily, his hand on the door. ‘Thank you, Mr McKinley, I’ll send somebody in shortly to take your statement.’

  ‘How shortly?’

  ‘As soon as possible. We’re no more anxious than you are to stop out here.’

  McKinley swore again. ‘I need my head seeing to! I could’ve said nothing to nobody. I’m already running out of time. You keep me here much longer and it’ll put the kybosh on me getting home. I’m not risking my licence, pushing on over the limits.’

  ‘Very wise of you, but we shall have to detain you a bit longer before we let you go, Mr McKinley. And when we do, see that we know where to get in touch – don’t make any more plans to go out of the country without letting us know.’

  ‘Listen, I go when and where I’m sent – anybody’d think I was on a bloody package tour! I suppose it’s too much to expect you lot to believe I’d nothing to do with this!’ McKinley thrust his big red face pugnaciously towards Mayo.

  Mayo could have told the driver he wasn’t in the business of believing any one thing anybody told him, until it was proved otherwise in black and white, but he knew he might as well save his breath. He looked at the ham-like hands gripping the steering-wheel. One squeeze round a delicate throat ...

  Plunging out into the rain again, he made long strides towards the shelter, where the two medics were beginning to pack up their instruments.

  ‘How long has she been dead?’ began Timpson-Ludgate, anticipating the first, most important question. ‘I can only give you an approximate time. Rigor’s hardly begun. Not more than three or four hours, say between six and eight. You don’t need me to tell you how she died, but wait for confirmation. Doesn’t appear to have been sexually interfered with, though I’ll be buggered how I’m expected to deliver pronouncements in conditions like this.’ He sneezed several times into a large handkerchief, revealing a heavy cold as the source of his irritability. ‘Tell you better tomorrow,’ he added, with a finality that indicated nothing would persuade him to get on with the post-mortem before the morning.

  ‘Somebody disturbed him, then?’

  ‘How should I know that? I’m not omniscient. What I can tell you is, it’s unlikely she was killed here. For one thing, as your Sergeant’s pointed out, it doesn’t look as though there’s been a struggle. There’s also a degree of hypostasis, blood draining to the lower parts, post-mortem. And I’ll leave the deductions about that to you.’

  Which was about as helpful as Mayo had expected. Brought here bundled in the boot of a car, most likely, and any tyre tracks would have been washed out in five minutes with the sort of rain that was coming down.

  ‘If your photographers have got all you want, you can take her away now, we’ve finished with her for the moment. She’s all yours,’ Ison said. He and the pathologist watched closely as the victim’s feet and head were sealed into plastic bags, and then the hands, against the possibility she had fought with her attacker and that fragments of his skin might be under her nails. At the same moment as the body, now in its temporary coffin, was lifted into the waiting ambulance, the rain stopped with disconcerting suddenness and the clouds parted to reveal a full moon shedding an eerie light on to the men squelching around outside the cordoned-off area where the body had lain.

  One of the dripping DCs approached Mayo, his dark hair plastered to his head. ‘Could I have a word, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Spalding, what is it?’

  ‘I think I know who she might be ...’

  Mayo cast his dark look over the constable, a man he was never really sure he understood. A man who kept himself to himself, quiet and dependable, intelligent though apparently unambitious, still a constable and knocking on for forty. A bit of an enigma, all in all, though Mayo wasn’t quarrelling with that. He didn’t brandish the details of his own personal life around for public consumption, either.

  ‘Haven’t seen her for years,’ Spalding went on. A raindrop slid down his nose and hung on the end. ‘And in the state she’s in, I wouldn’t like to be categoric, but I think she’s a woman called Angie Robinson.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  Spalding didn’t look very happy about having said so now. ‘Couldn’t be sure, sir. It was only when we were lifting her – and her hair fell away from her face and ...’ He stopped to brush the raindrop off his nose.

  ‘And you saw the birthmark. OK. Go on.’

  ‘I might be wrong. I don’t think I ever spoke to her more than a couple of times. She was just somebody my wife had met.’

  He must be talking about his ex-wife. It was known that Nick Spalding was another recent casualty of the police force, one whose marriage hadn’t survived the stresses and strains put on it. That much Mayo knew, but no more. ‘Right. You’d better tell me what you know about her – and in what circumstances your wife knew her.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say Roz knew her, sir, she was only an acquaintance.’ He was still reluctant to get involved. ‘Roz and her sister got to meet her through the woman Sophie was working for at the time – some old woman who’d been a famous archaeologist in her day and was writing her memoirs. Lived near Morwen, in a big old house called Flowerdew.’

  ‘This sister, then – she should be able to tell us something about Angie Robinson?’

  ‘If she’s at home and in the right mood,’ Spalding said shortly. ‘And if she wants to talk about it. The old woman at Flowerdew suddenly decided she was going abroad, so Sophie’s job there ended, and since then she’s spent most of her time gadding about the world – in between divorces, that is.’

  ‘Maybe it’d better be your wife we see first in that case.’ Mayo decided he didn’t much like the sound of this Sophie as a witness.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, sir,’ Spalding said quickly. ‘As I say, she didn’t know Angie Robinson much more than I did.’

  ‘We’ve got to start somewhere, man!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Let Sergeant Kite have her address. She’s Mrs –?’

  ‘It’s still Spalding, sir. We’re not divorced, only living apart,’ Spalding said woodenly. ‘She lives in Pennybridge.’

  Pennybridge at eight in the morning was quiet and appealing, looking at its best in
the morning sun, sharp after the night of rain. A picturesque village on the outskirts of Lavenstock whose charms had been the architect of its own downfall, it had attracted estate developers and caused the prices to soar of any old tumbledown cottage anywhere in the vicinity, and especially the period houses clustering round the green. As the well-off moved in, young village people left for flats and council houses in Lavenstock, and eventually the now upmarket village expanded so far it had become little more than a prosperous suburb of Lavenstock. It was the sort of place that brought out all Kite’s Leftist tendencies but he kept his opinions to himself because Abigail refused to be wound up by them and was in any case obviously wrapped up in her own thoughts. Usually bright and chatty, she’d concentrated on her driving and had hardly had a word for the cat since they left Lavenstock. It suited Kite to let her drive; she’d had more than the three or four hours’ sleep he and Mayo had managed to catch.

  Roz Spalding lived in one of the new houses of neo-Georgian design in a small, select crescent just off the main street. There were only about half a dozen of them, set well back, their landscaped front gardens open plan. A small development, select and expensive, every one with at least four bedrooms and a double garage. A notice on a tree said a neighbourhood watch scheme operated here.

  ‘No wonder old Spalding hasn’t got married again,’ Kite said, ‘if his ex’s tastes run to this! Must soak him dry, keeping her in this style.’

  ‘She doesn’t need money from him, she has plenty of her own. A house like this is peanuts to her.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh, word gets around,’ Abigail said, unbuckling her seat-belt. ‘Her old man was loaded, didn’t you know? He and his wife were killed in that air crash over Belgium and everything went to Roz and her sister. Bet she could buy you out, ten times over.’

  ‘That wouldn’t take much,’ Kite said. ‘But now you mention it, I do remember hearing something about it. Come on, let’s get this over with.’