Scared to Live bcadf-7

by Stephen Booth

  ‘It doesn’t always work like that.’

  ‘His other clients won’t feel happy about the police asking questions. He must understand that co-operation is in his own best interests.’ Kessen seemed to think this settled the problem. ‘All right, I want Grice to list every single room he’s visited in Bain House. Then we can match up his account with the prints we lifted. In particular, I want to know whether he was ever in that master bedroom.’

  Before he could move on, the phone rang, and Hitchens took the call. A smile came over his face.

  ‘It seems Mr Grice’s fingerprints were found in two of the bedrooms at Bain House, including the one where the victim slept. So if he says he was never in those rooms, he’s lying.’

  Kessen looked around the group. ‘DS Fry. I know you’ve got a lot on, but perhaps you’d like to have a go at our Mr Grice this time.’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  ‘And who the heck are you?’ said Eric Grice, winding the orange cord around the handle of his power drill.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Fry.’

  ‘Oh, aye? Reckon you can get more out of me than your mates did? I don’t have anything more to tell, you know.’

  ‘Well, let’s see, shall we?’

  ‘You might have time to waste, but I haven’t. There’s work to do.’

  ‘Mr Grice, you’ve given us a list of the rooms you visited in Bain House. Are you sure this is a comprehensive list? You haven’t left any rooms out?’

  ‘No, it’s right,’ he said. ‘A lot of the work I did was on the outside, like.’

  ‘So the only room upstairs that you were ever present in is the bathroom — is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case, Mr Grice, how do you explain the fact that we recovered your fingerprints from two of the bedrooms?’

  ‘The bedrooms?’

  ‘The master bedroom, where Rose Shepherd slept, and the second bedroom, just along the landing, where she kept her desk.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘You never did any jobs for her in those rooms?’

  He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted me going in her bedrooms. Like I told you, she was a very private person, Miss Shepherd. She kept me at arm’s length, so far as she could. I always knew the house was out of bounds, except for when I had to be somewhere to get a job done. I never even went upstairs to use the bathroom. She had a downstairs cloakroom, you know.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand, Mr Grice. I’m telling you that we found your fingerprints in two of the bedrooms at Bain House. Are you still denying that you went into those rooms?’

  ‘Well, like I said — ’

  Fry could feel herself starting to get impatient. Did the man think that he could alter the facts just by continuing to deny them? She leaned across the table, startling him in mid-sentence.

  ‘What were you doing in Miss Shepherd’s bedroom?’ she said. ‘And before you answer, think about this, Mr Grice: a murdered woman’s body was found in one of those bedrooms, and you’re the only person whose presence we can prove there. If you don’t have any explanation, how do you think that’s going to look when we charge you and prove to a court that you’re lying?’

  Grice blinked. He seemed bothered to be scrutinized so closely. But Fry waited, not moving or relaxing her stare while she gave him time to process the implications. Finally, his eyes flickered to the side to avoid her gaze.

  ‘It was my sister, Beryl,’ he said.

  Fry frowned. ‘What was?’

  ‘There’s always been a lot of talk in the village about Miss Shepherd, you know. Nobody knew anything about her, but that didn’t stop them talking. You know what it’s like — everyone had their own ideas.’

  ‘In other words, it was all speculation?’

  ‘Well, yes. There were a lot of half-baked stories. None of them were true, of course. You know what it’s like — a lot of biddies who watch too much telly.’

  ‘So what relevance is this?’

  ‘Beryl kept on and on about it. She knew I was the only person who Miss Shepherd let into Bain House, so she thought I ought to know all about the woman. I told her I didn’t know a thing, but she kept pestering me. Pestering and pestering. Of course, she wanted to show off to her pals in the village, and tell the other biddies that she knew the proper facts, all the stuff they didn’t.’

  ‘The inside information.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. She wanted to show off, like. I thought it was a lot of daft nonsense. I told her they all ought to find something better to talk about. But she wouldn’t let up. So next time I was in Bain House, I took a chance to have a bit of a nosy about. To see what I could see. Just to find a bit of something to keep Beryl quiet, that’s all.’

  ‘So you managed to get into the bedrooms?’

  ‘Yes. Only for a quick look round. To see if she had any dead bodies or mad relatives hidden away in there, you know.’

  Grice gave her a tentative smile, but Fry refused to acknowledge the joke.

  ‘But you said Miss Shepherd didn’t like you going upstairs. How did you get into the bedrooms without her noticing?’

  ‘I was mending a joint on a pipe in the kitchen, and I told her I had to turn off the water at the stopcock in the bathroom. She didn’t know any better, you see.’

  ‘Where was Miss Shepherd while you were nosing around in the bedrooms?’

  ‘She was downstairs, in her sitting room. She went in there to be away from me, I suppose. So I didn’t go in the front bedroom, because I thought she might hear my footsteps.’

  ‘And did you find anything interesting to tell your sister?’

  ‘Not really. Well, nothing at all, as a matter of fact. It was boring.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘So I had to make some stuff up.’

  ‘Hold on — you made things up about Miss Shepherd to tell your sister?’

  ‘Well, yes. Otherwise she would have kept pestering me. I had to get her off my back.’

  ‘And no doubt your sister would have spread this false information around her friends in Foxlow?’

  ‘That was the general idea. I didn’t think there’d be any harm in it. None of the stuff was ever likely to get back to Miss Shepherd herself, because she didn’t talk to anyone in the village. See what I mean? So it was harmless.’

  Fry caught her breath. ‘What false information did you make up, Mr Grice?’

  ‘I can’t remember now.’

  ‘I can’t believe it was anything too complicated. You don’t have the imagination.’

  He glowered at her. ‘I don’t know. It was just what came to mind.’

  ‘Let me have a guess, then. Did you tell your sister Miss Shepherd had a hidden safe in the house where she kept all her valuables?’

  Grice pulled his face. ‘Yes, probably.’

  ‘Did you tell your sister Miss Shepherd was a retired teacher from Scotland?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I couldn’t really tell — ’

  ‘And, Mr Grice, this is very important — did you tell your sister that Rose Shepherd had a friend called Dougie in Glasgow?’

  Eric Grice nodded slowly, but said nothing.

  Fry sat back. ‘Well, sir, for a man who thought he wasn’t doing any harm, you’ve certainly wasted a lot of people’s time.’

  ‘God damn the man,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘I could cheerfully strangle him with his own drill cord.’

  ‘At least he’s talking now. I’ve got someone taking a statement from him, and we’ll speak to his sister, too, to see if their accounts tally. But I believe he’s telling us the truth now.’

  ‘Meanwhile, it’s back to square one in our picture of Rose Shepherd. When we ignore all the stuff that Grice made up to keep the gossips happy, the information we have about her now amounts to what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It can’t do.’

  ‘Sweet FA, if you prefer.’

  ‘No, no. We do have some verifiable facts. W
e’ve got to have some.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  Hitchens looked at the board, scrubbed off some of the details and studied what was left. ‘She’s a British passport holder, born in London. And we’ve got her age — she was born in 1944.’

  ‘A wartime baby.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe her parents were killed in the Blitz or something.’

  ‘I thought we were looking at the verifiable facts.’

  ‘OK. Well, we’ve got her name, age, place of birth. And her physical details — height, weight, hair colour. She moved to Foxlow ten months ago, and she came here from London. She had plenty of funds, because Bain House wasn’t cheap, and she was a cash buyer.’

  ‘And apart from that …?’

  Hitchens tilted his head on one side to look at the photograph of the victim from a different angle. It didn’t seem to tell him anything new.

  ‘That’s about it,’ he said. ‘We’re no nearer to filling in her past history. Or to tracing any personal contacts, now the famous Dougie from Glasgow has proved mythical.’

  ‘Have we talked to everyone in her address book?’

  ‘Almost everyone. One or two companies that are listed have gone out of business. The odd thing is that her book only dates from the day she moved into Bain House. Apart from the solicitor and the estate agent, nobody we’ve spoken to had any contact with her before November last year.’

  ‘Did any of these individuals detect an accent?’

  ‘Only those who were offered a leading question by the officer interviewing them. In other words, if they were asked whether Miss Shepherd had a Scottish accent, they agreed she might have done. Otherwise, they had no suggestions to offer.’

  ‘Grice has a lot to answer for.’

  ‘Agreed. But I don’t think it would make much difference in this case. None of them could really agree on her appearance or manner either. One said Miss Shepherd had a nice smile, another said she was very reserved and never smiled at all. We’ve had a lot of different estimates of her age, too. You’d hardly think they’d met the same person.’

  ‘Well, a harmless middle-aged woman — who’d take much notice of her, unless she did something to draw attention to herself?’

  ‘And she didn’t do that.’

  Hitchens spun round and looked at Fry. ‘A harmless middle-aged woman that no one takes any notice of. Do you think you’ll end up like that one day, Diane?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Why not? We all get middle-aged, don’t we?’

  ‘The key word is “harmless”,’ said Fry.

  The DI laughed. ‘You’re right. I can’t see anyone not noticing you, no matter how old you get.’

  ‘Did we get anything from her contacts list?’

  ‘Well, her dentist can tell us that Rose Shepherd had a few previous fillings. Her GP prescribed her Nitrazepam for her sleeping problems. And the garage can tell us what the emissions were like on her Volvo. Pick the bones out of that, if you can.’

  ‘Why did she have trouble sleeping, I wonder?’

  ‘Who can say?’

  ‘Well, at least we have a confirmation of her ID from the dental records. We don’t have to wait for the GP to get back.’

  Hitchens opened the file. ‘One thing we did find in the house was the receipt for her car. It was bought from a Volvo dealer in Chesterfield and delivered to Bain House a few days after Miss Shepherd moved in. The receipt gives the recorded mileage at the time of sale, and we checked it against the current reading. She did about three hundred miles in a year. She was the proverbial careful lady owner.’

  ‘My God, she hardly went anywhere,’ said Fry.

  ‘She had no one to visit, did she?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  He raised his face to drink in the sounds. Cars andmotorbikes; thumping music from the pub, the thud ofa diesel exhaust. There were loud voices as a crowd ofyouths and girls queued to get into Brody’s nightclubon the top floor of the Pavilion. Laughing, shrieking,squealing. The noise echoed off the front of the building,allowing him to bathe in the clamour.

  He was waiting in the bus pull-in near the tufa fountain,talking to the fish as they popped up to see if he’dbrought them any food. Hissing, splashing, plopping.But he mustn’t stay here too long, or a policeman wouldcome his way, suspecting that he planned to stalk someridiculous teenage girl in a short skirt. Now, then. Now then. Move along.

  He laughed. It was so funny, the image of thepoliceman, thumping about in his boots, creaking in hisyellow plastic jacket, the radio squawking constantly inhis ear, sending him messages, messages, more messages,telling him where to go and not to go, instructions andorders, comments and commands, barking and babbling.How did he stand it? The policeman must be deaf. Deafin his mind. It was so funny that he laughed again.Chuckle, chortle, snigger.

  But he knew immediately he’d laughed out loud. Hecould tell by the faces of the nightclub queue, turnedtowards him in a glare of light. Derisive, hostile. Someonetittered, someone jeered. Something jabbered and mutteredat the back of his brain. It was time to be elsewhere.

  He turned, hunching his shoulders inside his overcoat,and walked towards the Promenade Fish Bar. Hewas following the lure of a rumbling motorcycle engine,a two-tone horn on a car racing up the road. Furtheron, he could hear the sounds of an amusement arcade.Rattle, crash, boom. They wouldn’t let him in, but hecould stand outside and enjoy the buzz of the traffic, too.

  Night-time was the most difficult. There was too littlenoise. Always too little. He was sure he wasn’t alone infeeling most vulnerable at night. Darkness could hideanything, couldn’t it? It was populated with fantasiesand horrors, ghosts and demons, and all the other fearsthat chattered like monkeys in the corners of his mind.Not to mention the burglars and rapists, the crazedaxemen muttering in the alleys, drawn to the sound ofhuman breathing like moths to a flame.

  Every time he went to sleep, he knew he might wakeup to a presence in the room, a voice congealed intoreality. He pictured the moment when the breathing hecould hear was not his own, when the shadow behindthe door began to move, when an arm brushed againstthe wall, a whisper of fabric in the silence and a hoarsemumble of his name, before the final lunge of the knife.He imagined those last moments so often that he couldfeel his limbs tangle in the sheets as he thrashed to escapethe blade. Slash, stab, rip. There, what did I tell you?

  A hospital room was no better. The sounds that drifteddown corridors during the night were strange and incomprehensible.Like bedlam, the music of the madhouse.Howl, roar, bark at the moon. And not only sounds, butsmells. They could blend in the mind like a thick soup,swirling and forming pictures that he’d rather not seeinside his head. There were half-spoken memories thathe’d carry for ever, recollections of unseen people discussinghim, their voices hushed and murmuring, commentingon his state of health, using words that were unknownto him. Planning his disposal, as if he were an animal.

  Of course, it was stupid to fear the unknown. Peoplewho did that were just projecting their own ugly thoughtson to a blank mask, like throwing handfuls of mud ata marble statue. Why live in terror of the unfamiliar?Why let the silent, dripping darkness of the imaginationdisplace the wicked reality?

  Those were the things that made other people afraid,but he knew he wasn’t like them. He’d been made differentlyfrom the rest of humanity; his mind was constructedof a glittering, fragile crystal instead of some greasy clay,scooped from the earth. His consciousness rang like abell, echoing and tinkling, speaking his name, callinghim softly, tolling with disdain.

  Some of these places would be closing for the nightsoon. Matlock Bath would empty, and he’d have to gohome. He’d have to face another night, counting tohimself to fill the silent hours, reciting the alphabet,and cursing, cursing … One, two, three, and DAMN,DAMN, DAMN!

  He didn’t care about the unknown. Not in the least.He knew exactly what to be afraid of, and it was somethingall too real. He heard it wailing in the distance.It was difficult to drown
out, even now. He knew howdangerous it could be, and where it would come from.He just didn’t know when it would finally draw nearand speak.

  19

  Thursday, 27 October

  Early next morning, an officer from the incident room entered DCI Kessen’s office at West Street, and placed several slim files on the desk. Watched by Hitchens, Kessen thumbed through the files.

  ‘Well, it looks as though we’ve got the first hits from our Nichols trawl,’ he said.

  ‘Any Simons?’ asked Hitchens.

  ‘Oh, yes. Three. One of them lives in Ashbourne, and he’s ten years old.’

  ‘Damn it.’

  ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t eliminate him out of hand. Kids are given mobile phones at a very young age these days.’

  ‘And high-powered semi-automatics?’

  ‘Let’s hope not. Get Ashbourne section to talk to the parents anyway, check there isn’t some remote connection with Rose Shepherd. It seems pretty unlikely, but we’d best rule it out.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘The second Simon Nichols is eighty-five years old. Actually, his full name is Edward Simon Nichols, so strictly speaking he’s ESN. He’s in a residential care home in Alfreton, but he could have some connection with Rose Shepherd.’

  ‘We need to spread the net wider, don’t we?’

  ‘Nichols isn’t an uncommon name,’ said Kessen. ‘There could be hundreds of Simons around the country. But unfortunately, these seem to be the only leads we have at the moment. Do you want to allocate them, Paul?’

  Hitchens took the files into the CID room and passed on the news to the officers on the early shift.

  ‘Is there one for me?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Yes, I saved this one for you specially, Ben. This Nichols lives on a farm, so it’ll suit you down to the ground. The address we have for him is Lea Farm, near Uppertown — wherever the heck that is.’

  ‘I know Uppertown. It’s near Bonsall.’

  ‘Bonsall?’ said Hitchens. ‘Just a minute — ’

  ‘Yes, Rose Shepherd made calls to a phone box in that area, didn’t she?’

  Hitchens smiled as he handed Cooper the file.