Winding Up the Serpent

by Priscilla Masters

  His friend put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you, Jonah,’ he said. ‘I’d leave her well alone. Let someone else find her.’

  Jonah looked dubious. ‘But I’m her employer,’ he said. ‘She could be hurt. She could be lying there, in pain ... fallen or something. Who else will go?’

  ‘Someone will.’ Paul spoke grimly. ‘And if no one does, all the better.’

  ‘Paul.’ Jonah shook his friend’s hand off his arm.

  ‘I don’t know how you can care at all about her,’ Paul said. ‘I don’t have your nature, Jonah. I can’t forgive her.’ He stared across the room. ‘She’s ruined more lives ... caused more unhappiness ...’ He looked at his friend then. ‘I hate her,’ he said. ‘I hate her.’ He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t go round if I were you. Leave it alone.’

  His dark eyes stared into the doctor’s face and as he spoke he nodded meaningfully, gripping the doctor’s arm now. ‘Leave it alone,’ he said again. ‘Don’t you get involved.’

  Jonah looked confused and embarrassed. ‘What if—’ he started urgently.

  ‘Forget “what if”! Forget it, Jonah.’

  The doctor sighed. His shoulders drooped. ‘Something might have happened to her.’

  ‘We can all live in hope,’ said the undertaker darkly.

  Jonah picked up his bag. ‘I’m going, Paul,’ he said. Haddon gripped his arm again. ‘I mean it, Jonah,’ he said urgently. ‘Promise me you won’t go.’

  Jonah frowned. ‘I...’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Ben was desperate to be let out. Desperate and frightened, too. He gave a whine then a series of loud barks.

  In the bedroom nothing stirred. The breeze had dropped. Outside it began to rain. Droplets splattered on the windowsill. Ben barked again, watched the bed. Nothing moved.

  He darted downstairs, sniffed behind the sofa. Then he squatted uneasily. If she found it she would beat him. He finished and guiltily ran back upstairs.

  If she found it.

  He put two paws on the bed, licked the cold hand.

  By eleven o’clock Evelyn Shiers had finished at the market. She walked into the kitchen and dumped her shopping bag on the table. Strange, she thought, as she caught sight of the red car standing in her neighbour’s drive. Was she on holiday this week? Before she switched on the radio she stood still for a minute listening, her ear cocked like an animal’s for sounds from next door. Silence. Then she heard Ben whining and that made no sense. Marilyn was at home. Her car was in the drive. Why should the dog whine? She frowned as her thoughts progressed slowly towards conclusion. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she muttered. ‘She’s on holiday. She’s in the house – or walking in the town.’

  So why, her small, inner voice said, didn’t she take the dog with her, or put him in the pen outside? Why was he whining? And there was no answer to that.

  ‘Try her again,’ Sally urged, pushing Maureen towards the telephone. ‘The doctor won’t see all her evening patients as well. She’ll have to come in, hangover or no hangover.’

  Maureen looked at her. ‘Have you ever known Sister Smith to have a hangover?’

  Sally pressed the number quickly. She had dialled it so many times this morning she knew it by heart. ‘She must have a hangover. She was all right yesterday and she’s never ill. And she hasn’t rung ...’ Her voice trailed into nothing and she replaced the receiver.

  Jonah left the undertaker’s with a sudden sense of freedom. Spring was in the air. The weather was bright and clean and the journey across the moors to the small isolated village of Flash fitted in with the dream he had always had of English country general practice. If only Pamella could have been with him it would have been perfect. But she would never come now and this was his sadness, because his dream had always been to share this and not to be alone. He glanced at his bag which now occupied her seat and he tried to concentrate on the patient he was about to see, on one of his regular home visits, an old man who had smoked all his life and was now dependent on cylinders of oxygen to give him breath. It wouldn’t be long before he paid the ultimate price for a packet of the cigarettes he had loved.

  The wife was a stringy old bird of seventy-five or thereabouts and she looked after him hand and foot, kept him out of hospital and still washed the sheets by hand, with water drawn from a well. One day Flash would be fed piped water and for a few years families would value it as a luxury. Until then it would have to survive on wells and springs.

  It was as Jonah groped in his bag to check for a syringe that the second thing went wrong that morning. He found to his annoyance that he had run out of fine insulin needles. He rummaged around in the bottom of the bag with one hand, keeping his eyes on the road. He frowned. He could have sworn he had a couple left. He must have used them all. Damn. But at least this distracted him from his sense of loss.

  Evelyn fidgeted all morning, unable to settle to her usual round of duster flicking, vacuum cleaning and spraying indiscriminately with scented polish. She was drawn too frequently towards the window to make an efficient job of the cleaning and she kept peeping out through the curtains for a sign of Marilyn’s pudgy figure, listening all the time for the click-clack of Marilyn’s stilettos. She heard nothing but the dog’s crescendo of yowls. Eventually she stopped altogether, her hand on her duster poised in front of her. She had never heard Ben whine like this. He was generally a quiet dog, well used to his life chained up outside in a pen, a guard dog who kept the house safe by day when the nurse was out working. And in the night the dog kept guard by sleeping at the foot of the stairs in a huge basket. This noisy behaviour was unusual – so strange it made her feel sick and uneasy.

  She watched the house for signs of movement, concentrating on the brightly painted pink front door with its brass knocker, its huge brass hinges and letterbox. She stared at the door, willing it to open, hardly caring now that Marilyn might see her. In fact she would be relieved to see her, might even wave. But the door remained firmly shut. She glanced at the windows. The downstairs curtains were drawn. The red Astra sat motionless in the drive.

  And still there was no sign of movement and no sound except the dog’s anguished howls punctuated by frenzied, maddened yapping.

  All morning she thought of walking up the drive, knocking on the door and shouting, asking whether something was the matter, but she was put off by the dog. Evelyn had always been a little frightened by Ben. And there was that incident about a year ago ...

  ... She had been idly glancing out of the kitchen window – not spying – but she had seen a van pull up abruptly at the foot of the drive. A man had jumped out, slammed the door, run up the drive and hammered on the front door, shouting, swearing obscenities.

  Evelyn’s heart fluttered at the memory.

  Marilyn’s dumpy figure had appeared in the doorway, hands on hips. She had been wearing a satin thing, fallen open to reveal plump breasts. She had laughed at the man, shouted back, sworn to match his expletives. She had stepped towards him and the satin thing had slipped off her shoulders so that almost the full breast was exposed, pink crescent of nipple showing. She’d wagged her finger in the man’s face, cavernous red mouth wide open. They had both shouted and then Marilyn’s voice had dropped suddenly and the man seemed subdued. Then Marilyn had glanced across and seen her watching.

  Both had turned on her with a torrent of foul, ugly language and Evelyn had dropped to the floor, shaking and frightened. She heard Marilyn shouting, threatening to set the dog on her. She had been frightened of Marilyn Smith ever since ...

  So instead of approaching the house she did other things to absorb her attention, plumping up cushions, wiping the front doorstep, attending to a cupboard that needed sorting out. But when men’s sweaters, shirts, ties, socks tumbled out in a woollen jumble she shuddered, picked them up, stuffed them back in the cupboard again and slammed the door shut.

  She muttered to herself and polished windows, dusted shelves, w
ashed the kitchen floor. But she left the radio switched off, and every few minutes she stood by the kitchen window and peered over the low wall at the house and listened to the noisy barks.

  It was at lunchtime that she knew something was definitely wrong.

  Marilyn would not have left the dog alone inside the house for so long. He would have wrecked it. Marilyn was in there too. Evelyn stared at the house with mounting fear and she wrung her hands because she didn’t know what to do. ‘Oh, help,’ she said. ‘Please – somebody must help me.’

  Ben was terrified now. He whined and slunk across the bedroom floor, tail down. He watched the still figure on the bed and knew she would find the mess downstairs. Then she would beat him.

  He growled and whined, then ran downstairs into the kitchen. Some drops from the dripping tap slaked his thirst. He licked some meat from a plate on the side. Then he bounded upstairs again ...

  When two o’clock struck and there was still no sign of movement and the only sounds were the yelps of the dog, Evelyn telephoned the surgery and asked for Sister Smith.

  If only Marilyn would pick up the phone at the other end. But when her call was answered she said only, ‘Sister Smith.’ Then she panicked and threw the receiver down on to its cradle.

  Jonah watched his old patient gasping for breath. With a tinge of pity he touched the old man’s hand.

  ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘you’re very bad today. You need the hospital. I can’t keep you alive here.’ He spoke slowly and clearly in short sentences.

  The old man understood. He closed his eyes and answered in a dry, rasping voice. ‘If I’m too bad for home, Doctor, I’m too bad to live. No hospital for me. I don’t want a couple of days – maybe months – bought at that price.’

  The pauses between words grew longer and on the last word he closed his eyes. Neither of the two people watching would have been surprised if he had not spoken again.

  His wife touched Jonah’s arm. ‘Let ’im stay here, Doctor. If ’is time has come so be it.’ Her face was set and hard, unsmiling, her leathered complexion timeless, strong and unyielding. The moors toughened their women.

  Jonah nodded. ‘So be it.’

  The old man struggled to open his eyes. ‘Yes, Doctor. She’s right.’ He snapped the oxygen mask back over his nose and mouth. It steamed up with his breath and the wrinkled eyelids closed again wearily. His face was gaunt and grey with the struggle.

  ‘I can give you an injection,’ Jonah said. ‘It’ll help the breathing.’ He looked again at the old man. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a bed in the hospital – just to give your wife a break?’

  The old man clawed the doctor’s hand and he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll die if I go in there.’

  Jonah bit back the obvious answer. He took from his bag a syringe and an ampoule of Aminophylline. Carefully he put a tourniquet on the skinny arm, selected a prominent blue rope vein and drove the drug in. The old man’s eyes closed.

  By three in the afternoon the dog’s obvious distress was becoming more than Evelyn could bear. She stood with her cup of tea by the kitchen window, listening to the yowling.

  She was suddenly so sure that Marilyn would not appear in the doorway and climb into the car as she had watched her do a thousand times that Evelyn did an unbelievable thing. She took a deep breath, unlocked the front door, marched through the pink lions rampant on Marilyn’s gatepost, walked up to the front door, raised the letterbox and dropped it again, pressed the doorbell and shouted Marilyn’s name. Her voice bounced around the walls.

  But the dog bounded down the stairs with a fierce growl and it terrified her so she ran back to the house and rang the surgery again.

  ‘Please,’ she spoke into the phone, ‘please, is Marilyn Smith there? Something is wrong with her dog.’ The words tumbled out and she replaced the receiver without giving the other end a chance to speak.

  In the surgery Maureen, who had taken the call, stood and stared at the telephone, blinking behind owlish glasses. She felt cold and uneasy. Dead hands stole up her back. ‘It was that person again,’ she said, ‘asking for Sister Smith.’

  ‘Ring the police,’ Sally said decisively. ‘Ring them now.’ And when her colleague didn’t move she grabbed the phone. ‘Ring the bloody police.’

  Chapter 3

  The slick white car with its fluorescent pink strip had been cruising near the market square, its occupants checking that inconsiderately parked cars were not blocking the narrow road and keeping an eye on a gang of youths clustered outside the video shop, when it took the call. It switched on its flashing blue light and sped up the High Street, turned right into Silk Street and arrived minutes later. The two uniformed policemen crunched up the gravel drive and in passing tried the door of the parked car. It was locked. They knocked at the front door and were rewarded by Ben’s frantic barks.

  They looked at one another uncertainly. ‘I don’t fancy meeting him face to face,’ said one of them.

  They shouted through the letterbox, feeling slightly foolish. ‘Hello! Anyone at home? Are you there, Miss Smith? He-ll-o! Hello, Miss Smith. Mar-i-lun!’

  Only the dog responded and they quickly dropped the flap. They walked around the back of the house, trying windows while the dog followed them from room to room, alternating mad barks with hostile growls. They watched him through the window, then went back to the car and sent a message over the radio.

  ‘No one around, dog going mad. No sign of a break-in. Have to get in but need help with the dog.’

  ‘Message received ... Over.’

  Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski replaced the receiver, scribbling down the details in his notebook.

  He knew instinctively this was no hoax. They wouldn’t break in then meet her returning from a night away or a shopping spree. That much they knew from the dog’s behaviour, but out of habit Mike tried Marilyn Smith’s number himself. As he had expected, no one picked up the phone. He replaced the set.

  He ran over the facts quickly in his mind... A single woman, fortyish, lived alone, in good health. Unexpectedly she had failed to turn up at work. She had not answered the phone and a couple of strange telephone calls had been made to the surgery, asking for her then hanging up without leaving a name. Car in the drive, locked. No obvious sign of a break-in, according to the uniformed lads. Dog whining.

  And this was the alarm call. According to the surgery she was devoted to the dog; they were inseparable. She never left him except when she went to work and then the dog was safely put in a pen outside. DS Korpanski glanced at the closed door and grimaced. He supposed he’d have to tell her.

  Mike, as he liked to be called, was more than six feet tall, dark-eyed with black hair bottle-brush short, and a thick bull neck. His father had been a loyal Pole, tempted to fight for the British, then seduced to stay by a local woman. Mike was their only, adored son. Devoted to body building, his shape revealed the hours he spent every week at the gym, pumping iron. With bulging biceps, a straight, strong back and heavy hamstrings, he was a popular member of the force, a supervisory officer for the juniors to emulate. And cheerful, too, with a ready grin and a good nature – except when he was either embarrassed or angry or both, as he was now. He knocked on DI Piercy’s door and waited, despising himself for having to stand outside until her whim called him in.

  He planted himself legs apart in front of her desk, so close he could almost have touched the thick dark hair that just touched the crisp white blouse. Her hands rolled a pen between her slim fingers as she listened to what he had to say, her head tilted upwards, intelligent blue eyes fixing on his as she concentrated. And the furrow between her eyebrows, which never quite left her face even when she laughed, deepened as she frowned. It took him seconds to fill her in and he watched her eyes shine at the challenge and knew that however wide the gulf was between them – and it was wide – they shared at least one thing – love of the work.

  As soon as he had finished she cleared her throat and fired
a few abrupt questions.

  ‘Who was it who rang the surgery?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘When was she last seen?’

  ‘Yesterday, about five, when she left work.’

  Without saying another word she stood up, unhooked her jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it on over the white blouse.

  ‘Lead on,’ she said smartly. ‘Lead on, Sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’ The tight sarcasm made his voice sound tired and disillusioned. He felt suddenly bitter as she moved towards the door, unmistakably feminine, a waft of light, clean perfume that touched his nostrils emphasizing the fact.

  Joanna tightened her mouth at his tone and her frank smile evaporated.

  ‘Did you say there was a dog?’ she asked sharply.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, a German Shepherd and the neighbour said it’s trained as a guard dog. Apparently it acts like a bodyguard to the woman.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ she said approvingly, ‘for a single woman, living alone.’ She met Mike’s eyes unflinchingly. ‘Perhaps I should invest in one, Sergeant.’

  He nodded. ‘Perhaps you should.’ He stood awkwardly, miserably uncertain, finding his position too uncomfortable until she spoke decisively.

  ‘So ring the vet.’

  Mike flushed. ‘Right, ma’am.’

  The vet turned up in an old mud-splattered green Landrover.

  Joanna wrinkled her nose. ‘Have you driven through a cowshed to get here?’

  The vet laughed, taking no offence. ‘Scent of the country, Inspector,’ he said. ‘If you want to work in an area that stinks of CFCs and “Country Meadow” from Sainsbury’s you’d better return to the city. I happen to prefer the real thing.’ He grinned at her and held out his hand. ‘Inspector Piercy, I presume. I’m Roderick Beeston.'

  She found it difficult to resent his good-natured, blunt manner. Instead she smiled. ‘I think we have a difficult dog,’ she said.

  The vet’s eyes narrowed. ‘Really?’