Winding Up the Serpent

by Priscilla Masters

  They were quiet for the next few miles but she could sense Mike was building up to say something. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was debating whether to risk it. Eventually he did.

  ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he paused, ‘Joanna. I’ll tell you why I object to women in the police force. They aren’t equal – that’s why. When you get a flat tyre it’s the bloody men who come and change the wheel. When you have to go out on a call you never send a woman police officer on her own. Rape victims, women – have to have a woman officer. Violent situations – always spare the woman. We have to mollycoddle you, make allowances all the time for your sex. That makes me angry. I have nothing against you personally. In fact, if you want to know the truth I quite like you. For what you are I think you’ve your head screwed on. But I think women want it all ways. They even,’ he carried on angrily, rising to his subject, ‘want a special MP now for women’s rights. What about men’s rights? – that’s what I want to know. Positive discrimination – that’s what it is, Joanna. That’s what men are suffering these days. We don’t know where we are any more.’

  She took in a deep breath. ‘I quite agree,’ she said calmly. He stopped in his tracks. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do. You’re right, Mike. Things have tipped too far. Men are confused, but I’m not personally responsible. Women have had the vote for less than a hundred years. Give us time. Let us settle down. We’ve not long left the kitchen sink behind. We’re still adjusting. Don’t be hard on us. In a few years we won’t need to be either strident and masculine or bimbos. We’ll be well-adjusted citizens.’ She grinned at him, glad he had voiced his prejudices. ‘Until then, Mike, let’s work together and I will try not to use my sex to manipulate you. And you don’t resent me – or my sex – if we get it wrong sometimes? All right?’

  The policeman smiled and for the first time she felt the warmth of friendship towards him.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but don’t expect me to make allowances. Mind you,’ he warned, ‘if I see your standards slipping ...’

  ‘You’ll be the first to throw bricks at me,’ she finished. ‘Now is that all?’

  ‘There is something else,’ he said unhappily, ‘that you haven’t touched on. We police work odd hours – day and night. My wife – God bless her – is a jealous woman. She’s not too happy about me gallivanting all over the place with you either. You have to understand it’s another objection. She’d far rather me be with a bloke.’

  Joanna sighed. ‘That I can’t do anything about,’ she said. ‘Male prejudices are easy. Female ones impossible to deal with. But I’d be very unhappy about you being taken off the case.’ She swung the wheel to leave the motorway and join the M50. ‘Hell,’ she said, ‘I’m only just getting used to you.’

  They were quiet from then on all the way into Cardiff, but it was a companionable silence. As they left the motorway and approached the centre of Cardiff Mike pulled out an A-Z of the city and Joanna manoeuvred the car along busy roads to an endless row of neat terraced houses.

  They were tall, three storeys high, each with its own gable window and a tiny pocket handkerchief garden entered by a small wrought iron gate. She pulled into a space in the long line of cars and together they took the three steps between a row of tubbed shrubs to the door. Mike knocked.

  A curtain in the bay window was flicked open and they found themselves staring at a pair of unfriendly dark eyes.

  Joanna smiled encouragingly and held up her ID card. ‘Police,’ she mouthed. She turned to Mike. ‘Back to the charm school,’ she said.

  Through ribbed glass the furred shape of a woman approached the front door and it was tugged. But the damp made it stick and it needed a shove from Mike to swing it wide.

  The woman stood blocking it. ‘Yes?’ she said suspiciously, glancing up and down the street. ‘Has there been another break-in?’

  ‘No.’ Joanna drew a deep breath. This was not going to be easy. ‘You are Mrs Smith?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said, ‘I am.’

  Joanna stepped forward. ‘The mother of Marilyn Smith?’ she asked.

  The woman glared at them. ‘Yes. I suppose you’re the detectives from Staffordshire they told me about.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  So – one question at least answered. Marilyn’s mother was definitely alive and well. But Mrs Smith’s next response took her aback.

  ‘Who has to pay for the funeral?’ she snapped. ‘I’m not a wealthy woman. I only have my pension to live on. And Marilyn won’t be sending me no more money now, will she?’

  Joanna muttered something, shocked, and glanced at Mike. His face was wooden, his eyes carefully averted.

  ‘Well, come in, come in,’ the woman said sharply. ‘It doesn’t do me any good having police here. People will wonder.’

  She glared at Joanna. ‘People will talk,’ she said, pressing her lips together. ‘Where are you parked? Not right outside, I hope.’ She leaned her head to one side. ‘And I bet you’re in a marked car.’

  Joanna reassured her. ‘We never travel in marked cars,’ she said. ‘We’re CID.’

  ‘Same difference. I don’t want the neighbours thinking...’ She peered at them. ‘And they’re quick to think round here.’

  ‘We’re parked a little up the road.’ Already Joanna felt a profound dislike for this woman. Once inside she wasted no time. ‘I’m afraid we still don’t know how your daughter died,’ she began. ‘The pathologist will be carrying out some more tests. Until we know her cause of death we cannot release the body for burial. They’ll be holding an inquest just as soon as we’ve gathered all the facts.’

  Marilyn’s mother looked sourly at her. ‘And when will that be?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s difficult to say.’ She glanced at the woman’s face. It was impassive.

  ‘I’m not rich,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘She’ll have to be buried in Leek. I can’t afford to have her body brought all the way down here. Expensive.’

  It was neither the time nor the place but Joanna said it all the same. ‘You will stand to inherit quite a bit of money from her estate as her next of kin, even if she died intestate.’

  The woman looked at her scornfully. ‘She was only a nurse,’ she said. ‘She won’t have much – not if I know Marilyn. She always was a spender.’

  Joanna was at a loss. It was Mike who chipped in.

  ‘She did have a house, and a car.’

  ‘Well, that’s something,’ she said, and they left it at that.

  Suddenly Mrs Smith seemed to brighten. ‘I’m forgetting my manners,’ she said. ‘You’d better come into the parlour.’

  Joanna didn’t think people still had parlours these days – chill, comfortless rooms with hard-backed chairs kept for best to impress. She followed Mrs Smith and Mike and sat down gingerly on the edge of an oak chair with a Rexine seat, while Mike stood near the door as though ready for escape.

  She glanced around the room until her eyes rested on one of the few ornaments on the mantelpiece. It was a photograph of two newly qualified nurses on either side of a young man in a white coat. They looked a close trio, their arms entwined.

  The plump girl with very dark hair was unmistakably Marilyn Smith. But the other?

  Mrs Smith followed her glance. ‘That’s Pamella,’ she said. ‘She was Marilyn’s best friend.’ She jabbed her finger at the third figure in the white coat. ‘She married him. He was a doctor. Marilyn works for him.’ She stopped speaking. ‘Worked for him,’ she corrected. ‘She worked for him. Of course that was taken a while ago.’

  Joanna studied Pamella’s face. Light brown hair, alive, sensitive, vivacious-looking. Very little make-up, perfect white teeth and pencil slim. It was easy to see why Jonah Wilson had fallen for her and not for the other young nurse in the photograph.

  She decided it was time to ask some questions. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but we do need to ask just a few things.’

  Mrs Smith looked immediately h
ostile. ‘Whatever she got up to in her own time was her own affair. She was a big girl,’ she added defensively, ‘and always wilful.’ Her dark eyes bored holes into Joanna. ‘There wasn’t much love lost between me and my daughter,’ she said.

  She perched uncomfortably on her chair, biting her lip. ‘I don’t really understand all this,’ she said. ‘Marilyn was never ill. How can she have died?’ A hurt tone entered her voice. ‘She was as strong as an ox. Why hasn’t anybody explained? Will I have to travel all the way up there to the inquest?’ She looked pained. ‘All that expense …’

  Joanna explained there was no real need for Mrs Smith to travel up to the inquest. At the same time she was unable to resist the comment that most parents would have wanted to travel to their daughter’s inquest.

  ‘But my arthritis ...’ Mrs Smith said, and Joanna, meeting Mike’s amused eyes, gave up.

  Bereavement had been the subject of one of Joanna’s written examinations when she had had to discuss the telling of a family that one of their members had died suddenly. Then it had been purely theoretical – she had never done it. But now she knew – whatever emotion you described and laid at the feet of a recently bereaved person you could never be wrong.

  She sighed and listened to Mrs Smith’s whining voice, complaining about her daughter. ‘Kept herself to herself... Never helped the family ... After her father died she didn’t care about me ... Never visited. Never came to Cardiff …’ Her tone became increasingly self-pitying. ‘I was always writing to her – a letter a week. She sent money, though – that was a help. But underneath she was a selfish little thing – always was.’

  How many times had Joanna heard the disappointment parents feel when their children have not reached expectations? ‘You wrote regularly?’ she said.

  Mrs Smith’s angry eyes turned on her. ‘You have to keep in touch,’ she said. ‘But she hardly ever wrote back. I didn’t know how she was, what she was doing. I didn’t have a clue. It was like I didn’t have a daughter.’

  Joanna glanced at Mike ... It was like she didn’t have a daughter. It was like the daughter didn’t have a mother. Mike smiled.

  Joanna was thinking of the letter she and Mike had read. Pages and pages of gossip, prying, intimate, insinuating gossip poured out on to paper. Mrs Smith had had nothing better to do with her time than peep through net curtains and observe the comings and goings of the neighbourhood. Like Evelyn, Mrs Smith’s life had been seen through net curtains and windows. Vicariously. And her letters to Marilyn had been filled with it. Joanna felt a deep revulsion for this nosy woman who took such malicious delight in relaying the information to her daughter. And the daughter, Joanna thought. What had she really been like? A cruel manipulative nurse ... who had used her intimate knowledge of people to financial, greedy advantage?

  Mrs Smith was glaring at her. ‘So how did she die? Was it drink? Drugs? Where was she? Was she up to no good?’

  Joanna cursed the uniformed locals. Had they told her so little? She forced herself to do her job. ‘She died at home,’ she said steadily, ‘in bed and, it appears, alone.’

  ‘She was too young for a heart attack,’ the woman snapped.

  Joanna met her eyes. ‘The pathologist doesn’t know what she died of.’

  The woman’s eyes grew round and incredulous. ‘In this day and age? Well,’ she said, ‘he’d better find out. I’m her mother and I want to know how my daughter died.’

  Joanna crossed the room and picked up the photograph of Marilyn Smith. No, even in this picture, in the flush of her success, she was not a pretty girl. There lurked something mean in the face that linked her to her mother.

  ‘The coroner will hold the inquest as soon as the police, pathologist and forensic lab have ascertained all the facts,’ she said.

  Mrs Smith picked on one word. ‘Forensic,’ she repeated. ‘Are you trying to say my daughter was murdered?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Joanna said patiently. ‘We don’t know how she died.’

  A swift, calculating expression crossed Mrs Smith’s face. ‘When will her stuff be released, then?’

  Joanna declined to comment. She was struggling to keep her temper. At the same time she was coming to the conclusion that Marilyn’s mother was the most obnoxious woman she had ever met in her life.

  ‘I can’t say,’ she said shortly. ‘Soon – we hope. Mrs Smith ... Do you think it is possible Marilyn might have committed suicide?’

  ‘Hah.’ Mrs Smith’s expletive banished the thought. ‘My daughter,’ she said viciously, ‘loved life. She wouldn’t have wanted to die.’ Her voice was defiant, challenging. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted to miss anything. I know my daughter did not commit suicide.’ Something contemptuous entered her voice. ‘She wouldn’t have had the guts, Madame Policewoman.’

  ‘Well, in that case it is possible – if we don’t find a natural cause of death—’ She stopped. It was against all police rules to mention this word before foul play could be proven. ‘It could have been murder.’

  ‘How?’ Mrs Smith sounded angry.

  ‘We don’t know yet.’ Joanna felt helpless. The frustration was eating at her. She knew the facts were lining up, underneath her fingertips. She simply wasn’t able to read them.

  Mrs Smith pressed her lips together and looked suddenly cunning and shrewd. ‘You do think someone murdered Marilyn, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Joanna said. She gave Mrs Smith a contact telephone number, told her to ring if she remembered anything that might be significant and rose to leave. Mike followed her along the dingy hall. As she reached the front door she faced Mrs Smith again.

  ‘We’ll keep you informed,’ she said. ‘As soon as we know anything we’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Mind you do.’ They were Mrs Vivian Smith’s parting words.

  All the way home in the car Joanna railed against Vivian Smith. ‘What an absolute bitch,’ she said. ‘What a cow.’

  ‘It isn’t surprising, is it, that Marilyn turned out the way she did?’

  Joanna was forced to agree.

  It was after seven when Joanna finally unlocked the door of her cottage, slipped off her shoes and switched the answerphone on.

  The first message was from Matthew. ‘... Jo ...’ There was a long pause. She could hear him breathing. Then he said, ‘Just rang to say hello,’ and rang off.

  The second was her mother. ‘Joanna,’ she said severely. ‘We’ve heard absolutely nothing from you for almost two weeks. We don’t know whether you’re dead or alive.’ Her voice softened. ‘Come and see us when you’ve some spare time.’ This Sunday, Joanna made a mental promise.

  The third call was the duty sergeant. ‘Evening, Inspector. Just thought you’d like to know Mrs Bloody Shiers has been on the blower all day long, complaining about the phantom dog.’ There was a short pause and Joanna could hear someone whispering in the background. ‘Willis says ... have you heard the one about the phantom dog?’ She groaned. ‘... It did bark in the night.’ Loud guffaws. ‘See you in the morning, Inspector. Sweet dreams.’

  The cat miaowed and leapt on to her lap. She felt too tired and depressed to push him off. Four days into the investigation and she was no closer to a solution than on day one. She still didn’t know whether Marilyn had been murdered or not. She sighed. Maybe Mike was right. Perhaps because of her promotion she wanted this to be a murder case. Perhaps she was attaching too much importance to the anomalies in Marilyn’s life. After all, there were skeletons in everybody’s cupboards. Maybe she had had a married lover? – someone who was wealthy and willing to support her in the manner she so obviously loved.

  She shivered a little and lit the fire, then sat down on the floor and started writing. Tomorrow ... Willis to the bank. Get details of Marilyn’s finances. Follow up the various acquaintances ... Plenty to do.

  So why did she feel depressed?

  She sat for a few minutes, pondering, staring into the flames. What did she really want out of life...? Out of her j
ob ...? Out of relationships ...?

  Early on she had come to the conclusion that police work was incompatible with being a wife and mother. Hours too long and far too irregular. Besides, she didn’t want children. She hated babies. She barely tolerated young dependants and could only really relate to rebellious teenagers – the more rebellious the better. And the job? She stared hard at the fire and knew she had contentment on that score. It was proving to be a good step in her life. The police force was for her.

  Relationships ...? That was the difficult one. There was only really Matthew. It wasn’t simply his honey-coloured hair and his sharp green eyes. It was his intuitive intelligence ... his wit. His presence of mind and the mental agility that seemed permanently switched on. She had been out with other cops during her career, but Matthew was simply – different. She and he had shared quick minds. She gave a wry smile. But Matthew had gone back to his wife and ... She stood up. No doubt he shared a fulfilling relationship somewhere else. It was not with her. She gave a sigh. She’d better feed the cat.

  ‘Come on, James,’ she said, and he followed her into the kitchen, purring as he walked.

  But as she opened the tin of cat food her mind could not leave the dead woman unexplained on the bed. She was uneasy with the case, and that was not the result of instinct but of training.

  She poured boiling water on a teabag of Lapsang Souchong and carried it carefully back into the sitting room. Marilyn must have been expecting someone – a man. So who was it? The undertaker? She gave a soft giggle. What murky depths? For all the sinister nature of the man’s work and a certain repugnance she felt for him physically, he did not seem a villain. And Marilyn had been possessed of a certain vicious intelligence. Joanna could not see the undertaker getting the better of her. Of the two, Marilyn’s mind had been the more devious. No, she decided then. The undertaker it was not. But she would still see him tomorrow.

  The antique dealer? Give a dog a bad name, she thought. He was a bit too convenient – a ready-made villain and, she grudgingly conceded from Mike’s account, clever, too. But the relationship between him and the dead nurse seemed, on the surface, remote. And would he have been able to pull off a murder that the pathologist could not recognize as such? She doubted it. He would have had no medical knowledge.