Souvenirs of Murder

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘You tell me. You were in the gang so you know him.’

  ‘There was only one clever one, the man who said he’d been a soldier. I believed him. Perhaps he went off his head. I knew he’d killed before, there was something about him – dangerous.’

  ‘He’ll kill you, slowly, if you hurt me,’ was the only thing I could think of saying.

  The horrible eyes widened. ‘You’re his woman?’

  ‘I’m his wife.’

  He must have moved as quickly as a cat then and hit me, for darkness swallowed me up.

  SIXTEEN

  My phone was ringing. It stopped when the messaging service must have cut in and then, some time later – a minute, an hour, a week? – rang again. I opened my eyes and was presented with a woodworm’s eye view of dirty floorboards. But only just, it was practically dark. The side of my face hurt, the side ground into the dust and roughness of the floor, and I seemed to be lying in a heap.

  The phone . . . had stopped again.

  What was the point of a phone you couldn’t answer? I thought dully. It was useless – would have to go.

  I struggled to sit up, head spinning, felt sick, had a little rest and finally, retching, got myself into a sitting position, my back to a wall. The phone was in my coat pocket and I took it out after getting very cross and swearing at everything for not cooperating and glared at it, or tried to, my eyes refusing to focus.

  Then it rang again, making me start violently.

  Somehow, I must have pressed the right button. ‘What?’ I bawled, making my head swim nauseatingly.

  ‘I’ve been trying to call you,’ said Patrick’s voice.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that!’ I raved at him. ‘It’s been ringing for bloody ages!’

  ‘Ingrid, what’s wrong?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘I’m just furious because the damn thing keeps ringing and I haven’t been able to answer it,’ I told him. What the hell else did he think was wrong?

  ‘Where are you?’

  Where was I? Oh, yes, there.

  ‘I’m in a studio flat at an end of terrace next to the playing fields, or whatever. Where the police were keeping watch, only they weren’t.’

  ‘Is this at Muswell Hill?’

  ‘Where else do you know about that has playing fields recently?’ I yelled, beginning to get extremely upset about everything now.

  ‘Please tell me why you weren’t able to answer it.’

  ‘Because he hit me and it’s left me feeling a bit weird, that’s why. You keep asking the most stupid questions.’

  ‘Who hit you?’

  ‘HULTON!’

  And I hurled the phone right into the large living room where it hit something and skittered along the floor out of sight.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry but all I was trying to do was take a look at where the surveillance was carried out,’ I said to Michael Greenway. ‘That flat seemed the obvious venue as it was empty, or at least looked empty, and was up for sale. Only it was the wrong place.’

  He seemed to have aged ten years.

  ‘And you bumped into Hulton,’ he said wearily. ‘I really don’t know why you’re still alive. And if Patrick hadn’t phoned you and then contacted me you’d probably still be in that bedsit walking round in small circles.’

  I had left out the bit about telling Hulton Patrick would kill him if he harmed me. Mostly because it was true. I said, ‘I did tell you about the man in the pub. It was him. If he’d been checked out, right under your noses all the time—’ I broke off, there was no point in getting angry, again.

  It was a little after two the following afternoon and we were in the room furnished with easy chairs next to Greenway’s office which he used on the rare occasions when he was able to relax for a while. I had been examined by a paramedic, deemed not to need hospital treatment and someone had taken me back to the hotel. From there, in bed, I had tried to ring Patrick to thank him for alerting people to my plight and tell him that I was all right but for some reason he had not answered, probably in the shower, so had left him a message. Then I had phoned Elspeth just to be sure someone was aware of the state of affairs, making light of events by saying I had tripped and hit my head – which actually seemed to have occurred as I had a lump on the side of it as well as a bruised jaw – but was now perfectly all right. Surprisingly, my phone was fine too. It probably didn’t ache all over though.

  I had already related to Greenway what had happened during my encounter with Hulton, and written out a report, so there was not a lot more to say.

  Greenway said, ‘I don’t have to tell you that half the Met’s out there now, looking for him, under their own noses as well as everywhere else.’

  ‘I should have remembered to carry Patrick’s gun,’ I said.

  ‘Then you could well have been dead right now. If he’d thought you were armed . . .’ Greenway left the rest unsaid and rose to pace the room restlessly, like something caged.

  ‘I’m really sorry I couldn’t arrest him,’ I said.

  The Commander, who momentarily had had his back to me over by the window, turned quickly. ‘Ingrid, for pity’s sake don’t apologize! Judging by his past record we’ll need a bunch of Royal Marines to bring the man in. I can only assume he thought you were some unimportant clerk, or somebody like that, and there was no kudos to be had in killing you.’

  I was alive so had to be grateful. Unless I was now in some kind of parallel universe and everyone was now grieving for me in another one.

  ‘You’re sure you’re OK today?’ Greenway said worriedly.

  I gave him a big smile. ‘Fine.’ Perhaps I had had a glassy look in my eyes.

  ‘We’re still no further with this,’ Greenway said to himself.

  ‘What about the knife?’ I enquired.

  ‘Oh, Patrick’s fingerprints are all over it. No blood, nothing else. As you said he must have thrown it and missed.’

  ‘Thrown it at who though? At someone who was pursuing him down the garden, the person who caught up with him, he having possibly passed out, and dumped him in the lane? The murderer?’

  ‘We might never know.’

  I was sensing his reluctance to go any further with the investigation. It was taking up too much of his time, using scarce resources and costing too much money and he was working out how he was going to break it to me gently. A dead sort of feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘I don’t know what to suggest we do next,’ Greenway observed slowly. ‘And until Hulton’s caught – and believe me, he will be . . .’

  ‘What about Rundle?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll talk to Rundle. I see no reason why you should hang around in the cold waiting for a dozy DCI to turn up. Meanwhile . . .’

  ‘You’d rather I went home.’

  He shrugged helplessly. ‘Until Patrick’s better and I’ve heard from Complaints – not a word yet, I’m afraid – then I don’t see . . .’ Again, he stopped speaking.

  ‘OK,’ I said, getting to my feet.

  ‘But I don’t want you to go away thinking that you’ve achieved nothing,’ he said hastily. ‘On the contrary—’

  I interrupted him. ‘Will you contact me when there are any developments?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I left.

  The word ‘failed’ seemed to hammer into my brain at each step I took down the stairs from the first to the ground floor. Failed, failed, failed, failed . . .

  Just outside, in thin winter sunshine that was having no effect on the freezing temperature, Elspeth called me.

  ‘Sorry to ring you during your working day,’ she began.

  ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘No, at least, I hope not. It’s just that Patrick seems to have taken himself off somewhere. We’ve been out all morning and have only just got in. I’m not particularly worried, it’s just that . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘But . . . but I have the car,’ I stammered.

  ‘Yes, I know and he
hasn’t borrowed mine or John’s, not that he would without—’

  ‘Was he well enough?’ I butted in.

  ‘Well, look, I don’t want to worry you any more than necessary but he might have stopped taking his medication.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Early yesterday he said that he was suspicious that whatever some of the tablets were they were the cause of his feeling dizzy and still weak. I said he could hardly stop taking everything just because something wasn’t quite right for him. He didn’t answer – you know how Patrick does that when he can’t agree with what you’ve just said.’

  Did I ever.

  ‘And he hasn’t even left you a note?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t think of looking. I’ll ring you back.’

  I went straight into a café nearby, for the warmth, and rang James Carrick.

  ‘Is there something you ought to tell me?’ I said, in the mood for scorched earth policies.

  ‘I was asked to contact you about now,’ he countered after a short pause while he had obviously left whichever room he was in and was now, judging by the slight echo when he spoke, in a corridor.

  ‘Oh, fantastic,’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘Ingrid, I do not argue with that husband of yours when he’s got it into his head to do something and starts issuing orders. I called in last night as I said I would and he was ready for off and about to ring for a taxi. He didn’t say much, only that he’d had a call from you that had worried him and he’d had to phone Mike Greenway. Are you all right, by the way?’

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ I said.

  ‘Good. I pointed out that his parents would be worried even more if he just upped and went and he told me he’d already left them a note.’

  ‘So you drove him to Bath station?’

  ‘Yes, that’s where he wanted to go.’

  ‘Elspeth says she thinks he’s stopped taking his medication.’

  ‘He might not have done. He went off somewhere and came back with some boxes of pills and chucked them in his bag. He seemed slow-moving and a little low key but otherwise OK, if that’s any consolation.’

  Well, it was something.

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘No.’

  I thanked him, adding an apology for snarling.

  ‘Please keep me posted. If things get desperate you know where to find me.’

  I fetched myself coffee and a croissant. I had planned to check out of the hotel and go home. What now? Was it necessary to inform Greenway of this latest development?

  ‘No,’ I said to myself. ‘Greenway has just about washed his hands of it.’ Very regretfully, the Commander was going to cast off his man from MI5 who, at best, would be sent out into the world with a slur on his character, at worst, and despite anything Complaints might or might not say, arrested and charged with murder.

  Elspeth rang me back.

  ‘The note was in the bathroom,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t say much, just that there’s something he wants to do and not to worry as he’s feeling much better. I also discovered that he’s been sleeping upstairs after all. I have to say I half expected him not to stick to doctor’s orders – mothers just have to lump it, don’t they?’

  ‘Please tell John to carry on being careful, won’t you?’ I urged, furious with Patrick for causing her this anguish after all her efforts in looking after him. ‘There are still people messing around with black magic and a murderer at large.’

  She promised she would.

  I almost stuck to my original plan to return to Hinton Littlemoor. But I did not. I went back to the scene of the crime in Park Road and, having given back the keys, used Patrick’s.

  The cleaning woman’s phone number – at least, I hoped it was her, Rosa Jerez – was in a tattered notebook I discovered jammed at the back of a drawer containing a jumble of things in a table in the hall. I wondered why the police had not found and removed it and remedied the omission myself, handling it with gloves and putting it in a plastic evidence bag in my pocket. The Smith and Wesson was in the other pocket and I took it out now and went into every room of this increasingly stinking property in case Hulton had decided to continue thumbing his nose at the Met. I was in the mood to wing him meaningfully and painfully and then complete his arrest.

  It had seemed too much to hope for that anyone would answer when I rang the cleaner’s number and no one did. But, back at the hotel, I became intrigued with other information I had already noticed scribbled down on the crumpled pages. Donning gloves I went through them carefully. There were phone numbers, mostly of what appeared to be the ordinary information a large percentage of the population has to hand: local garages, a window cleaner, a pizza delivery service, the local Chinese takeaway. There were other numbers with just initials alongside. People? Places like shops or stores? Dodgy solicitors? There were also addresses, all of people with foreign-sounding names, and whole paragraphs in German and what I thought was Serbo Croat. There were even diagrams, rough plans of various floors in buildings. I took the notebook down to the ground floor and copied all the more interesting-looking information in the hotel’s Internet room.

  Obviously, the notebook would have to go to Rundle. But my purpose here, in London, was not in order to hand bits of evidence on a plate to the Met. I was busying myself doing just that while not having the first clue where I was going to go from here. Why had I believed what Hulton had said? Because even the most vicious criminals tend not to murder their own daughters.

  I suppose I sat there, in introspective misery, for twenty minutes or so. I had tried ringing Patrick’s mobile but there had been no reply. I rang Rundle, damned if I was going to go trotting over to Wood Green again: he could send someone to collect it. He was not in so I left a message, asking whoever it was to get him to phone me back. I had a call almost immediately, a DI Latimer wondering if I could take the notebook to West End Central police station, just off Oxford Street.

  Well, yes, I could. And then, perhaps, a cup of tea and something to eat – I did not feel like having a proper lunch even though it was getting on for two thirty – followed by a quick look around some shops. Anything to try to take my mind off the hell that I was living in and postpone making decisions.

  The room phone rang and it was a call from reception.

  ‘Miss Langley, there’s a gentleman here who says he’s your husband and would like to speak to you.’

  ‘Please put him on,’ I said.

  ‘Hi,’ said Patrick’s voice. ‘I’ve a good tip for tomorrow’s two thirty at Ludlow, Cuckoo Spit.’

  ‘I don’t bet on horses,’ I said.

  ‘Plus a dead cert for the three fifteen, Snuggems.’

  ‘Room 207,’ I told him.

  I must be really twitchy, I mused, asking for two proofs of identity. No, actually, I was still furious with him.

  I let him in and he gazed at me searchingly, angry. ‘How the hell did you manage to run into Hulton?’

  ‘Calm down and I’ll tell you.’

  This I did and when I had finished Patrick said, ‘I don’t know why you’re still alive.’

  ‘That’s exactly what Greenway said. Hulton seemed more interested in how I’d stumbled across him.’

  There was a short silence before Patrick said, ‘This is me having one last stab at trying to sort everything out. I simply have to push to the back of my mind what’s going on in Hinton Littlemoor and give this priority. Otherwise I’m finished.’

  ‘You’re not well enough to be doing anything,’ I countered stonily. ‘I’m surprised you were even strong enough to get on a train.’

  He shrugged, not about to respond to points of view with which he did not agree. ‘Sorry if you’ve been trying to get hold of me – I hadn’t charged up my phone properly.’

  The man put his weekend bag on the bed, unzipped it and rummaged, presumably for the charger. He glanced at me, then held my gaze, a question in those wonderful grey eyes.

  ‘Oh, come here,’ I
said, holding out both arms. After a long, long, silent hug I whispered, ‘Please tell me why you’re going against medical advice.’

  ‘The docs couldn’t agree in the first place. The consultant you spoke to on the phone probably only won the argument because he had possession of the patient. I’ve just been back to the Nightingale Clinic to see the specialist I saw first as he impressed me rather and the pills I’d been given in Bath were making me feel like death and affecting my coordination. One lot of pills, that is. I’ve been taken off them. He agreed that most of the trouble must have been total exhaustion but still didn’t go along with the drugs prescription. I’ve just about had my week’s rest and he wanted me to go back home and carry on taking things easy but I’m damned if I’m going to.’ Wrongly putting my silence down to disbelief, he added, ‘That’s the truth.’

  ‘You’ve never lied to me,’ I whispered. ‘But the liver damage?’

  ‘I had more blood tests and apparently it’s not as bad as the other bloke thought and improving already. I’m still strictly on the wagon though and on tablets for that. That’s the bad news.’

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ I said, kissing him.

  He gently stroked my face where it was bruised. ‘I really hate it when somebody hurts you.’

  I slept for three hours, having intended to put my feet up for a few minutes while Patrick had a shower, and when I was woken by my mobile ringing I saw when I had switched on the bedside lamp that he had been asleep by my side.

  ‘Do you know where Patrick is?’ Greenway’s voice said, sounding tense.

  I could never explain afterwards why I lied. ‘Sorry, no. He should be at home.’

  ‘No, he’s not at Hinton Littlemoor and neither James Carrick nor the rector and his wife knows where he is. Or say they don’t, anyway.’

  ‘Why do you want him?’ I asked, ignoring the slur on their characters.

  Greenway breathed out hard down the phone. ‘Jethro Hulton has been found hanged. In that flat where you ran into him and I really, really want to talk to Patrick before the Met get hold of him.’

  ‘Hanged from what?’ I gasped. I could not remember anything in the place that would support the weight of a body.