by John Gardner
‘It was Jo Benton, wasn’t it?’ Suzie prodded.
‘Jo, yes, Jo.’
‘Definitely?’
‘Jo, yes.’ She raised her head. ‘It was Jo.’ Tears again and the juddering.
‘Sally, how did you get into the house?’
An older woman had come into the room and seemed about to say something, but Suzie looked up and gave a tiny shake of her head. Just looking at the two women she knew the older one was Sally’s mother, she had the same straight nose, lankish hair, the large pools of eyes and the flimsy frame. Looked so thin that she might break like a stick.
‘She was coming round here for a meal. Looking forward to it. We were going to listen to Happidrome, then probably go out if Steven came round. I went over at half-past six and couldn’t get a reply. I came back here and after a while I rang her. She didn’t answer. I knew she was home. So ...’ She gave another shudder, a sob. ‘So I went to the back door. The kitchen door. She often leaves it open. It was. I went in and ...’
‘That’s enough, isn’t it?’ Sally’s mother said with a catch in her voice. Then she came forward, wrapped her arms around the girl and held her, rocking, crooning to her.
‘I’m sorry —’ Suzie tried to sound firm and resolved. ‘I’m sorry but there are things that have to be done, things that have to be said. It may sound harsh but we must move quickly. This is a murder, Mrs —’
‘Grigson,’ Tovey supplied.
‘Grigson,’ Suzie repeated. Then, switching back to Sally, ‘You saw nobody?’
Shake of the head.
Suzie thought, I’ve missed something here. She said something I didn’t understand. Now it’s gone. Damn.
‘I’ll have to ask someone to come over and take your fingerprints. They’ll be dusting that back door and inside. Could there have been someone else in the house when you found her?’
Another shake of the head. ‘I don’t know ... I really don’t ... It was ... it was ...’
‘Horrible. A shock. I know, Sally. Leave you alone in a minute. Did she have a boyfriend, Jo?’
The eyes opened wide and brimming. ‘Of course. Steve. Steven Fermin.’
‘The announcer?’ That was it: Sally had said the name, Steve.
‘Oh, poor Steve, yes of course.’ She gulped air as though coming up from the depths of a pool. ‘Of course. Steve. They’re engaged ... getting married ... Oh God ... Christmas ... I was going to be her ...’ Her eyelids were drooping and her mouth went slack. The medicine was kicking in.
Magnus touched Suzie’s arm. ‘Let her sleep, Skipper.’
She nodded and went into the hall with the elder Grigson. ‘I’m so sorry about this. Mrs Grigson. I wouldn’t do this unless it was absolutely necessary. Can you tell me anything about the victim? About Jo Benton?’
‘I can’t believe it.’ Sally’s mother looked strained. Her eyes had crow’s feet, deeply etched, and the forehead was lined, which gave her the look of a woman living in constant concern. ‘She’s so nice, Jo. Full of life and devilment. Always laughing. I should get to Steve, tell him quickly, you don’t want him hearing it on the what’s-its-name ... thing.’
‘Bush telegraph ...?’
‘Grapevine, yes. They’re, were, so attached. In love. It’s ... it’s ...’ She gave up the struggle and sobbed as though her entire world had come to an end. In her head Suzie heard Judy Garland singing ‘Over the rainbow’, and she struggled not to cry also. No, she told herself, severely. No, a police officer doesn’t cry at death.
Outside she told Magnus that she was going to track down Steven Fermin. ‘I’ll get him through the BBC.’
Fermin had a weekly interview show — Fermin and Friends — for the BBC; very popular, a kind of mid-week In Town Tonight which went out on a Saturday before Palace of Varieties. She often listened to it. Fermin and Friends was broadcast on Wednesday evenings.
‘What do you know about Fermin?’ Suzie asked as they ran the gauntlet back to Jo Benton’s house next door.
‘Same as you. Listen to Fermin and Friends when I can. I listen to the news, In Town Tonight, The Brains Trust and Fermin. It’s about all I do listen to. Sometimes a play when I’m in, oh and Henry Hall of course.’ Henry Hall was leader of the BBC Dance Orchestra. Dance music was the rage and orchestras even topped the bill at variety shows — Roy Fox, Maurice Winnick, Harry Roy, Billy Cotton.
‘Did you know about the girl and Fermin?’ Suzie asked, teeth gritted.
‘There was something about it in the paper. A little piece in the Evening News, I think.’
‘I didn’t see it.’
‘You probably don’t read the right papers, Skip.’
‘True.’
They reached the shelter of the porch and Sergeant Osterley said they were almost ready to take the body out.
‘Not while the press is here.’ Suzie scowled.
‘What else d’you suggest, Skip?’ Magnus asked when they were inside.
‘Well not until I’ve made sure the boyfriend’s been told. And her parents, of course. Oh lord, her parents.’
Inside, the ambulance men stood by the kitchen door blocking the view with their stretcher. The doctor was still there, and Shirley was very active with the camera, the Hash lighting up the kitchen.
‘Okay.’ Suzie made for the stairs. ‘Let’s try and find an address book and stuff.’
They were only halfway up when the front door opened below them and ‘Sarn’t Mountford,’ Osterley shouted, ‘a word please.’ There was urgency in the call, and she turned and started back into the hall.
Osterley blocked the doorway with his drooping shoulders against door and jamb, left hand on the brass knob as though trying to hold back a wall of pressure. Outside, through the space of the open door a flashbulb exploded and, as Suzie reached the uniformed sergeant, so he was pushed forward into the hall. The constable was behind him talking, ‘Sir, you can’t go in there. Please sir ...’
Suzie raised her voice, ‘What’s going on? What is it?’ and the uniforms gave way, allowing a third person to butt into the hall. Highly glossed dark brown shoes, cavalry-twill tailored slacks, a houndstooth-checked jacket, green-flecked on dark grey, a rollneck sweater.
He was a shortish man with a flop of dark hair, longer than fashionable, pale-faced in the hall light. ‘Are you police?’ he asked. ‘What’re you doing here? Is it true?’ The questions boiling out of him.
And she recognized the voice. ‘Steven Fermin?’
‘Yes, I’m Fermin.’
‘Is what true, sir?’ Suzie asked.
He made a useless gesture with his arms.
‘Is what true?’ she asked again.
‘Jo? Jo Benton? They say she’s dead.’
Osterley stepped forward, touched his arm, trying to make up for allowing him to slip through and into the house. ‘Sir, I think you —’
Fermin’s head came up, eyes widened. Suzie Mountford saw what had happened. He had smelled the scent of blood and death. His eyes opened wide and a little choke came from the back of his throat as he lunged forward, gagging.
‘No!’ Magnus shouted and, to her surprise, Suzie slapped a hand around Fermin’s wrist and brought her weight forward and then back, the other hand coming up so his feet stuttered backwards, then stopped off-balance.
‘No, sir!’ she barked, surprising herself. She swung in front of him, close. ‘Mr Fermin, I can’t let you ...’
His face crumpled and he took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry. Of course —’ he couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘I don’t know what — I’m so sorry.’
Magnus was already helping her as they shepherded the man into the big living room to their right. The uniformed constable slipped past her and quickly drew the curtains.
Fermin took a pace towards a settee and Suzie put out a hand and pulled him back. ‘We can’t sit down. I’m sorry, we shouldn’t even be in here until my people’ve examined —’
He turned. ‘I thought ...’
‘The
forensic people’ve got to go over it. In fact, Mr Fermin, I’d really prefer it if you went back to the station where we can talk, and I suppose I might need you to identify the victim later if you feel up to it. Pip?’ She turned to Magnus. ‘Pip, can you call up another car?’
‘No. I’ve got my own car.’ Fermin turned away from her. ‘I’ve got my own car here. I’ll drive myself to the station. I’m allowed petrol.’ He seemed to need to explain how he was able to drive from the West End to Camford. He raised his hand, brushing the side of his face and she saw the nervous tic in his right eye and the way his hand trembled.
‘Camford Hill,’ she said. ‘Camford Hill Police Station. You know where ...?’
‘Yes, of course. Can I park there?’
‘Yes, look, I’ll get someone.’ She turned to Osterley. ‘Get Winnie Tovey over here. Send her with Mr Fermin.’
Osterley nodded and disappeared while Suzie went on explaining unnecessarily.
‘Go round the back: down Lockup Alley; we’ll follow you. Ten minutes or so. I’m obliged, sir.’
He brushed away an imaginary piece of lint from the sleeve of his jacket. ‘It’s better for me to be with someone.’
WPC Tovey appeared in the doorway.
Suzie nodded. ‘Look after Mr Fermin,’ she said to Tovey. ‘You know who he is?’
‘Oh yes. Sergeant.’
‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t speak to the press,’ she said to him.
Fermin gave a thin smile. ‘I’m one of them really, I suppose.’
He bit his lip, looked Suzie in the eye, nodded and left. There was a burble of talking as soon as he got out of the main door.
Suzie had glimpsed the pain in his eyes, was excessively upset by it and could not understand why because she hadn’t really taken to Steve Fermin.
Seven
There were letters, an appointments diary and a small notebook, all thrown higgledy-piggledy into a drawer in Jo Benton’s bedside table. The victim had been reading Gone with the Wind. It was lying on the bed, and she’d got to page 208: she had marked it with a postcard from Canterbury showing a picture of the west elevation of the cathedral. On the reverse side there was the current address — Miss Josephine Benton, 5 Coram Cross Rd, Camford Hill, London: and a scribbled note about how wonderful the cathedral was and what a calming effect it had on Aunt Beatie.
Suzie did a quick search of the other drawers in the room and found nothing immediately interesting. A heavy nineteenth-century wardrobe with three doors and inlaid mirrors took up almost an entire wall. She opened the doors. Suits, skirts and frocks hung in neat rows, almost filed by colour. She trailed the back of a hand along them, as a child would run her hand along railings. Her right hand went up separating a dress, lifting it out on its hanger. A nursing sister’s uniform. Was Benton doing part-time nursing?
Downstairs again, she riffled through the two drawers in a little mahogany Victorian desk with red and gold skivers. In one she found an address book. In the hall she saw a green patent leather handbag lying as though thrown from the kitchen.
‘You been through this?’ she called to Sammy and Shirley who were still talking quietly in the kitchen, working with fingerprint powder.
‘Haven’t looked yet,’ Shirley was harassed.
‘I’m searching for address books, diaries, things like that.’
‘Take a look, but be careful, Skip.’
She used a silver propelling pencil, a birthday present from Charlotte, to pry open the bag and then push things aside to see what lay at the bottom of the usual handbag clutter. Between a driving licence, identity card and some letters, she detected the flat grey shape of a Letts page-a-day diary/address book that she fished out using the first and second fingers of her right hand. Sammy Richards dusted it and there were no clear prints so she logged it together with the other items and look them all back to Camford Hill nick.
Pip Magnus had used the house telephone to make sure Fermin had somewhere to park when he got to the nick. His car was at the back and they’d put him in one of the interview rooms down in the basement.
At her desk in the CID office Suzie opened a murder book, just as Sanders of the River had told her to do. She used a bound ledger that the super had given her, writing the date and the victim’s name — Josephine Marian Benton — on the first page taking the name from the diary that was in Jo Benton’s handbag. She listed her own name together with WDC Cox, then Magnus and Richards. She gave cause of death as choked with wire, and left a space for the more detailed descriptions of the mutilation when Dr Blatty’s PM report came in.
Then she telephoned DCS Tommy Livermore at the Yard. It was almost half-past nine and he’d long left for the day but they said he could be reached at a Flaxman number so she got through to the exchange and a couple of minutes later was speaking to Livermore, who sounded quietly avuncular.
‘Yes, Sergeant Mountford,’ he began. ‘I spoke with Mr Sanders. Don’t say you want me to come traipsing over to Camford Hill at this hour.’ He didn’t sound like a man who’d want to take the mickey out of her like most of the senior officers in the Met.
‘No sir. I’m managing.’
‘Glad to hear it. What’ve we got?’
‘Nasty, sir. Josephine Benton the BBC announcer —’
‘The winter-drawers-on girl?’ They all knew her because of that. It was like a schoolboy sniggery thing in this middle-class world of comparative innocence.
‘That’s the one, sir. Dr Blatty’s doing the forensics to send to Hendon. PM in the morning.’
‘You done one before, Mountford?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well it’s not obligatory if you don’t feel up to it. You say it’s nasty?’
‘Strangulation — more choked really — with piano wire, cut into the flesh of her throat. Then mutilated.’
‘How mutilated?’
‘Meat skewers in her eyes, then the stomach ripped open; low down; genitalia ripped up really. Reminded me of the old Jack the Ripper details.’
‘Unpleasant.’ He sounded a little shocked for a hardened older officer. ‘Any ideas?’
‘I’ve got the boyfriend here, sir. Going to talk to him. Steven Fermin.’
‘The radio bloke, Fermin?’
‘Yes. He’s probably well out of the frame, Guv, but —’
‘Don’t say that till you’ve talked to him. Ninety-nine percent of murders are committed by close friends, relatives, husbands, wives. Handle him gently. Not too friendly, and don’t give him the full strength. Got a time of death?’
‘Dr Blatty says between six and half-past, and not after six forty-five.’
‘Well he should know. Good man, Blatty.’
Oh hell. Suzie thought.
‘Where’re you going after the boyfriend?’
‘Got some address books and diaries. I thought I’d look through them. There is one thing though, Guv.’
‘What?’
‘Pan of boiling water. There was a pan of boiling water on the gas hob in the kitchen. Unexplained. She wasn’t cooking anything.’
‘Ah. Then you might have a robbery gone bad. It’s an old thief’s trick that: put a pan of water on the hob as soon as you get into the property, then you have a nasty weapon you can use if you’re disturbed. Was there a definite break-in?’
‘We think he used the back door — leads straight into the kitchen.’
‘It could still be a robbery buggered up.’ There was a silence and she could hear him at the distant end. Sucking on a pipe, she thought. Don’t tell him. Not yet, even though she was certain this wasn’t a disturbed thief because of what she had remembered.
‘Right, anything else, Sergeant Mountford?’
‘Not yet, Guv’nor. I’m going to talk to the boyfriend now.’
‘Well, be one of Fermin’s friends, eh?’ he chuckled. ‘Telephone me any time. Anything you want, ring me. If I’m not in my office there’s a WPC who does the secretarial stuff. She’ll usually answer
the phone, WPC Abrahams, Terri Abrahams — with an i, got it? Good girl, Terri. She’ll usually know where I am. And listen — be orderly; take it one step at a time. You’ve opened a murder book?’
‘Yes, Guv.’
‘Keep it current. Note everything, even when you change your socks. Okay?’
‘Right, guv.’
‘I’m going to have my supper now then. Ring me tomorrow. What they call you, Sarn’t Mountford?’
‘Suzie, sir. Susannah, but they call me Suzie. With a zed, sir.’ She grinned.
‘Right, Suzie with a zed. Happy dreams.’
And you, Guv, she thought.
Magnus was having a quick cigarette outside the interview room when she got down to him.
‘Chummy doesn’t smoke?’ she asked.
‘Like a chimney, I’m just taking a break. Okay?’
‘How is he?’ she nodded at the door.
‘Winnie Tovey had a hard time getting him here. He suddenly broke down on her. In the middle of the High Street. Just started crying and leaning on her shoulder. His car, still in gear, stopped dead in the road.’
‘I should imagine she coped, Winnie Tovey. Looks like a girl who can cope.’ She thought of Winnie in that expensive and showy wine red coat. Wondered where she’d bought it. Suzie had put on her hard exterior. She knew well enough about grief and the ways it could take people. The night after her father died she had heard noises downstairs, at two in the morning. Her mum was cleaning and cooking a three-course dinner. ‘I needed something to do,’ her mother had said.
‘How do you rate him?’ she now asked.
‘He’s either the best actor in the world, nerves of steel, or totally innocent and just starting to realize what’s happened. The last two get my vote.’
They got Suzie’s vote as well. Where before she had seen pain in his eyes, Fermin now looked as though someone had punched him full in the face so that instead of the confident young broadcaster he was bewildered; dazed and baffled by what had happened.
‘You know I’ve got to make this official?’ Suzie began.
‘Official?’ Steven Fermin asked uncomprehendingly.
