Falconer watched, fascinated, as his sergeant turned on every tap in the place and then flushed the lavatory. ‘That should help a bit. Here, sir, I’ll open a window to freshen the place up.’
The fridge proved to be full of dried-out rotten food, the wall cupboard with out-of-date, dusty packets and tins. Even the kitchen waste bin hadn’t been emptied, its decomposed contents still lining the bottom of the receptacle. The towels in the bathroom still bore a faint dried crust of mould where they hadn’t had the chance to dry out after the place had been left to rot, and there were old magazines and junk mail everywhere.
‘God, what a dump!’ exclaimed the inspector. ‘Not house-proud, was she?’
‘Maybe she expected to come back to it,’ suggested Carmichael, with eminent common sense. ‘She’d not have known she was going to disappear off the face of the earth. A lot of people living on their own only have a real good go at their home once a week.’
Falconer had to give in to this logical thinking, facing up to the fact that everyone wasn’t so fastidious as he was, and suggested that they started looking round for an address book or diary, either of which would help them with people who knew the previous occupant.
In an overflowing sideboard they found several old diaries, a few colour photographs which depicted a woman of about the right age and description as Ms Doidge, and an ancient address book; which Falconer bagged ready to be looked through for clues to the woman’s life, whom she might have known, and whom she might have seen on the last night of her existence.
He assumed she was dead. It seemed after all unreasonable that she would just have run off and never contacted anyone again. Not that they might not find a number of people, perhaps noted in the address book, who knew perfectly well where she was, and had had no idea that she’d just evaporated into thin air as far as her employers and neighbour were concerned.
‘Let’s have a word with the woman upstairs, see how well she knew Ms Doidge,’ suggested Falconer. ‘Maybe the woman’s alive and well and living and working in Aylesbury, Aberystwyth, or Aberdeen, and just left here rather suddenly as a result of something that happened immediately before she left.’
‘Unlikely, sir, as she doesn’t seem to have collected any of her personal possessions. The wardrobe’s full of clothes, the dressing table’s covered with make-up and perfume, and there’s even some stuff in a laundry basket waiting to be washed.’
‘You’re right, of course. I can see someone flouncing off in a huge huff, but I can’t see them never collecting all their worldly goods, though, can you?’
‘Unlikely, sir.’
On the first floor the woman asked them in, introduced herself as Jasmine Giles, and offered tea or coffee. Carmichael accepted with a smile, and Falconer looked around him at the first-floor flat. Although in a similar state of lack of maintenance and disrepair, everything in it was immaculate and there was no mess whatsoever. The vintage of the furnishings, however, was ‘early jumble-sale’, the sofa and chairs’ outdated chintz jazzed up with a history of mysterious stains that could have told a very long and interesting story. The sideboard was the sort of 1930s relic that would never attract a high price as a ‘period piece’ at auction.
Seeing him looking, Miss Giles, who asked them to call her Jasmine, said, ‘Both flats are in a bit of a state, neglected, like, and the basement’s only used for junk, but the rent’s low, and it suits me at the moment to put away as much as I can from my wages. I’m saving up to go travelling.’
‘Why don’t you get the landlord to do something?’ asked Carmichael, who was soft-hearted and had just noticed the large brown stains on the ceiling which suggested that the roof was not in good order.
‘He lives abroad, and he’s really not interested. And it suits my thinking at the moment. If he refurbished these places, he’d charge more rent, and I’m happy as I am. I’ll soon be off to the Far East and Australia, and I want as much in my bank account as possible.’
‘Do you have an address or contact details for him?’
‘Somewhere; I’ll just have a look for you. I remember he had some estimates done when Suzie was here, and he didn’t like the figure that was suggested to put the flats into good order.’
‘What did Ms Doidge think of the state of the place?’
‘She didn’t really care. All she wanted was new clothes and to go out. She just wanted to meet someone special and settle down. She always said that one day her prince would come.’
‘But she’d surely not bring him back here?’ Falconer had spoken without thinking, and he felt embarrassed that he could have hurt Jasmine’s feelings. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that like it sounded.’
‘No offence taken. As I’ve just explained, I have a reason for living in a dump like this, and so did Suzie. She didn’t have a lot of hours’ work a week, and she was on a really limited budget. For all her love of clothes, she had to manage to find fancy stuff in charity shops at minimal prices. And when she went out, she expected to find some man and lure him into buying all her drinks.’
‘I understand that she was also claiming benefits?’ the inspector asked.
‘Only what she was entitled to in Working Tax Credits,’ Jasmine replied. ‘She never claimed anything that she wasn’t due. She wasn’t like that. She may have lived in a rat’s nest but she was a romantic, and very honest.’
‘When did you last see her?’ asked Falconer.
‘It must have been a couple of years ago, now I come to think about it. I just assumed she had gone off with someone.’
‘Did you know her well?’
‘We weren’t that close, but sometimes she used to come up for a coffee or a glass of wine at my place.’
‘Do you know if she had a boyfriend; a regular one?’
‘Now you mention it, there was someone she was going to see, but she didn’t want to talk about it much, which wasn’t like her at all. And it was someone new, as far as I know.’
‘So she didn’t tell you who it was?’
‘No. She was rather secretive about it, but said she’d tell me all when she could, which was very mysterious.’
‘Did she have a lot of boyfriends?’
‘Quite a lot. As I said, she was always looking for Mr Right, and coming up with Mr Left or Mr Wrong.’
‘Do you remember any of their names?’
‘She wasn’t usually with them long enough to ask them back for coffee, so she hardly ever brought anyone home. No, I can’t remember any names. She didn’t exactly introduce me if she came home with someone on whom she had evil designs – sexual ones, I mean. And the ones she did bring back here she never stayed with long. I suppose they didn’t measure up to her exacting demands.’
This last comment made the woman blush, but she merely cleared her throat and didn’t add anything to it.
‘Right, Miss Giles – Jasmine – I think that’ll be all for now, if you’ll just get those contact details for us and write down your own phone number, we’ll be off.’ Falconer waited for Carmichael to stop scribbling in his notebook, and stood, preparatory to leaving. ‘If you remember anything else that may be useful to us, please contact us at Market Darley Police Station. Here’s my card, and I’m sure DS Carmichael has one for you, too.’
‘I will, but it all seems so long ago.’
‘It is,’ concurred Carmichael, wondering how on earth they were going to find this woman.
Back at the station, Tomlinson had had no luck with the hospitals in his search for Natalie Jones – but had he struck gold, or even ceramic, when he contacted the dentist who had come up with the first victim’s identity? Not this time – but he had, however, experienced more luck with a different dental practitioner, who came up with the name Melanie Saunders and an address in Carsfold. He had also managed to trace the landlord who owned 2 Drovers Lane, and handed all the information over to the inspector to do with what he wished.
‘That’s another one,’ said Falconer in despair. ‘I thought
it was going to be Suzie Doidge, and it turns out to be someone else altogether. That’s two dead, and two missing. What’s been going on in this area over the last few years? It seems like we’ve got a serial killer, if all these things are related. And in that case where the hell is Suzie Doidge – or at least her remains? And how the hell has he slipped under the radar for so long, completely undetected and unsuspected? We have no more clue to the killer’s identity than we had when you stumbled over that first body in the woods. It’s like he’s invisible.
‘Carmichael, can you phone these two people – they’re the owners of the two properties where our first two missing women lived, and see what you can get out of them about their previous tenants. Also, get on to the women’s banks and see if, or when, their rent stopped being paid automatically. For all we know, these two ruthless landlords are still extracting money from the dead. The question is, do they know what they’re doing, or might be doing? And if the rents stopped, why didn’t they try to re-let the properties?’ Falconer stumbled to a halt, realising that he was reacting in panic to this further supposedly disappeared and/or murdered woman.
‘Strike that. That’s something that I’ll deal with myself: the landlords, at least. Carmichael, you check with the banks in town to see where they had their accounts if we don’t already have the information, I’ll,’ here he took his scrap of paper back, ‘talk to these two ruthless property tycoons.
‘OK, Tomlinson, now see if you can trace where Ms Saunders worked, and any other details about her life that may help us to find out why she ended up where she did.’ That was all three of them taken care of. He didn’t, however, rank Natalie Jones in his calculations. He was fairly sure she’d soon be home with her tail between her legs and a secret smile on her face.
The owner of 2 Drovers Lane sounded like a decent man on the phone and arranged to meet Falconer in thirty minutes in Café Figaro to tell him his side of the story. The owner of the King George III Terrace property was apparently currently resident in France, according to his tenant Jasmine Giles. He claimed to have had no idea that his tenant was missing and admitted that, yes, he had been a bit lax in inspecting the place, but that he didn’t like to employ a managing agent because of the extra expense. It wasn’t as if the flats were expensive to rent. He’d stop the payment immediately and was very sorry for his error.
Yes, thought the inspector with a disapproving frown. And pigs might fly. And they hadn’t found anyone who would take the time and effort to claim back the money, either. This woman seemed to have no relatives.
Thirty minutes later saw him in Café Figaro with a Mr Bridger. The man looked very benevolent, was about retirement age and sported a rather natty and thick moustache and beard. ‘I’m very distressed to hear that my previous tenant in Castle Farthing has been found, um, ah, deceased. I’ve only just heard the news on the local radio. I realised, when I went round to inspect the decorating, about a month after the man went in to carry out the work, that there didn’t seem to be anybody there. I carried on visiting in the hope that, if my tenant was out, I’d catch her in at a different time, on a different day of the week.’
‘As time went on, though, I realised that she’d just left the place, especially when I looked through the kitchen window at the back, and could see the same mug on the table, and the same knife and plate on the draining board. I stopped the payments of rent the next day. It didn’t seem fair to take money that was not officially owed to me.
‘I simply can’t believe that she was dead all that time. My wife, Pauline, will be absolutely horrified when I tell her. I thought she’d just moved on and been too remiss to let me know.’
The man’s explanation sounded sincere, and Falconer accepted it at face value. What point would there be in lying, especially as he had Carmichael checking the bank account? So, so far, it didn’t seem that either landlord was involved with either of the first two disappearances. But what about this third woman whose body had been found at The Manse?
Falconer shooed the other two detectives off home on time that night, and left the office himself unusually early. When he got to his house his eye was taken by the bird feeder he had purchased the previous weekend and hung out only the night before, full of seed. This interest in the welfare of wild birds was a new hobby for him, and he was amazed that the receptacle was already empty.
Greedy little gits, he thought, as he unhooked it from the tree branch and carried it indoors. He had decided to place it outside the front of the house so that the cats would not be enticed by birds gathering at it. He had once had a bird table in a tree in the back garden, and two days after he had put it up, came out to find one of his furry charges sitting on it, practically with his mouth open – the new feeder was his compromise.
After refilling it on going back into the house, he was aware that, whereas all the cats were usually there to greet him, tonight, there was one missing. Where had Monkey got to? She was one that was unfailingly there to welcome him.
He had a quick look in the back garden, then upstairs in the bedrooms and bathroom. No, no cat under his bed, no cat in the bathroom playing with the loo roll, and no cat in his laundry basket catching a quick snooze. There was no sign of her. Slipping back outside into the darkness, he called her, but elicited no response. That was odd.
He was rather distracted while he threw together something for his evening meal. As he washed up the few dishes he’d dirtied in his culinary efforts there was a ring at the front doorbell, and he wondered who would be calling on him unexpectedly in the evening.
On the doorstep stood Honey, all smiles. ‘What are we eating?’ she asked, working her way past him and into the house. He merely stood where he was, a look of mingled amazement and horror on his face.
‘What day is it?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you remember, you asked me to come round for a bite to eat tonight? And don’t worry that I’ll start throwing cats around, jump on your sofa and scream my head off. I really am cured.’ A multiple clacking of the cat-flap showed that his pets did not have the same confidence in her, and had exited at the first sound of her voice.
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot it was today, and I’ve already eaten.’
‘What are you like? Completely married to the job!’
The word ‘married’ shot through him like a crossbow bolt, and he had to pull himself together. She hadn’t meant anything by that. ‘Come on in,’ he said, somewhat after the event, ‘and I’ll rustle something up for you.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll order a pizza or something to be delivered. Are you sure you’re OK for me to be here? You seem somewhat distracted.’
‘We’ve got a lot on at the moment: two young women confirmed dead and two missing, and Monkey doesn’t seem to be around. I know she’s only a cat and I can’t expect her to be here to meet me home from work every day, but the fact is, she usually does, and it doesn’t seem right that she’s not here.’
‘I’ll come back another night. I can see you’re not going to be very good company this evening. No, don’t worry about it. I can always find something to do,’ replied Honey, thinking that he seemed just as concerned about his pet as he was about the deaths and disappearances – but he was a somewhat odd man, and she’d just have to get used to that.
Falconer, still not really aware of his social faux pas and bad manners, closed the door in a distracted manner, and went out into the back garden again to call, ‘Monkey! Monkey, where are you?’ making little kissing noises to try to distract her from whatever she was involved in and attract her home.
Chapter Seven
Monkey had not arrived back the next morning when Falconer got up, but he had awoken with a very uneasy feeling which didn’t take too long to identify itself. He’d been appallingly off-hand with Honey – which was probably partly to do with his guilt over thinking of Serena Lyddiard so often in the recent past – but was deeply unnerved by how the thought of marriage had disturbed him. Still, t
he most important problem on his mind was the little cat, and he wondered if his second try with Honey was a good idea. He had been so hurt by her the first time around, and he didn’t think his anger had really gone away. Maybe the whole thing was a mistake.
Why should he be so much more worried about a little Abyssinian cat than he was about having totally forgotten that the love of his life (or, at least, she whom he had previously considered thus) had been coming round? And then to dismiss her when she did show up! Why did he keep thinking of Serena? And why wasn’t he able to give his all to the case?
He needed to sort out his thoughts about his relationship with Honey Dubois, and evaluate if he could ever totally forgive her for what she had done when she had been back to her home island. But where had his little cat got to? Was she in a gutter somewhere, beyond recognition, or had she been enticed into someone’s car? Monkey was a very sociable little thing, and he wanted her back.
Resolving to walk the local streets in search of her, he steeled himself to finding her tiny, broken body, and left the house without breakfast or even a cup of coffee. Had he smoked, he would have lit up before he went out: sometimes he wished he had that vice and comfort to lean on in times of stress.
Later, he would print out a photograph of the cat with a message with his phone number on it and stick it on to lampposts and telegraph poles in the area, and call into the local shops. If she was out there, alive or dead, he would resolve the mystery, just to put his mind at rest about her fate.
He arrived at his office somewhat later than usual, and Carmichael and Tomlinson were already at their desks, but there was something odd about Carmichael. He squinted at him and asked, ‘Sergeant, why has your hair got green strands in the front?’
‘Sorry, sir. I’ve been trying to get it out.’ Carmichael looked more than sheepish.
‘Gum again?’
‘A huge bubble. It burst.’
Shadows and Sins (The Falconer Files Book 13) Page 7
