by Peter Helton
The place smelled of stale washing-up water, cat food and burnt sausages. There were only two people in the kitchen, though Sorbie could have sworn he had heard more than two voices. Two blokes – studenty types, he noted – were wrestling with a washing machine. Nearly a third of the machine, which was still plugged in and in the middle of a wash cycle, had disappeared through the floor. An additional two voices came up from below the floorboards. All four swore and grunted.
The girl stood next to Sorbie. ‘The floorboards are rotten underneath and it just kind of sank into the ground in front of my eyes. It had been leaning a bit for quite a while,’ she admitted.
Fairfield waved the girl, who said her name was Anna, away from the wrestling students to quiz her about Fulvia. Anna was reluctant to move further than the door from where she could keep an eye on her sinking load of washing.
‘What’s she done, then?’ she asked distractedly.
‘Nothing as far as we know. But her parents are worried about her. She seems to have disappeared. When did you last see her?’
Anna pushed her bottom lip out and shrugged. ‘Couple of weeks?’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘Not really. She wasn’t here that often even before that. And I’m not here all that often, either. I’m staying with my boyfriend; he lives closer to the uni. I only came to do my laundry. You think something’s wrong? She’s probably just got a new boyfriend.’
‘Did you ever meet her old boyfriend? Marcus?’
‘No, I don’t think he came here.’
Fairfield got the distinct impression that Anna had not been Fulvia’s biggest fan. ‘How do you get on with Fulvia?’
She puffed up her cheeks and slowly expelled the air. ‘She’s a bit full of herself. And she doesn’t mince words. Nothing’s good enough. She tells everyone that their food’s rubbish and how she can’t believe no one she meets can cook. She did cook a meal once, for the whole house, like. I wasn’t here but everyone went on about how brilliant it was. I think she just did it to show off. Mostly, she eats out, I think.’
‘Does she? Where?’
‘Search me. Italian restaurants, I presume. Why she came to England in the first place I’ve no idea.’
‘Show me her room.’ She turned to Sorbie, but the DS had got involved in trying to pull the washing machine, which had sunk yet lower, back into the kitchen, so she followed the girl without him up to Fulvia’s attic room. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open and peered inside while pulling on latex gloves.
‘Gloves! You really do think something’s happened to her.’
‘It’s just routine,’ Fairfield told her and let her go back down.
The room contained a single bed, a canvas wardrobe behind the door and a long and narrow pasting table under the window. Rolls of charcoal-smudged papers inhabited the corners; a bulging leather portfolio was crammed with life drawings. The walls were covered with drawings, which she immediately acknowledged as being exceptionally good. Fulvia appeared to have drawn everything, from people to shoes to butterflies and dogs. There were many books, in a pile by the bed and stacked all over the pasting table which sagged in the centre under the weight. Fairfield thought she knew why Fulvia was in England. Almost all of the books were on British art and monographs on British artists, only some of whom she had heard of. The inside of the wardrobe told Fairfield two things: Fulvia liked browns, greys and blacks and she could not have taken many clothes with her. Fairfield methodically searched the room for anything that might throw light on the girl’s fate and found none. Fulvia had rejected her small yet well-appointed attic bedsit on the other side of town to live in this tiny room on top of a cramped student house. As if to confirm her impression that the place was in urgent need of refurbishment, a loud crash shook the house. Two floors below her, the battle with the washing machine appeared to have been lost. She crouched down and pointed the beam from her pencil torch under the bed. A suitcase and a holdall took up most of the space. Both turned out to be empty. As she straightened up, her eyes fell on a blue-and-white object standing erect on its charger on the floor beside the bed: an electric toothbrush. She reached across and switched the charger off at the wall socket. On the table she picked up an empty clear plastic folder and held it against the light: plenty of fingerprints. She slid it into an evidence bag.
Sorbie was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. ‘The floorboards gave way. Washing machine is now in the basement but I don’t think it survived the fall.’
‘How do you get down there?’
‘Via the backyard.’
This consisted of a small concreted area surrounded by old brick walls. Narrow steps led down into the basement which was dark, filthy and smelled of damp. Broken furniture lay in mouldering heaps. She found three of the students standing in a pool of grey water around the crashed washing machine. One of them was Anna who was kicking it half-heartedly. ‘It won’t open. I can’t get my washing out.’
‘Did Fulvia have a dressing gown?’ Fairfield asked. All three shrugged their shoulders: not that they knew of. Fairfield could see Sorbie’s face in the hole above, peering down at the mess from the kitchen above. ‘OK, thanks,’ Fairfield said. ‘If you should hear anything about the girl, be sure to let us know.’ They grunted their acknowledgement.
Anna watched her leave, then looked up through the hole and glared at the policeman staring down at her. She was almost a hundred per cent certain the officer had deliberately pushed the washing machine down rather than helped to pull it up.
Back in the car, Fairfield took out her tin of Café Crème cigars and lit one with a disposable lighter. She blew a smoke cloud at the windscreen. ‘I’d appreciate it if in future you’d keep your mind on the job and not get side-tracked by domestic appliances.’
‘Sorry, ma’am. Just wanted to help, that’s all. Did you search her room?’
‘I did,’ she said and started the engine. She dropped the evidence bag in his lap. ‘Her dabs for elimination. Her wardrobe is full and there’s a suitcase and a holdall under her bed. Her electric toothbrush is sitting on a charger beside the bed. Wherever she is, she has very few clothes with her and no toothbrush. I don’t like it, Jack. I think that girl’s in trouble.’
He had made an effort. He had booked a table at what Laura had once told him was her favourite restaurant, shaved for the second time, put on a new shirt and freshly laundered clothes. McLusky had recognized the signs: he was nervous about meeting her. Having lived with her in Southampton for years, he was now nervous of just meeting her for dinner. They had carefully fluttered around the subject of getting back together like birds around a feeder that has a sleeping cat under it. McLusky thought he had made progress in wooing her back; their last meeting had even ended in a lengthy kiss from which Laura had eventually extricated herself with what McLusky had hoped was difficulty.
Yet the evening was not going well. They had met in a pub for drinks beforehand, but Laura was not drinking. She was on medication that did not mix well with alcohol but refused to say what the medication was for. When they had settled at their restaurant table, Laura opened the menu and found that it was completely different from what she remembered – the restaurant had a new chef who appeared to be a refugee from the 1990s and had bought shares in sun-dried tomatoes.
‘We can always go somewhere else,’ McLusky offered.
‘Forget it. I’ll find something.’
In the end they both went for the same dish: lamb chops accompanied by a quivering haystack of impossibly thin fries and a pyramid of roasted vegetables. McLusky knew he was drinking too quickly, especially as he was sitting opposite a stone-cold sober Laura, but he needed to drown out the image of Nicholas Longmaid reaching for a loaded gun that was no longer there, desperately fumbling with a shotgun and cartridge when the door burst open and his killer discharged his …
‘You’ve stopped eating, Liam. Are you all right?’
‘Fine, fine.’ He emptied
his glass of German lager and stabbed at his chips in an imitation of hearty appetite, then blurted it out. ‘Do you think we could live together again?’
‘Live together?’ She clinked her knife against his empty beer bottle. ‘How many of those did you have?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You know what I’m saying. You’re getting ahead of yourself. We’ve had dinner twice and you want us to move in together.’
‘OK, but … it’s not like we’ve only just met. We’ve lived together before.’
‘Yes. Remind me how that went, Liam. Ah, no, don’t bother; it’s just come back to me.’
‘We could give it a try. You could keep your room and just move in experimentally.’
‘What, into your place? A rented flat over a grocer’s, and with no central heating?’
‘It’s summer, Laura; what do you need central heating for?’
‘You don’t expect it to last until the autumn, then?’
McLusky left his food half eaten, demolishing the pretty arrangement just enough to make it look as if he had tried. His medical was coming up and he could do with losing weight anyway.
‘Do you want to go somewhere else? Or perhaps we could …’
‘Actually, Liam, I’m really tired tonight. I ordered a cab when you were in the loo. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come out tonight.’
‘No, no, I’m glad you did.’
‘I thought about cancelling but I did want to see you, you know?’
When they stepped out on to the street, it was raining heavily. The taxi was waiting. ‘I did buy an umbrella, honest. But it’s still back at the office.’
Like sixty per cent of your mind, thought Laura. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and ran to the cab.
Nicholas Longmaid’s autopsy had been immediate and had revealed no surprises. The time of his death had now been pronounced by Dr Coulthart with reasonable confidence as being between eleven a.m. and one o’clock. Forensics, however, had not been nearly so obliging. They were happy to say with ‘a degree of confidence’ that he was killed with a .38, but refused to be drawn on whether it had been fired from the same gun used to kill Charles Mendenhall since both projectiles had been too deformed to reveal a match.
While listening to McLusky, DSI Denkhaus had been twirling his gold fountain pen between his fingers. Now he dropped it on to his diary in a gesture of disgust. ‘Bloody typical. It’s like it was planned that way. They couldn’t have, could they?’
‘I asked. They laughed.’
‘No, I expect you can’t predict ricochets.’ His face brightened. ‘I’m glad you asked them, though, because you have to wonder what the chances are. Have we checked alibis? What about David Mendenhall? You fancied him for his father’s murder. Could he be involved in this? He knew him.’
‘We’ll have to talk to him again. Austin called him and he immediately said he would not talk to us again without a solicitor present.’
‘Sounds promising. Why would he react that way to a simple inquiry?’
‘He went off on one, to quote DS Austin, and shouted down the phone.’
‘We can’t pull him in without having anything on him at all, so go and get a statement from him, through his bloody solicitor if necessary. What about Longmaid’s wife? Could she have killed her husband?’
‘Oh, easily. By temperament, I mean. Not even a pretence of grief there. Forensics took swabs of her hands and clothing. No residue to say she fired a gun, but she could have worn different clothes and gloves and disposed of them somehow.’
‘She doesn’t have an alibi, then?’
‘Said she went for a drive after going shopping – nice day and all that. She had at least two hours unaccounted for in which to do it.’
‘You fancy her?’ McLusky pulled a face. ‘For the killing,’ Denkhaus added.
‘I think she was fond of Mendenhall and may have had a fling with him. She has closer ties to both victims than David Mendenhall. When I spoke to Poulimenos, he suggested that David wanted nothing to do with the four painting friends.’
‘Right.’ Denkhaus frowned. ‘Four?’
‘Oh, yeah, Poulimenos mentioned a fourth friend. But he died some time ago.’
‘Natural causes?’
‘Accident, I believe. But I’ll look into it.’
A few minutes later he was standing in a nearby supermarket, staring at the self-service salad bar. DSI Denkhaus had reminded him of his upcoming fitness test and dispelled any hopes McLusky might have had of postponing the evil day because of the ongoing investigation. ‘There’s always an ongoing investigation,’ he had been told. This morning he had breakfasted on bran flakes with a splash of skimmed milk, which had instantly put him in a bad mood. Now he was looking at the salad bar with something akin to hatred. A sign invited him to squash as much stuff into plastic boxes of varying sizes. Anything that looked even remotely interesting was covered in high-calorie mayonnaisy gunk. With a sigh, he filled his container – he had sensibly opted for ‘medium’ – with slithering sliced cucumber, tomatoes as small and hard as marbles, mixed beans, mixed bean sprouts and shredded lettuce.
Back in his office, McLusky irritably made room on his desk by piling the clutter on it into a heap on the floor so that he could find a place to set down his box of salad. Never had he anticipated a meal with less enthusiasm. Still, it was only until the fitness test; anyway, it was a hot day and salad was supposed to be summery, wasn’t it? He flicked on the little plastic fan which came reluctantly to life with a buzz and a squeak. He opened the salad box, peeled the foil off the little carton of French dressing he had bought at the same time and slam-dunked the lot into his salad. Attacking it with a plastic fork in one hand, he hammered out numbers on his desk phone with the other and ordered up a storm of background checks on all and sundry, as well as Elaine Poulimenos’s new address. Then he called forensics. ‘The boot print on Longmaid’s office door …’
‘Partial boot print,’ the technician reminded him.
‘Did you find any matches of it in the garden?’
‘Didn’t find any at all. Whoever it was probably stuck to the stone-flagged path and it was dry.’
‘Did you try to match it to any prints at Woodlea House?’ There was a pause at the other end. McLusky prompted irritably, ‘In Charles Mendenhall’s garden!’
‘Did you want us to? No one suggested to us that the two deaths are connected. Anyway, it’s only a partial and I haven’t been there, but the gardens at Woodlea are quite big, aren’t they? That would take a lot of man hours …’
McLusky grunted, dialled a different number and growled down the phone until he was talking to the walrus-faced SOCO team leader who had attended at Woodlea House.
‘There were many boot prints at Woodlea,’ said the man on a crackly extension from his neon-lit basement lab. ‘Both gardeners wear heavy boots. We only looked for dramatically different imprints, as from someone jumping heavily off the wall into the garden. It’s a huge place, you know, it would take a lot of man hours …’
McLusky grunted some more and hung up, then went back to attacking the rest of his salad. He had nearly finished it when Austin knocked and entered. ‘Looks nice,’ the DS said experimentally and watched him chase the last few beans through the dregs of salad dressing in the bottom of the box. McLusky let the oily dressing run into one corner then poured it into the back of the six-inch fan. It stopped squeaking immediately and instead wafted Herbes de Provence smells at him. ‘Making best use of police resources,’ he commented. ‘OK, Jane, astound me. What’s the bloody connection between Mendenhall’s death and Longmaid’s?’
‘The gardeners. Gotts and Lucket are doing the Longmaids’ garden, too.’
SEVEN
‘Nothing.’ McLusky had tried all the numbers for the gardeners he had, including the landlines at Woodlea and Stanmore House. ‘Gotts’ mobile went straight to voicemail. They’re probably working somewhere else.’
‘Or they’ve
done a runner.’
McLusky dialled one more number and got no answer. ‘Is it National Just Let It Ring Day, Jane?’ He lifted his jacket off the back of his chair and shooed Austin out of his office. ‘You keep trying to get hold of them.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘Poulimenos isn’t answering his phone. I’m not taking any chances. I’ll pop round there. I’d quite like another chat with him anyway.’
‘Ask him who does his gardening?’
‘That, too.’
Without Austin pumping imaginary brake pedals and complaining about the speed, McLusky bombed south out of the city with a blue beacon flashing on his roof and no fear of speeding tickets. The twenty-five-year-old suspension on the heavy car was no match for McLusky’s impatience, however, which meant that by the time he arrived at Bybrook View in record time, he had managed to give himself several good scares.
Through the bars he could see Poulimenos’s Bentley in the garage, but the wrought-iron gate to the farm complex remained closed and ringing the bell under the intercom in the stone gatepost produced no answer. He called the number again, imagined he could hear it ring seven times across the expanse of the courtyard, then stowed his mobile in his jacket and climbed the stone wall beside the high gate. He dropped heavily on to the gravelled ground on the other side, hurting his left foot in the process. Every time he put weight on it, pain spread through the ball of his foot. He walked gingerly to the front door. There was an old-fashioned bell pull; McLusky yanked at it, which resulted in a loud chime just on the other side of the door but failed to rouse anyone. He walked around the side, paused to cup his hands and peer through the windows of the Bentley, then hobbled on to the back of the house. The door to the studio was closed; he knocked heavily, still hoping to get a response.
