by Jane Adams
Sarah glanced across at the flashing light. She shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said. She put her magazine aside and went to open the door.
8 p.m.
John Tynan turned into Cavendish Road. He had been looking forward to this evening. Theo was always good company and the young man, David, who had been lodging with her for the past eight months or so had proved to be very pleasant too in his own way.
He had been thinking earlier in the day about just how long he had known Theo. Most of her life, probably. Her older sister, May, had been at school with John’s wife and the two had stayed friends all their lives, the two women dying within months of each other as it turned out, and from different versions of the same bloody illness.
May had lived all her life within five miles of where she was born, but Theo had always been a wild one. Wanted to be an actress and going full pelt to achieve her dream. She had run off to London and worked at anything and everything while she auditioned, until she’d finally got her first break with a little rep company that travelled doing one-night stands all over the country.
She’d done well for herself in the end though. In work more than out of it and playing small but useful roles on the television later in her career. Theo had stayed with sister May between engagements and kept in touch with old friends despite being away so much of the time.
It had been a great surprise when she’d come back home to stay. Must have been close on a year before, thought John.
He turned the corner into Cavendish Road to find his way blocked by a police car parked diagonally across the nearside lane and a uniformed officer waving the traffic around the cordon. Blue lights flashed eerily in the darkness pooled between the streetlights.
Theo’s house. The cordon was around Theo’s house. What the hell?
Anxious, John drove a little way on and parked at the side of the road, then walked back, taking in the two cars with their flashing lights. The constable standing by the slightly open door, the small crowd beginning to gather on the other side of the street and the curious watching discreetly from their curtained windows.
‘You can’t come in here, sir. I’m sorry, but there’s been an incident.’
‘But I’m expected,’ John said, startled.
‘If I could have your name, sir. And, you say you were expected?’
John took control of himself. ‘My name is John Tynan, ex-Detective Inspector Tynan. Theo Howard is a friend of mine and I’d like to know what’s going on.’
The young officer’s expression had changed a little as he took this in. He opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he had in mind was interrupted as the front door was flung open and Davy threw himself out, grabbing at John’s arm. His face contorted with emotion as he cried out, ‘She’s dead, John. Theo’s dead!’
Tynan barely had time to react before Davy had been ushered gently but firmly into a waiting police car. He turned back, reaching a hand towards the closed door as though to push it open. It was white, he noted, as though seeing it for the first time. White replacement uPVC, with an ornate brass handle and a little stained-glass panel just above the letter box.
The young constable on duty was speaking to him, John realized, but it was not until the PC reached out and touched John’s arm that he really took in what the man was saying.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’
‘Was she a close friend? If you could just come and sit in the car for a moment . . .’
Another car had pulled up parallel with Theo’s house. John saw it out of the corner of his eye and recognized Maria’s silver Mazda. Mike was in the passenger seat.
John raced down the steps towards them, talking almost before Mike had a chance to get out of the car.
‘Theo. They’re telling me Theo’s dead.’
‘Steady, John, slow it down. What are you doing here anyway?’
‘Theo, I told you, I came to see Theo.’
‘She was a friend of your wife’s,’ Maria remembered as she eased herself out of the car. ‘I remember you talking about her.’ She frowned. ‘Wasn’t she an actress at one time?’
‘Yes, yes. That’s her. But they’re telling me she’s dead. I was supposed to come to dinner tonight. I got here to find the place cordoned.’
He took a deep breath as though realizing how close to hysterical he must sound, holding out a hand as though to fend off their concern. ‘I’m all right, Mike. Really I am. It’s just a bit of a shock.’
Another car arrived. The police surgeon got out, greeted Mike and nodded to John Tynan. ‘Thought you were retired. Can’t they keep you away?’
‘Look,’ Mike said, ‘Maria will take you back home and stay with you.’ He glanced across at her for agreement. ‘Give me your keys, John, and I’ll drive your car back later when I wind up here.’
For a moment Tynan’s expression hardened as though angry at being dismissed. Then he nodded. ‘But I want to know, Mike. I want to know what happened. Theo, she had no family, not since May died, same year as Grace you know. She was a good friend. A good friend.’ He allowed Maria to open the passenger door for him and got into the car, the age showing on his pale face as they drove away.
Inside, the house was tidy, no signs of a struggle. Unusually for a terraced house of this kind, there was a small hallway with the staircase going off. A little table, no larger than a plant stand, stood at the bottom of the stairs, supporting a red-shaded lamp.
Three doors led off the hall. One at the end, open to reveal the kitchen. The front room had been turned into a dining-room. Mike was directed into the rear living-room. It was not a large room. French doors led into a neat garden. A three-seater sofa, covered with a cream throw, stood against one wall with stacks of bright cushions propped against the ends. An old chesterfield with a drop-down arm stood at right angles to the first settee. It too was draped with cream, and blue cushions lay beneath the woman’s feet.
Her shoes had been removed and placed tidily beside the sofa. Other than that she was fully and smartly dressed in a dark green suit and cream silk blouse.
There was, Mike noted absently, a tiny ladder in the left foot of her tights.
Her head was supported on another blue cushion and her eyes were closed. Theo Howard had grey hair. It was shoulder-length and loose and there was something about the way it had been combed out across the cushion that made Mike look twice. One hand rested across her stomach, the other fell awkwardly towards the floor, but from her position, neatly propped upon the sofa, and the casual arrangement of her limbs, she could almost have been sleeping.
Almost.
The reek of vomit and alcohol filled the tiny room. An empty bottle lay upon the floor and streaks of vomit ran from her nose and the corner of the woman’s open mouth, pooling beside her face, staining the blue of the cushion a fetid brown.
‘She’s holding something, Mike,’ the police surgeon commented.
With gloved hands he gently opened the woman’s hand. The fingers were still flexible, lightly clenched about the paper. Someone held an evidence bag for him and the surgeon eased the paper into the bag, drawing it flat as he posted it inside.
Mike took the sealed bag, moving away from the body as the surgeon continued with his work. Temperature of the body, temperature of the room, pronouncement of death at twenty thirty-two. Directing the photographer as she moved softly about the scene.
Mike read, his lips moving silently as he took in the words.
‘Anything interesting?’ the police surgeon asked.
‘It’s a poem,’ Mike told him.
‘A poem. Well, that’s a new one.’
He packed his equipment away and prepared to leave. ‘You can move the body when she’s finished the family snapshots,’ he said, nodding towards the photographer.
Mike thanked him. He glanced back at the paper in his hand and read again.
‘Right now; I do not need to be told truth . . .’
Chapter Ten
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8.40 p.m.
Charlie Morrow sat in the one and only armchair, trying not to think how long it had been since he last slept, and surveyed the rest of the room. It was a tiny flat. One small living-room, an equally small bedroom. Bathroom with a shower but no bath, crammed into a space that should have been a cupboard. A screened-off area at the end of the living-room that held a Baby Belling two-ring cooker, a sink and half draining-board together with a couple of wall cupboards and a yellow Formica-covered table that must have to double as a work surface.
Marion O’Donnel rented the place part-furnished apparently. The kitchen stuff was owned by the landlord, as was the bed — she’d supplied her own mattress. The two-seater sofa also came with the flat. It had a missing castor and its limp side was supported by folded cardboard torn from a cornflakes packet padded around a strip of wood.
The chair in which Charlie Morrow was seated, the pine desk standing under the window and the nest of square teak-effect tables were hers, it seemed. As were the assorted, cheaply framed posters and the flatpack bookshelves with their burden of paperbacks and magazines. Charlie Morrow had glanced through them earlier. She had eclectic tastes, he thought. A few thrillers, the odd romance. Cheap edition classics shoved, careless of any order, between science fiction novels, travel guides and women’s magazines.
On the top shelf were framed photographs. Herself and two old ladies who must be the Misses Thompson. An old photograph of a man and woman, standing awkwardly together, the woman squinting into the sun with a hand raised to shade her eyes.
Another of the same man, older and alone, seated in the armchair that Morrow now occupied.
Others of Marion and younger people. College friends, he assumed. She looked relaxed and happy, laughing into the camera.
Charlie Morrow shook his head and sighed. ‘Didn’t know what was coming to you, did you, girl?’ In his mind there was no doubt but that the dead woman was Marion O’Donnel. They’d contacted her dentist, got the dental records; it was only a matter of time until forensics confirmed what Charlie was certain he already knew.
Marion worked in a bookshop. They had tried to contact her when she hadn’t turned up for work, but that was all. She had holiday due to her, had taken two weeks of it and then not come back to work.
‘Was that in character?’ Charlie Morrow had asked. Her employer had shaken his head. No, she had generally been reliable.
And you didn’t think to report her missing? Morrow had questioned. The man had looked awkward. Shrugged vaguely.
‘She was an employee, Detective Morrow. I don’t think of myself as my brother’s keeper; never mind my employees’. She was a nice girl, obliging and friendly with the customers. I’d had no complaints.’
‘Until?’ Morrow asked.
‘Well, she’d . . . it was as if her mind wasn’t on the job, suddenly. She came in late, pleaded sick and went early on, oh, a dozen or more occasions in the month before she took her holiday. And she started to forget things. Orders didn’t get done and customers were complaining about her behaviour.’
‘So you suggested she take some holiday?’
‘I thought she might have problems. Need some time to sort them out . . . I don’t know. She’d been a first-rate employee before, I didn’t want to part with her if there was a chance she could straighten herself out. When she didn’t come back, well, I thought . . .’
‘That it was easier than having to get rid.’ Charlie Morrow nodded, ignoring the man’s indignation at his lack of tact.
‘Was she close to anyone at work?’
Apparently not. She was friendly enough, but it was a small shop. Just himself, Marion and three part-timers. She had formed no close friendships with any of them.
Morrow took their names and addresses and arranged for interviews. By then it was getting late and he had come here to her flat, just as forensics were finishing up. Morrow looked at the stack of documents lying neatly on the desk.
She had been very ordered, he thought. Everything filed and kept. Bank statements arranged by date. Phone and other utility bills sorted according to type and held together with paperclips.
Personal letters in yet another folder.
There was nothing hidden between the pages of her books. Nothing slipped between the magazines. Her rent had been paid in advance and was up to date, or had been until two weeks before. The landlord, thinking she had been away, had let it slide for a week then dropped her a note through the door and, later, left messages on her answering machine.
‘I thought there must be some good reason,’ he had told Charlie Morrow. ‘Eighteen, nineteen months she’d been with me. Paid her deposit good as gold and never so much as a day late. I decided she must have, maybe, family trouble and couldn’t get back. So I said to my wife, I said, we’ll take the rent out of her deposit money this month and she can make the deposit up again when she comes back.’
Charlie Morrow nodded and placed his own interpretation of events around the story, guessing it to be essentially the same but with a little of the altruism removed.
The landlord had been more worried about having police cars outside the converted house than he had been about the loss and possible death of one of his tenants.
There was a knock on the door; an officer came in and began to pack the sealed evidence bags into a plastic crate for transport.
Thoughtfully, Charlie Morrow reached out for the evidence bag lying on the table close to him. ‘Here, you’ll be wanting this too,’ he said.
For him, that single sheet of paper was the most significant find of the day. A second poem, this one also untitled. It began: ‘Right now; I do not need to be told truth . . .’
Charlie Morrow had been about to leave when DS Cooper and DC Stein arrived.
‘Thought we might catch you, guv,’ Beth said. ‘We’ve just come from the aunt’s place.’
‘Anything useful?’
Beth shook her head. ‘Not so far. The aunt was the father’s sister; after Marion’s dad died they didn’t see a lot of her. No conflict or anything, just drifted apart.’
‘Did the aunt know about the new boyfriend?’
Beth shrugged. ‘She knew there was one, but that was about all. Thought his name might be Jack, but no last name and she’d never met him. Said Marion was a bit tight-lipped about this one. She reckoned that was unusual, Marion was generally full of it.’
‘And the last time she saw Marion O’Donnel?’
‘Was the Friday before Miss Thompson spoke to her on the phone.’
‘And in her opinion, was her niece upset about anything?’
‘Hard to say,’ Beth shrugged. ‘Marion stayed for maybe half an hour. Had a cup of tea, talked about work and family and then went on her way.’
‘And did she mention the boyfriend then?’
Beth nodded, ‘Briefly, only to say that she was still seeing him. The aunt seemed to think he might be a married man. I think, because she was reluctant to talk . . .’
‘And she said it wouldn’t be the first time. Her last was a married man,’ Stein put in.
Morrow nodded. ‘That fits in,’ he said, ‘with what the Misses Thompson told us. That her choice of men left something to be desired.’
Chapter Eleven
8.40 p.m.
Sorting through the latest submissions to ‘readers’ wives’ was not the most satisfying of deals. These, the static equivalent of mucky home videos — Jake got a fair few of those too, sent through his various agents — were always a mixed bag. Some of them, he thought, should have been wearing a bag. But on the other hand, he’d found some real hot sales that way.
She had been one of them. Vinnie had passed her photo on, he remembered. Vinnie had a good eye. She was a classic blonde, firm curves and that look. A little uncertain, a tiny bit shy, as though she didn’t know the full score.
Whatever her boyfriend had been thinking when he took the shots, Jake saw pound signs.
And he’d groomed her, pa
mpered her, dressed — and undressed her — right. Had her photographed by the best in the business. She could have had anything her little heart desired. But it hadn’t been enough. She had to stick her pretty nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Not satisfied with what she’d got.
For some people, he thought bitterly, nothing was ever enough.
Well, time to see how his latest project was doing. Jake set the photographs aside and went down into the basement.
When Jake first moved into the house the basement had been a damp and dismal place, crammed with the debris of generations of successive owners. He’d cleared it out, run power and heat and water into all three rooms and replastered the walls, hiding the cold stone behind a colour wash of broken white. The basement was virtually soundproof, warm, and each of the three rooms was decorated in its own distinctive style. Jake did a lot of his work from here and he needed comfort and variety, though he doubted the young man lying bound and blindfolded on the narrow bed had any appreciation of the effort he had gone to.
Jake had bound his victim’s hands and feet and covered his eyes with thick grey ducting tape, but he had deliberately left the mouth uncovered. There was no need for silence. The man could scream himself hoarse and there’d be no one able to hear. And Jake had learnt the hard way how easy it was for someone to choke on their own vomit if you covered their mouths too tight.
He said nothing as he set the camera on its tripod, turning it towards the young man, checking he had the whole body in frame. The crotch of his jeans, Jake noticed, was wet, the damp patch spreading down one leg and on to the sheets.
‘Who’s there? For Christ’s sake, who’s there?’ Voice cracked with desperation.
Jake said nothing. Panning down the body, then back to rest upon the face.
‘Why don’t you say something? I know you’re there. For Christ’s sake, why don’t you say something?’
His voice broke and Jake could hear the young man trying to control the sobs that rose in his throat. His face contorted with fear; his body writhing on the narrow bed as he struggled to turn his head, straining for the slightest sound.
