Footsteps in the Blood

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Not Roger’s real name, I take it?’

  ‘Nothing like.’

  ‘I knew the man Roger was with. He’s well-known for being behind a porn video ring. We’ve never been able to get him, although he has been in court once or twice. I also knew that there had been a raid on one of his warehouses the week before, from which he had walked away clean. The place was empty. Even being repainted. Couldn’t have been cleaner.’

  ‘And Roger would have known this raid was to take place?’

  Dolly nodded. ‘I can’t say I saw any money pass between them. I think they would have been cleverer than that. Or Roger would. But I believe it did.’

  Charmian drank some wine. ‘Were you seen?’

  ‘I thought not. But from something that happened afterwards I think I could have been.’ Dolly ceased in her walking up and down the room. ‘ It was while you were away. Someone broke all the windows in my car.’

  ‘A vandal?’

  Dolly shrugged. ‘So I thought at first. Then I came back here and some of the glass had been shoved through my letterbox. I can’t prove the connection but …’ she paused.

  ‘But you’re nervous.’ Charmian drank her wine. ‘Do you think Roger did it?’

  ‘Oh no, far too canny. Nor Mr Magister, that’s not his name either, the porn king. He just hired someone. And would do so again.’

  ‘How does Nella Fisher come into this?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if she did at first. But I found out that Nella worked for a few weeks in that pub. I think that’s where she heard the threats she claimed she listened to.’

  ‘And was killed by a hired gun?’

  Dolly said: ‘No, I think Roger did that.’

  ‘Have you got a reason for thinking so?’

  ‘Not exactly a reason, just a feeling. I believe there might be something personal as well,’ said Dolly slowly. ‘Just something Nella said. As if the person she was telling tales about knew her. They had a past together.’

  She hesitated. ‘And there is something else. Something I just learned today. We have a witness who saw Nella that night with another person. I think they came here together. I think that other person was Roger.’

  ‘Would Nella go for a walk with Roger?’

  ‘Yes, because I think Roger is someone she might, in a funny way, trust.’

  ‘Nella did not sound the sort to trust a policeman, especially one she knew to be corrupt.’

  ‘But I think she might trust this one,’ said Dolly slowly. ‘Or just so far to be off her guard for long enough.’ If Roger had killed her.

  ‘Who told you about this witness?’ asked Charmian, not letting on that she had already heard.

  ‘Tom Bister. He sort of let it out.’

  ‘Can this witness describe the person with Nella?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Dolly. ‘Light wasn’t good. Or that’s the story. Not sure if I believe it.’

  ‘But he or she knows it was Nella, and could see her well enough?’

  ‘That’s about it. The pair moved into the shadows.’

  ‘Did this witness know Nella?’

  ‘Certainly seen her before,’ said Dolly carefully.

  Why did Charmian get the impression that Dolly was keeping something back?

  Because she is, said the voice of reason inside her, Dolly is not telling everything. Nor is Kate. Probably not George Rewley and certainly not Sergeant Bister, who had ‘let it’ out to Dolly and who may even have meant Rewley to hear what he said about the new witness. And for that matter, she herself was not being totally open.

  ‘Who is this witness?’ she demanded.

  ‘A police officer,’ said Dolly reluctantly. ‘Off duty.’

  The same story that George Rewley had just passed on, but Dolly had added another detail: she knew the witness.

  ‘This witness has been a bit slow in coming forward.’

  ‘Been on a package holiday and out of touch,’ said Dolly.

  ‘And might have the same reason that you have for keeping quiet?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dolly. She had a careful, blank look on her face.

  Dolly had the report on Nella Fisher’s last few days on her desk, but so far she had not given it to Charmian. She was just about to do so when the doorbell rang.

  Kate and George Rewley arrived together, although quick to explain that it was coincidence.

  ‘I just walked up the stairs and there was George,’ said Kate.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here, Barstow.’ George produced a bottle of wine from his raincoat pocket.

  ‘Still raining, is it?’ Dolly looked at the wine label. Sancerre. He knew what she liked. It would go with the meal too: sole in cream sauce with a spinach roulade. She hadn’t cooked it, but she knew where to shop to find food like that.

  ‘Will it ever stop?’

  They gathered in the big living room where Dolly had lit the gas fire. Before they could get too cosy, and forget what they were there for, Charmian said, ‘We’re going to talk over all the events surrounding Nella Fisher’s death as far as we know them.’

  George Rewley sat in a corner of the room, quietly watchful, as was his way. He wouldn’t talk unless asked a question, but he was observing their faces, their hands, and how they placed their feet. You could tell a lot that way. The only member of his family who could hear, he lipread and observed body signs as a way of life. He noticed and admired Charmian’s shoes. Kate was wearing white trainers, a bad sign in her case, he thought, since they no longer represented the kind of high fashion Kate went for; it meant she wasn’t trying.

  Charmian started the proceedings.

  ‘It’s an odd tale. Dolly has told me what she thinks is behind Nella’s visits to you. She has even told me why she thinks there might be some truth in the warnings that Nella gave her, that Dolly herself might be booked as a victim of violence.’

  ‘Still might,’ said Dolly.

  ‘So what about you, Kate? What did you make of Nella’s threat and tales? Did you believe them?’

  ‘She struck me as being desperate. But I don’t know why. She wanted money,’ said Kate. ‘I think she’d have threatened anything. Told any lies to get it.’

  ‘But she thought she had something to sell. Some bit of information. Did she tell you more than she did Dolly?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘She didn’t say much. She told me a policewoman might be under threat. She knew Dolly was my friend. I didn’t really believe a lot of what she said.’

  ‘Let’s go over the evening of Nella Fisher’s death again.’ Charmian looked at Dolly and Kate. ‘You two can talk and I will listen.’

  George Rewley was watching as well as listening; she did not forget that.

  ‘Can we talk over the soup?’ asked Dolly. She was a good cook but a nervous one. ‘Nothing will spoil the soup but the next course is tricky.’ She had bought a prepared soufflé to go before the sole but it had to go in the oven and come out and be eaten according to a strict timetable.

  Over the soup, which was thick and spicy and hot, they talked. Dolly first.

  She had worked all day on a shoplifting case, nabbed the old queen who was responsible for a considerable loss from a furniture store (‘You wouldn’t think you could lift a sofa, two armchairs and a television set, would you?’), taken statements and got the prisoner his solicitor. Then she had come home to change for an evening out. The Stafford Hotel. Yes, she had witnesses. She had driven herself, and she thought Kate had seen her go off. Just from the window, they had not spoken that day. At the hotel, of course, there were many people who would remember her. The evening of September 17 had been a festive occasion for her until she heard afterwards what had happened.

  Kate bore out what Dolly had said, Yes, she had seen her friend depart, but apart from that they had not met all day. Just a wave from the window. She herself had spent a quiet and solitary day. A fit of sneezing in the morning had made her suspect a cold coming on (Kate took her health seriously) so s
he had stayed home. The post had delivered a parcel of books she had ordered from the London Library to which she had devoted the day. The evening had been quiet and she had gone to bed early. No, she would not have heard the shot, since she slept at the back, well away from the grass where Nella had died.

  The two stories dovetailed. The mood of the party was quiet as they ate Dolly’s good food and drank the wine that Rewley had brought. Over the meal they carefully did not talk about the murder.

  And as if to forestall any more talk, Kate soon rose and said she was tired and would be off. Dolly did not try to detain her or the others. Instead she stood up and went for their coats.

  As they prepared to go, Charmian said in a low voice to Rewley, ‘Well?’

  ‘They are both lying.’

  ‘Dolly too?’

  ‘Certainly Dolly.’

  ‘Damn.’ Charmian took a deep breath. ‘So what was the area of the lying? Can you pinpoint it?’

  ‘For both girls, when they were talking about each other. I think they did meet that day. And in addition, for Kate, there is the evening. She was very tense about that.’

  ‘Well, you can tackle Dolly. I will shake Kate and see what drops out.’

  She cornered Kate on the stairs outside Dolly’s flat. ‘ Before you go, there’s some questions I want to put to you, Kate.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘You’re keeping something back.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘Just say yes or no.’

  Kate was silent.

  ‘All right, I take that as yes. But I knew it, anyway. In some ways, you’re a poor liar, Kate. I’ll get there, Kate, I’ll find out. But well leave that for the moment. The other question is this: Did you go out of your flat that night, and take a walk?’

  This time Kate was quick to answer. ‘ No, I didn’t set foot outside. Not once.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No one was with me. But I have a sort of proof. I made a telephone call about eleven o’clock. Maybe a while before. I watched the television news and then rang.’

  ‘Who did you telphone?’

  ‘My father.’

  Charmian believed her. In any case, it could be checked and she doubted if Kate would offer a lie which could easily be shown up. But to her mind, it was an interesting call.

  ‘Well, let’s get back to what you are hiding, Kate. I know you have a temper, I know you can blow up at people. But you aren’t stupid, and you don’t do it without a reason.’

  Kate kept quiet.

  ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘You’re rotten sometimes, Charmian.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  The words started to come out, as if a bandage had been taken off a wound. ‘Nella had this tale she wanted to tell me. Share with me, she said.’ Kate gave a sad little laugh. ‘About a man obsessed with a policewoman. Not nicely obsessed. She’d insulted him. He wanted to get even.’

  Charmian remembered Dolly’s story. ‘ Jack?’

  Kate put her head down. ‘I thought Nella meant my father. I think she wanted me to believe it was my father. It was then I hit her.’

  ‘Did you talk to Dolly about this, talk on that day?’

  Was this the lie that Rewley had detected? If they had talked that evening, then it might provide the motive that Bister and Elman were probably looking for.

  Kate stiffened. ‘No. Certainly not.’

  Another lie? I could do with a lie detector, Charmian thought, but Kate probably knows how to sidetrack one. Or would learn.

  Two different versions, Dolly’s and Kate’s, two different attackers, a corrupt policeman and Jack Cooper. Only one victim envisaged: Dolly Barstow.

  But not the one actually killed. The girl who died was Nella Fisher.

  Not a bad girl, she gave her blood. Yet she was not mourned by her family.

  As she drove home, Charmian continued this train of thought. Why had no one from Nella’s family come to her funeral?

  The little house was quiet and welcoming; in its hundred and fifty years of history it had known many comings and goings, births and deaths, tragedies and rejoicing, and its message was that you live through it.

  Muff, the cat, pushed open the cat flap and welcomed Charmian. Then she ate a saucer of fish, preceded Charmian to the bedroom, where she sat purring. Outside, in the bushes across the road, someone had trodden on her tail, a painful and ruffling experience. There’s a nasty foot out there, she could have said, but words were not her medium.

  Charmian lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. She had never felt quite at ease with Jack Cooper. But he was Kate’s father and Annie’s husband. Annie was her best friend. She had been at their wedding.

  The marriage had been turbulent and no one could call Jack easy. But a murderer?

  Then the other story. Dolly’s tale about the corrupt policeman. Roger, so-called. Roger might feel a strong desire to attack Dolly, if Dolly looked like being a threat, and had humiliated him. Nella had claimed he did. But why kill Nella?

  Why should Roger, whoever Roger was, kill Nella?

  There was one more puzzle: Dolly’s story, as told by Dolly, did not include any incident in which she had insulted and belittled Roger.

  The two stories seemed to merge in a puzzling way.

  She wondered if George Rewley would telephone with news of a breakthrough with Dolly, but the telephone remained silent.

  She considered telephoning Dolly herself … She reached out a hand … but Dolly had her answering machine on. Permanently on, probably.

  In her own flat, Dolly Barstow turned off her tape recorder. ‘That’s it, then.’

  She had taken the precaution of taping the whole evening’s conversation. In her present mood, she trusted no one and nothing except her own quick senses. She wasn’t going to unburden herself to George Rewley.

  She went back to their dialogue just before he left. ‘Come on, Dolly, what are you keeping back?’

  ‘Your imagination is working overtime, George.’

  What she was not telling was that she had seen Nella Fisher in the road outside the flats in Merrywick and she herself had seen the police officer she called Roger following her. That was something she was keeping quiet about.

  There was guilt as well, she ought to have done something about it. That was something she was keeping to herself, too.

  Dolly’s telephone had rung three times after the party had left. Once it was Kate, once Charmian, but the third caller had left no message.

  She put the chain on the front door and went to bed. Tomorrow she would let Charmian see the report on Nella Fisher’s last days.

  Kate was not asleep, and did not wish to sleep. She had tried to telephone Dolly but, like Charmian, got the answering machine.

  The sleep of all three women was troubled, Charmian’s most of all. She did not like the idea of an accidental or even a substitute victim. There had to be a reason why Nella Fisher was killed.

  It all came back to the wild figure of Nella Fisher herself. Know the victim, Charmian told herself, and you might learn who was the killer.

  Outside, the man in the bushes watched her bedroom window. His ankle stung a little where that damned cat had managed to get through trouser and sock. He was in a bad mood anyway.

  Or was it a good mood? Hate could be a pleasure and mingle very strangely with love so that he sometimes hardly knew what he felt himself.

  About the killing. That one first. This one next. But it ought to have been the other way round.

  Chapter Six

  Friday, October 6, for another group of people

  Woman Police Sergeant Margery Foggerty was a comfortably built woman whose uniform fitted her with some snugness. She was a motherly, kindly figure who was quite content to fill the policewoman’s traditional role of looking after women and children in distress. She preferred it that way, and had no ambitions to enter the CID. Her reward had been a steady, gentle course of promotion. She had reached her peak
, and she knew it; if she stayed on, then she would retire in ten years’ time as a sergeant. But she enjoyed her work, knew she was suited to it, and was happy with her house and her own society. If she had a grumble it was that the financial rewards were not great, Still, you did what you could.

  She had thought long and hard before coming forward with her story about seeing Nella walking with someone. Finally, she had decided that she really had better speak out. There could be other witnesses.

  She might have been seen herself and been recognised. Her sister and brother-in-law had a house in Merrywick which she visited regularly, especially since their marriage was breaking up and divorce looked on the cards. Margery did not want Muriel to divorce, she was not the sort of woman to be thrown on the hard, cold world since there was no sign that she could support herself. Frank might not be an ideal husband, no one pretended he was, but he was Muriel’s and she’d better keep him. She had known what he was like when she married him and he hadn’t changed with the years. There were no ideal husbands anyway, and Muriel had not been an ideal wife.

  Foggerty had been married herself, to another police officer, but police marriages are under constant strain and they had parted fairly amicably some five years ago. He was a Superintendent now in another force and had remarried. She was not jealous of his success, she had created her own life and enjoyed what she got from it. Holidays, a good car, a nice little house. At heart she knew she did not want to share.

  Especially with Muriel, who had better stay where she was.

  Margery had been on her way from telling her sister this blunt truth, and mopping her up after she heard it, when she had seen Nella Fisher. Nella was known to her and she was known to Nella and no love lost. It was a pity they had ever met.

  Foggerty – she preferred to be called this at work – had served as WPC in Cheasey, Nella’s home village, a sobering experience for a young woman from which she had learned a lot, not all of it good. For which she did not blame herself; life in Cheasey was a kind of disease and you were bound to pick up a scrap of infection.

  As a result of this two years of service, she knew the Fisher clan, one of the principal pillars of the criminal community of Cheasey. She had been responsible for putting several of them inside. Cousins of Nella, as she remembered … or possibly even more closely linked. The relationships in that extended family did not bear thinking about. Incest was nothing out of the way.