Footsteps in the Blood

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Didn’t like to bring her out. She was in season.’

  It was a very nasty wound, ‘How did she get this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  A lie, she thought, he must know. A deep graze. Looked like a bullet wound, she thought. Possibly she was being imaginative.

  ‘Well, Major,’ she said. ‘ You’re in trouble. But I’ll give her a shot of antibiotic, and you can keep up with antibiotic tablets. She might be in whelp by the way, Colonel.’ Colonel. Give him the treatment. She noticed he had deposited a great swinging waterproof cape by the door, nearly blocking the entrance. She’d seen such a garment in war films on TV. Probably he was an actor. And then, of course, she knew there were types that liked dressing up and acting out themes. Displaced sex, in her liberated opinion. But she said nothing, not her place and anyway she was too busy with the bitch.

  Folded money was placed in the collection box, but he got away without leaving a name or an address.

  Charmian went to bed and slept with Muff by her side. The soft rain ceased, but it became very misty. As dawn came, Maid of Honour Row was obscured by the mist, with the houses at the end of the Row almost disappearing from view. A thick grey curtain hung over roofs and treetops. Most of the inhabitants were asleep but Muff had taken a trip through the cat flap, then returned rapidly. Not fit for a dog out there.

  In the car, the man on guard over Charmian had his eyes closed as if asleep. His head rolled forward. Presently, he slipped sideways.

  A circle of fire ignited with a puff around the front of Charmian’s house. Soon it was blazing, licking at the window and the door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The morning of Friday, October 20

  Charmian was woken by the smell of burning and smoke. She was awake and coughing before she realised what was happening to her. Once awake, her reflexes were fast.

  She grabbed Muff and a coat and was down the stairs, putting on her coat and slippers as she ran. Muff hooked her claws into her shoulder and hung on. She knew danger when she smelled it.

  The front door defeated Charmian, it was already alight. She ran to the back where a flame showed itself at the window. There was smoke coming through the door and the key felt hot as she got her hand on it, but it turned and the door opened.

  She smelled petrol and burning wood, but she was through. She threw herself on the damp grass and drew in great lungfuls of air. She was still coughing and gasping when she realised that her right hand was sore where a blister was already forming. She examined herself carefully. No other damage as far as she could see. Muff had disappeared into the bushes.

  She was supposed to be under protection, but the protection had failed.

  Gathering herself together, Charmian walked round the side of the house, thankful that she was at the end of the Row. The fire had no hold yet on this far side. The smell of petrol was much stronger as she got to the front of the house.

  No doubt about it, this fire was no accident.

  The glass cracked explosively in a ground-floor window as she ran down the garden path. A van was parked across the road, but there was no movement from it. But the windscreen was shattered. She pulled open the car door and the driver slipped towards her,

  headfirst. There was blood on his face from a wound in the eye. The watcher had not watched himself; the guardian had been

  felled.

  She heard the fire engines arriving at that moment, Somehow,

  someone had alerted them.

  ‘It was me,’ said Birdie. ‘ Or rather Benjy, he woke me up barking. Good boy.’

  Charmian sat at the kitchen table in her friends’ house. She was wearing a dressing gown belonging to her hostess; it was made of pale frilled silk, something of a revelation about Birdie’s taste, and she was drinking hot tea. Muff had arrived unannounced and was receiving succour in the shape of a saucer of warm milk.

  ‘Watched from the bushes and followed you round,’ said Birdie knowledgeably, topping up her supply. She was usually more at home with animals than people.

  ‘I’m glad Benjy barked.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t he a clever dog? So I dialled 999 and said FIRE. Then I came round. You were out cold on the pavement. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Shock,’ said Charmian who was ashamed of herself for fainting. Not professional, she ought to be above that sort of thing.

  ‘But you’d got out of the house, that was the main thing.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for you and Benjy, my place would be a cinder by now.’

  ‘The firemen were very good, but I’m afraid the ground floor will be very wet and smoky.’

  ‘It’s insured,’ said Charmian absently. Her fire seemed the least of it now.

  ‘And that poor man.’ Birdie gave Charmian a sharp look. But she did not get an answer. ‘Mustn’t ask questions, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t have any answers. Not at the moment. I’m asking questions myself.’

  ‘Let me pour some more tea,’ said Birdie, administering the only form of comfort she had to hand.

  ‘I must get some clothes on. I can go back to the house, the stairs are all right and the fire never touched the upper floor.’ Everything would smell of smoke, though.

  ‘You can’t live there. You must stay here, dear.’

  Charmian stood up. ‘ Thanks, Birdie, but I won’t bother you. Winnie will be back soon and you only have the two bedrooms. Keep an eye on Muff for me though, will you, please?’

  ‘Of course, but are you sure about yourself, dear?’ asked Birdie wistfully. She loved a crowded house, it was so cosy. Also, there would be plenty to talk about with all this going on.

  ‘Quite sure, but thanks. I’ll probably find a place in London.’

  Fond as she was of Winnie and Birdie, she did not fancy being their guest. Apart from anything else, their housekeeping and cuisine was of an eccentric nature, depending almost entirely on their interests of the moment. Recently it had been organic vegetarianism. It seemed to involve a good deal of dust about the house. Perhaps that was growing organically too.

  She could stay with Kate, or even Dolly, although it might be better to be independent from both of them while this investigation west on. Come to think of it, she had the key to Humphrey’s London pied-à-terre. It was tiny but very central and would do.

  The telephone rang while she was still standing there.

  ‘It’ll be for you,’ said Birdie, not rising.

  ‘May not be.’

  ‘All the other calls have been.’ And it was true that the telephone had been ringing almost continually since Charmian had arrived in the house. First a senior fire brigade officer telling her that the fire had been caused deliberately and that there would be an investigation; she could go back into the house, with one of his officers, but had better not stay there. Then the local police, then the local police, headquarters division, again. There was a lot to say.

  She picked up the telephone. It was Annie. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

  Annie did not answer that question, she never bothered with inessentials. ‘Come and stay here. You must.’

  ‘George Rewley and Kate, I suppose,’ said Charmian, answering her own query. ‘No, I can’t stay with you, Annie.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Jack, I suppose? He didn’t set fire to your house. He’s calmed down now anyway.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I know my Jack. He always calms down. Anyway, I know where he is and he couldn’t have been out burning your house.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Because he’s here with me and we were in bed together last night,’ said Annie defiantly. Charmian paused. ‘Are you telling me the truth?’

  ‘Would I lie?’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly in reply. ‘I don’t think you would, Annie. But I won’t come. Have you told the police that you’ve got Jack with you?’

  ‘Of course not.
’

  ‘I’ll give you the rest of the day, Annie, for you to tell them, and then I’ll do it.’

  She put the receiver down before Annie could huff and puff.

  The next call was from Kate, also offering hospitablity. But she refused this too.

  ‘Thank you, and I appreciate the offer, but I have to refuse.’ Surely Kate could see that it wouldn’t do.

  ‘I’m worried about you, Godmother.’

  ‘I’m taking care.’

  ‘Well, do that. I love you.’ There was a little catch in Kate’s voice. ‘And what’s more, I need you around. That fire, how could it happen?’

  Reading between the lines it was clear, Charmian thought, that Kate did not know about the man who had been shot while watching over her. George Rewley, if he knew, had been discreet.

  Dolly telephoned next, likewise anxious to help, but she was more worldly-wise. ‘ I know you can’t stay here with me, wouldn’t do, what with one thing and another, but my mother has a flat in Richmond that’s not in use at the moment. She’d be delighted for you to occupy it. Quite secret and all that.’

  It sounded as though Dolly had heard about the shot officer. She might not know all the details but she had picked up enough to alarm her.

  ‘I think I’m fixed up,’ said Charmian evasively. She had made up her mind to hide out in Humphrey’s London flat, but the fewer people who knew the exact address the better. In any case, Sergeant Vander might have something to say on the subject. A so-called ‘safe house’? She would resist that suggestion from him. Get in one of those and you could take some time getting out.

  Under supervision from a uniformed constable on duty at her house, she collected some clothes, packed a case, and managed to get dressed.

  A quick look round had revealed her sitting room and kitchen, indeed the whole ground floor, to have a thoroughly trampled-upon air. Might be the firefighters, might be Father and Elman’s lot, but she guessed she could blame Vander for most of it. Looking for clues. He must be very angry.

  The clues would all be outside, surely? No one had got inside. But as she walked down the garden path, she observed that Vander and Co. had been at work there too: the rosebushes had trampled circles around them.

  ‘Bet you didn’t find much,’ she muttered to herself.

  The constable met her with a message. ‘Inspector Elman would be glad if you would call in at River Walk, ma’am,’ he said politely. He picked up her case. ‘Can I take this for you, ma’am?’

  ‘Thank you, the garage is round the back.’

  ‘There’s no petrol round there, all clean, ma’am, we’ve checked.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘The message from Inspector Elman was that if it wasn’t convenient for you to go to River Walk, then he would call on you when it suited. I can put a message through for you.’

  ‘No need. I’m on my way.’

  She drove herself, the suitcase packed for London in the back of the car. She had filled in the intervening few minutes with a brisk telephone call on the car phone to her London office. Reassurance and calming words were necessary there because the media were already showing a keen interest in her welfare.

  An actual press presence in Maid of Honour Row was prevented by a police barrier at each end of the road, but beyond it she spotted a clump of hopeful reporters lying in wait. She drove past at speed.

  It was a short journey to River Walk, but the drive seemed to clear her mind. The threat to her was much more vicious and determined than she had believed at first. She had always taken it seriously but not been alarmed. Now she was concerned, because she guessed how much she was hated.

  It was direct and personal.

  But who hated her with such venom?

  If not Jack, then whom? Somehow it felt like a threat emanating from Cheasey. Probably had Jake Henley’s face on it which made a thought with teeth in it.

  She had walked into something nasty and it had stuck like dog dirt.

  Not at all to her surprise, Sergeant Vander was there in the Incident Room in River Walk, waiting for her. He was talking to Elman and Father, a conversation that was suspended as soon as she arrived.

  Coffee was poured out, hot for once, and strong. ‘ Come on, sit down,’ said Elman. Father pulled out a chair. To her fury, she recognised they were being masculine and protective.

  Even more to her irritation, she also recognised that she was comforted by it. She wanted to be looked after. Never admit it, though, she advised herself. She took the coffee (welcome after dear Birdie’s herbal tea) and put on a resolute face.

  ‘Something to tell you. The Ballistics have done a quick job on the bullet that killed the DC in the van. The first tests indicate that it came from the same gun that killed Marg Foggerty. And Nella Fisher.’

  This is where we came in, thought Charmian.

  The three cases had become one. Only the bones remained, doing their separate dance.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Friday, October 20, to Tuesday, October 24

  ‘I’m afraid someone is out to get you,’ said Chief Inspector Father. ‘And we haven’t been very much good to you.’

  ‘It looks to me that I may have been the destined victim all the time: that it was me Nella Fisher heard threats about, and not Dolly Barstow, nor even Margery Foggerty. They just got in the way,’

  ‘That’s putting it bluntly,’ said Father.

  ‘I feel blunt.’

  Sergeant Vander remained professionally cheerful and practical.

  ‘Where will you be staying? I can fix you up with somewhere safe. You’ve made your own arrangements?’ Perhaps he was not so pleased with that news but the smile stayed on his face. ‘London? Right, you’ll let me know where?’

  Charmian thought she would but was not prepared to say anything at the moment. She had to get into the flat to begin with, and only then would she pass on the address to a strictly limited circle.

  ‘I’ll let you have all the details next week.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, still cheerful, more so if possible. He seemed to flourish on disaster. ‘You can disappear. Go missing. No one will know where you are.’

  ‘So we hope,’ said Elman to whom gloom was a more natural medium.

  ‘And the man who was shot dead? Has he left a widow and a family?’ His fate troubled her, he had died on her account.

  Vander said: ‘He was unmarried.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Shot through the windscreen. In the eye.’

  ‘Poor devil.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elman heavily. ‘It’s not what I like to see happening on my patch.’

  ‘There’ll be a man on duty all the time at your place in Maid of Honour Row,’ said Vander. ‘And I’m getting it fixed up. Windows boarded and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Ask them to look out for my cat.’ Birdie had promised to heed after Muff and her needs, but there was no doubt that the inquisitive cat would go back for a look-round at her home.

  ‘Will do.’

  The relentless cheerfulness of Vander was beginning to irritate her. ‘As soon as it’s ready, I shall go back.’ She knew he did not want to hear this.

  ‘I don’t know if that’s wise. He’ll try again.’ He frowned, then bounced back. ‘ Still, it’ll take him a bit of time to set up anything again. So you ought to be all right for a bit.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’d give you three days anyway.’

  Did he really say that in all seriousness, Charmian asked herself. Or was it his idea of a joke?

  One day, two days, three days.

  ‘We’ll lay hands on Jake Henley somehow. It’s him, I’m sure of it. Got his name on,’ said Father. ‘ We’re not talking about motive: we’re talking about someone who likes to kill.’

  On the same day as this meeting, there was a discovery in Merrywick.

  In Merrywick the streets were swept and cleansed once a week, which was not so often as had once been the case, nor so often as they needed, but better
than many places achieved. The inhabitants of Merrywick paid a high community charge and were an exceedingly vocal group, well able to shout for their rights and to object to sweet wrappings, empty plastic food containers and battered lager cans in the gutter. Consequently they were provided with a road cleaner, an old-fashioned figure with a broom and bag-on-wheels. On the day after the fire in Maid of Honour Row he arrived with his apparatus in the Dulcet Square and Dulcet Road area of Merrywick. He went to Dulcet Road first, because it was Dulcet Road’s turn to get cleaned and he was a methodical worker. Besides, he liked Dulcet Road, a pretty, neat street, one of his favourite work areas, nice lot of folk in Dulcet Road, not mean with their possessions. He had found a nearly full bottle of wine in a bin there once.

  He was a benign man who took his work slowly and calmly. Dirt would always be here, you only moved it around. When he came next week the same layer of paper and plastic would greet him. Looked the same, could be the same, except he knew he had shifted last week’s burden. He had once found a dead bird, that had been his most exciting moment, but even the feathered corpse had not moved him greatly. A dead baby now, he thought as he swept the gutter, that would be something.

  One of the jobs he performed with mild interest, because there might be a baby there, was to empty the rubbish bins which were placed by a hopeful Refuse and Cleansing Department at various appropriate spots on the street. Although they were capacious, they were rarely full. Most people who had tried for virtue at all seemed to deposit their rubbish around the bin rather than in it, as if they had reached towards it with closed eyes.

  ‘Just not looking,’ muttered the street-sweeper. The least censorious of men (because he did recognise that if it wasn’t for dirty people he would not have a job), he gave them a mark for trying.

  He started to investigate the bin where he could see something interesting wedged. A big, bulky something. Not a body certainly, which was just as well because he regarded anything he found as a perk of the job and a body, except as something to think about, he did not want.