Dying to Write

by Judith Cutler

  We all nodded – middle-aged, middle-class people clinging to the ethos of helping the police. But I thought of my tampons and discovered I wasn’t as middle-aged or middle-class as I’d thought. ‘Would it be WPCs or policemen?’ I asked.

  ‘Here we go. You women and your insistence on equality. I suppose I can’t demand the equality of having my male belongings searched by a male officer!’ Gimson said.

  ‘I don’t see why not, sir,’ said Chris equably. ‘If anyone prefers their room – and it is only their room, not their body – to be searched by someone of their own gender –’

  ‘Sex!’ said Gimson.

  ‘– then I’ll be happy to arrange it.’

  ‘Nyree’s dead,’ said Matt brutally. ‘OK, I’d like her killer found. If she didn’t do herself in accidentally, which is my theory. But Kate – what are you doing to find Kate?’

  ‘Let me tell you what we’ve done so far,’ said Chris. ‘There has been a thorough examination of her room by a team of forensic scientists. The search revealed no signs of violence at all. We can only assume that Kate left her room herself, perhaps to look for her rat, or that if she left with someone, she did so willingly.’

  For a moment, his eyes flickered in my direction. He was holding something back, something he might share with me when we were alone. I blinked: message understood.

  ‘And –?’ prompted Matt.

  ‘As you know, we’ve searched the grounds exhaustively. We’d like to check all your cars, by the way, in case one of them might have any clues.’

  Chris was sending me another message; he only used the outmoded term to me. I smiled.

  ‘Is that OK by everyone?’ he added.

  There was muttered agreement.

  ‘Isn’t there anything else you can do?’ Matt’s voice sounded both angry and despairing. ‘What about the media? Can’t you get them involved?’

  ‘We’d rather not, at this stage, just in case – you see, there is just the remotest possibility that she’s been abducted, and when that’s the case we have to follow very strict guidelines laid down by the Home Office. We have no option.’

  ‘So what can you do?’

  ‘Just talk to you all, again and again. Just in case a chance word helps us. So bear with us, please, ladies and gentlemen, if we appear slow and irritating. We’re doing our best. And if anything, no matter how trivial, comes to your mind, please, please talk to me or one of my colleagues. We shall treat everything as confidential.’

  The meeting was over. But he’d be in my room waiting for me when I got back.

  Chapter Nine

  To be precise, he was waiting in the corridor. When he smiled at me, it was with as much relief as if he’d been waiting, vulnerable on a street corner, for his girl. And yet I hadn’t delayed.

  ‘No blood, no seminal fluid, no nothing,’ he said, closing my bedroom door. ‘I didn’t want to spell it out back there, but I was actually telling the truth.’

  ‘But not the whole truth,’ I said. I gestured him to the chair. I sat on the bed.

  ‘All right. Not quite. And I thought you’d want to know. That bulge in Kate’s bed wasn’t her nightdress. It was a bag of rat food.’

  ‘There was a ring of something around her room – no, a parabola, as if someone had thrown –’

  ‘Right. I thought you’d probably noticed that. Yes, it was rat food. Perhaps she just wanted to make sure that Sidney was kept well fed.’

  ‘Or perhaps she was trying to do what that little boy in the fairy tale did.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘He was getting lost so he left a trail of breadcrumbs so he could find his way out of the woods. OK, not very apposite. But she was trying to tell us something, possibly.’

  ‘Not to go into the woods, perhaps. And what does Ian tell me but that you went trotting round the woods yesterday and again today?’

  ‘Exercise, Chris.’

  ‘Balls, Sophie. Come on, what did you find?’

  ‘Bugger all. Apart from a man in a red car, and I kept out of his way. He only wanted a slash in the hedge, anyway.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure. He had a bit of a walk round and then got back in his car. What about Courtney?’

  ‘Tina and I are reasonably convinced, but he wants to tell you himself. He sees you as –’

  ‘Safe!’

  ‘That. And as a friend he ought to have trusted from the start. You’ve made a conquest there, Sophie,’ he said with care.

  ‘I’m safe all right. Haven’t you spotted it, Chris? He’s gay.’

  ‘Oh?’

  I could have laughed at the relief he tried to suppress: instead I nodded casually. ‘And now I must go and cook.’

  ‘Hang on. Matt.’

  ‘Very anxious for you to find his friend.’

  ‘Or –?’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Is he just being very clever? Trying to con us that he knows nothing? I’m not sure he’s as pure as the driven snow, Sophie.’

  ‘He can be as randy as Don Juan but that doesn’t mean he’s done her in. And I’ve only seen him as being a nice, affectionate, friendly type. Speak as I find, Chris. But if I do find anything, I’ll let you know. But only if you let me go and cook a pile of samosas and pakora.’

  ‘OK. If you tell me when we can expect the honour of a formal statement. I don’t recollect your giving us one yet. And God knows you’ve enough to tell us.’

  I wouldn’t even ask him to let me off. ‘If I can get the first half of supper under way. I’m way behind schedule. Say about five thirty? Six?’

  We smiled at each other, stood up together and left the room. When I locked the door, he turned and pushed it. ‘Just making sure.’

  And we walked in silence to the end of the corridor, where we parted company.

  Before I reached the kitchen, however, I decided it was time to clear up one silly niggling worry and to do that I might as well phone Carl. He was the friend who’d sent the postcard. Not exactly friend. The man I’d been seeing at the end of term. Despite my resolution on the first morning at Eyre House, I hadn’t got round to writing to bid him farewell, and for the moment I was glad I hadn’t. He might have his uses, as a keen gardener and as a pharmacy lecturer. The phone call could scarcely be anything other than strictly business anyway, since his wife was likely to be around. She might even be the one to answer. I hoped not. I knew enough about Paula not to like her very much, but that didn’t justify what I’d done. Or what Carl had done. There’d been two of us, after all.

  It was Carl who answered. When he heard my voice he sounded so furtive I nearly laughed. I made my voice as brisk and neutral as I could and came straight to the point. How, I wanted to know, could I kill someone with easily available garden products? It was for this course, I explained – part of a story I might be writing. That was why I’d phoned him. Surely his wife wouldn’t object to that?

  To do him justice, Carl was not a man to come up with that sort of information irresponsibly, and he hummed and ha’ed for ages.

  ‘OK, Carl, let’s simplify the proposition. I have a man I want to dispose of and a supply of paraquat –’

  ‘No good. Contains an emetic, these days. But you have to be very careful anyway – a single splash in the eye and you can cause major damage to the cornea. No, I’m afraid what you really ought to do, but it certainly wouldn’t be undetectable – Jesus, Sophie, you’re sure this is only for a story?’

  ‘Honest, Carl. But my money’s running out. I’ll be in touch, OK?’

  I managed to put the phone down on anything more personal.

  So Matt had only been joking! But what would he tell Chris about his colleague’s illness? Whether or not it was in confidence, I was dying to know.

  Three o’clock. I was alone in the kitchen, and badly behind schedule. Agnes had already done her share. She’d had a short story commissioned by Radio Four – plain, ordinary Agnes could write to order – and wanted to work on it in p
eace. So she’d prepared a couple of summer puddings this morning, and left them to chill on a marble shelf in the pantry. The fridge was full of raw chicken pieces for me to stir into a big biryani.

  I had to be systematic. The vegetable curry to go with the biryani would take hours to mature. I’d better do that first. Then the messy business of the pakora. I wanted to get them done before the slightly easier job of the samosas. Thea should be up and around by then; she was still having her afternoon rest, and in any case I didn’t know if it would be wise for someone with her heart condition to stand around peeling vegetables.

  Toad popped his head round the door just as the onions were at their most vicious. Tears simply dripped off my nose. He muttered something about returning later, and withdrew. Perhaps it was the unlikely possibility of his playing the viola that made me start singing Berlioz’s Harold in Italy. I know I wasn’t designed for the voice but George always went on the principle that anything with a good tune ought to be sung, and Harold’s nothing if not tuneful.

  At last the onions were frying. The vegetables were chopped. I’d given up counting the number of garlic cloves I’d peeled ready to mash. The spices were vivid in Shazia’s mortar.

  Life felt good, as it always does when I’m cooking. Maybe I could even write a poem about cooking. Then, as I was pounding at the spices and raising wonderful fumes of chilli and ginger, someone opened the kitchen door, very quietly. And shut it again, equally quietly.

  By the time I’d reached the door and flung it open, the hall was deserted.

  I was so scared I could hardly raise the pestle. Then the door opened again, and it was Thea.

  She was amazingly deft with the pastry for the samosas. She’d borrowed from Shazia a plastic ring which cut six samosa shapes at a time. We became a good team, cutting and filling and deep-frying. The pakora already sat in a delectable heap, which diminished every time anyone decided to come in to make a cup of tea, an occurrence which increased with suspicious, if flattering, frequency.

  Five o’clock. We were back to schedule.

  We couldn’t cook the rice too much in advance in case it went soggy, but we wanted to make sure the chicken pieces to go in it were thoroughly cooked. Neither of us wanted to give Gimson the pleasure of diagnosing mass salmonella poisoning. We decided to cheat by frying them first.

  ‘I’ll get them,’ said Thea, reaching into the fridge. She screamed; grunted; and keeled over.

  There was no pulse.

  I flung open the door to yell for help, and dashed back to start mouth-to-mouth. A few quick thuds against her chest, and then I yelled again, more loudly and desperate than I’d ever yelled.

  Shazia – one look, and she was off again, screaming for Gimson and Naukez.

  I never thought I’d be pleased to see Gimson. He knelt beside me.

  ‘Keep going,’ he said.

  I did as I was told. I don’t know how long.

  Suddenly people came running, and then slammed out again. And I was elbowed aside by a slender youth who turned out to be a paramedic; Thea was stretchered out, accompanied by Gimson; and all was quiet again. But not for long.

  Once again the kitchen was full, and everyone was talking, except me. I was trying to piece it all together. Shazia pressed a mug of vile, sweet Co-op tea into my hand while explaining to Tina how Naukez had saved the day by making Ian, with all his police authority, call the ambulance. Naukez stared at his muddy wellies. Matt was leaning on the door to the kitchen, white and shaking. Courtney appeared at the other door, furtive as a schoolboy saved by the fire-bell from the head’s wigging. Chris was immediately behind him, but was clearly trying to push in ahead.

  ‘What made her ill?’ he asked me casually.

  I shrugged. ‘The sight of the dead chicken?’ I opened the fridge door.

  And then I too keeled over.

  It wasn’t Sidney amid all the chicken pieces, although I’d thought at first it was. It was another rat, its feet tied together and its head cut off. It was now in one of Ade’s bags, and I was wiping tears from my face and pushing away the smelling salts Chris held ready to apply again at any minute.

  I pulled myself up. Agnes had heard the commotion and abandoned her short story. She held a flask that looked as if it might hold brandy. I reached for it. It did.

  ‘I want you checked over,’ Chris was saying. ‘You shouldn’t be drinking alcohol after shock.’

  ‘I’m not drinking any more of that bloody tea,’ I said, ungraciously.

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ Agnes agreed. ‘Go on, young man, clear everyone out of here and then go yourself. We’ve got a job to do here – supper won’t cook itself, you know.’

  ‘But surely –’ he protested.

  ‘The chicken pieces are all sealed in polythene bags. They can’t have been contaminated. And before you say anything, there’s no point in sending your crew in here and hunting for fingerprints or whatever. We all use the place. Shazia wipes down all the working surfaces every morning. Just leave us to it. I promise not to put cyanide in the summer pudding.’

  ‘I think we might notice,’ I said, as she shut the door on Chris.

  She shook her head. ‘Not until too late. The cherries and the kirsch I put in – they have the same sort of smell as cyanide. Sweetish, almondy. I always used to disguise my children’s medicines on that principle. Sickly-tasting stuff in jam, and the converse. Easy.’

  As promised, I made my statement, of course. After the rat business there was no getting out of it. But I went through it like a dose of salts, to the great irritation of Ian, whose normal pace is thorough to the point of ponderous. But I had, as he admitted, nothing to add to what I’d already told him or Chris informally, and he knew where he could find me if he wanted to clarify any details.

  It might make supper late, but I had to have a shower and wash my hair. Then I found the only way to make my dryer reach from the power point to anywhere near the mirror was to lie flat on my stomach on the bed.

  I was ready to cry again. Especially when someone tapped on the door.

  Courtney. I ought to want to see him, to hear what Tina and Chris had decided about his future. I did, but not now. I wanted to get my hair dry and decide what to wear and go and be chatty and efficient and serve supper while all the time I was wondering about Thea.

  Some of this might have shown in my face. Enough.

  ‘Here, I’ll do that for you,’ he said, taking the dryer and brush. ‘You poor sweetie, you haven’t half had a busy day.’

  He smoothed and lifted and smoothed again. I could feel myself relaxing as his hands found a rhythm.

  Then he stopped. ‘Where’s your spray, Sophie? Ah – no, I’ll get it. You sit still.’

  He sprayed not my hair but the brush. ‘There. Take a look. D’you think it’s OK? Because I’ve never done it to anyone live before.’

  There are questions you don’t want the answer to but have to ask.

  ‘Live? You mean you’ve practised on …’ Say wigs, Courtney. Please say wigs.

  ‘The clients like their loved ones to look nice. Make-up, too, some of them have.’

  I looked in the mirror. He’d transformed my bob into something worthy of Princess Di. I wanted to say something truly appreciative, grateful. What came out wasn’t.

  ‘We’re talking about corpses here, are we?’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind?’

  I shook my head. The hair swung and glimmered and settled back easily. How could I mind? I smiled at him in the mirror. He smiled back.

  ‘Courtney: Nyree – would someone make her look nice for her funeral?’

  ‘I should hope so.’

  ‘They say … they say people’s hair keeps on growing. What about her roots?’

  ‘It doesn’t grow that much. The old facial hair – you have to shave the men, sweetie. But you’d style hers so the roots don’t show. You wouldn’t let her go out showing any grey, not when she was so particular about her looks. I’d comb it ma
ybe like this. And what’s more, she wouldn’t be able to you-know-what while I was doing it, would she?’

  We grinned at each other in the mirror. Then his face became serious.

  ‘I should have told you, shouldn’t I, Soph? About why I was in the nick, why I’d got that little shooter. Drugs, you see. All to do with my job, actually. The funeral care work. It was a big firm, see. International.’

  ‘International?’

  ‘Of course. I mean, say that husband of hers wants her buried in Vietnam or wherever, who’s going to do everything? All those rules and regulations. Someone’s got to take care of everything. The poor dears can’t book their own tickets, you know. Anyway, this is where Kate came in. The boss had the idea that no one would ever check inside, see. In the caskets, Soph. And there’s all that padding and quilting and stuff.’

  ‘So the coffins provided an ideal means of transport for other things than, er, bodies?’

  ‘Right. Currency. Drugs. Even an oil painting or two, would you believe? Which reminds me, Soph: you don’t look too bright. What about a spot of blusher?’

  I gestured at my cosmetics bag.

  ‘OK, you put your foundation on – haven’t you got a sponge? You naughty girl! – and I’ll do the rest. Turn round. There, that’s better.’

  ‘So how did you end up in Durham?’

  ‘Kate and her friends. Someone sang. Not as loud as I did, though, when they caught me. Scared witless I was, Sophie. If you get my meaning. But they never caught the boss. And he got the message round that if he ever caught up with me …’

  ‘Hence the gun?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And the last thing you wanted was to turn up here and find Kate?’

  ‘Absolutely. And then having Nyree drop off her perch, too – seemed like a conspiracy.’

  ‘What about all those foreigners who keep turning up? They wouldn’t be anything to do with you, would they?’

  ‘That’s what that DCI of yours wanted to know. God, I’ve had a day and a half of it too. Better than going back inside, though. Though he’s made no promises about that. He wants to talk to my probation officer, he says.’