Stalked By Shadows

by Chris Collett

  ‘Pam?’ Millie was mystified. ‘But she’s the cleaner.’

  ‘That’s a relatively new career direction for her,’ Mariner said. ‘Up until recently she was a wedding coordinator at Brackleys.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Anna’s friend Becky asked me to cancel Charles and Lottie’s wedding planner, so yesterday I went to do it. On the wall there was a certificate, for planner of the year, awarded to Pamela Rasen. There was something familiar about that name, and then, this morning, it came to me. I remembered the phone call Tony made to that ballet-school mother whose child had died. Jonquil’s an unusual name, and I saw it again, in the crematorium book of remembrance. Jonquil Rasen died exactly five years ago.’

  ‘How did you know she would turn up this morning?’ Millie asked.

  ‘Remember what Bonnington said when we asked him what was special about Wednesdays? He said, My house is clean. That was the day she cleaned his house, and made full use of his computer.’

  ‘But she gave me the names of her clients and Bonnington wasn’t one of them.’

  Mariner shot her a smile. ‘Do you really think she’d have handed you that?’

  ‘And what about Kerrigan? She gave us him, too.’

  ‘Of course she did; to direct us away from her. She must have witnessed the altercation with Lucy outside the health centre and used it to implicate Kerrigan. He was never on the estate at the time she said he was.’

  ‘But why would she hold Lucy and Nina responsible for her daughter’s death?’

  As Millie spoke, there was a bang from across the road as Pamela Rasen slammed down the boot of her car and went back into the house, closing the front door behind her.

  ‘Time to go and find out,’ said Mariner, releasing his seat belt.

  ‘How do we play this, boss?’ Millie asked.

  ‘Carefully,’ said Mariner.

  Pamela Rasen seemed remarkably composed, and not overtly surprised to see Millie and Mariner on her doorstep, even at this hour. She showed them into a compact and sparsely furnished lounge, the fireplace dominated by dozens of photographs of a young girl at various stages of development, instantly recognisable from her thick, red curly hair.

  ‘Would you like a drink, some tea perhaps?’ she offered politely.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Mariner.

  ‘I’m parched, do you mind if I -’

  ‘No, go ahead. That’s fine.’ Now that they were here, they had all the time in the world. ‘Go with her,’ Mariner murmured, and Millie got up and followed Pam into the kitchen.

  While Mariner waited, to the accompaniment of the kettle, cups and spasmodic background conversation, he picked up one of the pictures. He was still studying it when Millie and Pamela came back into the room. ‘She was a pretty little girl,’ he said, stating only what was obvious.

  ‘Jonquil was beautiful,’ Pamela agreed, sitting in the chair beside the fire and motioning for them to sit too. ‘Exquisite and delicate, exactly like the flower she was named after. But she had the life crushed out of her.’

  ‘How did it start, Pamela?’ Mariner asked gently, moving across to sit beside Millie. As he nodded towards her, she surreptitiously took out her notebook and pencil. But she needn’t have worried. Pamela was already lost in her own thoughts.

  ‘She always loved dancing,’ she said, of her daughter. ‘Practically as soon as she could walk she used to skip and dance around the house all the time. She was completely unselfconscious you know. For her ninth birthday we took her to see The Nutcracker. From then on she had her heart set on being a ballet dancer. So we enrolled her at ballet school to have proper lessons.’

  ‘Nina Silvero’s school,’ said Mariner.

  ‘It was a big mistake. Jonquil’s dad and I knew that she might never be a professional dancer, but Nina Silvero had to come out and say it right in front of her. “I really think you’re wasting your money,” she said to me while Jonquil was standing right beside me. “She’s too big and clumsy to ever be any good at it.” Imagine saying that in front of a young child? I wanted to hit her. I wish I had.’

  ‘And how about Lucy Jarrett?’

  For a moment she seemed puzzled. ‘Ah, Lucy Copeland and Julie-Ann Shore; Jonquil idolised them. They were the coolest girls in her class at St Felix. Anything they had, she had to have too. She thought they were so sophisticated. She knew that they called her “little fat Rasen”; they did it to her face, even though she wasn’t really fat. And she laughed along, even though I knew it really hurt her. That was when she began to want to lose weight. She was heartbroken when she couldn’t be a cheerleader, but she knew that if she stuck to her diet she could fit into the costume and they would have to let her join. That was when it really started. At first it was all right. She just began eating lots more salads and cutting down on potatoes and biscuits. She shed a few pounds and you could see her confidence sky-rocket. We encouraged her too at first, because it seemed to make her so much happier about herself. But then, before we knew it, it had become an obsession. She was weighing herself every day before she went to school; ecstatic if she’d lost a few ounces and desperately upset if she had gained any weight at all. And if she had put on weight then she would hardly eat all day. By this time she was routinely cutting out meals and we were doing everything to try to persuade her to eat. Even though she looked like a skeleton, she was still convinced that she was “little fat Rasen”.

  ‘The doctor wasn’t much help. She prescribed high-calorie drinks but somehow we had to persuade Jonquil to drink them. We couldn’t afford to send her to any of these fancy clinics so in the end she was admitted to All Saints.’

  ‘The psychiatric hospital,’ said Mariner, shocked.

  ‘It was terrible seeing her there, with all those frightening people; our sweet little girl who had done nothing wrong.’

  ‘How long did it go on for?’

  ‘More than ten years, until her body couldn’t take any more. Her vital organs gradually shut down. For the last few days she was on a life-support machine and we had to make the decision to allow the wonderful little girl we had brought into this world to slip away again.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible decision to make,’ Mariner said quietly.

  ‘Bob always blamed me.’ She was wringing her hands. ‘He said I shouldn’t have encouraged the ballet, that I should have been realistic with Jonquil right from the start. But she was nine years old! What kind of age is that to shatter a little girl’s dreams? We grieved separately and then he left me. For a while my job kept me going but then the factory closed and I had to look for something else.’

  ‘You worked at Longbridge?’

  Pam shook her head. ‘Carter’s paints in West Heath. I was Mr Carter’s PA for twenty-three years. When I saw the wedding planner’s job it seemed perfect, as if it was meant to be. I was a good organiser, and, if I couldn’t plan my own daughter’s wedding, I could plan other girls’ weddings for them instead. I thought it might help, but instead it made me angry and resentful -’

  ‘And then Rachel and Nina Silvero walked into the store.’

  Her laugh was brittle. ‘Nina didn’t even recognise me. I’d had my hair done differently and I hadn’t aged as well as she had of course. I’d had rather more stress in my life.’

  ‘She’d lost her husband,’ Mariner pointed out.

  ‘It’s not the same as losing a child. They were so smug and full of themselves. My daughter lay cold in the ground and they hadn’t a clue.’

  ‘So, once you had their address and phone number, you started following Nina Silvero and making nuisance calls.’

  ‘I was going to have it out with her. The first time I rang I was going to tell her who I was, and what she had done to Jonquil. But when she answered the phone I couldn’t go through with it, I couldn’t speak, and that was when I heard the anxiety in her voice, and it just came out: I’m going to make you suffer like she suffered. It made me feel powerful and in control, so the
next night I did it again, except this time I didn’t speak at all. Next time she and Rachel came into Brackleys I could see that it had affected her, and somehow it made me feel that I was getting some kind of justice for my little Jonquil. I wanted to make her endure what Jonquil had, to feel persecuted for no good reason.’

  ‘And when did you decide to take things further?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘To kill her you mean? I saw in the paper that she got her MBE. An MBE for killing my daughter and I knew the time had come. I thought I’d help her celebrate.’

  ‘So you went round to her house.’

  ‘Yes. I’d read a lot about poisons by now and I knew that was how I wanted to do it. I took round the bottle of white wine.’

  ‘With Martin Bonnington’s fingerprint on it.’

  ‘Oh.’ She didn’t know. It had been an accident. ‘I almost took champagne, but I knew you’d think that was odd. Nobody drinks champagne alone, do they? It was the only bottle I had in the house; the one Martin had given me for Christmas. I doctored it before I went. Bob used to collect model soldiers, you know, the sort that you paint? But he used to make such a mess so I’d got him some paint stripper specially from work. I knew that it contained acid, and that it would do the trick quickly. I wanted to watch Nina Silvero die as I had watched my own daughter die, right in front of my eyes.’

  ‘So you just turned up on the doorstep?’

  ‘Yes, Nina was surprised to see me, but too polite to turn me away of course. We went into the kitchen. I could tell that she wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible. I insisted on opening the wine, and that was when I reminded her that we had met before. She remembered Jonquil then, of course, and even asked after her. To her credit, she seemed quite shocked to learn that my little girl was dead, but she played down her own part in it. Said she had only done what was kind. Kind? What would she know? The atmosphere was a little uncomfortable by then, but the wine was poured so I proposed a toast, to mothers and daughters, and she drank. It went perfectly.’

  ‘How could you stand by and watch someone die like that?’ Mariner was horrified.

  ‘Experience, Inspector. I’d done it before, except that in Jonquil’s case it had gone on for years. Have you ever had to stand by and watch a loved one slowly kill herself and all because of a few thoughtless words?’

  ‘Meanwhile, you had run into Lucy Copeland too.’

  ‘I could hardly contain myself. Fate lending a hand again. No reason for Lucy to know who I was of course. They liked us to stick to first-name terms at Brackleys, because it’s more personal, and we had never met before. All I had to do was confirm that she’d been a pupil at St Felix. I got to know her pretty well; that she hadn’t known her husband-to-be very long and that he worked away, so it was easy to judge the phone calls. The only thing now was that following both Nina and Lucy was taking more of my time. I had a few lates at work so eventually they let me go. On the plus side it meant that I could devote all my time to them, and that was when I decided to set up as a domestic cleaner. It would allow me to be closer to Lucy. I put leaflets through some selected doors on the estate.’

  ‘And Martin Bonnington took the bait.’

  ‘It was just meant to be. He’s a sensitive soul, Martin, and he’d told me about his unrequited feelings for Lucy so I just capitalised on that situation. He was often out while I was cleaning so it was easy to use his computer. I may look like an old fogey but I’m quite IT literate, thanks to both of my last positions.’ She looked at Millie. ‘I don’t clean for all those other people.’

  ‘You had to be careful not to run into Lucy,’ Mariner said.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t too hard. She was mostly out at work, and if that smart car of hers was there I’d just ring Martin and rearrange my time. It hardly ever happened, though.’

  ‘And when did you start adding thallium to her milk?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘A couple of months ago. I’d been to Lucy’s house a few times by then, just outside, sometimes before I went to work, and I’d see the milk standing there. I kept thinking, I’d like to give you a taste of your own medicine. I remembered from when we discussed the buffet arrangements that her husband was lactose intolerant, and saw the perfect opportunity. I knew all about thallium because I’d had to produce safety leaflets at work. I knew what it could do.’

  ‘Where did you get hold of it?’

  ‘I’d taken a few things from Carter’s for Bob’s soldiers. It was one of them. I read up on how much you should give and then I injected it into the milk; not too often but enough to make her feel ill.’

  ‘And Nina Silvero’s too?’

  She smiled, pleased with her accomplishments. ‘Yes, some strategies worked well for them both.’

  ‘Like the anniversary flowers,’ Mariner said.

  ‘I thought it was a nice touch to add in the photograph to Lucy’s.’

  ‘And were you planning the same end for her?’

  ‘I hadn’t really decided.’ Pam frowned, contemplating it anew. ‘In many ways there seemed no need. The thallium was going quite nicely and her relationship with her husband was also deteriorating quite satisfactorily; I was happy to sit back and let things take their course. Jonquil’s Pound Puppy was perhaps too close to home, but I wanted to make her think about my Jonquil again. I didn’t think she would really remember.’ She looked up at Mariner. ‘It was her exam mascot, you know.’ So Knox had been right about that.

  While she’d been talking the tea that Pam had been so eager for earlier sat untouched, but now she reached across and picked up the cup.

  ‘All I wanted was justice for my poor, beautiful daughter, but now I feel as if my work is done.’ As she spoke those final words, she lifted the cup to her lips but too late Mariner realised the implication of them.

  ‘No!’ he cried, leaping across to snatch the cup from her grasp, splashes from it burning his hand, but it was too late. She had already taken two deep draughts and her face contorted in pain as the acid seared through her mouth and throat. For several seconds, Pamela Rasen thrashed in her chair, as the acrid aroma of burning flesh filled the air. Mariner dashed into the kitchen for cold water, but, by the time he came back it was over, Pamela Rasen quite still in her chair, her face a mirror image of Nina Silvero’s death mask. Hands shaking, Mariner took out his mobile and dialled 999, and, as he did, Millie, a hand clamped to her mouth, pushed past him into the kitchen, where he heard her retching into the sink.

  The doorbell of nineteen, Hill Crest rang and Lucy Jarrett went to answer it.

  ‘Hi!’ Millie Khatoon handed her flowers and introduced her husband Suliman.

  ‘The DI sends his thanks for the invitation and his apologies,’ Millie said. ‘He’s taken some leave and is going away for a few days.’

  Two miles away, Tom Mariner was standing by the boot of his car, arranging rucksack, boots, maps and a small selection of clothes. On the front seat lay a couple of Ordnance Survey Landranger Series that covered mid-Wales, and switched off in a drawer locked inside his house was his regulation-issue mobile phone.

  Also available in the fantastic DI Tom Mariner series

  THE WORM IN THE BUD

  In Birmingham a local journalist is found dead in his home. A puncture wound in his arm a testimony to his death by lethal injection, the cryptic note by his side: ‘no more’, seems at first to suggest suicide but Detective Inspector Tom Mariner has learned to take nothing at face value. There is something a little too staged about events, especially as just that evening Mariner had witnessed Edward Barham pick up a prostitute in a bar he was frequenting. As the police investigate the house further they discovers there is another witness to events at 34 Clarendon Avenue. Barham’s younger brother, Jamie, is found in a cupboard under the stairs. It seems likely that Jamie Barham had witnessed his brother’s killing but his severe autism has left him without the means to communicate what he has seen . . .

  Mariner is determined to build enough of a relationship with Jamie to g
et to the truth. And the fact that this means spending time with Anna Barham, Jamie’s new - and reluctant - guardian, is no great hardship. But is Edward’s death related to his recent investigations into a local crimelord. Or is there something else, something that only Jamie can tell them - if he so chooses . . .

  978-0-7499-3923-6