Blood in Grandpont

by Peter Tickler

  CHAPTER 5

  Karen Pointer had rung Susan Holden and suggested that they have supper at her flat that evening. It was, in a sense, her turn, but it was the disconcerting conversation with Geraldine that had prompted her to make the phone call. So Karen arrived home – home being a brand new flat overlooking the canal in the northwestern corner of Jericho – weighed down by two hessian bags bulging with the wherewithal to produce an easy but interesting supper, two bottles of rather expensive wine, and croissants and pain au chocolat for the next morning. She was not, she had realized, sure which of those Susan preferred. She unpacked, and made her way to the bedroom, where she began to discard her clothes in preparation for a shower. At which point, with the inevitability of Murphy’s Law, the phone rang. She was tempted to ignore it, but only briefly, for the most likely caller, surely, was Susan.

  And indeed it was Susan – or rather Detective Inspector Holden, as her tone of voice quickly made clear. There was no preamble. ‘We’ve got another body, Karen.’

  ‘Another one?’ Pointer echoed.

  ‘We think it’s Jack Smith. Geraldine Payne, your dentist, found him, in a house he’s doing up for her in Brook Street. Do you know where it is?’

  ‘I was just about to prepare supper for you,’ Karen replied, not entirely truthfully.

  ‘Supper will have to wait,’ came the answer. ‘Go south over Folly Bridge, first right into Western Road, and then first right into Brook Street.’

  ‘I’ll be there in 20 minutes.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Love you,’ Karen replied, but the detective inspector had already hung up.

  ‘We think it’s Jack Smith,’ Holden had said on the phone. Pointer understood the reason for that note of uncertainty as soon as she walked into the kitchen area. Whereas the death of Maria Tull had been a remarkably tidy affair – two clean knife wounds and no huge emission of blood – the sight which greeted her was diametrically different. The body of Jack Smith, if Jack Smith it turned out to be, was lying twisted and sprawling on his back, and his blood was everywhere. It had spurted, splashed and run across the floor like some childish work of abstract art; in addition, a gigantic crimson rose appeared to have burst through his T-shirt, and two pools of blood had formed a macabre pair of oversized sunglasses on his face. For several seconds Pointer stood and looked, not because she needed that length of time to plan her strategy, but because she was trying to absorb the ferocity of what was in front of her and then cast it aside, so that she could get on and do her work. She knew she would never get used to brutal death. At least she hoped so, for if she did, what would that say about her own state of mind? She wanted always to feel, and yet her job demanded detachment. Perhaps, she told herself silently, this was not a job to do for life. But right now, this was what she did, so she put her black case down on a dilapidated work surface, next to a drill, and opened it with a click. ‘I’ll need a bit of time with this one,’ she said firmly, ‘and I could do with some extra lighting too.’

  ‘Sergeant Fox will deal with that,’ Holden said. ‘I’m going to talk to Geraldine.’

  Geraldine Payne was in the front room, sitting on the edge of a brown leather sofa, the only substantial piece of furniture in the room. An empty pine bookcase stood to the left of the chimney breast, and otherwise the only other pieces were two wooden kitchen chairs, on one of which Detective Constable Lawson was sitting. Lawson stood up, but Payne continued to stare fixedly at the Victorian fireplace, apparently unaware of Holden, who walked over to the empty chair, moved it nearer Payne, and sat down.

  ‘Would you rather we talked later?’

  There was no reply, though Payne’s eyes did flicker briefly.

  ‘Or shall we get it over with now?’

  ‘Let’s get it over with,’ came the whisper.

  ‘OK,’ came the unhurried response. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Again the eyes flickered, but this time with alarm. ‘What do you mean? He was dead when I arrived!’

  ‘I know,’ Holden said firmly, mentally kicking herself as she did so. ‘What I meant was tell me what you can about the circumstances. What time did you arrive? Was the door locked or unlocked? Did you notice anything unusual?’

  In response, Payne emitted a sudden, hysterical laugh, and began to rock forwards and backwards on the sofa. ‘You mean, apart from a dead body?’

  ‘Just take your time.’

  For maybe thirty or forty seconds, Geraldine Payne did just that, stumbling erratically from laughter to sobbing to silence, but when finally she did speak, it all came rolling out in the proverbial torrent, words crashing and bursting until there was no energy left. ‘I left the surgery at five-thirty. I wanted to call in here and see how he was getting on. Well, I don’t trust him any more, not since he fucked that Italian whore and gave her my painting. But I was damned if he was going to leave me in the lurch. He’d agreed to re-plumb the house, and he was damn well going to, and when he was finished I was going to withhold half his fee to teach the bastard a lesson. I didn’t tell him, of course, but that was what I was going to do. It would have served him right. But first I popped across the road to the Playhouse and got a couple of tickets for the Chekhov, and then I walked here. It’s not too far. Twenty minutes maybe, and I needed the exercise after a day bent over patients. When I arrived, the lights were on and the front door was unlocked. Well, do workmen ever lock front doors? I thought he must still be working, but when I got in the hallway and called him there was no reply. So I went through to the kitchen because I could see the lights were on through there.’ She stopped and gulped, as she recalled the moment. ‘And he was there, on the floor, and there was all this blood. Christ!’ She shuddered.

  Holden waited for a few seconds, allowing her time to recover, and then gently probed again. ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘What do you think I did?’ There was sharpness in her voice, a sharpness which reminded Holden of their previous encounter, in the police station. ‘I rang 999!’

  ‘Did you touch the body? Check it for a pulse maybe?’

  Geraldine Payne looked across as her questioner, with a look which made it clear that she thought the woman must be out of her head. ‘It was patently obvious he was dead. I didn’t need to check for a bloody pulse.’

  ‘Quite,’ Holden agreed. There was nothing more she was going to gain by prolonging the interview. ‘Do you know his wife?’ she said as she stood up.

  ‘His wife?’ There was a pause, then a short incredulous laugh. ‘Why? Do you think she did it?’

  Holden didn’t answer the question at the time, but later, as Lawson drove her across town to Jack Smith’s house, to break the news to his wife, she tossed the question around in her head. Her first assumption was that his death must be connected to the missing painting, but on the other hand Maria and Jack had had an affair, even if it had been the one-off fling which Jack Smith had claimed. But suppose his wife had found out, then that sure as hell gave her a motive to have killed them both. It would be interesting to see how she reacted to the news.

  Dinah Smith was a big woman. When she opened the front door, her body filled its frame, blocking much of the light from within so that Holden and Lawson both stood in her shadow, briefly nonplussed. Everything about her was big, from her broad shoulders and her voluminous breasts to her bulbous hands and tree-trunk legs. She was a woman whom you could imagine mud wrestling or playing in the scrum in a woman’s rugby team in her spare time, while in working life she was built for the role of prison warder, one who could control the most troublesome of female prisoners – or male ones too, come to think of it – with a single terrorizing glance. Which was why it seemed so incongruous to Holden that she took the news of her husband’s death so badly. It wasn’t that Holden expected her to react with indifference, but the wailing she emitted when she was told that her husband had been murdered was of extraordinary intensity. Holden felt herself almost physically engulfed by the blizzard of
her grief. There was nothing to do except wait for the storm to pass. Eventually it did, but when Lawson offered Dinah Smith a handkerchief, she waved it away.

  ‘Who on earth would have wanted to kill him?’ she said, in an incredulous tone of voice. ‘Do you think it was a thief?’

  Holden’s first thought was that this was a curious thing to say. She had told Dinah that her husband had been stabbed with a knife, but she had deliberately given no more detail. So why didn’t Dinah ask more about how he died? That’s what she would have expected someone in her position to ask, normally. Except, she told herself, this wasn’t a normal situation. Being told that your husband has been murdered is in no sense normal. Holden knew that really, but even so she logged the woman’s response away in her head for future consideration, and then answered her question. ‘There’s no sign of anything having been stolen. And to be honest, there’s not much in the house worth stealing. A few pieces of furniture, but nothing in the way of ornaments or silver or electronic devices.’

  ‘But who would have wanted to kill him?’ She repeated the question in a voice that implied absolute incomprehension. ‘Who?’

  Holden cleared her throat. She ought to leave this till the next day, till the woman had had a chance to get over her shock, assuming it was shock, but this was a second death and there were no prizes to be won by being nice, or skipping awkward questions. ‘We understand your husband had an affair with Maria Tull.’

  Dinah looked at her, her mouth half-open in astonishment. Then, as if in slow motion, it began to close until the upper and lower lips met, compressing against each other until they had twisted into a snarl. At the same time, the wide-open eyes narrowed into the darkest of slits. In a matter of seconds, she was transformed.

  ‘You think it was me.’ The words hissed out of her mouth, and she stabbed a finger at Holden. ‘You bloody cow! You think I killed my own husband. What sort of woman are you?’ She was shouting now, and on her feet, and towering over Holden.

  ‘I don’t think anything.’ Holden tried to speak in a calm, reassuring voice, but she wasn’t at all sure she was managing it. ‘I can assure you of that. I know this is difficult for you—’

  ‘You know shit!’ she snapped, cutting across Holden. ‘You know nothing about me and Jack, nothing about our relationship.’

  ‘I want to catch his killer,’ Holden said firmly, fighting to regain control. ‘That’s my job. I want to catch his killer and Maria Tull’s killer, and I need your help. But we can come back tomorrow—’

  Again Dinah Smith cut across Holden’s words, though this time with a laugh. ‘When I feel better, you mean?’

  ‘Do you have a relation or friend you’d like us to call?’

  Dinah Smith didn’t reply. Instead, she turned away from Holden, and walked over to a table in the corner of the room, from which she picked up a photo frame. For several seconds she stood looking at it, before placing it back down. Then she turned back round and looked across at Lawson. ‘Would you mind making me a cup of tea, dear? Two sugars.’ Lawson glanced briefly at Holden for guidance, and then nodded at her questioner. ‘Of course.’

  Dinah Smith waited for Lawson to leave the room, and then she returned to her chair, sat down, and apologized. ‘Sorry. It’s just been one hell of a shock.’ She shrugged. ‘I should know. I’ve seen enough of it in hospital.’

  ‘I’m the one who should be saying sorry,’ Holden said, relieved that the crisis had blown over.

  But Dinah Smith’s mind wasn’t interested in politenesses and apologies. ‘I wouldn’t have called it an affair,’ she said simply.

  ‘No,’ Holden responded, and waited.

  ‘They only did it once. That’s what Jack told me. I believed him then, and I believe him now. He was a good man, Jack. A bit weak. Easily led. And she led him on, the silly bitch. Because she wanted that painting he found.’

  ‘What did he tell you about the painting?’

  ‘Nothing. He just said it was old and dirty and quite small, so he was a bit surprised when he realized Maria thought it was valuable.’

  ‘Did he say what it looked like?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about Maria? What did he say about her death?’

  ‘He was shaken up by it. I think he felt a bit scared. He slept with her once and now she was dead, and was he going to be next?’

  ‘He said that, did he?’

  ‘In so many words. And he was right to be scared, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Holden replied, because there was no other reply to make. They relapsed into silence. Sometimes words just got in the way. From outside came the sound of an ambulance siren. Holden listened as it sped down the hill away from the hospital, on its way to what? Injury, illness, death – they were all around.

  ‘Here’s a mug of tea, milk and two sugars.’ Lawson had appeared at the door, and now walked across to Dinah Smith.

  She took it, and cradled it in her two hands.

  ‘Do you need to ask me anything else, because I’d like to ring my sister.’

  Holden held up her hand. ‘We’ll go if you want us to, but it would very helpful if – for the record, just for the record – you could just tell us where you were today.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ she said. ‘I was working last night, so I had breakfast with Jack when I got in, and then I had a shower and went to bed. I must have woken about four o’clock, and then I went out to the little supermarket at the bottom of the hill, and I came back, and I’ve been in ever since.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Holden stood up. She was ready to go. It wasn’t exactly a tight alibi. In fact, it was no alibi at all. But that didn’t make Dinah Smith the killer. But it didn’t rule her out either.

  Dinah Smith raised her mug, and sipped noisily at the tea. Then she looked up at Holden. ‘Just make sure you catch the bastard,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Susan. And good morning, Jan.’ Dr Karen Pointer beamed at her two visitors.

  Detective Constable Lawson replied brightly, but Holden merely nodded. The fact was that she wasn’t interested in exchanging politenesses. Given that their plans to spend the evening and night together had gone so spectacularly up the spout, what she would really have liked to do is hug the woman, to hold her tight and smell her skin, but Karen Pointer seemed to be oblivious of her, and interested only in the corpse over which she now pored, like a philatelist over a stamp album.

  ‘Well, it looks like the same murder weapon. The initial stab wound is not quite in the same place as it was on Maria’s body, but the knife was either the same one or an identical one. However, he didn’t die instantaneously. He may have lost consciousness. There’s no sign of a struggle, but the blood from the neck wounds indicates he was still alive when those were inflicted. Then there followed the facial disfigurement. A single stab to each eye. The coup de grâce. Though that appears to have taken place after the heart had ceased to pump.’

  ‘Time of death?’ Holden was brusque, but if Pointer noticed she gave no sign of it.

  ‘It’s hard to be precise. The house wasn’t heated, and so it was pretty cold. I’d estimate between maybe twelve noon and two o’clock.’

  ‘Can’t you be more precise?’

  Dr Pointer looked up, and this time there was irritation in her voice. ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Oh!’ came the graceless reply.

  Lawson, conscious of the tension between the two women, forced herself to focus on the body, and to imagine, without emotion, what it must have been like. Lying on the slab, stripped of clothes, and bereft of dignity, it presented a very different picture from the image imprinted in her head, of the twisted blood-spattered, brutalized person she had seen on that kitchen floor. What sort of person could do that?

  ‘At least,’ Pointer said suddenly, ‘it would be hard to tie the time down with absolute certainty. But maybe nearer two o’clock than one.’

  ‘Right,’ Holden grunted. Then, almost as an afterthought: ‘Thank you.’
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br />   ‘That’s unofficial, you understand.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Again there was silence, and into this Lawson now gently tossed the question which had been growing in her mind. ‘Dr Pointer,’ she said, before remembering the pathologist’s preference for first names. ‘Karen, there was a lot of blood. Do you think the killer could have avoided getting it on his – or her – clothes?’

  ‘It’s hard to be certain. The knife cut the carotid artery in the neck, so that might have sprayed, but the heart was already in crisis by then, so there would have been less pressure, and.…’ She drifted to a stop.

  ‘Thank you, Karen,’ Holden broke in, apparently deciding that they had got all they could from the visit. ‘You’ve been very helpful. If you could email your full report over when it’s done, I would be most grateful.’

  ‘Not at all,’ came the reply. Formal politeness was suddenly back in vogue in the pathology lab. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. His possessions are over there.’ Pointer pointed to a large grey high-sided tray sitting on one of the work benches. Lawson, looking at it, felt a sudden surge of queasiness. The tray was just like the ones in airport security, the ones into which you have to place everything you are carrying and half of what you’re wearing. She had only flown abroad twice in her life, which made her something of an oddball amongst her friends. The first had been with friends to Ibiza, and the second had been less than a year ago. It had started with a five-hour delay at Gatwick. This had been followed, on night number two, by her developing a horrendous bout of gastroenteritis. Three days later, when she could finally risk venturing out on to the beach, she overdid it, fell asleep on her towel, and got horribly sunburnt. And alongside and during all of this, her relationship with her boyfriend Tom had been deteriorating via angry outbursts (hers) and surly exits (his) until there was no part of it that was not in ruins. She hated flying.

  Holden, oblivious to her constable’s interior musing, had walked over to the tray and cast a brief eye over it, before turning away. ‘That’s your job, Lawson. Get it into the car, and while you’re waiting for me, check out the mobile for recent calls, and all his contacts. Karen and I have one or two things to discuss.’