Wings over the Watcher

by Priscilla Masters

  The reason?

  In front of them was a plump woman berating her for not being able to make an appointment for the following day.

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist was saying. “It’s very difficult these days with this forty-eight hour access.”

  “Which – you’re – denying me.” The plump woman in large jeans and a loose, white cotton shirt thumped her fist hard down on the counter, bouncing the vase of silk flowers into the air. “It’s my right. If I need to see a doctor I can see one.”

  The receptionist cast around for help, found none and consulted the computer. “You can see Doctor Morgan at nine thirty in the morning.”

  “I want to see Doctor Angiotti in the afternoon. Look – Doctor Angiotti is my doctor. She understands me. She knows my history and sympathises with my problems. It’s her I have to see.”

  “It’s her afternoon off tomorrow.”

  The plump woman moved forward. “She’ll see me. Just ask her. I know she will. When can I see her?”

  Joanna watched the receptionist curiously. She was in a difficult position. She was not going to please this customer whatever she did.

  Finally the woman accepted an appointment for two days’ time, grumbling all the while, and the receptionist wrote the time down on a card. As she turned from the desk, the patient spoke loudly to the waiting room in general, “You’ll get no joy here.”

  Joanna met her disgruntled gaze. I wonder.

  The receptionist’s face was tight with anger as she continued staring at the computer screen. “Can I help you?” It was an automatic politeness.

  Joanna flashed her ID card. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  The receptionist immediately brightened up.

  Strange how anything out of routine can rejuvenate, banish tiredness. Call it energizing curiosity, if you like, but all humans thrive on variety.

  “We’re investigating the murder of Beatrice Pennington. I believe she was a patient here?”

  The receptionist had very bright blue eyes which looked uncertain. “I don’t know whether I’m. I mean – it’s confidential information.”

  “It’s connected with a murder enquiry,” Korpanski repeated.

  The woman was visibly flustered. “I’m sorry. Could you wait a minute?”

  She picked up the phone, spoke to someone. The door behind the desk opened and a woman walked out.

  “I’m Corinne Angiotti,” she said briskly. “I believe you wanted some information about a patient of mine?”

  Joanna’s impression was of coolness. That and a determined control. Doctor Angiotti was small and slim with blonde hair, prone to curliness. She wore no make-up and was about thirty. She had a smooth, olive complexion. Her eyes were brown. Not as dark as Korpanski’s but nearly there. Her lips were thin to the point of hardness and without lipstick. She wore the status badge of a doctor around her neck, a stethoscope.

  Joanna took all this in with interest. She responded equally coolly. “I’m Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, Leek Police. We’re investigating the murder of Beatrice Pennington whose body was found last week on Grindon Moor.” She tried the appeal. “To be honest, doctor, we’re floundering a bit. We’re trying to find out a bit more about Mrs Pennington in the hope that it might help find her killer.”

  The doctor leaned across the reception desk and spoke in a low voice. “You haven’t any idea who killed that poor woman?”

  Joanna shook her head. “Not yet,” she said.

  She sensed that Mike, standing behind her, almost close enough to feel her body warmth, was scrutinising the doctor. She felt the strength of his gaze – powerful.

  “Would you like to come into my surgery? I can’t spare much time but she was a patient and I would like to help.”

  They followed her through into a pleasant room, children’s toys in the corner, an examination couch, a swinging curtain, a large desk and three chairs.

  Corinne Angiotti sat in one, Joanna in the other. The doctor looked up at Korpanski, standing in the doorway. “Do you ever sit down?”

  “No thanks,” he said abrupt almost to the point of rudeness.

  Doctor Angiotti gave the slightest of nods and smiles – little more that a softening of her thin mouth but it improved her features one hundred per cent. “All right then,” she said. “How can I help?”

  “Mrs Pennington was a patient of yours?”

  “That’s correct, Inspector.”

  “She consulted you frequently?”

  “It depends what you mean by frequently. Certainly I have seen her a few times this year.”

  She pressed a few keys on the computer and deliberately turned the screen away.

  “Confidentiality,” she said with a smile.

  “Friends have mentioned that Mrs Pennington was depressed before Christmas.”

  Corinne Angiotti gave them a cool look.

  “I wouldn’t say depressed,” she said. “She had simply reached a certain stage in her life.”

  “Can you explain?”

  Corinne Angiotti gave a sad smile. “It’s a stage many women reach in their fifties,” she said. “Maybe you’ll reach it one day, Inspector. Children left home.”

  Not me, Joanna thought.

  “It was a sort of dissatisfaction. A worry about losing attractiveness. She didn’t need antidepressants, Inspector.”

  “So what did she need?” Korpanski asked roughly.

  “Just a chat. A change of life style. Reassurance. That sort of thing.”

  “Well it seemed to work,” Joanna said, still watching the doctor’s face very carefully. These professionals. They gave little away.

  The doctor gave another smile. “Yes,” she said.

  She wasn’t afraid of silence.

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude but I do have a busy surgery ahead of me. I don’t think I can tell you anything. I’m sorry. She was a decent woman. I was very shocked.”

  It was a dismissal.

  Outside Korpanski was almost mocking. “Solve your case then?”

  Joanna shook her head. “No. But you never know.”

  “Waste of bloody time,” he muttered.

  “Well – for one who started the day so well you’re a bit tetchy.”

  “We seem to be going round in circles,” he grumbled.

  The worst was – she agreed.

  She didn’t even try to defend her conduct of the investigation. Except that underneath she knew full well that something, at some point, would lead them to Beatrice’s killer.

  They had returned to Derby Street and walked in silence until they reached Jewel Pirtek’s handbag shop. Through the window they could see Jewel waving her arms around and talking on a mobile phone. But the traffic was noisy behind them and they couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  Korpanski regarded her with tangible suspicion. “I’d love to know who she’s talking to.”

  Joanna gave him a queer look. “Can’t you guess?”

  Nothing irritated Korpanski more than her implying superior knowledge. “No I can’t. Because I’m not psychic.”

  Joanna continued to watch. “I’d lay a guess that she’s speaking to best friend Saunders.”

  Mike nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

  They pushed the door open and registered Jewel’s appalled surprise. “I’ll have to go,” she said quickly into the mobile. “Customers.”

  Korpanski simply couldn’t resist it. “Except we’re not.”

  She eyed Joanna’s scuffed leather handbag. “You might be,” she said. “In fact you ought to be.” She chewed some gum slowly with an open mouth. “Special discount.”

  She unhooked a bag from the wall hooks and handed it to Joanna. “Now this one,” she said. Joanna took it from her. Jewel was right. It was a lovely bag with a £70 price tag dangling from the handle. But the leather was soft. She sniffed it. Looked at it. The right size too. She sensed Korpanski watching her and could read his mind without looking
across. Shopping! When there’s a serious crime to solve.

  Reluctantly she handed it back to Jewel. “It is a nice bag,” she said. “But I didn’t come here to buy a bag.”

  “I can do it for fifty quid.”

  It brushed too close to bribery. She shook her head.

  Joanna settled down on the bar stool; Korpanski took up his usual stance leaning against the wall, arms folded, feet apart. Guarding the exit like the genie of the lamp. Blocking the entrance too.

  “Come on, Jewel,” Joanna coaxed. “Spill the beans.”

  Jewel had sharp little eyes. However much makeup and false eyelashes she applied she would never be able to disguise this fact. Also that when she was rattled her voice rose an entire octave in pitch. “Beans. What beans?” Her eyes moved around the shop, deliberately skipping over Korpanski.

  “There are little…” Joanna tried to choose her words with care, “titbits you’ve been leaving out about your friend. You three have been pals for years. You must have shared every confidence – every secret. You and Marilyn think you know who her secret lover was, don’t you? You think you know who killed her.”

  For a second or two Jewel Pirtek went so pale Joanna braced herself to catch her when she fainted. But she didn’t. And she’d recovered within a minute to declare her innocence. “I don’t. I don’t. Neither of us knows. I promise you. We don’t know who it was. You’re talking about someone who’s killed my friend. It wouldn’t be safe to know. Not safe.”

  “We’d protect you from this person. If you proved to be right he’d be locked up. Put away. And if you’re wrong you have nothing to fear.” Joanna produced the most powerful argument of all. “If he’s not convicted he’ll go on to do the same to some other poor woman.”

  “I honestly do not know,” Jewel said, still in a panic. “There were things she said – admitted.” She was twisting the big gold ring on her middle finger. “I – we – got the feeling she wasn’t too proud of herself. Not sure, you see. In spite of what she’d said we wondered. We sort of –”

  What was she talking about?

  “She was a bit ashamed. At first she was very flaunty. But then, we thought, maybe it wasn’t a man.”

  It took Joanna a minute or two to grasp. “You’re saying that Beatrice was a lesbian?”

  “We – no – at least – we don’t know. Me and Marilyn – we just wondered it.”

  “Why? What evidence did you have?”

  Jewel went pale again. Joanna could read her mind. She’d said too much. Given away a confidence. She was going to need bullying. “Come on, Jewel.”

  “Just things. She’d say general things. About woman having softer characters, being kinder, that she’d had it with men.” She couldn’t resist a swift bitch. “Not that she’d ever got it together with men. Except Arthur.” Beattie’s friend couldn’t resist smiling. “If you can call him a man, that is. She just kept saying things like that it was women who had all the kindness and things like that. But I promise you. Me and Marilyn just thought it. We didn’t know.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “I sort of hinted at it.”

  “And?” Korpanski barked gruffly.

  “She just said the less we knew the fewer lies we’d have to tell. We couldn’t budge her. She wasn’t going to tell us. We thought in the end she would. Beattie was like that. She’d keep quiet but in the end she’d always tell.”

  Joanna tried hard to flick back to the few bike rides they’d shared and tried to piece together all that Beatrice Pennington had said. Had she picked up on the fact that Beattie’s secret love was a woman?

  No. Because we all make certain assumptions.

  Perhaps Marilyn Saunders would be able to shed some light on it.

  Or Guy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Marilyn was peering through the window as they drove up. She didn’t look at all surprised to see them.

  She’d opened the door before Joanna had even lifted her hand to knock.

  “Well, Inspector,” she said with a touch of bravado. “Nice of you to drop in.” Her manner bordered on the flirtatious but it reminded Joanna of a night watching a famous actress in a play, performing desperately. A few nights later it had become public knowledge that this actress had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. It had been a brave performance but full of pathos.

  “Coffee anyone?”

  Joanna wanted Marilyn to be at her ease so she accepted the coffee and they waited while the kettle boiled and it was made. Then they settled in her sitting room and Joanna took a good, appraising look at Beattie’s friend.

  Maybe she’d had a couple of good nights’ sleep or maybe she’d simply come to terms with her friend’s death but there was something newly confident about her.

  She looked good, her hair glossy. Still benefiting from the hairdresser’s attention. She’d probably been sitting out in the garden. Certainly her face was lightly tanned. And she was dressed not in casual clothes but a white cotton shirtwaister and some low-heeled pink sandals with toenails to match. Around her clung a haze of expensive scent which Joanna couldn’t identify. Not one of the classics, she decided.

  Korpanski was staring at her with a mesmerised expression. And the nurse was not only aware of it but took full advantage. She tilted her head back and crossed her legs provocatively, displaying a good expanse of plump thigh.

  “Now then,” she said, eyes wide. “What can I do for you.”

  “We’ve just spoken to Jewel.”

  “I know.”

  And suddenly Joanna knew too. Knew all. This was all learned behaviour. Behind the professional smile, like the actress who had learned she had weeks to live, was a frightened woman. A woman who would fight tooth and claw for what was hers.

  A cornered tigress.

  Joanna stole a swift look at Korpanski to see whether he shared her sudden perception and almost ground her teeth in frustration. He was taken in completely. And he was the one who always accused her of being hoodwinked by a guilty party. When all it took was a selected outfit and some war paint to fool him.

  Well he might explode in exasperation and say, shopping. She would always be irritated by this in men, that they were so easily taken in by the superficial gloss of the opposite sex.

  She turned her attention back to Marilyn. “Jewel told us that you believed Beattie’s secret romance was with a woman.”

  Marilyn swallowed and evaded their eyes.

  Something not quite right here.

  “We wondered,” she said. “She hinted, you see. She said all sorts of things about how women were so much better. Things I’d never heard her say before. Personal things, about a woman’s skin and hair. About them being softer, more understanding. She spouted this sort of stuff for months. And it was so alien coming from her. Beattie had always been…” Marilyn affected a high-pitched giggle, “ well – like her name. Sort of stodgy, you know. Old-fashioned. Easily shocked. When she first started saying this sort of thing Jewel and I simply ignored it.” A little toss of her head reminded Joanna of a wilful pony. “We thought it was just Beattie being Beattie.”

  Her eyes strolled from one to the other.

  And again Joanna was blessed with a flash of understanding. A little peep through the peephole show that was these three friends’ lives. Two of them had been attractive extroverts. Expecting and receiving all the attention. Beattie had fulfilled the role of necessary audience. Always the listener. When the listener had stopped listening and begun, instead, to talk, no one had, in turn, done her the courtesy of listening.

  Joanna drank deeply from the coffee while Marilyn chatted on, brightly unaware that she was drawing pictures in the detective’s mind.

  “We thought it was just her being silly – that she’d read something in one of those daft magazines and sort of thought she’d shock us. To be honest, after Guy and I got together she was always sort of odd. And then after Christmas she started spouting all this sort of nonsense. Adolescent we thoug
ht it. Talking all about the higher emotions and inner self, quoting from that book about Men from Mars and women from Venus. Different planets sort of stuff. We just couldn’t be bothered…”

  Joanna completed the sentence for her…to listen.

  “So who was it. This mystery woman?”

  “We didn’t know that.”

  “Didn’t she say?”

  But of course, if Beattie had said, they would not have heard, would they, these “best” friends.

  Korpanski was frowning. He shifted his bulky thighs. “Was it someone from work?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Someone from the Readers’ Group?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But there were only three areas in Beattie’s life – her home and family, her work and these two friends with whom she had socialised. Joanna was suddenly regretful and felt a vague colour-wash of guilt. Because she had not listened to Beatrice Pennington either but had regarded her as wallpaper. Background. Had she made some effort to listen to her she might have had a clue to the killer’s identity.

  Her husband, her lover or even her lover’s partner. Because this new knowledge had taken the lid off the box and exposed not a can of worms so much as a bucketful of writhing snakes. Relationships are rarely simple and when they cross such boundaries of convention forces are unleashed.

  Joanna was quiet for a while, content to let Mike continue with the questioning about names, dates, and so on. They had this subliminal method of understanding one another and instinctively he knew she needed to sit on the sidelines for a moment and think. To superimpose Beatrice Pennington over that of her best friend.

  Joanna was struggling to recall something. Anything that the woman had said to her.

  Something about a new life, about not needing money, about moving away from Leek, about the tacit understanding that existed between lovers. Something about Take my breath away …