The Chalon Heads

by Barry Maitland

‘Do you have medication I could fetch?’

  ‘No, no. No need for that. Look, I really think it would be best if you come back when my wife is here—maybe tomorrow . . . if you still need to, that is.’

  ‘OK, if you’re sure you don’t need help.’

  She departed, thinking that there wasn’t much to choose between the acting abilities of Toby Fitzpatrick and Ronnie Wilkes.

  She left her car where it was, and began walking along the lane, trying to think. McLarren would want her back in London, she knew, following up leads on forged stamps. She could imagine him now, in his office in Cobalt Square, asking where the hell she was, and what the hell she thought she was doing, wandering through the bird-twittering woods on a beautiful sunny morning when there was real work to be done. Thinking of this, she was glad she had left her mobile in the car.

  She came to the gates of the Crow’s Nest, and it occurred to her that she still had the key to the house, and knew the code to deactivate the burglar alarm. There seemed no point in going in, when every inch had been covered twice by SOCO teams and forensic staff. But if Starling had lied about when Eva had left, there must have been a reason, and that reason must surely have occurred here.

  Maybe. She thought of McLarren again, and walked to the front door feeling like a schoolkid playing truant.

  Inside, the stillness of the house enveloped her once more. It was like the stillness of an extremely self-contained witness, which would only yield to an indirect form of interrogation.

  She made her way to Starling’s den. There was the green-baize-topped table where he had sat that night and wept over his stamps, just as Eva’s father had wept over the copies Starling had given him. Did normal people do that? Did both men suffer from some kind of personality disorder, some obscure branch of kleptomania, perhaps, that they recognised in each other, and Eva recognised in both of them?

  And there was Starling’s wine rack against the end wall, an impressive collection of dozens of bottles, although he drank little according to Helen Cooper. Presumably another form of collecting for investment, for some of the bottles certainly looked old and dusty.

  But why would they be dusty, Kathy wondered, in a room that was regularly cleaned? Come to that, why would they be kept on wooden racks in the den, when the house had a purpose-built wine cellar?

  She went through to the kitchen, to the door that led to the cellar steps, and another question immediately faced her. The door had a lock, a Yale, the same kind as on the front door, and recently fitted by the look of it. Such locks had a knob on one side and a keyhole on the other, and were intended to prevent people on the keyhole side from coming through the door unless they had a key. Why would you put such a lock on a cellar door, with the knob on the kitchen side? To keep someone in the cellar, was the only answer that came to mind. It was so obvious that, once you’d spotted it, the lock might as well have had a flashing red light attached. And yet no one had noticed it during their searches.

  Kathy turned the knob and went inside. She found the light switch and went down the cellar steps, breathing in the air, cool and fusty like a crypt. By the light of the naked electric bulb she went through the first cellar room, beneath the kitchen, to the second under the hall, where the old wine racks were formed beneath stone benches. When she examined them closely she found that a few of the apertures were thick with dust, while others, presumably recently occupied by bottles, had almost none. Not long ago someone had moved all the bottles to the new timber racks upstairs in the den. The SOCO team, looking for drugs, bloodstains, fibres, scratches or signs of violence, had paid no attention to the levels of dust inside the old wine racks. Why would they?

  As a prison, the cellar was soundproof and secure. It was also spacious, clean and dry. Apart from the shelves of the wine racks, there was little dust, and the stone-flag floor was spotless. Frustratingly so. A Yale lock and some unused wine racks didn’t necessarily amount to anything at all.

  Kathy was searching for something more substantial when the floorboards above her head gave a creak. She froze. Another creak. A silence, and then another. Someone was walking across the hall, slowly.

  This someone must have a key. Kathy had the only key given to the police, so it wasn’t them. Who else? A neighbour? Could Toby Fitzpatrick have followed her to the house? Or someone closer to home? Sammy?

  This someone would also presumably notice that the alarm had been switched off. Was this why they were moving so slowly across the hall? Kathy stepped silently back to the first cellar room, and almost immediately heard the muffled clump of a footstep on the polished floorboards of the kitchen directly over her head. They could hardly miss the open cellar door now, the glow of the cellar light within. Just as she was working on this thought, the cellar light clicked off and she heard the thump of the door being shut.

  In the sudden total darkness Kathy swore to herself. In her mind the image was still fresh of the foot of the stairs, about fifteen feet in front of her and to the right. She walked forward towards it, banged her shin on the baluster post, grabbed the rail and sprinted up the steps. Without bothering to grope for the light switch she hammered on the door and called out.

  She thought she heard a cry from the other side, stopped and listened. It seemed to take an age before the lock clicked and the door swung open, and she found herself facing Marianna, who had the knuckles of her left hand pressed to her mouth as if to stifle a scream. ‘Oh, dear Mother of God,’ she whimpered. ‘You scare the living daylights from me.’ Her English seemed to have become quite fluent. Kathy looked over her shoulder and saw the couple from the embassy with whom Marianna had been staying. Marianna turned to them and said a few words in Portuguese, at which they nodded and left, looking cautiously at Kathy.

  ‘I come to check nothing smell in fridge,’ she said, turning back to Kathy.

  ‘I’m glad you did, Marianna. I wanted to talk to you.’ Kathy tried to sound composed, although her heart was still hammering from her experience in the cellar.

  Marianna looked anxious. Her eyes slipped past Kathy to the cellar door, then back to Kathy’s face and, seeing the expression there, darted away. ‘I make coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind about coffee,’ Kathy replied firmly. ‘Sit down.’ She sat opposite her, across the kitchen table. ‘The last time we met, Marianna, you could hardly speak a word of English, and you told me a pack of lies about what an angel Eva was. Now I want the truth. I know about her drugs . . .’ Marianna’s bottom lip trembled, but there was no denial, ‘. . . and now I want some answers. OK?’

  Marianna gave a deep sigh. ‘OK.’

  ‘Why did you tell me those lies? Were you afraid of Sammy? He beat you, didn’t he?’ Marianna looked startled, and Kathy saw she had got something wrong. ‘He gave you a black eye, didn’t he?’

  Marianna’s eyes widened, her bottom lip slowly pushed upward and she gave a sob. ‘No, no,’ she managed to say. ‘Not Sammy. My little Eva gave me black eye. She is wicked girl, God rest her soul.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  Marianna sniffed. ‘She was wild girl in Portugal. She worry her daddy to death. Sammy was good man for her. At first they were happy. She is like little girl again. But then she grows bored.’ Marianna pulled a tiny lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her nose, and began to twist the material in her fingers. ‘She has secrets. I know this. She scream and fight with me, but she cannot fool her Auntie Marianna. I try to help Sammy. I say, “No cash, Sammy, give her no cash.” But she is so sneaky. Sammy does not always believe me, but I know my Eva. She steals things, and sells her clothes and jewellery, and what else I don’t know. I don’t like to think what she do for drugs when she go to London. And all the time she get thinner and thinner, and then I start to find blood on her pillow. I tell Sammy, “We must do something, she is bleeding to death with drugs.” He is very worried. He plead with her, he get angry, she cry and she promise, always false promises.’

  She took another break t
o dab at her eyes and nose and take some deep breaths.

  ‘Finally he say no more London, he sell flat. She scream and scream and scream. She go mad, and try to leave him. So we make her stay.’

  Her eyes drifted over to the cellar door again.

  ‘When was this, Marianna?’

  ‘Two weeks ago, Thursday night. It is terrible. At first we lock her in her room upstairs. But then she begin to break things. We are frightened she will hurt herself. I say to Sammy, “We should get doctor,” but Sammy is afraid. He want to keep her safe until she calm down, then he will send her to private clinic. We put bed downstairs in cellar for her. When her friends come, he say she is in London since Thursday.’

  ‘Yes, I understand, Marianna. Go on.’

  ‘On Sunday night she escape. At nine o’clock I go to see her, to say goodnight, and she pretend to sleep. I take all her clothes away to clean. While I do this, she steal my key to cellar door. I didn’t know.’ Marianna began to weep silently. ‘She has nothing—no shoes, no money. She disappear into woods. Sammy go to her at eleven o’clock, and she is gone.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘Her summer nightgown. Silk, almost nothing. She grab old coat at the back door, we think, otherwise nothing. Near naked.’

  ‘Surely she could have found something to wear when she left?’

  ‘Sammy is moving about house. She don’t stop. She go straight out. I check everywhere. She take nothing.’

  ‘So she could have been gone, what, an hour? longer? before you discovered she was missing?’

  Marianna nodded miserably.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Sammy go out to look for her. He drive around, through the woods, down to Farnham, everywhere. Finally he come home, about midnight. He make phone calls. He say he think she will try to go to London, so he go there, to flat, to wait for her.’

  ‘What about you? Did you stay here?’

  ‘Yes. I wait in kitchen for her, all night, waiting for her to come home, like naughty little girl. But she not come.’ She began to weep again, more deeply this time.

  Kathy waited for her sobs to subside a little, then said, ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Sammy phone me from flat at dawn. She not come there. He say he stay there all day, and phone me every hour. Nothing.’

  ‘Did Sammy say if he had contacted anyone else?’

  Marianna shook her head.

  ‘What about your neighbours, the Fitzpatricks? Wouldn’t Sammy have spoken to them when he was searching for Eva in the woods?’

  ‘I don’t know. He is ashamed, and frightened.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that. Marianna, I’m going to have to ask you to go over all this again, in a police station, and make a proper statement. But we can do that later, when you’re feeling up to it. One last thing. Do you know where Sammy is now?’

  Marianna looked at Kathy in surprise. ‘Mr and Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘No, he’s left there, and no one knows where he’s gone. We’re worried for his safety. Where do you think he might be?’

  Marianna’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Oh, please God, no more death!’

  15

  An Orphan on Our Doorstep

  Kathy walked fast back along the lane towards her car and phone. But as she rehearsed in her mind what she had to say, she could hear McLarren reply, ‘So what?’ Starling and Marianna had covered up the real time at which Eva had left because of embarrassment, having already told the tennis players that she had gone the previous Thursday.

  And it wasn’t Sammy who was bothering Kathy now. She was thinking of Eva, fleeing down the lane, through the woods, barefoot, almost naked, as Marianna had said, and perhaps running into Toby Fitzpatrick in the twilight. Toby Fitzpatrick, who liked to watch her secretly from the woods through his binoculars, in her yellow bikini, in the pool; Toby Fitzpatrick who perhaps could lay his hands on a cardboard box of Finnish origin from the vases his wife had recently been given; Toby Fitzpatrick, whose dog had taken such a fancy to Eva’s head, and who now seemed gripped by some sickness of spirit.

  She stopped short of the Fitzpatricks’ cottage and thought how much more compelling it would all be if she could find some physical evidence of a link to Eva’s murder. And she thought again about the cardboard box in which her head had been delivered, and of the Iittala vases in the Fitzpatricks’ house. Their label had looked fresh, the vases new. And there had been two of them, identical, bought in two identical Finnish cardboard boxes, perhaps. At least, the size seemed about right. And if one had been used to hold Eva’s head a week ago, the other might still be around.

  Above her on the slope she saw the chestnut tree beneath which Toby Fitzpatrick had stood silently watching her that first time she had come to the cottage. She made her way up through the bracken towards it, and found the path that led past the gate at the rear of the cottage garden.

  There was a small covered area against the back wall of the cottage for the dustbins, a compost enclosure next to it, a bicycle wheel visible. The Fitzpatricks clearly liked to waste nothing. Old plant pots and lengths of rope and garden hose were neatly stacked. There were piles of old newspapers tied up with twine ready for recycling, and beside them cardboard boxes.

  She opened the gate as silently as she could. There was no sign of the dogs as she walked down the brick path towards the cottage. The cardboard boxes were stacked, small within large, and when she reached them she began to pull them apart, looking for a partner for the pale grey box that was so vivid in her mind. She had barely begun when she was interrupted by the snout of a Labrador, pushing against her thigh. It gave a little yelp of pleasure, and she saw the other behind, equally eager.

  She patted them. ‘Good girls,’ she whispered soothingly, until they were prepared to let her get back to her task. And suddenly there it was, identical to the one they had reconstructed from the debris on the road, and the sight of it gave her a jolt.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  She swung round at the sound of Toby Fitzpatrick’s voice. He was standing just a few paces behind her, and when he saw what she was holding he gave a stifled cry and turned as pale as he had when he had seen her at the pool in Eva’s bikini. He was a picture of guilt, and Kathy said, spontaneously improvising, ‘You saw her, didn’t you? That night, a week last Sunday.’

  ‘You know?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Toby, I know.’

  ‘Oh, God . . .’ he muttered, and covered his face with his hand. ‘The stamps and everything?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kathy said, trying not to look surprised. My God, she thought, he kidnapped Eva to get Sammy’s stamps?

  ‘It’s all over, then.’

  ‘It’ll be a relief,’ she said calmly, ‘to talk about it.’

  He stared at her in despair. ‘Yes . . . I suppose it will, yes. It’s been getting too much, worrying about it. I’ve been going off my head.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me now? Get it off your chest.’

  He hung his head in defeat. ‘She was bleeding,’ he began. ‘Her feet were bleeding from running down the road in the dark. She was in such a state—’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Helen Fitzpatrick’s voice sounded sharply from the direction of the back door of the cottage. The dogs yelped in excitement and tore towards her as she stepped out into the sunlight. She was wearing a white plastic apron and yellow rubber gloves, both of which were smeared with blood, and in her right hand she was holding the broad-bladed cleaver she used to chop up the dogs’ meat and bones. To Kathy she looked just like one of Dr Mehta’s assistants.

  ‘Darling . . .’ Toby Fitzpatrick turned to her, his body bent in supplication.

  ‘Toby, what is it?’ Helen said. ‘You look dreadful.’ She glared at Kathy. ‘What is it? What do you want?’

  ‘It’s all over, darling,’ he replied, close to breaking. ‘She knows everything.’

  His wife’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the cardboard box in Kathy’s hands. �
�What are you talking about, Toby?’ she said softly. ‘What does she know?’

  ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick,’ Kathy said quickly, ‘I’m taking your husband to Farnham police station. You can come too, if you wish.’

  Helen Fitzpatrick took a step towards her, then another. ‘What for? We’ve told you everything we know several times over.’

  ‘Mr Fitzpatrick wants to make a statement concerning the death of Eva Starling. Isn’t that right, Mr Fitzpatrick?’

  He looked from one woman to the other, then said, in a very small voice, ‘Yes, yes. It’s true.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Toby,’ his wife said. ‘You’ll do no such thing.’

  It was only at this point that Kathy realised, with, a terrible clarity, that Helen Fitzpatrick knew every bit as much about what had happened as her husband. She was only a couple of paces away now, the cleaver raised to shoulder height, out of the way of the dogs with their thrashing tails. Like a manic chorus, they milled around Kathy, blocking her way back to the path. Beyond them Toby Fitzpatrick stood, looking wild and dazed.

  ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick,’ Kathy said, and thought, Is this how it was for Mary Martin? ‘Helen, please think carefully. I’m a police officer, you know that.’

  Helen Fitzpatrick stared at her for a long moment, then said, in a low voice, ‘Oh, Toby. You bloody fool.’ She turned on her heel and marched back into the cottage, followed by the dogs.

  After a long silence, he said hoarsely, ‘I could do with a drink.’

  They went inside. As they went through the kitchen Kathy was relieved to see the cleaver abandoned beside a pile of ox hearts on the worktop. In the living-room they found Helen sitting rigidly on the sofa, still in her bloodstained plastic apron and gloves, staring at nothing.

  ‘I—I’m getting myself a stiff brandy,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘Anyone else?’

  No one replied, and he went to a cupboard in the corner of the room and poured himself a drink with shaking hand.

  ‘It must have been about ten o’clock that night,’ he said. ‘Sunday. We were about to go to bed when there was this frightful knocking on the front door, and there she was. I thought at first there must have been a sudden shower, because her hair was dripping wet. She had this old coat over her shoulders, and she was clutching her hands like this . . .’ He held the glass of brandy in front of his chest as if he were praying with it. ‘Helen wrapped her in a blanket, and sat her down over there, and she started talking. At first we couldn’t make it out. She was quite wild, shaking and crying, and she was mixing up Portuguese with English words. Eventually she made us understand that Sammy had been keeping her locked up in their cellar. We couldn’t believe it at first, it just seemed so bizarre. But there she was, in that state, when Sammy had told us she’d gone to London days before.