by Clare Curzon
‘Could well be,’ was the nearest the woman would admit to. ‘Like I said, she was running, sort of hobbled in this long skirt.’
‘Or could it have been a coat? An ankle-length, black leather one with a big fox fur collar?’
‘Yes, that’s what it was. The fur. I remember that’s why I didn’ t get a proper look at her face. I’m quite certain now. That’s the woman who was chasing the lad in the outsize clothes.’
So now Rachel Howard had a link with Micky Kane after he’d fled from the hospital, but Z couldn’t see what that implied or where it was leading. Had he, in desperation, tried to snatch her handbag? Whatever the reason for her chasing him, neither of them could explain it now. Both were dead, by widely different means; but possibly killed within hours of each other. So was that because of their connection?
‘Never rains but it bloody pours,’ Salmon snarled, bustling in as she settled again at the terminal. ‘We’ve another body. Looks like the husband did it. Straightforward domestic asphyxiation with a plastic bag. You’d think a doctor would find some subtler means. Must have suddenly seen red and just gone for it.’
‘Who’s this?’
‘Woman by the name of Stanford. Her husband’s a partner in a local practice. They’re bringing him in for questioning. If I can’t reach Beaumont to sit in, it’ll have to be you.’
She’d known more genteel invitations, and had to excuse herself. She was already involved with taking Rachel Howard’s half-brother to the grandmother’s apartment.
‘Well, there’s no great haste. Stanford can sit and sweat till we’re ready. Doctors should understand waiting-rooms. Let’s hope he’ll break and confess. An open and shut case. The woman was tied up first to keep her quiet.’
Not exactly instant passion, then, Z thought; but it was Salmon’s case and she doubted her opinion would be asked for. She looked at her watch: 6.28. There was time to pack up Micky Kane’s effects and write a covering note to the parents before picking up Martin Howard again. They could have a meal together somewhere and she’d find out more about the family background. This was the man Rachel had said used to be cruel to Emily, locking her in a cupboard. When she took him to the penthouse flat they must be kept apart for fear of alarming the old lady.
When he suggested they eat at his hotel she found him urbane, seeming interested in her work and divulging only that he’d joined the family business on leaving art college at twenty-one. Asked if he’d met his second cousin Alyson Orme, he said no; in fact, he’d not known of her existence until Rachel spoke of her. Emily was fortunate to have skilled nursing from someone close.
They timed their visit for when Alyson had returned home and had time to relax, but it was Ramón who let them in. Alyson’s greeting was understandably cautious. ‘I’ll get the coat,’ she offered and brought it in sheathed in transparent plastic.
He appeared embarrassed. ‘Why don’t you keep it? I’d only send it to a charity shop otherwise. I’m her executor, you see. Her nearest relative, apart from Dolly, my married sister in Aberdeen. She wouldn’t want anything from Rachel. They didn’t get on well together.’
‘And you did?’ Alyson asked, her face expressionless.
‘It was a case of having to. She’s – she was – a fellow director in the firm.’ He was interrupted by a low buzz from the direction of the kitchen.
‘More visitors,’ Alyson said.
Ramón came and stood in the doorway. ‘It is missing lady, Sheena, downstairs. I let her in?’
‘I suppose you’d better, or she might vanish again.’ She turned again to Martin Howard. ‘It must be years since you last saw Emily Withers?’
He hesitated. ‘Quite some time. We all used to live together, you know, in the old family home. Rachel and I still have separate accommodation there. We neither of us married or moved away.’
Z heard the lift doors open and voices out in the hall. Then Sheena Judd walked in, blinking at the unexpected company. ‘Sorry,’ she said, gauche as her air of defiance was punctured. ‘I thought you’d be on your own.’ Her eyes passed over the DS and rested on Martin. She looked surprised, then mildly provocative. ‘Oh hello, you’re back again. How did you get on with the pictures?’
In the momentary silence that followed, Z watched all colour drain from Martin Howard’s face. ‘Oh God!’ he gasped and sagged in his chair. It was a repeat of his collapse at the mortuary and she moved forward to help him, but Alyson was there first.
‘Do you have any medication?’ she asked, supporting the lolling head.
‘Breast pocket,’ he managed to get out.
Z left them to it: Alyson was the professional. Her own interest was centred on Sheena. ‘Where did you meet him before?’ she demanded, already more than half sure of the answer.
She’d guessed right. Martin Howard had been the bogus insurance assessor, visiting to check on Emily’s art collection. And she remembered Alyson speaking of the ‘family firm’, a gallery in Edinburgh through which Emily had originally obtained some of her treasures. But his action had been deliberate deceit. He could be charged with theft of stationery from Fitt’s office, forgery and possibly intent to steal valuable art work.
Ramón reappeared and helped Howard to a sofa, where he lifted his legs and pushed a cushion behind his head. Alyson came across. ‘He’ll be all right shortly. He’s diabetic. Can’t stand shocks. I’m not sure I can either.’
She turned to Zyczynski. ‘You see, I’d met him before too. In the snowy street. He helped me with my parcels when my umbrella blew inside out. I thought what a kind man!’
‘He is not bad man,’ Ramón declared. ‘I know. Sometimes Emily call me Martin. Then she hold my hand and smile.’
They all stared at him.
Martin Howard stirred on the sofa. ‘I didn’t mean …’ he whispered, ‘ …to kill her.’
Z moved nearer, bending to listen.
‘She would have …smothered Emily.’
‘With pillow,’ Ramón said, scowling fiercely. ‘I find pillow on floor. And with bed all …’ He twisted his arms about. ‘Window is open in glass wall. I think now perhaps woman fall out.’
‘Rachel Howard,’ Z said quietly. It all fitted: Rachel who’d ‘fallen off more than one roof,’ and whose cause of death had been manual strangulation.
As soon as Howard recovered and Alyson said it was safe, she’d have to arrest him for murder.
The team were kept busy with paperwork until late into the night, then Salmon and his two sergeants met up in the Boss’s office to unwind. Yeadings produced a bottle of single malt and announced, ‘taxis home on the house. It’s a tad late for mocha but let’s hope the scotch will damp down the caffeine.’
Salmon nodded. ‘After a day like today no one’ll need rocking.’
‘But how did the dead woman get from where she fell to the rooftop of the college?’ Beaumont pursued.
‘Presumably in Markham’s car,’ Yeadings offered. ‘But it needn’ t have been him driving. There were smudges from gloves on the steering wheel and bodywork.’
‘There was no more than a dribble of her blood on the rug.’
‘So the body was wrapped in something waterproof first, but it leaked at one corner.’
Z nodded, remembering the way Alyson had wrapped the black leather coat. There would be no shortage of sheet plastic in a house where an elderly patient was being nursed. She guessed it would be regularly used to cover the mattress against spills.
Perhaps when they questioned Martin Howard further he would explain how he’d moved the body, using the old Nissan dumped in the warehouse yard near where Rachel had fallen. For the time being they were kept at bay by medics at the hospital. The man was in a poor state. She wondered how he’d managed to carry the woman’s dead weight all five floors up to the top of the college. And then one further narrow staircase to the roof. Would a stranger from Scotland know how to access the college lift?
Salmon rose to his feet. ‘All reports on my de
sk by eight in the morning,’ he decreed. ‘And you’ll find mine there before you.’ His grin looked more of a leer, Yeadings thought; but, despite its unpromising beginning, clearly the day had ended on a high for him.
Sitting alone at the huge window with all the lights left on behind her, Alyson stared at the room’s image thrown back. Her mind was in turmoil. Before Martin Howard had been driven off by Rosemary Zyczynski he had asked to look in on Emily. She had still been reluctant to take the risk, despite Ramón’s defence of the man.
Emily had been dozing and barely opened her eyes as they came in. Alyson had watched life come back into them as her slow smile spread. ‘Martin,’ she breathed, focusing on his face. Her eyelids drooped, closed, and she was asleep again, silent and serene.
If she could believe all he’d said, this was Martin who had always ‘got her out of there’ when she was shut away. So it was the treacherous Rachel who used to lock her frail grandmother in a cupboard, and then, just days ago, tried to smother her in her bed.
Now, with Ramón on hand, perhaps Emily would emerge further from silence and begin to speak of the past, even describe what she’d seen when Martin arrived in time to save her life. So often after dark she had sat in her wheelchair staring at the great window, as Alyson did now, facing the room’s reflection with herself at its centre. And unspoken emotions had fleetingly lit her face. Maybe on this screen she was seeing herself younger, among old friends and rivals, defying the social conventions that condemned her wildness; rekindling her contempt for the bullying father who had seduced and betrayed her.
Met with hauteur and blame when she attempted a reconciliation for her bastard child’s sake, it was surely Emily, not her mother, who, enraged, snatched the silver candlestick and struck him down with a single blow.
But proof of that was beyond reach now. She had once spoken of her granddaughter’s ‘bad blood’ but, with black humour, must have included her own part in it, with her father as its source.
Driving home, Zyczynski’s eyes still burned from concentrating on the computer’s screen. So much had happened in so short a time that she felt herself hurtling towards the last bend of a helter-skelter. They knew now who had killed Rachel, and it seemed certain they held the men responsible for Micky’s tragic end, but there were so many small questions still niggling at the back of her mind.
Markham was absolved of any major crime, but he had still been violent to Sheena, and could be so again, yet she would not have him charged with assault. Ramón must have smothered his suspicions for days, and was guilty of concealing a crime, whether knowingly or not. Z sighed. And now, with most of the paperwork done, they had this new domestic murder to work through, a husband killing his terminally ill wife – but never a mercy killing, and not at her demand. Otherwise why the need to tie her hands?
Z was glad she hadn’t mentioned the case to Alyson when the nurse phoned earlier to declare her faith in Martin Howard’s good intentions. Dr Stanford, she remembered, was the doctor Alyson had praised for treating Emily with such compassion. How easily people deceive us.
Driving past the college she saw the penthouse lights still blazing and a figure seated by the great window. On an impulse she pulled up, got out and buzzed for admission.
‘Is it too late to call?’ she asked of the entry phone.
‘Oh good, it’s you. No. Come on up.’
Alyson put out glasses and opened a bottle of Merlot without asking. ‘Pointless to go to bed,’ she said. ‘So much has happened. I can’t believe it. To think of Emily being in such danger. And this was days ago.’
Z nodded. So perhaps Alyson hadn’t yet heard about Dr Stanford. No need to pile that extra agony on.
They drank in companionable silence, and then the buzzer sounded again.
Alyson went through to the CCTV viewer. ‘It’s Mr Fitt, of all people,’ she called back, going to let him in. Z listened as she met him stepping from the lift.
‘You’ve heard?’ Alyson said. ‘I’m so truly sorry.’
‘Mr Yeadings rang me, so I came at once. I must apologize for the late hour, but I needed to reassure you, if I can.’
Coming through, they appeared to be countering apology with apology, each of them taking blame for what had been allowed to happen.
‘This is Detective Sergeant Zyczynski,’ Alyson introduced her.
‘We have met. I’m glad to see you here, my dear. This is a distressing time for Miss Orme.’
He took the seat between them. Alyson produced a third glass and poured him wine. ‘I feel terrible,’ she said, ‘allowing all these people to get in and put Emily in danger.’
‘The blame is mine,’ he insisted. ‘I so regret not warning you fully,’ and he explained how security had twice been breached at his office; once when Emily’s strongbox key disappeared, and again when Martin must have got in on some pretext and taken the headed stationery.
‘When you told me that Rachel Howard had been here at that time I guessed she had used some excuse to visit the office in my absence and help herself to the key, using a false name. Then the bogus insurance man visiting to view the collection: another deceit I should have been able to prevent. It seemed logical to me later to suppose Martin was behind it, checking whether Rachel had occasioned any mischief here. He is in a curiously ambivalent position, being a co-director with her in the family firm, but well aware of her animosity to her grandmother.
‘I decided to trust him, and sent him a duplicate key to the strongbox, against the possibility of my not being in a position to defend it.’
Z leaned forward, ‘Couldn’t it have been Martin who helped himself to the original key?’
‘If he’d done so, then he’d have had no need to check that Emily’s collection was the same as when she left Edinburgh with it. No; his concern was for her security.’
‘This key,’ Z considered. ‘I believe it featured in another case,’ and she explained how she’d found one such hidden in Micky Kane’s trainer.
‘A few days later a witness saw the boy being chased by a woman answering to Rachel Howard’s description. Suppose he’d somehow acquired the key – snatched her bag or picked it up when she’d dropped it. Despite the different way the boy was dressed later she could have recognized him as someone being close when she lost the key. But he got away over a fence and she couldn’t follow.’
‘So where is this key now?’ Fitt asked.
‘I have it, together with the clothes he wore when he was first picked up unconscious. I was about to send them back to his parents, but I could drop in tomorrow and show it to you.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Days passed while early March falsely promised the arrival of Spring. Martin Howard was to be arraigned on a charge of manslaughter. He was proving cooperative and to a point his story made sense. Warned by Timothy Fitt of Rachel’s first visit to the penthouse, which coincided with the loss of Emily’s strongbox key in his office, Martin had employed an Edinburgh PI to watch her closely, fearing some move against Emily whose principal heir she was.
Alerted to her second visit south, he had followed her from Edinburgh, forged the letter of introduction to Alyson by photocopying the firm’s headings from Fitt’s letters, and faked his signature. His concern was to ensure that Emily and her valuables were adequately protected.
He later admitted his deceit to Fitt who had guessed the identity of the self-styled insurance appraiser and posted to him the replica key, while retaining the strongbox with its catalogue of the art collection and Emily’s latest will. Recent occurrences had convinced the old solicitor that his office was not as impregnable as he’d believed.
Martin had hidden nothing about attacking Rachel as she attempted to smother the sleeping Emily with a pillow. Nobody had witnessed her enter the apartment. Perhaps Sheena and the man hadn’t properly closed the door behind them on leaving. Or Rachel had some means of picking the lock. Absorbed in appraising Emily’s pictures, Martin had known nothing before a s
udden clatter from the bedroom. He’d gone in to find her there, bent over the old lady, intent on murder.
He had seized her violently by the neck from behind, shaking her until she dropped the pillow and slumped, unconscious, at his feet. Desperately he had tried resuscitation, but without success. The woman was dead, with Emily staring wide-eyed at him as he bent over the body.
He had panicked, seeking some way to hide what he’d done. He couldn’t carry the body out into the street. It had been mad to push her from the window, but he wasn’t rational then. He still denied any further involvement. He had fled the penthouse in horror, leaving Emily unguarded with the door wide open and the woman’s body God alone knew where down below …
And the window open, Ramón had claimed in his statement. He had gone in, found no one in charge and closed the gaping glass panel for fear Emily should take a chill. He had not reported the circumstances to Alyson Orme because he was new to the job and did not know what would be expected of him.
This had not satisfied the detectives interviewing him, but Ramón stood firmly by what he’d said, and collusion with Martin Howard was unlikely. The man was a foreigner and had poor spoken English in any case. The situation as he’d found it could have been too complicated for him to describe at the time. Strange, all the same.
It still remained to find who had discovered the body in the warehouse yard, broken into the Nissan and used it for transport to the college. Some knowledge was required of the layout there, and that the porter’s lodge had electronic control of the staff lift and roof access. Although once an external student, Oliver Markham had pleaded ignorance of this. Also he had been elsewhere that Sunday evening, and eventually Sheena had provided his alibi. Not that the body had to be removed that same night. Weather conditions made it impossible to tell with any accuracy how long the body had lain unnoticed among rubbish in the dark corner of Elston’s yard.
