‘Yes, in the Borth case.’
He thought her eyelids flickered at the name. Might as well put the question.
‘You know Aled Borth?’
No mistaking the flinch this time. Or the hunch of her shoulders under the flimsy top. She was on the defensive; he was sure she didn’t want to talk about Aled Borth.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You bumped into him on the morning of the inquest, remember?’
‘Oh yes, you were there.’ She hesitated, and he guessed she was calculating how to respond. ‘Did he mention that we’d met before?’
‘Not in so many words, but…’
‘But?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Honestly, you don’t want to know.’
‘Try me.’
‘Shouldn’t we both be getting on with our work?’
‘It can wait. Aled Borth interests me.’
‘I can’t imagine why.’
He waved at the chair. ‘Take the weight off your feet.’
‘If you insist.’ She moved around the chair. ‘At least you’re easier to talk to than Ceri Hussain.’
‘Aled Borth?’ he prompted.
‘I’d no idea that was what he was called,’ she said. ‘If I had, I’d have recognised it the first time you asked me to work on the inquest file. But in our Circle, we take our names from Mother Nature. Aled Borth joined a year ago, but I knew him as Greenleaf.’
Greenleaf?
Somehow Harry kept a straight face. It was a skill developed over years of listening to hardened recidivists assuring magistrates that they’d be starting a new job on Monday and were determined to stay out of trouble in future.
‘It soon became clear that he wasn’t genuinely interested in our belief systems. He seemed to treat the Circle as a kind of niche dating agency. I presume he expected us to rip our clothes off at the first glimpse of a full moon.’
‘Did you get to know him?’
‘I kept my distance. One or two of the other women took pity on him, but they soon discovered he was only interested in one thing. And it wasn’t exploring his spirituality. We’re a collective, we don’t have an established hierarchy or priesthood, paganism isn’t about rules. But he started making a nuisance of himself. After a few weeks, one of the men took him aside and suggested it would be better for him to leave.’
‘And that was the last you saw of him?’
‘Until he turned up here the other day. I don’t know which of us was more embarrassed, him or me.’
‘If you didn’t even know his real name, I suppose you didn’t find out much else about him?’
‘Not really.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘He struck me as rather mean. Mind you, he was chronically short of money. I remember him complaining once about his mother. He said she was drinking away his inheritance. If you ask me, all that fuss he made about her supposedly being poisoned was nothing to do with wanting justice done. My bet is, Greenleaf felt ashamed for wishing her dead and wanted to find somewhere else to lay the blame.’
Harry guessed she was right. Aled Borth had persuaded himself that he was a faithful son, determined to protect the reputation of a fine old lady who rarely touched a drop of alcohol. Pure fantasy. Whatever other crimes he might have committed, Malachy Needham surely hadn’t murdered Nesta Borth or Mrs. Saxelby. There wasn’t a business case for killing the residents of the Indian Summer Care Home. All he cared about was money.
With Kay Cheung, it was different. Someone had strangled her and hacked out her tongue. She deserved justice. Harry was determined to make sure she got it.
Chapter Sixteen
As the door closed behind his secretary, Harry recalled Kay murmuring to the potted palms as she fed and watered them. She was a gentle woman, content with the simple things. He couldn’t believe she’d been happy to work as an escort, for all the ostensible respectability of Cultural Companions. Had her revulsion at a client’s demands led to her death?
He called Sylvia in and asked what she knew about Kay. Needless to say, she’d learned far more than Harry ever had.
‘Her sister is a photographer. She’s ten years older, and quite successful, I think. They fell out because she didn’t approve of Tom Gunter.’
‘A woman of sound judgment, then.’
‘Absolutely. Though it was such a pity. The two of them were never close. When the parents died, the sister was reluctant to take responsibility for Kay. Kay went her own way, but when she became involved with Tom, the sister was furious. After that, they hardly ever spoke to each other.’
‘So it’s not likely the sister can cast any light on Kay’s death?’
Sylvia frowned. ‘Shouldn’t you leave all this to the police?’
‘You know me.’
‘Too well.’
‘I’m curious, that’s all.’
‘Curiosity will kill you one day, Harry. After what happened to Jim…’
‘This is nothing to do with what happened to Jim.’
The moment he said it, he wondered if it was true. But it must be, surely?
‘All right.’ She shook her head, resigned to the inevitable. ‘The sister is called Rosamund Chow. She changed her name when she began to make her way in photography. If you want to talk to her, she may be up at St. James’ Gardens.’
Harry was startled. ‘By the Cathedral?’
‘Yes, I read in the Daily Post that she’s exhibiting her photographs there.’ Sylvia shivered. ‘I didn’t much like the sound of the show. She calls it Aspects of Death.’
***
‘Where better to display photographs about death than in an old cemetery?’ Rosamund Chow asked.
Good question and Harry didn’t have an answer. They were standing under a large gazebo of green canvas in St. James’ Gardens, sheltering from the drizzle. The awesome bulk of the Anglican Cathedral loomed up in front of them, but Harry had eyes only for the pictures on display.
The photographs were black and white. He found the spare images unsettling. Faces twisted with grief, men and women dressed in black gathered around an open tomb, a body on a mortuary table, covered in a shroud.
Rosamund Chow waved him to sit down on a plastic chair next to a table covered in leaflets about her work. She was a short, dumpy woman who kept her hair in a tight bun and wore a plain white blouse and grey skirt. Her manner was brisk and business-like and everything she said suggested an uncompromising intelligence. Harry detected no trace of Kay’s habitual anxiety to please, but the shower had deterred visitors to the exhibition, and once he’d explained that he was the friend Kay had arranged to meet on the day she died, she was willing to talk. She’d already told him that she was married to an accountant and lived in leafy, upmarket Woolton. Harry had met her husband at the professional networking events that Jim insisted he attend. He was an affable fellow, and Harry suspected that Rosamund wore the trousers. Hard to imagine that she and Kay ever had much in common beyond a blood-tie.
‘It is one of the differences between the Chinese mind-set and the Anglo-Saxon,’ she said. ‘There is not such a taboo about death. We think about it a lot. Perhaps…perhaps it will make it easier for me to come to terms with this ghastly thing. Though right at this moment, I cannot be sure.’
‘Did you see much of Kay?’
‘We last met twelve months ago. I bumped into her in the city centre. She was going to an office to see to their plants, and I was off to see my husband for a bite of lunch at the Athenaeum. We talked for a few minutes, but I’m afraid it was all very superficial. Kay knew that I disliked Tom Gunter. He could twist her around his little finger, but with me she could be stubborn. No way did she want me to have the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so.” Neither of us mentioned his name, but he was there in spirit, standing right between us.’
‘What did you know about their relationship?’
‘Let me speak candidly, Mr. Devlin. Never mind de mortuis. Kay was a sweet, innocent girl, but she wasn’t stron
g and at times, I’m afraid, she didn’t behave in a particularly intelligent way. She chose her men badly, and although I only ever met Gunter the once, that was enough. Paul and I never wanted to have anything to do with him again. He was obviously unreliable and had a hair-trigger temper. I have little doubt that he beat Kay if she displeased him. But she didn’t have the backbone to walk out. Does that sound harsh? To say that she was perversely loyal might be kinder. Even when he was charged with murder, she stood by her man. You were his solicitor, you say, you must be aware that she actually believed he was a victim of mistaken identity.’
‘The case against him fell apart. Once he’d sacked me, that is.’
Rosamund Chow snorted. ‘Legal jiggery-pokery, I expect you were too honest to indulge in it. Of course, from Kay’s perspective, her loyalty was vindicated. How ridiculous is human nature. Poor Kay had an endless capacity to deceive herself.’
Rain smacked against the gazebo’s canvas roof and Harry turned his collar up against the gathering wind. The gardens occupied a scooped-out site, once a quarry and later a burial ground, and they formed a cool, quiet and mysterious oasis close to the heart of the city. Close to the gazebo, the cylindrical Huskisson Memorial honoured the man killed by Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’. Behind was Liverpool’s very own spa, a spring of water said to be drinkable, though Harry had never chanced it. Above were sloping Ramps, down which hearses once travelled to deliver the dead to their final resting place. Catacombs were cut into the sandstone cliff, old tombstones lined the pathways. Reminders of mortality were everywhere. Including the occasional needle discarded by the junkies and prostitutes who sometimes crept in here at night.
‘You never spoke to her after that meeting?’
‘I did not say that, Mr. Devlin.’ Her tone was precise, verging on pernickety. Harry suspected that having Rosamund as an elder sister might be a challenge for anyone. ‘We didn’t keep in close touch, but Paul and I are Christians and our faith has become the cornerstone of our lives. We are born again, you might say. I came to realise that I let Kay down. I was older and wiser and I should have kept her safe from men like Gunter. I failed her.’
‘I feel the same,’ he blurted out. ‘That message she left for me…’
‘You must not reproach yourself. You were a friend, but I was her flesh and blood. For years, I was preoccupied with carving out my own path. I adopted a new professional name, met Paul and married him. There wasn’t any room in my life for a younger sister.’
‘Did you contact her?’
‘Belatedly, yes. I rang her up ten days ago and tried to explain that I wanted to make amends for my past mistakes. She told me she and Gunter had moved into a flat at the Marina. It was a step up for them, but she seemed unhappy. I wondered where the money was coming from. Nowhere good, I suppose. I suggested we meet for a coffee, but she put me off.’
‘And that was the last time you heard from her?’
‘No, Mr. Devlin. She left a message on my voicemail on the morning she was murdered. I told the police about it, of course.’
‘What did she say?’
A flicker of pain creased Rosamund Chow’s stern face, and Harry’s heart went out to her.
‘She asked me to call her. Her last words were: you were right. About Tom Gunter, I presume.’
‘Did you ring back?’
‘No, I was too busy with the exhibition. I thought it would keep. Besides, I wanted to savour what she had said. I’m afraid it is one of my sins, Mr. Devlin. I very much enjoy being proved right. But of course, in the long run this has not made me feel happy at all.’
She sniffed hard, although Harry saw no sign of tears. He looked away while she blew her nose, at a photograph of two old Indian men, contemplating the blackened remains of a funeral pyre.
‘I must pray for the Lord’s forgiveness,’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘While I absorbed myself in death, I neglected life.’
***
‘If there’s a serial killer at work,’ Harry said as he sipped a half of Cain’s, ‘you can bet that he has a history. These people don’t spring out of nowhere, fully formed as sadistic murderers. There’s a build-up. Clues in their past. Previous crimes, they…’
‘All right, all right.’ Carmel raised her hands in mock-surrender. ‘You’re starting to sound like Maeve Hopes. When you get a bee in your bonnet, there’s no stopping you. Jim used to say the same. “If only Harry worked as hard as he…”’
Her voice faltered as she realised she’d used the past tense. ‘I mean, he’ll say it again the minute I tell him the latest.’
‘Yes, he will,’ Harry said quietly.
For a minute or so, neither of them spoke. They were in the saloon bar of the Burning Deck, across the road from the General. It was a cramped little pub which did a roaring trade thanks to the families of patients who felt in need of something stronger than tea, coffee or squash in the hospital cafeteria. The place owed its name to an almost forgotten daughter of Liverpool, Felicia Hemans. She’d been a chum of Wordsworth and at one time her verse earned her a reputation second only to Byron’s. But her fame hadn’t lasted. These days her poetry was remembered by a single phrase from ‘Casabianca’: The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled.
Some days, Harry could imagine exactly how that boy must have felt.
‘Kay was different from Denise and Lee. Too gentle and quiet for anyone to describe her as bubbly and fun-loving. Even if Denise and Lee were killed by a client who lost it, Kay wouldn’t arrange to meet a client at the same time as she was supposed to be seeing me.’
Carmel tasted her white wine and pulled a face. ‘Yuck. Too sweet. Like Kay Cheung, eh? She doesn’t fit the typical profile of an escort. Cultural Companions say she’d only been out with a couple of men. The team is checking up on them, of course.’
‘I wonder if she was killed for some other reason than the first two victims.’
‘But the m.o. is identical. That’s the complication.’
‘What have you found out about Borth?’
‘Not much. I need to tread with care. The SIO won’t take kindly to an in-house lawyer poking her nose in. There’s a strict line between legal and operational, you know that.’
‘You’ll wrap him around your little finger.’
‘As of now, this is the highest profile investigation in the North of England. We’re under pressure. The media are screaming that Denise’s murder wasn’t taken seriously because she was an escort.’
‘Isn’t it true?’
‘Not true and not fair. There simply wasn’t enough evidence for the team to get their teeth into. Everyone is focused on achieving a result. The people at the top won’t want to be distracted.’
‘If you don’t ask, you don’t find out.’
Carmel pushed her glass to one side. ‘Okay, okay, anything to get you off my case.’
‘Thanks.’ A thought struck him. ‘What about the forensics? Were all the women strangled in exactly the same way?’
‘Manually, yes. There were fingernail marks on the throat of Denise Onuoha, but they haven’t been matched to a suspect. Lee Welch’s neck was bruised, but there wasn’t much forensic evidence. Same with Kay Cheung. But he may have made a mistake in his latest choice of crime scene. Forensic clues don’t last long on a beach, but grassy areas are different. Footwear impressions were found close to Kay’s body that look interesting.’
Harry finished his drink. ‘Sibierski insisted on checking my shoe size.’
‘He’s just pulling your plonker, Harry. These prints came from size 11 trainers.’
‘My feet are size 9.’
‘Phew, got away with it, eh? If we can find a match to these impressions, we’re in business.’
Harry breathed in. Not so long ago, his lungs would have choked up in a place like this, but the smoking ban had cleansed the atmosphere. Now there was only the smell of stale beer to clog up your nasal passages.
‘How did the murderer cut out
the women’s tongues?’
‘With no great expertise.’ She made a face. ‘Messy. Horrible, actually. He used a common type of Swiss army knife. We haven’t found the weapon, or weapons. Maybe he used the self-same knife each time, maybe not. There are thousands of those knives out there.’
‘Yeah, I saw one recently,’ Harry said. ‘Tom Gunter threatened me with it.’
***
‘You took a risk, confronting him,’ Carmel said five minutes later.
‘It wasn’t as if we were strangers. I once acted for him, don’t forget.’
‘All the more reason to watch your step.’
‘Thanks for your confidence in my client management skills.’
‘Fools rush in, and all that.’ She coloured. ‘Sorry, that sounds cruel. Listen, Harry. I know you mean well.’
‘That sounds worse.’
‘It’s just that…with Jim in such a state, I need you to look after yourself.’
‘We can’t wrap ourselves up in cotton wool. Jim wasn’t poking his nose into anybody else’s business, was he?’
‘But…’
‘No buts,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘I must get along. Things to do.’
‘There’s no stopping you, is there?’ she said in weary resignation.
He touched her warm hand. ‘After what happened to Jim and Kay? Nothing at all.’
***
His next destination was Pretty Street, in Waterloo. Aled Borth’s cottage propped up the end of an ancient terraced row in a featureless one way thoroughfare five minutes from the waterfront. The street name was presumably the brainchild of Victorian city fathers with a keen sense of humour, but Aled’s neighbours had done their best to live up to it. Their small front gardens were neat confections of coloured pebbles and shrubs hardy enough to withstand the icy blast from the waterfront. In contrast, Aled’s patch of ground resembled a ‘before’ shot in a garden makeover programme. It was covered with old, broken concrete; nettles, bindweed and couch grass had colonised the cracks. Harry made his way from the broken wooden gate to Aled’s front door. The curtains upstairs and down were drawn.
Waterloo Sunset: A Lake District Mystery #4 (Lake District Mysteries) Page 20
