Wrong Place

by Michelle Davies

  Half a mile later a road sign loomed into view on her left, announcing only two miles to go until the turn-off for Trenton. Maggie’s pulse quickened and she suddenly felt more alert than she had in hours. It was six thirty now – what were the chances Umpire was still knocking around the station when she arrived? When he worked Major Crime cases he would sometimes sleep overnight in his office to get the job done, but maybe his hours were more regular with HMET. Or maybe he’d clocked off already to meet Renshaw.

  The thought dismayed her. Fine if he didn’t want to take things further with her, but why start seeing someone he knew Maggie couldn’t stand? All those conversations they’d had about Renshaw, when Maggie had solicited his advice on how to deal with her unpleasantness and backbiting. Had he been attracted to her all along? Had it started at the benefit evening for the officer who was killed, or was it even earlier than that? Who made the first move, him or her? Does he kiss her like he kissed me?

  ‘Oh God, stop this now. You’ll drive yourself mad,’ Maggie said loudly to herself. She switched on the radio and let Taylor Swift drown out her thoughts as she continued her journey.

  Trenton police station was far flashier than Mansell in appearance and in function too, as the divisional headquarters for the force’s northern reaches. With a sweeping glass and steel facade fitted with photovoltaic panels to generate its own power, the station was both envied and derided, its critics claiming it looked more like the headquarters of a corporation than a working police station.

  The front-desk reception area was in the hollow of an atrium rising three floors above. The front-desk clerk was friendly and efficient and told Maggie in a brisk voice to take a seat in the tastefully decorated waiting area while she made DI Green aware of her arrival. Sitting down, Maggie wondered if the serene surroundings tempered how people behaved, knowing the front desk at Mansell could be a volatile place to work with frequent outbursts from members of the public. Here, she couldn’t imagine anyone daring to speak above a whisper.

  She gazed up at the atrium, curious as to which floor HMET were based on, and toyed with the idea of sending Belmar a text to see if he was around to meet afterwards. He and Allie had a spare room at their flat in the centre of Trenton and staying over at theirs would be infinitely preferable to the drive back and a night squashed on the sofa again. Her parents might be staying at the Premier Inn in the centre of Mansell but her flat was still overcrowded. A night at the Small–Fontaine residence would mean clean sheets, no early wake-up from the kids and seriously good coffee served with breakfast.

  She decided to wait though, knowing there was little point making plans until she knew the outcome of the briefing and what DI Green expected of her over the weekend. Maggie needed a clear head for that and she knew the downside of staying at Belmar and Allie’s would be the skull-crushing hangover she always woke up with the next day.

  A few minutes later the front-desk clerk called Maggie over and handed her a security pass.

  ‘DI Green’s told me to send you up to the first floor and someone will meet you there.’

  Maggie said thanks and made her way over to the bank of lifts. On the first floor the lift opened onto a balcony foyer that looked out over the atrium. The grim-faced officer waiting to collect her didn’t bother to introduce himself.

  ‘The briefing’s already started. You’re late,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been kept waiting downstairs for ten minutes,’ she shot back.

  She followed him through two sets of security doors – each time he slapped his security pass against the sensor and fidgeted with obvious annoyance as the doors ponderously opened – until they reached the briefing room. It was packed and from her position by the back wall Maggie struggled to see over the heads of those in front of her despite her height.

  DI Green was in full flow at the front.

  ‘I’ll be the first to admit we’ve been well and truly kippered by Eleanor Bramwell,’ she was saying, her voice loud and rich as it carried across the room.

  ‘Not us, HMET were dealing first,’ said a male voice near the front. A murmur of approval rippled round the room.

  Green shook her head.

  ‘We haven’t got time to sit here apportioning blame and telling tales. Our focus needs to be finding and arresting Eleanor Bramwell. She might look like butter won’t melt but her husband says she’s nothing of the sort.’

  Green’s gaze fell upon Maggie at the back of the room and she gave her a fleeting nod.

  ‘Simon Bramwell is contesting his wife’s version of events and compellingly so. He says that when he returned home from work on Monday evening at six p.m. Eleanor had prepared a meal for them both. Spag bol, washed down with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. The food was fine but he remembers questioning the taste of the wine with her, said it was a bit bitter. She told him it was probably corked but as it was the only bottle of red left in the house it would have to do. So he carries on drinking and very quickly he starts feeling nauseous, so Eleanor tells him to lie down on their bed. The next thing he knows, he wakes up in hospital four days later with my ugly mug looming over him.’ Green crossed her arms. ‘He’s categorically denying that he stabbed his wife, left her to die in the bathroom, then crushed up a ton of pills and washed them down with vodka to top himself. I think he’s telling the truth, which means Eleanor staged the whole thing to make him the guilty party. She was probably banking on him dying so her story couldn’t be contradicted.’

  ‘We’re supposed to believe she stabbed herself?’ a female officer sitting at the front of the room scoffed sceptically.

  ‘I’ve sent the medical report on her wounds to a consultant forensic physician to see if he thinks they could be self-inflicted,’ Green clarified. ‘We already know the wounds were shallow and don’t exactly tally with her account of being frenziedly attacked by her husband. If he’d really gone at her like the Yorkshire Ripper, her injuries should’ve been far worse.’

  Maggie could see she wasn’t the only one in the room baulking at the idea of stabbing his or herself. A person would surely have to be utterly desperate to do that – or crazy.

  Green pointed to a Perspex display board behind her, but the heads of those standing in front of her obscured Maggie’s view of it.

  ‘After myself and DC Neville here –’ Green gestured at Maggie, who tried not to blush as the same heads swivelled round to scope her out – ‘had our run-in with Eleanor at the Langston Hotel in Mansell, she went to the train station. CCTV cameras picked her up on platform three, the London-bound platform, but she didn’t get on to a train.’ Green pointed again to the display board out of Maggie’s eyeline. ‘This shows Eleanor coming back out of the station about ten minutes later. She’s hidden her hair under a bobble hat and has changed her clothes – presumably in the waiting room on the platform – which shows she was prepared, and probably why she risked going back to her hotel room to grab her suitcase after she knocked me out.’

  ‘So she’s still in Mansell?’ asked the officer who had collected Maggie.

  ‘Our colleagues down there are checking CCTV around the town centre as we speak but for all we know she could’ve nicked another vehicle and gone anywhere. We’re talking needle-in-a-sodding-haystack.’

  ‘If she did stage the murder-suicide attempt, does her husband have any idea why?’ asked the same female officer who’d spoken up earlier.

  ‘Well, my first thought was she’d done it because he was a nasty shit who liked to knock seven bells out of her and it was her way of escaping. But it looks like everything she told us about being abused by him was bollocks too. We’ve checked her medical records and there haven’t been any hospital admissions in the past ten years for broken limbs,’ said Green, catching Maggie’s eye again. ‘He’s claiming he has no idea why she’s flipped.’

  Maggie wanted to kick herself for falling for Eleanor’s lies. It was no excuse that she was being pulled two ways by the cases she was juggling: as Eleanor’s FLO she s
hould’ve spent more time poking holes in her story to make sure it was watertight and passed on her suspicions the moment she realized it wasn’t. She should’ve seen through the fabrications.

  ‘All of us believed her,’ said Green, eyeballing Maggie as though she could tell she was mentally berating herself. ‘She’s a bloody good actress. Even her own husband had no idea what she was capable of and they’ve been married for nine years.’

  ‘So what’s the link to the attack in Mansell?’ someone else piped up.

  Green grimaced. ‘At approximately one p.m. on Tuesday, a pensioner called Sadie Cardle was found severely injured at home. At first the police in Mansell thought it was a distraction burglary gone wrong, as there has been a spate of them across the town in recent weeks. However, on Monday evening Mrs Cardle had a visitor and we now believe that visitor was Eleanor Bramwell,’ said Green, explaining the photographs and rings found in the second hotel room that had gone missing from Frobisher Road.

  ‘What we don’t know is why Eleanor went to see Mrs Cardle and whether it was her intention to hurt her. There must be a connection between them but so far we haven’t found it. Eleanor appears to have disguised herself in a long black wig to visit Mrs Cardle, so be aware, folks, that she may have changed her appearance again as we look for her now.’

  Maggie spoke up. ‘Does Simon Bramwell know Sadie Cardle or her family?’

  ‘He’s saying he doesn’t and is baffled as to why his wife would attack an elderly woman he’s never heard of.’

  As the group pondered a possible link, Green clapped her hands together loudly.

  ‘Right, we need to find Eleanor Bramwell before she does something silly to either herself or someone else. I want every family member, friend, associate and casual acquaintance mined for information. Someone must know where she is. I know it’s a big ask, but I want everyone working the weekend.’

  There were no dissenting voices as heads bobbed in acknowledgement of Green’s request, Maggie’s included. Eleanor had duped her and she would work round the clock until her arrest.

  Green issued a few more instructions then dismissed everyone with the order to ‘crack on’. As the group dispersed, a path was cleared to the front of the room and she beckoned Maggie forward.

  ‘Let’s have a quick chat.’

  Reaching the front of the room, Maggie finally had a clear view of the display board. She jerked to a halt as if she’d run headlong into a brick wall.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘What is it?’

  At the centre of the board was a blown-up image of the Bramwells on their wedding day. Eleanor was resplendent in strapless ivory lace, her long blonde hair set in gentle waves and crowned by a diamante tiara, while her handsome husband beside her beamed into the camera. Maggie studied the picture for a few moments, drinking in every feature of the happy couple’s smiling faces, until she was certain.

  She turned to DI Green, her expression set like granite.

  ‘That man isn’t Simon Bramwell.’

  62

  Audrey didn’t stay to drink her tea. Visibly shaken by Della’s outburst, she went through a pantomime of pretending she could hear her phone ringing through the thin walls and scuttled out of the house before Della could dispute it.

  Any guilt Della felt for manhandling the old woman was overridden by her growing excitement. It all made sense now, she thought, as she tidied away the mugs and rinsed out the teapot before returning it to the cupboard as well. After seventeen years away, Helen had finally returned to the family home – presumably for her inheritance, as that’s what Maggie seemed to think her only motive would be. Nan kicked up a fuss – well, she was hardly going to hand the money over without an explanation of where Helen had been all this time – and a struggle ensued. Della didn’t believe Helen meant to hurt Sadie and the police would take that into account.

  ‘I know it was an accident,’ Della mused out loud as if Helen was right there in the kitchen with her. ‘Once the police know that we can give Nan a proper farewell and then you and I can get to know each other.’ Her expression darkened for a moment. ‘That doesn’t mean you can replace Nan. She’s the one who raised me and loved me when you went off. But we can get to know each other as friends.’

  Putting the chairs back in the dining room, Della tried to imagine what Helen’s reaction would be to seeing her. Would her mum be proud of the person she’d become? Her face clouded again. What if Helen thought her job was rubbish, or she didn’t like the way she dressed? What if she didn’t approve of Alex? Troubled by her thoughts, Della wound her way down the hall and into the sitting room to put the television on. She needed a distraction until Maggie called her back. But when she spied the stain on the carpet where Sadie had fallen she felt sick. She backed out of the room and returned to the kitchen, listlessly opening the fridge to see if there was anything to eat. Everything was out of date and needed chucking.

  She was hungry though, so she decided to order a pizza. She couldn’t bear to get her usual Hawaiian – it had been Sadie’s favourite too – so she called up for a margarita with a side order of coleslaw instead. The man who took her order said it would take up to an hour because it was Friday night, their busiest time, yet less than fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the door.

  Della leapt to her feet, surprised. She grabbed her purse from the side and rushed down the narrow hallway. Flinging the door open, she was about to launch into a polite exchange with the delivery boy when the sight of a woman on the doorstep silenced her. Della assumed she was one of those annoying charity chuggers soliciting for money and was about to shut the door, but then she noticed the woman was holding a Lidl carrier bag full of shopping in one hand and some flowers that had seen better days in the other.

  ‘Are you Della?’ the woman asked brightly.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered warily.

  ‘I know I should’ve called ahead to say I was coming,’ the woman’s words tumbled out in a rush, ‘but after we spoke on the phone this morning I couldn’t stop thinking about you and your nan and everything that’s happened, so I jumped in my car and drove down. I’m Gillian Smith.’

  For a moment Della couldn’t speak. ‘You’re Gillian? You’ve come all this way to see me? Oh, how lovely of you, please come in.’

  Thrilled, Della stepped aside to let her enter. Inside the hallway Gillian handed her the flowers.

  ‘These are for you. I’m afraid they’re all that was left in the shop. If I’d planned this properly I would’ve got you a decent bunch.’

  Della accepted them gratefully. ‘They’re lovely. You really didn’t have to.’

  Gillian stared at the dusty surfaces.

  ‘Is this the police’s doing?’

  ‘Yes, when they were looking for fingerprints. Let’s go through to the kitchen, it’s not so messy in there.’

  ‘The place has hardly changed since the last time I was here,’ Gillian remarked as she followed Della. ‘Your nan always did like her knick-knacks.’

  Della smiled. ‘It’s so nice to be able to talk to someone who knew her well.’

  As she turned her back on Gillian to search in the cupboards for a vase for the flowers, a sharp bang reverberated around the kitchen. She spun round to see what had made the noise and stopped. Gillian had plonked a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin on the counter. Della trembled at the sight of it.

  ‘I brought this for you too.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but I don’t like gin.’

  Gillian sighed. ‘That’s funny, your nan didn’t either.’

  ‘No, she didn’t. She never drank, not even at Christmas.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Gillian evenly.

  Della stared at her, confused.

  ‘Did it take the police long to find the bottle?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ whispered Della.

  ‘How do you think, silly girl?’

  Everything fel
l into place in one horrible swoop. Petrified, Della let the flowers drop to the floor and backed away. Gillian idly rubbed her fingertips on top of the counter next to the bottle.

  ‘I came to say sorry but Sadie wouldn’t accept my apology. I didn’t mean to hit her that hard but it was the only way to get her to stop shouting.’

  ‘Apology for what?’ Della croaked.

  Gillian blinked at her as though she’d asked another stupid question.

  ‘For what happened to Helen, of course.’

  Della gripped the edge of the cooker for support. She felt dizzy and light-headed. She needed air. She glanced to her right and saw the key was still in the lock of the back door. If she could just . . .

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Gillian, putting herself between Della and the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Della, panting now as she struggled to catch her breath. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘You said you wanted to know about your mum, so here I am. I was her best friend. I looked out for her, I was always there when she needed me.’ Gillian’s expression darkened. ‘Well, almost.’

  ‘You hurt my nan because of her?’

  Gillian had a thin, narrow face – when she grinned and her skin pulled tight across her cheekbones she looked almost ghoulish.

  ‘I told you, I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’ said Della, quaking.

  ‘I could tell you, but it would make far more sense to show you. You’re coming with me.’

  Gillian grabbed the bottle and hit Della square in the chest, sending her crashing to the floor. Crying with pain, Della rolled onto her front and tried to crawl towards the hallway door but Gillian stood over her and hit her again, this time across the shoulders. For a moment she floundered face down on the floor, her voice strangled by fear, until Gillian pulled her over so her back was against the lino again.