Through a Narrow Door

by Faith Martin

  Hillary took a deep breath, and waited for the usual wave of pity to pass over her. She blinked as her eyes accommodated themselves to the gloom. He was a big lad, but not fat, with dark hair and what she thought might be blue eyes. He might be as old as an under-developed sixteen, or as young as a well-developed thirteen, it was hard to tell. He was dressed in dark blue tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. The logo was hard to make out, mostly due to the fact that he had a pair of garden shears sticking out of his chest. The dark stain of blood had pooled into his lap, but very little had made it to the floor. And from that alone she surmised that his heart must have stopped beating almost instantaneously. She hoped so anyway, the poor little bugger.

  He looked … surprised, Hillary thought. At least there was no sign of horror or awareness on that young face, still filled out with puppy fat. She backed out of the opening, motioned Tommy to take a preliminary look as well, and glanced around.

  Directly behind her was the straggly line of trees. Mock-orange blossom, she thought. The usual ubiquitous elder. No thorn trees though. Through the gaps in the branches, she caught sight of a scruffy paddock, more thistles and dock than grass. And another strand of rough trees just beyond that. It had the look of derelict land, a real rarity in this day and age, when any piece of land going to waste was promptly built upon.

  ‘I can hear a car, guv,’ Tommy said, dragging his gaze away from the murdered boy and looking back towards the gate.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Hillary agreed, taking the same careful route back. Back at the barred gate, she smiled as a slight and dignified figure stepped carefully on to the grass path. Doctor Steven Partridge must be approaching his mid-fifties by now, but he looked and dressed like a thirty-something reject from Howard’s End. Today he was wearing impeccable cream-coloured trousers with a crease that could slice bread, and a white, probably silk, shirt. Gold glinted discreetly from cuffs and the watch on his wrist. His hair was carefully dyed a becoming dark brown, and was smoothed back with some kind of aromatic hair oil.

  He looked up and spotted her, and smiled with genuine pleasure. ‘Hillary. So it’s one of yours.’

  ‘Yes, ’fraid so,’ she agreed ruefully, and, as he passed, she held out a hand in warning. ‘He’s young,’ she said softly, and saw his face tighten. Then he nodded, sighed and moved on past her. Hillary watched him go, then approached the phlegmatic constable at the gate.

  ‘Constable …?’

  ‘Wright, ma’am.’

  ‘Constable Wright. What else can you tell me?’

  ‘Victim’s name is William Davies, ma’am, aged fifteen. His family live in the last bungalow as you carry on down the road. Aston Lea’s all bungalows, ma’am, built in the thirties by the then estate owner for his workers. Father’s name,’ he checked his notebook, ‘is George Davies. Works as a mechanic up at the garage on the main road. Nothing known,’ he added, the usual shorthand for letting her know he had no criminal record. ‘Mother is Marilyn Davies. She works in the shop at the petrol station. Lad was found by his sister.’ Constable Daniel Wright’s face began to darken now, as he carried on. ‘One Celia Davies. She’s eleven.’

  Hillary gave a little grunt of distress, then nodded at him to carry on. ‘Seems she’s not at school because of one of those teacher training days or what have you. Anyway, her mum sent her down to the allotment to remind William that she wanted him back in time for tea. Apparently the lad wasn’t well, which was why he was home from his school. Some sort of tummy bug. He hadn’t eaten any lunch, or not been able to keep it down, and his mum wanted him to have his tea early. A boiled egg,’ he added flatly.

  Hillary took another deep breath and let him get on with it. It was the little details that could sometimes break your heart, and you just had to pretend it didn’t.

  ‘Anyway.’ Constable Wright sighed heavily, and went back to his notebook. ‘She couldn’t see him from the gate so called to him, but when he didn’t come out of the shed, she went in and … found him. She ran home and told her mother, and her father hot-footed it up here to see for himself.’

  ‘Her father wasn’t at work either?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  Hillary nodded but instantly wondered why not. And was the fact that the whole Davies family seemed to have been at home today somehow significant? She made a mental note to find out and then nodded at him to continue.

  Wright shrugged, as if to say there wasn’t much else to come. ‘Father finds his son and staggers back home to call us.’

  ‘Did he touch the body?’

  ‘He says not, ma’am.’

  Hillary’s eyes narrowed. She found that hard to believe. Surely a father finding his son in that state would instinctively touch him? Hold him, try to pull the blade out. Cry over him, rock him, something. But then, she knew, shock took people in different ways. Perhaps the horror of that scene had frozen him on the spot, and then all he wanted to do was turn away from it. Blot it out. It could as easily have happened that way.

  ‘What time did the call come in?’

  Daniel Wright checked the notebook again. ‘Dispatch has it at 2.53 p.m., ma’am. The timing seems to be right, but I didn’t question the little girl closely, nor the father either, come to that. Most of this is just what he blurted out when we arrived.’

  ‘He came back to the allotments then?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. He was in the road when we arrived, and motioned us in. He was white and shaking, but seemed coherent enough.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’d best have a word,’ she murmured. ‘I take it the little girl is with her mother back at the house?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I asked her, the mother that is, if she had a friend or wanted a neighbour round, but she said no.’

  Hillary frowned. Another strange reaction. But then again, perhaps the Davies weren’t close to their neighbours. And in a tiny hamlet like this one, that factor alone might be significant.

  Hillary moved up to the patrol car and Janine, spotting her, got out to give her a quick rundown on what she’d picked up from George Davies. Most of it tallied exactly with the report given to her by DC Wright.

  Hillary opened the back door and slid inside. Beside her a man sat slumped forward, his hands dangling listlessly between his spread knees. He smelt, oddly, of paint. He was wearing old trousers with a small hole in one knee, and a shirt that was fraying at the cuffs. Probably his old working-around-the-house clothes, donned for mowing the lawn or cleaning out the gutters. But again, Hillary wondered if money was tight in the Davies family.

  ‘Mr Davies, my name’s Detective Inspector Hillary Greene. I’m going to be heading up your son’s murder inquiry.’ She tried to say the blunt, harsh facts as gently as she could, but as she spoke, she saw his head rear up. He was thickset, like his son, and with the same dark hair, but in his case, it was now going thin on top. He had bright blue eyes.

  ‘You’re a woman,’ he said. It wasn’t an accusation, or a wonderment, simply a statement. Hillary didn’t take offence, but said simply, ‘yes,’ and waited. After a moment George Davies nodded.

  ‘You’ll find whoever did it?’

  Hillary hesitated for a scant second, then said again, and simply, ‘yes.’

  Of course, she’d been on so-called management courses where officers were advised never to make promises of that sort. But Hillary knew what George Davies needed to hear, and after seeing that poor dead boy in his dad’s allotment shed, she meant exactly what she said.

  George Davies let out a long shuddering sigh and leaned back against the upholstery. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘No.’ Hillary didn’t suppose he could. Best just to get straight on with it. ‘Mr Davies, why weren’t you at work today? Yesterday was a bank holiday, isn’t today a working day for you?’

  Davies nodded. ‘Yeah. But the boss likes me to work on a Sunday. Lots of folks bring in their cars for fixing then, because of the weekend see. So I always have a day off in the week instead. Whichever loo
ks less busy, the boss doesn’t mind. Except for Fridays. I never have a Friday off. And yesterday, as you said, was a bank holiday, so I thought I’d take today off as well and make it two days in a row. Weather was going to be good, like, and my wife wanted me to redecorate the loo. So …’ he shrugged.

  So that was one small mystery solved. And also explained the smell of paint.

  ‘Your wife wasn’t at work either?’

  ‘No, we only got the one car, see, so whenever I have my day off, she has it too. Besides, our Celia didn’t have school today, so it made sense to stay home for her like. The garage where I work is attached to the petrol station where wife works. The boss’s wife always minds the shop and sees to the pumps when Mari’s off,’ he explained.

  And again Hillary wondered. Only one car then. The Davies definitely weren’t well-off. But seemed to be good parents – timing their work around the needs of their children.

  ‘And William was ill, I understand?’

  ‘Who?’ George asked blankly.

  ‘William. Your son.’

  George Davies managed a smile. ‘Oh. No. Billy. He’s always been Billy.’

  ‘Sorry. I understand he had a tummy bug.’

  ‘Hmmm. So he said,’ George agreed. ‘Didn’t seem much wrong with him to my mind. But his mum said he was off his food, and there’s been some sort of tummy bug about. One of these twenty-four hour diarrhoea things.’ But he didn’t sound convinced, and Hillary got the distinct impression that his father thought that young Billy had been swinging the lead. Still, who didn’t try and get off school once in a while? She had, when she’d been his age. And she’d bet George Davies had too.

  ‘But if he wasn’t well, why was he on the allotment at all?’ she asked carefully. ‘Was he a keen gardener?’

  George grunted a laugh, then abruptly bit it off, as if expecting to be hit by lightning for such an offence. ‘No,’ he said, after a long and heavy moment, having obviously fought off the threat of imminent tears. ‘No, he was a lazy little sod, really. Like all boys his age. But he liked the allotments. Always hanging around, doing nothing much. You knows what kids are like. And he liked to take photographs and stuff. Besides, I think his mum sent him up here for some taters.’

  For a moment Hillary was lost, then suddenly twigged. Taters was the old Oxonian country word for potatoes. ‘You keep the winter crop in the shed?’ she asked. So the bag Billy had been found sitting on might have been filled with his dad’s potatoes.

  ‘Yeah. They need chitting, I ’spect,’ George Davies added vaguely, but the thought of having to do it at some point seemed to exhaust him. She could almost see him wilting. Finally, reaction was setting in, and she quickly folded her notebook away. ‘I’m going to ask the constable here to take you back home,’ she said, nodding to DC Wright’s partner, who was sat behind the wheel, and hadn’t said a word during the entire interview. ‘I think it might be a good idea to have the doctor out,’ she added to the man behind the wheel, a youngster with a shock of very pale hair and a faceful of freckles. He nodded instant understanding, and started the engine as Hillary slipped out.

  Janine stood beside her and watched the patrol car head through the gates. DC Wright began to close the gate behind them, then quickly opened it up again. ‘Looks like SOCO have got here,’ Janine muttered, as the first of several mid-range cars began to pull up on the road outside.

  Hillary nodded. ‘Best leave them to it.’ She headed for the gate and nodded at DC Wright as they passed through. Tommy was leaning against her car, talking on the radio, probably reporting in. With a start she wondered if he was talking to DCI Paul Danvers.

  She was about to take a deep breath and go and take over, when, behind her, she heard her name being called. Doc Partridge had finished his initial inspection and had declared the official time of death. There was not a spot of dirt or blood on his clothes as he walked up to her.

  ‘Well, I’m not expecting any surprises,’ he began instantly. ‘I’m sure the obvious thing killed him. Didn’t find any defensive wounds on his hands or arms. I think whoever stuck that blade into him took him by surprise. You noticed the shears were open?’ he added, but it was strictly rhetorical. Of course she’d noticed.

  Hillary nodded. ‘Using just the one blade made it easier to kill with?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘I would say so. Shears that are shut up must make a blunter weapon. But the individual blades both look sharp and well maintained. I don’t think the killer would have had to use too much strength to stab him.’

  ‘So a female killer can’t be ruled out?’

  ‘No.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘Right-handed?’

  ‘I’d say so, given the angle. And not much taller than the victim, either. Say in the five-eight to five-eleven range. But that’s pure speculation, of course,’ he added sternly.

  ‘Right, Doc. When can you post-mortem him?’

  ‘I’ll try to get to him first thing tomorrow. Got a drowning and a suspicious cot death to do before him though. And you know how cot deaths are,’ the pathologist sighed heavily. ‘Have to take your time and get it right with them. Make a mistake of one kind, and an innocent mother or father gets jailed for a murder they didn’t commit. Get it wrong at the other end of the scale, and the next baby brother or sister dies as well.’

  Hillary winced, and realized that the old saying was true: no matter how bad you thought you had it, there was always some other poor sod who had it worse. ‘Thanks Doc, I know you’ll do your best.’

  Steven Partridge smiled wearily, looking his true age for the first time she’d known him. She watched him leave, then nodded across to Tommy. Of Frank Ross there was still no sign. He’d probably got lost somewhere en route. In the vicinity of a pub, no doubt.

  ‘If a DS Ross shows up, tell him we’re at the vic’s house,’ Hillary said to DC Wright, who nodded amiably.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And strictly no press allowed inside,’ she added darkly. It wouldn’t be long before they descended.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Hillary glanced at her car, then mentally vetoed it. ‘Let’s walk,’ she said to Janine. It would give her a chance to get her thoughts in order before she had to talk the grieving mother and a traumatized little sister.

  And in the back of her mind lurked the knowledge that most murders were committed by members of the family.

  This had all the hallmarks of being a pig of a case.

  chapter three

  The Davies bungalow was called ‘The Lilacs’, and at some point George Davies, or maybe his wife, had taken a red-hot poker and burned the name into a rough piece of timber, before hanging it above a rarely-used front door. The rustic tone it set, however, jarred with the building itself, which was a charmless, squat and square, 1950s bungalow. The whitewash had long since faded to a dull grey, and although the garden was neat and tidy enough, and the paintwork on the doors and window frames was fairly fresh, the building seemed unfriendly somehow.

  Hillary followed the concrete path to a side entrance and glanced at Janine as she knocked on the door, noting that her sergeant, too, found the family home depressing. The door was quickly opened by a uniformed WPC, who nodded in recognition before Hillary could produce any ID. ‘The mother and little girl are in back, ma’am. Little girl’s in bed; mother’s fussing. She’s in shock, obviously, but seems coherent. Doctor’s due any minute.’

  ‘Right then, best get on,’ Hillary said, stepping through and appreciating the warning. Once the doctor got here and sedated Marilyn and Celia Davies up to the eyeballs, there was no telling when they might get a decent interview out of them.

  The door opened on to a tiny kitchen and, following the WPC’s pointing finger, Hillary went through to a narrow corridor. The door to a compact lounge stood open on one side, so she moved to the opposite side, listening for voices and finally hearing them at last in the second bedroom on the right. She knocked briefly and pushed open the door.
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br />   Celia Davies’s bedroom was obviously the smallest, little more than a box room, into which had been crammed a single bed and a small set of drawers. Dresses hung from hooks attached to the wall above. The décor in here was at least bright and cheerful, and a lemon-coloured wallpaper gave way to marching bands of daisies, cornflowers and poppies. White curtains hung at a small window, overlooking the narrow lane outside.

  In the bed, a small girl with mouse-coloured hair, and the now-familiar big blue eyes, peered up at her. She clutched a small and battered stuffed white dog a little closer to her in a protective gesture, and Hillary felt her heart plummet. Interviewing distraught children was not how she liked to spend her days. Already she felt like the wicked witch of the west. Or was it east?

  ‘Hello, you must be Celia,’ Hillary said gently, smiling down and then turning to meet the eyes of Marilyn Davies as she rose from the bed. ‘I’m DI Hillary Greene, Mrs Davies. I just need a few quick words with your daughter, then we’ll chat in the kitchen, shall we? Have a nice cup of tea.’ How trite, how meaningless the words sounded. They made her wince internally even as she spoke them, but in all the years she’d been doing this job, she’d never found words that fit an occasion like this.

  ‘I don’t want our Ceel upset,’ Marilyn Davies said at once. She was one of those stick-thin women, with wispy mouse-coloured hair, that looked as if the next decent wind would bowl her over. Like her husband, her eyes were a vivid blue, but right now they looked watery and dazed. Her hands were obviously cold, for she kept putting them under her armpits as if to warm them, then would catch herself doing it and yank them back down again to her sides. All signs of agitation and shock, Hillary knew. They were going to have to make this quick.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be quick and gentle,’ she said firmly. ‘Now, Celia.’ Hillary crouched down quickly beside the bed and smiled. ‘I want you to think carefully. When you went to fetch Billy, did you see anyone on the allotments?’