by Penny Grubb
Ahmed gave Drake what he hoped was a confident smile as the stretcher was manhandled away. He turned back to the note.
I don’t care what the doctors say, I know I’m finished. I’m not carrying on like this. Why should I? You wouldn’t if you had to live with this pain. You’re selfish wanting me to. Why should I do anything for you? What have you ever done for me? You want to know my only regret? I can’t stomach doing it with a knife and leaving you with a real mess to clear up.
A scrawled signature and today’s date.
More footsteps. More uniforms. Police this time. The paramedics must have called them. Despite the evidence of Tiffany’s note, he was not taking any chances with anything connected with this set of people. He would ask them to treat this house as a crime scene. The mantelpiece clock told him he had plenty of time to put them in the picture.
It was as he positioned his phone and clicked the camera to take a record of the suicide note that the words he’d heard replayed in his head. She did what? Selfish little bitch. He’d heard that voice before – on the phone. It hadn’t been the woman paramedic. Of course it hadn’t. She’d stayed in the ambulance with Tiffany. And no professional would have come out with a comment like that in front of Michael Drake.
He strained his memory for the sight of her. Someone had left the room when he turned to respond to Michael saying his name. Maybe hearing his name had hastened her exit. He marched outside. They couldn’t get out until he’d moved his car and there was time enough for a quick word with Michael if the paramedics would let him. Maybe there would be a simple answer to her appearance just here, just now, but he was pretty certain the voice had been Edith Stevenson’s.
Chapter 36
By lunchtime the day had brightened. Webber strode briskly as he hurried back from a brief foray to the sandwich shop. It wasn’t just the weather or the determined beat of Christmas carols behind the thrum of the traffic that lightened his mood. There was Tom Jenkinson too. The case was moving, new intelligence coming in almost by the minute. If Jenkinson had trodden on the toes of organised crime, he might have put himself in the firing line, but the killing had had an air of rushed incompetence, not a seasoned assassin, and yet it had been followed by the calculated murder of Arthur Trent, an act that had needed some nerve.
Whoever was responsible would be uncovered soon. They had left too wide a trail. Their only hope had been that no one would look, or anyway that no one would look while the footprints were fresh. If they’d done it before, and Webber suspected they had, then their luck had deserted them this time. It was frustrating to be without a named suspect but the net drew tighter with every interview, every new witness.
No one would slip through. He began to think they would wrap it up before Suzie and Ahmed had a lid on their cold case.
As he’d left for the shop, Ahmed had sprinted in past him. Cutting it fine for his interview with Joyce Yeatman, Webber thought, though he’d already checked that she hadn’t arrived. It was hunger that drove him out and he had quickened his step, determined to be back in time to observe, to get to know if Joyce would drop any mini bombshells about Melinda’s involvement.
He ripped the cellophane from his sandwich as he took the steps, grabbing a bite as he entered.
‘Ayaan’s woman’s here,’ the desk sergeant greeted him. ‘He only just made it ahead of her.’
Webber’s mind replayed the fleeting glimpse he’d had of Ahmed’s face as he’d rushed inside. Ahmed had been distracted by more than just worry about being late.
‘What’s happened?’
The sergeant shrugged. ‘Something’s up. He flew in like a whirlwind. Suzie’ll know.’
Webber strode through to his office. He thought Suzie had left. Her official excuse for keeping clear of Joyce Yeatman was a hospital appointment. He didn’t want to watch the interview with Suzie at his shoulder; he wanted time to absorb what Joyce said and work on any damage limitation that might be necessary. At any rate, he didn’t want her seeing it live while he skulked in his office. Ahmed’s agitated entrance was excuse enough to go and talk to her.
‘What’s going on, Suzie?’ She jumped round as he walked in behind her. ‘I gather Ayaan came tearing back like a hurricane.’
‘Since when is that news? He does everything at a million miles an hour. But yeah, there was a bit of an incident. He went out to talk to Michael Drake; wanted to have a word before he tackled Mrs Yeatman.’ She nodded towards the screen.
Webber glanced at the image showing three people milling about the interview room where he’d talked to the teacher, Meyer. Someone had brought hot drinks. Joyce was being settled in with tea and small talk.
‘What sort of an incident?’ he asked moving round so that she had to turn away from the screen to face him as she drew in breath to answer.
‘Both the Drakes are in hospital,’ she began.
He listened amazed as Suzie took him through the account she’d had from Ahmed.
‘Another suicide?’ He wondered if there was something about this group of friends that predisposed them to self-harm. It might be interesting to try that thought on Meyer. Yet Tiffany Drake wasn’t one of them. She was way younger than her husband, probably hadn’t known the other quintets.
‘Attempted suicide,’ Suzie corrected. ‘She’s fine. They might keep her in overnight but no damage done. They were more worried about the husband. He was in shock. Ayaan told them to be careful with the scene just in case, but there doesn’t seem to be much doubt.’ She reached across for an A4 sheet which she passed to Webber. ‘He took a photograph of the note she left.’
Webber read through it, commenting, ‘There’s some malice in that. What’s the matter with her, health-wise, the living with pain bit?’
Suzie shrugged. ‘They told Ayaan she was ill the first time he met them. The husband retired early to look after her. Ayaan was sceptical from the off, thought it was the husband who looked more decrepit. Mind you, he’s 30 years her senior. She wasn’t even born when his first wife died.’
‘Brad Tippet’s sister,’ Webber murmured thinking of the complaint against Farrar all those years ago.
‘One thing that’s odd, though. Ayaan’s pretty sure that Edith Stevenson turned up at the Drakes’ house just after he did.’ Webber listened as Suzie outlined the summary that was all Ahmed had had time to pass on. ‘Ayaan knows her voice,’ she said. ‘He’s spoken to her on the phone, and it sounds like she cleared off sharpish as soon as she realised who he was.’
‘So Michael Drake has kept up with at least one of the old gang. That could be useful once he’s back on his feet.’
‘First time Ayaan met them Tiffany mentioned Pamela Morgan too; called her Saint bloody Pamela; said she’d never met her which sounds credible. She and Michael have only been married a couple of years. She’d have been 15 when Pamela died.’ A pause. ‘Martyn, what was that stuff about Tom Jenkinson being involved in something big? What have you found?’
‘I don’t want Ayaan doing any digging behind the scenes,’ he said.
She gave him a look of exasperation. ‘I’m doing my best to keep him hemmed in, but you don’t help dropping things like that in.’
Webber took a quick glance at the screen. Just Ahmed and Joyce Yeatman now. They’d be getting down to business soon. ‘Just trying to cover all the bases,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you off somewhere this afternoon?’
‘Hospital appointment. I’m going at half past.’ Her tone slipped into defensiveness. ‘I’ve cleared it with DI Davis.’
Annoyance rose inside him that she expected him to object; just the sort of attitude that might have pushed him into finding her some time consuming last minute task. OK, he would surprise her. He allowed his gaze to stray briefly to her midriff. Was it his imagination that the material across her stomach looked tight? Wasn’t it too early to show?
‘Are you OK?’
The enquiry took her aback as he’d intended it to. ‘Yes, fine,’ she said. ‘A lot bet
ter this week.’
‘You may as well get off now. You’ve to get through the Christmas traffic.’
She stared and then roused herself. ‘Uh … right. Yes, that’d be great. Thanks.’
As she scurried out, he strolled after her as if heading for his office, but once the door had slammed behind her, he turned on his heel and was at the observation screen playing with the volume and straining to hear what was being said.
The ring of his phone sounded from across the corridor, muffled by the closed doors. He ignored it. After half a dozen rings it stopped and was immediately replaced by the phone behind him. He leant over to check the display. Front desk. They could wait. But as soon as that phone quietened, his mobile buzzed. With a sigh of resignation, he answered it.
‘Sorry, boss, I couldn’t raise you in the office. We’ve just had a call from across town. A woman walked in off the street and asked to speak to you about the cold case.’
His first thought was Tiffany Drake. Had she discharged herself from hospital? Why would she ask for him? Someone else could deal with this. He wasn’t traipsing across town.
‘She’ll have to come over here and no guarantees I can talk to her today.’ Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ahmed lean forward as he showed something to Joyce.
‘They tried that. She won’t; says she doesn’t have time, it must be face to face and she won’t talk to anyone else.’
His frustration rose as he watched the on-screen interview playing out beyond his reach. ‘Who is it and why are they bothering us with this? I’m busy. I can’t be racing across the city.’
The voice in his ear held a touch of uncertainty. ‘I know, I said all that, but when I heard the name I thought you should know. It’s Dr China Kowalski.’
Chapter 37
Ahmed struggled to retain focus. Joyce Yeatman sat in front of him. He was word perfect on the strategy he and Suzie had devised, but his mind kept flashing up pictures of the chaos back at the Drakes’. An image of Tiffany Drake’s pallid face superimposed itself on Joyce Yeatman’s features smoothing out the lines, blending Joyce’s open countenance with a demeanour that was troubled even in unconsciousness, the mouth a petulant downward curve. He shook his head and blinked. This was absurd. He hadn’t seen Tiffany this visit. She’d already been in the ambulance. He hadn’t seen Edith Stevenson either, though his mind kept rerunning that moment when Michael Drake had said his name. He had caught up with them outside.
‘I think your friend was here.’ He’d peered over the shoulder of one of the paramedics so he could see Drake’s face. ‘Edith Stevenson.’
Michael had been encased in crinkly silver by then as they’d tried to warm him. His face had shown mild surprise at Ahmed’s words. ‘Edie? What’s she doing here?’ Then his expression had crumpled to something like despair. Ahmed had heard him murmur, ‘Tiffany,’ as he’d had to back off to go and clear the road.
‘Do you keep up with any of Gary’s school friends?’ he asked Joyce Yeatman.
‘Not really,’ Joyce replied. ‘Not now. There was Pamela of course. Gary took her under his wing a bit after Robert died. She was a lovely woman, too sunny to be sad for long but she was really devastated by what happened to him. She got back on her feet but Gary always said she’d lost something fundamental when she lost Robert.’
‘Do you know what he meant by that?’
‘There was something about her, something indestructible. Everyone loved Pamela, that’s what they always said. I remember when I first met her, I expected a smug, self-centred bitch who had all the boys round her little finger. Well, the little finger bit was accurate enough.’ Joyce laughed. ‘But there was nothing smug or self-centred about Pamela. She really was a lovely woman but she lost something of her spark when Robert died. It was as though she blamed herself.’
‘Why would she have blamed herself?’
‘They’d been talking about splitting up only a year before. It might not have been the world’s best marriage but they were working things out.’
‘How did Pamela and Robert meet?’
Joyce spread open her hands and shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t know them then. I met Gary at university. He never talked much about his schooldays, not that sort of stuff anyway. And Pamela would never talk about Robert, not after I’d got to know her.’
* * *
‘Pamela and Robert …’
China Kowalski’s tone softened as she said the names. She smiled for the first time, her eyes focused somewhere far from a cold cramped corner of an office that was the only space Webber had been able to find for them both. He watched her expression as her mind roamed back across the decades.
He’d arrived to find her fast asleep, curled cat-like in a chair in amongst the noise and bustle of a busy public entranceway. Unconscious, she’d looked far younger than her 60 years, skin smooth, hair without a tinge of grey pulled into a high ponytail.
‘Jet lag,’ they told him. ‘She flew into Leeds–Bradford this morning, but she’s got a plane booked tonight. She reckons she has an hour to spare, tops.’
‘She’s travelled in from Malaysia?’
‘No, she’s come from Easter Island. I don’t know where she’s going on to. Quite a journey, though. She said to wake her when you arrived but I don’t know how. We had a gang of Christmas revellers kick off just after I rang you. She never stirred.’
But when he’d touched her shoulder, saying, ‘Dr Kowalski? I’m Detective Superintendent Webber,’ her eyes had opened. She’d looked blank for a second and then swung her legs down to the floor and stood up. She was tiny and had to tip her head right back to look into his face.
‘I’m China Kowalski. How do you do?’
Her hand was proffered without a smile. She maintained a serious air through the initial verbal to-and-fro as he led her to the closest he’d been able to find to a private corner. It might have been the jet lag but she seemed unable to take the lead and articulate exactly why she’d come all this way to see him, so he’d plied her with bits of questions touching on all the angles he could think of.
It was when he’d prompted with, ‘Tell me about the Morgans, Pamela and Robert,’ that she’d repeated the names, her expression softening. The smile broke the perfection of her skin, creasing it to myriad tiny lines, giving a clue to her real age.
She drew in a sigh. ‘Poor Quinny.’
‘That’s what you said to Don Farrar. What do you mean?’
‘Oh, it was just the nickname we had for her. I never really thought of her as Pamela Morgan. She was always Pamela Quinliven to me.’
‘Why poor Quinny?’ he pushed.
‘She had the world ahead of her. She could have done anything, but Robert Morgan came along and that was the end of it.’
‘How so? I hadn’t heard it was an unhappy marriage.’
‘Oh, they weren’t unhappy with each other, I didn’t mean that. It was all the other stuff. Winning all that money, Robert dying the way he did. It left her with nowhere to go. But it wasn’t suicide. It couldn’t have been.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘I knew Quinny. She’d never have done that.’
Webber shot her a hard stare. Had this woman made a detour of a few thousand miles on such a flimsy basis? ‘How … uh … how frequently were you and Pamela in contact after her marriage?’
‘Oh, hardly at all. We got together a couple of times. And I saw her at Robert’s funeral of course, and then at Gary’s. Gary Yeatman. He was one of our set.’
‘Yes, I know who Gary Yeatman was. Pamela would have changed a lot since you knew her at school. She was 45 when she died. Do you have any specific reason to say it wasn’t a suicide? She left a detailed note.’
‘Not Quinny.’ China Kowalski shook her head decisively and Webber knew she had nothing, just the memory of an old school friend. She needed a psychologist not a policeman. It was something inside her that had caused this preoccupation with Pamela Morgan’s deat
h. He was reminded of Brad Tippet’s fixation on Farrar’s supposed negligence.
‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that Quinny deferred her place at university to go travelling with Robert Morgan? Of course, she lost out. It stifled her future choices. Our set wasn’t a good advertisement for marriage. I suppose Gary did OK but looking back I think part of the reason Edie and I never married was that we had Quinny and Michael’s examples in front of us.’
‘Edith Stevenson? Are you still in touch with her?’
She shook her head. ‘I haven’t spoken to her in years.’
‘How about Michael Drake?’
‘We spoke briefly at Gary’s funeral. That’s the last time I saw him.’
Webber thought of Michael’s brief marriage to Brad Tippet’s sister. Her death had made an untimely end to it but this was the first he’d heard, other than from Brad, that it hadn’t been a happy marriage. ‘He married Quintina Tippet, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right, Tina Tippet. I was struggling for the name.’
‘Why was it such a bad example?’
She looked at him as though to say it should be obvious. ‘He had to give up any chance of university and go to work for her father. He must have hated her for that. What sort of marriage can it have been?’
Webber considered the woman in front of him. She’d smiled only when she’d talked about Pamela Morgan. Saint bloody Pamela. He found himself with an inkling of sympathy for the second Mrs Drake, and wondered about the first. ‘Not everyone sees university as the be-all and end-all,’ he said. ‘I understand Michael landed a very good job with the Tippet’s firm.’
‘I’m sure he did, but he had a place at Oxford. You’ve no idea what that meant, how hard he must have worked for it. We’d talked about the six of us going up together, but it didn’t happen. In the end it was just me and Gary at Cambridge. Quinny should have come with us but she chose to go globetrotting with her Canadian …’
