Tiger Blood (DS Webber Mystery Book 2)

by Penny Grubb

  He’d hoped to get at that nebulous something that would clarify things around Pamela Morgan’s death, but wasn’t sure now that she was the link he needed.

  ‘Yes, probably.’ He answered her question. ‘Not that we can date her remains that accurately after all this time.’

  ‘Remains?’ she said. ‘You’ve found her!’

  Alarm bells clanged in his head.

  … she was lying dead nearby …

  She hadn’t been speculating, she’d been certain … but she couldn’t know anything about when or where Tilly had been found … they didn’t have final confirmation themselves yet. And she shouldn’t know anything about when or where Tilly had died. He jerked upright gripping tight to the phone. ‘Um … buried up on scrubland behind the fishing lakes,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh! Well that’s wonderful, that means she can have a funeral and a proper burial. I’ll contact her aunt. I’ll help with the arrangements. But how awful that it’s too late for her parents.’

  ‘Hang on … you couldn’t have known we’d found Tilly’s body. Why were you so certain that she’d be round here and not in Dorset?’

  ‘Well, I always sort of knew she must be dead … when she never turned up, but …’

  Shit, thought Webber looking across at Melinda’s evidence boards, the ghost of Kowalski’s name shimmering from behind the work of the eraser. Had he got it all upside down?

  ‘… that’s how I knew about Quinny,’ Kowalski was saying. ‘Once I knew Tilly went back to York because of them, I knew they’d killed her, so they must have killed Quinny too. I wonder if she confronted them. That’s why I didn’t want my name anywhere near it. They’ll come after me. I might be out of your jurisdiction but I’d never be safe from them.’ Her voice had lost its calm veneer.

  Webber struggled to make sense from the jumble of words. It had been madness to start this tonight. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Bradley Tippet promised to keep my name out of it. He thought he was just causing trouble for some policeman or other, getting us into that club and pretending to bump into him by accident. I’d have let it lie if I’d known I couldn’t trust him.’

  ‘Too late for that, China. And it wasn’t Bradley Tippet who gave you away.’

  He gave Melinda a quick glance. She’d been the one to find Dr China but he wasn’t going to drop her name into the mix.

  ‘China, you were all interviewed when Tilly went missing. There was no hint that she’d come back to York. When did you find out? Who told you?’

  ‘No one told me,’ she said, her tone defensive. ‘Well … Tilly told me I suppose. It was last summer after her mother died.’

  ‘So you stayed in touch with Tilly’s parents?’

  ‘No, no, it was a firm of solicitors about her will. She left me Tilly’s rocking horse.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ He could tell from Melinda’s sharp intake of breath that she was itching to shout her own questions down the phone, but it would only take a fraction of a second for China Kowalski to cut the call and go to ground.

  ‘Tilly wanted me to have it. If only she’d … oh, I suppose she couldn’t have known the significance. Apparently Tilly said I was to have the rocking horse if anything happened to her.’

  ‘Really? I don’t remember anything like that from the original case.’

  ‘I don’t think she left a note or anything. It’ll have been something she’d said. The thing is her mother knew Tilly wanted me to have the rocking horse and all its stuff but she didn’t want to let it go. It had been so important to Tilly. I can understand that, but if they’d only told me at the time …’

  ‘What? What difference would it have made?’

  ‘I’d have found her stuff. Michael could have been stopped.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Her diaries. She wrote everything down. She always did. They’d planned for her to go back that summer. I don’t know why she never told the rest of us. She shouldn’t have trusted Edie … maybe she didn’t … why else would she have told them to give me the horse? If her mother had only told me at the time, we could have had the paperwork out and … oh, I don’t know … maybe nothing would have stopped him. I had it shipped out. It arrived in March. Customs made quite a mess of it, thought it had drugs inside.’

  Webber felt his jaw drop as she talked. ‘These diaries … they were inside the horse?’

  ‘Yes. Tilly used to carry her things round in the saddlebags but the horse’s body was hollow where the saddle fitted on. It was where she kept things secret from her mother.’

  ‘What was in there? What does it say? Do you still have it?’

  ‘It’s not all there,’ she said. ‘It’s a fraction of what she must have written over those years.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell someone?’

  ‘Tell them what? The plan for her to come back could have been taken as just another story, like the ones about the allotments.’

  ‘The allotments?’ he asked feeling a frisson of apprehension run across his skin.

  He listened aghast, sharing a disbelieving look with Melinda, as Kowalski spoke. He already knew that the garage had been leased by the Browns. It became clear that all the children had played up there. Kowalski didn’t seem to think the very old stories were relevant to anything, but he gave her a prompt.

  ‘You said something about farmers. What was that about?’

  ‘Some friends of the Browns. I told you Tilly wove stories around everyone she knew. I didn’t know them.’

  ‘A foot and mouth epidemic,’ he queried.

  ‘Yes, that was the story. How did you know?’

  ‘Tell me that story, China.’

  ‘I can’t remember … that’s not what’s important. Well, it was something about how the animals were saved. There was an outbreak of foot and mouth. They saved some of the animals, that was the story. It was just Tilly. It was just a story. It’s the other bit, the bit about her coming back here, that’s the part that’s true.’

  ‘Why are you so certain there’s no truth in the earlier one?’

  ‘Because it’s all or nothing with foot and mouth. You don’t save some animals.’

  Not unless, thought Webber, you get someone to help you dig a deep pit to dispose of the carcasses of the ones you can’t save. Not a fatal disease in most cases, just too contagious to allow an infected herd to live. Some of the quintets at least had known about that cattle pit, maybe even helped with the logistics of the cover-up.

  ‘So why didn’t you mention Tilly Brown to Donald Farrar? Why just Pamela Morgan?’

  ‘It was too late for Tilly. It was 45 years ago and it was just a story. But I thought there might be a chance of getting them for Quinny if only someone would look properly.’

  ‘What do you mean too late!’ He had to make an effort not to shout. ‘There’s no statute of limitations on murder.’

  ‘I was one of the quintets back then.’ Her voice was quiet. ‘I was part of the group.’

  Webber pulled in a breath and felt Melinda react. But he knew that China Kowalski wasn’t confessing to involvement in Tilly Brown’s murder, she was saying … what was she saying?

  ‘They’d have known,’ she went on in that same quiet voice. ‘They will know. After all this time it could only be me. But I wasn’t around when they killed Quinny.’

  So she was still frightened of them, despite the distance she’d put between them. ‘Do you still have Tilly’s diaries?’ he asked. ‘I need to have them. I’ll arrange to have them securely shipped.’

  After the call was over, Webber slumped back into the cushions, thoughts spinning. ‘She should have been pleased,’ he murmured as he slotted the handset back in its base.

  ‘Who should? Pleased about what?’ Melinda said, but went on before he could answer, ‘Martyn, does this mean you can get him for Tilly Brown?’

  He shrugged. ‘I doubt it. Even if she’s telling the truth … depends what state this evidence is in … whether
we can tie it to him or not. I wonder if we can…’

  ‘What? If you can what?’

  ‘I wonder if we can get him for Tilly Brown,’ he said. ‘Come on, it’s late. Let’s get to bed.’

  She should have been pleased.

  Who had said that? Not China Kowalski. It meant something but tomorrow would be soon enough to figure it out. He’d known from the off that he’d arrested Michael Drake on a charge that couldn’t go anywhere, but having Tilly Brown reach out from his past and get the better of him one last time wouldn’t be a bad second best.

  Chapter 60

  Webber heard the phone ring the next morning while he was struggling to dress Sam.

  ‘It’s someone from the hospital.’ Melinda’s voice was frosty. ‘Said you’d asked them to call.’

  ‘About the poisoning,’ he said as he took the handset from her. ‘Not …’

  ‘Come on, Sam. Let’s get breakfast.’ Sam grabbed his father’s trouser leg to pull himself to his feet and set off unsteadily after his mother. Webber watched them as he put the phone to his ear.

  ‘It’s about Mrs Drake.’ The words were upbeat. He recognised the medic he’d spoken to the night before. ‘Good shot, Superintendent, it’s looking like you were on to something. There’s no easy test but the symptoms fit. It’s just so unusual … not something we’d look for in the normal run of things.’

  ‘Will she be OK?’

  ‘Well …’ The buoyant tone deflated. ‘It depends. Best case she’ll recover naturally … worst case she’ll be on a transplant list, life on hold.’

  When he finished the call, he rang Ahmed because Ahmed was up to date on the cold cases and would remember the detail.

  It fitted. It all fitted. Surely they had Drake now for what he’d done to Tiffany, even if they couldn’t prove he’d killed Tina. And he had to be inextricably linked to what had happened to Suzie. His makeshift slaughterhouse had easy access to the burial site where three bodies had been unearthed … and to where Tom Jenkinson had been killed.

  When he walked through to the kitchen, Sam was in his high chair, his cereal in front of him.

  ‘Eat up those lovely vitamins,’ Melinda was saying, ‘so you grow big and strong.’

  Webber smiled. ‘It looks like that’s what Drake fed his wives.’ He nodded towards Sam’s bowl, then had to leap forward, hand upraised to stop Melinda from grabbing Sam’s breakfast. ‘No, no. I didn’t mean that. I meant vitamins. He’s been overdosing them with vitamins.’

  ‘What?’ Melinda stared at him.

  ‘Vitamin overdose. There’s some fancy name for it. She had all the right symptoms, dizziness, nausea, sensitivity to sunlight, bone pain. Turns out it’s very hard to diagnose … there’s no real test for it and no one thinks to try. But deadly. Depending on the dosage it can be quite quick. Drake was careful. Didn’t go overboard. I’ve just spoken to Ayaan. He’ll go back over everything but there was always a reason for when Tiffany’s health got bad. She was just back from staying with a friend … she’d been trying herbal remedies … anything but Drake’s home cooking.’

  Melinda glanced at Sam and then out of the window to where the garden wore a hard frost, early light shimmering from the silver threads that adorned the bushes.

  ‘Vitamins? But aren’t vitamins good for you?’

  ‘Well, recommended daily amounts and all that, but they can be nasty in quantity.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘They’re keeping her in to see how bad she is, but the best treatment is Drake being behind bars and no longer in control of what she eats.’

  She turned to Sam and made a pretence of straightening his bowl as she asked with apparent carelessness, ‘And how’s Harmer?’

  The question hit him like a slap in the face. Of course he should have asked about Suzie. He’d forgotten her in his rush to chase up the details of the poisoning. ‘Uh … I didn’t think to ask. It was the medic who’d been treating Tiffany Drake.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Martyn! What were you thinking? She’s one of your officers. Oh, never mind, I’ll ring Fiona later.’ She gave him a hard glare, then snapped, ‘Watch Sam,’ as the clack of the letter box signalled arrival of the post.

  He watched her stalk out to the hallway, her rigid form radiating self-righteousness. She’d snapped at him but she’d been pleased.

  She returned with half a dozen letters which she skimmed through, tossing a couple aside and handing him a thick ornate envelope. He was aware of her curious glance as he took in the intricate lettering that spelt out his name and address. It looked hand-written and yet too neat not to have originated from a machine. As he reached for a knife to slit the top, he saw that Melinda’s attention had turned to a letter of her own. He caught a glimpse of unfamiliar handwriting as he slid out a stiff card with embossed edges from the fancy envelope. It was a formal invitation to Mr and Mrs Webber – brackets, and Sam Webber, close brackets – from someone he’d never heard of … what the hell? Then in amongst the ostentation of the decoration that wove its way around more of that perfect calligraphy, he spotted a familiar name.

  ‘Ayaan’s wedding,’ he said. ‘We’re all invited, Sam too.’

  She smiled. ‘When is it?’

  ‘April 15th.’

  ‘Well, make sure you’ve got the day off. Don’t go letting everyone else have time and you end up working. I want to go and I don’t want to be on my own with Sam. It’ll be a really big do, by all accounts.’

  Webber wanted to say, poor Ayaan, but held the thought in.

  Melinda took the card from him and studied it. ‘How come they have our home address?’

  ‘Their daughter’s marrying a detective.’

  ‘A good detective you’ve always said.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t resent him.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said, surprised. Where had that come from?

  ‘Good.’ She speared him with a look, then lifted up the letter she’d been reading. ‘We’re in demand today. Don Farrar wants us to have lunch with him the Friday before Christmas.’

  A cascade of potential complications flooded Webber’s mind. What would John Farrar make of his father inviting them to lunch? It was clearly a pitch to find out how the whole Pamela Morgan thing had panned out, and he’d targeted Melinda because she’d find a way to go even if he tried to demur. But maybe there was a way out.

  ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘We’ll be with your parents.’ His heart sank a little at the reminder that the ordeal of the Christmas visit was yet to come.

  ‘No, it’s not to his house here, it’s to his club. We could go into London from Mum and Dad’s. It’s only an hour by train. They’ll look after Sam.’

  ‘OK.’ He bowed to the inevitable. And a lunch invitation from retired Captain Donald Farrar who’d been something-or-other in the Foreign Office would help oil the wheels with Melinda’s father, who was a crashing snob.

  ‘Does he know we have Sam?’ Melinda asked. ‘He’d love London, wouldn’t you, Sam? I could get in touch and ask if it’d be OK.’

  Maybe she would end up refusing the invitation after all. ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ he told her. ‘I looked up Farrar’s swanky club after the whole thing with China Kowalski. No children under fourteen and no women members.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ She spun round with a disbelieving stare.

  ‘You’ll be there on sufferance as a guest.’ He didn’t hide his amusement as he watched conflicting emotions cross her face. Curiosity would win out in the end, he thought, and a day’s escape from the Bryants would be a bonus.

  It was as she cleared away Sam’s breakfast that she returned to the previous topic.

  ‘Was it a particular vitamin, Tiffany Drake I mean, or was it just any old stuff?’

  ‘They don’t know for sure, but vitamin A is the lead contender, it fits her symptoms.’

  ‘But Martyn, what did he do? How? He didn’t force-feed her cornflakes. And what …?�
� A look of horror swept across her features. ‘Those animal remains …’

  ‘He could have been overdosing her on supplements, over the counter stuff, but he might have thought the purchases would be traceable. And preliminary analysis of that stuff in his fridge looks like canine liver.’

  Melinda put her hand to her mouth. ‘Yuk! But how on earth could he have persuaded her to eat it?’

  ‘Plenty of people like liver.’

  ‘Not dog’s liver!’

  ‘Who’s to know once it’s cooked? It probably all tastes much the same.’

  ‘You said there were cats as well.’

  ‘I daresay he was experimenting. It’s something to do with animals that eat bones. The excess vitamin A gets stored in the liver; the older the dog, the greater the concentration. Apparently husky-type dogs were his best bet. Polar bear or seal liver would have been more toxic but they were out of his reach. At least I assume they were. God knows what we’re going to find traces of in that garage.’

  Melinda went to lift Sam from his highchair. Stray tales of other people’s children crossed Webber’s radar from time to time … the faddy eaters, the children who spread destruction in their wake wherever they went, Mel’s friends who wouldn’t join in trips to the park because of the stress of keeping their offspring away from roads, ponds and anywhere they could hurl themselves into mortal danger. He thought of Sam sitting placidly at work in the middle of a mini grand prix. Someone had once said to him, ‘You might not be so lucky with your second. They’re all different.’

  His second child would be Suzie’s, maybe damaged by whatever Michael Drake had used to subdue her. How had Drake got Suzie Harmer of all people to ingest anything, let alone a strong barbiturate? Whatever it was, it would turn out that she’d thought it was her own idea.

  ‘You know something?’

  Her words made him jump. It was as though she’d sensed he’d been thinking of Suzie. He wanted to say, yes, I was thinking about her but not like that! The thought evaporated. She already knew Suzie was nothing to him, that wasn’t the point. And dear though Mel was to him, she wasn’t psychic. She’d been reacting to her own thoughts, not his.