A Wreath for my Sister

by Priscilla Masters

  She looked at them. ‘Remember, Sharon was kept waiting.’

  Mike spoke up. ‘Perhaps he’d been watching from outside.’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe. Anyway, at half past eight a man walked in. According to statements from the barmaid and drinkers at the pub that night, he was of medium height, medium build and was wearing a dark anorak with the hood pulled up. It was a rainy night and no one thought anything of it. He crossed to Stacey, spoke briefly and they left together.’ She paused. ‘She was never seen alive again. Her body was found two days later, dumped on the edge of Macclesfield Forest. She’d been raped and then garrotted.’

  Now Joanna had no need of the computer. These next facts she would never forget. ‘A thin, twisted steel cable had been used, together with a short length of a wooden broom handle to lever the cable.’

  She watched Colclough’s face. ‘Stacey was very like Sharon Priest. Sparkly, physically attractive, deeply frustrated by the restrictions of bringing up a young family alone, desperately wanting some excitement in her life.’

  Colclough blinked. ‘She certainly got that, didn’t she?’

  Joanna nodded.

  ‘Well, Piercy,’ he said, ‘you’d better get over to Macclesfield and talk to the investigating officers.’

  She nodded again, then added, ‘In this case there was no shortage of suspects, sir. A little like Sharon, Stacey had plenty of men in her life. Only none of them led anywhere. They started off with four or five prime suspects. But no one was ever charged with the murder. It remains on their files.’

  Both men were watching her now and she could read their minds.

  Colclough cleared his throat noisily and muttered something about not liking unsolved murders on his patch, then he said, ‘Do you think he’s a Leek man, Piercy?’

  She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. But I am sure he already knew Sharon. I don’t think – for him at least – that it was a blind date.’

  Colclough raised his eyebrows. ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘According to Christine, when he replied to Sharon’s advert he told her to wear her best dress. He told her he didn’t live very far away, although they had always used box numbers.’

  ‘The paper’s distributed all around the Potteries,’ Mike objected.

  ‘True, but he knew the Quiet Woman. And he said she would look stunning in red.’

  ‘She called herself the woman in red.’

  ‘He mentioned her dark hair. Besides, there’s Sharon’s instinct. She had a feeling he knew her. He knew she drove a battered Fiesta. And, strongest of all, sir,’ she said, ‘he knew her name, even though she never used it in her letters.’

  Colclough sat down heavily, breathing hard. His blue eyes looked tired, but bright. He looked like an aged but alert bulldog. ‘Let’s get this quite straight, Piercy,’ he said slowly, ‘so I’m absolutely clear. You believe that the man who answered Stacey Farmer’s advert in the lonely hearts column was the man who killed her.’

  ‘That isn’t my assumption,’ she said quickly. ‘It was the conclusion of the officers investigating the case.’ She quoted from the statements recorded on the computer. ‘An unknown male assailant following an assignation made through the lonely hearts column in the local paper –’

  ‘All right,’ Colclough said hastily. ‘And you believe the same man answered Sharon Priest’s ad, and then killed her. But you think he already knew her.’ He stared at her. ‘Just be careful, Piercy,’ he said. ‘Be careful you aren’t restricting your investigations too much ... keeping the field too narrow.’

  ‘I’ll start with boyfriends of Sharon Priest’s,’ she said firmly. ‘And if I get no convictions there, then will be the time to move on.’

  Colclough nodded, then turned to Mike. ‘What do you think about that?’

  ‘Seems pretty sensible to me.’

  Colclough thought for a moment, then, ‘All right, both of you,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll know more definitely tomorrow when we compare DNA samples from the two cases,’ she said.

  ‘In the meantime I don’t feel we can afford to ignore any avenue – certainly nothing connected with Sharon Priest’s private life.’

  She grinned at Colclough. ‘After all, just think how embarrassing it would be if we were hunting high and low for some mysterious serial killer and it turned out to be Sharon’s ex-husband all the time.’

  ‘I’m glad you can see the funny side, Piercy,’ Arthur Colclough said testily. ‘Sometimes I have my doubts about your sense of humour.’ He heaved a great sigh. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘There is one thing that worries me,’ she said slowly. ‘It might be irrational. Lots of women advertise in the personal columns. Quite a few of these fit this pattern – lonely, single-parent mums.’ She stopped. ‘I haven’t got any figures but a few have subsequently gone missing. I hope,’ she said, ‘that Stacey and Sharon aren’t the tip of an iceberg. It just bugs me. What if others who were put down as missing persons actually fell victim to the same man and we just haven’t unearthed their bodies?’

  ‘Why go fretting about other missing women, Piercy?’ Colclough scowled. ‘You’ve got enough of a problem nabbing the guy who killed Sharon and then proving it was the same bugger who got Stacey.’

  She knew he was right to steer her back to the original murder.

  ‘So who have you got so far in your bag of suspects?’

  ‘Well,’ she said slowly. ‘There was no shortage of men in Sharon’s life, and some of them are choice customers.’ She grinned at them. ‘You can take your pick. There was a violent ex-husband who came home one night to find her in bed with a so far unidentified man, a co-habitee who I’m very curious about, a married lover who no one knows anything about. Incidentally, it’s possible that he’s the father of her youngest child.’ She sighed. ‘As I said, no shortage of men – just like Stacey Farmer.’

  ‘But with all those men in her life she still put an advert in the paper for one.’ Colclough looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she didn’t exactly have what my mum would call a good steady relationship with any of them,’ Joanna said. ‘The violent ex-husband was both violent and an ex. The man he found her in bed with seems to have run off without his trousers and out of her life. The co-habitee now cohabits with another woman, and the married man – whoever he was – appears to have remained married. So what Sharon lacked in quality she made up for in quantity.’

  Colclough made a face.

  ‘The psychologist feels our killer is probably someone who selects lonely woman – single, divorcees, separated ... the women who are lonely, have children, little money and spend their time dreaming romantic dreams of Prince Charming. From what Sharon’s friend says, she was like this. And judging from the statements, so was Stacey Farmer.

  ‘The psychologist believes our killer is someone who has a distinct grudge against this type of woman. He suggested the killer might himself have been cheated on or jilted by a woman like this and it’s his way of hitting back, at women in general but women like this in particular. So he made contact with them through the personal columns. And my belief is that when he turned up at the Quiet Woman on Tuesday night Sharon Priest had a bit of a shock. Because the man who invited her into his car posing as her Prince Charming was not some handsome stranger, as she had fondly imagined, but someone she already knew.’

  She paused. ‘The psychologists have always talked about the growing conceit of a serial killer,’ she said. ‘They claim as he gets away with crimes he gets braver. His crimes become more audacious and he kills on his own back doorstep. Perhaps Sharon was the one he meant to get in the first place and the other was a practice run ...’

  ‘So Piercy.’ Arthur Colclough looked unconvinced. ‘Where are you going to start?’

  ‘Well,’ she said cautiously. ‘Sharon’s shoe is still missing.’ Again she gazed at the computer screen. ‘No hint of that before,’ she said. ‘He didn’t take a souvenir of h
is crime before.’ She looked at Superintendent Colclough. ‘The shoe must be somewhere. It can’t have disappeared into thin air.’

  ‘And it isn’t on the moors,’ Mike said. ‘We’ve had a thorough search. It isn’t there.’

  ‘It may be a clue,’ she said dubiously. ‘I’m not absolutely sure. I suppose it could have been a trophy. What would be really lucky is if our killer doesn’t know the shoe is missing. It could have fallen off in his car or somewhere.’

  Colclough breathed out very hard in a slow whistle. ‘Bit of a long shot,’ he said.

  Mike and Joanna nodded in agreement.

  ‘Well, Piercy,’ he said, slapping her on the back. ‘This gives us plenty of work.’ He paused for a moment, thinking, then asked about the wire.

  ‘The cable, sir?’ Joanna frowned. ‘It’s annoying me,’ she said, pursing her lips thoughtfully. ‘I feel I should recognize it. It’s a thin, twisted steel cable. We’ve started enquiries around car shops, garages and so on, but we’ve got nowhere yet. It doesn’t seem to fit into anything specific. Apparently it’s too thin for car cable but we can’t work out another use.’

  ‘I wondered whether Macclesfield might lend us a couple of officers,’ she said. ‘It would give us a bit of a start. And after all, this might help clear up their unsolved murder too.’

  It was much later and they were sitting in Colclough’s office eating greasy chip-shop chips and drinking lager out of cans.

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Joanna. ‘Sharon had close friends but kept a lot of secrets from them.’ She paused. ‘I suppose somewhere near the top of the list of suspects has to be Finnigan, her ex-husband and father of the two older children. And he does have a history of violence.’

  ‘Not sex attacks, though,’ Mike pointed out. ‘Not rape.’

  ‘ABH,’ she said. ‘He knocked her about and broke her jaw.’

  Arthur Colclough raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t get GBH for that one.’

  ‘The old provocation card was flashed,’ Joanna said. ‘He did come home from night duty to find her in bed with another man.’

  Colclough nodded. ‘Did they get a divorce?’

  ‘Yes, two years ago.’

  ‘Then she took up with Paul Agnew,’ Mike put in. ‘He works at the oatcake shop at the top end of town.’

  Joanna was in the act of sliding a chip into her mouth. ‘Mike,’ she said. ‘We haven’t asked anyone whether she had a job.’

  ‘She had three kids,’ Mike said. ‘She wouldn’t have had the time.’

  ‘Part time?’ Joanna said. ‘It’s worth a try.’

  Mike nodded.

  ‘I’ll ask Christine tomorrow.’

  Colclough was enjoying the chips too much to feel even a twinge of guilt. This felt like old times before he was too senior to enjoy a newspaper full of chips at the station. ‘Nectar,’ he said, puzzling the others. ‘What was that you said about the father of the third child?’

  ‘Yet another of the many mysteries of Sharon Priest’s overcrowded sex life,’ said Joanna. ‘But he’s almost certainly the married lover.’

  ‘And we know nothing about him ...’

  Mike shrugged. ‘No,’ he said.

  Colclough dabbled a chip on the sprinkling of salt. ‘But somebody knows,’ he said. ‘And if he was married and she threatened to pull the plug on him it would give him an excellent motive for wanting her silenced.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘We’d thought of that,’ she said, then glanced at the computer. ‘But doesn’t this look a little larger than a simple domestic affair?’

  The Super frowned at her. ‘Do we know nothing about this married man?’

  ‘Bugger all,’ Mike said gloomily, ‘apart from the fact that he drives a smart car.’

  Colclough popped the last of his chips into his mouth and stared at the greasy paper regretfully.

  ‘Well, that really narrows the field,’ he said. ‘And the ad in the paper?’ He was looking at Mike.

  ‘Not much help,’ Mike said gloomily. ‘It seems they just hand over all the mail addressed to a particular box number. Anyone could have picked it up. It’s really lax,’ he grumbled. ‘It could be anyone ... The editor said half of the men who reply to the lonely hearts are married anyway.’

  ‘So it doesn’t even rule out married men.’

  ‘Quite honestly, sir,’ Mike said reluctantly, ‘I don’t think we’ll ever know who all of them are.’

  ‘Well, we don’t need to know all of them, Sergeant, Colclough said sharply. ‘Just the one.’

  Mike flushed.

  The Super glanced at Joanna. ‘You’ve got your work cut out, Piercy.’

  She nodded. ‘I know, sir.’

  He grinned. ‘You’ll get there, in the end. But it’ll take an awful lot of leg work.’

  She looked at him. ‘I’ve got to get him,’ she said, ‘otherwise he’ll kill again.’

  Chapter Seven

  The day beckoned grey, cold and uninviting as Joanna drew back the curtains the next morning, but as she showered she felt exhilarated at the thought of the ride ahead and began to plan her day. It was time to meet Doreen Priest, Sharon’s mother, but the prospect depressed her. The uniformed boys had informed Mrs Priest of her daughter’s death and told her she would be interviewed later, but Joanna always found it hard – expressing sorrow and at the same time relentlessly pumping out the information she really needed, the less savoury details of a person’s life. And she needed to talk to Christine Rattle again. There were so many unanswered questions. How many of them was she able to answer? Who was the man Sam Finnigan had found his wife in bed with? How had Paul Agnew been so sure Ryan had not been his son? Who was the unknown married man and why had they parted so acrimoniously? Had his wife known of his infidelities? Had she cared?

  She squeezed a couple of oranges into a glass, switched the kettle on, then prepared some ground coffee. Years ago her mother had taught her to savour the food she ate. She poured out a dish of cereal and took the tray into the dining room so she could watch the birds fight over the mesh stocking of peanuts. But her mind kept pondering the case. And as she sat and ate her breakfast she had the distinct feeling that some of her questions would never be answered and a few of Sharon Priest’s secrets would lie with her in her grave. When she got there. Permission for burial might not be released for several weeks yet.

  She drank her coffee thoughtfully. And now there was this other murder. Would it further complicate the case or help solve it? She would have to speak to the Macclesfield investigating officers. And there was something else lying at the back of her mind, nagging away like a toothache. The wire cable twisted round the girl’s neck until it bit her flesh and extinguished her life. Twisted, slim steel cable that reminded her vaguely of something ... and she couldn’t think what. Perhaps at the morning briefing some bright spark might enlighten her.

  And then there was the suggestion she had made last night to the Super – that the killer came from Leek. Had he?

  But if he hadn’t, how had he known things about Sharon? How had he known she would look good in red? Had he a fondness for red and had merely said it without knowing?

  But he knew her name. He knew the car she drove.

  Joanna shook her head. He had to have been known to her. She must interview Christine again.

  She stepped outside into the morning drizzle and watched the mist rising over the silent canal.

  She was still frowning as she wheeled her bike out of the garage.

  For the first fifty yards she felt cold on the bike, chilled by the wind, her legs stiff and tired from her car-driving days, and she wondered why the hell she bothered to cycle at all. Then the strength seemed to warm and invigorate her, make her legs quick and strong and she began to pedal to a hidden rhythm, humming as she moved.

  ‘Hi.’ It was Stuart drawing alongside her, white teeth flashing.

  She grinned back at him, the pleasure of being on her bike making her suddenly happy. The day
promised well.

  He watched her critically as she pedalled up the hill. ‘You’re not doing badly, though.’

  She felt hugely pleased at the compliment and they were silent companions until they reached the hill and the cars pulled past.

  Stuart gave the drivers a sour look. ‘The traffic’s been awful the last couple of mornings.’ He winked. ‘Traffic lights on the main Cheddleton road. Lorries like a wall.’

  She laughed and they shared the easy companionship of two people who enjoy the fresh air, the exercise, the challenge of a steep hill, not people who took the easy way. She watched with pleasure his feet flashing up and down, the slim figure bent low over the handlebars. He was fit. She had real trouble keeping up with him and after a minute or two she started panting.

  ‘Whew,’ she said as they neared the top of the hill. ‘I’m sure this hill’s getting both longer and steeper.’

  ‘Bend down a bit lower,’ he suggested.

  ‘Can’t. It knackers my back.’

  He laughed. ‘You’ll soon get used to it. Just keep trying.’

  ‘I do,’ she said and she felt envious of the slim form, his strong legs, the seemingly effortless ride.

  As soon as the road flattened out she felt a surge of energy.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

  They pedalled a bit quicker and were soon at the point where Joanna turned off. She raised her hand and waved. ‘Bye, Stuart. I’ll see you again, I expect.’

  He grinned and carried on along the road and she turned into the station car park and locked her bike to the railings.

  Mike was waiting for her in her office, a sheaf of papers in his hand. ‘Can I speak to you before the briefing?’

  ‘What is it, Mike?’ She sat down.

  He stared at her, his face pale and tense. ‘It’s these letters,’ he said.

  Her pulse quickened. ‘What about them?’

  ‘Prince Charming to Cinderella,’ he said, sinking down into the chair. ‘How can she have been such a fool?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Joanna, just listen to a few sentences. “Do you ever wonder why I love the colour red?”’