Recalled to Death

by Priscilla Masters

  But the word didn’t faze Genevieve Dreyfuss. ‘Yes. He told me one day that he was lucky, that cats may have nine lives but most humans only had one. He told me he had already had two.’

  More confused than ever, Randall gave her a card, asked her to ring him if she recalled anything else that might help their investigation and called an urgent briefing.

  Once he’d brought everyone up to date with this latest development, he rang Martha.

  Martha’s morning was proving to be an odd one. She had had a long talk with a statistician who was looking at death rates and causes of death in various towns, cities, hospitals and nursing homes. While Shrewsbury’s residents were, in fact, largely healthy, demographics showed that there was a propensity towards a more elderly population than in the national average and this had a knock-on effect. It skewed the death statistics and she was finding it hard to work out where and how she should be collating this information. But it was necessary so they would have an early alert in the case of a repeated Dr Shipman who, though he had been the most evil of men, had, in a strange way, done the general public a service. He had stopped them having blind faith in their doctors. Never again. Faith – yes. Blind – no. Although she largely trusted the medical profession, being a member of it herself, she subscribed to the mantra: keep your eyes open and your wits about you.

  Each month she had to submit facts and figures to the government body responsible for births, marriages and deaths – or hatch, match and dispatch as they were often called. The trouble was that computers could only accept information in straight lines and tidy boxes. They wanted cause of death 1, 2, 3, 4. A bit of this and a bit of that simply wasn’t good enough. But the causes of death in the elderly were rarely clear cut. They might have been a bit of heart failure, a bit of pulmonary disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, peripheral vascular disease and so on. At least, Martha reflected, staring out of the window at the spike of St Mary’s Church, they now accepted old age as a valid cause of death. So heart failure due to old age due to …? She smiled.

  In spite of her quandary, something inside her felt light and happy today, and when Jericho buzzed her at 12.30 p.m. to say that Detective Inspector Alex Randall wondered if he could have a word with her, she was almost floating.

  ‘Alex.’

  He stood in the doorway, simply staring at the lovely woman who was smiling the warmest smile he’d ever seen. He felt its radiant heat from right across the room. Her hair seemed like a flame against the sunshine which poured in through the window behind her. For a moment he could not speak, and for once he felt he did not need to.

  Having let the detective in, Jericho closed the door, shaking his grey locks. Nothing good would come out of this friendship, he was sure.

  Meanwhile, somewhere in the country a dentist was looking through his emails. Police frequently discover an identity through dental records. Maybe not this time?

  ‘Not possible,’ the dentist said, shaking his head as he pressed delete.

  NINETEEN

  Martha’s office had a formal, slightly sombre feel to it: mahogany bookshelves, a leather-topped mahogany desk, a large, bowed window which overlooked the town from afar, the spire of St Mary’s standing like a trophy tower. Her vibrant colouring – a throwback to Celtic roots – Welsh father and Irish mother – was at odds with both her position and the formality of the room. As Randall stood just inside the door, that was his thought. And he suddenly felt he would rather be meeting her somewhere else, somewhere less formal, where they would be on an even footing and could talk about subjects other than murder and death.

  She caught his hesitation and bit her lip, uncertain what to say. She took a step towards him. He caught a waft of Chanel No. 5 and smiled. Not quite the non-conformist then.

  ‘Any news?’ she asked. ‘Have you found out who your man is yet?’ She stopped herself. ‘Or should I call him our man? He is our joint responsibility, Alex.’

  He nodded. ‘I need a walk,’ he said, hardly realizing what he had just suggested. ‘Can you play hooky for a while?’

  Slowly she nodded, perfectly aware that this was quite a step, something very much other than work. ‘It’s a lovely day, Alex,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we walk through The Quarry?’

  The people of Shrewsbury were lucky enough to have their very own park right in the middle of town. Known as The Quarry, it contained an exquisite sunken garden planted by their ex-parks attendant – a man called Percy Thrower.

  She gave Jericho a brief explanation of her departure and watched his face tighten in disapproval, but he said nothing.

  And twenty minutes later, each clutching a Costa coffee, they found themselves on the wide path at the side of the sparkling Severn River, lime trees providing dappled shade, the waters shining silver, reflecting trees, the boat house and the Porthill footbridge, scene of many a school dare and responsible for two deaths that Martha had presided over. She shook herself. Must she connect everywhere with death, tragedy or felony?

  They sat, like Derby & Joan, on the warm grass, not caring that it was slightly damp. And Alex Randall started unburdening himself about the case, telling her the latest development, describing the characterful woman who had told them all she knew about their tramp, that he had spent time living in her shed, that he’d dug her garden competently, that he had seemed to her to be cultured, that he appeared to have deliberately withheld his name for an unknown reason, as well as his cryptic phrases about having more than one life and being happy to remain nameless, amongst the dead. As he spoke he was aware that the murdered man was gradually being coloured in, coming to life, becoming a person, someone three-dimensional.

  Moving, speaking, humming, living, working.

  He looked at her. ‘How can he have had two lives?’

  ‘Well, it makes sense,’ Martha said. ‘In a way he has had two lives. His first as someone who went skiing, probably with family or friends, and the second as a lonely hobo. Two lives, Alex,’ she said. ‘Two lives.’

  ‘Which ended with …’ He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  They were companionably silent then Martha touched his hand and looked at him earnestly. ‘I hate it that he doesn’t have a name, you know,’ she said.

  Randall met her eyes. ‘Well, I don’t like it, either,’ he said. ‘But what can we call him?’

  ‘Charlie,’ she said, lights flickering through her eyes. ‘The tramp? Charlie Chaplin?’

  He leaned back and in spite of himself he smiled. ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘Knowing what we do about him I don’t think Charlie’s quite right, do you? Charles,’ he said. ‘We shall call him Charles. It’s as good a name as any, though it doesn’t quite fit with the pretty ghastly injury we saw.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed gently, lying back now on the warm grass, her eyes shielded from the sun. ‘It doesn’t but it gives him a character; it makes him a person. Not just a crime …’ she thought of her morning’s work, ‘… and a statistic.’

  Randall nodded, sitting up, his hands around his knees. ‘But giving him a name doesn’t provide us with answers, Martha,’ he said, looking down at the slim figure in a dark blue dress, white sandals, her red hair spread on green grass. ‘We still don’t know who he is, who killed him, why – if there is a reason – where he came from, why he elected to lose his identity and stay lost. And what about these strange statements he made, that he was “already dead” and had had two lives? It isn’t just the violent crime,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’s much more than that.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They were momentarily quiet.

  Then she sat up, remembering something, ‘What about the number on the prosthesis? Any luck with that?’

  ‘Not as much as we’d hoped. They used them in France, Switzerland, Spain and Germany. They’re looking into identifying where it was inserted and who the patient was but it could take some time. It was a few years ago – their records weren’t computerized then.’

  In spite of herself, Mart
ha smiled. ‘What was life like before the instant access of Microsoft and Wikipedia?’

  Randall smiled too. ‘I can hardly remember. But anyway …’ He met her eyes. ‘I’m not holding my breath on that one.’

  ‘You still have other avenues of enquiry?’

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke with a little more jollity than he felt.

  Silence dropped between them heavy as a stone.

  Martha wanted to ask him personal questions. Are you married? Do I mean anything to you other than as a colleague? Do you have children? Once he’d mentioned he’d had a son. Strange words, set in the past, full of implication, but he hadn’t enlarged.

  Why do you never talk about your family? Never mention wife, parents, brothers, sisters? Why do you wrap yourself up in the cloak of secrecy and anonymity, giving me only occasional glimpses of your vulnerability? Why do you look so sad sometimes?

  As well as more general questions. Where do you live? What do you do with your leisure time? That, she decided, was the safest option and the only one she could ask.

  She began with a laugh. ‘What do you do when you’re not at work, Alex? What hobbies do you have?’

  ‘I like to walk,’ he said, looking at her oddly, as though wondering why she was exploring this particular avenue.

  ‘Do you have a dog then?’ Safer than, Do you have a wife?

  He laughed, still looking at her in that puzzled way. ‘No. I like to walk – alone.’ He paused. ‘I like to think while I’m walking.’

  ‘Any particular place? Near your home?’ She tried to ask this airily, but the moment the words were out of her mouth she knew she’d failed.

  He turned his perceptive hazel eyes on her. He knew exactly what this was. An interrogation.

  She gave a tiny laugh and an even tinier smile, then sat up. ‘Maybe we should …’

  He gripped her arm. ‘I’m married,’ he said.

  Her heart beat slowed. ‘Oh,’ was all she could say.

  He was shaking his head and pulling at her arm now as though to physically stop her from thinking what she was thinking or from going. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It isn’t what you think.’

  She looked at him. Please, please don’t give me the old chestnut that your wife doesn’t understand you.

  She didn’t need to say the words. He read them in her face and as a result chose his words even more carefully. ‘My marriage is a miserable state of affairs,’ he said.

  Now she put a warning hand on his arm. Do not spoil this. Don’t make me think less of you.

  He knew exactly what she was thinking and looked away. He didn’t want to see disappointment in her bright eyes. ‘If you met my wife you would know instantly. Martha,’ he said, desperation making his voice hoarse, ‘I don’t know whether she’s mad or bad.’

  And she was shocked. She looked at him, opened her mouth to speak and could not find a single word to respond in anyway remotely appropriate.

  The trouble with being a single woman, a widow, is that you leave yourself wide open, vulnerable; you can too easily appear needy or standoffish, predatory or cold. None of these was how she wanted to appear.

  But Alex Randall seemed to want nothing from her now. He was staring out across the river at the Boat House and the dog walkers and a rowing team sculling their way skilfully against the current. A beautiful sight, the entire team working as one, oars flashing in the bright September sun, their coxswain’s orders floating across the water to them.

  ‘Pull. Left. Right. And … ’

  ‘We had a son,’ he said. ‘He was born with …’ He began again. ‘He was born without a head.’

  Anencephaly, she thought, with horror. Incompatible with life.

  ‘When he was born he was just sort of …’ He closed his eyes. ‘Floppy. There was no life in him. No breath. He never cried. The doctors told us he couldn’t live. And from then on Erica …’

  So that was her name. His wife. Erica Randall.

  He was still staring miserably out across the water, not at her. It was as though he had forgotten she was there. ‘Erica changed,’ he finished. ‘She’s had various diagnoses pinned on her.’ He gave a cynical, bitter laugh. ‘She’s been diagnosed as bipolar, as having a psychopathic personality disorder. Some doctors insist she’s schizophrenic, others that she’s suffering from post-natal psychosis. I’ve heard it all and from one day to the next I never know what she’s going to be like. Demonic, sometimes. Hateful. Frightening.’ He looked across at her. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Martha. I know.’ He looked tired, weary, older than his years. ‘She … We came from Reading. She was …’ His forehead was creased with anxiety and unhappiness. ‘She was assaulting people.’ That mirthless laugh again. ‘Even me, which was embarrassing. She was breaking shop windows, shop-lifting, causing an affray, abusing people mentally and physically.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘She seemed full of hatred. As you can imagine, it didn’t exactly do my career much good. In the end we decided it was best if we moved somewhere where we were not known and Erica had to succumb to treatment.’

  Martha frowned. ‘What sort of treatment?’

  She knew. There was no treatment for a personality disorder. One just had to wait until they grew out of it. Or not.

  He looked at her. ‘They tried electroconvulsive therapy, which was awful and inappropriate anyway. Basically she’s admitted if she fails to take major sedation. She’s in hospital at the moment after smashing up the house. Again.’ He looked at her then. ‘I know what you’re thinking …’

  Oh, no, you don’t.

  ‘I could divorce her,’ he said. ‘Yes, I could. And how would that look? I dump a wife because she has psychiatric problems? Not good, but it’ll all come out one day, Martha. She’ll do something which will make it impossible for me to continue here. And then I’ll become a fugitive again.’

  A fugitive again.

  She was surprised at how bleak this made her feel. Then she opened her eyes wide and spoke because the words had pricked her. ‘A fugitive again,’ she said. ‘Like Charles?’

  He started and she knew he was leaving his confession behind him.

  She reached out and touched his hand. ‘I am so sorry, Alex,’ she said, ‘about your home circumstances. I really am. I don’t know what to say. I’d hoped …’ She couldn’t lie and say she’d hoped he was happily married but she couldn’t leave the sentence unfinished.

  ‘I’d hoped your personal life was less wretched,’ she said finally and with honesty.

  What possible solution could there be for this situation? She was puzzling this one out when he spoke.

  ‘I wish she would die,’ he said very softly, but she heard it as clearly as if he had shouted it from the rooftops. Clanged it like a church bell summoning the faithful to fervent Christian prayer. And it was a prayer.

  I – wish – she – would – die.

  But then what?

  The thought frightened her.

  TWENTY

  Randall detailed DS Paul Talith and DC Gethin Roberts to search Miss Dreyfuss’s garden shed that ‘Charles’ had used as a doss house. He kept the name to himself, smiling when he thought of Martha’s face, but then he recalled the way the conversation had turned and felt like dropping his face into his hands. His life was turning into a mess.

  Oblivious to their SIO’s anguish, Talith and Roberts had driven out to Pontesbury Hill and found Miss Dreyfuss in a pair of old trousers and gardening gloves looking at her flower beds ruefully.

  ‘Truth is,’ she said, looking up at them, despair clouding her face, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to manage this place now. He did an awful lot.’

  Talith studied her features and read the despair. Despair and something else which, surprisingly, he identified as grief. She had liked their victim. He frowned. It was beginning to give colour to the man. The emotion of grief clothed bones with warm flesh, made blood flow in the veins, a pulse pump along the artery and blew air into the lungs of someone he had so far only thought of as a
n anonymous dead vagrant. Being in contact with someone who had known The Man and liked him was giving him a personality. He had been likeable. Talith was silent, still frowning. Someone mourned him. Then he looked across at Roberts, who was watching him, and toughened his attitude up. It didn’t tell them who he was or where he had been or come from.

  The shed was a bog standard wooden garden shed, made of roughly hewn wood and stained green. Talith had one like it at home, but a bit smaller. Once a year he and Diana cleared it out; the rest of the time it was an absolute tip, a chaos of lawnmowers and hedge clippers, rakes and hoes, sprays of weed killer, bags of compost, Weed ’n’ Feed and other garden detritus. This was nothing like that. He and Roberts both stared. It was military: every tool carefully laid out, bottles lined up in order of size, bags of compost neatly stored, spades and other equipment hanging from hooks. In the corner there was a folded sun lounger on which were neatly folded blankets. So now they knew something else about their man. He was or had been methodical. Even Miss Dreyfuss seemed surprised at the orderliness. ‘I rarely came in here,’ she said quietly, peering past them from the doorway. ‘It seemed – it was – his domain.’

  Talith simply stared around the shed and breathed it in. It had the scent of a holiday caravan when you first joined it after a long, wet winter. Stuffy, needing airflow. He turned to Roberts. ‘Know what this tidiness reminds me of?’

  ‘Military?’ Roberts ventured.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Prison. You ever been in a cell, Roberts?’

  The younger officer was affronted. ‘’Course I have, a time or two.’

  Talith made a face. ‘They’re just like this, tidy in a small, contained space. Oppressively tidy, mate. We’d better get some pictures before the CS officers disturb it.’

  And so Freddie Gascoigne, police photographer, was again summoned. He was having a busy day. And even he made a face when he eyed the orderliness of the shed.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell the wife. She’ll have me scrubbing out our shed. This is tidier than our kitchen.’