Recalled to Death

by Priscilla Masters

  As I lay, somehow not drowning in the water, I thought of my life. Under my hand the once thriving business had become shaky. Four generations on, what was I going to achieve? My father had died two years before and I had grieved for him. He had been a good man and I missed him, which explains why I suppose I took my finger off the button as far as my marriage and the business went. So the business was failing and my wife wanted to kill me.

  Martha looked up. ‘What a sad story.’

  Randall nodded, his eyes focused on the neat writing, ignoring the officers who were glancing across, curious.

  She continued reading. I was picked up by a boat but they were Dutch drug runners and didn’t know what to do with me, and to be honest I didn’t really care. I just sat, catatonic. Even depression wouldn’t describe it. I felt hollow. Dead. I didn’t want to be me anymore. They were talking about what to do with me in Dutch and I had picked up a little of what they were saying. The BBC World Service was on the radio and through it I learned my fate. Or not. I heard my name spoken in one of the bulletins. I heard that a body washed ashore had been identified by ‘his’ wife (my wife) as the missing yachtsman, Simeon van Helsing, the shoe multi-millionaire. They announced the date and time of his funeral. My funeral. So there you have it. I was no longer officially alive. I was dead and about to be buried. What irony that the drowned corpse could not be me but her ‘also missing’ lover.

  In the end, after six or seven days, they tossed me over the side of the boat, thinking, I suppose, that as I was so apathetic and half-dead that I would not attempt to swim but simply drown. Or maybe they didn’t really care what happened to me. But the human spirit is strong. I could not prevent my arms and legs from making the motions that would keep me afloat. I could not force myself to drown and so I swam ashore. I did return in the night to the factory and took one of the precious little shoes out of the glass case. And then I remembered. It had been raining once and Poulson had lent me his mac. It still hung in my office. I had forgotten to return it. In the pocket were the medals he so proudly flourished on every conceivable occasion. I knew it had been a lie. And so I had these two objects to remind me of the very best and worst of human nature. I vowed I would keep them with me. From my drawer I took my copy of A Tale of Two Cities, a book I had always loved because of its connection with shoemaking. I remembered that my life had been insured for a million pounds. And now Verity would have it. Could have it. If I had just been declared missing she would have had to wait for the obligatory seven years. But Verity did not like to wait for anything. She had the impatience of the young woman she still was. She would want her money now. I could hear her petulant voice. So there is your story and my story. Verity was the only winner to the tragedy and a newspaper I read a day or two later told me her fate too. She, somehow, had managed to inflate the life raft and had been found shivering and cold but alive. My poor little dancing sparrow.

  I decided that as I was dead I was released from my obligation to both business and wife. I had made a mess of both anyway. And now I had the freedom to choose the path I wanted. Life on the road appealed to me. No baggage. No wife to return to, no business, no family. It was better for everyone if I remained dead.

  And so I found Shrewsbury, in Shropshire. A small town where I felt both comfortable and safe and I shed all obligations, everything that was part of my previous life, apart from the treasured little girl’s shoe, (the girl who became my grandmother, did I say?), my book and the set of medals that had belonged to Poulson. It would remind me of the futility of inheritance. Of the deceit of so-called friends. And, ironically, I knew about Jane Kamara and her husband’s disappearance. It seemed fitting to use Mr Knebworth’s coat.

  But a few months ago as I was sitting, reading on a bench in The Quarry, someone walked by. I don’t know who he was. He was blonde and stocky, around my age, a man with a casual air, wearing a very expensive suit, and instead of walking by he stopped and stared at me. I stared back at the stranger, wondering why I commanded such scrutiny. After a while, without speaking to me, he walked on.

  A week later, he was back. Same place – and staring at me again. Then he bent over me. ‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘You’re not dead, are you?’

  I admit I was nervous. I didn’t know what to do except to write down all that had happened. I took courage and inspiration from Doctor Manette’s actions.

  He had survived. So could I.

  But where to go?

  Thinking about it, I am unnerved by that man. He knows who I am. What, I wonder, will he do with that knowledge? Should I, like a true hobo, move elsewhere, take to the road, find a new place?

  This is what I will do. Move on.

  But I will leave my account somewhere. And if you are reading this you must have found it. How? Why? Has something happened to me? Have you just been lucky? Or intuitive? Which is it? Tonight I shall not sleep in the field with the others. I shall take to the road. Go someplace else, wherever fate wills. Somewhere where I will not be found. I say goodbye to my friend, Miss Dreyfuss. I thank her for being my friend. I thank all who have been kind to me in my strange life.

  Finally, I sign my name.

  Simeon van Helsing

  Martha looked up. ‘Except he was found, wasn’t he? I wonder who this man was who recognized him.’

  Randall was already pressing keys.

  THIRTY

  Friday, 31 October, Hallowe’en

  Martha gave DI Randall twenty-four hours before she called him. She knew he would have work to do piecing together their man’s story and, hopefully, tracking down his killer. None of this involved her. She would only be a distraction. She only hoped that the discovery of their man’s identity would lead to an arrest.

  But finally she picked up the phone.

  ‘Martha,’ he said, sounding truly glad to hear from her. ‘I was just about to ring you. I’ve had an email from a dentist in Chalfont St Giles, just a bit puzzled that the dental records we circulated of our murdered man appear to match those of a person recorded as already dead.’

  ‘Confirmation then.’

  ‘Yes. It would appear so.’ He paused. ‘Is there any chance you can come over to the station?’

  ‘OK,’ she said, and was there in twenty minutes.

  She found Alex Randall sitting in front of a computer screen. He looked up as she entered and grinned at her. The warmth in that grin took her aback.

  ‘Thanks to you,’ he said, ‘I’ve got it all here. An account of the sailing accident. Naturally Poulson never was found.’

  ‘Well, he was in a way,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s just that he was buried under Simeon van Helsing’s name.’

  ‘What about his family?’

  ‘Apparently he didn’t have close family. A mother who lived abroad who doesn’t seem to have made much of the fact that her son had apparently drowned. A brother who inserted something in the Deaths column of the local newspaper. The family just appear to have accepted his “still missing, presumed drowned” status. Sad,’ she said, ‘even though he was a nasty piece of work.’

  ‘Yes,’ Randall agreed. ‘And there’s plenty of information about the Van Helsing Shoe Company, who appear to have gone from strength to strength.’ He paused. ‘They’re now worth almost three billion pounds.’

  ‘Under whose directorship?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘Verity,’ she said. ‘But how come it’s worth so much?’

  ‘Handmade shoes for the wealthy. They keep foot measurements for the stars and have branched out into dance shoes, ballet, tap. Here,’ he said. ‘It’s all here.’

  Martha peered into the screen. No doubt about it: the Van Helsing Shoe Company was a thriving and successful business.

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘We’re going to find it very difficult to convict Verity,’ he said, ‘who inherited something like sixteen million pounds from her husband’s estate as well as the million from her husband’s life insurance. She
must have quite a talent for business to have turned it around so successfully. But according to their website she’s worked hard, sourcing the leather and other products from abroad but all the manufacturing is done here, in this country. She employs over a thousand people.’

  ‘Has she remarried?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it. There’s no mention of a husband.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No mention of those either.’

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘The Chalfonts,’ he said. ‘Just an hour’s drive from London.’

  ‘Have you contacted her?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He gave her another mischievous grin. ‘I thought you’d like to be in on the action.’

  Martha tried to keep her face straight, impassive and unenthusiastic – and failed completely.

  ‘Even better than that,’ Randall said, peering intently into the computer, ‘I think this is our killer.’

  Martha looked over his shoulder.

  He was a beefy-looking blonde man with a cocky, confident gaze. Underneath was his name, Hiram Schumacher, described as thirty-five years old, ambitious and competent, with a degree from the University of London in Business Management. In his spare time he was into fencing, boxing and keeping fit.

  Martha met Randall’s eyes. ‘You think?’

  Randall nodded. ‘He fits the profile. Call it instinct but I can just see him and Verity cosying up to one another.

  ‘This guy is one of their executives. We’re going to have to be very cautious,’ he said. ‘And as for Mrs Van Helsing, she’ll be able to afford the very best defence counsel.’ He looked at Martha. ‘We have nothing to charge her with.’

  ‘What about a false insurance claim? Wrongful identification of her husband?’

  ‘She’ll say she was so traumatized she made a mistake. The CPS won’t buy it.’ He was still looking at her. ‘I can tell you that already.’

  She nodded.

  ‘She may well have had nothing to do with her husband’s murder,’ Randall said.

  ‘But she was quite happy for him to be murdered five years ago. She was part of the plot. Probably initiated it.’

  ‘Again, the only two people who could have given witness to that are both dead.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why, once discovered, he had to die. In case he re-surfaced.’ She remembered a phrase from the Dickens. ‘In case he was “recalled to life”.’

  Alex Randall nodded. ‘It was always a possibility. But having seen his throat injury, unless she’s built like a shot putter I can’t see her inflicting the fatal wound. It was vicious and would have taken extreme force.’

  ‘Well, we have a description of our assailant.’

  But Randall shook his head. ‘No, we don’t,’ he said. ‘What’s more, we haven’t got any forensic evidence of him. All we have is the notebook with an account of our man’s life. It will have to be proved that Van Helsing really did write it. And in it we have the description of a man who appeared to recognize Simeon van Helsing. Nothing more. We can fingerprint it and try and match it up with a suspect, but we’re going to have to prove it was Van Helsing’s handwriting and that the notebook contains a true account of events. And then we’re going to have to find some forensic evidence to support our theory. Unless we get a confession which, somehow, looking at this guy and knowing how much money’s at stake, I very much doubt.’

  She smiled. ‘How quickly we’ve got used to calling him by his correct name.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was thinking for a moment, trying to work things out. ‘But surely in these days of surveillance, number plate recognition and so on, you can build up a case?’

  ‘Hey.’ Randall laughed. ‘Hang on a minute. Who’s the copper here? You’re way ahead of me, Martha. A step at a time.’ His eyes were warm as they rested on her. His look felt like a caress. ‘Time I rang Mrs Verity van Helsing. Are you ready?’

  She nodded. He picked up the phone and dialled, Martha sitting by his side, hardly daring to breathe, able to listen to just one side of the conversation.

  ‘Hello, is that Verity van Helsing?’

  A woman’s voice responded cagily. She probably thought it was a cold call. Double glazing, solar panels or a mis-sold PPI.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Alex Randall of Shrewsbury Police.’

  There was a querying response.

  ‘I wonder if I could come and talk to you, please.’

  Another response. Martha fancied she heard a question in it. What about?

  ‘I would prefer to talk to you face-to-face, Mrs Van Helsing, but I can tell you it concerns your late husband.’

  There was another response, shriller this time, with a note of panic.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  The response was one word. A submissive, Yes.

  ‘I’ll come to your house around eleven. Thank you.’

  He put down the phone, met Martha’s eyes, knew she would love to come. ‘No,’ he said gently. ‘I can’t jeopardize the case.’

  And she had to accept it.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The next day Martha was in such a state of tension she almost had a headache. She’d slept little during the night. Her mind had been full of the man’s story, of the people involved and the double crime committed against Simeon van Helsing. When she did sleep it was light and fitful, her dreams a tangle of the Dickens story, of the Bastille, of a mansion in the Chalfonts, a sword flying through the air and a man’s dying cry and all watched by what she now considered the repugnant and malevolent facade of Moreton Corbet Castle. At six she rose. She would get no more rest.

  But work had to be done. She forced herself to plan the day ahead, to write letters, make phone calls, liaise with Jericho about dates for inquests and statements to some very persistent solicitors, but her heart was travelling down the M40 towards The Chalfonts.

  Randall took Paul Talith with him to interview Verity van Helsing. On the way down he explained to his DS how Martha had helped in discovering their ‘tramp’s’ hiding place for his message. Even as he spoke he felt a sense of pride in her. She astonished him with her lively, clever interest in the cases they had jointly been involved in.

  Talith gave him a shrewd glance as though he read what he was saying and also what he was not saying. He had his own private thoughts. The coroner was a beautiful woman, was clever and was also a widow. But his inspector? Talith took a surreptitious glance across. He didn’t know. Married? He never mentioned a wife. Children? He didn’t mention those either.

  They turned off the motorway. The Chalfonts was a leafy area less than an hour from London, yet the scattered villages had the feeling of deepest countryside. Verity van Helsing lived in a large country house behind locked gates, accessible via a speakerphone. Randall gave Talith a look, stepped out of the car and spoke curtly into it. ‘Detective Inspector Alex Randall for Mrs Van Helsing,’ he said, and the gates swung open.

  Back in the car, Talith turned to his DI. ‘How the hell are you going to do this, boss?’

  ‘I haven’t quite worked it out, Talith. I thought I’d begin by asking her about her husband’s “accident”.’

  ‘Well, best of luck with that one,’ was Talith’s response.

  ‘What I’m really after,’ Randall mused, ‘is our killer. And I don’t think that’s going to be our Mrs van Helsing. She is a little more subtle than that and I don’t think she’d have had the physical strength to strike the fatal blow. I have an idea but, as you know, Talith, an idea is hardly a conviction.’

  ‘I wonder, sir, if it might be an idea to visit the factory then?’

  ‘We can do that after we’ve spoken to our lady,’ Randall said. ‘Perhaps Verity van Helsing herself would like to give us a tour.’

  The front door opened as they reached the top of the drive and a woman stood there. Apart from saying that Van Helsing’s wife would have to be built like a shot putter to have inflicted his fatal injury, Randall hadn’t given Mrs Van
Helsing’s physical appearance any thought at all. He’d seen her picture on the factory website but it had been head and shoulders only and he had gained the impression of a hard face. Little else. Company portraits tended not to reveal much of a person. She had been a dancer so he had guessed at a small size. Certainly the woman who stood on the door step was that, trim and petite, a very beautiful woman somewhere in her thirties with a lovely bone structure, shining, beautiful blonde hair and big eyes as blue as the ocean. By his side, Talith gave a low whistle. ‘Wow,’ he said.

  Mrs Van Helsing moved forwards with the grace of a panther. Yes, she still had a dancer’s body and ease and grace of movement, poised and confident. Randall’s next thought was treacherous: what a waste to send this woman to prison.

  For what? Complicity to murder – not once but probably twice. He gritted his teeth, hardened his heart and held out his hand.

  She appraised him coolly and Randall had to remind himself that this was also the woman who had turned the Van Helsing Shoe Company from a failing, probably old-fashioned, traditional family business into a clever multi-billion pound industry. He shook her hand.

  ‘Now,’ she said briskly, still on the doorstep. ‘What is all this about? I don’t know if you’re aware but my husband died five years ago in a tragic sailing accident. One of his closest friends died with him.’

  Talith gave the DI a swift glance.

  ‘Yes,’ Randall said. ‘I’ve read the accounts of the tragedy. I believe you were in the boat too.’