Darkness & Light: A Frank Elder Mystery (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

  It was the collar of a dress, soft gold with a faint pattern running through; short sleeves; a belt fastened at the waist and the skirt full length and slightly flared.

  It was not a dress that had been slept in.

  Not a wrinkle, not a fold out of place.

  Not sleeping, then, but laid out.

  The woman’s arms were angled down, angled together, the left hand resting on the right; there was a gold ring with a small diamond setting on her right hand, and on the third finger of the left a slight indentation, a pale circle of skin where until recently she had worn a wedding band.

  Elder moved away from the bed. “This is the woman the room was registered to?” he asked.

  “I think so,” the manager said. “I suppose.”

  “You don’t know?”

  He shook his head.

  “You do know who the room was registered to?” Elder tried to keep the impatience out of his voice.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So?”

  “Irene Fowler, that is what it says. Naturally, I looked.”

  “And you’ve no idea if this is her?”

  “These last few days it was busy; the conference, we were full.”

  Elder walked across to the wardrobe and slid back the door; a third of the hangers were full, two more dresses, both full length, skirts and tops, a topcoat in beige, a dark blue pinstripe suit with wide lapels. What looked to be expensive underwear in the drawer; a cashmere sweater for the cold. Four pairs of shoes.

  In the bathroom, a toothbrush and toothpaste rested inside a plastic cup. Hairbrush and comb. Lotions and creams. A towel, discarded, on the floor beneath the sink; another on the rim of the bath, neatly folded; the shower curtain pulled back.

  “Here,” Prior said.

  When he went back into the room, she was holding up a black leather handbag, holding it with a ballpoint bearing the hotel’s name.

  “It had got pushed down between the cupboard and the bed.”

  She put down the bag and, before opening it, pulled on plastic gloves.

  Personal organizer, lipstick, wipes, small comb, tissues, panty liners, ibuprofen, loose change; a wallet with sixty pounds in notes, store cards, credit cards, a driver’s license bearing the name Fowler, Irene Patricia; date of birth, twenty-first of June, 1940; address, seventy-one Sheridan Avenue, Market Harborough.

  “Interesting,” Prior said. “Driving license, no car keys.”

  “Perhaps they’re in her coat.”

  They were not in her coat: no keys of any kind.

  “The maid,” Elder said, “the woman who found her...”

  “She would not have taken anything,” the manager said.

  “That’s not what I meant. We need to speak with her, that’s all.”

  “She is downstairs, in my office. She is very upset.”

  “We’ll need to talk to the rest of the staff as well,” Prior said. “Anyone who was on duty last night. This morning, too.”

  “They are not all here. They...”

  “You’ll give us a list. They’ll be contacted, brought in.”

  “We’ll also need a list of everyone who was staying at the hotel,” Elder said, “those who were attending the conference, especially. Any outside speakers, guests.”

  “I can let you have the name of the conference organizer, of course. Also, there is a programme. I have copies downstairs.”

  “Good.”

  “Why don’t you go down?” Prior said. “Maybe talk to the maid? I’ll make a few calls, get things moving.”

  “Okay.”

  But before leaving he went back to the bed and looked down. Irene Fowler, fifty-seven years old, recently widowed or divorced; smart, well groomed, well educated at a guess, more than gainfully employed: Around the slight swelling on her neck there were purplish marks, no bigger than pinpricks, as if tiny blood vessels had burst beneath the skin.

  The maid was Croatian, worried about her immigration status, confused. She had seen the woman once before, at least once. The day before, she was certain. Or maybe the day before that. She had come back to her room when it was being cleaned. Alone? Yes, alone. Some papers she’d forgotten. Papers, books, something. Polite. She had been very polite and nice.

  Interesting, Elder thought: a businesswoman attending a conference, she would have a briefcase, at least; most likely a computer, a laptop; certainly a cell phone.

  None of those things appeared to have been in her room.

  By late afternoon, none of them had been found.

  Earlier, a maroon Volvo Estate registered to Irene Fowler was discovered in the car park and opened without recourse to the keys. She had been a tidy driver: Aside from the car manual and an up-to-date road atlas, there was but little of the usual detritus—a blue-and-silver wrapping from a bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate; a chamois; parking tickets from Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester, all from within the last ten days.

  When her ex-husband was finally tracked down and notified, he cursed and swore and broke down in tears.

  There were children, too, grown-up now, but children just the same.

  By the time Elder arrived home, Katherine was long in bed, and Joanne sat watching a screenful of doctors cracking open a man’s chest; he didn’t know if it was fiction or for real.

  “Long day,” Joanne said, reaching her cheek up to be kissed.

  Elder mumbled something vague.

  “There’s pasta,” Joanne said, “I could heat it up. Meatballs and tomato sauce.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You’ve eaten already?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then you should.” Switching off the set with the remote, she swung to her feet. “You can’t go without food. Besides...” nudging him in the stomach, “don’t want you fading away.”

  The light was still on in Katherine’s room and she was reading her way through an abridged Jane Eyre for the second or third time.

  “Shouldn’t you be asleep by now?” Elder said.

  “Dad!” The a dragged out so that it became two syllables, breaking in the middle.

  “What?”

  “You’re always nagging, you know that?”

  Elder ruffled his fingers through her hair. “How was school?”

  “Fine.”

  “Really? I thought you were dreading it.”

  “It was okay.”

  “Not as bad as you feared then?”

  She gave him the same exasperated look she’d first perfected at age five: a slow sideways turning of the face away, along with an upward rolling of the eyes.

  “Five more minutes, okay?” Elder said. “Then it’s lights-out for sure.”

  “Okay.”

  His supper was ready in a deep white bowl, new from Muji that day, Joanne never one to miss out on the chance to do a little shopping; Parmesan cheese, a small salad of tomatoes and spinach, a glass of red wine.

  Once Elder had sat down, Joanne clinked her glass against his.

  “What’s this all in aid of?”

  “Does it have to be in aid of something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I did have a good day. We took on two new stylists and someone to do nails. A good girl, I think, to work reception. Martyn seemed pleased.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  “You don’t have to be so sarcastic.”

  “I didn’t know I was.”

  “Like hell you didn’t.”

  Elder sighed and smiled and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “No probs.”

  Just occasionally, Joanne came out with something, some little phrase, that drove him up the wall.

  When he’d finished eating, Joanne refilled the glasses and they carried them through into the other room. One of those singers she liked on the stereo.

  “How was your day?” Joanne asked.

  “Let’s say not as good as yours.”

  In that light she looked beaut
iful and he knew he would have followed her almost anywhere had she asked: this place no better no worse than most.

  When his hand rested high inside her thigh, she made no attempt to move it away.

  FORENSIC EXAMINATION OF THE DEAD WOMAN’S BODY only told them so much. Death had been caused by strangulation, the hyoid bone broken, a loss of blood to the brain. Some kind of soft ligature had been used, most likely an article of clothing, one that left no readily discernible trace.

  There was alcohol in her bloodstream, but not an incommensurate amount. There were signs of recent sexual activity, but nothing that suggested sexual assault. No trace of semen, inside or outside the body: assuming a condom had been used, it had been removed from the scene.

  The most likely scenario, the investigating officers agreed, was that she had invited someone, a man, up to her room; they had sex together, consensually enough, but after that something had gone wildly wrong. If wildly was the word. The way in which the body had been left suggested composure, calm, a strange degree of detachment. Ritual, even. Care.

  As Maureen Prior pointed out, there was no way of knowing for certain that whoever had made love to her and whoever had killed her were one and the same, though the circumstances suggested they most probably were.

  For a while the former husband came under suspicion, as nearest and dearest often did, but delve as they might there was nothing there, nothing other than anger, sadness, and regret. One of the casual workers at the hotel had a record of minor sexual offenses—exposing himself, stealing underwear from launderettes, a single incident, unproven, of rubbing himself up against a woman on a crowded bus—and although both Elder and Maureen questioned him, separately and together, they could find nothing conclusive linking him to Irene Fowler’s murder.

  Links were sought, connecting the death to those from strangling that were already under investigation, but none were found. After three months, the file, still open, was shuffled to the bottom of the deck, the bottom of the drawer.

  Case unsolved.

  Chapter 13

  ELDER FELT THE FIRST DROPS OF RAIN AS HE GROSSED Fletcher Gate to where Joanne had suggested they meet: a glass-fronted café-restaurant with a spiral staircase between the floors; Joanne seated on the upper level by the window, staring out.

  “Frank, it’s dreadful.” News of Claire Meecham’s murder had been the lead item on the local news, front page in the early editions of the Post. “Poor Jennie.”

  Nodding, Elder eased out a chair.

  “I didn’t know whether to phone her or not,” Joanne said. “I don’t know what’s best.”

  “I saw her earlier,” Elder said. “Just briefly. She didn’t seem in too bad a state. You should ring her if you can.”

  He had been in to the Force Crime Directorate HQ to drop off the information for Maureen Prior as promised, and Jennie had arrived just as he was leaving.

  “This is Derek,” Jennie had said, introducing the man at her side.

  Derek was tall and dark skinned, handsome and substantial in a pale linen suit. Elder’s knuckles were still sore from shaking his hand.

  He ordered a regular coffee and watched as Joanne sipped her latte. Outside, the rain was falling more steadily, making uneven trails across the glass. A tram climbed slowly past and stopped for passengers before turning down Victoria Street toward Old Market Square.

  “It said in the paper she’d been strangled.”

  Elder nodded.

  “Someone broke into the house and strangled her?”

  Elder shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think she was already dead.”

  “But how...?”

  “Whoever killed her. I imagine he took her back to where she lived.”

  Joanne fidgeted with the rings on her hand. “Will they catch him, Frank? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  “You’ll stick around? Help?”

  “I doubt it. They can manage well enough without me. Maureen’s in charge of the investigation. Maureen Prior, you remember her.”

  “All the more reason, then.”

  “For what?”

  “For you getting involved. You and Maureen, you were always a team.”

  “No. Maureen knows what she’s about. Besides, I’ve packed it all in, remember? Done and dusted. Out to grass.”

  Joanne smiled with her eyes. “So you say.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You got involved before.”

  “That was different. And pretty much a disaster. As you were at pains to point out.”

  “I’m sorry. There were some things I never should have said.”

  “But you were right. If I hadn’t stuck my nose in, what Katherine went through would never have happened.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Of course I do.”

  It hung among them, all three of them, his culpability, unwitting as it may have been, in the events that had led, almost, to Katherine’s death.

  Joanne looked at her watch. “I should be getting back.”

  “Okay. I’ll stay and finish this.”

  “You’ll see Katherine again before you go?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Joanne seemed to hesitate for a moment, then bent and kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Take care, Frank.”

  “Do my best.”

  He heard her heels on the stairs, then, moments later, watched as she crossed the wide street, hurrying a little against the rain. Five, ten yards along the opposite pavement before she was lost to sight. How much easier it would be, Elder thought, if she had become less instead of more beautiful with age.

  KATHERINE HAD GIVEN HIM HER NEW CELL NUMBER, BUT when he tried it there was no reply; when he called round at the house there was no one in. Despite the rain, which continued to fall, he chose to walk back into the centre, across Castle Boulevard and along the canal. No matter how much he tried to shunt his mind toward other things, coincidences continued to bounce back and forth between the years: the way both women had been dressed then laid in their beds; the means of death itself, similar though not identical; the lack, as far as he knew, of any clear forensic evidence.

  Near the edge of the marina, he stopped to watch four ducklings, the size of small fists, traversing the water in their mother’s uneven wake.

  What rankled most was that Irene Fowler’s murderer had never been found, the case—his case—never closed. The same stupid, instinctive injured pride that had led him to become involved with such awful results before. Well, not this time. Inside an hour he would be packed up, checked out, heading west. He would call Katherine when he got back and explain; invite her down to Cornwall, the next break from her course.

  As he turned from the canal side toward the hotel entrance, there was Maureen Prior walking toward him.

  “Come to wave me off?” Elder said.

  Prior shook her head. “I’ve come to take you to lunch.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not hungry?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then you can watch me eat instead.”

  They drove out past the racecourse and parked by Colwick Lake, facing out across the flat expanse of water.

  “Catching your own?” Elder said.

  Prior reached round onto the back seat and lifted up a plain white plastic bag: inside were two chicken salad sandwiches, individually wrapped, and some Walkers crisps.

  “That’s it?”

  “You weren’t hungry, remember?”

  “That was before.”

  She handed him his sandwich and started to eat. The sound of rain was light on the roof. There were two other cars parked farther along. A fisherman in a dark green waterproof and hood.

  “Got the results of the postmortem earlier,” Prior said. “Preliminary, at least. Nothing we mightn’t have guessed. Quite severe bruising in the tissue ben
eath the skin. Fractured windpipe. Strangulation. The pattern of hemorrhaging matches the marks on the neck.”

  “Any other marks?”

  “Some rawness around the wrists and ankles, not new. Faint bruising on the upper arms.”

  “She’d been tied up; pinned down.”

  Prior nodded.

  “Rape?”

  A shake of the head. “Probably not. Some evidence of sexual activity, vaginal, but no particular bruising or tearing.”

  A pair of ducks wheeled low across the water and skidded to a halt near the far bank.

  “Anything else?” Elder asked.

  “Not a great deal. No significant amount of alcohol in the bloodstream; a small trace of aspirin, but no other drugs.”

  “What about time of death?”

  “Nearest they can estimate, ten to twelve days before the body was found.”

  Elder nodded. He got out of the car and in a few moments Prior followed suit. The rain seemed to be slackening off at last, though the sky was still sealed in gray.

  “Claire Meecham went missing sometime on the weekend of April ninth, tenth,” Elder said. “Now it seems as if she died just a few days later.”

  “We need to find out where she was.”

  “Who she was with.”

  They continued to walk around the edge of the lake. “Irene Fowler,” Prior said. “You really think this is the same all over again?”

  Elder smiled. “You told me before, don’t assume.”

  “But if you did?”

  He shrugged. “The similarities, they’re there.”

  “Some are, agreed. But there are differences, too. Irene Fowler was murdered in a hotel, for one thing. That’s where she was found. Claire Meecham was discovered at home, but that’s not where she was killed. Someone had kept her body hidden for some little time and then gone to the not inconsiderable risk of taking her back and tucking her up in her very own bed. That’s a lot different, Frank. A whole new ball game.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Of course it is.”

  Elder was shaking his head. “It could be an elaboration and nothing more. The basic things haven’t changed. Two women of roughly the same age. The way the bodies were left. The way they were killed.”