Corpse in Waiting

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Could it be that it’s the boyfriend who chucked you over who’s trying to get you into trouble?’

  Visibly, she thought through the implications of cooperating over this. Then, ‘I don’t know,’ she answered slowly.

  ‘You’ve spoken to him then.’

  ‘Yes, I had to. I discovered I’d got some of his stuff. I told him I’d bin it all if he didn’t collect it.’

  ‘And you shared a few worries at the same time?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, you do, don’t you?’

  ‘Did you give him my mobile phone number?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you’re lying. What’s this man’s name and address?’

  ‘His name’s Alan Kilmartin. He’s an architect.’ She gave me the address, all the information now coming with an alacrity that made me think that she wanted revenge and also that he probably wasn’t the man who had made the call.

  ‘But you did get hold of my mobile number. How?’ I asked, trying to keep calmly professional and knowing I was failing, fast.

  The lip-glossed mouth formed a little pout. ‘OK, I admit I had a little look at Patrick’s mobile when he was in the john at a café where we went for coffee. He’d left it on the table.’ She smiled in knowing fashion, gazing down at her perfectly manicured fingernails.

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘And last night you persuaded him into drinking alcohol even after he’d told you he was banned.’

  ‘Banned? What’s banned?’ she muttered. ‘Who banned him? You?’

  ‘No, his medical specialist did. He was doped by thugs during his previous case and suffered slight liver damage.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose a few drinks did him any harm.’

  ‘You don’t actually care, do you? You see something and you want it, mostly because someone else already loves it, whether it’s a house or a person. You have to have it and then, like the house, make money on it by ripping it apart and getting rid of it. But the real satisfaction is taking it away from someone else.’

  Alexandra shot to her feet and I did likewise.

  ‘He’s a fine man too,’ she said, almost spitting out the words as though they disgusted her. ‘I like fine men. They turn out to be quite ordinary in the end when you’ve stripped them off, layer by layer. For some reason it’s something I’m really good at. But don’t worry, you’ll get him back – eventually.’

  And with that she stalked away.

  I stood and cursed myself for allowing my feelings to get the better of me.

  SIX

  If the address Alexandra had given me was correct Alan Warburton Kilmartin, Dip.Arch. RIBA, lived in Warminster. I wondered, after what she had said, if he really had thrown her over for someone else or merely run like blazes when he realized what she was doing to him. On the other hand, they might have had a fairly normal relationship and he had become fed up with her hobby of hoovering up other, desirable, men mostly on the grounds that they were married, engaged, devoted to, or going out with, someone else.

  I could not, of course, investigate further, officially that is, without getting permission. I probably would not get it, no crime having been committed and all that. To carry on privately sleuthing would also involve going behind Patrick’s back and that was not right either. All that apart, my cat’s whiskers told me that Mr Kilmartin did not come from the kind of background to make such a call – and was hardly a hoodie – and the voice, unless whoever it was had disguised it, had sounded distinctly rough. There was a part of me that wanted to do as Patrick had suggested, let the whole thing drop, the house, that is. Perhaps I should just trust him.

  I do trust him, I love him to bits, but I still wanted Alexandra’s flesh boiled off her bones and fed to hyenas.

  ‘Bugger everything,’ I muttered.

  My phone rang and it was James Carrick.

  ‘I thought you’d like to know that the soil sample we took in the back garden is heavily contaminated with human blood,’ he informed me. ‘It’s the same blood group as the murder victim’s but, as you know, DNA testing takes a bit longer so we don’t yet have a positive match.’

  ‘It has to be almost a foregone conclusion surely,’ I commented.

  ‘Looks like it. Are you busy with anything in particular?’

  ‘No, not really.’ Only in trying to write a book.

  ‘Are you interested in talking to the owner of the house, Miss Hilda Bennett?’

  ‘If you think it’ll do any good.’

  ‘She’s suffering from dementia so it’ll be hard work. But I know you’re good with people.’

  ‘Lynn didn’t manage to communicate with her?’

  ‘It didn’t go at all well. And I have to say Lynn’s brilliant at her job but she can have a rather brusque manner with people who can be described as vulnerable.’

  ‘I’ll have a go,’ I said. ‘She might not get many visitors and enjoy talking to someone.’

  ‘Lynn said she found herself talking to an Easter Island statue.’

  ‘I assume she didn’t bring up the subject of the murder.’

  ‘Of course not. I told her just to say she was with the police and checking up on empty properties. The last thing I wanted to do was distress her. What I could really do with is knowing whether her nephew was living there around the time we think the woman was killed.’

  ‘I’ll have a go.’

  ‘Shall I arrange it for you?’

  This he did and, at just before two thirty that afternoon I walked up the drive to a medium-sized house with a modern extension situated off the Wells Road. Frail and elderly people, some seemingly completely comatose, were being pushed around the garden in wheelchairs by relatives or uniformed carers and not for the first time I came to the conclusion that I would rather end up beneath the wheels of a large, red London bus than like this.

  ‘Another police person?’ sniffed the woman on the reception desk.

  ‘Miss Langley’ll do fine,’ I assured her. I write under my maiden name.

  Miss Bennett was one of those remaining indoors. She sat, apparently dozing, in a chair in a corner of a lounge. A few other residents were also in the room, but not sitting close to her, some asleep, others staring blankly at a television screen, the set switched on but with the sound turned almost right down.

  ‘Miss Bennett?’ I said softly, pulling up a chair. ‘My name’s Ingrid Langley. May I speak to you for a few minutes?’

  There was a slight start so at least she was not hard of hearing.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked.

  There was no response.

  ‘You may or may not remember Sergeant Lynn Outhwaite coming to see you to ask you a few questions about your house.’

  I was slightly shocked for she was not an old woman, surely she could not be much more than fifty-five to sixty. Her dark-brown hair was lank and tied back with a weary-looking piece of green ribbon but her face was practically unlined.

  I continued, ‘I’m here because I’m thinking of buying it and wondered if you knew anything about its history. Such an attractive little house – I’ve really fallen in love with it. It’s a happy sort of place.’ All this sounded horribly banal to me but what on earth did one say?

  She raised her head and looked at me and for some reason a shudder went through me. She had not been happy there.

  ‘The garden’s got plenty of potential,’ I said. ‘I should imagine that at one time it was really pretty. Do you enjoy the gardens here?’

  There was no response.

  ‘I understand that your nephew’s on his way back from New Zealand,’ I went on chattily. ‘David, isn’t it? He must be your brother’s son as you’ve the same surname. I expect he’ll come and see you when he gets home.’

  Again there was something in her look that told me I was wrong. They were not close and he would not be coming to visit her.

  I asked the important question. ‘Was he living at the house before he went away?’

  She still said nothing a
nd I felt as though her dark, unsettling eyes were burning holes in me.

  I tried to get a response for one last time, risking, ‘Don’t you like him?’

  She closed her eyes, rejecting me utterly, and returned to her own world.

  ‘She don’t say nothin’,’ hissed the old man sitting in the chair nearest to me. He peered searchingly at Miss Bennett for a few moments and then jerked his head in the direction of a door on the far side of the room that led into a large conservatory. I made my way there and he followed me, slowly and painfully, half a minute or so later.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t suggested struggling so far,’ I said.

  ‘If you don’t bloody struggle you may as well go outside and shoot yourself,’ he declared. ‘Besides, that woman has long ears.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as though you like her very much.’

  He flopped down on to a padded bench. ‘I don’t like people who can’t even spare you a smile – no matter how ga-ga they are. Sit down, gal, so I can see you better.’

  I sat.

  ‘Thought so. I’ve seen your face somewhere before. Been on the box, have yer?’

  ‘A few times,’ I replied. ‘In books programmes.’

  ‘That’s it then. Sorry, my ears are too long too and I heard you say you were buying her house. I’m not too daft to read the papers and I know a police sergeant came to talk to her the other day. Is this the place where they found the body?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘P’raps it’s just as well that she’s here then, not knowing, like.’

  ‘You’re probably right. How long has she been here?’

  ‘Around a year. I know that because she came two days after my birthday last year and it’s next week. I overheard someone say that she’d been in another home but had got worse.’

  ‘D’you happen to know which home that was?’

  ‘No, but a green people-carrier with some kind of gold-coloured logo on the side brought her. I didn’t pay much attention.’

  ‘Does she have any visitors?’

  ‘No one that I’ve seen.’

  ‘The police are trying to find out who was living in her house when the murder was committed. Do you know anything about a nephew who sometimes goes to New Zealand?’

  ‘No, sorry, nothin’. As I said, she don’t speak.’

  ‘What, to nobody?’

  ‘Sort of grunts when the staff ask her things, that’s all.’

  I thanked him and left. I did not enquire as to which care home Miss Bennett had come from as I knew I would be wasting my time. ‘Client confidentiality’ would see to that.

  At three thirty that afternoon I had a call from Patrick.

  ‘He tried to do a runner so I had to arrest him,’ were his first words. ‘I’d already got Immigration at the airport involved, of course, and he threw a punch at me and still tried to get away. The man stank of booze so obviously he’d been drinking on the plane.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a lot of drinking, from across the other side of the world,’ I commented.

  ‘Too right. As far as the rest of it goes Mike’s still working on the theory that Irma and Imelda are, or were, the same woman and there’s a connection with organized crime. At least, he’s keeping an open mind about it until it’s proved otherwise. As you know, this Martino Capelli is bad news and Mike really wants to know what he, and others, are planning. It’s been near the top of his priorities list for months. The underworld grapevine’s humming with all kinds of plots but that could be gossip or deliberate red herrings.’

  ‘You’re at HQ then?’

  ‘Yes. D’you want to come up? Mike reckons it might be useful for you to be in on the interview with David Bennett.’

  ‘He could be a Capelli minion, you mean?’

  ‘We don’t know, do we? He does have a previous conviction for assault. And we really do need to know why this woman was murdered.’

  ‘Was this conviction in the UK?’

  ‘No, New Zealand.’

  ‘Look, I might be being naive here, but I’ve never associated New Zealand with the likes of the Capellis.’

  ‘That’s what they hope everyone thinks though, isn’t it? These people are branching out everywhere.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t come up tonight. Matthew’s playing in the school concert.’

  ‘That’s OK. Bennett’s being detained overnight and brought here for ten thirty tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What shall I tell him about your absence?’ I asked evenly.

  ‘Oh God, I’d promised to be there, hadn’t I? You’ll just have to tell him the truth, that I’m working. I’d actually forgotten all about it.’

  ‘There’s time if you got a train soon. Why don’t you come home and we could both travel up early tomorrow morning?’

  ‘No, sorry. I’d like to but I’ve arranged to meet an old army chum for dinner.’

  Why was I doubting his word? Why did I wonder if Alexandra had checked out of the hotel in Bath and was heading back to her flat in town?

  David Bennett was furious. Livid. He was a big man with a florid complexion, untidy fair hair and was, I guessed, in possession of a bullish demeanour normally, never mind his present anger. He occupied a chair in the interview room but gave every impression of being about to detonate from it at any moment. It was probably only the presence of Patrick, who had positioned himself between Bennett and the door, that kept the man from raging around the room, the interviewer exuding a healthy menace.

  ‘Right,’ Patrick said, shooting me what I shall describe as a brief professional smile, this nothing to do with any difficulties that might exist between us, but to make it appear that I was merely one of the tiny cogs in SOCA’s machine and not his wife, current squeeze, or whatever. This was normal practice with potentially serious criminals to prevent any possible revenge being visited upon me should he happen to half screw their heads off. ‘This is Miss Langley. With your permission she will take notes. You may object if you wish.’

  Bennett just scowled at me which I interpreted as a ‘that’s fine by me.’

  I knew that Michael Greenway was listening to the interview in an adjoining room and watching through the one-way glass window that gave every appearance of being a large mirror on the wall of the room we were in.

  As I had entered I had assessed Patrick very quickly but carefully. There did not appear to be any signs of post-coital bliss but then again he is a master of the art of schooling his facial expression.

  He formally opened the interview and started the recording machine. ‘Let’s be quite clear on this,’ he opened the proceedings with, ‘When you’ve been questioned here, and whatever our conclusions are, you’ll be taken to Bath and handed over to Detective Chief Inspector Carrick who is heading the investigation into the discovery of the body of a murdered woman at 3, Cherry Tree Row, Lansdown Hill, Bath. Is that understood?’

  ‘I’ve been abroad for months,’ Bennett grated. ‘Which could have been proved if you’d bothered to go to the trouble. This isn’t anything to do with me.’

  ‘And I’d like to remind you that there’s already a charge of resisting arrest and striking a police officer.’

  ‘I’d been drinking. And anyway, I hit your shoulder – no harm done.’

  ‘That’s only because I have good reflexes,’ he was told with a nasty smile. ‘To resume,’ Patrick continued, ‘I received an email from the DCI early this morning to the effect that you were the registered occupant of the house, both for council tax purposes and on the voting register, for a period of three years up until thirteen months ago.’

  Bennett took a deep breath, stared at the ceiling for a moment and then decided to cooperate. ‘I was listed as the occupant, but I wasn’t. At least, only for a short while. The place was a tip, unfit to live in. I kept an eye on it because I knew it would be mine one day as my aunt’s leaving it to me in her will.’

  ‘Where did you live?’

  ‘I rented a small flat in Claverton
, little more than a cupboard really. You haven’t even told me who’s been killed.’

  ‘Her name was Imelda Burnside.’

  Bennett’s eyes narrowed. ‘Imelda!’

  ‘She was known to you then.’

  ‘We went out for a short time.’

  He did not seem to be at all upset.

  ‘She lived with you when you were at the house?’

  ‘Yes, for a bit.’

  ‘Did you break up?’

  ‘No, I got fed up with the conditions there – Imelda wasn’t too keen on housework either – and rented the flat at Claverton because it was all I could afford at the time. It wasn’t big enough for both of us.’

  ‘Did you let her stay on at your aunt’s house?’

  ‘Yes, she’d lost her job.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She got another one quite quickly and said she’d pay the utilities so I let her stay on for a little longer. Then I got a letter from her to say that she hated the new job and was moving, going to live with her sister.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About a year ago – not all that long after I’d moved out.’

  ‘Do you know the sister’s name?’

  ‘If I remember rightly it was Irma.’

  ‘Where did she live?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  I said, ‘Was your aunt aware that she was living at her house?’

  ‘I didn’t bother her with it.’ He added, but openly resenting my interjection, ‘She probably wouldn’t have approved.’

  ‘But you don’t go to see her now.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Please answer the question.’

  ‘No,’ Bennett said after a pause. ‘What the hell’s the point? The woman’s just a cabbage now – finished.’

  ‘Would you say that your aunt’s fond of you?’

  ‘What a stupid question,’ the man said scornfully. ‘Yes, very – or she used to be when her brain was all right. Otherwise she wouldn’t be leaving me her house, would she?’

  ‘What is your business, Mr Bennett?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘I do a bit of this and that. I’ve a couple of properties in Christchurch that are rented out. My mother was of New Zealand nationality so I’ve a dual passport. Over here I own three flats over shops in Bearflat, Bath. Sometimes I take a temporary job or buy and sell stuff on the Internet – if I want extra cash.’