Corpse in Waiting

by Margaret Duffy

‘You all deaf?’ Greenway shouted.

  Everyone had dived to the floor and the women who had already been on the carpet grabbed what clothing they could find and crawled towards the sides of the room. I knew I ought to help them but they were reasonably safe if they stayed there. My role, I decided, was the traditional one, watching Patrick and Greenway’s backs.

  We were by no means through yet.

  Someone fired and a bullet thunked into the wall somewhere behind me. After this events became confused, some of it so weird I thought afterwards that my memory was playing tricks. Had Greenway really picked up a man and thrown him, like a large log of wood at three others who charged at him through a doorway? And when a man had come from behind us had Patrick clubbed him down with the Glock before he could fire? The room emptied and there was more sporadic shooting in other parts of the house.

  Belatedly, I obeyed Patrick’s swift gesture that I should go back into the first room and not long afterwards, a matter of seconds probably, it went oddly quiet. The drunk was still sprawled in his armchair and other than for him I was alone in the room. At that moment a vast noise erupted from somewhere out the front as the door was battered in. Sirens howled, vehicle tyres slewed on gravel, orders were shouted, tracker dogs barked, women started screaming again. Then a man appeared in a doorway and furtively crossed the room towards the doors into the garden.

  ‘Stop right there,’ I ordered, standing up. Only then did I notice the gun in his hand.

  ‘I’m with the cops, dearie,’ he said.

  ‘No, you’re Romano Descallier.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said with a broad smile brimming with gold fillings and insincerity.

  ‘I was given your description,’ I informed him, ‘Medium build, medium height, middle-aged but looking older, wishy-washy hair, pale blue eyes. Hobnobber with the rich and famous, criminal record as long as your arm but what it all boils down to is that you’re just a nondescript old fart.’

  ‘Bitch!’ he spat.

  ‘You’re under arrest.’

  His gun arm shot up but I got him first.

  I loathe being called dearie.

  NINETEEN

  I kicked the dropped weapon out of the way just as Mike Greenway came into my line of vision, the whole house now reverberating with the tramp of standard issue police footwear. He was triumphant but hurt, one sleeve of his sweater dark with blood which was dripping to leave a trail on the floor.

  ‘You’re about to be tedious by saying it’s only a scratch,’ I scolded. ‘It isn’t. Please allow me to do something about it for you.’

  He caught sight of Descallier who was nursing a wounded gun arm and upon seeing the commander, fainted. ‘You got him! Brilliant! I was beginning to think he’d got away!’ He then subsided abruptly on top of the drunk in the armchair.

  I shoved his head between his knees, closed and locked the doors to the garden, removing the key to prevent my prisoner from getting away and went off through the mêlée to find the kitchen where I rummaged – bugger forensics – until I unearthed a couple of new tea towels. With them I endeavoured to stop the bleeding from the flesh wound in Greenway’s shoulder, having ruthlessly hauled the sweater off him to get at it.

  ‘No one tried to arrest me just now,’ I said chattily to try to mitigate the pain I was causing him as I pressed a folded tea towel on to the wound.

  ‘They’d be raving mad if they did,’ he said through tight lips.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well you hardly look like a trafficked woman or one of Descallier’s trollops, do you?’ he went on with some asperity.

  ‘You wouldn’t know where Patrick is, by any chance?’

  ‘I have an idea he’s gone to look for that woman.’

  I had forgotten all about Alexandra.

  When the place soon became teeming with paramedics as well as everyone else I was able to leave the Commander in someone’s care. I presented a cop who looked as though he might be in charge with the Smith and Wesson, together with the location of its real owner, plus friend, added that I was with Greenway and left him, a trifle bemused, in the entrance hall at the bottom of the staircase.

  Ascending, I found myself on a spacious landing – or at least it would have been without so many police in it – like the hallway below almost a room in its own right. All eight doors visible from this were open, a quick tour on my part revealing that the views through them suggested that at least two led into suites. One of these I knew from Alan Kilmartin’s drawing was Descallier’s. It was sumptuously furnished, a shower room I glanced into in passing loaded with gold taps and other fittings, used silk-embroidered towels thrown down on the floor and into the bath.

  ‘Looking for someone?’ said a businesslike, smartly-dressed woman, presumably a CID officer, coming from within and forcing me to stand aside.

  ‘Yes, Patrick Gillard. I’m with SOCA.’

  ‘Another one! I wasn’t even aware you were here, but do carry on. There’s a female in there I think I’m going to arrest as I suspect she’s Descallier’s mistress. She’s talking to a SOCA man she referred to as Patrick. What’s your interest?’ she finished by bluntly asking.

  ‘He’s my husband.’

  ‘I’m envious,’ was her parting remark as she walked away.

  ‘I left a confiscated firearm with your man downstairs,’ I called after her, having realized that she was in charge. ‘I fired it twice in protecting my colleagues.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They were in the huge master bedroom, Alexandra huddled up on the bed wearing a silky robe and her usual pout, Patrick leaning against an ornate chest of drawers that would have done Versailles proud. Gilt-framed mirrors were everywhere and the curtains were heavily draped velvet with huge gold-trimmed tie-backs. I began to see what the boss lady had meant; arms crossed, his shirt in tatters, his face marked, the welts on his wrists raw, Patrick was still the only thing in the room worth looking at.

  ‘Oh, not you,’ said Alexandra. ‘Come to gloat?’

  ‘Those phone calls you made . . .’ I began.

  ‘He’s just asked me that. And I told him.’

  ‘To get the police going to all the wrong places,’ Patrick said. ‘As we have recently suspected, with planted clothing and other stuff. But not Boyles House, that was a real prison, wasn’t it, Alex?’

  She improved on the pout, saying nothing.

  ‘You were not at all keen when Descallier first suggested a partnership so you tried to do a runner to Bath,’ Patrick continued. ‘I’m guessing here, Alex, you’ll have to correct me if I’m wrong. But first he waved a big stick in the shape of Stefan and then enough money and promises under your nose to make you change your mind. And got rid of the other bed-warmers that Alan Kilmartin saw when he came here with you that time. I reckon old Dessie actually fell for you in a big way, never mind your little business, which, let’s face it, is a microdot in his empire. For after all, he’d already met you several times.’

  ‘I wish they’d strung you up by your bloody neck!’ Alexandra shrieked. She slapped her hands over her mouth for a moment. ‘I – I didn’t mean that.’ She gazed up at him, tears welling in the beautiful eyes. ‘Please, please help me. You could, easily. You have a lot of authority. I could that see you were going to be wildly successful when we first met.’

  ‘I seem to remember that you colluded in trying to kill my wife,’ Patrick murmured.

  Authority, the boss, returned with a uniformed woman constable, and politely intimated that this really was her patch. We left the room. There was really nothing else to say but I still would have liked to ask a lot more questions.

  ‘Thank you for your forbearance,’ Patrick said at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Any time,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘No, seriously, I was expecting you to take her apart.’

  ‘Am I that stormy?’

  He leaned on me a bit. ‘D’you reckon anyone’s got a couple of aspirins?’

  It
had, Patrick admitted later, gone badly wrong. One of his main objectives, to use subversion; hoping to engage with the workforce, nurse any grievances they might have and create dissent so there was every chance they would round on those in charge, had misfired. They all, it appeared, had big stakes in the set-up and were not just hired gunmen, thugs and bruisers. Worse, Alexandra had already told Descallier about us, that we worked for SOCA and were likely be on the case so there was no getting out of that. She had said she had the idea we would go to her flat and as luck would have it we had walked right into the group Descallier had sent round there.

  It came out later that Descallier had been keen to delay any police investigation, which was getting uncomfortably close, but had not been remotely interested in selling Patrick to the highest bidder. But Patrick had at least, probably by his demeanour, made the man reluctant to kill him, the years in prison, should he be convicted of all the criminal charges he had so far wriggled out of no doubt ratcheting up unpleasantly in the man’s mind. So he had decided just to string him up to teach him a lesson and then dump him ignominiously somewhere. After they had disposed of the latest batch of women. Of these, although a couple were ill after their treatment, fortunately none had actually been hurt during the raid which was a relief to us.

  Neither Patrick nor I were personally involved in the aftermath of the case, our only connection the leads provided by our connection with Alexandra that led all the way back to house-hunting in Bath. I found I despised her but pulled myself up sharp: how would I have reacted when given the same choice? Would I have settled for a stinking prison in case I told my story to the police or cooperated and have a life of luxury?

  Using our first aid kit, I had applied analgesic, antiseptic salve to Patrick’s wrists, which I had then bandaged. His hands were still comparatively weak and he was suffering from racking pains in the shoulders and a badly bruised face. I had no idea how he had managed to fell one of Descallier’s gang, the man who had come up behind us and had been about to shoot Greenway in the back.

  ‘You did a good job on the man with his trousers around his ankles,’ Patrick said to me.

  ‘I didn’t kill him, did I?’ I gasped.

  ‘No, but he won’t be going in for rape for a while, if ever.’

  Oh, good.

  To his disgust, Greenway had been carted off to hospital where, despite his protests, he was kept in overnight after being stitched up and then sent home the following morning with dire warnings as to what would happen if he opened the wound up again. This meant that his wife issued him with some kind of meaningful ultimatum and he did not go to work to conduct the debriefing with us that he had planned. I did not regret this at all: it had not really been our case.

  Months later, Descallier and most of his associates, were given various prison sentences for people trafficking and other crimes that were on file, the Metropolitan Police generously giving SOCA a one-line mention in one of several reports.

  And Alexandra? Her defence counsel played on her big blue eyes for all he was worth, portraying her as the naive, even a little simple, woman preyed on by the ruthless master criminal. She finished up having to do a few hundred hours community service, which come to think of it, was the best punishment.

  But right now, we went home.

  ‘We were little more than armed back-up to two cases really,’ Patrick said to James Carrick a couple of days later when we met him for a drink in the Ring o’ Bells. ‘It’s not what I joined SOCA to do but you can’t pick and choose.’

  I thought his views on our roles a little sweeping but made no comment, asking instead, ‘How’s the investigation into the head in the cupboard case going?’

  Carrick pulled a face. ‘I’m forced to admit that it’s stalled. Despite establishing exactly who the victim was, Imelda Burnside, discovering the murder weapon, the old police truncheon and the knife that was used to decapitate the body, plus knowing that she had had rows with David Bennett, who has now admitted knocking her around, I have absolutely no evidence that he killed her. It would be a waste of time and money bringing it to court. All I can say for certain is that she wasn’t killed in the house but the body was decapitated in the garden. That suggests she was killed out there too.’

  ‘What does Bennett say about the truncheon and knife?’ Patrick enquired.

  ‘I showed them to him and he was emphatic he’d never set eyes on either of them, not even when he visited his aunt in the sheltered accommodation where she lived before she went into care. I can’t say that I believe him but short of getting out the thumbscrews . . .’

  ‘She was in another nursing home before the one she’s at now,’ I told him. ‘One of the residents told me.’

  ‘Not that it can have any bearing on anything but which one, do you know?’

  ‘No, but she’d arrived in a green people-carrier with gold lettering on it. And I’ve just remembered, Imelda Burnside worked in the same nursing home where Miss Bennett was for a time. Irma told us. It could have been that one.’

  ‘Did she say anything else that might be useful?’

  ‘She said she’d met her once and didn’t like her. In her words, she was “bonkers normally”, and hated everyone.’

  ‘But seemingly not her nephew.’

  ‘Yes, she hated him too.’

  ‘Then why leave him the house?’

  ‘Perhaps that was better than not leaving a will at all and it going to the State. I take it the woman has never married – I mean, some women revert to their maiden name when they’re divorced – and there’s no other family.’

  ‘It might be worth finding out,’ Carrick mused. ‘Someone might know about the will and if David Bennett was had up for murder there might be a case for a challenge to it.’

  We all confessed that we were a little hazy on the details of civil law and then went on to talk about something else.

  ‘It doesn’t add up,’ I said to Patrick a few days later. He was having a long weekend.

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘When you really think about it, why would David Bennett, having killed Imelda in a rage, or whatever, then cut her head off and put it in a cupboard? The house was due to be his. He wouldn’t want two stinking messes there, never mind the resulting hoo-ha.’

  ‘To make it look as though she’d been murdered by some nutter and thus draw suspicion away from himself,’ Patrick replied without hesitation.

  ‘OK, but presumably he wants to make money on it, not live there. Who’d want to buy it?’

  ‘Well, you do.’

  ‘I did make the initial decision before finding the head,’ I reminded him. ‘And who, exactly, has put the place on the market? Bennett? How can he? His aunt’s still alive.’

  ‘She might have done.’

  ‘She’s not mentally capable.’

  ‘You’d better ring Carrick with all that. It’s not our problem.’

  ‘It is my problem. I feel responsible.’

  But men cannot understand such female notions and Patrick finished his coffee and went back into the garden to carry on mowing the lawn. I knew his hands were not yet really strong enough for the task but supposed that his thinking was that if he ignored how they felt they would recover more quickly. He was probably right.

  James, whom I had already discovered was a more sensitive soul and whose problem it most emphatically was, thoughtfully heard me out.

  ‘I can answer one of those questions because I felt I had to establish the truth myself,’ he said. ‘According to the estate agent Miss Bennett did put the house on the market but under the guidance of her solicitor. Perhaps she’s known him, or her, for a long time and does manage to communicate with whoever it is.’

  ‘Does she have to sell up to pay for her care?’

  ‘I didn’t ask that as it didn’t seem relevant. That’s the problem; the only person who might have a lot of answers is beyond reach.’

  ‘I’m not being nosy, just thinking that if she is having to s
ell for that reason then if she lives for quite a while there won’t be much left for her nephew.’

  ‘Yes, but surely he can’t be planning to finish her off.’

  I almost chided him with, ‘No, silly,’ but said instead, ‘She hates him, remember? If she left him the house rather than let it be forfeited to the Crown in the event of her dying intestate only for the money it fetches to trickle slowly away for her nursing home care – not that she might have any choice in the matter – she could be one happy lady thinking of him ranting and raving in his cupboard at Claverton.’

  ‘It would probably serve him right. So where does that leave us?’

  ‘Nowhere really now you’ve answered my question.’

  ‘That’s a shame as I could do with a breakthrough.’

  I stared at the phone after he had suddenly rung off: he must be under enormous pressure to get a result.

  ‘You know the head in the cupboard case we have down here?’ I said to Michael Greenway after enquiring about his shoulder injury.

  ‘I gather you’d wanted to buy the place.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m ringing you. I’m sure DCI Carrick’s getting it in the neck for not having yet solved the murder and I was wondering if I can use my SOCA ID in order to try to give him a hand.’

  ‘Has he asked for your help?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a short silence before he said, ‘D’you have any leads?’

  ‘No, if I did I would have shared them with him.’

  ‘Patrick too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It would have to be in your own time.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘OK, you have my permission – off the record. Be careful though, David Bennett’s not the main suspect for nothing; he’s pretty stupid as well as being dangerous to women.’

  My reasons were not entirely altruistic: the book had hit the wall again and sitting staring at a computer screen hoping for inspiration is always a waste of time. Greenway need not have warned me about David Bennett as I had no intention of going anywhere near him, that was Carrick’s job. As I had said to Patrick, I could imagine the man lashing out in a rage and killing Imelda but not indulging, if that was the right word, in what took place afterwards.