Go Not Gently

by Cath Staincliffe

  Baking. Once all women did it. Lily and Agnes would have grown up knowing how to rustle up a Madeira cake or the recipe for parkin without blinking.

  ‘There was a message for you,’ Sheila said. ‘The police rang, they left the number, they want you to ring them.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  It was Inspector Crawshaw. I dialled and waited. The phone rang on and on. At last it was picked up. I asked switch board to transfer me to Crawshaw. He was brief and to the point. ‘We’d like to have another word. If you’re in now I’ll send someone round.’

  Sergeant Bell turned up twenty minutes later. By then Maddie was engrossed in helping Sheila. I left them in the kitchen and showed the sergeant into the lounge. Would Sheila let Maddie lick the bowl? What about salmonella? It all seemed more complicated these days.

  Sergeant Bell flipped open her notebook, checked her watch and noted the time.

  ‘When we last spoke to you, you told us you’d not seen Mr Achebe since Thursday, the twenty-fourth of February,’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And he’d not made contact since?’ Spoken slowly, making sure I considered the question carefully.

  ‘Yes, except he’d left a message on my answerphone. I only heard it today, I’ve not been in the office much. He still owes me some money and he was ringing to say he still intended to pay. It must have been before all this.’

  A look of incredulity crossed her face. Then she looked exasperated. ‘When was this?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, my machine hasn’t got a time announcement. But like I say, it must have been before Thursday, before it all happened. I mean he’d hardly ring me about something so trivial if he’d just killed his wife.’ I still couldn’t relate the words to an actual death. Couldn’t believe Tina was really dead, murdered.

  ‘Do you know what day the message was left?’

  ‘No, not for sure. I could probably find out if you really need to know.’

  ‘We do,’ she snapped.

  ‘A friend left a message too. I could ask her, see if she can remember when it was.’

  She nodded. The ponytail bounced briskly. ‘We’ll need the tape.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I’ll take it now.’ Bossy. She stood up pulling on gloves.

  ‘Look, I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just a message about the bill.’

  ‘The big deal,’ she was really rattled now, raising her voice, ‘is that James Achebe is suspected of killing his wife. The couple were heard arguing prior to her death.’ I’m sure she wouldn’t have told me the half of it if she hadn’t been so pissed off. ‘She was last seen by the postman at nine fifteen that morning; at ten o’clock a neighbour failed to get an answer and notified us. He has no alibi for those forty-five minutes. But,’ she glared at me, ‘but,’ (I had heard her the first time) ‘he claims he was at work at the time we estimate the attack took place. No one saw him there until later on. So we’ve only his word for it. And he claims he made a phone call, rang you.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ I felt the blood drop from my face, shock ripple through my wrists and fingers. The answerphone message was Jimmy’s alibi.

  ‘What?’ Sergeant Bell demanded.

  ‘I’ve left the machine on. If anyone rings it’ll record over it. Oh, shit.’

  I ran for my coat, called to Sheila that I’d be out for ten minutes and left with Sergeant Bell. We jogged round the corner. With every step I berated myself. Stupid, sloppy, incompetent.

  Grant Dobson was washing the car in their drive. We swapped greetings but I’d no time for being sociable.

  I clattered down the stairs, the sergeant at my heels, unlocked my office door.

  The answerphone sat on the right side of my desk, its little red message light still and steady. I pressed the off switch. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I pulled out my chair and sank down. Pressed play.

  We stood in the gloomy room, breathing harshly, and listened as Rachel’s voice burbled on. Then it came. ‘It’s Jimmy Achebe. I know I still owe you for the job…’ I let it play through. This time I noticed the noises in the background, vans coming and going, the occasional squawk of Tannoy, familiar to me from his previous calls. When Rachel started again I stopped the recording.

  ‘That sounded like his workplace,’ I said. ‘He’s rung me from there a couple of times before.’

  She nodded, noncommittal.

  ‘You’ll contact your friend and find out what day she rang you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I tried then and there but all I got was Rachel’s answerphone. I reminded her of my home number and asked her to ring me as soon as possible.

  ‘I’ll take the tape.’

  I ejected it and handed it over.

  ‘We’ll be in touch if there’s anything else.’

  ‘This might give him an alibi though, might it?’

  She zipped up her jacket. ‘It’s a bit flimsy,’ she said. ‘All it proves, if we can establish it’s Thursday, is that he rang sometime after nine.’

  ‘And before nine thirty.’

  She frowned.

  I held my hand out for the tape.

  ‘Listen, Rachel says the time again when she rings back. It pinpoints it. Jimmy must have rung in that half-hour.’

  I played Rachel’s second message. Sergeant Bell listened. But she didn’t give anything away, just nodded when it finished. I gave the tape back to her. She slipped it in a plastic bag, then in her pocket. Pulled on her gloves. And left.

  Why hadn’t the police asked me directly about any answerphone messages? I wasn’t the only sloppy one. If Jimmy had been giving that as an alibi it should have been checked out straightaway. What on earth was the point of all the allusions to whether he’d been in contact when what they had to corroborate was whether a message had been left on my machine that Thursday morning? I felt my cheeks grow warm with rising anger. And because of their beating round the bush the message could so easily have been lost.

  I locked up and climbed the stairs. The tape proved that Jimmy hadn’t killed Tina. It must be at least half an hour’s drive from Levenshulme to Swift Deliveries over the far side of Swinton. Tina had been alive at nine fifteen, dead at ten o’clock and Jimmy had rung me between nine and nine thirty. No way could he have made that call and been in Levenshulme at the crucial time. Jimmy Achebe wasn’t a murderer.

  But if Jimmy hadn’t killed Tina then who the hell had?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  At home, the cake lay cooling on the side. Maddie stood on a chair at the sink washing up. Totally absorbed.

  ‘She’s not shy, is she?’ Sheila smiled, tipped her head at Maddie.

  ‘No,’ I said. Cranky, opinionated, moody? Yes. Shy? No. ‘Wait till the honeymoon’s over.’

  ‘You get the worst of it,’ she said. ‘Mothers do. Do you work with the police much?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all. They wanted to talk to me about a case they’re covering. The suspect’s an ex-client.’

  ‘Sounds very dramatic.’

  ‘It’s not usually,’ I said. ‘The job is ninety per cent waiting around or looking up forms and checking facts and figures.’ The other ten per cent could be particularly hairy, though. I’d been stabbed and shot at on two previous cases where things had turned very nasty.

  We were interrupted by the arrival of Ray and Tom. Tea and cakes were devoured and then the demands of domesticity pushed work from my mind.

  Saturday had been dominated by the job. Sunday, I restricted myself to a perfunctory phone call to Agnes arranging to see her Monday morning.

  Agnes was looking quite chipper when I arrived. She’d made an excellent recovery from the flu. I declined her offer of tea.

  I was anxious to get straight down to business.

  ‘I went on Saturday,’ I began, ‘but Lily didn’t seem very well at all. She was wandering about when I got there and later she lost track of time. She was talking about the war years and her husband, George. She got quite distressed too
, frightened, claimed that people were stealing from her, trying to poison her. Sounds just like what happened at Homelea.’

  Agnes shook her head slowly. ‘Oh, Lily,’ she muttered.

  ‘What did Charles say? Did you see him?’

  She nodded. ‘He called in briefly after he’d been to the hospital. Dr Montgomery is doing a full assessment today but he’s pretty certain that it is Alzheimer’s. He said he hoped he could settle her and she’d be able to move to one of the nursing homes who specialise in it…care of the mentally frail he called it.’ She swallowed before carrying on.

  ‘Charles mentioned the business of me being next of kin too but Dr Montgomery said it would confuse the records and I was welcome to visit at any time. He didn’t see any need to complicate matters.’

  ‘So we’re going to have to find everything out from Charles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Agnes, if anything happens to Lily, who inherits her estate?’

  She blinked in surprise. ‘Charles, there’s no one else. Why?’

  ‘It’s probably irrelevant but I just wondered if Lily had amended her will recently, made any changes.’

  ‘Not that I know of. I don’t understand…’ Her face creased deep with confusion.

  ‘Well, I’m trying to consider every possible angle. If there’s been any deliberate maltreatment of Lily we need to think about motives. Who’d want to make her ill, why? What benefit could there be? If someone stood to gain financially…’

  Agnes stared at me with a look of incredulity. It did sound ridiculous. She held up her hand. ‘Sal, please don’t imagine that I think someone is deliberately mistreating Lily. I only thought there might have been some error of judgement, a mistake, and that people are covering it up. That’s why I want you to check the tablets.’

  ‘I’ve organised that. It’ll be a few days before we get the results.’

  ‘Charles was quite shocked at the change in her,’ she said. ‘I wish there was something I could do.’

  ‘You could visit her for a start.’ It came out more sharply than I intended.

  ‘But I…’ she was flustered, her hand shook, sought out the brooch on her cardigan, ‘I had flu,’ she protested.

  ‘And before that it was the chiropodist,’ I retorted.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. I let it stretch while I curbed my anger. When I spoke I kept my tone deliberately neutral.

  ‘I know about Nora.’

  ‘Nora?’

  ‘Don’t, Agnes. Lily told me. Nora, your sister. She ended up in Kingsfield.’

  She pressed her hand up to her mouth and struggled to stop the shaking. ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘Not much more than that, really. That Nora was Nora Donlan, she’d been sent to Kingsfield. She gave me the impression it’d been a well-kept secret. No one ever talked about it.’

  ‘I can’t, excuse me.’ Agnes left the room.

  I sat in the quiet and listened to the chirrups from sparrows outside, the occasional puttering sound from the fire. My mouth was dry now. I’d have liked to have got a drink but I didn’t dare move and risk intruding on Agnes.

  Some time later she came back. Her face was taut and ashen. She clutched a large white hanky but her eyes were dry. She lowered herself into the chair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘That’s why you’ve not been to see Lily?’

  She nodded in assent.

  ‘Is Nora still there?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ She drew a couple of breaths, releasing the air slowly with a shuddering sound. ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘Nora’s dead. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. The words or perhaps the wobbly note in my own voice served to trigger her tears. Agnes stayed where she was, weeping quietly, almost sedately. She leant forward, buried her face in the hanky. Tears sprang to my own eyes, stinging. I sniffed them back. I went and knelt at her side. Put my arm around her shoulders. She didn’t shrug me off. I didn’t speak. Agnes wept. At last, taking a couple of deep breaths, she straightened up. I slid my arm away. She turned her head to face me.

  ‘It’s more than sixty years ago,’ she said, ‘sixty years, never mentioned.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ I offered.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, ‘I can’t, I just can’t.’

  I waited a while before I spoke again. I felt clumsy but whatever her emotional state I needed to make my position plain to her. ‘Agnes, apart from checking those tablets there’s nothing else I can do to help Lily. You and Charles will have to arrange the best care for her. There’s no point in my visiting again. She needs friends, people she knows, not me. It’s up to you whether you can face it or not. After all, they may move her out into a nursing home.’

  ‘I’ve been so foolish,’ she said, ‘so cowardly. Will you come with me tomorrow, please? You’re right. It’s my place to go. If you could help me, this first time. .

  I couldn’t say no.

  Rachel caught me at home that afternoon.

  ‘Sal, I got back late last night. Weekend in Derbyshire.’

  ‘Not camping?’ I was aghast.

  ‘No,’ she laughed, ‘residential training. Exhausting. You wouldn’t believe what goes on and Social Services fork out for it all–’

  ‘Rachel,’ I cut in before she launched into a blow-by-blow account, ‘when you rang me about the room, what day was it?’

  She hummed and hawed a bit. ‘Wednesday? No, Thursday.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Wednesday I was in court all day and Friday I went straight off to Derbyshire, it must have been Thursday. Why?’

  ‘Oh, I’d other messages, I needed to work out when they were left.’

  ‘So is it free?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The room! Honestly, Sal.’

  ‘Sorry, miles away. No, it’s gone, we’ve got someone already.’

  ‘Well, if you hear of anywhere else. This poor woman’s getting desperate. Turns out that the cousin is into the Internet in a big way, Worldwide Web, keeps her up till two in the morning enthusing and cruising, or whatever they do.’

  I rang the police and got through to Sergeant Bell. I told her it had been Thursday when Jimmy Achebe rang me and left his message. It was an alibi, wasn’t it? It was exactly the same time as the attack on Tina. There was no way he could have made it to work all the way over in Swinton in time to ring me if he’d done it. She wouldn’t commit herself. Was he still being held? He was. Was there any other evidence to contradict the alibi? She couldn’t divulge any information. I felt like throttling her. Why couldn’t she bring herself to admit that the tape was pretty watertight proof that Jimmy was innocent? Did the truth not suit the case they’d been building? If she wouldn’t tell me anything now I’d make a point of ringing her regularly until she did. If only to remind her that I knew about the alibi and that I expected them to release Jimmy as a result.

  I had a cheese salad butty and then cycled to the office supplies place in Didsbury to get a new tape for my answerphone. While I was in the area I called at the cheese shop and stocked up. I was always overwhelmed by the choice but invariably ended up with the same tasty Lancashire, mature Cheddar and a soft Irish blue called Cashell. At the health food shop I bought tinned chickpeas, vegeburger mix, live yogurt and olives. Everywhere adverts exhorted me to celebrate Mother’s Day –with chocolates, flowers, food, teddy bears. There was even a sign attached to the lamppost pushing helicopter rides for Mother’s Day, book now! Did they get a rush on like Interflora did?

  In the couple of hours left before collecting the children I decided to put some work into the garden. The first weeds were just emerging. I spent time clearing those, digging out myriad small dandelions. Then I shovelled out the compost ready for forking in round the shrubs and in the borders. Over the winter the brick box had got covered with dead wood and brambles. I raked those into a pile for a bonfire. I scraped the bottom of the box
clear all ready for new waste.

  We had a large garden which I’d made my own over the years that we’d rented the house. The basics had been there before, lawn, flowerbeds, rockery. To them I’d added a bower cum-patio next to the house, a suntrap for the long summer afternoons. We’d put a sandpit in for the kids and a climbing frame. And I’d divided off the bottom of the garden with lattices up which I grew clematis, honeysuckle and annual sweet peas. That area got the morning sun.

  My plans included a water feature. I’d been keen on the notion of a fountain and pool but one look at the price of pumps to circulate the water had shifted the scheme from intention to pipe dream. Maybe when my boat came in.. . I could still go for a pond anyway.

  I dug in some of the compost. In the crisp March air it was hard to imagine the scents and colours that summer would bring. By the time I’d done one border my shoulders and back were aching and my time was up. I washed my hands and face, watched the great tits on the bird nuts for a couple of minutes. I’d worked away some of the tension left from dealing with Agnes that morning. And I was thankful that the job, with its erratic nature, at least allowed me time, precious time. For weeding and watching birds feeding and for playing in the soil.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lily had gone. Agnes and I stood in the room next to the bed she’d occupied. It had been stripped down and made fresh. I looked in the locker. It was empty.

  ‘I’ll go and find out what’s happening,’ I said, sounding more relaxed than I felt. Agnes nodded. She looked bewildered, a tremor shook her lower lip. She’d been tense and silent on the journey to the hospital.

  If Lily was dead, how would Agnes bear it? But Lily hadn’t been frail, not in that sense, when I’d called on Saturday.

  I saw the Irish nurse, whom I’d met before, along the corridor and asked her if we could have a word. She came into the room.

  ‘Do you know what’s happened?’ I asked

  ‘Mrs Palmer, is it?’ She checked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think she had a fall. They’ve taken her into the Infirmary. You’d be better talking to Mrs Li. I wasn’t on duty.’