by John Harvey
‘A moment, ma’am.’
‘Yes, Mark, what is it?’
‘Adriana, ma’am.’
‘Who?’
‘Adriana Borrell, the sculptor. Winter’s girlfriend from way back.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s just returned from Cyprus, apparently. Finally responded to one of my messages.’
‘And you’re telling me this why?’
‘Just checking we still want to speak to her.’
‘Speak to her? Yes, of course, why not?’
Leaving him standing there, Hadley hurried on into her office. If that boy doesn’t develop some initiative sharpish, she was thinking, I’m going to have to ship him off back into uniform.
Elder got back from his run that morning to find a message from Trevor Cordon on the answerphone. A body had been found in Penlee Park in the middle of Penzance, would he be interested in taking a look? Anything, Elder thought, for a diversion. Even another dead body.
Cordon met him at the Trewithen Road entrance, Scene of Crime officers already evident, the area roped off, tent erected round the corpse. Elder found a spare set of protective clothing in the boot of Cordon’s car. The dead man was young, mid-twenties at best, possibly younger; reddish hair, a fashionable amount of stubble. A dark gash like a second mouth where his throat had been cut.
‘Poor bastard,’ Elder said softly, as much to himself as anyone else.
‘My first thought,’ Cordon said, ‘before I got a good look, another druggie. They tend to congregate here some of them, this end of the park. But, no, he’s too well dressed. Casual, but smart. Certainly not been sleeping rough. And altogether too healthy-looking. At least, he was.’
‘Killed here?’ Elder asked.
‘Close, I’d say. Signs of some kind of struggle down by the gate. Killed there and then dragged into the bushes would be my thinking.’
‘Robbery, then?’
Cordon cocked a head to one side. ‘No wallet, no phone. Just 15p in his pockets and a train ticket, return to Falmouth.’
‘Student, maybe?’
‘It’s possible. We’ll get his ID checked as soon as we can.’
‘No one reported missing?’
‘Not as yet.’
Elder leaned closer, looking at the face which had settled into some kind of strange repose. The same age as his daughter, more or less. A life snuffed out too soon. He called Katherine the moment they moved away from the scene, no reason other than to hear the sound of her voice, reassure himself she was okay.
The recorded message was short and to the point. ‘Sorry I can’t talk to you right now, please try again later.’
He was halfway across the park, heading back towards the police station, when his phone rang and he thought it might be Katherine, returning his call.
Colin Sherbourne’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. Jessica Tracy, the girl who’d been reported missing, had been found and returned home, safe but sorry, nursing a sore stomach and an aching head after a night of too much vodka, too much cheap wine, too many pills.
‘No further sign?’ Elder asked.
‘Of Keach? No, since Ingoldmells, not a thing. But we’ll keep looking.’
As he was passing the tennis courts, his phone went again.
‘Dad, hi. Sorry I missed your call. I was off out for a run.’
Smiling, Elder veered off the path towards an empty bench and sat down.
49
Adriana Borrell was tall, taller still thanks to boots with a serious heel. She was strikingly dressed: a suede jacket, several sizes too large, hanging loose over a pink shirt with a ruffled front; camouflage trousers secured by a scarlet leather belt and a patterned scarf tied loosely around her head. Her face was leathered and deeply lined. Her voice, when she spoke, suggested someone for whom the health warning on cigarettes held no meaning.
Her grip, when she shook Hadley’s hand, was firm and strong. ‘Your boy said you wanted to see me.’
Hadley suppressed a smile. The word ‘catamite’ flashed wickedly across her mind.
‘I thought we might talk about Anthony Winter.’
‘You still looking for the bastard who killed him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ten, twelve years back it could cheerfully have been me.’
Hadley smiled. ‘I take it this isn’t by way of a confession?’
‘Call it more wish fulfilment, if you like.’
‘You weren’t sorry, then, to hear what had happened?’
A smile creased the sculptor’s face still further. ‘Opened a bottle of Chablis I’d been saving and drank a toast. Or two.’ Her laugh was as rough and robust as her voice.
‘Your relationship ended in what? Two thousand and eight? Nine?’
‘Fifth of November, two thousand and eight. Gatwick to Larnaca. When we took off you could see the first of the fireworks. Seemed kind of suitable. Celebratory.’ She looked around. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way I can smoke in here, is there?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Adriana laughed. ‘Infringement of my human rights.’
‘Two thousand and eight,’ Hadley said, pressing on. ‘Ten years ago, give or take. It’s a long while to stay angry, harbour that much hate.’
‘Oh, don’t worry yourself. I haven’t exactly been sitting around dwelling on it. Don’t suppose I gave him a thought for months at a time. Over there especially. Too much living to do. Too much work.’
‘But still you cheered when he died?’
Adriana shrugged her shoulders as if to say, why not?
‘What was it, made you so angry?’
‘At Winter? You mean, aside from him being a total shit? Which is what most artists, those that are any good and know it, have to be just to get on, get noticed.’
‘Yes, aside from that.’
Adriana stretched her arms sideways and flexed the muscles in her back. ‘Are you sure I can’t sneak a cigarette?’
‘Sure.’
Now Adriana stretched her arms in front and spread her fingers wide. ‘Sorry. Sit too long in one position, I seize up.’
‘Would you rather walk around a little? Talk somewhere else?’
‘Can we do that?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
Adriana’s eyes lit up. ‘And then I could smoke?’
‘No rules to say you can’t.’
They crossed the car park and turned right along Regis Road, crossing at the lights towards the open space by the railway bridge and the seats between Natasha’s Flowers and Bean About Town.
Hadley nodded in the direction of the coffee wagon and Adriana shook her head and took a slim packet of cigarillos from her pocket.
‘Each to her own addiction,’ she said, when Hadley came back with a double espresso.
‘Okay, so now … Anthony Winter …’
Adriana took smoke down slowly into her lungs; released it through her mouth and nose. ‘I think I knew from the start he wasn’t going to be what you’d call faithful. And I took that on board. Or thought I had. But it was the lies that went with it that got to me, undermined whatever it was he had. And then the tying up, the bondage … I was happy to go along with a little of that. Nothing, you know, too serious. Nothing that was going to really hurt. But Winter, he got into it more and more. It got so normal sex – whatever that is, but you know what I mean, I think – it got so normal sex simply wasn’t on the menu. And I got a little tired of being tied to the bed or whipping Winter across his backside just so he could have an orgasm.’ She tapped away a sliver of ash and watched it fall towards the ground. ‘And then there was the business with the girl …’
‘The girl?’
‘Melissa.’
‘His daughter?’
‘His daughter, Melissa.’
Hadley’s skin felt electric. ‘What about her?’
‘She modelled for him. I don’t think at first she wanted to. I don’t think her mother wanted her to, either. But so
mehow he persuaded them.’ She gave a quick shake of the head. ‘He wasn’t easy to say no to, Winter.’
‘And that was it? She modelled for him, that’s what you didn’t approve of?’ Hadley’s mind was racing back through the reproductions of Winter’s paintings she’d seen. ‘Modelled nude, you mean?’
‘Yes, of course. With Winter, what else?’
‘And she would have been how old? Fourteen? Fifteen?’
‘Somewhere round there, yes. You’d have to ask the girl herself if you want to know for certain. Ask her mother.’
Hadley held the question for a second longer, tasting it on her tongue. ‘Aside from the modelling, was there anything else you didn’t approve of? Between Winter and his daughter?’
Adriana stubbed out the cigarillo. ‘I’ve said all I’m going to. I’m sorry.’
Hadley was already selecting a number on her phone. ‘Alice, drop whatever you’re doing. Time to go back to Munchkinland.’
50
This time the weather was less welcoming: a constant mithering rain. The kind, Hadley thought, that soaked through clothes and skin down into your very soul. Overhead, the sky was a leaden, uncompromising grey. There would be no sitting in the arbour, enjoying the scent of flowers, the touch of the sun.
There was a light dully shining in one of the upstairs rooms, the curtains not quite closed. They could hear Susannah Fielding’s hurried footsteps on the stairs before she opened the door with a look of half-surprise.
Following her through into the kitchen, they politely declined the offer to take a seat.
‘Tea, then, it won’t take a minute. I could make tea …’
Hadley shook her head. ‘We just wanted to ask you a few questions about Melissa. It need not take long.’
‘Melissa, yes, I’m afraid she’s not been well.’
‘About her relationship with her father.’
‘With Anthony …?’
‘When she was younger, she posed for him, I believe?’
‘Yes. Yes, she did.’
‘And this was after she’d posed for you? The portrait we were looking at before.’
‘Yes.’
‘The riding lessons,’ Alice said with a helpful smile.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ She smiled back. ‘You remembered.’
‘When she posed for her father,’ Hadley said, ‘it was different.’
‘I don’t …’
‘She posed in the nude.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘And at the time she was how old?’
‘She … she would have been, I think, fourteen. Yes, fourteen.’
‘And how did you feel about that? As her mother, I mean?’
‘I don’t know, I mean, I really can’t remember. I … And why, anyway? Why does it matter now? I don’t understand.’
‘I’m wondering how you felt about Melissa posing in that way?’
‘I thought … I thought …’ Susannah’s left eye was starting to blink, almost uncontrollably. ‘I thought since he was her father it was all right.’ Leaning sideways, she reached out a hand towards the back of the nearest chair.
‘Maybe you should sit down?’ Alice said, moving towards her, concerned that she might fall.
‘Yes, I think …’
Alice took hold of her arm and helped her into the chair while Hadley fetched a glass of water. At the far side of the room a clock was quietly ticking; muffled, the sound of footfall overhead: all the colour had gone from Susannah Fielding’s face.
‘Did Anthony behave inappropriately towards your daughter, Mrs Fielding? And if so, were you aware …?’
‘No, no! Of course not! Of course …’ Susannah brought her head down hard and fast, face first, against the kitchen table.
Alice let out a small, involuntary cry and, darting forward, reached for Susannah’s shoulders, easing her gently back. Blood was beginning to run from her nose and there were the first signs, already, of a swelling above her right eye. Hadley ran water on to a clean tea towel and held it against her face.
In the commotion, the sounds of someone descending the stairs had gone unnoticed.
‘It’s me you should be talking to,’ Matthew Fielding said.
The air in the interview room was heavy and still. Matthew Fielding sat beside his solicitor, upright and steely-eyed, lean face, closely cropped hair.
‘My client is prepared to make a statement,’ the solictor said.
The pulse in Hadley’s temple quickened and, alongside her, she sensed Chris Phillips tense momentarily, then relax.
‘Mel had been ill for years,’ Fielding began, his voice even, matter-of-fact. ‘Little things, off and on. No particular reason, no particular cause. Doctor would examine her, find nothing, prescribe a few pills. Then, when she went to university, she had this kind of breakdown. I suppose that’s what it was. I was off in the army by then and all I knew was little bits Mum’d tell me if I asked. Fobbing me off, really, I suppose. Not wanting me to worry. Enough to worry about out where you are, she’d say. But then this last time, when I came back on leave – just a few weeks back, this – Mel and I, we went for a drink together. Something we’d hardly ever done. Not talked either, I suppose, really talked, not properly, seriously, not since, well, not since we were kids. And not much then. But she started telling me – we’d been talking about something else at the time – suddenly started telling me about what had happened. With … with, you know … with …’
Pausing, he glanced from Hadley to Phillips, from one face to another, then up for a moment at the ceiling.
‘I went round there. That evening. She tried to stop me, Mel, said what was the use, it wouldn’t do any good. But no, I wanted to have it out with him, see his face when I made him tell me … tell me what it was he’d done. At first he wasn’t going to talk to me at all. Point-blank refused. Then came over all friendly, offered me a drink – I think he’d been drinking pretty heavily already. Put his arm round me. Tried to. That was when I hit him first. Not hard, but he went down all the same, and I could see the fear in his eyes. And seeing him like that, it made me think of how he’d fucked up our lives, Mel’s and Mum’s and mine, and I hit him again. And made him tell me about what happened with Mel. And I think he knew then I was going to kill him. He started yelling, yelling and screaming and trying to get away and I grabbed him and got hold of this chain and started swinging it round my head and …’
He broke off again, steadying his breathing; his voice, when he resumed, quieter, back under control.
‘The thing is, I no longer knew what I was doing. I’ve seen it happen, in a fire fight, the heat of the battle, you lose control. It’s not you. There’s something else takes over, driving you on. As if, for those moments, you’ve literally gone out of your mind.’
He looked across the desk evenly and folded his arms across his chest.
‘What d’you think?’ Phillips asked. They were in Hadley’s office, Matthew Fielding in a cell below, waiting to be charged.
‘I think he’ll try to plead manslaughter, some kind of diminished responsibility, temporary insanity, whatever. The CPS will go for murder, straight and simple.’
‘Is it ever?’ Phillips asked ruefully.
‘Is it, fuck!’
51
The body in Penlee Park had been identified: Scott Masters, twenty-two, in the final year of a BA honours course in photography at the University of Falmouth. The rucksack he had been carrying was found, discarded, in one of the gardens on Trewithen Road, some sixty metres from the park gates. His notebooks, together with a small book of photographs by Saul Leiter, were still inside; his Nikon D5600 digital SLR camera was missing.
‘Expensive?’ Elder enquired.
‘Quick check on the Internet,’ Cordon said, ‘a few quid short of a thousand.’
Elder let out a slow whistle.
‘I’ve sent out a description to all the camera shops in the area, pawnshops, anywhere whoever did this might be looking for a qui
ck sale. His mobile the same.’
‘And Masters, do we know if he was over from Falmouth on his own?’
‘Apparently so. There was an exhibition at the Exchange he was interested in seeing. I spoke to one of his friends at the university. Until more or less the last minute, he’d been going to come with him. Feeling like shit now, of course, that he didn’t.’
‘What about family, they’ve …’
‘They’ve all been informed.’
‘And the murder weapon? No sign?’
Cordon shook his head. ‘Still searching. What we can tell, long blade, seven or eight inches, inch and a half wide. Kitchen knife, that kind of thing. If he’s got rid, a good chance we’ll find it. Unless he’s chucked it out to sea of course. Then we’ll have to wait on the tide. Meantime, we’re talking to the staff at the Exchange, checking their CCTV, see if anyone remembers Masters being there. If he was seen talking to anyone in particular. Taking his photograph round to other places he might have visited, stopped for a drink, coffee, whatever.’
‘You think he might have struck up a conversation with someone? Whoever it was attacked him later?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘What doesn’t make sense to me,’ Elder said, ‘if whoever did this didn’t know his victim, which is what, for the moment, we seem to be assuming – if it was a matter of sheer chance, opportunity – all right, threaten him, overpower him, attack him from behind, but why kill him? And why in such an extreme way?’
‘Maybe he panicked,’ Cordon said. ‘Either that or the adrenalin kicked in and he couldn’t stop.’
Or maybe, Elder was thinking, he just enjoys it for what it is. Not the first time and possibly not the last.
After leaving the police station, and enjoying what was, for him, the relative luxury of a good phone signal, Elder called first Katherine and then Vicki.
‘What is this, Dad?’ Katherine said. ‘Twice in two days. Anyone’d think you were stalking me.’ But she said it with a smile. And after ten minutes or so of small talk and having assured him she was absolutely fine, no one lurking in the shadows, no weird phone calls – his aside – said she had to go.
‘Take care,’ Elder said.
