The Anna McColl Mysteries Box Set 2

by Penny Kline

  ‘No, I expect you’re right. But what makes you think …’

  She made a kind of gulping noise. ‘I just know. I suppose it could’ve been the same person, but it’s usually men who kill you, isn't it? I mean, I can see why the police want to find out as much as possible, and I know you're trying to help me, and if I could remember any more I’d tell you, of course I would.’

  She was afraid, there was no doubt of that, but there was something else. She had started to choose her words carefully, as if she had been through them in her mind before I arrived and was trying to stick to a well-rehearsed script.

  ‘James was going to be a scientist,’ she said suddenly. ‘Scientists have to write down exactly what they see, only when we do experiments at school they usually go wrong.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ Memories of litmus paper that should have turned pink but didn’t. Writing it up anyway, getting a tick if you reported the ‘right’ result, learning what was required. ‘What kind of a scientist does your brother want to be?’

  ‘Oh, he’s not going to be one now. He dropped out last Christmas. He was doing his A levels. He’s much cleverer than me, but he got fed up.’

  The door opened and the woman in the pink overall backed into the room, carrying a tray. ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’

  Sally sprang to her feet. ‘Is Mummy still in bed?’

  The woman nodded, chewing whatever was in her mouth, then swallowing it and running her tongue round her lips. ‘Be down soon, pet.’ She glanced at me, then patted Sally on the arm. ‘I’ll be here for another half-hour if you need anything.’

  After she left, Sally pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. ‘Actually, there is one thing I remembered,’ she said, speaking so softly that I had to lean closer to hear. ‘I could smell perfume, I think it was perfume, or it might have been that body spray stuff.’

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘No, I only thought about it when I was lying in bed last night. It’s funny how you can remember smells, or sometimes you smell something and it reminds you … James had some aftershave for Christmas, from one of our aunts. He said it smelt like a —’ She broke off, glancing at the door. ‘I don’t think Mummy will come down. She didn’t really want me to see a psychiatrist.’

  ‘I’m not a psychiatrist,’ I said. ‘A psychologist’s different. There’s nothing the matter with you, Sally, I’m just here to try and help you so whoever it was in the car doesn’t get the chance to do something like that again. This perfume, you say it reminded you of James’s aftershave?’

  ‘No, I only meant it had that horrible sharp smell that hurts your nose. Anyway, James threw it in the bin.’

  ‘So you couldn’t actually give it a name?’

  She shook her head. She looked close to tears. ‘That girl that disappeared a few weeks ago,’ she said, ‘is she dead?’

  There was no point in falsely reassuring her. ‘No one knows what's happened to her, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But if I can’t remember they might … Anyway, with that girl it was different. She was older than me, and pretty.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I did.’ The voice came from outside, in the entrance hall, but a moment later a head came round the door.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Her brother's arrival seemed to have done nothing to make Sally feel more at ease. If anything it had had the opposite effect. ‘This is the lady who’s —’

  ‘Yes, I know who it is.’ James was walking round the room, lifting things up, then putting them down. From the look of his hair he had only just got out of bed, but if anything his dishevelled appearance enhanced rather than detracted from his good looks. If his colouring had been dark his high cheekbones and rather narrow eyes would have made him look almost oriental. His nose was similar to Sally’s — small and slightly upturned — but everything else about him was more extreme. Fairer hair, bluer eyes, sharper jawline. He was wearing jeans that had worn through just below the knees and across the back of one thigh, and a pair of battered white trainers with no laces. A red towel, hanging round his neck, only partially covered his smooth, bare chest.

  When he turned to face me his expression was studiously bored. ‘Give it a rest now, can you? She’s told the pigs everything she knows. Anyway what’s the point? Have you any idea what their clear-up rate is?’ He stared at me, his head slightly tilted back, his voice was full of scorn. ‘OK, for homicide it’s around ninety per cent, but overall it's nearer fifteen.’

  ‘Where did you read that?’ He was right, as a matter of fact, but that only served to make his supercilious manner even more annoying.

  ‘Look, I hope this visit’ a one-off,’ he said, resting his arm on the mantelpiece and nearly dislodging an expensive-looking china vase. ‘Is anyone actually concerned about my sister’s state of mind, or is she just part of a pointless investigation to justify the pigs receiving their pay cheques at the end of the month? Wouldn’t you say Sally’s been through enough already? It’s only six months since our father died.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry.’ His face flushed with anger. ‘Look, my mother’s ill so I have a perfect right to stay with Sally while you — ‘

  ‘Absolutely, but it would be easier if you sat down.’

  ‘Why? Why do I have to sit down?’ He looked briefly in the direction of Sally, who now had part of her sweatshirt stuffed in her mouth, then strolled across the room, whistling through his teeth, slid open the patio door and stepped into the garden. ‘Look, I don’t know what special techniques you shrinks use, but whatever they are you’re wasting your time. If Sally’d remembered anything new she’d have told me and I’d have passed it on.’

  ‘She remembered the smell of perfume,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that.’

  Sally was watching him anxiously. The scab on her leg had started to bleed. She rubbed at it, then licked her finger. ‘I told her,’ she said, jerking her head in my direction, ‘about it being a bit like that aftershave Auntie Eleanor gave you.’

  James snorted. ‘Right. Good. Now they’ll think it was me in the car.’ Then he saw her face. ‘Oh, don’t be such an idiot.’ He turned towards me. ‘Look, my mother hasn’t been well, not since the accident.’ He spoke the word accident with heavy sarcasm, then noticed my puzzled expression. ‘Oh, I’m not talking about what happened to Sally. They haven’t told you about my father's death, then? An unfortunate accident. Yes, well, it's always so much easier to call it an accident, close the file, shove it in a cupboard, and get on with more important matters, like checking road tax discs and handing out parking tickets.’

  He was walking away. I followed him on to the patio.

  ‘You think there was something suspicious about your father’s death? But why would anyone have wanted to harm him?’

  He was standing very still, with his back turned. ‘You never met him,’ he said angrily. ‘If you had you wouldn’t ask such a bloody silly question.’

  *

  Fifteen minutes later, driving across the Downs, I became aware that the car behind, an old mustard-coloured Capri, was much too close to my rear bumper. I flicked on my lights, slowing down but not so much that the driver had no time to react, then watched in my driving mirror as he pulled out to overtake, raced past, then almost lost control on the bend. When I reached the main road the Capri was parked on a strip of grass, near the zoo, and the driver had his head down, nodding in time to the music that was blaring through his window. Catching a glimpse of his profile, I had no difficulty recognizing the thick fair hair, high cheekbones and slightly upturned nose. Presumably that was what he intended me to do.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Anna? Didn’t expect to see you here.’ Graham Whittle was out of breath and had to pause between words. During the seven or eight months since we had last met he had lost weight. Now that his face was thinner his nose looked slightly more hooked and his eyes a little deeper set, and I remembered how
he had once told me he had an Italian mother.

  ‘Stepped out of the car,’ he said, ‘and saw a kid nicking plants from outside the garden centre.’

  ‘Caught him?’

  ‘Her. No, far too quick for me.’ He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Oh, you’re here about the little girl who was almost dragged into a car. Gave her the third degree, did you? No, don’t tell me, we buggered it up and you had to pick up the pieces.’ He winked at the desk sergeant. ‘Howard’s in his room, only I’d treat him with a fair amount of caution if I were you, hasn’t been in the best of moods these last few days.’

  I could see Howard Fry coming out of his office. When he spotted me he glanced at his watch, then turned back and held open his door, tapping his foot as he waited for me to walk the length of the corridor.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ he announced.

  ‘Likewise,’ I said.

  He managed a feeble smile. ‘Sorry. Meeting with the Assistant Chief Constable. Sally Luckham — how did it go?’

  The room smelled faintly of cigarettes. He must have just seen off another visitor, and if he had allowed him to smoke it must have been someone important. Howard had given up three or four years ago, and still had the condemnatory attitude of a reformed smoker. I knew the feeling.

  ‘It’s an odd family,’ I said. ‘Actually, the mother was in bed all the time I was there and I only had the pleasure of the brother’s company for five minutes or so.’ I had decided not to mention the incident on the Downs: James warning me to stay away from his sister, or else. ‘Why didn't you tell me their father only died a few months ago? What happened? Was there something odd about it? James mentioned an accident, and he doesn’t seem too enamoured of you lot.’

  Howard had his back turned, searching for something in his filing cabinet. ‘Thought you’d have read about the case,’ he said, straightening up, then smoothing down the dark red hair that was receding at the temples but had been allowed to grow a little longer at the back. What was it about dead straight hair? A conditioned response to some early sexual experience?

  ‘He was a diabetic,’ he said. ‘Got stranded up on the Mendips.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The way he put it made it sound like the two things went together.

  ‘God knows what happened. As far as anyone could tell he’d climbed up Seeker Gorge, then slipped off the rocks at the top, fallen and broken both his legs. He wasn’t found for quite a time. His car had been parked in a lay-by, that’s what led us to the body.’

  ‘Couldn’t he have dragged himself to a place where someone would see him?’

  ‘Have you ever been to Seeker Gorge? Anyway, it wasn’t the injuries that killed him, or the cold. Diabetic coma. Doctor thought he must have left home in a hurry, had his insulin injection, but failed to eat a proper breakfast. Of course, by the time he was found it was impossible to tell exactly what had happened.’

  ‘Surely he’d have carried glucose tablets.’

  Howard nodded slowly. ‘You’d have thought so. A colleague of mine, with a wife who has a tendency to suffer sudden attacks, has been issued with glucogen injections, not that it would have been much use in Luckham’s case. He was on his own.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  He sat down, still without looking at me. ‘Cut out any ideas like that, Anna. The coroner decided there was nothing untoward.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting there was.’ I felt annoyed that I had been asked to visit a family that had undergone such a traumatic experience, without anyone bothering to put me in the picture. Howard was leaning back with his eyes half closed. He seemed to have forgotten about the Assistant Chief Constable, but more than likely the appointment was not for another hour — he had just felt the need to impress on me how desperately busy, and by implication how desperately important, he was. No, that wasn’t Howard’s style. I was over reacting, on edge because my interview with Sally had produced so little.

  ‘If I’d told you about it before,’ he said, ‘you’d have gone to the house with all kinds of preconceived ideas.

  I wanted you to have an open mind. Anyway, forget about all that, have your special techniques enabled the girl to remember a few solid facts?’

  Special techniques. He sounded almost as sceptical as James Luckham. ‘She’s frightened,’ I said, ‘but there’s something else. I’ve a definite feeling she knows more than she’s letting on. Today it was mainly a question of gaining her confidence.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job.’ He fiddled with the pens on his desk. ‘But there’s a fourteen-year-old girl who could be lying face down in a ditch. I was hoping one visit to the Luckham house would have been enough.’

  Outside in the corridor some kind of scuffle was going on. Voices were raised, Howard’s door received a kick, then the sounds started to fade as whoever was making them was escorted towards the cells.

  ‘The missing girl, Geena Robson,’ I said, ‘what was she like?’

  ‘D’you mean, why are we so worried about her? Partly, the fact that she was seen being pulled into a car, although I suppose it’s possible the account of what happened was exaggerated. But it’s not just that. She doesn’t sound the type to have run off without saying a word to anyone. According to her relatives and teachers she’s a quiet, introverted sort of girl, with no boyfriend and few interests outside her school work. She and her mother live in a small flat over a second-hand bookshop and her mother has a part-time job walking round Broadmead shopping centre trying to persuade people to agree to have a mail order catalogue sent to their house.’

  ‘And you say the father lives with another woman?’

  He nodded. ‘We checked all that. It was the obvious conclusion when she first went missing. A dispute over custody or access, although by the time kids are fourteen all that kind of thing’s usually over and done with.’

  Howard’s son was younger than that. I wondered if the two of them were still in touch on a regular basis, or if the divorce had meant the boy and his mother had moved to another part of the country.

  ‘You mean Geena Robson would have made up her own mind if and when she wanted to see her father?’ I asked. ‘Incidentally, Sally Luckham says she thinks she smelled perfume.’

  ‘That’s what she told you? Any particular brand?’

  ‘She didn’t know, said it had reminded her of some aftershave an aunt had given to her brother.’

  Howard raised his eyebrows. ‘Perfume, aftershave, can anyone be certain they can tell the difference?’

  ‘Aftershave usually smells …’ I searched for the right word. ‘Stronger, muskier.’

  ‘She never mentioned it to Ritsema.’

  ‘No.’

  Howard pulled a face. ‘You’ve never met him but already you’ve got him down as an insensitive slob who browbeats little girls into silence. When are you seeing her again? There’s a strong possibility she read about the missing girl in the local paper and decided inventing an attempted abduction would be a good way of getting a bit of attention.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not right.’

  He lifted a briefcase onto the desk, then stood up. ‘That would account for her attack of nerves and the fact that even you think she’s hiding something. If you want my opinion, she’s wishing she’d never started it. Still, for the time being we’ll have to take it at face value.’ He opened a drawer and started taking out papers and slipping them into a folder. ‘How's Owen?’

  The sudden change of subject threw me a little. ‘Owen? He’s fine. At least as far as I know he is. He’s in Melbourne, on an exchange with another academic.’

  ‘The other man’s come to Bristol?’

  ‘Woman. She’s called Fay Somers.’

  ‘Must feel strange all alone in the flat. Going to bed on your own, that’s when it really hits home.’ He looked up, not smiling, just checking to make sure I realized he was talking about himself. ‘You know, if Sally Luckham really does know something it could gi
ve us the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. On the other hand, if you can persuade her to admit she’s been leading us on a wild goose chase, at least we can eliminate her and get on with our other enquiries.’

  *

  I could hear Nick talking to Heather. The sash cord on the waiting room window had finally snapped. So, by the sound of it, had Heather. Or was it something to do with Dawn?

  Dawn Rivers. Was it her fault she had a name like a country and western singer? She had only been working with us for a couple of weeks — brought in as a temporary replacement when Martin developed shingles and was ordered to take a month off sick — but it had been a tough two weeks. Nick would only admit to finding her mildly irritating, but Heather was on my side. Perhaps Dawn was just one of those people women find it hard to like. Heather thought men might find her sexy in a ‘strict nanny’ kind of way but I doubted if this had anything to do with my aversion towards her. Maybe Dawn’s super-efficiency was making me uneasy? If I was absolutely honest with myself, would I have liked to deal with clients in the brisk, know-all way she seemed to favour? Not that any of us had actually seen her with a client. Maybe she was warm and empathic, reserving her off-putting manner for her colleagues.

  I heard her coming out of her room and made a decision to start afresh, make a real effort to acknowledge her good points.

  ‘Oh, I was hoping to catch you, Dawn.’ If you want to make someone feel good ask their advice. ‘Didn’t you say you’d read a paper on hyperventilating? Only this man came in, gasping for air, and —’

  ‘I’ll bring it in for you,’ she said, taking an electronic notebook from her bag, flicking open the cover, then operating the pocket-sized keyboard with lightning speed. Her clothes were as severe as her tone of voice: dark jacket and skirt, white shirt, navy shoes.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, still keeping her eyes on the notebook, ‘that boy you’ve been seeing, the one with big boots and an earring, can’t keep his next appointment.’