by John Eider
The scene at the Cedars was no less chaotic than that at the murder site… once Grey got there. Making the walk himself might have seemed obvious by day or even closing time, but not at after two in the morning when even the most welcoming road – let alone the fringes of the Hills – seemed alien, unfamiliar, unknown, a photonegative of the oddness of a silent empty residential street seen in daytime by the person usually out at work. Yet this was where he found himself, passing from the lights and excitement of the Prove scene to disobey the accepted wisdom of those in the town by being alone on the Hills estates after dark (albeit at a time where even the least-constrained kids were likely to have gone home).
The Cedars though was lit up like a Christmas tree, not that that brought any comfort. As Grey came around the side to the back door an ambulance passed him to get there first, he finding it where Sergeant Smith and Rachel Sowton were waiting. It being a mild night, a scattering of other residents were also milling around inside and out wrapped in bathrobes or silk dressing gowns.
Cori took Grey to one side to explain; as behind them Mr Carstairs accompanied by his invalid wife, herself being helped by a tireless Ellie, were moved into the back of the waiting emergency transport,
‘Sir, Mr Carstairs woke about midnight with chest pains and erratic breathing, his wife then called for help which left her exhausted. Rachel called the doctor, and by then the whole building was up.’
‘Is he okay?’
‘The doctor thinks it’s just brought on by the stress of the day, but after sitting with him for a while thought it safest for him to go into hospital overnight. Meanwhile…’
‘Charlie Prove.’
‘After the doctor had come and things had settled down a bit, Rachel went around the rooms to check everyone was all right; and Charlie’s flat was empty. Best guess, the same commotion as woke the others roused him from his sedation. A couple of people saw him up with the rest, but in the melee he must have wondered off on his sleepwalk without being noticed.’
‘But the door… the Constable…’
‘He had gone to help the Carstairs, leaving his post.’
‘Well, that was what he was there for: he heard a woman calling, couldn’t be helped. You said sleepwalk?’
‘Someone up with the commotion saw Charlie heading off down the street outside from their front window. They said he looked distracted, dazed, but moving at a pace.’ She leant in and whispered, ‘The residents who were up know we’re looking for Charlie, but not that we’ve found him.’
‘I don’t envy their Duty Manager that task in the morning,’ he said as they moved away from the building to talk.
‘The person who saw him outside didn’t see anything else?’
‘No, sir, they’ve no idea where he went, or why he went there.’
‘I’ve got a bit of an idea. I’ve been talking to the leader of the Hills Estate Community Forum – a role Charlie himself must have held for something like seventeen years – before finding his daughter’s body one morning unhinged him to the point where he couldn’t bear to see his home ever again; until tonight, it seems, when some nightmare impulse, maybe brought on by the pills he’s been put on and by the finding of a second body yesterday morning, brought it all back. He would have woken up tonight half-zonked and disoriented to find another friend, Mr Carstairs, in peril and the Cedars in uproar, and so chose tonight of all nights to go mourning, searching – who knows – after the memory of his dead daughter, dashing away to be clubbed across the back of the head not a minute’s walk from the building he and his beloved Eunice once lived in.’
‘How?’
‘A single blow from behind by a blunt object, yet to be found.’
‘You guess a large, strong individual?’ she asked, echoing their thoughts on Stella’s attacker.
‘Charlie was six foot – I guess from the blow they were at least as tall. That’s only my estimate, mind.’
The officer posted there that night then emerged from the building, and Grey went to speak to him,
‘Constable.’
‘Sir.’
‘Everything all right in there?’
‘I think it’s calmed down again now.’
‘Well you did right, rushing to the call. You didn’t see anything of Charlie Prove while this was going on?’
‘No, sir. The corridor was pretty full; half the residents were up. He might have been at the back, or by the staircase.’
‘Yes, I should imagine it would’ve been hard to keep track of anyone in that commotion.’
‘I’ll tell you who I did see though, sir. If you’re interested.’
‘Always.’
‘That woman, the manageress,’ explained the Constable, who arrived to this night watch fresh from the station, and so hadn’t been there earlier in the day.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I’ve seen her before…’
With the ambulance gone and doctor following it in his car, Ellie took the man from the next-door room to the Carstairs back to bed, saying to the detectives as she went,
‘It’s not that we mollycoddle them, though the families sometimes think we do; it’s that a place like this must be calmer than the world, must have less shocks.’
As he watched her help the old man inside, Grey only hoped to be so cared for in his dotage; while Rachel Sowton, her duties for now fulfilled, came to stand by the detectives as she lit a cigarette, eventually asking,
‘So who of us is next?’
‘Hopefully none of you,’ reassured Cori; though this was undone by her colleague who merely answered,
‘We don’t know.’
‘So no idea why yet either?’
But Grey answered her with a question,
‘I was told that Charlie hadn’t been back to the Hills for fifteen years.’
‘That’s right, as far as I knew.’
‘Did he ever go for walks at night?’
‘No, and that I do know.’
He pondered, ‘And it’s absurd to think he had time between being woken by tonight’s emergency and leaving to either call anyone to tell them he was coming, or receive a call from someone on the Hills asking him to come.’
‘Nor in any fit state to make or understand such a call,’ added the Duty Manager burning her cigarette down to the filter.
‘So if his decision to go there tonight was just a random impulse brought on by the shocks of these two evenings…’
‘…then no one on the Hills was expecting him,’ concluded Cori.
Rachel might have seemed alarmed at this were she not already on full alert these last twenty-four hours, further suggesting, ‘Which means that whoever it was that did that to him followed him from here?’
Grey turned to Cori, ‘I think one of us at least should stay till morning. We might need a bigger presence here by then anyway, if the regional news crews start arriving on the trail of some imagined serial killer.’
‘I have a sofa-bed in my flat I can pull out for one of you,’ offered Rachel Sowton as she snuffed her cigarette out against the doorframe.
‘I’ll stay,’ volunteered Cori. ‘It’s further for me to get home and back by morning anyway.’
But Grey demurred in accepting this arrangement, and this was noticed by Rachel stood beside the officers,
‘Ah, so you’ve learnt where I was yesterday evening? Sergeant, I fear your Inspector is concerned that it would be inappropriate for a female officer to be left with someone of my, shall we say, proclivities?’
‘Not at all,’ he blustered in response. ‘Forgive me if I took a moment to decide whether it was respectful for either of us to accept your offer.’
‘Ah, isn’t he a sweetie?’
Cori smiled, Grey continuing,
‘And I’ve no idea where you were last night, only that one of the Constables recognised you from the raid on Sophia’s last summer.’
Her indignation became real, ‘That “raid” was nothing more than some old biddy of a neighbour not liki
ng what she thought we were getting up to in there; and nearly losing my friend her licence in the process.’
‘Well then, we must have found something when we went in,’ he said before he caught himself.
‘Not enough to get a dog stoned, Inspector; but obviously you’ve got no real criminals to catch, so go for the weirdoes, eh?’
Grey didn’t know what to say to that, speaking instead a moment after to Cori, ‘Anyway, it makes more sense for it to be me staying, as you need a good sleep in your own bed: you’ve got a concentrating day ahead of you tomorrow.’
‘I have?’
‘Starting at the library’s records office, looking up the histories of Stella Mars’s and Charlie Prove’s time as Town Councillors.’
‘They were on the Council?’ asked Rachel, the woman who’d known and worked with both for fifteen years.
‘Yes, both starting in the Sixties, Charlie till he came here.’
‘And you said Stella Mars?’
‘Well that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow: seeing if our researcher has found anything out of Stella’s marriage to Samuel Mars, rumoured ex-sailor and not-altogether-wonderful husband by the sounds of it.’
‘A marriage too?’ The revelations were coming thick and fast now for Rachel. ‘I guessed she had been wed at some point. And how did you..?’
‘In an extraordinary conversation with a man who knew them years ago – and that’s not all, I think he hinted at “school gates” and “other mothers”.’
‘She had a child?’
‘If she had then Sarah will have found it out by now. I need to write all this down before I forget it.’
‘I have pens and paper, I’ll see you inside,’ said Rachel turning for her office/apartment.
‘You’ve been busy,’ said Cori as they stood outside alone now.
‘Pure luck,’ he countered, ‘and I wish the same for you tomorrow. Have a lie in, then call me once you’re there.’
But before Cori left, Grey paused her to ask one more thing,
‘What Rachel said. You knew about her inclinations – you weren’t surprised?’
‘It was just a feeling, sir. Nothing you could pin down. Well, goodnight sir.’
And there she left him, the town’s detective, and he hadn’t a clue.
In the dayroom he found a lamp had been moved for him to cast a pool of amber light over a desk bearing an A4 pad and variety of pens. As he moved to sit down before it, the Duty Manager returned to place pillows and a duvet over a nearby easy chair; she saying as she did so,
‘I’ve upset you, haven’t I?’
‘It takes a lot to upset me.’
‘Maybe if you knew that I regretted what I said the moment I’d said it?’
‘Well, you don’t have to.’
‘I am upset though, about the raid on Sophia’s.’
‘Maybe after all this is over I can ask our Community Policing officers to look into it.’
‘Thank you. So what about you, seeing as we’re talking life choices?’
‘Sorry?’ he answered, caught off guard.
‘Married, girlfriend, single?’
‘Oh. Single.’
‘Well don’t worry, you’re not the only one. I don’t suppose the job helps?’
‘Possibly not.’
‘Or maybe it suits?’ she added cryptically. ‘I sometimes wonder if mine gives me an excuse not to settle down with someone? Still, better to be frustrated outside of a relationship than in it, at least then no one else gets hurt.’
‘Quite,’ he answered, not sure which of the two of them she was talking about, nor if he’d ever thought of it in exactly that way.
She went out for a minute and returned with a mug,
‘You know, Inspector, you can’t be a nice guy in a tough world and expect the rest of that world to be as nice back to you. On which note, here’s a cup of hot chocolate.’
‘Thank you.’
And with that she was gone, smiling sadly as she closed the door behind her.
Chapter 10 – Morning and Raine Again
