And None Shall Sleep (21 page)

They turned to look at Justin Selkirk, still apparently absorbed in his daughter. The child was teasing them, giggling and peeping through her fingers. Her father was watching with a wary, absorbed expression on his thin, pale face.

Perhaps it was then that Joanna realized there was something different about Justin Selkirk.

He glanced up then shyly, met her eyes, and gave a slow, deliberate wink. Was he a clever fool or a foolish fool? She watched him play with the child's curls, long, strong, bony fingers wrapping the yellow hair tightly. Then, quite suddenly, and without warning, he pulled. The child yelled. Pain flashed across her face before she laughed again, with tears shining in her eyes.

Teresa watched without emotion. ‘Don't do that, Justin,' she warned. ‘Please, don't do that.'

Immediately Justin Selkirk stopped playing with the child's hair and dropped his hands to his sides. The child almost toppled before grabbing on to his sweater.

His wife's face sagged. She looked older, bleaker, and frightened. This much both the police officers read before she again bowed her head and used the curtain of hair to conceal her emotions.

Joanna felt compelled to divert the conversation back to Selkirk's murder. ‘Your father's death must have upset you very much, Mr Selkirk.'

‘Yes, it did. It was an absolutely awful shock.' The glimpse they had had of Justin Selkirk had been replaced by Selkirk the ham actor with predictably awful lines. ‘I don't think I shall ever get over it.' He met their eyes with an expression of fatal grief. ‘We shall never forget him.'

‘A terrible shock,' Joanna said softly but Teresa Selkirk picked her head up and gave her a penetrating stare. ‘Haven't you two understood anything?'

There was a long silence.

Selkirk broke it. ‘Do you know,' he said, ‘I have dreams about my father's murder. I actually dreamed about it the night he disappeared.'

‘Really, Mr Selkirk?' Mike could hardly contain his interest.

‘Even now ...' Selkirk glanced around him fearfully, ‘I think I hear his voice.'

‘And what does he say?'

Selkirk closed his eyes. ‘He screams.'

It was Mike who spoke first as they paddled back through the mud. ‘It looks as though Selkirk handed on a bit of his character to his son.'

Joanna nodded.

‘I know it's just imagination,' he continued, ‘but I've met mass murderers I've been more comfortable with than that little trio.'

The officers were unusually attentive during the Saturday briefing.

Yolande's murder had heightened the feeling of pressure. All felt a certain sense of failure – of anti-climax, of disappointment. They knew the person morally responsible for both murders was still walking free. Each gave their findings dully in voices taut with stress. Sure, in their dreams it might be an arrest followed by a conviction, but their worst nightmares gave them something quite different from fear another investigation scaled down because of the cost and pressure of other cases. The police force was not financed by an elastic budget. Joanna watched them file out quietly. Cases were always like this. The first couple of briefings ended boisterously, with confident jokes, the inevitable leg- pulling. But this acceptance, these bowed shoulders. The officers could not work overtime for ever. After one week they were getting tired and their families would soon be complaining, adding to the pressure.

She turned to Mike after the last one had left. ‘You get yourself to the gym. Take a bit of time off.'

He was quick to demur but she touched his shoulder. It didn't suit her plans to have Mike at her elbow all evening.

‘I mean it, Mike,' she said. ‘Work off a bit of that energy. I want to run some routine checks on the Frost case.'

The file on Michael Frost was quite thin. There had been very little formal police investigation and no reason to suspect that his death was anything but a psychiatric suicide. His depression was well documented. The consultant psychiatrist had spoken of the patient's anguish and grief following years of nursing his wife through a long illness.

Yes, the suicide had been both unexpected and tragic. Yes, on reflection he should have been on a ward with closer supervision.

Joanna gave a wry smile as she read the transcript of the consultant's statement. It was very difficult to prevent a really determined suicide bid, she read. Very difficult. The future of depressives was assured, she read. The psychiatric Ward was now situated on the first floor, staffed with trained mental nurses. The windows had all been barred. There were double the number of staff on duty at any one time. No untrained nurse was to be left in sole charge.

Joanna threw the file down on the desk. It all sounded too good to be true. Where was this all leading her?

She picked it up again and glanced through the pathologist's report. Frost had suffered horrendous injuries. Head, chest, pelvis. Two broken legs.

Yolande would have heard all this evidence. How must she have felt?

Another sentence jumped out at her. No one had assessed him a suicide risk.

She looked again through the post-mortem report. There was no record of the toxicology analysis. So if O'Sullivan was right and Yolande Prince had not given Frost his medication, they were the only two who knew ... unless the letter had revealed more. She was suddenly curious about that letter. To whom had it been addressed? To the invalid wife?

Had Yolande pocketed it, then passed it on without revealing its existence?

The last sheet of paper in the file was the published results of the hospital inquiry. And it was this that had been more damning of Yolande Prince.

She had stepped outside her bounds of duty trying to advise the patient.

She should have realized the desperate state of her patient and called for medical aid.

She should have consulted the night sister.

She should have made sure the bathroom window was locked and secured. No mention of a chair.

In all there were fourteen criticisms aimed at the nurse and Joanna felt a wash of sympathy for her.

They had used her as a scapegoat for the tragic death of a patient. Joanna could well see it would have made Yolande Prince both notorious and vulnerable. The local paper had hounded her for weeks before forgetting the case.

Forgetting? Joanna admonished herself. The press never forgot.

She rang Matthew at his flat. ‘Matthew,' she said, ‘tell me about depression. Does it have to have a cause?'

He gave an explosive laugh. ‘I don't know, Joanna. You cancel our night out and then the next day instead of apologizing or, even better, arranging another seductive evening, you ask me about depression?'

‘I do it because I love you,' she said, ‘because I can depend on you and because I know you know the answer.'

‘Hmm. Well,' he said slowly, ‘thinking on depression has changed recently. I believe the current theory is that it does need a cause. At least ...' The logical scientist won over the doctor, the love of precision, ‘not really a cause so much as a reason. It's usually there, although frequently the relatives fail to recognize the severity of the resulting depression. That's the trouble. Depressed people's small problems tend to increase in size. The depression makes them magnify their problems thus increasing the severity of the initial depression.'

‘And will someone who commits suicide usually have tried before?'

‘Not necessarily.'

‘I see.'

‘What's depression got to do with your case?'

‘Plenty,' she said. ‘At least I think so.'

‘And how are you getting on with it?'

‘I think I'm just starting to understand,' she said slowly. ‘Do you want picking up and taking home?'

‘No. Thanks,' she said awkwardly. ‘It's really nice of you but I'll cadge a lift home. I've got some more work I want to catch up on, plus an early start in the morning.'

‘Don't overdo it.'

She felt suddenly touched by his concern. She pictured the strength in his face that could so suddenly turn warm and gentle. She fell silent and Matthew, with his intuitive understanding of her moods, said nothing until he tentatively broached the subject of the weekend. ‘You haven't forgotten about our little romantic break for two, have you?'

‘No,' she said. ‘Definitely not.'

His voice was even softer when he asked the next question. ‘And you will consider the future?'

‘I promise.'

‘Good.' He sounded satisfied. ‘I'll see you soon, then?'

‘Yes.'

Luckily for Joanna WPC Critchlow was on duty and available for the rest of the evening. Joanna found her chatting to the duty sergeant by the coffee machine.

‘I hate to be sexist about this,' she said. Dawn turned a pair of enquiring dark eyes on her. ‘I need someone to come with me.'

‘And Korpanski won't do?'

Joanna shook her head. ‘I need the kid gloves of the female of the species.'

‘I'm intrigued.' Dawn unhooked a set of car keys from behind the desk. ‘Where to?'

‘Emily Place, number fourteen.'

It was strange, Joanna reflected during the ten-minute drive, how much people's style of driving differed. Mike was heavy on the accelerator and bad language. Dawn Critchlow made the car positively glide.

Emily Place was deserted, the residents' curtains tightly drawn against a dull, cold evening. There was nothing to tempt people out of doors when inside there was the fire, warmth, light, the television. They could hear the Carters' TV on loud as they walked up the concrete path, threading themselves past a rusting car.

‘Tidy-looking place,' Dawn observed. ‘Do you want me to come in or shall I wait outside?'

‘Come with me,' Joanna said. ‘I want you to hear all that's said.'

Andy Carter opened the door to her knock. He gave them both a hostile stare.

‘I don't believe this,' he said. ‘You've been here once. We've told you everything. I was hoping you wouldn't come back.' His Adam's apple bobbed around in his thin neck. ‘I suppose I was being a bit optimistic, wasn't I?' He stood back while they entered.

Ann Carter was lying on the sofa, watching television. She hardly looked up as the two officers walked in. ‘And I don't suppose you've brought any good news for us, have you?'

Dawn perched on a dining chair with thin, spider legs.

Joanna sank down on the sofa beyond Ann's feet. ‘And what would you consider good news, Mrs Carter?'

The woman merely stared back at her. She opened dry lips. No words came out.

Andy Carter took a seat beside his wife. They watched Joanna warily.

Joanna felt the domination of the photographs lining the walls of this small room. For a moment she stared at the largest of them.

‘She was a sweet little girl, wasn't she?'

Andy Carter raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘Yes,' he said through clenched teeth. ‘She was.'

Joanna's eyes were drawn to the missing photograph. The Carters saw her look. They must have read her puzzlement. They exchanged glances but said nothing.

‘You must miss her.'

Andy Carter's hand jerked in his wife's. ‘What do you think?' he asked furiously. ‘What do you bloody think? Oh!' he exclaimed impatiently. ‘Is any of this going to bring her back?'

‘No. But then Selkirk's death wasn't going to resurrect your daughter, was it?' Joanna let her gaze linger over the Photograph.

‘We didn't have anything to do with his death.' Carter spoke angrily. His face was a dark, angry red and she knew the pushing was having effect. He stood up, agitated. ‘What's the bloody point of all this? Can't you see? We're still raw from our daughter's death.'

‘I've come from another house today,' Joanna said quietly. ‘They'd lost an only daughter too.'

‘Send them Victim Support, then,' Ann Carter snapped. Her face was contorted with grief. ‘That's what you did for us. Big help they were too.'

Joanna waited for the outburst to finish before carrying on. ‘You might know the girl.'

Neither looked curious. ‘She was a nurse.'

‘Oh, yeah?' Andy Carter pulled at the gold sleeper in his ear. ‘Not five years old, then, like our Row.'

‘No, but every bit as precious to her parents.'

He flushed. ‘They have my sympathy,' he mumbled.

But Ann Carter's face was still hard. ‘What are you doing round here, Inspector?' she sneered. ‘Come to admire our photographs?'

Joanna paused. The television in the corner of the room continued to spew out colour and sound. She wished they would switch it off. Somehow they seemed able to ignore it. She couldn't.

‘The girl's name was Yolande,' she said, ‘Yolande Prince. She worked at the cottage hospital.'

Andy Carter let out a whistle of breath. ‘That's where I've heard that name,' he said. ‘I knew I'd read it somewhere.' He gave Joanna a penetrating stare. ‘She was the nurse on duty the night Selkirk disappeared, wasn't she?'

Joanna nodded.

They were both watching her now, their interest at last pricked.

Joanna leaned closer. ‘Who's Michael Frost?' she asked abruptly.

Ann Carter swung her feet to the floor, stood up, crossed the room and turned the television off. The room was abruptly empty, devoid of light, colour, noise. It seemed suddenly both plain and dull.

The woman picked one of the photographs from the wall and stared at it for a while without speaking. ‘When Selkirk crashed into the crossing outside the school he killed our Rowena. Molly Frost was the lollipop lady. She lost both her legs. Michael was her husband. He took it bad.'

The simple words were an obvious understatement.

At last. Joanna felt an enormous sense of relief wash over her as she listened to Ann Carter.

‘Michael was wonderful,' she said. ‘He gave up his job to look after Molly. Cared for her like she was a baby.' She gave Joanna a twisted smile. ‘Although Rowena died we never blamed Molly. We knew she had done her best. She would have saved her if she could have. She did try. We always felt grateful.'