Past Tense (16 page)

Sloan grunted. Search teams weren't supposed to be fashionistas, either, just meticulous. He turned over the page. ‘The refrigerator and freezer contained a number of ready meals for one person…'

He got the picture. A femme sole, a singleton, a spinster, a single woman, living alone – the condition could be described in a number of ways, all of them saying the same thing. A woman on her own. And, in police terms, therefore vulnerable. He sighed. Lucy Lansdown had been vulnerable, all right. And not from within herself either – that is if the pathologist was correct in his deductions. And he usually was.

The report had kept its bombshell until the last. Unless, it ran on in detached, professional prose, the officers who had first entered the house, whom they understood to have been Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby, had run a very comprehensive search of every single cupboard and drawer, whilst wearing gloves, then someone else had.

Looking for what? Sloan asked himself at once but answer came there none. And when, exactly?

He scanned the report again looking for any mention of a handbag and found none. If Lucy Lansdown had taken it with her when she had gone out, then it had either been stolen or gone into the river with her. It certainly hadn't been found on the road anywhere near the bridge.

Reminding himself to alert the frogmen, he pushed the report away, rang for Crosby and picked up his coat. ‘Calleford,' he said. ‘The hospital there.'

‘If we can get in their car park,' said that worthy gloomily.

‘Even hospitals have tradesmen's entrances,' said Sloan. ‘And, in a sense, Crosby, let me remind you that that's what we are. One of our jobs is keeping the streets clean, remember.'

The philosophy of policing did not interest Crosby. Driving fast cars fast did and they were soon speeding towards the county town and its big teaching hospital there.

The principal nursing officer there expressed her sadness at the death of Lucy Lansdown and saw no reason why the records of the nurse's time on the wards should not be made available in the circumstances. ‘There should, of course, be a schedule of which wards she was on during her training because it is an important part of it, Inspector. We aim to make sure that every student nurse gains proper experience in every aspect of nursing.'

Detective Inspector Sloan explained that it would only have been any time spent in contact with female patients that were of interest to the police.

‘Medical or surgical?' No one could have called the principal nursing officer slow on the uptake; indeed no one ever had.

‘That we don't know,' admitted Sloan, adding half-apologetically, ‘all we do know is the patient wasn't happy at the time and declined to go back into hospital some years later when she was dying.'

‘Not uncommon,' she said briskly. ‘Especially in the old. They don't want to die there. Quite understandable, of course. Most people naturally would wish to be with friends and family at the end.' She gave the policeman a very straight look. ‘Although, I'm afraid that in our experience, gentlemen, that particular wish is not always reciprocated by their families.'

‘Especially when the going gets hard,' put in Crosby wittily.

The principal nursing officer ignored this and pressed a bell on her desk. ‘I'll get those records looked out for you now, Inspector. It shouldn't take long. Perhaps you'd like to come back after you've seen the chief executive?'

The chief executive exuded non-cooperation with anybody, but especially the police. ‘Certainly not, Inspector. I am not prepared to make them available to you. Patients' notes are sacrosanct. We have a legal duty to them, you understand.'

‘This one is deceased,' said Sloan.

‘And to their families,' swept on the administrator.

Detective Inspector Sloan had been schooled on the aphorism that you caught more bees with honey than with a stick. ‘I quite understand your position, sir, and it's very reassuring to know how careful you have to be.' He gave a light laugh. ‘I certainly wouldn't want the whole world to know what I'd been treated for.'

‘And you wouldn't find out from me,' said the man, still firm.

‘On the other hand,' said Sloan persuasively, ‘I'm not sure that just knowing which ward a patient had been in at a particular time – we have the approximate dates from her medical practitioner's records – is likely to be construed as your being in breach of confidence.'

The man said nothing while he thought. Sloan said nothing either. Short pauses – pig's whispers, they were called – could be as loud as words.

After a moment or two Sloan went on, ‘So you will understand exactly why it is that the Calleford Police are beginning the process of getting a court order in order to resolve the situation. This, of course, will obviously absolve you and the hospital trust of any responsibility in the matter.'

The administrator visibly relaxed. ‘That, Inspector, puts an entirely different complexion on things.'

‘Of course, at the moment,' continued Sloan, ‘the death about which we are making enquiries is in the hands of the coroner.'

‘Of course,' murmured the administrator. ‘Perhaps if I might just have a moment to consult with our legal people…'

 

Detective Constable Crosby was back at the wheel of the police car before Sloan looked up from comparing two lists of dates and said, ‘Lucy Lansdown worked on Banting Ward for three months four years ago.'

Crosby braked hard very suddenly indeed, causing the papers on Sloan's lap to cascade to the floor. ‘That was a near thing, sir,' he yelped. ‘I nearly didn't spot that speed camera.'

‘You nearly killed me,' said Sloan acidly. He retrieved his papers from the well of the car with difficulty, considerably hampered by a seat belt he had no intention whatsoever of removing until he was safely back at the police station and out of the car.

Crosby was unrepentant. ‘Sneaky place to site it.'

‘And as I was about to say, Crosby, these notes handed over with great reluctance by that jobsworth at the hospital confirm that Josephine Eleanor Short was a patient on Banting Ward at the same time.'

‘Bingo,' said Detective Constable Crosby, picking up speed. ‘Where to now, sir?'

‘The churchyard at Damory Regis.' The forensic experts busily at work there had rigged up tenting all round the site of the disturbed grave, the canvas on one side brushing against the village war memorial.

Sorrow in stone, thought Detective Inspector Sloan to himself as he advanced towards the specialists, idly wondering the while whether anyone read the names on it these days. An A to Z of grief, you could call it. A to W, anyway, he decided, as the names only ran from Arden to Worrow. Soon, though, all would be forgot, just as Henry the Fifth had said in that glorious Agincourt speech of Shakespeare's that was drilled into all schoolboys. All forgot, that is, except the battle itself.

‘This way, Inspector,' called out one of the white-clad figures. ‘The tent flap's over here.'

Obediently Sloan picked his way over the grass, Crosby stumbling after him among the tussocks. Once inside the tent, his eyes took a moment or two to adjust to the muted light.

‘Sorry if you two can't see very well. Got to have a roof over the top,' grumbled the bespectacled forensic scientist. ‘Everyone seems to have a helicopter these days.'

‘How are you getting on?' asked Sloan, not admitting to the police helicopter parked over at Calleford. Or how useful it and its infrared camera could be.

‘It all seems to be fairly straightforward,' said the expert in the patronising way of all specialists. ‘I should say that he, whoever he was—'

‘Or she,' muttered Crosby, sotto voce.

The expert favoured the constable with a cold stare and repeated himself. ‘He, whoever he was, tried to get in the head end of the coffin first and then found the job couldn't be done without clearing all the earth off.'

‘Earth to earth,' said Crosby.

The expert pushed his glasses up on his nose and carried on. ‘He piled it to one side, just as the gravedigger had done, and then when he'd got what he wanted he pushed it all back again. Well, nearly all.'

‘But not too carefully,' reasoned Sloan, ‘otherwise the vicar wouldn't have noticed that the grave had been disturbed.'

The forensics man nodded. ‘That's just what the archaeologist we had out here told us. Apparently it's very difficult to restore earth exactly as was. That's why they can find out so much about the ancient past.' He rolled his eyes. ‘I must say the fellow did go on a bit about Anglo-Saxon postholes.'

It was the more immediate past that was engaging police attention at the moment and Sloan asked exactly what it was that the archaeologist had said.

‘That it was a very recent disturbance, which we knew about anyway, and a thoroughly unskilled backfilling, which anyone could have worked out.' The forensics specialist added, ‘Whoever it was, I have presumed that he'd have been working in the dark.'

‘He's not the only one,' put in Crosby, kicking a nearby stone.

‘Is there any hard evidence that it was a one-man job?' asked Sloan, reminding himself to have a word with Crosby later about the importance of professional solidarity.

‘You never can tell that for sure, Inspector,' said the expert, pushing his glasses back again, ‘but I would have thought so myself. After all, you halve your take if there're two of you, don't you?'

‘True,' agreed Sloan. That was an old lesson. Even the three robbers in Geoffrey Chaucer's ‘The Pardoner's Tale' had worked that out.

‘To say nothing of the risk of your mate turning Queen's evidence.' The forensic man was clearly warming to his theme. ‘And opening the grave up wouldn't have been all that hard work, not shifting freshly dug earth.'

Sloan brought him back to a matter more at hand. ‘What about the coffin lid?'

‘He didn't screw it back all that well, which is why your undertaker was able to slide it off again so easily. He got it back just well enough for the first thread on the screw to catch, in fact.' The man pushed his glasses back up his nose for the umpteenth time. ‘Looked to us as if he'd brought the wrong size screwdriver with him, though. There's a few brass filings lying about.'

Wondering if carrying a screwdriver and spade after dark in a graveyard constituted ‘going equipped' within the meaning of the Act, Detective Inspector Sloan said, ‘Let us know when you've got everything you can from the site, will you, because we've got a post-mortem lined up for the deceased.'

And not before time, he added silently to himself.

It should have been done before.

Detective Inspector Sloan had barely got back to his office when the telephone rang. He was aware that he really needed to get going with arranging another post-mortem but ingrained discipline made him – however reluctantly – pick up the receiver and say, ‘Sloan here.'

‘Charlie Marsden, SOCO, here, Inspector. About our examination of the Berebury Nursing Home in St Clement's Row after the break-in that you requested…'

‘Ah, yes, of course, Charlie.' Since the finding of Lucy Lansdown's body the breaking and entering at the nursing home had receded in his consciousness. It shouldn't have done, he knew, because he was convinced that somehow it, too, must be a piece in the jigsaw. An important piece. ‘Well, what have our Scene of Crime officers found?'

‘Nothing retrievable, I'm afraid, in the way of useful marks from the carpet in the old lady's room. Too many people have tramped all over it since.'

‘That figures,' said Sloan, sitting down and pulling his notebook towards him. ‘What about the pantry window?'

‘The intruder wore gloves, that's for sure.'

‘Who doesn't these days?' asked Sloan rhetorically.

‘So, Inspector, did whoever it was who got into that bedroom where the vase was broken. He wore gloves, too.'

‘Ah, yes. The china. What did you find on that?' Sloan couldn't decide whether the SOCO was into sex discrimination or not. ‘Anything?'

‘We examined the pieces of the vase for fingerprints but there weren't any on any of them. It had been handled all right but with gloves on, too.'

‘Which is odd,' said Sloan thoughtfully.

Marsden went on conversationally, ‘Quite a nice one, it must have been. The wife's into porcelain and paste and all that jazz so I know that's all it was. Nice but not really valuable. Costs me a bomb, she does,' he added.

‘I'm sure.' In spite of this promising opening Christopher Dennis Sloan wasn't going to say anything about what it was his wife, Margaret, the girl who had once worn the electric-blue dress at a dance at the Bellingham, had a penchant for. ‘What about the break-in itself? Was it an amateur or a professional job?'

‘Difficult to say, Inspector. A babe in arms could have got in that back window there,' said Charlie Marsden scornfully. ‘All he needed would have been something to lever the window out. Any old pinch bar would have done the trick nicely. People put bolts and locks on their front doors and forget the back windows.'

‘Until the horse has bolted,' agreed Sloan.

‘We fingerprinted everyone in the building just to make sure,' said Charlie Marsden. ‘Had a bit of fun with some of the inmates, you won't be surprised to know. That Lady Alice gave us quite a runaround. Couldn't get away from her afterwards. Her good old days must have been something worth writing home about.'

‘I'll bet.' Detective Inspector Sloan knew quite a lot about what happened when genteel young ladies from sheltered backgrounds cut loose, whether in wartime or not. And it wasn't always good news. ‘And?'

‘Ah, you're going to like this, Inspector.'

‘I'm glad to hear it. Go on.'

‘Obviously we took the prints of all the staff as well as the patients.'

‘Obviously.'

‘And all round the pantry and kitchen areas where whoever it was got in.'

‘The intruder, Charlie. Let's settle for calling him that.'

‘The intruder might have worn gloves that night but I can tell you someone who didn't at some time and whose prints shouldn't have been there anyway.'

‘Who was that, then?'

‘The Steele boy.'

‘Not our Matthew?'

‘None other than our own favourite young lag. We got several sets of his dabs in the pantry and the kitchen. His mother's are there, too, of course, because she works there. Not my province, of course, but she could have let him in.'

‘Are you sure about his prints?' asked Sloan. He'd have Matthew Steele brought in for questioning, willy-nilly, and pronto.

‘Matched perfectly with the records. I promise you.' The voice at the other end chuckled and added, ‘Trust me, I'm not a doctor.'

 

‘It's like a plaited cord, Crosby,' declared Sloan when he'd finally finished with Charlie Marsden. ‘We've got these three strands all entwined together. The break-in at Josephine Short's nursing home is one of them for starters.' He paused for thought and then said, almost to himself, ‘Yes, I think that did come first.'

The two detectives were sitting in Sloan's office at the police station. There had been a note on Sloan's desk from Superintendent Leeyes awaiting his return to it. The note demanded his report and his presence with it as soon as possible. Sloan was now engaged with Crosby in what he would have liked to think of as a mind-clearing exercise before this.

‘With Matthew Steele on the premises anywhere anything could happen,' averred Detective Constable Crosby feelingly. ‘He was the first bad 'un I ever nicked. Stole a bike down Railway Street and I got him for it.'

‘No, I'm wrong,' murmured Sloan, half-aloud, following his own train of thought. ‘The break-in mightn't have been the first thing that happened.'

‘Sir?'

‘Josephine Short was a patient in that big hospital in Calleford, remember, when Lucy Lansdown was a nurse on the ward at the same time as she was in there.'

‘That was ages ago,' said Crosby.

‘The seeds of crime,' pronounced Christopher Dennis Sloan, amateur gardener, ‘can take as long to germinate as an orchid does.' Mixing his metaphors, he added grandly, ‘It can have roots that go a very long way back, too.'

‘All right, then, the girl and the old lady could have got together in hospital somewhere else a few years ago,' conceded Crosby, ‘but it's not a lot to go on, sir, is it?'

‘True.' Sloan nodded. ‘So if that's the first thing that happens the break-in comes next.'

‘Like I said, sir, with Matthew Steele around…'

‘No, Crosby.'

‘No?'

‘Matthew Steele could have got into the nursing home at any time he wanted. Easily. His mother works there, remember.'

‘I get it,' Crosby said. ‘He could have lifted a key of the place – and the room – when he was in there anytime beforehand.'

‘Or been let in by his mother,' pointed out Sloan.

‘I'm still with you, sir. So he wouldn't really have needed to break into the nursing home.'

‘Not so fast, Crosby, not so fast. Matthew might have taken the window out just to make it look as if he had.'

Detective Constable Crosby gave a deep sigh. ‘It's very difficult, sir, isn't it?'

‘It's called considering all the possibilities,' said Sloan tartly, a man now also soured by the thought of a bruising encounter with the gentlemen of the press, hastily arranged by the force's despised Press and Public Relations department. A note about that had been on his desk too. It was a toss-up whether it was a marginally less welcome prospect than an interview with the superintendent.

Crosby was clearly cogitating hard when he said, ‘So either Matthew Steele could have pretended to come in through the window or someone else—'

‘Person or persons unknown,' said Sloan, trying as always to din ‘policespeak' into the constable's head.

‘Could have done it for real,' finished Crosby.

‘And?'

Crosby's brow wrinkled. ‘And what?'

‘And entered Josephine Short's room and knocked over the vase in the process.'

‘But we don't know why anyone went in there. That it?'

‘Exactly, Crosby. I think if we did know we would be a lot further on. Then…'

The furrows on Crosby's brow deepened. ‘Then somehow or other the girl goes in the river but we still don't know how or why.'

‘There was something before that,' said Sloan, unsure now whether talking the case over with Crosby could really be said to constitute clearing the mind.

‘What was that, then, sir?'

‘There was the funeral.'

‘What about it?'

‘It happened the day before the girl went into the river and she had attended it.'

‘How were they connected?'

‘If we knew that, Crosby, we'd be a lot further along with this case than we are.' Exploring the ramifications of the break-in with Crosby was one thing. Doing it with Superintendent Leeyes later on was going to be much more difficult. He had another thought. ‘That's assuming the whole scenario is one case. We don't even know that.'

‘So then the girl goes into the river,' persisted Crosby. ‘After being at the funeral, of course.'

‘No, Crosby. You're going too fast.' Privately deciding that going too fast must be a first for the detective constable except in the matter of his driving, Sloan went on, ‘The afternoon of the day of the funeral William Wakefield comes back from South America but does not come home that night. Instead he goes out somewhere in London…'

‘A night on the tiles?' suggested the constable. He had never actually had one of these but liked the sound of it.

‘Possibly, Crosby, quite possibly, but nevertheless I thought a check on hire cars was indicated and the Met are going to do that for us. With a good car he could have come down here, pushed the girl into the river, and got back to the Erroll Garden Hotel in the times that they have down for his coming and going there.'

Crosby nodded. ‘And the other man – the grandson, Joe Short – could have got out of the Bellingham via the beer cellar and got back in again without anyone knowing. That's for sure.'

‘Exactly so,' agreed Sloan. ‘And if the River Board's calculations are correct Lucy Lansdown goes into the river – never mind how for the time being…'

‘Dead or alive, you mean, sir,' put in Crosby.

‘Not quite either but never mind,' said Sloan again, ‘but at a time when either man could have done it.'

Detective Constable Crosby gave a deep sigh. ‘And that only takes us up to the night before last and doesn't include Matthew Steele.'

‘Moreover, today,' went on Sloan trenchantly, ‘Lucy Lansdown's body is found and we learn that Josephine Short's grave has been desecrated although this was carried out at a time as yet unknown.'

‘Since the funeral, though,' said Crosby brightly.

Detective Inspector Sloan gave his subordinate a pitying look. ‘Well done.'

‘And the funeral was only the day before yesterday, sir.'

‘Thank you, Crosby, I am well aware of that.' He was still waiting for a written report from the forensics team presently examining the grave and permission from the Home Office and the coroner to exhume the body for a post-mortem. ‘And nothing so far helps explain the break-in at the nursing home. Or its connection with the death of Lucy Lansdown, let alone the desecration of Josephine Short's grave.'

‘Perhaps it's a case of multiple pathology, like the doctor said.' The constable hitched himself forward in his chair. ‘So where do we go from here, sir?'

‘Literally, as far as I am concerned, to face the press.' Detective Inspector Sloan got to his feet and said with tightened lips, ‘Metaphorically I just don't know. And you, Crosby, you can go and bring Matthew Steele in for questioning.'

 

If there was one duty Detective Inspector Sloan liked least of all it was holding a press conference. No matter how well the force's press and public relations expert briefed him beforehand on how not to respond to snide questions, Sloan always felt his ire rise at the downright impertinent ones.

‘I know you do, Inspector,' said that officer patiently. ‘It is quite obvious to everyone present that you want to punch the reporter's nose at any such question, but if you do, I can promise you that you'll be the one to hit the headlines. And they won't help your career prospects.'

Sloan muttered something unintelligible in reply to the adviser, whose position in the force in any case he held to be a waste of space and public money.

‘Moreover,' went on the man with professional suavity, ‘it should be remembered that press conferences quite often have a positive outcome.'

‘Only when the villain's taking part,' retorted Sloan with some justification. ‘The camera doesn't lie even if the suspect does.'

‘True,' said the man, standing back a pace and regarding Sloan's appearance with a critical eye. ‘Are you sure you couldn't be persuaded to go on camera in uniform, Inspector? It comes over so much better with the general public. They expect it, you know.'

‘Quite sure,' said Sloan with unaccustomed surliness.

‘What about wearing a raincoat, then?'

‘It's not raining,' said Sloan stubbornly.

The man sighed. ‘All right. Now can we please consider some of the awkward questions you might be asked?'

Sloan bristled. ‘I shall just stick to the facts.'

The man sighed again. ‘The press won't, of course. They'll try and jump you into saying something you don't want to.'

‘Let them try,' he growled.

‘I expect they will.' The press officer sounded resigned.

‘I shall tell them simply and clearly about a woman being pulled out of the river – nothing more,' said Sloan with dignity.

‘And who she is, of course…'

‘No,' he said firmly, shaking his head. ‘Not that yet.'

‘Or that she was a nurse? They may have picked that up very quickly in any case. Nurses always make a good headline.'

‘No.'

‘Aren't you forgetting that they may have already talked to her next-door neighbour before coming here?'

‘The name is not going to be released until the relatives have been informed,' said Sloan with dignity, ‘and I shall say so however many times they ask me.'

‘And what are you going to say about the men diving in the river under the bridge?'