Core of Evil (16 page)

At least, that was what Daisy thought until she turned a page to find a chapter about sensational crimes in the Tendring Hundreds area. To illustrate
it, there was a photographic reprint of the front page of a newspaper dating from the 1940s. The headline said, simply, ‘Local Woman in Murder Tragedy’.

And beneath the headline was a black and white photograph of the girl whose reflection she had seen in the water of the marina.

Once upon a time, before he had made Detective Chief Inspector, Mark Lapslie’s office had been a small, rectangular room in a monolithic 1950s building on the outskirts of Chelmsford, with a grim view across the police station car park and plaster-board walls that showed signs of continual overpainting in a variety of colours. Triangular pieces of sticky tape, yellowing with age, had adorned the walls, though the posters and photographs they had secured had long since been removed. Angular metal conduits, studded with rivets, had been fixed along the skirting board at some stage in the past to take electrical cables and sockets; more conduits had been added at waist height at a later date to take computer network cables. The building had no air conditioning, but the policemen and women who had worked there had quickly learned which windows to open and which to leave shut in order to create a continual cool flow of air through the corridors. In winter, Lapslie had kept cartons of milk out on the window ledge. A lady with a trolley used to
come through, once at eleven o’clock and once again at three, selling sticky buns and stewed tea. Another lady with a trolley would come through half an hour later to empty the out-trays on the desks and deliver any new post.

Now, Lapslie had a desk on the eleventh floor of an open-plan office in an architecturally award-winning office block built only a few years before in the redeveloped town centre. Incoming post was scanned in and delivered electronically to the computers on every desk. Outgoing mail had been replaced with outgoing email. The windows were coated with metallic film, for security and energy efficiency, and they couldn’t be opened. Nobody was allowed to stick anything to the walls, and the notice boards were pruned once a month for offensive or out-of-date items. All of the electrical and ethernet cabling ran under the raised floor. So did the ventilation: small, circular vents every few yards provided an almost unnoticeable flow of fresh air. The chairs were state-of-the-art, like black sculptures: plastic mesh on a metal frame, promoting comfort and coolness. A cafeteria in the basement sold
venti lattes
and almond croissants at grossly inflated prices. A chalkboard sign on one wall compared their grossly inflated prices with those of other coffee bars in the locality and came to the conclusion that the coffee there was just cheap enough that it made no sense to go out for one,
unless you just wanted a walk. They had a gymnasium, a dry-cleaners and a hairdressers actually on the premises.

And Lapslie hated it. He hated it with a passion beyond telling. The noise of thirty or so officers and civilians of various ranks, all talking to one another, talking to themselves or talking on the telephone was distracting beyond measure. To Lapslie it had been like having the taste of blood in his mouth for the entire working day. Following a letter from his doctor to the Assistant Chief Constable, Lapslie had been allowed to use one of the Quiet Rooms – usually set aside for confidential discussions – as a surrogate office if he needed a break. The rest of the time, he wore earplugs.

Still, there were some consolations. Shortly after the force had moved in, some of the lower-ranking officers had discovered that if they covered the floor-based ventilation grilles in a line at the same time, leaving the last one uncovered, then the resulting air pressure out of that vent could quite easily lift a skirt high above the waist on any passing woman. That had kept them amused for a while, until a circular came round forbidding the practice.

Now he sat in the Quiet Room, reading through Dr Catherall’s final autopsy report. He’d spent several weeks chasing her to get it finished, and eventually, and with bad grace, she had complied.

There was no doubt – Violet Chambers had been
murdered. The cause of death was uncertain – she had certainly been poisoned, but she also appeared to have been struck on the back of the head. Either could have been the fatal occurrence, although the dirt under her fingernails matched the ground in the vicinity, meaning that she had still been alive when she had been dumped in the forest. The fingers on the right hand had been removed by a sharp, bladed object like a pair of scissors, but that had been done at some stage after Violet Chambers had died, and so blood loss could be ruled out.

Lapslie put down the autopsy report and picked up the report on the area where the body had been found. Tests on the plastic in which she had been wrapped were inconclusive: it was a standard make, available from any large DIY store, and both time and weather had erased any fingerprints that might have been there. And, based on some complicated calculations involving insect pupae and moss, it had been definitively established that her body had lain there for more than eight but fewer than ten months before having been so rudely excavated by a crashing car.

Which still left the two big questions: who had killed her, and why?

Something moved in his peripheral vision, and he twisted around. Emma Bradbury was standing just outside the glass door to the Quiet Room, waving at him. She was wearing a pinstripe trouser-suit offset
by an orange sash tied around her waist. He gestured her to enter. She pushed the door open, and Lapslie could immediately taste blood as the susurration of the open-plan office washed over him, as if he’d suddenly bitten his tongue.

‘What’s up, Emma?’

‘Message from the Super, sir. Could you give him an update on the case? Apparently his PA has been trying to get hold of you, but you haven’t been at your desk.’ The saltiness of the blood receded, replaced by lemon and grapefruit. For a moment the two tastes combined in his mouth: something exotic, like lemongrass, only deeper and more intense. Emma closed the door behind her.

‘An update on this case? The Violet Chambers one?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Bit beneath his level of interest, surely?’

Emma shrugged. ‘Not for me to judge. Oh, you asked me to trace where the rent from Violet’s house was going, sir. Turns out it’s going into an account opened some years ago in the name of J. Chambers.’

‘Jack Chambers?’ He remembered the name from the interview with the elderly couple living opposite what had been Violet’s house. ‘Violet Chambers’ husband?’

‘That’s right. According to the bank, when he died, back in 1984, she had the account transferred across into her name. And she used it intermittently
right up until we know she died, ten months ago. And, bizarrely, she’s been using it since as well.’

‘Someone’s been taking money out of the account? That would certainly track with theft being a motive, but I can’t imagine it’s a whole load of money. What is it – a few hundred pounds a week?’

Emma nodded. ‘Something like that, sir. I’ve known murders happen for less.’

‘In the heat of the moment, yes, but this has the hallmarks of something longer term. Something premeditated. I can’t see anyone taking a risk like that for a few hundred pounds a week. How has the money been taken out? Cashpoint, debit card or cheque?’

Emma consulted a sheet of paper in her hand. ‘All of the amounts taken out have been cashpoint withdrawals from a variety of banks scattered around London, Essex, Norfolk and Hertfordshire. No cashpoint machine was ever used more than once, as far as I can tell.’

Lapslie leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. ‘All right, let’s summarise where we’ve got to. The crime scene where we discovered the body is a bust – the evidence has just been washed, carried or blown away over the past ten months. The body is a bust – we can’t say for sure how she died, and there’s no trace evidence. The victim’s background is a bust – there’s nothing there that could give any cause for murder, apart from this
trickle of rent. The only thing we’ve got is this woman who may have been seen going in and out of Violet Chambers’ house before she died, and that may be completely innocent. We could spend the next few months tracking down a chiropodist, if we’re not careful. So what’s left? Where do we go from here?’

‘The nature of the crime itself. Poison is generally a woman’s weapon, and the fact that it may have been administered in the form of food indicates a domestic setting – something casual. The murderer was known to the victim, and trusted enough for her to take a slice of cake or whatever it was that the murderer had baked.’

‘Okay – it’s something to be going on with. Set up a house-to-house in the neighbourhood around Violet Chambers’ place. Ask anyone if they remember Violet having any regular visitors in the month or so before she disappeared. Check local shops to see if they recall any women who appeared around that time and then vanished again. Pharmacies and off-licences might be a good place to start. Check with the local surgery as well – whoever this woman was, if there was a woman, she might have taken Violet to an appointment at some stage. Or made one herself.’

‘Will do. Anything else?’

Lapslie thought for a moment. ‘Yes – run a check into unsolved poisonings. See if this … colchicine …
has been used before. It’s a long shot, but we might strike lucky. I can’t imagine it’s a common poison, all things considered.’

Emma nodded, and headed off. The door swung shut behind her, and Lapslie was cut off from the noise of the office. Cut off from all noise apart from the sound of his own breathing and the rustle of his clothes as he moved. And if he kept very still, then even that was hushed to the point of silence.

Silence. The blessed state that he craved above all else, and so very rarely achieved.

When Lapslie explained his synaesthesia to most people, they either didn’t believe it or they were fascinated. They asked him questions about how it felt, and they sympathised – as much as they could – but they never really understood. Not even the doctors and the psychiatrists, who spent their time reading textbooks and devising experiments to help them understand what synaesthesia implied about the way the brain worked. They never appreciated how it felt to be constantly battered by sensations you weren’t expecting. Constantly ambushed by unplanned floods of flavour – some pleasant, some sickening, but all of them unwelcome.

How could you explain that you could never listen to the radio? Never watch the television? Never attend a sporting event or a concert, for fear that a stray taste provoked by an unexpected sound could make you throw up? How could you tell them that
you couldn’t spend your evenings in the pub with the lads because the raucous atmosphere was like a stream of rancid fat in your mouth, masking the taste of the beer, the whisky or whatever else you tried to use to cover it up with? He’d got a reputation in the force for stand-offishness, for being remote and aloof. The truth was, he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t join in. He felt as if he was slowly going mad.

Even eating out was difficult. When they first started seeing each other, he and Sonia had tried to go out for the occasional meal, but they’d had to look for restaurants with no background music. Even then the murmur of other people’s conversations underpinned the whole meal, from starter to coffee, with the flatness of blood. No matter what main course he ordered, the meat always tasted raw. After a while, they stopped going out entirely, apart from on Sonia’s birthday, when Lapslie steeled himself for an unpleasant evening. And, frankly, that just wasn’t fair on her.

It wasn’t only one way, either. Over the years, Lapslie had found himself eating blander and blander food, if only because his working life was a morass of clashing flavours. Sitting in a silent house, eating rice or pasta, was the ultimate in luxury for him.

A quiet house. A house without a wife, without children.

Sonia had tried to understand. Not one for going out much herself – her job as a nurse took up most
of her time, and resting took much of the remainder – she valued the peace they had together. They went for long walks in the woods. He read, sitting quietly in an armchair, while she did needlepoint and crosswords.

A little island of peace and contentment, which had lasted until precisely the moment when Sonia unexpectedly fell pregnant. With twins.

Lapslie loved his children desperately. He also hated them; or, rather, he hated the constant noise, the squalling when they were young and the shouting and arguing when they were older. Earplugs helped; working late in the office and going out for long walks alone helped even more, but that just put more strain on Sonia, who had to look after the children and the house by herself. And slowly he found himself losing touch with them. Watching from a distance as they got on with life without him.

He couldn’t now remember whether it was he or Sonia who had suggested splitting up. They had obviously both been thinking about it for some time, and when one of them broached the subject, almost in passing, the other leaped on it. ‘A trial separation’, they had called it. And, as with many of the trials that Lapslie had been involved with over the years, it was getting increasingly rancorous and there seemed to be no sign of it ever ending. They were still in contact, but they were drifting apart. Through no
fault of his, and no fault of hers, they were just drifting apart.

He sighed. Better go and see what the Superintendent wanted.

He chose a route to his office – one of the few actual offices in the entire building – that minimised the number of people he had to pass on the way. ‘Office’ was a bit of a misnomer – in fact, it was just a section of the office ‘floorplate’, as they called it, separated off by frosted glass panels – but at least it was something. When he arrived outside, the Super’s personal assistant glanced up at him from her desk. She was frowning. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I was caught up.’