Corpse in Waiting (5 page)

‘No, I'm all right, thank you.'

‘Is James on the case?'

‘Yes. He's going to call round at our hotel later. Where's Alexandra?'

The chilly barrier between us reappeared. ‘Gone off with a headache. She asked me to tell the estate agent that she wouldn't look at any more houses today.' A pause. ‘She's really mad with you.'

‘It's irrelevant – she won't want the place now.'

‘Do
you
?'

‘James asked me that. I don't know.'

‘It seems to me you'll do anything to stop Alex having it.'

‘No, it's not like that at all. And frankly, you ought to know me better than that after all this time. I fell in love with it. But you might be partly right – perhaps I don't want it to fall into the hands of someone I know will tear it to pieces.'

I thought he would carry on with that subject of conversation but he tackled the sandwiches instead, staring into space, munching with a slight frown.

I drank the juice, not knowing what to say, and for a while there was silence.

‘I'm almost sure I met Alex in a pub in Plymouth,' Patrick said, finally.

‘And I'm quite sure you've never been to a fashion show,' I responded, speaking more curtly than I had intended.

‘Your very good health,' James Carrick said, raising the tot of single malt that Patrick had just given him. And then, exasperated, ‘Out of all the houses for sale in the world you could have looked at you had to choose that one.'

‘Just think of it from the point of view that someone else who found it might be in hospital right now having suffered a heart attack brought on by the shock,' I said, again finding myself speaking more sharply than the occasion demanded.

Patrick said. ‘Do you have an identity for the body yet?'

Carrick shook his head. ‘No. It was naked under the wrappings – no personal effects. I'm bracing myself to attend the PM tomorrow afternoon. First thoughts are that she was bludgeoned to death. But then to . . .' He broke off.

‘It might have been meant for a specific person to find,' I suggested. ‘Some kind of horrible revenge.'

‘That's a possible explanation. The house belongs to an old lady who's now in a nursing home, away with the birds. Apparently it had been rented to a nephew, who may or may not be her next of kin – we don't yet know. Lynn's been at the home for most of the afternoon trying to get some answers, but without success. But at least we have the address of a firm of solicitors who are acting for the owner from the estate agent so we're working from there.'

‘Do you want me to come to the nick and make a statement?' I asked.

‘If you could call in for a wee while tomorrow morning . . .'

‘It wouldn't appear that she was killed at the property,' Patrick said. ‘Otherwise, surely, we would have noticed bloodstains.'

‘Aye,' Carrick said on a gusty sigh. ‘But who knows what went on in the garden? It's pretty secluded because of the trees. Scenes-of-crime are going to rig up lights and work through the night on the entire property.'

‘There's a blackbird's nest in the white lilac,' I told him.

‘I doubt they'll need to actually fell anything,' he pointed out.

‘I wouldn't mind having another look round when they've finished,' Patrick said.

‘I expect that could be arranged,' James said, albeit guardedly. ‘But—'

Patrick spread his hands, palms out. ‘Peace, Oh, son of the North. I have no intention of interfering with your case. Just professional interest.' He gave the other a sunny smile.

James did not appear to be reassured.

‘But I've never stuck my nose into his investigations – unless invited to,' Patrick said later that night.

‘It's just his natural caution,' I said. The atmosphere was still strained. I knew that Alexandra had phoned him earlier but he had not disclosed anything about their conversation.

The story of the body's discovery had been all over the evening papers with a photograph of Carrick, looking stern, making a statement to the media outside the house. Seemingly unaware that the property would be out of bounds to everyone but the police for at least a week someone at the estate agency, obviously with a bad case of jitters, had rung me to ask if I wanted to carry on with the purchase. I had told them I would let them know the next morning.

Did I really want to go ahead?

I could not sleep, seeing those rotting eyes, smelling death and decay that still seemed to linger around me even though I had showered and washed my hair. And that other thing; Patrick saying that he had slept with Alexandra, almost certainly not true after what he had related to me when we got back together again. Even if it was not there was no point in my getting upset about it as we had been divorced at the time.

But I was.

For several restless hours my thoughts went uselessly round and round. When I did at last sleep it was to dream that several Alexandras with empty eye sockets were chasing me around the house waving large knives. They all cornered me in the scullery and the blades were raised, glittering.

‘God, you gave me a shock!' Patrick exclaimed in the pale light of early dawn.

I had woken with a start, sweating, wrapped tightly, like the corpse, in the duvet. ‘What?' I muttered.

‘You screamed.'

‘I had a nightmare.'

‘And you have all the bedclothes.'

This matter was grimly dealt with and he promptly went back to sleep.

I surveyed him, his body as lean and sinewy as the day I had fallen in love with him on that summer's day on Dartmoor. We had been as children then in those more innocent times, he eighteen, I fifteen, when my parents had not been concerned that their daughter was walking in wild places with the clergyman's son. Why should they have been? Patrick's interests were well known to be singing in the church choir and going fishing in the River Tamar. So that afternoon when we had eaten our picnic and Patrick had made us laugh until we cried – he is still a brilliant mimic – hugging one another in the hot sunshine and I felt the way his body moved under the thin material of his shirt . . .

Children one moment and as close as human beings can become the next. A crash course in adulthood. I had decided, there and then, that here was the man I wanted, for ever and ever.

And now?

Patrick announced at breakfast that he was fulfilling the rest of his promise to accompany Alexandra on her house-hunting. I could not remember his making any promises but was reluctant to start an argument in the hotel restaurant so told him to carry on. There seemed to be no point in remaining at the hotel so I went back to our room, packed and left, leaving him either to stay for the rest of the time we had booked, another night, or check out. Then I took a taxi to Bath's Manvers Street police station.

At least, that was what I had intended to do. But, for a reason that I was not too sure about until I actually arrived, I changed my mind.

‘SOCA,' I said to the constable on guard outside the property now cordoned off with incident tape, showing him my ID card. I had asked the taxi driver to wait and had already spotted Carrick's car.

‘The DCI's in the back garden,' he told me, perhaps not daring to enquire what the hell the case had to do with that particular crime fighting agency.

The front and back doors were wide open, which was wonderful, given the lingering smell. I paused in the downstairs doorways but knew better than to enter, a solitary scenes of crime officer, in a white anti-contamination suit, still working in the living room to the right of the front door. Some of the floor boards had been taken up but otherwise it did not seem that forensics had burrowed too deeply into the fabric of the house. My house.

Part of the back garden had been forked or raked over, which I knew was necessary – I told myself it would take care of a lot of the weeds – and the blackbird was having a ball hauling out a large worm from the disturbed earth to feed to its young. It paid no heed to the man standing quietly surveying a medium-sized hole in the ground that I only noticed as I got closer.

‘We found her clothes and bag but not anything that might have been used to decapitate the body,' Carrick said after a quick glance in my direction and not appearing to find my presence surprising or out of order.

‘The murderer buried them?' I mused aloud. ‘I wonder why?'

‘God knows when all he had to do was burn them or chuck them in the river. A small bush of some kind had obviously been dug out and then stamped back in any which way – that's where they started digging.'

‘Oh, the dead forsythia. I noticed that.' I eyed the sad bundle of twigs with just a few tiny green shoots that had been put on one side. ‘That was done
last
year – it's still struggling to grow.'

‘Aye, the pathologist thinks she's been dead a good twelve months.'

‘So who was she?'

‘The bag was plastic, thank God, so hadn't rotted. The driving licence inside is in the name of Imelda Burnside. The address on it is here in Bath, in the London Road but it turns out she wasn't living there then as she'd been evicted for not paying the rent. There was no money but her credit cards were still in the purse. The interesting thing is that there's a set of car keys, plus a couple more that fit the doors to this house.'

‘She must have been living here then.'

‘Looks like it. Lynn's talking to the neighbours and checking up on things like council tax and with the DVLA. If her killer had another set of car keys he might have sold it or used it for his getaway.'

‘I was on my way to the nick when I thought I'd come here to ask myself if I still wanted to buy the place.'

‘Did you come by taxi?'

I nodded.

‘I can give you a lift. I'm going back shortly.'

As I went back through the house to pay off the taxi my phone rang. It was the estate agent, in panic mode. We had a short conversation.

‘I've just received an amazing offer if I carry on with the sale,' I said to James when I returned to the garden. ‘Although a price of twenty thousand pounds below what had originally been asked was agreed yesterday I've just been told I can have the place for fifty thousand below if I don't now pull out because of what's happened. I'm only human and I've jumped at it as it's a wonderful investment even if I don't ever live here. But, being suspicious, I'm wondering if the owners' solicitors really have their client's interest at heart or someone else has their finger on the pulse and wants to get shot of the place, fast.'

‘The nephew,' Carrick murmured. ‘That's my priority already, to find and talk to him.'

‘Any other leads?'

‘Not yet.'

We bought the rectory at Hinton Littlemoor when the diocese planned to put it on the market having rehoused Patrick's parents, John and Elspeth, in a rabbit hutch of a bungalow on a cheap little development where the railway station and goods yard had once been. Neither Patrick nor I had found this at all acceptable. A lot of alterations to what was already quite a large house later they have their own private annex where an old stable and garage used to be and the new rooms above are for our and our family's use. John still has his study, sacrosanct, in the main house and they are welcome to use the living rooms there too if they wish. It is a very nice arrangement – but for the lack of an author's workstation – with everyone respecting others' privacy although I do have to rake the children out of their grandparents' accommodation occasionally when I feel they are practically living there.

Elspeth, still slim and elegant, was in her own kitchen, preparing her and John's lunch.

‘Do you remember anyone by the name of Alexandra Nightingale?' I asked.

‘You're back early,' she commented, as usual getting right to the heart of any situation. ‘Is everything all right?'

‘I
think
so. It's just that this woman's popped out of the woodwork and Patrick's helping her look at houses for sale.'

‘
Really?
'

‘Umm.'

‘I take it this would be someone he knew when he came home badly injured.'

‘That's right.'

Elspeth paused in grating cheese. ‘What does she look like?'

‘Around five feet six inches tall, blonde hair – although it might not be natural – bright blue eyes.'

‘Really piercing blue eyes?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I can remember a girl like that but I think she had dark hair. Let me think a minute . . . That's right. He brought her here one weekend. I didn't like her at all, mainly because she was rude and patronizing. She put John's back up straight away by saying that only people like country yokels still went to church. And now she's turned up, you say?'

‘Moving some kind of agency down here from London and buying a house. Apparently she used to be a model.'

‘I'd be surprised if she was, unless I'm thinking of a different girl. She didn't have the deportment of any kind of model.'

‘Patrick thinks he met her in a pub in Plymouth.'

‘That sounds more like it.' Elspeth went back to grating. ‘What do you think of her?'

‘Not much. She's all over him.'

‘And flattering him silly, I suppose.'

‘Yes, but – Elspeth, please don't say anything to him.'

After taking a glance at an opened recipe book she shot me a look over her reading glasses. ‘No, of course not. Not unless he mentions it to me.'