Death of a Friend (22 page)

‘Just for the record,’ he said, ‘I was praying she’d say her piece quickly and leave me alone.’

‘That isn’t the way it sounded to me. What was that about someone being omnipotent?’

‘Docile and omnipotent,’ he said again. ‘Boanerges. It’s Emily Dickinson.’

‘
Poetry!’
she howled. ‘You and Martha quote
poetry to each other and you wonder why I’m jealous.’

‘Shut up, you dozy wench. I’m too tired to argue. Can we just pretend the call never happened? What she said – it can wait until morning.’

‘Irresponsible sod,’ she said, shifting at last so he could put his arm round her.

‘You mind your language,’ he mumbled, as their mouths found each other.  

The phone woke them twenty minutes before the alarm would have done. Outside, birds were asking each other whether or not daylight had really arrived, and if so, was spring far enough advanced to warrant a full chorus? The sky was clear, the roads almost silent. It was 5.40 a.m.

‘Cooper?’ came the voice of another anonymous police message handler. ‘There’s been some kind of incident at the Quaker Meeting House in Chillhampton. It has been suggested you might like to get over there, seeing as how it’s connected with your murder inquiry, and find out what’s what.’

‘Can’t you give me more than that?’ croaked Den blearily. ‘Like what sort of incident.’

‘Domestic. Neighbour reported screams. Just thought you’d want to know.’ The voice was smug; somewhere along the line someone had done some unusually quick thinking and made the right connections.

‘Yes. Thanks,’ he said.

When he arrived at the Meeting House, there was a police car already parked outside and a small knot of villagers standing a judicious distance from the building, despite the hour.
How
embarrassing for the Aspens,
thought Den, with genuine sympathy. One woman stepped forward. ‘Be ’ee a policeman?’ she asked.

‘Detective Constable Den Cooper, madam,’ said Den politely.

‘Tid’n every day us gets this sort of thing,’ she continued gleefully. Den recognised the type – early sixties, dumpy, with piercing brown eyes. She was clearly enjoying herself hugely.

‘I’m sure it isn’t,’ he agreed, and pressed the doorbell, wondering how his arrival would impact on whatever might be happening in the Aspens’ flat. A uniformed WPC clattered down the stairs to let him in. It was Benny Timms, one of the older, more matronly members of the local team. She smiled briefly, but seemed unsure as to how welcome his presence might be.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m not altogether sure,’ she whispered back.
‘The wife’s been having hysterics, but I can’t get them to tell me what it’s all about. The woman from the house up the road says she heard loud screams and shouting. He looks ghastly.’

‘Has he been hitting her?’

‘No, I don’t think so. If anything, it’s the other way around.’

‘What?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Come and see for yourself. I suppose they might talk to you, if you already know them.’

He shook his head pessimistically. ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’

He entered the room behind Constable Timms and scanned the scene. Clive and Mandy were both on the sofa, in their nightclothes. She was shaking and tearstained, her hands held in a tight grip by his. Clive was indeed looking ghastly. His black hair stood up in ragged spikes, his skin was grey and his short, thick beard was a sinister black slash on his cheeks and chin. ‘Good morning,’ said Den gently. ‘I gather there’s been some trouble.’

Clive shook his head heavily. ‘Mandy had a bad dream. She woke up screaming and I’ve been trying to calm her. There’s no need for you people to be involved. We’re very sorry if we disturbed the neighbours. We had the window open, and the sound must have carried. This
is all very embarrassing, as I expect you’ll appreciate.’

‘Well, sir,’ Den began slowly, his mind picking up speed as he talked, ‘the fact is there was a disturbance. The noise was sufficiently alarming for your neighbour to fear for your safety. With respect, it sounds as if there was something a bit more serious than a bad dream going on.’

Mandy moaned and tried to pull her hands away from Clive’s grasp. Den began to wonder just why her husband was holding her so tightly. ‘Let her go,’ he said with a frown. ‘Sir, your wife is trying to get free.’

For a moment Clive hung on, and then with a dramatic gesture he flung his hands wide apart. Mandy’s fell into her lap like two dead things, revealing a scatter of torn-up paper which she had been clutching.

‘What’s this?’ asked Den, stooping to gather a few of the scraps. They were the remains of a colour photograph. Quickly, with Mandy offering no resistance, he collected all the other fragments. There were eight in all, easy enough to reassemble. Clive made a low groan as Den laid the spoilt picture on the sofa beside Mandy.

‘Is this who I think it is?’ he asked.

Benny came to look over his shoulder, bemused by the sudden turn of events. ‘It’s somebody’s
little boy,’ she said. ‘Looks like a nice little chap.’

Den was staring from Mandy to Clive and back again. ‘So this is how you recognised him yesterday,’ he said to her. ‘But—’

‘It’s not what you think,’ growled Clive, shaking his head crazily from side to side. ‘I never
touched
him.’

‘All right, sir.’ Den tried to calm him. ‘Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we? Would you explain why you’ve got a picture of Clement Nesbitt here in your flat?’

‘There’s no law against it, is there? It’s just a simple snapshot. I work at his school. I wouldn’t hurt him. I wouldn’t let anyone touch a hair on his head.’ His voice was rising; his eyes darted feverishly from face to face. ‘It’s
her,
with her nightmares and her refusal to face reality. She’s the one you should be questioning, not me.’

Mandy began to cry again, loudly and without restraint. Den was at first concerned for her and then quickly suspicious that she was employing a diversionary tactic. Benny had evidently come to the same conclusion, since she put a firm hand on Mandy’s arm. ‘Come on, now, that’s not going to help. You’ll only have the neighbours telling more stories about you. You’ll have to explain yourselves sooner or later, you know.’

The brisk words had some effect and Mandy
grew quieter. Den decided to leave the remaining formalities to Benny, indicating with a slight backward movement that the floor was all hers.

‘Right,’ she said, even more briskly, ‘there doesn’t seem to be any need for further questions at the moment. Detective Constable Cooper here is part of a murder inquiry, as you know, and I should imagine you will both have to be interviewed about what’s happened this morning.’ She looked at Den, who nodded. ‘Meanwhile, I must ask you not to make any more disturbance. Can I have your assurances on that?’

Clive and Mandy murmured assent, like chastened schoolchildren.

Den cleared his throat. ‘We’ll need to see you separately,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll take this with me.’ He tucked the torn-up picture into an evidence bag from his pocket. ‘I don’t think we should waste too much time, for everyone’s sake.’ He paused briefly, watching Clive carefully. ‘In fact,’ he decided, choosing his moment, ‘I think it would be best, Mr Aspen, if you were to come with us to the police station now, and answer some questions there.’

Clive clenched his hands tightly together and pressed the double fist into his own stomach. It looked painful. ‘Don’t,’ said Mandy. ‘Clive,
please don’t.’ She looked at Den. ‘Be gentle with him,’ she begged. ‘He’s not well.’

Den gave Clive ten minutes to get himself ready, while he and Benny went out into the village street. The Meeting House was set back from the road, with parking space in front for three or four cars. There was very little traffic; the curious neighbours had presumably all returned to their breakfasts. At least Clive wouldn’t have an audience.

‘What do you reckon?’ Benny asked Den, as they loitered between their two cars.

‘She’s obviously scared of him,’ Den began, before correcting himself. ‘Or scared
for
him. And he’s a real mess.’

‘Clinging to sanity by his fingernails,’ Benny agreed graphically. ‘Though you can’t always be sure with couples. I mean, it can be a sort of mirror image of the way it looks to an observer. Isn’t there something called projection, where people dump all their own worst features onto their partner?’

Den gave her a sceptical look. ‘Sounds complicated.’

‘There’s nowt so complicated as folk,’ she quipped. ‘Good luck with them, anyway. Disturbed your beauty sleep, did it? I told them not to call you.’

He grinned and rubbed his unshaven chin.
‘And now you’re glad they did. You looked a bit stuck when I arrived.’

She slapped him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Me? Stuck! Never. But I can’t pretend I was enjoying it. Something not very nice going on there. I’d bet money on it.’

‘Well, while you’re here, I might as well ask you—’ Den leant closer, with a glance at the open window above their heads. Belatedly he wondered whether Clive and Mandy might have overheard what had been said so far. In a whisper, he said, ‘Would you say he’s in the running for the murder of Charlie Gratton? As a gut feeling?’

Benny pursed her lips and blew out her plump cheeks. She looked across the village street and then along its length to the junction with a small country road. She frowned. ‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ she said at last. ‘But I would be surprised.’

Den opened his eyes wide in a parody of amazed incredulity. ‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘You’ll go far with insight like that.’

‘You’re the detective, mate,’ she said, turning towards her car. ‘I’d say his ten minutes are up. I’ll just sit here until you’ve got him safely away. Have a nice day.’

But Den’s day had virtually no chance of being nice after such a start. He delivered Clive to the
police station only to have him whisked away to an interview room without a ‘by your leave’ even though it was far from clear who would do the interviewing. DI Smith and DC Bennett were both at home. Belatedly, Den realised it was Good Friday and nobody was going to thank him for bringing people in for interview. ‘Either do it yourself or leave your subject to stew until a more respectable hour of the morning,’ said the desk officer unsympathetically.

Den dithered, out of his depth. He knew there was no way he could question Clive without some discussion with the Inspector first. But it seemed wrong to bring the man in only to abandon him to the ministrations of the handful of reluctant Bank Holiday staff. He looked helplessly at his watch: seven forty-five.

‘Call the DI at eight,’ he said. ‘Tell him what’s happened and ask him to phone me at home. I’m going back for some breakfast.’ He hoped he sounded decisive. ‘And take Mr Aspen some coffee and something to eat, okay?’

The officer’s jaw jutted forward mulishly, before he asked, ‘Would he like butter on his hot cross buns, do you think?’

As he’d expected, Lilah had gone without leaving any sort of note. He didn’t know when he could expect to see her again. This was almost the first
time that his work had intruded so blatantly on their relationship and he knew it was bound to cause conflict. If he were to go for promotion – move to Exeter or even further afield, make himself available for intensive investigations – then Lilah would inevitably be required to make sacrifices. Outings would be cancelled; important events missed. Did she love him enough to make such adjustments? he wondered miserably. Were they already doomed to the stereotypical rocky police marriage, with the predictable finale in the divorce court?

He dragged his thoughts back to the job in hand. At least things did at last seem to be moving on the Gratton case. Martha’s phone call couldn’t be ignored; at the very least, someone should go and take a careful look at that evil-sounding horse. More immediately, the ructions at the Aspens’ needed to be brought into the picture. The photograph of Clem was hard to account for with any innocent theory. Which one of the Aspens had torn it up and why? Impatiently, he waited for the DI’s call. He wanted to get on with it, right now. More than anything, he wanted to speak to Mandy again, and try to coax the story out of her.

As he’d hoped, Smith summoned him back to the station and spent twenty minutes analysing the sudden acceleration of events. ‘I think Clive
Aspen is seriously unstable,’ Den concluded. ‘One minute he’s all calm and collected, the next he can’t keep still and has a face like a gargoyle. Something’s triggered off some sort of relapse, sir. Dorothy Mansfield – and Val Taylor – told me he had a breakdown before coming to live here. I wouldn’t put anything past him at the moment.’

‘Poor chap,’ said the DI, to Den’s surprise. ‘Better go carefully with him, then.’ He tapped his teeth with a biro. ‘Do you think she made some sort of accusation? His wife, that is. And sent him off the deep end.’

Den blinked. ‘About Clem, you mean?’

‘Clem or Charlie, or both. Look, Cooper, I think
I’ll
see the chap and you can go back and talk to the missus. Encourage her to open up, say it’ll help Clive if she tells us the whole story. Does she trust you, do you think?’

‘Can’t say, sir.’

‘Well, give her a couple of hours to settle down, and keep it sweet. It can’t be much fun for her if her husband’s gone off his rocker.’

‘She did look as if she’d had enough,’ Den agreed. ‘Sir … the photo of Clem …’

‘Intriguing, definitely. But not actually incriminating in itself. And not immediately useful in solving the Gratton case.’

‘I know, sir. But—’

‘I can see the way your mind’s heading, Cooper. Aspen was buggering the kid, Charlie found out about it, reported it anonymously – you’d have to work on that bit, of course – so Aspen bumped him off on the horse he rides to the hunt. Got the idea from what happened to the Nesbitt woman. Thought it a fitting end. Something along those lines?’

‘More or less,’ Den admitted. ‘And the disturbance this morning was because Mrs Aspen, having found that photo, had just come to the same conclusion.’

‘Keep an open mind, son,’ the DI advised. ‘And go home and tidy yourself up. Ten-thirty’s the right sort of time to visit Mrs A. She might even make you a lovely cup of Quaker tea.’

Den did as he was told, thankful that he lived only a few streets away from the station. It promised to be one of those days when he bounced back and forth like a yo-yo.

He had to remind himself that it was Good Friday. He had barely given Easter a thought, except to work out a complicated rota with Phil and Danny to ensure there was cover for each day. He had managed to secure the Sunday off and was supposed to be going to Redstone for a roast lunch with Lilah and her family. Otherwise it wasn’t going to be noticeably different from
other Bank Holiday weekends. As Lilah so often said, to a cow every day is the same; they still have to be milked every morning and afternoon.