Go Not Gently (13 page)

Maddie and I got ready for a trip to the park. There was a nip in the air and the clouds were scudding along at a fair old rate so I gathered up gloves, scarves and hats. Maddie got her bike out. I stuffed crisps and apples into my duffel bag. Digger followed me about, desperate to be included. I don’t often take him out, there’s not a lot of love lost between us and Ray is happy to do all the dog chores, but I’d no excuse for not letting him join our jaunt. First, though, I let him out into the front garden where he could relieve himself shielded from view by thick privet hedges. Since Digger had moved in the front garden had become his toilet area. We never used it for anything else anyway, too gloomy.

We picked our way round dog dirt all the way to the park, me cursing all the thoughtless dog owners and shouting warnings to Maddie. I let Digger off on the football pitch and he chased demons for all he was worth. Tearing here and there, swerving and changing direction. Maddie pedalled along the path ringing her bell.

We progressed slowly round the park, taking in the dilapidated duck pond with its flooded shores and crumpled railings, the children’s play area, the bowling green, the rose garden and the bit we call the wild wood. Here we stopped by a bench and had our picnic, throwing titbits to the squirrels. One was brave enough to take food from our hands. We made it home without an argument.

Sheila was baking. The smell! I was five and begging to lick the bowl, my tongue curling round the metal whisk dripping with sweet yellow goo, nose at table height watching floury hands pat pastry.

‘It smells wonderful. Do you do this often?’

‘Hardly ever,’ she laughed. ‘I used to bake twice a week when the boys were little. But not for years. I think it must be a nesting activity.’

‘Making the place your own?’

‘Yes.’ She opened the oven, removed a tray of scones and put in a cake tin. ‘It was totally on impulse. I was in the supermarket and I saw the flour and those little bottles of food colouring. I even bought cake tins. Didn’t know if you’d have them.’

‘Neither do I. If we do they’ll be up there in the cupboard – things we never use.’

Baking. Once all women did it. Lily and Agnes would have grown up knowing how to rustle up a Madeira cake or the recipe for parkin without blinking.

‘There was a message for you,’ Sheila said. ‘The police rang, they left the number, they want you to ring them.’

‘Thanks.’

It was Inspector Crawshaw. I dialled and waited. The phone rang on and on. At last it was picked up. I asked switch board to transfer me to Crawshaw. He was brief and to the point.  ‘We’d like to have another word. If you’re in now I’ll send someone round.’

Sergeant Bell turned up twenty minutes later. By then Maddie was engrossed in helping Sheila. I left them in the kitchen and showed the sergeant into the lounge. Would Sheila let Maddie lick the bowl? What about salmonella? It all seemed more complicated these days.

Sergeant Bell flipped open her notebook, checked her watch and noted the time.

‘When we last spoke to you, you told us you’d not seen Mr Achebe since Thursday, the twenty-fourth of February,’

‘That’s right.’

‘And he’d not made contact since?’ Spoken slowly, making sure I considered the question carefully.

‘Yes, except he’d left a message on my answerphone. I only heard it today, I’ve not been in the office much. He still owes me some money and he was ringing to say he still intended to pay. It must have been before all this.’

A look of incredulity crossed her face. Then she looked exasperated. ‘When was this?’

‘I don’t know exactly, my machine hasn’t got a time announcement. But like I say, it must have been before Thursday, before it all happened. I mean he’d hardly ring me about something so trivial if he’d just killed his wife.’ I still couldn’t relate the words to an actual death. Couldn’t believe Tina was really dead, murdered.

‘Do you know what day the message was left?’

‘No, not for sure. I could probably find out if you really need to know.’

‘We do,’ she snapped.

‘A friend left a message too. I could ask her, see if she can remember when it was.’

She nodded. The ponytail bounced briskly. ‘We’ll need the tape.

‘What? Why?’

‘I’ll take it now.’ Bossy. She stood up pulling on gloves.

‘Look, I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just a message about the bill.’

‘The big deal,’ she was really rattled now, raising her voice, ‘is that James Achebe is suspected of killing his wife. The couple were heard arguing prior to her death.’ I’m sure she wouldn’t have told me the half of it if she hadn’t been so pissed off. ‘She was last seen by the postman at nine fifteen that morning; at ten o’clock a neighbour failed to get an answer and notified us. He has no alibi for those forty-five minutes. But,’ she glared at me, ‘but,’ (I had heard her the first time) ‘he claims he was at work at the time we estimate the attack took place. No one saw him there until later on. So we’ve only his word for it. And he claims he made a phone call, rang you.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ I felt the blood drop from my face, shock ripple through my wrists and fingers. The answerphone message was Jimmy’s alibi.

‘What?’ Sergeant Bell demanded.

‘I’ve left the machine on. If anyone rings it’ll record over it. Oh, shit.’

I ran for my coat, called to Sheila that I’d be out for ten minutes and left with Sergeant Bell. We jogged round the corner. With every step I berated myself. Stupid, sloppy, incompetent.

Grant Dobson was washing the car in their drive. We swapped greetings but I’d no time for being sociable.

I clattered down the stairs, the sergeant at my heels, unlocked my office door.

The answerphone sat on the right side of my desk, its little red message light still and steady. I pressed the off switch. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I pulled out my chair and sank down. Pressed play.

We stood in the gloomy room, breathing harshly, and listened as Rachel’s voice burbled on. Then it came. ‘It’s Jimmy Achebe. I know I still owe you for the job…’ I let it play through. This time I noticed the noises in the background, vans coming and going, the occasional squawk of Tannoy, familiar to me from his previous calls. When Rachel started again I stopped the recording.

‘That sounded like his workplace,’ I said. ‘He’s rung me from there a couple of times before.’

She nodded, noncommittal.

‘You’ll contact your friend and find out what day she rang you?’

‘Yes.’ I tried then and there but all I got was Rachel’s answerphone. I reminded her of my home number and asked her to ring me as soon as possible.

‘I’ll take the tape.’

I ejected it and handed it over.

‘We’ll be in touch if there’s anything else.’

‘This might give him an alibi though, might it?’

She zipped up her jacket. ‘It’s a bit flimsy,’ she said. ‘All it proves, if we can establish it’s Thursday, is that he rang sometime after nine.’

‘And before nine thirty.’

She frowned.

I held my hand out for the tape.

‘Listen, Rachel says the time again when she rings back. It pinpoints it. Jimmy must have rung in that half-hour.’

I played Rachel’s second message. Sergeant Bell listened. But she didn’t give anything away, just nodded when it finished. I gave the tape back to her. She slipped it in a plastic bag, then in her pocket. Pulled on her gloves. And left.

Why hadn’t the police asked me directly about any answerphone messages? I wasn’t the only sloppy one. If Jimmy had been giving that as an alibi it should have been checked out straightaway. What on earth was the point of all the allusions to whether he’d been in contact when what they had to corroborate was whether a message had been left on my machine that Thursday morning? I felt my cheeks grow warm with rising anger. And because of their beating round the bush the message could so easily have been lost.

I locked up and climbed the stairs. The tape proved that Jimmy hadn’t killed Tina. It must be at least half an hour’s drive from Levenshulme to Swift Deliveries over the far side of Swinton. Tina had been alive at nine fifteen, dead at ten o’clock and Jimmy had rung me between nine and nine thirty. No way could he have made that call and been in Levenshulme at the crucial time. Jimmy Achebe wasn’t a murderer.

But if Jimmy hadn’t killed Tina then who the hell had?

At home, the cake lay cooling on the side. Maddie stood on a chair at the sink washing up. Totally absorbed.

‘She’s not shy, is she?’ Sheila smiled, tipped her head at Maddie.

‘No,’ I said. Cranky, opinionated, moody? Yes. Shy? No. ‘Wait till the honeymoon’s over.’

‘You get the worst of it,’ she said. ‘Mothers do. Do you work with the police much?’

‘Oh no, not at all. They wanted to talk to me about a case they’re covering. The suspect’s an ex-client.’

‘Sounds very dramatic.’

‘It’s not usually,’ I said. ‘The job is ninety per cent waiting around or looking up forms and checking facts and figures.’ The other ten per cent could be particularly hairy, though. I’d been stabbed and shot at on two previous cases where things had turned very nasty.

We were interrupted by the arrival of Ray and Tom. Tea and cakes were devoured and then the demands of domesticity pushed work from my mind.

Saturday had been dominated by the job. Sunday, I restricted myself to a perfunctory phone call to Agnes arranging to see her Monday morning.

Agnes was looking quite chipper when I arrived. She’d made an excellent recovery from the flu. I declined her offer of tea.

I was anxious to get straight down to business.

‘I went on Saturday,’ I began, ‘but Lily didn’t seem very well at all. She was wandering about when I got there and later she lost track of time. She was talking about the war years and her husband, George. She got quite distressed too, frightened, claimed that people were stealing from her, trying to poison her. Sounds just like what happened at Homelea.’

Agnes shook her head slowly. ‘Oh, Lily,’ she muttered.

‘What did Charles say? Did you see him?’

She nodded. ‘He called in briefly after he’d been to the hospital. Dr Montgomery is doing a full assessment today but he’s pretty certain that it is Alzheimer’s. He said he hoped he could settle her and she’d be able to move to one of the nursing homes who specialise in it…care of the mentally frail he called it.’ She swallowed before carrying on.

‘Charles mentioned the business of me being next of kin too but Dr Montgomery said it would confuse the records and I was welcome to visit at any time. He didn’t see any need to complicate matters.’

‘So we’re going to have to find everything out from Charles?’

‘Yes.’

‘Agnes, if anything happens to Lily, who inherits her estate?’

She blinked in surprise. ‘Charles, there’s no one else. Why?’

‘It’s probably irrelevant but I just wondered if Lily had amended her will recently, made any changes.’

‘Not that I know of. I don’t understand…’ Her face creased deep with confusion.

‘Well, I’m trying to consider every possible angle. If there’s been any deliberate maltreatment of Lily we need to think about motives. Who’d want to make her ill, why? What benefit could there be? If someone stood to gain financially…’

Agnes stared at me with a look of incredulity. It did sound ridiculous. She held up her hand. ‘Sal, please don’t imagine that I think someone is deliberately mistreating Lily. I only thought there might have been some error of judgement, a mistake, and that people are covering it up. That’s why I want you to check the tablets.’

‘I’ve organised that. It’ll be a few days before we get the results.’

‘Charles was quite shocked at the change in her,’ she said. ‘I wish there was something I could do.’

‘You could visit her for a start.’ It came out more sharply than I intended.

‘But I…’ she was flustered, her hand shook, sought out the brooch on her cardigan, ‘I had flu,’ she protested.

‘And before that it was the chiropodist,’ I retorted.

There was an uncomfortable silence. I let it stretch while I curbed my anger. When I spoke I kept my tone deliberately neutral.

‘I know about Nora.’

‘Nora?’

‘Don’t, Agnes. Lily told me. Nora, your sister. She ended up in Kingsfield.’

She pressed her hand up to her mouth and struggled to stop the shaking. ‘What did she tell you?’

‘Not much more than that, really. That Nora was Nora Donlan, she’d been sent to Kingsfield. She gave me the impression it’d been a well-kept secret. No one ever talked about it.’

‘I can’t, excuse me.’ Agnes left the room.

I sat in the quiet and listened to the chirrups from sparrows outside, the occasional puttering sound from the fire. My mouth was dry now. I’d have liked to have got a drink but I didn’t dare move and risk intruding on Agnes.