Murder in Midwinter (22 page)

‘Oh, yes.’ He pulled out to overtake a lorry. ‘Where in Nethergate?’

‘Harbour Street,’ said Fran.

He looked sideways at her, and surprised her with a grin that made her feel quite breathless. ‘I wasn’t really paying attention yesterday,’ he said.

‘Too intent on Laurence Cooper’s flat,’ she said.

‘Quite. So recap for me. What did you say about your cottage yesterday?’

Fran explained about the builder Jim Butler having bought Coastguard Cottage from her family, and how he’d built the estate on which Laurence Cooper’s flat stood.

‘Did Laurence rent it, or had he bought it?’ she asked, finally.

‘Rented it. Some speculator owns the whole block. He says references were taken from Cooper and he’s never defaulted on the rent.’

‘Did he still have the references?’

‘No, which makes me suspicious,’ said Connell. ‘Not necessarily about Cooper, but about the landlord. I think we’re going to have to put someone in to have a look at his books.’

‘Could he have a motive?’

‘Who, the landlord? I can’t see why, can you? He never saw any of his tenants and had never met Cooper.’

‘So what do you think about it all?’ asked Fran. ‘Personally, I mean.’

‘I don’t know what to think. Forensics tell us he was killed where he was found, yet why on earth should he be there? There were no keys or documents on him, and it was only through sister Dorothy reporting him missing we found him. We were having no luck with dental records, but that doesn’t surprise me.’

‘Oh? Why? I thought that was a favourite method of identification,’ said Fran.

‘If everyone went regularly to their dentist, yes,’ said Connell, ‘but with so few National Health dentists now and the cost of dental treatment, people don’t go any more.’

‘That’s true,’ said Fran. ‘I haven’t been for years, and I can’t even remember who my last dentist was. I suppose I ought to register down here, now.’

‘If you can afford it,’ said Connell grimly. ‘Dentistry’s an absolute scandal these days.’

‘And they lecture one so, don’t they?’ said Fran. ‘Shake their heads at you as though you’re a recalcitrant child.’

He grinned. ‘Dead right,’ he said. ‘So there we are. No dental records. Oh, we might have found them in time, but he certainly hadn’t visited a dentist in the last six years.’

‘What else, then? Why did you tell Mrs Morleigh to speak to me?’

‘Because she had no idea about her family who left the theatre, and I wondered if Cooper had anything to do with them, as I couldn’t think of any other reason for him to have been there.’

‘Couldn’t he have been forced in there by someone trying to mug him? Who then went too far?’

‘Possible, but how would they have got in? The door hadn’t been forced.’

‘What?’ said Fran. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I’m surprised Mrs Morleigh didn’t tell you.’

‘How could anyone have got hold of keys? She’d only just been given them by the solicitor.’

‘We don’t know. We’re tracing everyone who rented the place over the last twenty years or so, but as the last people to use it were holding illegal raves they’re staying well out of sight.’

‘They must have got the keys from somewhere,’ said Fran, turning to look at him.

He shrugged. ‘Sure, but for all we know, each succeeding tenant changed the locks. There could have been any number of keys around.’

‘Was there no chain and padlock? Any other security measure?’

‘The main doors were boarded up and secured, but the side door, where you saw me the other day was a Yale and an old-fashioned sash lock.’

‘What’s a sash lock?’

‘One that has an old-fashioned key.’

‘Oh.’ Fran turned back to the windscreen which showed an uninspiring view of rain swept vehicles. ‘So, not a mugging because the murderer had keys.’

‘Or Cooper did.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. That’s why you hoped to find a link to Mrs Morleigh’s family.’

‘If there had been a link, it might have explained the keys, but as I’ve said, there could be dozens of sets of keys in circulation around Nethergate and the area.’ He sent her a brief smile. ‘No, what I want from you now is just who he was and why he was there.’

‘Oh, is
that
all,’ said Fran, smiling back. ‘And if I can’t find it?’

‘We’ll carry on with dull old police routine until something turns up.’

Fran requested a comfort stop as they got near to Sheffield, and suggested buying sandwiches in case they didn’t have time when they arrived in Richmond. They ate them in the car park, unable to see out of the windows through the dirty curtain of rain.

They just made it to Richmond in time to meet a disgruntled detective sergeant in a wet raincoat outside a small terraced cottage in a pleasant, cobbled lane. What Fran could see of Richmond, she liked.

Connell introduced them both and once more Fran ducked under blue police tape.

‘SOCOs finished?’ asked Connell as they went into the tiny front room.

‘Yeah,’ said the DS, whose name was Fitch. ‘Bloody mess, it was, pardon the pun.’

Fran stared at the chair by the fireplace. Her stomach swooped and she swallowed hard. DS Fitch nodded.

‘Yes, that’s where they found the old girl,’ he said. ‘Tied to the arms she was, then bashed over the head.’

‘I’ve read the report, thank you, Sergeant,’ said Connell.

‘I was telling the lady, sir,’ said Fitch defensively.

‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ said Fran, and moved away to look at the shelves in the alcoves. Taking a deep breath, she moved her hands over the small ornaments that Dorothy had obviously liked to collect. Nothing was coming through.

‘Papers?’ asked Connell.

‘Bills and stuff in a cupboard in the kitchen, sir.’

‘Passport? Birth certificate?’

‘No passport, sir. Birth certificate with the parents’ death certificates in a dressing table drawer.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘At the station, sir. Well, over at HQ.’ Fitch looked over at Fran, who was now looking through a pile of magazines. Connell frowned and shook his head.

‘Was there anything else in the dressing table drawer?’ asked Fran suddenly.

‘Some old photos, I think. Nothing much.’

‘Are they still here? Or are they with the birth certificates?’

Fitch looked nonplussed. ‘Here, I think,’ he said.

Connell turned and went into the hall. ‘Come on, then,’ he said over his shoulder to Fran.

The biggest of the two bedrooms held a large old-fashioned wooden bed, so high that a step had been provided to climb into it, a dressing table and a carved wardrobe. Fran went straight to the dressing table, where she found a very old box of loose powder, a venerable comb and a lot of dust. Opening the middle drawer, she found several faded black and white photographs and an envelope, inside which was a lock of brown hair. This brought tears to her eyes and a lump to her throat, although she had no idea whose it was, or what connection it had to sister Dorothy.

Picking up the photographs, she went to sit on the bed. Connell came and sat next to her.

‘What are they?’ he asked.

Fran shook her head. ‘I don’t know. A lot of people from the forties and fifties by the look of them.’ She showed him the blurry images of children posed in gardens and adults at the seaside. ‘I wonder where these were.’

‘Nethergate, do you think?’ he said.

‘I don’t think so.’ She looked through a few more and stopped, her breath catching in her throat.

‘What?’ He was watching her intently.

‘This one –’ she held out a picture ‘– it’s Anderson Place.’

The black and white photograph showed a much more overgrown building standing in untidy gardens. But posing against the wall in the foreground stood the two children in the other photographs, obviously Dorothy and Laurence.

Connell looked puzzled. ‘Why would they be there?’ he asked. ‘I suppose it is the two Cooper children?’

‘Oh, yes, it’s them.’ Fran stroked a finger over the photograph. ‘But why, I wonder? The house wasn’t open to the public in those days, was it? It had been a military hospital during the war.’

‘Looks like some kind of notice there, look,’ said Connell taking it from her and peering closely.

‘Pity it isn’t clearer,’ said Fran, and carried on looking through the photographs.

‘We’ll get it scanned and let the boys have a go at it,’ said Connell, standing up. ‘Do you want to see anything else?’

‘I’d like to have a quick look round up here,’ said Fran.

‘I’ll be downstairs with Fitch, then,’ he said.

When she heard his footsteps going down the stairs, she went to the wardrobe and opened the door. A few dispirited garments hung there, polyester blouses and pleated skirts, but nothing that gave any clue to Dorothy as a person. Fran shut the door and went into the room next door. Immediately, she felt something. ‘Laurence,’ she muttered to herself.

The room contained only a single bed, a small wardrobe and a bedside table. A few male items of clothing hung in the wardrobe, although nothing of the kind Fran felt sure Laurence would have worn. In the bedside table drawer she found another photograph, this time on its face, of two young men, arms slung carelessly about each other’s shoulders, and by the clothing, taken sometime in the sixties.

‘Before or after it was made legal?’ murmured Fran. She put the photograph, along with the others from the dressing table, into her bag and went downstairs. Here, the sense of Laurence wasn’t as strong as it had been in his room, but there was a sense of someone else. A very strong feeling of anger – and fear. Mainly fear, thought Fran, as she stood in the little sitting room with her eyes closed, ignoring the two men staring at her.

‘What did he tie her with?’ she asked, opening her eyes suddenly.

‘Er –’ Fitch was floundering.

Connell looked at him contemptuously. ‘Picture wire,’ he said. ‘It was in the report. From those pictures.’ He nodded towards two blank spaces on the walls. Fran went over and ran her hands over the spaces. She didn’t know if she would get anything from them, but she had to try. She was new at this, and every situation would be a testing ground. Nothing came through except more fear and confusion. Nothing at all from Dorothy. She went back to the chair and went to touch the back, but pulled her hand back quickly.

‘What is it?’ said Connell.

Fran smiled at him wryly. ‘Squeamishness,’ she said.

He smiled back. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘If you’ve finished here, we’ll go over to HQ and see what they’ve got.’

Fitch, even more disgruntled than when they arrived, locked the door, checked the tape and said they could follow him to HQ. Fran and Connell shook the rain off and set off after him.

The DCI in charge of the murder enquiry was pleasant but wary. They were shown the evidence bags, and allowed to take out the birth and death certificates.

‘Father, Colin Cooper – what’s that? Army?’ said Fran, peering. ‘Mother, Shirley Cooper, housewife. And these are their death certificates.’

‘And this one.’ Connell held it out. ‘You’ll love this.’

Fran took it and gasped. ‘Laurence Cooper! But what on earth is his birth certificate doing here? He’d have needed it himself.’

‘Is it Laurence’s, though?’ said Connell, pointing. ‘Look at the Christian name.’

‘Earnest,’ said Fran. ‘But it is Earnest Laurence, look. Maybe he preferred Laurence.’

‘It’s the right date, anyway,’ said Connell. ‘I think we have to assume it’s his. Born in 1946.’

Fran picked up another evidence bag and hastily put it down again.

‘The picture wire?’ said Connell, picking it up. ‘What beats me is how whoever it was had time to take down the pictures and take off the wire. How come she didn’t make a run for it?’

‘Perhaps he’d already bashed her over the head?’

‘Then why would he need to tie her up?’

Fran shrugged and they stared at each other, perplexed.

‘Weapon?’ said Connell, turning to the DCI, who shook his head. ‘Any chance of a copy of the landline records?’

After half an hour in the canteen with some indifferent coffee and a small packet of bourbons, they were on their way home with the phone records and other information Connell had requested and been grudgingly given. Fran opened her bag to take out the photographs.

‘What the hell are you doing with those?’

She looked up. ‘Shouldn’t I have taken them?’

Connell gave an exasperated sigh. ‘No, you shouldn’t. For God’s sake woman, this is a murder investigation.’

Fran bristled. ‘I’m aware of that,’ she said, ‘and may I remind you that you asked me here, not the other way round.
I’m
helping
you.
I have no personal interest in this case.’

‘Not much we can do about it now, anyway,’ muttered Connell, and swore as a lorry overtook them, throwing a swimming pool’s worth of rain at the windscreen.

Fran put them back in her bag. ‘I’ll look at them at home tonight and send them back tomorrow,’ she said.

‘I’ll come and collect them tomorrow,’ corrected Connell. ‘
If
you don’t mind.’

For the rest of the journey, except for a stop at services near Luton, they were silent. Fran peered ahead into the darkness and tried to quell a deep sense of disappointment.

Chapter
Eighteen

L
IBBY AND SIDNEY PUT
up the Christmas decorations on Friday. When she had lived in the big Edwardian house on the other side of Canterbury, Libby refused to put them up until the last possible minute, telling the children it devalued the essence of Christmas. But now she wanted to keep Christmas going as long as possible, having decided that anticipation was the best part of it all.

Sidney was a great help, naturally, especially when Libby brought in the tree she had dragged home from the Manor estate after Ben had helped her cut it down. Feeling virtuous, as she had only taken the top of a healthy tree, she stuck it in a large tub of earth and sand and stood it on an apple crate covered in crepe paper in the corner behind the armchair. If anyone sat at the table in the window the tree would have their eye out, but it looked good. Sidney immediately jumped up on to the table and began to select baubles.