Simeon's Bride (13 page)
Dewi stood up. ‘Shall I get to Debenhams before they shut up shop for the day, sir?’ he asked McKenna. ‘Find out when the suit was on sale?’
‘Ask about the perfume as well. What’s it called, Eifion?’
Dr Roberts wrote the name of the perfume in Dewi’s notebook, tucking the book into his pocket. ‘Just a thought, sir,’ Dewi said to McKenna. ‘Lots of women use their friends’ scent, don’t they? Spray on a bit to see if they like it. This lady could’ve done that, couldn’t she? Maybe Romy liked carnations.’
McKenna dialled Robert Allsopp’s home number. The telephone rang twenty-three times before Allsopp responded.
‘How much longer is all this going to go on?’ he demanded.
‘All what, Mr Allsopp?’
‘Being hounded! I’m sick to death of it!’
‘We’re not hounding you. I did say we’d need a formal statement.’
‘How many formal bloody statements d’you need to do your job?’ Allsopp shouted. ‘Eh? First her, then the car, then her husband, then the bloody car again! What next?’
‘Hopefully, not much, provided you’re willing to answer a few more questions now.’
Allsopp sighed. ‘What d’you want to know?’
‘What kind of perfume did Madge – Romy use?’
‘What kind? How d’you expect me to know that? The kind that smells!’
‘Yes, Mr Allsopp,’ McKenna said. ‘Perfume usually does smell, otherwise there’d be little point in using it. What did her perfume smell of?’
‘Jesus Christ! Flowery sorts of things.’
‘Which flowers? Any in particular?’
‘Oh, God! You’re like a bloody terrier with a bone! I can’t remember.’
Jack could hear the rise and fall in Allsopp’s voice, the whine of despair. ‘Think.’ McKenna was saying. ‘Just cast your mind back. Try to picture the scent bottles, where she kept them, how many. Then try to recall their actual smell. Did you prefer one or the other? Did you dislike any of them? Take your time. Did you associate a particular scent with clothes she wore, or places you went together … little things like that.’ He lit a cigarette from the stub of the last, and swivelled his chair back and forth.
‘You still there?’
‘I’m still here, Mr Allsopp.’
‘There was one I remember, because I hated it, and she would insist on using it because she said she liked it. Actually, she said she loved it
because it made her feel special.’
‘Why did you hate it?’
‘It got right up my nose. Literally! Gave me sneezing fits, and runny eyes.’
‘D’you know what it was called?’
‘Some French name … they’ve all got French names, haven’t they?’
‘Well, then, what sort of smell was it?’
‘Really pungent. Like anaesthetic with flowers, if you know what I mean. Romy used too much of it, sprayed it on all over, even though I told her it was very strong. You couldn’t sit in the car with her.’
‘Any chance of picking out the flower?’
‘I’m not very good at that kind of thing … I can’t say … not really.’
‘Shit!’ McKenna exclaimed.
‘I beg your pardon? You say something?’
‘Mr Allsopp, this is very, very important. I know you’re sick of the sight of policemen, but I wonder if you’d do us a favour?’
‘I suppose so. Anything to get you off my back.’
‘As soon as possible, I’ll send someone round to see you with a particular perfume for you to test. All I want from you is yea or nay as to whether it’s the one you didn’t like.’
Allsopp laughed. ‘So I’m to expect some bloody great flatfoot with a bottle of scent, am I?’
Dewi returned well after six o’clock, having left the suit with Dr Roberts. ‘I hate those women’s shops,’ he announced, sinking into a chair opposite McKenna’s desk. ‘They reek of perfume. You can smell it out in the street. Enough to choke a body.’
‘Mr Allsopp said one of Romy’s perfumes made him sneeze. But, of course, he couldn’t remember which one. Derbyshire police are getting a bottle of this Incarnat for him to smell.’
‘Have to find it first, won’t they? The girls in Debenhams had never heard of it, tried to sell me Estee Lauder instead. I tried Boots and the other chemists, but nobody stocks it in Bangor. Anyway, the suit.’ He flipped open his notebook. ‘This book’s nearly full, sir. Mostly with old women’s gossip.’ He pulled his tie loose. ‘Quite a bit warmer tonight than it’s been so far. P’raps there’s some proper sunshine on the way…. Debenham’s were eventually very helpful. The buyer said they’d stocked that particular outfit around three and a half years ago, just one consignment, and some of it sold off in a sale. Twenty jackets: three size 10, seven size 12, six size 14 –12 and 14 being the most popular sizes – and four size 16. Before you get too hopeful, sir, the buyer said there’s nothing to say the jacket was bought in Bangor. She thinks it was probably available nationally, but she’s going to ask the head office where the jacket was sold, when, and how many.’
‘And a lot of use that’ll be!’
‘It could narrow down the field, sir.’
‘We haven’t got a field!’ McKenna snapped. ‘We haven’t got anything, except a lot of gossip, a woman’s suit, two dead bodies, and sodding Jamie Thief and his borrowed car!’
‘D’you want me to see that Mr Stott?’
‘I haven’t decided what to do with him yet. You’re on lates today, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir. Off duty at ten.’
‘You’d better have your tea break now. I’m going home to feed the cat.’
The cat ate in the kitchen, placidly crouched over a plate of fresh cod, while McKenna waited for a frozen lasagne to cook through, thinking he ought to buy a recipe book. He should telephone Denise, but decided if he did so now, the lasagne might burn, and if he waited until he had eaten, he would be delayed from returning to work. He needed time to think, to decide what to do, what to say, and sat forking food into his mouth, tasting little, thinking about women in general, that mysterious race, and Denise and Romy Cheney in particular. The cat sat at his feet, grooming herself fastidiously. Her eyes were brighter already, her coat developing a gloss.
‘Mary Ann wants you to go and see her, sir,’ Dewi greeted him.
‘Why?’
‘She says there’ll be another murder in the village if you don’t,’ Dewi grinned. ‘It’s about Beti Gloff, but I only got half the story because Mary Ann was whispering into the telephone on account of Beti being in the next room.’
‘Oh, Lord above!’ McKenna ran his hands through his hair. ‘What next, Dewi? What next?’
‘Beti’s said to be mad with rage, sir, talking about knifing her old man. And it’s all to do with that article about her in the local paper today, although what I don’t know.’
‘We’d better go and see her, then. And on the way back, we’ll call in on Jamie’s buddy.’
The telephone rang as McKenna was shutting the office door. Allsopp sounded weary. ‘No, I haven’t had a visit from any perfume-bearing PC Plod, Mr McKenna. I remembered all by myself without any help from anybody, because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since you rang, and that bloody smell’s been wafting under my nose like Romy’s bloody ghost was walking around beside me. And shall I tell you why, Mr McKenna? I’m sure you want to know. I’ve got a vase of flowers in my sitting-room, on the mantelpiece, and I’ve got
the fire lit because Derbyshire’s a bloody cold place in April, and the heat from the fire’s bringing the scent out of the flowers, even though they’re greenhouse grown and don’t have all that much scent to them. They’re pink and white flowers, very pretty, and the heat’s making their petals go a bit brown already. And they’re carnations, Mr McKenna. That’s what the perfume smelt of. Carnations.’
McKenna, almost jubilant, telephoned Jack, disturbing him from a nap in front of the television. ‘D’you realize what this means? Not only do we have the suit, an actual physical clue, but we can now connect it directly with Romy Cheney. What d’you think of that? Good, or what?’
‘I suppose so … not much use unless we find a woman to fit into the suit, is it? And why she stuffed it under the floorboards.’ Jack sounded gloomy. ‘I’ve just had a thought.’
‘What?’
‘Suppose it wasn’t the woman who wore the suit who hid it.’
‘What’s that bit of garbled syntax supposed to mean?’
‘Well, suppose she witnessed what happened to Romy, so she had to be got rid of as well, and the murderer stuffed her clothes under the floorboards. This other woman could’ve been hung as well. She might be dangling from another tree in the woods, or a tree in some other woods. She might even be buried under the earth floor in that outhouse.’
‘I see,’ McKenna said slowly. ‘Why don’t you just come round and throw a bucket of cold water in my face? What am I supposed to do, eh? Search every sodding wood from here to Chester? Pull down Gallows Cottage stone by stone, then dig up Snidey Castle Estate looking for bodies which might or might not be there?’
‘There’s no need to take on like that!’ Jack whined. ‘It was only an idea!’
‘Mr Tuttle could have a point, sir,’ Dewi offered, as they drove out to Salem village.
‘I know he might have a point.’ McKenna had taken to grinding his teeth, Dewi noticed. ‘That is why Wil Jones is going to find Gallows Cottage being dug up in the morning, and why you and several other people will be spending the day bashing your way through the woods looking for bodies which probably don’t exist.’
‘I don’t mind, sir. I like being out in the fresh air.’
McKenna drew to a halt by the school gates, now closed for the night, and turned to look at the young officer beside him. ‘I sometimes wonder if you’re not a bit puddled, Dewi Prys. That’s why you drive Jack Tuttle to screaming point at times. Well, it’s going to rain tomorrow. I could hear the trains clearly when I was having tea, and I can only do that when
there’s rain on the way. So I hope you enjoy a bit of water with your fresh air.’
‘Funny you noticing that, sir. I thought it was only the old ones like my nain knew you hear further when there’s rain around. She reckons she can hear the cathedral clock if it’s going to pour down, and that’s at least a mile as the crow flies.’
‘Talking about crows,’ McKenna said as he locked the car, ‘look at that lot up there.’ Black shapes hunched along the spreading limbs of the tall trees, looking down on the cottages, the church, the graveyard, and the two men, darkening an already sombre sky.
‘And on the electric wires. Wonder what they’re waiting for?’
McKenna shivered. ‘I don’t like this place. I came here the other day in brilliant sunshine, and it was no nicer than it is now.’
‘Nain says it’s evil ground. Folk reckon the church was built here to keep the badness under control.
‘Doesn’t seem to be working too well, does it?’
Beti and Mary Ann sat in Mary Ann’s uncurtained window, one each side of a small gateleg table, like two geraniums in pots, McKenna thought, looking at them. ‘Pull up chairs for you and Mr McKenna, Dewi.’ Mary Ann said. ‘This is talk to make around the table.’ A pot of tea under a stained knitted cosy sat on a trivet in the centre of the table, a plate of custard creams and arrowroot biscuits and jammy dodgers beside.
‘There’s been trouble,’ Mary Ann told them, ‘between Beti and him, because Beti had her picture in the paper and people thought enough about what she was saying to put it in print. Bitter jealous, he is, because the newspaper people thought Beti and Simeon more interesting than him finding a poor body everybody knew was there for any fool to find.’
‘What’s he done, then?’ Dewi asked, taking the last of the jammy dodgers.
Beti opened her mouth to speak. Mary Ann held up her hand. ‘You let me tell this, so we get it right. Now then. About Beti’s husband.’
‘Hasn’t John Jones got a name any longer?’ McKenna asked.
‘Of course he has! But he doesn’t deserve we use it for what he’s done today. The local paper came this morning while Beti was doing her early errands. That no-good was still indoors, and Beti says he hadn’t even sided the breakfast pots, never mind washed up.’
‘Yes?’ Dewi said. ‘So why’s Beti wanting to stick the breadknife in his guts?’
McKenna watched Beti. She sat as stiff as one of the marble angels in the graveyard, only her eyes showing life, glittering with unshed tears in the light from Mary Ann’s parlour lamps.
‘He started on her, didn’t he?’ Mary Ann said. ‘In that horrible, sour,
vicious way of his. Calling her wicked bad names and saying she was no fit wife for any God-fearing soul.’ Mary Ann took the cigarette McKenna offered. ‘When Beti tells him what she thinks of him, he hit her. Smacked her in the mouth.’ She sipped her tea, little finger crooked. ‘I know he’s not done anything wrong in your books, but he’s done something to offend God, and any decent-thinking person.’
‘Did he hurt you, Beti?’ McKenna asked the old woman.
She turned towards him, looking with the one eye she could focus. Tears oozed out and slithered unchecked down the wrinkled cheeks, running into the deep creases at each side of her mouth, dripping off her little pointed chin. McKenna saw the darkness of bruising under age-grimed skin, seeping into a faint weal above the frayed collar of her blouse. Dewi squeezed her hands, rubbing the thin papery flesh, murmuring comforts. Mary Ann puffed smoke towards the ceiling. ‘She’s not going back there tonight. But I’m worried he’ll come looking for her, because he’s bound to know she’ll like as not be here, and I don’t know what might happen if he turns up. I’m fretted out of my mind over it.’
‘And what’s Beti going to do in the long run, Mary Ann?’ McKenna asked, asking himself why they spoke of and around Beti as if she were an incompetent.
‘I don’t know,’ Mary Ann admitted. ‘This isn’t the first time he’s done cruel things to her … but it’s the first time Beti’s got off her backside, if you get my meaning, and not just taken whatever he dishes out.’
‘Better late than never, eh, Beti?’ Dewi pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket, shook it open, and handed it to her. ‘Wipe your eyes, love. Mr McKenna and me’ll go and talk to John Jones.’
McKenna stood up. ‘We’ll tell him to keep right away until you decide what you want to do. If anything crops up, ring the station. I’ll arrange for someone to come right away.’
Beti’s mouth trembled with the vestige of a smile.
In the car, McKenna picked up the telephone and punched out a number, ‘Who’re you ringing, sir?’ Dewi asked. ‘Social Services?’
‘No, I’m bloody not!’ McKenna snapped. ‘What d’you think they’d do with her, eh? They’d cart her off to Gwynfryn Ward, and lock her up because she’s threatening to harm that no-good!’
While McKenna spoke into the telephone, Dewi sat quietly, gazing through the windscreen at the darkening sky above the church tower; half-listening, half not listening.
