The Body of a Woman (11 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Body of a Woman
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He went on talking, quietly on a level tone, giving her time to face the unbelievable.
But Chloë was suspicious of him. ‘Who else is here? Janey? Uncle Charles?'
‘You'll see them soon. They've been touring in Scotland. We hoped they would arrive before you.'
The child closed her eyes and was silent a long moment. Yeadings was appalled by her stiff self-control. When she looked at him again it was with something like loathing in her eyes.
‘You - you aren't going to make me see -? Identify her, I mean.'
‘That won't be necessary. Once we trace your father he will be able to do that.'
‘You mean you don't know where he is? He'll be in Reading somewhere. Have you tried asking at the University? Someone must know where he's holed up.'
The bitterness in her voice was unexpected. Nor was “holed up” quite the expression of a respectful daughter. She had a stepmother whom she'd suspected of “running off'. So where did her loyalties lie? If any.
‘We're still making inquiries. Nobody seems to have seen him for a few days. We shall be advertising for him to come forward.'
She closed her eyes again the better to take this in. ‘He's gone missing? But you haven't called me home for that. They simply said Leila had been in an accident. Now you say she's dead. But you don't think he's dead too. Or do you?'
Trying so hard to make sense of it, she stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. ‘You really do believe it's Leila you've found. What makes you think that?'
‘We're going by photographs in the house here. And we've examined records of dental work she had done in Mardham.'
The girl leaned forward in her chair, hands gripping the seat to either side of her tensed thighs. She looked transfixed.
He gave her a moment to absorb the clinical detail. A grown woman might have burst out with ‘Oh, my God!' but not this disciplined child. Perhaps over-disciplined? She was doubting and testing every new fact. Yeadings felt for her; and there remained so much more for her to face.
‘But Leila's really fit. There's nothing wrong with her.
Granny said - an accident. How could she have an accident in Shotters Wood? There's no road through. People don't even ride horses there. Who was with her?'
‘We don't know.' He could answer only the last question. And then there was no avoiding the full brutal truth. ‘It wasn't an accident, Chloe, and she wasn't unwell.'
He watched her work out the truth on the level of logic. An intelligent girl, she arrived there by herself: not a natural death and not an accident, so what else remained?
‘Chloë, I have to tell you. It appears that someone attacked her. That is why we're so concerned, and why we need you to help us find out everything we can.'
But still she wouldn't believe. She had gone stubbornly into denial.
‘No!' she ground out. ‘No, not Leila! Nobody could do that!'
Rosemary Zyczynski moved again towards her but the girl sprang up. ‘Don't touch me! Leave me alone.'
Out in the hall there were voices. Z walked past her and went to see who had arrived. It was a sallow-faced young woman from Social Services accompanied by a great bear of a middle-aged man. She introduced him as her senior officer.
‘We can probably do with both of you,' Z assured them as he seemed to hang back. ‘Chloë is through there with Superintendent Yeadings. She's only just learned it was murder, so you'll find she's in shock. I'll make some tea for us all.'
‘You haven't been questioning her?' the woman demanded sharply.
Her companion beat Z to the denial. ‘Don't worry. Mike Yeadings knows better than that. We'll give him a couple more minutes with her before we interrupt.'
When Z took in the tray with four cups and a tumbler of lemonade from the fridge she found Chloe sitting straight-backed and pale under her freckles, listening to the Boss. ‘Visitors?' he asked, looking round.
Z nodded. ‘Social Services.'
‘I won't see anybody,' the girl said fiercely.
‘We are obliged to have someone here,' Yeadings said calmly, ‘to represent your family.'
‘I'll wait for Uncle Charles. And Janey. They're written into Leila's will,
in loco parentis
in case anything happened.' The Latin came out in a brittle, adult voice. She was trying so hard to command reality.
‘They should be arriving in London at any time now.'
‘Maybe they're back. I'll ring them.' She went across to the phone on her father's desk, turned away, took a deep breath, and while she began to dial Z let in the two social workers. They gave their names to Yeadings as Ms Maggie Martyn and George Claydon.
The double brrr of the dialling tone continued, clear to all in the room, until an amplified male voice took over, inviting a message to be left. ‘Oh no!' Chloë cried, almost despairing. ‘Why is nobody there? Uncle Charles, it's me. I need you. I need you, right now. Please, speak to me!'
Painful to witness as Yeadings found it, he had to leave her a free rein. That way she might feel she had some influence over events. And then, thank God, at last she broke down, standing there abandoned, still fiercely clutching the receiver while dry sobs racked her.
He went across and gently took it from her stiff fingers. ‘They'll come. I know they're on their way.'
I hope to God they do, Z told herself. Such wholesale desertion was unbearable.
Chloë refused the drink. ‘I'd be sick,' she said shortly, exhausted by sobbing.
‘Can you tell us who your doctor is?' Maggie Martyn asked.
‘I don't need a doctor. We haven't registered with one yet. We've only been here a few weeks.'
‘Is there someone from where you were before?'
‘Caversham,' the girl said almost contemptuously. ‘And no there isn't. I'll wait till Uncle Charles and Janey come.'
Z looked meaningfully at Yeadings. Chloe needed to rest
before they spoke to her further, but she couldn't be left alone. ‘How about your nextdoor neighbours?' Z asked, mainly to cover the Boss's voice as he spoke quietly into his mobile phone across the room.
‘The Piggotts. I don't know them.' She seemed determined now to insist on isolation. Then impulsively, ‘Look, I have to phone Gran. She'll be expecting me to. Only I don't know how to … explain.' Her head twisted in horror from side to side.
‘Can I help?' Z offered.
‘Would you?' It sounded breathless.
‘Give me her number and tell me what you want her to know.'
Chloe looked baffled. ‘Just that I'm here, I suppose. I've arrived. And thanks for having me.'
Less truculent, Yeadings noticed. This was progress of a kind, habitual good manners surfacing through the nightmare. But shock had prevented her seeing that some explanation was due. Mrs Knightley senior would demand to know what kind of accident Leila had suffered.
‘You can leave it with me. I'll explain everything,' Z told the girl. ‘What if she insists on coming over?'
‘She won't. Gran doesn't go anywhere now, she's so arthritic. Don't tell her - please don't say there's nobody here.' At last there was a faint note of panic in her voice. ‘I - I think if you don't mind I'll go and lie down. Is that all right?'
‘Of course.' Yeadings looked pointedly at the social workers. ‘Rosemary, help Chloe up with her luggage, will you?'
Z followed her. ‘Smart room,' she commented as the girl wearily dropped her jeans and kicked her trainers under the bed. She turned back the bedcover and Chloe slid in, turning her back on the world.
‘Thanks' hollowly, and still polite, the ingrained civility functioning at surface level whatever churned beneath.
Z drew the curtains to block out the brilliant midsummer light. She left Chloe lying flat and staring frozen-faced at the far wall.
‘This is appalling,' the male social worker had burst out as the door shut behind them. ‘It's absolutely essential to locate the father at once. She must have personal support.'
Yeadings caught the flicker in the woman's eyes and saw she shared his misgivings. ‘We're hopeful he's not involved in the murder,' he said quietly. ‘Either as a further victim or the killer. Chloë hasn't asked for him and she assumed at first that her stepmother had 'run off'. We may find the marriage was far from a happy one.'
‘That's all she needs at a time like this,' wheezed George Claydon. ‘A dysfunctional family background.'
 
Charles Hadfield made his call to the house on his cellular phone. A background noise of slamming car doors and distant shouting reached Z - the typical scrimmage for taxis at a major railway station. Hadfield gave his estimated time of arrival as 1.20pm.
Z handed the receiver to the Boss who identified himself and added that Chloë had already arrived from France and was resting in her room.
‘Superintendent? Good, good.' Yeadings' rank gratified the man, as it should. Maybe he was familiar with police matters and knew that normally a sergeant or DI was the most he'd be meeting initially.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Yeadings told himself, replacing the receiver. Since he'd been more or less caught out abandoning his desk, he'd carry on and meet the main characters. Certainly until Mott managed to get back from Gatwick. Not that there was any hurry to inform him that Chloë had slipped through his net. When Uncle Charles put in an appearance would be soon enough for Z to ring the DI and call him in.
The social workers having left, promising to keep in touch, Yeadings and Rosemary Zyczynski were examining the main bedroom when they heard the Hadfield pair arrive. While Z slid shut the doors of Knightley's wardrobe her boss went to the head of the stairs and watched the dead woman's uncle blunder through the open front door and head for the dining-room. There followed a chink of glass on glass and the man's throat clearing.
A smaller, oddly dressed woman followed quietly, sighted Yeadings on the shadowed gallery, stopped short and stood looking up at him. He went down. Despite her cool stare the grey eyes were red-rimmed. She was mourning the dead woman. ‘Superintendent Yeadings?'
‘Yes. Chloë is resting. She'll be relieved you're here. She needs someone she can trust.'
The corners of the woman's mouth quivered. ‘Doesn't she think much of the police then?'
‘Not yet.'
She nodded, as if his reply had pleased her. ‘So her father's still not available? We decided, if that was so, we'd move in. I had the luggage stacked outside in case you're examining the house.'
‘We shall be sealing the main bedroom and study. Beyond that, I think we've seen all we need for the moment. When you feel ready I should like to ask you a few questions about the family.'
He was aware of her looking past him and then Charles Hadfield came up behind, a whisky tumbler in one hand. ‘Has Knightley not shown up yet?' he demanded.
Yeadings turned and took him in: tall and heavily built but leaning on a hand-cut blackthorn. He had a large, squarish head with close-cropped white hair, strong features and
startlingly blue eyes made more so by contrast with his ruddy cheeks. Pale skin above the eyes showed a red indentation made by a tight hat brim. The cream panama, pushed to the back of his head, made Yeadings think of a cricket umpire.
‘We're still looking for the Professor,' he said.
‘I see. So how can I help?'
‘By suggesting where else we should look. And particularly by telling us anything you know about your niece that could explain what she got herself caught up in.'
‘Caught up in,' the man repeated. ‘So you don't think this is a random killing? There's method in it?'
Which was precisely what Yeadings did feel in his bones, but he'd no explanation for it as yet. ‘We have to cover every possibility, keep an open mind.'
‘Yes, yes.' He sounded impatient at the cliché. ‘Leila was nobody's fool, Superintendent. Yet I always felt …'
‘Yes?'
‘ …there was something of the innocent about her. Not that I'm that good a judge of women. Been deceived by them too often. You'd best ask Janey what she was really like. They seemed to have an understanding. If you want me I'll be in the garden.' At which he abruptly raised his hand with the stick to draw the panama back over his eyes, and limped off in the direction of the kitchen.
Their voices had reached Chloe who had been barely asleep. She came out on the landing and gave a sharp cry, ‘Janey!' Then she was flying down, barefoot, with a cotton robe still undone, and was hugging the little woman in the long bunchy skirt.
Over the girl's head Yeadings nodded towards the drawing-room. ‘I'll give you a while together,' he offered. Janey met his eyes briefly, her face screwed with distress, then the two moved off, their arms round each other.
It was a risk. He knew he could miss something vital passing between them. But this was no time to put on pressure.
He sat down on the third stair, resting elbows on knees,
and was conscious of Z upstairs moving from the main bedroom into another. He guessed it was the one that Chloe had just come from. Good move on Z's part. The child might have left something significant open to view. He went outside and ordered the constable on guard to fit a seal to the room Leila had presumably shared with her husband.
In the drawing-room the low voices continued, the words lost to him. Chloë was having the most to say; Janey's voice a mild murmur briefly punctuating the flow. He strained his ears but could get no meaning from it.
Z came downstairs with a man's plastic-wrapped suit over one arm, went out, and he heard her locking it into her car boot. She had just returned as Janey came to the drawing-room door. ‘Chloë's ready to see you,' she said, and the two detectives followed her in.
The girl looked defensive. The older woman's face was unreadable.
Yeadings sat opposite them, addressing Chloë. ‘There's a possibility,' he said cautiously, ‘that your stepmother was caught up in the unsavoury business of some new acquaintance she didn't know very well.'
It was pure guesswork. All he had to go on was intuition fed by Z's impression that Leila's cleaner scented fresh scandal.
He had caught their attention. They seemed to be waiting for more. Right: he'd wade further in.
‘Even something illegal.'
‘Leila's not like that,' Chloë protested quickly.
‘So what is she like? Tell me. We need to understand. It could lead us to discover who might want to harm her.' He had followed her into the present tense and the girl hadn't noticed.
‘Nobody would. She - she's gentle. She doesn't let people rattle her. She puts up with almost anything rather than make a fuss.'
His eyebrows twitched. ‘Won't complain? More tolerant than you, perhaps?'
‘Too damn true! She lets people —' Chloe fought to contain herself, fists clenched and tight-lipped.
‘Walk over her?'
‘Lets people get away with things.' The words came out reluctantly.
So much anger, he thought; but already she was beginning to retreat, wouldn't give much more away without being shocked into it.
‘Yet someone deliberately killed her.'
Chloe stiffened, her eyes shut, and he watched the colour drain from her face. She couldn't speak.
‘So these people she never complained about, who are they?'
‘Just people.' As she forced out the whispered answer her face burned and she turned away from him.
Answer enough: she meant her father. And perhaps sometimes herself?
‘People are so - bloody - awful, if you don't stand up to them.' She spoke with passion.
‘They certainly can be. Thank you, Chloë. I'm sorry I had to probe.'
The hands in her lap turned helplessly palms upward. ‘It's your job.' She appeared reluctant to allow that much, but relieved that his words sounded final.
‘That's all for the present, then. But I may need to bother you again. Later on.'
Chloe nodded, rose and made for the door. There she stood with her back to him and fought against tears, took a deep, sighing breath and ground out, ‘She was so nice, a really good person. You have to know that.' And she was gone, not waiting for Janey.
Leila submissive and a peacemaker? That wasn't the impression given by the body found in Shotters Wood. Leila Knightley had fought like a tiger for her life.
Just before Chloë's arrival there'd been a call on his mobile from Forensics. They'd analysed something further: under Leila's fingernails microscopic flecks of black suiting, wool and cashmere mix, luxury quality. And Forsyth, the expert on fabrics, had said they were lucky it hadn't been pure wool super 120-twist, or the fabric's surface wouldn't have scratched off.
Which was why Yeadings had had Z take out Knightley's dinner jacket in its plastic cover, to send on to the lab for comparison.
Janey - he already thought of her as that - stood regarding him, dumpy but strangely impressive. She waited until he acknowledged she was still there.
‘So you got what you were after. Leila was the family shock-absorber. All right; the learned Professor is a bully and lives only for himself. But you're wrong if you assume he was the one who killed her. He hasn't the bottle. Aidan is just a womanising wimp.'
She turned away and the scorn had left her voice. ‘It's a less civilized world now. There's little kindness left.' She looked suddenly crumpled. Then she left.
Kindness? What had kindness to do with the case? Yeadings asked himself. Yet she was right: we live in an age of anger. With more kindness there'd be less rage. Only where is this kindness suddenly to spring from? There has to be security first. Peace of mind: there wasn't a lot of that about either.
And if Leila Knightley had been kind, what good had it finally done her?
I'm showing my age, Yeadings thought. I should leave the armchair philosophy to others. Our job's keeping the peace. Or at best grabbing wildly as it fast goes down the plug hole.
To the team he often summed up his first impression in a single word. For Janey he chose ‘pragmatic'. Now for Leila he had been offered ‘kind'. From the brief sight he'd had himself of her alive, she probably had been.
He looked up to see Charles Hadfield standing again in the hall. He hobbled forward, leaning heavily on his stout blackthorn. ‘I just can't believe it,' he confessed.
The weathered face, with its fine broken veins over the cheekbones, showed an underlying pallor. Despite the bluff voice, body language said something else. Leila's death had truly shaken him.
‘No one who knew my niece could ever want to harm her.'
‘So you think it must be a stranger who attacked her?'
‘Was she … I mean - A man, was it?'
‘She wasn't raped. The attack wasn't sexual.'
The policeman's crudeness shocked him, even as he took comfort from the knowledge.
‘Sit down, Mr Hadfield,' Yeadings invited.
‘I'm not a bloody cripple, Superintendent.' But he took the chair indicated and stretched one leg out painfully. The ankle was heavily bound with crepe bandage. ‘Went north for the heather and a good malt whisky. Both conspired to bring me down.'
Yeadings nodded, almost smiling. ‘I'm hoping you can help us. We know nothing of the family. Except that Mrs Knightley was your niece.'
‘I'm her only blood relative. She was my sister's daughter. Her parents are dead, lost in their yacht off Agadir. She came to me as a little girl. Knightley was a recent widower when they married. That would be nine years back, when Leila had done a year at university. Both children are her husband's. Leila was a wonderful mother to them.'
Good: brusquely informative, he was co-operating. But then, why shouldn't he? Possibly because by nature he was an awkward cuss; had long chosen that role and revelled in it; lived it as a private joke. Yeadings had met his kind before.
‘Tell me what your niece was like.'
Hadfield thought for a moment. ‘She was a good girl, dignified, dutiful. Too dutiful. There wasn't much juice in that marriage.'
A curious phrase. It seemed even to faze the man who'd used it.
‘I mean - she gave all she had. He was an unmitigated bastard.'
‘Was? Do you think he's dead then?'
Hadfield was silent, the blue eyes hooded. He rested his chin on thickened knuckles grasping the blackthorn's carved knob. The stick was planted firmly upright, less as a prop than a device to explode him to his feet. Despite the closed eyes his whole pose was spring-loaded. This was a very angry man.
‘You didn't like him,' Yeadings prompted.
Hadfield opened burning eyes. ‘I hated his very guts. If he hasn't killed himself already, I'll be first to claim the honour.'
So, speaking apparently without collusion, the family had a single opinion, that Leila was more sinned against than sinning. Yet who ever knew what went on in a marriage beyond the couple themselves? And even they could find it a right old conundrum.
‘I was responsible for her upbringing,' Hadfield admitted. ‘I was a middle-aged bachelor when she was sent back from Africa, an orphan. Never had any children of my own, that I know of. So I sent her to boarding school and saw her briefly in the holidays. That's if she didn't go off camping or pony trekking, or something of the kind.
‘When Janey first moved in with me she gave me no end of a telling-off; said I'd deprived the child of a sense of family. So she took it on herself to act the surrogate mother.
‘I think now it may have been too late by then. Why else would Leila have taken on a disagreeable husband with a couple of ready-made children, the first man who ever showed any real interest in her?'
‘Perhaps she was in love with him.'
‘She thought she was. But once the knot was tied she seemed to—'
Yeadings was good at waiting. He found that the longer
the silence drew out, the greater the compulsion for it to be filled. But the man opposite him wasn't holding anything back. He simply found it hard to find the right words.

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