The Final Curtain (12 page)

Great,
Joanna thought
. The traditional crappy call-out of the fire brigade.
She said a prayer:
Don't say it's stuck up a tree, please, Mrs Weeks. Or down the well.

And even she could hear the irritation in her voice as she asked, ‘What about your cat, Mrs Weeks?'

It was Diana Tong who took over the phone and even her normally controlled voice shook. ‘Someone appears not to like cats, Inspector. It's been strung up on the front door.'

Joanna was shocked. ‘What?'

‘It's hanging there.' Diana's voice was breaking.

Joanna hadn't liked the snooty moggy but this was horrible. She gave Mike a swift glance then spoke into the phone. ‘Don't touch anything, Mrs Tong,' she said. ‘We'll be out there as soon as possible.'

Rush was standing motionless, eyebrows raised, waiting for an explanation which Joanna was forced to give.

‘This is a sixty-year-old lady,' she explained. ‘An ex-actress who has been repeatedly calling us out for minor occurrences.' She paused. ‘So far. Some of these might have been in her imagination but she's convinced someone is threatening her. She lives alone in an isolated house on the moorlands and was a well-known actress in a sixties soap. More than forty years ago she was quite seriously assaulted by a fan. She also has an ex-husband who is a convicted criminal. Yesterday we were called out because she was convinced her dead husband's watch, which was buried with him, had turned up on her bed. Today – this.'

‘What?'

‘She has a pedigree cat which she's extremely fond of. It has been missing for a day or two. Apparently it's turned up dead, hanging from her front door.' She didn't need to spell out that this was an escalation of events, but Chief Superintendent Rush appeared to feel
he
needed to say it, eyebrows flexed. ‘It appears then that something really
is
very wrong.'

‘Yes, sir.' But Rush was still eyeing her, waiting, she supposed, for her ‘take' on the incident.

She gave it to him – as best she could. ‘It may just be some local person who's playing tricks,' she said, ‘or it may be something connected with her colourful past. Anyway, the sooner we get out there and take a look around, the better. I'm sure you agree.' Korpanski was already on his feet, apparently as eager to escape as she was. ‘We should get over there right away,' she finished apologetically, as she slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat.

Rush gave her a tight smile and a nod and Joanna breathed a tiny prayer of thanks to Mrs Timony Weeks as she followed Korpanski out of the room.

As he manoeuvred the car out of the tight parking lot she turned to him, screwing up her face. ‘He's just as bad as I thought he'd be,' she said grumpily. ‘If not worse.'

Korpanski took his eyes off the road to grin at her. ‘Go on,' he teased, ‘I can see you two being the best of friends.'

‘Sod off.'

Korpanski simply laughed out loud. A rich, throaty, masculine bellow, then sang in his deep, gravelly voice, ‘There may be troubles ahead. But while there's music and moonlight …' He resorted to humming the rest of the tune until he got to, ‘Let's face the music and dance.'

She couldn't help herself laughing. ‘I won't disagree with any of that. So what do you think about
this
call-out?'

‘Sounds a bit more serious this time, doesn't it?'

She nodded, wishing she hadn't even thought that she would like some more tangible evidence than cigarette ash, then tried to put the brakes on. ‘Let's just wait and see exactly what
has
happened.'

Almost through force of habit they stopped on the ridge and looked down on Butterfield Farm. It looked calm and peaceful in the winter sunshine, though the property itself was, as always, in the shade. But it was hard to imagine anything as brutal or cruel happening here as the murder of a much-loved pet and the deliberate act of hanging it from the front door. Joanna stared. It was Beatrix Potter land, surely? There couldn't be a more idyllic spot than here. Even Korpanski murmured something about it being ‘pretty perfect'. But if this truly had happened someone else must have looked down on it, as they were now, but with malicious intent. That person had not wanted to admire it, but to spoil it and intimidate its inhabitants. So was this mischief-maker even now creeping around the place? Looking as they were at its stone roof and neat surround, busily planning another crime? Joanna scanned the entire panorama of pale and empty fields superstitiously. She could see nothing untoward, no one skulking. In fact, nothing at all out of the ordinary.

But she was well aware that if the assault on the cat had happened as described it was a disturbing turn in events. And someone was behind it.

Korpanski let out the handbrake and as they descended the track and neared the farm Joanna found herself wondering: what next? Where is this all going to lead? Where will it end?

They pulled into the yard, parking next to an elderly, mud-spattered Volvo. ‘The gardener and his wife,' Joanna observed. It looked appropriate, a sturdy rural vehicle.

‘Rossington,' Korpanski agreed. ‘Frank and Millie.'

Diana Tong must have been watching for them. She hurried out of a side door as they pulled up. ‘This is dreadful,' she said, her face pale and shocked and her hands clasped together. ‘Dreadful. Poor Tuptim. She was there when I came in this morning. Why anyone … Such a cruel thing.' She snatched a breathy sob. ‘How could …?'

‘Let's have a look, shall we?' It was Korpanski who spoke while Joanna watched Mrs Tong with interest. There were times when she appeared resentful towards her employer. Angry, even. But now all this had apparently melted away. Because she had finally got her revenge?

Diana Tong led them around to the front door and Joanna stood and stared. She would never have harmed any animal although she wouldn't have described herself as an ‘animal lover'. But this? It was enough to turn your stomach. God only knew what the poor animal had suffered. A loop of rope was nailed to the door from which the cat dangled, head lolling, eyes dulled blue glass, tail hanging down like a rat's, looking somehow larger and yet less important in death than in life. It was horrible and cruel. There was simply no point to it. Joanna felt angry. This had been done purely to upset Timony Weeks.

But a tiny whisper insinuated something else.
This had achieved something. This was irrefutable evidence. Her stories would be believed now, her call-outs treated with priority.

Joanna argued with herself, while her eyes absorbed the scene: Timony Weeks had adored this cat. She had stroked and caressed it as a child, or perhaps even a lover. Many people do substitute an animal contact for a human one. Maybe, after so many failed marriages, Timony had joined these ranks.

She couldn't have done this.

The cat's tail hung down almost to the floor, its paws dangling limply. The scene had been set to extract maximum horror. And the effect had obviously worked. At the foot of the door was a pool of fresh vomit. Joanna eyed Diana Tong. ‘Poor Timony,' she said. ‘She just threw up and then fainted.'

Korpanski's eyes were on the vomit. ‘So no DNA there then,' he muttered, disappointed.

Whether the animal had been alive or dead when it had been pinned to the door was uncertain. Joanna's guess was that the animal had already been dead or surely the poor creature would have struggled, and there were no scratch marks on the woodwork. Blood trickled from its mouth, so her guess was that the cat had been strung up straight after it had been killed. Probably strangled with the rope. At her side Korpanski was standing still, frowning. She knew her sergeant. Something was going on in that blunt instrument of a brain of his.

Joanna drew out her mobile phone. No bloody signal. Of course, they were in a remote valley. Without a word Diana Tong handed her the house phone and Joanna summoned the police photographer and forensics. The sight of the dead cat had triggered a memory of a lecture she had heard a while ago. The point of the lecture had been to alert the police to sadistic assaults on animals. They were, it had been claimed, often the first signs of abnormality a psychopath displayed. The next target, the lecturer had pointed out, could well be human. She looked up to see Diana Tong watching her and knew she was thinking along the same lines: what fate was planned for Timony Weeks? What was the reason for this cruel warning? For almost three weeks now there had been taunts and hints, half-revealed glimpses of something hiding behind the curtain. Now the pointless psychological jokes had escalated into a very real threat. What effect would it have? They followed Diana Tong inside.

Timony Weeks sat, shrunken as a mummy, wrapped up in a blanket, shivering, on the sofa. No Noël Coward costume today. She looked tiny in her white towelling dressing gown and she was shaking with shock. Mike, watching from the doorway, looked like a powerful bodyguard. There was something almost biblical about his stance and threat. Joanna sat down next to the actress, waiting for a moment before speaking to Timony in a gentle voice, as though speaking to the inner Timony, the child actress who lived inside this sixty-year-old's body.

‘I'm sorry about your cat,' she said. ‘I have sent for a photographer and a team of forensic evidence collectors.'

Timony Weeks said nothing; neither did she look up.

Joanna pressed on. ‘We will do everything we can to find out who committed this cruel act.'

Timony Weeks still said nothing. Apart from the shaking there was no other movement. Head and body did not respond. It was as though she could not hear. All the same, Joanna continued, ‘This signifies an escalation in events which worries me.'

Timony Weeks' head cranked around so her eyes stared straight into Joanna's face. Her lips were dry as cracked leather and her face looked as if it was struggling against the facelift to burst out with some emotion. She mumbled something which Joanna did not quite catch the first time around.

‘Sorry?'

‘In what way,
worries
you?'

Joanna was reluctant to relay the contents of the forensic lecture she had attended. But all the same, ‘I'm worried about …'

‘You believe me now? That this person means me harm?'

‘I think it's possible, Mrs Weeks. I think it's time for us to take a look at all this more thoroughly.'

With a further effort Timony lifted her head to stare straight ahead. ‘I told you there was something bad behind all this, didn't I? I knew that something was very wrong. The atmosphere here …' She scanned the room and looked out of the window, towards the empty lane and the ridge beyond before it rested on the rocky tors of The Roaches. ‘It was all wrong. I knew something awful would happen, Inspector. I was just waiting for it.' She bent her head so she was almost touching Joanna's hand. She smelt of rose water and lavender. It was an old-fashioned, pleasant smell, nostalgic, sweet and suitable.

‘You did,' Joanna agreed. ‘So we need to know who and why. I could do with some names, Mrs Weeks, a place from where to start our investigations. Think. Who could wish you harm, apart from Sol? Could it be to do with Butterfield Farm? Is there someone who wants you out of here? A neighbour, someone who wants the land? It is a lovely property.'

But at the back of her mind other things were niggling her as she tried to put the jigsaw together. Who could have known about the Rolex watch? Anyone. Colclough's sister had known. It had been in all the papers. Timony Shore's life had been played out in public. So what about some of the other little menaces? The smell of cigarette smoke. Was it pure coincidence that it had reminded her of an unhappy previous relationship?

‘You don't understand.' Mrs Weeks was regaining some of her spirit. ‘This isn't about Butterfield Farm. It isn't about property or money. This is personal. It's about me.'

Joanna glanced across at Korpanski. What did he make of this? she wondered. But he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the woman as though he, too, was puzzling this one out. Even Diana Tong appeared to be holding her breath, watching, motionless, intrigued as to what answers could be forthcoming.

Timony Weeks seemed to be distracted by some mental image in the far distance. ‘There is something there,' she said. ‘Some guilt. When I write my … It lies at the back of my mind, like an oil slick, something I am responsible for. I have flashbacks,' she said in her throaty voice. ‘They stem from my days – years – in the Butterfield series. I seem to have different memories.' Her eyes looked questioningly at Joanna, as though she might be able to interpret these flashbacks, then she cleared her throat, puzzled. ‘But surely it was a happy time?' It was a statement that sounded like a wondering question.

Timony continued, ‘Then sometimes I am not sure. I think some things must have been … different from how I recall them. Something determined to push into my mind; the sunshine of my past is hidden by a cloud. And yet when I try to push the cloud away and remember whatever lies behind it, it slips away downstream, laughing at me as it goes. Certain things trigger these memories – the tricks that have been played. But how can anyone know what's buried so deep in my mind that even I struggle to remember it? When I smell smoke when none of us here smokes, or see the toilet seat left up as though a man had just used it, or I hear certain music playing softly which evokes half a memory. When I find the watch that was buried with my long-dead husband or the burglar alarm goes off at three o'clock in the morning, startling me out of a dream or a nightmare.' She met Joanna's eyes. ‘I can't even answer that bit, whether it was a dream or a nightmare. But when these things happen it seems to awake a monster that had been long dormant. Do you understand, Inspector?'

‘I'm not sure I do,' Joanna said, knowing that her blunt honesty would risk Mrs Weeks' trust but unable to even try to deceive her. Timony Weeks was smart enough to sense when the truth was being told. And if she thought the detective was even trying to pretend Joanna would be the one to lose status.