The Hireling's Tale (5 page)
‘The maids have already cleared the rooms booked by Mr Kendall,’ said the manager. ‘They didn’t report anything out of the ordinary.’
‘But they didn’t know then what we know now,’ said Shapiro grimly. ‘Believe me; you beat someone the way that girl was beaten, it takes more than a quick tidy-up to remove all the evidence.’
He used Mr Coren’s phone to call Superintendent Giles. ‘You heard about the girl on the boat?’ Castlemere’s senior police officer had. There was, in fact, very little that escaped his notice. ‘I’ve got forty hotel rooms, and after that maybe twenty flats, to search and right now there’s five of us to do it. Any chance of a bit of help?’
Late Monday afternoon, just when Shapiro was convinced that whatever evidence there was would be found in the room vacated by the Korean delegate Kim Il Muk - so that even sending him a postcard asking ‘Did you murder someone in Castlemere? Tick box A for Yes, box B for No’ would strain Queen’s Street’s budget - signs of a bloody struggle were found in the unlikeliest of places.
The major breakthrough in police detection of the twentieth century was the discovery of how much physical evidence was created by an act of violence, and how much of it could survive a rigorous clean-up and still be read if you turned the microscope up high enough. A spot of blood in the crevice between the wall and the skirting board would elude all but the most professional search but could contain enough information to jail someone for life.
The maid who cleaned the room had noticed nothing amiss. But Detective Constable Dick Morgan saw what both she and the departing occupant had missed: that one of the roses on the wallpaper behind the headboard was a deeper, richer red than
the others. He called the Scenes of Crime Officer, and when Sergeant Tripp looked closely he saw more spots of rusty pigment in places where they were even less obvious - on the underside of the window ledge, in the hinge of the bedside cabinet. When he looked very closely there were also traces of blood in the grain of the wallpaper around the bed. A damp rag had removed the surface spotting but left a residue in the tiny canyons of the texturing.
the others. He called the Scenes of Crime Officer, and when Sergeant Tripp looked closely he saw more spots of rusty pigment in places where they were even less obvious - on the underside of the window ledge, in the hinge of the bedside cabinet. When he looked very closely there were also traces of blood in the grain of the wallpaper around the bed. A damp rag had removed the surface spotting but left a residue in the tiny canyons of the texturing.
‘There must have been enough of it,’ said Tripp; and two things all Queen’s Street knew about SOCO, that he knew his blood and that he never exaggerated. He looked round the room. ‘She was probably on the bed when he was hitting her. No knife wounds on the body? - so he did the damage with his fists. Her nose or maybe her lip was pouring blood, and she was turning her head to try and avoid him. Going off what’s left, this whole wall must have been spattered.’
Morgan shook his head in a kind of brooding wonder. Like Tripp he was a Fenman born and bred, not given to emotional outbursts. Inside he was seething. Someone had pinned this girl to the bed and pounded her face until it ran with blood. Why? - because that was how he got his kicks? Because he only enjoyed sex with women he’d first beaten senseless? Toms made their living fulfilling some pretty odd male fantasies, but they didn’t sign up for something like this. Which was why when he’d finished with her he killed her. By the time she knew what he was capable of, he had to.
Morgan pulled himself together and called
Superintendent Shapiro, and Shapiro opined that the discovery would probably earn Morgan a promotion. Since DC Morgan had spent the last ten years avoiding promotions - a canny, intelligent man who already had all the responsibility he sought - this was not what he wanted to hear.
Superintendent Shapiro, and Shapiro opined that the discovery would probably earn Morgan a promotion. Since DC Morgan had spent the last ten years avoiding promotions - a canny, intelligent man who already had all the responsibility he sought - this was not what he wanted to hear.
But Dick Morgan’s discomfort was soon forgotten when Mr Coren’s list put a name to the last occupant of room 411.
‘Can’t be,’ said Morgan with certainty.
‘Wouldn’t have thought so,’ agreed Donovan.
‘Stranger things have happened,’ observed SOCO gravely.
Room 411 had been occupied by Mrs Grace Atwood.
A straw poll of everyone who knew her would have voted Mrs Atwood the last person in England to be involved in a suspicious death. Shapiro remembered her from his meeting with the remaining delegates: a sturdy, shrewd woman of about fifty with a regrettable penchant for floral chiffon. She’d left Castlemere after giving her statement, but she hadn’t gone far. Ipswich, wasn’t it?
Philip Kendall confirmed that. He’d known her for years, they’d worked for the same firm once. Until this weekend he hadn’t seen her for a while, but he’d be astonished to learn she was involved in a murder. She surprised people quite enough by hiding behind that plain apple-cheeked face one of the keenest brains in the machine tool business. Surely to God she wasn’t also concealing a fondness for beating and murdering young prostitutes?
But Shapiro had spent over thirty years learning to take nothing on trust. Not long after Mrs Atwood arrived back in Ipswich, Liz set off to follow her. It was clearly necessary to talk to her again; but she didn’t expect to return with the murder solved and the murderer in handcuffs.
Mrs Atwood had hardly finished telling her husband and the two of her four children who were at home about the appalling events in the hotel in Castlemere when a Detective Inspector arrived on her doorstep with more, and yet more disturbing, news. They talked in the kitchen, alone.
‘We think we’ve established where the initial assault on the girl took place. Room 411.’
Mrs Atwood blinked. That sounded familiar, but it took her several seconds to realize why. When she did her jaw dropped. ‘But - that isn’t possible.’
‘We have forensic evidence,’ Liz said quietly. ‘Laboratory analysis will give us positive confirmation, but I can’t think of any other reason why there would be traces of blood on your walls. Can you?’
Innocent or guilty, Mrs Atwood wasn’t the type to babble. When she got her voice back she said, quite firmly, ‘Nothing happened during my occupancy of room 411 that would leave traces of blood anywhere.’
‘Nevertheless, that’s what we found.’
‘Could it pre-date the conference?’
Liz was impressed. Not many people could think that clearly in a state of shock. ‘That’s something we’ll check, of course. But it would be the hell of a coincidence, wouldn’t it?’
Grace Atwood thought so too. But she was no
closer to understanding. ‘So what are you saying? That someone let himself into my room in order to meet a prostitute there? That they used my bed?’ She shook that thought out of her head, but not before it had left its impression in her eyes. ‘And then he killed her?’
closer to understanding. ‘So what are you saying? That someone let himself into my room in order to meet a prostitute there? That they used my bed?’ She shook that thought out of her head, but not before it had left its impression in her eyes. ‘And then he killed her?’
‘Probably not in the room,’ said Liz. She thought that might matter to Mrs Atwood. ‘But he certainly gave her a bloody nose there - he cleaned up afterwards but we found traces that he missed. They must have been there half an hour or more, probably between nine and eleven. I take it you weren’t in the room at that time?’
Mrs Atwood shook her head. ‘I don’t believe I’d have missed all that going on. No, we had drinks in the bar about eight-thirty, then I went for a bite of supper with’ - the pause as she thought through her next words was brief but significant - ‘one of the other delegates. I got back to the room a little before midnight. There was nothing obviously wrong at that point - it never occurred to me that someone had been there.’
‘You weren’t supposed to know,’ said Liz. ‘He tried very hard to leave it as he found it. Who was it you had supper with?’
There was a sharp, machine-tool-specialist glint in her eye. ‘It was only supper with an old friend. But I’d just as soon my husband didn’t know, and I imagine my companion would feel the same way about his wife.’
Liz had no problem with that. ‘There’s no reason they should know. But you’re one another’s alibis:
it’s important that we know who you were with during the relevant period.’
it’s important that we know who you were with during the relevant period.’
After another moment’s thought Mrs Atwood nodded. ‘Of course. As I say, it was perfectly innocent. But we were catching up on one another’s gossip, and it got late, and … Well. It was Philip Kendall, the sales director at Bespoke. He organized the conference. We used to work together, we had a lot of news to swap, and it was so noisy in the bar he suggested we go out for some supper. And there was no reason not to, except that I try not to do things I’ll have difficulty explaining to my husband afterwards. I work in a man’s world, Inspector Graham, there are myriad opportunities for misunderstandings. I usually try to avoid them.’
‘I know about that,’ Liz assured her. ‘It’s no different in police work. As I say, this should be the end of it. I now know where both you and Mr Kendall were at the critical time. That narrows the list of suspects down’ - to a mere sixty or so; assuming it was someone staying in the hotel and not just hijacking the room for an hour. ‘Thank you for your help. Unless the timing becomes an issue, I don’t expect I’ll need to trouble you again. The best thing you can do is forget about it.’
‘Forget that I slept last night in a bed where a prostitute entertained a client and he beat her so badly that he needed to clean the blood up afterwards?’ Mrs Atwood’s voice soared incredulously.
Liz gave a rueful shrug. ‘I said it would be the best thing. I didn’t say it would be easy.’
*
At close of play on the first day Shapiro still didn’t know who the dead girl was. He knew roughly when she died, but he didn’t know when she entered The Barbican Hotel or who she went there to meet. He accepted Liz’s judgement that the registered occupant of the room knew nothing about the incident, but if she wasn’t involved then the field was wide open again. A hotel room is not like a bank vault, it doesn’t take much in the way of specialist skills to get inside. Despite the best efforts of Mr Coren’s staff to run a safe and efficient establishment, anyone with a little nerve and ingenuity could have walked in off the street, found an empty room and called a prostitute to meet him there.
Except that she wasn’t a local prostitute, and if he’d picked a room at random - even if he’d assumed the conference group would be in the bar until late - he couldn’t waste time waiting for her to travel here. She must have been nearby. Maybe they arrived together. But if they’d been staying here someone would have seen her, and no one did. Maybe no one saw him either. The invisible woman had been drugged, beaten and then murdered by the invisible man, and CID had somehow to bring in a prosecution. Thanks a bunch. Shapiro took his coat off the stand and went home.
As soon as Tuesday’s sun was up Donovan took his dog for a walk. Even before he had the dog he’d enjoyed walking at quiet times of the day, late at night or soon after dawn. He wasn’t a sociable man, preferred his own company to that of people he cared nothing about, whose only topics of conversation were the weather and the government. He had a few close friends, almost no casual ones.
Dawn and dusk suited Brian Boru as well. He was no more into small talk than Donovan was. Also, although he definitely wasn’t a pit bull terrier, he wasn’t the sort of dog you could walk in the park in the middle of the day. The ducks, and indeed the poodles, were just too damned tempting.
They set off along the towpath and went as far as Cornmarket before heading back along Brick Lane. It was a clear morning, full of promise for the day, the pale early sunshine glinting off the water and illuminating a faint haze over the distant fields of The Levels.
Halfway along Brick Lane someone fell into step behind them.
Donovan broke his stride and looked back. It was
a woman; more than that, it was someone he knew. The red satin blouson, the short skirt, lighter streaks running through the dark mass of hair: subtlety isn’t much use to a streetwalker. ‘Zara?’
a woman; more than that, it was someone he knew. The red satin blouson, the short skirt, lighter streaks running through the dark mass of hair: subtlety isn’t much use to a streetwalker. ‘Zara?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ she hissed. ‘I don’t want people to know I’m talking to you.’
He blinked. Being accosted by a prostitute wasn’t something he’d boast about either. ‘So … ?’
‘I’m worried,’ she said. ‘I think he may have done it again.’
Donovan didn’t need her to draw him a diagram: he knew exactly what she meant. His attention sharpened like wind catching a sail. ‘What makes you think so?’
She shrugged awkwardly. She’d more or less caught up with him now: in an empty street you couldn’t be close enough to talk to somebody and still look as if you were nothing to do with each other. ‘Somebody’s missing. One of the girls. I asked Dawn if we should report it, and she said we could get her in trouble. You know what it’s like in this business: you get a good offer, you can disappear for a few days and all it means is you had a profitable weekend. Only, with what happened at the Basin …’
‘My word any good to you?’ asked Donovan. ‘Because if it turns out to be a false alarm, I promise we won’t make life difficult for either of you. Tell me who she is and where she lives. If she is in trouble, the sooner we know about it the less chance we’ll find her with her skull smashed somewhere.’
‘And if she comes back with a john and finds you crawling all over her house?’
‘Then somebody smelled a leak and we’re from the Gas Board! Zara, we’re talking about somebody’s life here. You’ve heard of people dying from embarrassment? – well, this is how it happens. Tell me what you know.’
She wouldn’t have stayed out watching for him if she hadn’t meant to do exactly that. Her mind was made up before the sun rose, it was only cold feet that made her hesitate now. ‘All right. Her name’s Maddie Cotterick. That’s her real name - her working name’s Shauna. She has a house in Viaduct Lane; I don’t know the number, it’s a yellow door. Since what happened yesterday we’ve been checking round - calling the register, if you like. Anyone who hadn’t been seen, somebody called on her. I called on Maddie, but she wasn’t there. But she hadn’t cancelled the milk.’
It could mean nothing at all and they both knew it. But if it did mean something it probably meant something bad. ‘OK, Zara, I’ll get round there. She’s probably got an address book or something: I’ll call her friends, see if she’s with any of them.’
‘Jesus, Mr Donovan,’ exclaimed the girl, ‘you can’t work your way through her book like that! Nearly everyone in it’ll be … you know.’
He did know. He gave a saturnine grin. ‘Credit me with a little tact. I wasn’t planning on starting the conversation with: “Hello, this is the police, do you know a tom called Shauna?” ’
He took the dog home and fed it before heading to Viaduct Lane. Castlemere didn’t really have a Nob Hill, but it did have a scabrous underside and this
was it. Even the viaduct was defunct: it used to carry the railway line from the shunting yard at Cornmarket, but that closed a generation ago. There was just a passenger halt now on the other side of town: nothing had rattled over the viaduct in the time Donovan had been in Castlemere.
was it. Even the viaduct was defunct: it used to carry the railway line from the shunting yard at Cornmarket, but that closed a generation ago. There was just a passenger halt now on the other side of town: nothing had rattled over the viaduct in the time Donovan had been in Castlemere.
And except for the bright yellow door halfway along, nobody had painted any of the little houses here for at least that long. Castlemere’s only surviving length of cobblestones was in Viaduct Lane: not preserved, merely forgotten about. There was dirt in the gutters, weeds growing in the rain-damaged brickwork.
He rang at the yellow door, but no one came and he heard no movement. He waited a moment, but he wasn’t about to walk away. ‘Goodness,’ he said aloud to himself, ‘is that gas I smell?’ With the aplomb of someone who’d done this before he put his elbow through the little glass pane in the front door and groped around for the latch.
From the street this looked like the last stop on the highway to hell. No one who could beg, borrow or steal anything better lived in Viaduct Lane. People in The Jubilee looked down on Viaduct Lane. So Donovan was startled by what he found inside. It was a proper, even a nice little house. Tiny: two up and two down, and even then the rooms were smaller than he had aboard
Tara
. But nice. She kept it clean and decorated, with lots of primary colours and Walt Disney curtains. There were patchwork cushions and soft toys lying around. Maddie Cotterick might
have to live in Viaduct Lane, but she didn’t let it past that yellow front door.
Tara
. But nice. She kept it clean and decorated, with lots of primary colours and Walt Disney curtains. There were patchwork cushions and soft toys lying around. Maddie Cotterick might
have to live in Viaduct Lane, but she didn’t let it past that yellow front door.
There was no one here. The house felt too still even to have someone sleeping upstairs. Donovan checked the ground floor for signs of a struggle and found none; then he went upstairs. The house was too small to have a hall: the stairs were boxed into a little alcove off the living-room.
There were two bedrooms, as different as chalk and cheese. His first thought was that two people lived here, and whoever decorated the rest of the house slept in the front bedroom. It was sunny and cheerful, with a toy clown hanging from a balloon as a lamp-shade and more of the soft toys lying around: a sheep, a lion, an Old English Sheepdog with a zip down its middle for pyjamas. The smaller back bedroom was decorated all in reds: scarlet and crimson and dark blood-red, with vivid slashes of cerise; the sort of colour-scheme that provoked migraines. Donovan nodded to himself, thinking he understood. This was Shauna’s room, all right. The other must belong to …
And then he realized that he hadn’t understood at all; and though he was alone and his mistake a private one, still his lack of insight made him flush darkly. This was certainly Shauna’s room; and the rest of the house belonged to Maddie Cotterick. This was her place of business; the rest of the house was her home.
As a policeman Donovan had known his fair share of prostitutes. On the whole he’d found them a tough, coarse, resilient, humorous bunch of women
who had mostly fallen into the life as a result of some personal disaster but had a talent for making the best of a bad job. They had swum and not sunk. They talked about what they would do when they’d made enough money to retire, but Donovan got the impression that by the time they’d made the streets their own they were reluctant to abandon them in favour of a more genteel but less familiar way of life. He’d heard it said so often it was less a truism than a cliche: You can take the girl out of the business but you can’t take the business out of the girl …
who had mostly fallen into the life as a result of some personal disaster but had a talent for making the best of a bad job. They had swum and not sunk. They talked about what they would do when they’d made enough money to retire, but Donovan got the impression that by the time they’d made the streets their own they were reluctant to abandon them in favour of a more genteel but less familiar way of life. He’d heard it said so often it was less a truism than a cliche: You can take the girl out of the business but you can’t take the business out of the girl …
But he’d never considered the likelihood that, when they got home from work, they’d change out of their business clothes and catch up on a bit of reading or knitting, or painting the kitchen units. He hadn’t thought of them as having a life much beyond the realm of rubber and zips. He knew it was absurd: that’s why he blushed. He’d thought of them as a problem, he’d thought of them as an information resource, he’d thought of them as part of the street-furniture, but until now he’d never thought of them as people.
As far as he knew he’d never met Maddie Cotterick, and now it might be too late. But she’d taught him something just by the way she decorated her house.
There was no sign of trouble up here either, and no reason for anyone to have cleaned up as they did at the hotel. So probably she left willingly, just didn’t come back. That didn’t mean she was dead. Perhaps she was scared, thought now was a good time to take that holiday she’d been promising herself. He looked
in the wardrobes - both wardrobes, in both rooms. The rail in the front room had a gap along its length, as if she’d grabbed a handful of clothes at random. So she’d left in a hurry. Oh yes, she was scared. The question was, had she any particular reason to be? Not uneasy, not on her guard, but scared.
in the wardrobes - both wardrobes, in both rooms. The rail in the front room had a gap along its length, as if she’d grabbed a handful of clothes at random. So she’d left in a hurry. Oh yes, she was scared. The question was, had she any particular reason to be? Not uneasy, not on her guard, but scared.
He found her address book, and checked that it contained personal friends as well as clients. Then he found a bit of sturdy board to nail over the hole he’d made in her door, and left, closing the little house up behind him.
It was still early, so Donovan was surprised to be hailed as he rode his bike through Castle Place in the direction of Queen’s Street. Not a tom this time: he recognized the big green 4 x 4 as belonging to one of the local vets. He pulled up and took off his helmet, and his whole expression said
Now
what?
Now
what?
Keith Baker backed his jeep and rolled down the window. He was a solidly built individual of about thirty with a thatch of straw-coloured hair and the ruddy outdoor complexion of a man who wrestles bullocks for a living. ‘Got a dead sheep in the back,’ he said by way of greeting.
Donovan considered for a moment. ‘Well, keep your voice down or everybody’ll want one.’
Baker grinned. ‘I’m going to do an autopsy to confirm the cause of death. There’s a lot of things that kill sheep. Diseases that have no real equivalent in us or any other species. And dogs, and crows, and getting stuck on their backs, and falling off cliffs,
and sometimes just having nothing better to do. You find them lying in the field with their legs stuck up in the air, and it can be a right bugger, sometimes, working out what killed them. But I’ve got a fair idea this time, right enough.’
and sometimes just having nothing better to do. You find them lying in the field with their legs stuck up in the air, and it can be a right bugger, sometimes, working out what killed them. But I’ve got a fair idea this time, right enough.’
Donovan felt the day slowly passing. ‘Good. Fine. You must be sure and let me know.’ He went to put his helmet back on.
Baker was still grinning. ‘You think this is nothing to do with you, don’t you? You think I’m just gossiping to pass the time. What if I told you that sheep was shot?’
Donovan shrugged. ‘Maybe it was rabid.’
‘Oh yeah,’ nodded Baker ironically. ‘And maybe it was flitting from tree to tree and got mistaken for a pheasant. I don’t mean the farmer shot it. I mean, he found it dying in the field and called me. He thought a dog must have had it. But you get more damage with dogs, to the fleece and to the carcass. The only thing I can think of would make three neat holes like that would be a gun. Not a shotgun, a rifle.’
‘Three holes? It was shot three times?’
‘Reckon so. If I’m right I’ll let you have the bullets. Bloody kids, I expect. Got hold of a gun, can’t wait to try it out on something, not good enough to hit rabbits so they look for something bigger and slower. Thought I’d better let you know. Anybody that stupid with guns, sooner or later it’s a person gets hurt.’
Donovan nodded. ‘Whose sheep was it?’ Baker gave him a name and the address of a farm out on The Levels. ‘OK. If I get the chance I’ll take a run out
there later, see if he can tell me any more. But we’re up to our eyes right now, it might be tomorrow.’ Or sometime next week, he added privately; or perhaps that quiet time we get in the middle of August. ‘Most useful thing you can do is put the word around. If it is kids, it could be farm kids - you know as well as I do what passes for security with most farm guns.’
there later, see if he can tell me any more. But we’re up to our eyes right now, it might be tomorrow.’ Or sometime next week, he added privately; or perhaps that quiet time we get in the middle of August. ‘Most useful thing you can do is put the word around. If it is kids, it could be farm kids - you know as well as I do what passes for security with most farm guns.’
‘Most farmers have shotguns,’ said the vet. ‘I don’t know how many would have a rifle.’
Neither did Donovan: dead sheep weren’t really his field of expertise. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can find out.’ But he wasn’t planning on giving a shot ewe much priority at the present time.
He wasn’t expecting that someone would have walked into Queen’s Street in the middle of the night and confessed to throwing a girl off the top of The Barbican Hotel, thus freeing him for other enquiries, and so it turned out. In fact, far from getting lighter, the workload had increased. There’d been an incident at Cornmarket.
‘Cornmarket? I’ve just come from there. Everything was quiet forty minutes ago.’
‘Well, it’s not quiet now,’ rumbled the Station Sergeant. ‘The chiefs on his way over, he said would you meet him there? He tried to phone you but you must have been on your way in.’
‘Chief’ was no longer an appropriate form of address for Shapiro, but he seemed to be stuck with it. It didn’t matter to Sergeant Bolsover, who’d known him since he arrived in Castlemere, that he’d been promoted from Detective Chief Inspector to Detective Superintendent, or even that he was still
not the senior officer at the station. (That honour fell to Superintendent Giles, and his soubriquet was The Son of God.) By the time you’ve called a man Chief for ten years you can hardly start calling him something else.
not the senior officer at the station. (That honour fell to Superintendent Giles, and his soubriquet was The Son of God.) By the time you’ve called a man Chief for ten years you can hardly start calling him something else.
‘What sort of incident?’ said Donovan.
Sergeant Bolsover gave the sort of grim facial shrug his jowly fenland face had been designed for. ‘Messy,’ he said succinctly. ‘Is there another kind?’ It was an exaggeration, but though they dealt with an awful lot of stolen cars and break-ins and closing-time punch-ups for every murder that came along, some weeks it didn’t feel like that.
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