The Company She Kept Page 5

  Her eyes, too, glittered, and the excitement had brought a flush to her swarthy cheeks. Wearing the barbaric jewellery Kitty had given her as a farewell gift, she looked more foreign to Sophie than ever. Of them all, she was the only one who was not either amused, embarrassed or half-scared, though none of them quite knew how to start.

  After a small silence Felix began by asking in a facetious, sepulchral tone if anyone was there.

  ‘You should not laugh!’ Irena reprimanded him sharply. ‘Ask if there is message for anyone, Sophie.’

  Sophie cleared her throat and asked the question self-consciously. The glass began to move: I-R-E-N-A.

  ‘That was predictable!’

  Felix’s laugh was unkind, but this time Irena ignored him and spoke excitedly. ‘Who is there?’

  D-I-D- The glass stopped. Irena’s gasp caught in her throat.

  ‘Do you have message for us?’

  E-L-I-S- ...

  At that point the glass skidded madly and slid away, knocking several letters off the table. The nervous silence was fractured by Angie’s frightened gasp, followed by

  Irena’s guttural, accusing voice: ‘Elissa! She is wishink to spell Dido, then Elissa, but you, Felix, you push the glass!’

  Felix uttered a word not likely to be in Irena’s vocabulary, but she got the gist.

  ‘Is not a joke!’ she shouted, turning on him. Her pronunciation and command of English was rapidly deteriorating into the accents of farce but Sophie saw that she was deadly earnest. ‘And you frighten Angie!’

  ‘I – I’m not scared,’ Angie denied, white and trembling by now. Any reference to Carthage and the darker elements of its past was likely to upset her. Kitty, telling her ghoulish stories with relish, had brought the past too vividly into the present and Angie, who was impressionable, hated them; detested Kitty’s workroom, the red walls, the blue and red and gold mask of Tanit above the desk, and all the other reminders of fire and magic and evil, however long ago they had occurred. Felix knew this and it was quite possible he had mischievously pushed the glass in order to frighten her, but really it was Irena who was his target tonight. He began bickering with her again.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, do be quiet, you’ll wake the old ladies!’ Madeleine ordered, even her patience wearing thin. It was unlikely that Jessie Crowther would be disturbed; she was growing deaf and in any case slept like a log, but if Kitty was awakened from her first sleep, she vowed that she never slept a wink for the rest of the night.

  ‘It must be our collective subconscious,’ Sophie put in, trying to harmonize the situation. ‘When we see the obvious beginning to a word, we all start willing it to move to the next letter –’

  ‘Collective balls!’ Felix gave a bark of unamused laughter. ‘One of us must have been pushing the glass – but it wasn’t me. Tommo was right. I’ve had enough of this voodoo!’

  Sophie, too, by now, felt that enough was enough, and as everyone else began to voice their own opinion, the noise level increased. Somewhere above, a floorboard creaked.

  ‘I told you you’d waken Kitty!’ Madeleine accused.

  ‘Well then, go up and see if she wants to join in. She can take my place and welcome,’ Felix answered flippantly.

  ‘We start again!’ Irena announced with authority. ‘Come, sit!’ She began to rearrange the tiles. ‘Is only a game.’

  Did any of them believe this by now? However, with varying degrees of unwillingness, they were all, even Angie, eventually persuaded to begin once more and after one or two initial skirmishes, the glass again moved. And now it spelled K-I-T-T-Y. ‘You see!’ Sophie said, ‘Madeleine mentioned Kitty’s name and now look –’

  ‘Sssh!’ hissed Irena.

  The glass had begun to move again. D-E-A-T- it spelled. Before the word was finished, it skidded and stopped.

  ‘Oooh!’ Angie wailed, white-faced, her eyes enormous and dangerously bright.

  ‘You do it again, Felix!’ Irena was in a fury, but Felix’s amusement had now vanished totally. He was no longer prepared to laugh, or even make sarcastic comments. He was as angry as she was, his face ugly with temper. He jumped up, pushing himself from the table with his hands and in doing so, rocked it so that the glass slid off the polished surface, followed by a slither of letters, and splintered on to the floor in a thousand shards of light.

  Irena was beside herself. Screaming, she launched herself towards Felix like a wild cat. Sophie, perhaps with some premonition of a horror she could never have envisaged, tried to ward her off, appalled at the way they were acting, like barbarians, at how easily the fragile calm of the hour before had been shattered. Angie began to cry, adding to the hubbub, while Madeleine endeavoured without success to calm everyone down. Footsteps were heard outside: Tommo returning, no doubt ashamed of his boorish departure, perhaps remembering he’d left without even a civil word of farewell to Irena.

  Felix, with an exclamation of distaste, suddenly brushed Irena off as if she were some sort of disgusting fly and with great strides left the room. Unstoppable, she flew after him. Their voices could still be heard when they reached the hall, loud but indistinguishable. In the room above, footsteps shuffled across the floor, a door banged. A moment or two later, there was a crash, and after that there was silence. A silence that went on and on.

  ‘Stay here, you two,’ Madeleine ordered, walking to the door. Sophie had no desire to do anything else and stayed rooted to the spot but Angie crept after her. Sophie waited alone, trembling, until the waiting became intolerable and then she, too, went into the hall.

  CHAPTER 6

  A couple of hours’ sleep after getting the murder inquiry under way wasn’t much, but after breakfast, a sharp shower and a change of clothes you were good for another twelve hours. No wonder, though, that Howard Cherry had opted for promotion that bound him more and more to the desk but at least promised a fair share of good night’s sleep! But Mayo didn’t really envy the Super. Cherry was a good friend and welcome to his promotion. It was where he’d been aiming ever since he and Mayo had been young coppers together, working on the same beat in the north of England. Mayo was a practical policeman while Cherry was a born administrator who was willing to rely on Mayo to get on with the job so long as he was kept well in the picture, a situation which suited both of them very well.

  After performing this function as soon as he got to the station, Mayo came down from the third floor to find

  Kite returned from Pennybridge, waiting for him with the name of someone who could put him in touch with the relatives of the murdered woman so that they could get a positive identification. Her name, he said, was Freeman, Dr Madeleine Freeman.

  Kite didn’t look as though his own sleep had done him much good; there were pouches under his eyes, but he was full of nervous energy, unable to keep still, and it soon became evident why. He was jubilant with the news that one of his informers had contacted him with a possible lead on the whereabouts of the disappearing witness in the child pornography case. It would mean, he remarked, a drive down to Essex for someone that morning, would mean taking two off the strength just when manpower was needed most. It was a statement made partly in query, partly in hope.

  ‘Better get off then, hadn’t you, Martin? It’s your case and we’re not letting them slip through the net at this stage.’

  Mayo would be glad to see the end of it himself, for more reasons than one. It had been an emotionally slanted affair and a successful outcome would give a fillip to every man and woman on the strength.

  Kite could hardly conceal his satisfaction at the hoped-for-reply, but he tried. ‘Couldn’t have come at a worse time, I know, but we can’t let up until we’ve got these bastards.’

  Mayo hoped Kite wasn’t letting this one get to him. His normal, cheerful insouciance had been remarkable for its absence since he’d been dealing with this admittedly depressing inquiry. It was understandable – he had two boys of his own and an investigation of this sort was the pits, but Kite was a
police officer and the rotten, mucky things of life were his business – he’d better snap out of it if he thought otherwise. You couldn’t afford to become involved to the point where your efficiency and sense of judgement were impaired. And yet, without it, without the pity and the rage, what was the point?

  ‘Keep at it, Martin,’ he said.

  All available manpower would now be called upon for the murder investigation, but the possibility of letting up on the case which had occupied the time and skills of the department for so long was a non-starter. Mayo was used to handling half a dozen cases at once, as they all were. It was simply a question of who now did what, how much routine work he himself could delegate to his inspector, the mature and unflappable Atkins. He mentally surveyed the rest of his team, most of whose strengths and weaknesses he could gauge to a millimetre.

  ‘Sergeant Moon,’ he said, ‘I’ll keep Abigail Moon with me for the most part of this one and leave you free to concentrate on Billen. You take Farrar with you today.’

  He wasn’t displeased with this strategy. He felt it to be an adroit compensating move on his part, killing two birds with one stone, one that would give Abigail the experience she needed – without rubbing Farrar’s nose in it. Of all the team, he was the one who resented the woman detective’s presence most, as being about to achieve (without much effort, as he saw it) the promotion which continually escaped him. He wouldn’t see why, for instance, he, rather than Abigail Moon, should have been sent with Kite, but tough. That’s the way we all had it once, lad.

  Abigail, unlike Farrar, was delighted.

  Her plans for her future were not going too badly. If only she had as much confidence in her personal life as in her professional one! Although her academic prowess at university hadn’t been particularly brilliant, she’d obtained a respectable degree and she knew, backed up by the assessments she’d undergone so far, that she was capable, given the opportunities and a share of luck, of rising to a senior position in the force. She had no illusions about what she’d be up against. Even if it was an exaggeration to say that she’d have to be twice as good as any of her male colleagues to get anywhere, the way ahead was certain to be tough, and since this present case was going to give her the opportunity to get her foot in the door, she was determined she wasn’t going to miss a trick. She was going to enjoy the new experience of a murder hunt, of working with the team. No one could be easier to get on with than Martin Kite and she could ignore Farrar, whom she liked well enough when he wasn’t acting like a jealous prima donna. The rest of the team were friendly and she thought she would like the challenge of working for Mayo, despite his reputation for being a bloody-minded Yorkshireman when the occasion demanded it, and a slave-driver to boot. She didn’t mind either; she could cope with the one and rather admired the other – especially since she’d found he worked twice as hard himself. She’d also heard he was a right old male chauvinist – but then, ninety per cent of her colleagues were.

  She rang Madeleine Freeman’s home as soon as she could after their return from Pennybridge, but all she got was the answering service, advising her to try the surgery. There, she received a frosty reception from the dragon who answered, to the effect that Doctor couldn’t possibly see anyone that morning, it wasn’t her scheduled surgery. In the end, a reluctant concession was achieved, as it finally got through that this was urgent police business: they could come in about nine-thirty and catch Doctor between house-visits. That was when she usually popped in to the surgery to see if any more calls had come in for her and to pick up her post.

  The tiny patch of flowerbed through which a few sparrow-bitten crocuses had mistakenly pushed hopeful heads didn’t make the brick-built surgery look any less like a British Telecom sub-station. A small, dumpy erection, it squatted on the edge of the Somerville estate in the middle of an area of waste ground which was advertised as being ripe for development. According to the board outside, the all-woman partnership was shared with Dr Aisha Lall and Dr Mary Smith; inside, the patients jammed into the small waiting-room were mostly harassed-looking women and noisy, under-school-age children with runny noses and hacking coughs.

  ‘Another five minutes and you’d have missed her! Doctor’s just about to set off again, but she’ll see you for a few minutes,’ the dragon announced, brisk and condescending, intimating that this was an unheard-of favour. Middle-aged, grey and officious, she held the telephone between her chin and her shoulder while walking the fingers of one hand through patient-record envelopes in the filing cabinet, and at the same time dealing with a patient on the end of the line. ‘Right, Mrs Painter, I’ve given you eleven, OK? Don’t be late or you’ll miss your appointment.’ Replacing the receiver smartly, she tapped figures into a small computer by her side, and only then did she jerk her head towards a door in the corner marked: PLEASE KNOCK AND ENTER.

  ‘In there,’ she ordered the two detectives. ‘Don’t forget to knock before you go in.’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Mayo said.

  Dr Freeman already had her coat on and was finishing a mug of coffee while writing something on a prescription pad. Mayo was beginning to feel a serious lack of initiative in himself at having only one object in view. She motioned them to sit down but remained standing while she asked what she could do for them.

  Abigail told her who they were and that they were investigating the suspicious death of a woman. ‘We’re hoping you may be able to help in identifying her.’

  ‘Oh dear! Yes, of course I’ll help if you think I can – one of my patients, was she?’ The doctor looked grave, but not unduly disturbed. Death, after all, came within the daily scope of her job. Pushing her papers away, she regarded them inquiringly, giving her mind immediately to what was being said, a tall, collected sort of woman with steady eyes behind large spectacles, a firm, smiling mouth, a well-cut hairstyle, large calm doctor’s hands with short, unvarnished nails. Her skin was glowing and entirely without make-up. She looked as wholesome as new bread and eminently sensible.

  ‘We think her name might be Angie Robinson.’

  Death took on a different aspect when it was someone you knew. However familiar it was to her, professionally speaking, however accustomed she was to helping patients cope, it didn’t help the doctor now. She sat down abruptly but after an interval of absolute stillness, and though her face had drained of colour, she braced herself, sat upright and asked without a tremor, ‘What makes you think it’s her?’

  ‘One of my men thought he recognized her,’ Mayo said. ‘She has a very distinctive birthmark ...’

  It was evidently the answer she’d feared. ‘Yes, I see. I see.’

  ‘We shall need a formal identification of course. Her next of kin ...?’

  ‘She has none.’ The doctor took a deep breath. ‘I’m prepared to identify her.’

  ‘It won’t be pleasant, I’m afraid.’ He told her how Angie Robinson – if it was her – had died, and where.

  ‘Better me than anyone else. It won’t be the first time I’ve seen a dead body. And I was closer to her than anyone.’

  ‘Perhaps we should see a photograph first, if you have one.’ He was reluctant to subject her to an ordeal which might, despite the near certainty, be unnecessary. But it was immediately obvious, when she produced a snapshot from her handbag, that the woman pictured there, and the one now lying on the mortuary slab, were one and the same person. Even though the profile turned to the camera had been her unmarked side.

  Yes, that was Angie Robinson, the doctor agreed ten minutes later, looking down with a frozen expression at her friend, decently covered apart from the face, laid out in the County Hospital mortuary chapel. She was silent for a long time, but before turning away she stretched out a hand towards the body and gently, almost caressingly, pulled forward the hair so that it more or less covered the livid mark on the face. ‘Poor love, she minded so terribly anyone seeing it.’

  When they were again outside Mayo reminded her that it would be necessary to talk. ‘Is ther
e somewhere here in the hospital where we can have a few minutes?’

  The doctors’ common room was her first suggestion, but on second thoughts it would be better, she amended swiftly, if they went across to where she lived in Kilbracken Road, only a few streets away. It was the only way to be certain there’d be no interruptions. Mayo glanced at his watch, saw there was time since the PM wasn’t scheduled to take place for another hour, and agreed. Their car followed her Volvo along the circuitous ring road to a quiet, tree-lined road situated between the hospital and the red brick buildings of Lavenstock College. Parking outside a sizeable terrace house with a house agent’s sign planted in the garden, she ran quickly up the steps and unlocked the door.

  The room she took them into was spacious and high-ceilinged with wide, sashed windows, a fireplace with a mahogany surround and mirrored overmantel, and a general air of solid, unimaginative comfort, apparently furnished in the early years of the century and largely untouched since. The heavy, drab-coloured curtains and Persian-patterned carpet muffled the sounds from outside as she bent to switch on an electric fire in the grate. ‘Tell me about it, please. I’d like to know the details, though it’s going to take time to absorb. Hartopp Moor! Why on earth should she be out there – and why, why should anyone want to kill Angie anyway?’

  It was the question they all asked, understandably, manifesting the normal person’s bewilderment when faced with the incomprehension of violent death. ‘Why her, or him?’ And usually, ‘What have they ever done to deserve this?’ though quite often the answer to that one was patently obvious. Mayo never attempted to answer the unanswerable, and in this case she didn’t seem to expect it. He said, ‘I have to ask you if she’d quarrelled with anyone lately, or if there was someone likely to have had a grudge against her?’