Dear Sergeant Power, Dr Steiner’s letter ran, I hope this provides you with all the handwriting you need. I was asked by my good friend Max Cornfield to witness the signature of Mrs Sylvia Hermione Barr. Rather to my surprise, despite his urgings even at the eleventh hour that she should employ a solicitor, Mrs Barr dictated to Max her will, which was then duly witnessed. Mrs Barr was by now too distressed for Max to contemplate leaving her to fulfil the evening engagement we had planned.
Derek, who was reading over Kate’s shoulder, said, ‘To my untutored eye, his handwriting corresponds with the will signature.’
‘It should do. It’s not with Steiner’s moniker we have the problem, remember. It’s Leon Horowitz’s. And there’s something I don’t like about this letter.’
Derek picked it up. ‘Such as what?’
‘Such as the very terse account of the signing. No mention of Horowitz at all. Jesus,’ Kate sighed, ‘what if Steiner and Cornfield have cooked up a nice little conspiracy between them?’
Derek snorted. ‘For God’s sake, Kate, if you’re on to the problem this quickly, it should be a piece of cake! You should be dancing on the desk, not looking as if you’d like to hide under it.’
She opened her mouth to tell him that Cornfield deserved his money. But shut it again. As Mrs Duncton had pointed out, her feeling had nothing to do with the law.
‘Let’s see what Horowitz’s letter says, shall we?’
‘Always assuming he sends one, of course.’
‘How long will you give him?’
‘Another twenty-four hours at least. I’ve no idea how good the Portuguese postal system is, but I’d bet the German one would be better. If I don’t hear anything by tomorrow noon, I’ll phone him again – just to jog his memory,’ she added grimly. ‘Meanwhile, what’s new in the in-tray?’
Despite Derek’s huge groan, there was nothing so urgent that she had to cancel a lunch-time hair appointment she’d managed to fix after that long Sunday evening stare in the mirror. She was staring again, now, at Guiseppe, the stylist, shearing swathes from the back.
‘Not too much, she urged.
‘Sorry?’ His accent was more Midlands than Milan.
If only he didn’t have the radio going full blast he might be able to hear. My God, this must be what happened when you grew old. You complained about loud music. She hesitated. Perhaps it was the quality of the music, which would surely have been naff even when it was new, which it certainly wasn’t now. Still, that was perhaps what local radio listeners liked.
‘Not too much,’ she repeated.
‘Signorina, this is so ageing,’ he said, grabbing the rest and pulling it out of sight. ‘Look, this is your jawbone again, and look – if I trim this – your cheekbones are back.’
So they were.
‘What,’ she began slowly, ‘if I were to consider some colour?’
‘You can consider all you like, but it couldn’t be today. I’ve got an appointment list this long.’ None the less he paused to consider, holding her hair to the light and letting it fall again. ‘Have you ever thought of a nice red tint?’
The news jingle spared him an unfairly pungent reply. And then a news item.
Her stomach clenched. ‘Forget the colour. How soon can you get me out of here?’
It was a further ten minutes before she could sprint back to work. By then, the headline had made the newspaper vendors’ boards:
FOUR OAKS WOMAN DEAD IN FRENZIED ATTACK
‘Don’t ask me how I knew. I just did,’ she told a highly sceptical Lizzie.
‘You’re telling me that out of all the women in the Midlands you intuited that it would be one who gave you tea that would be killed. Come on, Kate.’
‘At least my intuition’s been backed by hard facts,’ she said tartly. ‘Mavis Duncton, née Barr, preferring to be called Maeve, is dead. And I can offer the investigating team ready gift-wrapped two nice suspects, plus possible motivation.’
‘Who’s running the MIT? Or is it called something else this week?’
‘I’ve an idea it might have changed from a murder investigation team to a murder investigation unit, or it might just have changed back again.’
Lizzie managed what seemed to be a genuinely comradely grin. ‘All these bloody initials,’ she said. ‘I always used to say we ought to have a handbook saying what they stood for. Trouble is, it would be out of date in a week.’
‘Oh, less. So – MIT or MIU or whatever – shall I pop along and give them chapter and verse?’
The quality of Lizzie’s grin changed perceptibly. ‘Why not? Tell you what, though, Power. Keep your hands off Neville’s prick.’
Was it supposed to be a joke? If she didn’t laugh was it because she didn’t have a sense of humour?
‘Oh,’ she said, as off-hand as she could, ‘I prefer to keep my prick-feeling for after hours. Don’t you?’
‘That’s not what I heard.’
‘Then you heard wrong, ma’am. And I’d like to make a formal request that you check the origins of any gossip before you pass it on.’ She turned on her heel and walked out.
Rod was on the phone when Kate opened his office door. Smiling, he waved her to a chair, while he carried on talking and making the occasional note. Kate took deep breaths and looked at the pictures on the wall: he’d brought them from his Steelhouse Lane office. With a bit of luck her pulse would have returned to normal by the time he could switch his attention to her.
He cut the call and came round the desk, half sitting on it while he spoke. ‘You look upset. Lizzie?’
‘That’s neither here nor there at the moment, Rod. I just want to know who’s in charge of the team dealing with the Duncton death. I’ve got information they should have.’ She faltered. Why on earth hadn’t she simply asked his secretary?
‘She’s been having another go at you, hasn’t she?’ he asked, reaching back for a file as he spoke. ‘There you are. Dave Allen. No jokes about his name and being a comedian. The incident room’s already up and running in Sutton. Dave’ll be glad to see you. Do you want to be seconded on to his team? He’s not exactly mob-handed, and it’d get you out of Fraud for a bit. Out of Lizzie’s fire.’
She shook her head. ‘Thanks for the offer, but no. A, I want to stick with the case I’m on, and B, she’d see it as a victory. I tried to talk to her last night. Rod, there is something wrong, I’m sure of it, but she clammed as soon as I tried to press her.’
‘I’m glad you tried, anyway.’
She smiled, and made for the door.
The phone rang. He picked up the handset but covered it immediately. ‘Kate, your hair looks really good!’ he whispered.
They exchanged a friendly wave, and she was on her way to Sutton Coldfield.
However busy he undoubtedly was, DCI Dave Allen gave her a friendly wave as she peered round the incident room door. He was about fifty, his figure sagging into a paunch. His eyebrows were already caterpillaring into a tired old man’s furrows. But his smile lit up his face.
‘Two possible leads, I gather,’ he said with no preamble. ‘Shoot. I’ve tickets booked for my holiday and I’d hate to have to cancel.’
‘Only possibles.’ Perhaps her desire to get out of Lizzie’s orbit for the afternoon had inflated their importance. She’s got a brother who loathes her and she may not have endeared herself to her late mother’s man of all work.’ She could have phoned, radioed, e-mailed, for God’s sake, but she’d come out all this way. OK, she’d brought photocopies of all the relevant interview transcripts, could chew over likelihoods and problems, but truly she didn’t need to be here. Despite what she’d said to Rod, yes, perhaps Lizzie’s harassment was getting to her.
At any rate, it was good to be back in the bustle of and active inquiry, as opposed to the quiet, almost studious environment of the office she shared with Derek.
‘I’ve got to out to the scene again in five minutes. Care to come?’ Dave asked. ‘Another pair of eyes, and all that.’
Yes, yes, yes! ‘If I can be of any use,’ she said, cautiously.
‘My wedding anniversary in Mauritius tells me any extra help would be worth having. And you can fill me in on these suspects as we go.’
The whole caboodle was waiting for them: more police cars than anyone working in Fraud could imagine, a couple of vans, two big private cars and the news media, plus yards of police tape and – already – a couple of sheaves of flowers. The neighbourhood was too middle-class for hordes to be out rubbernecking, but blinds and net curtains were certainly a-twitch.
Mrs Duncton had died messily in her kitchen. Her blood had splattered all her immaculate Hygena units, trickled down the window, seeped under the back door. Some bone and brains around, too, on the newspapers spread, for some reason, all over the floor.
‘Have you found the murder weapon yet?’
He shook his head. ‘We’re still at the no-stone-unturned stage. It’ll help when the path. tells us what we’re looking for. A bit more specific than hard and heavy, anyway. No sign of any forced entry, by the way. Looks as if she let in her killer. She might even have been making him a cup of tea. The bastard.’ He swallowed hard, adding, as he ushered her quickly outside into the garden, ‘Could either of your suspects have done this?’
‘One’s a retired doctor, so you’d have thought he might be a bit more scientific. The other looked after a crazy old woman for years without laying a finger on her. But it’d be nice to check their alibis.’ She breathed deeply to get the smell of blood from her nostrils.
‘Motivation?’
‘As far as her doctor brother was concerned, she was more anxious, I’d have thought, to kill him. But who can tell with dysfunctional families?’
‘And the other one?’
Kate looked soberly back at the bloodstains on the window. Could the gentle, courteous, bereft Max Cornfield have done such a thing? ‘Well,’ she said, recalling Mrs Duncton’s words, ‘it was she who got between him and about twelve million quid.’
‘I’d say that was a motive.’
They walked silently down to the bottom of the garden, turning back to look at the house. Dave sniffed deeply. Then snorted.
‘Good clean country air my arse. What’s the pong?’
Kate pointed. ‘Could be the compost heap. Or maybe that lot – manure of some sort. They took their gardening very seriously. Which reminds me. Her husband. How did he take it?’
‘Gibbering. Practically certifiable. Heavily sedated. Poor man found her. Tried mouth-to-mouth, he says. Covered in her blood. The forensic people have his clothes, incidentally, just in case he killed her first and found her second, if you see what I mean.’
Kate saw. ‘How old is he? What does he look like? You see, I saw this oddball I took to be the gardener. But Mrs D was so off-hand he could have been a husband she’d just had a row with.’
‘Or simply not be on speaking terms with,’ he amended. ‘They certainly had separate bedrooms. We’ve checked – not a photo lying around of them as a couple. Come to think of it, no photos lying around full stop. Makes a house a home, having pictures of the family, doesn’t it? All your loved ones.’
Kate nodded. Not a lot of chance her having a photo of Graham anywhere. And there’d be nothing like a photo of Robin on her bedside table to make Graham lose his erection.
‘We could organise it so you could get a quick shuftie of the bloke in hospital, medics permitting, of course,’ Dave continued, ‘in case the gardener and husband are one and the same. Talk to Jane McCallum when we get back to the nick.’
They started walking slowly back.
‘Anyone else in the frame?’ Kate asked. ‘I know I drank tea with the woman, but we never got on to the intimacies of family and friends. Did she have children?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
Kate slapped the side of her head. ‘There was an estranged sister. What was her name?’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Something as old-fashioned as Mavis, which is what Mrs Duncton was called before she changed it to Maeve. Edna. That’s it. And she was about four years older than Maeve. The person you really need to talk to, Dave, about the Barr family is none other than suspect number two, Mrs Barr’s handyman.’
He nodded, making a note. ‘Do you fancy talking to him about this Edna?’
‘In general or in the context of this crime?’
‘Let me think about that one.’ He looked at his watch and speeded up.
‘Gaffer, have you time for me to have a look at the house?’
He looked again. ‘If you take more than three minutes you’ll have to hitch a lift back.’
‘No problem. You’ve got enough cars out there.’
‘You Fraud people; always whinging about not having transport …’
By common consent, they turned away from the back door walking round to the front of the house. A uniformed constable half-saluted and pushed it open for them.
‘Anything out of place?’ Dave asked, as she stared round the hall.
She shook her head. ‘Strange, I hardly registered this when I came to talk to her. She whisked me into the living room. Have the SOCOs finished in there yet?’
He put his head round the door, then waved her in, standing arms akimbo while she looked round.
‘Where did you stand, where did you sit?’ he prompted her anxiously.
‘She’d have done better without help. Biting her lip, she sat down on the sofa she’d sat on before. She blinked, looking around, closing her eyes to his glances at his watch, her ears to the sound he made sucking his teeth.
‘Did you find any pottery lying around, Gaffer?’
‘Pottery?’
‘She had a valuable piece of something called Ruskin: it used to be in the middle of that shelf.’ She pointed to the display shelves. ‘It was lovely: about a foot tall, purple and red. Sang de boeuf she called it.’
‘Sang – doesn’t that mean blood? We’ve got enough of that in the kitchen!’
‘But no shards?’
He shook his head: ‘Apparently not. But with all the smears and everything, someone— Hell, Power, are you suggesting he whacked her with a vase?’
‘Or did the mysterious “he” whack her with something else: surely a vase wouldn’t on its own make the sort of mess in there?’ She jerked her head towards the kitchen. ‘And then he steals the pot?’ She shook her head doubtfully. ‘I know she said it ought to be in a museum, but would that make it valuable enough to steal?’
‘You tell me, Power. Trouble is, if it is, it wouldn’t half widen the list of possible suspects, wouldn’t it?’
But it wouldn’t be left to supposition. SOCO would get on to it. Bins would be searched, the pathologist consulted. Not just any pathologist, of course. Her old friend Pat the Path, he of the motorcycle collection, which had now started to spread from the huge room in which he’d kept them into a purpose-built centrally-heated garage. She could phone him up and pick his brain. She could even suggest a meal. That would be an evening satisfactorily filled.
On the way back Dave talked about his daughter’s degree, his forthcoming anniversary, all the cheerful domesticity anyone could crave. Despite the afternoon free from Lizzie’s attacks, despite the sense that she’d done well and was for a change appreciated by a boss, Kate was biting her lip in misery as Dave pulled up alongside her car.
She felt him looking at her.
‘Come on, lass. Come and have a cup of tea with the team. No matter how tough you are, no matter how many times you’ve seen worse before, it always gets to you, doesn’t it? Tell you what, I’ve got this supply of biscuits I keep for just such a day as this. And when you look a bit brighter, Jane’ll fix for you to visit Mr Duncton.’
The red light was pulsing on her answerphone when she got home. Graham? But even as she reached for the play-button, she hesitated. What if he promised to come and then didn’t turn up again? She couldn’t wait in all evening on the off-chance.
She could. Worse, she would.
No, nothing from Graham, not even an apology for letting her down. But one from Rod.
‘I hear you’ve so impressed Dave Allen that he’d like to co-opt you on to his team, pro tem at least. Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like me to say yes?’