NINE

Blood and human waste have distinctive odours, impossible to describe but absolutely unmistakeable. Sarah registered both even before her glance took in the body. Dora Marple’s thin frame lay at an unnatural angle at the foot of the stairs. Blood had poured and pooled from a head wound. The dark almost black colour indicated it was a while since it stopped flowing. How long had the body lain there? More to the point, how had it got there? Eyes wide, Sarah gasped. Was that a trick of the light? She refocused. No. Another barley perceptible twitch.

Grabbing her phone from a jacket pocket she barked instructions while sprinting round to the back of the house. Paramedics would be on the way now, but if she could get in . . . Shielding her eyes from the sun, she gazed up at the property. Windows looked secure, back door was locked.

‘Hey, you.’ A man with white hair and beard, brandishing a garden fork watched from next door’s fence. ‘What’s your game?’

‘Police. I need to get into the house. Now.’ Tone of voice, urgent air, whatever. It did the trick.

‘I’ll get the key. Meet you at the front.’

He was there in less than a minute. ‘Here y’go love. Look out for each other me and Dorrie do.’ Neighbourhood gnome?

She turned the key, glanced back. ‘Thanks, Mr . . . ?’

‘Trent. Stanley.’

‘I’ll manage now. Can you keep an eye out for the ambulance?’

The smell inside made her gag. The fact it could be a crime scene and she could be compromising evidence was secondary in her thinking, saving life came first.

Breathing through her mouth, she approached Dora, simultaneously darting glances round the hall. No obvious signs of a struggle, no handy blunt instrument, it was conceivable the old woman had fallen on the stairs, hit her head on the way down. Conceivable. And highly coincidental.

The left arm was broken, bone protruded through the skin. X-rays could reveal more fractures. No way could Sarah risk moving her, but she could at least talk to her. Squatting at her side, she brought her face close to the old woman’s. ‘Mrs Marple? Can you hear me?’

Brittle beige eyelids fluttered, the faintest puff of breath escaped through sepia lips. ‘Help’s on the way, Dora. Hang on in there, sweetheart. We’ll soon have you taken care of.’ Sarah stroked the woman’s hand half afraid of snapping its small twig-like fingers.

‘I . . . I . . .’

‘What? You, what?’ Sarah had to stop herself shouting. ‘Talk to me, Dora?’

‘I . . .’ She rolled her head to the side.

Don’t stop now for God’s sake. ‘Dora. Dora. Can you tell me what happened here?’

‘Back off. Can’t you see she’s in a bad way?’ Trent, the neighbour, had appeared in the hall.

She brushed him away with an impatient hand. ‘Dora, listen, I’m a police—’

‘Leave her alone for pity’s sake.’

Sarah glared. ‘Look, Mr Trent. She may have been attacked, she might have vital information . . .’

‘Carry on like that, lass, and if she was attacked you’ll finish off what the bugger started.’

She opened her mouth to remonstrate, but held back. Maybe he was right. However Dora Marple had ended up this way, she looked as if she was at death’s door. Sarah had no wish to open it.

It was academic anyway: a couple of paramedics in green scrubs had appeared behind Trent. Sarah made a couple more phone calls as they worked. A crime scene team arrived as Dora was being stretchered to the ambulance.

‘So, did she fall or was she pushed?’ was Baker’s line after Sarah brought him up to speed. It was neither original nor amusing. Perched on the window sill in his office, she rolled her eyes while ceding it was a key point. The bigger question was this: if pushed was it because she’d witnessed Evie’s abduction and could supply a description of the abductor?

‘Strikes me as a coincidence too far,’ Sarah said.

He turned his mouth down, gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘How would they know where she lives?’

‘Kidnapper could be local as well?’ The upward inflection conveyed doubt. Not surprising given the injuries could still be accidental. And they were most likely grasping for straws in the dark. Baker tipped his chair against the wall. The balance looked pretty precarious to Sarah. ‘So,’ Baker said, ‘he – or she – knows the old dear saw—’

‘Dora.’ Not old dear. ‘Dora Marple.’

‘Yeah, yeah. So they know she saw what was going on and decide to shut her up permanently?’

Sarah swung an impatient leg. ‘Only they didn’t.’ Which was why she’d ordered a police guard at the hospital.

‘And she could still hold the key?’

‘Assuming she survives.’ Sarah had had a word with one of the doctors. Dora was clinging on to life by the frailest thread. She’d lost a lot of blood, suffered two cracked ribs as well as the broken arm. At her age, the shock alone could kill her.

‘I won’t hold my breath,’ Baker murmured. Christ was he trying to be funny? ‘Anything back from forensics?’ The team was still trawling and tooth-combing the house.

She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

Tipping the chair forward, he sprang to his feet, grabbed his jacket. ‘Bloody good job we’ve got a prime witness then.’ He turned at the door. ‘Come on, Quinn. What you waiting for?’

One day she’d swing for him. Right now she closed her mouth and followed.

A thin man with centre-parted short black hair sat straight-backed, hands clutching bony knees, in an upright chair in Interview Room One. The shiny black suit and thin tie added to the Uriah Heep-stroke-undertaker look. Only the face didn’t fit the funereal image, it resembled a strikingly unsuccessful boxer’s. Observing through the spy hole, Sarah reckoned the guy’s nose had been broken at least twice over the years, it had taken squatter’s rights on sunken cheeks and made slanted eyes appear even smaller. Shifty glances at his surroundings were the only discernible movements he made. Not that there was a lot to take in: metal table screwed to tiled floor, shelving unit housing digital recording equipment and a police constable built like the proverbial leaning against the wall, beefy arms folded. The uniform’s bulk and heavy brow would probably make an archangel nervous.

‘Who is he and what’s he seen?’ Sarah asked.

Baker raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you recognize him?’

Peering through the spy hole again, she took a closer look. Her heart sank. The scarlet dreds had been ditched, he’d lost a bunch of weight but underneath the more conventional exterior, Eddie Flint was just about recognizable. He was better known round the nick as Edward. As in the Confessor, a professional time waster and thorn bush in the police side.

She very nearly stamped a foot. ‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ Like they hadn’t got better things to do than pander to some serial fantasist.

Baker jabbed a thumb towards the door. ‘He’s helping with inquiries.’

‘You are joking.’ It wasn’t a question. Flint wasn’t the only target in her firing line. Talk about raised hopes . . .

‘Lighten up, woman.’ He shoved a hand in his pocket.

‘Don’t talk—’

‘He saw someone with the baby.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Or says he did.’ How could they believe a word the guy came out with when he held his hands up to just about every crime that hit the front page? It was pathetic, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

‘He’s the closest we’ve got to a witness, Quinn. Don’t knock it yet.’

She took a step nearer. ‘How close?’

‘He’s given a description of two people, male, female, both white, early thirties. She takes Evie, he’s waiting in a motor round the corner. They drive off towards the Coventry Road.’

‘And that’s it?’ She paused for more. It didn’t arrive.

He peeled himself off the wall. ‘Best find out, hadn’t we?’

‘Come on, boss. He gets off on this kind of thing. He’ll be making it up. We don’t even know he was there when it happened.’

Baker lifted a finger. ‘That we do know.’ The hand he took from his pocket now held a small piece of paper. A receipt for a six-pack of Four X, a bottle of Johnnie Walker and five Hamlet cigars. ‘Right place.’ The off-licence was across the road from the newsagent’s. ‘Right time.’

‘And if he’s lying?’

‘He’ll need a hell of a lot more than a small cigar to feel happy again.’

‘Is there anything you’d like to add to what you’ve told us?’ Sarah sat across the table from Flint, playing a pen between her fingers. Baker seated at her right, had left most of the questioning to her. After an hour-long session they now had detailed descriptions of the couple he claimed to have seen taking Evie Lowe. As for the car, he’d said he wouldn’t know a Daimler from a Daewoo, only that it was dark blue with a National Trust sticker in the back window.

Creasing his eyes, Flint appeared to give the point some thought before shaking his head. ‘No, inspector.’ He clasped his hands in his lap. ‘I’ve given you everything I can.’

Including a splitting headache. Sarah stroked her right temple. Try as she might, she couldn’t get a handle on the man. In sombre tones, he’d claimed to have seen the light, turned his life round and was eager to make amends for his shady past. Born again Christian? Or another string to his fantasy bow?

‘So why not give it a little sooner, Mr Flint?’ The smile was not warm.

‘If only I’d realized the significance at the time, inspector. It wasn’t until I bought the newspaper this morning.’ He ran finger and thumb along what could be the start of a moustache. ‘Believe me, it’s a stick I’ll beat myself with for the rest of my life should anything untoward . . .’ The bottom lip quivered, pale green eyes were cast down.

Sarah tapped the pen on the table. How come when someone said ‘believe me’, it was the last thing she wanted to do? She classed it in the same school of weasel words as ‘with respect’. Either way, given the information Flint had supplied, she and Baker would have to take a decision pretty soon on whether it was worth getting a police artist in to work on a visual that could be released to the media. The drawback being, if Flint was making this stuff up as he went along, any duff information could hamper the inquiry if not steer it in completely the wrong direction. Sarah stifled a sigh. With so little else in the evidence basket, could they afford not to take the risk?

She jumped when Baker’s chair rasped against the tiles. ‘OK Mr Flint, you sit tight. DI Quinn will get someone to rustle up some refreshment for you then we’ll see about getting an e-fit together.’

So much for consultation. Sarah pursed her lips. As for rustling up refreshment, boy was he in risk-taking mode.