The murder quadrille, p.11
The Murder Quadrille, page 11
A particularly detailed chapter on decomposition in The Forensic Atlas!
Why would a man in advertising want to know how a corpse liquified, or the effects of various temperatures and habitats on a dead body?
Still clutching the newspaper, Tess ran upstairs, her footsteps clattering on the wooden treads.
She read frantically. This librarian was the second woman to have been murdered in the area. Another had disappeared and her corpse had been discovered in similar circumstances a year ago.
Was this what it was all about? Was her neighbour a serial killer?
Tess reached out for a Diet Coke and swigged from the plastic bottle while she considered the facts.
Holy crap, she could sell her story to the international sensation monthlies: My life next door to a serial killer! And then write the whole story up as a novel too, with the guarantee of endless TV interviews.
Eureka! Now her publishers would have to take her seriously.
She slid the mouse and across the desk and scanned the computer for her file on Martin. Dinner party, dinner party, dinner party.
‘The dinner party notes’.
She bent nearer the screen and opened the file. Martin had barely uttered once the subject got onto murder. He had just nodded and agreed with everything she and that fat-cat lawyer had said. And Sarah had looked pained and pinched. Perhaps she knew about him. Or suspected. Maybe she was in on it, another Rosemary West. Or had she had just worked out that her husband was a mad murderer and that was why she left in the middle of the night…
Tess scrolled down.
Later in the evening Tess had heard shouting. And Martin had called out:
‘Do what you want, Sarah. Women! You’re all the same. Plenty more fish in the sea. I’m going out for some air. At least the roses don’t despise me.’
Hahahahahahahahaha!
The roses don’t despise me!
God, how funny. Drama queen!
Usable though.
She scrolled down.
He had also shouted: ‘If you don’t like the situation, Sarah, in the morning I trust you’ll be gone.’
The situation! What situation might that be? A yard full of dead women, and more in the cellar and under the floorboards?
It would certainly explain why Martin had so adamantly eschewed Tess’s offer to help him with the digging.
Tess went again to the window looking down on the yard.
The two detectives were there. She could hear them laughing. Their mood was not very serious, as though they were playing pool in a bar, not looking down into a messed up flower border where, perhaps, a body lay.
One man shook his head. He might have been saying ‘this is ridiculous.’
Dammit, there was her camera! Sitting on the window ledge in front of her nose.
She pressed the on button and pulled it up to her face. She might as well get a shot of the detectives and the grave-like hole. But it was dark now. The viewfinder showed nothing but black. She fumbled around with the back of the camera, trying to find the night exposure switch. She didn’t want auto-flash on, splashing the garden with light, dragging attention to herself.
When she pressed the shutter release to focus, a red glow filled the LCD screen. With long exposure it was important not to get wobble, so she held her breath while she slowly depressed the button. To her horror flash lit the glass like lightning. At the same moment, with a shriek, her phone rang. Gasping, she steadied herself on the edge of the desk and lifted the receiver.
‘Hello?’ She found herself whispering, mentally still hiding from the police next door.
The other end of the line was soundless.
‘Hello?’ She raised her voice to a more normal level. ‘I know you’re there.’
Nothing.
Tess stood utterly still and listened. She could hear quiet exhalation on the other end of the line.
‘Speak up or I’m going to cut you off.’
Silence.
‘Okey dokey, smokey. Tata, as you ol’ limeys say!’
Tess put down the receiver and hurriedly dialled 1471.
‘You were called at 2230 hours. We do not have the caller’s number to return the call.’
We do not have the caller’s number! What on earth did that mean? Tess was used to ‘The caller withheld their number’, but why on earth would the exchange not have the number at all?
She replaced the receiver and dialled the operator for an explanation, but while the number rang out her doorbell buzzed.
After a moment’s hesitation Tess replaced the receiver and ran downstairs. Perhaps it was the police.
And about time too.
As she pulled open the street door she heard her cell phone vibrating on the desk upstairs.
A tall dark man in a motorcycle helmet stood on the threshold, looking every bit as sinister as a bogeyman in any teen horror film.
Her heart skipped, and she gave a sideways glance, hoping to see the copper still standing on next door’s step.
But no one was there.
‘Well?’ The man’s rasping voice came through his black visor, along with the stench of bad teeth.
‘Well, what?’
‘Where’s the parcel?’
‘What parcel?’
He fumbled with a scrap of paper in his hand and read from it.
‘A large parcel wrapped in bin-liners, about the size of a woman’s body.’
‘You won’t get something that big on a bike,’ Tess said.
‘It folds, they told me. Only weighs a few grams.’ The man looked down at the paper again. ‘Is this number 42A?’
‘No,’ said Tess, still looking for the policeman. ‘This is 44B. 42 is next door and there is no A or B.’
The courier stomped off, his heavy boots squeaking against his leather bike pants.
Tess stood on the step and watched him stop at 42 and hammer his gauntleted fist on the door.
‘Miss Brandon?’
Tess spun round. Behind her, emerging from behind a wheelie-bin was a man. It looked like one of the detectives she had watched earlier getting out of the unmarked police car. He flipped open a French steel lighter which gave off a whiff of butane gas. Once the blue flame sprang out he raised the lighter to a cigarette clamped between his teeth, illuminating his face and reminding her of Orson Welles in that film with the zither music.
‘Do you have a minute to answer a few questions?’ Looking down, he fumbled in the inner pocket of his leather jacket. The lighter dropped to the pavement, while the cigarette looked as though it might burn a hole in the front of his shirt. ‘Police,’ he said, stooping to retrieve the lighter. ‘Detective Stuart Adams.’
‘No problems.’ Tess could hear her phone ringing again. ‘I was expecting you.’
The detective moved nearer and lowered his voice. ‘It’s about the phone calls.’
‘The heavy breather?’ Tess was astonished. Even in her books the police weren’t this quick off the mark. ‘Are you guys psychic or something?’
‘Heavy breather, eh?’ He gave a wink. ‘They don’t send detective inspectors out for that kind of thing. I need to talk to you about the little call you made this afternoon.’
Tess’s phone stopped. The cell phone started vibrating again.
‘I’m sorry?’ What on earth could he be talking about? The only phone call she had made today was to her agent back in New York. ‘Don’t you want to talk about the goings on next door?’
The detective blew a plume of smoke in her direction. Automatically she fanned it away. She hated the smell of tobacco smoke.
The cell stopped and the main phone rang again.
‘I thought that’s what we were talking about.’ The detective smirked. ‘All right Ms Brandon, let’s take things one step at a time, shall we? Could I come inside?’
‘Ok. I er…’ Tess fidgeted, darting a look up the stairs, anxious about the ringing phone. ‘I…’
‘Do you want to run up and get that?’ He tilted his head up towards the sound of ringing.
‘You’ll come up afterwards?’ Tess didn’t want to lose this opportunity to speak to the police about what she had seen, and also to draw as much as she could out of him.
He nodded.
‘I appreciate it,’ said Tess, already moving up the stairs.
‘Give me a minute or two…’ The detective waved his cigarette in the air, ‘…to finish my fag, and give you a few moments to get whoever it is off the line, then I’ll come up and take a few notes. OK?’
Tess took the stairs in threes. Fag! He’d be in for a bit of joshing if he used that kind of language back home.
But by the time she reached her apartment her phone had stopped ringing. She dialled 1471 once again.
With the phone cradled on her shoulder she inspected her cell. She couldn’t think of anyone who would phone her at this time of night. Her agent usually called the main phone. This cell was only for the UK contacts. She had hung onto her US cell phone and that was in a pocket somewhere.
She scrolled through the missed calls. Two from an unrecognisable foreign number +33 493 etcetera. Where the hell was that? Holland?
The voice on the main line was repeating the same announcement over and over. ‘We do not have the caller’s number to return the call.’
It was a while since Tess had had a heavy breather on the line. She wondered whether those vapid blondes like Lisa got them all the time, stalkers too. But perhaps if you really were pretty, it frightened weirdos off—unattainable and all that.
Lisa! She must let them know what was going on. Max was Martin’s lawyer after all.
Tess snatched up the phone, while rooting on her desk for the slip of paper where she had exchanged addresses with Lisa to whom she had promised to send a signed copy of her latest book. Lisa had provided her phone number at the bottom of the note, which at the time had amused Tess.
Tess stabbed out the eight digits and waited, glancing at her watch and realising that at 11 o’clock it was probably too late to be calling. But this was urgent, and she needed to do it before the detective came in.
A groggy female voice picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘Lisa?’
‘Yes. Who’s that?’
‘It’s Tess.’ During the momentary silence Tess realised that Lisa probably had no idea who she was. ‘Is Max there? I need to speak to him urgently.’
Dammit. Now she was on this phone the US cell in her inside pocket had started bleeping, only the cord on this phone was way too short for her to be able to reach her jacket and answer it.
There was a momentary pause before Lisa replied, as though she needed to think hard before replying.
‘No. Sorry. Max went out about an hour ago. A bail case at the local nick.’
‘…It’s just that I need to speak to him urgently. I don’t know whether he knows about it yet, but Martin got taken away by the police. And they’re digging up the back yard.’
‘Back yard? Martin?’
Tess could almost hear the cogs in Lisa’s brain grinding into action.
‘Martin Beaumont, do you mean? Sarah’s husband?’
‘That’s right. Martin Beaumont. This is Tess, their neighbour. The writer.’
‘Oh yes. Tess. You write horror books don’t you?’
‘Whatever…’ This call was even heavier work than she had expected. She enunciated carefully as though talking to a child. ‘Look, Lisa, when you speak to Max, you must tell him to call me.’
She could hear the heavy footsteps of the detective thudding up the stairs.
‘It’s urgent.’
TURKEY TROT—A face to face dance. Dancers take a step for every beat. Couples move in straight lines, swaying and occasionally pumping the arms like turkeys, or adding a small hop or skip.
Max took his hand away from Lisa’s breast as she replaced the receiver, and he hauled himself up to a sitting position.
‘What did the ghoulish American harpy want?’ He splayed his legs out out on the bed, the crumpled sheets sticking to his sweaty stomach. ‘And what’s that fool Martin been up to now?’
Lisa had started to explain when the phone rang again.
This time it was the police station telling Max that Martin was being held there, and was calling for a solicitor.
So much for a lazy night in!
Max reluctantly dragged on his clothes.
‘You really must give up criminal work,’ Lisa whined, from her comfortable position in bed. ‘As I see it, the really criminal thing is the way you have to keep getting up in the middle of the night and chasing after these unsavoury characters.’
‘It’s a job,’ said Max, fiddling with his cufflinks. ‘I have a reputation.’
Lisa yawned and pulled the duvet round her naked shoulders before snuggling down to sleep.
Women! Max decided not to stoop to her level by reminding her that the luxury Egyptian cotton sheets she lay on, the silk nightdress, not to mention everything else she wore, were paid for by his work with these unsavoury characters.
Within fifteen minutes of the phone call Max was installed inside the bleak grubby interview room at the local nick. In the glare of the strip lighting, he clicked open his briefcase while the dishevelled Martin sat before him and whinged: ‘This is a nightmare come true.’
Max’s stomach growled. No part of him was in the mood for moronic platitudes.
‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’ Martin, tonight’s version of Lisa’s “unsavoury character”, employed the high-pitched wail of self pity generally practised by the guilty. ‘Why, why, why?’
Max glanced up at the interview room clock. Only eleven thirty.
‘You know I didn’t do it, Max!’
Blah, blah, blah. Max could see he was in for a long night, when before he even had a chance to sit down Martin had started weeping.
‘How long have you known me, Max? You see, I’m the victim here.’
Without speaking Max slapped a clean writing pad on the chipped plastic veneer-topped table. No point engaging. He’d let the imbecile gabble on till he had exhausted his thesaurus of inane platitudes.
‘You do believe me, don’t you, Max? You know I didn’t do it? I wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, perhaps a fly. But I wouldn’t kill a woman.’
A sheen of sweat glistened on Martin’s brow. Max wondered how it was that once people found themselves in this particular situation they all came out with the same old lines, and used the same cliché intonation, as though they were auditioning for some tatty amateur stage production of I’m Innocent Get Me Out of Here.
‘I have to believe you didn’t do it, Martin. It’s the law.’ Max unscrewed the lid of his fountain pen. ‘If I even entertained the thought that you might have done it, I am sure you realise that I could not represent you and would have to pass you onto another solicitor.’
Max drew a few short strokes on the blank paper, just to get the pen working, and wished the nick would bring in a nice glass of Port rather than the compulsory cup of pale lukewarm tea. Why had he not left the answering machine on? How much nicer to be nuzzling into the nubile nakedness of Lisa, than sitting in a smelly dank police interview room with a man who had guilt written across his forehead in capitals.
‘No. Please. Not another solicitor,’ Martin whimpered. ‘It has to be you, Max. You understand. I’m so alone.’
Max was appalled to see tears brimming in Martin’s eyes.
This level of self pity at this early stage was not just a bad sign. It was a disaster.
‘So tell me, Martin…’ Max poised his nib over the paper. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s absurd. She was a bitch. You know that.’ Martins voice had developed a strange falsetto. ‘You saw her. She’s not dead anyhow.’
‘Enough.’ Max held his hands up to stop Martin’s diatribe before he incriminated himself. ‘The facts, Martin. The facts alone, please.’ Max lowered his eyelids halfway down his eyes. He had seen Laurence Oliver do this in a film and thought it a very effective way of looking scary and cool at the same time.
‘We fought, with a kitchen knife…’ Martin shuddered, briefly grasping around and gulping before continuing, ‘…and she slumped down. But it was all an act, and I didn’t kill her, because she went on to spend all my money, and crawled out of the grave to play with me.’
‘Martin!’ Max barked like a sergeant major on parade, a tactic which usually worked with hysterics. ‘Facts!’
He wished now however that he had not eaten quite so much of the game pie for dinner at the club, nor had the sticky toffee pudding and those glasses of Armagnac to round it all off, before driving home and falling into bed for a quickie with Lisa.
Even more he wished was not working with a client who was not only a friend but also an idiot.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Martin folded his arms and leaned back, sulking. ‘I can see it in your face, Max. I know you really think I killed her.’
‘Martin!’ Max growled, though it was more to do with indigestion and the pain of an impending gout attack than the irritation of dealing with Martin in this hysterical state. Mentally Max had already started toying with ostensibly sensitive ways he might slough Martin off, and thus remove himself from the dilemma of being in the service of a bloody useless defendant who happened to be in possession of his home phone number. ‘I’m warning you.’ He held up a fat palm, while still looking down at his notepad. ‘From this moment, dear boy, you don’t say anything to me except in reply to my questions. Not a word.’
Max despised Martin’s fearful reaction to the charges. Much better to go at it like a highwayman. If you were guilty, at least lash out, have a try at defending yourself, and if you were innocent, well, even more reason to make some kind of a stand and not sit there snivelling like a teenage girl who’d lost her handbag at a dance. Max hated nothing more than whiny men, with the possible exception of whiny women.
A fly buzzed past his head and landed on the table.
Martin sobbed and wiped the snot away from his nostril with the cuff of his shirt.
Oh god! How many guilty men resorted to these embarrassing tactics, believing it made them appear more innocent. Rather than watch Martin’s pathetic amateur theatrics, Max decided to ignore him, fiddle with his pen, check the ink cartridge. Anything.
