Desolate places, p.10
Desolate Places, page 10
‘What?’ he said eventually, swallowing.
‘Would you ring him, please? The officer at the Met?’
‘What for? I told you – it’s nothing—’
’To do with us,’ she finished for him. ‘I know that. But aren’t you even curious? You said they’d know more this morning, after the postmortem. Whether she was murdered or not. Did you talk to him last night? After we visited Mr Chapman?’
‘I reported back to him, yes. And that was it.’
Grace simmered with frustration; she grabbed a chip from Burton’s plate and nibbled on it. ‘What’s his name?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Oh, no, sweetheart. I’m not telling you that. I’m not having you poking your nose into something that’s none of our business.’
‘Then would you just—’
He heaved an ostentatious sigh and reached for his mobile. ‘If I do, will you drop the subject?’
‘I promise.’ With the index finger of her right hand, she crossed her heart. But it was not the only thing crossed: under the table, out of Tom Burton’s view, Grace crossed the fingers of her left hand.
After a couple more routine phone calls, Neville suddenly realised that he was famished: last night’s supper had been sketchy at best, and he hadn’t had time for breakfast. There were still other calls to be made, but the grumbling of his stomach could no longer be ignored.
It was Friday, which meant fish and chips would be on offer in the station canteen. Neville was partial to fish and chips, so it wasn’t a difficult decision to make his way to the canteen. In the queue he spotted Sid Cowley, presumably on a similar mission. Ignoring the glares of those behind Cowley in the queue, he slipped in beside him.
‘Hey, Guv. Any news?’ Cowley greeted him.
Neville ticked the calls off on his fingers – minus the one to Triona, which was none of Cowley’s business. ‘The body’s been formally ID-ed by the son. The Polish cleaner isn’t answering her phone, which is a nuisance but frankly no surprise. The coroner is planning to open the inquest on Tuesday, after the Bank Holiday. And,’ he added, ‘I’ve liaised with the press department on information for the web site and the routine press release. They suggested a news conference, but I think it’s early days for that yet. We don’t have enough to go on to even think about it at this stage.’
Cowley nodded his agreement.
‘And how have you been getting on? With the phone and the SOCOs?’
‘I found the phone,’ Cowley confirmed. ‘In the handbag, where I fought it was. It’s a smart phone, but not a top-of-the-line one.’
Hence Cowley’s lack of interest in it during the initial examination of the handbag, Neville intuited.
‘Unfortunately, it needs a passcode to get into it. So I did what you said, Guv – I took it to the tech department and handed it over to Danny Duffy. He said it shouldn’t be too hard to crack it. He ought to have the results by Tuesday.’
Neville scowled. ‘Tuesday?’
‘This is Friday afternoon, Guv,’ Cowley reminded him. Danny’s a nine-to-five bloke. Unlike us, he gets the weekend off. And like you said, Monday’s a Bank Holiday.’
‘Bugger.’
‘But unlike me, I’ll bet he doesn’t have a hot date lined up for tonight.’ Cowley cracked his knuckles and gave Neville a smug, anticipatory grin.
They’d reached the serving counter. ‘Fish and chips, me darlin’,’ Cowley said to the girl behind the counter.
‘Make that two,’ Neville added, salivating in spite of himself. ‘Plenty of salt and vinegar on mine.’
They paid at the till, collected their cutlery, and took their trays to a recently vacated table.
Neville gobbled a chip, burning his fingers, his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He swore and reached for a glass of water.
Cowley grinned. ‘Do you want to hear about the SOCOs?’
When he was able to speak again, Neville glared at him. ‘Of course I do.’
‘They’re sending someone to the Regent this afternoon to collect prints and DNA off the staff, like you requested.’
‘Good. And?’
‘And what they’ve got so far at the crime scene is a shedload of fingerprints. Which won’t be any help to us,’ he added, stating the obvious, ‘until they’ve got something to compare them to.’
‘Stewart?’
Neville’s heart skipped a beat as he turned his head and looked up at the scowling face of Detective Chief Superintendent Evans, standing beside their table. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘I’ve been looking for you, boyo. You’re not an easy man to find. And your phone is switched off.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘I figured I’d find you here, eating fish and chips.’
Neville was sure he’d seen a small smile, quickly suppressed; that gave him the courage to reply in kind. ‘Yes, sir. And I can recommend them. They do very good fish and chips here on a Friday.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Evans narrowed his piggy eyes. ‘But when you’ve finished, I’ll be waiting to see you. In my office.’
The wedding was over. Simon and Ellie were now joined – if not in holy matrimony, as Jane and Brian would have wished – at least in legal matrimony. Ellie could now rejoice in the title of Mrs Stanford; their baby would be born into a recognised family unit.
Ellie, Jane admitted to herself, had cleaned up very well indeed. Jane had always – privately – thought her an unprepossessing little thing, skinny and charmless, but today she glowed from within; swathed in satin and lace, she was every inch the radiant bride. Her long, straight hair had been coaxed by the means of some skilful hairdresser’s art into a confection of upswept curls, and her makeup emphasised her rather pretty eyes. Her smile of pure joy owed nothing to either art or artifice. But it might, Jane told herself, have had something to do with that tiny life which was growing within her, too small as yet to spoil the lines of her wedding gown.
Jane’s hand went to her own abdomen, smoothing down her dress, suddenly self-conscious. In a few months she wouldn’t be able to hide her pregnancy, and she was going to have to get used to that.
After the official photographs, the wedding party was ushered into a small private dining room for the wedding breakfast. Jane had somehow imagined that she would sit with Brian and Charlie, but of course she was reckoning without the strict wedding protocol which dictated such matters. The smartly-dressed young woman with the clip-board was efficiently directing people to their seats. Brian was quickly paired off with Georgina Dickinson, while Jane found herself partnered at the other end of the head table with Hugh Dickinson. ‘Bride’s father? Groom’s mother? Right here,’ said the young woman, pointing to the calligraphied place cards.
The union of Simon and Ellie had happened with such indecent speed that this was the first time Jane and Brian had met the Dickinsons. All they’d really known about them, filtered through Simon, was that they were wealthy and lived in Northamptonshire. The mental images Jane had conjured up for herself proved to be not far off the reality: Georgina Dickinson was sleek, beautifully turned out and rather formidable, while her husband had a nice smile and a kindly manner. It was obvious that Ellie – their only child – was the adored centre of their world, for whom they would have done anything.
Hugh pulled out Jane’s chair with a courtly bow. ‘Mrs Stanford, what a pleasure it is to meet you at last,’ he said. ‘I blame myself, of course. We should have met months ago, when it became obvious that our children had a future together.’
‘Please, call me Jane.’
‘And you must call me Hugh.’ He favoured her with a twinkly smile. ‘We should have invited you and your husband for a weekend in the country. We’ll have to remedy that soon, so we can get to know each other.’
‘Our weekends are rather … occupied,’ Jane said. ‘Church, you know.’
‘Of course. How silly of me!’
They chatted for a few minutes; Jane learned that Hugh Dickinson had not inherited his wealth, as she had imagined, but was a self-made man, running his own business. Somehow that made him seem less remote to her world – more like a regular person than a pampered aristocrat – and she found herself liking him far more than she’d expected.
‘And what about you?’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing all the talking, which is unforgivable. And rude. Do tell me about yourself, Jane.’
Jane was glad that they were interrupted at that point by a server with the first course, which proved to be a bowl of pale-coloured creamy soup, garnished with something exotic. ‘This looks lovely,’ she said.
‘It’s vegetarian,’ Hugh told her. ‘The entire menu is. That’s what Ellie – and Simon, of course – wanted. The Randolph didn’t half give me a hard time about that. They have standard wedding menus, and at such short notice …’ He shook his head, bemused. ‘But they allowed themselves to be persuaded.’
At a price, of course. But money clearly meant nothing to Hugh Dickinson, when it came to his daughter’s happiness.
‘So,’ he said. ‘You were telling me about yourself.’
Jane immediately felt awkward, defensive. ‘I’m just a vicar’s wife,’ she said, staring down at the soup. ‘Nothing else to say, really. I’ve never worked outside of the home.’
‘It’s a fine vocation, I’m sure. And you have the two boys?’
‘Yes. The twins.’
Hugh glanced down the table to make sure that everyone had been served, then lifted his heavy silver soup spoon. ‘It must have been quite a challenge, raising twins.’
Jane’s sigh was heart-felt. ‘Sometimes. Yes.’ The challenges, on a vicar’s stipend, had been largely financial – something she wasn’t sure Hugh Dickinson would have understood.
‘Did you ever wish you’d had more?’ He turned a candid face towards her and confided softly, ‘We didn’t plan for Ellie to be an only child. It just … happened that way. I sometimes wonder how things might have been different if we’d had more children.’
‘I always wanted a daughter,’ Jane heard herself telling him, to her horror. To cover her embarrassment, she looked down into her soup and spooned some into her mouth.
‘Well, now you have Ellie! We’ll allow you to share her.’ He chuckled. ‘And by the end of the year, who knows? We both might have a grand-daughter to spoil rotten.’
Felicity Chapman had been murdered. Suffocated, in fact. In a London hotel room. Tom Burton, true to his word, had rung the SIO at the Met, and he had confirmed it.
Grace Long was supposed to be writing up a report on the successful investigation of a quad bike theft, but she just couldn’t concentrate. She sat at her desk, pulled out her notebook, and read through her notes again.
‘Taxi,’ she said aloud, when she reached the end. ‘Pewsey.’
The taxi driver would have been the last person in Devizes to see Felicity Chapman.
She picked up her phone and googled ‘Devizes taxi’. A long list popped up, many of them as far away as Swindon.
‘If I were going to take a taxi to Pewsey,’ Grace said to herself, ‘wouldn’t I use the taxi firm closest to my house?’ She tapped the map and enlarged it, found three firms within the town, and rang the nearest one.
‘Hello,’ she said when the dispatcher answered. ‘This is PC Grace Long of the Wiltshire Police, making a routine enquiry. Did one of your drivers by any chance pick up a Mrs Felicity Chapman at Kennet House, Devizes, on Wednesday morning and take her to Pewsey Station?’
After a couple of minutes on hold, she received a negative answer.
Undaunted, she tried again, repeating the same words to the next-nearest dispatcher. This time she wasn’t even put on hold.
‘That would be Maggie,’ the dispatcher said. ‘Mrs Chapman always asks for Maggie.’
‘Maggie?’
‘Some people prefer a woman driver.’
Grace pumped her fist. ‘Can I talk to this Maggie?’
‘Sure. She’s out on a job at the moment, but I can have her ring you when she’s finished.’
‘That,’ said Grace, ‘would be perfect.’
Lilith Noone was feeling frustrated. On the one hand, she was flattered and pleased that Rob Gardiner-Smith had challenged her to find a juicy story involving immigrants. But so far she’d been entirely unsuccessful.
She’d made phone calls to all of her usual inside sources, with no result. She’d checked the Metropolitan Police’s online news section repeatedly, to no avail. There were murders there, of course, but none of them could be described as ‘juicy’’; the desired link to immigrants was likewise elusive.
On Friday afternoon she had another go on the Met’s news section, scanning for newly-added stories. The one titled ‘Hotel death investigation launched’ didn’t sound particularly promising, but she clicked on it anyway. The name ‘Detective Inspector Neville Stewart’ jumped off the screen at her; she leaned forward and read the story with an increasing sense of elation.
‘A murder investigation has been launched following the death of a woman in the Paddington area. Police were called to the Regent Hotel in Sussex Gardens on Thursday afternoon. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
‘The 56-year-old woman has been formally identified by next of kin, but the name is being withheld. A post-mortem examination has taken place; cause of death has not been disclosed at this time.
‘Detective Inspector Neville Stewart, the Chief Investigating Officer, is asking for help in contacting a material witness, hotel housekeeping staff member Zuzanna Dabrowska. If anyone knows the whereabouts of Miss Dabrowska, they are asked to contact DI Stewart as a matter of urgency.’
Behind the bland police-speak in which these news stories were always couched, Lilith’s instincts told that she was on to something. Detective Inspector Neville Stewart, her old adversary and sparring-partner. And Zuzanna Dabrowska? In immigrant if ever there was one …
Looking over her shoulder to make sure that no one was watching – especially Tom Burton – Grace strolled out of the police station and headed for the car park.
The taxi dispatcher had been as good as her word; Maggie had rung her back, and had suggested meeting at the Rule Britannia mobile transport cafe, located in a lay-by on the A361.
Grace knew the place; she drove by it twice daily on her way into work from the farm and back again. But she’d never stopped there – she’d never had reason to. She spotted the over-sized – if somewhat tatty – union jack flapping in the breeze, indicated and pulled into the lay-by, parking behind a huge lorry.
The taxi was there already, in front of the lorry. As Grace headed for the red-white-and-blue-painted caravan, the taxi door opened and a petite woman in jeans and a donkey jacket got out.
‘Hi, I’m Maggie,’ she said, extending her hand.
Grace shook it. ‘I’m Grace. PC Long, I suppose I should say. Thanks for meeting me.’
‘No problem.’ It was a local voice, with a warm west-country burr.
She’d always considered herself a good judge of character, and it didn’t take Grace more than a split second to decide that she liked this woman with the spiky greying hair. Her lined, un-made-up face spoke of a life which had not been an easy one, but her smile was spontaneous and genuine.
‘Can I buy you a cup of coffee?’ Grace suggested.
The smile was turned up a notch. ‘I’ve been stopping here for years, and trust me – the coffee is best avoided.’
‘How about tea?’
Maggie nodded. ‘The tea is strong, but it won’t kill you.’
They went to the serving hatch. ‘Two teas, please,’ said Grace. While she paid and collected the two mugs, Maggie claimed a rickety table which had just been vacated by the lorry driver.
‘Now,’ said Maggie, accepting one of the mugs and spooning in a generous amount of sugar, ‘how can I help you?’
Grace followed suit with the sugar, which seemed a good idea given the robust colour of the tea. ‘It’s very kind of you to meet me,’ she repeated. ‘I just wanted to ask you a few questions about Felicity Chapman. I believe you took her to Pewsey station on Wednesday morning?’
Immediately the other woman looked wary, then took a few seconds to frame a reply. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’
Oh, God, Grace said to herself, hoping her dismay wasn’t showing on her face. Maggie didn’t know that Felicity Chapman was dead. And why would she? Nothing had been in the press, as far as Grace was aware.
Berating herself for her stupidity, she chose her words very carefully. ‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, Maggie, but Mrs Chapman is dead. She died in London. And I’m … involved … in the investigation.’
The blood drained out of Maggie’s face; in an instant the lines on her face appeared deeper, almost graven into the skin, and she seemed ten years older. ‘No,’ she choked. ‘She killed herself, didn’t she?’
‘Sid, I’m sorry,’ Neville said as he put the car in gear and drove out of the station carpark. It was at least the tenth time he’d repeated it, not counting the number of times he’d said it to Triona over the phone.
‘But doesn’t that Welsh bastard realise that the rest of us have lives, too? I mean, he’s heading home tonight to Denise and his bloody kids. No chance of him going off to bloody Wiltshire on a Friday afternoon, is there?’
Neville didn’t even offer the usual token protest when Cowley rolled down his window and lit up a fag. ‘It’s not my fault. I don’t want to do this, either,’ he said.
‘Then why didn’t you talk him out of it? Why didn’t you say we’d go to bloody Wiltshire on Monday morning?’
He repeated what he’d said before. ‘Evans thinks it’s important that we interview the husband in person.’
‘Then why can’t the husband bloody well come to London?’
Neville sighed. ‘It’s not just interviewing him, is it? We can take a look at the house, get the lay of the land.’
‘But she didn’t die in that house.’ Cowley took a drag on his cigarette, then expertly flicked the ash out of the window as he exhaled. ‘She died in London, in case you forgot.’
