A Deadly Thaw (19 page)

Daniel sat in the kitchen with his head in his hands. In front of him was the empty can of cold beer that he’d finished in three swift gulps. ‘It’s actually been hard keeping it all in. I live by myself now in Whitby. I’ve had girlfriends, lots of them, but Lena’s always exerted this fascination over me. Over the years, coming and going from my life. If she’d been a regular girlfriend it might have fizzled out long ago, but it was the enchantment of the unobtainable. Can you understand that?’

Kat had calmed down, and her professional curiosity kicked in. ‘Of course I can understand that.’
But has it helped you?
she thought.
Is your life better for it?

‘For a long time she was quite distant from me. She’d come in for a drink, but I never found out anything about her. That never really changed but we did get closer. Despite the distance, if you see what I mean.’

‘So you knew her for, what, ten or so years?’

‘Twelve or thirteen. Right up until she went to prison.’

‘Did you visit her there?’

Daniel stood and went to the fridge. ‘Do you mind if I have another?’ He reached inside and took out another can. ‘I would have visited her but times were limited. She wanted to see you during those times.’

Kat frowned. ‘I didn’t get that impression over the years I was going there. We never talked about anything of any consequence. She didn’t even seem particularly pleased to see me.’

‘I’m not sure if this helps, me saying this, but she was always very protective of you. She wouldn’t talk about you at all.’

‘But you knew about me?’

‘Of course. I knew Lena had a sister. She seemed proud of what you had done with your life but she never really wanted to talk about you.’

‘Not interested.’ Kat’s tone was bitter.

‘I really don’t think it’s that.’

‘So what changed? You implied, just now, that you and Lena did get closer.’

Daniel fiddled with his can. ‘In 2004, Lena came to me for help. I got a phone call in the middle of the night. Just after midnight I think it was. Or maybe a bit later. I’m not a night owl. She woke me up when she rang.’

‘September 2004?’

‘Yes. She rang me to say she’d just killed a man.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Yes. Just like that. She still had her wits about her, you know. She’d driven to a phone box across town to call me. So nothing would come up on her mobile or house phone records. It was the first time I’d heard her like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Completely focused on what she wanted doing.’

‘Which was?’

‘When she called, I thought she’d want me to help get rid of the body. Which, you know, I probably would have done. Probably.’

‘But she didn’t want that.’ Kat could see where this was going. ‘She wanted you to hide Andrew Fisher.’

‘So you know.’

‘Well, I’ve guessed. The police have a lead that Andrew Fisher was holed up in Whitby, at least for a while.’

Daniel stared at the can of beer. ‘She had a plan. A pretty good one, actually. She said that if she pretended the next morning that she’d woken up next to her dead husband, it would take them a day or so to work out that a murder had actually been committed. Which would give us a chance to get Andrew up to Whitby and any other affairs sorted out before she was arrested.’

‘What about the deception? Didn’t she think that the police would work out that they had the wrong man?’

‘I think she did, but that never happened. It surprised us both. I hid Andrew Fisher for the first few months. Until the spring of 2005. He stayed in my house. Didn’t go out unless he was wrapped up in a hat, scarf and so on. It was winter, so it was pretty easy to do.’

‘And after that?’

‘He moved into a house the other side of the river. Where the tourists don’t venture. I sort of kept an eye on him. Only for Lena’s sake. He was pretty self-sufficient.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘I don’t know. For ten years or so I never bothered. Lena wouldn’t see me in prison and Andrew’d made a life for himself in Whitby, I think. I’d occasionally see him in a pub. Or walking about the town. We tended to ignore each other. Too much history.’

‘But why? Why did you help her?’

Daniel reached forward and took a sip of his beer. ‘I’ve told you the answer to that. Because I’d have done anything for Lena. Don’t ask me how he ended up dead in Bampton. I last saw him at the beginning of April. He was alive and well then.’

Kat said nothing. She allowed the silence to settle around her. Daniel was watching her. He was a huge bear of a man. Long limbs, a solid torso. It was no surprise that Lena had chosen him to depend on.

‘You haven’t asked me the key question.’

Kat sighed. ‘That’s because I’m not sure I want to know the answer. Okay. I’ll ask it. Why? Why did Lena kill someone in her bed, pretend it was her husband and then send him up to Whitby to hide?’

Daniel’s smile was grim. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

Sadler left them at ten. He had looked at his watch and made his excuses. Connie looked after him with a sardonic eye. ‘It’s not even as if he’s got far to go. He only lives around the corner.’

‘As, in fact, do you.’

‘Opposite direction though.’ She wondered how Palmer knew where she lived. ‘Funny case this is turning out to be.’

He turned to her. ‘I don’t want to talk about the inquiry. It’s one bloody thing after another with this investigation. What happened to those simple cases that you see on TV? You know, the ones you can solve in two hours?’

‘Oh, those.’ Connie had moved on to brandy and Coke, and she took a long gulp from her glass. ‘You want an easy life? You can always go back into uniform. Climb the greasy pole. Go for an inspector post.’

‘Now you sound like Joanne.’ His voice was sulky.

Here we go
, thought Connie.
I’m going to get his marital woes
.
Again
. At least she never got this with Sadler. But it was Palmer’s weaknesses that held the key to her attraction to him. It made him more human. ‘Problems still?’

He picked up his glass. ‘I should never have got married. It was all right when we were engaged. At least I had some say in decisions we made. Now she just tells me what’s going to happen. Like she’s decided to come off the pill.’

‘If you don’t want a baby yet, you’ve got to tell her. You know what this job is like. It’s her that’s going to bear the brunt of bringing up the child. She needs to know that.’

‘Do you think I’ve not tried?’ he hissed. ‘She’s decided to have a baby. And I don’t get any say in it.’

Connie smiled into her glass. Poor bugger. She wondered how he’d be when his expensive suits began to be marked with baby sick. The thought made her snigger. He saw it, and his eyes narrowed. ‘You were right, you know. When you suggested I call off the wedding. I was just too pig-headed to see it.’

‘You’re too conventional, Palmer. You never would have backed out. Just as you’re going to let Joanne have her own way about the baby.’

‘Well, if she wants to get pregnant, we’ll have to have sex.’

She leant towards him. ‘You not getting it at all?’

‘Nothing. Not. At. All.’

Connie snorted into her glass. ‘Join the club, but at least I’m single. How’s that come about?’

‘She’s too tired in the evenings. Actually, so am I.’

‘It’s different for men.’

‘Well, as I said, if she wants a baby, it’s not going to happen by itself.’

Connie, for the first time, noticed a coldness in his voice. ‘Don’t you love her?’

‘Probably, but it’s not how I expected it to be.’

Only probably. She really was better off single if that was the best it got.

‘Remember before the wedding, when I asked if I could stay at yours?’

Here we go
. ‘Yes. I do. I remember saying no.’

‘I meant it only platonically. I just wanted to stay with a mate. You know, from work. Who understood what I did all day. It’s not changed anything, has it?’

Connie smiled. ‘Not for me it hasn’t. You’re still the same irritating bugger you were before you had your pre-wedding wobble.’

To her surprise, he grabbed her hand. ‘As long as things are still the same. I wouldn’t want anything to change between you and me.’

She tipped her glass to her mouth to see what was left. Not much, just ice cubes. She poked them with her finger. ‘Nothing’s changed,’ she said, without looking at him.

‘Do you think I should have married someone in the business? You know, another copper?’

Connie grimaced. There were a few married couples in the station, but she wasn’t clear if or how they ever saw each other. From what she could see, once the kids came, it was the women who resigned while the men carried on with their jobs as normal. Not for her.

‘Did you have anyone in mind?’ It came out more flirtatious than she’d intended, and she saw Palmer’s eyes widen.

He leaned in towards her. ‘You said no last time.’

She turned in her seat to face him. ‘It was the week you were getting married.’

‘Weren’t you a bit sorry, though? I mean, that it never happened?’

Connie looked down into her glass. ‘More than a bit.’

Kat put Daniel in the spare room downstairs. There was a ratty old sofa that was just about big enough to accommodate his long limbs. She heaved a large quilt from the airing cupboard, and he heaped cushions from the various chairs for pillows.

‘Will you sleep?’ she asked.

He looked dog-tired. ‘Probably. You?’

‘Probably not.’

He smiled at her. ‘You look like your sister, you know.’

‘So everyone used to tell us. Less so now. We’re rarely seen together.’

‘Are you with someone? Boyfriend, I mean?’

Kat thought of Mark. ‘There’s someone I like. A lot. But it’s complicated.’

‘Oh, I know all about those relationships. Does he make you happy?’

‘Yes, he does, but the timing is terrible. I need to concentrate on finding Lena and finding out what’s going on.’

At the mention of her sister, he turned away. ‘Lena is a keeper of secrets. Hers and others’. If you really want to know what happened in 2004, you need to unlock the past.’

As she left him settling into the sofa, she picked up her phone to check for messages and wondered if Mark was thinking of her too.

What the hell am I doing?
thought Palmer. Connie’s back was against the converted mill where she lived, and he was pressed against her. He slid a hand up the front of her jumper and under her bra.

‘I think we should stop.’ Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.

‘Do you want to?’

‘Of course not but we’re not having sex in the street. That’d be the talk of the station if we got caught.’

‘Can I come up then?’ It was the second time he’d asked. She’d said ‘no’ last time. He could see her mind assessing it.

‘It’s just sex though, right?’

He laughed into her hair. ‘Definitely just sex.’

She slid her arm inside his jacket and fumbled to find his skin. ‘That’s all right then.’

Sadler had slept badly. Two hours of fitful sleep and the rest of the night had been spent lying in the dark thinking about the case. Llewellyn’s behaviour had unsettled him more than he’d let on to the team. His superintendent was a local, a man rooted in the Derbyshire landscape, and he had been a presence at this station since Sadler had joined the force. Llewellyn was respected. He’d climbed the ranks, studying for extra qualifications at night school, and was still seen by ordinary coppers as ‘one of us’. So why did Sadler have the horrible feeling that Llewellyn was involved in something lacking the transparency he so advocated to his teams?

When he arrived at the station, Palmer was already at work, typing information into the computer with expert fingers.

‘Where’s Connie?’

Palmer looked around the room. ‘I haven’t seen her this morning.’

‘Was it a late one last night?’

Palmer focused his eyes on the screen in front of him. ‘Not particularly.’

As if on cue, Connie came through the door, balancing three cups of coffee in her hands. She put all three down on Palmer’s desk. Sadler picked up one. Palmer continued to look at the screen.

‘Today, can you both focus on pulling together everything we know about Philip Staley? There’s a potential rugby link between him and Andrew Fisher. If it exists, then we need to find it. Focus on all the material we have. Look for any particular links with Lena Gray. She worked in a florist’s and then as an artist. That’s more of a long shot but try it anyway.’

‘What about the fact that he’s a rapist?’ asked Connie.

Now Palmer did look up. ‘He’s not been convicted.’

Connie’s face reddened. ‘But we do believe Rebecca Hardy, don’t we? You were there, Palmer. Did it look like she was lying?’

Palmer swung around in his chair. ‘I don’t think she was lying, no, but he wasn’t convicted of any crime. I’m simply stating a fact. You can’t go around calling him a rapist.’

Connie put her hands on her hips. ‘Look. It’s the act that makes him a rapist, not the conviction.’

Sadler looked at the two of them. They were bickering as usual although there appeared to be an edge to their disagreement. Time to intervene. ‘Connie, come with me. I’m going to interview Andrew Fisher’s mother. I’d like you with me. Bring the coffee.’

Connie’s eyes were on Palmer as she nodded, and she followed Sadler out of the station. They both blinked as they stepped outside the front door and encountered sunshine, and not the weak watery kind that had graced Bampton since early April. There was warmth in the air.

‘I think spring has finally hit us.’

‘About time. Isn’t May supposed to be the last month before summer? Bet it doesn’t last though.’ Connie walked around to the passenger door and flung herself in.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Everything is fine,’ she said, pulling the seat belt across her body.

The drive to Andrew Fisher’s childhood home was brief, but even in that short time Connie’s mood appeared to brighten. She stopped looking out of the side window and instead turned towards Sadler. ‘Have you ever been here before? I mean, you knew him from school.’

‘We weren’t in the same circles. He was in the rugby crowd, I preferred cricket and I never drank like he did.’

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Connie thinking it over. ‘You know, if you drink like that when you’re a teenager, I bet you like a good few when you’re older. I wonder how much of a drinker he was as an adult.’

‘Did Philip Staley’s mother say how much he liked a drink?’

Connie humphed in her seat. ‘She didn’t tell me that much. She was anxious to protect her son. Except when the bit about the money came out. Then he wasn’t such a golden boy.’

‘Five hundred pounds is a lot of money for someone in her position to lose. It was probably all her savings.’

‘It’s not been touched. If we can prove conclusively it was Philip Staley who was killed in 2004 she could probably get it back somehow.’

‘True. But the bank account isn’t a priority. Don’t worry about that for the moment.’

As they drew up outside Andrew Fisher’s childhood home, a shadow in the window indicated that they were being watched.

‘I rang ahead to say we were coming.’

Connie looked up at the house. ‘One thing worth remembering. When I interviewed Jane Reynolds about seeing Andrew Fisher in Whitby, she poured scorn on our assumption about Pamela Fisher not knowing her son was still alive.’

‘It was Llewellyn who told me she had seemed shocked. I have him down as a good judge of character.’

‘I’m just passing on what Mrs Reynolds told me. She was a canny old bird in her own way too.’

The front door opened to them as they walked up the path. Pamela Fisher didn’t even bother to pretend that she hadn’t been awaiting their arrival. She led them into the hall, which was stultifyingly hot. The heating needed turning down on this warm day. The woman was wearing a short-sleeved dress.
Why doesn’t she save money by putting on a cardigan and turning down the heating?
thought Sadler irritably.

They followed her into an equally warm living room full of furniture. Connie squeezed past two sofas and sat in the only armchair, leaving Sadler to sit on one of the low sofas.

‘Would you like tea?’ Pamela Fisher had a clear voice with no trace of a Derbyshire accent.

‘We’ve just had coffee in the car, thanks,’ replied Connie. The woman frowned.

‘How are you?’ asked Sadler.

Pamela Fisher sat slowly down into the sofa, old bones making her movements stiff. ‘I’m all right. It’s been an awful time, but it was kind of the Superintendent to come around to explain things and see if I was okay.’

‘It was a shock?’

The woman smoothed her skirt with her hands. ‘I’ve never had a problem with my heart. Arthritis is my affliction. And low blood sugar. But when I heard what happened, I thought my heart had stopped. The woman who’d broken the news had to get me a sweet cup of tea. There was too much sugar in it.’

‘So in 2004, when your son was found dead, you had no idea that it wasn’t really him.’

The woman screwed up her face in disgust. ‘No idea whatsoever.’

‘And what did you think when his wife, Lena, was charged with his murder?’

Pamela’s face took on a mottled hue, a complexion that Sadler associated with repressed anger. ‘I liked Lena when I first met her. She was a bit airy-fairy, if you get my meaning, but better for him than his first wife, Gail.
She
never gave him any rest. Always wanted to know where he was. Lena gave him more space. Andrew did have to go and live in that big draughty house, although they seemed happy enough. That’s all anyone wants for their children.’

‘You said you liked her when you first met her . . .’

Pamela looked down at her lap. ‘She was cold. It wasn’t shyness. It was her personality. You couldn’t get near her, emotionally. I used to wonder what was going on underneath that cool exterior.’

‘So you didn’t visit Lena in prison?’ asked Connie.

‘Why on earth would I want to do that? She murdered my son. She didn’t even make any effort to deny it. I couldn’t believe it. She was evil. There was no way I was going to visit her there.’

‘And you had no idea about motive?’ Sadler glanced over to Connie, who was looking around the room.

‘None whatsoever.’

Connie had stood up and was looking at some photographs grouped together on the far wall.

She pointed at a portrait showing a boy in a school uniform. ‘Is this Andrew as a teenager?’

Sadler and Pamela turned towards the image and said ‘Yes’ in unison.

Pamela Fisher looked at Sadler in alarm. ‘You knew Andrew? You never said.’

‘We were in a couple of the same classes at Bampton High.’

‘Did you know him well?’

‘Not really. We had different groups of friends.’ She relaxed a fraction.

Connie looked at the two of them, frowning.

Five minutes later, walking back to the car, she said, ‘She didn’t like the thought of you knowing Fisher as a teenager. What was that all about?’

Sadler looked back at the house. ‘I have no idea.’