A Meeting of Minds (22 page)

Read A Meeting of Minds Online

Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: A Meeting of Minds
13.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
‘She's one of them,' Neil said hoarsely, piecing things together at last. ‘Max, why didn't anyone tell me?'
Alone in the semi-dark Zyczynski was more concerned with the living than the newly dead. Wormsley had always been something of an enigma, but Neil was different. She was beginning to understand what lay under the flippant surface. He had known drama enough in his young life and it had left him vulnerable.
Tonight how much had he seen, or done, to upset him so? How had he spent the time between leaving her apartment and raising the alarm? Had he rushed for help only because he knew he'd left personal traces at the scene of the killing? Would he otherwise have let himself in to his own apartment and laid low, abandoning the body to grow cold and be discovered later by someone else?
And with Chisholm away, who would that have been? – probably Beattie, coming out next morning to let Frank Perrin in for his coffee and cake. The shock would have been awful for her: a second of her selected companions murdered within a week.
Oh, why didn't somebody come, bringing a torch, and save her from all these futile speculations?
When the first blue revolving lights showed through the window she undid the door with a handkerchief held between fingers and lock. They were paramedics. She let them in, explaining, ‘You'll need flashlights. I don't want the switches here touched until SOCO arrives.'
They took one look and knew they weren't needed. ‘We should wait for a doctor to confirm death really,' said the male paramedic, ‘but there's another call we should answer. Do you want us to stay with you, or …'
‘You go. I'm fine,' she told them.
There followed another wait while she became over-conscious of being half-dressed. She assumed Max had his hands
full with Neil Raynes or he might have thought to fling a bathrobe down for her. She felt her way through the swing doors to the front hall and called. His head appeared over the gallery railing, and she told him what she needed.
‘Right,' he said and the required cover-up landed beside her. ‘You OK otherwise?'
‘Yes; get back to Neil. I think the cavalry have just arrived and they're pawing the ground outside.'
He waved and disappeared. She hoped he'd think to get some clothes on himself before she had to bring visitors up.
DI Salmon fumed at being kept outside, but Beaumont was there to witness if he breached the secure crime scene. First in were the SOCO's team in their white coveralls. After a quick survey they brought in the angle lights, cables and generator, then set about photographing from detail to general. The fingerprint men started dusting the light switches, the door handles and the bunch of keys lying on the wood-block floor and still attached by a silver chair to Wormsley's belt.
‘What's that gadget on the door?' Salmon demanded, peering over the shoulder of one stooping expert. ‘Electronic entry system,' the man told him. Cards are out, these days. Thumbprints are the in-ID. Next generation works on an analysis of the eye's iris, but we haven't seen that in use locally yet.'
Salmon scowled. ‘You mean that, to gain entry, we've gotta stick the body's thumb …'
‘Correct. Can you give me bit of space, sir? Your shadow's in my light.'
‘Shall we go upstairs?' Z suggested. The DI squinted up towards Chisholm's door and didn't fancy the spillage on the lower steps.
‘Through this way.' She indicated the swing door that led towards the front of the house.
‘Who was sick?' he demanded, following her. He expected her to admit to it.
‘Young Neil Raynes. He's waiting up in my apartment. I've not had a chance to question him yet.'
‘I'll do that.' He called back over his shoulder to the experts, ‘Let me know at once when the doctor arrives. We might get something more out of him than confirmation of death.'
‘Professor Littlejohn will want to see the body
in situ
,' she warned him.
‘Not necessary. He hasn't been notified.'
Z forbore to argue the point. The Boss would have seen to that. Both men would be turning up shortly, whatever might have been exercising them elsewhere.
Everything looked seemly in her apartment. There was a strong scent of brewing coffee, but no sign of cups yet. Z introduced the two men who rose to meet them.
‘So what made you attack him?' Salmon started off. Shake the scrotes, was his motto. It wasn't that he necessarily expected this one to be the killer.
Neil had had time to get his mind together and he recognized a bully ‘He wouldn't have been worth it,' he said shortly. ‘I came down from here and there he was, on the floor. It shook me for a moment and my lunch came up. I thought he made an odd sort of noise, but I was covered in mess and had to throw my jacket off. When I went across I couldn't find a pulse. He wasn't breathing. What I heard must have been his lungs emptying.'
‘So you're a pathology expert?' The DI's tone was scathing.
‘I'm a hospital porter. I've heard similar things before.'
‘You didn't apply resuscitation?'
‘I'm trained to yell for help before I try anything myself.'
‘So while help was coming, what did you do to the apparent dead body?'
‘Nothing.'
‘Nothing,' the DI repeated, as if it were a crime.
‘I looked at my watch,' Neil suddenly remembered. ‘That's what the crash team do when they give up working on a patient. It was 16.12.'
‘Make a note of that,' Salmon snarled at Z. He turned back
to the young man. ‘Did you see anyone else, hear anyone leaving? Was there a car parked outside?'
‘Nothing and no one. As soon as Rosemary and Max arrived I came back up here.'
‘And you'd been in here before?'
Neil seemed to think for a moment, then said, ‘We'd been out to lunch together. I just came up to carry some stuff in that Max had bought. He'd gone to park his car round by the old stables. Then I left, straight after.'
Salmon switched his attention to Max. ‘So you'd have been outside the rear entrance at the time Wormsley was coming in. Was there anyone with him?'
‘I didn't see him or any other person. Mine was the only car, and I parked at the far side of the garages. I walked back to the front of the building where Ro …where Z had left the outer door on the latch for me.'
Salmon's cell phone played two bars of the Skye Boat Song. He snatched it out from an inner pocket and grunted, ‘Yes?'
Beaumont informed him that Professor Littlejohn had arrived and that the car pulling up outside was Superintendent Yeadings's Rover.
The DI made an exasperated sound. ‘Beaumont, find some way to get into Wormsley's garage and feel whether the car's engine is warm. Make a note and give the time. Tell the guv'nor I'm on my way down.'
It was getting crowded in the confined space by the entrance to Flat 5. The pathologist, familiar with the ways of the SOCO, asked civilly if they had reached a stage he could interrupt.
‘Go ahead,' said Gowan. ‘You've pipped the duty surgeon at the post.'
‘Splendid,' Littlejohn said, as if promised a treat. ‘You can ring through and cancel him. I'll perform the double duty. Let's see now. Yes, definitely expired, and the time is precisely 17.02.'
There was a little easing around the back door as Beaumont
left and Yeadings came in, to be joined by Salmon popping out like the Demon King through the utility room's swing door. The superintendent nodded. ‘Another death, I understand. Carry on, DI Salmon. Do we know how many people are at present inside the house? I suggest you post a constable at the front door and have this area taped off at once.'
 
It was another three hours before activity petered out to leave a single uniformed man on duty and all residents briefly interviewed. Chisholm's absence – particularly in view of his having been ‘spied on' by the dead man – had struck Salmon as distinctly suspicious, the more so since Neil claimed not to have an address where he might be reached.
‘You mean you have no idea at all?' the DI insisted, his voice rising to a cartoon squeak. ‘Have you had some lovers' spat or something?'
Z groaned under her breath at the man's crassness. Max could barely believe his ears, and observed Yeadings turn his back to examine a framed abstract print on Rosemary's sitting-room wall. Neil retreated into a dignified silence.
The next apartment being that of the first murder victim's mother, Salmon was with difficulty persuaded against instant interrogation. ‘The lady is elderly,' Yeadings pointed out. ‘I'll just look in to see everything's as it should be with her, and you can have a word with her tomorrow.'
With that Salmon had to be content, but in interviewing the other residents with Beaumont in tow, he banned Z as an interested party. It was left to her to visit them all after he had left, and smooth the ruffled feathers.
She wasn't surprised to find Major Phillips in Miss Barnes's flat, dispensing comfort and Chivas Regal. By now they had gathered what Z's official function was and declared themselves reassured to have her living on the premises. ‘Not that I've managed to prevent any of this mayhem,' she told Max afterwards. ‘In fact I guess I'm lucky not to have been one of three fatalities. It looks so far as though Paul Wormsley was
struck down with a blunt instrument, just as I was three days back.'
They found Beattie a trifle tearful. ‘I'm not frightened,' she said, declining Z's offer of a bed for the night. ‘I'm just awf'ly disappointed. This was meant to be sech a peaceful, friendly place, and look a' it now!'
Frank Perrin, who dropped in after a phone call from Zyczynski, restored her good humour, and finally saw her to bed with a beaker of hot chocolate; but before he left he did a man-sized job with a bucket of scalding water and disinfectant, so that Neil, walked back home by Max, found no embarrassing reminders of his abject failure.
‘Will you be all right alone?' Max asked.
‘Never better,' the young man ground out bitterly.
‘Tomorrow I have to get back to London. I wish it wasn't necessary, but there's no let out. It'll be pretty chaotic here, police everywhere. If you can extend your sick leave you could make it easier for the others.'
‘Rosemary'll be working?'
‘She's determined, once you've both been to get your stitches out. I'll drive you there. You can share a cab back.'
‘I'd forgotten that. Anyway, Beattie's got her man-friend to look after her.'
‘There's still Mrs Winter to keep an eye on.'
‘That –
woman
! I'd rather shit pins.'
‘I'll take that as a no, then?'
‘Rosemary agreed we'd go to ER together, but once I'm there, I'll stay on. Will you tell her? Explain there's less blood and guts to cope with in hospital.'
 
Superintendent Yeadings sat in on the DI's briefing next morning. The three crimes were scrawled in chalk across the blackboard.
Sheila Winter, Murder by Stabbing; DS Zyczynski, Attack with a Blunt Instrument ( ceramic table lamp); Paul Wormsley, Murder by Blunt Instrument (not found).
‘We don't know,' Salmon admitted, ‘if these were crimes
committed by the same person or persons. We'll look at the first murder first.'
He looked rattled. By nature a one-suspect man, he found them now crawling out of every available bit of woodwork. He faced up to it, though; had the crime scene photos pinned on the wall and wrote the full list up there for all to see. The first three names were Barry Childe, Jonathan (Nat) Baker, Frank Perrin.
‘Any of those singly, or as a pair or a threesome,' Salmon said truculently, as if expecting an explosion of protest.
Everyone sat silent. A hand went up. ‘Sir, wasn't there a Dutch connection with one of them?'
‘Jan Nederkamp,' Salmon said. ‘A fax from Amsterdam police has provided him with a watertight alibi. He was in Stuttgart at a business meeting arranging to supply forced hyacinths for Christmas to German retailer. So if we can believe they still remember Christmas out there, he gets crossed off the list. In any case he is thought to have broken off his relationship with Sheila Winter last July, when he became engaged to a Belgian banker's daughter. They were married in September. According to a statement he made to a police brigadier, the break-up was by mutual consent and neither party had reason to feel resentment towards the other.'
He moved back to the blackboard to add the next name: Gabriel Fenner, D.Sc.
‘Dr Fenner – (not a medical man, for those of you not familiar with academics) – is Winter's ex-husband, who held some shares in Sheila's garden centre. He is a don at Cambridge University and his subject's Archaeology.

Other books

Spoils by Tammar Stein
Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive to Excess by Mulligan, Christina, Post, David G., Ruffini , Patrick, Salam, Reihan, Bell, Tom W., Dourado, Eli, Lee, Timothy B.
The Nightingale Nurses by Donna Douglas
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
An Obsidian Sky by Ewan Sinclair
The Ozark trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin
Splintered Fate by ylugin
Forced Partnership by Robert T. Jeschonek