All My Enemies (2 page)

Brock stared after him, then turned to Kathy. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. He nodded back over his shoulder. “You’d better take a look.”

Within the snug, still house, a womb of Axminster and Liberty against an uncertain world, something awful had exploded in just this one room. A woman’s belongings were scattered in all directions, slashed clothing mixed with broken things swept from the dressing-table and chest of drawers. Her blood was sprayed across the grey wallpaper, and her bedding was a turmoil of bloodstained sheets and pillows. In the midst of all this she was laid out, naked, as if by an undertaker, straight out on her back, arms by her side, palms upward, her body spattered with purple punctures. And at the very centre of the turmoil, the focus, the thing which had sent the priest reeling backward, was her face, a livid scarlet pulp, the flesh all torn away, surrounded by a halo of fair hair.

“My God!” Kathy muttered under her breath, and moved forward towards the remains of Angela Hannaford.

“Stop!”

The word was barked out like a military order, and Kathy froze immediately. She turned and faced a tall, dark man in pale blue overalls and plastic boots, who was staring at her, hands on hips. Behind him, a photographer and two other men were crouching on the floor, peering at a patch of carpet.

“I said, nobody in here till I give the word. Don’t you bloody listen?”

Kathy flushed and stared back at him. “Sorry. I’ve just arrived. Kathy Kolla.”

He stared coldly at her for a moment, then said, “Really? Well, clear off, Kathy Kolla.”

Kathy glared back at him, reacting as much to the adrenalin shock from the scene in the room as to his rudeness. She swallowed, turned, and retraced her steps back out to the landing.

The Reverend Mr. Bannister was emerging from the toilet, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. He avoided meeting Brock’s eye. “I see . . .” he muttered, “I see.”

They returned downstairs and went into the front room, where they sat at a dining-table, gleaming with fresh polish.

“Tell us what you can about Angela,” Brock said.

“Ah . . .” The clergyman sucked in a deep breath and pushed his glasses back on his nose. “She was—” he swallowed, cleared his throat, the bile still burning “—a pleasant girl. Kind, obliging, pleasant. Yes . . . twenty-two, twenty-three.” He shook his head abruptly, as if with irritation. “Why, then? I don’t understand.”

“Pleasant, you say?”

“What? Yes, pleasant. Of course. Umm . . . quiet. Dependable, regular church-goer, like her parents.” He seemed to have difficulty finding things to say about her. “One of our Sunday-school teachers, popular with the kiddies.” He looked at his watch, agitated. “That’s where she should be now.”

“You knew her pretty well?”

“Well . . . yes, yes. The family—Angela and her parents—are just about our most loyal parishioners. She wasn’t at the service this morning. I remember that now.”

“Where is that?”

“St. George’s, C of E.”

“So you noticed that she wasn’t there.”

“Yes. I knew that Basil and Glenys—Mr. and Mrs. Hannaford—I knew that they were returning from holiday this morning, and I thought she might be meeting them, or something.”

Brock nodded. “I was a bit confused by Mr. Hannaford’s account of all that just now. He mentioned that they flew into Gatwick this morning, from Frankfurt. And you think Angela was expected to meet them at the airport?”

“Oh, I’ve no idea. That’s just what I assumed when she wasn’t at the service. Adrian wasn’t there either.”

“Who’s Adrian?”

“Her fiancé. Adrian Avery. He lives up near the station. Kingsway or Manor Way, I’m not sure.”

“You’d have expected him to be at the service this morning?”

“Not necessarily. He’s not as regular as Angela.” He shrugged.

Brock looked at him carefully. “Would there be anyone else you can think of who was attracted to Angela sexually? A former boyfriend perhaps, or someone she knew, whose advances she’d rejected?”

The clergyman snorted. “Of course not!.”

“She was unattractive, was she?”

“No, no.” He corrected himself, a bit flustered by this. “I mean . . . God, what do I mean? I mean that she was . . . chaste. There was nothing sexually provocative about her. Do you know what I mean? I remember my predecessor telling me that she always used to take the part of the Virgin Mary in the Christmas nativity play when she was a girl. She loved the part, and she was perfectly suited to it.”

Brock nodded. “And there’s no doubt in your mind that that
is
Angela Hannaford upstairs?”

“Chief Inspector . . . I couldn’t say. I really couldn’t. The hair . . . it looked like hers. Do you want me to . . . to look at her again?”

Brock hesitated. “Would you be able to identify her wristwatch, say, or her rings?”

“No . . . I wouldn’t have any idea.”

“Well, we’ll leave it then. Will you stay with the parents for a while? They seemed anxious for you to be here. I believe they rang your house immediately after calling the police?”

“That’s right. Actually, they asked for my predecessor. They weren’t thinking straight, of course, with the shock of finding Angela. They would have got more comfort from him than from me, I’m afraid. He’d known them for a long time, you see, and he was more their age. But I’ll do my best. I’ll steer clear of motive,
Chief Inspector, but, dear Lord!” He shook his head helplessly. “What could have possessed anyone?”

Brock got to his feet and showed him to the door. “We’ll come through and speak to Mr. and Mrs. Hannaford again in a little while.” He followed the vicar out into the hall and returned a moment later with a woman, whom he invited to sit at the table. Kathy judged her to be in her early thirties, not much older than Kathy herself. She looked preoccupied.

“What can you tell us at this stage, doctor?” Brock asked.

“Death appears to be due to stabbing.” Her voice was low and very quiet, so that Kathy found herself leaning forward to catch the words. “There are more than forty stabbing cuts to various parts of her body, done with a blade perhaps half or three-quarters of an inch in width, I’d estimate. Any one of a dozen of these might have been the cause of death. There are other injuries too—extensive bruising and a couple of possible fractures . . . a rib and a finger.”

She paused.

“So he continued stabbing her after she was dead?” Brock prompted.

“Yes.”

“Was there a struggle?”

“There was a lot of activity, obviously, but whether she resisted him . . . I couldn’t say.”

“Was she restrained in some way?”

“I think her thumbs were tied together—there’s deep bruising and tearing of the flesh of one thumb and the remains of a thin cord round the other.”

The thick curtains and carpets in the room seemed to absorb all sound from outside, so that a heavy silence filled the pauses in the doctor’s account. Kathy was conscious of a ringing in her ears.

“Was she sexually assaulted?” Brock said.

The doctor nodded. “There is extensive vaginal and anal
bruising. But hardly any traces of semen. They’re still working with the UV light, but I couldn’t be sure there was any at all. He washed her, afterwards.”

“Washed her?”

“Yes, that’s how it looks. There was a wet face flannel in the bathroom, and the sheet beneath her is wet.”

Another pause, longer, as if the doctor were becoming increasingly reluctant to go on.

“What about time of death?” Brock asked.

The doctor shrugged. “Maybe twelve to fifteen hours . . . say between midnight and dawn.”

“And her face?”

“That was done after she was dead. He made a cut from ear to ear, under her chin, then pulled the skin back up to her hairline. He didn’t do it very neatly. Possibly the blade wasn’t very sharp—all the other wounds are stabs, rather than cuts.”

“Any ideas about the mutilation of the face?”

“None whatever. I can’t imagine that he was trying to hide her identity.”

“No.”

“There was another odd thing. Her jaw was propped open.”

“Eh?”

“With a piece of matchstick, jammed between her back teeth, here.” The doctor opened her own mouth to show them, then closed it and began to get to her feet.

“I think that’s about all I can tell you for the moment. I had a look at the parents. I think we should get their own GP to see them. He should be familiar with their medical history. This is the name they gave me.”

She gave Brock a note and he said, “We’ll organize it. Are you happy with the way they’re going upstairs?”

“Oh yes, Desai’s very competent.” She hesitated, then went on, “The father took me to one side and asked me why this had
happened to his daughter. I said I couldn’t tell him.” She looked Brock in the eye. “I could have given him some medical terms, but what would that explain?”

Brock nodded.

“Also, he asked me if she had died quickly. I lied to him. I said yes.”

ANGELA’S MOTHER SAT CROUCHED
in an armchair in front of the fireplace, her head bowed towards the tapestry screen which was used to hide the grate during the summer months. She was sobbing quietly into a tiny handkerchief clutched in her hand, and a policewoman sat in the inglenook beside her, holding the cup of tea which Mrs. Hannaford had accepted, but not touched. She appeared older than Kathy had expected, and made no attempt to hide the silver in her hair. Her husband rose to his feet from the chair opposite her when he saw Brock and Kathy come into the room, and followed Brock’s nod towards the bay window, where the three of them sat down, out of earshot of Glenys Hannaford.

“This is Detective Sergeant Kolla, Mr. Hannaford,” Brock said. “She’ll be part of our team working on this case.”

Basil Hannaford looked at Kathy through his horn-rimmed glasses without seeing her. He sat stiffly upright, his heavy features expressionless. Kathy had the impression of someone mentally hanging on grimly to the rail of a ship during a hurricane. In the light of what they had come home to, his carefully casual travelling clothes and the glow of his holiday tan seemed incongruously frivolous.

“I’d just like to check again with you the sequence of events this morning, then we’ll leave you in peace for the moment. We’ve asked your GP to come round, and he says he’ll be here within the hour.”

Hannaford didn’t respond. Like his wife, Kathy took him to be
at or near retiring age. There was a pugnacious set to his mouth and chin, temporarily softened by shock.

“You and Mrs. Hannaford were in Germany on holiday, is that right?”

It was a moment before he nodded. “We . . .” He cleared his throat and tried again, speaking in a low monotone. “We were on a tour. Four days on the Rhine, and then four days on the . . . the Romantic Road . . . in Bavaria. Got back to Frankfurt last night and caught the plane to Gatwick this morning.”

“What time did you get in?”

“10:53 was the scheduled time.”

“Were you expecting Angela to meet you there?”

Hannaford shook his head slowly. “No . . . No. We took the car to Gatwick. Left it there. Airport car park.”

“So this morning you collected the car from the airport car park and drove back here, arriving when?”

“Soon after midday. Gardening programme . . .”

He stopped, jaw clenched, and they waited.

“On the radio?” Brock murmured after a moment.

Hannaford nodded. “Radio Four. Hadn’t long started.”

“Now when you arrived home, you drove into the drive, where your car is now?”

A nod.

“And was there anything at that stage that you noticed? Anything out of place?”

He thought a moment and frowned. “Only . . . only that Angela didn’t come to the door. She’d have heard the car arrive, if she’d been at home.”

“What did you think?”

“Thought she must still be at church. The service runs from 11:00 to 12:00.”

“Would she have gone to that in her own car?”

“Doesn’t have a car. It’s a ten-minute walk to St. George’s.”

“So there was nothing to alarm you at that point?”

“No. I went to the front door, to open it before I got the bags out of the boot.”

The expression on his face changed.

“You noticed something?”

“Not at first. I called Angela’s name, but the house was so silent. I knew . . . she wasn’t there. Then I noticed, on the hall floor, her bag.”

“Describe it, please.”

“Just thrown down. The clasp was open and some of the things inside had spilled out.”

“You didn’t think she would have left it like that?”

“No, of course not. Not just lying there, on the floor.”

“What did you do?”

“I picked it up—put the things back inside. Then I started checking the rooms, down here first of all, then upstairs. And then . . .”

“Were there any signs of a disturbance in any of the other rooms? Anything at all that you noticed as being odd in any way?”

“Nothing, no. Not until I got to Angela’s room . . .”

They waited in silence for a moment, then Brock murmured, “Was her door closed when you first saw it?”

He nodded.

“And Mrs. Hannaford, has she also seen Angela’s room?”

“Couldn’t stop her. She’d followed me into the house. I was standing just inside the doorway of Angela’s room, trying to . . . comprehend. Glenys must have come up behind me. I heard her ask what the matter was. Then before I could turn round she passed out—just fell to the floor. I carried her through to our bedroom. Rang you from the phone there.”

“Did you go back to Angela’s room after that?”

“No.”

“So neither you nor Mrs. Hannaford stepped more than a
couple of paces into the room? You didn’t go over to the bed, say, or move anything?”

“No, no.”

“All right. And where is Angela’s bag now?”

Hannaford pondered. “I think I put it down in the hall before I started looking into the rooms. On the settle, I think.”

“Could you show us?”

They got up and made for the door. As they passed Mrs. Hannaford she looked up and whispered, “Basil?”

“It’s all right, Glenys. I’ll be back in a moment.”