Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (40 page)

“Oh no.” There was pain in her voice. “That was never the plan – never.” Mrs Meakes’ breath caught; her head started to nod, as if her neck might snap. “How was I to know Sandy Plimpton was going to start broadcasting all those terrible lies? Then the newspapers took it up – and turned Alan into a stalker – a madman.” She wrenched her head towards Alan. “I would have
never
let anyone harm you – I was ready to tell the police everything. Then Colin Pound was killed.”

“So you decided to keep schtum. Wait for the police to find a new collar. Or should that be jacket?” snorted Tess. “A blood-soaked dralon jacket dumped outside your house. You knew just what line to take with your fictional find: too small to fit Alan, wasn’t it? Taken away by the bin men on Monday?” Tess shook her head at her own gullibility. “I rang the council on the way here, and the bins go on—”

“Thurschday,” said Alan. “I put the bag out – in the dark – like you schaid, Mrs Meakes.” He rubbed his hands on his polyester slacks. The cheap fabric was shiny over his knees, Tess saw; soiled around his ankles.

“How long have you been hiding here, Alan?” she asked.

“Since the police left,” Mrs Meakes answered for him. “They’d turned my house upside-down – and dug up my garden. They wouldn’t be back. Alan would be safe here.”

“I don’t dispute it,” said Tess. “But how did you get him here? Who helped you, Mrs Meakes? Who helped you murder Jeenie?”

“Help? What makes you think I needed
help
?” Her head shook harder. “Why do people always assume a woman of advanced years requires—”

“Drop it, Meakes, you can’t support your own head. So how the hell did you crack open Jeenie’s? How did you drive the limo that fetched her to her death? Then dig her grave from your wheelchair?”

As she spoke, Tess felt a shift in the gloom behind the old woman. The darkness was stirring. The curtains? They were moving – growing – bursting open.

Mrs Pattison sprang out – her silver ponytail whipping through the air, and a tea-pot raised above her head like a scalping axe.

“Get down!” Tess heard a male voice behind her – then felt strong arms throw her down. She heard the teapot smash to the floor – and saw DS Selleck wrench back Mrs Pattison’s arms. She arched her back, straining awkwardly to look at her son.

“Mum,” sobbed Alan. “Please.”

The fight went out of her.

DS Selleck relaxed his hold. He was panting, and dishevelled. His captive, however, stood proud in defeat. Tess recalled meeting Mrs Pattison in the flat she shared with her son. “I clean toilets and wipe old dears’ bums for a living,” she’d said then. “It don’t make me stupid.”

“
You’re
Maggie?” said Tess. “The saintly, bloody Maggie!”

“Who?” frowned Selleck.

“Mrs’ Meakes’ carer – at the Happy Cypresses.”

“So?” said Mrs Meakes. “She’s nothing – no-one. She just pushes my wheelchair – makes my bed—”

“I make my
own
bed, Mrs Meakes, and I’m ready to lie on it.” Maggie Pattison crossed her burly, weathered arms. “Yes, I helped to kill Jeenie – and I
still
think it was too good for her. Alan deserved a better life – he were going to get
me
a better life – then Jeenie robbed us of everything. Didn’t he, Lil?”

She appealed to her friend, and Tess saw the truth, clear as any snapshot. Twenty years ago, two kids had paid a terrible price for a puny moment of fame. Now all that remained in the frame was a heartbroken grandmother and a broken mother. Together, they’d decided to act. “That was why you applied to appear on
Pardon my Garden
,” Tess addressed Mrs Meakes. “To get to Jeenie?”

“Reg’s idea,” she nodded. “When Jeenie Desmpster popped up on our telly after all these years – looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth – well, it hit Reg hard.” Her head fell. “He grew obsessed with meeting Jeenie – confronting her – but his heart couldn’t take it. By the time
Pardon my Garden
got in touch, Reg was dead. I was rotting in the Happy Cypresses with my photos… and my ghosts. Then, Maggie Pattison walked in with my supper on a tray – first time I’d seen her in almost two decades.” She clenched her bony hands. “I knew I wasn’t alone.”

“But—” Tess turned to Maggie. “Why were
you
working at the Happy Cypresses? You live the other side of London.”

“Didn’t always, though, did I? How do you think Alan and Kathy became friends?” She bent to tend her friend in the wheelchair. “We only lived round the corner – even when Alan got famous – but then it went to shit, didn’t it? Alan had his breakdown. He started getting beaten up. He was too known round here, you see? We had to move on – but I kept the job at the Happy Cypresses. For my sins.” She stroked Mrs Meakes’ shaking fists.

“The old folk didn’t care about the world outside, or what it was saying, did they?”

“And Reg and Lil Meakes?”

“Of course I wondered how they were getting on – they’d always been good to Alan – but I couldn’t bring myself to knock on their door, especially when I heard what happened to their Kathy. They’d been such mates, her and Alan, but Jeenie destroyed that, too, didn’t she? So I cursed her name, every time I slopped out another bedpan – every time I changed my boy’s sheets, stinking from his nightmares. When Mrs Meakes told me what she wanted to do,” she said grimly.,”I was in.”

“You found the callsheets your son had been stealing from our production office,” said Tess. “Having learned the format of a
Pardon my Garden
shoot, you knew just how to exploit it. After all, you used to manage Alan’s presenting career – you know
all
about how TV worked. Posing as one of my production team, you called Jeenie’s agent to rearrange her pick-up time.”

Tess turned to DS Selleck. The officer had straightened his shirt, and was listening to her. For the first time since they’d met, he was listening. With a stab of sadness, she realised it was too late. “In the dark, early hours of Monday morning, Maggie Pattison concealed herself in a thick coat, and tucked her silver ponytail into a baseball cap. Collecting Jeenie from her flat in a hired limo, she delivered her to her accomplice at 13 Squarey Street. Didn’t she, Mrs Meakes?”

“Jeenie marched in, like she owned the place. Stopped just where you’re standing now. When I told her who we were – what she’d done to our children – she laughed.”

“So Maggie struck Jeenie over the head – just hard enough to knock her out. I’m guessing that was the agreement?”

“I didn’t want my friend spending the rest of her life in prison,” nodded Mrs Meakes. “When
I
had only months to live. If anyone was to be arrested for Jeenie Dempster’s murder, I wanted it to be me.”

She’d wanted it all along, Tess realized. Mrs Meakes had
wanted
the truth to come out about Jeenie,
wanted
her little girl’s name cleared and, from their first, stormy encounter in hell, she’d wanted Tess to be the one who did it. “Knocked unconscious, Jeenie was then dragged to the sofa, and smothered – with something made of dralon fabric.”

She looked at Selleck. “Your forensics guys presumed the killer stuffed an item of their own clothing into Jeenie’s mouth – a jacket perhaps – but the
obvious
trick would be to place a cushion over her face, especially if Jeenie was lying prone on the sofa. When a thorough search of the house showed up no such thing, I suggested the killer brought one along with them. You were not receptive. Then Miller pulled that thing out of his trousers this morning.” Selleck reared; Tess mustered a grin. “I knew how the killer smuggled a dralon cushion in and out of Squarey Street without attracting a second glance.” Tess crouched down in front of Mrs Meakes.

“Do you mind?”

With a look of relief, the dying woman toppled into Tess’ embrace. Keeping one arm around Mrs Meakes’ waist, Tess reached beneath her thighs to extract a battered object. For months, it had lain on the seat of the wheelchair, doing the job of protecting the patient’s aching bones.

It had done the job alright, thought Tess, holding up a brown, dralon cushion. Selleck frowned.

“It was very simple, Officer,” said Mrs Meakes. “I sat on her.”

She was still talking, as Tess lowered her back into the wheelchair. “Maggie carried Jeenie to the sofa, and then she picked me up out of my wheelchair – cushion and all – and I sat on Jeenie’s face until she died. It was all quite peaceful, really, like sitting in a church. True, it took longer than I’d expected…” her voice faltered. “But it gave Maggie time to finish digging her grave. Behind the yellow roses – Reg had planted them for Kathy, you see, we thought he’d like that.” She smiled. “Oh, but it was a job, getting her in, wasn’t it, Maggie? Jeenie was heavy for a bag of bones. Poor Maggie had barely got the mud off her hands, when she had to come back inside and clean up all the blood. We hadn’t counted on so much of it, had we dear?”

Alan’s mum shrugged. “I’ve cleaned up worse.”

Tess shuddered: They could have been talking about an 80th birthday party at the Residential Home.

“Before your crew arrived, Maggie brought a bedspread from upstairs to cover the blood on the sofa. So much of it, you see…”

Her pink, watery gaze was wandering to the cushion in Tess’ hands. Looking down, Tess saw dark, rust-coloured stains in the dense, brown weft of the dralon. It was all she could do not to throw the gruesome thing at the wall: the most hunted murder weapon in the British Isles, and Mrs Meakes had been sitting on it all the time. “You couldn’t afford to destroy the last piece of evidence connecting you to the murder, could you?” said Tess. “You had to ensure Maggie stayed off the hook.”

“Yes, there
was
that,” conceded Mrs Meakes. “But if I’m honest, I liked having it with me. Jeenie destroyed the most precious thing in my life, didn’t she? I liked sitting in her blood.” Her nose twitched like a little rabbit. “Smelling it”.

Selleck looked as if he was about throw up, thought Tess, or at least write something
very
harsh in his notebook. Instead he issued a caution to both Mrs Meakes and Mrs Pattison and ordered them to accompany him to Croydon Police Station for further questioning. This prompted a sudden movement from the one person who’d been silent throughout their whole, hideous confession. Fat Alan spoke at last.

“You killed Jeenie?” He looked in confusion between the two women who’d promised him safety. “
You,
Mum – you and Auntie Meaksch –
you killed Jeenie
?”

“I did it for you Alan,” cried Maggie. “For me
and
you, son.” But she’d already lost him. Hands clamped over his ears, Alan started keening to and fro in his chair.

“Tesch,” he rasped. “You’ve got to help me, only you can help me…”

“I’m here, Alan.” Tess crouched down beside him. “What do you want me to do?” Frantically, he spiked up his crusty, greying hair. Then he thrust his dirty fingers into the front of his slacks – and pulled out a small, white card.

“Call this man,” he told her. “Call him
now.”

It was a business card – Tess read the name:
Rod Peacock
?

“He posted it through my letterbox last week,” nodded Alan. “Said I should call if I needed representation – if I ever had anything
new
to say. Well, I do now, don’t I, Tess? My Mum and Auntie Meakes killed Jeenie.”

His lisp was gone, realized Tess, his speech defect cured. Alan heard it too.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. “I’m going to be famous.”

L
eaving Croydon Police Station, Tess zipped up her Puffa, and pondered the best way back to her South Wimbledon flat.

DS Selleck was somewhere in the building behind her, doubtless bustling away with his high profile arrests. Tess had hoped to get a moment alone with him – there was something preying on her mind – but it seemed there were papers to file, backs to slap. Selleck had brought in a killer, and DCI Burns wasn’t going to let his new golden boy go.

Taken into custody, Mrs Meakes and Mrs Pattison had already started their passage to a colder place – a world of scraping chairs, scratched tables and doors slamming at night. Fat Alan had barely waved them goodbye. He had a limo to catch, didn’t he? Rod Peacock had sent a car – and Cleo. Tess watched the two of them disappear into the back seat: Alan already acting like a star; Cleo looking unsure whether to sluice or seduce him.

Neither offered Tess a ride. So, in a re-run of that first nightmarish morning, Tess had given her statement, then visited the Gents and the coke machine. Now what? She should have been crowing.
You cracked the case, woman, now crack open the Cava
.

Instead, she was terrified. Scared stiff – of going home to find her Mum still brittle and broken; their flat still reeking of burnt toast and booze. With the investigation over, just one question would remain: open a bottle at the flat, or head to the nearest pub?

Only a few hours remained to Tess before Darcus Darling pissed on her from a Panoramic height. His grand exposé was still slotted for 9pm, and his daughter planned to be drunk when it aired.

First, however, she took his call. Like she always did.

“You won,” he said.

“I–?”

“Saw it all.” From her mobile phone, his voice emerged, strangely subdued. “Today’s
Live With.
You collared Colin Pound’s wife for his murder. Now my sources are telling me you’ve bagged
Jeenie’s
killer -”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” she puffed. “The police will take the credit. You can still rubbish me on telly tonight.”

He let out a hissing noise. “Your mother didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Our little date last night. It was
not
a success. I think your mother may need psychiatric help.”

“Mum?” Tess felt a familiar squirt of panic. “How is she, Dad? What did you do to her
this
time?”

“Nothing! Merely asked her few,
small
questions about you,” he sniffed. “Your mother turned quite pink, and then started demanding answers from
me
: what were my intentions?”