Dying Art (A Dylan Scott Mystery) (4 page)

Dylan murmured his agreement.

“What about you?” Jane asked. “How did you know her?”

“Oh, I’ve known her for twenty years. I hadn’t seen her for ages as I’m friendlier with her sister, Maddie, but yes, I’ve known her awhile.”

“She was such a lovely girl,” Doreen said. “In one way, she kept herself to herself, but she was very friendly and, like I say, she’d do anything for anyone.”

“My cat knew her well,” Jane said with a small smile. “If Prue’s window was open, Fudge would be straight inside, making himself comfortable on her sofa. She never seemed to mind.”

Both women smiled at Fudge’s antics.

“Did Maddie say that one of you called the police when she wasn’t answering her phone or the door?” he asked.

“That was me.” Jane pushed her plate away as if the question had stolen her appetite. “Maddie phoned to say that Prue was supposed to be in London with her. I didn’t think it was anything to worry about, but I promised her I’d tell Prue to phone her as soon as I saw her. Of course, when I went round the back to knock on the door, I could see into the dining room.” She shook her head. “It was such a mess. I knew immediately that something was wrong so I called the police.”

“As soon as they saw it,” Doreen joined in, “they broke the door down.”

“They didn’t,” Jane said, her voice tight with impatience. “The door was unlocked. The glass was broken—police said it had been cut—and the door was unlocked.”

“Oh.” Doreen was disappointed. “I thought they broke the door down.”

“No.”

“The police don’t seem to be any nearer catching the person responsible,” Dylan said. “Unless you’ve heard anything I haven’t?”

“There have been a spate of burglaries in the area,” Doreen said, “and yet they still can’t catch him. We’d had no trouble in our street until now, but quite a few houses closer to the town centre had been burgled. They say it’s the same person who did those. He’s never hurt anyone before—not that I’m excusing him—and they think she might have fallen down the stairs. Of course, she might have been pushed. No one’s to know, are they?”

“They think it happened after midnight but before two o’clock,” Jane said.

“It’s funny no one heard anything or saw anything odd,” he said.

“It is,” Doreen agreed. “I’m a very light sleeper and I usually hear every sound. Not that night.”

“It was windy,” Jane said. “All I could hear was the wind rattling the opening light in my bedroom window. I’ve got a chap coming out to fix it on Thursday.”

“And you didn’t see anyone in the street?”

“It wasn’t a night for being outside,” Doreen said. “I hope they hurry up and catch him. I’m assuming he’ll keep well away from our road, but you never know, do you?”

“Indeed,” Dylan said.

As they had nothing interesting to tell him, and as he’d probably see them again when he visited Prue’s home, he left their table and sought out the man with the ponytail, the one who claimed to be a friend. He was sitting on a barstool, his leather jacket slung across the neighbouring stool. He was wearing a white shirt and black tie.

“Hi.” Dylan put out his hand. “Dylan Scott. I gather you were a friend of Prue’s?”

He shook Dylan’s hand. “Danny Thompson. Yeah. I suppose you could say that.”

“I hadn’t seen her for a while. How did you meet her?”

Thompson shrugged. “I took over a wine bar in the town centre about a year ago. I had big plans, you know? It was going to be
the
place to go in Dawson’s Clough. I sometimes have a mini-rush on when people finish work for the day but, by seven o’clock, the place is usually deserted.”

“Ah. And you met Prue—how?”

“She came in one night a couple of months ago. January time maybe. She was my only customer so we got talking. At least, I got talking. She got drunk. A couple of weeks later, she was back. We discussed books and films, art and music, put the world to rights—and she got drunk again. To tell the truth, we both got drunk. Still, I had no customers so it didn’t matter. She wasn’t a heavy drinker so I didn’t make much out of her. I enjoyed her company though.”

Dylan smiled. “She sounds like a heavy drinker.”

“She wasn’t. Three glasses of wine and she was away with the fairies. I don’t think she went out much, and she told me she never drank at home. The slippery slope, she called that. As I understood it, when things got on top of her, she’d jump in a cab to my place, have a few drinks and take a cab home.”

“Really? She always seemed happy-go-lucky to me. What used to get on top of her?”

“No idea,” Thompson said, “but I think there was a bloke involved. I used to tell her there were plenty more fish in the sea, but she just laughed. I think her heart had been broken. She used to say that the fairytales she’d read as a kid never warned her that Prince Charming was married, gay or both.”

Maddie hadn’t mentioned any men in her sister’s life. Perhaps she hadn’t known about them. Perhaps it was easier to discuss your failed love affairs with a stranger behind a bar than a happily married sister. Although Dylan was beginning to wonder about the state of Maddie’s marriage. People involved in happy marriages don’t jet off to the Algarve when spouses are burying their sisters.

“Did you get involved—romantically, I mean?” Dylan asked.

Thompson smirked at that. “No. I fall into the gay category.”

“Oh. Right. I see.”

“You’d never know, would you?” Thompson spoke with a tinge of sarcasm. “I don’t do the camp stuff.”

Dylan smiled and determined to move the conversation forward. “Did she want to get involved? Did she come on to you?”

“Nope. There was a man in her life, one she couldn’t have, and she didn’t bother looking elsewhere. At least, that’s the impression I got.” He tipped up his glass, swallowed the contents and put it on the counter. “Time I was off. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a couple of customers tonight. Be seeing you.”

“She didn’t mention any problems she was having, did she?” Dylan asked.

Thompson frowned at that. “No. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I was just curious. By the way, what did you say the name of your bar was?” Dylan asked.

“I didn’t. But it’s Danny’s Wine Bar. I decided to go for originality, you know?”

“Perhaps I’ll call in sometime.”

“It’s on King Street. Watch where everyone’s going and walk in the opposite direction. You can’t miss it. And bring a few friends with you.”

“Be seeing you, Danny.”

Jane and Doreen were next to leave. They both clutched white handkerchiefs as they hugged Maddie and offered their condolences once more. Maddie stood rigid in their embrace.

Slowly but surely, the hotel emptied of mourners until only Dylan and Maddie remained.

“I’m so relieved the day’s over,” Maddie said. “I thought it would never end. Still, it’s just you and me now. Shall we have dinner together? A few drinks perhaps?”

“Sorry, but I can’t. I’ve arranged to meet up with an old friend, an ex-copper, and I need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, shall I? At Prue’s house?”

“Okay.” She planted a featherlight kiss on his cheek. “Thanks for coming today, Dylan. I appreciate it. We all do.”

Chapter Five

By the time he was sitting opposite his one-time boss and friend, ex-Detective Chief Inspector Frank Willoughby, Dylan had almost managed to shake off the chill of funerals and death. It helped that he was in one of his favourite pubs, the Dog and Fox, with a pint of his favourite beer, Black Sheep.

“You can’t keep away from Lancashire, can you?” Frank’s greeting was a hearty slap on the shoulder. “It must be our weather.”

“That’s it, Frank. I thought it was time I gave the snorkel and flippers an airing.”

Frank snorted with laughter.

He’d been a damn good copper before being forced to retire on health grounds, although there was a time when Dylan had hated the sight of him. Dylan and DS Pike had been keen, enthusiastic upstanding members of the police force, but Frank, or “that arrogant northern bastard,” as they liked to call him, preferred to refer to them as “soft fucking southerners.”

The years had changed them both though. Frank had suffered a heart attack and Dylan had been kicked off the force and marched into a cell. As ridiculous as it might once have sounded, they’d become good friends and had a great deal of respect for each other.

“Because nothing ever happens in this place, lazy journos have to resort to printing old news. If Maddie hadn’t been up here reading the local rag, she wouldn’t have seen my name mentioned in connection with Anita Champion’s case, and I would be safely in the south—land of the civilised.”

“Don’t kid yourself that you’re an A-list celebrity in these parts,” Frank said, “because I haven’t seen your name mentioned for a year or more. I certainly missed that particular article. It must have been very small, too, because I read the paper from cover to cover. When was it in?”

“I don’t know. About three weeks ago. It was when Prue was killed and Maddie came up. She stayed in a hotel and read it there.”

Frank shook his head. “I never saw it.”

“Perhaps she saw an old edition.”

“Could be. So you’re definitely taking on this case?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Dylan took a long, slow swallow of beer. Nectar. “I’m still thinking about it. I’m not sure what I can do really. I don’t have phone records, email records or Prue’s address book. I asked Maddie, but she wasn’t much help. I know your lot got phone records and checked her email account, and I know there was an address book that they returned to Maddie, but I can’t get my hands on any of it. Maddie’s mislaid the address book.”

Frank rolled his eyes at such stupidity. “That’s a big help then. I had a look at the file and saw the phone records. On the day she died, she called her sister. Three days earlier, she called her dentist. Her landline was hardly used and she hadn’t made a call from her mobile for about six weeks. There were no text messages worth noting.”

“What about emails, Frank?”

“Nothing worth mentioning. I may, if I ask in the right places, be able to get copies for you.”

“Yeah? I’d really appreciate that. Maddie might find Prue’s address book, but she never saw phone or email records.”

Frank nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. What’s your opinion so far?”

“I expect your mob are right and Prue’s death was due to a petty thief coming a cropper. On the other hand, there’s something odd about it all.” A niggle of doubt had been planted. “Nothing was stolen for a start, and who’s heard of a burglar who didn’t take anything? It’s number one on his job description.”

“The suspect was disturbed, or so they reckon,” Frank said. “I suppose he believed the house was empty and was shocked to discover it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but he’d had enough time to turn the place upside down. Furniture was upturned, papers were strewn everywhere. If he did all that quietly enough not to disturb her, he knew she was there. If he made plenty of noise, she would have been downstairs before he’d had the chance to do so much damage.”

“Not necessarily.” Frank took a swig of his beer. “A young woman is dropping off to sleep when she hears a noise. She believes someone’s in the house so, quite naturally, she’s terrified. A lot of women would stay where they were and keep quiet.”

“True.”

“Or they’d do a treble-nine from the safety of their bedroom. Perhaps move a set of drawers or something in front of the door. Hide in the wardrobe maybe. Did she have a phone in the bedroom?”

“I assume so,” Dylan said. “Most people keep a mobile next to them, don’t they?”

“I don’t.”

“No, but you’re still celebrating the invention of the wheel.”

Frank grinned good-naturedly.

“I think we have to assume he was upstairs when Prue saw him,” Dylan said. “If he’d been downstairs, I believe it’s unlikely she’d have fallen. Far more likely is that he was upstairs and either she fell to her death trying to run from him, or he pushed past her trying to escape.”

“Possible.”

“What else did you manage to find out from your friends at the nick, then? You managed to have a snoop round, didn’t you?”

Frank smiled at that. “I don’t need to snoop. Yes, I managed to have a word with a couple of the investigating officers.”

“And?”

“Nothing exciting, I’m afraid. They’ve been after the suspect for over a year. He targets houses like Prue Murphy’s—semi-detached or end-terrace houses with no alarms in quiet residential areas. He’s never bothered about the mess he makes. Drawers will be emptied, tables upturned, chairs damaged, DVDs or CDs tossed around. As for what he’s taken, it’s usually stuff that’s easy to sell. It’s small-time. If he nicks a couple of hundred pounds’ worth, he’s done a good night’s work. He’s a petty thief, probably someone with a drug habit. He goes for small items—hi-fi, iPods, phones, cameras—stuff that’s cheap and easy to shift. The houses have been empty, the owners away for a fortnight or a weekend. How he comes by his information, they don’t know. They’re still looking into that. They’re pretty sure he believed Prue Murphy’s house was empty, and got the shock of his life when she confronted him. Like you, they believe he was upstairs because she had her back to the stairs when she fell. It was the back of her head that took the full brunt. Maybe he was upstairs, she backed away from him—I don’t know.”

Dylan’s small seed of doubt took root. The scenario was too neat and tidy.

“Okay,” he said. “So this time, he cocked up because the house was occupied. He also cocked up because, as far as we know, he didn’t steal so much as a teabag. There was a small amount of cash lying on the kitchen table and he must have seen it. If he was small-time, why didn’t he pocket that? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Give me another theory,” Frank said.

Dylan expelled his breath. “Theories are a bit thin on the ground right now. Maybe someone wanted her dead and tried to make it look like a burglary.”

“Why would they? She had nothing—no money, no position of power. She was just a young woman trying to eke out a living making and selling her jewellery designs.”

Frank was right. Prue Murphy simply wasn’t victim material.

“How did the funeral go?” Frank asked.

“The same as they always go. Bloody depressing affairs. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, if that’s what you mean. Except—”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing really. I saw a young teenager watching people gather beforehand. It was difficult to say if he was old enough to smoke so perhaps he was just having a crafty one and happened to have it by the entrance to the church. He seemed interested though. There was someone else too, a chap with a beard looking on from a distance. I didn’t see him in the church, but afterwards, while we were gathered by the grave, he was watching people.” Dylan tried to recall an image of him. Probably six feet tall, early sixties maybe but agile-looking, untidy grey hair and beard. “I got the impression he was paying more attention to the mourners than to the service itself.”

“You didn’t speak to him?”

“No. Some blasted woman nearly put my eye out with her umbrella and when I turned round, he’d vanished. I tried to find him, but there was no sign of him.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Yeah, but other than that, zilch. At the wake afterwards, I spoke to a couple of Prue’s neighbours. They said it was windy that night so neither of them would have heard anything. They weren’t much help. Oh, and I spoke to a Danny Thompson, who owns a wine bar in the town centre.”

“Danny Thompson. Daniel Thompson. I’m sure I know that name. Never mind, it’ll come to me. Carry on.”

“He knew Prue because, every now and again, she’d take a taxi into town, get drunk in his bar and take a taxi home. He had the impression she was nursing a broken heart. He talked of a man she couldn’t have.”

“Married?”

“Or gay. He told me she once said something about Prince Charming always being married, gay or both.”

“So she’d been dumped by some bloke,” Frank said, “and was feeling sorry for herself. God, we all think that, especially when we’ve had a few drinks.”

Frank had a point. There was probably nothing more to it than that.

“Got him,” Frank said, pleased with himself. “Danny Thompson was ordered to carry out some improvements to his wine bar, something to do with health and safety. Or was it hygiene laws? I don’t know now. Anyway, before he could carry out these expensive improvements, there was a convenient fire at the premises.”

“You’re telling me he torched it and claimed on the insurance?”

“Nope. I’m telling you that
someone
torched it and he claimed on the insurance. It could have been your man Thompson or kids messing around with matches. The insurance company asked plenty of questions but nothing conclusive came to light.”

“He’s not making a lot of money, or so he said.”

“I’m not surprised.” Frank took a swig of his beer and grinned. “Wine bars are too bloody girlie for the Clough. We like proper drinks in proper pubs. Wine bars are for you soft southerners.”

Dylan laughed, but he refused to take the bait. “The police didn’t find anything else at Prue’s home? Like footprints or fibres?”

“Nothing. The ground was wet, but he kept to the path. He walked round the back, cut glass from a small side window, reached inside—wearing gloves—to open the back door and let himself in. If he touched the victim, he left no evidence.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?” Frank asked.

“It means my gut instinct says something isn’t right and you should always listen to your guts, Frank. They’re also telling me it’s time we had another drink. Same again?”

There were worse ways for Dylan to spend time than enjoying a drink with an old friend. A couple more and the chill of funerals would have gone completely.