Killing a Unicorn (4 page)

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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

BOOK: Killing a Unicorn
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The knot in Jonathan's guts was tightening, as though he'd eaten something bad. Ignoring the disapproval, he said, ‘So why the investigation?'
The DI didn't seem to feel the repeated question worthy of an answer. He had small grey eyes, opaque as clay marbles, and his hard stare deliberately gave nothing away, as if to project the image of the hard-nosed copper who'd seen it all before. Jonathan tried to dismiss this as play-acting, a need to intimidate and overwhelm, but he couldn't help feeling that behind it all lurked the sense of a very real aggression. The inspector was, at a guess, just the wrong side of fifty, retirement looming, and making the most of the nearest thing to drama the local force could have had in years. The acme of excitement in Felsborough nick must be rounding up drunk and disorderlies. ‘As my sergeant said,' he replied at last, ‘we have to make sure that's how it happened. There are certain things that need to be explained.'
‘Such as?'
‘Well, it was a bit careless, at the least unwise, wouldn't you say, taking a dangerous path like that one down by the waterfall, if she was going down to your brother's house at The Watersplash, as it seems likely? She'd recently broken her ankle, hadn't she? Couldn't walk easily yet, not even with her walking stick?'
‘That wouldn't necessarily have stopped Bibi! Anyway, dangerous is relative. If you know the path, as she did, there's nothing to it. It's not Mount Everest. And with her dodgy ankle, it's more likely the stick would've helped, rather than hindered.'
‘Maybe so.' He paused to look Jonathan up and down. ‘We haven't found the stick yet, by the way, but we shall.'
‘I should hope so! I said you should never have allowed her to use it, Alyssa!'
Crouch's gaze swivelled towards Miss Arrow. His eyes narrowed, perhaps not yet able to place her in the scheme of things. Jonathan thought he'd better not make the mistake of thinking her diminutive size bore any relation to her effectiveness. ‘That was the Judge's walking stick, you know!' she declared. Jane was a fiercer defendant of all that appertained to the Judge than any of the family were. Given her own predilections, she probably admired his authoritarianism.
‘Oh? Which judge was that?' asked Crouch, ill-advisedly, earning himself a severe look from Jane.
‘Judge Calvert, of course! It was his malacca cane, with a silver knob and an inscribed band, which they gave him when he retired from the circuit and was appointed to the High Court,' she said, nodding, almost genuflecting, towards the forbidding portrait of the man over the fireplace. Crouch followed her gaze with a sardonic amusement he didn't trouble to hide. He had obviously met judges like that before. Clearly, he thought the walking stick had been given in gratitude for seeing the end of him.
Jonathan couldn't quite see the cane's importance to the police, but he could imagine the fuss Jane would make if it were to be permanently lost, though that seemed unlikely. If it hadn't turned up anywhere along the edge of the pool, it shouldn't be beyond the resources of the police to dredge for it. But maybe Bibi had fallen in higher up, and been carried down into the depths of the pool — and then the stream itself would be the obvious place to look - something like a walking stick would surely have got itself wedged into the bank or among the pudding stones on the bed, but he thought it wiser not to suggest this. He didn't think Crouch was the type to appreciate being told how to do his job.
‘You mentioned sleeping pills, just now,' Crouch was going on, putting Jane's comments aside and watching
Jonathan narrowly. ‘Why did you immediately assume Ms Morgan's death was due to an overdose?'
‘Overdose? Did I say that? I don't recall.' Jonathan spoke sharply before he caught a dangerous gleam in the inspector's eye and decided he'd better not push too far. He shrugged. ‘It's just that those pills of hers were knockout tablets — instant drowsiness. I know my brother made her promise she'd never take any unless he was around. He always thought she could easily forget she'd taken one and swallow another.'
Especially if she'd had a few drinks.
‘She used to be like a zombie the next day, anyone will tell you.' In fact, he had a strong notion that Chip had removed the pills altogether.
Sergeant Colville was writing somet
That's what they all say, said the inspector's expression. And in fairness, could that ever be stated, with complete conviction, of anyone, and especially of Bibi, who had never been a person you could pigeonhole? Jonathan's eyes automatically sought out Jane Arrow and he sensed straight away that she'd read his thoughts, and that they probably coincided with her own. She was sharp, Jane. Maybe that was why it was always she who seemed to take charge of situations in this house — not Alyssa, with her outspoken opinions and her emotions all on the surface. Jane, as the daughter of a naval officer, had a background of inherited pragmatism. Just what her position was in the household never seemed to have been defined … for years she had ridden daily, sitting uncompromisingly upright on her old-fashioned bicycle, from her house
in Middleton Thorpe village to Membery Place, where she performed many of the duties normally associated with a housekeeper, as well as acting as companion, friend, adviser, occasional helper in the nurseries — all without, as far as Jonathan was aware, being paid a penny. He'd always assumed she had independent means, but he sometimes wondered about her motives.
‘Where is everyone?' he asked her. ‘Where's Chip?'
‘He's in London, supposed to be at some function — but we haven't been able to locate his secretary to find out where. And Mark's in Brussels, Francine hasn't been able to get hold of him, either –'
‘Where's she, then? Where's Fran?'
‘She insisted on going back home,' Alyssa said. ‘I wanted her to sleep here, but she wouldn't, she thought Mark might ring. She shouldn't be on her own after a shock like that. Poor Fran!'
There was some subtext here that he hadn't yet read. He looked once more at Jane Arrow for enlightenment.
‘It was Francine who found her, Jonathan. After she had put Jasie to bed, Bibi looked in, excusing herself from supper, as she had one of her headaches coming on. She was going outside for a breath of air, and then to bed. That, I'm afraid, was the last we saw of her.'
Alyssa said, ‘Oh dear. We were waiting for you, wondering where on earth you'd got to. We watched television for a bit, had a little aperitif. I — er, I think we may have dozed a little, we'd had a busy day and you know how it is, at our age.' Jane raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, Jane, we
both
of us jumped sky high when the telephone rang! But it wasn't you, Jonathan, it was Fran, in an awful state, the dear girl, to say she'd found Bibi in the waterfall pool.'
‘Jesus.' Jane pressed her lips together at the profanity and, automatically, as if he were still a boy, Jonathan followed up with an apology.
But for Fran to have come across Bibi, drowned, there, of all places: in the pool with its mossy rocks, the place Fran so dearly loved! It was where he and she had sat together
that memorable evening, years ago, when he'd arrived home from Budapest, full of his first major success. He'd gone down to The Watersplash, ostensibly to see the new house, then almost finished, taking a bottle to drink to its completion, though perhaps that hadn't been his only objective. He'd also been bursting to talk about his concert. Praise was sweet music indeed, in those early days.
Mark hadn't been there however, only Fran. She'd had food that she'd brought with her for her supper and they'd sat by the pool, sharing a funny, impromptu meal. Peanut butter sandwiches and half an apple each. And afterwards, they'd drunk the golden Tokay he'd splashed out on in the euphoric aftermath of the concert, by then deliciously cool from being suspended in the depths of the pool. A fine, sweet wine that wasn't as innocuous as it seemed, and had loosened their tongues, especially his, since he had learned not to make a habit of drinking too much. Previously, he and Fran had never really had the opportunity to get properly acquainted, but that evening had established an immediate rapport between them that had continued ever since, an easy comradeship that was like being with the sister he'd never had. It had been an evening very much like this had been, still glowing with the heat of the day, and they'd sat there peacefully until the sun went down and the trees cast their shadows, watching the reflections die from the water. He found it impossible to think of the place now. ‘I'll go and fetch her, bring her back here,' he said immediately.
‘She won't come,' Alyssa said. ‘She's already said so and you know what Fran's like.'
‘I'll go, all the same.'
‘I've no objection,' the inspector remarked as he jumped up, though it hadn't even occurred to Jonathan that he might be expected to ask for permission. ‘We have all the relevant details. I don't think I need waste any more of your time at present,' he added, throwing open the remark to the room in general, glancing at his watch. ‘There
doesn't seem to be any point in waiting for the other Mr Calvert to arrive. I'll see him tomorrow.'
‘But why do you need to see Chip at all?' Alyssa asked. ‘He can't tell you any more than we have done.'
The big inspector stared at her with cold grey eyes. He spoke loudly and slowly, as if addressing someone slightly deaf. ‘He'll be needed to make a formal identification of the body. You do realize that, I suppose? He can come down and do it tomorrow.'
‘Come down where? And what do you mean, identification? Fran's already told you it's Bibi. Anyway, why can't he do it here, if it's necessary?'
‘She's already been taken away, Mrs Calvert.' The young policewoman spoke gently, risking another snub from the inspector by her intervention.
‘Away where? We haven't been in touch with the funeral directors yet. Oh! Oh, my dear Lord … I suppose you mean — the mortuary,' she finished faintly. ‘But — but is that necessary?'
‘I'm sorry, yes, in the circumstances.'
‘No need to hurry over contacting the undertaker,' said Crouch brusquely. ‘There'll have to be an autopsy before there can be any funeral.'
‘A what?' Alyssa was horrified.
‘An autopsy — a post-mortem. Just to make sure …' He paused and looked round at the circle of stricken faces. ' … that everything's just as it should be.' His tone was unsympathetic, just on the edge of insolence.
 
 
He wasn't always that odious, Kate Colville reminded herself as they drove away, just a man who couldn't ever forget that he'd had what he thought of as a rotten deal. To be fair, most other people thought the same — most of the men in the squad, anyway. Demotion wasn't something any man took easily, it was what they all dreaded, especially someone as macho as Dave Crouch. And today
hadn't been one of the good ones. Its ending seemed all of a piece.
Every man and woman in the Division knew his history by now. There was a lot of ‘there but for the grace of God' in the way they regarded him and, for the moment at any rate, they put up with his rotten attitudes, excusing him. He'd screwed up his career with the Met and got himself transferred here to lick his wounds. No one blamed him for what had happened, he was just bloody unlucky, that he'd been the one out of the two-man armed response unit to go and shoot the robber toting a gun which, it turned out, had been nothing more than a replica pistol. But hell, you didn't stop to ask questions when you were at the wrong end of what looked like a .22 handgun in the hands of a known and dangerous villain.
Nevertheless, somebody had to take the rap, the top brass had to go through the motions, justice had to be seen to be done. Disciplinary questions were asked, measures taken. But you couldn't expect a man like Dave Crouch to accept the inevitable so easily. No one had reason to know that better than Kate. Apart from anything else, there was the loss of face such censure implied. He had other problems, too, of a personal nature, that he carried with him from much further back in the past.
‘When did Logie say he'd be doing the PM?' she asked as the police car sped through Middleton Thorpe village. It was barely more than a hamlet, all of two minutes from the pub at the beginning to the church at the end, less if you disregarded the signs requesting the lowering of the speed limit, as Crouch had done. But he always drove too fast, a legacy from his former days, when a speedy response had been a necessity. She knew better than to remonstrate, or to complain about the way he'd treated her during the interview, either.
My sergeant
! she remembered, smarting. It would just give him another handle to start a row, and that was something she tried to avoid unless it became absolutely necessary.

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