Rattling the Bones (26 page)

We sat in silence. Then I said, ‘You might like to visit Culpeper if only to see the house. It is out of this world. It must be worth a fortune. I don’t know if that gives less significance to Culpeper hiring an enquiry agency, or more. I mean, if you’re rich, you can indulge yourself in a whim, can’t you? It’s not like you’re breaking open the piggy bank, something you’d only do if it really mattered a lot. Besides, I got the impression Culpeper likes people to report back to him. He’s a virtual prisoner in his own home but once upon a time, I bet, he was one of life’s movers and shakers and he still likes to keep a finger on the button. Perhaps it gives him a buzz to know he can still get people to jump when he says so.’

Morgan gave a muffled growl.

‘He’s a nice old boy,’ I went on hastily, ‘I honestly liked him, but I wouldn’t try and fool him. But if someone like that is bored, he might just decide to set Duane the task of finding Edna as a kind of hobby. It
might
just all be an intellectual exercise to him, like a crossword puzzle, something to pass the time. But on the other hand he seemed genuinely upset to learn that Edna had been living rough when I first met her. He didn’t fake that. He hadn’t known it and he was shocked. He really cared. When I told him she was in hospital he went all to pieces.’

‘I’m always interested in what rich people do,’ Janice Morgan said simply. ‘They sometimes wind up murdered.’

‘No one could get to Culpeper. He’s surrounded by security - except at the bottom of his back garden. That runs down to the canal but I’m sure there are all kinds of devices hidden in the undergrowth to let you know if there’s an intruder. Besides, he doesn’t go out and very few people get in to see him - except his family and his spies. It’s all a bit like
The Godfather
.’

‘Money makes motive,’ said Janice.

She sniffed the air. ‘Your dog’s clawed a hole in that bin bag and is dragging out your dirty clothing.’

‘You’re very quiet,’ said Ganesh.

It was evening and we were on our way to the hospital to see Edna again.

‘I’ve had a busy day, going to see Culpeper. You should see that house, Gan. Poor old chap, he’s lost both his lower legs. He’s pretty with it mentally, though. He must be really frustrated.’

‘Sure,’ murmured Ganesh giving me a careful once-over look. ‘What happened to your nose?’

I touched my nose and winced because it was tender. ‘Nothing.’

‘It looks swollen.’ His tone grew suspicious.

‘Oh? I tripped over Bonnie.’

‘Right,’ he said in a way which indicated he didn’t believe me.

We found Edna sitting beside the bed looking quite pink and chipper in what looked like a brand-new blue towelling dressing gown. Around us other visitors chatted to patients and plied them with grapes and Get Well cards. I handed Edna the bar of chocolate we’d brought from the shop.

‘Thank you, my dears!’ she said graciously and squirrelled the chocolate away in a pocket of the dressing gown. ‘I’m going back to the hostel tomorrow.’

‘Are you sure, Edna?’ I asked in some dismay. It was what I’d told Morgan I wanted for Edna, to be released from hospital. But I had to admit she was safe in here from homicidal motorcyclists. She looked so much better in herself today that it allayed my fears the hospital would get her down.

‘They told me so. She told me so.’

‘Who did, Edna?’

Edna’s mind had moved on. She leaned forward confidentially and whispered, ‘There’s such a nice young girl in the bed over there but she’s had everything out.’

‘Do you mind?’ protested Ganesh. ‘If the conversation is going to be about women’s insides I’m leaving.’

‘Edna,’ I persisted. ‘I’m not interested in any of your fellow patients. Who told you about going back to the hostel?’

‘That girl who helps run the place, Nikki, she’s called. She was here today. I think it was today.’ Edna frowned and pursed her lips, chasing the elusive scrap of memory, trying to fit it into the timetable. She gave up and concentrated on something nearer and more solid. She patted the pocket to check the chocolate was still there and smiled happily.

‘Did she bring the dressing gown?’

Edna looked down at the dressing gown as if she hadn’t paid much attention to it before and smoothed the surface experimentally. ‘I suppose she did. Can’t remember. She’s all right as those charity people go. I don’t hold with charities much. A charity took my cats.’ Her air of goodwill faded. She leaned forward. ‘I don’t forget my cats!’

‘No, you don’t,’ muttered Ganesh beside me.

Edna fished the chocolate from the pocket and studied it. ‘I’ll keep the wrapping paper,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty.’ She stuffed the bar away again.

‘Edna,’ I began carefully, ‘this accident you had in the street . . .’

‘I didn’t have any accident!’ she snapped. ‘He ran me down, or he tried to run me down.’

‘I believe you, Edna, honestly I do. Can you remember whether you were distracted by anything or anyone just before it happened?’

She turned her gaze on me with a disconcerting alertness. ‘Like what, dear?’

‘I don’t want to put ideas into your head,’ I explained. ‘I just would appreciate it if you’d think back over the - the incident from the moment you decided to cross the road.’

‘There was nothing,’ said Edna, sullen now. ‘There were people on the pavement on both sides but nothing in the road until that bike came roaring out of nowhere.’

Ganesh, ever loyal even though he hadn’t a clue what I was up to, leaned forward. ‘Picture it, Edna. An empty road, you . . .’

Edna raised a wrinkled finger and pointed it at him. ‘Not just me, no. There was a youngster who crossed just before me.
He
didn’t get run down, did he? He went strolling across like he’d got all the time in the world, with his eyes fixed on one of those mobile phone things. If anyone had been run down, it should have been him. He wasn’t looking to left or right. He couldn’t have seen anything, anyway. He’d got the hood of his jacket pulled right up over his head. It wasn’t raining.’

‘Thank you, Edna,’ I said. ‘They call them hoodies, those kids who like that fashion.’

Ganesh gave me a funny look.

‘Fashion . . .’ mumbled Edna in disgust. ‘That’s not fashion. I remember when we had fashion. Pencil skirts. You had to have a nice little waist and we wore proper foundation garments. Matching belts and shoes and gloves. My sister had pretty party dresses, lots of stiffened petticoats. I used to watch her getting ready to go and meet her young man. She wore sheer stockings with seams up the back, if she could get ’em.
Are my seams straight, Edna?
They were expensive and if you did lay your hands on a good pair or two you looked after them. None of this throwaway nonsense. If you got a ladder in your stockings you took them to a special shop where they mended them. The girls used to sit in the shop working on it and you could see them from the street, through the windows. The work couldn’t have done their eyesight any good.’

Her voice had been growing drowsier and she closed her eyes.

Ganesh was fidgeting. ‘Come on, Fran,’ he muttered, ‘she’s roaming down memory lane and getting lost doing it, by the sound of it. She’s all of a muddle - you won’t get any more sense out of her. Not that we got much before.’

We took our leave, although I don’t know whether she realised it or had already fallen asleep.

I checked on the way out with the nurse to make sure Edna really was going back to the hostel the next morning.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We kept her in to run some tests, but everything seems fine. I understand someone from the hostel where she lives will be collecting her in the morning.’

‘Did her visitor from the hostel bring that nice dressing gown?’

‘I think she must have done,’ said the nurse. ‘I wasn’t on shift at the time.’

‘What was all that about whether she was distracted before she started to cross the road?’ asked Ganesh, as I’d known he would.

‘Just trying to get a clear picture of what happened,’ I told him. ‘Thanks for your help.’

I was grateful to him. I’d still not told him of my close encounter with the motorcyclist, but he’d chipped in to help me get what I wanted from Edna, even so.

‘You’ll never get a clear picture of anything from her. Not unless she’s rabbiting on about some bygone time when girls mended their stockings, for crying out loud,’ he observed.

I said nothing because I was running it all through my head. I’d never known Edna so loquacious and I put it down to whatever pills they were giving her. But had she told me anything of interest, apart from the sighting of the hooded youth? I had a feeling she had but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

‘Good of the hostel to shell out for a dressing gown for the old bat,’ said Ganesh a bit later.

That roused me. ‘The hostel worker may have brought it in. I’d bet a pound to a penny the hostel didn’t buy it. The place is run on a shoestring. They feed everyone there on beans and vegetables. That dressing gown cost money.’

And it was the sort of thing a clothes-conscious woman like Jessica Davis would buy.

‘
Clothes
,’ I said. ‘For more years than any of us knows Edna has worn cast-off bits and pieces she’s got from charities and goodness knows where else. So why should she care so much about fashion or the lack of it nowadays?’

‘She’s old and potty,’ said Ganesh. ‘She was sane once, I suppose. She remembers something of those days. Old people always remember the past. It’s nothing to worry about.’

But I had a feeling it was. ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I should have asked that nurse how many other visitors Edna had today.’

It was getting late as we made our way homeward but the day was far from over yet. We took the Edgware branch of the Northern Line. I said goodbye to Ganesh at Camden Town and got off the train. It pulled out carrying him on to Chalk Farm, the nearer station for the shop.

I sometimes feel that the whole world meets at Camden Town Tube station. Some people would argue in favour of Oxford Circus being the nation’s rendezvous but the people I know favour Camden Town.

That is why I wasn’t particularly surprised, when I emerged into Camden High Street, to see Les Hooper lumbering down the pavement towards me with the grace of a hippo escaped from Regent’s Park Zoo.

That didn’t mean Les wasn’t surprised to see me. Dismayed might be the better term. He stopped, looked about him helplessly, and clearly would have turned and run if it would have helped. All he could manage was to stand there flapping his shovel-sized hands and looking miserable.

‘Hi, Les,’ I said. ‘Just the bloke I wanted to see.’

‘Oh, ’ullo, darling,’ he returned hoarsely. ‘What do you want me for? It’s not about that poor sod, Duane, is it? ’Cos I don’t know nothing.’

‘Sure you do, Les,’ I said smoothly, linking my arm through his, an action causing him further alarm. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a drink.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he began, trying to disentangle himself from me without actually shaking me off. But, like Bonnie, when I’ve got a grip I don’t let go easily.

‘Come on,’ I interrupted cheerfully. ‘I’m sure you never say no to a pint, Les. My shout.’

‘It’s not that . . .’ he began as I towed him along the pavement. ‘It’s the rozzers.’

‘Police?’ I asked sharply. ‘Have they been to speak to you?’

‘Yes, they bloody have,’ said Les unhappily. ‘Not just your regular couple of pigs, either, but a smart-mouthed woman inspector.’

‘Inspector Morgan?’ I asked.

‘Yes, that’s the one. Here, are you on her payroll or what?’

He stopped and a weight like that isn’t easily budged so I had to stop too, but I didn’t release his arm. His small reddened eyes were peering down at me suspiciously.

‘No, I’m not!’ I snapped. ‘I’m no kind of grass, Les!’

I must have looked my outrage because he became shame-faced and muttered, ‘Didn’t think you was.’

We resumed our uneven progress and entered the first pub we came to. Les seemed to rally when his meaty paw encircled a pint glass and he visibly relaxed. Pubs were his milieu. He probably had mates here who’d help him out if things got awkward. I noticed we gathered a couple of curious stares. They probably weren’t used to Les coming in here with a woman or, at least, not one like me. I’d bought myself a soft drink because I was on business and needed my wits about me.