The Chalon Heads (17 page)

She hadn’t realised he had arrived. Brock would have sent for him, of course, because he was always the most reliable and meticulous. She watched him silently as he homed in on the woman’s dressing-table. So cool, arching his superior Indian eyebrow at something.

‘The lipstick isn’t here,’ Kathy said, glad that she made him jump.

He recovered quickly, giving her a little smile. ‘Hi, Kathy. I wondered where you were.’

She felt pleased that he had been wondering that.

‘I should have known you’d be somewhere around, stuffing up my crime scene,’ he added, turning back to the dressing-table. ‘You had the same idea, did you?’

‘Her makeup looked fresh, as if she’d been getting ready to go out, or to meet someone. But the lipstick is different from the ones here.’

‘I’d better take it all.’ He took a fold of plastic bags from his pocket and began collecting Eva’s jars and tubes, pencils and sticks.

‘Anything from the head?’ Kathy asked, watching the neat, economical way he moved. She now felt slightly uncomfortable being alone in a bedroom with him, with such an absurd, frothy meringue of a bed flaunting itself at the far end.

‘The bed’s a bit over the top, don’t you think?’ Desai murmured.

‘I hadn’t particularly noticed,’ Kathy said. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Trying to make a statement, do you think?’ he said.

She didn’t reply to that. She felt odd, light-headed, and she was aware of a slight shake in her hand. Reaction to the adrenaline rush, of course, the shock of seeing Eva like that.

‘The doc reckons at least twenty-four hours. Probably severed with a long-bladed knife. And she was probably dead before they took her head off.’

‘I should hope so,’ Kathy breathed. She looked at Eva’s dressing-table, so elegant and well stocked, and imagined her here not many days ago, glancing carelessly out at the view she probably took for granted, trying to decide which of all her lovely clothes to wear.

‘I’d better go,’ Kathy said. ‘Got to take the housekeeper in to Farnham.’

‘Hang on,’ he said.

He came towards her, somehow managing to look elegant and purposeful in the silver overalls that made the other SOCOs look like a cross between astronauts and circus clowns, and dropped to his knees at her feet. The bizarre thought came into Kathy’s head that he was going to propose to her.

‘Give me your foot,’ he said, and she dumbly obeyed, lifting the left one. He took off the shoe and examined the sole. Then he replaced it and did the same with the right.

‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to know what manner of crap you’d brought in here.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Do you do that with all the detectives, Leon?’ she asked.

‘Just the women,’ he said, with the faintest smile. ‘I have a thing about women’s feet.’

‘And women’s underwear.’

‘I’m trying to do something about my image, Kathy,’ he said, straightening up and meeting her eyes. ‘Become more human. I’m told people think I’m distant.’

‘I don’t think this is what they have in mind, Leon. They probably want to see you playing rugby and drinking beer.’

‘Ah.
That
human . . .’

He had compelling dark eyes, she thought, and they were testing her in some way.

‘DS Kolla!’ They heard a call in the distance.

‘Underwear’s in there.’ Kathy pointed over her shoulder and left.

They arrived at Farnham police station at the same time as the interpreter, a grey-haired woman who worked part-time for the overseas service of the BBC. Helen Fitzpatrick remained in the front waiting area, while the others were shown into a small interview room where Marianna accepted a glass of water. She seemed somewhat restored, with fresh makeup and clothes; a cardigan over her shoulders, navy slacks tapering to very small feet in gold slippers. But her expression was dull and withdrawn, and her responses at first hesitant.

Kathy began by asking her about herself. Her full name was Marianna Pimental, and she was fifty-three, she said, speaking so softly and tentatively that the interpreter had to lean forward in her chair. She was unmarried, and had been with the de Vasconcellos family since she was seventeen, at first in Vila Real, then later, after Donna Beatriz died, when they moved to the south coast. When Eva married in 1993, and this first reference to Eva brought a pause for the sharp intake of breath and several suppressed sobs, she had not accompanied her to England. However, Eva had sent for her in the following year, and despite Dom Arnaldo’s increasing ill-health and her own reluctance to go abroad, he had insisted she must go.

It was true that she had learned very little English, despite having now lived in England for several years. Neither Eva nor Senor Starling required it of her, and she had no friends here. She was extremely homesick, and had been since she arrived. Were it not for Eva, her only wish would be to return to Portugal and to Dom Arnaldo.

‘Does Mr Starling then speak in Portuguese to you?’ Kathy asked.

He tried, though his command of the language was extremely limited—he had learned it from playing tapes in his car. Eva thought her husband’s attempts to speak her language were comical, and did not encourage them.

‘Apart from being homesick,’ Kathy said, ‘are the arrangements at the Crow’s Nest satisfactory? Is Mr Starling a good employer?’

Donna Eva was her employer, Marianna corrected. Senor Starling was proper. He would customarily address her through Eva, rarely directly. She had no complaints to make about him.

She had now referred several times to Eva without tears, and Kathy tried to move more directly to discussion of her. ‘You must have known her better than almost anyone,’ she said.

Marianna nodded gravely. That was true.

‘What was she really like?’

Marianna proceeded to deliver a precise eulogy. Her mistress had been the most beautiful baby, the most intelligent child, the most considerate young woman that God had yet managed to create. She was in every way perfect. There was nothing more that could be said.

‘Who on earth would want to harm her?’

Marianna’s face darkened. She had seen the barbarians, on the television, from the taxi window in London, even once in Farnham itself—boys without hair, skinheads, monsters allowed to roam loose in the streets of England.

‘Have you ever seen anyone in particular, either at the Farnham house, or in the London flat?’

She had only once been to the London flat.

‘Really? I’m surprised that you didn’t go there with Eva. Why was that?’

Senor Starling needed to have his meals prepared, the house maintained. Eva always considered his needs first. In London she ate out, and the flat had a cleaning woman once a week. It was inconveniently small, and it wasn’t necessary for Marianna to be there. She certainly had no wish to go to London.

‘How often did Eva go there?’

It varied. Perhaps twice a month.

‘Did she have many friends there?’

Marianna turned from the interpreter and stared suspiciously at Kathy as she heard the question in Portuguese. Eva made many friends, because she was so charming. But she did not go to London to meet friends. She was a perfect wife in every way.

‘I can understand, then, why Mr Starling would have wanted her to be his wife, Marianna,’ Kathy said, feeling the frustration of this indirect dialogue, ‘but, really, why did she wish to marry him? Surely she could have had her pick of fine young men, Portuguese men?’

That was true, she could have, and many had tried to woo her, although she was still so young. Perhaps, after so many young suitors, Senor Starling’s maturity had appealed.

‘Perhaps? Didn’t she tell you, you being so close to her?’

Marianna hesitated. Yes, that was what she had told her. And Senor Starling was a man of substance.

‘Rich, you mean? But I thought that Eva’s family was already rich?’

The woman swelled up with umbrage. She could not possibly speak of Dom Arnaldo’s affairs. That would be intolerable. It was enough to say that his family was of the House of Aviz, and related to the de Souza Holsteins, the dukes of Palmela. They had been cushioned from the consequences of the revolution of 1910 by Dom Arnaldo’s grandfather’s estates in Brazil, and it would be insufferable to suggest that Donna Eva had married for money.

‘She really was a princess, then, was she?’

Marianna deflated slowly. It was true, though Eva was far too unostentatious to parade her superb lineage generally, that she was of royal blood. Through the de Souza Holsteins, Eva was related by blood to the Princess Helena, wife of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, and daughter of no less a person than Queen Victoria of England herself.

They stopped for a cup of tea. They had heard the authorised version of Eva, Kathy knew, a portrait of perfection painted by a loyal and doting companion. It explained nothing—why Eva had married Starling, why she went up to London, why someone might have hated her so much that they could mutilate her in that way.

‘She has beautiful clothes, Marianna. Do you help her to buy her clothes?’

Marianna pursed her lips in disapproval at the question.

‘No? But, then, who does? Surely not Mr Starling?’ Kathy gave a little smile of incredulity.

Senor Starling was a very generous husband, Marianna said stoutly. Why not Senor Starling?

‘I don’t doubt he’s generous. But he has no idea about good taste, Marianna. Come, now. The house in Surrey is very comfortable, but it doesn’t have the style of Eva’s clothes, or of the London flat.’

Eva bought her own clothes, on her own, Marianna maintained. She bought them because Senor Starling wanted her to be happy and to look nice.

‘Do they go out together much? You know, to functions where she needs to dress so smartly?’

Certainly, they went out, with friends. But, when pressed, Marianna could name only one couple, Mr and Mrs Cooper, who had visited and stayed with them in Farnham, and with whom Eva and Starling had stayed in some other part of London.

Kathy sighed and waited a moment before going on. ‘It wasn’t the clothes that they quarrelled about, then?’

Marianna started at the word ‘quarrelled’, even before it was translated for her, and once again Kathy had the suspicion that her lack of English might be a matter of convenience.

What did she mean? What was she implying? Eva and Senor Starling
never
quarrelled.

‘Oh, Marianna,’ Kathy shook her head sadly, ‘I think we both know that isn’t true.’

The woman bristled, and Kathy was afraid that she would simply refuse to go on. But then she fixed Kathy with a fierce eye and said, in English, ‘You must say nothing against Senor Starling. He gives her everything, more than everything. He spoils her. Sometimes she is too extravagant. Too much. She is . . .’ and her face crumpled as she finished ‘. . . so young. Sometimes she is lost. No life, no home.’

She dabbed at her eyes, mouth trembling on the brink of sobs.

The phrase struck Kathy, as if it were the first truthful thing Marianna had uttered. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said gently. ‘And this time, before she left, did she give you any idea at all of what she intended to do? Where she might be going?’ Marianna shook her head.

‘A name, perhaps, of a shop? Or a movie?’ Kathy brought out the list of films showing at the Cinema Hollywood. ‘Have a look at these titles. Maybe she mentioned one to you?’

Marianna took the list out of politeness, dubiously. She ran her eye down the page, stiffened and looked up in horror at Kathy. And then the grief, which had been so strangely numbed by the processes of officials, of doctors and police, all in their strange clothes, welled up again in an overwhelming rush, and she began to wail inconsolably.

It took several minutes before she calmed sufficiently for the interpreter to be able to make herself understood to Kathy. She, too, had read the list, and was looking pale.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kathy said, her arm round Marianna, seeing the expression on the interpreter’s face. The woman pointed to a section of the list setting out a programme of the films of the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, her finger resting on the title of the 1970 film
Cabeças Cortadas.

‘What?’ Kathy said, vainly trying to follow this as a woman constable tried to help her with Marianna.

‘
Cabeças Cortadas
,’ the woman gasped. ‘It means
Severed Heads
.’

Helen Fitzpatrick was on her feet when they reached the waiting room, and hurried forward to put an arm round the sobbing Marianna. She looked searchingly at Kathy.

‘I think it’s best that she lies down for a while,’ Kathy said softly. ‘I’ll get a car to take you home, if you don’t mind looking after her.’

Helen agreed. ‘I’ll take her back to the cottage until we can get something organised. How’s Sammy?’

‘Not good. I’ve got some business here, and then I’ll call on you.’

After they’d gone, Kathy returned to the area of the interview rooms, in the corridor meeting Bren clutching a plastic cup of thin frothy coffee in his big fist.

‘How’s it going with Sammy?’ she asked.

‘Brock called in the doc again to look at him. Can hardly get a word out of him, as if he’s just turned in on himself.’

‘I think he and Eva quarrelled over money. Marianna admitted she was extravagant.’

‘Any idea when this was?’

‘No. She’s fallen apart again. I don’t think we’ll get anything more from her today. I’m going to talk to the neighbours now. I just wanted to let you know.’

‘Brock wants me to pick up Keller, just to make absolutely sure he’s not involved. My money’s on the guys working on the Heathrow passenger lists.’

‘How do they know what to look for?’

‘A couple ticketed but only one checks in, someone with a record, I don’t know. But I’ll bet he’s there somewhere. Why else take us out to the airport?’

‘Why do that to Eva? Why destroy the stamp?’

‘Fury, contempt. Someone who hated Sammy so much that he wanted to take everything Sammy owned and tear it up in front of his eyes, rather than keep any of it himself. Who would hate that much?’

‘Sammy did time for being involved in selling drugs to a girl who died. But that was years ago. Surely it would have to be something more recent?’