The Flesh Tailor (18 page)

Wesley didn’t answer.

‘Tell you what, you get over and talk to this Mrs Jannings. I want to know chapter and verse on everyone who’s lived at Tailors
Court over the past sixty years. Every last one of them. And then I want Mabel Cleary found.’

‘Is Harry Parker still enjoying the custody sergeant’s hospitality?’

‘Yes. But we can’t hold him for much longer without more evidence. I’m going to have another word while you’re out with Rach
and hope he makes a slip-up. And I’m having the widow brought in and all.’

‘Parker’s got the lot – means, motive and opportunity.’

‘His place was searched last night and there was no sign of a firearm.’

‘What about tests for residue?’

‘Nothing so far. But he could have worn gloves and got rid of all his clothing along with the gun, unless his mates from prison
did it for him. Maybe he called in a favour. There has to be some reason why they rented the place next door to the victim.’

Wesley stood up. ‘I’d better be off.’

Half an hour later he was sitting in the passenger seat of the pool car, looking out of the window while Rachel drove towards
Morbay. As they crossed the old stone bridge which spanned the River Trad, much narrower here than downstream in Tradmouth,
he could see the
tourist boats bobbing on the grey water, tied up for the winter and protected by tarpaulin. Soon they were speeding out of
the town through brown-green countryside. Then the straggling villages gradually gave way to suburbia; the sprawl of Morbay
that had swallowed fields with its housing estates and business parks. Wesley closed his eyes. He needed time to think.

But before long Rachel announced that they’d arrived at Palm View Residential Home, and when Wesley opened his eyes he saw
that Rachel was parking the car in the drive of a large white stucco house set back from the main road behind a leylandii
hedge. As he emerged from the passenger door he noted that the only palm tree in sight was a puny specimen in a pot by the
front door.

After locking the car Rachel strode ahead of him and rang the doorbell. It wasn’t long before the glass door was opened by
a girl in a nylon overall who looked as though she should have been at school.

They’d phoned ahead so getting in was no problem. Wesley hoped that Mrs Jannings would be able to help them but if she was
like some of the residents they passed in the cabbage-scented corridor he knew they might be out of luck. There were a lot
of blank, puzzled stares and one tiny old woman with fluffy white hair had clutched at his arm with claw-like fingers as he
walked by and asked him if he knew where Bob was. Wesley apologised gently and said that he had no idea.

When he asked the young care assistant about Bob, she seemed to know all about it. No doubt she’d heard the story many times.
‘He was her sweetheart in the War,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘He was American – based in Tradmouth. Went to D-Day and never
came back. It’s
with you being . . s.’ She suddenly looked embarrassed. ‘You know, black like him. She never married, you know. Never got
over it. Poor Elsie.’

Wesley and Rachel looked at each other. In those few words she had summed up one woman’s lifetime of heartbreak and mourning.

‘Esther’s in here,’ she said as they reached the door to a large plastic conservatory. The carpet on the floor had a busy
red pattern and the chairs set around the walls were cane with orange marshmallow cushions.

A big-boned, strong-looking woman with straight iron-grey hair was sitting in the corner, a walking frame placed in front
of her like a protective cage. It was hard to tell her age but Wesley’s first, uncharitable thought was that she was rather
ugly. But when she looked up he was relieved to see that her eyes were sharp and alert.

He saw Rachel give the woman a charming smile as she sat down beside her on the sofa. He left it up to her to explain the
reason for their visit. And as Rachel told her about the skeletons found near the house he watched her face carefully but
he saw no reaction apart from a shake of the head.

‘I don’t know nothing about no skeletons, my love,’ she said to Rachel in a tone that didn’t invite argument. ‘There was never
any talk of anything like that and I can tell you that nobody was buried at Tailors Court while I was there and that’s God’s
honest truth.’ She folded her arms defensively, daring them to contradict her.

‘How long did you live there, Mrs Jannings?’ Wesley spoke for the first time, earning himself a harsh stare. ‘Mr and Mrs Persimmon
mentioned that you were widowed in the War.’

‘That’s right. I got married in 1944. War bride. But my husband went missing in action a couple of weeks after the wedding.
My mother-in-law was an invalid so I stayed on to look after her. She didn’t die till 1979. Sacrificed my life, I did. No
husband. No kids.’ Then a smile spread across her thin lips. ‘But I got Tailors Court.’

‘You inherited it from your mother-in-law?’

‘That’s right.’ The smile suddenly disappeared. ‘Not that it did me much good. I had all that inheritance tax to pay and in
the end I couldn’t manage the place on my own so I sold it to that yuppie couple from London. He said he’d fallen in love
with the countryside when he’d come down here for a visit – something to do with his work. They had no idea if you ask me,’
she said disdainfully. ‘Then my legs gave out so I had to move into this place. It’s going to cost me every bloody penny.’
She snorted in disgust.

‘So when you lived in Tailors Court were there any children there at all?’

She looked at Wesley sideways. ‘I’ve told you, I didn’t have no children. Didn’t have time. Miles was lost in action. And
if you’re thinking those bones are his, you’re wrong. They never found him so I can only guess that he’s still somewhere over
in France. In some corner of a foreign field that is forever England. Isn’t that what they say?’

Wesley looked at her, rather surprised. Somehow Esther Jannings didn’t look the sort to quote Rupert Brooke. ‘I’m sorry. It
must have been very hard for you.’

She gave a little shrug of her wide shoulders. ‘You carry on, don’t you? You’ve got no choice.’

Wesley knew he should be feeling sorry for this woman but something stopped him: perhaps it was because she seemed more than
capable of taking care of herself; or
perhaps it was because there was something self-pitying about her that he found distinctly unattractive. He also suspected
that she’d avoided answering his question about children with the deftness of a politician so he decided to repeat himself.

‘Were there any children staying at Tailors Court while you lived there? Anyone at all, even for a short time?’

She thought for a few moments. ‘Well, if you go back as far as the War, there were some evacuees – vaccies we used to call
’em. But they went home when all the danger passed.’

Rachel leaned forward. ‘Do you remember them?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘How many were there?’

‘A few. They came and went.’

‘Boys or girls?’

‘Both as far as I recall. But my mother-in-law preferred girls. She said they were quieter.’

‘It’s not always the case,’ said Wesley with a smile. ‘My daughter’s a lot more boisterous than my son,’ he added, establishing
his credentials as a family man to put the woman at her ease.

But Esther Jannings just grunted and looked away.

‘Was there a girl called Mabel?’

‘How should I know? There were some snotty kids hanging around the place but I never knew their names and I think a few had
come and gone before I got wed to Miles. I can’t tell you about them cause I was a young girl back then and I didn’t take
no notice. But I do remember there was a land girl called Mary. Miles used to say she was no better than she ought to be.
She was from some big city up north. Manchester maybe.’

‘Do you know what became of her?’ Rachel asked.

Wesley knew what she was thinking. Her mother had been brought up on a farm in the area, had married a local farmer and had
acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of the goings-on in the local farming community over the years. There was always a chance
she’d know somebody who knew somebody whose mother remembered a land girl called Mary who was ‘no better than she ought to
be’. It was a long shot but it was worth a try.

‘She got married to the son of the farmer she worked for. Always flashing her eyes at the men, she was. Even at my Miles.
Little whore,’ she added with a surprising amount of venom.

‘Do you know the name of the farmer?’ Rachel persisted.

‘Haynes. Gorfleet Farm. Got her feet nicely under the table, she did.’

Rachel’s eyes met Wesley’s and she gave him a small nod. He guessed that she knew the Haynes family – or at least her mother
did.

Wesley took over the questioning. ‘One of the skeletons we found belonged to a child aged nine or ten. It was buried near
the paddock and certain items found in the grave suggest that he or she died after the late 1930s.’ He watched Esther Jannings’s
face for a reaction but he saw none.

‘Well, I don’t know nothing about that. The paddock’s some way from the house so who’s to say some murderer didn’t decide
to dump a body there? It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘While I was at Tailors Court I went up in the attic.’

She suddenly looked wary.

‘Have you ever been up to the room at the end? We found a table in there. And what looked like surgical instruments.’

Esther opened her mouth to say something then closed it again. Tight.

‘Do you know anything about that room, Mrs Jannings?’

She shook her head.

‘You lived in the house. You must know something about it.’

She looked Wesley in the eye. ‘It was Miles’s room. He told me never to go in there.’

‘And you did as you were told?’ Wesley asked. Somehow he found it hard to see Esther Jannings as a downtrodden woman.

She nodded. ‘I didn’t go up there and I never wanted to. That door was kept locked and Miles kept the key.’

‘And all the years you lived there after he died, you never went up there out of curiosity?’

‘I did not,’ she said firmly. Somehow Wesley believed her.

‘So you suspected that something …’ He searched for the right word. ‘Something unpleasant happened in there. If you’d just
thought he had a model railway up there you wouldn’t be looking so scared now, Mrs Jannings. What did Miles do in that room?’

‘I don’t know. And I didn’t want to know.’

There was a long pause and Wesley waited. People, in his experience, could never resist filling a silence. Eventually his
patience was rewarded.

‘He used to like science.’

‘What sort of science?’

‘Experiments. He used to tell me about them.’ She shook her head and suddenly she looked unsure of herself, almost frightened.
‘I knew him before the war, you see, and he was … But after he came back from Dunkirk with that wound to his head he changed
completely. It was like something had been switched on. Something evil. I can’t explain.’

‘But you still married him?’ said Rachel gently.

‘He was a man, wasn’t he? And my mam reckoned he was a good catch, being the only son and all.’ She looked Rachel up and down.
‘We can’t all be blonde and pretty, you know. Some of us had to take what we could get.’ There was a bitterness in her words
that made Rachel look away.

‘Tell me about the experiments,’ said Wesley. ‘He never used to be like that when I first met him. Like

I said, he used to be nice, and always bright – he got a scholarship to the Grammar School. Then he came back wounded and
he’d changed. He started to catch animals. He’d put mice in bottles and see how long it took them to die and … the dog had
puppies and one of them was weaker than the others: I found him cutting it up while it was still alive. He said he wanted
to see what went on inside it.’ She looked away. ‘It was disgusting.’

‘But he’d been brought up in the country. He could have seen any farmer around here butchering livestock any time,’ said Rachel
with the detached practicality of a farmer’s daughter.

‘That’s not the same, is it? He liked … experimenting. He said he’d found this book about a man who used to live there who
was some kind of doctor – but I didn’t want to know. It scared me. I wanted him to stop but he
said that if it bothered me, I needn’t have anything to do with it. Then sometimes when I went round his mother would say
he was up in the attic. And he always needed to clean himself up before he came down to see me.’

‘This was before you were married?’

She nodded. ‘Oh yes. I only saw him a couple of times a week when we were courting. And we were only married a fortnight before
he …’ She sniffed loudly. ‘Before he went missing.’

‘So all this started after he was wounded at Dunkirk? It changed his personality?’

‘That’s right.’ She hesitated.

‘Is there something else?’

‘He must have painted them but I can’t see how it was possible.’

Rachel looked at Wesley enquiringly. Esther was beginning to lose them.

‘What are you talking about, Mrs Jannings?’ she said gently. ‘What did you think Miles had painted?’

‘Those horrible pictures behind the panelling.’

‘What panelling?’

‘In the bedroom Miles used to sleep in before we were wed. The room with the stairs leading up to the attic. I started to
take the panelling off one day – must have been a few years after the war finished. His mother said it was old and dark and
why didn’t we use it for firewood and I could paint the room, cheer the place up a bit. But when I saw what was behind it,
I put it straight back again. Horrible it was.’

‘Tell me about it?’ Wesley asked. He knew what was coming but he wanted to hear Esther’s version.

‘It was drawings of people with their skin hanging off. Showing, you know, their insides.’

‘And you thought your husband had drawn them?’

Esther shook her head. ‘He couldn’t draw a straight line and these were good. I mean they were very realistic. I don’t see
how he could have done ’em, I really don’t. But when I went to take the panels off I found they were really loose so he must
have had ’em off the wall at some point.’