The Red House (14 page)

Detective Sergeant Spencer makes the mistake of darting his eyes from my paper cup of black-dark coffee to my inflated middle.

‘If you find our case half as interesting as my caffeine intake, you may make a half-decent copper,’ I comment blandly.

He blushes. He’s a ginger, with paper-white skin, and his embarrassed cheeks near glow. ‘Sorry,’ he stammers. ‘It’s just, my mum had a baby last year, and she cut out coffee. Tea, even. I thought everyone did that. Well, every pregnant woman. I thought you all did that …’ He must have noticed the mental arithmetic going on behind my eyes. ‘My step-mum, I mean. She’s not my real mum. She’s my age.’

Our age.
I’m not that much older. Spencer pushes his shoulders back and stretches his spine to add an inch to his height, but he can only look young. It’s that damn hair. That, and his constant apologising.
Could be worse. He
could be arrogant and then not apologise. At least this makes a change.

It’s morning at our desks after a long night in Highfields Caldecote, dealing with fresh witnesses and old bodies. Then, after too short a respite between cool bedsheets, I’d had to meet Morgan Davies landing at Stansted Airport, returning from Shannon. It’s a short journey but Morgan had had to wait till morning for a flight.

I’d stoically absorbed her barrage of insults and demands while communicating the details of Rowena’s death, trespassers in her barn, and her daughter’s present location at a friend’s home which, surprisingly, turned out to be what got the biggest reaction. I’d had to quickly prioritise my questions.

There was no time for tact. I pulled up a photo on my phone screen and put it under Morgan’s eyes.

She sucked in a breath.

‘Do you recognise this man?’

‘That builder! He shoots rabbits.’ She shudders. ‘He used our toilet once. I didn’t want him to, but he said that the Portaloo was broken and that the water was already off in the other houses. I thought he might commit vandalism of some sort if I didn’t let him. He’s – he appears to be – is he dead?’

‘Yes. Do you know his name, Mrs Davies?’

Morgan pushed my arm to shove the image away. She turned to go and pulled her rolling suitcase over my foot.

I followed. ‘Do you know his name?’

She stopped under a sign for the parking shuttle. ‘Of course not! Why would I? We didn’t natter through the bathroom door! Why are you asking me? If you think that
one of us had something to do with … with however he met his end … over some bloody rabbits!’

‘No, Mrs Davies, but he was in your barn last night.’

She paled. ‘With my mother?’

‘He appears to have entered after she had already died. He responded to the alarm. Dora Keene was looking for Fiona and pulled it thinking it was a light.’ In a panic over being locked in, but I didn’t say that yet, nor how he had died. That would come. These were but the early pebbles of the avalanche, and they hit Morgan Davies hard just as they were.

‘That girl is not permitted on our property. That man is not permitted on our property.’ Tears balanced on her lower lashes then splashed down onto her cheeks. ‘You can’t leave children alone for a moment. I say this as a fellow mother. They can’t be trusted. You need to know that.’ She lifted her hand; I knew what was coming. She rubbed her palm against my belly, fingers spread. The baby kicked, which she took as a reward. I preferred to interpret it as the little one acting out on my behalf. I would love a chance to kick the belly-touchers.

Instead, I said, ‘We’ll need to talk more later, before you return to your home. The property is a crime scene.’

‘That’s absurd!’

‘We need to talk. Please, Mrs Davies. I understand your urgency to get to your daughter. Just don’t bring her home until we’ve had that chance.’

‘It’s not my home! It’s hers. It’s my mother’s. I’ve only ever been a guest, a tolerated squatter. You don’t know what it was like. She wouldn’t even share the house with me. She lived in that barn for as long as I have memories. My father
died when I was fourteen and she left me to live in the White House alone. I did stupid things, disgusting things, but what else will a teenager do, unparented? When I left at eighteen I vowed I would never come back. Sometimes I wish I never had.’

The parking shuttle pulled up and she heaved her suitcase on board. She had refused my offer of a lift, needing to get her own car back.

I put one foot up into the shuttle doorway to make it wait. ‘So your family has lived in the house for a long time? Forty years? More?’

‘Why?’

‘When were you eighteen, and when did you come back?’

‘This is ridiculous!’

‘I hate to guess, but all right: 1975?’

Morgan’s vanity overrode her indignation. ‘1982,’ she corrected, through gritted teeth. ‘I returned four years later.’

I wondered if something other than a teenager’s natural urge to move out might have driven her. Had Morgan Davies run away from something freshly buried under the blackberry bushes?

‘There’s more to discuss, Mrs Davies,’ like what was found under the blackberry bushes. But the shuttle doors creaked in anticipation, I retracted my foot, and she was taken away.

Those buried remains are what I focus on now.

The pathologist has made preliminary observations. The remains are of a woman and child. The smaller skeleton is nestled such that the pathologist assumed at
first sight that it was in utero but further examination in situ showed that it was separate from the woman, on top of her not inside her. They’re both still in the ground, the dirt on and around them being swept away by little forensic brooms and then sifted. He’s there, supervising the exhumation himself.

He’s sent photos to my phone. I steel myself to not react. I force my face to fall into a careful neutral, and freeze it there.

The adult skeleton’s arms are crossed over its chest, formally placed, not holding the baby.
So not buried alive, thank God
, I think, briefly, stupidly. It’s not that deep a grave. Of course they were dead going into it; otherwise they would have clawed up and out. I shake the image off, literally shimmying my shoulders.

Spencer’s head is next to my cheek, to share the view of the phone’s small screen. He bites down on a cupcake and chews. A blue sprinkle clings to his upper lip. ‘You want one?’ he offers. There’s a tin of them open on his desk.

‘Somebody’s birthday?’ I ask, glad of the distraction.

‘I like to bake. Go back one …’ His finger darts out, like a frog tongue catching a fly, and slides across the screen to return to the previous photo.

I tilt my head. ‘What do you see?’

He taps the screen, enlarging the image. ‘That orange colour, there. Is that the edge of a blanket? Or clothes? A collar?’

‘I expect Jensen will fill us in.’

‘There was a blanket or bedspread that colour in the barn. Maybe part of a set.’

‘What, on the bed?’

‘No, in the back. I drew a map.’ He pulls a paper out of his back pocket and unfolds it. It’s the layout of the barn, with labels. He pokes at the phrase ‘linens & clothing’. There are also ‘food’, ‘appliances’, ‘furniture’, and ‘papers & books’.

‘You mapped her hoarding?’

The surprise in my voice appears to offend him. ‘I thought it could be helpful.’ He plucks a second cupcake and consumes it in two bites.

‘I’ll put a gold star next to your name in my lesson book.’

I don’t mean it badly, but he pushes the map back into his pocket, and wipes a streak of icing off his cheek. I pretend not to notice his hurt feelings and get on with it. Handholding doesn’t help in the long run.

‘There’s more to this situation,’ I say. ‘Morgan Davies claims that her mother has lived in the barn for decades. Depending on how long the remains have been there, she could have known about them. She could have … Do you think the redevelopment may have triggered all this? Rowena Davies thought that the bodies might be found, so she killed herself?’

‘Still waiting on what was in her system.’ His breath smells like pure sugar. ‘But the empty pill packets suggest …’

‘Maybe she was just ready to die.’

‘Maybe one of the girls had something to do with it,’ Spencer says casually, but it’s obvious that he’s testing my loyalty.

I have to be careful. We’ll need to talk to Keene, to get information about Dora and Fiona and their friendship together. At the same time, we’re not supposed to give any information to him, at least not more than will be obvious
from the questions themselves. I can’t yet trust Spencer to understand that my history with Keene can be an asset here. I give him the answer he needs.

‘Sure. Maybe one of the girls,’ I admit. ‘Maybe the old woman asked for help. It would be natural to ask her granddaughter.’

‘Her granddaughter’s not the one who was in the barn. What if that builder caught the other girl in the act?’

I decline to answer. ‘Look, this is what we’ve got.’ I rip pages from a spiral notebook and write a name on each.

Rowena Davies.
‘She’s dead. Probably suicide, maybe helped.’ Next to that I lay another page:
Dora Keene.
‘Locked in the barn. Maybe by the dead builder? But he used the gun to break in, so …’ Next to her, I place his page:
Dead man. Builder
. ‘No ID in his pockets and his fingerprints aren’t in the system. The car belongs to the development company. Shotgun unregistered.’ I hate guns. ‘We’re still waiting to hear from the developer who bought the land, for him to ID his employee. Dora killed him in what she thought was self-defence.’

Spencer laughs, in a truncated burst. ‘She says.’

My head snaps up. ‘What’s in it for her?’

‘She was discovered alone in a friend’s barn with a teacher. She was discovered alone in a barn with a dead body. Take your pick.’

I hate how reasonable his suspicions are.
I know Dora, I know her like
… Before I became pregnant, I would have said ‘like my own child’. But I don’t, not as close as that. And who says that even parents know anything about what their children are really up to, anyway?

I tear another page and write on it:
Patrick Bell.
‘Claims to be a long-lost, grown-up former resident of the area. Supposed to have been there last night. Looking to meet up with his sister, Imogen. A sister who happens to resemble Dora Keene.’ I write
Imogen Wright-Llewellyn
and
Maxwell Gant
on two more sheets. On a seventh I write
Mother and child
, dead under the blackberry bushes.

‘Aw, mother and child, like on a Christmas card,’ Spencer jokes, and the image of a horrific skeleton Madonna flashes in my mind, skull tilted towards her skeleton babe, inside a border of mistletoe.

I shake it off. ‘Imogen Wright-Llewellyn and Patrick Bell claim to have lived nearby. They were likely just children when the bodies were buried, if they overlapped with them at all, but they may know something …’

Spencer doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s rearranging the papers. I hold back the urge to slap his hands. It feels like he’s fiddling around in my head.

‘Right. Dead, dead, dead, dead,’ he says, stacking three sheets. That’s Rowena, the builder, and the macabre Christmas card, as I’ll now be forced to think of them.

He continues: ‘Present at the scene of the current crime or crimes.’ That’s Maxwell and Dora.

‘Fiona too,’ I add. I rip out another sheet, write her name and add it to the second pile.

Lastly, ‘Ancillary,’ he says, adding the sheets for Imogen and Patrick Bell.

I can’t help but tease him. ‘Big word.’

‘Fuck off. Ancillary,’ he repeats. He plunges a finger between
Patrick
and
Bell
, pinning the paper down. ‘If he even exists. You think?’

I shake my head, not a negative shake but a who-the-hell-knows. I add a question mark to his name.

‘We could have as many as four crimes here,’ I say, reshuffling the papers. ‘Rowena, the builder, and the two skeletons.’ I put those three sheets in a row. I put
Dora, Maxwell
and
Fiona
in a column descending from between the first two. ‘They both died last night. Any of these three could have been involved.’ I move the
Mother and child
up to the top, above
Rowena
. ‘Maybe Rowena knew they were about to found. Maybe she killed herself or had a heart attack. So this one’ – I tap
Mother and child
– ‘caused this one’ – I tap
Rowena
– ‘and the builder was an accident.
Ancillary
,’ I joke.

Spencer smirks. ‘Which makes the only actual murder the one that’s too old to solve.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t murder. Rowena used to be a midwife, at Hinchingbrooke. What if she practised midwifery at home?’

‘The baby skeleton is really small. Premature, maybe? A birth gone bad?’

‘Maybe not murder. Maybe an accident, covered up. Maybe she buried a mistake.’
Maybe no killers, just cowards.

‘So who locked the barn?’ Spencer says.

I lean back. ‘Dora was in there, with Rowena.’ I separate those pages and put them on top of Spencer’s cupcake tin. ‘Fiona, Maxwell, and the builder were there.’ I arrange them around it.

‘Maybe Patrick Bell.’

‘Maybe Patrick Bell,’ I agree, adding him. The cupcakes are now surrounded. I add the page with Imogen’s name
on it with Dora; someone may have mistaken one for the other. ‘It was locked from the outside. So no one was locking themselves in
with
her. There’s no room for a sexual motive.’

‘Maybe he was already in there.’ Spencer adds Maxwell to the cupcake tin.

‘It’s a strange place for a tryst. You wouldn’t meet for sex with Grandma asleep in there.’
But where
would
Dora go?
I wonder. Now that her father’s not working, there may not be the chance for privacy that one would expect around this age. She’s fifteen already.
Jesus, I feel old.

‘Maybe Fiona was jealous and tricked Dora. Offered the barn to her, told her Rowena was away, or sleeping in the house. They show up, find dead grandma, freak out, they’re locked in, they panic and set off the alarm. The builder comes to the rescue, but they don’t know who he is. Boom, he’s dead. All this time Fiona’s in the house. She didn’t come out when the alarm went off. That’s odd, right?’