Winding Up the Serpent (9 page)

Mike nodded. ‘I think the doctor's receptionists did.'

She held up the letter. ‘The date on this is last week,' she said.

Mike stared at her. ‘Address?'

‘Cardiff. Why say her Mum had died? Obviously,' she said, ‘to explain away the money.'

She would go through the letters later, in her own time. For now she wanted to get on with her search of the dead woman's house, and leave, as soon as possible.

But as she wandered into the kitchen she pondered Mike's bitter words and she felt that old, familiar quickening of the pulse she had first experienced when reading as a child, ‘The game's afoot, Watson.'

Here was someone else in the incomplete picture of Marilyn's life: a local man with criminal tendencies, someone who believed he was above the law. Was he also conceited enough to commit murder and believe he could get away with it? And was he intelligent enough to have killed Marilyn without detection?

She stood, leaning against the doorway. ‘Mike,' she said. ‘Did you say you had him on an attempted murder charge?'

‘Woman shot,' he said. ‘Old girlfriend. They had a row. He said the gun went off by accident. Like hell it did. She got blasted in the arm.' He stared at her. ‘She nearly lost it. If it hadn't been for a 999 call, a quick ambulance with paramedics and a damned skilled surgeon, she might have died.'

She pushed her hair back off her face. ‘So you had the evidence.'

Mike looked even more sour. ‘We thought we did. She made a statement – said he'd told her he'd kill her.'

‘Then surely she testified?'

‘They got to her first,' he said. ‘She withdrew it, denied they had been rowing at all, said it had all been an accident, that she'd asked him to show her how the gun worked. By the time we'd finished we didn't even bother getting her on a charge of obstructing the police. It wasn't worth it,' he ended bitterly. ‘We didn't have a chance. With our chief witness changing her statement it would have got thrown out of court. We couldn't even make stick a charge of malicious wounding. Would you believe it, the crafty bastard even had a bloody licence for the gun.'

‘What happened to her afterwards?' she asked, curious. ‘Is she still living in Leek?'

‘She went off to open a restaurant in the Costa del Sol.' He blinked. ‘With her little boy. Knowing the way he works, they threatened the child. And I wonder where all the money to open the restaurant came from.' His face was red and angry. ‘A lot of the trouble in this peaceful little town,' he said, ‘can be traced straight back to him. He's in it right up to his little squirt's neck.'

He paused for a moment. ‘Someone did get to him once ...' He reflected. ‘Threw him off the edge of Ludd's Cave. Unfortunately, he lived.'

Joanna was silent, then she looked at Mike. ‘How is it I haven't heard of him?' she asked.

Mike looked at her thoughtfully. ‘He's been quiet for a year and a half'

She frowned. ‘Could that be anything to do with Marilyn?'

He shook his head. ‘Probably planning something,' he said. He paused, then looked at her as though debating whether to bring up a subject. ‘Do you ever have nightmares, ma'am?' he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Nothing too troublesome.'

‘I'll tell you my nightmare,' he said, his dark eyes glinting. ‘We're surrounded by moors. Has it never struck you. Inspector,' he asked, ‘all these miles and miles of moorland? They're snowed up for half the year, inaccessible. Roads – they hardly touch the edges. The ground's soft, peaty. It's one of my nightmares. If there were a hundred bodies hidden up there we might never find them.' His fists were clenched, the great veins standing out on his thick neck.

‘Come back to the case, Mike,' she said softly. ‘Marilyn Smith was found, not on the moors but here, in the centre of town, tarted up to the nines in her own bed, behind her locked front door.'

She saw him flush then and she could have bitten her tongue off. Damn. Why hadn't she said something less conflicting? He had at least shared a confidence and all she had done was to mock it.

‘But he is connected, isn't he?' he mumbled.

As though in answer the grandfather clock in the hall clanged the half-hour. Mike turned. ‘All these antiques,' he said. ‘They came from him.' He looked around him. ‘They hardly belong, do they, ma'am? They stick out like duchesses in a brothel.'

Joanna was silent, deep in thought. It was possible that Grenville Machin was the man Marilyn had been waiting for. In that case a felony was surely more probable than simply possible. And where an acquaintance of a man suspected of attempted murder dies unexpectedly ...

She examined the kitchen minutely. New white units would have gleamed, had it not been for the layer of dust and grime. Marilyn had not had too much of a conscience about housework. She pulled open the dishwasher door. It was full of dirty dishes. Marilyn had eaten well the night she had died. On the side lay the remains of a meal of steak, chips, tomato sauce and a dish of fruit salad with an empty carton of double cream. Recalling the corpse padded with fat, Joanna decided Marilyn had not battled against the flab.

Mike joined her in the kitchen. ‘Nice,' he said appreciatively. ‘Wouldn't mind a kitchen like this myself, and Fran would love it.' He wrinkled up his nose. ‘She'd keep it a bit bloody cleaner, though.'

‘Yes, but again,' Joanna said, ‘money.'

It was an hour later, after systematic searching of the downstairs rooms, that Joanna looked at Mike. ‘I think we'd better start upstairs,' she said.

The curtains had been tied back, the bed stripped down to the mattress and the bedding sent to forensics. The room had lost its seductive, harem look and looked and smelled exactly like any woman's bedroom, tidy, clean, perfumes, cosmetics ... Pink and lace and Doulton dancers.

‘No contraceptives,' Joanna pointed out when they had hunted through the drawers and the fitted, mirrored wardrobe.

‘No more of those saucy negligees either,' Mike said.

‘No, she seems to have had just the one outfit.'

‘For the one night.'

‘And no love letters either,' Joanna said.

‘What on earth was the significance of the new clothes?'

Joanna sighed. ‘It beats me.'

Mike's dark eyes met hers. ‘Suicide,' he said. ‘It has to be.'

‘Then how?' demanded Joanna. ‘And where's her reason, her farewell to the world?'

‘Maybe,' Mike spoke slowly, ‘maybe she wrote to her mother.'

Joanna nodded. ‘Mike,' she said. ‘Maybe you're right. It's possible. OK. We'd better send the local force round to tell her and warn her we'll be coming down.'

Mike nodded.

‘Go back to the station,' she said. ‘We'll go to see her tomorrow. For now I think I'll have a word with Mrs Shiers, the next door neighbour.'

‘You think it was her who rang the surgery?'

‘It has to be.' She frowned. ‘What do you know about her, Mike?'

‘That she's a well-known eccentric,' he said. ‘And, as you learned this morning from the doctors' receptionists, that her husband vanished without trace a few years back.'

Joanna looked up. ‘So you know about that?' she said.

He nodded. ‘She never reported him missing,' he said. ‘Local belief was that he'd left her for another woman.' He scratched his chin. ‘People gossiped but we never made anything of it. There was no suggestion of foul play at the time.'

‘Perhaps we'd better look into it, Mike,' she said, ‘in a gentle, probing way. Softly softly ... It's possible there's something there.'

‘Perhaps we should,' he agreed. ‘But what gets me is why she hasn't come across and spoken to us. Why does she just sit there, spying on us? She knows we'll have to talk to her sooner or later.'

‘Some people,' Joanna said, ‘are frightened of “getting involved” with the police. They're worried suspicion might end up at their door.'

‘Especially if they've got something in their past,' Mike said grimly.

A mental picture of Evelyn Shiers had formed in Joanna's mind. Nosy, timid ... with maybe a guilty conscience?

The reality was nothing like that. A frightened fox, ginger bristles twitching, opened the door. Joanna was glad she had left Mike behind. Burly policemen frighten old women, who are never quite sure whose side they're on.

‘Mrs Shiers?'

The woman twitched.

‘I'm Detective Inspector Piercy. I've come to ask you a few questions about your next door neighbour.'

The woman twitched again, gave a loud gulp then said defensively, ‘I don't know anything. I don't know why you want to see me. I hardly knew her.'

Joanna smiled encouragingly. ‘Only a few questions, Mrs Shiers. It won't take long.'

Grudgingly, Evelyn Shiers opened the door.

Joanna saw salt-and-pepper hair, a faded redhead, bristles on her chin, pale eyes and a flowered overall on a thin frame. She followed her into the small living room. Two ginger Toms occupied the sofa of a brown three- piece suite. She selected the armchair and sat opposite the grey eye of a television.

‘It was you, wasn't it, who rang the doctor's surgery yesterday?' Joanna spoke gently. Evelyn Shiers responded.

‘I didn't know what to do,' she said. ‘I thought she ...' She glanced to her left, in the direction of the nurse's house. ‘I thought she would think I was interfering.'

‘Did she ever accuse you of interfering?' Joanna asked casually, as though the answer was unimportant; but it was important. Was the woman a snoop?

Evelyn Shiers' eyes flickered. ‘She liked to keep herself to herself,' she said quietly.

Joanna waited, sure the woman would speak again, and she did.

She leaned forward in the chair, knotting her fingers together. ‘She's dead, isn't she?' There was no mistaking the eagerness in her voice. ‘I mean ...' Her voice trailed away. She looked embarrassed.

Joanna nodded. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘She's dead.'

Mrs Shiers stood up abruptly, turned away and stared out of the window. ‘I should have rung earlier.'

Joanna stood too. ‘It wouldn't have made any difference. She was already dead by the time morning came.'

The neighbour's eyes widened. ‘Lying there dead,' she said, ‘while I was having my breakfast?'

Joanna nodded.

The woman sank back on to the sofa, burying her face in her hands. She gave a long shudder, then looked up. ‘Horrible,' she said.

‘Mrs Shiers,' Joanna said slowly, ‘do you have any idea if anyone might have visited the house on Monday night?'

She shook her head. ‘No,' she said. ‘They wouldn't have got past Ben.' She stared. ‘What do you mean,' she said, ‘
visited
the house? Do you mean someone – killed her?'

‘We don't know.'

‘Well, was she ill?'

‘We don't think so.'

Evelyn Shiers screwed up her face tightly, concentrating hard. ‘Don't you do post-mortems and things?'

‘They didn't find anything.'

‘Nobody came to the house.' She was stroking her chin, had found one sharp bristle and was fingering it. ‘Ben would have barked. I would have heard him. Nobody came.'

Joanna sat down again. ‘Mrs Shiers,' she said. ‘What was Marilyn like?'

Evelyn began to bob her head quickly up and down ... up and down, like a hen. Joanna watched it and recalled where she had seen this habit before. It had been in an old folks' home and the woman, she had been told, had been quite demented. She waited for Mrs Shiers to talk.

‘She was a nasty thing,' she said slowly. ‘Nasty. Cruel.' She smiled. ‘You can tell that from Ben. When he came he was a quiet dog, affectionate. I saw him in the garden.' She looked up. ‘I used to pat him then.' She paused for a moment and then continued. ‘He changed. He got wild. She used to taunt him, you see, tease him, and gradually he got like that ... wild. I used to hide when Ben was out.'

‘You never complained about him?'

Evelyn Shiers blinked. ‘What's the point?' she said. ‘Who'd listen to me? You haven't got the time.'

Joanna was silent.

‘It wasn't the dog, was it, that killed her?'

Joanna shook her head. ‘No,' she said simply. ‘It wasn't the dog.'

Evelyn Shiers bobbed her head up and down again. ‘I didn't really think it would be,' she said. ‘Worshipped her, Ben did. I think maybe that was the problem. You see – there was just the two of them.' She thought for a minute. ‘Just the two of them ... He was upset that morning. I never heard him whining like that before. In real distress, he was. Sounded real mournful.'

Joanna puzzled over the significance of the dog. How much did Ben know? Then she remembered. Ben was dead too. She sat in the armchair and stared out of the window at a few dying primroses struggling against the weeds.

Evelyn Shiers followed her gaze. ‘Cat pee,' she said calmly. ‘No plants are fond of it.'

Joanna returned to the subject of Marilyn. ‘Did she have many friends?' she asked.

‘Not her.' Evelyn pursed up her lips. It gave her a tight, spiteful look. ‘Not her. She pretended. Marilyn liked to pretend that she had lots of friends – especially men friends. But she didn't really. She hardly ever went out and I only saw one or two men come to the house. And they never came again. She'd fool herself, tell me about hotels and restaurants she'd visited. But it was all lies. She never went anywhere.'

‘The men who came to see her ...' Joanna persisted. ‘Who were they?'

Evelyn thought for a minute. ‘That antique fellow,' she said. ‘He came to bring furniture once or twice. Hardly stayed a minute.'

‘When was this?'