Wings over the Watcher (22 page)

“For work,” Korpanski growled.

“Chained her bike to the railings and…”

“Disappeared.”

“Reported missing on Thursday, 24th June by her husband. Body found almost a week later under a hedge on the Moorlands on a little-used road between Grindon and Butterton in a state of decomposition. Cause of death manual strangulation.”

“The pathologist thought the hand was big.” Bridget Anderton again. “He thought more likely a man’s hand.”

“And probably dumped under the hedge soon after she disappeared.”

Joanna spoke. “Anomaly one. The affair was thought to be with a woman but the murder thought to be committed by a man.” She searched around the room. “Inspiration anyone?”

“The husband of the woman she’d been having an affair with?”

“Or maybe her own husband,” Joanna said thoughtfully. “Bridget? Would you like to tell the others what you saw”

“He came home from work hurriedly today,” the WPC said. “His neighbour, Kerry, had spent the morning in his house. I was just keeping an eye,” she replied to the sniggers around the room. “Anyway – she meets him on the doorstep holding out some pages of blue what looked like notepaper. They go inside. A couple of minutes later she bolts back out, runs across the road and back into her own house. A minute or two later Pennington’s knocking on her door. She doesn’t answer it and he drives back to work.”

“Maybe he tried it on.” Paul Ruthin suggested.

“No, it was obviously the letters,”

Joanna interrupted. “We know that Beatrice sent numerous letters on blue notepaper, sealed in blue envelopes to the object of her affections,” she said, “because the librarians have told us. We know that she delivered them by hand, walking from the library so we assume it was somewhere near, in the town.”

She paused. “And, according to a friend, who kindly rang us, Kerry Frost is convinced that Arthur Pennington had known about his wife’s letters for some time. In other
words
before
his wife was murdered. However, as Sergeant Korpanski has pointed out, he may have motive but he did not have the opportunity. Too many witnesses saw his wife after Pennington was safely in his office.”

“The real question is – who were these letters addressed to?”

“C,” Phil Scott said gloomily.

Joanna put her hands up to her face. “Surely it is not beyond our capabilities to find out who ‘C’ is? Surely if we find out who she is it will lead us to Beatrice’s killer?”

At her side Korpanski let out a long, heaving sigh.

Time to move on. “Right – so. There are other problems. While plenty of witnesses saw Beattie cycling in to the town and even locking her bike to the railings it seems no one saw her get into a car or be abducted.” Another thought struck her. “We
know
that the letters were sent to someone who either lived or worked very near the library. It’s possible she went once too often to deliver one of these and that was where she met her death, her body being disposed of at some other time, maybe that night.”

A few heads nodded. It seemed logical.

“Let’s think about alibis. Her own husband?”

Korpanski shook his head. “It’s not going to work,” he said. “He’s in an office with a secretary in the adjoining room. He has to go through her room to reach the outside.

“Even if he had slipped out he would have to work very quickly,” Bridget Anderton objected. “Meet up with his wife, murder her, dispose of her body somewhere and get back to work – all in a pee-break. Unless,” she said, “his wife’s body lay in his boot all day.”

Joanna stared at the back of the room. “No response to the boards, I don’t suppose?”

“Plenty,” PC Anderton said. “Everyone
saw
her in her best frock wobbling along the road. I mean – she was conspicuous but no one so far reports seeing her get into a car near the library or on the road at any time when the body was being dumped.”

On this down beat the briefing seemed to pause.

There was a hard knocking at the door, the desk sergeant’s face appearing in the round window.

“Oh no,” Joanna said crossly. “Not now.” She didn’t want interruptions. She wanted to move on, consolidate their knowledge, pool their ideas. She wanted to find the killer, make an arrest.

But he opened it anyway. “I think you’ll want to see this, Ma’am.”

“What,” she asked irritably. “We’re in the middle of a very important briefing.”

For answer the desk sergeant lifted his eyebrows and stared, the faintest hint of a smile touching his mouth.
Trust me
, it said.

“All right then. Korpanski,” she said, “come with me.”

“We’ll continue later.”

Joanna faced the determined, damaged face of Corinne Angiotti. Her first instinct was one of shock. The last time she had met the doctor she had been composed, in control, confident to the point of arrogant. And now? Someone had put a fist into the delicate features. Hard. And done a lot of damage. The eyes that glared back at her were full of anger and terror.

Joanna was curious; but first things first. “Do you need a doctor?”

Corinne Angiotti shook her head.

“Some pain killers?” Joanna managed a smile. “We keep a couple of aspirins around the place – for hangovers usually.”

“I’m OK.”

“Who did this to you?”

Corinne Angiotti stared back without speaking.

“Let’s go in here.” Joanna led her into one of the smaller interview rooms. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? Tea?”

She was struggling to conceal her shock and pity. She hadn’t expected this.

She closed the door behind them. “OK,” she said. “Do you want this on the record or off?”

“Off – for now,” Corinne spoke with difficulty through the split, swollen lip. “It’ll all have to come out – eventually, I expect.”

“What?”

Corinne put a hand up – near her face. “This,” she said, “and other things.”

So this was “C”, Joanna thought and could have kicked herself. The signs had all been there from the first. The numerous calls to the doctor’s surgery, the fact that it was round the corner from the library. And Corinne Angiotti had just the right profile to fit. Beatrice Pennington would have adored the woman who had given her so much attention. It was typical of
her that she had misinterpreted the doctor’s professional interest as being a return of her love. Oh what a tragedy – not only the woman’s death but her life too.

She glanced across the room at Korpanski and knew he had worked it out in the same second that she had.

“So
you
were the one,” she said. “The object of Beatrice Pennington’s affections.”

Corinne’s eyes dropped instantly. “Can I have a glass of water?”

“Yes, of course.”

Korpanski shot across the room to the sink, filled a plastic cup, handed it to her – all in the space of a second. Corinne Angiotti took it gratefully without looking at him once and drank.

“Beatrice Pennington,” she said steadily, “was a sweet, kind woman who was cruelly mocked by her family, her friends and in particular Guy Priestley.” Her eyes opened as wide as she could manage. “They were
all
laughing at her. People she’d loved and trusted, people she’d known all her life. They all let her down. Her husband hardly acknowledged her existence; her mother and father had little time for her, preferring her sister; her two friends used her and her children couldn’t have cared less whether she was alive or dead. She had no one she could turn to. She was lonely and ignored so she came to consult me as her doctor because she felt so devastated by what had happened. I couldn’t let her down.”

“What was your understanding of what
did
happen?”

“I’m sure you’ve unearthed the full story. Urged on by Marilyn, Guy Priestley quite callously pretended to made a play for her. She fell for it. Beatrice was naïve beyond belief. She had low self-esteem. She felt a fool, completely unloved and unwanted. I just gave her some of my professional time.”

“But her husband wanted her,” Joanna pointed out.

“Her husband was
used
to her. That’s all.”

Corinne tried to smile but it started the lip bleeding.
“Ouch,” she said, putting her hand to it.

Korpanski shot back to the sink and returned with some paper towels soaked in cold water. Corinne took it gratefully and dabbed the blood away. Joanna gave Mike a suspicious look. There was no need for him to compensate for the behaviour of the entire male race.

He caught her eye and gave her a bland, innocent smile but he knew that
she
knew what he was up to.

“Beatrice consulted me on a number of occasions,” Corinne continued, “starting round about Christmas-time. Within a week, I think, of the Priestley incident. Her son and daughter had not let her know whether they would be home or not for the festive season. Her parents were going to her sister’s. I felt really sorry for her.” Corinne’s fingers brushed over her face. “She seemed so low. I tried to prescribe some antidepressants but she refused them. She said it did her more good to talk to me. I tried to refer her to a counsellor but again she refused, again saying that she would prefer to talk to me, that she found it more helpful.” She brought her hands up, palms outwards in a foreign gesture of appeal. “What was I to do? I’m a doctor. My work is to struggle against the forces of nature, do what I can to promote my patients’ physical and mental health. I have taken the Hippocratic oath to that effect. In the circumstances the best option seemed to be to listen to her problems. At least she felt she could unburden herself of some of the humiliation and shame she’d experienced when Guy Priestley deliberately made such a fool of her. I knew how she felt. I have a – few problems myself.” Her hands brushed over her face and even through the swollen eyelids Joanna could read the hurt held in her eyes.

In the circumstances the epithet, problems, seemed a bit of an understatement but Joanna reserved her comment. It would have been unkind to say anything.

“I felt a real empathy with her. Maybe that was my mistake,” Corinne mused – more to herself than to the two detectives. “Maybe I shouldn’t have empathised with her
quite so much but it seemed natural at the time. We talked quite a lot about marriage, about relationships. That sort of thing. To be honest I too found it therapeutic. That was another mistake I made. I see it now so much more plainly.”

“And then?” Joanna prompted.

“And then she started writing letters to me. Love letters. They were awful. Embarrassing, quite unbalanced. At first they professed a sort of romantic love. Adoration, almost. Then they got quite physical. Talking not about emotion but about touching, feeling, kissing. I felt terrible.”

“When was this?” Joanna interrupted.

“Well after Christmas. March, sometime. I wrote back telling her this was a big mistake, that I had expressed a professional interest rather than personal, that I had treated her as a patient. The trouble was – I started to see myself as no better than Guy Priestley. I too had led her on and now was trying to let her down. It was just what she didn’t need. You understand? I was letting her down more gently than he had. Without cruelty or malice. But the result was the same. It would make no difference to her. She’d perceived us both as potential lovers. At one point she threatened suicide.”

“When was this?”

“May, June sometime. I…”

And suddenly Corinne’s eyes became furtive and her manner evasive, face turning away, hands fidgeting, feet moving underneath the table. Joanna thought she understood. Although these consultations had taken place in the surgery, Doctor Corinne Angiotti had not kept accurate and detailed records which would make her story uncorroborated. And which left her, in turn, vulnerable.

“Did these exchanges take place in the surgery?”

“Yes.”

“Entirely?”

“Up until then, yes.”

“So they’re all on record,” she asked innocently.

Corinne covered her mouth with her hand. She scooped in a long breath. “Not fully, no.”

The fidgeting stopped. It is interesting how truthful people are incapable of lying.

“And then things turned nasty and a bit frightening. She began waiting outside the house, bumping into me deliberately when I arrived at and left surgery. Often when I’d think I was alone in the house I’d look out of the window and see her just standing there. If I went shopping up the High Street I’d bump into her. It was terrible. I was always conscious that she was nearby. She became further detached from reality, imagining things I’d never said. Started to tell me she’d found a cottage where we could live, that we could build a new life together.” Suddenly Corinne Angiotti covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. “It was horrible. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be with her. I simply thought of her as my patient, someone I treated. Not a bloody lover. I didn’t know where it was all going to lead. I didn’t know how to stop it and professionally I was frightened. She appeared so plausible, so lucid, so unimaginative and truthful. I was worried that if the story came out people would believe her and not me.”

Joanna exchanged a swift glance with Korpanski. Did Angiotti know she was digging herself into a pit?

She gave her a chance. “Why didn’t you come to the police?”

“Because in my more confident moments I still thought I could handle it. Because I didn’t want to embarrass her. Because I was afraid that you would believe
her
– not me.”

“We would have handled this with kid gloves,” Joanna said. “We can be careful and considerate. Don’t you understand?”

“You didn’t know how convincing she was, nor the power of her conviction that she was right. She was deluded. She really was quite convinced that I did love her and had, at some time, promised that I would leave Pete to go away with her. She sensed that we weren’t happily married and filled in the rest.”

But Korpanski was staring, fascinated at the doctor. He
always stood in the same way, like the genie of the lamp, guarding the door, arms folded, legs apart. “There’s more,” he said.

Corinne Angiotti looked at Korpanski directly for the first time since entering the room. And she looked at him with fear.

“And then?” Joanna echoed.

“Then things turned even more threatening,” Corinne admitted.

“She hid in the drive one evening. We have a long drive,” she explained. “We live in one of the Victorian semis on the Buxton Road, on the fringes of the town. The drive is curved and lined with rhododendrons. Anyone could hide in there and she did. One evening when I’d been working for the Medical Deputising Service I was very late home. It was around 1 am. As I got out of my car I knew she was there, I could hear her breathing heavily. Did anyone tell you she had adenoids and very laboured breathing? Oh yes. As her doctor I knew that all right. I knew it every bloody time she phoned me at home. I could hear it. ‘Your heavy breather again’, Pete used to say.”

“Go on.” Joanna was wondering where all this was leading.

“She asked me where I’d been. I started off telling her it was none of her business. But she persisted, accusing me of having another lover. She was mad,” Corinne said. “She said she had a knife. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘I mean it. I will kill you if you don’t stick by your word. I know you want to be my lover.’” Corinne’s eyes were struggling to open against the bruising which was darkening by the minute. “How could she know that,” she asked pitifully, “when it wasn’t true?”

Joanna glanced across the room at Korpanski. He was watching the doctor with fascination.

It was he who broached the subject. “Tell us about the murder.”

“I don’t know about the murder,” Corinne protested. “I
don’t know. I only know that I didn’t do it.”

A gaze flickered between the two detectives. Joanna gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and a swift glance downwards at the doctor’s hands. Medium sized for a woman. Not the man’s hands the pathologist had described.

“Then what?”

“She wanted us to go away together. You have to understand. I really liked her but there was no way I was going to ride off into the sunset with her. I’d hoped…” Her voice softened. “I suppose I’d always hoped that my husband and I would somehow work things out.”

They waited for her to draw the inevitable conclusion.

“It seems that was a bit of a vain hope.”

Joanna exhaled noisily, blowing out in relief.

“I knew I really had to confront her,” Corinne said, “somewhere on neutral ground and somewhere where I would be safe. I was feeling increasingly threatened. She was unbalanced, you know. There was no appealing for her to understand that it was all in her mind. She simply wasn’t listening.” She drew in a deep breath. “I was late for work on the Wednesday she disappeared and as I passed the library I saw her bending over, locking her bike to the railings. She was wearing a fifties-style cotton thing with a full skirt.” She smiled. “It looked odd with a cycling helmet. I honked my horn and tried to do a U-turn in the road but when I arrived back she’d vanished. There was just the bike locked against the railings. I don’t know whether she’d seen me or not. She didn’t wave but I thought she’d started to look round.” Her hand covered her mouth again as though she was distressed by her memory. “I lost the chance to talk to her – for ever, it seems.”

Now it was Joanna’s turn to look wide-eyed at Korpanski. Corinne Angiotti must have been so close to the killer.

“Did you see anyone else approach her?”

The doctor shook her head. “No.”

“Did you notice anything that might give us a clue?”

“I’ve thought and thought about it, gone over that little street scene so often in my mind but the only thing I keep coming up with is that for some reason she didn’t want to see me that morning.” Corinne’s face was puzzled. “I don’t know why but I’m convinced it’s true.”

Joanna eyed the tape-recorder with frustration. If it had been switched on they could have recorded this interview.

The case had never seemed more ridiculous. For Beatrice Pennington to shrink away from the woman she had professed to love? It didn’t make sense.

Corinne Angiotti must have read her mind.

“I know,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“How were you when you arrived at the surgery?”

“Agitated,” Corinne said. “Very.”

“Did anyone witness these events? See you turning in the road?”

The doctor shook her head. “Well – loads of people must have
seen
me turning around on such a busy road. No cars hit me but I don’t suppose anyone would remember. It’s an insignificant thing. I really wasn’t conscious of other people. I simply felt an overwhelming sense that I must have it out with her for once and for all.” She paused. “My husband saw me.”