Resurrection Bones (A DI Fenella Sallow Crime Thriller Book 6), page 9
"I heard she paid for the boarding house with cash," PC Beth Finn said. "Any truth to that?"
PC Woods nodded. "And she has a rental property in Spain, offered me a discount a few years back. Nice place, but I've never been to her flat here in town. She doesn’t let many people near her rooms here. Close friends only, and tea with the vicar—Reverend Beasley. Shame some thug struck her down in her prime."
A vein throbbed in Fenella's neck. Three husbands, eh? All dead. No shortage of secrets in that lot. She felt a surge of energy and flashed a broad smile.
"Jones, find out about these deceased husbands. Natural causes? Have a poke in their medical records. I'll have a natter with her vicar, see if he can shed some light on what went on inside her rooms."
A splendid start to a squalid case, Fenella thought, feeling much better. She turned to Ria. "Update on baby Eva. Any good news?"
Confusion crossed Ria's face. Yes, her mind was elsewhere today. Fenella sneaked a quick glance at Jones. He leaned back in his chair, handsome and buff. Was Mr Charming the source of Ria's woes? Their private lives were none of her business, but she'd have a nosy anyway.
Ria gave the faintest of smiles. "Still working the files, ma'am."
"Keep me informed," Fenella said. She wanted to work the case herself, but with two deaths in Port St Giles there wasn't time. "Do you need help?"
"Got it covered, ma'am."
The niggle at the back of Fenella's brain shrieked. She nodded at Dexter. "Tell me again what you saw in Mrs Fassnidge's flat."
"I walked in and found her at the table, guv. Pools of blood on the floor, some smudged on the walls. Then I went into the yard and saw you."
"It doesn't make sense," Fenella said and inched carefully to the whiteboard so that her back didn’t twinge. "A stranger walks into your flat while you are having a cuppa. What do you do?"
"You approach them or you back away." This was Jones.
"Aye, but we found Ruth at the table," Fenella said.
"She must have known the attacker," Jones replied.
"Precisely," Fenella replied. "Possibly a friend."
Dexter said, "Aye, guv, my thoughts exactly. Focus on her relationships and we've got the bugger who did her in."
A new thought zapped Fenella's grey matter. "Jones, check if forensics found an address book or diary. A busy woman writes important stuff down. Impossible to keep track otherwise."
"You think she had a secret notebook?" Ria asked, face dough pale. "Surely she would use a laptop?"
"Mrs Fassnidge is a pen and paper lass," Fenella replied. "I'd put money on her having a hidden notebook with details of all her dealings."
Ria looked shocked. Her mouth moved, but no words came out.
Fenella noticed but said nothing because she loved this part of an investigation. It was quite a feat to start with a blank page and find a direction. She pointed at the whiteboard. "Let's get a photo of Ruth on the board. Fred Bickham too. A nice snapshot where they are alive and smiling."
Chapter 23
Fog billowed on the slate roof, loitered in the gutters and swirled around Detective Constable Ria Leigh's feet. She crouched against a brick wall, a large black bag over her shoulder, watching the delivery bay of the Port St Giles Cottage Hospital. The steel doors, whitened by the moon, glowed with a smudged gleam. Dozens of trucks arrived during the day. Nothing moved at four in the morning. Nothing good came of that hour.
The delivery area, tucked in a back alley, was a different place in the fog and dark. A land of squalid blind corners where sinister shadows flickered. But it was the best time for Ria. An hour when tired workers near the end of their shift missed things they would catch when alert. Ria's stomach grumbled with the ache of hunger. When did she last eat? Ages ago. Food could wait. She must keep a clear head for the task ahead and keep out of sight. Recognition was the last thing she needed. Fog and gloom and dark. Perfection.
Her gaze swept over the area. It was very quiet. No voices. No light from the window above the bay door. The crash of waves carried from the beach and she fancied the scent of burnt wood hung in the moist air. An electric motor hummed, soft and faint and out of sight.
Whizz-click-whizz.
Ria slunk through the gloom to the metal steps that led to a side door. Deep inside, Mrs Stoke lay unconscious and bedridden. A helpless addict, dead to this world, but alive. For now.
Amazing how easy it is to get in and out unnoticed if you knew the back routes and where the steely eyed CCTV cameras watched. Like a ghost. Ria grinned. Tonight she'd become a phantom.
Whizz-click-whizz.
Ria gazed toward the sound. It might be a mechanical door opening or the internal grumble from the lift shaft. Swirls of mist danced in the shadows. She waited, but saw no one. Her gut twisted with a dread she could not put her finger on. Something about the cobblestoned alley filled her with doom. Something wasn't right. But she knew two things: There was no one in the alley and she wasn’t being followed. So, what was the problem?
Might not be the alley, she told herself. Might be my financial troubles. Her eyes closed and she brooded over her problems.
First, her drug suppliers followed their own law with clients who didn’t pay—a barbaric beating then concrete shoes and a ride in a rowboat far out to sea. Money, she needed cash to keep the buggers at bay. And that led to her second problem. House repairs. That damn house had plunged her deep into a pit of debt. How did payments pile up at such a dizzying speed? Bills are an awful beast, she thought. They choked life's joy and robbed you of peaceful sleep.
And now her business partner Sloane wanted to close her therapy practice and leave town. Ria swore. How did she end up in this insane mess? Sloane's clients were supposed to be high rollers living the ideal country life. Why the hell did they need credit? Why the hell did Sloane offer it? And once again Ria was struck by the distasteful thought her business partner was fiddling the books.
Ria exhaled a breath from deep down in her lungs. She hated the fear oozing from Sloane now things had become murky. But it was naïve of Sloane to think she could just walk away from their joint venture. She'd string the timid lass along for now and strike a fatal blow when fate gave her the chance. Beat 'em down and beat 'em down again.
Ria hissed out another breath and considered her most vexing problem. Sloane's client Mrs Stoke with her overdose and blabbing mouth. She presented an urgent challenge. The woman might be sitting up in bed now, telling the world who sold her the pills.
Sod it. She glanced at her watch.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Mrs Stoke would betray them when she awoke. Muscles twitched tight in Ria's shoulders. It is not my fault the brain-dead hag binged on pills. No doubt about it—when the poisonous witch woke up she'd pin them with the venom of blame. That meant the end of her career. Civic Officer of the year for four years' straight snatched from her deserving grasp.
"No."
Anger surged through her veins, savage and rotten and raw. Mrs Stoke made bad choices and must now suffer her plight. Ria snatched another sour glance at her watch.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
"Action time."
She sprinted from the wall, stopping outside the circle of light cast by the lamps above the delivery bay. Her breath hissed in the dense air. For a while, she stared up the steps at the worker’s door and listened to the pounding of her heart. When, at last, it beat at its normal rate she opened her black bag and checked her kit once more.
Check: doctor's white house coat.
Check: the mask with the evil Halloween scowl.
Check: the brown porter's jacket she'd slip into on her way out.
And check, the suffocation pillow. Press down hard for three minutes and done.
She smiled as she pictured herself creeping into the hospital room, placing the pillow on Mrs Stoke's face and pressing down, down, until the woman's breaths stopped and her body went limp.
Would there be a struggle? She'd never met Mrs Stoke but her name made her sound stout. Tree trunk arms and elephant legs infused with demonic strength. She'd thrash about with gasps and groans, refusing to die, fighting for the right to live. Ria imagined a bony arm stretching, fingers unfurling, pressing the bedside alarm. She pictured nurses and doctors hurtling into the room with Mrs Stoke pointing and screaming in outrage.
Ria's smile vanished. She shuddered and cursed and glanced at her watch. She'd check for snores at the room door. Best strike while Mrs Stoke slept. Beat 'em when they are down and beat 'em down again. The long nightmare was nearing the end. Twenty minutes in and out. Time to start the clock.
She looked at her black bag with the suffocation pillow and she looked at the metal steps rising up before her and she looked at the door at the top. The man with one eye slept in the room beyond the door.
Ria didn’t know his real name, everyone called him One Eye. He'd been the night watchman for years. He never locked the door and did indeed have one glass eye. The other eye, clouded with age, read the newspaper and viewed late-night telly while he downed slow shots of rum. He was supposed to keep his good eye on the CCTV monitor, but the forty-year-old camera had not worked in a decade. No vans arrived before six. One Eye's shift finished at seven. He slept until five thirty.
She pictured a half bottle of rum on the table, One Eye curled in soiled bedsheets with a shot glass at his side. She'd used this door three times before. Every time he'd snored as she tiptoed by. Silently, Ria thanked One Eye for making her life a little bit easier. The dark hallways and corridors to Mrs Stoke's ward would be a breeze. A quick scan for nurses, doctors or cleaners and into Mrs Stoke's room. Blissfully simple after that.
Clear-eyed and filled with a cold-hearted urge to get the job done, Ria sprinted up the metal stairs, cursing at the sudden clang. Only as her hand reached for the door handle did she become aware of the damp clinging to her back. Sweat oozed from every pore drenching her in cold clamminess. She blinked away the salt stinging her eyes but could not shake the cloud of doom which squeezed her chest. Even though One Eye slept in a drunken stupor on the other side of the door, she shivered.
It got strange after that.
The door swung open before she touched the handle. Harsh lights blinded Ria and in that instant she sensed it was going wrong. One Eye wasn’t sleeping. One Eye wasn't there. A figure framed in the doorway stared with disdain. And a giant gold hoop glinted. It hung from the man's nose. He wore a security guard's uniform and looked familiar.
"I've had my eagle eye on you," he said, stepping through the door. "What's your game?"
It's Frank, Ria thought. Frank from Grub Pot Café. He held a mobile phone in his right hand and a cricket bat in his left.
Ria's legs trembled. She shuddered out a panicked breath. Her mind worked at breakneck speed as her body fought off a mix of panic and flat-out fear. Had they set a trap? Sloane must have betrayed her. Snared like a sewer rat. Wait. Sloane did not know about her treat for Mrs Stoke. No one did.
Whizz-click-whizz.
Ria gathered her wits. "Where is One Eye?"
Frank leaned the cricket bat against the door frame. "He died last week. Can I help you?"
"Delivery."
"I don't see your van."
"Parked around the corner."
He had not recognised her. She relaxed a little and began plotting her next steps. But there was something else about the man. Something that bothered her.
Frank pointed to his left, to his right and straight ahead. "New CCTV installed yesterday."
A red light blinked above the bay doors. Ria's legs convulsed. She grabbed the cold railings, gut turning over in stress. The bloody thing had monitored her as she crept about in the foggy dark.
Frank continued. "Dazzling state-of-the-art camera. Scans the whole area for movement—whizz-click-whizz. Even beeps when a truck arrives. The thing is, it did not beep, but it did watch as you crouched by the wall. What the hell were you doing?"
"I … I … er … came to speak with One Eye."
"Oh yeah?" He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. A spider web of spittle glistened between his brown teeth. "What you got in that bag?"
"Nothing."
"Looks like a pillow." He grinned like the devil. "You One Eye's bit on the side?"
"We liked to talk."
"Me too, but times are hard and I ain't got much cash." The grin swelled and his tongue licked his cracked lips. "How much for the night?"
"Eh?" Even though Ria backed away she smelled his sweat. "What the hell … I'm not some cheap tart."
Something flickered in his eyes. "I remember you now. You were in my café earlier. Last of the big spenders. And I wonder why I have to work nights in this hell-hole."
He raised his phone.
Click-click.
"Got your photo and I've got you on CCTV. Now sod off you penny-pinching whore or I'll call the police."
Chapter 24
Fenella sighed in frustration. Her day had started badly and she sensed it was downhill from here. It was ten in the morning and a monstrous pile of paperwork tottered on her desk. All urgent. All late. And her back pain hadn't gone away. A bad start to the day.
She pushed the mug of cold coffee away, tried to focus on the bland words of a form from the top of her pile with her pen grasped tight in her hand. Buckle down and do the work, she told herself. But she put the pen down and gazed around her tiny office. It's like a bleedin' cage. No wonder she felt like a mouse on a wheel.
There'd been no breakthrough in the Fred Bickham case. No word from forensics on Ruth Fassnidge, and a nauseating silence on baby Eva Fisk. Not even a call from a nut job claiming they snatched the bairn. Her heart squeezed at the misery of the parents trapped in a nightmarish hell. No news wasn’t good news.
Focus, she told herself. Don't let your muse run free, it'll chase rabbits and waste the day. Focus on the forms. But she wondered what Dexter was up to, and whether Jones had any good news. What about Ria? Were she and Jones an item? They won't want me poking about in their business, best leave them alone.
Then she recalled the slack jowled puppeteer from a management training course. One of Superintendent Jeffery's weird team building bright ideas. Fenella thought the whole idea was mad but, apparently, there was a lot to learn from puppets about how their masters pulled the strings. So they wrote notes while the puppet did a lot of the talking—an alcoholic wooden doll with a giant red nose and huge clogs for feet. Jeffery sat on the front row in a razor-sharp uniform next to Chief Constable Rae.
They clapped in astonishment when the puppet burst out in song. Not a nursery rhyme, opera—O mio babbino caro. They rose to their feet in applause when the puppeteer drank a jar of ale and ate a pork-pie then spoke with a friend on the phone while the puppet continued to sing. Fenella reckoned it was a recording played back through a hidden speaker in the doll's mouth. She'd taken a sly look at the puppet when the event was over. Its head was made from a solid block of wood. No sign of a hidden speaker or wires or batteries. No electronic anything, just a wooden marionette with strings. How had it sung with such clarity and gusto?
"It's your job to stay on top of things," the puppeteer's puppet had ranted as they neared the end of the day's training. "Ignorance costs money. Unsafe. Uneasy. Unwise. Superb leaders don't suffer from that blight. They know which string to pull to make the puppet dance. They must know what is going on in their world."
That's right. I must know what is going on in my team's personal lives. How else will I know where to poke my nose in? She snatched her mobile phone and scrolled to find Ria's number. She'd invite the lass for lunch and force her to spill the beans. Oh, and she mustn't forget PC Beth Finn. She'd invite her for lunch too. I'm pitiful Fenella thought with a gleeful smile. The door flew open before she pressed the dial key.
Superintendent Jeffery marched in, arms swinging at her side. She stopped at Fenella's desk, her face twisting into a wolfish scowl that might have been a grin. And she wore her full uniform with the gold tassels on the shoulders.
I should have run for it while I had the chance, Fenella thought, sensing her day was about to go from bad to worse. But given the state of her back, running was out. She glanced at her phone, willing the thing to ring so she could make an excuse and scarper. But it didn't ring. Not even the soft buzz of a text message. Where were her team when she needed them?
Jeffery said, "Thought I'd pop by to see how things are going. Team out and about?" She didn’t wait for an answer. "And how is Ria Leigh settling in?"
"Busy with the baby Eva Fisk case," Fenella replied
"Excellent. She will make a first-rate detective." Jeffery leaned forward so her palms rested on the desk. "Hand-picked by me and plucked from the claws of the Regional Crime Team. A genius move, eh? Our win, their loss. Snooze you lose."
"Learn that from a puppet, ma'am?"
Jeffery stared for a long moment, jaw working. "I'm here to talk about visibility and waste."
"Eh?" Now it was Fenella's turn to look surprised.
"Visibility is the buzz word these days, Sallow. A waste if we don't use it to full effect." Jeffery's eye's twinkled with the zeal of a peasant at the head of a witch-hunt. Never a good sign when they glittered like that. "A word in your ear from a rock-solid source. Ready?"
"Yes, ma'am?" Fenella said, watchful and waiting for the first wallop of something nasty to drop.
"Chief Inspector Rae is all over the concept. He wants his leaders out in front. I have always worked that way, don't you agree?"
Fenella said nothing.
Jeffery snorted. "Our station is a vibrant model of modern policing. We lead the way with untiring steps and—"
"Can you get to the point?" Fenella said, cutting the boss off. "Don't want to waste time, do we?"
A flicker crossed Jeffery's face followed by a wolfish smile. "Good news. You've been selected to take my place in Cut the Strings: Visibly Moving Ahead leadership seminar. Chief Constable Rae has been called away and I … can't attend either. Starts in an hour and runs all day. The Chief is back tomorrow. Make notes and send them to me tonight."
