A Meeting of Minds Read online

‘Muzzy,’ she said. ‘But I know who I am.’

  ‘Good. Your buddy here has just given birth to a set of fire-irons.’ He grinned reassuringly. ‘Looks like we’ve reached base now, so we have to unload. Mind if I come in with you?’

  ‘Stay for coffee,’ she invited feebly.

  ‘Good gal, yuh’ll do.’

  The rear doors were swung open, the step lowered and the stretcher slid out on to a trolley. Neil, clutching his blanket, followed on foot as the paramedics rushed the patient through the entrance. He saw now she’d had a line put in and the driver had come round to hoist the fluid bag.

  Neil knew it was bad. Rosemary had lost consciousness, then vomited. There could be concussion, so they’d watch her like hawks for at least twenty-four hours. He felt a fraud expecting to be treated here himself.

  ‘Well, look what’s turned up,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Nurse, take this one into a cubicle and clean him up. I’ll come along when we’ve got the young lady fixed up. Have you two been fighting, lad?’

  An invalid chair was pushed under him. He raised his feet submissively while they got the flanges dropped. Then he was whisked off, out of sight of whatever they were up to with Rosemary. He was too overwhelmed to protest.

  His forehead was mopped up and disinfected. Tapes were being applied to stick the gash together when Marty put his head through the curtain. ‘They told me I’d find you in here. How’s it going?’

  ‘How’s Rosemary?’ he overrode him.

  ‘Sent upstairs. If you’re well enough to come back to work, you may get the chance to drool over her bed.’

  ‘I’ll live,’ he said miserably. ‘God, what a mess!’

  ‘A bad day? Still, your hair’s OK.’

  ‘Very droll. Imagine landing up here. Back at work.’ He sounded disgusted.

  ‘I’ve brought in your medication and some essential gear. Trust you to fall among friends. You’ll be asking them for your sick note, then handing it back again.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Rosemary? I shouldn’t think so. There’s a queue at the moment, and neither of you should be getting excited.’

  ‘That would only be me. I doubt she knows I exist, except as a handyman. I fixed her gas boiler yesterday.’

  ‘You’re talking too much, old man. I think you’re for a bed upstairs when they can get one free. Male surgical ward, though; so don’t expect too much.’ He flipped a hand in his direction.

  He saw no need to warn him that the girl might be police. If he dropped her suddenly, or started getting defensive, she would probably smell something a bit off. Anyway he knew nothing that mattered as yet.

  ‘Just two minutes,’ Sister told Yeadings. ‘I don’t have to tell you not to upset her.’

  ‘This is purely a sympathy visit. No mention of work,’ he promised. But he’d reckoned without Z. Her bandaged head turned towards him as he entered the private room. Her face was bloodless and her eyes enormous.

  ‘They’ve fixed you up nicely here.’

  ‘Sir, I’ve been trying to recall what happened.’

  ‘Don’t push yourself. It’s bound to be vague at present.’

  ‘It’s coming, though. But it was all so fast. I never saw whoever it was. Heard noises. I think I’d disturbed him searching the place.’

  ‘So you’ll not be giving a description?’

  ‘I was expecting Vanessa. It was her bedroom. But this was someone much larger, bigger than me. I just remember this huge shadow coming at me. I think now that the wardrobe doors must have been open. That whole wall is glass and what I saw was his reflection in it; not him at all. So when I ducked I got it wrong, and he slugged me.’

  ‘With a table lamp. You’re lucky that it broke, being china. I wouldn’t have given much for your chances with a brass one. Though I guess you don’t feel so lucky at present.’

  She pulled a face. ‘I don’t understand what an intruder would want in Vanessa’s room, unless he was a burglar. It’s Sheila who was killed, and we’ve been through all her stuff.’

  ‘Someone who didn’t know one bedroom from the other? Or thought Sheila might have hidden something among her mother’s things?’

  Yes, or someone who knew that Vanessa raided her daughter’s cupboards for anything she fancied. I’ve once or twice seen her wearing Sheila’s clothes. Even dresses. They fit all right on her, apart from looking too long. Maybe there were other things beyond clothes that she helped herself to. Someone could have noticed that she did that.’

  ‘So everyone in the house is a suspect.’

  ‘I guess so, because the outer doors are never left unlocked. Was there any sign of a break-in?’ she suggested hopefully.

  ‘No. Whoever attacked you came from indoors. So a resident, or else someone he or she let in. Beaumont is to look into everyone’s whereabouts. Also into the question of spare keys.’

  ‘Sir, who found me?’

  ‘Mrs Winter. I’ve just had Beaumont on the phone with a rundown on events. Your young neighbour is in here as well. He tripped on the stairs, dealing with the distraught lady.’

  ‘Neil? Oh, I’m sorry. Is he badly hurt? And how’s Vanessa standing up to this second shock?’

  ‘I haven’t checked on the young man yet. As for Mrs Winter – I’ve no idea. Her doctor’s looking after her.’

  ‘At home? So Beattie’s dragged in again, I suppose.’

  ‘Beattie was out at the time. Everyone claimed to be. Which doesn’t help. At present Mrs Winter’s with another neighbour, a Miss Barnes, who took over on arriving home.

  ‘Look Z, Sister’s making signals at me through the porthole. I have to leave you, but Nan will drop in tomorrow sometime. She’ll ring up first to ask what you’d like her to bring along. Get some rest now. Take all the time you need.’

  ‘Right,’ DI Salmon began grimly, demanding hush and reviewing the briefing assembly. ‘We’re one CID officer down. Which means that everyone must pull on his oars that little bit harder.’

  Now that she’d gone missing, it seemed that Z had been of some value to the team.

  Beaumont, sucking the end of his ballpoint pen at the back of the room, pondered the imagery. Pulling on oars brought Henley-on-Thames regatta to mind, but scarcely seemed to suggest a combined uniform and CID operation. A right assortment of crab-catchers they’d be.

  So, Henley-on-Thames. The location hadn’t yielded any clues. None of the staff or regulars at the White Swan had apparently seen the dead woman before. Or so they said. Her photograph, touted door-to-door in the town, had failed to raise a response. It looked as though the pub car park had merely served as a random dumping ground for whoever drove the body there; or was driven there by Winter when still alive. Which raised the question of how he got away afterwards. Taxi firms in the area hadn’t yielded anything of promise. So had a second car driver been involved for getaway?

  Henley folk presented a tight little community, only heavily swelled in the summer months. At this time of year outsiders would be remarked on. So the car was probably left at a time when the good townsfolk were all in bed. The days were gone when a beat constable walked the streets all night and spotted anything amiss.

  The question of Animal Rights Activists had been raised because of the slashed mink coat. There were none known locally. That sort of vicious damage hailed more from urban leftists than these rural parts of Thames Valley. Round here nobody even got sentimental about foxes. That possibility must still be considered, though, because Sheila Winter’s garden centre had a small section devoted to household pets. Although their accommodation seemed reasonably comfortable to him, God knows what the crazies would make of it.

  And the expensive fur coat raised a second point. Why that and nothing else? Had she started out that Saturday evening fully dressed, dolled up for a dinner out or some kind of entertainment? If so, who with? Or with whom?, as the Boss would put it. And where were the rest of her clothes? Her mother had been useless when asked what she’d have been
wearing.

  The linen basket contained only what Sheila had worn at work. And she’d certainly come home to change, because the borrowed Vectra had been parked at the front of the house, outside the Major’s windows when he went to draw the curtains before watching the six o’clock TV news. It had gone an hour later when Miss Barnes arrived back from a staff meeting at school. And nobody had the least idea where it had gone, until the body was discovered in it on Sunday morning.

  Yesterday they’d received the first bit of gossip on the woman’s private life. And it was offered by Z, for what it was worth. Salmon had fired a broadside at her for not speaking up before. It seemed that on the previous Tuesday she had walked in on her neighbour in flag. delict. And been too ladylike to stay and find out who it was humping her. The interesting thing was that it had been a moment of sudden passion, to judge from the scattered clothing in the hall. And Sheila Winter had dared to take her lover to bed, or rather to drawing-room sofa, in her own flat where anyone might have walked in on them.

  Z had denied that last supposition. She claimed that there was little come and go between the residents. Despite Beattie’s hopes of creating an extended family, they all liked their privacy and respected each others’. She’d just happened to bring up the Winters’ post from the hall and found the latch hadn’t been dropped on the flat’s door. She’d knocked, and called as she went in, but there was a lot going on at the time and the participants hadn’t heard her.

  She’d claimed that to her one set of white buttocks was much the same as another. So she hadn’t volunteered any name; only mentioned that the two men in Flat 5 had spent most of August sailing round the Canary Islands and their suntan was probably all-over. So that seemed to knock out Chisholm and the boy Neil Raynes, who were possibly an exclusive item anyway. That left two other possibles from the residents: Paul Wormsley, Flat 6, and the retired major in Flat 1, both from the lower floor who would have needed to cross the hall to go up the stairs behind Z’s back while she sorted the post. Naturally Salmon had expected her to have eyes in the back of her head – or to be as insensitively nosy as he was himself. Someone had certainly gone up, but she’d no idea who.

  According to her story she hadn’t gone straight to the Winters’ apartment after sorting the post. She’d dumped her own letters in her kitchen and made a pot of tea, giving Sheila, or whoever, time to settle in. What she hadn’t explained was where the older woman would have been at the time. Sheila was unlikely to have left her door unlocked for an expected lover when her mother might pop in at any moment. So presumably the older woman had gone out by taxi and wasn’t expected back. Beaumont made a note to check on Mrs Winter’s movements on the early evening of the Tuesday before her daughter’s murder.

  His slowly chugging train of thought was abruptly derailed.

  ‘So did you?’ Salmon snarled. His gaze was fixed on the DS and he’d clearly had to repeat his question, which notched up another degree or two to his temperature.

  ‘As far as possible,’ Beaumont ventured, totally at sea. And then, lamely, ‘It’s early days yet.’

  Everyone’s eyes were fixed on him. DC Silver attempted to bridge the gap. ‘There are only three copies of the tapes so far, sir. We’ve circulated two among uniform branch since they’re more familiar with staff at the centre.’

  ‘Yes,’ Beaumont said briskly, picking up on the cue, ‘and I want one copy to go to the hospital for DS Zyczynski to view. Security there have facilities for examining CCTV film, and they’ll allow her to use it.’ He hoped there was some truth in that. Wasn’t the Raynes boy employed at the hospital? He’d surely be able to wangle something of the sort, even from a ward bed.

  Salmon let it go at that. Since releasing Barry Childe, only one success had resulted from widespread investigation employing swollen numbers drawing overtime. DC Silver had at last gained access to the laptop computer, surprisingly acknowledging help from Superintendent Yeadings, who was renowned as a technological dummy.

  While he was still wading through Sheila’s correspondence, both business and personal, he had found nothing to suggest that she had any connection with Childe’s project out at the Marlow cottage. Unless, of course, code words were used for any illegal substances. Someone would need to check in a horticultural encyclopaedia that each species quoted was genuine. He couldn’t remember offhand if any constables had a background of classical Latin. Maybe they’d need to call in an expert.

  Civilian office staff at the local nick had been allocated to listing wholesalers and the more important account-holding customers. The personal stuff, which included originals of the dead woman’s annual correspondence with her father, had yet to be sorted.

  Salmon now decided to divert more on to DS Beaumont who struck him as far too relaxed in his attitude to the job. Silver could do the hacking and pass on what he found.

  With questions of his own to find answers for, Beaumont was not enchanted. ‘What else are we covering?’ he demanded, suspicious that the DI hadn’t allocated any of the labour to himself.

  Salmon recalled Yeadings’s instructions. ‘I want everyone in that house thoroughly vetted,’ Salmon ground out. ‘Starting with the woman who had the conversion done. I want to know how she advertised for purchasers, the dates the contracts were taken up, and a full life history of all involved. Hobday, get on to Beattie Weyman’s background. Fanshawe, you have the rest of the residents. Somewhere there’s a connection with the dead woman that we haven’t learnt of. Maybe a shake-out of Criminal records will give us a lead.

  ‘And Beaumont, that Dr Fenner – I want an hour by hour account of what he was up to on the night of the murder, and who he contacted right from leaving Cambridge until he got back there after visiting his ex-wife. It would appear that the terms of his daughter’s will were a surprise to him. If he’s in low water financially he may have been relying on a quick fix from that. Now go and dig the dirt, and dig deep.’

  Beaumont slunk off, following DC Silver to the office, little more than a broom cupboard, where he’d been occupied printing out reams from the laptop. He was riled at Salmon’s jumping on him at the briefing. He’d had better lines to follow in his mind at the time. There was a disturbing sense of having nearly been on to something important. Now, distracted, he knew it had got away. He wasn’t quite sure where his reasoning had been leading him, to a point of almost-revelation. Just a half idea – something beginning with ‘but …’

  It had gone. He sighed.

  At least the DI had let up on his obsession with Barry Childe. Now the Salmon fishing was into more widespread waters. Not deep yet: but up to the DI’s fishy neck.

  ‘I’m to collect the CCTV videos,’ he reminded Silver, who was immersd in the laptop’s data.

  The DC gave him a harassed glare. ‘I’ve only one copy of every video here and I’ve no idea what’s in them. I had this other thing dropped on me before I could get cracking.’

  ‘That’s because our new man likes the sound of your name. He hasn’t managed to memorize more than half a dozen, so we lucky sods come in for the full load.’

  ‘Where’ll you be working? You need to book a screen.’

  ‘Just hand me the goods. I’ll do the rest.’

  Silver indicated a black plastic sack under a corner of his desk. ‘Let me know where you’ll be, sarge. I need to be covered, in case the DI comes charging in.’

  Beaumont smiled beatifically. ‘You can tell him I’m in hospital. I fancy joining Z in there. There’s no reason why she should take it easy while we bend our backs under the lash. I’m going to commandeer a bit of National Health Service property and hold her hand in the back row at the movies.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Miss Barnes poured tea for Mrs Winter and smiled as she offered the madeira cake. The woman was taking this second blow very well. She seemed the indomitable kind, sitting there like a dowager at a formal reception, stiff-backed and attempting to be gracious. After such appalling things had happened su
ch poise was almost unnatural; perhaps the false recovery after shock, and time would eventually break her down.

  The schoolmistress took a furtive glance at her watch. Her visitor had been here for almost ten minutes now. If only the doctor would arrive. Then perhaps they could broach the subject of what had actually happened. Major Phillips had kindly offered to look out for him and direct him to which bell to ring.

  She wished that Mr Chisholm had given her a fuller account of the incident. He had briefly explained that when she came home Mrs Winter had found young Rosemary unconscious in her apartment, had run out and then tumbled down the stairs. Neil Raynes had fortunately broken her fall but sustained injury to his head. Both young people had been taken away in an ambulance by paramedics. It was a curious catalogue of disasters.

  Why Rosemary was in the wrong flat at all was uncertain, nor was it mentioned what had caused her to faint. Miss Barnes hoped there was no connection with the terrible murder of the woman’s daughter. The Winters seemed to be pursued by gross misfortunes. It was an alarming introduction to life at this house, which had at first promised to be admirably peaceful.

  The doorbell shrilled and she started in her chair. ‘He’s here,’ she told Mrs Winter, rose and went to let him in.

  The man who stood with the Major under the portico was tall and spare. ‘Dr Fenner,’ he introduced himself. ‘I was told …’

  ‘Yes, doctor. Do come in. Mrs Winter is through here.’

  He followed her in and laid his briefcase on the side table under the Vauxhall mirror while he removed his driving gloves.

  Mrs Winter’s reaction was electric and incomprehensible. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded imperiously.

  He turned to face her. Miss Barnes felt caught in the middle of two strong opposing forces. ‘This is the doctor, dear,’ she said placatingly. ‘We were expecting him, you remember.’

  ‘This,’ Mrs Winter declared dramatically, ‘is the man I was once so ill-advised as to marry. I don’t wish to have anything to do with him.’