No Help For The Dying

Chapter 14

Henry’s house looked undisturbed and empty, with no obvious signs of activity. Riley eased the Golf into a space eighty yards from the entrance and waited. It was late afternoon and the suburban road was quiet and deserted, apart from Palmer, who was checking the area on foot. It could have been her imagination or the effects of the dull weather, but she thought the house now wore the unique air of desolation which seems to cloak deserted buildings when their human occupants are not coming back.

She joined Palmer on the pavement as he came abreast of the car.

‘This should do,’ he said. They were close enough to the house to pick the car up in a hurry, yet sufficiently far away for it to be missed by anyone keeping watch on the front door. ‘If anybody has got the place under surveillance, they’ll expect us to park up close.’

They had decided earlier to hit the two houses — the neighbour’s and Henry’s — simultaneously. They each carried clipboards and were trying to look like canvassers working the street. Privately, Riley didn’t think Palmer looked like any canvasser she had ever seen, but no doubt he would argue that he would get by on charm. Part of the plan was for him to work that charm on the Neighbourhood Watch supremo, while Riley got inside Henry’s place. She hadn’t been able to think of a logical reason for coming back so soon after her last visit, so it would be better if the elderly neighbour didn’t see her.

Riley turned down Henry’s drive, the gravel crunching loudly underfoot. If anyone was watching, it would look too suspicious if she kept to the grass, so she gritted her teeth and marched along as if she had every right to be there. Off to her right, Palmer was doing the same. She reached the front door and pressed the bell. Count to thirty. Press again. Count another twenty for luck. No sounds from inside and no sign of movement through the slit windows either side of the door. The corner of an envelope was protruding from the letterbox, which meant the post hadn’t been touched today. She heard Palmer pounding on the door on the other side of the fence and whistling cheerfully, already playing his part to distract attention from Riley.

The garage doors were still shut, so she walked over and looked through the crack. It showed the same empty space and the same oil tray with its glutinous black deposit, the surface now covered by a scum of dust and bits of leaf. She walked round to the back and peered through the honeysuckle-clad gate, one ear cocked for noises. It would be crass to go charging through the house only to find the old neighbour giving the cat an early tea.

She crossed the patio to the kitchen door. The same shards of glass were on the floor, except now a faint outline of a dried footprint showed alongside them. It had probably been there on her first visit but it had been too damp to see clearly. Judging by the size, which was at least a nine, it had not been made by the old lady.

Riley tried the door. It was unlocked. She wiped her feet carefully on a small brown mat, stepped over the slivers of glass and looked around. A fork was lying in the middle of the work surface, with remnants of what looked like cat food stuck to the prongs. An empty dish stood nearby, licked clean save for a smear of dried jelly.

She did a rapid scout of the ground floor. Out of the kitchen down a carpeted hallway, into a living room on one side and a dining room on the other. A downstairs cloakroom opened off the entrance lobby on one side, with stairs nearby, and across from it and looking out onto the front, a large study. A room to come back to.

Back out and across the lobby and up the stairs. There was a double twist in the staircase leading to a landing. She didn’t like the idea of that open space above her, but there was no choice other than to keep going. Four bedrooms, ranging from master to small-ish, with no signs of regular occupancy in the first three. A toilet, bathroom and airing cupboard. A faint trace of soap or air-freshener hovering in the atmosphere. And something else she couldn’t place. Musty, like the inside of an old wardrobe.

A sudden flash of movement made her start and a black and white cat streaked past her on the way downstairs. It had come skidding out of the last room facing the rear of the house. Riley felt the hairs on her neck move and stepped quickly up to the open doorway, holding her breath. She had momentary visions of the old lady coming out, having chased the cat to stop it soiling the carpet, and screaming the place down when she saw an intruder.

But the old lady wasn’t going anywhere, and any screaming had probably been done earlier.

She was lying on the room’s double bed, her face turned to the ceiling, arms by her side. She looked oddly elegant, but a shadow of her former self. Her skin was as pale as parchment, and any wrinkles she’d possessed seemed to have smoothed themselves, as if fate had decided that death was bad enough, without being old, too.

Riley couldn’t see any signs of a struggle, but the old lady plainly hadn’t got here by choice. Her clothes were neat, and her dark cardigan carried traces of white hairs where the cat had been nestling against her side. Riley thought about the fork on the kitchen work surface and guessed that was where she had been surprised. Carrying her up here afterwards would have been no problem; there was almost nothing of her.

As Riley made her way downstairs she rang Palmer. When he answered she told him to come round the back through the kitchen and to wipe his feet.

‘No answer next door,’ he said, when he joined her moments later. ‘Maybe she thinks I’m a Mormon.’ He sniffed the air and frowned, then noticed Riley’s face. ‘What’s up?’

She nodded at the ceiling. ‘She’s up there. Last door on the left. I’m going to do the study if you want to take a look.’

He nodded and disappeared upstairs. Riley entered the study, trying to dismiss the mental image of the old lady on the bed upstairs and concentrate on the task in hand. The room was a typical male preserve, dark and solid in furnishings and tone. A heavy antique desk and a club chair stood squarely in front of the window, the surface holding a clutter of papers and a coiled black power cable. Bookcases lined the walls, and other than a side-table holding a small combination television and VCR, the only other items of furniture were a sofa and a recliner chair with the footrest extended holding a week-old copy of the Radio Times.

The desk drawers yielded the usual household items; bank statements, old bills, photos, a few assorted batteries and a bunch of pens and pencils held together with an elastic band. Judging by the hotel names, Henry liked to collect souvenirs on his travels. In the bottom drawer she found a small stack of pamphlets showing a traditional biblical scene of fishermen in the Holy Land staring up at a ray of light coming from the heavens. The picture was topped by heavy lettering in black and gold, with the now familiar words: THE CHURCH OF FLOWING LIGHT. WELCOME ALL WHO ARE UNLOVED, AND ENTER HERE.

Behind these were some old leaflets announcing a fete in support of funds to set up a drop-in centre in Southampton. It was dated two years ago. Next to it was a stack of envelopes with the same title on the back flap, and underneath these was a box of lapel badges with the name of the church in neat, gold lettering. On the very bottom was a photograph of a group of grinning youngsters standing round a picnic table. They looked self-conscious and awkward, and one or two had even turned away or raised their hands in protest. The shots were slightly blurred and grainy, as if they had been taken from a film or video reel. In the background Henry was grinning and holding aloft a sandwich and a glass of drink. He looked as if he was the only one happy to be caught on camera.

There was no indication on the reverse side of where or when it had been taken. From the clothing of the subjects, Riley guessed it could have been any time in the last five years. She peered closely at Henry, but he looked no different from when she had last seen him — tall and gaunt and somehow effortlessly comfortable.

Riley took one of the leaflets and the photo, then checked through the bookcases. Henry’s library seemed to be big on biographies. She couldn’t tell if they had been read or were simply for shelf yardage. He also seemed to have a keen interest in company information, with an extensive collection of business directories covering the UK and Europe, and a carefully stacked section of business magazines such as Fortune, Business Week and several volumes of Who’s Who.

On the side table holding the small television and VCR were three video cases. Two ere full, one was empty. On the spine of each were titles in Henry’s spidery hand, proving he was a Newsnight and Panorama fan.

She couldn’t see anything which helped and went back into the lobby just as Palmer was coming downstairs. He looked as cool as always, but she knew he would have been thorough, ignoring the dross and inspecting anything that seemed promising.

‘Nothing up there,’ he said. ‘If I was a betting man, I’d say the place has been sanitised.’

‘Any guesses?’

‘About how she died?’ He shrugged. ‘She must have disturbed them when she came round to feed the cat. There’s some bruising around the mouth, but that’s all. She couldn’t have put up much of a struggle.’

Riley showed Palmer the pamphlet and the photo of Henry. ‘It looks like he’s a fully paid-up member of the Church after all.’

He nodded and checked the cloakroom, expertly flicking through coats and jackets and humming softly while he did it. He found a slip of paper and handed it to Riley. It carried a familiar phone number and name: Donald Brask.

‘He went out without his coat.’ Beneath the coats was a small padded case, the kind used for carrying a laptop. He nudged it with his toe. It was empty. ‘Did you see a laptop anywhere?’

‘No. But there’s a power lead on the desk.’

‘Point one for the killer. He — or they — probably came here for the same reason we did and picked it up on the way out.’

‘Why not take the case?’

‘Less obvious…easier to hide a laptop under a coat…couldn’t be bothered. Maybe they panicked.’

Riley stepped across to the front door, where the white envelope she had seen from the outside was hanging from the letterbox. It was junk mail. She looked around; there were no other envelopes in evidence, which meant either the old lady had moved any recent mail or the killer had taken it.

As she moved away from the door, she heard the crunch of gravel outside. She peered through the side window. A police patrol car had pulled up in the driveway.