The Marx Sisters

32

The site workers arriving in the pre-dawn darkness found Marquis Street half blocked with police cars and ambulances, their blue and red emergency lights whipping across the scarred remains of Jerusalem Lane. A crowd of police officers and men wearing donkey jackets and hard hats huddled around the entrance to Mrs Rosenfeldt’s Sandwich Bar, sipping steaming mugs of tomato soup.

Upstairs Brock picked his way round the ambulance crew as they strapped Kathy’s body into the stretcher. He conferred for a moment with Bren Gurney before going over to Dr Mehta who had emerged from Peg’s bedroom.

‘My guess would be two or three sleeping pills in the drink to make her sleepy. Then the plastic bag,’ the pathologist said. ‘There’s a foil of Somatone in the kitchen with half a dozen pills missing.’

Brock nodded. He turned back to Sergeant Gurney. ‘Have a good look for the manuscript here when the scene-of-crime people are done, Bren. I don’t think you’ll find anything, but better check.’

Gurney nodded, then indicated to Brock where one of the ambulance men behind him was trying to attract his attention.

‘Yes?’ he said to the man, a stocky figure with an expression on his face which suggested that he had long since stopped being impressed by disasters.

‘We’ll get going with this one now, squire.’

‘All right.’ He looked down at the bandaged head visible at the top of the red blanket. Her eyes were open, staring in the direction of the bedroom, where the photographer’s flash gun kept throwing the figure of the old lady on the bed, with the crumpled transparent plastic bag over her head, into brilliant focus.

When they reached the street, the crowd outside parted, staring solemnly down at her as she was lifted up into the ambulance. Behind them, framed by a halo of light from her shop, she thought she made out the frail figure of Becky Rosenfeldt, the last survivor of Jerusalem Lane.

The ambulance was swaying from side to side like a small ship in a heavy sea, but she felt secure within the womb of the strapped stretcher, the old man above her, holding her hand, watching the ambulance crewman who kept checking the drip attached to her left arm.

‘Am I still alive, then?’ The words barely made it past her lips, but Brock seemed to pick them up. He was saying something about her foolishness, and how long it had taken for her message to reach him. But there was something she had to tell him.

‘She confessed to me, Brock. They both killed Meredith, then themselves.’

She blinked her eyes to see his face, but her vision was blurred by tears she couldn’t wipe away.

He said nothing, but she felt the pressure of his hand on hers.

At last she spoke again, in a whisper. ‘At least Marie Kowalski can go free.’

Brock nodded. ‘Yes, but Felix Kowalski will still have to pay for what he did to you. And, much as it hurts to admit it, I’m afraid we’ll have to let Terry Winter go. Without the sisters’ evidence we’d never make it stick.’

The mention of Terry brought Martin Connell abruptly into her consciousness. She held him there for a moment, then took a deep breath, letting him go.

‘I don’t care,’ she whispered. ‘I really don’t care.’ Then, ‘The manuscript is in the pit with Eleanor.’

But surprisingly Brock was shaking his head. He didn’t think so. Stupid place. Never know when it would reappear. A red herring to keep us all off the trail. Something about the female line, from mother to daughter, from aunt to niece.

‘Terry Winter’s daughter, Alex?’

He was shrugging. ‘If it exists at all,’ she heard him say.

She closed her eyes, feeling terrible. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

Stitches torn, loss of blood, sleeping pills in the drink, probably die, serves you right.

But when she looked up at him he didn’t seem unduly alarmed.

She relaxed into the warmth of the blanket, letting it just happen.

‘Tell Bob,’ she whispered, and he bent his head to hear. ‘Tell him: Eureka.’