No Sleep for the Dead

Chapter 32

By ten-thirty the following morning, the sun was already warm when Riley knocked on the door to Cecile Wachter’s house. Palmer was carrying a small photocopier he’d borrowed from a friendly office supplier, so he could copy the precious photo of Cecile’s brother and Radnor.

‘You don’t think she took fright, do you?’ said Riley, when there was no answer. They had deliberately left it until now to come back, to give Cecile time to prepare. Maybe it had given her too much time. There were no signs of life in the street, with most commuters having long departed for work and their children for school. A dog paused at the gateway behind them and cocked its leg before moving on, and a radio blared somewhere nearby. Beyond that, it was a normal suburban morning.

Palmer stepped forward and bent to pick something off the step. It was a link from a gold coloured chain, about half an inch across. The two ends had been forced apart, leaving the metal raw and jagged.

‘Damn — we’re too late,’ he muttered, and put the copier on the ground. ‘Stay here.’ He pushed the door and watched it swing open, expelling a rush of warm air.

‘Miss Wachter? Cecile?’ His voice echoed back dully from inside, and he knew instinctively that nobody was in. Nobody alive, anyway.

He stepped inside and walked through to the living room, which was neat, uncluttered and looked rarely used. Then to the kitchen, where a saucepan full of browning potatoes stood on the hob alongside a plate of meat, curling at the edges. In the conservatory, where they had sat the day before, looking at Cecile Wachter’s photographs and the proof they needed that Arthur Radnor had known her brother, Palmer stopped, feeling a sudden chill go through him.

‘Oh, no.’ Riley had followed him through the house. She was looking down past his shoulder to where Cecile Wachter lay on the floor by the coffee table, her head on one arm as if she was asleep. Her legs were neatly arranged, as she had appeared in life, and the only sign that all was not well was a dark smudge on one side of her forehead and a small trickle of dried blood from one ear.

Palmer placed his fingers against Cecile’s neck. She was cold to the touch, her eyes staring sightlessly into the carpet, her glasses lying a yard away by the door to the garden, one earpiece twisted out of shape. A hank of hair had come loose from her bun, and was lying across one cheek.

‘How long ago?’ Riley asked, swallowing hard against a rush of nausea.

‘Don’t know. Hours, probably.’ Palmer straightened up and went to check the remainder of the house. He was soon back.

‘No signs of a search,’ he said briefly. ‘Whoever did this knew what they were looking for. If they were looking for anything.’ He bent and picked up some of the photographs they had seen yesterday, which were now lying scattered on the floor. Two or three had been torn in half, others had been crumpled, a sign, perhaps of the intruder’s anger. Or desperation.

‘The photo,’ said Riley.

Palmer checked through the photos one by one. There was no sign of the shot showing Radnor and Claus Wachter, the only proof they had seen so far that the two men knew each other.

‘Whoever it was,’ said Riley, looking round, ‘caught her by surprise.’

Palmer nodded and studied the scene, tracking events through from the front door to where Cecile Wachter had died. ‘She had the security chain on. It slowed him down slightly, but not enough to make a difference.’ He turned and ran through it again, but came up with the same scenario. ‘He must have found her with the photos.’

‘But why kill her? She just wanted to be left alone.’

‘He was tidying up. Maybe things got out of hand. She looks like she took a smack to the side of her head. She wasn’t exactly robust.’

‘So he’s got the photo. I wonder if it was Michael or Radnor.’

‘One of them, definitely. Who else would be interested? Christ,’ he swore quietly, ‘I’ve been so dumb.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m pretty sure we weren’t followed here — I’d have spotted them. Which means they must have known about Cecile. When we headed in this direction, they guessed immediately where we were going.’

‘Do you think she was working with them? I can’t believe it; she sounded pretty sincere when she said she’d left all that behind.’

‘She probably had,’ Palmer agreed. ‘Maybe Radnor discovered she’d come to England but took a chance on her either not talking or not knowing what his part had been in her brother’s death.’

‘Until we showed up.’

‘Yes. They either killed her because they realised she had something, or they found the photo and decided to cut their losses. Sooner or later Radnor would have reasoned that she posed a real threat to him. And now was as good a time as any to do something about her.’

‘Except,’ said Riley sombrely, ‘she didn’t know she was a threat.’ She sat down on the sofa and stared around the room. ‘That bit you said to Cecile yesterday — something about tradecraft. What did you mean?’

‘The practice of spying. How to collect and sift information, how to gain contacts and get peoples’ confidence, to wheedle out facts, to move around without being noticed. Like every trade, it has its methods-’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Wait. Cecile might not have been a fully-trained spy, but she’d have been told how to conceal information until it was time to deliver it.’

‘But that photo was in a bundle of others. She hadn’t hidden it because there was no need. How long was she gone upstairs while we were here? A minute?’

‘You’re right. There’d never been the need to hide it before. It was just a photo among a pile of others. Until yesterday.’ Palmer leaned over the coffee table and stirred the photos with his finger. Some still had drawing pins attached, now tarnished and bent. Others had holes showing where they had once been pinned up.

He looked back towards the front of the house.

After all these years, one photo suddenly became important. Cecile knew they wanted to copy it. Would she have had time to conceal it with Michael or Radnor hard on her heels? Make it Michael — it would have taken energy and bite to rip through the security chain, and Radnor had neither. Which meant she wouldn’t have had very much time once he broke through.

‘What if she managed to hide the photo,’ he said quietly. ‘Since we came here, she knew how important it was. But where?’

Riley supplied the answer for him. She knelt down as Cecile had done the previous day, and tried to imagine her in the same position when Michael had burst in on her. From the position her body was now lying in, it was possible she had resumed the same stance in trying to prevent him seeing the incriminating photo.

Yet there was nowhere close that Cecile could have reached from here. All the other items of furniture were too far away. Unless. She peered under the coffee table, then gave a small whisper of triumph. When she stood up, she was holding the photo, complete with one of the old drawing pins. Cecile must have put it under there when she heard someone at the front door, or did so moments before Michael entered the conservatory. It was the last place he had considered looking, right under his nose.

‘Clever,’ said Palmer, with sombre admiration for Cecile’s quick thinking and courage.

‘Do you think she knew what he was going to do to her?’

‘Possibly. Where she came from, she’d have seen people like him in action before.’

They cleaned any surfaces they might have touched, including the mugs they had used yesterday and the photos they had handled. Then Palmer picked up the photocopier, secured the front door and walked with Riley back to the car. Once they were clear of the area, Riley stopped at a public telephone and dialled the emergency services to tell them she’d heard a woman screaming at the Wachter home. She rang off without leaving her name.

When she got back in the car, she found Palmer looking thoughtful.

‘Have you got Mitcheson’s mobile number?’ he said.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘This visit to Ragga Pearl: we need some back-up.’