The Price of Butcher's Meat

2

Some thirty minutes before Pascoe arrived in Sandytown, Detective Constable Shirley Novello had parked her Fiat Uno in front of Kyoto House.

Wield had told his trio of DCs to start with the Parkers, but he’d left it to them to sort out their assignments. There were three addresses for the family members and, by right of seniority, Dennis Seymour should have had first pick. But Seymour, old in courtesy as well as service, had said, “Ladies first, unless you think that’s sexist, Shirley.”

“Not from you, Den,” she said, smiling. “After thirty, you married guys have forgotten all about sex, right?”

As she spoke she was studying the list and assessing the possibilities.

Doing the crappy routine stuff well and without complaint got you marked down as reliable, which was okay, but plucking a precious stone of evidence out of the crap was what got you marked up as bright, which was so very much better. Faced with a choice of witness interviews, the ambitious DC tried to work out where the glittering prize was most likely to lie.

Of the three addresses, only one was permanent and old experience suggested that this was the one to go for. In murder inquiries you started by looking close to home. Relatives were best, but wise old Wield had kept the cousin and niece and nephew to himself.

The other two Parkers were just visitors. Could be their reasons for visiting were worth looking at, but most probably they were just here for the sea air.

She said, “I’ll do Kyoto House.”

As she spoke she covertly watched Hat Bowler’s reaction. He was her most direct rival in the contest to climb the CID slippery pole and she had a healthy respect for his ability. She caught a faint smile, instantly suppressed. It worried her for a second. Then she thought, If he’d got first choice I’d have done the faint smile thing too, just to worry him! So, reassured, she set out on the short drive to Kyoto, confident in her own judgment.

As she got out of her car, she glanced eastward. The view was magnificent if you liked mile after mile of water and acre after acre of sky. Novello found it merely boring. She’d never been able to raise much enthusiasm for nature unless it involved muscular young men with a penchant for wrestling. The house, on the other hand, was a bit of all right, its modern lines, big windows, and open aspect appealing to her much more than the ivy-draped antiquity of Sandytown Hall.

As she approached the front door, it opened to reveal a girl of eight or nine who demanded, “Who’re you?”

“I’m a police officer,” retorted Novello. “Who are you?”

If she’d thought to intimidate the child, she was disappointed.

“Have you come to interview us? I’m a witness. I saw everything!”

She stepped forward and would have dragged the door shut behind her, presumably to forestall interruption, but a voice called, “Minnie, who is it?”

Novello grinned and said, “Tough luck, kid,” then pushed the door fully open and called back, “DC Novello, Mid-Yorkshire CID.”

A moment later a man appeared, thirtyish, slim, haggard, with disheveled gingery hair.

“Mr. Tom Parker?” asked Novello.

“Yes. Is it about what happened at the hall? Of course it is. I’m sorry. This dreadful business has really knocked the wheels off me. Come in, come in.”

As Novello followed him into the house, she glanced back. The child had wandered out to the parked Uno and was eyeing it up with the kind of expression Novello recognized from multistory video footage. Had she locked it? Of course she had. Places she parked, both professionally and for pleasure, you did it automatically. So the kid was going to be disappointed, unless she had gone equipped, which in this day and age wouldn’t be surprising.

In the house she was led into an airy lounge where a woman rose to meet her.

“Mary, this is Detective Constable…I’m sorry…?”

“Novello.”

“Yes. Novello. This is my wife.”

Mary Parker was as slim as her husband, with wispy blond hair and a slightly scrunched-up anxious face, but she looked a lot less haggard.

“Would you like some tea?”

Novello would have preferred coffee, but there was a teapot on the table so she said, “Yes, please,” rather than have a delay. She’d made the quick decision it would be useful to interview this pair together. Some couples you wanted to keep as far removed from each other as possible, but the Parkers, she judged, could be mutually helpful.

This proved to be the case, and soon she’d got what seemed a pretty comprehensive account of their movements during the party. She took particular note of their recollection of times and the location and activities of other guests. With such a large number of witnesses, Wield would be doing a complex reconstruction job on the events at the hall, 99 percent of it probably irrelevant to the inquiry, but Novello wanted to be sure that her contribution was detail perfect.

“So the last time you saw Lady Denham…?”

Tom Parker was vague.

“There were so many people to talk to, so much to talk about, I’m afraid I lost track…”

Novello could believe it. The wife was much more positive.

“Just before four o’clock. Most people were on or around the lawn where the food and drink were. I saw her move away. I assumed she was going to the hog roast area.”

“Why?”

“There’d been some delay with the roasting and that wouldn’t please her. She doesn’t-didn’t-like things not to go the way she planned.”

Not a big fan of the victim’s, guessed Novello.

“Can you be sure that’s where she was headed?”

“Only the general direction. You can’t see the barbecue from the lawn, it’s well removed from the house and there’s a deal of shrubbery in the way. Also, I wasn’t watching her in particular.”

“No? What were you watching in particular, Mrs. Parker?”

“The weather,” said Mary Parker promptly. “I could tell there was a storm brewing.”

“I see. And you were worried it would spoil Lady Denham’s party.”

“No. My two older children were down on the beach and I was thinking about them.”

“And that was definitely the last you saw of Lady Denham?”

“Yes. The storm broke about half an hour later. Charlotte said she’d go and make sure the children got back from the beach safely, so I headed into the house with my young ones.”

“Charlotte’s the Miss Heywood who lives here? Is she a relative?”

“Oh no. Just a friend who’s staying with us for a few days.”

Novello said, “I’d quite like to speak to her too. Is she around?”

“She’s up in her room resting,” said Mary. “She actually saw poor Daphne’s body. It really upset her. Would you like me to ask if she feels up to talking with you?”

“Why don’t I do it myself? Then I can explain exactly what I want.”

She got to her feet as she spoke. Her thinking was that it would be very easy for the resting woman to tell Mary Parker, Sorry, I don’t feel up to snuff, tell her to go away! There would be no appeal against that. Never give a choice unless it’s a test was something she’d learned early when dealing with witnesses.

She tapped discreetly on the bedroom door, ready to follow up with a proper constabulary bang if necessary, but the door was opened almost instantly to reveal a young woman who stared at her with the same unfriendly expression as the child at the front door, and echoed her words, “Who’re you?”

“Detective Constable Novello,” she said, flashing her ID. “Sorry to trouble you. I can understand you’d want to lie down after such a shock, but it’s important we talk to witnesses as close as possible to the event.”

“Yes, fine. And I haven’t been lying down,” said Charlotte brusquely. She hesitated a moment then said, “You’d better come in.”

Novello guessed she’d decided that if she went downstairs, she’d probably have her anxious hosts hovering. Maybe she had something to tell she didn’t want them to hear.

In the room, Novello noted that neither of the twin beds was ruffled, which suggested she was telling the truth. On the dressing table stood an open laptop. The woman closed the lid and nodded Novello to the room’s one chair while she sank onto the nearer bed.

“Right, Miss Heywood,” said Novello. “It’s Charlotte, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s Shirley, isn’t it?”

“Right,” said Novello, thinking that this was a sharp one, picking her first name from the brief flash of a warrant card. Better stick with Miss Heywood for the time being. “First things first. You’re just staying here, right? Can I have your home address, just in case we need to get in touch after you’ve gone.”

Charley gave it.

Novello said, “Not so far then.”

“Seems a long way today,” said Charley.

“That figures.”

The two women looked at each other. Novello saw a rather square-jawed not unattractive young woman with vigorous chestnut hair. She wore enough makeup to soften the jawline and highlight the intelligent brown eyes. Good shoulder development suggesting weight training or maybe distance swimming; nice figure, would need to watch it when young activity slowed to middle-aged indulgence or she might balloon out.

Charley saw a stockily built woman with short uncombed black hair, wide mouth, watchful gray eyes, not a trace of makeup, wearing a loose off-white top, beige fatigues, and black trainers.

Dyke? she wondered. Maybe I should have gone downstairs!

“The Parkers…are they friends?” said Novello.

“I suppose so. Why?”

“Just, not your age group. I wondered…”

“Yeah? The police are institutionally ageist as well as everything else, are they?”

Novello smiled. It changed her face completely for a moment.

“Student,” she said. “Either still at it or just finished, right?”

“Why do you think that?”

“If you press the button and get a Twix, it’s a chocolate bar machine,” said Novello, smiling again.

This time Charley smiled back.

“Okay, you got me.”

“Studying what?”

“Psychology.”

“Oh my. Need to watch you then.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

The atmosphere was growing more relaxed. Both of them noted it, and noted the other noting it.

“Look, sorry to drag you back to the barbecue, but I do need a statement and I gather you were one of the first on the scene. Don’t start there, go back to when you arrived at the hall, anything you can remember, people, events-doesn’t matter how trivial-times.”

Charley rose from the bed and went to the window. The storm had cleared, the evening sky had a fresh-washed look, and though there was still enough wind to give the waves whitecaps, they were dancing toward the shore rather than roaring in like an invading army.

She said, “The party started at two, I think. Funny time, neither lunch nor evening meal, but once you get to the back end of August it can start getting chilly after five and no one really likes that kind of English do when you’re all standing around the barbecue pit, trying to keep warm…”

Her voice tailed off. Novello thought it was because the image of the dead woman’s body in the metal roasting basket had returned to her, but when Charley turned to face her, it was irritation not pain that showed in her face.

“This is stupid,” she said. “I’m really trying, but I can hardly remember a thing. It’s crazy, I came back here afterward-Mary wanted to get the kids away from there as quickly as possible; you can’t blame her-and after we’d got them sorted, I headed straight up here, and I sat down at my laptop and e-mailed my sister, I just had to talk to someone, not talk, you understand, but get it all out to someone close. Cass, that’s my sister, and me always told each other everything when we were kids, and we still do, even though she’s a nurse in Africa. So I spilled it all out to Cass and it’s like that’s what really happened, I spilled it all out of myself and that’s got rid of it and I don’t have it in my head anymore! Does that sound crazy?”

“You’re the psychologist,” said Novello. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. If you’ve written it all down in an e-mail, all we’ve got to do is read the e-mail.”

The sharp brown eyes fixed her unblinkingly and the woman said, “We?” in a tone cold enough to make an early swallow wonder if this had been such a good idea.

“Sorry,” said Novello, raising her hands in mock surrender. “Don’t want to go prying into your private stuff. All I meant was you could read it over, right? Refresh your memory about what you saw.”

“I suppose so.”

Novello stood up to let Charley sit at the dressing table. She raised the laptop screen and brought up the list of Sent E-mail. Novello, without making it obvious, clocked that most of the recent ones were addressed to cassie@natterjack. Charlotte clicked on the latest of these, regarded it for a moment, then stood up.

“I’m being silly,” she said. “That poor woman’s dead and I’m worried about protecting my privacy. Here, you read it yourself. Best you do anyway, you’re more likely to see the gaps you’d like filled.”

“Are you sure?” said Novello, but she was already slipping back onto the chair as she asked the question.

She read quickly, said, “Wow.”

“What?”

“Those two banging in the cave. They would be…?”

“Teddy Denham, that’s Sir Edward, Lady D’s nephew. And Clara Brereton, her cousin, who lives at the hall. You don’t have to start digging around there, do you?”

She sounded alarmed.

“Not if it’s not relevant,” Novello assured her, thinking, Two close relations in close relations? Wait till we see the will!

Something else had caught her attention.

“This guy in the wheelchair. Franny Roote. He a local or what?”

“No, definitely not, though he seems to have been living here a little while. I think he may have had some treatment at the Avalon, that’s the clinic just outside the town.”

Franny Roote. Novello remembered a Franny Roote-Pascoe’s Franny Roote, as she thought of him. Could this be the same guy? And did the DCI know he was here in Sandytown? Brownie points perhaps for bringing the news! Except, of course, the name would be on the guest list in Wield’s possession and certainly would not have escaped those sharp eyes. Anyway, could be Pascoe would regard Roote’s presence as bad news, and you didn’t win prizes for bringing that.

She asked a lot more questions and made notes. In the process she got the story of how Heywood had come to be in Sandytown, and also became aware that the same cast of mind that had made the woman opt for psychology rendered her a sharp and slightly nosy observer of human behavior. Not only an observer, maybe a recorder too?

She said, “Charley…now we’re on e-mail terms, okay if I call you Charley?”

“Do I get to call you Shirl?”

“Only if you can pronounce it with a split lip.”

They shared a laugh, then Novello went on, “I couldn’t help noticing that there were quite a lot of e-mails to your sister. I’d guess you’ve been filling her in with your impressions of this place over the past few days, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Any chance of getting to see those earlier messages? My impression is not a lot gets past you, and there might be something there that could help. We can ask questions till the cows come home without getting anywhere near an on-the-spot insider’s view.”

Charley shook her head vigorously.

“There’s private stuff in there. Not just my privacy, it’s my sister’s too.”

“I understand that,” said Novello. “Maybe you could print your messages out, do a bit of editing with a black marker if you like. I wouldn’t ask, only, from what I’ve seen, you’re good at taking things in and you’ve got a real gift for expressing it.”

“I’m nebby and gabby, you mean,” said Charley.

“That’s it exactly,” said Novello. “Like me. Only I didn’t have the Latin, so that’s why I became a cop instead of a psychologist.”

She could see she was nearly there and was wise enough not to push.

Charley said hesitantly, “And you’d be the only one to read them?”

Novello smiled reassuringly and said, “You can rely on me. Of course if I spotted anything I thought might be useful, I’d need to pass it on to my boss. I mean, there’d be no point else, would there? Probably won’t arise, but in a case as serious as this, we’ve got to cover every eventuality.”

If the Church ever admits females to the priesthood, I reckon I’ll be first in line for the Jesuits, she told herself.

“Okay,” said the woman with sudden decision. “Tom’s got a printer in his study…I’m sure he won’t mind me using it…”

“Great! While you’re running them off, I’ll get my notes organized. I’ve got this sergeant who likes everything squared off with hospital corners, or he sends you to bed without any supper.”

Which was a slander on Edgar Wield, of course, but she’d seen him in the gym pressing weights that made her eyes water just looking at them, so his shoulders were broad enough to bear it.