Still Waters Page 25

  ‘Mr Patel, you are a prince among men!’ She kissed him on either cheek. ‘Thank you, thank you. I don’t suppose you know which was his cottage…’

  Standing outside to phone, Fran became aware of Mrs Patel approaching her. ‘There’s more you should know, Chief Superintendent. Poor Ashok is embarrassed to tell you, but I will. He had a fancy woman, that man. I used to see them. She goes to his cottage all plainly dressed on top, but underneath, when the wind blows, you can see that she’s not a lady at all. That’s why Ashok’s upset.’

  ‘And have you seen her recently, this woman?’ She was braced for a sad negative.

  ‘Oh, yes. Ms Evans. Ms Caroline Evans. She works in London. She was in the shop two days ago before she went on holiday – she’s been looking very sad recently. And now we know why, don’t we? She lives just over there, Ms Harman. In that house with the green door.’

  Arms akimbo, Fran watched another scene-of-crime team search another empty house. Not the one with the green door – that could wait till they’d run its owner to earth – but Alec Minton’s.

  The one-up, one-down cottage – to describe it as bijou would be to exaggerate its size – was on the far side of the village from Lenham, its garden backing onto the reservoir land. There was no sign of the kitchen ever having been used, but then, that was Alec Minton for you. The king-size bed, occupying the whole of the bedroom, with barely enough room to inch round, had been stripped, as she would have predicted. There were no towels in the minuscule bathroom, opening off the kitchen. But if Minton had ever spent time with Janine here, then her DNA must surely be lying somewhere, no matter how efficient his cleaning. And what about other women? Were there others besides Lenham’s Ms Caroline Evans in Kentish towns or villages wondering why they hadn’t had a call recently, a summons to that big bed? For according to Mr Patel, Minton had been a regular, if infrequent, customer, until what must have been the week of his death. Fran hadn’t had the heart to tell him that it was probably the parish magazine bought in the Patels’ own shop that had brought about their client’s death, bearing as it did the news of the polluted water.

  Minton must have known exactly what was polluting the water, and feared that somehow his part in it would be traced back to him. He’d set about eradicating all traces of himself – hence, no doubt, his choice of the Mondiale as his suicide venue. She hated it when killers topped themselves and took all their secrets with them.

  What about those undies from Minton’s gym? No, they couldn’t be Janine’s, and almost certainly wouldn’t be Miss Evans’, or she’d have got rid of them herself. There must be another girl, alive or dead, somewhere. Someone whose husband or partner wouldn’t approve of his woman wearing sexy clothes for the delectation of a pensioner from Hythe. Fran had better get the MisPer file checked. At least if Minton had ever killed again, the body wasn’t stowed in the reservoir, she laughed dourly to herself. No, Janine’s death must be a one off. Mustn’t it?

  There was a call from above her head. ‘Guv! Someone’s moved something out of the attic here. You can see where it’s been from the dust. From the shape it looks like a bag or a sack.’

  She was about to start making phone calls when her mobile rang, making her jump.

  Iona Harris!

  ‘I thought you’d want to know I got a really, really rush job done on the DNA samples. We’ll be billing you for an arm and a leg, of course.’

  ‘No matter,’ she lied. ‘What were the results?’

  ‘Alec Minton had sex with Janine Roper before she died. So you can discount whichever of your theories you had here.’

  ‘The barmy one? Thanks, Iona. I’d better get all our other unexplained female sudden deaths checked for Minton’s DNA too.’ She explained.

  Harris was gratifyingly impressed. ‘But thank goodness for modern science,’ she added. ‘Otherwise someone wouldn’t half have a lot of work coming up.’

  As she strolled back through the village to pick up her car, she decided she and Mark should celebrate, after all. There might be a load of booze at home – what about all that they’d left at Mark’s house? she wondered idly – but she’d do it with a bottle of Mr Patel’s best. And a surprisingly good one it turned out to be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Mark stared. At the key, the keyhole, the front door and his house. Why should his key not go in, let alone work? Scrambling less easily than he liked over the side gate, he tried the key from his bunch in the back door. No, he couldn’t get that in either. The garage? Not that he’d ever used it for his car, of course. But even that was barred to him.

  How could a man not get into his own house?

  Because, the answer came painfully slowly but with brutal clarity. Sammie had changed the locks. Sammie and Lloyd had changed the locks. Sammie and Lloyd had changed the locks because their house in Tunbridge Wells was on the market – no chain! – and they had moved into here. Had that been their plan all along or had they simply improvised when presented with a golden opportunity to exploit a naïve and indulgent father?

  He trudged back to where Fran was waiting in the car, parked cloak-and-dagger fashion round the corner, and slumped into the passenger seat. ‘My daughter. My own daughter.’ He could feel, not just hear, his voice breaking.

  ‘She’s squatting, is she?’ Fran took his hand and gave it a comforting but bracing squeeze. ‘We’d better get on to a solicitor, then. Now, while the beer is in us.’ Without waiting for him to argue – not that he would have done – she turned the car towards Maidstone, all one solid car park on a Saturday.

  Funny, he thought he’d been the one who’d driven over here. How did she come to be behind the wheel? ‘You guessed?’

  ‘I just had a nasty feeling.’

  ‘My daughter. My own daughter,’ he repeated, stupid with disbelief. ‘Why don’t we just go and knock the door down and throw them out?’

  She negotiated a delivery van. ‘Because of your security camera. They’d sell the footage to the press, who’d have a field day.’ He noticed that neither of them referred to Sammie and Lloyd by name. ‘A couple of middle-aged innocent police officers would be no match for them, not if they can conceive and hatch a plan as subtle as this. A top-notch solicitor it is, Mark, and not some man whose sole excitement is conveyancing and wills. We need the most compulsively devious bastard you’ve ever raged against. Because sure as eggs, they’ll have one too.’

  ‘I feel so soiled,’ Mark groaned. ‘What a vile woman.’

  ‘Vile indeed. A positive Rottweiler. But I suspect Ms Brent is exactly the sort of solicitor we need. You don’t buy suits like that if you don’t earn a great deal of money. Come on – it’s in her expensively manicured hands now, and we must just let her get on with it. So I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to enjoy this gorgeous weather for a few minutes.’

  He pulled his face into a smile. ‘The Rectory?’

  ‘Where else?’

  They weren’t surprised to find Paula on site; several other women, presumably other members of the team, were hard at work dealing with flaking paint. As one got a surface clear, another came and rubbed it down. Then a third applied primer.

  ‘All this double time and we’re going to have to pay an arm and a leg to get our own house back!’ Mark groaned.

  ‘But Ms Brent’s convinced we will get it back, and soon. She’d scare me into submission, I tell you that. All the same, we need a Plan B, and who else other than Paula can tell us if we can have a Plan B? We have to trust her, Mark.’

  ‘I trusted my own daughter – invited her in, left her food, left her wine… She’s even got that mixer I bought for you, and all your efforts in the deep freeze.’

  ‘It’s only money.’

  ‘And I never got round to organising a simple tenancy agreement. I’ve been a fool.’

  ‘But there’s no legal or common sense doubt about who owns the property, and to whom it’ll be returned. Come on, let’s see what Paula says.’ She too
k his hand again.

  He looked at it, turning on her ring finger the not quite engagement ring he’d bought as much to soothe the troubled breasts of the hierarchy as to show affection and commitment – they both knew that they had them by the barrel-load. It sparkled encouragingly.

  Paula’s face said as much as Paula’s mouth. ‘Move in here in six weeks’ time? You’re joking!’

  ‘Alas, no. We know we couldn’t occupy more than a couple of rooms, Paula. And I’d have thought with your contacts you could get a kitchen and bathroom installed before then.’

  Her smile was grimly smug. ‘Oh, I’m sure I can pull in a couple of favours. It won’t be much fun for you, though, living in the middle of a building site.’

  Mark said, his mouth still stiff, ‘Just think of us as extra security.’

  She looked at him with interest. ‘There has to be a backstory. Why don’t you tell me all about it while I brew up?’ She herded them into the scullery. ‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Caffy, and not in front of all those interested ears, either,’ she added, filling the kettle.

  ‘She’s been talking to the police shrink?’

  ‘Yes. Shrinks, indeed. They seem to think she has to turn up, and if all goes well to eat with him, quite normally. But somewhere along the line, she’s got to make it clear that she’s meeting him as an old acquaintance only, and that it’s a one off. At the moment they’re still belly-aching about whether she should say she’s found someone else as being better for Gates’ ego.’

  ‘Hasn’t she?’ Fran asked. ‘A pretty girl like that?’

  ‘A pretty unusual girl like that. Most guys of her age are scared by her learning. Those that aren’t are put off by her past. That’s what happened to her last bloke. When push came to shove he couldn’t deal with the fact that she’d been a prostitute.’

  ‘She tells them? What a risk! Some men would find it a real turn-on, a dangerous turn-on.’

  ‘You’ve met Caffy. Everything up front.’

  Mark rubbed his chin. ‘Maybe that’s what presses Gates’ buttons. You never know.’

  ‘So it won’t be easy for her to find a decent man,’ Paula concluded.

  ‘This ex-pop star—’ Mark began tentatively.

  ‘Loves her like a daughter.’ The response was emphatic. ‘In fact, she insisted that he and his wife were in on the discussions. He wanted to drop her off at the hotel himself, and wait to collect her, but your people insisted on a taxi, driven by cop, of course.’

  ‘Who will no doubt linger in case he’s needed. And she’ll be wired up?’

  ‘She really wasn’t keen, and who can blame her? But the hotel has CCTV, and one of your people will join the security team. There’s just one interesting thing you should know, though. Gates is staying at the hotel where they’re eating. He’s got one of the best rooms.’

  Fran’s stomach clenched. What would her colleagues do? Thank goodness it wasn’t her decision.

  Before they could say more, cheery whistling – it sounded like a piece of Mozart or Haydn – announced the arrival of Caffy herself, apparently ready to put in a couple of hours’ work.

  But instead she sat herself down on the kitchen table. Paula shot her an enquiring look, but said nothing.

  ‘I never told you,’ Fran said, to fill what might have become an awkward silence. ‘I’ve got a new job.’

  Caffy went pale, as if Fran had punched her. ‘You’re not leaving this house before you’ve even moved in!’

  ‘Absolutely not. In fact, as Paula will explain, we’re moving in in early July.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Her face was suffused with delight. ‘It won’t be very pleasant at times, but you’ll actually see it improve day by day, organically, as it were. And, talking of organics, I have a friend who would love to help restore your garden. A total sweetie, the nicest bum in the world. Though he didn’t like it when I took him up on the scaffolding to see the underlying layout.’ She glanced at Fran’s shoes.

  ‘Am I properly shod? Oh, Mark, will you come up too? There’s not a breath of wind.’

  ‘You’re very lucky, Caffy,’ Mark declared, halfway up the second ladder, ‘not being afraid of heights.’

  ‘Not afraid? I’m scared rigid. I can’t think of anything worse than falling and realising there was nothing you could do about it, that gravity would operate no matter what. It’s one thing I shall do to the windows you mustn’t tell the planning department about – I shall put on safety devices so you can’t fall out accidentally. Ugh. Imagine jumping off the Clifton Suspension Bridge or Beachy Head.’

  ‘Not so nice for the poor sods clearing up afterwards,’ Mark said grimly, concentrating on putting one foot in front of another.

  ‘Quite. So what’s the new job, Fran?’ Caffy asked, pausing on the next platform.

  ‘Investigating murders we’ve not been able to solve. Now we’ve got DNA and all sorts of other forensic science techniques—’

  ‘I’m so glad you give forensic science its proper name. I hate people calling it “forensics”, which means nothing – and forensic only means “of the courtroom”, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Quite. Anyway, I get to review these old cases and see if we can nick the ones what dunnit.’

  ‘So the miserable swine who think they’ve literally got away with murder will wake up one morning to find you arresting them! Fran, how wonderful.’

  Mark made sure he leant back towards the house, but told himself it had been worth the effort to get here. The garden was laid out like a relief map, with ghostly flowerbeds below them, what looked like an ornamental fountain and then a kitchen garden. ‘What a wonderful place to hold our wedding reception,’ he thought.

  And then he realised from the silence he’d said it out loud.

  ‘Aren’t you married already? You’re so together I thought you’d been man and wife for years,’ Caffy said, with one of her warm beams.

  ‘No. But we will be together for years,’ Fran said. ‘At least I hope so. And you can’t back out now, Mark, not now we’ve got a witness.’ She was as pale as he’d seen her; then she blushed, rosily, as if she were a coy girl. It was hardly surprising, considering how often and how hard he’d snubbed her in the past. Would he have backed out even now but for Caffy’s presence?

  ‘A witness? At the wedding?’ Caffy repeated, with an edge of joy to her disbelief. ‘No, you don’t mean that. You’ll want an old friend. Family.’

  Fran bit her lip. She hadn’t meant that, had she? She must simply have meant that Caffy had been a witness to what passed for a proposal and he couldn’t therefore back out.

  Before Fran could right herself, he said quickly, ‘I guess we’ll be married quietly at St Jude’s. We know the vicar there. So we may not need witnesses in the registry office sense. I don’t know about Fran needing a bridesmaid, but nothing would give me greater pleasure than if you’d be my best woman.’ He managed a courtly bow, but wished he hadn’t.

  The women, high on their ridiculous perch, hugged each other and him.

  ‘All the same,’ Caffy said at last, ‘Paula would make a much better best woman. She’d organise everything down to the last flower petal.’

  ‘Well, maybe I do need a bridesmaid,’ Fran said.

  ‘You’re on. But not if you find someone else you’d prefer: we’ve only known each other five minutes after all and you must have loads of old friends you could call on.’

  Fran was shaking her head slowly, whether in disbelief or because she couldn’t think of anyone he couldn’t tell.

  Meanwhile, Caffy was bubbling on. ‘You know Todd can play the piano and the organ? I bet if I asked he’d play for you – either at the church or here. And some of his mates. He’s into piano quartets at the moment.’

  ‘Piano quartets?’ Fran echoed.

  He let them talk, not eager to think about the imminent descent. He certainly wasn’t aware of time passing.

  Suddenly Caffy’s voice changed. ‘Sorry to bring you down to
earth, as it were. This new job, Fran. How dead does the body have to be? I mean, would it be a forensic archaeology type of body?’

  Fran didn’t seem to have picked up the young woman’s seriousness. ‘Any sort of body. But I wouldn’t want one on my own patch. Literally,’ she added with an amused glance at Caffy, who responded by licking her index finger and making a mark in the air.

  ‘But you just might have one.’ Caffy pointed to the far end of the vegetable garden, where the weeds and grass grew with far more energy than anywhere else in the plot. A strip, two or three feet by six or seven. From here it looked coffin-shaped. Human-body shaped.

  ‘You don’t think it’s just had more compost than the rest of the place?’ he asked. ‘Maybe it was the compost heap!’

  Caffy shook her head. ‘Have you ever seen a compost heap that shape?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Quite.’ The flat syllable came all the more strongly given her usual loquacity.

  ‘Nor have I,’ he admitted. ‘Hell, it’s the sort of thing they taught us about in one of those courses which you always think is going to be absolutely useless and then… Forensic Archaeology,’ he explained. ‘Didn’t you ever go on one, Fran?’

  ‘I should have done but something cropped up.’ She shut her lips very tightly.

  He guessed it must have been some panic over her parents.

  ‘Even if it is a body, it doesn’t have to be a human one, of course.’ Caffy was being helpful again. ‘It could be a horse or dog or something.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ve never seen one of those that shape either. I’m sorry, Fran, but I’m afraid Caffy’s right. I’d say we need to get thermal-imaging equipment down there,’ he said.

  ‘But – surely—’ Fran sounded almost panicky.

  ‘I’d hate my mate to turn up anything that would spoil his dreams,’ Caffy said, with jokey reassurance. ‘Mind you,’ she added, all sober reflection again. ‘I’m afraid there’s someone’s dreams I’ve got to spoil. And I wish I didn’t have to do it. But someone’s got to. And it’s best if it’s me.’