Embroidering Shrouds (5 page)

‘Well, it's one or the other, Jo,' the SOCO pointed out reasonably. ‘I haven't had a good look at
her
but there really is no blood anywhere except in the area surrounding the chair which is tipped over. There's a lot of blood on the top rail of the chair.' He fingered some dark staining on the upholstery. ‘So from the way she's lying it's ninety per cent certain she was in it when she was initially struck.' He bent over and touched the tapestry with a gloved finger. ‘And then there's this. It tells its own tale. I think we have enough evidence to reconstruct the massacre of this particular innocent.'

His grey eyes looked distressed. ‘Judging by the spilt embroidery silks, I think she was actually bending over her sewing when the first blow was struck and she never looked up again. The back of her head's a bloody pulp but I can't see any injuries on the side of her face and I don't want to touch her until...

Joanna's frown deepened and Barra continued to expand his theory.

‘She was an old woman. It's perfectly possible she was a bit deaf.'

Joanna's gaze took in the small stitches that made up the picture. ‘Deaf maybe but not blind. I can't even see any glasses.' She made a mental note to speak to the dead woman's doctor.

Footsteps along the corridor announced Matthew's arrival. He grinned at her from the doorway. ‘Seems only a couple of hours ago that I saw you, Jo.'

She made a wry face. ‘And I thought I was safe until tea time.'

Matthew eyed the body. ‘Well, this little lady wasn't, was she?'

She waited while he slipped on a pair of examination gloves, his green eyes busily scanning the room, absorbing the upturned table, the lamp, the splashes of blood, the tapestry frame, lastly the state of Nan Lawrence's body. ‘I think we can say with certainty it's a homicide.'

He'd finished a cursory examination of the body in a couple of minutes. ‘I don't think there's a lot of point my making a meal of this, Jo,' he said. ‘I can tell you she's been dead for more than thirty-six hours. Rigor mortis has practically worn off. She died of multiple wounds, blows square on to the back of the head with our old friend the blunt instrument.'

Barra indicated the walking stick. ‘Anything like this?'

Matthew's green eyes gleamed. ‘Could well have been. Bring it along to the PM, will you? I'll see if it matches the injuries. And I'll want some X-rays doing before I start.'

Joanna raised her eyebrows.

‘I have my suspicion's she has a good number of broken bones,' he explained. ‘She's old. She took a hell of a beating. Her bones will have been brittle.' He looked up. ‘Primary cause of death almost certainly head injuries. Could be shock, but ...' He lifted the skirt of the dress, revealing thick lisle stockings heavily stained with blood, a leg twisted to an unbelievable angle. Joanna winced. He pushed the thick sleeve of the cardigan aside. ‘Red weals on the forearms. Look at this.' He lifted Nan Lawrence's right hand, and even Joanna could tell the wrist had been snapped. The fingers too were discoloured and swollen.

‘Arthritis and trauma. Whoever did it was either in a hell of a temper, drunk, or a complete psychopath,' Matthew said, disgust making his voice husky. ‘I think it's what the newspapers may well call a frenzied attack. I wouldn't disagree with them.' Joanna watched him speak, noted the set of his chin, the tightening of his mouth. No one could say pathologists do not feel for their patients. She knew that Matthew was moved. He stared silently for a time at Nan Lawrence's face. ‘How old was she? Eighty?'

‘Something like that, I don't know exactly.' Joanna's mind was already grappling with the problem she had started the day with. Was this the work of the same gang of burglars who had preyed on the other old ladies of the town?

Never quite at ease in Matthew's presence, Mike had watched silently from the doorway. Now he spoke, and from the comment he made Joanna knew his mind had been tracking along the same highway. ‘So it's happened,' he said. ‘They've struck again. Only this time they have killed someone.'

Matthew turned to face him.

‘We've had a couple of attacks on old women,' Mike explained. ‘The last one had her face slashed with a Stanley knife.'

Matthew was still regarding Korpanski. ‘Yeah, I knew about that,' he said.

‘But do villains usually change their weapons? I thought once a slasher always a slasher. I mean this is a different sort of attack, the walking stick just happened to be here. It isn't the sort of weapon villains take on their sprees.'

‘Violence is violence,' Korpanski countered. “They were all old ladies attacked in their own homes – defenceless and weak. I don't suppose a bunch of psychos care what they use, just so long as they hurt someone. The stick was here so they used it. Violence always escalates, Dr Levin. We thought something like this would happen in the end. She probably just annoyed them, so they bashed her about.'

Joanna looked up. ‘How could she have annoyed them? She was sitting in her own home doing some sewing.'

Mike shrugged.

Matthew was continuing his examination of the room. ‘I take it she lived alone?'

‘Yes,' said Barraclough, sellotaping bloodstains from the walls. ‘Her brother lives in the big house next door. Matthew –' he called the pathologist's attention to the state of the chair ‘– do you agree this is where she was sitting when the first blow was struck?'

They all peered at the chair, then at the tapestry. A long spray of blood decorated the canvas and they didn't need Barra to tell them that the first blow often gave this pattern of spattering before the injuries became severe and the blood loss less vigorous. Even so Matthew took his time before answering. ‘Could be, Barra. I can see what you mean. Blood sprayed. No oozing. It could be.' He was clearly unhappy to draw too many conclusions. ‘I can't be sure yet. I'll need to study the injuries.'

Joanna was busy with her part in the investigation, directing the team. ‘Let's get the body moved to the morgue, and we'd better call on the brother. I'll see you later, Matthew.'

She left Matthew continuing his discussion with Sergeant Barraclough and she and Korpanski walked out of the house.

They had time for a brief exchange as they rounded the side of the concrete block and approached the front of Brushton Grange.

‘So it's happened. They've killed someone. Though why, I can't imagine.'

‘They don't need a reason, Jo. There isn't any point to any of it. It's the same as all the other muck we get shovelled on top of us – pointless, mindless, stupid crime. There isn't a motive within fifty miles of this bunch. They just go out and
do,
they don't think.' Korpanski's attitudes were all too familiar to her. ‘Well, try this for size. We have four old women, one has been accidentally hurt by being pushed down the stairs, two have been badly frightened and robbed, one has been deliberately set upon, and now we have this.' The mortuary van was pulling up outside the front door of Spite Hall.

They negotiated the path between the two buildings, a dark space no more than six feet wide where the sun failed to penetrate, blocked out by the newer house. The result was that the area was damp and overgrown with ferns, the stone slabs slippery with moss. ‘The trouble is, Jo,' Mike said slowly, ‘the whole picture is confused. It's almost like each crime is separate, even though we can be sure it's always the same gang.'

She smiled at him. ‘Like one of those Cubist paintings where you know it's a face but the eyes and nose seem in the wrong place and of the wrong proportion. I know, Mike, it is confusing, but there must be a rational explanation somewhere.'

Mike climbed the steps ahead of her, throwing his comment back. ‘Look, Jo, like I said in there,' he jerked his thumb backwards, ‘violence escalates. We could have expected this. We should have had more men on the job from the start. Tell Colclough this time we need a proper team. Not the couple of extras he let us have after the Marlowe attack.'

Joanna nodded. They would have all the officers they wanted now. Murder escalated an inquiry, opened the purse strings, gave them access to unlimited funds.
Too late for one victim.

Above them the October sky threatened another downpour. Joanna turned to look at Spite Hall. ‘Her brother must have cursed this place every time he stepped outside his front door. Why on earth did they build so near the house? Was it built as a troop hut?'

‘No. Rumour is she had it built just after the war, to live in after her father died.'

‘Right in front of the family home? Did she dislike her brother so much?' At the back of her mind the question was already forming. Did he dislike her enough to want to kill her? It opened up the possibility of a different motive for the old woman's murder. Was this possibly not the work of a gang but a sudden eruption of sibling rivalry after years of hatred?

Mike was looking uncomfortable. ‘They're just old stories.'

‘Then perhaps Spite Hall was well named.'

He glanced up at the decayed Georgian facade. ‘Perhaps he didn't mind. It doesn't look as though he cared too much about the place.'

Mike was right. Brushton Grange looked neglected: the paint was peeling, the woodwork rotten, the windows were dusty with faded curtains carelessly draped across, even the bricks were crumbling, the mortar between them deeply scored. The paint on the front door had once been red, now it wore a pale bloom like the paintwork of a very old car.

There was no visible door knocker or bell. Joanna lifted her fist and banged.

There was no response from inside the house. It remained completely silent. The only sounds were the gathering police officers, working inside and outside Spite Hall. Joanna stared up at the neglected facade. Maybe no one did live here. Her mind began racing. Perhaps the brother had so hated Spite Hall he had moved away and that was why Brushton Grange wore such an empty, uncared-for air. He had abandoned it. Joanna looked questioningly at Mike who simply shrugged. Without expecting an answer Joanna banged again. They were about to descend the steps and look around the building when the door creaked open, just a crack, and a face peered out. That was when she realized she did not know his name.

‘Mr ...?'

He supplied it. ‘Patterson. Arnold Patterson. Who are you.'

‘Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy – Leek Police. And this is Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski.'

The door opened wider. Through it they could make out a dark expanse of hall. Dull, tiled, Victorian. ‘So what do you want?' His voice was neither hostile nor curious, but strangely flat as though all inquisitiveness had abandoned him years ago.

‘Are you the brother of ...' Involuntarily her gaze jerked backwards.

Patterson gave a ghost of a smile. ‘I am.' He opened the door a little wider.

He was an old man of eighty years or so, bent almost double, condemned by arthritis to peer always at the floor unless he made a superhuman effort to look up, which he did now. And Joanna could read the pain twisting his face. Yet her first instinct on meeting Nan Lawrence's brother was one of relief. This man could not conceivably have killed his sister however much he had hated her; there was not enough strength to batter a mouse to death in those weak arms.

He lifted his face to peer up at her. ‘So what have you come about?'

She was alert to the fact that this was a frail old man and she had some shocking news to break to him. ‘Are you alone?'

There was a flash of wariness in the pale eyes. ‘I often am, but as it happens my grandson is with me – upstairs. He lives here.'

‘Would you like to call him down?'

‘Not particularly.'

Whatever frailty Arnold Patterson possessed in body he made up for it in spirit. Joanna wondered whether it was a family characteristic. Hard to judge when all she had seen of the sister had been a huddled heap of old clothes containing a battered, lifeless body.

Mike tried to help. ‘We've got some rather bad news for you, I'm afraid, Mr Patterson. It's about your sister.' Patterson didn't bat an eyelid but he struggled to straighten just an inch. There was something curiously dignified about the movement, almost military. ‘Then you'd better tell me what it is.' A wisp of wry humour softened his features. ‘I can tek it. I've a weak body but my heart is sound – so the doctor tells me.'

Lydia's pen was scratching across the surface of the exercise book. At last the story was absorbing her to the exclusion of everything else. Everything.

Patterson was still keeping them on the doorstep. ‘May we come in?' Joanna asked.

‘If you must.' He invited them in with obvious reluctance.

The old man moved with difficulty through the wide, tiled hall, pain evident in every slow step forcing his back lower until it was nearly at a ninety-degree angle to his body. At the end of the hall he turned left, pushing a door open.

It was another dull, neglected room, furnished with 1940s utility furniture. A cupboard, a couple of huge, hide armchairs, an oblong table with two chairs pushed back, a carpet square in the centre that had lost its colour long ago. It was reminiscent of the room they had found his sister's body in. Once it must have been the servants' kitchen; a row of bells hung motionless on the wall. Now they played host to ancient spiders' webs and layers of dust. The atmosphere was made doubly dingy by threadbare red curtains half-nailed across a sash window and the only source of light a forty-watt bulb, minus a shade, swinging from the centre of the ceiling. Patterson eased into one of the armchairs and held his bony hands out towards the fire – one electric bar barely glowing red. Joanna sat opposite him. Mike took up his customary stance, standing in the doorway, legs apart. His face was wooden and he said nothing, preferring to leave sensitive issues to Joanna.