River Deep (7 page)

“Well – as it happens Humphreys does appear to have mislaid one of his keys.” He moved away from the parapet. “And now that’s an end to it.”

“OK.”

“Just one more thing, Alex, is your gut feeling that your man was killed in error, the killer thinking it was Humphreys?”

“I don’t think so but I don’t really have much of a gut feeling at all yet. Nor will I until I know who he is. Then maybe I can understand what he was doing there in the first place. Then, again maybe, I can begin to work on who
killed him. Identity is everything, Martha. I don’t need to point that out – especially not to you.”

“Is there anything more?”

“Just police stuff, really.”

“What?”

“The door was secured by a Yale. No deadlock. Easy to get in. Trouble is folks in Shrewsbury feel safe. They don’t expect to have their homes broken into so they don’t generally bother with unnecessary expense like burglar alarms or complicated locks. This town still lives in the idyllic sixties. Peace and freedom.” He held up two fingers in a forward-facing, sixties peace and love ‘V’ sign. “It’s a backwater, Martha, and I think many people in the UK would give their eye teeth to live in a similar backwater. Quite honestly a nicked credit card could have slipped back the Yale and got you into Marine Terrace.”

She nodded. “Did you point out to Humphreys that the dead man could have been mistaken for him?”

“We did.”

She waited. “With no particular response?”

“Not a thing. Not a flicker of an eyelid. As I said. He either knows absolutely nothing about this business and it’s pure coincidence that the dead man turned up in his cellar or he’s an accomplished actor.”

“You must have plenty of lines of enquiry. Witnesses? Someone must have seen the man arrive there on Sunday. There were plenty of people around. Your police officers for a start.”

“They had enough to do.”

“But police officers are trained to observe, aren’t they? Have you put out appeals on the radio and television? Our ‘John Doe’ is someone’s husband, brother, son, father. Surely he is missed?”

Randall gave her an amused smile. “Doctor Gunn,” he
said formally. “We’re doing all we can. As you say there are plenty of lines of enquiry. And… .” He’d been stung into revealing more than he’d intended. “We do have a car.”

“A what?”

“Well – a Hyundai van, to be precise. Grey, two years old, left at the Friars Lane car park since Monday. Ticket issued Monday morning, ten am, valid for eight hours. The Traffic Department alerted us this afternoon.”

“But I don’t see the connection. Our man died on Sunday night.”

“I know but it’s something – maybe a lead.”

“And the trace?”

“It belongs to a Mr Haddonfield, from Oswestry.”

He was smiling, mocking her interest. Waiting for her to prompt him.

She couldn’t resist. “So?”

“Mr Haddonfield of Oswestry has, it seems, disappeared.” He was still mocking her.

“You have a description?”

Randall nodded. “Early forties, five-eleven,
dark-haired.”

“So?”

“It doesn’t look as if he’s our guy either. For one thing the timing’s all wrong and for another a man answering that description and giving that name was picked up hitchhiking along the A5 towards Oswestry on Monday night. The story he gave to the truck driver was that his van had been trapped by the floods and that he would pick it up when they had receded. In the meantime, he said, he would use his wife’s car.”

“He gave the truck driver his name?”

“Yes.”

“So where did the truck driver drop him off?”

“On the outskirts of Oswestry. He had a mobile phone
and had rung his wife up to meet him at the dropdown point.”

“So?” Her curiosity was killing her. “What does Mrs Haddonfield say?”

“That she never heard from her husband after Monday lunchtime. That it wasn’t her he rang. That she was working, anyway, he’d known that, and that she wouldn’t have been able to get away. In fact she was working so late she’d stayed overnight on Sunday at the hotel where she works – particularly as the weather was so foul and she had an early start on the Monday morning.”

“But the truck driver …?”

“Confirms that Haddonfield telephoned his wife and asked her to pick him up.”

“What does Mr Haddonfield’s phone supplier say?”

“That his line was unused from midday Monday.”

“So was it Haddonfield?”

“The truck driver says so and we have the Hyundai van at the police compound.”

“I don’t understand what connection this can possibly have with our case,” she said slowly. “The timing’s all wrong. Everything’s all wrong.”

“I know that,” he said. “But you know it’s very hard for pathologists to be precise about time of death.”

“I think within twelve hours on a relatively fresh corpse is not exactly precise,” she objected.

He seemed annoyed. “Well – whatever – we’ve invited Mrs Haddonfield up to the mortuary for a viewing. Just in case.”

“I’ll be very interested to know what happens.”

Randall nodded and strode towards the waiting Panda car.

It was four-thirty. Too late to return to the office but she didn’t want to go home either.

Towards the town, lights were being switched on. Life was returning to normal now the waters were receding. The night would be cold. Already one or two stars were visible in the sky, over a pale, full moon.
There would be no rain tonight.
She headed towards the town.

It looked inviting with its bright lights and intriguing shops. She never had enjoyed shopping until she had moved to Shrewsbury. Randall was right. Here the illusion was of old-fashioned England. The town centre had its shopping malls, Pride Hill and the Darwin Centre (named after the great evolutionist) but it also had quirky, individual shops which sold jewellery from Cuba, food from the Mediterranean, wines from all over the world. There were old family businesses which had moved from generation to generation, hardly changing – except for computerising their sales. She felt a strange sense of security when she shopped here. It reminded her of going to Dublin or Belfast, Cardiff or Swansea with her parents when she had been small. Today she wanted to buy some ham, cheese and olives from Appleyards and a bottle of wine from Tanners so she wandered into Wyle Cop.

She was thinking as she walked. Now it was Haddonfield who could be either victim or villain. How quickly a sheep can turn into a wolf. And if he was the dead man a wolf becomes a sheep again.
It is only a matter of wearing the fleece.

To her left the shops had obviously suffered from the river’s invasion. Already signs were up offering reductions on flood-damaged goods. But it was as she progressed towards the town that her eye was caught by a sign fixed crookedly to one window. “Drowned Stock”. Martha gave a little chuckle. Someone, it seemed, had a sense of humour. She had discovered the shop six months ago when it had first opened. Called merely Finton’s it was an antiques shop and the window had held one piece of
furniture
,
a small, unpromising country-made oak dresser with a couple of Toby jugs on top, a disappointment when her passion was for paintings. She had peered through the window and seen more pieces of antique furniture and a few curios. Even so she had been tempted inside. The back of the shop was filled with the most eclectic collection of goods she had ever seen: copper warming pans, horse brasses, candlesticks, fire buckets, plenty of odds and ends with amongst them scattered genuine antiques. But it had not been the stock but its owner who had drawn her eye.

A genuine gypsy. Complete with long, wild hair, hooped earrings, a gold stud in his nose, dark, dark eyes with a fearsome expression, a tie-dyed red sweatshirt and grubby black jeans. He had looked villainous yet intriguing. She had not spoken to him then but had suspected he had a sense of humour. The Drowned Stock notice was proof of this. As she pushed open the door she felt forced to admire his attempt at humour. The floods must have caused him quite a headache – particularly now – only a few months after he had opened his doors.

So she walked in and squelched across a seagrass floor, avoiding the two huge dryers which blasted boiling air into the room. He was arguing with a short, plump, bespectacled man holding a clipboard. Neither took any notice of her browsing.

“Look – you can see for yourself, you toad. The whole lot wants replacing.”

The little man murmured something which the shop owner obviously didn’t appreciate. He eyeballed him back. Martha would have backed down at such strong opposition but the presumed insurance investigator must have met this degree of threat before.

“I’m sorry, Mr Cley. But company policy says…”

“You can stick your company policy right up your …”

“I have explained.” The insurance investigator picked up his bag and dropped the clipboard inside. He made one last ditch attempt at reason, conciliation. “It doesn’t help, you know, Mr Cley, being aggressive.”

Finton took one step forward. “Oh? Look – I don’t care what you say. I’ve paid my premiums and I specifically checked that I was covered for
full flood damage.”

More murmurings from the suited man.

It only earned him Finton’s eyeballs again. “Arse around with me, mate, and you’ll have your head stuck up your own. You can check with your company if you like but I warn you I’ll be exposing you to the
Shropshire Star
if I don’t get the answer I want within twenty-four hours. You and your company’ll be splashed right across the front page. No one – not even genuinely safe house owners – will touch you with a very long barge pole. You’ll be dead. Worse. You’ll be out of a job. Like I will be,” he added quietly, almost an aside. The suited man moved away, produced a camera and a tape measure and went about his business. Then the shop owner acknowledged her presence. “Hello again.” He gave a disarming grin. Beautiful teeth. “I have seen you before, haven’t I? I don’t forget faces. At least, not ones I don’t want to forget.”

He had a beautiful voice too. But he was scruffy. Tall and thin, aged about thirty, with unruly hair and a silver ring on his finger. He was attractive enough to have landed a part in any film, but only as a gypsy, a pirate, or some other villain. He should have looked a complete ruffian. But the teeth and his voice saved him and identified him at the same time. Public schoolboy, masquerading as a villain. She smiled at him and he smiled back and held out his hand. “Finton,” he said. “Finton Cley. Owner of this establishment.”

Martha felt herself blush. “Martha Gunn,” she said.

“You are joking?”

It was not the response she’d expected. “No. It really is my name.”

“And you don’t …?”

Now he was being rude. This was beyond the pale. “I don’t anything,” she said coldly. “I called in on the
off-chance
that …”

“Not to gloat, I hope. You look too nice for that.” He tossed a scowl over into the corner. The insurance man didn’t appear to notice. “Help pick over the drowning pieces?” he said hopefully, “Give me a hand salvaging my future?”

“I don’t know if there’s anything …”

“Do you want to browse?” His eyes were flickering across to the insurance investigator’s scrutiny of fungus growing in the corner. Even to her untrained eye it looked more than a week old. “Yes,” he called across. That’s what happens when the flood waters recede and the weather’s warm. All this seagrass’ll have to be torn up.”

The insurance investigator murmured something unintelligible and Finton turned his attention back to her. “So what is it? Browse or the personal attention?”

Her eyes picked out a dark painting dangling from one of the beams. He followed her gaze. “Yes – nice, isn’t it?”

She laughed, putting the faux pas behind her. “Antique shop owners always say that – praise the would-be purchaser’s taste.”

This time he blushed. “Well,” he said gruffly. “What else would we say? Laugh because you homed in on the worst object in the entire place?”

“Is it?”

“Certainly not.”

“Look – I don’t really see anything.”

He lost interest in her. “OK. Fine. Do call again. Goodbye.”

As the door pinged behind her she wondered whether Alex Randall and his team had called into Finton’s Antiques as part of their investigation.

She continued up the hill towards the town, passing the
Lion & Pheasant
. Part pub, part small, cosy, private hotel, her mind flicked back to the puzzle of who lay on Mark Sullivan’s mortuary slab. There seemed no way it could be Haddonfield but if he wasn’t dead where was he? And if the body was Haddonfield’s how on earth had he magicked himself from Oswestry back to Shrewsbury, a distance of thirteen miles. Too far to walk. If he had returned why had he pursued the double journey? Had he forgotten something? Important? How had he returned? To his death? And what about the anomaly over the phone calls? And the timing? Martha shook her head. She didn’t envy Alex Randall unravelling this one.

She reached the top of the steep hill, continued along the High Street and made her purchases in Appleyards, breathing in the scent of freshly milled coffee as she chose ham, olives, French cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. She called into Tanners wine shop on the way back down the hill and dawdled over the selection, finally picking a New Zealand Shiraz from the bin. She loved the place and its atmosphere of Georgian elegance. The best wine shop she’d ever been to. And that included London and the famed Fortnum & Mason’s. She felt released, free as she walked back down the hill, but as she reached the English Bridge her mobile phone rang. It was Mark Sullivan. She could barely hear him over the roar of the water still threatening. She was vaguely surprised to hear his voice. He didn’t usually approach her direct but dealt with
Jericho who then passed details on to her. Besides – she had not been aware that Mark Sullivan knew her mobile phone number.

“Where are you?”

“Believe it or not, on the English Bridge. I can just make out Marine Terrace.”

Sullivan gave a huge chuckle. “Not turning private investigator, are you, Martha?”

“Absolutely not.” She defended herself, “I was calling in at the deli and couldn’t resist a rummage through Tanners’ wine bins.”

“Don’t make me thirsty.”

“Did you want something?”

“It’ll keep.”

“Why don’t you pop over later, Mark,” she said impulsively. “I’ve bags of food and some very interesting wine.”

“How interesting?”

“New Zealand Shiraz.”

“All right. Nine?”

“Fine.”

It was only after she had pressed the End Call button that she realised she hadn’t told him where she lived.

The house was quiet and dark when she returned. Sam was at rugby practice and Sukey and Agnetha were huddled together on the sofa watching
Abba the Movie.
Even Bobby barely raised his head from his paws as she walked in. By the light of the TV she could see that Sukey was sucking her thumb. She left them together and started preparing an evening meal.

When Martin had been alive she had begun this formality of eating well and together in the evening. The twins had been small then but they had still sat around, like a family should.

Now the twins were bigger – and particularly with Sam’s
necessary calorific intake – she had continued with the tradition. She and Agnetha often shared a bottle of wine and the meal usually stretched into the evening.

It was an oasis of contentment.