Souvenirs of Murder (14 page)

‘Has the key been removed by forensics?' Patrick said to the DCI. ‘I left it in the lock.'

‘Yes.'

‘This thing doesn't look as though it's been subjected to any force, either from within or without. It's strongly, although roughly, built and I suggest to you that anyone inside wouldn't have been able to break out, even if they'd used their feet. And the woman involved is quite slight.'

‘What nationality would you say she is?'

‘Spanish. Her English isn't too good and although I'm half decent at French and have a little German there was no proper communication between us.'

‘
Then
what did you do – after you'd secured her in the cupboard?' Rundle enquired. ‘Incidentally, weren't you worried she might run out of air?'

Patrick pointed to gaps at the tops of the doors, which did not fit very well. ‘No.'

‘He noticed that when he was half off his head with drugs,' I commented. ‘Thought about her welfare too.'

‘I
am
exploring all angles,' Rundle said to me.

I apologized, having just realized that fact as soon as I had spoken.

Moving from there, Patrick went back to the bathroom, the floor covering in which had been removed. Standing in the doorway he gazed back along the corridor.

‘That's Leanne's room,' he said, gesturing towards the first doorway on the left. ‘I was coming back from where I'd hidden the cleaning woman in the cupboard when she came out, saw me but before she could say anything I put my fingers to my lips. She must have just woken up because she was still in her pyjamas and looked half asleep. I went to her and whispered that I must take her somewhere safe. Then I seem to remember I took her back into her room and shut the door so we could talk without being overheard.'

We went to stand by the doorway. Patrick was the only one not to look inside, his expression taut. I glanced in quickly; lots of pink, teddies, pictures of pop stars on the walls, just like Katie's room.

Rundle said, ‘Could you hear anyone else in the house?'

‘No, it was very quiet.'

‘All those downstairs could have already been dead by then.'

‘And I would have had an hysterical child on my hands instead of one who had just woken up. Would she have slept through all that gunfire?'

‘Kids do sleep deeply,' the DCI pointed out. ‘And the weapon might have been silenced.'

‘But it wasn't. It was my Glock 18, which wasn't silenced.'

‘Do you
know
you had it on you when you entered the house that morning?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're quite sure you had it with you and hadn't left it behind, or had it lifted off you the previous evening when you say someone must have spiked your drink?'

‘I'm sure I had it with me, in its shoulder harness.'

‘Which you were wearing when you were found in the lane out the back, the weapon in your hand.'

‘I have no memory of being found.'

‘OK. Then what happened?'

‘I can recollect impressing on Leanne that we must leave. She wanted to go and find her mother. But she'd . . .' His voice trailed away, a frown creasing his forehead.

I held my breath and so, probably, did Rundle.

‘Yes, she'd twisted her ankle in the garden the day before,' Patrick said in an undertone. ‘That's why I carried her. I told her we'd find her mother but actually had every intention of taking her out of the house as fast as I could. That meant going down the stairs and out through the front or back doors, of course. But we didn't make it.'

Neither the DCI nor I broke the silence that followed while Patrick went away from us for a short distance. Then, turning to us he said, ‘I think I'd just left her room, carrying her when there was a shot. Leanne screamed. That's all I can remember.'

‘Take your time,' Rundle said sympathetically.

‘Everything else is a blank until I woke up in that clinic. No, I have a vague memory of lying somewhere out the back here, on a pile of stinking grass cuttings.'

‘Yet the child was shot with the same weapon that killed all the others,' Rundle said. ‘That doesn't tally with your account.'

I said, ‘Patrick, you said you
think
you'd just left the room when there was the sound of a shot. When I spoke to you in the clinic you said you didn't get a look at whoever fired the shot but weren't sure why. Could any period of time have elapsed between you leaving Leanne's room with her and the gun being fired?'

‘It was a bit hazy,' Patrick said after a pause. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But—'

‘Where could the shot have been fired from so that you would not see whoever it was?'

His eyes darted around with expert assessment. ‘Nowhere. Even if he'd been standing up there on the next flight of stairs I'd have seen him. Any higher up the stairs and he wouldn't have been able to see his target.'

‘But it was hazy,' Rundle reminded him.

Patrick grimaced. ‘You can't be expected to understand or believe it but I've been as good as boiled in that kind of training. When you've done exercises using live ammo it's part of how you exist.'

‘You didn't see this guy?'

‘No.'

‘He could have rushed out of one of the other rooms.'

‘He didn't. I'm quite sure about that now.'

‘Or behind you out of the room down the end you'd gained entry into.'

‘Then he'd have shot me in the back.'

‘And we still don't know what drove you to return here on that morning to rescue the girl – if that's really why you were here.'

‘As I've said before, several times, it must have been something that one of the men who broke into my digs said.'

Rundle took a deep breath and let it go gustily. ‘This is—'

‘One possible explanation,' I interrupted. ‘Is that someone crept out of one of the rooms behind you, having been in there either before you arrived, perhaps asleep, or concealed themselves in there when you closed Leanne's door in order to talk to her. When you came out of the room he clouted you with something from behind, rendering you semi-conscious. He then grabbed your gun and shot the child, who was then probably lying by your side on the floor. It's quite likely you would have heard that shot.'

Rundle said, ‘That's possible but goes nowhere to solving the problem of people downstairs not hearing all that going on, or of Patrick not hearing them.'

‘Perhaps they were doped,' I said. ‘Everyone might have had their drinks spiked, not just Patrick. They were all shot neatly in the back of the head. Easy if they were unconscious, or nearly so.'

‘But they were killed when they were standing up!' Rundle persevered. ‘There's blood and brains all over the walls.'

‘So someone was a little artistic with finger painting,' I said. ‘Have the carpet and floor been examined for bullets that penetrated the victims' skulls and then emerged or for the kind of chemical traces left when shots are fired at close range?'

‘Everything's
being
examined,' the DCI replied. ‘It was like a slaughterhouse in there and tests will take a while longer.' He led the way downstairs and into the front room.

As with the bathroom, the carpet had been removed, as had sections from several floorboards.

‘This is a Victorian house,' Rundle said. ‘It was impossible to tell due to the seepage of blood and other fluids into the floor, plus dirt, whether holes in the wood were recent or history. You have a point though, they could have all been out for the count when Patrick arrived. It still doesn't prove that he didn't kill them. I suggest we start right from the beginning and visit these digs you had. You might remember what they said to you.'

But the digs, some five minutes' drive away, a bedsit on the top floor of another Victorian semi, were in the process of being deep-cleaned, the van of the company doing the job parked outside.

Rundle went ballistic.

Patrick and I left him to it, going back outside to stand on the pavement, where we could still hear the DCI shouting and the high-pitched protestations of the landlord, a skinny Welshman. I could appreciate the latter's point; that the place was uninhabitable and therefore he could not rent it out, but when police seal a room they expect it to remain so. I had every expectation that Rundle would arrest the man and charge him with interfering with evidence.

‘But surely there's no real evidence there now,' I said. ‘Forensics must have gone over everything.'

Patrick had appeared to be daydreaming but was not as he is not prone to such activity and did not respond. Then he said, ‘I must have walked. We'll walk back in a minute.'

I was finding the whole thing very difficult because the pair of us had never been in this kind of situation before. We had helped James Carrick recover his memory after having been struck down in a hotel car park and I knew Patrick had experience of amnesia among those under his command in his army days. But drugs are different and I was becoming resigned to his never being able to reclaim that short period of his life. And of course if he had been rendered unconscious, again, on the first floor of the scene of the crimes then that was that, no amount of effort trying to remember would be of any use.

Two down-in-the-mouth workmen exited the house, gave us filthy looks, flung themselves into their van, wound down a window and lit cigarettes. Then Rundle appeared in the doorway.

‘You can come up now,' he called to us.

All the furniture had been removed from the room, the lock on the door of which was still broken, the curtains and carpets also gone leaving us facing an empty box. It was full of steam from some kind of scrubbing machine with connecting hoses that we had had to squeeze by on the landing. Patrick went into the room for a few seconds alone, had a perfunctory glance around, shrugged, and then came out again.

Something strange was happening.

‘Please stop right there,' I said, a hand on his chest.

For a moment I thought he would carry on walking and knock us aside.

‘What?' he said harshly, seeming to look right through me.

‘Because there's some kind of mental chemistry going on and you need to stop and quietly think about what it is.'

He did not want to think about it and I was worried that he was about to slam out of the house in a temper. We were in grave danger of showing Rundle exactly how several people might have been done to death.

I stared into Patrick's unseeing eyes, willing him to calm down.

After what seemed a long time his vision cleared. Then he turned abruptly and went over to the window, seemingly to look out. Again, time went by and I was grateful to Rundle for keeping quiet.

‘The bastard said he was going to sell Leanne to a paedophile ring in Belgium,' Patrick muttered at last, addressing the dirty glass before him.

‘Who, Hulton?' I said, or rather gasped, before Rundle could speak.

‘Yes. At least – and I must be careful here – they were all wearing balaclavas. He said he was Hulton.'

‘But his own child!'

‘He thought it was really funny.' Patrick broke off, shaking his head. ‘But, as I've just said, this was all dreamlike. Anyway, whoever he was he seemed to think I should find it amusing too. Then he got the other two to hold me down and gave me the jab. I didn't pass out then – truth drug doesn't tend to make me talk but I can remember giving him my real name. It appeared to mean nothing to him. Everything's a blank after that until my phone rang and it was you.'

‘D'you reckon he'd brought you here in order to question you? I can't see how you could possibly have made it under your own steam.'

Patrick turned to face me. ‘I must have done because I can distinctly remember them breaking into this room.'

‘Who else might have done, brought you here, I mean?'

‘I've simply no idea.'

‘And you have no memories of leaving that house and returning here?'

‘No, none.'

‘I can only think that you were followed. How else would they have known where you lived?'

Rundle said, ‘Well, a picture's emerging but I have to say I don't necessarily believe it's the correct one. There's a watch on airports and railway stations for the man so all we can hope for is that he's soon nabbed. Meanwhile,' he went on dismissively, ‘nothing much has been achieved.'

‘Who was the man who Patrick was supposed to have tossed into a bush outside and who gashed his hand on some glass?' I asked him. ‘Commander Greenway told me that he was a passer-by who had begun to investigate the sound of smashing bottles coming through the open front door.'

‘He was actually the postman,' the DCI answered. ‘D'you have any recollection of that?' he went on to ask Patrick.

Patrick thought about it. ‘I have a vague recollection but I don't remember anyone in postman's uniform. He was quite an old guy – must have been getting on for retirement.'

‘Was there any broken glass?' I enquired.

Rundle said, ‘Yes, out the back. Someone must have been throwing empty bottles at a wall.' Addressing Patrick he said, ‘If the front door was wide open why didn't you go in that way?'

‘There's an old saying: “Never go down the path that your enemy has strewn with rose petals.”'

‘Did you hear bottles being smashed?'

‘No. I don't remember the postman saying anything about it either. As far as I was concerned he was rather persistent, in my way and I didn't think he was anything to do with the snake pit indoors so I heaved him into the bush in case he carried on nosing around and got hurt.'