The Eighth Witch (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Lacey and Sparks emerged from Cavendish House and headed back to the car.

“You reckon you saw the tanker parked over there this morning,” Lacey said, pointing to the Fish n’ Chicken car park.

“Certain of it.”

They reached the car. Lacey tossed his keys in his hand but didn’t unlock the door. He looked across at the café and made a decision. “Okay, let’s go and see if they can shed some light.” He dropped the car keys back in his pocket and set off across the street.
 

Inside were a few people sitting at tables, eating from platefuls of greasy-looking, unappetizing food. They took no notice as the two policemen entered. Behind a high counter a man and a woman were working. The man wearing white overalls, splashed with grease stains, the woman in her forties, with bright orange hair and too much make-up. She was dressed as a waitress, with a bright red tabard over white T-shirt and a fawn skirt that was much too short and tight. The tabard clashed noisily with her dyed hair.

“No Michelin stars here then,” Lacey said quietly, looking around at the grubby décor and the faded color photographs pinned to the walls, depicting the various concoctions on the menu.
 

“You’d think the Public Health people might take an interest though,” Sparks said.

“Can I help you?” The man behind the counter wiped his hands on a stained cloth and stood ready to serve.

Lacey produced his warrant card and introduced himself and Sparks.

The man behind the counter glowered at them. He was in his fifties, clinically obese, with small eyes set in a belligerent face. He wore a white paper hat decorated with a cod and a rooster and bearing the legend
Fish n’ Chicken
. “I told you lot everything I know earlier on this morning. I’ve nothing to add. I didn’t see anything, nor did Jeanie. First I knew about it was when the police car and ambulance arrived.”

“We’re not here about the incident at Cavendish House,” Sparks said. “We want to ask you about one of your patrons.”

The man looked puzzled for a moment, then his expression drifted into incomprehension. “One of your customers,” Lacey said. “A tanker driver. David Scott. Drove a tanker for Westmill’s Flour.”

“Scotty,” Jeanie said. “He’s talking about Scotty, Mick.”

“Yeah, I know.” He leaned forwards on the counter. “What about him?”

“He was here this morning. Do you remember if he left with anyone?”

Mick shrugged. “Couldn’t say. I was working.”

Sparks turned his attention to the waitress, Jeanie. “And you?”

“Can’t say I took much notice. He wasn’t one of my favorite customers. Wandering hands and a lousy tipper. But now you come to mention it, there was a woman. Sitting over there by the window watching the commotion going on at Cavendish. I saw them talking at one point. I think Scotty offered her a lift.”

“And she accepted?”

Jeanie chuckled. “They always do. Though what they see in him God only knows.”

“So he made a habit of picking up women here,” Lacey said.

The belligerence rushed back to Mick’s tiny eyes. “Are you trying to say this is some kind of pick-up joint?”

Jeanie jumped in. “I don’t think he was, Mick. Calm down.” She turned her attention back to Lacey. “Scotty sees himself as a bit of a ladies’ man, though as I said, God knows why. I think he’s an ugly bastard. But yes, he’s picked up others here in the past.”

“The one this morning, can you describe her?”

“Early thirties, I should think. A bit plump. Ginger hair, scraped back in a ponytail. Nothing to look at.”

Lacey and Sparks exchanged glances. Jeanie had just described the woman they’d seen emerging from the Cavendish House lift.

“And you’re sure they left together?” Lacey said.

“Well one minute they were both there talking to each other, and when I came back from my comfort break they’d both gone. So I assumed…”

“Fair enough,” Sparks said. “Did anything about the woman strike you as unusual?”

“In what way?”

“Anything. Anything at all that seemed out of place…different.”

Jeanie thought for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip pensively. When she finally spoke she had a film of lipstick coating her teeth. “She liked her perfume. Smelt like she bathed in it. Classy stuff too. Not the cheap muck you get down the market. So that was odd. I mean, she didn’t look the type to be able to afford expensive perfume.”

“Anything else?”

Jeanie shrugged. “Not that I can bring to mind.”

Lacey smiled. “You’ve been very helpful.” He gave her his card. “If you think of anything else about Scotty or the woman perhaps you’ll give me a call.”

Once they were back out in the fresh air Sparks said, “So how did they perform the switch?”

“Switch?”

“The blond and our ginger mystery woman. It must have happened in the lift on the way down. But how? And why for that matter?”

Lacey climbed in behind the wheel of his car. “There was no switch, Matt.”

“What do you mean? You saw it with your own eyes.”

Lacey turned the key in the ignition. “There was no switch,” he said again. “We’re only looking for one woman.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“If you say so, Matt. If you say so.”

Lacey eased out into the traffic and pointed the car in the direction of Bradford.

“Does Laura live far from you?” Carter said to Annie.

“Walking distance.”

“Do you fancy a stroll then? We could call in and see Laura’s mother.”

Annie looked at him askance. “Why on earth would you want to do that? I told you about her condition. It’s unlikely we’d get any sense out of her. The carers who call in twice a day to check on her condition gave up trying to hold a conversation with her weeks ago.”

“Well, it would do no harm, would it? Besides I wouldn’t mind looking around the house, to see if I can turn anything up.”

“Do you think that’s likely?”

“Who knows? Besides, there’s little I can do here at the moment. Martin Impey hasn’t been in touch and I’m not meeting Lacey until this evening. I thought it might be a constructive way to kill some time.”

“Let me get my coat,” Annie said.

Laura Sallis’s cottage was in the center of a block of five, flanked by a pub at one end and a parade of shops at the other. There was a small courtyard at the front, cluttered with terracotta pots filled with herbs that had been left to go to seed. Tired window boxes added their weed-strewn chaos to the general neglect that permeated the nineteenth-century building.

“It’s sad,” Annie said as she climbed the three stone steps to the front door. “Laura used to be so proud of this place. She kept everything immaculately. Now look at it.”

She rang the doorbell.

A few moments later the door was opened by a plump woman, mid-fifties, her sensible clothes covered by an equally sensible nylon overall. A smile split her ruddy face. “Can I help you?” she said.

“I’m Annie Ryder, a friend of Laura’s. We’ve come to see Edith.”

The plump woman’s smile became broader. “Oh, that’s nice. Edith gets so few visitors these days. Do come in.” The woman opened the door wide and beckoned them inside. “I’m Joan, Joan Maitland. I look in on Edith every day, just to make sure she’s eating properly, and to see that she has everything she needs.”

“Are you a neighbor?” Annie said.

“I live at number three. I’ve known Edith for years. We used to be good friends once upon a time—before the…” The smile slipped a little as she remembered happier times. “These days though I’m not even sure she knows who I am.” She led them through the house. “Just through here. She’s in the sitting room.”
 

They reached the room at the back of the cottage and Joan surprised them by knocking lightly on the door. She pushed it open and said breezily, “Edith, visitors for you.” She turned to them. “Go on in.”

Edith Sallis sat in a high wing-backed chair facing the window where she could look out at life as it passed by on the street. She was white haired and looked impossibly frail. Her hands were folded in her lap but they weren’t still. Her fingers were making small picking movements.

“It’s the pins,” Joan said quietly in Annie’s ear. “She thinks her skirt is covered in pins and she has to find them and pick them all up.”

Annie went across and crouched down by Edith’s chair. “Hello, Edith. It’s Annie, Laura’s friend.”

Edith didn’t acknowledge her. She continued to stare out through the window and her hands continued to pluck the imaginary pins from her skirt.

“She’s gone down badly since Laura left,” Joan said to Carter, sympathy bringing a well of tears to her eyes. “Still, we all do our best for her.”

“I’m sure you do. She’s very lucky to have such good friends.”

Edith became aware of Annie squatting down beside her. She blinked hard and tried focusing on Annie’s face. “You’re not Diana,” she said. “I thought Diana was coming to see me.” The expression in her eyes clouded again and she went back to staring out through the window.
 

Annie pushed herself upright and went back to Carter and Joan Maitland.

“Who’s Diana?” she said.

The cheeriness dropped from Joan’s face. “Don’t mention that woman to me,” she said.

“Who is she? I don’t remember Laura ever speaking about anyone called Diana.”

“Well, she wouldn’t. It’s because of that…that woman that Edith finds herself in her current predicament with no one but a few friends and a couple of charity workers to look after her. Diana!” She spat the name out. “I curse the day Laura invited her into her home and her life.”

“Are you saying that this Diana is the reason Laura’s not here now?” Carter said.

“Lured away is more like it,” Joan Maitland said.

“Diana?” Edith said loudly. “Are you still here?”

Joan gave a heavy sigh. “You see, even after all this time that bloody woman’s spells are still working. I always said she was evil, that one. Pure evil.”

“So have you any idea where Laura is now?” Carter said. His interest piqued. Another dimension had been added to this puzzle. Perhaps Annie’s assertion that Laura Sallis’s disappearance was linked to the mystery deaths in Ravensbridge wasn’t so wide of the mark.

Joan Maitland shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since she packed her bags and left.”

“I want Diana,” Edith shouted petulantly.

“Look,” she said. “Come into the other room. We can talk in there without distressing Edith. She may not seem aware of what’s going on around her but I feel that part of her mind still takes everything in. She may not process it like you or I would, but I think she can still get upset by what she hears.”

She led the way through to the room at the front of the house. In all the time Annie had known Laura she had never been in this room, and it took her by surprise.

The furniture in here was much more modern and stylish than in the rest of the house. The walls were adorned with posters advertising rock concerts and art exhibitions, and dotted between them were modern, heavily stylized oil paintings. Mostly nudes. Mostly women locked in passionate embraces. A huge plasma television occupied one corner of the room, in another a futuristic-looking sound system.
 

Joan noticed the look on Annie’s face. “Laura’s inner sanctum. She never let anyone in here. She told me once that if she didn’t have this room, this place to be totally herself, the strain of looking after Edith would have overwhelmed her. You seem surprised.”

Annie nodded. “You think you know someone…”

“We all have our private places,” Joan said. “Most of us just keep them in our heads though. Laura needed to give her private side a physical expression. This is it.”
 

Annie’s eyes scanned the titles of the CDs on the rack by the stereo. Leftfield, Faithless, Massive Attack. Modern dance and trance. She always pictured Laura going home and curling up to Billy Joel and Barry Manilow. She was beginning to realize that she didn’t know Laura Sallis anywhere near as well as she thought she did. The realization saddened her.

“Are you okay?” Carter said, noticing the change in Annie’s mood.

Annie shook herself out of the sudden melancholy that had swept over her. “Yes. Yes of course.”

Carter turned to Joan. “What else can you tell us about this Diana person?”

Joan Maitland hesitated.

“It’s okay,” Annie said. “You can speak freely. I asked Rob to help me look into Laura’s disappearance.”

“Very well,” Joan said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
 

Chapter Nineteen

“I couldn’t tell where or when they first met. Diana just appeared one day and she and Laura seemed to be very close from the outset. Inseparable, I’d say, and as for Edith… Well, Diana was all she could talk about.”

“And how was Diana with Edith?” Annie said.

Joan Maitland shifted her plump body on the couch, the nylon of her overall squealing on the black leather. “Well that was one of the strangest things. Whenever Diana was here Edith would become quite lucid. They’d be in Edith’s room talking and, from what I overheard, Edith was always calm and rational.”