A Killing Resurrected (11 page)

Everyone turned their attention to Claire.

‘I don't know any more,' she said. ‘Really.'

Ed came out from behind the bar. ‘Looking at his room?' he scoffed. ‘That's a bit feeble, even for the police, isn't it? What did they expect to find after all these years?'

Claire shook her head. ‘I'm not sure they expected to find anything,' she told him, ‘but they're coming back again on Monday to look for anything in the house that might tell them who Barry's friends were back then, some of whom may have been members of the gang. Photographs, letters, things like that.'

Bradshaw seemed suddenly to realize that others were listening, and turned to face them. ‘Sorry if we're holding you up,' he said with false heartiness. ‘Let's get those glasses filled, shall we? Give me a hand, Kevin; we have a bunch of thirsty people here.' He moved back behind the bar. ‘Now then, Roger,' he said to the first man in line, ‘what's it going to be?'

V
alerie Alcott sat staring down at her plate, fists clenched beneath the table. She wished she had gone straight home after leaving the hospital instead of agreeing to come back to the house with her father. But she'd felt sorry for him after that ugly scene in the hospital, with Celeste going on and on until a senior nurse had asked them to leave.

‘I think that is quite enough for today,' she'd said firmly. ‘Mrs Alcott needs her rest and I must ask you to lower your voices and leave. Not only is it bad for Mrs Alcott, but you are disturbing the other patients.'

Her mother, propped up on pillows, looked old, and Valerie remembered thinking that no one should look that old at fifty-two. Her face was grey and her breathing was laboured. She had tried to put on a bold face; tried to pretend she was pleased to see them, but Valerie had caught the grateful look she'd given the nurse when their eyes had met.

But Celeste just wouldn't shut up.

‘I've come all the way up here from Bristol,' she said waspishly, ‘and I don't intend to be told when I can and cannot visit my mother during visiting hours.'

‘Your mother needs to rest,' her father had said, rising to his feet. ‘She—'

‘So,
now
you're concerned, are you, Dad?' Celeste snapped. ‘If it hadn't been for you, she wouldn't be in here in the first place, you and your smoking! I'm not a little girl anymore, so I won't have you telling me what is best for my mother.'

Valerie had taken her sister's arm. ‘Come on, Celeste,' she had coaxed. ‘Mum is very tired; she does need her rest, so let's go. We can come back tomorrow, and perhaps it would be best if we came one at a time and just sat quietly with Mum.'

‘You're as bad as Dad,' Celeste accused, pulling away. ‘You keep saying you've stopped smoking, but I know you haven't. I can smell it on you. And just look at what that's done to my mother!'

‘For God's sake, Celeste, drop it!' her father hissed. ‘If you want to have a go at me, then do it outside. Now, are you coming or do I have to drag you out? Because I will if you keep this up.'

Celeste turned on him. ‘There! See? Now look what you've done. You've made Mum cry. It's all right, Mum,' she said, bending over to stroke her mother's hair, ‘we love you. Don't cry.'

The nurse had moved in, a sturdy nurse, expertly nudging Celeste away from the bed as she straightened their mother's pillows. Celeste attempted to push back, but the nurse stood her ground. ‘You can leave voluntarily, or I can have Security escort you out,' she said in a low voice. Her hand hovered inches away from the emergency call-button on the in-house communications unit.

‘You'll be hearing more about this,' Celeste snapped as she moved away. ‘I will not be treated like this when it could very well be the last time I see my mother—'

‘Celeste! For God's sake!'

Never had Valerie seen such a thunderous look on her father's face as he came round the end of the bed to seize his daughter by the arm and literally drag her away, and for once in her adult life, Celeste looked frightened.

Now, sitting there at the table in the house where she'd grown up, Valerie cringed at her own cowardice. She'd done nothing, absolutely
nothing
back there at the hospital. She'd just stood there, speechless and totally useless while her father marched Celeste out of the ward, down the hall and into the lift, and then outside. Valerie had followed them down, feeling more like a six-year-old than a grown woman.

It had been like that since childhood. Celeste, three years older, had carried on a secret campaign of intimidation as far back as Valerie could remember, and no matter how hard she'd tried, she'd never been able to fight back successfully.

‘So, what
are
you going to do when Mum comes out?' Celeste demanded, only slightly more subdued than she'd been at the hospital. She wrinkled her nose as she looked around the room. ‘She certainly can't come back here. The place reeks of smoke, so where will she go?' She looked pointedly at Valerie. ‘Your flat is too small and there are too many stairs anyway, so that's no good, but you could get a bigger place.'

‘And how am I supposed to do that?' Valerie said. ‘I'm at work all day and I can barely afford the rent on the place I have now.'

‘You might be earning a better wage if you'd paid more attention to your education and gone to university instead of buzzing off to Europe and God knows where else when you finished school,' Celeste snapped. ‘Now what are you? Typist in some little office with no prospects. If I were you, I'd—'

‘But you're
not
me!' Valerie flared, ‘and I thank God for that. It's all very well for you to talk; yes, you went to university, but your main objective was to snag a rich husband, and you succeeded, so don't preach to me about the difference university makes. At least I work for a living. You don't! And I'm sick and tired of—'

‘Stop it!'

Celeste gasped and Valerie jumped back so hard her chair almost went over backwards as her father's fist hit the table with such force that the teacups slopped tea into the saucers and on to the tablecloth. ‘Just shut it, both of you! Can't you see she's baiting you, Val?' He turned to Celeste. ‘And if you are trying to make me feel bad about what's happened to your mother, you are wasting your breath, because nothing you say or do can make me feel any worse than I do now. I
know
it's my fault; I
know
I'm responsible for your mother's condition, and I don't need you or anyone else to tell me that. So either shut up or leave, and I don't much care which one you choose.'

Grim-faced, Celeste threw her napkin down and pushed her chair back. ‘In that case, I'll leave and let you two get on with it,' she said thinly. She stood up and moved to the door, then paused. ‘With me out of the way, you can both light up and discuss what to do about Mother, when she comes out of hospital –
if
she ever does.'

Claire Hammond shivered and stirred in her sleep. Cramped and cold, she slowly came awake and reached for the coverlet to cover her shoulders. But there was no coverlet, and this was not her bed.

She opened her eyes and looked around. Slowly, the outlines of the room took shape. The conservatory, of course! After spending the whole day and most of the evening cleaning and sorting things out, she'd flopped into one of the overstuffed chairs for a brief rest before going home. That had been around ten o'clock. So what time was it now? Claire peered at her watch, but the light was too faint for her to see the time.

She wrinkled her nose. Whatever was that smell?

Claire sat up straight, suddenly alert and wide awake. Petrol? She was sure it was petrol she could smell, but where could it be coming from? The windows weren't open, and even if they were, the conservatory was at the back of the house, and there would be no reason for . . .

A sound! She caught her breath; stopped breathing, straining to hear. There it was again! Someone was in the house; someone with petrol . . .

Claire shot out of the chair to move swiftly across the room. Silently, she eased the door open, put her eyes to the crack . . . then froze! Not six feet away in the hall, a dark figure, intent upon the job in hand, was backing slowly down the hall. Guided by the light of a pencil torch gripped between the teeth, he was sloshing petrol on the floor. The smell was overpowering. Claire's eyes watered and her throat convulsed as she choked back a terrible urge to cough.

Panic gripped her. She could feel her heart pounding hard against her ribs as she closed the door and leaned against it, fighting hard to overcome her fear. The whole house was filled with fumes. One tiny spark and the whole place would go up in flames, and she'd be lucky if she got out alive.

She heard a sound; a sound she recognized. The hinges on the back door had been making that sound for as long as she could remember, and that meant . . .

Oh, God! The intruder had opened the back door, and that meant he only had to step outside, light a match, toss it in . . .

Suddenly, Claire was angry, so angry it banished fear. A weapon. She searched frantically for a weapon. Something
. . . Anything!
No time . . . She grabbed the first thing that came to hand, hefted it and grunted in satisfaction as she slipped into the hall. She felt the cool night air on her face. The back door was open. The light from the torch wavering as the last few drops of petrol were shaken from the can.

From somewhere deep within her came an angry, visceral sound, rising to a howl of rage as she charged headlong down the hall to hurl the jam jar full of pennies at the figure in the doorway . . .

‘She has some nasty bruises and her clothes were soaked in petrol,' the lead fireman told Paget. ‘I don't think the bruises are all that serious, but we had to get her out of those clothes, so we wrapped her up and sent her off to hospital in an ambulance. She didn't want to go; insisted she wanted to stay until you got here, but we finally persuaded her it was for the best. I tell you, that is one plucky lady, and if she hadn't done what she did, she wouldn't be alive now. That house was so full of fumes that one spark would have blown the place apart. We've been here over an hour, now, and we've only just taken off our masks.'

‘Did she tell you what happened?'

‘She said she'd spent the day cleaning, sat down for a rest and fell asleep in the conservatory at the back of the house. Woke up to hear someone in the house, looked out and saw this person backing down the hall pouring petrol on the floor as he went. Of course, it was dark, so she couldn't see much, and she daren't switch on the light, so she grabbed the first thing that came to hand, charged down the hall and flung it at him.

‘Bloody great jar full of pennies,' the man continued with a shake of the head. ‘Probably would have killed the bastard if it had hit him, not that he didn't deserve it. Hit the doorpost; took a chunk right out of it. Glass and pennies everywhere. Must have scared the shit out of him because he took off. Lucky for her he did, because with all that petrol on the tiles in the kitchen she slipped and fell when she threw the jar, and banged herself about a bit. She wouldn't have stood a chance if he'd stayed long enough to set the place alight.'

They found Claire Hammond in Casualty. Wrapped in a blanket, and with a towel wound round her head, she was curled up in a chair in a curtained-off cubicle.

‘No bones broken, just a few bruises,' she told Paget when he asked after introducing Tregalles. ‘There was no need to admit me, so technically I'm an outpatient and I'm free to go. The only reason I'm still here is because I'm waiting for some fresh clothes.' Claire grimaced. ‘Fortunately I was able to have a shower, hence the towel,' she continued, pointing to her head, ‘but they told me it will probably take at least half-a-dozen rinses before the smell will be completely gone from my hair.'

‘Have you arranged for someone to bring your clothes?' Paget asked.

‘Not yet,' she said, ‘but I have a friend who will. It's just that I don't want to get her out of bed in the middle of the night, so I'm going to wait and call her about eight.'

‘Oh, I think we may be able to get you home before that,' Paget told her. ‘But before we do, I would like to ask you a few questions if you feel up to it?'

Claire gave a perfunctory nod and said, ‘I'm fine, really, but what's happening at the house? The way that man was sloshing petrol about . . .' She shuddered.

It was Tregalles who answered. ‘It's certainly not as bad as it could have been,' he said, ‘but I'm afraid the carpets in the two downstairs rooms have to go. The fireman I spoke to said you would never get the smell out, so it would be pointless to try to save them. The same goes for the carpet at the bottom of the stairs, and the two big armchairs and sofa in the front room were soaked as well. As for the rest, he told me there are professional cleaners who specialize in this sort of thing.'

Claire nodded slowly as she absorbed the news, and said, ‘Thank you, Sergeant,' as if what he'd told her pretty much confirmed her own mental assessment of the damage. ‘And as you say, it could have been worse – a lot worse if he'd ever struck a match. On the bright side, the carpets
were
old and threadbare, so I would have had to replace them at some point. As for the rest, we'll just have to wait and see what the cleaners can do.' She turned to face Paget. ‘Now, what is it you want to know, Chief Inspector?'

Paget told her what they had learned from the firemen on the scene. ‘And what I would like from you is anything you can add to that,' he said. ‘I know it was dark, but were you able to see anything of this person at all that might help us?'

Claire shook her head. ‘The only time I saw a clear outline of him was when he was standing in the open doorway shaking the last of the petrol out of the can,' she said, ‘but that's all it was, an outline.