Corpse in Waiting (4 page)

With a set look on his face Patrick said, ‘So how many pieces are you going to try to cut yourself into?'

‘Sufficient,' I replied. Then added, ‘Look, it'll be no different to the way I used to go to my writing room at Lydtor and shut the door. Everyone used to be quite happy about that.'

‘Do as you please,' he said and went away.

The phone number of the estate agent was on the board outside, which I could see from the front bedroom window. I rang, explained I was with Ms Nightingale but acting independently and put in an offer twenty thousand pounds below the asking price. They said they would contact the vendor and ring me back.

I went back downstairs, pausing on the way to note that there was a built-in cupboard in the passageway by the box room door. I knew that what I was doing looked very bad but consoled myself with the knowledge that I did not want this house just because
she
did. The pair of them were in the room to the left of the front door and I estimated that I turned up the very second that Alexandra realized something was going on.

‘Have you two had words?' she asked, failing to hide her smile.

‘Not really,' Patrick said. ‘But I think Ingrid's fallen in love with it too.'

‘What, this house?' she cried. ‘But it's mine!'

‘Not yet,' I pointed out.

‘That's what you think!' Alexandra stamped out and up the stairs while I drifted off to have a look at the kitchen and downstairs bathroom.

The former was larger than I had expected with a scullery leading off to the rear from which the damp, mouldy smell seemed to be emanating. One would have to knock the whole thing through into one and hope to be allowed to create another window. I went down the step into the scullery, opened the cupboard beneath the Belfast sink and there indeed were some very rotten floorboards and strange white fungus-looking growths with tendrils going up the wall. There did not seem to be any sign of it elsewhere. The tiny bathroom was hardly worthy of the name, with rusting and stained fittings: this room could also be incorporated into a new kitchen. It appeared the lavatory was an outside one.

As I made my way over to the door to the garden my phone rang and it was the woman from the estate agency.

I had myself a house.

Imparting the news had two immediate effects. The first was Alexandra raging off yelling, ‘You weren't brought along to bugger things up for me!' and then, to Patrick, ‘Well, are you going to stand there and abandon me now she's got what she wants?' The second being that he didn't. Coolly telling me that he'd see me later, Patrick followed her to her car.

‘The harridan gave him no choice,' I said aloud. ‘But he could have arranged to meet her after lunch and we could have walked back into the city.'

Actually a little shocked by his reaction, I wandered, bemused, into the back of the house and stared around the kitchen. There were horrible, cheap DIY store cupboards and worktops here, all seemingly holding one another up, but the old scullery beyond had what looked like an original walk-in larder. I went over to it and turned the knob on the door but it appeared to be locked. One of the keys on the ring fitted and turned but it still would not open.

‘Stuck,' I muttered. ‘Oh, well.'

Forcing myself to concentrate I rang the agents and made an appointment that afternoon to sort out the details of my purchase. Then I went back upstairs, still, frankly, in a bit of a daze. I could not understand why Patrick still felt obliged to help her. Surely it was obvious, even to someone other than this wildly biased observer, that she was ghastly.

Perhaps they had had a worthwhile relationship all that time ago, perhaps he had loved her and was blinded by the kind of person, possibly a better one, she had been. Perhaps there had been some terrible tragedy in her past that he knew about and felt sorry for her.

The cupboard in the upstairs passageway was locked, or stuck, as well.

So whose fault
was
this mess? I inwardly raged.

It might just be mine, was my miserable conclusion. Why did I feel so insecure about Alexandra? Why
should
I regard her as a threat to my relationship with Patrick? I could only put it down to what my father had called my ‘cat's' whiskers, the intuition that has helped solve quite a few of Patrick's, and, come to think of it, James Carrick's cases for them.

I got annoyed about the door, wondering if the cupboard would be worth retaining, marched downstairs and raided the kitchen drawers. Amongst rubbish, old newspapers, string, rusting cutlery, and other sundry items I found some old fire tongs and what looked like half an iron poker. It was still quite long, around fourteen inches and I discovered when I hauled it out, everything shedding mouse droppings, that someone had flattened the end a bit like a screwdriver. (I found out at a later date that it was one of the tools for a Victorian kitchen range.)

Absolutely perfect.

The cupboard door was only stuck seemingly in a couple of places, at the top and towards the bottom on the side of the lock. But the wood was not in good condition and there were ominous crunching noises when, crouching down, I had inserted my weapon into the gap – the door did not fit very well – and applied a little leverage. I did not want to do any damage to something that was not yet mine so proceeded gently. At last, the door yielded, leaving a thick layer of paint on the inside of the door frame. No, not paint, I saw when I looked more closely, the deposit was what appeared to be glue.

I stood up, opened the door wide and found myself eyeball to partially empty sockets with someone's head.

My back slammed into the wall behind me and there was a bang as the tool I had been using landed on the floor. I suppose I must have stopped breathing for a moment from shock for I then heard myself gasp for air, inhaling the stink of putrefaction. The head on its shelf just grinned back at me.

It was not a joke one made of some kind of resin that smelt horrible, I ascertained, making myself go closer again. This was real. It was only halfway to being a skull as the shrivelled lips were still there and thick black hair tumbled down from what remained of the scalp. Those eyes . . .

Feeling sick, I walked away for a short distance, surprised to find that I was a little unsteady on my feet.

Then I rang the police.

THREE

‘
Y
ou've found a
heid
?' James Carrick exclaimed, his Scottish accent more pronounced then usual.

‘In a house I'm hoping to buy,' I elaborated.

There was a pause and then he said, ‘I'm not sure which is the more surprising statement. Are you
sure
?'

‘I'm looking at it now,' I said. ‘It's on the top shelf of an upstairs cupboard. The cupboard had been glued shut and there's another one similarly sealed in the scullery. Perhaps that's where the rest is.'

‘Is Patrick with you?'

‘No, he's gone house-hunting with some blonde trollop.'

‘Bloody hell,' he responded morosely. ‘Give me the address and I'll be with you as quickly as I can.'

Cautious as ever, Carrick, fair-haired, in his late thirties, a Scot to the core, and once described by a friend of mine as wall-to-wall crumpet, arrived on his own, had a look for himself and
then
called out the troops.

‘Are you all right?' he asked.

We were standing in the scullery, waiting for his team to arrive, gazing, warily, at the larder door.

‘Yes, I'm OK,' I replied, actually wishing Patrick was here too.

‘You're not going to want to live here now, surely,' he said, giving me a sober look.

‘I don't know,' I replied. ‘I think it would . . . depend.' At least Alexandra would be unlikely to want it now.

‘You could sweep the cupboards away when you modernize the place,' he suggested. ‘Had I told you Joanna's pregnant?'

‘No! Congratulations!'

‘Well, as you know, she's had two miscarriages. She's taking things very easy.' Awkwardly, he went on, ‘Look— er – excuse me for asking but what did you mean when you said Patrick had gone house-hunting with some – er – woman?'

‘Trollop,' I corrected before explaining.

His brow cleared. ‘You had me worried for a minute. I thought—'

‘
I'm
worried,' I interrupted. ‘She might have some kind of hold over him.'

‘Who –
Patrick
? Surely not!'

‘Not the sort of hold you might be thinking of. She might represent . . . you know . . . his youth, fun times before he had any responsibilities and was still an army officer in a regiment that hadn't been amalgamated with others. Oh, I don't know, James. You're a bloke. You ought to be able to explain it to me. I mean, she used some really filthy language and he
laughed
! Now if there's one thing he hates it's me swearing.'

‘But he cares about you, doesn't he? She might have been just a one-night stand – history.'

‘And if you met a bloke with whom Joanna had had a one-night stand and he started chatting her up and calling her darling how would you react?'

‘I'd kill him,' James responded grimly. ‘Oh – right, I see what you mean.'

All discussion on the matter then had to cease as Carrick's team, led by his assistant, DS Lynn Outhwaite, arrived in a blare of sirens and other police designed-to-intimidate sound-effects. Carrick immediately sent the scenes of crime people upstairs to examine the head, directed a photographer to take pictures of the scullery and its larder door, in painstaking detail and close-up, before he too went upstairs and then, personally, set about opening it using the thing I had found in the drawer. This door was more firmly stuck but after about ten minutes of careful diligence on the DCI's part it yielded.

‘My prints are already on it, I'm afraid,' I said as he grasped the door knob with a gloved hand.

‘No point it having mine as well,' he muttered.

The glue's sealing effect had kept in the stench. Everyone – there was quite an audience by this time – involuntarily jumped back as it hit us. This was just as well because the thing that toppled out and hit the floor with a sickening squelching thud landed on the spot where the toes of Carrick's shoes had been a second earlier. The next few moments were only memorable for the reason that one of those watching from the back ran into the kitchen and threw up noisily into the sink.

‘Oh, God,' Carrick said thickly as dark-coloured fluids began to trickle across the ancient lino in our direction.

The body, presumably headless, was wrapped in what appeared to be bedding; sheets and perhaps some kind of thin bedspread but the material was so stained it was almost impossible to tell exactly what it was. The feet stuck out from the bottom of the revolting parcel and were bare, bones and sinews visible through grey, oozing flesh. There were flakes of red polish still on the toe nails.

I was absolutely sure about one thing: I did not want to be around when this nightmare was unwrapped.

‘You needn't stay,' Carrick turned to me to say as though reading my thoughts. ‘I can catch up with you at home later.'

‘We're on holiday,' I told him, forced to smile. ‘Come round to the hotel.' I gave him the name of it and left, aware of his baffled gaze on me.

House-buying now being on hold I walked back into the city centre, called in to the estate agents to tell them that that particular property was now a crime scene but I would proceed as soon as was possible. I then bought myself a sandwich and a small carton of fruit juice. Sitting in Queen's Square to have my lunch I did a bit of thinking.

I had to admit that my behaviour as far as Patrick was concerned had been a bit over the top. It was perfectly possible that because of recently having Mark my hormones were still all to hell. Did I have a horror of being no longer attractive, more like a milch cow than anything else? Of losing my figure and turning into ‘'er indoors', a wife who was a fetter for, as that wretched woman had said, ‘a good-looking man'?

‘Yes,' I muttered. ‘That's about the truth of it. I behaved like a cast iron fetter. A jealous and—'

Patrick has never been to a fashion show in his life. This fact sort of clattered into my brain as I sat there, in truth everything in my mind overlaid with those images of putrescent flesh, bared teeth in rotting gums, the stinking remains in the two cupboards. Was it my imagination or had the stench got into my clothes and hair? I tried to repress the memories and concentrate on what had suddenly occurred to me but this somehow seemed wrong as the horror had once been a living human being.

I could not. Suddenly I did not want anything to eat either.

‘Boo,' said a well-remembered voice, its owner seating himself at my side.

‘How on earth did you know I was here?' I asked.

‘I've a thermal-imaging wife-seeking device on my mobile,' Patrick said, jokey but still cool. ‘And I thought you were likely to be in a quarter of a mile radius of the estate agents.' He eyed the sandwiches. ‘Have you put those in the sun deliberately?'

I just looked at him and he looked at me, the temperature going down a few more degrees. Then he gave me one of his stock-in-trade penetrating stares. ‘Ingrid, what's
wrong
?'

‘A body's been found at the house,' I whispered.

‘A
person
, you mean?'

‘A woman. The head was in a cupboard upstairs and the rest in the scullery. It was ghastly. Do you want the sandwiches? I'm not hungry.'

Virtually shockproof after his service days, he pounced on them but presented me with the carton of juice. ‘Don't get dehydrated – you've had a nasty experience. Would you like something stronger? I know of a nice little pub nearby.'