The Collared Collection (7 page)

After the euphoria of knowing everyone was safe, the true horror of the fire was beginning to bite – they had been so very lucky to escape at best injury, at worst an agonising death, and she knew they probably owed their survival to David’s quick thinking. Not forgetting the smoke alarm, of course.

Although one of the firemen had told her they might be able to salvage items of clothing, as they’d prevented the blaze from reaching the bedrooms, Callie and the boys currently had only the clothes they stood up in – and they were sooty and smelly. They wouldn’t be allowed to set foot in the house again until it was declared safe, after the fire investigation team had completed their examination of the scene to establish the cause. But she couldn’t think about practicalities – they would have to wait until the morning.

She realised she’d lost all her photographs and keepsakes of the children’s childhood, stored in a dresser downstairs. Despite telling herself it was everyone’s safety that really mattered, she mourned the memories that had gone up in smoke – not all the years she’d spent with Dominic had been ghastly. When they’d scraped together every penny they had to buy the house, they moved in a matter of days before Sam was born, blithely assuming they had decades of happiness ahead of them. Freckle Face had a lot to answer for – though in all fairness, Callie knew her errant spouse was far from blameless.

Her mind was on a rollercoaster ride to nowhere – she knew she really had to pull herself together.

Exhausted, Alex and Sam had fallen asleep in David’s enormous bed, but not before Sam wept pitifully in his mum’s arms for his missing Jasper. Callie had tried her best to persuade him that the cat would have fled the fire and was probably hiding in someone’s shed until it was safe to come out again, but he wasn’t convinced – and why would he be, when she didn’t really believe it herself?

She alternated between a state of exhilaration because they’d all survived and a deep depression because they were destitute. Too wired to sleep, she cuddled with David on his squishy cream leather sofa, sipping French brandy, which she considered the height of decadence at that time of the morning, even if she didn’t like it.

‘Ugh!’ Her face flashed through its repertoire of gurns as the liquid burned through several layers of her oesophagus on its way down, ‘I hate the taste and the smell of this stuff, but it’s a very pretty colour.’

‘Drink up, Callie, it’s for medicinal purposes.’ He adjusted the travel rug he’d tucked around her when delayed shock had sent her into a fit of the shakes.

‘Do you think the fire was started deliberately?’ she asked, although she’d already formed her own conclusion.

‘We won’t know for sure until the investigators have had a good look, but that would be my first guess, yes.’

Her ‘up’ phase disappeared in a beat. She shivered again and felt tears course through the charcoal dust on her cheeks. ‘I don’t understand why Balaclava Man is after me – I don’t know who he is …’ she cried, unable to hold back loud sobs, which sapped the little energy she had left. David encircled her with his arms, making soft, comforting noises to make her feel warm and safe again.

When she had calmed a little, he said, ‘He must – if he’s responsible for the fire – think you can identify him. Otherwise it makes no sense. I know you’re shattered, but can you think back for a moment to the morning Dee died?’ She nodded mechanically. ‘Now, slowly go over everything in your mind, right from the moment Sam and Alex went off to school. Do you remember seeing anyone you wouldn’t expect to be there? Did anything else strike you as odd; no matter how unimportant or insignificant you might think it is? What about when you went to the newsagent’s on the corner, to buy the chocolates?’

Nothing came to mind, and no one. She shook her head. ‘No, the only person I saw – apart from the lady who sold me the sweets – was old Mrs Walker from next door. We passed the time of day, said a few words about the hot weather – as you do – and that was that.’

‘And you’re sure you didn’t notice anyone on your way round to Dee’s, or while you were waiting on the doorstep? You must have stood there for a minute or so.’

‘Nothing; I’m positive.’

David sat back and swirled the brandy in his glass, then took a deep breath. ‘Callie, you were right about Dee, she was murdered.’

Though she’d worked that out for herself, hearing confirmation was a harsh reality check. Her head fell forward into her lap, ‘Oh God, David, who would do such a dreadful thing? And why on earth …?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea – we’re looking into the backgrounds of both Dee and Giles to try to discover a motive, but we’ve drawn a blank so far. Apparently, they were both model citizens, at least so far as we can tell. There’s not an awful lot that makes sense in this case, and we have no apparent leads.’ He hesitated, fiddling with the blanket’s fringe, ‘Actually … there’s something else …’

She looked him straight in the eye. ‘What?’

‘Now, don’t let this give you nightmares …’ – she didn’t much like the sound of that – ‘but I think the person who killed Dee – the most likely suspect being Balaclava Man – was still in the house when you found her body.’

Bile surged in her throat and she took a large swig of the brandy, which nearly choked her. ‘Oh, crap,’ was all she could say for several minutes, then, ‘But surely I’d have known …’

‘It was partly the open door – that was an invaluable piece of information, while we were waiting for the preliminary PM results. Serious suicides crave privacy – they need to make certain they won’t be disturbed and Dee would have closed the door, probably locked it, if she planned to kill herself. It’s a recognised pattern suicides follow – like a jumper will always take off their glasses. Perhaps our man left the door open so that he had an unhindered means of escape – we won’t know that until we find him and question him. Or it may be the door was open anyway, because it was so hot and he walked through without bothering to close it. Then you messed everything up by arriving before he was ready to leave – my guess is, he went out through the front, while you were in the back garden waiting for the ambulance.’

Though she wasn’t sure she could take much more, Callie asked, ‘But why was he still there? Hadn’t she been dead for a long time – the cold bath water? Maybe he was searching for something … that’s why he came back to the house – at least twice that we know of … and on the last occasion, poor Giles disturbed him and paid the price with a bang on the head.’

‘That’s a possibility … we think Dee was drowned in the sink and then laid out in the bath while he finished setting the scene – that’s before her other injuries were inflicted. Apart from the slit wrists, it’s very reminiscent of Elizabeth Siddal.’

‘Elizabeth who?’

‘Siddal – she posed in a tin bath, as the model for Ophelia.’

‘Oh … right.’

‘My dad’s a Millais fan.’

‘Ah, that tells me everything …’

‘Anyway … the pathologist found pressure bruises, where she was held underwater, and her physiology showed all the signs of a traumatic drowning.’

‘Isn’t every drowning traumatic?’

‘You know what I mean. Perhaps the murderer was trying to play about with the body temperature and cause confusion over the time of death by running cold water – genuine suicides choosing that method run hot water to dull the pain and promote blood flow. I don’t know a definite time, but we are assured she hadn’t been dead for very long when you entered the house. Her floating wrists suggest that too.’

Callie gasped, clutching agitatedly at the rug. ‘You don’t mean I could have saved her?’

His hand brushed hers. ‘No, you were definitely much too late for that.’

She breathed a noisy sigh of relief, hoping he was telling the truth and not just trying to spare her feelings.

Following several seconds of turgid silence, he went on, ‘The report states her wrists were slashed by a left-handed person positioned to her right side – the doc could tell from the angle and varying depths of the cuts that they definitely weren’t self-inflicted. Dee was right-handed, I believe. Also, the spatter patterns of blood you would expect from living flesh weren’t present, confirming the theory that she was drowned first.’ He listed the facts in a voice bereft of any emotion, as though he’d memorised them straight off the page. ‘As you’d imagine, the depth of the wound is an important factor – her cuts were way too deep. Dee wouldn’t have had the strength it takes to slice through layers of flesh like that, especially on the second wrist. Plus, of course, there wasn’t nearly enough blood for the cuts to have been made while she was still alive.’

‘It certainly looked like a lot to me.’ She shuddered at the vile memory, feeling sick to her stomach. Earlier that evening – which seemed like a lifetime ago – she’d been determined to badger David into giving her the full facts. Now she found it dreadfully painful to listen to what Dee had suffered … it was almost unbearable.

‘Only because it was diluted by the water. Oh yes – the weapon was most likely a serrated carving knife, or similar, which we haven’t yet found.’

Feeling very faint, she whispered, ‘Enough … David, I really can’t talk about this anymore.’

He stroked her hair. ‘I understand, and I’m sorry to push you, Callie, but I do need to ask you one last thing about when you phoned for the ambulance. What did you do in the bedroom?’

‘Apart from ringing 999 and trying to mop up some of the water I’d trudged in with me –’

‘And I suppose you bent down to do that?’

‘Yes, of course. I told you, I tried to clean up the rug with a tissue – which was pointless, because I was still dripping everywhere. Then suddenly I felt so ill, I had to rush out.’

David slapped his thigh. ‘That’s it! He thinks you saw him then. Forensic evidence suggests he hid under the bed – I bet he was still there when you used the telephone!’

She barely made it to the bathroom in time.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Ginny, it’s Callie.’ She performed some controlled, deep breathing exercises, while she listened to prickly silence on the other end of the phone, ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but quite a lot’s been happening … and … oh Ginny, it’s so awful … our house burned down last night …’ At that point she gave in to a fit of wailing, unable to utter another intelligible word.

David gently massaged her shoulder with one hand and took the phone with the other. ‘Hello, Ginny, it’s David, David Bennett. If you remember, we … err … met at Callie’s recently?’ He quickly distanced the handset from his ear – she could hear Ginny’s well-bred voice shouting words that could probably get her disbarred. When he was able to get a word in, he said, ‘Listen, Ginny, I don’t expect you to hold me in very high regard …’ as she launched into another tirade, David waited patiently for her to run out of steam. He found her outburst amusing, judging by the lop-sided grin on his lips. ‘OK, now you’ve got that off your chest, I’m trying to tell you that Callie needs a good friend right now and that’s you. I don’t want anything that I’ve …
we’ve
done to come between two people who’ve been good mates for so long. Are you able to get away and come over to see her?’

They spoke some more – Ginny had cut down the decibels and Callie couldn’t decipher her exact words. Eventually, David said, ‘Thanks, Ginny, we’ll see you in about an hour – I’ll wait here until you arrive.’ He gave her the address.

‘She’s coming?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, as soon as she can. She‘s just got back to the office from a trial up in Manchester and hadn’t heard – don’t worry, when I explained to her what’s happened and she realised you were in trouble, she wanted to drop everything and be with you.’

They heard a big thump as something fell in the bedroom; she gave him the benefit of her best apologetic look. ‘Sorry. Dominic can’t collect them until this evening – I hope they aren’t doing too much damage.’

‘There’s not much to destroy in there, they’re fine. When Ginny arrives, I’ll take them off to buy shirts and trousers for school; I can bunk off work for a few hours without anyone noticing – and I thought we’d swing by the house, see if any of the neighbours have found Jasper.’

‘Oh, thanks – you’ll be Sam’s friend for life. I’m not sure we can hold out much hope for the poor creature, though.’

‘You never know.’ He looked thoughtful, ‘Are you sure you’re alright about the kids going to stay with Dominic and Fr … Polly?’

‘Yes – I have to be. They should be as far away from me as possible for their own safety, until this is sorted out. I’ll stay with Ginny, if she’ll have me.’

‘You’re more than welcome to camp out here … unless you feel it’s too early in our relationship to shack up together?’ He grinned and tilted his head to one side.

He regarded ‘them’ as more than a one-off roll in the hay then? ‘Thanks for the offer, David, but no. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, it’s just …’ Well, what was it exactly? she wondered.

He held up a hand. ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to explain. We’ve got all the time in the world.’

Wow! At least one aspect of her life had a future then, she thought. She may have been dressed in an oversized shirt, boxers, and shorts that almost reached her knees, with no bra, no job, and no home, but those few words gave her a frisson of hope for the future and made her feel like a supermodel. Except fatter … and shorter. ‘I’ll go and check on the boys,’ she mumbled, hoping to conceal her emotions – not that she was entirely sure what they were.

Alex and Sam were in seventh heaven, ‘Hey, Mum, this PS4 is really cool, can we get one?’ Sam asked. ‘David said we’ll be able to get all sorts of new stuff like this with the insurance money – can we get one, Mum? Ooh look, I’ve killed the alien!’

He was beside himself with pride at having blown a scaly aquatic beast to smithereens. Outwardly at least, he seemed to have been able to put the trauma of last night behind him.

‘Perhaps not – we’ll see how much we have left after I’ve bought boring stuff like a fridge, washing machine, some chairs; it’s a long list.’ Assuming she was up to date with the premiums, of course; she made a mental note to check that out very soon.