Authors: Barry Maitland
The black shoulder bag was still lying where Hannaford had laid it.
“Ah,” Brock said. “We assumed that belonged to Mrs. Hannaford. Kathy, would you ask Desai upstairs to check this for us, please? Tell him we’d like to have a look inside as soon as possible.”
Kathy went quickly upstairs to Angela’s room. This time she stopped at the doorway and spoke to the back of the man who was crouching beside the bed.
“Are you Desai?”
He looked back over his shoulder at her. He had a lean face, dark good looks, Indian she assumed, and the same arrogant expression in his eyes.
“Chief Inspector Brock asks if you would check the dead girl’s handbag for us. It’s lying on the hall settle downstairs. As far as we know only the father has touched it, although it’s possible the mother did too. They found it lying, open, on the hall floor when they arrived this morning.”
“OK.” He turned back to his inspection of the carpet.
“He says we’d like to get at the contents as soon as possible.”
This got no answer. Kathy stood for a moment staring at the woman’s body on the bed, then clenched her jaw and hurried back downstairs. Brock and Hannaford had returned to the window seats in the bay.
“Why do you want to know the name of her dentist?” Angela’s father was asking.
“Sometimes it’s useful.”
Hannaford shook his head and gave a name.
“Did your daughter have any particular physical distinguishing marks at all, Mr. Hannaford? A birthmark, a tattoo?”
The man looked at Brock as if he were mad. “A tattoo?”
Brock shrugged apologetically. “These days, quite a few young people do.”
“Really? Well, perhaps the sort of people you . . .” He stopped himself. “No, of course not. It’s inconceivable.”
“And have you any idea what she might have been doing yesterday evening?”
Hannaford shook his head.
“Were you in touch with her at all during the past week? Did you ring her from the Continent?”
“Yes, once. It would have been last Tuesday, I think. We had reached . . . what was the name of the place?” He looked for a moment towards his wife as if to ask for help, then remembered. “Lindau, on Lake Constance. We rang her from the hotel at about 6:30 that evening. Everything was perfectly normal. She didn’t mention any plans for this Saturday, as far as I know. I would have expected her to be with Adrian if she went out at all.”
“No, dear.”
They looked up to see Mrs. Hannaford standing a few paces away. The vicar was holding her arm, awkward. Brock stood up to get her a chair.
“Adrian was going out with his friends, don’t you remember? One of them was having a stag night. He’s getting married next Saturday.”
Hannaford shook his head. “No, no, I don’t remember, Glenys. Shouldn’t you be lying down?”
“Dr. Pollock will be here soon, dear. I’ll wait till then.” She
hesitated, then continued. “She said she was going out on Saturday evening too. She’d got tickets . . . for the theatre.”
“Tickets, Mrs. Hannaford?” Brock asked gently. “There were others going?”
She bit her lip suddenly and began sobbing once more. After a moment she whispered, “A friend from the office.”
She turned away and blinked out through her tears at the garden. “The grass needs cutting, Basil,” she mumbled distractedly. Kathy followed her gaze. A lush lawn framed by beds of annuals and banks of shrubbery led to a huge, shady ash tree at the far end. A plump squirrel was scurrying across the lawn, its fluffy grey tail held high.
ANGELA’S HANDBAG CONFIRMED WHERE
she had been the previous evening.
“You’ve met DS Leon Desai then, Kathy? DS Kathy Kolla.”
“Yes, we met upstairs,” Kathy said coolly.
Desai nodded briefly in acknowledgement and turned to the handbag on the dining-table in front of them. Brock let him empty it with his gloved hands, carefully bagging each item as he brought it out. The first of these was a glossy theatre programme, folded to fit into the bag, for a performance of
Macbeth
at the National Theatre. Later, when they came to her purse, they retrieved the theatre ticket, for the evening of Saturday, September 8.
Kathy made her own list of the items in the bag as Sergeant Desai brought them out. They included a current season ticket on Southern Rail from Petts Wood to Blackfriars in the City of London, an Access credit card, a cheque card and a blood donor card. There was no driver’s licence.
“All right, thanks, Leon. How’s it going upstairs?”
“Slowly. We’ll be some time yet. He seems . . .” He hesitated.
“What?”
Desai shrugged. “I was going to say that he seems to have been remarkably careful. It sounds an odd thing to say, looking at all that mess. But it’s not as easy as it should be to find his traces among it all.” He pursed his lips with frustration. “What I would appreciate, sir, is if you could keep people downstairs. You know what it’s like. Every new person is just another contamination to eliminate. Somebody threw up in the toilet upstairs not long ago, and we hadn’t even started in there yet.”
“Oh dear.” Brock frowned, avoiding his glare. “Yes, of course, Leon. Just give us a shout when you can let us back up again.”
The man got to his feet. “Any idea how he got in yet? We haven’t been able to find any traces of a forced entry upstairs.”
“No,” Brock said, “nor down here either. That’s one of the worrying things.”
Desai nodded and left.
“Who is he, Brock?” Kathy asked when the door closed behind him. “I thought he was with Scene of Crime.”
“He’s our LO, Kathy—Laboratory Liaison Officer. He’s with the Met Forensic Science Lab in Lambeth, coordinating the scientific blokes, advising us on scene management and so on.”
“Well, when I went upstairs he made it pretty clear what he thought of liaising with
contaminants
like me.”
Brock smiled. “The more refined their equipment gets and the more subtle the traces they can pick up, the more of a headache the rest of us become for them. What they’d really like when a crime is discovered is for the whole neighbourhood to be evacuated and sealed off, and for them to be given a month or two to sift through it in space suits. You can understand their frustration with what happens to their evidence when we barge in. It’s bad enough for them trying to make sure that they don’t themselves provide some opening for the defence—you know, inadvertently picking up a hair in the toilet and transferring it on their shoe to the bedroom, or something.”
“Yes, I know,” Kathy said. “We spent quite a lot of time on that at Bramshill. But it’s also important that
we
get a good look at the scene.”
“Of course. Look, Kathy,” Brock said, changing the subject, “I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier, but thanks for agreeing to come out today. I could have called Bren, but he’s had quite a bit on his plate recently. And of course, I’m really delighted you’re joining us tomorrow.”
Kathy beamed. “You know it’s what I always wanted, Brock. I was a bit worried that there would be some . . . well, embarrassment at what happened at Edenham—that it might stop them transferring me to Serious Crime.”
“It is true that, on the whole, young aspiring officers are discouraged from stabbing suspects to death. I dare say that it would be regarded as unduly colourful, on a personnel file. On the other hand, you did save my life, which would probably count on the plus side, marginally. At least, it does with me.”
He smiled at her. “On the two occasions we’ve worked together, Kathy, you’ve managed to cause quite a bit of physical damage, to yourself as much as anyone else. This time, let’s just track down the animal responsible for what happened upstairs, and then arrest him in an orderly fashion, shall we? For the sake of your file.”
“You don’t want me to become type-cast, is that it?” Kathy smiled back.
“What I’d particularly like is for you to concentrate on the girl. Find out what you can about her. It’s beginning to look as if the physical evidence may be a bit sparse, in which case the connection between Angela Hannaford and her killer will become all the more important.”
“Perhaps there is no connection. Perhaps it could have been anyone.”
“No. We’re surrounded by five million houses very much like this
one. There has to be some reason why it was this house, this girl, this time. How did he know there was a young woman here? How did he know she was on her own? How did he know that he had time to spend on her? I don’t mean that he necessarily
knew
her, although we’ll begin with that as a possibility. But even if he didn’t, there was
some
connection between his pattern of life and hers.”
Kathy nodded. “Where would you like me to begin?”
“The boyfriend, I think. I’ve got people from the local Division starting on house-to-house interviews in the street here, with the neighbours and so on. But you might see where you go with her social life. Keep in touch with me here. This is the phone number.”
As Kathy got into her car, she looked back and saw him come out of the porch at the front of the house, talking with a couple of local CID detectives. He was a big man, and his mop of grey hair stood out above their heads, framed by a trail of yellow honeysuckle blossom growing around the framework of the porch. He seemed to be only half listening to the other two, his eyes straying over the windows in the upper part of the house. He scratched his beard, pondering, then hunched his shoulders and said something, and the little group dispersed.
KATHY RANG THE FRONT
door bell and waited while the chimes died away inside. Eventually the door was opened by a small girl, barely tall enough to reach the latch. She stared up at Kathy silently while the smell of roast lamb and scorched ironing drifted out of the interior of the house.
“Hello,” Kathy said. “Is Adrian at home?” The little girl just stared at her, saying nothing. “Adrian Avery?” Kathy repeated.
“I’ll need a fresh shirt tonight, Mum,” a male called from somewhere upstairs.
“Well, I can’t help that,” an exasperated woman’s voice replied faintly.
“Just tell him there’s someone to see him, will you, please?” Kathy smiled encouragingly at the girl, who abruptly turned and ran away down the hall. After a couple of minutes a middle-aged woman bustled out with the small girl in tow.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Avery? I wanted to see Adrian, if he’s at home.”
The woman looked at Kathy with interest. “Are you a friend of his?”
“No, Mrs. Avery, I’m with the Metropolitan Police.”
The woman’s face dropped. “Oh. Is something wrong?”
“Yes, I’m afraid there is. May I come in?”
The woman showed Kathy through to a plumply furnished living-room.
“What is it?” she demanded anxiously.
“You know Angela Hannaford, do you, Mrs. Avery?”
“Angela? Yes, of course. Has something happened to her?”
“I’m afraid so. She died last night.”
All over Petts Wood, Kathy knew, the same message, in all its variations, was being met with the same stunned look, the same moment of disbelief followed by the same hushed question, “How?”
“She died at home, Mrs. Avery. We are treating it as a suspicious death.” Kathy waited a moment while this sank in, then continued, “When did you last see Angela?”
But Mrs. Avery didn’t hear her. She was staring at the carpet. “How awful. Her poor parents! Do they know? Are they back?”
Kathy nodded.
“Should I speak to them?”
“Are you close friends?”
“No . . . not really, but . . .”
“I’d leave it for a while. When did you last see Angela, Mrs. Avery?”
“Oh . . . well, Friday night, yes, of course. She had dinner with us, here, on Friday evening.” She shook her head.
“Did she speak at all about her plans for Saturday? How she intended to spend the day?”
“I don’t know . . . Adrian will know. I think she said she had to get some shopping in for her mum and dad coming home.”
“What about yesterday evening, did she talk about that?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right, she did. She was going up to town, to the theatre. She was very keen on the theatre.”
“Did you see her at all yesterday?”
“No, no, I didn’t. But Adrian did. He’ll tell you.”
“Yes. What time did he get home last night, Mrs. Avery?”
“I’m not sure . . . Why? Why do you ask that?” A note of alarm had crept into her voice. “There’s no . . .”
At that moment her son appeared at the door. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and his feet were bare. He hadn’t shaved, and his face was puffy, as if he’d only recently woken up.
“What’s going on?” He looked tentatively from his mother to Kathy. “Lizzie said . . .”
As Mrs. Avery rose to her feet, staring at her son, Kathy broke in, “Perhaps I could speak to Adrian alone now, Mrs. Avery. If you don’t mind.”
The woman shook her head slowly. As she left she whispered, “Oh Adrian, darling. I’m so sorry.”
Her son stared at her in surprise, then turned to Kathy. “What’s this all about then?”
He too seemed stunned by what Kathy had to tell him, but, as with his mother, there were no tears.
“I can’t believe it . . . can’t believe it . . .” What little colour there had been in his face had drained away. “What . . . happened?”
“We’re still trying to find out. I’m very sorry, Adrian. You were engaged to Angela, I understand.”
“Yes . . . well, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
He blinked, having difficulty focusing on her words. “We haven’t named the day or anything.”
“Right. Did she wear your ring?”
He shook his head numbly.
“How long had you been going out together?”
“What? I dunno. Years. Christ . . . are you sure it’s Angela?” He peered at her doubtfully, puffy eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you really sure it’s her?”
“Yes, we’re sure. I’m sorry. You saw a lot of each other, then? Went out regularly?”
He shook his head, and at first Kathy thought he was saying no, then realized he was still grappling with the question of whether she could really be dead.
“Did she go out with other men?”