Authors: Janice Frost
“I’m sorry. There’s no more news. Can I make you a coffee?” Ava offered. Nancy didn’t say yes, didn’t say no, so Ava moved towards the kettle. With what seemed like a gargantuan effort, Nancy heaved herself to her feet to show Ava where to find what she needed.
“When did you last eat?” Ava asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not hungry. Don’t look so concerned, I’m not in any danger of fading away.” Good, an attempt at humour, Ava thought, but she also knew that it was forced. At least Nancy took sugar in her coffee, she thought, watching her heap two spoonfuls into her mug.
“Ms Hill—”
“Nancy.”
“Nancy, did you visit Amy at her flat in town?”
“Not once term started, but I did go round before she moved in to see if I could help make the place a little more comfortable. You know, cushions, rugs, the odd bit of furniture. The landlord only provided the basics.”
“So you knew which of the bedrooms was Amy’s?”
“Of course, it was the larger one at the back with the alcove bookshelves. Her flatmate, Becci, had the one at the front above the bay window. There is another tiny room, barely large enough to accommodate a single bed. It’s a wonder the landlord didn’t let that out, too. We stored some of the shabbier furniture in there when I bought Amy some new pieces.” Ava nodded, suppressing an exclamation of satisfaction and excitement at being proved right about her theory.
“Ms Hill, did Amy have a part-time job, or did you give her an allowance?”
“I gave her what I could afford, but it wasn’t a great deal. She had a student loan, like most kids nowadays.”
“Would you say she was extravagant?” Nancy paused,
“She definitely had a liking for the finer things in life, but I like to think I taught her to cut her coat according to her cloth.”
Ava told Nancy about the clothes.
“She definitely wouldn’t have been able to afford clothes like that on her budget,” Nancy said, frowning. “Do you have a theory that might explain how she acquired these things, Sergeant?” At last, a spark. Nancy’s eyes had shown nothing but dullness until then.
“It’s possible that they were given to her as a gift, or that Amy bought them with cash from a boyfriend,” Ava said.
“I’ve told you before that Amy mentioned having a boyfriend who gave her an expensive necklace, but she only went out with him two or three times. I’m sure she’d have told me if there was someone special. She didn’t have much time for boyfriends, Sergeant. Before she went to university, she was studying for A levels and doing a part time job. She didn’t earn much — not enough to pay for the kind of clothes you say she had.”
Ava nodded. The boyfriend had been checked out. He’d been a foreign student who was not even in the country at the time of Amy’s death. “Where did she work?” Ava asked, interested.
“She was a waitress at the pizzeria on Gold Street. Sometimes she worked Sundays as well, stayed overnight at a friend’s house in town to save me having to come and collect her after a late shift.” Ava was instantly suspicious; such an arrangement would have given Amy the perfect opportunity to stay overnight with Taylor.
Nancy was a single parent, Ava knew. She said that she’d had a series of one-night stands with men while travelling in France, resulting in a pregnancy. She didn’t know which of them was the father, and claimed she hadn’t known their surnames.
She had concealed the pregnancy and had not registered Amy’s birth for a year after her daughter was born because she was young and afraid of being censured. Nancy also claimed to have given birth at home, alone. It was an unusual story, particularly as Nancy didn’t strike Ava as being either a promiscuous or a risk-taking type. Whatever Amy’s origins had been, there was little doubt that she had been loved.
“Thank you, Nancy. I won’t trouble you any longer,” Ava said.
“Why did you ask about Amy’s room? Have you found something?”
“I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.”
“Sure of what?”
Nancy’s question caused Ava to hesitate. If Nancy were spending most of her time in bed, drugged to the eyeballs, it was more than probable that she didn’t know that Becci and Gary were dead.
For a moment, Ava hovered by the door to Nancy’s house, wondering if she should tell the unfortunate woman about the latest tragedy.
In the end, she bottled out. “Just a detail I’m looking into. I’m afraid I can’t say much more at the moment.” She glanced at Nancy, and saw that the spark had gone out. Ava wished she could offer some words of comfort, but she knew there were no words that could heal Nancy Hill’s anguish.
* * *
Leaving Nancy standing on her doorstep, Ava walked to her car and reversed down the drive. Driving back to town, she wondered how significant it was that after Amy’s death, Becci had moved into her dead friend’s bedroom, bringing only some of her clothes in anticipation of the crammed wardrobe of designer outfits that awaited her in Amy’s room.
There was no doubting the significance for Becci and Gary. They had wound up dead. But was it enough to prove that the faulty gas fire had been intended to kill Amy, as Ava suspected? Had the killer grown impatient waiting for Amy to use the fire in her room, and decided to deal with her more swiftly? Had he (in Ava’s mind the killer was a very specific ‘he’) simply not cared that the faulty fire might cause other deaths? If Ava’s theory was correct, and the gas leak had been intended to kill Amy, then the deaths of Gary and Becci could indeed be linked to Amy’s. Ava suspected she would have a hard time convincing Neal that this might be the case.
* * *
For several minutes after Detective Sergeant Merry’s car had disappeared, Nancy Hill stood on her doorstep, inhaling the first fresh air she’d breathed in days.
Richard had been trying to encourage her to go outside since the funeral but she couldn’t seem to get beyond the doorstep and anyway, she had no desire to do so. Now, standing on the threshold, Nancy was surprised to feel nothing much at all, no accelerated heartbeat or sweating palms, no sense of impending disaster, no urge to slam the door shut and hide away inside for the rest of her life.
Nor did she feel tempted to step across the threshold; that was too far for now. It was the pills the doctor had prescribed for her kicking in. For a couple of days now, her pain and anxiety had been floating away from her on a cloud formed of anti-depressant cotton—wool.
But she wasn’t yet empty of all feeling. Even as she greeted the outside world for the first time in days, she felt her whole body begin to tremble with guilt and self-doubt.
Never before had she doubted the rightness of becoming Amy’s mother. Protecting Amy and providing for her had redeemed the anger and pain caused by the death of her own parents. The love that had gone from her life the day they died had been restored to her the moment she first held Amy in her arms; the joy and love coursing through her at that moment had cancelled out any doubts.
Now that she had failed to keep Amy safe from harm, she feared she had done something terribly wrong, and was being punished. More than that, the means of her punishment lay in her own hands.
Jim Neal looked up, startled, as Ava burst into his office, giant red Costa cup in each hand.
“Your caffeine intake belies your healthy lifestyle,” he remarked, accepting her offering, “how many lengths did you clock up this morning?”
“I didn’t count. Never do less than sixty-four; that’s a mile. Probably about eighty this morning.”
Ava Merry was a fitness fanatic. Neal survived on two or three half hour workouts a week that he did at home in his mini gym in the garage, and the occasional run. Walking and climbing were his sports of choice, preferably in Scotland in the company of his boyhood friend, James, ‘Jock’ McAllister, now a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. They both led busy lives and it wasn’t always easy to schedule time away, but a couple of weekends every year they would head off to bag another Monroe and catch up on each other’s lives.
Neal was looking forward to the day when Archie would join them on their expeditions. As soon as his son could walk any distance, Neal had introduced him to the great outdoors. Every October holiday they’d headed for the Lake District and roamed the hills. Last year Archie had scaled Helvellyn. Though his heart had been in his mouth all the length of Striding Edge, Neal had found the same organ swelling with pride when they reached the summit. A few more years, he’d thought, and Archie would be bagging his first Monroe.
Ava was pacing the room, he noticed, obviously bursting to tell him something. Neal was immediately attentive.
He listened as Ava rattled through her theory about Becci switching to Amy’s room immediately after her friend’s death.
“ . . . so it’s entirely credible that the deaths are linked after all, sir,” his sergeant concluded in a high pitched voice that betrayed her excitement. She cleared her throat, embarrassed.
Neal was reluctant to rein her in. She had done good work in finding out that Becci had swapped rooms with her friend, but he wasn’t as willing as Ava to attach any particular significance to this. He began by congratulating her on her deduction, adding, “It’s also entirely possible that the fire might just have been faulty, and Becci and Gary were simply unlucky,” he said watching Ava’s face crumple.
“If it was the killer’s intention to poison Amy with carbon monoxide fumes, why the sudden change of method? And after he’d killed Amy, why leave the fire as it was; a risk to someone else?“
Ava shrugged, “Maybe he decided he couldn’t wait for her to spend an evening in her room; maybe something happened to make her death more imperative?”
“That’s a fair enough assumption, although the methods are very different — strangling involves closer contact with the victim; it might be consistent with a killer who felt a heightened sense of urgency. Both Bradley and Simon may have been stalking Amy. We know that stalking can escalate to violence against the victim, but carbon monoxide poisoning isn’t really consistent with that kind of killer. It’s premeditated, calculating.
There is a type of stalker who thinks he’s protecting his victim. Simon would fit that mould; we know Amy didn’t feel threatened by him. Bradley was obsessed with her, but he was allegedly getting over it.” Neal paused to gauge Ava’s reaction to his words. She was obviously ruffled that her idea had failed to captivate him.
“I’m sorry, Ava. I’m not entirely convinced.”
“But what if Amy had been seeing someone who was generous with his money?” Ava persisted. “They could have split up. Amy could have had something on him that she could use to blackmail him, something that would give her killer an increasing sense of urgency.”
Not wanting to dampen her enthusiasm, Neal did not point out how unlikely he thought this scenario was. Then again, what else did they have to go on?
“It might be worth following up,” he said, and was rewarded by a grin that would have put a Cheshire cat to shame. Then, he moved on.
“Anna Foster’s holding something back,” he said. “I’d like to interview her again, this time with you present, see if you can find a way in — get her to open up. I want to know if she’d noticed any change in Simon’s behaviour recently, what might have prompted it. That kind of thing. We’ll pay her a visit this afternoon. Tomorrow you and I are taking a trip to London.”
“London, sir?”
“We’re going to pay Simon Foster’s father a visit.”
Neal picked up his coffee. He preferred to drink from a proper cup, but years on the job had taught him to enjoy the contents and ignore the vessel. Costa was just across the road and the drink was still piping hot. He sipped and nodded at Ava to show his appreciation. He glanced at his watch. “Meet me in the car park in fifteen minutes,” he said, needing a few minutes to himself.
When Ava had gone, Neal noticed that the photograph on his desk had been moved. He pushed it back a little, tilting it to the left until he had the correct angle. This way, from his normal sitting position, he could look up from his work and see his son’s face smiling directly at him. Archie was a good-looking boy, he thought, not for the first time. Everyone told him so; he wasn’t just a besotted parent. He heard Maggie’s voice in his head telling him Archie was handsome, just like his dad.
It was true, there seemed to be little of Myrna in the boy as far as looks and personality were concerned, but he had her talent for music and Neal didn’t begrudge the amount he paid out each week on Archie’s piano, cello, and most recently guitar lessons. Even if Archie’s future career took him in an entirely different direction, Neal felt obligated to nurture this talent. He wanted Archie to have choices. Neal had not intended to become a police officer; he’d wanted to go to university and study law, but Myrna’s pregnancy had meant that he had to put aside his ambitions, and, by the time he’d advanced sufficiently in the job, Neal found that by serendipity or pragmatic thinking, he’d stumbled into the perfect career; one which satisfied both his temperament and his insistent intellectual curiosity.
Myrna had never wanted Archie. She would have ended the pregnancy had Neal not pleaded with her to bring the child to term, absolving her of any commitment or responsibility towards the baby after it was born. Myrna had been at a key point in her career, and a child had not been part of her plans. She’d agreed, reluctantly, to give birth to their son, as long as she could walk out the door afterwards and never see either of them again.
He couldn’t avoid noticing the ever-soaring arc of her career as an opera singer, although the Myrna who stared out at him from the covers of international glossy magazines was barely recognisable as the girl he’d thought he loved back then. She had worked her way through a string of lovers since leaving Neal and Archie, the latest being a director who had filmed her in a version of ‘Aida’ that had flopped spectacularly — much to Maggie’s delight.
Looking at her photograph, and reading about the extravagant life she lived, Neal could scarcely believe he had ever known her. Whenever he thought of Myrna — and then of Archie — he could only pity her for what she had lost.
Neal had not hidden Myrna’s identity from Archie, and he knew that his son had a box under his bed containing newspaper and magazine clippings about Myrna’s successes. Once or twice Archie had even written to his mother, but she had never replied. Neal never blamed her for her decision. She hadn’t wanted to become pregnant; a damaged condom had been to blame. Myrna had desired only to nurture her talent. Neal had reasoned that if he was going to be a dad one day anyway, why wait? In his opinion, they had both got what they wanted; although Neal was convinced he’d got the better part of the deal.
* * *
On the drive to Long Hill, Neal asked Ava a question that had been provoking him since their interview with Professor Christopher Taylor.
“This Professor Taylor,” he said casually, “Are you seeing him?” As soon as the words were out, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut; he was certain he’d crossed some kind of line. Then again, they were colleagues. Colleagues were meant to talk to each other, weren’t they? If he were a woman, a conversation like this wouldn’t be embarrassing at all. Ava, he noticed, was turning a deep shade of crimson. He fully expected to be told to mind his business.
“We’ve been out on a date. Just the one. I’m not sure if we’ll be seeing each other again.” From her colour, Neal could tell that it had been much more than a simple date. He could also tell — and he was proud of this, because weren’t men supposed to be bad at that sort of thing — that Ava’s feelings about Taylor were ambivalent. His own feelings about the professor were crystal clear — he disliked the man intensely.
“Sorry, it’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s alright. He contacted me almost immediately after we interviewed him. I suppose there was a kind of mutual spark when we met.”
“Well, be careful, Sergeant. He struck me as a bit of a ‘smoothie.’”
“A smoothie?” Sergeant Merry’s face was a picture of delight, “Did you just say ‘smoothie?’ I thought that word went out with the ark. And what’s with the fatherly tone? You’re not that much older than I am.” It was Neal’s turn to be embarrassed, and Ava wasn’t about to let him off lightly either.
“While we’re on the subject, what about you and Anna Foster? I saw the way you were looking at her. Beware of cougars, sir.”
“Cougars?”
“You know, predatory older women.”
“My interest in Anna Foster is purely professional, Sergeant. Her son is a suspect in a murder case.”
“Yeah, right,” Ava teased.
Anna Foster was at least ten years older than him, but Neal was attracted to her. He would deny this to Ava until he was blue in the face, but he had to be honest with himself. Ava’s talk of predatory women was wide of the mark; there was nothing remotely predatory about Anna Foster. She was reserved to the point of shyness, petite and vulnerable. Neal cringed at his own description. He didn’t want to be a stereotypical male looking for a little woman to protect. Maggie would have had a lot to say about that.
At this time of the afternoon the Long Hill area was uncharacteristically quiet. The rain had started up again with a vengeance, keeping all but the most steadfast shoppers away. In this sort of weather, the crowds tended to flock to the centre of town with its big stores and heated shopping centre offering shelter.
As Neal and Ava crossed the slippery cobblestones towards Anna Foster’s bookshop, a particularly heavy shower battered on their umbrellas. The word, ‘dreich,’ rose to Neal’s lips, though even that Scottish adjective fell short of summing up the miserable weather. The rain, he noted, still in Scottish mode, was ‘stottin’ off the ground,’ and he was glad to step over the threshold of ‘Books Now,’ after shaking the excess water off his brolly. Across the street, sheltering in another doorway near her habitual spot, was the Big Issue seller he had seen on his last visit to Anna’s shop. She gave Neal a shy wave, which he returned.
Ava stepped inside first. Anna Foster was sitting at her desk near the doorway, tapping away on a laptop. She looked up as the doorbell sounded, her fingers still darting over the keyboard. The customer-ready smile on her face waned when she saw who her visitors were.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Merry, Inspector Neal,” she said, her tone neutral. “Do you have some news for me or are you looking for a second hand copy of ‘The Virgin and the Vampire,’ like most of my customers today?” The novel had just been released as a movie, starring one of those young actors who had made his name playing vampires — or was it werewolves? “We just have a few questions, Ms Foster,” Ava said. Anna Foster sighed, but she didn’t repeat that she had already told them everything she knew about Simon’s whereabouts.
“I’m sorry,” Ava said, “This won’t take long.”
“Let me just call Maya down to take over here. She’s upstairs unpacking some boxes of books I picked up at a house contents sale.”
The young ‘goth’ woman appeared within seconds. Recognising Neal, she said, ‘hi,’ then turned to look at Ava.
“Maya, this is Detective Sergeant Ava Merry. Inspector Neal you’ve met before.” Maya and Ava stared at each other, each possibly seeing her mirror opposite. Ava’s blonde hair tumbled loose over her shoulders and she was wearing a pretty yellow blouse under a beige Mac. She looked healthy and her make-up was subtle and understated. Maya’s dyed jet-black hair was arranged in an untidy coif; her face was pale, powdered nearly white and her clothes were black and lacy. But both women had ruby red lips, and they smiled at each other as if in mutual admiration.
“Cool. I was a Goth for a bit,” Ava said, “God I miss the scene sometimes.”
“Now look at you, totally mainstream!” Maya said, but there was no hostility in her voice.
Anna led them upstairs and into her flat. She offered to make them a drink, but even Ava had had enough caffeine to last her quite a while.
“Ms Foster,” Ava began, conscious that Anna had been looking in Neal’s direction, expecting him to take the lead. Now she turned her big, sad eyes to Ava.
“I know you feel that you’ve told us all you can about Simon, but I’d just like to take you back to the weeks before his disappearance.” She tactfully avoided any mention of Amy’s death.
“Did you notice any change in Simon’s behaviour? Did he seem quieter or more agitated?”
“He was a little distracted,” Nancy admitted. “Not his usual self.”
“Can you relate that to anything he’d been doing, any incident in his life, however unimportant or irrelevant it might seem?”