Wendy Aitken arrived at half past three, almost quivering with excitement, hovering behind Jericho who ushered her in with his customary deadpan expression. The door had hardly closed behind him when she slapped a small cassette on Martha’s desk. “I’m sure you’ll be interested in
this
, Doctor Gunn.” There was more than a hint of triumph in her voice.
Martha poured them both a cup of coffee and sat down, crossing her legs, comfortable in her short black skirt, low-heeled pumps and a fine grey sweater as soft as moleskin. Her favourite.
DI Aitken hardly paused to sip the coffee. “I’ve spoken already to Alex Randall and he’s on his way over. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No.” If anything Martha was slightly amused. She found the detective’s enthusiasm endearing. “That’s fine.”
“I should explain. After you made your suggestion I discussed the possibility of hypnosis with my Detective Chief Superintendant. He was keen on the idea – provided Watkins was willing to co-operate.” Martha nodded. “We had guidance from a clinical psychologist who suggested the route we should take to provide the best chance of finding out something Watkins’ subconscious knew but his conscious mind was unaware of. So – under his guidance – we carried out the exercise in three stages. First of all we subjected Watkins to light hypnosis – simply to relax him, chatted about his work, his home and so on. Then we asked him to recount the events of Monday night, February 11th. Finally we asked him, still in a very relaxed state, to look at some photographs.”
“And?”
Wendy held her hands out, smiling, her face relaxed and merry. Haddonfield had been missing for a month. She must have unearthed something. “I’m not playing with you, Doctor Gunn, I promise.” There was something of the tease about her. “But I think you’ll understand that if we work in sequence – as we did when we questioned Watkins – you’ll have a better picture. You’ll understand it.” She suffered a swift bout of anxiety. “Is that all right?”
Martha shrugged. “Whatever.”
Aitken slotted the tape into a player and sat back while Martha concentrated.
“Your name is?”
Wendy Aitken’s voice first.
“Evan Watkins.” The voice was calm, monotonic. A flat line.
Wendy leaned across the desk to whisper. “We used open-ended questions. Nothing leading, you understand, Coroner? The psychologist told us what we should ask, the correct wording.” Obviously an enthusiast of psychology, she settled back in her chair.
Again Martha nodded her comprehension.
“On the night of Monday, February 11th, you were driving?”
“From Shrewsbury … (He used the Welsh annunciation of the town to rhyme with shoes) … back towards Llangollen.”
“Which is where you live?”
“Yes – and work. I got a garage, you see.”
“Tell me about the weather that night, Evan?”
“It was a foul night. Pissin’ down with rain.” There was no apology for the Anglo Saxon. Watkins was too relaxed for that.
“At what time did you leave Shrewsbury?” Wendy Aitken mirroring the way he said it.
“Just before six. I was worried, you see. The river was
rising. I thought the bridges might get cut off or maybe floodin’ on the A5 so I didn’t stay. Once I’d picked up my stuff I left.”
“Did you see anyone on the road?”
“I saw a few people.”
“Did you pick anyone up?”
“Yes. There was a hitchhiker standing just after the island. Soaking he was. I pulled up, threw the door open and he climbed in.” There was a pause.
“What does this man look like?” She was shifting gear as well as tense.
And now Watkins was mirroring her, matching his answers to the questions. The descent to re-enter the past was complete.
“He’s wearing a long raincoat, black, the collar pulled right up to his chin. He’s quite tall. Taller than me.”
Wendy leaned across to whisper again. “Evan’s about five-five.”
Watkins was still talking. “He’s quite slim. Dark hair, I think. Tidy. Not really the sort to be hitchhiking.
“‘Where you going, pal?’ He’s staring at me. Not very friendly-like. ‘Look,’ I says. ‘Do you want a lift or not?’
‘I’d like that very much.’ Nice voice. Well spoken. Soft.”
Aitken leaned across to speak again. “Remember. Haddonfield was a
window cleaner
.”
“‘Where are you heading?’”
It was eerie, hearing the recorded conversation between a missing man and the van driver, the last man to see him before he vanished. With or without a puff of smoke.
“‘Oswestry.’
‘Right then’ I says. ‘Hop in. I’ll take you there.’ He does that – hops in. Holds out his hand. ‘Haddonfield’, he says. ‘Clarke Haddonfield.’ I shake it. Soft voice. Soft hand too.”
“A window cleaner,” Aitken reminded her again.
“‘So what are you doing out, walking, on a night so wet?’
‘Car got stuck in Shrewsbury. They’ve closed the bridge, haven’t they? Can’t get my car out.’” It struck Martha then that the reason the reported conversation had such impact was because when Evan Watkins recounted the words of the hitchhiker he altered his accent subtly from his native North Walean. While his contribution to the conversation was unmistakably Borders, Wales or The Marches, the person he had spoken to had had an English accent.
She glanced across at Wendy Aitken to see what the detective made of this. But of course, she was investigating the disappearance of Clarke Haddonfield. Her perspective was from a local angle. It was only Martha who knew that Bosworth was from Chester.
Aitken’s voice cut in on the tape. “Would you describe the man to me?”
“Dark eyes. Can’t see much of his mouth. Collar in the way. Heavy eyebrows.”
“Go on, Evan,” she prompted. “Carry on with your story.”
Immediately Watkins’ voice changed. “‘Whereabouts in Oswestry do you want dropping?’ He’s vague. ‘At the service station.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one on the A5.’
‘Oh – you mean Jarvis’s.’
‘That’s the one. Jarvis’s. BP.’ I’m quiet for a bit. He’s talking on the phone, you see. Sounds like he’s telling his wife – or someone – that he’s been picked up and is on his way back. I cut in, ‘I’ll take you home if you like, Mr Haddonfield. The weather’s awful. You’ll get soaked.’
‘No. No,’ he’s saying part to me, part into the phone. ‘Don’t you worry about that. You just drop me off at the roundabout services. There’s a tree on the verge. I can stand under that. My wife will pick me up.’
‘No need,’ I says. ‘Don’t drag her out on a night like this.’
‘I’d like to drag her out, so drop me off at the tree.’”
The tape was silent although still whirring. Even though this was reported speech it was as though Haddonfield himself had spoken. A sharp rap of an order hiding behind venom worthy of a superbitch.
Wendy’s voice again. “Then what happened, Evan?”
“I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable now. Don’t quite know what to say. He starts talking into his mobile phone again. I turn the radio down so he can hear. “
“What is he saying?”
“He’s talkin’ very low. I can’t quite hear him. I keep lookin’ at him but he’s quiet now. Puts the phone back in his pocket. Ten minutes later I see the tree by the roundabout. He jumps out, pulls his collar right up. ‘Thanks,’ he says. I drive off, watching him in my mirror. Just standing.”
Wendy Aitken leaned forward and flicked the off switch. Martha watched her, puzzled. There was nothing there.
There was a knock on the door. It was Alex Randall, hesitating in the doorway. Wendy bounced up and introduced herself.
“We’ve been listening to the tape,” Martha said, “of Evan Watkins’ account of picking up the hitchhiker and taking him from Shrewsbury to Oswestry.”
Wendy Aitken still had that same, confident smile. “This will interest you, Inspector Randall,” she said, pulling out a cellophane file from her briefcase. She laid a photograph on the table, flicking it down as though she was producing
an ace. A man in an England t-shirt, pint of lager in his hand, arm wrapped around a blonde, huge grin. He was toasting the picture-taker.
“I showed this photograph to Watkins,” she said. “He couldn’t be absolutely positive about it but he doesn’t think this is the guy he picked up that night.”
Randall and Martha stared.
“Which is very strange,” she carried on seamlessly. “Because this is a recent photograph of Clarke Haddonfield.”
The three of them simply gawped at each other for a few minutes.
Martha spoke first. “This is such a complex case,” she said to both of them. “In fact my head’s reeling. I’m only glad I’m not investigating it. But if it wasn’t Clarke Haddonfield in the cab that night who on earth was it? Where is he and what connection does the man impersonating Haddonfield have with Gerald Bosworth? Or with James Humphreys for that matter.” Randall moved forward as though to speak but she interrupted him. “I don’t think Humphreys is
quite
out of the picture yet. Well – I suppose you two are simply going to have to work together. And in some ways start all over again.”
Alex and DI Aitken both nodded. They were slowly adjusting to new facts, asking themselves other questions. Who had climbed into the cab that night?
“I thought it seemed a bit obvious introducing himself,” Aitken said. “I mean – you wouldn’t normally when you were picked up hitching, would you?”
A sudden flash of a memory. She and Martin struggling with huge rucksacks into the back of a Mini, holding out their hands. Martin. Martha.
“You might, sometimes.” She blinked the memory away.
“So the search for Clarke Haddonfield continues?” DI Aitken nodded. “And you’ve still found no connection between Bosworth, Haddonfield and Humphreys?”
Randall shook his head.
“There are rules in medicine,” Martha said slowly, as much to herself as to the other two, “that discourage coincidence, that lead us to expect that coexisting symptoms have a common connection. Given two emerging
pathologies
you learn to look for one cause. Strikes me, Alex,” she said, smiling at him, “that this case should be governed by the same rules. I don’t believe in murders and disappearances from one small town happening in the same night being coincident – particularly when a false name is deliberately strewn across our path. I don’t want to interfere but it may well be that our ‘Mr Haddonfield’ with the nice manners and the mobile phone could well be your killer. And if there was someone on the other end of that mobile phone possibly it was an accomplice and nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs Haddonfield.”
He nodded. “I do have some ideas,” he said finally to Aitken. “Certainly we should be pooling our work.” He stood up sharply, anxious to be gone.
They had both left in minutes, bristling with long
tick-lists,
leaving Martha with nothing physical to do. Except dig. She rang Mark Sullivan.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any further with the sternal wound?”
“Martha,” a touch of humour in his voice. “Who’s investigating all this?”
“Alex and DI Wendy Aitken of Oswestry police.”
Sullivan chuckled. “You could have fooled me.”
She confessed. “Well – I am
dying
to find out what’s going on. I’d love to be investigating, Mark. Instead I’m chained to the confines of my job.”
“There’s nothing to stop you making a few little tentative enquiries of your own.”
She knew he was smiling on the other end of the phone. “Stop inciting me, Mark.”
“I’m not. I’m simply suggesting you play a more active part in the case.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” He was losing interest. “Say you’re willing
to be present at questioning.”
“I can’t. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
It was a dismissal. Martha reminded him that the inquest was the following day, said goodbye, put the phone down and straightaway dialled Alex’s mobile. He answered tersely, “DI Randall.”
“Alex, it’s Martha. I just wanted to tell you. If I can be of any help you will call, won’t you?”
“Of course. If I think of anything.”
He was bound by the same constraints as she
. “We’re just heading to Chester, to re-interview Mrs Bosworth. We’ve rung and warned her we’re on our way.” He gave a heartfelt sigh. “I don’t mind telling you I think in this case we’re somehow all missing the point. I haven’t even thought what questions I’m going to ask Mrs Bosworth that I haven’t already covered. The solicitor is a family friend and is … solicitous to say the least. I don’t think I’m going to achieve anything by this long and very tedious journey.” He paused. “Something tells me the answer is nearer home. Back here in Shropshire.”
The next words were spoken so softly that afterwards Martha convinced herself she must have imagined them. But she held on to them all the same and revisited them again later. “I wish you could be here with me. I could do with a bit of direction.”
Couldn’t we all?
“Hang on a minute, Coroner.” He was giving directions to the driver.
He was back. “I think I’ve learned that where money is concerned people will do all sorts of things to keep it.” It was a cryptic remark. “I’ll be in touch, Martha.”
“You can always use my …” But the line was dead.
And who knows who might have been listening.
Martha sucked in a deep breath, watched the trees
outside
her window waving in a blasting gale and forced herself to move on. Work was piling up. She should not spend too much time and energy on one case when she had so many to consider. She worked steadily for three hours, barely looking up when Jericho replaced empty mugs of coffee with full ones. By early afternoon her desk was almost empty and she could allow herself to think again.
She recalled Watkins’ voice, the slow, ponderous, pedantic words describing picking up the hitchhiker. She
half-closed
her eyes to picture the scene, to renact it with the remembered words. And saw more, filling in details which had been merely implied. The road glossy with bouncing rain, the threat of the waters flooding, panic of being cut off, the deceitful sheen sweeping the road’s surface that could conceal millimetres or inches or even feet of water and kill the internal combustion engine stone dead.
The answer was in the water. It had lapped at the cellar steps, flushed Bosworth’s body from its hiding place, somehow hidden Clarke Haddonfield only to vomit up someone else. Some mystery person who had, in turn, vanished back behind stairods of rain.
Water.
So what had been the point of it all? She had always considered murder to be a sequential, logical crime. Even random killings were a result of a killer’s personality. He
would
kill at some point. It was written in the darkest corner of his character. The only random, unpredictable factor was who would die, when and where. And planned, clever murders were born out of a collision between circumstance. The usual motives. Greed, fear, love, hate. Sometimes combinations of all four. So what was this? Really? A
crime passionel?
Really? It was possible.
So from motive to mechanics. Where was Clarke Haddonfield? Was he alive or dead – like Bosworth. Is it
really possible to hide a body? To destroy flesh and bone completely? Of course. There are ways to do it. But to be effective, suspicion needs to be diverted. The eyes should be deflected so friends and family believe their loved one is still alive. But always somewhere else. Just beyond the horizon, the other side of the hill, there when you are here, always elsewhere. So the hitchhiker’s journey had been that – a deflection. A clumsy one but had it not been for Wendy Aitken’s persistence, egged on by her, it might have worked. And now she felt restless because she could do so little. She needed to walk off her frustration.
She parked at Gay Meadows, paid her pound and crossed the English Bridge. No red sky tonight or Munch’s
Scream
. The wind had subsided. The river today was picture-postcard peaceful, gliding smoothly, graced with swans and one, solitary canoeist ruggedly ignoring the cold weather, sculling along with the grace of all sports – properly executed. She watched him for a moment, thinking of Sam and his football, somehow knowing that at the back of her mind she had reached her decision.
We are given ten talents. It is up to us to use those talents, to take them to the heights written in our minds and in our bodies. Not everyone could possibly be a footballer. Her son had been given that subtle combination of muscles and skill.
She turned left along Marine Terrace to stand in front of number seven.
She too had been given talents – of curiosity, of intrigue, of an insatiable desire to unravel tangled skeins of wool to restore order, peace, ensure justice for the dead and for the living. So she allowed her eyes to feed her brain. All external signs of the drama were gone. There was no police tape. No loitering Press. No curious bystanders. The house looked an innocent, pretty, blue-painted cottage; the one she and Martin had seen all those Christmases
before.
And yet. She peered down between her feet. There was a grille on the floor, a wired window beneath, the well filthy with flood debris, mud, leaves, sodden paper. Beneath must be the cellar. She was tempted to kneel down and look. But it would not do. People were walking past. She looked down again and wondered. She would have thought the police would have cleared this grille.
She left Marine Terrace. It would yield no secrets to her. Instead she turned and on impulse started up the hill. But even Finton Cley’s shop was closed this afternoon. She tried the door in frustration. No opening times were displayed. Something told her he would resent such a straitjacket. She returned to her car and the office. None of the messages were from either Alex or Mark. She picked up her work.
There were other deaths.