The Marriage Hearse (5 page)

‘What about the dead woman’s work? Has anybody found out what she did for a living? Could it have brought her into contact
with weirdos?’

Rachel spoke again. ‘Her mother said she worked at a language college in Morbay. She hesitated. ‘Mrs Harbourn wants to see
her daughter. I rang Colin Bowman first thing and he’s expecting her this afternoon.’

Gerry Heffernan beamed at her. ‘Thanks, Rach. Anyone else got any ideas? Steve, what about you?’

DC Steve Carstairs had been slouching against a filing cabinet. He straightened himself up. ‘I think we should talk to her
mates, sir. Maybe she was leading a double life. On the game. Involved in drugs. That sort of thing. You never know, do you?’

Normally, Heffernan would have made a cutting remark but today he merely smiled indulgently. ‘You’re right, Steve, you never
know. I’ll leave you to speak to her mates. Start by getting a list of all the wedding guests. Rach, I’ll leave it to you
to find out all you can about her work. Maybe some of her colleagues were invited to the wedding. See what you can come up
with.’ He beamed like a headmaster whose school had just come top of the league tables. ‘DI Peterson and I are going to the
postmortem in half an hour. Then we’ll have a word with the grieving groom. Everybody happy?’

He didn’t wait for a reply before sweeping into his office. Wesley followed, somewhat puzzled.

‘You all right, Gerry?’ he asked as he shut the door behind him.

‘Never been better, Wes. Never been better. You ready for our visit to the morgue?’ He spotted a piece of paper on his cluttered
desk and picked it up. ‘I had a message last night, apparently. A Marion Blunning wants a word with me. She was the bridesmaid,
wasn’t she?’

Wesley nodded.

‘I’ll give her a call as soon as we get back.’

Wesley said nothing as he followed the boss out of the building. But he noted a decided spring in his companion’s step, and
a smile playing on his lips as though he was harbouring some pleasing secret.

‘You’re full of the joys of spring today,’ he commented as they crossed the road to Tradmouth Hospital. The hospital was near
enough to the police station to walk and Wesley was glad of the exercise.

‘Am I, Wes? Can’t say I’d noticed. Let’s hope Colin’s got the kettle on, eh.’

Heffernan charged down the hospital’s polished corridor and pushed open the swing doors marked ‘Mortuary. Authorised Personnel
Only’. That sign always made Wesley’s heart sink. He was the son of two doctors and the brother of another. But he had never
had the stomach to watch the dissection of a body unmoved. When he’d attended his first postmortem he had fainted and he had
to steel himself each time if he wasn’t to make a fool of himself.

When they reached Dr Bowman’s office they were greeted by the chink of bone china cups. Colin liked the good things in life.

‘First things first, gentlemen. Earl Grey or Assam?’ Dr Colin Bowman, the pathologist who had made a vital contribution to
so many of Wesley’s investigations, was a tall, balding man with an amiable smile. He poured the tea from a china pot. No
mugs and tea bags here. After the tea was drunk and the organic biscuits eaten – mainly by Gerry Heffernan – Colin led the
way to the postmortem room.

Kirsten Harbourn was waiting for them and the instruments that would probe her body were lined up on a steel trolley. Wesley
looked at them and shuddered, telling himself that this horror was necessary if justice was to be served. But somehow that
argument did nothing to calm his queasy stomach. He looked away as Colin began to cut into the dead woman’s flesh. Gerry Heffernan,
however, chatted away to the pathologist happily, leaning over to see what he was up to.

‘She’d not had much breakfast,’ Colin observed cheerfully as he examined the stomach contents. ‘Pre wedding nerves probably.’

Wesley glanced at the two small plastic bags that lay on a trolley at the side of the white tiled room. The corpse’s clothing.
Only in this case there wasn’t much. A bra and a frilly blue garter. The sexual connotations turned his stomach afresh.

‘She wasn’t a virgin.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ said Heffernan merrily.

‘But in my opinion she wasn’t raped. No sign of very recent intercourse. No semen and certainly no bruising or any indication
of violence. Interesting, considering how she was found, laid out on the bed like that with her knickers on the floor.’

‘Perhaps she just hadn’t had a chance to put them on,’ Wesley suggested. The other two men looked sceptical. ‘Or someone might
have been trying to make us think it was a sex crime when it wasn’t.’

Heffernan shrugged. ‘Possible. But my money’s on him chickening out when he realised he’d gone too far and she was dead. He
panicked and ran.’

Colin wasn’t listening to their speculations. He was busy examining the dead woman’s neck. After a couple of minutes he looked
up. ‘Interesting.’

‘What is?’

‘I don’t think she was strangled with the lamp flex. It was pulled tight around her neck but I think by that time she was
dead already.’

‘But she was strangled?’

‘Oh yes. No doubt about that. She just wasn’t strangled with the flex, that’s all. Come and have a look.’ He signalled to
Wesley to move closer. ‘You can see where the flex dug into the skin but look at that marking underneath. Not hands.’ He studied
the marks for a while before pronouncing the final verdict. ‘Whoever killed her used something much softer, wider and more
flexible. A scarf, an item of clothing, possibly a tie but I would have thought that would be a bit narrow.’

He bent over the body and examined the neck with a magnifying glass he’d picked up from a nearby trolley. ‘Hello,’ he said
softly, picking something delicately off the flesh just behind the ear with a pair of tweezers. ‘It’s tiny but it could be
a fibre … red by the look of it. I’ll get it sent off to the lab.’

Wesley frowned. ‘So she was probably killed with something that would be recognisable as the murderer’s. His tie …’

‘Or her scarf.’ Heffernan grinned. ‘Could a woman have done it, Colin?’

Colin nodded. ‘I don’t see why not in these days of equality. A fit woman could certainly have done it.’

‘Any sign of a struggle?’ Wesley asked.

‘Not that I can see. There doesn’t seem to be anything under her fingernails so I don’t think she put up a fight.’ He studied
the neck again. ‘I think she was strangled from behind. I think her killer surprised her. She had her back to him – or her.’

‘Someone she trusted then?’ said Wesley.

‘Or someone who crept up behind her when she wasn’t expecting it. The door to her cottage was open. And I noticed there was
a CD player on the chest of drawers. It was switched on.’ Gerry Heffernan’s eyes glowed. ‘What if she’d been listening to
a CD? What if someone walked in while she was getting dressed and she didn’t hear them?’

‘It’s perfectly possible,’ said Colin. ‘What had she been listening to?’

‘Would you believe
Wedding Favourites
. A compilation album of popular wedding music. Mendelssohn’s wedding march, “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba”, Widor’s
Toccata, that sort of thing. Getting in the mood, I suppose. Tragic,’ he said softly, looking down at her corpse. ‘You’ll
let us have the toxicology report when you get it, won’t you, Colin? Who knows? It’s always possible her killer gave her a
Mickey Finn her before he strangled her.’

Colin nodded. ‘I always do a thorough job, Gerry. You know that. We aim to please.’

Ten minutes later, Gerry Heffernan decided they’d learned all they could from the dead woman’s remains for the time being
and they took their leave of Colin. They had work to do. And besides, Heffernan wanted to speak to the bridesmaid, Marion
Blunning.

If anyone could give them the lowdown on the bride’s private life, it would be her best friend.

Steve Carstairs had lived in Devon all his life, although there were times when he longed to escape; to break away and join
the big boys in the Met. London was his dream. The dirt, the hustle, banging up armed robbers and tearing round in fast cars.
He had joined the force for excitement but all he seemed to get these days
was paperwork while the likes of Rachel Tracey got all the interesting stuff because she was a woman and Wesley Peterson
got all the promotion because he was black.

But Steve would never leave his familiar surroundings and join the Met. He was a naturally lazy creature who took the path
of least resistance. Abandoning his flat, his car and his mother who did his washing and cleaned up after him would be too
much effort. Just like knocking on every door in the vicinity of Lower Weekbury.

Most of the houses, he and his colleague discovered, were second homes or holiday rentals. And as it was the summer season
and the weather was good, they were all occupied for the weekend.

But it was the same old story. Time after time. No, I didn’t see anything suspicious. We’re only here for the weekend/the
week/the fortnight. No, I don’t know anyone else in the village. We arrived in the four by four from London on Friday night
and we haven’t seen a soul. That’s the point of coming to the countryside, isn’t it – to get away from people? Yes, I noticed
some police cars/crime scene tape and I wondered what was going on but I’m afraid I can’t help you, Officer. I’ve seen nothing,
heard nothing and I can tell you nothing.

One irate weekender claimed that he had been so preoccupied with a sudden interruption to his electricity supply that he wouldn’t
have noticed if a horde of Barbarian warriors had been slaughtering and pillaging their way through the village. He had been
far too busy trying to pressure the cottage’s owner into sending round an electrician who could solve the problem. Fortunately
one had turned up at around eleven but the man couldn’t remember the tradesman’s name. He had other things on his mind.

By the time Steve and DC Darren Wentworth, the newest and most morose recruit to Tradmouth CID, knocked on the door of Heron
Cottage, a little down the lane from Honey Cottage, they had become quite disillusioned with the great British public.

So it was a pleasant surprise to encounter Mrs Lear, who, Steve estimated, was seventy if she was a day, and sharp as a razor.
Her eyes shone with excitement as she inspected their identification before leading the way into her pink cob cottage which
was
completely unmodernised and contained original features, such as a glossy black range, that a second home owner would have
paid handsomely for. But there was no fashionable minimalism here. Every available space was filled with nick-nacks and photographs
– the souvenirs of a long life.

Mrs Lear was a small bird-like woman with the energy of someone half her age. She was also a mistress of hospitality. Tea
and home-made scones were produced from nowhere. Steve reckoned she was probably lonely, glad of the company – any company.

‘I thought you’d be making house-to-house enquiries.’ She said the words with relish, being an avid fan of
Crimewatch
on the telly. ‘Isn’t it terrible about that poor girl? And on her wedding day. I saw the wedding car pass the window to take
her to the church. You can just see Honey Cottage from here. I wanted to see what her dress was like. Such a pretty girl.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Only to pass the time of day. They were doing up the cottage, her and her fiancé. He seemed such a nice young man. And I
was glad the cottage had been bought by a young couple and not …’ She fell silent for a few seconds and bowed her head. But
gossip won over grief in the end and she carried on, her face glowing with the importance of her role as witness in a murder
enquiry. ‘They had builders in, you know. Extending their kitchen and putting in a new bathroom. Well, they like that sort
of thing nowadays, don’t they? Ripping things out and putting things in. Then they rip them out again and …’

‘What was she like, the dead girl?’ Darren Wentworth interrupted, fearing that they were in danger of being sidetracked.

‘I didn’t know her well but I heard that she worked in some kind of school in Morbay. Something to do with teaching languages.’

‘Did she have many visitors?’

Mrs Lear shook her head. ‘Not that many. They kept themselves to themselves.’ She hesitated. ‘Like most people round here
these days. There was a time when you knew all your neighbours but now it’s all second homes and they don’t want to know …’

Darren nodded vigorously in agreement. The area’s rising house
prices meant that he and his wife lived in a council house on the outskirts of Tradmouth, with little hope of buying anything
of their own.

Steve bit into his scone. It was stale, a few days old. But he ate it out of politeness.

‘Her mother was round there quite a bit, of course. And her father came sometimes but never at the same time as her mother,’
Mrs Lear continued. ‘I think they were divorced. And a rather plain girl with glasses used to call a lot … and there were
a couple of young men …’

‘Did you see anyone near the dead woman’s house yesterday morning between eleven and twelve thirty, apart from her father?’

She looked rather confused. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t really watching. My friend, Mrs Hodges, telephoned around eleven twenty
and she must have been on for at least an hour. Her husband’s in a home, you see – Alzheimer’s – so she likes someone to talk
to. The phone’s in the back so I couldn’t see what was going on outside.’ She sounded mildly annoyed about her friend’s bad
timing. ‘In fact she only rang off a couple of minutes before the wedding car arrived.’

Mrs Lear raised a finger as though she had just remembered something. ‘I don’t know if it’s important but there’s been a car
parked down the lane. A man sits in it just watching Honey Cottage. I wrote the registration number down. There’s so much
crime these days, isn’t there?’ She looked round conspiratorially. ‘I thought it might be a burglar casing the joint.’

Darren and Steve exchanged glances. ‘Do you have the number?’

Mrs Lear suddenly looked flustered. ‘I’m not sure where I put it. Would you like me to try and find it for you?’