Winding Up the Serpent (15 page)

So why did she feel depressed?

She sat for a few minutes, pondering, staring into the flames. What did she really want out of life...? Out of her job ...? Out of relationships ...?

Early on she had come to the conclusion that police work was incompatible with being a wife and mother. Hours too long and far too irregular. Besides, she didn't want children. She hated babies. She barely tolerated young dependants and could only really relate to rebellious teenagers – the more rebellious the better. And the job? She stared hard at the fire and knew she had contentment on that score. It was proving to be a good step in her life. The police force was for her.

Relationships ...? That was the difficult one. There was only really Matthew. It wasn't simply his honey-coloured hair and his sharp green eyes. It was his intuitive intelligence ... his wit. His presence of mind and the mental agility that seemed permanently switched on. She had been out with other cops during her career, but Matthew was simply – different. She and he had shared quick minds. She gave a wry smile. But Matthew had gone back to his wife and ... She stood up. No doubt he shared a fulfilling relationship somewhere else. It was not with her. She gave a sigh. She'd better feed the cat.

‘Come on, James,' she said, and he followed her into the kitchen, purring as he walked.

But as she opened the tin of cat food her mind could not leave the dead woman unexplained on the bed. She was uneasy with the case, and that was not the result of instinct but of training.

She poured boiling water on a teabag of Lapsang Souchong and carried it carefully back into the sitting room. Marilyn must have been expecting someone – a man. So who was it? The undertaker? She gave a soft giggle. What murky depths? For all the sinister nature of the man's work and a certain repugnance she felt for him physically, he did not seem a villain. And Marilyn had been possessed of a certain vicious intelligence. Joanna could not see the undertaker getting the better of her. Of the two, Marilyn's mind had been the more devious. No, she decided then. The undertaker it was not. But she would still see him tomorrow.

The antique dealer? Give a dog a bad name, she thought. He was a bit too convenient – a ready-made villain and, she grudgingly conceded from Mike's account, clever, too. But the relationship between him and the dead nurse seemed, on the surface, remote. And would he have been able to pull off a murder that the pathologist could not recognize as such? She doubted it. He would have had no medical knowledge.

And Mrs Shiers. Why had she been so defensive about her husband? Was he dead? Was this terror of a phantom dog merely the manifestation of a guilty conscience? Joanna sat and pondered that one very carefully before deciding it was possible. Evelyn might conceivably have killed her husband and buried the body. On the surface she seemed an unlikely murderess. But murder can be no more than an accident. And she would be the sort of natural victim to panic after an accident... do something quite silly like bury the body in the garden. Perhaps he'd run off with someone else and wasn't really missing at all? She'd better speak to Mat in the morning – see if he had come up with anything. She grimaced.

Last of all she considered the unknown quantity: Dr Wilson. Of all the men involved Joanna did not want it to be him. She liked him.

‘This is a puzzle,' she muttered, ‘a dog rag puzzle.'

‘Talking to yourself, Jo, is the first sign of madness.' The voice at the door made her jump.

‘Tom ... for goodness' sake!' She felt embarrassed, exposed.

‘You a policewoman,' he said, ‘and leaving the door open. Caro wanted me to come over and ask if you'd eat with us tonight.' Tom and Caro lived in the next cottage in the terrace. ‘She's made a whacking great pot of curry – loads of rice.' He walked towards her. ‘We'd both like you to come. We've been bickering all evening ...'

‘I haven't heard you,' she said.

‘And you do usually ...' He grinned. ‘That's the trouble with these cottages. Walls do not have ears. They have microphones. Anyway – please come.'

‘So Caro can pump me about the nurse?'

‘Whatever the reason Caro wants you to come,' he said seriously, ‘mine is purely for the joy of your company.'

Joanna smiled. ‘How can I refuse?'

‘Good.' Tom smiled back at her and reached for her hand with a quick, deft movement, then raised it to his lips. ‘Thank you, Jo.' He made a face. ‘I need some company with Caro tonight.'

‘Why?' she asked.

He held his hand up, waved it around horizontally. ‘Things none too good at the moment,' he said.

‘Give me half an hour,' she said, ‘and I'll bring the wine. And, Tom, don't worry about Caro. She does love you, you know.'

‘No,' he said firmly, ‘I do not know.'

She could hear Tom and Caro quarrelling as she knocked on the door, clutching a litre bottle of Chianti.

Tom's face was red, Caro's white. Both made a huge effort to pretend nothing was wrong and, as Joanna had thought, Caroline didn't waste much time before pumping her about the dead nurse.

Still, she enjoyed the evening. It was good to be in company again, to talk about things other than police work, when she could divert Caroline's mind away from the nurse's death.

‘Had she had sex? Oh, come on, Jo,' she said at one point. ‘You know I can find all this out by reading the coroner's report.'

‘Then read it,' Joanna said. ‘You know I can't tell you anything.'

‘Yes, but what do you think?' she asked.

Joanna was tired. She'd drunk at least half a bottle of very nice Italian wine. She leaned forward. ‘I'd lay a bet she was murdered,' she said.

Caro's eyes gleamed. ‘I knew it.'

‘You've done it now,' Tom muttered when Caro disappeared into the kitchen to pour the coffee. ‘It'll be all over the local rag. Quote Detective Inspector Piercy is convinced Marilyn Smith was murdered unquote.' He looked at her kindly. ‘You never learn about Caro, do you? For a copper, Joanna,' he said softly, ‘you're bloody naive.'

They talked about the weather, and politics, and the latest show in Stoke's theatre in-the-round. The coffee sobered Joanna up and for the rest of the evening she was discretion itself.

But by that time the damage was done.

The story broke the following morning. ‘Detective Inspector Piercy confided' – confided! Joanna would have liked to wring Caro's neck, and Tom's, too. The whole thing had been a set-up. She was furious as she read down the column.

‘Detective Inspector Piercy confided in our reporter that her suspicions were that the dead nurse was murdered.'

Joanna finished the paragraph in disgust. Never again, she vowed. Never again do I make a friend of a newspaper person. She spent the next uncomfortable hour and a half on the carpet in the Chief Superintendent's office – ‘I hope you can prove all this, Inspector' and references to how sad it was to begin her career on such a false note.

‘And don't forget, Piercy, there were plenty who thought a woman might not be right for the job. We took a chance on you.' His beetling eyebrows lowered. ‘Don't let me down, Piercy.' It was a threat.

Inwardly she groaned.

‘Have you made any progress? It's four days since the woman died.'

‘Not yet, sir.'

‘You're an experienced police officer,' he said. ‘We expect better than this from you. What makes you believe the poor woman was murdered, anyway?'

‘Circumstances,' she said, and spent the next twenty minutes explaining the facts as she saw them. The blackmail ... the clothes ... the capsule.

He quickly saw the flaw in her argument. ‘If she was waiting for a lover, why take a sleeping capsule?'

‘I don't know, sir.'

He looked at her pityingly. ‘In all probability, Piercy, she wasn't waiting for a lover at all.' He waved the wad of notes at her. ‘And now we've got this bloody nutcase of a woman hearing phantom dogs.' He glared at her. ‘She's ringing the station every five minutes complaining.'

‘I'll go round and see her, sir,' she promised.

‘And talking of dogs,' she said, ‘if the bloody thing was as fierce as the report suggested surely nobody could have got past it.'

‘I was going to talk to the vet later today, sir.'

‘And, Piercy. Get Levin on the phone. Pin him down.'

‘It's early days yet, sir.'

‘Any other leads?'

‘If you can spare Willis, sir, I thought I'd ask him to look into the bank accounts.'

His eyebrows almost met in the middle.

‘I'm sure she was a blackmailer, sir.'

‘All right,' he said. ‘Keep Willis.'

He wagged his finger at her. ‘One wrong-coloured capsule plus erotic underwear doesn't add up to murder.' He plucked at his chin. ‘And by the way, Dr Wilson is very well thought of by the people of this town. Don't tread on his toes, or get in his way.' He cleared his throat noisily. ‘He also happens to be my doctor. I don't want you upsetting him, please.'

She nodded.

‘I'd like you to report to me after the weekend, Piercy. We'll review the situation then. And if the lab in Birmingham does uncover something and this turns out to be a simple overdose ...'

‘No, sir.'

He stared at her. ‘You got carried away last night,' he said, almost kindly. ‘In this job it can be very important knowing who you can trust and who you can't. Pick your friends carefully, Piercy. And in future. And for your sake,' he added, ‘I just hope you're right. I don't think egg on your face would do much for your appearance.'

‘No, sir.'

‘By the way,' he said as she turned to go, ‘how are you getting on with Korpanski?'

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘We've had our differences,' she said cautiously, ‘but I think we'll be all right.'

‘Good,' he said. ‘Good. Unfortunate about the paper,' he muttered, and she left.

En route to her own welcome office she passed Mike chatting to one of the DCs.

‘Mike, can I have a word with you?'

He followed her into her office and stood in front of her desk, sharply to attention.

She sighed. ‘No, not like that. I ...' Words failed her. ‘Sit down, Mike.'

He stood stiffly. ‘I prefer to stand, thanks, Inspector.' He looked tired this morning, irritable. The companionship they had enjoyed briefly yesterday seemed to have evaporated.

‘I'd sort of hoped we could sit down over a coffee and discuss the case. The Superintendent is breathing down my neck. The article has upset him.'

‘You might have phrased it better,' he said. ‘You know the sort of thing ... “Can't rule it out.” I felt such a bloody fool reading that in the paper this morning.'

‘I was at a private dinner party,' she said, ‘with friends.'

‘I'd change my friends, then,' he said grumpily. ‘We'll look such a pair of idiots if it turns out she died naturally.'

‘But she didn't,' Joanna insisted. ‘You know she didn't.' She gazed at him. ‘Something will crop up soon. We still don't know who she was expecting that night. Nor do we know where her money came from. I just want to find out the truth. I really do have a feeling, Mike.'

He grunted. ‘The Super doesn't have a lot of faith in feelings. He deals in hard facts, Inspector, as do we all. We're the police, Joanna, not mediums, and I'd lay a bet she wasn't expecting anyone.'

She felt her irritation grow. ‘I know that's what you think, Mike,' she said, ‘but one hard fact we do not have is the cause of death. Without that ...' She looked at him sharply. ‘Are you all right?'

He looked sheepish. ‘Wife giving me a hard time,' he muttered.

‘Oh.' She felt inadequate. ‘I'm sorry. Is it the hours?'

‘Not really,' he said. ‘She's just being bloody stupid.' He shifted uncomfortably. ‘There was a picture,' he said. ‘Fran saw it.' He grinned. ‘You look a bit less like a gypsy than usual. It's a good photo and my wife can be a bit jealous.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I don't know where the picture came from.' Then she remembered. Caro and Tom playing with a new camera, a few months ago at a barbecue. And she was suddenly bitterly resentful. She had counted them among her small circle of friends. If they could not be trusted, then who? Problems from the men in the force she had anticipated. But this ...?

‘It's not as if you're married,' he carried on. ‘It wouldn't be so bad then. If you had a husband. But single ...'

Now she was furious. ‘I'm not bloody well getting married so your wife can sleep well at nights, Mike,' she said. ‘If she feels I'm a threat well I'm bloody sorry. You're just going to have to convince her, Mike. It's her problem.'

‘It's mine too.'

She looked at him. He looked fed up and tired. She gave a lopsided grin. ‘Having a hard time, Korpanski? Wife giving you a hard time?'

‘Bugger off,' he said, laughing.

‘Come on,' she said. ‘We've got work to do. It's hard enough without these extra problems.'

‘You know,' he said, ‘if this was a detective novel Agatha Christie would have used a vegetable alkaloid.'

‘I've thought of that,' she admitted. ‘Perhaps I had better speak to Matthew Levin again. The trouble is, Mike,' she said, ‘we all know that without the cause of death we know nothing. That has to be our starting point.'

She stabbed the point of her pen into the paper. ‘The cause of death.'

She looked at Mike. ‘Perhaps the Super's right. We're really getting nowhere.' She picked up her coffee and stared into the bottom of the cup.

Mike bent over her. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. ‘You'll just have to lean on your pet pathologist, madam.'