Dead Again Read online

  To the left and shielded by trees was a row of garages.

  Pip Dingham had one of the houses and his aunt Lou lived in the big block of flats on the top floor. They were all owned by the university. Pip lived there because it was near the big school where he taught.

  Lawns and flower beds surrounded the buildings, all well cared for. As Charmian drove in through the gates and took the gravelled drive to the left towards the garages she saw a gardener cutting the grass.

  Not the sort of ambience from which you expected brutal murder to spring but of course Coburg Court had not even been built at the time, and Joan Dingham had been living in Richmond then. So she had had to take a train to commit the Windsor murders. So had Rhos Campbell who had lived in South London. Mustn’t forget Rhos. The two had been at school together in Slough and had been friends ever since. There had been hints of a lesbian relationship between Rhosamond and Joan (who might be AC/ DC), but no evidence of this was brought forward at the trial. Charmian had learned to be cautious about talk of that sort which came up so often.

  As she got out of the car she saw an official-looking man, carrying a clipboard with papers attached, approaching the gardener. She had noticed the gardener eyeing her as she parked her car so she guessed that parking here was for residents only. Or was he just curious to know who she was? Anyway, he was bound to know who Mrs Armour had staying with her and probably found the set-up interesting. Of course, it could be that he was part of the protection team which had been provided for Joan, more to keep the peace than out of love for her. If this was the case, the so-called gardener would know Charmian even if she didn’t know him.

  The man with the board and the papers was standing by the gardener as she came up, he was sneezing heavily and wheezing.

  ‘One of those colds,’ he said, muffling his face in a big white handkerchief. ‘Better keep away, miss.’

  Charmian, who hadn’t been very close, stepped back a pace. ‘Can you tell me which is Mrs Armour’s flat?’ He looked the sort who would know. Got it written on that paper he had pinned to his board, no doubt.

  She was right, he consulted it before answering. ‘Third floor, that is the top.’

  He began to follow her into the hall, still sneezing, giving the gardener a quick nod and an admonition to get on with it. This was not well received.

  ‘You work here?’ she asked, professional curiosity operating, as it so often did.

  ‘For the university. Check on paint work, that sort of thing. My firm did the work.’

  He handed over a card.

  A.C. CHAPPELL

  All up-keep work undertaken. Painting, etc.

  3, Lower Flood Street, High Windsor.

  Charmian took it.

  ‘Where is High Windsor?’

  ‘Other side of the castle, going towards Staines. My own naming.

  Impresses the customers.’ He sneezed again into his handkerchief.

  A fanciful fellow, she thought. ‘ That’s some cold.’

  ‘Yes, better keep away, miss,’

  She had given the gardener a good look as she passed and it

  seemed to her that he nodded. A tiny little nod that she did not

  acknowledge.

  There was a lift to the top floor: two doors there, two bells, and

  she had to choose which one to ring. She was standing, preparing to make a decision, when the door to her left opened.

  Emily Agent stood there. ‘Hi, ma’am, come on in. Been expecting you. Saw you arrive. Inspector Parker’s here already.’

  A mixed noise of voices, muted laughter and the clink of glasses floated out of the door towards Charmian.

  ‘Party, is it?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Emily held the door wide for her to enter.

  Inside the room, she saw Dr Greenham, he was drinking a cup of coffee and holding a glass of something strong in his left hand, and talking with animation to a tall woman with bright yellow hair in a crest, rather like the sort of plumes that decorated the helmet of a medieval knight.

  Baby hadn’t done a bad job within the terms of her commission; it was not unflattering to the strong-jawed face underneath. It did dominate the nose which, Charmian supposed, was its purpose. She knew the face: Joan, old friend of Beryl Barker and Diana.

  It was not Joan’s flat but she came forward, hand held out, as if it was. Behind her, hand also held out, came a smaller woman, similar to Joan but younger-looking. This was Lou, the younger sister. Perhaps life in prison preserved you, froze you, pickled you, and you did not age so fast. Both women were well dressed and Joan wore a silk suit, something few were wearing this season, just slightly out of date, bound to happen after decades in prison. You lose your eye for fashion.

  Or it might be just the genes, the very genes that allowed you to become a murderer. To dream about killing perhaps, at last to achieve it, more than once too. Then to face a trial, a guilty verdict and to come out looking brassy.

  Charmian didn’t have to introduce herself to Joan.

  ‘I know who you are: Miss Daniels. I have been waiting to meet you.’

  Now why doesn’t that make me feel happier? Charmian asked herself, while she took Joan’s hand and murmured something. She could not quite use the word pleasure, but she did not find herself recoiling in quite the way that Baby had described. She had, after all, touched the skin of more than one killer in her long career. But there was something unpleasant about Joan’s touch. Perhaps because although her fingers were chilly and dry, the palm was damp.

  A fanciful idea flitted through Charmian’s mind: inside the body she was touching were two people: the one Joan was letting the world see and the hot one she was shutting inside.

  Not such a fanciful idea. Joan Dingham was not an easy woman to read.

  ‘Lou or Lulu, I answer to both names,’ Lou said as she introduced herself to Charmian as Joan’s sister. ‘ Come in and have a drink: coffee or wine or something stronger.’

  Across the room, Charmian saw that a lot of the noise she had heard had come from Dr Greenham being professionally jovial. He was talking to a tall, thin, dark-haired woman whom Charmian recognized as Bee – surname for the moment forgotten – a friend of Beryl Andrea Barker. Bee recognized Charmian, with a hint of resignation. She had been one of Diana’s gang members, and remembered Charmian’s part in their failure.

  Charmian accepted a cup of coffee and declined the wine, aware that she needed a clear head. There was a lot to think about: all criminous.

  Bee, Diana, Baby, part of the old gang assembling. Were they planning anything? She didn’t think so. They might be playing at it. Surely they wouldn’t? Their taste had been for fine jewellery shops of which Windsor had several. Then there were the murdered girls, where she had blundered into an investigation not altogether pleasing to her colleagues in the CID; they were behaving with good manners as always. And there was Emily Agent across the room who, if prodded, would certainly let Charmian know what was really thought about her and about SRADIC. Emily grinned and gave her a small wave. This is a strange business you and I are engaged in, the wave and the grin seemed to say.

  Perhaps I am being fanciful myself, Charmian thought, for the moment anchored to Joan who was talking away nervously about how happy she was to have this chance of university study.

  ‘Of course, I have to be passed as up to it,’ she said.

  ‘You will be, Joan,’ said Lou. She turned to Charmian. ‘Your friend Beryl Barker is my hairdresser too. Joan went there.’ She looked proudly at her sister.

  Charmian nodded. ‘I know.’

  Joan touched her hair. ‘ She did a good job.’ Her hair was bright and flamboyant. Also firmly set with lacquer, it would not wave in a wind, but might be difficult to sleep on.

  Hair to hide behind, had been Birdie’s view of such display.

  ‘I want to do this work well … Perhaps write something. Explain myself.’ She turned to her son Pip, who had come up to the three women to offer them wine.
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br />   He said gently, ‘I don’t know, Mum.’

  ‘Perhaps better to leave it alone? You see, I don’t know how to behave now I am outside …’ Joan was nervous. ‘Of course, I am going back, but I shall be out and I want people to understand it was not all me.’

  She looked at Charmian.

  ‘Joan has never talked about it before, never explained,’ said Lou. ‘Now she wants to.’

  ‘It might be hard to explain,’ said Charmian. ‘ Can you do it? What will you say?’

  Joan licked her lips, which looked dry and hot. She did not answer. Then she muttered, ‘ I will say that no one is alone.’

  Once again, Charmian had the impression that a third person had been involved. A third person besides Rhos?

  ‘Calm down, Mum,’ said Pip.

  Charmian liked him, she liked Lou, who looked as though this party, if you could call it that, was beyond her powers of control.

  ‘Some sherry?’ Lou enquired hopefully of Charmian.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Charmian went to the window to look out. There was the man with the board. ‘Lovely view.’

  ‘Who is that man?’ asked Joan, looking over her shoulder.

  Pip approached them to take a look. ‘Oh, that’s Mr Chappell. He keeps us all in order.’

  ‘Come and meet the person who is helping me.’ Joan led Charmian up to Dr Greenham.

  Dr Greenham did take some more sherry and gave every indication of having had some, perhaps too much, already.

  ‘She’ll make the course,’ he said, as soon as Joan’s back was turned. ‘She’s clever enough. But I don’t know what to make of her. But who does? She says she is going to write a book “explaining”, God help us.’

  ‘She told me that too.’

  ‘She’ll get a publisher. TV and newspaper offers too, I guess. She says she had another ex-con who wanted to work with her, but the woman wanted to exploit her. She’s against being exploited. So she sent her away with a flea in her ear.’

  ‘It was a woman?’

  ‘Seems so. They met in prison. Could be a prison visitor, or a warder, I suppose. Or a woman copper.’ He looked at Charmian.

  ‘Not me,’ said Charmian coldly.

  ‘Evil, the woman called Joan. I must say that I wouldn’t care to be her, bearing in mind Joanie’s past record.’

  He held out his hand for a refill of sherry. Pip poured him some and then moved on to where his mother stood. ‘Had a talk with another of them,’ he nodded to where Pip was talking to his mother and another woman. ‘ That one over there. She’s been in stir.’

  ‘They don’t call it that now,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Clink, nick, quod, behind bars. I must go into the etymology of it.’ He stumbled over the last long word.

  ‘I’m off,’ Charmian said to Pip as he came over. ‘Say goodbye to your mother and aunt for me.’

  She waved to them both and included Emily Agent in the gesture. Emily seemed stuck, but it was her duty to stay with Joan. Parker seemed to have escaped.

  ‘I’ll see you down,’ said Pip.

  ‘I can manage.’

  ‘Be glad of the air …’

  In the lift, as it sped down, he cleared his throat nervously. ‘Bit of a cough. Infection, I think.’

  ‘There’s a lot of it around,’ said Charmian, thinking of the sneezer in the grounds.

  ‘She can’t help it, you know. Mother, I mean. She says she needs rewiring … It’s the years inside. Some of it was spent in solitary because she was afraid of being attacked … She wouldn’t talk about it.’ He meant the killings. ‘I don’t think she could … it was a sort of mutism. Kids get it, I believe, after trauma …’

  ‘You were only a child yourself when it happened.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed. Aunt Lou brought me up.’

  Mr Chappell was there on the grass.

  ‘Found it all right, did you?’ he asked Charmian.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  As Charmian got into her car, Inspector Parker appeared from another car.

  ‘You got away?’

  She nodded. ‘Call it that, if you like.’

  ‘What do you make of her?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘I can’t believe she did all that killing on her own.’

  ‘She didn’t. There was the other woman, the one who killed herself, Rhos Campbell.’

  Parker nodded. ‘ She must have been the dominant party. I’d like to know more about her. I tried to get Dingham talking but she went dead silent. Then I tried the sister. She wouldn’t say much either. They specialize in not talking, that pair. The boy talks more, but knows nothing. Just a kid then. Interesting and terrible position to be in, to know that your mother killed other children. What protected him from the same fate?’

  ‘She was his mother.’

  ‘The blood tie? Doesn’t always work out, look at the Wests. The family was just easy fodder for them.’

  She thought she would chance a probe. ‘Anything new about the dead girl found near Threadneedle Alley?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard,’ he said discreetly. ‘But I might not hear. You never get much out of Tim Wibley.’ Inspector Wibley was famous for his buttoned-up lips. ‘But you’re dealing with that affair, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not entirely. It’s just that Dolly Barstow somehow got into it at the beginning.’

  ‘And when Dolly gets her teeth into anything, she doesn’t give up easily.’

  ‘No.’ Unless she’s caught up in a complicated love affair which seems to be the case at the moment.

  She was not going to tell him about her idea that somehow the death of two girls, one on Pinckney Heath and the other in the scrap of rough land in Windsor itself, was connected with the Joan Dingham killings.

  Chapter Seven

  When she got back to her office, she asked her secretary to ring the Police Record Office and get her the file on Rhosamond Campbell.

  ‘Now what did you make of that meeting this morning?’ she asked herself. ‘You have now met Joan Dingham, her sister and her son.’

  Murderers, so she had been trained to think, came in three categories: organized killers, disorganized killers and a third category which she had formed for herself.

  Organized killers target victims, having chosen the type they fancy; they watch the victim, observing his or her behaviour patterns. This type of killer stalks the victim, choosing the right place and time to do the killing. Such a killer uses a trick or con to get the victim under his control.

  The disorganized killer does not choose his victim: if he or she was in the mood it just happened to whomever chanced along. A bad-luck killer, you might say, often choosing a victim at risk to himself. His motive for killing is often a mystery even to himself.

  The third category of killer was, to Charmian’s mind, better called the theatrical killer. They wanted to make a show, capture an audience. Jack the Ripper would fall into this group. She thought that Joan and Rhos might be killers of this sort. Theatrical killers are a sub-group of the organized murderers, but more controlled. They sometimes hover around the police investigation, watching with pleasure. Years may elapse between their killings, and then the curtain will go up again. All three types of killer may kill more than once, as the mood takes them.

  It was her opinion that the killer of the two girls was of this third type, and that he had just opened the show again: the curtains were drawn.

  She pushed the papers on her desk away from her and went to stand at the window to look out. Her thoughts were getting complicated. Where does this all lead? Was it coincidence that just when Joan came out of prison a theatrical killer appears on the scene, using some of the symbols earlier used by Joan and Co? Or was it possible that there had been a third killer involved with Joan and Rhos all the time, and that this killer is out and walking around?

  Deep breath here, Charmian, she told herself. This is murky water in which you could drown.

  Her secretary, Edith, came
in with some letters for her to sign. ‘There’s been a brutal murder in Staines: a stabbing. Woman with her dog.’

  ‘What about the dog?’

  ‘Also stabbed but surviving.’

  ‘Oh, well, Staines is out of my area. It won’t come my way,’ said Charmian.

  ‘Don’t count on it. The woman had a lover who lives in Cheasey.’

  Charmian groaned. ‘I shan’t touch it.’

  But she knew she might have to. As head of SRADIC she was obliged to collect all records, check and observe, and take action if necessary. She had been put there to oversee, a kind of judge of operations who could and did interfere. But the police are very territorial, and her powers only operated within certain boundaries.

  As an overseer, she was valued but not loved.

  ‘Has the file I wanted been delivered?’ All the records of investigations going back five decades were kept in a barn-like structure at the back of the main SRADIC building.

  Any records earlier still were in an underground set of rooms underneath the old police college in Abbey Street, now used as police lodgings for first-year recruits. Anything earlier than that was regarded as a historical document into which not even Charmian Daniels would want to pry, and so these were wrapped in plastic and forgotten, binned. Pre-history. They were tucked away in a vault beneath the old Central Police Station where it was assumed they would crumble away if the rats did not get them first.

  ‘Being sorted,’ said Edith. ‘Goes back to before SRADIC was started so it’s a bit of a muddle, but we will get it.’

  ‘For God’s sake get on to it, give them a push.’ Her voice was sharp, sharper than she usually allowed herself to be.

  The telephone rang and Edith took her chance to escape.

  ‘Charmian? It’s me.’

  ‘Yes, I recognized you,’ said Charmian with resignation. She had half expected a call from Baby. ‘And yes, if you are asking, I did see Joan today, and no, I didn’t warm to her, rather the reverse. I liked her sister better and the lad Pip. He had good manners anyway.’