Windsor Red Read online

  ‘You shouldn’t have been listening.’

  He might have said, But I always listen, except that he knew it and she knew it. ‘ Is it murder then?’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t kept you away from school with spots,’ said his mother. ‘ If Dr Cook had been here I wouldn’t have, he’d have seen you and sent you back to school.’

  Her son responded that he wanted to go to school, he was in the school play and needed for rehearsal.

  ‘What kind of a part have you got, son?’ asked his father, appearing at the back of the shop with a stack of boxes.

  His son considered. ‘I’m like a kind of a fairy,’ he said, at length.

  ‘A fairy?’ Bessie looked at her son. ‘What kind of a fairy? What are you called?’

  ‘Mustardseed.’ He added: ‘It’s Shakespeare.’

  ‘I hope they’re teaching you to speak properly then.’ Bessie was a Londoner and found the Berkshire accent of her son alien.

  ‘Teacher says the way I talk is the way Shakespeare might have talked,’ said her son triumphantly.

  ‘Go and take your spots upstairs.’ In any contest with him she usually lost. He was their cleverest child so far, but she had hopes of the baby.

  The baby gave a soft wail and Elspeth Green, coming in to buy aspirin and a stamp to write to her husband, looked at him with sympathy. She thought that Bessie, what with the demands of the shop and the other children, did not pay him enough attention. ‘Someone’ll steal you one day, love,’ she said.

  ‘The doctor said to take things quietly and have a rest, so Jerome told me to go home,’ she told Bessie. ‘I’ll have some chocolate, too. You need sweetness for shock.’

  Bessie thought she did look pale and worried. Pretty, though. ‘I never go white with shock myself,’ she said enviously. ‘ Just all red.’

  ‘There’s plenty of good red blood inside you, girl,’ said Brian, giving her an affectionate slap.

  Charmian came in soon after this, and she too bought chocolate. Her body sugars needed topping up also, although her pain and exhaustion came from a different quarter than Elspeth’s. Women should look after women, and was she doing this?

  She had left Anny behind her with Jack, they did not need her, they had each other. The police team was at work in the Yard, soon they would be interviewing the inhabitants. She had cleared her departure with them, they could talk to her later.

  She was on her way to meet Laraine. Baby had set up the meeting. She had arranged to meet Laraine in the bar of the Theatre Royal in Windsor where she had discovered you could get a good cup of coffee in privacy and quiet, which was exactly what she wanted.

  Laraine was already there and she recognised her at once, even though she could see that Laraine was the sort of person who changed her appearance regularly. Last time her hair had been in a loose bob, now she was wearing a tight jersey turban of bright emerald. Such hair as Charmian could see appeared to have changed colour too. Surely she had not gone grey? Or was it some effort of Baby’s? She had once offered to ‘ tip’ Charmian’s hair.

  Laraine looked up and gave a wave; so the recognition was mutual.

  As she sat down, Charmian remembered what Baby had said. ‘Laraine’s a marvellous person. She should never have been in prison.’

  ‘You mean she wasn’t guilty?’ Charmian had asked.

  ‘Oh no, she did it all right, but he asked for it, and she’s too good for prison.’

  There was always a Laraine figure in Baby’s life. The last one had initiated an armed robbery as well as murdering a man, but in a funny kind of way Baby’s judgement on moral issues was good. Laraine had gone inside each time for fraud, and there was more than a hint that she might be capable of violence.

  Charmian got out her notebooks and arranged her tape-recorder. Laraine looked at it alertly.

  ‘Do you mind if I use it?’

  Laraine said she did not, provided permission was always asked. She understood what Charmian was doing and approved. There ought to be a study of why some women kept going back to prison.

  Take her own case: she kept going back because she kept getting caught. Why did she keep getting caught, when she was brighter than most policemen?

  She did not know and, if Charmian could come up with an answer, she would be doing a real service.

  Laraine sat back expectantly.

  ‘But why do you keep committing the same offence?’

  ‘For profit. Money. I don’t know any other way a woman like me can make a lot of money. I’m not saying there aren’t other ways for different sorts of women, but this was the only way open for me.’

  So there was Laraine’s reason, and in her mind the account had come out right, more profit than loss.

  But perhaps there was something else. ‘Women need help. You ought to know that. They have to protect themselves, you see it all round you all the time. I read something in the paper yesterday about a siege in a flat: it’ll be a man holding a woman prisoner, you’ll see. And then today, what did I hear? A body in a sack. Ten to one it’ll be some poor cow a man’s carved up.’

  Yes, there was something more to Laraine than appeared on the surface. Crime was her business, but it was also her weapon. Baby had caught on to that. It was up to Charmian now to find for whom the weapon was sharpened.

  The conversation went on between them over the coffee, quiet and low key. Towards the end, Charmian said: ‘And what about now?’ she knew that Laraine worked part time in a supermarket, and Nix in a dry cleaner’s, while one of them worked in a butcher’s. The others were not in work.

  ‘Business as usual,’ and Laraine gave the answer with a smile. Make what you like of that, the smile said.

  Charmian walked down the hill from the theatre towards the river. The town was now crowded with tourists and shoppers. She wondered where the locals went in high summer. Hid in their houses probably to emerge at dusk when the visitors had gone. Behind her she could hear the last strains of the band of the Irish Guards as the guard changed at the Castle and one unit marched out and the next came in. It was a daily spectacle, meticulously timed. She wondered how many terrorists had watched and planned.

  She sat on a bench on Eton bridge, watching the river run underneath. This place had seen a lot of English history. The Tower of London, Hampton Court and Windsor Castle, royal homes and sometimes prisons, were linked by the river Thames. Not far away was Runnymede, and beyond that Staines where the Anglo-Saxons had forded the upper Thames. No wonder William of Normandy had planted his castle where he did.

  It was sunny and pleasant on the bridge, but after a while she got up to walk down Eton High Street, passing all the antique shops and the expensive eating places in search of a quiet telephone to make a private call. She found one as the road turned towards Slough. There was a public call box at a leafy corner where the road looked almost rural.

  She called Harold English. ‘Hello, anything to tell me?’

  Cautiously, he said, ‘On one front nothing. Go on as planned. Clear? On that other matter, the question you raised, No, the chap does not appear to have a record. But he has been involved in violence. As a victim. Attacked. Twice.’

  ‘That needs thinking about … You’ve heard what’s been found in the Yard?’

  He had.

  ‘I’m worried. I suppose no identity yet?’

  ‘No, but there is something you ought to know. It’s only what I’ve been told, but I guess reliable.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Two limbs. But two different people. One a man and the other a woman.’

  Chapter Four

  A BLACK NIGHT , one of the blackest, but still a warm bright day for everyone except Charmian. She walked back down Eton High Street enveloped in her own private darkness. One thought in particular obsessed her. The quarrel that Kate and Harry had in the Castle, had it been about another woman? This was the question she was going to have to put to Anny. But tactfully, because Anny did not yet know about the different limbs in th
e sack, and must not be encouraged to think about them nor draw either of the dreadful conclusions that presented themselves so tellingly to Charmian. A dead Kate or a murdering Kate? Take your choice. She did not want it to be either.

  Jerome was walking by the river. He was pushing his small son in a pram, one of the old-fashioned sort that his mother had dug out of her attic for him. He remembered taking walks in it himself. Or he could be imagining it. Memory could play one of its games with you.

  He knew his could. For instance, just now, as he pushed the pram by the river he had thought of Lisa at home, ready with their tea.

  Not so; she wasn’t there, could never be there again. She was dead. He knew that perfectly well, but just fleetingly, his body had forgotten.

  Elspeth was lying on her bed, trying to pretend her headache was getting better. However, it was not; if anything, it was worse. She had no sense of darkness, rather the light worried her eyes. She found the light too bright, too intense and had drawn the curtains against it. Even so she could not cut it out completely. She must be fit to go back to work tomorrow, so much to do before her husband came home. A shorter trip than usual, which was nice, but when you had got used to people being absent for a certain length of time then you had to replan things when they weren’t. Quite soon now she would give up working for Jerome, because she hoped to have a child of her own to tend, and he could manage beautifully by himself. When she’d started with him, she had seen herself helping with the child, but he did not need her, she soon saw he could do all for himself. A splendid father, everything arranged for, so different from the Robertsons who never seemed to look ahead. She wondered if Bessie Robertson would be glad of her help in the shop? Preferred her own muddle, probably. As she thought about it she drifted off to sleep, and when she woke up, although she still had her set of worries, she felt much better.

  Anny and Jack lay on Anny’s big double bed side by side. She did not always let Jack sleep there; he had a narrow bed in what Anny called his dressing room and he called his bunkroom and he was often sent off there. Anny needed a lot of sleep and Jack needed a lot of whisky and the two did not always go together. Now Anny had had a strong nip of whisky too. They were both very unhappy.

  Molly Oriel had telephoned to offer sympathy. She made the most practical demonstration of this that she could by offering to help Anny with her stall at the forthcoming Fair in Windsor Great Park. ‘No, Anny,’ she said, loudly and clearly. ‘ You must not give it up. On no account. I’ve told any number of people that you will be there and be there you must.’ She did not quite go so far as to say that the Queen herself would be there to buy a pot, but she came very close.

  It made Anny laugh, which was perhaps what she had intended. For Molly Oriel it was a bright day, darkened only by sadness for her friend, but one of great personal happiness for herself. Life is such a sandwich, she thought.

  Charmian found her gloom lifting as she shopped for an evening meal. She was remembering Kate, thinking of the adolescent she had been, bright and eager. The two had not met often enough, Charmian told herself, but the girl she recalled could not have turned into a double murderer of a particularly brutal kind. Surely not? One had to trust people. Trust, she said to herself. This is Anny’s child you are talking about. The trouble was she mixed with so many criminous women who seemed capable of anything that it was souring her judgement. She shopped carefully. There is something honest and cheerful about buying steak and green salad and Brie cheese with oatcakes, things might not be so bad after all. One could not, perhaps, be happy, but one could certainly bear to go on.

  She was giving dinner to Nix and Baby tonight. Baby – ‘Andrea, remember, Andrea’—had not wanted to come, but Charmian persisted.

  ‘I’m in a hurry. I need to see her. You said you’d help.’

  ‘I’m helping. All right I’m helping. I’ll bring her.’

  But she arrived alone. ‘Nix is coming later. She’s got a date with a man friend.’

  ‘Ah.’ This was of interest to Charmian. She had wondered when that theme would surface. There had to be a man with that lot. ‘Someone she met through prison?’

  Beryl Andrea Barker, she was all of that tonight, gilded to her waist with jewellery, gave a hoot of laughter. ‘ You don’t meet a man like that in prison.’

  ‘I said through. You do know him then?’

  ‘Seen him.’ Apparently that was all she was going to say.

  Nix arrived just as Charmian was putting the steak under the grill. ‘Thanks for asking me. Kid here said you wanted to talk.’

  Andrea looked smug at being called kid. Clearly that was all right even if Baby was not. ‘Had a nice time?’ she asked. ‘ Not bad. Is that garlic on the steak?’ Charmian nodded. ‘ Do you mind?’

  ‘No, love it. Keeps the bloodsuckers away, did you know? Wonder if it’d do the same for the fuzz?’

  Kid, formerly Baby, aiming to be Andrea, said: ‘Now that’s no talk. You’ve put all that behind you, Nix.’

  ‘Who said?’ she picked out a radish from the salad bowl. ‘Well, maybe.’

  ‘I’m fuzz myself,’ Charmian reminded her.

  ‘No?’ Nix started backwards in pretend horror. ‘ Now she tells me.’ Then she relaxed with a real laugh. ‘Yes, I know. Andrea said so. But she says you’re genuine.’

  Over dinner they talked freely about the sort of thing any trio of women might talk about: clothes, food and, with restraint on Charmian’s side and none whatever on Nix’s, about sex. Charmian tried to be the one that steered the conversation but she was uneasily aware that Nix knew this and was amused. Come to think of it, with her record she must have plenty of experience in police interrogation and have invented her own ways of dealing with it. But I’ve had experience too, Charmian told herself, so watch out, my lady.

  After dinner, rightly assessing her Nix, Charmian produced a bottle of malt whisky which they drank neat. Over the years Charmian had developed a hard head herself but Nix matched her, drink for drink.

  ‘You got a hollow leg or something?’ growled Baby, forgetting she was the ladylike Andrea and picking up her racier persona. ‘You’ll be pissed.’

  Nix just laughed. ‘We could finish this bottle.’ She held it up to measure what was left. ‘Never had a good drink out of a policeman before.’

  ‘Nor a good anything else,’ said Baby, still in residence. ‘If all you’ve been saying is true.’

  ‘Perhaps women police are different,’ said Nix, leaning across the table and gripping Charmian’s wrist with her long fingers.

  ‘Not this one.’ Charmian extricated herself coolly.

  ‘I’m ambidextrous, you know,’ said Nix with a smile. She held up her left hand mockingly.

  ‘That must have been very useful to you in your career.’ Nix laughed. ‘I like you. Be a pleasure to be nicked by you.’

  ‘I hope it won’t come to that … Although you do seem to go in and out.’

  ‘And that’s what you want to talk about?’ Nix’s voice sounded light and lively. Almost too lively.

  I wonder if she’s high on something as well as drink, Charmian thought. ‘ Do you mind if I make notes?’ she asked, trying to drag her down. She produced notebooks and pencils.

  ‘Fire away.’ Nix was still airy. ‘Just don’t tape me; I can’t stand the sound of my own voice.’

  ‘I would never have known it.’

  ‘Not taped and on record and ready to bear witness against me at the wrong moment.’

  ‘Tell me the right moment,’ said Baby sourly. She was finding it hard to keep up as Andrea, obviously practice was needed.

  Nix turned to her. ‘You go home, kid. You’re tired.’ Baby stood up obediently, as if she had got her cue and must take it. She made polite noises to Charmian and was off.

  ‘She’s a child,’ said Nix, as soon as the door closed on her.

  ‘You think so?’ Charmian asked. It did not happen to be her own opinion of Baby.

  Nix put her elbows on
the table and looked bright. ‘Now to business. Do I just talk or do you ask questions?’

  Not high on drugs, Charmian thought, not even drunk. Just high on herself. She’s got the confidence of Old Nick.

  ‘We’ll start with me asking questions.’ She had a list of questions which she was putting to all her subjects. She had drawn them up with the aid of a police psychologist who had also told her what to look out for.

  ‘They’ll lie, of course. No matter how much they swear to tell the truth and even believe they can, they will lie. We all do it, and this lot more than most. It’s self-protection. Only saints can tell the truth about themselves and even they find it painful.’

  ‘I’m quite good at spotting a lie myself.’

  ‘Of course. But this time you’ve got to spot the lie behind the lie.’

  True, Charmian thought. So I have, dammit, because this is a job within a job. Will I do it? More important, will I do it in time?

  Time was beginning to worry her. There was always such pressure in police work, but usually you could show it. Now she must not, but hold it tight inside herself like a secret. Worry over Anny and Kate was not helping her. All the time, at the back of her mind, she was thinking: Whose bodies have we got bits of? And where are the rest of those bodies?

  But she controlled herself and talked gently to Nix, not looking for the involuntary change of voice, the eyelid twitch, or the sudden foot movement, for with Nix they would not be there. Instead, as with Laraine, she would look for the fluent patter, the smile at the back of the eyes, the mannered quietness. Nix would have them all, know how to use them, a natural liar if ever she saw one.

  And I’m not bad myself, thought Charmian, it takes one to know one.

  She went through her questions, asking about family background, upbringing and education, the standard sort of thing. Nix seemed to have no complaints about her family or her school except that they were ‘dull’ and it had all seemed ‘bloody pointless’. Her mother? Oh, Mum had been all right, never had much of a life. Dead now. Dad? Oh, he was still around.