Footsteps in the Blood Page 7

  By training and by natural aptitude, Margery Foggerty had a good memory for faces, so that she had recognised Nella easily when she had seen her about Windsor and Slough. Not to put a name on her perhaps, not to be able to say: That’s Nella Fisher. But she knew that she came from Cheasey and that she was probably a Fisher girl. Names were always tricky in that outfit, kind of interchangeable. Positive identification came later, after a few questions asked around. And then later, Nella, who had recognised Foggerty too, had tried a little clumsy blackmail; she had underestimated Foggerty there and got nothing for her pains.

  Nevertheless, the death by shooting of Nella Fisher had been a tremendous shock. A real blow in the gut. Put her off her food, and that took some doing.

  It was when sitting in the canteen and realising that bacon, egg and chips were not sliding down as happily as usual, that she made her decision.

  She had just come back from a short period of leave during which she had flown out for a little holiday in sunny Spain (on her own, but she knew how to pick up the right company when she wanted it), during which time she had been able to push the problem of Nella to the back of her mind.

  To the back, but not out of it. The trouble with being a woman, she decided, was that, do what you will, you had a feeling heart. More than a man ever had. Nella had been a nuisance while alive, and looked like being even more of a nuisance now she was dead. Margery Foggerty moved her bacon and eggs aside. They were cold as it happened, they had got cold while she thought things out. Her cup of tea was cooling also, and she detested lukewarm tea.

  Bister was sitting at a table across the room. She got herself a mug of hot tea and walked over. Confession time.

  She passed Dolly Barstow on her way across: they were not buddies.

  Bister looked up at her as she sat down at his table. His eyes had their usual cold, clear light. Pale-blue eyes changing to grey in certain lights were never friendly eyes.

  ‘It was nice in Spain,’ said Foggerty settling herself into her seat. Her flesh overflowed a bit so it took some doing. ‘I was sorry to get back.’

  ‘Glad you enjoyed it.’

  ‘Things seem to have been happening while I was away.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Bister without interest.

  ‘Murder on the patch. Nella Fisher.’

  ‘You were around when she was killed.’

  ‘I went off the next day.’ Foggerty took a sip of her tea. This wasn’t going well. As usual, Bister knew all the details you hoped he had forgotten. He had been a nuisance to her before.

  ‘So what have you come to tell me?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m telling?’ said Margery over her mug.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to tell you, so that if you haven’t, there’s no conversation.’

  Such charm, thought Foggerty. Slays me.

  Her eyes followed the figure of Dolly Barstow as she went through the swing doors and down the corridor. Barstow was a pal of that Charmian Daniels woman which always put her on the inside track. Daniels was about the same age as Foggerty but infinitely far above her in status. Life was very unfair.

  There was another side, however, her thoughts rolled along comfortingly: she may have better pension rights, but I bet I’ve got more capital. Margery had been both careful and canny. Her stomach served her a rolling heave, to remind her that it too was here on business.

  ‘I’ve come to tell you something,’ she said, leaning forward.

  Bister had finished his meal and was ready to go. ‘I’ve got quite a dossier on Fisher. So if you’ve come to tell me anything about her home life, how she was in care at the age of eight, on probation at thirteen, and was missing for six months when she was fourteen, no one ever did discover where she was, don’t bother, I’ve got all that and don’t need more.’ Unlike Charmian Daniels he did not believe that knowing more about the emotional or psychological life of a victim was a key to what had happened to them. Dates, motives and opportunity was what solved crimes, he thought, together with the forensics. Heaven forbid he should forget those. He and Inspector Fred Elman had set up their MIRIAM – major incident room – in a church hall in River Walk, Merrywick. He was on his way there now. ‘And I don’t want intuition, either.’

  ‘As if I would.’

  No, silly of him, Foggerty was not one for the sensitive approach to detection. Besides Sergeant Margery Foggerty he sometimes felt thin-skinned himself, while admitting that the tough and unsavoury work she had to do was well done by her. No obscene sexuality or act of bestiality did she flinch from, and she would rescue those she could. Not with any love, but efficiently.

  All the same, he did not like her.

  ‘No, I don’t know why I didn’t tell you this before I went away …’ She gave a shake of her head. ‘But it sort of got pushed out of my thoughts by that kid that buried her twin brothers in a sandpit, little beast. Mind you, we got them out, but one of them might be brain damaged.’

  Bister waited, more or less patiently.

  Foggerty’s stomach gave another sharp contraction, reminding her they were both here on business. Wonder if I’ve picked up some bug in sunny Costa Brava, she thought, knowing it was just nerves. Better get on with it instead of wittering on about the Brown twins who probably had deserved what they got. She was on the sister’s side there. Girl children always got lumbered, and as the kid said, she was only putting them in a safe spot while she went away to play.

  ‘I saw the girl in Merrywick that night, on that road and not far from where she was killed.’

  ‘What was she doing?’

  ‘Just walking.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘I was walking too. I was on my way back from my sister. She lives in a road near there. I saw Fisher in the distance.’

  ‘But you recognised her?’

  ‘Oh sure, she always wore the same sort of thing, a dark, black kind of sack over black jeans. I don’t think she had anything else.’ The clothes had suited her in her lost-girl way. Never pretty, Nella had an appeal like a rain-drenched kitten.

  Bister did not want to reject the offering but he didn’t see what it added. ‘ Was the light good?’ he asked thoughtfully.

  ‘No, not very, it was raining.’

  Not much help really, he thought. ‘Well, thanks for telling me, even if a bit late.’

  ‘I’ve explained about that.’

  ‘Shows she was hanging around before she was killed, I see that.’ Yes, it did help a bit after all. One more little fragment of the broken mosaic that was her death and the night when it happened.

  ‘She wasn’t on her own,’ Foggerty took a deep breath, and her stomach twitched. ‘There was someone walking with her.’ She had thought a lot about saying this, but it had better be said.

  ‘Well, I never.’ Bister swallowed his last gulp of coffee. ‘Now it is a pity you didn’t tell me that before.’

  Sergeant Foggerty shifted uncomfortably but said nothing. She made her excuses.

  ‘And what was this other person like? Anyone you recognised?’

  Foggerty shook her head.

  ‘A description, please.’ He was pulling out his notebook.

  ‘I couldn’t really see. They were moving away fast … And like I said, it was raining.’

  ‘Sex? Male or female?’

  ‘They all look the same these days.’

  Bister clucked his teeth angrily.

  ‘I didn’t know she was going to get killed.’

  ‘Help and no help,’ said Bister caustically. He thought for a moment. ‘Still, it puts her on the spot with someone who was probably her killer.’

  ‘Might have been,’ corrected Sergeant Foggerty.

  ‘I’m going to say yes, it’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.’

  Margery Foggerty stood up. ‘Well, now I’ve told you.’

  Bister shuffled the papers in his notebook. ‘ Yes, thanks.’ Then he gave a brilliant, wicked smile. ‘But I already knew.’

&n
bsp; ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes, woman in one of the flats, looking out of a window. Looking for her cat, and she saw them. But I didn’t put a lot of weight on it because she’s a bit of a fantasist and rings up about once a week, claiming she’s seen things. Case of crying wolf, so it seems now. People are telling the truth sometimes. Now with you to back her up, I have to believe her.’

  ‘Right,’ said Foggerty, her own voice feeling hollow to her. How many pairs of eyes had seen what? But to her surprise her stomach felt better, she had done the right thing.

  ‘Unluckily she didn’t see enough to be much help either. Just two walking figures. But one was definitely Fisher because of the clothes. Like a walking mummy, she said, only black.’

  Yes, that was Fisher, as all who knew her could testify.

  Later on that day Foggerty saw Bister and Dolly Barstow talking together. They did not look her way but she knew she had been seen. They were probably talking about her and what she had said.

  Just a guess, of course, but some guesses seemed to carry their own believable truth with them.

  So Barstow would know and would probably tell Charmian Daniels whom gossip reported to be taking a hand. It also reported that she had been offered a plum job locally. Some people did everything right. The woman was even slim and pretty. Maybe too thin, it couldn’t be healthy to be too thin. Foggerty took a toffee from her pocket, unwrapped it carefully and started to chew.

  I was right to say what I did, though, she decided, but it would have been better if I had done it before I went to Spain.

  Somewhat to her own surprise, she slept soundly that night, better, as it happened, than Charmian Daniels, or Dolly Barstow, or Kate Cooper.

  And much better than the man who had stood in the bushes across the road and watched Charmian’s windows while he smoked his cigar. It was a wet night which did not improve the pleasure of his cigar, but it occupied his hands and his mouth which satisfied him somewhat.

  He was a man who sought satisfaction, who hated to be denied. Greedy, if not worse.

  On the morning of October 7 when Charmian left her house she was surprised to see a car parked across the street with a man sitting in it. He got out when he saw her and walked across the road.

  She recognised him at once, ‘Jack.’ Jack Cooper, Kate’s father and husband of her oldest friend. ‘ What are you doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for you.’ His tone was not pleasant.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  He smelt of whisky and bar-rooms, as if he had been smoked over all night.

  ‘Why didn’t you come in?’ Still, perhaps as well he hadn’t by the look of him.

  He ignored the question, but came up closer.

  ‘There is the telephone.’ Charmian took a step away.

  ‘This is better said face to face.’ He grabbed her arm. ‘Not to say shouted.’ She tried to shake herself free, but he hung on. ‘Don’t move away.’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ She looked at the house next door. Of course, the window curtains twitched.

  ‘I’m angry with you. Very very angry. I’ve never liked you.’

  That’s not true, we’ve got on well enough.’

  ‘I put up with you. But you’re an arrogant interfering bitch.’

  ‘And you’re a bastard. You’re drunk, Jack,’ said Charmian with weary tolerance. She’d seen Jack in this state before. They all had.

  ‘How dare you put my wife against me, and my daughter?’

  ‘Oh, rubbish.’

  ‘Rubbish, is it? Letting Kate and Annie think I made a pass at that other bitch, Sergeant Dolly Barstow, CID.’

  ‘I expect you did, Jack, you do, you know.’

  ‘Don’t you patronise me.’

  ‘But as it happens it wasn’t me. It was Nella Fisher. Who is now dead. What about that, Jack?’

  There was a moment of silence. Just for a second, she thought he would hit her.

  He took a step back. ‘I’ll get you for that. You don’t understand men. You don’t know how a man’s mind works. I’ll show you.’

  He turned back towards the car.

  ‘You shouldn’t be driving in your state,’ she called out.

  He got into the car and turned in her direction. She thought he would drive straight at her, then he reversed sharply, swung the car round, and drove off very fast.

  Charmian took a deep breath. Just for a moment, Jack had looked like murder.

  Fury swept over her. ‘I’ll be round to see you, Jack,’ she called. ‘Damn you.’

  She had known Jack for years, sometimes been angry with him for his behaviour, sometimes pitied him because Annie could be quite a handful, often found him amusing. He was a witty man even in his cups. Never, ever had she felt frightened of him.

  Now, for the first time, she felt the threat of personal violence.

  Chapter Seven

  Saturday, October 7 to Monday October 9

  Two days passed, during which nothing much seemed to happen in the investigation, or nothing that came to Charmian’s ears. She knew that the routine enquiries would be proceeding. The Major Incident Room in River Walk would be in full operation, but you could not expect developments all the time. They had come to one of those patches, and it happens in all investigations, when everything goes quiet. With luck, it would burst into life again and hurry forward. Or, if not luck, then patient hard work will often do the trick. Sometimes, of course, nothing does, and that case remains open. The file is never closed on a murder investigation.

  Charmian had two busy days in London, during which the Nella Fisher case was always at the back of her mind as she attended to administrative duties, wrote letters and memoranda and chaired two committees.

  She had calmed down in her anger with Jack Cooper, but not forgiven him or forgotten him. She would deal with him. Her sense of personal danger had faded somewhat while not quite going away. But you couldn’t think of Jack as a killer, not Jack whose wedding you had attended (and he had been pretty hungover at that too), and whose hand you had held while his child was born, whom you had protected once or twice from the onslaughts of an angry Annie. He had not been around again, or she didn’t think so, but yet she had had the feeling as she parked the car or opened the window for the cat at night that there was someone outside.

  She had her own private and personal problems too. They could be summarised under hair, Humphrey, and clothes. She chose to bracket her problems under these headings and in this order (which said something in itself), but what she was really confronting was a career problem. A life-style problem. If she took the job on offer, and if, as she might, she married Humphrey, what sort of a life would she have, what sort of a woman would she be? Life did shape you so, no use pretending otherwise. So often, you were not a free agent, not even in charge.

  This hiatus was a time to be accepted as part of the process, and Charmian accepted it. Went on with her life, visited her hairdresser, looked at some new clothes, did not buy any, was telephoned by Humphrey who, it turned out, was no longer in Geneva but in Bonn, and was not home to receive his call. Same old work pattern, though. She also wrote two letters about the new position she had been offered: one accepting, one refusing. She had till the end of the month to decide. She weighed herself, down again, another pound gone. Do you do something about it, she asked herself, or be grateful? Didn’t the Duchess of Windsor say that no woman can be too thin? Simply not true.

  During this time, Sergeant Dolly Barstow and Kate Cooper were elusive. Charmian felt convinced that Dolly was still holding something back.

  Kate was around, that was about all one could say. She had come in over the weekend with a book to lend to Charmian about the French Revolution that she thought her godmother ought to read (trust Kate to admire Robespierre); in addition she brought her a cake from a famous patisserie, but would not stay to eat it. ‘You need to eat it up though, every calorific slice. Promise?’ Then she reported that she thought the police still had an
eye on her, but of how she really felt inside, she said nothing. Charmian, watching her, was biding her time.

  It was stormy weather, with strong wet winds. Walking home from the railway station by the River Thames, Charmian saw how branches of trees had been tossed into the water by the gale of the night before. The currents were pulling the logs together in loose swirling masses as they passed down the river. She stood looking at them, thinking that was how it was at the moment in the Nella Fisher case, with a lot of different elements jostling for place and getting in each other’s way.

  Then the log jam broke: Dolly Barstow sent her the file on Nella’s last days. She delivered it by hand, pushing it through Charmian’s letterbox in the late afternoon of October 9, with a note. Her note said: For your information.

  Only Muff the cat was at home to receive it at the time and she sat on it thoughtfully with muddy paws. Then, growing bored, she pretended it was something she had caught, chewing at the corners of the envelope with her sharp little teeth, then turning round and tearing at it with her back paws.

  Charmian rescued the mauled packet when she came in and bore it into the kitchen where she studied it over a chicken sandwich, followed by a slice of the chocolate and almond cake from Maison Blanc and a cup of coffee, Muff had long since departed to sleep off her maraudings. Paper must be filling, Charmian thought.

  When she had read it, for no reason whatever that she could identify, but which must be there under the surface, she rang up her doctor and made an appointment for the next day.

  ‘You love worrying,’ she told herself vengefully. Lumps and bumps, what did they amount to?

  She consulted her diary and made a few telephone calls; her London appointments for the next day could be rearranged. Then she tossed up whether she should go to Cheasey to see the family of Nella Fisher, all those Fishers, Seamans and Rivers and Waters who had been so reluctant to attend the girl’s funeral, or go to see Jack and Annie Cooper. Jack on his own for preference, but that might be hard to achieve.