Windsor Red Page 9

  Charmian went back into the shop to buy a box of chocolates. She was going to see Yvonne first and Yvonne seemed a person who would appreciate a present, and did not get many. If ever she had seen a woman who had failed to get the fairy off the Christmas tree, it was Yvonne.

  Yvonne also had made her preparations. She greeted her visitor with a bright smile, and led her inside. Her hair, pretty hair once, but grey now, was washed and well sprayed with lacquer. Another new pair of shoes was on her feet, and she had the teatray ready.

  Her home was in one room. The teatray was on the table that also served as desk and dressing table. On almost every surface Yvonne’s clothes and small possessions were distributed. She was impartial, apparently not minding if her nightgown occupied a chair with a packet of biscuits. Several pairs of shoes, all new, shared a hiding place with a bottle of milk.

  ‘Been here long?’ asked Charmian, handing over the chocolates.

  ‘About two weeks,’ admitted Yvonne shyly. ‘ It’s taking me a bit of time to get settled in.’ She glanced around her in a puzzled way. ‘I don’t seem to get on top of it somehow.’ She removed a pair of shoes from beside the milk bottle and replaced it with a packet of teabags. This piece of housekeeping satisfied her, she resumed her smile and turned to Charmian. ‘Thank you ever so much for the chocolates. You’ll take a cup of tea?’

  The sad thing about Yvonne was that as you talked to her you became aware that she was a person who had once had, even if she had now forgotten it, some education. You could tell it from the shape and pattern of her speech, and the way she poured the tea.

  Charmian had the tape recorder going. Yvonne said she did not mind, she seemed flattered at the idea she was on record. After some innocuous routine questions, Charmian said: ‘Do you like prison?’

  ‘No.’ Yvonne was surprised. ‘ No one could.’

  ‘But you keep going back.’

  Yvonne turned on her much the look she had offered to her muddled room. ‘It’s not that I feel at home there,’ she tried to explain. ‘That would be a terrible thing to say.’ She struggled to get it right. ‘I know how to behave there. People tell you what to do. I don’t seem to know outside.’

  Incompetent, lost, with no one to tell her what to do, and no money, Yvonne eventually performed the acts that sent her back to that safe haven.

  Charmian knew her record and knew that she had long periods of going straight before going back inside. She always committed what might be called a public crime, shoplifting or robbing a till. She never took from a private purse. She had her standards.

  ‘When did you last see your children?’

  Yvonne looked vague. ‘I’d like to write …’ Probably dyslexic, thought Charmian. That may always have been her trouble. Or part of it. ‘But I’ve got my friends.’

  Yes, Charmian could see why Yvonne wanted Laraine and Nix and Co. But why did they want her?

  Or had she just hung on? Charmian was beginning to recognise an adhesive quality to Yvonne that might make her difficult to dislodge. Not that Laraine struck her as a compassionate heart.

  ‘They helped me get this room.’ She looked around with that mixture of satisfaction in her own achievement in having done anything at all and bewilderment at not having done it better that Charmian was beginning to recognise as characteristic of her. ‘I come from round here. Went to school. Grew up. My old teacher Miss Macy still knows me.’ There was pride in her voice. A long relationship was obviously unusual.

  ‘That’s nice.’ It was an encouraging noise so that she would go on talking.

  ‘We’re helping,’ said Yvonne shyly. ‘You should help other people, shouldn’t you?’

  ‘If you can. What do you do?’

  ‘She has a charity that gives outings to disabled children. It’s nice for them. She’s taking them to the Fair in the Great Park. We’ll help her with that.’

  ‘Will you now?’ The thought of Laraine and Nix, not to mention Baby, on such expeditions was something to grapple with.

  Yvonne seemed to read her mind. ‘Laraine was keen straight away and told the others they must be,’ she said proudly. ‘When Miss Macy visited me inside and told me what she did and I told Laraine she said straight away, That’s it and told the others so.

  Charmian sipped her tea; it was good. Yvonne had done her job well.

  Betty Dedman and Elsie Hogan shared a small flat while Rebecca Amos lived in a guest house round the corner from them. It was not a place of luxury, more of a working man’s hostel than a four star hotel, thus confirming Charmian’s view that a certain selectivity operated in the doling out of funds.

  Betty and Elsie had a small but nice establishment, with a hopeful air of permanence to it. They were planting window boxes. Of course, they both had jobs, while Rebecca, perhaps from choice, did not.

  Not being tea drinkers they offered her whisky or sweet sherry. She chose the whisky. It was a good brand. In one corner of the room was a box stacked with bottles of squash, cans of Coke and packets of potato crisps.

  Betty saw Charmian looking at them. ‘For some kids we know,’ she said briefly.

  ‘The Great Park outing?’

  ‘Yes.’ Betty gave her a sharp look. ‘ Who told you?’ Then she answered herself. ‘Yvonne.’

  ‘It’s very good of you.’ And it was giving Charmian cause to think. She was trying to put together a picture. A jigsaw or a mosaic: there were several pieces still missing.

  ‘I’m not a child lover,’ said Betty, stating what was obvious, ‘but you’ve got to do what you can. I get the goods from the supermarket where I work.’

  ‘Does Elsie work there too?’ she adjusted a tape. ‘I’m recording this, you don’t mind?’

  ‘What you like.’ Betty did not care. Elsie Hogan did not answer, no need, Betty was her voice. ‘Else works in the butcher’s division.’

  ‘Nice job,’ said Charmian absently.

  ‘You think so, do you? Hear that, Else, you’ve got a nice job.’ Elsie did not answer. ‘And in case you are asking, the reason I keep going back to prison is because I keep getting caught. The times I don’t get caught, I don’t go inside. I’m a professional. Got that?’

  Charmian nodded. Laraine was a bit of a feminist, Nix was an individualist, Elsie was silent, and Yvonne was lonely. Betty was doing a job.

  That was her claim, anyway.

  ‘You’re being very honest. Do you mind if I quote you?’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Betty indifferently.

  Charmian sipped her whisky. It seemed to burn her tongue. Rebecca Amos, the only one not to be in work, was the only one not to have stayed at home to meet her as arranged. There was no Rebecca and no sign of anyone at the house to tell Charmian where she was. It was the sort of hotel where you could be missing for days before anyone noticed you were gone. Charmian was totally unsurprised at being let down. She had met this sort of treatment before. Every so often with this lot, they led you up to a door, then shut it in your face. Not exactly unreliable, although it often felt like that, more unpredictable. The uncertainty syndrome, she called it, and perhaps it was the most significant thing she had noticed about them. It was something they all shared, even Baby.

  She did not hold it against them, she had felt like being less disciplined herself. Perhaps they were more honest and spontaneous than she was. Or just braver.

  Passing a small public garden, not far from the hotel, she saw Rebecca Amos sitting on a bench in the sun, enjoying the warmth like a small cat with no real home.

  Charmian walked across, and sat down beside her. After a bit, she looked up. ‘ Oh it’s you. Might have known you’d find me. Well, I don’t want to talk.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘No, it’s not. You’ve taken the others in, but you don’t take me in. You’re up to something. I may not be clever, but I can tell that much.’

  I don’t think I’ve taken anyone in,’ said Charmian mildly. She had not overlooked this herself. ‘I ask que
stions, you answer them. Or not. I’m interested.’

  Rebecca started to laugh. ‘First time I’ve ever been paid money for doing nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Feels like nothing. Just taking a pack of kids on outings.’

  While this was happening a police team was searching the ditch where the suitcase had been found. They had provisionally identified it now as belonging to Kate Cooper. They extended their search to the ditch as it ran up the side road to the farmhouse.

  It was a difficult, dirty job since the ditch seemed to have been used as a deposit for old rubbish for some decades. There were several old cycles, more than one pram, tin cans, bottles and plastic bags without number, and even parts of an old car.

  By this time, with a skill in excavating and assessing the age of rubbish that an archaeologist would have envied, the police had established that the severed limbs had been deposited in the refuse tip on a day previous to the discovery of the limbs in Wellington Yard. They were about to undertake the same process of dating for the woman’s case.

  The searchers, hot and tired, decided that the boy and the dog had had it easy.

  Then, beneath an old mattress which itself had been covered with branches from a torn-up bush, they discovered another suitcase.

  This one had belonged to a man.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘ WHAT YOU ’ VE GOT TO REMEMBER ,’ said Lady Oriel, ‘is that we are all fascinated by the murder. Two murders, in fact, it has to be so because of the legs belonging to a man and a woman. It’s no good pretending that Anny won’t be stared at, because she will, but she must come to the Fair and stick it out.’ This was Molly Oriel’s philosophy of life. When bad things happened you faced them and stared them out.

  This was not how everyone felt, not exactly how Charmian felt herself, experience had taught her that from some happenings you did well to walk away, run, if you could.

  ‘She happens to agree with you,’ she said. ‘But it’s tough. So that’s why I am with her.’

  ‘It’s her own fault really, for shouting so loudly about Kate.’

  ‘Only to her friends.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Molly Oriel, laying her hand on Charmian’s wrist. ‘In matters of this sort, there are no friends.’ She gave Charmian a frank look. Not even me, she might have been saying.

  They were sitting side by side in the sun on a seat in the Great Park. All around them the Fair was assembling itself. Across the way from where the two women were sitting, a hot-dog stand was frying onions. Next door a soft drinks stall was already selling cans of Coke to a queue of little boys in Wolf Cubs uniform, whose own stall, a tombola, in aid of their own organisation, had been set out to await their first customer. Bottles and tins of all sorts were arranged in piles, and every number in the dip won you something. A tin of apricot jam from Hungary, a bottle of home-made rhubarb wine, a tin of orange juice, or if you were lucky a bottle of sherry. Both Charmian and Molly had promised to buy tickets the moment this stall was declared officially opened. They were awaiting the arrival of Lavender Bell, their pack leader.

  Next to this stall was a big hut selling hats, shoes and boots for the country dweller. Rubber boots and shoes from Korea hung on one display wall, jostling trilby hats in all colours for both sexes, and panama hats with bright silk lining. There was also a counter of sweatshirts decorated by pigs’ faces with flashing eyes. Red blinking eyes. There were others that squeaked.

  Two lines of stalls, booths and caravans stretched between the trees. You could buy china on one stall, jewellery on another and candy floss on another. A row of coloured lights hung in loops between the trees, ready to be switched on when night fell. Then the bonfire would be lit. The day was going to end with a giant barbecue and a concert.

  A junior member of the royal family was coming to open the Fair. In the distance the royal car could be seen arriving.

  Molly Oriel stood up. ‘Come on, let’s go and curtsey. I love that bit. Nice hat she’s got on. We go to the same milliner, you know.’

  Hard to tell with Molly, Charmian thought, when she was joking or not. Probably not this time. ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘His prices have trebled, my dear, since he has got so smart.’ The car came level with them, they made their bobs, and rose. Molly’s performance was elegantly done; with Charmian it was a little more clumsy.

  Anny came striding through the crowds. ‘There you are, thought you were meant to be helping me.’

  ‘We have been. I personally tacked your background hessian into place, and I have the bruises to prove it.’ Molly Oriel held out a hand whose delicately pink-tipped fingers looked immaculate. A great diamond glittered on her left hand. Molly did not believe in dressing down.

  Anny, however, looked distinctly the worse for wear. Dark spectacles hid her eyes and her clothes were crumpled as though they had been slept in, which was probably the case, because Charmian recognised them from yesterday. A mark of Anny’s disorientation. Charmian knew it and Molly Oriel guessed. ‘Go and comb your hair, Anny. I happen to know HRH is coming to your stall. I fixed it myself. Who’s looking after it now?’

  ‘I left Jack. But I’m afraid he’s had a drop this morning.’

  ‘Of course.’ Molly was totally unsurprised.

  Anny obeyed her silent advice. ‘Yes, I’d better get back.’ A drunk Jack was unpredictable.

  Charmian said: ‘I’ll come too.’ On her own she found Molly Oriel daunting company; she had such an air of bringing with her worldly contacts and understandings that were outside Charmian’s sphere. In short, every so often, she felt put in her place. In spite of this she liked the woman. They left Molly making her deft way towards the illustrious party, flinging over her shoulder, ‘I see it’s Susan today. Such a dear, I must say hello to her.’

  After the tombola (now doing a brisk trade), they passed a stall set inside a tent where two young women, one blonde, one very dark, both tall and slender, were busy pinning up a notice: ARIADNE KNITS. All around them were spread sweaters, dresses and shawls in glorious jewel colours. The women themselves were dressed in their own wares to which their figures did full justice.

  ‘Lose a pound or two and I could wear those,’ murmured Anny. ‘Good colours. That’s Ariadne Vernon and her sister Meta. They were into their earth colours last season, which frankly I found too quiet. I prefer this new range. I met them at the Windsor Horse Show last month. We had stalls side by side then. Wish I had now, they are such a draw, always bring the crowds along.’

  Ariadne saw them and waved. ‘Come on over for coffee later if you’ve got time.’

  Anny smiled and waved back. ‘Shan’t go. She’s bound to ask after Kate. They were chums.’

  In the middle distance they could see Molly Oriel’s bright dress dipping again in an obeisance, and then her figure turning and twisting in animated conversation. She was a tall woman and she stood out.

  Anny said: ‘Stop here for a minute, I want to say something:

  ‘Jack is sure that the clothes in the case do not belong to our Katy.’

  ‘You thought so yourself.’ Although you did not say so.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ admitted Anny reluctantly. ‘What I do know,’ and Anny’s voice was serious, ‘is that the swimsuit was certainly Kate’s. I have a feeling I never saw the other clothes before, but what does that mean?’

  Charmian considered. It might not mean much. But it had to be taken into the account. Perhaps Kate had more than one life. One into which she had now disappeared, taking Harry with her. That was quite a thought. The clothes belonged in that life. It did not sound like the Kate she had known as a child, but people grew up. She did not know this Kate now.

  ‘Try and make up your mind about the clothes, Anny. It might be important. Have you told anyone but me?’

  ‘No,’ Anny’s seriousness deepened. ‘I want you to try and find out. Someone has to, I can see that, and I think it ought to be you. Because if those are not Kate’s clothes, t
hen whose are they? And why is Kate’s bathing suit there?’

  And once again, where is Kate? As Charmian did not say aloud.

  ‘There is someone walking around without any clothes,’ said Anny. ‘Or not walking around. Cut up in pieces and left around for us to find. That’s the most likely, isn’t it?’

  ‘As yet, no one knows for sure if the case is connected with either of the limbs.’ Or the limbs with Kate.

  ‘Oh, that’s just talking like a policeman. Now talk with your heart.’

  ‘Well, all right. Yes, in my heart, as you put it, I do believe that the case will turn out to be connected with the limbs. And yes, I do believe that Kate comes into it somewhere.’

  Anny drew in a deep breath. ‘Thanks for being honest.’ And as she did not say: At last.

  ‘I’ve always been honest with you, Anny.’

  ‘Oh, in the way of friendship, perhaps, but now I see what deviousness you are capable of I am not so sure.’

  Charmian flushed. There was Anny doing it again. Sometimes she picked things up as from the air. Charmian could remember the time that Anny had told her that if she thought she was going to be a teacher of history in a top girls’ school (which was where Charmian truly believed she was heading), then she was walking in the opposite direction. Two months later, Charmian had joined the Force. Even later there was the time she pointed out to an incredulous Charmian that her marriage did not really suit what she was. That turned out to be a fact, too.

  What did she see now?

  ‘Being a successful policewoman has corrupted you, Charmian.’

  ‘Damn you, Anny.’ She showed her hurt. ‘I do my job. And do it to the best of my ability. And if I’ve been successful, well, good. I don’t accept that it has harmed me.’

  ‘Well, hasn’t it? I know you, my girl. You’ve got that pinched look about you. Isn’t there something in your life at this moment that you would rather there wasn’t?’

  Charmian was silent.