A Wreath for my Sister (9 page)

Christine nodded. ‘Yeah, all right,' she said. ‘I thought you'd want to know. But it was him, wasn't it? The guy from the advert.'

‘Yes,' Joanna said cautiously. ‘We think it probably was, but you thought he might already know her. It isn't impossible someone answered the advert knowing it was Sharon who had put it in.'

Christine dropped her head into her hands. ‘I can hardly bear to think,' she said, then looked up. ‘Have you spoken to her mum yet?'

‘Only very briefly on the telephone. She wasn't keen on the identification. I didn't get very far,' she said. ‘You said they weren't close.'

Christine shook her head.

‘Can I ask you something?'Joanna was pulling the car into the hospital entrance. ‘Sharon Priest was married to Sam Finnigan. But she and the children share the surname Priest.' She looked at Christine Rattle. ‘Why?'

‘She wouldn't change her name,' Christine said. ‘Hated the name Finnigan. So she kept the name Priest and all her kids are called Priest too.'

‘Thanks.' It had set Joanna's mind at rest.

Christine stared down at the white face of her friend. Then she did a strangely moving thing. Bending over and kissing the pale cheek, she spoke to the still figure.

‘Don't you worry, Sharon,' she said softly. ‘I'll do everything I can to help them get him. And I promise you. We will get him. I know we will.'

Joanna felt suddenly awkward. She wished she too could have made that promise to the dead girl. But years in the police force had taught her. Promises of ‘nailing' people, just deserts, suitable prison sentences. These were pledges she was unable to make and keep. The only thing she could say with truth was that she would try – long and hard.

Christine pulled the sheet back up over her friend's face. ‘Sleep now, Sharon,' she said and turned away.

Then she straightened up and looked at Joanna. ‘I'm glad I came,' she said.

There was a small interview room halfway along the corridor. Containing a few seats, a coffee machine and a porthole in the door, it was a private room, where she had occasionally snatched moments with Matthew. Now she led Christine Rattle to it, inserted money into the coffee machine and handed her a polystyrene cup.

‘I wanted to talk informally,' she said, ‘away from the station and not at your house. Tell me about Sharon. Tell me about her life. What sort of person was she?'

As Christine spoke, her thin face changed and became fierce. ‘She was an ordinary person,' she said. ‘Kind ... really loyal. And she was a good mum.' She looked at Joanna with a kind of pity. ‘You wouldn't know,' she said, ‘not having kids. But it's really difficult trying to bring them up decent when you're on your own.'

‘But the children had a father.'

‘Sam Finnigan,' Christine said scornfully. ‘A lot of bloody use he was. Fine at losing his temper and swiping them when they got in the way of the telly.'

‘I see. And what about Agnew?'

Christine looked uneasy.

‘Off the record,' Joanna said deliberately.

It seemed to convince Christine. ‘He's high as a kite half the time. See ...' she paused, ‘the trouble was for Sharon she never met anyone decent – normal.' She looked even more angry and fumbled in her bag until she found her cigarettes. ‘The one reasonable guy she met was married. Mind you ...' She lit the cigarette and took a deep puff, blowing the smoke out with a whistle and picking a piece of stray tobacco from her tongue. ‘He was good to her, although ... well ...' She looked up, caught sight of a face in the porthole. ‘Who the hell's he?'

Matthew was grinning at them through the glass.

Joanna stood up hastily. ‘Excuse me,' she said and walked outside.

Matthew spoke first. ‘I wondered if you'd be bringing someone in to identify the girl,' he said. ‘Why didn't you ring and tell me you were coming?'

‘It's all right. The mortuary attendant looked after us.'

‘I'd have looked after you. Joanna,' he said. ‘Please – can we talk some time?'

She touched his arm. ‘There isn't any point, Matthew. We've been through this. You made your choice. I just hope you're happy.'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you?'

She flushed.

‘Joanna. Look ...' He brushed a stray hair from her cheek. ‘I want you.'

He was so close she could feel his body warmth, his breath on her cheek, the nearness of him ...

‘I had a letter from Jane this afternoon,' she said.

He looked startled. ‘What?'

‘Unsigned.'

He stared at her.

‘The usual insults, I can leave you to guess what they were. I don't enjoy this, Matthew.'

‘Joanna, I'm so sorry.'

She turned to go back into the room. ‘Just ask her to leave me alone,' she said.

His hand was on her shoulder. ‘Meet me,' he said, but she shook her head.

‘No.'

‘I'll come to the cottage one night.'

‘It's better you don't.' She sighed. ‘I'm sorry, Matthew. It's really not going to work.'

‘You don't understand.' His voice was hard and urgent. ‘We came to a truce – for Eloise ...'

Now she turned and her voice was equally hard. ‘Then bloody well stick to it.'

She returned to the room, conscious that he was staring after her.

‘What a dish,' said Christine when the door was closed. ‘Is he your boyfriend?'

‘No,' Joanna said. ‘Just an old friend. He works here.' Christine gave her a world-wise look. ‘I see,' she said. ‘But he is a bit of all right.'

Joanna laughed.

‘What a shame,' Christine said sagely. ‘They're all married – all the nice ones. They get nabbed. And then the wives, they hold on.'

‘Yes,' Joanna echoed. ‘They hold on.'

Christine lit another cigarette and spoke with it dangling precariously from her lips. ‘Like the guy Sharon was seeing. His wife ... she wasn't going to let him go.' She paused to take a few puffs at the cigarette. ‘No way.'

Joanna risked a swift glance up at the porthole. Matthew had gone.

Christine carried on talking. ‘You see, all she wanted was a little bit of sparkle in her life, you know. She looked after her kids. All she wanted was someone to care for her a bit.' She ground her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘It isn't fair. It's all wrong.'

She stared at Joanna. ‘And now this.'

‘Then help us, Christine. Tell me about her ex-husband,' Joanna said. ‘He was the father of her two oldest, you said.'

‘October and William. They split up after he came home from night work and found her with this bloke.' She giggled and for a moment looked young and mischievous. ‘They wasn't even up to anything. They was asleep. Anyway, Sam lost his rag then. Broke her jaw. She got him for it – ABH and he was warned to keep away from her. But when he got drunk he'd come round and make a nuisance of himself all over again, like he couldn't leave her alone.'

‘He was violent towards her?'

Christine nodded. ‘Verbals and physicals,' she said.

‘Did he ever attempt rape?'

The question seemed to confuse Christine. She thought for a minute then shook her head, her eyes flickering towards the door. Eventually she answered. ‘Not as I know of,' she said. ‘Violence, yes, but I don't think ... No – nothing sexual. Then she moved in with Paul Agnew.' She seemed anxious to move away from the subject of Finnigan.

Joanna interrupted her. ‘Was Agnew the man Finnigan found her in bed with?'

‘No.' Christine shook her head. ‘I never did know who that bloke was.' She sniffed. ‘Sharon made a joke about it. He ran out of the bedroom and right out of her life. She says she never saw him again.'

‘Did you believe that?'

The woman shook her head. ‘Sharon could be really secretive sometimes. All I know is she was on her own for a while before she moved in with Agnew, so the bloke couldn't have amounted to much, could he?'

Joanna kept her private thoughts to herself and instead returned to Agnew. ‘And were they happy?'

‘Were they hell.' Christine lit another cigarette. ‘Not for a minute they weren't. I don't know why she bothered with him. For a start he was nearly always stoned. Although he isn't a bad bloke. He isn't violent like Sam, or anything weird. But I do know there was something peculiar.'

Joanna looked up.

‘He's – well ...' Surprisingly she flushed. ‘Nothing to do with her being killed.' She paused. ‘I don't think it was him.'

And for now Joanna was content to leave it at that.

‘But she split up with him?'

‘She was pregnant,' Christine said reluctantly. ‘He threw her out.'

Joanna remembered what Christine had told her. ‘You said before that Sharon was having an affair, but surely the baby could have been Agnew's?'

Christine shrugged her shoulders. ‘Don't ask me,' she said. ‘He threw her out. That's all I know.'

‘Who was the man she was involved with? What's his name?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I really don't. All I know is he was married.' She looked at Joanna. ‘I've told you. Sharon was quite close like that. She could really keep secrets. I've never known anyone – certainly not any of my girlfriends – who could keep a secret like her. She never told on him.'

‘She must have said something – anything – that'll help us identify him. Christine,' Joanna said, ‘you realize he is a suspect.'

‘Well ... She said they made love in his car.'

Christine giggled. ‘She said it was really difficult, although it was a flash car.'

‘Didn't she know the make?'

‘Oh, she knew it all right, but she didn't tell me. Just flash. That's all she said.'

Joanna sighed. What if Sharon had kept the secret of her lover for long enough? Threatened to tell his wife? Might he then have decided to kill her?

‘She split from him too,' Christine said. ‘I don't know why. But it was something to do with Ryan, not long after he was born.' She frowned. ‘Sharon was really bloody angry about it. Kept saying she felt used, taken advantage of. That was when she first thought about putting the ad in the paper. I think it was partly to spite him. You know – to prove she'd get someone else. I think Sharon really liked him.'

She sat quietly for a moment, contemplating. Then she looked at Joanna. ‘Not much of a life, was it? She was always worried about money and the kids. I hardly ever saw her laughing. Her idea of fun was a fag, some chips and a good romantic film on the telly.' She dabbed again at her cheek and rolled the tissue up in a ball.

Joanna took Sam Finnigan's and Paul Agnew's addresses and relayed all the information back to the station. She dropped Christine back at her house, then turned her car towards the station and an evening in front of her computer screen. The PNC2 was a new link which gave access to major crimes country wide. It had only been in place for a couple of years but it had already proved useful in a number of cases where crime had crossed police boundaries. She sat and tapped in detail ...

It was more than two hours later that she pushed her chair back from the desk. She caught sight of her face in the mirror, pale and tired, black rings beneath both eyes.

She left her office and found Mike still working at his desk, studying some of Sharon's letters.

He looked up. ‘What is it, Jo?'

‘I think he's done it before,' she said. ‘I'll have to ring the Super.'

Mike shook his head. ‘Surely not,' he said. ‘Not in this area, he hasn't. There's been nothing round here like this before. I'm sure. I'd remember,' he added.

She sat him down in front of the computer terminal and pressed a few keys to bring up witnesses' statements from a previous crime. She had selected the cases quite carefully. Capital crimes against women involving rape. And she had kept within a fifty-mile radius.

Mike watched her press the keys, her slim fingers with short, shaped nails agile across the board, her hand occasionally passing over her mouth as she waited for the computer to catch up with her demands.

She leaned forward to stare at the screen and cupped her chin in her hand. At last she found the statements that had excited and at the same time depressed her, then she looked up at him without saying a word. He stared, not at her but at the screen.

‘It was him all right,' was all he said.

And he picked up the telephone himself and dialled Arthur Colclough's home telephone number.

Superintendent Colclough had just finished a hearty dinner of steak and mushrooms. He would have liked chips but had settled for the new potatoes his wife put in front of him, compensating by smothering them with butter. He had ignored his wife's disapproving look and muttered comments about cholesterol. Chips tomorrow, he was thinking, when the phone rang.

‘Detective Inspector Piercy, sir,' she said, before apologizing for disturbing him at home. ‘I can't be absolutely sure ... but ...'

‘What is it, Piercy?' he asked testily. ‘I'm just having my tea.'

‘Sharon Priest wasn't the first one,' she said quietly. ‘I think he's done it before.'

‘What?' The shock made his voice squeak.

‘He's killed before, sir. I'm pretty sure.'

It was exactly twenty-five minutes later when the door swung open and Colclough marched in, heavy on his feet.

‘What's all this about, Piercy?' His eyebrows were meeting in the middle, a sure sign of his bad temper. He gave Mike a curt nod. ‘Still here, Korpanski?'

Then his attention focused on Joanna and the grey screen on the desk. ‘Well,' he said. ‘And why haven't we been alerted if there's a serial killer romping around?'