Limestone Cowboy (22 page)

I took Mrs Norcup back into the other room and closed the door behind us while Dave went to the loo and had a wander round. “How do you get on with your neighbours?” I asked.

“I don’t,” she replied. “There’s a white girl lives below who’s on the game, a West Indian crack dealer above, Chinese on one side who have gambling parties that last for days and two Bosnian refugees on the other side. It’s not a good place to bring up a child. We’ll be out of here as soon as we can find somewhere else. Rory’s dad said he’d try to help.”

“It’s like the United Nations.” I heard the sound of flushing and the creak of floorboards. “Do you see Rory’s dad very often?”

“Not really. He does his best, always sends Rory a present, but he works hard. He’s on oilrigs.”

I didn’t know if they had oilrigs in Sheffield, and Rory hadn’t seen a birthday or Christmas, yet, but I let it go. Dave came in and raised an eyebrow.

“We’ll need a full statement from you, Mrs Norcup,” he said. “I think you ought to come to the station with us.”

Alarm flashed across her face. “But what about Rory?” she said. “I ought to be with him. He’ll be
missing
me.”

“Rory’ll be fine. Do you have a coat?”

She produced a big blue and yellow anorak with Michigan in four-inch letters across the back. We locked the door behind us and led her down to the car. When I’d put her safely in the back seat Dave jerked his head at me and walked a few paces away from the car.

“There’s glass fragments embedded in the kitchen worktop and glass in the rug,” he told me. “We need a SOCO here, soon as possible.”

I made the phone call and we took Mrs Norcup to Heckley nick. There was a good chance that she’d never see Rory again.

I was making a brew when Gilbert came in to ask about developments. He accepted the offer and I spooned Nescafe into a clean mug. Pete joined us, complaining about the roadworks that had sprung up on the bypass. I pushed the coffee jar his way and gave mine a vigorous stir.

“Why do they have to cone off half a mile of road when they’re only working on about five yards of it?” he asked. “They don’t realise that the amount of delay is proportional to the length of time you slow the traffic
for. There’s a critical point when the traffic slows so much it becomes stationary.”

“It’s a conundrum, Peter,” Gilbert told him. “Where’s the sugar?”

“Write to the Gazette,” I suggested. “It’s in the Coffee Mate tin.”

Pete handed out beer mats and we cleared spaces on desks in the big office to make room for our drinks. Maggie came in, asked if it was a private party and we told her to join us.

“So,” Gilbert began. “What’s the state of play with the lady you have downstairs?”

“According to the doc at the hospital she’s a classic case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy,” I replied. “I’ve invited the child protection unit to talk to her – it’s a bit outside my experience.”

Gilbert sipped his coffee and replaced it on the desk, adjusting the position of the beer mat until it was just right. “Dodgy jobs, these involving mothers and babies,” he said. “One wrong step and we’re accused of misogyny, or matricide or something. Be careful how you go with this one, Charlie.”

“Matricide’s killing your mother,” Pete told us. “There was a bad case of MSBP reported in Norwich earlier this year. Mother of twins and they had about a hundred visits to hospital and operations and all sorts before she was found out. There’s probably more of it about than we realise. Doctors are not as aware of it as they should be.”

“Dave’s at her flat right now,” I told Gilbert, cutting off Pete before he could start telling us more about the Great Norwich Twins case. “He reckons there were
fragments of glass on the worktop and on the rug in the kitchen. He has a SOCO with him. If they find any glass we should be able to match it with that from the tin of food.”

“Good,” Gilbert said. “Good. That’s what we want – good, solid forensic evidence. So how does this fit in with the Grainger’s job? Was that her handiwork, too?”

“I’m afraid not,” I replied. “The two are unrelated.”

“That’s a shame. What’s the state of play there?”

“We’re struggling. There’s been no new case
reported
for over a fortnight, so the scare may be over, but we’re no nearer catching the culprit.”

“Anybody in the frame?”

“Not really. Chief suspect is the wife of the warfarin victim, but it’s a long shot.”

Gilbert looked puzzled, then said: “Oh, I see. She poisoned her husband’s pineapple and placed the other tins on the supermarket shelves to divert the blame elsewhere.”

“That’s right.”

“There was a similar case in America a few years ago,” Pete informed us. “Poisoned her husband with stuff you clean aquariums with after taking out a big insurance policy on him.”

“Have another word with her, eh, Charlie,” Gilbert said. “It’s a high profile case with a lot of public
interest
. People in high places will start asking questions before too long so we need to draw a line under it as soon as possible.”

“The wife works at the electronics factory,” Pete added, “soldering components on printed circuit
boards. One of the contaminated tins of pineapple had been soldered.”

“There you go, then,” Gilbert said. “You have a
volunteer
.”

Gilbert stumped off back to his office and Pete found the file and swatted up on the warfarin victim. I indicated for Maggie to follow me and carried my
coffee
into my little office.

“You didn’t sound convinced about the wife,” Maggie stated as she manoeuvred the visitor’s chair to a more favourable position.

“No,” I replied as I hung my jacket behind the door, “but it gets Pete out of the way. There’ve been too many cases for it to be her. The crime is the poisoning of the tins, not the poisoning of Mr Johnson. It’s either done for pure mischief or it’s aimed at Grainger’s. Enough of that, what was Tenerife really like?”

She laughed. “It was brilliant, Charlie, just brilliant. You’d love the place. OK, so it’s a bit chicken-and-chipsy in some parts, but it’s incredibly beautiful in others. And the weather is gorgeous. That’s what you go for, isn’t it?”

“It’s been sunny here while you were gone. You missed the summer.”

“So I’ve heard. Ah, well, you can’t have everything. And what about you? How have you been, Charlie?”

“Pretty good. A couple of juicy cases to solve, with no personal involvement. Old-fashioned detective work, just like we joined for. I’ve been enjoying myself.”

“And the love life?”

“Um, looking up, Maggie. Looking up.”

The phonecall came about ten minutes later. “That’s brilliant,” I said. “Well done,” and “Keep me informed.”

I replaced the receiver. “She’s coughed,” I said. “Mrs Norcup has just confessed to poisoning her son with broken glass.”

“Congratulations,” Maggie said. “More brownie points for the department.”

She went to tell Pete and make some more coffee while I rang Gilbert. It was a tidy conclusion to a
difficult
case, but we didn’t rejoice or jump up and down with jubilation at a crime solved. It was a sad ending, and two lives would never be the same again. I stood looking out of the window at the traffic down below, marvelling at the way it kept going without all piling into each other. There were simple rules. That’s why it kept moving, and in each vehicle was a driver with a pair of eyes and a brain and a desire to survive. So they obeyed the rules, or most of them, and everybody rubbed along.

“Do you take sugar these days?” Maggie asked.

I turned around and held the door for her as she manoeuvred in, holding two more coffees. “I don’t mind,” I replied.

“What’ll happen to her?” Maggie asked, when she was seated again.

“I don’t know. Little Rory’s going into care. Dave thinks the department should adopt him.”

“Hey, that’s a brilliant idea.”

I found a KitKat in my drawer and broke it into two. “There’s this woman,” I said, munching on my half of the biscuit. “She’s all alone in a house and has nobody to talk to all day. No neighbours, no friends. Her
relationship
, if you can call it that, is on the rocks and she’s reached the end of her tether, so she decides to do
something about it. She damages the person she says she loves. Does it make sense, Maggie? Why would a woman do something like that?”

“Who can say? When you’re in an emotional state there’s no knowing what the human mind can
rationalise
. People do things like that to attract attention to themselves. They have bleak, loveless lives. Abject poverty with no possible way out of it, never any treats, never the centre of attention. It must grind away at you, a life like that.”

“But it’s not the sole prerogative of the poor, Maggie. It happens to rich people, too.”

“I know, and that’s more difficult to explain. But you can still be well off and have a loveless life, be downtrodden. And poverty’s relative, isn’t it? Most of us realise that our lives are in our own hands, we can do something about them, but some people don’t see that, or they’re trapped. They make a cry for help. Slash their wrists, take an overdose. You’ve seen it often enough, Charlie.”

“That’s true, but money helps, doesn’t it?”

“Usually, but not always. And I draw the line at damaging the baby. That’s cowardly, unforgivable, in my opinion.”

“The baby?”

“Young Rory.”

“Oh yes, young Rory. No, Maggie, I’m not talking about Mrs Norcup. I’m not talking about her at all.”

“Sorry, Chas, but you’ve lost me.”

“How do you feel about having your hair done, in the firm’s time, on expenses?”

“Now you’ve really lost me.”

I collected the frames, tried them for size on the unfinished pictures and painted them white. It was looking promising. I filled in the loops of the letters in bright colours and gave some of them ears and tails, so they looked like owls, cats, mice and Mr Smileys. Typical doodles. I was enjoying myself. If I could have started again I’d have made the writing even larger, with only five or six well-selected words covering the board, but I was happy with the first attempt.

Rosie rang to say she was home, and I told her that I’d ordered the tickets for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s not my favourite Shakespeare, but I’d
survive
.

“Have you ordered your outfit for the gala?” she asked.

“What outfit?”

“Your Wyatt Earp outfit.”

“That outfit. There’ll be enough hoots of derision when they see my pictures,” I told her, “without me dressing up like a clown.”

I was tempted. Long coat, big hat, cowboy boots and moustache. It’d be good for a laugh and Gareth would be green with envy. But there are some
temptations
I can resist, and this was another of them.

Thursday morning I read the transcript of the interview with Mrs Norcup. Rory was the result of a brief fling with a married man she met when he was working on
the bypass, who had gone AWOL when the Child Support Agency tried to serve him with a summons. The original Mr Norcup left her when they were both eighteen, after the inquest that recorded the death of their daughter as a cot death.

Dave poked his head round the door. “What’re you doing for lunch, Sunshine?” he asked.

“Um, going shopping,” I replied.

“Shopping? You?”

“Yeah. There’s a shop on the High Street advertising trousers at three pairs for ten pounds. Sounds a
bargain
to me so I thought I’d have a look, see what they’re like.”

“Three pairs for ten pounds?”

“That’s what it says in the window.”

“Whereabouts on the High Street?”

“Next to Jessup’s.”

“That’s a dry cleaner’s, you dozy wazzock.”

“Is it? Oh, in that case I’m free. Sandwich in the pub?”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.”

Have a day off and the work piles up. Nobody thinks to come in and empty my In tray for me. I spent the rest of the day catching up, paying for my trip down to the Cotswolds. In the evening I fixed the
pictures
in their frames and stood them in the kitchen where I could study them while I ate my tea. I made a few minor adjustments where I’d left ragged edges and declared them finished. Final touch was my
initials
in the bottom corner.

“It suits you,” I told Maggie, next morning.

“Cut and blow dry,” she said. “I was tempted to
sting you for a full work over, complete with hair extensions and braiding, but common sense prevailed.”

“Good. Did you remember the corned beef?”

“Right here.” She placed the tin on my desk.

“Super.”

I dusted down my briefcase, put everything in it and looked in my notebook for a number. When I was through I said: “It’s Detective Inspector Priest here. I’d like to come and see you. Now.”

Debra Grainger opened the door before I could reach for the bell push. I thanked her for seeing me so early and she led me inside. We went into a drawing room I hadn’t been in before, with uncomfortable
wing-backed
chairs covered in a tapestry material that you could have struck a match on. They sat upright in those days, spine straight and not touching the back of the chair. Give me a beanbag, any day. I sat down and refused a coffee.

“What’s it about?” Debra asked.

“I think you’ve a good idea, Mrs Grainger,” I said.

“Is it about Mort?”

“Partly. What has he told you?”

“That he spent the night in a cell. Said he was asked to go to this farm. He didn’t know what it was about. They held a dog fight. He said it was horrible but he couldn’t get away. Then the police came and arrested everybody.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

She was wearing a blouse and skirt, with modest heels on her shoes and no tights. A thin chain with a
crucifix hung round her neck but the rings had vanished from her fingers and she looked as if she hadn’t had much sleep.

“Where is Sir Morton now?” I asked.

“He said he was going to London to have a word with his lawyer.”

“And Sebastian? Where’s he today? I thought you didn’t like being left alone with him.”

“I don’t know where he is. He knows the score, so he’s keeping a low profile. Is he behind all this?”

I shook my head. “No. Sebastian comes out of it shining white. He had nothing to do with it. Just the same, I think you should insist on your husband
moving
him. It may not be possible to sack him, these days, but he could transfer him back to one of the branches.”

“That won’t be necessary, Inspector.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m going home, back to the States, soon as I can arrange the flight. Then I’ll have a word with my lawyers. My marriage is over, I want out of here.”

“That might not be possible,” I said.

“Why not?” She looked at me, alarmed by my words, and fidgeted with the cuffs of her blouse. She should have been puffing nervously on a cigarette or gulping at a large brandy and soda, but I suspected that she’d never done either.

“There are certain legal processes to be followed,” I told her. “You’ll have to stay here for a while.”

“Until when?” Disappointment filled her voice like she’d heard that the Easter Bunny had died.

“As long as it takes.”

An original oil painting hung on the wall over the
fireplace, of girls in long skirts gathering cockles or mussels from the sea. I’d have swapped it for both my efforts. The sun came out briefly, lighting the room, then went behind a cloud again.

“You’re leaving him?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Divorce?”

“Yes.”

“Because he went to a dog fight and spent the night in police custody?”

Her cheeks flushed and she plucked at her sleeve with those long fingernails as if something
objectionable
were sticking to it. “This isn’t easy for me,” she said.

“I know.”

“He’s having an affair, isn’t he?”

“Who with?” I asked, turning the question back at her.

“I can guess.” She jumped up, fetched a mobile phone from a drawer and pressed a pre-set button. “Could I speak to Sharon Brown, please,” she said, then: “Is she? Do you know when she’ll be back? Thank you, I’ll contact her then.”

She put the phone down. “Ms Brown is on a course and won’t be back until Monday. Guess when Mort will be back. Was she at this dog fight, Inspector?”

“Mmm.”

“Well, at least there’ll have been one bitch there.” She jumped up again and strode over to the window, looking out, hiding her tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said, walking over to stand beside her.

“It’s happened before, it’s not your fault.”

“How long have you known?”

“About Sharon? A year or so. She was one of his brighter employees. He encouraged her, put her through college. It’s a familiar story, Inspector, a tried and trusted formula. There were others before her, but nothing I could prove.”

A grey squirrel galloped across the lawn where I’d watched her sunbathing, sending a pair of collared doves flapping off, and in the distance I could see Stoodley Pike.

“Have you heard the expression ‘trailer trash’, Inspector?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well that’s what we were, as my husband likes to remind me. My parents moved to Florida from Virginia when I was a baby, looking for a better life for them and me. They swapped one trailer park for another, but the winters were milder. Things didn’t go well for them but they stayed together through thick and thin because that’s what they believed in. That and in Jesus Christ. They didn’t want me to marry Mort, said he was too old for me, that I wasn’t sophisticated enough for him, but I wanted to escape from that life so I leapt at the opportunity. Now I’ve got to go back to them and admit that they were right, and it’s not easy.”

I told her to come and sit down again, and she
followed
me. “You can afford a good lawyer,” I said, “and he’s a wealthy man. You’ll come out of it OK. You’ll be able to build your parents that villa with the ocean view they’ve always dreamed of. I know it’s not the best solution but it helps.”

“Look on the bright side?”

“That’s right.”

“When will I be able to go home?”

“It’s not that simple,” I said, reaching down for my briefcase which I’d left on the floor at the side of my chair. I removed a large manila envelope and
extracted
the photo of the woman in the long coat and gloves.

“Is this you, Mrs Grainger?” I asked.

She studied it for much longer than necessary, weighing the implications of her reply.

“It… could be,” she decided upon, eventually.

“Is it or isn’t it?”

“I think it is.”

“Do you still have that coat?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it, please?”

“The coat?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To prove to myself that it’s you in the picture.”

“I’ll fetch it.” She stood up and left the room. I was wondering if I should have followed her, how it would look if she hurled herself from an upstairs window while I was sitting there twiddling my toes, when she returned with the coat over her arm. I took it from her and held it up by the shoulders.

It was a navy blue Burberry, lightweight, with an expensive feel to it, and exactly like the one in the photo. I delved into a pocket and found a leather glove. Its partner was in the other pocket. That saved me having to ask to see the gloves.

“I was worried about these,” I said, flapping the
gloves at her. “I didn’t think you’d be able to wear them over your nail extensions, so we made enquiries with your hairdresser. Apparently you had short nails up to last week.”

“What’s all this about, Inspector?”

“I think you have a good idea, but I’ll show you.” I reached into the briefcase again and retrieved the tin of corned beef. “This is a tin of corned beef exactly like the one that poisoned Maureen Wall, nearly three weeks ago. Somebody had pierced the tin, and the
others
that were found, with something small and sharp, like a drawing pin.” I produced one from my briefcase. “Let’s see if it works,” I said.

It was awkward, holding the tin steady while trying to balance the pin under my thumb with the point against the hard metal. When it was stable I placed my other thumb over the first one and squeezed. The thumbnail turned pink with the pressure until,
without
a sound, the pin penetrated the steel and slid effortlessly into the meat.

“There,” I said. “Nothing to it.”

“I don’t know what all this has to do with me,” she said, but her expression told a different story.

“You’re a practical person, Mrs Grainger,” I told her. “I’m told you made the model of the office and leisure complex with your own hands. You know how to use tools, have access to them, no doubt know all about soldering and super glue and saturated solutions. I think it was you that contaminated all the food at Grainger’s superstore.”

She was staring down at her hands and I noticed that one of her nail extensions had become detached.
She tried to press it back in place. “It’s absurd,” she declared. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“To hurt your husband,” I suggested. “You’d had as much as you could take and this was revenge for all his philandering.” She stayed silent, as I expected, so I threw her the lifeline: “Or perhaps you did it to save your marriage. You saw it as a way to win Sir Morton’s affection back by giving him your full
support
and understanding during these difficult times? If the Press were hounding him everywhere he turned perhaps he’d spend more time at home instead of gallivanting off every weekend? Or maybe you thought that by putting pressure on the
company
you’d create stress between him and his staff, in other words, between him and Sharon Brown. You tell me.”

“You haven’t any evidence. None at all.”

The gloves were on the arm of my chair. “That’s true,” I conceded, “and you saw how fiddly it was holding the pin against the tin. Doing that whilst at the shelves might attract attention; might be picked up by the CCTV cameras. But if you put the pin inside your glove, poking out of the thump, it would look perfectly natural to pick up a tin, appear to read the label and then replace it, after piercing it with the drawing pin. That’s what you did, Mrs Grainger.”

She shook her head but was unable to speak.

“And if we look at your gloves,” I continued, “I
suspect
we’ll find a neat little hole in the thumb of the right hand one.”

“You’re very clever.”

“It’s what I’m paid for.”

“You’re right, I did it to save my marriage,” she said, her voice a whisper.

“I don’t think you should say any more,” I told her, “until you have a solicitor present. I’ll have to ask you to come to the station with me.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not unless you refuse to come.”

“Will I go to jail?”

“Two people nearly died. You put hundreds of lives at risk, scared half the population out of their wits and wasted thousands of hours of police time. If a child or someone frail had eaten that corned beef this might have been a murder enquiry. You could go to jail, but no doubt you will have a very good lawyer in your corner.”

“I didn’t want to hurt anybody. It’s just that nothing happened.”

I interrupted her – “I’d prefer you not to say
anything
until we’re at the station,” – but she ignored me.

“I pierced the corned beef and some tins of fruit, but nobody noticed. I wanted them to go bad, that’s all, but nothing happened. So then I used the dye, but it was covered up by the store. Next I used the rat
poison
. It tastes horrible. I tried it. I didn’t think anybody would actually eat the stuff.”