Past Tense (23 page)

‘Then,' she had told Sloan, ‘while we were driving there he actually led the conversation round to that very thing. He asked me if I'd noticed and I said yes.'

‘Did you indeed?' said Sloan, glad to be interviewing her in her own home and not looking down at her dead body in the morgue. ‘And what did he say?'

She had given a shaky little laugh. ‘He made me promise not to say anything about it because that dim young constable of yours had let it out by accident but he didn't want him to get into any trouble.'

‘Plausible,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, but not unkindly. ‘I understand Crosby feels the slur deeply.'

This was, in fact, an understatement. The detective constable was still muttering about it when Sloan finally reached his own office.

‘Hanging's too good for some people,' declared Crosby. ‘He shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.'

‘I don't think he will, Crosby. The evidence against him is pretty conclusive, although that slip over the girl's name was the only one he seems to have made.'

‘That's good, sir.' He pushed a report under Sloan's nose. ‘This'll help, too. The Met confirm that, although a man calling himself Short arrived from Lasserta when he said he did, and booked into the airport hotel for the night, he actually hired a car later that same night – a quite different one from the one he collected the next morning. He used Brian Brenton's passport and driving licence the first time…'

‘His own, actually,' Sloan corrected him mildly. ‘I expect he posted them straight back to Lasserta first thing the next day.'

‘To come down to Berebury and break into the nursing home to plant that photograph there,' carried on Crosby who, once started, was difficult to deflect. ‘Pretty silly that, if you ask me, to use his own passport and driving licence.'

‘Not really,' mused Sloan. ‘If anyone had got as far as finding that much out, he knew he'd be sunk anyway. And the first hire company would have wanted some evidence of identity and a driving licence before they let him take one of their cars away so he would have had to use Brian Brenton's for those. He couldn't very well use Short's passport then, now could he?'

‘It'll all take a bit of explaining away, anyway,' observed the constable with some satisfaction.

‘There'll be fingerprints and so forth coming from Lasserta now that the cat's out of the bag,' said Sloan, who had been busy with the assembling of evidence for the Crown Prosecution Service. ‘He's still keeping his cool, though.'

‘Even he can't pretend he's six inches shorter than he is,' said Detective Constable Crosby incontrovertibly.

‘And even a defence counsel shouldn't be able to talk his way out of that,' said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘At least, I hope not,' he added, a man given to hedging his bets as far as the Crown Prosecution Service was concerned.

 

It was some time later before the reinterment of the body of Josephine Eleanor Short took place in the churchyard of Damory Regis. Janet Wakefield had had no hand in making the arrangements this time. Instead the formalities had been accomplished by Simon Puckle in his capacity of sole executor and trustee of the deceased's estate. He stood beside the coffin now, solemn and respectful.

The Reverend Derek Tompkinson, the vicar, was there, murmuring that canon law didn't really cover reinterments but that he would be saying a few suitable prayers. It was he who had told them that people called Arden had lived in the village for a long time, although there were none of them now there. ‘The last one – that is George Peter Arden – was killed flying over France in the war,' he had explained. ‘Dangerous, hectic days…'

Tod Morton was there in his best frock coat, and supervising the lowering of the coffin back in its place. ‘No dummy screws this time, Inspector, I promise,' he whispered in Sloan's ear as he led the way past him. He had pointed to the war memorial nearby and said, ‘At least we know now why the old lady chose to be buried just here in the churchyard.'

The police had come there dressed in uniform for reasons too indefinable to put into words. Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby were solemn and respectful, too. And silent on the matter of a recent raid by ‘F' Division's Drugs Squad that had discovered a Sri Lankan sapphire ring in the home of a notorious drug dealer. And equally silent on the matter of a proposed raid on the home of Matthew Steele, scheduled for dawn the next morning, although as Crosby had said, ‘I don't know why we should bother, sir. The diamond ring must have gone ages ago and he still hasn't been back home.'

‘It's a loose end,' said Sloan.

Superintendent Leeyes had expressed himself forcefully on the matter of loose ends. ‘I don't like them, Sloan. You tell me that you think Steele had tried to break into the undertaker's first.'

‘That's right, sir. And when he couldn't get in there he went for the grave.' Sloan had told him that the young man was in dead trouble with a dealer at the time, as if that completely explained his behaviour – which perhaps it did. ‘We'll get him in the end, sir,' promised the inspector. ‘He hasn't got any brains.'

‘See that you do,' ordered Leeyes grandly.

Janet Wakefield was there. She had dressed with great care for Josephine Short's first interment at Damory Regis. She had dressed with equal – if not, greater – care, too, for Josephine Short's reinterment in the churchyard there.

But differently.

‘I'm going to be wearing my black,' she had informed her friend, Dawn, at one of their coffee sessions.

‘But, Jan, I thought you—'

‘I feel I really know Josephine now,' Janet insisted, ‘and that even though she's dead she's still part of our family.'

‘If you ask me,' said Dawn frankly, ‘I should have said it was more of a case of your being part of her family.'

‘Yes, well, maybe…Anyway, I wished I'd known her when she was alive.' Janet went on earnestly, ‘She must have been…well, very feisty in her day.'

‘In spite of losing everything,' Dawn reminded her. ‘And I don't mean just her faculties.'

‘She had lost everybody who was anything to her,' said Janet sadly. ‘How she stayed sane, I don't know.'

‘At least she was spared knowing that her grandson had been murdered,' said Dawn, metaphorically looking for crumbs of comfort in a notably bare larder.

Janet kept her head turned away towards the coffee pot, not meeting Dawn's eye, while she said, ‘Bill and I have decided that if we have – if we were ever to have – a girl, that we'd call her Josephine.'

Dawn looked up sharply enough to catch sight of a blush creeping up her friend's cheek. True friend that she was, she merely said diplomatically, ‘What a nice idea. How long now before Bill comes home again?'

‘He's working his notice out now and then he's coming back for good. Not,' she added hastily, ‘that Simon Puckle says we can assume anything on timing as far as inheriting the estate is concerned. Not yet, anyway.'

‘Not until it can be proved that the real Joe Short is dead, I suppose?' said Dawn, who had been briefed on the matter by her husband, an insurance man. ‘Don't you have to wait for seven years or something awful like that without him being found?'

‘We understand from Simon Puckle that it may not be necessary,' said Janet, pushing a coffee cup towards Dawn.

Dawn sat up. ‘How does he work that out?'

‘Actually…I know this sounds silly…but Brian Brenton is being very helpful.'

‘I can't believe that, Jan. Surely not?'

‘He is. He's told the police exactly where in the jungle to look for the body.'

‘You're joking!'

‘No, I'm not.' She frowned. ‘It seemed very odd at first and I didn't understand, but they told me he's hoping to be charged with murdering Lucy Lansdown and to go to prison for that here in England.'

‘Hoping? He must be mad.'

‘They have the death penalty for murder in Lasserta,' Janet explained simply.

 

Lucy Lansdown's brother was also there at the interment, soberly dressed and still sad. ‘It's nice of you to come,' Janet said to him.

‘It doesn't do to think of what might have been, does it?' he said, shaking his head. ‘Poor Lucy.'

Janet shuddered and nearly lost her composure. ‘No.'

‘Poor Lucy,' he said again.

‘Poor everybody,' said Janet.

Matthew Steele wasn't there. He was in custody on charges, various, carefully drawn up under the Theft Act.

Mrs Linda Luxton wasn't there either. As she had explained to Simon Puckle, there was someone else in room 18 now and she was very busy. ‘And one has to move on, hasn't one?'