The Devil's Chair (16 page)

‘Is the job nearly finished?'

Lucy nodded. ‘I think one more day will do it,' she said, her eyes dropping to the floor.

‘Have you heard from him since the accident?'

A shake of the head this time.

‘And have you rung him?'

Another shake of the head, then, ‘I thought I'd wait until after Tracy's funeral.'

Tinsley glanced at her colleague. Have
you
got any questions? she mouthed.

He took the cue. ‘Neil Mansfield has the reputation of being a ladies' man.'

Tinsley almost groaned.
Oh, no, I didn't mean that
.

It didn't throw Lucy. ‘Not with me,' she said. ‘With me he was the perfect gentleman.' The words were accompanied by a defiant look aimed directly at her husband, as powerful and focused as a laser.

‘Thank you,' WPC Lara Tinsley said, and they both stood up.

The Stansteads both saw them to the door, the captain patently not wanting his wife to be alone with the police.

They stopped at the car. ‘While we're out here we may as well just check on Mrs Price before we head back to the station,' Lara said. She wondered if Mansfield's other customer might give them a little more insight into the man.

Mrs Price proved to be in her middle forties, a slim woman with very sharp, all-seeing eyes. She was plain in a business-like way, no make-up, hair scraped back from her face, wearing a shapeless black dress and cardigan and flat black leather ballet slippers. She blinked as she registered who they were.

‘Ye-es?'

Quickly WPC Tinsley flashed her card and explained why they were in the vicinity.

‘We understand that Neil Mansfield did some work for you?'

‘That's correct.'

‘And you recommended him to your neighbour?'

‘That also is correct.' She spoke in a clipped, precise voice, reminding WPC Tinsley of her old English schoolmistress.

‘His work was good,' she continued. ‘He
never
left a mess and he was pleasant. Also, his prices were not out of the way. Lucy wanted to have some of the upstairs decorated while her husband was at sea. I knew Neil was reliable, would turn up on time and the job would be finished before Captain Stanstead was back on leave.' She said disapprovingly, ‘He runs a tight ship,' without cracking her face at the appropriateness of the analogy. ‘He wouldn't tolerate the house being decorated while he was there. And the work
would
have been finished had events not intervened.'

Then, oddly enough, it was at that point that she smiled. No more than a tight rictus but unmistakable for all that. ‘I got the feeling,' she chortled, ‘that Lucy was planning to pretend that it was
she
who had done the decorating. The captain can be a little mean with his money and might well have objected to the cost of paying someone to do something he would consider his wife should do.'

Lara Tinsley met Sean's dark eyes. He made a strange, resigned sort of face accompanied by a shrug, still leaving the questioning to her.

‘Is there anything else you can add that might throw some light on the fate of little Daisy Walsh?' She'd asked the question more in desperation than believing it would lead to anything concrete.

‘I saw them once,' Mrs Price said reflectively, ‘the three of them.'

For a moment both the officers thought she was talking about Mansfield, Daisy and Tracy. But when she continued they realized how wrong they had been.

‘Neil, Lucy and Daisy,' she said, her head on one side. ‘They just looked like a happy family.'

The phrase startled them both. Food for thought.

Lara Tinsley waited until they were outside before turning on her colleague. ‘Well, you were a fat lot of good in there!' she exploded.

PC Sean Dart grinned at her. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I just thought you were making such a good job of it there was no point my distracting you.' His accent was stolid, Yorkshire, slow, but friendly and for the first time she caught a hint of a sense of humour.

‘So,' she ventured, ‘what did you make of that?'

‘Puts a different light on it, doesn't it?'

‘You bet it does. Happy family? Neil, Daisy and
Lucy
? Interesting, don't you think?'

‘Aye.'

‘I wonder what the captain would have made of that.'

Sean simply grinned at her.

And WPC Tinsley caught the first hint that she and PC ‘Dark Horse' might become buddies. One day.

R
andall hadn't held out much hope for the letter that had accompanied the bouquet of herbs. He had submitted it to forensics for DNA and fingerprints but he knew their perpetrator was too smart to have left such obvious clues. He'd even taken a photocopy and submitted it to a handwriting expert who came back with the observation that children who had been to school in the sixties had been taught lovely handwriting – just like this.

‘Village schools,' he'd said, with the pride of a magician pulling off a difficult and seemingly inexplicable trick, ‘were taught copper plate writing. It was considered important,' he finished loftily.

Randall felt frustrated. Oh, yes, it all fitted all right but it still hadn't found them their mystery woman. Or the child.

The slipper had proved to be the partner of the one found in Carding Mills stream and it hadn't been there during their initial search of the cottage. Gethin Roberts had searched the tiny attic. ‘Not a chance, sir,' he'd said when questioned. ‘It was put there some time later.'

And Randall believed him.

Martha scanned her court. She had anticipated, if Daisy's body had been found, to have had a joint inquest for mother and daughter. But she couldn't put off at least opening the inquest on Tracy Walsh any longer, while she waited to find out the fate of her daughter. She gave a slight smile and a nod in DI Alex Randall's direction and another one towards Mark Sullivan, the pathologist who had performed the post-mortem on Tracy Walsh. He returned the gesture with a reflected friendly nod.

She sat back in her chair, thinking. Dr Mark Sullivan was a brilliant pathologist. Of all the doctors she had worked with in her time as coroner, Sullivan was the one she trusted most. He was not one to fudge the evidence, to skimp on the initial post-mortem, and above all he never ever tried to extrapolate too much from the evidence. So many pathologists thought they were police, judge, jury and executioner as well as coroner, trying to push the verdict into her mouth and sensational headlines into the papers.

But Sullivan? She met his clear blue eyes and smiled again. At one time, she had worried about him. He had had a drink problem which had been solved by divorcing his wife. These days he looked a happy and confident man, particularly in the rather snazzy navy suit he was wearing with a varsity tie of maroon and pale blue. At least she hoped it was a varsity tie and not the colours of Aston Villa. She smothered a smile. She wouldn't put it past Sullivan to turn up to an inquest in a tie bearing the colours of his favourite football team.

She continued looking around the room, happy to observe everyone before she opened the inquest. Alex Randall was also smart in a grey ‘court' suit. Policemen always dressed up for an inquest, unless they wore uniform. She felt DI Randall's gaze on her and gave him a shallow smile.

A grin would be out of place.

Her glance drifted across to Pat Walsh in tight jeans and her customary sour expression and Sofia at her side, unable to supress the excitement she was obviously experiencing at being the focus of attention. Martha had seen her being interviewed by a reporter before she'd entered the court, and it had looked business-like: Sofia, hand on plump hips, had been frowning and shaking her head, while the reporter had appeared persistent. In anticipation of the inquest and her role as victim's sister Sofia had had her hair professionally streaked and her long, red fingernails sparkled with crystals, indicating the attentions of a professional manicurist. Martha stifled a cynical smile. To Tracy's mother and sister this was simply a day out with maybe a cash bonus at the end. There was no hint of either grief for Tracy's untimely death or concern for the fate of the little girl, their niece and granddaughter. As she met the younger woman's eyes Sofia gave a cud-like chew of her gum and a bovine smile.

Observing Tracy's relatives, Martha wondered what the dead girl had really been like. This was the trouble with her job: she never met the people whose fates she became bound up with. She heard about them, sometimes from people choked with love, at other times their opinions skewed by jealousy, simple dislike or even guilt, but to her the subjects of her inquests always remained shadowy strangers; people never met, only peeped at through a gauze curtain which shifted in the wind, depending on who was speaking. So she could only ever speculate as to their true character. She never, ever caught the flavour of the real person however many eloquent eulogies were made. Before opening the inquest she trawled through what she knew about the dead woman. From the descriptions and photographs Tracy had been slimmer and prettier than her sister. But had she been cast out of the same miserable mould as her mother and sister? She would never know, and so she turned her gaze back on Sofia, who gave her another long, slow, insolent chew before turning to speak to her mother. Pat scrutinized Martha from across the room, displaying stained teeth and the fidgety fingers of a smoker who is planning her next cigarette.

In the front row a portly young man in an ill-fitting suit was frowning and nibbling his nails. He was hyperventilating with great scoops of breaths and he looked pale and uneasy. Uneasy, Martha wondered, or was there an element of guilt? She recognized Neil Mansfield, whom she had only spoken to on the telephone, from his picture in the newspaper. He was clearly avoiding meeting the glances of Tracy's relatives.

Martha cleared her throat.

Time to open the inquest.

She gave her customary speech about the formalities to be observed, made a passing reference to the child who was still missing, using the platform to appeal for anyone who thought they might be able to help to speak to the police. Then she outlined the procedure and function of the inquest – to ascertain who had died, when they had died, where they had died and how they had met their death. She described the circumstances of the crash without dwelling on the alcohol-fuelled row which had provoked the evening's events and began with Neil Mansfield, who took the witness stand nervously, by asking him to describe the events of the night of Saturday, 6 and early morning Sunday, 7 April. After a lot of clearing his throat Mansfield made a good witness, surprisingly unemotional now, having conquered his nervousness, but Martha noticed he continued to avoid meeting Tracy's mother or sister's glances. It was obvious there was no love lost between them. His face was very pale but he appeared resolute. Now he was factual, growing in confidence, giving his evidence in a firm, clear voice and responding to her request that he run through the events of that night in chronological order, answering the questions she put to him with impressive clarity considering what must at best have been a rather fuzzy memory.

‘We'd been drinking in the early evening.' He scanned the room, challenging any negative response. There was none, only sympathy, even from Tracy's mother and gum-chewing sister. Mansfield cleared his throat and continued in a low voice, not fixing his gaze on anyone in particular. ‘We'd wanted to go out but we didn't have a babysitter for Daisy.' Mentioning Daisy made Mansfield suddenly lose his control. He gripped the front of the witness box and screwed up his face as though tightening and contorting his features would prevent him from crying. But he recovered in the briefest of moments. He went even paler, almost a greenish white and gasped, cleared his throat and continued. ‘We, erm … we couldn't decide what to watch on the television.'

There was not a person in the court who did not realize that this phrase was a euphemism for
we argued over the channels
. Mansfield's eyes flickered around the room, his face set. He was going to tell this tale. ‘We had a bit of a row. Daisy started crying. Tracy ran upstairs and fetched her out of her bed then she came running back down with her.' His voice was gruff. Martha recognized the symptoms. Neil Mansfield was still finding it hard to keep control and stop himself from crying.

She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘Take your time, Mr Mansfield,' she said gently. ‘Would you like some water?'

Jericho's head shot up. This was one of his duties.

‘No, thanks.'

‘She went off.' Mansfield swallowed. ‘That's all I know. Sorry.' He seemed to be apologizing to the entire room. ‘I fell asleep. Next morning …' He looked around him desperately. ‘Next morning I realized she wasn't back. Then …'

‘All right,' Martha said kindly. ‘That's enough. Is there anything else that you can add that might shed a light either on the events of that night or help the police to find Daisy?'

Mansfield shook his head and now she could see that tears were not far away. His face was twisted like an anguished child.

Detective Inspector Alex Randall was next to take the stand, explaining the circumstances of the accident, using maps and photographs to clarify the geography of the area. Martha sat back in her seat and watched him. It was always good to observe a professional, particularly when he was tall and attractive with a clear, pleasant voice. Randall's voice was curt, clipped, accentless. She could not have guessed where in the country he came from or what his background was. He was classless, polite. Not bland exactly but difficult to pin a label on. Even his vocabulary gave no clue to his geographical origins. She wondered when he had developed this closed aspect of his character. And why. Why did he need to be such a closed book? Had he always been like this or was it something he had developed? His face was animated as he spoke. He enjoyed giving evidence, putting across his side of the story. Luckily Randall was so engrossed in his story that he was unaware of Martha's scrutiny. Or so she thought. Quite suddenly he stopped looking at his notes, turned away from the people watching and moved his head to the right to look directly at her, his eyes seeming to look beneath the surface as though he could guess what she was thinking. She flushed as only redheads can.