The Devil's Chair (27 page)

Save us all time and worry
.

Above all, what was the connection?

Randall closed his eyes in a long and tired blink. He needed air.

He needed Martha.

Martha was, as usual, in her office, working through piles of papers and computer records. She made a face as she tried to read some facsimiles of hospital notes. When would doctors learn to write? Medical records were so unsatisfactory. Pages missing, sometimes out of order, results of tests scratchily filled in, sometimes patently obviously not correct. When were alarm bells raised that something was not right?

She too felt she needed air that morning. What she really fancied, to wake her up, instead of yet another cup of coffee, was a walk in the crisp spring air through Haughmond Woods.

She smiled to herself, crossed the room and lifted the sash window. Just an inch but the scent of lilac carried in on the breeze and tempted her even more.

She looked around her.

Her room looked different today. Prettier, brighter. And she
felt
different too. Oh for goodness' sake, Martha, she lectured herself. You can't fall for bloody Simon. It would be a disaster. One: he's a total worm. Two: he was married to your very best friend in the world bar one – Evie. Three: whatever he says you can't trust him and you never will. Four: there's that pathetic Christabel business. She had a sudden vision of Simon Pendlebury's sheep-like face as he confessed to her he'd
fallen in love
.

She would never get that image out of her mind. Never. He had looked so completely and utterly and pathetically foolish. And five: last but not least there's Jocasta and Armenia. So forget it.

But still … she had really enjoyed last night. Not having to drive for once, she'd relaxed her one glass of wine rule and had had two glasses of some very good Rioja which had had the result that she'd drunk a third glass of wine which had made her mellow, relaxed and happy in Simon's company like never before. They'd fallen into easy conversation, ragging each other about past events and mishaps. But then … she suddenly remembered venturing a negative comment about his daughters and how he'd laughed and agreed with her. ‘The trouble was,' he'd said, his hand touching hers in a gentle, non-sexual gesture of friendship, ‘that Evie, as you know, was ill for a while and she just didn't have the energy to stop them. And besides, she didn't want the girls to remember her as someone who nagged so they just got worse and worse.' He'd laughed then screwed up his face. ‘What they need is a strict stepmother.'

She'd put a hand further up his arm and giggled. ‘A
wicked
stepmother,' she'd said and he had put his face very close to hers and said nothing, but his brown eyes had been warm and friendly.

Now, next morning, stone cold sober, she was wincing at the memories.

She was tugged out of her reverie by a
rat-a-tat-tat
on the door. Jericho Palfreyman, coroner's assistant, stuck his head round, shaking his grey locks disapprovingly and looking distinctly out of sorts. ‘That inspector,' he said. ‘He's here again.'

‘I'm sorry, Martha.' Alex's head appeared over Jericho's. ‘I wanted to keep you up to date on developments.' He had a large brown envelope under his arm. ‘And show you these.'

‘It's OK, Jericho,' she said, smiling at her disgruntled assistant, yet she felt awkward. She was going to find it difficult to fit in her workload if Alex was going to make a frequent habit of these visits. But she smiled. ‘There's been a development?'

He filled her in on the planting of the pyjamas and pulled the photographs out of the envelope. As Martha looked down her face changed, became careworn and sad. She looked up. ‘What sort of person would do this to a four-year-old, Alex?'

‘Someone who …' But his ideas didn't make any more sense in the coroner's office than they had in front of the assembled officers earlier in the day.

Martha watched his struggle for a moment and realized it was better not to ask him direct questions that he was patently finding difficulty with and instead asked him what evidence had been unearthed yesterday morning. ‘Tell me about the pyjamas,' she said. ‘What can you glean from them so far? And most importantly, are they Daisy's?

‘It appears so,' he said very carefully, his hazel eyes meeting hers with sudden pain and frankness. He fingered the photographs one by one, close-ups of the blood staining, another very close up of the jagged tear in the pyjama leg, blood-stained and large, the way they had been folded so neatly and placed in the mouth of the litter bin.

‘So far all we know is that there is this bloodstaining and damage to the pyjamas consistent with a leg injury. A small fragment of bone has been found embedded in the material and initial DNA analysis indicates that the bone is – was – Daisy's. It leads us to think she probably had a broken leg.'

Martha winced, feeling the shooting agony of a broken limb. ‘Untreated she could easily have died from that alone, combined with the blood loss,' she said. Her eyes dropped back to the sheaf of photos scattered across the surface of her desk. ‘Infection, shock.'

‘There was no chest wound, apparently,' Alex put in quickly. ‘Or at least, what I mean to say,' he corrected with a quick, connecting flash of a smile, ‘is that there is no blood and no sign of damage to the pyjama top.' He paused before adding quietly, ‘But of course the dressing gown was bloodstained low down. It could have come from the same wound.'

He looked down at the floor, not at the face across the desk. It took Martha's soft question to persuade him to lift his gaze.

‘And is there any clue as to how or when the pyjamas were planted?'

‘Well, there we've been a bit lucky,' Randall said, feeling the glow he often felt in the coroner's presence. ‘It's nothing definite yet, but the CCTV footage shows a car driving right up to the small bin.' He gave a regretful but resigned smile. ‘The car being between the camera and the person you don't see as much as we would hope. But we see enough. There is a small delay while the person presumably folds the pyjamas and places them on the top of the bin. And this is the breakthrough. The car has been identified as a ten-year-old Toyota four-wheel drive. The number is too mud spattered to read but we have a list of models in a thirty-mile perimeter and will be working through their owners. There aren't too many,' he said encouragingly. ‘Just forty.' He paused. ‘No one really obvious springs to mind.' He allowed himself a warm smile aimed in her direction. ‘By that I mean no one with a criminal record or a conviction for witchcraft.' Her eyes warmed and for a split second they were again connected by a bridge of … friendship? Martha gave a little shake of her head. No – this was something else. Something much more intimate.

There was the briefest of pauses then Randall hurried on with his story. ‘We'll initially focus on women as the caller was a woman. Then if we've had no joy we'll move on to men.' He stopped. What he wasn't saying was that in his heart of hearts he believed this would be a futile search, its end result a mound of earth and underneath that mound of earth a little girl's body.

Coleman and Roberts had reached the Long Mynd Hotel and as before PC Gethin Roberts allowed himself a brief daydream that was currently slipping away from him: that he was bringing Flora here post-wedding for two nights before they set off to the Caribbean for their honeymoon. Coleman watched him indulgently.

Roberto Agostino had practically crossed himself as Coleman and Roberts' squad car pulled on to the forecourt of the Long Mynd Hotel. A police presence was the very last thing they needed after the expensive refurbishment of the large hotel.

‘Oh, God,' he said, crossing himself. ‘Now what has happened?'

‘Nothing to worry about, sir.'

Agostino didn't look at all reassured by Coleman's bluff sentence.

They ushered him into his office and filled him in on the finding of some ‘
garments of clothing
'
.

He looked bemused. ‘But how can I help you in this?'

‘You said that Tracy seemed to get on well with one particular social worker at your convention in November – Sheila Weston.'

Agostino looked wary. He held his palms out wide in the well-known gesture of disclosure. ‘So what?'

Roberts glanced down at his notepad. ‘And did you also say that Tracy brought Daisy in a day or two during November?'

‘She said she had no one to leave her with.'

‘What about her partner, Neil Mansfield?'

Agostino shrugged.

Roberts had a flash of inspiration. ‘The social worker who kept an eye on Daisy.'

Agostino still looked bemused. He shrugged again. ‘So?'

‘Can you give us her name and address?'

He caved in. ‘But of course. Just a minute.'

He vanished from the room and they heard a swift chatter of instructions. Then Agostino returned and with a flourish worthy of Valentino he produced a neatly written card. Pink, the size of a postcard. ‘Here.'

Written neatly in thin-tipped black felt pen was an address in Slough, Bucks, for Sheila Weston.

For the first time that day Gary Coleman looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘Slough,' he said, glancing at his colleague. ‘It'll take us most of the day to get there and back and speak to her. We'd better clear it with the inspector. It could be a wasted journey, Geth,' he said, trying to wipe the disappointed look from his pal's face. ‘We might not get anything from her.'

But DI Randall, now he had a positive lead to work on, was more than happy for his two officers to interview someone they thought might be able to help them find the child and give them a reason why these events had happened.

As Coleman and Roberts were heading south down the M40 scores of police, specials and regulars, were engaged in house-to-house enquiries around Church Stretton, conducting interviews around the town, cross-checking vehicle numbers on the police computer and following up leads on the Toyota. And Lara Tinsley was wondering how her new information fitted in with the case.

Still more personnel were peering down microscopes in the laboratory, searching for something in the fibres of the teddy bear pyjamas, hoping to find a thread of material or a strand of hair, a tiny fragment of paint or soil, dog or cat hair or traces of flora or fauna; anything that would bind their perpetrator to this little girl's clothes and convict her of her crime. To the more fanciful of them Daisy Walsh was the princess imprisoned in a castle, sleeping in the centre of a forest of thorns. They would set her free with science.

Coleman and Roberts were on the M6 toll, forking out the £6.50 for safe passage. ‘And what do we do when we get there?'

Roberts' Adam's apple bobbed up and down in his throat. The truth was he wasn't sure.

Coleman chewed back a grin. ‘You don't know, do you, Geth?'

Roberts sulked.

Coleman pushed on. ‘You're a bloody idiot, you know.'

‘Yeah. Flora thinks so too.'

‘You haven't had a row?'

‘Not exactly, but just … Put it like this.' Roberts turned a pair of anxious dark eyes on his colleague. ‘Now is not exactly the moment to ask her to marry me.'

‘Oh.' Coleman shut up then asked curiously in a mockney accent, ‘What 'ave you done to upset the adoring girlfriend?'

‘Well, she thought we were idiots not to find the little girl's slipper in the first place. I said to her we didn't find it because it wasn't there, stating the obvious. And she just laughed and said, ‘“'Course it was.” I saw red then, Gary,' he said. ‘Saw red. And we haven't exactly made it up either.' He waited for his colleague to support him and when he ventured no words of consolation Roberts added, piqued, ‘I'm waiting for
her
to apologize.'

Slowly Gary Coleman turned his head. ‘Haven't you learned anything in that short, eventful life you've had so far, Roberts? Waiting for her to apologize? You'll wait for ever, my mate.
You
apologize.'

Roberts protested. ‘But I haven't done anything wrong. She shouldn't have said it.'

‘You don't have to have done anything wrong,' Coleman advised. ‘Just apologize anyway.'

Roberts sat back grumpily, folded his arms then glanced across at his colleague curiously. ‘You mean it?'

‘Yeah. Life's too short Gezza, my old sport.'

Roberts sat back and folded his arms. Apologize? When he'd done nothing wrong, only stated the truth? He needed to work this one out.

T
hey were silent until their satnav led them to a small, semi-detached house on the outskirts of Slough. It was neat and tidy, a small red Ford Ka sitting in the drive. It was in the middle of a long, straight row of almost identical houses, lawns and drives identical too; the only item that distinguished each house from its other was the make of the car that sat in the drive.

The woman who opened the door to them looked pale, tired and very worried. She was wearing a loose top over denim jeans that looked pale and tired as well. Over-washed and sun bleached, the pair of them. She didn't look in the least bit surprised to see them even when they flashed their ID cards in front of her weary eyes. ‘Come in,' she said resignedly.

The two officers glanced at each other. They hadn't even said why they'd come. And she hadn't asked … Interesting considering the conference at the Long Mynd Hotel had been six months ago and she had been there for a brief weekend course – hardly a powerful connection.

Roberts blew out through his teeth while Coleman began the questions.

‘Mrs Weston, I don't know if you've been following the case of the little girl who disappeared after a car accident?'

She blinked.

‘It happened at the Long Mynd just outside Church Stretton?'