The Flesh Tailor (39 page)

It was dark now and it was starting to blow a gale out there. On the way back from the pub he’d seen the boats pitching to
and fro on the churning water and he didn’t like to think of Roz driving in this sort of weather; not in her condition.

He switched the TV on and sat there for a while, hardly aware of what was happening on the screen. Roz was out there somewhere
and he had a terrible feeling – a premonition almost – that she could be in some sort of danger.

At one time Harry Parker had hated the police with every fibre of his being but now, when it came down to it, he knew they
might be the only ones who could help him. He picked up the phone and began to search for the card the inspector had left.
He had just located it when suddenly he noticed a photograph lying on the table.

He picked it up and frowned. There were three names scribbled on the back – names he didn’t recognise – and he was sure it
hadn’t been there when he’d left the flat for the Tradmouth Arms.

He flopped down in an armchair and sat there for a while, staring at the phone, going through his options. Roz might have
gone to see a friend and return any moment. But on the other hand, the uneasy feeling that something was amiss was refusing
to go away. He studied the card in his hand and reached for the phone.

When DI Peterson answered Harry could sense his impatience, as though he were in the middle of something important.

‘Is there anything else?’ the inspector asked once Harry had confided his worries. ‘Anything at all, however trivial?’

‘I found a photograph of a bloke – old-fashioned black-and-white one with three names on the back. I wondered if it could
have anything to do with –’

‘What are the names?’

When Harry told him Wesley thanked him and ended the call.

Roz Dalcott didn’t much like driving down single-track Devon lanes in the dark and there were moments during her journey when
she wondered just why she was doing it. James was dead and they’d been living apart anyway. But over the past days he had
been on her mind a lot. He’d been a good man. Maybe he hadn’t deserved the way she’d treated him. Perhaps it was her uneasy
conscience that was making her continue the enquiries he hadn’t had a chance to complete. James had wanted to know the truth
about his father and she told herself that it would do no harm to do a bit of preliminary digging. If she discovered anything
relevant – which was doubtful – she could tell the police later.

She found the place without much difficulty and parked
the car on the muddy verge outside the house. She clambered out of the driver’s seat, her large belly making her movements
clumsy. The house squatted behind the low hedge that separated it from the lane; a small, low building with a light on in
the downstairs window. After locking the car – you couldn’t be too careful, even in the middle of the Devon countryside –
she walked slowly up the path and when she reached the door she hesitated, her hand hovering over the door bell. Was she doing
the right thing? Probably not, but it was too late now to turn back now.

Roz rang the bell and waited for a while but there was no answer. She reached out her hand and gave the front door a tentative
push. It yielded to her touch and her heart pounded as it creaked open slowly to reveal a neat hallway, with watercolours
of local scenes on the walls and a rich Turkish rug on the floor. Something, curiosity perhaps, made her step inside, calling
a nervous hello.

The front room door was open and a pool of warm light spilled out into the hall. She moved forward on tiptoe and crossed the
threshold. But where she’d expected a cosy living room, she saw something quite different. This was a room without the normal
comforts; a room filled with books and anatomical drawings like the ones she’d seen long ago in James’s old university text
books. It was a room lined with shelves and on these shelves stood jars containing unspeakable things: body parts and foetuses;
eyeballs and brains all floating like jellyfish in the liquid that preserved them from decay. Roz stood there staring in horror
and curiosity, then her hand went to her mouth as if to stifle a scream.

Now she knew it had been a mistake to come and her first and only instinct was to flee. But as she took a step
towards the door, she heard a sound in the hallway. Thinking the house was empty had been another mistake. And she feared
that it was a mistake that she was about to pay for.

By now the incident room was half empty. Gerry had told most of the team to go home and get some rest which was exactly what
Wesley wished he was doing, but he couldn’t help worrying about Roz Dalcott.

The nearest person was Nick Tarnaby who was sitting at his desk typing into his computer.

He asked him to call the number of the Podingham Clinic. ‘Urgently.’

Nick’s expression gave nothing away as he made the call and asked for the name Wesley had specified. After a few minutes he
walked slowly over to Wesley’s desk with a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Not there but I got the home address.’

Wesley took the paper from him and examined it. ‘It might be nothing but I want to get over there as soon as possible and
I think I might need some back-up.’

He began to move and Tarnaby followed him out of the building. As they reached the car park, he heard a familiar voice.

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

Nuala Johns was emerging from the shadows wearing a trench coat, fashionably short with the belt pulled tight to emphasise
the slimness of her waist, and a pair of high-heeled black leather boots. She had the look of a glamorous female private eye
but that was probably the intention. This was all Wesley needed.

‘I rang Roz Dalcott to see if she’d give me an interview,’ Nuala went on, ‘but her husband said she wasn’t in. He
sounded worried so I put two and two together. Something’s going on, isn’t it?’

Wesley felt his fist clench. ‘Look, Nuala, contact the press office. I can’t tell you anything.’ He turned once more to his
car.

‘Come on, Wesley, you can do better than that. What’s going on?’

He swung round. ‘I can’t talk to you at the moment. Go through the proper channels.’

He clambered in behind the wheel and, with Tarnaby beside him, roared recklessly out onto the main road.

Roz recognised the tall woman framed in the doorway. She’d met her before at a drinks party the previous Christmas. She tried
to smile. ‘I’m so sorry. The door was open and I –’

‘What are you doing here?’ Marie Shallech’s voice was quiet but Roz detected a hint of threat behind the words.

‘I wanted to talk to you about James. My late husband. You worked with him at the Podingham. Do you remember, we met at …’

Roz realised she’d begun to gabble. She often did when she was nervous and she was certainly nervous now. ‘You see, James
left an envelope with his solicitor – I’ve only just been told about it; I think they mislaid it or something.’ She saw that
Dr Shallech was still staring at her but she carried on. ‘You probably don’t know that James’s father was hanged for murdering
his mother. He’d started looking into the case and he thinks his father was innocent. He thinks his father’s locum killed
his mother. They were cousins and she’d known some secret about him; something he did when he was a child.’

‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’ The woman spoke quietly, almost in a whisper.

‘James left a photograph of the locum and there were three names on the back of the picture. Charlie Haslem, which was the
cousin’s name. Liam Cheshlare, which was the name of the locum. And your name – Marie Shallech. Can you think why your name
would be on it? And he left this photo of you.’

Fumbling, she took the picture out of her bag and handed it to Marie who took it and held it between her finger and thumb
as though it was something dirty.

Roz took a deep breath, feeling a new wave of courage. If she didn’t ask, she’d never find out. ‘I think there’s a resemblance
between you and the man in the other photograph. Is he your brother, Dr Shallech?’ Roz said. ‘Is he still alive?’

But the question wasn’t answered. Instead the older woman stood absolutely still, her eyes fixed on Roz’s face. Then she spoke.
‘Did you tell anyone you were coming here, Mrs Dalcott?’

‘Roz. Please call me Roz,’ she gabbled, suddenly aware that she shouldn’t have come.

She took a step back. ‘Look, the police think my partner’s got something to do with James’s death and I just want to know
the truth.’

Marie Shallech’s lips turned upwards in a cold smile. ‘Let’s go into the other room and sit down, Mrs Dalcott. I’ll make us
a nice cup of tea.’ She turned and led the way back into the hall but she stopped at the door and let Roz go first. It looked
like politeness but Roz had a sudden suspicion that she was blocking her escape route. Marie opened the door to the back room
– a small living room
with French windows at one end, shabby and furnished only with the bare necessities. Roz entered and sat down on a well-worn
sofa then the door closed and Marie stood there, leaning on the door, staring at her.

‘I wish you hadn’t come here, Mrs Dalcott. I really do.’

Wesley drove towards Tradmouth, with Nick Tarnaby sitting silently in the passenger seat. After they’d driven about five miles
down the unlit A road, Nick broke his silence.

‘Isn’t that the road you want – Hawkston?’

Wesley signalled right and took the narrow single-track lane, putting the headlights onto full beam. The car that had been
behind them all the way from Neston also took the turning. It was following a good distance behind but Wesley was aware of
the headlights in his rear-view mirror. A fox galloped across his path, turning for a moment to stare at the approaching car
with bright, terrified eyes, but as he was driving fairly slowly, it managed to scurry away into the tall hedgerow to safety.
A few yards later a rabbit with suicidal inclinations did the same; but again, it was lucky enough to escape.

Hawkston was little more than a hamlet: a handful of stone-built houses and a small village green. Wesley parked the car on
the verge behind a small blue Toyota. He recognised the car. It was Roz Dalcott’s. His instincts had been right.

He emerged from the car, stepping carefully over the muddy tyre ruts at his feet, and walked up the lane with Nick by his
side, straining in the darkness to examine the house names. The one they were looking for stood at the end. Green View: not
the height of originality, Wesley
thought. There was a light on in a downstairs window and the two men walked up the path to the front door, unaware of the
car that had doused its headlights and rolled to a halt just out of sight round the bend in the road.

Roz felt her unborn child move inside her as Marie raised her hand and, with a swift movement, her steel grey bob had gone.
The hair left behind was cropped and thinning. The make-up she wore now made her look vaguely ludicrous – like a dame in an
amateur pantomime.

Roz stared, unable to think of anything appropriate to say.

‘It’s something I’ve perfected over the years, living as a woman. I’d always enjoyed dressing as one, of course, and when
it became necessary for Liam Cheshlare to disappear, I became Marie Shallech. And to tell the truth, I’ve rather enjoyed it.’
Marie took a step forward and opened a drawer in a nearby side table. Roz felt herself gasp when she saw her take out the
gun. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer to a God she’d ignored since her Sunday school days.

‘The human body is a wonderful thing, Mrs Dalcott.’ Marie levelled the gun at her head. ‘And so fragile. A perfect machine.
It almost makes you believe in a creator, doesn’t it? I dissected my first human body when I was ten.’ She said the words
with a matter-of-fact coldness that made Roz shudder. ‘Would you like to hear about it?’

Roz nodded, welcoming anything that might give her extra time.

‘My parents were killed during the war. A bomb dropped on our house during the Blitz. I saw their bodies.
They’d been blown to pieces; exploded into bleeding lumps of meat. And when they found me I was covered in their blood, trying
desperately to reassemble my parents. I was only nine years old and I was trying desperately to bring them back to life.’

‘It must have been awful for you,’ Roz whispered.

Her sympathy wasn’t acknowledged. ‘Then I was evacuated to Tradington with my bitch of a cousin – to a house called Tailors
Court. They thought it would do me good – make me forget.’ She snorted. ‘As if.’ She paused for a few seconds. ‘A soldier
called Miles lived at the house. He’d seen some terrible things in the war too – comrades blown to pieces; men with bloody
pulp where their heads should have been. We had a lot in common, me and Miles. And I shared his interest in science and experimentation.
Only I took that interest one step further.’

‘What do you mean?’

There was a mirthless smile. ‘I don’t expect it’ll do any harm to tell you now. In fact some say that confession can be quite
therapeutic. It’s a simple story really: I was playing by the river with my cousin and a couple of other children. One was
a local boy called Victor and he fell in the water – he was a sickly child, small for his age but he wanted so desperately
to join in.’ There was a long pause. ‘I can’t remember much about it but my cousin told me later that I’d held Victor’s head
under the water till he was dead. Of course everyone assumed he’d been swept away by the current and, as half the river was
being used for military purposes, nobody was in a position to launch much of a search for a missing child. We hid his body
then Belle fetched the wheelbarrow and we took him back to Tailors Court and … I’d spent a lot of time cutting up
animals with Miles but I was desperate to see how the human body worked. Aside from my parents, who didn’t really count, I’d
only seen the pictures, you see. I wanted to see the real thing.’

‘What pictures?’

‘The ones on the wall in Miles’s room. A boy called Otto Kramer had escaped from Germany with his father. They were staying
with a man who knew a lot about local history and he told us how the house had once belonged to a doctor who was hanged for
killing a woman and dissecting her body. He’d wanted to discover the secrets of life.’