The Merchant's House (7 page)

‘I know it was recently but I can’t remember …’ Wesley shook his head in frustration.

‘At least we know what she looked like now,’ said Heffernan matter-of-factly. ‘I want this picture circulated to every nick in the county – do you know this woman? And I want it shown to all the local hotels and guest-houses; if she’s not local she must have stayed somewhere. And posters – we need posters. At least we don’t have to waste time on all that reconstruction rigmarole.’ He looked at the photos again. ‘Pretty girl… who’d want to do that to her, eh? Destroy her face? Why, eh?’

He looked up at Wesley but the sergeant wasn’t listening; he was still searching the recesses of his mind. Where had he seen that face before?

There is much work to be done in the shop but I cannot put my mind fully upon it. This morning Jennet did come upon me outside her chamber door. God forgive me, I had been watching her dress. She did make a curtsey and did look me in the eyes as if she understood all. As I watched her I felt sick with lust and I pray the Lord to help me in my weakness.

Elizabeth still keeps to her bed.

Extract from the journal of John Banized,
29 March 1623

Detective Inspector Stan Jenkins picked up his tray and hesitated, looking round the canteen for a familiar face of appropriate rank. He spied Gerry Heffernan in the far corner hidden behind a heaped plate of sausage, chips and beans. DI Jenkins looked at his salad and sighed. Heffernan had never succumbed to the current fad for healthy eating, and there was nobody to watch his waistline, Gerry being a widower. He approached Heffernan’s table, trying vainly not to spill his tea.

Heffernan looked at the salad. ‘She put you on a diet again, Stan?’ He shovelled a forkful of chips into his mouth ostentatiously.

‘Doctor’s orders … cholesterol test.’

‘Heffernan’s sixth rule of life – never visit a doctor unless you’re ill. My Uncle Albert was still going to sea when he
was seventy. Smoked sixty a day, drank navy rum like it was lemonade and lived on fish and chips. Died when he was eighty-three.’

‘Perhaps they have stronger constitutions up in Liverpool, Gerry.’

‘Don’t know about that, but they’ve got stronger tea. Just look at that – it’s like a urine sample. I’d take it back if I were you.’

Stan looked across at the two amazons behind the counter and rejected the idea of complaint. He sat down and tried to muster some enthusiasm for the green creation on his plate.

‘Any news of Jonathon Berrisford?’ Heffernan spoke with his mouth full.

Stan shook his head. He was used to being asked about this particular case: everyone in the station concerned themselves with a child’s disappearance. ‘Drew a blank with that woman up in Morbay. I did a check on her. She’s staying in a hostel down here, getting a bit of sea air – care in the community job. She’s known to the West Midlands force; apparently she makes a habit of this sort of thing. Every crime or disappearance, she’s always the star witness.’

‘Suppose it makes the poor cow feel important.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for her, Gerry. She’s wasting police time. Lucky I didn’t charge her. You must be getting soft in your old age.’

‘How’s Jonathon’s mother? She still down here?’

‘We finally persuaded her to go back home. It wasn’t doing her any good sitting in that cottage staring at the wallpaper. And she couldn’t be left on her own; we had to have a WPC stay with her and that didn’t do the budget much good.’ He sighed. ‘She’s better off up there. She’ll have her husband and relatives, and I dare say the doctors up there can dish out the tranquillisers as easily as the doctors down here. She rings me every day, though. Sometimes I can hardly bring myself to pick the phone up.’

Heffernan bowed his head and said nothing.

Stan changed the subject. ‘How’s your new sergeant settling in – the black chap?’

‘Fine. I’ve actually caught him in possession of a quantity of brain cells, unlike others I could mention.’

Stan eyed Heffernan’s plate enviously. ‘How are your sausages?’

‘Want one?’

‘I can’t take your last one.’ His eyes gleamed as he pushed the remains of his salad to one side.

‘Go on, Stan, nobody’s watching… and your need is greater than mine. Must be going.’ His metal chair clattered as he stood up. ‘See you, Stan. Don’t eat anything I wouldn’t eat.’

Stan Jenkins raised a hand in farewell, his mouth being full of forbidden cholesterol.

As soon as Heffernan had padded into his office, Rachel descended on him, her mouth set in determination.

‘Why did you let them go, sir? Shouldn’t we be charging them?’

He sank down wearily into his chair. ‘Who?’

‘Those Australians. Surely there’s been an offence committed.’

‘What offence? Being Australian’s not an offence … at least it wasn’t last time I looked.’

The inspector maddened her when he got into these moods. She tried to keep calm. ‘The money, sir. They stole the money.’

‘Borrowed it, Rach. They’ve promised to repay it and I don’t think for one moment they’ve got anything to do with the murder. Still, it’s worth checking, I suppose. We can have a word with those hippies they’ve been stopping with, establish their movements at the time of the murder. Fancy going on the hippie trail to Neston, Rach? Could transform your life.’

He looked up at Rachel, trying not to grin. The look of disapproval on her face reminded him of his Great-aunt Beatrice who did charitable work for distressed sailors and reputedly possessed the largest knickers in Liverpool. Eventually he took pity on her.

‘Don’t worry. Our antipodean friends are quite safe at the youth hostel and they’ve sworn a solemn oath not to leave Tradmouth till we’ve finished with them. I reckon we’ve scared the excrement out of them – him especially. They won’t budge. Look, Rach, get down to Neston to that
travellers’ site and see if you can track down this pair they were staying with. You’ve got the details.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Sullenly.

‘Take DC Carstairs. I wouldn’t recommend taking anyone in uniform. And go home and slip into something more comfortable – jeans or something – or they’ll think you’re from the DSS or Social Services. Off you go. And don’t look like that. They’re mostly harmless … even the dogs.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Coming from local farming stock, she was unconvinced by her boss’s last statement, but nevertheless went in search of Steve Carstairs to break the news. The outer office appeared to be empty, but as she closed the door a head rose slowly from behind a desk.

‘What are you doing down there, Wesley? Lost something?’

Wesley looked sheepish. ‘I thought I might try and get rid of… you know. I’ve brought a bin-bag from home and I can tape up the top and …’

‘Had a good look, then?’

Wesley looked up at her, irritated by the accusation. ‘We’re not all like my predecessor, you know. Some of us have better taste.’

She looked distinctly sceptical. ‘Come on, Wesley, I know what men are like. I’ve got three brothers, the original sexist pigs.’

‘No boyfriend?’ He couldn’t resist the question.

‘Not at the moment.’

Their eyes met and there was a moment of awkward silence. Then Wesley, self-conscious, turned his attention back to the bin-bag.

One of the magazines he was coaxing into the bag fell to the floor and opened itself at a particularly provocative page, the pose owing more to an anatomy textbook than the annals of erotic art. His eyes were first drawn to the obvious places, but then he saw the face, blank and dehumanised. The girl was blonde and under other circumstances Wesley would have described her as attractive. It was a face he knew well; a face he had last seen, destroyed and battered, on the pathologist’s table. He bore the magazine triumphantly into his boss’s office.

‘So that’s what Madam got up to in her spare time.’ Heffernan studied the picture from every angle while Rachel looked on with distaste. ‘Very observant of you, Wes, noticing her face. That’s what years of expensive education do for you.’

‘The publishers are an outfit in Manchester,’ said Wesley, turning to the front page. ‘I’ll get someone to run a check on it now.’

‘Looks like we’re headed up north tomorrow, then. Ever been to Manchester, Wes?’

‘No, sir. Can’t say I have.’

‘It’ll be a whole new experience for you. You know what they used to say? If you’ve never been to Manchester, you’ve never lived.’

Wesley looked sceptical.

It had just gone six thirty when Mr Carl switched the burglar alarm on and the salon lights off, then emerged into the grey drizzle that had brought the Indian summer to an abrupt end. Coat collar up, he made his way down the cobbled hill past shutting shops and figures with newly resurrected umbrellas, past the fenced gap in the shopfronts where they were digging up the foundations of some old house or other. There was nothing much to see for their efforts, only some old brickwork and some holes … and that skeleton he’d read about in the local paper.

He could see the welcoming beacon of the Angel’s mullioned windows. The pub was late-fourteenth-century with a smart twentieth-century clientèle He found it comfortably full of post-work drinkers. The Artistic Director of Tradmouth’s foremost hairdressing establishment sat on a blackened pew and waited, soothed by the music of Vivaldi. One pint… two pints; he was late, three-quarters of an hour late. Carl stood up to leave; he would phone from home, see what had happened. Then the door swung open. The newcomer spotted Carl and weaved his way through the standing drinkers. He stood there, without speech. Carl could see there was something wrong from the panic in his eyes.

The Lord has punished me. Elizabeth has lost the child. She keeps to her bed in her grief and will not see me.

This morning I went into the chamber by Jennet’s and I did block up the gap in the wall lest I be tempted more to sin.

Extract from the journal of John Banized,
5 April 1623

Manchester lived up to its reputation. It was raining … and they were lost.

Wesley stopped the engine. ‘Got the
A to
Z, sir?’

‘Don’t worry. Navigation was always my strong point. Just give me a chart and I’ll get us there. Don’t look like that. You’re in the capable hands of an officer of the merchant navy.’

‘I thought it was the police force, sir.’

‘That and all. Turn right and straight on. Should be the university then some hospitals on our left.’

The traffic was light. Wesley was glad he didn’t have to do this in the rush hour. Heffernan navigated them successfully through litter-strewn streets lined with ancient and modern shops selling Indian food and saris; past student accommodation built in the sixties brutalist style; past Victorian redbrick shops, many selling takeaway food, catering to the burgeoning student population. They turned a corner and drove down a road of large Victorian terraces and villas,
lined with mature trees. The rows of plastic bellpushes by the flaking front doors indicated that the once-prosperous houses were now divided into flats. Fallowfield had seen better days.

‘My daughter, Rosemary, lives off this road,’ Heffernan said quietly. ‘She’s at the Royal Northern College of Music’ He paused for a few seconds. ‘I worry about her, you know.’

‘I’m sure she can take care of herself, sir.’

‘You’re probably right… but I still worry.’ He looked down in silence at the
A to Z
. ‘Take the next turning on your left and then it’s second on the right. Cul de sac. Kempthorn Close.’

Kempthorn Close was flanked by the now-familiar Victorian terraced flats, modern metal fire escapes jutting from their façades like angular warts. At the end of the cul de sac a large villa stood in littered overgrown gardens; a recently Tarmacked drive, like a fresh scar on a wrinkled face, led to the entrance. The battered, once-imposing front door bore a number of mismatched name-plates; some tarnished brass, some dark plastic with bold white lettering. Venusian Publications was one of the latter and bore the qualification ‘First Floor’. They stepped into a dingy hallway, floored with shabby linoleum, and climbed the impressive staircase. The sound of muffled typing seeped through glass-panelled doors.

They reached their destination. Wesley was about to knock, but Heffernan had pushed the door open before his knuckles could reach the glass. A startled secretary looked up. She was hardly what Wesley would have expected an employee of a pornographic publishing company to look like: a bespectacled, demurely dressed lady of mature years, she would have looked at home behind the counter of a suburban public library. Her mouth twitched into a nervous smile. She scented trouble, and when the visitors showed their identification her suspicions were confirmed. Heffernan explained the purpose of their visit, and Wesley watched the woman’s face as she was shown the picture of the dead girl. She shook her head.

‘It might have been before my time. I’ve only been here three months.’

‘Is there anyone else I can speak to?’

“There’s Mr Keffer, but he’s out this afternoon.’