Corpse in Waiting Read online

  ‘And yet you say you rented a “cupboard” as times were hard. How was that with rent money coming in?’

  Bennett grimaced. ‘The tenants of two of the flats over here stopped paying the rent saying I hadn’t done any repairs. It wasn’t true and I had an idea they were in the plot together. It took months to get them out and one of the flats was trashed. Cost me a couple of thousand to put it right.’

  ‘That must have made you pretty angry.’

  ‘Oh, I know who they are.’ He realized that statement could be misconstrued. ‘I mean, I’ll not have them as tenants again.’

  ‘Let’s return to Imelda. Was she close to her sister?’

  ‘God knows. She didn’t really mention her.’

  ‘So you don’t know anything about her at all.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is there any doubt in your mind that Irma actually existed? Could they have been one and the same woman?’

  ‘I haven’t the first bloody clue.’

  ‘Did she ever mention a man by the name of Martino Capelli?’

  ‘No. Look, what is all this about? I only went out with the woman for a short while and—’

  ‘You don’t seem remotely upset about the fact that she’s been murdered,’ I fired at him, loathing him for his general callousness. ‘Her decapitated and badly decomposed body was found in the larder of the house and her head was in a cupboard upstairs. Did she actually lose her job again and couldn’t carry on paying the bills? Did she refuse to move out as she had nowhere else to go? Did you get drunk again and go round there to chuck her out only for everything to get out of hand?’

  ‘No!’ Bennett gasped.

  ‘Tell us what happened in New Zealand when you were convicted of assault,’ Patrick asked silkily.

  ‘I – er – I—’

  ‘I already know. You got drunk and beat up your girlfriend who suffered extensive bruising, contusions and a broken jaw. You were sent to prison for six months, a sentence shorter than it might have been because, according to witnesses, she was blind drunk as well and had come at you with a broken bottle.’

  Bennett sullenly remained silent.

  ‘It’s DCI Carrick’s job to find out if you’re guilty of Imelda’s murder,’ Patrick continued. ‘My interest is with the victim herself in case she did lead a double life. Where did you meet her?’

  ‘In a pub somewhere.’

  ‘Think!’

  ‘In Bristol.’

  ‘You picked her up.’

  ‘She wasn’t a tart!’

  ‘No, of course she wasn’t,’ I said. ‘You got talking, she was flat broke and desperate and you offered her money for sex. She turned out to be quite useful along those lines but you fell out when she got fed up with clearing up after you, cooking your meals and washing your socks because actually you’re a complete slob!’

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’ Bennett bellowed.

  ‘What did she do for a living?’ Patrick said quickly, in a tone that represented a slapped wristie for me. Throwing any petrol on to the flames would be his prerogative.

  ‘I’ll tell you that only when you’ve had that woman removed from the room!’ A quivering forefinger was pointed in my direction.

  ‘Oh, good, we’re getting somewhere,’ Patrick murmured. ‘She stays. Answer the question.’ He gave the man a freezing stare. ‘Otherwise . . . I shall find it difficult to remain . . . patient.’

  ‘She worked in retirement and nursing homes,’ Bennett muttered after a long pause.

  ‘I would have thought there was a constant demand for people like that in the Bath area with so many retired folk living there. And yet from what you say it seems she was often out of work.’

  ‘Imelda could be a bit stroppy,’ Bennett said after consideration. ‘If she didn’t like someone she told them so. Perhaps it didn’t go down too well.’

  No doubt he had had first hand experience of that.

  ‘You mean she was rude to the clients?’

  ‘Oh, no. To the staff. If she thought they weren’t treating people right. They don’t you know, they drug ’em up if they get difficult and slap them around. She used to tell me about it.’

  ‘What else did she tell you?’

  Bennett shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention, did I?’

  ‘Think.’ The word dropped into the room like molten lead.

  ‘Well – well, about her day really. She didn’t talk about her past, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘What, not about her childhood, parents, friends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you find that a bit strange?’

  ‘I can’t say I was that interested.’

  ‘Although this might have been at a time before such stringent checks were made on people who work with the vulnerable, do you think it’s remotely possible that she kept losing her job because they discovered she had a criminal record? I want you to think very carefully about that.’

  ‘She did hate the cops. One cautioned her in Union Street once when she called him a bastard. No reason for her to do that really.’ He chuckled humourlessly. ‘Except that you are – all of you.’

  SEVEN

  ‘He could easily have killed her,’ I said later. ‘The man is a complete slob.’

  ‘I agree, but whether he did or not is for James Carrick to find out,’ Michael Greenway said. ‘Thanks for coming, by the way.’

  Patrick said, ‘She and Irma could have been one and the same woman. She had a criminal record and moved to the West Country to start a new life, changing her first name. But I do have to ask myself why she didn’t change her surname as well.’

  ‘We must be very careful here,’ the commander said to him. ‘There might be a sister. If not and it is the same person it doesn’t appear that Bennett’s aware of, or been involved with, her past life. But I still have to have the true state of affairs confirmed.’

  ‘Are there no DNA samples of Irma in view of the fact that she has a record?’ Patrick wanted to know.

  ‘No, it happened quite a while ago when she was in her late teens and before the technology really kicked off. Since then, other than having a dodgy boyfriend, she seems to have stayed out of trouble. There are fingerprints, yes. But we can’t compare those with the body as it was too badly decomposed.’

  ‘Do I get the feeling you want me to go and find out if Irma still exists?’ Patrick queried.

  ‘Yes, but don’t make a career out of it and leave no trace if you get into her last known address in Romford, Martino’s flat. I don’t want there to be any suspicion that it’s being watched. Is that clear?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s a nice quiet little number for you while you’re still off main ops, but three days, no longer. I can’t throw any more money at it than that on the strength of snouts’ gossip.’ He gave us one of his big smiles, which suited him perfectly as he was a big man, around six foot five. ‘Take Ingrid. She can watch out for Capelli honchos for you.’ He chuckled.

  I was last out of the room and he called me back.

  ‘Is that OK?’ he whispered a little anxiously.

  ‘You have a woman’s intuition,’ I said, no louder.

  ‘Coming from you I’ll take that as a compliment. What’s the problem?’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘God, have I made things worse?’

  ‘Not at all, but you might look up the name Alexandra Nightingale in records for me.’

  Shortly afterwards I received a phone call from the estate agency repeating the news that a higher offer, above the original asking price and surely emanating from Alexandra, had been made. I reminded them that my offer had already been accepted but was told that it was not legally binding and the solicitors representing the owner had made no final decision. Other prospective buyers had looked at the property. I immediately put in an offer of twenty thousand pounds over the original price.

  We had just checked into an hotel. Patrick, who was unp
acking clothes and tossing them on to the bed, glanced up as I finished the call but made no comment.

  ‘This is about more than just a house,’ I observed quietly.

  He still said nothing.

  ‘After I’d taken you to the station I went to see Alexandra at her hotel,’ I went on to say. ‘She admitted that she’d obtained my mobile number from your phone, which you’d left on the table in a café when you went to the loo. She’s been complaining to any number of friends about my wanting to buy what she regards as her house, including her ex, one Alan Kilmartin. She seemed quite ready to drop him in it.’

  ‘You should have let me talk to her. I said I would.’

  ‘I saw her with a man just outside the hotel entrance. She was very angry, upset really. He was of medium height, dark, ugly and wearing a single but quite large, gold earring. He looked distinctly snaky. Alexandra told me that he was an employee and was looking for a commercial property for her. I’m not too sure that was the truth.’

  ‘And your point in all this?’

  ‘I asked her what sort of agency she had and she told me it was to do with domestic staff, home helps, nannies and so forth. When—’

  Patrick butted in with, ‘It seems it’s a perfectly innocent business then.’

  ‘When you have that kind of agency you build up a huge client base. If she shifts down to Bath she’ll have to start all over again, from scratch.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Then she told me that you were a fine man. She likes fine men, she said. But they turn out to be quite ordinary after she’s stripped them off, layer by layer, something that she’s discovered she’s good at. But I was assured I’d get you back – eventually.’

  ‘Ingrid, she was just winding you up.’

  ‘That’s exactly what took place, what she said, practically word for word, no bias on my part, no bitching. I’ve edited out the superior smirks and the odd drops of spit. As I said the other day, it seems to me that one of your layers has gone already. I think the stripper she’s using is called infatuation.’

  Patrick flopped down on the bed. ‘Look, this is a real distraction from the job.’

  ‘I’m aware of that. Would you rather I went home?’

  He looked at me, alarm writ large as though if I did I would head straight off to see a solicitor. ‘No. I didn’t mean it like that.’

  I opened my travel bag and started to unpack. ‘OK.’

  ‘We’re a great team,’ Patrick said.

  ‘I know. We’d better get on with the job then.’

  ‘Look, I am not having an affair with this woman.’

  ‘Fine,’ I replied, giving him one his own shark’s smiles.

  As we knew already, Martino Capelli had run his crime empire from his home, a flat in Romford, before being sent to prison and this was, according to criminal records, the last known address of Irma Burnside. A cross reference to information about him listed any number of others known to have worked for, consorted with, or be related to him, one of the names in the latter category being that of his cousin, the late but not remotely lamented Tony. It would be naive of us to assume that the business was defunct while he was inside. Not at all: it would be ticking away quietly under the care of some of these people until such time he was released. Or, as we had now been told, was rumoured to be functioning with orders being issued by him from inside prison.

  That was the background and it was not our brief to infiltrate the gang, merely to try to track down the woman, if indeed she still existed and had not come to a horrible end in Bath under a different name. One of Michael Greenway’s team had suggested a trawl through dental records in the area as a quick way of establishing the truth as then we would have instant identification material. But for practical purposes Romford can be regarded as part of Greater London and the number of dentists runs into dozens. We had already established that the practice where the woman who had called herself Imelda Burnside had been registered had no previous history of her, this blamed on a one-time inept employee who had somehow caused their computer to crash, destroying all the records.

  The address was a flat that turned out to be over a fish and chip shop in a busy road near the High Street. If no one was in we were going to break in, completely off the record and leaving no trace of our entry.

  ‘Even if Irma had abandoned her home it wouldn’t have stayed empty all this time,’ I said when we had found somewhere to park the car and were walking back. ‘I should think the place was rented.’

  I had driven up from the West Country as the Range Rover has its uses – not being referred to as the ‘battle bus’ for nothing – and, most importantly, it has been adapted so Patrick can drive it. Having a right foot with no sensation does not make for good control and he only gets behind the wheel of conventional cars if he has to and then only for short distances.

  He said, ‘That’s something we shall have to discover because if it wasn’t and she owned it that rather strengthens the case for there having been two women. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been flat broke in Bath and had to live at the house in Cherry Tree Row.’

  ‘Unless it didn’t sell for ages.’

  ‘And David Bennett was telling the truth when he said Imelda had written to him saying she was going to live with her sister. Who had just, presumably, bought somewhere else to live. No more conjecture though. Let’s get to the truth.’

  We were assiduously ‘making a great team’ as Patrick had put it. There was no strained atmosphere and we were just being terribly, terribly businesslike. I had made up my mind that I was not going to mention Alexandra’s name unless really provoked or she arrived, all poisonous charm, and proceeded to strip a few more veneers off my husband.

  A little intelligence gathering was undertaken first. It was now just after four thirty and the fish and chip shop was open and full of noisy children just out of school. We waited on the pavement until the chaos inside had abated and then went in.

  ‘The flat upstairs?’ said the man behind the counter who appeared to be in charge in response to Patrick’s query, backed up by his warrant card. ‘Yes, a woman lives there. But I don’t know who she is.’

  ‘Are you the proprietor?’ he was asked.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Are these properties rented?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Patrick then went on to ask him for the name and address of the landlord. The man had to go to a room in the back to get the information and when he returned he said, ‘You’ve missed her. I’ve just seen her go down the back stairs.’

  Patrick shook his head sadly. ‘Thanks. We’ll have to come back later.’

  We did not make the mistake of immediately making our way around to the rear of the building in case anyone’s curiosity in the chippy caused them to watch our activities for a while and we ended up by having to break in. There was a café practically opposite so we headed for it and spent a short time drinking tea.

  ‘Are you armed?’ I asked in casual fashion.

  ‘Just with my knife.’

  ‘We are still on certain terrorist organizations’ hit-lists.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Patrick mused. ‘I’ll go back to the car and get it. We’re possibly dealing with a spin-off from the Mafia here too.’

  Patrick is permitted to carry a firearm, for our personal safety and in the course of his present duties. He periodically attends practice sessions at a police weapons training establishment to maintain his standard and is a very, very good shot. The weapon, a Glock 17 pistol which he carries in a shoulder harness, is otherwise kept in a safe at home or in the secure cubby box in the Range Rover that can only be accessed by those in the know, us, and even then we have to enter code numbers, changed once a month, on a key pad. I too have received instruction but stick to the short-barrelled Smith and Wesson as I am used to it. It was in my bag now and my story, if asked, is always that it is for his use, merely back-up. I’m the back-up.

  I stayed behind to finish my tea. From
where I was sitting I could see the fish and chip shop and also an opening that provided access to the rear of the various premises by delivery vehicles. There appeared to be a private car park in there too. People were walking in and out but I was too far away to be able to identify Irma Burnside from the mugshot, a copy of which we had brought with us.

  Very shortly afterwards I spotted Patrick on the other side of the road. He paused, glanced across in my direction and then disappeared into the entry. I paid the bill and went outside. When I caught up with him he was standing at the bottom of what looked like a fire escape, and probably was, that was used to provide access to the first-floor flats. We went up and rang the appropriate bell. There was no reply.

  Patrick’s ‘burglars’’ keys quickly dealt with the somewhat dated door locks and we went in. As we had already ascertained from the exterior of the building there appeared to be no conventional alarm system fitted.

  I stayed by the front door while Patrick performed a swift check that the flat was otherwise unoccupied. I had half expected in this somewhat lacklustre area that the interior would be the same but from what I could see from where I was standing this was far from the truth. There was a huge Chinese carpet in the living room off to the left of me, silk probably, and the oriental theme was continued with tasselled lamps and a carved wooden dragon painted green and gold, also a lamp, that must have stood over five feet high.

  ‘Whoever lives here doesn’t struggle for money,’ Patrick said, echoing my own conclusions. ‘Plasma screen TV, designer kitchen, ditto bathroom, king-sized bed.’

  ‘All a bit tacky though.’

  ‘I’ve never met a so-called crime lord who had good taste – not that we know he still rents the place.’

  We both moved into the living room where my working partner, who had donned gloves, rapidly and carefully went through the drawers of a Chinese lacquer cabinet, leaving everything exactly as he had found it. This kind of searching is not part of my role, unless he requests my help, so I touched nothing, walking around the flat to assimilate detail, looking at photographs and pictures, trying to find something that would help us. Well, she obviously liked dragons, as I had already seen. There were luridly coloured wooden ones, also china ones, silver metallic ones, on shelves, in pictures on the walls and, like the large one I had spotted first, standing on the floor.