A Reason to Kill Read online

  She let herself in and allowed the heavy door with its stained glass panels of green and blue to slam shut behind her. She listened; all was still quiet, despite it being after nine.

  She pulled the trolley through to the kitchen and, before removing her coat, filled the kettle and set it on the stove, fixing the whistle firmly in place.

  Rina’s kettle was the household wake-up call. Rina herself was an early riser, always had been, but she was perfectly willing to make allowance for the habits of her guests. For most of them, a lifetime of late nights and equally late mornings had become ingrained and she had found that few of them were capable of sensible conversation much before ten. Breakfast, a communal affair, was generally acceptable from about half past nine.

  Kettle on, she slipped out of her coat and went back to the hall to place it in the tall wooden closet beside the door. Rina’s hall was hung with pictures of her guests, mostly from their glory days. The Montmorency twins when they had made their one brief but cherished appearance on Broadway. The Peters sisters perched like bright-clad birds on the edge of a grand piano. The Great Stupendo, and the same guest in his incarnation as Marvello, flanked a large poster advertising Rina and the late Mr Martin on Brighton Pier. True, she and her husband were never a headline act, but they always worked and, since his unfortunate death, Rina had proudly maintained that claim.

  She touched the poster fondly, smiling as she recalled just how young they had been back then. She’d look a little silly now, she thought, in the skimpy corset and red feathers that had passed for a costume in her husband’s knife-throwing days, but she had done it justice back then.

  Later, she’d joined a touring company, played small walk-on parts and then small speaking parts and then lead roles but that had been without her beloved Fred. Five years after she had taken his name, Fred had been taken from her and Rina had never found another man to match him.

  The kettle had begun to scream by the time she re-entered the kitchen. She held the door wide so that the piercing whistle should screech through the rest of the sleeping house, and was satisfied to hear the bump and clatter of waking guests as she took it from the stove and filled the first tea pot. A second kettle would ensure that any stay-abeds would rise in due course.

  Then she set a large griddle pan across two burners on the stove and left it to warm while she found the bacon, sausages and eggs in the fridge and the fresh-baked bread from her wicker trolley. It still felt faintly warm, despite the chill wind on the home journey.

  She paused again to examine one last poster. This one hung in the kitchen above a large wooden settle against the longest wall. It was a picture of Rina, though she thought of it almost as an image of the kitchen god. After all, the role in which she was depicted in this rather grand black and white photograph had been her last and greatest – the role that had paid for this house.

  ‘Lydia Marchant,’ Rina said, her tone of quiet satisfaction very different from the harridan’s voice she had used to flagellate poor Sergeant Baker that morning. ‘Lydia Marchant Investigates. A run of a full ten years and two rival channels on the television. Something to be proud of, eh, Fred?’ And now cable and satellite channels reprised her role on a daily basis and dubbed it into a dozen different languages around the world. Such franchises brought nice little cheques dropping on to her doormat with satisfying regularity.

  A contented look on her face that Frank Baker would have been astonished to see, Rina laid bacon and sausage on the griddle pan and filled her second pot with tea as the first of her morning guests started to arrive.

  Three

  Mac had made no comment when requested to visit Mrs Freer – a job he could reasonably have expected to be handed off to uniform. It had quickly become apparent that any rules of engagement learnt in his previous postings simply did not apply here. Chief Inspector Eden was not one for set roles and not much of one for rules and regulations – or, Mac had noted, for paperwork, Eden’s desk being piled high with files and letters and Post-it notes. He was getting used to being told ‘it’s probably on the desk’ whenever he wanted something that should have been in a filing cabinet.

  At first, Mac had assumed that such overt muddle would be reflected in the running of the small HQ, perched at the end of the promenade, but he had quickly learnt better. Eden knew exactly what was on his desk and in which archaeological layer it resided. Mac’s attempts to casually remove at least the odd stack of misplaced files to their proper resting place had been greeted with amusement and, he soon realized, a small degree of disdain.

  Despite this, Mac was already starting to like Eden and his cohorts; to admire the town of Frantham, any part of which could be reached by shanks’ pony within a quarter-hour or so. In fact, if he had any complaint then Mac would have to admit that he was bored. Deeply bored.

  He had walked from the police station to Newell Street, hardly a stretch and a pleasant walk even on such a blustery day. He found number 42 and, there being no bell and only a letterbox without a knocker, he rapped, rather too gently, on the door.

  Mrs Freer was a frail, elderly lady, he had been told, and he had no wish to startle her. Unfortunately, no one had told him that Mrs Freer was deaf. Five minutes of increasingly loud knocking and the old lady finally came to the door.

  ‘Who are you?’

  She sounded scared, he thought. ‘I’m a police officer,’ he told her.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A police officer.’ He raised his voice, struck by the difficulty of sounding gentle and reassuring at the same time as having to shout.

  ‘Oh? I see.’

  Mac heard a chain being fastened and the door cracked open just a few inches. He was ready with his ID card. ‘Look, Mrs Freer. This is who I am.’

  She took her time, examining the card and then studying him, and finally she opened the door and allowed him to come inside.

  Mac paused on the threshold and wished he’d taken a deeper breath of fresh air. The house smelled stale and old and reminded him faintly of school dinners and men’s urinals. The carpet in the hall was sticky underfoot and he was forced to wait, trying not to adhere, until the elderly resident manoeuvred her walking frame in the too narrow hall and led the slow way back into the kitchen at the other end of the hall.

  ‘You’ll be wanting tea.’

  ‘No, no thank you. I’m fine.’

  She filled the kettle anyway and he reminded himself that she couldn’t hear. ‘I said, no. It’s all right. Please don’t trouble.’

  She fumbled with the kettle plug, her obviously wet hands in such close contact with electricity causing Mac to wince and reach out to help. She ignored the gesture, fumbled the plug home and then took hold of her frame once more. Thus supported, she scrutinized Mac for a second time.

  ‘Have you caught them then?’

  ‘Er, no. I’m sorry.’ He backed off and sat down at the Formica-topped table. ‘I wondered if you had anything to add to what you told the officers last night.’

  ‘Are you Scottish? Your name is Scottish. You don’t sound Scottish.’

  ‘My family,’ Mac said. ‘I was born and raised in England.’

  She nodded. ‘I went to Scotland on my honeymoon,’ she told him. ‘We liked to travel. Though not like the young people do nowadays. Getting on planes the way we used to catch buses.’ She barked with laughter. ‘What a life, eh?’

  Mac smiled. ‘I suppose it is,’ he agreed, not really sure what he was supposed to say.

  Mrs Freer eased herself across the kitchen floor and Mac realized that she had not in fact switched the kettle on. He wondered if he should remind her, before she got too far away from it and had to make another awkward turn, then he decided not. He really didn’t want any tea. The kitchen was cleaner than the hall but it smelled no sweeter and, frankly, Mac had endured his share of unclean tea in his uniformed days. He could do without now. He waited until Mrs Freer had struggled to the table and lowered herself into a chair before asking again if th
ere was anything more she remembered.

  She considered the question thoughtfully, nodding to herself as though some inner dialogue was going on that Mac was not party to. Finally she said, ‘There were two of them. Only one came in, but I know there was another outside. It was late, well after ten, so they probably thought I’d be asleep upstairs, but I’ve not used the upstairs, you see, not in years. The Red Cross lady came and had my bed brought down and things fixed up for me so I could cope. They put a special shower in the cupboard in the hall, special handles and such, but mostly I just have a lick and a promise in the kitchen sink.’ She smiled at Mac. ‘You don’t need so much washing and brushing at my age.’

  Mac was doubly glad he had refused the tea. ‘And so, what happened? I know you told the officers last night, but sometimes in the fresh light of day …’

  She nodded again. ‘I’ve had a bit of time to think,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there was two of them. I went and had a look outside this morning and there’s footprints in the flower bed. Two lots.’

  ‘May I take a look?’

  She started to get up and Mac waved her back to her seat. ‘Don’t worry. I can manage – that is, if you don’t mind?’ He was suddenly afraid that he might have offended the old lady’s sensibilities.

  ‘No, you go on, take a look.’

  The lock on the back door was new and the surround had been reinforced but the tool marks where it had been forced were still clear. Mac wondered if anyone had photographed them or if anyone was due to come and fingerprint. There had been no reference in the initial report to either possibility.

  The yard was tiny, with a few slabs, a wheelie bin and a flower bed maybe three feet by two, unexpectedly well planted with winter pansies. Closer inspection revealed that she was right about the footprints.

  Mac may only have lived in Frantham for a couple of weeks but he was already learning to read the weather and as he had walked along the promenade had taken note of the bruised rain clouds collecting out at sea. Another hour and the footprints would be history, washed away by the torrential rain he had read in the clouds. Mac returned to the kitchen and asked if she had a dustbin bag. More out of hope than expectation he photographed the prints with his mobile phone and then covered the footprints with sections of torn bag, weighting it down with garden pebbles.

  Mrs Freer listened closely as he explained what he had done. She nodded sagely but Mac could see in her eyes that she had about as much of hope as he did that anything would come of it.

  ‘There have been three burglaries in the street,’ she told him. ‘This week alone. Last week it was Gala Crescent on the Jubilee Estate. Last week and the week before.’ She gave gentle emphasis to the ‘and’. ‘Nothing seems to have been done.’ She shrugged frail shoulders. ‘Children,’ she said.

  ‘Children?’

  ‘They were young things, the two that broke in here. Just children. What were they doing out so late at night?’

  ‘Children?’ Mac frowned, realizing he was repeating himself. ‘Could you guess how old they were?’

  The frail shoulders lifted again. It looked to Mac as though it cost her to make even so slight a movement. ‘Still in school,’ she said. ‘Teenagers. Thirteen or fourteen or so, I’d say. The boy in the kitchen looked no more than that. Scared to death he was.’

  Of you? Mac thought. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Freer was nonchalant. ‘I started to tell those officers last night but they had to rush away. Young people, always rushing, they get on planes, you know, the way my generation used to get on buses.’

  Mac nodded. This was obviously something that impressed her. ‘You were going to tell the officers what?’ he asked.

  ‘That I showed them my gun,’ Mrs Freer told him.

  Four

  Several thoughts skidded through Mac’s mind at that point. Does she mean a real gun? Should he call for back up? Where is it now? He settled for voicing that final thought.

  ‘Um, Mrs Freer, where is the gun? Can I see it?’

  She started to get up but then flopped back down in the chair. ‘Oh, be a dear and get it for me, will you? I don’t feel so good today; it’s taking a lot of getting around. I expect it’s because I had such an interrupted night.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mac told her. ‘Where …?’

  She flapped a bony, fragile-looking hand back towards the hall. ‘In the other room, dear. Under my pillow.’

  ‘Under your …’ This is surreal, Mac thought. A sudden worry struck him that, if by some quirk the gun was real, he might have to arrest this fragile pensioner. Reluctantly, he made his way into the living room, now converted into a bed-sitting room. The curtains were half open, allowing only a slant of grey light to infiltrate. Mac took in the threadbare carpet and the ageing furniture. The television resembled the one his parents had nursed through years of faithful service before its final demise. The old lady’s bed was tucked between the window and the couch and draped with a crocheted blanket and, somewhat to his surprise, a thick and puffy duvet dressed in a very smart purple cover.

  For a moment, Mac was taken aback by the very clean nature of the crisp white linen sheets and pillowcases. ‘Clean linen and winter pansies,’ Mac muttered. ‘Who takes care of that, then?’ He twitched the pillows aside and stepped back.

  ‘Oh boy.’

  Gingerly he lifted the very real revolver from its place beneath the plump white pillow and checked the chamber. To his profound relief it was empty. Mac’s knowledge of guns was not vast, but he reckoned the snub-nosed little revolver was probably a .38 and, holding it up to what light managed to get in through the window, read the Smith & Wesson name, much worn but still clearly engraved.

  Returning to the kitchen, he laid it down gently on the table. ‘You do know that it’s illegal to own this, don’t you?’

  Again that airy wave of the hand. ‘Oh, stuff and nonsense, my dear. My husband had it decommissioned long ago. Filed through a pin or some such, I don’t really remember what he said.’

  ‘I’ll have to take it away, have it examined, just to make sure,’ Mac told her gently. ‘Mrs Freer, tell me, have you threatened anyone else with this?’

  ‘Not for years,’ she told him. ‘There’s never really been the need.’

  Mac needed a cup of tea the next time it was offered. The same type of pansies as he had seen in Mrs Freer’s garden were growing happily in large terracotta pots by the door to Peverill Lodge and the pin-neat woman who greeted him at the door had Mac guessing that she must be the provider of clean sheets as well. She looked vaguely familiar, Mac thought, but he couldn’t place where he might have seen her before.

  ‘Mrs Martin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘DI McGregor. I’ve just come from speaking with Mrs Freer.’

  She raised an eyebrow and then took his identification from him, inclining it towards the daylight, the better to see.

  ‘Come in,’ she ordered, standing back from the door. ‘I hope you don’t mind talking in the kitchen but we’re getting lunch. Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Thank you, I would.’ Rina Martin led him through a spotless hall and into a large and sparkling kitchen. The scent of herbs and what his hungry stomach identified as fresh tomato sauce reminded him that he had eaten very little at breakfast and it was now well after one o’clock.

  From somewhere off the hall he could hear a piano being played and two pretty if slightly wavery voices singing. A tall man with a mane of steel-grey curls stood beside the kitchen range, stirring a pot from which the enticing fragrance issued. A second man, this one smaller, plumper and rather bald, washed salad at the Belfast sink.

  ‘That smells good.’ Mac couldn’t help himself.

  Rina Martin turned and raised an eyebrow. She gestured towards the taller man. ‘Mr Matthew Montmorency,’ she said, ‘and Mr Steven Montmorency. This is Detective Inspector Sebastian McGregor. Please, do sit down. You make the place look untidy.’

  Mac sat dow
n with alacrity. Making the place untidy was, he felt, probably a sin around here. Matthew Montmorency inclined his grey head. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Apparently,’ Rina said, ‘Inspector McGregor has just come from interviewing Mrs Freer.’

  ‘That poor woman!’ Steven Montmorency spoke this time. ‘First her husband going off like that and then all this – and it’s not as if she has any health left.’

  ‘Quite.’ Rina silenced him.

  ‘Gone off?’ Mac asked.

  ‘He died,’ Rina said quietly. ‘Steven has something of an aversion to speaking about death.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Was it recent?’

  Rina shook her head. ‘No, it must be seven years ago, eight maybe. But they’d been together since she was sixteen and he wasn’t much older. It was a terrible blow.’

  Mac nodded. ‘It must have been. Mrs Martin, do you know Mrs Freer well?’

  ‘Well enough. I call in twice a week and see if she needs anything. She has a care package, or so they call it, and a woman comes to do shopping and pay bills and the like. But there are some things she doesn’t like her to get. Personal things, you know.’

  Mac didn’t know but he wasn’t sure he was going to ask.

  ‘I wash her sheets and keep the bed nice.’ Rina shook her head. ‘There’s not much I can do about the house – she’s too proud to let me or anyone else clean and scrub for her – but I think if she can at least sleep in clean sheets, that’s something.’

  ‘And the flowers?’

  Rina shrugged. ‘Hearts ease. Did you know that was the old name for pansies?’

  Mac replied honestly that he hadn’t known that.

  ‘It’s a good name. They do ease the heart, I think. Such cheerful little plants. She doesn’t get out into the back yard much at this time of year but at least she can see something colourful from the kitchen window.’