Chapter 10 — Morning and Raine Again
The hard-backed chair proved oddly comfortable, and Grey had soon begun writing his notes of the conversation with Campbell Leigh. After half an hour though he knew that whatever he hadn’t got down by then he would have to trust to memory, and cutting the light moved to the easy chair.
Lying there he thought deeply on the mystery surrounding the building he now quite fittingly found himself residing in. How frustrating that the body needed sleep and that the world shut down for the night, when there was so much he felt mere hours away from learning — of Stella’s marriage, and of she and Charlie’s time as Councillors. He would know it soon though; indeed may already have some of that intel waiting for him at the office if Sarah had stayed late at her desk that evening; while Cori would find her portion out tomorrow.
Grey summed up what he had though: two people killed in different but equally brutal and simplistic ways — ways simple for this killer as they were evidently strong and could rely on overpowering with hands or killing with one blow. A woman could be just as cruel a killer, but this suspect was a man, Grey was becoming certain. The picture formed itself in all but face: tall, broad-shouldered, thick-armed. Going on their best guesses so far, then the killer could get themself into a building at night unnoticed, and could track Charlie all the way from the Cedars to the Hills Estate before striking; nor were they squeamish at death, seemingly as at liberty to get themselves out of these situations as into them, without a hint of hysteria at the horrors they had caused or panic leaving careless clues behind.
He made another assumption: that unless they had retained terrific strength into old age then they were not of the victim’s generation; nor he expected residents of the home, which, though this was a generalisation, seemed as caring and friendly a place as he could imagine. What of the staff: Rachel, Ellie? Similarly ridiculous.
What else could he suppose? A criminal background? There was little technique in the killer’s methods, but they were carried out quickly and cleanly, with a minimum of fuss; but where was the theft, the gain, the reason any criminal would need to risk such action? Military then? A background in battle might indeed account for their acceptance of death and calmness in killing — a soldier gone bad could be a terrifying thing. Then Grey caught himself — had the suggestion that Stella’s husband had been in the Services influenced his train of thought along this track? Anyway, he had purportedly been a sailor, and they weren’t trained to kill in close quarters, were they? And from what Campbell Leigh had said, if alive then her husband would be older than the Cedars residents by now.
He tried to get the picture these thoughts formed into as clear a focus as possible; yet as always with such speculation he knew that it could gain nothing, leading you along as many wrong roads as right, while forming conclusions that may be swept away with the next piece of hard evidence — whatever that may turn out to be.
The next morning he woke to find the first residents down for breakfast. Perhaps having someone fast asleep beside you as you ate was commonplace here, but still…
Ellie, fixing trays to arms of chairs for bowls and plates to sit on, broke from this task to bring him a cup of coffee, leaning over and whispering,
‘We’re going to tell them about Charlie in a bit; best you’re not here, just familiar faces.’
Grey noted that the coffee, though properly made, was in a cardboard cup. He took the hint and taking his notes with him left that dedicated woman to her ministrations.
Stopping home only for a shower and change of clothes, he arrived at the station early to find his office door locked. He hoped this meant that something had been left for him, as he normally kept nothing confidential there; and sure enough upon entering found a card file left on his desk bearing a sticky note from Sarah,
‘ Marriage details enclosed, copy of certificate in the post. Dentist’s appointment, be in later, Sarah. ’
Assuming the last part referred to herself, which given that Sarah’s teeth always seemed to Grey like two bands of ivory then he couldn’t imagine what work she needed doing, he sat down to read the folder’s contents. The print out, taken from a computerised archive of paper documents, confirmed the name Samuel Mars and his profession: which far from sailor (which was always unlikely in such land-locked country) instead read “Teacher”. They had been married in the church in town in June, Nineteen Sixty-five.
‘You qualified in Sixty-three,’ Grey muttered. ‘You met him teaching, you married two years later.’
‘Am I interrupting, sir?’ This was Sarah, just arrived.
‘I thought you were late in?’
‘It is nine thirty.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is. Thank you for finding this.’
‘There’s more, sir.’
He turned to the second printed page, and found the system had cleverly — if bleakly — linked the record of marriage to that of their divorce.
‘Nineteen Seventy-four — the year she left the Council in absentia,’ he recalled Campbell Leigh’s phrase, ‘and pitched up at Tudor Oak Independent School still under the name Mars.’
‘But look at the reason, sir.’
‘”Abandonment”; and as it’s he who lodged proceedings, then does that mean that it was she who abandoned him?’
‘We’ll find out when the copies of the original records arrive, boss.’
‘And there’s something else: I think there might have been at least one child.’
‘Well, we know the name and the timespan now which helps; and as we know they lived locally I’ll get going through the town records this morning, save having to send away for a copy.’
‘You might find the Sergeant there.’
Just then the office phone rang, Grey answering,
‘Inspector Rase?’
It was reception, ‘Inspector, there’s a Mrs Rossiter and Miss Painter here, with financial records you asked to see? They said you were expecting them this morning.’
Raine Rossiter, with the paperwork of the flat transactions. Grey had quite forgotten about them.
‘Show them up, please, and ask want drinks they want.’
‘Very good.’
He passed the file to Sarah, ‘Keep these safe.’ Just then the phone rang again.
‘I can’t answer it here.’
‘Leave is, sir, and it will trip over to the mess room. I can answer it there.’ And with that she left to take the message, just as the two women were shown up to the Inspector’s office.
‘Hello, Inspector. ‘
‘Mrs Rossiter.’
‘You remember Andrea, she helped me gather our records together.’
Andrea was indeed the one holding the document box. Drinks and biscuits were soon brought into the sunlit office.
So close were the public offices of Southney situated to each other, that in her short walk between the police station and library, and across the gardens that formed something of a town square, Sarah Cobb also passed the civic buildings where unbeknown to her their two murder victims had once met to debate the future of their town; a future Sarah’s generation took for granted as their unavoidable present, with the notions that the present town they lived in had ever been decided on or that different decisions might have been made back then both quite absent from her mind. The Inspector had once tagged his researcher an “Easy optimist”, and had done so with envy.
‘Morning,’ chirped Sarah to the librarian at the front desk. ‘Births, marriages and deaths?’
‘Hello, dear. I’ll buzz you through.’
A frequent visitor, Sarah had no need now to introduce herself or explain her business, as the lady she knew by now to be the Senior Librarian took her through a pass-carded door from the public areas and down to where the town archive and the records of next-door’s registry office were kept for those who asked and were authorised to see it.
‘Any era in particular?’
‘Sixty-five to Seventy-four.’
‘I might know the name for you.’
