‘That’s it really. I’m afraid there’s even less for Derek Waldron: no police record, no wrong doing; though he is listed on the Internet as a member of various recognised professional bodies.’
‘What field?’
‘Architecture, sir. Civil engineering.’
‘I never did ask him what he’d done for a living.’
‘He’s been at the Cedars even longer, previously had his own house in town.’
‘Hardly Bonnie and Clyde are they.’
‘Not really, sir,’ she laughed.
But like minnows in the wake of a shark they disappeared as the footsteps of the Superintendent sounded behind them in the corridor,
‘Grey, my office?’
‘Eunice Prove, Eunice Prove,’ Superintendent Rose began once he and his Senior Investigative Officer were in his office, door closed. ‘You didn’t work on it, did you Grey?’
‘I think I was on another division at the time.’
‘The things they have us investigate, the animals they have us round up and try to keep penned.’
‘Sir?’
‘Your girl Sarah had found the file out of archive for you, but I took it from her as you weren’t here — it all came back to me reading it last night. I’ve just come back from the Assistant Chief Constable’s Office, by the way. You know I’ll be back there every day to give updates until these murders are sorted out?’
Grey took the hint. The Super continued,
‘A girl found bludgeoned — there’s no other word for it — bludgeoned in her own home, probably in broad daylight.’
‘Found by her father, I’ve been told,’ asked Grey as Rose passed him the file.
‘Indeed, though there was nothing like a coherent statement ever taken from him at the time — and you say it’s Stella Dunbar who’s been looking after him ever since?’
‘Seems like it, sir.’
‘This was as uncultured an attack as that on her father.’
‘Yet messier, more frenzied it sounds,’ mused Grey.
‘But the Eunice case doesn’t help us.’
‘No?’
‘This Oscar Skellet. Well, he turned up again, up to something like his old tricks.’
‘The boyfriend who fled back over the border?’
‘Well, it was presumed so, though the local police up there never found him. Anyway, he has since turned up: in Shotts Prison, jailed three years ago for three counts of aggravated assault.’
‘Of women?’
‘No, during a burglary of a warehouse at night. An amateur affair it reads like,’ the Super was now scanning a different set of printouts. ‘Apparently his colleagues testified against him, admitting to robbery and just trying to get off the assault charges. It looks as though that was never a part of the plan — easy in and easy out — but when they were disturbed this fellow Skellet went haywire, left a security guard and two others who answered the alarm in hospital, one of whom hasn’t worked since. Apparently his mates had known Oscar for years, didn’t know he had it in him.’
‘Which makes you wonder at what occurred during those last minutes with Eunice. But…’ Grey’s mind was working through the logistics. ‘But why weren’t we informed of his capture? Even before these two new murders, we had the Eunice Prove file open and unsolved with him listed as a key witness, if not as a suspect.’
‘An administrative oversight.’ The Super shook his head, ‘The fact had gotten lost in the system that we wanted him too. It happens, Grey. The Assistant Chief Constable has spoken to his counterpart up there and our paperwork is being sent to them now; and at least he’s inside in the meantime.’
‘But no help to us.’
‘Not in this case, no. Any other suspects?’
‘None obvious; but honestly, her life is like an onion and we’ve barely started peeling.’
‘Stella Dunbar’s?’
‘I’ve never known one so repressed. And as for Charlie, I’m not sure he’s belonged to the world since Eunice died.’
‘I’m told the Cedars Manager has form?’
‘Rachel Sowton? Minor stuff, and years ago. She loves the residents, would die for them I’d say.’
‘We’ve seen people kill family when they think it’s best.’
‘I don’t get any feeling about her at all.’
‘No, no, it doesn’t fly for me either.’
Grey shook his head, ‘That place is based on insulation. A member of staff described it to me last night as being somewhere with “less shocks than the world”, no noise, no bumps, no jolts. Neither victim seem to have been up to much once there, bar a bit of tutoring in Stella’s case — and we’ll have spoken to both of her current pupils by the end of the day, I hope.’
‘So it’s all over something that happened years before?’
‘But how far are back we going? Charlie’d been their fifteen years, Stella twenty-four.’
‘They knew each other before though?’
‘Yes, it seems so; but from what we’ve heard they were enemies during their time on the Council, fiercely opposed.’
‘Which only makes it more confusing. You’re confident it’s the same killer?’
‘There’s no reason why they couldn’t be, from what little we can deduce: tall, strong, cautious getting there and getting away.’
‘And absolutely no witnesses?’
‘They picked a busy building to enter to attack Stella, but struck either while everyone else was watching a TV program or had gone to bed; and then an equally busy estate to strike Charlie, but after midnight when even the most rebellious kids would have gone home.’
Rose pondered, ‘You say chose, but they didn’t choose the time for the second attack exactly, did they.’
The Inspector could sometimes forget that the Superintendent had himself been an officer: working through the uniformed and traffic divisions, as opposed to the investigative branch he himself had chosen, yet getting on to his elevated role through sheer effort and earned respect. No number of meetings with the Assistant Chief Constable could diminish that or take from the man’s experience. And here, despite all that was going on, he had found a chink of light in areas Grey could not fathom.
‘You mean, of course,’ the Inspector clarified for himself, ‘that though the killer picked the best moment to take on Charlie, they couldn’t have known when the disturbance with the ill resident on the ground floor would break out, when Charlie would be off down the road unguarded to follow. That is interesting.
‘You know, this follows on from something we were saying with Rachel Sowton last night: that if no one could have been expecting him at the Hills then he must have been followed from the Cedars; only I hadn’t thought it through, as if the killer couldn’t have known Charlie would be outside and vulnerable at that time then that means — what? — that they were stalking the place, awaiting an opportunity?’
Rose concurred, ‘It might not have been too difficult to have hung around outside there unnoticed, what with everything going on there lately, and watching out for comings and goings, lights turning on and off. I don’t know.’
The conversation hung on this point awhile, Grey’s mind working through the possibilities; but the Super’s logic held, he further suggesting,
‘Perhaps they intended to play the same trick they had the night before with Stella… before seeing the Constable watching the backdoor.’
‘Maybe,’ answered Grey distractedly.
‘There’s no internal suspects, you’re sure?’ his boss asked. ‘As it would suit them to attack him away from the Cedars, to draw attention away from themselves.’
‘Apart from the Duty manager, the only other non-resident in the building last night was the orderly, Ellie — who lives nearby and was there in ten minutes — who were both at Mr Carstairs’ side the whole time.’
