‘It’s army housing, end of a row, detached. You think there’s something wrong with the house?’
‘It might be one explanation. If it was a house where… perhaps people couldn’t settle, where successive occupants felt unhappy, had marital problems, sickness… then new people living there might well get a sense of that.’
‘You’re so matter-of-fact about all this, aren’t you?’
Fiona shook her head slowly, as if her senses were adjusting to the atmosphere of another planet.
‘I’m familiar with it, that’s all,’ Merrily said. ‘But Syd didn’t have much patience with any of it. Out of his comfort zone.’
‘They don’t do comfort,’ Fiona said. ‘Neither do I. But – I’m sorry – this is beyond reason. This is mad.’
‘What did you find?’
Fiona unwound her scarf as if it was choking her. The green glow of the end window lit the side of her face, making her look faintly sick.
‘I went upstairs. If it was going to be my home, I had every right. Have to work out where to put the furniture, much of which is still in store.’
‘Sure.’
‘The house has three bedrooms. Two were full of boxes of stuff, waiting to be unpacked. The master bedroom… well, it was empty. As if it had been burgled or something. No clothes in the wardrobe. And the dressing table… all the drawers had been pulled out, as far as they’d go. All empty.’
‘I see.’
In the green window, a figure – possibly the poet, Traherne himself – was running along a path towards a conical wooded hill. Fiona was slowly winding the ends of her scarf around her hands, pulling it tight.
‘That means something to you?’
‘It might. Go on.’
‘The mirror had a dust cloth draped over it, although there was no visible dust. The whole room was extremely clean and bare. The bed had been pulled away from the wall, almost into the middle of the floor, the bedclothes pulled back but not removed. Oh-and there was no carpet. It had been rolled up and put into one of the other bedrooms. And… there was a trail of white, making a circle around the bed.’
‘Salt.’
‘A lot of salt. How did you know?’
‘Salt’s part of the mix for holy water, sprinkled during a clearance. An exorcism, if you like. But it can also be used on its own.’
‘Christ.’
‘Anything else?’
‘And on the wall, opposite the window, there was a large wooden cross I’d never seen before.’
Probably to catch the first rays of the morning sun.
‘Sam’s never done much of that – crosses and pictures. Nothing ostentatious. He says you should hold whatever you have in your… your heart. The only thing he used to keep in the bedroom was his Bible. Not a Gideon-type Bible in the bedside cabinet, this was a massive old family Bible, half the size of a paving slab.’
‘An heirloom?’
‘No. He bought it. Just before he was ordained. Symbolic, I suppose. Something big and heavy that you couldn’t just slip into your pocket. A necessary burden. I…’ Fiona spread her hands. ‘I don’t know. With Sam, there were always things you didn’t ask. It had brass bindings and a lock, and he used to keep it on top of the wardrobe and get it down to dust it every Sunday. The odd thing is that it wasn’t there. There was nothing on top of the wardrobe. Not even dust.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I got out of there. I felt… quite cold.’
Fiona took both her hands out of her scarf and laid them on top of it. Her wedding ring was iridescent in the blazing stained-glass light. Merrily stood up, turned to watch the figure that might be Thomas Traherne moving away along the path up the wooded hill which might be Credenhill. Traherne had been the vicar at the church below the hill. She had a strong feeling there was history here that Fiona wasn’t yet prepared to disclose.
‘Those things you didn’t ask…’
‘I don’t have the knowledge. Do I?’
‘How about if I ask them?’
‘That might be helpful. If you don’t mind.’
‘OK.’ Merrily picked up her bag. ‘Your car or mine?’
23
Billy Grace had found bruising around the pubic area in both cases but no traces of semen, and no internal damage. Neither Maria nor Ileana Marinescu had been raped. Or, it seemed, had recent sex of any kind.
‘So… was there an attack with intent to rape?’ Bliss said to the class. ‘Or was it something random? Group of lads coming back from the pub, spot these two on their own, maybe wander over, see what’s on offer.’
‘Maybe simply thinking they were prostitutes?’ Darth Vaynor said.
They had decent CCTV now, of the girls entering and leaving the Grapes in Church Street at 9.45 p.m. On their own, both times. Nobody following them.
‘Very drunk, presumably, the attackers,’ Rich Ford said, the veteran uniform inspector. ‘And then it gets progressively out of hand.’
About fifteen of them in the incident room, including seven uniforms and Slim Fiddler and Joanna Priddy from crime-scene.
Rich Ford, months off retirement, glanced over his shoulder, cleared his throat.
‘Perhaps I should mention that while the two Lithuanian gentlemen helped into the hospitality lounge in the early hours were completely pissed – one vomiting profusely all over the reception desk – neither had any blood on him. We did manage to talk to them this morning before they were checked out, and it was fairly clear that neither of them had seen – or at least remembered seeing – anything untoward.’
Statistics showed overwhelmingly that most crimes against economic migrants in Hereford were committed by other migrants. Maybe retribution for non-payment of business protection or the required percentage for procurement of employment. Neither of which seemed to apply to the Marinescu sisters.
‘However, if this is to do with some existing conflict we know nothing about,’ Rich said, ‘there’s likely to be retaliation, isn’t there? Could be trouble on the streets tonight – and that could give us an in.’
‘If the girls had been on the game,’ Bliss said, ‘we’d have to consider the possibility that they’d intruded on someone else’s street corner or pub of choice… or failed to cough up the agreed percentage of their earnings to the pimp.’
‘Which in this case would be Goldie,’ Darth Vaynor said. ‘And we don’t have any reason to think Goldie’s lying about them not being involved in prostitution.’
Slim Fiddler grunted.
‘Less they was doing a foreigner?’
‘Can’t be ruled out,’ Bliss said. ‘Or, as Darth said, that somebody thought they were on the game. We’ll come back to that. Let’s just deal with the second possible motive – robbery.’
Turning to Brian Wilton, the office manager, who brought up on the monitor a picture of the pale blue handbag found in Bishop’s Meadow down by the river. A twin to the one Bliss had seen in East Street.
‘Contents emptied out,’ Brian said. ‘Wallet-type purse found in the Cathedral Close, empty. Bits of make-up kit also picked up between the Cathedral and the river.’
‘Likely to be DNA,’ Slim Fiddler said. ‘We’re still waiting.’
‘Also, that lays a bit of a trail.’ Bliss went over to the blown-up street map, tapped it with his pen. ‘Quickest way from East Street to the Cathedral Close is through this little alleyway, almost directly across the street from
