***
Wendy’s address, even though it was walking distance to the cemetery, was further away than Larry’s, almost five hundred yards.
The house appeared empty, no light on inside, not even a sound when she placed her ear against the front door. To her, it looked more promising than Larry’s address.
A white-painted house with a bay window, it was in good condition, and the street was well maintained, although there were roadworks at one end of it, a house being renovated two doors away.
Wendy knocked on the front door four times, each time harder than the previous one. Eventually, a stirring, a light at the rear of the house. The door opened, a woman dressed in black stood in front of Wendy. Whatever it was that she had disturbed, she didn’t like the look of it.
‘What is it?’ the woman, in her fifties, jet-black hair combed straight and down to her waist, said.
‘Sergeant Wendy Gladstone, Challis Street Police Station. I need to speak to Flora Soubry.’
‘Don’t know why. I thought it was someone from down the street complaining, no idea why, but people can be difficult when they don’t understand.’
‘If you have problems with them, it’s nothing to do with me. It’s Flora Soubry that I need to see; one question.’
‘Come in. We’re odd, that’s what you’ll think.’
A house in total darkness, heavy curtains closed, a woman in her fifties, her hair jet-black and down her back. Yes, Wendy thought, it was odd, but no different than some other houses she had been in over the years: devil-worshippers, mad all of them, and then those who were dressed as characters out of nursery rhymes, not forgetting the house with swingers, the couples pairing off with whoever. She had been younger then, following up on a complaint, the swingers not only inviting her in but asking her to join them. She had beaten a hasty retreat, arranged for a couple of policemen in uniform to sort it out. They had returned to the station after a couple of hours to a rousing cheer from the others; Wendy had updated her colleagues on what she had seen there, and whereas there was no proof that the two had succumbed, one of them a lay preacher at his local church, it hadn’t stopped the ribbing.
In the back room where the light had first appeared, five women sat around a table, a Ouija board in the middle.
‘A séance?’ Wendy said.
‘We communicate with the dead,’ one of the women said.
It seemed more benign than some other situations she had seen over the years, although Wendy didn’t like it. Summoning spirits, attempting to communicate with the dead, didn’t sit well with her. She’d do what she had come for and then leave.
‘I’m looking for a Flora Soubry,’ Wendy said.
‘That’s me,’ a woman with a high-pitched voice said, her hand on the board. Wendy found it hard to imagine that this woman, clothed in black, the same as the woman who had answered the door, could wear colourful clothing and footwear, although out of the house all of them would have been indistinguishable from the majority, and London was awash with the eccentric, the mad, the weird, and now, one murderer.
‘You bought a pair of sandals from a shop in Knightsbridge?’
‘A week ago, a good price.’
‘Do you have them with you?’
‘I do. In the other room.’
‘Can you show me?’
The woman got up from the chair, taking her hand away from the board, and opened the door to her right. In the other room, the women’s everyday clothes on hangers. She knelt down, picked up the sandals.
Wendy took a photo as proof and went back to the other room. ‘Do you believe in this?’ she said, looking down at the Ouija board.
‘We do,’ one of the other ladies said.
‘Why are you here?’ Flora Soubry asked.
‘A woman who bought the same sandals as you, the same size, was murdered. The sandals are the only clue we have.’
‘How tragic. Can we help?’
‘Communicating with the dead, hardly investigative, not sure it’s even admissible as evidence,’ Wendy said.
‘Everyone is sceptical until they have proof.’
Wendy left the house. The five women had a new focus for that night; finding out the identity of the dead woman. They couldn’t fail any more miserably than Homicide.
Chapter 6
An impasse. That was how Isaac saw it. As the senior investigating officer, it was his responsibility to deal with the murder investigation, the reason that Jenny was mildly annoyed that night.
She had been excited to tell him about her day and how they were going to decorate the baby’s room, or whether they should buy a house instead of staying in the two-bedroom flat in Willesden.
He was distant, although he had tried to be interested, a woman’s death troubling him. Eventually Jenny, tiring of the stilted conversation, left him and went to bed.
He went and sat in the living room, picked up a book, scanned the first few pages, tried to read it but couldn’t. From the other room, the sounds of Jenny asleep. It was where he should be, where he went. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Rough day, not getting any better either.’
Jenny rolled over, looked at him through semi-closed eyes and gave him a kiss. ‘It’s what I signed up for,’ she said.
And it was, they both knew that when she had first moved in with him. The long hours, the weekends away cancelled at the last minute, the romantic candlelit dinners in the flat, just the two of them, disturbed on more than one occasion. The lot of a police officer’s wife was difficult, and Isaac had had more than one broken romance when a lover had said she could deal with the long hours on her own, the uncommunicative nature of her man at the end
