“She’s been up here all right,” Fairbrother said. “And heads are going to fucking roll. Even I missed this. Shit.”
“Let’s just find her—don’t worry about it.” Langham left the room and moved down the hallway to another door that had blood on the threshold. “In here!”
A double bed, like something out of the past with its ancient bedspread. Time hadn’t moved on. Oddly, considering the amount of blood clues up to this point so far, this room didn’t appear to have any inside. Something clonked, and Langham cocked his head, trying to work out where the noise had come from.
“You do the honours,” he said to Fairbrother, nodding at a built-in cupboard.
Langham stood back and waited in case the woman burst out and barrelled into them. Fairbrother crept to the cupboard and looked like he wished he were anywhere but there. He tugged on the small handle, and the door creaked open. Langham held his breath, his stomach contents souring, but no one charged out, no one screeched or attacked.
The cupboard seemed deep—and dark.
Fairbrother produced a torch, flicked it on, then shone it inside.
Langham moved closer. The old woman sat on the floor, her cheek on her shoulder, as though she were just taking a nap. Blood covered her clothes, her hair clumped with it, and a bottle of some description was on the floor beside her. It rocked—must have been what that clonk was—and vomit, thick and lumpy, coated the fabric of her top over one breast.
“She dead?” Langham asked.
Fairbrother stepped back. “D’you want to be the one to find out? Fucked if I want to touch her.”
Langham swallowed. Picked up a small compact mirror off the dresser. Took Fairbrother’s torch and stepped into the cupboard, bracing himself for the woman to wake up, see him, and freak the fuck out. He went up close, holding the mirror beneath her nose, pointing the torch beam at her face. Her skin had a greenish pallor, the wrinkles somehow grey at the edges. Her eyes were closed, and crusts of blood had lifted from her face, on the verge of drifting away.
He concentrated on his task. Held his breath.
No mist on the mirror.
“She’s long gone, I think.” Langham put the mirror in the hand he held the torch with. He breathed through his mouth, battling the urge to be sick, and took her wrist in hand so he could check for a pulse. Didn’t find one. “Yep, gone.”
He stepped out of the cupboard. Released a sigh—one of relief that he wasn’t in such a confined space with a once-crazy old woman. The stench was also getting to him—alcohol-laced vomit wasn’t one of the better things he’d smelt.
“We’ve got to be bloody mad,” Langham said, “to do this job.”
“You have,” Fairbrother said. “You’re on holiday, yet still you’re willing to get in there with a blood-covered, sick-riddled old woman. Something wrong with you, mate.”
Langham nodded. “Maybe.”
Or maybe I’m just married to my fucking job. Maybe I’ve just been pretending, kidding myself that I can take a break and forget it for a while. Trying to be someone I’m not—someone who can walk away from what’s a part of him.
The thoughts bothered him so much he left the room, going into the bar to ask for a statement pad. He scribbled down what had happened since he’d got here. When Fairbrother appeared again, Langham handed it over.
“Here’s my statement. Saves holding your paperwork up while I’m in Spain or wherever we end up going—you know, you waiting for me to get back and whatever. I need to get away from here. I should never have come out.”
“I did wonder,” Fairbrother said. “But thanks all the same. For, you know…”
“Like I said, don’t worry about it. She’s found now. No one needs to know she was missed the first time or that I arrived after the initial search.” He raised his hand in farewell and stepped past the cordon that had been erected around the old man.
Outside, he sucked in some much-needed fresh air. A shiver ran through him, and an image of the old woman in the cupboard loomed in his mind. He glanced at the swinging sign. Shuddered and hunched his shoulders to try to stop the gusts of wind sneaking down his shirt collar. He walked to Simmons’. Went straight upstairs, knocked on Oliver’s door.
Oliver opened it, his hair tousled, face flushed. “There are several people in a strawberry patch out the back of the pub.”
“Yep, bones have been found.”
“She did them all in, you know. The old woman,” Oliver said.
“Yep, nutty as a fucking fruitcake, that one.”
“I got the sense her head was broken,” Oliver said.
Hers wasn’t the only one… “Yep, she can’t have been right up top. And if you know why she did it, maybe leave it until we get back from abroad before you report it in? I’ve just found the batty old bird in a cupboard of all places. Seems like she killed a bloke—caved his head in with a poker by the looks of it—then must have taken some pills or something. Had a bottle of booze in there, and she’d puked on herself. May well have brought up a load of tablets but choked on her vomit. Possibly suffocated. I don’t know, but I can’t wait to get out of here. Get the hell away.”
Chapter Fifteen
With Randall’s revelations, clarity had come. Jackson would have preferred that clarity to have hit him after the kill,
