Identity Crisis (4 page)

Without warning, her rear view mirror shone with the dazzling, dancing reflection from full beam headlights. Jo suffered a moment’s heart-stopping panic before she saw the accompanying red and blue flashing lights. Almost immediately, the driver appeared by her window, a torch beam pointed upward, displaying his uniform and face.

Binns walked round the front of the car, his shadow elongated by the headlights. He waited as Jo unlocked the doors. ‘Dr Grey?’

She nodded.

‘Very sensible precaution,’ he said approvingly as he slid into the seat alongside her. ‘I’m Sergeant Binns. Although most people call me Jack.’ He flipped open his warrant card for confirmation.

‘Thank you for coming,’ she gasped, the relief echoing in her voice. ‘You’ve no idea how glad I am to see you.’

‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get here. We’re short-handed due to the storm. Added to that I’d to take a detour: fallen trees. Helmsdale road’s completely blocked. Heaven knows what time they’ll get it open again. The fire service has any number of emergencies to deal with. Every one of their men and appliances are out.’ He paused and added sourly, ‘They’re lucky they’ve got the manpower to call on. I had to come here via Wintersett.’

‘I’m just glad you got here,’ Jo told him. ‘What do we do now?’

‘My orders are to stay with you until DS Mironova arrives.’ Binns smiled at her. ‘I spoke to her whilst I was on my way, to warn her about the road conditions. She’ll be at least another half an hour. Would you like to fill me in on the details whilst we’re waiting?’

Binns listened to Jo’s story in silence. ‘What do you think?’ she asked when she’d finished.

He hesitated before replying. ‘It isn’t easy to imagine an innocent explanation,’ he told her frankly. ‘I’m not the detective though, and any speculation we indulge in might be totally off
the mark. We’ll leave the detective work to CID. I can tell you that I checked with Netherdale General and the cottage hospital at Bishopton, just to be on the safe side, and there have been no patients admitted in the last week matching your sister’s description.’ He paused. ‘Not unless she was having a baby,’ he added with a smile. ‘I hadn’t time to widen my enquiries further afield because I thought it was more important to get out here. I can organize that fairly quickly though, if needs be. One thought that did occur to me as I pulled up. There appears to be no sign of another car, apart from yours, I mean. I take it your sister must have one, living out here?’

Jo looked round for a second, perplexed. It was almost as if she expected Vanda’s car to materialise out of the darkness. It was a measure of her state of mind that she hadn’t thought to check. ‘I didn’t look,’ she confessed. ‘They both garage their cars in the old mill. Vanda and her husband, that is.’

‘Is it that building I caught a glimpse of as I came down the drive?’

Jo nodded. ‘It used to be a corn mill, but the building has been disused for years. The doorway where they loaded the flour sacks on to wagons is ideal for cars, just like the entrance to a double garage.’

Binns was about to say something, when the glare from a set of headlights signalled Mironova’s arrival. ‘DS Mironova’s made better time than I thought,’ Binns said.

Clara swung across the front of the Mercedes and parked at right angles. Her headlights illuminated the back of the house. She waited for a few seconds, her hand hovering by the ignition key as she surveyed the scene, assessing the house and surrounds. Take your time, she thought. Work through it like Nash would do. Pretend you’ve to report back to him. Which, she added mentally, you might have to yet.

‘What’s she doing?’ Jo asked Binns. ‘Why hasn’t she got out of the car?’

‘At a guess, I’d say she was weighing things up, assessing the scene.’ Binns narrowly avoided adding the word ‘crime’.

He might not have said it but Jo didn’t miss the significance.

The first thing Clara noticed was the milk bottles. They were in a small crate with four partitions, two of which contained full pint bottles. Helmsdale and the surrounding district was one of the few remaining areas that boasted a doorstep delivery service. Even the mighty supermarkets hadn’t been able to devise a way of supplying a host of remote properties regularly, so it was left to the traditional milkmen. Assuming that the local supplier delivered daily, those bottles would have been on the doorstep since Friday morning. That meant Dr Grey’s sister had either forgotten to take them in or…. Clara’s lips tightened as she considered the alternative. Which in turn, meant that whatever misfortune had befallen Mrs Dawson had taken place as early as the previous day.

She stared at the gravel on the end of the drive and the approach to the house. The large chippings were more the size of aggregate. Their normally chalk-white colour was stained a muddy shade of brown in places. Clara looked across towards
the bank of the stream, partly in shadow, partly lit from the headlights of both cars. The level of the water, she could just about make out, was close to the top of the bank. Although the water was contained now, it was less than twenty-four hours since the River Helm had been in danger of flooding this area. Clara guessed this stream, a tributary to the Helm, must have been far higher. Was this significant? Could it have any bearing on what had happened to Mrs Dawson?

Clara was about to turn the ignition off when her attention was drawn to something moving in the wind. She flicked the headlights to main beam and concentrated her gaze on the back wall of the house. It was a few seconds before she saw the movement again and this time she was able to identify the source. It was a piece of cable, unattached, swinging loosely in the wind. TV aerial? Exterior light? Certainly her arrival hadn’t attracted the attention of a motion-sensitive security light.

Her gaze travelled upwards. She leaned forward in her seat, unbuckling the seat belt so she could get a view of the wall right up to the eaves. Her expression took on a grimmer cast. The cable was neither from a TV aerial or an outside light. It was the telephone line. But what had caused it to split? Most people would have identified the storm as being the prime suspect. But Nash had trained her not to think like most people. She now had two mental notes. One, to check the milkman’s delivery schedule. The second, to check that loose wire; find out whether it had snapped, or whether it had been cut. Clara reached over to the glove compartment and took out a large torch. Only then did she get out of the car.

As soon as she saw Mironova emerge, Jo struggled out of the Mercedes. Binns followed suit. ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Dr Grey told Clara, shouting over the noise of the wind. Her voice conveyed her fear, her pent-up stress and her concern for her sister.

Clara put a hand on the woman’s arm, comforting as best as she was able. ‘Don’t worry, Dr Grey. It might be a lot of fuss over nothing. Let’s get on with it. Sergeant Binns and I need to go through the house, examine everything in detail. In normal
circumstances, I’d insist you wait in the car, but as long as you obey our instructions, I think on this occasion, we can bend the rules a bit.’ She smiled. ‘After all, you’ve already been inside, and you might be able to help.’

Waiting outside, inactive, alone, with only her most morbid thoughts for company was the last thing Jo wanted. With an effort that was almost as much physical as mental, she pulled herself together. ‘Yes, of course, if you think I could be of any use.’

‘You know the house, we don’t,’ Clara told her. ‘I don’t just mean the layout, but you’d know if things were out of place, or if there was something missing. Bring those notes Sergeant Binns asked you to make.’

‘Clara, before I come in,’ Binns said. ‘I’ll go across to the old mill and see if there are any cars parked there. Dr Grey said her sister uses it as a garage.’

‘OK, then come and join us,’ she yelled.

Mironova walked round to the rear of her car. The rain had ceased temporarily, which was a blessing, but the wind was blowing just as hard. She fought to open the boot and delved into her crime-scene bag. She slipped a few evidence bags into her coat pocket then removed three pairs of latex gloves and plastic overshoes. She passed one set of each to Binns before taking Dr Grey’s arm and guiding her towards the house. As they walked across the gravel, she handed Jo the protective clothing.

Jo took them, hating what they represented. ‘I want you to follow what I do and where I go,’ Clara told her. ‘I’m going to attempt to avoid walking where anyone else might have walked, and I want you to do the same. I’m sure you’ve seen the drill on TV; and I’m not trying to insult your intelligence. That way, if a crime has been committed here we stand less chance of contaminating any trace evidence.’

‘It’s all right. I understand.’ Jo had gone from close to hysterical to subdued now, overwhelmed by the horrific insinuations of the detective’s actions and words. The routine donning of protective equipment, the matter-of-fact assumption that they were entering a crime scene was overpowering her already overstretched nerves.

‘I’m not saying this is a crime scene,’ Mironova startled her by saying. It was almost as if she had read Jo’s thoughts. Or, possibly the fact that she was more accustomed to dealing with relatives than professionals in just such situations. ‘All I mean,’ she continued, ‘is that it would be too late once we’re inside.’ Clara paused outside the porch. ‘Did you do anything apart from switch the light on and open the door? Wipe your feet, for instance?’

The question was a simple one, yet Jo couldn’t for the life of her remember. ‘I … I’m not sure,’ she answered slowly. ‘I might have done.’

‘Not easy to remember. A straightforward act like that, it’s a reflex action. The brain hardly registers that it’s happened.’ Mironova opened the outer door with her gloved hand; the bulb glowed as feebly as earlier. Clara muttered something mildly impolite, which as far as Jo could gather was directed at global-warming activists.

Mironova stepped over the threshold in to the wide porch, paused on the doormat to pull the overshoes on, then took a long stride that carried her beyond the direct route between the doors. Whilst she waited for Jo to follow suit, Clara examined the broken pane in the kitchen door using the strong beam from her torch to supplement the overhead light. She turned her attention downward, playing the beam here and there in an attempt to pick up reflections from broken glass. There were one or two, certainly not a significant amount.

When Jo was alongside her, Mironova reached forward and opened the inner door. The ceiling lights were bright by comparison. ‘That’s better,’ she breathed. Instead of stepping into the kitchen Clara bent down and shone her torch inwards, along the tiled surface of the kitchen floor. The beam picked up a lot more glass fragments, confirming her suspicions.

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, I’d turned the lights on and didn’t want to go back to turn them off once Sergeant Binns had phoned. The place was in total darkness when I arrived.’

‘Don’t worry about that, as long as we know.’

Mironova took another long stride into the kitchen and waited for Jo to join her. When she did, Clara looked down at the doctor’s
feet. Jo always wore trainers when she was driving. Those, the jeans and the denim coat were almost a uniform. ‘You’ve very small feet, even for a woman.’

‘Size five may be small, but my sister Vanda’s feet are even smaller. I don’t know if she still does, but she used to wear children’s shoes. Said she got them a lot cheaper when kids’ clothing didn’t have VAT on. One thing about these trainers, they’ve a very distinctive pattern.’ She pointed across the floor to a series of muddy footprints. ‘See those, with the diamond pattern on the sole. They’re mine.’

‘And,’ Clara added, ‘if you say Mrs Dawson’s feet are smaller than yours, whose are the others? At a guess I’d say they’re more like a size nine or even ten.’ Which meant they were most likely a man’s footprints. Mironova didn’t say it. She didn’t need to. ‘We’ll wait here for Sergeant Binns.’

As they did, Clara looked around the room. She pointed towards the corner by the kitchen door. ‘The pane in the door was smashed from the outside. Afterwards someone swept most of the fragments up. Probably with that dustpan and brush.’

She looked at the partly prepared food on the worktop. As Mironova pondered the implications of this, Binns arrived. ‘The mill was all locked up, but I shone a torch through the window. There’s a blue Peugeot 307 inside,’ he reported.

‘That’s Vanda’s car. Brian keeps the mill locked at all times. He told Vanda that he didn’t want anyone nicking either car, and with the place being so secluded it would make an easy target.’

Clara saw the distress in her face. Better distract her, get her involved. Less time to dwell on things. Even as she thought it, Mironova was aware of the grave implications of their recent find. ‘OK, we’ll have to move carefully,’ she pointed across the floor. ‘I don’t want to mess up those prints. So, we’ll go round this way.’ Mironova pointed round the back of the central workstation. She led the way, pausing by the food on the worktop. There was a piece of steak, lying on a sheet of kitchen roll. The meat juices had leeched on to the paper, leaving a dark brown stain. Clara bent and sniffed at it. She made no comment, but Binns noticed his colleague’s expression was sombre. Jo Grey was very much aware
of the implication. They moved round the island and reached the entrance to the hall, where Clara stepped through. There were three doors leading off. Lounge, dining room and cloakroom, Clara guessed. Towards the front of the house were the stairs leading to the upper storey. ‘Did you look in every room?’

Weariness and stress were making Jo tetchy. ‘Of course I did. Upstairs as well as down.’

‘Were all the doors closed when you arrived?’

‘Yes. I left them open when I looked for Vanda. Why, is that important?’

‘It might be. If you’re staying in, you usually leave one or two doors open. Closing them is more the action of someone leaving the house. Is this the lounge?’ Mironova gestured to the nearest doorway.

Jo nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Clara was heading towards the open door when she heard the sound of a phone ringing. As she thrust the door wider the sound ceased; a voice said, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’

If Jo had been startled earlier, Mironova was shocked rigid. She took a deep breath. ‘You might have warned me,’ she muttered as she eyed the parrot.

‘I’d other things on my mind,’ Jo answered tartly.

Mironova inspected the room. Before she began to look closely, she tried to imagine how Nash would have tackled the job. She started by noting the position of each piece of furniture, then turned her attention to the smaller items. Her interest centred on the TV remote control. It was on top of the display cabinet located between the door and the TV.

‘That’s odd,’ she murmured.

‘What is?’ Binns asked.

‘The remote. To use it you’d have to get up and walk all the way across the room, whether you were in one of the armchairs or on the sofa. Which rather negates its purpose.’

Mironova stepped further into the room. From a different angle she could see the stain which had spooked Jo earlier. She walked slowly across the carpet, accompanied by the continuous interrogation from the parrot. ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ the
bird screeched repeatedly.

Clara ignored the grilling at first, but eventually the significance of the agitated squawking attracted her attention. She paused and looked back at Jo, who was hovering anxiously near the door. ‘Does that bird always ask the same questions when someone comes in the room?’

‘I’ve never heard him do that before. It must be something new Vanda’s taught him. He’s only a young bird, still learning his vocabulary.’

Mironova turned to look at the stain on the carpet. Rich, dark, red. The colour of blood. Except … She reached down, prodded it with the tip of her finger and sniffed at it. Looked up and smiled encouragingly at Dr Grey. ‘This isn’t blood. I can’t tell you for certain what vineyard it is, but it’s definitely red wine. Blood would have turned dark brown by now, like that around the steak in the kitchen.’ She shuffled sideways and caught the reflection of a stray beam of light on glass. ‘The wine glass it came from is under there.’ Clara pointed to the sofa. She looked at the TV listings magazine on the coffee table next to the armchair and examined it for a few seconds. ‘Does your sister like soaps?’ she asked. ‘
Coronation Street
, that sort of thing?’

‘Can’t get enough of them.’

‘OK, as far as I can tell, and it’s only guesswork, I’d say whatever happened to Mrs Dawson took place somewhere around 7.30 on Thursday evening. 8.30 at the latest.’

‘How do you work that out, Clara?’

‘For one thing, it had to be early evening, because she hadn’t cooked her meal. It had to be Thursday, because there wasn’t enough for two people. It might have been a day earlier of course.’

‘No, I spoke to her on Thursday afternoon,’ Jo told her.

‘How can you pin the time down?’ Binns asked Clara.

‘She was watching TV, enjoying a glass of wine. The listings magazine is opened at Thursday’s page, which confirms what Dr Grey just said. Whatever happened, when the TV was switched off someone put the remote over there. Nobody does that whilst they’re watching, otherwise they’d have to traipse all the way across to change channels. And given her liking for soaps, that’s
about the time they’re on.’