Foster relayed this to Marvel, then frowned at his phone before saying to Jonas, "I think he got cut off."
There was a short silence while Jonas felt bonded to Foster through the common experience of being hung up on by DCI Marvel, then Jonas told him about the b.u.t.ton on the roof. Foster said he was the vomit guy really but then seemed quite excited about taking a look anyway.
He wasn"t short but neither was he fit, so Jonas cupped his hands and boosted him on to the roof and pointed out the relevant section of guttering.
"Ooooh," said Foster with a happy smile. "Did you move it at all?"
"No."
"Excellent."
He asked Jonas to hand him his field bags and bemoaned his own stupidity at only bringing plastic instead of paper bags too.
"Only expected vomit, you see?" he reminded Jonas. "But you should always be prepared."
He continued to chat happily as he took several minutes measuring and photographing the b.u.t.ton in situ, then he picked it up with tweezers and put it in an evidence bag before lowering himself gingerly off the roof and on to the upturned bin which Jonas held steady for him.
He held the plastic bag up to the questionable light and they both examined the b.u.t.ton as if it were a goldfish they"d won at the fair.
"Nice spot," smiled Foster and, for the first time in days, Jonas felt like a real policeman.
"It was right here right here!" Marvel stood in the freezing rain holding the dustbin lid like a riot shield and pointing at his feet. "Right here here!"
He glared at Jonas, who deflected the look to Mike Foster, who shrugged for them both.
"Maybe someone moved it," said Foster in a helpful tone that showed Jonas he had no first-hand experience of DCI Marvel.
"You think think so?" said Marvel furiously. "The lid"s on the gra.s.s covering the vomit. Then the lid"s on the bin and the vomit is all washed away. You think someone moved the lid? You think so? You"re wasted at this forensics s.h.i.t! You should be a f.u.c.king so?" said Marvel furiously. "The lid"s on the gra.s.s covering the vomit. Then the lid"s on the bin and the vomit is all washed away. You think someone moved the lid? You think so? You"re wasted at this forensics s.h.i.t! You should be a f.u.c.king psychic psychic!" He hurled the bin lid across the garden. Dixie rushed from his hidey-hole all noise and thunder and little white teeth as the lid rolled into the fence and toppled to a standstill.
"Couldn"t we have fingerprinted that to find out who who?" said Reynolds tentatively.
"s.h.i.t!"
While Marvel stomped across the wet gra.s.s to retrieve the bin lid, Jonas and Mike Foster exchanged guilty looks, as if they were jointly responsible for whatever it was Marvel wanted to blame them for.
"I touched the lid," Jonas said quietly.
Reynolds rolled his eyes. "I"ll tell him."
Marvel returned, holding the lid by an edge.
"Jonas found a b.u.t.ton on the roof," said Foster with just the right note of submission.
Reynolds raised an interested eyebrow, but it was wasted on Marvel.
"I don"t give a s.h.i.t if Jonas found the f.u.c.king Rosetta Stone on the roof. I want to know what happened to the vomit vomit."
"I don"t know, sir," said Jonas when it became clear Marvel expected a response and that Foster was too cowed to give one.
"It was your job to keep the scene secure. Your f.u.c.king job job!"
Jonas flared a little. "With respect, sir, you said my job my job was to stand on the doorstep and wait for the killer to come back." From the corner of his eye, Jonas saw Foster and Reynolds exchange puzzled looks. Good. Let them know Marvel was a p.r.i.c.k. was to stand on the doorstep and wait for the killer to come back." From the corner of his eye, Jonas saw Foster and Reynolds exchange puzzled looks. Good. Let them know Marvel was a p.r.i.c.k.
Marvel glared at him, then turned away dismissively and muttered darkly, "Can"t protect a puddle of f.u.c.king sick sick ..." ..."
n.o.body knew what had happened - and no amount of haranguing from Marvel could enlighten them. Finally he jerked his head at Reynolds and stalked away down the garden in his porous shoes. When Reynolds caught him up and asked where they were going next, he told him they were going to put the squeeze on Peter Priddy.
Jonas helped Mike Foster put his bags into his car and almost felt like hugging him goodbye. He was the first sensible official Jonas had met on the case.
Squeezing Peter Priddy didn"t go quite to plan.
For a start, Peter Priddy blubbing in his dead mother"s kitchen while in search of Jaffa Cakes was a very different person from Prison Officer Priddy, angry, embarra.s.sed and defensive about being pulled off shift on a wing full of nosey cons to speak to homicide detectives.
Marvel squeezed and Priddy pushed back and the worry lines on Reynolds"s brow got deeper and more indicative of imminent hair loss the more evident it became that they were really just there taking a flyer.
"Of course my hairs are going to be on the bed!" said Priddy. "She"s my mother! I don"t stand at the door and shout shout at her!" at her!"
"But you didn"t visit her on Sat.u.r.day night?"
"I told you."
"Were you in Shipcott on Sat.u.r.day at all?"
"No! I told told you!" you!"
Marvel nodded slowly as if he agreed 100 per cent with what Peter Priddy had told them. "Because we have a witness who saw your car parked on Barnstaple Road at ..." He stopped for Reynolds to fill him in on the details but never took his eyes off Peter Priddy"s face, so was perfectly placed to see the big man"s fair skin flush a deep red.
"Between 8.45pm and 6am," supplied Reynolds.
"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!" Priddy pushed his chair back from the staffroom table with a loud rasp.
"We have a witness," said Marvel with a careless shrug.
"Who? Where? They"re lying."
"No need to get agitated, Mr Priddy," said Marvel in a tone guaranteed to agitate.
"f.u.c.k off."
"Are you saying you weren"t there, Mr Priddy?"
"Yes I am."
Marvel raised his eyebrows in open disbelief. "Well, maybe they"re mistaken."
"Yes they b.l.o.o.d.y are are. Or mischief-making."
"Why would anyone want to make mischief with you, Mr Priddy?" said Marvel. "You"ve just lost your mother in the saddest of circ.u.mstances. Why would anyone want to make life harder for you?"
Peter Priddy got up, not looking at Marvel or Reynolds. "I don"t know. Like you said, people are sick. I have to get back to work."
"Mr Priddy," said Reynolds soothingly, "we"re just going through a process of elimination. We"re speaking to everybody like this."
"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks."
"We are," are," said Reynolds, hoping it would be true before too long. He looked at Marvel for confirmation and got a grudging nod. "It"s our job. You"re in law enforcement, Mr Priddy; said Reynolds, hoping it would be true before too long. He looked at Marvel for confirmation and got a grudging nod. "It"s our job. You"re in law enforcement, Mr Priddy; you you understand. We"re on the same team here." understand. We"re on the same team here."
The flattery worked and Priddy softened a little. "Yeah. OK."
Some of the tension drained from the room.
Reynolds cleared his throat. "Before you go, I wonder if I could ask you for a DNA sample?"
Priddy stared at the two men with undisguised disgust. Reynolds looked away and got out the kit. In silence he got the swabs from the sterile plastic. In silence, Peter Priddy opened his mouth and allowed Reynolds to sc.r.a.pe the inside of his cheek.
"I"ve got to get back to work. And you do too, because the more time you waste with me, the more time you"re not trying to catch the man who killed my mother. And that really p.i.s.ses me off."
In the silence that followed him slamming the door behind him, Reynolds closed his notebook, turned his palms upwards and sighed. "Can"t blame him, I suppose."
"I"ll blame him for whatever the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l I want," snapped Marvel.
As if Reynolds didn"t know that.
On their way out, the prison staff were noticeably less friendly than they had been on the way in.
Eighteen Days
Annette Rogers had been interviewed at the scene and had already moved on to care full-time for an elderly man in Minehead, but Gary Liss and Lynne Twitchett both worked part-time in Shipcott at Sunset Lodge, a large detached stone house in its own grounds set back from the road and conveniently adjoining the graveyard behind the church. As they got out of the car, Marvel wondered at the horror of growing old and infirm within a geriatric stone"s throw of your final resting place.
The home"s owner, Rupert Cooke, was a chubby, happy-faced man with the habit of bending slightly forward and turning his head attentively when he listened, even though Marvel wasn"t seated in a wheelchair. He offered Marvel and Reynolds his office for privacy and Reynolds thanked him politely.
"I"ll give Lynne and Gary a shout," he said.
"Don"t," said Marvel. "We"ll find them. Have a look around at the same time."
"If you don"t mind," added Reynolds hurriedly.
"Of course," said Cooke. "Be my guests."
"Not for a while, I hope," said Marvel drily. Too drily, apparently, as n.o.body laughed.
He and Reynolds wandered through the large airy rooms where a few residents sat and did jigsaws or knitted. An old man with an oxygen mask on and ears so big he looked like a spaniel peered fixedly at an enormous television with the sound down so low that it was all but inaudible. Seemed that past a certain age, one functioning sense at a time was all any resident could really expect to enjoy.
Reynolds peered into a large aquarium. "They"ve got a j.a.panese fighting fish in here. Beautiful."
Marvel ignored him. Ridiculous hobby, fish-keeping. Making yourself a slave to guppies.
A middle-aged woman in a blue uniform bustled towards them and Marvel stopped and raised his eyebrows. "Lynne Twitchett?"
"In the garden room, I think," smiled the woman, pointing in the direction they were already heading.
The majority of the residents were in the garden room and Marvel understood why the moment they entered. It was hot. Saharan hot - even in the middle of winter. With its long windows and gla.s.s roof, the garden room was no more or less than a greenhouse for cultivating old folk. And it seemed to be working. At least two dozen old women with identical hair sat around the perimeter of the room, sunning themselves like lizards in wing chairs, sucking up the heat as if they"d outlived the capacity to make their own. Several of them wore hand-knitted cardigans and crocheted knee-rugs just to be on the safe side. A large tin of cheap biscuits was being pa.s.sed around the room and examined at each station as if it were the Holy Grail. Ahead of the tin was all craning white heads and expectant muttering, behind it was silence and crumbs.
Lynne Twitchett sat at the upright piano against the far wall of the room, playing a faltering version of "Jingle Bells" while perched on a piano stool. At least, Marvel a.s.sumed that was what she was sitting on. From behind it looked as if Lynne Twitchett"s giant blue a.r.s.e had simply sprouted four spindly wooden legs, so completely had her bulk consumed the rest of the furniture.
Reynolds leaned in to him and murmured, "Who ate all the Jaffa Cakes?" - the first funny thing Marvel had ever heard come out of his mouth.
They talked to Lynne Twitchett for less than five minutes in the office. Her near-impenetrable Somerset accent made her sound like one of Marvel"s yokels, but even Reynolds felt it was less a misleading anomaly than the cherry on the top of her dubious intellect.
Marvel loved dumb people. If guilty, they either confessed or were so transparent in their lies that there was never any doubt about their culpability. Similarly, if they were innocent it shone through despite their nerves or their rambling or their accidental self-incriminatory statements. Dumb people were a breeze and Lynne Twitchett was right up there with the breeziest he"d encountered. Added to which, he had discounted her as a suspect the moment they saw her; the thought of Ms Twitchett tiptoeing unnoticed past Annette Rogers, or bounding gracefully on to the lean-to roof, was comical. Reynolds thanked her and released her back into the greenhouse, where she would no doubt grow even bigger on a mulch of the residents" biscuits.
They found Gary Liss changing beds upstairs, where it was cooler and apparently empty of old folk.
Gary Liss was nothing like Marvel had imagined. He was a small and lithe thirty-five-year-old. He had dark hair, an olive complexion and narrow blue eyes. He looked like a circus acrobat who had been rea.s.signed to bedpans and taken to them like a duck to water. He didn"t miss a beat while they talked, and his military bed-making was hypnotic to watch. Marvel and Reynolds followed him from room to room asking their questions, and Gary Liss stripped beds, bundled dirty sheets, shook out fresh ones and then wound mattresses in them as neat and as tight as if he was working in the gift-wrap department of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Marvel wondered how the h.e.l.l the old folk managed to fight their way between the top and bottom sheets every night, and had a mental image of residents spending years shivering above the covers, too frail to gain entry to their own beds.
Despite the efficiency of recall that his phenomenal work-rate promised, Gary Liss was almost as useless as Lynne Twitchett when it came to the details leading up to Margaret Priddy"s death. He had been on the early shift before she was killed - seven in the morning until three in the afternoon - and had gone to the pictures that night.
"Alone?" said Marvel.
"No," said Liss, then volunteered, "with my girlfriend."
"What did you see?"
"Some old French c.r.a.p at the art-house place."
"Not a film buff?" asked Reynolds.
"Not all that foreign b.o.l.l.o.c.ks."
"Can you remember the t.i.tle?" persisted Marvel - it was a fact that could be checked.
"Mister Somebody"s Vacation, I think."
"National Lampoon?" suggested Marvel.
"Nah, something French."
"Monsieur Hulot"s Holiday?"
Trust Reynolds.