The Philosophy of Disgrace Page 24

  ‘Pretty lousy if I’m honest.’ Rachel said with a thin smile.

  ‘OK, I’m just going to go and get something from the kitchen, I won’t be long.’

  She shut the door behind her quietly, her dad was at the sink, and Diana was peeling carrots next to him. ‘Dad, it’s Rachel, I mean mum. She’s running a temperature, she’s tachycardia, the wound is infected and her respirations aren’t right. These aren’t good signs.’

  Charlie put the potato he had been peeling into the sink, and dried his hands. ‘Say that again in English.’

  ‘I think she may be in Sepsis, I mean she might have blood poisoning.’ Amy said, her heart pounding almost as fast as Rachel’s.

  ‘Let me look at her.’ He said, striding towards the door, sure that Amy was over reacting.

  Diana dropped the carrot and followed, wiping her hands on her skirt.

  As Charlie opened the door, they all heard a dull but significant thud. Rachel lay on the floor in the midst of a massive convulsion. Diana rushed past him, throwing herself down beside Rachel. ‘This isn’t like a normal fit, you’d better call an ambulance.’ She called.

  Charlie’s fingers were shaking as he dialled 999, while Amy quietly sobbed at his elbow.

  ‘Is she going to be alright dad?’ She whispered once the ambulance was on its way.

  ‘I don’t know love. I don’t know.’ He had a horrible feeling that Rachel might have pushed it too far this time, and the thought clutched at this heart like an ice-cold fist.

  Ratcliffe’s breast pocket started to vibrate yet again, ‘Bloody hell! What now?’ he demanded of no one on particular as he retrieved the buzzing phone. Hadn’t Maria run out of names to call him yet? It wasn’t Maria, he took the call.

  ‘What’s up?’ Angela asked. They were in the car park, outside the station.

  Ratcliffe put the phone back in his pocket. ‘Rachel porter is in hospital, in the ICU, in critical condition apparently. Blood poisoning from her leg injury.’ He said dully.

  Angela took a breath, ‘Bloody silly cow! What is it with these people?’ She had just about had a gut full of the Porter family, they were a bloody nightmare. She couldn’t stand self-effacing people like Rachel Porter; did they honestly think they were being brave and stoic in the face of adversity? Bullshit. They were the most selfish types of all. Half of them killed themselves with self-neglect and left everyone else to pick up the pieces, the other half sucked the rest of the population dry. Shame the whole lot of them, the whole family, hadn’t been in that bloody house when it went up in flames.

  ‘I need a drink.’ Ratcliffe said. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’ She said through gritted teeth.

  When they reached Ratcliffe’s car, he let out a groan of disbelief. The bonnet had been covered in full, black sacks.

  ‘Your worldly belongings I assume.’ Angela said as he started to pull them down, one by one and throw them in the boot.

  As he moved the last bag, she pointed at the car, ‘Want me to nick her for criminal damage?’

  ‘Eh?’ He was in no mood for jokes. Then he saw what she was looking at, Maria had carved the word “asshole” into the paintwork of the car. Wordlessly he got into the car, slamming the door.

  ‘You do realise that the control room will have the whole thing on CCTV, don’t you?’ She said, slipping into the passenger seat.

  Ratcliffe just gritted his teeth and started the engine.

  Angela thought he would get into the pub and knock back as much booze as he could stomach, but instead he had only taken a few sips of his pint and was now staring at it moodily as he slowly rotated it on the beer mat. ‘I know a guy who will do a cheap re-spray for you.’

  ‘Eh? Oh that, I’m not bothered about that, she could have been worse, could have cut my balls off with a rusty penknife.’ He said, his expression dull.

  ‘The night is still young.’ She quipped, wishing he would hurry up and finish his drink, because she wanted another and didn’t want to look like a lush for having two to his one.

  ‘Whatever’.

  He wasn’t with it, his mind was elsewhere, still on the case she suspected. ‘Come on, share.’ She said, waving her hand in front of his face to break his trance.

  He sat back and let out a long, slow breath. ‘Just thinking that we’ve missed something. We should at least have a suspect, and we don’t have a clue.’

  ‘That room, in the flat, do you think Stella did it? Like some kind of weird guilt trip thing over the incest, and having a child?’

  ‘I suppose it fits, I mean you saw her, she was hardly sane.’

  ‘Are any of them?’ was Angela’s cynical response.

  ‘What’s bugging me is that if she didn’t set fire to the flat, who did, and why? My guess is that someone else knows that room exists, and that person didn’t want it found. But that person is also getting sloppy, the fire didn’t take, the room has been seen.’

  ‘It stands to reason that it’s the same person who killed Stella then doesn’t it?’ She said. It did stand to reason but she wasn’t entirely sure how.

  ‘So what did Stella know that this person didn’t want her to talk about? What’s in that room that might give the game away? And who haven’t we talked to that we should have?’ Always the same, more questions than answers.

  ‘Well we’ve got Frances Haines for Roy Baxter, she isn’t talking and it’s not helping her. So it can’t really be to do with what happened to him, so it must be to do with what happened to the baby, given what was in that room.’

  ‘But why isn’t Frances Haines talking?’ Ratcliffe asked, finally taking a large slug of beer.

  Thank God. Angela was down to the watery dregs of a melting ice cube in her glass. ‘Another?’ She said, now that he had less than half a pint. She stood to go to the bar. ‘Obviously she’s not talking because she doesn’t want to land herself in the shit even deeper.’ She added.

  It didn’t take long to be served, the bar was quiet and the barmaid wasn’t the chatty type. Mind you, they never were when it came to other women in Angela’s experience.

  When she got back, Ratcliffe looked pensive again, ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe not. What if she’s not talking because she doesn’t want to land someone else in the shit?’

  ‘What do you mean? Baxter had half her DNA in his hand, and her earring which has now been positively ID’d’. She was glad she had bought a double, she had a feeling she might need it.

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that, and I think we’ve been in too much of a hurry to nail someone for this and get it over and done with. Yes, Baxter had her hair in his hand, and the earring, but he was bashed over the head with something, from behind. Did he reach behind him and grab her while she hit him. Or could it be that he attacked her, and got hit from behind by someone else?’

  ‘Are you suggesting she might be innocent?’

  He shook his head, he had a mouthful of beer. ‘Far from it, I think she’s in it up to her neck. For instance, I’m pretty certain she knew exactly where that body was, and intended to find it that day, with a witness. If she hadn’t found him someone else would have, and she would have instantly been in the frame. She knew Stella was barking, I’ll bet she figured that Stella would take the rap, and she would be off the hook.’

  ‘But wouldn’t she have got rid of the forensic evidence first?’ Angela reasoned.

  ‘That guy had been in there for twenty odd years, back then the only police show on telly was bloody Z cars, people barely understood fingerprinting, let alone DNA analysis. I doubt it even occurred to her there would be any forensic evidence. And even if it did, I doubt she thought it would have survived.’

  It wasn’t an unreasonable thought Angela concurred. ‘So we’re back to Stella or the mother as suspects then? Which is pointless because they’re both dead, and we can’t prove it.’

  ‘No, we’re not, you just said it, they’re both dead, and Frances may be covering for
someone who is very much alive. If the killer was dead, she could tell us any cock and bull story and we’d have to buy it, and the worst she might be facing is a charge for aiding and abetting, or concealing the crime.’

  ‘But you’re suggesting she is worried enough to face a life sentence rather than tell us what actually happened?’

  He drained his glass. ‘Or I’m talking shit, and she did do it. Either way, there’s a story there, and we need to hear it, otherwise this one is going to bug me for the rest of my days.’

  ‘But who’s left in the frame? Rachel?’

  ‘She was only a kid at the time, it’s not impossible, but I don’t think she did it. But I do think she might know more than she thinks she does.’

  ‘What like a buried memory or something?’ She didn’t really believe in such things, but it was a thought.

  ‘Maybe. But we’re not going to get that out of her anytime soon. There has to be someone else in the picture, someone else connected to the family that we don’t know about yet’. Ratcliffe said.

  ‘So who can we talk to that might know?’

  ‘There’s only one option. Delia Jones.’

  Charlie came back into the waiting room. Amy had finally stopped crying, and appeared to be dozing on the rather grubby sofa that filled one wall of the tiny room. Diana was sitting with Rachel, and had been with her while he had gone outside to phone his mother and tell her what had happened. He’d had to explain to her that it didn’t look good, that the doctors wouldn’t speculate on an outcome, and that a nurse had warned him that two thirds of people who were hospitalised for septic shock died. He had told his mother that he was prepared for the worst, she hadn’t said much and he had taken her silence as an indication of her shock at this turn of events. She had offered to come to the hospital, but he had told her not to bother. Rachel was out of it, hooked up to a ton of machines that seemed to control her very life source in a mechanical and frightening way. There was nothing anyone could do except wait, and see if her body had enough strength left in it to fight the battle. He had his doubts, even if her body did, he wasn’t sure her mind would want to wage war on this tide of misfortune.

  He was awash with coffee, it felt like he had done nothing but imbibe gallons of the stuff in the last few hours. Sit with Rachel, get frustrated, go out, drink coffee, calm down, go back, and sit with Rachel. It was a caffeine-fuelled nightmare on constant loop. And it was all his fault, he should have taken her straight back to hospital as soon as he found out she’d discharged herself. He’d said that to the doctor, but had been told that it might not have been the best thing at all. The leg infection was caused by MRSA, and the chances were she’d picked that up at the first hospital. There had been some mention of amputating her leg, if they could stabilise her that was. He still thought he should have taken her back to the hospital, at least things wouldn’t have gone this far. Something could have been done a lot sooner.

  Elton John’s greatest hits played in the background. It had been playing over and over since they’d arrived. If he heard ‘Candle in the Wind’ one more time he thought he might go insane.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Frances sat demurely on her thin, blue plastic covered mattress stoically ignoring the paper plate full of congealing food, which had been brought in an hour before. Never, ever, had she eaten off a paper plate, or used plastic cutlery and she did not intend to start now.

  Over the hours, she had wondered if this was the same cell that had held Stella, not that it mattered either way. They had all been in the same cell for years, just a different kind, where the bars and the steel door were all in the mind.

  Peter had proven himself the abject disappointment she had always known him to be. At least that hadn’t been a surprise in this whole debacle. She put her fingers to the back of her head, and felt gently for the lump, and the slight bald spot where the hair would never grow back. If only she hadn’t fallen like that and knocked herself senseless for days. Otherwise, she might just have got away with it. Now it was too late, they had evidence of her involvement with the incident. God knows how, she had no memory of him grabbing at her that day, or of losing her earring. She never wore those earrings anyway, they were hideous. But to explain that to the police would be far too dangerous, would mean pointing the finger in an entirely different direction, with not a shred of evidence. All that planning, all for nothing. Now what? Languish in jail for the rest of her days? There had to be a way out of this, a loophole somewhere, she just needed to think.

  Angela had left Ratcliffe sorting through his meagre belongings, a typical collection of bloke stuff. Old fishing trophies, LPs with covers depicting obscure bands featuring men with particularly unpleasant mullet haircuts, all wearing flares. Football programmes, photo albums, old clothes, junk. All of it junk. Marie had taken the trouble of cutting the legs and arms off all of his suits, had sliced his ties in half, and shredded his shirts. She had also taken time to carve the word ‘wanker’ into his favourite CD’s.

  So Angela had left him, in mourning for his belongings, rifling through black bags in her lounge.

  If she were honest with herself she needed a bit of space, some time to think about why she had allowed her boss into her home, and more to the point into her bed. But she didn’t feel like being honest with herself, so instead she disguised her excursion as a need to consider the case in more detail.

  The charred skeleton of The Limes looked sad rather than eerie, illuminated as it was by the sliver of moon that glowed weakly above the trees. She hardly knew what she hoped to find there, other than some vague wish that the smoke blackened bricks might have some sentience and would whisper some deep dark secret, which would be the key to the whole case.

  Instead, she just stood on the drive and felt rather stupid. There was nothing left, everything the house ever was had been incinerated if not by Frances and her pyromaniacal rampage, then by this second elimination. But why?

  She agreed with Ratcliffe, there had always been another person in the loop, someone they had completely overlooked. The discovery of an unmissed, un-mourned body so many years after death wasn’t much of a deal, just find the culprit, throw the book at them –Job done. It was simpler in fact to pin it on Frances rather than Stella. If she had still been alive, she would have been declared unfit to stand trial, and would have ended up in a secure psychiatric unit at best. No satisfaction for anyone there. Frances however would stand trial, be found guilty, go to prison and they could all move on. She and Ratcliffe would have been able to close the case nice and neatly. Everyone happy. A good result. But for some reason this other element, this third wheel, had ballsed up. Re- entering the picture in such a way that their presence could not go unnoticed. But why?

  There had to be a reason why this person had decided to wipe Stella Baxter and her family home off the face of the planet. There had to be a reason why the same person had tried to do similar to the flat. The only reason in Angela’s mind was that all three, Stella, The Limes, the flat, could reveal the identity of the third man. Or woman.

  Yes, definitely a woman. Angela’s instincts told her that the whole miserable affair had a woman’s touch running all the way through it. Nothing was simple, the things that had happened were cruel, devious, designed for lasting effect. Men didn’t hold on to bodies, they disposed of them, they buried them in woods, or pushed them into rivers in cars, or put them under tons of concrete. They didn’t make Serrano ham out of them and keep them in the shed. Male killers might keep trophies, if they were really sick, but not whole cadavers.

  Maria’s antics that day had set her mind on this course. Not only had Maria wanted to destroy her husband’s most valued things, she had wanted him to know she had done it, feel the effects of her fury. Keep them as souvenirs. Whoever had been at work in the Porter family had wanted the same. Had wanted to see them suffer, and had wanted them to know the source of it. Not only that, they wanted to be sure the Porters were embroiled in it enough themselves t
o never point the finger.

  Angela had had a debate once with her brother, Stephen. She had been involved in a case where a paedophile had abducted a child. They had caught the man, after the damage had been done. Stephen had said that if he were the child’s father he would have found a way to kill the man and would not have turned a hair. Angela had argued that if she were not constrained by the law, she would lock him up forever and personally make every day of his life hell, and she would make sure he stayed alive to experience it. Women are much more cruel beasts she had explained. Men like to put the sinners out of their misery, women like misery to put out the sin.

  She took the heavy torch out of her bag, and made her way into the ruined building, completely ignoring the ‘Danger’ signs that the fire service had liberally scattered about. The torch beam brought small areas of destruction into sharp focus. The water that had been used to put out the blaze had been almost as damaging as the fire itself. What the flames hadn’t consumed, the blast from the hoses had washed away, finished the job. A portion of wall had fallen and bits of sodden wallpaper still clung to damp shards of plaster. She shone the torch on it, the last evidence that this ruin had once been a home. The water had washed away some of the soot, and she could still see the ghost of the pattern underneath the dirty streaks of charcoal, and something else, part of a word. She stepped closer, almost losing her footing on the rubble. All she could make out were the letters s and u, then the top half of another that may have been e or an f. The paper below was gone.

  As she searched around, there were other fragments, but exactly that, fragments. Nothing complete, no way of divining meaning. However, something had been written on the walls, and the fire may have been started to make sure that no one ever read it. Either what the fire hadn’t destroyed had been washed away, or it had disintegrated as the structure of the building had collapsed in on itself. Nevertheless, she took photographs on her phone of the fragments she had found, and resolved to get someone there the next day to salvage what they could. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something, a reason at least why Stella might have died.