Ken McClure - Wildcard

‘Another one, eh,’ said the man. ‘Poor woman has had more visitors since she died than she ever did when she was alive.’

‘That’s often the way,’ said Steven, keen to engage the man in conversation in case he had useful information. ‘People tend to turn up at your funeral when they wouldn’t have crossed the street to say hello to you while you were alive.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ agreed the man. ‘You know, I still can’t get over it.’ He sighed. ‘Poor Miss Danby. She seemed happy enough when I talked to her the weekend before last. She was asking me about a good garage to service her car. I sent her to Dixon’s in Minto Street. My brother works there.’

‘Then you didn’t think she was the sort to take her own life?’ probed Steven.

‘Who’s to say?’ replied the doorman, philosophically. He put his head to one side and both hands behind his back to impart his wisdom. ‘People often put a brave face on things. Hide the truth from the world, if you know what I mean.’

‘Sure,’ replied Steven, hoping he wasn’t about to be subjected to a series of examples. ‘You implied that she didn’t have many friends?’

‘If she did, very few of them ever came here,’ replied the man. ‘Having said that, she quite often went away for the weekend but maybe that was work.’

‘She didn’t say?’

‘She was a very private person, was Miss Danby, not the sort to volunteer that kind of information, and I’m not the sort to ask,’ replied the doorman.

‘Of course not,’ said Steven. He asked for directions to the flat.

‘Third floor, second door. You can still smell the disinfectant. God knows why they’d want to go and do that.’

Steven had overlooked the fact that the Public Health people would have disinfected the flat thoroughly in the wake of the PM findings. He got the full lingering force of it when he opened the door and entered the hall. They had obviously used a formaldehyde ‘bomb’ to make sure that the disinfectant got everywhere and that no virus particles were left alive. This was effective, but unfortunate from Steven’s point of view, because he hated the smell of formaldehyde and had done ever since his early days at medical school, where the cadavers the students worked on were stored in solutions of the stuff. He put a handkerchief over his nose and mouth until he opened a window in the living room and waited by it until the air had cleared enough for him to take a look around.

The flat was very well furnished but in a pleasantly understated way — good-quality stuff but kept to a minimum so that there was a feeling of light and space about the place. He noted that Ann Danby had an eclectic CD collection, all stacked neatly in purpose-built racks beside the Bang and Olufsen music centre. A closer inspection revealed that they were filed neatly in alphabetical order. Steven moved on to her tape collection and found that the same system applied. It spoke of a tidy, organised mind. Her books, however, were arranged by subject and occupied three tiers of black metal shelving fitted to the wall opposite the window.

Many of the titles were computer- and probably work-related. They took up almost the entire top shelf, while a liking for poetry was demonstrated by the titles to the left on the middle shelf. Keats seemed to have been a particular favourite but Auden, Rupert Brooke and Wordsworth were also well represented. At the end of the poetry section, just before the shelf divider, there were a number of volumes of love poetry. Steven saw a certain poignancy in that in view of the picture the man on the door had painted of a rather solitary, lonely woman.

Steven picked up a little book of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work and moved through it until he found the one that had been Lisa’s favourite. ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ He lingered over the last line, ‘And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death’, and felt a lump come to his throat. He replaced the book and noticed there was a triangular gap a little further along, as if one had been removed, so that the books to the right of it had flopped back. He looked around the room and noticed a small blue-covered volume lying on the lamp table beside the chair that Ann Danby had used most, judging by the letter and newspaper racks beside it.

Steven went over, picked it up and saw that The Sonnets of William Shakespeare had been her last reading companion. He checked for a bookmark, to see if he could find the last poem she’d read, but didn’t find one. He did, however, note with some surprise that the flyleaf had been ripped out. It had not been cut out, because a jagged remnant of paper had been left, as if it had been done in anger.

Puzzled as to why such a meticulous woman would do such a thing, he looked for the missing page in the waste-paper basket but found nothing. Then he noticed a piece of paper lying on the window ledge. It had obviously been crumpled up at one point, but had been smoothed out in order to make examination possible. He suspected that the police had found it on the floor but had assigned no significance to it. It was the missing flyleaf. There was some writing in light-blue ink on it. It said simply, ‘My love for ever,’ and was signed ‘V’. The initial had been done with quite a flourish, the sign of an extrovert personality perhaps?

Steven sat down for a moment and wondered why there had been no mention of a boyfriend before. Had this been an oversight or… a secret? A secret lover might explain a lot, but why had she kept him secret? Could V be a woman? Not everyone was comfortable with openly gay relationships, even in these enlightened times.

Steven remembered the policeman’s recollection of Ann’s last words, ‘All men are bastards.’ Not terribly original but now it made sense, and it was conveniently significant because it suggested strongly that V was a man. The fact that the relationship had been kept secret also suggested that he might be married, but, whatever the personal details, finding out the identity of V was now going to be a priority, particularly if it should turn out that he had been on the Ndanga flight.

Steven put the book back in its place on the shelf and glanced quickly through the other titles. There were a number of biographies, mainly of politicians both past and present, half a dozen reference books, a number of illustrated books about French Impressionist painters and fiction ranging from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before. The right-hand corner of the very bottom shelf was given over to books on hill-walking. Lakeland, Snowdonia and the Scottish mountains were all featured, but there was also a guide to trekking in Nepal. Why had there been no mention of a love of outdoor pursuits in the file on Ann Danby? Or had she kept that a secret, too? Perhaps this had been an interest that she had shared with V: it might even account for the weekends away. On the other hand, it could be that she had just been an armchair enthusiast for the outdoor life.

The question was resolved when he found hill-walking gear in the walk-in wardrobe in the main bedroom. There were two expensive shell jackets, one in red and one in blue Gore-Tex fabric, and two matching fleeces hanging on the rail beside a range of good-quality business and leisure clothing. A pair of Scarpa mountain boots sat on the floor with boot stockings stuck inside them. A Berghaus rucksack was propped up against the back wall, along with two Leki walking poles.

The smaller of the two bedrooms had been used by Ann as a study, and featured a pine desk and a wide range of computer equipment. There were two small metal filing cabinets and a swivel chair in light-cream leather with a matching footstool. Steven didn’t like the thought of doing it, but he would have to search the desk drawers for more information about Ann Danby’s life, not least for clues as to who V might be.