Gay Longworth - The Unquiet Dead

‘Nearly right, Father. Her name is Anna. Anna Maria. And she isn’t here. Now I know a lot has been on the news, and that rumours of a body rushed through the press, but it isn’t her. Anna Maria isn’t here. Now, I insist you leave.’ She opened the door. Don was standing just the other side of it.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,’ said the caretaker.

‘You didn’t,’ she said, removing her hand from where it had jumped to her chest. ‘I need to escort this gentleman off the premises.’

The vicar looked at Don. ‘It is often the guilty who cannot move on,’ he said.

Don shrank from the vicar. ‘Go away,’ he said in a strained voice.

‘It’s all right, Don, he’s going.’ Jessie turned to the white-haired man. ‘Right now.’

But the retired priest was not listening to her. ‘An earthbound spirit can make a place feel unsafe. They make themselves heard in a number of ways.’

‘I can hear them,’ said Don.

‘What?’ said Jessie, turning back to Don. ‘Who?’

‘The voices.’

‘Everyone, just stop,’ said Jessie. ‘This conversation is over.’

‘He drowned. It was an accident,’ said Don.

‘What was an accident?’ Jessie looked at him sharply. ‘Who drowned?’

The caretaker began to quiver slightly; he looked around the room nervously.

‘Do you know anything about the body downstairs?’ Jessie persisted.

‘Questions, questions, questions – I don’t like questions. They give me the wobblies.’ Jessie didn’t want the caretaker getting the wobblies. Whatever the wobblies were, a psychiatric ward meant they were probably more harmful than the name suggested.

‘It’s all right, Don. Let’s sit you down. We don’t have to talk about this.’ She walked him back through to the foyer. ‘Don’t you go anywhere,’ Jessie shot back over her shoulder to the priest.

‘An infested location will often attack the human element within it,’ he called after her. ‘Especially if the human –’

Jessie held up her hand. She helped Don on to an upturned box. The quivering stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and when he looked up at Jessie, he seemed quite unaware of what had happened.

‘Did you know they used two hundred and eighty-six marble tiles for the big swimming pool? Each one three foot by four foot, put there by hand.’

‘No,’ said Jessie. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I’ve worked here all my life,’ said Don.

‘Yes,’ said Jessie, ‘I know. But now it’s definitely time to go home.’

‘It’s about money,’ said Father Forrester, walking through the double doors towards them. ‘Old money.’

‘Who have you been talking to?’ she asked, then immediately regretted the question. He smiled benignly. If he was expecting enlightenment, he was talking to the wrong girl.

‘That is a complicated question, Detective, and one that I should like to answer in the fullness of time. Until then, perhaps it is better to simply pass over my details. It will become increasingly evident when and why you’ll be needing me.’ He handed her a piece of paper. ‘I’m staying with some very good friends of mine: Sister Beatrice and Mary at the Rectory, Mill Lane, Wapping. I took the liberty of writing the details down. Call me when you want to talk. I’ll be ready.’

‘Ready for what, exactly?’

‘For whatever is needed of me.’ He bid her goodnight, replaced the trilby on his head and walked out into the rain. There was something about him that made Jessie feel uneasy. She was about to call after him when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned abruptly.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you again.’

‘Again, you didn’t.’ Again, she lied.

They watched as the elderly man was swallowed up by crowds of commuters battling with the steady downpour.

‘If you’re ready …’

Jessie nodded. ‘Are you feeling better?’

‘I’m not sick, you know, I just get the wobblies sometimes.’

Jessie was suddenly very tired. ‘Goodnight, Don,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She stepped out into the rain. Behind her the caretaker pulled the thick metal chain through the door handles and began the lengthy ritual of locking up his keep.

Jessie was walking towards her bike when she remembered she’d left her helmet in the foyer. Unable to face going back, she pulled the collar of her leather jacket up and thought about hailing a cab and going home. It had been quite a day and she felt emotionally drained. Her relationship with Mark had never been easy to navigate, but today the velocity of the storm that Marshall Street Baths had thrown in their faces had been overpowering. She’d never felt the antagonism quite so intensely as she had standing on the threshold of that bizarre old boiler room. Since the fry-up at breakfast, her only sustenance had been two whiskys – no wonder she was feeling low. Two whiskys and a fry-up, thought Jessie ironically; whatever Mark might think, she was becoming a card-carrying copper despite herself.

She stood on Regent Street long enough to get bored, wet and cold. Welcome orange taxi-lights were evading her. The queues at the bus stops stretched back to the shop doors, Oxford Circus tube station was closed due to a security alert and the rain was now falling in a relentless stream. Even returning to work seemed more appealing than attempting public transport, so she crossed the busy road and headed down Maddox Street. Rain had brought its usual effect on the commuter traffic and the customary crawl was now stationary. Horns blared to no effect except to increase the blood pressure of all who heard them. The pavements were slick with grease and rainwater, but at least off Regent Street, they were empty. Each step made a small splash. She stopped to wipe water from her eyes and thought she heard someone stop behind her. She listened through the falling rain then started walking again, stepping carefully and precisely, changing momentum. Now she was almost sure she could hear someone walking in the rain behind her. She stopped again and turned. Her ears were playing tricks on her. Ears and eyes, all in one day. Marshall Street Baths was getting to her.

Up ahead, Jessie could see the panda cars and the IRV drivers waiting for instructions and, although it was silly, she felt relieved. Behind her, a phone played a ring-tone she recognised. Jessie turned involuntarily and looked around. The street was still empty. The P. J. Dean song started revolving in her head. That was something she was haunted by.

The Klein incident room was empty. All the boys were probably in the pub. She didn’t blame them. It was a good night for a Guinness or two. Or three. She sat down at the computer terminal and inserted the CD-ROM that the CCTV tapes had been transferred on to. If she could prove that Anna Maria was not in the Marshall Street Baths she could make sure Mark had no excuse to disrupt her investigation again. The two of them couldn’t be in that building without fighting. One location, two crime scenes and two investigating officers was a recipe for disaster as today had already proved. Mark was going to do everything in his power to remain in Marshall Street Baths, even if it meant prising up every floorboard, every tile. What really saddened Jessie was that the girl’s disappearance clearly meant half as much to him as getting Jessie out of CID – which came as a real shock to her because she had genuinely thought things had improved between the two of them. Well, she wasn’t leaving CID, and she wasn’t going to rest until she had handed Anna Maria Klein to him on a plate.

Jessie began as the sixteen-year-old moved out of range from her position on the corner. Green high-heel boots, a fur-trimmed coat under which peeked a long, floating skirt. She looked stockier in the CCTV images than she did in the ‘professional’ photographs her mother had shown them. Had the photos been touched up, like so many were, stretching her to seem longer and leaner? Or was the photo accurate and something else accounted for Anna Maria’s bulky appearance on the CCTV. Not the dress. That was made of very thin material. Too thin to be worn in February, surely? Jessie carried on watching frame by frame for the next fifteen minutes until something finally caught her eye. A girl walking quickly through the CCTV’s range. She had long dark hair and wore a stripy woolly hat. She wore a thick, oversized jumper and jeans, and carried a large duffel bag over her shoulder. A perfectly normal-looking girl. Jessie had watched hundreds come in and out of the frame. Runners. Shop assistants. Secretaries. Models. Schoolkids. Language students. Tourists. They all looked the same, except this one. This one was wearing green six-inch heels. Jessie froze the image and saved it. Next she brought up the clearest still of Anna Maria standing on the corner. She enlarged the picture to get a more detailed image of the boots she was wearing. They were high. The shape of the heels matched. The colour matched. A lawyer could argue that boots like this were sold in their thousands, and they were probably right, but these weren’t the clodhoppers with thick robust heels that most people wore. These had thin soles and spiky heels, and that made them expensive. Expensive and green reduced the likelihood of a sixteen-year-old girl wearing them. The build and height of the two girls were the same. The hair colour and the clothes were different. Jessie tried to remember what was up Marshall Street that would allow a girl to change her wardrobe with no one noticing. There was a cafe, but it was very small, some doorways in which to hide maybe, a telephone booth, a car park. Jessie smiled to herself. A car park would have security surveillance of its own. She picked up the phone and made the request.