M.C. Beaton - The Day the Floods Came

The shivering finally stopped and she began to feel sleepy and almost warm. She had a paradoxical desire to take all her clothes off and fought against it.

♦

The vicar parked up on the pavement outside the disco and the three got out. Wayne blocked their way as they tried to walk into the disco. “It’s for young people only,” he said truculently. “Then I shall report you immediately to the police for ageism,” said the vicar loftily.

Wayne gave him a hunted look but the word ‘police’ acted as an open sesame. They walked into the disco. Music assailed their ears. Couples were dancing. It all looked very normal, except that they could not see Agatha. John shouldered his way towards the bar, with the Bloxbys close behind. “Where’s the television researcher?” he demanded. Terry gave a final polish to a glass. “You’ve just missed her,” he shouted. “Left ten minutes ago.”

John gave him a baffled look. Agatha could be up in the office.

He swung round and shouted to Alf, “What can we do now?”

“I have prayed,” said the vicar calmly. “The police will be here.”

“Praying’s a fat lot of good,” shouted John and the words were no sooner out of his mouth than the music suddenly died and the disco was full of police, headed by Brudge.

Terry had turned a muddy colour. John thought quickly. If there was a cold room left over from the days when there had been a butchers shop, it would be on ground level.

“Through the back,” he said to Brudge. “There must be some way through the back.”

“There’s a door here, sir,” said a policeman with sharper eyes than Agatha Raisin.

“That’s the toilets, and the stores, nothing else,” said Terry.

“Watch him and see he doesn’t get away,” said Brudge. He walked through the door beside the bar. He took out a torch and shone it round about, shone it up and down the stack of soft-drink cases and beer crates and then on the floor. He saw faint scrape marks on the floor, as if someone had pulled the cases back. Then he remembered in a report when the disco had been searched that said behind the crates there was an old freezer room, but it had been full of stores and junk and the refrigerator unit had been disconnected.

“Move those crates and cases as fast as you can,” he barked at his men. “And pull down that curtain behind them.”

Inside, shivering Agatha had realized that there was no longer the dim thud of the music. She heard the crates being moved from behind the door. She heard voices. She did not scream because she was sure they had come to make sure she wasn’t going to live any longer. From the looks of Joanna, someone had broken her neck.

Agatha looked around for a weapon. But there was nothing.

She would never forget the moment when the door swung open and she found herself staring at Detective Inspector Brudge. “Oh, you lovely man,” cried Agatha and flung herself sobbing into his arms.

Brudge pried himself loose. “Get her to an ambulance,” he barked, “and search this place. My God, that’s the missing girl!”

Agatha then was embraced by Mrs. Bloxby, who wrapped her in the vicar’s jacket. “I’m a fool,” sobbed Agatha.

“There, now,” soothed Mrs. Bloxby. “It’s all over.”

An ambulance arrived and Agatha was wrapped up and stretchered in. A policewoman got in beside her.

Mrs. Bloxby caught hold of the ambulance driver as he was about to climb into the ambulance. “Will she be all right?” she asked.

“I think so,” he said. “She seems to be suffering from moderate hypothermia.”

The ambulance roared off.

♦

Agatha recovered quickly and awoke from a refreshing sleep two days later just as Brudge and two detectives entered the hospital room. “Strong enough to make a statement?” asked Brudge.

The one thing Agatha lied about was her reasons for not phoning the police. She said it was such a long shot that she decided to have a look herself.

At last, when the statement was over, Agatha said, “But why?”

“Why what?”

“I guess they killed Kylie because she’d found out about the drugs. But why not leave her body where it was and then: take it out some dark night and bury it?”

Brudge signalled to the others to leave and settled back in a chair beside the bed. “May as well tell you the whole thing. Zak cracked. What happened was this. He really did mean to marry Kylie and he was in love with her. But idiot that he was, he told her about the drugs. Now he and his father had no previous criminal records. But one of the major Birmingham gangs heard about him setting up the disco in Evesham. They approached Terry Jensen with an offer. If he stored the drugs for them, he’d be a very rich man. He wasn’t to distribute them in the disco. He was merely to store them so they could be picked up and distributed elsewhere in the Midlands. Now Zak may have been in love with Kylie, but Kylie doesn’t seem to have been in love with Zak. She thought this little bit of information was gold and began to demand all sorts of things from Terry, like, after they were married, she wanted a Ferrari.

“Terry told Zak she’d have to go. He was appalled, but it was either Kylie, or himself and his father serving a long prison sentence. She had been bitching about the wedding gown and somehow he persuaded her to slip out one night and bring it round to the club. They’d switched off the refrigeration in the cold room. Told her to go in there – they had it uncovered – and try it on. Then they shut the door and locked it and turned on the refrigeration. With all she had drunk, it made the process of hypothermia quicker.”

“But wouldn’t her hands have been bruised, hammering on the door?” asked Agatha.

“There were no injuries to her arms. I think she thought they were playing a joke on her until it was too late. When she was weak enough, they injected her with heroin.”

“But why the river and why the bouquet?”

“Zak was sick with misery. He had loved her. He wanted her to have a more ceremonious burial than the one his father had planned for her. He bought the roses – where, we still don’t know. Somehow he got her to the river, still in her wedding gown, and as a last farewell, he thrust the bouquet into her frozen hands. I think he must have been a bit off his head with grief, because he thought, in all the chaos of the floods, that it might be assumed she was another flood victim, wedding dress and all.”

“And what about Joanna?” asked Agatha.

“They got tipped off – we’re still trying to find out who did that – and someone struck her as she was getting into Kylie’s e-mail and then wiped all the e-mail out. But Joanna did find one incriminating e-mail before she was hit. Zak says he sent her a desperate e-mail, saying to keep her mouth shut.

“Joanna knew she was on to something. She called round at the disco and told Terry about the e-mail and that unless he paid up, she was going to go to the police. He broke her neck.”

“And Mrs. Anstruther-Jones?”

“It could be youths who made a habit of getting high on drugs and frightening people by driving at them. They may have gone too far. Zak denies they had anything to do with it, but Terry, or that Wayne, may have thought it was you and decided to stop you asking questions about Kylie.”

“There’s one thing I totally forgot,” said Agatha. “Kylie was a member of a church group. I should have asked about her there.”

“We are not completely inept,” retorted Brudge. “We did, of course, question the members. Kylie went once and then never again, although her mother believed her to be a staunch member.”

Agatha lay back against the pillows, her brow wrinkled. “There’s something missing,” she said slowly. “Or rather, someone.”