Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

‘And that was unusual?’ I asked.

‘We don’t use the upstairs rooms,’ she said. ‘I can’t manage the steps any more. My bedroom’s downstairs in the room we used to call the back parlour. A few years ago, we had the pantry turned into a bathroom. I haven’t been upstairs in years.’

‘But your daughter went up?’ I asked.

‘Did she come back down again?’ said Mizon.

The woman looked startled. We were scaring her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘After about fifteen minutes. I remember because the ads were on. I heard her come back down and go out the front door.’

‘Did she speak to you again?’ I asked. ‘Call out goodbye or anything?’

The lady shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘She’d already said goodbye.’

I had no need to look at Mizon.

‘Mrs Richardson, have you let any strangers into your house over the last few days?’ I asked. ‘Anyone you hadn’t seen before?’

‘No, dear, I’d never do that. Wouldn’t dream of it.’

I was starting to breathe again.

‘Only the nurse,’ said the old woman.

I waited for a second. ‘Which nurse was that?’ I asked.

‘The new one,’ said Evadne. ‘The one that came on Monday. About mid afternoon. She had a card and a uniform and everything. Should I not have let her in?’

‘I’m sure it was fine,’ I said. ‘Did she come to give you your pills?’

Evadne shook her head at me. ‘No, dear, I’d already had those,’ she said. ‘She came to give me a health check. I’m not sure she checked much, though. Just talked to me for a few minutes, asked when Karen was due. Then she left.’

‘Did you show her out?’

‘She said not to get up, that she’d show herself out. I heard the door, though.’

I looked up at Mizon. She was pale, her hands clasped tight in front of her. I stood up.

‘Mrs Richardson,’ I said. ‘Do you think we might look round the house?’

66

THERE WAS NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY ON THE ground floor, but we hadn’t expected there would be. I wasn’t even surprised to find a nearly empty rubbish bin in the kitchen and a fridge in which everything seemed fresh. There was nothing to explain the bad smell. Two minutes after starting our search, Mizon and I stood at the bottom of the stairs.

‘We could call it in,’ she said.

‘What if we’re wrong?’ I replied.

‘We didn’t bring gloves.’

‘We’re only going to look.’

Still we didn’t move.

‘We have to,’ I said, and before I could change my mind, took the first step up. That seemed to bring its own momentum and I was soon at the top. Mizon, to do her justice, was right behind me. There were five closed doors on the first floor.

‘Start at this end,’ suggested Mizon, indicating the door nearest to us.

‘Not sure that’s necessary,’ I said. Mizon followed my sight line and gave a quiet moan when she saw the cluster of flies hovering around the furthest door.

‘I’m calling this in,’ she said. She got her radio out of her bag.

‘Wait just a sec.’

The corridor wasn’t wide enough for two of us so I led the way towards the front of the house. When we reached the door, I pulled my sleeve down over my hand and pushed it open.

Behind me, Mizon made an odd gulping sound and stepped back into the corridor. I could hear her on the radio, contacting Control, requesting immediate presence. I took a step further into the room. Quite close enough. The flies sensed an intruder and their steady drone took on an angry sound.

The body of Karen Curtis lay on the large double bed. The bedspread was the old-fashioned type that I think is called a candlewick. Long narrow grooves ran across the fabric. The grooves had acted as channels for Karen’s blood, taking it away from her terrible wound, across the bed and down on to the flower-patterned carpet. Karen had been overweight, dressed in blue trousers and a brightly patterned smock. Her shoes on the pillow looked expensive and she’d been killed wearing a chunky amber necklace. It lay at the foot of the bed.

I heard Mizon come back into the room.

Karen hadn’t been tortured that I could see. She’d probably been killed quickly. All this was assuming, of course, that it really was Karen I was looking at. Because it was impossible to be sure. Mizon and I had seen Karen’s photograph downstairs, we knew exactly what she looked like. It wasn’t going to help us much. This woman’s head was nowhere to be seen.

67

‘I DON’T THINK SO, DEAR,’ SAID THE POOR OLD LADY. ‘SAME colour hair as this one, but …’

Evadne Richardson was in the interview room at Lewisham. Shortly after calling in news of Karen Curtis’s death, we’d taken her mother out of the house and I’d driven her back across London. She knew we hadn’t been able to identify formally the woman found upstairs in her house, but the description she’d given us of Karen’s clothes left little doubt. She’d asked several times to see her daughter and couldn’t understand why we kept telling her it wasn’t possible.

She was braver than I think I would be, in her situation.

‘Take your time,’ I told her. ‘It’s important that you’re sure.’

She looked again at the snapshots of Victoria and Cathy Llewellyn, before taking off her glasses and bringing the photograph closer to her face. I gave her time, conscious that upstairs in the incident room, people would be watching us. She shook her head again and I thought I saw a tear shining in the corner of one eye.

‘These photographs were taken a long time ago,’ I said. ‘The girls would be older now, in their twenties. What about this one?’ I was pointing to the older of the two girls.

‘She looks, I don’t know, I may have seen her,’ Evadne said, looking up at me and then back down at the photograph. ‘She was pretty, dear, like you. Nice little thing.’

My face was still swollen and discoloured. I wasn’t remotely pretty. I began to suspect that Evadne Richardson would be little use in court as an eye witness.

‘Did you get a good look at her face?’ I asked, knowing I had to go through the motions. ‘Did you, for example, notice a scar at all?’ Tulloch had told me to check whether our nurse bore any resemblance to Emma Boston. So far, Emma’s alibis checked out but Tulloch wasn’t letting her go easily.

Mrs Richardson thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t notice a scar. Do you think she could have hurt my Karen? A nurse?’

‘I don’t think she was really a nurse,’ I said.

I got back upstairs to find Tulloch had returned from Evadne Richardson’s house. Karen Curtis’s severed head – we had to assume the murdered woman was Curtis until we knew otherwise – had been nowhere in the house. Nobody had asked the obvious question out loud.

‘The woman at Mrs Richardson’s house was killed between thirty-six and forty-eight hours ago,’ said Tulloch. ‘That’s according to the attending surgeon. We know Karen Curtis was alive at seven thirty on Monday evening because that’s when her mother last saw her. The chances are she was killed shortly after that.’

‘By this nurse,’ said Anderson

‘Probably,’ said Tulloch. ‘Our killer, knowing Mrs Curtis’s habit of visiting her mother on Monday evening, arrived at the house that afternoon wearing the uniform of a district nurse. Mrs Richardson is used to being visited by nurses, the woman appeared unthreatening and had ID. She had no real reason not to let her in.’

I found a vacant chair and sat on it.

‘Mrs Richardson didn’t see the nurse leave,’ continued Tulloch. ‘She just heard the front door close. What seems likely is that the killer remained inside and quietly made her way upstairs.’