Puppet for a Corpse Read online

  ‘I know.’ Thanet took him by the elbow and eased him along the passage into the kitchen, sat him down in the wooden armchair. ‘But it’s all right. No harm has come to her. She’ll be home any minute now.’

  ‘God be praised.’ Pritchard hunched forward, dropping his head into his hands.

  ‘Mrs Hodges said that Charity called in this evening on her way home. She’d spent the weekend with a friend, apparently. We only missed her by fifteen minutes or so. I don’t know how long it takes to walk from the Hodges’ house, but she really should be here at any moment.’

  Pritchard said nothing, did not look up, but Thanet could tell that he was listening. His body was tense, his breathing stilled.

  ‘Would you like us to wait until she gets here?’ Thanet offered. It wasn’t really necessary for him to do so but by now he was rather curious about the girl. And they shouldn’t have to wait long.

  For a minute or two Pritchard did not respond. The silence stretched out and Thanet glanced at Lineham, who responded by raising his eyebrows and shrugging. Thanet was even beginning to wonder if Pritchard was so exhausted by the nervous strain of the last few hours that he had dropped off to sleep. Then the man stirred and slowly straightened up, sat back in the chair.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’d be grateful if you would.’ His lips barely moved, as if even the effort of talking was too much for him and he had scarcely finished speaking before he closed his eyes and, head lolling back against the chair rail, dozed off.

  With one accord Thanet and Lineham quietly left the room and went into the sitting room. It was the first time Lineham had been in here and as he looked around Thanet could see mirrored in his face the same incredulity which Thanet had felt at his first sight of the kitchen.

  ‘My God,’ said Lineham. ‘Talk about Cosy Corner!’

  ‘Shh.’ Thanet made sure the door was closed. ‘Not exactly a home from home, I agree.’

  They both sat down in the hard, slippery armchairs.

  ‘How can they stand it?’ said Lineham. ‘The bedrooms are the same, you know—lumpy flock mattresses which look as though they came out of the Ark, rusty bedsprings, bare lino on the floor … I just can’t understand people being prepared to live like this.’

  ‘Perhaps they can’t afford to do otherwise?’

  ‘Oh come on, sir! It’s not just lack of money I’m talking about, and you know it. It’s the sheer drabness of it all. Just look at it! Anyone can buy a tin of emulsion paint and brighten things up if he wants to.’

  ‘Then obviously, the Pritchards don’t want to. This, incredible as it may seem to us, must be how they like it.’

  ‘Like it!’ Lineham’s face was a study in disbelief.

  ‘From what we’ve seen of Pritchard, I’d guess it’s a question of religious principle. He probably thinks comfort is sinful, an indulgence of the flesh.’

  ‘Is that what they’re like, these Children of Jerusalem?’

  ‘I don’t really know. I’m only judging by some of the things he’s said, and by this place.’

  ‘They meet in that hall in Jubilee Road, don’t they? The one with the green corrugated iron roof?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They can’t exactly be thriving. The place looks as though it’s about to fall down.’

  ‘They may be going downhill now, but at one time they were a force to be reckoned with in Sturrenden, I believe.’

  ‘How long have they been around?’

  Thanet wrinkled his forehead. ‘I’m not sure exactly. But quite a time. I think I once heard, since the middle of the nineteenth century.’

  ‘As long as that! And presumably they’re not just a local group, if they still have these holiday homes.’

  ‘Quite.’ Thanet shifted restlessly, aware that beneath the apparently innocuous surface of this brief conversation there had been a growing undercurrent of unease. He noticed Lineham glance surreptitiously at his watch.

  ‘Mike, are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘It’s twenty past ten,’ said Lineham flatly.

  ‘And she left the Hodges’ at about nine thirty-five.’

  ‘Three-quarters of an hour.’

  ‘For a twenty-minute walk.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Thanet. ‘Not with two policemen sitting in her own front room, waiting for her.’

  ‘We’re clucking like a pair of mother hens,’ agreed Lineham.

  ‘Suffering, no doubt, from residual anxiety.’

  They rose in unison.

  The brief rest did not appear to have done Pritchard any good. His pallid forehead glistened with sweat in the dim light and his eyes were fixed, staring. The bones of his knuckles shone white through the skin where he gripped the arms of the chair. When he saw Thanet and Lineham he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘You said she was all right.’ he said, in a near-whisper. And then, with a suddenness that made them both start, he erupted from the chair. ‘If she’s all right,’ he bellowed, raising clenched fists, ‘where is she? You tell me that!’

  It was an effort of will not to flinch from that archetypal figure of despairing wrath.

  ‘We were about to ask you, Mr Pritchard,’ Thanet said calmly, ‘if there was anywhere she might have stopped off, on the way home.’

  The reasonableness of the question and Thanet’s matter-of-fact tone punctured Pritchard’s fear and anger and he seemed to deflate back to normal size. He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Which way would she have come?’

  Pritchard frowned, his eyes unfocused. He shook his head as if to clear it, put one hand up to his temple. ‘Let me see … She’d have turned right out of Mrs Hodges’, then left at the end of Lantern Street into Victoria Road. Then, if she had any sense, she’d have gone to the end of Victoria Road, turned left into St Peter’s Street and left again into Town Road.’

  Thus describing a wide semi-circle, Thanet thought. ‘You said, “If she had any sense …”’

  Pritchard swallowed, as if to control rising nausea. ‘Half way along Victoria Road there’s a short cut. A footpath.’

  A footpath. The word conjured up darkness, a narrow, confined space where shadows lurked at every corner. At this juncture the very word had a dangerous ring to it.

  ‘Where does it come out?’

  ‘Just along the road from here, about fifty yards away. But surely she wouldn’t have … Not at night … in the dark …’ Fear had dried Pritchard’s throat and tightened his vocal cords. His voice was little more than a gasp, a whisper.

  Unless she’d been in a hurry, Thanet thought, anxious to get home quickly and minimise her father’s anger and anxiety. Of course, the opposite could be true. She might have opted for delaying tactics. He repeated his earlier question.

  ‘I suppose she could have called in at my brother’s,’ said Pritchard, his voice stronger now. ‘He and his wife live in Gate Street. There’s another footpath linking Gate Street and the short cut we were talking about. But I really can’t see why she’d have gone there instead of coming straight home.’

  ‘What number in Gate Street, sir?’ asked Lineham.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘And your brother’s full name?’

  ‘Jethro Pritchard.’

  Lineham took it down.

  ‘Could you tell us what Charity looks like?’ said Thanet.

  ‘Looks like …’ Pritchard repeated. Once again he shook his head as if to clear it, passed his hand across his eyes as if brushing cobwebs away. ‘She’s … not very big. Comes up to here.’ He laid his hand on his chest. ‘She’s got brown hair, light brown. Long. Wears it tied back. Brown eyes …’ Pritchard’s lips worked and his face threatened disintegration.

  ‘All right, sir, that’s enough, I think.’ It would have to do, Thanet thought. With Pritchard in his present state too much time would be wasted trying to obtain either a more detailed description
or a photograph. And time might be of the essence. The beat of urgency was back in his brain now, surging through his veins and tingling down into his legs, his feet. He shifted restlessly. ‘Sergeant Lineham and I will just stroll along and … meet her. We shouldn’t be …’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Pritchard interrupted. ‘I can’t sit about here doing nothing a minute longer.’

  Thanet didn’t like this idea one little bit. The man looked dangerously near to cracking up, and if anything had happened to Charity …

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better for you to wait here, in case she comes home while we’re gone?’

  ‘No! I’ll leave the lights on and the front door ajar if you like, to show I won’t be long.’

  Thanet looked at him and empathy raised its inconvenient head. How would he himself feel if Bridget were missing in circumstances like these? He would be frantic to be up and about doing something, anything, to find her.

  ‘As you wish. Let’s go, then, shall we?’

  3

  Outside it was now marginally cooler and the air, though still humid, smelt clean and fresh after the stale, almost foetid atmosphere of number 32. The street was deserted. Lineham fetched torches from the car and they set off in the direction of the entrance to the footpath.

  After a few moments Pritchard stopped. ‘Here it is.’

  A narrow slit, barely three feet wide, flanked on either side by the blank side walls of two blocks of terraced houses. Dim light from a street lamp illuminated the first few yards. After that, darkness.

  Thanet had already made up his mind. He dared not risk Pritchard stumbling across Charity’s body alone. One of them would have to stay with him.

  ‘Sergeant, you go the long way round with Mr Pritchard. I’ll cut through the footpath and wait for you at the far end.’

  Thanet half-expected a protest from Pritchard, but there was none. Perhaps he was by now incapable of further rebellion. He moved off obediently beside Lineham and Thanet switched on his torch and plunged into the black, yawning mouth of the alley.

  Once past the houses the darkness thinned a little. The footpath now seemed to run between back gardens, and the six foot high close-boarded fence on either side was punctuated by wooden doors and gateways beyond some of which loomed the bulk of garden sheds of varying shapes and sizes. Thanet’s footsteps beat out an irregular tattoo as he paused to check each entrance. Some were padlocked, others were not and if there was access he opened the gate as quietly as possible and shone his torch inside. The detritus of years seemed to have washed down the gardens and come to rest here. Wheel-less, rusting bicycle frames vied for space with broken toys, rotting cardboard boxes, unrecognisable pieces of machinery, neglected tools and legless chairs. It was impossible to search thoroughly at present, he had neither time nor justification and he forced himself to keep moving on, dissatisfied.

  And all the while there was growing in him a sick certainty of what he was going to find, the apprehension that this time he would have no opportunity privately to prepare himself for the one moment in his work as a detective that he dreaded more than any other, his first sight of a corpse. He had never fully managed to analyse that split second of unbearable poignancy, compounded as it was of regret, compassion, sorrow, anger, despair and a sense of having brushed, however briefly, against the mystery of life itself and he had never talked about it, even to Joan, from whom he had no other secrets. For years he had fought against this weakness, had despised himself because of it until he had eventually come to realise that to do so was pointless, that this was one battle he would never win. And so he had in the end become resigned, had even managed to persuade himself that that one moment of private hell was necessary to him, the springboard from which he could launch himself whole-heartedly into an attempt to track down the murderer.

  If Charity was dead … if he were to find her … His stomach clenched and, praying that she had chosen to go the long way around and was even now safely in the company of Lineham and her father, he softly opened yet another door and played his torch over the mounds of junk, his fearful imagination at once transforming a broken mop into a battered head, a discarded rubber glove into a severed hand …

  Enough, he told himself severely. You’re letting this get out of hand. Determined to keep his thoughts firmly under control he shut the door, turned away and began to walk more briskly.

  After only a few steps his foot made contact with something that went skittering away across the path and hit the opposite wall. He focused his torch, advanced upon it frowning and bent to examine it.

  It was a hairbrush.

  He did not touch it, but quickly flashed his torch around it in ever-widening arcs. The immediate vicinity was clear but as the light probed the tunnel of darkness ahead the beam picked out a scattering of lightish splotches some ten to fifteen yards away.

  Slowly, carefully, he advanced, the certainty of what he was going to find churning his stomach.

  And yes, there she was.

  With one comprehensive sweep of his torch Thanet took in the whole scene: the gaping suitcase in the middle of the path, a jumble of clothes spilling out of one corner; more clothes, strewn haphazardly about and, the focal point of it all, the crumpled body of the girl, lying at the foot of a door in the left-hand wall of the alley.

  Thanet hurried forward, noting with relief that her clothing seemed undisturbed. Perhaps she had at least been spared the terror of a sexual assault—could even still be alive. He squatted down beside her and shone the light on her face. The brief flare of hope was at once extinguished. That blank, frozen stare left no room for doubt and the jagged gash on her right temple looked lethal. But, to be certain, he checked. There was no whisper of breath, not even the faintest flutter of a pulse. This, he was sure, was Charity. He looked at the rounded, still childish contours of brow and cheek and closed his eyes as the familiar pain swept through him. For a few seconds he remained motionless, abandoning himself to the protesting clamour in his head in the way that a patient resigns himself to the screaming whine of the dentist’s drill. Then, jerkily, he stood up.

  Now she was a case for Doc Mallard.

  The thought reminded him of Lineham and the girl’s father, waiting for him at the end of the footpath, and at once he realised his predicament. He dared not leave the body and risk someone else stumbling upon her. But if he didn’t, Lineham and Pritchard would most surely become impatient and return along the footpath to meet him. And to think of Pritchard seeing his daughter lying there like that …

  If only some passer-by would come along the alley it might be possible to despatch him with a message to Lineham, but on this Bank Holiday evening everyone seemed to be immersed in his chosen form of entertainment. Thanet hadn’t seen a soul since leaving Pritchard’s house. He glanced at his watch. A quarter to eleven. The pubs would soon be out. It was vital to get the footpath sealed before then. So, what to do?

  His dilemma was resolved by the sound of footsteps, approaching from the far end of the alleyway. He listened carefully: yes, two pairs. Lineham and Pritchard? If so, he must warn Mike in time …

  He waited tensely until the bobbing disc of light that was probably Lineham’s torch had become visible around a bend in the path some fifty yards ahead and then he called softly, ‘Mike?’

  There was a low answering cry and the footsteps accelerated.

  Thanet switched off his own torch, hoping that Lineham would take the hint.

  ‘Mike?’ he repeated urgently, advancing to meet them. ‘Wait. Stay there. Switch off your torch.’

  But it was too late.

  Involuntarily, Lineham had flashed his torch ahead, briefly illuminating the body of the girl and with a hoarse cry Pritchard rushed forward, shoving Thanet aside. Thanet staggered and put out a hand to hold him back and Lineham reached out, but the man’s frantic impetus had already carried him to where the girl lay and before they could stop him he had fallen to his knees and with a cry of anguish had gathered her up i
nto his arms.

  Lineham made as if to pull him away but Thanet restrained him. ‘Leave it, Mike. The damage is already done.’

  Both men were painfully aware that forensic evidence might well have been destroyed before their eyes.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Lineham’s voice was thick with guilt. ‘I should have thought … I shouldn’t have flashed that bloody torch.’

  Pritchard was weeping now, harsh, strangled gasps, his arms wrapped tightly around Charity’s body.

  Thanet turned to Lineham. ‘Go back to the car, get things organised as fast as you can. Stress the urgency, the pubs’ll be out in a matter of minutes. I’ll wait here, with him.’

  Lineham nodded and was gone, his receeding footsteps soon no more than a hollow, echoing blur.

  Pritchard slowly quietened down, the storm of tears gradually diminishing to irregular, sobbing breaths at ever-lengthening intervals.

  Lineham was soon back.

  ‘Everything’s laid on, sir,’ he whispered.

  ‘Doc Mallard?’

  ‘Available.’

  ‘Good. I’d like you to get Pritchard away now, then. Fast. Stay with him till I come.’ Thanet knew that it would be only a matter of minutes before the first reinforcements arrived. He stepped forward, laid a gentle hand on Pritchard’s shoulder.

  The man stiffened, turned his head to look up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Pritchard. Deeply sorry. But you must leave her, now.’

  Pritchard gave his daughter one last, lingering look, then laid her gently down and stood up, staggering a little. Thanet steadied him with a hand under one elbow.

  ‘Sergeant Lineham will take you home.’

  Pritchard turned away without a word.

  Thanet waited until they were out of sight then flashed his torch once more over the girl’s body. Her sightless stare seemed to him a mute reproach, a silent protest against a life cut short.

  He promised himself that the moment the photographers had finished with her he would close her eyes.

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