Читать книгу The Torso in the Town - Simon Brett - Страница 9

‘There was nothing on the local news,’ said Jude. They were in Carole’s sitting room, in front of the log-effect gas fire, which looked even less welcoming when switched off. Every surface in the room gleamed from punctilious polishing. The décor was unimpeachable, but anonymous. Like its owner, the room resisted intimacy.

Jude had tried to get Carole to come to her house for coffee – or even, as it was already late afternoon, a glass of wine – but her neighbour had opposed the suggestion. The process of rapprochement between them might have started, but any further progress would be at the pace Carole dictated. So Jude had acceded to the request to talk in High Tor rather than Woodside Cottage, and Carole had filled her in on the morning’s visit to Debbie Carlton.

‘So the police have no idea who the torso belonged to?’

Jude shrugged. ‘No idea they’re yet ready to make public, anyway.’

‘It is frustrating,’ Carole observed, not for the first time, ‘knowing they have all kinds of information at their fingertips, and we don’t have access to it.’

‘Murder is their job,’ Jude pointed out. ‘With us it’s only really a casual interest.’

‘Like bridge and line-dancing and amateur dramatics and all those other things recommended for the retired to fill their lives with.’ The bitterness in her voice showed how much Carole still resented her enforced early departure from the Home Office. Jude was sometimes disturbed by the depths of varied resentments that lay within her neighbour, and wondered whether they could ever fully be eased away. Carole did seem to make life unnecessarily difficult for herself. Prickliness was not part of Jude’s emotional vocabulary, and she had had long-term plans to humanize Carole. The plans had even been making some progress, until the split-up with Ted Crisp had moved everything back to square one.

Still, not the moment to pursue that. Jude moved the conversation on. ‘I had a call from Kim Roxby this morning. I’d left a message, thanking them for the dinner party. A bit late, but quite honestly, given the way Saturday evening ended, social niceties got rather forgotten.’

‘Did she talk about the torso?’

Jude was encouraged by the eagerness in her friend’s voice. She’d been right. Investigating a murder might be just the thing to jolt Carole out of her cycle of self-recrimination.

‘Yes. She hadn’t got much to add to the little we already know. Needless to say, the Roxbys have had a lot more to do with the police than I did. Pelling House is still sealed off. Kim’s sent the kids to her mother’s. That’s in Angmering. Kim and Grant have booked into a plush hotel up on the Downs for the duration.’

‘Will the police pay for that?’

‘No idea. With the money Grant’s got, I’m sure he’ll never even bother to ask.’ Jude looked thoughtful. ‘I hope Harry’s all right . . .’

‘Hm?’

‘Grant and Kim’s oldest. The one who found the thing. He’s at a very tricky stage of his life, and it was a ghastly shock for him.’

‘Oh, he’ll get over it.’ Carole hated sentimentality about the young. Her attitude to children had always been brusque and practical. She sometimes worried that she had taken that approach too far with her own son. Maybe that was why Stephen didn’t come and see her very often, a symptom of the coldness of which David had always accused her.

And maybe that coldness was also what had made her relationship with Ted Crisp come to grief. She felt herself sinking into the familiar spiral of self-hatred, and with an effort brought her mind back to the torso in Fedborough. ‘So Kim Roxby hasn’t got any sidelights from the police about anything . . . how long the body had been in the cellar, for example?’

‘She did overhear one of the forensic people saying he reckoned it was at least three years old.’

‘Which would mean the death happened before Francis and Debbie Carlton bought Pelling House.’

‘Hm. I wonder who owned the place before them . . .?’

Carole smiled smugly. ‘I can, in fact, give you that information. It was owned by a man called Roddy Hargreaves. According to Debbie, he now virtually lives in the Coach and Horses pub in Fed. He had something to do with the pleasure boats down near Fed Bridge.’

‘Presumably the police will have talked to him?’

‘I imagine so. Again, it’s so frustrating not knowing what they’re up to.’

Jude smiled. ‘Unless we can find someone who’ll hack into their computers, I’m afraid we’re stuck with that.’ She pushed a hand thoughtfully through the twists of her blonde hair. ‘There was something about the body that was funny, you know . . .’

‘Having no limbs is pretty funny. Funny peculiar, that is, not funny ha ha.’

‘Something else. I don’t know anything about forensics or pathology, but I’d have thought a body that’d been dead three years would have lost most of its skin and flesh.’

‘Depends entirely on where it’s been kept for those three years.’ Here was a subject Carole did know a bit about. Her work in the Home Office had occasionally involved talking to policemen on related subjects. ‘Bodies buried in peat or in glaciers have been preserved virtually intact for centuries.’

‘Not a lot of peat or glaciers round Fedborough, are there?’

‘No, but there are other things that can have a kind of mummifying effect. Being in a very smoky environment, for one. Or in some cases, bodies have been preserved by wind, draughts even . . . I think I’m right. Hang on, I’ve got a book on the subject.’

Carole knew exactly where on her shelves the required volume was, and quickly found the relevant page. ‘It can be in a draught. Or in the sun and air. The tissues don’t putrefy, but just slowly dry up.’

‘Like dried meat or fish.’

‘I suppose so, yes.’ Carole grimaced.

‘Well, if that’s the case,’ Jude went on, ‘then I don’t think the torso could’ve been in Pelling House for very long.’

‘Why not?’

‘The cellar was terribly damp. It smelt musty and mildewy. And Grant was saying earlier in the evening that he’d heard it actually fills up with water when the Fether gets really high.’

‘Maybe the body had been moved then . . .’ Carole’s eyes were still scanning the page as she spoke. ‘Ah, no, that may not be it, though . . . Book also says a body can become petrified . . .’

‘I’d be petrified if someone was cutting off my arms and legs.’

‘Very funny, Jude,’ Carole responded primly, and went on, ‘Adipocere – that’s a sort of waxy stuff – forms on the external parts of the body and it can end up looking like a marble statue. Trouble is, that only happens in very damp, airless conditions. So . . . did the torso you saw look more mummified or petrified?’

Jude shook her head glumly. ‘I don’t have the expert knowledge to answer that, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, all right, did it look more dried-up or waxen?’

‘Dried-up, I’d say.’

‘That would mean it’d been mummified, which would certainly be unlikely in a damp cellar.’ Carole closed the book with annoyance. ‘There’s so much we just don’t know.’

‘Like, for instance, where are the two arms and legs that were once part of the torso?’

‘Good point.’ Carole returned the reference book to its allotted place. ‘Mind you, if for the moment we put on one side the more extreme explanations, like a psychopath getting his kicks, a religious ritual . . . or cannibalism . . . there’s only one sensible reason why someone would cut up a body.’

‘What?’

‘Ease of disposal. It’s a cliché of criminality that murder’s easy enough to commit; the difficult bit is getting rid of the body. Much less difficult, though, if you scatter limbs round the country and then get rid of the torso separately. You could even carve the torso up too. And doing that could also help to make identification more difficult.’

‘So,’ Jude started slowly, ‘we might be looking at a scenario where our murderer . . .’ Carole didn’t pick up her use of the word. Both of them were now convinced that they were dealing with a murder. ‘ . . . our murderer was in the process of disposing of the body, had got rid of the arms and legs, and then had to stop for some reason . . .’

‘For some reason.’ Carole sounded testy with frustration. ‘And what chance do we have of finding out that reason? Very little, I would think. We seem to be up against a brick wall. There’s no other avenue of investigation we can follow.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We know the name of the person who owned Pelling House before the Carltons.’

‘Yes, but we don’t know him. We don’t know where he lives.’

‘Debbie said he’s always in the Coach and Horses in Fedborough.’

‘But we still don’t know him,’ Carole wailed. ‘We haven’t been introduced.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Come on, get your coat. I’m going to treat you to supper in the Coach and Horses.’

As recollection of her recent shame encompassed her, Carole froze. ‘Jude,’ she whispered, appalled, ‘I can’t go into a pub.’