A Deadly Thaw Read online

  Connie had long ago learnt that starting an investigation with a set of assumptions was a sure-fire way of making things more difficult for yourself. People rarely reacted in the way you expected, could look unmarked by the vicissitudes of life and could surprise even the most experienced copper.

  But Lena was still a surprise. Given she had served a long stretch inside Styal high-security prison, Connie expected at least a visage of shame and possibly guilt. Instead, the woman standing in the open doorway was looking at her with cool detachment. ‘What have I done now?’

  Connie wasn’t surprised. Although people rarely identified her as a copper straight away, her tiny frame and fragile appearance lulling suspects into a false sense of security, there were two of them presenting themselves at this woman’s front door. She reminded herself that here was a woman used to the criminal justice system. ‘I’m Detective Constable Childs, and this is Detective Sergeant Palmer. Can we come in?’

  She saw, for the first time, a flash of concern in the woman’s expression. She stood aside to let them into the house. As Connie had suspected, the large hall was bare, with only a small side table filled with a jumble of letters and keys, too meagre for the cavernous space. An effort had been made to brighten the interior. The painted walls might have been stained, and a smell of damp assailed her nostrils, but a bunch of hydrangeas was floating in water on the table, their colourful orbs providing a splash of brightness in the dark hallway.

  The woman noticed her looking. ‘You like flowers?’

  Connie shrugged. ‘No. Well, yes, of course I like flowers but I particularly like hydrangeas. They remind me of my grandmother. She used to have two large bushes growing in her front garden. I don’t remember them being out in spring though.’

  The woman stroked one of the heads. ‘They’re the first blooms of the year. The garden is full of the bushes. The flowers are supposed to symbolise vanity and boastfulness. I can’t see the connection myself.’

  Connie looked at the flowers and stifled the urge to touch them too. ‘You are Lena Fisher?’

  The woman winced. ‘I’m Lena Gray now. I went back to my maiden name. Come through to the living room. Forget about the bloody flowers.’

  The lounge was huge, with picture windows at either end. The one looking out towards the front garden was almost obscured by an oak tree whose branches tapped against the glass. The back window at least gave a partial glimpse of the rear garden but was so dirty that all Connie could see was the ghostly outline of her own reflection in the glass as she stared across the room.

  She and Palmer sat on one of the sofas, and Lena took the one opposite them. She had long dark hair, streaked with fine threads of silver, pulled up into a French knot. She wore an old white shirt over a grey T-shirt and jeans ripped at the knees. She looked both untidy and effortlessly chic. Connie glanced down at her scuffed shoes and promised herself a shopping trip as soon as the sales started.

  ‘Ms Gray. You were released from prison in April last year having served ten and a half years of a life sentence. Is that correct?’ The woman nodded but said nothing. Connie carried on. ‘You were convicted of the murder of your husband, Andrew Fisher, in a trial that took place in March 2005. You agree this is the case?’

  Again the woman nodded.

  Palmer was silent next to her. Watching them both.

  Connie could feel her blood pressure beginning to rise. She took a deep breath. ‘When Andrew Fisher was found dead in September 2004, it was initially thought to have been the result of a heart attack. You positively identified him as being your husband. Is that correct?’

  The woman’s expression was unreadable. But still she nodded. Connie had had enough. ‘And at what point did you realise he wasn’t, in fact, your husband?’

  Silence.

  ‘And why didn’t you think to mention it when you were subsequently arrested and tried for his murder?’

  The woman’s amused expression had gone.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’

  Lena put her head in her hands. Connie waited, giving her time to compose herself.

  There was a scraping noise of metal hitting metal, and then the sound of the front door opening and closing. A woman walked into the room, so resembling Lena that Connie had to look back opposite her to make sure what she was seeing wasn’t an optical illusion caused, perhaps, by the shadowing glass.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Lena stood up but didn’t move away from the sofa. ‘These are . . . detectives.’

  As the other woman approached, Connie could see that the resemblance between the two women was superficial. They both had long dark hair and thin-limbed bodies, but whereas Lena Gray was calm self-containment, this new woman had a restless energy which, Connie thought, she was making an attempt to suppress.

  The similarity hadn’t gone unnoticed by Palmer. He was looking at the two women with a puzzled frown on his face.

  ‘I’m Kat Gray. Lena’s sister.’

  Sadler hadn’t mentioned anything about a sister. Perhaps she hadn’t been around at the time of the killing.

  She walked over to Lena’s sofa and sat down next to her. Two pairs of pale-blue eyes fixed on Connie, and she was suddenly aware of an undercurrent of strength emitting from these two women. She leaned forward. ‘So, Lena. I was asking you at what point you realised that the man you identified as your husband in 2004 wasn’t in fact Andrew Fisher.’

  That shocked the new woman. ‘What?’ She swivelled around to look at her sister, who was still staring at Connie. ‘What’s she taking about, Lena?’

  Lena shook her head, and Connie, for a moment, let the silence settle over the dusty living room.

  ‘In 2004, you positively identified a body found in your bedroom as your husband, Andrew. However, given that you had been married to him for five years and that the injuries that the dead man had sustained had not particularly affected his facial features, you must surely have realised that the man you were identifying was not your husband.’

  Kat was pale with shock. Her sister, wary. ‘What makes you so certain that the man I identified wasn’t my husband?’

  Connie looked at the two sisters. ‘Because earlier today the body of a man was found which we believe to be that of Andrew Fisher. So the question I’m putting to you, Ms Gray, is who did you kill on the nineteenth of September 2004?’

  5

  After the police had gone, Kat went into the kitchen and put the kettle on the hob. She hunted around for matches and finally located them under a damp tea towel on the kitchen counter. It was useless to complain to Lena. Especially now they had more important things to discuss. Nothing could be forced into the open. Ever since she was a teenager, Lena had responded only to words of encouragement and enticement. Any criticism, implied or otherwise, would be met with withdrawal and distance.

  As the kettle spluttered to life, Kat thought back to the other time when the police had come to the house. She hadn’t been living here then. She’d taught English abroad for most of the 1990s, returning in 1998 to retrain as a therapist. She’d used her savings to rent a modern loft in the old textile mill at Litton. Although housed in a Victorian building, it was aeons away from the draughty wreck that this place had become.

  Then, one day in 2004, she had a call to say that her brother-in-law was dead, and she’d gone back to her childhood home to support her sister. And she had. At least for a short time. But then the police had come to arrest Lena, and, after that fateful visit, Kat had never, really, ever left. Because Lena had gone with them. No denials, no protestations of innocence. The same through the trial. Pleaded guilty and had done nothing to help herself. It had been left to the solicitor to try to present any mitigating circumstances.

  Kat’s phone pinged, and she picked it up to look at the message. It was from Mark Astley. ‘Thanks for the support today.’ Her heart jumped. Of course he had her mobile number. She’d given it to him during the first session in case either of t
hem needed to change their appointment times. She’d never said that it was okay for him to contact her otherwise, and certainly not via text message.

  She thought about replying. Something neutral and innocuous but encouraging. Professional but a reply all the same. Discretion got the better of her, and she deleted the message.

  After pouring the hot water into the teapot, she put everything on a tray and carried it through to the living room. Lena hadn’t moved. Kat carefully placed the tray on the table and sat opposite her, taking the seat where the detectives had been. ‘Is it true?’

  Lena turned to look out of the far window. ‘I can’t tell you.’

  Kat could feel her face turning red. ‘What do you mean you can’t tell me? What can’t you tell me?’

  Lena stood up and walked towards the window. ‘Don’t ask, because I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  Still facing away, her sister spoke to the window. ‘Does it matter? I’m not able to say.’

  Kat looked at the brewing tea and felt the urge to pick up the pot and hurl it at her sister. She willed herself to stay calm. ‘Can you at least tell me if the man you identified in 2004 was actually Andrew?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what?’ Kat was shouting, the frustrations of the day suddenly to the fore. ‘No, you can’t tell me, or no, it wasn’t Andrew?’

  Lena remained silent.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’

  Finally, Lena turned to her sister. ‘Not everything can be told. You, of all people, should know that.’

  6

  Palmer deposited three Styrofoam cups of coffee onto Sadler’s desk. ‘Hot off the press, as it were.’

  Connie gave him a sour look. ‘You’re mixing your metaphors. I thought we were boycotting that place.’ A well-known chain of coffee shops had recently opened a branch in Bampton despite vociferous opposition. Some of the smaller cafés that had been in the town for generations predicted their own demise as they struggled to cope with the competition.

  Sadler forced his attention back to the voice on the phone.

  ‘I like the coffee there.’ Palmer picked up one of the cups and took a long swig. ‘I’ll have yours if you don’t want it.’

  ‘Coffee is the least of our worries.’ Sadler put down his phone, got up and shut the door to the office. ‘That was Superintendent Llewellyn. For the third time this evening. We’re getting a media strategy together before the details of the victim’s identity get into the press. Because once the body that was found at Hale’s End Mortuary is confirmed to be that of Andrew Fisher, we’re going to be bombarded with questions. I need to go through with you what we’re going to have to cover. Let’s start with 2004.’

  Connie opened her notebook. ‘I’ve had a chance to glance through the old files. On the morning of the twentieth of September 2004, a Monday, Lena Fisher, now Lena Gray, awoke to find her husband, Andrew, dead in bed. She called an ambulance, which arrived at the house twenty-two minutes later. He was taken to hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.’

  ‘That was certainly what we believed to be the initial sequence of events,’ said Sadler.

  Connie nodded. ‘According to her later statement, following her arrest, she changed the story slightly to say that they had sex when he got into bed, and then they both went to sleep. I’m telling you this because it might be relevant to helping us identify who the man was. It was someone she was willing to admit she’d had a sexual relationship with.’

  ‘But why did the sex come out in the later statement?’ asked Palmer. ‘Why didn’t she tell us at first?’

  Sadler picked up his coffee and frowned at the logo emblazoned on the cup. ‘Because when Lena Gray was first questioned, it was as a woman whose husband had died in the night of natural causes. Whether or not they had sex the previous evening was none of our business.’

  Connie was looking disapprovingly at her notes. Sadler guessed that she would have asked the question. He felt the prickle of irritation. ‘In any case, the question wasn’t asked.’

  Connie, always quick to pick up on his mood, turned the page of her notebook. ‘Given that Andrew Fisher had been positively identified by his wife and death wasn’t considered to be suspicious, no further DNA proof was obtained or required. This is standard procedure in cases of natural causes.’

  Sadler could feel Palmer’s eyes on him.

  ‘However, an autopsy was carried out two days later by Dr Shields – Bill – and he concluded, given a small amount of bruising around the mouth and some evidence of burst blood vessels in the ocular orbit (that’s eyeballs, in layman’s terms), that death was, in fact, most likely due to asphyxiation.’

  ‘And no further checks were done on the man’s identification, even though the cause of death was now considered to be suspicious?’ asked Palmer.

  There was silence in the room.

  ‘That’s what’s going to be investigated. We would have done identity checks and I’m pretty sure these were carried out,’ said Sadler. He could see them both looking doubtful. ‘I have to say that I strongly suspect that the correct procedure was followed. However, I don’t want you to get involved in any mistakes that might have been made over the misidentification of the body. The case has been referred, by us, to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. There’ll be an investigation, and we can’t let that hinder what we’re having to do now.’

  Palmer looked concerned. ‘You’ll be all right, though, won’t you? You said you weren’t directly involved in the case.’

  Sadler made a face. ‘It’s a small team here. We all got involved one way or another. I may need to look at my own actions in relation to how we policed this.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Connie’s face was indignant. ‘First of all, as you said, you weren’t the investigating officer, so I hardly think you should be doing too much mea culpa. Second, let’s not forget that the body had already been positively ID’d by his wife. It’s not you that the press are going to go for when they find out about this. It’s her.’

  Sadler looked at the two members of his team sitting across the desk and wondered, not for the first time, what he had done to deserve such loyalty. ‘Which brings us on to Lena Gray. What do we know about her?’

  Palmer opened his mouth to speak, but it was Connie, once again, who got in first. ‘Lena and Andrew Fisher had been married for five years, no children. It was his second marriage. Lena’s first. Andrew worked as a consultant for one of the big City accountancy firms. By rights, they should have been living in a house in the London commuter belt. However, Lena, by her own admission, didn’t want to leave the family home, Providence Villa, where she is, in fact, still living. So she stayed in the house all week while her husband rented a flat in London, paid for by the company, and joined his wife at weekends.’

  Finally, Palmer was able to interrupt. Sadler noted that he’d clearly skimmed through the file too. ‘The marriage was, by all accounts, a happy one, as far as these things go. Neighbours hadn’t reported any domestic disturbances, and both persons were under the police radar. However, subsequent scrutiny of Lena’s medical records revealed that she had, on a number of occasions, sought medical help for stress and depression. No other information was held on her medical file so it’s only guesswork as to what caused these illnesses.’

  Connie turned to Palmer. ‘Mental-health problems aren’t simply a question of cause and effect. Lena could well have suffered from stress and depression without any direct cause.’

  ‘Did Lena talk about any problems in her interviews?’ Palmer asked.

  Sadler rubbed his face. ‘She didn’t talk about anything, from what I can recall. When the results of Bill’s autopsy came in, she was arrested on suspicion of her husband’s murder. It was strange really. You’re not going to be able to hide the physical evidence of asphyxiation. She was always going to be found out after the PM.’

  ‘What was she like?’ asked Connie. ‘During the court he
arings, I mean.’

  ‘She was calm. I assumed it was because of the trauma but clearly we underestimated her, because all the time she was hiding a much larger truth from us all.’

  ‘That the man in her bed, suffocated with a pillow, wasn’t her husband at all. He was, in fact . . . ’ Connie let the words hang in the air.

  Sadler put down his pen. ‘That is the first of many questions we’re going to have to answer. It’s been quite a day. I can safely say, without a doubt, that it’s been a first for me. There’s going to be a lot of fall-out tomorrow. Let’s call it a night.’

  7

  Kat woke the following morning and listened to the rain splatter the window next to her bed. Spring hadn’t decided whether it had completely arrived. They’d had a week of true warmth where she had felt the chill of winter lift from her bones. But it had been followed by a cold snap, and winter and spring were still battling it out for ascendancy in Derbyshire.

  The sash window had an inch gap at the top where the wind tried to whistle through the packing tape she’d put up over the winter in anticipation of the usual cold bite. It was the problem with having a room at the top of the house. In summer she overheated in the stuffiness as not only did the window not close properly, it also failed to open to its full extent. But it was the room that Kat had slept in since she was a teenager, when she had finally been allowed to move out of sharing the large bedroom below with Lena.

  At the time, Lena had been exultant at being in the bigger bedroom, hers by right because she was older by one year. Kat had preferred this room, with its faded rosebud wallpaper which would now be known as shabby chic. It was to here she had come back after Lena’s arrest.