‘Can you think of any reason, madam, why your husband might have taken his own life?’ he asked Constance.
Mrs Lange had escorted him into the drawing-room, the first time he had been anywhere in the farmhouse except the kitchen. The room was beautifully furnished in traditional country style with big squashy chintz-covered chairs and sofa, the colours all gentle blues and golds, relaxing, easy on the eye. A log fire blazed in the big open fireplace and a weak wintery sun streamed through the windows, its pale light reflected in the gleaming pieces of brass and copper which stood on the mantelpiece and on either side of the grate. A fine grandfather clock dominated one corner of the room, and the silence between him and Mrs Lange was so intense that its ticking sounded as loud to the inspector as if a drum were being methodically beaten inside his head.
The newly widowed woman returned the policeman’s gaze steadily. She certainly seemed to have recovered well enough now, on the surface at least, thought Inspector Barton. But then, he supposed that was only to be expected of a woman like her. She was, after all, Mrs Constance Lange. Whatever Mrs Lange was really feeling, now that the initial shock was over, she was unlikely to let it show to anyone and certainly not to a policeman. He was both impressed and a little unnerved. If Constance Lange was hiding anything, he didn’t reckon she was going to give herself away yet. And the inspector proved to be dead right.
Constance was quite controlled. Only the tiniest tremor in her hands, folded neatly in her lap as she contrived to sit quite upright in an easy chair opposite the policeman, indicated that she might be suppressing any emotion. She regarded Barton coolly.
‘No reason at all, inspector,’ she replied eventually. And her voice was quite without expression.
Fourteen
Wayne Thompson’s back was aching. He reached behind him with one hand, exploring gingerly. Ouch! He resented his back ache. After all, it was only when he was forced to put in long hours on the day job that it played him up like this. Wayne Thompson was a big strong lad, but his height — he was well over six foot — did not help his tendency to suffer back trouble, and he didn’t enjoy being a builder’s labourer. He didn’t like fetching and carrying in all weathers. And digging played his back up more than anything. But recently he hadn’t had much choice. His other employment had more or less dried up.
It was Thursday, December 17th, the evening of the same day that Inspector Barton paid his fruitless visit to Constance at Chalmpton Peverill. Christmas was only just over a week away, thought Wayne, and that at least was good news. He got two days off on full pay then, and the boss had hinted there might be a bonus as well if he continued to pull his weight.
If his back could stand it, more like, grumbled Wayne to himself. He slicked down his abundant head of dark brown hair, pulled on his expensive knee-length fur-collared leather overcoat, bought in better times, admired his good looks — which he reckoned were not being put to any worthwhile use at all at the moment — for one last time in the hall mirror. Then he set briskly off along the towpath by the Feeder, the inland waterway which links the River Avon with the Floating Harbour, to his favourite pub down by Temple Mead Railway Station where he drowned his sorrows in eight pints of lager. At the end of that lot even his back ache didn’t seem to be such a problem any more.
The journey home to his little bedsit in a ramshackle old Victorian house in Barton Hill always seemed to take longer. He prided himself that he could hold his beer, did Wayne, but he weaved a bit as he walked. He was in control though, and dark as it was along the towpath Wayne didn’t feel in any danger. He wasn’t likely to fall. He’d done this late night walk often enough after a few beers, hadn’t he?
But on this occasion Wayne didn’t make it home. He was only fifty yards or so from the lock and the footbridge where he usually crossed the Feeder when he seemed to lurch unnaturally to the left. Uttering not a sound, and with only a gentle splash, Wayne Thompson pitched sideways into the murky water.
They found him early the next morning. The corpse, floating face-down in the water, its feet tangled in weed sprouting from the bank, was spotted at first light by a woman out walking her dog.
She raised the lock-keeper who promptly dialled 999 and was told not to touch anything until the police arrived. But by the time the lock-keeper and the woman returned to the body, a couple of passing joggers had also spotted it and were in the process of clumsily dragging the sodden corpse on to the tow-path.
A police patrol car, fortuitously close by when the driver was alerted on his radio, arrived on the scene just three or four minutes after the 999 call was made and its two occupants jumped from the car shouting to the joggers to leave the body alone and stand back.
One of the two officers did his best to keep the joggers, the lock-keeper and the dog-walker as far away as possible while his colleague checked that the man pulled from the water was indeed dead. There wasn’t any doubt. Police Constable Smithers touched ice-cold flesh and found himself shivering inside his warm coat. This was his first body but he knew it would not be his last. He had to cope. With difficulty he maintained control of himself. He was nineteen years old and new to the job, but maybe it was partly the fact that he was a probationary constable still attending regular sessions at the National Police Training School in Cwmbran that made him so observant. PC Smithers took a good long look at the corpse and noticed that there was a small gash in the back of the dead man’s coat. It was a good coat too, and the policeman was pretty sure somehow that it wouldn’t have been put on with a tear in it. And PC Smithers was well aware of the two other recent stabbings of young men in the Bristol area.
He was unable to stop shaking, however much he fought against it, but he wasn’t sure now if that were caused by the shock of being confronted by a dead body or by the feeling of excitement which was beginning to engulf him. He just hoped nobody else was aware of it. Swiftly he stepped back and used his police radio to contact his senior officer.
The SOCOs, in the truck which served as a mobile incident room, arrived within fifteen minutes with Rose herself only minutes behind them. She had already been in her office at Staple Hill when the call came through from the Chief Inspector at PC Smithers’ station — she seemed to be getting in earlier every day — and had roared across town to the crime scene, this time beating Carmen Brown by a good twenty minutes.
It was raining yet again and the SOCOs were erecting a tent to protect the murder scene. The body lay awkwardly face-down along the side of the towpath. The ground was muddy. A number of assorted footprints were visible, none of them particularly clearly. Rose suspected that, if they had not been too distorted by the steady rain, one or two at least of the footprints would prove to come from a size ten Timberland boot. Thankfully the weather and the hour meant that only a handful of particularly resolute joggers and dog-walkers had passed by the towpath so far that morning. She gave instructions to seal off the crime scene, deciding quickly just how big an area she wanted fenced off.
‘Nobody’s been near since we got here, ma’am,’ said PC Smithers.
Rose could see that the young PC was shaking. She knew he was trying desperately to hide his youthful inexperience beneath a thin but eager façade of efficiency. She had done it often enough, after all, she remembered.