She piled some more mango chutney on to her already loaded plate. Damn Terry Sharpe, she thought. Even the circumstantial evidence was totally unhelpful. The barman at the Portway Towers had passed on a message to Colin Parker from a woman — and he was quite certain it had been a woman’s voice on the phone — calling Colin into the car park where he met his death minutes later.
And Paolo remained adamant that it was Mrs Pattinson who called him asking for Charlie on the night Marty was murdered at the Crescent Hotel.
‘No it wasn’t just a woman saying she was Mrs Pattinson,’ he had told Rose yet again when she had telephoned him a few minutes earlier. ‘It was Mrs Pattinson. I’ve heard her voice on the phone enough, haven’t I?
‘And I hope to God I never hear from her again.’
Rose finished every mouthful of her curry. It didn’t give her much comfort though. She felt bloated and even more depressed than before she had started on the meal.
That afternoon provided only hours more of plodding police work and certainly no miracle solutions. The evening which followed was a total disaster.
Rose hadn’t wanted to go to Bill Jamieson’s farewell party in the first place, and didn’t know why she hadn’t stopped Simon from accompanying her, the way things were between them. She supposed it was habit really. Simon had always come to these dos in the past, and Bill, her first station sergeant when she had joined the Avon and Somerset Constabulary all those years ago, was one of the few policemen her husband really liked. They shared a love of jazz for one thing, and indeed Bill would probably have made a better teacher than he had ever made copper, she thought disloyally. He had been lucky to be promoted to sergeant, they always said. The older man had never had the push and shove you needed to get on in the force nowadays, and was probably all the nicer for it. Both Rose and Simon were fond of him.
However, within minutes of arriving at the Compton Arms, Rose realised that the whole thing was going to be a big mistake.
She was aware of a few leers, a certain muttering, and a lot of laughter as soon as she and Simon entered the bar. Rose knew that she had been the subject of a joke or two around the station lately because of the time she was spending with Charlie Collins, but normally nobody would dare make any comment in front of her — let alone in front of her husband. Alcohol changed all that, and several of her colleagues were already fairly drunk. She reckoned that some of them must have been on the booze for most of the afternoon to get into that state already and half wished she had had the time to do the same.
She steered Simon into as quiet and safe a corner as she could find and ordered them both a drink. The corner turned out not to be safe enough.
‘She’s left the toyboy tart at home tonight then...’ she heard one detective — not on her team but she made a mental vow to get him all the same — to another.
‘Worn out probably,’ muttered the other to an outbreak of only vaguely subdued laughter.
The men, well oiled as they were, thought of course, that their voices were low and did not realise that Rose and Simon were standing right behind them. They did not really mean to be overheard, Rose realised that, but you did not need her exceptionally acute hearing in order to do so. In their drunkenness they had lost all sense of sound level as well as all other kind of sense. And in any case the damage was done.
Rose felt Simon freeze beside her and she was aware of him glaring at her throughout the rest of the evening. He did not speak to her again while they were in the pub. She had, of course, wanted to leave as soon as the incident happened — but she decided that she wouldn’t give her blabbing colleagues the satisfaction. That might indeed have made matters even worse. Instead she did not suggest to Simon that they leave until what she considered to be the first respectable moment — after the farewell speeches were over — and he silently complied.
The taxi ride home was also conducted in stony silence, while Rose reflected that she could have saved the fare by driving herself as her mood had been such that she had barely drunk anything at all. Simon, however, had done his best to drown his sorrows. In little more than an hour and a half he had downed several pints of beer and a couple of large whisky chasers. Gloomily Rose reflected on how that wasn’t going to help either, and she was right.
Once inside the bungalow, and indeed more than a little drunk, Simon let rip.
‘You cow!’ he screamed at his wife. ‘You thoughtless bloody cow. What kind of a fucking fool do you take me for?’
At first she tried reason, then she joined in the slanging match. She really had had enough. It became the worst row they had ever had. Afterwards Rose remembered vividly her own stupid hurtfulness as much as she remembered his.
‘And if I am screwing him, what’s it to do with you?’ she yelled. ‘At least he’s interested. What do you care?’
There were even one or two moments when she had thought he was going to hit her, something he had never done. But it was she who ultimately lost control, picked up a vase off the table in the hall — which was as far into the bungalow as they got before the fight started — and threw it against the wall where it smashed to smithereens.
Then she stormed out of the house, with Simon’s parting shot ringing in her ears.
‘Have a good time with your rent boy, you slut! I’d make sure he wears something though...’
Rose began to cry as she climbed into her car — thankful only that the car keys were still in the handbag she was carrying and that she was quite sober enough to drive.
With tears streaming down her cheeks she swung the car out of the driveway and headed back into Bristol city centre. She had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near Charlie Collins, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell Simon that.
In fact she drove straight to Jury’s Hotel, which was both big enough and anonymous enough to suit her purposes and not as expensive as the ludicrously overpriced Portway Towers, and checked in for the night. More than anything else she longed for at least a few hours peace and quiet.
Yet again, though, as she desperately sought sleep which continued to elude her in spite of her emotional and physical exhaustion, it was not anxieties about her troubled marriage that plagued her. Instead her last conscious thoughts were once more of Mrs Pattinson.
She thought that the next day she would ask for the computer pictures of the elusive woman to be reissued, this time doctored with a selection of different hairstyles and colours.
As it turned out, she did not need to bother.
Seventeen
It was the next morning, Tuesday, December 22nd, just three days before Christmas, when she arrived at Staple Hill Police Station. She was tall, elegant, beautifully dressed, and gave the impression of being quite composed and in charge of herself. But she was wearing dark glasses, which she removed when she spoke to the desk clerk to reveal tired red-rimmed eyes. And when you looked at her closely there were lines of strain around her mouth. This was obviously a woman under great stress. Her voice, however, was calm and she spoke clearly and unemotionally.
‘My name is Constance Lange,’ she said. ‘I am also known as Mrs Pattinson. I would like to confess to murder.’
Almost everyone in Bristol, probably everyone in the UK, knew who Mrs Pattinson was — or certainly who she was supposed to be. The desk clerk, an experienced former police officer now re-employed as a civilian, tried not to gulp. He instructed his younger assistant to contact DCI Rose Piper at once. He did not intend to take his eyes off this Constance Lange until she was safely passed on to far more senior hands than his. The chances were she was no more Mrs Blessed Pattinson than his missus, but in his job you didn’t take chances. And there was something about this woman which set his teeth on edge.