In fact, the clerk on duty at Staple Hill that morning would imminently have preferred a return to the policing of another age. He would certainly rather have liked to handcuff the woman to the chair he had bidden her sit in — just to make sure.
Fortunately both Rose Piper and Peter Mellor were at their desks when the call came through to the portacabin incident room.
They dashed across the yard to the main station building, trying to suppress their excitement. It was a bitterly cold day and neither had bothered to put coat or jacket on, yet they felt no pain.
‘Probably just another nutter, boss,’ said Mellor.
Rose knew he didn’t really mean it. The pair of them already had a gut feeling that this was the real thing, she was sure of that. There had been quite enough approaches from members of the public who had caused a lot of work and so far no progress by claiming that they knew Mrs Pattinson — but this was the first time anyone had claimed to actually be her.
Constance stood up as the inspector and the sergeant approached her. Rose appraised her quickly, searching for some quick visual confirmation that this really was Mrs Pattinson.
At a glance the woman more or less matched the physical description that had been compiled. Most importantly she was definitely about the right height, build, and age. Her hair was different, but Rose had expected that. She tried to imagine the face before her framed in Mrs Pattinson’s glossy blonde bob, and she could certainly see nothing which precluded Constance Lange from being Mrs P — except maybe the colour of her eyes, which were light hazel rather than deep green.
Rather to Rose’s surprise, Constance Lange stretched out a hand in greeting and Rose found herself taking it. The woman was behaving more as if she were the vicar’s wife on house calls rather than a murderer who had walked into a police station to confess, Rose thought.
‘Good morning,’ said the woman, in rather nicely modulated tones.
Rose coughed, clearing her throat. The handshake had been firm but courteously brief. The other woman’s flesh warm and compliant. Any kind of physical contact with an allegedly violent criminal was always an unnerving experience. But Rose knew better than to allow herself to make assumptions. She locked into professional mode, briskly introducing herself and Sergeant Mellor.
‘I understand you wish to make a statement, Mrs Lange,’ she said crisply.
Constance Lange merely nodded her assent. Like the front officer clerk Rose took in all the obvious signs of strain. But, nonetheless, Mrs Lange seemed quite self-assured, at peace with herself almost. She gave no indication of any nervousness or uncertainty at all about what she intended to do.
They took her to an interview room where she turned down an offer of tea or coffee, making it quite obvious that she wanted only to get on with the business in hand. Peter Mellor turned on and checked the tape recorder. For the purposes of security two tapes were always used. He and Rose sat across a simple wooden table from Constance.
It was a small airless room, but if Constance Lange was in any way daunted she gave no hint of it. And when she began to speak she did so with great deliberation and a kind of studied calm. She did not look at either police officer sitting opposite her. Instead she kept her eyes cast down towards her hands clasped on the table before her. They were strong capable hands, Rose noticed, hands that were definitely used to physical work, yet well cared for. The nails were without varnish but manicured. She studied the long elegant fingers, wound lightly together. The hands rested easily, perfectly still. There was not the slightest hint of any tremor. And neither was there any tremor in her voice, which remained clear and expressionless.
Firstly she explained who she was, the widow of a respected Somerset farmer, a mother and a grandmother, even giving a brief resume of her background. She was a girl who had come from nowhere to become a wealthy middle-class woman with a lovely family. Someone to be envied. She spoke almost as if she were making a speech that she had rehearsed.
‘But you see, for many years now I have lived a double life,’ she revealed. ‘Mrs Pattinson was the other me. The person I could never quite shut out. When I was Mrs Pattinson I could do things I could never do as Mrs Lange. Being Mrs Lange was not quite enough for me...’
Her voice trailed away a little there, as if she could not really quite believe what she was saying, Rose thought.
‘I thought I could get away with it,’ Constance continued. ‘And I did for a long time. My excuse was an elderly aunt with Alzheimer’s whom I used to visit in Bristol, and after she died I just pretended she was still alive. It was so easy. Once a month I would hide behind the identity of Mrs Pattinson and it almost became a routine part of my life. It even seemed quite safe, really, trouble free. That might sound crazy now, but I did what I did because it was a way of getting what I wanted with very limited danger. I thought it was less dangerous than a series of affairs.’
Constance paused, shut her eyes tightly for a few seconds and then opened them again. Rose could detect no sign of any weakness, but was aware, perhaps, of the first flicker of pain. The woman’s voice had just the slightest shake to it when she continued.
‘You see, I have always had certain needs. Certain fantasies I could never quite get out of my head. Fantasies that would lie dormant for a time, but never leave me completely alone. None of it has ever had anything to do with my family...’ This time her voice definitely faltered. ‘I don’t suppose you’d understand.’
Rose could not take her eyes off the woman. She did understand, as it happened — up to a point, anyway. For Rose, keeping her own sex life under control had always been a bit like riding a bicycle — OK as long as you didn’t lose your balance. Rose had so far kept her balance, just about, but was all too aware of how easy it would be to fall off.
The more Constance Lange talked about her sexual desires and how she had arranged a double life in order to satisfy them, how she had seemed almost to have no choice, the more Rose found herself sympathising, in fact almost bonding with her.
But this case was not about the mere realisation of allegedly harmless sexual fantasy. Constance Lange was in the process of confessing to murder — and that was something else. Rose Piper could never sympathise with a killer.
‘I killed Marty Morris because he was blackmailing me,’ said Constance, once again in the same matter-of-fact tone. ‘Apparently he followed me home to Chalmpton one day. He threatened to tell my husband about my secret sex life if I did not pay him an extremely large sum of money. I paid up. But the demands continued. In the end I became quite desperate.’
‘But you asked for Charlie Collins the night Marty was murdered,’ said Rose. ‘It always seemed likeliest to us that Marty Morris was killed by mistake.’
Constance shook her head. ‘I’d planned to tell Charlie what Marty was doing, to call in his help. I’d been...’ she hesitated as if searching for the right word, then continued, ‘...using Charlie for some time. I don’t know why I thought he would help me, but I did.
‘Then Marty turned up instead, and it seemed like fate. I couldn’t stop myself when I saw him coming through the garden, I saw a chance to get rid of this evil thing that was threatening my life.’
She looked quite intense. The words seemed almost to be choking her, while at the same time Rose sensed that the woman was also relieved, every bit as if she were getting something terrible off her chest. There were flaws in her story, anomalies which would have to be cleared up before Constance Lange’s statement could be accepted, but this was not unusual. The DCI just wanted to make quite sure that nothing was overlooked.