Twenty-One
Rose Piper arrived at Charlie’s apartment block little more than ten minutes after his murderer had left. But she didn’t know that. Neither did she know that the murderer, ironically, had used the same method of entering the block as she was about to.
As she stood on the pavement outside Spike Island Court she was momentarily surprised, but not really alarmed, to get no reply when she pushed the intercom button for flat thirty-six. Fortunately a resident appeared with a key, and by virtue of an apologetic smile and a mumbled excuse, Rose managed to gain entry without having to play the warrant-card trick.
She took the lift to the third floor where she found that the door to Charlie’s flat was slightly ajar. This did alarm her somewhat. Rose called his name, got no response and then tried to push the door open. It stuck after just a few inches. She leaned against it, pushing it as far as she could and then squeezed her way in around the edge.
Charlie’s body was blocking the way.
Rose uttered a small involuntary cry and dropped to her knees by his side. He had fallen on his back and his bloodied and broken face stared unseeingly up at her. Charlie Collins was only barely recognisable. His nose and cheek bones had been smashed to pieces. There was more than one concave recession in his head and his hair was matted with blood and tangled with small pieces of bone. His torso had not escaped attention either. One arm was lying at an impossible angle, indicating that it was fractured. Charlie had patently been the victim of a quite frenzied attack. Rose hardly needed to check his pulse to know that he was dead, but she did so anyway.
For just a few seconds she felt as if she were frozen with shock. Then her training took over. She operated on auto-pilot. Swiftly she used her police radio to contact her own HQ to report the crime and to call an ambulance, although she was quite sure that would prove to be a waste of time.
Leaning against the wall in the hallway for support, she felt as if her legs could barely hold her upright. But she was functioning — just about. And a frightening thought crossed her mind. Charlie’s wrist had felt warm when she had checked his pulse. It was possible that his murderer was still in the apartment. The doors to the bedroom and the kitchen were both closed. She craned her neck to peer through the open door into the living-room. She could see no sign of life and neither could she hear any sound.
She resisted the urge to search the flat properly. At worst she could end up being attacked herself and at best she would get a rollicking from the SOCOs for messing up evidence. Instead she left the apartment, this time being careful to touch as little as possible, and waited outside in the corridor.
Back-up was with her within minutes, but even the short wait on her own had been long enough for the grim reality of what she had walked into to overwhelm her. Rose never failed to be affected by the sight of a dead body, but this was only the second time she had ever actually discovered one. Also, it was the first time she had ever seen a dead person that she had known — and, she had long ago admitted to herself, in spite of everything and her better judgement, a person she had grown fond of.
She felt much worse even than she usually did. Poor Charlie looked so awful too — she had never seen a corpse that had been so badly beaten. She knew she was shaking and was only just in control of the waves of nausea which were spasmodically rising from the depths of her belly, causing her to gag.
It was a relief to hand the situation over. Peter Mellor turned up within minutes and, even in her shock and distress, it gave Rose some fleeting sense of satisfaction to note that the expression of stiff distaste he had always worn when dealing with the living Charlie Collins had departed swiftly with the young man’s death.
In fact Mellor looked uncharacteristically flustered, and Rose guessed that he was wondering if he would have dealt with Charlie Collins’s call for help any differently had he not disapproved so strongly of the boy. Rose, still a professional in spite of feeling so wretched, did not see how he could have done but neither did she think it would do her sergeant any harm at all to experience self-doubt for once.
Detective Chief Superintendent Titmuss also made an extremely rare scene-of-the-crime appearance, but then this one undoubtedly held far-reaching repercussions. Doctor Carmen Brown, Rose was told, was on her way.
And if anyone noticed the state the DCI was in, they were tactful enough not to mention it.
Rose suddenly couldn’t take any more of it. She did not want for the moment to have to look again at Charlie Collins’s battered face and broken body and she knew exactly what she did want to do. In fact she couldn’t wait.
‘I’ll be back,’ she announced briefly, and left a rather surprised-looking Peter Mellor to it.
Outside she battled for control. Charlie Collins’s ruined face was right inside her head. The handsome young man lying obscene in death in his own home. The nausea was suddenly too much for her to fight. She reached her car but could go no further. Holding on to the door handle for support she started to retch and had little choice except to bend over and be heartily sick on the tarmac, splashing the wheels of the vehicle. It was a relief to vomit, and she actually felt very slightly better as she straightened up — only vaguely aware of a typical Spike Island yuppie type hurrying past and resolutely pretending that he hadn’t noticed what she was doing.
Rose couldn’t care less. The enormity of the murder of Charlie Collins and all that it might signify was everything to her. She mopped herself up as best she could, using the box of paper tissues she always kept in her car. Then she started the engine, manoeuvred her way carefully out of the car park, aware that her hands were still trembling slightly, and set off purposefully in the direction of the A38 heading north towards Gloucester.
She was going to Eastwood Park to see Constance Lange.
Rose saw Constance glance at her in some surprise when she was taken to her cell by a prison officer. She supposed she looked a mess. She certainly felt it.
Constance, by comparison, contrived to look elegant even in these surroundings. She was wearing an unmistakeably cashmere sweater over a straight calf-length skirt. As a prisoner on remand she was allowed to wear her own clothes and, although she continued to refuse to see any of her family, she had accepted readily enough the clothing which her elder daughter Charlotte, resigned to not being a welcome visitor, had in any case sent to the prison.
It occurred to Rose obscurely that Constance Lange would probably contrive still to look elegant even if she had to wear prison garb. And there remained an eerie calm about her. Rose wondered if the news she was about to break might shake that at last.
Technically Rose should not have been there at all now that Constance was awaiting trial. Certainly she could not demand to see Constance, and it had been a relief when she arrived at Eastwood Park and the accused woman had agreed to see her.
Quite bluntly she told Constance about Charlie’s death and the manner of it. There was just the briefest flicker of response. Rose could only imagine what was going on inside the other woman’s head. Constance, sitting on her bunk bed, merely stared silently at her family photograph, almost as if nothing that she had heard had anything remotely to do with her.
‘Constance, Charlie’s death is just too much of a coincidence not to be connected to the other murders,’ Rose told her. ‘He was trying to get hold of me when he died. I reckon he had something important to tell me. And I can’t help thinking that Charlie might well have been killed by the same person who murdered the others. Now that could not be you.’
Constance still didn’t speak. Rose sighed and continued.