“I don’t imagine he’s armed.” She tried to sound braver than she was. “I think he realises I’d give him a good kicking in a fair fight.”
“Janet, you have to stop this and get out right now. He has every reason to hurt you.” While she spoke Longbright was trying to raise the alarm on her mobile.
“No, he doesn’t want to hurt me.” She smiled at him confidently. “He’s hardly moved a muscle since he stepped into the room.” She moved a little closer. “There’s a strong intelligence working behind his eyes. I think we’re just going to have a little chat, as equals. Wait a minute.” There was a brief silence. “Well, I’m damned, it’s not a man at all – ”
The handset fell to the floor with a clatter. A moment later, it was gently replaced on its base.
♦
Bimsley and Mangeshkar took the young Indian DC’s Kawasaki 500 and took off, coasting around stalled traffic at Hyde Park Corner, hitting seventy in the deserted backstreets behind the Brompton Road. As they roared into the quiet cherry-tree-lined street off the King’s Road they could see that the communal door to Janet Ramsey’s apartment building was still open.
Bimsley had no qualms about kicking in the locked front door, but Meera stopped him. “She might be behind it,” she warned, calling to Ramsey and getting no response.
“I’ll do it gently,” Bimsley promised, but as he leaned on it, the door swung in.
Ramsey was lying at the foot of the stairs, her cracked forehead still wet with a vivid slash of blood. Mangeshkar checked for vital signs as Bimsley reported back.
“She’s still breathing,” said Meera. “He’s not here. But he’s messed up badly this time.”
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
43
The Dynasty
While the staff of the PCU worked on through the rainy Saturday night, Janet Ramsey reached stable condition at the Chelsea Hospital. Her X rays revealed a single wound: a skull fracture caused by a sharp blow to the head.
Early on Sunday morning, Banbury enlisted Kershaw to take photographs and conduct further analysis at the editor’s apartment.
“She fell from the top to the bottom,” Banbury told his colleague with certainty, clambering to his feet after examining the attack site. “Seven stairs, enough to increase her weight-mass fatally. She’s lucky to still be alive.”
“High heels, old chap, hardly surprising she couldn’t keep her balance.” Kershaw checked the screen of his digital camera, playing back shots. “She’s an old-school journo, hasn’t been out of cocktail outfits since her days of attending mayor’s banquets for the provincial press.” He looked around at the pastel cushions, ribbons, and flowers disapprovingly. “Janet Ramsey has a secret – despite what she publishes in Hard News, she’s a born romantic.”
“Good for me; soft surfaces hold more fibres.” Banbury hated examining hardwood floors because fresh evidence became balled up with older detritus and gathered around the edges of the room. “Let me see the fissure on her forehead again?” Banbury’s partner turned his camera around to reveal the uploaded photographs taken by the admitting doctor. “Can you enlarge the contusion area and lighten it a little?”
Kershaw worked the camera controls. Together they examined the damage that had placed Ramsey in a coma. “Three leaves,” Kershaw muttered.
“What are you saying?”
“You can clearly make out three V-tipped indentations at the hairline of her right temple. She’s got a fleur-de-lis pattern stamped into the front of her head.” He began searching around the base of the staircase.
“Over here.” Banbury pointed to the antique ironwork railing that stood a few feet beyond the front door. After Kershaw took shots of the area, Banbury sprayed Luminol on the stairway and lifted impressions from the points of the fleur-de-lis. “Looks like she fell headfirst down the steps and banged her forehead against the railing. The force would have been enough to dent her skull. The brain is probably bruised, and there could well be bone splinters in it, so I imagine she’ll be too whacked out to be interrogated just yet.”
“She was in the bedroom when she phoned the sergeant,” said Kershaw, thinking aloud. “The Highwayman rings her doorbell – the second time he’s done so – and this time she lets him in. She calmly fronts him out, but then he makes a move towards her, as if he’s going to attack, and she jumps back – ”
“What was he going to hit her with?” asked Banbury. “She said he wasn’t armed.”
“She said she thought he wasn’t armed. Perhaps he pushes her. Either way, the front door’s still wide open; she goes to leave and falls headlong down the stairs, cracking open her skull. Point is, there’s no way of proving whether it was attempted murder.”
“Then we have to find a way,” replied Kershaw. “This is the kind of street where the residents will tell you they saw nothing.”
“We have one reliable witness: Ramsey herself.” Banbury ran a hand over his cropped head. “The phone call. She got closer to him than anyone. And on the transcript, she tells Longbright that the Highwayman is not male.”
“That’s ridiculous, a woman wouldn’t be strong enough.”
“You haven’t met my girlfriend,” said Banbury. “She works in a pub and was still changing the barrels two days before giving birth to our nipper.”
The pair crossed the road and began knocking on doors. An elderly neighbour opposite thought she had seen someone being attacked, but didn’t call the police because she had “no desire to interfere in the affairs of others.” Chelsea was home to much of London’s old money. Phalanxes of pathologically self-centred venture capitalists, wine traders, and art dealers lived behind its triplebolted doors.
“Did you at least get a full statement?” asked Banbury when Kershaw returned. The crime scene manager was in Janet Ramsey’s hall, lying on his stomach and sliding sheets of sticky acetate across the carpet.
“I tried to get the witness down to the unit, but she refused to go. Besides, what I got didn’t add up.”
“Tell me.”
“The old lady says she looked out of her window and saw Ramsey’s front door open. She knows Ramsey to nod to, nothing more, actually referred to her as ‘that frightful newspaper woman.’ Ramsey came out onto the steps, then dropped, as though she’d lost her footing on the first step, and fell headfirst, glancing against the railing. Witness reckons she was alone. When she landed, she didn’t get up.”
“And she still did nothing to help?”
“Carried on repotting her nasturtiums.”
“As you say, Ramsey was wearing very high heels, so it’s possible she just fell. I need to take a look at the top step.”
Banbury examined the treads and took a scraping of a single small scuff mark. “I’ll see if this matches her heel,” he told Kershaw, “but it looks pretty straightforward. She was trying to get away from him, and didn’t check where she was going – or he had already gone and she was simply in a state of disorientation.”
“Or she may have been lying, and he was never there at all,” added Kershaw.
“Then why would she tell Longbright the Highwayman wasn’t male? No, he was here all right. We’ve got the same ridged bootprints in the hall, and this time they’re the larger of our two sizes, same as the one in the gallery.” He ran his torch along the carpet, highlighting the indented pile. “He walked behind her.”
“So he could have pushed her,” Kershaw suggested.
“I don’t think so. The carpet prints are all the same depth. He continued walking and went out the way he came in.” Banbury rocked back on his heels, thinking. “One odd thing, though. Her prints are clearly distinguishable because of the narrow heel. They come up from the lounge, go to the front door and back, then stop altogether. His prints cross hers, so I guess he might have flattened the pile.”