‘Kingston gave me the impression she wasn’t afraid to be a witness. Do you reckon you can get over that wall into the beer garden and check the back door?’ Jane asked.
‘Piece of cake.’
With a run and a jump he was up and over the wall.
‘Bugger off or I’m callin’ the police on you two!’ a shrill female voice shouted.
Jane turned and saw a frail elderly woman with a hunched back, clutching a copy of the News of the World.
She got her warrant card out.
‘It’s all right, Betty, we are the police.’
Betty tilted her head and her eyes narrowed.
‘Then why’s that darkie jumpin’ over the wall?’
‘He’s my colleague; we’ve come to see Fiona. She wasn’t answering our calls and we think her front doorbell may be broken, so now we’re trying the back door.’
‘Right, fair enough, but you can’t be too careful these days, you know.’
‘You’re quite right, Betty.’
‘Is it about the robbery? I saw it as well, you know.’
‘Yes, I heard you tell Fiona about the gun going off and the young man lying on the pavement.’
Jane nodded, watching for Teflon to come back over the wall.
‘One of ’em bastards nearly knocked me for six before they robbed the van. When’s one of your lot gonna come and see me about it?’
‘Sorry, Betty, what did you say?’
‘I said, when’s one of your lot gonna come... Never mind, luv, you obviously ain’t interested in what I gotta say.’
She started to walk off.
Jane grasped the gist of what she’d said.
‘Did you say one of them knocked you over?’
‘I said nearly. As a police officer you should pay more attention, you know. I was walkin’ up the road when this bloke opens a car door and nearly ’it’s me bad ’ip. After the robbery Fi told me she saw it ’appen and ’e was the one who drove the car.’
‘Has no one from the investigation been to see you?’
Betty frowned and shook her head. ‘Not a soul.’
Jane glanced across the road and saw Teflon inside the lounge bar, opening the door. She got her pocket notebook and pen out.
‘What’s your address, Betty? I’ll come and see you later, probably this afternoon sometime.’
‘Fifteen Dacre Road — it’s down there on the right. Don’t come between five and six as the Antiques Roadshow is on and I don’t like to miss that.’
She limped off.
Jane recalled wanting to speak to Betty on the Thursday afternoon, when she first met her, but not bothering as Fiona said DI Kingston was dealing with her. From what Betty had just said it seemed he hadn’t spoken to her, which didn’t make sense as Kingston had told her Betty was ‘a bit senile and not very reliable,’ and in his opinion it wasn’t worth getting a statement from her. She had no reason to doubt Kingston. As she watched Betty limp down the road, she wondered if she had dementia and had forgotten about the whole thing. Or maybe she just liked the attention and wanted to talk to another policeman.
‘We need to get the local CID down here.’
Teflon sprinted towards the car.
‘What’s happened?’ Jane asked, hard on his heels.
‘The back door was open, and the keys were in it. There’s a woman at the bottom of the cellar and blood on the floor — looks like she fell backwards and hit her head on the concrete.’
‘Have you called an ambulance?’
‘No, she’s dead.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I checked for a pulse. I’m assuming it’s Fiona Simpson.’
He opened the car door and picked up the radio.
‘Call a divisional surgeon to pronounce life extinct and a lab liaison sergeant as well — ask for Paul Lawrence to attend, if he’s on call,’ Jane told him.
‘I was going to get the local lads to deal with it.’
Jane shook her head. ‘Locals can hold the scene until a lab sarge gets here — they know more about suspicious death scenes than a divisional SOCO or CID ever do.’
‘You reckon it’s suspicious?’
‘Paul taught me to treat every unexplained death scene as a possible murder — we don’t know yet whether she fell or was pushed. I’m just going to take a quick look and see if there’s anything that needs urgent preservation for forensics.’
She pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her shoulder bag.
‘You always carry those around with you?’
‘Yep, a couple of pairs at least. If you go around touching things at a scene without them, you could destroy or contaminate potential evidence. If the locals turn up before I’m back, you tell them to stay out of the pub.’
Jane stood at the top of the short flight of steep stone steps leading to the cellar and crouched down. The light was on and she could see the dead woman’s face, her eyes wide open as if frozen with fear. A two-foot pool of blood surrounded her head and the outer few inches of the pool had congealed, indicating to Jane that Fiona had lain there motionless for some time. She looked closely at the steps and the carpet in the hallway leading to the cellar, but there was no sign of any blood trail or droplets. She made notes in her pocket notebook of her observations, and the fact that the cellar light switch was in the hallway by the cellar door. Then she checked the saloon bar door, which was bolted shut, top and bottom, as was the public door to the beer garden. There were dirty beer glasses on the tables and bars, and no sign of any disturbance to indicate a struggle might have taken place.
Jane went into the beer garden through the private rear door to look at the gate in the wall. It had a Yale lock, which could only be opened from the inside by turning the oblong knob. She made some notes before removing the set of keys from the private back-door Chubb lock, which she put in an empty plastic coin bag she found next to the till.
She went to speak to Teflon, who was talking with a PC. Jane asked the officer to man the lounge bar door and not let anyone in without her permission, and to record the names and times any authorized persons entered and left the premises.
‘Is it Fiona Simpson?’ Teflon asked.
‘Yes. Did you have to unbolt the lounge bar door to get out?’
‘Yes. Is there a problem?’
‘It seems she’d locked up the lounge and saloon bar doors before she died, but she left the back door open, which makes me wonder if someone other than Fiona opened the back door to leave via the beer garden.’ She held up the coin bag with the keys in it. ‘With a bit of luck, we might get a fingerprint off the Chubb key or Yale lock on the garden door. Was the cellar light on or off when you found her?’
‘On. You reckon she was murdered?’
‘It’s too early to say for sure, but it’s something we have to consider.’
‘Well, if she was, and it’s connected to the robbery, then maybe the driver of the getaway car saw her looking out of the upstairs window at him.’
‘Could be. Anyway, it’s all speculation until forensics examines the scene.’
Teflon nodded. ‘Local CID and div surgeon are on their way, along with DS Paul Lawrence. I told Cam what I’d found, and he said he’d inform Murphy. I’ll let him know it’s Fiona Simpson.’
‘I’m just going to pop down the road and speak to that old lady again. She said she’s a regular at the pub, so she might know who was working behind the bar with Fiona Simpson last night. I don’t want anyone else entering that scene before Paul — not even the divisional surgeon.’
Jane knocked on the door of Betty’s 1930s, brick-built, one-bedroom terraced house.
‘I wasn’t expectin’ you until later, dear. Come on in, make yourself at ’ome. You wanna cup of Rosie Lee?’
‘No thanks, Betty.’ Jane smiled at the cockney rhyming slang for tea.