Page 18

chapter eighteen

The fog from the night before was more or less gone in the morning. It held on—a wispy, lacy shawl compared to the thick blanket of the night before—but as Gabriella walked her route, the breeze cleared it, shredding it into nothing and leaving the sky clear and blue.

Even though it was cold, she felt a massive lift at the sight of the sky, and felt better than she had for a while.

Some of that was because Mr. Jaguar had been dealt with on Saturday night. She didn’t realize how nervous he’d made her until the threat of him had been neutralized.

She wondered if whoever his wife hired would manage to track her down, and what she would say to them if they did.

She genuinely didn’t remember which townhouse the man had come out of, but she did remember the general location on the street. It was possible that would be enough of an answer. If she was inclined to give it.

She turned off the main thoroughfare, walking down a quieter road which had a church halfway down it. All the houses and buildings along the way were new, a clear sign this street had been bombed during the war, and she noticed the church roof looked new on one side, and there was some construction going on in the bell tower, with scaffolding and a skip bin sitting in the small car park.

A workman was halfway up the scaffold, the ting ting sound of a chisel striking stone clear in the morning air. He turned, arms full of broken bricks, and tossed them down into the skip below, but as the bricks left his hands he gave a shout of pure shock and fear.

His gaze was fixed on the skip below, and Gabriella stopped in her tracks. He lifted his head, caught sight of her, and waved wildly.

She moved toward him, crossing the street and walking into the car park while he clambered down the scaffold.

“There’s a girl in the skip.” He shouted it out as soon as he reached the ground. “I threw bricks onto a girl in the skip.”

He was frantic, beside himself, and he ran toward the skip, tried to look inside it, and when he couldn’t see over the rim, ran back to grab a wooden box which Gabriella guessed the workmen used as a chair when they had a tea break. He set it down and boosted himself up.

“Is she moving?” Gabriella asked.

He was hanging onto the side of the skip, and he turned a white, pinched face toward her. Shook his head.

“Let me see.” She didn’t want to, but if she was going to call it in, she needed to have seen it for herself.

He looked like he wanted to say no. “You’re a lass,” he said. “You shouldn’t . . .” He noticed her uniform at last, and gave an uncertain nod. Stepped down.

Gabriella stepped up, and still had to go on tip toe to look over the metal edge. A woman lay crumpled and folded up, her stockings torn, facing away. Gabriella knew it was cowardly, but she was very glad for that.

The killer had boosted her over the edge and let her fall willy nilly.

Unlike the body she’d seen at the bomb site, this victim looked like she was asleep, except for the matted blood in her blonde hair, the rust red shocking against the pale gold.

She stepped back, almost overbalancing, and the workman caught her arm to steady her.

“Did I . . ?” He rubbed a handkerchief over his forehead.

“She was already dead.” Gabriella patted his arm. “Someone killed her and left her in the skip.”

He blew out a breath, and staggered back, leaning against the wall of the church, shaking his head.

“Is there a church office here?” she asked.

He waved to his left, and she walked around until she found a narrow pathway that led to a small house with two entrances.

The vicarage and the church office, she guessed.

She knocked on the main door, as the office looked closed, and it was opened moments later by a vicar wearing his dog collar, his light blue eyes curious and friendly.

On hearing about the body, he ushered her into the tiny entrance and showed her the phone.

“Should I . . .?” he looked out the door, torn.

“Maybe the workman who found her could do with a strong cuppa?” she suggested.

He bustled off to make it, grateful to have something to do, and Gabriella called the local nick.

She was putting down the receiver when the vicar came out with a steaming mug, and they walked back to the church together.

The workman was still leaning against the wall, and he took the tea gratefully, gulping it down.

The three of them stood awkwardly, waiting for the police, and when Constable Evans arrived, she let out a sigh of relief.

“Miss Farnsworth.” Constable Evans nodded. “You called the station?”

“This gentleman was working on the building when he looked down into the skip and saw a body. I was passing by on my rounds and he asked for my help.” She nodded toward the workman.

Evans gave a nod, walked to the skip and used the box to look over the edge. He stood for a moment, looking in, then stepped back.

“You’ve seen the body, Vicar?” he asked.

The vicar shook his head. “You want me to see if I know her?” he asked, voice a little uncertain.

Evans nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

The vicar made his way over and used Evans’s arm for balance as he stood up on the box and looked over.

“I can’t see her face. It’s possible she’s one of my parishioners but I’ll need to see her face before I can be sure.” His hands shook as he clasped them together. “What a terrible business.”

He looked so distressed, as soon as he stepped down Gabriella walked over and slipped her arm through his.

“Why don’t we go make a big pot of tea, Vicar? There’ll be a lot of people arriving soon. You can show me where everything is and I’ll get on it.” She despised the notion that women always hovered in the background, making tea and providing creature comforts while the manly men got on with things, but she didn’t think the vicar was going to be able to stay on his feet much longer.

Evans caught her eye and gave her a subtle nod, acknowledging what she was trying to do, and that went a long way.

She gently led the vicar back to the house, but before they got there he pointed to the rear door to the church, and fumbled for and produced a huge set of keys. “The church kitchen,” he explained. “It’s got a proper urn that we use for church get-togethers. We can let the coppers come in and help themselves as they like.”

That sounded very sensible, so she carefully filled the massive stainless steel urn and switched it on, then found the tea bags, sugar and milk under the vicar’s direction.

“We just held a fundraiser for the roof last night, so the milk should be perfectly fresh,” he told her.

“What happened to the roof?” she asked, stacking cups neatly on the long counter beside the urn.

“Bomb hit it in the war,” he said.

Surprised, she looked over at him. He’d taken a seat on a thin, pale yellow formica chair near the door, and he already looked better. “So long ago?”

She wondered how they’d managed until now.

He nodded. “Twenty years, it’s been. We had to have a temporary fix done at the time. Some plastic sheeting and some fibercrete over the top, just to tide us over. But we couldn’t afford a proper fix for a long time, and months turned to years. The temporary fix finally failed three months ago, and now it simply has to be done.”

“You’re lucky the whole church didn’t collapse,” Gabriella said, thinking they’d gotten away lightly if all they got from a bomb was a hole in the roof.

“We were lucky that the bomb never exploded. It fell straight through the roof without detonating, but the tragedy was that sometimes, when the sirens sounded, people would take refuge wherever they were, and that night, a woman must have come into the church for shelter from the bombing raid. The falling debris and slate tiles from the roof landed on top of her and she died.”

“That’s terrible.” Gabriella couldn’t imagine the terror of that. “Were you the one who found her?”

The vicar nodded. “First thing the next morning. It took them a while to find out who she was, poor dear. What with the chaos of the war, the police didn’t check the missing persons list until a month after her death. Fortunately, she was not yet buried and they were able to identify her by her dental records. Her family came to visit me when they finally worked out what had happened to her.” He waved a hand to the door beyond. “They put up a plaque in her memory on the church wall.”

As he finished speaking, the urn began to rumble and shake as the water boiled, and Gabriella switched it over to the keep warm setting. “I’ll go let the lads know there’s tea available, and I’ll most likely be off to finish my rounds. Would you like me to walk you home?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’ll stay here. Thank you for your kindness, my dear.”

Unsure what to do, but going on instinct, Gabriella walked over and he lifted his hands toward her. She held them in both of hers.

“All the best, Vicar. I hope they find who did this.”

She left the door open as she went back to the scene, and caught Evans’s eye again.

“Tea?” he asked, hopefully.

“Round the back of the church in the kitchen. I’ve left the door open, and the vicar is back there, too.” She glanced at the tradesman, and then at the hive of activity around the skip. “Is it alright if I go on my way? I haven’t finished my rounds.”

“Aye.” Evans gave a nod. “Just tell me how it was when you got here. Mr. Yates over there says it was as he noticed the body.”

She thought it over, gave a nod. “He was chipping bricks off the side of the tower and setting them to one side on the ledge. I could hear the sound of the chisel as I walked down the street and looked up. When there was no room to stack any more bricks, he picked them up and turned, tossed them into the skip below, but as he let go, I think he saw the body. He didn’t know that she was dead, and he gave a cry of absolute terror as the bricks dropped down.” She’d never forget that sound.

Evans lifted his gaze from his notebook. “That’s more or less exactly what he says. He says he saw you on the street and called to you for help.”

She nodded. “He did. He climbed down the scaffolding, and pulled the box to the side of the skip and looked in.”

“The box wasn’t already there?” Evans asked.

She shook her head. “It was set up against the side of the building. It looked like it was where someone would sit to take a tea break.”

Evans scribbled a bit more. “Thanks. You can go. If I need more from you, I know where to find you.”

She gave him a grateful smile and left to work her way through the rest of her route. She kept picking at the story of the woman found dead under the roof in the church during the war. At the sheer bad luck of it.

And it stirred something in her memory. Something she’d heard recently, but couldn’t quite place.

As she came back down the main road on the final stretch, she caught sight of the Land Rover, parked up on double yellows.

And just like that, she realized she was ready for war.

The Italian temper that lived in her didn’t come to the surface often, but today she was Vesuvius.

She circled the vehicle, and when she saw the window was partially down on the passenger side, she smiled. She wrote out the ticket and sealed it in its plastic sleeve, then stepped in as close to the door as she dared, and popped the fine through the window.

It skimmed through the air, fluttering a bit, and then landed on the driver’s seat.

She walked the rest of the way back to headquarters feeling a tiny bit better.

She went to find Mr. Greenberg as soon as she got back, and explained about the body.

He carefully put a red pin in his map.

This was the fourth red pin, although only the third in their borough.

The homeless man found dead in Kensington Gardens, and three women.

That seemed like a lot.