‘It’s Beth Powell,’ she said, hoping firstly that he’d remember her, and secondly that the rapport she thought she’d struck up with him at their previous meeting wasn’t just in her imagination. ‘I was called in as duty solicitor for the woman arrested for the shooting.’
‘I hope she said a little more to you than she did to me,’ he replied, his voice tinged with weariness.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Beth admitted. ‘Except her name. It’s Susan Fellows.’
‘Well, that’s a start,’ he said.
‘I wondered if you fancied an after-work drink with me,’ Beth said, hoping she wasn’t being too transparent.
‘Now, that’s the best offer I’ve had all day,’ he replied, his voice suddenly lighter. ‘I’ll be right down.’
He was grinning as he came through the door. ‘It’s not only my charm, is it?’ he said, his dark brown eyes twinkling. ‘You just want to pump me for information on the shooting.’
‘I cannot lie,’ she said with a smile. ‘But it was your charm that made me dare to ask.’
‘I’m glad you did.’ He ran his fingers distractedly through his thick hair. ‘After the day I’ve had, I’d sell my soul for a pint.’
They walked round to The Assizes, a pub in Small Street which was popular with the legal profession at lunch-time. It was quiet now, just a few people having a drink before going home.
The first time Beth had met Longhurst had been while waiting at Bristol Crown Court. They’d had a fairly brief chat about criminals in general and he’d struck her as being a ‘hang-’em-high’ type. He had told her a story about two young men who were killed in a car crash. As it turned out, they were on their way home from robbing the house of an old age pensioner. Longhurst had been quite gleeful that they were no longer at large to terrorize anyone else.
Whilst no one in their right minds would mourn the passing of two such vicious thugs, Beth didn’t meet many people who would openly admit to such delight. Longhurst told the story with such humour as well, and it was refreshing to meet someone who didn’t bow to political correctness.
Over the last few months she’d had clients who had mentioned him too. It was interesting that although they were afraid of him, they also admired him too for being ‘straight’. One serial offender had said he’d rather be arrested by Longhurst than by anyone else because he didn’t fabricate evidence.
Over a pint Roy Longhurst gave Beth his view of the events at Hotwells that morning. ‘I’m not easily shocked,’ he said with a frown. ‘But a bloody wino wiping out two people, leaving six children in total with only two remaining parents, makes my blood boil. I wish the armed squad had mown her down too. Now she’ll have to be tried and kept in prison at the tax payer’s expense. For what? She’s worthless.’
‘Actually she doesn’t strike me as a wino,’ Beth said sharply. ‘And she must have had some grievance to do what she did.’
‘Spare me the bleeding-heart bit,’ he exclaimed scathingly. ‘She’s got to be mad, probably let out of some mental institution. Anyone else with a grievance against a medical practice complains through the proper channels.’
On the way to the police station Beth had thought along much the same lines as Longhurst. Even though Susan had given her nothing to make her change her mind, Beth automatically began defending her.
‘Maybe she did and no one would listen to her,’ she retorted. ‘Look at you, Detective Inspector Longhurst, sitting there over your beer convinced she’s worthless just because she’s shabbily dressed. You mark my words, there’s going to be a bloody good reason why she did it.’
He just laughed. ‘I’ve never met anyone yet with a real grudge who didn’t insist on telling you about it, chapter and verse. She hasn’t said a word, hasn’t even cried.’
They argued for a little while, but to Beth’s surprise she found him funny rather than truly bigoted. He made sweeping statements – he thought thieves should have their hands cut off, and wanted castration for paedophiles and the birch for young offenders – but as Beth had also thought some of these things with certain clients, and he said it in such an amusing way, she stopped trying to argue and laughed with him.
‘Well, Susan Fellows doesn’t strike me as a real loony,’ she said eventually. ‘Maybe a little simple, but despite the way she looks and dresses, there’s something quite refined about her. I had this odd feeling I’d met her before too!’
‘Really?’ Longhurst looked at her in surprise. ‘Any idea where?’
Beth shook her head. ‘Not one. I came to the conclusion it was just the way she spoke. I mean, I’m surrounded every day by Bristolian and West Country accents, so hearing someone without one tends to pull you up.’
Longhurst grinned. ‘We don’t get too many posh voices in the cells,’ he admitted. ‘Then there’s the question of the gun. I think we’ll find it belongs to her. Left to her by her father, something like that. Of course anyone could get a direct hit with that one, especially at such close range, but I’d say she’d handled guns most of her life.’
‘What about the victims?’ Beth asked. ‘What do you know about them? Or have I got to wait till tomorrow and read it in the papers?’
‘Both of them straight-“A” types,’ he said. ‘Doctor Wetherall was fifty-six, lived out in Long Ashton, played golf, good father and husband. Much what you’d expect from a family doctor. The receptionist was much the same, comfortable home, two kids at university. About the only detrimental thing we did pick up about her is that she was something of a dragon, curt with patients, a bit domineering with the other staff. Don’t think she was very well liked at work. But that’s no reason to shoot her, doctors’ surgeries always have their fair share of dragon ladies.’
There was little more Longhurst could tell Beth, except about the actual arrest and what he’d been told by other staff at the medical centre, and after buying them both a second drink, he moved on to ask her how she was settling down in Bristol, for at their first meeting she hadn’t been there very long.
‘Pretty well,’ she said. ‘Calmer, beautiful scenery, and it’s great not to have to suffer the Tube any more. If I could just get someone reliable to do a few jobs in my flat, I’d say everything was just about perfect.’
‘You haven’t got a man then?’ he asked.
Beth bristled. It always infuriated her when people fished to know if she had a partner. ‘Is that what you think a woman needs a man for?’ she snapped at him. ‘Just to put up a few shelves, build some cupboards? Is that all your wife values you for?’
‘I haven’t got a wife.’ He shrugged. ‘At least, not any longer. And even when we were together I was no great shakes at DIY anyway.’
Beth felt slightly chastened. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just assumed you were being patronizing. Because I’m single I get that sort of line all the time and it irritates me. I also assumed you were married.’
‘I certainly didn’t mean to sound patronizing,’ he said, and looked crestfallen. ‘I just assumed a good-looking, smart woman like you would be spoken for. So much for assumptions.’ He laughed. ‘But at risk of having a knife stuck in my gut, may I enquire whether you are alone by choice or circumstance?’
He was on dangerous ground, but for some reason Beth found it amusing this time. ‘A bit of both, I guess. I’m too involved with my work for most men.’
‘That was my ex-wife’s excuse for leaving me,’ he admitted, and he smiled at her. Beth found herself smiling back.
Beth walked home about two hours later. Roy, for he had insisted that was what she must call him, had offered to drive her home, but she used the excuse that it was quicker to walk up Christmas Steps to where she lived in Park Row than to be driven. It wasn’t really quicker, and in the dark and the heavy rain it wasn’t a pleasant walk, but Beth rarely allowed any man to do anything for her. She had found to her cost in the past that even something as simple as a lift or a cup of coffee could lead men into thinking she owed them something.
>
Yet perhaps she’d been foolish to turn down Roy’s offer, she thought. After all, it had been nice having a drink and chat with him. He was the first man in a very long time to intrigue her. On one hand he was almost a stereotype policeman, macho, opinionated, a man’s man. Yet there had been moments when he’d revealed a much gentler, sensitive and thoughtful side. She liked his sense of humour too.
Beth didn’t know why that should interest her. Men were nothing but trouble to her. While she still half hoped that there was a man out there who was as independent and intelligent as herself, loving and sensitive, without a lot of emotional baggage, she was too jaded really to believe such a man existed. Being alone wasn’t the same as being lonely. She enjoyed having the freedom to do exactly as she liked.
Walking into her flat on the third floor, she felt a rush of pleasure at seeing the panoramic view of the city lights from her windows. The flat itself was quite ordinary and boxy, but the view had sold it to her.
She’d turned it into a snug little retreat now. Almost everything was cream, from the walls to the carpets and curtains, and that way it appeared bigger. The only colour came from her collection of pictures, vivid modern art, mostly originals by little-known artists which she’d bought in small galleries and craft fairs all over England. Her favourite one was a slice of cherry pie with custard. It amused her to imagine what her father would have said about it. He was such a snob, he had clung on to all the hideous old paintings that he’d inherited from his grandfather purely because he thought their age made them valuable. He would never have understood her view that you should have a picture because you loved looking at it, and that its monetary value was unimportant.
After kicking off her shoes and hanging her wet coat on the hall door to dry, she flopped down on the settee. The comfort of it made her think of Susan Fellows again. Had she spent a night in a cell before? Would it frighten her into explaining herself tomorrow?
It was frustrating knowing nothing about her, and she wished she could stop thinking she’d met the woman before. What could have happened to Susan to make her sit outside a doctor’s surgery in all weathers? And what turned her from that into a killer?
Beth recalled a woman she’d defended a couple of years ago in London. She’d been having an affair with a married man who had strung her along for years telling her he was going to leave his wife. She had jumped on him one night as he was leaving a pub and stuck a carving knife in his back. The only explanation she could give at the time she was arrested was that she’d seen him earlier in the day buying curtains with his wife.
It had sounded so trite, so entirely irrational, yet once Beth got to know the woman better, she began to understand. Curtains, her client had pointed out, were something usually bought by a woman alone. Just the fact that her husband was there with her, engrossed in choosing the material, was evidence they were a couple who shared everything, cared equally about their home, and he wasn’t intending to leave it, or his wife, ever.
Beth doubted Susan would turn out to have been the doctor’s mistress. Or that the receptionist was her lesbian lover. So what did that leave?
Maybe she’d been turned away from treatment at the surgery at some time? Sectioned perhaps by Dr Wetherall when she didn’t think she warranted it?
But Roy had said that one of the receptionists had told him Susan wasn’t a patient there. So maybe they had done something to someone she loved?
Could the two victims have been having an affair, and one of their partners was a friend or relative of hers? It appeared to be a strong possibility. They were in the right age group for affairs, both attractive, personable types by all accounts, thrown together daily. Yet killing them for it was a bit extreme.
Beth switched on the television to see the news. The shooting would undoubtedly be on there, and perhaps some of the journalists would have already discovered things she and the police didn’t know.
Chapter three
While Beth was puzzling over why a woman would shoot two people, Susan Fellows was lying on her bed in the prison cell, trying to make her mind go blank. That was the way she’d got through bad periods of her life before. She felt it ought to be easy here as there were no distractions. Impersonal, shiny green painted walls with surprisingly little graffiti, nothing but a toilet bowl and a small basin to look at.
But the green walls reminded her of Beth Powell’s eyes.
She wished she could convince herself that it was pure coincidence the solicitor had the same name as her childhood friend – after all, Beth hadn’t recognized her. Besides, surely fate couldn’t really be that cruel to bring her back to her at such a time in her life?
Yet even at ten, her Beth had been very tall, her green eyes, black hair and pale skin making her remarkable. Susan was pretty certain that if she’d dared snatch that comb clip out of the woman’s hair, she would have seen those curls she’d so often envied come tumbling down to her shoulders.
She knew it was her Beth, but why didn’t she recognize her? And why was she here in Bristol?
Still quivering from the shock of the meeting, Susan turned her mind back thirty-four years, to the day she and Beth met for the first time. A hot day in August 1961, when she was ten. Her father had come home for lunch that day and he’d offered to drop her in Stratford-upon-Avon for the afternoon so she could go to the library and look around the shops, then they could come home together when he closed the office.
Susan soon got tired of looking in the shops because it was so hot, so she went down to the river and sat on the grass watching people coming and going on the pleasure cruises. There were people all around her, having picnics, dozing in the sun, families, old people and many foreign tourists. She didn’t know much about William Shakespeare in those days, and it had always baffled her that people came from other countries just to see where this man was born. She had once asked her father if he was like Jesus, and he’d roared with laughter.
She had been sitting there for some little while when she saw another girl standing under a tree, staring down at her. Susan was very shy, and her first thought was that there had to be something very wrong with her to make anyone look at her like that. She thought the girl was much older than her too, because she was tall, and she envied her curly black hair and the white shorts and pink blouse she was wearing. Susan always wore dresses – her mother made them, and some of the girls at school laughed at them because they looked babyish with smocking and puffed sleeves.
‘Do you know where the boats go?’ the girl asked suddenly.
‘Nowhere special, just up and down the river,’ Susan replied.
‘Have you ever been on one?’ the girl asked, moving closer to her.
Susan shook her head. ‘They’re just for visitors and people on holiday,’ she replied.
‘Well, I’m here on holiday, but I haven’t been on one,’ the dark-haired girl said almost indignantly. ‘Can I sit down with you? I’m fed up with being on my own.’
Susan knew only too well how it felt to be alone. She didn’t have any real friends as she couldn’t invite them home to play because her grandmother was ill. She was delighted that this girl appeared to want to be friends with her.
‘I’m Beth Powell,’ the girl said. ‘I’m ten, and I’ve come up from Sussex with my mother to stay with my Aunt Rose. We only got here on Saturday afternoon.’
‘I’m Suzie Wright,’ Susan had said, since in those days she was always called Suzie, even at school. ‘I’m ten too, and we live in Luddington, that’s a village further up the river. I’m waiting for Daddy to finish work so I can go home with him.’
Susan couldn’t remember exactly what they talked about that afternoon, only how quickly the time flew by. She supposed she must have told Beth that her father was an insurance man, that her granny who lived with them was sick, and her brother Martin was away at university, but she had no recollection of it. What she remembered most was the two of them taking off their socks and sandals and sitting on t
he edge of the river bank dangling their feet in the cold green water and giggling about anything and everything.
Susan had said at one point in the afternoon that she thought Beth looked like Snow White, with her black hair and white skin. Beth giggled and seemed really pleased; she said everyone else told her she was too tall and skinny, and that she wished she could be small like Suzie and envied her lovely pink cheeks.
Susan hadn’t known then that Beth was going to colour her whole adolescence, or that their friendship would become so important to her. All that mattered that day was that Beth loved Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, and What Katy Did, just like her, and that they both liked riding bikes, and Beth appeared to want to spend the whole of August with her.
That August, and the four following ones, were all spent with Beth. So many long, sunny days exploring the countryside on their bikes, damming up small streams in the woods, going to the pictures on rainy afternoons, and listening to the Top Ten in Woolworth’s. Every memory was a golden one.
It was awful when the end of August came and Beth had to go home to Sussex. They both cried and clung to each other, vowing to write and be best friends for ever.
They had spent five summers together, a hundred letters exchanged in between, so many hopes and dreams shared. They believed that by being best friends, they knew everything about each other. Looking back as an adult, Susan realized that was an illusion. She had hidden a great deal that was important from Beth, so it was almost certain that Beth did the same.
The last shared holiday was in 1966, when they were fifteen, perhaps the most memorable one of all because it was when their minds turned to makeup, boys and dances.
‘The wallflowers,’ Susan murmured to herself, remembering their first dance in Stratford, with all the balloons in the net above them. She’d bought a red dress that same afternoon without her mother’s approval, and put it on at Beth’s Aunt Rose’s house. It had seemed perfect in the shop, sophisticated, slinky and daring. But when they got to the dance and she saw that all the other girls were in the ‘Mod’ fashion, with long pencil skirts, high-necked blouses and ‘granny’-type shoes, it had felt too tight, too revealing, and she thought everyone was staring at her.