Grief Encounters Read online

  ‘MP Found Hanged.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Monday 15th August 2005

  ‘And you expect us to believe that?’ Superintendent Gilbert Wood said after I’d told him about Friday’s meeting, finishing with Magdalena.

  I threw up my arms in frustration. ‘It’s the truth. What more can I say?’

  ‘Come on, Charlie. We’re both grown up; you’re a single man. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in having a lover with Property of the Pope tattooed across her backside.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed. Or I wouldn’t be. I was an art student, she was an artist’s model.’

  ‘Is that what they called you – the Pope? Did your fellow students elevate you to the Vatican?’

  ‘No, and we weren’t lovers.’

  ‘So it was a professional relationship. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing, except it wasn’t any sort of relationship. We used to go to Leeds College of Art for life classes. That’s drawing and painting nudes, to you. Usually female, sometimes male. Magdalena was one of the regular models. To be fair, she was just about the only one any of us fancied. There was a touch of the exotic about her. The others were bored housewives who posed for a couple of hours before going to pick up the kids from school. Magdalena always reminded me of a belly dancer, or a gypsy queen. I could imagine her telling fortunes or making silver jewellery by the light of a campfire. We were all about nineteen and she was much older. At least twenty-five, I’d say. Some of the drawings we did were a bit shaky.’

  Gilbert lifted one of the photographs I’d brought from the meeting and said: ‘Well she doesn’t look exotic now, Charlie. Somebody really did for her.’

  ‘They certainly did.’

  ‘Was her hair this long back then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was silent for a few seconds, then asked: ‘Were any of these women connected, if you see what I mean, with the, um, sex trade, or anything like that?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, Gilbert, it was all relatively innocent, and they were probably paid about fifty pence per hour. It wasn’t exactly a nice little earner by any standards. There wasn’t a drug scene, although some of them, like Magdalena, may have moved in what you might call bohemian circles. There was pot about, but you had to know where to find it.’

  ‘Did you know where to find it?’

  ‘Pot? No.’

  ‘Did you ever try it?’

  ‘I had the odd puff of a joint at parties. It never did anything for me. I suspect they’d never seen any marijuana.’

  ‘We’ll strike that admission from the record. So the chief super has handed the case to you, in your role as divisional head of HMET?’

  ‘’Fraid so, boss.’

  ‘And you reckon the chief super will be asked to resign, later this morning?’

  ‘His words, not mine.’

  ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘There could be something in the air. Did you see where old Ted Goss had topped himself?’

  ‘Mmm. No suspicious circumstances, they said.’

  Gilbert looked at me over his half moon spectacles. ‘That’s what they said. Something will come to light, mark my words. He’ll have had his fingers in one pie or another.’

  ‘You’re a cynic, Gilbert,’ I said. ‘His wife is an invalid and he was in a thankless job. For an MP he was a decent old cove. Last of the old-time socialists, but everything he believed in had gone out of the window. Perhaps he just ran out of the will to live.’

  ‘And pigs’ll fly. So what about Swainby? What was he? Last of the old-time coppers?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait for the jungle drums to start rolling.’

  ‘Keep me informed, please.’

  ‘Will do.’ I went downstairs to the CID office and gave a collective wave to the gathered troops. I hung my jacket in my little enclave, checked for messages and joined them. Someone brought me a mug of tea. I went through the weekend’s reports of crimes and allocated them to the sergeants and told them we had taken over the murder investigation they’d all read about. They updated me on on-going cases and I told them to go to it. The gift of delegation eases many burdens.

  Mad Maggie Madison and Dave ‘Sparky’ Sparkington followed me to my office and sat down. They’re the core of my murder investigation team. I showed them the photographs and told them all about Magdalena.

  Dave said: ‘And you expect us to believe that?’

  ‘Wait!’ I protested, holding my hands up. ‘Wait! I’ve had this conversation once already this morning, with Mr Wood. You’d better believe what I say, because I’m not explaining again.’

  Dave studied one of the photos for a while before saying: ‘That’s all very well, Charlie, but this tattoo is quite small and you’d be, what, about five yards back while you were drawing her? I don’t think you’d be able to read it at that range. What do you think, Maggie?’

  Maggie agreed with him. ‘You’d have to be in much more intimate contact to make out what it said.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I conceded. ‘As usual, David, with your incisive policeman’s brain you have stumbled upon an angle to my story that demands further enquiry. We were about five yards back, but when Magdalena was the model I usually managed to bag a seat on the front row. I still couldn’t make out what the tattoo said. There were about twelve of us in the group and we were all intrigued. Tattoos weren’t as common as cones on the motorway in those days. Eventually we persuaded one of the girls in the group to ask her what it said. It was a mistake. Magdalena told her to mind her own business and was obviously distressed with the question. Eventually we asked one of the tutors who we thought was having an affair with her. He used to fix her pose before we started drawing and came into much closer contact with her than we did. He told us that the tattoo said Property of the Pope, but he hadn’t a clue what it meant.’

  ‘OK. So we’ll believe you, eh, Margaret?’

  ‘Just about, David.’

  ‘So where do we start?’

  ‘We start by you two collecting the files from Halifax, go have a look at where the body was found, and set up the incident room. I’ll nip to Leeds College of Art to find out what I can about Magdalena. She may be on the files or somebody might remember her.’

  Maggie said: ‘We need a better picture of her. Did you keep all your drawings?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you’re right.’

  I took three KitKats from the stash in my drawer and handed them out. Dave said: ‘What did you get up to over the weekend, then?’

  ‘Painting a couple of pictures for the police gala,’ I replied. It’s held every August and is mainly a public relations exercise, showing off the dogs, horses and other accoutrements of law enforcement. There’s a section for cops’ art and I always enter a couple of my paintings. All the other submissions are delicate watercolour landscapes or highly defined oils of hunting scenes and still lifes, but mine are always wild splashes of abstract colour, with barely recognisable form. They always arouse a great deal of comment from my peers, but they are the ones that the press like, and I occasionally sell them.

  ‘No doubt they’ll be the laughing stock of the show,’ he remarked.

  ‘Thank you, Dave. It’s the lot of the genius to be misunderstood in his lifetime.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want it any other way,’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Did you see that programme on eagle owls on TV last night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Maggie added.

  ‘It was fascinating,’ Dave told us. ‘Apparently one’s been seen on the Whitby moors.’

  ‘A wild one?’ I asked. ‘I thought they lived on the Russian steppes or somewhere.’

  ‘They do. This one may be an escapee, but nobody knows. They have a six-foot wingspan and can pick up a sheep. Well, a lamb.’

  ‘What sort of noise does it make? Sort of too-wit too-woo-shriek?’


  ‘No. They just hoot.’

  ‘It’s a myth that owls say too-wit too-woo,’ Maggie assured us. ‘They just make a hooting sound.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to remember that. Now how about collecting a few witnesses to this murder and seeing what sort of noise they make when we apply the bastinado to the soles of their feet, eh?’

  As soon as they’d gone I picked up my internal phone and dialled Jeff Caton, one of my sergeants, who was busy at his desk in the outer office. ‘Did you see a programme on TV last night about eagle owls?’ I asked him.

  Jeff hadn’t seen it, either, so I told him all about it.

  Leeds College of Art and Design is on the northern edge of the city centre, divided between two sites. One is a swish Eighties construction, allegedly designed by Lego but no doubt a joy to work in, and the other the hundred-year-old building of my student days. I abandoned the car outside the parking zone and walked back towards town, looking for the familiar façade with its fake classical mosaic that was the college’s emblem. I found it hidden in a corner, surrounded by structures that were either shining new or waiting for the wrecking ball. The city was evolving around it.

  Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth are the college’s most famous luminaries. From the outside it could have been a bank or the offices of an ancient firm of lawyers, with only the mosaic high on the wall to indicate otherwise. I trotted up the steps to the front door, hidden apologetically round the corner, and pulled it open.

  Inside it was smaller and dingier than I remembered, like a careworn friend you haven’t seen for years. No smell of turpentine or linseed oil delighted my nostrils to bring the memories flooding back; no chattering throng of students in flowing chiffon and tie-dyed shirts came flip-flopping down the corridor. A couple of girls in semi-Goth outfits clumped by and I wondered what they were studying. Tattooing and body piercing? We’d had the best of it, no doubt about it, in those golden years post the Pill and pre-Aids. I walked over to the front desk and showed the receptionist my warrant card.

  The vice principal saw me. I’d hoped that his eyes would light up when I asked him about Magdalena, as he remembered hasty fondles in her changing room or the stolen brush of his fingers against her skin as he arranged her pose, but unfortunately he was far too young. He would barely have been born when Magdalena sat on her high stool, legs crossed, as a dozen dry-mouthed students struggled to capture her likeness.

  He doubted very much if there would be any record of her on the files. Nude models were casual labour, paid for out of the petty cash, and most of the records were destroyed in the various moves. He could give me a list of all the teaching staff going back to about 1970, and he knew of one tutor who was still active and living not too far away: JKL Mackintosh RA RP.

  ‘Old Mack,’ I said. ‘I remember him. He took us for life classes occasionally. He was a portrait painter.’

  ‘He graces us with a visit, now and again,’ the vice principal said, in a tone that implied that the visits were far too frequent and time consuming. I knew the feeling well. When I leave the station with my yellow metal Timex in one hand and the troops’ bottle of Bell’s in the other, I’ll never make the return journey. Not ever.

  ‘Do you have an address for him?’ I asked.

  He didn’t, but he had a phone number and he allowed me to use his phone. JKL, as he was more formally known, was in and said I could call round. I thanked the vice principal and was soon heading past Hyde Park Corner – that’s the Leeds Hyde Park Corner – out through Headingley towards Lawnswood.

  Old Mack was waiting for me with a freshly boiled kettle and a plate of digestive biscuits. The years had been kind to him. His goatee was white, his lanky frame was stooped a little and the eyes rheumy, but otherwise it was the same old JKL who exhorted us to use bold strokes to capture the spirit of a subject and not just a likeness, and discussed the models as if they were unfeeling lumps of clay. The oil paintings on his walls were impressionist landscapes that shone with their own sunshine, and a couple of modern sculptures in copper and stone shepherded a family of primitive clay animals on his mantelpiece.

  ‘Priest, did you say?’ he asked, after we were seated and I’d admired his works of art.

  ‘Charlie Priest, but it was a long time ago. We came from Batley, mainly for life classes, that’s all.’ As he poured the tea I remembered that the beard was more than an affectation. He had a livid scar at the left hand side, running up his neck from under his shirt collar, and he habitually turned the other cheek towards you.

  He gazed up into the corner of the room and shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t remember you. And you became a policeman. That’s an unusual career change of direction, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘It’s a long story, sir,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to go into teaching, wasn’t good enough to make it as an artist, and my father was a policeman. I only expected to be in the force until I found something else, but here I am.’

  ‘And you made your father happy, no doubt.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s strange how so many parents have an inherent antipathy to their sons going into the fine arts. I used to think it was a working class thing, but now I’m not so sure.’

  I had thought it might be interesting to have a discussion about the state of the arts today, but I glanced at his clock and decided that would have to wait for a subsequent visit. ‘I’m investigating the death of a woman who I believe used to be a model in the life classes you held,’ I said, plunging straight into it. ‘She was called Magdalena. Do you remember her?’

  ‘Magdalena?’ he repeated. ‘Magdalena Fischer?’

  ‘I don’t know her surname. Fisher, is it?’ I’d been expecting something more exotic, with perhaps an apostrophe in it. D’Auberville, or something.

  ‘Fisher with a c in the middle,’ he told me. ‘Was she murdered?’

  That was more like it. ‘Thanks for that,’ I said. ‘It’s a big help. At the moment it’s just a suspicious death, but it could be murder. When did you last see her?’

  He thought for a few seconds. ‘It doesn’t seem long ago, but when I put it into years it’s frightening. It must be nearly ten years ago. I used to bump into her occasionally down Headingley Lane, out shopping. I don’t get down there so often, these days, what with the traffic and all the riff-raff. We didn’t speak. Just acknowledged each other with a smile. She was a good model, no doubt about it. Long hair, down to her waist. That was her most impressive feature. Does she – did she – still have it?’

  ‘Yes, she did. I don’t suppose you know where she lived?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Somewhere down in bedsit land, near Hyde Park Corner, if I were to hazard a guess. If she owns a house down there she’ll probably be the last of the owner-occupiers. All the others have been bought to let.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you still have a painting or drawing of her?’ I asked. Sometimes you get lucky. The secret is to keep asking the obvious questions.

  ‘No. I donated all my old stuff to the college.’ He chuckled, adding: ‘They probably made a bonfire of it.’

  ‘Was there anybody – I’m thinking of tutors – who was close to her, do you know?’

  He shook his head. ‘You mean having an affair with her? No, sorry. Not that I heard about.’

  ‘Do you still paint?’

  ‘I try, but the eyes are not what they were. Do you?’

  ‘Now and again. I’m working on a couple at the moment, for an exhibition of policemen’s art. They’re after the style of Kandinsky, and should make a nice contrast with all the other stuff on show.’

  ‘Ah ah! I bet they will.’

  We shook hands and I gave him my card and told him the usual: ‘If you think of anything else…’ and thanked him profusely for his help. He asked me to let him know how the investigation progressed and I said I would.

  I turned right at the Corner, into Hyde Park Road, with the open ground of the university c
ampus on my left and endless rows of Victorian terraced houses on the other side. At Brudenell Road I made a right, then turned into another street and drove round in a big square. Almost every house had a couple of estate agents’ signs planted in the front yard, sticking out like prayer flags in a stiff breeze, announcing rooms to let. The student population would be returning in the next few weeks and the last of what was once a community would retreat to their cellars until the blessed relief of the Christmas recess. If Magdalena wasn’t on the electoral roll, finding someone who knew her would be as hopeless as looking for a matching pair in a mushy pea factory.

  The troops were sitting round in a big group when I arrived back at the nick, either gossiping and telling dirty stories or discussing various cases, depending on who you asked. I made myself a mug of tea and joined them.

  ‘Everything moving smoothly, Jeff?’ I asked.

  Jeff Caton takes on all the other stuff, mainly burglaries, when I’m diverted to a murder case. ‘All in order, Chas,’ he replied, desperately trying to suppress a wicked smile.

  I told Dave and Maggie about Magdalena Fischer and they said they’d booted up the HOLMES terminal down in the incident room, had a quick look at the crime scene and fetched the files from Halifax. Dave was sitting with his chair the wrong way round, hunched over with his elbows resting on the chair back. When the boring stuff was out of the way Jeff said: ‘Did anybody see that programme on eagle owls the other night?’

  ‘I did,’ Dave replied, immediately sitting up.

  ‘It was fascinating,’ Jeff told us. ‘They have a six-foot wingspan.’

  ‘And they can carry a sheep,’ Dave added.