Jenna jiggled her shoulders to stretch out the cricks that had set in as she stared up at the old manor house. Not visible from the road, she’d never seen it before, had never needed to be there. As far as she was concerned, she’d never heard any rumours, seen any reports of trouble out there.
An outlying house, with a quiet family.
9
Sunday 19 April 0220 hours
Mason and Jenna turned their backs on the building and made their way towards the ambulance, where two paramedics tended to an elderly lady. Dressed in a quilted full-length dressing gown of faded pink, she perched on the edge of the flip-down seat in the ambulance. Her blue-veined hand gripped onto the bed rail, her wizened little face almost obscured by an oxygen mask.
‘Hi,’ Jenna showed her badge. ‘I’m DS Jenna Morgan, and this is DC Mason Ellis.’ She tossed a friendly smile at the short, round-faced female paramedic whose cheeks glowed an unnatural red in the white light of the interior of the ambulance. ‘Is everything okay?’
The paramedic shot them an easy smile. ‘Sandy. I’m Sandy. This is Mrs Crawford. Mr Crawford is just outside. He was concerned Mrs Crawford was feeling a little faint, so we gave her some oxygen to assist her breathing.’ She raised her voice. ‘Didn’t we, Mrs Crawford?’ At the old lady’s owl-like blink, Sandy raised her voice another notch. ‘We’ve given you oxygen Mrs Crawford. To help with your breathing.’
Mrs Crawford gave one long slow blink to make Jenna wonder whether she appreciated Sandy almost shouting.
Jenna lowered her voice to a discreet level, just above the roar and crackle of the fire. ‘Is it okay to speak with her?’
‘Sure. She didn’t want to lie down.’ Sandy turned to pat Mrs Crawford on the knee and raised her voice to accommodate the lady’s ability to hear above the sound of the ambulance engine and the fire. ‘You’re good aren’t you, Mrs Crawford? Just a bit breathless there, but you’re okay now, aren’t you, my darling?’
Mrs Crawford patted her chest and squeezed out a weak smile as she nodded.
Sandy turned to Jenna. ‘What a darling. Heart as strong as an ox. She’s eighty-nine, she’s going to live another bloody thirty years with a heart like that.’
Jenna glanced at Mason. Lips twitching, he dipped his hands into his pockets and looked at his feet as he kicked at the dirt.
Jenna gave a quick survey. She’d stick with Mrs Crawford and let Mason deal with the older man lurking at the side of the ambulance, a sneaky cigarette, lit end turned inwards to the palm of his hand. He shot guilty little glances over in his wife’s direction. His thin shoulders hunched over, less as a defence than a sign of age, Jenna suspected. Before his wife caught sight of him, he turned his back on them and a stream of smoke floated above his head and then was whipped away by an errant gust of wind. As though his wife wasn’t astute enough to notice he was smoking.
‘Okay. Thank you, Sandy. Mason, would you like to speak with Mr Crawford? See what you can get from him.’
Mason grunted out an agreement and ambled over to speak with the gentleman who hovered a few paces away.
Jenna climbed into the ambulance, edging past the attentive Sandy, and hunkered down, so she came face to face with the other woman. In the bright, unforgiving lights of the ambulance, Mrs Crawford’s pale, parchment skin stretched translucent across her cheekbones.
‘Mrs Crawford?’ Jenna reached out with a light touch to the older lady’s elbow.
Washed-out grey eyes turned their sadness on her. ‘He wasn’t a very nice man, but I wouldn’t wish this on him.’ Her voice, muffled by the oxygen mask, croaked out.
‘Who wasn’t nice, Mrs Crawford?’
Confusion stole into the woman’s eyes as though Jenna should know exactly what she meant. She plucked at the mask and pulled it from her mouth to speak around it. ‘Why him. Gordon Lawrence, of course.’
‘Gordon Lawrence.’ Jenna slipped her notebook and pen from her top pocket and scratched down the man’s name. Not that she’d forget it. She tapped her pen on the page, interested to note that the second person to comment on Gordon Lawrence had the same opinion as the first, Olivia, and was similarly quick to express it. ‘You know him?’
Mrs Crawford stretched a tight smile. ‘Not well. He didn’t allow that.’ She glanced over Jenna’s shoulder at the fire raging on and slipped the oxygen mask further down onto her chin so she could speak unrestricted. ‘Shouldn’t speak ill of him. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.’
A frisson of awareness sneaked through Jenna’s system and she shuffled closer, her curiosity piqued at the old lady’s words, a reiteration of Olivia’s earlier assessment. ‘You said he’s not nice? In what way was he not nice, Mrs Crawford?’
‘Ethel, you can call me Ethel. I prefer it. Him out there will be called Mr Crawford, never known to anyone else as anything other than Mr Crawford.’ Her lips twitched. ‘Even me. Mr Crawford, or Father. Once the children came along, I only ever called him Father. Like he was the lord of the house.’ Laughter cracked out of her and she pressed a pristine white handkerchief to her lips.
Jenna waited. Gave her a moment to recover herself but found she didn’t need to prompt Ethel. The woman was a talker. It happened. Some people simply went with nerves or adrenaline and ran with it. Some wanted to vent, and some were simply lonely. As a police officer, it proved highly useful when they came across a talker.
‘But this man. He wasn’t nice. Gordon. He said to call him Gordon, but he was the devil.’
Jenna blinked, but remained quiet. Interesting that of the people she’d met so far in a short space of time, he wasn’t well liked. She needed to revisit the girls. There was more. Definitely more.
‘He’s a show-off. Egotistical. Thought he could come along and invade our community just because his wife originated here. Doesn’t mean you belong. She’s a quiet thing. He thinks he can throw his money around and buy people’s respect. It worked with some.’ She half closed one eye and pinned Jenna with her sharp look. ‘Respect isn’t bought in my book, it’s earned. Others aren’t always so discerning. They believe along with money comes a God-given right to demand anything without question.’ She paused while she scrubbed the end of her little bobble of a nose with her handkerchief. ‘Not everyone saw it.’
In for the long haul, Jenna slithered herself up onto the edge of the stretcher bed and made herself comfortable. If she’d stayed where she was, her legs would be dead from the knee downward in no time at all. And this was not going to be a short interview.
She peered out the back of the ambulance a few paces away to catch sight of Mason. Hands plunged deep into his pockets, his head bounced up and down like a nodding dog as Mr Crawford, lit cigarette dangling from his mouth, appeared to be as verbose as his wife.
As she turned her attention back to Ethel, the old lady was off with barely a spare second to drag in a breath between sentences. The oxygen appeared to have revived her.
‘Him and his family, they moved in a few years back. Six, I think. Kids seemed okay, settled in. Wife is nice enough. I don’t remember her from a child. Very beautiful. Poor soul, having to put up with him and his shenanigans day in, day out.’