Siding Star Read online

  “DS Sims and a photographer are in the cathedral with the body, ma’am, and DS Jones and PC Venn are in the deanery taking statements.”

  “Good. All right then, constable. Lead me to the devastation.”

  She followed Wilkins toward the north door, which was open.

  Some lights were on in the cathedral, but the nave was not particularly well lit, and it was a moment before she saw what might at first have been mistaken for a very large dog, lying in a doorway in the wall opposite her. Two constables were standing guard.

  She walked across to them. The wolf was on her side, legs stretched out straight.

  Alaskan timber wolf, the information sheet said. Female. Aged two years, five months. Weight, 36 kilos. Height, 0.914 meters to the shoulder. Name, Katie. Bred in captivity. Keeper: “She’s just a big

  softy. If she isn’t frightened she won’t harm a fly.”

  Well, she certainly looked harmless enough at the moment. “Good evening, Constable Jewell, Constable Langdon. This,

  I take it, is the alleged culprit?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you two are the ones who caught her?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good work. What exactly happened?”

  “Well, ma’am, we came when the alarm went off and got in

  through the north door. We had the key, of course, but it was

  already open. We saw a light burning up at the altar, so we

  went there and found a hell of a mess…” He hesitated, glanced

  heavenward, and said, “Sorry!”

  Who was he apologizing to? God? The blessed Virgin? The

  DI?

  “Anyway, there was a mess, and in the middle of it we found

  the old man. Dead as a doornail. PC Jewell checked his vital

  signs, but it was obvious anyway. Not dead long, though. He

  was still warm.”

  “Beyond checking his vital signs, you didn’t touch the body?” “No ma’am. Definitely not, ma’am.”

  “Good.”

  “Anyway, then we heard a sort of snuffle and raced back

  here, and there was the wolf in this doorway, sort of cowering.

  We could see blood on it. So I kept watch in case it went savage

  again, while PC Jewell put in a call. Sergeant Stillwell was here

  in a few minutes and he put it under with a tranquilizing dart,

  and that was that. It’ll be safe enough now, ma’am.” “And you reckon she killed the old man?”

  “Looks like it, ma’am. It is a wild animal. And it’s big.” Cecilia nodded and knelt. This close, she could see the rise

  and fall of the wolf’s body as she breathed. The ear nearest—the

  left ear—was torn and bloody. And the constable was right. She

  was big.

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  “Can you shine your torch here, please?” Wilkins did as Cecilia asked, and she looked more closely.

  “What do you think did that?” She pointed to the ear. “I expect it was the victim trying to defend himself, ma’am.

  Grabbed hold of the beast’s ear in his last desperate struggle.” Cecilia nodded.

  While Wilkins followed her moves with the beam of the

  torch, she picked up each powerful foreleg in turn and peered at it, examining pads and claws. She turned to the wolf’s head, pulling back the lips on each side so as to reveal first the dan- gerous-looking canines and then the rest of the teeth, gleaming white in the beam of the flashlight.

  She stood up. “What happens to her now?”

  “Well, ma’am, as she’s turned killer, the people from the fair are bringing a vet to give a lethal injection straightaway. We’ll keep an eye on her until then.”

  “I see. And you’re sure you can keep her safe?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. She should be out for a good hour yet. If she does start to wake up, we’re to yell for Sergeant Stillwell and he’ll give her another tranquilizer.”

  “All right, I leave her with you. But if the crowd from the fair turns up before I’ve got back to you, you’re to tell them not to give her a lethal injection before I’ve had one more look at her. Is that clear? Not to inject her. I have something I need to check, and I do not want her put down until I’ve had time to do it.”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll tell them to hold everything.”

  “Good. All right, Wilkins, you can stay here. Give the others a hand if they need it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Right, ma’am.”

  Cecilia walked the few meters to the south transept, turned left, and continued until she was opposite the carved gate that led to the sanctuary and the high altar. She paused and glanced west. She was looking at the longest piece of Gothic vaulting in the world, or so someone had told her. It was certainly magnificent. Even glorious. Here one could believe in God. And that, presumably, was the point of it.

  She turned east toward the sanctuary, where the cathedral’s lighting was supplemented by the bright theatrical brilliance of additional lights brought in for the photographer. The result was an odd mixture of gothic twilight and third-millennium glare. She stood, taking it in—stone columns and soaring arches, the sanctuary a pool of light, and at its center before the high altar, something dark and crumpled.

  She sighed. Then she walked slowly forward through the carved gate and between the choir stalls.

  The photographer was already at work, and DS Sims was making notes.

  As she approached they looked up, and Cecilia nodded a greeting.

  “Keith Berryman, isn’t it?” she said to the photographer.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She’d seen him before. He hardly looked old enough to be out of school, but she guessed he had to be in his twenties. “You’re keeping your distance, I hope?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m just to set up lights around the perimeter so as the deceased is well lit, and take some general pictures. Then I’ll take what the Scene of Crime Officers tell me to take when they get here.”

  “I see they’ve not arrived yet.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  When she came to the altar rails she saw paint marks on the sanctuary floor, curious lines and swirls and symbols. Again she stopped.

  “Satanism,” Sims said. “Pentangle, circle, the lot. The old fellow was a Satanist. That’s what he was up to. Be a hell of a job to clean it up.”

  Cecilia had heard of such things as this, but it was the first time she‘d met them. She looked again at the paint marks, then looked up at the altar, and at last lowered her gaze to what lay before it.

  An old man, broken and ruined.

  She stared, taking in from where she stood the distorted features, the cruelly twisted body.

  She looked at Sims.

  “ID?”

  “No, ma’am. Maybe we’ll find out when we can touch the body.”

  She nodded and looked back at the victim.

  “Did anyone see the wolf attacking him?”

  “Well, no ma’am.” Sims said. “When PCs Jewell and Langdon came because of the alarm, they found the corpse, and then the wolf with blood on it, and naturally they put two and two together.”

  “Blood on its ear. I see. And forensics is on the way.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, we leave everything as it is till they arrive. In the meantime, you could go and tell the vet to forget about lethal injections and treat the animal in whatever way she needs for that cut in the ear.”

  “But surely ma’am, if the creature’s a killer—”

  “She isn’t. Sims, what’s in front of us? What can we see?”

  “A corpse, ma’am. An old man.”

  “And?”

  “Well, the paint marks, ma’am—”

  “Besides the paint marks, Sims! What about the body?”

  “It’s… it’s dead, ma’am.”

  “Oh, yes, very dead. And that’s all you can see?”<
br />
  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Right, and it’s all I can see. There’s nothing else. There’s not a mark on the exposed parts. Not a bruise. Not a scratch. No blood. The robe isn’t torn. Does that look like the work of a wild animal?”

  Silence.

  “Um… he could have fallen so as to hide the wounds, ma’am. They may be on parts of the body we can’t see.”

  “Well, yes, he could. He could turn out to be a remarkably tidy corpse. And if forensics finds such discreetly placed wounds, we shall look again at our hypotheses. In the meantime, on the basis of what we can see, we have no evidence whatever of assault by a wild animal.” She paused. “There’s something else. I had a look at the wolf’s teeth and claws as soon as I got here, and I half expected this when I found no sign of blood or cloth on them. So if the wolf killed him, how did she do it? Telepathy?”

  Sims nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I see what you mean.”

  Cecilia looked back at the corpse. “For what it’s worth, when forensics comes I’ll lay you odds we’re told the old man died of a heart attack. Look at the way he’s fallen. His arms. The way he’s clutching at his chest.” Cecilia hesitated and then went on, thinking aloud. “Maybe he had a heart attack when he saw the wolf. It would have been a shock, seeing her suddenly, in the middle of the cathedral. Especially when he was up to no good himself.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, then, I’d appreciate it if you’d go and tell the fair crowd that while we’ve drawn no final conclusions yet—only the coroner can do that—it actually looks as though there’s been no death by violence, in which case executing the alleged perpetrator would be a bit premature. After that, maybe you could call forensics again and say if they are intending to send some people tonight, or are maybe thinking of leaving it till later in the week, or maybe even next week, it’d be nice if they’d let us know. Then the rest of us could decide how to get on with our lives.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Right, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sims started to go.

  “You know where you went wrong, Sims?”

  “I should have examined the wolf, ma’am.”

  “Before that. You went wrong because you got here with your mind made up.” She relented. “We all do it sometimes. But the fact is, however obvious something may seem at first sight, if we can’t show it, we don’t know it. Simple as that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sims disappeared rapidly in the direction of the dean’s door. No doubt he was furious, furious at being lectured to, and especially furious at being lectured to by a young woman. Well, he’d just have to live with it.

  She shook her head. Focus. What ought she to do now? Wait for forensics, she supposed.

  She walked around the edge of the sanctuary. A scarlet and gold crucifix lay face down on the floor. Further away from the altar, a golden candlestick was on its side, obviously pair to the one on the altar. She stared at both, then at a carpetbag that lay at the side of the sanctuary.

  She sighed.

  Surely even wolves had a right to due process.

  Remember San Francesco.

  Where the hell was forensics?

  Five

  Heavitree Road Police Station. 7:00 a.m.

  Sergeant Wyatt was already on the desk when Cecilia walked in the following morning.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  She returned his smiled. “Good morning, sergeant.” Wyatt was an older man, approaching retirement, the son of

  a soldier. Cecilia figured he’d grown up with all the old British army jokes about Italian tanks having only two gears, reverse and fast reverse, and so on. So when she arrived a few months’ back it had been pretty obvious from day one that he wasn’t at all sure how he felt about having as his superior a female young enough to be his daughter whose last name ended in a vowel. Then one night a couple of weeks ago a trio of large young toughs with a grudge had jumped him in a road near the Heavitree station. They were starting to knock him about, as luck would have it, just as she was passing. She’d brought her car to a screeching halt, leapt out, and reduced two of them to moaning heaps in about fifteen seconds while he finished off the third. In the process she’d used a couple of Italian streetfighting tricks Papa had taught her—tricks that weren’t in the police training manuals. The upshot of it all, she gathered, was that Sergeant Wyatt was now her fan, declaring to all and

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  ChristoPher BryAn

  sundry that DI Cavaliere was “all right,” even if she was Italian and female. “Long day yesterday, ma’am! I gather they kept you hanging about the cathedral half the night.”

  “Well, yes, it did go on a bit. Still, at least it wasn’t like Monday.” On Monday she’d had to go out on a hit-and-run that had killed an eight-year-old. In the end the driver turned himself in. Even so, it was ghastly. “I hate it when it’s a kid!”

  “The day you stop hating it’s probably the day to think about retiring, ma’am,” Sergeant Wyatt said.

  She nodded. Of course he was right.

  She was hardly at her desk when the outside line started to flash . “I’m afraid your ex is on the line again, ma’am,” the woman

  on the switchboard said. “What do you want me to do?” Damn. He’d already called three times, and so far she’d said

  she wasn’t available.

  “All right, I suppose I’d better find out what he wants. Thank

  you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A pause.

  A click.

  “Hello, Ceci. How are you?” It was the first time she’d heard

  his voice in… more than two years, surely? He sounded cheerful, even jocular.

  “Hello, George. I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Ceci, it’s so good to hear you. It’s been too long. Look, I’m

  going to be in Exeter next week for a conference for the bank.

  I’ll be staying at the White Hart. The thing is, I think there may

  still be one or two of my things in the house—things I forgot to

  take. So I thought perhaps I’d drop by one evening and we can

  check. And then afterwards we could pop out and have a drink

  together.”

  She sighed. “George, you took everything in the house that

  siding stAr 25

  was yours. Actually, I think you may have taken one or two things that weren’t.” “Oh,” he said, pleasantly enough, “well, if you’re sure. It’s just that I seem to be missing a few things, so I thought I’d check. Anyway, I can still take you out for that drink. What would be a good night for you?”

  “George, why on earth would we do that?”

  “Oh, come on, Ceci! After all that’s happened we really ought to get together. It’s been a long time. Look, I know the situation’s awkward, but we were good together once. Why throw all that away?”

  That was true. They had been good together, or she’d thought so.

  But then Freja had arrived from Stockholm to negotiate an exchange of securities with George’s bank. In the process, it seemed, George had negotiated her.

  “George,” she said, “does Freja know about this?”

  “Freja? Ceci, this is nothing to do with Freja. This is about us.”

  “George, there isn’t an ‘us’. You ended ‘us’ when you left. Without warning.”

  “But Ceci, you still have a lot of unresolved anger. I can sense it even over the phone. Nurturing hostile feelings—it’s not healthy, you should know that. I still care about you and frankly I’m worried about you.”

  She very nearly laughed. So now an Englishman was offering to show a southern Italian how to be in touch with her feelings?

  In a way, of course, he was right. She was still angry. Angry and hurt.

  But she doubted that could be resolved by a drink with George.

  Unless maybe she broke the bottle on his head? That would show him she was in touch wi
th her feelings.

  “Ceci, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So which evening would be best for you?”

  “Best?”

  26

  Christopher Bryan “For a drink.”

  “Oh, that. Look, George, evidently you aren’t getting this, though I can’t think why. Anyway, I’ll spell it out. Yes, I’m still angry with you on the rare occasions I think about it. Maybe I haven’t read the right books, but I was under the impression even cads who leave their wives generally have the good manners to tell them.”

  “Ceci, what’s past is past. You have to let it go. I did what I needed to do. You have to believe that. But we can still give each other a good time if we choose.”

  Her second phone line was alight and blinking at her.

  “There’s someone on my other line. I’ll have to put you on hold.”

  She punched the flashing button. “DI Cavaliere.”

  “Sergeant Wyatt here, ma’am.”

  “How can we help, sergeant? Lost animals a speciality.”

  “Good one, ma’am! There’s been a break-in at the off-license on Magdalen Road. There are officers there, but Superintendent Hanlon would like you to check it out.”

  “All right, Sergeant. I’ll be there.”

  She looked back at the other button and realized how much she didn’t want to press it. She thought she’d more or less held her own with George—yet the mere sound of his voice brought back that first misery. Misery she’d begun to get over—even to forget.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  She pressed the button.

  “George?”

  “Ceci.”

  She took a deep breath. “Look, George, the short and the long is, No, there’s absolutely nothing in my house that‘s yours, and No, I won’t let you take me out for a drink. Is that clear? I hope so, because now I have to go. I have a break in to investigate. Please don’t telephone me again.”

  “Ceci, you’re not hearing me.”

  Siding Star 27 “Oh please, George! That’s it. That really is it. Oh—just one other thing. My name is Cecilia. Goodbye.” She hung up, her hand trembling only slightly as she pushed the handset into its cradle.

  She sighed, and sat for a few moments.

  She’d actually caught a glimpse once of George with Freja: extremely tall, extremely well dressed, and extremely thin, with long blonde hair. He knew what it was like going to bed every night with an Italian sex goddess, and yet he preferred a Swedish beanpole?