I was excommunicated from the family. It happens. I don’t even know what I’m doing here now to be honest. I should have stuck to my guns and stayed away.’
‘Why are you here now?’ Ratcliffe asked. Angie thought it odd and a little mercenary to ignore the funeral but turn up to pick over the family bones. It was more than obvious they’d been clearing the house. Maybe this would turn out to be more interesting than she’d first thought.
‘Frances asked me to help sort out the house. I wanted to see it again, see if it was as awful as I remembered.’ She paused and looked around. ‘It is.’
Angie had to agree with that. The house was oppressive and gloomy, not exactly a place anyone would want to call home.
Ratcliffe wanted to know why they had all fallen out.
‘Money. Always money isn’t it? My aunt died – she left me her flat and some money. My mother and Frances thought I should share and share alike. I didn’t want to, so we fell out.’
Her answer had been too trite, too neat for Angie’s liking. She hoped her boss would pursue it. ‘What about Stella? What did she think?’ Ratcliffe asked.
‘I can’t recall her being given the chance to say what she thought,’ Rachel replied. ‘Does any of this have anything to do with the fact that dead bodies seem to be popping up all over the place?’
Ratcliffe leaned back in the chair. Angie heard it moan again as the weak joints adjusted to the shift in weight. She could see him thinking and wondered if he shared her thoughts. Her guess would be that Rachel had been a kid when someone had murdered an adult and a baby, covered them in sand, and hidden them away. Still, that didn’t quite explain Rachel’s flippant and detached response to the situation. ‘Yes, about that,’ Ratcliffe said, tapping the table with the tips of his fingers. ‘The bodies. Do you know who they are?’
Rachel wasn’t looking too good; her face was ashen and a slick of sweat was making her forehead shine like oiled alabaster. Angie watched with mounting concern as the frail woman put her head in her hands and said, ‘I don’t know,’ in a voice that was almost slurring. It looked as if she was physically trying to swallow down the distress and confusion of what was happening. Angie had never seen someone turn so grey so quickly. Without warning, Rachel’s eyes rolled back and she slid off the chair onto the floor where she began to jerk and twitch like a thing possessed.
No one had been expecting that.
‘Get Ferris in here now!’ Ratcliffe yelled. A sound that sent Angie scurrying for the door.
Angie knew Julia Ferris as a woman more accustomed to dealing with dead bodies than live ones at that stage of her medical career, but she was still a doctor and immediately recognised that Rachel was having an epileptic seizure.
‘She’s having a seizure,’ she said with her usual cool detachment. ‘Given that she’s wearing a MedicAlert bracelet, I suspect she suffers from epilepsy.’
‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ Angie asked, worried that they’d be sued for negligence if Rachel was injured. They already had one damaged Porter sister on their hands.
‘Other than move that chair so she doesn’t smash her face on it, no. She’ll be out of it in a minute or two. Just let her settle and give her some water. She’ll probably be a bit sleepy too, so let her rest if she needs to. You can check with her whether she carries medication and has taken any today. Now, does anybody mind if I get back to the dead guys now?’ Ferris said peevishly. Angie knew she would have to get garbed up in another paper suit to go back to the crime scenes, and she’d have been pissed off too in Ferris’s shoes.
Angie was a little shocked by the doctor’s nonchalance but Ratcliffe just appeared relieved that Rachel wasn’t having a stroke or a heart attack. So far, they had two dead bodies, one witness in hospital, a potential suspect (who was fuck knows where), and a second witness who was writhing on the floor like a demented snake.
Just as Angie’s anxiety was beginning to rise again, the rigors torturing Rachel’s thin body started to lessen and slowly she stopped jerking and grew progressively limp. ‘Get her some water will you?’ Ratcliffe asked as he bent down to help Rachel sit up. ‘You had me worried for a minute or two,’ he said, helping her into a sitting position. Angie watched as Rachel fought to compose herself, shame spreading across her features in the same way that urine had spread across her trousers during the fit. Angie couldn’t help but feel for the woman.
Rachel took the water and drank it down quickly. ‘Sorry, that one seemed to come out of nowhere,’ she said. ‘Haven’t had a fit in ages.’
‘Are you OK? Do you need anything? Can I get your medication?’ Angie asked, her heart rate only just beginning to settle back to its normal pace after the drama. She passed Rachel the blanket that had slipped off when she fell, hoping to at least help her preserve some dignity in front of Ratcliffe. She might have encouraged the poor woman to go and change, but the house was practically empty and it was clear there weren’t any clean clothes lying around. Angie watched as Rachel wrapped the blanket around herself.
‘More water please – took my dose this morning,’ she said, still looking disorientated. Having drunk the second glass straight down, she explained that she suffered from epilepsy and had since she was a child. Though usually well controlled, the fits could be brought on by stress. ‘I think you would agree that my day has been stressful,’ she said to them both with a feeble laugh.
‘Just a bit. Look, if you need to take a break we can pick this up later,’ Ratcliffe said, genuine concern showing on his face.
‘No, I’m fine. I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. ‘I want to get this over with as soon as possible and get back to my room please.’
Ratcliffe looked as doubtful about that as Angie felt, but decided to press on. He helped Rachel back onto the chair and motioned to Angie to put the kettle on. ‘When your sister saw what was in the trunk in the shed, she called out before she fell. The young man out there said that she called out the name “Roy”. Does that mean anything to you?’
Kettle in hand, Angie watched as Rachel blinked at him for a moment whilst she absorbed his words.
‘Roy? Roy was Stella’s husband. Are you saying that’s him in the shed?’ she asked, screwing her eyes up in an attitude of dazed disbelief. ‘Roy walked out on Stella thirty years ago, just upped and left, said he was going out to buy cigarettes and never came back. It can’t be him.’ She screwed her face up in what might be disbelief. With the state of her it was hard to tell. ‘I’m sorry, but I think I’m having another one,’ she mumbled before she went down again.
***
It was no good. By the time Rachel came out of the second fit, she was so exhausted they would have been hard pressed to get her name out of her in any sensible form. The only reasonable thing they could do was get someone to drive her to the hotel she was staying at and call it a day.
The only useful information they’d gained from the whole interview was gleaned from Rachel’s parting words as she walked wearily out of the door. ‘By the way, if the body in the shed has a gold tooth, a canine, then it is Roy.’
***
Julia Ferris was in the yard discussing the logistics of moving the trunk complete with sand and body with the Crime Scene guys when Ratcliffe and Angie approached her. ‘Does our victim have a gold tooth?’ he asked.
