Dying to Help (Anna McColl Mystery Series Book 1) Read online

  Dying to Help

  Penny Kline

  © Penny Kline 1993

  Penny Kline has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and

  Patents Act,1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1993 by Macmillan London Limited.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter One

  It’s not easy to smother another human being. Unless the assailant is twice the victim’s size, as with a parent and child. Karen was not a child but the tranquillizers that had been stirred into her coffee while she was out of the room were extremely effective and quite tasteless. A little sugar had been added just to be on the safe side.

  Gradually the warm cosy room began to feel uncomfortably overheated. Karen rose to adjust the thermostat on the radiator but her head spun and she had to sit down again.

  ‘I should lie down and relax.’ The voice was kind, soothing. ‘There, that’s better.’

  Karen closed her eyes and her body seemed to float, as though suspended on air. A cool hand smoothed her fair curly hair. A finger traced a pattern from her forehead down her nose until it reached her lips.

  Then the cushion descended.

  Legs kicking, arms flailing, she struggled, trying to turn her head to one side, trying to scream although her mouth was forced shut and no sound could emerge. Minutes later, probably only two or three, she lay still.

  Chapter Two

  ‘He never did it.’

  Diane Easby leaned forward until her face was only a few inches from mine. When I gave her my full attention but made no audible response she repeated the statement, raising her voice as though she thought I might be deaf.

  ‘I said, he never did it.’

  ‘You believe your brother was innocent.’

  ‘I know he was.’ She tossed back her shoulder-length hair, removed two black and gold slides that scooped it up behind her ears, then replaced them more firmly. In her mid-thirties, I guessed, tall, well built, with a strong, open face. She had the coarse, slightly greasy skin that sometimes goes with fair colouring, but she was carefully made-up to draw attention to her light brown eyes.

  She had arrived early for her appointment and settled herself down in the waiting room, turning the pages of a magazine but taking more interest in the other clients. As I passed the open door on my way to the secretary’s office, I saw her lean across to one of Beth’s clients and whisper something in her ear, and the client, a depressed woman with eating problems, had actually managed a faint smile.

  When I introduced myself Diane sprang from her seat and followed me up the stairs, a little unsteady on black high-heeled shoes and breathing hard.

  Although it was her first visit there were none of the usual uneasy silences, none of the anxious fidgeting with the hands, eyes looking up then flicking away. Diane Easby’s gaze was steady, determined. She had started talking the moment she entered the room, perching herself on the nearest chair, still wearing her coat, eager to get started.

  ‘Since it happened I’ve hardly slept a wink. I’m a wreck, a total wreck, and the kids are driving me insane. Dr Dyer’s told you all about it, I expect.’

  I nodded. ‘About your brother, yes.’

  ‘He was the youngest, see, baby of the family.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she searched in her pocket for a tissue, then noticed the box on my desk.

  I pushed it closer. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, love. I’ve always had nerves, ever since I can remember, so you can imagine what all this has done to me.’ She ran her tongue round the inside of her cheek. ‘Dr Dyer said you’d help me come to terms.’

  ‘You’ve had a bad time,’ I said. ‘How old are your children?’

  ‘Eh? Twelve and two. I left Siobhan with a friend but she won’t be able to stand it very long so I’ll have to be getting back quite soon.’

  She was looking me up and down, trying to assess whether I was going to be any use to her.

  ‘You’re a psychologist then.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ I waited for the usual questions about psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists. What was the difference? But she had no interest in such distinctions.

  ‘Keith couldn’t have done it. You believe me, don’t you?’

  I hesitated. ‘The best thing is if you tell me all about it from the beginning. We’ll need to work through everything that’s happened. Then, when it’s all out in the open, the shock, the fear, the feeling of loss — ’

  She nodded enthusiastically. The front of her coat had come open and I caught a glimpse of fluffy mauve sweater and tight black skirt.

  ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘Start wherever you like. Just tell me whatever comes into your head.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  She began with the bare facts. How back before Christmas her brother had been taken in for questioning about the murder of a social worker. How he had confessed to a murder he’d never done because he couldn’t stand people going on at him. How the following day he had hanged himself in his cell, using the webbing belt that was hidden in his underpants.

  I remembered the case but knew none of the details. A social worker had been suffocated in her own home in Montpelier, a district just north of St Paul’s, but with the up-market streets of Redland a stone’s throw away on the opposite side of Cheltenham Road. There was only one suspect and the police had been on to him the day it happened. Keith Merchant, that was the name, and the social worker had been called Karen Plant. I had seen items on the local news bulletin and assumed Keith Merchant’s guilt had never been in doubt. A tragic, pointless killing carried out on the spur of the moment by a disturbed young man Karen Plant had been trying to help.

  Confident that she had gained my interest, Diane leaned back in her chair and started filling me in on some of the more unpleasant aspects of the case. Her description of what had happened was graphic, almost as though she had been there herself.

  ‘Protruding tongue and staring eyes, blood leaking from the nose and ears.’

  She looked up and caught the enquiring expression on my face.

  ‘After he done away with himself I went to the library and looked it up in a book. Asphyxia, they call it. I wanted to know what she’d have looked like. It was all there with photos and everything. Then there was a section on cut throats — ’

  ‘It was a book about forensic medicine?’

  ‘Something like that. I asked an assistant. She found it in the upstairs part.’

  ‘Did your brother know Karen Plant?’

  ‘Oh, yes, she was a friend of his. Sort of. She’d helped him find a room, fill in forms for his benefit and that. In return he did little things that needed doing round her flat. Washers on the taps, fixing a cupboard door that wouldn’t stay shut. She shared a flat with another lady, lived near the
railway bridge, next to the expensive part but where the houses are getting a bit cheaper.’

  ‘Yes, I know where you mean.’

  It sounded as though Karen Plant had made the common mistake of becoming over-involved with a client. How old had she been? How experienced? Had she been taking a special interest in Keith Merchant, encouraging him to feel he had a worthwhile contribution to make in life? Or perhaps she needed the work done anyway.

  Diane interrupted my thoughts. ‘I expect you knew her, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, not really. I’ve heard about her. From a friend who worked with her now and again.’

  ‘Keith liked to be helpful, see. Most people do if they get the chance.’

  The room was starting to feel a little stuffy but if I opened the window a blast of cold air would blow in from the street. Diane read my mind and started fanning her face with her hands. Her fingernails were long and fuchsia pink, all except the little ones, which were neatly bitten to the quick.

  Standing up she removed her brown fun-fur coat and hung it over the back of her chair, where its bulk refused to balance, and it slid to the floor and lay in a heap like a large dead animal.

  I carried it to a hook on the back of the door, then we both sat down again and she began explaining how even before her brother’s death she had been under severe strain, what with the kids and a husband who might be laid off any time.

  ‘What does your husband do?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, Alan’s a long-distance lorry driver.’

  ‘So he’s away from home quite often.’

  She nodded vaguely. We were moving away from the real problem and she wasn’t certain she had convinced me of her brother’s innocence.

  ‘So,’ she said, her voice more confident than the expression in her eyes, ‘you’ll tell them to re-open the case.’

  I paused. ‘Was there any hard evidence against your brother or did the police just go along with his confession?’

  ‘Two tenners in his pocket but that was for putting up shelves. He was good with do-it-yourself provided you told him exactly what you wanted.’

  ‘The police must have talked to you.’

  ‘Eh? Waste of time. Already made up their minds, just going through the whatsits. Desperate to make an arrest, what with it being a social worker and that. Anyway,’ she added impatiently, ‘he couldn’t have done it. Skinny he was, born premature and never caught up. Weren’t strong enough to suffocate a grown woman.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘Not retarded, nothing like that, just easily intimidated.’ She mouthed the last two words as though she was describing the plot of a TV movie. ‘I reckon he knew they’d put him away for life, decided it weren’t worth going on.’

  I glanced at the clock. ‘Look, I tell you what, Mrs … ’

  ‘Diane. Call me Diane. After all it’s the name I was born with, not like the one they forced on me at the Registry.’

  ‘I tell you what, Diane. Shall we make another appointment, say in a week’s time?’

  ‘I’ve got to wait a whole week?’

  ‘Well, all right, Thursday. Would your friend be able to look after your daughter on Thursday afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, I expect so, seeing it’s for an important engagement.’ She stood up and waited for me to help her into her coat. ‘I knew you’d sort it. Knew as soon as I saw you. Empathy, they call it, don’t they. I read a feature in one of those magazines at the supermarket check-out.’ She had her hand on the door knob. ‘He was scared, see, that’s why he confessed. I knew him inside out, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Couldn’t be provoked no matter how hard you tried.’

  I nodded. Now was not the time to come up with a lecture on the over-controlled personality. The quiet timid creature who one day, after a build-up of tension sometimes lasting more than twenty years, suddenly loses control.

  She stared at me for a moment, then smiled warmly. ‘See you Thursday then. What time?’

  ‘Will two o’clock be all right?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ She held out her hand, soft and smooth with three large rings. ‘Thanks ever so much. I’m ever so grateful.’

  She stepped forward, kissing me lightly on the cheek, then turned and left without glancing back over her shoulder.

  The scent of her body spray lingered in the room. I took my file of case notes from the bottom drawer of the desk and started writing down the relevant points.

  Diane Easby, mid-thirties, married to Alan, a long-distance lorry driver. Two children, aged twelve and two. Brother, Keith, found hanging in a police cell two days after being taken into custody for questioning with regard to the murder of social worker Karen Plant.

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember if there had been a picture in the paper. Tall with sleek black hair? No, I was thinking of someone entirely different. Karen Plant had ‘fair curly hair, tiny hands and feet, like a doll’. But I hadn’t read that in the paper. That was the way Bruce had described her. He had seemed pretty cut up at the time although, as far as I knew, he had only met her once or twice when his work in the Housing Department overlapped with hers in Social Services.

  All the same he might be able to tell me more about the case. If I called in on Chris on the way home I could raise the subject with Bruce in an indirect kind of way, not mentioning Diane Easby of course, just idly curious to know what had happened.

  I could hear footsteps on the stairs, the sound of voices, Martin pausing to have a few words with Nick. In a moment he would knock on my door and give me the lecture on overdoing things that he had been threatening for several days.

  He was right of course. I was worn out and it was nobody’s fault but my own. It was up to me to take responsibility for my own wellbeing. After all, wasn’t that the essence of all psychological treatment? To help the client to take charge of his or her life and stop feeling like a helpless victim of other people? At weekend conferences attended in order to avoid spending Sunday on my own, there was much talk of ‘empowering the client’. It was a word I detested. To empower. How politically correct, although when you thought about it there were echoes of Mrs Thatcher’s heyday. The cult of the individual, a belief in the disabling effect of the Welfare State.

  It reminded me of conversations with my father. He was so certain in his views. I was too. It had made for good discussions in the past, before … I felt a twinge of guilt, knew I should be visiting him more often, phoning at least once a week. But we were so little use to each other. He had his own way of dealing with grief and if we had been able to speak openly he would have challenged my belief that talking helps to ease the pain.

  A sudden image of my mother caught me unaware. Standing in her newly decorated kitchen with its yellow wallpaper and blobby white-gloss paintwork. Laughing, always laughing …

  Martin knocked on my door and came straight in.

  ‘Are you free for a couple of minutes, Anna? By the way, you haven’t forgotten the case conference?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  He sat down on the chair where Diane Easby had been sitting a few minutes before.

  ‘Heather’s still off sick so I’ve spent the morning answering the phone, making appointments.’

  ‘Better than seeing clients.’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’ He ran the fingers of one hand through his thin sandy hair. He had shaved badly, nicking a mole on the edge of his jaw. His bottle-green thick-knit sweater had pulled threads on both arms and clashed with his olive cords.

  Recently, at one of our weekly case conferences, Beth had raised the subject of clothes. Should we dress casually or would the clients have more confidence in our ability to help if we were more formally dressed?

  Martin had reacted badly. ‘Like insurance salesmen, you mean?’

  Not even bothering to correct it to ‘sales persons’, Beth had given him a withering look. ‘It’s all a question of attitude, Martin.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but surely that’s best left to personal preferenc
e.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Beth dressed in expensive suits, silk shirts, and matching accessories.

  Martin had sighed. ‘Surely you don’t believe there’s one definitively best way to relate to each and every client.’

  But as usual the argument had remained unresolved. ‘Anna?’

  He was gazing at me with an intent, concerned expression. I knew what he was going to say, held up my hand to stop him, but realized it would be no use.

  ‘You look exhausted. You’re seeing too many people. The way you’re carrying on you’ll be burned out by Easter.’ He paused to take in the effect of his words. ‘Look, I do understand. We’ve all done it. It’s a way of — ’

  ‘Making yourself feel indispensable?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ He picked up a pen that was lying on my desk, unscrewed the top, then screwed it up again. ‘Beth says you and David have split up. I’m sorry. You must be having a rough time.’

  ‘If you want the truth, Martin, it’s a relief.’

  He looked up, surprised at my defensive reaction. He wanted to help but I wasn’t making it easy for him. He decided to take my response at face value.

  ‘Good, I’m glad. I know things had been difficult between the two of you. Only, do ease up a bit.’ He stood up to indicate the lecture was over. ‘Right then, see you downstairs in a couple of minutes?’

  ‘Oh, Martin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve just seen a new client. Her brother hanged himself in a police cell. He was the one they thought was responsible for killing that social worker.’

  ‘Well, he was, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  Chapter Three

  Chris and Bruce and their three children lived in a large dilapidated house on the edge of the city, in a road which had been left stranded when a new flyover was built. Chris hated the place but it had the advantage that there was always plenty of parking space.

  I locked the car, then checked the passenger door, then unlocked it to make sure I had remembered the handbrake. During the last few weeks sensible checks had started to turn into anxiety-reducing rituals. There was no time to think about it now. Later, back home, I would decide how to cut down on checking the electric, rings on the cooker, the bath taps, window catches. I had devised a special treatment for myself. Instead of believing something awful would happen if I failed to carry out these rituals, I reversed the superstition and decided that the awful event, whatever it was, would take place if I kept on checking and double-checking. It usually worked.