The Company She Kept by Marjorie Eccles Page A

white apartment, the array of clothes and the seductive underwear, had not found it amusing, either. She had looked with pity at the blemished face under the pathologist’s scalpel, for which all the lotions, creams and unguents in the world had ultimately been of no help at all. She felt angry at the undeservedness of it, but fiercely glad the woman hadn’t had to go through that final humiliation. Death, at least, must have been quick.
    â€˜He was disturbed and didn’t succeed in raping her, so he strangled her to keep her quiet,’ she said. There was an edge to her voice.
    â€˜Or that was what we were meant to think,’ Mayo said. ‘That it was a sex killing that went wrong, so that we shouldn’t look for the real reason she was killed.’ Abigail looked thoughtful. ‘And that means,’ he went on, ‘that we’re looking for someone, anyone, young or old ... but someone cool and calculated enough to try an immediate cover-up. Don’t forget – all the evidence indicates she was simply dumped there after being killed elsewhere. And after finding that letter, I don’t see this as a casual sex killing, I think we must look closer to home.’
    â€˜Jenny Platt’s checked out McKinley,’ Abigail said. ‘If he was in the motorway café at nine o’clock talking to other truckers, as he says he was, he’s off the hook.’
    â€˜I think in any case we’re looking for someone closer to home than McKinley.’
    â€˜The man who came to the flat?’
    â€˜He’ll do to start with.’
    They had by now arrived at the entrance to the small group of buildings which constituted the Women’s Hospital. The two hospitals, the County and the Women’s, were separated only by the distance across the park. It would have been less than a five-minute drive from the County Hospital mortuary, had it not been for the allegedly quicker one-way system which took you all round the houses and left you twenty minutes later within a few yards of where you’d started. But although in terms of time they’d saved something, otherwise it didn’t seem as though they’d gained much: others of the press were here also, having already ferreted out, God knows how, for there hadn’t yet been a release, that the murdered woman was Angie Robinson and that she had worked here. Taking advantage of the media presence to gain publicity, a picket had been posted at the gate, a group of young nurses with protest placards which read Women for Women and sundry other slogans of a similar nature.
    With a sigh, Mayo passed them and began to force his way through the pack, ‘No comment’ on his lips. He sometimes felt that he must, unknown to himself, exude some substance like aniseed, that enabled the media hounds to sniff him out wherever he went.
    The name tag on the lapel of her white overall said ‘Eileen Dalton’. She was a plump woman in her forties with fading, gingerish hair and tired eyes, but her face lit up when she smiled. She was one of two receptionists on duty at the Outpatients’ desk at the Women’s Hospital.
    â€˜I can give you ten minutes,’ she said. ‘I’m due for my lunch-break now, anyway, while it’s quiet. Sorry I can’t take you anywhere private, but we can get a cup of tea round the corner while we talk. There won’t be many there now.’
    â€˜Round the corner’ proved to be a refreshment bar at the end of a corridor manned by the WVS and at the moment free of customers. Mayo and Mrs Dalton took a table by the window where presently Abigail joined them, bearing three polystyrene beakers of tea and a packet of coconut creams. Rich aromas of stew, boiled cabbage and fish wafted along the corridor.
    Abigail broke open the biscuits and offered the packet to Mrs Dalton, who shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t want to spoil my lunch.’
    â€˜Meals good