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The Four Marys
Part 1 The Four Marys
Part 2 The
Four Marys Part 3 The
Four Marys Part 4 The Four Marys Part 5 The Four Marys Part 6 The Four Marys Part 7 The Four Marys Part 8
The Four Marys - A Murder Mystery
By
Paul Norman
Part
Three (You can access the other parts from the main menu).
Chapter
Nine
Wednesday
The
reference to Noddy was not lost on Mike. His parents had bought him
the very first Noddy book by Enid Blyton, published in 1948, and it
had become a firm favourite of Mike’s. He had been sorely tempted,
on inheriting Jasmine, to paint the front and rear bumpers of the car
red, but knew what the consequences would be. Some day he would have
her resprayed a less noticeable colour, just one colour, not
two-tone, as it was now. Something respectable such as British Racing
Green, or maroon, maybe. Or just plain black, which was probably how
it had left the Morris factory in Cowley. But then he would have to
change her name, of course.
Jasmine
chugged her way out to Churchdown, turned left and headed up the
narrow road towards the council houses where he was to meet DCI
Maxwell. He followed the line of council houses until he reached the
one belonging to Mary Fielding and Jenny Rogerson. He could see
Maxwell’s gleaming black Wolseley, big, chunky, and functional, but
luxurious on the inside, parked a little way down the street, and
pulled in behind him, then made his way to the front door of the
house. A kiddie’s Tri-Ang tricycle was in the front garden, which
was well-tended, comprising a three-yard square of lawn either side
of the concrete path, and a single climbing rose that was thinking of
struggling free of the trellis to which it was attached.
A
uniformed constable, whom Mike did not recognise, stood at the
doorway and asked to see his warrant card, then let him in.
‘Upstairs,’
he said, without smiling. The stairs were opposite the front door.
Mike ran lightly up them, turning left at the top to follow the
voices he could hear in the front bedroom. As he reached the top of
the stairs, WPC Alice Matthews was on her way down, carrying a crying
infant.
‘Morning
Mike. This is James. His Mum, a Mary Fielding, has been battered to
death with a piece of flint,’ she said, smiling wanly, cuddling the
little boy to her chest as though he were one of her own. Mike paused
to smile at James, and he momentarily stopped crying, reached out a
chubby little hand and touched Mike on the nose.
‘Might
need you in a little while,’ Alice said. ‘He seems to like you…’
There
was an appalling smell of excrement, urine and the coppery smell of
blood as he entered the bedroom. Inside the surprisingly large room
was a bed, a chest of drawers in antique pine, a rickety dressing
table made from cheap plywood and painted white, and a bedside
cabinet on which stood a table lamp with a dirty but serviceable
shade. There was also a copy of A
Summer Place,
a Pan Giant which Mike also had in his own collection because the
film had starred a young Sandra Dee. There was also a pair of
glasses, a tumbler of water, and a small bottle of aspirin. Mary
Fielding lay face down on the lino, a pool of dark blood spreading
away from beneath her face. She wore a housecoat with a floral design
and nothing else, apparently. Not that he could see, anyway. It was
quite clear that as she had died, she had soiled herself, and the
stench was overpowering. Her shoes, expensive-looking and evidently
quite painful from the state of her feet, were alongside her. One of
her eyes was visible, as her head was on one side, and it was open.
Mike found himself staring into it, mesmerised by the piercing blue
colour, wondering when she was going to say something. The side of
her head had a distinct depression where the flint, which lay to the
right, had impacted. Fragments of bone and brain were matted into her
hair. This was a young mother, James’s young mother, and she had
died painfully, reaching out for her little boy, desperate to save
him from the same fate.
Elizabeth
Trigg was on her knees beside the body, taking samples of hair, blood
and tissue from Mary Fielding’s wound. She had evidently been
called just as Mike was arriving back at the police station, and she
must have set out immediately. She had on her beautiful white lab
coat, which still somehow managed to accentuate her stunning figure.
Maxwell stood in the bay window, his trilby hat on the dressing
table, his pipe in his mouth, though from what Mike could tell, it
was empty, for there was no smoke emanating from it.
‘Constable
Thompson, open a window, will you?’
‘Hallo
Mike,’ Lizzie said.
‘Lizzie.’
Maxwell’s
eyebrow raised a fraction at the familiar greetings. ‘Same method,
obviously.’
‘Evidently.
There is flint around, for example you could pick some up at a
builder’s yard, but my guess is that it’s come from someone’s
back garden,’ Lizzie said.
‘Two
Marys,’ Mike said, quietly.
‘What?’
‘Both
of the victims were called Mary. Mary Simkins, Mary Fielding.’
‘Coincidence?’
‘I
have no idea, Sir.’
‘Well
then, get your thinking cap on, if you have one. See if there’s a
connection, why don’t you? Keep your brain active, that’s the
stuff. Miss Trigg, are you going to tell us anything we don’t
already know?’
‘I
suspect not, Chief Inspector. It seems very likely to me that the two
victims, the two
Marys,
were killed by the same perpetrator. If you can find a connection,
you will in all probability have your man.’
‘Right.
We’ll leave you to it. Thompson, you and I will interview the other
girl who lives here. Matthews is arranging for social services to
pick up the kiddie, then you and she can do the house to house
enquiries. There aren’t that many houses in the Close, shouldn’t
take you long…’
‘Do
we have any idea what happened?’ Mike asked. It was Maxwell that
answered.
‘Miss
Fielding’s housemate, a Miss Jenny Rogerson, was downstairs. There
was a party going on, apparently. When everyone had left, she came
upstairs to check on Mary and her son, and found her dead, on the
floor, as you see her. We believe that whoever killed her climbed up
the drainpipe and through the window. Battered her head in, left the
same way. The forensic officers are on their way. There are
footprints, both here, on the carpet, and outside, on the front
garden – I hope you kept to the path, by the way, constable? And
there are fingerprints on the drainpipe and the window sill, by the
look of it, plus another footprint as he scrambled through the
window. She didn’t have time to put up a struggle, just looks as if
she raised her arms to defend herself, he took a swing at her and
caved her head in. She wouldn’t have known much about it, if
anything. I’d say it happened sometime around three this morning.’
‘He?
You know that it’s a man, then?’ Mike addressed his question to
Lizzie.
‘From
the size of the footprint on the window frame, which I would say was
a ten or even an eleven, I’d say we’re looking at a man, yes.
Almost certainly.’
‘Right,
thank you Miss Trigg, we’ll wait to hear from you. Quick as you
can, as usual, if you please. Constable Thompson, with me.’
They
went downstairs and into the front room, which looked out onto the
street. Jenny Rogerson sat on a chair, one of only three in the room.
Alice Matthews was standing in the window holding the little boy in
her arms.
‘Waiting
for Social Services, guv,’ she said, addressing Maxwell.
‘Take
him away somewhere, if you please, Matthews. He doesn’t need to
hear this. He’s probably too young, but you never know.’
‘Guv.’
Maxwell
parked his sizeable frame in the chair next to Jenny’s. Mike
hovered by the front room door then removed a teddy bear from the
third chair and sat down. Jenny Rogerson was in her early thirties,
Mike thought. She had shoulder-length blonde hair which was obviously
dyed because the roots were just starting to show through. She was
attractive, but in an artificial way, her eyes were red from crying
and her make-up had run. She wore a loose-fitting blouse beneath
which could be seen her underwear, consisting of a bright red
brassiere, and she wore a pair of tight-fitting jeans. Her feet were
bare. Not like Mary Fielding’s, she evidently wore sensible,
well-fitting shoes, unlike her dead housemate. She reminded Mike of
Mandy Rice Davies, the pretty call girl who had been involved in the
breakup of Harold Macmillan’s government three years earlier.
‘Feel
up to answering a few questions, Miss Rogerson?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Mrs
Rogerson,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m married. Separated. Well, divorced
actually. Papers came through yesterday.’
‘Mrs
Rogerson. Constable Thompson, pass Mrs Rogerson that box of tissues
off the sideboard, will you?’
‘We
were carrying on the party down here… no one heard anything… the
blokes drifted off around four-ish… work, you know. I think Mary
sent John packing because he was drunk and he had a terrible
headache, he suffers with them - migraines. I can give you his
address if you want to talk to him. He’s Mary’s – he was Mary’s
boyfriend. He’s not James’s father, though. Terry, my boyfriend,
wanted to stay, but I told him no, he had to wait, because of my…
you know… period.’
‘Do
you know who James’s father is?’ Mike said, and she nodded.
‘David
Smith. He doesn’t live round here anymore. He moved away. Matson, I
think. I don’t have an address for him, but Mary might, in her
address book. That’ll be upstairs…’
‘We’ll
find him,’ Maxwell said. ‘We’ll need to talk to him, that’s
for sure. Did you know him? What was he like? Jealous type?’
‘Not
really. A bit weedy. Civil servant, worked at the Guildhall, I think.
There was a Christmas party, people were pairing off, Mary got stuck
with him, fell pregnant. Just a one-nighter. There was never anything
between them. He moved away before Christmas. The people at the
Guildhall might be able to tell you where he went. I don’t think
Mary kept in touch with him, though she might have his address, like
I say, I think he lives somewhere near the railway station. She
wanted to forget him, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the party…
sort of fizzled out because the boys went home…’
You
were partying like there was no tomorrow, and the “blokes” had
probably come here expecting a bit of how’s your father…
‘You
heard nothing? Absolutely nothing?’
‘The
record player was on… It was quite loud… I think it might have
been the Everley Brothers… By,
bye Love,
something like that. I was still listening to it, even after they’d
gone. I didn’t think about Mary.’ Jenny Rogerson sniffed into a
handful of tissues.
‘The
party started when?’
‘Not
here. It wasn’t here. We came home because of Mary’s little boy.
Because of the babysitter. Abi. Abigail. Abigail Walker. She lives a
few doors down. She’s only sixteen, she had to go home because of
getting up for school. We were a little late, she was a bit cross,
but we gave her an extra half crown to shut her up. Her Dad was
waiting to take her home. He wasn’t too happy, either, he has to
get up early for work, he’s a postman. They live at number three.
On the corner. One and three, the semis on the corner.’ Mike had
his notebook out and was making notes of the names and addresses they
needed to visit during the course of this morning’s enquiries.
‘What
time did you all get here? Was it by car? Who came?’ Maxwell asked.
‘I’ll need names and addresses. And do you remember if anyone
went missing during the time of the party? And then showed up again?’
‘There’s
a lot of blood,’ Mike said. Maxwell looked at him quizzically. ‘I
mean, if someone had left the party, climbed up the drainpipe and
killed Mary, then rejoined the party, wouldn’t he have been covered
in blood?’
Maxwell
shrugged. It had probably occurred to him but didn’t need to be
said right now, in his opinion. ‘We’d best check with Miss Trigg
on that score,’ he said gruffly. ‘Mrs Rogerson? Can you answer
the questions, please? Did you come home by car, and how many of you
were there? If it was more than the four of you, did anyone leave
during the course of the evening? While the party was going on? And
can you think of anyone who might want to harm Mary Fielding?’
Jenny
shook her head. ‘So many questions… there were just the four of
us. Me, Mary, Terry and John, in Terry’s car. It’s an Anglia, a
Ford Anglia, it should be out in the street. Terry and John live in
Longlevens, their addresses are in my book, over by the phone. Under
their first names. Mary came home because of Jack, her little boy,
she sent John home and went straight upstairs. It was just the three
of us down here. We shouldn’t have been driving, really, given the
amount of drink we’d all had, but we had to get back, you see. For
Abigail.’ Mike found the relevant entries against the mens’ names
and copied them into his notebook. Terry Vincent and John Harrison.
‘Just
the three of you? Partying? Drinking, dancing, that kind of thing?’
Jenny
nodded. ‘Yes. We were pissed, really, sorry. Someone passed some
tablets around at the party…’
‘The
party you left to come home?’
Again
Jenny nodded. ‘I don’t know what they were. The tablets, I mean.
Mary didn’t have any. She was just drinking. Just drink. Just a
couple of Babychams, as far as I know. She said she needed a clear
head to take care of Jack. She doesn’t drink much at all, really.
Not normally. She was a bit more drunk than usual tonight, though, as
if someone might have spiked her drink with something. We only went
out for a night of fun… I think it was someone’s birthday…’
‘Well,
it wasn’t much fun for Mary Fielding, was it?’ Maxwell said.
‘Right, I think we’re done here for now. Let’s let the
forensics do their stuff. Mrs Rogerson, you’ll need to come down to
the station to make a statement. And…’
‘No,’
Jenny said through her tears. ‘In answer to your question, I can’t
think of anyone who might want to kill Mary.’
‘Thompson,
get started on those house to house enquiries. Start with the
babysitter and the house next door. We’re looking for anyone who
might have seen or heard something, someone, or a car between
midnight and four o’clock. Make that two cars, in case the killer
also came by car, and have a look for Mr Vincent’s Ford Anglia
while you’re at it. Ask if anyone saw anything suspicious,
loitering around this house or anywhere in the street between those
hours. WPC Matthews can help with that once the social have collected
the little boy. I’ll see you back at the station. Mrs Rogerson?
Sometime this morning at the station, if you please?’
Jenny
nodded. Mike followed Maxwell out of the house. Lizzie Trigg was just
putting her gear back into her car, which was a grey Hillman. Further
along the street was a black Ford Anglia. Lizzie beckoned him over.
‘There’s
a concert tonight in the Cathedral. Britten’s War Requiem. Fancy
it? I have a spare ticket.’
‘I’d
love to.’ The words were out of Mike’s mouth almost before he
knew it. Elizabeth Trigg might be a year or so older than him, but
she was incredibly attractive, and he had really enjoyed having that
coffee with her yesterday. As far as he was concerned, he had nothing
on that evening, and although he was not familiar with the War
Requiem, he did know some of Britten’s music, and in any case
Lizzie was very good company and he quite liked the idea of spending
an evening at a concert with her. He had been thinking of asking
Martha Baker if he could see her again tonight, but something as
instant, as organised as this concert that Lizzie Trigg was offering
him, well, it was a no-brainer. And it was not as if he had made any
kind of arrangement with Martha. Not yet. Tonight wouldn’t hurt.
She would be quite safe walking home from Ermin Street, because Mike
had established that Barney Cottingholme-Cole, Barney
Cole,
was not, could not be, the rapist. It suddenly occurred to him that
the rapist might strike again, this time in Brockworth, but he
dismissed it immediately. He wanted to go to the Cathedral with
Lizzie Trigg tonight.
‘Great.
I’ll see you there.’
‘I’ll
pick you up if you like.’
‘In
Jasmine?’ In
the Noddy car?
‘No
rain forecast for tonight. We can leave the top down.’
‘If
you’re sure? I can easily get the bus and meet you there. I’m not
that far away. I live in Tuffley. Chedworth Road. Number
eighty-five.’ Quite
near where DCI Maxwell lives,
Mike thought.
‘What
time does it start?’
‘Seven
thirty. We can park in front of the city library in Brunswick Square.
I know the librarian, he lets me use the car park. It’s a ten
minute walk to the cathedral.’
Boyfriend?
Mike
thought, but said nothing.
Surely she would have said if she was going out with the librarian?
Besides, the librarian would be an older man, the kind of man who
wore a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, who smoked a pipe and
had a Labrador retriever that followed him everywhere.
‘I’ll
pick you up at six thirty, then.’
‘Look
forward to it. See you later, Mike. Oh, by the way, post mortem on
this one, tomorrow morning, around tennish, if you’re up for it?
Jeremy has gone home sick, he won’t be in for the rest of this
week. Tonsilitis. Probably been drinking last night, if you ask me!’
Mike
thought that there had been nothing wrong with the pathologist this
morning, but he said nothing. People did get ill at the drop of a
hat, but it did seem a little out of character. He couldn’t imagine
Jeremy Burnham-Twist taking more than the occasional sip of sherry,
but he said nothing. She was probably making a joke that anyone who
already knew the pathologist would recognise as such. ‘I’ll see
you tonight, then?’
‘Of
course, sorry. You can remember the address? Number eighty-five?’
‘I
know it. Near my old school. One of my class mates used to live in
your road. Name of Scudamore. I’ll see you later.’
He
remembered only too well setting off ona cross country run with John
Scudamore, only to hop on a bus once they were out of sight of the
school, going to Scudamore’s house for coffee and gramophone
records before catching the bus back an hour or so later, when they
would feign exhaustion from the run and arrive back at school in the
middle of the pack. He would familiarise himself with where Elizabeth
Trigg lived so that he wouldn’t be late for this evening.
She
squeezed his hand and smiled, and his heart melted. Somehow he could
foresee trouble brewing. At this particular moment he felt equally
attracted to Lizzie Trigg and Martha Baker. Something that would need
to be sorted out sooner rather than later. Martha obviously had the
edge because of the spooky Ouija board episode that had predicted her
as his life partner all those years ago, but although he had at one
time filled his head with a lot of superstitious nonsense, his police
training had overtaken that and he now thought he was much more
sensible. Even so, he was on edge, and the delicious thought of the
two beautiful girls fighting over him was difficult to get out of his
head right now, and he started to feel distinctly uneasy about
cheating on Martha. As those thoughts tumbled through his mind,
Martha’s face swam into his consciousness and he was on the point
of running back to tell Lizzie that he couldn’t go with her after
all. He could imagine a life with Martha, growing up, growing old
together, raising a family and so on, whereas he couldn’t imagine
the same thing with Lizzie Trigg. But he finally managed to convince
himself that a night out with her would be harmless. It wasn’t as
though they were going to leap into bed together at the end of it.
That simply wasn’t going to happen. Panic over.
He
caught up with Alice Matthews and together they began the laborious
task of knocking on the doors in the immediate vicinity to hear what
the neighbours had to say about last night’s party and the fact
that Mary Fielding had been murdered as they slept in their beds. Or,
hopefully, had been disturbed by the partygoers and the murderers
arriving in the lane during the night.
But
the house to house enquiries were fruitless. Abigail Walker was at
school, of course, at the nearby Churchdown Secondary Modern. Her
mother confirmed that her husband had walked along to the
Rogerson-Fielding house to collect her and they had returned some two
hours later than planned. She had managed to wake Abigail in time for
school, but her husband had called in sick with an upset stomach and
she had made the phone call for him using the call box at the end of
the road. They had a brief chat with Mr Walker, who was none too
pleased to be roused from his sick bed, but he confirmed what his
wife had told them, and offered nothing new, nothing that would help
with their enquiries, and they had no reason to doubt him.
Abigail,
the parents told them, was in the fifth form at the Secondary Modern
School, and she would be home around four o’clock this afternoon.
Mike made an appointment to come back and talk to Abigail when she
was home, rather than disturb her lessons by turning up at the
school. The rest of the street had apparently slept through what had
happened last night, or else someone was lying. Neither Mike nor
Alice could point to anyone of whom they were immediately suspicious,
and so for the time being, they made their separate ways back to
Stevenage and resumed their normal duties.
Mike
drove back through Brockworth to Ermin Street, then through
Hucclecote and Barnwood, reaching the suburb of Longlevens a quarter
of an hour later. He parked outside John Harrison’s house in
Richmond Gardens and knocked sharply on the door.
‘It’s
open!’ a female voice called, so he pushed open the door and walked
in, finding himself in a smartly decorated hall with a dado rail, and
a staircase. At the far end of the hall he could see a woman in a
pinafore skirt busying away in the little kitchen. He could tell at a
glance that this was a house the owners were proud of and someone,
probably the lady who was now walking towards him, kept spotlessly
clean and tidy.
‘Mrs
Harrison?’
Thelma
Harrison was in her mid-fifties, and had a kindly face. She reminded
him of his own Mum, and he briefly wondered how the rest of his
family were settling into their new life in Australia. Especially
Annie.
‘That’s
me. Can I help you?’
Mike
produced his warrant card. ‘It’s about Mary Fielding. I believe
your son, John Harrison, is her boyfriend.’
‘That’s
correct. What’s he done now? Or her? What’s she done?’ Mike
noted that Mrs Harrison had immediately gone onto the offensive,
thinking the worst of both her son and her girlfriend.
‘Well,
I need to talk to your son about last night, Mrs Harrison. I need to
question him about his movements after he left Mary’s house last
night…’
‘Why?
What’s happened?’ A young man in his late twenties came flying
down the stairs in his stockinged feet. This
must be John Harrison, Mike thought, and
looked him up and down for signs of blood. There was none, and the
clothes he was wearing looked as though he’d slept in them. Not
our man,
Mike thought, though he would still need to question him, of course.
Rule him out.
‘John
Harrison? Can we go somewhere and talk?’
‘Front
room. What’s happened? Is Mary OK?’
The
voice was rough and uneducated, and the accent sounded like someone
who possibly came from the Birmingham or Coventry area. Harrison led
Mike into a spotless front room and they sat down. His mother hovered
in the doorway.
‘It’s
all right, Mrs Harrison, you can sit in on this if you wish,’ Mike
said. She parked herself on a fireside chair. ‘I’m investigating
the murder of your girlfriend, Mary Fielding,’ he began. The colour
drained from Harrison’s face. He buried his face in his hands and
began to sob. His mother let out a strangled cry and rushed to her
son, throwing her arms around him.
‘It
is my understanding that you were sent home from Mary’s house in
Churchdown last night because you had had too much to drink. A
headache brought on by excessive alcohol intake. Is that correct?’
Harrison nodded.
‘We
made a night of it because Jennifer’s divorce papers came through
yesterday. Christ! Are you sure she’s dead?’ His eyes filled with
tears suddenly. His mother produced a clean, fresh hankie from her
pocket and passed it across, then put her arms around his shoulders.
‘I’m
sorry. Mr Harrison, Jennifer identified her before I came away. There
will have to be a formal identification later, probably tomorrow, but
there is no doubt it was Mary, I’m afraid. You and she were close?’
It was his mother who answered.
‘They
were saving up to get married. They have their names down for a
Council House. As soon as that comes through, they’re… sorry.’
Mrs Harrison began to sob, softly, too, and Mike could see that they
had both really cared for Mary Fielding and her little boy, James.
This had obviously hit them hard, and from their reaction to the news
that Mary had been murdered, he was in no doubt that neither of them
had known anything about it.
‘What
will happen to James?’ Harrison asked, wiping his eyes.
‘I
really couldn’t say. Mary’s Mum and Dad…’
…have
to be told, they have to be told their beautiful little girl has been
brutally murdered and their grandchild is now both fatherless and
motherless. At least, if David Smith could be contacted …
Chapter
Five
Tuesday
Martha
Baker started to pour teas for the patients, and then smiled to
herself as she remembered how nice looking PC Michael Thompson was.
She was definitely looking forward to riding home on the bus with him
tonight, even if he was undercover, a few seats behind her, and
ostensibly not with her at all. Maybe she could get to go out with
him if she played her cards right. Since starting work at the
hospital Martha had had plenty of offers but no one had taken her
fancy, with the possible exception of Johnny Allen, one of the
porters, a year or so younger than her, and very nice looking in a
Gene Vincent kind of way, but not quite what she was looking for. She
had already knocked him back a couple of times, and he hadn’t
seemed too fazed by her rejection. PC Michael Thompson, PC
Mike Thompson,
she corrected herself, was tall, very good looking, and being a
policeman, could offer her protection from almost anything life could
throw at her. Couldn’t
he?
Mike
paused at the nurses’ station and waited until the staff nurse who
had directed him to Nurse Baker, turned and saw him waiting.
‘Can
I help you, Constable?’
‘Nurse
Baker. Is she married?’ He couldn’t believe he was asking such a
question, and neither could the staff nurse, for she frowned at him
and sniffed the air suspiciously.
‘What
business is that of yours? What relevance to the case in hand does it
have, might I ask?’
‘None
whatsoever. I just wondered…’
‘She’s
not married, Constable,’ the other nurse, the younger one,
exclaimed, giggling behind her hand. With the staff nurse frowning,
Mike found his way out into the street and found Bob Seeley sitting
in the ambulance bay in his Escort waiting for him.
‘All
done, mate?’
‘All
done.’
‘Where
to now, then, your Lordship?’
‘Don’t!’
‘What?
Only kidding, mate! You have to admit you have that air about you.
Someone a bit posh. Grammar School and all that. Classical music and
jazz… no rock and roll for you, eh?’ Not
as posh as public school-educated Martha Baker, though…
‘I
don’t know what you mean, Bob.’ A year ago he had stood in
the pulsating, rocking atmosphere of the local ballroom in Gloucester
and listened, fascinated, whilst the Rolling Stones had pounded out
rock classic after rock classic, honing their musical skills to
perfection after years of practise at Alexis Korner’s place in
London. Since his sixteenth birthday, when he was deemed by his
parents as being responsible and sensible enough to travel on his
own, Mike had often made his way to stay with relatives in the East
End of London, from where a short tube journey brought him to the
London Blues and Barrelhouse Club, and later to the Marquee Club,
where Korner had graduated to, and where he had first seen the
Stones.
Mike
loved the Stones, but preferred the Beatles for their close harmony.
He did listen to some classical music, having been introduced to it
by his father at a working men’s club gramophone recital of
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and he still bought every album
released by Mr Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band, along with all
the Bobby Darin LPs, and various EPs and singles by Lonnie Donnegan
and Django Reinhardt. But someone had put it about that because he
liked Beethoven, Brahms and various Italian and German operas, that
he was posh. A Grammar School boy, while almost every other copper at
Stevenage Police Station came from a Secondary Modern background. It
was unwarranted, of course. He was a grammar school boy, but he
certainly didn’t consider himself posh, although he was well
educated, and he knew very well that Sergeant Wilson and his cronies
would take every opportunity to punish him for it, given half the
chance.
But
before any of that could happen he intended to make a good fist of
looking after the Nurse Martha Baker enquiry. What a dream start to
his Stevenage career it would be if he could nail the rapist! Mike
soon dismissed this idea as a pipe dream, though, because Martha’s
description of the man who had been following her up Hydean Way
certainly didn’t fit the description the other victims had given.
After Bob dropped him off at the nick, he buried himself in a pile of
paperwork, sorting it into two piles, parking tickets and minor
offences that could be signed off and handed over to Jack Kershaw in
the records office, and those that required a longer look, to make
sure every officer involved had done his bit and the case files could
be closed and filed away. One particular file caught his eye, and it
was the one that detailed an interview between Sergeant Wilson, a
visiting CID officer, and Roger Simkins. In essence, it was a missing
persons case, and Mike read through the transcript of the interview
with interest, resolving to spend the afternoon out at the little
neighbourhood chemist’s shop where the incident Mr Simkins had
reported was supposed to have taken place. There was no mention in
Wilson’s written report of the conversation that suggested that
Roger Simkins might have murdered his wife.
The
disappearance of his wife, Mary Simkins, and the involvement of the
pharmacist, intrigued Mike. All of the paperwork in the file was up
to date, and each relevant officer, including Sergeant Wilson, had
done his or her bit. But there was something not quite right about
it. The investigating officer had been WPC Primrose Matthews, a
pretty young policewoman who was married with two young children,
though Mike had recently heard rumours that she and her husband had
split up. She and her husband and her young family occupied the other
semi-detached police house next to the one allocated to Mike, in
Burwell Road, next to the March Hare public house. She and Mike had
hit it off fairly quickly when he first arrived, and after a quick
lunch of a sandwich and a cup of tea, he sought her out in the staff
room, where she was putting the finishing touches to her uniform
before going out on foot patrol in Longmeadow, where the alleged
disappearance had occurred.
‘Mind
if I tag along, Pre? Sergeant Wilson has asked me to close a load of
case files and the last one is the one you attended, at the chemist’s
shop. Mr Simkins reported his wife had gone missing. Remember?’
‘A
couple of weeks ago, yes. No problem. We’ll park at the shops. What
are you planning to do?’
‘I
thought we could just have a chat with the pharmacist. Always
supposing he’s not still disappeared, that is.’
‘Disappeared?
What do you mean? Come on, let’s get the car, we can talk as I
drive.’
Bob
Seeley had just gone off duty, and Primrose took the keys off the
hook, signed out the Escort Bob had been driving and they sped off
along Broadhall Way towards the Longmeadow estate and the little
square of shops.
Primrose
wound the window down a little. Seeley had evidently been smoking in
the car again. ‘What did you mean about the pharmacist
disappearing? It was Mary Simkins who disappeared. Apparently.
Sergeant Wilson seems to think they had a row and she just walked out
on him. At the shops. Got on a bus, caught the train to London and
started a new life without him. End of.’
‘There’s
a note from Mr Simkins. On the back of his statement. He said
something about his wife being taken into a consulting room by the
pharmacist, but neither of them came out. He swears blind he was
watching from outside the shop the whole time, and he never saw them
come out, but there was no other way out of the consulting room.’
Primrose
frowned, pulling the car round the enormous roundabout at Longmeadow,
where the hollowed out underpasses formed the hub of the cycle tracks
and walkways that were the hallmark of the new town, the envy of the
rest of the country, and the world, for that matter. Every effort had
been made to ensure the safety and convenience of all road users in
the town. There was no need for cyclists to mingle with other
traffic, as there were cycle tracks running parallel to each major
road, no traffic lights except for one set in the Old Town, but
instead plenty of roundabouts to slow the traffic down. It all seemed
to work perfectly.
Mike
watched with interest as they drove past the serried ranks of
Corporation houses, each one identical to the next, terraces of
three, four, five or more two- and three-bedroomed houses, shiny and
new, with identical front doors, set back from the road and with a
low post and rail to denote the limit of their front garden. Nothing
like Gloucestershire, where most of the privately owned housing stock
comprised villa-style three bed semis. These Stevenage estates were
different, even, to the council estate in Brockworth, where Mike’s
best friend, Jimmy Hunter lived with his three sisters and two
brothers, his mother and his father and their dog, a collie cross
they affectionately called “Feck”. These houses were nicely laid
out, the gardens neat and well-kept, the front doors painted smartly
Mike
could see the attraction of these new town housing estates. During
his frequent visits to family in the East End of London, he had seen
that there were still no-go areas, areas dominated by piles of
bomb-damaged rubble, street-long terraces of two up, two down houses
with no indoor sanitation, just a hut at the end of the yard,
sometimes shared between two or three houses. A two-week long holiday
with his ancient Aunt Maggie and Uncle Leopold, who were actually his
father’s aunt and uncle, had left him craving the comparative
civilisation of Brockworth, and now the reality of life in the East
End convinced him that Stevenage New Town would seem like paradise to
people who had never known anything better than Camberwell.
He
realised that Primrose was speaking, and dragged himself back to the
present.
‘I
didn’t see that. I did speak to Mr Simkins, but I didn’t take his
statement. I made some notes, which I handed over to Sergeant Wilson
at the time. At the shop, Mr Simkins was almost hysterical. He was
being abusive to the shop staff, and I had to restrain him and take
him to the nick. He calmed down eventually, and the sarge took over.
That’s the last I heard of it. My statement, my account of what I
saw and heard is in the file, isn’t it? Sergeant Wilson took my
notebook and issued me with another. That should be in the file.’
‘I
don’t recall seeing it, only the interview notes with Sergeant
Wilson and the CID officer, Bailey, I think his name was. He doesn’t
work at Stevenage. I’m just confused by what Roger Simkins wrote on
the back of his statement. It’s as though he was hoping someone
would come along and question what happened. As though his official
statement was somehow written for him and not by him.’ There was no
mention, in any of the notes, that the interviewing officer had
threatened to charge Roger Simkins with the murder of his own wife.
‘He
must have written it at some point when he was on his own.’
Mike
nodded. ‘If no one believed him… I don’t know. There’s just
something odd about it. I didn’t want to sign it off without
chatting to the pharmacist first. And then maybe to Mr Simkins
himself.’
‘We’re
here. The pharmacy is in the corner, right next to the betting shop.’
‘I
see it. You’re off on your beat now?’
Primrose
nodded. ‘Let me know how you get on. I’ll be a couple of hours or
so, then back to the station for some more paperwork. I hate
paperwork!’
Mike
grinned. ‘I don’t mind it. Then home to the hubby and kids?’
‘Right.
Then the real work starts. John’s great, but he’s not a very good
cook, and he lets the kids run riot! Anyway, he’s away on business
at the moment. I’ll be glad when the kids start sch00l! They’ll
be starting at Ashtree JMI in September, thank God!’ That sounded
familiar, and Mike wondered how he had come to be living next door to
Primrose Matthews for several days without realising it. Remembering
now that he rarely heard a sound from next door except for the
occasional raised voices early in the morning and sometimes late at
night, when he was in bed reading. He's domehow got the impression that
Primrose and her husband had a very strange, almost cool relationship,
although just now she had said he was great. But Mike didn't buy it. He
really liked Primrose but he didn't believe all was well with their
marriage, though of course he didn't know what was wrong.
He didn’t
have a television –
yet. They had managed in Brockworth well enough without a television,
the radio had been sufficient entertainment for them, that and the
large gramophone he’d nagged his mother to buy from Currys in
King’s Square, opposite the Bon Marché store so he could play the
shellac 78rpm singles an ancient uncle from Boverton Avenue had given
to
him. Jack Hylton and his orchestra, Harry Roy, Al Bowlly, some Louis
Armstrong Hot Fives and a couple of arias from Puccini and Verdi. E
lucevan l’estelle
was his favourite. He thought the performance was by Enrico Caruso.
On Family
Favourites
they often played such tracks. O,
mio babbino caro
was another.
Then
he had started buying his own records, beginning with Chris Barber’s
Jazz Band’s Whistling Rufus, followed by Kenny Ball’s Jazz Men
and finally Mr Acker Bilk and his Paramount Band’s performance of
Under the Double Eagle, which persuaded him once and for all that
Acker was the best. Listening to Saturday
Skiffle Club
presented by Brian Matthew was a regular treat in those teenaged
days. He bought Lonnie Donnegan’s ground-breaking Rock
Island Line,
and a number of other records on the blue Pye Jazz label. EPs had
followed, and then the Beatles had happened. There was very little
popular music on the BBC, which had three networks, The Light
Programme, the Home Programme, and the Third Programme, the latter
confining itself to classical music and highbrow plays and
discussions. Sometimes they had managed to find Radio Luxembourg on
the ancient Walnut-cased radio, with the tiny lettering denoting all
of the stations on the Long Wave frequency. They listened to an hour
or so of popular music, but the reception wasn’t that good, and so
Mike and his friends would crowd into Hickeys Music Shop or the Bon
Marché basement and into one of the so-called soundproof booths so
that they could listen to the record they might want to buy. The
Beatles were revolutionary, with a raw energy that was lacking in
even the great rock and roll singers from the United States, singers
like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry.
The black-labelled Parlophone singles now formed a significant part
of Mike’s collection. He hadn’t brought the gramophone with him
to Stevenage, that had gone to someone along the road in Brockworth.
Instead he had bought himself a decent record player with detachable
stereophonic speakers and a socket into which he could plug a set of
headphones so that he could listen to his music in bed before going
to sleep and dreaming of Sandra Dee and June Thorburn. She was
considerably older than Sandra Dee but still looked young enough to
turn his head, and he had spent many happy hours watching her at the
cinema in such classics as The
Cruel Sea
and Tom
Thumb
in which she looked absolutely adorable.
Being
in the company of a rather attractive young policewoman right now
started him thinking about who Primrose looked like, and with her
striking almost black hair and eyebrows, her clear complexion and her
ready smile, he thought she looked very much like a cross between
Vivienne Leigh and a young Elizabeth Taylor. Mike smiled to himself.
Who needed film starlets like Sandra Dee when you had real-life girls
like Martha Baker? Or Elizabeth Taylor, when you were sitting next to
the delightful Primrose Matthews?
Primrose
locked the car, unaware of the youthful thoughts coursing through
Mike’s head, and she was no doubt thinking about when she could
finish her shift and get home to her little ones. She was eighteen
years old, having married young, and had just a few months’ more
experience in the force than Mike.
There
were no playschools or nursery schools in those days, of course, they
were still a couple of decades away. Mike had not had time to explore
the whole of Stevenage, but he did know the major neighbourhoods,
Bedwell, Marymead, Longmeadow, Roebuck, and Shephall, which was where
the Hyde was, a quarter of a mile down the road from where he lived
in Burwell Road, where he was to get off the bus with Martha Baker
tonight. He had spent the whole of his first weekend in Stevenage
riding around the town on his bicycle, which he had brought with him,
thinking that it would be less noticeable than his car, the Morris 8
Tourer he had inherited from his Dad before the family left for
Australia. That was parked in the garage next to his section house,
which he had been extremely fortunate to have had allocated to him.
There seemed to be no shortage of available houses for police force
members in Stevenage, unlike in Gloucester.
He was
familiar, too, with Shephall Way, and Hydean Way, where Nurse Martha
Baker had told him she lived, not that far from the other major road
into the town, Six Hills Way, so named because of the six undulations
at the side of the road near the junction with Shephall Way, which
resembled ancient barrows. No one had yet confirmed that was what
they were, but they had to be something of the sort, surely? If you
followed Six Hills Way out of town you came first to the Bedwell
neighbourhood, the first estate to be built in the 1950s, then down
through the valley. Turning to the right took you to the Broadwater
Estate whilst carrying on, up past the Girls’ Grammar School,
brought you to Shephall Way and the start of the Shephall Estate.
Further along Six Hills Way and you came to the end of the current
phase of building, the Chells Estate, then out into open countryside
which led, eventually, through Aston, and Benington, and ultimately
to Hitchin. It was a young, vibrant new town, with an average age of
37, a town where people displaced from the war-torn capital could
carve out a new life for themselves in modern, comfortable housing in
a well-planned, well laid-out town. As yet it didn’t have a great
deal of character, and was known variously as “Space City” on
account of the British Aircraft Corporaion factory, and Hawker
Siddeleys, or “the town with no
grannies”, but people were making an effort, they were
personalising the small front gardens, they were bringing their
character out into the open. He liked it, in fact he liked it a lot.
It signified a fresh start after the trauma of the second world war
generally, and for Mike, personally, a fresh start after saying
goodbye to his family, who had emigrated to Australia.
He
glanced at his watch. Two fifteen. Less than six hours till he saw
her again. He resolved to do a check on Martha Baker when he got back
to the nick. He knew he wouldn’t find anything on her, but there
was the remotest chance she had fallen foul of the law at some point
in the past, and then there might be a photograph of her – a
mugshot. Better than nothing, but probably not at all flattering.
They never were. There again, it might be better than nothing.
‘I’ll
just pop in the shop and have a word. Which way are you headed?’
‘You
want to come with me on my beat? Of course, he doesn’t trust you
with a beat of your own yet, does he, that Sergeant Wilson? All
paperwork and running errands for people, I’ll bet! It’ll come,
Mike, don’t you worry. You’ll make a great copper! Come on, I’ll
come with you, then we can do the beat together.’
They
made their way into the shop, which was empty apart from the
pharmacist and a shop assistant, who was an older woman, about
forty-five, wearing a pale blue overall. She looked like a cleaner.
‘Constable,
what can I do for you?’ the pharmacist said, addressing Primrose.
‘Your
case, Mike. Do your stuff.’ Primrose took a step back and began to
think about her children and her husband John. Primrose was an
inexperienced policewoman, and recognised the need for her and Mike
to get some experience in interviewing people. But this was Mike’s
case, so she left him to it. With just a few months on him, she knew
the ropes slightly better than he did and would be ready to step in
to help if he needed her to. She sat down on the chair which had been
placed by the door for customers, knowing she would have to vacate it
if an elderly customer came in.
‘Mr…?’
‘King.
Says so on the sign outside,’ the pharmacist said, and Mike took an
instant dislike to him. He was in his early fifties, with a receding
hairline and thick-rimmed glasses. He was about five feet six inches
tall, and wore a short white lab coat. He didn’t look much like the
kind of pharmacist you could confide in, Mike thought. Charmless,
grumpy, sarcastic, annoyed at having to serve people, almost as
though he didn’t want to soil his hands with customers.
‘I’m
Constable Thompson and this is WPC Matthews. We’re following up
enquiries relating to the reported disappearance of Mrs Mary Simkins
a couple of weeks ago. Her husband says he saw you take her into a
consulting room, but neither of you came out. I just wondered if you
could remind us of your version of the events that day.’
‘Again?
I’ve told this story several times over to your lot,’ King said,
frowning. ‘There’s a consulting room over there, in the corner,
little more than a broom cupboard, actually. Mrs Simkins wanted to
ask me something in private, there were other customers in the shop,
so I took her into the room, spoke to her, and then she left. We were
in there less than a minute. Then she left. That’s it.’
‘She
left? Through the front door?’
‘Correct.
She left through the front door, turned right and was never seen
again. Apparently.’
Again that smirk on Mr King’s face that
confirmed Mike’s dislike of him even more.
‘And
you went back about your business?’
‘Correct,’
King said again with an audible sigh.
‘Mr
Simkins says he was outside the whole time, watching, and neither of
you came out of the consulting room. He called the police from the
call box over there, outside the newsagents, and they arrested him.
You remember that?’
‘I
was told about a commotion outside, yes. I didn’t witness it
myself…’
‘I
did,’ the lady in the overall chipped in. ‘He was in a right
state, poor man. Didn’t know what to do with hisself, he didn’t.’
‘Thank
you, Edith, no one was asking you.’
‘I’d
like to hear what the lady has to say, thank you, Mr King.’
‘He
hung about outside the shop,’ Edith said. ‘There was a commotion,
he was looking the other way when his wife come out, so he missed
her. Shortly after his wife left, he come back in, asked where she
was, and we told him she’d left. All over in a split second, if you
ask me.’
‘Nobody
did ask you,’ muttered King under his breath, but both Mike and
Primrose heard him.
‘Did
you make a statement, Mrs…?’
‘West.
Edith West. No. Nobody asked me to.’
‘Would
you be willing to come down to the station and make one this
afternoon?’
‘I
suppose I could. I finish at three. I’m supposed to meet the kids
off the school bus, but I could get my daughter to do it, she’s at
Barnwell School.’
‘It
would be much appreciated if you could, Mrs West.’
Edith
West shot a withering glance at the pharmacist, Mr King, and returned
to what she was doing, stacking shelves with bottles of cough mixture
and the like.
Mike
turned to Primrose. ‘I’ll finish up here and scoot back to the
nick, so I’ll be there to take Mrs West’s statement when she
arrives. One more thing, Mr King – what was it that Mrs Simkins
wanted to ask you about? In Private?’
‘Contraception.
She wanted to talk about contraception.’ Did that make sense?
Didn’t men buy condoms? As far as he knew, Mary Simkins had no
children, so she couldn’t have been worried about the need to avoid
having any more. Of course, it was possible she needed advice on
contraception to avoid getting pregnant because of a medical need,
but that didn’t seem likely either. Mike thought that Mr King was
being untruthful, but he didn’t have the experience to question
him, and Primrose wanted to be off on her beat. Whatever it was that
Mary Simkins wanted advice about, it certainly wasn’t
contraception. If Mike couldn’t get his head round her
disappearance, he might well be coming back to speak to Mr King
again. For the time being he was prepared to leave it and concentrate
on where the young lady might be. He didn’t think Mr King had had
anything to do with her disappearance, but he couldn’t rule it out
altogether.
‘I
see. Well, thank you for your time, both of you. You’ve been most
helpful.’ Mike and Primrose left the shop. ‘I’ll walk from
here, won’t take me more than twenty minutes or so. Thanks for the
lift, Primrose, see you back at the nick.’
‘OK.
Mind how you go. Think you’ve got everything you need to close the
case now?’
Mike
removed his helmet and scratched his head. ‘Not sure. Something
still doesn’t ring true for me.’
‘Me
either. Something fishy about Mr King.’
‘And
why didn’t anyone ask Edith West to give a statement at the time, I
wonder.’
‘Maybe
she wasn’t in the shop when they interviewed Mr King? Keep this up,
all these questions, and you’ll make CID in no time!’
‘Right,’
Mike said with a grin. It was what he wanted above all else. Since
arriving in Hertfordshire he’d run into DCI Maxwell only twice, and
then only fleeting glimpses as the detective had gone into briefings
back at the nick. He took his leave of Primrose and walked back into
the town, arriving at the police station at a little after two
thirty. He just had time to go through the records to see if there
was anything on Martha Baker. Jack Kershaw showed him where the card
indices and the relevant files were kept, and left him to it.
‘I
don’t suppose for one minute there will be anything about young
Martha,’ Mike said to himself, and started to look through the 5x3
inch cards that held the records of anyone in the town and outlying
villages who had been questioned about anything in the last ten
years.
To his
amazement, there was a card for Martha Baker, from just over a year
ago. He noted the reference number and pulled out the relevant file.
There she was, in all her glory, a photograph of her looking much as
he remembered her from this morning, though the police photographs
were not meant to be flattering, but simply a record of the person’s
address and personal details, and there were two handwritten sheets
of foolscap together with an official record sheet. Martha Baker had
been arrested several times, or so it seemed, for being drunk and
disorderly and she had a police record!
Chapter
Six
Tuesday
Mike
read through Martha Baker’s file with an expert eye – it was
something he had excelled at in police college lectures – how to
assimilate information quickly and efficiently. It would see him in
good stead when the time came for him to make the transition from
uniformed bobby to CID, if it ever happened. Martha was in fact
eighteen years old, having
been born on the 14th
February 1948. She had attended Badminton School, Bristol, a boarding
and day school for girls, and it seemed that although she claimed not
to know who her birth parents were, apart from their names, they had
paid the fees regularly, right up until she had been expelled in July
1964 for drinking and unacceptable behaviour, the nature of which was
not recorded, but which must have been pretty bad. Her real name was
Mary Cottingholme-Cole, but she refused to change it from the name of
her adoptive parents, Edwin and Emily Baker, with whom she had spent
her holidays for the past five years. Edwin Baker was the son of a
Jamaican man and a white woman. His wife, Winifred, had died from
cancer of the oesophagus four years ago, and Martha currently lived
in his house in Hydean Way with his sister, Joyce, who was a
kind of unofficial housekeeper. There was no further mention of Joyce
Baker in the notes, but Mike remembered from his conversation with
Martha that she worked on the assembly line at the Hawker Siddeley
Dynamics Blue Streak factory in Gunnels Wood Road. There was nothing
in the notes about why Martha had changed her name from Mary, though.
Edwin
was employed as a hand on the trawlers working out of Aberdeen, and
was away from home for several months at a time. Martha had been
arrested in January of the current year for shoplifting, and had been
given a caution. She had also been picked up several times during the
last year for being drunk and disorderly. Mike sat back and scratched
his head. It was impossible to believe that the sweet young girl with
the looks of an angel and the temperament to match could possibly be
the girl who was the subject of the police file he had laid out
before him on the desk, and he wondered if there had been some kind
of administrative error. But it was most definitely her photograph
that stared back at him from the file. He was tempted to take her
photograph and keep it in his wallet, but the consequences, if he
were found out, were unthinkable.
He put
the file away, picked up his helmet and was about to return to his
pile of case files, of which only two remained, the Simkins file and
one other, when he heard Sergeant Wilson bellowing his name at the
top of his voice, and walked into the main office to find him and DCI
Maxwell.
‘Where
have you been, Thompson? I’ve been calling your name for hours!’
Wilson barked. Mike saw DCI Maxwell wince at the sheer volume of
Wilson’s voice.
‘In
the records office, Sarge. Filing.’ This was not strictly true, but
it was apparently a satisfactory answer. Wilson indicated the
presence of DCI Maxwell. ‘Thank you, Sergeant, we’ll take it
from here. You can spare him for a couple of days?’
‘Yes,
Sir,’ Wilson said, although Mike guessed that he wasn’t too happy
about losing his runabout, and he hovered in the background as
Maxwell addressed Mike.
‘A
body has been found in the King George Fifth Playing Fields. I’m
told that since arriving in the town, you know your way around pretty
well. I’m hoping you can take us straight there. Sergeant Wilson
assures me the site has been secured and a Home Office Pathologist
has been called. There’s a car out back. Thank you, Sergeant, we’ll
have him back in time for tea.’
‘Sir.’
There were plenty of uniformed bobbies present in the station at the
time. In all probability, DCI Maxwell had simply demanded the loan of
PC Mike Thompson, knowing that Wilson would not be able to refuse a
senior officer’s request, and most of the other available bobbies
would know Stevenage New Town and the Old Town, for that matter, in
far greater detail than Mike would.
But
Mike was grateful to Maxwell for rescuing him from Wilson, even
though he knew he would probably still have a mountain of paperwork
to take the place of the one he had just more or less cleared,
waiting for him on his desk on his return, and in all probability he
would be expected to clear it before finishing his shift, although he
had no intention of missing his appointment with Martha Baker if at
all possible. Besides, it was the one project Sergeant Wilson had so
far entrusted him with, and although he had not had time to report
back on it as yet, he was determined to see it through, especially as
his beloved Martha Baker might be in danger.
In the
car park, he slid into the driving seat of a pale blue Triumph Herald
at Maxwell’s insistence, and Maxwell himself got in the passenger
seat. Mike had passed his test six months after his seventeenth
birthday, in a similar car. He had inherited his father’s Yellow
and Black Morris Eight four-seater Tourer with the number plate
BAD785 when the family had sailed to Australia two months ago. It was
currently parked in the garage of the police house he occupied in
Burwell Road off Shephall Way, near to the March Hare public house,
which heralded the start of the little group of shops that included
the newsagents’ shop and the big hardware store on the corner. He
had not yet had the courage to drive it to the police station because
he knew how the other bobbies and Sergeant Wilson in particular would
pull his leg about it. Moreover, there was something wrong with the
dynamo, the fitting of a new one would solve it, but having spent
most of his pay on his gramophone and then getting the engine tuned
to perfection, Mike couldn’t afford it right now. So he carried a
spare battery, fully charged, on the running board. If the worst came
to the worst, he always had the starting handle. No, he was keeping
Jasmine, which was the name his father had given to the car, well
under wraps for now. Primrose Matthews knew about it, of course, and
rather than tease him about it, had asked several times if he would
take her out for a drive around the countryside in it. Mike had so
far made a number of excuses not to take her, saying that he was
still working on it, that it wasn’t quite roadworthy, both of which
were not strictly true, but he was looking forward to driving her in
it. Possibly this coming weekend…
‘Far
to go, Thompson?’
‘No,
Sir. Turn left at Zenith Garage, down Southgate, left into St
George’s Way, then the road sort of takes you right there, to the
playing fields. Sir.’
It was
evident from the way Mike drove without having to have his memory
refreshed, that he knew perfectly well the way to the King George Vth
Playing Fields, and he began to wonder if it had all been an excuse
to rescue him from the clutches of Sergeant Wilson. A voice inside
his head muttered “don’t
flatter yourself, you mean absolutely
nothing to DCI Maxwell, and Sergeant Wilson is probably pissing
himself laughing right now, because he probably lives in Stevenage
and has done so all his life!”
It
took just five minutes to traverse the length of St George’s Way,
past the magnificent church, which was the largest parish church
built in Britain since the second world war, past what would soon be
the new swimming pool, then across the junction of Fairlands Way and
St George’s Way and into the Playing Fields named after the Queen’s
grandfather. They could clearly see, over to the left by a group of
tall trees, a roped-off area with the blue and white plastic tape,
two police cars, and a group of officers. A brand new black Morris
Oxford was also parked there, and Mike supposed it might belong to
the pathologist.
‘What
have we got, then?’ Maxwell asked one of the uniformed constables.
He surreptitiously winked at Mike when he saw him, knowing that the
CID officer must have commandeered him from the station.
‘Female,
Sir. She has a library card in her purse, according to the
pathologist, her name is Mary Simkins. Sir.’ Mike frowned, but said
nothing.
‘What
do we know about her? Afternoon, Jeremy,’ Maxwell said, calling
across to the pathologist, who was examining the body. ‘We sure
she’s dead?’
‘Very
drole, Chief Inspector. Yes, she’s dead alright. Whoever did it
caved the back of her head in with this piece of flint. From the look
of it, she’s been dead for about two weeks. Rats, crows and insects
have done their fair share of damage. If we didn’t have her purse
with her library card, we’d be looking to identify her from dental
records.’
‘Flint,
you say? Find much flint around here, do we?’
‘Not
really, no, we don’t. The perpetrator must have carried this around
with them. It’s quite heavy, but not beyond a strong woman, so we
can’t rule a woman out as the murderer.’
‘Killed
in situ, or killed somewhere else and brought here by the murderer,
do you think? Might explain the flint.’
‘Hard
to say, Chief Inspector. Need a thorough examination of the remains
and the surrounding material here. There may be residue of earth or
clay that might indicate she was killed somewhere else, but for the
time being I would work on the theory that two weeks ago she was
murdered right here and her body hidden beneath the undergrowth, then
she was found earlier today. Someone set out with the express purpose
of murdering this poor woman, and carried a piece of flint with them.
There’s quite a stench coming off the body, it’s a wonder no one
found her earlier. But then that’s your job, I suppose, to find out
why?’
‘Thank
you, Jeremy. Do we know anything about her, Constable?’ Maxwell
said, addressing the uniformed officer. Mike butted in.
‘I
might know something about her, Sir, I was just reading the case
files this morning. Apparently, she and her husband were at
Longmeadow Pharmacy about two weeks ago, and she just disappeared.’
Maxwell’s
eyebrows went up. ‘Go on.’
‘The
husband says the pharmacist took her into his consulting room, and
neither of them came out. He reported it to the police, got very
shirty because they didn’t seem to want to take him seriously. Said
she just disappeared, Sir. Into thin air.’
‘That
what they taught you at Hendon, constable? People don’t just
disappear into thin air.’
‘No,
Sir, it’s what it says in the report,’ Mike explained patiently.
‘I was there this afternoon, just before you came to the nick –
the station, Sir. Spoke to the pharmacist. He thinks that Mr Simkins
looked the other way long enough for Mrs Simkins to make her way out
of the shop and run away. He might have been distracted, Sir. The
cleaning lady, who also helps out in the shop now and then, she’s
coming to the nick – the station, this afternoon to make a
statement. Sergeant Wilson wanted me to close the file, but I’m
reluctant to do that before hearing what Enid West the cleaning lady
has to say.’
‘Hmmph.
Well, we’d better have a word with Mr Simkins, and we’d better go
back to this shop of yours and have yet another word with the
pharmacist - .’
‘Mr
King, Sir.’
‘Right.
Let me know an accurate time of death and so on when you have a
moment, Jeremy. And I need to be absolutely certain it is this Mary
Simkins before I go breaking the news to her husband. Just because
she has Mary Simkins’s library card doesn’t mean that’s who she
is.’
The
pathologist stood up and stretched to get his muscles moving again.
He was tall and slim, though not as tall as Mike. His hair was jet
black and he had a cowlick that projected out over his forehead. He
wore light brown corduroy trousers, a flower-power shirt covered by a
yellow waistcoat with a bright red and blue paisley pattern, and a
red corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches. A maroon cravat
completed his outfit. Mike had no doubt that if he were to look down
he would see that the pathologist, who seemed to be in his early
thirties, would be sporting a pair of smart light brown Oxford
brogues. He looked for all the world like a character from a Richard
Gordon Doctor
book, and would not have looked out of place on a Pinewood film set.
He saw Mike and extended his hand.
‘Burnham-Twist,
H.O.P.,’ he said, pumping Mike’s hand vigorously with a very firm
handshake.
‘Constable
Thompson,’ Mike replied with a grin. He liked Burnham-Twist
immediately. Ordinarily, constables, even constables at murder
scenes, were ignored by the powers that be, especially if there was a
DCI present.
‘I
don’t see why she would be carrying someone else’s purse and
library card, but you’re the detectives, of course,’
Burnham-Twist said, turning back to DCI Maxwell. ‘Regarding the
post mortem, Detective Chief Inspector, you’ll be the first to
know. First thing, at the hospital, of course. You’ll be there?’
‘Constable
Thompson will be there. I have a meeting with the ACC at nine
o’clock. Bit tight. I’ll square it with Sergeant Wilson. You’ll
be working on my team for the duration, Constable Thompson. Got a
suit, have you?’
‘Not
really, Sir. Never had occasion to wear one.’ This was true. At his
sister Pauline’s wedding, he had worn the smart black Beatle jacket
his mother had bought for him as a kind of compensation for missing
their appearance in Gloucester in the Spring of 1963. They had joined
the queue a good quarter of a mile from the Odeon cinema in Kings
Square the night before the tickets were due to go on sale, and much
as he liked the Beatles, he preferred to listen to their records and
to settle down with a good book. He knew from what he had read that
he would be unlikely to hear them anyway, above the sounds of the
screaming, hysterical girls. This was in complete contrast to the
concerts he had been to in the City, in Cheltenham and at the Colston
Hall in Bristol to see his favourite jazz band, Mr Acker Bilk and his
Paramount Jazz Band, where there was no screaming, just dead quiet so
that you could hear every note, and then an eruption of applause at
the end of each piece.
‘Smart
casual, then? Pair of decent trousers, nice jacket? You get back to
the nick and finish your shift as normal, then first thing tomorrow,
get yourself over to the hospital and sit in on Mr Burnham-Twist’s
post mortem.’ Mike found himself staring at the outrageously
flamboyant outfit sported by Jeremy Burnham-Twist, and permitted
himself a small inward smile.
‘Sir.’
I’ll
just walk back to the nick, then, shall I? Stop and buy a suit on the
way, I suppose? Mike
had casual clothes, of course, but there was a gents’ outfitters on
the way back to the nick, who sold off the peg suits. Well, he had a
little money in his pocket, which he had been saving towards the
purchase of a new dynamo for Jasmine, his car, but it wouldn’t hurt
to splash out on a suit. Three months had passed without so much as a
word from Maxwell, and now he was seconded to CID for a couple of
days. It didn’t happen often, and he would be the envy of his
fellow bobbies and, no doubt, a period of leg-pulling and snide
remarks would come his way, but then, the murder of Mary Simkins
might occupy no longer than a few days. He thought he could pull it
off. And between now and tomorrow’s post mortem, there was the
small but significant matter of his catching the same bus home as
Martha Baker. And Edith West’s statement to take, too. His thoughts
returned to what he had just read about Martha Baker, this apparent
wild child, and he was having some difficulty equating her angelic
good looks and easy, friendly manner with someone who, to all intents
and purposes, liked her drink perhaps a little too much, and had
spent quite a few nights locked up in a Stevenage Police Station
cell, sleeping off her drunken antics. The mugshot didn’t do her
justice, of course, but that wasn’t their purpose, was it? She had
been expelled from public school, for Christ’s sake! Was she really
the girl for him? But the Ouija board…
The Four Marys continues in the
April issue...
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