by Wes Markin
‘I understand why I’m here,’ Peacock said, ‘I’m a crime writer, and there’s been a crime.’
‘It’s not about your profession,’ Willows said. ‘It’s about the fact that you were the last person to see Janice Edwards alive.’
‘True, but there really isn’t much to tell you, detective. I hardly knew Janice. She sent me an email a couple of months ago asking me to come on to the show.’
‘Do you still have this email?’ Pemberton said.
‘Yes. I’ll forward it to you.’
‘How long was your guest slot?’ Willows asked.
‘Thirty minutes. I arrived early at about quarter to five.’
‘And how’d Janice seem?’
‘Fine. I guess. Polite, enthusiastic, gracious. All the things that you’d expect in a host really. She talked about how much she enjoyed Phyllis Kemp, gave me a cup of tea, and before I knew it, we were on air.’
‘Phyllis Kemp?’ Willows said.
‘Mr Peacock’s series. Think Murder She Wrote,’ Pemberton said.
Stunned that Pemberton had spoken to her, and without an aggressive tone in her voice, Willows looked at her. Pemberton didn’t look back.
Well … baby steps.
‘I don’t really like that comparison,’ Peacock said. ‘For a start, my books are set in the UK, and Phyllis is much more reserved than Jessica Fletcher.’
‘Ah, okay,’ Pemberton said.
Willows watched her colleague pretending to take notes.
She’s so sarcastic, Willows thought, looking back at Peacock. Does he pick up on it? Am I starting to know her better than anyone?
‘So, the interview?’ Willows said.
‘Intense. Think your hardest job interview and then multiply it by infinity. Over the course of the interview, she only played one song, the rest of the time was me, and some bloody difficult questions.’
‘What song was it?’ Pemberton asked.
‘It was one I’d chosen prior to the show. My favourite.’
‘Jingle Bells?’
‘Funny, detective!’
Pemberton and Peacock exchanged smiles. He’d taken it in good humour; Pemberton seemed pretty adept at reading her audience. A skill Willows knew she didn’t possess.
‘It was a Radiohead song. The Bends.’
‘You didn’t strike me as the melancholic type.’
Peacock smiled again. ‘It’s the lyrics I like more than anything. Not a fan?’
‘A big one actually.’
Were they flirting? Willows thought and then coughed to interrupt them. ‘What questions did she ask you?’
‘Many. There’ll be a podcast … you know … at least, she said there’d be.’ He paused. Willows watched him grow paler as some of the reality settled in. ‘I guess you can still get the recording?’
‘Already have done,’ Willows said. ‘And we will listen to it later.’
‘You know, there was one question she asked which really threw me.’
‘Go on,’ Pemberton said.
‘She asked me about a homosexual relationship in my book between two male officers. She spoke of one scene and its realism, and being that I was in a heterosexual marriage, she wondered how I’d so effectively captured the tenderness between them.’
Willows glanced at Pemberton again. This time, Pemberton was looking back, but she quickly turned away again.
‘And what did you say,’ Pemberton said.
‘I just rambled on about how I’d asked a friend for some help, but now, in retrospect, I’d answer it differently. At the end of the day, what’s the difference between a heterosexual relationship and a homosexual one? Surely, they’re the same thing? Tenderness is born from two people regardless of gender or sexual orientation.’
Willows steered the conversation back to where it needed to be. ‘And you noticed nothing about Janice which suggested she could be in danger? Was she perhaps nervous or anxious?’
‘No. She was the perfect host.’
‘And when the interview finished?’
‘We took a couple of photos of me holding my latest book behind the mixing desk for her website … I presented her with a signed copy … we briefly chatted about doing another show when the next Phyllis book was out at the end of the year … and then I was off … ah … hold on …’ He pulled out his mobile phone, fiddled with it, and pushed it over to Willows. ‘I left at 5:44, you can see that I texted my wife to say I was on my way home. She wrote back to ask me to drive carefully because of the poor visibility. That ash cloud is relentless, isn’t it?’
Willows nodded as she wrote the notes in her book. ‘The CCTV camera told us the same thing, Mr Peacock.’
‘So you’ll have the assailant who shot her on CCTV?’
Willows looked up and saw the excitement in his eyes. Crime writers, she thought. This is the real thing, you know! Nothing to get giddy about.
‘As a crime writer, you’ll know we cannot discuss that with you, Mr Peacock,’ Pemberton said.
He smiled. ‘I really wish I could tell you more, detective. You have my DNA, fingerprints and I’ve nothing to hide. I don’t think I’m a suspect, am I?’
Willows thought about mentioning his blood-spattered book clutched in Janice’s hand, but decided against it. Pointless. He wasn’t a suspect, and they’d already concluded that the killer had placed her hand on the book, post-mortem.
‘One last question,’ Willows said. ‘Did you notice Janice eating anything?’
‘Not that I recall. What exactly?’
‘Sweets?’
Peacock shook his head.
‘Did she offer you anything?’
‘No, sorry.’
Willows made some notes and said, ‘I’m sure you know the drill, Mr Peacock. Phone on you always and don’t leave the area. We could be in touch at any point.’
‘You can count on me.’
Willows chanced another look at Pemberton.
This time, nothing came back.
4
IT WAS A cold room. Dangerously so. How many lives a year were lost in HMP Hancock due to persistent underfunding?
Yorke didn’t want the answer to that question.
The aging guard, who’d signed them both in, came into the visitor’s room. He was accompanied by another elderly man. Jake, who had been leaning on the table, sitting upright on his stool. Yorke chose to rise to his feet. ‘Good evening, Mr Wheelhouse. My name is DCI Yorke, and this is DS Pettman.’
The guard, a miserable man who was clearly desperate for retirement, rubbed his hands together. ‘It’s frigging cold in here. I’ll rustle up a couple of hot drinks? Keep an eye on him though, would you?’
I get this isn’t a high security facility, but isn’t that just incompetence? Yorke thought.
‘Tea, one sugar, please,’ Jake said. ‘And DCI Yorke will take a black coffee, no sugar.’
‘Five minutes,’ the guard said.
Stunned over Jake’s encouragement of incompetence, Yorke failed to stop the guard before he’d abandoned his charge and disappeared out of the door.
Yorke decided to make the elderly guard’s wish for early retirement a reality by speaking to his superiors later, but for now, he had more pressing issues.
‘Sit down please, Mr Wheelhouse.’ Yorke gestured at the stool opposite both himself and Jake.
Wheelhouse moved slowly. His shoulders were hunched.
‘And I’m sorry for your loss,’ Yorke said.
Wheelhouse didn’t respond as he lowered himself down on the stool. He kept his eyes down and was yet to make eye contact with either detective.
He was dressed in jeans, and a stripy jumper. These were his own clothes. This was getting more and more common in prisons such as these. Yorke didn’t really know what to make of it. The fact that the guards were still forced to wear uniforms seemed to make it even more peculiar.
Finally, Wheelhouse ran both of his hands through his thinning white hair and lifted his eyes to the visito
rs. ‘I’m much too old to be dealing with this kind of loss.’
Yorke could feel Jake squirming on the stool beside him. He’d be incensed by this man’s self-pity. He’d been mixed up in crimes involving children.
Yorke shifted it on quickly. ‘You were close then, Mr Wheelhouse?’
Wheelhouse nodded.
‘Could you tell us a more about your relationship?’
‘Not much to say really. She never really had anyone. Her father was never on the scene, and my parents died young. There was only me who gave a shit.’
‘Her mother, Bridgett?’
Wheelhouse snorted. ‘My sister? Don’t go there. Don’t make an old man waste the final throes of his life dwelling on that stupid cow.’
‘Doesn’t sound like it ended well,’ Jake said.
‘We know Bridgett emigrated to Greece,’ Yorke said. ‘She’s been contacted regarding her daughter’s death, but I’ve yet to learn of her response. I assume she’ll be back in the country shortly.’
‘Don’t count on it!’ Wheelhouse snorted again.
‘When was the last time you saw Janice?’ Jake said.
‘Last Friday. I saw her every Friday. We’d have a full hour together. It was the best hour of my week, and I’m sure it ranked pretty highly for her too.’
‘Even considering your past crimes?’ Jake said.
Yorke glanced at his colleague. Not yet. You’re charging in.
‘Even considering.’
Yorke had never seen Wheelhouse before, but he doubted that he usually looked this washed out. Grief was physically weighing on him. In a way, Yorke was glad. It meant that Jake would struggle to get a rise out of him, and they’d be able to unpick the man’s value in this investigation in a more productive manner.
Yorke took his notebook out. ‘A couple of things I’m interested in, Mr Wheelhouse, before I discuss more … sensitive issues. When looking at Janice’s history, I noticed that she worked as a cleaner for many years. I also learned that she went into care when her mother abandoned her at fifteen. Why’d you allow her to struggle? You’ve not been short of money for many years, and certainly not in her lifetime.’
‘Her mother’s parting gift was to blacken my name. Janice chose to go into the system rather than come to me. Broke my heart at the time.’
‘Blacken your name? Come on!’ Jake said. ‘I’m assuming the picture your sister painted was accurate?’
‘Some of it, not all of it.’
‘So, do you think if she’d only been privy to the actual truth, she’d have chosen you over the system?’ Jake said.
‘Probably not,’ Wheelhouse said. ‘Listen, I thought the world of that little girl. I never had my own children. She was, and still is, everything to me. I wrote to her from jail and told her I’d changed. Finally, she accepted me back into her life, and then accepted my financial support.’
‘Your blood money?’ Jake said.
Yorke coughed. ‘Thank you DS Pettman. We appreciate everything you’re telling us, Mr Wheelhouse. So, you financially supported her, allowed her to stay in your flat, which has been standing empty during your years in incarceration, and as a result, she has been able to pursue her ambition of being a radio presenter.’
‘And a good one too! I listened to every show for two years.’
‘Did you listen today?’
‘Of course.’ He stared at Yorke with a broken expression. ‘I heard everything.’
Despite everything that this man had done, Yorke wanted to reach out and take his shoulder. He held back.
‘Why do you think this has happened? Is there anything you can tell us? Who’d want to hurt her? Can you give us names of anyone she knew? Anyone she had problems with?’
Wheelhouse raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you already knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘I assumed that was why you were here—’
‘You’re not making any sense,’ Jake said. ‘Get to the point.’
‘She was killed because of me. I expected you lot here this evening for that very reason.’
‘Come again,’ Jake said.
‘She was killed because of me.’
Yorke leaned forward on his stool. ‘Okay, what makes you say that?’
‘Because of the message I was sent by the killer.’
‘Message? What message? Where is it?’ Jake said.
‘The message on the radio. His favourite song. Yes, the caller got it wrong, but that was all irrelevant. What is relevant is that Don’t Fear the Reaper is my favourite song. The message came from them. The bastards I left behind. The bastards who won’t let me retire.’
Yorke leaned back. The notorious Young family were behind the death of Janice Edwards.
Following their interview with Matthew Peacock, Pemberton and Willows had filled pages with notes on Young Properties. This had been no easy task set by Yorke. This organised unit had their grubby paws on everything but were adept at keeping themselves insulated from any blowback. On paper, the Young family were dealers in real estate; whereas, according to the criminals who broke under police pressure, they were connected to prostitution, drug running, pornography, snuff movies and human trafficking. But every court case fell apart. The Youngs were so far removed from the people who were caught that any lawyer worth his salt could break the chain of connection. It was like holding a tattered old five-pound note in your hand and then trying to to track back to the very first person who spent it.
Even the murder of the CEO Simon Young at DS Jake Pettman’s house last year had done little to chip away at this racket. His lawyers simply said that Young had found the whereabouts of his kidnapped child, Tobias, and had done what any father would’ve done. He’d gone to get him back. Sure, him and his closest colleague, David Hewitt, had been armed, but that didn’t make them gangsters, did it? They’d just feared for their lives, and the lives of the young boy, from the fearsome Lacey Ray, and so had acquired guns illegally. Nobody else in the Young family had been aware of these events. Besides, both Young and Hewitt had been killed by Lacey Ray, leaving the remaining above-board Youngs to continue with the family business and pay high taxes in order to make Southampton a better place.
It was still frosty between Pemberton and Willows, but hot work like this was causing a much-needed thaw, and they were now communicating. At least on a professional level.
Pemberton put the phone down and laughed. ‘Contacting Southampton over these past cases is certainly ruffling a few feathers. That one detective just spoke to me like my father did the time I borrowed his car after failing my driving test.’
‘You did what?’ Willows said.
‘Don’t worry. I wasn’t caught. I guess that if I was, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, would I? I was so pissed off that day. I spent a chunk of my driving exam in a traffic jam, and the examiner took offense at my language. Pretty sure everyone swears in a traffic jam. I could drive, and so the fail was bollocks.’ Pemberton smiled. ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this, should I?’
‘That you’ve committed a crime? What do you reckon?’
Pemberton bit her bottom lip. ‘Yes. Let’s move on, shall we?’
‘Good idea,’ Willows said, and smiled.
And just like that, the tension finished melting.
At least between them. It only took twenty minutes for tension to rear its ugly head again, albeit for a whole different reason. ‘My God, I don’t believe it,’ Willows said.
‘Whenever you say that, something bad quickly follows.’ Pemberton moved quickly over to Willows’ desk.
Willows pointed at a picture of an elderly man on the screen. ‘Douglas Firth.’
‘Okay … who is he?’
‘Another old-timer that spent many years working in organised crime.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he’s currently housed in HMP Hancock with Wheelhouse.’
‘Is that such a problem?’
‘Well, yes, aft
er you see who he’s related to …’
‘Go on … who?’
‘You might want to sit down for this.’
It seemed Yorke had it figured out all wrong. The killer didn’t want to be thought of as the Reaper. He’d been sending a message to Herbert Wheelhouse about the cost of betrayal.
Not that the nickname didn’t fit. The grim animal had brought death to Janice Edwards. Not with a scythe, but with the same swiftness, and lack of emotion, as the original hooded monster.
The guard, who had earlier shown a complete disregard for security, was now sitting beside the door, nursing the hot drink he’d so desperately wanted. Jake drank his, but Yorke abstained. The only way he was picking his up was to throw it over the incompetent person who’d put it there.
Wheelhouse was avoiding Yorke’s eyes. He was also squeezing his forehead so tightly that the already deeply furrowed skin threatened to split. Men from these kinds of occupations were masters at keeping emotion behind closed doors, but the death of the niece he so adored was threatening to smash down the shutters.
‘How much did you steal from your employers?’ Yorke said and stared.
Eventually, Wheelhouse relented and looked up. ‘Technically, it wasn’t stealing. I just took my retirement.’
‘A retirement fund?’ Jake said. ‘Are you in the Teamsters?’
Wheelhouse managed a smile. ‘No, it’s very different. The Youngs don’t allow retirement, and they certainly don’t give out pensions.’
Yorke leaned forward. ‘How much was it?’
‘A couple of hundred grand skimmed over several years.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Gone. Every penny.’
Jake shook his head. ‘Some retirement fund! What if you live to be ninety?’
‘Unlikely. Short life span in my job.’
‘And the chickens always come home to roost, don’t they?’ Jake said.
‘When did they first approach you to ask for this money back?’ Yorke said.
‘They didn’t.’
‘Really? Not even a word of warning?’
