The Whitby Murders (A Yorkshire Murder Mystery)

by J. R. Ellis

  ‘Good idea,’ replied Oldroyd and he followed her up the path, still deep in thought.

  Andy and DC Jenkins’s dogged pursuit of lines of enquiry in London continued with a visit to the Women’s Theatre Cooperative where Andrea Barnes was employed as an actor. The group operated from the Viaduct Theatre situated under a railway arch near Charing Cross. They parked in a street nearby.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m going to like this, Sarge,’ said Jenkins, grinning as they walked towards the theatre. ‘It might be a bit too alternative for me. Look at that.’ He pointed to a poster showing a woman in a short skirt standing with her foot on a man who was lying on the floor.

  ‘How old are you? You sound like some grumpy old pensioner who wishes he was back in the 1950s. What’s wrong with live theatre taking on some radical issues?’

  ‘Dunno. I prefer watching telly. I haven’t been to the theatre since I went to the pantomime when I was a kid. What do you think their plays are about?’

  ‘Women’s issues: inequality, domestic abuse, male domination of powerful roles in society – things like that I should think.’

  ‘Heavy stuff; not my idea of a fun night out.’

  ‘Do strong and confident women threaten you?’ asked Andy mischievously.

  Jenkins laughed. ‘Hardly. You haven’t met Sheila, my partner. I’d like to see any man dominate her.’

  They arrived at the entrance just as a group of young women emerged, laughing and talking. The women were eclectically dressed in jeans, dungarees, multi-coloured tops and woollen jackets or cardigans, with their hair in various tints. They wore trainers or converse. There was an energy and artiness about them. One or two glanced suspiciously at the two policemen. Andy smiled at them as they passed.

  ‘I think they’re part of the company. They must have known Andrea Barnes.’ It was curious to think she had probably acted with these women.

  They went in through the narrow door into a rather gloomy entrance hall from which double doors led into a large space with a massive curved brick ceiling. They were directly under the railway and a sudden deep rumbling noise indicated that a train was passing overhead. The lighting was subdued. In one corner of the room, two actors were rehearsing a scene with a director who stopped them to make comments. Voices echoed in the empty space.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Andy turned to see a woman dressed entirely in black except for her strikingly oversized red glasses. He introduced himself and Jenkins and explained why they were there.

  The woman frowned and shook her head. ‘I’m Ann Gifford, director of the Women’s Theatre Collective. We’ve already spoken to the police; a detective came from the Met. Is it necessary to go over all that again? It’s very painful. Andrea was a much loved and vital member of our group and we were all her friends.’

  ‘I’m from the police in Yorkshire,’ explained Andy. ‘The investigation is not complete and we’re speaking again to everyone involved in the case or who knew the people who died.’

  Gifford sighed. ‘Okay. You’d better follow me.’ She led them into a small office, very different from the ones they’d seen at St Thomas’s and Alpha Publishing. It was extremely untidy with scripts and bits of props lying around. A bookshelf on the wall was crammed with copies of plays. ‘I’d ask you to sit, but as you can see that’s not possible at the moment.’ All the chairs apart from one behind a desk had stuff piled onto them.

  ‘Never mind, we’ll stand,’ said Andy. Gifford sat behind the desk. ‘What can you tell us about Andrea Barnes?’

  Gifford shrugged as if it was all too much painful effort. ‘Andrea was a founding member of this group. That’s her in Consent.’ She pointed to an action photograph on the wall showing a group of female actors on stage. ‘Andrea co-authored that play. We write all our own material. She was a good writer too. She joined straight from drama school and she’s been a vital member ever since; hardworking, talented, great sense of humour. I don’t know what we’re going to do without her.’ She stopped and looked away. Andy wondered if she was shedding a tear, but she turned back and carried on. Her tone changed to one of anger. ‘She’s not the first excellent woman to be murdered by a man she knew and she won’t be the last until society takes violence against women seriously.’

  Andy looked at her. ‘Did you know her partner, Dominic Holgate?’

  ‘Not really; he came to meet her here a few times. He seemed okay, he was involved in theatre, but you never know with men.’

  At this point Andy did not want to be drawn into a discussion of male violence against women.

  ‘What makes you so sure that Holgate killed her then?’

  Gifford looked surprised. ‘Isn’t that what happened? It’s been all over the press. Holgate stabbed her in that escape room or whatever it was, ran off and then killed himself a couple of days later. It’s Shakespearean, the difference between appearance and reality; brutal killers are often full of charm. We dealt with that issue in our last play. It was very well received by the critics. It’s very important that these issues are—’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Andy, deliberately cutting her off in full flow. ‘The fact is we’re not sure that what the evidence suggests is actually what happened. We’re looking for other people who might have had a motive to do either of them harm. Did Andrea have any enemies to your knowledge?’

  ‘No. Everyone loved her. I don’t know why anyone would want to harm her, but that’s often the story with domestic violence: good women, women who have helped others, get badly treated by the very people who should be caring for them. It’s a huge problem. Do you know women are more likely to be killed by a man they know than anyone else?’

  Andy still refused to be drawn. ‘Were you aware that Andrea had any financial problems?’ he asked.

  Gifford looked suspicious. ‘No. It’s true that none of us make a great deal of money out of what we do – that’s not our motivation – but I think Andrea had some kind of legacy, didn’t she, from an aunt?’

  ‘That’s right, she inherited a flat in Leeds, but we also have evidence that she was involved in some scam with her uncle concerning false jewellery.’

  ‘Andrea? I find that hard to believe. Are you sure there wasn’t any coercion involved?’

  ‘Not that we’re aware of.’

  ‘Sounds to me like she was trapped in something to do with a male relative. That’s very common too: girls and young women being exploited and abused within the family. If not that then she was probably driven to it by the need to survive here in London where women earn considerably less than men.’

  Andy glanced at Jenkins and saw to his amusement that the sergeant was looking alarmed and intimidated by this woman and her strongly expressed views.

  Gifford paused and shook her head. There was sadness and regret in her voice. ‘I wish she’d talked to us about it if her money situation was so bad and I know why she didn’t. She wouldn’t have wanted to worry us and she was very committed to the company. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave us for something better paid.’

  ‘Right,’ said Andy.

  Gifford stood up. ‘Look, I’ve got a rehearsal soon. Is there anything else?’

  ‘No, that’s fine, thank you.’

  She escorted them back to the exit. Her mood was now sombre. ‘The awful irony of it all hasn’t escaped us,’ she said as the detectives were leaving. ‘Here she was, performing plays about the way women are treated in society and then she becomes a victim herself. It’s shocking and it hurts us a lot.’

  Louise was having troubling thoughts. Ever since she’d met her friends in Leeds the previous night, something had been preying on her mind. She sat alone in the house in Chapel Allerton turning the problem over. She got up and looked out of the window at the tiny back garden, which her mother had made into a lovely little sanctuary with flowers in ceramic pots and attractive garden furniture. It was looking rather bedraggled now in late October.

  She sighed. There was only one
thing to do which was to tackle what was bothering her. She got her phone and sent a photograph to her friend Aisha with the text:

  Good to see you last night. Is this the person you saw at Andrea’s flat?

  The message came back quickly:

  Hi! Yes pretty sure. Great to see you too.

  She texted back: Thanks, then went into the lounge and sat down. She thought for a moment and then sent another text to a different person:

  Need to talk about something bothering me. A picture missing from Andrea’s flat. You might be able to help.

  She waited a while in silence and then a message came back.

  Nice to hear from you, hope you’re okay. Going to be in Leeds on Saturday. Be busy but we could meet up.

  She replied: Yes. can pick you up, but the answer she received suggested they meet at a certain time and place. She put down the phone and thought again. Then she called Steph.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi, how are you?’ Steph was at work at Harrogate HQ, looking through reports.

  ‘I’m okay, thanks, but I need your help. You know when we went to Andrea’s flat with Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he leave a key for the flat with you? I need to go over there to look for one or two things. I’ve remembered that I lent her some books and I’d like to get them back.’

  ‘Yes, he did leave a key, but I don’t know if I should lend it to you as the flat is still technically part of the investigation.’

  ‘I promise I’ll look after it and I won’t stay long. I won’t touch anything; I’ll just get my books.’

  ‘Are you just going round there by yourself?’

  There was a slight pause before Louise answered. ‘Yes.’

  Steph thought for a moment. ‘Okay then, I’ll drop it in to you on my way home tonight.’

  ‘That’s great. See you later.’ The conversation ended and Louise put her phone down on the coffee table. She wasn’t going to tell the truth about what she was intending to do. This was a problem she wanted to sort out herself.

  In the afternoon Andy and DC Jenkins arrived at the offices of Reality Media Productions, where Dominic Holgate had worked.

  ‘Well, this is just about our last chance,’ said Andy wearily. ‘We’ve followed up on nearly everybody on the list my boss gave me, but nothing’s really turned up. Let’s see what they made of Holgate here.’

  ‘Don’t give up, Sarge, I’m sure we’ll find out something useful,’ said Jenkins in his cheery manner.

  After going through the usual rituals at reception, they were shown into a large air-conditioned open-plan office full of workstations and huge indoor plants with their green leaves snaking up the walls. They walked through and into a small private office separated from the general area with glass partitions. A bald-headed man dressed in a black waistcoat and white shirt greeted them. Jenkins’s eyes were drawn enviously to his impressive hipster beard and glasses as he reflected on his own inability to grow a decent beard.

  ‘Hi. Paul Matthews, Director of Innovation.’ He shook hands briskly with the detectives. ‘Please sit down. How can I help?’

  Andy explained the purpose of their visit.

  ‘We had someone here from the Met,’ Matthews replied, echoing Gifford at the Women’s Theatre Cooperative. ‘I can only repeat what I said then. We all got on well with Dom and he was an excellent member of the team. He was friendly, creative and a good team worker.’

  ‘Was he ever angry with people or threatened violence? Did you ever see him with knives or guns?’

  ‘No, certainly not. The only problem with Dom was that deep down you felt his heart wasn’t in the job. He’d done a business degree and had some problems. We took him on based on his personality and obvious intelligence. He could do the job very well but his real love was the theatre. He would have loved to have become an actor. He was a great mimic and used to have us in stitches.’ Matthews smiled. ‘He loved his practical jokes too. He’d give you some coffee and there would be a frog moulded into the bottom of the mug, or he’d be slumped at his desk and there would be a realistic-looking knife sticking out of his back. That was the only knife I ever saw him with: a joke one.’

  It wasn’t a joke one that killed Andrea Barnes, thought Andy. ‘Did he have any enemies?’ he asked.

  ‘Dom? Not that I know of and, before you ask, I did meet his girlfriend, Andrea, and they seemed to get on fine. It came as a great shock to us when they both died.’

  ‘You say that as if you don’t believe the account you must have seen on the news that Holgate killed her and then committed suicide.’

  Matthews smiled and shook his head. ‘Do you? It strikes me you don’t if you’re still investigating the case,’ he observed perceptively. ‘I don’t know the details. I can only say that for us who worked with him in this company the whole idea seems too monstrous to accept. We’ve obviously talked about it, and none of us can see Dom as a murderer and certainly not of his girlfriend.’

  ‘Did he ever seem depressed or moody? Someone who might be suicidal?’

  ‘Again no. He was always upbeat. The idea of him killing himself is also something we can’t get our heads round.’ He smiled at Andy and shook his head. ‘I really don’t envy you investigating this case, Sergeant. I’ll bet nothing makes sense.’

  It seemed that Matthews was right, thought Andy as he and Jenkins left the office in silence after a relatively short interview and walked back to their car. No one, except Gifford, seemed to think it was credible that Holgate would murder Barnes and then kill himself. But, as far as he knew, no other explanation of what happened had yet been offered.

  ‘Still in the dark, Sarge?’ Jenkins sensed what he was thinking.

  ‘Pretty much,’ he replied. ‘Maybe the boss can make something from what we’ve learned, but I can’t.’

  That evening, three of the remaining friends met after work near Old Spitalfields Market. Here there was a line of vans selling street food so they loaded up with burgers, burritos and pizza and found somewhere to sit. The crowds were not as dense as at lunchtime, when the area was a favourite venue for office workers. Jack, Mark and Maggie huddled together at an outdoor table just inside the market. The plan was to progress on to the cinema after eating.

  ‘It feels funny with just the three of us,’ observed Maggie, eating a slice of pizza. After a furious row with Mark after the visit from the police, she had finally forgiven him for not telling her the full truth about the plagiarism affair with Dominic.

  ‘Ben’s on his way,’ said Jack. ‘I had a text from him; he’s back in London.’

  ‘Good. It’s a pity Louise isn’t here.’ Maggie smiled. ‘I’m sure those two are about to get it on.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘She was very concerned about him in Whitby.’

  ‘Weren’t we all?’ said Jack, eating a burrito.

  ‘Yeah, but there was something about the way she looked at him. Maybe it takes a woman to understand.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly the atmosphere up there for romance to flourish,’ said Mark. ‘Maybe things will happen when they’re both back here together. It’ll be nice to have something good to celebrate.’

  ‘Oh look, he’s here,’ said Maggie. She’d spotted Ben in the distance looking for them and waved at him. ‘He’s coming over.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Ben as he reached their table. The others greeted him. ‘I’ll just go and get something.’ He went off to the row of vans and returned with a burger and salad. He brought over an empty chair and squeezed in at the table. ‘It’s great to be back here, isn’t it? And great to see you all. When’s Louise coming down?’ He seemed much more upbeat now he was away from Whitby.

  Maggie gave Mark a furtive glance and smiled.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘She left it open. She seems to want to stay up there until her dad and the others have finished with the case. I still don’t know what she thinks they’re going to find.’ Jack didn�
�t mention that Andy and Jenkins had been to see him. It would have involved too much explaining. Mark and Maggie had decided on the same approach. They all wanted to put the business behind them and move on.

  ‘I think at some deep level, she’s still in denial about things. She can’t believe she’s lost two friends, that one killed the other and then committed suicide,’ said Ben. ‘It’s a common reaction to something as traumatic as what we went through.’

  ‘Yes, and I think she expects her dad to perform magic. Like she’s reverted to being a child. You know, when your parents seemed all powerful?’

  ‘Wow, this is getting into deep psychology!’ said Jack. ‘But you might be right. I don’t think she would have been like this if her father hadn’t been a detective.’

  ‘Well, never mind, she’ll get over it,’ said Mark. He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll have to get off soon or we’ll miss the start of the film. What’s everybody doing this weekend? We could meet up and eat somewhere. I could do Sunday.’

  ‘I’m away this weekend,’ said Jack.

  ‘I could do Sunday too, preferably evening,’ said Ben.

  Mark turned to Maggie, who had been exchanging texts and only half listening. ‘Oh yeah, Sunday evening’s fine. I’m busy Saturday too.’

  Oldroyd and Deborah were sitting in the lounge bar in an old pub near the harbour when Andy rang to report back.

  ‘Hi, sir. Hope you’ve had a good day?’

  ‘Not bad at all, Andy,’ replied Oldroyd. ‘Things have got exciting up here.’ He told Andy about Elaine Pesku’s escape. ‘I think it all proves that there is indeed more to this case than we initially thought. I’ve suspected it for a long time. Granger’s got a team out searching for Elaine Pesku and added to all that we’ve been for a bracing walk up to the abbey.’

  ‘Sounds good, sir. I wish I had some good news myself, but I’ve followed up just about everything concerning this group and I can’t say we’ve come up with anything exciting. We’ve only got Maggie Hinton’s employers left, and I’m not optimistic that will throw anything up. The others seem in the clear. To sum up: Jack Ryerson’s alibi for Wednesday was backed up by his lover. Mark Garner admitted that he had a nasty row with Holgate about the plagiarism, but his alibi for the Wednesday, that he was at work, was supported by his employer. Ben Morton seemed a bit of a loner at work, but we couldn’t find anything against him. Holgate was well thought of at his company and nobody could identify any enemies. They thought he got on well with his girlfriend, Barnes. They even said what a great member of the team he was, entertaining them with practical jokes and tricks with knives where he pretended to be dead. I thought that was a touch ironic, you know. The knife he used to stab Barnes was real enough and he was dead all right by the end.’