Night Train

by Ted Tayler

  Gus bustled up the stairs and darted past the admin section with the cheery wave he’d kept in reserve. Vera Butler and Kassie Trotter were poised to pounce, but Gus pointed at the ACC’s door. His friends nodded as they saw Kenneth Truelove in the doorway, waiting. They could wait. Gus knew he’d have to spare them five minutes on his way out.

  As he made his way across to the ACC’s office, he remembered Alex Hardy. After he chatted with the ladies, he ought to drop by the Hub and check Alex’s progress. If Geoff had found Rick Chalmers before someone else grabbed him, then they should have had a good half-morning working on the Grant Burnside killer.

  “Come on, Freeman,” said the ACC, “stop dawdling. DS Mercer will join us in a moment. I have to leave for Salisbury by one o’clock for a funeral. Jimmy Calvert, the retired Police Surgeon. No doubt you remember him?”

  “I do, Sir,” said Gus. “Jimmy attended quite a few deaths while I worked in Salisbury. Old school. His name cropped up during the Ursula Wakeley case review. He was off sick with the flu, and Peter Morgan stood in for him.”

  “Yet you still solved it in double-quick time,” smiled the ACC.

  “My superiors considered me as old school too,” said Gus. “With both myself and Jimmy on a case, there were few loopholes for a defence lawyer to explore.”

  “Quite. Ah, that’s Mercer I can hear in the corridor. We can make a start.”

  Geoff Mercer tapped on the door and didn’t wait for an invitation to join them.

  “Did you get everything sorted, Mercer?” asked the ACC.

  “No problem, boss. My dress uniform is getting a quick going over by Christine. I can drive home, get changed, and pick you up outside at one o’clock.”

  “Excellent. Let’s crack on. I’ll run through the basics. If you have something to add, Mercer, then jump in.”

  “Got it,” said Geoff, grinning at Gus.

  “Who do we have this time?” asked Gus.

  “Ivan Kendall,” said Kenneth Truelove. “Does the name ring a bell?”

  “Did he live next door to that bloke who never won Wimbledon?” asked Gus.

  “Are you in one of those moods of yours, Freeman?” asked Kenneth Truelove. “This murder took place four years ago. The victim came from South Wales, but for some inexplicable reason on Saturday the eighth of March he left home to catch a train to Westbury station.”

  “Not the most exciting place to visit on a Saturday night, Sir, I grant you, but what was this chap’s background? Was he known to us?”

  “No criminal record. Clean driving licence. Kendall ran a small window-cleaning business centred on the tiny village where he lived with his wife and daughter.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Forty-five, a year older than his wife, Sally. Their daughter was sixteen. Kendall lost a well-paid job through redundancy six years earlier. Neither he nor his wife was well-qualified, so they lived hand-to-mouth. If he hadn’t needed a van for his business, they would have relied on public transport.”

  “Life’s been tough in those old mining communities for a generation and more,” said Gus.

  “Yes, and the stress told after that sudden change of circumstance,” said the ACC. “Sally Kendall walked out for a short period within a year, then she moved to Cardiff, leaving Alexa, the daughter, behind. Sally got involved with a bar owner, Tommy Griffiths, fifty-five and single. He wanted more than someone willing to share his bed after work, but Sally must have still loved Ivan despite the economic headaches they suffered. Sally went back for a second time.”

  “There were no domestic problems where the police or social services got involved?” asked Gus.

  “None whatsoever,” said the ACC. “When things got too much, and another final demand landed on the doormat, Sally disappeared. Ivan just kept working, looking after Alexa, and trying to get them out of the mire.”

  “When did his wife leave him for good?” asked Gus.

  “She didn’t. Sally spent a few weeks with her mother in the summer of 2013, but there was a reason for that. A lovelorn Griffiths had quit his job in Cardiff and moved into the village. There’s no evidence he stalked Sally Kendall or tried to come between husband and wife. While Sally was at her mother’s, Ivan got on with things as before. Tommy Griffiths realised he was banging his head against a brick wall and took a pub in Weymouth. Sally came home as soon as the coast was clear, and until the following March, everything was fine.”

  “At least on the surface,” said Geoff Mercer.

  “So, what changed in March?” asked Gus.

  “If the detective teams in South Wales and up the road in Westbury knew that, they might have solved the case back in 2014,” said the ACC.

  “Well, they missed something,” said Gus. “Because, so far, it’s been an everyday story of country folk living on the bread-line. There’s no mention of criminal activity, domestic abuse, alcohol-fuelled arguments, drug addiction, incest, or bestiality. What triggered this urge to travel on a train to Westbury?”

  “Nobody knows,” said the ACC. “After spending the afternoon having a couple of pints at the rugby pub in Pontyclun, Ivan came home, sat in the living room for an hour without saying a word, then got changed and walked out. The daughter came home at ten and told her mother she’d seen her Dad getting on a train to Cardiff. It was totally out of character.”

  “What did Sally do?” asked Gus.

  “She went to bed, and when there was still no sign of him by early afternoon, she called the police.”

  “Did they start an immediate search for a body?” asked Gus.

  “Why?” asked the ACC. “They couldn’t even list him as a missing person after only twelve hours. Ivan might have gone to Cardiff, got drunk and slept it off somewhere. He could creep home later and tell his wife he just needed to escape the madness for a spell. It was his turn to take a break after all.”

  “Ivan was a quiet man by the sound of things. He kept himself to himself. Am I right?”

  “Spot on,” said Geoff Mercer.

  “When things got tough, the wife walked away for a respite break. When she was ready, she returned. Ivan never altered his routine when Sally wasn’t there on the other three occasions. He continued to graft as hard as he could to provide for his family. There are many men like that crack in the end. There are two ways things go from there.”

  “Suicide, or murder-suicide,” said Geoff.

  “Exactly. Perhaps, Ivan believed that Sally Kendall had decided to move to Weymouth,” said Gus. “Tommy Griffiths had declared his love for her, and after wrestling with the problem for nine months, Sally had decided the South Coast was a better prospect. Ivan jumped on the train, planning to get off at an unscheduled stop or make for somewhere near Cardiff Central to lie on the high-speed line. What’s to say he didn’t plan on making it to Weymouth to sort out this Tommy Griffiths character?”

  “Police found Ivan Kendall’s body in a fishing lake in Westbury on Monday morning,” said the ACC. “Someone murdered him.”

  “Nobody in South Wales knew that on Sunday lunchtime,” said Gus. “In those first few hours after her phone call, they should have looked closely at the family dynamic. Was it possible Ivan Kendall was suicidal? Did Sally know where in Cardiff he might have gone? How far away is that village from the city? Ten or twelve miles?”

  Kenneth Truelove nodded.

  “A quick phone call and they could get their Cardiff colleagues to pay a visit to the likely addresses. By teatime, they should have known whether Ivan reached the capital. Then they needed to check for a body on the line to Cardiff, and CCTV at the city station to see if he travelled further afield.”

  “There’s nothing in the file that I can see to suggest they went with the suicide angle,” said the ACC. “I think they reckoned he’d turn up after a day or two.”

  “Did they check what ticket Ivan bought on Saturday evening?” asked Gus.

  “A return ticket to Cardiff Central,” said Kenneth Truelove. “I
won’t tell you what else they found on the body just yet. Run with your ideas on Ivan’s motive for his sudden late-night trip. When you dig into the case with your team, no doubt something you think of in this first pass will prove useful.”

  “Nothing ever gets wasted, Sir,” said Gus. “I now know that Ivan planned to return home. You don’t buy a return ticket if you don’t plan on using it. When we start work on the file, we’ll double-check that South Wales Police confirmed the ticket purchase with the village railway station on Sunday afternoon. You said they discovered Ivan’s body first thing on Monday morning. Who found him? I suppose it was a little old lady walking her dog. It usually is.”

  “Not this time, Freeman. A police diver went to the lakes with uniformed officers and a forensic team,” said the ACC. “DC Clive Trainer got a call to attend Westbury station just after six o’clock on Sunday morning. A train conductor had arrived for work, and when he visited the Gents toilet, he found a large quantity of dried blood in one of the stalls. A savage attack had taken place late the previous night. They found no trace of an injured man or dead body in an extensive search of the station premises. The forensic team discovered blood in the car park on the station forecourt and signs that a car had left in a hurry. The detective interviewed the conductor and learned that the only night train was the Cardiff service, which stopped at Westbury at a quarter to midnight.”

  “South Wales Police should have checked CCTV at Cardiff Central to see where Kendall went after he’d made the brief trip into the city. If he’d headed out of the station, they were looking at a different scenario. As it was, he purchased another ticket.”

  “And that was a return ticket too,” said the ACC. “That was what police found on the body in the lake. He intended to get to Westbury and return, perhaps the next day. Ivan Kendall carried a modest sum of cash in his pockets, but no mobile phone or credit cards.”

  “Surely, he had a mobile phone for his business?” asked Gus.

  “No, the Kendall’s had a landline. Alexa, the daughter, had a basic pay-as-you-go phone, not a smartphone.”

  “What did you mean by a modest amount of cash?”

  “Sixty-five pounds, plus loose change. It surprised Sally it was that much, but then she wasn’t sure how many customers Ivan called on for payment that Saturday morning. People were often at work during the week when he went to clean their windows. He was more likely to catch someone at home on a Saturday. The police didn’t think it was unusual. Window cleaners often deal in cash. As for the credit cards, with money as tight as it was in the Kendall household, Sally told them it was out of the question. Ivan didn’t want to risk getting into even more trouble.”

  “That could be another angle to pursue, Gus,” said Geoff Mercer. “Ivan Kendall could have taken a payday loan from an unscrupulous outfit.”

  “I thought they were all the same,” said Gus. “If Ivan did, then Sally didn’t appear to know.”

  “There are national companies involved in that business,” said the ACC. “But it’s not uncommon for someone local to mount a smaller-scale operation on a town’s housing estate. The interest rates still make your eyes water, but why Westbury? If Kendall were late with his payments, they would visit him at home, or in a dark alley when he was making his way back from the rugby club.”

  “Loan sharks aren’t daft enough to kill the guy either,” said Geoff. “With Kendall the main breadwinner dead, there’d be even less chance of them getting the money back. I’ll make tracks now, boss. I’ll pick you up outside at one. Bye, Gus. This case looks to be a belter, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll reserve judgement until I hear more,” said Gus.

  Geoff Mercer left the room.

  “What led this chap Trainer to search the fishing lake?” asked Gus once the door closed.

  “It was Sid Dyer, the conductor who suggest they look there. He wasn’t impressed with DC Trainer. Dyer had arrived at six o’clock, found the large pool of blood on the bathroom floor, plus splatter around the cubicle and immediately phoned the police to report a murder.”

  “That’s fair enough,” said Gus. “Even though there was no corpse, it’s hard to believe anyone could survive an attack such as that.”

  “After they searched high and low for a corpse and found nothing, Trainer wondered whether it was a waste of his time. The forensics evidence they uncovered made him think again, but by then, it was lunchtime. DC Trainer was keen to watch an international rugby match on television. So, he let the case slide for four hours thinking if there was a body close to the station and someone tripped over it, they would call 999.”

  “I imagine they’ve promoted him by now?” asked Gus.

  “He’s a DS in East Sussex,” said the ACC. “Trainer wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if I’d heard what he did. Sid Dyer was travelling home on his motorcycle later on Sunday evening and thought of likely places to dump a body. The fishing lakes were dead opposite the entrance to Station Approach. He called it in as a suggestion. The diver was on the bank at first light.”

  “Did Ivan Kendall carry no ID?” asked Gus.

  “None, but it didn’t take long to work out from the train tickets that the victim came from Pontyclun. Westbury police contacted the locals, and South Wales Police called off the hunt for the missing window cleaner. They notified Sally Kendall within the hour.”

  “How did the victim die?” asked Gus.

  “Blunt force trauma to the head,” said Kenneth Truelove. “Nothing fancy, just a sustained attack to the head, torso, and legs with a baseball bat and a crowbar, or something similar. The head injuries proved fatal. He was dead before they threw him in the lake.”

  “Two armed men against one,” said Gus. “I don’t think they meant Ivan Kendall to use those return tickets.”

  “No, but there still wasn’t a hint of what made Ivan take that cross-country journey or a clue to the identity of his killers. Kendall was a quiet, family man, despite the occasional separations.”

  “Which direction did the investigation take next?” asked Gus.

  “After scratching around looking for connections between Kendall and anyone this side of the Bristol Channel DC Trainer’s superior went to Weymouth to arrest Tommy Griffiths. They charged him with murder.”

  “That smacks of desperation,” said Gus. “It’s obvious that it didn’t stick.”

  “Tommy Griffiths had enough alibis from his busy bar to convince the detective team he was nowhere near Westbury that night. Sally told the South Wales detectives Tommy had accepted that she would never leave Ivan. Killing Ivan wouldn’t have altered her mind. She was never moving to Weymouth to be with him.”

  “How’s Sally now?” asked Gus.

  “Nobody knows,” said the ACC. “Sally thought if someone had frightened Ivan enough to make him do something so out of character, then she and her daughter could be in danger. She had no idea who might want to kill Ivan or why, but several months after the funeral, the pair disappeared. There have been no sightings of them since the end of 2014.”

  “Blimey,” said Gus. “Does that mean she was right, and they’re six feet under? Or have they moved far enough away from a small village like Pontyclun to a big city where nobody gives a passer-by a second look?”

  “You will need to look for them, I imagine?”

  “I don’t think we’ll get far without them.”

  “Good hunting,” said the ACC.

  Gus took a moment to consider. How do you find someone who goes into deep hiding because they’re afraid for their lives?

  “Blessing will be my best bet,” said Gus. “She can scour social media. Despite Alexa becoming a popular name in the cloud by the time Sally and her daughter went to ground, it won’t be hard to trace the daughter. Parents find it impossible to keep their kids away from it.”

  “And social media,” said the ACC. “Although there was never any issue with the parents, the local police knew of the daughter. Alexa didn’t commit any crimes, but a com
ment by one detective referred to her as being of easy virtue. Alexa was sixteen when her father died. The locals had seen her out with other teenagers for the previous three years. Her behaviour is unlikely to have changed in the four years since. I agree DC Umeh will find her online somewhere.”

  “You had better get ready to leave for Jimmy’s funeral, Sir,” said Gus. “Was there anything else?”

  “I’ll let you read the files for yourself, Freeman. A week after they released Tommy Griffiths, the car used by the men to transport Kendall from the station to the lake turned up on a nearby industrial estate. Blood on the nearside rear passenger window was a match for Kendall. The car got stolen from Bath on Friday. They never found the attackers, despite reconstructions on both sides of the Bristol Channel. Any leads they pursued dried up fast, and six weeks later, the case went onto cold storage.”

  “I might get something from that conductor,” said Gus. “He had more common sense than Clive Trainer. At least Sid Dyer worked out the most likely place to look for the body. Kendall would still have been in the lake if Trainer had his way.”

  “More bad news, I’m afraid,” said Kenneth Truelove, smoothing his dress uniform jacket. “Sid Dyer retired in June 2016 and died in a motorcycle accident nine months later.”

  Gus blew out his cheeks.

  Geoff Mercer was right.

  This one was a belter.

  CHAPTER 3

  Gus gathered up the files from Kenneth Truelove’s desk and followed the ACC out of the door. Geoff Mercer was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He gave Gus a wave.

  “Rick Chalmers is working with Alex Hardy,” he called out. “They’re making excellent progress. If you ask at Reception, they’ll issue you with a pass.”

  “Terrific,” said Gus, “I’ll pay them a visit in a minute.”

  “I hope you’re not rushing off without a word?” asked Vera Butler.

  Gus turned and saw Vera and Kassie Trotter, hovering a few feet away.