Copyright © 2017 by David W Robinson
Cover Photography by Adobe Stock © DiViArts
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All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United Kingdom
First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Books. 2017
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The Author
David Robinson is a Yorkshireman now living in Manchester. Driven by a huge, cynical sense of humour, he’s been a writer for over thirty years having begun with magazine articles before moving on to novels and TV scripts.
He has little to do with his life other than write, as a consequence of which his output is prodigious. Thankfully most of it is never seen by the great reading public of the world.
He has worked closely with Crooked Cat Books since 2012, when The Filey Connection, the very first Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery, was published.
Describing himself as the Doyen of Domestic Disasters he can be found blogging at www.dwrob.com and he appears frequently on video (written, produced and starring himself) dispensing his mocking humour at www.youtube.com/user/Dwrob96/videos
By the same author
The STAC Mystery series:
1. The Filey Connection
2. The I-Spy Murders
3. A Halloween Homicide
4. A Murder for Christmas
5. Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend
6. My Deadly Valentine
7. The Chocolate Egg Murders
8. The Summer Wedding Murder
9. Costa del Murder
10. Christmas Crackers
11. Death in Distribution
12. A Killing in the Family
13. A Theatrical Murder
14. Trial by Fire
15. Peril in Palmanova
The SPOOKIES Mystery series
The Haunting of Melmerby Manor
The Man in Black
My Deadly Valentine
A Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery (#6)
Prologue
A clutch of police cars, some with their blue lights still flickering in the fading, February twilight, stood outside 61 Carlton View. A uniformed officer ran yellow ‘crime scene’ tape across the bungalow’s drive, while other officers stood by, holding back the inevitable crowd of nosy neighbours, and the press pack.
Inside the bungalow, officers from CID and Scientific Support went about their work with quiet efficiency, photographing the body and the setting, dusting for prints, examining every item of furniture and fittings for the slightest trace of anyone other than the victim. A doctor crouched over the woman, taking blood, while mortuary attendants stood by, waiting for the senior investigating officer to authorise the body’s removal.
With a mixture of sadness and anger, Detective Sergeant Gemma Craddock of Sanford CID, looked down on the middle-aged woman. Laid on the bed, fully clothed, her bulging eyes staring up, skirt raised showing her stockings and sensible, department store underwear, a nylon coated washing line was wrapped tightly round her neck.
“Doc’s already said she doesn’t appear have been sexually assaulted, sir,” she muttered. “Seems to me it’s definitely the work of the Sanford Valentine Strangler.”
“You should know better, Sergeant Craddock. Never assume anything,” Chief Inspector Roy Vickers warned her.
He had been drafted in from Wakefield to head the investigation. A large, square-shouldered, no-nonsense man with over twenty years’ service, he had an enviable arrest record, and Gemma had no doubt that he had seen much worse than this.
“Third year on the trot, Sergeant,” he said. “Fiona Temple, two years ago, Thelma Warburton last year and now…” Vickers checked Gemma’s notes. “Bridget Ackroyd.”
“All on or around Valentine’s Day, too,” Gemma said. She picked up the card and paper flower next to it. “Same MO as the last two. Valentine card and paper flower on the mantelpiece.” When she looked up to Vickers, her eyes were filled with pleading. “Sanford’s a small town, sir. I don’t think we’ve ever had a serial killer before.”
“Precisely why I’ve been called in,” Vickers reassured her. “No offence, but we’re better equipped to handle them in Wakefield.” He chewed his lip. “Trouble is, serial killers don’t usually wait twelve months between murders. Normally it’s a matter of a few weeks or months.” With a sigh, he shrugged his overcoat tighter about his shoulders. “Where are you up to?”
“Usual stuff, sir. Our people are already talking to the neighbours and trying to trace any family. Like the others, she lived alone.”
“Widowed?”
“Divorced, sir. We’ll be checking the ex-husband, but the whisper is he’s working away, somewhere.”
He led the way out into the dark street where Gemma lit a cigarette and blew angry smoke into the coming night.
“The usual routine, sir?”
Vickers nodded. “You’re already on with neighbours and family and you know the form. I want the full ABC of her movements over the last few days, and those of anyone close to her, anyone who could be considered a likely suspect. Check for connections between the dead women. Get it all logged, make sure you keep me up to date with all developments, not just those you consider important.”
“Yes, sir.”
Vickers looked down his nose at her. “And keep that bloody uncle of yours out of it.”
Gemma smiled. “I think Uncle Joe is too busy with the Lazy Luncheonette and the Sanford 3rd Age Club.”
Chapter One
“And don’t burn the bloody toast this morning,” one of the Sanford Brewery dray men grumbled.
Joe Murray took his money, rang it up in the till, and sorted out change. Handing it over, he glared. “How long have you been a dray man? Twenty years?”
“Give or take.”
“Right. I don’t tell you how to deliver barrels of beer, do I? So don’t come in here telling me how to cook breakfast. Now bugger off so I can serve your mates.”
The dray man wandered away chuntering to himself, and the next one arrived at the front of the queue. “Full English, Joe, and no toast. I’m not in the mood for your tantrums this morning.”
Joe scribbled the order, passed it through the hatch to the kitchen, and poured tea. “If you or any of your mates don’t like the service at the Lazy Luncheonette, go somewhere else.”
The driver took his tea and handed over the money. “I’d miss the ambience, Joe, the pleasure of seeing your ugly mug every morning.”
Seven thirty on a bitterly cold Monday morning in mid-February, and the Lazy Luncheonette was at its busiest. Many of the café’s eighty seats were taken, a line of drivers, most of them brewery employees, queued almost back to the door where Joe had pinned up a large, handwritten notice reading, WIPE YOUR FEET. It was an attempt to keep the ice and snow of the outside world off the floor tiles where they would present a threat to staff and customers.
Sheila Riley, one of Joe’s employees, and coincidentally, one of his best friends, had warned him it was too blunt. Joe, more liverish than usual, would not hear any criticism.
“It’s not like I’m asking them to wear a collar and tie, is it? This is the Lazy Luncheonette, not the Ritz.”
Outside, in the world men called real, t
he traffic backed up on Doncaster Road, the inclement weather exacerbated the usual morning jam and aggravated drivers’ tempers. A turgid, leaden sky threatened more snow and chaos which were a part of a Great British winter. It could only get worse.
“Snow this late in February is usually gone in a day or two,” Brenda Jump had said when it first appeared the previous Friday.
“So much for your weather forecasting,” Joe had grumbled when she arrived for work this morning.
Brenda, his other best friend, doubled up as kitchen assistant to Lee, the cook, Joe’s nephew. The system was tried and tested, and it worked. Behind the till, Joe whined and complained, while dishing out tea and taking money, Brenda and Lee prepared the meals, and Sheila could be seen dancing round the café delivering the orders. When he had a moment to spare, Joe would help her, and between them they cleared up the detritus of finished meals, passing the crockery back to the kitchen for washing up. It was hard work, but as a team they had it mastered and, when they got to the end of the day, even for grumpy Joe, there was satisfaction in a job well done.
The dray men of Sanford Breweries were his biggest and most loyal customers, perfectly at home with his irritation and outspoken rudeness, and they were often at pains to aggravate him further. It was almost as if his annoyance helped them cope with their own lives, persuading them that there really were others worse off than themselves.
“Think about it, Joe,” Sheila had once said when in one of her teasing moods, “You serve as a horrible example and inspire other people to be better tempered and more polite than you.”
“Polite,” he had retorted, “doesn’t get the job done.”
If the weather outside was as irritable as Joe, the interior was kept warm by the crush of bodies feeding, and in the kitchen by the glow of ovens and hobs working at full capacity. But Joe’s ire had an additional edge to it this morning, and Sheila was at a loss to understand why. And when she asked, she got short shrift.
“Just get on with feeding the five thousand,” Joe snapped.
“He’s narky because he hasn’t got a date for Wednesday,” Brenda called out from the kitchen.
The face on the driver Joe was serving split into a broad smile. “You’re looking for a Valentine, Joe? Take my missus… please.”
“One more word outta you and I’ll call your missus and tell her what you get up to first thing on a morning.”
“She won’t care, as long as I’m not up to it with her.”
“Just sod off,” Joe said, handing over change. He turned on his staff. “And you lot, shut it and get on with what you’re supposed to be doing.”
With two full breakfasts and two bacon sandwiches perched precariously on her arm, Sheila danced past him. “At your age you should know better. You’re behaving like a teenager.”
“For your information, I am not in a bad mood because of Wednesday night.”
“No. He’s just in a worse mood than normal,” Brenda called out. “Sheila, why don’t you go as Joe’s Valentine, and calm him down a bit?”
“I am not going as Joe’s Valentine,” Sheila replied haughtily. “Nothing personal, Joe, but I don’t need a Valentine at all.”
“So what’s this Valentine thing all about, Joe?” asked the next dray man in the queue.
“The 3rd Age Club,” Joe replied. “The barmpots wanted a night out for Valentine’s, so we’re booked into Churchill’s, the big restaurant on Wakefield Road. Dinner and dance. Thirty quid a head.”
“Churchill’s eh?” asked the dray man. “Do they do a decent bacon butty there?”
Joe frowned. “I should think so. Why?”
“I was just thinking, I might get served a bit quicker if I went there for breakfast.”
The frown wrinkling Joe’s brow turned to a mean scowl. “Any more lip out of you and I’ll throw you to Churchill’s.” He slammed a beaker of tea before the customer. “And you know where I’ll shove the tea, don’t you?”
***
Sat in the mess room, converted temporarily to a briefing room, Gemma had never felt so out of place in her own station.
All her uniformed colleagues were there, and so were the two CID men she supervised, but the rest were CID and Scientific Support officers from Wakefield and Leeds, brought in by Vickers to further the Sanford Valentine Strangler inquiry.
“All right, people, listen up,” Vickers called out, bringing the briefing to order. “First off, two new faces for you. Des Kibble is our specialist dab man.”
At the rear of the room a powerfully built, dark-haired officer stood up. His tanned features scowling, he nodded a greeting to the assembly.
“Des may be new to Sanford, but he’s been with us a long time, and he’s the best fingerprint officer in the business,” Vickers went on. “He’ll be going over the old case files to check on the fingerprint records and see if he can come up with anything new. The next new face is Paul Ingleton.”
The lean-built, straw-haired man who stood up was a good deal taller than Kibble, and he smiled a friendly greeting at his new colleagues.
“Paul is our forensic photographer. Ex-army, been on the force about seven years, joined us from Bradford about five years ago and, like Des, he’s the top man in his field. He, too, will be going over the old case files to see if he can highlight anything.”
Vickers consulted his notes, then faced his team again. “In two days it will be Valentine’s, Night. It’s a year since the murder of Bridget Ackroyd, and we’ve made no progress. Whoever killed her, and the other two women in the years before Bridget, is still at large. So let’s just remind ourselves of what we do know.”
Vickers turned to the pictures on the wall, and pointed at the first, an enlarged image of a middle-aged, dark-haired woman.
“Fiona Temple. Aged fifty-one, divorcee. Lived alone in a terraced house on Leeds Road. Found dead in her bedroom on the morning of 15th February, three years ago. Her daughter-in-law had called on her, got no answer and became worried because Fiona had a heart problem, so she called the paramedics and ourselves. We broke in and found her laid on the bed. Her skirt was pushed up to the waist so her underwear was on view. However, post mortem revealed no sexual abuse. No sign of a struggle, nothing apparently missing from the house, purse intact, with about fifty pounds, plus cards, in it. Ligature was two bootlaces knotted together. They could have been bought from anywhere. There were traces of other people in the house, including family members, but nothing definitive, nothing that could lead us to a suspect. The shoe laces could have belonged to Fiona or the killer, we have no way of knowing, but Scientific Support speculated that she may have been killed elsewhere and her body brought home. Inquiry still open, but no action since last year, and still no clue to the killer’s identity. Woman’s husband returned from working in the Middle East a few months later, but he was never a suspect. He was in Dubai the night she died, and had been there for over a year. Alongside the bed we found a simple Valentine Card and a paper flower; a red rose. The card had a handwritten message which read ‘Thank you, my love’. It was written in block capitals. We know the card could have been bought at any one of a dozen different outlets in Sanford, and hundreds of shops in Leeds or Wakefield. No forensic on the card at all.”
Vickers moved on to the next photograph; a woman in her mid fifties, her hair white, features scowling into the camera.
“Victim number two. Thelma Warburton, aged fifty-six. Another divorcee. Her body was found on the morning of 19th February, the year before last, when neighbours became concerned after they hadn’t seen her for several days. Post mortem estimated she had been dead for four days before she was discovered. Like Fiona, Thelma was found at her own home, on Willington Street. She was laid on her bed, fully clothed, but with her skirt pushed up to reveal her underwear. No sexual interference. The ligature was a length of twine, the stuff you can buy at the newsagents. Her family were not local, neither was her husband. Although she was born here in Sanford, she’d lived much of h
er life in Birmingham, moving back up here only after her divorce, five years prior to her death. Her two daughters and one son all live in the West Midlands, as does her ex-husband. All were accounted for on the night she died. Once again, there was little in the way of forensic, and once again we had a Valentine card with the same handwritten message as Fiona’s. Analysis confirmed it was written by the same hand. This time the flower was purple.”
Vickers moved on yet again.
“On 16th February last year, the third victim was found at her bungalow in Carlton View. Again, neighbours were worried about her. One of them looked through the back windows, saw Bridget and called us in. Exactly the same as the other two right down to her skirt pushed up, and the Valentine card with the handwritten message in the same block capitals, written by the same hand. This paper flower, like the first one, was red. Bridget was fifty-four and divorced. Ex-husband, an engineer of some kind, working in the Far East at the time of her death, and had been for three months. Forensic turned up a lot of evidence, most of it useless, yet again. Ligature this time was a washing line, the kind with a polymer covering, the kind you can buy anywhere.”
Vickers turned from the board. “Three years, three murders and we’ve got nowhere. With forty-eight hours to go to Valentine’s Night, we need the women of Sanford to be warned and vigilant. So our first task is to call on the pubs, clubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and get them to carry this poster on our behalf.”
He held up an A4 sized poster, the headline written in bold, red capitals: MURDER.
Under the heading were three small images of the women and beneath that a warning in bold type.
These women were murdered on or about Valentine’s Night. How well do you know your Valentine date? Take care. If you do not know your partner well, ensure you are not alone with him on or after the Valentine Night celebrations.
My Deadly Valentine Page 1
