“And I’m not asking about the kissing,” Brenda pressed. “I’m interested in the…”
“I think that’s enough, Brenda,” Sheila interrupted. “Joe is entitled to some secrets. Aren’t you, dear?”
“Course I am. What I will tell you is I’ll be seeing Letty again on Saturday night.”
Brenda’s face lit up. “At the Miner’s Arms? I can nag her to tell me how good you are, in that case.”
“Not at the Miner’s Arms,” Joe retorted. “Why the hell would I take a classy lady like Letty Hill to the Miner’s Arms on a Saturday night? We’re thinking of going through to Leeds for a film and meal after.”
Brenda chuckled. “Last Tango in Pontefract?”
Sheila, too, tittered. “Belle de Dewsbury?”
“You can laugh.” Joe took out his tobacco tin and prepared a cigarette. “Anyway, how did you get on after Churchill’s?”
“Brenda and George Robson took me home in their taxi,” Sheila said, “and I went straight to bed… alone, of course. As I prefer it.”
“Then George and I went back to his place and I showed him how to tidy up.”
Joe grinned. “I’ll bet that took all night, too.” He yawned. “Better go for a smoke before the lunchtime rush. It’s enough leaving you lot in charge for a whole day. I’ll not make a habit of it.”
Sheila scowled at him. “We can cope, Joe. We won’t bankrupt you. We’re not dangerous, or anything.”
The clatter of pans and at least two plates hitting the kitchen floor, reached their ears, followed by Lee’s cry of, “Aw, jiminy.”
“I wish he’d learn to swear like a proper Yorkshireman.” Joe stared at the two women. “You were saying?”
“That’s Lee,” Sheila reminded him. “He’s like that even when you’re here, and it’s clumsiness, not dangerous. When it comes to running this café, Joe, you’re the best. When it comes to managing your staff – us – you’re the absolute pits. You never learned how to delegate.”
“When you’re not here…” Brenda began, only to be cut off by the doorbell, and the entry of Gemma and Chief Inspector Vickers.
Joe greeted them with a smile of relief. “Hello, Gemma. And look who it isn’t. How are you, Vickers? Want some tea?” he rose from his seat.
Grim-faced, Vickers said nothing but nodded to Gemma.
“No thanks, Uncle Joe. We want to ask you a few questions. Well, one question really.”
Puzzled, Joe invited, “Ask away.”
“Do you know a woman named Letitia Hill?
Joe let out an irritable sigh. “Why can’t everyone mind their own business when it comes to me and Letty? What about her?”
In deference to the two women present, Gemma retreated slightly. “Can you tell us where you were last night between, say, ten o’clock and three this morning?”
Joe’s grumpiness turned to full blown suspicion. “At ten, I was in front of the TV watching the news. By half past eleven I was in bed, where I stayed until about five this morning.”
Gemma looked to her superior, and it occurred to Joe just how uncomfortable his niece appeared. She looked as if she wanted Vickers to take over.
Vickers did not. Instead, he nodded to Gemma again.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Joe, but you’ll have to come with us to the station.”
“Like hell. I have a business to run here.”
“You either come with us, Murray, or you’ll be arrested,” Vickers assured him.
Joe rose to the challenge. “On what charge?”
“No charge, merely suspicion.”
“Of what?”
“Murder.”
Joe’s jaw dropped and the colour drained from his tanned face. Sheila and Brenda snapped their heads round to face the chief inspector, and even Lee appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“What?”
“Letty Hill was found dead at her bungalow, this morning,” Gemma said. “She’d been strangled.”
Joe flopped into his seat opposite Sheila and Brenda. “I… er… Oh, bloody hell.”
“We need to speak to you, Uncle Joe, if only to eliminate you from our inquiries.”
Joe responded only sluggishly to his niece. “What? Oh. Yes. Obviously. Of course you do.” He shook his head vigorously, clearing his mind, concentrating his wits. “But surely you can speak to me here?”
“It’s a formal interview, Murray,” Vickers replied. “It will be recorded. We’ll need fingerprints and a DNA sample for comparison purposes. It has to be done at the station.”
Joe glowered. “Sod off, Vickers. You know damn well I didn’t kill her.”
“There is a difference between what I may know intellectually and what I know for a fact,” the chief inspector retorted. “My superiors and the courts will not take my opinions or my knowledge of you into account. Now, you either come with us voluntarily, or I will insist that Sergeant Craddock arrest you. And I don’t care whether she’s your niece or not. It’s your choice.”
Sheila again reached across the table and took Joe’s hand. “You’re obviously upset, Joe, but you should go with them. Would you like one of us to come along?”
Joe shook his head. “I need you two to run the café while I tear them to pieces.” Heaving in a deep breath, he stood up. “One condition, Vickers. I come in my own car. I’m not forking out for a taxi back from Gale Street.”
Vickers smirked in triumph. “As long as you don’t try to do a runner.”
***
Joe was perfectly accustomed to the small, cramped interview rooms at Sanford Police Station, or any police station, come to that, but in the past he had sat on the other side of the table, with the police, helping them with their inquiries.
But once the police had taken his fingerprints and allowed a DNA swab, he found it disconcerting to face Vickers and Gemma in the tiny room while they announced themselves to the recording devices.
On the ten minute drive from Doncaster Road, his thoughts had been centred around Letty, their evening out on Wednesday, and its aftermath.
Joe was too old to believe in love at first sight, but their relationship had got off to the most promising of starts. Now it was not to be, and Joe, for all that he had only known her for a few days, took it personally.
Parking his car on the multi-storey in Sanford High Street, he had made his way quickly through the crowds of shoppers into the backstreets and arrived at the redbrick, late nineteenth-century Police Station only a few minutes after Vickers and Gemma, from where they had hustled him through to the interview room. His mind was burdened with questions and he knew he would get no answers until Vickers was satisfied that Joe had successfully accounted for himself.
And yet he had not rehearsed any responses, as the police discovered when, after he had identified himself to the recording device, and refused legal counsel, they repeated the questions he had been asked back at the Lazy Luncheonette, and they moved onto deeper inquiries.
“How long had you known Mrs Hill, Mr Murray?” Gemma asked, maintaining a formality as uncomfortable for her as it was irritating for Joe.
“I met her at the end of January, when she joined the 3rd Age Club. Sheila knew her – slightly – and canvassed her to join the club.”
Vickers had Letty’s diary open in front of him. “We did note that you’d only known her a couple of weeks when you asked her for a date on Valentine’s Night. Did you think it a little odd when she accepted?”
“Not especially. I met her, I liked her, I found the bottle to ask – well, to be honest, Brenda found the bottle to ask on my behalf, and Letty accepted. It’s not so odd when you think about it. At our age, you don’t want to be hanging around too long.”
“Not like you to be dating women, is it?” Gemma asked.
“What do you think I’m made of, girl? I’ve been on my own for ten years now. Ever since your Aunt Alison and I split up. I may be no Romeo, but I’m not completely…”
Joe trailed off as Vickers reached across to th
e recorder.
“This recording paused at…” Vickers interrupted, checking his watch, “… Eleven thirty one.” He paused the machines. “Sergeant Craddock, I’d like you to leave and send in Constable Brooks to take your place.” He eyed Joe. “Your uncle has just identified you as his niece.”
Joe fumed. “Will you get the pole out of your backside, Vickers? You know damn well I had nothing to do with Letty’s murder, so this is no more than a bloody formality.”
Gathering her belongings, Gemma explained, “There are procedures, Uncle Joe…”
“I don’t give a bugger about your procedures. While you are wasting my time, you’re also leaving the real killer out there, free to murder some other poor woman. Now for God’s sake, sit down and let’s get on with it.”
Both officers were taken aback with his vehemence.
“I realise this situation is unnerving for you, Murray—” Vickers began, only to be cut off by Joe.
“I am not nervous. I’m bloody annoyed. Letty and I had had one date and we’d planned a second. We were in the process of getting to know each other and now she’s dead and it’s getting to me because I’ll never get to know her properly.”
It seemed to Joe that most of his words went over Vickers’s head. “Getting to know her. After just one date?”
“Yes? And?”
“Would you repeat that on tape?”
Joe let out a frustrated sigh. “There you go again. For the last time, I did not kill her. And I’ll repeat everything in open court if it’ll make you get your finger out and look for the real killer.”
Vickers reached for the recording machine again with the instruction, “Try not to identify Sergeant Craddock as your niece again.”
With the machine running, Vickers asked the pertinent questions and Joe told them of the evening out at Churchill’s.
“Did you go to Mrs Hill’s last night with the intention of pressing her for another date?” the chief inspector asked at length.
“That’s a leading question or I never heard one,” Joe complained. “If I say, ‘no’, you might well ask why did I go there, then. So let me make it clear. I did not go anywhere near Letty’s place last night. I haven’t seen her since I left, about one o’clock yesterday. And we had already planned to meet again on Saturday.”
“But you have been to the bungalow before, Mr Murray?” Gemma asked.
“Yes. I spent the night there on Wednesday.”
“So we will find traces of you in there?”
“I should think so.”
Vickers frowned. “Why did you stay the night?”
Joe fumed. “Because she wanted me to paper the hall ceiling. Why do you think I stayed, you idiot? She invited me.”
“You pressured her.”
Joe shook his head and then remembered the recording. “No I did not. In fact, I was about to let her get out of the taxi when she asked me in for coffee. Half an hour after that, I was about to leave, when she practically dragged me into her bed. Now what the hell do you take me for, Vickers?”
“You don’t want to know the answer to that.” Vickers produced the Valentine card and laid it on the table. Allowing Joe to study the front, he then opened it while Gemma reported the actions for the benefit of the recording. “Do you recognise this?”
“Yes.” Joe made no move to pick it up. “I bought it for Letty on Sanford market on Wednesday afternoon.”
“And you wrote the greeting on the inside?”
“Yes.” Joe aimed a bony finger at the bottom line. “I didn’t write that, though. It’s not even in the same colour pen I used.”
“We’d noticed. When did you give her the card?”
“Wednesday. At Churchill’s.”
“When did you give her the paper flower?”
Joe’s brow knitted. “What paper flower?”
Gemma produced the yellow paper flower. “This was on the mantelpiece, next to the card, Mr Murray.” Gemma explained.
Joe shook his head. “Nothing to do with me. I gave her a real flower. A red rose. And I gave her that in Churchill’s, too. Are you really this gormless, Vickers? Didn’t you take my advice from Wakefield when I told you to find a bit on the side?”
“Now listen—”
“I just said, I gave her the card and a red rose while we were at Churchill’s and that is all. We were there for Valentine’s Day. What did you think I’d do? Send her a bill for the restaurant? She put the damn thing on her fireplace, and stuck the flower in a vase, but there was no paper flower when I left.” He fell quiet for a moment, his face lined with pain. “Maybe she wasn’t as impressed with me as I thought. Maybe she had someone else waiting in the wings.”
“And that’s why you strangled her?”
His thoughts still of Letty, Joe did not rise to Vickers’s bait but shook his head. “No. She was fine when I left on Thursday.”
After allowing a few moments of silence, Vickers tossed his pen on the table and leaned back in his seat, his arm draped casually over the high, chair back. “Have sex with her?”
The question only ignited Joe’s anger again. “You mind your own bloody business, Vickers. Concentrate on who might have strangled her, not my private life…” Awareness slipped through his mind. His anger faded and a broad, cynical smile spread across his crinkled features. “Oh, I get it now. This is a Sanford Valentine Strangler crime, isn’t it?” A blush came to Vickers’s face, and Joe became more serious, his eyes burning in to them. “This nutter has struck again, hasn’t he? How many is it now? Three? Four? One a year for the last how many years? And you think it’s me?” He laughed harshly, but there was no humour in the bark. “I knew you were desperate for suspects, Vickers, but I didn’t know you were that hard up. According to the papers, the guy rapes them before he kills them. That means you have tons of DNA. Go ahead and check mine against it all. You’ll find it doesn’t match.”
“The newspapers don’t always get it right,” Vickers countered. “You’re right, of course. The murder of Mrs Hill has all the hallmarks of the Sanford Valentine Strangler, but they’re not difficult to mimic. But, as always, we withhold certain facts from the media; facts which only the guilty person would know.” He leaned forward and jabbed a large index finger into the table top. “A lack of body fluids doesn’t prove your innocence, Murray.”
Joe puzzled over the admission for a moment before the answer occurred to him. “So he doesn’t have sex with them before he kills them. Either that or he uses a condom.” He was speaking as much to himself as the two officers. “In that case, you still find traces of the lubricant in her, er… Well, you know what I mean. That means these are not sex killings, unless he’s getting off in some strange way with it.” His eyes homed in on Vickers. “Is that it?”
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
“Gar.” Joe waved a dismissive hand at the chief inspector. “Don’t talk so bloody soft, man. You know it isn’t me. And as far as I’m concerned, if you’ve no more questions to ask, then I’m going. Someone has to find out who killed these women.”
Vickers snapped off the recorders. “You will mind your own business.”
Feeling himself with a measure of control, Joe smiled and shook his head. “You’re joking, aren’t you? You drag me away from my livelihood, ask me these idiot questions, most of ’em designed to trap me into some kind of admission, and then, when you admit defeat, you tell me to keep out of it. You should try running a workman’s café for a month or two, Vickers. It won’t help your investigative skills, but at least you’d get a taste of real life.”
***
With Joe gone, Vickers grumbled, “One of these days…”
Gemma rounded on him. “Sir, with all due respect, you do not come to Sanford and hassle a man like Joe Murray the way you just did.”
“Be careful, Sergeant.”
“No, sir, I will not be careful. And if I have to, I’ll go to the Chief Superintendent with this. I may only be a sergeant, but I
am the senior CID officer in Sanford, and I know these people. You tackle a man like Joe, and they will rally round him. He’s cranky, ill-tempered, outspoken and tight-fisted, but he’s not universally disliked. Just the opposite, in fact. We need the public’s co-operation in this investigation, and we both know my Uncle Joe wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone murder middle-aged women.”
Vickers glowered at her. “You shouldn’t even be involved in this investigation, Craddock. Unfortunately, as you’ve just pointed out, you’re the senior officer on the ground in Sanford, and we need your local knowledge. But just remember your duty. It comes before family and friends. Joe Murray is a suspect. He was one of the last people to see Letty Hill alive, and he’s just admitted he spent the night with her. He is a suspect and he remains one until I say otherwise.”
Gemma struggled to rein in her temper. “He’ll start shoving his nose in. If only to clear his name. It’s not always good news when Joe investigates. There are times when he does more harm than good, but equally, there are those times when he comes up with vital information. You should know. He did it to you in Wakefield, the year before last. Now, thanks to your heavy boots, whatever he learns, he’ll keep to himself.”
“This is your last warning, Sergeant. If you’re so sure of his innocence, then get out there and prove it.”
Gemma gathered together her belongings. “Thank you, sir. I’ll do just that.”
Chapter Four
The Lazy Luncheonette was in the deepest throes of the lunchtime rush when Joe got back.
Changing quickly into his whites, he relieved Sheila at the counter, freeing her to deliver the orders, and as they coped with the queues, he tried, as best he could, to bring his companions up to date, but it was after two, with the last of the day’s meal served, and custom quietening down, before he could properly tell them the full tale.
They hung on his every word. Even Lee, who finished at two and normally went straight home, stayed behind to listen.
When he had told them everything, Joe looked fondly on his nephew. “You’re a good lad, Lee, and I need you to do me a favour, if you will. I need you to bring Cheryl in, if she’s not busy with anything else, to cover for the next few days.”
My Deadly Valentine Page 4
