“You’re not going to prison are you, Uncle Joe?”
Joe’s fondness almost evaporated in the face of his nephew’s dim-wittedness. “No, boy, I am not going to prison, but Chief Inspector Vickers will try his damndest to make sure I do. But to stay out of prison means I’m gonna have to devote a lot of time to investigating this business, and that means I’ll be AWOL for much of the coming week. If Cheryl could cover, I’d be grateful.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Lee said with a broad smile. “She’ll get her mum to look after Danny. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
With Lee gone, Joe, Sheila and Brenda mulled over the worrying events.
“That poor woman,” Brenda said. “The fourth now. It’s time they found this pervert and locked him away.”
Joe hedged his words. “Listen, Brenda, don’t take this the wrong way, but you should be careful. You’re, er, slightly freer with your… favours, let’s say, than Sheila and me. Just be careful who you’re dating.”
Brenda smiled weakly. “I’m not worried, Joe. He only kills on Valentine’s Night, so I’m safe for another year.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Joe said. “Even Vickers admits it’s odd for a serial killer to go a whole year at a time without another victim.”
“And talking of Vickers, he doesn’t seriously suspect you, does he?” Sheila asked as she and Brenda got up and began work on cleaning down.
Joe shook his head and gulped down a mouthful of tea as the next customer walked in. Serving the woman with a cup of tea and a slice of Lee’s homemade apple pie, Joe replied to Sheila.
“No, I don’t think he does. I think he’s still annoyed at the Wakefield jewellery affair when I told him a few home truths, then pinned the culprit down before him.”
“I thought you came out of that, sort of, friendly,” Brenda said.
Joe dropped the customer’s five-pound note in the till, and gave her change. “There you go, luv. Enjoy.” Replying, to Brenda, he went on, “Vickers thanked me for my help, but it was grudging. In fact, he described it more as interference. It would give him great pleasure to see me charged with something.”
The local news appeared on the wall-mounted, flat screen TV. Sheila reached for the remote and turned up the volume.
“Police in Sanford have questioned a man on the death of fifty-three-year-old Letitia Hill. Joseph Murray, a businessman, was questioned at Sanford Police station this morning. Chief Inspector Roy Vickers of West Yorkshire CID said no charges were brought, and Mr Murray was later released pending further inquiries. Mrs Hill, a widow, is believed to be the fourth victim of the Sanford Valentine Strangler.”
While the newscaster moved onto other local stories, Sheila turned the volume down again. The woman customer, who had watched the report, stood and left, her pie and tea untouched. Behind the counter, his face vermillion with rage, Joe snatched up his mobile and called the police station.
“It’s Joe Murray. Put me through to Vickers,” he barked.
“I’m sorry, Mr Murray, but I don’t know if he’ll—”
“Tell him if he doesn’t speak to me now, I’ll go to the press and tell them exactly who made him look a fool in Wakefield the year before last.”
“Hold on a minute, sir.”
Waiting to be connected, Joe paced furiously behind the counter. Two workmen entered. Brenda, responding to years of automatism, left her cleaning and joined Joe to serve them, while Joe ducked into the kitchen, still bubbling angrily.
“Chief Inspector Vickers.”
“Vickers, it’s Joe Murray. What the hell are you playing at bandying my name all over the TV?”
“I was reporting to the press, Murray. It’s standard procedure.”
“It’s already costing me business,” Joe shouted. “And you didn’t have to name me.”
“Joe in a spot of bother is he, Brenda?” one of the workmen asked.
She shushed him as she passed over his beaker of tea. “You know Joe. He’ll sort it.”
On the telephone, Vickers remained calm in the face of Joe’s onslaught. “No one has accused you of anything, Murray. We’ve simply given out a statement saying you’ve been questioned. If your customers don’t like being served by a suspect in a murder inquiry, that’s not my fault.”
“We’ll see what my lawyers have to say about that when I work out the damage you’re doing. You know damn well it isn’t me. You had no business naming me.”
“Tell it to the Chief Constable.”
“I will. Freddie Wainman happens to be an old friend.”
“I mean the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, not the Assistant Chief Constable of North Yorkshire.”
“They all pee in the same pot,” Joe retorted, “and by the time I’ve done, the pot they’re aiming at will be on your head.”
“Just calm down,” Vickers advised. “I’m sending your niece to see you.”
“And getting Gemma to shut me up won’t work.”
“I’m not trying to shut you up,” Vickers replied. “You’ll see why I’ve sent her when she gets there.”
“She’d better be carrying a large cheque,” Joe snapped, and cut the call off.
As he came back into the café, where Brenda and Sheila were once more engaged in the cleaning down, one of the two workmen grinned at him. “What’s up, Joe? Do they think you’re the Valentine Strangler?”
“I’ve been questioned on it,” Joe grumbled.
The other workman gaped. “You’re joking.”
“No I’m not bloody joking. Are you gonna walk out, too?”
The first workman smiled again and held his beaker forward. “No, but would you mind tasting my tea… just to be sure.”
From across the café, Brenda laughed. “Idiot. The Valentine Strangler strangles his victims. He doesn’t poison them.”
“Sod off all of you,” Joe snapped and stormed out into the street where he could enjoy a cigarette.
The day was fresh, but bitterly cold, in direct contrast to Joe’s boiling mood. A stiff, easterly wind drove broken cloud across a volatile sky, occasional patches of sunshine showing through, fighting against the icy chill.
Barely noticing the wind, he paced back and forth across the front of his premises, puffing irritably on his hand-rolled cigarette, muttering incoherently to himself at the perceived injustice of the morning’s events, occasionally pausing to reflect on the wonderful night he had enjoyed with Letty, and the terrible swiftness with which her life had been taken. And if his thoughts, as bitter as the east wind whipping the buildings of Britannia Parade, were of the solitary life he faced after such a short relationship, it did not take long for them to settle on Letty, and the sorrow for her life lost.
“Fifty-three is no age to die,” he grumbled.
Crushing out his cigarette, he went back into the café as the two workmen left, still pulling his leg, and pitched in to help Sheila and Brenda with the daily cleaning. Muttering mutinously to himself, his anger gave added power to his scrubbing. Not trusting himself to remain civil, he left the few customers who came in to his companions.
By three thirty, with the cleaning done, they were back at table five, enjoying a last cup of tea, when Gemma entered carrying her briefcase.
Brenda poured Gemma a cup of tea. “Thank God you’re here. He’s been like a bear with a sore doodah ever since he came back from the police station this morning.”
“That bloody Vickers,” Joe growled. “Naming me like that.”
“Calm down, Uncle Joe. Mr Vickers did not do anything against the law or the rules. We’re investigating a murder, you were one of the last people to see Mrs Hill alive, and there are traces of you all over her house. We had to speak to you.”
“You didn’t have to broadcast it, though, did you?” Joe protested. “Vickers did it on purpose.”
Gemma sighed. “Nobody accused you of anything, Uncle Joe.”
“I’m losing custom,” he cried.
“One person walk
ed out,” Sheila said.
“Really?”
“Yes,” Brenda said. “But she’d paid for her tea and cake and she didn’t ask for her money back.”
“And the cake went back in the chiller,” Sheila told Gemma.
Joe glowered “I did not put that apple pie back in the cold cupboard.”
“I know you didn’t,” Sheila replied. “Brenda did.”
Joe glanced sharply at Brenda.
“She hadn’t touched it,” Brenda argued, “and I wasn’t about to see good food go to waste.”
Joe shook his head. “Between you and Vickers, you’ll put me out of business.” He stood up. “I’m going for another smoke.”
“No, stay there, Uncle Joe,” Gemma insisted. “And please calm down. You’ll have a heart attack the way you’re going on.”
“That would bugger up Vickers, wouldn’t it? He’d have to look for a proper suspect then.”
Gemma reached into her briefcase and from it took a buff folder. “For your information, Chief Inspector Vickers sent me to you. I don’t know whether he’s just winding you up with this TV business, but he’s not a complete fool. He knows how observant you are, and we need your powers of observation.”
“So I can sell myself down the river? Go back to Gale Street, Gemma, and tell Vickers to shove it.”
“Just shut up and listen,” Gemma said, venting her frustration through gritted teeth. Pausing a moment to calm down, she went on, “We know you were at Letty’s all night on Wednesday. You told us so.”
Brenda grinned. “Caught out again, Joe. Don’t you know you’ll never be able to hide from me?”
“Please, Mrs Jump. I’m gonna be here all night at this rate.” Switching her attention back to Joe, Gemma explained, “Like I said, we’ve found traces of you all over the house, including the bedroom, bathroom and living room. We can’t let you back in there, but Vickers has asked me to show you photographs from the place so that you can tell us if there’s anything that doesn’t tally with your memory.” A look of caution entered her eyes. “You may find some of these pictures, er, disturbing.”
“I’ve seen bodies before,” Joe retorted. “Real ones, not just photographs. Come on. Show me.”
He was wrong. The first photograph sent a shockwave of distress through him. It was an image of Letty laid flat on her back, her skirt pushed up, empty eyes staring at the ceiling, black cord wrapped around her neck. Joe bit his lip and look away, grimacing his anger and grief.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Joe,” Gemma said. “I must ask you to look at the photograph. Tell me if there is anything not right.”
“For God’s sake…”
“Please.”
Joe forced himself to look again.
“He doesn’t know the colour of her knickers, I can tell you that,” Brenda joked, oblivious to Joe’s pain.
His anger boiled over again. “When I got into bed with her, she wasn’t wearing any.” He put the photograph down and pushed it to Brenda, turning it so she could see it the right way up.
Brenda stared. The colour drained from her cheeks, and any humour she had felt left her shocked face. “Oh, dear God.” Tears sparkled in her eye. “I’m… I’m sorry, Joe. I never realised… oh dear.” She reached into the pocket of her tabard, seeking a tissue.
Made of slightly sterner stuff, Sheila, too, looked at the large image, her features set in stone. She patted Brenda’s arm.
“Anything, Uncle Joe?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “I just wasn’t taking much notice. You know. You don’t, do you? We’d had a few beers, she invited me in for a nightcap, one thing led to another, and… well you know. All I can tell you, Gemma, is what I told you at the station. She was fine when I left her yesterday morning.”
Gemma fished into her folder again, and drew out several large prints of the living room, bedroom, and one of the kitchen showing the stainless steel sink, a cup and saucer racked up on the drainer. “Take a look at these. See if anything comes to mind.”
Joe glanced, looked closer, then shook his head. “I don’t have a photographic memory, Gemma. Sure we were in the living room for a while before… And I used the bathroom, and the kitchen, but I just wasn’t taking much notice of anything. What about the ligature?”
“Hmm, curious,” Gemma admitted. “It’s a length of cord. We think it comes from a retractable dog leash. You know the kind of thing. They’re usually five metres long, and the cord extends as the dog moves away, then rewinds into the handle when it comes back to you. This is a heavy duty one, usually used for large dogs. The killer cut about a metre of the cord off, but here’s an oddity. It’s been washed.”
Sheila’s eyebrows rose. “Washed?”
“Yes. It’s as if someone has rubbed it down with a damp cloth coated in washing up liquid. No extraneous marks, finger marks or palm marks on it at all.”
Now Joe was surprised. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d get prints off a thing that narrow.”
“You’d be surprised what we can get off something like that,” Gemma reported. “On this kind of thing, we’d expect a few dog hairs. That might have given us a tiny lead on the breed of dog. But…” she shrugged. “Nothing.”
“He was obviously wearing gloves, then,” Brenda commented, tucking the tissue back in her coverall.
“All the time, Mrs Jump,” Gemma agreed. “We know nothing, we have nothing. Mrs Hill is the fourth victim of this man, assuming it is the same man, and we’re fairly certain of that.”
“You’re certain it’s not a copycat?” Joe asked.
Gemma shook her head. “Remember Vickers told you we keep certain information from the press? The way he leaves his victims, skirts up, knickers, stockings showing, is something we don’t tell them. The fact that he never, never leaves any sign of sexual activity, is something else.”
The light dawned in Joe’s eyes. “That’s what Vickers meant when he said a lack of bodily emissions would prove nothing.”
“Correct. The idea that the victims were raped and murdered is an invention of the media. No one from our department has ever said anything of the kind, and I’d appreciate it if you three would keep it to yourselves.”
“So they’re not, er, sex killings?” Sheila’s ears coloured at the mere suggestion.
“The truth is, Mrs Riley, we don’t know. It could be that the killer gets off, for want of a better phrase, after murdering them and pushing up their skirts. If so, he leaves no trace.”
“He must leave some evidence of himself,” Joe protested.
“Tons of it we imagine,” Gemma said. “But these are ordinary women in ordinary houses, Uncle Joe. For instance, Mrs Riley, you’re a widow. How many men do you have in your house in the space of, say, a month?”
Sheila entire face coloured this time. “I don’t have any men, Gemma. And I object—”
“No, no. You’re misunderstanding me. I said men, not men friends or lovers. TV repairmen, washing machine engineers, plumbers, central heating repairs, and so on. Callers collecting for charity, insurance salespeople. Anyone like that.”
“Oh. I see what you mean.” Sheila calmed a little. “I suppose, quite a few.”
“You see, Uncle Joe. We have to piece together the last few weeks of the victims’ lives and they all lived alone, so it’s not easy. And over the last three years, we’ve worked to identify those tiny clues which may have come from the same person.”
“Without success?” Joe asked.
“Nothing we could get DNA or a blood type from,” Gemma admitted. “Threads which may have come from a coat or jumper. Shoe impressions on the carpets which only show up under ultra-violet.” Gemma chewed her lip. “Thelma Warburton had been dead four days when we got to her. We got next to nothing from her or her house. This man is ultra-careful. I’m surprised he doesn’t vacuum the house after he’s done.”
“Never any sign of a struggle?” Joe wanted to know.
Gemma shook her head. “Not even the dea
th struggle.”
“Then, obviously, the women knew him. Even Letty.”
“Correct, but we’ve drawn a complete blank there, too. We cannot find one person common to all four women, and although we haven’t really begun checking Letty’s background, we’re certain the four women did not know each other.”
Allowing his thoughts to run, Joe fiddled with a photograph of the mock fireplace in Letty’s living room. “Whatever you’re looking for, the link, is so tiny it’s all but insignificant, then. You’re sure he doesn’t just choose his victims at random?”
“Very unlikely,” Gemma replied. “Middle-aged, single women, living alone, no known relationships? No, Uncle Joe, he has to know something about them in advance.”
Joe had stopped listening. He was concentrating on the photograph. In the centre of the mantelpiece stood the small clock with its dark, mahogany-coloured surround. From one side of it projected what looked like a piece of white card.
“What’s that?” He turned the photograph and pointed so Gemma could see what he was asking about.
“Not sure,” she said, and dipped into her briefcase again, coming out with a printed list. “This is a list of everything in the house. Let’s see…” She ran her finger down the list. “Not the Valentine Card. We know about that… Could be her dentist’s appointment card… No. Here it is. It’s a business card. SDA. The Sanford Dating Agency.”
Joe’s frown returned. “She was using a dating agency?”
“Well, we don’t know for sure. Not yet. It’s a line of inquiry. That’s not how you met her?”
“No. I told you, she was a new member of the 3rd Age Club.”
“Maybe she was a member of the dating agency before she joined your club.”
“Yeah, and maybe she was just taking the mick with me on Wednesday night.”
Brenda, her face serious this time, said, “There’s nothing wrong with one-night stands, Joe. You’re the odd man out expecting something more just because she jumped into bed with you.”
My Deadly Valentine Page 5
