Letter From The Dead - a crime thriller (Detective Inspector Declan Walsh Book 1)

by Jack Gatland

  ‘It never is,’ Monroe replied calmly.

  ‘She’s angry with me again,’ Declan leaned back, almost laughing at this. ‘She’s pissed because her book group banned her.’

  ‘Because of you?’

  ‘It’s a Catholic group.’

  ‘Oh.’ Monroe began to chuckle now. ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  There was a pause. Declan didn’t know whether it was his time to speak or not.

  ‘You know what they call you?’ Monroe eventually asked. ‘In New Scotland Yard?’

  ‘I’ve hear a few of the nicknames,’ Declan replied.

  ‘The favourite is The Priest Puncher,’ Monroe continued, sipping at his drink. ‘I mean Jesus, Declan. A priest?’

  ‘He deserved it,’ Declan muttered. ‘He was dog trafficking.’

  ‘Don’t you mean drug trafficking?’

  Declan shook his head. ‘No sir, dogs. Father Corden was head priest in Hampstead. Very affluent area.’

  ‘I’m aware of the house prices in London.’ Monroe nodded. ‘Millionaire’s Row’s near there, I believe.’

  ‘It is, sir,’ Declan nodded. Millionaire’s Row was the unofficial name given to a street of houses, all so expensive that the entire road was filled with high walls and electric gates. Premiere League footballers, rock stars, foreign dignitaries and movie stars lived there, behind those gates. ‘And that’s the problem. Many of the congregation were rich. Super rich, even. Which meant any Catholics in that group had a lot of guilt.’

  ‘A lot to confess?’

  ‘Yes sir. They’d come to the church for confession, but the dogs would have to be left outside.’

  ‘And let me guess,’ Monroe said. ‘While famous Miss Catholic confessed her sins inside, her dear, darling, expensive doggie was taken from outside?’

  Declan nodded. ‘They kept claiming that the dogs ran away. That maybe there were kids having fun. The church was right next to Hampstead Heath, so to start with they assumed that the dogs were escaping, running around the scrublands. Some were found, too.’

  Monroe considered this for a moment. ‘The ones that were chipped and neutered?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Declan took a sip of his Guinness. ‘No point stealing a thoroughbred dog that can’t give you thoroughbred puppies.’

  ‘And you worked out that it was the priest because of the confessional schedule.’

  Declan nodded. ‘Caught him red handed. But he tried to get away, pulled the whole ‘I am the voice of God and you will let me go’ act. He struggled.’

  Declan shrugged.

  ‘And I punched him.’

  ‘On live TV.’

  ‘Well yes sir, it was problematic that there was a TV crew filming at the time. Our sting dog was owned by an Instagram influencer. She saw this as an opportunity for exposure.’

  ‘Well, that wasn’t the only thing exposed. From what I saw, you knocked him spark out on the six o’clock news,’ Monroe said, leaning back on his seat and taking a better look at Declan. ‘Catholic Church weren’t happy?’

  ‘No, sir. And neither was my commander, DCI Farrow.’

  ‘Catholic?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And that’s why you were suspended,’ Monroe mused, absently scratching at his chin with his index finger. ‘for doing your job. Well, until the punching a vicar part. And that’s why Lizzie’s having trouble.’

  ‘And Jessie,’ Declan added. ‘She’s in a Catholic school. But that wasn’t why I was properly suspended, sir.’

  Monroe nodded at this. ‘The wonderful DCI Ford.’

  ‘The fallout from that, a couple of days after Hampstead… Well, let’s just say it was a lot of the wrong exposure in a short amount of time,’ Declan replied.

  ‘I heard you made a right royal mess of things in Mile End,’ Monroe mused. ‘And you were only there two days.’

  ‘I solved the case.’

  ‘While suspended.’

  ‘I had a note saying I was under Ford’s remit.’

  ‘You had a note? A note for Christ’s sake?’ Monroe was chuckling into his drink. ‘Och, that makes everything fine then. And there I was, thinking you’d just made everything worse for yourself while dismantling the Mile End crime unit.’

  ‘Wasn’t my fault that happened.’ Declan’s expression was darkening.

  ‘Calm down, I read the SCO 19 report,’ Monroe said. ‘You did the right thing. In a cack handed way, of course.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘So what now? For you, that is?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Declan stared down at his pint. He’d been asking himself the same question recently. ‘Depends who’d take me. It’s been suggested that I could take a demotion and look at a more provincial post than London. Maybe somewhere that hasn’t heard of me. Or, I can sit it out, wait for the dust to settle, if it even does.’ Declan wasn’t hopeful on that. The Catholic issue was a PR nightmare, but could be sorted. The problems in Mile End immediately afterwards weren’t so easy.

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ Monroe huffed. ‘You’re too good a copper to stay benched.’

  There was a pause, as if Monroe was making a decision.

  ‘Come join my team.’

  Declan looked up at this. It was well known in the force that DCI Monroe headed a cold case orientated team off Fleet Street, all from some antiquated offices in Temple Inn. People called it by a different name, though.

  ‘I’m sorry sir, but I don’t think I’d be a fit for the Last Chance Saloon,’ Declan said carefully.

  ‘Ah, so you’ve heard of us, then?’ Monroe smiled. ‘The place where the screw ups and the no-hires are dumped when nobody else wants them?’

  Declan squirmed slightly in his seat. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that.’ he said.

  ‘Do you know what happens when a police officer, even one in CID massively screws up?’ Monroe asked, leaning forwards. ‘They get fired. Boom. Gone, just like that.’

  He took a long sip of his drink, as if working out what to say next. Eventually he replaced the glass on the table, looking back to Declan.

  ‘But sometimes, just sometimes there are detectives of a higher calibre. Ones that are vital, useful even, the future of the police force. To lose them would be a disgrace.’

  ‘And so you take them.’

  ‘Aye, so I take them,’ Monroe smiled. ‘Some of the greatest analytical minds in the force. The best lateral thinkers out there, all under my roof. Does that sound like a joke department to you?’

  ‘Not when you put it like that.’ Declan returned the smile, but it faded quickly. ‘But I’m probably leaving the force. Sir.’

  ‘Why in god’s name would you do that?’

  Declan shrugged. ‘Maybe because I solved a politically explosive murder, uncovered police corruption and solved a dog trafficking ring in the space of a week, and got shafted for it.’

  ‘No,’ Monroe replied. ‘That’s not why. You’re thinking of abandoning ship because you don’t have faith in us anymore.’

  Declan paused, his half-finished Guinness up to his mouth. Monroe was correct. After his father’s death had been classed as accidental, the last straw had been broken. Declan had lost faith in the judicial process; and by default the police.

  ‘Your father would be disappointed if you left,’ Monroe chided.

  Declan nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘So why not do something different?’ Monroe asked. ‘Why not make him proud of you?’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Declan faced the older man. ‘You just so happen to have something on you that does just that?’

  Monroe reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulling out a manilla envelope. Placing it on the table, he looked to Declan.

  ‘In that envelope is a possible piece of evidence to an old case,’ he said.

  ‘A cold case?’

  Monroe shook his head. ‘No, actually. It’s one that your father closed, almost twenty years back. This new evidence might change that outcome, however.’

 
Declan didn’t reach for the envelope.

  ‘What sort of evidence?’ he asked.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a dead letter?’ Monroe replied. Declan shook his head, so the older man continued. ‘It’s an undeliverable letter. One where the address is wrong, or the person the letter was sent to doesn’t live there anymore and it’s sent back, or if it’s stolen, lost, a whole load of things. How many times have you received a letter for the wrong address, or maybe one that’s your street, but it’s a different town?’

  ‘A few times, I suppose.’

  ‘Well then, that’s a dead letter. Didn’t get to where it was supposed to go. Most of the time they’re tossed away. Sometimes people write things like ‘not at this address’ and post them back, even though there’s no original address on there. More than a million letters a month go missing like this.’

  Monroe tapped the envelope.

  ‘In there is an envelope that never reached its target. Not because of the Royal Mail, but because it simply got lost in the mix. Was found a couple of weeks back in a Derby police station, and passed to me.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because it was to do with a case I worked on twenty years ago,’ Monroe continued. ‘When I was with your father.’

  Declan tried to recall his father’s cases. He didn’t know that many of them, but there was one from around that time that fit.

  ‘The Victoria Davies murder,’ he said.

  Monroe nodded. ‘Start of 2001. Few months before the General Election. Victoria Davies, pushed off the roof of her family’s manor house on New Year’s Eve by her husband, Michael Davies.’

  ‘I remember this one,’ Declan said. ‘I’d just finished Army training at Pirbright, and was at home for the holidays before I moved on.’

  ‘Redcaps, wasn’t it?’ Monroe was referring to the Royal Military Police, named ‘redcaps’ due to the scarlet covers of their peaked berets.

  ‘Yeah. Shipped out to Northern Ireland later that year, so I don’t remember what happened in the end, but I do recall Dad being convinced there was something more going on.’

  Monroe sipped at his drink, watching Declan.

  ‘Go on,’ he encouraged.

  ‘Michael claimed he didn’t do it, even though it came out in the trial that she was pregnant with someone else’s child, he was having an affair with his PA and he was overheard at the party saying that he was going to kill her,’ Declan continued. ‘That and the forensics found a cigarette with his DNA on that placed him at the scene of the crime at the correct time, and a guard that watched him follow Victoria to the roof after giving him specific instructions to stop anyone else from following.’ He looked back at the envelope.

  ‘Do I need gloves to touch it?’

  ‘Christ no, it’s been manhandled by dozens of people over the years. We’d never get a solid print from it.’

  ‘He was a Labour Party donor, wasn’t he? Tried and convicted before the election, the government desperate to keep it out of the press.’

  ‘Aye, he was,’ Monroe said, finishing the drink and rising from the chair. ‘It was a simple cut and dried case. But in that envelope is a letter that changes everything. Possibly even exonerates Michael Davies.’

  ‘Jesus. Has he been told?’ Declan finally picked up the manilla envelope as Monroe shook his head.

  ‘Michael Davies died of bowel cancer five years ago,’ he replied. ‘And if we were wrong then, well then a good man lost his life in prison, and I owe it to your father to find the right person and put them behind bars. We could do it together, if you felt like it.’

  He pointed at the envelope.

  ‘My card’s also in there,’ he said, already turning and walking from the seat. ‘If you decide you do want a last chance at being a copper, come to the address on it tomorrow at 9am.’

  And with that DCI Monroe left the bar.

  Declan turned the manilla envelope in his hands. Inside it was a letter that possibly proved that his father had been wrong on one of the most high profile cases of his career. He looked at the fireplace against the back wall of the bar. There was a fire burning low in it; one toss of the wrist and the manilla envelope, the evidence and the business card would all disappear. He could quit the force and the Last Chance Saloon could find another loser to hire.

  Declan finished his Guinness, staring down into the glass, the foam sliding down the sides. He was the loser. Nobody was going to hire him; the Catholic Church wanted him dead, half the police didn’t trust him, the other half thought he was a hero, and either way his career was probably over. At least Monroe was a known evil.

  And more importantly, if the people Monroe had working for him were half as good as he believed, then these people would be top notch investigators.

  And that’s what he needed if he was going to prove his father’s murder.

  Rising from the table, Declan nodded to the landlord behind the bar.

  ‘Thanks for everything, Dave,’ he said, nodding up the stairs. The landlord nodded.

  ‘Not joining them?’ he asked.

  Declan shook his head.

  ‘My father’s not up there,’ he replied sadly.

  And with that Declan Walsh tucked the manilla envelope into his inside pocket and quickly walked out of the pub.

  3

  The Homeless And The Ambitious

  The streets of London were cold and wet that afternoon. It wasn’t raining, but it was that awful halfway point between has rained and is dry; too wet to sit down without soaking yourself, and too dry to be allowed into the warm foyers of buildings for a moment or two of brief normality.

  The homeless man walked the streets alone and silent; he wore dirty jeans that looked like they were once expensive, worn over black and battered Dr Marten boots. His overcoat and scarf covered the top half of his body, the torso of which seemed unnaturally bigger than his head and hands, giving the impression of a man wearing many layers of clothing underneath it, bulking it out.

  On his balding head was a woollen cap, as grubby and dishevelled as the rest of him, pulled down low over his forehead, almost touching his battered, black rimmed NHS prescription glasses. A fuzzy wisp of brown beard peeked out between nose and scarf as he kept his head down, shifting the large and heavy looking rucksack over his shoulder with one hand while his other rooted through his overcoat pocket, pulling out a small, cheap bottle of whisky, shaped in that ‘hip flask’ style of bottle. Taking a swig from it, he looked around, gathering his bearings. Across the street was a small queue of equally homeless men and women, all waiting in turn for a paper bowl worth of food and a wooden spoon to eat it, these items provided by a lady who stood under a gazebo, a table in front of her; one of the many pop up soup kitchens that had appeared lately.

  Seeing the soup kitchen reminded the homeless man that he was hungry; slowly and carefully he walked across to the line, standing at the end, being careful not to make eye contact with anyone.

  There was a small TV on behind the woman as she plated some kind of casserole into the bowls; an afternoon television programme was playing, but the sound had been turned too low for the homeless man to hear. That was fine though. He didn’t watch much television these days, anyway. And he recognised the show; Peter Morris in the pm, a title that, with the initials of Peter Morris spelling ‘pm’ and with the show being broadcast in the afternoon, must have made some marketing team at ITV scream with excitement.

  In front, an older man was staring at him strangely. Stick thin and in what looked to be a well out of date track suit, worn once more seemingly over every other item of clothing he owned, the man was trying to gain a better look at the homeless man’s face.

  ‘Hey,’ the older man said. ‘I know you.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ the homeless man looked away from the older man, back to the TV set, where Peter Morris, casual in a pink shirt and black trousers, the sleeves down, his hair a greying black, was now talking to a white haired man in a pinstripe suit.

>   The homeless man looked harder at the television.

  It couldn’t be.

  It was.

  With that bloody quiff and mane of hair, there couldn’t be anyone else.

  ‘Yeah, I do,’ the older man replied, breaking the homeless man’s concentration. ‘Where do I know you from?’

  ‘I come here sometimes on Tuesdays,’ the homeless man offered, hoping that this would end the conversation. The older man shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not it…’

  The homeless man looked at the queue building behind him, at the television showing the familiar face and then the older man who believed he’d found his own familiar face in turn. He sighed, shifting his rucksack. He wasn’t going to get anything to eat right now. He couldn’t risk the older man remembering who he truly was. And besides, if he had to keep looking at that face on TV, he’d end up breaking it.

  And so, turning towards the road, the homeless man started away from the soup kitchen, and food.

  The older man stared after him.

  ‘I bloody know you…’ he muttered. And then, all remembrance of the homeless man forgotten, he turned back to the soup kitchen and his next meal.

  On Peter Morris in the pm, the presenter and namesake of the show leaned back onto his armchair, his notes held in his hand as he watched the man in the pinstripe suit facing him, sitting on the couch with an expression of what could only be called loathing.

  ‘You okay, Charlie?’ Peter asked with a smile.

  ‘I’ve had better days,’ came the reply. Peter looked over to the Floor Manager, now waving to attract their attention.

  ‘Coming back from adverts in three, two…’ the Floor Manager made a motion and the red light on Camera Four lit up. Smiling, Peter looked into the lens, directly at the audience. He’d been told once by someone, probably Phillip Schofield or someone like that to always stare past the lens, to somehow insert yourself into the living room of the audience. Of course, with half the audience now watching this on their smartphones, and probably while sitting on the toilet, Peter wasn’t sure if he wanted to go quite that far.