A Carriage of Misjustice

by Charlie Cochrane

  “What if we’re barking up the wrong tree?” Laurence asked. “If Osment left that bar door open, then anybody might have come in there unnoticed. Somebody who’s completely unknown to us, like a vagrant chancing his arm that he’d find something to nick. Or a warm place to spend the night.”

  “Seems unlikely,” Pru said, “that they should try that door exactly at the point it’s been left unlocked. If they watched Osment opening it, they’d have known somebody was in the building.”

  “Unless it was someone who deliberately followed him there, for whatever reason,” Laurence pointed out, “not realising he’d arranged to meet people there.”

  “Sir.” Sally’s tones were not quite as tentative as earlier. “I’ve got a couple of thoughts. We’ve kept asking why Osment arranged to see Dave at the club and for Cooper to come there. Could it have been for his own safety? If things had got nasty, he could have nipped into the changing rooms, if he’d already unbolted and unlocked the door to give himself an escape route. If he found the players still in there, he’d have got some stick from them but that would be better than getting attacked. If not, he could have locked the door behind himself. In the event, he didn’t have time to do so.”

  “I like that idea, Sally.” Pru pointed at the photo on the incident board of the bench where Osment’s blood had been found. “Where his head hit that wooden edge isn’t that far from the entrance to the bar. If there’d been a scuffle in the doorway he might have fallen backwards as the door was pushed in, resulting in him whacking himself.”

  “He was still finished off afterwards,” Robin reminded them. “So even if this started as an accident it didn’t finish as one. It could have been a spur of the moment, red-mist-descending moment, using whatever implement came to hand, but it smacks to me of lurking intent to do harm. Sally, you said you had a couple of thoughts. What’s the other one?”

  “It was about Cooper, sir, and why he’d been asked to come at seven if Dave was due to arrive much earlier. Maybe they were never meant to overlap.”

  Callum said, “I’m sorry but I don’t follow.”

  Sally didn’t seem fazed by the challenge. “Maybe Cooper was right when he said that Osment wanted to get money off him. Perhaps he wanted to blackmail the pair of them, separately. ‘What about all these pictures I took on the night when I went back there. I know you must have been the one who hit Jamie.’ He’d have had some story ready that he’d have adapted for each of them and the sequence of pictures he showed would be different. It would have had to be backed up too. His own eyewitness account in the case of Cooper, something else we’ve still to establish in the case of Dave.”

  “That’s possible,” Robin acknowledged. “Does it take us any further forward, though?”

  “It might if they weren’t the only people he planned on blackmailing.”

  Callum snorted. “Are you suggesting he had a whole string of people he asked to turn up? A sort of extortion surgery? That sounds like it came out of a farce.”

  While it did seem far-fetched, Robin knew both from experience and reading up on cases that blackmailers went to ridiculous lengths to snare their victims and often relied on a simple threat of action being enough. “I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. We know he tried the pitch on Dave and possibly on Cooper. If he didn’t think he’d get anywhere with them, he might have lined up further potential victims. Either for the accident or something else.”

  He yawned, suddenly feeling the effects of the journey, the late night, and his eighth straight day of work. At least he’d had the previous weekend off—the team here had been on the case for longer.

  “You look how I feel, sir.” Pru gave him a sympathetic smile.

  “I could say the same to you.” Robin stifled another yawn. “Right, we need a break and you’re all probably in a similar boat. Everyone go home, get a rest, and come back tomorrow ready to tackle this again. We have to believe we’re closer to the solution than we were.”

  Maybe after a decent night’s sleep, he could persuade himself that was true.

  It was unusual for the doorbell to sound in the evening, especially on a Monday. The last occasion had been when Mrs. Haig, she of the wonderful fruit cake, had sprung a leak from one of her pipes and Robin had nipped round with a wrench to do some timely tightening up. While Adam wasn’t quite as handy as his partner in the plumbing department, if their neighbour was in trouble again, then at least he could offer comfort and advice. He eased out of his chair, then headed for the door, at the point as the bell went a second time.

  “Okay, I’m coming.”

  But rather than any of his neighbours being on the step, there was a tired and wan Sam Woakes.

  “Can I come in?” he asked. “I’d like to talk.”

  “Can’t we talk out here?”

  “Oh, Adam, it’s fucking perishing tonight. Give me a break.” Sam broke into a rare smile. It was easy to see why Martin was so smitten.

  “Okay.” Adam reluctantly opened the door, then ushered him into the kitchen. That room had the advantage of both Campbell being in residence and a selection of potential weapons—carving knives and the rolling pin—should self-defence be needed. “Want a cuppa?”

  “I’d not say no. Strong, please. Same as I like my men, as they say.”

  “If you’re going to spout clichés, you can naff off.” Despite the banter, Adam kept an eye on his guest while going through the tea-making process. While he wasn’t too concerned for his safety, there’d been other potentially fatal confrontations in this property, one in the house and one in the garden. Another incentive for them to move, before the non–Mrs. Haig neighbours started a protest group. Or was this all leaping to conclusions about Sam’s motive? “What did you want to talk about?”

  “This fucking business with my brother, Joe. He’s not a murderer. Neither am I.”

  “And why are you telling me this? I’m not the police and even if my husband is, I don’t have any influence on his investigations.” Adam cast a glance at Campbell, who’d woken at the arrival of Sam and had been keeping a wary eye on him ever since.

  “Yeah, but he’ll listen to you, won’t he? Tell him to get off my back.” Sam drummed his fingers on the breakfast bar.

  “You’ve got this wrong, Sam. I don’t mix work with home and neither does Robin.”

  From the way Sam rolled his eyes, that argument clearly wasn’t convincing, and the idea of sharing a cosy cuppa with him was becoming less attractive by the minute. What would it take to get him out of the door? Feign a kind of seizure or pretend he had just remembered that he was supposed to be at Mrs. Haig’s house mending her dodgy toilet handle? Neither of those were going to seem convincing, but that wouldn’t matter if they did the trick.

  “No sugar in the tea, by the way,” Sam said, staring at the still unpoured kettle meaningfully.

  “Oh, yeah.” Adam filled their mugs, bashing the tea bags with a spoon to get them to brew quicker. “Martin said you—” He paused, annoyed that, in his desperation to find a way to end the conversation, he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.

  “Martin said what?”

  “He said you’d had a chat at the end of yesterday’s practice.” Adam thrust a mug at his uninvited guest. “Said you’d been asking if Robin’s as hot as he’s made out to be. In my opinion yes, but you know that for yourself by now.” Hopefully that would deflect the conversation away from the other part of yesterday’s chat.

  “He’s okay. Not my type. Distinctly Martin’s, I guess. He’s mentioned him once or twice. You’d better watch out.”

  Campbell’s growl at that remark made Adam wonder, yet again, whether the dog followed human conversations with an unnerving degree of understanding. “You’ve upset him,” he told Sam. “Doesn’t like his other dad being maligned.”

  “Sorry. I’m handling this all wrong.” He was, but there was still no sign of him leaving. “How friendly are you with Martin?”

  “We get on okay. Not bosom budd
ies. Why?”

  “If I tell you something, would he need to hear it? Would Robin need to?”

  “Depends what it is and what my conscience would tell me to do about it. I can’t make a blind promise without knowing what I’m getting into.” Was this going to be some great revelation that would help bring the murder inquiry to a swift conclusion? Although, in that case, what could Martin have to do with it?

  Sam stared into his mug, as though he could find the answer to his mysterious dilemma written in the brew, like the way old women used to read the future in the tea leaves. “It’s not the kind of thing I want getting around. Doesn’t do me any credit.”

  “If I tell it to Robin, it goes no further, I can promise you that. Unless it’s relevant to this murder investigation.” With a sinking heart, Adam registered Sam’s wince at the word murder. Making sure that the rolling pin—which Sandra must have used earlier and left drying in the rack—was within reach, he took a deep breath and asked, “Is this to do with your brother?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes we used to swop places. Not often and not for anything important like cheating in exams or whatever.” Sam looked up at last, defiantly. “And not so we could create an alibi for bumping somebody off.”

  “Okay, so why the angst if it’s no big deal?”

  Sam squirmed on his chair. “I didn’t say it was no big deal. It’s a huge deal as far as Martin’s concerned.”

  “Martin? How does he— Oh, I get it.” The light on the road to Damascus couldn’t have been so starkly illuminating. “You took Joe’s place on that blind date?”

  “Yep. I shouldn’t have gone, because I was already feeling ropey, but I’d promised him I’d cover rather than him stand the guy up. He didn’t want to pass up his chance entirely, in the event Martin turned out to be fit, you know.”

  What a pair of a right charmers: Martin was well shot of Joe, whatever the circumstances and maybe Sam came into the same category. “Why couldn’t Joe go? Did he have the runs as well?”

  “No. He had a hot date. Guy he’d met in the queue at the sandwich shop that lunchtime.” Sam glanced down at Campbell, reached out as though to pet him, but snatched his hand back at the dog’s admonitory growl. Newfoundlands were good judges of character. “I really fancied him at the time, still do. That’s why when I saw he was involved with this fundraising choir, I had to wangle myself into it. Wanted a second chance.”

  “If that’s the case, you have to tell him at some point. The longer you leave it, the worse it’ll be. And you need to tell Robin. Now.”

  “Why?”

  Adam managed not to yell Are you thick or what? “Think about it. He knows you’re hiding something, because Martin told me and I told Robin. Of course, you numpty, he thinks you’re covering up that you doubled for Joe at the club when that bloke was murdered.”

  “That’s going to land me right in it.” Sam pushed his mug away. “Won’t it make him increasingly suspicious given that we’ve worked the switch before?”

  “If you don’t tell him, I will and how suspicious is that going to appear? Let’s face it, he’s not interested in your love life and how you run it. His priority is to solve this case and get home as soon as he can. If you can give him a break by shutting off one dead end, we’d all be grateful.” Assuming, naturally, this wasn’t part of some elaborate cover up. Confess to the less misdemeanour to deflect attention from the bigger one. He picked up his phone. “I’ll dial his number now. Explain that you’re here and that you have something important to say. Then we can both get on with what’s left of our evenings.”

  With clear reluctance, Sam nodded, then waited while Adam rang and explained the situation.

  “Why the hell did you let him in?” Robin said. “Is he there? Can he hear us?”

  “Because it seemed like the right thing, yes, and only me. In that order. He has something to say to you.” Adam passed the phone over and watched, with a touch of schadenfreude, as Sam related what he’d said earlier. When that was done, Robin had evidently gone into interview mode, given the string of answers—meaningless without the context of the questions—that Sam was producing. Amongst the interview questions was there also a warning not to harm a hair of either his or Campbell’s heads?

  Sam’s sudden guarded expression caught Adam’s attention. Robin had evidently asked a question he wasn’t happy about.

  “I haven’t seen him for weeks. That’s not unusual—we only meet up a few times a year. Joe bumps into him a lot, obviously.”

  Intrigued at who they could be discussing, but not wanting to make Sam feel any more self-conscious than he already was, Adam picked up the Sunday newspaper—still laying where he’d left it the previous afternoon—and pretended to read.

  “I know they go for the odd pint, start and end of the season. Sort of ritual, I guess. He goes to watch training sometimes, but he doesn’t go to the matches anymore. He lost his appetite for those when Jamie . . . you know.” Another pause as Robin must have put a further question, one that got Sam riled again. “I have no idea how often he goes along on a Wednesday. Ask him. Or ask Joe. I wasn’t there.” A further silence while Robin—talking loudly but not audible enough—laid down the law. “Yeah, okay. I’ve got you. I’ll hand you back to Adam.”

  Adam took the phone, and said into it, “Sorry about that.”

  “No need to apologise. He might have told me something I needed to know. I gave him an earful about not bothering you in future and that if he needed to talk, he should contact Abbotston nick and they’d contact me. Tell him to sling his hook.”

  “I will, only I’ll be politer. Oh, and when you do get home, don’t forget the milk.”

  Robin chuckled. The milk line was their private code for saying I love you when they were being listened in on. Adam had often wondered if the other rozzers at Abbotston thought the pair of them had a dairy addiction. “Love you too.”

  Adam ended the call, then crossed his arms. “The chief inspector says you have to go. And when the police say you have to do something . . .”

  Sam broke into a grin. “Yeah, I know. I’ve outstayed my welcome. See you at choir practice.”

  “Yep. Talking of which, tell Martin what you’ve told me. Same threat—if you don’t, I will. Like I said, he knows you’re holding back, and he’ll only go and imagine it’s worse than it is.” Although how it could be much worse—short of the murder itself—Adam wasn’t prepared to consider. “If he gives you a gobful of abuse, you’ve only yourself to blame.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Doesn’t make it any easier, though.”

  Adam—and Campbell, who’d clearly taken a dislike to their visitor—accompanied Sam to the front door, watched him drive away, and then locked and bolted the front door, an action he rarely bothered to do.

  “Can’t be too careful, can we?” he said to the dog. “We’ve both had one too many encounters with criminals.”

  The healthy wagging of Campbell’s tail implied that he agreed.

  Robin had wanted to get his head straight about what Sam had told him—and the implications of it—before talking to the team. Sleeping on it always helped, because a theory that felt great at night, especially after a few beers, could seem like a load of cobblers’ come morning. The suspect could wait too, given that he’d waited long enough and might have been lulled into thinking that the police weren’t looking in his direction. Well, they hadn’t been up until now, deceived by the smoke and mirrors of a seemingly solid alibi and maybe a little tampering with evidence. The tiny crumb of knowledge that he often attended training as a spectator, so would know what usually happened on those evenings, might be the breakthrough they needed.

  Come Tuesday morning, as soon as it was decent to do so, he got on the phone to Betteridge.

  “Hello? Robin? What’s up?” She sounded as though she’d not been long awake.

  “Sorry, boss. I’ve got an idea, and I wanted to talk it through with somebody before I go charging in with my size tens. Can
I pick your brains?”

  “What I have of left of them. Been up until two o’clock supervising raids. I’ll make coffee while we talk.”

  Prick of the conscience—Robin wasn’t the only person with a serious case on his hands. “I could ring later.”

  “No. You’ve bloody well woken me up now. Tell me.”

  “I’ve got an idea that’s gone from being viable to bleeding obvious. Who better at Hartwood sports ground to be able to clear away any forensic evidence that we may have overlooked than somebody who knows those pitches and buildings like the back of his hand? Damn it, I was with him clearing stuff into a black plastic bag—the same sort of bag we found a piece of at the scene.”

  “Okay so far, but being blunt, those sacks are the sort any household has. I’ve got a roll of them in the kitchen.”

  “Yours might not be an exact match. We’ll test his.” The team could get onto that today. “He even told me he wanted to play at forensic officers and said he fancied himself as Hercule Poirot.”

  “Now that’s interesting. Hold on.” The sound of filling a kettle for that coffee Betteridge needed. “Right. Do you think he was playing at amateur detectives, rather than hunting for his wife’s ring, when he was at the ground that Saturday night he kicked Osment up the arse? Somehow got wind there was likely to be trouble and lay in wait?”

  “Maybe. Or that was the evening he first recognised Osment as the vandal and decided to try to catch him out on subsequent nights.” Robin remembered his mother’s mystery books he’d read when younger, how in some of them there’d been a particular witness very keen to help the detectives with their enquiries who had turned out to be the culprit and had been covering over their crime with a show of cooperation. Almost daring the police to catch him or her and gloating over their apparent inability to get at the truth.

  “If Weatherell is so keen on amateur detection, I can imagine him trying to find out who killed his son, particularly in light of his wife’s death. What if that led him to suspect Osment all along, as Preese did?”