Blue Murder

by Graham Ison

  “An RAF pilot spotted the yacht, Commander,” said Harding as he drove, “And we imposed on the Cyprus Navy to investigate. When they found that it contained three dead bodies, they brought it into the harbor at Paphos where the Cyprus Police have it under guard. The bodies have been taken to the Princess Mary Military Hospital.” He glanced sideways at Fox. “In this heat it was essential to move them immediately but, apart from that, we have preserved the scene.”

  “Thanks very much,” said Fox. It was the best he could hope for. The main reason he had decided to come to Cyprus himself was his concern for the scientific evidence, and he didn’t want amateurs crawling all over the vessel in which the victims had been discovered. At least Harding was a professional and that was a great comfort.

  Early the next day, Fox and the two other members of the team began their enquiries by paying a visit to the mortuary.

  “Clearly been shot, sir,” said Detective Superintendent Craven-Foster, gazing down at the body of a young woman, one of the three victims.

  “An extraordinarily astute observation, John,” said Fox, wondering whether his detective superintendent was being sarcastic, “on account of the number of holes in her.” In Fox’s estimation, the woman’s body had been struck by at least five rounds, but he knew better than to speculate further. The most pressing decision he now had to make was whether to ship the bodies back to the United Kingdom or to have them examined locally. But Fox did not intend to have what he scathingly described as “local GPs” carrying out autopsies. Even the highly-qualified RAF doctors at the Princess Mary hospital were unlikely to count a skilled forensic pathologist among their number.

  Having afforded the other two bodies – a man and an older woman – a cursory glance, and having come to the conclusion that they too had been shot, Fox returned to the headquarters of the Sovereign Base Areas Police at Episkopi and telephoned the Murder Room at Scotland Yard. His message was terse and to the point. “Get a Home Office pathologist out here on the next available flight,” he said. “Preferably Pamela Hatcher.”

  “Very good, sir,” said the duty DI. “By the way, sir, the Assistant Commissioner would like a word with you. I gather he’s a bit upset.”

  Fox shook the receiver vigorously before putting it to his ear again. “Hallo, hallo,” he said, “I seem to have been cut off.” He replaced the receiver on its base. “Line to London’s terrible,” he added, turning to Craven-Foster. “Now then, I suggest we go and take a look at the yacht.”

  The arrival of three Scotland Yard officers to investigate a triple murder had been a big event in the daily routine of the Sovereign Base Areas Police, and the Chief Constable had unhesitatingly offered Fox and his colleagues all the assistance they might need. First on Fox’s list of requirements had been a car and driver, and Geoffrey Harding had charitably assigned his own. Then he had telephoned the local police and arranged for a launch to meet the three officers and take them to the yacht.

  “Good job Swann can’t see that,” said Fox, nodding at the flag on the bonnet, “he’d want one too.” The lugubrious Swann, who had been Fox’s driver on the Flying Squad, thought that he had escaped when Fox was promoted, but had found the very next morning that nothing had changed when he was required to drive Fox and the other two to Gatwick. But there had been no need to take Swann to Cyprus, and Fox merely cautioned him not to lose too much at cards during his absence.

  The promised police launch was waiting at the quayside and ferried Fox – now sporting a panama hat – Craven-Foster and Morgan out to the yacht, guarded by a Cypriot policeman, that lay at anchor in the center of the small harbor at Paphos. The Cyprus Police had moored it offshore to prevent interested locals – and tourists, who were there in profusion – from getting close to it.

  On the door of the hatchway leading below was a small red sign: a circle around a drawing of a bikini with a diagonal line through it. Fox glanced around the saloon. In the center of the spacious accommodation was a long table. A chair lay on its side and there were several heavy bloodstains on the carpet. But the thing that interested Fox was the expensive wood paneling on the bulkhead of the cabin, much of which was splintered and torn.

  “At a rough guess,” said Fox, fanning himself with his hat, “I’d say that the maniac who committed these murders was armed with a machine-gun of some sort.”

  “There appear to be one or two rounds in the deckhead, too, sir,” said Craven-Foster, glancing upwards. “Bloody shame, really, ruining a vessel like this. Must be worth all of a hundred grand.” He looked around admiringly. “Deep ‘V’ type,” he added. “Capable of cruising at about twenty knots, I should think.”

  Fox shot a suspicious glance at the detective superintendent. “You know about these things, do you, John?” he asked.

  Craven-Foster smiled smugly, the sort of smile that amateur yachtsmen reserve for those they regard as “landlubbers”. “I’ve done a bit, sir, but nothing breath-taking. I’ve got a Corribee down at Emsworth. When I manage to get away,” he added.

  “Have you really?” Firmly convinced that anything connected with boats was highly expensive, Fox briefly wondered how Craven-Foster could afford such luxuries on his pay. “You’ve just got yourself a job then,” he said. “As you’re so well-versed in this nautical business, you can find out where this yacht came from, where it was going and who it belongs to.”

  “Do we have a look round, sir?” asked Morgan.

  “No, Charles, we do not have a look round,” said Fox. “Not until a scientific team from the Yard has been over this thing with a fine-tooth comb.” He turned to Craven-Foster. “When we get back to Akrotiri,” he added, “get on the phone to the Murder Room and arrange for a team to be flown out. Might be a good idea to have a word with the bloke in charge of the air force here and see if he can arrange for them to be put on one of his flights. Save buggering about with that Cyprus Airlines lot.” Fox had been unimpressed by the Cypriot national airline which had flown him and his team out from London, but in all fairness, they could hardly have been expected to rearrange their flight schedules just to suit a Scotland Yard commander. “And if the DI on duty says that the Assistant Commissioner wants to talk to me, tell him you don’t know where I am.”

  *

  By some miracle of administration, the team from the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory and Pamela Hatcher, the Home Office pathologist, arrived in Cyprus late on the Saturday afternoon, within twenty-four hours of Fox having given his instructions.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, Pamela Hatcher, her long gray hair braided into a pigtail as usual, was taken straight to the Princess Mary Military Hospital at Akrotiri and started work immediately. “There’s not a great deal I can tell you about time of death,” she said when she had finished her post-mortem examination of two of the bodies. “The heat, the confined space of the yacht, the effect of salt water in the atmosphere, then the changes when the cadavers were brought ashore…” She laid down the instrument she had been using on the third body and shrugged. “Anybody’s guess really.”

  “I’m not sure that it matters a great deal,” said Fox. “We know that the bodies were discovered on the thirtieth of June and once we find the date of its last port of call, we can assume that the murders took place between those two dates.”

  Pamela Hatcher grinned at him. “You sound like a detective, Tommy,” she said. “Incidentally, congratulations on your promotion.”

  “Thanks,” said Fox. “But I’d rather have stayed where I was.”

  Pamela Hatcher extracted yet another round from the body of the woman on which she was working. “That makes seventeen in all,” she said, dropping the round into a kidney-shaped dish, “And I think that’s probably the lot.”

  “So what’s the tally?” Fox glanced at DI Morgan.

  “Seven taken from the man, six from his wife—”

  “Do we know she’s his wife?” asked Fox sharply, thinking that he had not been told a piece of vital i
nformation.

  “Well, I assumed—”

  “When you’re working with me, Charles, don’t assume anything,” said Fox. “So, six from the older woman…”

  “Yes, sir,” said Morgan, slightly abashed. “And four from the younger woman.” He pointed at the body on the table, which Pamela Hatcher was roughly sewing together.

  Fox nodded. “How many did the lab team find in the yacht?”

  “A further ten, sir.”

  “Extravagant bugger, this murderer of ours,” said Fox. “Twenty-seven rounds altogether. Caliber?”

  “At a guess, sir,” said Morgan cautiously, “I’d say 7.62 millimeter.” And even more cautiously, added, “Could have been a Kalashnikov AK 47, I suppose, sir.”

  “Yes, it could,” said Fox. “Or any one of half a dozen other automatic weapons. Ship the rounds back to the lab. We’ll let Hugh Donovan take a look.” Dismissing the three dead bodies as of no further interest, he turned to Craven-Foster. “How are the SOCOs getting on, John?”

  “They’ll finish tomorrow, I gather, sir.”

  *

  At five o’clock the following evening, the senior scenes-of-crime officer, accompanied by Craven-Foster and DI Morgan, came to see Fox in his room at the RAF officers’ mess.

  “Well, Frank, what have you to tell me?” Fox, jacket abandoned and shirt-sleeves rolled up, was sitting on his bed.

  Frank Dobson, the senior SOCO, was a small man with a ginger goatee beard and a nervous cough. “Fingermarks all over the place, Mr Fox, but until we can get them back to London, we shan’t know whose they are.” And forestalling Fox’s next question, hurried on. “We’ve done a quick comparison with the fingerprints taken from the three bodies and most of them appear to match with the deceased.” He coughed and peered at Fox through his wire-framed spectacles. “There are others, of course.”

  “Of course,” murmured Fox. “Anything else of great moment?”

  “You know about the rounds taken from the deckhead and the bulkhead…?” Dobson raised a querying eyebrow.

  “Yes. Ten, I believe.”

  “Yes indeed.” Dobson nodded gravely. “There was also evidence of an attempt to start a fire on the deck of the galley, but as all the scuttles and the door were closed it looked as though it was defeated by lack of oxygen before it took a hold. But apart from that, nothing else of consequence. One or two of the lads are just doing a last round-up and I’ll confirm later that we’re all clear.”

  “Disappointing,” said Fox who, despite his unorthodox approach to criminal investigation, still relied heavily on scientific evidence. He swung round to face Craven-Foster. “Identities, John?”

  “Frank’s team found these in a drawer, sir,” said Craven-Foster, taking three passports from his briefcase and tossing them casually on to the occasional table. “The man is Michael Leighton, aged fifty-four, the older woman is Patricia Tilley—”

  “Not his wife then,” said Fox pointedly.

  “No, sir, not as far as we know,” said Craven-Foster and shot a sympathetic glance at Morgan. “She’s aged forty, and the younger woman is Karen Nash, aged…” He paused and leaning forward flicked open one of the passports, mentally calculating as he did so. “Thirty, sir.”

  “Well, well,” said Fox, standing up. “I suggest we go across to the mess and have a drink while we think about what to do next,” he said. He glanced at Dobson. “Frank?”

  “No, I won’t, thank you, Mr Fox. Got a lot of paperwork to do if we’re to get our stuff off to the lab promptly.”

  “Of course,” said Fox. He put on his jacket and, donning his panama hat, led the way out of the building through the stifling heat and the all-pervading smell of kerosene to the mess.

  There were one or two RAF officers at the bar when Fox and his colleagues entered, but beyond nodding and bidding them a good evening, they left the detectives to their own devices.

  “What now, sir?” asked Craven-Foster when the three of them were settled at a table.

  “A large Scotch, I think,” said Fox and beckoned to the steward. “So, we have the bodies of three people, apparently unrelated one to the other. What d’you make of that?”

  “Do we know that for sure, sir?” asked Morgan and wished he hadn’t.

  Fox cast a benevolent gaze at the detective inspector. “Well, for a start, given that Patricia Tilley is only ten years older than Karen Nash, they’re clearly not mother and daughter, but they could be sisters, I suppose. We can’t tell from the passports any more, because they don’t include maiden names. They don’t even show marital status.” Fox frowned at what he regarded as slovenliness on the part of the Home Office. “Furthermore, either one of the women could be married to Leighton, I suppose, now that some women decline to adopt their husband’s name.”

  “Perhaps it was a ménage à trois,” said Morgan quietly.

  Fox grinned and took a sip of his whisky. “These days, Charles,” he said, “Nothing would surprise me. However, you can take that little enquiry on, once we get back to London. Get someone to do a bit of research at St Catherine’s House.” Despite the fact that the three detectives were chatting over a drink, Fox had no intention of allowing them to relax. “What have you found out about the yacht’s movements, John?” he asked, switching his gaze to Craven-Foster.

  Craven-Foster pulled out a pocket book and thumbed through it. “The yacht was refuelled in Paphos early on the morning of the thirtieth of June—”

  “How early?”

  “Six a.m., sir.”

  Fox nodded. “Yes, go on.”

  “And having checked that the cruising speed is, as I suggested, twenty knots, we can assume that the yacht could have reached the point where it was found in just over two hours. Say two and a half to be on the safe side.”

  “That’s an awful lot of assuming, John,” said Fox. “It could have called somewhere else along the Cyprus coastline before putting to sea, or it could have anchored somewhere for breakfast before going on.” He shrugged. “But what difference does it make? It’s fairly certain, I think, that we don’t have a double murder followed by a suicide. Therefore, someone came aboard on the thirtieth of June – or was aboard already – and left after committing the murders.” A thought crossed his mind. “You’re the sailor, John. Was anything missing from that yacht?”

  “Like what, sir?”

  “Like a dinghy, or an inflatable? Something that our murderer could have used to escape.”

  Craven-Foster shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it,” he said. “There’s no housing for a dinghy and the inflatable was still inboard.”

  Fox glanced at the steward and signaled for another round of drinks. “So we have someone who came aboard, committed the murders, and left again. In his own vessel.”

  “Or a strong swimmer, sir,” said Morgan thoughtfully.

  “One who can swim at least fifty miles,” said Fox crushingly.

  “Oh,” said Morgan, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Fox glanced across the ante-room as Frank Dobson appeared in the doorway, standing on tiptoe and nervously rubbing his hands together. “Ah!” he said, “Frank’s decided to come for a drink after all.” And, as Dobson approached, asked, “What’ll you have, Frank?”

  “Nothing, thanks, Mr Fox.”

  “Well, what—?”

  “I thought I’d better let you know straightaway. One of the lads found a package secreted behind the paneling on one of the bulkheads.”

  “What sort of package?” Fox leaned forward and took a cigarette from the open case on the table.

  “I shan’t know for sure until the lab confirms it,” said Dobson, “but I’d say it contained cocaine. About two kilos of it.”

  Three

  Fox decided that he had done all he could in Cyprus. Leaving Detective Superintendent Craven-Foster and Detective Inspector Charles Morgan to make such further enquiries as were necessary on the island, Fox flew back to London. Straight into a row with the Assista
nt Commissioner.

  “Mr Fox,” said Peter Frobisher at his icy best, “I thought that I had made it perfectly clear that your function, as Commander SO1 was to oversee and supervise the operations of that branch. And yet, within twenty-four hours, I find that you have gone to Cyprus, actively to involve yourself in a murder investigation.”

  But Fox was not to be easily browbeaten. “I don’t see how I can possibly supervise a detective superintendent whose qualities I am unfamiliar with, sir, if he is two thousand miles away from me.”

  “Mr Fox,” said Frobisher patiently, “one has to trust one’s subordinates to get on with the job.”

  “Exactly so, sir,” said Fox. “And as you have given me command of SO1 I expect to be accorded that same trust.” He could be as icy as Frobisher. “However,” he went on as the Assistant Commissioner was about to interrupt, “We have a triple murder on our hands, assigned to us by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I think you would agree, sir, that we can’t afford to make a bloody great balls-up of it.”

  Frobisher wrinkled his nose slightly at Fox’s coarseness. Since his appointment as Assistant Commissioner, he had assumed an air of gentility that he thought accorded with his high office. It was a view not shared by Fox who firmly believed that a copper was a copper, no matter what. “Exactly so, Mr Fox. But I think you should be aware that your branch deals with a great deal more than straightforward murder enquiries, and you must be here to make decisions as and when they are required to be made.”

  “If you want my resignation, sir, you have only to ask,” said Fox. He had decided, early in his service, that it was of greater value to his career to have informants inside Scotland Yard than outside it, and he had quickly learned of the Commissioner’s reservations about his promotion to commander.

  “My dear Mr Fox, let’s not be too hasty.” Frobisher could not bear the thought of the Commissioner saying “I told you so” and, as he had undertaken to keep Fox on the straight and narrow, it would look like failure on his part if Fox were to leave the force so soon after his appointment. “It’s just that you need to be aware of your global responsibilities.”