A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘What about your parents?’ Mundy asked.

  ‘My dad died when I was ten. I remember him but never really knew him.’ Joshua Derbyshire glanced to his left. ‘My mum … well, she never had no time for me. She only ever wanted girls, did my mum … like she had some sort of downer on males. I was her third, I was. She wanted three girls but got a boy. She always told me that I was “stupid and always will be stupid … no girl would ever be as stupid as you” but my sisters stood up for me, particularly our Jane. My mum didn’t even come to my trial but both my sisters did. They both stood by me.’

  ‘And Jane in particular?’ Mundy commented. ‘She sounds golden, as you say.’

  ‘Yes. Golden.’ Joshua Derbyshire looked downwards at the tabletop. ‘Golden. She married a schoolteacher and she lives up in Nottingham – Robin Hood country. It’s a day’s trip for her to visit me but she visits when she can.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’ Mundy sat back in his chair.

  ‘What’s interesting?’ Derbyshire asked with a worried tone. ‘It’s interesting that she visits me? What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It’s interesting that in your file your sister is given as living in Burnt Oak,’ Mundy explained.

  ‘That was the address of our house when I was arrested,’ Derbyshire explained. ‘She’s moved on with her life, and so has Sarah, my other sister. She lives in Clacton, a lot closer than Jane, but she doesn’t visit or write as much. They gave up our tenancy when my mum died. She never wrote to me or visited me once … not once, my mum didn’t.’

  ‘I’d like to visit your sister.’ Mundy held eye contact with Derbyshire. ‘Both really, but preferably Jane in Nottingham. She sounds like a useful person to talk to. Can you let me have her name and address?’

  ‘She’s Jane Weekes now. She has two children,’ Derbyshire advised. ‘Why do you want to visit her?’

  ‘For the same reason I am visiting you,’ Mundy replied. ‘Out of interest.’

  ‘What … to laugh at me … “soft Josh”?’ Derbyshire’s tone of voice hardened.

  ‘No … not at all. Am I laughing?’ Mundy also spoke with a hardened tone. ‘Have I laughed once since I have been here?’

  ‘Why then?’ Derbyshire demanded. ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘Because I think you’re innocent,’ Mundy replied softly.

  The ensuing silence lasted for a full fifteen seconds, during which both men continued to hold eye contact.

  ‘I think you’re innocent,’ Mundy repeated, breaking the silence. ‘That’s why I am here.’

  ‘You do?’ Derbyshire gasped. ‘You believe me …?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mundy spoke calmly, ‘I do.’

  ‘Why … I mean … why does a copper think I am innocent all of a sudden?’ Derbyshire whispered. ‘After twenty-eight years … not just my sister Jane but now a copper thinks I am innocent. Why?’

  ‘It’s not a sudden thing,’ Mundy explained. ‘Not a sudden thing for me, anyway. I have had my doubts about the safety of your conviction for quite some time now.’

  ‘I appealed against my conviction,’ Derbyshire once again looked down at the tabletop, ‘for all the good it did. I lost the appeal.’

  ‘I know you did.’ Mundy nodded. ‘The evidence was damning. I can see why you lost the appeal.’

  ‘I got beaten up in here,’ Derbyshire announced. ‘It happened quite often.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Mundy replied. ‘But again, that’s the way of it. Murdering old ladies is not an acceptable crime. Crimes against children, crimes against the elderly … it makes you a “nonce” – you are not part of the criminal fraternity and so every now and then you get a kicking.’

  ‘I know.’ Derbyshire forced a smile. ‘I found out … I found out the hard way but I get left alone now. I’ve got the years in, you see, and I know my place. I know how it works. If someone … if one of the top lags takes food from my plate I let him have it, and I give my tobacco allowance to a big geezer who watches my back in return but only so long as I don’t annoy anyone – only if I don’t make someone upset. Nobody picks on me but if I upset someone, well, then I take what’s coming to me. I have to. So I avoid looking at other cons and let them take my food. I don’t speak unless they speak to me and I don’t speak to the prison staff, the screws … I don’t speak to them at all. That’s how I get by. I haven’t had a kicking for about five years now,’ Derbyshire added with a clear note of pride in his voice.

  ‘I’m pleased you are surviving.’ Mundy smiled. ‘So what is your sister’s address in Nottingham?’

  ‘Appledore Crescent.’ Derbyshire spelled the name for him.

  Mundy committed the street name to memory.

  ‘Number twenty-three,’ Derbyshire added.

  ‘Twenty-three.’ Again, Mundy committed the house number to memory.

  ‘You’re not writing it down?’ Derbyshire observed. ‘You must have a good memory.’

  ‘I have.’ Mundy grinned. ‘It comes with being a police officer all my working life. Well, pretty much all … and the number is easy to remember. They’re consecutive numbers, you see: twelve, one two and forty-five … four five … and so on, so twenty-three … two three is easy to remember. So,’ Mundy asked, ‘does your sister Jane work – is she employed?’

  ‘No, she’s not employed. She’s a housewife but that’s work enough.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I know just how hard housework can be.’

  ‘You do your own?’ Derbyshire asked.

  ‘Yes, I have to.’ Mundy shrugged. ‘There’s no one else to do it.’

  ‘I found out how hard it was when I cleaned for Miss Tweedale,’ Derbyshire reflected.

  ‘You did her housework?’ Mundy was surprised. ‘That’s a girly thing to do, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not her housework.’ Derbyshire shook his head. ‘I didn’t do the dusting but I cleaned her brass. I didn’t mind doing that – it was interesting. It didn’t seem like it was a girl’s job. She had a collection of brass shells.’

  ‘Shells?’ Mundy queried. ‘Brass ornamental seashells?’

  ‘No, from guns, you know … round brass things,’ Derbyshire clarified.

  ‘Ah,’ Mundy patted the tabletop, ‘you mean artillery shell casings. I know what you mean. They used to be popular ornaments in people’s houses. You don’t see them so often these days … sometimes you still see them in pubs.’

  ‘I’ve never been in a pub.’ Derbyshire looked crestfallen. ‘Miss Tweedale said she’d do that, said that she would take me into a pub and buy me a pint of beer on my eighteenth birthday but I was arrested before that happened. I’ve been banged up in prison since I was seventeen. Youth custody until I was twenty-one then I was brought to the adult prison.’

  Mundy looked aside. He felt deeply uncomfortable. Deeply ashamed.

  ‘But the shells,’ Derbyshire continued, ‘we’d sit and polish them together … in the summer we’d take them into the garden and polish them in the sunshine. She had thirty-seven of them.’

  ‘That’s a lot,’ Mundy commented. ‘I’ve only ever seen a couple or so on the sideboard of folks houses, but thirty-seven …’

  ‘Yes, thirty-seven,’ Derbyshire repeated, ‘not all on show. Some she kept up in the attic but all were kept well-polished. We would sit in the back garden and polish them and chat away as the bees buzzed around the flowerbeds. She would tell me about her life on the stage. She was on stage in London and had a brief spell in Hollywood making films. She made a bit of money but returned to England to work in theatre because she loved the stage. She acted in London and she also toured round the UK playing in theatres. She was a lovely lady and she called me her “own dear boy”. Nobody had treated me like that before. Nobody. She called herself a “second-division actress”. I remember that clearly. She said that she had shown flashes of first-division performances now and then but couldn’t sustain it so she was a second-divisioner and never got the top female parts, so she used to say. But she
had a nice house, full of her memories. What’s it like now? Burnt Oak, I mean,’ Derbyshire clarified, ‘not her house …’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mundy smiled. ‘I’ve never been to Burnt Oak.’

  ‘It’s on the Northern Line,’ Derbyshire advised.

  ‘Yes,’ Mundy continued to smile, ‘I know where it is, I’ve just never been there. I’ve never had occasion to set foot in Burnt Oak … and me a born and lifelong resident of London. So, you’d left home by the time you were arrested?’

  ‘Yes, I had. Independent living, the social workers called it.’ Derbyshire rolled his eyes.

  ‘Where was that?’ Mundy asked.

  ‘In Colindale. It was a council-owned house … not council built but they owned it.’

  ‘A miscellaneous property.’ Mundy pursed his lips. ‘Yes, I know the type.’

  ‘It was built in Victorian times for a family,’ Derbyshire continued, ‘then it was divided into two separate flats. I had the upstairs one. I was quite happy there.’ Joshua Derbyshire smiled to himself. ‘Yes, I was … I used to go up to Miss Tweedale’s house each Saturday and help her out any way she wanted … shopping, car cleaning, gardening, polishing the brass. I used to walk to her house from my little flat because she wanted me to walk. She said it was good exercise for me. I’d walk there and back.’

  ‘She evidently liked you a lot.’ Mundy scratched the back of his left hand.

  ‘Yes, she was good to me. It was like having a mother for the first time. I really felt cared for. Because of Miss Tweedale I know what it means to have a proper mother. She said that I had more about me than a special school pupil. She said I could have coped with mainstream education. I might not be the star pupil, she said, but I didn’t need the special school label stuck on my forehead.’ Derbyshire spoke with a note of anger in his voice.

  ‘Well, you’ve proved her right,’ Mundy observed approvingly. ‘You’ve got three O-levels … that’s brainy enough.’

  ‘Not all at once, though – just one a year, like I said. I mean, there’s geezers in here who have got five, six, seven O-levels all in one sitting. There’s even geezers in here who study for degrees.’ Derbyshire paused. ‘I could have had four O-levels but I failed history.’

  ‘No shame there.’ Mundy smiled. ‘History is a difficult subject to get a pass in. It’s very popular so they can set a high pass mark.’

  ‘I’d like to have another shot at it.’ Joshua Derbyshire set his jaw firm. ‘I’d like to do it for Miss Tweedale. I got the other three for her, and when I found it was getting hard I thought of Miss Tweedale and carried on. I can get history for her.’

  ‘Good for you, Joshua, that’s determination.’ Mundy eyed Joshua Derbyshire with warmth. ‘That’s what I like to hear … I like that attitude. I like it a lot.’

  ‘It also helps to pass the time in here,’ Derbyshire replied quietly. ‘But mostly I want to do it for Miss Tweedale. She believed in me.’

  ‘All right.’ Mundy once again relaxed back in the chair. ‘So tell me more about her – about Miss Tweedale. Was she all alone in the world?’

  ‘She lived alone.’ Derbyshire also relaxed in his chair. ‘She said she liked it that way but she had relatives … in London and the south, I think she said.’

  ‘Was she close to them?’ Mundy asked. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Miles away, I think,’ Derbyshire replied.

  ‘No … I meant emotionally speaking,’ Mundy clarified.

  ‘I don’t know. She had a sister but never talked about her,’ Derbyshire continued. ‘She often mentioned a couple of cousins that she had. I think she liked them more than she liked her sister in the south. And she had nephews but she didn’t like them. Once she said, “They’re just waiting for the old girl to die. That’s family for you, Josh, like a pack of circling vultures … any wonder I didn’t want to get married? It would be like falling into a pond full of piranhas.” She kept calling the family piranhas but I don’t know what a piranha is …’

  ‘A flesh-eating fish,’ Mundy told him. ‘It lives in the Amazon. It’s apparently not as fearsome as it is reported to be but I wouldn’t want to test it. Local people are not frightened of it, so I believe.’

  ‘So, she had some money,’ Derbyshire confirmed. ‘I mean, that old Rolls-Royce must have been worth a penny or two. She also had a lot of oil paintings hanging on the walls of her home but she never flashed money around and she didn’t have any expensive jewellery … not that I saw. Her home had a very strong feel. I liked her home. I think of it a lot.’

  ‘Strong?’ Mundy repeated. ‘How so … strong? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean …’ Derbyshire paused as if searching for the correct words, ‘… nothing cheap or tacky … nothing flimsy like it was about to fall apart any minute.’

  ‘Solid furnishings?’ Mundy suggested.

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s a better way of putting it. I like that way of putting it. Yes, it was a solid old house to be in.’ Derbyshire nodded gently. ‘Heavy furniture.’

  ‘Did Miss Tweedale have any friends that you knew of?’ Mundy asked.

  ‘She had a good neighbour … the couple next door – to the right if you looked at her house – Mr and Mrs Baxendale.’

  ‘Baxendale,’ Mundy repeated.

  ‘Miss Tweedale said … she used to say, “we are the Dales”, like the Yorkshire Dales, “but these Dales are in North London”,’ Derbyshire explained. ‘I’ve never been out of London so I don’t know but Miss Tweedale said that there is no such place as Tweedale and no such place as Baxendale.’

  ‘I see.’ Mundy stroked his chin.

  ‘But Miss Tweedale and Mr and Mrs Baxendale were really good mates. I thought so anyway.’ Joshua Derbyshire rested his hands on the tabletop.

  Mundy saw they were long and narrow. An artist’s hands, he thought. Derbyshire looked intently at Maurice Mundy and asked, ‘So why do you think I am innocent, Mr Mundy?’

  Mundy took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘How shall I put this …? Well, to be frank I don’t think you smell like a murderer, Joshua, especially one who would chop an elderly lady up and steal her money. You don’t smell at all like someone who would make a real bloodbath of the crime scene. That’s why.’

  ‘Murderers have their own smell?’ Joshua Derbyshire gasped. ‘Is that right? There are murderers in here and they don’t smell any different to any other cons … not to me they don’t.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t mean that murderers really have their own smell,’ Mundy replied. ‘I don’t mean that literally … I mean it figuratively … I mean that—’

  ‘I know what literally and figuratively mean.’ Derbyshire smiled. ‘I have an O-level in English language, so I know what you mean.’

  ‘Very well … you just don’t smell like a murderer,’ Mundy continued. ‘You don’t now and to be honest you didn’t then.’

  ‘You were there?’ Derbyshire’s eyes narrowed. ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mundy glanced away from Derbyshire, ‘I arrested you.’

  ‘No … no …’ Derbyshire held up his narrow hand. ‘I remember it was a copper called Spate, he arrested me. I would have recognized you if you had made my arrest. I’ll never forget Spate; he was a hard old geezer. Hard and bad.’

  ‘He arrested you,’ Mundy agreed. ‘He said, “Joshua Derbyshire, I am arresting you in connection with the murder of Anne Florence Margaret Tweedale. You are not obliged to say anything but it will harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned anything you may rely on in court.” He said that.’

  Joshua Derbyshire glanced up at the high ceiling of the agent’s room. ‘I’ll never forget those words, and he said them with his hand really gripping my left shoulder. It was like he put it in a vice.’ Derbyshire put his right hand up to his left shoulder.

  ‘Yes. So then what happened?’ Mundy pressed.

  ‘He pushed me towards two uniform cops who put handcuffs on me and they took me to the police statio
n in a van. One drove and one sat next to me in the back of the van.’

  ‘And you still don’t recognize me?’ Mundy smiled. ‘I dare say you were a bit bewildered by it all. I was the constable who sat next to you in the van. My right wrist was handcuffed to your left wrist. I sat nearest the back door of the van as I was obliged to, in case you tried to jump out and make a bid for freedom.’

  ‘You.’ Derbyshire’s jaw dropped. ‘You were that copper?’

  ‘Yes, that was me,’ Mundy confirmed. ‘Twenty-eight years ago we rode in the back of a police van, you and me. I thought then that you were guilty. I thought we had you bang to rights. I really did and I didn’t like you. I thought Spate had arrested the right man, and you confessed to it. Then you retracted your confession, but you had confessed. The evidence against you seemed solid. I was new in the job then, but over the years, when I was in plain clothes and in the detective branch, I have been part of many teams which have investigated a murder and you develop a sense of someone being guilty. I began to look back at your arrest and you never smelled correctly. Eventually, in my mind, I could never see you as a murderer. Like I said, you just didn’t “smell” correctly.’

  ‘You took your time, you didn’t half take your own sweet time.’ Derbyshire’s voice once more had a hint of anger. ‘I am liable for parole in two years and only now do you come and tell me you believe I am innocent … and I thought I was slow at things.’

  Mundy put his hand to his forehead. ‘You’ve got the right to be angry, Josh, the very real right, but it took years in the police before I developed a nose for a guilty person and you have to allow for that. I was, as you say, a “proper copper” until a few days ago. I couldn’t conduct my own investigation, but now I have a bit more room to manoeuvre. Look, Josh, do me a favour … do yourself a favour …’

  ‘Yes, what?’ Derbyshire growled.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone the reason I have visited you … no one, no one at all. If anyone asks, tell them I wanted information about another case, another investigation, a cold case of some years ago, and say that you couldn’t help me.’