A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘So you know East Anglia well?’ Mundy asked.

  ‘You could say that,’ Cassey replied. ‘Why are you interested in my old Saab?’

  ‘We’re not,’ Mundy said. ‘We are interested in the murder of Oliver Walwyn.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ Cassey demanded with a note of fear and alarm suddenly re-entering his voice. ‘I don’t know anyone of that name.’

  ‘A little boy who had his skull smashed in about ten years ago,’ Mundy explained. ‘You probably read about it. The story was well covered in the press and on television.’

  ‘And his body was dumped in a fishing pond in a village green in Essex which could not be seen from the road,’ Ingram added. ‘I mean, the pond could not be seen from the road.’

  ‘Indicating someone knew it was there.’ Mundy spoke coldly. Then he added, ‘You’re quite a small, old geezer, aren’t you? What are you, five six, seven?’

  ‘So?’ Cassey’s voice became high-pitched. ‘What’s my height got to do with anything?’

  ‘Have you got a large, well-built friend?’ Ingram asked.

  ‘I’ve got a few friends; they come in all shapes and sizes.’ Cassey remained defensive.

  ‘Any one large friend in particular?’ Mundy pressed.

  ‘No.’ But the answer came too rapidly, too highly pitched to be believable.

  ‘Have you got a criminal record?’ Ingram asked.

  ‘You must know that I have …’ Cassey continued to stand his ground but his voice trembled with fear.

  ‘Yes, we did check,’ Mundy replied. ‘Nothing very serious and nothing for a long time … all spent now. Assault, resisting arrest. All a bit violent in one way or another.’

  ‘And you collected a few months in HM prison,’ Ingram added.

  ‘Yes. No point in denying it but that was …’ Cassey’s voice shook with fear, ‘… well, it feels like it was another lifetime. I’ve turned the corner. In fact, I turned the corner a long time ago. Like I said, all that is well behind me.’

  ‘Well, good for you. But the murder of the boy,’ Ingram pressed, ‘what can you tell us about that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Cassey gasped. ‘I can tell you nothing about it. Nothing at all.’

  ‘But you were the owner of a Saab 90 with ill-matching doors ten years ago,’ Mundy clarified.

  ‘Ten years? Yes, I was. I had the car for three years about ten years ago, but you’ll know that if you checked with the records,’ Cassey replied nervously. ‘It’s all on computer these days. All on those computers, wretched things that they are.’

  ‘You don’t like computers?’ Mundy observed, still hearing fear in Cassey’s voice. ‘It sounds like you don’t like them at all.’

  ‘You can’t seem to hide,’ Cassey whined, ‘so no … no … I don’t like them. Computers and CCTV cameras on every lamppost … you can’t hide.’

  ‘Useful, though.’ Mundy smiled. ‘They’re very useful to the police.’

  ‘To you, perhaps,’ Cassey sneered. ‘So why question me about that boy who was murdered? Why link my old Saab with that murder? I don’t see the connection.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Mundy replied calmly. ‘We have to see a connection and, when we do, we’ll call back.’

  ‘But thank you for your cooperation.’ Tom Ingram smiled. ‘It was very interesting to meet you.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ Maurice Mundy echoed as he felt his shoes stick to the rug on which he stood. ‘Very interesting indeed.’

  David Cole leaned forward and clasped his hands tightly together. He took a deep breath. His face developed a ruddy hue. ‘I am …’ he said quietly and slowly, ‘… trying to remain very, very calm.’ He glanced out of his office window at the vista it offered of central Chelmsford, of modern, late-twentieth-century buildings and narrow streets carrying a heavy flow of traffic. ‘I have never dealt with Cold Case Review officers before so I confess I am not sure of my ground. I am trying to remain calm. I will have to consult my boss, take advice and let him decide to notify your governor or not.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Ingram replied.

  ‘But I would have thought that you have jeopardized our inquiry into the murders of those girls,’ Cole continued.

  ‘We did not mention them at all,’ Ingram protested. ‘We enquired only about our case … Oliver Walwyn. We did not mention any of the murdered women – not once. We were very careful not to do that.’

  ‘But you tipped him off that we know he used to own a distinct car which was seen in the vicinity of the area where Janet Laws was known to be abducted with one man driving and another leaning over something or somebody as if in a struggle. That’s sufficient to tip them off.’ Cole took a deep breath. ‘And you implied that we had a description of the two men in the distinctive Saab … one short and driving, the other large. You asked if he had a well-built friend. If it is them then he’ll be phoning his mate now. If they have collected trophies from their victims they now have all the time in the world to dispose of them. You’ve blown our case if it is Cassey and another man.’

  ‘We are entitled to interview people who may be connected with the crime.’ Mundy sat back in the chair which he occupied and which stood in front of Cole’s desk. He remained forcibly calm as he spoke.

  ‘But not suspects!’ Cole then slapped his palm on the desktop. ‘Not suspects, that is clear … that was made clear. Not suspects! You don’t interview suspects.’

  ‘We didn’t.’ Mundy remained relaxed. ‘We didn’t know that he was a suspect until we were in his house, and then we found that he reeks of guilt.’

  ‘Reeks of it,’ Ingram echoed. ‘And he’s got the right profile. Single man, a low-life … was employed as a delivery van driver all over East Anglia and further afield on occasions, but he’ll know East Anglia, he’ll know it well – all the little lanes off the beaten track. He trembled with fear at the mention of his old Saab, and of his well-built mate … the Laurel and Hardy duo. He’s your man, all right. He’s the Stanley Laurel.’

  ‘And the “Oliver Hardy” is now covering his tracks, especially since you waited twenty-four hours to tell us,’ Cole growled. ‘Considerate of you, I must say!’

  ‘We had to return to Scotland Yard to check our records,’ Mundy explained. ‘That took time.’

  ‘Oh, and we’re in the dark ages up here in Essex, are we?’ Cole snarled. ‘We’re still burning witches at the stake, are we? We’ve got our own computer which interfaces with the Police National Computer. Or didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Mundy shrugged. ‘I suppose we just thought “London”.’

  ‘Typical arrogance of Met coppers, if you ask me.’ Cole sighed. ‘I’ll talk to my boss and we’ll probably arrest Cassey on suspicion, but it’s likely going to be a damage limitation exercise. If he is released from custody don’t go near him. Not without clearance … and then only about your investigation.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Ingram replied for both he and Mundy. ‘That’s fair enough.’

  Cole stood up. ‘Just get back to London. I’ll go and talk to the next floor up about this but they won’t be a set of very happy campers. You can bet on that.’

  The girl was black, an Afro-Caribbean, short, with heavy make-up about the eyes, brightly dressed in a red coat and a yellow scarf with multi-coloured beads around her neck. She eyed Mundy with a poorly disguised sneer at a pathetic, sad old man who was on the ‘Callie’ seeking a little empty-headed company. She said, ‘Are you looking for a girl?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Mundy replied, looking down at the waif.

  ‘So what do you want, darlin’?’ the girl replied. ‘And I only do safe?’

  ‘Sensible of you,’ Mundy said, ‘but she’s mixed race, taller than you, shorter than me and I hope she only does safe as well. She’s called Roberta.’

  ‘If you’re a regular of hers you should always know where to find your girl.’ The woman admonished Mundy with an air of aggression and effortless superiority for one so young t
hat surprised him. ‘Sorry, mate, I can’t help you. I don’t know any girl called Roberta and time is money.’ She turned away and was lost in the crowd at the bottom of Caledonian Road in the gathering evening gloom.

  Eventually Mundy found the girl he was looking for and took her to a cheap Italian-owned and run café. He watched with no little dismay as Roberta Loss emptied much of the contents of the sugar jar into her tea.

  ‘You won’t taste the tea,’ Mundy warned. ‘Not that there is a great deal of tea to taste in here but at least it’s warm and wet.’

  ‘It goes with the territory.’ Roberta Loss picked up the teaspoon with slender, wasted-looking hands and stirred the concoction within the cup in front of her. ‘Smackheads get to stop photosynthesis …’ The woman shrugged. ‘We develop an addiction to sugar and have to take loads of it because we can’t obtain energy from the sun … not no more, we can’t.’

  ‘Are you still living alone?’ Roberta Loss’s statement about photosynthesis made no sense to Maurice Mundy and he did not comment on it.

  ‘Yes. I like it like that.’ She sipped the tea. ‘It’s a reaction to the way mother and him used to live, I suppose … knocking lumps out of each other with me cowering behind the settee, but for some reason they stayed together. I just couldn’t understand them. I still can’t. They’re probably still doing it now under the palm trees.’

  ‘It seems to work for some people.’ Mundy also sipped his tea. ‘It’s like they feed off the violence, though I could never understand it either. It’s like they like the violence for the peace which follows. Like banging your head on a wall because it feels good when you stop. Most people wouldn’t knock their heads against the wall in the first place.’

  ‘Headbangers.’ Roberta Loss smiled. ‘I know what you mean. I meet a lot of them in my line of work.’

  ‘I imagine you do.’ Mundy sighed. ‘Or it’s the chemistry which seems to work between small, feisty women and large, biddable men. I could never understand that either. Finally I stopped trying to understand it. If it works for them, it works for them … so leave them as is. I am sorry you had to see that, though.’

  ‘Couldn’t be avoided.’ Roberta Loss cupped her hands around the mug of tea.

  ‘Anyway, I’m pleased I found you,’ Mundy said with a smile. ‘I have thirty pounds to spare … I’d like you to have it.’

  ‘I’m not happy about taking it,’ Roberta Loss complained.

  ‘I know but I’d like you to take it,’ Mundy argued. ‘You’ll get home earlier if you do. You’ll be a little safer.’

  ‘OK.’ Roberta Loss took the money and slipped it into her purse.

  ‘Any employment?’ Mundy asked, though he knew what the answer was going to be.

  Roberta Loss inclined her head to the window of the shop. ‘Just what’s out there, just what’s going at the bottom end of the Callie.’

  ‘I don’t like you doing it,’ Mundy spoke calmly.

  ‘Where else can I go but the Callie? I can’t work Piccadilly, not young enough, and not good looking enough for “the Dilly Lady” … so it’s the Callie for me … or King’s Cross. It’s the same difference, the Callie or King’s Cross.’

  ‘I don’t mean I don’t like you standing on the Caledonian Road,’ Mundy spoke quietly. ‘I don’t care where you stand, the Callie or “the Dilly Lady” or King’s Cross, I mean I don’t like you doing it at all. I don’t like you standing anywhere.’

  ‘What else can I do?’ Roberta Loss gulped her tea. ‘Tell me, oh wise one, what else can I do? How else can I earn money? A girl like me. I have no qualifications … no work experience. I had reasonable looks before I got wasted with heroin, so I stand on the street, and I’ve been here ever since. It’s a common enough story out there.’

  ‘I dare say.’ Mundy felt deeply uncomfortable. ‘Are you still living in the same place?’

  ‘Me old bedsit in Earls Court? The Kangaroo Canyon? Yes … still there.’ Roberta Loss put more sugar into what remained of her tea. ‘I’ll let you know if I change address.’

  ‘I’d appreciate that,’ Mundy replied, ‘but your tea won’t absorb any more sugar.’

  ‘I know.’ Roberta Loss smiled. ‘I eat the sludge these days. Like I said, I don’t get anything from the sun no more. I have to eat sugar.’

  ‘Eating sugar.’ Mundy sighed. ‘You can move in with me. I’ve told you that before. I won’t take any money off you so you wouldn’t have to work …’

  ‘What? And you’ll handcuff me to the bed so I can’t leave the house to score some H?’ Roberta Loss inclined her head to one side. ‘Is that what you’d do?’

  ‘If I thought it would do any good,’ Mundy sighed, ‘yes, I’d be prepared to do that …’

  ‘I’d scream my lungs out and you’d be done for false imprisonment.’

  Roberta Loss drained the last of her tea and was left with a slush of tea-soaked sugar in the bottom of her cup. She took a teaspoon and began to shovel the slush into her mouth. ‘It gives me energy,’ she explained. ‘It’s going to get cold out there tonight. You know, it’s good of you to keep inviting me to move into your drum but it wouldn’t work – we’d get on each other’s nerves. I may take you up on it for a few days if the alternative is rough sleeping, if I get evicted. So it’s good to know that I have that as a safety net. Thank you.’

  ‘Have you had any treatment?’ Mundy asked.

  ‘I tried methadone but it didn’t work for me,’ Roberta Loss explained. ‘At the clinic they say if you can do without it for a day, you can do without it for a week, and if you can do without it for a week, you can do without it for a month, and so on. And they told us the story of the old lady …’

  ‘I don’t know that one,’ Mundy asked. ‘What’s that story?’

  ‘Well,’ Roberta Loss spooned more sugary slush into her mouth, ‘it is the story of an old … a middle-aged lady who was told she was very ill. In fact, it was believed she was terminally ill but they didn’t tell her that and her doctor arranged for a nurse to visit her and give her a daily shot of heroin to ease the pain.’

  ‘I see.’ Mundy sipped his tea, which had by then gone cold.

  ‘So,’ Roberta Loss continued, ‘the doctor retired and his practice was taken over by a new doctor who reviewed all the patients and their treatments and came across the records of the middle-aged lady and her daily dose of heroin. By then she had been getting a daily shot for ten years.’

  ‘Ten years!’ Mundy gasped. ‘So she wasn’t terminally ill?’

  ‘No, there had … what was the phrase they used?’ Roberta Loss looked to her right. ‘A mal … or a misdiagnosis, and so the doctor visited and said, “I’m sorry your treatment has taken so long but now you are cured and I am going to stop the treatment”. He visited her a couple of days later expecting to find her in a dreadful mess … the shakes, stomach cramps, vomiting … the whole cold turkey number.’

  ‘But …’ Mundy prompted.

  ‘But she was as right as rain. Apparently. So the story went. She said that she did have a period of influenza-like symptoms for a day or so but that soon passed. She was just pleased she was cured and could go out for a whole day without having to wait in for the nurse to call and give her an injection.’ Roberta Loss scooped the last of the slush from her cup into her mouth. ‘So there she was, living an addict’s dream … a heavy hit of pharmaceutically pure heroin every day. She came off it without being eased off it and all she experienced was feeling like she had had a mild dose of influenza for a day, the point being that they say that the need for heroin is a myth … it’s all in the head.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Mundy replied. ‘That’s very interesting indeed.’

  ‘And it’s true because whenever I have been in prison and couldn’t get any heroin the craving wasn’t as strong. In fact, on some days it wasn’t there at all,’ Roberta Loss explained. ‘It just vanished. Vanished.’

  ‘So why go back to it?’ Mundy appealed.

  ‘Becaus
e it’s who I am … it’s my place … it’s my identity.’ Roberta Loss looked down at the tabletop. ‘I am a heroin-addicted street-worker … part of the underground sex industry. I’m known as that. The suppliers push H on to me. If I wasn’t that what could I be? There’s nothing else I could be.’

  Maurice Mundy felt cold anger rising in him.

  ‘If I don’t buy I’ll get my face burned off with acid,’ Roberta Loss added. ‘So they’ve got you cold. No escape.’

  ‘Animals,’ Mundy hissed. ‘Animals. So why don’t you move to a new location? Relocate to some place where you are not known and establish yourself as a non-user.’ He casually examined his tablemat which depicted a racing Ferrari in Italian Racing Red, and then he glanced at a huge photograph of St Mark’s Square in Venice which hung on the wall behind Roberta Loss. ‘It’s the only way you’ll break free. Honestly, it’s the only way you’ll do it. And you’ll have to break free if you wish to live. It’s as serious as that.’

  ‘I know … I know … do you think I don’t know? Each week we hear about a working girl getting iced. Often it doesn’t make the newspapers.’ Roberta Loss dropped her teaspoon into her empty cup. ‘So you don’t have to tell me, oh wise one. But, like I said, it’s all caught up in the self-image and all the pressure on you. That old lady didn’t know she was a heroin addict and she didn’t have very heavy men being nice and kind to her if she bought white powder from them or threatening to break her legs, or worse, if she didn’t. But I’ll think about what you said … promise.’

  ‘Please do. You know where I live and you have a set of keys …’ Mundy paused. ‘All right, enough of the lecture. Shall we have another cup of tea?’

  ‘So …’ Roberta Loss upturned the sugar jar into the second cup of tea after it was served in an off-hand manner by the olive-skinned waitress who scowled at Roberta Loss as she did so. ‘Tell me, how is the new job? Good?’

  ‘Interesting … it’s very interesting, looking over old cases. Old, unsolved cases – “cold cases”, as we call them. Better than sitting at home soaking up daytime television or sitting in the pub all afternoon making each pint last an hour.’ Maurice Mundy stirred his cup of tea despite not having sweetened it. ‘It gets me out. I’m up in East Anglia all this week and I’ll be going to Nottingham tomorrow.’