A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘So you work Saturdays?’ Roberta Loss sounded surprised.

  ‘If we have to,’ Mundy replied. ‘Our work time is more liberal, less structured than the so-called “proper coppers”. We don’t have to work those long hours of endless overtime or do surveillance well into the night. It’s all more civilized. Reviewing evidence, talking to witnesses who may have recalled something over the passage of time which they didn’t think relevant at the time or were not asked about at the time. We’re not allowed to interview suspects; we have to notify the proper cops of any new information we might uncover.’

  ‘“Proper coppers”.’ Roberta Loss smiled. ‘I like that term.’

  ‘Someone used it earlier this week and I seem to have adopted it, for my sins,’ Mundy explained.

  ‘So what takes you to Nottingham?’ Roberta Loss asked.

  ‘Oh, that’s just a personal agenda I am pursuing. You can join me if you like, for the journey. I can’t take you to the house I have visited but we can travel up and back down together … have lunch, look round Nottingham. It’ll be a full day.’

  ‘No, I can’t … I’m working tonight.’ Roberta Loss looked at the window and groaned. ‘And it’s started to rain – that’ll slow things down. It’ll be a late finish for me, even with the thirty pounds you have given me. I’ll be working late tonight and I won’t be getting out of my pit until midday … probably, by which time you’ll be in Nottingham. What time will you get back, do you think?’

  ‘Early evening, I should imagine. Won’t be late.’ Maurice Mundy sipped his tea.

  ‘Will you get something to eat?’ Roberta Loss asked in a concerned tone of voice.

  ‘I have a pile of pizzas in the fridge; I saw that they were reduced to half price in the supermarket. They had reached their sell-by date so I grabbed all six that were on offer.’ Mundy looked pleased with himself. ‘I’ll have an early night and I’ll have all day Sunday to recover … then it’s back to the Cold Case Review Team on Monday.’

  ‘Why didn’t you rise in the police?’ Roberta Loss asked suddenly. ‘I mean, detective constable – that’s not very much, is it? I’ve been arrested by detective sergeants who were in their twenties.’

  ‘I can imagine. The company men … the so-called “young thrusters”. They have the work, sleep, work, sleep, work mentality. I could never get into that mindset.’ Mundy glanced at the falling rain. ‘I never was that keen.’

  ‘Is that the real reason?’ Roberta Loss eyed him intently.

  ‘It’s the reason that I am giving you.’ Mundy avoided her stare. ‘It’s part of the reason.’

  ‘So there’s another reason?’ Roberta Loss smiled.

  ‘Possibly.’ Mundy smiled back. ‘The whole truth is out there.’

  ‘But you won’t tell me what it is?’ Roberta Loss winked at Mundy.

  ‘Nope. So I didn’t achieve greatness then, but no one in the CCRT did. Those who achieve greatness retire at fifty-five years of age with a huge pension and turn their backs on the police. The low fliers … well, our pensions won’t run to good living and we still can keep our hand in if the pressure is kept off. It’s a better deal than taking a job as a night watchman or a school-crossing warden like some retired police officers have to do. It offers a certain self-respect.’ Mundy swallowed a mouthful of tea. ‘It keeps me in the police, and that I like.’

  ‘I see.’ Roberta Loss emptied yet more sugar into her tea. ‘So, tell me, who is up there in Nottingham?’

  FIVE

  ‘Thank you very much for the phone call, I really did appreciate it.’ The woman smiled. She was tall, with neatly kept hair – elegant, Maurice Mundy thought, in a three-quarter-length dark green dress, her slender legs placed in sensible brown shoes with a small heel. ‘It enabled me to ensure I was at home.’

  ‘It was really in my interest.’ Mundy reclined in the armchair, which he found soft and comfortable. The room was light coloured and airy with a large window which looked out on to Appledore Crescent, and an equally large window on the further side of the room which looked out on to the rear garden of the property which, Mundy noted, was modest in size but very carefully tended. Within, the house smelled of air freshener and furniture polish, as if it had been prepared in readiness for his visit. Prints of old Nottingham hung on the wall provided the decoration. ‘It would have been a long way to come to find that you were not at home.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The woman smiled again. ‘It is really the case that it is in both our interests. So, you are interested in Joshua?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy glanced around the room and then held eye contact with Jane Weekes. ‘I am interested in Joshua … specifically, I am interested in the safety of his conviction.’

  ‘Is this official police business,’ Jane Weekes asked guardedly, ‘or a private pursuit of justice? I note that you are but one man. I understand that plainclothes police work in pairs.’

  ‘The latter,’ Mundy confessed. ‘My visit is wholly unofficial.’

  ‘But you are a police officer?’ Jane Weekes spoke in a calm, relaxed manner. Mundy noted that she had not lost her London accent.

  ‘Technically, yes,’ Mundy explained. ‘I am semi-retired and with limited room to manoeuvre but not yet put out to grass.’

  ‘I see. Joshua did not kill that woman,’ Jane Weekes asserted. ‘He did not kill her.’

  ‘I don’t believe he killed her either.’ Mundy quickly relaxed in the presence of Mrs Weekes and felt that he was going to enjoy the visit to her home. ‘I think, with growing conviction, that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice.’

  ‘And so little compensation that he has benefitted from prison,’ Jane Weekes replied. ‘It is hardly any compensation at all.’

  ‘Benefitted?’ Mundy repeated. ‘How? In what sense? What do you mean?’

  ‘In the sense that he is more alert – the rigorous regime has brightened him up and brought him down to earth. His feet are now on the ground. He lives life rather than sliding over the surface of it. He is now fully engaged with life. I think it has brought out his latent potential. He has had a bit of an education in prison. Joshua is not a highflyer, he wouldn’t … could not manage a university correspondence course, but three O-levels meant that he could have coped with a mainstream school all along and avoided the stigma of a special school attendee.’

  ‘I also found him more alert than I had expected, I readily confess,’ Mundy replied. ‘He has read Treasure Island, for example.’

  ‘Has he?’ Jane Weekes beamed. ‘Well, good for him. Good for Joshua. That book must have a reading age of about fourteen.’

  ‘I would think so … and not only had he read it but he could criticize it,’ Maurice Mundy advised. ‘He was able to pick holes in the plot, so he had really read it, and read it very carefully.’

  ‘How interesting? What did he say?’ Jane Weekes continued to smile broadly.

  ‘He said …’ Mundy glanced upwards, ‘… what did he say now? Oh, yes … he said that Stephenson seemed to get tired of the book by the time he wrote the final chapter and he rushed to finish it. He said that two paragraphs in the final chapter began with the word “well”, like he was having a quick gossip over the garden fence with his neighbour, and he said that Stephenson should have taken a week’s holiday then written the final chapter.’

  ‘Josh said that!’ Jane Weekes gasped. ‘That is not special school material; he definitely could have coped in a comprehensive school – the lowest ability range, perhaps, but he could have kept his head above water.’

  ‘I thought so too.’ Mundy inclined his head. ‘And he was able to pick holes in the plot, as I said, such as that it is the case that the reader never finds out what Jim Hawkins and the doctor do with their share of the treasure … and he asked how did they manage to conceal the treasure from the crew they hired in Jamaica to help them sail the Hispaniola back to England without the crew discovering the treasure on the ship?’ Mundy raised a finger. ‘Especially since Long J
ohn Silver had forced a hole in the bulkhead of the hold of the ship where the treasure was stored and taken his fair share before spiriting himself away in the night. That action of his meant that the treasure was in plain sight of the newly hired crew. Josh picked that up by himself.’

  ‘That really is interesting.’ Jane Weekes took a deep breath. ‘My husband will be interested to hear that. I have talked with him about Josh, as you might imagine, and he says that it sounds like Joshua suffered from “negative Pygmalion effect”.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ Maurice Mundy pleaded, ‘I am not familiar with that term … the negative Pygmalion effect. What does it mean?’

  ‘My husband is a schoolmaster,’ Mrs Weekes explained, ‘and a damn good one too. He is a strong advocate of the Pygmalion effect. He says that people, but especially children, will believe what is said about them if they are told it often enough. If you tell a girl she is plain and unprepossessing, she will be plain and unprepossessing … but if you tell that self-same girl she is beautiful and attractive, she will become beautiful and attractive. If you tell a boy he’s a team player, he will become a team player, but if you tell him he’s better off on his own, he will grow up to be better off on his own.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Mundy smiled, ‘I understand. I have come across that attitude. I just didn’t know it was called the Pygmalion effect.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Weekes continued, ‘my husband is an idealist and he started teaching at a struggling comprehensive, not by then labelled as a failing school but well on its way there. The children just wouldn’t cooperate in the form he was given, which was a notoriously difficult form. They would get up and walk round the classroom in the middle of lessons, sometimes even walk out of the classroom in the middle of a lesson … you know, the sort of thing that they’d be shot for in an earlier era. But my husband let them know how much he enjoyed teaching that form because they were intelligent and hardworking. He didn’t lay it on with a trowel but he’d say that to that particular form once a week and they began to settle down, became interested and they began to work. Eventually he got good results from them.’

  ‘Good for him.’ Mundy smiled. ‘Well done him.’

  ‘Yes … my husband took his attitude to the staff room; he told his colleagues what he was doing and they followed suit. Within a few months the whole school had been turned round – utterly transformed. It was a huge success story. It is now a very successful inner-city comprehensive and my husband has risen to become the head of history. He was offered a headship but he doesn’t want to leave the classroom to manage a school.’

  ‘You know, that rather explains now why I didn’t work at school,’ Mundy growled. ‘I failed my eleven-plus and was sent to a secondary modern because someone has to drive the buses and build the brick walls …’

  ‘And stack supermarket shelves.’ Mrs Weekes also growled with disapproval. ‘Yes, I know all about the evils of the eleven-plus system being an eleven-plus failure myself. But those days are gone … thank goodness. It’s all comprehensive now.’

  ‘Thankfully.’ Mundy nodded in agreement. ‘Thankfully.’

  ‘But I mention the Pygmalion effect to explain Joshua,’ Mrs Weekes continued. ‘I think my mother had some issue with her father which wasn’t talked about like such things might be today, and I don’t think there was a great deal of passion in my parents’ marriage. I think my mother got married to have daughters. She got two, wanted a third but got a son instead – a son for whom she had no time. Poor Josh, he just couldn’t do anything right. He was our mother’s victim from day one. That was bad enough, and then he turned out to be a bit slow. So then what was he but “stupid” – every day he was told that he was stupid. So he became stupid because it was expected of him. He went to the special school and became “soft Joshua” – a target for the local bullies … but Anne Tweedale rescued him. She saw potential in him and showed him warmth and acceptance. She mothered him and he responded with loyalty and doing what he could to please her. Then he stabs her multiple times and steals her valuables? I don’t think so. It is just not credible. I don’t believe that he did that.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ Mundy sighed. ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘So what is your interest in my brother?’ Jane Weekes asked after a slight lull in the conversation.

  ‘I arrested him.’ Mundy held eye contact with Jane Weekes and watched as her jaw sagged and the colour drained from her face. After a second brief pause, Mrs Weekes said, ‘I am not sure that I am happy … I am not very comfortable with your presence in my house, Mr Mundy.’

  ‘Please hear me out. I understand how you might feel, but please let me explain.’ Mundy held up his hand, palm facing outwards towards Jane Weekes. ‘I was a junior constable then, still in uniform, and I didn’t arrest him as such – it would be more accurate to say that I was present when a senior officer arrested Joshua and myself and another constable escorted him into custody.’

  ‘I see,’ Jane Weekes replied cautiously. ‘And it’s taken you twenty-eight years to express your concern about the safety of his conviction? Not a man in a hurry, are you, Mr Mundy? Not a man to run for the bus, it might seem.’

  ‘It’s taken me a few months really.’ Mundy defended himself. ‘You see, I never achieved high rank in the police, and anyway, someone has to investigate the theft of the lawnmower from the cricket club’s garden shed, but I have also been part of murder inquiry teams. I may have only been a “pit pony”, kept largely in the dark and the sort pulling loads no one else wanted to pull, but despite that I have been close enough to the action to see things, and over the years I have learned that murderers have a distinct personality trait.’

  ‘Oh …?’ Mrs Weekes replied with a look of alertness in her eyes.

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy spoke softly but firmly. ‘It was described to me very recently as believing that the sun shines just for them, and often they subscribe to the belief that it’s always somebody else’s fault …’

  ‘As, for example …’ Jane Weekes’ voice became a little warmer.

  ‘As a case I recall when a man’s wife walked out on him and went to live in a woman’s refuge. The man was so full of self-importance that he couldn’t cope with his wife leaving and he persuaded a friend who worked for British Telecom to provide him with the address of the refuge, which his friend could do because his job allowed him to access the address of the ex-directory numbers. He said that he wanted to talk to his wife to try to rescue their marriage … or so he explained to his friend, and like an idiot his friend agreed and furnished him with the address of the refuge.’

  ‘Oh … no …’ Jane Weekes put her hand up to her mouth. ‘Oh, no …’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mundy raised his eyebrows, ‘I’m afraid so. This man’s idea of rescuing his marriage was to go round to the hostel with cold premeditation, armed with a carving knife, and he ran his wife through for walking out on him – “nobody walks out on me” being his attitude … and he was totally without remorse when we arrested him. He was not at all bothered that his friend lost his very good job and was not likely to get another – not one that was worth having, anyway … He was not in any way bothered that his wife lost her life when still less than halfway through her expected lifespan. He said that it was all her fault for leaving him because he was a little bit violent at times, and that wasn’t his fault either – it was the beer that made him like that.’

  ‘That is not Joshua, that is not Joshua at all,’ Jane Weekes replied indignantly. ‘He would never, never, ever think like that. Never!’

  ‘I know, but it took me many years of arresting real murderers before I could look back on Joshua Derbyshire’s arrest and say, “that young man is not a murderer”, but even then I could not say anything until I retired from mainstream policing.’

  ‘I see.’ Jane Weekes spoke softly. ‘That is interesting. I am less uncomfortable now. So how can I help you, Mr Mundy?’

  ‘Could you tell me who Joshua’s legal team w
ere?’ Mundy asked. ‘I might be able to talk to them, even after this length of time.’

  ‘You might well … His solicitor was a young man called Greenall.’

  Maurice Mundy took his notebook from his pocket. ‘Greenall,’ he repeated.

  ‘He might still be with us even after this length of time,’ Jane Weekes added. ‘He was employed by a firm of solicitors called Pope and Steadman.’

  ‘Pope and Steadman.’ Mundy wrote in his pad.

  ‘Of Burnt Oak,’ Jane Weekes advised. ‘He seemed to be genuinely unconvinced of Joshua’s guilt. His barrister was an elderly man who hadn’t taken silk so he was not a star player, and he put up a very perfunctory performance at Josh’s trial. He brought only one character witness as his defence package. He didn’t sum up the defence argument and declined to address the jury at the close of the trial which, of course, only served to make Joshua look guilty. He was a man called Levy. Oh, and he also declined to put Josh in the witness box; that also made him look guilty …’

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy looked around the home, built in the sixties, he guessed, and he found it cold within. A single gas fire, turned down low, served to take the edge off the cold but didn’t warm the room. ‘That indeed would make Joshua look guilty, as you say. Can I ask if you knew Miss Tweedale?’

  ‘I knew her quite well. Josh made no secret of his going to her house. He was only about fourteen or fifteen, probably nearer fifteen, when he met her and so she would run him home on dark nights or I would collect him from Miss Tweedale’s house. He still needed looking after and protecting even at that age, because we genuinely thought he had a functioning level of about ten years of age,’ Jane Weekes explained.