A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘It’s an old family firm,’ Norris Miller of Millers Removals and Storage consulted the file. ‘I am fourth generation. My father and grandfather were very good – they didn’t bully me into joining the family firm upon leaving school. I got a bit of further education and then travelled to Australia and New Zealand where we have relatives. In fact, they said to go and get a bit of life experience, sleep under strange stars, chew some dirt and come and join us when you’re ready to join us … only when you are ready. They wanted me to come with enthusiasm, not resentment.’

  ‘That sounds to have been very sensible advice.’ Maurice Mundy sat with his legs crossed in front of Miller’s desk in a small office overlooking a parking bay in which five large vans, of cream livery with red lettering, were parked in a neat row. Mundy noticed that two of the lorries had larger-than-normal cabs so as to provide sleeping accommodation above the driving position. The interior of Norris Miller’s office was decorated with photographs of Millers Removal Vans of earlier years.

  ‘It was very sensible. It meant I came here when I wanted to. If I was bullied into joining upon leaving school I would have grown to resent it and they clearly knew that. In the event, I was twenty-six when I came to work here. I stayed because I wanted to stay and I grew to love the work. The crew like it … it’s mainly manly physical work and it’s clean – we just handle people’s household possessions – and it’s safe work. There is a certain skill involved which I had not appreciated until I started here. It’s just awesome watching two geezers remove furniture, negotiate tight corners without touching the walls, lifting heavy items without any apparent effort. I am well used to it now but when I started it was breathtaking to watch.’ Norris Miller beamed. ‘Really breathtaking.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ Mundy forced a smile.

  ‘Anne Tweedale … that job was before my time – just before my time, though. North-west London is a bit moneyed and we get to do removals for a few celebrities. Anne Tweedale, the actress, was one of them. I remember my father remarking a year or two later what a sad old business that had been for them, clearing the house of a murder victim … of someone who should still be alive. All the crew were upset by it.’ Norris Miller continued to leaf through the file. ‘It’s an unpleasant job to clear a house when someone has died. Natural causes is one thing but when someone’s life has been taken … then clearing a house when the owner should still be alive … that’s a hard old number to play.’ Norris Miller was a large, broad-chested individual who seemed to Mundy to be very muscular under his plum suit, red remembrance poppy and yellow cravat. He seemed like a man who could lift a settee on to his shoulders as easily as another man would lift a rucksack. Physically speaking, he seemed to Mundy to be well suited to the removal business in addition to being the manager. ‘Ah …’ he tapped the file, ‘… here we are. Miss A. Tweedale’s possessions removed and stored. She died intestate. Quite strange, really, a woman with her wealth and possessions, you would … well, I would have thought that she would have left a will. The only “intestates” we deal with are those who have next to nothing to leave anyway. We get them from time to time.’

  ‘I imagine you do.’ Mundy sat forward and rested his fedora on his knees. ‘What did you do with Miss Tweedale’s possessions?’

  ‘Put them in our storage facility out in Hertfordshire, near Borehamwood. It sounds grand but it’s really just a lot of second-hand containers in a field.’ Miller grinned.

  ‘Second-hand?’ Mundy echoed in an amused tone of voice.

  ‘Yes, we have no need to buy new containers. No need at all. After travelling round the world on ships … and being loaded and unloaded, sometimes not very carefully, then, after a few years, they get a bit bent and scratched and worn … but so long as they are watertight and can be secured they are still of interest to us to use as fixed site storage facilities. So we took Miss Tweedale’s possessions from her house and stored them in container forty-three, it says here, that is fourth row, third container … and we kept them until she was declared intestate, upon which her next of kin, given here as being one Mrs Phyllis Spate, arrived with legal notification that she was the rightful owner of Miss Tweedale’s possessions. The Court of Probate, Divorce and Admiralty which sits in an antechamber of the Houses of Parliament approved her claim to be Miss Tweedale’s next of kin.’ Norris Miller picked up the file, rotated it through 180 degrees and handed it to Mundy. ‘I dare say I can let you have a photocopy of that document, if you wish.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Mundy read the notification. ‘That won’t be necessary – not at this juncture, anyway. We may need a copy at a later date, though. So long as I can say that I have seen it, that will suffice for now.’ Mundy re-rotated the file and handed it back to Miller with a smile of thanks.

  ‘Why the police interest after all this time?’ Miller asked.

  ‘It’s just a loose end I was asked to tie up,’ Mundy replied. ‘It’s of little importance, which is why I am calling on you alone. Usually, you see, we work in pairs.’

  ‘Yes … I didn’t want to ask or comment but I thought a lone officer was unusual.’ Miller took the file and closed it. ‘But you showed me your ID so I assume it’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite all right. And the issue of Miss Tweedale’s possessions and their disposal is not important in itself. All I can say is that it impinges distantly upon another investigation.’

  ‘Well, if Millers Removals of Burnt Oak can be of assistance then I am pleased you asked.’ Norris Miller glanced at his watch. ‘Which brings us neatly up to knocking-off time. I don’t suppose you work nine to five?’

  ‘No, we don’t. Crime doesn’t stop and neither do the police.’ Mundy stood and extended his hand to Miller. ‘But I work in the Cold Case Review Team now … it keeps my hand in until I retire on a full-time basis, so in my case, the job is less time-consuming.’

  ‘Good.’ Miller took Mundy’s hand in a warm grip. ‘I am looking forward to my retirement; my sons will take over from me but I’ll do what my father did … kick them out of the UK and tell them not to come back until they want to stand in my shoes. I see the rain has begun again.’ Miller glanced out of the loading bay towards the street. ‘Got far to go?’

  ‘Archway.’ Mundy put on his hat.

  ‘Across London in the rush hour.’ Miller looked despairingly at Mundy. ‘Rather you than me. Which way will you go?’

  ‘A410 to Friern Barnet and down the A1,’ Mundy replied. ‘It ought not to be too bad. Once I pick up the A1 all the traffic will be going in the opposite direction. I should be all right.’

  ‘Then in for the night like me?’ Miller smiled. ‘Home is the only place to be on a wet November evening.’

  ‘No.’ Mundy grinned. ‘I’ve got a date with a lady. You still get them, even at my age. But thank you for your assistance. It is appreciated. Deeply so.’

  Mundy sat on the settee and glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Oh … that,’ he said, ‘was a most wonderful meal. Thank you so very much. I have not had home cooking in … well, it seems like a geological age.’

  ‘I’m so pleased you enjoyed it.’ Janet Thackery also looked contented. ‘I enjoyed cooking it. It’s been long enough since I cooked a man a meal which he appreciated. We must do it again.’

  ‘We must.’ Mundy held eye contact with Janet Thackery. ‘Yes, we must.’ He looked around the room. ‘You have redecorated,’ he observed.

  ‘This is five or six years old,’ Janet Thackery explained. ‘It was the last major job that George did in the house. I will, of course, keep it just as it is.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mundy yawned involuntarily. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘The meal is making me sleepy.’

  ‘So,’ Janet Thackery looked warmly and approvingly at Maurice Mundy, ‘will you be going up to Chelmsford again … on your cold case?’

  ‘Yes, I will, as well as pursuing the other matter,’ Mundy replied.

  ‘Be careful there, Maurice.’ Janet Thackery’s jaw
set firm. ‘I really want you to be careful there. I freely confess that I don’t like the sound of what you’re doing. I don’t like the sound of it at all. You could be treading on a lot of wrong toes, even if the cause is just.’

  ‘I’ll be careful, don’t worry.’ Mundy nodded thoughtfully. ‘Mind you, I can’t see what harm they can do to me?’

  ‘Still …’ Janet Thackery replied with a stern note in her voice. ‘George always said, “You can never be too careful”. So for me and for him, please take that advice.’

  ‘I will … I will.’ Mundy paused. ‘I also want to do what I can for my daughter, so I have quite a full timetable. Plenty to keep me occupied.’

  ‘Your daughter!’ Janet Thackery’s mouth fell open. ‘Maurice, you are a dark horse. I never knew that you had any children, but all along you have a daughter. I never knew that about you.’

  ‘I didn’t know I had one either.’ Mundy raised his eyebrows and inclined his head towards Janet Thackery. ‘Well, that is to say I knew I had fathered a child but her mother left me shortly after her birth, taking the child with her. She wanted nothing to do with me … no financial support … nothing. She was an Afro-Caribbean woman, she was very headstrong and the relationship was brief. It was an indiscretion … and Roberta was the outcome.’

  ‘Roberta …’ Janet Thackery repeated the name. ‘I like that name, I like it a lot.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Mundy forced a smile. ‘I wouldn’t have agreed to it … in my opinion it belongs to those names like Freda, Wilma, Davida, Georgina, Edwina … couples who were wanting a boy and had decided what to call him before he was born. In the event they are blessed with a daughter so they give her a feminized version of the name they had chosen for their son. The tradition is very strong in the Hebrides, I believe. If I had had my say in it she would have been given a proper girl’s name … such as Alison. I have always wanted a daughter called Alison, but … mother and daughter vanished from my life. They left me wondering over the years what had become of them … and just last year my long-lost and only child made contact with me. She’s twenty-six years old.’

  ‘Oh … married … a career?’ Janet Thackery sat forwards with keen interest.

  ‘No … no … she’s not married.’ Mundy sighed. ‘She’s single.’

  ‘Plenty of time. Twenty-six is still young. Does she work?’

  ‘Yes … she works.’ Mundy drew a deep breath and then added, ‘She’s twenty-six years old, of mixed race, a heroin addict who works the streets. She sells her body to raise money to buy little packets of white powder.’

  ‘Oh, Maurice.’ Janet Thackery sighed deeply and sat back in her chair. ‘I am so sorry. You must be so worried about her.’

  ‘I am, being a police officer.’ Mundy replied also with a sigh of resignation. ‘I know the danger she’s in. One working girl a week is murdered in the UK … on average. I’ve seen the bodies, shortly after they’re found, sometimes recently deceased, sometimes in an advanced state of decomposition. I’ve broken bad news to relatives and taken relatives to view their daughter behind a glass screen when possible. The CCRT case up in Chelmsford impinges on a series of murders of street girls. It brings it all home … quite forcibly.’

  ‘It would do, it would,’ Janet Thackery repeated, ‘but you can’t blame yourself.’

  ‘I don’t … I wasn’t there.’ Mundy smiled briefly. ‘I don’t blame myself at all.’

  ‘What happened?’ Janet Thackery sat forwards.

  ‘It’s a horror story,’ Mundy protested. ‘It will ruin a good supper. I did love that seafood casserole.’

  ‘Tell me. I am interested,’ Janet Thackery encouraged Mundy. ‘It won’t ruin the meal.’

  ‘Well,’ Mundy also sat forwards, ‘Roberta told me that her mother and her went to live in Southampton and when she was five her mother took up with a West Indian gentleman and they … that is, Roberta’s mother and her boyfriend, went to live in Jamaica, leaving Roberta in their house. Just turned the key and left her alone … five years old.’

  Janet Thackery gasped. ‘That is just too bad.’

  ‘I don’t know the full story, just Roberta’s version,’ Mundy continued, ‘but she says she was alone in the house for about three days before the police broke in and rescued her.’

  ‘That must have been traumatizing for her.’ Janet Thackery spoke quietly. ‘That sort of thing will leave dreadful emotional scarring. It will lead to self-medicating through alcohol or narcotics.’

  ‘Yes. Two things apparently saved her,’ Mundy explained. ‘A leaking tap in the bathroom and a letterbox which was low down in the door.’

  ‘Yes, I know the type.’ Janet Thackery smiled.

  ‘And,’ Mundy continued, ‘the fact that the letterbox was free hinging; it hadn’t got a spring attached to it. That helped a lot.’

  ‘I see.’ Janet Thackery nodded. ‘I know the type,’ she repeated.

  ‘It is Roberta’s story that the leaking tap was her source of water so she didn’t get dehydrated and eventually died of thirst … and she was able to push small objects out of the letterbox. A sharp-witted neighbour saw the pile of small items on the step underneath the letterbox, realized their significance and notified the police … and Roberta’s life was saved.’

  ‘Were her mother and her mother’s boyfriend traced?’ Janet Thackery asked angrily.

  ‘No, not to my knowledge,’ Mundy replied. ‘They were not. They just disappeared into a new life in the Caribbean. So Roberta was placed in care and spent the next eight or nine years in an institution. She was mixed race … it is a bar to fostering. She didn’t fare well on the “P” test.’

  ‘The what?’ Janet Thackery gasped. ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘Social workers have a P test applied to children whom they want to see fostered or adopted … “pink, perfect and a pair”,’ Mundy explained. ‘Any of those will be an aid to placing the child. Roberta was perfect but, being of mixed race, she was of little interest to either white or black couples … and not having a sibling meant she was an even less attractive fostering prospect. She read her file when she was sixteen and found she had been put in the “hard to place” list.’

  ‘That must have done wonders for her self-esteem.’ Janet Thackery once again sat back in her chair. ‘No wonder she took to sticking hypodermic syringes in herself. I mean, no wonder.’

  ‘It gets worse.’ Mundy spoke matter-of-factly.

  ‘Worse!’ Janet Thackery caught her breath.

  ‘Yes … it transpires that when she was about thirteen or so a couple expressed an interest in fostering her to the delight of social services and the introductory visits went well … so she was “placed” with them. No other children in the house, just Roberta and the foster parents.’ Mundy clasped his hands together. ‘Pretty soon the reason why they wanted a girl to foster became clear.’

  ‘Oh, no, they weren’t paedophiles … is that what you’re going to tell me?’ Janet Thackery put her hand up to her mouth. ‘I have read that those people apply to become foster parents, but thirteen years old is a bit old, I would have thought.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t as bad as that,’ Mundy sighed with relief, ‘but bad enough. It was the case that she was wanted as a domestic servant. When she came home from school she was set to do the housework.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Janet Thackery thumped the chair arm with her fist. ‘Didn’t those wretched social workers monitor the placement?’

  ‘Seems not.’ Mundy sighed. ‘They should have done but they seemed so pleased to have been able to place a child who was on their “hard to place” list that they congratulated themselves, walked away and forgot about her. So it appears.’

  ‘She could sue them,’ Janet Thackery protested.

  ‘Possibly, but it would be difficult to prove,’ Mundy replied. ‘Anyway, her schooling suffered because she was not allowed to address her homework until she had done all her housework, and that could be as late as nine p.m. So she was often
in trouble for poor quality or non-production of homework … but she told me that she impressed her teachers sufficiently that they implored her foster parents to let her stay on at school to obtain qualifications, but her foster parents were adamant that she leave school at the earliest opportunity and take up employment so as to contribute to the family income … which is what she did.’

  ‘So no qualifications despite having the ability?’ Janet Thackery clarified. ‘How deeply unfair … how horribly unfair.’

  ‘Yes, that about sums it up.’ Mundy put his fingertips to his forehead. ‘Anyway, in the event, she didn’t get a job, the housework fell on her shoulders in its entirety and her so-called “foster parents” took her dole money off her … also in its entirety.’

  ‘Evil!’ Janet Thackery hissed. ‘That is just plain evil.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it, evil, as you say … so she lived like that until she was eighteen, when a friend suggested she make a living by working King’s Cross. So she did and has thus been self-employed from that day to this. I go and meet her, buy her a meal, even sometimes just a cup of tea, and I give her what money I can afford. At some point along the way some false friend offered her acceptance and emotional warmth and a wrap of white powder … and that is my daughter.’

  ‘How did you find her, Maurice?’ Janet Thackery leaned forward.

  ‘I didn’t … she found me. She knew my name from her birth certificate. Her mother once told her I was a policeman, though as I remember her mother to be, she probably described me as “the Filth”. She developed an anti-police attitude in the short time we were together, which is probably why she walked out on me.’ Mundy paused. ‘So Roberta wrote to me. She addressed the envelope to “Police Constable Maurice Mundy, the London Police”. Her letter was brief and to the point. “I am your daughter, Roberta. This is my address … can we meet?” The letter was opened, as all letters are, and it was passed to our personnel section who found where I was stationed and sent it to me with a compliment slip. So we met up, me and my daughter, and we still meet. I have done what I can to persuade her to move in with me, even as a halfway step to freeing herself from heroin and the street, but she is trapped in a “this is my identity” loop and can’t seem to move on.’