As he climbed out of the taxi, holding a large carrier bag, Chief Inspector Feeney and Sergeant Holmes got out of their unmarked car, and a gaggle of uniformed officers, male and female, climbed out of other cars.
“You’re sure of yourself, Joe?” Feeney asked.
“Absolutely. Freddie is innocent and I know why he wouldn’t speak.”
The chief inspector invited further comment with a brief flicker of the eyebrows.
“He’s a lifer, isn’t he? That’s what he meant when he said you could send him back to Long Lartin, and that’s what you meant when you said you couldn’t comment. Isn’t it?”
Feeney nodded slowly.
“Hazel doesn’t know, either,” Joe said. “He told her he was the wheelman in that robbery, but he wasn’t, was he?”
Feeney sighed. “You’re a clever man, Joe Murray.”
“And that’s what this is all about,” Joe said. “He lied to Hazel and he doesn’t want her finding out the truth. Safer to go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and then wait for you to turn up evidence against Gil and Elaine, then he would be released again, with Hazel never any the wiser.”
“And what difference does it make if Gil and Elaine are free?” Feeney asked.
“They have the same information as Diane. They could bring it out, or use it to shut him up.” Joe glanced up at the house. “For now we’d better get Gil and Elaine before they scarper. I don’t know how you’ll prove it. With their track record, I don’t think they’ll admit everything so freely.”
Feeney eyed the carrier bag. “What’s that for?”
Joe laughed. “A present for the happy couple.” He nodded towards the house. “Are they still here?”
Feeney, in turn, nodded to a dark BMW parked across the street. “Gil’s car.”
Joe grunted. “I’ll let you lead the way.”
The chief inspector detailed Holmes and two uniformed officers to approach the door where they rang the bell. On the first floor, the net curtain parted a little, then fell shut.
“Do it,” Feeney instructed.
A uniformed officer took a ram to the door three times before it smashed open. They hurried in. Feeney and Joe followed at a more leisurely pace to find Gil Shipton and Elaine Badger pinned on the stairs by police officers.
“What the hell is going on, Feeney?” Gil demanded.
“I have a warrant to search Flat three, Mr Shipton, for evidence pertaining to the deaths of Virginia Nicholson, Diane Shipton, and Terrence Badger. If you obstruct my officers from carrying out that search, you will be arrested and charged. Sergeant Holmes?”
Holmes guided the couple back up the stairs, Feeney followed and Joe fell in behind her.
Pushing into the flat, they found the place a mess. Clothing, books, magazines, Diane’s personal effects were spread all over room.
“Someone ransacked the place,” Elaine said. “We were trying to tidy up.”
“Then why did you just try to run?” Joe asked.
Gil scowled malevolence. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough hassle off the filth… and you?”
Careful to keep himself out of range of Gil’s ham-like fists, Joe looked at the TV set, and grinned to himself. “Score another point for Joe Murray,” he muttered.
He stepped around a heap of clothing and picked up the remnants of a giant Easter egg box. It was surrounded by a mass of torn gold foil, and beneath it, neatly cleaved in two were the halves of a plastic display egg.
He picked up the empty halves of grey plastic, badly sawn in half, and showed them to Feeney. Smiling at Gil, he said, “You’re lying. You were looking for something. But Chief Inspector Feeney told me it wasn’t in this egg. They checked it at the police station with one of those airport type scanners. And I’ll tell you something else. I knew it wasn’t in this egg, because when I picked it up at the Winter Gardens, the foil wrapping hadn’t been disturbed. If Diane had opened that and hidden it in here, no way could she have wrapped it up that expertly. And that’s why you’re tearing the place apart. You didn’t find it in the fake egg, so you were still looking.”
“Where is it, Shipton?” Feeney demanded.
“Where’s what?”
“You know damn well what. The information Diane threatened you with.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We ain’t got nothing, have we, Elaine?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I told you—”
“They’re telling the truth, Chief Inspector,” Joe interrupted. “They didn’t find it.” He grinned at Elaine. “Did you?”
Elaine brazened it out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know your big mistake, don’t you?” Joe asked. “You were too quick to take that fake egg back from the charity stack in the Winter Gardens. If you’d waited and had a quiet word with Quigley later on, you might have got away with it. But no, you had to rush in, didn’t you? Eager to get your mitts on it before the cops did. Keen to show everyone how hard-faced you can be.”
With more than a hint of frustration in her voice, Feeney asked, “What is going on, Joe?”
“It’s all quite simple, and some of it is down to my good friends Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump. Sheila’s late husband was a police inspector. She knows how the law operates. She’s intelligent and logical. When I come up with a theory, you can bet Sheila throws up the objections, and this time was no exception. When I thought Freddie Delaney had killed Diane, it was Sheila who asked where the argument between Gil and Diane came into it. I thought I had the answer. I thought Freddie was working for them. Especially after you told me he served time with Gil. But when we were all in the Winter Gardens this afternoon, watching Elaine’s performance, it was Brenda who pointed out what everyone else had missed.” Joe stared at Gil and Elaine. “The other woman in the Shipton’s infernal triangle was Elaine. She and Gil were having an affair, and that’s why Diane was so set against it. She didn’t want Gil. He could please himself who he went with; but not her sister. So she logged all the details of their past crimes and stored it on a memory stick, which she then hid from them. The proposition was simple. Gil stops his carryings on with Elaine, or Diane handed everything over to the cops. She was willing to claim that Gil forced her to blackmail their victims. That way she’d get off with probation or at worst a light sentence.”
“We’d already guessed most of this,” Feeney objected.
“Yes, I know you had, but you couldn’t prove it. I can. Y’see, there was something odd about it all, something I heard Diane say to Gil in that pub. He would never be able to find the information once the charity stock went off to the orphanages. But she would. Now how could she do that? She had no more idea than anyone where the giant Easter egg would end up. Some of my people suggested she had a tracking device on it. Nonsense. You can have parcels tracked, but for an individual to pay to have something tracked, is incredibly expensive and it demands knowledge of technology these people simply didn’t have. No. Diane knew she’d be able to find it because she never put the memory stick in the charity egg in the first place.”
Joe let the two halves of the plastic egg drop and picked up his carrier bag. Digging into it, he came out with another giant Easter egg, which looked exactly the same as the fake one. He held it up so Elaine’s greedy eyes could fall upon it. Without warning, he tossed it to her.
“Here. Try this one.”
“Joe, no. She’ll crush it underfoot—”
Joe cut Feeney off with a finger to his lips.
They watched as Elaine tore feverishly at the carton, then the wrapping, and finally emerged with a large chocolate egg. She broke it. Pieces of chocolate fell everywhere, and amongst them was a small packet of sweets.
Falling to her knees, searching feverishly through the detritus, tearing open the cellophane wrapping of the sweets, she eventually stood up. “Nothing there.”
Joe smiled. “I know.” He fished into the top pocket of his gilet and brought o
ut a memory stick. “I found it about half an hour ago.” He gestured at the mess on the floor. “That’s not the egg Diane left behind. It’s a replacement which I bought on my way over here.”
Elaine’s face turned to a mask of fury. She launched herself at Joe. A policewoman grabbed and restrained her. Gil moved, but Sergeant Holmes and Constable Tetlow restrained him.
Joe handed the memory stick to Feeney.
“Go on,” the chief inspector invited.
“When Diane came to Weston, it wasn’t to blackmail Ginny or Freddie, it was to ask a favour. Ginny wouldn’t listen. She’d already suffered at their hands years ago. So Diane made her way to the Leeward and asked Freddie. He listened. All she wanted was for him to keep the Easter egg safe, and he obliged, by putting it in his freezer… a place colder than Hell.” Joe laughed. “And she had unwrapped and re-wrapped that egg. It wasn’t perfect, but it would pass a casual inspection. Diane was smart. If and when Gil and Elaine stopped seeing each other, she could go back and collect it. And if Gil didn’t toe the line, she could still go back and collect it but hand it over to you. She knew they were watching her every move, so she picked up the fake Easter egg, and put it out in full, public view. Unfortunately, it backfired on her. Convinced that they knew where the information was, there was only one way Gil and Elaine could get it back. They had to kill Diane so that it became the rightful property of her heir… Gil.”
Shipton spat at the floor. “Prove it.”
Joe grinned. “I don’t have to. I’m sure the police will turn up the necessary evidence in good time, and they’ll know exactly where to find you, Gil… in the nick, for a long time, I should imagine, once they get to Diane’s information.”
Chapter Fourteen
Through the windows of the flat, Feeney and Joe watched Elaine and Gil taken away in separate cars.
“What about Ginny and Terry Badger?” the chief inspector asked.
Joe shrugged. “You’ll have a hard time proving all this, but my guess is they hit Ginny because she wouldn’t tell them where the memory stick was hidden. She couldn’t because she didn’t know. I saw her and Freddie talking seriously at the bar in the Leeward on Thursday night. She was telling him about the incident with Diane. Freddie wasn’t as worried as he made out because Diane had already been to see him, but when Ginny was murdered on Friday morning, he got nervy. In a straight fight, he might beat Gil or Terry, but he couldn’t take them both together, and he was worried that he might be next. The fact is, they obviously didn’t know Diane had visited Freddie, too, otherwise he really would have been next.”
“They couldn’t have killed Diane, Joe,” Feeney pointed out. “Remember the TV? Someone had to be here to turn up the volume while they murdered Diane, and we know for a fact that all three were in the Castle Hotel at the time.”
Joe tutted. “What is it with you people and technology?” He began to search the mess on the floor. “Last year, Brenda took part in that TV programme; I-Spy. I bought one of these flatscreen TVs for the café so my customers could watch her making a fool of herself. I don’t watch telly, but I do like fiddling with… ah. Here it is.” He bent and picked up the remote for the TV. Aiming it at the set, he switched on and the volume almost blew their eardrums. Joe turned it down. “I have to admit that it only occurred to me when I was in the Castle Hotel today, and I saw the landlord faffing with the telly. When I tried it with the portable TV in my room at the Leeward, it didn’t work because it’s an old set.” He waved at the TV. “This is modern. Like the one I have in the café, only smaller. Now, watch this.” Reading the remote, he cautiously picked the right buttons. “When they go on holiday, most people set up security timers for their lights. Modern TV sets have timers inbuilt, so you can arrange for the TV to come on while you’re away, too, and any wannabe burglar will think you’re home.”
A small menu appeared on screen, allowing the user to set up the on and off times. On the ‘on’ section of the menu, the time was set at 21:15.
“It’s programmed to come on at nine fifteen, and look at the volume setting.” Joe gestured at the screen where the volume was set to seventy-five. “Most of us don’t need it higher than about ten or eleven,” he said. “They killed Diane earlier, knowing that you would question them, and they used the TV to set up an alibi. Pathologists are always hazy about the time of death. When I checked with the landlord of the Castle Hotel, he assured me they were all there from half past eight onwards, and they never left the bar until about eleven. Everyone here heard the TV come on at a quarter past nine, and it led you to the assumption that Diane had been murdered then, but in fact, she was probably killed an hour earlier.”
“Clever,” Feeney congratulated him. “And Terry?”
“You haven’t told me anything about his death, so again, I can only speculate, and you’re just as good at that as me. He was a bit of a dork, wasn’t he?”
“Not the brightest star in the night sky, no. And, by the way, he was bludgeoned, the same as the others. With the same weapon by the looks of it.”
“I wonder if he knew about Gil and Elaine. If he didn’t and then suddenly found out, last night, say, there would have been an argument and either Gil or Elaine finished it with the heavy duty spanner.” Joe shrugged. “Like I said, you’ll have a hard time proving it all.”
Feeney tossed the memory stick in the air, caught it, smiled and kissed it. Joe recognised the gesture as a surrogate kiss for himself. “There’s no rush. Not while we have them locked away for whatever is on this thing. And if we find one trace of either of them on the bodies, we’ll have them.” She beamed a broad smile at him. “Why didn’t Freddie come to us with the Easter egg? If he’d brought it to us, we’d have arrested them earlier.”
“I’m guessing here, Patricia, but you have to understand that Freddie had no way of knowing what was in that egg. Diane probably told him it was important to her, but she wouldn’t have said why. What if he brought it to you and there was nothing in it but chocolate? That would have alerted Gil and Elaine to the fact that Diane had been to the Leeward, and they would have targeted him. Even when he hinted to me where I could find it, he had no way of knowing whether it would save his skin.”
“Well, anyway, we have them now, and the evidence on that memory stick is enough for us to remand them in custody, which gives us plenty of time to pin the murders on them. And it’s all thanks to you, Joe.”
He smiled modestly. “Don’t let Sheila or Brenda hear you say that.”
Feeney’s placid features darkened. “There is the matter of Freddie, though. I still can’t work out what he was playing at.”
“It’s called love, Patricia. I’m no good at it. I tried and failed. Freddie loves Hazel and she loves him. But when he came to Weston, he told her he got a fifteen-year sentence and he had nothing to do with the weapons used in the robbery. He didn’t even let her in on that until he had a secure job and his feet under the table. Tell me what really happened on that robbery.”
Feeney nodded. “Freddie shot the security guard. He pleaded manslaughter, but the jury wouldn’t have it. It was murder during the course of an armed robbery. And he didn’t serve seven and a half years as he told Hazel. He was given life, and he served fifteen before he was released on licence.”
“And you can send him back for a bar fight if you want, can’t you?” Joe waited for her to nod. “He never told Hazel because he didn’t want to scare her off. Over the years, he’s been comfortable in that lie. After all, what was the danger? No one in Weston knew him, and the chances of someone from Long Lartin turning up here were pretty remote. Then Diane showed up, and she did know. If you check up, you’ll maybe find that she covered the story when she was a reporter. Read through the information on that memory stick, and you’ll find that she blackmailed him, too. By now, he couldn’t afford to let Hazel find out. He was afraid he’d break her heart, maybe push her into tearing up their marriage lines. So he did as Diane asked. Then I started shoving my
nose in and he knew I had a reputation for getting to the bottom to things. I told him that, my girls told him, too. He knew you couldn’t say anything to me, and all he had to do was scare me off. Hence the two goons he sent after me.”
“I’m astonished that you got all that.”
Joe grinned diffidently. “To be honest, I checked the memory stick before I brought it here, and it confirmed the background. The rest is intelligent guesswork.” He held up his hands. “I had to. You wouldn’t want me turning up with a porno movie starring Elaine and Gil, would you?”
Feeney laughed. “No. I suppose not.” Her face became more serious. “Freddie is a lifer, Joe. I could send him back for those two who attacked you.”
“You’d need a formal complaint.”
“You’ve already made one.”
“Then I withdraw it.” Joe shook his head. “He was trying to protect himself and his wife, and what they’d built up over the last few years, and I’m not gonna send him back to the nick for that. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same in his position. And anyway, it was Hazel who tipped you off when they followed me to Bath.”
“I can’t let it pass that easily, Joe. One of the things they teach you in the police is never let anything pass. If you see a car parked on double yellow lines, you don’t ignore it because if you do, the driver will assume he has the right to park on double yellows lines. Freddie used intimidation. If I don’t take some action, he may assume he can get away with it every time.”
“Push those two thugs. I don’t think they followed me to Bath off their own bat. I think Gil Shipton learned that Freddie had paid them, and he paid them more to follow me and do a better job.” Joe smiled at her frown. “Come on. You don’t have to live your life by the book. If you feel the need to say something to Freddie, make it off the record. There was no harm done.”
The Chocolate Egg Murders Page 16
