Night Fall

by Frank Smith

  Her eyes glittered as she leaned forward and jabbed an accusing finger at Paget. ‘That man destroyed our lives,’ she said softly, ‘and you and all the rest of you are responsible. So you can stew in your own juice, as far as I’m concerned, because I’m not the least bit interested in helping you find the person who killed Gavin. Good luck to him, I say.’

  Bronwyn Davies picked up her handbag and got to her feet. ‘I’m going home now,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to hear from you ever again. And I’ll be sending you a bill for every single penny I’ve spent coming here.’ She walked to the door, then paused to look back at Molly. ‘You seem like a decent sort,’ she said, ‘so let me give you a bit of advice. Get the hell out of here while you can. This is no place for the likes of you.’

  She flicked a glance at Paget as he got to his feet. ‘And I don’t need you to see me out,’ she said coldly. ‘I’m sure I can find my own way, thank you very much.’

  ‘Superintendent Alcott died last night,’ Tregalles said as he hung the damp tea-towel up to dry. He leaned against the counter while Audrey put the last of the dinner plates away. ‘Paget told me this afternoon. Valerie Alcott rang to tell him this morning.’

  ‘Died?’ Audrey said. ‘I didn’t know he was ill. I knew he was in that care place in Tenborough, but I thought that was because he had a breakdown after his wife died. What happened? How did he die?’

  ‘Suicide, according to his daughter. He blamed himself for his wife’s death from his second-hand smoke. She had emphysema if you remember.’

  ‘Oh, dear, I am sorry to hear that,’ Audrey said softly. ‘How awful for the poor man, and for his family. I remember you used to go on about him, but I think you liked him, didn’t you, love?’

  ‘I did,’ Tregalles said. ‘He had a sharp tongue, and he was always in a hurry, always looking for a quick solution, but he always came round in the end, and he stood up to Brock for us on a good many occasions. He and Paget used to go a few rounds every now and again, but I know Paget was sorry to see him go, and he was sorrier still to hear the news this morning.’

  ‘How’s Mr Paget getting on with his new boss, then?’

  ‘Superintendent Pierce?’ Tregalles pursed his lips. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said slowly. ‘He hasn’t said much to me about her, but he’s been in a sort of funny mood ever since she came.’

  Audrey sniffed. ‘Hardly surprising, since she took the job that was his by rights.’ Audrey had always been a big fan of Paget’s.

  But Tregalles was shaking his head. ‘I don’t think it’s that,’ he said. ‘I know they’ve run into each other before, years ago in the Met, and I don’t think they like each other very much, but he hasn’t said anything against her. And considering the lack of progress we’ve made on these murders since she came, she’s been pretty decent about it. Alcott would have been screaming bloody murder by now, but she sits in on the briefings and seems to understand the problems we’re facing. Though God knows what she tells Brock.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Audrey said. ‘You were dead set against her before. What happened?’

  Tregalles frowned into the distance as if thinking hard. ‘I think it’s those long legs,’ he said slowly. ‘And she’s got a gorgeous fig—’ He yelped and scooted away as Audrey chased him out of the room snapping the tea-towel at his behind.

  SIXTEEN

  Wednesday, 26 October

  Tregalles looked at the clock. Twenty past ten. When he had asked Mike Fulbright to come in to make a statement, Fulbright had said he would be there at ten. He’d asked if he needed to bring his solicitor, and Tregalles had said, ‘By all means, if you think you’re going to need one.’

  He had hoped that Maxwell or Molly might find something in the material taken from the storage locker that would tie Whitelaw to Fulbright, but no such luck. Confirmation of the sale of the Nissan X-Trail some six months ago was found among the papers, which gave the lie to Fulbright’s story, at least as far as Tregalles was concerned. ‘The man was not only broke after the divorce,’ Maxwell said, ‘he was in debt up to his ears. He was in a court-ordered debt reduction programme, but it would have taken at least three or four years to pay it all off had he lived. And that’s assuming he didn’t incur any more debts along the way. Which might explain why he was living in the cheapest place he could find down on Prince Street.’

  Molly had nothing better to offer. ‘The only things left from the locker are a couple of old biscuit tins full of odds and ends,’ she said. ‘Mostly junk as far as I could see when I took a quick look last night, but you never know, so I’ll go through them as soon as I get a chance and let you know if I find anything important.’

  Mike Fulbright was forty minutes late, and he arrived without a solicitor. ‘Sorry if I held you up,’ he said breezily as they took their seats in the interview room, ‘but things to do, you know. Can’t just leave them, can we? Specially when you’re the boss.’

  ‘This interview will be recorded,’ Tregalles said, then went on to explain the procedure to Fulbright, and nodded for Maxwell to start the recorder. He’d intended to have Molly sit in, but, having mentioned the biscuit tins, Molly said she’d like to go through them and get them out of the way.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked when he saw Fulbright frowning at the recorder.

  ‘No. No. None whatsoever,’ Fulbright said expansively. ‘I’m here to help in any way I can.’

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it,’ Tregalles said, ‘so perhaps you can begin by telling me why you felt it necessary to lie to DCI Paget and me when you said Gavin Whitelaw had come in to talk to you last week about trading in his car.’

  Fulbright scowled. ‘I certainly did not lie!’ he said indignantly, ‘and I didn’t come here this morning to be treated like this. Gavin said he was thinking about trading his car in on a newer model, and we talked in general terms about that. As I told you, he was trying to get me to commit to a firm price for his car, but I told him I couldn’t give him that without seeing it.’

  ‘Did he say he would bring it in?’

  ‘He said he’d think about it.’ Fulbright did his best to look sad. ‘Unfortunately, he never had the chance, poor devil.’

  ‘And the make and model of the car you were discussing, sir, was a five-year-old Nissan X-Trail. Is that right?’

  ‘That is what I said, Sergeant,’ Fulbright said tightly.

  ‘Did you talk about anything else?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, where is all this leading?’ Fulbright demanded. ‘Yes, I suppose we talked of other things. I don’t remember exactly.’

  ‘Including the recent murders of Billy Travis and Dennis Moreland?’ Tregalles prodded.

  Fulbright hesitated. ‘Why would we be talking about them?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘You tell me,’ Tregalles said, ‘and please try to make what you tell me more believable than the load of bollocks you’ve been giving me about Whitelaw trading in his car.’

  Fulbright’s eyes narrowed. ‘I did not come here to be insulted, Sergeant,’ he said thinly, ‘and I will not tolerate being spoken—’

  ‘It’s not an insult when it’s the truth,’ Tregalles cut in, ‘so let’s stop playing games and get to the truth, Mr Fulbright. You see, I have trouble believing you when I know that Whitelaw sold his car months ago to pay off debts. He was broke, he was living in a flea pit, and the furthest thing from his mind was buying a car. He couldn’t afford a car of any description while he was still paying off debts. So I’ll ask you again, what did you talk about?’

  Fulbright stared hard at Tregalles. His jaw was set, but the slow rise of colour in his face betrayed him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said belligerently. ‘Why would he come in then?’

  ‘Exactly my question,’ Tregalles told him. ‘Why, when he hadn’t the faintest hope of buying a car, would he come in to talk to you? And it wasn’t just talk, was it? It was a heated discussion, possibly even an argument. We h
ave a witness who claims there was a lot of arm waving and shouting, and Whitelaw didn’t look happy when he left. So I suggest we forget the load of crap you’ve been feeding me, and you start telling the truth. Which reminds me: where were you between midnight and three o’clock last Thursday morning?’

  ‘Courses,’ Amanda announced briskly. ‘I’ve been looking at the record of the courses taken by all members of our staff in the past three years, and it appears that more than half of them were cancelled at the last minute. That’s not a good sign, and I would like to correct that if I can, Neil. Apart from the odd case of sickness, I take it the rest of the cancellations were because of workload?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen the figures, so you know what it’s been like. You can cut staff and delay filling vacant positions, but there’s always a price to pay, and one of the easiest things to cut back on is training. We budget for so many hours a year; we submit names and a proposed schedule, and Training uses that to allocate places. But when the time comes for that man or woman to go, all too often we simply can’t afford to let them go for a week or sometimes two, so we cancel. It’s a waste of our time making up a schedule we know we won’t be able to keep, and it makes thing difficult for Training, because others are doing the same. And in some cases, a course has to be cancelled because it’s not worth running for two or three people. So even the ones who could have gone lose out.

  ‘Not only that,’ he continued, now in full flight, ‘most of our courses are taken at the West Mercia Training Centre in Hindlip Hall, and if we commit to a certain number of places, they have every right to charge us for those places if they aren’t filled. If they have to cancel the course itself, it throws their scheduling out, and it leaves them with instructors idle for days or even weeks. Now, I’m sure West Mercia has similar problems, but it doesn’t make for very good relations between the two regions. The result is, we’re wasting time and money all the way up and down the line, and our people aren’t as well trained as they should be.’

  Paget settled back in his chair. ‘God knows Superintendent Alcott and I tried to get Mr Brock and others to see that, but it was like talking to a brick wall for all the good it did. So I wish you luck, Amanda, I really do, because I think it’s important, but I suspect you’ll find the door is also closed on that one.’

  Amanda Pierce nodded slowly. ‘I suspected as much,’ she said, ‘and I’m sure you’re right, but I’m wondering if we can’t overcome some of the obstacles by doing some in-house training.’ She slipped on her glasses and picked up a file. ‘I see that you spent some time as an instructor at Hindlip Hall yourself, so I thought—’

  Whatever Amanda was thinking was cut off by the ringing of her phone. She hesitated for a moment, then picked it up and said, ‘Yes, Fiona?’ She listened for some time, then said, ‘Thank you, Fiona,’ and put the phone down.

  ‘It seems Fiona has developed something of a quiet relationship with Mr Brock’s secretary, Claire Raeburn,’ she said, ‘and Claire phoned to let us know that Bronwyn Davies went over to New Street after she left here yesterday, and insisted on delivering a letter personally to the chief constable. She must have prepared it beforehand, because she repeated much of what she told you about her ex-husband and his sergeant, and said that, unless action is taken against the sergeant and his superior within the next thirty days, she’ll go to the media with her story. Needless to say, it had the desired effect; there will be an internal investigation, and it sounds as if everyone in that section is already scurrying for cover.’ The muscles around her mouth tightened, and her eyes were flinty as she said, ‘It would have been nice if Mr Brock had told me that himself, but perhaps it just slipped his mind when we spoke earlier this morning. Anyway, I suppose I should be grateful that Whitelaw was in Uniforms under DS Grimshaw and not one of ours.’ Amanda took in a deep breath, let it out again slowly and said, ‘Now then, training. Where were we . . .?’

  Picking through the contents of old, rusting biscuit tins was not Molly Forsythe’s idea of how a newly minted detective sergeant should be spending her time. But, regardless of her feelings, the job had to be done, and as DS Ormside had pointed out, it should be done by someone who was familiar with what had been found among the possessions of the previous victims.

  She looked at the list she’d been compiling as each item was removed: a fountain pen that used real ink, two pencils, a four-inch-wide paint brush that had never been cleaned and should have been tossed long ago; string; a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, a half-used packet of corn plasters; two batteries, corroded . . . Really! What was the point, she wondered as she put everything back and opened the second tin. More of the same by the look of it. God! The things people collected! Sticky tape, brittle with age; bits of cloth; more string and rubber bands, odds-and-sods of every description. Something in an envelope at the bottom of the tin. Photographs. She shuffled through them, counting as she went. Twenty-two of them, some fairly old, judging by their subject matter, and they were all of Gavin Whitelaw, from the time he was a boy of ten or twelve, to when he was about twenty. Pictures of him astride a motorbike, at the wheel of a car, on a beach with a group of young men waving bottles of beer about. Clearly, the man had thought a lot of himself, she thought as she studied each one.

  She stopped at a group picture, a little different from the rest. It was a picture of a choir outside a church. Adults, male and female, in the back row, teenagers in the middle row, small boys and girls in the front row. Molly recognized the church: All Saints on Riverview Road. And there was Gavin Whitelaw in cassock and surplice in the middle row. Thinner in the face and with hair brushing his shoulders, he’d been quite a good looking kid. Hard to think of him as a choir boy, but there he was, grinning at the camera.

  A memory stirred in the back of her mind. A snapshot of an angelic looking Billy Travis in cassock and surplice. She stared at the picture in front of her. Yes! There was Billy at the end of the row. Older in this picture – sixteen or seventeen, perhaps? He was so slight and small compared to the other boys, it was hard to tell his age.

  Molly sat back in her chair. So the two boys had been in the same choir back then, but did that mean anything? She opened a desk drawer, took out a magnifying glass and bent closer to examine each face, but if Dennis Moreland was there, she couldn’t see him. She set the picture aside and dug back in her notes for Joan Moreland’s telephone number.

  Joan answered on the third ring. She sounded cheerful enough when she first answered, but her voice became guarded when Molly identified herself. ‘Dennis? In the choir at All Saints?’ she echoed when Molly asked the question. ‘Oh, no. He didn’t belong to any church when I first met him. It took me quite a while before I could persuade him to come to mine, and then it was only because of the children and Sunday school. What’s this all about anyway?’

  ‘We’re still trying to find the reason for your husband’s death,’ Molly told her, ‘so we have to look at every possibility, no matter how improbable. Sorry I had to trouble you again, Joan.’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s no trouble.’ Joan Moreland’s voice had softened. ‘And I’m sorry if I was short with you the other day. I know you were only trying to do your job. So if there is any way I can help, I don’t mind if you call.’

  So that fence was mended, thought Molly as she put her phone away, but she was still no further ahead. She sat looking at the photograph, then made up her mind. It might not come to anything, but it was better than what she was doing. She shuffled through the remaining pictures. All the rest of them were of Gavin Whitelaw mugging for the camera in his younger days, and none included Billy Travis.

  All Saints church was set well back from the road on the corner of Riverview and Rutland. Its high, square tower of weathered stone was a landmark in the town; it could be seen from almost any point of the compass, and was frequently used as a point of reference when giving directions. When comparing it to the photograph of the choir, the church itself was unchange
d, but the grassy bank and shrubbery that had served as a background were gone, replaced by a paved car park. Another mark of ‘progress’, Molly thought wryly. On the other hand she would have had to feed the meter if she’d parked on the street, so perhaps she should be grateful for small mercies.

  There were two other cars in the otherwise empty car park, an ancient Volvo and a bright red Mini Cooper. Molly had always liked the look of Mini Coopers, in fact she might have owned one if it weren’t for the price. She gave the car an affectionate pat on the roof as she went by.

  Molly climbed the steps, opened the heavy, iron-bound door and went inside. She hadn’t been aware of the street noise outside until the door closed behind her, and suddenly there was silence. She stood there for a moment, looking down the long centre aisle to the chancel, choir stalls on either side, and the altar beneath a stained glass window. It had been chilly outside, but it seemed even colder inside. Cold and still. Molly shivered . . . then jumped when a voice beside her said, ‘Can I help you? Oh, dear, did I startle you? Sorry. I didn’t mean to.’

  Molly turned to face the speaker, a small, round-faced woman with a kindly smile. ‘I’m Esther Phillips, the vicar’s wife,’ she said, extending her hand.

  ‘Molly Forsythe,’ Molly said automatically as she took it. ‘I’m looking for your husband. Is he here?’

  ‘He’s in the office. If you’d like to come with me?’ Esther Phillips set off down the aisle. ‘I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before,’ she ventured. ‘New to the parish, are you, Molly?’

  Molly produced her warrant card. ‘Actually I’m here on business,’ she said. ‘Detective Sergeant Forsythe, and I’m looking for some information from your husband.’