Rock'n'Roll Suicide (Jack Lockwood Mystery Series Book 1)

by Geoffrey West

  “Shut up Jack, it’s not funny. It’s a living hell.”

  “Ever thought about divorce?”

  “Ever thought about minding your own business?” He settled back in the seat and closed his eyes. “I’ve had more than I can take, I’m at my wits bloody end and I’m exhausted. D’you mind if I try and get a bit of kip on the way? I’ve been up with the children since five this morning.”

  “You can’t let her treat you like that.”

  “And you’re such an expert on marriage, aren’t you? How long did your wife stick around after your mental problems started?”

  * * * *

  As I drove down through Croydon, then Purley and Coulsdon and thundered towards the M25, Ken snoozed on. I glanced across at him, and realised I’d never noticed how distressed he seemed to be these days, nothing like his old happy-go-lucky self. Since he’d lost his job, he’d aged, he looked weary and jaded somehow, at least ten years older than his 34 years. I wondered what it must be like to be married to a woman like Natalie. A cold, hard-hearted bitch who did nothing but try to undermine him at every turn. When I’d seen the expression on her face when she looked at him, I could sense her hatred. It struck me how sad it was that a marriage can descend into something like pitched battle. Ken snored on as I hurtled on towards the Clacketts Lane turnoff.

  Then I thought back to the way Natalie had treated me. She’d barely glanced in my direction, as if I wasn’t even there. What a disgusting way to treat someone in your own house. Then I remembered: she had looked at me, just for a split second before she turned away as I was leaving. And the look on her face was pure undisguised hatred. Why? What had I done? For heaven’s sake, she didn’t even know me.

  Ken’s head lolled forward, he grunted slightly as he changed position, snoring now, lost in sleep. Ahead of the poor bugger was a nightmare existence: a wife that didn’t love him, diminishing prospects of finding a job, and, if he decided to leave her, he’d not only lose all but a part-share in the house, but he’d become one of those sad ‘weekend fathers’, living in relative penury, and, in a few years struggling up to take his children out for every other Saturday: trips to the museum or the park, fierce determination to make it a happy time, with all the attendant heartache and misery of handing them back to Natalie, knowing that all the time he wasn’t there she would be poisoning their minds against him. Of course they weren’t his own children, but he was their main carer, and I knew that he worshipped them as if they were his own. Poor old Ken. If only I could find a way to help him, just as he’d helped me.

  Inside the restaurant area we found a corner table, and didn’t have to wait long for Nikki Prowse to arrive. He had hardly changed: the large gold earring below the thick black hair, the sailor’s swaggering walk, the intense stare that always seemed to be searching for far horizons. And in his expressions there were reminders of Miranda too. The way he smiled, the occasional frown, the wrinkle of his nose as he laughed reminded me of her with a sickening, heart-wrenching poignancy.

  Over food, we chatted for a long time, reminiscing about the Cornish holiday.

  As often happened when Ken and I were in the company of someone else, Ken pulled out the photos of his twins, and Nikki looked impressed, showing us photos of his own three girls, who were 10, 12 and 13. After an hour, Nikki looked at his watch and stood up.

  “Better be getting back,” he said, promising to let us know when Miranda’s funeral was going to be.

  It was a strange interlude. After he’d left us, I wondered why he’d wanted to make the effort to talk to us at a time when he was obviously busy, and the police were investigating his sister’s death.

  * * * *

  I probably shouldn’t have started the long drive back to Brookham at 10 o’clock at night. But I’d had a doze in the car, dreaming about the blue Cornish sea, the smell of the fish on Newlyn Quay, and Miranda’s face, the smile in her eyes just before I kissed her for that last time. I thought about my sadness at Ken’s house, taking him back there after our chat with Nikki, watching him trudge miserably up his front garden path, into the misery of his personal domestic nightmare.

  The M20 wasn’t busy, and as I ate up the miles, my mind was in neutral and I thought of poor Ken’s awful predicament, then of my own. All my fears and worries came back to me: the police warning, that I was under suspicion for both Miranda and Shelly’s murders – perhaps they even had me down for being responsible for Miranda’s death. And for the first time in 24 hours I remembered Edward Van Meer, the homicidal maniac who was presumably still on the run, possibly aiming to track me down and kill me.

  Shortly afterwards I was almost hypnotised by the brake lights of the lorry ahead, wondering if my life could get any more complicated. The mobile rang and I put it onto the hands-free unit on the dash.

  “Hi, Jack?”

  Nikki’s number, that I’d only just put into my phone contacts, appeared on the screen. “Hello Nikki. I thought you’d be in your hotel in bed asleep by now.”

  “I was. But something’s been worrying me. Jack, look I’m sorry, but I haven’t been straight with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Arranging to meet up with you and Ken wasn’t exactly my own decision.”

  “No?”

  “It was the police. DS Willow – you’ve met him, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, DS Willow and the other police bloke on the team, they persuaded me to look you and Ken up, to set up a meeting, try and make it sound casual, like, you know?”

  “So you didn’t just want to meet up as an old friend?”

  “We weren’t bosom buddies really anyway were we? I liked you well enough Jack, but you and Ken were just clients, like hundreds of other guys who come down and I take fishing.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “Don’t sound so precious, Jack,” he snapped. “A few days ago I found out that my sister’s been murdered by some buggering maniac! Right now my priority is helping find out who the hell killed her, not playing catch-up mates with a couple of guys I barely know! The only reason I looked you up was because the police team asked me to.”

  “Sorry Nikki. That’s fair enough.”

  “Coppers wanted me to set up a meeting and record it for ’em. You were a BIA, you know the sort of thing they’d be looking for. I had a hidden video camcorder in my case. Bit wobbly, but I’ve filmed us talking, recorded all our conversations.”

  “So you think I killed Miranda? And you were trying to trap me into admitting something?”

  “Okay. Yes! I didn’t know what to think, do you blame me? The police hinted that there was some other woman you were involved with that had died, and I knew you’d spent time in a sodding nuthouse, so what the hell was I supposed to think? My sister had been murdered, and the police told me you were a suspect. Why wouldn’t I do everything in my power to try and find out if they could be right?”

  “So why are you phoning and telling me all this?”

  “Because I’ve handed the film over to the police, watched it again with them. Watched how you both behaved, the body language, all that stuff that you know more about than I do.”

  “And?”

  “Ken. Just how well do you know him, Jack?”

  “I was at school with him.”

  “Really close friend then?”

  “Well, of course.”

  But even as I answered something disturbed me, because it wasn’t really true.

  How well did I know Ken?

  Ken.

  My best friend?

  Well no, not exactly.

  He was my old school friend, who’d contacted me because of reading about me in The Alleynian, who’d looked me up out of the blue just two years ago. Who’d spent hours talking to me, raising my spirits, doing his best to help me in any way he could.

  But just how well did I know him?

  The actual facts were that I’d fallen out of touch with Ken for a lot of years, an
d it had been him who’d reignited our friendship after all that time, as a result of hearing about my problems, and I was grateful to him for bothering, when closer friends had abandoned me.

  “The thing is,” Nikki’s voice went on, “coppers reckon that the way he was behaving when the three of us were talking, he was uptight, anxious. You know?”

  “What do you mean, uptight?”

  “I might as well tell you. Police warned me not to say a word, but I reckon you might be in danger. ’Sides I reckon you’ve got a right to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “What I told them about the time the pair of you was in Cornwall.”

  The lorry in front of me braked, and I braked hard too, slowing for the traffic hold-up that was ahead. A police Land Rover with flashing blue lights passed both of us, steaming ahead, sailing past the sea of red dots.

  “Remember the night before you and Ken left Cornwall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, coppers told us that the concrete was poured on the morning of August the seventh, that’s the concrete on top of the hardcore under which Miranda was buried. We saw Miranda on the fifth – you were with her that evening. She was seen on the morning of the sixth, but not after that. So the only possibility is that she was murdered on the evening of the sixth or some time very early on the seventh. Whoever buried her had to shift a lot of bricks and rubble and goodness knows what-all out of that hole, put her body there, then replace some of it. Quite a bit of work, which couldn’t possibly have been done in daylight or he’d have been seen. So it had to be during the hours of darkness.”

  “Okay.” I thought hard. “The sixth being the actual evening that I’d arranged to go out with her, when she never turned up.”

  “By which time, the concrete was hardening over her grave, and the murdering bastard must have been breathing a sigh of relief that he’d got away with it.”

  “Sure.”

  “You remember Ken was interested in the local church? St Martin’s? The nights you went out with Miranda, he was up there brass rubbing, wasn’t he? Got the keys off the vicar, to do it.”

  “He spent ages messing about with tissue paper and pencils.”

  “The night of the sixth, I’d fixed to go for a few jars with some of my mates and I invited the pair of you to come with us. Neither of you could come, you’d arranged to meet Miranda and Ken reckoned he was too tired. Miranda was working at the estate agent’s office until five, supposed to be seeing you at eight, but she never showed up. Same night as Clive Semple vamoosed, and she left us the note saying she’d gone with him.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I’d had a few too many that night, went outside to clear my head about 10 o’clock. I felt sick as a dog, I actually vomited in the road. Felt like having a wander to clear my head, so I staggered along, and I happened to go as far as St Martin’s. The door was partly open. And I heard someone crying. A man, sobbing his heart out. I didn’t look in to see who it was, I reckoned it was private, like. But I know the vicar had let Ken have a key to the church. And lately I got to thinking. If it was Ken, why was he so upset?”

  “What do the police think?”

  “You know what they’re like. Never tell you a damn thing. Crucial fact, as far as you’re concerned, is that Mary Graham, the landlady at your boarding house, remembers you coming in that evening at around nine, when it was still daylight. She says you looked okay, hardly spoke to her. No wonder – it was the night Miranda stood you up, when she’d promised to meet you and discuss whether she was prepared to have a long-distance relationship with you.”

  “But the police would say I could have killed her, hidden her somewhere, come back to the boarding house, then sneaked out after dark to get rid of the body.”

  “Sure you could. But Mary went up to your room in the middle of the night. There were complaints, you were screaming in your sleep. They knew you’d had psychiatric troubles, they were worried you’d do a mischief to yourself or something. Anyway, Mrs Graham testifies that you were in your bed at ten, and at two am – she was so worried she used her pass key and went up to check on you twice more. You could have slipped out earlier on or later, but you’d have had to pass the front desk and you’d have been seen.”

  My heart was beating faster. What did it all mean?

  “So you’re telling me that you and the police are working on the assumption that Ken killed her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why, for God’s sake?”

  “He’s your mate. Do you reckon he fancied her? Maybe he made advances to her behind your back, and she rebuffed him, he got angry and attacked her to stop her screaming or something, and he went too far?”

  “No!” I couldn’t believe this new development. To think that Nikki had done his best to trap poor Ken into incriminating himself for a crime he obviously hadn’t committed.

  “No, Nikki, you’re wrong. Ken wouldn’t have done that. I swear to you he couldn’t have done. There has to be some other explanation.”

  “Police are working on the theory that both of you were her lovers. I can tell you it’s pretty sickening to have to hear them say things like that about your own sister.” his voice cracked with emotion, “especially as we all know she wasn’t that kind of girl. But they say that she could have led you on, and Ken too, and taunted him with the fact that she wanted you and not him, tempers got flared…”

  “No. That’s simply not possible. You of all people know that your sister wasn’t that kind of person. In fact I swear to you Nikki, that Miranda and I never actually had a physical relationship. I was emotionally involved with her, I didn’t push her for that kind of thing, it just wasn’t like that. If she’d been the type of girl to sleep around, I wouldn’t have wanted to have a proper relationship with her. And I promise you, Nikki, that is what I wanted. I respected Miranda, I really did.”

  “Thanks mate, I appreciate hearing it. But where the hell it leaves us now, I do not know.”

  “Tell me Nikki. Do you believe me? That I had nothing to do with her death?”

  “Sure I do Jack. When we spoke this afternoon, any remaining doubts I had disappeared. Why else would I be talking to you now, against the express instructions of the coppers, and putting you on your guard?”

  “Why did you warn me?”

  “Because if Ken did it he might be getting desperate. Desperate enough to do you harm if necessary, and I reckoned you needed to be warned. But if what you say about Ken is true then looks as if we’re never going to find out who killed her.”

  After he’d hung up, I noticed the lorry had taken the next exit, and as if I was on automatic pilot, I blinked away tiredness, deciding to turn off at the next services to have some coffee to keep myself awake.

  Was it possible?

  Ken, frustrated sexually in his miserable sham of a marriage, murdering Miranda because he made a pass at her and she rebuffed him?

  No. It was completely ridiculous, the idea made no sense at all.

  Then, as I followed the arrows in the road, turning up left towards the Maidstone services, I had a sudden idea that literally made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  All the pointers, the odd occurrences and the weird coincidences that I’d discounted all this time pointed to something that I could barely even begin to contemplate.

  There was just one other possible motive for Ken killing Miranda. Just one, and I could hardly believe I could even consider it.

  Chapter 16

  DE CLÉRAMBAULT’S SYNDROME

  As I parked beside a silver Renault Clio I turned on the car radio and the seventies classic Take it Easy, by the Eagles was playing. For some reason I’ve always hated that song. It takes me back to when I was young, a boy of around twelve, something that happened, something awful that I can never quite remember. It was 1987, and the 1972 hit had been played on an oldies station.

  And quite suddenly, out of the blue, I remembered something.

  S
chool. Dulwich College. The end of the school year. One of those summer evenings when it doesn’t get dark until nearly ten at night, when the daylight filtered through your eyelids makes you restless, reminding you of the smell of freshly mown grass, cool air and never-ending sunshine.

  Peter Edwards and Jock Summerville were somewhere outside, in the corridor. I’d been dozing on the bed of our dormitory in Blew House, just before lights out. I’d drifted off to sleep, but I’d woken up suddenly.

  Ken’s face was above me, flushed bright red, mouth open, drooling. He was stammering something, while Edwards and Summerville appeared in the background, goggle-eyed and laughing as they watched us.

  I’d pushed Ken away from me and he’d fallen down, beginning to weep and blubber. In fury, I leapt up and grabbed Summerville, who was nearest, smashing my fist into his face to make him stop laughing. I could still remember the blood pouring from his nose, my confusion and fear, the master appearing as if from nowhere, grabbing me by the collar, pulling me away from Jock Summerville, whose hand covered his bloody face as he tried to lunge back at me.

  It was so deeply buried in my subconscious I’d completely forgotten that awful memory until now, and still I could only remember part of it. There was more, much more, and the very worst part was still lost. Lost in the labyrinth of my mind, maybe lost forever.

  Fully awake now, I twisted around in the car seat. Opened the window and took some long deep breaths, struggling to get back to the happenings of that hot summer night all those years ago, when someone nearby had been playing Take it Easy on their radio. The service station’s car park was almost empty, just a few clumps of cars squatting here and there, large tracts of emptiness, the services block fifty yards away, lit up like a ship at sea, travel-weary people coming and going, the automatic doors opening and shutting hypnotically.

  Concentrating hard, I tried to remember what had happened to Jock Summerville. In The Alleynian, I remembered reading that he’d gone back to his native Scotland and become an accountant in… Where was it? Glasgow? No. Edinburgh. That was it, Edinburgh.