Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  ‘So, what have Batwoman and Robin got for me now then?’ he said. ‘I can see you’re bursting to tell me.’

  And Kate did just that, revealing all that they had discovered before quickly summarizing their conclusions. For once he let her finish without interruption. Then, blowing a bubble with his gum, he sucked it back in again and nodded slowly.

  ‘A possible connection between this investigation and Talbot Court sounds a bit iffy to me, despite the dosser you saw there seeming to resemble the character the witness clocked at the murder scene, but the nephew bit could be promising.’

  He treated her to one of his wolfish grins. ‘Maybe we’ll have this thing sussed and put to bed even before Miss Marple actually arrives.’

  ‘And there again, maybe you won’t, Ted,’ a voice with a distinct Ulster accent spoke sharply from the doorway.

  Kate turned quickly to see a thin, blonde-haired woman of about forty standing there with one hand resting against the upper part of the door frame and the other on her hip. She was dressed in a smart grey trouser suit, which emphasized her trim figure, and her sharp blue eyes were focused on Roscoe’s shocked face with evident amusement.

  Deidrie Hennessey. Kate recognized her immediately, recalling only too well how Roscoe had crossed swords with the fiery former DI on a previous murder inquiry when he had effectively tried to muscle in on her investigation.

  ‘Sure, it’s grand to be seeing you again, Ted,’ Hennessey said, moving into the room. ‘And it seems we’ll be working together from now on too.’

  For several seconds Roscoe seemed stuck for words, but then he grinned, though there was no humour in his dark boot-button eyes.

  ‘Heard you’d been promoted to DCI, Deidrie,’ he said, standing up. ‘Didn’t realize they would let you loose as SIO so soon, though.’

  Hennessey chuckled, ignoring the barbed comment. ‘Aye, Ted,’ she replied. ‘Well, there’s nothing like a baptism of fire now, is there?’

  Her expression hardened. ‘And if you’d be so good as to get the team together, the incident room briefing will be in half an hour.’ She treated Kate to a cold smile. ‘Then, Sergeant, you will have the opportunity of telling us all what you’ve just told the DI.’

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘Well?’ Kate said when Hayden joined her in the police canteen after the main incident room team briefing. ‘What have you got for me?’

  Her partner had only managed to escape the briefing so he could carry out the background inquiries into Talbot Court and she was keen to find out whether the ‘trade-off’ had been worthwhile.

  ‘Quigley,’ he said.

  ‘Quigley?’

  ‘Elsie Norman’s maiden name. Got it from a birth certificate in a drawer at her home.’

  ‘Well, that’s something anyway. And Talbot Court?’

  Hayden sniffed, looking slightly uncomfortable as he referred to his pocket book.

  ‘Not a lot, I’m afraid. There’s a bit about the history on the internet, which I printed off. But it doesn’t help us much. Apparently, the place was originally built in the Georgian era, around 1770, by Sir William Makepeace Talbot, a wealthy banker and philanthropist, and it passed to his son, Robert, on his death in 1805. Robert himself died unexpectedly in 1850 and his son, Thomas, then inherited the estate. But he was an inveterate gambler and heavy drinker and, basically, he went bankrupt before committing suicide, leaving no heirs. As a result, the house had to be sold to cover his debts and it was subsequently grabbed by the local authority for use as an asylum – or madhouse, as such places were called then. It continued as such until 1935, when it was closed as no longer suitable and turned into one of the first approved schools—’

  Kate cut him off with an irritable hiss. ‘I wasn’t asking for a detailed history lesson, Hayd. Can we get on to this century?’

  He looked hurt. ‘Okay, okay, give me a chance. I was just being thorough, you know. But I’m coming to the relevant bits, so hang on.’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘In the 1950s, after the approved school system had fallen out of favour, the palatial pile was purchased by a so-called charitable foundation, the Kilburn Trust, a religious group who reopened it as a private orphanage for – and I quote – “challenging juveniles.” They ran the place until the late sixties, when there were a series of nasty incidents.

  ‘First, a couple of the inmates tried to commit suicide, then a member of staff was fatally stabbed by one of the kids. The culprit was locked up for murder and in the course of the police investigation, allegations of sexual abuse surfaced. These came to nothing in the end, but for some reason the goings-on at Talbot Court continued to be pursued by a freelance journalist, named Leslie Brookes.

  ‘They seem to have become a sort of cause célèbre for him, before a mysterious fire gutted much of the building and led to the closure of the orphanage and the winding up of the Trust, effectively halting his investigation. Since then, the place has been bought by two different property developers, the first of whom went bankrupt like poor old Thomas Talbot and the second simply left it to rot, due to years of planning objections by the local authority. I hear it’s now on the market again with a London property agent.’

  ‘And that’s it, is it?’

  ‘Not quite, but you did set me a rather impossible task.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, it is a bank holiday weekend, which means most corporate and local authority departments, like the district and county council offices, are closed, so not approachable for information. Nevertheless, I did manage to tease out a few more snippets from another source. Ever heard tell of Charlie Dexter?’

  She pursed her lips for a second, then shook her head, which seemed to please him and he continued a little more upbeat.

  ‘Well, he happens to be a member of my classic car club. But more importantly, he’s an ex-copper and was a DC in Bridgwater about the time of the Talbot Court scandal.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The thing is, after surfing the net, I got in touch with him and it turns out he has a pretty good memory, despite being in his mid-seventies.’

  ‘You do have some useful friends,’ she acknowledged, remembering some of his other contacts in past cases.

  He grinned, apparently appreciating the compliment. ‘Yes, I do, don’t I? Fact is, Charlie well remembers the stabbing at Talbot Court and the subsequent fire, which he says was investigated as arson, though it got nowhere. He wasn’t actually involved in the murder inquiry as he was on an unconnected rape investigation at the time, but he was aware of the fact that when the Kilburn Trust folded after the fire, it left massive debts and the Principal – one Edward Grace – plus his wife and all the staff simply vanished into thin air.’

  ‘Convenient. And the sexual abuse inquiry?’

  ‘He recalled office chit-chat about some sort of inquiry being set up in that respect, though no specific details of what happened as a result. But he did point out that, prior to the fairly recent Jimmy Saville business and all the child abuse inquiries that that scandal has generated since, complaints of sexual abuse by juveniles in the sixties were unlikely to have been given as much priority – or even as much credence – as they are today. Furthermore, as most of the kids at the orphanage then would probably have been seen as misfits and problem youngsters, with a history of anti-social behaviour, and Grace himself was an eminent psychologist who categorically denied anything untoward had taken place, the authorities were obviously bound to have come down on the side of Grace.’

  ‘You mean he suspects that the alleged sexual assaults were probably cuffed?’

  ‘Precisely – which would not have surprised him as he says the senior police officer who investigated the whole affair was a DCI called Justin Bobbett, who was killed in a car crash a couple of years afterwards. Evidently, Bobbett wasn’t that well regarded at the time – a bit slapdash in his methods, it seems, and allegedly rather too well in with the Principal at Talbot Court.’


  ‘You mean bent?’

  ‘Not bent, just a bit too friendly with Grace – maybe overawed by the man’s social status – and not someone who would have put too much store on the allegations of a few disturbed children anyway.’

  ‘So, the long and the short of it is that it’s unlikely any file record will actually exist in relation to the sexual assault allegations?’

  He nodded. ‘That was his assessment and since, as I have already said, it’s a bank holiday weekend, I’ve been unable to take things much further in that respect. There’s no relevant archival material on our local box – and, to be frank, there is unlikely to have been any after five decades. Similarly, a check on the PNC database proved pointless without the name of an offender, and I understand that all force archived prosecution material was transferred to CPS after they took over prosecution responsibilities in the eighties, and—’

  ‘They’re not contactable because of the bank holiday?’ Kate finished for him drily.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And I suppose the same would apply in relation to the National Archives’ records on Talbot Court?’

  ‘’Fraid so – if there are any, of course. But it’s worth saying that, after a bit of research on the internet, I was able to establish that they don’t keep info on the individual inmates or staff of such institutions anyway. We would need to approach the specific institution itself for that and, since Talbot Court and the Kilburn Trust are no more, that’s out the window.’

  ‘But there was a murder. There must be something on record somewhere that would give us the offender’s name? Old press reports on the internet, for example?’

  He shook his head. ‘I haven’t been able to turn up anything so far and the press would not have been allowed to publish the name of a convicted juvenile offender anyway, which makes that a total non-starter. In fact, until the bank holiday is over, it’s difficult to know where else to look, especially as there were no computers in the sixties, so there is no electronic data trail to follow.’

  ‘Then we’re stymied.’

  He treated her to a smug grin. ‘Not entirely. You see, while the info I got off the internet about Talbot Court was minimal and didn’t reveal the name of the kid who was sent down, a brief mention of the stabbing did reveal the name of the victim – an Alistair Scarsfield.’

  Kate jumped. ‘What? Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  She glared at him angrily, but didn’t pursue the point. ‘Scarsfield? Wasn’t that the name we saw scrawled on the wall at Talbot Court?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Then there has to be a connection between the Talbot Court business and our present investigation. The writer of our letter called himself George, the name George was scratched on the wall at Talbot Court, and another inmate appears to have alleged in that other bit of graffiti that Scarsfield was a paedophile. The coincidences in this affair seem to be mounting up.’

  Hayden compressed his lips. ‘There certainly seem to be a whole string of them emerging.’

  ‘But if the two Georges are one and the same person, and he is Scarsfield’s killer as well as being the killer of Elsie Norman, I don’t see how this links into the fixation our man seems to have with so-called aunts.’

  ‘Going by the message he scrawled on the floor with the lipstick at the scene, it’s very likely Elsie Norman was one of the aunts or harridans he refers to in his letter and not just some random victim.’

  ‘Okay, okay, but then where do Scarsfield and Talbot Court fit in?’

  ‘Not the faintest idea.’

  ‘Which brings us to Elsie Norman’s nephew. Our George could be George Quigley, so he might be known to us.’

  ‘He isn’t. I ran the name through the PNC, but it came up negative.’

  ‘And what happened to the rest of the children at the orphanage? Did they all simply vanish into thin air too?’

  ‘Not exactly. They were apparently dispersed among other orphanages around the country. There’s no available information on exactly where they went because the fire destroyed all the records and, after all this time, it will take forever to locate their whereabouts – especially as we don’t even know who the youngsters were in the first place.’

  ‘Then we will have to try and find the Principal himself, won’t we?’

  ‘Already done that.’

  ‘My, you have been diligent.’

  He grinned again, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘According to the press reports on the internet, Grace committed suicide after being traced to an apartment in Malaga, Spain, by our tenacious reporter, Brookes, six months after he’d fled there.’

  ‘What about Grace’s wife?’

  ‘No idea. They were both apparently in their fifties then, so unless she has the genes of Methuselah, she is almost certain to be six feet under by now.’

  ‘And the “tenacious reporter”?’

  ‘Retired, obviously. I don’t know where yet. He might even be dead. I have yet to follow that one up, but no time so far. Maybe a job for tomorrow.’

  ‘Correction. It has to be the job for tomorrow. As it is, we’ve got bugger all to show for a whole afternoon’s work and the guv’nor certainly won’t be impressed by it – especially after I persuaded him to excuse you from the briefing in the first place so that you could get on with things.’

  He smiled brightly. ‘You could always try telling him that the best is yet to come?’

  She scowled and glanced at her watch. ‘Just for that, my man, you can buy the first round in the bar tonight.’

  *

  The track was just as George remembered it from all those years ago when he had been taken for a couple of picnics by a mother desperately trying to engage with her own child. It led down a sharp incline to a lake. Normally you needed a permit to fish there, but dumping the shrink’s VW Beetle in the still, dark water didn’t constitute fishing, did it? It was a relatively easy process too. Stop the car on the slope, engage the handbrake, climb out, then release the handbrake and give the thing a push – sending it rolling down the slope into the water. It needed a couple of extra hefty pushes after that, but then the water seemed to suck it into its cold embrace and within fifteen minutes, there was the immense satisfaction of seeing it disappear beneath the surface. Someone would find it eventually, of course, but by then it would make no difference; everything that he had planned would have been achieved.

  The long walk back to the road was a bit of a pain – George was dog-tired – but once there, it was a simple enough matter to thumb a lift into Glastonbury and blend in with the hippies and crack-heads attending an impromptu music festival in a field near the town. Sitting at a table in a small side-street café just before closing time, George sipped a cup of hot coffee and thought about the next move with a sense of anticipation.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kate awoke, bleary eyed and with a mammoth headache. Sharing a full bottle of red wine with Hayden after returning home around midnight, on top of the couple of pints downed in the police station bar with the rest of the inquiry team, had been a big mistake, but it was too late to regret that now.

  She rolled over on to her back, stared at the blinding white ceiling and groaned. Hayden was out for the count and snoring in the big double bed beside her. She nudged him with her elbow.

  ‘Up, you lazy sod,’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s gone eight.’

  There was no response and, studying the substantial heap that quivered fitfully under the duvet, she gave a cynical smile, knowing from past experience that, short of the ceiling caving in, nothing would wake her other half until the effects of their heavy night’s imbibing had worn off sufficiently. In any event, there was no real rush. He had been assigned to her action team and they had been detailed to work the late shift, so they didn’t have to be back on duty until two in the afternoon – which also meant a very late finish. Lucky them.

  Forcing herself to sit upright against the headb
oard, she waited for the room to steady itself. Coffee, that’s what she needed – lots of the stuff, strong and black.

  The quarry tiles were ice cold on her bare feet when she stumbled down to the galley kitchen to fill the kettle, and she shivered as she waited for it to boil, her mind on the previous afternoon’s incident room briefing.

  The whole thing had been conducted in an atmosphere so tense that it had been almost tangible. The barely concealed hostility that existed between Roscoe and DCI Deidrie Hennessey had communicated itself to most of the uniformed and plainclothes officers gathered in the room and, although the different action teams had accepted the tasks they had been allocated for the following day with their usual professionalism, there had been something missing – perhaps a lack of obvious enthusiasm – which did not bode well for the future.

  But there was nothing Kate could do about the problem. It was down to Roscoe and Hennessey to resolve. All she could do was make sure she did her own job to the best of her ability and manage her own small action team as efficiently as possible. That team had at first consisted of Hayden and Danny Ferris, until Ferris had taken a leaf out of Hayden’s book and signed off sick with a so-called stomach bug, leaving her with just her other half as her sole foot soldier. Still, things could have been worse. She could have been taken off the inquiry altogether and lumbered with the mundane job of providing the continuing CID cover that was required for the local area instead – a job which had gone to the new sergeant, Des Percival, and Highbridge’s remaining long-serving detective constable, Jamie Foster.

  Anyway, whatever. In the few short hours remaining to her before her next shift, she at least had the opportunity of sorting out some domestic chores, which had already been left several days longer than she would have liked. Jerking open the dirty linen basket in the corner, she pulled out a tangle of shirts, socks and underwear, and tossed them on to the floor in front of the washing machine, intending to stuff the coloured garments into its gaping maw and let it run its programme as she enjoyed a mug of strong black coffee. But the coffee was not to be hers for a while.