He sat staring out of the window and by the time he passed Penny Lane he had managed to convince himself that he had probably imagined the whole thing. After all, if nobody else on the bus had seen it, it was likely that he was mistaken. Perhaps the couple had just been having a fight…or even dancing. If he went to the police, he might make a complete fool of himself. And besides, he wouldn’t have time that night. He was taking Susan to the Odeon to see Dr. Zhivago: she’d been on at him to take her to see it for ages but it didn’t sound like Keith’s cup of tea. He preferred something like Psycho; just the sort of film that would make Susan terrified enough to want to cling to him in the dark. As he thought of the evening ahead he told himself to forget about the upstairs window. He had imagined it. Or it had been a trick of the light.
As he predicted, Susan adored the film’s exotic romance. And when he had kissed her in the back row she had responded eagerly and allowed his hands to explore parts of her body not previously available to him. As he walked her home he wondered whether to mention what he’d thought he’d seen from the top deck of the bus but he decided against it: she would only have told him that he was imagining things and that he’d seen something quite innocent; a man taking a speck of dirt out of a woman’s eye; or a couple kissing. And she would probably have been right. Instead Keith concentrated on a long and passionate goodnight, one that might have held a promise of something more if Susan’s father hadn’t been watching from the front bedroom window.
But that night it wasn’t Susan who featured in his dreams. Instead he dreamed about murder. Dreamed that he was on the top deck of the eighty bus, outside the house in Ullet Road watching a shadowy figure stabbing a woman in a shower. Blood was spurting from the open flat window and landing in rivulets on the windows of the bus and Keith was wiping it away with his sleeve. He shouted but no sound came from his mouth. Then the man in the raincoat next to him on the bus suddenly turned, with mad staring eyes, and began to drive a knife into his defenceless body.
* * *
Keith felt exhausted when his mother woke him up the next morning but he hauled himself out of bed and dressed by the paraffin heater in his bedroom. His mother nagged him to have a proper breakfast, just as she did every morning, but Keith had no time. He grabbed a slice of toast and took a sip of tea before hurrying out into the chilly, bright morning, making it to the bus stop just in time.
He hopped on to the pea-green bus with the Corporation coat of arms painted on its side and made his way up the stairs, clinging to the handrail. The fog of morning cigarette smoke hit him as he reached the top deck and he was glad to see that his favourite seat was still free – the seat at the front with the panoramic view. He settled himself down and lit his first cigarette of the day, then he sat back, enjoying the fresh rush of nicotine and trying not to think of the dull routine of the day ahead.
As the bus chugged down Ullet Road he felt a thrill of anticipation. He had made sure he was sitting on the right-hand side of the bus so that he would have the best view of the upstairs window as the bus drove past. But he wasn’t sure what he expected to see. A body lying on a brightly illuminated bed, perhaps? Or a screaming woman clawing at the window? Or, more likely, nothing at all.
The bus shuddered to a halt opposite what he’d started to think of as the murder house and the diesel engine throbbed while the queue of passengers climbed on. He focused on the window – the bay window on the first floor – but the thin cotton curtains were drawn, hiding the scene within. Keith studied the house: it was a large Victorian building: a corner house, probably divided into flats like most of its neighbours, standing at the end of a row of similar houses next to a side road. Red brick and vaguely Gothic in style, it was a house to grace any horror film. Just the sort of place to harbour a killer – or his victim. As the bus set off, Keith noticed a car parked close to the corner – a shiny blue Cortina, probably brand new. It looked exactly like his boss, Mr. Kelly’s car, but Keith told himself that it couldn’t be: Mr. Kelly always arrived at work early so he would be on his way by now. There must be a lot of brand new Cortinas around: a lot of lucky bastards who didn’t have to queue at the bus stop every morning.
For the remainder of the journey Keith stared out of the window, watching the city awake from its slumber under the blue autumn sky. The bus pulled in to its allotted spot at the Pier Head bus station and cut its noisy engine. Then Keith walked the short distance to the Liver Building, accompanied by a fanfare of screaming sea gulls. Another day, another dollar, as he had once heard someone say.
When he reached the office he sensed a strange undercurrent of excitement. The clerks kept their heads down but the secretaries talked in whispers, as if they were sharing forbidden secrets…secrets too juicy for general consumption. Keith sorted through the papers on his desk, watching and listening. Something was going on in that smoky shipping office. And he wanted to know what it was.
He realised that he hadn’t seen Mr. Kelly that morning, which was unusual: he was normally there in his glass-fronted office keeping an eye on things. Not that Kelly had much to say to the young clerks. He was old, at least thirty-five, tall with glossy black hair and a snub nose. But the girls in the office seemed to like him.
It was lunchtime before the clerks had a chance to get together. As Keith took a ham sandwich out of the lunch box his mother had packed for him first thing that morning, Mike Fry hurried over. Mike had joined the firm around the same time as Keith and he had a shock of red hair and a face that couldn’t keep a secret. He perched on the corner of Keith’s desk and looked around before leaning forward.
“So what do you think?” Mike began in a whisper.
“Think of what?”
“Mr. Kelly and Linda.”
Mr. Kelly’s secretary, Linda, was a tall, dark-haired young woman, beautiful in an unconventional kind of way. Striking, Keith’s mother would have called her. None of the young clerks knew Linda well. She was way above them…as distant as a goddess.
“What about them?” Keith asked innocently.
“They’ve not come into work. Someone rang Kelly’s house and there was no answer.”
“What about Linda?”
“She’s not on the phone.”
“Perhaps she’s ill then…and she couldn’t get to a phone box.”
Mike grinned knowingly. “Perhaps. Funny though, them both being off at the same time. Maybe they’ve gone on a dirty weekend together.”
“It’s Wednesday.”
But this inconvenient fact didn’t deter Mike. Soon others had gathered around the desk and in due course the verdict was that Kelly and Linda were holed up in a hotel in Blackpool living off the fruits of passion. A small, fair-haired typist, wise beyond her tender years, announced solemnly that they’d fancied each other for at least a year; certainly since the death of Mr. Kelly’s wife…or maybe even before. There’s nothing like office gossip for exercising the imagination.
“Perhaps the big bosses know where Mr. Kelly is,” suggested Keith. “Perhaps they just haven’t told us minions.”
Mike leaned forward. “I saw Mr. Davies before and I asked him if Mr. Kelly would be in…trying to sound all innocent, like…but he didn’t say anything. I reckon Kelly’s gone AWOL. And so has Linda,” he added with a wink.
“Kelly lives somewhere in Ullet Road, doesn’t he? Near Sefton Park?” Keith said innocently.
“That’s right,” Mike piped up. “I heard he owns some flats down there.”
“I heard that too,” said Keith. This was old news.
“Someone said they belonged to his late wife. She inherited them from an aunt or something.”
“What did his wife die of?” Keith asked. But nobody knew the answer.
The conversation ground to a halt. They’d covered the sum total of their knowledge about their boss’s private life. Mike had done well to glean the information about the late wife�
��s inheritance. He’d make a good detective, Keith thought, with a slight pang of envy.
“I’m sure I saw his car parked off Ullet Road this morning,” said Keith.
But the clerks had lost interest and turned their attention to their sandwiches and the subject of Saturday’s football match.
That afternoon Keith found it difficult to concentrate on his work and he kept looking at his watch, longing for five thirty. Longing for his homeward journey on the eighty bus. He kept thinking of Kelly and Linda. Why hadn’t they turned up at work? He had to check out the house. And he was impatient to get it over with.
He would be late home, of course, and his mother would be annoyed because his tea would be spoiled. But she had refused to contemplate having a telephone put in so it couldn’t be helped. He wanted to discover the truth. And the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that the woman he saw being murdered might have been Linda. But had the man been Kelly? It had all happened too quickly to see.
The bus went out on time that night. Keith was first on and he hurried up the stairs to the top deck and headed for the seat at the front. He lit a cigarette. He needed one. He was afraid…afraid of what he might find. He sat there in the fog of smoke and crushed homeward-bound bodies, chain smoking and fidgeting with the clasp on the cheap leather briefcase his mother had bought him last Christmas. Somehow the journey seemed longer that evening. Like the journey to a place of execution.
When they reached the top of Ullet Road, Keith stood up and stubbed out his cigarette on the dirty grey floor. Grabbing the handrails, he made his way down the bus which rocked and lurched so much that he almost took a tumble down the stairs. The conductor stood on the platform, watching him with a smirk on his face. Keith jumped down on to the pavement outside the big red brick house as the smirking conductor rang the bell and the pea-green bus pulled away in a cloud of diesel fumes. From now on he was on his own. There was no going back.
He stood at the bus stop for a few minutes looking up at the house. The curtains were still drawn across the upstairs bay window but the light was on, a single bulb shining through the thin cotton. And he could see a shadow moving behind the flimsy material. Somebody was at home.
Keith knew he had to check if the Cortina was still there. He had been so certain that it was Mr. Kelly’s car, but now he was there on the spot he began to have his doubts. What if he was leaping to conclusions? Adding two and two and making five? The road was a long one – Kelly might live anywhere. And he and Linda might both have come down with some illness or other and been unable to let the office know. He walked to the corner and looked down the side road. But there was no sign of the Cortina he had seen that morning.
Keith was beginning to feel rather stupid. His mother would tell him that he had been watching far too many Hitchcock films and maybe she was right. What did he have to go on? He knew Mr. Kelly lived in that particular road and owned flats in the area. And he had seen what he believed to be his car parked next to the house where he had seen a man murdering a woman, who may or may not have borne some vague, passing resemblance to Linda. And Kelly and Linda had not turned up for work that day, apparently without explanation. He had put all these facts together and come up with a scenario straight from the movies. Kelly had been having an affair with Linda and he had murdered her – for reasons unknown – in full view of the top deck of the number eighty bus before going to ground, a fugitive from justice.
It had all seemed so plausible sitting in the smoky warmth of the top deck but now, here in the cold November air, it began to seem rather far-fetched and ridiculous. He made his way slowly back to the bus stop. Perhaps he should just wait for the next eighty and go home.
And yet he had seen the couple struggling…the man possibly strangling the woman. It had just been a glimpse, over too quickly and too far away for any sort of identification. But he had seen it – he was certain of that. And now the light was on in that very room. There was somebody up there.
He took a deep breath. He had come this far so he might as well check, just to satisfy his own curiosity. He would concoct a story. He would be looking for a friend called John who lived next door and he would apologise profusely when he was told he had the wrong house. He loved detective stories and he felt rather pleased with himself for thinking up this ingenious ploy.
He pushed open the wooden gate and walked slowly up the path to the front door. The house was divided into flats like so many of its neighbours and there was a row of doorbells at the side of the flaking front door. Beside the row of bells a fat spider was sitting in the centre of a large web. Keith peered at the labels, trying to make out names in the dim glow of the streetlight. There was one in the middle that stood out, however. A neatly typed label gave the name of the occupier of flat number three as ‘Kelly’. Keith’s heart began to beat faster. Had his instincts been right all along? But then he told himself that there must be hundreds of Kellys in Liverpool, a city where at least half the population had Irish ancestry. The spider shifted slightly as he stared at the bell, pondering his next move.
He turned to go. It had been a stupid idea. But as he turned he came face to face with a young man, roughly the same age as himself, maybe a year or two older. The young man’s hair was long, Beatles style, and he wore a donkey jacket and a Liverpool University scarf.
“How do?” he said with a grin. His accent was Yorkshire and he had an open, freckled face. “Who are you looking for?”
The young man was obviously a student, and he hardly looked like a murderer. “Er, I heard there was a flat going. Is it this one? Kelly?” He pointed at the bell.
“No, that’s the landlord. Look, I don’t think any of the flats are empty…unless the landlord’s decided to move up in the world. He works in town and he inherited this place from his first wife so he can’t be badly off. And he’s just bought a brand new car so he must be in the money,” he added bluntly, extending his hand. He seemed the chatty type, which suited Keith fine. “Jim Watts…doing medicine,” he said, looking Keith up and down, noting his jacket and tie. “Are you a student then?”
“Er, no. I work in town. Thought it was time I got a place of my own…you know how it is.” He took Jim’s hand and shook it. “John McCartney,” he said without quite knowing why he felt so reluctant to use his real name.
His heart was beating fast: he’d been right all along. Kelly did live there. And now he had disappeared…so had Linda. And Keith had seen him kill her.
“Just ring that bell there.” Jim pointed to a bell marked ‘Kelly’. “The light’s on so one of them should be in.”
“One of them?” Keith was aware that his voice was quivering with nerves. He had come too far to back out now.
“Either Mr. or Mrs. Kelly. Landlord or his wife. They’ve got the big flat on the first floor.”
“I thought you said his wife was dead.”
“That was his first wife.” Jim winked. “He’s remarried. Much younger than him. Linda, her name is. Lovely legs.”
Before Keith could stop him, Jim had pressed Kelly’s bell, trying to be helpful. “I’ll leave you to it, then, ” said the student. “One of ’em should be down in a minute. Good luck.”
With that he closed the front door and Keith was left standing on the doorstep, stunned. Kelly was married to Linda – or at least that’s what he told his tenants. He was living with her in a flat on the first floor, a flat he owned. And she was calling herself Mrs. Kelly. The situation would have provided hours of office gossip…if he hadn’t murdered her. And he was upstairs now, probably getting rid of the evidence. Or disposing of the body. It was really time to go to the police. He had played detective but he felt he couldn’t go it alone any more.
He turned to go. The next eighty bus should be due shortly. He’d report his discoveries at Allerton police station…on home ground. Perhaps this display of initiative would count in his favour if he
ever applied to join the police force.
Keith had just reached the gate when the front door opened. He swung round and stared at the figure framed in the doorway.
“Hello, Keith. What are you doing here?”
Keith opened and closed his mouth, lost for words. This was the last thing he had expected.
“Seeing you’re here, why not come in for a cup of tea? I’d no idea that you knew where I lived.”
As he walked back up the path, Linda smiled and smoothed her mini skirt down over her shapely legs. And a fly landed in the web of the fat spider by the doorbells.
* * *
April 2003
“I hate these bloody cold cases.” Detective Sergeant Bob Jones took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket but, seeing the disapproving looks of all those around him, put it back again. It was time he gave up anyway.
“So how long does the pathologist reckon it’s been under the floorboards then?” DC Burns asked, looking at the photographs of the crime scene and wrinkling his nose in disgust.
“Donkey’s years. I’m surprised nobody noticed the smell. We found a receipt from a record shop by the body dated 1965. It could have fallen out of the murderer’s pocket – then again it might not. Everything’s been sent to Forensics anyway: there might be fingerprints, even after all these years. The clothes are quite well preserved…considering.” Jones smiled. “Didn’t half give those builders a turn when they found it.”
Jones flicked through the papers on his desk. “In 1965 the place was owned by a Kevin Kelly, a widower who inherited various properties from his late wife who, in turn, had been left them by an aunt. There was a bit of a question mark over the wife’s death apparently, but nothing was ever proved. Kelly was found dead in 1965. His brand new Ford Cortina had been driven into the Mersey with him inside it…when I say driven I mean the handbrake was left off and it was given a shove. But he was already dead when it hit the water – stabbed in the heart. And there were a number of defensive wounds: he’d put up a fight. Don’t expect his killer thought he’d be found until time and tide had destroyed the evidence. Matter of luck, really.”
Vintage Crime Page 32
