Silent Terror

by Ted Tayler

  “Is that a lot?” asked Blessing.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll soon reduce that first thing in the morning,” said Gus. “Start with those in full-time education aged fourteen or fifteen in the summer of 2011. We’ll try to identify Mrs Atkins’s library trouble makers. If we get names and photos, we can put them in front of the café staff.”

  “There has to be more, guv,” said Lydia. “A skirmish in the library, and poking fun at Ursula outside the café a year later wouldn’t provoke such a violent reaction, surely?”

  “We’re not dealing with normal teenagers, Lydia,” said Blessing.

  “For everyone’s sakes I hope you’re right, Blessing,” said Gus. “It’s time to call it a day folks. Lydia, make sure each of us has a copy of that file before you leave. First thing in the morning, we start our search.”

  Friday, 6th July 2018

  When Gus parked the Focus at the rear of the Old Police Station, he smiled to himself. His team didn’t need any encouragement from him. They were already upstairs, and it was only five to nine. Gus had hoped to make it in from Devizes earlier, but the Highways Department must have forgotten something when they completed the roadworks in Seend. They were back this morning, digging up tarmac that had hardly had time to settle.

  “Morning everyone,” he said as he exited the lift, “what do we know?”

  “It’s not as straightforward as we hoped, guv,” said Lydia.

  “At least we’ve worked out why that is,” added Luke.

  “The census took place on the twenty-seventh of March, guv,” said Lydia, “which was in term time. We checked each of the children recorded in the Mere district aged around fourteen or fifteen, and nobody fitted our profile.”

  “They were at boarding school,” said Gus, “as we suspected. Didn’t I read that the 2011 Census attempted to collect more data than those carried out in the past? They used terms such as ‘out of term population’ as well as ‘usually resident’. I imagine this has posed problems over the years. If you took Bath, for instance, they have a large student population for a sizeable part of the year. To understand the level of services they need to provide, the County Council needs to know the numbers. For part of the year, the students return home, and so their local authority needs access to that data too. Overseas students swell the numbers in cities like Bath, before flying home in the summer. Did the Hub restrict the search to those counted as ‘usually resident’ in the Mere district?”

  “It did, guv,” said Luke, “but supplementary data’s available taking account of the categories you mentioned. I’ve analysed that and can’t find anyone that fits the profile. We’re stumped.”

  “Explain that to me, Neil,” asked Gus.

  “Students and schoolchildren were initially counted in the usually resident base of their boarding school or university, guv. Then they got relocated to their family home. The family home for our suspects may not be in the Mere district. It could be in Scotland, or Northern Ireland. It could conceivably be abroad.”

  “So, unless we know which schools these two attended back in 2011, we can’t find them, guv,” said Lydia.

  “What about our kids in the library?”

  “They wouldn’t have been in school uniform, guv,” said Luke. “not when Mrs Atkins says she saw them.”

  “The kissing students?”

  “A Saturday afternoon, guv,” said Neil, “and they were sixteen or seventeen by then. Many sixth-forms dispense with uniform from Year 12. If it were out of term time, you wouldn’t have a clue where they studied.”

  “The scarf,” said Gus, “what about the scarf? Was it recorded? If not, get hold of Ormrod and Dillon, check whether it was a school or college scarf.”

  It was a frustrating start to the day as Neil and Luke called the shop owners while Lydia and Blessing got their heads together. Gus wondered what they were debating.

  “Have you had a brainwave, Lydia?” he asked.

  “Blessing has, guv.”

  “Time to share, Blessing.”

  “Although these students might have been away from Mere for weeks at a time, they could still keep in touch with things.”

  “Letters or phone calls to their parents, asking them to send money and cake. Yes, we’ve seen public school life depicted on TV and in film, Blessing.”

  “No guv, social media will be their main source of contact to the community.”

  “We’ve discussed this before, Blessing. These two kids and anyone that Ursula Wakeley argued with would never befriend her on social media. There was no way she could torment them online, and anyway, we have no evidence of her ever accessing one of those sites.”

  “Well, we can’t say she didn’t, guv,” said Blessing, “because the library only retained browsing data for twelve months. What we agreed was Ursula didn’t access the internet under her name. Let me dig into the accounts connected to Mere and see what I can find.”

  “Have you done this before, Blessing?” asked Gus.

  “I’ve used most of the sites since I was sixteen, guv. My parents barred me from having a mobile phone until then. When I started working with Andy Carlton, we had a case that needed someone to trawl through posts and messages on Facebook searching for hate speech. He thought I knew my way around better than the middle-aged detectives on his team. I have a knack for it, guv.”

  “Get started then,” said Gus, “we need all the help we can get.”

  “Ormrod thinks the scarf was woollen and brown to match the winter coat she wore, guv,” said Neil.

  “Dillon said much the same, guv,” said Luke. “It was a long scarf, like Doctor Who wore, but plain. He couldn’t remember the colour, but it was dark.”

  “OK, we’re not going to find them via that route. While Blessing and Lydia join forces on the internet, we three could try another approach.”

  “What about the Electoral Roll, guv,” said Neil.

  “You need a name to start the search, Neil,” said Luke.

  “I remember my Dad telling me that back in the old days, he could go to the local church. And in the porch, there was a booklet chained to the wall. It was a street by street listing of surnames by house number. I asked him if he used the information when he was a young copper to trace villains. Dad said he was fifteen and if he met a girl at the youth club once he knew her name he could find her address and just happen to cycle past her house or drop an anonymous Valentine’s card through her letterbox.”

  “What a rogue,” said Gus, “no chance of that these days. Most churches are locked, and that kind of information is only available on request to protect the individual.”

  “What about the library details from July 2011 we collected,” said Luke. “That could give us several names to search. The two youngsters rebuked by Ursula might appear on that list. At least one of them had to be a member. If we find one name, we can follow up on which school they attended, and whether they went on to university.”

  “We might learn why their name didn’t appear on the 2011 Census too,” said Gus.

  “I picked those records up the last thing on Wednesday,” said Neil. “They’re right here on my desk. I didn’t get a chance to go through them yesterday because of the door-to-door.”

  “You and Luke can start now then, Neil. Good hunting.”

  Gus remembered one of his mental notes. The car parking issue. He called Geoff Mercer.

  “Good morning, Gus,” said Geoff. “Is this good news on the Wakeley case? Solved it already?”

  “I’d like to say we’re there,” said Gus, “but it’s two steps forwards, three steps back at times. Anyway, if someone thinks we’re unduly quick in achieving results, you should remind them of our remit.”

  “I know, you get the murder file, and everything’s there for you. The forensics, the door-to-door enquiries, any witness statements get handed to you on a plate. Sometimes they’ve done a reconstruction and broadcast it on Crimewatch. All you have to do is loosen a few alibis, ask different qu
estions, and come up with the culprit. Then, as soon as you point the finger at the villain, you swan off to the Waggon & Horses for a celebratory drink. The ACC passes everything you find onto the detective squad who carried out the first investigation. Their task is to wrap things up and pass a winning package to the Crown Prosecution Service. It’s a doddle. How you persuaded the ACC to get you back on such a cushy number beats me.”

  “If everybody could do what I do then life would be so much better,” said Gus. “While you’re feeling positive about the CRT’s achievements, can I ask that you badger the local Council for two extra parking spaces? Alex is with you at present, and Blessing Umeh’s car is in the garage getting repaired. In the next week or so we’ll be scrabbling for spaces among the masses.”

  “I suppose if you don’t get those spaces, it will impact on your high success rate?” said Geoff.

  “That’s a given, Geoff.”

  “Anything for a quiet life,” said Geoff.

  Gus waited for a few seconds expecting his friend to say something more, but the rest was silence. Gus decided he’d just wait until he saw the new signage on the wall outside indicating the six Crime Review Team parking spots. One mental note ticked. If only he could remember the others.

  “We’ve got something, guv,” said Luke.

  “That was quick, Luke. Where was it?”

  “In August 2011, during the school holidays, a library member called Caitlyn Bendick signed in a visitor.”

  “Bendick? He’s the shipping magnate, isn’t he?” said Gus. “Is Caitlyn a grandchild?”

  “Neil’s checking, guv.”

  “Who did Ms Bendick sign in?”

  “It’s unclear, guv, but it looks like F. Wardrip. I might be wrong. There’s nobody with that surname living locally.”

  “Oh, you’re wrong, alright,” said Gus. “Wardrip was a serial killer in the States. He murdered five women in the mid-Eighties. Our killer has a sense of humour.

  “James Bendick married for a second time, guv,” said Neil. “Caitlyn is his only child. The family live on Castle Hill. Bendick retains properties in London and Monte Carlo. He bought the Mere home in 1995, and Caitlyn arrived in 1997. His second wife Catherine is an interior designer with a London store; she also owns a separate property in Gstaad, Switzerland.”

  “When you say family, you’re using the term in its general sense, I presume,” said Gus. “Caitlyn’s father spends much of his time in London or the South of France. Her mother has an office in the city during the week and a pied-à-terre during the skiing season. Where did they stash their only daughter during term time?”

  “At the time of the library incident, Caitlyn was at Bruton School for Girls,” said Blessing Umeh.

  “Listening in again, Blessing, well done,” said Gus. “How do we know that?”

  “As soon as we heard the name, we looked for Caitlyn’s Facebook account,” said Lydia.

  “You were right, guv,” said Blessing. “the term fees are more than ten thousand pounds. There’s a school next to the premises for younger girls. It won’t surprise me if Caitlyn has been there ever since she was old enough for Preparatory school.”

  “Have you found any Mere-related sites that Caitlyn Bendick or her family might have frequented?”

  “Her parents don’t have a personal online presence,” said Lydia. “They’ve both got websites and business accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Catherine uses Pinterest too. Caitlyn uses her social media accounts for the usual things. She follows her favourite pop stars and personalities. On Facebook, Caitlyn has around eight hundred friends. We’re isolating the young men based within a twenty-mile radius of Mere. We’ve found two Pages that concentrate on local news and gossip for the town. Mere Chat has around six hundred and fifty members, but the posts ceased in December 2012.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” asked Gus.

  “Millions of people join Facebook and never post a thing, guv,” said Neil. “Perhaps they can’t work out how to use it, or they search for long-lost friends for a while and get fed up. An inactive account can sit there for years, and nobody does a thing. Who were the administrators for Mere Chat? We could ask them why they stopped. Maybe they switched to the second one you mentioned?”

  “You could be right, Neil. That page got set up on the eighteenth of January in 2013. It’s got over four thousand members. It records at least fifty posts a day.”

  “That’s a busy little community page,” said Gus.

  “The eighteenth of January was only two days after Ursula’s murder,” said Luke.

  “Did you find the name of the administrator for Mere Chat, Blessing?” asked Gus.

  “Arnold Friend,” said Blessing. “The surname appears here and there in the town. I can’t find an Arnold though at the moment.”

  “Interesting,” said Gus. “Let me make a phone call. Meanwhile, get a list of those six hundred-odd names associated with the Chat group. Was Caitlyn Bendick a member? Are there others that might be relevant?

  “One thing was unusual, guv,” said Blessing. “On this type of page, the administrator or moderator generally has a photograph of themselves on display. The header image might be a local landmark or an aerial shot of the town. That’s what they had, but Arnold Friend chose a traditional depiction of Michael in full battle gear, his sword drawn ready for the coming battle.”

  “As in Michael, the avenging archangel?” asked Gus.

  “Yes, guv. The archangels were the first angels created by God. Traditionally there were twelve, and they were sometimes associated with the role of punishing wrongdoers.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Ursula was like her father, Gideon, she saw it as her role to confront wickedness wherever she saw it,” said Gus.

  “Here, the wrongdoers were the first to strike a blow,” said Neil.

  “Keep digging, Blessing,” said Gus. “I’ll make that call now.”

  Gus called Horace Plant.

  “Good morning, Mr Plant. Gus Freeman here, what can you tell me about a gentleman called Arnold Friend?”

  “He worshipped at our church, Mr Freeman. Before my time, though. Did you visit our graveyard after we spoke?”

  “No, we returned to our car after a visit to a café in town. Why?”

  “The Friend family has had its roots in the town for generations, Mr Freeman. They were here before the Wakeley family. Arnold Friend’s gravestone is two plots to the left of Gideon and Elspeth Wakeley. I believe he died in 1884.”

  “You told me that the early Methodists favoured a simpler form of religion,” said Gus. “I assume his headstone is a basic slab or cross?”

  “Oh no, Mr Freeman, Arnold Friend, was a wealthy man. The stone image of St Michael dominates that corner of the graveyard.”

  “Many thanks, Mr Plant,” said Gus, “and goodbye.”

  Blessing and Lydia were watching Gus. It was clear they were waiting for something.

  “Our avenging angel died in 1884,” said Gus, “and is buried close to Brother Gideon. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Ursula set up the Mere Chat account to attract as many residents as possible. The Facebook page gave her access to shared gossip and the ability to snoop around online with no one realising. Ursula did that while in the library's telecentre.”

  “I wonder why the locals didn’t suss that the person running the page wasn’t a real member of the Friend family,” said Neil.

  “Perhaps they were more interested in the content,” said Blessing. “People who joined the page posted lots of old photographs and revived long lost memories. A memory from someone you hadn’t seen in a while would be of more interest than checking out who created the page.”

  “Who manages the account that started just after Ursula’s death?” Luke asked Blessing.

  “Catherine Bendick is one of three people who now administer and moderate the page. Of course, that doesn’t mean she was in from the start. People swap around from time to time, due to pressure of work, i
llness, or simply moving out of the area.”

  “We need to ask the question of Mrs Bendick, Blessing,” said Gus.

  “I’ve transcribed a third of the members' names, guv,” said Lydia. “It will take me a while.”

  “Get one of the lads to help,” said Gus. “Blessing, find a phone number for this place on Castle Hill in Mere. I wonder whether Catherine Bendick is at home today. It’s Friday morning, so no doubt she’ll be in her London office. Perhaps they have a maid?”

  “Do you want me to speak to her?” asked Blessing.

  “It’s the wife we want, Blessing. So, either you’ll speak to her direct, or you’ll badger the maid until she supplies the number of her employer’s London office.”

  “Got it, guv.”

  “You have three questions when you get through to her. Who came up with the idea of getting involved in the Mere Village Voice, or whatever quaint name they chose. Then ask Catherine for the usual residential address of her husband. The last question will start alarm bells ringing. We need to know who slept at Castle Hill on the night of Wednesday, the sixteenth of January 2013? Tell her it’s just a routine enquiry. Be creative. Don’t give any hint we suspect her daughter of anything.”

  Blessing noted the list of questions and sought the phone number.

  “That’s why we couldn’t trace the daughter via the Census data,” said Luke. “Caitlyn was at school in Bruton, although, we didn’t have that information at the time, and the family address can’t be in Mere. James and Catherine spend such a considerable amount of time elsewhere. Their registered address could be anywhere.”

  “True, Luke. How many photographs are there on Caitlyn’s social media pages, Lydia?” asked Gus.

  “Hundreds, guv,”

  “Grab images of her facing the camera around the time of the murder and something recent. Then we can get Ormrod and Dillon to confirm we’ve got our girl. Mrs Butterworth, Mrs Atkins, and Becky Burden would provide the icing on the cake if we showed the photos to them afterwards.”

  “We still have little on her companion, guv,” said Neil.