Worse Than Dead

by Stephen Puleston

  ‘I must say Inspector, that you were very lucky to have a sample of Mandy Beal’s handwriting.’

  Howick’s smile broadened.

  Drake recognised the holiday postcards Mandy had sent her parents and that Collins was pinning to the board.

  ‘The paucity of the text I had to consider must be a restricting and eventually limiting factor in the gravity of my conclusions,’ Collins said.

  Howick’s smile waned. Winder had a pained expression on his face as he chewed on a doughnut. Caren stood watching Collins intently. He stood back and admired the cards before turning to Drake.

  ‘Weighing up all the evidence and, as thin as it is, I’ve concluded that the author of the suicide note and the postcards cannot be the same person.’

  ‘So someone else wrote the suicide note?’ Drake said.

  Howick nodded slowly.

  ‘Or someone else wrote the postcards,’ Collins said.

  It was the sort of comment that only an academic would make.

  ‘How can you be certain?’

  ‘Nothing is certain, Inspector, only taxes and death. But it’s simple – one is written by a left-handed individual and the other by a right-handed person.’

  ‘Thank you Dr Collins,’ Drake said.

  Howick escorted Collins to reception and once he’d left Winder blew out a lungful of air. ‘Someone else wrote the postcards,’ he said, mimicking Collins’s thin voice. ‘As if. Guy’s a Muppet.’

  Drake stepped to the board. ‘So she was killed. Another murder suspect. We’ll need to tell the family.’

  ‘Caren, you go and see Mr and Mrs Beal again.’

  ‘What, this afternoon?’

  ‘You can ask him about Green,’ Drake said, turning to Winder who had a thin band of sugar covering his upper lip. ‘Anything on the Irish connection?’

  ‘The department in the Garda have got nothing on Loosemore. But the Blue Parrot hit the jackpot. Owned by a Fergal Connors and the Garda have a whole team onto him. And he’s friends with Beltrami no less.’

  * * *

  Caren parked the car and sat watching a man helping his elderly wife as she struggled into their car. She wondered how many of the other bungalows on the small estate were occupied by retired couples, hoping for a contented retirement away from the bustle of the cities of England. Once she’d locked the car her thoughts turned to Alun and whether their final years would be spent in a home with a neat front garden, driving a small, neat car and worrying about what the neighbours thought. She liked her farmhouse perched on the side of the Conwy Valley and she found it difficult to imagine moving from there. But with Alun away so often, she had begun to feel lonely and was contemplating the possibility of selling up.

  She walked down the paved drive decorated with the occasional terracotta pot. She reached a hand to the doorbell.

  How easy would it be to tell Mrs Beal that her daughter had been murdered?

  ‘Must be important if you’re working so late,’ Philip Beal said, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Caren said.

  ‘She’s sleeping,’ Beal said, lowering his voice.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

  Beal frowned, but drew the door open after a delay and then pointed Caren towards the conservatory. A section of horizontal blinds fluttered noisily beneath an open section of the roof, cooling the temperature. Caren narrowed her eyes against the sunshine and sat down opposite Beal.

  ‘We’ve had a report from an expert about the suicide note Mandy left.’

  Philip Beal let out a brief grunt. ‘What sort of expert is that?’

  Caren ignored him. ‘I’m afraid I have some difficult news. We don’t believe that Mandy killed herself.’

  Philip Beal sat impassively, his eyes hard.

  ‘We were able to compare the handwriting from the postcard you gave one of my colleagues against the handwriting on the suicide note and the expert is convinced they were written by different people.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Beal asked.

  Caren nodded slowly and adjusted her position on the chair so that she sat on the edge.

  ‘We’re treating the inquiry as a murder investigation.’

  Beal nodded again, but kept eye contact with a look that sent a shiver down Caren’s back. As though there was no emotion in the man.

  ‘I need to ask you about Darren Green.’

  Beal didn’t flinch and it surprised Caren.

  ‘He worked on the same ferry as Mandy. You’ve read about his murder I take it? It was in all the newspapers.’

  Beal curled the fingers of both hands together.

  ‘I’ve read the Merseyside police file: you’re named as his next of kin. He was your son.’

  The statement inviting confirmation hung in the air. Caren waited and saw Beal blinking and then swallow, as though he was preparing to say something. Then he nodded briefly.

  ‘From my first marriage. I didn’t know him. It wasn’t like we were close.’ The Liverpool accent seemed to get harsher as he recalled unhappier times.

  ‘How did Mandy find out?’

  ‘She found some old papers. And then she was like a dog with a bone. Wanted to know all about it and where and when.’ Beal bowed his head slightly. ‘Eventually she traced him to the family in Liverpool. I was amazed when she told me he… Darren… was working on the ferries.’

  Beal ran out of energy and Caren could only guess at the pain of losing two children within days of each other, even if one was a person you’d never known. Never had anything to do with. Never had any part of their life.

  ‘She was full of it. Wanted us to meet him.’

  ‘Did that ever happen?’

  ‘No. She… Peggy… wouldn’t contemplate it.’

  ‘What did Mandy tell you about him?’

  ‘She liked him. He told her about his past and she saw him quite often. What’s going on?’

  It was the first time Caren had seen vulnerability in Beal’s face, a tremor in his voice which made this the hardest part of her job.

  ‘We don’t know, but Mandy didn’t kill herself.’

  ‘I never thought she did.’

  Caren hoped that he had more to say, but he stood up abruptly.

  ‘I’ll show you out.’

  ‘Will you tell… ?’

  Beal nodded as he opened the door. Outside she felt the cool evening air on her face as she walked up the drive to her car.

  * * *

  Drake ignored the first and last single letters on the codes, deciding that it was utterly impossible to try and guess what they could mean. He had already spent hours trying to work out if they related to place names and if so, where. There had to be logic to this, like solving a crossword, a Rubik’s cube and he’d recently downloaded the Rebus game onto his tablet computer, but that was about finding the right words. Now what he had were letters and numbers.

  He started with the initials of everybody that may have had contact with Rosen.

  JB – John Beltrami

  LA – Lewis Aylford

  RJ – Robert James

  EP – Eddie Parry

  Then he finalised a list with the initials of other crew members. First the captain Jonathan Seymour – JM, then the engineers and some of the deck officers. Drake decided against including the cabin staff, but added MB for Mandy Beal.

  It must have been an event. In the past or perhaps in the future, but why did Rosen record the activity? There must have been a significance. He turned to the dates, thinking that he of all people ought to be able to make more sense out of the numbers. He scribbled on the pad 4520 and then, interchanging the last two set of digits, came up with 2045. And 3018 became 1830. Then the numbers looked like times and he double-checked the sailing times for the ferries. But then there were two other ferries travelling from Holyhead and he spent an hour building a spreadsheet with the departure times of each. At the end of this task he was no clearer and in fact thought that he was more confused.
>
  Then he spent another hour writing all the names backwards, so 4520 became 0254. But still the significance of any combination of these numbers eluded him. He leant back in his chair, considering the possibility that there was some computer expert somewhere who might have a piece of software into which they could punch the data and wait for a reply.

  He read through the background notes to Rosen’s career, hoping there might be some clue. Maybe the numbers were his regular combination for the national lottery or a combination to a safe they hadn’t found. The numbers didn’t relate to the PIN numbers of Rosen’s various cards. They’d already eliminated that as a possibility.

  The exercise needed clearer thinking so he walked through to the kitchen and flicked the switch on the electric kettle. He reached for the coffee grounds, measured accurately, allowed the timer on his mobile phone to ping after a minute and then poured the hot – not boiling – water over the coffee. He fiddled again with the timer on his mobile and waited, thinking about the numbers, resolving that they had to be dates and times. He was still staring at the coffee pot when the mobile sprang to life with the sound of an old car engine that he’d chosen as the tone.

  Returning to his office, he stood for a moment looking out over the parkland surrounding headquarters. Patrol cars were leaving, a Scientific Support Vehicle pulled into the long drive down to the main building, and along the pavement by the main road two joggers ran past. The coffee tasted sweet and bitter: he’d just changed the variety of grounds, experimenting from an online supplier.

  It occurred to him to reread some of the reports and he found his mind wandering to the post mortem of Rosen and Green and thinking that he hadn’t spoken to the pathologist about the death of Mandy Beal. Some joined-up thinking was needed, he concluded, realising the possibility that all three reports needed to be read with the same critical eye.

  He picked up the telephone and dialled the number of Lee Kings. He’d never particularly liked Kings, who could be over-familiar with the occasional clumsy innuendo about Sian that only resulted in Drake wishing there were more pathologists in North Wales.

  ‘How are you keeping, Ian?’ Kings said.

  ‘I needed to talk to you about Rosen and Green.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘We’re working on the basis that they are somehow linked. I know it’s not the same MO. But there’s a strong possibility Green killed Rosen. And if somebody wanted Rosen dead, they may then have disposed of Green.’

  ‘Everything is in the report. I don’t think I can add any more.’

  ‘And we are treating the death of Mandy Beal as murder now.’

  ‘The stewardess on the ferry? Attractive girl.’

  It was the sort of comment that annoyed Drake. He stood, peered out of the window and saw a BMW the same colour as MC’s passing in the main road.

  ‘Anything to link those three deaths together?’

  ‘No nothing, nothing. Is this helpful, Ian?’

  Drake knew that thinking about MC prompted his next question. ‘Did you do the post mortem on Sylvie Whatmore?’

  ‘Yes, why do you ask?’

  ‘Her boyfriend is a relative.’

  ‘Small world.’

  ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘She died of a stroke. But she’d been developing pneumonia and she’d had such a dependency on heroin her body gave up. The manual evac didn’t help.’

  ‘Manual evac?’

  ‘She had a miscarriage in her twentieth week. At the time doctors thought she was lucky to have carried the child so long. They operated under general anaesthetic to remove all the products of conception. The procedure’s called a manual evacuation.’

  Drake grasped the telephone a little tighter. He was certain that MC knew nothing about the pregnancy.

  ‘Does MC Hughes know about this?’

  Drake heard the sound of Kings flicking through some paperwork. ‘I spoke to him at the start of the week.’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  Kings didn’t need to reply: Drake already knew the answer. He had to find MC. Quickly.

  * * *

  Drake knew he couldn’t ignore the possibility that once MC had learnt about Sylvie’s pregnancy he had reacted badly. And the likelihood that Newman had been right about MC killing Birch became more of a probability. Newman had sent Drake Vigo’s statement – for the sake of completeness the email had said – naming MC as his attacker and making clear how MC enjoyed using a baseball bat. Protocols meant that he should notify Newman, and it crossed his mind to send an email but then he recalled the hard, determined look on Lance’s face, making it clear that any contact had to go through him.

  He left his office and took the lift to the senior management suite. Hannah gave him a surprised look when he asked to see Lance.

  ‘He’s very busy.’

  ‘It’s important.’

  She picked up the telephone and spoke tentatively, explaining Drake’s presence. She motioned to the door to his room.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to the pathologist. Apparently he told MC Hughes about his girlfriend’s pregnancy. I’m sure MC didn’t know she’d become pregnant when he was inside.’

  Lance sat back into his chair. ‘And that gives him the inclination for murder?’

  Drake nodded. ‘I was going to call Glyn Newman but—’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  Drake turned to leave.

  ‘Ian. About the other evening. How are you coping? I know that double murder case hit you hard. And Wyndham gave me some background but I need to know you’re dealing with things.’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, sir.’

  Drake didn’t say anything to Hannah as he left and he headed straight for the car park.

  It was a short drive home, his suit jacket folded carefully on the rear seat, the newspaper on the seat by his side. He pushed a Springsteen Greatest Hits CD into the player and flicked idly through the songs, playing no more than a minute or two of each. By the time he drove into the estate where he lived he was already on the tenth song. He noticed an Audi parked on the pavement outside his home and immediately thought that MC had visited again. After last time he didn’t think his cousin would have dared to return. But he needed to speak to him. His mind was rehearsing what he would say to MC as he pushed open the door, the realisation striking him that if it was MC he’d have to arrest him on suspicion of murder.

  Voices from the kitchen were unfamiliar. Certainly not MC’s accent. For a moment he relaxed, pleased that it wasn’t his cousin and that he would avoid the inevitable confrontation.

  He only took a couple of steps into the kitchen before stopping and staring in disbelief.

  Detective Inspector Glyn Newman sat at the table, Jeff Wallace by his side. Newman managed a sneer while Wallace narrowed his eyes. Neither man moved and Drake saw the notepads in front of them on the table. Sian looked up at Drake, uncertainty clear in her eyes.

  ‘I understand that Moelwyn Carol Hughes was here last week,’ Newman said. ‘As you know Ian, he’s the only suspect we have for the murder of Birch.’

  Drake stood for a moment, suppressing the urge to shout at Newman.

  ‘I did try to call you earlier to arrange this discussion with Sian,’ Newman continued. ‘But you weren’t available. Busy, I suppose.’

  Drake balled a fist with both hands.

  ‘We haven’t been able to find MC Hughes yet. He seems to have disappeared. His whereabouts are critically important.’ Newman narrowed his eyes, obviously implying that Drake and Sian knew something valuable.

  Drake wanted to lunge over the table, pick up Newman by his dirty jacket and throw him outside. Instead he settled for taking a step towards Sian, then leaning on the table.

  ‘You can fuck off right now. Leave my house and don’t ever pull a stunt like this again.’

  Chapter 30

  ‘Why were they here?’ Sian said, drawing her fingers around a glass of water.

  Drake’s mi
nd felt paralysed. Sian was being dragged into the investigation and he was powerless to prevent her involvement. It was lucky that Megan and Helen were at a party.

  ‘Newman thinks that MC killed Joe Birch.’

  ‘And did he?’ Sian brushed away the last of her tears.

  ‘There’s evidence—’

  ‘He wanted to know all about the time MC was here.’

  ‘What did he ask you?’

  ‘He wanted to know if I knew where Moelwyn was and whether I could contact him.’

  Drake breathed out heavily.

  ‘And he wanted to know what you’d talked to Moelwyn about.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘And why did they want to talk to me? Was I helping with inquiries?’

  Drake wanted to scream at Newman. He’d call Lance immediately, tell the superintendent what had happened and demand that Newman keep away from his family.

  ‘Am I going to be arrested because of your awful cousin? I wish I’d…’

  Drake briefly pondered what she meant.

  ‘He said he tried to call you. Why didn’t you answer?’

  ‘It was a lie. He didn’t call me. He was just saying that.’

  ‘Why would he do that? I can never get hold of you. Most women can reach their husbands on the telephone. They answer their mobiles.’

  Drake knew that he’d explained a dozen times before that it could be difficult reaching him on the telephone and that… Well, he wasn’t certain he could explain. He couldn’t compare himself to an accountant or an estate agent who kept neat hours and never had to go out and look at dead bodies for a living or comfort grieving families.

  Sian ignored him for the rest of the evening. She worked on some papers for the practice, called her mother and put the girls to bed. Drake killed time around the house, finding aimless chores, until he sat in the study, holding the notebook in his hand and hoping he would feel inspired to write something.

  Overnight Sian’s mood had not improved. She barely looked at him over breakfast and ignored him as he tried small talk, so he left the house and headed for headquarters with a gloomy mood enveloping his mind.

  He took the usual route into Colwyn Bay and as he stopped by a traffic light his mobile rang. He peered down at the screen and a flicker of anger registered as he read MC’s number.