The I-Spy Murders

by David W Robinson

  “It’s the cord off an old-fashioned dressing gown, Azi, and if you’ve watched this I-Spy crap at all, you’ll know that she was anything but old fashioned.” With the mortuary attendants gone, Hoad set off down the stairs. “Come on. Let’s get to it.”

  ***

  “In an updated statement, Detective Chief Inspector Frank Hoad of Chester CID says that Ursula hanged herself using the cord from a dressing gown belonging to Housey, Marc Ulrich, which she probably took from him earlier in the week. Although the police do not suspect anyone else of being involved in the incident, they are nevertheless questioning the Housies and the backroom team here at Gibraltar Hall.”

  His face a mask of frustration, Joe looked away from the latest television report from outside Gibraltar Hall, and instead fumed at the heavy traffic making for Chester city centre.

  “Bloody rubbish,” he growled.

  Sheila drew her attention away from the TV news, and followed his gaze. “Rubbish, Joe? Chester, or the volume of traffic?”

  “I-bloody-spy,” Joe replied. “Suicide, my eye. She was murdered.”

  Sheila blanched. “Don’t go saying things like that, Joe. You could implicate Brenda.”

  “That’s not the reaction I’d expect from a police inspector’s wife,” Joe chided her. “Of course we know Brenda wouldn’t hurt her, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Ursula did not kill herself. Listen, Sheila, when we get to the hotel, can you handle everything while I get off down to Gibraltar Hall?”

  Sheila tutted. “You don’t seriously imagine the police will take any notice of you?”

  “They will,” Joe assured her. “They always do. Even your Peter, rest in peace, always listened to me when I had something to say. I’m telling you, that woman was in no state to commit suicide the way they’ve described it. I’ll tell you something else, too, the investigating officer will keep the Housies on ice until he’s through with his inquiries. We both know what Brenda’s like. We know how tough she can be, but we also know how worried she’ll be. I have to go down there and see if I can persuade the police to let me work with them.” He checked the exterior again as Keith pulled into the forecourt of the Victoria. “Looks like we’re here. You just handle the members, Sheila. I’ll grab a taxi and go down there.”

  “You will keep me informed?”

  Joe fished his mobile phone from his pocket. “Scout’s honour. Let me check in first. I’ll drop my bag in my room and get off to Gibraltar Hall.”

  Keith manoeuvred his vehicle around an ornamental fountain, to the grand front of the Victoria, where, the moment he braked, Joe leapt off, leaving Sheila to address the remaining passengers.

  With no time to take in the functional, redbrick building behind the ornate concrete and plaster façade, Joe hurried in. By the time the bags were unloaded, he had already registered, and before his remaining members had checked in, he had left his suitcase in his room and was climbing into a taxi for the 20-minute journey to Gibraltar Hall.

  Sat in the rear seat, he felt the knot of tension in his gut rising. Memories of Filey, where not one, but two of the club members had died; manslaughter and murder. Now here he was again, another outing, another member embroiled in a suspicious death.

  When he eventually climbed out of the cab at the entrance to Gibraltar Hall Lane, he found his way barred by a police woman manning the barrier on the main road.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she told him, “but there’s been a suspicious death in the house and…”

  “I know,” Joe interrupted. “Why do you think I’m here?”

  The young brunette frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Then get your boss out here,” Joe ordered. “You may not have heard of me, but I’ll bet he has.”

  The girl backed off a little. And spoke into her radio. Two minutes later a smartly dressed Asian man appeared in the lane and marched across to the barrier. “What’s the problem, constable?”

  “This gentleman insists that he’s here because of the… because of what’s happened, Sarge.”

  “Joe Murray,” Joe declared. “The girl didn’t hang herself. She was murdered.”

  Rahman frowned. “And how do you know that, sir.”

  “Let me in and I’ll show you.” Joe frowned. “You are the senior investigating officer, aren’t you?”

  He peered at Joe through his thick lenses. “I’m Detective Sergeant Rahman, Mr Murray. Detective Chief Inspector Hoad is busy at the scene of the suicide.”

  “It’s not a suicide,” Joe repeated. “Now get your boss out here. If he has any doubts, tell him to ring Detective Chief Inspector Terry Cummins of the North Yorkshire police. Terry will vouch for me.”

  Rahman’s irritation grew. “Just who are you?”

  “Joe Murray. A better detective than you or your boss will ever make, son. Now do as I ask and speak to your inspector.”

  With an annoyed cluck, Rahman, ordered, “Wait there,” then turned on his heels and marched back towards the house.

  Joe shook his head. “How did he make a detective?”

  The policewoman’s features darkened. “Race and religion are no barrier to advancement in the modern police service.”

  Joe frowned. “Who’s on about the colour of his skin or the god he prays to? I’m talking about those glasses he wears? He must be blind as a bat without them.”

  Chapter Seven

  It would be a wait of almost fifteen minutes before the policewoman’s radio bleeped for attention. She listened for a moment and then said, “Yes, sir.” Then she lifted the barrier and said to Joe, “You can go through. Sergeant Rahman will meet you at the gates and take you in to see Chief Inspector Hoad.”

  Joe grunted his thanks, and to the click and whirr of digital cameras from nearby reporters, stepped through the barrier into Gibraltar Hall Lane.

  His anxiety carried him quickly along the tree-lined road. From the fields beyond the trees, he could hear the sound of pop music, and he could easily imagine the crowds in front of the stage. It sent a hammer blow reminder of the last time he had walked along this same road. Then he had been jittery, but his concern was all for Brenda. Now he felt more nervy, and again, much of his concern was for Brenda, but he was keener to ensure the police did not dismiss this woman’s death so easily.

  Rahman greeted him at the cabin where Brenda had first entered the hall the previous Saturday. He ushered Joe in to meet an older man. Shorter, stockier than the sergeant, his dark hair was thinning on the crown and a bushy moustache curved down either side of a grimly set mouth. Joe could almost feel the burn of his eyes.

  His gaze darting around the room, he rested a moment on the dressing gown cord in the evidence bag on the desk, and was satisfied that his original assumption was right.

  “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Hoad, Mr Murray. You come highly recommended.”

  “You spoke to Terry Cummins?” Joe asked.

  “I did, and he suggested I accept your help.”

  Joe smiled, but Hoad’s next words wiped it from his face.

  “However, I’m not with the North Yorkshire Police and I see no reason why I should let a private individual in on a simple case of suicide.”

  Joe shook his head sadly. “You’re one of those chief inspectors, are you?”

  “If you mean in control of the investigation, sir, then the answer is yes. Now if you’d like to go on your way, we’ll…”

  “Ask yourself one question, Hoad,” Joe interrupted. “How could she hang herself when she was sound asleep?”

  Hoad screwed up his face. “There are only two ways you could know that, Murray. You were either here, or more likely, someone who was here telephoned the information to you. Perhaps I should be speaking to your friend, Brenda Jump.”

  Joe took out his tobacco tin and began to roll a cigarette.

  “And you can’t smoke that in here,” Hoad warned him.

  “See, that’s always the trouble with you cops,” Joe said, spreading a thin lin
e of tobacco along the paper. “You think everyone else is dumb. You think I don’t know I can’t smoke it in here. You also think that because you’ve been closest to Ursula Kenney’s body, you have all the answers.” He rolled the cigarette, licked the gummed edge of the paper and finished it off. “You’re wrong on both counts, and when you’re willing to listen, I’ll be outside…” He held up the completed cigarette. “… smoking this.”

  He stepped out of the cabin, ignoring the chief inspector’s protests. Once out in the sunshine, he took out his brass Zippo and lit the cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs and letting it out with a hiss of satisfaction.

  Hoad and Rahman hurried out after him. “What the hell are you talking about?” the chief inspector demanded.

  Joe took another drag on his wafer thin cigarette. “I don’t watch much TV, but because Brenda is here, I’ve been following this crap all week. I was up late last night. Late enough to see Ursula leave the ladies’ dorm and make for the Romping Room. She was groggy; almost out on her feet. Staggering everywhere. I don’t know what she swallowed every night, but I do know she took two pills before going to bed. She’s been saying all week that they’re strong painkillers. I’ll tell you something else, too. Just now, I saw a dressing gown cord on the desk in there.” Joe jerked his thumb backwards indicating the cabin. “It was fashioned into a slip knot. It’s in an evidence bag, which probably means it was the rope she used to hang herself. Now you’re trying to persuade me and everyone else that she could do it when she was zonked out of her mind? Never in a million years. What’s more, when she left the dorm last night, she was wearing a flimsy nightie and a pair of stockings none of which left much to the imagination. So where did she get the cord? No, Hoad, it may look like a suicide, but when you get the autopsy report, you’ll find she was murdered. I knew it the minute I heard it on TV.”

  With a frown, Hoad took out his mobile phone and jabbed at the number pad. “This is Chief Inspector Hoad at the outside cabin. Find me the video of Ursula Kenney going to the Romping Room last night, and pipe it to the TV in the hut. Keep running it over and over again until I bell you to stop.” Putting the mobile away, he narrowed a gimlet eye on Joe. “Chief Inspector Cummins was right about you.”

  Joe grinned. “Was he?”

  “Yes. He said you were a proper pain in the backside, but your mind moves faster than everyone else’s and you spot things three weeks before other people even stop to think about them.”

  The smile faded from Joe’s wrinkled features. “I must remember to ring Terry and thank him for the reference.” He pulled on his cigarette again. “Chief Inspector, I know you have your ways, and I know you’ll probably get there in the end, but one of my friends is in there, and even though I know she didn’t do it, you’ll have to question her. I’ll counter that by going my own sweet way until I can prove to you what I’m saying. I won’t interfere with your investigation, but why don’t you accept my help in the spirit in which I’m offering it? Help, not hindrance.”

  Hoad considered the proposition for a moment. “Put your smoke out and come back into the office.”

  Joe dropped the cigarette, crushed it underfoot and followed them back into the cooler interior of the cabin where Hoad waved Joe to a chair and Rahman switched on the TV. When the screen came alive, it showed Ursula weaving her way along the landing and into the Romping Room. When she disappeared, the sequence ran again, starting with her departure from the ladies’ dorm.

  “Look at her as she comes along the landing,” Joe said. “You can see straight through that nightie.”

  Sure enough as she passed beneath one of the overhead lights, she became silhouetted and the diaphanous nightdress all but disappeared. As she neared the Romping Room door, it became obvious she was carrying nothing at all.

  “So where was the cord?” Joe asked.

  Sat behind his desk, the chief inspector stared at the evidence bag as if it had betrayed him. Pushing it aside, he logged onto a laptop computer. After fiddling with the tracking pad, he turned it to face Joe.

  “Photographs taken in the Romping Room when we got here,” he declared. “You may find some of them distressing.”

  Joe pulled the machine towards him. The first few images were of Ursula’s naked body hanging from the wall hook. Her feet were on the floor, but she had slumped low enough for the noose in the cord to asphyxiate her.

  “I’m not a ghoul,” he grumbled and skipped quickly past the early pictures.

  The remainder were of the room in general; the pristine bed linen, the closed, secure hatch, even the closed door.

  “Do you have a time of death?” Joe asked.

  “Not specifically, no,” Hoad admitted. “Some time after midnight. We know from the footage you’ve just seen, which, by the way, we had watched before, that she went into the room at about eleven twenty. We guess she was contemplating it for a long time. Suicides usually do.”

  “Hmm,” Joe muttered. “I’ll tell you what suicides don’t do, though. They don’t make the bed before they hang themselves.”

  Both police officers started. “What?” the Detective Sergeant asked.

  Joe turned the laptop to face them, its screen showing the bed linen neatly in place.

  “She went in there at eleven twenty. She hung herself, according to you, forty minutes later with a dressing gown cord she didn’t have. What was she doing in the meantime? There are no chairs in this room. So did she stand up for three quarters of an hour while she was thinking about it? The state she was in, she’d have been lucky to stand for five minutes. She probably lay on the bed, but that means the bed sheets should be rumpled, and they’re not. Now, did she decide to make the bed before she hung herself? Given her general approach to this life as we can judge from this last week, it doesn’t seem likely. Or did someone else make the bed to persuade you that she never used it, and instead went in there and hung herself immediately?”

  “Hanged, not hung,” Rahman pointed out. “But why would any killer make the bed? Once we realised it – sorry, Mr Murray, but I think we would have realised it eventually – it would only arouse suspicion.”

  “Joe is right,” Hoad said. “You don’t mind if I call you Joe? Good,” he responded to Joe’s nod. “He’s right, Azi. If Ursula was either asleep or already dead when the killer moved her, the sheets would have shown signs of her body having been dragged from the bed.”

  “Correct,” Joe agreed. “So he tidied up, knowing it would take you some time to realise that she had been deliberately hung.”

  “Hanged,” Rahman corrected him again.

  “I don’t know if linguistic niceties matter to Ursula Kenney,” Joe countered.

  “In that case forget about them,” Hoad said. “Joe, I can understand you want to clear Mrs Jump of any involvement, but what you’ve actually done is drop her deeper into it.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t watch this stuff, but I know that Brenda had a hell of a row with Ursula the other night.” Hoad smiled coolly, and with hands held up and open, shrugged. “Where you have a murder, you have to have a murderer and he… or she… has to have a motive.”

  Joe was about to protest but the younger officer beat him to it. “With all due respect, sir, Mr Murray, I don’t see how she could have been murdered anyway. None of the backroom staff could get into that side of the house and, besides, according to the duty log, there were none of them here last night. The security officers were the only ones on duty. And to complicate matters, none of the other Housies could have done it without being picked up on the night cameras while they were leaving the dorm and making their way to the Romping Room.”

  “And yet she was murdered,” Joe said. “Is it possible someone could have got in from the outside?”

  “Totally impossible,” Hoad argued. “Someone young enough and fit enough may have been able to get over the back wall, but they would have been picked up by the security cameras, and even if they were missed ther
e, they have about twenty yards of garden to cross to the back door, and the gardens, too, are covered by cameras on the outside of the house. If, by some miracle they got to the back door without being detected, how did they get past the security guards?” Again he shrugged. “I agree with you, Joe. It looks like murder, but it’s an impossible murder, so it must have been suicide, and if it was suicide, where did she find the dressing gown cord?”

  “Sir,” Rahman said, “I think we should speak to Marc Ulrich.”

  Hoad sat up. “Why?”

  “The dressing gown cord is his, sir.”

  When both Hoad and Joe registered their surprise, the sergeant went on to explain, “I said I’ve been compelled to follow the series, sir.” He smiled bleakly. “Press-ganged, but I have seen a lot of it. Marc has worn a dressing gown several times this week, and yesterday he was complaining about having lost the cord.”

  “Was he now?” Hoad said, getting to his feet. “You never said anything earlier.”

  Again Rahman’s smile was bleak, but this time apologetic. “Sorry, sir, but I only just made the connection when Mr Murray pointed out that Ursula wasn’t carrying the cord.”

  “All right. “Let’s get a word with him. Sorry, Joe, but this puts a new light on it, and it may very well be suicide.”

  Joe frowned. “How do you make that out?”

  “Ursula was one of the most frequent visitors to that room. Suppose she took the cord and hid it there earlier?”

  “I don’t buy it,” Joe said. “It still doesn’t explain the bed linen, but all right, you talk to the Housey. While you’re doing that, is there any danger I could speak to the backroom people?”

  The police officers exchange glances, and Hoad nodded. “Don’t see why not. What are you thinking?”

  “That someone may have been able to get past the security and into the house to kill her.”

  Hoad laughed. “Yes, Cummins said that about you, too. Whenever you get a bee in your bonnet, you want the honey from it before you let it go.”

  ***

  Joe frowned in puzzlement. “Lemme get this straight. I thought you were working for the TV channel.”