The I-Spy Murders

by David W Robinson

  Naughton grunted and having called up the footage Joe had asked for, paused it. “Running a truckstop gives you an eye for detail? My college education was a waste of public money, then.”

  “That’s right,” Joe said entering the room. “You professionals run on rails, I don’t, and the reason I don’t is because I’ve dealt with so many bull-headed truckers over the years. If one of my regulars comes in and he’s wearing different overalls, I know he’s either changed jobs or his boss has sold out to a bigger company, so I find out which, because it might affect my turnover.” He sat before the monitors. “Did you find what I asked for?”

  Naughton waved at the console. “It’s all yours.”

  He ran the footage and Joe immediately paused it.

  There were many obvious differences between the current appearance of the dorms to when they were inhabited, most of them as a result of the Housies’ personal effects scattered about both rooms. Aside from clothing hanging on doors, each had a little shelf space above the bed or, in Greg’s case, on the far wall, at right angles to him and facing the camera. It was there that Joe concentrated his study.

  The extraneous light source had caused the camera to lose focus for a brief moment, so that its true source point was difficult to pinpoint, but by studying it closely he realised that it had come not from the bed, but Greg’s personal effects.

  Switching his attention to the screen showing the room under full lighting, he studied those effects. A few paperbacks, with a small, framed photograph tucked between them, his shaving brush and razor, the head of which was tucked into a protective, plastic sheath, and a bar of soap on which rested a facecloth.

  “Sad little collection,” Joe muttered to himself.

  “They were not allowed too many possessions,” Naughton pointed out. “The whole purpose of the exercise was to cut them off from everything and everyone, or as near as was possible.”

  Joe scanned the screen again. Others had similar possessions on their shelves. Marc’s shabby dressing gown hung beside his bed, but from his shelf hung a toilet bag and actually on the shelf were a few books and a photograph. Ben’s was similar to Greg’s and Dylan’s looked like Marc’s without the annoying robe hanging by the bed.

  Joe checked the footage with the light on it. The only difference he could see was Greg’s photograph, which was laid flat.

  “What’s with all the photographs?” Joe grumbled.

  “Family mementos,” Naughton replied. “You do have family?”

  “Not so’s you notice,” Joe said. “My brother lives in Australia, my ex-wife moved to the Canary Islands and my nephew is my head cook.”

  “Those pictures reflect a person’s true identity,” Naughton argued. “Greg had a picture of his wife and children, Dylan one of his late mother, Marc…”

  The light came on in Joe’s head. “That’s it,” he shouted, cutting Naughton off. “A reflection.”

  Both men were completely nonplussed. “What?” Hoad demanded.

  “Quick, where’s the nearest shop?”

  The chief inspector frowned. “I don’t know. There’s a supermarket down in Kelsall… I think. It’s only a small one, but…”

  “Can you run me down there?” Joe interrupted again. “And while we’re gone, get young Azi to contact all the crew and Housies and get them out here.”

  “But…”

  “Frank,” Joe interrupted for the third time, “I know who did it and how, and probably why.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joe came out of the supermarket and climbed back into Hoad’s saloon car.

  “I just spoke to Azi,” the chief inspector reported. “He’s managed to contact everyone, and they should be back at Gibraltar Hall for twelve.”

  “I asked our coach driver to collect Sheila, Brenda and me at the hall if necessary. He’s moaning about it, but he’ll be there. Did you manage to stop Helen Catterick this morning?”

  Hoad nodded. “Close run thing. She was actually on the train when we got to the railway station. She’s playing hell, too, so be prepared for a rough ride.” Hoad fired the engine. “Still, if you’re right, it shouldn’t take that long,” Hoad said.

  “No, but you never know.”

  The chief inspector slid the car into gear and pulled off the supermarket car park. “I just hope you’re sure of your facts, Joe.”

  “I have another few experiments to run when we get back to the hall, just to be sure, but this time I know I’ve got it right.”

  “Why call them all back? Why not just those you suspect?”

  “Because I’m not sure which of the Housies it was. Not yet. I’ll only know that when Naughton runs the tests for me again. Besides, having everyone there is a good way of putting the real culprits off their guard. That way, when they’re accused, you can see it in their faces. Problem is, Frank, if you made your arrest this morning, you’d have put the killer on guard. It could have created more problems than it solved.”

  Rejoining the A54, turning towards the Hall, Hoad said, “What’s this Terry Cummins tells me about you writing these cases up?”

  Joe nodded. “Once it’s all done, I write them up as booklets for my customers to read. I call them Joe Murray’s Casebooks. They’re on shelves in my café.”

  “Joe, if you name names before any trial, you could jeopardise the proceedings.”

  “I never name names, Frank,” Joe assured him. “Never. The names are changed and so are the locations. That’s made clear at the front of every book. Besides, I don’t sell them… well, I do, but only as e-books.”

  “Are they popular?” Hoad asked, braking as they approached Gibraltar Hall Lane and the police barrier.

  “Oh yes,” Joe sneered. “I sell about one a year.”

  The chief inspector laughed. “Then why bother?”

  “I told you, they give my customers something to read. See, you have to think of it from a business point of view. A trucker gets, say, half an hour for his break. He comes into my place, and while he has his meal, he starts reading one of my cases, but no way can he finish it in thirty minutes. If he’s a local yokel, he comes back again and again and again until he’s read it. If he’s passing through, where do you think he’ll stop for his dinner the next time he’s in Sanford? The Lazy Luncheonette.” Joe tapped the side of his nose as Hoad brought the car to a stop at the rear of the hall. “I may work with cabbage in the kitchen, but don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m one.”

  Making their way into the hall, as Hoad had promised they found themselves confronted with an angry Helen Catterick.

  “I’m supposed to be on my way to London, Chief Inspector,” she grumbled. “You did say I could go. Now suddenly I find myself dragged back here under threat of arrest if I refuse. My employers are none too happy and neither am I.”

  “Circumstances have changed, madam,” Hoad replied. “I need you here for the time being, and your employer will just have to wait or go ahead without you.”

  “The future of I-Spy depends on my being there,” she complained.

  “Then it’s probably doomed,” Hoad said and walked past her into the house.

  Joe hurried along behind and headed straight for the control room where he once more dragooned Naughton into operating the recordings while he went back to the men’s dorm.

  This time he took four different recordings and with the last one, he was satisfied.

  “Are you going to explain what the hell is going on, Joe?” Hoad demanded.

  Joe eyed Naughton. “No. Not yet. I don’t want any of you telegraphing any of this to the killer, but I now know who he is and how he and his accomplice maintained communication.”

  “If you’re going to say he used a mobile phone, you’re wrong,” Naughton declared. “Mobiles were banned in the house, and the Housies handed them in before they ever went into the place.”

  “You think so?” Joe demanded with a grin.

  “I know so.”

  “Then let me
tell you something. At least three people smuggled mobiles into the house. And they all used them at different times during the week.”

  Both Hoad and Naughton gawped.

  “That’s not possible,” the chief inspector said. “We searched everyone on the day of the killing.”

  “No, Frank,” Joe disagreed. “You searched their personal effects. You never got around to searching them personally because you had no need. You already had the weapon – Marc’s dressing gown cord – and at the time, you suspected nothing more than suicide. I repeat, there were three people in that house carrying and using mobile phones.” Joe gathered his belongings. “There’s one last thing I need from you, Naughton. A list of the Housies in the order they were accepted onto the programme.”

  Naughton frowned. “What? Why?”

  Joe smiled. “Because I think it’ll be the final clincher.” While Naughton began to search through the computer database for the relevant information, Joe addressed the chief inspector. “I just need a little time to get everything together, Frank. If you wanna get everyone into the living room, I’ll be there in a while.”

  ***

  By the time Joe made it to the lounge, everyone was already seated at the table and Naughton had reinstalled the three flatscreen TVs, which had been there all week. Sited on different walls they ensured everyone could see.

  There was a delay while Joe set up his netbook and Naughton hooked it into the TV array so that everyone would know what he was talking about. At length, Joe took his seat between Sheila and Brenda at the head of the dining table, and broke the cap on a bottle of water.

  “There were so many suspects in this case that it was hard to decide where to concentrate,” he confessed, “but as usual it was the clever killer’s attention to detail that gave him… or her… away. You see, I’ve investigated a lot of these cases, and what I find is that the killer pays attention to the tiniest details of the actual event and works hard to cover it up, but forgets to cover himself… or herself. If you add to that, details from the victim’s past that the killer can’t get at, then you slowly build up a case.”

  He called up his notes and studied the computer screen for a few moments.

  “Okay, let’s take the victim first. According to my friend Brenda, Ursula was on some strong painkillers. Dihydrocodeine Tartrate. Powerful stuff. A slow release opiate analgesic, which can leave you dopy for hours on end. I know. I’ve taken them. And yet, according to the pathology report, she wasn’t taking anything of the kind. She swallowed a couple of paracetamol every night. Headaches? Period pains? Or was she just putting on a show? I dunno, but these are ordinary, boring painkillers you can buy over the counter at any pharmacy.”

  “So what are you driving at, Joe?” Hoad asked. Having been briefed much earlier by Joe on this aspect of the investigation, he knew what Joe was doing, and his question was designed purely as a prompt.

  “Paracetamol would not make her sleepy, and yet when she went to the Romping Room on Thursday night, she was staggering around like she’d drunk half a bottle of vodka. So it’s exactly as I told you a couple of days ago. Someone slipped her a mickey.”

  “Slipped her a mickey?” asked Sergeant Rahman.

  “You wouldn’t understand, son,” Joe replied. “Mickey Finn was a familiar expression from the movies when I was a boy. It means she was doped. In this case we know it was Zimovane. But there’s more. It wasn’t only Ursula who got it. Everyone did.”

  A hubbub of chatter ran round the small audience.

  “How?” Tanya demanded.

  “Really simple when I thought about it.” Joe looked into Brenda’s eyes. “It was in the pie Brenda cooked on Thursday evening.”

  She glowered at him. “I’ve known you since we were children, Joe Murray, and if you’re accusing me of doping every other contestant…”

  “No, Brenda,” Joe interrupted. “I’m not accusing you. I’m saying it was in the meal you cooked, but I know you didn’t put it there. Someone else did.”

  “Who? How? And how do you know?”

  “How do I know? Because every one of you slept through the night on Thursday. If we watch the videos from all the other nights, we find people were getting up, sitting up chatting, even sloping off to the Romping Room to do what comes naturally. But not on Thursday. From lights out to reveille, you all slept like good little girls and boys with clean consciences. Someone needed to make sure you slept all night. And that same someone put the Zimovane in the meal and also lured Ursula to her death in the Romping Room.”

  “You can’t possibly know this,” Naughton complained, “unless you saw something on the videos. Saw the culprit put the stuff into Brenda’s cooking.”

  “I can infer it,” Joe told him. “On Friday morning, the morning they found Ursula, everyone was hanging round the living room waiting on Frank and his boys talking to them. And everyone had a raging thirst. They were drinking water, soft drinks, tea, like it was the new rock and roll. Know what one of the side effects of Zimovane is? Thirst.”

  “So you’re saying someone put this in the pie I baked,” Brenda said. “Who?”

  “You,” Joe declared. In order to head off her inevitable outburst, he hurried on. “You did it in all innocence, Brenda. Let me explain.” He addressed the whole room again. “As Brenda said, she and I have been friends since we were school kids. Now, I’ve been in catering all my life. There is no meal that I don’t know how to produce. I’ve trained any number of cooks, too, including my nephew, Lee. But I never taught Brenda or Sheila how to prepare anything. Both had been married for many years. Both learned from their mothers and fathers. Brenda, when she’s preparing a meal, has some habits that I disapprove of. One of them is to put a light dusting of flour on top of her pies. To me it’s wasteful, not tasteful.” He smiled at his rhyme. “It may be very pretty, but it doesn’t suit a workman’s café in the North of England. However, it doesn’t matter how much I complain over it, when Lee’s off and she’s baking she still does it. And she did it on Thursday night when she prepared the meat and potato pie for dinner. And that is where the Zimovane came from. It was mixed into the flour. A large quantity of it, I’ve no doubt, but spread between the Housies it probably wouldn’t be even noticed, never mind threatened anyone’s life.”

  “Two things,” Naughton pointed out. “If it was in the flour, how come it only made its way into the dusting Brenda put on top of the finished pie? It would have been baked into the crust.”

  “Not necessarily,” Joe declared. “Think about it. What would a temperature of 220o do to a drug like that? Would it neutralise it? Would it burn it away altogether? Maybe the pie would even catch fire. I don’t know, and since none of our, er, suspects is a pharmacist, I’ll bet they don’t know either. But it wasn’t an issue. Brenda needed so much flour for the crust that she used it directly from a bag. But she used a shaker when she spread it on the finished product, and that is the flour that contained the Zimovane.”

  “If that’s what happened, then he or she would have been picked up on the cameras putting the drug into the shaker,” Brenda said.

  “True, but as it happens there are several glitches on the recordings from the kitchen. Scott and Katy pointed it out to me. The camera had been acting up all week. They changed it three or four times and it still wouldn’t play ball. According to Scott, they believed the heat from the kitchen was affecting the wiring leading to the camera. I have a different theory. Suppose those glitches were deliberate, designed to puzzle the tech staff. When the culprit dropped that drug into Brenda’s flour shaker the camera would be cut, a stock feed would run, and the technical staff would think no more of it. Just another glitch. But in reality, the camera had been made to play the fool all week simply to mask the one action that would ensure that everyone in the house was asleep on Thursday night.”

  “Hang on, Joe,” Brenda protested again. “How could he know in advance that I’d put flour on top of the crust. We didn’t know each other be
fore this week, and none of them even knew what I would do for dinner.”

  “No, but Master Spy did. Not only that, but Master Spy also knew about your stupid habit of dusting the top of the pie. You told him that. And he – or she, I never could work out which – knew when you first applied to come on the show because you put it all on your application letter form. You had to so they could arrange for the correct ingredients and cookware.”

  Hoad shot a glance at Helen, and she nodded confirmation. “Remember, Chief Inspector, this is a TV show. Much though it may appear live and spontaneous, we need as much information from the Housies in advance as we can get, including any particular method of cooking.” She smiled weakly. “Fire regulations. We have to be prepared.”

  Naughton still shook his head. “Even if I accept all this, how come it didn’t put Ursula to sleep along with the rest of them?”

  “I expect better of a man like you, Naughton,” Joe told him. “You being so clever and all. Zimovane is a tranquiliser, not an anaesthetic. Everyone would get a good night’s sleep out of it, Ursula, too. The Zimovane would see to that. But Ursula had something else on her mind. A meeting in the Romping Room. A meeting with her killer, although she didn’t know at the time that he would kill her. So it may have made her feel sleepy, woozy, but it wouldn’t put her to sleep. We’ve seen her on the videos, haven’t we? On her way to the Romping Room, she’s weaving like she’s stoned out of her mind. That was the Zimovane at work. We also know she was in there for a good half hour, maybe longer, before she died. She probably got bored and nodded off while she was waiting for the killer. That only made his job easier.”

  Helen leapt on Joe’s words. “He? His job? Twice you’ve hinted that it was a man.” He spun his head round to fix his eye on Scott Naughton.