‘Yes, ma’am. The White brothers, of Trafalgar Street.’
‘Oh dear! It suddenly occurred to me it might be.’
‘You know them?’
‘They’ve been up before me several times, usually for soccer violence. I’d hoped we’d reform them in time.’
‘It’ll be in the records, but can you recall when they were last in Court?’
‘Not offhand. Earlier this year, I think.’
‘Doubtless there were other lads up with them, that they’d been fighting with?’
‘Yes, half a dozen or more.’
‘The same ones every time, or did they vary?’
‘The Steeple Bayliss fans were always the same.’
Dawson grunted. Rivalry between the two towns dated back to Shillingham’s superseding SB as the county town at the end of the last century.
Monica said frowningly, ‘You think they could be responsible?’
‘At this stage, ma’am, anyone could.’
‘But the season’s finished, hasn’t it?’
‘A week ago, yes. As it happens, the last match was an away one at Steeple Bayliss.’
‘But surely any animosity of that type would be immediate? They’d hardly wait a week and then come over.’
‘Unless something more serious had occurred, and it developed into a full-blown vendetta. The age of the man you described puts him in the right bracket.’
‘In which case he won’t be hanging round here, he’ll have gone back to Steeple Bayliss.’ Which was twenty-seven miles away, a good forty-five minutes’ drive.
‘All the same, it’ll do no harm to be careful. I expect the DCI will put a policewoman in your house.’
‘I hardly think that’s necessary. In an emergency I can do as much as a policewoman. What I would appreciate, though, is someone keeping an eye on the house. If anyone tried to break in, it would be very upsetting for my mother.’
‘I’m sure that can be arranged. Now, ma’am, if you’d be good enough to read through the statement DC Cummings has written out, perhaps you could sign it.’
Minutes later the policemen were shown out. Monica sat staring at the closed door, her normal, orderly life suddenly upside down. As a magistrate, she had long accepted that she could be the target of someone’s spite – resentment over a sentence or even a misconstrued comment in Court. But the thought that she might be able to identify a murderer, and that he knew it, was distinctly unsettling. If only, she thought uselessly, she’d settled down earlier that night, not bothered to get out of bed, slept through the whole thing.
With a sigh she reached for the latest pile of catalogues.
CHAPTER 4
The post-mortem was held first thing the next morning. It was a part of his job that Webb had never become resigned to, and at this early hour he was finding it particularly trying. Broodingly he surveyed the circle of faces round the table: Steve Cummings, already green about the gills, Bob Dawson, Dick Hodges, Penrose, Smithers, each of them held in sickly fascination by the grisly task in hand.
Since even the Trubshaws had been unable to say with certainty which twin was which, Webb had resorted to fingerprints – fortunately on record – to establish that it was Gary White who had been stabbed.
During the last hour his clothing had been removed and examined closely, item by item, before being bagged for despatch to the laboratory. As expected, the tear in the green sweatshirt corresponded to the angle of the chest wound. Now, the high-powered lamps above the slab spotlit the naked young body as, ignoring the constantly flashing camera, Stapleton recorded his progress into the suspended microphone.
Slowly and with painstaking thoroughness the examination proceeded, the heat from the lamps and the pungent smell of disinfectant adding to the malaise of the onlookers.
They learned that the partially digested food appeared to have been in the stomach about four hours, which suggested death had occurred around 11.0 p.m. It had been caused by a single thrust of a short, serrated blade. No surprise there. The exact dimensions of the blade and the lethal path it had followed, Webb allowed to pass over his head. Such details would be on his desk in due course.
The hands of the clock circumnavigated its face and had started round it a second time before the body was removed and an identical one laid in its place: identical in all respects but one – there was no stab wound. In fact there were no external marks whatever on this second boy, a fact unusual enough in the circumstances to arouse curiosity. The performance started once more: intrusive incisions into the firm flesh, the removal and weighing of organs, the steady, expressionless voice speaking into the microphone.
Another hour and a half had passed before Stapleton announced it as his opinion that the deceased had died from vagal inhibition.
Webb stared at him in disbelief, his normal tact overwhelmed by frustration. ‘You mean he stopped breathing? Oh, come on, doctor! That’s how we all die!’
Stapleton fixed him with a cold eye over the top of his mask and continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘The malfunction appears to have been caused by trauma.’
‘What kind of trauma?’
The pathologist raised thin shoulders. ‘Shock? Fear?’
‘You’re saying he was frightened to death?’ This time Webb strove to keep his voice neutral. But really! A healthy young thug, not averse to the odd punch-up and having led anything but a sheltered life, to have died from fright, like a dippy old spinster who finds a man in her bedroom?
‘There is no defect in any of the organs, nor, as I expect to have confirmed when the specimens are analysed, is poison indicated. Digestion had progressed to the same degree as that of the first body, leading to the assumption that they died within minutes of each other.’ He paused and cleared his throat raspingly. ‘Sometimes, I understand, an abnormal affinity exists between twins; if he saw his brother killed, it’s possible the trauma he suffered could have resulted in his own death.’
No one spoke for a minute. Then Stapleton pushed the microphone aside. ‘So there you have it, Chief Inspector. That’s the best I can do for you.’
Webb nodded his thanks and pushed his way through the swing doors into the blessedly cool tiled corridor. It was a brief respite, for outside the hot sun awaited him, glinting on the pathologist’s sleekly polished car and burnishing the gravel to diamond-like brilliance. But it was a natural life-giving warmth, unlike the harsh white lights inside which illuminated death.
He paused, savouring his return to the living world, and drew a restorative breath. To his left lay the hospital grounds, spreading lawns, colourful borders and clusters of trees now in full leaf. On the terrace at the back of the building, dressing-gowned patients relaxed in the sunshine and in the distance a uniformed nurse was encouraging two others along one of the paths.
On Webb’s right was the high wall which separated the hospital from Carrington Street Police Station. With a start he remembered the scheduled press conference and hastily checked his watch. He’d just about make it. Balance restored, he walked briskly down the drive and turned into the next gateway.
‘Monica?’
‘Hello, Justin.’ She nodded at her secretary, and the girl picked up the pile of signed letters and quietly left the room. ‘I thought you were away for a few days.’
‘I am, but I just rang home and Eloise told me the news.’
‘A bit shattering, isn’t it?’
‘Exchanging glances with a murderer? You could call it that. And what’s this about refusing to move out of the house? You really must be guided by the police.’
‘But, Justin, if he wants to track me down, hiding in someone else’s house won’t stop him. I still have to go to Court and run this place; I refuse to have my whole life disrupted.’
‘Better than losing it, I’d have thought.’
She suppressed a shiver. ‘Touché; but I’m not really being foolhardy; the police are watching both the house and the store, and they follow me everywhere. I’m as safe
as I can be in the circumstances.’
‘How good a look did you get at him?’
‘Fairly good; he was directly under the lamp.’
‘You hadn’t seen him before? In Court, for instance?’
‘Not that I remember. Why?’
‘I wondered if dumping the bodies on your doorstep was deliberate.’
‘No, I’m sure not. The engine was stuttering before it reached the house and he tried to restart it. The fact that I knew the twins was pure chance.’
‘I hope you’re right; it’s quite bad enough as it is. Look, why don’t you move in with us for a few days?’
‘No, really. It’s sweet of you, but I’m all right. Anyway, they’ll probably nab him before long. There can’t be that many criminal redheads on the loose.’
‘Ever heard of hair dye?’ he asked drily.
But, as he’d anticipated, he’d been unable to change her mind. Monica’s adherence to her own ideas – her stubbornness, in fact – was a quality he’d had to accept, since it was one he shared. They’d clashed more than once over the years, but their underlying affection for each other was undiminished.
As he replaced the phone he was aware that the call had done nothing to still his unease. Had he been her husband rather than her brother-in-law, he might have stood more chance of influencing her – though he doubted it. An independent lady, Monica. George would have his hands full, if and when they married.
He walked across the hotel bedroom and stared out of the window at the busy street below. Monica’s sudden vulnerability had brought home to him how fond he was of her, and for the first time in years he thought back to a time when they’d been even closer.
They’d met when he was just down from university and she studying to go into her father’s business. Against the façade of the building opposite he conjured up a picture of her as she was then, a small, attractive girl with fair curls and laughing eyes. Yet even at that tender age she’d known where she was going, and he’d recognized a strength of purpose which matched his own. There was an immediate empathy between them; he’d taken her to the theatre and for long, candlelit dinners, over which they confided their ambitions for the future. Looking back, he realized that he’d been on the verge of falling in love with her. But, calling at her home one evening, he’d met Eloise – beautiful, spoilt Eloise, who at that time was engaged to Harry Marlow.
And that had been that. In the all-consuming selfishness of passion, both Harry and Monica were forgotten, and within weeks the wedding had taken place. Now, after all those years, Justin found himself belatedly wondering how Monica had felt. Of course, it wasn’t as though there’d been any commitment between them, a fact which, if he’d thought about it at all, had eased the odd twinge of conscience. It failed to do so now. He could only hope she’d not been hurt as badly as Harry must have been. It said a lot for both Monica and Harry that they were still among their closest friends.
Gazing unseeingly out of the window, Justin continued to probe his suddenly sensitive conscience. For, having discarded Monica without a thought, he hadn’t hesitated to call on her whenever it suited him. It was to her that he propounded his ideas for expansion, his worries about share prices or personality clashes among the staff. She was always ready to listen, calming unnecessary anxiety, offering sound comment and occasionally suggesting a course of action which he was glad to follow.
And over the last year or two his demands on her had extended into the social sphere as well. Eloise had never hidden her boredom with the fat Italians and balding
Frenchmen who came to do business with him and whose languages she made no attempt to understand. So, when she started to plead increasingly unconvincing migraines, he had turned to Monica, who had willingly placed at his disposal not only her fluency in languages but the quiet, attentive charm that was so much a part of her. In fact, he realized to his dismay that there were times when he preferred his sister-in-law’s company to that of his wife.
A knock on the door made him start and he turned sharply.
‘Justin?’ a voice called. ‘Coming down for a drink before lunch?’
‘Be right with you!’ he answered, and, thankfully relinquishing his musings, he went to join his colleagues.
The press conference over, Webb and Jackson had repaired to the Brown Bear for lunch, where they were joined by DI Crombie.
‘Any developments while I was at the PM?’ Webb asked him, as Crombie put down his plate and glass and pulled out a chair.
‘The piece in last night’s News produced some phone calls.’ The local paper had run a front page item, asking if anyone had seen the van between 9.0 p.m. and midnight on Monday.
‘Well?’ Webb prompted, as the Inspector spread a paper napkin over his knees before embarking on his meal.
‘Some lads walking home from the Mulberry Bush are pretty sure they saw the van parked along the road about ten forty-five. At any rate the one they saw was dirty, dark green in colour and had an elongated roof-rack. And at eleven-twenty or so a motorist pulled into the Wood Green lay-by to check a map reference and noticed a dark van parked there without lights. He didn’t investigate – thought it was a courting couple.’
‘So if both sightings were the van we’re interested in, it had only moved a hundred yards in half an hour?’
‘It would seem so.’
‘Waiting for someone?’
Crombie shrugged.
‘Did the lads see anyone in it?’
‘Yes, they glanced in as they passed and a man was sitting behind the wheel. It was only a brief glimpse and they can’t describe him, or say if there was anyone with him.’
‘Well, it’s not likely the murderer would have been hanging about with a couple of bodies in the back. So, always provided it was the right van, it seems the twins parked near the Mulberry Bush for a while, and later drove on to the lay-by. Any bright ideas why?’
‘A call of nature?’ Jackson suggested. Webb shot him a repressive glance.
‘And there was another report,’ Crombie continued. ‘Not the van this time, but a parked car just round the bend from the lay-by. The bloke who rang in thought at the time it looked suspicious, because it was off the road hidden under some branches. As far as he could tell there was no one inside.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Also around eleven.’
‘So the two vehicles were parked near each other?’
‘No, Davis checked that when he took the call. The car was on the Shillingham side of the lay-by and the van on the far side, near the Mulberry Bush.’
‘Close enough, though, not to rule out a connection between them. So where had the car driver got to, and why did he try to conceal his car? Do we know what make it was?’
‘Not much of it was visible, but it looked like a hatchback.’
‘Mm. Any other news?’
‘The house-to-house didn’t turn up much. All the neighbours noticed the van, but Miss Tovey was the only one who did anything about it. The rest of them ignored it, presumably in the hope that it would go away.’
Webb grunted. ‘I take it all the people who phoned are coming in to make statements?’
‘Yes, this afternoon, after which I’ll drive out with them to check the exact positions of the parked vehicles. In the meantime, though it’s rather late now, the lay-by’s been sealed off till the SOCOs can get to it.’
‘Everything all right, gentlemen?’ The barmaid bent forward to collect their empty plates, the bracelets on her wrists jangling discordantly. An inveterate sensation-seeker, she took great pride in her police clientele and constantly questioned them on current cases, seemingly undeterred by their unfailing refusal to be drawn.
‘Fine, thanks, Mabel.’
‘Working on the murder of them twins, are you?’
Webb winked at Crombie. ‘That’s right,’ he admitted.
‘Shocking thing, young lads like that. Mind, they weren’t what you’d call squeaky-clean theirselves
, were they?’
‘Weren’t they?’
‘Come on, Mr Webb, you’re not fooling me. All that hooligan business up at the club. Some say it’s just high spirits, but I don’t go along with that. It’s violence, same as any other, and once you get into that sort of thing, there’s no saying where it will end.’
‘Very true, Mabel.’
She waited hopefully, but when it was apparent he was adding nothing further, she reluctantly moved to the next table.
Webb drained his glass. ‘Speaking of which, has Bob been along to the club?’
Crombie grinned. ‘You bet – any excuse! He hadn’t got back by the time I left.’
‘I wonder if he’ll come up with anything new.’
As decreed by the Football Association, Shillingham United Supporters’ Club had no official link with the football club. Nor had it any official premises, being based at a small commercial hotel, the Duckworth, a little further up Station Road. There, its members had the use of what was grandly known as the conference suite, which comprised a bar, a large room where social events were held and a small ante-room for committee meetings.
Bob Dawson, an ardent football fan, knew it well, but this was the first time he’d been there in an official capacity. He hoped young Steve’s presence would reinforce his authority over what was normally a relaxed social gathering.
As it was lunch-time, several members who worked locally were gathered in the bar, talking in low voices. The news of the double murder had jolted them out of their flat, end-of-season feeling, and when they turned towards him, Dawson saw that his apprehension had been groundless. Whatever his usual relationship with them, they recognized him now as an officer of the law and were looking to him for reassurance.
Dick Turner, the chairman, came towards him with his hand extended. ‘Glad to see you, er – Sergeant. A terrible business.’
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