Souvenirs of Murder

by Margaret Duffy

‘Well, you’ve been well and truly rumbled. What now?’

  ‘We wait.’

  ‘Beckovic has just arrived. He shoved me out of the way.’

  ‘He’s here!’ Patrick exclaimed, only quietly.

  ‘Yes, I heard a man who must be the owner of the club say so.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘No, at least, he came in with several men but that doesn’t mean they were actually together.’

  A few minutes went by during which time I had to retreat into the corridor as men entered. Then came a thundering on the outer door.

  ‘Well, of course I locked it,’ I heard the bouncer call over the jazz band. ‘You didn’t want them doing a runner, did you?’

  The two then did just that, dashing past me into the club, and, hard on their heels, I saw that it was packed. Patrick has always said that war is organized chaos and this is precisely what happened: war. Tables were overturned, the jazz band routed, chairs were thrown over the bar, glasses and bottles smashed.

  I had not seen the face of the individual who had knocked me aside in the doorway but I saw him now as he jumped to his feet, recognized him even though his hair was styled differently to that in the photograph. A surprisingly slight figure given his strength of shoulder, he was with two cronies. I fought my way towards them through the clubbers stampeding for the exit. Then I saw that one of the men was grabbing into an inside pocket of his jacket. In the mêlée Patrick must have seen the movement too for when I next glimpsed him he was right upon him, only coming from behind. Moments later the man had disappeared, presumably felled and on the floor.

  Patrick and Beckovic stood face to face, the surviving henchman apparently having been turned to stone.

  ‘You!’ the man bawled above the turmoil of people falling over furniture as they scrambled to leave. ‘You’re in custody for murder!’

  I arrived in a clear space near a wall – people seemed to be finding their way out through an emergency exit – and stayed there, able to hear what was being said and aware that James Carrick was not far away either.

  ‘As you can see,’ Patrick said with one of his stock-in-trade nasty smiles. ‘Not so.’ He commenced to sway slightly from side to side, staring fixedly at the man he was talking to and although I could not see from where I was standing I knew his eyes were like crazy, living pebbles. It makes the recipient, frankly, shit-scared.

  ‘You phoned me and pretended to be a friend of Zoran! You lied!’ For all the shouting and bluster he was a weedy sort of man, his lips specked with spittle as he yelled.

  ‘I do sometimes if it catches murderers,’ Patrick said in a bored voice.

  A forefinger was pointed accusingly. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? You’re some kind of hit man for God’s sake! You were working for her! Just the sort to go off your head and blast the lot of them to hell!’

  ‘Yes, and I’m a cop,’ Patrick said. ‘Just like you.’

  I edged a bit closer. Even in the poor lighting I saw the colour drain from the other’s face.

  ‘No!’ he yelled, his hands shaking. ‘You can’t be! That’s what you said when I doped you, but you’re lying! You killed those people! I saw you, you were staggering all over the place!’

  ‘How did you see me?’

  ‘I was on watch farther down the street.’

  ‘No, you weren’t. Keeting was on his own. You saw me because you were in Pangborne’s house.’

  ‘No! It’s your word against mine. No court would ever believe you after you’d had a gutful of that whisky.’

  ‘I had no whisky. What whisky?’

  ‘You did. Someone poured some in your drink – what looked like orange juice. The Scotch was doctored to make them all unconscious.’

  ‘How do you know about that? Nothing’s been said about that by your mob because Rundle’s still waiting for the full written report on that and blood samples from the murder victims.’

  The henchman suddenly came to life and decided to leave, walking backwards, the second person that evening to do so and find himself cannoning into the bouncer, who had silently approached. This time the big man, without shifting his concentration away from what was being said, contented himself with chopping the invader of his space neatly across the neck and heaving the untidy result to one side.

  ‘You’re under arrest,’ Patrick said to Beckovic.

  Beckovic panicked, completely, and before I had had a chance to move lunged forward and grabbed me by one wrist in a vicious heave that almost dislocated my shoulder. Then a knife was held across my throat, I actually felt the edge of the blade slit my skin. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Carrick, who had the Smith and Wesson, had drawn it.

  ‘You killed that child,’ Patrick said through his teeth and might have said a lot more if the bouncer, actually Michael Greenway, had not shouted first.

  ‘Release the woman!’

  ‘She dies, just like that Serbian bitch deserved to die if you try to stop me!’ Beckovic frantically shouted almost right in my ear. ‘Move aside and let me through!’

  Whereupon this woman decided she did not want to die right now and I threw myself backwards, stamping heavily on his feet with my heels as I did so. He yelled in pain and we both crashed to the floor. I was cast aside and, when I had stopped rolling over and over, I saw him start to bolt from the room. Then, he turned and flung the knife, straight at me.

  Instinctively, I curled, with my hands over my head, but was far too slow. All I heard was a single, sharp metallic clang, a bit like a small clock striking one, and then a clatter. No agonizing stab of pain. Perhaps you don’t feel anything when a knife first buries itself in you, the thought went through my mind. I looked up.

  Two knives were on the floor, still shivering from their collision.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Greenway whispered. And then to Patrick. ‘You’re wasted in SOCA. You should get a job in a circus.’

  Mladan Beckovic had run into a wall of cops in the entrance hall.

  It would be a long day for Patrick and me tomorrow; statements, interviews, but for now, at one thirty in the morning, we rested. I think Patrick and James had just about forgiven Greenway for the battering together he had subjected them to, authenticity or no, but Patrick, I knew, was ready to drop and functioning on will-power alone. At least we were taking it easy in a very pleasant VIP lounge at HQ while we waited for the Commander to tie up a few loose ends before we could all go our various ways for a few hours’ sleep.

  ‘It was a complete fluke,’ Patrick said, discovering that my gaze was upon him and not for the first time in a few minutes. I think I was in a state of mild shock: I could have so easily been in hospital with a horrible injury.

  The knife was ruined, a nick in the blade, and had taken its place in the investigation, no doubt as Exhibit Z.

  No, it wasn’t a fluke.

  Greenway breezed in, still wearing the horribly tight suit – the only suitable attire he had been able to lay his hands on in the time available – he had suffered in all night with the green shirt and pink tie. Muttering something he wrenched himself out of the jacket and hurled it overarm into a corner. The tie followed.

  I said, ‘If you really want to get comfortable I can . . .’

  He gave me a big grin. ‘No, I can survive for a few more minutes, thank you, Ingrid.’ He surveyed us all gleefully. ‘Well, he’s singing his heart out already. It was all Hulton’s fault, who was in it with him. That’s a lie. Someone threatened to kill him if he didn’t top the lot of them. That’s a lie. He’d contacted the Pangborne woman before she came to this country, asked for a job so he could infiltrate her mob and she turned him down flat after a short meeting on the grounds that he was a wimp. That might not be a lie. It was all for Zoran, who was his best chum. That’s probably partly true too. Personally, I think the man’s raving mad.’

  The Commander had already told us that he had made a few more plans after we had left, not entirely trusting his ‘adviser’ to stick to what
had been decided. He himself had thought it wise to turn up an hour before the agreed time and make sure he had back-up, just in case. He had told no one that he intended to be right in the middle of things and had had a quiet word with the usual doorman, one of Rundle’s undercover people, to phone in saying he was ill but recommending a ‘friend’.

  I had not actually been present when Greenway had conducted a debriefing with Patrick and Carrick and had rather received the impression when the Commander had lured me into this room with coffee and a plate loaded with chunks of iced fruit cake that if I attended then it would cramp his style, in other words, he would be forced to moderate his language. The three had joined me after twenty minutes or so, the one nearest to my heart ashen, but giving me a rueful smile. I had refuelled them with coffee and cake.

  ‘So this was all purely for revenge?’ I said.

  Greenway nodded briskly, with a mouthful. Then, ‘We don’t know yet what connection there was with that shoot-out in Hilik all those years ago but there must have been one or why write the name of the place on the wall? Nor do we know if there was monetary gain to be had in it for him. The shrinks will talk to him and I’m no expert but it might be something to do with knowing that he is a bit of a wimp, not at all like his father who Patrick informs me was physically a big man who carried a lot of clout locally. So if the son could lead a double life, fool the Metropolitan Police and use the data that was available to him in order to track down the killer of his friend that might have boosted the little rat’s ego.’

  ‘But why kill Hulton?’ I said.

  ‘We don’t know that yet either.’

  To Patrick I said, ‘So it was Beckovic and the men he was with who broke into your flat and doped you.’

  ‘And as it would appear that I’d been slipped some of that whisky after all it would explain why I didn’t know who the hell it was.’

  Greenway turned to Carrick. ‘Whatever I said just now, James, I want you to know I very much appreciate your help. I know you understand that nothing can appear in official records about your off-piste presence on this case but want you to know that if there’s anything I can do to help you in the future then just give me a call.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Carrick said quietly. ‘I’ll have a couple of hours’ sleep then I must go home and find myself a murderer in Hinton Littlemoor.’

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to apply the three Oracles of Murder: motive, means and opportunity,’ Greenway said jokingly.

  ‘Yes, but everyone hated the victim’s guts. I have around a hundred suspects.’

  ‘Then who stands to gain?’

  TWENTY

  It was established, but much later, at his trial, that Beckovic himself had been the ‘insider’ who had leaked the story to the media of someone working for SOCA being involved in the shootings as a ploy to draw any possible suspicion away from himself. The coincidence he had created of there being only one police officer watching the house, to be taken seriously ill – he had introduced a few drops of juice from putrid raw prawns into Philip Keeting’s morning coffee – had worried him.

  Beckovic finally admitted having planned to gun down Pangborne, plus anyone who got in his way, breaking into the house while everyone slept. Watching and biding his time nearby that night, waiting for it all to go quiet, he had seen Patrick leave the house at around four thirty in the morning and, wondering why he was still on his feet, decided to follow him, calling upon two friends, the pair with him in The Last Gasp, who were also hanging around in the area in case they were needed. They had burst into the bedsit, taking Patrick by surprise mainly on account of his having consumed a small amount of the whisky, and jabbed him with truth drug. It was never established why he had told Patrick that he planned to sell Leanne to a paedophile ring, or even that he had pretended to be Hulton. They had left him semi-conscious and returned to Park Road where they had discovered everyone unconscious. Beckovic had sent his henchman away and, quite forgetting that he had doctored the whisky earlier – to do this he had entered through the back door, kept right out of Pangborne’s way and told those he met he was a neighbour – had taken a couple of mouthfuls from one of the whisky bottles. He had woken in a bedroom just after ten the following morning not knowing how he had got there.

  The drug seems to have had a disastrous effect on him, either that or he panicked when he left that room and saw Patrick talking to Leanne. Overpowering him for the second time that day, he had taken Patrick’s gun, shot the child – because she was screaming – and then cold-bloodedly shot all the others. It had probably taken only a couple of minutes. He had then realized that someone was banging around in the cupboard on the upstairs landing and found the cleaner, Rosa Jerez, who had indeed seen Hulton earlier. She had begged him not to kill her and for some reason – had he been sickened by what he had done already and terrified the sound of the shots would quickly bring people to investigate? – he had released her after making her swear to tell the police that Patrick had committed the murders. He had then snapped her wrist as a reminder of what would happen to her if she broke her word. Making his escape he had again come upon Patrick, outside, and dumped him at the end of the garden when he had collapsed after throwing the knife at him.

  Of course, hardly any of this had been established when our part in the case was over. Except, that is, the new account of what had happened from Rosa Jerez after Beckovic had been arrested, to the effect that she had been forced to lie. He had told her he would find and kill her, wherever she tried to escape to, if she implicated him. The irony of all this is that if Beckovic had left her in the cupboard and gone away instead of letting her out, his hands still apparently having been covered in blood from smearing it on the walls, she would have been none the wiser as to the identity of the killer. To be quite sure on this matter Patrick had been suddenly introduced into the room where Miss Jerez was making this statement. She had practically fallen on his neck, weeping, thanking him for hiding her away and thus, and despite her coming face to face with Beckovic, probably saved her life as he might have otherwise, in a frenzy, killed her with the rest.

  We had stayed a further two days in London, endeavouring to play our part in unravelling what had been a complicated case and were now on our way home with the golden knowledge of Patrick’s innocence. He actually had a copy of the statement in his jacket pocket in the event of any more visits from Complaints, which organization remained as silent as a grave. Officially, he was still on sick leave.

  ‘Hilik though?’ I said, breaking what had been a long silence on the drive home, Hinton Littlemoor a matter of minutes away.

  ‘Better than Hilik,’ Patrick murmured, imitating Beckovic’s voice, making me shudder. ‘Mladan’s a big man now. Mladan can gun people down with the best of them.’

  ‘You really think that’s what it was?’

  ‘Yes, after he’d killed Pangborne, his original target, he thought he’d prove himself. And, don’t forget, he’d been hoist by his own petard, the whisky which had to have affected any judgement he had left by then.’

  By this time it was around four thirty in the afternoon and we had already decided to go to the rectory first. I had told Patrick he owed his mother a very large bouquet of flowers and these were residing fragrantly on the rear seat of the car together with a gift for John that my husband had promised me faithfully he would not, if offered, even taste.

  It was teatime in the annex kitchen, Matthew and Katie with their grandparents just about to sit down to cold chicken and salad sandwiches and home made cakes – no pot noodles ever here. They were not expecting us.

  ‘Oh! Oh!’ Elspeth cried when presented with a walking flower bower. ‘Oh, thank you. How wonderful!’ she said when her son was revealed. ‘You look happy. Is it all all right now?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Patrick assured her.

  ‘You’re not still under suspicion?’

  ‘No. We caught him.’

  There was then a mass hug, Patrick unas
hamedly in tears, Katie clutched to his chest, one hand resting on her bright chestnut hair.

  We moved into the rectory, in more snow, and for a few days – no, I must be honest here, the best part of the fortnight – we strove, with Elspeth and Carrie’s help, to gain some kind of domestic order. Patrick was still not back to full health and had to go to bed early but his blood readings were improving. Then, on day fifteen after the move, James Carrick rang to ask if he could call in for a chat and Patrick immediately invited him, and Joanna, to dinner that night.

  The cook battered off in the 4 x 4 through the still snowy lanes to the shops.

  James, we discovered, had had the flu and was still suffering from a racking cough. There had been the ghost of an idea in my mind that he might be in need of help in connection with the local murder investigation, which was soon proved to be the case.

  ‘I’m under a hell of a lot of pressure to get a result with the Blanche case,’ he said not long after being in receipt of a pre-dinner glass of wine.

  Joanna sighed. ‘Can’t you forget work just for a couple of hours?’

  Patrick gave her a sympathetic smile and then said to James, ‘Commander Greenway’s offer of help does extend to his troops, you know.’

  ‘I don’t want you actually to do anything as you’re still recovering,’ the DCI hastened to say. ‘But a few ideas . . .’

  ‘The weather seems to have put a stop to any black magic antics although they’ve probably been driven indoors. Did you have any luck with forensics as far as the samples of wood that Ingrid took from the church and the axe in our local woodcarver, Stewart Macdonald’s, workshop were concerned?’

  ‘Not enough to hang a charge on anyone. They were both oak of some age and probably from the same source.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Does your father intend to ask him to quote for repairs or replacements?’

  ‘No, not now. Macdonald called in to see him a few days ago and virtually asked for the job. He’s not a churchgoer and probably expected to find a doddery old pushover. He didn’t get one. Dad took an immediate dislike to him and told him that the church couldn’t afford to employ a craftsman to make things from scratch and he would suggest to the PCC that second-hand replacements would be cheaper. The idea had just popped into his head. Since then someone went on the Internet and arrangements have been made to buy stuff from a chapel that’s being demolished in Bristol. A couple of members of the congregation are sufficiently skilled in woodwork to adapt it for our use.’