A Dangerous Life (DCI Jack Callum Mysteries Book 2)

by Len Maynard

  A DANGEROUS LIFE

  A DCI Jack Callum Mystery

  LEN MAYNARD

  © Len Maynard 2019

  Len Maynard has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2019 by LMP

  This edition published in 2020 by Sharpe Books

  DEDICATION

  To the memory of Lonnie Donegan, Wally Whyton,

  and Paul Lincoln aka Dr Death.

  Pioneers to a man.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Certain liberties have been taken with the geography of Hertfordshire for the benefit of the story. Hopefully the residents of that beautiful county, home for many years, will be forgiving.

  Table of Contents

  1 - TUESDAY MARCH 17TH 1959

  2 - TUESDAY

  3 - TUESDAY

  4 - WEDNESDAY MARCH 18TH 1959

  5 - WEDNESDAY

  6 - THURSDAY MARCH 19TH 1959

  7 - THURSDAY

  8 - THURSDAY

  9 - THURSDAY

  10 FRIDAY MARCH 20TH 1959

  11 - FRIDAY

  12 - FRIDAY

  13 - FRIDAY

  14 - FRIDAY

  15 - FRIDAY

  16 - SATURDAY MARCH 21ST 1959

  17 - SATURDAY

  18 - SATURDAY

  19 - SATURDAY

  20 - SUNDAY MARCH 22ND 1959

  21 - MONDAY MARCH 23RD 1959

  22 - MONDAY

  23 - MONDAY

  24 - MONDAY

  25 - MONDAY

  26 - TUESDAY MARCH 24TH 1959

  27 - TUESDAY

  28 - TUESDAY

  29 - TUESDAY

  30 - TUESDAY

  31 - TUESDAY

  32 - SATURDAY MARCH 28TH 1959

  33 - SATURDAY JUNE 14TH 1959

  1 - TUESDAY MARCH 17TH 1959

  “…So it’s important you remember these three simple rules. One, don’t talk to strangers. Two, never go off with anyone you do not know personally, and three, remember that the police are your friends. We are here to listen and help you whenever we can.” Jack Callum looked up from his notes on the dais at the rows of faces staring back at him with expressions of total apathy.

  Cynthia Arnold, the school’s headmistress, sprung to her feet and walked to the front of the stage.

  “Very informative,” she said. “I’m sure, School, that you would like to show your appreciation to Chief Inspector Callum for giving up his valuable time to speak to you today.” She started a round of applause that rippled listlessly around the assembly hall and quickly died. “Now, if you could all make your way out, in an orderly fashion, to the playground, where…” She looked down at the piece of paper clutched in her hand. “Where Sergeant Grant and Constable Cooper will explain to you how you can stay safe on our roads.”

  There was a hubbub of grumbling voices and shuffling feet as the hall gradually emptied.

  “Thank you for that, Mr. Callum,” the headmistress said. “I’m sure your words found a receptive audience.”

  “Well, those that stayed awake for long enough might have learned something,” Jack said as he folded his speech and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket. “And can I apologise again that Superintendent Lane couldn’t be here today.”

  The headmistress clucked her tongue. “Never to worry,” she said. “I’m sure it couldn’t be helped. In any case, you proved to be a very successful last minute substitution. Full marks.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  The truth was that Henry Lane had been trying to wheedle his way out of this speaking engagement for weeks. More comfortable swinging a golf club than standing in front of a microphone, a last minute attack of laryngitis meant that Jack had to take his place, much to his own chagrin. He enjoyed public speaking even less than Lane.

  “Well, excuse me,” the headmistress said. “I hear your men have brought a police car along with them to help with their demonstration. I have to see. It’s all rather exciting.”

  Jack watched her bustle, excitedly, out of the hall, and then made his way to the side of the stage and the short staircase to freedom.

  He trotted down the stairs and pulled up short when a voice spoke from out of the shadows. “Did you mean it?”

  Someone was standing a few feet away, hidden by a fold in the curtain.

  “Did I mean what?” he said, and a teenage girl stepped out from behind the folded brocade and stood in front of him.

  “That the police were our friends and that we should come and talk to you, and you will help?”

  Jack smiled indulgently. “We’ll always listen, and help if we can…sorry I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Gerry…Geraldine Turner.”

  “Well, Geraldine, do you have a problem you wish to discuss?”

  The girl looked tearful. She nodded, a lock of her curly blonde hair falling out from beneath her Alice band and dropping down over her face. “It’s my brother,” she said.

  “Well, what is it you want to tell me about your brother?”

  “He’s dead,” she said, biting at her lip pensively. “I killed him.”

  “I’m sorry that your time has been so cruelly wasted, Chief Inspector,” the headmistress said. “But our Miss Turner is one of Hatfield County School’s greatest fantasists.”

  “So she’s done this kind of thing before?” Jack said quietly, glancing across at Geraldine who sat in the corner of the office, biting her lip pensively and staring down at her shoes, doing her best to avoid meeting his eyes.

  “With almost monotonous regularity,” the headmistress said tiredly.

  Jack continued to stare at the girl. He couldn’t shake the feeling that, by involving the headmistress, he had betrayed Geraldine’s trust in the most profound way, but he’d had no choice. Being alone in the office with a thirteen-year-old girl would have been seen by most as dangerously inappropriate.

  “Still, the school secretary has been in touch with her father and Mr. Turner is on his way in now to take her home. He shouldn’t be long. They live in a lovely house called Elsinore, on the Broadway in Letchworth,” the headmistress said with a smile, gazing wistfully over Jack’s shoulder, through the window to the playground where his junior officers were putting the black Wolseley through its paces, demonstrating stopping times to an audience of bored schoolchildren.

  Jack, keeping his voice low, said, “And as far as you’re aware Geraldine doesn’t have, or has never had, a brother?”

  The headmistress shook her head. “In our records we have her down as an only child. I’m afraid, Mr. Callum, that teenage girls have a great capacity for making up stories.”

  “I have two teenage daughters myself,” Jack said, finding the headmistress’s condescending attitude towards her charges irritating.

  “Then I don’t need to tell you, do I?” she said. “You don’t have to stay, you know. I’m sure I can deal with Mr. Turner when he gets here.”

  “I’ll hang on. I’d like a few words with him. Besides, I have to wait for my men to finish the demonstration. Sergeant Grant is my lift back to the station.”

  “I see,” the headmistress said and, dropping all pretence, stood up, walked to the window and stared out at the car as it performed an elaborate skid on the playground’s tarmac surface. Jack would have to have a quiet word with Constable Cooper about his tendency to showboat.

  “Ooh,” she said. “It really is quite exciting.”

  Jack went across and sat down on a hard chair next to Geraldine. Apart from her initial pronouncement that she had killed her brother, the
girl had said nothing more to him.

  “Are you all right, Geraldine?”

  “I told you, it’s Gerry,” the girl said without looking at him.

  “Sorry, Gerry. Are you feeling okay now?”

  Geraldine finally turned her head, a look of contempt in her eyes. “You’re just like the rest of them,” she said. “I trusted you.”

  Her words cut deep, increasing the feeling that he’d betrayed her.

  Thirty minutes later the school secretary knocked on the door of the office.

  “Mr. Turner’s here, Headmistress.”

  “Well, don’t keep him waiting, Sandra. Show him in.”

  Anthony Turner was a tall man in his mid-thirties with lush, wavy brown hair and matinee idol looks. He nodded a hello to Jack and the headmistress, and folded himself into the chair next to the girl, grasping her hand and holding onto it tightly. “Geraldine, do we have to go through all this again?”

  “It’s Gerry,” the girl said and wrenched her hand away from him.

  Jack watched the colour spread up from Turner’s neck, turning his face an angry puce. The anger was reflected in his eyes and in the fingers of his free hand that were clenching and unclenching.

  Jack cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Turner,” he said. “Chief Inspector Callum, Welwyn and Hatfield CID.”

  Turner turned his ferocious glare on the hapless Cynthia Arnold. “You called the police? Even though I told you that I would be down here within the hour to sort this matter out?”

  “I…I…” the headmistress spluttered.

  “You mustn’t blame Mrs Arnold, sir. I was here anyway, giving a talk to the school. Gerry approached me with her confession.”

  “And you haven’t got enough common sense to realise when you’re being led up the garden path?”

  Jack refused to rise to the bait. He found Turner to be a conceited, arrogant bore, but he kept his feelings to himself. “I’m afraid we have to take all such confessions at face value,” he said evenly. “We’d lose all public sympathy if we didn’t.”

  Turner opened his mouth to speak again and then, after consideration, shut it and got to his feet. “Come on, Geraldine. I’m taking you home.”

  “Actually,” Jack said to him, “I’d like a quick word with you, if you can spare the time. Mrs Arnold, could you take Gerry into the outer office and wait with her until we’re finished?”

  “Of course,” the headmistress said. She came across and took the girl’s hand. “Come along, dear. Let’s give your father and the Chief Inspector some privacy.” She led Geraldine out into the secretary’s office and closed the door behind them.

  Jack went around the desk and sat down in the headmistress’s chair. “Take a seat, Mr. Turner. This won’t take long.”

  Grumbling, Turner sat down on the hard chair opposite him and glared across the desk.

  “A day off from work is it, sir? Only I was wondering why the school called you and not your wife to come down here?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, Chief Inspector, but I’ve just come off a long and arduous run at the Lyric I’ll be resting until my next film role starts rehearsing in a fortnight.”

  “Ah, you’re an actor,” Jack said.

  Turner nodded curtly. “Furthermore, my wife is not a well woman. She can’t leave the house.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Is she bedridden?”

  “My wife suffers from a psychological condition. She’s an agoraphobic.”

  “That must be very distressing for you. She can’t leave the house at all?”

  “Not without very severe panic attacks,” Turner said.

  “It must be very difficult, with you being away at work in the theatre all the time. How do you cope with Gerry’s needs?”

  “We have a woman who lives in during the week.”

  “And she makes sure Gerry gets to school?”

  Turner nodded. “And does the shopping and any other errands that would necessitate my wife leaving the house.” He glanced at his watch. “Are we going to be much longer?”

  Jack leaned forwards, crossing his hands on the desk. “Do you have any idea why Gerry told me she had killed her brother?”

  Turner sighed. “Geraldine in an only child, Mr. Callum. We were never blessed with another child. I can’t honestly say where this latest fantasy has come from. Geraldine is, what is it they say, highly strung?”

  “She seemed very… convincing.”

  Turner barked a laugh. “I’m afraid that’s something she gets from me. I come from a family of actors. My mother used to be very highly regarded. It’s in the genes, you might say.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “That must be it. In the genes.”

  “Are we finished here?”

  “I think so. I won’t detain you any longer. You can take your daughter home now.”

  Turner nodded sharply, stood up and walked to the door.

  “Just one more thing,” Jack said as Turner’s fingers closed around the door handle.

  Turner turned back to him. “Yes?”

  “I take it your daughter has done this type of thing before.”

  “What are you implying?”

  Jack smiled “It’s just that when you arrived you said to her, ‘Do we have to go through all this again?’ Which suggests to me that what happened today wasn’t an isolated occurrence.”

  “Please understand, Mr. Callum, that dealing with my wife’s…condition, puts a huge strain on us as a family. Geraldine is going through a difficult time of life, puberty. That’s really enough for her to be dealing with. It’s hardly surprising that she seeks refuge in fantasies.”

  “Oh, I can understand the pressures teenage girls are under. I have two daughters myself, but it’s a bit extreme isn’t it? Confessing to the murder of a sibling she doesn’t even have?”

  “What can I say? Only that I bow to your greater experience in such matters. Good day.” Turner turned on his heel and left the office.

  Jack listened to them in the outer office as Turner gathered up Geraldine and left the school.

  “What a charming man,” the headmistress said as she bustled back into the office. “And so talented. I was lucky enough to catch his Hamlet at the Old Vic a few years ago. It was right up there with Gielgud and Olivier, in my opinion.”

  “Strange,” Jack said. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Well, of course, he’s not as widely known, or as highly praised for that matter, but he’s just as talented. It was a real coup when we found Geraldine a place here, especially as we were so far outside her local catchment area, but Mr. Turner was insistent. He wanted only the best for his daughter.”

  “I’m sure he did.” Jack smiled indulgently at the foolish woman. “I’m sure he did.”

  2 - TUESDAY

  “So why would a thirteen-year-old girl confess to killing a non-existent brother?” Jack said to his wife, Annie, as they washed up the dinner things.

  “Is she troubled in other ways?” Annie said.

  “She might be. Her mum’s an agoraphobic, It’s an almost pathological fear of open spaces. That can’t be easy to live with.”

  “It sounds like the daughter’s seeking attention,” Jack’s eldest daughter, Joan, said. She was sitting at the kitchen table sewing. “Perhaps her mother’s illness is overshadowing her. Does she get much attention from her father?”

  “Probably not enough,” Jack said. “I don’t think he’s there much. He’s an actor.”

  “An actor?” said Annie. “Is he famous?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jack said shaking his head. “I’ve certainly never heard of him. Joanie, do you still read those trashy gossip magazines? Does the name Anthony Turner mean anything to you?”

  “Anthony Turner doesn’t,” she said. “But Tony Turner does.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He was quite the rising star, once upon a time,” Joan said. “He graduated from the Rank Charm School and for a little while m
agazines were full of him. They had him in the same mould as Dirk Bogarde, and predicted that he would go on to have similar success. They ran features about him. You know the kind of thing; At Home With Tony Turner, Meet Tony Turner and his Beautiful Family.”

  “Well, he needs to get his money back from Rank, because they certainly failed him in the Charm stakes,” Jack said almost to himself. “You do read a load of tripe, Joanie. So, what happened to him? Why is his star no longer rising?”

  “Why are you so interested in tripe?” his daughter said with a smile.

  “Call it prurient curiosity.”

  “The best kind,” Joan said. “His wife died a few years ago and he remarried. It caused a heck of a stink.”

  “I remember him now.” Annie finished washing a plate and came back to the conversation. “Didn’t he marry Lois Franklin, the Cadence Girl? She used to be in all the magazines persuading us to buy their beauty products.”

  “You’re right, Mum, he did. A month after his first wife died. Rumours began flying around that they had been carrying on while his wife was fighting for her life with cancer. The scandal killed his film career stone dead.”

  “He’s still acting,” Jack said.

  “Yes, he went back to the theatre. He still pops up here and there in the odd film, but mostly in character parts as the hero’s best friend or the heroine’s husband. Nothing to set the box office alight these days, but as far as I’ve read, the theatre is his main source of income these days, that and television commercials. He did one for cigarettes a couple of years back.”

  “Then I shouldn’t think Gerry’s home life is a barrel of laughs,” Jack said. “Losing her real mother to cancer, her stepmother unable to leave the house for psychological reasons, and her father treading the boards night after night or away on location.”

  Annie’s soapy fingers entwined with his. “Why are you so concerned? Surely it’s a case for the school board or the family doctor. It’s hardly a police matter.”