by Len Maynard
“I feel that I let her down, Annie,” Jack said. “She sought me out today after I told her and the entire school that the police were their friends and that if they had any problems they should come and speak with us, and the first one to do so I couldn’t help. I just batted her back to the school to let them deal with it.”
“You did the right thing,” Annie said.
“Did I?”
“Of course you did.”
“Did mum tell you? I’ve got a job,” Joan said, changing the subject abruptly.
“I haven’t had the chance,” Annie said. “You tell him.”
“Avril is taking me on as her apprentice.”
“Avril the hairdresser? What do you know about hairdressing?” Jack said.
Joan looked affronted. “Hey, I can shampoo and set with the best of them. I used to do some of the customers at the pub for pin money. Avril said I can help her out on her rounds, and she’ll teach me to cut and everything.”
“That’s good, isn’t it, Jack?” Annie said.
“Yes, splendid,” he said distractedly, his mind still on Tony Turner and his family. “Don’t expect me to stop going to the barbers’ though. Carlo’s been cutting my hair since we first moved up here.”
“Well, I suppose he’ll get it right one day,” Joan said.
Jack spun around and threw the tea towel at her.
Joan ducked. “Hey, only joking,” she laughed. It lightened the mood in the kitchen. He didn’t like to bring his work home with him but, for some reason, Gerry Turner had got under his skin today. He’d be thankful to get to work tomorrow and go back to chasing down and arresting some real criminals.
He sat in his favourite armchair listening to the Archers on the radio. “An everyday story of country folk”, or so the BBC would have their listeners believe. He had believed it, and the soap opera had spurred his eventual move from the smoke and noise of Tottenham in North London to the greener, semi-rural setting of Hertfordshire. So far he hadn’t been disappointed, but his date with the Archer clan in the idyllic village of Ambridge was still required listening whenever he could spare the time.
The doorbell rang and he swore softly under his breath while he waited for someone else in the house to answer it. When it became evident that everyone else was more concerned with their own pursuits and not at all interested in seeing who was at the door he said, “Bugger!” and pushed himself out of his armchair.
As he stepped out into the hallway the bell rang again. “Coming!” he called irritably. “Keep your hair on.”
Detective Sergeant Eddie Fuller stood on the doorstep.
“Christ, Eddie, haven’t you seen enough of me for one day?” Jack said.
“Sorry to disturb, guv,” Fuller said. “I was against it but Chief Superintendent Lane insisted I come and get you.”
“Come in and tell me all about it,” Jack said.
Fuller shook his head. “I’ll bring you up to date while I drive.”
“That urgent, eh?”
Fuller glanced at his watch and nodded.
“I’ll get my coat,” Jack said.
“Where are we headed?” Jack said as they pulled out onto the main road.
“Norton Common.” Fuller’s face was grim and he had offered no information since getting the car. “The team’s already there.”
His sergeant’s reticence was beginning to annoy Jack. He’d found the talk he delivered to the school today to be quite draining, and that, combined with Geraldine Turner’s spurious confession and the uneasy confrontation with her father, had left him feeling tense. He’d hoped to drain the stress from his system with a quiet evening at home with the Archers and perhaps some music later. He’d bought the new David Whitfield long player at the weekend and so far hadn’t had a chance to play it. Instead he was being driven through the dull Hertfordshire night, on his way to Norton Common and its sixty acres of rolling greens, thick woodland. Home to muntjac deer, Letchworth’s own black squirrel colony, and one of the most unlikely crime scenes he could imagine.
“So are you going to tell me what’s waiting for us when we get to the Common? Or is this your idea of a mystery tour?”
Fuller glanced around at his boss. “Sorry, guv,” he said. “My mind’s on other things. I was meant to be taking Judy to the pictures tonight, but the Chief Super caught me just as I was heading home. I wouldn’t mind but I’ve had to cancel our last three dates because of work and I don’t think she’ll put up with it for much longer.”
“A messed up social life goes with the job, Eddie. You know that,” Jack said, but he sympathised with his sergeant. The job had put a lot of strain on his relationship with Annie during the early years of their marriage. “Try to put your love life out of your mind and just tell me what the case is.”
“A particularly nasty murder,” he said.
“Anyone we know?”
Fuller shook his head. “No identification so far. A man, mid-forties, found by a dog walker just after six tonight.”
“So what makes this murder so nasty?”
“At first the dog walker only saw him from a distance and thought it was just someone taking a leak against a tree, but he got closer to him and the man didn’t move away. He couldn’t. He’d been nailed there and his throat had been cut.”
Suddenly the peaceful idyll of Ambridge seemed a million miles away. Jack blew through his teeth. “You’d better step on it, and use the bell.”
Fuller pressed down on the accelerator, switched on the Winkworth bell and the Wolseley tore noisily along the main road to reach its grisly destination.
By the time they reached Norton Common the body had been taken down from the tree and was laid out on the grass with police doctor, Barry Fenwick, crouched over it conducting the preliminary examination. One of the team had driven his police car onto the common. Its engine was idling and its headlights turned night into day.
There were a handful of CID officers searching the scene by torchlight for clues, and another taking photographs, the blinding light from his flash bulbs adding occasional illumination to the gory scene.
Jack looked from the blood-spattered tree, to the sticky pool of red slowly sinking into the earth at its bole, to the body lying on the grass. “Any idea how long ago this happened, Barry?” Jack said to the doctor.
“The body’s still relatively warm and rigour is only just stiffening the jaw and neck but hasn’t reached the other muscles yet, so not long. Two hours, three at the most.”
Jack checked his watch. It was just coming up to eight o’ clock. “So between five and six. If this had happened at the end of the month when the clocks changed it would have been light. Cause of death?”
“Catastrophic blood loss. The carotid artery has been severed. Death would have followed very quickly. Two minutes, three tops.”
“And what about the stab wounds to the stomach?” Jack pointed to the blood-soaked shirt.
Fenwick shook his head. “Superficial. None of them look deep enough to be fatal. They could be hesitation wounds but I think rather they were designed to cause pain, not to kill.”
“It’s a shame he was taken down,” Jack said. “I would have liked to have seen the body in situ, so to speak.”
“Your man took photographs,” Fenwick said. “But if it helps you to visualize it, his arms were raised above his head and a six-inch nail had been hammered through the palms of his hands. Judging from the tearing of the flesh on his palms I’d say he was hanging there for several minutes being tortured before his throat was cut. Of course the autopsy will yield a more accurate picture.”
“As will the photographs,” Jack said with a shudder.
“Now this is interesting.” Fenwick leaned closer to the body. He took a pair of tweezers from his bag and started probing the black moustache on the body’s top lip. A few moments later he said. “Yes, I thought so.” He lifted his hand. Caught between the tweezers’ points was something thin black and hairy.
�
�Fake,” Jack said, staring at it.
Fenwick nodded, dropped the false moustache into a polythene bag and returned his attention back to the body’s face. “Can I have some more light here,” he called to an officer holding a torch. The officer swung the beam down to the dead man’s face. Jack glanced at it and took in the details of the corpse; a middle-aged man of Latin extraction judging from the look of the swarthy skin. Fenwick leaned in closer still and the shadow cast by his body obscured Jack’s view.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Fenwick muttered as he worked at the face with the tweezers.
Jack moved in to get a closer look at what the doctor was doing. He appeared to be poking the corpse’s nose with the point of the tweezers. Finally with an almost exultant cry of, “Yes, I thought so,” Fenwick pulled back and rested on his haunches. He looked up at Jack. “Well, what do you make of this?” he said and brandished the tweezers. Jack stared at them. Caught between the points was a blob of something light brown and fleshy.
“What the hell is that?” he said.
“Nose putty,” Fenwick said. “Or mortician’s wax.” He saw the look of bewilderment on Jack face and smiled. “It’s a fake nose, Chief Inspector and, judging from the paleness of the skin beneath it, it looks like your man here is wearing makeup – the theatrical kind.”
Jack crouched down beside the body, took a handkerchief from his pocket and started to wipe greasepaint away from the face. A few minutes later he said, “Good God!” and stood upright.
“What is it, guv? Do you recognise him?” said Fuller, who’d been watching the whole procedure with a kind of macabre fascination.
Jack nodded, still staring down at the body. “Yes, Sergeant. I recognise him. In fact I was talking to him just this afternoon. His name is Tony Turner. He’s an actor.”
“Well, I suppose that would explain the makeup.”
“Yes, but not why he was wearing it. Nor does it explain why he was found nailed to a tree with his throat cut,” Jack added grimly.
3 - TUESDAY
Jack surveyed the scene bleakly. Several yards away WPC Myra Banks was standing, talking to an elderly man wearing a windcheater and corduroy trousers, holding a equally elderly looking golden retriever on a leather leash.
“I take it that’s our dog walker,” Jack said to PC Alan Blake who was standing nearby looking a little green around the gills. Blake nodded and swallowed loudly. He was only twenty-two, not long out of Hendon, and this was his first murder scene.
“Are you all right, Constable?” Jack said to him.
The young constable shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You’ll see worse before you’re finished. Get off home. Come in tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep.”
“Yes, sir.” Blake looked suitably relieved. “Thank you, sir,” he said as he scuttled away from the crime scene.
“Do you remember your first murder, Eddie?” Jack said, watching the constable’s trouser cuffs flapping over the grass as he hurried away.
“It’s etched indelibly on my mind. An old woman killed in a block of flats in Stevenage. Robbed for her pension money, her head split open like a ripe melon. I threw up for two days solid.” He shuddered.
“There’s nothing else I can do here,” Jack said. “I’m going to break the news to Turner’s wife. Give me the keys and I’ll take the Wolseley. Can you get a lift back to the station with one of the others?”
“Don’t worry about me. It’s a mild night. I’ll walk.”
“As you like, but talk to the dog walker first. See if he’s told us all he knows. Myra!” he called to the WPC. “You’re coming with me.”
“Where are we going?” Myra said as she settled into the seat beside Jack.
“Up to the Broadway. A house called Elsinore. We have to break the news to Tony Turner’s wife. It’s why I wanted you along…to comfort her while I make a cup of tea.”
“Great,” Myra said grimly. “I could always make the tea.”
“Your shoulder is more absorbent than mine,” Jack said with a smile.
“I doubt it. But I’ll do my best.”
“Yes, I know you will.” He liked Myra Banks. She was on secondment to CID after a number of years spent in uniform and Jack wanted to make her position permanent. He had the nose of a good detective and, from what he’d seen of her so far, he had yet to be disappointed by her talents.
“Well, not exactly a Danish castle,” Myra said as they pulled in through the gates. “But impressive nonetheless.”
The Turner house was a turn of the century yellow brick mansion, with a red tiled roof and four large picture windows taking up much of the downstairs frontage. Jack pulled up outside the maroon-painted front door and switched off the engine. He took a deep breath and glanced at Myra. “Let’s get this done.” He opened the driver’s door.
The woman who greeted them was plump, elderly with wavy grey hair and rosy-apple cheeks.
“Chief Inspector Callum and Detective Constable Banks to see Mrs Turner,” Jack said brandishing his warrant card.
The plump woman peered at the card myopically before opening the door wide. “Please come in and wait in the hall,” she said. “I’ll tell Lois you’re here.”
Leaving them standing in the spacious hallway, she disappeared through a doorway to the left of them. Jack looked about, noticing the framed playbills hanging from the striped wallpapered walls. Ahead of them was a wide staircase and on the wall at the top of the stairs was an oil painting in an ornate gilt frame.
“The master of the house,” Jack said wryly. “Looking a lot different to when we saw him an hour ago.”
Myra followed his line of sight and stared up at the portrait of a handsome man, relaxing on a high-backed chair, dressed casually in blue slacks and a cream shirt, open at the neck to reveal a dark blue silk cravat. The pose was relaxed, legs crossed, hand on his chin, a cigarette caught between his fingers. The artist had deftly caught the blue-grey cigarette smoke eddying up to mingle with the oh-so-carefully-ruffled hair of the sitter, giving Turner the look of a rather stylish vagabond.
Myra opened her mouth to say something and then snapped it shut as a tall, elegantly-dressed woman stepped into the hallway. From her elaborately coiffed honey-blonde hair to the tips of her expensive Italian stilettos, Lois Turner, née Franklin, looked every inch the high-class model she used to be. With a broad smile that lit up her perfectly made up face she walked towards them, hand extended.
“Lois Turner,” she said. “Very pleased to meet you.”
There was just a hint of an American accent to her voice. Jack shook her hand. “Can we go somewhere and sit down,” he said. “I’m afraid I have some very distressing news about your husband.”
“About Tony?” Lois said, the poise slipping from her features as if someone had thrown a switch. “What is it?”
“If we can just go somewhere and sit down,” Jack said again.
Lois looked flustered. “Yes, yes, of course, come through.”
As Jack followed them through another door leading from the hallway he glanced back up the stairs in time to see a young fair-haired girl duck back out of sight behind a wall.
Lois Turner led them through the house to a smallish room, its walls lined with books, interspersed with more framed playbills, these ones looking older than the ones hanging in the entrance hall. Some of the names were familiar to Jack, but he could see from the bemused look on Myra’s face that names like Herbert Beerbohm-Tree and Mrs Patrick Campbell meant nothing to her.
“This is Tony’s office. Please take a seat,” Lois said and indicated an expensive looking settee upholstered in deep red velvet. “Now,” she said. “Would you mind telling me what all this is about?” She pulled a hard chair out from under an oak desk and sat down rather primly, demurely crossing her ankles and leaning forward slightly as if wanting to catch every word.
“It’s your husband, Mrs Turner,” Jack said. “I’m afraid ther
e’s been an incident.”
“Has he crashed his car again? I keep telling him not to drive so recklessly. Do you know if he’ll be home soon?”
Jack held up his hand to cut her off. “I’m afraid it’s a lot more serious than that.”
The words did not come easily to him but eventually he managed to convey that her husband would not be coming home that night, or any other night for that matter.
When he’d finished speaking a hush settled over the room, broken by Myra who got to her feet and announced she would make a cup of tea.
“That won’t be necessary,” Lois said, her composure restored. “Hester will make one.” She crossed to the desk and pressed a black bell push. A few seconds later the door opened and the plump woman from the hall stepped into the room.
“Tea for our guests, Hester, if you please.”
“Of course,” Hester said and asked if they wanted milk or lemon.
“My rock,” Lois said as the older woman left the room. “I don’t know how I would cope if it wasn’t for Hester. She keeps me organized, and she’s especially good at helping me with Geraldine, my stepdaughter. I can’t leave the house you see.”
“Yes,” Jack said quietly. “I spoke to your husband earlier today. He told me of your problem.”
“Ah, my problem, yes. I suppose that’s one way of putting it.” She sat back down on the hard chair. “So, Tony’s dead,” she mused. “I can see that causing problems, especially for Geraldine. She and I have never got on, and Tony, dear Tony, played the role of peacekeeper throughout our marriage.”
Myra leaned forward in her seat. “Forgive me for saying this, Mrs Turner, but you don’t seem exactly heartbroken that your husband has been killed.”
Lois winced and Jack glared sharply at the young constable. “What WPC Banks means…”
Lois shook herself, cutting him off herself. “I’m sad…of course I’m sad, but I never saw Tony and I making old bones together.”
“Have you any idea who might have done this?” Jack said. “Did your husband have any enemies?”
