Making a Killing

by Bud Craig

  “Nor did anybody else,” I said. “What did you do in the police?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you because of confidentiality. It was quite a wide-ranging role.”

  It was clear she wasn’t going to say any more. It probably wasn’t relevant, but I was curious. I remembered Steve telling me he wasn’t allowed to know what Colette was doing, but he had surmised she was in witness protection or the special branch. Anyway, it was time I moved things on a bit.

  “How did you and Adam meet?”

  “It was about three years ago at a party in Chiswick. We’d both had a lot to drink and got talking, well, flirting. We exchanged numbers and met a couple of days later. There was still a strong attraction when we were sober.”

  “The acid test.”

  “Quite. Within six months I’d bought this house and we moved in together. Adam helped me out financially, but he didn’t want his name on the deeds for tax reasons, he said. I’d left the Met and Adam was happy to come to Manchester with me.”

  Would this whirlwind romance have lasted the course if Adam Jennings hadn’t died? There was no way of knowing now.

  “Let me go through a few things with you, Colette,” I said. “This will be difficult but can you remind me of how you found out Adam was dead?”

  She twisted her hands together slowly, swallowing hard before speaking.

  “It was our gardener who found him.”

  I looked out of the window at the enormous back garden. I had lived without a garden since Louise and I had split up. I hadn’t missed it. I like flowers and couldn’t help but admire Colette’s gardener’s handiwork, but that was as far as it went. Gardening was too much like hard work and it was the sort of thing only grown-up people did. I’d been expecting to grow up for years but was in no hurry. Colette went on with her account.

  “It was a Saturday. Adam hadn’t been back long from his last trip. I got up early and he was having a lie-in. As far as I know he was still fast asleep about ten o’clock when I left.”

  “Right.”

  “I’d arranged to meet a friend at Dunham Massey, the National Trust place. We were planning to have coffee first, then a walk round the grounds, then have lunch. Well, that never worked out, did it?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Take your time,” I said.

  “I’d just got there when my friend rang to say she couldn’t make it, her daughter was ill and she had to look after the grandchildren.”

  I noted this down. Force of habit. It probably wasn’t important.

  “What time was this?”

  She pursed her lips for a moment, concentrating.

  “It would have been after eleven when I got there.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I had a coffee and read my book for a bit. I had a quick look round the National Trust shop and then left for home.”

  She puffed out her cheeks, fingering her top lip.

  “As I pulled up at my house, Janice came flying out of the house, screaming.”

  “Janice?”

  “Sorry, the gardener’s called Janice.”

  “Right.”

  “She flung her arms round me as I got out of the car. ‘It’s Adam,’ she said, ‘something terrible’s happened.’ She was sobbing and trembling. Her voice was shaking, she could hardly get the words out… she said she’d rung the bell but got no answer, so she used her key and went in.”

  Colette sighed and looked near to tears. These memories had brought out the emotions I thought had lain hidden.

  “Sorry, I…”

  “It’s OK, no rush.”

  “Janice calmed down a bit. She said, ‘You’ll need to prepare yourself for a shock. He’s in the living room.’ I followed her into the house. Adam was lying on the floor with a… with a knife through his chest. There was… blood on his shirt, some had seeped onto the carpet.”

  I wondered if she would get through this but it had to be done. Eventually she went on.

  “I was pretty sure he was dead, but couldn’t accept it somehow. Neither of us knew what to do. We went into the living room and sat on the settee for a few moments. Then I dialled 999 and asked for police and ambulance.”

  She was breathing heavily by now as if she were exhausted.

  “Well, a police officer arrived. Detective Sergeant somebody. He sent us into the kitchen while the paramedics had a look at Adam. He asked us lots of questions as you can imagine, took our fingerprints and said they would have to search the house and garden. Janice and I went to her house for the night.”

  “Right. Anything else?”

  “Not really. By this time the police had confirmed Adam was dead.”

  “Have you got a number for Janice?”

  She searched in her bag and handed me a card for JL Garden Design. I slipped the card in my jeans pocket and carried on with the interview.

  “Did the police tell you anything else?”

  “Not straight away, but later they said somebody had assaulted Adam, then stabbed him through the heart with a kitchen knife. They estimated he must have died between eleven and twelve.”

  While Colette was in Dunham Massey, in other words.

  “Was Adam expecting anyone that day?”

  “No, he didn’t have many visitors.”

  “Let’s move on,” I said. “Had you any idea Adam was also Peter Goodall?”

  “Of course not. I came across some weird situations in my years in the police but I never thought any of them would apply to me.”

  “How do you feel about it now?”

  She shook her head as if lost for words.

  “Stunned, I guess. As for this double life Adam was supposed to have been leading, well, it’s still hard to believe.”

  “It occurs to me you can’t have spent much time together.”

  I realised I had said the same thing to Tess about her and Peter.

  “Adam’s job took him away a lot and I often went to yoga conferences and held weekend courses at hotels around the north of England.”

  I wondered if she had told me all this the last time we met and I’d forgotten. Now it may have a relevance it didn’t have then.

  “The lifestyle suited us. We had no desire for kids and when we met up again after a few days away, we were always glad to see one another.”

  I was reminded of what my relationship with Louise was like now. We were always pleased to see each other, something I was afraid we would lose if we moved in together. More relevant right now was the similarity of the two relationships Jennings had got involved in. Had he deliberately chosen women who didn’t mind him being away to help him set up his double life? Women who didn’t want children?

  “Did you believe Adam had been faithful to you since you met?”

  She shrugged.

  “I guess so. In the light of what I now know, I got it wrong. He could have been up to all sorts.”

  “He could indeed and so could you.”

  I wanted to shake her up a bit, get a positive reaction.

  “I could but it’s none of your business.”

  “Except that if you were involved with a man who was, you know, jealous, controlling,” I said, “he might be a suspect.”

  “I don’t know anybody like that.”

  You’re lucky then, I almost said.

  “If you had found out about Adam’s other life, that would be a motive for murder, wouldn’t it?”

  She sighed as though running out of patience.

  “The police have been through all that and I’ll tell you what I told them. I had no idea about Adam being Peter Goodall until he died.”

  We shared a tense silence then I went on with my questioning.

  “I understand you have met Tess Weekes.”

  “Yes.”

  “She told me she got the impression the police considered her a suspect.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well, the partner is always under suspi
cion,” I said. “She usually inherits the victim’s worldly goods for one thing.”

  “That doesn't apply to me. Adam didn’t leave a will and when he died, he only had about three hundred quid in his wallet.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Try as they might, the CID couldn’t unearth any documents for Adam Jennings. No passport, no birth certificate, no driving licence. No sign of a bank account, cheque book, credit card.”

  “Bloody hell. What about his business? Was there any paperwork for that?”

  Colette shook her head.

  “How did he manage then?”

  “The business side of it is still a mystery to me. I never asked him about it. The life of a financial advisor held no fascination for me.”

  I couldn’t blame her for that.

  “As for the personal stuff,” she went on, “passport, driving license etc., think about it, Gus. How often does anybody need any of those things?”

  “Hardly at all.”

  “And you can be known by any name you like.”

  I had no idea where to go from here, but Colette had more to say.

  “Fortunately, Adam paid me half the mortgage in cash every month. He also gave me a lot of Ancarner shares when we got together and my broker advised me to sell them a few months before Adam died. Good advice as it turned out.”

  One motive less.

  “Listen, Gus,” she went on, “before you ask, I didn’t kill him. I would never have hurt him and I wasn’t here at the time he died.”

  “Did Tess say anything to you that might help?”

  She shrugged.

  “Nothing significant. We talked about coping devices, you know, what we do to keep ourselves sane. Yoga does it for me. Tess walks along the coast with her dog every morning at eight thirty precisely. She’s afraid she’s developing OCD.”

  “I wouldn’t blame her if she had.”

  “She’s had so many people invading her privacy. Police, reporters, bloody television cameras outside her house at all hours of the day and night.”

  “You must have had the same.”

  She shrugged.

  “It died down very quickly in my case. Peter Goodall was more newsworthy than Adam Jennings because of the Ancarner business.”

  That didn’t make sense, but the media’s priorities were a closed book to me. Colette stood up with an air of finality.

  “Well, if that’s all.”

  I got up, knowing a hint when I saw one. On my way out I thought of something else to ask her.

  “Do you reckon any of the neighbours might know anything?”

  “You could try Ronnie, the ageing hippy across the road, number seventeen. He’s as nosy as they come, doesn’t miss much.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I crossed the street, thinking over the interview with Colette. Why were there no records of Adam’s business? I began to wonder if he just told people he was a financial advisor. Nobody would question it, would they? If anybody asked him for advice, he could put them off by saying he’d get back to them or he was too busy to take on any more work.

  I couldn’t help wondering if somehow Colette had found out about Adam’s other life. How would she have reacted to that? As I knocked on Hippy Ronnie’s door, I thought I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye, but dismissed it from my mind. After waiting a few minutes, I realised there was nobody in. I could easily come back later.

  My next job was to talk to Janice, the gardener. Her house in Bury was only a mile away so I walked, leaving the car parked outside Colette’s house. I needed the exercise and it gave me a chance to think about what I had discovered so far. I had to ask the way twice but eventually found the seventies semi I wanted.

  A tall, startlingly attractive woman in tight jeans and t-shirt opened her door. I thought I may have seen her before but had no idea where.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Are you Janice?”

  “Yeah.”

  I handed her a card.

  “Gus Keane, GRK Investigations. I’m looking into the death of Adam Jennings.”

  “Yeah, Colette said you’d be in touch. Come in.”

  We went into her living room. None of the furniture matched. I wondered if this was deliberate or she had just got what she could afford. I sat in a battered armchair, while Janice made herself comfortable on a rocking chair. She looked at me for longer than strictly necessary.

  “You’re Rachel’s dad, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, how did you…?”

  “I’m the guitarist in the Lazers.”

  Her Lancashire vowels stood out to a Manc like me. Just a few miles from the centre of Manchester the accent was different, but Louise never could hear it.

  “Rachel’s band. I thought you looked familiar. I didn’t know you were a gardener.”

  “Oh, yeah, been doing it for years, got certificates and everything.”

  “Well, as you probably know, Tess Weekes, Peter Goodall’s partner in the Isle of Man, has asked me to investigate his murder.”

  “Yeah. A bit late in the day if you ask me but I’ll help all I can. I guess you want me to tell you about finding Adam’s body.”

  “Please, if it’s OK.”

  “Yeah, no worries.”

  When she’d finished it was obvious her account matched what Colette had said. The events of that Sunday morning two years ago must have lived with her.

  “Did you notice anything unusual at the time?”

  “Apart from a dead body, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  “The house seemed much as usual.”

  “What about outside the house? Did you see anyone or anything in the street, the garden, anywhere?”

  “Don’t think so… a couple of cars went past, I reckon, but nothing memorable.”

  The expression ‘getting nowhere fast’ sprang to mind. Time to move on.

  “Can I ask you what you make of Colette?”

  Janice smiled at the mention of Colette’s name.

  “We’ve become friends since I’ve been her gardener. I really like her. Adam’s death brought us closer somehow.”

  “I can see how it would.”

  “Colette comes across as shy, the complete opposite of me, but that’s dead superficial. She seems a bit underconfident, but I reckon she’s determined in a quiet sort of way. When we were planning her garden, she knew what she wanted and that’s what she got. I think she might be like that in the rest of her life too.”

  “You must be dedicated to call round on a Sunday morning.”

  She shrugged.

  “I love my work. It’s not a nine to five job, I do it as and when I need to. I needed to tidy up the garden and that was the only day I was free to do it.”

  “How do you fit it in with your music?”

  “I manage somehow. I’m lucky, I get paid for doing the two things I enjoy most in the world.”

  “What did you think of Adam?”

  “I only met him a few times, he was nearly always away. He seemed nice enough, I suppose. The garden was Colette’s domain so I never had much to do with him. To be honest, I’d hardly given him a thought until he died. Then finding out about his double life, well, it was a hell of a shock.”

  “Did you fancy him?”

  This was a question that just came to me out of nowhere. It might lead somewhere and it might not.

  “Did I bollocks,” she said. “The police tried that angle. I suppose it’s understandable but they got nowhere so I suggest you don’t waste your time.”

  “That’s me told.” I smiled.

  “Tell you what, Gus, there is something that does give me a motive for killing Adam, but only if I knew he was also Peter Goodall.”

  Is this a wind-up? I asked myself.

  “Go on.”

  “Ancarner owed me thousands for some landscaping I did on a hospital just outside Derby.”

  Janice was only one of many who were feeling the effects of the Ancarner collap
se. People had lost their jobs, maybe their homes. Had one of them been so traumatised that they wanted to kill the man responsible? Was Janice Lolbern that person?

  “What are your chances of getting the money?”

  “Slim. The whole thing makes me so angry. It’s like they’ve brought slavery back – you do all this work and never get paid.”

  “What have you done about it?”

  “Well, a group of us have got together. We’re taking it through the courts. That’ll take forever, but what the hell, as long as the lawyers make money out of it.”

  We could get into a political discussion if we weren’t careful. I had to focus on who did or might have done the murder.

  “You might want to kill someone, but you’d have to know who to kill,” I said.

  “Sorry?”

  “As you said a minute ago, you’d have to know Jennings was Goodall to want to kill him.”

  She nodded. We went on talking for a while. After we’d been round in circles at least twice, I left.

  * * *

  I walked back to Ronnie Bracken’s house. As soon as I knocked, he came to his front door as if he was expecting me. He was maybe sixty odd, skinny with stubble and long, untidy grey hair.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you Ronnie Bracken?”

  He looked me up and down. I did the same to him, taking in his Fortunate Son t-shirt and fading Levi’s.

  “Yeah.”

  I passed him a GRK Investigations card, while I explained who I was and what I wanted.

  “Come in, mate,” he said as if I had identified the password correctly.

  He took me into a disappointingly tidy and conventional living room. We sat down on armchairs.

  “I see you’re a Creedence fan,” I said.

  “How the hell did you know that?”

  I pointed to his chest.

  “The t-shirt.”

  He smiled.

  “Oh, yeah. Best band ever.”

  Music was always a good opening but the discussion about what was their best album threatened to go on indefinitely. Eventually we settled on Cosmo’s Factory and I could get to what I had come for.

  “Anyway, the day Adam Jennings was killed,” I said.