by Bill WENHAM
“Of course, Sir Alfred.”
Allenby tapped his right finger on the side of his nose a couple of times and Sharpe understood the gesture.
“Just our little secret, your indiscretion and what I’ve just said, eh, Mr. Sharpe. Your cooperation is very much appreciated, I assure you and thank you,” Sir Alfred said and as he was about to turn away, he added, “Those corrections, Sharpe, do them today, there’s a good chap.” Then he turned and left the Society’s offices a much happier man.
In a matter of minutes Sir Alfred’s position had switched from one of defence, to one of attack.
Sharpe stared at the closed door after his Lordship had left. His last comment hadn’t been a request. It had been a bloody order! – and he’d better get on with it. You never knew what kind of strings those bloody magistrates could pull, he thought.
On his way back from Cambridge to his Manor House, Allenby’s mind was extremely busy. Now that he had his target identified, all he had to do was to figure out how and when to destroy him. Even after all these years this was something that would come extremely easily to him.
He would have a relatively free hand and would be above suspicion. Even if Sharpe heard about this later on, it would be highly unlikely that he would connect an incident in Little Carrington with his own visit to Cambridge today.
And even if he did, what was there to prove?
Detective Inspector Middleton had exonerated him of any involvement in Prentiss’s death and whom else would even dare to accuse him?
So, what kind of accident would befall David Bowen, unsuccessful blackmailer, Sir Alfred mused as Ives drove him home in the Rolls.
Chapter Twenty Three
Sgt. Barnett was sitting back behind his own desk and looking much more relaxed and comfortable. Middleton and Bristow stood in front of him.
“Well, Sergeant, as you know, with what we discovered in Mr. Prentiss’s cottage, and which solved the murders for us, we’re done here now. Bristow and I will call in on Sir Alfred as a courtesy and then we’ll head back to Cambridge. I’d like to thank for the loan of your office and…”
He got no further as the front door of the police station flew open and Warren Merton, a man of about forty, burst in. He was looking wild-eyed, shaking and was almost incoherent as he immediately started stammering.
“I-I-I - just, just f-found Old Joe. Old Joe Turner. He’s lying in the l- l-lane behind m-my house – and, Oh, G-God – he’s dead! And there’s blood everywhere!”
Middleton stepped forward and put his hand on the trembling man’s shoulder.
“Calm down, Mr….”
“Merton, sir,” Sgt. Barnett offered, got to his feet and nodded to Mary. She immediately went into the kitchenette.
“Mr. Merton, sit down here, sir,” Bristow said and pushed a chair forward for him, “Take a deep breath and then tell us exactly what you saw. Take your time and tell us slowly.”
She saw Middleton shake his head at her but she ignored him.
Warren Merton sank gratefully into the chair, gasped a couple of times, wiped his face with his hand and took a deep breath as Bristow had suggested. Finally, he said, no longer stammering, “I took my dog out for his morning walk and we’d only gone a few steps when old Charlie started barking and straining at his leash. I didn’t see Joe right away but I guess Charlie knew he was there. Dogs do, don’t they?”
He paused as Mary placed a mug of tea that she’d made earlier on the corner of the desk in front of him. Merton accepted it gratefully and gulped half of it down immediately. Fortunately the pot had sat for a while and the tea wasn’t overly hot.
Merton clutched the mug in both hands and started again.
“Well, like I said, I didn’t see him at first but then I saw this shape lyin’ at the edge of the path. At first I thought it was old Dennie, blind drunk again. He usually is, right, Sergeant? But then I thought, it can’t be Dennie ‘cos its eight o’clock in the morning.”
He paused again and drank some more tea. Middleton and Bristow waited for him to continue but it was obvious that Middleton was getting impatient now. Bristow had her book out and was taking notes.
“When I got closer I could see all the blood and there was Old Joe, face up an’ starin’ at nothin’. He’d ‘ad ‘is bleedin’ throat cut from ear to bleedin’ ear!”
He gulped down the rest of his tea and Mary took back the mug from him.
“Jesus, it gave me quite a bleedin’ turn, I can tell yer. I ain’t never seen nuffin’ like that even in the East End!” Warren Merton was from Battersea and was one of the fairly recent additions to the parish but not over the past year.
“I never seen the others but they must ‘ave looked the same, right? Bleedin’ awful it was, an’ I wish I never seen this one niver. Poor ole Joe. Nosey ole bugger ‘e was, but why would anyone do sumfin’ like that to ‘im?”
He stared at Middleton and Bristow and scowled.
“Ain’t none of us safe ‘ere in Carrington any more?” he asked.
Middleton had no answer to that so he just said, “Mary will type up your statement, Mr. Merton, and Sgt. Barnett will have one of his constables bring it round to your house for you to sign. Right now, I’d like you to show us where you found the body before anyone else discovers it.”
Middleton helped him to his feet. Bristow had already left to start the car. Middleton said, “When we’re done, Mr. Merton, I think you should go back home and try to put this out of your mind if you can.”
Merton just snorted.
“Not much bloody hope of that now, is there? And why aren’t the bleeding pubs open when yer need ‘em? I feel like joining old Dennie fer a skinful right about now.”
He looked at Middleton as they went through the outer office.
“Just ‘ow the ‘ell are we s’posed t’ know what’s goin’ on around ‘ere now that Old Joe’s gawn?”
Outside, Middleton opened up the rear doors of their car and Merton got in. He whistled and his little terrier, Charlie, who had been waiting patiently outside the police station door, also jumped in the back, trailing his leash.
Directed by Merton, Bristow headed for the lane where Old Joe Turner had met his end.
Sgt. Barnett sat back down again at his tiny alternate desk in the outer office. Middleton wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while yet and would still need the use of his office.
“Teas all round, when they get back, please, Mary, because they sure as hell aren’t done here yet,” he said.
He picked up the phone and called Cambridge as Middleton had known he would. He asked them to send their full team over, including medical, since the parish had not yet got a replacement for Doc Brewer.
The dispatcher said that they would be there within the hour.
David Bowen hadn’t been in the pub for several days. In fact he hadn’t even been outside the door of his cottage. He had been too busy with his historical project, his blackmail plans and also planning a murder.
He walked in and took a vacant place at the bar and listened to the various conversations going on around him regarding the killing of Joe Turner. He contributed his own comments but only when directly spoken to.
No point volunteering information unnecessarily, he thought. It had all gone so smoothly and he had been amazed that it had been so easy. It was all over in a split second. Joe had fallen, face up, at the edge of the lane and Bowen had just walked on as if nothing at all had happened.
No one had seen him, his problem had disappeared instantly and he was already in the clear. It had been three murders and now it was four – big deal, he thought, because all of them would be blamed on the same person, whoever that was.
Then Bowen heard a snatch of conversation that sent a chill running down his back and he nearly choked on his beer.
“Well, it couldn’t have been him, could it, because the cops say that old Joe was only killed either late last night or early this morning.”
Bowen put his beer dow
n on the bar because his hand was shaking and he turned to face the speaker. It was Terry Atwell, one of the groomers from the Harriman stables.
“It’s pretty obvious that dead men can’t commit murder, can they? – and you all know, as well as I do, that, hard as it is to believe, old Parker Prentiss did all three of them. They’ve found ample proof too, according to my guv’nor.”
“That’s right, Ter, and he popped off with a heart attack over at the Manor House, didn’t he?” someone said.
“And he’s six feet under right now, I shouldn’t wonder,” another voice added.
Bowen turned back to the bar and downed the rest of his beer in one huge gulp. He ordered another and sat staring at his own reflection in the bar mirror, oblivious of the rest of the conversations going on around him.
Oh, shit, he thought. It had all seemed so simple. Do it and let someone else take the blame. But, at the time, he’d been unaware that there was no one else – not any more. His solution to his problem was already dead and buried.
The police would be looking for him now! He also realized, with another shock to his system, that believing that he wouldn’t need one, he had no alibi for that time either. To say that he’d been at home working on his historical project wouldn’t help much either because no one knew that he even had such a project. No one except Joe Turner, that is, and he wouldn’t be bailing him out now, would he?
To make matters worse, although Bowen didn’t know it, if he mentioned the Historical Society and the police checked it out, Sharpe, true to his pledge to Sir Alfred, would say that he’d never heard of David Bowen.
Bowen could produce the envelope bearing his name and that of the Society but that would prove nothing, especially if Sharpe insisted that nothing had been sent from there. It would suggest that he’d got his informational package from somewhere else and it would also suggest that he’d already lied to the police.
He could also produce his unfinished manuscript but that wouldn’t prove that he’d been working on it during the time Joe Turner was killed either. There was also the fact that he and Joe had had angry words about killing right in front of these same pub customers last evening!
He was, as they say, right up shit creek without a bloody paddle!
He downed his second beer and ordered a double Scotch. He drank half of it in one gulp.
“Celebrating something, David?” Ray, the barman asked.
“What” Bowen said, startled.
“I just asked if you were celebrating something. Not like you to drink Scotch,”
“No, not celebrating. The opposite actually, Ray, because I feel like hell tonight. They say this stuff will ward off a cold and I think I’m getting one.”
“Well, don’t send it over here. I don’t want it,” Ray laughed but gave David an odd look as he turned away to serve other customers.
That was stupid, Bowen said to himself. What the hell did I say that for?
He downed the rest of the Scotch, called out a general ‘Goodnight’ and left the pub. He was physically shaking and wanted to get home quickly. It was getting late and he wanted to check and recheck everything he’d done before during and after killing Joe Turner.
His grandfather’s cutthroat razor, now scrubbed clean and sealed in a plastic bag, was buried amongst the roots of his many runner bean plants at the end of his garden. He had tilled the soil around all of them so that one area wouldn’t stand out. He’d done that just after midnight so that no one would see him. Everyone in the community tended to their vegetable gardens diligently so to have his tilled would not be unusual. Unless the police had good reason to they wouldn’t digging up everyone’s garden it the parish, surely.
After a while, once he was back inside his cottage that night, Bowen decided that he was safe and went to bed.
But in all of his plans, he had badly underestimated Sir Alfred Allenby!
After the first call, the one from Prentiss, Allenby had realized that there would be others and he had recording equipment installed for all of his incoming and outgoing calls.
He had David Bowen’s recorded and undisguised voice making his blackmail demands, should the police ever need it – and if he offered it to them, which he thought to be highly unlikely.
To go to the police would be one solution to his problem but if he did that, he would have to explain to them why he was being blackmailed. He didn’t intend to do that either.
As he saw it, he had two choices – tell the police, let them handle all of it and accept the possible consequences – or simply do away with the source of the problem himself.
He didn’t have to even think for even another second before he made his decision. Situations such as these were what he had been trained for, so many years ago.
Chapter Twenty Four
The Cambridge coroner, Dr. Patricia Derbyshire, knelt beside the body of Joe Turner and examined the gaping wound in his neck. Finally, after several minutes she stood up. Middleton and Bristow were standing opposite and watching her.
“Different kind of weapon from the old lady and the doctor, Paul,” she said as she stripped off her bloodied plastic gloves. She dropped them into a container for disposal later.
“Different?” Middleton asked. “How so?”
Pat Derbyshire pointed at the neck of the body lying between them.
“The wound is much deeper and consequently, much wider. A surgical scalpel did the others and we know that because you found one with Miss Siggers’ body. I think you were meant to find it,” she said.
Middleton looked dubious.
“Possibly, but the initials on it were those of Dr. Brewer and he was already dead,” he said.
“Well, yes, but I believe that a scalpel has a much too short a blade to have inflicted a wound like this. It was done in just one slash of whatever weapon it was,”
“A knife then?” Middleton asked.
“Possibly, Paul,” Dr. Derbyshire said, looking thoughtful.
“Why only possibly, Pat?” Middleton asked.
She frowned slightly.
“Because I’ve seen this type of wound before during my training. Photos of it, at least, gruesome as hell but not the real thing.”
“Was the type of weapon identified?” Bristow asked.
“It was, Sally. The wounds were made by an old fashioned barber shop razor – the Sweeny Todd type that they called a cutthroat.”
Middleton and Bristow glanced at each other.
“And we have a barber shop here in the parish,” Bristow said. “I wonder if they would have one of those.”
“All good barbershops use those, Bristow. Maybe your high fashion hair cutters don’t but a good barber does,” Middleton said.
“Hairstylists do, sir, with what is called a razor cut,” Bristow said. “So, before we go running off to arrest the poor bloody barber, there’s someone else we need to take a look at first.”
“I wasn’t planning to go running off anywhere, Bristow, as you put it, so who else do you have in mind?”
“We also have a hairstylist right here in the village, sir – Ella Thomas, the new blonde bombshell who owns the beauty salon. A lady who has already caused an awful lot of aggravation to a lot of people.”
Middleton smiled indulgently at her.
“Then surely we would be looking at her as a possible victim, Bristow, rather than as the perpetrator of this crime? You haven’t forgotten what I told about women and bloodless crimes, have you?” he said.
Bristow grinned at him and glanced down at the blood covered gloves the coroner had dropped into her waste bag.
“The doc here doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with it, does she sir?” she said cheekily.
“There’s an exception to every rule, Bristow, and Pat handles the aftermath of it. She’s not bloody responsible for it.” Middleton said tersely.
“A hell of a lot of exceptions, actually, Paul, just like the ‘I’ before ‘E’ except after ‘C’ rule. There are proba
bly more exceptions to it than those that fit it, and in this case, as Sally says, I’m one of them,” the coroner said.
“Thank you, doctor,” Bristow said. “We girls need to stick together, don’t we?”
“You are most welcome, Sally. I’m always happy to defend you against this old tyrant of yours.”
“Not so much of the old, thank you very much,” Middleton said.
The coroner grinned at him, regardless of Joe Turner’s dead body lying in front of them.
“You’re never going to win, Paul. I wouldn’t even try if I was you. Two against one is bad enough but when its two women against one mere man, the odds are virtually impossible,” she said and beckoned to the ambulance attendants, indicating that they were ready to release the body.
“Ask Forensics to take a good look at his clothes, please, Pat.” Middleton said.
“And tell them not to bother looking for lipstick traces because my boss says that a woman can’t possibly be responsible,” Bristow added.
Middleton looked at her and started to laugh.
“I like that, Bristow, and I can’t believe that you actually said it.”
“I said what?” Bristow demanded.
“You said that a woman can’t be responsible and I agree with you. I’ve always been of the opinion that all of them were an irresponsible lot,” Middleton said, with a broad grin.
“That’s not what I meant,” Bristow protested.
“Ah, Bristow, but that’s what you said. May I remind you that a good police officer, male or female, should always think before they speak?”
Bristow stood with her forefinger to her lips, looking up at the sky, in a parody of someone thinking.
“Okay, sir, I’ve thought. So, would you like me to drive you back to the Nick, or do you want to bloody well walk?” she said.
“Nice touch, Sally,” Pat Derbyshire laughed. “Personally, I wouldn’t have given the miserable old bugger a choice but then, he’s not my boss. So, you children play nicely now, because I’ve got work to do even if you two haven’t.”
