by Roy Lewis
Eric hesitated. ‘Let’s just say I got out of there as quickly as I could after she’d signed the papers. Which now make you a wealthy woman.’
‘Which is the reason why you’re interested in me,’ she challenged.
‘Well, it helps,’ he mocked her. ‘By the way, talking of the Chivers family, I got some more information from Linwood Forster, which helps clear up a little mystery.’
‘And what may that be?’
‘Hang on a moment.’ Eric rose from the settee and went through to the small third bedroom he used as an office at home. He opened his briefcase, riffled through the documents it contained, extracted a sheet and returned to sit beside Sharon once again. ‘You remember that letter you showed to me in the file, that seemed to have been left there after a certain amount of weeding had been done?’
Sharon frowned. ‘Of course I remember it, since it was I who drew your attention to it.’
‘Here it is,’ Eric said, showing her the letter. ‘Look at it again.’
I am instructed by my client that this correspondence is now to be regarded as closed. My client refuses to accept any further involvement in the matter in question, and to deny any responsibility for the future development of claims, should they be made, as referred to in earlier correspondence. Indeed, should any further demands be instigated my client reserves the right to institute legal proceedings for libel in regard to matters referred to….
‘I remember it well enough.’
‘Well, when I collected these file documents from the former solicitor to the Chivers Trust, Mr Strudmore, he gossiped to me about this letter, and his view of what had happened. I didn’t actually read it until you showed it to me later. Strudmore had mentioned he’d even checked local papers in Scotland and found a prison sentence was involved. I’ve made no further enquiry about it all because it was irrelevant to the Chivers Trust itself, but in talking to Linwood Forster at his club, he was able to fill me in with most of the details. He confirmed that your grandfather did indeed have some involvement with security matters in Scotland.’
‘He was a spook!’ Sharon laughed, put down her glass, and clapped her hands.
Eric smiled. ‘Well, part-time, anyway. It now seems that part of your family fortune, as built up by grandfather George, was due to investment by the government: they put money into his firms, and in return he used his business as cover to provide them with information.’
‘The dirty dog!’ Sharon exclaimed. ‘What kind of information?’
‘Linwood Forster was prepared to talk about it because it was all so long ago, and so irrelevant these days. It was all in connection with Polaris and the siting of nuclear deterrents at Holy Loch. You know, the government’s insistence on having a British, independent deterrent.’
‘Which we now know was never British, never independent of the Americans, and not really a deterrent anyway.’
‘And based on a nuclear submarine, located near Glasgow, of all places!’ Eric nodded emphatically. ‘Anyway, there was a considerable amount of resistance to the project: local demonstrations, attempts to infiltrate the base, near-rioting, that sort of thing. Your grandfather was one of those people who were instrumental in keeping an eye on things. In his case, not least by maintaining connections with a small Marxist group which included a young woman called Sally Chalmers.’
Sharon twisted her head to stare at Eric. ‘You’re not going to tell me….’
Eric shrugged. ‘According to Linwood Forster, Sally Chalmers and your grandfather became an item.’
‘I don’t believe it. He must have been fifty! And she would have been….’
‘Twenty-two,’ Eric confirmed. ‘But he was wealthy, a charming man, one would guess, lent assistance to the group in apparent sincerity, gained their confidence, and at some stage he and Miss Chalmers became lovers. Then, from the inevitable pillow talk….’
‘He betrayed her! The wicked old bastard!’
‘He got information from her, passed it on to the appropriate quarters, and she was put on trial, along with some of her group. She served a prison term. This letter … well, the rest of the correspondence had been weeded out of the file, but my guess, and Strudmore’s incidentally, who claims to have seen some of the letters, my guess is that Sally Chalmers at some stage later got in touch with your grandmother—’
‘Flora.’
‘Yes. Probably asked her for some kind of compensation, threatened to expose your grandfather … but Flora Chivers was a tough old lady, it would seem. She would have nothing to do with it. This letter we have here, it seems to have been the end of the business.’
Sharon read the letter again, silently. At last she asked, ‘So what happened to this Sally Chalmers?’
Eric shrugged. ‘Linwood Forster didn’t know. She faded into the background, got on with her life I suppose. But there’s the answer to the little mystery surrounding George Chivers and what he was up to in Scotland in the late sixties and seventies.’
Musing, Sharon murmured, ‘You know, it’s maybe not a nice thing to say, but I’m beginning to feel glad that I never knew my grandfather. Doesn’t sound to me as though I’d have liked him. A spook, for God’s sake!’ She shook herself, like a dog throwing off water. ‘And a betraying bastard. Don’t want to think about it. Right, I’ll go stack the dishes.’
‘No, leave it,’ Eric insisted. ‘I’ll see to it, after we’ve had a brandy. I don’t want you getting too tired. We’ve an active night ahead of us.’
‘Promises, promises….’
Eric rose and poured out two brandies, returned to the settee and they sat there for a half hour, chatting inconsequentially. Finally, when the drinks were finished he went out to the kitchen and stacked the dishwasher. He was becoming quite domesticated, he thought wryly. From the other room he heard voices and music: Sharon had switched on the television.
He finished stacking, ran his hands under the tap, picked up a towel and wandered back to the sitting room. Sharon was standing in front of the television set. She reached down and switched it off. When she turned to face him her eyes were wide, her features pale.
‘What’s the matter?’ Eric asked, concerned.
She half turned her head, gesturing towards the television set. ‘The first item … it was about the woman murdered at Tynemouth. They say the body has been identified.’
Eric walked forward and took her in his arms. ‘So what’s the problem?’
She was shaking. ‘The body … the dead woman….’ She raised her shocked face to his. ‘It’s been identified as my cousin.’
‘What?’ Eric said, astonished.
‘That’s right. Coleen Chivers.’
2
The briefing room was packed: additional officers had been drafted in to expand DCI Spate’s team, now that the issues had changed with the receipt of forensic information from the Midlands. The surveillance of Raymond Conroy, and the loss of contact with him, had now metamorphosed into the hunt for a murderer.
Normally on such occasions there would have been a buzz of anticipation, a chattering, murmuring, discussions going on all around the room, but this was different: the room was virtually silent, even down to the rustling of paper. It was as though all the officers in the room were waiting for something dire to occur, holding their breaths for the next bit of bad news. Assistant Chief Constable Jim Charteris was not present, but Charlie Spate was keenly aware of his brooding presence outside the room. He’d be ensconced in his office, but Charlie knew what the man would have on his mind.
Charlie looked down at the file in his hands. A similar file had been passed to each officer in the room. It contained photographs of the dead woman, the crime scene, some close-ups of the marks on the corpse, a list of names with brief notes attached.
‘Right. Listen up.’
Charlie looked around the assembled officers and caught Elaine Start’s glance. Her mouth was twisted in distaste: he knew she was offended by his use of the Americanism. His eyes sli
pped away from her, challenging others in the room.
‘Let’s take a look at these photographs first,’ he announced. ‘Some of them cover the work undertaken by officers in the Midlands. They relate to the killings of three women, the Zodiac killings, and there’s a few shots of the location – now confirmed by forensics – where they died. The details have not yet been made public knowledge, because the results came in only this morning, but the location, this cellar shown in the photographs, is now positively linked to Raymond Conroy by DNA evidence. We’re now certain – not that we ever doubted it much – that Conroy really is the Zodiac Killer. These photographs are for your information and background only. In themselves they give us a reason for looking for Raymond Conroy, but as far as we’re concerned we need to focus on what’s happened up here on our patch. The murder of Coleen Chivers. You’ll all probably know the location where Dickens and Riley found the body. Tynemouth Priory. A car was seen driving away from the location minutes before the body was discovered. No description available, but we can surmise it may well have contained the killer. The arrival of the squad car may well have disturbed Conroy so he was unable to complete his work.’
He held up one of the photographs and waved it. ‘Pay particular attention to this shot of the woman’s breasts. Note the marks across the flesh, a sharp instrument, maybe a knife, more likely a scalpel. Forensic will confirm in more detail later. But check them out against the marks shown on the other dead women. The marks tell us who we’ll be looking for. The guy the newspapers have labelled the Zodiac Killer.’
He paused, letting his glance travel around the silent officers. ‘We all know what that means. Ever since the collapse of the hearing after which Raymond Conroy was released we’ve had the man under surveillance, until he slipped out of sight. We are now aware that there is confirmation from forensic evidence that Conroy was indeed involved in the murder of the three women in the Midlands, in spite of what Mr Justice Abernethy might have concluded after the lawyers had got their teeth into the existing evidence at the time. But now this has happened: the murder of Coleen Chivers. So you know what I’m about to say: it’s absolutely essential that we trace Raymond Conroy, whom we believe has gone to ground somewhere up here in the north-east, essential we find him, bring him in for questioning. The case against him over the Midlands murders has collapsed, of course, but we need to talk to him again now, and urgently. Not for what he did in the Midlands, but for what he’s probably done up here.’
He almost added it was a matter of pride, but refrained from doing so. The room remained silent. He had expected that someone would have raised some doubt, querying whether they were correct in merely assuming the Tynemouth Priory killing had been done by Conroy, irrespective of what had occurred in the Midlands, but no one spoke, though he observed that there was a frown on DS Elaine Start’s brow as she stared at the photograph referred to.
‘So that’s the first task, and our number one priority: find Conroy. But that doesn’t mean we neglect other lines of enquiry. We’ve had information passed to us from London – for once the bastards down there seem to have paid attention to what goes on in the north.’ His comment raised a faint smile on some faces: he was known to be a southerner himself previously from the Met, and they knew that this was a way of trying to bond the group to his objectives. He grunted, then selected a different photograph. ‘This is a photograph of one George Khan. Good-looking bastard, isn’t he? It seems the dead woman was a bit of a randy piece, chief executive of a big company, and that this character was the latest in a line of lovers. Enquiries are currently being made in London as to his whereabouts at the moment: it seems he’s not been seen at his office or home for some days. There’s a view that he might well be up here, though we can’t be certain of that. Anyway, keep your eyes skinned. We can’t ignore the possibility that this killing was motivated by a lovers’ quarrel. So, Meredith, Jones and Sampson, you’ll be checking through the list of men she’d been involved with. Usual stuff. Not least, the last time they might have seen her, nature of their relationship with her, alibis for the night in question. Charlton, you’ll be responsible for liaison with the Met and their contact with the Home Office.’
Charlie took a deep breath. ‘Right. That brings us to one other thing. We may be hunting Raymond Conroy but he had his enemies. Two of them are known to us. I’ve met them myself, a few days ago, here in the north-east. One is Gary Lawson; another is Nick Capaldi. They’re both based in the Midlands but they’re up here, and they think of themselves as hard lads. I don’t want them getting in the way of our enquiries. So you, Salmond, will co-ordinate a search for these two guys, along with DC McManus. I want them hauled in, questioned, and if there’s nothing to be got out of them, I want their arses kicked back to the Midlands, out of our way.’
He closed the file, stuck it under his arm and surveyed the room silently for a few moments. ‘Now we don’t know quite how Coleen Chivers fell into the killer’s hands. We have information that she was at a charity dinner in Gosforth earlier that evening, but left early. She was seen in a bar close by to the Gosforth Park Hotel, probably in the company of a man, but we have no clear description of this person. Maybe we should assume it was Raymond Conroy, but let’s not get carried away. Could have been Khan. We have no identifiable time for her leaving the bar, and there’s been no sighting of her after that event. Her car was discovered nearby: forensic are still combing through it. My guess is we’ll not get much from it. The killer probably took her away in his own car though how the hell he enticed her into it, God only knows. But when she was found, she’d been stripped, so we need to find any items of her clothing that may have been discarded in the area. We also have no information just yet as to the time of death. Dickens and Riley can confirm that it looks as though she was strangled, slashed and then dumped. But all this means you’ve got plenty of lines of enquiry to follow. You’ll see from the sheets in front of you the make-up of the teams, who’s leading the groups, and where your priorities lie.’
He put his head back, challengingly. ‘And let’s get one thing clear. We’re certainly not going to be working in a bubble here. The press are going to be on our necks; the public will be harassing us. I need hardly tell you, so will the top brass. This is urgent, guys. So keep your mouths shut while you follow your enquiries. But first things first. Find Raymond Conroy!’
The groups began to break up, some leaving the room, some staying where they were, studying the file. Elaine Start remained where she was, reading the reports from the forensic labs in the Midlands, studying the photographs. Charlie returned to his office.
Some twenty minutes later there was a light tap on the door and Elaine Start looked in on him. ‘Can you spare me a few minutes, sir?’
Charlie leaned back in his chair and beckoned to her to come in. She closed the door behind her, quietly. There was a slight frown on her face and she seemed a little edgy.
‘So how can I help you, DS Start?’ he said in a formal tone.
There was a hint of mockery in his voice as he adopted the same formality she did when they were in the office together. Whatever happened between them when they were between her sheets was not referred to here. She straightened, opening the file he had given her. ‘It’s about some of the details noted here, sir.’
‘What about them?’
‘Well, the first thing is, the cuts on Coleen Chivers’ breasts. They’re somewhat … crude.’
‘How do you mean?’
Elaine placed several photographs on the desk in front of him. ‘These are the shots taken of the victims of the Zodiac Killer. We all know, because the papers have been screaming about it from the beginning, that the killer seems to have so-called artistic leanings. He got his kicks by keeping the women alive, it seems, in that cellar we now know about, while he used a scalpel to torture them, carving Zodiac signs on their bodies, inking the marks later to outline the sign. I have to admit I don’t see much artistry in them, just a series of cu
ts linking specific points….’
‘I don’t suppose he was able to draw the full figures of Sagittarius and Libra in detail,’ Charlie replied a little irritably, ‘with the victims presumably struggling and yelling. But I get the picture, if you’ll excuse the pun.’
Elaine clearly thought the remark flippant. ‘That’s not really the point I want to make,’ she said. ‘The fact is, if you look at the cuts made on the women in the Midlands they’re clearly defined, precise in their lines. That’s not the case with Coleen Chivers. It’s not even possible to see what design the killer had in mind. To me they just look like … cuts.’
Charlie sighed. ‘I don’t think you can have been listening closely enough to my briefing. A car was seen leaving Tynemouth Priory. Conroy had taken the woman there, naked, strangled her, cut her about—’
‘But previously he’d done that in a secure hideout!’
‘Damn it, he’s not been up here long enough to find a safe house!’ Charlie snapped, losing patience unreasonably. ‘Can’t you see that? Look, my view is that the urge was on the perverted bastard again, he wanted to satisfy it, he grabbed the Chivers woman, strangled her, carved her … but couldn’t do his normal fastidious job on her as he did the others because he didn’t have an available cellar and time. And he was probably disturbed when the police car turned up in Front Street.’ He glared at her. ‘You don’t seem convinced.’
She was silent for a little while. Then she took a sheet from the file and stared at it. ‘This report from the Gosforth lab—’
‘They’ve not had time to produce a full report,’ Charlie interrupted dismissively. ‘It’s just a few findings, preliminary stuff.’
‘But it states that there were traces of the date-rape drug, rohypnol, in the body. There’s no evidence in the other three cases, in the Midlands, of the use of such drugs.’
Charlie sighed theatrically. ‘Detective Sergeant Start, let’s compare like with like before we jump at issues like that. The killing of Coleen Chivers naturally differs from the cases in the Midlands. It wasn’t planned as carefully. There was no safe house where Conroy could hide the woman while he tortured her. And because of the periods during which he held his previous victims, there’s no way we can know whether or not he used rohypnol or any other drug at any particular time in the killings. So just exactly what are you trying to say? What’s bothering you?’
