The Diane Dimbleby Murder Collection Volume 2

by Penelope Sotheby

  He had also set Webster to organizing teams of constables and special officers into search groups to canvas locations from which the ring may have been purchased. This seemed a fruitless process with the large shopping centre of the city of Birmingham being so close and the Internet connecting all areas of the world so easily. But a local search was expected and, while a fairly traditional approach, had more often than not produced useful information.

  There seemed little else he could do until he had information from these avenues of inquiry. He looked morosely at the stack of manila folders with sheets of blue or green paper poking through, stacked irregularly like stale and mouldering layers of pastry. His hand reluctantly reached for the topmost file, a set of witness statements about an arson at a warehouse. He wrinkled his nose, almost smelling the charred wood and smouldering plastic, as his fingers gripped the smooth folder’s edge.

  A blinking light on his desk phone distracted him, almost eliciting a thankful sigh, and he left the folder where it was.

  “Phone first,” he thought to himself. “Might be urgent. The folders will be here when you get back. They’ll always be here, waiting.”

  “Crothers,” he said as the cold receiver touched his ear.

  The tinny voice of PC Foster greeted him.

  “A Miss Diane Dimbleby called for you, Inspector. She seemed to think it’s rather urgent, and she left some information.”

  Darren held in a sigh as he closed his eyes. He should have expected it. Why did the girl have to go to her? She would be like a terrier latched onto a postman’s trouser leg until the case was solved. He couldn’t quite decide whose trouser was going to get savaged, but he had a feeling it might be his.

  Reluctantly, he said, “What did she have to say?” and jotted down the name and address on the corner of a stray sheet of paper. Replacing the phone, he leaned back into his chair, his eyes closed with his fingers rubbing on his temples. He couldn’t decide whether he had a headache coming or if he was mentally preparing himself for another long day.

  ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

  Inspector Crothers looked at the picture of Gary Sandrake.

  “You never can tell,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Tell what, sir?” asked Sergeant Webster.

  The face on his phone was a little puffy, like he was recovering from an allergy to a wasp sting. The eyes were large and gazed simply into the camera. The nose seemed too small for the face, and there was a hint of thinning hair around his temples. He looked like an average young man living a quiet life with normal aspirations for the future.

  “You never can tell,” said the Inspector again. He had learned by now that looks were the least effective indicator of a disturbed mind. The less outward deviance, the easier it was to lull the world into thinking you were harmless. Like Gary.

  “He doesn’t look like the type of fellow to be cutting off fingers and sending them first class, does he?”

  “No sir,” said Sergeant Webster, who was concentrating on the afternoon traffic around the centre of Shrewsbury. Their vehicle didn’t have the lights and siren blaring, so they were just another inconvenience to all of the other road users, to be honked and gesticulated at with wild abandon.

  After receiving Diane’s information, Inspector Crothers had dispatched a PC to the jewellery store to verify the information while he had sent a car to sit at the end of the street and observe the address. He and Webster had pulled up the slim file on Gary Sandrake and found a picture from a few years prior when he had been reissued his driving license after losing his original.

  The file had made slim pickings with little more information than an average member of the public. There had been a drunk and disorderly charge which was from long enough ago that it was probably a university student doing what they do best: drinking and throwing up on someone’s doorstep. A more recent record showed that he had been issued a speeding ticket by the Shrewsbury traffic police, which seemed unusual as he had no car listed under his name. However, the vehicle he had been driving was a small maroon saloon car, and Crothers had issued the license plate and description to all cars and constables on the beat. The car was registered to a Tabatha Stein, Gary’s mother. There had been no word on its location, and it was not at the house. A patrol was heading to his mother’s home, but Crothers did not hold out much hope that it would be there either. He knew that if Gary was the digit mailer, he would be long gone by now, the car parked in a quiet road somewhere miles away.

  Traffic began to ease as they cleared the roads around the town centre. There was still an hour before mothers would fill the residential streets as they jostled to collect their children from school. Sergeant Webster turned onto a road lined on either side with cars, half on the pavement, and negotiated the uneven alley that passed between them, his speed reduced and his senses keen for any animal or small child that might spring from between the cars.

  The area was roughly middle-class, the residents enjoying a comfortable life without the ostentation that excess wealth encouraged. Semi-detached houses faced each other across the lines of vehicles. Low walls and hedges failed to give privacy to the front of the houses whose upper windows seemed to gaze down sadly upon the small gardens. Roughcast covered the upper half of the buildings like a cosmetic cream trying to smooth out the brick wrinkles around the aging eyes. The odd Union Jack flag fluttered weakly from makeshift poles that protruded from walls like a stray unshaven hair.

  Crothers stared through the side window, his mind superimposing his own home upon those outside. He smiled softly and reminisced on the times he used to visit it, times that were ever more sparsely scattered. He could see Gunner, their spaniel that his son had named after his favourite football team, Arsenal. The name could not have been less apt for the dog that greeted everyone, friend or foe, with whips of the tail and drool by the lickful, and who ran for cover when the fireworks began. His wife, Jodie, shooing Gunner from around her legs as she placed her small briefcase on the kitchen table, her other hand cradling a bag of Chinese food to her chest. He could smell the chow mein and feel the crackle of prawn crackers on his tongue, and he swallowed down the saliva flooding his mouth.

  He resolved to make it home for dinner that evening, no matter what the job required. He had spent too many evenings with a limp sandwich spat out of a vending machine that he washed down with coffee so dark and bitter that he almost gagged with each swallow. He knew that his job needed him, people needed him. He helped the thin blue line push back at the evil of the world and give those hard-working people the opportunity to live oblivious to the darkness that threatened to wash down their streets. He would have guilt at leaving files untouched for one evening to enjoy some of that same peace himself, but he could feel his weariness from the recent weeks putting lead into his shoes and ice in his mind.

  He grunted softly to himself as he nodded his resolve and shook off the reverie that had come to rest upon him, an event that had been occurring with increasing frequency over recent weeks. He knew that the moment was inappropriate for daydreaming. There was a woman out there that might still be alive, and she was counting on him, whether she knew it or not. His jaw tightened, teeth grinding against one another, his resolve firmly back on the job.

  Webster turned the car into an almost identical street and slowed alongside a deep brown Ford coupe. He rolled his window down as they pulled alongside and the Ford did the same. A hand smattered with liver spots and raised knuckles that hinted at arthritis came to rest on the sill. Detective Sergeant Barnes was an asset to the squad in his ability to be overlooked as a policeman. His sunken cheeks and the exaggerated crow’s feet around his eyes gave him the look of someone so far past his prime that he could only remember it through black and white photographs. He had the habit of curving his spine slightly and coughing intermittently that, when taken with the rest of his physical appearance, seemed to show someone in their seventies. In fact, he had barely reached sixty.

  “Nothin
g to report.” Barnes muffled a cough with the back of a hand. “Been no-one but the neighbour stop by since we arrived. He was only there five minutes and has been with a visitor ever since.”

  Crothers looked down the street at the low brick wall that shielded the front garden from the street. No chance of anyone sneaking in that way. Anticipating the Inspector’s question, Barnes stated, “’Round back is a six-foot fence in pretty bad shape. Anyone coming over that would bring the whole thing down.”

  “No other means of access?”

  “None that I could see. I took a walk around the neighbourhood when we arrived and left Hoskins here to watch the front. Only chance he’d have of getting in would be through the toilet from the sewer.”

  “Excellent work as always, Barnes.” Crothers gave a sharp nod of approval to the young Hoskins too. “Stay in position and call in if anyone comes close. I want a look at the place.”

  With an affirmation, Barnes started the window back up its track and Webster pulled further down the road into a vacant parking spot a couple of houses down.

  “Looks normal,” said Webster as he reached for the door handle.

  “It’d be easier to do our job if they didn’t.”

  Crothers had one foot out of the door and had paused to look at the upper windows. The tan curtains were drawn, and he was sure that he had seen a flicker of movement, the shadows faintly rippling. He turned his head to Sergeant Webster without moving his eyes from the window.

  “He could be holed up inside, so we go in slow and watchful.”

  “Surely he wouldn’t come back here. It’s the first place we’d look.”

  “If his mind isn’t right, which the finger would suggest, I’m not going to try second guessing him. Keep ‘em peeled.” Crothers pointed two fingers towards his eyes, then flipped his hand to point a single finger at the upper window.

  They walked to the low wall in front of the house and passed through a small black wrought-iron gate that squealed softly on hinges that for a long time had only seen rain as a lubricant. Crothers kept flicking his eyes to the upper windows, but the curtains betrayed no more movement. The windows stared back through the pebble-dashed mask, betraying nothing of what lay beyond.

  They walked up to the large white PVC front door, and Crothers looked through the fan of glass that made up the upper half. A long hallway stretched back to an open white wooden door to the kitchen and stairs ran up to the left, opposite another door around which lurked the corner of an armchair.

  “Stay here and knock in about two minutes.” Crothers had leant in close to Webster’s ear. “I’ll head around the back.”

  Webster acknowledged with a “Sir” and Crothers went to the left, away from the living room window which was also covered in pale grey curtain. A small path of concrete led around the edge of a plain grass lawn and stopped at a tall bare wooden gate. Popping the latch, the gate swung easily inward, and the path continued beyond, passing another PVC door that led to the kitchen and around to a small concrete patio that was hidden from neighbours by a tall wood fence that had clearly seen better days. Crothers stopped to examine the door, but frosted glass blocked any view inside.

  The patio had a simple picnic table in the centre of it, the parasol removed and the wood dark with the dampness of the earlier rain. A large set of patio doors were curtained too, and when Crothers tried the handle he found them firmly locked. A couple of pieces of wood braced the sliding door on the interior. Good protection against a break-in, thought Crothers. The place seemed to be locked up tight from all directions. Either he’s barricaded himself in, or he really was leaving for a while.

  Another window with a curtain upstairs and another smoked glass window which Crothers assumed was a bathroom. The house seemed quiet and empty, except for the glimpse he had earlier. He began to wonder if he had actually seen it when a fabric blind pulled over the kitchen window shook and banged against the glass.

  Crothers darted to the pathway and looked around the side of the house, expecting to see the kitchen door flung open and the rear of Gary Sandrake making for the front of the house. Yet the pathway was quiet, and the door remained shut. Crothers walked swiftly down to the open gate and in a loud whisper told Webster to be ready for a runner.

  Standing at the rear corner of the house, Crothers banged on the kitchen door.

  “Sandrake!” he yelled. “This is the police. We would like to talk with you.”

  He banged again and heard a faint scratching sound from inside.

  “Gary Sandrake, this is the police. We have some questions about some recent events that you might have information on.”

  Crothers paused and was met with no sound. He banged again, a little harder and repeated his initial statement. The scratching returned but nothing more.

  Peering behind him into the backyard, he was sure that the blind was moving again and retreated away from the kitchen door. There was no way anyone was getting out without either he or Webster seeing them.

  Using his knuckle, Crothers tapped on the kitchen window. The blind flew backwards, Crothers taking a step back in surprise as a large white cat, fur fluffed out, pushed through and onto the inside sill.

  “Playing with the cat at a time like this, Inspector.” The familiar voice of Diane Dimbleby came through a broad spacing in the boards of the tall fence that ran around the back yard. “You’ll learn much more by questioning the neighbour.”

  Chapter 4

  “Jake Briggs.”

  The voice was deep and clipped. The speaker was a short man, around 5 foot 6, with thinning grey hair brushed back and dressed in old suit trousers and a crisp cream shirt, both of which were a couple of sizes too large. He stood with his back straight, feet together, and gave the Inspector the impression that he would swing up a salute at any moment.

  “This gentleman has been ever so kind,” said Diane. “He has been telling me about his neighbour.”

  “Nice young man,” said Jake stiffly. “His fiancée is a lovely girl.”

  “What was her name?” enquired the Inspector as he pulled a small black notebook from his pocket and flipped through to a blank page.

  “Shelly. Shelly Newsome I think. Never really asked her last name.”

  “You knew they were getting engaged?”

  Jake motioned to the sofa, and Inspector Crothers took a seat while Diane perched on the edge of a padded chair. He strode over to the oak mantelpiece and turned his back on it to face the Inspector, his hands held behind him.

  “He was proposing a couple of days ago. It was their one-year anniversary, and he was planning a whole thing for them.”

  “A thing?”

  “Dinner to start and then proposing before whisking her away to a fancy hotel on the coast, down in Weston.”

  “Did you see them leave?”

  With a nod, Jake said, “He popped round about 5 o’clock on the night of the meal and left me the food for his cat. It’s on a special diet.” Jake patted his stomach. “Needs to lose some weight.”

  “Don’t we all,” said the Inspector.

  “Then he took his suitcase and said he’d be back in a week.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  “Suit, tie. Both grey I think. Black shoes, scuffed around the toe. He never took much time to polish them.”

  “Nothing unusual about his demeanour?”

  “Nothing at all. The grin on his face was bigger than usual, but that’s understandable. Can I ask what this is all about? Surely the lad isn’t in trouble.”

  “We don’t know much yet, but we are interested in finding his whereabouts as quickly as possible.”

  “That sounds like trouble to me. And I can tell you, Inspector, he’s one of the nicest young men I have ever met. And I’ve met some stinkers.”

  “We just need to find Gary and Shelly as soon as possible. Can you tell me where they were going to dinner?”

  “Lovely place, the old Wolcott Inn just east of Telford, close to Priors
lee.”

  “That was quite the perfect choice,” said Diane. “It’s in such a beautiful location.”

  “Then he was going to a spot along the Priorslee Lake, a small picnic area that they had visited on their second date. Not far from the inn.”

  The Inspector scribbled notes furiously.

  “Any specific name for the place?”

  “None that he told me.”

  “And then?”

  “He had already called her work to get the time off, and they were going straight down to Weston-Super-Mare. Shackleton? Shaftesbury?” Jake paused and stared at the ceiling. “The Sharkesley Hotel. Yes, Sharkesley.”

  “Has he contacted you since leaving?”

  “Not a word. I’ve taken care of the cat before, and I’m sure he has better things to be doing than chatting to an old codger.” Jake reached for a cup and saucer that sat on the far end of the mantle and took a sip. “Tea’s gone cold. Let me fix another pot. A cuppa, Inspector?”

  Inspector Crothers shook his head. He had things to do, places to call and a couple to find.

  “None for me,” said Diane, as Jake collected her cup from the table next to her. “I really should be going. Rufus, my dog, hasn’t been out since this morning. I will be getting a stern talking to when I get home.”

  Inspector Crothers watched Jake leave the room and made to rise when a yelp came from the chair next to him. Turning, he saw Diane gripping her ankle, a look of pain on her face.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” said Diane as she placed her hands on the arms of the chair and levered herself upwards. “A little pressure and…” She yelped again and fell back into the chair, a thin mist of dust filling the air.