An Unholy Mess

by Joyce Cato

  He could only hope that Trisha’s business wasn’t urgent.

  Eventually, the congregation began to splinter and troop back to their various homes in the village. In her car, Trisha pulled onto the main road, her face tense. She kept glancing towards her handbag, and the frightening little secret she had hidden away in there.

  She felt as if her whole world was on the brink of collapsing, and right now, the vicar of Heyford Bassett was the only person in the world that she trusted enough to tell. So she’d come back and see him tomorrow.

  Perhaps.

  Back at the house, the police had already set up an incident room in the big empty lounge of flat 2, forensics having given it the all clear. Makeshift chairs and tables had been moved in, along with computers and all the other office paraphernalia of a modern police murder inquiry. The telephone engineers, amidst much speculation, had installed multi-telephone lines and now Jason was sitting at a scarred wooden desk, reading the autopsy report.

  It told him nothing that he hadn’t expected. Margaret had been a reasonably healthy woman of thirty-eight. She had not been pregnant. She had probably not been rendered unconscious before her death. She had not been drunk. She hadn’t taken any illegal drugs – or, at least, none that still remained in her bloodstream – and the only thing of note that the pathologist had to tell him was that she was, in his opinion, underweight. No signs, however, of bulimia or anorexia nervosa.

  Cause of death, obviously, had been the shotgun wound. The technicians had identified the pellets, analysed the lead content, and given him all the information he could possibly want about the cartridge that killed her. Unfortunately, the shot used was one of the most popular brands around, and could have been bought in any sporting goods or gun shop in the country.

  He tossed the report aside and rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. At that moment, Jim Greer walked in.

  ‘Still no sign of the gun, sir. We’ve got a couple of uniforms going through all those in the area with a licence for a shotgun, but we’re in the middle of the huntin’, shootin’ fishin’ brigade here, so we’re looking at hundreds of licensees. It’ll take time to talk to them all.’

  ‘Too much to hope that anyone living here owns a shotgun, I suppose?’ Jason asked, and his sergeant grinned back at him wordlessly. ‘Yeah, thought not,’ Jason sighed.

  It had been one of their first priorities to try and find the murder weapon, and all yesterday afternoon and well into the evening, a team of policemen had been combing the grounds for it. Jason had reasoned that if someone living in the house were responsible for the murder, they wouldn’t have had much time to get rid of the shotgun. It was far more likely to be only superficially hidden, as the killer wouldn’t have dared to keep it in their flat.

  And yet, the gun hadn’t been found.

  ‘Well, there’s three possibilities, Jim,’ he said tiredly. ‘One: either someone from outside came in, shot her, left by the back door taking the gun with him, and by now could have disposed of it as far away as Scotland. Two: someone here shot her, then sneaked out last night and hid it a good distance away. And Bradley thinks he may have heard someone prowling about last night.’

  Jim clucked his tongue. ‘Bad luck not to catch him at it then.’

  ‘We’re short-staffed,’ Jason said, a touch of bitterness mixed in with the fatalism. ‘If I could have had as many men as I’d wanted, a mouse wouldn’t have been able to get out of here unseen last night. And if the judge hadn’t been so concerned with upholding people’s rights, we could have searched the flats and found the weapon yesterday. Unless—’

  ‘Sir?’ Jim asked, his voice rising questioningly.

  Jason sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘Unless, Jim, it’s number three. Which is that somebody in this house has been very clever indeed. And we aren’t even on the right track yet.’

  ‘And that’s the one you’re going for, is it, sir?’

  Jason shrugged. ‘Let’s just say, I’ve just got a feeling that this one is going to be a hard nut to crack.’

  ‘There’s nothing obviously wrong in Franklyn’s flat, anyway,’ Jim said.

  It was standard police procedure to seal the premises of a murder victim, and Jim himself had gone through the entire place and found nothing. Sean had slept last night in an empty flat on the next floor, but would be allowed to return to his own flat later.

  Flat 2, of course, remained sealed.

  Jason reached for a pen.

  ‘Franklyn has an alibi, remember? And if he did arrange for a hit to be made on his wife, he’d hardly be likely to leave anything incriminating lying around, would he?’ He sighed heavily. ‘What I just can’t figure out is why she came here in the first place, Jim.’ He looked towards the room where she’d been found. ‘She’d been at the vicarage long enough to know that flat 2 was empty, so why come in here at all? Unless she was forced to at gunpoint, she must have come voluntarily. To meet someone maybe?’

  ‘A pre-arranged meet?’ Jim said, nodding. ‘It makes sense.’

  ‘But who?’ Jason said with frustration. ‘Not someone already at the party, surely? It would be rather obvious if two people left the party together.’ Suddenly he sat up straight. ‘Paul Waring left the party briefly. Did you check with the shop that he’d actually been in?’

  ‘Yes, sir, one of my first priorities,’ Jim said, a shade reproachfully. Did the boss really think he would let something as important as that slip? ‘I managed to catch them just as they were closing. The owner remembers him coming in because he bought four of their priciest bottles of wine and a good stash of beer. She’s not likely to forget a sale like that. Besides, she’s the sort that notices everything,’ he said wryly. ‘You gotta love the nosy ones. She remembered more or less when he came in, too, and the time fits with when the other witnesses say they saw him leave and return to the party.’

  Jason slumped back in his chair. ‘There’s going to be no easy answers on this one, Jim, I can feel it in my bones. So, what have we got? Margaret leaves the party, and according to Vera, goes into the opposite wing of the house from this one. Why?’

  ‘Perhaps she wanted to get something from her flat first, sir?’

  ‘Then she nips out into the corridor and down here to flat 2,’ he mused, pulling the map of the house that Monica Noble had drawn for him a little closer. ‘See, she bypasses this main foyer,’ he pointed on the map, ‘where the front lift is. The main door is probably only used by those on the second or third floors anyway.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Jim agreed. ‘John Lerwick in flat 3, and the Franklyns would be far more likely to use the side door, here, near the Nobles’ flat. It’s like I said, sir, she must have wanted to go back to her own place first.’

  ‘But for what? Nothing was found on her.’

  ‘Perhaps the killer took whatever it was,’ Jim said, his voice growing a touch excited now. ‘Perhaps they met just so that she could hand it over.’

  ‘So why then kill her?’ Jason pointed out.

  Jim sighed. ‘Could be anything, sir. Perhaps they quarrelled, and things got out of hand.’

  ‘But raised voices would have been overheard by people at the party, surely?’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘They didn’t have any music playing or anything like that. Besides, it couldn’t have been a spur of the moment thing. Whoever she met had a shotgun with him or her. You don’t just lug one of those around for amusement.’

  ‘Unless it belonged to Mrs Franklyn?’ Jim pointed out, but he himself was dubious.

  Jason acknowledged the point.

  ‘Ask her husband if they own a shotgun by all means. But we already know that they don’t have a licence for one, so it would have been illegal if they had. So he’s not likely to cop to it, on that principle alone.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Have the background reports on the Franklyns come in yet?’

  ‘I think so. We managed to get on to their bank before they closed. And there’s a report from the insur
ance office where Franklyn works somewhere.’ Jim began sorting through files. He grunted. ‘Here it is. The bank statements….’ He quickly leafed through them, and nodded. ‘They’re a bit tight for money, especially after getting the mortgage on this place, sir, but they’re not too badly off. No outstanding debts, at any rate.’ He handed the report to Jason, who ignored it. He wasn’t the sort of superior officer who thought a subordinate couldn’t read a bank statement without help.

  ‘And the insurance office?’

  ‘A bit more interesting sir,’ Jim said, speed-reading the constable’s report. ‘According to the secretary who works there, a big promotion opportunity is coming up in the firm. Whoever gets it rises well up in the managerial status and moves into the top job for the whole of Gloucestershire and the Home Counties. According to her, the boss was taking a good look at our Mr Franklyn as a possible contender.’

  ‘So, things were looking up for them?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But Mike Shaw, that’s the chap who did the interview, makes a note here that he thinks the secretary was keeping something back. It might be worth talking to the boss himself. See what he made of Franklyn.’

  ‘Right. Get on it, Jim.’

  ‘It’ll have to wait until tomorrow, sir. No boss I ever knew worked on a Sunday,’ he grinned.

  ‘Apart from our vicar, you mean,’ Jason said, catching sight of Graham Noble, still dressed in his white cassock, entering his flat.

  Jason looked up as one of the uniformed men looked in.

  ‘Yes, Smith?’

  ‘I attended the service, like you asked, sir. Everybody’s talking about the murder, of course, but nothing untoward. No one acting suspicious.’

  Jason nodded. ‘I didn’t really think there would be. Still, you never know.’ Some of the more unbalanced killers really did hang around at the scene of their crimes, lapping up the action. ‘I hope the service wasn’t too much of an ordeal for you, Smith.’

  The young PC grinned. ‘It was better than I thought it would be,’ the constable said. ‘The vicar gave a right good sermon.’ And with that, he departed to resume his sentry duty on the gates.

  Jim glanced back at Jason, who was thinking, not about the murder of Margaret so much, but the fact that Graham Noble gave a good sermon. Somehow he wasn’t all that surprised. There were hidden depths in the vicar of Heyford Bassett that might yet prove useful.

  Unless, of course, it was Graham Noble himself who had been so dead clever yesterday. In which case, Jason would take extreme pleasure in arresting him.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jason walked to the incident room window and pushed it open, wondering irritably when the heat wave was going to end.

  ‘Jim, any chance of requisitioning a few fans?’ he asked without hope. His sergeant looked up from the pile of reports he was reading and grinned. ‘Thought not.’

  It was nearly five o’clock, and all afternoon Vera, John, Monica and Graham Noble had, after being given permission to do so by the forensics team, been busy clearing away the remnants of the party. ‘It’s time to call it a day, Jim. Haven’t you got a home to go to?’

  Jim shrugged without enthusiasm. His in-laws had been invited over for Sunday lunch, and for once, he hadn’t jibbed about having to work at the weekend. Not that he minded his mother-in-law so much, but his father-in-law was a total golfing fanatic who could talk about nothing else. And Jim had always been a rugby stalwart.

  ‘I’ll finish going over the forensic reports. You swan off for the night.’

  Jason made his way back to his desk as his sergeant left, unaware that across the way, Monica had begun to open all the windows in her flat in search of a cooling breeze.

  Jason sighed, undoing yet another shirt button, and began to read. He started with the fingerprint evidence at the crime scene. There were plenty of unknowns, probably belonging to the decorators, and tomorrow morning they’d all have to be fingerprinted and questioned. There were no prints belonging to the victim. Odd that, he thought. But then again, if Margaret had been meeting someone in there, she’d hardly have gone around finding naked surfaces on which to place her hands. Naturally, none of the other vicarage residents had left their prints in flat 2, apart from the Nobles. But then, they were known to have been inside, so this meant very little. Of course, as any police officer could tell you, the person or persons finding a body were always put on the suspect list.

  Not that Jason could seriously believe that a woman like Monica Noble would fire a shotgun at someone. Then he frowned, warning himself to be careful about jumping to conclusions. But then, she was one of those with an alibi.

  Angry at himself for the way his mind kept see-sawing about when it came to the vicar’s attractive wife, he tossed aside the woeful report, and turned next to the detailed reports on the tarpaulins themselves.

  And there was not much there for a copper to get his teeth into, either. Or rather, there was far too much there to be of any real use. The tarpaulins were literally smothered with forensic evidence. Paint. Turps. Plaster. Lichens. Dust. And food remnants, no doubt from dozens of packed lunches. A whole army might have trampled over it. He looked up as Jim re-appeared, grumbling, in the doorway.

  ‘Forgot my damned car keys,’ the younger man muttered in explanation, looking vaguely around.

  ‘You ought to get one of those gizmos that you can put onto a key ring that beeps when you whistle it,’ Jason muttered. ‘Hello, this is interesting,’ he added, suddenly sitting up straighter.

  ‘Sir?’ Jim stopped his search and looked up, interested.

  ‘The expert’s comments about the bloodstains,’ Jason said, distractedly speed-reading his way through to the end.

  Although he spoke in a normal voice, on the still summer air, his voice carried far enough to be distinctly audible to Monica Noble over in her flat, who was getting ready for a bath. She sighed, and began to walk towards the window to shut it.

  In the incident room, Jason continued to speak. ‘According to the expert, the splatter marks are consistent with Margaret being shot in the room, at a distance of about six feet, but what do you make of these “mirror images” of certain bloodstains that they found?’

  Monica clasped the window latch, her mind on a lovely cool bath.

  ‘Like it says here, sir,’ Jim said, ‘they probably happened when the tarpaulin was folded over her. Where the two sides met, the bloodstains were transferred from one side of the tarpaulin to the other.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Sir!’ an excited young constable rushed in, his voice ringing loud with self-importance. ‘We’ve just got this in,’ the constable handed Jason a piece of paper. ‘Apparently, the victim called the local station the morning before her death, sir. To report a crime.’

  ‘I can read,’ Jason said dryly. But why was he only hearing about this now?

  Jim, tense and alert, watched Jason’s face as he scanned the report.

  ‘According to Mrs Franklyn, a very valuable pair of diamond and sapphire earrings had been stolen. She accused Carol-Ann Clancy,’ Jason summed it up succinctly.

  Jim whistled. ‘Could it really be that simple?’

  Jason shook his head, thoughtfully. An accusation of petty theft wasn’t much of a motive he thought – unless they came across something to indicate that Carol-Ann was mentally unbalanced as well.

  In her bathroom, Monica froze, appalled. She strained her ears, listening in vain for more conversation between the policemen, then when there was none, reluctantly closed the window. They must have gone into another room. Damn! She sat down abruptly on the edge of the bath and in a daze, turned on the taps.

  She began to feel just a little bit sick. Carol-Ann was one of those who hadn’t been present at the party when the shot was fired and that alone put her on the suspect list. Did the police really think that she could have done it? All over a pair of stupid earrings? She told herself she was panicking over nothing, and poured some bath salts into the tub. Then she stripped
and climbed in. Although she knew her daughter wouldn’t hurt a fly, how could she make Jason believe it? She couldn’t just sit back and let Carol-Ann come under serious suspicion. She just couldn’t!

  But what could she do about it, short of finding the real killer herself?

  Back in the incident room, Jim left, and Jason turned back once more to the reports. Something nagged at him – something that wasn’t quite right. He reached for the pictures of the murder scene and spent several long minutes looking at them. But whatever had briefly teased at the back of his brain had gone. He was simply too tired to think properly anymore. With a sigh, he told everybody but a token PC to leave for the night, and headed to his own car.

  On the top floor, in Flat 9, Joan Dix sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed, staring at the wall opposite. She was pale and trembling, and suffering just a little from shock.

  Julie had long since taken the train to Cheltenham for some ‘music and life’, as she’d put it to her mother. She’d had enough of death and police, and being cooped up in the house.

  Thus abandoned, the hours had dragged by and Joan had started to do what she always did in times of crisis. She’d cleaned. Vacuumed every square inch of carpet, and polished every wooden surface. No room had been spared her obsessive attentions – not even her daughter’s bedroom. Which was how she’d come across the letter hidden in her daughter’s lingerie drawer.

  She’d just emptied the contents of all the drawers to re-line them with paper, as she’d done with her own vanity table drawers not ten minutes before. At first, she’d picked up the letter without a thought. Then she’d noticed the pink ribbon that was still looped around it, which looked as if it had once bound a whole stack of letters, and became instantly suspicious. In this age of computer emails and texts, who bothered to actually put pen to paper? Unless it was in the cause of romance, that is?

  A quick glance at the masculine handwriting had got her heart thumping. Without a qualm she’d removed the pieces of expensive notepaper, and what she’d just read on them terrified her. And made her the only person in the vicarage on that sun-baked evening to actually feel cold.