The Poisoned Rock: A Sullivan and Broderick Murder Investigation (The Rock Murder Mysteries Book 2)
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THE POISONED ROCK
A SULLIVAN AND BRODERICK MURDER INVESTIGATION
Robert Daws
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in this novel are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or localities is entirely coincidental.
This edition 2016
Copyright © Robert Daws 2016
Robert Daws has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Author’s representative
Paul Stevens at ITG
40 Whitfield Street, London W1T 2RH
For Janet and Clem
Table of Contents
About the author
Prologue
1
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3
4
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Epilogue
Acknowledgments
There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1
About the author
As an actor, Robert Daws has appeared in leading roles in a number of award-winning and long-running British television series, including Jeeves and Wooster, Casualty, The House of Eliott, Outside Edge, Roger Roger, Sword of Honour, Take A Girl Like You, Doc Martin, New Tricks, Midsomer Murders, Rock and Chips, The Royal, Death in Paradise, Father Brown and Poldark.
His recent work for the stage includes the national tours of Michael Frayn’s Alarms and Excursions, and David Harrower’s Blackbird. In the West End, he has recently appeared as Dr John Watson in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, Geoffrey Hammond in Public Property, Jim Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister and John Betjeman in Summoned by Betjeman.
His many BBC radio performances include Arthur Lowe in Dear Arthur, Love John, Ronnie Barker in Goodnight from Him and Chief Inspector Trueman in Trueman and Riley, the long-running police detective series he co-created with writer Brian B Thompson.
Robert’s third Sullivan and Broderick novel – Killing Rock – will be published in early 2017. His first novella, The Rock, has been optioned and is being developed for television.
Prologue
Hotel Mandrago, Gibraltar Town, November 1942
Murder
The couple lay naked on the bed, the young woman’s right arm and leg wrapped around the man’s waist and thigh. Lovers at rest, a perfect post-coital scene.
The flash of a camera bulb made the woman start, her eyes opening wide. The man’s eyes remained closed. From the shadows of the shabbily furnished hotel room, the photographer’s stern voice ordered her to close them again. This she did. She had so little to do and was going to be paid so much that she would do whatever she was told. At first she’d thought the man on the bed was dead. That had alarmed her. But then she heard him breathing. Too much beer, she supposed.
As if dressing the room for the camera, the photographer had laid out the man’s uniform along the bottom of the bed. It was an officer’s tunic, Polish from its markings. Not that the young woman cared. She wanted the wretched business over and done with as quickly as possible.
She had taken it for granted that she would be asked to perform sexually – that was what usually happened – but not on this occasion. Instead, she was to remove all her clothes and then embrace the naked man lying unconscious on the bed. If it was supposed to be a joke, it would be an expensive one. Or was it supposed to be some form of artistic expression? She didn’t care. She wasn’t asking questions and the photographer wasn’t offering any answers. Another camera flash. The job was done.
Three minutes later, the young woman stood at the bedroom door, placing the money she had just been given in her cheap silver-coloured purse. Looking across at the figure in the shadows, she smiled.
‘Thanks.’
Don’t be grateful, thought the photographer, as the woman slipped from the room. Being grateful won’t help you now.
***
Behind the desk of the Hotel Mandrago’s small reception area, its aged and dishevelled owner sat in drunken slumber. His feet were propped up on the desk and the spindly wooden chair he was sitting in was tilted back at a precarious angle. As the young woman crept down the stairs and passed him, she smelled the combined aroma of brandy and sweat hanging heavily in the air. Quickening her step, she crossed the narrow vestibule and was out of the main door before the man could stir.
As she reached the dark, narrow, cobbled street, the cool night air was like a cleansing elixir. She stopped for a moment to take a deep breath before slipping off her high heels and heading barefoot towards the harbour. It was after curfew and there’d be no return across the Spanish border to La Línea tonight. She would seek refuge at Izzo’s Bar. The small, corpulent proprietor, Vittor Izzo, often let her stay in an unused box room at the top of the building. As her pimp, it was in his interests to look after her a little. Marisella’s payment would have to be the usual sexual favour, but with any luck it was late enough in the evening for Vittor’s total inebriation to be guaranteed. Sometimes, if she was lucky, Izzo’s seven year-old son Oskar would awaken and plead with his father to let Marisella sleep in his room. The boy had no mother and was much neglected by his father. Marisella would often sing him gently to sleep and then pray that both she and the child would one day escape from Vittor’s clutches.
Continuing on her path, Marisella concluded that the night had not been as bad as it might have been. She had experienced far more demanding and demeaning scenarios with punters. She now had a purse full of money and her precious baby was home and safe with its grandparents. They would all
eat well this week. The shame of what she had been forced to do to achieve this was something she would not dwell on tonight. Since her husband had run off six months earlier, she had relied on her devoted parents. She had little choice. Thanks to Franco and his regime, poverty and deprivation surrounded her in the small Spanish town where she lived. Although Spain was officially neutral in the war, el Caudillo clearly admired Hitler and his aims. Life for those Spaniards who worked on Gibraltarian soil was not made easy by the dictator.
But for now, all Marisella could think of was sleep. Tomorrow she would turn up for her low-paid job at the fruit and vegetable warehouse near the harbour. Although menial, her day job was considered ‘essential’ work by the Gibraltar authorities, and every day she and several thousand other Spanish workers walked past the border post at Four Corners on their way to their labours. Their presence had become all the more important since the evacuation of the Rock’s civilian population two years earlier. The war and Gibraltar’s vulnerable strategic position in Europe had necessitated the moving of 13,500 citizens to French Morocco and then further afield to Madeira, Britain and the West Indies. By the summer of 1942, the Rock had become little more than a military garrison.
Most nights, Marisella would cross over to her Spanish homeland with genuine relief in her heart. An evening spent with her seven-month-old daughter Rosia in her arms was the goal of each working day. Her other ‘occasional work’ was a dark secret. A means to an end and hateful in the extreme.
Clasping her purse to her bosom, she continued down the lane, a passage made eerie by the lack of street lamps to light the way. Earlier that night, the sky above the Rock had been criss-crossed with the beams of powerful anti-aircraft searchlights. It had only been an exercise, but served as a reminder of the ever-present danger of aerial bombardment from enemy planes. A fellow worker had remarked to her earlier in the day, ‘A blind man on a galloping horse can see that things are getting busy around here.’ It was true. More ships, more equipment, tanks and planes were arriving daily. Provisions were being shipped in at a hugely increased rate. The fruit and vegetable warehouse in which she worked was operating at full capacity. On top of this, the Yanks were everywhere. Thousands of them. Something was brewing. Something big.
Marisella stopped for a moment to rub her foot. The pavement was cold and her toes were chilled. Apart from the constant, distant drone of work from the docks, the lane was silent and deserted. Moving off once more, she was suddenly aware of someone watching her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and shivers, in no way related to the cold, shot down her spine. Turning her head to look behind, she glimpsed a fleeting shadow. Although she knew it was only her imagination, a rising animal fear possessed her. Quickening her pace, she reached a junction. Her choice was to take the longer route along Main Street – not clever after curfew – or the shortcut through a series of smaller passageways that led directly to the harbour. The passages were quicker and she could navigate them blindfolded. Quelling her nerves and cursing her imagination, she decided to take the first, safer route. Crossing the street as swiftly as she could, she disappeared into the darkness of the town.
Fifty metres on, Marisella turned a corner and descended a long flight of steps that would take her down to Main Street. As she did so, she saw at the bottom of the steps a man climbing up towards her. He was wearing a raincoat and a hat obscured his face. In an instant, Marisella was gripped by fear. Somehow she knew that, whoever the stranger might be, he wished her no good. Turning and retracing her steps up the stairway, she reached the top in moments. Almost running now, she turned the corner back onto the lane. Such was her haste, she had little time to see the figure standing directly in front of her. Stopping suddenly just inches from the stranger’s face, Marisella let out a gasp of shock.
It took seconds to focus and steady herself before she could fully take in who it was that blocked her way. She saw – Thank you, Mary, Mother of Jesus! – a smiling woman’s face framed by wisps of honey-coloured hair. Relief spread through Marisella and an embarrassed smile momentarily curled her lips. So pleased was she to see the person standing before her, she did not react when the woman reached out one arm towards her. Instead of the comforting pat she might have been expecting, the woman grabbed Marisella’s hair in a vice like-grip. Pulling it sharply, she wrenched Marisella towards her. With a vicious yank, she snapped Marisella’s head backwards as her other hand struck quickly at her throat. The blade she was holding cut deeply and expertly across the neck, severing the carotid artery and trachea with practised ease, slicing down almost to the bone. Marisella felt little pain as she fought for breath, her throat now filling with her own dark, hot blood and drowning her. In the eight seconds that remained of her life, she could not even cry out her beloved baby’s name – Rosia.
Two days later
Short and stocky Inspector Lorenz stood in what had once been the hallway of the ruined townhouse. It was almost impossible for the middle-aged officer of the Gibraltar Police Force to get a clear view through the darkness that permeated the old building. Torchlight was prohibited by the imposed night-time blackout. Not that it mattered. What he could see in the gloom gave him all the information he needed. It was a scene he had witnessed several times before. The body of a prostitute murdered either by her punter or her pimp. At least, that’s what he supposed. She would be taken to the morgue and, he hoped, identified. The more likely scenario was that she would remain anonymous and disappear into oblivion. Numbered, catalogued and ultimately forgotten.
It was therefore a surprise to discover, in the woman’s silver purse, a wad of crisp Gibraltarian pound notes. More surprising still was the discovery of a photograph of the woman, smiling to camera, holding a small baby in her arms. On the back of the picture, someone had handwritten ‘Mama and Rosia’. The inspector raised an eyebrow. The identity of the young woman might prove easier to discover than he had supposed. As two ambulance men lifted the corpse onto a stretcher, Lorenz stepped out into the passageway to fill his lungs with fresh, clean air.
1
The Union Jack rippled in the warm air that swirled around the upper reaches of the Rock, its vivid red, white and blue standing out against the azure sky above and beyond it. A bold banner, proudly positioned to fly high above the white, box-like military observation post more than 400 metres up on the northern slope of the Rock of Gibraltar.
From her position on the passenger balcony of the terminal of the new Gibraltar International Airport, Tamara Sullivan looked out across the runway, its short length sandwiched between the waters of the Bay of Gibraltar to the west and the Mediterranean to the east. Primarily designed for military aircraft during World War II, it still provided many challenges for modern-day commercial pilots. Not least among those the ever-changing up-currents and down-drafts caused by the Rock itself. That magnificent block of Jurassic limestone thrusting skywards before her had often created perilous and, at times, fatal conditions for take off and landing. Sullivan shivered and decided to turn her thoughts elsewhere.
It had been just six weeks since the thirty-one-year-old detective sergeant had arrived on the Rock. Back then, looking out of the cabin window of the incoming Monarch Airbus transporting her from a cold and wet London to the warmer shores of the Mediterranean, Sullivan had been thrilled at her first sight of the Rock’s towering presence. It was a thrill that had survived intact during her month-and-a-half stay in Gibraltar Town – a vibrant and diverse place, with its mix of ancient and ultra-modern buildings hanging precipitously to the Rock’s lower western slopes and built on reclaimed land taken from the Bay of Gibraltar. Living on one of the great wonders of the natural world had proved an unexpected pleasure for the tall detective with the dark hair and striking good looks that had been passed down to her from her mother’s Irish gene pool.
Although only halfway through her three-month secondment with the Royal Gibraltar Police, Sullivan felt as though she had been on the Rock for much longer. Expec
ting a quiet and rather pedestrian time with the force, she had been surprised by the many challenges that had come her way. Some had been of the welcome variety, others terrifying and life threatening.
In another six weeks, she would be back at the airport, returning to London and the Metropolitan Police Service – and an uncertain future, her once-sure path to promotion and power within the Met blocked forever. But there was no use thinking about that now. Instead she would allow the heat of the morning sun to warm her face for a few minutes more, one last burst of sunlight before re-entering the sleek and beautifully designed terminal building behind her. Unexpectedly, Sullivan found herself not wanting to leave now, even for this short trip. Her journey today would take her to Manchester, then on to the Wirral and her old family home. It was to be a quick, twenty-four-hour visit to celebrate her mother’s birthday and then a return to Gib to finish her secondment. It had always been part of the plan, but the nearer it came, the less Sullivan wanted to go.
Glancing to her right and over to Winston Churchill Avenue – the thoroughfare that crossed the short runway that separated the border with Spain from the Rock itself – Sullivan could see that the road barriers were down and the normally hectic traffic had been halted: a sure sign that an aircraft was about to land. In forty minutes, it would have refuelled and restocked and another 160 passengers would be on board for its return flight to Manchester. With a heavy heart, Tamara Sullivan prepared herself to join them.
2
Among the passengers aboard the Monarch flight about to land at Gibraltar was a gaunt, sallow, elderly gentleman. His patrician looks and air of authority marked him out from his fellow travellers. Sitting in row B, where the extra leg room afforded him the comfort he required, he had spent the flight lost in thoughts both troubling and comforting. Mostly he had been struggling to come to terms with how quickly time had passed. It astounded him. Was it really over a decade since he had received the call to his first meeting at the Cabinet Office in Whitehall?