Murder Club

by Mark Pearson

  ‘I guess only Dr Chilvers can tell you that.’

  53.

  DELANEY SAT IN his car with the engine running, an unlit cigarette between his lips as he looked out of the window.

  The heavy precipitation promised by forecasters and amateur pundits all day was yet to materialise. Delaney watched the glistening snowflakes crystallising like pieces of coral fusing together on the ground. An ice carpet built up of millions and millions of flakes, no one of them alike, each unique and yet coming together.

  Delaney wished he could manage that with the various elements of the cases he was working on. Fit the disparate particles together and make some sense.

  Patricia Hunt had lied to him. He knew that much. Or if she had not lied exactly, had not told him the entire truth. A sin of omission rather than commission, as the brothers and sisters back at Ballydehob would have told him. The kind of brothers and sisters who don’t tease you on your birthday or give you home-made Christmas presents. The kind of brothers and sisters who would put the fear of God in you and made sure it stayed there.

  Delaney didn’t read the Holy Book much any more. But what he did read, and could read very well, was people. Not just the old body-language trick of people looking up and to the left if they remembered something when asked a question, or up and to the right if they were making up the answer. No, Delaney knew intuitively. Maybe the story he had told his daughter Siobhan the other night was true, he thought to himself as he dragged his thumb across the wheel of his lighter, scratching against the flint and flaring it into flame. He lit his cigarette and took a drag. Not long to go to New Year’s Eve and he was making a conscious effort to cut down. It wasn’t so much Kate’s wafting of her fingers when he came in from having one, or the fact he didn’t want to smoke around his newborn baby when he or she was born. Well, perhaps it was. But it was mainly Siobhan’s critical eyes that spurred him on. Family, he thought to himself, what a powerful thing it is. How it makes people and breaks people. Nearly broke him, and he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  But what was happening in the Hunt family? Patricia Hunt was not being honest with him. And, in his experience, people who were not honest with the police usually had a very good reason not to be so.

  Kate Walker fished the herbal teabag from the mug it had been sitting in, white china with the words ‘I’d rather be in Ballydehob’ written on the front. She had ordered it for Jack online, but somehow appropriated it for herself. Crystal Mountain organic Himalayan green tea. Blended with four botanical herbs, she discovered from the packet: peppermint, angelica, lemon verbena and ginseng. It was supposed to create a deliciously refreshing infusion that would awaken the mind and revitalise the body. Kate blew on the surface, took a cautious sip then added a squirt of honey from a squeezy bottle she kept on her desk. She liked the drink and found it worked for her. Maybe it was a combination of a sense of well-being from being pregnant and giving up the alcohol. Maybe it wasn’t. One thing she did know for sure, though, was that it wasn’t a few glasses of ice-chilled Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc after a hard day’s work that she missed. It was the jolt in the morning that the espresso machine in her kitchen gave her. Coffee was her secret vice. In that respect, she empathised with Jack’s senior boss Superintendent George Napier, if with little else. She took a sip of her tea and permitted herself a small smile. Actually she empathised with the man in one other major way. He had to deal with Detective Inspector Jack Delaney and that could drive any man, or woman, to stronger stimulants than freshly ground Jamaican Blue.

  She pulled out the folder she had recently liberated from the courier’s padded envelope and started reading the medical files on the missing man. The Reverend Jeremy Hunt. Last seen in the parish some twenty years previously. She pulled her notepad towards her and started to make notes, correcting herself as she did so. According to the conversation she had just had with Jack, he hadn’t actually been seen twenty years ago. Just made a phone call and never turned up. Jack had put a call though to immigration to chase up entry and exit visas, but, as she well knew, the wheels of that particular bureaucratic engine could turn very slowly, and neither of them had access to the kind of grease required to speed up their progress. Kate made a few jottings as she turned the pages of the various reports and papers, not just Jeremy Hunt’s medical record but his history of service through Africa in the Seventies onwards. Her cup of tea grew cool.

  After a while, she picked up her phone and punched a speed-dial button.

  ‘Hey, Jack,’ she said as the call was answered. ‘Whoever we dug up yesterday from St Luke’s church …’

  ‘Go on,’ said the familiar voice.

  ‘Are you smoking?’

  ‘Never mind that.’ Delaney adopted a professional tone that didn’t fool Kate for one second. ‘What do you want to tell me, Doctor Walker?’

  ‘Well, Detective Inspector Delaney, I can tell you for a fact that whoever it was we dug up … it wasn’t Jeremy Hunt!’

  54.

  PC DANNY VINEM and PC Bob Wilkinson were out on foot and none too happy about it.

  ‘Jeez, Bob,’ said Danny. ‘Why couldn’t they give us a car? My plates are freezing here.’

  ‘Feet are a part of the job. You know that, Danny.’

  ‘I think I’m going to go into CID,’ he continued as the two of them walked to the top end of Oxford Street. ‘Yeah, lookit …’

  Bob Wilkinson stopped and stared at him. ‘Did you just say “lookit” to me?’

  The younger constable shrugged. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what about it, Danny Vine. You ever use the expression, “lookit”, “innit” or “knowwhat-imean”, and I will stamp on your size-ten plates of meat, and then you will really know what chilblains are.’

  ‘You going racist on me, Bob?’

  ‘I’ll go racist with my asp up your arse in a minute.’

  ‘Seriously though, why not?’ Danny persisted as they passed the only pub genuinely to be found on Oxford Street, The Tottenham.

  ‘Did you know, Danny, that in 1852 there were thirty-eight pubs in Oxford Street and now there is only one?’ Bob jerked his thumb sideways as they passed it. ‘Now, if that ain’t a sign of the times, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘Seriously though, Bob, what do you reckon? Should I go for CID?’

  ‘Get to work a bit closer with the lovely Sally Cartwright. Is that the idea?’

  Danny Vine shook his head, a little flustered. ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘You don’t have to be coy with me, son. I’ve worn out enough shoe leather in this game to know a thing or two or the mating dance of the lesser spotted constable.’

  They turned left at the intersection and walked up Tottenham Court Road. The snow underfoot had turned to mush although the temperature was definitely dropping again.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Bob. She’s an attractive woman.’

  ‘She’s gorgeous. Clever. Personable,’ Bob Wilkinson agreed. ‘If I was sixty-eight years younger, I might be giving you a run for your money.’

  ‘But she’s made it quite clear she’s not interested in me. Can’t say I blame her after what happened.’

  ‘The guy got what was coming to him, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Jack Delaney sure don’t take no prisoners, does he?’ said Danny.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘First Michael Hill and now Michael Robinson. Both taken out. You’ve heard the gossip.’

  ‘What, he don’t like people with the name Michael?’

  ‘Couldn’t blame him if he did. I was just saying …’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Seriously, Danny, DI Jack Delaney may have a lot of enemies on the force, but he’s got a lot of friends too.’

  ‘Yeah I know. Jeez, Bob! I didn’t mean anything by anything.’

  ‘Good. That’s that then.’

  ‘But CID, you know. People like Jack, they get t
o make a difference.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘That’s what I want.’

  ‘We make a difference too, lad.’

  ‘What, out tramping in the cold and snow, homeless shelter after homeless shelter?’

  ‘You think CID just sit around in warm pubs drinking mulled wine this time of year, and waiting for inspiration to strike?’

  ‘Guinness maybe,’ Danny laughed and held up his hand before Bob Wilkinson could reply. ‘Joke, Bob. Joke.’

  The constable shook his head. ‘Well, you might just be right on that one.’

  Five minutes later and they were in the offices of one of the many homeless shelters dotted around the capital. Not the one Bible Steve was usually taken to. That had been their first port of call. Then lots more.

  The woman in charge of the centre was in her fifties, with a plump figure, thick dark hair and a sense of energy and enthusiasm that was a dramatic contrast to the hangdog attitude of Bob Wilkinson.

  ‘So how can I help you, officers? My name is Marian Clark.’

  ‘We’re just constables, ma’am,’ replied Wilkinson, although PC Danny Vine here has plans to become the next Commissioner.’

  Marian Clark smiled at the young constable. ‘Well, as the great man once said … you have to have a dream in the first place, for that dream to come true.’

  ‘William Shakespeare?’ asked Danny Vine.

  ‘Oscar Hammerstein.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Danny. ‘I’ve not read any of his books.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Bob. ‘We’re trying to ascertain if a young woman has gone missing.’

  ‘A runaway, you mean?’

  ‘We’re not sure. We have a confession to a murder that we are checking out.’

  ‘It’s probably a waste of time,’ interrupted the younger constable. ‘One of our regulars, Bible Steve. He’s delusional, drinks a bit, lives rough, you know …’

  Marian Clark’s expression was replaced with something a lot less kind. ‘Yes, this is a homeless centre, Constable. I think you will find we know exactly how it is.’

  ‘Have any of your regulars not turned up for a day or two?’ asked Bob Wilkinson.

  ‘Sometimes we don’t see them for days, particularly in the summer when it is hot outside, even through the night.’

  Bob Wilkinson looked out of the small office’s window. It was getting darker now as the clouds thickened even more ominously overhead and the snowflakes were falling more intensely.

  ‘A young woman, you say?’ The shelter manager picked up on the constable’s unspoken point.

  ‘Yes, early twenties maybe.’

  ‘Child-like. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Delicate skin?’

  Bob Wilkinson looked down at his notebook. ‘Face like an angel.’ He read out the quote.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Marian Clark.

  ‘You think you might know her,’ asked Danny Vine.

  ‘This man who says he murdered her …’

  ‘Bible Steve,’ answered PC Wilkinson.

  ‘Is he much older than her? Grey matted hair, tall. Always quoting from the Bible or some such?’

  ‘Hence the nickname.’

  ‘She came in with him a few times. We don’t have men here. I had to ask him to leave, and he became quite …’

  ‘Violent?’

  ‘Not violent as such. Abusive. He left with her.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Friday afternoon.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen her since?’

  The woman didn’t reply, but PC Bob Wilkinson didn’t have to be CID at any level to read the answer in her eyes. He pulled out his radio phone and thumbed the Call button.

  ‘Foxtrot Alpha from Thirty-Two.’

  55.

  JACK DELANEY WAS sitting in the right-hand room of The Holly Bush pub in Hampstead.

  Danny Vine would not have been at all surprised to learn that Jack was there with a drink in his hand. He might have been surprised at what he was drinking, though.

  ‘What’s that, sir?’ asked DC Sally Cartwright as she perched herself on the stool alongside him. ‘Bloody Mary?’

  ‘Bloody half-a-chance would be a fine thing,’ replied her boss with a grimace. ‘Virgin Mary. All the goodness, apparently. None of the vice.’

  ‘I’m sure the sisters would approve.’

  ‘Not if they were drinking it.’

  ‘So, no movement, then?’

  ‘No, been stuck out here twiddling me thumbs watching the snow fall. Came in here for a bit of a warm.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have waited inside the hospital?’

  ‘I hate hospitals, Sally. And I figured it wise to give White City a wide berth for a while.’

  ‘Don’t blame you, sir. The super is strutting up and down like a cock who’s had his henhouse raided.’

  ‘You got half that right. Anyway, I just took a call from Diane. Seems like Bible Steve might not be quite so delusional after all.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A young woman’s gone missing off the streets. Pretty much matches Bible’s description of the woman he claims to have murdered. Another homeless person been seen in his company a lot lately.’

  ‘He might be telling the truth?’

  ‘It’s unusual, I grant you, but it wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘Jesus! I would never have had him down for that.’

  ‘It happens. Who knows? Maybe God told him to do it.’

  ‘Paranoid schizophrenics who kill sometimes do say they had God talking to them.’

  ‘Or the Devil.’

  ‘True. But Bible Steve isn’t a paranoid schizophrenic, is he?’

  Delaney shrugged. ‘Seems to me that people sometimes get labelled properly after the event. After is usually much too late.’

  ‘I still don’t have him down as a murderer.’

  ‘Maybe he saw someone else. Maybe there was a fight. Maybe he got in the way. A lot of maybes, I know. Time will tell, I guess. Meanwhile, what have you got for me?’

  ‘I’ve been going through the records we got from Northwick Park Hospital the other night.’

  ‘Going through it with Tony?’

  ‘No, sir. On my own. DI Hamilton’s headed up to Suffolk with DI Halliday.’

  ‘Catwalk, eh?’ Delaney raised his eyebrow, knowing it would annoy his young assistant.

  ‘DI Emma Halliday, yes sir. I don’t know why people have to belittle the woman’s intelligence just because she is six feet tall.’

  ‘She’s over six feet tall and gorgeous, Sally.’

  ‘Can you just get me one of those drinks please, sir,’ she replied, not rising to the bait.

  Delaney gestured to the barman and Sally opened the folder and flicked through a few pages.

  A few possible women to talk to, nothing really obvious. They are all a bit vague as to how they got their injuries. Pointing more towards domestic abuse maybe, but not the sort of assault Michael Robinson made on Stephanie Hewson. But this one looks more promising, sir,’ she said, removing a sheet or two of paper and closing the folder.

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘Her name is Lorraine Eddison. She’s a thirty-three-year-old dental nurse. She lives and works in Harrow. She was assaulted four months after Michael Robinson was arrested and put on remand.’

  She placed a photograph in front of her boss, taking the drink that had been put to one side for her.

  ‘They look alike, don’t they?’

  ‘Not only do they look alike, sir. She claims she was mugged, resisted and the attacker cut her with a knife.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down by where we parked the other day when we met DI Hamilton at The Castle pub.’

  ‘I didn’t mean where was she attacked, I mean where was she cut?’

  ‘Sliced across the belly, sir, from behind. He had hold of her round the neck and she struggled. So he cut her.’

  ‘But no rape?’

  ‘She says not, sir.’

  �
��But she may not be telling the whole story.’

  ‘Like you said.’

  ‘I did. Where does she live?’

  ‘The other side of the hill. Past the school and heading down to the main road that goes to Northwick Park. Maybe fifteen minutes’ walk from where she was attacked.’

  ‘What was she doing on the hill?’

  ‘Had been meeting friends for a few drinks at The Castle. Someone’s birthday celebration. It was a warm night. Thought she might as well walk.’

  ‘Just like Stephanie Hewson. Maybe we should go and have a chat with her.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Not just yet. We’d better go and have another chat with Bible Steve first, don’t you think?’

  ‘Sir.’

  DI Tony Hamilton held the door open leading into the lounge bar of The Crawfish pub open for his female colleague, who didn’t seem impressed by the gesture.

  ‘Save it for the uniform girls, Hamilton,’ she said.

  She walked past him and into the bar. The Crawfish was an old-fashioned country pub, L-shaped. Wooden beams, a wooden floor with rugs. A medium-sized bar at the top of the small part of the L, with a dining area to the left and snug bar in front. The snug had a large open fireplace with a firedog in the middle filled with flaming logs. The flames crackled and snapped as they walked past. There weren’t many diners left but a few locals were dotted here and there, a couple playing dominoes, an elderly man sitting by the fireside, with a pile of scribbled receipts and notes that he was going through and entering into a notebook. The bar was L-shaped too and Tony and Emma walked up a small step and perched in the corner on a couple of bar stools.

  There was one barman behind the bar. A man in his late twenties, called Lee, according to the name embroidered on his staff polo shirt. He was serving a couple of middle-aged Hooray Henrys. The Henry was in maroon-coloured corduroy trousers with a striped yellow shirt and tweed jacket, Henrietta in a pair of riding trousers a size too small for her and a white silk shirt. Apparently, the wine the barman offered to them wasn’t to their liking. They were obliged to wait for a few minutes until, with a sniffy nod, they seemed pleased, if not delighted, with the best that was on offer.