The Murder House

by Simon Beaufort

  I was humming as I walked out – until I met Oakley and Evans, who were just coming in and looked really pleased with themselves. I asked why.

  ‘We need DNA to be sure,’ said Oakley, ‘but I think we’ve finally got an ID for our body. It’s James Paxton!’

  I felt as though the world had suddenly stopped spinning. I’d just about rebuilt my life, only to have it crashing down around me again.

  ‘I thought dental records indicated otherwise,’ I said, with a mouth so dry that it felt as if it were stuffed with cotton wool.

  ‘Some clerk must have cocked up,’ Oakley explained. ‘A filling and an extraction were mis-marked. We’ll check with the dentist tomorrow.’

  ‘Grossman is past it,’ said Evans disparagingly. ‘He should have noticed the similarities as well as the differences. It’s time he retired.’

  They walked away, discussing Grossman’s incompetence, and leaving me weak-kneed in the doorway. My head was pounding this time, as well as my heart.

  How long before they requested James’ phone records, and discovered that I’d been the last person he’d contacted? I’d done all in my power to prevent them from learning it was James, and I’d bought myself a lot of time. But now what? I forced myself to walk down the steps, hoping that my shaking legs wouldn’t deposit me in a heap on the ground.

  FOURTEEN

  Saturday, 25 August

  It had been a busy night for Oakley and Evans, who proceeded as if the body were Paxton. There were numerous protocols to be followed – forms to fill in, a warrant to seize Paxton’s records from the dentist and requests made for specific tests, including a visit from the forensic odontologist. Paxton’s DNA would need to be matched to the corpse, and his colleagues at Urvine and Brotherton interviewed again. By the time they had finished it was almost four o’clock.

  ‘Shall we visit Maureen now?’ asked Evans, leaning back and rubbing his neck.

  Oakley shook his head. ‘Let her have her sleep. God knows, she’ll be facing a lot of bad nights from now on. We’ll do it first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Today,’ corrected Evans. ‘I might just kip down in the cells for a couple of hours. It’s hardly worth going home and disturbing the missus.’

  Oakley couldn’t sleep because his mind was racing. He went through witness statements with renewed energy, and by the time Evans arrived back, stupid with sleep and sporting a bad shave, he was impatient to make a start. At eight a.m. they were knocking on Mrs Paxton’s door to ask for the keys to her son’s flat, so they could collect his comb, toothbrush and razor to test for his DNA. And a cheek swab from her.

  Despite Oakley’s insistence that nothing was certain until the tests had been run, the hapless Mrs Paxton collapsed on the floor and wept. Oakley radioed for a female officer to wait with her until relatives could be contacted, and it was Anderson who arrived. She didn’t offer words of empty comfort, but simply sat next to Maureen and put her arm around her.

  ‘I knew something had happened to him,’ Maureen sobbed. ‘A mother feels these things. You didn’t believe me.’

  ‘You also said your son would never be in Orchard Street,’ said Oakley. ‘There was no reason to make the connection between him and the body.’

  ‘But who would want to harm him?’ cried Maureen, not listening as she huddled in her own world of grief. ‘He helped people. He didn’t have enemies!’

  ‘Did he ever mention Marko Kovac?’ asked Oakley, unwilling to disabuse her of that notion. ‘Had he ever been to Albania? Or did he have clients from there?’

  ‘Of course not!’ cried Maureen. ‘He was like me. He preferred Britain to foreign places. I don’t know about his clients. You’ll have to ask Mr Brotherton.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about a branch of science called nanotechnology?’ Oakley saw her bemusement. ‘Making small machines the size of an atom?’

  ‘No! James knew nothing about atom bombs! He was a barrister.’

  Oakley wondered who might be able to tell him whether Paxton had been interested in commercially lucrative science. Perhaps Kovac had hired him to patent his idea, but the lawyer had been greedy with fees, so Kovac had dealt with the nuisance with a rock, black plastic and duct tape. Yet patent law was different from criminal law, and he wasn’t sure Paxton was qualified. Perhaps that had been the problem.

  ‘You’ll have to look in his diary,’ said Maureen in a strangled voice. ‘Find out who he was meeting between Tuesday after work and Thursday when he was due in court. Whoever he met will be his killer.’

  ‘He probably met any number of people, Mrs Paxton,’ said Anderson gently. ‘And he may not have noted them all down.’

  Oakley imagined that was true, especially if Paxton had been due to liaise with someone – Wright? – who’d offered to provide him with information to see Yorke a free man. However, he’d been through Paxton’s diaries and emails – again – the previous night, and knew that Paxton had nothing booked after 4.30 p.m. on the Tuesday. Any other encounters, including the one at the gay bar, had been off the record.

  ‘Farnaby,’ said Maureen suddenly. ‘He killed James because he was jealous.’

  Or because he didn’t want Paxton to represent the man who had beaten his grandmother, thought Oakley. Indeed, at that precise moment Davis and Merrick were asking Farnaby to accompany them to the station for further questioning.

  ‘We’re also waiting for his phone company to send us their records,’ Oakley said. ‘We’ll be able to trace who he called and when. There must be a good reason why James’ mobile wasn’t with his body. Perhaps the killer took it.’

  ‘He was never without his mobile,’ agreed Maureen. ‘It was always switched on, except in court. Yes – that might help.’

  ‘We’re hoping he made arrangements to go to Orchard Street, and the phone seems a good starting point.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have thought it more likely that he was sent a note? asked Anderson. ‘By email or even by hand.’

  ‘Not email – I checked. Moreover, the Orchard Street house was available through James’ connections, not the killer’s, as far as we know. The chances are that he suggested the venue, not the other way around.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Anderson obstinately. ‘The phone seems to be a waste of time to me.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Oakley, wondering why he was discussing it with her. What did she know? ‘Murder enquiries are all about following leads, and most transpire to be nothing. But some produce gold, and the phone might be one of them.’

  ‘He was never without his mobile,’ repeated Maureen in a fresh welter of tears. Her sobs became wracking and uncontrolled.

  Oakley escaped with cowardly relief. Breaking such news was the part of the job that he hated more than any other. He spent the rest of the day speaking to Paxton’s colleagues at Urvine and Brotherton and his neighbours, but learned nothing he didn’t already know. They were shocked to hear that Paxton had been murdered, but few seemed particularly upset. Only his mother, it seemed, would really miss him.

  It was terrible trying to comfort Mrs Paxton, although at least she didn’t recognize me from my schooldays – not that she would’ve done, I suppose. I doubt she would’ve thought me grand enough for her golden son, and I’d have been well beneath her notice. Still, it was dreadful to know that I was responsible for her grief.

  I’d spent a miserable night, fretting and worrying about what the identification of James might mean for me. Colin asked what was wrong – he was too sensitive not to notice my agitation – so I spun a tale about being upset about Wright. He pressed me no further.

  It wasn’t until the small hours of the morning that I managed to pull myself together, huddled against Colin and feeling the rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing. He was sweating from having me so close and was sleeping restlessly, but I was chilled to the bone and wanted his warmth.

  I’d almost fainted when Oakley said that he’d requested James’ phone records. I didn’t know what
to say. Perhaps I should have stayed mum, so that when he asked me why James had phoned me that Tuesday evening – twice – I could deny it. I could say I’d been out at the time. I was fairly sure my mother wouldn’t remember whether I’d been with her or not. I could use her as an alibi.

  Even as I soothed Mrs Paxton with meaningless words, a plan began to form in my mind. It was common knowledge that Wright had hated me, so I’d claim that he must have given James my number as part of some spiteful plot. He’d then taken James’ phone after the murder and called me on it, and when I’d answered I’d obviously assumed that it was his mobile and not James’. People would almost certainly believe that. Bitterly, I wondered whether Oakley would have followed the trail to James if he’d received my second note – the one blaming Kovac and drugs. What had happened to the damned thing? It couldn’t be lost in the post, given that I’d delivered it by hand. Still, it was irrelevant now.

  A murder victim has no privacy, and I knew there’d be nothing about James that wouldn’t be probed and investigated. Then it occurred to me that blaming Wright would do me no good, because Oakley would find out what school James had gone to and, if he interviewed Frances, Gary or Colin, they’d mention me. Oakley might even recognize Colin from when they’d met by the Watershed. I’d be Oakley’s prime suspect, especially given that I’d advised him to drop the phone angle. That had been a mistake. Being a murderer isn’t easy, I can tell you.

  I was relieved when Oakley left Maureen’s house, but frightened at the same time. What should I do? Leave the country? Spain was a good place to go, as there were a lot of flights in the summer, and Brits could easily disappear there. I felt the net closing in and was disappointed my ploy with the dental records hadn’t worked permanently.

  I sat with James’ mother for a long time, but there’s not much you can say to someone who’s lost her only son – not that’s worth hearing, at least. You can’t say it will be all right, because it won’t. As far as Maureen Paxton was concerned, nothing would be right ever again. So I just sat with her, and wished her family would hurry up and arrive.

  While I was there, I did a lot of thinking. Oakley and the others would assume, of course, that it was the killer who’d wrapped James in plastic. I’d concluded it was the Yorke gang, because James had summoned me to help him with Yorke’s case. But what if James had been juggling more than one ball? What if he had something going with Kovac, too? Or what if James hadn’t died when I’d hit him? What if Kovac had found him injured and had finished the job?

  Maureen told me that James hadn’t had many close friends, and I’d looked in his address book when she’d shown it to Oakley. I wasn’t in it, thank God, probably because he hadn’t considered me important enough. Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to be in possession of evidence that he knew me, in case I hadn’t played his game and had turned him in.

  James was twenty-eight years old, and school was a distant memory. Oakley wouldn’t look that far back yet, and would concentrate on his work and clients. I still had a few days grace, which would be enough to think about what I wanted to do: flee to Spain or try to weather it out. But I didn’t reckon with Oakley’s annoying attention to detail …

  Giles Farnaby sat in one of New Bridewell’s interview rooms looking pale and miserable. Robert Brotherton sat with him, and sometimes tried to stop him from replying, but Farnaby claimed he had nothing to hide and wanted to help.

  He admitted on tape this time to following Paxton into the gay bar, but he had friends who were prepared to swear that he had spent the rest of the evening with them at a completely different location. Merrick quietly confirmed that this was true: he’d seen Paxton in the bar thirty minutes after Farnaby said he had met his friends, and he had not seen him in there.

  Farnaby had spent hours at the hospital with his grandmother and taken a fair amount of time off work. He couldn’t be sure where he was at specific times, but the staff at the intensive care unit could vouch for a good deal of it because there was a visitor’s log. Of course, there were times when he was at home, supposedly asleep, when he could have slipped out and committed a murder, but Oakley became convinced during the course of the interview that he hadn’t.

  There was little more Oakley could do than ask Farnaby not to leave Bristol without giving a contact address. The lawyer walked away with his head bowed, although his distress had more to do with the fact that Emma Vinson had died that morning than his being a suspect in a murder enquiry. When he had gone, Brotherton turned to Oakley.

  ‘Urvine and Brotherton is a respected company. We have a reputation for honesty and fair dealing.’

  ‘Right,’ said Oakley, thinking that his experiences with Paxton suggested otherwise.

  ‘We have an interest in justice, just as you do,’ Brotherton went on. ‘I disapproved of Paxton’s tactics in the Noble trial. Had I known what he’d planned I would have stopped him.’

  ‘Then it’s a pity that you weren’t Noble’s lawyer,’ said Oakley bitterly. ‘Paxton’s antics had some serious consequences.’

  ‘I know that. And in the interests of justice I feel compelled to pass you these papers. I wish to stress that neither I nor anyone else at my firm had knowledge of these transactions at the time, and that we have only uncovered them following on from your initial findings after James disappeared. I am passing them to you, at this early stage in the investigation, so that you can be assured that we have nothing to hide.’

  The sheaf of pages Brotherton passed him comprised transcripts of phone conversations between Paxton and people Oakley didn’t know. He glanced at Brotherton, mystified.

  ‘They were members of the jury in the case against Andrew Brown – the handbag snatcher. You don’t need me to tell you that fraternising with them during a trial is against the rules.’

  ‘So he did get a verdict by unethical means?’

  ‘I believe so, although you won’t prove it with those transcripts – he didn’t offer money or make threats. He just chatted, doubtless to befriend them in the hope that they’d be more receptive to his arguments. I suspect this was his first dive into the unethical. He became more careful after, and we haven’t found anything in our records since. He must’ve used a different mode of communication.’

  ‘His missing mobile, I imagine. When did you first suspect he was bending the rules?’

  ‘After Brown, when he began to win rather too often. However, I only started to probe into his affairs when he went missing. What you hold in your hand is the result of my investigations.’

  Oakley met his eyes. ‘When I visited your offices in Queen Square, did you leave those files behind deliberately – the ones with the photographed pages from the police file?’

  Brotherton returned his gaze evenly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Oakley nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My firm does not condone what Paxton did, and I wish I’d listened to young Farnaby’s suspicions. I dismissed them because James had been promoted over his head – I didn’t trust his motives.’

  ‘But it was Paxton’s motives that were suspect?’

  ‘Very suspect,’ agreed Brotherton.

  Sunday, 26 August

  The investigation began to leap ahead again. Oakley arrived at work at six o’clock to go through the witness statements gathered the previous afternoon. Merrick was also in early, and they worked in silence for a while. Eventually Oakley leaned back in his chair and began to summarise what they knew.

  ‘James Henry Paxton. Twenty-eight. Not married; no steady girlfriend. Seen in a gay bar the evening before his death, leading to speculation about his sexuality. Lawyer to unsavoury characters like Andy Brown, Gordon Noble and Billy Yorke.’

  Merrick took up the tale. ‘He left work at around four thirty on Tuesday the thirty-first of July, and I saw him at six. We’ve found no one who saw him later – yet.’

  ‘We’d better visit that bar. I’ll take Evans with me – it shouldn’t be you. Have you hear
d from the phone company?’

  ‘No. We had to produce a warrant before they’d deal with us, but we should hear today.’

  ‘That’s Paxton’s mobile and his home phone?’

  Merrick nodded. ‘And Tim Hillier went through his work email with me again yesterday, and I’ve ploughed through his personal account. I even retrieved some trashed messages, but there was nothing relevant in either. Paxton was a dull fellow – virtually all his messages pertained to business, and none were social. The man was obsessed with work.’

  ‘Or his private life was so dodgy he didn’t keep records.’ Oakley stood and leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets. ‘Let’s try to reconstruct what happened that Tuesday night.’

  ‘We don’t know he died then,’ warned Merrick. ‘He might have died on Wednesday or even later.’

  Oakley shook his head. ‘You just pointed out that he was obsessed by work. I don’t see him not showing up on the Wednesday morning without good cause.’

  ‘All right. So, he left work at four thirty and probably headed to Clifton, where he met this friend. Farnaby saw him at five thirty, and I saw him at six, so it wasn’t just some quick sordid drop off or hasty exchange of information. They stayed together for at least thirty minutes, and probably longer. We don’t know when he left.’

  ‘He went to Orchard Street, which he knew was empty because Academic Accommodations would have told him Kovac had left that morning. He also had a key, because Urvine and Brotherton look after the property.’

  ‘Why there?’ asked Merrick. ‘Why not a pub?’

  ‘Because he didn’t want to be seen. If that anonymous note is anything to go by – and there’s no reason we shouldn’t take it seriously – the Yorkes are involved. Paxton probably had some trick lined up to get him bail, but died before he could deliver. That suggests three possibilities. First, a rival gang decided to prevent Yorke getting out. Second, Paxton’s plan fell through, so the Yorkes killed him. Third, he did have something lined up, but was killed trying to organize it.’