Brief Cases Box Set

by Andrea Frazer

  He didn’t bother going home again, as it simply wasn’t worth the extra to-ing and fro-ing, and seven thirty saw him behind his desk sorting through the paperwork that had accumulated since he had last sat there, and mulling over what had been happening in Ms Darling’s life over the past couple of weeks.

  It was the telephone that disturbed his reverie, but what an interruption it proved to be. PC Merv Green had been on duty in and around the railway station that morning, keeping an eye on vehicles in the station car park, and walking round the station periodically to make sure that there wasn’t a pickpocket at work. Cities didn’t have a monopoly on petty crime like this. It happened in relatively small places too.

  He had been making his way along one of the platforms where the usually jostling crowd of commuters was waiting for the arrival of their morning train, all trying to be in a position to get into a compartment first and bag the best – or maybe the only – seat. As the train approached the station, there had been a yell from the furthest end of the platform, and cries went up: ‘Woman under the train!’ ‘Someone pushed her! I saw!’ ‘I never saw her jump!’ ‘Get an ambulance!’ and from one anonymous wag: ‘Get a bucket and shovel!’

  Green ran, pushing people out of his way in his anxiety to confirm what he had heard shouted; and they weren’t wrong. The train was not so long that it still covered what was left of whoever had gone under it, and Green came perilously close to losing the contents of his stomach, just avoiding an unexpected rebate on his breakfast.

  When Green called it in, although he had no name for the victim, or even confirmation of the sex, Bob Bryant had a gut feeling that this one was for Falconer, and called it through to him.

  The inspector’s response was unusually coarse and unexpectedly heartfelt: ‘No! No! No, no, no! Damn! Damn it! No! Oh, shit! Bugger!’ he yelled, to himself, rather than to Bob Bryant on the other end of the line. ‘I should have waited, and escorted her to the train this morning, after what happened during the night. Bugger! Arse! What a negligent fool I am!’

  ‘If it’s her, Harry, it’s hardly your fault, is it?’ asked Bob Bryant, trying to dispel Falconer’s feelings of guilt and anguish.

  ‘But the threat in that last letter was chilling, and we should – I should – have taken it more seriously. That wasn’t just a case of name-calling; that was a threat to her life, and even I didn’t take it seriously enough. I suppose I thought that her tormentor would only act on his evil impulses when she was in her own home. Why didn’t I consider her safety in going to work, or rather the danger she was in when she was in transit? I’m an absolute fool!’

  ‘I should get yourself down to the railway station, and make sure it’s her first, before you start beating your breast and tearing out your hair,’ was the calm advice of the desk sergeant. Falconer took it at its worth, and calmed himself with difficulty while preparing to go to see the remains.

  When he arrived at the railway station and sought out the correct platform, he realised what a good job Green had done. The man had used his loaf, and requested that the train be moved as far as it could along the track, allowing a clear view of where the victim had landed, getting those who were alighting at Market Darley to use the far exit, so as not to contaminate what must now be considered a crime scene.

  The passengers waiting to board had been crowded into the station’s waiting room, and were now waiting to be interviewed, bleating like sheep at how late they would be for work, meetings and the like, while yelling into their respective mobile phones trying to ‘big up’ what they were now declaring to be a bloody nuisance. But perhaps secretly believing that the morning’s experience would be something that they could dine out on for months.

  The area of platform itself had been isolated with blue-and-white crime tape, which now fluttered in the slightly chilly September breeze. Thus was the situation when Falconer arrived, in the sure and certain knowledge that Carmichael was not far behind him. That was cold comfort, however, as he felt he should have been able to save this poor, persecuted woman from having to pay the ultimate price for what was, in fact, an accident, blown out of all proportion and sensationalised by the press.

  After Carmichael arrived, his face a woeful mask, it took the two of them an hour and a half to gather all the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the daily commuters, leaving them to reassemble at the far end of the platform in anticipation of the next train, all chattering like starlings about this unexpected interruption to their usual boring daily schedule.

  There were already white-suited officers at work where the commuter had gone under the train: Falconer was able to give an adequate identification from scraps of torn clothing that had matched what she was wearing when he had visited her before she left for the station, but there was nothing really for them to find. What evidence does a little push leave? What trace could there be of the little shove, that just tips a person’s balance, and causes them to fall?

  Although all the other would-be passengers on that train would need to be interviewed, to see if anyone owned up to standing close enough to Miriam Darling to have witnessed whether she propelled herself in front of that train, or whether she was given a helping hand, it was a job they would leave to the uniformed branch. They would try to uncover the network of rumour and lies that had made Miriam’s life such a misery before today, hoping against hope that they would be able to trace it to its original source in the town, but it would be a thankless task, and one unlikely to be successfully concluded.

  Falconer finally left feeling very downhearted, and Carmichael had a glum expression that clearly indicated his feeling that they were facing a hopeless task. ‘I don’t know who is responsible for what that poor woman went through,’ commented Falconer as they arrived back at their cars, ‘but they might as well have handed her a chalice of poison and bade her drink it, for the outcome would have been the same.’

  Chapter Six

  Wednesday 22nd September

  Falconer and Carmichael had spent the previous afternoon clearing their desks as best as they could to give them a free run at the new case, and had decided to start their investigations with the neighbours. Rumour and gossip usually emanated from someone close to the ‘target’ and, as Miriam had not lived in the area long, they had decided to start with those who had been physically close to her.

  Their first visit was to Carole Winter, whom Falconer knew had befriended her new neighbour. If not involved herself, maybe she could give them some leads as to whom she had introduced Miriam to.

  Carole’s face ‘closed’ when she saw who was at her door, and they were invited inside reluctantly, her face bearing an icy smile that did not touch her eyes.

  After introducing themselves, Falconer explained why they were there, although he had little doubt that she had realised that as soon as they had displayed their warrant cards.

  ‘I was good to that girl,’ she spat at them, defensively. ‘I toted her around everywhere with me, introducing her to everyone I know, and then I found out what she had done – and not even a whisper to me that she had a past.’ Mrs Winter sat bolt upright in an armchair, her hands clasped in her lap, a look of defiance on her face.

  ‘She’d lied to me by her silence, and I wasn’t having that – not having found out what she’d done and got away with.’

  ‘Who told you?’ asked Falconer, keeping his question as brief as possible so as not to prompt the flow of indignation and self-righteousness often found in some church-goers who would happily ‘cast the first stone’, and considered that they themselves were incapable of sin.

  ‘It was Liz from the library. If she’s bored, when the library’s not busy, she amuses herself by ‘Googling’ new ticket-holders. The poor girl got much more than she bargained for when she searched for Miriam Stourton, nee Darling. And, before you ask, the application form to join the library service has a lot of seemingly irrelevant questions on it, including maiden name, and she had inadvertently put her married name in
that space.

  ‘Well, that really set the cat among the pigeons, and we had a long talk about what to do. It was Liz’s suggestion – that’s Elizabeth Beckett – that we spread the word that the woman was a danger to society. She should’ve been locked away, and the key thrown over a cliff. What a wicked deed, to kill her husband and her own child like that! She deserved to burn in hell, and I hope she is doing just that, now.’

  ‘Crikey!’ Carmichael later exclaimed. They’d certainly stirred up a hornets’ nest of resentment at this house.

  ‘Can you give me the names of the other people to whom you introduced Ms Darling?’ asked Falconer, thinking to get a head start, but he’d stirred up another spurt of contumely.

  ‘Darling, my bum! She was no more Ms Darling than I am the Aga Khan! Darling, my big fat hairy arse! But I’ll answer your question, and then I want you out of this house. This has been a shocking time for me, ending up with a murderer living next door, and I want to forget it as quickly as possible, and get back to my normal tranquil life. What a good actress that woman was! I’d never have guessed she had such evil in her heart!’

  The rest of the interviews conducted, from the names Mrs Winter provided, were either full of the same contempt, or with a holier-than-thou attitude that made Falconer’s stomach turn.

  Elizabeth Beckett at the library merely displayed astonishment that she could have uncovered such duplicity, but her colleague, Becky Troughton, claimed that she had taken an instant dislike to the woman, and that she had felt from the first that there was something wrong with her. How some people strive to find something a little bit ‘special’ about themselves, some supernatural ability that sets them apart from others! Falconer felt that this was the case here. Had the information never become public knowledge, Ms Troughton would probably be saying that she had sensed a good soul in Miriam Darling, and had taken to her at their very first meeting. Feelings, schmeelings! he thought in disgust.

  At the church, although he spoke to the incumbent, a selection of the ladies of the congregation and choir, it was the holier-than-thou, pious attitude he encountered, many offering to pray for her forgiveness, yet none who believed in her innocence, and absolutely no one who would admit to making silent phone calls or sending anonymous letters. What an upright slice of society all these people seemed to form, and yet he had counted at least seventy letters on Miriam Darling’s sofa the first time he had gone to her house.

  Mabel Monaghan, the head honcho at the WI, was highly indignant that such a woman should even have considered joining the organisation, and admitted that she had torn up Miriam’s application as soon as she had heard about her murky past.

  ‘And you believed it without question?’ Falconer had asked her.

  ‘There is no fire without some smoke,’ she had replied, getting the quotation right where so many others mangled it.

  The only positive response he got was from Justine Cooper, the nominal leader of the book club that met once a month. ‘I’d thought of asking her to give us a talk about her ordeal, so that we could, maybe, find a few literary similarities with this sort of persecution, and choose our next book along those lines,’ she had admitted, when questioned.

  ‘I suppose it was a rather morbid thought, though, given what she was going through, and for the second time. And now she’s dead! Still, every cloud has a silver lining. We could still discuss her situation at our next meeting, and go ahead with that as a theme without her actually being there.’ Now there was a hard-faced young woman, Falconer thought, as they left her house. She should have been a journalist, the way she seized things and twisted them to her ultimate advantage.

  ‘I don’t like these people.’ Carmichael, as usual, summed up his feeling succinctly. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met such a bunch of two-faced, trouble-making people who aren’t actually criminals.’

  ‘I’m with you on that one, Carmichael,’ agreed Falconer, and then noticed that his sergeant had his pen in his mouth again – a habit of which he thought he had broken him.

  ‘Put out your tongue, Sergeant,’ he ordered, at the kerb-side, in public.

  Looking a mite embarrassed, Carmichael removed the ballpoint pen from his mouth and complied.

  ‘As I thought! The colour of an aubergine! When we get back to the station, go straight to the canteen and see if you can get them to serve you up a cup of coffee from the very dregs of the urn. That’s the only thing we’ve found that seems to strip the ink.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Carmichael, glumly.

  Nothing was gleaned from the uniformed staff who had spent the hours after the return of the commuters trailing around the addresses given at the station that morning. Oh, yes, they’d come across a few who admitted to standing near, but not directly behind, Miriam Darling, but none that would admit to having pushed, or even accidentally nudged her, and no one had seen anything to which they were willing to admit.

  With a heavy heart, Falconer knew that all the officers involved would just have to start all over again, and see if they couldn’t coax a reluctant memory from someone, even if not an admission of guilt, but it was going to be a long and tedious job, and he still felt himself responsible for what had happened. What had possessed him, leaving her to make her own way to the railway station? He should have accompanied her. He had been negligent, and a sorely put-upon, innocent woman had paid for his lack of forethought with her life.

  If only he had advised her not to go to work until she had been installed in a safe house. If! If! If only he had driven her to the station and waited with her. He would have kept her well away from the edge of the platform and, maybe, by the time she had returned to Market Darley that evening, he could have met her from the train with the address of a safe house into which she could move with immediate effect.

  The week after Miriam Darling had been mangled by an incoming train was a week of reflection, regret and soul-searching for the inspector, and he was in an unusually glum mood when he picked up a white envelope from his post, one morning and slit it open, to find it was from Miriam Darling’s bank manager, and had a smaller envelope enclosed with it, marked with his name.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ he exclaimed. ‘What on earth can this be?’

  ‘This’ was a letter from her bank, explaining that the enclosed envelope had been handed to the manager by Miriam Darling herself, with the instructions that it was to be kept there in safe keeping, and only sent, in the event of her death, and even then not until a week had elapsed.

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ quoted Falconer, as he slit open the second and smaller envelope. Inside, he found a letter, handwritten, explaining everything, and which saddened him even more than he would have thought it could. He read:

  Dear Inspector Falconer,

  I apologise for all the work I must have caused you and your colleagues over the last seven days, and now is the time for explanations. If, as I have planned, I have gone under a train at the local station, then my intentions will have gone as I hoped, and I shall be dead.

  I knew I couldn’t face starting yet another life, because I think my past will follow me to the ends of the earth, given the information technology available today, so I have decided to join my husband and son ‘on the other side’.

  I didn’t want to leave this life without a little bit of revenge on those who had tormented me, so I will have made my death look as much like murder as I can, and have left it for you to suspect and question those who tormented me, and I hope they are made to feel hellishly uncomfortable.

  My last hope is that, with the delivery of my letter to you, the truth will be made public, so that they can feel the guilt they share in my carrying out of this act of self-destruction. I don’t wish to carry on as things are, and I hope that what I did will give them cause to think, next time they are in receipt of a juicy piece of gossip, and maybe hold back, when they are tempted to pass it on.

  Many thanks for your help and support, and to your colleagues who did
their best to keep me safe,

  Miriam Stourton, nee Darling

  Falconer’s throat was almost closed with emotion as he finished reading and, putting the letter on Carmichael’s desk, in full view, where he would find it as soon as he sat down, he left the office and went for a walk in the clean, clear air of a beautiful September morning.

  THE END

  Driven to It #5

  Abigail Wentworth is looking forward to her reunion lunch with Alison Fairweather. They are old schoolfriends who met twice a year, usually for Alison to dish the dirt on the others they had known when they were younger – and for Abigail to gloat over their ‘inferior’ circumstances, in comparison to her own respectable existence.

  During one such lunch, though, Abigail recognizes a face from the past – and from that moment onward, her life skids completely out of control …

  Chapter One

  Friday 26th November 2010 – lunchtime

  Mrs Abigail Wentworth capped her lipstick, fluffed up her tinted beige curls, and looked at herself in the mirror. Sadly, it was still her mother’s face that looked back at her, but as there is no escape from that cruel beast, Anno Domini, she merely picked up her perfume atomiser and sprayed herself generously with a fine flower-scented mist. She was as ready as she could be for lunch with her old schoolfriend, Alison Fairweather, who would be visiting Market Darley that day for their annual luncheon in the town.

  Although they didn’t live very far apart geographically, their lives were so different that this meeting was one of only two that took place each year, the other being in a hotel or restaurant in the vicinity of Alison’s home. Thus they hadn’t seen each other for six months, and Abigail wanted to look her absolute best, to show that she wasn’t ageing as fast as her friend. It was a matter of pride to her that she appeared just that little bit more youthful than Alison.