Holy Murder
Page 4
“You didn’t like to press him about it,” another voice said. “You felt you were invading his privacy. He renders unto God the things that are God’s when he is in church but his own life he renders unto himself.”
Silence fell again. Amos rolled his eyes.
“He was churchwarden. You must have his address and phone number in the church records,” he insisted.
No-one seemed to want to move, so great was the respect for the unbroken privacy of Fred Worthington, or perhaps it was the fear of his wrath.
Finally the vicar succumbed. He nodded to a middle aged man standing near the door to the tower stairway.
“Better get his details from the office, John, if you would,” the vicar said quietly. “I think in the circumstances the needs of the investigating officers outweigh our desire to respect Fred’s privacy.”
As the official toddled off for the relevant details, Amos asked the general assembly: “I suppose it’s too much to hope that anyone knows anything about him. Is he married? Children? Interests? Did he abseil?”
Amos, Swift and Burnside looked round, only to be met with headshakes and eyes turned towards the floor.
Uncomfortable minutes passed and Amos, without speaking, looked round the church officials and helpers one by one, then round again, and again, hoping someone would break ranks but without eliciting a response.
At last, the middle aged church official returned clutching a piece of paper which he handed without comment to the inspector. Amos glanced at the name, address and telephone number that it bore. He knew only roughly where the address was but declined to undergo the ignominy of trying to prise precise directions from the shell-shocked faithful.
“Has everyone here given statements and their addresses to a police officer?” he demanded.
There was a general murmur but the inspector looked at each person in turn. This time their eyes met his and each individual either nodded or said “yes”.
“I think we can let everyone go for now, thanks Gerry,” Paul Amos told Burnside. Then to those non-police officers remaining he said clearly: “Please all make sure you are available over the next few days in case we need to speak to you again. Is anyone going away on business or holiday?”
A general murmur and shaking of heads indicated “no”.
Burnside waved in his officers stationed at strategic points in the church, including the two officers who had respectively allowed Fred Worthington, the elusive churchwarden, to slip up the Stump and subsequently out of the north door.
The one from the bottom of the stairway up the tower protested once more that absolutely no-one except the three leading officers had got past him.
“Juliet and I will trace Worthington back to his home then we’ll call it a day,” Amos said to Burnside. “Are you on duty tomorrow, Gerry?”
“Not supposed to be,” Burnside replied, “but of course …”
“No need, thanks,” Amos cut him off. “We work enough unpaid overtime. Can you set us up an incident room in Boston police station and see that all the statements are available to us. We’ll take it from there. See you Monday?”
“Yeah, sure,” the sergeant confirmed. “See you Monday.”
Amos ushered the police officers out of the south door like a shepherd releasing his flock from the pen. The religious asymmetry struck him. The shepherd was supposed to usher the flock in to safety, the safety of the Stump that had protected mariners, farmers and traders from floods, pirate attacks and the pestilences of centuries. Now the Stump had been desecrated as the site of a great sin.
And here was Amos, removing the protectors of the material world while the guardians of the soul remained inside, lost and confused.
Amos and Swift returned to their car to find a parking ticket on the windscreen.
Chapter 10
Detective Sergeant Juliet Swift stepped smartly in front of Amos and peeled off the parking ticket.
“I’ll deal with it, sir,” she said firmly. Swift would pass it on to a junior officer on Monday to get it cancelled. She knew that Amos would have dealt with it himself.
Swift still had the car keys and Amos nodded to her to drive.
“A16, north,” he said briefly. “About five or six miles. We’ll ask directions from there. I’ll put the siren on when we’re well clear of the church. Worthington may grab some clothes and make a dash for it.”
Finding the A16 was more tricky than the two officers, who were not familiar with Boston, expected. The pedestrian zone from the market place through to Wide Bargate forced them to pick their way through narrow back streets, then south down the right bank of another drain, until they reached the north east end of John Adams Way, the now grossly inadequate ring road that took traffic round the east and south of the town.
Five potentially precious minutes had been wasted before they were on the road that they actually wanted. They headed with lights flashing and siren wailing eastwards towards the roundabout where the A52 split off to the right along the coast to Skegness, thus halving the traffic.
Swift, on Amos’s instruction, swung left following the Grimsby sign, past the Pilgrim Hospital and northwards.
Three miles on, the car shot with a series of jolts over the level crossing that marked the transit of the Boston to Skegness railway line, a lonely survivor of the savage ripping up of tracks in the county some 30 years previously in the 1960s. The route had been preserved at the behest of Billy Butlin and his holiday campers.
“Slow down and I’ll switch the siren off,” Amos told Swift. “We don’t want to announce our arrival.”
In Sibsey they stopped and asked directions that took them down the road signed for Sibsey Trader Mill, a windmill whose rotating sails now beckoned towards a tea room rather than sacks of flour.
“Next turning,” Amos said abruptly, and in a side road off the side road they found the home of the elusive and shadowy churchwarden Fred Worthington. It was a short cul-de-sac with a circle at the end for turning. The houses on either side of the road were fairly modest but attractive, each with a short drive up to a garage. It looked to be a pleasant place to hide from the cares of the world.
“Pull onto the drive,” Amos added, pointing to one of only two that were unoccupied. “Either he’s not at home or he’s one of the few people who put their car in the garage.”
The former proved to be the case. There was no response to the very clear chime of church bells detonated by a press on the button on the front door. Nor was there any easy way of checking the back. Access down one side of the house was blocked by the garage reaching the border fence while the gate at the other side was locked.
“I could shin over,” Swift offered.
“I wouldn’t bother,” Amos replied with a note of resignation as he peered in through the front window. “There’s no sign of life and I’ve no doubt the back door will be locked. If he’s in and not answering the door he won’t answer at the back either.
“Let’s try the neighbours. We’ll split and work round the close from opposite ends. Usual stuff. Has anyone seen him today? Has his car been in the drive in the past hour? Does he live alone? Any family? Anywhere he goes? Don’t let on about what happened to Simeon Knowles. With a bit of luck they won’t have heard about it yet. Just say it’s routine and make out Worthington’s not in any kind of trouble.”
Worthington may have been out but his neighbours were very much at home. Information, however, was nearly as slow in coming as it had been at St Bartolph’s.
The man had, apparently, lived in the close for best part of 20 years but didn’t mix. There again, the same could be said of most of the neighbours, who either worked or did housework in the day and watched television at night as far as Amos and Swift could gather.
It emerged, though, that Fred Worthington had arrived with rather more sociable ideas. According to two neighbours whom Amos spoke to, back in 1977, soon after he moved in, he organised a street party for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.
However, attempts to make the party an annual shindig fell by the wayside and Worthington had gradually withdrawn into his shell, one shell among a row of shells occupied by hermit crabs.
It was Swift who stumbled on the one resident of the close who had, briefly, got genuinely close to Worthington. By now the two officers were only a couple of doors apart. She called Amos over.
“I think you should hear this, sir,” she said. “This is Mr Johnson, Johnnie Johnson. I think he can help.”
“You’d better come in,” Johnson said amiably, adding with unintentional irony: “We don’t want the neighbours talking, do we.”
Chapter 11
While the outside was distinctly traditional middle class conformism, the inside of Johnson’s house was modern and minimalist. Nonetheless, it had been put together with coordination and an artistic eye.
At least there was no danger of relaxing into a comfortable arm chair and taking your mind off the investigation, Amos thought. He could see by the look on Swift’s face that she thoroughly disapproved.
“You’re asking about Fred, I gather,” Johnson said. “Do you mind if I ask why?”
Amos sat up straight – it was admittedly difficult to do otherwise in the tubular steel and plastic chairs. Johnson was speaking as if Worthington were a real person rather than a shadow, as he had seemed to be at the parish church.
“There’s been an incident at Boston Stump,” Amos said simply. “We just need to ask Mr Worthington about the running of the church, as he is churchwarden there, and whether he witnessed anything. Unfortunately he had left before we had all the information we needed.”
Juliet Swift coughed quietly to indicate that Amos was in danger of meandering too much. The inspector took the hint and asked: “Do I gather you are on familiar terms with Mr Worthington?”
“Mmm … well, I wouldn’t go quite that far but I probably had more to do with him than anyone else in the close. I don’t know if anyone told you, but in 1977 he organised a very successful street party for the Silver Jubilee. I don’t think he’d been here all that long.
“Then he invited all the neighbours in for a glass of champagne on Christmas morning after he returned from the morning service at the Stump. This, too, went well the first year but one by one the neighbours dropped out for some reason or another. I was the last one to keep going so he held it in my favour. Not that we got off to a good start. I’m homosexual, inspector.”
Johnson paused to gauge the reaction of the two officers.
Amos looked as relaxed as was possible on the uncompromising furniture. Swift, despite an effort at self control, bristled visibly and shifted in her seat. Johnson moved his gaze from the inspector to the sergeant.
“The church is nearly as bad as the police for its prejudice,” Johnson continued with a distinct note of bitterness. “I thought with Fred living on his own he might be of a similar persuasion to me but when I touched his arm he pulled away and was quite cutting.
“Unlike most of your lot, though, Fred was willing to be reasonable. He was civil on the rare occasions we passed in the road and he recognised that I was the only one happy to exchange a few words. The other neighbours could hardly bring themselves to say hello to him.
“As they dropped out of the Christmas drinks they were too embarrassed to face him. And he held it heavily in my favour that I continued to support him. I never came onto him again and he slowly accepted me for who I am rather than a wretched sinner. It took an Act of Parliament to force the police to do the same.”
Amos took a deep and audible breath, then continued as if the remark had never been spoken.
“You said that Mr Worthington lived alone. Perhaps he just wasn’t good at personal relationships.” Then the inspector added coldly: “Or perhaps he didn’t fancy you as a sexual partner, just wanted you as a neighbour.”
“You think if a man lives alone he must be gay?” Johnson retorted, overlooking the fact that he had made the same assumption several years ago. “As a matter of fact he wasn’t. He was seeing some woman. She just didn’t live here but she often stayed the night and she was here most weekends up to about a couple of years ago.”
“Can you describe her?” Amos asked, a little more warmly.
Johnson leaned forward in his chair, his suspicions aroused.
“I’m a little reluctant to go into Fred’s personal life behind his back. I thought this was just routine. Are you accusing him of something?”
“We need to know where he may have gone so we can contact him,” Amos assured Johnson. “We may recognise the woman as someone at the Stump. Do you have a name for her?”
Johnson thought for a moment.
“Funnily enough, no,” he replied. “I only ever met her properly on Christmas mornings. She called him Fred but he only ever referred to her as ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’. Never by her name.”
“Can you describe her?”
“About 5 foot eight, quite slim when she first visited as I recall but got a bit plumper by the end. Happens to all of us,” Johnson added, patting his tummy.
He’s relaxing again, Amos thought. Don’t put him on his guard.
“I know what you mean,” the inspector responded affably. “Can you remember anything else? Hair, for example.”
“Short and dark, I think. I didn’t really take much notice.”
“And she stopped coming regularly, as far as you know, about a couple of years ago?”
“That’s right. I don’t think Fred will be with her. After she stopped parking on his drive, Fred started walking out some evenings and returning an hour or so later. I guessed he was going to the pub. There’s one in the village. You could always try there.
“One evening I saw him setting off and I fancied a pint and a respite from my own company. Yes, I like pints,” he said, shooting a hostile glance at Swift. “Not pina coladas.” Then back to Amos: “As I guessed, Fred was there, sitting on his own on a bar stool. I’d given him time to get half way through his pint and he accepted my offer of another with a little hesitation. ‘Don’t worry, Fred,’ I told him. ‘I know you’re spoken for.’
“‘Not any more,’ he said. And then he added something very strange that made me think she must have died. He told me: ‘I’m only a churchwarden. She’s left me for a saint’.”
Chapter 12
Amos and Swift headed north, cutting slightly westward towards Simeon Knowles’s home. They had the keys from his pocket with them, one of which would presumably give them access. There was no sign of anyone else at the house as they pulled up.
They got out of the car. Amos stood for a moment looking thoughtfully southwards across the great plain that was the fens. Flat land stretched before them, not only the 10 miles or more to Boston, where the Stump could be clearly seen, but also for a similar distance or more to the left and right.
The sun-facing south garden had been given over to vegetables rather than flowers, each section divided neatly by planks.
“Terracota rhubarb forcers,” Swift said contemptuously. “How twee.”
Swift rang the doorbell as a courtesy in case Knowles had someone waiting at home for him. After a few seconds’ wait she quickly negotiated the two locks on the front door using the keys that had been found in the dead man’s pockets.
“We’ll look for a suicide note first,” Amos announced. It was a sizeable house, so it took a few minutes to check round. No such missive was readily available and neither officer thought it likely that Knowles would kill himself so publicly yet hide away his reasons for doing so.
Next they concentrated on a room at the front of the house with views down towards the Norfolk coast at the far side of the Wash. It appeared to be some kind of library-cum-study, with books crammed into shelves round three wall
s.
A solid desk was arranged across the window with a swivel leather chair placed to maximise the benefits of the view. There was no computer but an old fashioned typewriter stood at one end of the desk as if pushed to one side until it was called back into use. A bottle of standard blue-black ink stood sentinel in the centre of the desk top at the back, with a fountain pen laid horizontally in front of it.
Amos opened the two long top drawers. One contained only typewriter paper, the other a typewriter ribbon still sealed in its package. The lower drawers were in two columns at either end of the desk, with a space between to accommodate the sitter’s legs.
In the left hand side were receipted bills, the most recent on top. Telephone, electricity, gas, water and council tax were all mixed together according to date. The top drawer was half full but the two underneath were completely full.
“It looks as if Knowles paid each bill promptly as it came in, then put the bill into the drawer,” Amos remarked as he studied the bank stamps on the top few. “As the top drawer filled up he presumably emptied the bottom drawer and moved the contents of the two higher drawers down one. The bills go back for six tax years.”
The top right hand drawer contained monthly bank statements. In every case the transactions for an entire month fitted easily onto one short page. Amos looked again at the most recent utility receipts.
“He paid nearly all his bills in cash,” the inspector said. “Yet he hardly ever drew cash out of the bank. He had his state pension paid monthly, plus a small private pension. That’s about all that ever goes in. There are one or two large items such as holidays going out according to the itemised statement and very little else.”
Amos pulled out the bottom right hand drawer. It contained income tax returns. Knowles declared his state and private pensions but nothing else. It was enough to tip him into paying some tax but not enough to warrant a higher tax band. Just enough to keep the taxman off his back without being too onerous, Amos thought.