Ashes to Ashes

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘I understand there was no sign of him at the Chinese restaur-ant,’ Daws said.

  ‘No, sir,’ Patrick replied. ‘And one of the suspects said that he hadn’t seen him for weeks.’

  ‘You must appreciate that I’ve asked Greenway to forward your reports to me. I liked the way you got that DI out of a nasty spot. But I had to prevent your presence getting into the media as I don’t want O’Connor to know the NCA is getting close to him.’

  ‘I told him I knew who he was but wasn’t that convinced at the time. It was Ingrid’s photofit of him that clinched it. We also now have a completely unconfirmed report that he was at the Peterses’ bungalow the night the funeral director returned because he’d left his mobile there.’

  ‘Unconfirmed?’ Daws queried with a frown.

  ‘Yes, from Sandra Stevens. Hereward, her ex-husband, related the episode to her shortly before he was killed – murdered – some of the details of which she appeared to have forgotten but dreamt or hallucinated about when she was unconscious in hospital. It’s not evidence.’

  It was a real shame we couldn’t ask Henry about it, I thought.

  ‘No, not admissible,’ said Daws. ‘Well, we know that O’Connor’s been to Bath on a mission to murder that woman although only one witness – you, Ingrid – identified him. Following on from that I understand a body’s been fished out of the Avon with a bullet from your Glock 17 inside it. Yes, that was confirmed first thing this morning,’ he added when he saw the look of slight surprise on Patrick’s face. ‘I got a look at the photo of this man taken in the mortuary and I know who he is, or rather was – Declan O’Leary, O’Connor’s brother. He was the explosives expert. As I’m sure you know, O’Leary is O’Connor’s real name.’

  I did not glance in Patrick’s direction but have an idea he smiled.

  ‘It’s a positive identification,’ Daws continued, ‘because, as you also know, before I went to MI5 I worked for a time with Army Intelligence in Northern Ireland. He was connected with a terrorist group and lived in southern Ireland. I’ve contacted the police there as they might have a DNA sample in their records.’

  ‘I take it there’s no sign of the man Ingrid wounded in the shoulder.’

  ‘No. Another point I want to make is that as I’m sure you’ve seen the news in the media that criminal gangs are spreading into the provinces, something that we’ve known for a long time, of course. It’s fairly safe to assume from his activities in the West Country that O’Connor’s gang is one of them. But I do have one problem. You’ve made no mention of any connection that you know of that he has with this Peters woman that would make this whole thing hang together.’

  ‘Ingrid has a theory,’ Patrick said.

  Daws smiled at me, something he hardly ever does to anyone, which shook me slightly. ‘I like your theories,’ he told me.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Frederick Judd might be the connection,’ I began. ‘Based on the possibility that it was his body which was cremated in Bath instead of that of Archie Peters, I have an idea that O’Connor is working for Anne Peters, who – another theory of mine – was Judd’s wife, or if not, was in a relationship with him. We know everyone left him, including his staff – fled, perhaps – when he went off his head with some kind of mental disorder. I have a picture in my mind of a woman bent on revenge who wanted to get back what she regarded as hers. Judd was reputed to be wealthy from the proceeds of crime. But she would need help – someone who had a reputation of getting rid of people, no questions asked. Someone like O’Connor.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Daws asked, looking thoughtful.

  ‘We now know that Anne Peters has had experience as an actress. In my opinion, every time we’ve met her so far she’s been acting. I’ve been thinking about this and pretty sure that the blonde-haired woman who shouted out to us that night in Feltham sounded very much like Anne Peters when she came to the rectory at Hinton Littlemore, and also when we talked to her at her home at a later date.’

  ‘You might find out if you’re correct soon,’ Daws observed. He turned to Patrick. ‘I still want this man alive. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Patrick said.

  As we were leaving, Daws spoke very quietly to me. ‘The pair of you were in fine voice.’ Then, amazingly, he smiled again.

  ‘Did you hear what he said?’ I whispered to Patrick as we walked along a corridor towards the lifts.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He told me that we were in fine voice. Did you mention that bit about us pretending to be drunk in your report?’

  ‘It’s not the kind of thing you put in a report,’ Patrick answered, mildly affronted.

  ‘You know what it means then?’ And without waiting for a reply, I said, ‘He was there!’

  THIRTEEN

  If Janice North was still smarting over her escapade she was not advertising the fact and greeted us warmly after we’d almost literally bumped into her in a corridor at Feltham police station. Patrick and I had agreed that neither of us would mention it if she didn’t.

  The implications of what Daws had said to me were still fizzing through my mind. It was perfectly possible that he had been in the town that night as it would not be the first time he had directly involved himself with one of our assignments. Perhaps following our activities was a kind of hobby of his and, if so, I was not very happy about it. I could only hope that he had more altruistic reasons for what he was doing. But why had he dropped such a heavy hint? Why mention it to me at all?

  ‘She’s still spitting mad,’ reported the DI. ‘Refuses to answer questions, just stares down anyone who tries to interview her.’

  ‘What about the other two?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘Well, as you’re aware, the Italian’s wanted in his home country for murder and we think he’s connected with a local Mafia group. But he’s terminally ill with advanced cancer, which he has been able to prove to us. He’s been interviewed but is clearly very ill. It sounds callous of me to put it like this but I don’t think he’s going to be a lot of use. The driver of the car has no previous convictions and insists he’s just a handyman at the restaurant. He knows the woman only as “the boss” and became indignant when it was suggested he was in a relationship with her.’

  ‘Who’s the registered owner of the car?’ I asked.

  ‘A leasing company. It’s leased in the name of someone called Patrick O’Leary. I haven’t had time to do any research on him.’

  ‘Got her!’ Patrick said with relish. ‘It’s O’Connor’s real name.’

  ‘I’ll have her brought to interview room one.’

  ‘Does she have a solicitor?’

  ‘No, says she doesn’t need one as she’s just a restaurant manager and we’ve arrested the wrong person. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re still dealing with the aftermath of last week …’ She hurried away.

  Several observations crowded into my mind when we entered the interview room and I examined the woman closely. First, the blonde hair, cut into a bob, was definitely her own – it was growing out dark at the roots; second, she was very expensively dressed and third, the almost black eyes staring at me with unconcealed malevolence were the same that had indicated my presence was not wanted in Patrick’s father’s study at home. Same hands, same bony wrists, same sloping shoulders. This was the woman who had called herself Anne Peters.

  ‘No more time-wasting,’ Patrick began by saying, having switched on the recording machine and formally opened the interview. ‘You know who we are and we know who you are. You came to Hinton Littlemore rectory in an effort to cover yourself following the criminal activities that surrounded Archie Peters’s funeral when Judd’s body was substituted for his and probably thought you were safe when I initially failed to find out what had really happened. I’m sure you were desperately hoping I wouldn’t be able to discover anything. Whether you really were Peters’s wife or not doesn’t interest me now. I don’t care a damn what your real name is either. As I said at the beginni
ng of this interview, I work for the National Crime Agency. All I’m interested in is arresting a man calling himself Jinty O’Connor. Other police forces can take care of the rest.’

  She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms and carried on staring at me.

  ‘I’m guessing that O’Connor had nothing to do with your abduction of DI North last week,’ Patrick went on. ‘He wouldn’t have done anything so stupid. What were you hoping to achieve?’

  She carried on ignoring him.

  ‘There you are, presumably well off now you have Frederick Judd’s money – although Archie Peters’s assets might prove difficult to get hold of now – and are mistress of your own little crime empire, using the restaurant as a front and with the comforting thought that you have a mobster with a real reputation keeping you safe. Am I right?’

  She said nothing but her expression said it all. He was right.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Patrick continued, ‘things might not be so cosy after all. You hired O’Connor to help you get back at Judd – with whom at one time, we’re pretty sure, you were close – and might have initially been under the impression that he was working for you. But O’Connor’s not like that and here, I assure you, I’m on firmer ground. He’ll want every penny you have and you’ll probably end up as Judd did – burnt to ashes.’

  This registered and she transferred her attention to Patrick, only to discover that he has a far better line in nasty stares. Flustered, she glanced away.

  ‘The skull usually explodes, you know,’ he went on chattily. ‘Or the torso, or both. Pressure builds up because of gases inside and then … bang!’

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ the woman said harshly. Speaking with a strong London accent, she went on: ‘I’ve no idea who you are and have never heard of either of those men you’re on about.’

  ‘You have a car leased by O’Connor under his real name, O’Leary,’ Patrick pointed out.

  ‘Oh, really?’ she responded in a bored manner.

  ‘And were involved in the abduction of a police officer and also carried a handgun. You can’t deny it. Those are very serious charges and you’re apparently maintaining that the wrong person’s been arrested.’

  ‘But you’re on about other stuff that I’ve not had anything to do with.’

  ‘Has anyone here mentioned “other stuff” or just charged you with the crimes you committed the other night?’

  She said nothing. We already knew the answer to the question: she had been charged only in connection with the Feltham crimes.

  ‘You know perfectly well about the “other stuff”,’ Patrick went on remorselessly. ‘And it’s all very well connected.’

  ‘You’re trying to tie me in knots.’

  Not difficult actually, duckie, was the thought that crossed my mind.

  I said, ‘The curate at Wellow heard you and Archie talking about when you used to be an actress. You’re acting right now.’

  ‘I don’t know any curates. And I’ve never been an actress.’

  ‘Never belonged to a drama group?’

  ‘Oh, er, no.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Patrick told her calmly. And then said to me, ‘We might be here for quite a while.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ she mumbled.

  But at least she was talking.

  ‘Was Frederick Judd your husband?’ Patrick said into the ensuing and rather long silence.

  ‘Judd! No!’

  ‘You’ve heard of him then.’

  Confused, she answered, ‘Oh, er – yes, in the restaurant.’

  ‘Was he a customer?’

  ‘No, he’s dead. That’s what I heard.’

  ‘So how did you hear about him?’

  ‘Just people talking.’

  ‘From the man driving the Jag the other night?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t know anything – just does odd jobs.’

  ‘And drives the car.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Follows orders, that kind of thing.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘He was described to us as your boyfriend.’

  ‘Someone must have been having a laugh,’ she answered dismissively.

  ‘Judd was, though – at one time before he went off his head and chucked you out. Although he might have installed someone a lot younger and more attractive before he completely lost it.’

  ‘That’s all a load of crap! How do you get this job when you’re so bloody rude?’ the woman shouted at him. ‘Don’t you have to show respect to witnesses?’

  ‘But you’re not a witness,’ Patrick leaned over to whisper. ‘You’re a criminal, and have been, I think, for a very long time.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea to kidnap the cop. It was Enrico’s. He said it works in Italy when you’re trying to get away from the law.’

  In businesslike-fashion fashion, Patrick said, ‘OK, let’s go through what I’m sure of about you – count up the number of murders you’re responsible for. There’s probably Archie, although he was very ill. Slipped something in his food to finish him off, did you? Then there’s Judd, who I think you lived with and wanted his money extremely badly. His body was cremated instead of Archie’s. Poor old Archie’s remains went up with the bungalow but we found his skull roughly where the kitchen used to be. There were two bullet holes in it that had happened after death and were done either by you or someone working for you, to try to make it look as though you’d been murdered when you’d really done a runner. Forensic science is a hell of a lot better than, clearly, you imagine. Slightly before that happened you arranged to have Hereward Stevens, the funeral director, murdered because he came back for his phone and saw O’Connor in your house. There was also the risk that Sandra, his ex-wife – who had been interviewed by the local paper and appeared in an article – had been told about this so it was fixed, by you, to have her killed as well. Only she didn’t die and is under very impressive police protection in hospital. That’s three murders and one attempted murder. Not bad, eh?’

  And here, Patrick sat back and smirked at her. It was an infuri-ating smirk which even irritated me, sitting at an angle to the pair of them.

  ‘Smug, pompous bastard!’ the woman yelled. ‘I know all about you, the holier-than-thou priest’s son with a big posh house in Hinton Litttlemore and that stuck-up cow over there for a wife! You think you’re the big man, don’t you, parading around in your big posh car?’

  She then buried her face in her hands, hating herself.

  Patrick turned to me and laughed. ‘You said she was thick, didn’t you?’

  ‘Too thick even to stick to the agreed plan regarding the DI,’ I said.

  This was not the first time he had used that particular ruse.

  ‘So what’s it to be?’ Patrick continued. ‘Are you going to give us the facts or end up being the only one charged with these murders?’

  ‘You said you wanted O’Connor,’ she replied, dropping her hands with a gesture of resignation.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’ll do a deal – everything I know about him in exchange for—’

  ‘I can’t do deals,’ Patrick butted in with. ‘But the people here might listen to you more sympathetically if you fully cooperate.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Tell me your name.’

  After a pause: ‘Marlene Judd.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘I was his sister!’ she shrilled. ‘And he turned his back on all of us! His whole family! His wife – only she’s dead now, which was his fault as she was never the same after he beat her up one night – and his brothers, sisters, and even his poor old mum who had to go into a council home as she had no money. We had no money either as he never paid us for what we did for him. We just got promises, promises. He was filthy rich! I went to his house in Harrow, or rather mansion, and asked him if he’d pay for Mum’s care, begged him to, and he just laughed in my face. Likely they called him Freddie the Bent and it weren’t nothing to do with his ac
cident. He got everything he deserved, the bastard!’

  I was a little shocked to discover that I agreed with her.

  Patrick said, ‘You employed O’Connor to locate Judd after he moved from there and find out where his money was hidden – I’m assuming it wasn’t in a bank – and—’

  ‘Some of it was.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Jinty did him a deal – that he’d let him go with some of it if he drew it all out.’

  ‘And then killed him anyway.’

  ‘Too right.’

  ‘How much money are we talking about?’

  ‘Altogether?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She sighed despairingly. ‘I suppose I might as well tell you as I’ll have lost it all now. Around two million.’

  ‘All in cash?’

  ‘No, stolen stuff partly that some fence had given him a rough estimate for. Jewellery, antiques, pictures. There were drugs too. They were hidden in the restaurant so you lot have probably found them now.’

  ‘Where’s the rest of it concealed?’

  ‘I don’t know where it is now. Hidden away. It was stashed away at Fred’s place, under the floorboards. Jinty promised I’d get my share.’

  Just a bullet or something a little more exotic actually, I thought.

  Patrick said, ‘But quite a while before all that happened you’d found yourself a rich old man a long way from London and adopted a new identity.’

  ‘I was skint and needed to get away from Fred in case he went even madder and came after me, didn’t I? The old man advertised for a housekeeper – skivvy more like as it turned out – and I soon realized that he was almost as crazy as Fred. And mean.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’ I asked.

  Again that black stare. ‘No, he had cancer everywhere. I knew it was only a matter of time when I took the job but it took a hell of a lot longer for him to die than I’d thought.’