Joint Enterprise (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 3)

by Oliver Tidy

  The machinery was set up and the formalities of identification and detail were submitted.

  ‘Now, James, do you know why you are here?’

  Andrews looked at Romney with a frown. ‘No.’ He’d obviously decided to play mute and make them earn their money. Fair enough.

  ‘That’s not very helpful, James,’ chided Romney. ‘Helping the police with their enquiries means you volunteer information that might prove useful.’ Romney followed this with a big sigh. ‘Look, James, you know why you’re here and I know why you’re here. At the moment it isn’t serious for you. You might even get to be home for tea with your family. But only if you cooperate. I thought we understood each other. We have your four friends from yesterday’s fun and games in other cells waiting their turn to tell me why they’re here – to cooperate. Would you rather I walk out of here and leave you till last?’ Romney checked his watch. ‘Actually, if that happens, James, we won’t be speaking until the morning. I’ve got theatre tickets for tonight and I’m not missing it because you want to play dumb. Last chance: where were you yesterday?’

  Andrews was clearly not happy, but he also had little choice if he wanted to be released sooner rather than tomorrow. ‘At the castle.’

  ‘Which castle? Who with? Why?’ Romney tapped his watch like a teacher at a late pupil.

  ‘Dover castle. I was at Dover castle yesterday with four friends: Mickey Price, Colin Mattock, Jez Ray and Gavin Ireland. We went there because we love history and we wanted to be part of the battle scene. There was no other way for us to get in. We had to gate-crash.’ He kept a remarkably straight face and hardly blushed at all.

  Romney sat back. ‘You love history?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s not a crime is it?’ Andrews had stumbled on, or rehearsed, what he believed to be a good get out for him and Marsh sensed he was pleased with himself for it.

  Romney remained outwardly patient. ‘No, James, of course it’s not a crime to love history.’ Romney sat forward quickly, resting his elbows on the table so that his face filled Andrew’s vision. He went from affable to quietly menacing and threatening, speaking in low tones through clamped teeth. ‘Murder is a crime though. Did you know that James? Which one of you killed the Frenchman?’ Both officers were paying close attention to the young man’s response and neither could miss his wide-eyed, colour draining reaction. His cocky self-assured look had fled along with his wits and his power of speech. ‘Was it you, James? Did you bayonet that poor man who had simply turned up because he loved history? He had a wife and two young children, James. He’s dead, she’s a widow and they are now fatherless. Did you kill him?’

  James Andrews looked like he might faint. ‘What? What are you talking about? Murder? What are you saying? No one was there for that. We were just there for a bit of fun.’

  ‘Fun, James? What’s your idea of fun? Violence? Grievous bodily harm? Aggravated assault? Is that how you and your friends get their kicks, James? Is that what you call loving history?’

  ‘The news just said a bloke had died there,’ said Andrews, as though he hadn’t heard Romney’s questions.

  ‘He was killed, James. He was bayoneted through the chest during the battle scene. It pierced his heart and he died immediately.’

  In a lucid moment of thinking, his voice almost a full octave higher, Andrews said, ‘What makes you think it was one of us?’

  ‘Because you were there intent on violence weren’t you, James? You and your mates. No one else was. Then there’s the filming and then there’s the blood on the uniforms. No doubt there will also be members of the French contingent who suffered injuries as part of your fun who will be able to identify you.’

  James Andrews leant to the side of the table and vomited loudly onto the floor.

  *

  ‘That was interesting, Sergeant. Don’t you think? Guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty, sir.’

  ‘Mmm, that’s my opinion too.’

  They were standing outside interview room two in preparation for doing the same to the next lucky contestant.

  ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘Colin Mattock, sir.’

  ‘Ahh, we’re warming up with the knowns aren’t we? Jolly good. After you.’

  As Marsh reached for the door handle, a uniformed police constable came skidding around the corner.

  ‘Where’s the fire, Constable?’ said Romney.

  ‘No fire, sir. Looks like murder though.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be funny, sonny?’

  ‘No, sir. Phone call from the hospital. A patient has been killed on one of the wards.’

  ‘It never just bloody rains does it?’ bemoaned Romney. He’d been looking forward to exercising his baiting skills on the remaining weekend warriors. He made a quick decision. ‘Right, Sergeant, you stay here and continue in the same vein with this lot. A confession that implicates each and every one of them, signed and on my desk when I return would be well received. Understood? Other than that, I specifically want to know whose idea the whole thing was. If you have to arrest any of them because they no longer want to help us with our enquiries, don’t hesitate.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir.’

  ‘I know you will. You’ll need another bod from upstairs to support you. Sort one out. I’m going to the hospital.’

  *

  Romney was still visiting Buckland hospital for regular physiotherapy on his injured arm. Prior to that, he’d been laid up for nearly a week there with injuries sustained at the hands of an angry and powerful young woman suffering with Down’s syndrome. So he knew his way there and around. Making sure there was no one spying on him in the station car park, he arranged his little cushion, then himself, and drove.

  A police patrol car was parked outside when he arrived. At reception he showed his identification and asked for directions to the crime scene.

  A young constable was standing guard outside the room where a man had had his life ended prematurely. Romney pushed his way in. Maurice Wendell, the town’s resident pathologist, was already there as were a small team of Scene of Crime Officers.

  In response to Romney ostentatiously checking his watch, Wendell said, ‘Very funny, Inspector. I was already here. When I say here I mean the hospital, of course, not the room.’

  ‘Glad to hear it, Maurice. I really wouldn’t like to think you were just drumming up trade for yourself in order that you might continue to live in the lap of luxury to which you have clearly become accustomed. What have we got? Who is he?’

  ‘We have foul play, for a start. Middle-aged male stabbed twice in the chest. One of them found his heart. He was probably asleep when the assailant struck. No signs of having tried to defend himself. Quite unfortunate, really.’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly.’

  ‘No, I mean the means of his death. He was in here because he was the victim of a stabbing.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ said Romney, thinking instantly of Grimes’ recent visit.

  ‘Edy Vitriol. Bit of a minor local celebrity, apparently.’

  The pathologist was still speaking, but Romney had become suddenly hot and his mind was racing with questions of whether the police – i.e. he – might perhaps be criticised for not providing protection of some sort for a man, a local celebrity, who had already been attacked once.

  ‘Was his assailant caught?’ Romney was conscious that his fingers had crossed themselves.

  ‘Not to my knowledge. Don’t you know?’

  ‘I came straight from the station. No one tells me anything. Murder weapon?’ said Romney.

  ‘Not here, I’m afraid, or at least it hasn’t been found if it is. But you’ll be looking for something long and sharp and thin. Think stiletto. Knife, not heel. Registering Romney’s worried and creased brow, Wendell said, ‘What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘He was stabbed on his doorstep last night by an unknown assailant who just rang his doorbell. Grimes visited him earlier for a statem
ent.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the pathologist.

  As a matter of routine, Romney said, ‘How long has he been dead?’

  ‘Between three and six hours.’ The pathologist didn’t look up.

  ‘What? Three hours!’ Romney’s outburst caused the others now crowding the little ward to look around at him.

  ‘Possibly longer. Look.’ He lifted a stiffening limb. ‘Rigor is almost fully set.’

  Romney said, ‘This is a hospital isn’t it? A place where people come in trust to be looked after and get better, not ignored and murdered and then left to rot. How the hell can a man lie dead, murdered, in his bed for over three hours?’

  ‘I can’t help you with that one, Tom.’ The pathologist was remaining restrained, no doubt because the farcical situation involved overworked members of the medical professional with whom he would have had a degree of sympathy.

  Romney called in support for a full search of the room and the surrounding area in case the weapon had been dumped. Security was spoken to. Nursing staff were spoken to. CCTV film was requested. Security was worse than useless. The nursing staff knew nothing and had seen no one and the CCTV cameras were in the process of being updated and so there was no film.

  By the time Romney found his bed in the small hours he knew no more than he did after his brief conversation with the pathologist.

  Unbelievable as it truly was – given the current state of the NHS – Edy Vitriol had occupied a bed in a small ward that had no other patients. His killer had apparently walked in off the street, found him sleeping, stabbed him twice and left. There was no trace of whoever had killed the man. He had been either incredibly lucky or immaculately professional. On a par with this bad news was the strong possibility that Detective Constable Grimes had been one of the very last people to have seen Edy Vitriol alive. As Romney sought sleep, he hoped to Christ that Grimes had been thorough, effective, fair, cooperative and above all done everything by the bloody book for a bloody change.

  ***

  7

  Grimes arrived at Romney’s home a little after six-thirty the following morning. Romney let him in and led him through to the kitchen.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please, gov. Cream and sugar if you’ve got it.’ Grimes perched himself on one of the new and expensive brushed aluminium bar stools with leather seat and trim. It groaned ominously under his bulk as he twisted it back and forwards through its arc of available movement in the way an eight-year old might.

  ‘There’s semi-skimmed milk. Take it or leave it.’

  Grimes made a face. ‘I’ll take it black, thanks. Can’t get used to the taste of that watered down substitute. I can’t help feeling that if I had to drink rats’ milk it would taste like semi-skimmed cows’ milk.’

  Romney handed over the full mug and waited as Grimes spilt some on the new granite counter and then heaped five spoons of sugar almost entirely into it.

  ‘You like a bit of coffee with your sugar?’

  ‘I missed breakfast to come and see you, gov. Need the energy.’

  If it was a hint, it was a waste of breath. Romney didn’t mind standing him a coffee, especially as he’d got him out of bed early and round to his house for a private chat, but he wasn’t supplying the man breakfast. Besides, if Grimes’ objected to semi-skimmed milk, he wouldn’t have considered muesli and natural yoghurt human food.

  ‘Kitchen looks good. Better than last time I was here anyway.’

  ‘I got someone in in the end. Got fed up of looking at it, falling over things and washing up in the bathroom.’

  Tom Romney had bought his current home, a solitary large brick built pile in the middle of the White Cliffs countryside, longer ago than he cared to admit and for reasons he’d largely forgotten. He did remember that he’d fallen for the place on a cycle ride around the country lanes that surrounded Dover during a period of self-immersion in the plethora of get-rich-quick property development programmes on the telly. He had also tired of his dull featureless bungalow in the suburbs and was restless for change. Out of financial necessity, he’d become a bit of a closet DIYer and was not without experience and enthusiasm for the cause, which was good because after the purchase and legal fees it was only enthusiasm and his experience that was left.

  It had been a run-down place in need of investment, time and love all of which, owing to his then and still current state of solitary living he had felt he could manage over time. And time is what he had. Slowly he’d ripped out, disposed of, replaced, redesigned, restructured and renovated. It was still a long way from finished, but sometimes, if he really squinted hard into the gloom of the future, he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. He could only hope it wasn’t the front beacon of an approaching train.

  Romney said, ‘How did it go up at the castle yesterday? Any progress?’

  ‘Not yet, gov, but we barely got the chance to talk to anyone. That Hugo Crawford thinks a lot of himself. He was so unhelpful you’d think that he wasn’t interested in recovering the film.’

  ‘Really? That’s interesting. Did you see Wilkie?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s a worried man.’

  ‘So he should be. It’s his neck in the noose.’

  After a good loud slurp, Grimes said, ‘So what’s afoot, gov? Trouble? You haven’t got me round here at this time in the morning to talk about stuff we could just as easily do at work.’

  Grimes wasn’t a complete fool, whatever he might be happy for people to think of him, and Romney knew it and Grimes knew that Romney knew it. Romney had come up through the ranks at the local nick and had known Grimes for many years. Grimes was a time-server with no great ambition, but he had his uses. He could be insightful, wily. He had experience and local knowledge.

  ‘I hope not, Peter, but the way things are these days, after what Wilkie did to us, we can’t be too careful about things. We’re all under area’s microscope, as the super is always keen to remind me. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. Have you heard about Edy Vitriol?’

  Grimes’ face creased. ‘No. What did he do, now?’

  ‘Died.’

  ‘What!? Shit. He looked all right when I spoke to him.’

  ‘Someone walked into his room when he was asleep, probably not long after you’d spoken to him – although I’m sure there’s no connection – and stabbed him twice in the chest. He bled to death and then lay there until one of the nurses could tear herself away from the daily Sudoku long enough to remember she had a patient on the ward who might be in need of medical attention.’

  ‘Bloody hell. So what’s that got to do with us, apart from giving us another murder to investigate?’

  ‘Fortunately for us I think the spotlight might be trained on the NHS for leaving him slain and unnoticed in his hospital bed for over three hours. The tabloids are going to have a field day. But we need to have followed procedure to the letter in our dealing with his original assault. I don’t want any of the shit that the fan’s going to throw around sticking to us. And you are the one who spoke to him.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes, ah. So what happened? What did you do? Talk me through it. Please, don’t leave anything out, don’t get creative and don’t think that I want to know anything outside of what is relevant.’

  ‘You got any biscuits, gov, or some cake? This sugar isn’t doing it for me.’

  Romney rolled his eyes and rooted around his cupboards for a minute. He returned with a box of chocolate Swiss rolls. The sell-by date was well past, but he didn’t feel the need to tell Grimes. It was only a placebo for the big man. He doubted that out-of-date confectionary would present a problem for Grimes’ constitution. This was, after all, a man who was known to enjoy spicy Thai food and Turkish kebabs with extra chilli sauce as part of the same meal – at lunchtime.

  *

  Superintendent Falkner was back at his morning vigil and his office window gazing out over the Dover rooftops with the melancholy air of a character from a Fowles’ novel. W
ith what was going on in the town at the moment his behaviour became more understandable.

  Romney parked, stuffed his pillow behind his seat, wandered into his leader’s line of sight and looked up. He knew what was coming, and he really didn’t wish to be knocked at again. It was embarrassing. After a brief exchange of body language, Romney traipsed up.

  ‘Morning, Tom.’

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Things are getting busy, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll be happy if we’re not stretched any thinner for a while.’

  ‘You need help, Tom. I can easily summon some extra bodies from the area pool.’

  Romney had worked with officers from the area pool before. The experience left him feeling he’d rather work with people from the local swimming pool. ‘No thank you, sir. Everything is under control. I have confidence in my officers.’

  ‘Mmm. Who’s on what?’

  ‘I’m looking at the latest – the Vitriol death in the hospital.’

  ‘Yes. Now, he was interviewed by Grimes shortly before being slain, wasn’t he? In connection with the reason he was in there. Being stabbed on his doorstep, I understand?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. I’ve spoken with Grimes. He had been his usual thorough self with his initial input.’ The words threatened to stick in Romney’s throat and even Falkner, who had to know something of Grime’s reputation in the station, raised his eyebrows. ‘According to Vitriol’s statement that Grimes took in the hospital, he had no idea regarding the identity of his attacker or the motive for the attack. He couldn’t even tell Grimes whether his assailant was male or female.’ Romney was careful to be laying it on thick by remembering every detail that would excuse the police from having gone out making random arrests. If they had no idea of where to start how could they?