A Season for Murder

by Ann Granger

  ‘You make me sick!’ said Meredith furiously. ‘All of you! You mean she was beddable! That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Try it – before you dismiss it!’ said Fearon. A mocking gleam showed in his eyes. ‘You know where to find me.’ He turned and walked back to his Mercedes.

  Meredith stormed indoors. Her eye lighting on the telephone, she prayed, ‘Don’t call me now, Alan, please! I’ll say a dozen things I’ll regret afterwards!’ Mercifully the phone stayed silent. After a while, as questions about Pardy grew in her mind, that seemed less of a blessing.

  But Markby had other concerns. When he returned to the police station he found Pearce hovering in the corridor waiting for him.

  ‘Mrs Turner is here, sir. Wanting to see you. She’s Pardy’s mother. Pardy’s father was her first husband. Wpc Jones is with her at the moment.’

  ‘That was quick!’ Markby exclaimed. ‘How did she hear about it so soon?’

  ‘I found a letter from her amongst Pardy’s effects and I rang up the local nick to send someone round to see her,’ Pearce said.

  Markby nodded. ‘Good work. What’s she like?’

  ‘Nice woman – not what I’d have expected somehow.’

  Markby opened the door of his office. Wpc Jones sat talking with a small, pale, neatly dressed woman in her forties. A half-drunk cup of tea was on the desk, Wpc Jones got up as he came in and Markby nodded his acknowledgement and dismissal. He pulled up a chair and sat down by Mrs Turner who gazed at him with bewildered and frightened eyes, red-rimmed from crying.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Turner,’ he said. ‘A terrible shock to you.’

  ‘Reg – my husband – is in Scotland,’ she whispered. She cleared her throat and made an effort to speak more loudly. ‘Otherwise he would have come too. I didn’t have time to contact him – he’s on a business trip and it’s difficult during the day. So I came down myself by train. I didn’t want to drive – I was too upset, my concentration all over the place, and we live near the station. My neighbour kindly telephoned British Rail Information and they said there was a good connection.’ She fidgeted with the handbag resting on her lap. Her fingers must have become thinner over the years because her engagement solitaire and wedding ring were both loose. ‘I’m a supply teacher. Luckily there’s no school requiring me at the moment so I could come at once without having to make arrangements, you see.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Were you – forgive my asking – were you in close contact with your son?’

  She shook her head miserably. ‘No, he was always a problem. But it wasn’t entirely his fault.’ She added the last words quickly and defensively, darting a nervous glance at him. ‘You see his father died when he was three and I had to manage on my own. He was a very withdrawn child. I think because I had to leave him at day nursery and with minders while I went out to work. Some children become independent that way, but some just close up. Simon was one of those. Later, when he went to proper school, he never really had any friends. It used to be quite awkward when his birthday came round. I’d give a little party but it was a job to know which children to invite. I finished up inviting the neighbourhood children – butt even at his own party, he never seemed to play with them.’

  She fell silent and reached for her cup of tea, her hand shaking. Markby waited patiently. But the story already had a familiar ring to it.

  ‘I worried about him and I thought that perhaps he needed a male influence in his life. A boy being brought up by a mother alone, perhaps it wasn’t the best thing, and a different environment might suit him better. So I sent him to boarding school. It cost a lot of money but because of my circumstances – I should have explained I was an army widow. My husband was killed as a result of an accident on Nato manoeuvres in Germany. The school gave Simon a bursary which helped quite a bit and I was working fulltime once he’d gone there so I was earning more money. The school was not very far away. He could come home at weekends if he wanted to.

  ‘I thought it might bring him out. I was taking a gamble really, I suppose. With him away at school, I had more free time myself and I was able to go out a little, join a few local societies. That’s how I met Reg, my second husband. He was a widower and a fellow member of the local historical society. We got along well, had a lot of common interests. We got married.’

  ‘How old was Simon then?’

  ‘Oh, fourteen – quite old enough to understand, I thought. And Reg took a real interest in him, tried to be a father – but Simon just rejected all his efforts.’

  Not surprisingly, thought Markby. The boy had never had a father-figure in his life and being suddenly presented with one at fourteen was bound to go down badly.

  ‘He just dropped out of school altogether at sixteen – failed all his exams. Not because he wasn’t bright – but he – well, I have to say, I think he failed them all on purpose. Out of spite – to punish us. It sounds awful . . .’ her voice trailed away, ‘I think he hated us.’

  ‘He was probably going through a phase,’ Markby said encouragingly. ‘Lots of youngsters rebel against their parents.’

  ‘Yes – ’ she brightened. ‘Yes, they do, I know. Well, Simon left school and he ran off down to London. Luckily we were able to find him and bring him home. He was still under age. The police in London said we were very fortunate. So many of the youngsters who run off down there just disappear and the parents can’t find them. Simon stayed home for about six months after that and then ran off again. That time we couldn’t trace him.

  ‘Then, when he was eighteen, he just turned up again one day. I think he had been sleeping rough and he was broke and not feeling very well . . . We took him back, of course. We hoped . . .’ She drew a deep breath. ‘It didn’t work out. He wouldn’t get a job, just hung about the house. Reg started grumbling at him. There was a terrible row and Simon just packed up his things and walked out. After that he lived here and there in all kinds of places. Sometimes he’d come and see me – generally when he wanted money.’ She gave Markby a very direct look. ‘I do realise why he came. I used to tell Reg when he’d been to see me – but I never told Reg I gave Simon money. Reg wouldn’t have understood.’

  ‘I see,’ Markby said. He had heard similar tales a hundred times before but they remained as heartbreaking as ever.

  ‘I used to worry,’ Mrs Turner said, ‘about the kind of company Simon kept.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, Mrs Turner, the three young people he was living with here in Bamford are all quite nice youngsters – if rather oddly dressed and so on. I don’t think there’s any harm in them.’

  ‘It’s nice to know that . . .’ she said gratefully. ‘When – when can we have the body? When can we bury Simon?’

  ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. I hope fairly soon. There will be an inquest.’

  ‘Yes – of course. It’s odd, one worries about so many things. I used to worry about drugs. I was afraid Simon would take to using drugs. I never thought – your sergeant said Simon’s death was suspicious. That means murder, doesn’t it? I mean, one just never thinks about murder, does one?’

  Markby shifted awkwardly on his chair. ‘In my line of work, Mrs Turner, I’m afraid we often do.’

  ‘Yes, of course. What I can’t understand is, why anyone should want to kill Simon. I know he was difficult – but he wasn’t a threat to anyone and I don’t see how he could have done something to make anyone that angry with him, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, Mrs Turner. But I am trying to find out,’ he told her.

  When she had left, Markby sat silent at his desk for a while, doodling daisy plants in pots on a scrap of notepaper. At the end of his third row of daisy plants, the telephone at his elbow rang. It was the pathologist.

  ‘Hullo, Alan – I’ve finished with your young victim and I’m sending over a report as soon as I can get someone to type it up, but I thought you might like to know straight away that there’s a contusion behind the right ear.’

  ‘N
ot from the fall?’ Markby asked sharply. He dropped the biro, leaving the last daisy without a pot to stand in.

  ‘It’s an outside chance, but my own opinion is that it’s unlikely. From the angle and nature of the wound I think that we have here your old pal and mine, the Blunt Instrument.’

  ‘Haven’t found one yet.’ Dash it, have to go back to Jubilee Road and search the garden and that back alley again.

  ‘As I read it,’ the voice in his ear continued, ‘someone right-handed came up behind him and struck him behind the ear as he stood with his back to his attacker. He would have been temporarily stunned and fallen down the staircase like a sack of potatoes.’

  Markby replaced the receiver. Words come back to haunt us. Simon’s words came back to haunt the man whose task it was to find his killer. ‘She went down like a sack of spuds.’

  ‘Who says,’ murmured Markby aloud, ‘that Fate is blind?’

  Twelve

  The dustcart hove into view at the corner of Jubilee Road late that same Friday morning, moving slowly and running well behind schedule. It was always the same after a major public holiday, and Christmas and New Year were by far the worst. Regular collections of household rubbish had been interrupted, people had been supplied with black plastic sacks to take the resulting overflow and the amount to be collected from each house was doubled.

  They began on Jubilee Road as they began on every road. Two dustmen in their yellow council overalls moved quickly and efficiently down, one on either side of the street, collecting up the plastic sacks and other receptacles and piling them in neat heaps at intervals. Then the lorry began its stately progress along and as it reached each heap, a yellow-overalled man picked up the sacks and boxes and threw them into the back where a set of metal teeth dragged them into the dustcart’s interior.

  There was a certain poignancy to this post-festive rubbish. Gaily coloured wrapping paper, besprinkled with reindeer and Father Christmas figures, protruded in crushed wads from plastic sacks which had split or been torn open by cats. Here was an empty ‘sparkling wine’ bottle which had heralded the birth of another year sticking up amongst the gnawed remains of a turkey, a string of Christmas tree lights which had failed to work, a toy expensive but already broken beyond repair.

  Between the sodden tea-bags and potato peelings could be glimpsed fragments of Christmas cards depicting people plodding to church through snowdrifts, although it was years since Bamford had had a White Christmas, There wasn’t much church-going from Jubilee Road, either.

  Before number forty-three the dustman gathering up the bags stopped and found himself exchanging appraising looks with a uniformed police constable barring the entrance. A tabby tomcat was prowling around the torn plastic bag of the rubbish put out by next door’s gate but there was no bag in the gateway of forty-three.

  ‘What they done, then?’ enquired the dustman of the policeman with a jerk of his head towards forty-three.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said the constable.

  ‘Where’s their bag? If they don’t put it out I can’t take it. I haven’t got time to go knocking on the door and asking for it. We’re not supposed to. Council policy. Wastes time.’

  ‘You can’t have it,’ said the constable.

  This gave the dustman something to think about. ‘Why not? Got the crown jewels hidden in it?’

  ‘It’s being examined . . .’ said the constable loftily. ‘Your mate is waiting for you in the lorry.’

  ‘All right,’ said the dustman, reluctantly moving towards next door’s sack. ‘Git out of it!’ He aimed a kick at the tabby tomcat which dodged him and jumped over the wall carrying a mangled piece of chicken carcass dragged from the bag. ‘Them cats,’ said the dustman in disgust. ‘They tear them bags open every week.’ He collected the plastic sack and hurled it into the back of the lorry. Then he came back to the constable. ‘What you looking for?’

  The constable was a bright young man and he wanted to transfer to CID. He could have told the dustman to move along but an inner prompting stopped him. ‘Something heavy, hard . . . a weapon,’ he said in neutral tones.

  ‘Go on . . .’ The dustman was fascinated. ‘Someone get murdered?’

  ‘Might have been,’ said the constable.

  There was a shrill whistle and an unintelligible cry from the lorry as it moved on.

  ‘All right!’ bellowed the dustman and followed it.

  In the back garden of number forty-three Sergeant Pearce had earlier arrived hot-foot from the station, dispatched by his superior as soon as the pathologist’s phone call had terminated. ‘Find it!’ Markby had ordered him crisply. Pearce had rushed over to Jubilee Road with two extra constables and proceeded to comb the back garden and alley. Now he was helping an unhappy constable to finish sorting through the last contents of forty-three’s bag of rubbish. ‘Don’t half smell, dunnit?’ mumbled the constable. ‘Yah – what’s that?’

  ‘Rice pudding . . .’ said Pearce after inspecting the hand the constable held out. ‘Tinned sort. I like that myself.’

  The constable muttered and wiped his hand on a rag. They shook out the last of the contents. Beer and Coca-Cola cans rolled away in all directions. Cigarette ends fell on to the muddy paving stones of what had once been a patio and stuck there. Baked-bean tins oozed red gore.

  ‘Nothing!’ said Pearce in disgust. ‘Nothing he could have been hit on the head with!’

  ‘We’ve been over the garden, not that there’s much of it,’ said the constable obstinately. ‘There’s nothing here. We went all through those overgrown flowerbeds. And that back alley is clean and all.’

  A footstep was heard and they both looked up. ‘Oh, hullo, sir . . .’ said Pearce, glancing at his wristwatch. It was almost one. ‘No luck, I’m afraid. Not a thing. We’ve searched in the garden, the back alley there and this was the dustbin bag. We rescued that from collection. Bin day today.’

  ‘You mean,’ Markby said slowly. ‘All the other bags on this side of the street have been collected – taken away?’

  An uneasy silence fell. ‘Um, yessir,’ said Pearce, turning scarlet.

  ‘The weapon could,’ Markby said with increasing ire, ‘have been thrown into any of them! All the gardens have gates into the back alley! He needn’t have thrown it away in this one! In fact, it’s far more likely he chucked it in another, if he chucked it anywhere!’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said the miserable Pearce. ‘I should have thought of that.’

  Markby growled and walked back through the house and out of the front door to join the constable on guard.

  ‘Dustcart?’ he snapped.

  ‘Just been past, sir!’

  Markby swore and looked disconsolately along the pavement. It was bare of plastic sacks, but a torn Christmas card, a chicken bone and a piece of tinsel ribbon marked where a rubbish bag had stood next door. Similar odd bits of debris appeared at intervals down the pavement.

  ‘Cats tore the bag open before the lorry came,’ said the constable in explanation. He hoped he wasn’t going to get the blame for this.

  ‘Gone,’ said Markby. ‘If it was in any of them. Gone to join the rest of the rubbish on the municipal tip. Damn, damn, damn . . .! He strode away towards his parked car. Pearce wasn’t normally incompetent, but this morning he’d made a bad mistake – partly because of the time factor. They hadn’t known that Pardy was struck over the head until Markby’s return from the adjourned inquest. If Pearce could have got to Jubilee Road an hour earlier . . . It was no good, Markby was the one who’d have to take responsibility.

  A yellow-overalled figure had appeared at the corner of the street and was walking quickly down it towards them.

  ‘Here, mate!’ the dustman hailed the constable, ‘You know you said you was looking for something like a weapon . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ the constable cast a nervous eye towards the chief inspector. If the old man heard, he’d tear him off a strip for chatting about the search to an outsider.

  ‘Well
, down at the corner house another of the bags was torn open,’ said the dustman, ‘and when I picked it up, this fell out . . . I’d told my mates what you’d said and Baz, that’s the driver, said we ought to hand it over to you, just in case.’ He held out a small woodwork hammer.

  ‘Mind how you handle that!’ exclaimed the constable. ‘Mr Markby, sir, wait a minute!’

  Friday evening it began to drizzle with rain again and Meredith turned up the gas fire and switched on the television. From time to time she sneaked a look at the telephone but it refused to ring and as a matter of principle, she wasn’t going to be the one to pick it up. She was not normally a great television-watcher on the grounds that she found it stopped her thinking. But just now to stop thinking seemed highly desirable. She turned on the set in the corner of Rose Cottage’s living room and, sitting with her feet tucked up under her on the sofa, became hypnotised by the succession of flickering coloured images and the curiously adenoidal dubbed voices of the Channel Four screening, an incomprehensibly surreal Spanish film. If the plot seemed disjointed and punctuated by dream sequences, it hardly mattered. Most of it drifted by Meredith’s ear unabsorbed.

  Here she was, sitting in someone else’s home on someone else’s sofa watching someone else’s television set. All this because in her mid-thirties she didn’t own a thing of her own except an ageing car and a couple of suitcases of clothing. True, she had got a box of household utensils and bed linen somewhere between Eastern Europe and the Channel ports which, when it finally arrived, she wouldn’t open because here she had plenty of household items ready supplied, and when she did eventually open it she’d wonder why on earth she ever bothered to ship all that stuff home. But she did know why she bothered. She shipped it home to prove that she did have a home. She carried it about like a snail or tortoise on her back. Shipping a crate home, even full of junk, was making a statement that her life had substance. Going through the absurd ritual of insuring it even more so. But if it all fell off the lorry somewhere along the Autobahn it wouldn’t have mattered a jot.