by Penny Grubb
‘Or woman.’ The words were barely audible. Webber’s stare snapped across to Ahmed in time to see him flinch as he took Suzie’s elbow in his midriff. She pulled Ahmed’s attention to the file in her hand. Webber could see it was a lab report. Something back from that graveyard up at the gravel pits probably.
‘How do we know it was driven from the passenger seat after Trent was killed? Why didn’t the killer do the business once he’d got it lined up with the tree? Far easier that way.’
Davis tapped the map again. ‘The shift worker,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t remember seeing it but heard it stop then start up again. He clocked it as odd to pause at that junction at that hour. Road’s clear … you can see both ways as you approach. The killer stopped the car to get out. He had that cruise control gizmo in place.’
Someone went to pin up a diagram of the workings of the car the way the lab had reconstructed how the trick had been pulled. The complex diagram of wires was met with a chorus of disbelief. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Davis, ‘Nothing like this in the car, but remember those odd bits of stuff …’ He pointed to a photograph showing the vehicle’s interior after the crash. Short lengths of string and wire hung from one of the seatbelt anchors and the door handles. ‘Suppose he had it fixed so he could set it off then yank the whole mechanism out, just leaving those odd scraps behind. Who’s going to look twice at a bit of string?’
Webber’s attention wandered as they argued for a crude but effective mechanism against something more sophisticated. Again he glanced at Ahmed whose whole bearing radiated irritation with Suzie who was taking his attention away from the discussion on Trent.
A couple of dissenters spoke up, arguing that Trent might have been killed at the junction where the car had been heard to stop. ‘… makes more sense than trying to drive from beside him …’ but Davis shook his head. ‘Doesn’t fit with what we know,’ he told them, ‘and anyway, that junction’s too exposed. The car stopping caught someone’s attention. If he’d hung about long enough to pull bodies about, our half-asleep witness would have woken up and seen him.’
‘Did the witness see the crash?’
‘He heard it. And he remembered running footsteps too once he was pressed for a second-by-second account. Running footsteps before the impact. Only no one else was there when he got to the wreckage. Our phantom driver trusted to luck the car would hit hard enough to be taken as cause of death, because Trent was a dead man by then.’
‘If Trent was definitely killed back there, do we know for certain the killer stayed in the car with him at all?’
‘If he got out earlier,’ Davis said, ‘he’d have needed some kind of remote control on the car and there’s no trace of anything that clever.’
Webber thought about the traffic light scam. There had been nothing clever about that either. It was clear now that Jenkinson had told Ahmed the truth. Handheld lasers operated by children at his signal. They’d never fully unravelled what it was all about and wouldn’t until they ran Jenkinson’s mystery man to earth.
The set up with Trent was uncomfortably reminiscent of what had happened to Gary Yeatman. Back in 1996 no one had thought about looking for anomalies of timing, nor conducted house-to-house enquiries in the area. Like Trent, Yeatman had died in the small hours when no one was about. His car might have been seen but no one had asked the right questions. This time, they’d got themselves out into the surrounding streets quickly enough that memories were fresh and intact.
Davis moved to the wider aspects of the case, talking about the reams of footage from various security cameras that might hold a missing piece of the jigsaw. Wading through that lot would be a tedious job for someone. Ahmed would be good at it but Webber daren’t let him that close to the case. A shame because a finicky arduous task would be just the thing to distract him from any freelance enquiries on his own account. Webber didn’t like the gleam in his eye as he listened to Davis’s team bouncing ideas around; didn’t like it that he occasionally leant in to say something to the officers nearest to him, and he wasn’t impressed that Suzie hadn’t pulled him up far more sharply. She needed to keep a closer rein on him.
His phone sounded from across the corridor, the tone signalling an external call. He pushed himself up from the desk, briefly meeting Davis’s eye as he left the room and went to pick up the handset.
‘It’s a Mr Meyer, you spoke to him yesterday.’
‘Put him through.’
‘Martyn Webber? Jack Meyer here. I’ve been looking out photographs for you.’
Webber watched through the glass. Suzie was talking to Davis now, presumably briefing him on the latest on the cold cases, that lab report maybe. Ahmed’s attention was all on Davis’s team as they bustled about preparing to head off to get started on their allotted tasks. The look in Ahmed’s eye showed how badly he wanted to be setting off with them. He wasn’t paying any attention to Davis and Suzie.
‘Ah, the group of five,’ Webber said absently into the phone. ‘Did you find it?’
‘Not yet, but I’m sure it’s here somewhere. It’s that other name, Will Jones. Blow me down if that didn’t crop up as I was going through the albums.’
‘Will Jones?’ Webber made himself turn away from the scene across the corridor and concentrate on the call. ‘Have you remembered him?’
‘Vaguely. At any rate, I remember the fight. And when I saw the photo, it came back to me. The names were on the back and there was Will Jones in amongst the quintets. He wasn’t a pupil … wasn’t at school then. He’d been through the secondary modern system, left at 15 or 16, I imagine.’
‘He was into the animal rights movement apparently,’ Webber prompted.
‘If you say so. It wouldn’t surprise me. He certainly caused trouble at school that year.’
‘You said there was a fight.’
‘Yes, in the quintets’ final year. Gary and China hammer and tongs with Edie as I remember it. Nothing physical. There never was. Pamela and Michael the peacemakers. It was all tensions and fights by then. Michael was set to marry Tina Tippet. Pamela had taken up with her Canadian and planned to go off travelling the world with him. And Brad Tippet a coiled spring of resentment against Michael for nabbing his big sister.’
The early 1970s. Webber tried to imagine the mores of the time. He knew that Pamela Morgan hadn’t had children, but wondered about the other unexpected marriage. ‘Was Tina Tippet pregnant when she married Michael Drake?’ As he asked the question he knew that they wouldn’t have confided that snippet to Meyer even if it had been true.
Meyer gave a forced laugh as though embarrassed at the question. ‘No, no. They never had children. I expect they would have if Tina had lived. It must have been 1976 she died. Yes, because it was the year Gary and Edie graduated. Michael couldn’t go because Tina was ill, but the quintets were there at Tina’s funeral to support Michael. They rallied round when one of them was in trouble. In fact, I’m not sure that Will Jones wasn’t there too. I couldn’t swear to it, not after all this time, but now I’ve remembered him …’
‘But where did Will Jones fit in? Why did he become one of the group?’
‘Ah, now that was a reaction to Michael’s marriage, I’m sure. Edie trying to make him jealous. I think she had her eye on him. Leastways if he wasn’t going to marry Pamela I think she wanted him for herself. Young Edie Stevenson, I mean. Will Jones was her boyfriend.’
So the woman with the weird walk on Ahmed’s film had been the adolescent girlfriend of Will Jones of the tiger stunt. After ending the call, Webber stood as he was, handset to his ear listening to the buzz of the dialling tone as he looked through the glass panels watching the activity across the corridor.
His first thought had been satisfaction at having such a chunky nugget to take home to Melinda; it boded well for another comfortable evening. His second thought was to be horrified at his first. What had become of his professionalism? Of course he shouldn’t tell Mel. He didn’t need to. Things were not exactly fine, but ge
tting there. The next stage of his penance would be a painfully uncomfortable stay with Melinda’s parents over Christmas. His job would be to contain things, act the model husband and father, and resist the temptation to explode.
He could see the whole excruciating week as though it were scripted. Cold shoulder to start with from all of them; then Melinda’s mother would soften towards him for Sam’s sake. This would infuriate both her husband and daughter who would join ranks to raise poison levels to unbearable. Then his father-in-law would succumb to the habits of a lifetime and start telling his daughter what to do. At this point the Bryants would turn their fire on each other and leave him alone. On the last day of the visit they would take their leave with everyone exclaiming over Sam and being cold and wooden with each other. Mel would thaw on the journey back because otherwise she would have no audience on whom to vent her frustrations about her father, and normal life would resume.
He thought of Davis’s comment about overtime and let out a sigh. There would be no bolthole for him. If he let Mel go on her own, the dynamic would be disastrous. They might persuade her not to come home.
His task following Meyer’s call was to keep a close enough eye on things that Melinda’s name didn’t get entangled in any way that might damage her future prospects – or his, come to that. The buzz in his ear turned to a low-level siren as the handset protested its separation from its base unit. He replaced it and strode to the door, signalling to Davis to join him in his office.
‘Where are we with these cold cases?’ He jerked his thumb towards Suzie and Ahmed. ‘They’re costing us an arm and a leg. I don’t want to go throwing good money after bad if we’re not going to get any further.’
Davis tipped his head. ‘The post office job is wrapped up as far as it’ll go. We can place the eldest brother in Dorset at the same time as the car. The teacher Meyer didn’t remember him, did he?’
‘Not really,’ Webber said. ‘He was aware of three brothers gone bad but they weren’t a part of the quintets clique. It was a hierarchical set-up. The quintets were the cream, the post office brothers would have been the scum. They’d have known of each other’s existence but little more than that.’
‘Circumstantial says that big brother post office didn’t drive the car to Dorset, but we’re betting he drove it back. If he blackmailed someone about Robert Morgan then maybe he got enough money to disappear abroad. That was always the working hypothesis. The sticking point was that the money should have run out and he ought to have resurfaced, but maybe he had enough to make a clean break. Probably drank himself to death on a beach somewhere years ago … assumed name … who’d know?’
Webber nodded. He’d never given the post office brothers high priority. ‘What about Robert Morgan? How far have Suzie and Ayaan got with that?’
‘To be fair, they were taken off course by that note in the missing girl’s file, Tilly Brown and her orange plastic rocking horse stuff. The Morgan case went on the back burner while they looked at that.’
‘Just coincidence then. The plastic’s from something else, is it?’
Davis’s face betrayed the frustration he felt. ‘We can’t be sure. It’s proving a negative … and after all these years … but it was in the file. The only things she took with her were the bits and pieces from the rocking horse, the broken bit of the saddle, distinctive shade of orange, the bridle and something called a shaffron. Both her parents are dead now. Her mother died early this year. Of course no one thought the rocking horse was important enough to photograph at the time, or if they did the pictures are lost. There’s no analysis we can do even if we wanted to spend the money. Nothing to compare against.’
‘And after all,’ Webber completed the thought, ‘what are the chances? Was there anything from the original paperwork that suggested she could have come back here?’
Davis shook his head. ‘The school friends were interviewed in case she’d been in touch. The one she’d always been at daggers drawn with, Michael Drake, they had a bit of a go at him but it was a long shot, and anyway some stray footage of him turned up on a security camera showing he’d been … I can’t remember where it was, but anyway, he was out of the frame before even being in it. They were clutching at straws once they were asking questions back up here. The search was extensive.’
Webber felt uncomfortable that he’d been the one to divert energies into this dead end by passing on Melinda’s theory about the orange plastic. He pulled in a breath preparatory to changing topic and knew that something fundamental had changed. He didn’t regret putting his marriage ahead of the job; he was thankful he’d realised how much he valued his family before he’d lost them, but it was time to regain balance.
‘If we can wrap things up,’ he said to Davis, ‘I want you to get Ayaan working on the Jenkinson case. Background obviously,’ he added, forestalling Davis’s objection. ‘He’s meticulous. He’ll be useful and we need every hand we can muster. So exactly where are they on Robert Morgan?’
Davis gave a quick glance to where Suzie and Ahmed sat heads down over a heap of old files. ‘Our big problem with Morgan is that all energies at the time were aimed the wrong way. It was about a watertight case against the animal rights group, no one touched on premeditated murder.’
Webber nodded. Morgan’s death had been taken as unintended collateral damage. The original team had milked it, but they hadn’t investigated it. Extensive paperwork had arrived from Dorset all slanted just the wrong way, like pictures of a crowd that showed no faces.
‘Suzie’s done what she can to profile Morgan,’ Davis went on, ‘but he’s a difficult one. He didn’t keep up any links with his Canadian family. His whole network in this country was tied in with his wife’s friends. I don’t think he knew anyone other than through her. They’re talking to people still around from back then, trying to build a picture … well, everyone other than Edith Stevenson who won’t talk to us, but I’m not reading anything into that. Not yet. She’s probably just a bad-tempered old bat. That teacher you talked to said she was reclusive even back then.’
‘Jack Meyer,’ Webber said. ‘I’ve just had a call from him. And let’s keep an open mind on Stevenson. It turns out she was Will Jones’s girlfriend.’
Davis’s eyebrows rose. ‘The animal rights guy? The one who turned up briefly round here. That’s interesting. Oh, and I’m saying they haven’t found much on Morgan, but there is one thing. He and his wife won an enormous amount of money on the football pools in the mid-1970s. They opted for anonymity but I imagine the close circle of friends would have known. Suzie’s been chasing Pamela’s will.’
‘Come on, let’s see what she’s found and we’ll get them both up to speed on what Meyer had to say.’
Chapter 34
Suzie tapped the page in front of her. ‘And that’s another angle for you,’ she said.
Ahmed leant across to take a look. Once everyone else had left, he and Suzie had gravitated to the wall with the radiator and returned to Robert Morgan, the topic they’d been pulled away from after those remains turned up at the gravel pits. He was pleased the body hadn’t been Tilly Brown; pleased too that it was all going to unravel into some scam-gone-wrong to do with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease half a century ago. He didn’t want anything else cropping up, no more cases to hop on to. He wanted Robert Morgan in the bag and then they’d have to let him help out on the hunt for Tom’s killer.
‘If Joyce Yeatman was that close to Pamela Morgan,’ Suzie continued, ‘she must have known Robert too. With luck she’ll have a few insights and fill some gaps.’
Ahmed drew in breath to speak but it was Davis’s voice that answered her. ‘You mean they must have been close because Morgan’s suicide note was addressed to Yeatman?’
She nodded. Ahmed said, ‘Pamela Morgan and Gary Yeatman had known each other for years, but we’ve no evidence they kept in touch after school. Gary’s death might have been the thing that brought Pamela into Joyce Yeatman’s life, but we don’t
know that they were close when Robert Morgan was alive.’
‘You’re going to get that out of her when you interview her,’ said Suzie, ‘and anyway, it’s not just the note, it’s the will.’ She looked up at Davis. ‘Pamela Morgan left most of her money to good causes, but those apart, Joyce Yeatman was her chief beneficiary.’
Ahmed saw Webber run his hand through his hair as he stared at Suzie. Finding money entangled in a murder case wasn’t unusual but Ahmed thought Webber looked more worried than the revelation demanded.
‘When you were working with Tom Jenkinson, did you ever worry about him being recruited into something bigger than the petty theft stuff he’d been involved in?’ Ahmed saw Suzie’s surprise as Webber posed the question out of nowhere. Davis looked taken aback too.
‘Yes, of course, but I think he’d have told me if he’d had an approach.’ He spoke the words confidently but as soon as they were out, he felt foolish. Tom had been up to all manner of junk behind the scenes; garbage he’d known nothing about. ‘Why?’ he asked Webber. ‘Has anything come up like that?’
Webber just gave a shrug that could have been a yes or a no. Ahmed looked at Davis who was clearly as surprised as any of them. it was almost as if Webber had asked the question out of the blue to divert the discussion away from Pamela Morgan’s money. He wondered how well Melinda Webber knew Joyce Yeatman.
There was a moment’s pause, then Suzie said, ‘Yes, that note. You’re going to have to get it off Mrs Yeatman if you can … if she’s kept it. We know it said something about Robert Morgan’s death. We need to know what exactly.’
She glanced towards the grey vista outside the window. Ahmed’s thoughts stalled. Tom involved in something big? He had been making headway no matter what had been uncovered since Tom’s death. He looked Webber in the eye. ‘Tom would have said something … or at least hinted … if he’d been threatened or anything.’
