Deadlock

by Graham Ison

  I made the call at twenty-five minutes to one for no better reason than that I thought Mrs Manners would out of class for the lunch break by then. Warner had told us that, like him, Shirley Manners was a schoolteacher. I knew from experience that most adulterous relationships start in the workplace, and usually end in acrimony.

  ‘Shirley Manners,’ said a confident voice.

  ‘Mrs Manners, this is Detective Chief Inspector Brock of the Murder Investigation Team at New Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Why on earth are you ringing me?’ She sounded guarded, as though she was not alone.

  ‘I need to speak to you with regards to the murder of Denise Barton, Mrs Manners.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone of that name. I really think you must have a wrong number.’

  ‘I take it you’re not free to talk at the moment,’ I said, now convinced that she was in a room with other people.

  ‘I’m at work,’ she said.

  ‘In that case, I’d better come and see you at your home in Effingham,’ I suggested.

  ‘Er … no, that’s not a good idea.’ Suddenly the confidence diminished a notch or two.

  There was a lengthy pause, long enough for me to ask if she was still there.

  ‘Yes, I am. I was just walking out to the grounds. The reception’s better outside. Look, I’ve got the day off tomorrow, and I’m coming up to London to do some shopping in Oxford Street. Perhaps we could meet then. Although I still don’t understand why you should want to talk to me.’

  ‘I’m at Belgravia police station,’ I said. ‘Ask for the Homicide and Major Crime Command offices. I’ll see you then.’ I had no intention of meeting her in some teashop in Oxford Street.

  ‘Oh!’ Shirley Manners obviously didn’t like the sound of a police station. Too official, perhaps? ‘All right, then,’ she said eventually. ‘I could be there at about half past eleven.’

  ‘I’ll be expecting you,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t I answer your questions, whatever they are, on the phone?’ she asked, making a last-ditch attempt to avoid the nuisance of coming to Belgravia.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Manners. You see, I may need to take a written statement from you.’ That wasn’t the reason at all, of course. I liked watching the faces of witnesses so that I could see when they lied, something that could not be detected on the telephone.

  I could quite see why Malcolm Warner had been attracted to Shirley Manners. She was a shapely blonde in her mid-twenties, and it came as no surprise when she admitted to being a physical education teacher.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Mrs Manners, and this is Detective Sergeant Carpenter.’ I knew, from the experience of others, that it’s essential when interviewing a woman to have a female officer present to counter the sort of allegation that some women are prone to make against male police officers. Such allegations, which can range from overfamiliarity to indecent assault, are easily made but difficult to disprove. Liz Carpenter’s presence was, therefore, a form of insurance. For me.

  ‘Now that I’m here,’ said Shirley Manners, ‘perhaps you’d tell me what this is all about.’

  ‘Please take a seat, Mrs Manners. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Only if it’s decaffeinated.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t guarantee that.’

  ‘In that case, I won’t bother.’ She made a point of glancing at her wristwatch as if to imply that she had an appointment elsewhere, and fairly soon.

  ‘It’s about the murder of Denise Barton, Mrs Manners.’

  ‘I told you on the phone that the name means nothing to me, Chief Inspector.’

  It was obvious from the blank expression on the woman’s face that she really didn’t know anything about the Barton girl or her murder.

  ‘She was Malcolm Warner’s fiancée.’

  ‘His fiancée?’

  I could tell by the shocked look on Shirley Manners’s face that this was news to her.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Manners, his fiancée. But more importantly, she was murdered sometime on the night of Saturday the fifteenth of June. Malcolm Warner has made a statement to the effect that he spent that night with you. My job is to confirm his alibi.’

  ‘D’you mean he actually told you that?’ Shirley Manners’s expression implied that it would be the very last time he spent the night with her. But then came a surprise. ‘It’s not true. Malcolm Warner is a colleague, and that’s all.’

  ‘Am I to understand that you categorically deny having spent the night of Saturday the fifteenth of June with Malcolm Warner?’ I wanted to be absolutely certain that was the case.

  ‘I most certainly do.’

  ‘Are you willing to make a written statement to that effect, Mrs Manners?’

  ‘No, I’d rather not have anything written down,’ she said, quite adamantly. ‘These things often get out and in no time at all people will be writing on social media about there being no smoke without fire.’

  ‘Thank you for coming in, Mrs Manners,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t look as though you can help us any further.’ I sent for one of the uniformed officers to escort her from the building.

  She didn’t exactly flounce out of the interview room, but she’d clearly been irritated by the whole episode.

  ‘What d’you think, Liz?’ I asked, once we’d returned to my office.

  ‘She’s lying through her teeth, guv.’

  ‘You think so?’ I always relied on a woman detective’s intuition when it came to assessing a female witness, and Liz Carpenter was every bit as good as Kate Ebdon.

  ‘Did you notice the way she reacted when you mentioned that Warner had a fiancée? Mind you, she covered it up pretty well. It might just be that she’s on the point of separating from Mr Manners, and believed herself to be on a promise of a future with Warner. And then she finds he has – or had – a fiancée and is, therefore, a two-timing bastard.’ Liz smiled. ‘And I speak from experience, guv’nor, believe me.’

  ‘In that case, it’s back to see Warner and rattle the bars of his cage for him.’

  We left it until the evening to visit Warner at Cobham again. I could have taken Liz Carpenter with me, but I opted for Kate Ebdon simply because she had been with me on the first two interviews.

  ‘Oh, it’s you again.’

  Warner’s tone and attitude were only just short of belligerent, and I suspected that he had already had an ear-bashing from a furious Shirley Manners.

  ‘When I saw you on Sunday you told us at first that you had spent the evening of Saturday the fifteenth of June playing chess with Justin Lane. When we proved that to be untrue, you then told us that you spent the night with Mrs Shirley Manners.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I interviewed Mrs Manners this morning at Belgravia police station, Mr Warner, and she categorically denied having spent the night with you. She went on to say that you were a colleague and nothing more.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ said Warner. ‘We most certainly did spend the night together.’

  ‘Well, one of you is lying, sport,’ said Kate. ‘And that means that one of you will most certainly finish up in court charged with wasting police time, or even perverting the course of justice.’ She paused to give her next statement effect. ‘And perverting the course of justice carries a penalty of life imprisonment.’ These days, however, four months is usually the going rate, but Kate didn’t mention that.

  ‘For God’s sake, it’s true, I tell you.’ The unworldly Warner had clearly been frightened by Kate’s dispassionate statement of the law. ‘Just a moment.’ He hurried across to a small table and opened a drawer. After a frenzied search of its contents he produced an account with a credit card receipt attached to it and handed it to me. ‘That’s the hotel Shirley and I stayed at in Guildford on the fifteenth of June.’

  ‘This doesn’t prove anything, Mr Warner,’ I said, returning the bill. ‘You may have stayed there, but it doesn’t tell me that Mrs Manners was with you. It just shows accommod
ation for two people, and that the booking was made by you.’

  ‘If you ask the hotel, they’ll tell you. I registered us under our own names.’

  ‘You did what?’ exclaimed Kate.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Warner, his face a picture of innocence.

  ‘Is Mrs Manners a widow … or divorced, perhaps? Or even on the point of divorce?’ Kate was struggling to come to terms with Warner’s naive approach to adultery.

  ‘No. She’s married to someone who works in IT.’

  ‘I wonder if he’s hacked into his wife’s mobile phone,’ speculated Kate, a comment that appeared to discomfit Warner, who had obviously never considered such a possibility.

  ‘What d’you think, Kate?’ I asked as we drove away from Warner’s Cobham cottage.

  ‘Why on earth would a woman like Shirley Manners risk her marriage for a night in bed with that clown, Harry?’

  ‘I think we may safely assume that that particular affair is over, Kate.’

  ‘If it ever was one in the first place,’ said Kate dismissively.

  It was only about ten miles from Cobham to Guildford and we were able to park outside the hotel where Malcolm Warner and Shirley Manners had stayed.

  We explained to the receptionist what we wanted, and after she had received the manager’s consent to give us the information we required, she confirmed that Mr Malcolm Warner and Mrs Shirley Manners had stayed at the hotel on the night that Denise Barton had been murdered. As a bonus, the receptionist was able to give a good description of Shirley Manners, and to tell us that she and Warner had shared a room.

  I phoned Shirley Manners from the car. It was a brief conversation. Once she had recovered from her outrage at learning that instead of passing her off as Mrs Warner, Warner had actually given her name to the hotel, she admitted that she had shared a room – and a bed – with him on the night in question. She also stated that she had been with him for the entire night.

  ‘Well, thank God not all alibis are that difficult to confirm,’ I said, once Kate and I were back at Belgravia.

  ‘Are you going to do her for wasting police time, Harry?’ Kate asked.

  ‘What, and waste even more police time? It’s not worth the trouble, Kate. My one regret,’ I continued, ‘is that I won’t be a fly on the wall to witness Shirley Manners’s next meeting with Malcolm Warner.’

  ‘Given that she’s a PE teacher, it could get quite violent,’ commented Kate.

  I arrived home at about eight o’clock and was amazed to find Lydia there. She hadn’t mentioned that she was coming over.

  ‘What a surprise,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you did give me a key, Harry.’ She sounded a little guilty, as though she should have given me warning of a visit.

  ‘For the very simple reason that I wanted you to come and go as you please, Lydia darling. Treat it as if it were your own home.’ I took her in my arms and gave her a kiss.

  ‘If you’re sure, Harry.’ She leaned back against my encircling arms and looked up at me.

  ‘Sure I’m sure. In fact, I’d ask you to move in permanently, but I haven’t got a swimming pool.’

  She laughed and the tension was eased. ‘I’ve prepared a cold supper, darling. I didn’t know what time you’d be in.’

  ‘Great. That’ll give me time to have a shower.’ I paused. ‘Why don’t you join me?’ I suggested, not thinking for a moment that she would.

  Lydia said nothing but, fixing her gaze unwaveringly on my face, she began to unbutton her denim shirt.

  An hour later, she turned to look at the bedside clock. ‘I suppose we should have our supper,’ she said.

  ‘I thought we’d just had it,’ I said, and she launched a playful punch at my chest.

  It was at half past ten, just as we were thinking of going back to bed, that my mobile rang.

  ‘Can’t you ignore it, Harry, just this once?’ Lydia implored.

  ‘You know I can’t do that, darling.’ I picked up the phone. ‘Brock.’

  Before finishing my conversation with Gavin Creasey, the night-duty incident room manager, I asked him to call out Kate Ebdon and to alert Linda Mitchell.

  ‘I’ve done that, sir.’ Creasey’s tired tone of voice implied that he didn’t need telling how to do his job.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve got to go out.’ Lydia looked disappointed.

  ‘I’m afraid so, darling, and I could be out all night from what they were telling me.’

  ‘Don’t your people have any consideration for women like me? Just as I’m in a ready and willing mood, you’re snatched away from me.’

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ It was not a very comforting reaction, but my mind was already on what Creasey had just told me.

  There was a car waiting for me outside my flat.

  ‘Where to, guv’nor?’ asked the driver.

  ‘Richmond Park.’

  The park was closed to traffic, but the Kingston Gate had been opened to allow the police vehicles access.

  My driver opened his window. ‘Where’s it all happening, mate?’ he asked the policeman who had been posted there to stop rubberneckers. Already, even at this late hour, some had been drawn to the scene by social media.

  ‘A few yards up on the left.’ The PC pointed. ‘Just before the right-hand turning that leads to Robin Hood Gate.’

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ said the driver, and drove the few yards or so to where the centre of police activity was located.

  ‘And you are?’ An inspector with a clipboard placed his pen in the ‘ready to write’ mode and looked at me expectantly.

  ‘DCI Brock, HMCC West.’ I’d been tempted on many occasions in the past to say that I was Father Christmas and to ask where the kids’ party was being held, but incident officers don’t possess the same bizarre sense of humour as CID officers.

  The stepping plates did not lead directly from where I was standing but followed a circuitous route so that I approached the canvas structure sheltering the body from the rear.

  Jane Mansfield was in a small group talking to Kate Ebdon, Dave Poole and Linda Mitchell, the crime-scene manager, but broke off her conversation to speak to me.

  ‘Looks like the same MO as the last three, guv’nor,’ she began. ‘Twenty-seven years of age, five foot nine, good figure, long brown hair and naked to the waist. Significantly, her bra was missing, although she did wear one.’

  ‘As you know her age, Jane,’ I said, ‘I presume you’ve identified the victim?’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ said Dave, joining in the briefing. ‘You’re not going to like this. She’s a Dutch citizen, Danique Vandenberg. Her credit cards and driving licence were still in her bag, along with a five-pound note and some loose change. Oh, and her passport contains details of her next of kin. They live in some place called Apeldoorn,’ he added, a hopeful expression on his face.

  ‘Oh, great!’ I said. ‘Foreign complications are all we need, and in answer to your unasked question, Dave, no, we’ll not be going to the Netherlands. Next of kin will be notified via the Dutch Embassy.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Dave.

  ‘In the meantime,’ I continued, ‘we’d better get on with it.’ In view of the stark similarity between this evening’s victim and the other three I was dealing with, I knew that the DAC would allot this one to me as well.

  ‘Anything yet, Linda?’ I said, in the hope that there might be some significant scientific evidence that would enable me to break our evidential impasse and make an arrest. But on the basis of what we had found so far, our murderer had been very careful. Or very lucky.

  ‘There are some deep indentations on the grass. My initial assessment is that the murderer carried the body from a car to where he left it.’ Linda Mitchell, looking much brighter than I felt, waved a hand towards the five or six yards of grass between the tent and the road.

  ‘Any chance of identifying the shoes that left those marks, Linda?’

  ‘What
, on grass? I’m afraid that’s the sort of good fortune that only happens on television, Harry. Nevertheless, I’ve arranged for casts to be taken, but don’t put money on me coming up with anything.’

  ‘D’you want me to do the usual, guv?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Yes, please, Kate. As soon as Linda’s finished, and as soon as you can assemble the search team.’ The search team was a group of specialist officers who would go over the ground, slowly increasing the search area from the body outwards in the hope of finding some tiny piece of evidence that would point me to the woman’s killer.

  ‘Has the good Dr Mortlock arrived yet?’ I asked of no one in particular.

  ‘No. Pamela’s on duty tonight,’ said Linda. ‘I understand that Henry Mortlock left this morning for a golfing holiday in Japan.’

  I crossed to the tent. Inside, Pamela Hatcher was bent over the latest victim. She seemed to spend most of her working day with Seb Mould’s team. As a consequence, our paths hadn’t crossed for some time. A slender woman of about fifty-two, Pamela wore her long grey hair in a single pigtail, at least when she was working a crime scene or carrying out a post-mortem.

  ‘Hello, Harry. Haven’t seen you in a while.’

  We exchanged a few pleasantries and Pamela got down to business. ‘First signs are that she was manually strangled from the rear, but hypostasis indicates that she was killed elsewhere and then carried here.’

  ‘That’s a first for this guy,’ I said. ‘If it’s the same killer. Time of death?’

  ‘I would estimate about seven o’clock this evening, Harry.’ But Pamela Hatcher was a cautious forensic pathologist. ‘I’ll be able to tell you more after the post-mortem.’

  ‘I’ve been doing some checking, guv,’ said Dave, flicking open his pocketbook. ‘At this time of year the vehicle gates are closed at nine o’clock each evening, but the pedestrian gates are left open twenty-four-seven.’

  ‘Which means that our killer must’ve dumped the victim and given himself enough time to get out of the park before the gates were closed. Who found her?’