by Stan Mason
She nodded sagely staring closely at his face. ‘I think that the phenomena you wish to know about is called Crisis Apparition,’ she explained like a lecturer talking at a seminar. ‘There are three types. Firstly, is the appearance at the time of, or very shortly after, death. That’s the most common one. Secondly, it may be a visit some months after the person has passed on, and thirdly, it could be a sighting at a time of crisis, such as a fire or a car accident. Which one is it in your case?’
‘My wife died a short while ago. I’ve seen her ghost twice and I want to know whether I’m imagining it or whether she actually has come to visit me from the grave..’ He took the photograph of Amy Chester from his pocket and handed it to the woman.
She stared at it and then closed her eyes. For a while nothing happened and the architect became somewhat bored, then she gave a long sigh and appeared to go into a minor trance.
‘This is not the picture of your wife,’ she accused without opening her eyes.
‘No, it’s not her. It’s her spirit friend,’ he replied, annoyed for not having explained the situation to the psychic from the start. ‘Her name’s Amy...’
‘Don’t tell me any more,’ interrupted the woman curtly, opening her eyes to stare hard at the photograph. There was a long silence and then she began to shudder as she went into a deeper trance. ‘This young woman was nineteen years of age. She was raped, beaten and strangled.’ She paused and Hunter waited patiently for her to continue. She shuddered once more and then started to talk again. ‘The man killed her in a room on the third floor of a building before taking her to a beach in his car. Oh, dear... he broke her collar-bone and gave her two broken ribs. I’m in touch with her now.’ There was another period of silence before the woman continued. ‘She wants someone to find her killer and...’she tailed off quickly and stared at Hunter oddly. ‘Strange... there are two spirits almost conjoined with each other. It’s never happened to me before. I can’t make sense of it.’
‘The second one is that of my wife,’ proffered the architect helpfully.
‘Yes... you’re right. She says her name is Ruth. It is the spirit of your wife.’
‘Can you give me a description of the man who killed Amy?’ Hunter’s voice took on an element of desperation.
‘Two spirits together,’ muttered the psychic as though she was in another trance. ‘One of them says she’s your wife. I don’t understand what’s happening.’
‘Can you tell me the registration number of the car?’ he intruded hopeful of getting the information that was so vital..
‘Your wife’s saying she wants you to find Amy’s killer. I can’t understand why she’s involved.’
‘The car... the car,’ repeated Hunter urgently. ‘Can you see its registration number?’
The woman suddenly relaxed and looked directly at him. ‘I’m sorry but both of them are gone. The lines of communication no longer exist. You see, it’s like a telephone call between the spirits and ourselves. They choose when to call and when to hang up. But quite honestly I find it strange that two spirits contacted me together.’
‘You don’t recall the place where Amy was killed,’ he said negatively.
‘Yes, I do,’ she responded readily. ‘It was on the third floor of a large building but I couldn’t see the outside. The room was dark and there was a cross on the wall.’
‘What kind of cross?’
‘A Maltese Cross... a very large one. I didn’t see anything else there that might help you.
He thought for a moment. ‘A Maltese Cross! Where would a large cross of that kind be hung on an internal wall? It wouldn’t be in a church... they didn’t have Maltese Crosses. Perhaps it had something to do with the island of Malta. The world was such a small place in terms of travel that he couldn’t rule it out. Maybe Antonio Perrera was Maltese and he had returned to his home abroad.
The psychic intruded into his thoughts. ‘You wife was very adamant that you should find the killer. How well did she know Amy?’
‘That’s just it... she didn’t. They never met each other when they were both alive. They were strangers when Amy was murdered.’
The psychic’s face filled with excitement. ‘I’ve never known a case like this before. Two spirits joined together. It’s remarkable!’
The architect dismissed the woman’s euphoria and he pressed for further information. ‘I want to know the description of the man and the registration of the car,’ he demanded hurriedly.
‘I can’t help you in either case,’ she responded tiredly. ‘I could only see the back of the man... he was almost like a shadow. I’m completely oblivious about the car. You have to understand, we only get partial views of what happened in the past.’
‘Can I ask you to go back in your mind to see if there’s anything else you might tell me?’
She looked at him bleakly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I can’t think of anything. Only what I told you. But I would like to pursue your case.’
‘You mean it isn’t over.’ There was surprise in his voice.
Only if you want it to be,’ she told him candidly. ‘If you come again, I might gain more information.’
He was extremely disappointed that the session had ended so quickly but hopeful that the psychic might be able to tell him what had happened at a later date. In the meantime, if she was to be believed, he knew that Amy had been killed in a room on the third floor of a large building which had a Maltese Cross on the wall. The police firmly believed that Amy was raped and killed on Vernon Beach but he now knew that wasn’t the case. Following his visit to the psychic, Hunter had advanced his investigation. The information he had gleaned put him somewhat ahead of the game but it didn’t help him move any further forward to the final solution. Nonetheless the investigation was starting to throw up a multitude of clues which drew him nearer to the killer and yet they were remote with regard to the man’s identity. Now the pages on his study wall were beginning to identify a more meaningful and interesting picture. It was in interest to build on it.
***
He moved to the next stage of his plan, proceeding to the place of Amy’s employment. Hamptons was a large superstore in the area selling all kinds of foods and household goods. It was quoted on the London Stock Exchange, one of many operated by the company throughout the country. Amy had been a check-out girl, working there from the time she left school so she was very well-known. On arrival, Hunter approached the store manager whose expression turned extremely dull when he learned the subject matter of the visit.
‘She was a good check-out girl,’ he revealed openly. ‘Never put a foot wrong. Not like some of them. I had a lot of time for Amy.’
‘How close was your relationship with her?’ asked the architect point-blank. ‘Did you go out with her?’
The manager guffawed at the idea. ‘I never mix business with pleasure,’ he retorted, surprised at the suggestion. ‘In my experience, it never works out.’
Do you know of any boyfriends she had,’ asked the architect sharply.
‘No, I know nothing about the personal lives of the staff. The only information I have is what they provide in their curriculum vitae and in the annual staff reports. Cheryl Weston was her close friend. I’m sure she can tell you more.’
He led the architect to one of the check-outs and told the woman to close her cash register. Cheryl Weston left her post and came to a small office at the end of the building where she faced Hunter across a table.
‘You knew Amy Chester well, didn’t you?’ he said boldly.
‘She was my friend,’ came the reply. ‘We worked together on the check-outs and had lunch together, whenever our shifts worked out together.’
The woman had nothing to hide so Hunter felt that he could press her for information and receive it.
‘Did she tell you about any of
her boyfriends?’
‘There was Antonio and Tom,’ she replied frankly. ‘There was another one but she never told me his name. Oh, yes. She was very secretive about him.’
‘And you know nothing about that man?’ He fired the question at her sharply.
Cheryl Weston thought deeply before replying. ‘I had the distinct impression that he wore a uniform. I don’t know why I should think that. It was something she said.’
‘A military man, a policeman, a postman, a security man?’ Hunter began to go on a fishing expedition.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she retorted sadly. ‘You see she was man crazy. Well... a young woman of nineteen. What do you expect? It’s not unusual. Young in life and lots of men about. But there was no need for anyone to rape and strangle her. That was terrible! They ought to castrate the bastard if they ever catch him! Especially with her in that condition.’
Hunter’s eyebrows raised highly on his forehead. ‘What condition?’ he snapped.
‘She was pregnant when she left Hamptons. Gave in her notice and left the same day. A week later she was dead.’
‘Pregnant,’ repeated the architect in disbelief.
‘Seven weeks pregnant. She showed me it was positive on one of those things you buy in the chemist to check whether or not you’re in the club.’
The architect’s mind went in a whirl. The police files showed nothing about a pregnancy. Why were they keeping it a secret? This was too much to bear! It meant that he would have to return to the police station and have a serious word with Roger Watson on the issue.
He terminated the interview with Cheryl Weston shortly afterwards and made his way quickly to the police station. He arrived there demanding to see the Detective Inspector who came to the interview room shortly.
‘What is it now, Mr. Hunter?’ snarled the policeman angrily. He considered that he had more important things to do than waste his time in meaningless discussion with someone who had no idea of detection.
‘There are discrepancies in the police files with regard to your investigation in the Amy Chester case,’ accused the architect moving into hazardous territory.
‘What discrepancies?’ demanded Watson becoming irate.
‘Firstly, there were tracks of a tyre on the beach. Apparently the police took photographs and a mould of them but I saw nothing in the file regarding those items. You do realise you might have possibly been able to find the killer’s car from them.
Watson inhaled tiredly before replying. ‘For your information, Mr. Hunter, those tracks were destroyed by people marching up and down around the body when she was first found. There was a partial tread... only a partial one... but no more. And let me tell you your information that we photographed them or made a mould is false. People who found Amy’s body on that beach had stepped on those tracks making them almost unrecognisable. We’re talking of sand on the beach here with half a dozen people milling around... not ordinary clay in a remote garden.’
The architect sat back in his chair duly reproached. ‘Well what about the fact that Amy was pregnant?’ he said forcibly. ‘There’s nothing in the file. How do you account for that?’
‘I’m not surprised,’ came the reply, ‘because she wasn’t pregnant. Where do you get your information? If you’re concerned that she might have been you’d better see the pathologist. But, as far as we’re concerned, she wasn’t. And that’s how it reads in the pathologist’s report!’
Hunter was rocked back on his heels and referred to his second line of argument. ‘She wasn’t killed on the beach. She was murdered on the third floor of a large building which has a Maltese Cross on the wall.’
Watson stared at him as though Hunter had lost his mind. ‘Where did you find out such things?’ he demanded, coming swiftly to the end of his tether.
‘I was told by a psychic.’ The words seemed to echo around the room as Watson paused before ridiculing him.
‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I took you for,’ insulted the policeman. ‘We used to have one here. A waste of time. Had us hunting high and low in the wrong places. Useless. If that’s where you got your information, forget it! Don’t you realise they’re all charlatans!’
The policeman stood up to end the interview feeling that he had wasted enough time on a man who declared himself a private investigator with a client who was dead and buried. It was a mutual feeling because the architect was also angered at the turn of events. He had walked boldly into the police station with evidence of a tangible nature, as well as facts obtained from witnesses, only to be taken down a peg for their inaccuracy. It was reasonable to accept that the tyre tracks on the beach had been destroyed by people who found the body but how could the police deny that Amy was pregnant when Amy’s work colleague had seen the proof? He had to visit the pathologist to find out the truth.
He made his way to the morgue where the pathologist worked and had her paged by the receptionist. She was a tall slender woman with straight dark hair and a permanent gloomy expression on her thin white face which was most suitable for her work. He introduced himself as a private investigator who had just left DI Watson at the police station.
‘I’d like to see the details of the autopsy on Amy Chester,’ he told her. ‘There seems to be a discrepancy in the police file.’
‘Oh,’ she responded with surprise. ‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve been told that Amy was seven weeks pregnant when she left her employment. The police files don’t mention the fact that she was pregnant at all.’
‘That’s because she wasn’t pregnant when I did the autopsy.’
He stared at the woman suspiciously. ‘Her friend at work actuall saw the instrument which proved that Amy was pregnant. How do you account for that?’
‘Those instruments are no always reliable,’ returned the woman without any expression on her face. ‘Alternatively, she may have had an abortion before she was strangled. That’s a possibility.’
‘Couldn’t you tell that she had an abortion when you did the autopsy?’
‘Not really. She’d been savagely raped and she wasn’t pregnant. There was no need for me to dig deeper.’
The scales began to fall from his eyes. So that’s what happened, he thought to himself. She became pregnant and then had an abortion. ‘What more can you tell me?’ he asked quietly with his tail between his legs.’
The pathologist went to a filing cabinet and withdrew Amy’s file. ‘It’s four months since it happened. My memory’s not that brilliant after all that time. Let’s see.’ She opened the file and examined the pages within it. ‘Amy Chester... killed on 3rd April between 9.00 and 9.30 p.m. To start with, she had three quarters of a bottle of whisky in her stomach. Not the kind of liquor drunk normally by women. That’s indicative she was forced to drink it. The bruising to her lips show it too. The blow that killed her was made by a blunt instrument, possibly the bottle itself, to the skull above the left eye. She had eaten only one sandwich and an apple some hours before the attack. She suffered a broken collar bone, some broken ribs and damage to her spine. Some semen was extracted but the police have been unable to match the DNA. I presume the killer’s still at large. I’ve not read anything contrary in the newspapers.’
‘He is for the moment,’ concluded Hunter with a miserable expression on his face. It had not been a very good day in terms of success. And now he was confused as to whether Amy had been pregnant or not. It didn’t make any difference to his task but he was the kind of man who liked the facts to run in a decent order. He left the pathologist’s office with nowhere to go. He had a lot of facts and non-facts, some true and some not true, now but he had no idea where they would take him. Not a clue!
***
Hunter wandered on to Vernon Beach with no expectation whatsoever. It was far too late to find any clues there. Holidaymakers from all parts of Britain had
made their marks on the sand, tramping across the beach, resting on sun-loungers, eating ice-cream, making sandcastles and playing cricket or netball. All the sand had been churned up for the best part of half a mile. He strolled across to a hot-dog stand nearby to ask the cook whether he knew where Amy’s body was found. The man immediately pointed to a spot some fifty yards away at the edge of the sea.
‘Why do you want to know that?’ he asked. ‘She was found there four months ago. The police have given up finding her killer.’
‘Well I haven’t,’ retorted the architect sharply.
‘You a relative?’ The cook used a skillet to move some sausages around on the grill.
‘You could say that,’ came the reply. ‘I am connected.’
A strong breeze blew across the sand taking with it some ice-cream and confectionery wrapping paper. Hunter breathed in the air tempered with brine enjoying the sensation. He stared at the ebbing sea as the tide started to go out. If only the ocean could speak to tell the tale! In his mind’s eye, he saw the shadow of the killer laying Amy’s body on the wet sand. He could almost see the man walking away having committed a most heinous crime and expecting to get away with it. What was the killer like to look at? If he had murdered the young woman on the third floor of a building, he would have had to carry her down the stairs into his car. Then he drove his car to Vernon Beach to carry her body from the road down to the edge of the sea. That was a distance of thirty yards on its own. Therefore, it stood to reason that he was a strong man. He had to have carried her because the police report had no details of drag marks across the sand to the point where she had been dumped. How far did the killer have to drive before he got to the beach? And why leave her body on the beach at the edge of the sea? There were dozens of side-alleys, deserted areas and industrial sites in town where the body could have been hidden. Why the beach? It didn’t make sense! Perhaps the reason was because the murder had taken place very close by. He turned away from the sea to stare at the buildings along the sea-front but there were no large buildings to be seen, only a miscellany of two-storied houses used mainly for tourists who required bed and breakfast holidays. There was another idea that crossed his mind. If Amy had been found with no skirt and no panties, they may have been left behind in the room where she had been murdered. But where was it? Poor Amy! Raped, beaten and strangled! As Cheryl Weston had commented sadly: ‘How could anyone do something as horrible as that?’
