by John Dean
‘And you, Eddie,’ continued the inspector, ‘we’ve been ignoring your stoppy-backs for years. What we did not know about was the poker.’
‘I can’t see what interest it is to you anyway,’ said the landlord with a surly look on his face. ‘It was just a bit of fun. It didn’t harm anyone.’
‘It might have harmed Trevor Meredith,’ said the inspector quietly.
He watched the sidled glances between the men and the alarm on the faces of all of them.
‘Listen, guys,’ he said, his tone of voice softer, ‘you know me. I don’t care what you do after hours as long as it doesn’t impinge on anyone else’s life, but this time it has, hasn’t it?’
The inspector looked at Radley and Myles.
‘I mean, last night we had you two daft buggers squaring up to each other in the market-square and uniform reckon this place was bedlam yesterday. I think the trouble was all to do with gambling debts, and when two old friends like you come to blows we have to get involved. There really are no options. That’s not something I can keep from Curtis.’
Radley and Myles looked at the floor.
‘And when one of your regulars gets murdered,’ continued the inspector, looking at the landlord, ‘it becomes even more serious. I am pretty sure that what has been happening here has nothing to do with the murder, but I do want it sorted out. I want all debts settled within twenty-four hours and assurances that the poker comes to an end. In return, I’ll smooth things over at our end. Understand?’
The landlord looked at him glumly. No one else spoke.
‘So come on,’ said Harris wearily. ‘I had virtually no sleep last night and I really am starting to get sick of people stonewalling us on this. Will someone tell me what the hell has been going on around here? How did the poker start?’
There was a few moments silence.
‘It was Eddie’s idea,’ said the young accountant eventually. ‘Eddie, tell them.’
‘OK, OK,’ sighed the landlord. ‘Yes, it was my idea. We started three or four months ago. I knew it was wrong but business has been so quiet lately and I reckoned I could sell a few more drinks. It only started with three or four of us then the others kind of tagged along.’
‘And Bowes? How often did he play?’
‘Couple of nights a week.’
‘So do I assume that you remember what he was like now, Eddie?’ said Harris.
‘He was quite posh,’ nodded the landlord.
‘Yeah,’ said Len Radley, ‘he drank white wine.’
‘Positively regal,’ said Harris, with a smile. ‘Who would have thought it in a place like this?’
Eddie scowled at the comment.
‘Do we know where he came from?’ asked Roberts, the first time she had spoken during the encounter.
‘I did ask him once,’ said the trainee accountant. ‘You know, trying to be friendly, but he blanked me. Mind, Trevor Meredith, he were the same. He would never tell you anything about himself either.’
‘How did Meredith come to be part of your game?’ asked the detective inspector.
‘He saw me in the street one day,’ said the landlord. ‘Said he had heard what was happening and could he join in? Said he liked a game of poker from time to time. That’s when it started to go wrong.’
‘Wrong?’ asked Roberts. ‘What do you mean wrong, Eddie?’
‘We just played for fun but him and Bowes, they were more serious about it. Liked gambling for more money than the rest of us could afford.’ The landlord glanced pointedly at Radley and Myles. ‘And some of us got carried away, if you ask me.’
‘What about James Thornycroft?’ asked the DI. ‘How come he was involved?’
‘Came with Meredith one night. He seemed to know David Bowes. Mind, so did Meredith. Some times, the three of them would go off into the main bar and sit in the dark talking.’
‘About what?’ asked Roberts.
‘I don’t know. They kept their voices down and if any of us went close, they stopped.’
‘So what about…?’ began Harris but was interrupted by his mobile phone ringing.
The DCI glanced down at the name on the screen.
‘Look after things here, will you, Gillian?’ he said, and without further explanation the inspector walked out of the bar.
The detective inspector heard the door into the market-place open and could see through the pub window, illuminated by the street lights, the silhouette of Jack Harris pacing up and down, engrossed in his phone conversation. He did not return for fifteen minutes, by which time the DI’s interrogation was over and the men were sitting at the bar, nursing pints, and shooting occasional resentful looks in her direction.
‘I miss anything?’ asked Harris, returning to Roberts, who was seated at a table in the corner, well away from the others, the G and T in front of her. ‘You pay for that?’
‘Of course. Who was that on the phone?’
‘An old mate of mine in Customs,’ said Harris quietly as he sat down. ‘This is fast turning into what Curtis would no doubt call a multi-disciplinary operation.’
‘How come Customs are involved?’
‘When the Africa thing cropped up, I had this hunch. Asked my mate if he could do some digging around for anything on David Bowes.’
‘And?’
‘He’d never heard of him but when I mentioned the name Paul Garratt, the floodgates opened.’ Harris glanced round, keeping his voice low. ‘Oh, and he also knew all about Meredith when he was Robert Dunsmore – and, believe me, there is a lot to know.’
Before the chief inspector could elaborate further, the officers heard the front door of the pub open and looked up to see Butterfield striding purposefully across the room towards them.
‘Guess what?’ said the constable excitedly when she got to the table.
‘It’s a big question, Constable,’ said Harris. ‘You will have to give me some kind of a clue.’
‘Jasmine Riley has turned up!’
‘Now that,’ said Harris happily, ‘is my kind of a clue.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘Come on, Gaynor,’ said Matty Gallagher as he stared across the interview-room table at James Thornycroft’s wife, ‘it really is time to start talking.’
‘Let’s start with me saying that I object to being brought to Roxham Police Station, then,’ she said calmly. ‘It seems an unnecessary thing to do, especially when my husband is so gravely ill.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t buy the grief bit, Gaynor. Not after your last little performance. Besides, the sooner you answer my questions, the sooner you can get back to the hospital,’ said the sergeant, glancing up at the clock: it read 11.45 p.m. ‘Although I remain to be convinced that you really care what happens to him.’
‘That’s not fair,’ she said. For the first time in their conversation, she seemed to be struggling with emotion. ‘That is not fair at all. James and I may have had our difficult times, but there is no way I would want this to happen to him.’
The comment caught the sergeant by surprise. She seemed to be genuinely upset at the way he had approached their interview. Was it his imagination or were her eyes moist with tears? He could not be sure.
‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘no, I don’t suppose that you do. My apologies, Mrs Thornycroft. It’s just that the way you talked about him last time led me to suppose that you and he—’
‘Have you ever seen someone fighting for life?’
Matty Gallagher nodded and his mind went back to a darkened hospital room and his mother lying in the bed, struggling desperately for every last shallow breath, her body ravaged by illness yet still fighting for survival. He remembered that helpless feeling of things unsaid, words that she could never hear, of times gone, of times wasted. Noticing Gaynor watching him intently, he nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I have experienced that.’
‘In which case, how about we start this interview again?’
‘OK,’ nodded Gallagher, irritat
ed at the way he had lost control of the situation, ‘but all of this does not conceal the fact that we think you might have information that will further our inquiries.’
‘I’m not sure what I can tell you.’
‘You can tell me about David Bowes.’
‘I don’t really know the man. I had heard his name a couple of times, but that’s about….’
‘Silly me,’ said the sergeant, slapping his forehead with his hand. ‘You probably know him better as Paul Garratt.’
Gaynor Thornycroft stared at him in amazement.
‘How on earth do you know about that?’ she said quietly.
Feeling weary as his lack of sleep caught up with him, Jack Harris sat in the interview room and stared at Jasmine Riley, who looked down at the table, not meeting his gaze. It was shortly after midnight and she had arrived at Levton Bridge Police Station in a motorway patrol car just a few minutes earlier: the officers who drove her at high speed up from Cheshire said she had spoken little. On arrival, she had spent ten minutes with the duty solicitor who now sat next to her in the stuffy interview room. The only other person present was Gillian Roberts.
‘Before we start,’ said the solicitor, a sallow faced man, ‘I want to make absolutely clear that my client is not under arrest. Is that the case?’
‘As far as we know, she has not done anything wrong,’ said Harris. ‘So no, she is not under arrest.’
The lawyer nodded: he seemed satisfied by the response.
‘Please ask your questions then,’ he said.
‘We would have anyway. You know that.’
The lawyer looked sharply at the detective, who ignored the gesture and instead glanced across at Roberts: he had asked her to help with the interview because he hoped that the female touch would help.
‘Jasmine,’ said Roberts, taking the cue, ‘we really need to know about the events leading up to your fiancé’s death.’
Jasmine looked up and nodded; tears glistened in her eyes.
‘Then will I be able to go back home to Mum?’ she asked.
‘Assuming there is no reason to hold you further, the officers are waiting to take you back to Chester. Am I right that your mother declined the offer of accompanying you?’
‘She gets car sick,’ nodded Jasmine and gave a slight smile. ‘At least it’s not cancer.’
‘A pretty awful thing to have told people,’ said Roberts.
‘I know.’ Jasmine looked close to tears again. ‘I’ve done some stupid things. Look, can we get this over with? I really don’t think I can take much more.’
‘Sure,’ said Roberts. ‘So when did all this start? What made you decide to flee Levton Bridge?’
‘I’m not quite sure when it started. It was little things at first but over three or four weeks, Trevor went from being a fairly laid back chap to one who was jumpy, on edge all the time. By the end….’
Her voice tailed off and she looked down at the table. They could see her shoulders heave as she fought back the tears.
‘Take your time, luvvie,’ said Roberts.
Jasmine straightened up, dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, and nodded.
‘Ask your questions,’ she said.
‘Trevor’s behaviour,’ said Roberts. ‘it was out of character?’
‘You know,’ said Jasmine slowly, almost as if the thought had just occurred to her, ‘the more I think about it, there had always been something about him. Funny how you only notice these things afterwards. What’s that saying, that you can’t see the wood for the trees?’
‘A somewhat unfortunate phrase to use given the circumstances of his death,’ said Harris.
She looked at him sharply.
‘Sorry,’ he said, but did not sound apologetic. ‘What was it about Trevor that made you think things were not quite right?’
‘The way he always avoided personal matters.’ Suddenly she seemed eager to talk, eager to unburden herself. ‘At first I put it down to him being a man. They always shy away from that kind of stuff, don’t they?’
Roberts glanced at Harris.
‘Sure do,’ she said.
‘But with Trevor,’ continued Jasmine, ‘it was more than that. Whenever I asked where his parents were, for instance, he would change the subject to something else. He never ever talked about them – he did once let slip that he had a brother but he said that they did not talk to each other.’
The words were coming in a rush now.
‘He seemed to regret mentioning it the moment he had said it,’ she said. ‘When I asked what his name was and where he lived, was he married, did they have kids, was I going to be an aunty, that sort of thing, Trevor just would not reply. Said there were some things I shouldn’t know. He said it was better that way, that what I did not know couldn’t hurt him. That was one of his favourite sayings.’
‘Did this brother ever call?’ asked Roberts.
‘No.’
‘It would really help if we could find him.’
‘To be honest, I am not even sure that he even exists.’ She looked at them, as if the thought had just occurred. ‘The more I think about it, I knew so little about Trevor but you sort of drift into these situations. I mean, I don’t even know what he did before he came to Levton Bridge. I would ask him but he would say nothing. Except once. Once, he said he had been in Africa but when I asked what he had been doing….’
Her voice tailed off again.
‘Jasmine, my love,’ said Roberts, reaching over and touching her hand, ‘I think you need to prepare yourself for a shock. Would it surprise you if we said he was not called Trevor Meredith when he was in Africa?’
‘I suppose I always knew there was something like that.’
Harris, who had been examining her closely during the conversation and had come to the conclusion that she was genuine, leaned forward, intrigued by her calm response to the question. He had expected more of a reaction: shock, tears, something, but not this. Not nothing.
‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked.
‘It was one night,’ said Jasmine, her eyes assuming a far-off expression ‘About eighteen months ago. It had been such a happy day. Trevor had been off work and we’d been out walking in the hills. We’d taken Robbie.’
‘So what happened to ruin it?’
‘It didn’t ruin it so much, just got me thinking. That night, we were clearing a cupboard out in my house, getting ready for moving in together.’ She hesitated, fighting back strong emotions again, tears glistening once more in her eyes.
The detectives let her compose herself.
‘I found my birth certificate.’ she said eventually. ‘We were laughing at my middle name. Trevor said that Jemima was an awful name. Jasmine Jemima, what a mouthful, he said, what were my parents thinking?’
She smiled at the memory. So did the detectives. The solicitor did not react.
‘Then?’ asked Harris.
‘I asked Trevor if he had his birth certificate so I could find out if he had an embarrassing middle name that he had not told me about. It was just a joke, you know – we’d both had a couple of glasses of wine and were mucking about. Suddenly, Trevor changed, had that guarded look about him again.’
‘I assume he did not have the passport then?’ said Roberts.
‘He said he had lost it.’ She looked at the detectives. ‘What was his real name?’
‘Robert Dunsmore,’ said Harris.
‘I should have guessed Trevor was not his real name,’ said Jasmine quietly. ‘I am not sure why, but the fact that he did not have a birth certificate really troubled me – I mean, people lose things all the time but the fact that he did not have one sort of made him a non-person.’
‘You’re not the first to have said that,’ said Harris. ‘So, if you had all these reservations, why stick with him?’
Jasmine gave the detective a bewildered look.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I really am not sure.’
‘So coming back to what has h
appened over the past month,’ said Harris. ‘What made him so edgy? We think he might have been investigating dog fighting. Might it have been that?’
‘It said on the television that Trevor’s dog was dead,’ she said. ‘Is that true?’
The question caught the detectives by surprise. Harris nodded and Jasmine Riley sighed.
‘He was a lovely chap was Robbie,’ she said. ‘Doted on Trevor. You can trust dogs, you know.’
‘Some dogs,’ nodded Harris, thinking of Scoot, curled up by the radiator in the CID room. ‘We think Robbie was attacked by a fighting dog. I ask again, did you know Trevor was investigating dog fights in the area?’
‘He did not tell me that.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Now there’s a surprise. Mind, he did not have to tell me. I had already guessed something strange was happening – he had been going out at odd times for months. Said he was taking the dog for a walk then he would be out for several hours.’
‘I do that with Scoot,’ said Harris.
‘That’s why I did not think too much of it – I know what you men are like with your blessed dogs. Then he was away overnight a couple of times and wouldn’t tell me where he’d been. Out, he would say, always just out whenever I pressed him on it. I thought he was having an affair, then James Thornycroft told me that Trevor was wrapped up with dog fighting. They’d known each other for years, did you know that?’
‘We do now,’ nodded Harris.
‘Well, I bumped into James in the shop a few days ago and he asked me to go outside with him. He said that he was telling me as a friend that Trevor was putting himself in danger.’
‘Did he say from whom?’
‘No.’
‘And how did Thornycroft know all this?’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ asked Jasmine.
‘Because James Thornycroft was attacked in his home this morning. It’s not certain that he will live.’
She seemed genuinely shocked.
‘Did you tell Trevor about what James had said?’ asked Roberts.
She nodded.
‘How did he react?’
‘Just brazened it out. Said that if Thornycroft was going round blabbing lies like that, there would be big trouble. He seemed really shaken.’
