by M J Porter
“I will, and I’m waiting for some more photographs from Weston. They didn’t have a police photographer, or if they did, the photos have been lost in the intervening years. There were only pencil drawings. Luckily, the local photographer for the Weston Mercury took quite a few shots. But they only had the negatives to hand for most of them. I want to see as much detail as I can.”
“I can’t believe they didn’t have a photographer. I thought everyone had someone who could point a camera and record all the facts for later use. It sounds like a cock-up to me.”
“Hum, maybe. Anyway, I’ll see what these other photos can show me. In the meantime, I’m going to write a detailed report containing all my suspicions and questions. I’ll let you read it when I’m done.”
“Very good, and let me see the bulletin you want to send out. Just to be doubly sure. You know how some of these stations can be. They’ll pick you up on the smallest details. You’d have thought they had more important things to worry about these days.”
Smythe’s eyes scanned the information that Sam had been pondering on the desk before him. He had the copy of the Weston Mercury, the McFarlane case file, and the notes he’d taken in Weston. The more Sam looked, the more he was sure that the same perpetrator had been involved. It was just too bizarre that two murders should look the same without being carried out by the same person.
“Similar ages and similar looks,” Smythe confirmed, reading the description of Anthony.
“Very similar, indeed. They could perhaps have been twins. Although I’ve not yet managed to get a good photo of Anthony when he was alive.”
“Poor lads. They’d have been fighting for their country had they lived. A damn shame,” and Smythe took himself off to his office. Sam watched him go, thoughtfully. Smythe was right. Perhaps, in some strange way, the boys had been spared. But no, it should have been their decision, and no one else’s, as to how they risked their lives. No matter the state of the world right now that needed to be remembered.
Sam had been to search through the case file again for Robert McFarlane, and he’d found the original alert that had been sent out to other police stations. He suppressed a smirk at the state of it. It had been typed, but perhaps not by someone best skilled in the art of the typewriter. While the words were all correctly spelt, there were strange gaps. At some point, it appeared that the paper had been taken out of the machine and then fed back into it, only too close to the lines above. The person hadn’t considered starting again but had forged on all the same.
Sam couldn’t quite place the name of the receptionist they’d had back then. In all his years, he’d noticed that people did tend to fade and merge, one into another. That was how he knew Robert’s case had deeply affected him because he could remember even the smallest details of finding the body, from the smell in the air to the scent of petrol fumes that had accompanied the doctor's arrival with his huge car.
“Alert,” he reread the paper, just to see if the same wording would suffice this time around.
“Erdington Police Station, the murder of a child, boy, aged seven years old, on 30th September 1923. Found with no identifiable wounds, although later confirmed as death by drowning. Victim missing for three days, as reported by his mother, before being found. Please be alert, and contact me if you have any information or experience of a similar situation. Contact Chief Inspector Fullerton on Erdington 3299.”
Sam admitted it wasn’t a great deal of information, but even so, he would have expected any superintendent or chief inspector with a child murder to have made contact, but no one ever had. No one. He remembered the days after the alert had first been sent. The chief inspector hadn’t daren’t move far from his desk, confident that someone would have some information to help him solve the case. The ring of the phone had occasioned a rush to answer it, but no answers had ever come that way. Eventually, they’d stopped thinking that Robert’s death had been anything but a singular occurrence.
Sam glanced to the piece of paper attached to the warning. It listed where it was to be sent, and he startled when he realised that it had only been sent to English police stations and not to the Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish ones. He suppressed a sigh of irritation at the oversight and pulled the typewriter towards him. He wasn’t the best at it, but he could get by with the right level of determination.
This time, Sam determined to be more expansive, aware that the alert would be sent to the local printers and only then sent on to the relevant places.
“Request for information.” He couldn’t call it an alert, not after all these years.
“Information request for any similar crimes committed in the last twenty years. Two child murders, in 1923 and 1926, with striking similarities, both unsolved. Both victims, seven years old at the time of the offence, found with no identifiable wounds but subsequently believed to have been drowned, although found on dry land, dressed in school clothes. 1923 murder in Erdington, 1926 murder in Weston. Suspicion that there might be more, later, victims. Please contact Chief Inspector Mason at Erdington Police Station on 3299.”
He would have liked to include much more information, but the idea was always to speak to any officer who suspected a link to an unsolved case. He cursed the fact that there was no central records office, but it was hardly anyone’s priority, not at the moment. In fact, he doubted he’d get any response at all. Most would wonder why his superintendent had even permitted him to pursue such an old case when there were war crimes to investigate.
“O’Rourke,” he called her to his side, and she came quickly, eyes alight with curiosity.
“Run this by Smythe, and then can you have it taken to the printers for me. I know it’s not urgent, but I’d still like it organised as quickly as possible.”
O’Rourke scanned the words, biting her lip as she went. He’d not had the opportunity to speak to her yet about his findings in Weston. He’d been at his desk since 7 am.
“A link then, even after all this time. Amazing,” O’Rourke mused, a spark of pleasure in the quirk of her lips and went on her way. He watched her go, surprised to find he was relieved by her enthusiasm. Perhaps he wasn’t the only person haunted by these unsolved crimes.
Then he turned to the next task, a summary of what he’d discovered. Quickly, he drew two lines down a sheet of paper, and above the columns wrote, not Anthony and Robert, but rather Erdington and Weston, keen to make it feel impersonal.
In the first column, he wrote the pertinent facts; age, seven for both of them; the date the bodies were found; 30th September 1923 and 6th October 1926. Next, he wrote how the bodies had been placed; Robert in Erdington with his legs and hands together, Anthony in Weston, with his right arm flung to the side, and both legs bent at the knee. Then Sam wrote a possible list of suspects. He grimaced, noting how few suspects there had been in the end.
For Erdington, they’d suspected the schoolmaster but only for a short amount of time. In Weston, there had been four people who might have been involved if he included Anthony’s father. There really wasn’t a lot to go on, and he found himself looking at the pencil drawings once more. It was all in the photographic images that the similarities became apparent, and it was all but impossible to convey that in his tallying. Sighing with frustration, he placed the items in a box he’d set aside for the case notes and moved it beneath his desk.
When Smythe asked, he’d show him what he had so far, but really, it would depend on whether they heard from other police forces or not.
Sam resolved to be patient, and after twenty years, he thought it should be easy, but it wasn’t. Not at all.
Chapter 7
Two weeks went by, and Sam felt his hopes fading. He spent what time he could on the two old cases, but there were more pressing matters. A spate of burglaries, a suspicion of counterfeit ration books to be investigated, an accident between a bus and a car that, luckily, wasn’t fatal but needed careful management. He began to worry that Robert and Anthony’s cases would be one-of
fs, unconnected, and never to be solved despite his initial hopes.
“Chief Inspector?” he glanced up to see O’Rourke calling him from the front desk, her voice high with excitement, her cheeks flushed a ruddy colour.
“A phone call for you about the alert that we sent.”
“Really?” but Sam was already on his feet, hand reaching for his notebook, aware his heart was beating loudly in his ears. Was it possible? Could it be true?
“It’s a Constable Dougall from Inverness.” He looked blankly at O’Rourke, for a moment unable to reconcile the words with a place.
“Scotland,” she said slowly. “Nessie, Loch Ness.” She looked at Sam as though waiting for him to comprehend.
“Yes, yes, I understand now. You just took me by surprise.”
“He has a strong accent, but you just need to concentrate,” she encouraged him all the same as he scooped up the black receiver from the well-worn front desk. He heard the crackle of the long-distance call.
“Chief Inspector Mason speaking.”
Ah, you’s the man I need. You’s the name on the bit of paper.” The voice was just a bit too loud, the Scottish accent strong but not impossible to untangle. For a moment, Sam considered whether Dougall would be able to decipher his accent. It was thick Black Country combined with a hint of Birmingham. It was not the clearest for those not used to it. People from London he’d encountered in the past had looked aghast at him when he’d spoken, as though their accents were any better. Every sound a Londoner made was harsh and edged, and half the words were some sort of rhyming slang only they seemed to understand.
“Is this Constable Dougall?”
“Aye, it is. Hamish.” the man confirmed, and Sam could hear what he took to be the paper of the alert shaking over the connection. Sam couldn’t determine how old the man was. Certainly, old enough to no longer be a constable.
“I’m responding to your alert. I think we might have something here. I’ve hunted out the old files. 1919 it was,” Dougall stated. “It wasn’t me. It was me Pa, who handled the case. The only difference, it was a young girl, not a boy. But I always remember me old Pa saying the body looked odd. He could never explain quite what he meant, but she was drowned, on dry land, I remember that. Some thought it had to be ol’Nessie,” and he chuckled at the ridiculous statement. “People will believe the strangest of things when there’s no rational reason.”
“When in 1919?” Mason asked, O’Rourke standing so close to him, she could hear as well. She picked up her pencil to make notes because he couldn’t hold open his notebook and write while clutching the large telephone receiver at the same time. It wasn’t possible to wedge it between his neck and his shoulder.
“Just a moment, I’ll find the details.” Sam could hear more rustling from the other end of the crackling receiver again, this time more pages, and then Dougall was back.
“April 4th 1919. Here, I’ll read the report to you,” Hamish offered, and Sam remained quiet.
“April 4th 1919, called to school playing fields behind the new school.” Here Hamish paused. “We had a new school built, and the old one was abandoned for a time before being redeveloped. My Pa complained about it all his life. Built too close to the river, and the houses keep flooding. Poor sods.”
“But to return to the report,” he seemed to recall himself. Sam could tell that Hamish was what people called a ‘chatterer.’
“Body discovered at 7.04 am by a dog walker, a Mrs Elsie Stone, and immediately reported to Sergeant Green at the station. Chief Inspector McTavish responded, alongside Inspector Dougall.”
“That Dougall was me Pa, not me. It’s confusing. I’m always getting asked about stuff I’ve never seen. Daft beggars. Nay sense”
“Suspicion of murder confirmed by Dr Jones, who later diagnosed death by drowning.”
“But of course, that’s not what’s interesting. I’ve been looking at the old photographs, and me Pa was right. Poor wee lass has her long socks on, and short gym skirt, and her hands outstretched, bent forward to the floor. I know the thing upset my Pa, but no one would listen to him. He went to his grave worrying about the wee lass and the fact no one was ever held accountable.”
Sam felt his eyes close with distress at the sparse details. The murder had occurred before poor Robert’s and was so, so similar.
“Does it sound like what you’re after?” Hamish asked, hopefully.
“It does, yes. Absolutely. But you say the site where the body was found has been built on?”
“Aye, there’s about fifty houses there now. The whole place is barely recognisable.”
“Not worth me coming up then to look at the scene. A blow, really. Would you be able to send me the details from the file? Perhaps copies of the photos?”
“I can do better than that. I can bring them to you. I’ve got family in the area close to you, and I’m visiting next week if you can wait. My sister married an RAF officer. They’re based down there at the moment, at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome.”
“That would be extremely helpful,” Sam confirmed hastily, thinking that Hamish’s sister had been lucky, or at least her husband had, not to be injured by the bomb that had fallen on the aerodrome earlier in the year. As much as the children loved watching the aircraft take to the skies, Sam was uneasy that there were so many potential targets close by for the German bombers. He thought of the Jimmy Fry killed on 9th August 1940 when eight bombs had fallen from the enemy planes for a brief moment. He’d never forget the terror of that first night of bombing over his home.
“Then, I’ll find you at Erdington in about seven days. Glad to be o’assistance,” Hamish exclaimed and then ended the call.
O’Rourke looked at Sam with round eyes, her pencil poised over his notebook.
“A girl, and before the McFarlane murder?”
“Aye, and did you see that the original alert was only ever sent to the English stations? If more of these crimes appear in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, there’s going to be a real stink.” And then he paused.
“Can you hunt out a big map? I think we need to start looking at this more logically.”
“Yes, I’ll get it set up in one of the back rooms, the biggest one.”
“Thank you. I’m going to move everything I’ve got into there, and then I can look at it when I have the time.”
“But what’s the connection?” O’Rourke asked, her face furrowed in thought. Sam shook his head. He’d been thinking the same.
“I don’t know yet. But there must be one. Three young children murdered, all drowned but found out of the water, all the bodies strangely placed on the ground. I’m going to inform Smythe. It’s going to be impossible to keep Jones out of this. I’ll let Smythe handle Jones. The fool doesn’t listen to me at the best of times.”
But before either of them could move, the phone rang once more, the loud sound making Sam wince because of his proximity to the device. He didn’t know how O’Rourke put up with it ringing all the time. However, it was much quieter since the last bomb had fallen in April.
“Erdington Station,” O’Rourke answered quickly, reaching to claim the receiver so that Sam didn’t have to answer. Her eyes widened in surprise at whatever the other person was saying in response to her greeting.
“Really?” she offered when she was able to get a word in edgeways. Sam could hear a quick voice, but not the details of what was being said. “Just hold on for me. I’ll get Chief Inspector Mason.”
“Another one,” she gasped, handing him the receiver.
“Not in Scotland?” He was already shaking his head, hand trembling as he reached to take back the receiver.
“No, it’s not, Berwick upon Tweed this time.”
“Isn’t that in Scotland?” Sam asked, sure it was, wishing his knowledge of geography was much better than it was.
“They like to think they are, but no, it’s firmly this side of the border, still in England. Didn’t you study Geography at school?” she mused, but S
am merely shook his head.
“Chief Inspector Mason speaking,” he stated as he held the receiver to his ear, trying to speak clearly, despite the strange excitement thrumming through him.
“Chief Inspector Quaker here, from Berwick upon Tweed. I might have one of interest for you.” The voice was strong, flavoured with the Scottish accent that Dougall had spoken with, only not as rich.
“Go ahead,” Sam informed him, trying to determine his age just from his voice, giving up because it was impossible when he couldn’t see Quaker.
“It’s not as old as yours, only ten years, so that would make it in 1933. It might be too recent for you. But another young boy, eight, not seven. Again, found on dry land, but determination was drowning. The body was found close to the cricket ground, on a grim January day, certainly not a day for cricket.” Quaker almost chuckled but sobered before it could genuinely be laughter. “Poor family,” he quickly stated to cover-up his inappropriate comment.
“We had no luck even finding where the murder took place, and in the end, there was pressure on the police surgeon, and they had it ruled as death by misadventure. As if you could drown on the cricket square in the middle of winter! I never liked it, never. But they wouldn’t listen to me. I was just an inspector back then.”
“So, it wasn’t processed as a murder scene then?”
“It was to start. It was just changed at the behest of the coroner. A bad business.”
“Do you have photographs?”
“Of course. I’m looking at them now. And the more I look at them, the more I can see the care taken to place the body, as though it’s been posed. I think that’s the right word. Some nasty piece of work committed the murder and enjoyed themselves while they were doing it. I still can’t believe they wouldn’t accept it was a murder. It seems all the more obvious now.”
“Posed,” Sam murmured. It was a good word to use, better than his ‘placed.’
“I’ve just had a call from Inverness; they had a female victim from 1919.”
