He paused for breath and marshalled his thoughts.
“I told you we were speculating, and here’s the way I see it. Jennifer has introduced Kirkland and Quinton to George. Later, she would have shown them the photograph, and announced that she was prepared to act as an intermediary. She needed cash from them, fifty thousand each, and she would secure the penny from the dealer. They would be able to view the penny today in her room. The highest bidder would take the prize. Both Kirkland and Quinton trusted her implicitly. ‘What’s not to trust?’ Kirkland said when I asked him. This should all have happened yesterday, but of course, it didn’t. Had it done so, Jennifer would have been half way to America now and it was the last these two would have seen of their money.”
Dockerty shook his head. “There is no way she would get a hundred grand in cash out of the country, Murray.”
“I know,” Joe agreed. “To get away with it, she needed an ally. Didn’t she, Dr Wright?”
Wright appeared flummoxed. “I’m sorry?”
Joe sighed. “Lies, lies and more lies,” he whined. “Everyone is lying. All right, let me spell it out. She didn’t have a hope in hell of getting the money out of the country, but according to her calculations, she didn’t have to. All she had to do was get it to a luggage locker at the railway station here in Leeds, or maybe one at Manchester Airport. Then, once she brought Dennis Wright into her confidence, he could wait until the police, Quinton and Kirkland had stopped looking for her in this country, and pay the money into a bank account for transfer to the USA. The bank would ask questions, obviously, but Dr Wright is a distinguished academic and it would be no surprise to find him carrying a large amount of cash around. He could even pay it into a dozen different accounts with a dozen different banks, as long as it was all transferred out to a single account in the States. What I’m saying, Dockerty, is that there are ways and means of getting around the money laundering once you have an accomplice.”
“Murray, I was not an accomplice,” Wright protested.
“I know you weren’t and that’s where Jennifer made her biggest mistake.” Concentrating on the Chief Inspector, Joe said, “Jennifer kept everything to herself until the morning of Christmas Eve. She told no one. She had Quinton and Kirkland earmarked as mugs, George would become an innocent dupe, and she was certain that Wright loved her. So certain, that when she met him on Saturday, she told him everything … and he told her he wanted nothing to do with it.” Now he stared at Wright again. “Please stop me when I get it wrong, Dr Wright. Jennifer was shocked. She probably pleaded with him that the plan had gone too far for her to stop, but Wright would not budge. He had his reputation to consider, and he would not become mixed up in any kind of criminal act. They trailed the streets of Leeds and she begged and pleaded with him, but he was completely unmoved. He really did not want her as his wife or life partner, and he wasn’t interested in ripping off those two for a hundred grand. The argument went on and on for several hours until, in the cafeteria at Debenhams, she finally snapped. ‘Please your damned self. You know what happens next’. A threat that I’ve been trying to make sense of since Saturday afternoon.” Joe swung his gaze back to the historian. “Why don’t you cut out all the bull, Wright, and tell us what it really meant?”
Wright shook his head and looked down at his trembling hands.
“Dr Wright?” It was Dockerty, encouraging him to answer the question.
Wright looked up and stared at the wall behind Kirkland’s head. He took a deep breath and let it out with a hiss. “Murray has it right. She told me soon after she met me at the railway station. I tore her to pieces for it, told her to forget it and she told me it had gone too far for that. She carried on harrying and pressuring me, and then, in Debenhams, I told her why I didn’t want her. Because she was a well-educated, but drunken slut. She told me she had a right to expect some return on her emotional investment, I said no, and then she said if I didn’t toe the line, she would let Quinton and Kirkland know what was going on, and she would blame me.” He sneered at both men. “As if that was some kind of threat. I told her to go ahead, and that’s when she lost it.”
“But she never told either of them,” Joe said.
“No. If she had, both would have come for me in the bar.”
Ike Barrett half raised his hand. “I don’t want to seem, er, picky, Mr Murray, but you, yourself, pointed out that the photograph of George Robson was taken in the early hours of Christmas morning, almost twelve hours after Dr Wright and Mrs Hardy had their fall out in Debenhams.”
“Jennifer,” Wright said. “I think she was trying to play hardball. Maybe she decided she would go through with it after all, take the money and run for it. After all, with that kind of cash, she didn’t have to go to the States. She could have driven over to Hull and hopped on a Continental Ferry. She’d be in Rotterdam or Zeebrugge by tomorrow morning and by the time either of these dorks raised the alarm, she could be anywhere in Europe. I don’t know what she was thinking when she took Robson to her room.”
“Yet you lied, Wright,” Joe challenged. “I asked you what Jennifer meant when she emailed you with a solution to your financial problems, and you told me that in your Skype conversation she mooted a novel based on the Middleton Penny.”
“I was not lying,” Wright assured the room. “It’s what she said during that conversation. I scotched the idea immediately. I wasn’t interested in novels or her. But she never said anything about this kind of scam until I got here the day before yesterday.”
Joe rounded on Quinton. “You lied, too. When I put Wright’s explanation to you, you said that Jennifer had admitted using you to research a novel.”
Quinton began to sweat. “I, er, I was trying to keep the real truth from you, Murray. You’d already said that if I got the Middleton Penny, it may be considered an illegal transaction. Then you mentioned her using me to research some novel and I thought, yeah, it sounds good, so I went along with it. That’s all. I swear it.”
“Kirkland didn’t lie” Joe declared, “and it told me that the other two did.”
“This is all very well, Murray,” Dockerty said, “but it doesn’t tell us who killed Jennifer … or why.”
“I’m getting there,” Joe promised. “What I’ve done so far is given you three men with serious motives for killing her. Did Quinton or Kirkland find out about the fake penny or did Wright set out to protect his precious reputation? Quinton, Kirkland, Wright. Which one murdered her?”
Chapter Sixteen
The room erupted as the three men got to their feet, each protesting his innocence, verbal abuse hurled at Joe, causing George to stand and roll up his sleeves ready to enter the fray if he had to. Threat and counter-threat rang round the room, Joe sat it out, Sheila flapped, pleading for calm, Barrett hovered on the fringes trying to keep men apart, but it was only when Dockerty bellowed for order that a rumbling silence fell.
“I’ll say this for you, Murray, you don’t half know how to cause trouble,” the Chief Inspector commented.
“It’s a good job Brenda is ill, or she’d have slapped them all about a bit,” Joe replied. Taking up the narrative reins again, he went on, “We have three men with possible motives for killing her. Wright to protect his reputation, Quinton because he’d been made to look a fool and Kirkland because there was always the danger that she would tell his wife that they’d been sleeping together. When it comes to Quinton and Kirkland, we also have to consider the possibility that they believed she had the Middleton Penny in her room. Quinton is especially interesting. Like Kirkland, he followed Wright and Jennifer round Leeds on Saturday, but when I challenged him, he denied it.”
“I explained that to you, Murray,” Quinton gasped.
“And how do I know that your explanation isn’t just a lot of hot air?” Joe demanded. “Imagine this. Quinton approached Wright in the bar on Saturday evening, asking about the Middleton Penny. Wright gave him short shrift, but you began to put two and two together, didn’
t you, Quinton? You saw her dancing with George Robson, the Executive Director of Leisure Services for Sanford Borough Council. You watched them go back to her room, and you knew what was happening, didn’t you?”
Quinton sweated. “This is ridiculous.”
“She was laying George the way she had laid you,” Joe went on. “Why? Because a well-connected man like him, the Director of Leisure Services for Sanford Borough Council, was exactly the kind of man who would possess the Middleton Penny. Successful, well heeled, a bob or two behind him, and his job under threat from government policies. And Jennifer was in there screwing him for all she was worth so she could come to a deal which would see you and Kirkland fighting it out, head to head, using your money to knock spots off each other and all to own the Middleton Penny. Then she told you to go to hell when you approached her on the dance floor.”
Joe paused to call up the photograph of Wright and Jennifer.
“So you waited, bided your time, and went back to her room in the early hours. You pleaded with her, she told you where to get off again and she made a fatal mistake. She turned her back on you. And that’s when you hit her on the head.”
“No. I never –”
“Then,” Joe pressed on, ignoring Quinton’s attempted interruption, “you came up with an idea. All the contact details would be on her computer. You quickly drew the pictogram – neat piece of thinking that – because you knew it would point the finger at George, then you took the computer and her diary and got the hell out before someone, Tom for example, could raise the alarm.”
Quinton trembled and shook his head. “It didn’t happen, I tell you.”
“But you made a mistake, didn’t you? The password wasn’t in her diary and you didn’t have the brains to figure it out for yourself. You also knew that when they let George go, the cops would get to a room-by-room search, so you had to get rid of the computer and the diary. You threw them in your waste bin and when you came out of your room at half past seven the following morning, you dumped them in the bin at the end of the corridor, knowing they would be taken away by the cleaners and they’d be on their way to the rubbish dump by mid-afternoon.”
“I tell you it never happened,” Quinton shouted.
“And if you need proof of how angry he was, Dockerty, take a look at this.”
Joe spun the computer round so everyone could see the photograph filling the screen.
“A photograph of Dennis Wright and Jennifer Hardy taken at lunchtime on Saturday, here in Leeds. But look who’s behind them.” He pointed at the millionaire. “Oliver Quinton. And look at the fury in his face.”
Dockerty and Barrett studied the photograph, then Quinton, and then the photograph again.
The Chief Inspector turned calmly on the suspect. “Well, Mr Quinton? What do you have to say to that?”
“Nonsense. All of it.” Sweat poured from under his greasy hairline. “I admit I approached Wright concerning the penny, I admit I went onto the dance floor to speak to Jennifer, I admit I’ve been sleeping with her for a few months, and yes, when I saw them, when she introduced him, I thought that Robson might be the owner of the penny … until I found out who he really was on Sunday morning. And when she told me where to get off, I thought maybe Kirkland had already cut a deal with her. But I swear I never went anywhere near her room on Saturday night. I was pretty teed off with her, sure, but after the incident on the dance floor, I went to bed. I didn’t sleep well because I was so bloody mad at her, but I swear I never left my room.”
“Why so angry on that photograph, Mr Quinton?” Barrett asked.
“I always look like that. It gets me what I want. Normally.” He pointed at Wright. “When Jennifer and he stopped some bloke in the street and asked him to take a picture, all I could think was they were the two people standing between me and the Middleton Penny.”
“Which seems to me to be a pretty good motive for murder,” Dockerty said.
“It is,” Joe agreed.
Barrett stood and moved behind Quinton.
“But unfortunately, he’s telling the truth.”
A gasp ran round the table at Joe’s declaration.
“What? Murray, just what are you playing at?”
“Calm down, Dockerty. You’ll have a heart attack at that rate.” Joe pointed at Quinton. “He’s worthless and he deserved to suffer like that. Even though he didn’t kill Jennifer, he should go to prison for life anyway, just for breathing the same air as me.”
“Now look –” Quinton began, but Joe cut him.
“Just shut up. And let this be a lesson to you. Don’t you curse at my members again. You’re sleaze, Quinton. I may be bad tempered, but I don’t treat people with the same contempt as you.” Joe concentrated on Dockerty. “There are other factors, Chief Inspector, which I haven’t explained yet, and when you take those into account, you realise that however much I’d love Quinton to have done it, however much I think he deserves to go down for life, he can’t have. To begin with, I don’t think he’d have had the wit to draw that pictogram so quickly. I don’t think he even has the brains to think of something like that, never mind think of it so quickly. If it was him, he’d be more likely to steal the computer and the diary and get out quick.” He swung his gaze on Kirkland. “But you’re more rational. You’re a thinker. You could conceivably have come up with it.”
Kirkland maintained his air of calm. “You’re right. I could. But I didn’t. I felt the same way as Quinton, and I, too, suspected that Jennifer may have already reached a deal with him. But I’ve told you before, Murray, I manage people, I manage situations, and there’s no profit in losing your temper. Murdering Jennifer would not get me what I wanted, therefore, much though I may have thought about it, I didn’t murder her.”
“I know you didn’t.” Joe returned to addressing the room again. “You see, if you tack this onto Quinton or Kirkland, there are too many things which can’t be explained. I’ve already pointed out that Jennifer didn’t draw the pictogram, so it would never have pointed at George. Instead, it would point at someone else; the man who killed her. The whole case had me foxed for a long time. How could I explain everything that went on? I couldn’t. It was only when I began to forget about the Middleton Penny and Jennifer’s silly little plan that I began to stumble on the truth.” Joe’s gaze rested on the young constable, still standing behind Quinton. “Ike, in that picture of Jennifer’s hand, we can just see the bottom of a book. It’s covered in wine or blood or something, but I believe it’s a copy of Dr Wright’s book, Missing Pennies. Do you have it to hand?”
“It’s with the other evidence, sir.”
“Could you get it, please?”
Barrett looked to his chief for permission. Dockerty hesitated a moment and then nodded. Barrett hurried out of the room and Dockerty glowered. “What is going on here, Murray? You’ve already accused Quinton and Kirkland of killing her, then said they couldn’t have done. Who are you going to blame now? The publisher?”
“All in good time, Chief Inspector. We need that book before I can clear it up, but it’s a devious tale.” He looked at Dennis Wright. “Seriously devious.”
Wright stared back. “Are you trying to say there is something wrong with my account of the two pennies, Mr Murray?”
Joe shrugged. “You’re the historian. You tell me.”
Wright bristled. “I’m not just a historian, I’m an authority. My account is as accurate as it can be.”
“Is it?” Joe smiled evilly. “In that case, you have nothing to worry about, do you?”
Barrett returned with the book sealed in an evidence bag.
“You’ll need gloves on, son,” Joe told him, “because I’ll need you to open that book and read a short section of it.”
Frowning, Barrett slipped on a pair of forensic gloves.
“Good lad,” Joe congratulated him. “We’ll make a professional detective of you, yet. Now will you open the book at page 178 and read the third paragraph down.
&
nbsp; Still puzzled, Barrett first checked with his boss, who gave a nod, and then removed the book from the bag, teased open the stained pages and thumbed gently through them until he came to the chapter Joe had asked for.
Clearing his throat, he read, “In 1970, during renovation work, the penny encased in the cornerstone at St Mary’s, Hawksworth, was stolen. Alarmed at the theft, in order to prevent a repetition, the Diocese of Ripon ordered that the penny in the foundations of St Cross, Middleton, be removed and deposited at the bank for safe keeping. The second penny was later…”
“Thanks, Ike, we’ve heard enough.” Joe rounded on Wright. “What do you have to say about that, Dr Wright?”
All eyes in the room turned on Wright who shrugged. “It’s a printer’s error. It must be.”
“Wright, Murray,” Dockerty exploded, “what the hell are you two talking about?”
“Calm down, Dockerty. I told you once, think of your heart.” Joe luxuriated in the satisfaction of the Chief Inspector’s raised blood pressure. “The churches have been swapped, haven’t they, Dr Wright?”
Wright nodded miserably.
Dockerty’s voice was not much above a hiss. “I still don’t understand.”
“Then let me tell you a story,” Joe suggested, “A tale of greed and deception, two churches swapped over.” He indicated the book Barrett was carefully putting back into the evidence bag. “In that copy, the churches have been turned around. Sheila told me the tale when we were coming here on Saturday. It was the Middleton Penny that was stolen and the Hawksworth Penny put into safe keeping at the bank. Wright himself verified it yesterday. And that’s what Jennifer Hardy’s drawing was trying to tell you.”
“Even if you’re right, I still don’t get it,” Dockerty argued
A Murder for Christmas Page 23
