A Poison Tree

by J. E. Mayhew

  Jimmy took the phone in his long fingers and for a second, Blake wanted to snatch it back as if the old policeman was going to scroll through his other photos and somehow contaminate them. “Where d’you find these?” Jimmy said, breathing heavily.

  “You didn’t answer the question, Jimmy.”

  The old man went quiet as if he was deep in thought. “Yeah, I’ve seen them before,” he said at last. “Is this about the girl? The one who got strangled in the woods down in Eastham?”

  “It might be,” Blake said. “Where have you seen these shoes before, Jimmy?”

  All Jimmy’s bravado had fled. “I saw them on the feet of Drucilla Hunt. When she was alive.” Jimmy’s magazine crackled in his lap as he ran a hand over it. “But then she was found strangled, fully clothed but with those shoes missing,” Jimmy’s eyes grew wide. “We never found them. Looks like you have.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Detective Sergeant Vikki Chinn sat in the interview room with Detective Inspector Cryer. She wished Manikas hadn’t been sent off to watch the Rees house for a whole host of reasons. His economy with words, was one for a start; Cryer never seemed to shut up. Natalie Murphy sat opposite them, still wearing her coat and gloves, her arms folded, looking like she was sucking a wasp. Everything about her said: not stopping long.

  “Sorry to bring you out on a Friday night, Mrs Murphy but we needed to ask you a few questions regarding a case we’re investigating. Can I take your coat? I hope you understand that you’re here voluntarily and…”

  “Miss,” Murphy said, pulling her coat more closely around her throat as if Cryer might try to snatch it.

  Cryer blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”

  “Miss Murphy. I’m not married.”

  Cryer reddened. “I do apologise, Miss Murphy, I’ll amend the records…”

  “Miss Murphy,” Chinn said. “We understand that you were present when some shoes were delivered to the charity shop that you manage. Could you tell us about them?”

  Cryer frowned at the interruption but looked towards Natalie Murphy, who shifted in her seat. “We get a lot of shoes in,” she said. “Do you mean the ones that came in on Monday night?”

  “Yes, specifically these red Converse trainers,” Chinn said, showing Natalie a picture of the shoes.

  Natalie Murphy stared intently at the picture. Vikki could see her jaw clenching. “Gerald was sorting them out. They came in plain boxes. All numbered. He became agitated as he opened them…”

  “Agitated?” Vikki said. “In what way?”

  “Like he’d seen a ghost,” Natalie said. “There were other shoes but the red ones, the baseball boot things. He almost fainted when he saw them.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  Natalie shook her head. “Not really. I made him a cup of sweet tea but he just mumbled something about bad memories and said he had to go.”

  “And he left straight after that?”

  Natalie nodded. “I told him to see a doctor. I was worried he’d had a stroke or something.”

  “Did you have any idea why he might have been upset?” Vikki said.

  “He’s only been with us a few weeks. I haven’t really got to know him. He keeps himself to himself, if you know what I mean. Anyway. I didn’t really have time to think about it because I had a phone call from my mother’s care assistant. She’d choked on her breakfast…”

  “The carer?” Cryer said.

  “No. My mother,” Natalie said, through gritted teeth. “I look after her in the evenings but she has a carer to come in and give her breakfast and get her ready for the day. If you call wiping her face with a damp flannel and spraying her with Impulse deodorant getting her ready.”

  Cryer scribbled down a few notes. “So you haven’t seen Gerald since then?”

  Natalie shook her head. “Mother took ill after the choking attack. I’ve been at home with her almost all the time. I did phone the shop and Jamie told me that he hadn’t been in. That was when he told me you needed to speak to me.”

  “And you’ve no idea where Gerald Rees might be now?” Cryer asked, leaning forward.

  “Isn’t he at home?” Natalie said, raising her eyebrows. “I mean, I gave you his address.”

  “He doesn’t appear to be there,” Cryer said. “Any ideas?”

  Natalie shrugged. “No. Like I said, I don’t know him that well.”

  “What about the other shoes?” Vikki asked. “Did you get a look at any of them?”

  “Not really. I was about to have a look when I got the call about my mother. Jamie arrived just in time to take over from me and open the shop. I left almost immediately after.”

  Vikki shuffled through her notes. “Is there any way of telling where those shoes had come from?”

  Natalie rubbed her temples with a gloved hand. “Not really,” she said. “We’re a sorting centre. A lot of stuff gets delivered from other shops. Everything goes through us.”

  “So there’s no way of tracking these items?” Cryer said, sitting back in her chair.

  “Most of it just gets loaded into a van that does the rounds. The shoes could have come from our other shops or just been left by the back door for us to find. If anything is brought in in person, we try to get the donor to Gift Aid it. We can claim the tax back then. But the boxes didn’t appear to have any Gift Aid barcode, so I’d guess they were just blind donations.”

  An awkward silence fell over the room as Chinn and Cryer checked through their notes for any details they might have missed.

  “Is Gerald in any kind of trouble?” Natalie asked.

  “We hope not,” Vikki said. “You may have heard that a young woman was found dead in Eastham Country Park yesterday morning. We’ve traced her movements and she bought the trainers I showed you from your shop shortly before she died.”

  “And there’s no sign of Gerald,” Natalie said.

  Vikki Chinn closed the file and stood up. “Anyway, thank you for your time, Miss Murphy. You’ve been very helpful. If anything else comes to mind, please don’t hesitate to contact us.”

  “Yes, I will.” Natalie Murphy rose, and Cryer showed her to the door. When she returned, Cryer pulled a face.

  “Didn’t like her,” she said. “I think she’s hiding something.”

  Chinn shook her head. “Really? Why’s that then?”

  “Dunno. Just a feeling,” Cryer muttered. “She was smiling too much when she left the office and it wasn’t a nice smile either.”

  “Well, we can’t arrest her for smiling,” Chinn said.

  “ 'Can’t arrest her for smiling,’ Ma’am,” Cryer said, fixing her eyes on Chinn.

  Chinn pursed her lips and nodded. “Yes, Ma’am,” she said. “Sorry, Ma’am.”

  “Good. Carry on. Sergeant.” Kath Cryer allowed herself the slightest of smiles as she stalked out of the office.

  CHAPTER 14

  The dusty, smokiness of Jimmy Leech’s living room and the proximity to this leering creature was giving Blake a pulsing headache. The old man seemed to have regained some of his cockiness after his initial shock at seeing the picture of the boots. Now he was back on safe ground: retelling the past. Jimmy wove stories about a time that should have left him ashamed, but it was clear he revelled in it. By his calculation, the old man had to be at least 92. Better people from his generation had passed away long ago. It didn’t seem fair.

  “She was a game one, that Drucilla. A proper policeman’s friend, if you know what I mean, Constable Kinnear,” Jimmy chuckled and winked at Kinnear.

  “No. I don’t,” Kinnear muttered.

  “Oh, I think I’ve hit a nerve, Blake,” Jimmy said and broke down coughing again. “Not your cup of cocoa, eh, Detective?”

  “Just stick to the facts, Jimmy,” Blake said. “We don’t want any of your shaggy dog stories now.”

  Jimmy recovered himself and held up his hand. “Alright, alright,” he said. “It was just a bit of banter.” He gave Kinnear a sly, sidelong glance. “Na
h. Drucilla proved very useful even before the Lock case. She was a proper little snitch and seemed to be able to find out all kinds of tittle tattle about people. S’pose it was no wonder she ended up dead. Eh, d’you remember that Inspector? Garbutt, I think his name was? Oh, you wouldn’t. You would’ve been shittin’ your nappy when this all happened. Anyway, this Garbutt was as queer as they come. A shirt-lifter, like.” Leech gave Kinnear another glance and continued. “Drucilla tipped us off that he was picking up young lads round the public bogs in Eastham. Not too far from where your victim was found, funnily enough. We fuckin’ nicked him. His feet didn’t touch the ground. Should’ve seen his face.” Leech paused and scratched his chin. “I think he topped himself. Good riddance, I say. Saved us the trouble of a trial and everything.”

  “Bastard!” Kinnear leapt up and Blake only just managed to throw an arm around him to stop him from landing a punch on the old man.

  “Kinnear, that’s enough!” Blake said. “Go and wait outside.” He bundled the red-faced detective outside and returned to the room.

  Leech sat back in his chair, laughter bubbling in his phlegmy throat. “I haven’t had so much fun in years,” he said. “I knew he was one of them.”

  Blake leaned in close to Leech. “Just tell me what I need to know or so help me, I’ll let Kinnear back in, lock the door and leave you two to get better acquainted.”

  The laughter stopped, abruptly and Leech thrust his face into Blake’s. Blake could smell his rancid, smoky breath. The man’s eyes gleamed with a sharp cruelty. “Yeah? See how that works out for you and him. I’m not scared of you, Will Blake. My boys would fertilise the flowers on my grave with your blood and bones. Now lover boy’s gone, why don’t you and I have a proper chat?”

  Blake sat down again, never taking his eyes off Leech. “Make it quick, Leech. I want to catch whoever killed this girl. She was innocent…”

  “Nobody’s ever innocent, Blake, not totally. You know that,” Jimmy said, settling back down and lighting another cigarette. “Like I said. Drucilla was a snitch. I don’t know how she got her information but it often proved to be top notch. Small stuff was her trademark. She was only a kid, seventeen, eighteen. I think small-time crooks, burglars, and dealers liked to brag to her. She was classy. Posh. Lived in a big old house up in Raby. Her dad was an army major or some such crap. Imagine how you’d feel if you were some toe rag from the Ford Estate and you found yourself with her on your arm! You’d tell her anything just to cop a feel.”

  Blake frowned. “But where did Gerald Rees come in? They were a duo, right?”

  “They were but fuck knows what he brought to the party. He was a specky streak of piss without two braincells to rub together as far as I could see. She used to joke that she only kept him around so she could call him Mr Rees. Mysteries. Get it? Drucilla Hunt and Mister Rees. Ha!”

  “Lock wasn’t smalltime, though, was he?” Blake said. He’d stopped taking notes because this was one story, he’d be able to write up almost verbatim later.

  “Drucilla helped us with another murder case before the Cameron Lock business,” Jimmy said, his reptile persona giving way to the policeman that he used to be.

  Blake wondered for a moment if he’d been a good copper in some ways.

  “Carly Simmonds,” Jimmy said. “A proper beauty. A Bobby Dazzler, as we used to say, though she didn’t look so dapper with her brains knocked out all over the canal towpath in Chester.”

  “How did Drucilla fit into that one?”

  “Simmonds split her time between the perfume counter in Brown’s of Chester and working on her back in the Grosvenor Hotel.”

  “She was a prostitute?”

  Jimmy looked pained. “I think she’d have preferred Escort or fancy woman. She always had a bit of class, did Carly. Anyway, she turned up dead one night and we didn’t have a clue. Drucilla brought us photographs of Carly in a fancy car with some fella called David Collins, an accountant at one of her old dad’s businesses. Seems like Drucilla had been tailing him for some time because his wages and his lifestyle didn’t match and she suspected he'd been fiddling the figures.”

  “So he was suspect number one?”

  “He was meant to meet her that night. We found he had a hotel room booked. Not what you’d call a perfect alibi,” Jimmy said. “He did a flit and topped himself. Hosepipe through the car window job. Exhaust fumes. A suicide note with a full confession turned up in the post a few days later. He couldn’t bear the scandal of it all. A respectable family man with a wife and kids, caught with his fingers in the till and erm… somewhere else…”

  “Convenient,” Blake said, eyeing Jimmy carefully.

  “Considerate, I’d call it,” Leech said, winking. “It meant we could tie the case up in a nice, neat bow. Drucilla saved my bollocks a couple of times like that. The Stephen Bradshaw case would’ve been a nightmare if we hadn’t nailed Lock.”

  “But then Lock’s mother gets killed,” Blake said. “An innocent old woman and nobody bats an eyelid.”

  “I told you, Blake, nobody’s innocent. The things she did to her son. You wouldn’t want to know. No, we didn’t look too hard, I’ll be honest.”

  “But you looked haunted when you saw those shoes, Jimmy. Something’s eaten away at you all these years. What is it?”

  Jimmy heaved a huge sigh of blue smoke right from the bottom of his black heart. “Drucilla had been following some smalltime weed seller called Gary Archer when she turned up dead. He fessed up before we’d even fastened the handcuffs…”

  “Nice and clean,” Blake murmured. “How you liked it.”

  “He was a trouble-maker. I didn’t care if he spent a few years behind bars,” Jimmy said, his voice rising to a whine. “But something nagged at me about that one. When we interrogated him, I asked him where her shoes were. He said, ‘how should I know?’ I knew he didn’t do it then. I could tell. Just from the way he said that.”

  “So why was he confessing? Covering for someone? Who? They must have been wealthy to pay him off for a life sentence.”

  Jimmy waved his hand in the air as if clearing a bad smell. “Life sentence, my arse,” he said. “Archer had a history of psychiatric problems. Diminished responsibility was the verdict. He went to hospital for a while, secure unit for a bit longer and he came out after about thirteen years. And a few years later, I hear he’s living somewhere over in Spital in a nice little cottage with a garden and everything. How the fuck does that happen?”

  Blake shrugged. “It does happen, Jimmy. People turn their lives around.”

  “Yeah right,” Jimmy said. “Not Archer. He wasn’t meant to make old bones.”

  “Anyway, it seems a bit odd, you railing against the injustices of the world seeing as you turned a blind eye or two in your time.”

  Jimmy shrugged. “No comment.” His face clouded over again. “It wasn’t so much that as when I asked the question, something clicked. You must know it. That feeling when you realise there’s a connection. That the case you’re on is just part of something bigger. Most of the time, people who croaked or got put away deserved it. They were criminals of one sort or another. But kids getting killed never sat right with me.”

  Blake nodded. “Go on.”

  Jimmy stared at Blake and his voice dropped to a whisper. The room seemed to close in, as if the faded wallpaper and old cabinets were all listening. “It was the shoes, Will. Carly Simmonds’ shoes were missing, no sign of them. Red Stilettos. We recovered all of Stephen Bradshaw’s clothing apart from his sandals. Josie Lock was found dead in her garden in dressing gown but no slippers. They weren’t in the house; we checked because it seemed so odd. Then Drucilla’s feet were bare. And I remember at the time wondering if there was some maniac out there, taking them as trophies. And I’ve wondered ever since.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Alex Manikas sat in the passenger seat of his car outside Gerald Rees’ house in Kylemore Avenue, Bromborough. He’d been told that people ignored passen
gers in cars. How true this was, he wasn’t sure, but he could stretch out a bit more in this seat. The house looked like all the others in the avenue; a semi-detached built in the 1930s; bay windows with rendered walls painted white. The privet hedge was clipped neatly and kept low so that Manikas could see that the curtains were still drawn. A uniformed officer had knocked on the door a couple of times but there was no answer. He was on his fortieth level of a Bubbleshoot game when a movement distracted him, losing him the level. Cursing under his breath he squinted over at the house. The upstairs curtain had been pulled back for a brief second and a pasty, round face had glimpsed outside.

  A moment later, a grey-haired man in a tweed jacket and a trilby pulled down low over his eyes came out of the front door. Manikas fumbled with his mobile. It was Rees alright and he was on the move.

  ◆◆◆

  DCI Blake threw himself into the driving seat next to Kinnear who opened his mouth to speak. “Not a word!” Blake snapped. The awkward silence grew in the car as they drove down Telegraph Road, the long, hedge-lined route that ran down the Deeside of the Wirral. On one side fields edged housing estates and school playing fields. On the other, they ran down to the river Dee and the rolling Welsh hills beyond. The skies always seemed so open and big on this side of the peninsula. Finally, when they were some distance away from Leech’s house, Blake glanced at Kinnear.

  “So, what the hell was that all about?”

  “I’m sorry, boss,” Kinnear said after clearing his throat several times. “I shouldn’t have lost it with Leech back there. I should’ve been more professional.”

  “I told you, Andrew,” Blake said. “Leech is a reptile. He’s a relic from another time. Him and his kind are dying out. Trust me.”