No Simple Death (2019 Edition)

by Valerie Keogh

  ‘I just bet he did,’ West said, perching on the side of the desk as Jarvis rejoined the group. ‘Well?’

  ‘Mr Fletcher and his wife were away for a few days in the Achill Islands and only arrived back late last night. His children were staying with his mother so the house was empty. He said there was the usual assortment of hang-ups on his answerphone but nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Okay, so we don’t know if Johnson tried to contact him or not. We still have any number of questions we need answered. If our victim was murdered by Pratt, how did he meet him?’ West asked, and expecting no response continued, ‘Edel Johnson states that the money from the Drumcondra house sale is still in her account. Find out if she is telling us the truth.’

  ‘And what has the village of Come-to-Good got to do with anything, and why did Edel Johnson do a runner?’ Andrews added to the mix. ‘Let’s find some answers. Allen, you and Jarvis hit the phones. I want to know if our murdered man hired a car. He had to have come to Foxrock in some form of transport. If you have no luck there, show his photo at the local DART and Luas train and tram stations, you might get lucky.’

  Both men moved to the far desk and got down to work.

  West was still staring at the photos of the two men. He turned when he saw Andrews. ‘You got the warrant to search the Johnson house without problem?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll take Baxter and Edwards with me. Unless you want to come?’

  ‘No,’ West said, rubbing a hand over his head. ‘I spoke to Jennifer Johnson yesterday; she’s agreed to meet me to allow me to go through the stuff belonging to her brother that’s in storage.’ Reaching out, he tapped the photo of the missing man. ‘I’m just wondering did he bite off more than he could chew. All that cash, did he try to outsmart the wrong person? Is that why he had to run?’

  ‘When I get back, I’ll have a word with the Drumcondra lads, see if they can come up with anything,’ Andrews said. ‘Maybe our friend Cyril left a trail there. It’s worth a shot.’

  West wiped his face with his hands and rubbed his eyes, wishing again that he’d passed on the damn whiskey and gone to bed earlier.

  ‘You’re sure you fancy another long drive. I could go to Cork.’

  Noticing the concern in his eyes, West clasped his arm briefly. ‘Thanks, Pete, I’m fine. No, you do the Johnson house.’ He checked the time. ‘It’s ten; I should be back here by six. I’ll talk to Falmouth on the way and see if they have had any sightings of Edel Johnson. Keep me informed if anything shows up in the house.’

  Andrews left as he lingered a minute more, staring at the photos of the two men. Picking up the A4 size photo of Edel Johnson that he had taken from Clarke’s old file, he placed it between them. He remembered she had compared her life to an Agatha Christie novel. There were a lot of conniving women in those novels.

  ‘You should remember though, Edel,’ he murmured softly, ‘in those books, the murderer and his accomplice always got caught.’

  8

  The journey to Cork, where Simon Johnson had rented storage facilities in an industrial area just outside the city, was uneventful. Jennifer Johnson, an attractive, blonde woman in her early fifties, was waiting when he arrived. She accepted his condolences graciously and handed him the key to the storage shed.

  The door opened easily. Inside, there were a number of boxes neatly piled at the entrance but the remainder appeared to be various items of furniture. A mountain bike and a road bike balanced themselves against one wall.

  Jennifer pointed to them. ‘They were the real reason he rented the storage facility in the first place,’ she explained. ‘He loved to cycle. When he decided to rent the apartment, it seemed like a good idea to store extra furniture and stuff here. There isn’t much, as you can see, my brother wasn’t a hoarder.’ She indicated the boxes. ‘All the personal papers he left behind are in those boxes. You are welcome to take them with you, if you so wish. I trust you to return them to me when you can.’

  West smiled at her gratefully. ‘That would make it a lot easier, thank you. I’ll have the contents inventoried and returned to you as soon as possible.’ He quickly transferred the four boxes to the boot of his car and, relocking the storage door, he handed her back the key.

  ‘There was something Simon said that puzzled me, Sergeant,’ she began. ‘He said that he hoped all his clothes wouldn’t get damp here. When I said there weren’t any clothes, he laughed and said maybe Adam Fletcher thought his Armani suits were too valuable for a lock-up. He said, he would ask him where they were, when he spoke to him.’

  ‘Do you know if he did?’

  ‘Not when he was here. He never mentioned it again and I forgot about it until now. Simon had very expensive taste, Sergeant, and the money to indulge it. He only wore Armani; he swore nobody made suits so well. He wore dark suits in London and lighter suits in the Middle East. All his dark suits, several of them, would have been in his apartment and, of course, all the shirts and shoes to match.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘Simon loved his shoes; he had them handmade in Italy.’

  ‘Maybe that was the other business he had to attend to, contacting Adam Fletcher?’ West queried.

  ‘It is a possibility, I suppose. He only mentioned having business. I’m afraid I didn’t inquire. Simon was a very kind, indulgent brother but he kept his business to himself, as I do.’

  ‘Just one last question, Ms Johnson, before I go. How long was the man you knew as Adam Fletcher in possession of these boxes?’

  A chill breeze blew Jennifer’s expensively streaked blonde hair across her face where it caught tears she had been trying hard to contain. ‘You think it was him, don’t you?’ she asked in reply. ‘Simon hadn’t a bad bone in him.’ She struggled a moment before continuing, her voice thick with unshed tears. ‘He saw people as invariably good and kind because he himself was. He trusted that man without knowing him at all. Did he trust a monster, Sergeant West?’

  He reached out and took her hand, holding it a moment. ‘I don’t know, Ms Johnson. Not yet anyway. But we’ll catch whoever killed Simon, believe me,’ he said, instilling his voice with a confidence he didn’t feel, giving her the answer he knew she needed to hear.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant; I know you’ll do your best.’ She took a step towards her car and then looking back at him, she answered his question. ‘Those boxes… they were in the apartment about a week before they were moved here.’

  He waved his thanks but she had already turned away to walk to her car. Climbing into his own, he once again headed for the long drive to Foxrock.

  There were no hold-ups on the journey home and it was just after five when he pulled into his designated parking spot outside the station. Climbing out, he stretched his tired muscles, feeling every one of his forty years as they adapted to a standing position. He’d spent too many hours, over too few days, on the road. His stomach joined the chorus of protest, gurgling loudly enough to remind him he had missed not only lunch, but breakfast as well. He hailed a young garda he recognised and instructed him to have the boxes in the boot brought to his office.

  Avoiding the desk sergeant’s eye, to bypass any messages that might have come for him, particularly ones from Inspector Duffy looking for an update, he made his way to the station canteen. This was a badly lit, uncomfortable room that he generally tried to avoid but he was hungry and tired, a combination he knew could lead to frayed tempers at best and mistakes at worst. It was quiet and West took the canteen’s version of shepherd’s pie and sat with a sigh, enjoying a seat that wasn’t moving at sixty miles an hour. He ate the pie without tasting, a trick he had learned long ago to cope with institutional food, and soon sat with an empty plate. For a few minutes, he relaxed, enjoying the comfort of a full belly, listening to the murmuring of the canteen staff.

  Had he known the murmuring issued from the smitten lips of two of the younger canteen staff he wouldn’t have lingered so unconcernedly. He took his good looks for granted, had his hair cut at a local barber shop for
fifteen euro every six weeks, and, generally, wore clothes he got as presents from his mother, sisters and, occasionally, girlfriends. His smartly-tailored suits were handmade, however, a relic of his days in law and they hung well on his six-foot frame. The gifts from his mother, sisters and girlfriends were invariably expensive so, despite himself, he always looked smartly dressed and stylish. His manners matched, effortlessly charming and generally agreeable. Women loved him, responding as much to his manners as to his looks, and he enjoyed them, while taking their love very much for granted and on his terms completely. So it was, that he was still single at forty and currently unattached.

  Pushing away from the table, he took his tray and left it on the rack, completely unaware of the admiring and flirtatious giggles of the two young women who watched him pass.

  Most of the rest of the afternoon passed in a flurry of mindless paperwork, done with an ill will because it had to be done. The powers that be, he often criticised, delighted in adopting new and more ludicrous forms to complete for every aspect of his working day. He was scribbling his initials on the final piece of drivel when Andrews knocked and entered. He threw it in his out tray and, with an exaggerated sigh of relief, threw his pen on top and sat back in his chair.

  Andrews patted the pile of forms. ‘Who told you being a detective was more exciting than law, eh?’

  He tilted his chair back on two legs. ‘All the criminals I locked away, perhaps I shouldn’t have believed them. Sit down, tell me what you’ve got.’

  Moving a pile of folders from the only spare chair to the floor where they toppled immediately into another dustier pile, Andrews sat, opened the folder in front of him and proceeded to update him on the day’s work.

  At the end, West raised his eyebrows in exasperation. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered in annoyance.

  ‘Nothing,’ Andrews echoed calmly, ‘the lads have chased every lead so far and have come up with exactly that… nothing.’

  ‘What about Drumcondra?’

  ‘They have no current file on our Mr Pratt or any of his aliases. There is always the possibility, I suppose, that he used another temporary alias that we know nothing about. I put the five hundred grand into the mix but, still nothing. No report of any swindle or scam. Mind you,’ he added, ‘not everyone is willing, or able, to come to the police if they have been ripped off. There is always the possibility, like you said, that he tried to rip off the wrong person.’

  ‘What about the house?’

  ‘Again, nothing. We found personal papers in the name of Simon Johnson but nothing in any other name. No further bank accounts apart from what we have. We found a couple of accounts in her name and it seems she was telling the truth, there is a balance of three hundred thousand which is almost what she received for her house in Drumcondra.’

  ‘Did you talk to her bank?’

  ‘Got a court order this morning. If she uses her card, we have her.’

  ‘I spoke to Falmouth earlier,’ West said tiredly, stretching his arms over his head and making the chair creak as it strained to balance on two legs. ‘No sign of her, or her car as yet, but they’ll continue to be on the lookout. I still can’t believe she ran out on me,’ he muttered.

  Andrews’ eyes narrowed in a smile. ‘We’ll get her,’ he said consolingly before West’s chair came down on all four feet with a crash, startling him into dropping his folder to the floor, the contents scattering.

  ‘Sorry.’ West helped him pick up the contents, rescuing one gory shot of the victim from under his desk and returning it to him. He waved at the boxes piled beside the door. ‘Our victim’s. Want to give me a hand to go through them?’

  Andrews looked at his watch pointedly.

  ‘It’s only six thirty,’ West complained. ‘Give me a hand and I’ll buy you a pint.’

  Muttering imprecations against Guinness, Andrews opened the nearest box. Thirty minutes later, they had found nothing of any consequence and he rang his wife to tell her he’d be home in half an hour.

  ‘No later,’ he promised, looking pointedly at the sergeant, and hung up.

  In the last box, they found a reference from Bareton Industries for one Adam Fletcher. West read it quickly. ‘It’s signed Tom Bareton. I’m sure it’ll prove to be a forgery but we’d better get it checked out tomorrow, just to be sure,’ he said, handing it over to Andrews.

  Looking at it with little interest, Andrews frowned. ‘Might be easier to go down to them, Mike.’

  ‘Dammit, I’m only back from Cork. It’s a long journey just to find out something we already know, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well,’ Andrews said slowly, ‘I was thinking about paying a visit to Amanda Pratt, anyway. I might get a better feel for our Cyril, if I saw where he came from. We know about his life as Simon Johnson, I’d like to see how it differed, why he lived the lie.’

  West nodded thoughtfully. Peter was right, it would help. He had been in Cork, why hadn’t he gone to see her? That bloody woman, she was filling his mind with distractions he didn’t need. ‘I should have done that,’ he conceded, rubbing a weary hand over his face. ‘Fine, you go down. Check out Bareton Industries, and Amanda. The lads can handle anything that turns up here.’

  ‘I’ll leave around 5am,’ Andrews said. ‘I hate driving in Cork; the traffic is a nightmare and that one-way system is dreadful. Every time I drive there, I break the law, driving up one-way streets the wrong way.’ He sighed heavily. ‘At least if I’m early, I can catch Amanda Pratt before she leaves to do, whatever it is she does.’

  West’s face relaxed. ‘She is going to love you arriving on her doorstep at eight.’

  ‘I’m expecting breakfast, Mike.’ He grinned and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, maybe coffee. I can go straight to Bareton Industries afterwards and have a word with’ – he glanced at the reference – ‘Tom Bareton. I might have a word with this Adam Fletcher too; see if he has remembered anything of relevance.’

  There was certainly nothing else of relevance among Simon Johnson’s papers and they quickly returned the flotsam and jetsam of the victim’s life to four sad-looking cardboard boxes.

  ‘Doesn’t amount to much, does it?’ West said as he taped up the last box.

  Andrews obviously wasn’t in the mood to get philosophical. ‘You’re forgetting his Armani suits and his handmade Italian shoes – they’re still walking around enjoying life.’

  West could never stay miserable and introspective when Peter Andrews was around.

  They left together, walking in companionable silence to the car park.

  ‘You want that pint, Peter?’ West asked, knowing as he did so the answer he would get, and wondering, not for the first time, what it must be like to have someone to rush home to.

  ‘I’d better get home; Joyce will have dinner waiting.’ He hesitated. ‘You’re welcome to join us; she always makes too much.’

  He shook his head. ‘Thanks, another time maybe. And we’ll go for that pint another time too. I’m going to make it a personal mission to teach you to appreciate a good pint of Guinness.’

  Andrews opened his car and bent his tall frame into the seat. ‘Maybe I’ll convert you to the joys of a pint of Heineken instead,’ were his parting words as he sped off, exceeding the car park speed limit by one hundred per cent.

  West grimaced at the thought as he climbed into his own car. He decided to drive to the Stillorgan Orchard for a pint knowing he was unlikely to meet any of his colleagues there and could enjoy it without the usual shoptalk. He knew the story of the Come-to-Good fiasco would be doing the rounds and he definitely didn’t want to be the butt of jokes about that. He closed his eyes briefly; in a few days, maybe he could laugh about it, but not tonight.

  He laid his head back against the headrest, remembering her smile. Damn the woman, how many lies had she told him? What a fool she had made of him.

  He started his car, hearing his mobile hum as he reached for the gearstick. What now? Leaving the car in neutral, he fished in his jacke
t pocket and, with a weary sigh of exasperation, answered it.

  9

  Almost five hundred miles away, a storm battered the coast of Cornwall. The ground, sodden after an exceptionally wet winter, gave up in defeat and water flooded roads and fields. Weather warnings were issued. Police and rescue services advised people to stay indoors unless a journey was absolutely necessary.

  Worried householders hastily piled sandbags at vulnerable doorways remembering the last time when floodwater had swirled in and destroyed everything before it. Optimists said they’d be fine; pessimists carried everything of value to the highest point in the building, securing against flood and, in the worst-case scenario, against looting should they need to be evacuated.

  Two miles from Come-to-Good, the wind howled up a narrow, high-hedged, private laneway, chasing rain before it and making the hedges sway drunkenly. Where the lane branched off the narrow road, a To Let sign stood, its paint peeled and fading, its wood rotting from long exposure to Cornish wind and rain. Tenacious fingers of ivy and bramble had reached out and, slowly but surely, were pulling it in. Soon it would vanish altogether, devoured by the multitude of woodlice and beetles that scuttled in and out of the rot.

  The two-storied cottage that the sign referred to lay at the end of the lane and was, itself, showing signs of decay. Six-foot rhododendrons, planted by some well-meaning, but woefully ignorant, previous tenant or owner, encircled it. Nothing grew under their dense foliage except the ubiquitous brambles and ivy that pushed damp, destructive fingers into the brickwork, the window frames and under the corrugated roof, intent on claiming the cottage for their own.

  Sufficient space had been roughly hacked through the shrubbery to allow access to the weather-beaten front door but already new growth was edging its way across the gap. The windows, small by design, were made smaller again by the encroaching greenery and let in very little light during the day and at night the cottage was in total darkness. Electricity had been cut off after the departure of the last official tenant over two years before and now there were just a few flickering candles to battle the night.