The Frame - from the author of the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series (A Feyer and Drake Mystery Book 2)

by David W Robinson

  Drake watch the scene unravel in his mind. She was asleep. The killer disturbed her. She turned to face him, possibly to rise, and he punched her. That would account for her reposed position before the baseball bat was used.

  Wider angle photographs showed her underclothing, a basque and bra, strewn around the lower portion of the bed, and her street clothes, folded neatly over the back of one of two, wooden chairs. The bed linen and the bland, grey carpet were covered in pools of blood, all of it – according to the pathologist – the result of wounds to her head. He found no traces of blood from any other part of her body. In one of the patches, was a clearly defined footprint, which later proved to be from shoes belonging to Leonard Pearson, the Bellevue’s proprietor. The footprint was not significant, Drake realised. Pearson freely admitted going into the room, and he would have stepped in it before realising the horror before him.

  The weapon, a standard baseball bat available at sports’ suppliers anywhere, was discarded on the floor, alongside the bed. What interested Drake was the side of the bed upon which the bat lay. It was the far side, closest to the bathroom.

  The pathologist also said that as a consequence of such a frenzied attack, it was inevitable that the killer’s clothing and face would be spattered with blood. Easy enough to wash off in the small bathroom before escaping, but not so simple to get out of his/her clothing.

  The position of the bat brought home to him the precise scenario. The killer had murdered Barbara, dropped the bat, gone into the bathroom to clean up, and then made his/her escape. Having seen the photographs, he found an immediate suspect in the lover. After having sex, Alex Walston could have carried out the crime while he was still naked, but he would not need to shower. It was not, after all, as if he would be soaked in blood. Spatters. The pathologist was most precise about that. Walston could have visited the bathroom, washed the blood from his hair, face, neck and hands, and then dressed. It was late summer, and any blood about his body would have been covered with clothing.

  Reading through the remainder of the file, he was disgusted to learn that Oxley had never demanded forensic examination of the clothing Walston had worn for the assignation. Similarly, after a cursory search of Pearson’s quarters, none of his clothing had been taken for analysis. Even to a layman like him, it was a huge gap. It was as if everyone homed in on Rachel Jenner, and shut out all other possibilities.

  It was gone eleven o’clock by the time he finished reading. He could not clear Rachel Jenner, any more than he could accuse anyone else, but there was sufficient ambiguity even at this early stage to cast further doubt on the original conviction.

  With the time coming up to midnight, he went to bed, and after setting his alarm for seven, closed his mind to everything but the need for sleep…

  Chapter Eight

  Drake slept poorly, his dreams haunted by images of Becky, the Anagramist, and Sam Feyer, all intertwined in various bizarre situations, sometimes with sexual overtones, just as often challenging, frightening.

  There was nothing odd about that. It had been the way since Becky’s appalling death, and his unwillingness (prompted by Sam) to commit the Anagramist to eternity.

  He climbed out of bed a little after seven, showered, shaved, and ordered breakfast for half past eight. Making his first cup of tea of the day, he sat at the window, and looked out over the flat surface of the sea. The sun had come up an hour earlier, but overnight cloud had gathered, blotting out what would have been a glorious sight, and he guessed it would rain before the day was out.

  Memories of past visits to Landshaven told him that the weather would have little effect on the townsfolk and holidaymakers. The amusement arcades, bars and restaurants would be busy, Limes shopping mall would be crowded, and the masses milling around the pedestrian areas would thin out, but Landshaven would be alive.

  It was a direct contrast to the way he felt. His life was on hold, drifting. His autonomic bodily systems kept his heart beating, pumping blood through the arteries and veins, his respiratory system took in oxygen, released carbon dioxide, tiny aches and pains made themselves dimly aware of their existence, but for him life had ceased to have any kind of meaning back in the spring.

  He was not what could be considered a professional counsellor. He specialised in motivation, but he had spent a good number of years counselling staff and students at Howley College, and it gave him an unwelcome insight into his problems.

  Of the five, generally accepted stages of grief, he was locked in stages two to four, still hung over from the isolation factor of stage one. Bargaining was minimised. ‘If only I had refused to attend the meeting that day’, ‘if only I had stayed home instead of attending that meeting’ rang true now and again, but only rarely. One day, he was sure, he would move to stage five, acceptance (although, he would argue that he had already accepted the loss) but for now he could not shake off the two dominating emotions, anger, sometimes reaching a level of absolute fury, and the depths of depression.

  He was a counsellor in need of counselling.

  People tried. Professional colleagues had made half-hearted attempts to lift his spirits, but mostly their well-intentioned efforts were little more than platitudes. Even his father, notoriously outspoken even for a politician, treated him with kid gloves.

  Thoughts of such harsh treatment brought his concentration, naturally, to Sam. Of anyone in his circle of friends and acquaintances, she would be top of the list when it came to assistance, but her early departure, necessary though it was, had destroyed much of the empathy between them, and he knew that his general moodiness would make it difficult to repair the damage.

  Over an excellent, full English breakfast, he forced his concentration away from self-indulgence to his reason for coming to Landshaven. With the time coming up to 9 o’clock, he took up his mobile, and rang Sam.

  “I appreciate you’re technically off duty for the weekend, but can we meet for lunch?”

  “Social or professional?” She sounded tired as if she had just got out of bed, and it lent a sharp, unforgiving edge to her voice.

  Drake returned the crisp irascibility. “It concerns Barbara Shawforth, if that’s what you mean. I need to speak to you, and I’d rather not wait until Monday morning. Or did you have other plans?”

  “Yes. I planned on kicking round the house all weekend. Still, lunch doesn’t sound like a bad idea. The Captain’s Table. It’s on the seafront, opposite the harbour, not far from the Trafalgar Inn.”

  “I know it. Half past twelve?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  With breakfast over, he returned to his room. He needed to prepare for what he guessed would be a tricky meeting. Once having refreshed his memory, he listed the people he would need to speak to.

  Detective Inspector Barker remained top of the list. Because of Barbara Shawforth’s status, Trentham had kept the number of officers working directly on the investigation to a minimum, and of them all, Barker was most involved. He had an antipathy to Rachel Jenner, made plain in his attitude when Sam introduced them, but Drake, even though he needed to know where the opinion came from, was perfectly capable of putting it to one side.

  The most difficult prospect would be Rachel Jenner herself. He had spoken briefly to Hayley Killeen over the telephone the previous day, and he met with absolute intransigence.

  “My client is obliged to speak to the police, but only because they’re reopening the investigation, but she is not compelled to speak to anyone else, and she will not speak with you.”

  Drake was accustomed to dealing with determined lawyers: his father, brother and sister to begin with. He rang off with a promise that Mrs Killeen and Rachel Jenner had not heard the last of him.

  His study of the case and his tentative conclusions, made it all the more important that he speak to Rachel Jenner, and one way or another, he would.

  At ten o’clock, tired of hiding away from the world, he put on a black fleece, and stepped out into the chilly morning, turnin
g left towards the ruins of the castle.

  The first flecks of rain had begun to fall, the temperature was several degrees lower than the previous day. It was a steep walk up to the castle, past an open public car park, through a narrow arch along the cobbled lane with high, stone walls on either side, which opened out onto a well-tended, lawned area surrounding the ruined keep, the only substantial building remaining.

  Standing on the steep promontory of North Cliff, the castle dated back to the twelfth century and only the retaining walls remained, and many of those were reduced in height, but there were frequent viewing platforms, from where he could look out over the sea, down upon the town, or further south to Flamborough Head. On the northern side, the walls were lower, and there were warnings of a sheer drop just twenty metres from the outer side of the wall.

  The walk – about a mile and a half by the time he returned to the hotel – helped shake off the early morning gloom permeating his mind. As he ambled around the castle walls, thoughts of Becky intruded occasionally. She had loved Landshaven every bit as much as he, but for the most part, he purposely indulged in the spectacular views and the invigorating tang of ozone filling his nostrils and lungs.

  He was dressed casually, denim jeans and a woolly jumper, and decided that there was little point in changing his clothes for what was an ad hoc meeting with Sam. At noon, he locked the police files in his briefcase, put away his laptop and carried both down to his car, where he put them in the boot, then climbed behind the wheel for the drive to the seafront.

  As he anticipated, the promenade was busy. The rain was not yet so heavy that it would send the masses scurrying indoors, but slowed the seafront traffic to a nose-to-tail crawl, and he was glad to turn out of it at the pay and display car park alongside the harbour.

  He paid for four hours, climbed out of the car and looked around. His choice of car park was deliberate. Both Barbara Shawforth and her lover, Alex Walston, had used the same place on the day of her death, and both were captured on traffic cameras as they crossed the road.

  The redbrick sheds of the fish and general dock lined the right-hand side of the car park, and they extended further, the steep, rough stone walls meeting the beach against which the sea lapped. To his left, the rear of his car, he could see clear across the whole of South Bay, as far as the spa complex, and above the promenade the monolithic Majestic Hotel dominated the view.

  Walking back to the entrance, and looking across Seafront Way, there was a long parade of shops which stretched from the bottom of Town Hill, all the way round to the inner ring road which stood beneath the Majestic. Immediately across from the harbour was the Trafalgar Inn, and alongside it a dark, narrow and enclosed alley; Harbour Passage. Barbara and Walston had made their way through that alley up to Town Hill, where it emerged alongside the front entrance of the Bellevue Hotel. Only Walston had returned less than an hour after he left his car. Sometime between two twenty, when she crossed the road, and quarter to five when hotelier Leonard Pearson found her, Barbara was beaten to death.

  With images of that September afternoon four years ago running through his head, Drake crossed the main road, turned right, waited briefly at the lights where Town Hill met Seafront Way, and then crossed again to the Captain’s Table. He checked his watch and read twelve twenty. There was no sign of Sam. He moved further on, and studied the window display of a souvenir shop, one of those seaside places which sold anything and everything from postcards to china ornaments, to toys and novelties.

  At length, he turned back and looked across the road to the marina where a range of private pleasure craft were moored, the masts of yachts swaying erratically in the light breeze, small boats bobbing on the gentle swell. Away to his left, beneath the promontory of North Cliff, the fairground was already in action, but he noticed that the ferris wheel was static. A signal that they were expecting high winds? He was not sure that it would dissuade the thrill-seekers.

  “Been here long?”

  Sam’s voice brought him back to the here and now. He gave her a big smile. “Five minutes. No more.”

  She indicated the restaurant with a nod. “Shall we?”

  He ushered her through, she had a brief word with the proprietor/manager, and they took the window table from where they could overlook the comings and goings along the harbour side.

  Officially identified as a glorified fish and chip shop, The Captain’s Table offered a full range of menus, from which Drake chose a well done steak with roast potatoes and vegetables, and Sam followed suit. She asked for a glass of house red and Drake ordered a glass of lager.

  Throughout the meal the conversation remained neutral. The subject of Barbara Shawforth and Rachel Jenner, and their personal problems were never mentioned. Sam confessed that the restaurant was one of her favourites, and Drake, having visited the place many times, concurred. They chatted about the weather, holidays, the rise of populist politicians around the world and what it might mean for the country… anything to avoid more contentious issues.

  They both declined dessert, and it was only when coffee and brandy were delivered that they came to the nub of their meeting.

  “The files are in the boot of my car. You can take them with you, if you wish, or I can bring them back to the police station on Monday morning.”

  “It’s my weekend off, Wes. Monday will be fine.” Sam played with her coffee cup. “You studied them thoroughly?”

  He nodded. “I was at it until half past eleven last night.”

  “Your thoughts?”

  “A thousand and one unanswered questions, and I’m not gonna minimise this, Sam. Most of these questions should have been asked in the original investigation, but they weren’t.”

  “Have you ever met Vernon Oxley?” When Drake shook his head, Sam went on. “I always had the feeling that he was promoted on the Peter Principle.” She gave him a quizzical look. “You of all people must understand the Peter Principle.”

  He nodded. “An employee rises through the ranks and eventually reaches a position where he’s simply incompetent.”

  Sam agreed. “Oxley is also lazy, but at his level, he has enough people working within to cover up any cock ups.”

  “That fits. When he and his team arrived from York, he latched onto Rachel Jenner, and he never looked seriously at anyone else. But the Landshaven team were just as guilty from all I’ve read. They dismissed other suspects far too quickly.”

  Sam did not react to the announcement. “Your conclusion?”

  Drake was hesitant. “I haven’t really come to any conclusion,”

  It might have worked with others, but not Sam and she said as much. “This is me you’re speaking to, remember. No conclusion? What’s your gut feeling then?”

  “Rachel Jenner was innocent. She was shafted.”

  Chapter Nine

  Drake sipped coffee, allowing Sam time to absorb his bald announcement.

  Once more, she barely reacted. “Interesting.”

  “I told you yesterday, my report is confidential. It’s for Iris Mullins’ eyes only. But my conclusions might impinge upon your investigation, which is why I needed to speak to you in private.” He held up his hand as if defending himself. “I’m not trying to lead you. You’re the detective, not me, and the investigation will proceed as you see fit. There are just too many problems with accepting Rachel Jenner’s guilt. Quite aside from motivation, which frankly, doesn’t make sense, the manner in which she allegedly got to the Bellevue Hotel and how she got in without anyone being aware of her, was never satisfactorily explained, and you need to speak seriously to Leonard Pearson. I’d like to speak to him, too, if that’s permissible. The evidence of her next door neighbour was dismissed out of hand, principally because that neighbour was dead, and yet there’s nothing to indicate that she was senile. And there’s one question that remains unexplained – at least to me.”

  “And that is?”

  “What was this evidence which led to the appeal? All the files say
is that fresh evidence was uncovered which cast doubt upon her conviction.”

  Now, for the first time, Sam hedged. It was as if she was torn between openness and the need to maintain confidentiality. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you. I only learned of it myself on Thursday.”

  Drake tutted, letting his frustration out in a manner which was not calculated to sour their already fragile working relationship. “The judgement is in the public domain, Sam. I’m asking you because it’s easier than going to the trouble of reading through the appeal transcript.”

  She gulped down the last of her wine. “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. It’s a long story.”

  He shrugged and finished his coffee. “I have plenty of time. Would you care to take a walk along the seafront while you tell me?”

  For the first time since they met she smiled. “All right. It’s better than mooching around the house channel hopping, trying to find something worth watching on television.”

  She reached for her purse, but Drake stayed her. “My treat.” He signalled the waiter, handed over his credit card, punched in his PIN, took the card and the receipt, and they stepped out into the early afternoon.

  They crossed the road, and turned right, and strolled towards the local sea wall fronting the beach, and as they walked, Sam went into her story.

  “You’ll need some history to understand what I’m saying. This involves a Detective Constable Tom Hacton. Ex-army, twenty years with the police, a dedicated plodder. No ambition, quite happy as a constable. He didn’t even want CID, but he was drafted in when they were shorthanded. This would be, oh, ten years prior to Barbara’s murder. Even in CID, he did not want promotion. He was quite happy working as a DC. So, let’s come up to the time of Barbara’s killing. I told you that Oxley is a lazy sod. Landshaven CID had done most of the ground work when he and his team shipped in, focused on Rachel Jenner, and within a week they had her charged and remanded for trial.”