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

by David W Robinson

  “Serial killers don’t strike once and then wait four years.”

  “They do if they’ve been inside for those four years.”

  “And she has a track record for murder, does she? I mean, if she’s a serial, she must have done one or two before Barbara. No, your theory doesn’t hold up. We need evidence, not opinion.”

  Barker turned right at the island, and accelerated up the steep climb to the town centre. Headlights coming in the opposite direction, cut through the first spots of rain, and ahead of them, tail lights lit up with irritating regularity as traffic fought its way through the early rush-hour.

  “What do you know about this place where she’s staying?” Sam asked.

  Barker tagged onto the end of a stationary queue on the inner ring road, and applied the handbrake. “Ruth Russell. Bit rough and ready, is Ruth. She runs this big boarding house just off Thirsk Road. Two houses knocked into one. Her family ran it for years, but after her old man died about ten years ago, she stopped taking the holiday traffic, and let the rooms out semi-permanent to whoever. No meals, just a roof over their heads. No men, all women, and she knows full well that most of the girls are tarts, but they don’t ply their trade there.”

  “So she’d be happy to take Jenner in?”

  The traffic moved on, and Barker followed. “As long as she had room, and she must have had, or she wouldn’t have taken her. The tale I heard was that Hayley Killeen paid Rachel’s first month’s rent. Killeen is looking for a serious payday on Rachel’s compo, and she won’t just charge legal fees. She’ll be on a percentage.”

  Sam filtered the information, and as they passed the junction with the upper end of Town Hill, said, “I haven’t had much to do with Killeen since I got here. How well do you know her?”

  Typically, Barker had no qualms expressing his opinion. “Bitch of the first order. Christ knows how her husband gets on with her. If we caught a scroat, man or woman, knifing a tramp in the middle of the street, she’d claim it was assisted suicide or justifiable homicide. It doesn’t matter what’s what, the police are always in the wrong. She was gobsmacked when Oxley charged Rachel, and she was pulling her hair out when Rachel was convicted, but you should have seen her face when that buried evidence turned up. When she came into the station a few days after the audit, it was like she’d enjoyed a good reaming from every man in the Landshaven Regiment.”

  Once beyond the outer boundaries of the town centre, the traffic thinned, most of it making its way into town, and Barker was able to pick up speed.

  The character of the town changed here. All traces of the seaside resort had disappeared, replaced with the peripheral business premises, and large areas of residential properties.

  Barker’s final remark reminded Sam. “Talking of the missing evidence, it’s another angle I have to look into. Hacton’s behaviour. According to you and everyone else, he was a little angel. So what was he doing hiding evidence that might have led to Rachel’s acquittal?”

  Following the Thirsk signs, Barker turned off into a clutch of streets, each side populated by old, terraced houses. Turning finally into Hambleton Terrace, he cruised up the street, and pulled in outside the double front of numbers 42-44.

  He put the handbrake on, killed the engine, and half turned to face Sam. “I’ve been thinking about Tommy ever since that bastard evidence turned up, and I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know why he did it. I’m not kidding, Sam, it was completely out of character.”

  She would not hear it. “Three reasons spring to my mind, and I’ll bet Wes Drake will have more. One, pure and simple mischief, two, he was ordered or paid to do it, three, he had a personal beef with Rachel.”

  Barker shrugged. “Mischief; never. Not Tommy. Personal argument with Rachel; not that I know of. Ordered to do it? Who by? Paid to do it? Same argument.”

  “An argument he’s not here to answer.” Sam threw open the door and climbed out. “Call the station, Frank. Get a team out here ASAP to take statements from the landlady and residents… but NOT Rachel Jenner.” Leaving Barker to deal with the matter, she climbed out.

  The windows of the double house were covered in mesh grills, and not just the lower floors. But the double doors were in need of a coat of paint, and some refurbishment work. She hammered on the door, and while she waited for Ruth Russell to arrive, half bent to check the deadlock, and found much of the wood around it chipped away.

  A string of muted curses reached her ears, and the door was suddenly flung open.

  “If you’re looking for a legover, piss off down the harbour like the rest of… oh.”

  Ruth Russell was about sixty years old, and fitted the stereotype of the seaside landlady. Overweight, her fading, red hair pulled back in a straggly bun, her fierce eyes pierced Sam like lances. She was clad in an old cardigan, beneath which she wore a shabby shirt, a ragged, dun-coloured skirt, and on her stockinged feet was a pair of dowdy carpet slippers. Her forearms, bared to the elbows, were folded defiantly underneath voluminous breasts and propped up by a portly abdomen.

  As Barker joined her, Sam forced a gentle smile. “Mrs Russell?” She did not wait for an answer. “Detective Chief Inspector Feyer, Landshaven CID. And I’m sure you know Inspector Barker.” She gestured sideways at her colleague.

  “Filth.” Ruth Russell was unrepentant. “So what the bloody hell do you want?”

  “To get in out of the rain so we can speak to you.”

  “Well you—”

  Barker cut her off. “Stop messing about, Ruth, and let us in. We’ve got news, and we need to speak to your tenants.”

  “What news?”

  Barker began to lose his temper. “For Christ’s sake, let us in. It’s pissing down, if you haven’t noticed.”

  She stood back and allowed them to enter the dimly lit hall.

  Looking around, Sam wondered how Rachel Jenner reacted to this place. The flock wallpaper had not been renewed in years, and the off-white paintwork was cracked, chipped, and faded to a dirty cream. The threadbare carpet was worn down almost to the floorboards in places, and above them, two low-wattage lights, threw out niggardly illumination.

  As a detective sergeant, Rachel had owned a house off Fraisby Road, not far from where Sam now lived, and it would have been a world away from this unkempt squalor.

  Ruth tapped an irritable foot on the carpet. “What’s this all about?”

  “Do you know a woman called Olivia Bradley?” Sam asked.

  “She’s one of my tenants. I just let them have rooms, you know. If she’s been caught shagging someone she shouldn’t have, it’s nothing to do with me.”

  “She’s dead.”

  Under normal circumstances Sam would have made an effort to modulate her tone of voice, alleviate any potential shock, but if her assessment of this woman was anything near correct, she wouldn’t care that much.

  She was right.

  “Shit. I’ll have to look for another tenant now.”

  “Did you see her at all last night?” Barker asked.

  “I told you, I just let them have rooms. I don’t have nothing to do with ’em other than collecting my rent, and keeping ’em in check when they get outta line. Like that cow, Jenner, scrapping with one of them the other night.”

  Sam seized on the information. “Fighting? Who with? Olivia Bradley by any chance?”

  “No. Emma Kraal. Right, so you’ve told me that the Bradley cow is dead, what more do you want?”

  “To speak to Rachel Jenner,” Sam replied. “And given the number of your tenants who work the harbour side, we’ll be sending a few officers in later in the morning, to speak to them.”

  Ruth’s irritation grew again. “Most of ’em are out of here by half-past nine. They have to go sign on.”

  “Not today, Mrs Russell. You keep them here until my people are through. They should be here within the hour.” Having made her point, Sam looked up the stairs. “Rachel Jenner?”

  “I’ll get her for you. Don’t know
as how the lazy sow’s out of bed yet.”

  With an air of amusement hardly befitting the events of the morning, Sam watched her disappear, and asked, “Is she always like that?”

  “Always,” Barker replied. “She’s been tied to this house virtually since the day she was born. Her granddad or great-granddad was a cop in Hull. Retired in the early nineteen hundreds and bought the place. It’s passed on down the family ever since but she’s the last of the line. Never had any kids, and she blames the rest of the world for that. She’s a plain, simple, miserable old bat, but she has some serious bottle. She’ll take anyone on; man, woman, teenager, even a mob. She’s not scared of anyone.”

  Ruth reappeared a few minutes later. “She’s getting dressed.”

  Sam made an effort to engage the woman. “I understand your grandfather was a police officer.”

  Ruth scowled. “My great grandad as it happens. Yes, one of these thieving bitches has nicked his billy club. If I get my hands on the—”

  Sam interrupted. “Billy club? An old-fashioned truncheon?” She waited for Ruth to silently agree. “Have you reported the theft?”

  “Have I hell as like. Waste of bleeding time, your lot. Antique, it was. Worth a few quid. I’m telling you, if I find out who did it…”

  Puffing out an angry breath, she turned and stomped away.

  Barker smiled after her. “See? Miserable.”

  It was not an adjective which could be applied to Rachel Jenner. Dressed in tatty trainers, jeans and an over-sized jumper, she was bleary-eyed and downright angry. Her upper lip was swollen and there was a small cut to her right cheek.

  “What do you want?” Much of Rachel’s fury was directed at Barker.

  Sam ignored it and concentrated on her injury. “Have you reported that?”

  “No. I had worse beatings in prison. Now, again, what do you want?”

  Sam opted to meet her challenge. “You at the station eleven o’clock this morning.”

  Her anger spiked. “Well, you can bugger off. And I’ll be speaking to my solicitor about—”

  Sam cut her off. “Mrs Jenner, I’m not asking, I’m telling. The investigation into Barbara Shawforth’s murder has been reopened and I need a statement from you. You’re welcome to bring your solicitor along but you are not under suspicion and you’re not under caution. I’d rather deal with it at the station, because there are other matters I need to speak to you about; concerning last night.”

  “What about last night?”

  Barker stepped in. “Olivia Bradley was murdered and we need to establish your whereabouts.”

  “I was here.”

  “Can anyone verify that?” Sam did not wait for an answer. “Save it for later this morning. The station, eleven o’clock, Mrs Jenner, and if you’re not there, I’ll put out a call for your arrest.”

  “This is harassment.”

  “No. It’s investigation and you know it. Just make sure you’re there.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rachel returned to her room her heart somewhere around the level of her feet. She had been back in Landshaven less than four days, and already she was beginning to doubt the wisdom of coming home.

  She was Landshaven Landshaven born and bred and had inherited that stalwart defiance typical of a fishing town which had stood on the Yorkshire coast for over 1000 years,

  The Feyer woman’s insistence on questioning her meant she would have to go to Landshaven House, and even the thought of it brought back all those terrible memories.

  Before going to university, she had been determined to join the police service, and three years at York did nothing to change that ambition, but her modest sociology degree did change the attitude of the selection panel. There was no ‘fast-track’ graduate program back then, but there were proposals for one, and they were happy to accept candidates with a degree.

  For Rachel, however, it was the old-fashioned route, and after the necessary two or three years on the beat, she transferred to CID. Promotion could have come quicker but for a couple of stumbling blocks. The lot of women in the police service was improving but it still had a long way to go, and in a small town like Landshaven attitudes frowned upon women progressing too far too fast. The second problem she faced was her marriage to Detective Sergeant (as he was then) John Jenner. Neville Trentham was publicity conscious, and John was the coming man, the front runner for the top job in CID, due for promotion to inspector at any time. Trentham could not countenance accusations of nepotism, and so, she was held back.

  For the duration of her ten-year marriage, she tolerated it. John’s salary was good, hers was better than average, so they had an acceptable standard of living. Career-wise she earned a hard, no-nonsense reputation as a detective sergeant, one which was worthy of advancement, and the brakes on her promotional prospects were a frustration, but nothing worse than that… and even then they were largely her fault.

  The divorce did nothing to change matters. By that time, John was a DCI in charge of CID, and his close friend and drinking buddy, Frank Barker had a downer on her for the way she ‘treated’ her husband. It was irrelevant to Barker that John failed to resist the temptation of women often eager to drop their knickers for a senior detective in the hope of currying favours when they needed such.

  All that was nothing at the side of Barbara’s murder, and the way she had been targeted for prosecution. The lies people had told, intangible evidence given such credence, statements dismissed as unreliable… If only she could go back and change things.

  She visited the bathroom and as she washed, the hot water snapped at the cut to her lip, a ‘welcome home’ present from one of the sex workers dossing at Ruth Russell’s place, a reminder of how far she had sunk.

  The neat townhouse she and John shared and which he had left her when they divorced, was a part of her past, sold to meet her legal fees, along with her wardrobe of modest but classy clothing. Now she was dressed in shabby hand-me-downs, reliant upon loans from Hayley Killeen and state handouts, and living in a tiny, dingy room in a rundown boarding house populated by prostitutes, druggies (the latter often leading women into the former profession) and others down on their uppers. To a woman, they hated her. She was an ex-cop turned killer, and she had murdered the wife of one of the most popular men in Landshaven.

  Four years in prison had produced a Rachel Jenner so much tougher than the one who went in. Only she knew how low women could sink, and some of the vile acts committed against her plumbed the depths of human savagery.

  Violence in women’s prisons was not as prevalent as it was in men’s, but it was there, and despite her status as an ex-police officer and therefore a vulnerable prisoner, they still got to her occasionally. She was a cop, unilaterally detested by all and sundry. Even the prison officers disliked her, and from day one she was a target.

  Freedom did nothing to change matters. The first night at Ruth Russell’s, she had encountered Emma Kraal in the second floor bathroom. A thirty-year-old with a long history of selling herself, she was every bit as tough as Rachel. There was some sneering from Emma, sharp words from Rachel, and then the back of Emma’s hand flashing across the small space between them, and a cheap dress ring cutting into Rachel’s lip.

  Not that Rachel left the issue there. She grabbed Emma by the bare arms and pressed her back into a corner, threatening retaliation on a nuclear scale if the woman ever came near her again. It led to a sharp exchange of words with Ruth Russell, and the promise of eviction if anything like it happened again. Emma had smiled in triumph. She’d been resident at Ruth Russell’s for a good few years, and although the landlady disliked almost all her boarders, it was outweighed by her contempt for Rachel.

  It was typical of the entire town’s attitude to her. Her insistence upon her innocence was irrelevant to everyone. Notwithstanding the fresh evidence (thin, but enough to get her conviction overturned) she was arguably the most hated woman in Landshaven.

  Chief amongst her antagonists were the
editorial staff of the Landshaven Chronicle. During the last two general elections, the newspaper had canvassed on behalf of Marc Shawforth. He was their golden boy, the local millionaire who campaigned tirelessly on behalf of the town and its people. His wife’s killer was a perfect target for the editor’s opprobrium.

  Thoughts of Shawforth brought a cynical smile to Rachel’s injured lips. The vast majority of people in this town did not know the Marc Shawforth she had known for many years. He was a salesman, willing to say anything, offer the world and a shilling to ensure his seat as the MP for Landshaven. Privately, he was a different proposition; niggardly, mean of spirit and money, a man who treated his wife as a possession. Was it any wonder Barbara developed a reputation for being so free with her favours?

  Not everyone in the town hated Rachel. Hayley, so often an antagonist when Rachel was a serving police officer, had become a good friend as well as her lawyer. Her husband, James, whom she met for the first time when invited to Sunday lunch with the Killeens, had taken to her, too.

  And then there was John.

  She met him, not entirely by chance, in the Duke of York, a pub on the periphery of the pedestrianised shopping precinct at the top of Town Hill. It had always been one of her favourite watering holes, and he was in there when she stepped in for an afternoon drink.

  In the early days after she was charged, she persuaded herself that the only person who could have planted that incriminating blouse in her wardrobe was John, but he vehemently denied it, and much later underscored his belief in her by donating his half of the proceeds from the sale of their house to her legal fees. He had no need to. They were divorced, she was entitled to only half the equity in the house, and at the time of her prosecution, he was living on his boat in Landshaven Harbour. His half of the sale would have provided him with a suitable deposit for a new, permanent home, but visiting her when she was on remand, he insisted on his belief in her innocence.