No Spoken Word

by David Menon

  Barton decided to go with a different angle. ‘Mr. Taylor, being a left-wing activist back in the fifties and a vocal supporter of the Soviet Union must’ve led you into some pretty fierce arguments with people’.

  ‘There was a lot of misunderstanding about the Soviet Union back then’

  ‘So people misunderstood the gulags, and the Stalinist purges?’

  ‘They were to do with internal security and the constant threat from the United States and the capitalist world that it led’.

  ‘But you were happy to come back to all that?’

  ‘I was homesick’.

  ‘No other defector ever came back’.

  ‘I can’t speak for the situations of others’.

  ‘And you were quite happy to slip back into the capitalist world you seemed to so despise? You built up Arrow Aviation into one of the most highly successful light aviation and defence companies in Europe’.

  ‘Which I’m in the process of selling so if you don’t mind I have much to do and I need to get on’.

  And that’s when the penny dropped inside Barton’s head. It’s like when you look for something and find something else. Investigating one murder can lead to uncovering another.

  ‘Mr. Taylor, I need you to come down to the station for us to take a DNA sample’.

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘On the grounds of the pursuit of our investigations into the murder of your daughter’ said Barton, who could see that Taylor was struggling to hold onto his ice cold demeanour. ‘You’re a close relative of the deceased, the only one we have. It might help us just to tie up all the knots’.

  Do I need my lawyer?’

  ‘No. We’re just going to take a sample’.

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  ‘Well I could arrest you but I’m sure you don’t want to go down that road’.

  Whilst they were waiting for Taylor to have his DNA sample taken Barton put in a call to the pathologist Dr June Hawkins.

  ‘June, there’ll be some DNA coming over to you this afternoon of a man called Vincent Taylor. I want you to see if it is a match with Maria Taylor. And let me know as soon as you can. Thanks, June’.

  He then asked Louisa if she could prepare photographs of Vincent Taylor from before he defected and after he came back, plus a detailed history of when and where he was born and where he went to school. Twelve years in his political and principled fatherland wouldn’t turn a fevered communist supporter into the sort of free market capitalist who could steer a company into successive multi million pound profits. And Barton wondered that if he could get to what he now perceived to be the real truth behind Vincent Taylor in the space of a few thoughts then how on earth has nobody in authority seen it before now?

  Diana Matthews felt like she was on the edge of a cliff and she didn’t know whether to jump or wait until she felt the push from behind.

  ‘I’ve given a whole lifetime of sacrifice to you, James’ said Diana who was in the middle of a row with her husband. They’d been trying to have dinner. She’d cooked a roast. But they’d both pushed their plates away. Neither of them were very hungry.

  ‘I know you have’ said James.

  ‘Then why can’t you open up to me now? You know who killed Maria and Tony, don’t you? And you know why. You made sure you were out of the way that afternoon when it happened so that nothing could be attributed to you personally’.

  ‘You seem to have got it all worked out’ said James who was sitting on the other side of the table from his wife. ‘I don’t know why you’re wasting time with all these questions’.

  ‘Don’t try and be clever now. It’s too late for that. Do you know how humiliated I felt in that police station all bloody night? Don’t you realise how close I came to being charged?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have said anything on that damn mobile phone’.

  Diana was incensed. ‘Oh no, no, no, don’t you dare try and turn this around on me! They were both our friends, James’.

  ‘And listen to the saintly lady now. Where did you suddenly get your halo from, Diana? You knew exactly what was going on when we were in Moscow. You played an active role in everything so don’t try the holier than thou act now. You went into it back then with your eyes wide open and you never questioned the disappearance of friends then’.

  ‘But that was part of your work, part of what you had to do and I supported you every step of the way. We’re retired now, James. We don’t live that life any longer’.

  ‘I do’ said James looking into his wife’s angst ridden face. ‘I never stopped’.

  She liked to watch the evening news. It was a ritual that she and her late husband had followed after he retired. The sound of the six o’clock news starting signalled the first gin and tonic. Then the second one came at the start of the regional news programmes at half past. After that it was time for dinner and she either had another gin and tonic with that or she poured herself a glass of wine.

  She’d been told by her doctor that she had to think about cutting back on the alcohol consumption but she was well into her seventies now and couldn’t see the point of cutting down on booze for health reasons. Why? What would it achieve? She’d never smoked. She hadn’t had sex since her husband died and her two daughters and three grandsons would be well taken care of if anything happened to her. She had absolutely no interest in living to an age where she had to rely on someone else to wipe her clean after going to the toilet. That wouldn’t be living to her and she’d hate for those she loved to see her in that state. She felt perfectly fit and healthy at the moment and as long as it stayed that way she’d carry on with her evening ritual, drinking a toast to her late husband Bob every night with the first gin. Why do these doctors go on about ‘eating healthily’ and ‘drinking responsibly’ to old folk who wanted a bit of enjoyment in their later years?

  She wasn’t getting much from the various news items. It was a fairly slow news day but her attention was taken by then story of a murder up in Manchester. Well as soon as the name of her home city was mentioned her ears pricked up but then she got one of the biggest shocks of her life. She felt her jaw drop. There he was large as bloody life and walking with a pride and purpose that he didn’t deserve to feel. She’d had no idea he’d been living back in the UK. She thought he’d gone back to Russia never to darken these shores again. It was all different now. Russia wasn’t the Soviet Union anymore. It was all full of corrupt billionaires now who couldn’t give a damn about the workers struggle. Not that they ever really did in her opinion. The Russian aristocracy had been replaced by a Communist party elite and the people underneath still went without. But none of that mattered now. He’d been living the good life and according to the reporter on TV he hadn’t shown any grief or concern for his murdered daughter.

  Last Christmas her family had bought her a tablet computer and her grandson Theo had set it all up for her. She picked it up from off the coffee table and typed ‘national rail enquiries’ into the search engine. She wanted the times of trains to Manchester. It was time for her to help see to it that justice was finally done.

  NO SPOKEN WORD

  ELEVEN

  Kath Ward was looking forward to a night of peace with her feet up in front of the telly. Her late husband Tony hadn’t really gone much for the telly. He saw it as some sort of instrument of the state through which to feed its propaganda to the people. Kath thought he was being over the top in his usual Tony way and she liked to watch the odd drama or film on the box. And now she could without noises off from the left of him grumbling under his breath about a lowering of TV production standards to accommodate the American dominated global advertising commercialism that had taken over from the previous priority of getting good writers to write good scripts for good actors who were only interested in their craft and not in becoming a vacuous modern day celebrity who sells pictures to a national celebrity magazine if their dog has puppies. One programme she really did like was an American drama called ‘Six Fe
et Under’ which was set in a funeral parlour in Los Angeles that was run by a family who formed the basic set of characters. At the start of each episode it featured a death that became the main line of drama through the episode. Once it showed a man in his late middle age sitting at the breakfast table and going on and on and on about nothing at all. Just complaining and whining for the sake of it. This went on for a few seconds until his wife came up behind him with a large frying pan and with all her might she wacked him round the side of his head. She’d probably had to listen to it for years and had reached the point where enough was enough. Kath never even dreamed of going that far with Tony, although the thought crossing her mind fleetingly from time to time did amuse her, but even when he was ranting at full throttle about how the Tory government had offended him this time, she wouldn’t have swapped him for the world. And she’d give anything right at this moment to hear his ranting again.

  It had been a tough old day what with one thing and another. The girl who worked in the shop with her, Wendy, had been acting strange all day, like she was a million miles away but she kept on insisting whenever Kath asked her that she was fine. But Wendy was also being odd around the photo-fit of the man wanted for questioning for Maria and Tony’s murder. Kath had put it up in the shop window. Wendy had barely been able to look at it. Kath wondered if Wendy recognised someone in the image but for some reason was too nervous to say anything. She decided she’d ask her outright tomorrow.

  When the doorbell rang she woke up with a start and spilt half the mug of coffee she’d made for herself earlier but had fallen asleep without drinking. ‘Shit!’ she exclaimed. She thought she’d better answer the door first before seeing to the spilt coffee that was quickly expanding across her living room carpet.

  She opened her door and had hardly caught her breath before the tall, imposing figure of a man pushed her inside, raised his hand with his gun in it and shot her in the head. Her body was thrown backwards and it only took seconds before her blood was mixing swiftly and decisively with the coffee.

  But by then he was down the stairs and out onto the street amongst all the other passers-by.

  Diana Matthews knew she must’ve had some sleep because she’d made it from midnight when she went to bed through to daylight and it didn’t seem like she’d been lying awake for a lot of that time. And yet she didn’t feel like she’d had the kind of deep, restful sleep she needed. But that’s what comes from taking a herbal sleeping pill. It doesn’t quite send her off into a proper sleep but rather a dazed state of neither being properly asleep or properly awake. But now it was letting go of her and she yawned and stretched to chase the last of it away.

  And then it hit her. The reality of what was going on in her life came crashing down on her like the sky itself had fallen in on her. She couldn’t believe what her husband James had told her the night before. He was still involved in all the games that had dogged their married life and his professional career. But then again she might’ve known. He’d still been as secretive since he retired as he’d always been and she thought it was just a way of not being able to let go of the past. The reality was clearly much more serious and much more sinister than that.

  She opened her eyes and brought herself from under the duvet, planting her legs on the floor like they were dead weights. She’d got to that age where it was sometimes hard to get the circulation going in her feet and the lower parts of her legs and she sat for a moment and twisted her feet around in the air between bringing them down again and getting out of bed.

  The house was quiet. This wasn’t unusual. She and James had slept in separate rooms for a few years now and he often didn’t rise before about ten o’clock. She looked at the bedside clock and saw that it was only a little after eight. She decided to put on her dressing gown and go and make herself some breakfast. She was thirsty and wanted some hot earl grey tea with lemon. She was a little hungry too and was going to make herself some toast made with brown bread. These were the ordinary mechanics of life that Diana had always relied on to get her through some of the more murky aspects of her married life with James. But she couldn’t even begin to think about doing now they were supposed to be retired. But now that James had admitted to being still involved in his old ways she was really at a loss as to know what to do for the best. She’d taken calls from her son and her daughter who wanted to know how ‘everything’ was and she’d told them both that it was all okay and that she and their father would work things out. She was lying to them. She was lying to herself.

  She walked into the living room and realised that certain items were missing. Like the picture of her husband James holding their granddaughter Harriett in his arms. James loved that picture and there were one or two other things belonging to James that were also not there anymore. It sent her running to his room and she burst in only to find his bed and his wardrobes empty. She felt the strength go from her legs and she fell to the floor in tears.

  It had finally come down to a choice and he’d chosen ‘the service’ over her.

  Barton made it over to the latest crime scene at Kath Ward’s flat where the pathologist Dr. June Hawkins and her team were dressed up in their usual protective plastic covers over their clothing and were hard at work. Kath Ward was still lying in a pool of blood that had now more or less dried up. Barton donned the protective plastic covers himself and had already made her conclusions according to what she’d found thus far.

  ‘This looks like another contract killing, Jeff’ said Dr. Hawkins.

  ‘What makes you say that, June?’

  ‘The way she’s lying there on her back’ she answered. ‘I think she opened the door and the killer marched straight in and then shot her in her head, as you can see there right in the middle of her forehead. The killer knew exactly what they were doing’.

  ‘But what made Kath Ward a target?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘You see that’s just what I’m not getting here’ said Barton. He liked conferring with June about a case. She sometimes offered a fresh insight and noticed something that he and the team might’ve overlooked. It was always worth a try when he couldn’t see a straight road ahead in terms of getting a result. ‘Why have three seemingly ordinary people been marked out for murder? A woman who owned a shop in the suburbs and a married couple who may have had radical political views but stayed within the law and for a day job ran a second hand book shop. What had these people done?’

  ‘I take it you’re not making much headway with the investigation?’ said June as she led Barton outside onto the balcony that ran along each floor of the block of flats. It meant they were out of the way of June’s team as they went about their work.

  ‘We’ve got one or two potentially promising seeds but I don’t know yet whether or not we’ll be able to make anything grow out of them’ said Barton. ‘And on the other side of this I’ve got an elderly man who I’m growing more and more suspicious of by the name of Vincent Taylor’.

  ‘Yes, I read about him in the paper’ said June. ‘It seems the press are starting to dig into his background’.

  ‘And it’s quite a colourful one’.

  ‘It so is’ June agreed. ‘It doesn’t get much more colourful than going from communist flag waver who defected to model capitalist chairman of Arrow Aviation’.

  ‘Yes, and it’s a journey that I just can’t reconcile since the meat in the sandwich was twelve years in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War’.

  ‘So what’s it all about?’

  ‘And what does it have to do with a retired diplomat who’s spent so much of his life shadow boxing that he wouldn’t recognise the real truth if it leapt up and slapped him one’.

  ‘James Matthews?’

  ‘Yep’.

  ‘What about Mrs. Matthews? You were questioning her for a while weren’t you?’

  Barton shook his head. ‘I must admit I don’t like the woman but I think she’s an innocent party in all this to be fair. I think her husba
nd is the real villain but so far I’ve got nothing on him except a few question marks on his career’.

  ‘You’ve solved cases that are more intractable than this, Jeff’.

  ‘Yeah, I know but there’s something about this one that’s niggling away at me, June. I don’t know how or why or what but there’s something I’m missing here and it may have to do with a crime that goes way back and was never solved’.

  June then took a call on her mobile and when she’d finished she had some more news for Barton. ‘Jeff, that was the lab. That DNA sample belonging to Vincent Taylor that you asked me to check with the DNA of Maria Taylor? Well it’s not a match’.

  Barton’s hopes were raised. ‘It’s not?’

  ‘No. The man who came back from the East is not Maria’s father’.

  Barton got back to the station and Louisa told him that a search on the property deeds for the house in Mallingham Road, Chorlton that was rumoured to have been a KGB safe house back in the day revealed that in the late fifties it was owned by a woman called Mary Fleming who’d inherited it from her parents a year before after they both died in a car accident. Mary Fleming sold it in 1960 to a Ronald McIntyre who retained ownership until earlier this year when he died and the family are now selling the property and the profits will be split between them as part of the inheritance.

  ‘Have any of them got any record of any political involvement?’ Barton asked.

  ‘Oh yes’ said Louisa. ‘Mary Fleming was a fully paid up member of the Communist party. After she sold the house she moved to Wandsworth in London. MI5 had been keeping an eye on her, like they did with all members of the Communist party but they didn’t consider her to be hot enough to retain surveillance, especially as she resigned from the Communist party shortly before her move to London. It’s not known where she is now’.

  ‘Okay. Great work, Louisa, thank you’ said Barton who was well pleased about the DNA result because it fitted in perfectly with his theory. But it was the more recent murder that needed to be attended to first. ‘Did DS Bradshaw and DC Alexander bring in Wendy Pritchard?’