The Filey Connection

by David W Robinson

  “Cora Harrison,” Joe corrected him and took out his tobacco tin. “Gemma told me this woman claims to have seen it, but I just stood on your car park and she can’t have seen it. Not if the cops are working where Nicola was hit.”

  “I don’t know.” The landlord tunnelled his gaze on Joe’s cigarette. “But I do know you can’t smoke that in here.”

  “I’m saving it for when I get outside,” Joe said and sipped his half of bitter. “Nicola was boozing in here last night?”

  Wilkinson nodded. “She was with that mate of hers, rabid Mavis.”

  “Mavis Barker?”

  “The very woman,” Wilkinson agreed. “They were well oiled when they left, the pair of ’em. Prattling all night about some do they’re going on with that club of yours.”

  “Weekend in Filey,” Joe told him. “This Friday. We come back Monday.”

  The landlord shook his head sadly. “How do you cope with two old ravers like that for a dull weekend?”

  “I don’t,” Joe admitted as he finished his drink. “I leave it up to Sheila and Brenda. I’ll catch you later, Eric.”

  Joe stepped out of the Foundry Inn and looked towards the police officers once more. They had cordoned off only the left hand side of the road, and he guessed that they would have done most of their work during the night or in the early hours.

  Moving to the front of the pub, on the pavement, Joe looked at them again. This time, he could see the whole road, and if this was where Cora Harrison had stood, then she could possibly have seen the collision. But the sidewalk was narrow and, at closing time, busy, so most people didn’t wait there for taxis; they waited on the car park.

  Across the road was a run-down parade of shops and small businesses intermingled with poorly maintained, Edwardian terraced houses. Joe could imagine them in the dark of eleven twenty last night. A few lights on behind closed curtains, but many of the places in darkness. No witnesses.

  He walked along the pavement to the front of the hotel where the police were packing up their equipment.

  “Find anything?” he asked.

  “Just mind your own business…” Constable Vincent Gillespie trailed off as he looked up from stacking up cones for loading into the van. Like most of Sanford’s police officers, he recognised Joe as their sergeant’s uncle. “Oh, sorry, Mr Murray. Didn’t realise it was you.”

  “No problem, Vinny. Gemma was round my place earlier, and told me what happened. Nicola was one of my members.” Joe dug into his pockets, pulled out his brass Zippo lighter and relit his cigarette. Puffing on it, he repeated, “So, did you find anything?”

  Gillespie shook his head. “Scientific Support did most of the work just after sun up. About five this morning. All we’ve found is this.” He held up a seal-easy evidence bag in which was a small piece of 1” diameter black tubing bent into a right angle. “Not sure, but I think it might be a corner piece off the vehicle’s bull bars.”

  Joe visualised the front grid of a Land Rover and the familiar bull bars. “But you don’t know if it’s off the vehicle that hit Nicola?”

  “No, sir. The dreaded SS will tell us that. If this connected with Mrs Leach, there’ll be evidence on it. If you’ll excuse us, Mr Murray. We’d better get going.”

  “Sure. Just one thing, Vinny. Do you know where the Land Rover came from?”

  Gillespie frowned. “Funny thing, that. According to the forensic bods, it came outta there.” He pointed to the hotel car park. He grinned. “Maybe the driver and his woman had been up to what comes natural, eh?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “The feeling is that Mrs Leach would have stepped round that tree.” Vinny pointed at the spreading yew, its branches reaching across and down to the pavement. “I think your Gemma’s been onto the hotel loadsa times to get it cropped. It’s a bloody nuisance.”

  Again Joe could visualise the scene. Nicola staggering along the pavement and batting the branches out of her way while stepping round it. It was a course that would bring her close to the kerb edge and make her an easy target.

  “Right. Well, thanks, Vinny. I’ll see y’around.” Joe turned into the Sanford Park Hotel.

  After the searing heat and light of the outside, the interior came as a welcome relief, but one tainted with some sadness. If the hotel’s exterior gave the impression of a moribund office block dumped out of place in an industrial area, the inside merely added to the gloom. The off-white walls looked dirty, the Formica fascia of the front desk was chipped and scratched and Joe was certain that if he rapped the backs or cushions of the dowdy Dralon-covered seating, a cloud of dust would burst into the air.

  In the hotel’s favour, however, the air felt fresher inside. The interior of the pub had been cool; the hotel was cooler. Air-conditioning, Joe thought as he approached a middle-aged brunette on reception.

  “Good morning, sir. Can I help you?”

  “I’m hoping so. Joe Murray. You had a bit of a schimozzle out here last night. Woman got knocked down and killed.”

  The woman’s chubby features changed in an instant. The welcoming smile was gone, replaced by a scowl of deep distrust. “If you’re a reporter…”

  “Do I look like a reporter?” Joe cut in with a sweeping gesture over his T-shirt and jeans. “I own the Lazy Luncheonette a coupla miles down the road. The woman was a member of the Sanford 3rd Age Club and I run it.”

  “Then you’d better speak to the police.”

  “I did and they’re not asking the right questions.”

  “So what do you expect me to do?”

  A combination of the morning’s frustration, the gloomy hotel interior and the receptionist’s surly attitude got to Joe. “You know the day your bosses covered customer service? Was that your day off?”

  “Now listen –”

  Joe cut her off again more rudely this time. “No, you listen. All I want is some information. Did you have any strangers staying here yesterday?”

  “The people who stay here are always strangers,” she told him. “We don’t get many locals booking in.”

  “And were there many yesterday?”

  “There was no one here yesterday.” The receptionist gestured upwards. “Fifty rooms, fifty vacancies. Are you happy now?”

  “So there would have been no cars on your car park last night?” Joe demanded.

  “There might have been, but I wouldn’t know because I was at home. And if you want to know who the cars belonged to or how much the tarts charge for doing it in the back of a car on our parking area, I still wouldn’t know. And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t bloody care. Now if there’s nothing else, you’ll have to excuse me. Some of us have work to do.”

  Joe looked around the empty lobby. “Where?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he turned and marched back out into the blazing sunshine.

  Keeping a wary eye on the time, and the need to be back at the Lazy Luncheonette to help with the midday rush, he drove into Sanford, parked in the multi-storey behind the shopping mall, and made his way through the backstreets to the police station, a distinguished, redbrick building, constructed during Queen Victoria’s reign, which was now buried in the backwaters, hidden behind the 21st century façade the town preferred to put out.

  Gemma, up to her eyes in paperwork, agreed to see him and took him through the public reception area, into her Inspector’s office, where she listened patiently to what he had to say, then reproved him.

  “I asked you not to interfere, Uncle Joe, and the first thing you’ve done is interfere.”

  “No. I’ve been out to the scene of the crime,” he said, “and learned things that you may not have been aware of.”

  Gemma tutted. “We were aware of them. We know the Harrison woman wasn’t in the Foundry Inn, but she never said she was. We know she wasn’t staying at the Sanford Park Hotel, too, because we asked. We also knew the Land Rover came out of the hotel car park and if what you say is true, Vinny may have a piece of the vehicle wit
h him when he gets back here, but it still doesn’t add up to a deliberate act of murder.”

  “As opposed to an accidental act of murder?” Joe demanded. Seeking inspiration, he looked up at the room’s only window. Small, high up, all he could see were the blackened bricks of some exterior wall less than a foot beyond the glass. So much for inspiration. “Did you know she probably gave you a false name?” he asked.

  “We’re aware of the possibility.” Gemma shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “At this moment in time, we haven’t been able to trace anyone named Cora Harrison in Sanford.”

  “It was false,” Joe declared.

  “She could have come from Leeds or Wakefield.”

  “The name was false and you know it.” Joe pressed home his advantage. “The car came out of the hotel car park. She rang you to report the accident, gave you a false name and address, and yet she was stood in a position where she couldn’t have seen what happened. Even if she was on the pavement in front of the Foundry Inn, which is unlikely, she couldn’t have made out a Land Rover from that distance in the dark. If you want my opinion, this was a deliberate act, and she was in the damned Land Rover when it hit Knickers-off.”

  “That’s going too far.”

  “Is it?” Joe demanded. “I just checked it out. Like you said earlier, Nicola would have skirted the yew tree blocking the pavement. And right at the very moment, a truck sneaking out of the Sanford Park Hotel’s lover’s retreat runs straight into her? Sorry, Gemma, but I don’t believe it.”

  Gemma’s frustration manifested itself with a hand run roughly though her dark hair. “There are other explanations.”

  “Gimme one,” Joe challenged.

  Gemma paused a moment, her eyes flickering around the compact office. “All right. Let’s say this woman is out with a man who’s not her husband. She’s in her lover’s car. A lot of people use the Sanford Park Hotel car park for, er, shenanigans, as you’ve just pointed out. We’re always getting complaints about it. We’ve asked the hotel to cut the trees down so the place is more open, but they say they can’t afford it. And we’re forever asking them to cut down that damned yew. Anyway, she and her lover have just finished… you know. They see what happens and she knows she has to report it. So she gives us a false handle and address, and they scram. She doesn’t wanna hang around to talk to us because her husband may find out what she was up to.”

  “That doesn’t explain how the Land Rover happened to be in just the right place at the right time.”

  “Uncle Joe, it happens. All the time. People are killed on the roads every day, usually due to carelessness. And in every case, it happens because they were in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time, whichever way you want to look at it.”

  Joe thought about it and with a grunt, said, “This Cora Harrison must have used a mobile, then. Have you traced it?”

  “Unregistered.” Gemma held up her hand as Joe opened his mouth to protest. “All right, all right. I know all mobiles are supposed to be registered, but do you know how many SIM cards I can buy from local newsagents? And if you think about it, any couple in an illicit affair would use unregistered phones to keep in touch, wouldn’t they?”

  “So she’s using an unregistered phone, and you still don’t believe she was up to something.” Joe rolled a cigarette.

  “You can’t smoke that in here,” Gemma warned him.

  “I know, I know.”

  His niece huffed out her breath. “I do believe she was up to something, yes, and I just told you what. We have no evidence that the hit and run was deliberate, and unless something turns up, my governor’s not going to listen to me or you. Now do me a favour, Uncle Joe, and let it be. Get your club to pay their last respects to Nicola, and leave the criminal investigation to us.”

  “The phone call? Was it a 999?” Joe asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Recorded?”

  “They all are,” Gemma replied.

  “Then listen to it,” he advised her.

  Gemma sighed. “Why?”

  Joe got to his feet. “Because if she was in the Land Rover, you’ll hear the engine running in the background. Listen to it, Gemma. Better yet, get me a recording of it. I know people who’ll tell you not only what kind of engine it is, but probably who built it.”

  Chapter Three

  Every Wednesday evening, the top room of the Miner’s Arms was given over to the Sanford 3rd Age Club weekly disco.

  The club had been the brainchild of Joe and his friends, Sheila and Brenda.

  Both women were widowed. Brenda had been a bank clerk before her late husband’s failing health forced her to give up work. When Colin died, he left her financially comfortable, and she worked for Joe to give her something to fill the hours rather than any monetary considerations. The same could be said of Sheila. A former school secretary, when her police inspector husband, Peter, succumbed to a heart attack, she was not found wanting, but she needed fresh, more invigorating company than she had with the staff and pupils of Sanford Park Comprehensive. So she took early retirement and came to work for Joe. The two women were the best of friends, which irked Joe only at those times when he wondered whether he should date one or other of them.

  Known in the local community as Joe’s Harem, Joe had known them both from childhood, when they had all attended the same school, and they had worked for him for over five years. Although he would never admit to it anyone, he considered them indispensable. They could run the Lazy Luncheonette just as efficiently as he, they were unflappable, and they were so indefatigably cheerful that they provided the perfect foil to his sullenness.

  Like Joe, Sheila was razor thin and short of stature. An attractive woman in her younger days, the ravages of time and the stress of widowhood had taken their toll. The shower of blonde hair showed streaks of grey, the corners of the eyes were creased, and her figure had lost some of its curves. Not that she was unattractive even now. At the age of 55 she could still turn heads on grab-a-granny nights, but they usually turned slower because most of their owners were in the deeper throes of arthritis.

  Brenda was the antithesis of Sheila. A buxom woman, she had no qualms about showing off her finest asset, but aside from her large bust, she showed no sign of being overweight, despite her predilection for sweets. Where Sheila employed a degree of tact and discretion in her daily life, both words had obviously been left out of Brenda’s lexicon. Her dress sense was not the only thing about her that was loud. In contrast to Sheila, who maintained an air of formal grace and demure discretion, Brenda dealt with widowhood by enjoying herself quite openly with a number of men. Not that she was as loose-legged or easy as Mavis Barker and Nicola Leach, but she was freer with her favours than Sheila.

  Joe, too, was single, but his was a result of a divorce, not death. He and his ex-wife Alison had been married for ten years when she decided she wanted more than life above a workman’s café in Sanford. That was ten years in the past, and the last he had heard of Alison she had left the UK for good and was living in Tenerife. Whatever relationships Joe had enjoyed since, he kept to himself with employing a level of secrecy that would have turned MI6 green with envy. Even his family, nephew Lee and niece Gemma, knew nothing about his private life.

  The 3rd Age Club was born of the realisation that even in a small town like Sanford, with its population of about 40,000, there would probably be many people in the same position as them.

  “There must be hundreds, maybe thousands of middle-aged and elderly people who are single, divorced or widowed, and they have nowhere where they can get together,” Sheila had enthused when she first mooted the idea.

  Although he felt her numbers were hopelessly overstated, Joe had to agree with her. His life at the time consisted of the Lazy Luncheonette and the local pub.

  With him as chairman, Sheila as secretary and Brenda as treasurer, the club launched four years previously and now enjoyed a membership of over 300. They were a motley a
ssortment. Some were widowed, some were divorced, others were still locked in happy or otherwise marriages. Some were still working, others had given it up through retirement, failing health, or simple unemployment. They represented a range of working types; professional, skilled, unskilled, clerical, practical, managerial. But the one thing they had in common was their age: every member was over fifty. Many were at that time of life when every day the grim reaper did not come to call was seen as a bonus, and most had come to the conclusion that if life was a game of two halves, they were well into the second period. All had decided that now was the time to start enjoying themselves, and without exception they would fight tooth and nail to secure whatever pleasure they could.

  When not working at the Lazy Luncheonette or unravelling a mystery, Joe threw himself into the 3rd Age Club with gusto. He was the prime mover, the ideas man, the negotiator, and he was also the club’s DJ. Mick Chadwick, landlord of the Miner’s Arms, provided the room and the sound system, Joe provided the laptop filled with music from the 50s, 60s and 70s, and the karaoke microphones, and ran the show every Wednesday.

  By quarter to eight, the room was beginning to fill. Joe picked out a Herb Alpert track, and left it playing as background music. The early arrivals always crowded the bar, not the dance floor, and while they sorted themselves out he and his two companions sat behind the disco set up on the small stage by the windows.

  “I notice Mavis isn’t here,” Sheila commented as the room began to fill with new arrivals.

  “Were she and Knickers-off close friends?” Joe asked.

  “About the only friend Mavis has, I think,” Sheila replied. “Well, about the only friend who would indulge Mavis’s, er, foibles.”

  “You mean getting drunk and dropping her trolleys?” Brenda said.