Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

  Markham thought back to Steve Sinnott’s revelations. Sir Philip Soames had stuck to Woodcourt through thick and thin otherwise he’d have been out on his ear. They shared an unbreakable bond. A bond forged in blood. But later, according to Alex Sharpe, the conspirators had argued and the bond was torn asunder.

  ‘He kept screaming the same words over and over. “Why did you fall away from the true path? Why did you force me to give you up?”’ The psychiatrist observed Markham closely. ‘I can see by your expression that these words mean something to you, Inspector.’

  ‘They do indeed, Dr McGrath,’ replied Markham gravely.

  Sir Philip Soames was another victim to add to Preston’s tally. Presumably Woodcourt had agreed that he would have to be sacrificed. In all likelihood, the loss of his long-time friend and fellow occultist tipped him into madness.

  ‘At the end, the patient’s mania centred on an angel hauling a millstone attached to a chain.’

  There was a prolonged silence eventually broken by Noakes.

  ‘He should have been dragged to court to face the families,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Edward Preston faces a whole life sentence and Cynthia Gibson will at the very least go down as an accessory. There will be some closure.’ Markham’s tone was mild as if he too felt cheated. He turned to Dr McGrath. ‘We’ll be requesting a clinical assessment of Woodcourt’s killer.’

  ‘I’d like to shake his hand,’ muttered Noakes.

  ‘Then there’s the chain of events which enabled him to breach hospital security,’ continued Markham, ignoring the interruption.

  ‘An investigation is already underway, Inspector. I suspect we’ll find he had help from someone on the inside … a relative of one of the victims…’

  Markham nodded, his thoughts resting compassionately on Jonny Warr’s avenging father.

  Whoever kills a human being, it is as though he has destroyed the world.

  If only the worlds of Dick Woodcourt and the lost boys had never met.

  ‘C’mon, Noakes.’ Markham signalled to the DC. ‘Time to head back to base.’

  Bromgrove Police Station resembled an anthill, with uniforms scurrying in all directions like demented termites. Clearly a full-scale operation was now underway to amalgamate cold cases involving missing children and the St Mary’s murders.

  Markham spotted Barry Lynch, the slab-faced PLO, preening on the sidelines.

  ‘Oh God, that’s all I need,’ he groaned to Noakes. ‘That self-important twerp muscling in for a few soundbites.’

  ‘Bandits at six o’clock,’ was the DS’s muttered rejoinder.

  ‘Markham, Noakes! Excellent work!’

  DCI Sidney bore down on them in full dress uniform, beaming from ear to ear.

  ‘The DCC will be along shortly to congratulate us in person.’

  Markham noted the DCI’s use of the first-person plural. Smashing a paedophile ring while delivering a massive boost to Bromgrove’s clear-up statistics was PR nirvana. Natural enough, he supposed, for his superiors to want a slice of the action. Evidently, Sidney’s previous instructions to jettison Woodcourt as a suspect clashed with his cherished persona of all-wise commander and could therefore be conveniently expunged from the record.

  Markham decided he was more than happy to play second fiddle. All that mattered was justice for the victims of Woodcourt, Preston and Soames.

  Sidney was pontificating as though addressing a police conference. Dimly, Markham registered the usual tropes: ‘…tragedy of mental illness … abuse of digital technology … distortion of personality … social breakdown…’

  So, Sidney was going to spin this decades-old cover-up as some kind of collective psychosexual aberration. Good luck with that!

  Suddenly, Markham realized he didn’t care. The great and the powerful always had their partisans. He and Noakes would do their job regardless, without fear or favour.

  Whoever saves a man, it is as though he has saved the world.

  Lynch was hovering with various underlings.

  ‘If I could just have a line for the journos, sir,’ he said obsequiously to the DCI.

  Sidney clapped Lynch on the shoulder in an unprecedented display of bonhomie. ‘Just tell them we are delighted with developments at this stage, Barry. Absolutely delighted.’ He turned to Markham, all solicitude, and enquired. ‘Do you feel up to fielding questions from the press, Inspector?’

  Markham recognized his cue.

  ‘If it’s all right, I’d far rather leave that to you, sir,’ he murmured. ‘I’m still a bit off balance, to tell the truth… I’d prefer to get off to the hospital … check on Olivia.’

  ‘Naturally, naturally.’ The DCI was positively effusive, his earlier invective against ill-advised liaisons quite forgotten.

  An attractive young woman from the media office sashayed towards them, holding a stack of glossy press releases. Sidney’s eyes gleamed.

  ‘Right, Markham, you and Noakes,’ he inclined graciously in the DS’s direction, ‘can get off now.’ He stroked his pips before adding, in an ebullition of goodwill, ‘The gentlemen of the press must wait a bit longer for their exclusive.’ The entourage tittered dutifully as he swept out of the station foyer, bobbing in his wake like a flotilla.

  ‘Think we got off lightly there, Noakes.’ Markham sagged with relief.

  The DS made a sound that was somewhere between a guffaw and a growl.

  Markham hesitated, but Noakes got there first.

  ‘Of course I’m coming to the hospital with you, Guv. But perhaps we should have a wash and brush-up first.’ He gestured theatrically at their dishevelled appearance. ‘Don’t want your girlfriend keeling over again at the sight of us!’

  The casual words held a world of understanding. No need for anything more. Without a backward look at the excited bustle around them, the two men headed for the locker room.

  Epilogue

  New Year’s Eve. The Sweepstakes.

  Markham sprawled lazily in his favourite overstuffed armchair, savouring the comforting warmth of a log fire crackling in the hearth.

  It doesn’t get much better than this, he thought, watching Olivia who sat cross-legged at his feet perusing a heavily blotted letter.

  ‘What news of your little scallywags?’ he enquired.

  ‘Having a wonderful time by all accounts.’ She grinned. ‘There’s a postscript from Julian – by way of corrective to Nat’s more colourful assertions!’

  Markham gazed at the fire ruminatively. ‘Extraordinary that O’Keefe came up trumps like that.’

  ‘Well, those two desperately needed a happy family atmosphere and that’s what they’ll get on his sister’s farm. Lots of fresh air and fun … and four other rascals to play with over the holidays.’

  ‘O’Keefe was a suspect at one point, you know.’ Markham laughed at the expression on Olivia’s face. ‘Don’t look like that, sweetheart, virtually everyone was.’

  ‘Not Cynthia, though.’ Olivia’s voice was full of pain. Her naturally open and trusting disposition had taken a terrible blow when the full extent of Cynthia Gibson’s involvement finally became clear.

  Markham ached to comfort her. ‘Cynthia was delusional, totally in thrall to Preston. That’s how it started.’

  ‘But she became an abuser, Gil. My old friend an abuser!’ It was a whisper.

  ‘Yes, dearest.’ There was no point sugar-coating it. ‘Female paedophiles are rare, but Cynthia was more than a spectator. As she said in her confession, “Wherever he has gone, I have gone.”’

  ‘D’you think she was planning to draw me into it, Gil? To turn me?’

  Markham put his hands on her shoulders, kneading them in a soothing rhythm.

  ‘“When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” That might have been her plan, yes, but I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure. Maybe, at some subconscious level, she wanted to bring it to an end … needed your strength to help her break free.’

  Olivia gave
him a look of gratitude. ‘She didn’t know about you being a policeman, though. That was a real shock.’

  ‘Certainly the timing of your arrival couldn’t have been worse from Preston’s point of view,’ Markham observed.

  ‘At least she had no part in the killings. That’s some comfort.’

  Gesturing at another letter lying on the hearth rug, Olivia added in more cheerful tones, ‘That was a lovely letter from your old mentor.’

  ‘Yes. I reckon Mike Bamber thought about those boys every day, and the terrible way they had to go. As he says, at least they’re free now and the parents have some sort of closure.’

  ‘What will happen to Jonny Warr’s dad?’ Olivia asked anxiously. ‘When Noakes said he’d done us all a favour, I couldn’t help agreeing.’

  ‘It’ll probably be manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and a probation order. I can’t imagine any judge sending the poor man to prison.’

  Suddenly, Olivia gave a convulsive shudder and seemed to shrink into herself.

  ‘What is it, my love?’ Markham asked gently.

  His girlfriend had turned very pale.

  ‘I still can’t forget how he looked when he grabbed me in the corridor at St Mary’s,’ she said faintly.

  No need to ask who he was.

  ‘One minute all normal and smiling…. The next, it was like a wolf’s face … the mouth all stretched … like he was going to bite me… The hatred…’

  Markham took both Olivia’s hands in his.

  ‘Leave him to rot in his little room. He’ll never breathe free air again.’ Looking deep into his lover’s eyes, he added, ‘The conspirators marched hand in hand to hell, but we must hope for better things.’

  The shadow cleared. ‘“This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe, Is boundless better, boundless worse,”’ Olivia quoted dreamily.

  Markham chuckled. ‘Trust an English teacher to cap my eloquence with Tennyson!’

  Nestling closer to him, Olivia looked up at the chiselled profile of this most unlikely policeman as he gazed thoughtfully into the flames.

  ‘I’ve felt Georgina Hamilton quite close to me in the last few days,’ he said eventually. ‘Her friend Joan – you remember, the cook from St Mary’s – said the same after the funeral. Like a cloud had lifted from her shoulders and she knew Georgina was at peace.’

  ‘Was Georgina murdered, then, Gil?’ Olivia asked softly.

  ‘Oh yes, not a doubt of it now. She had cancer, but I never believed the theory that she’d decided to end it all. Turns out Alex Sharpe had poured out his soul in a diary which must somehow have come into Woodcourt’s possession, because Nat came across him burning documents one night. I think Georgina stumbled across something incriminating – a scrap of paper with names – and was planning to get in touch with me when she was silenced by Woodcourt after he had followed her home… It struck me at the time that the way the body was positioned suggested some lingering regard for the victim.’

  A tremor rippled across Markham’s face, but his voice was steady. ‘What exactly happened will likely never be known. Georgina was such a decent woman – that British sense of fair play. I think she let Woodcourt into the apartment hoping he could explain everything. By the time she realized the danger, it was too late.’

  ‘What about the Diazepam? Weren’t there tablets next to her when you found her?’

  Markham’s face was sombre. ‘All part of Woodcourt’s ‘killing kit’ according to Alex Sharpe. He always had a supply on him. Chloral hydrate too.’

  ‘How horrible! Masquerading as a holy man when all the time…’

  There was a long silence. Markham recalled the great copper basin he and Noakes had found in the undercroft when Woodcourt was finally trapped, presumably designed to catch Julian’s blood as his throat was cut. He knew this was one detail he would never share with Olivia.

  ‘Well, we must leave him to a greater power!’ exclaimed Markham at last. ‘The avenging angel came for him in the end. Perhaps now Irene Hummles and all the other poor innocents can rest in peace.’

  ‘That cry we heard in the grottoes, Gil…’ Olivia said tentatively, ‘the child’s scream…We all heard it.’ Her face was pensive. ‘D’you think it was a ghost … one of the murdered children?’

  Markham chose his words carefully. ‘It certainly felt like someone was there with us,’ he answered. ‘I think it must have been a benign presence trying to shine a light in the darkness. It stopped a killer in his tracks, so you could say love had the last word. If the souls of those poor waifs were wandering abroad, somehow they’ve come home now.’

  Olivia shivered. ‘All the time I was at St Mary’s, it felt as though I was being watched and followed. As though the grounds were haunted.’

  Markham forbore to comment that the shadowy presences Olivia had sensed flitting about were not necessarily spectral. The work of dismantling the paedophile network had just begun, but the conspirators no doubt had eyes and ears everywhere. It was a sobering thought.

  Olivia’s voice caught on a sob. ‘I can’t erase that image of Woodcourt digging in the little school cemetery. Reburying the victims. As if those poor children were being killed again. As if they would never stop being killed. In my mind, I’m there, shouting at him to stop, to let them go.’

  ‘We’ll lay flowers, my love,’ said Markham’s quiet voice, ‘and say goodbye properly.’

  Olivia’s face brightened at the thought of a memorial, her thoughts diverted from darker channels.

  ‘Poetic justice that Sir Philip Soames met his end at Preston’s hands, wasn’t it?’ she said musingly.

  ‘It was indeed,’ replied Markham with grim satisfaction.

  ‘What about Alex Sharpe?’

  Markham sighed. ‘He’ll be tried as an accessory, the snivelling wretch. The wife’s a basket case. She almost certainly suspected what had happened to Irene Hummles, but anaesthetized herself with drink and prescription medication.’

  There was another silence. How damnably clever Preston had been, planting the idea that his deputy had seen the matron leave St Mary’s on the day she had vanished. Taking that witness statement at face value had cost lives. Privately, Markham cursed the incompetence and vital missed opportunities. At least lessons had been learned, so Operation Acacia stood some chance of excising the evil which had hidden deeply in the recesses of the school organism like a rogue synapse of cells that cried out to be cauterized.

  ‘Enough of this!’ Olivia jumped to her feet and disappeared into Markham’s galley kitchen, returning with a bottle and two glasses. ‘We’re going to banish all the horrors for tonight and look to the future,’ she said lovingly.

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’

  The little fire sputtered and crackled in the hearth. Clinking glasses, the lovers looked into the flames and traced their castles in the air.

  The shadows of the past receded and the pilot light of their love burned strong and steady. Whatever the next day brought, they would face it together.

  THE END

  Book 2:

  CRIME IN THE

  SCHOOL

  A fiercely addictive crime thriller

  Catherine Moloney

  Dedication

  To the Three Musketeers,

  T, J and P

  Prologue

  SCHOOLS COULD BE SPOOKY places at the fag end of the day, reflected Jim Snell grumpily as he trundled his caretaker’s trolley along the linoleum-covered ground floor corridor of Hope Academy, its squeaking wheels sounding unnaturally loud in the silence.

  On the other hand, it was a blessed relief to have the place to himself for a bit after hours of ‘yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.’ Those la-di-da teachers with their endless demands simply had no idea, he thought wrathfully. If they had to clean up after the little scrotes, it would be a different story, he muttered, skewering a recalcitrant crisp packet with unnecessary venom.

  Suddenly he froze mid-lun
ge, distracted by a hollow clang from somewhere deep within the building.

  Though not inclined to flights of imagination, Snell nonetheless experienced a thrill of apprehension.

  Seven p.m. on a Friday night. You never saw any of the teaching staff for dust come the start of the weekend, he mused sourly. And all the Facilities Management team should be long gone. The corridor’s eau de nil walls, illumined by the security lights outside, had an almost aqueous phosphorescence. Save for the steady thrum of a generator, everywhere was hushed and still.

  The caretaker felt an irrational urge to flick the switches and flood all the dark corners with light. Normally he disliked the cacophony of posters which adorned Hope’s corridors, clamouring for attention with their headache-inducing primary colours, but in that instant he craved their familiar over-bright assault on his senses.

  Could there be a prowler on site, he wondered. Or one of the Year 11 lads messing about for a dare? No, not possible. He would have noticed something amiss on his rounds, but there’d been nothing out of place. Uneasily, he recalled stray gossip about the school ‘ghost’. The HR manager had put the mockers on that sharpish, but the memory lingered. Was it possible the place was haunted? Was there some … thing stalking the building?

  The moment passed.

  Snell told himself to get a grip. This wasn’t Friday the thirteenth! Just a leaky, creaky wreck of a sixties building. Likely a mannequin had toppled over in one of the textiles classrooms. Not for the first time neither! Or it could be that wonky grille in the staff elevator – well past its sell-by-date, that was … Any road, he’d had more than enough for one night. A bottle of whisky awaited him in the caretaker’s office, safely hidden away under lock and key in the bottom drawer of his rickety filing cabinet. Time for some well-earned refreshment.