Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

  Lauren was clearly the designated spokesperson.

  ‘Well, he was dead cool,’ she volunteered. ‘Not like a teacher.’ Which of course, he wasn’t.

  Markham nodded encouragingly.

  ‘And he was dead popular too. Always called us ‘ladies’ without being sarky.’

  Markham did his best not to display puzzlement at the non-sequitur. He had a feeling that logic was not Lauren’s strong suit, but found himself warming to the big untidy girl.

  ‘Didn’t half wind our boyfriends up.’ No doubt that was the point of the exercise. ‘He could be scary if you got on the wrong side of him, though. There was those lads—’

  ‘What about them, Lauren?’

  ‘Well, they got into a fight with Mr Dean innit.’

  ‘What was the fight about?’

  ‘Nobody knew ’zactly. But Mr Dean shouted at them to get out of his office.’

  ‘Mr Dean looked dead upset.’ Nicki’s voice was the merest whisper. Her pug-like face was distressed. With an almost imperceptible nod, Markham signalled to Noakes to take over the questioning. The DS’s coarse tones could become very low and gentle at the right moment.

  ‘D’you have any idea why he was so upset, Nicki?’ asked Noakes in a fatherly voice.

  The girl’s good-natured features turned an unbecoming mauve, leading Markham to suppose that she’d had a king-sized crush on Ashley Dean.

  ‘I heard one of them shouting that he was just a cocky little shit who used to clean the bogs and everyone knew he was Mr Palmer’s bumboy.’ Classy.

  Jake was shuffling his feet. Casually, Noakes drew him into the exchange.

  ‘What’s your take on it, Jake? Think we need a bloke’s view now.’

  No-one can do this quite like Noakesy, thought Markham. Doesn’t say much but somehow makes kids feel safe. That’s the first time Jake’s made eye contact with any of us.

  ‘Yeah, s’right, they was being dead abusive to sir just like Nick said.’ Jake’s voice gained in confidence. ‘And Declan Thompson flipped him the finger on the way out. Everyone saw. They was excluded after that.’

  ‘What did you think of Mr Dean?’ asked Noakes.

  ‘An OK guy, leastways to me.’

  ‘But not to everyone?’

  The boy hesitated and licked dry lips.

  ‘It’s all right, lad, anything you say in here is just between us,’ reassured Noakes.

  ‘Declan said Mr Dean was bullying his mate Pete Clarke. Said Pete was a ponce and stuff. That’s why Dec had a go …’

  Jake fell silent, clearly fearing he had said too much. Once more, his gaze was riveted to the floor.

  Markham figured they’d got as much as they were going to get.

  ‘You’ve been a great help. You can get back off to class now.’

  Lauren and Nicki wobbled out on their distinctly nonregulation winkle pickers with Jake bringing up the rear.

  ‘Poor little tykes,’ said Noakes as the door shut behind the ill-assorted trio. ‘Sounds like Ashley Dean was messing with kids’ heads.’

  ‘Maybe the homophobic bullying was an expression of self-disgust, sir,’ said Burton earnestly. ‘Maybe Ashley was deeply closeted.’

  ‘Eh?’ Noakes looked mystified, while Doyle’s hand was arrested in mid-air with a biscuit halfway to his mouth.

  ‘Go on,’ Markham said.

  ‘It might be that there was some unresolved sexual tension between Ashley and JP which Ashley was exploiting.’ Burton was pink with pleasure at having the DI’s full attention. ‘Or he could’ve been involved in a full-on affair with JP.’

  ‘Where does the self-hatred come in?’ Markham’s deep, sonorous voice was interested.

  ‘Well, it’s possible Ashley was a straight acting homosexual or bisexual who was ashamed of his gay side. On the other hand, he might not have been homosexual at all – just stringing JP along to further his career. Either way, there might have been an identity crisis and a lot of self-loathing, which would explain his taunting that kid.’

  ‘Or maybe he was just a nasty piece of work who got his jollies winding folk up,’ harrumphed Noakes.

  Markham weighed the possibilities. ‘Ashley certainly played the role of Hope’s resident lothario, according to Tracey Roach. But maybe that’s all it was – an act – and we should be looking for some sort of infernal triangle.’ Noakes’s mouth being now so far agape that he resembled a stunned behemoth, Markham clarified, ‘A third wheel, Sergeant. Someone who was bitterly jealous of the relationship between Ashley and JP.’

  Noakes appeared far from convinced, while Doyle simply looked as though this was a long way too deep for him.

  The day wore on wearily as they ploughed through the statements of some seventy or so staff with no further interruptions from students. Helen Kavanagh had probably thrown a cordon sanitaire around their office, Markham reflected, with a view to controlling the flow of information. Well, he’d break through her defences eventually.

  Rubbing his eyes, he glanced at the ugly chrome wall clock. Five fifty-five. The students must be long gone, their stampede for the exit inaudible from this part of the building. He walked to the window. Twilight was falling. The landscape looked chill and colourless, with dun vapour slowly invading the school grounds and making the familiar strange.

  Night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

  God, he needed to get a grip. Time to roust the senior leadership from wherever they were lurking.

  At that moment, there was a soft knock at the door and Tracey Roach slid into the room. Markham wondered how long she had been out there.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Officers.’ The little girl whisper set the DI’s teeth on edge but his keen eyes detected unmistakable anxiety beneath the woman’s ingratiating demeanour.

  ‘What is it, Mrs Roach?’ He beat back his impatience and strove to sound reassuring.

  ‘It’s Audrey Burke, Inspector, I can’t seem to find her.’

  Markham waved the woman to a chair. ‘What do you mean, you can’t find her?’

  The HR manager anxiously twisted the sleeves of her cardigan. ‘I wasn’t really listening properly. I think she said she needed to do something … only she didn’t come back.’

  Despite the fustiness of the office, Markham suddenly felt icy cold. He recalled the desperate look of entreaty in the face of that pathetic rabbity little woman lurking outside the door of the Learning Resource Centre the previous day. In his mind’s eye, he saw her watchful posture, the shifty sidelong glances, the shrinking away from someone just outside his line of vision. Someone who must have been right there in the LRC.

  I may have signed that woman’s death warrant, the DI thought as the clutch of unease tightened its grip. Even though Noakes got nothing out of her initially, I knew something wasn’t right. I should’ve warned her she could be putting herself in mortal danger by keeping secrets. Please God let this be a false alarm.

  But something told him it wasn’t. From the serious looks on the faces of his team, they knew it too.

  He forced himself to address Tracey Roach calmly, his lean frame taut as though every molecule in his body had passed through an electric current.

  ‘Think carefully, Mrs Roach, this could be very important. What were her exact words? Did she say she needed to do something or see someone?’

  Flustered, the woman’s eyes darted from Markham to the others and back again.

  ‘I honestly can’t say for sure. She was a bit quiet this afternoon, but I didn’t think anything of it. Just assumed she was coming down with a cold or something.’

  Markham had heard enough. He felt a tingling at his finger ends.

  ‘Right, Noakes, you and Doyle go with Mrs Roach and start checking the building. Jim Snell should be around somewhere, so collect pass keys and whatever else you need from him. Kate, you’re with me.’

  Tracey Roach looked up at him imploringly. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, I should have realized Audrey was upset and paid more at
tention.’ She spoke without a trace of archness, and Markham liked her all the better for it.

  ‘You’re not to blame, Tracey.’ The woman blinked at his use of her first name and the gentleness of his voice. ‘We all took our eye off the ball. Now, let’s get that search started. For all we know, it’s nothing sinister and your colleague maybe just needed some time to herself.’

  Forty minutes later, Markham and Burton stood in the front courtyard looking up at Hope’s bunker-like façade.

  There’s something deadly about this place, thought Markham. Beneath the chirpy posters and jolly slogans, it’s squatting there like a toad. Something evil and misshapen. Something festering in dark corners away from the light. Next to him, Burton shivered as though she felt it too.

  The DI’s eyes raked the building. And paused.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to a section of pavement towards the side of the forecourt studded with glass portholes.

  Burton frowned then her expression cleared. ‘Oh, those are the new music studios. You remember that funny little flight of stairs by the side of the drama theatre, well, that takes you down to the soundproofed practice rooms. The corridor’s very narrow and the rooms are just carrels really, so those skylight thingies were the only way to get natural light down there.’

  Soundproofed.

  ‘Let’s look,’ rapped Markham, moving swiftly back towards the school.

  Burton panted as she tried to keep up with the DI’s long strides. ‘It’s all secure, sir. There was nobody timetabled to use any of those rooms this afternoon, so Jim Snell locked up around lunchtime.’

  ‘There are any number of duplicate keys in this place, Kate. I saw them all hanging on that rack in Snell’s office. He’s a lazy bugger, careless too I reckon, so it’d be easy for someone to help themselves. The same someone who was prowling around the night that Ashley Dean’s body was discovered.’ A note of desperation crept into his voice. ‘I hope to God we’re not too late.’

  Back at the drama theatre, the two detectives stood by the unobtrusive stairwell which led down to the practice rooms. Burton fumbled with her labelled keys under Markham’s impatient scrutiny.

  ‘Design and Technology, Expressive Arts, Resistant Materials, Humanities … Ah, here we are. Music Practice Rooms.’

  ‘Right, we’ll be needing your torch, Kate. It looks pretty gloomy down there.’

  Burton had her torch out before he had finished speaking and directed a powerful beam down the stairs. Moving almost as one, they descended to the basement where a narrow corridor was lined on one side by four doors with a fifth facing them at the far end. There was no sound save for the rhythmical chug of a generator and the soft hum of one light above the door at the end.

  And yet Markham suddenly knew a predator had been there before them. He could feel the menace in that submarine-like space with its little cubicles. He badly wanted to be away from it but, in a hoarse voice barely recognizable as his own, gave the instruction, ‘Let’s check each of these rooms.’

  His apprehension had infected Burton who dropped the keys. Time itself seemed to have slowed down, to have contracted to the beating of their hearts in the stuffy airless passage.

  Afterwards, Markham retained a vague impression of music stands, instrument cases, stacks of sheet music, and illicit sweet wrappers in the windowless cubby-holes.

  All as it should be.

  Then they were at the final room. The one at the far end.

  ‘That’s the last of them, sir,’ exhaled Burton with clear relief as they looked around the bare little studio. ‘All clear.’

  ‘No.’

  Burton looked at the DI in alarm. The skin seemed stretched over the high cheekbones, and his eyes had a peculiar intensity. Following his gaze, she saw that he was looking at a battered upright Hummel piano with its back next to the wall.

  The DC gave a nervous titter. ‘Looks like the budget ran out when they got to this one.’

  Markham wasn’t listening. As though in a trance, he moved across to the Hummel and set his shoulder to the instrument, straining to move it away from the wall. After a second’s hesitation, Burton joined him. Flushed and breathing hard, they manoeuvred it into the centre of the tiny room.

  Something attracted Burton’s attention.

  The back of the piano had warped and buckled so that it bulged outwards.

  The DC’s eyes met Markham’s, and a long wordless message passed between them.

  With shaking hands, she produced a pen knife from her pocket and inserted the hasp between two of the discoloured sagging panels.

  The slight body exploded from the back of the Hummel with a violent crash, the impact of which sounded almost blasphemous in the hieratic stillness of the studio.

  Burton’s hands went to her mouth as she contemplated the sagging jack-in-the-box that had once been a woman.

  Denuded of spectacles, Audrey Burke’s milky sightless eyes were rolled back in their sockets. Her lips were drawn back in a rictus of pain and terror. That she had been almost decapitated was evident from a gaping purplish neck wound. Twisted limbs hung at impossible angles, no doubt dislocated as the murderer crammed her pitiful corpse into its makeshift coffin.

  Beside him, Burton turned away in horror, but Markham stood motionless.

  Nothing could touch Audrey Burke further. All that he could do was call her killer to account. Drinking in every detail of the scene, he noticed an infinitesimally minute shred of paper between the thumb and index finger of the dead woman’s right hand. Banknote? A letter? Had she come here with blackmail in mind only to realize too late that she was staring death in the face?

  At that moment footsteps pounded above their heads. Noakes and Doyle. Markham squared his shoulders. Two bodies in a little over forty-eight hours. So it begins again, he thought to himself with an ache of despair.

  Cloaked by night, the hunter in the shadows watched and waited.

  7. Family Snaps

  AFTER HOURS OF INTENSE police activity, an uneasy peace finally descended on Hope.

  The DI, however, remained on site. He had held it together in front of the team, but now paced up and down his cramped office as though he could somehow out-run the freeze-frames of Audrey Burke’s violated corpse which played on an infernal loop in his mind.

  Again and again, he saw the crumpled marionette jack-knifing out of its piano frame prison, head lolling grotesquely and scrawny pipe cleaner limbs cruelly wrenched out of position. He dry-heaved as he recalled the slashed throat and hideous fixed grimace. Like some dreadful parody of The Joker from those Batman films so beloved by Noakes.

  The autopsy would be first thing in the morning. He thought back to the insignificant little woman fingering her drab dirndl skirt, and pictured the flesh hanging from her bones like cold flanks of meat dangling from hooks at the butcher’s.

  Shuddering, Markham dropped into a chair.

  How in God’s name would he break it to Olivia? He felt guilty that he had not phoned her, merely texting to say that there had been a development. Audrey’s death would wring her heart. Better that she should take her rest.

  He shut his eyes, but the gruesome images seared his eyeballs. Morbidly he wondered how the undertakers would make those pitiful remains acceptable for viewing by the family. Would they sew the head back on as they did for victims of the guillotine in days gone by? Could their formaldehyde and fillers convert that awful death-snarl into a smile? He felt unutterably sad as he thought of Audrey Burke’s final makeover.

  Markham started up from the chair and went towards the window, momentarily forgetting where he was, his hands clenching and unclenching as he stared unseeing into the darkness.

  There was no escaping the fact that he had been a negligent fool. He had failed Audrey. Hadn’t looked beyond the mousy exterior to the vulnerable woman beyond. Hadn’t followed up his intuition that she was badly scared of someone at Hope. Hadn’t tried to win her confidence or warn her that she could be at risk
. He had ignored what was staring him in the face. As he imagined the PA’s terror when her executioner dropped his mask and she realized that this was the end, he wondered if he would ever be able to forgive himself.

  ‘Guv.’

  Markham was jerked from his gloomy reflections by Noakes. He glanced at the wall clock and saw that it was 2 a.m.

  ‘What’re you doing here, Noakes? Your shift doesn’t start for several hours.’

  Noakes scratched his head awkwardly. ‘Figured you could do with some company, boss. I’ll get a brew on.’

  The DS’s gruff solicitude touched Markham. For the first time in several hours he felt a sense of purpose.

  ‘Sleep well, Audrey,’ he whispered as Noakes hovered at the fridge. ‘We’ll get the bastard, never fear.’

  ‘What’s that, boss?’ Noakes eyed the DI warily as though he suspected him of climbing the walls.

  ‘Nothing Noakesy. Just talking to myself.’

  Noakes padded across the room with a steaming cup, his resemblance to a St Bernard dog more pronounced than ever. After the horrors of the night, his stolidity and dumb sympathy put new heart into Markham.

  ‘There you go, Guv. No toast till the canteen opens.’ At these blessedly normal words and the comforting warmth of the tea, Markham slowly felt the icy hand of death release its clutch.

  The two men sat companionably. Eventually Noakes broke the silence.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t get Audrey to open up, Guv. I gave it my best shot but reckon the poor cow must’ve made her own plans.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Markham regarded the DS steadily. ‘She was obviously petrified of someone and I should’ve kept a closer eye on her, gone in harder, begged her not to go it alone …’

  Markham’s voice trailed off miserably.

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Guv. She was nuts about Palmer, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, Olivia said she’d been making puppy-dog eyes at him for years. Thought the sun rose and set on him.’

  ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers.’ Noakes broke into a grin, then coughed apologetically and went on with his theory. ‘If she was trying to protect Palmer, then maybe she thought she could strike a deal. Olivia said Ashley was nasty about Audrey. Called her gormless or some such?’ Markham nodded confirmation. ‘Well, that could’ve made her sympathize with the killer – prepared to keep shtum provided the head was safe.’