Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

  ‘I want you to head back to the community centre and get statements from everyone we talked to yesterday — plus Shelly the receptionist and anyone else who was there on Monday.’ Markham ran a hand through his elegantly tousled black hair, amused to note that, even in the midst of a squalid crime scene, Kate had visibly brightened at the prospect of getting stuck in to her beloved time and motion graphs. ‘We’re also going to need everyone to account for their movements today. Even without Dimples’ report, we can assume Mr Elford died within a fairly narrow time frame this morning. Rigor hadn’t set in, and it looks like the killer had to abort some part of their plan because of that call from the council.’

  ‘Better check what Elford got up to last night as well,’ Noakes grunted.

  ‘Thank you, yes. See if you can pin down his movements. Who saw him, when and where? What time did he clock off yesterday? Who did he speak to last? Did anyone notice anything unusual about his behaviour?’

  Burton had whipped out a notebook and was scribbling frantically. ‘That the lot, sir?’

  ‘Well, I need to brief you on our visit to Hope this morning.’

  ‘Anything useful from the drama teacher, sir?’

  ‘You betcha.’ Noakes waggled his eyebrows like Leslie Phillips. ‘He was having it off with Shawcross for one thing,’ he said with obvious relish.

  ‘What!’

  ‘We’ll give you the gory details later, Kate. Suffice to say, the scenario’s not exactly clear cut . . . so no likelihood that we’ll be arresting Leo Cartwright any time soon.’

  She gulped. ‘Right.’

  Noakes mopped his tomato-red face with a spotted handkerchief so large that it could have doubled as a bandana.

  ‘What about the neighbours here, guv?’

  ‘I’m going across to see the caretaker now. You’re on that with me, Noakes. Afterwards, we’ll get Doyle started on house to house. You never know, the killer might have done a recce . . . been watching the flats . . . Worth a try anyhow.’

  ‘And Elford’s family, sir?’

  Markham was very still. Then, ‘Once we’ve spoken to Mr Jones, Noakes and I will pay a visit.’

  There was no resentment in Burton’s open, earnest face. She never questioned his decisions as to the allocation of manpower, a quality which had earned Markham’s respect. He smiled warmly at her. ‘I’ll be briefing the DCI later today, which means a press conference for you to arrange, Kate. A chance to pour oil on troubled waters with our friend Gavin Conors.’

  ‘I’ll get on to Barry Lynch in the press office, sir.’

  Noakes shuddered theatrically. ‘Surprised the MeToo lot haven’t caught up with ole Bazza. Frigging octopus if you ask the typists.’

  ‘Thank you for that, Sergeant. I’m sure Kate is more than a match for any Harvey Weinsteins amongst us.’

  Noakes grinned, unabashed by the rebuke.

  ‘Right, let’s leave the scene of crime boys to it.’

  * * *

  Outside the flat, the heat seemed to rise up in a shimmering wall.

  Noakes wiped his heavily perspiring face. ‘Mebbe Mr J’s got summat cold in his fridge,’ he ventured hopefully.

  Kate strode purposefully towards her Mini Metro as her colleagues walked slowly over to the caretaker’s little bungalow.

  And behind them, in the airless, sterile little flat where Peter Elford had met his end, white-clad figures moved to and fro like pensive ghosts.

  5. The Paths of Glory

  ‘Well that was a downer an’ no mistake, guv.’

  Markham nodded wearily, then shrugged off his jacket and loosened his tie in an unusual break with his customary formality, though Noakes noted beadily that no soup-plate-sized sweat stains marred the DI’s crisp striped shirt. He remembered having a guilty peep at one of Muriel’s shlock horror books from the library (always discreetly hidden beneath the latest Booker Prize winners in case she chanced to encounter anyone from the Women’s Guild). It was all about the Yorkshire Ripper, and a detail that stuck in Noakes’s mind was the fact that one of his mates had said the Ripper didn’t sweat. Even in the height of summer when they were working as gravediggers, Peter Sutcliffe never took off his leather jacket and never seemed to sweat. The writer quoted some trick cyclist who said this was typical of a serial killer. And the guvnor was just the same. So how come, then?

  The DI interrupted this bizarre reverie. ‘You did well, Noakesy. Those hysterics came out of nowhere . . .’

  Noakes gulped. It was true. Peter Elford’s wife, a brittle hatchet-faced blonde, had appeared to take the news of her ex-husband’s demise (‘suspicious death’) calmly, but then abruptly lost control, screaming and raving like a madwoman. Almost as though she was furious that Elford had escaped having to face the consequences of his deficiencies as a husband and father. Suddenly, the blonde hair had been in her eyes, her thin lips drawn back in a snarl, and her face streaked with saliva and tears.

  Apparently not disconcerted in the least by the woman’s transformation from placid Barbie doll to shrieking maenad, Noakes took her in his arms and held her in a bear hug. ‘It’s okay, lass. We know you loved him . . . you jus’ got in a muddle.’ Talking her down from the ledge. ‘Now you’ve gotta be strong for the kids.’

  Elford’s boy and girl had arrived not long after, brought home from school by a family liaison officer.

  ‘They were nice youngsters,’ the DS said sadly. ‘Their dad . . . well . . .’ he pulled an expressive face, ‘he might’ve been an arsehole . . . but he did a good job with those two.’

  ‘The divorce was ugly alright. But as a family they never had a chance to mend fences.’ Markham’s face hardened. ‘The killer took that away from them.’

  His subordinate knew that look. Knew too that it boded ill for someone.

  The DI’s office felt stale. Noakes lurched across to the grimy window and tugged irritably, eventually managing to crack it open a few meagre inches. Then he flopped back in his chair.

  ‘So, what was Elford’s game then, guv? Blackmail?’ The DS’s jowly face creased with perplexity. ‘D’you think he knew who the murderer was yesterday morning when he showed us round the centre?’

  Markham thought back to the administrator’s demeanour. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I think whatever he found out, he pieced it together later that day.’

  ‘Stupid bastard must’ve thought he could handle it,’ opined the DS. Having screwed his jacket into a ball on entering the office, he now sat in his shirtsleeves looking for all the world like a superannuated bookie rather than one of CID’s finest. He scratched his bristly chin ruminatively. ‘Thelma an’ Shirley didn’t like Shawcross . . .’

  ‘Sour grapes, Sergeant.’

  ‘Mebbe.’ Noakes shook his massive head. ‘God knows, women are hard to make out.’

  Not Muriel Noakes, Markham thought wryly. There was no doubting where the balance of power lay in that household.

  ‘Leo Cartwright knew summat too,’ Noakes persisted. ‘He was dead shifty back there at the school . . . like he knew something . . . something ’bout “Bex”,’ the DS air-quoted sarcastically, ‘but couldn’t decide whether to tell us . . .’

  ‘Perhaps what’s happened to Mr Elford will help concentrate his mind,’ Markham replied heavily. ‘Secrets can kill.’ It sounded like a warning you’d read on a cigarette packet. The image of a skull and crossbones flashed across the DI’s mind. He was starting to feel light-headed in the stuffy office, a dull headache beginning behind his eyes.

  ‘Mebbe Elford tried it on wi’ Shawcross an’ she gave him the old heave-ho.’ Noakes spoke with lugubrious relish. ‘Can’t see him reacting well to that.’

  ‘Or perhaps there was some other kind of history between them.’ Markham’s long slender fingers beat an impatient tattoo on the desk. ‘A patient complaint . . . something that got him into hot water.’ He sighed. ‘We need Kate to check it out discreetly.’

  ‘Either way, if he was blackmailing the murderer, he d
ecided not to dob them in.’ The DS blew out his cheeks. ‘Must’ve had a reason. Mebbe he hated Shawcross . . .’ inspiration struck him, ‘or had a thing for whoever topped her. Hey, guv — that could mean a woman . . . someone Elford had the hots for . . . someone—’

  ‘Hold it there, Sergeant.’ Markham raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘It could equally well have been a man.’

  That brought a halt to Noakes’s gallop, his discomfiture almost comical.

  ‘But Elford wasn’t a poof.’ He brought himself up hastily. ‘Sorry, boss . . . he wasn’t into blokes, was he?’

  The DI’s headache was getting worse. ‘There’s possibly quite a lot we don’t know about Mr Elford, Sergeant. His sexual tastes for one thing.’

  ‘Eh?’ The DS had the air of a beached guppy fish.

  ‘Mr Elford might have been into S&M, rough sex . . . or any number of “alternative” scenarios . . . none of them exclusively heterosexual.’ Gingerly, Markham massaged his temples as though by this means he could banish his migraine. ‘The killer could have shared these proclivities. Possibly that’s how they lulled Elford into a sense of false security . . .’ Noakes was now looking distinctly queasy, rummaging for his bandana hankie and mopping his face vigorously. ‘Or it’s possible there’s some other connection — not necessarily romantic.’

  There was a pause while the DS recovered his sangfroid.

  ‘But whoever it was wanted to make us think Elford was into secret perving an’ went too far by accident . . .’

  ‘Indeed.’ Markham’s face was grave. ‘Only they didn’t know about that council appointment and panicked.’

  ‘What d’you reckon to the twine tied round his neck, guv? Same signature as Shawcross. P’raps they were trying to finger him as the killer. Y’know, like suggesting he kept the twine like a trophy or summat.’

  ‘That’s the part that disturbs me most, Noakes.’ The DI was extremely pale, his resemblance to a chiselled effigy more than usually pronounced. ‘There was something spiteful . . . twisted about it.’

  ‘Well, it’s the warped sickos wot keep us in business, guv,’ the other said, mugging cheerfully.

  ‘Hmmm.’

  At that moment, there was a soft tap and a woodentop put her head round the door. ‘Sir, sorry to disturb,’ the diminutive brunette murmured as Noakes leered affably.

  ‘What is it, Constable?’

  ‘DCI Sidney wonders if you could spare ten minutes to brief him on the community centre investigation, sir.’

  The DI was willing to bet Slimy Sid hadn’t put it so politely. And by sending a personal emissary, he’d ensured there’d be no escape for Markham.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be up directly, Constable,’ he dismissed her with a charming smile which belied the throbbing at his temples.

  ‘God, that’s all we need, boss.’ Noakes was out of his seat and sidling towards the door. ‘Sidney on the freaking rampage.’

  ‘You’re coming too, Sergeant.’ The DI’s tone brooked no argument. ‘Safety in numbers.’

  * * *

  Miss Peabody, the DCI’s PA and barometer of his moods, was waiting patiently in the outer office.

  ‘’Lo, luv. ’Ow’s his nibs?’

  The PA pushed a strand of greying marcelled hair back from her forehead and made the flustered beaver-like noises with which she customarily greeted Noakes’s sallies. Markham suspected that, for all her yoked subservience to the great panjandrum of Bromgrove Police Station, she rather enjoyed his sergeant’s subversive attitude.

  There was no time to read the runes. Ushering the two men into the holy of holies, the PA beat a hasty retreat.

  At least Sidney’s office felt deliciously chill, the louvre blinds slanted and a top-of-the-range cooling fan bringing Markham’s temperature back to normal.

  The DCI eyed them with his irritable rattlesnake glare and waved them to two chairs in front of his desk.

  Christ, thought Noakes, he’s one ugly bastard. Bonce like a boiled egg and that frigging goatee to hide the eczema. Prob’ly fancies himself as Bromgrove’s answer to Jason Statham. Idly, his eyes wandered over the Hall of Fame, as the DCI’s collage of himself rubbing shoulders with the great and good was irreverently known. Oh yeah, there were a couple of new ones . . . Sidney bowing and scraping before Princess Anne like some latter-day Uriah Heep . . .

  A discreet warning cough from the DI recalled Noakes to himself.

  ‘Two murders in less than forty-eight hours, Inspector.’

  He made it sound as though Markham was personally responsible.

  ‘At the heart of our community.’

  Here it came.

  ‘Where citizens have a right to feel safe.’

  It was a case of waiting for the DCI to exhaust his stock of platitudes.

  Noakes wriggled on his seat. Urgent semaphore for ‘get to the frigging point’.

  And, finally, Sidney did.

  ‘This is top priority, Markham. There’s to be no repeat of what happened last year.’ Translated from Sidney-speak, this meant nothing that could remotely embarrass the DCI’s Five Pillars: the Council, the Local Education Authority, Bromgrove NHS Trust, the Newman Special Hospital Authority, and, last but not least, Bromgrove CID. The guiding principle being that nothing should be permitted to imperil Sidney’s chances of an OBE and eventual retirement to the sunlit uplands, garlanded with honours.

  He shot Markham a gimlet glance. ‘Are the two deaths connected?’

  ‘We think so, sir.’

  Sidney looked as though he were battling incipient neuralgia. ‘Linked to the community centre?’

  ‘I believe that’s where the answer lies, sir.’

  ‘Not proceeding on the basis of one of your famous hunches, I hope.’ Said with a sinister tremolo, teeth bared in what could have been either a smile or a snarl.

  The DI preserved an expression of Sphinx-like imperturbability.

  Noakes didn’t know how the guvnor managed it. Tuning out the DCI’s nasal honk, he allowed himself to drift off, smiling dreamily as he played out various Tarantino-style fates for Sidney in his head.

  ‘Something amusing you, Sergeant?’

  Noakes immediately assumed an air of impenetrable stolidity. ‘Just taking it all in, sir.’

  Giving up on Markham’s village idiot, the DCI turned his attention back to his quarry. ‘I presume you’ll be liaising with the sex crimes team — what with the likelihood of a mentally disordered offender being at large.’

  By a supreme effort of will, Markham managed not to meet Noakes’s eyes. Only ten minutes in and the agenda was clear.

  Talk about the Self Preservation Society, thought Noakes disgustedly. Anything to steer us well clear of the local big wigs and ensure we pin this on some local whack job.

  The DI knew better than to put up any resistance. ‘Naturally, sir.’ His tone was one of iron-clad courtesy. Not servile. Obsequiousness was simply not in his repertoire. ‘DI Carstairs is covering that angle.’ He’d square it with Chris Carstairs later when they did their evening workout at Doggie’s. His suave fellow DI owed him a few favours and was more than capable of throwing sand in Sidney’s eyes for as long as it took them to get a lead. If necessary, Carstairs and Kate Burton could rustle up some data-rich spreadsheets between them . . . or, better still, get some Cracker type from the university’s psychology department to do an offender profile.

  It wasn’t that the DCI was a bad man, Markham told himself with a flicker of compunction. In fact, he knew Sidney to be capable of great kindness to officers facing personal crises. It was just that his relentless tunnel vision — the product of too many years marinating in the upper echelons of the police service — invariably served them ill when it came to taking an imaginative view of an investigation. He felt quite sure that the key to these murders lay somewhere in the community centre, and that they had almost certainly already met the killer. But the DCI was under great pressure from the town’s Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, especially in the
wake of the corruption uncovered by Markham’s most recent investigations. Local schools, churches, hospitals, the theatre, the art gallery — all had harboured a worm in the bud . . . all had festering secrets to be dragged with mandrake-like shrieks into the light. Small wonder if Sidney was hankering to pin these latest killings on some mythical bushy-haired stranger.

  ‘I understand there may be a connection with Hope Academy, Inspector.’

  The DCI’s snitches had clearly been busy. Time to tread carefully.

  ‘Well, Rebecca Shawcross was a teacher at Hope, sir. And, of course, the school’s sixth-form study annexe is based in the community centre.’

  ‘But you’re not suggesting any school personnel are involved.’

  ‘Highly unlikely, sir.’ Markham’s ‘bedside manner’ came to his rescue. ‘Our visit there was more a question of building a picture of the victim . . . Had her colleagues noticed anything unusual?’ He had a sudden burst of inspiration. ‘Had anyone been seen hanging around the school — stalkers, unwanted attention — that kind of thing.’

  No way was he prepared to enlighten Sidney about the extracurricular dimension, though a salacious gleam in Noakes’s eye suggested his sergeant would have enjoyed witnessing the effect of such revelations.

  ‘Good, good.’ The DCI clearly liked the stalker theory.

  ‘I believe your lady friend is back teaching at Hope . . .’

  Somehow Sidney always larded any reference to Olivia with a thick layer of innuendo.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’ Keep it short and sweet.

  ‘Not caught up in this investigation I trust, Inspector? I seem to remember she has rather an unfortunate knack for drawing attention to herself . . . There was all that drama at St Cecilia’s, for example . . .’

  As though Olivia was some sort of exhibitionist crime-scene groupie, Markham thought savagely. Hardly surprising that she harboured a deep-seated antipathy towards his boss, invariably describing him as first cousin to Judas Iscariot.

  Noakes’s beefy face flushed red. Oh no, was he about to plough in like some medieval knight bent on defending his lady’s honour?

  ‘Ms Mullen didn’t ask to be attacked, sir. An’ she was dead brave when it happened.’