Merry Murders Everyone

by David W Robinson

  “Because he never existed in the first place.”

  “Spot on,” Banks agreed.

  “Difficult, though, getting work with a false ID. Especially in a school where they chase up references.”

  “Difficult, yes, impossible, no,” Banks said. “Remember, Joe, he copped a tidy sum seven years after Francine disappeared.”

  “And did the Ripon police drag the Darlington squad in on it?”

  Banks shook his head. “As far as I’m aware, they ran a query with them, but if they made any enquiries, we were never told about them, which, as far as I’m concerned, means they just asked a few questions about it. This old chicken had been missing for the better part of ten years at that stage, they weren’t likely to have any more joy than the original investigators.” Banks relaxed again, and collecting photographs and photocopy, closed the file. “If I’m right, Joe, your friend, Mrs Riley, Naylor, whatever she wants to call herself, is in serious danger. If I’m wrong, well, you’ll just make me look a complete berk.”

  Joe grinned without humour. “Trust me, I don’t stop to worry about things like that. One thing puzzles me, Eliot. Since when is a large company like North Shires concerned for the safety of people who are not their customers?”

  Banks laughed. “Mrs Riley is a customer. Sorry, did I not mention it? She took out a large policy with us after her husband died. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. If I’m right, Joe, not only will you lose a friend, but North Shires will lose a bloody fortune.”

  Joe needed no more incentive, but the hard-headed Yorkshireman would not let him leave it there. “And you’re offering me five grand?”

  “You need a sweetener? For every penny we can recover from Nellis/Newman/Naylor, I’ll throw in a one percent bonus.”

  Joe glanced down at the file. “Do I get a copy of the full report?”

  Banks reached into a drawer of his desk, came out with a folder similar to the one spread on his desk. He handed it over. “Absolutely confidential, Joe. No one must see it but you.” He paused a moment, his brow creasing. “Although come to think, I’m told that you have contacts in the police.”

  Joe took the folder and nodded as he got to his feet. “My niece, Detective Inspector Craddock, Sanford CID, and her boyfriend, DI Howard Riley of Leeds CID. Sheila’s nephew.”

  Banks blanched. “For God’s sake don’t let him see that lot, not until you’ve got some evidence. If he goes tramping in with his size thirteens, and we’ve got it wrong, he could wreck his aunt’s marriage for nothing.”

  ***

  Joe got back to his car just after six o’clock. The evening traffic showed no inclination to thin out. If anything, it appeared busier, and he guessed that many people would have finished work, and set about Christmas shopping.

  As he climbed behind the wheel, started the engine, switching the heaters to full to combat the biting cold of the winter’s night, he was oblivious to the bright lights and Yuletide glitz around him. The last thing on his mind was Christmas.

  He had met Martin Naylor on many occasions after Sheila’s summer announcement of her forthcoming marriage, and he had never found the man anything but pleasant company. But that meant nothing. How many murderers had he encountered who were superficially pleasant and outgoing? Many of them were women, some had even succeeded in seducing him. But behind the facade was always a calculating, cold-blooded killer. Masks, like those of the Santas stood outside many of Leeds’ department stores, were too easy to put in place, too simple to maintain in public, too easy to let slip when the time was right.

  Pangs of hunger reminded him that he had eaten nothing since a rushed lunch in The Lazy Luncheonette. He joined the queues of traffic again, fought his way into a multi-storey car park just off Briggate, arguably Leeds’s busiest shopping thoroughfare, and once parked up, joined the thousands thronging the streets.

  He ambled into Trinity Shopping Mall, and partly in a daze, passed familiar High Street names, shops which will be found in virtually any town or city in the country. Eventually, he settled into a corner of a fast-food joint, and chewed through a tasteless burger and fries, washing it down with tea that tasted more like warm water, and for once his thoughts were not on how much better he could produce such fare. They were centred entirely on Sheila.

  Across the way, children gambolled in the queue to see Santa. Young people, whose lives had barely just begun, and their unbridled excitement carried him back across the years to the days when he had been a similar age, had felt the same excitement, had joined the queues along with other, firm friends, amongst whom were Sheila and Brenda.

  He remembered the thrill of getting nearer and nearer, and telling Santa what he wanted for Christmas, promising to be the goodest of the good little boys, and the joy of collecting a real, genuine gift from Father Christmas. He took his great nephew, Danny, to see Santa in Sanford’s Galleries Shopping Mall every year, and found the boy’s excitement to be contagious; he loved it as much as Danny, as much as he, Sheila and Brenda had at that age.

  He was fond of saying that it takes a lifetime to make a true friend, and despite their many disagreements (most of them minor) over the years those two women were true friends. There were others, Alec and Julia Staines, George Robson, Owen Frickley, even, heaven help him, Les Tanner and is ladylove, Sylvia Goodson; men and women who would stand at his side in Sheila’s defence.

  But what if Banks had it wrong? A true friend she might be, but Sheila was a strict and frequently unforgiving woman. She would never tolerate such allegations without some foundation. If Joe fired from the hip, half a century of friendship would be in tatters.

  He climbed back into his car at half past seven, his mind still tumbling with indecision, and as he started the engine, began the slow crawl out of the car park, onto the busy streets, he hooked his phone into the car speakers, called Brenda, and asked her to meet him in the Miner’s Arms an eight o’clock.

  He met with fierce resistance. “I’d planned on having a night in. We’ve Churchill’s tomorrow night, remember.”

  “Yeah. With the weekly disco cancelled, so had I, but something’s come up, and I need to speak to you urgently, Brenda, because I don’t know how to handle it.”

  The announcement ignited her worries. “What? What is it?”

  “I don’t wanna talk over the phone, and anyway, I’m driving, but it’s important. Trust me. Just meet me in the Miner’s at eight and I’ll bring you up to speed.”

  ***

  About half a mile from The Lazy Luncheonette, the Miner’s Arms had stood on Doncaster Road since the days when the pit was one of the major employers in Sanford. When it was up and running, the actual mine was on the other side of town, and many people had pointed the anomaly out.

  Licensee, Mick Chadwick, was unrepentant. Plenty of the men employed at the pit had lived on this side of Sanford, and no one ever complained about the naming of the Foundry Inn. For those daring enough to point out that the Foundry Inn was within a few hundred yards of where the old foundry had stood, Mick’s response was short, snappy, and often unsuitable for mixed company.

  The pub’s position, at the point on Doncaster Road where the industrial estate tapered off, and the residential areas of South Sanford began, was ideal, and from Mick’s point of view, profitable. He had his ups and downs, but over the year, he made a more than adequate gains, none more so than Wednesday evenings when Sanford 3rd Age Club held their weekly disco in the top room. Not only did he charge the club for use of the room, but sales of drinks and snacks shot up well above the average.

  There were those times of the year, however, when the third agers cancelled the disco, and when Mick looked at his sales figures, it was enough to bring on one of his petulant moods, and both his wife, Beth and the other bar staff knew to give him a wide berth.

  One such occasion was the week of the annual Sanford 3rd Age Club Christmas Dinner & Dance, always held at Churchill’s. The club membership, most of whom were either pensioner
s or approaching pension age, would not tolerate two evenings of comparative excess, and as a result, the weekly disco was cancelled.

  When Joe arrived a couple of minutes before eight, Mick was already in full moan mode.

  “The pennies you spend won’t make up for the money I’m losing tonight.”

  “You know what I love about you, Mick? You’re a thoroughbred Yorkshireman. Nothing matters but the weight of your wallet.”

  Placing a half of lager and a Campari and soda in front of Joe, Mick retorted, “I wish I was making a fraction the amount you make out of that café.”

  “Yes, but with me to get serious insults, not your half-hearted snaps.”

  Nodding a passing ‘hello’ to one or two people, Joe retired to an empty table in the far corner of the lounge bar, and checked the near empty room. Mick was right. There were less than a dozen people in the lounge, and only a few more in the public bar where a live football match was on TV. Normally, this bar would be packed with club members, waiting for the top room to open, and the landlord would be lucky to cover the cost of electricity and heating with the evening’s takings.

  Wrapped in a heavy, quilted coat, but nevertheless shivering, Brenda walked into the room five minutes later, glanced around, and joined him.

  “This had better be worth it, Joe Murray,” she said, removing her coat and sitting alongside him. “You’ve dragged me away from a night of serious channel hopping on the telly.”

  “Yes, well, I’d planned to cut my toenails, but after speaking to Eliot Banks, I have more important things on my mind.”

  Brenda sipped her Campari. “So fill me in.”

  Given Brenda’s free lifestyle, Joe would have chuckled at the inevitable innuendo in her words, but Banks’s information had been preying on his mind ever since he left the offices of North Shires.

  Over the next quarter of an hour, he told Brenda everything, and showed her the documents Banks had given him.

  As the tale unfolded, she became first, more serious, and then with the revelation of the murdered woman and the missing first wife, it turned to look of pure dread. Finally, when Joe finished the tale, the only emotion he could read in her face was thrilling anger.

  “If he’s poisoning Sheila, I’ll rip his wedding tackle off and nail it to his head.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel the same way, but we have to think seriously about this, Brenda. We have absolutely no proof that Martin Naylor is Mervyn Nellis or Marlon Newman.”

  Brenda slapped a hand down on the photographs causing one or two people to look in their direction. “It’s him, Joe. You only have to look at the pictures to see it.”

  “They look alike, granted, it’s difficult to be certain, and you know what I’m concerned about, don’t you? Sheila’s reaction if we get it wrong.”

  The announcement drew Brenda up short. It was obvious that she had not considered that aspect.

  “Oh dear. Yes. She’ll tear you and me into little pieces, and then feed us through a shredder, and then sweep us into the gutter.” She took another swallow of Campari. “We’ve been friends for so long. All of us.” She turned appealing eyes on him. “What are we going to do, Joe? If he is the same man, we can’t leave her at his mercy.”

  Joe took in more lager. “It’s difficult. We’ll be walking on eggshells. And what makes it more complicated is that the medics haven’t actually found anything wrong with Sheila. If he was poisoning her, it would have shown up in the tests, but according to what Howard told us, and Sheila herself said, there’s nothing to account for the problem.”

  “Untraceable poison?” Brenda asked more in hope than certainty.

  “No such thing according to my knowledge. Any poison would show up provided the medics do their job properly, and I can’t see them shirking the work, can you?”

  Silence fell between them, punctuated only by the rattle of bottles and glasses behind the bar, the muted hum of conversation from a few patrons in the lounge, and the chatter of football fans from the public.

  It was Brenda who broke it. “Could Howard help?”

  Joe’s drummed his fingers on his lips. “Possible, I suppose. At least as a bona fide police officer, he could look into it and possibly pull Martin in for questioning, but I don’t think he’d get very far. Martin would only deny it, and the cops have no DNA on file from either Nellis or Newman.”

  Brenda made up her mind. “In that case, it’s up to you and me. What say we collar Martin and give him the third degree?” She could see the doubt in his features. “Come on, Joe. Sheila is our oldest friend, and she very dear to both of us. We can’t leave her in danger, and let’s be honest about this, when it comes to facing people down, you have no equal. All right, so when it comes to fighting, if you tried to take toffees from a newborn baby, you’d lose, but you’re not afraid of hassling anyone, with me alongside you, Martin wouldn’t dare get physical.”

  “What would a newborn baby be doing with toffees?” Joe still had his doubts. “We’ll have to bring in extra staff at The Lazy Luncheonette.”

  “Lee and Cheryl can arrange that. Even if she’s ill, Cheryl can call on her friends, and Lee might be a bit of a dipstick, but he knows how to run the place.”

  He made up his mind. “All right. We’ll get breakfast out the way tomorrow, then leave it to Lee while we shoot over to Sanford Comprehensive, and tackle Martin. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Chapter Six

  Harold Ogilvy was a couple of years older than Joe and Brenda, and had been headmaster (or Principal as he preferred to call himself) of Sanford Comprehensive for the last decade. Under his guidance, the school plodded its way through the usual crises involved in the education of teenagers, but he was always pleased to welcome former pupils.

  Situated in a green belt in the eastern half of Sanford, it was a vast expanse of playing fields surrounding the glass and concrete main buildings. In those far-off days when Joe and Brenda had attended the school, it was known as Sanford Secondary Modern, but even then, the brighter pupils, amongst whom were Sheila and Brenda, sat their GCE, O and A-levels, and some went on to university. Others, like Brenda, settled for a career in banking, while Sheila opted for secretarial college and eventually joined the school’s administrative staff, where she remained for most of her working life, eventually rising to the vaunted position of school secretary.

  Joe never had the option. True, he sat his O-level exams, and came away with a couple of passes in English and maths, but on leaving school at the age of sixteen he became a full-time employee of The Lazy Luncheonette, or Alf’s Café as it was known then. Not that his education ended at that point. His father insisted that he went on to catering college on a part-time basis, where he studied for three years.

  At any time in his life, he could have cut away from the family business and taken work as a chef in more upmarket eateries, but allied to his cooking skills was a sharp, financial acuity which showed him the way forward. When his older brother, Arthur, moved to Australia, Joe realised that the family business would come to him when his father retired or passed away. Now through his mid-fifties, he had never seen any reason to regret his decision.

  Ogilvy commented on it when they joined him in his comfortable office overlooking the playing fields. “Given the plethora of cookery programmes on TV, you could have had your own show by now.”

  “Yes, but I’d have had to learn to speak proper English, like what the Queen does, Harold, and I’m a common Sanforder at heart.”

  As always, it had been a busy morning, with the Sanford Brewery drivers clogging up the café from a little after seven o’clock until half past eight, and it was almost an hour after that before Joe and Brenda could leave the running of the place to Lee and his wife Cheryl, who appeared to be fully recovered from whatever ailed her the previous day. Cheryl, a sociable, likeable woman, much more astute and focused than her lumbering husband, had brought in two of her friends to help out, allowing Joe and Brenda the opportu
nity to get on their way to the school.

  When they arrived, they were compelled to wait until Ogilvy was through with the morning’s disciplinary matters, dealing with recalcitrant students and (according to him) staff.

  “It’s the time of year,” he had explained with a heavy sigh and by way of apology. “We break up for Christmas tomorrow, and to be honest, no one is getting through a great deal of work, and that includes the staff. I imagine you’re rushed off your feet.”

  “Burning out the soles of his trainers,” Brenda chuckled.

  Ogilvy smiled by return. “So what can I do… Oh. Forgive me. How’s is Mrs Naylor? Martin told me she was very ill, and has been ever since they came back from Cape Verde.”

  It took Brenda a moment to register Sheila’s identity from her new, married surname. She still thought of her as Sheila Riley. “Still queasy, and as it happens, that’s why we’re here. I know it may be inconvenient, Harold, but would it be possible to speak to Martin?”

  Ogilvy frowned. “Is it urgent?”

  “Very,” Joe assured him.

  It seemed to Joe that the headmaster deliberately set his face in a mask of disapproval and concern while he checked the master timetable on his computer.

  “He’s currently with year ten, leading them on a drama production designed to be put on by Easter. They’re in rehearsal in the assembly hall, and I don’t suppose he’ll mind you interrupting.” Ogilvy checked his watch. “There’s only another ten or fifteen minutes to morning break.” He smiled obsequiously at them. “You know the way?”

  “Unless you’ve redesigned the place,” Joe said, and he and Brenda left the headmaster’s office.