THE MORALS
OF A MURDERER
An enthralling crime mystery full of twists
(Yorkshire Murder Mysteries Book 4)
ROGER SILVERWOOD
First published as “The Importance of Being Honest”
Revised edition 2019
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
First published as “The Importance of Being Honest” 2005
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Roger Silverwood to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
©Roger Silverwood
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
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Chapter One
London, UK. 17 April 2003, 2pm.
A dark blue armoured security van criss-crossed its way through the busy traffic along City Road into DeLisle Street and stopped outside the Bank of Agara. The driver and guard got out of the cab. The driver pulled back his elbows to stretch his back. The guard took out a partly smoked cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. They strolled round to the rear of the van. They glanced round the busy street at the unremarkable pedestrians and motor vehicles purposefully pursuing their destinations. The guard tapped a code on the door and it was promptly opened from the inside.
Then all hell was let loose!
Four men in street-clothes wearing black masks and waving handguns appeared: two from behind pillars on the bank steps, one from behind a newspaper stand and a fourth out of an office-block doorway There were gunshots. Men shouted and women screamed. Two of the men climbed on to the top of the van. It set off and weaved its way into the stream of traffic. As it gained speed, the men on the roof climbed down and jumped off. A big black car came from nowhere with doors wide open. The men dived into it while it was still on the move. The doors closed and the car dissolved into traffic immediately behind the van.
In the gutter, a man lay still. Blood trickled through the jacket of his blue uniform across the silver buttons. The other two guards kneeled down by his side, one of them speaking urgently into a mobile phone.
Two men in traditional Arabian long white robes, headdresses with black surrounds, rimless sunglasses and sporting black moustaches and beards rushed out to the top step of the bank and looked anxiously around.
Police sirens wailed their two-tone racket in the distance.
*
Imperial Distillery, Slogmarrow, Near Bromersley, South Yorkshire. UK. 4 April 2005 9 a.m.
A small grey-haired man came through the large door smartly embellished with the words BOARD ROOM in gold leaf upon it and shuffled on to the landing of the old mill building.
‘Andrew. Andrew!’ he called in a Scottish twang down the stone stairway to the floor below. He dug his bony hand into the trouser pocket of his Reid & Taylor suit and pulled out a handful of coins; he held the clenched fist against the gold watch-chain hanging in an elegant sweep across his tartan waistcoat. ‘Andrew!’ he called again impatiently. He opened his hand, peered at the coins and slowly turned them over one by one with the other hand.
A young man in a cream blouse and kilt, came running up the stairs.
‘Yes, Mr Fleming.’
‘Ah, there you are. Ah, Andrew, when you go into Bromersley next, will you go into the sweetie-shop for me?’
‘Yes, Mr Fleming.’
‘Ay. I want you to get me — mmm — a quarter of those Grampian humbugs. I’ll give you the right money. Just a minute.’ He turned the money over again, and made a selection of coins. ‘Mmm. No, better make it two ounces. Here’s eighty-two pence. Yes. That’s right. Tell Miss Millington I want those in the quiet wrappers.’
‘Yes, Mr Fleming.’
Andrew rushed off.
The old man turned round and, stooping slightly forward, his lean arms hanging limply by his side, shuffled back into the boardroom.
A log fire crackled in the big hearth, and an illuminated crystal chandelier hung from the high vaulted roof. The floor was carpeted with the McFee tartan, and the walls had a thistle-pattern wallpaper covering. Above the mantelshelf, pinned to the wall, was the blue-and-white flag of St Andrew.
Three bald men were seated in high backed chairs at the long polished table in the middle of the room. Mr Finlay, the financial director and, at seventy years of age, the youngest of them, was speaking.
‘I am quite determined to tell the chairman that I am simply not able to serve the company any longer. I must take my retirement now. I will not be put off again.’ He took out an inhaler from his pocket, screwed off the top and stuffed it up one blue craggy nostril.
‘I agree,’ Mr Menzies interjected, rubbing a painful, arthritic thumb-joint.
‘This has been brought up at every annual meeting since young Duncan McFee became chairman, I can tell you,’ added Mr Reid, director of Human Resources. ‘But nothing will be done, you’ll see.’
Fleming took his seat at the head of the table.
‘There was the difficulty with the wars.’
‘The war’s been over nigh on sixty years!’
‘I know. I know.’
‘It’s like talking to a brick wall,’ Menzies said.
The grumbling and maundering continued awhile.
The antecedents of these worthy gentlemen and most of the other people working at Imperial Gin had originated in the Western Isles of Scotland and had drifted south, bringing their skills at distilling, to provide work to the masses of the Yorkshire unskilled labour market in the 1920s.
When unemployment was rife throughout Scotland, in April 1863, Hector McFee came to Yorkshire to the big house and estate at Slogmarrow on the eastern slope of the Pennines in Yorkshire, and founded a small distillery specifically to produce gin.
Over the succeeding 139 years, the Scots ventured out of their estate to the nearby village and cattle-market at Tunistone and the market town of Bromersley, some six miles away. They married local folk and some found employment in Bromersley or further afield, many retaining their Scottish traditions, some still regularly wearing their kilts.
The present chairman of Imperial Gin, Duncan McFee, who was the great-great-grandson of Hector was visiting Slogmarrow this day and the four senior directors were assembled, awaiting his arrival.
The sound of an engine, the crunching on gravel as the vehicle swerved, and then the squeal of brakes, followed by the slamming of two car doors disturbed the quiet.
Four heads popped up. The bickering stopped.
‘Ah!’ Fleming said. ‘That sounds like him now. Take a wee look, Mr Finlay, will you now?’
‘Yes, gentleman,’ Finlay said. ‘It’s McFee.’
The men pushed back their chairs and made their way to the landing. Finlay was the slowest, shuffling along in his soft shoes. They peered down the stone steps at the arched double door that led into the building from the courtyard. It opened and the big man walked in. He looked up at the reception committee on the landing, smiled warmly, waved a hand the size of a frying pan and made straight for the stairs, followed by the young driver carrying a leather briefcase. He overtook McFee and carried on up towards the boardroom.
‘Ah, my friends,’ the big man said with a generous smile as he pulled on the handrail. Eventually, he reached the top of the stairs and, breathing heavily, repeated: ‘My very dear friends.’
He shook hands with each one in turn.
‘Mr Fleming. Mr Menzies. Mr Finlay. Mr Reid.’
They smiled, nodded and muttered: ‘Mr Chairman,’ as, in turn, they clasped his hot hand.
Then McFee strode purposefully into the boardroom followed by the four directors.
When the driver had left the room and closed the door, McFee began:
‘How good to be back with you all. Let us get down to business. Everything appears to be going very well. I will do the tasting this evening as usual.’
Fleming coughed, then said:
‘Chairman, on behalf of the board, I have something I would like to discuss with you about our pensions.’
The other three elders nodded and muttered: ‘Yes. That’s right.’
McFee waved an impatient hand.
‘Gentlemen. Friends. Let us get the balance sheet out first. It is only a month away. We are having an excellent year. When we see the exact figures, we may feel that we can vote ourselves an even bigger bonus than last year, and that was a record, wasn’t it. Don’t you agree?’
Finlay already looked defeated.
‘Ay, well, the chairman has a point there.’
Reid said: ‘But time is going on.’
Menzies said: ‘Time is moving inexorably on and it is time it was settled. I believe I am the oldest here and — ’
‘I’m the oldest’ Fleming said.
‘Only by two months. What’s that.’
‘Gentlemen. Friends,’ said McFee. ‘Please. I suggest we postpone the decision about our pension allotments until after the year-end figures are out. Agreed?’ He looked into the board-members’ faces.
They sat stony-faced.
He smiled expansively. ‘That’s it. You know it makes sense.’
‘Very well,’ Fleming said grudgingly. ‘If that is the majority view. Put it in the minutes, Mr Reid.’
The chairman nodded enthusiastically.
‘Good. Good. Now let’s move on. I have called this meeting for a very special reason. A personal reason. You four are my closest friends as well as being long and loyal servants of Imperial Gin plc. Tomorrow is my birthday. I will celebrate fifty years: half a century. Now I know I come from a family of survivors who have a boringly enviable reputation of longevity. My grandfather lived to be ninety and my father ninety-four. I might die this very afternoon or I might live another fifty years. I know that only God knows the time. But fifty is something of a landmark, isn’t it.’
The old men nodded, uninterestedly.
‘Tomorrow I am having a celebration dinner and I invite you all to attend.’
The dinner never took place.
*
Six miles from the Slogmarrow distillery was the South Yorkshire town of Bromersley. Once renowned for coal, now it was infamous for public houses, banks and supermarkets. On the road north out of the town was a forecourt with thirty or so cars, polished and gleaming, bearing huge price-tickets, red on white, stuck on their windscreens, awaiting the inspection of walkers aspiring to become drivers and willing to take a gamble! Next to the forecourt was a large barnlike building with big doors wide open, packed with more cars, old and older, in different states of roadworthiness. In front of that was a tiny two-roomed red brick office building.
In the office, at his desk, was Evan Jones, a slim, wiry man, with white, silky hair, immaculately dressed in a light-grey suit, white shirt and a red bow tie. Opposite him was Olivia Button, a smartly turned out thirty-year-old, fair-haired woman in a cream trouser-suit, with the figure of a Michaelangelo statue. The two were leaning forward, over the desk, looking into each other’s eyes. He smiled and she sighed. Then he sighed and she smiled. He held her soft, responsive hands, and in a low musical voice, was ardently promising her the world with treacle on it.
No one wanted to kick a tyre or dispute the mileage on a clock, so what more pleasant occupation was there for Evan Jones than to spend a little time with his new-found girlfriend?
They sighed.
After a minute, the jangle of the telephone broke the spell.
‘Oh,’ he moaned in a dreamy, Welsh musical cadence. He loosened the tender touch of one of her soothing hands and, still looking into her big eyes, reached for the phone. ‘Hello, yes? Evan Jones speaking,’ he said distantly. Then his voice suddenly hardened. ‘Oh, yes. I said two grand … All right, seeing as it’s you, eighteen hundred — cash.’
Olivia Button gazed closely at his lips as he spoke animatedly into the telephone, fascinated by the up-and-down movement of his pencil-thin, forties’-style moustache.
‘Right,’ Jones said firmly. ‘Thank you very much. I’ll have it ready for you. With a full tank of petrol … Goodbye.’ He replaced the phone. ‘Sorry about that, Olivia, my darling,’ he said as he reached out to take her hand again.
Her gaze left him briefly as out of the corner of her eye, through the window, she saw a woman determinedly advancing through the line of cars on the forecourt straight for the office door.
‘Oh. I think you’ve a customer, Evan.’ She pouted. ‘A woman.’
He jumped up, releasing her hands.
‘Have I? Oh. Ah. Right, love. Must get on. See you tonight then.’
She stood up and put her arms round his neck.
‘Oh, Evan,’ she whined.
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips.
‘You must go, Olivia,’ he said, unravelling her arms from round his neck. ‘Use the back door, love.’
She smiled at him through half-closed eyes, picked up her handbag and slung it on to her shoulder.
‘Bye.’
He straightened his coat-sleeves, adjusted the gold cufflinks, tweaked the dicky-bow and glanced towards the window.
As the back door closed, the front door opened.
A woman with a set of big teeth, an ill-fitting brown coat and a blue headscarf entered, banged the door shut, and stood there, feet apart, staring imperiously at him. Evan Jones’s face whitened beneath the tan.
‘Oh. It’s you,’ he said, pulling an unwelcome face. ‘What are you wanting now, Amy?’ He spoke in that up-and-down musical delivery the Welsh have.
The woman swaggered up to the desk, dragged the headscarf downwards, and shook her head to allow a mop of red hair to fall out. She plonked down on the chair recently occupied by Olivia Button.
‘To collect what you owe me, and no nonsense,’ she sneered in the local vernacular. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’
‘I don’t owe you anything. And you know I don’t smoke.’
‘You keep them for customers,’ she challenged.
‘Like so many other things, Amy, that’s a courtesy I can no longer afford.’ He caught a glimpse through the window of Olivia Button’s car pulling out on to the main road. He was thankful the two women had not met each other.
Amy glared at him, then suddenl
y stood up and dashed round to his side of the desk. She pulled out a drawer, opened a silver cigarette-box it, took out a cigarette, slammed the drawer shut and returned to the chair.
His lips tightened. He had remained motionless while she rummaged in his desk, but he was not prepared to tolerate any further invasion.
‘All right. You’ve got a cigarette, now go.’
She put the cigarette in her mouth.
‘I need a light,’ she snapped.
Evan’s eyes opened wider. He stuck out a skinny finger and pointed at a chromium cigarette-lighter in the shape of a car on his desk.
She reached out for it and picked it up.
‘New, eh? Expensive?’ She pulled a face.
Jones shook his head slowly. ‘It was an advertising gift from a tyre company!’
She lit the cigarette, examined the lighter again, sniffed and banged it noisily back on the desk.
‘Five thousand pounds,’ she said staring up at him and blowing a blue cloud across the desk. ‘That’s about a tenth of what I am due. But I’ll settle for that,’ she said with a confident nod of the head.
‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous! The judge made an award and I have paid it. And that’s all you’re going to get!’
Her thin lips went even thinner.
‘If I hadn’t been locked up, I could have got a proper lawyer, instead of that legal aid junior they set on to practise on me. He would have made out a proper case and I would have got a decent settlement out of you!’
‘Well, you lost the case. It was all fair and above-board. You got more than you deserved. So forget it, Amy. We’re not married now! I’m not responsible for you any more. You mean nothing to me. You’ve lost me thousands in claims from dissatisfied customers you’ve swindled.’ He wiped saliva off his mouth with a handkerchief. ‘You’re not getting another penny.’
She stood up, red in the face and looked him up and down. Then she glanced away, took a heavy drag on the cigarette and blew out a big cloud. After a moment, she turned back and switched on a smile like an ad for Steradent.
‘I’ll tell you what, Evan,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want to be unreasonable.’
The Morals of a Murderer Page 1