An Unfinished Murder

by An Unfinished Murder (retail) (epub)

  A little further on, a small white cat with tortoiseshell patches was prowling amid the headstones, looking for mice. Birds flapped from one tree to another and the jackdaws circled the church tower, uttering their discordant cries. But of other human life there was only one example. Meredith’s attention was called to it by the sound of running water and the clang of a metal watering can. An elderly man was stooped over one of the taps dotted around the churchyard for the use of people putting flowers on graves. He stood up as she looked. Can in hand, he turned and set off towards a headstone nearby. He was tall, with wispy grey hair, and wore an old-fashioned raincoat. Meredith walked casually nearer so that she could read the legend on the headstone.

  Brenda, beloved wife of Arthur Hellington

  There followed the dates of her birth and death, but Meredith did not need to know those. The man was on one knee, carefully arranging the flowers he’d brought in an urn.

  She waited until he had finished his task and stood up. Then she cleared her throat tactfully to let him know she was there, and asked, ‘Mr Hellington?’

  He turned and looked at her vaguely, then in puzzlement.

  She hastened to explain. ‘I’m Meredith Markby, Alan’s wife. You came to see my husband recently, about your daughter.’

  His expression cleared and he came towards her. ‘Oh, Mrs Markby, yes, of course. Your husband was involved in the search for Rebecca at the beginning, when she disappeared. And now, of course, they’ve found… they’ve found her.’

  He sounded so lost that Meredith said, impulsively, ‘There’s a bench over there. Would you like to sit down for a moment?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said gratefully, ‘yes, I think I should.’

  When they were seated, side by side, he said, ‘I hope your husband didn’t mind my troubling him?’

  ‘Of course not. He – he is just so sorry that Rebecca couldn’t have been found earlier. Twenty years is a long time not to have any information.’

  ‘Yes, a very long time,’ he agreed. He indicated the headstone of the grave he’d been tending. ‘My wife, Brenda. She couldn’t accept it, you know. She always thought Rebecca would come back; or that we’d hear from her. She thought of so many possible explanations why she hadn’t contacted us. Her mind ran on nothing else, and eventually, well, she rather lost her grip on day-to-day reality.’

  ‘When the present investigation is over,’ Meredith told him, ‘you should be able to bury Rebecca, at least. Even if, well, even if they can’t find out what happened. They’ll release the… body to you.’

  ‘Yes.’ He pointed at the headstone again. ‘It’s a double plot,’ he said. ‘I intended that I should be buried there with my wife. But now I’ll bury Rebecca there, with her mother. Brenda would have liked that.’

  There was a silence during which he sat, with his hands loosely clasped, looking towards the grave. Meredith was about to take a tactful leave of him, when he spoke again.

  ‘Some of Brenda’s explanations, as she called them, of why Rebecca hadn’t phoned or written were rather fantastic. The more so, the longer it went on. Any reports she read in the tabloid press about a disappearance, or kidnapping, she’d seize on. She imagined Rebecca locked in a lonely barn somewhere, or taken to some big city and coerced into prostitution. But first of all, she thought Rebecca might have been injured in an accident, and be lying in a coma somewhere. I understand that’s commonly what people fear. Or that Becky had lost her memory. One explanation Brenda returned to constantly was that Becky had had a severe asthma attack.’

  ‘She was asthmatic?’ Meredith exclaimed, rather more loudly than she would have liked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘from childhood.’

  ‘Did you – did anyone mention this to the police, twenty years ago, when she disappeared?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said again. ‘We stressed our concern to the inspector who came up from Gloucestershire to see us, Inspector Parry. He had a young sergeant with him, Carter.’

  ‘So she would have carried an inhaler on her?’

  ‘All the time,’ Hellington said.

  * * *

  ‘Asthmatic?’ Markby exclaimed. ‘I don’t remember that!’

  Meredith had abandoned her trip to the market and returned home immediately, after parting from Arthur Hellington, to tell Alan what she’d learned.

  ‘She carried an inhaler on her at all times,’ Meredith insisted. ‘That would survive being buried, wouldn’t it? It would be made of plastic or similar.’

  ‘They found buttons and a couple of zips in the grave,’ Alan said. ‘There was no mention of anything that remotely resembled the remains of an inhaler. I’ll get on to Trevor Barker at once. They’ll have to go back and dig again. It could have been in a pocket, and we know the body was moved between Josh and Dilys finding it in the spinney and it being buried. The inhaler could have fallen out then – or earlier, of course.’

  * * *

  ‘I’ve looked all through the file here,’ Barker assured him. ‘There is no mention of the girl being asthmatic.’

  ‘But it must be there!’ Markby insisted. ‘The parents told Inspector Parry when he came up from Gloucestershire.’

  ‘Well, then,’ pursued Barker, ‘possibly Parry failed to pass that detail on to us. Or he told someone on your team, and whoever it was failed to make a note of it in the file.’

  ‘Not on my watch!’ Markby said firmly.

  Barker hurried on. ‘Look! Let’s assume Parry didn’t even mention it to you or anyone else on your team. After all, it was his investigation, wasn’t it? Not yours. It was a liaison job, as far as Bamford was concerned. All Parry wanted you to do was tell him if she turned up alive here. She’d disappeared on Parry’s patch and he was looking for her there. He was just closing a loophole when he asked you to look here. No one back then was suggesting she might turn up here dead!’

  Markby made no reply; he sat opposite the inspector, still simmering.

  Barker plunged on. ‘You were asked to check out whether she came home, and you did check – and, as far as could be ascertained then, she hadn’t.’

  There was a saying: ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging!’ Barker thought it was time for him to stop, so he did.

  Markby raised his head. ‘You’ll have to go back and search that spinney again, Trevor. Every inch. Dig some more around the grave. Look under all the bushes.’

  ‘The costs of this investigation are spiralling,’ said Barker bitterly. ‘We’ll have to get equipment back, and a search team… but you’re right, of course. We have to go back and try and find that wretched inhaler.’

  * * *

  ‘Good morning!’ the smart young woman at the desk greeted Ian Carter. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I’d like to have a word with Mr Malone, if he’s in today,’ Carter told her, adding his name.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ A note of doubt entered her voice and she began rattling keys on her computer.

  ‘I don’t, but if he’s here—’

  ‘Yes, he is in the office this morning,’ she admitted. ‘But he’s got an important meeting in half an hour’s time. Could you come back tomorrow?’

  ‘I have important things to do, too,’ Carter told her amiably. ‘I do think Mr Malone would like to know I’m here.’

  ‘Well, what’s it about?’ she challenged.

  ‘Personal,’ said Carter. He smiled at her but remained standing in front of her, immovable.

  He saw doubt flicker across her features. Then she reached for the intercom. ‘Peter? I know you’re waiting on this morning’s meeting, but there’s a gentleman here by the name of Carter who’d like a word.’

  There was no immediate reply.

  She frowned, perplexed. ‘Peter?’

  His voice crackled suddenly from the machine. ‘Yes, yes! Send him in, Beth!’

  Beth stared resentfully at Carter. ‘You can go in,’ she said stiffly. ‘But you should have made an appointment. He’s got other people
coming in half an hour.’

  ‘Oh, it won’t take me that long!’ said Carter cheerfully.

  The Gloucester office into which Beth ushered him was large, airy and had a picture window overlooking the Sharpness Canal. There was a glass-and-steel desk and similar modern pieces of furniture dotted around the room, together with the obligatory potted yucca. Malone was standing with his back to the window. Carter wondered if that was deliberate, so that the light didn’t fall on his face.

  He then, quite irrelevantly, remembered being told by his ex-wife, Sophie, on a visit to Versailles that Marie Antoinette had bad skin. Ladies, in her presence, were warned beforehand to stand with their backs to the light, so that attention shouldn’t be drawn to their, perhaps finer, complexions. Why did he think about that? he asked himself. Was it because, even now, his mind threw up the image of that angel on the fresco, in its flowing robes? Malone had made him feel uneasy, all those years ago, by a certain theatricality, an awareness of how others saw him. Even now, when Carter walked in unexpectedly, Malone was striking a pose.

  Beth closed the door with a sharp click, and Malone spoke. ‘It is you, then. I can’t say I’m surprised.’

  ‘You have heard the news, I take it? That Rebecca’s remains have been found?’ Carter replied with equal brusqueness.

  ‘Couldn’t not hear about it!’ snapped Malone. ‘It’s in the press, on the telly, my wife heard about it and called—’

  He broke off abruptly, and Carter guessed he had not meant to say that his wife had called him. Those few words and Malone’s attitude had already revealed that, although Malone had grown older, and progressed career-wise, he had remained in many ways the truculent youngster Carter had interviewed twenty years earlier.

  Now Malone asked, suspiciously, ‘You didn’t tell my receptionist that you were a police officer, so is this an official call? Or are you just dropping in for old times’ sake?’ After the barest hesitation, he added, ‘I suppose you are still a copper?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Carter told him. ‘I can show you my identification.’ He took the plastic folder from his inside pocket and held it out.

  Malone took it, glanced at it, and handed it back. ‘Superintendent now, eh? Congratulations.’

  ‘You’ve done well, too,’ Carter returned politely, indicating the smart, modern office.

  Malone’s mouth twisted into a brief, sardonic grin. ‘You still didn’t tell Beth you were here officially. Why not? Is that standard police procedure now, blag your way in and then spring a nasty surprise on the person visited?’

  ‘Believe it or not,’ Carter told him, ‘I was being tactful. No need to feed the office gossip mill.’

  Malone stared at him for a moment and then said, ‘OK, OK. I suppose I should be grateful for that.’ He indicated a chair with a gracious sweep of his hand. ‘Please sit down, Superintendent Carter. I’m afraid I am waiting for an important client and can’t give you much time. But it will be enough, perhaps. I can’t tell you anything now I didn’t tell you twenty years ago.’

  There was a definite change in his manner. Suddenly, he’d returned to being the suave financial expert, and Carter might have been a client. It was a measure, thought Carter, of how shaken Malone had been to see him walk in.

  Carter seated himself. ‘It must have come as quite a shock to hear remains had been found and identified.’

  ‘Yes, of course it did!’ Malone sat down opposite him. ‘Rebecca had gone home, hadn’t she, after all? Just as she was saying she would; and just as I kept telling you, all those years ago. You didn’t believe me, did you? Well, you should have done. If you had, you might have started looking earlier in the right place, instead of wasting everyone’s time here, your own included. She’d gone to Bamford to visit her folks. No wonder you didn’t find any trace of her here.’

  Carter accepted that Malone might have some grounds for feeling aggrieved; but the man now had enough experience of life to understand that Carter’s questioning of him, years before, had been necessary. But he didn’t want to anger Malone further. He needed his cooperation. ‘Any investigation has to start at the beginning, and that was here. Unfortunately, that does mean people get upset,’ he said, placatingly. ‘Her college was where she was first missed. We don’t know how she came to be buried where the bones were discovered. There’s a gap, but we hope to fill in the missing pieces.’

  The word ‘bones’ seemed to touch a nerve in Malone, and he twitched. ‘Poor kid,’ he said, and looked down at the floor.

  ‘You knew she was asthmatic?’

  Carter had received an irate call from Trevor Barker shortly before setting out today, demanding to know why no one at Bamford had been informed of this important fact.

  ‘Didn’t DI Parry say anything?’ Carter had asked blandly.

  Apparently not, was the answer. Ex-Superintendent Markby, said Barker, was astonished to hear it. ‘And so was I! What were you all playing at, back then?’

  Carter imagined Alan Markby jumping up and down in frustration and giving Barker a hard time. The image gave him a moment of unworthy delight. But Barker and Markby both had some justification for being disgruntled. Why didn’t we mention it to the Bamford team? Carter asked himself. I suppose I didn’t because I thought Inspector Parry would have done so. I was just a junior member of the team, a dogsbody, and he did all the talking. Perhaps Parry thought I had said something. Or perhaps Parry simply forgot. He hadn’t been far off retirement. Mentally he’d got a little lazy.

  ‘We all knew!’ Malone said now, irritably. ‘She carried this little gadget, an inhaler.’ He held up his hand with his forefinger and thumb crooked and spaced to show the size of the inhaler.

  ‘Did she use it often?’

  Malone stared at him. ‘I can’t remember! Yes, I remember she had an inhaler and I suppose I must have seen her use it. But not often, no, not to my recollection. She didn’t wheeze. Why do you want to know about that?’

  ‘Only because no inhaler was discovered in her grave. If she had one on her, it should, in theory, have been buried with her. Other traces of her clothing were found.’

  ‘Look,’ Malone said, a sudden note of entreaty in his voice, ‘I have these really important clients and they’ll walk in here at any moment. I need to have my head together. If you’re going to fill my mind with gruesome images, I’m not going to be able to concentrate! Surely you can understand this?’

  ‘Of course,’ Carter told him politely. ‘But I would like to run through things again, everything you can remember.’

  ‘I can’t do that now! Anyway, haven’t you got any records?’ Now Malone was really twitchy.

  ‘Indeed, we do. But sometimes, over the years and with the benefit of distance, and hindsight, odd little bits of memory surface. Or things start to look different. Perhaps I could call on you at home?’

  ‘Caroline – my wife – won’t like that,’ said Malone gloomily. ‘But, yes, it would be best if you came to the house, and Caroline heard what you’ve got to say. I told her I saw you the other evening at the Wayfarer’s Return. Did you see me?’ He paused and raised his eyebrows. His voice held a note of forlorn hope.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Carter. ‘I was surprised. It had been a long time.’

  Malone would clearly have liked to reply that it hadn’t been nearly long enough. But if so, he forced these words back. ‘I thought you would have done. Sod’s law, isn’t it? I’ll get away from here as early as I can.’ He went to the desk and scribbled on a notepad, tearing off the page and handing it to Carter. ‘That’s where I live. The house is set back from the road but if you see a pub called the Feathers, watch out for a drive opening on the other side of the road. It’s got security gates, but I’ll make sure they’re open to let you in. Can you come about six? Give me a contact number so that I can call you if I’m going to be held up here.’

  Carter took the address and put it in his pocket. ‘Did you enjoy your meal at the Wayfarer’s Return?’

  �
�Not much,’ admitted Malone. ‘Not after I saw you there!’

  * * *

  A little before six, Carter and Jess were driving along a quiet, tree-lined road on the edge of the city. From time to time they passed driveways barred by security gates or twisting little side-turns that probably led to such properties, set further back from the road.

  ‘Wealthy area,’ said Jess. ‘Quite a millionaires’ row, this!’

  ‘I get the impression Malone has done well, but I’m just wondering,’ Carter said, but didn’t volunteer what he was wondering.

  Jess prompted him. ‘What?’

  ‘These aren’t recently built properties. Malone and Rebecca first met at a party, out of town, in a large house. When Rebecca was taken by another partygoer, a girl, to her parents’ house as a sort of refuge, where Rebecca could stay until morning, it was nearby. That, to me, suggests just the sort of community this is. So, I’m wondering… ah, there’s the pub and that, over there, must be the entrance to Malone’s place. The gates are open. I don’t for a minute think that makes us welcome! But here it is. It must be this one.’

  Carter turned through opened wrought-iron gates in a tall, thick laurel hedge, and followed a curving gravelled drive to pull up in front of the house. First glance suggested it might have been built in the thirties. It had a definite art deco look. It was rendered white and presented a mix of straight and curved shapes, the windows projecting in rounded bays while the main entrance door – in fact, a double door – stood within a square recess. There was a first-floor balcony above it and, above that, below the roof was a decorative pointed design in several sections. The gardens were laid to lawn and shrubs.