Trial by Fire

by David W Robinson

  He cut the connection, put the phone on the table alongside his folder, and concentrated again on Joe.

  “Okay, Mr Murray, let’s move on again. Amongst the evidence collected at Developer’s Dream, there were two items we’re interested in. Ike?”

  Barrett leaned down to pick up a sealed evidence bag, which he passed to Dockerty.

  “I am now showing Mr Murray evidence exhibit labelled, GV-stroke-RD-stroke-one-five-stroke-one.” Dockerty passed the bag to Joe and continued talking. “This is a chef’s knife with an eight-inch blade and a wooden handle. The blade is badly scorched and so is the handle, but the initials L.M. can clearly be seen having been scratched into the handle. Mr Murray, do you recognise this knife?”

  Holding the bag, Joe had recognised it immediately. “Yes. It belongs to my nephew, Lee.”

  “Lee Murray?”

  “Correct.” Joe took a deep breath to calm a mind already racing with ideas. “His father lives in Australia, and Lee’s mother brought him back to England while he was still a boy. I became a sort of father figure to him. When he left school, he wanted to play professional rugby, but I insisted on him having a trade in case it didn’t pan out. I took him on as an apprentice in the café, and sent him to catering college. It turned out to be a wise move because he suffered a knee injury playing rugby which ended his career before it got properly going. Anyway, while he was at college, I bought him a full set of chef’s knives. There was a lot of thieving at that place, so Lee scratched his initials into the handles. This—” Joe held up the bag, “—is one of that set.”

  “I see.” Dockerty considered his next words. “That knife was found on the floor of Developer’s Dream, quite near to Mr Vaughan’s body, and we suspect, although it make take some confirming, that it was used to stab him before the fire was started. I have to ask, Mr Murray, when did you last use that knife?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe replied, “but I can tell you it was over a year ago.”

  “Why so certain?” Barrett asked.

  “Because it went up in smoke with the old café.”

  Having delivered his coup de grace, Joe waited for a response, but he did not get one. Both police officers stared owlishly at him, waiting for more.

  With an irritated cluck, he went on. “The old place was left in ruins, and according to Brad Kilburn, who was the Watch Manager that night, too, it was unsafe. I lost almost everything that night. We’d been to Blackpool for the weekend, and all I had left were the clothes I stood up in and the few in my suitcase.”

  “Your nephew could have taken the knives home?” Barrett asked.

  “What planet are you living on, Sergeant?” Joe demanded. “Lee has a young son. You don’t take lethally sharpened chef’s knives home with you where an inquisitive kid might get hold of them. On the night of the fire, they were hanging on the wall in the old Lazy Luncheonette, where they always hung, and neither I, nor Lee have seen them since. I claimed a new set on the insurance.”

  “You don’t know how that knife ended up at Vaughan’s home, then?” Dockerty asked.

  Joe shrugged. “I can offer you a theory, but you already know what that will be.”

  Dockerty mirrored the shrug and nodded to his sergeant, who produced the second piece of evidence.

  The bag was labelled GV/RD/15/2 and contained a charred, Sheaffer ballpoint pen. The matte silver finish had been burned off, and Joe had no doubts that the thing was unusable, but as he turned the bag over, he once more recognised it right away.

  “The pen is badly scorched, the body clearly melted in places, but the barrel of the pen is engraved on one side,” Dockerty was saying to the machine. “The words are difficult to make out, but they read, ‘To Joe, with thanks, Alec and Julia’.” The superintendent looked up from his report. “Do you recognise that pen, Mr Murray?”

  “Yes. It’s mine.”

  “The inscription would indicate that it was a gift.”

  Joe nodded. “From Alec and Julia Staines. Their son, Wesley, got married last summer, or the one before. It was up in Windermere, and there was some trouble which I helped sort out with the local police.”

  “A drug dealer murdered,” Dockerty said, checking his notes once more.

  “Ten out of ten for doing your homework. Alec and Julia gave me the pen as a thank you for helping young Wes.”

  Barrett made a note of it. “When did you last use the pen, Mr Murray?”

  “I can’t say that I’ve ever used it. I’m not one for frills and fripperies. When I got home from Windermere, I chucked it in a drawer in my apartment.”

  “Your present apartment?” Dockerty wanted to know.

  “No. My living quarters above the old Lazy Luncheonette. Like the knife, as far as I’m concerned, it went up with the old building. I’ve never seen it since, and this time I didn’t claim for it on the insurance. In fact, until you just showed it to me, I’d forgotten it even existed.”

  “So once again, you have no idea how it came to be at Gerard Vaughan’s house?”

  “I have ideas, yes, but I don’t know anything for a fact.” Once again Joe sat forward. “Let’s face it, all you have is someone who saw a car similar to mine, half an hour before the Fire Brigade were called, a knife which may or may not have killed Vaughan, and a pen which I haven’t seen since it was first given to me. I don’t know who’s doing what, here, but whoever he is, he’s leading you by the nose and pointing the finger at me, but you’re gonna have to come up with something a lot more persuasive than this little lot.”

  Dockerty, too, leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “On the other hand, you may just have done it and be playing these tricks to double bluff us.”

  “Why?”

  The superintendent frowned. “So we won’t charge you.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. I don’t mean why would I lay a trail like this. I mean why would I murder Vaughan in the first place?”

  “You have a lot of antipathy for him,” Barrett pointed out. “You admitted as much yourself.”

  “Yes. It’s true to say I didn’t like him. But I came out on top in the end.”

  Once more their faces were blank, and Joe let out along sigh.

  “Look, Vaughan bribed his way through various council departments to get the original Britannia Parade knocked down and the new building put up.”

  “Unfounded allegations, Mr Murray,” Barrett put in.

  “True, but it’s not like I’m repeating them to the press, is it?” Joe paused a moment. “Anyway, mine was the last business still operating because I wouldn’t give way, and the reason I wouldn’t is because Vaughan never wanted The Lazy Luncheonette in the new block. Eventually, Sanford Borough Council took out a compulsory purchase order, but I threatened to appeal it and hold them up some more. We then went away to Blackpool for the Easter weekend, and when we came back, the place had been razed to the ground.”

  “An act you blamed Vaughan for… er, inciting the fire, that is,” Barrett said.

  “I did. I had no proof, and I had no choice but to accept that he would get away with it. Anyway, they shifted me into a new building on the other side of Doncaster Road. I lost a huge amount of trade thanks to them. Then my fairy godfather turned up.”

  “Who?” Dockerty demanded.

  “Sir Douglas Ballantyne. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of him. He’s one of the richest men in the country. I’d sorted out some trouble at his Blackpool depot, and he was being threatened by a family member. He asked me to look into it. I did, and I pinned the perpetrator down. Sir Douglas was so grateful that he bought a majority shareholding in Gleason Holdings, Vaughan’s company. He also ordered Vaughan to install The Lazy Luncheonette in the new building, and at an advantageous rent for the first two years.” Joe grinned. “I won.”

  “But Vaughan continued to make life difficult for you, didn’t he?” the superintendent asked.

  “He nit-picked a lot, sure. The cheeky sod even charged me
rent on the cubbyhole outside where we have to store our recyclables. But his niggling was no worse than Environmental Health or even the Fire Service. I could handle it. Trust me, he was more irritated than me by the way things turned out. I even found new customers from the offices on the floors above us.”

  With a resigned sigh, Dockerty asked, “Is all this relevant?”

  “It goes right to the heart of the matter, I’d say,” Joe asserted. “What possible motive did I have for murdering him?”

  “You hated him,” Barrett pointed out for the second time.

  “I disliked him,” Joe argued. “To hate someone, you have to feel something for them, and I had no interest in him. Besides, there are plenty of people in this town who I don’t like. If I had to go round killing them all, Sanford would be a ghost town. I had no motive for murdering Gerard Vaughan.”

  “Leaving that aside for the moment, try looking at it from our point of view, Joe. We have a murdered man, his house is burned down, and the prima facie evidence points at you.”

  “Exactly as it’s meant to,” Joe argued. “You know me, Dockerty. I may not be the sharpest blade under the cutlers’ grindstone, but I’m not dumb. If I was gonna get rid of Vaughan, I wouldn’t leave a trail leading you right back to me, would I?”

  “You could have recovered the knife and pen from the old building. You could have dropped the knife after killing Vaughan, knowing that the fire would erase all forensic evidence. The pen could have fallen out of your pocket, and you couldn’t know that your car was seen there.”

  Joe shook his head sadly. “I never went into the old building. Check Brad Kilburn’s report on it. He declared it unsafe. The only people who went anywhere near it were the demolition contractors. And even if I had, why would I take a knife which could never be used again and a pen that would never work again?”

  “Souvenirs,” Barrett suggested.

  “I’m not that sentimental,” Joe retorted. “Hell’s bells, I never even used the pen even though it was a gift. I repeat, you have nothing. Not even a motive. A lot of circumstantial evidence, exactly the same as Vickers had when he tried to pin the Sanford stranglings on me. Now if you can’t come up with anything more concrete, can I go back to my business?”

  “Not yet. I’m not entirely happy—”

  Joe cut Dockerty off. “What will it take to convince you that I’m innocent?”

  Quiet descended on the room. Even Joe struggled to come up with an angle that would sway the debate one way or the other.

  Barrett cut into the silence. “You don’t keep a mileage account for your car?”

  Joe was perplexed. “Why would I?”

  “Well, I was just thinking, sir, you could itemise the mileage done for business separate from your private mileage. You know, I have to log my mileage when I’m on police business so that I can claim my expenses. I thought you might do the same for tax purposes.”

  “My bookkeeping is complicated enough,” Joe replied. “I just log the car’s petrol receipts, and claim twenty percent for business. The tax and VAT people have never argued about it.”

  More silence, which Dockerty broke this time.

  “Can you account for your movements yesterday?”

  “All day?” Joe waited for the detective’s agreement. “Let’s see, I opened up as usual at six, and spent the day in the café. We closed at half past three, the cleaning was done by four. Sheila and Brenda went home, but I stayed behind, like I always do, checking my perishables, frozen foods and confectionery. I was short in some areas, so I made a list and then went to the very same cash and carry you mentioned, where I bought soft drinks, cakes, buns, and some frozen items: chips, ice cream, that kind of thing. I came back to the café about six-ish, put all the stuff away, then went to the Miner’s Arms, where I had a couple of drinks and a snack before going home. Once home, I never went out again. I had a meal at about eight thirty, cashed up and did my books in front of the TV and then went to bed about ten fifteen. Can’t be sure of the exact time, but the BBC news was on when I switched the telly off.”

  “What were you watching on TV?”

  Joe grinned slyly. “An old episode of Inspector Morse. The one where his house catches fire.”

  “Joe.” There was a warning edge to Dockerty’s voice.

  “Well, get your sergeant to stop asking idiot questions. I wasn’t watching TV. It was just on.”

  Dockerty sucked in is breath. “You had no contact with Gerard Vaughan yesterday?”

  “He called into the café mid-morning, moaning about the lorries parked out back.”

  “Delivery trucks, sir?” Barrett asked.

  “No… well, yes and no. He was always moaning about the lorries delivering to us, but he was more concerned with the draymen from Sanford Brewery, and the way they crowd the lane early doors. My argument is they’re usually out of the way before the office wallahs turn up, and he never moaned about trucks delivering stationery for the architects on the third floor, or the computer supplies people at street level. You know, he even blamed me for the truckers who park in the back lane overnight, and most of those are gone by the time we open.”

  “That was the only contact you had with him yesterday?”

  Joe realised that Dockerty was fishing for something, but he was not sure what. “Unless you have evidence to the contrary, yes.”

  “No, I have no evidence to contradict you.”

  Not fishing then, other than hoping Joe might slip up and incriminate himself. “We’re all over the place here, Dockerty. Do you have anything which will definitely put me in the frame for this?”

  “Nothing substantial, sir, no. But think of it from my point of view. Someone went along to Vaughan’s house last night and after murdering him, spread cooking oil everywhere—”

  “Cooking oil.” It was a eureka moment for Joe.

  The detectives exchanged glances and then concentrated on Joe. “What about it?” Barrett asked.

  “Listen to me for a minute, please. I know that stuff. Now let’s imagine I did it. I went to his house, murdered him, then set the fire. This means taking a twenty-litre drum of cooking oil and spreading it everywhere. Once the drum was empty, there would be a film of oil all over it. You can’t avoid it. If I put that in the boot of my car, there would be traces. Your forensic people will find them. I never carry cooking oil in my car. All right, not never, but only in extreme circumstances like when we’ve run out and the delivery hasn’t arrived. But those are brand new drums, still sealed and they don’t leave traces. Get your people to go over the boot of my car, I guarantee they will find nothing.” He sat back, triumphant. “Would that persuade you that it’s nothing to do with me?”

  “It would help, certainly,” Dockerty agreed.

  “You could have cleaned the car up,” Barrett argued.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to eradicate all traces of oils?” Joe demanded. “It would take weeks, not minutes. If I had an empty drum of oil in my car, there will be traces and your scientific support people will find them.”

  “Unless you put down plastic sheeting,” Barrett pointed out.

  “You really are looking to hit me with this, aren’t you?”

  In order to stop the argument, Dockerty came to a decision. “All right, Joe, I take your point even if Sergeant Barrett doesn’t. Where is your car? At the café?”

  Joe nodded.

  “I’ll send the forensic people down there as soon as I can.” The superintendent closed his folder and checked his watch. “Interview concluded at nine fifty-four.”

  Barrett switched off the recorder and ejected the tapes. He took out a bag and dropped one tape in it. “I’m sealing this in your presence, Mr Murray,” he said, and scrawled his signature across the envelope seal. He pushed it across the desk to Joe, and handed over his pen. “If you could sign too, across the seal, please.”

  Joe scribbled his signature and handed it back.

  Dockerty gathered together his be
longings. “You’re free to go for the time being, Joe, but before you do, I want to stress a couple of things. First off, you’re not out of the woods. I’m letting you go because I have no further evidence to let me keep you here, but I will be looking for it. Until I say otherwise, you are still a suspect. You understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Second, I know you. You’re a hard-nosed, cantankerous and stubborn old sod with an eye for detail, and no matter how much I tell you to mind your own business, you won’t.”

  “Damn right, I won’t. Not while I’m accused.”

  “Suspected,” Dockerty corrected. “Not accused, suspected. What I’m getting at here, Joe, is you must not talk to your niece, Gemma, about this.” Dockerty held his hands apart in a gesture which accepted the inevitable. “She’s family and I can’t stop you seeing her, but if you badger her about the case, our progress, or potential evidence, you may be trying to clear your name, but you will also be jeopardising her career. I know you’re annoyed with her for the way she arrested you this morning, but she was doing her job, and according to both her and Constable Gillespie you made it impossible for her to do anything else. That aside, I’m sure you don’t want to wreck her career because of your temper. If you learn anything, anything at all, which may be germane to this investigation, you must bring it to me. Once again, are we clear on this matter?”

  “Yes.”

  Dockerty stood up. “In that case, you can go and we’ll catch up with you at the café later this morning or early this afternoon.”

  Chapter Four

  In the rear seat of the taxi taking him back to The Lazy Luncheonette, Joe struggled with a febrile mind incapable of settling on a single item from the plethora of information which had bombarded him during the morning.

  Not for the first time, someone was trying to set him up for a murder he had not committed, but the major question was, why.

  The last time it happened, the case of the Sanford Valentine Strangler, it was because he had had a one-night stand with the latest victim: he knew her. Was the same true this time? He knew Vaughan, he had an antagonistic business relationship with the man. Was the killer making an effort to hide his identity by capitalising on that? Or was it truly personal: someone with a grudge against Joe who had decided to deal with it in this drastic manner?