Trial by Fire

by David W Robinson

  While the taxi skipped along the dual carriageway of Doncaster Road, and the tall, angular, redbrick new building came into view, Joe decided that of the two options, the latter was the more worrying. The obvious line of attack in that case would be to eventually corner and possibly kill Joe… or at the very least, see him go to prison for the rest of his life.

  When it came to the matter of Vaughan’s death, Joe found himself a compound of ambivalent emotions. He told himself he did not care, but at a much deeper level, the thought of ending a human life so violently and callously, filled him with anger. It was wrong. As Dockerty had pointed out, it was a crime and the perpetrator needed to be locked away.

  “If I had my way, I’d hang them,” he said to Sheila and Brenda after relating the morning’s events to them.

  Sheila tutted. “And then send apologies to all those innocent men you’ve executed?”

  “No, Sheila. With DNA—”

  “Joe, no one has the right to take another human being’s life,” Sheila argued. “Not even the state. Lock them up forever, if you have to, but if life is God-given, then only God can take it away.”

  Joe shut up. Sheila was not particularly evangelical, but her faith was one of the bedrocks of her life, and such arguments were a sure way to major rows.

  Brenda tactfully changed the subject. “So, are we in the same boat as we were when they accused you of being the Valentine Strangler?”

  “Not quite,” Joe replied. “Dockerty might be a hard nut, but he’s fair, and he doesn’t have the downer on me that Vickers had. I’m not likely to find my name plastered all over the Sanford Gazette this afternoon.” He slurped on a beaker of tea. “If it’s gonna be a long, drawn out affair, we’ll have to call Les Tanner and ask him to stand as chairman of the 3rd Age Club until I get it sorted. But once they check my car over, they’ll know it’s nothing to do with me and we should be back to normal.”

  The Lazy Luncheonette experienced a mid-morning lull every day from nine fifteen, by which time the brewery drivers were gone, and eleven o’clock when the first shoppers from Sanford Retail Park, seeking more wholesome and often cheaper fare than offered by the fast food outlets in the mall, began to arrive.

  Since moving into the new premises, with all those offices above them, there had been a slight increase in morning trade as the staff came down for takeaway orders, but even that was over by nine thirty.

  A hot Tuesday in July was no exception and while Joe enjoyed a beaker of tea at table five, in front of the counter (so numbered because the same table had always been his favourite in the old café) the rest of the room was empty. In the open plan kitchen, Lee was busy preparing lunches, and his wife Cheryl, was helping. Sheila and Brenda sat with Joe, Sheila concentrating on a magazine and Brenda writing a letter, leaving him the kind of quiet he wanted when coming to grips with a puzzle of this nature.

  Taking out a notebook, he began to write a list, but it had nothing to do with shopping.

  Brenda glanced sideways from her letter and asked, “What are you weighing up, Joe?” She leaned closer and read aloud. “Firemen, cops, passers-by, scroats… demolishers?” Brenda laughed. “Is there such a word?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe replied. “I’m trying to work out who could have got a hold of that pen and knife.”

  “Well, I’d cross out passers-by,” Sheila commented looking up from her magazine. “After the fire was put out, the site was fenced off.”

  Brenda giggled. “And I’d change demolishers to demolition crew, because I’m still not sure demolishers is a proper word.”

  “Go back to writing… who are you writing to, anyway?”

  “My cousin, June. You remember her. She met a Canadian while she was in the army, and settled down over there.”

  Joe nodded and then spoke to Sheila. “Someone passing by could have climbed over the fence.”

  “Then they’d be scroats, not passers-by,” Sheila retorted. “Anyway, the person who did this is, by definition, a scroat. It was deliberate, Joe. You’d be better off scrubbing both scroats and passers-by, and concentrating on the people who don’t like you.”

  Abandoning her letter for the second time, Brenda laughed again. “He doesn’t have enough pages in the notebook for them.”

  Joe dismissed her opinion with a grunt and went back to his list.

  A thought occurred to Sheila. “You know, whoever did this was planning for the long term, wasn’t he?”

  The other two looked up from their lists. “You’re assuming it’s a man,” Joe said.

  “How do you mean, Sheila?” Brenda asked, more pertinently.

  “The old place burned down over a year ago. They must have picked up the pen and the knife on the night-stroke-day of the fire. They’ve hung onto them for fifteen months. That begs the question, were they planning on murdering Vaughan all along, and if so, why wait until now?” She put down her magazine. “Think about your situation, Joe. You’ve all but beaten Vaughan, albeit thanks to Sir Douglas Ballantyne. There were niggles, I’ll grant you, but they were no worse than you get from some other people. If you were going to murder Vaughan, surely it would have been while we were across the road in that awful, temporary place. Not now.”

  Joe scowled. “I already told the cops all of that.”

  ***

  The post-lunch lull had set in by the time Detective Sergeant Barrett and the forensic officers turned up at half past one, and Joe was up to his elbows in helping wash those items which would not fit in the dishwasher; large pans, strainers, grill trays and such.

  In contrast to his hostility earlier in the day, Barrett was friendly enough, but business-like and obviously keen to get on with the job. “We’ve been ordered to go over your car, sir, and check the skips for any signs of discarded plastic sheeting.”

  “You’ll find the spare key for the car on a hook over there,” Joe said, gesturing to a rack where coats and other items of kitchen clothing hung. “I’ll let you get on with it. We have enough to do.”

  Barrett nodded at the three-man forensic team. “I have to speak to building security,” he announced.

  “I thought Dockerty had already secured the tapes.”

  “We tried,” Barrett agreed with a nod, “but when our man got here, they weren’t ready. They’re no longer using videotape. They’re digital and we need to take copies of the files.” He held up a couple of memory sticks.

  “Whaddya mean ‘no longer using videotape’?” Joe demanded. “No one’s used tape for years.”

  “Which is exactly what I meant, sir.”

  Barrett left, and Malcolm Devere, the head of the forensic team, his face mostly covered by a mask, was left to study the tiled wall in the corner where Joe had indicated.

  At length he asked, “Excuse me, Mr Murray, but you did say the car key was here?”

  “There. On the hook….” Joe trailed off looking where the forensic man stood, and a small, shallow, stick-on hook, where a bunch of general keys hung. There was no sign of the car key. He called out into the dining area. “Who took the sandwiches this morning?”

  “I did,” Sheila replied.

  “You’ve still got the spare car key in your pocket.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sheila said, rooting into the large pocket of her tabard. Her cheeks coloured as she came out with the keys. “Sorry, Joe.”

  He tutted and said to the forensic officer, “It’s always happening.” Drying a pan from the bain-marie, he nodded at the waste bin beneath the hooks. “Either that or the keys fall off into the bin.”

  “We lost ’em altogether the other week,” Lee commented. “Fell in the bin, no one noticed and we chucked ’em out.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said, passing the pan back to Lee. “And it cost me nearly eighty quid for a new one.”

  The forensic man took the key from Sheila and looked at the red tab on the back corner of the plastic surround. “Chipped, is it?”

  “No alarm fitted,” Joe confirmed. “but
the key disables the immobiliser.”

  “Right, Mr Murray. I’ll get out and get on with. Through the back?” He pointed at the rear open door.

  Joe nodded again. “Black Ford Ka. It’s the only one there and it should be parked near the door.”

  Half an hour passed. With most of the cleaning done, and few callers (Joe guessed people preferred to be out in the sunshine rather than sitting in a café facing away from the sun) Lee and Cheryl went home, and Joe, Sheila and Brenda seated themselves at table five, Joe ruminating on the crossword in the Daily Express, Sheila reading her magazine, Brenda picking up her letter again. Barrett came through and disappeared via the back door to join the forensic team.

  A further half hour went by with only one customer dropping in, and Joe was about to call it a day when Barrett came back in through the rear door.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Murray, but could you come out here, please?”

  “Problems?” Joe asked, getting to his feet and draining off his tea.

  “If you could just come with me, sir.”

  Sheila and Brenda exchanged concerned glances as Joe and Barrett passed through the kitchen and out into the back lane.

  Gleason Holdings had purchased a large chunk of land behind the old Britannia Parade, and levelled and tarmacked it to provide a parking area for the office workers. Joe was always first to arrive every morning and parked his car close to the rear door of The Lazy Luncheonette, but across the expanse of tarmac, the car park was now almost full.

  Standing at the open boot of the Ford Ka, two forensic officers, both wearing white jumps suits, had abandoned their face masks and were smoking cigarettes. The third, Devere, was in the driver’s seat of his van, making notes.

  With Barrett’s approach, the two men stubbed out their cigarettes and moved to one side.

  Before guiding Joe to the boot of the car, Barrett spoke in tones that were anything but reassuring. “Now, Mr Murray, during the interview this morning, you did say that you never carry empty cans of cooking oil in your car.”

  “Never.”

  “Malc?”

  Devere climbed out of the van, bringing his clipboard with him, and led them to the rear of Joe’s car.

  The boot was empty, save for a bag of wheel-changing tools. Its grey carpet appeared spotlessly clean to Joe, but small areas had been circled in blue dye by the forensic team.

  “We’ve photographed everything for reference.” Devere consulted his clipboard. “We found traces of cooking oil in several places. There is also an area—” He pointed to a larger, more elliptical marking on the carpet, “—where a drum has stood. From the arc of cooking oil left on the carpet, we can calculate the diameter of the receptacle, and we estimate that it must have been a standard, twenty-litre drum.”

  The colour drained from Joe’s tanned features.

  Barrett was no more and no less pleasant yet business-like than he had been all morning. “How do you explain that, Mr Murray?”

  “I, er… I don’t. I can’t.”

  “From what Malcolm tells me, Mrs Riley had the keys, and took the vehicle out this morning. Could she have placed a drum of oil in the boot?”

  “What? No, of course not.” Joe was not about to let the police even try to lay the blame on one of his employees. “She takes sandwiches to Ingleton Engineering. It’s a small firm about a mile down the road.” He waved in the general direction of Sanford town centre. “It’s not a big order. They’re bagged up individually and she carries them in a cardboard box. She wouldn’t even open the boot.”

  “This engineering company wouldn’t have need of a drum of cooking oil?”

  “We’ve been supplying them with sandwiches for forty years, and they’ve never asked for one yet.”

  “You see the position we’re in, sir,” Barrett explained. “During your interview this morning, you assured us that your car had not moved since you got home last night. You also assured us, and you’ve just repeated that you never carry drums of cooking oil, other than new and unused, in the boot of this car. So I have to ask, how come the cooking oil got there? How come there was a drum, which appears to have been opened at some point, allowing the traces of oil to spill, in your car boot?”

  “And I’ve already said, I don’t know. Other than me or one of the girls when they took out the sandwich order, no one has been near that car since… I can’t remember when.” He turned on Devere. “You’re sure it is cooking oil?”

  “No doubt about it,” the forensic officer replied.

  “The same oil I use?”

  Devere shrugged, “I’d have to have a sample of your oil to compare. Can you give me one?”

  “I’ll get a drum from the kitchen.”

  Joe took a pace forward before Devere stopped him.

  “It would be better if we could take a sample from an old drum, Joe. Fresh oil would not be contaminated and it may lead us to the wrong conclusion.”

  “You mean it may prove me innocent?”

  Devere remained ambivalent under Joe’s sour eye. “Or guilty.”

  Joe pointed at the back wall alongside The Lazy Luncheonette’s rear exit, where a single, metal door, in pale turquoise stood locked. The upper half bore louvre slats for ventilation, and although it was strong in appearance, it was double secured with a brass padlock, and an inset mortise lock.

  “Keys?” Devere asked.

  “In the kitchen on the same hook as the car keys… should have been.”

  “Double locked?” Barrett asked while they waited for the forensic man to reappear.

  “We had a lot of trouble in the old place,” Joe explained. “There was a back yard there, and we had a shed at the bottom where we stored the old drums and other material for recycling. Cardboard and the like. Kids used to break in regular, nicking the drums and stuff, so I set up two padlocks. Course, they went up in smoke with the building, but when we moved into this place, I took one look at the cheap lock on that cupboard door and thought, no way. They’ll jemmy it in minutes. So I bought a brass padlock for it.”

  “Not worth that much, are they?” Barrett asked. “The drums, I mean?”

  “I get two or three pounds each off the recycling man. It’s not that, though. It’s the mess the thieving gits create when they break into cupboards like this. You should know. You must see plenty of it.”

  Devere returned and after collecting sealed sample tubes and a funnel from his van, tried to unlock the door. Joe and Barrett watched with interest as he tried to turn the key. At length, he checked the other keys on the ring, trying one or two.

  Joe took them from him. “Here. Give me the damn things. I dunno. Bloody cops. Can’t even open a padlock with the…”

  He trailed off as he, too, found it impossible to turn the key in the padlock. With a frown of puzzlement, he ran through the keys on the ring until he found the one he was seeking, and inserted it into the door lock. He turned it and the door opened, but only a fraction of an inch before the padlock stopped it. Trying the padlock key once more, he found he could not open it.

  “Strange. Probably seized up, eh? I have some three-in-one oil in the café. That should loosen it.” He handed the keys back to Devere and hurried into the kitchen, where he spent a few moments going through his general store cupboard, where, amongst the washing up pads, detergents and other general, non-food necessities, he dug out a small can of oil.

  Rushing back out, he tilted the lock upwards and with the can’s plastic feed pressed to the padlock keyhole, squeezed a few drops in.

  “It’ll take a minute,” he promised as he returned to the kitchen and put the can of oil away.

  When he got back outside, it was to find Devere trying the lock and shrugging his shoulders.

  “Joe, this is the wrong key.”

  “It’s the right key,” Joe insisted. “It’s just needs a bit more time for the oil to soak through.”

  With another shrug, Devere backed off to wait.

  “Have you had trouble wit
h this lock before, sir?” Barrett asked.

  “Never,” Joe assured him. “We’re in this cupboard every day. Chucking in cardboard, waste paper, plastics, and, obviously, the used cooking oil drums. It was probably a bit nippy last night and the lock is iced up.”

  Even to himself the excuse sounded hollow. The temperature had not dropped much below 15 degrees overnight.

  Devere said so. “Joe, it’s been hot enough to fry eggs on the patio overnight.”

  “Then maybe there’s some muck got in the lock.”

  “It’s the wrong key,” the forensic man insisted, and stepped forward to try it one more time.

  “And I’m telling you it’s the right key,” Joe said, his temper beginning to get the better of him.

  Devere came away again, unable to open the padlock. “Sergeant Barrett, this is the wrong key for this padlock.”

  Barrett faced Joe, his features now grim. “Mr Murray, it looks to me like you may have something to hide in there.”

  “Don’t talk so bloody stupid, man.”

  “I’m sorry, but given this problem, and the traces of oil we found in your car, I’m going to have to take you back to the station for further questioning. I’m also going to insist that the café is closed and remains closed so our forensic officers can work on it, and I’ll need all the keys to your flat.”

  “No way are you searching my flat. Listen, Barrett—”

  “We’ll obtain a warrant to search it, sir. My main concern in asking for the keys is that none of your friends can go there and disturb any potential evidence.”

  “How dare you?” Sheila said, making all of them aware that she and Brenda had appeared at the back door.

  “”Madam?” Barrett asked.

  “How dare you insinuate that Brenda or I would go to Joe’s flat without his permission, and how dare you imply that we might tamper with evidence? My husband was a respected police officer in this town, and both Brenda and I are law-abiding citizens.” She glowered at the young detective. “So is Joe.”