Trial by Fire

by David W Robinson

  “It’s likely to come out anyway, Mr Pemberton.” Denise told him. “Right now, Ray Dockerty is short of suspects. Joe is all but cleared, so they’ll begin to delve into Vaughan’s history. Your name is bound to come up sometime.”

  A glimmer of confidence appeared in Pemberton’s eyes. “As I understand it, all his records, including the hard drive on his laptop, are gone. Up in smoke.”

  “Then you understand it wrong,” Joe told him, and took some satisfaction from the alarm which quickly replaced Pemberton’s confidence. “The records are gone, sure. So is the computer hard drive. But they didn’t go up in smoke. Vaughan’s killer took them, which means that if it isn’t you, the killer has everything on you. And he’s not likely to want the help of Environmental Health. He’s more likely to want every penny in your bank account.”

  Joe stood up, ready to leave, and glowered down at the slobbering, beaten man.

  “When they send you down, ask for Sanford nick. As prisons go, it’s pretty comfortable.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sitting in Denise’s car after leaving the clubhouse, Joe wound down the window to let in some hot, yet fresh summer air.

  “We have to take all this to Dockerty,” Denise said.

  “I know, but I’d rather not. At least not until we get closer to the killer. Something like this could panic him into doing either a runner or something stupid.”

  “Joe, we’re uncovering corruption. If we don’t report it, then we’re guilty of withholding information. You know what Ray said. If we turn up anything, it has to go straight to him.”

  Joe seethed in frustration. “I just don’t like the idea of him getting away.”

  “Him?” Denise sound surprised. “You’re sure it’s a he?”

  “Dockerty was.”

  “But he doesn’t know what we know. What about the women Vaughan paid to entertain these men? You’re sure it’s not one of them who got short-changed?”

  “It has to be someone near to me. Someone who knew me well enough to frame me.”

  “Or someone who could pay a local yokel. There are just too many people for us to go after, now. We have to hand it back to Dockerty.”

  Fuming in silence, Joe watched her fiddle with the key getting it into the ignition, and the connection snapped in is mind.

  “The keys.”

  “We know how he got the key, Joe. He stole it from your café.”

  “Keys-z-z-z,” Joe said. “Plural. As in more than one of. Yes, we know how he got the car key, but how did he get the key for the outside cupboard?”

  About to start the car, Denise paused. “He didn’t. He cut it off with a bolt cutter.”

  “The padlock, yes, but there’s a second lock on that door. An ordinary lock. He needed a key for that. How did he get it? There are only three. I have one, Lee has one and the third is hanging on the rack in The Lazy Luncheonette. He couldn’t steal that because we’d have noticed it instantly. So how did he get it?”

  Denise fired the engine and slipped the car into reverse. Looking over shoulder to reverse out of the parking space, she said, “You’re sure building security don’t have one?”

  “They may. You think it’s one of them?”

  “The only alternative is someone stole their key or, more likely, made a plaster cast of it, then had one cut.”

  She dropped the car into first and pulled away along the gravel drive towards the main Sanford road.

  “Well look, before we go rushing to Dockerty with all this, stop in at The Lazy Luncheonette and let’s speak to security.”

  Joe could see the doubt on her face.

  “Come on, Denise. It’ll only take a few minutes and we may have even more to tell your CID chums.”

  “All right. You’ve persuaded me. Which way.”

  “Turn right and we’re a mile up on the right, but you’ll have to go past and double back at the roundabout.”

  But when they got there, Todd Henshaw was adamant that it could not have happened.

  Opening the key cupboard, he gestured at the plethora of keys hanging there. “We can get into any place in the building, including your café, Joe. We have to have access in case of fire or any other emergency. But—” He stressed the word, “The keys have to be booked out.”

  Returning to his station where he could watch the various camera feeds from around the building, he opened the top drawer of the desk, and took out a hardbound, A4 notebook. Many of its pages were full, and each page was divided into columns listing key numbers, time out, signature, time in, signature, reason for taking the key.

  “Most of them are general keys,” Henshaw went on. “For meter cupboards, electrical control boards, storage areas which the cleaners need access to. Your outside cupboard is key number twenty-two.”

  He backed up several pages, before the start of the month, and ran his finger carefully down the column of key numbers.

  Looking over his shoulder, tracking the numbers with his eye, Joe could see, long before Henshaw got to the end, that Key 22 had never been taken out.

  “The only possibility, Joe, is that one of the security staff took it, but I can’t see it. We’re always double-manned, as you know, and there’s the danger that his partner could have noticed. Besides, the bod on that CCTV looks too tall to be one of us.”

  “Doesn’t rule any of you out,” Joe told him. “You could have sold it on. But thanks, Todd.”

  Ten minutes later, they sat at table five in The Lazy Luncheonette where Sheila and Brenda were in mufti after the lunchtime rush. Lee had already gone home, and the two women were cruising down to closing time.

  “One of the security men could have taken the key and made a cast for it, then passed it on to the killer,” Joe told them after Denise had recounted their day’s trial. “Or the killer could have taken it from here and made a cast of it.”

  “Who would have access to it here, Joe?” Sheila asked. “We’d have noticed.”

  “Would we?” Joe reached behind him and gathered up several chocolate bars from the counter. Tossing them on the table, he began to unwrap one. “Help yourselves,” he invited them. “Just imagine we’re in the middle of a rush and the recycling mob call. They come in through the back door and take the key. They’ve done it enough times in the past. Then there’s the Fire Service, Vaughan himself when he came nosying round, and there’s probably a hundred and one others who could have lifted the key for a few minutes, made an impression of it, and then put it back.”

  “Well, I don’t recall anyone anywhere near the keys,” Brenda said. “Not for weeks. Months maybe. And does it all matter, Joe? After everything you and Denise have learned, you’re in the clear.”

  “But I’m not,” he protested, “and that’s what’s so galling. I’m putting forward alternatives, but if Dockerty cannot place me at Vaughan’s or here, then the same is true of all these other possibilities. There’s not one shred of evidence to convict them or clear me, and on that basis, I’ll still be under suspicion. Am I right, Denise?”

  Chewing on chocolate, she nodded gravely, and then swallowed the sweet. “I’m afraid so. I don’t believe Dockerty suspects Joe, but because there’s a multitude of evidence pointing at him, Ray has no choice but to keep him under suspicion.”

  “But the video,” Brenda cried. “You said it couldn’t possibly be Joe.”

  “And it wasn’t,” Denise assured her. “But how do we know that Joe didn’t pay this man to plant the empty drum? You see? They don’t have enough to convict Joe, but they can’t clear him either. He remains a suspect. If Ray didn’t play it that way, he’d be failing in his duty, and he’d be called to account by his superiors.” Denise checked her watch. “And talking of Ray Dockerty, Joe, it’s nearly three o’clock and time we were getting to Gale Street.”

  “One last call before we go there,” Joe insisted. “Let’s try Frank Utters again.”

  “Who?”

  “Utters the Cutters,” Sheila translated. “The he
el and key man in the market.”

  “Oh him. The one who told me he’d cut a car key for you, Joe. Would he do anything so hooky as cutting a key from a mould?”

  “Frank’s like most traders in this town. They’ll do whatever they can to earn a crust.”

  Market day in Sanford was Wednesday, but the indoor market hall, close to The Gallery shopping mall, was open six days a week. As on any Monday, shoppers were thin on the ground.

  “It’s worse tomorrow,” Joe told Denise as they made their way along the different aisles to the top corner and Utters’ stall. “This town is dead as a dodo every Tuesday.”

  When they got to Utters, they found Frank taking his ease over a cup of tea while studying form on the racing pages of the Sanford Gazette. Joe confronted him, but Utters was reluctant to commit at first.

  “Cutting keys from a mould is illegal, Joe,” he complained.

  “Why do you think we came to you?” Joe retorted. “Come on, Frank, you know me, and I know you. As long as it’s a paying customer you don’t care much what they want.”

  Utters clucked. “How come I’ve got a worse reputation than you and I never murdered anyone.”

  “Neither did I. Now, come on. Let’s hear it.”

  The key cutter sighed. “Yeah, all right. I did one. About three weeks ago.”

  “Can you describe the man?” Denise asked.

  “Man? It was a woman.”

  Denise hid her surprise. Joe did not.

  “A woman?”

  “Yeah. Thirty-ish, blonde. Quite, er, tasty if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I can remember,” Joe replied. “So how did she explain needing the key cut from a mould?”

  “Reckoned one of her brats kept losing it, or flushing it down the lavatory or whatever. I don’t ask questions, Joe. As long as it’s not a front door key, I’ll do it, and this wasn’t a front door key. More like an outside cupboard, if you want my opinion.”

  Joe dug into his pockets and came out with his bunch of keys. Sorting through them, he held the bunch up by the recycling shed key. “Like this?”

  Utters nodded. “Exactly like that. Listen, Joe, you’re not going to plod with this, are you?”

  “Some of it, “Joe admitted, “but don’t worry, Frank. No names, no pack drill.”

  It was a short walk from the market hall to the police station, where, after being asked to wait because Superintendent Dockerty was in conference with his senior detectives, they were eventually admitted to his office.

  Dockerty did not appear to be in the best of moods, but he still greeted them with a barbed joke. “Here they are, look, Ideal Homes and Doctor Washed Pots.”

  Joe scowled. “Have you ever thought of becoming a comedian, Dockerty? If so, take my advice and stick to directing traffic.”

  “What do you want? As you can see, we’re busy getting nowhere.”

  Over the next twenty minutes they brought him up to speed about the things they had learned during the day. Dockerty listened intently, but Joe noticed Gemma and Barrett exchanged the occasional awed glance.

  When they were through, Dockerty said, “Dare I ask how you came by most of the information?”

  “PACE,” Denise said with a broad smile.

  Even Joe frowned. “PACE?”

  “Police and Criminal Evidence Act,” Denise explained, and then to Dockerty she said, “We ignored it.” She leaned forward resting her elbows on the superintendent’s desk and cupping her chin in her hands. “Let’s face it, Ray, if you’d spoken to these people, they’d have had lawyers crawling all over you. All we did was apply a bit of, er, pressure.”

  “None of it will stand up in court without formal investigations, sir,” Barrett pointed out.

  “I don’t need you to tell me that, Ike. However, the information Denise and Joe have brought does permit us to question these people, with or without lawyers. And if you’re right, Denise, Joe, about the killer having taken all of Vaughan’s information, then the victims are sure to be blackmailed.” To his junior officers, he went on, “Full team briefing first thing tomorrow. Ike, get onto Leeds, we may need more bodies. Gemma, speak to Vickers in Wakefield, tell him we might have to call on him for manpower, and while you’re at it, track down this MP and then get onto his local force. If he’s not at home, talk to the Met. Someone needs to speak to him if only so he can arrange a little damage limitation.”

  Joe grunted. “Blooming typical. Nobody gives a hoot about my reputation, but because he’s an MP he gets the chance to realise his assets and scarper to Brazil before it all hits the fan.”

  “He’d be wasting his time then,” Dockerty riposted. “We’ve had an extradition treaty with Brazil since the late nineteen nineties.” His face became more serious. “I’m sorry about this, Joe, but unfortunately, I still cannot rule you out as a suspect. I believe you’re completely innocent, but if I strike you from the list, people above me will be asking why.”

  Joe glanced sourly at Denise. “That’s already been made clear to me.” He turned to Gemma. “Have you turned up anything at all?”

  “Only Vaughan’s naughty parties,” she replied. “We spoke to the neighbour, Spencer. He had a moan about you two, and then told us what he’d told you. We were about to begin investigating who might have attended. Looks like we don’t have to bother now.”

  In what appeared to Joe as an effort to re-establish control over proceedings, Dockerty ordered, “I want informal interviews with these people at the Town Hall. Particularly Pemberton. With his links to Vaughan, there is no way he could sit on that bench. Use the threat of charges as a lever.” He turned a more benign eye on Joe. “By the way, we owe you a vote of thanks.”

  “Makes a change. What have I done to deserve such praise.”

  “Eric Neave.”

  “Who… oh, the silly old duffer I shared a cell with.”

  “The very man. When you told me about his azalea bush, I got onto Leeds, and they lifted it out of the planter. They found the knife which was used to murder Neave’s wife. Enough DNA on it to start our own laboratory, but we found traces of the neighbour on it. Neave had been saying he was innocent all along. Looks like he was telling the truth.”

  “Hmm.” Joe shook his head. “You’re sure he didn’t pay the neighbour to get rid of his wife? From all I heard, Neave and his missus didn’t enjoy the friendliest of relationships.”

  “The neighbour is being questioned.” With that, Dockerty turned back to his two officers to continue the briefing.

  Joe switched off. In front of him on the desk was a buff folder from which the edge of a large photograph projected. He opened the folder and found himself staring at an image of Vaughan’s badly charred body.

  Frowning in disgust, he shuffled it to the back and did the same with two more shots of the body taken further away and from different angles. While the chatter continued around him he next looked at a picture of Vaughan’s laptop, melted and charred, its back open where the hard drive had been removed. Next was an image of Lee’s kitchen knife, its once shiny blade now blackened, but the initials L.M. standing out clearly on the burned handle.

  Joe recalled the day, almost fifteen years ago, when he gave the set to the young Lee.

  “You make sure no one nicks ’em, lad,” he had said. “I know what those thieving sods at the college are like.”

  “No worries, Uncle Joe. Anyone tries and I’ll paste ’em.”

  Joe had disapproved of the threat, but replied more logically. “You have to be able to identify them, you idiot. Put some kind of mark on them so you know they’re yours.”

  Lee had spent most of the day using a nail and his raw strength to carve initials into the handles so deeply that even the ravages of two fires would not erase them.

  Joe shuffled the photograph to the back and found himself looking at an image of the pen. Once again, it was blackened and charred, the fine matte silver coating burned off, tossed incongruously on the floor, as if it had fallen t
here. The image evoked memories of the day Alec Staines had brought it into The Lazy Luncheonette.

  The week previously Joe had cleared up a murder in Windermere, and exonerated Alec’s son, Wes. But he was loath to accept the pen.

  “I was only doing what I always do.”

  “You got Wes off the hook, and Julia was pretty snappy with you at one bit. It’s a bit of summat and nowt, Joe, but it’s just our way of saying thanks.”

  So he accepted it, but he never used it, and even if he could not see the inscription in the photograph, he could recite it. “To Joe, with thanks. Alec and Julia.”

  “Enjoying our album, Joe?”

  Joe looked up from the photographs to find Dockerty staring at him.

  “It’s certainly bringing up some memories, but I wouldn’t keep it in the cupboard with my wedding pictures.”

  Dockerty reached across and closed the folder before taking it back. “As a suspect, you shouldn’t even be looking at them.”

  “What do you think I’m gonna do? Scan them and slot them into my black album? Are we through here, yet?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, yes,” Dockerty replied. “Thanks. Both of you. You’ve given us lines of inquiry we can pursue, but I won’t kid you, Joe. This could be a long haul.”

  Joe stood up, Denise followed suit.

  “Keep us informed,” Joe said as they left.

  With Joe leading the way, he and Denise stepped out into the hot sun of five in the afternoon.

  “You staying at my place again, or are you going home?” he asked.

  “Why? Are you eager to see the back of me, or looking for a bit more, er, action?”

  “No, it’s not that. I don’t have much in the fridge or the freezer. Tell you what. Let’s go over to the frozen food shop. Coupla TV dinners, eh?”

  “Why not?”

  They ambled across the market square, through the stalls, Joe nodding or saying hello to people he knew, prompting Denise to ask, “How come everyone seems to know you?”

  “History,” Joe replied. “This is a mining town. At one time, half the population worked at the pit, and the other half ran the businesses which fed off the miners’ wages. My old man opened the café just after World War Two, and it’s been a fixture on Doncaster Road ever since. Right now, I’m the last of the original Murrays, but Lee has the family name and when he takes over, he’ll carry it on. Hopefully, his son, Danny, will follow him.”