A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘OK.’ Joshua Derbyshire nodded. ‘OK, I’ll do that.’

  ‘And,’ Mundy held up a cautious finger, ‘this is vital …’

  ‘And?’ Derbyshire looked keenly at Mundy. ‘What?’

  ‘And don’t get your hopes up,’ Mundy spoke sternly. ‘I mean that. It’s important … don’t pin your hopes on this because nothing might come of it. It still may be the case that you’ll have to wait until you are paroled … if you’re paroled, and it still may be the case that you’ll die of old age in the prison hospital. This is just a ray of hope – a very small ray of hope on the horizon. Nothing more.’

  ‘All right, I understand … a ray of hope on the horizon,’ Joshua Derbyshire repeated as he lowered his head. ‘What will you do, Mr Mundy? I mean, what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Me …? Me? I’ll go and talk to a few people. I must get to know as much about Anne Tweedale as I can.’ Maurice Mundy stood up. ‘And I’ll take a trip to Nottingham – Robin Hood country, as you call it. I must visit your sister Jane … I’ll do that … I’ll do those things. But remember, Joshua … this is just a little ray of hope on the horizon, and it’s a distant horizon, nothing more than that.’ Mundy tapped twice on the door of the agent’s room and heard a bunch of keys rattle in response.

  ‘He would have been so really, really proud of them.’ Janet Thackery reached slowly and gracefully for her knife and fork as the youthful waiter withdrew after inviting her and Maurice Mundy to enjoy their meal. ‘So really, very proud.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mundy also slowly unwrapped his knife and fork from the neatly folded paper napkin, ‘and so you must be also … one is a probation officer and the other is set to fly high in hospital administration. Not bad, not bad at all. Good careers and safe jobs.’ Mundy sank his knife into his beef pie. ‘So what about you, Janet? Will you retire when you can – is that what your future holds?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Janet Thackery poured thick, rich gravy over her chips and her pie. ‘They’ll have to carry me out, that’s my attitude. I can work until I’m past sixty … women can these days. And do you know, I think I will. I couldn’t fill my days otherwise. Is that why you’ve carried on after you turned fifty-five, Maurice?’

  ‘Yes … yes, I dare say it is.’ Mundy glanced out of the window behind Janet Thackery and enjoyed the late autumn colours on the shrubs offset here and there by the evergreens. ‘I too would find it difficult to fill my days, especially in the winter months, like now, when you can’t go for a turn in the park to clear the tubes. I never was much of a reader or a doer of crosswords and there’s really only so much daytime television you can watch. All those wretched mind-numbing reality TV shows … you can keep them.’

  ‘You would have found something to do, Maurice.’ Janet Thackery eyed him warmly. ‘I know you … you would not allow yourself to vegetate.’

  ‘Dare say I would, but I like being active … and the Cold Case Review Team suits me very well. You’re not expected to put in a full working week, only one job at a time, and there’s no one breathing down your neck and pressuring you for results.’ Mundy took a mouthful of food, swallowed it, and then added, ‘It’s a very civilized form of police work.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine it would be.’ Janet Thackery fell silent and then she said, ‘George wanted it kept quiet.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Mundy glanced at her. ‘George wanted what kept quiet?’

  ‘George wanted it that way,’ Janet Thackery explained. ‘He wanted it kept quiet that he had gone into a hospice.’

  ‘Oh, yes … I see.’ Mundy smiled. ‘I see. Sorry, I was a bit slow on the uptake there.’

  ‘He didn’t even want the boys to visit him … just myself, but I felt it was important for the boys to do so.’ Janet Thackery poked at her food. ‘Dying is a natural process … it comes to us all. The boys wanted to visit and I think that they made a better adjustment to his death because they visited him when he was dying … they were part of the process.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Mundy replied softly. ‘It makes a lot of sense. As you say, it made them feel included. I think I would have wanted the same.’

  ‘Well, I just wanted you to know that that was why you were not told until after he had died. None of his friends were told, not one … nobody knew apart from me and the boys. We were also able to keep it quiet because it all happened very quickly. He came home feeling ill … had stomach pains and went to see the doctor. He was squeezed into their evening surgery. He was given a quick examination and painkillers, and he was admitted to the hospice the very next day. He was told then that he had just six weeks … and that is what he did have. He died six weeks to the day that he was admitted.’ Janet Thackery paused. ‘His brother and sister were told but even they were asked not to visit … even my mother wasn’t told, and although she’s very frail now she still has it all upstairs. It was how he wanted it.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’ Mundy nodded. ‘It’s probably a good job I wasn’t told. I would probably have visited full of ebullience, trying to jolly things along.’

  ‘Which is what George would not have wanted,’ Janet Thackery replied firmly.

  ‘Yes, yes … I fully understand.’ Mundy put his hand to his forehead. ‘It would not have been appropriate. People need to be left alone sometimes; they need space to think and prepare themselves.’

  ‘I think he would have been upset by your visiting and also quite envious of you. It would have made the unfairness of a relatively early death seem all the more unfair. I mean, you being just two days older than him, you were born within forty-eight hours of each other. Him dying … and you living and healthy.’ Janet Thackery wore a blue summer dress. She had auburn shoulder-length hair and Mundy thought her to be very young looking for her fifty-four years. She had, he noticed, pleasingly angular features, with high cheekbones and an appealing sparkle in her eyes. He found her very fetching. Very fetching indeed.

  ‘Yes …’ Mundy poured the tea. ‘I feel – well, to be perfectly honest I don’t know what I feel. Cancer is such a cruel disease. I live in such constant fear of it.’

  ‘There are much worse things than cancer, much, much worse … arthritis, for one. Arthritis is just as painful but unlike cancer it doesn’t kill you, it keeps you alive … that is a cruel disease. Cancer is merciful by comparison to arthritis.’ Janet Thackery sat back a little as Mundy poured her tea. ‘The nurses in the hospice were truly excellent. One nurse told him that having a good father figure for the first seventeen years of your life is much better than having a bad father who plagues you and blights your life well into your adulthood. That was what George wanted to hear because he was a very good father figure to the twins. He loved them and they loved him. I was left a real fishing widow when they were growing up. They’d leave at the crack of dawn, the three of them, and come back in the late evening with a straw basket full of trout.’ Janet Thackery smiled at the memory. ‘I used to complain at the time but now … now I’d relive those days like a shot if I could.’

  ‘You have good memories, though.’ Mundy smiled broadly. ‘That’s something to treasure … golden memories.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose.’ Janet Thackery inclined her head to one side. ‘You know, you should have got married, Maurice.’

  ‘No one would have me.’ Maurice Mundy shrugged slightly.

  ‘That I cannot believe.’ She smiled warmly at him. ‘I can’t believe that at all.’

  ‘True … it’s true.’ Mundy once more shrugged his left shoulder. ‘I’m afraid it’s true.’

  ‘There must have been one or two near misses, surely?’ Janet Thackery persisted.

  ‘A few,’ this time Mundy shrugged both his shoulders, ‘but none of them took the bait. I suppose they were sensible or they were just more cautious than they were hungry.’

  ‘Still, you missed out, Maurice.’ Janet Thackery sipped her tea.

  ‘Perhaps. Mind you, I did enjoy your wedding; it was the best wedding I attended
in those years when our generation was getting married. People arrived in one’s and two’s on the Friday and we drank all the booze that was intended for the reception. We were pitching tents in George’s back garden and the booze kept disappearing. The following morning we woke up to what we had done. So that geezer … I hadn’t met him before … Tom somebody …’

  ‘Tom Yorke?’ Janet Thackery replied with a smile. ‘Tom Yorke.’

  ‘Yes, that’s his name, Tom Yorke,’ Mundy repeated. ‘He had an estate car but he was still legless with a bad hangover so we pinched his car keys, drove his car into the village, bought out the off-licence and replaced all the booze we had drunk the previous day. Then we did your wedding and drank it all afterwards.’

  ‘So we heard, afterwards,’ Janet Thackery chuckled, ‘but it was a trifle silly of us to leave you lot with such a mountain of booze. It was just asking for trouble. We were guilty of contributory negligence.’

  ‘So …’ After a short pause Mundy spoke slowly and quietly with a serious tone of voice. ‘Five years. Five years now. How has it been?’

  ‘I’ve made the adjustment,’ Janet Thackery replied solemnly. ‘Late forties, I was a bit young to be a widow, but I have a satisfying job and two lovely boys.’

  ‘You haven’t changed since you got married,’ Mundy observed with a warm smile which caused Janet Thackery to look down and grin. ‘It’s true what they say,’ Mundy continued. ‘A woman’s face doesn’t really change, and you still have a figure many women would kill for. A size ten, I’d say.’

  ‘All those skiing holidays.’ Janet Thackery continued to keep her head lowered. ‘They really keep you fit. And yes, size ten. I don’t complain.’

  ‘I can imagine. You know, I do enjoy the meals with you once a month or so, but …’ Mundy paused. ‘Well, I wonder if we could also do other things together, you and me. Go to the theatre … watch a film … go for a long walk to get out of the city … I mean, only if you’d like to.’

  ‘Yes.’ Janet Thackery raised her head and held eye contact with Maurice Mundy. ‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘I would like that. I’d like that hugely. I confess that sometimes the evenings get a bit difficult to fill. It is most especially in the evenings that I could use some company …’

  ‘Good.’ Mundy smiled. ‘I’ll see what’s on and phone you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Janet Thackery lowered her head. ‘So how’s the Cold Case Review Team?’ she asked. ‘How are you finding it?’

  ‘It is interesting … less pressured than pre-retirement police work, as I said, and it’s very interesting to look back at old cases.’

  ‘Can you talk about your cases?’ Janet Thackery asked.

  ‘Yes, but not in detail,’ Mundy replied. ‘I … we have to be discreet.’

  ‘Of course.’ Janet Thackery ate her meal.

  ‘But yes, we can, broadly speaking,’ Mundy continued. ‘We have just been handed a ten-year-old case of a young boy who was murdered and his body found floating in the fishing pond in the middle of his village.’

  ‘Oh …’ Janet Thackery momentarily pointed her fork towards Mundy. ‘You know, I think I remember that murder. It got a lot of media coverage … if it is the one I am thinking of. He was found by the milkman, wasn’t he? Strangled?’

  ‘The postman, in fact, but yes. He wasn’t strangled, though. His skull was fractured. He was just twelve years old.’

  ‘Oh.’ Janet Thackery sighed. ‘Such a tragedy … his parents …’

  ‘Yes, it was a bit of a bad case. It still is,’ Mundy commented.

  ‘I remember George saying that that was a local case. He was sipping beer before our evening meal and watching the news and he said, “Local … the person who did that lives locally. You can bet your life on it”.’

  ‘It seems that way, even ten years on. It seems a very local crime.’ Mundy sliced into his steak pie. ‘The village is remote, well remote for that part of England, not on any route from somewhere to somewhere else. You can’t see the pond from the road so the culprit most probably knew it was there. It all speaks loudly of local knowledge but there was no motive that could be identified. The family lived quietly, they had no enemies, and it seemed the whole village turned out to look for him despite the fact that it was apparently a filthy night.’

  ‘I see …’ Janet Thackery inclined her head. ‘So no leads … no suspect or suspects?’

  ‘None,’ Mundy replied. ‘It became a cold case but it now transpires that a woman was murdered in Chelmsford on the same night.’

  ‘Oh?’ Janet Thackery looked interested. ‘A connection, do you think?’

  ‘We don’t know. It’s most likely to be a coincidence but it’s the only lead we have,’ Mundy explained. ‘No connection between the two murders was made at the time, and they, the Essex Police, were probably right about that. But, like I said, right now it’s the only lead.’

  ‘I see. So tell me,’ Janet Thackery asked with genuine interest, ‘what’s the rule if you do uncover fresh evidence?’

  ‘Oh, in that case we have got to notify the proper coppers.’ Mundy grinned.

  ‘The proper coppers,’ Janet Thackery repeated with a soft laugh. ‘Is that what you call them?’

  ‘No … no …’ Mundy also laughed softly, ‘that’s just a term that someone used this morning. I visited him in Pentonville Prison and he used that term, the “proper coppers”.’

  ‘I see. Is he part of the cold case?’ Janet Thackery put her knife and fork down and sipped her tea.

  ‘No. No, he’s not; I am pursuing my own agenda there,’ Mundy admitted.

  ‘Is that allowed?’ A note of alarm crept into Janet Thackery’s voice.

  ‘Nope.’ Mundy smiled. ‘It isn’t allowed. It’s a definite no-no … a very big no-no. We can only look into allocated cases but I still have a warrant card so I can access our records and I can call on someone in prison and see him in the agent’s room without writing to him and asking him to send me a visiting order.’

  ‘Maurice,’ Janet Thackery sighed with disapproval, ‘you’re going to get your fingers burned.’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m doing it anyway,’ Mundy replied defensively.

  ‘You know George always said that about you …’ Janet Thackery looked at Mundy.

  ‘No, I don’t – what did he always say about me?’ Mundy smiled. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That you were a maverick … a wild card … a loose cannon,’ Janet Thackery reported, ‘and he said you’d get your fingers burned one day … burned good and proper.’

  ‘And it did happen, so George was quite correct,’ Mundy replied in a resigned tone of voice. ‘It is why George and I started out together. Both probationary constables, we left the police college together and he rose to become a detective chief inspector while I never got beyond the rank of detective constable. It was all because of my “cavalier attitude”, so I was told.’

  ‘Well …’ Janet Thackery poured the last of the gravy over her chips. ‘I dare say you can’t change your personality … not at your age.’

  ‘That’s very tactful of you.’ Mundy grinned. ‘Very tactful indeed. But even George distanced himself from me at work.’

  ‘Oh, I never knew that.’ Janet Thackery spoke with a clear note of unease. ‘You visited our home … you and George went for a beer together now and then … we always spontaneously exchanged cards at Christmas. He never said anything to me about it. Not one word, ever.’

  ‘He was sensible and I understood why he had to do that. The golden rule is the golden rule … which is never associate with a failure,’ Mundy explained. ‘It’s the golden rule in any organization and the police force is no exception, it’s no different at all. We were mates outside work, as you say, but he’d never be seen sitting with me in the canteen or chatting to me in the corridor.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I feel so … embarrassed.’ Janet Thackery looked away from Maurice Mundy. ‘Really, that’s news to me.’

  ‘Don’t be em
barrassed,’ Mundy reassured Janet Thackery. ‘George was career-minded, I fully understood that, but I was always impatient with paperwork and I had a cocky attitude towards authority figures, especially if they were younger than me … which in the end they all were, of course, but that attitude did not go down well. Not well at all. I was never really anti-authority as such – I just had the tendency to treat everyone as though we were equals. “Over familiarity” I think is the term … I just put obstacles in my own career path. I was my own worst enemy.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you for telling me that, Maurice. I appreciate it.’ Janet Thackery paused and then asked, ‘So tell me about the unofficial case you are working on … if you can.’

  ‘It’s a geezer that George and I arrested,’ Mundy began. ‘Well, that’s to say we didn’t arrest him – a senior CID officer, now retired, actually arrested him, but it was me and George who took him to the police station. We were both constables at the time.’

  ‘So … some time ago?’ Janet Thackery observed.

  ‘Twenty-eight years ago to be precise.’ Mundy ate a slice of his meat pie.

  ‘And he’s the person you visited in Pentonville?’ Janet Thackery confirmed.

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy nodded.

  ‘He’s still in prison after twenty-eight years?’ Janet Thackery gasped. ‘Is he serving a full-tariff life sentence?’

  ‘No,’ Mundy explained. ‘He collected life and the judge set a minimum term of thirty years before parole could be considered.’

  ‘It must have been an awful murder.’ Janet Thackery finished her meal and placed her knife and fork centrally on her plate.

  ‘He hacked an elderly lady to pieces after she had befriended him,’ Mundy told her. ‘The crime scene was a real bloodbath. I never knew eight pints of blood could be so messy. The evidence against him seemed utterly compelling. When he was sentenced to life with a thirty-year minimum I said “goal” and celebrated with the other officers involved in the case. We had a bit of a drink the evening of the day that he went down.’

  ‘So why visit him?’ Janet Thackery asked. ‘A new development?’