The Chocolate Egg Murders

by David W Robinson

  There was another pause and Joe could hear the complaining voice at the other end of the call.

  “All I’m asking is whether the same weapon could have been used in both killings.” Feeney paused again and listened. Then, with an exasperated, “Thank you,” she put the receiver down. “Nitpicking bloody doctors.”

  Joe raised his eyebrows.

  “It was something that occurred to me as I was speaking to you just now,” Feeney explained. “We were told that Ginny Nicholson was killed with a metal implement, and judging by the wound it was a heavy, large sized spanner.”

  “The type a mechanic might use?” Joe asked.

  She shook her head. “No… well, that is, most mechanics would have one in their tool kit, but it would be rare that they would need one. This is more like the kind of heavy duty equipment a civil or marine engineer might need. Or someone who repairs lorries. That kind of thing.”

  “Well if it belonged to someone like that, there’d be traces of oil or grease on the spanner and it would have some on the wound. Hasn’t the pathologist confirmed that, yet?”

  “We haven’t had the full report yet.” Feeney cast a cynical nod at the phone. “Which is what that idiot was trying to tell me. It’s Easter weekend, Joe. We don’t actually shut down, but we certainly slow down, just like any other organisation.”

  “A mechanic or engineer? Does Gil Shipton fit the bill?”

  “No,” Feeney replied. “He’s a career criminal. So, too, is Terry Badger, but he did start out by ringing and stripping stolen cars.”

  “So he might have that kinda toolkit,” Joe reasoned. “Why would he do that for Diane?”

  “Dynamics,” the chief inspector explained. “The Met’s report on the hierarchy of this band of thieves indicates that it’s quite rigid. Diane was the source, she and her sister were the blackmailers, Gil and Terry, the heavies, but Terry followed Gil’s orders. Always has done. It could be that Gil ordered Terry to deal with both Virginia and Diane.”

  The chief inspector finished her tea, Joe did likewise.

  “But we’re speculating.” She smiled again. “Now here’s what I want you to do, Joe. Go out and forget all about it. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Somerset. Have a smashing day in Bath. Help your lady friends with their Easter bonnets, but forget about Ginny Nicholson, the Shiptons and the Badgers, and above all have a good time. That’s what Weston was designed for.”

  He stood and shook hands. “You’ve got it.”

  ***

  Stepping out of the police station into bright sunshine, Joe first checked his watch and read 9.20. He took out his mobile and rang Brenda.

  “Where are you at?” he asked.

  “We’re just getting on the bus, now. Where are you?”

  “Outside the police station.” He began walking along. “I’ll walk to the main road. There’s a parade of shops there. Have Keith pick me up there.”

  “Roger, dodger. But get a move on. Keith reckons it’s about an hour and a quarter to Bath.”

  “I’ll be there. Stop worrying.”

  He put the phone away and ambled along, his mind running over the incident at the Winter Gardens the previous evening.

  Joe Murray was no stranger to arguments. He had them all the time in the Lazy Luncheonette, but he was king of the castle up there. He had even faced threats of physical violence in his café, but the presence of his nephew, Lee, was always enough to persuade the would-be assailants to back off. Lee, a former prop forward, was one of life’s gentle giants, but his sheer size was enough to worry most people.

  He had back up here, too. George and Owen had dealt with the Shiptons and the Badgers first time around, and the Winter Gardens security team had helped persuade the attackers to back off.

  It was the why that puzzled Joe. He could perhaps understand Gil Shipton’s attitude to the photographs, but why chase Joe down in the Winter Gardens? It made no sense.

  He said as much to his two companions when he finally took his seat on the bus ten minutes later.

  Ignoring his safety belt, and sitting side-saddle in the jump seat, so he could talk to them, he told Sheila and Brenda of his conversation with Chief Inspector Feeney. After they had responded with due surprise bordering on shock, he went on with his speculations on the personal attacks.

  “Why am I getting all this hassle? It’s not like I actually know anything, is it?”

  “They don’t know that, Joe,” Sheila pointed out. “I remember Peter telling that quite often, in cases of intimidation, the victim didn’t know anything or if they did, they weren’t aware of what they knew.”

  “No, look, you’re not with me. Diane was murdered last night while we were watching the Neil Diamond lookalike. They sent those bods after me, so it’s obvious they knew I was at the show. What could I possibly know about Diane’s death? What do I know about Ginny’s murder? Come to that, I don’t know too much about the business between Diane and Gil. I only overheard a brief bit of their conversation in that pub, and they weren’t getting into names or anything, and the cops were already onto it.”

  “No, Joe. You’re getting your timing mixed up.” She raised mock eyes overhead. “Typical man.” Grinning at Joe, she went on, “You overheard them yesterday afternoon, the police didn’t interview them until Diane’s body was found. If they were going to hassle you, it would have been arranged before Diane was killed.”

  Joe turned to face forward again as Keith pulled out to pass a slow-moving lorry on the steep climb up the Clevedon Gorge.

  As their driver pulled back into the nearside lane, he turned again to face his companions. “You’re wrong.”

  Brenda shrugged. “We would be, wouldn’t we?”

  “You are. I know you are. But I can’t think why.”

  Sheila smiled benignly, the way one would smile upon a simple-minded relative. “Is this a famous, ‘I’m missing something’ Joe Murray moment?”

  “It is. I don’t see what Gil and the Badgers have to gain from braining Diane… well, I do. He obviously wanted rid of her. But whatever she has hidden, and wherever it’s hidden, it’s still out there. There is still the danger that the information, assuming that’s what it is, will come to light.”

  “True,” Sheila agreed, “but is it any use without Diane’s testimony?”

  Joe grunted. “Have to admit, I hadn’t thought of that. The police would need verification from the victims, and they won’t be in a big hurry to come forward.”

  “It seems to me that Diane was killed for two possible reasons, then,” Brenda chimed in. “To get her out of Gil’s hair or to shut her up, or possibly both.”

  “And why was Ginny killed?” Joe demanded.

  His question was greeted with a silence punctuated only by the rumble of the bus and Keith’s occasional remonstration with other drivers as the Easter traffic thronged the motorway.

  When Keith pulled over onto the M4 interchange, to turn east for Bath, Sheila finally spoke up.

  “Perhaps she was thinking of going to the police, and they decided to shut her up.”

  Joe disagreed again. “Ginny’s argument with Diane happened when? Two o’clock Thursday afternoon. If she was gonna complain to the cops, she’d have done it on Thursday. Yet she didn’t or Feeney would have told me. The first the police knew of the argument was when we told them yesterday morning.”

  “Maybe she only threatened to go to the police and that was enough,” Brenda suggested.

  Again Joe would not hear it. “The Shiptons and the Badgers are no fools when it comes to dealing with the law. The only person guilty of anything on Thursday was Ginny when she threw the chocolate egg at Diane… and missed. They didn’t have to kill her. All they had to do was brazen it out.” He injected more urgency into his voice. “I can see the sense in what you’re saying, but it’s all too pat, and there’s something missing.”

  “The document or documents Diane has tucked away,” Brenda said with a smile.

  Joe’s f
eatures twisted into a mask of blind anger. “Not physically missing. I mean there’s something missing from the argument. It doesn’t quite hang together. I just said the Shiptons and the Badgers are not stupid. For them to have done all this means they’ve done too much. They may have believed that killing Ginny and Diane was necessary, but in that case, why warn me off? Why not go for me with an engineer’s spanner? Why not put me out of the game for good, too? Gil would have had the chance when I came out of that pub yesterday, and those two clowns last night could have done worse if they’d wanted.” He shrugged again. “It just doesn’t quite hang together.”

  They left the debate there and while watching the fields of Avon pass by, Sheila and Brenda engaged in chatter on the prospect of Bath now less than half an hour ahead of them.

  Joe sat facing forward and even put his seat belt on when Keith grumbled that there was a police patrol car coming up on the outside of them.

  It passed with barely a glance at them, and soon their driver pulled off the motorway and dropped onto the twisting and hilly A46 for the final, eleven miles into Bath.

  While the rest of the passengers oohed and aahed at their first sight of the old city in the valley below them, Joe’s febrile mind flipped over and over the last thirty-six hours, seeking that elusive something he was missing.

  It was always the way. A vital spark that would put him on the right track, but like a finger prodding him for attention in the midst of a pushing crowd, it evaded him, lost in a welter of impression, theories and counter-theories.

  Dropping down the hill into the city centre, Keith followed the inner ring road to the official coach park by the riverside, where under the guidance of an attendant, he reversed into an empty slot alongside other coaches, and climbed off.

  Relieved at having something to take his mind off Weston-super-Mare and the murders, Joe picked up the PA microphone.

  “All right people, here’s the deal. There are official tour guides here in Bath, and one of them will be getting on the bus in a minute or two. He’ll guide Keith round the city, and stop here and there to give you a brief talk on what you’re seeing. It doesn’t come free. If you’re staying on the bus, it costs six pounds a head. If you don’t wanna pay it, and you’d rather go into the city centre and find your own way round, you’re welcome to, but if you’re staying on, I need your money up front.”

  He removed his cap, took out his own wallet and dropped a twenty in the cap to cover his, Sheila’s and Brenda’s fare, then made his way along the aisle collecting from the passengers.

  Half way down, he had to wriggle past George and Owen who were preparing to get off.

  “You don’t want the tour?”

  George scowled. “If I wanna hear some boring old fart prattling on about the bloody Roman plumbing, I’ll have a couple of beers with Alec Staines.”

  “Oi. I heard that,” Alec called out from a few seats behind. “And I’m a painter and decorator, not a bleeding plumber.”

  “Same difference,” George replied. “Staying on the bus is wasting valuable drinking time.”

  “Back here for half past four,” Joe ordered and carried on along the aisle collecting the fares.

  Ten minutes later, Keith started the engine again and pulled out of the car park, while the guide introduced himself as Tony Allington, and showed off his blue badge, which he assured everyone, was the best way of recognising an officially appointed tour guide.

  For the next hour he guided Keith around the outer city, even out onto rural roads, asking him to stop occasionally, where he would point out the landmarks, and allow the passengers to get off in one or two places, so they could take photographs. Joe, his focus more on the tour than the Weston killings, was as busy as anyone with his Sony DSLR, camera.

  Coming back into the city, when Keith stopped at traffic lights, Tony pointed further down the hill to the Jane Austen Centre, where a man dressed completely in regency attire, greeted visitors. He asked Keith to turn right into Queen’s Square and took them twice round it, pointing out the varied architecture – Palladian and Grecian – of the different sides, and gave them a brief lecture on the life and times of John Wood and John Pinch, before directing Keith out of the square along the A4, and up Marlborough Lane for their final stop on Royal Avenue where they could take in the view of the Royal Crescent.

  Keith parked ahead of a police patrol car, and everyone, including the driver, disembarked, for the short walk up a broad path, and from there they had a magnificent view of the whole crescent. While Tony gave them a potted history of the place, Joe began taking pictures, swapping lenses for different close ups and panoramic shots.

  Struggling to see his photographs in the strong sunlight, he backed under the shade of a tall tree and studied the images on the camera’s tiny screen.

  “Good,” he muttered. “I’ll put a couple of those in the next newsletter.”

  He switched off the camera, detached the lens, and dropped it in the pocket of his gilet. Looking around, he realised the group had moved off, retracing their steps back to the bus.

  He turned to follow them and at that moment, two men grabbed him and threw him to the ground.

  “Hey!”

  Joe’s head spun. He looked up into two faces, almost blocked out by the sunlight, and vaguely recognised them from the night before.

  One of them drew back a solid fist and prepared to deliver it. Joe closed his eyes waiting for the blow.

  It never came. There was a sudden flurry of activity around him, shouts and cries, most of them unintelligible. Cautiously he opened his eyes again and saw the two attackers now restrained by several police officers, a smiling Chief Inspector Feeney stood nearby.

  “What the hell…?”

  Joe struggled to his feet and noticed that some of his friends, amongst them Sheila, Brenda and Keith, were hurrying back up from the bus to see what the fuss was all about.

  “Hello, Joe,” Feeney greeted him.

  “What… I don’t, er, I don’t understand.”

  “You remember the phone call I took while you were with me this morning? It was a tip off. The caller told me that these two would come for you here, so we followed you. In fact, we passed you on the motorway, and we’ve been following your bus all over Bath. While your driver was going round Queen’s Square a couple of time, we guessed this would be your next and last port of call, so if they were going to attack you, it would be here.”

  “Not in the city centre?” Joe asked.

  “Too crowded down there.”

  “Are you all right, Joe?” Sheila asked, her face a mask of concern.

  “Yeah, no problem, but I’m beginning to wish I’d never heard of Weston-super-Mare and Bath.” He turned aggrieved features on Feeney. “Couldn’t you have nicked them earlier? I mean they must have been following us, too.”

  “Not that we noticed.” Feeney waved a hand around her. “This is the Royal Crescent, Joe, possibly the most famous street in Bath. No matter where else they go, every tour of the city stops here. They knew they’d find you here sometime today. And we couldn’t pick them up earlier. We didn’t know who they were.” She aimed a finger at the two attackers. “Are they the same pair who went for you in the Winter Gardens last night?”

  Joe nodded. “They are. Lucky for them that I chose to take the tour, then, rather than go for a pint with George and Owen.”

  “Who?” Feeney asked.

  “Two friends. So what’ll you do with them now?”

  She smiled on the two men. “Take them back to Weston-super-Mare and have a little chat with them, see if we can’t get to the bottom of this business.” She chuckled at Joe. “You carry on and enjoy yourself. I don’t think you’re in any more danger.”

  ***

  “Somebody obviously means business to send them all this way after me,” Joe grumbled. “What the hell is it I’m supposed to know?”

  “I don’t think you know anything, Joe,” Sheila insisted, and leaned to one side whi
le a waitress served her. “I think they’re just afraid you know something.”

  An hour had passed since the incident on the Royal Crescent. Keith had brought them back to the centre of Bath and the coach park, where everyone left the bus for an afternoon walking around the city centre.

  After wandering through streets where Roman, Regency and modern mingled freely, they had found their way to Sally Lunn’s House, reportedly the oldest in Bath, in one of the narrow streets near the Abbey. After visiting the Kitchen Museum, where Brenda commented that the 16th century ovens reminded her of the kitchen in the Lazy Luncheonette, they secured a table in the dining room and ordered three Bath Cream Teas; half a Sally Lunn Bun, toasted, and topped with cinnamon butter and clotted cream.

  Typically, Joe had complained about the prices.

  “The thick end of twenty quid for three toasted teacakes and cream? It’s daylight robbery. How much do we charge at the Lazy Luncheonette? Seven and a half quid, the lot. That’s value, that is.”

  “Yes, Joe, but our toasted teacakes come with a squirt of supermarket cream from a can.”

  “And you charge another fifty pee per squirt,” Sheila pointed out.

  Brenda added to his angst. “And your tea is served in cracked beakers, not best china.”

  “Plus you don’t have a kitchen museum,” Sheila reminded him. “Instead, you have a widescreen TV showing awful daytime programmes.”

  “And you don’t have waitress service.”

  Spotting an opening Joe leapt upon it. “Sheila delivers the meals.”

  “Four at a time,” she said. “I don’t get a fancy pinny, only a mucky tabard.”

  “Can you imagine what the draymen would make of you in a black skirt, white blouse, dark stockings and a frilly apron? They’d be demanding a strip show.”