Christmas Crackers

by David W Robinson

  Waverley said nothing, but stared at the dull lights of the Christmas tree.

  Sheila pointed to the landing beyond the closed door. “Out there, Frank collapsed, Osborne raised the alarm and everyone rushed out, led by Superintendent Lambert. We all saw him point past you, Dennis, and we heard him say, izquierda. We assumed he was trying to tell us that the killer left by those stairs, but Osborne assured us there is no way out up there. The truth is Frank wasn’t pointing at the stairs. He was pointing at you, Dennis.” Sheila’s tone became almost causal. “You know, Peter, my late husband, and your Uncle Joe, Gemma, always said that the best clue to a killer is the victim, and in this case, they’re right. Frank was known for his misuse of foreign languages, and he misused the word izquierda again. In Spanish, it means left, but not necessarily left-handed, which is what he was really trying to tell us. You, Dennis, are left-handed. I saw you swap over your knife and fork earlier, I saw you polish the knife with your left hand, and just now, you held the pen in your left hand. Frank’s final little joke pointed at the man who poisoned him and used pidgin Spanish to identify him. You were the senior officer Frank was investigating, weren’t you?”

  “Absolute nonsense. I deny every word of it.”

  “Your fingerprints will likely be on the glass, sir,” Gemma pointed out.

  “Well, of course they are,” Waverley blustered. “I picked it up when Sheila detected the cyanide.”

  Sheila smiled. “I don’t think fingerprints will get you far, Gemma. I think Frank’s investigation will indicate that Dennis was the officer under suspicion.”

  “With his admin?” Waverley roared. “Never. He couldn’t keep his expenses straight, never mind his investigations.”

  “In that case, I’ve no doubt that when Frank’s computer is checked, the reports will be absent, and his hard copy will have been, er, filtered.” Sheila smiled triumphantly. “But police computers have backup systems and they’ll be recovered.” She picked up a napkin, stood and leaned over the table to retrieve the champagne bucket. Peering into it, and using the napkin she sifted through the ice cubes and eventually lifted out a sliver of glass. “That, Superintendent Lambert, Gemma, is a shard of broken glass from a phial. When the ice melts in this bucket, you’ll find more, and if your Scientific Support people are on the ball, you’ll find Chief Superintendent Waverley’s fingerprints on it and, with luck, cyanide residue.”

  She passed the piece of broken glass to Gemma, who bagged it up.

  Sheila stared at Waverley. “You murdered one of your oldest friends and colleagues simply to save your own skin.”

  Waverley’s features fell and he shook his head. “That’s what you think is it?”

  “It’s what I know. And the broken glass will prove it.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right. I don’t,” Sheila admitted. “I can never understand anyone who takes the life of another human being.”

  Waverley sat back in his chair and mopped his brow again. “I can’t stand bent coppers. I never could. And I’m ashamed to say that I am one.” He had the air of a beaten man about him. “Some years ago, I was working vice in East Leeds, and collared a young woman whom I should have arrested, but didn’t. Instead I accepted certain, er, favours, let’s say. It turned out she was controlled by one of the leading gang masters in the city, and he wasted no time putting the pressure on. He had photographs and tape recordings. The police have never been able to pin so much as a parking ticket on him since.”

  “Because you fed him tip offs on raids,” Sheila suggested.

  Waverley nodded and after a pause went on with his tale. “A rival gang member was arrested about a year ago, and after protracted negotiations, he gave information in exchange for a lighter sentence, information which was subsequently passed to Professional Standards, and then handed to Frank. I don’t even know how Frank got my name, but he did. The informant certainly didn’t tell him.”

  “Frank was a good detective,” Sheila pointed out. “You said so yourself. And you murdered him to keep that good detective quiet.”

  Waverley shook his head slowly, sadly. “I said you didn’t understand. It was much worse than you think, Sheila. Frank told you he was coming up to retirement. He also said he had a hankering after an apartment near Marbella. He rang me three months ago, and we met in a pub in Ilkley. Off the beaten track, you see. We wouldn’t be spotted. Over a few drinks, he put the proposition to me. If I could let him have twenty thousand pounds, in cash, of course, he would be happy to pin the blame elsewhere. I had until the New Year to come up with the money or he would arrest me.”

  “And if you had paid, who would he blame?” Sheila asked. “Eileen Tompkins?”

  “Not quite,” Waverley said. “Eileen Tompkins’s late husband, Charlie. He was my bagman when I worked vice in Leeds, and he was on my team when I arrested – or rather, didn’t arrest the woman.”

  “And that’s what Eileen harangued Frank over earlier today?”

  The old man nodded.

  Sheila stood up. “I think, Ms Lambert, you’d better caution the Chief Superintendent.” She looked down in a mixture of pity and disgust. “My husband spent practically all his working life in the police, and he was never anything but honest. He never took a bribe, and he never coerced anyone. Like so many of his colleagues, your colleagues, he did the job properly. People like you and Frank Knighton compromise the hard work he and all the other honest officers put in. You were prepared to malign the reputation of a deceased fellow officer to save your skin and give Frank Knighton a comfortable retirement. Instead, you murdered your potential conspirator. I find that quite disgraceful and you’ll forgive me, Dennis, but if I never hear from you again, it will still be too soon.”

  The Headland Hotel

  “So not one bad cop, but two?” Donna’s malleable features betrayed exactly the right mix of surprise and disgust.

  “It’s a matter on which I have quite strong feelings,” Sheila told her.

  The writer shook her head, in good-humoured bewilderment. “You people astonish me,” Donna gushed. “It’s not just your powers of observation, but your skill at putting it together.”

  “It has to be said that Joe is the master,” Brenda pointed out, “but we’re not exactly slow to pick up on things.”

  “They’re as good as me,” Joe argued, keeping one eye on the floor where Rowena was weaving through the tables, her eyes on him. “How many people would have spotted that Waverley was a southpaw and put that together with Knighton’s garbled languages?” He cast a nod in Rowena’s direction. “It looks like I’m on.”

  Donna shook her head. “Way too early. You’re giving the last award of the evening.”

  Rowena beamed a smile that took in the whole table. “I hope you’re all having a good time.” Without waiting for confirmation, she concentrated on Joe. “They’ll be serving dinner in a few minutes and after that, we start the award ceremony. You’re on last, Joe, so don’t swill too much of that bubbly.” She gave a downcast glance at Donna. “I’m sorry, dear, but you didn’t make the shortlist for Factual Book of the Year.”

  Donna shrugged. “If I get the right copy from these three, I’ll be up for it next year.”

  “I’m sure you will be. Okay, gotta love you and leave you for now. Have a great evening.”

  Rowena wandered off and Donna concentrated on Joe. “You have plenty of time for more stories, Joe.”

  “They’re serving dinner,” he protested.

  “Eating doesn’t stop you talking at the Lazy Luncheonette,” Brenda put in. “In fact, it doesn’t stop you solving murders, either.” She smiled in Donna’s direction. “We were on a North Sea Ferry once when he left Sheila and me in the bar while he solved a murder.”

  “Wow. Joe, you have got to tell me this tale.”

  He sighed and glanced daggers at Brenda. “It didn’t exactly happen like that. Course, it was hard lines for her killer again that I happened to be o
n the boat at the time, and there’s one thing I’m not: a patsy.”

  Donna gaped. “A patsy?”

  Joe leaned to one side allowing a waiter to put a bowl of soup in front of him. “We’d been to Amsterdam on one of these minicruise things. Not just us three, but a bus load of us from the 3rd Age Club. We sailed from Hull and on the outbound crossing there was a fancy dress party.”

  Murder at the Rotterdam Ro-Ro

  After less than three hours out of Kingston-upon-Hull, the show-bar of the MV North Sea Sprite was packed with people, and an atmosphere of festive excitement pervaded the room, backed by Christmas music from the loudspeakers, to which a mass of bodies jiggled and wriggled. In the background, a giant, digital clock read out the time in lurid pink: 22:16.

  Seventy members of the Sanford 3rd Age Club had made the journey to Hull, looking forward to a day’s shopping on the Amsterdam Christmas market, but treating the Saturday night shipboard disco as yet another opportunity to demonstrate their penchant for growing old disgracefully. Many of the passengers were in fancy dress, but it was the STAC members who had gone out on a limb. Amongst the Santas, shepherds, wise men, angels and elves, Les Tanner and Sylvia Goodson stood out as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. George Robson and his close friend Owen Frickley were instantly recognisable as American Gangsters with reindeer antlers sticking out from their fedora hats. Not to be outdone, Alec and Julia Staines were clad as Dumbledore and Trelawney, Alec with the full white beard, Julia wearing the pilot-goggle glasses.

  Sat towards the rear of the room, close to the entrance, Sheila and Brenda had dressed a little more sedately, Sheila wearing the smock dress of Maria von Trapp, and Brenda dressed as the Mother superior from The Sound of Music.

  A stunted Darth Vader entered the room and looked around. His gaze fell upon the two women, and he strode confidently to them.

  “Oh look, it’s Dwarf Vader,” Brenda declared gleefully.

  Joe pushed the mask up onto his head. “And where did you get the bottle to wear a nun’s habit? On your way to a vicars and tarts party are you?”

  “Good turnout, Murray,” said Les Tanner as he and Sylvia passed. “Especially our people.”

  “Yeah, great, Les,” Joe called after him. “Prat,” he said when Les was out of earshot.

  “Oh, be nice, Joe,” Sheila urged. “It is Christmas.”

  “Christmas does not stop Les Tanner being a prat. He doesn’t get time off from it.” Joe took his seat between them and dropped the mask on the last empty chair.

  “Les is right, Joe,” Sheila insisted. “It is a good turnout. You wangled a really good deal for us. Two nights on board and a coach to take us to Amsterdam and back for shopping.”

  “It’s a standard deal,” Joe said.

  “Yes, but not at the price you got,” Brenda assured him.

  To change the subject, he asked, “Anyone seasick, do we know?”

  “Cyril Peck, I think,” Brenda replied. “He says it’s because he was in the army, not the navy.”

  “He’s a lying old twonk. He didn’t get in the army.”

  “Medically unfit?” Sheila asked.

  “Criminally unfit,” Joe replied. “He applied to join, and two days later, the cops collared him in a stolen car. He got six months for it. End of military career.” He took out his tobacco tin and began to roll a cigarette.

  “You can’t smoke that in here,” Sheila advised.

  “I know, I know. Do you know how far I have to walk for a gasp? It’s right at the back of the boat.”

  “Ship, Joe. Ship.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a …”

  A bump to the leg of his chair forced him to trail off. He turned his head and found himself staring into a sour face beneath a neat fringe of black hair. His attention was automatically drawn to her bared left upper arm, and a familiar bulls-eye scar.

  “I can’t get past you,” the woman said pointing to his chair leg.

  Joe took in the man leaning over her, and the woman alongside him who was a mirror image of the first without the scowl. It slowly dawned on him that the grumpy woman was confined to a wheelchair.

  “Sorry, luv,” he apologised, and tucked his seat further in.

  “I should bloody think so, too,” she grumbled and the man pushed her along.

  “Enjoy your funeral,” Joe retorted. “I reckon everyone else will.”

  The wheelchair occupant snapped on the brake and the man rammed his midriff into one of the handles.

  She glared at Joe. “I’m disabled, you know.”

  “Well I guessed you weren’t just lazy,” he replied, “but as long as you haven’t lost the use of your ears along with your legs, you should have heard me apologise.”

  She was about to take Joe up on it again, but the man leaned over and snapped off the brakes. “Now, Cherie, let’s not argue.”

  “Typical of you,” Cherie snapped. “Call yourself a husband? Call yourself a man? Let everyone get away with anything, don’t you.”

  The husband gave Joe a cringing smile of apology and pushed the wheelchair on.

  “That’s one disabled lady with a huge chip on her shoulder,” Joe commented.

  “It takes some of them like that, Joe,” Sheila announced. “You don’t help. Fancy saying something like that to someone in a wheelchair.”

  “Others carry on as though there’s nothing wrong with them,” Brenda observed, eager to pour oil on troubled waters.

  “Yeah, well, let’s not let ’em spoil the party, eh? I’ll go for a smoke and get some drinks in on the way back.”

  With his mask hanging from one arm, Joe left the bar.

  The Sprite was over seven hundred feet long. Towards the bow, on Deck 12, it could have been mistaken for the reception area of any major hotel, or an airport shopping concourse. Most of the High Street brands were available, many at shipboard prices, a considerable reduction on landlocked shops. There were three restaurants, and two coffee bars, and three separate bars, all of them lit with Christmas decorations, from the giant tree at reception, to the twinkling fairy lights in the piano bar, infusing the passengers with the Christmas spirit.

  But the smoke area, as Joe had promised, was a long walk. An observation area at the back of one of the upper decks, it was less than a hundred feet from the stern, and all that could be seen was an open deck with several parked lorries, and beyond that, the waters of the North Sea, churning in the ship’s wake.

  There were a few people enjoying their tobacco, but in the pitch dark, moonless night, there was nothing to see beyond the rear of the ship, other than faint red and white lights to the south. It was impossible to judge how far away they were, but Joe imagined they were the lights of an oil platform.

  “Sorry about that, chum.”

  Enjoying his cigarette, Joe had only been vaguely aware of a presence next to him. When the man spoke, he looked up into the lugubrious face of the same man who had been pushing his wife along in the wheelchair.

  Slightly taller than Joe, he was in his mid-forties, casually dressed, with eyes that betrayed a resigned sadness.

  “You’re talking about your wife?” Joe asked, and received a nod in response. “Not to worry, buddy. I run a café in Sanford, and I get all sorts coming through the door.” He offered his hand. “Joe Murray.”

  “Allan Dexter. The woman in the wheelchair is my wife, Cherie.”

  “And the other woman is her twin sister.”

  Dexter nodded. “Val. Valerie Mathers. She lives with us. Has done ever since the accident that put Cherie in the chair.”

  “Car crash, was it?”

  “No. Fell down the stairs at home. Severed her spinal cord. She’s paralysed from the waist down.”

  Joe cringed. “No wonder she’s angry, then.”

  “It’s been two years now,” Dexter complained. “I thought she may have accepted it. Some people do, you know. But not Cherie. She rants and rails against the whole world. Especially me.”


  “You have to do everything for her?”

  He nodded. “Everything. Except feeding her. It’s easier now that Val lives with us. She returned just before the accident, and she’s a godsend.” As if realising he was unconsciously unburdening himself on a stranger, Dexter suddenly smiled. “You notice a lot, don’t you? I meanersay, we were only passing you for a coupla seconds. Half a minute at the most, and you twigged that she and Val were twins and that Cherie is practically helpless.”

  “You wife made that clear enough.” Taking a drag on his smoke, Joe chuckled at the memory. “I notice everything, Allan. For instance, your wife and her sister grew up in a house where there was a history of tuberculosis, didn’t they?”

  Dexter laughed. “Well, the missus did, sure. Don’t think Val did. They were separated at birth, you know. Adopted. How did you know?”

  “The scar on your wife’s left arm,” Joe patted his left shoulder. “I have the same one. My gran had TB, and I had to be vaccinated against it when I was kid. BCG jab. Screamed the surgery down when they jammed the needle in my arm, so my old ma used to tell me.” To change the subject slightly, he asked, “You going to Amsterdam tomorrow?”

  “Nah, mate. Done it before. Lotsa times. Its awkward getting the wheelchair on the bus, you know. We’ll get one of those specialist taxis. You know, the kind which takes wheelchair passengers, and make our way up into Rotterdam. Ever been there?”

  “Passed through,” Joe admitted. “When I was married. Usually on my way to Germany or Austria.”