‘Did she tell you anything more?’ I asked Sarah. I hoped getting Derek out of the house would make her more talkative. We were back in the car and heading towards Lauren’s school where Sarah needed to be for a merit assembly. I was going to walk to the office from there and catch up on some paperwork.
‘Not directly’ she explained, ‘but I’m convinced she was scared of her husband. He certainly ran the family. His word was always final.’
‘Did she say anything more about not reporting Donna to the police?’
Sarah nodded before hitting the brakes to avoid a car pulling out of a side street.
‘Wanker...sorry, what did you say?’
‘About reporting Donna missing.’
She shook her head. ‘Her husband’s word was final. He insisted she’d come back when she ran out of money. Her opinion wasn’t needed, or wanted.’
My mobile rang but I didn’t recognise the number. I answered and listened to the caller, saying little in response. ‘Can you drop me at the office, please, Sarah?’
She turned to look at me. ‘Who was it?’
I said I’d be there inside of fifteen minutes before terminating the call. ‘That was Christopher Murdoch. He wants to talk to me.’
Murdoch was waiting for me on the doorstep of our office. He stood staring at his mobile, clearly agitated. Don must have been called out. I introduced myself, shook his hand and took a moment to have a good look at him. From the information I’d pulled on him from Companies House, I knew he’d just turned forty. Even though he hadn’t shaved for a few days or washed his hair, it was clear he was in good shape and looked like he took good care of himself. The passing of time had been kind to him so far. I invited him in and sat down behind my desk.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Murdoch?’ I asked.
He was looking at the floor as he replied. ‘I need your help.’
I waited for him to lift his head. ‘Why?’
‘The police think I killed my wife.’
I let it hang there for a short while. My initial reaction was he didn’t seem the kind to kill, but it takes all sorts. He was an obvious suspect. ‘What brings you here, Mr Murdoch?’
‘I heard you were already involved, that you were investigating my wife.’ He held his hands up. ‘I just know, ok?’
The police had told him. There was no other explanation.
‘You’re already up to speed’ he continued. ‘I didn’t kill my wife and I need you to find out who did.’
I wasn’t sure what it meant. I tried to think it through. If the police had told him about me and cut him loose, did they really suspect him of his wife’s murder? Or were they looking to me do their job for them by proving Murdoch’s innocence or guilt for them? He was too high profile to simply disappear. He had to make some sort of move. I shuffled some papers. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. We’re snowed under at the moment.’
I watched him produce a roll of twenty pound notes. ‘Will this help?’
‘It’s not about the money.’
He leant forward across the desk and placed the roll in front of me. ‘I need to be in the loop. My legal team tell me I need an investigator to help me. I want to clear my name.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t care about all the other stuff. She was my wife. I need to know.’
I looked at the money. We could certainly use it but I wasn’t sure. I also wondered what he meant when he said other stuff.
‘I don’t care what you think of me, Mr Geraghty. Look, just take the money and do the job I’m asking you to do.’
I pushed the money back across the table. The way he’d offered it to me felt like an insult, like he thought he could buy me. Putting aside the question of money, he hadn’t offered me a single good reason why I should start digging about on behalf of a man the police suspected of murdering his wife. I escorted him to the door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After throwing Murdoch out of the office, I’d had time to get some fresh air and buy a sandwich before meeting Julie Richardson. Don had reluctantly tracked her down for me using public records. She’d been keener to speak to me about Salford than I’d anticipated. I sat on a small chair in her front room. Her flat occupied the upper floor of a converted terrace property and was only a couple of streets away from where Maria Platt lived. I knew Richardson was in her early fifties, but she could have passed for several years older. Like the area, she’d seen better days and was in need of a make-over. She passed me a mug of coffee and sat down opposite me.
‘You can ask if you want’ she said and pointed to the scar on her face.
It had been the first thing I’d noticed. The scar stretched from just underneath her eye, went around her cheekbone and stopped just short of her mouth.
‘A present from Frank’ she said.
I nodded and wondered what I was getting involved in. She lit a cigarette and offered one to me. I shook my head and let her continue.
‘What’s your interest in him?’ she asked.
I told her about Donna Platt, and how he didn’t like me sniffing around. She explained she wanted her revenge, the reason being obvious. I asked her to start at the beginning.
She nodded and took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Frank was a bastard; an absolute bastard from the minute I met him, but that’s not to say he wasn’t a bastard who didn’t have his moments. I was 21 when we met. Too young to know any better. Frank was very much on the up by then and I liked the money, the buzz, everything about him. It was a turn on, I suppose. Like an idiot, I thought we were going places, but Frank was just high on the power it gave him. He controlled it well, as he was mainly about the business, but if you crossed him, you knew about it. It worked well for years. He was married, which was fine. I knew from the start what I was getting involved in, but that was part of the deal. He bought me a house which I lived in and he bought me plenty of presents. I kept a low profile; that was the deal.’
‘Did his wife know about you?’
Richardson shrugged. ‘No idea. Never met or asked about her. It was an off-limit’s topic.’
Branning had photocopied us a set of notes he kept, so I already knew some of her background, but it was useful to hear it first-hand. I asked her to explain about the work she did for Salford.
‘Basically, I managed one of his clubs. He’d opened a string of them around the city. Frank always had a soft spot for the kind of entertainment you got in a working man’s club. I don’t know why, I thought it was shit and even then it was a dying game. I got the North Hull club and Frank let me oversee things; hiring and firing, booking entertainment, that kind of thing. And of course it suited Frank, as he knew where I was.’
‘Did you know Donna Platt? 2’s Company?’
‘The name rings a bell.’
‘Frank managed them.’
Richardson laughed. ‘He managed a lot of bands. I wasn’t stupid. I knew Frank was shagging anything that moved, and the singers were more than willing.’
‘I got the impression the other girls in the band didn’t like him.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me. If he wasn’t interested, he could be pretty blunt.’
‘Did he like Donna?’
‘Are you asking me if they were fucking?’
I nodded. No point beating around the bush if she was going to be so blunt.
She shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’s a long time ago. I can’t be sure. The name rings a bell, but that’s all.’
I changed the subject. ‘Why were you willing to give evidence against him?’
She lit another cigarette and composed herself. ‘By then Frank had me running his massage parlour, but when I say massage parlour, I mean knocking shop. The police came for us and because it was my name on the paperwork, I was going to take the fall. The police had other things on me, so I was looking at some serious prison time.’
‘So you cut a deal?’
She nodded. ‘They said they’d look after me, make sure I was alright. They had this twat in charge, Brann
ing, he was called. Didn’t know his arse from his elbow.’
I told her I’d met him and he still carried the case with him.
‘So he should.’ Her hand went to the scar. ‘He put me in a safe house and told me Frank would never find me.’ She stood up. ‘Do you want a drink? I think I need one.’
I shook my head and waited for her to return and continue.
‘Frank obviously had someone on his payroll, because he found me. He told me if I gave evidence against him, he’d kill me. I knew what he was like, so I wasn’t taking the chance.’
‘And that’s when he cut you?’
‘No. He’s not that stupid. He waited until the charges were formally dropped. He’d kicked me out of the house, of course, but I thought that was it. He’d won. The police were never going to get another chance like that. He was bulletproof. He tracked me down to a friend’s house where I was staying and I was home alone. He sat on the doorstep for ages, talking through the letterbox. I sat on the bottom stair, I can still even remember the colour of the carpet, and listened. He told me how much he loved me, how he shouldn’t have involved me in his business. Stupidly, I let him in. He said he wanted to talk and make sure I was alright after all that had happened. Like an idiot, I believed him. Once he was inside, he cut me.’
‘Did you report it?’
She laughed again. ‘What for? The police wouldn’t do anything and I had no proof.’
I had to agree.
‘But the thing is, I’m not scared of him now. I’ve got nothing on him now. Anything I knew is useless nowadays. I’d like to see him taken down. He’s not going to pay for what he did to me, but if you’ve got something on him, I want you to make him pay.’
Following my meeting with Julie Richardson, I headed back to the office for some time to think. My talk with her had left me disturbed. I knew Frank Salford was unpleasant, it came with the territory, but looking at Richardson’s face, I was surprised how unpleasant he was. What disturbed me even more was his name looming large in both inquiries. It seemed increasingly likely he’d had a hand in Donna Platt’s disappearance, but we still had no idea where she was.
Rather than going to the pub, which had been my original plan, I decided to walk home and visit the supermarket in the St Stephen’s shopping centre. It was the kind of superstore you could get lost in. It seemed to take an age to walk from one end of it to the other before I settled on my usual selection of staple items. I treated myself to a ham and mushroom pizza, and although it was hardly fine dining, it hit the spot. I stood at my flat’s large bay window for a few moments, looking down on the street. A few students silently hurried by but it was a quiet night out there. With a couple of bottles of beer settling nicely and Steve Earle’s masterpiece, ‘El Corazon’ on low on the stereo, the day spent enquiring about Ron Platt and Jennifer Murdoch was fading from my mind, if only on a temporary basis. My relaxation was interrupted by the noise of the flat’s buzzer. I peered out of the window but saw nothing. If the person stood close to the communal front door, they were out of my eye-line. I left my door on the latch and walked down the stairs. I could see the silhouette of my visitor through the frosted glass of the door. I assumed if the visitor was hostile, they wouldn’t be announcing their arrival. I opened the door and shook my head. Christopher Murdoch again.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘Your help.’
‘I’ve already told you.’
He cut me off. ‘I want you to work for me because I know you understand what I’m going through.’
He had my attention. ‘What?’
‘I know you’ve lost your wife. You know what it’s like.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘It is to me.’
‘I’ve just heard, that’s all.’
I didn’t want to air all my dirty linen on the doorstep, so I took him up to the flat.
I pointed him in the direction of the spare chair. ‘Heard what about me, exactly?’ I asked. Murdoch looked uncomfortable but I was in no mood to play nice. ‘What the fuck do you think you know?’
He held his hands up. ‘Just that the fire wasn’t an accident.’
He knew nothing. It wasn’t a secret the fire my wife had died in hadn’t been an accident. I went into the kitchen and made strong coffee to sober him up. It also gave me time to think. Despite his clumsy and shallow attempts at appealing to me, I was falling for it. He was giving me a reason. He wanted the same thing as me; closure. I asked him to tell me about his wife.
‘She was the love of my life’ he said. ‘We met just over ten years ago and I knew straight away she was the one for me.’ He looked directly at me. ‘You just know, don’t you? At first, she wasn’t interested in me. It took some effort to get her to notice me, I can tell you. To cut a long story short, my persistence won her over and I eventually proposed to her at the top of the Eiffel Tower. We were very happy. She had her career, I had mine. Things were good for us.’ His voice was barely a whisper. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without her now.’
I let him compose himself before starting my questions. ‘Why was your wife off work?’ I asked.
‘Stress. She has a demanding job. She was a mess.’
I wasn’t sure being an accountant for a local building firm qualified as being particularly stressful, but I nodded my head. ‘Other than that, did she like her job, when she’d first started there?’
Murdoch nodded. ‘I think so.’ He laughed, but wasn’t convincing. ‘As much as you can, I suppose.’
‘Did you help her?’
‘As much as I could. I tried to give her the support she needed, but it was difficult to know what to do. She was on medication from our doctor, which was for the best. I thought the experts would sort her out.’
‘Did she need to work, financially speaking?’
Murdoch shrugged. ‘We could manage either way. It was her choice to work, and why shouldn’t she? She worked hard to pass her exams; she liked her financial independence, so why would I stop her?’
I got to the point. ‘What about her gambling problem?’
He didn’t answer straightaway. ‘I don’t really know anything about it, to be honest. I knew she was spending too much time at the casino, but I thought she could handle it.’
‘How deep was she in?’
‘We never really spoke about it. She wouldn’t. All I knew was that it was getting more serious. She was borrowing more and more from me and I think she was starting to wake up to how serious it was. I blame myself, really. She hadn’t even been in a casino until I took her on a corporate event. We’d got to the stage where the casino was becoming more aggressive about the money she owed.’
‘Which casino are we talking about?’
‘Rischio. It’s Italian for bet. It’s owned by a guy called Frank Salford.’
I nodded and moved things up a gear. ‘Where were you on the night your wife was murdered?’
‘I was working.’
‘Where?’
‘In my car, on the motorway.’
‘The motorway?’
‘In a lay-by. I wanted to get a few ideas down while I had them, so I pulled over and used my laptop.’
‘Wasn’t it a bit uncomfortable, working in your car?’
He shook his head. ‘Not at all.’
‘How long was this for?’
‘I was coming back from a meeting in Leeds. I’d eaten around there with a business associate and left about 6.30, pulled up near Ferrybridge Services at about 7.00, worked for three hours or so and then drove back to Hull. I went to the casino to unwind and I got the call on my mobile about one in the morning and was met by the police.’
‘Why didn’t you go into Ferrybridge? You could have worked in the canteen area, had a coffee?’
‘I’d already passed it. I couldn’t be bothered to drive to the next junction and double back on myself.’
As befitting a man in the p
ublic eye, it was difficult to read Murdoch’s face. Parking up in a dark, isolated lay-by to use an expensive piece of equipment didn’t ring true to me. It was possible, but it didn’t feel right. A laptop battery would probably last that long. ‘Did anyone see you?’
‘There was the odd lorry parked up and a few cars came and went but nobody I specifically noticed.’
I went into the kitchen for beers. I needed a drink.
He took the bottle and thanked me. ‘Pretty basic place this, isn’t it?’
‘It’s how I like it.’
‘I think they call it minimalist.’
I sat back down in the chair next to the window. The sky was darkening and promised rain.
‘Did you have life insurance on your wife?’
‘Do I have a motive for wanting my wife dead?’
I nodded. That was exactly what I meant.
He told me they had policies out on each other. I knew it wasn’t uncommon for married couples to have such policies, so a surviving partner would have some financial security should disaster strike. I also knew money made for a powerful motive. The police would be looking closely at the circumstances surrounding the policy.
‘What kind of marriage did you have?’ I was asking blunt questions but it was the way things had to be.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Happy, stormy. What was it like for you?’
‘It worked. That was the main thing.’
Murdoch looked embarrassed. I took a mouthful of beer and waited for him to explain.
‘We had an open marriage’ he eventually said. ‘To be honest, it was more Jennifer’s idea, but I can’t say I was complaining. We set ground-rules. We’d only sleep with other people at this club we were members of. It kept the spice in our marriage, if you follow me.’
I nodded. A swingers club. I’d heard about such places, but half-thought they were urban myths. I’d led a sheltered life, obviously. ‘Did your wife have any special friends, if that’s the right way of expressing it?’
‘One or two regulars, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Did those relationships extend beyond the boundaries of the club?’
Broken Dreams Page 8