by Frank Smith
‘And you stayed about an hour. Did you come straight home?’
‘Stopped at the Three Crowns on the way back. Stayed till about eleven, then came home.’
‘Did you or your husband go out again?’
‘Not till this morning, no. He went off with his mates just before George rang. Why do you want to know all this?’
‘He’s wondering if it was Gordon who killed Billy,’ Travis said quietly.
Trudy’s eyes opened wide. ‘Gordon? Kill Billy? Why would he. He likes Billy. Besides, he never went out. He was at home with me all night. That’s ridiculous!’
‘He likes Billy?’ Paget echoed. ‘Would he like him as much if he found out Billy was sleeping with you when he’s out of town? It seems to me he would have good reason to go after him. And I must warn you, Mrs Mason, if you’re protecting him, it could mean very serious consequences for you.’
But Trudy Mason was shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, ‘so I suppose I’d better explain. Just don’t tell Billy, George, because—’ The words died on her lips and her hands flew to her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes once again. ‘It was a game,’ she said shakily. ‘Well, sort of a game.’ Trudy paused to dab at her eyes and blow her nose. ‘Gordon knows about me and Billy; he has done from the very beginning.’
She turned to face Travis. ‘Remember that accident four years ago, George, when Gordon was laid up for the best part of six months? Smashed himself up when he went off the road trying to avoid a kid who ran out in front of him,’ she explained for Paget’s benefit. ‘Did a lot of damage, that did. Pinned inside the cab for four hours before they were able to get him out. They fixed him up all right, well mostly. Enough for him to go back to driving and that, but not so good on the home front, if you know what I mean. Like he’s never been able to . . . well, you know . . . get it up since then.’
‘He’s impotent?’ said Paget.
‘That’s it. But I’m not. Impotent, I mean in a manner of speaking, and Gordon always felt guilty about that. I mean, I still love Gordon and he loves me, but it did put a bit of a strain on things with him not being able to . . . like I said. So when I met Billy, and we got on so well together, I asked Gordon if he was all right with me and Billy getting together every once in a while. To relieve the tension, as you might say.’
Trudy Mason turned back to Travis. ‘You know how it was with Billy before that, don’t you, George?’ she said softly. ‘He’d never had a real girlfriend; I was his first. I know it’s hard to believe, but he told me he’d never had sex before, and I believed him, so it was doing him good as well as me. But I didn’t want to go behind Gordon’s back, so I explained the way it was, and he agreed.’
Trudy made a face. ‘To be honest, Gordon did have a bit of trouble with it at first,’ she admitted, ‘but he came round in the end. Actually, I think he was relieved in a way, because he didn’t have to feel guilty any more. But he did insist on us having a couple of rules. He never wanted to see the two of us together when he came home, at least not in that way, and I wasn’t to tell Billy that Gordon knew. Which was all right with me, because as long as Billy thought we were meeting in secret, it kept him excited. And, to be honest, with me being a good ten years older than him, I wanted it to stay that way.’ She bit her lower lip hard as she fought back the tears. ‘God! But I’m going to miss him,’ she whispered. ‘Who in his right mind would do something like that to Billy of all people?’
Billy’s bedroom was at the back of the house. It was quite a large room with a ceiling that sloped towards a narrow window overlooking the back yards of the terraced houses in the next street. The linoleum on the floor was old, and it crackled beneath Paget’s feet as he moved to the centre of the room, then paused to look around and mentally catalogue the furniture.
Billy’s bed, neatly made, faced them from across the room. The wall above it was covered in pictures: everything from still life to street scenes and landscapes. Pictures of bicycles, cars, a woman hanging out washing on a line, two men loading or unloading a removals van. There were close-ups of small children, of a young couple holding hands, and the faces of old people with wrinkled necks and weathered hands.
And every one was in black and white.
Lying on the seat of a wooden chair beside the bed was a large photograph album. Paget picked it up and opened it. It was filled with pictures of Trudy Mason. Dramatic head-and-shoulders shots for the first few pages, but they became more and more revealing as Paget turned the pages.
‘Good body for her age,’ Molly observed archly, peering over Paget’s shoulder. ‘And very nicely posed. Quite tasteful, really, don’t you think, sir?’
‘Quite,’ he said, closing the book.
A chest of drawers, a wardrobe, and a large bookcase crammed with magazines took up much of the wall opposite the window. Paget pulled out magazines at random. Every one of them concerned photography in one form or another. He looked around the room. It appeared that Billy Travis had been passionate about only two things in life: photography and Trudy Mason, possibly in that order. So what had he done to deserve such a death? Perhaps the answer was in the laptop on a shelf above the desk beside the window.
‘That’s odd,’ said Molly, who had been cruising the room. ‘Have you noticed, sir? There are no family pictures. None at all. You’d think with father and son both being photographers, there would be some family photos among this lot.’
Paget pulled the laptop off the shelf. ‘That is a bit odd,’ he agreed absently. ‘Perhaps this will tell us something more about the man.’
Molly bent to peer under the bed, then got down on her knees and pulled out a small suitcase. It was covered in dust. Clearly it had not been opened for a very long time. She expected it to be locked, but the latches sprang open as soon as she pressed them.
Inside were photographs, scores if not hundreds of them, all of the family, but most of them of Billy himself. Billy as a baby; Billy as a toddler with his mother; Billy on a tricycle; Billy on his birthday. His mother was in most of them, so it was a reasonable assumption that his father had taken the pictures. Molly shuffled through them and found a cheeky one of Billy as a boy. He was grinning broadly as he pointed to what must have been a recent ‘buzz cut’. He looked awful, but he must have changed his mind – or he’d had it changed for him – because Molly found another picture of him with a full head of hair, and looking positively angelic as a choir boy, taken a year or so later.
Molly had been passing the pictures to Paget as she sorted through them, but now Paget set them aside. ‘There are none of his mother after about the age of five,’ he said slowly. ‘PC Whitelaw said Billy’s mother died when he was young, and it doesn’t look as if any pictures were taken of the boy for several years after that. Have you seen any of him from about the time he was five to something like ten?’
Molly shook her head. ‘You’re right,’ she said, shuffling through the pile. ‘It looks as if there were none taken for several years. Nor can I find any pictures of him from the time he was seventeen or eighteen. Not a single picture. I wonder why that was?’
‘Perhaps his father can tell us,’ Paget said. ‘I’m taking the laptop with me, but you might as well put the case back under the bed for now. SOCO can go through it later.’
‘Funny, but I never realized it had gone on that long,’ George Travis said bleakly when Paget asked him. ‘I suppose I fell out of the habit of taking pictures of the boy after his mother died. She was the one who was always after me to take Billy’s picture. She couldn’t get enough of them; always pestering me to take more, so I probably thought we had enough, and just stopped taking them.’
‘What about later? We couldn’t find a single picture of him after the age of seventeen or eighteen.’
Travis shook his head in a bewildered sort of way. ‘I think it might have been earlier than that,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what got into him, but all of a sudden he went camera shy. I thought he was joking at first
, but I soon found out he wasn’t when I tried to take a picture of him. Dead serious, he was, so I let him be.’ His face clouded. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t have a picture of the boy since then.’
He raised troubled eyes to meet those of Paget as the realization hit him. ‘Not one!’ he repeated. ‘Me, a photographer, and I don’t have a single picture of my son as a man!’ His lips quivered, and he turned his head away to hide the tears in his eyes.
‘Perhaps Trudy Mason might have one,’ Molly suggested, but Travis shook his head. ‘I know she tried,’ he said, ‘but she told me he grabbed the camera off her and got so upset that she never tried again. He took lots of her, though.’
With Ormside away until Monday, Paget was anxious to get back to Charter Lane to oversee the setting up of the incident room, so it was left to Molly to trace Billy Travis’s movements on the night before he died. George Travis had said that Billy left the shop around seven thirty on Friday evening, so the first thing that needed to be established was whether Billy had actually gone to the meeting in Thurston Street.
Now, as she followed Ted Grayson down the hall to a small sitting room, Molly could see why George Travis had described the man as ‘a bit odd’ when Paget had asked about the man. Grayson had come to the door wearing ragged jeans, a multi-coloured tie-dyed shirt open to the waist, and flip-flops on his bare feet. With his gaunt face, scarecrow frame, and hair pulled tight and tied at the back in a pony-tail, he looked more like one of the street people who huddled in doorways on Bridge Street each night than the owner of a small but tastefully furnished house in Thurston Street.
‘So, Detective Sergeant Forsythe,’ he said brusquely as he waved Molly to a seat, ‘what’s all this about Billy Travis?’ Grayson pulled up a footstool and squatted cross-legged to face her. ‘What’s Billy supposed to have done? He was here just last night, and I can’t see him getting into much trouble between then and now. Is he in trouble?’
Molly ignored the question. ‘Do you happen to remember what time it was when he arrived last night?’ she asked.
‘Quarter to eight, give or take a few minutes. We try to start at eight, and Billy usually gets here in good time. And you aren’t answering my question. What’s he supposed to have done?’
‘In a moment,’ Molly said. ‘Can you tell me when he left?’
Grayson remained silent, eyeing her narrowly as if trying to decide whether to answer or not. ‘Eleven o’clock,’ he said at last. ‘Everyone left at the same time, and the town hall clock was striking eleven as they went out the door.’
‘How was he when he left? Did you notice anything different about him during the evening? Or did he say anything that struck you as odd?’
Grayson got to his feet. ‘I don’t like playing games,’ he said coldly, ‘especially when it involves a friend, so no more answers until you tell me what this is about. So, either you tell me or we’ve finished here.’
‘Unfortunately, it’s not a game,’ Molly told him. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Billy Travis died last night.’
‘Died?’ Grayson stared at her for a long moment, then sat down heavily in a leather armchair. ‘How?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘What was it? Some idiot run into him? Billy always walked home. Is that what happened?’
‘No, Mr Grayson, it wasn’t an accident. Billy Travis was murdered a few hours after he left here.’
‘Murdered?’ Grayson repeated. ‘Who the hell would want to murder Billy? Are you quite sure we’re talking about the same man? How?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not at liberty to give you any details at this point,’ Molly said. ‘You say Billy was a friend?’
Grayson nodded slowly. ‘I just can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I mean, Billy of all people? He was such a harmless little guy. Good photographer. Did some good work in black and white, especially. A traditionalist, that was Billy when it came to photography.’ He drew a deep breath and let it out again slowly. ‘So, what do you want to know?’
‘Did he seem worried or agitated last night? Did he say anything that struck you as odd? Or did he say anything to suggest he might be meeting someone when he left here?’
Grayson shook his head. ‘Billy’s more of a listener than a talker. I mean he will join in, especially when it’s something near and dear to his heart, but he doesn’t put himself forward or indulge in small talk, if you know what I mean. So all I can tell you is that he seemed perfectly normal when he left here.’
‘You said he usually walks to and from these meetings. Do you know if anyone else was going his way last night?’
‘No one was. All the others came by car. In fact, come to think of it, he’s the only one who lives in that direction, so he’d be walking alone. Not that he had far to go; just down to the end of the road to Dunmore Lane, then straight on from there. Ten minutes at the most.’
Grayson gave Molly a list of names and addresses of those who had been at the meeting the night before, but said he doubted if they would be able to shed any more light on what had happened than he could. When Molly asked if Billy had been particularly friendly with any of the other members of the group, Grayson shook his head. ‘Billy was a real loner,’ he said. ‘In fact, I can’t think of anyone he was close to, other than his father, of course. He and George were very close. Billy lost his mum when he was a kid, so they only had each other. God!’ he exclaimed, ‘this is going to hit poor old George hard.’
‘What about girlfriends?’ Molly probed, wondering if Grayson and others were aware of Billy’s relationship with Trudy Mason. But Grayson was once again shaking his head. ‘Never heard him speak of one,’ he said, ‘in fact some of the members of the club were convinced he was gay.’
‘And what did you think, Mr Grayson?’
Grayson snorted. ‘Billy was a loner, and he didn’t mix well with women, but I can assure you he wasn’t gay.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
Grayson’s lips twisted into a sardonic grin. ‘Let’s just say it takes one to know one,’ he said softly. ‘Or hadn’t you worked that out yet, Detective?’
Molly checked for CCTV cameras as she drove back over the route Billy had probably taken the night before. She found one in Dunmore Lane. It was pointed at the doorway of the corner shop. But had it been on last night? More to the point, was it a real CCTV camera? Some of them were no more than dummies, mounted by the shopkeepers themselves in the hope that they would deter anyone who might be thinking of robbing their shop.
Real or not, it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference to some of the hoodies who spent their time slouching around the streets, looking for an easy mark. Molly got out of the car and crossed her fingers as she entered the shop.
FOUR
Monday, 3 October
Paget left the house earlier than usual on Monday morning. It had been a busy weekend, and he felt confident that everything that could be done had been done, but he wasn’t looking forward to the arrival of his new boss, Detective Superintendent Amanda Pierce. It would have been difficult enough if everything had been normal, but with the death of Billy Travis, today would be anything but normal.
Trudy Mason had accompanied George Travis to make a formal identification of the body on Saturday afternoon, and Starkie had been surprisingly cooperative by offering to perform the autopsy later that day. There were no real surprises. There were some internal injuries as a result of the fall, but as he said, they were of little consequence considering that death had occurred on impact.
He’d found nylon fibres embedded in the front and sides of the neck, but none around the back of the neck. ‘In other words,’ he told Paget, ‘he wasn’t hanged or partly hanged. He was choked. There was a bruise on the back of his head, so the rope may have been slipped around his neck and his head pulled back sharply against a post or something like that. There were marks on his ankles, indicating that they were bound at some point, probably with plastic ties like those on his wrists. I won’t have the toxicology report ba
ck until at least Tuesday, but I’d be surprised if there’s anything unusual about it. Regarding the time of death, I’ve narrowed it down a bit, and I think it’s safe to say he died between one and three o’clock Saturday morning. As for the capital A carved in his forehead, there was no tearing of the skin, so I’d say the instrument used was very sharp, such as a razor, a box cutter blade, or possibly a scalpel.’
‘But why put a dressing over it?’ Paget had asked.
‘The only reason I can think of, is that he wanted it to be seen as something separate from the injuries due to the fall. I suspect it may be a message of some sort, but that’s your department, not mine.’
‘Which may be why he was dragged off the tracks,’ said Paget. ‘The killer didn’t want his face messed up by a train. But what’s the message, I wonder?’
‘As I said, not my problem,’ Starkie said cheerfully. ‘You’re the detective.’
Much of Sunday had been taken up with chasing down and taking statements from everyone who had been at the meeting in Grayson’s house on Friday night, to no avail. They all appeared to be stunned by the news of Billy Travis’s death, and all said much the same thing. The last they had seen of him was when they left the house together at eleven o’clock on Friday night. As for the movements of Trudy Mason and her husband that night, everything checked out up to the time they said they had returned home, but from that point on it was simply the word of each of them that neither had left the house again until the following morning. Gordon Mason confirmed, albeit reluctantly, that he knew about his wife’s arrangement with Billy, and claimed to have had no problem with it.
But, as Tregalles suggested when he and Paget met in the car park and entered the building together, while Gordon Mason might have gone along with the arrangement initially, it was the sort of thing that might fester and prey on his mind during those long trips abroad. ‘It could build up a lot of jealousy and resentment,’ he said. ‘He may have wanted it to end, but perhaps his wife didn’t. He probably knew about Billy’s Friday night visits to the camera club, and if Trudy Mason’s a sound sleeper, it would be a simple matter to slip out of the house and lie in wait for Billy as he walked home.’