The Decoy

by Florrie Palmer

  Over supper on that same evening, Bob suggested he and Stella should take a long holiday to get away from what had turned into a devastated village.

  “We could ask the Nicholsons to join us if you’d like, angel. They’d be as glad to get away as us.”

  “They have children,” said Stella, cynicism icing her words. “And I don’t want to go away. We went in August and I don’t want to go again.”

  However hard Bob tried to lay down the law, however intimidating he was, she remained adamant. “I won’t go. I want to be here to give Eliza support.”

  Bob was clearly aggravated. “Eliza doesn’t need you, Stella. You’re hardly an old friend. You come with me and do as your old man recommends.”

  It nearly started a major row between them. Stella always did as Bob wanted, but this time she had found courage and was sticking to her guns. She refused to go.

  “And you should be here to support Jay,” she said with more boldness than she had ever found to speak to her husband before.

  On Wednesday morning at 7.30am there was a knock on the door of Manor Farm. Still in his dressing gown, Jay answered it. Four policemen stood on the doorstep with the senior investigating officer, whose face was long and serious. He held up a formal looking piece of paper. It had the royal crest in the centre of the top. He showed it to Jay. A headline ran across the page under the crest: “Warrant to enter and search premises.”

  He said, “This warrant gives us the right to search this property and to seize any articles we believe to be possible evidence in the killing of Anne Berkeley. May we come in, please?”

  Dumbfounded, Jay said, “Can we refuse?”

  “I’m afraid you would be breaking the law were you to attempt to do so, Mr Armstrong.” No nice DCI and “sir” today.

  Jay threw his hands in the air and shook his head. “But my daughter is here. She hasn’t even gone to school yet. Why so early?” Then he thought of something, “And on what grounds?”

  “We are acting on information received, Mr Armstrong.”

  Half laughing, Jay asked, “From whom, may I enquire?”

  “I am not at liberty to divulge that, sir.”

  Eliza came through from the kitchen. She looked crumpled. Her eyes looked small and held no light. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The previous two nights, in spite of Jay’s exhortations and her own exhaustion, she had been unable to contemplate sleep. She had stayed up watching late night television in a mindless blank, taking none of it in until she finally slept for a few short hours on the three-seater. The feeling of sickness she’d had ever since learning of her mother’s murder was still with her. She had eaten barely a thing since Monday and looked drained and haggard

  “What’s this about? Why so early?”

  The policemen entered the house. Jay was white. His words explained exactly what this was about. “Surely you can’t think we had anything to do with this? We loved and adored Annie – you cannot possibly believe otherwise. Whoever has told you otherwise is either deeply malicious or totally stupid. Whatever they said and whatever their reason, they are entirely wrong.”

  “I am sorry, sir,” said the inspector,” but as the closest relatives of Mrs Berkeley, you will appreciate that you are rather high on the list of potential suspects.”

  Eliza’s legs felt unsteady, her face one of misery. “Are you suggesting either of us murdered my own mother? You must be mad!”

  The policemen shuffled uneasily on their feet.

  “Have the decency to allow me to explain to my daughters what you are doing here.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, Mrs Armstrong.” The antagonism mustn’t be allowed to build. The DI knew he had to keep Eliza on side as much as he was able. “Where are they now?”

  “The youngest, Holly, is in the kitchen having breakfast. Can’t you please at least wait until she goes to school? Juliet is still in bed.”

  “All right, Mrs Armstrong, we can wait until you have told Holly what’s happening. When does she leave?”

  “In about ten minutes.”

  “And how does she get there?”

  “By bicycle to the station. She gets there on her own steam.”

  “Very well, we can hold off until then. But I must ask you both to remain where you are.”

  Holly appeared in the room. She scowled at the police then gaped in astonishment at the number of policemen standing about in their sitting room.

  Eliza was so furious that she hadn’t noticed her daughter come in behind her. “I’m supposed to be grateful for that, am I? This is just outrageous.”

  Holly, distressed said, “Why are they here, Mummy?”

  “Don’t worry, darling. The police are just doing their duty. We all need to know what happened to Annie B. and they’re just going to hunt for any clues they might be able to find here.” She hugged Holly. “It’s all fine, really. I promise. Now, you should be off.”

  Eliza followed her to the door and waved as her daughter set off on her bike. In an effort to normalise the situation, trying to sound nonchalant and cheerful, she said what she always said, “Drive carefully.”

  She watched Holly pedal down the lane. Then she came back into the house, closed the door and returned to the sitting room. The detective nodded at the men who started to disperse around the house. One went into the kitchen and downstairs cloakroom, another hunted around the sitting room and playroom, and the two others went upstairs.

  The detective stayed with Eliza and Jay and Juliet, who by this time had appeared. They sat, wretched and hardly speaking while the search took place.

  After half an hour or so, one of the officers came into the room. “May I have a word, sir?” The senior investigating officer followed him to the kitchen doorway where the young officer whispered in his boss’s ear.

  The detective turned to Eliza and Jay. “Please remain where you are, I shall be back in a moment.” The DI followed the officer through the kitchen and down the corridor that led to the downstairs cloakroom.

  The cloakroom was a square tatty room that was used for hanging coats, macs, housing wellington boots and keeping fishing equipment, tools and other such things. At one end, a lavatory and basin were enclosed in a cubicle.

  The two policemen reappeared in a few minutes, carrying Jay’s toolbox, his Barbour jacket and what looked like a bagged pair of his gloves.

  “Can you tell us whether these are your gloves, Mr Armstrong?” Jay agreed that they were, and the detective asked him again to verify what clothing he had been wearing on Monday morning. He told them and the officer returned to the cloakroom to collect Jay’s flat cap and his Timberland boots.

  His stammer back, he said, “I was going to suggest you take the pyjamas I wore in bed last night, and while we’re at it, you might like my dressing gown.” Starting to remove his dark blue towelling robe, Jay had one sleeve off and was almost beyond rage. “Actually, why not take all my clothes while you’re at it?”

  Eliza put a restraining hand on his arm. “Calm down, darling. You know they won’t find anything, so calm down.”

  He exhaled noisily and issued a long groan. “I can’t bear this, Eliza. They obviously think I did it.”

  “But we know you didn’t, sweetheart, so they won’t find anything.”

  “Mr Armsworth, we would ask you to accompany us to the police station to assist with our enquiries. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. And now if you’d like to get dressed, the officer here will accompany you upstairs.”

  “My name is Armstrong! Jay Armstrong! May as well get that right if you’re planning on charging me with the murder of a woman I adored and would never have harmed as long as I lived.”

  Eliza wondered if the policeman was trying to rile her poor husband by choosing one of his weak spots. She put her arms round Jay’s neck and whispered, “Please calm down,
darling. You need to keep calm. Do that deep breathing our yoga teacher taught us, remember?”

  When Jay returned fully dressed, as he came into the room, one of the policemen was holding his laptop.

  “Hey! That’s my private laptop. You have no right–”

  “This is a murder enquiry and I’m afraid we do, Mr Armstrong. Would you come with us, please?”

  Eliza looked as though she might faint again. The shrill words sounded unnatural in her head. “When will he be back?”

  “When Mr Armstrong has answered all our questions satisfactorily. This officer will remain here with you, Mrs Armstrong, and you are at liberty to invite anyone here, as long as you do not leave the house.”

  Eliza could not contain her sarcasm. “May as well lock us both up and throw away the–” She stopped mid-sentence. Suddenly she saw her mother in her head. The image she had was one of her smiling, with a finger to her lips.

  “Okay,” she said, calm again. She followed Jay as he got into one of the police cars, “I love you, darling. Everything is going to be all right. I know it.”

  He shouted back, “Ring Peter Fenton and tell him they’re taking me to Cambridge!”

  Eliza ran back into the house and immediately rang their solicitor as Jay had suggested. She cried and choked and shouted down the telephone.

  Peter Fenton was only just able to understand what she was saying. He had of course read the papers and heard the news about Eliza’s mother and was not altogether surprised to hear Jay was being questioned. He would have, Peter thought, the most motive for her death. Jay seemed a decent man, but Peter had dealt with enough people in his time to know that you should never judge a book by its cover.

  “Please hurry, Peter.”

  “I’ll need to send our top criminal lawyer, George Pearson. He’s the best in Cambridge and a nice man. I’ll go with him, Eliza. Try not to worry too much. The police often make mistakes. We’re leaving right away.”

  He dropped everything he was doing and ran down the corridor of Fenton Barnard to George’s office. They were round at the Parkside Police Station in no time. The Armstrongs were important clients.

  Juliet was distraught and angry. Eliza rang Rose. “Can you come?” The cracked voice said it all.

  “I’ll be there straightaway, darling.”

  When she reached the farm, she found Eliza lying on the sitting room sofa in the foetal position, her legs bent up, her body curled round itself. Despair had overtaken her. Juliet, despite her intentions to be a rock to her mother, was lying on her bed crying her heart out.

  22

  7–8 November

  At the pathologist’s laboratory, an officer wearing blue latex gloves opened the toolbox. He carefully removed a large monkey wrench, which he had already bagged. With the pair of Jay’s gloves and the clothes Jay had been wearing on the morning of the murder, he gave them to the forensic pathologist who had performed Annie’s autopsy.

  When she examined the wrench, there was a surprising amount of dried blood around the head of it that was clearly visible through the stereoscope. Some was visible to the human eye. If someone had tried to wash this tool, they had made a bad job of it. The pathologist suggested they might have been in a hurry.

  A couple of broken white hairs were stuck in the clotted black blood that had seeped between the lower jaw and the screw mechanism of the tool. It also had a few tiny grey woollen fibres and some tiny yellow silk ones on the head and handle. The grey ones matched the gloves. The pattern on the injury was a telltale marker for the weapon that had inflicted it. A skin imprint in what remained of the scalp fitted with this. The pathologist had already taken photographic documentation of Annie’s injuries and the pattern lacerations had wavelike characteristics imprinted from the teeth of the wrench.

  Samples of the blood and the hair and their DNA were compared with that of the victim’s. It was the same person. So, it was conclusive. This was the weapon that had killed the old lady.

  The pathologist studied the wrench for fingerprints and found only Jay Armstrong’s. She then looked closely at the woollen gloves that had rubber pads on the inside of the fingers. These had clearly not been washed and there were a few splatters of Annie’s B.’s blood on the right glove. Again, the only fingerprints on them were those of Jay Armstrong’s. Now the police had some positive evidence that pointed straight at the victim’s son-in-law.

  The pathologist carefully went over Jay’s clothing to search for blood or any telltale signs that might indicate he had murdered the woman while wearing them. Here, she drew a blank. She phoned the DI who was at the police station interviewing Jay.

  A young policeman knocked on the door of the interview room, put his head round the door and said, “Sorry to interrupt, governor, but I have something important for you to look at.” The detective had left the room and returned a few minutes later with the wrench and the gloves. They had been bagged up again in clear plastic bags but were quite visible through them. He put them on the table.

  “I understand the business you run with Mrs Armstrong has been in a spot of trouble lately?”

  “It has been, yes, but things are much better now. We’ve had some good orders from the autumn catalogue.”

  “Have you been paid for those orders yet?”

  “No. The money should come through very soon.”

  Jay did not know, but the police had secured a court order allowing them to access his personal and business bank accounts. They had seen that the business had been in trouble and that his personal funds were very low. They passed his laptop to an expert to hunt for any incriminating emails. The expert would also go through Jay’s search history and see whether he really had been looking at the company website when he said he had. Search histories often revealed a lot about a suspect.

  Delving into Anne Berkeley’s background and her bank account, they could see that she had been a wealthy woman.

  “Do you recognise this tool here, Mr Armstrong?”

  Jay leant forward in his chair and studied the rusted old monkey wrench.

  “Well, it looks like one I have, but mine hasn’t been used for ages.” He wanted to add “it’s in my toolbox” but he had seen them removing it from his house and knew that that is where they had got the wrench.

  The DI moved the wrench to one side, replacing it with the grey fishing gloves. “And the gloves? I believe you use them for fishing?”

  Jay sighed. “They certainly look like mine.”

  “And when was the last time you wore them?”

  “When I was fishing in Scotland in September.”

  “Have a close look at them, Jay.” He could clearly see the spots of blood on the right hand one.

  “What would you say about the blood on those gloves?”

  “Must be from a fish. When I catch them, I gut them, you know.”

  “What if I told you the blood on that glove is actually human?”

  “Maybe I nicked myself, I don’t remember.”

  “That blood is Anne Berkeley’s blood.”

  He went white. His jaw dropped.

  “But how?”

  “That’s what I was hoping you could tell us, Jay.”

  The detective didn’t need to reflect. It was a clear-cut case. They had a weapon, they had a pair of gloves and now they had the motive. A witness had come into the police station to say they had seen Jay Armstrong walking back across the field that morning carrying something about a foot long in one hand. The witness had insisted they be given anonymity so their evidence could not be used in the court trial, but it did help to decide the minds of the police. It had all happened so quickly since the search. That was on account of the witness. It had certainly been a helluva good tip-off, resulting in finding the perp a lot faster than they could have hoped. Now all that was needed was to inform the Crown Prosecution Service.

  “Take him back to the cells, please.” He’d let the man sweat a while longer.

  The police rushed the weap
on and gloves over to the CPS who had only to glance at the evidence to decide there was sufficient evidence to substantiate the charge of murder.

  By about five o’clock that afternoon, Jay was brought back up from his cell to the custody sergeant, who handed him a charge sheet and read out the alleged offence to him. It was explained to him that he would be held at the station on remand until the date he was given to appear before the Cambridge Magistrate’s court in two weeks’ time. His case would then be passed on to the Crown Court for full trial with a judge and jury.

  Jay was taken back down to his tiny, bare, windowless cell. He lay on the low narrow bed and turned toward the wall. He cried like he used to when a child.

  The spectre of his stepfather that had haunted him for so many years had finally come to get him. His day of reckoning had arrived. He had deliberately let some of the air out of a tyre on Ralph’s car, causing his death.

  When Eliza rang the police to ask when they were going to return her husband to his home, they told her he had been charged with her mother’s murder. She was unable to speak and dropped the landline phone so it smacked onto the kitchen floor. Its battery cover flew off. The batteries rolled across the terracotta tiles.

  By Wednesday, still unable to eat and sapped of energy, Hugh Dunlop’s exhausted body had tried to recuperate while he had lain in bed sleeping most of the day. His wife had rung the doctor, who had diagnosed a bad case of food poisoning, prescribed Dioralyte, plenty of water and no food. There was little he could do but wait it out.

  On Thursday morning, having been assured the police had finished there, accompanied by the FLO, Eliza was determined to see where her mother had died. Frail as she was feeling, she managed to walk to the place where Annie had died.