DEAD MONEY

by TERESA HUNTER

  “As in?”

  “Must I spell it out for you? There were stories.”

  “Stories of what?”

  “You force me to be plain. Why does a middle-aged man hang round centres full of displaced, vulnerable children and teenagers?”

  “On what evidence?”

  “There is evidence, I believe.”

  “The police?”

  “Their investigations have closed,” he hesitated before adding, “for the time being.”

  “Will they stay closed?”

  “That rather depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “On whether we all agree to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  ‘Sleeping dogs lie’ – Raeburn’s words exactly. The threat was clear. My meeting was over. The woman with the lace handkerchief continued to weep.

  Chapter 14

  4pm Wednesday, October 17,

  Whitechapel

  Ludgate called shortly after I got back to the office.

  “Can you make dinner tomorrow evening? I have some things I want to discuss.”

  There was something about his tone that made me uneasy.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll head over your way. How about the Oxo Tower?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll see you there, about eight.”

  Omar stopped off on his way home from court. He seemed more cheerful. I suspected his case was turning.

  “How did you get on?” he asked.

  “Not brill.” I recounted the day’s interviews.

  “Well, you can count Crippledown out.”

  “I guess.”

  “What do you think about these allegations?” I asked Omar after repeating Raeburn’s and Ragland’s smears.

  Marsha joined us, sitting in an armchair she had rescued from a skip on the Old Kent Road. My desk, which, like me, had seen better days, had been salvaged from another in Northumberland wharf.

  “What’s this, doll?” Marsha asked.

  “Raeburn, the union guy, warned me off. Said Ken had taken back-handers. Do you remember the case of Hannigan?”

  “The young catholic who was sacked?”

  I nodded. “Said Ken cut a deal to ship him back to Ireland for the price of a new extension.”

  “D’you believe it?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her.

  “That’s not all Marsha,” Omar nodded to me to continue.

  “Ragland hinted at worse.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Underage sex, grooming minors…I don’t know.”

  “They both have motives for discrediting Strachan,” Omar said.

  “Ragland’s a piece of piss,” Marsha put it more colourfully.

  “What do you think, Jules?” Omar asked. That was the problem. I didn’t know anymore.

  “Three months ago, I would have laughed my head off. But now, after everything...” I trailed off.

  “We never really get inside someone else’s head,” Marsha’s voice was kindly.

  I nodded again. “The possibilities, as far as I can see, are either someone broke into the house and killed them all.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know, Omar, maybe a burglary.”

  “Nothing was taken.”

  “Maybe he was disturbed?”

  “He’d have to be bloody disturbed to wipe out a whole family for the sake of a bit of petty thieving,” Marsha interjected. “That sort don’t carry shot guns. It’s not the way it works, doll.”

  “Well, then, maybe Ken was on to something. Maybe he got some conclusive proof of something, something to do with the pension scheme, maybe this meeting with R…”

  “So the actuaries gunned down his entire family,” Omar’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I don’t think so.”

  “Which only leaves...I mean, if he was the good man that Stephen Russell believes, how could he shoot his family? How could he have done such a thing?” My voice caught on the words. “I just can’t understand it…”

  Omar and Marsha both watched me intently, waiting for me to go on.

  “If he wasn’t a good man, if he was something other than we thought…”

  “Steady, doll,” Marsha stood and placed a soothing hand at the base of my neck.

  “But if he wasn’t a good man, if I misjudged him for years, if he was bad, that means anything is possible.”

  “Not at all,” Omar’s voice was quiet and calm. “Nothing here is clear.”

  “A bad man wouldn’t care about murdering his family,” I said.

  “Ain’t so, gal. You know what they say about thick as thieves. Family’s all some crooks have to hold on to.”

  “Jules, you may have to accept…” Omar stopped, as if trying to choose his words with extreme delicacy.

  “Julia,” he began again. “Sometimes we have to accept that any one of us, no matter how good, kind and courageous…” he hesitated. “All of us...every one of us... at a certain time in our lives, in certain circumstances, any one of us might…” his voice petered out.

  “You believe he did it, don’t you?”

  Omar didn’t answer, although in a way he did.

  Chapter 15

  8pm Thursday, October 18,

  The Oxo Tower

  “Ask for evidence,” Ludgate said, when I ran through the interviews with him the following evening. “Until either of them produces something, keep it in the back of your mind. It’s not strictly relevant to your primary investigation.”

  “The pension collapse?”

  “And the company. If they took money out of the pension, what did they take out of the company before it went down.”

  “The creditors?”

  “Exactly.”

  We had a window table, over-looking the Thames, with a view of the North Bank stretching from Westminster down to Canary Wharf. The lights of London were brash against the dark.

  “Look Julia, there’s no easy way for me to say this.” Ludgate’s face was sombre. “You are not making the progress on this story we need.”

  “It’s difficult.”

  “Too difficult for you?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Getting anywhere with that missing Sherlock man?”

  “No, nothing, yet.” I had called Strathclyde police ahead of this meeting, as I had all my contacts, desperate for a new lead. There was nothing.

  “Police aren’t even treating it as a missing person. Not seriously.”

  “Was there nothing from the meeting with Patterson?”

  I shook my head.

  “We can’t afford to let this stall, Julia. My instincts tell me there’s something going on here. Have you been through the company accounts?”

  I had to admit I hadn’t. The pension scheme accounts had been my main focus.

  “I’ve been going through them. Pure fiction. Who makes 80 per cent on cans of lager?”

  “I’ll check them out.”

  “Do that. I know the Kellys of old remember.”

  I nodded, taking a sip of wine.

  “The inquest’s next Wednesday, there may well…”

  He cut me dead.

  “The time for the “may wells” are over. This story needs a crack operator. I’ve given you the best chance I can. Either you come up with the goods and soon. Or we put someone else on the story.”

  That last sip of wine regurgitated back into my mouth.

  The days before the inquest dragged. On Monday, I called Sister Robert’s asylum centre to make an appointment to see her after the inquest. I might as well check her out while in town. I spent the rest of the day going through the company’s profit and loss accounts for the past five years. Ludgate was right. Sales volumes were falling year on year, yet revenue was rising. I spotted several well-known tricks used to smooth out the numbers, such as sale-and-leaseback of buildings; disposal of assets at inflated prices to family members; scantily-accounted for special cash inflows.

 
As a private company, these accounts would escape the scrutiny, which listed plcs had to withstand from investment analysts. The more you looked into them, the more they fell apart.

  I sensed I was wasting my time here in London. There was only so much you could achieve on the phone and by going through old documents. I would have to pull off a minor scoop on Wednesday, at the inquest, or I was in deep trouble.

  Marsha knew I was feeling down. On Monday evening, she invited me to join her at the project’s soup kitchen for the down and outs at Waterloo, although why she thought mingling among London’s rejects would lift my spirits I wasn’t sure.

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “If you say so,” I replied, reaching for my coat. It was the best invitation I had. The only one.

  The kitchen was a lock-up under one of the old arches close to Southwark Cathedral. I’d always meant to get involved. It was on my door-step. Marsha was a regular volunteer, which made me feel bad. She crossed the river to help people living, as she put it, on my manor.

  Marsha was obviously a favourite with the regulars. She had that touch of magic that marks people out from the crowd. For sure, someone needed to be cheerful to lift the gloom of those who idled in. It would have taken a heart of stone not to ache for the plight of, particularly the young, who were sleeping in the streets. Bedraggled, dirty and without hope. Many struggled with their English. Illegal immigrants, young girls and boys, who discovered the hard way that the promise of London could be brutal and empty.

  “Like your new coat, Susie, very stylish,” Marsha flattered one client, as she filled up a soup bowl and handed it across. “Harrods or Harvey Nicks?”

  “Got it off a tip down the Elephant, nice though,” Susie smiled, looking pleased.

  “Still at the Bermondsey hostel, Dougie?” she asked another.

  “Na, that bitch of a social worker got me kicked out.”

  “Bad luck. Tell you what, what do you call 100 social workers at the bottom of the sea?”

  “A good start,” a chorus replied. This “bottom of the sea joke” seemed universally adaptable.

  It was a bitter sweet scene despite the laughter. Drugs, prostitution, mental illness, abuse, family breakdown; the underbelly of one of the richest cities in the world.

  “It breaks your heart,” I said to Marsha, as we walked away.

  “No, doll. There’s a lot of help out there,” she replied. “A lot of people doing good work. They ain’t abandoned.”

  Chapter 16

  10 am Wednesday, October24,

  Glasgow

  It was the strangest inquest I had ever attended, probably because it wasn’t one. I did my homework before heading for the airport. Omar was right. Scotland has no tradition of public inquests after a suspicious death. The Procurator Fiscal hears evidence in private and decides whether murder investigations should be initiated. On rare occasions, evidence could be heard by the Sheriff in public. Someone had lobbied hard for this inquiry, and my money was on Mrs Strachan.

  The court was packed, I guessed, with friends, neighbours and other associates of this much-loved family, all searching for an answer to the question that kept them, like me, awake at night. What made him do it?

  I recognised a few faces in the crowd; Stephen Russell, the Clydebank Head, a priest, who spoke at the funeral, other funeral followers. No sign of Raeburn.

  One I couldn’t miss –sat up in the front row with Jim Sugden, her funeral coat and hat as pristine as the day of the burial.

  The Sheriff’s court in the heart of Glasgow’s Merchant City was lavish; domed ceilings, marbled columns, gold-crusted statues of ancient Gods, stained-glass windows, and heavy wooden panelling.

  I found an empty seat near the front, and as I took up my position, I spotted someone waving to me from the side benches. It was Chief Inspector Pitcher. What was be doing here?

  The clerk hammered on the table, announcing the Sheriff was on his way.

  “Court rise for Sheriff Johnston!”

  A bespectacled Sheriff Johnston, bewigged and begowned, took his seat on the bench and proceedings began. First to give evidence was PC Barry Fraser. He reported attending the Bearsden address, accompanied by armed officers, after an emergency call detailing shots just after 3 o’clock on October 3.

  “And you entered the house?” the Sheriff asked. The proceedings weren’t adversarial, like a normal court. The Sheriff took the role of inquisitor.

  “Not immediately, no,” came the hesitant reply. Fraser clutched his note book tightly. He looked nervous.

  “You waited?” the Sheriff asked again.

  “Until it was safe.”

  “Safe?” The Sheriff took off his thick-rimmed glasses and polished them on his black gown. He wasn’t looking at the witness, but he was listening to him.

  “Until we were sure there was no gun man left alive,” Fraser explained.

  “And how long was that?”

  He must have known the answer, but Fraser flicked the pages of his note book backwards and forwards before replying. “Something like eight hours.”

  A gasp echoed round the court room. Fraser blushed. The Sheriff replaced his glasses on his nose and glared at the constable.

  “You waited eight hours…until nearly midnight?”

  “It wasn’t midnight,”

  “After 11pm?”

  “Yes,” he replied, although too quietly to be strictly audible.

  “Why so long?”

  “Policy,” Fraser replied, pronouncing it the Scottish way, like “pawlissy”.

  “When you entered, what did you find?”

  “Nothing in the hall. A body in the lounge, lying on the carpet with a wound to the back of her head.”

  “Mrs Strachan?”

  “So she was later identified.”

  “Was she breathing?”

  “She didn’t appear to be.”

  “What did you do next, constable?”

  “The patio doors were open. We went into the garden. There were two more bodies. An adolescent male and female.”

  “Also wounded?”

  “Aye, they had bullet wounds. In the back for the boy, but lower down at the top of the leg for the girl.”

  “Did you search the house further?”

  “Indeed. In the study we found a man, slumped across a desk. There was a shotgun by his side.”

  The court rumbled as those present took in these remarks. The clerk silenced them with his hammer.

  “Mr Strachan?”

  “He was later identified as such.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “There was a note on the desk.”

  “Did you draw any conclusions about what had taken place?”

  “It looked like the man had crept up on his wife and shot her in the back of the head. She wouldn’t have known anything about it.”

  “And the adolescents?”

  “Must’ve been alerted by the noise from the lounge and were trying to escape over the back garden.”

  “He shot them in flight?”

  “It would seem.”

  The court gasped as one, and some of those present vented their disgust with murmurs of “monster”, “bastard”, “murderer”.

  My eyes were drawn as if by magnet to Mrs Strachan. Her stiff back did not move.

  “And then?”

  “We concluded that he had returned to the study and shot himself.”

  “None of them was breathing?”

  “We thought not at the time.”

  “But subsequently?”

  “The paramedics discovered a faint pulse in the adolescent female. She was taken to hospital.”

  “The daughter, Emma?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still breathing?”

  “I couldn’t say…”

  “But a faint pulse.”

  “Yes.”

  This was the first time it was revealed anyone had been found alive. The clerk hammered to silence the court.


  “She was alive?” the Sheriff continued.

  “Yes. But we didn’t know. Not at the time...”

  “And died later, in the hospital?”

  “Yes...”

  Another gasp from those present. My gaze drifted to the motionless figure of old woman Strachan. I caught Pitcher out of the corner of my eye. He smiled inanely, and I wondered, again, what on earth was he doing there?

  “Were any other lines of inquiry pursued? Was anyone seen running from the scene?”

  “No other suspects were sought. All the evidence pointed to...” he didn’t finish.

  “That will be all constable,” the policeman was dismissed.

  The next to give evidence was, Professor Fergus MacIntosh, a professor of pathology at Glasgow University. Dressed in a light tweed suit, he was tall and thin, with a wispy beard, and failing hair. He looked more like Old Father Time than Dr Death.

  He replied to the Sheriff’s questions softly and with maximum courtesy. He would not be startling the court room with tales of blood and gore. Mrs Jane Strachan had probably been killed instantly by a massive shotgun wound to the head. Similarly Robbie would have died within seconds of being hit.

  Then he came to Emma.

  “The wound was not fatal,” he tried to break the news as gently as he could. “There were signs on the ground that she attempted to drag her body, perhaps to get help.”

  “The wound was serious?”

  “It was too serious to permit her to travel far. But it was not a fatal wound. She died subsequently through loss of blood.”

  “If the police had entered sooner, is it your opinion she might have lived?”

  “I am certain she would be alive today.”

  The clerk lifted his hammer to quiet the storm he expected these words to produce, but an eerie silence descended.

  “That will be all. Thank you Professor MacIntosh. Can I next call Dr Hullah, the Strachan’s GP.”

  Dr Hullah reported that the Strachan’s were a healthy normal family, with no obvious medical problems.

  “I knew the family well, GP for some 20 years. Mr Strachan had developed late onset diabetes about two years ago, so I saw him for regular monitoring. I saw him a fortnight before the incident.”