Souvenirs of Murder

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Yet the child was shot with the same weapon that killed all the others,’ Rundle said. ‘That doesn’t tally with your account.’

  I said, ‘Patrick, you said you think you’d just left the room when there was the sound of a shot. When I spoke to you in the clinic you said you didn’t get a look at whoever fired the shot but weren’t sure why. Could any period of time have elapsed between you leaving Leanne’s room with her and the gun being fired?’

  ‘It was a bit hazy,’ Patrick said after a pause. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But—’

  ‘Where could the shot have been fired from so that you would not see whoever it was?’

  His eyes darted around with expert assessment. ‘Nowhere. Even if he’d been standing up there on the next flight of stairs I’d have seen him. Any higher up the stairs and he wouldn’t have been able to see his target.’

  ‘But it was hazy,’ Rundle reminded him.

  Patrick grimaced. ‘You can’t be expected to understand or believe it but I’ve been as good as boiled in that kind of training. When you’ve done exercises using live ammo it’s part of how you exist.’

  ‘You didn’t see this guy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He could have rushed out of one of the other rooms.’

  ‘He didn’t. I’m quite sure about that now.’

  ‘Or behind you out of the room down the end you’d gained entry into.’

  ‘Then he’d have shot me in the back.’

  ‘And we still don’t know what drove you to return here on that morning to rescue the girl – if that’s really why you were here.’

  ‘As I’ve said before, several times, it must have been something that one of the men who broke into my digs said.’

  Rundle took a deep breath and let it go gustily. ‘This is—’

  ‘One possible explanation,’ I interrupted. ‘Is that someone crept out of one of the rooms behind you, having been in there either before you arrived, perhaps asleep, or concealed themselves in there when you closed Leanne’s door in order to talk to her. When you came out of the room he clouted you with something from behind, rendering you semi-conscious. He then grabbed your gun and shot the child, who was then probably lying by your side on the floor. It’s quite likely you would have heard that shot.’

  Rundle said, ‘That’s possible but goes nowhere to solving the problem of people downstairs not hearing all that going on, or of Patrick not hearing them.’

  ‘Perhaps they were doped,’ I said. ‘Everyone might have had their drinks spiked, not just Patrick. They were all shot neatly in the back of the head. Easy if they were unconscious, or nearly so.’

  ‘But they were killed when they were standing up!’ Rundle persevered. ‘There’s blood and brains all over the walls.’

  ‘So someone was a little artistic with finger painting,’ I said. ‘Have the carpet and floor been examined for bullets that penetrated the victims’ skulls and then emerged or for the kind of chemical traces left when shots are fired at close range?’

  ‘Everything’s being examined,’ the DCI replied. ‘It was like a slaughterhouse in there and tests will take a while longer.’ He led the way downstairs and into the front room.

  As with the bathroom, the carpet had been removed, as had sections from several floorboards.

  ‘This is a Victorian house,’ Rundle said. ‘It was impossible to tell due to the seepage of blood and other fluids into the floor, plus dirt, whether holes in the wood were recent or history. You have a point though, they could have all been out for the count when Patrick arrived. It still doesn’t prove that he didn’t kill them. I suggest we start right from the beginning and visit these digs you had. You might remember what they said to you.’

  But the digs, some five minutes’ drive away, a bedsit on the top floor of another Victorian semi, were in the process of being deep-cleaned, the van of the company doing the job parked outside.

  Rundle went ballistic.

  Patrick and I left him to it, going back outside to stand on the pavement, where we could still hear the DCI shouting and the high-pitched protestations of the landlord, a skinny Welshman. I could appreciate the latter’s point; that the place was uninhabitable and therefore he could not rent it out, but when police seal a room they expect it to remain so. I had every expectation that Rundle would arrest the man and charge him with interfering with evidence.

  ‘But surely there’s no real evidence there now,’ I said. ‘Forensics must have gone over everything.’

  Patrick had appeared to be daydreaming but was not as he is not prone to such activity and did not respond. Then he said, ‘I must have walked. We’ll walk back in a minute.’

  I was finding the whole thing very difficult because the pair of us had never been in this kind of situation before. We had helped James Carrick recover his memory after having been struck down in a hotel car park and I knew Patrick had experience of amnesia among those under his command in his army days. But drugs are different and I was becoming resigned to his never being able to reclaim that short period of his life. And of course if he had been rendered unconscious, again, on the first floor of the scene of the crimes then that was that, no amount of effort trying to remember would be of any use.

  Two down-in-the-mouth workmen exited the house, gave us filthy looks, flung themselves into their van, wound down a window and lit cigarettes. Then Rundle appeared in the doorway.

  ‘You can come up now,’ he called to us.

  All the furniture had been removed from the room, the lock on the door of which was still broken, the curtains and carpets also gone leaving us facing an empty box. It was full of steam from some kind of scrubbing machine with connecting hoses that we had had to squeeze by on the landing. Patrick went into the room for a few seconds alone, had a perfunctory glance around, shrugged, and then came out again.

  Something strange was happening.

  ‘Please stop right there,’ I said, a hand on his chest.

  For a moment I thought he would carry on walking and knock us aside.

  ‘What?’ he said harshly, seeming to look right through me.

  ‘Because there’s some kind of mental chemistry going on and you need to stop and quietly think about what it is.’

  He did not want to think about it and I was worried that he was about to slam out of the house in a temper. We were in grave danger of showing Rundle exactly how several people might have been done to death.

  I stared into Patrick’s unseeing eyes, willing him to calm down.

  After what seemed a long time his vision cleared. Then he turned abruptly and went over to the window, seemingly to look out. Again, time went by and I was grateful to Rundle for keeping quiet.

  ‘The bastard said he was going to sell Leanne to a paedophile ring in Belgium,’ Patrick muttered at last, addressing the dirty glass before him.

  ‘Who, Hulton?’ I said, or rather gasped, before Rundle could speak.

  ‘Yes. At least – and I must be careful here – they were all wearing balaclavas. He said he was Hulton.’

  ‘But his own child!’

  ‘He thought it was really funny.’ Patrick broke off, shaking his head. ‘But, as I’ve just said, this was all dreamlike. Anyway, whoever he was he seemed to think I should find it amusing too. Then he got the other two to hold me down and gave me the jab. I didn’t pass out then – truth drug doesn’t tend to make me talk but I can remember giving him my real name. It appeared to mean nothing to him. Everything’s a blank after that until my phone rang and it was you.’

  ‘D’you reckon he’d brought you here in order to question you? I can’t see how you could possibly have made it under your own steam.’

  Patrick turned to face me. ‘I must have done because I can distinctly remember them breaking into this room.’

  ‘Who else might have done, brought you here, I mean?’

  ‘I’ve simply no idea.’

  ‘And you have no memories of leaving that house and returning here?’
r />   ‘No, none.’

  ‘I can only think that you were followed. How else would they have known where you lived?’

  Rundle said, ‘Well, a picture’s emerging but I have to say I don’t necessarily believe it’s the correct one. There’s a watch on airports and railway stations for the man so all we can hope for is that he’s soon nabbed. Meanwhile,’ he went on dismissively, ‘nothing much has been achieved.’

  ‘Who was the man who Patrick was supposed to have tossed into a bush outside and who gashed his hand on some glass?’ I asked him. ‘Commander Greenway told me that he was a passer-by who had begun to investigate the sound of smashing bottles coming through the open front door.’

  ‘He was actually the postman,’ the DCI answered. ‘D’you have any recollection of that?’ he went on to ask Patrick.

  Patrick thought about it. ‘I have a vague recollection but I don’t remember anyone in postman’s uniform. He was quite an old guy – must have been getting on for retirement.’

  ‘Was there any broken glass?’ I enquired.

  Rundle said, ‘Yes, out the back. Someone must have been throwing empty bottles at a wall.’ Addressing Patrick he said, ‘If the front door was wide open why didn’t you go in that way?’

  ‘There’s an old saying: “Never go down the path that your enemy has strewn with rose petals.”’

  ‘Did you hear bottles being smashed?’

  ‘No. I don’t remember the postman saying anything about it either. As far as I was concerned he was rather persistent, in my way and I didn’t think he was anything to do with the snake pit indoors so I heaved him into the bush in case he carried on nosing around and got hurt.’

  Rundle gave Patrick a hostile stare. ‘So what standard of competence, mental and physical, do you reckon you possessed at that time?’

  ‘By the time I returned to the house probably seventy-five to eighty per cent of norm all round. The fresh air –’ Patrick nodded briskly – ‘Yes, I did walk from here. The fresh air made me feel better.’

  Which percentage brought him down to Mr Average-man-in-the-street, I supposed.

  ‘OK,’ Rundle said, glancing at his watch. ‘I can’t spare any more time right now. Are you sticking around?’

  ‘We’re staying with this until I’ve cleared my name,’ Patrick said.

  The DCI guffawed. ‘You might have to stay a long time.’

  ‘No, I shall go and find him myself.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Rundle grated.

  ‘I have an adopted daughter – she’s actually my niece – who’s been hearing from the kids at school that her uncle’s a killer. I promised her I’d come to London and find out what really happened. Nobody, no cop, no one, is going to stop me from doing that.’

  TEN

  Perhaps wisely, Rundle made no further comment on the subject and went off after sourly telling the landlord that the cleaning team may as well continue as any damage had already been done. We also left the premises and, Patrick already having decided to walk to where we had left the car, set off, Rundle possibly having forgotten that he had given us a lift there.

  ‘It doesn’t look as though there’s much choice of routes from here to Pangborne’s place unless you deliberately went a roundabout way,’ I said, tucking my arm through Patrick’s. ‘And you probably weren’t in any state to find your way through back alleys.’

  ‘I’m sorry I nearly lost it back there,’ Patrick said, giving my arm a squeeze.

  ‘I meant what I said when I spoke of chemistry,’ I told him. ‘It’ll take a bit longer for you to fully get over this.’ I glanced at him quickly. ‘Are you really going after Hulton?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Your consultant here is really freaking out over it. I honestly don’t think you’re yet fit enough to go after someone like that – never mind what those in charge are saying.’

  ‘He’s only a stupid grown-up yob who’s been sheltering in the organization of a clever woman.’

  I didn’t have an answer to that right then.

  It had started to rain again and I put up the hood of my coat. In the distance could be seen the pall of black smoke from the fire as it rose above the rooftops. Traffic was light.

  ‘None of this means anything to me,’ Patrick said, looking around when we were probably halfway there. ‘All I can remember is a breeze on my face and just roads and buildings.’

  ‘Hardly surprising as it all looks very much the same,’ I replied.

  ‘There’s something else you ought to know that I haven’t mentioned before and didn’t want to tell Rundle about.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All through that morning I was hallucinating. It’s very difficult for me to pick out what’s real. I have to keep censoring out all the impossible bits.’

  ‘Like people with two heads and fire-breathing double-decker buses, you mean?’

  ‘Fantastic colours, feeling as though I was flying, everything distorted like looking through a special effects camera lens, seeing people who couldn’t possibly have been there.’

  ‘Like who, for example?’

  ‘Mum and Dad riding bikes and, somewhere or the other, the Queen taking some corgis for a walk.’ He added, giving me a grin, ‘She stopped to tell me what a splendid job I was doing.’

  ‘She’s always been a fan of yours.’

  This was not entirely make-believe on my part. During his service days there had been several commands to assist at investitures, because, it was breathed, she found him amusing. Her Majesty, one gathered, was another born mimic.

  We walked on in silence and, a few minutes’ later, reached the car.

  ‘At least we now know why you came back to this house,’ I said.

  ‘But we still don’t know if I’m a mass murderer or not,’ Patrick answered before grimly falling silent.

  We had just booked into an hotel in central London – we needed time to plan our next move – when Patrick’s mobile rang. I gathered from hearing half a conversation that it was Michael Greenway and that he wanted to take us out to dinner that night.

  ‘He said he’d be in the Dover Street wine bar at seven thirty,’ Patrick reported.

  ‘How did he know we were in London?’

  ‘Apparently he rang home as we’d switched off our mobiles while we were at the murder scene this morning because we didn’t want any interruptions and Carrie told him.’

  ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘Probably to soften me up before giving me the guilty verdict.’

  But he was wrong because Greenway’s first words to us were, ‘Let’s be quite clear on one thing; as far as I’m concerned you’re still working for me until I hear otherwise. My priority – and bugger the Met – is to get hold of Hulton. He’s the key to this, whether he’s guilty of murder or not. What would you like to drink before I fill you in on the latest?’

  I wondered if the tone of this opening meant he was about to engage with us in a council of war but it appeared that the Commander was reckoning this to be mostly an evening off and had every intention of enjoying himself.

  ‘So what is the latest?’ Patrick prompted him, in receipt of his second whisky double.

  ‘He hasn’t left the country,’ Greenway said. ‘There’s been a sighting of him here in London.’

  ‘By a member of the team that you initially assured me did all the groundwork before Patrick went in to the Pangborne gang?’ I enquired. ‘Those who were the basis for your statement that he wasn’t going in alone? The same ones who mysteriously disappeared while all the action was taking place so witnessed bugger all?’

  For the first time I got the impression that Greenway was genuinely angry with me.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘What was it like then?’ I persevered. ‘Other than a monumental cock-up?’

  After a somewhat overwrought silence the Commander said, ‘There was round-the-clock surveillance – by the Met – from a house nearby but as you
know the Pangborne place faces a park so observation from a house opposite was impossible. They were a little farther down the street on the other side. I was liaising with the officer in charge, a bloke called Rundle, and for some reason that has not been subsequently explained there was a mess up with the rota. Only one person was on duty that night and he had a bad attack of the trots. No one turned up at six that morning to take over from him, by which time he was obviously suffering from food poisoning and subsequently admitted to hospital. I don’t think there were any suspicious circumstances in all this.’

  ‘So who’s seen Hulton?’ I said.

  ‘One of Rundle’s team who’s routinely working undercover in a nightclub in Acton much frequented by people who ought to be helping us with enquiries but aren’t. You must appreciate that he couldn’t simply order in a raid – he had his own cover to think about. Hulton was tailed to Chiswick by someone else but lost when he dived down into a tube station.’

  Patrick said, ‘We met Rundle today. Following your permission Ingrid and I went to the murder scene to see if it helped me remember anything. There was not much of a result but I did at least remember Hulton – or someone I thought was him – telling me he was going to sell Leanne to a paedophile ring. It must have been why I went back to the house.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have baulked at shooting the poor child then,’ he commented quietly.

  ‘I told Rundle I was going after him myself.’

  ‘Well, you aren’t,’ the SOCA man replied smoothly after a sip of whisky.

  ‘That’s what Rundle said.’

  ‘Leave Hulton to me. He may well have told you that to ensure you went back to the house and had it all tidily planned so that you would end up as number one suspect for the killings. OK, suppose you do go after him. He might have oppos whose orders are to start shooting when you arrive on the scene. You end up in the frame for injuries to innocent parties as well as all the others as he’ll be prepared to swear under oath that he saw you kill them. It’s too risky.’