A Dangerous Life (DCI Jack Callum Mysteries Book 2)

by Len Maynard

  “Would you like me to compile a list?”

  “You’re saying that your husband had a lot of enemies?”

  Lois crossed her ankles again. “Tony was a…how can I put this? Tony was a difficult man. He made enemies as easily as you or I make acquaintances.”

  “I see,” Jack said.

  Lois gave a brittle laugh. “I doubt that very much. Go to any theatre in the West End, or any film set in Hertfordshire for that matter, and get the people there to tell you what they thought of Tony Turner. I think you’ll find that their answers will make your hair curl.”

  “And you?” Myra said. “You don’t seem that surprised…or even dismayed…that someone’s killed him.”

  “I loved my husband very much…for all his faults,” Lois said, and then tears started to flow. She reached into her handbag and took out a handkerchief, dabbing at her eyes and blowing her nose.

  Hester came back into the room carrying a tray. She set the tray down on a coffee table and, with an effort, squatted down next to Lois, wrapping a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  Lois shrugged her off. “I’m all right, Hester, really. I’ve just had some very bad news. It’s Tony, he’s been killed.”

  “Oh, great Heavens,” Hester said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “You can pour the tea,” Lois said.

  Once the tea was poured into bone china cups, Hester once again left the room.

  “There’s the question of identification,” Jack said. “We need you to identify the body.”

  Lois sipped her tea and looked at him tearfully over the rim of the cup. “Well, that’s not going to happen,” Steel was suddenly back in her voice. “You told me that my dear departed husband had appraised you of my situation. I won’t leave the house.”

  “But the law requires that…”

  “…that a formal identification must be made by the next of kin,” Lois said. “Yes, I’m aware of that. Tony’s parents are still alive. They’re living in Shillington in Bedfordshire. I’m sure they meet your requirements.”

  “They do but…”

  “No ifs, no buts,” Lois said forcefully. “If necessary I can get my doctor to write a letter to your boss excusing me. Mark Francombe understands agoraphobia and has helped me a great deal.”

  “And Mark Francombe’s your doctor?” Myra said, jotting the name down in her notebook.

  Lois gave her a withering look. “Of course. I can give you his address if you like.”

  “Thank you,” Myra said.

  “And I would appreciate that list,” Jack said.

  “List?”

  “Of the people who could wish your husband harm.”

  With a sigh Lois got to her feet, went across to the desk, opened a drawer, took out a notepad and a Biro and started to scrawl the doctor’s address together with a list of names.

  “The ice maiden cometh,” Myra said when they got back to the car.

  “She seemed quite emotional.”

  “She was play acting. There was nothing until I mentioned that she didn’t seem very upset by her husband’s death, and then she turned on the waterworks.”

  “You’re a cynic.”

  “I’m a woman, guv. It takes more than a few crocodile tears to fool me. Do you think she could have had something to do with it?”

  “I’m not ruling anything out.”

  “But you heard her, sir. She can’t leave the house.”

  “She said won’t, not can’t,” Jack said. “But somehow I can’t see her nailing her husband to a tree and cutting his throat in the middle of Norton Common, can you?”

  Myra shook her head. “And risk chipping her nail varnish? That manicure must have cost her a packet. So no, I don’t think so.”

  “Check her story with the doctor anyway. Mark Francombe. He’s in East Street. The Millbrook surgery.”

  “I’ll call on him on the way in tomorrow.” Myra fell silent, staring out at the darkened streets as Jack drove them back through the town. “I wouldn’t put it past her to pay someone to kill him though,” she said after a while.

  “You’ve got the mind of a detective,” Jack said.

  “Well, don’t tell him. He might want it back.”

  Jack smiled. “Can I drop you off at home? It’s getting late.”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks. Can you take me back to the station? I have to see Chief Superintendent Lane before I go home.”

  “Do you think he’ll still be there at this time of the evening?” Jack said doubtfully.

  It’s at his request, so he’d better be there.”

  4 - WEDNESDAY MARCH 18TH 1959

  “What do you mean, she won’t identify the body?” Chief Superintendent Henry Lane said as he paced back and forth in his office.

  “Just that,” Jack said. “She can’t leave the house.”

  “Well, that just won’t do. We need a formal identification.”

  “She’ll get her doctor to write a letter of excuse if we put any pressure on her.”

  “Excusing her for carrying out her public duty?” Lane said, a vein in his temple bulging ominously as his temper rose. “Never mind her duty as a wife.”

  “She’s agoraphobic, sir,” Jack explained patiently. “She suffers from extreme panic attacks if she goes out into the open. Her doctor will confirm that, or so she says. WPC Banks is going to verify that on her way in this morning.”

  “Never heard such rubbish,” Lane muttered and stopped pacing. “Well, what are you going to do about it, Chief Inspector?”

  “His parents live in Shillington. I’m going to pay them a visit and see if they’ll oblige.”

  “Yes, do that, and then we can move this investigation onto a more formal footing.” Lane sat down at his desk and picked up a pen that was lying on the blotter in front of him. He tapped it against his teeth and put it down again. “Nailed to a tree and tortured. What a way to go,” he mused quietly. “Do you think the wife had anything to do with it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jack said. “WPC Banks suggested the same thing.”

  “Bright girl that one. Anything else?”

  “Mrs Turner gave me a list of people who might wish her husband harm.” Jack took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and laid it on the desk under the chief superintendent’s nose. Lane glanced at it and then snatched it up and studied it more closely.

  “I’ve heard of some of the names on here,” he said sounding appalled.

  “There’s a couple I recognise too.”

  “Our Mr. Turner could give Mussolini a run for his money in the popularity stakes. Are you going to talk to all of these people?”

  “I’m certainly going to try.”

  “Well, speak to the parents first. See if they can shed any light.”

  Jack walked to the door. “I’ll get over to Shillington.”

  He drove through the picturesque village of Shillington, tucked just inside the Bedfordshire border. He’d been here some years before when he was looking to make the move from Tottenham in London but had dismissed it as being too rural, too much of a departure from his urban roots.

  The Turners lived in a bungalow situated at the blunt end of a cul-de-sac. The surrounding houses looked well appointed, with neatly cut lawns, tidy flowerbeds and clusters of trimmed conifers.

  He walked up the gravel path and rang the doorbell, sheltering under the tiled porch from a thin drizzle that had started to fall from a leaden March sky. A tall man with short iron-grey hair and a military bearing opened the door almost immediately. His eyes narrowed as he peered at Jack’s warrant card. “You took your time,” he said bluntly. “After the Harpy’s call I was expecting you last night.”

  “The Harpy?”

  “The Franklin woman.”

  “Your daughter-in-law?”

  “Our daughter-in-law was Polly…the lovely Polly.” His voice caught in his throat. “But she was like a real daughter to us in so many ways. The Harpy took her plac
e. She usurped her, damn the woman!”

  “I gather that you two don’t get on. So why did she telephone you to say that I wanted to see you?”

  “My wife took the call. I hardly ever see the Franklin woman, thank God.” He extended a hand. “Laurence Turner,” he said, stepping to one side. “You’d better come in.”

  He led Jack inside the bungalow. It was modestly furnished with a three-piece-suite that was probably new just after the First World War, and had seen its own share of battles since then.

  “I was hoping to speak to both your wife and yourself,” Jack said.

  “Jean won’t see you. As I said, she took the ’phone call from the Harpy and after that she took to her bed, unable to face the fact that her son, her beloved Anthony, was dead. If she sees you it will make her face the reality of the situation and she’s not strong enough for that…not yet anyway.”

  “Your daughter-in…Lois…told her the reason I wanted to see you?”

  “You want me to stare at a body on a slab and confirm that it’s my son,” Turner said bluntly. “Yes. She told her, and no doubt derived a lot of pleasure in doing so.”

  “They’ve taken him to North Herts Hospital. The mortuary there is…well, the staff…know how to handle these things sensitively.”

  Turner flopped down on one of the armchairs and buried his face in his hands. When he took them away from his face Jack was expecting to see tears moistening the old man’s cheeks, but the cheeks were dry and the old man’s eyes had lost none of their disdain.

  “Don’t expect me to grieve, Chief Inspector,” Turner said when he noticed Jack’s interest. “I’ll shed no tears for that one.”

  “But he was your son, and the manner of his death was…”

  “He was my son,” Turner interrupted, “but he was also an unmitigated shit, and I don’t care who knows it. He broke his mother’s heart, never visiting her from one year to the next. And as for poor Polly… That girl deserved so much more out of life. When she fell ill and needed her husband at her side she got nothing. While she lay dying my son was off, having it away with that American whore.”

  There was sheer venom in his voice.

  “We have a granddaughter, you know, who we haven’t seen since her mother passed away. Can you imagine how much that hurts us?” Turner said, his eyes tearful for the first time.

  “I can imagine, sir,” Jack said gently.

  “Can we go to the hospital now and get this over with?” Turner said, gathering himself.

  “I can drive you there.”

  “Let me go up and see my wife, to tell her I’m going to be out for a while. North Herts Hospital you say?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Bloody inconvenient,” Laurence Turner said sourly.

  As they crossed the border back into Hertfordshire, Jack said, “Lois wrote me a list of names of the people who might have wanted to harm your son.”

  “Did she? May I see it?” Turner said unemotionally.

  Jack took a folded sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to him. For a short while there was no sound in the car apart from the steady swish of the windscreen wipers, the thrum of the Wolseley’s engine and Turner’s slightly stentorian breathing.

  “It’s quite a short list,” Turner said at last. “I can think of at least three more names, not including my own.”

  “Your son was really that unpopular?”

  “It’s hard to credit isn’t it? Tony Turner, star of stage and screen. Loved by the masses, loathed by those who really knew him.”

  Jack fished in his pocket again, produced a pen and handed it to Turner. “Just add the names to the bottom of the list, if you wouldn’t mind. Don’t bother to add your own.”

  “As you wish,” the old man said.

  “Yes, that’s him,” Laurence Turner said as the mortuary attendant drew back the sheet to reveal Tony Turner’s makeup-free face. “Cover him back up, for God’s sake. I don’t want to look at him any longer than I have to.”

  Jack nodded to the attendant. “I’ll take you back to the station and arrange for a car to take you home.”

  “Yes, thank you. Jean will start to panic if I’m gone for too long.”

  “Of the list I showed you, and the names you added, were there any that stood out as being likely suspects?”

  “I’m not going to do your job for you, Chief Inspector,” Turner said sharply.

  “No, sir, I’m not expecting you to do that. I just wondered if any names jumped out at you.”

  Turner sighed as he sat down in the passenger seat. “To be quite honest with you, ninety per cent of them mean nothing to me at all. Of the few I recognise only one of them would have the guts to do something like this, and the last I heard he was in a nursing home after suffering a calamitous stroke a couple of years ago, so I don’t think he’s your man.”

  “I’ll take his name anyway, sir.”

  “Usher. Thomas Usher, my son’s old business partner.”

  “Your son and Mr. Usher were in business together?”

  “If you can call prostitution a business.”

  “Prostitution?”

  “My son chose to call it an escort agency. He and Usher used to employ whores to cater to the baser needs of his so-called show business friends. He was a pimp, Chief Inspector, nothing more, nothing less. He closed down the business shortly after he met the Harpy. I think Usher was very angry about it, Anthony killing the golden goose, so to speak. I knew he harboured a grudge over it. Usher had no show business contacts of his own so he couldn’t keep the agency open. He lost a packet from what I heard. And he was a man you wouldn’t want to upset.”

  “Really?”

  “Thomas Usher was a gangster pure and simple. He owned several drinking dens in Soho and, if my memory serves me correctly, a night club in the West End, but the name of it escapes me.”

  “And he’s the only one you think would be capable of killing your son?”

  “In his heyday he could have killed Tony in the blink of an eye and not given it another thought. But as I say, he’s not your man. From what my son told me, the stroke has left him with the mental acumen of a cauliflower.”

  Jack nodded. “Well, thank you for that. You’ve been very helpful.” He drove the Wolseley smoothly into the station car park. “Right, let’s see about getting you a ride home.”

  “Thomas Usher,” Jack said to Eddie Fuller when he entered the squad room. “Have you ever heard of him?”

  Fuller shook his head. “The name means nothing to me. Should it?”

  “Probably not,” Jack said and walked through to the stairs that led up to his office. At the doorway he paused and turned back. “Get on to Division and see what you can dig up on him. He was very active in the South London area a few years ago. A stroke put paid to his criminal ways apparently.”

  He looked beyond Fuller and watched Myra Banks pinning a glossy page taken from a magazine to the incident board she was compiling.

  “Something you want to share with us, Myra?” he called.

  “It’s a Knight’s Castile soap advert from an old copy of Woman’s Own. I found it at my mother’s. She has copies of the magazine going back years.” She smiled. “It’s the only image of Lois Turner I’ve been able to find so far, but I’m still looking.”

  Jack went across and peered at the advert.

  “It was taken before she made her name as the Cadence Girl,” Myra said.

  The advertisement depicted a young woman smiling into the bathroom mirror while spreading a thick soapy lather on her porcelain cheek. “Knight’s Castile. My secret for soft, soft skin.”

  “Do you women believe all that guff?” Jack said.

  Myra smiled. “I don’t, but you live with three of them. Try asking them.”

  “Do you have a photograph of our victim?”

  “Tony Turner?” She shook her head. “The only one I’ve been able to find so far is a publicity picture from the 1955 Picturegoer annu
al, but it’s been heavily touched up. She rummaged through a small pile of papers on a desk nearby, pulled out a page and handed it to him.

  Jack stared at it. “It makes him look like a waxwork of himself, but I suppose we’ll have to make do with this until we get a better shot of him.”

  “I’ll get down to the library later,” Myra said. “They have copies of Spotlight, the actors’ directory, in their reference section. I might be able to get a better image from there.”

  “Good thinking. See if you can get a better one of his wife as well. One where she’s not trying to sell me something.”

  “That might be easier said than done. Selling herself was how she made her name.”

  “In more ways than one, if you believe Tony Turner’s father. I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

  5 - WEDNESDAY

  Strange noises were coming from the rear of the Callum household as Jack stepped in through the front door. There was the sound of a strumming guitar and a clattering rattle, all underpinned by a deep thump, thump, thump.

  He stuck his head around the kitchen door. Annie was at the cooker stirring the contents of a large aluminium saucepan with a wooden spoon. “What’s the racket?” he said.

  Annie turned at the sound of his voice, a smile on her lips. “Your son. Eric has some friends round.”

  “What are they doing back there? Building a tank?”

  “They may as well be.” Annie lifted a spoonful of steaming brown liquid from the pot and tasted it gingerly. “Hmm. Perfect. Beef stew. I’ve just got to make the dumplings. Can you go though and tell Eric he only has three quarters of an hour before I’m ready to serve.”

  “Is it safe back there?”

  She smiled. “You might want to take earplugs with you.”

  Jack shook his head and wandered through to the back room. He raised his eyebrows at the scene and the noise that greeted him. Eric, his fourteen-year old son, was sitting on a dining chair, a guitar resting on his knee, his head bowed over it. While the fingers of his left hand contorted around the guitar’s neck making chord shapes, his right hand strummed the guitar furiously.