by Jack Gatland
When he was murdered.
The thought sparked across Declan’s mind for the briefest of moments, but it was enough to kill any relaxation that Declan had. He believed without a doubt that someone had murdered his father, but he still needed to work out why and by whom. Luckily, there was a whole crime board of suspects for Declan to work through, and for the last couple of weeks he’d been doing that with the help of Jessica, although without her mother knowing. One day Jessica wanted to be a police detective like her father, grandfather and even great-grandfather; to her, this was more a simple case of helping Dad get closure while learning some wild police skills.
Declan turned and looked across the living room; since moving in, he’d barely touched the place, and he knew exactly why. The ghost of Patrick Walsh was strong here, as was the ghost of Declan’s mother, Christine Walsh, who had passed away four years previously, leaving a widower in the house. The furniture, the random ornaments on the shelves, the book choices, these were once chosen and bought by his parents, many of which had been purchased and placed in their locations on sideboards and shelves while he lived here both as a child and as a teenager. It felt almost heretical to remove them.
He would though; just not right now.
Declan wanted to finish the case, to find who killed his father first and then, having honoured him in death, Declan would start remodelling this small village house. And he knew that he would start with removing the small, secret room upstairs.
Taking the tumbler of whisky, Declan made his way up to his father’s secret study; a small, hidden priest hole of a room that was obstructed by an empty bookcase. It was a room that had been built for some unknown bloody reason that Declan had never been told about. In this secret hideaway was a crime board covered in photos, notes and news clippings, all linked by yards of red string, some kind of unofficial investigation that Declan’s father had been working on before he died, an investigation that he’d not left any information on. On that board were faces Declan didn’t recognise, but others stood out to him; a recent photo of Johnny Lucas, one of the ‘twins’ of the East End, well-built and in his early sixties, his salt and peppered hair blow-dried back, giving him a little quiff at the front; a picture of Jackie beside him, exactly the same as Johnny, but with a white shirt on and a parting to the side the only differences; and an old photo of DI Derek Salmon, taken from the time that he worked under DI (or even the later promoted DCI) Patrick Walsh.
Placing the tumbler of whisky down, Declan checked through his father’s folders, looking for something that could explain why Derek was on the board. His father was a known hoarder; every case he worked on had been copied out into duplicate folders and then filed in the large metal filing cabinet in the room's corner. It was how Declan had learned that someone had doctored the official copies of the Victoria Davies murder, when the copies that Declan had worked through in the Temple Inn Crime Unit simply didn’t match up. It held decades of crimes in green foolscap folders; many solved, some still outstanding. His father had retired six months before he passed away, and Declan knew that this blot on his copybook, this failure to have a hundred percent close ratio had caused Patrick Walsh to write his own memoirs, and most likely caused his death.
The problem was that Declan had read the manuscript several times now, and found it watered down, even censored. He’d unlocked the old iMac downstairs with a password given to him by Monroe and even Jessica, she of the generation that understood technology better than anyone couldn’t find anything of worth on it. It was as if the true book, the true story, had been hidden away and they had placed a forgery on display for all to see. Maybe Kendis could help here? She’d written it for Patrick, or with Patrick, or something along those lines.
Maybe tomorrow.
Declan had searched the cabinet from top to bottom, still unsure why Derek Salmon’s picture was on the crime wall. In all the time that Declan had known Derek, he’d not once seen him perform any kind of criminal act. And his father had even vouched for Derek when Declan started working under him. Surely you didn’t do that when you had no faith in someone. Yet a conversation that Declan had in this same house several weeks ago with Shaun Donnal, then a suspect in another murder came to mind. Donnal had come to Declan’s father’s house for help, unaware of Patrick Walsh’s death. He had explained that he’d learned of a book, written five years earlier by Michael Davies and based around a crime that then-DI Patrick Walsh had solved; a solved case that Declan had proven invalid by the time that he had solved it and found the true murderer himself. According to Donnal, in the book it had been stated that the detectives on the Davies murder had been bought off. When questioned about this, and when Declan had angrily shouted that his father wasn’t a bent copper, Shaun had replied one simple phrase.
‘I didn’t say your father, I said detectives. Plural.’
There were only a handful of detectives on that case. Patrick Walsh had been one of them. Then-DS Alexander Monroe had been another.
And then-DC Derek Salmon had been on the team as well.
Was this why he was on the wall? Was this one reason that the Seven Sisters agreed to let him take the fall? What else did he have hidden with those skeletons in the wardrobe?
Sitting in his father’s desk chair, Declan slowly turned in it, taking in every one of the study’s four walls. There was nothing that gave him any inspiration here.
Wait.
In the study's corner, on the highest shelf of a bookshelf, Declan saw a battered-looking hardback book amongst a random grouping of old police procedural handbooks.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For some reason this felt out of place there, probably because it was the only fictional novel in the room. Declan also knew that as a fan of the Great Detective, his father owned this in two other editions.
Why would you keep a cheap-looking book on the shelf when you had better copies to show?
Rising from the chair and pulling it from the shelf, Declan realised that it felt stiff, more solid than it should. Even hardbacks had a little give where the paper would shift when held. Turning it around in his hands, he realised this was because the book’s pages had been glued together to create an effective box and, when he opened the cover of the book he saw that it had been converted into a keep-safe, with a small recess cut into the middle. In the recess was a USB flash drive and a post-it note stuck to it that simply said
Wintergreen
Declan stared down at the flash drive for a moment. There wasn’t anything in the study that could explain what this was, so he placed the keep-safe on the desk and, taking the flash drive, he left the study and made his way to the iMac downstairs. Turning it on and logging in, Declan placed the flash drive into the back of the iMac, slotting it into an available USB slot, watching a folder named WALSH appear on the desktop.
Opening it however proved to be a problem as a box flashed up onto the screen the moment that he clicked onto it.
Enter password
Declan tried wintergreen with no success; he tried a variation of versions of the word, even trying the password that unlocked the iMac, but none of these opened the folder. Until he could open it, the flash drive would be yet another puzzle for him to solve, along with what a Wintergreen was.
The clock on the wall chimed nine pm; Declan ran his hand through his hair and rotated his shoulders in a circular motion, trying to ease the stress and tension within them.
It didn’t work.
He sighed, looking to the clock. Maybe a drink around actual people would help.
Grabbing his coat, Declan left his house, heading for The Olde Bell.
The bar was quiet when Declan arrived, a young girl working behind the bar.
The Olde Bell was a tourist destination in the summer; almost nine hundred years old, it had once been the hostelry of Hurley Priory, which made it one of the oldest hotels in the world. It was also a pilgrim point for war afficionados, as
the British Army used it as a meeting place between Churchill and Eisenhower during the war. But this wasn’t tourist season; this was late Autumn and the tourist trade had left for the year. Now the bar was almost empty, the hotel that backed onto it equally so.
Looking around, Declan saw Karl sitting alone at a booth beside the wall, a pint of what looked like lager in his hand. He nodded to Declan.
‘This is it?’ Declan asked as he walked over. Karl shrugged.
‘There were more, but it is getting late for them,’ he said. ‘I waited in case you came.’
‘Thank you,’ Declan nodded to the drink. ‘Can I buy you one?’
‘I would like that,’ Karl smiled. ‘Any pilsners.’
Declan ordered a drink for Karl and a Guinness for himself, taking the drinks and walking back to the booth. As he sat down, he realised with a small amount of amusement that it was the same one that he’d sat at with Monroe, when the canny old Scot had recruited him into the Last Chance Saloon.
Karl raised his own half empty glass.
‘To Patrick,’ he said. Declan raised his own glass, clinking with Karl’s before taking a sip. His father had taught him from an early age never to toast without clinking glasses. It was something to do with bad luck, but he couldn’t remember the whole superstition.
‘So,’ Karl smiled, ‘when are you allowing me to fix your poor battered car?’
Declan chuckled. ‘When the police pay me money to do so.’
‘Such a shame,’ Karl lamented. ‘Audis are such good cars. German built is always good.’
Declan paused while sipping, observing his drinking companion. A tall, tanned, robust German in his mid-sixties, Karl had lived in the village since Declan was a small boy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, during the early nineties Karl had moved to England, and had embraced the life of the ‘country squire’ ever since.
Karl stopped mid-drink, as if remembering something. Slowly and deliberately, he raised his glass again.
‘And to Christine,’ he said.
Declan paused at the mention of his mother, but Karl just smiled.
‘They are together in Heaven now,’ he continued.
Declan nodded, clinking his pint glass to Karl’s. He wasn’t a deeply religious man, but he hoped that his mother and father were now somewhere better, and more importantly, together.
‘He never got over her loss,’ Karl said into the glass. ‘He was never the same after her murder.’
Declan almost spilled the glass. ‘What?’
Karl looked to him, as if realising he’d spoken out of term.
‘Her death. He was never the same after her death.’
‘You said murder.’
Karl shook his head. ‘Apologies, sometimes words for me merge when speaking in another tongue. Death and murder, they are very similar in German.’
Declan nodded, placing his glass on the table and rubbing at his eyes. His mother had passed away after an illness, so there was nothing suspicious there. However, since examining his father’s death, he’d seen conspiracies in every corner.
‘Don’t apologise,’ he forced a smile. ‘You at least speak a second language. I have trouble speaking my own.’
Karl laughed at this. ‘When in Rome,’ he said.
Declan took a mouthful of Guinness, taking the time to consider his next line.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ he eventually asked. ‘You back onto my father’s–I mean my house. Before he died, did you see anything strange?’
‘What do you mean, strange?’ Karl seemed confused by this.
‘I don’t know. Visitors, perhaps?'
‘No more than usual,’ Karl thought for a moment. ‘Your woman, she was there—’
‘My woman?’
‘Sorry, again with language. I believe you would say your ex?’
Declan nodded at this. ‘Ah yeah, you mean Kendis.’ Karl had been around since Declan was a small boy and had seen the trials and tribulations of Kendis Taylor first hand. And Kendis had already admitted helping Patrick with his memoirs. But Karl shook his head at this.
‘No, I mean yes... She was there, Kendis, but I mean your other ex.’
‘Lizzie?’
Karl nodded. ‘She visited your father often.’
‘With Jessica?’
‘No, more alone,’ Karl sipped at his drink. ‘And there was an older woman. At other times that is, not with Elizabeth.’
‘A local?’
‘No. She was…’ Karl fought for the words. ‘Helen Mirren. You know the actress? Very good actress. Exquisite.’
‘I know Helen Mirren,’ Declan frowned. ‘The woman looked like her?’
‘Yes. Short white hair, very slim. Beautiful.’
Declan couldn’t picture anyone that he knew looking like that, and he was pretty sure that Helen Mirren herself had never visited his father, but Karl hadn’t finished.
‘I never learned her name,’ he said, ‘although I asked Patrick about her. I wondered whether she was a lover, and if not, whether I might contact her.’
‘And what did my father say?’ The thought of Patrick Walsh having someone after Declan’s mother was unnerving to Declan. Karl shrugged.
‘He said I was mistaken,’ he finished. ‘That there was never such a woman visiting his house.’
Declan leaned back in his chair. If this was true, then his father had been meeting someone in secret before his death, someone who wasn’t on the crime wall, or in his memoirs.
The question was who though?
9
Early Days
Declan arrived in Temple Inn, and the Crime Unit of DCI Monroe’s Major Crimes Investigation Unit just before nine o’clock the following morning. He hadn’t slept well; partly because even after a couple of weeks, he still felt that he was intruding in his late father’s house, partly because he was worrying about Jessica and this stranger she was seemingly dating and telling no one and the revelations from Karl Schnitter about his own father’s meeting habits, but more because of the actions of the previous day, and the revelation of Derek Salmon as a potential murder suspect still weighing heavily on his mind.
Entering the building, Declan saw that the examination table was empty in the downstairs morgue; the chances were that Doctor Marcos had finished her post-mortem examination of the body believed to be Angela Martin earlier that morning, or even the previous night. Declan didn’t know where the bodies went after that, or even if there was some kind of cold storage in the building; he couldn’t see the owners of Temple Inn, where the police leased the property from being happy with bodies being held on site. Hell, they hadn’t even allowed custody cells.
Entering the upstairs office, Declan saw that it was currently empty, as Monroe had already called everyone into the briefing room to the side, the glass wall revealing Anjli, Billy, Doctor Marcos and DC Davey as they faced Monroe, currently standing by the enormous plasma screen that he’d somehow wrangled from the police funds. Monroe meanwhile was watching for Declan.
‘Come on in, son,’ he said. ‘The gate guards alerted me you were driving in, so I called all the soldiers together. Let’s get this show on the road.’
Declan entered the briefing room, sitting at a space next to Anjli. ‘Have we swept this room recently?’ he asked.
Hearing this, DC Davey nodded, pushing her glasses back up her nose as they slipped down slightly. ‘Do it every day now,’ she replied, a hint of pride in her voice. It was a strange thing to expect; the sweeping for bugs in a police Crime Unit, but recently the Last Chance Saloon had found a mole in their ranks who had bugged all the rooms on the upper level, mainly to gain intelligence for a suspect in a murder case.
It was only paranoia if they weren’t out to get you. And there was already a long list of powerful enemies that would go to extreme measures to get revenge on Monroe’s team, following the outcome of that case.
‘DI Walsh, would you care to update us on what happened with Mister Salmon while alone in yo
ur car yesterday?’ Monroe asked. Declan nodded, looking to the others.
‘So as the Guv rightly guessed, while I drove to the crime scene yesterday, Derek Salmon spoke alone, coming clean with me about the confession. But what he said was taken as confidential and doesn’t leave this room. If it does, then I think it’s pretty much confirmed that it could only be one of us that spread it, you understand?’
There was a silent assentation by nodding from the others, so Declan continued.
‘Derek told me he didn’t do it,’ he started. ‘And yeah, I know that everyone says that, but he also told me he’s being paid a ton of money to take the fall.’
‘Why?’ Billy asked. ‘I mean, am I the only one here not seeing this right? He’s staining his career, his reputation by doing this, even if he’s freed.’
‘Because he’s dying,’ Monroe added. ‘And dying men don’t care about reputation.’
Declan nodded. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Derek knows he’s dying, and he also knows the police pension isn’t worth that much. His daughter’s started university, and his wife, estranged as she is, will end up shouldering a ton of debts when he goes. So, he made a deal with the Seven Sisters.’
‘They killed Angela Martin?’ Monroe was surprised at this. ‘Didn’t see that coming.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Declan interrupted, shaking his head. ‘Derek said that they showed him the location of the body on a map, and was told by whoever showed him it wasn’t anything to do with her father, but more who she was dating. Apparently Angela Martin was seen with both Moses Delcourt, son of the Matriarch of the Seven Sisters, and some Birmingham gangster wannabe called Macca Byrne.’
Billy was already typing on a laptop. After a moment photos of Macca Byrne and Moses Delcourt appeared. Macca was in his traditional all black clothing, his black hair hidden under a peaked cap, the wicked-looking scar on his face visible. Moses meanwhile was in a hooded top, his head almost shaved, the slightest hint of a goatee on his face. He looked no older than eighteen.