Skeleton Plot

by J M Gregson

  ‘No. I suppose you have to be careful about these things. But when all this is over and the facts are established I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t turn out that she was killed very near where the skeleton was found last week.’

  ‘Will you, indeed? Well, perhaps you are better placed than we are to have an opinion on that. We shall need to keep open minds until we have more facts available. I suspect you know more about her life outside the squat than you have so far revealed to us. Tell us about the people she met away from Fairfax Street.’

  ‘There was the farmer’s son. I don’t remember his name; I don’t think I ever knew it. He fancied her and he bedded her, but I’m not sure whether they were ever an item – that was the term we used, I think. You’d need to ask him about that.’

  ‘We already have, Mr Wallington. And we’ve asked others as well. There was certainly a close relationship between them.’

  ‘Well, there you are then. A close relationship, some sort of bust-up, and death for the girl. She was unstable because she was on drugs; she might have done things to bring about her own death if she involved herself in a violent row. But that’s your business, not mine. I don’t envy you trying to establish the truth, at this distance in time.’

  ‘It isn’t easy, as you say. But we’re lucky to have many of the leading players still around. Including you, Mr Wallington. Do you think your friend Kate or Kathy was involved in any way in Julie’s death?’

  He decided to ignore their description of her as a friend. Perhaps she’d told them things about him, if they’d managed to locate her. That wouldn’t have been easy, surely – but they’d found him, hadn’t they, so why not Kathy? ‘I don’t know. They were quite close in the squat and they went off to that farm together and saw men there. I don’t know what men, beyond the fact that one of them was the farmer’s son and that Julie was shagging him at the time.’ He glanced up to check their reaction to the word. He found them again quite impassive.

  Bert Hook, who hadn’t spoken at all thus far, said, as if he was merely confirming something they already knew, ‘You were trying to get between the sheets with Kathy yourself, weren’t you, Mike?’

  He forced a smile. ‘Sheets were in short supply in the squat. But I suppose you’re right. Things were pretty free and easy in places like that. You grabbed what you could where you could and when you could. So long as you didn’t think you’d get the clap, you had a go at most women. Sometimes you got no further than a quick grope and a knee in the balls. But quite often you got a surprisingly good fuck.’ He threw in another four-letter word; he had an obscure feeling that the most basic terms would make them think he was being more honest. ‘I think I had a go at Kathy, yes. But she turned me down. Pity, really: I think she’d have been a very satisfying shag. And both Kathy and Julie scrubbed up well, when they chose to. But you can never tell with these things, can you – I expect you’ve found that yourself.’ He grinned a little in appreciation of his own wit as he raised his eyebrows at the sturdy Hook.

  ‘When was it that you asked Julie Grimshaw to sell drugs for you, Mike?’ Hook threw the question in as if it were the next stage in a casual conversation.

  ‘Now look here! I asked you to come here so that I could offer my full cooperation as a responsible citizen who holds a key post in our community. If I’d thought that you were going to make these—’

  ‘You didn’t invite us here, Mike, and you’ve so far shown very few of the qualities of a responsible citizen. You were selling drugs both in the squat and in at least two pubs in the Gloucester area. We know that and we have the evidence to bring charges if we choose to, even at this distance in time. Whether or not we decide to pursue the matter will probably depend on the degree of cooperation and assistance you offer us in the course of a murder inquiry. Your conduct so far would indicate anything but innocence. We have not cleared you of involvement in the death of Julie Grimshaw. In fact, your evasions are exciting our interest in you as a suspect. We know that you were the Mick who was selling drugs around Gloucester and that you were trying to recruit people to sell them. Julie was one of those people, wasn’t she?’

  Hook spoke with such conviction that Michael felt the man was very sure of his ground. They had unearthed other people in the squat, as well as members of the filth who’d patrolled the area, so they probably knew all these things for certain. He licked his lips and said, ‘I’ve a hell of a lot to lose here, you know.’

  Hook nodded. ‘You have indeed. And you’re going the right way about losing it at the moment.’ He shook his head a couple of times. ‘You may or may not be a good Chief Education Officer in 2015. That is quite irrelevant to this matter. Did you or did you not approach Julie Grimshaw to sell drugs at seventeen Fairfax Street, Gloucester, in 1995?’

  Mike wanted to deny his involvement, but he didn’t know how much others had already told them about him. He said heavily, ‘Yes. Julie was a heavy user and she hadn’t the money to sustain the habit. That was the sort of person we recruited – when I say “we” I mean the people higher up the chain than me. I didn’t have much choice in the matter.’

  ‘Except that it was you who identified Julie as a suitable recruit to an evil trade. Give us the details.’

  ‘I offered to provide her with her own supplies in exchange for her services as a seller. That’s what you did. You found people who were heavy users, but preferably not addicts. Addicts are totally dependent on you for their supplies, but they’re unreliable. They might try to sell while they’re stoned and get reckless.’ He was for a moment back in his world of twenty years ago, confident of his own expertise and the judgements he was able to make on potential recruits to the staff. ‘I put the deal to Julie because she wasn’t stupid and I thought she’d be careful.’

  ‘And did she accept?’

  Michael licked his lips, realizing that he was getting in deeper, becoming more reliant on their clemency, with each of these successive admissions. ‘She neither accepted nor refused. I made her the offer. She disappeared the next day. Went out and never came back.’ He looked hard at Hook and at the relentless Lambert, desperately wanting to be believed.

  Hook’s voice softened persuasively. ‘Think hard about your answer to these next two questions, Mike. Much better to tell us now and get marks for cooperation, if the answers should be yes. Did Julie refuse your offer to become your dealer? And did you or other people who were directing you decide to eliminate her because of that refusal?’

  ‘No! It was exactly as I just told you it was. She went out and never came back. I thought she’d just moved on, probably to some other squat. And she knew nothing about the people higher up the drugs chain, so they wouldn’t have harmed her. I knew precious little about them myself, and Julie knew nothing.’ He was wide-eyed with fear now, desperately anxious to convince them.

  ‘Did you simply accept her disappearance? Didn’t you ask around the other people in the squat and attempt to find out what had happened to her?’

  He was quiet for a moment, wondering what he should say to this. ‘I asked Kathy what had happened to Julie – well, I think she asked me, actually. We were each a little suspicious of the other. It’s like that in squats: no one really trusts anyone else. It doesn’t pay to ask too many questions about anything.’

  That at any rate rang true, whatever they made of the rest of his answers. Hook glanced at Lambert, who immediately resumed the questioning. ‘When did you decide to change your name, Mr Wallington?’

  He glanced apprehensively at the door he had shut so firmly upon his family, and they knew in that moment that his wife knew nothing of this, probably nothing of his time in the squat. ‘Two years after I’d left the squat. It was when I began my first teaching job. You don’t want people to know you’ve lived like that when you’re going to be shaping the lives of young people. I’d been Mick Warner in the squat, but I wanted to put all that and everything it meant behind me.’

  ‘Especially as you’d been dealing in dru
gs. I can’t see that being a big attraction when head teachers were considering your applications.’

  ‘I said I’d been working abroad for a year, broadening my experience. I’d certainly been doing that, hadn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. You’d also been breaking the laws of the land. Not only selling drugs but recruiting others to do the same. I don’t suppose Julie Grimshaw was the only one you approached.’

  He didn’t trouble to deny that. Anything was preferable to the accusation of murder they’d been dangling before him minutes earlier. ‘I’m not proud of what I did in those months. It could ruin my career if it came out now – you can imagine what the tabloids would make of it.’ He paused for a moment, but Lambert offered him no reassurance. ‘I got rid of Mick Warner, became Michael Wallington.’

  Just as the Kathy of the squat had become Kate Clark, board member of a great national utility company, thought Lambert. There were skeletons in the cupboard from that squat, as well as the one very real skeleton which had started all this and brought them here on this bright Sunday morning. ‘Did you make the change official?’

  ‘Yes. It was all done by deed poll. I became Michael Wallington. I buried Mick Warner and everything that went with him for ever.’

  ‘Or at least until the discovery of the remains of a woman who had lived with Warner at Fairfax Street brought him back into your life.’

  ‘Until this, yes.’ He glanced again at the door. ‘Please don’t bring Mick Warner back into my family life. Debbie and the children don’t deserve this.’

  ‘Secrets don’t usually help marriages, Mr Wallington. But it’s your business how much you tell your wife of this. It will remain your secret, unless the happenings at Fairfax Street become the background for a murder trial. Have you anything further to offer to us?’

  ‘No. I don’t know how Julie died. It wasn’t in the squat.’

  The children came out to see the detectives depart. The boy and the girl beside him waved hard as the car drove away, dancing a little with the excitement, too small and too innocent to have any understanding of a world which dealt in drugs and violent death.

  ‘I hope I’m not intruding, Mrs Dutton.’ Steve Williams stood awkwardly at the doorstep of the small semi-detached house.

  The widow looked at him suspiciously for a moment. Then her face cleared as she recognized him. ‘It’s Mr Williams, isn’t it? Come in, please. Jack said I was to listen to whatever you had to say to me.’

  She was a small woman with grey hair and a slight limp. He wasn’t sure as she led him into a living room with slightly old-fashioned and well-worn furniture whether the limp was permanent or temporary. She offered him the best armchair and he sat down carefully on its lumpy and lopsided seat. ‘I was very sorry to hear that Jack had gone.’

  ‘It was the best thing for him. Best thing for all of us, really. None of us wanted him to go on suffering, once there was no hope.’ Jack Dutton had not been dead for long, but she had got used to saying these words to people who offered their condolences. It was a formula she recited to get her and her well-wishers through the awkward early moments of sympathy. ‘I’ve had quite a few letters. Some from family, some from friends. I didn’t know Jack was so highly thought of.’

  ‘That must be a consolation for you, at a sad time like this.’ Steve wasn’t good at sympathy. He’d danced on a few graves in his time, told plenty of people that they’d had it coming. But he hadn’t felt the need to offer consolation very often. He found now that he wasn’t comfortable with it. ‘I visited him in hospital, you know, not long before he went.’

  ‘The day before he died. He told me you’d been. Said I was to contact you, if I needed anything. Said you’d look after me.’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad he did that. That’s why I’m here. Disturbing your Sunday morning when you want to be quiet with your grief.’ He gave a laugh which was a little too loud, then stopped it abruptly, realizing that laughter was not appropriate in this house of mourning.

  ‘That’s all right. Jack worked for you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He worked for me for a long time.’ Dutton obviously hadn’t spoken about his work at home, any more than Steve had spoken about his businesses to Hazel. ‘We got on well. He was a reliable man, your Jack.’

  ‘Yes. He was a good husband. Do you want tea? I can soon—’

  ‘No. Please don’t bother. You’ve got quite enough to do at the moment, Mrs Dutton.’

  ‘Beth, they call me. Funeral’s Wednesday. Church at ten o’clock, then the cemetery.’

  ‘I’ll do my very best to be there, Beth. But I came here because I want to offer you real help, not just sympathy.’ He looked round at the room and its shabby furniture, stopped himself just in time from offering what he realized would be taken as an insult. ‘I’d like to provide you with some financial help, Beth.’

  The lined grey face looked at him suspiciously. ‘That’s good of you, Mr Williams. But we’re all right. The house is paid for and I have the pension. And there’s money coming in from insurance: I think you told Jack to take the policy out, to supplement our pensions. The funeral’s going to cost more than I thought, but the insurance money will see to that, when it comes in.’

  ‘I’d like to pay for Jack’s funeral, Beth. It would be my last gesture to a man who was a good worker and a good friend.’ Dutton had never been a friend. Williams didn’t have friends, certainly not among the people who’d worked for him.

  But he was relying on the fact that this woman wouldn’t know that, and he was right. Beth Dutton said uncertainly, ‘Well, if you’re sure, it would certainly be a help – I don’t know how long it will be until the insurance pays out. But do you realize how much funerals cost nowadays, Mr Williams?’

  ‘I do and it’s all right, Beth. Just make sure all the bills are sent to me at this address.’ Steve didn’t have cards. You didn’t commit things to print, in the businesses he’d operated. He scribbled his address on the back of an envelope and put it by the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Now you’ll make sure you do that, won’t you?’

  He picked up a picture of a young woman which was a few inches to the right of the clock. ‘Is this your daughter, Beth?’

  ‘Yes. That’s Ros. She’s ten years younger than the youngest of the boys. Bit of an afterthought, Jack used to say she was.’ Beth looked embarrassed, wondering if she should have said that to the man who had been Jack’s boss for twenty years and more.

  Steve was relieved that he’d said ‘daughter’ and not the ‘granddaughter’ he’d almost used. He put the picture down and said, ‘Very pretty girl, isn’t she, Beth? Takes after her mother, not her father, for looks.’ He was rather pleased with that, as a man not used to delivering compliments or making jokes.

  ‘She’s twenty-four now. She’s giving up her job and going off to university. Bristol, she’s going to. Going to cost her a packet in student loans, but she’s very determined, is Ros, when she gets an idea into her head.’

  ‘I’d like to help her with that, Beth. I’ll pay her fees. It will be my final gift to Jack, my remembrance of him. Better than a slab of marble.’

  ‘And a lot more expensive. Do you realize how many thousands are involved?’

  Steve took a deep breath. ‘I do realize, Beth, but I’d like to do it. It would be a kind of memorial to my own son, Liam, you see. He never went to university.’

  Beth found herself crying again. She’d wept a lot over the last few days, so that she hardly noticed it now. There was something frightening about this big man with the bald head, even though he had employed Jack and paid him well and was now offering her wonderful things. She dabbed at her face with her handkerchief and said, ‘You lost your son, didn’t you? It’s coming back to me now.’

  ‘Yes. He died in a road accident. His mum can’t let go of him, even though he’s been gone for eight years now.’ He hadn’t meant to say that. He didn’t know why he’d mentioned Hazel. And he hadn’t meant to bring Liam into this, to sully his
memory by involving him in this squalid manoeuvre, this attempt to make sure that the dark things Jack Dutton had done on his behalf went to the grave with him.

  Grief loosened Beth Dutton’s tongue. She said suddenly, ‘Why are you doing this, Mr Williams? There’s no need, you know. No one here is going to talk to the police.’

  Steve was shocked by that. But it was good really, he told himself. This woman he had believed knew nothing was sharper than he had thought. She knew the score – knew that it was essential that she said nothing if the filth came sniffing around. He said firmly, ‘I’ll see to Ros’s fees at Bristol. I owe that to Jack.’

  She looked hard at him. Her eyes still brimmed with tears and her cheeks were wet with them. She said only, ‘Aye. Maybe you do.’

  This was over the top, Steve thought as he drove away. He was offering too much for it to be just a favour to an old friend who was dead. No one would believe it was merely that. Throwing thousands of pounds away wasn’t the sort of thing Steve Williams did. But he felt a kind of cleansing in his offer. He was finished now with all the bad things he had done when he was operating his business empire. Sponsoring the studies of this innocent girl would purge him of some of the sins he had committed in the past.

  And it would ensure that the evil things Jack Dutton had done on his behalf were buried with him.

  SIXTEEN

  Andrew Burrell decided that the flat was a good investment after all. He’d wondered at the time of his purchase, because of the price. He’d paid a considerable sum for it, putting down his deposit long before the new block was completed. He’d got what he considered the prime site by doing that.

  This flat was on the top floor and had been sold as a ‘penthouse apartment’. It had two luxurious bedrooms, a splendidly fitted bathroom and kitchen and a sitting room with views over the Severn. The rooms were unusually spacious for a modern development and this was now one of the most fashionable areas of Gloucester. It was just below the old docks, where in medieval days sailing ships had delivered precious cargoes into the ancient cathedral city.