Jack-Knifed

by Wonny Lea

  ‘I can assure you that Mr Wilson was not decapitated, and we have no reason to link him to drugs in any way, shape, or form, or indeed to any other type of criminal activity. As yet we have been unable to make any arrests, but there has been a lot of evidence gathered from the crime scene that will undoubtedly take us in that direction in the very near future.’

  Martin had been advised some years ago to use those sorts of words, as in most cases the murderer would actually be listening with macabre curiosity to radio and television accounts of his handiwork, and even buying up newspapers exposing his notoriety. It had been known to rattle some criminals on hearing that they may have left evidence behind – a longshot, but Martin was hardly going to admit that not only was there no one sitting in the cells, but that there wasn’t any likelihood of that any time soon, not without some sort of a break.

  Again the room became noisy and Martin simply waited until there was reasonable calm before taking a two-part question from a woman he recognised as Laura Cummings, one of the local television crime reporters.

  ‘Is it true that Mark Wilson’s real father is in jail for the manslaughter of his daughter and the subsequent murder of his wife and her lover on the Penrhys Estate in the Rhondda some years ago?’

  So, someone had done their homework, but clearly not everyone, as the majority of the reporters were hearing this information for the first time, leading to a flurry of texting and emailing from a variety of mobile phones.

  She continued. ‘What was it you said? – “no links to criminal activity in any way shape or form” – with a family like that it’s hardly the case, is it Detective Chief Inspector Phelps – what else is there you are not telling us?’

  It was the norm for reporters to give police officers their full title when they believed they had caught them out and were in the act of exposing some sort of cover up and the inevitability of it amused Martin.

  ‘The question I responded to related to Mr Mark Wilson, and not to his birth parents. And as far as we are able to tell our victim was not in contact with any members of the family since he was a small boy.’

  ‘He was gay!’ shouted a short, pimply faced youth from the back of the room. ‘Is that anything to do with his death?’

  Prepared for this question Martin responded. ‘It is no secret that Mark was homosexual, and even did some campaigning for the rights of gays and lesbians. But there is nothing to indicate his killing was linked to his sexual preference and he was not sexually abused around the time of his murder.’

  ‘Was he shot, knifed, strangled, or what?’ The same half-pint reporter was making up for his physical size by using a strangely powerful voice.

  ‘We are looking for a knife, or possibly knives, but none have as yet been found at the scene.’ Matt answered this question as previously agreed.

  ‘So how many unsolved murders have you got on your books now, Detective Chief Inspector Phelps?’ Laura Cummings’ interruption was more of an accusation than a question, and Martin could easily have risen to the bait. Instead he looked straight at her and reminded her that they were there to work together on this case and not to score cheap points on the seeming lack of progress in other cases.

  ‘It seems as if there are no further questions regarding the murder of Mark Wilson, but before ending this press conference I would like to make one final appeal to the public. Please come forward if you can give us any information. There must have been some unusual activity around Mr Wilson’s house between the hours of five and eight p.m. last evening. Someone must have seen something.’

  The room was quickly emptying as reporters rushed off to meet their seemingly endless deadlines, which Martin suspected were for the most part self-imposed and created to make them seem more important. He did not, however, underestimate the importance of the media, and he was aware that some of the cameras were still pointed in his direction as he and Matt left the room – it would, as always, be interesting to see what he said in print, and even more interesting to see what he didn’t say in print.

  He was sure that the phones would start ringing in Goleudy as soon as this particular item was read out on the evening news stations and hoped that at least one person out of the inevitable timewasters would be able to bring something of relevance to the investigation.

  Instead of going back to his office, Martin returned to Incident Room One and spent the next twenty minutes without saying a word but revisiting every photograph and flicking through the computer images, going over and over the scenes from Mark’s kitchen and lounge. He was adding a few comments to the whiteboard when DS Pryor arrived, eager to give Martin the information he had gained about Mark’s family.

  Paula had already given them some facts, but now they knew for certain the dates and circumstances of the death of Sarah Wilson in 1974, and the subsequent conviction of Bob Wilson for her manslaughter. Matt said that the administration at HM Bristol Prison had been most helpful, and the records of Bob Wilson while serving his first prison sentence seemed to show a prisoner who deeply regretted his crime. One particular psychiatric report described a domestic incident that had gone terribly wrong, and almost depicted Bob Wilson as a victim rather than a criminal.

  The reports and an exemplary prison record had led to the early release of Bob Wilson, who within hours of that release had brutally murdered his wife’s lover and inflicted an injury on his wife that had resulted in her death some months later.

  Bristol had described a very different Bob Wilson when he was returned to prison and he freely admitted to having waited out his previous time in the knowledge that as soon as possible he would kill his wife for bearing their son. Recent psychiatric reports described him as a self-confessed homophobic, and Wilson in turn described his son as ‘the bloody little queer’ who ‘ruined all their lives’.

  Martin shook his head in disbelief, calculating that Mark must have been just a small boy when this opinion of him had been formed by his father. Over the years, his father had built up more and more hatred towards his son, in spite of having never actually seen him as a teenager or a man.

  The record went on to describe how when Bob Wilson was released, he was within hours back at what he still considered to be his family home. On arrival, he found that a former drinking mate, Barry Evans, was now his wife’s bedmate; more than that, he was forcing Bob’s teenage daughter Amy to accept his unwelcome sexual advances.

  After years of planning to kill his wife, Wilson’s attention was turned on his wife’s lover. According to the coroner’s report, he kicked and punched his victim to death, and even after death continued raining down blows that so disfigured Barry Evans’s face as to make identification by his family impossible.

  The only statement on record from Amy Wilson was one that said her father had only attacked Barry Evans to stop him groping her, and that he wouldn’t have touched her mother if she had stayed out of it – not another word was spoken by the girl and the rest of the incident is described graphically by Bob Wilson himself.

  In all his years in prison, toeing the institutional line but plotting his wife’s demise, he had never really considered an exit plan. He told the officers who found him, blood-soaked and manic in a nearby bus shelter, that he had done his job. At that stage it appears that he believed the blows he had inflicted on his wife would have been enough to finish her off, but had reckoned without the intervention of their daughter Amy.

  Matt concluded by saying that most of the prison officers regarded Wilson as ‘a complete nutcase’ and to add to this, he had become ‘friendly’ with some of the most evil elements of the prison population.

  ‘However, for Mark’s murder, he has the safest of alibis,’ said Matt, ‘as just the day before he was the instigator of a punch-up in the prison corridor, and spent the day of the murder in solitary, down there in Bristol.

  ‘I never really had him in the frame for Mark’s murder’ said Martin. ‘We would almost certainly have heard of any high-profile escapes, and relea
se would not be an option – I can see from this report that he’s been turned down for parole three times already. No – the only thing possible could be his involvement in an arranged killing, but that usually involves a ton of money, and he isn’t likely to have accumulated that through the modern-day equivalent of stitching mailbags. What about the daughter, Amy?’

  ‘Good news there,’ reported Matt. ‘It appears she visits her father regularly, and the prison service is looking into any information they have on file and will give me a ring later today.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to take a trip to Bristol and interview Bob Wilson, because although he could not have personally killed his son I am firmly convinced that there’s a family connection. We also definitely need to interview the sister, Amy, so let’s get those two set up as soon as possible.

  ‘Of course we mustn’t forget Mark’s new family – so far we have only met Sandy and Norman Harding, who appear to have been devoted to Mark and lavished him with love and all the worldly goods he could possibly need, but was that at the expense of someone else? The couple told us that they had adopted Mark as they couldn’t have any children of their own, but do either of them have a brother or a sister, or any other family member who would have benefited from their generosity if it hadn’t been heaped on Mark? It’s a long shot, but jealousy can be an evil thing, and is the root of many wicked deeds.’

  ‘It can’t be far off the time for them to view Mark’s body,’ Matt said. ‘Depending on how they cope with that, I’ll dig a bit further into their family background.’

  The two men left the room and turned into the corridor, where right on cue they saw Helen Cook-Watts guiding two people whose faces were expressionless and whose hands were tightly clasped, one with the other. She directed them towards the viewing room set up for the purpose with a simple wooden table and a small bunch of white flowers to break up the severity of the setting.

  Realising that Helen had the situation well under control, the detectives held back and watched as she faced Sandy and Norman and asked them if they were ready.

  Their eyes were on the long rectangular table not quite in the centre of the room, but with enough space for people to stand on either side. The couple stood together on one side and Helen moved to the other side, before carefully removing the upper part of the sheet to reveal Mark’s still-handsome face.

  There was no immediate reaction, as the couple simply stared at their son’s face, and then as if a tap had been turned on Sandy’s face was soaking wet – covered with tears that once released she seemed incapable of stopping. Norman held Sandy tightly, indicated to Helen that she should put the sheet back over Mark’s face, and then turned to help his wife out of the room.

  Helen had been prepared for a long session, and was a bit fazed by the speed at which it was all over. She followed them into the corridor and attempted to get them to sit in a nearby waiting room.

  ‘We just want to get home, thank you,’ was all Norman could manage, but Sandy looked at Helen and squeezed her hand, whispering, ‘We are so grateful he still looks like Mark, and it was only that brief final look we wanted – the rest of our goodbyes will be said at home. That’s where we knew Mark – not here.’

  Martin Phelps watched as the group moved towards the back of the building and the car park. His questions could wait until tomorrow; this wasn’t the time to intrude on these people’s grief.

  Life could be so cruel – but was it life that was cruel or just that some evil people contaminated other people’s lives just for the sheer hell of it?

  Chapter Eight

  Unholy alliances

  Amy Wilson got out of a taxi and handed over a ten-pound note for a fare that was just a little more than five pounds, and laughed loudly at the look of amazement on the driver’s face as she waved off his offer of the change, suggesting that he had a drink on her and boasting that there was plenty more where that came from.

  Palash had been a cab driver in Newport for the past four years and, although he didn’t think the people of the area were mean, his tips were usually in the nature of the fare being rounded to the nearest pound. He couldn’t think of another occasion when a passenger had given him a tip that was virtually the same value as the original cost.

  Staring at the woman as she walked off towards the station he played the game of ‘guess the background’, as he often did with the people who used his cab. He figured that in spite of her Goth image, she was no youngster; possibly over forty, but with all that make-up and way-out hair style it was difficult to say.

  She wore extremely tight black jeans and high boots with clumpy heels, and Palash thought that she must have felt very warm in all that gear. He then noticed that her arms were bare of clothes, but well-covered with black and purple tattoos. Her face was pale, but Palash, who was not an expert when it came to the ways of women, couldn’t make up his mind if this washed-out look was as a result of life treating her roughly or an image that she, for some reason, wanted to create.

  She was lost to him now, as she had turned the corner to the train station, and he had to admit to himself that here was one fare he could not second-guess. She looked as if she was hiding behind some image of her past, and he remembered that loud, almost forced, laugh as she had handed over that ten-pound note – and he wished that for him there really were plenty more where that came from.

  Amy knew she had shocked the taxi driver, and smiled to herself as she collected her ticket, a single to Bristol Temple Meads, and played the same game with the young man selling the tickets. She told him to keep the change, but going red in the face he explained that they were not allowed to take tips, and he pushed her change towards her twice before she finally took it and swore at him loudly.

  The woman behind her in the ticket queue threw her a look of disgust, and as Amy walked away with her ticket she heard the woman commiserating with the young man, and describing Amy as ‘some weirdo who looked old enough to know better’.

  Being called a weirdo was a way of life for Amy, but that word ‘old’ hit her hard and she went off into one of her moods of deep depression, wondering how long she would be able to hang on to her latest man – he was at least fifteen years younger than her and the source of her new-found financial freedom. Amy had no idea where Jack got his money from, but she was sufficiently streetwise to know that it wasn’t the usual nine-to-five office job and as far as she was aware he wasn’t employed by anyone anyway.

  No, it had to be drugs, and he had to be dealing. She knew for sure that he was not a user, as having been a heroin addict herself for several years she knew all the signs. Still supported by a daily, but legal, supply of methadone, Amy wondered if she stayed with Jack how long would it be before she gave into the temptation of returning to the real thing and ditching the substitute. After all, her reason for giving up in the first place had nothing to do with the damage it was doing to her body, but through necessity as they wouldn’t let her near the good stuff in prison. But now there was freedom and Jack’s money too, and so maybe …

  Amy was on a journey she had made countless times over the past few years, and she knew as she sat down on one of the platform benches that she had about five minutes to wait before the train for Bristol pulled in. It amused her to see people walking up to the bench but then deciding against sitting next to her – didn’t they know that looking different was not a disease and that they wouldn’t catch it?–Maybe they thought they would wake up the next morning pale-faced and with black-rimmed eyes. They’re the real saddos, she thought, and most of them have never done anything more exciting than a quick fumble in a darkened room, whereas she had allowed her body to be transported to places these people could not even imagine.

  The electronic message board flashed up the news that the 12.44 to Bristol Temple Meads was arriving on time, and two minutes later she was sitting on the train and trying to settle down to the ride of about thirty-five minutes. Settling down to anything was not really an option and her
mind jumped backwards and forwards over the events of the past few months, starting from when, at the end of a similar journey to today, she had first met Jack. They had both arrived at the entrance to the prison at the same time, but she by means of the number 70 bus while he had parked his black BMW in one of the side streets off Cambridge Road.

  His immediate thought had been that she would look good sitting next to him in the front seat of his car, and he had lost no time in chatting her up. He was mentally inside her knickers even before they had been through the usual security checks and allowed in for their respective visits. She remembered that first meeting, and during her visit she had looked around the room and noticed him sitting next to a man who looked exactly as Jack would look in twenty years, so was not surprised to learn later that Jack was also visiting his father.

  Bob Wilson had noticed his daughter looking around and caught his breath sharply when he realised the subject of her attention, asking her quietly if she knew Leo Thompson’s son. Amy explained to her father that they had met briefly coming into the prison and had been surprised to hear him warn her off having anything to do with that lot. Bob obviously knew they were linked to drugs, and was aware that his daughter still craved for the poison that had so nearly led to her death when she was just sixteen.

  ‘What’s his father in for?’ she had asked, and been told that it was likely he had killed two men who had attempted to double-cross him. It had been proven beyond doubt that he had beaten his mother-in-law to death. Her father had gone on to say that he and his fellow prisoners were all keen to stay on the right side of Leo, as he was well-connected with the criminal fraternity on the outside.