Jack-Knifed

by Wonny Lea

  This suggestion was obviously not to her liking, and the young woman, who looked the part but in Matt’s mind probably did no exercise herself – other than the bedroom variety – got quickly to her feet and hurried towards a door at the back of the reception area.

  DC Matthews was poking around the so called ‘meet and greet section’, where there was ice-cold water on offer seemingly free of charge, but there was also a selection of liquid healthy options, the prices of which more than offset any layout on the water front.

  ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘You could feed a family of four for a week on what they charge for this stuff, and adding it all up I wouldn’t think there would be much change from my salary if I was a member here.’ He had picked up a menu that itemised the cost of the speciality drinks and post-exercise meals that, according to the blurb, were essential in order to obtain maximum benefit from the membership experience.

  ‘Probably not far off the mark,’ replied Matt. ‘However we are here as part of a murder investigation, not to do the management for their extortionate prices and to be honest I think anyone who is conned into paying them is not to be pitied, as they must have more money than sense.’

  The response from DC Matthews was lost as the door through which the secretary had disappeared opened inwards to reveal Mr Wilson in all his sweating glory.

  It wasn’t often that Matt was made to look small, but the size of this figure would have dwarfed most men, and the fact that he was red in the face from recent exercise seemed to emphasise his physique. He also looked far from pleased at having his workout disturbed by policemen, even though thankfully for his business they were not in uniform.

  Matt once again displayed his warrant card and went through the usual introductions. He tried to assess the reaction of Mr Wilson to their presence – he was obviously angry at being disturbed, but was it more than that?

  ‘So what’s this all about?’ The voice that came from the manager was not what had been expected, being more like contralto than tenor, and certainly not reaching anywhere near the depth of baritone. It was not just that the tone was higher than expected, it was also as if the words were being forced out, and it was a voice that once heard would always be remembered.

  ‘We are investigating the recent murder of Mark Wilson. You will probably have heard or read about it, and we have discovered that he was a member of this club and would like some information about his pattern of usage. It would also be helpful if you could tell us if he was particularly friendly with any other members or perhaps members of staff.’

  ‘Any member of my staff who had taken up a special friendship with Mark Wilson would have been out on their ear and if I had had my way he would never have been a member here in the first place – there are clubs that cater for his sort, we are not one of them.’ These words were forced out and so much so that Matt almost felt the need to duck out of their way.

  ‘What sort is that exactly, sir?’ asked Matt pointedly.

  ‘Well, he was gay, wasn’t he, and our members are not in to that sort of thing. We had loads of complaints and lost a number of good accounts when he joined up, and I got it in the neck from the company for losing business.’

  ‘How did your members know Mark Wilson was gay – was it tattooed on his forehead?’ Matt could feel his temper rising, and it was not just what the manager said but the venom behind the words that was making Matt’s blood boil.

  ‘I sussed him out straight away. And it didn’t help, him having the same surname as me, and having a few members of staff who are no longer with us suggesting we could be related. Can you imagine me being related to that?’

  The receptionist who had returned with her boss suddenly spoke up with more courage than Matt would have given her credit for. ‘He was a really nice man, and always spoke to me, not like some of the members here, especially the women who look down their noses and think I’m their personal servant.’

  ‘It’s your job to be their personal servant, you stupid bitch, what do you think we pay you for?’ The words of this living Mr Wilson stung as they were spat out, causing the young woman’s courage to desert her and her eyes to fill with tears as she walked away from the men.

  Matt guessed he would not find her working there if they had cause to return and indicated to DC Matthews that he should track her down and speak to her. She needed to be told that contrary to the instructions of her boss, she was able to speak to the police.

  Cutting to the chase, Matt asked Mr Wilson where he was on the afternoon and evening of the previous Saturday, and in what seemed like a totally rehearsed response he claimed to have been in the health club until lunch time, and then in the pub, where he met two mates and they all had a curry and more than enough lager. After that, he told Matt, he had gone to his sister’s house and crashed out on her sofa, not waking up until after six o’clock when her latest boyfriend had arrived and started ‘groping at her’.

  So this giant of a man, who was obviously homophobic, was not particularly enamoured with heterosexual relationships either.

  Matt couldn’t wait to get away, and after taking the details of Mr Wilson’s alibis, which were conveniently stored on his mobile phone, he was relieved to see DC Matthews coming towards him and they left together.

  ‘What a nasty piece of work,’ said Matthews as they approached Matt’s car. ‘Definitely someone with the strength to slice through bone and muscle without breaking into a sweat, and there is no love or even any tolerance for anyone who doesn’t fit into his idea of what a man should be.’

  ‘Yes, he certainly has the physical strength. And there is a mountain of hatred locked up in that imposing frame, but I suspect that he may be a bit of a wimp, like bullies often are. And he is a bully, judging from his behaviour towards that receptionist.’

  ‘No worries of further bullying on that front, sir,’ responded DC Matthews. ‘The secretary, whose name is Tina Chivers, gave me quite a bit of information about Mark’s pattern of membership at the club before she left through the back door. I told her she should gang up with other ex-receptionists and do that bastard for sexual harassment and constructive dismissal.’

  ‘Trust we know where to get hold of her?’ asked Matt.

  ‘No, boss, I let her go without getting any contact details – what do you think I am, a rookie?’

  ‘Sorry mate, of course not, I was really just thinking aloud. Did she have anything else of interest to say about her ex-boss?’

  ‘Not a lot, but apparently in front of the members he’s really charming. They all like him and feel protected by his sheer physical size, especially the women, but he never seems to take advantage of the members, it’s just the female staff he believes he has the right to play with. Apparently, quite a lot of the personal trainers have flings with the female members, but not Mr Wilson.’

  ‘Interesting,’ muttered Matt.

  ‘He obviously has witnesses to his whereabouts on Saturday, but DCI Phelps will be more concerned with us checking independent witnesses at the pub, and neighbours who may have seen him at his sister’s place, rather than believing the stories that may have been concocted with his friends and his sister. As always, one job leads to another.’

  A similar thought was going through Martin Phelps’s mind as he ran the gauntlet of the press, and felt a fleeting desire to scoop a few of them up on the bonnet of his car as they forced him to come almost to a complete stop before allowing him to move, inch by inch, into the Hardings’ drive.

  Even before he had opened the car door he saw their front door open. Helen Cook-Watts had been there for some time, and made it easy for him to ignore the shouts from the media, who were asking the usual questions about arrests, and making up their own statements regarding police incompetence, each one trying to outdo the others with their potentially headline-grabbing quips.

  Martin raised an arm to acknowledge their presence, but to their obvious group annoyance did not respond to any of their comments and went straight
towards Helen and into the hall.

  Helen had obviously been waiting for him, not just because he had rung earlier to tell her he was on his way, but also because she wanted to tell him what had been happening at the house.

  ‘I got here just after eight this morning after getting a phone call from Sandy. She was beside herself with worry because Norman had smashed a whole load of dishes and had subsequently locked himself in the downstairs cloakroom and refused to come out.

  ‘He was out by the time I got here and Sandy had cleared up the broken china so everything appeared as normal. However he hasn’t spoken a word all day and about an hour ago he went into the garage and came back with a large cardboard box and has been filling it with bits and pieces from all parts of the house.’

  ‘What sort of bits and pieces?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Ornaments, a clock, items of personal jewellery, birthday cards, and even shaving soap and deodorant,’ replied Helen.

  She continued. ‘None of it made any sense to me, nor to Sandy to begin with, but when he went upstairs and returned with a small bundle of cards that included some Father’s Day cards Sandy realised that he was collecting and boxing up everything that had been given to him by Mark.’

  ‘Maybe he just wants to have some contact with these things to help him come to terms with what’s happened to his son,’ suggested Martin.

  ‘Exactly what I said to Sandy,’ replied Helen. ‘But about ten minutes ago he went back to the garage, and returned with a petrol can and started to pour petrol over the box. Because he had trouble opening the cap I managed to get it off him before he had done any real damage and Sandy rescued the box of matches so the situation was defused – but the poor man has flipped.’

  ‘Ring his GP, now,’ said Martin. ‘I expected anger and recriminations to be the order of the day, but this is way outside my experience, and needs a different sort of professional help.’

  Martin left PC Cook-Watts to make the phone call, and walked into the lounge, where Sandy and Norman were sitting on the sofa like a couple of bookends, not together as they had been before, but separate, each in their own personal world.

  Sandy got to her feet as soon as she saw Martin, but Norman showed no sign he was even aware that anyone else had entered the room.

  ‘I have just asked PC Cook-Watts to contact your GP as your husband may need something to help him cope with this – and what about you, how are you managing?’

  ‘I’ve always been the strong one,’ said Sandy. ‘I can talk about Mark, and I have talked about him non-stop to Helen, who has been a lifesaver for me. If Norman could only talk he would find things easier. We’ve both found it difficult to sleep, but I must have gone off soundly around six o’clock this morning. I was woken by the sound of Norman smashing plates in the kitchen. That was bad enough, but then he locked himself in the toilet, and then the whole thing with Mark’s presents and the petrol.’

  Sandy sank back down on the sofa, and Martin pulled up a large footstool and sat on it so that he was facing her and at her eye level.

  ‘If you could talk some more now, I would be very grateful,’ he told her. ‘The more I can get to know about your son, the better chance I have of putting the pieces together and catching whoever did this terrible thing. Did Mark know anyone who would want to cause him harm, anyone he has fallen out with recently, or anyone who may have had reason to hate him or be jealous of him?’

  Sandy thought for a few minutes before answering. ‘Yesterday, when Norman was talking still, we went through all of that and maybe we did too much of it – concentrating on all the negative aspects of Mark’s life instead of all the joy he has brought into our lives.’ She shrugged her shoulders and went on. ‘There are certainly issues around his biological family and these were made known to us when we first fostered Mark, and they were discussed again during the process of adoption. We knew we were taking on someone who was part of an extremely dysfunctional family and whose childhood had been blighted by domestic violence, the death of his sister and then the father murdering his mother and her lover. We learned to love Mark even more because of all of this and because he had emerged from years of dubious fostering arrangements to be a thoughtful, sensitive man.’

  Sandy swallowed hard and Martin waited for her to continue while thinking how lucky Mark had been to be adopted by this couple.

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, Mark’s father is still alive, and still in jail, but it’s several years since we checked that out.’

  ‘That is correct,’ Martin told her. ‘He’s in prison in Bristol – did Mark ever express any desire to visit him?’

  ‘It’s something we asked him from time to time but he didn’t want to see his father, although I sometimes got the feeling that it was more that Mark firmly believed that his father wouldn’t want to see him. Mark was aware that his father blamed him for everything that had happened, and believed – and probably still believes – his son’s homosexuality to be the root of all their problems. Do such people really exist?’

  She directed her question at Martin not really expecting an answer, and went on to finish what she had to say about Mark’s family.

  ‘Mark had two sisters, the one who was killed, and another one, Amy, who is presumably still alive; she’s only a few years older than him. We also checked with Mark if he wanted to contact his sister, who like Mark spent most of her childhood in care, and around the time of his adoption he did say it might be nice to share some of his good fortune with her.

  ‘So Norman hired a private detective who did manage to track her down, and came back to us with the news that she was a heroin addict with no desire whatsoever to kick the habit. He reported that she had spat in his face when he had mentioned her brother and made it absolutely clear that as far as she was concerned there was no brother, just a “worthless piece of shit,” I believe it was, who had ruined the lives of the four people she cared about, namely her mother, her sister, her father, and herself.

  ‘She also told him that if he dared to tell us where he had found her, she would get her dealer to plant drugs on Mark and then watch as his precious new family fell to pieces when he was picked up for possession. He told us that she was one of the most sick and twisted people he had ever had the misfortune to meet.

  ‘We didn’t tell Mark the outcome of the investigations, just told him the investigator had drawn a blank, and we then persuaded him into thinking that as she had gone to so much trouble to not be found then that must be her choice. I don’t think from that day to this we have mentioned her name.’

  Martin nodded. ‘So to the best of your knowledge there has been no contact between Mark and any member of his family for at least the past twenty years.’

  ‘More like thirty years – no, more than that!’ responded Sandy. ‘After that one attempt to find his sister, we never had an inkling that he even thought about his family, and he constantly told us how lucky he was to have the best parents in the world – meaning Norman and I …’

  Sandy choked on these words and Martin could see the raw grief in her face. Helen Cook-Watts had re-joined them, and at Martin’s signal she sat down next to Sandy and held her hand.

  ‘Are you OK to continue?’ asked Martin, and Sandy nodded.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think there is anything else I can tell you about the family.’

  ‘Did Mark tell you much about the time when he was in care?’ asked Martin moving on.

  Sandy managed a tiny smile that for a moment relaxed her mouth but made no impression on the misery in her eyes. ‘Oh, there were stories, of course. Not all his experiences were bad, and we were always grateful to hear about a few of the short-term placements, and his memories of feeling part of a family for the one-off Christmases, and even a couple of brief holidays. Mark had the ability to focus his memories on these happy moments.

  ‘We know from the meetings we had with his case worker when we first fostered him that there were more bad times than good, and we were told
that it was almost certain he had been both physically and sexually abused over a number of years.

  ‘Mark himself told us of one particular incident that had happened just a few years before he came to us. He was at the beginning of what everyone hoped would be a long-term fostering arrangement when the police turned up at the house to interview him in relation to a murder. As Mark was just in his early teens at the time, the woman of the house had been asked to sit in on the interview.

  ‘Apparently, the boy who had been murdered was the son of a family that had fostered Mark about five years previously. At that time the son was about sixteen, and even though Mark was just nine years old it seems there was a mutual attraction between the two boys.

  ‘The father spotted his son’s interest in the young boy, and reported to Social Services that the latest misfit they had landed on the family was turning his perfectly normal son into ‘a woofter’. The reality of the situation was that although Mark was born gay, he was at the time too young to understand, and it was the son who was experimenting with his own homosexual feelings.

  ‘Through no fault of his own, Mark was moved on, but apparently the son came out on his eighteenth birthday and subsequently flaunted his sexuality by bringing home a string of one-night stands. It would appear that the father detested his son’s activities, and for years the house was visited on a regular basis by the police as a result of neighbours constantly complaining about fights.

  ‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, there was one night when the father had followed the son to a well-known gay pick-up point just outside the city, and stabbed him repeatedly with a kitchen knife.

  ‘When picked up by the police, the father had accused Mark of killing his son, and although there was prima facie evidence that the father was the killer the police had to follow up on his accusations. We know all of this, not just from Mark, but also from his caseworker. She was keen to ensure that we knew as much as possible about Mark’s past – I suppose so that we could not accuse them of withholding information if Mark had subsequently turned into a psychopath as a result of it all.’