And Did Murder Him

by Turnbull, Peter

  ‘I think you’ll make it first go.’

  ‘Thanks for that vote of confidence. I think if somebody, anybody, has faith in you, then you can do almost anything.’

  ‘Tell me about your father’s place of work.’

  ‘It’s an office, like any other.’

  ‘Frankly, in my experience, one office is not like another.’

  ‘It’s in an old building on Bath Street, Charing Cross end, quite near here, really. In its heyday the building would have been the home of a wealthy man and his family, with the servants’ quarters in the basement. You know the bars on the basement windows of old houses which make the basements a pure fire trap. I always thought that they were there to keep burglars from getting in; in fact, they were designed to stop the servants sneaking out and going on the town. Did you know that?’

  ‘In fact I did,’ Donoghue replied. ‘I’m something of an aficionado of Glasgow’s Victorian architecture. Glasgow is the most Victorian city in the UK in terms of its architectural heritage.’

  ‘Yes,’ she mused, ‘yes, it probably is.’

  ‘So, your father’s office?’

  ‘He has the basement and ground floor of the building. There’s a firm of accountants above him; a firm of property surveyors above that, and the attic is the operational base for a private detective. One man and a secretary. Her makes a living by sitting in his car outside houses spying on extra-marital affairs. It’s a seedy way of making a penny.’

  ‘Car parking is a problem in that part of town. Can’t keep feeding the meters.’

  ‘Daddy has a garage at the rear of the office. It’s a rough and ready affair, but it keeps the precious Bentley dry.’ She smiled. ‘It keeps both Bentleys happy. The garage was thrown up before the present building regulations came into force. It wouldn’t be allowed now; it spoils the rear line of the terrace. It’s by no means the only one, there are others, all of the same vintage. About twenty years old.’

  ‘So it’s just a shelter with an earth floor?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Veronica Bentley seemed affronted. ‘No, it’s got a proper concrete floor and one that’s just as filthy greasy as you’d expect after twenty years’ constant use. It’s fairly oily as well. Daddy had a car once, a Daimler with a porous sump which dripped oil wherever he left it standing. The garage floor never recovered from that. Then Daddy had some work done on another car in the garage, so there’s bits of metal everywhere.’

  ‘The garage is directly to the rear of the office?’

  ‘Yes. Why are you interested in it? Is it significant?’

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘I’m a little worried that you’ve been asking a lot of questions about Daddy. Do you suspect him of some crime?’

  ‘Yes, I do, frankly. I would be lying if I said otherwise. But this is early days, really. I shall have a very open mind.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’ A note of ice in her voice, a trace of haughtiness, a hint of a privileged background. A background that’s always there; even in the gutter.

  ‘Tell me, that day that you left the squat for one day, the day you saw your father—what occurred between you?’

  Veronica Bentley looked sideways and downwards. ‘A row,’ she said softly.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In his office. We must have been heard by everybody. Even the private dick in the attic, let alone all the employees of Bentley and Co. How embarrassing. It was the first time that I had stood up to him, the only time so far. I went home shortly after that and he locked me up in the garden shed.’

  ‘In the garden shed?’

  ‘Well, he made it warm and comfortable, a bed, blankets. I was warm and dry so long as I stayed there and didn’t escape by breaking a window and climbing out. I was only allowed thin cotton pyjamas. Daddy said I had to stay there until the poison was out of my system. My mother brought me three meals a day and emptied the slop bucket. And I got the Glasgow Herald each morning except Sunday, when it was the Sunday Telegraph. I was allowed to move into the house that day that you called for the first time. Daddy thought that the worst was over by then.’

  ‘I see. The row which took place between you and your father—what did you say to him?’

  ‘What didn’t I say!’

  ‘Well, you see what I’m driving at, Miss Bentley, is, was there anything that was said which could have told your father where it was that you were living?’

  A look of horror and sudden realization flashed across Veronica Bentley’s eyes. ‘Oh…oh…’ she gasped. ‘No…I know he can be bad…but not that bad. You don’t think…’

  ‘I don’t think anything. Miss Bentley. Not at the present. At the present we are still in the process of turning over stones.’

  Veronica Bentley nodded. ‘Well, yes, I told him where I was living. I mean, not in so many words…but I lost the place, as they say, I said something along the lines of, “If you hadn’t been such an animal, then I wouldn’t now have to break up my body like bread and share it out among your clients so that I can puncture myself four times a day.” I knew I’d scored a point because that registered with him, he looked stunned, he looked like he’d been shot in the head, right between the eyes.’

  ‘So all he had to do was look up his files, find two or any clients with the same address, same mode of life, who lived near each other or similar…’

  ‘Or similar. It would have been easy, really, especially since Eddie and Shane called on him together on occasions and he would have put two and two together. He’s bad but not stupid, and he would have realized who I was living with and then he’d realize why they called to see him on any pretext. He’d realize not just what they were doing but that they were laughing at him while they were doing it. He may even have got the private dick upstairs to do a bit of sleuthing for him.’

  ‘Simple, really.’

  ‘Dead simple,’ said Veronica Bentley.

  Richard King entered Donoghue’s office.

  ‘Ah.’ Donoghue glanced up. ‘Come in, Richard, take a seat, please.’

  King sat. He was fresh-faced, fully rested and ready for the back shift. It was 17.15 hours.

  ‘It looks like I’ll be home on time for once today,’ said Donoghue. ‘That will please my lady wife; please me as well, give me time with my children. I just don’t see them and they don’t see me. So, to business! There’s a few things I have to hand over to you in the Eddie Wroe murder, one or two things to be done on your shift.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Well, to come to the point, all roads are leading to Rome. Or rather, all fingers are pointing towards David Bentley.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. Shane Dodemaide’s prints on the knife found next to Eddie Wroe’s body have been explained. Bentley turns out to be solicitor for both Dodemaide and Wroe. He calls Dodemaide for an interview, about nothing in the event, but during which he says, “Would you mind handing me that knife?” and pointedly doesn’t touch it once Dodemaide has carried it safely across Bentley’s office and dutifully laid it on the man’s desk.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So I think Bentley stabbed Wroe with an identical knife, which he subsequently disposed of and which we will never find, and smeared Wroe’s blood on the knife with Dodemaide’s prints all over it, reverse way on, but all over it none the less and left that knife close to the body.’

  ‘Where it was found.’

  ‘He called Eddie Wroe into his office and took him to the garage at the rear of his house, probably on the pretext of offering him a lift home, but in fact to kill him. The body lay on the floor of the garage which Veronica Bentley informs me is covered with oil and metal filings and not swept clean like a suburban garage. Eddie Wroe’s body lay in the garage from midday Saturday to early Sunday morning, by which time rigor mortis had set in. Bentley returned to the locus on Sunday morning, broke the rigor of the corpse, probably bundled it into the boot of his car. Easily done: the deceased was smallish and Bentley is hugel
y built; he took it half a mile away and dumped it and the knife in the alleyway where they were found.’

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘He blamed them for turning his daughter into a smackhead. He also found they forced her to sleep with them for heroin.’

  ‘That would annoy any father.’

  ‘To say the least. But any father would have dragged his daughter home or to hospital and then gone and sorted out Dodemaide and Wroe with a baseball bat and would do so in an uncontrollable temper. Our man lets his daughter return for a few more days of puncture and rape while he lays a convoluted plan to murder one and fit the other up for it. It’s that element of detachment, a sense that the injustice is done to him, not his daughter, that I find impossible to fathom.’

  ‘Chilling.’

  Donoghue reached forward and took a sheet of paper from his in-tray. ‘This is a warrant to search the premises of David Bentley and Co. It includes outbuildings. What I’d like you to do is to get the Forensic chemist, the chap with the glasses—’

  ‘Bothwell.’ King glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be able to catch him before he leaves for home.’

  ‘Good. Him and a scene of crime officer are to photograph the garage. Let Bothwell loose; we’re looking for Wroe’s fingerprints in the garage, blood and hair and clothing fibres. Dr Kay is waiting at the Forensic Science Laboratory to match if she can anything that you can supply her with. If the samples match, you can proceed and crave a warrant for the arrest of David Bentley. If you get a warrant, don’t exercise it. He’s not going anywhere. No one else is in danger and I want to be there when he’s arrested.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘I should also tell you that I’ve asked for permission for firearms to be drawn. Bentley has a pair of revolvers in his library. I don’t for one minute think he’ll shoot it out with the police, but I want to be prepared for any eventuality.’

  ‘I dare say if we don’t take guns, we’ll only need them.’

  ‘And if we do take them, we won’t need them, which is how we all would prefer it. Please pass all this on to Montgomerie. He’s drawn the graveyard shift, as you know. If we have grounds for a warrant, he’ll exercise it with me.’

  A uniformed officer jemmied off the padlock of the garage and the doors swung outwards. It proved to be a roomy garage with a workbench at the further end, a metal cabinet to the left, a skylight and a naked lightbulb hanging from a metal beam. Wide tyres from a large car had left greasy impressions on the oily surface.

  Elliot Bothwell stood patiently holding his case while the scene of crime officer set up the camera and the flash equipment. He watched with interest. Even in these days of high tech photography with lifelike colour prints, the police preferred black and white photography. It had been explained to him once, colour flattens a scene, black and white is more three-dimensional in effect. Elliot Bothwell was thirty-six years old and he remembered that he should have phoned home to tell his mother he would be late for supper. He looked around the garage. His eye was drawn to the far corner, close to where the metal cabinet stood. Richard King came and stood beside him.

  ‘Somewhere in there, Mr Bothwell,’ said King, ‘is a place where we believe a body to have lain; so any blood you find and fingerprints, hair, clothing, fibres…’

  ‘It lay over there, sir.’ Bothwell nodded his head towards the metal cabinet. He repeated the movement. It annoyed King, he found it a lazy, perfunctory movement. A raised and pointed arm would have seemed more enthusiastic, more professional, but two slow, sure nods of a thick-jowled head irritated him.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, you can see the footprints in the oil that lead from the door here to the corner over there.’

  ‘There are footprints all over the garage floor.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Bothwell blinked. ‘Both those prints walk from the door to the corner and then return. The person who made the prints is well built, you can tell that by the size of the print. He walked to the corner from the door carrying nothing. You can tell that because the feet are pointed slightly outwards, as are normal footprints.’

  ‘Go on.’ King was intrigued and was no longer annoyed by Bothwell’s laziness of gesture.

  ‘Well, on the return journey, he was carrying something, because his feet were planted parallel with each other, that is, the toes pointed dead ahead, not outwards. That’s a sure sign of someone carrying something heavy. The other footprints in the garage, they’re various sizes, big and small, facing each other, facing in the same direction, widely spaced. It’s as though one person had chased another around the garage at some point.’

  King smiled at Bothwell. ‘I’ll leave it to you.’

  The flash gun popped.

  If you can control it, then it’s all right. In fact, it’s pretty good. Malcolm Montgomerie had resisted alcohol that morning, had enjoyed six hours of good, nourishing alcohol-free sleep. He awoke at 7.0 p.m., had a coffee, showered, enjoyed a ready-cooked meal at 9.0 p.m. and soaked up television until 10.45 when he pulled on his ski-jacket and told himself that alcohol, if you can control it, is pretty good stuff’. He left his flat, went down the common stair, into his car and drove to P Division. He entered the rear entrance of the police station, signed in, checked his pigeonhole, and was about to ascend the stair to the CID corridor when the desk officer called him back.

  ‘Yes?’ said Montgomerie.

  ‘Someone to see you, sir,’ said the officer. ‘Out in the front reception area.’

  ‘Who?’

  The desk officer shrugged and smiled. Montgomerie walked to the desk, lifted the hinged section, walked into the uniform bar and glanced into the public area. Tuesday Noon sat on one of the black upholstered seats next to a plant in a large white bowl. He glanced up at Montgomerie and smiled. ‘I’ve got something that’s worth a drink, Mr Montgomerie,’ he said.

  The uniformed desk officer watched as Montgomerie spoke with Tuesday Noon for a minute or two. He then saw Montgomerie take out his wallet and hand the aged derelict two five-pound notes. The aged derelict kept his hand open and held Montgomerie’s gaze. Montgomerie paused and then pushed a third five-pound note into the man’s hand. The elderly man shuffled out of the building, leaving a sour smell in his wake. Montgomerie went upstairs to the CID corridor and the bar officer took a can of ozone-friendly air freshener and sprayed the public area. Liberally.

  Montgomerie skipped up the stairs two at a time and strode purposefully into the office he shared with King and Abernethy.

  The footfall of a confident man,’ said King, not looking up from his desk.

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you be confident, a solid day’s sleep, not fifteen seconds inside the building and your grass lays gold dust on you.’

  ‘Gold dust is falling out of the sky.’ King put his pen down and looked up. ‘There’ve been major developments in the Wroe case.’

  ‘Oh?’ Montgomerie walked to the table in the corner of the room and spooned instant coffee into a mug. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m awash with the liquid.’

  ‘So tell I?’ Montgomerie poured boiling water from the geyser into the mug and added milk.

  ‘All indications are that Bentley senior is the culprit.’

  ‘Veronica’s father?’ Montgomerie raised his eyebrows.

  ‘The one and the same. His name just kept popping up in all the wrong places or all the right places, depending on your point of view.’

  ‘It pops up more often than you think,’ said Montgomerie, and told King that Tuesday Noon had reported seeing David Bentley burning rubber in his Bentley, tearing down Bath Street, shooting red lights at 7.00 a.m. Sunday last.

  ‘You’d better sober him up, then,’ said King. ‘It looks as though he’s going to be a Crown witness. May not need him, though.’ King tapped the report that he was writing. ‘We got the results on blood traces and hair and fingerprints that Elliot Bothwell found in Bentley’s garage, the one behind his place of work. Dr Kay
confirms that they belong to the deceased.’

  ‘Certainly seems like he’s got some explaining to do.’ Montgomerie sat at his desk. ‘What was the motive?’ King told him. ‘So on that basis, and the evidence, I requested a warrant for his arrest and arranged the release of Dodemaide.’

  ‘You’re going to pick him up tonight?’ ‘No, you and Fabian are going to pick him up tomorrow. He probably thought that you could do with the overtime.’

  Montgomerie groaned. ‘Anything lying to be done?’ ‘Nothing. Why, you anxious to work or something?’ ‘In a sense, yes.’ Montgomerie sipped his coffee. ‘I’ve got a visit to make, I have some gold dust to sweep up.’

  Montgomerie drove to the squat on Belmont Street. The rain had eased off but had not completely stopped, and a dark cloud, low and foreboding and visible in the darkness, spoke of an impending deluge. Behind him was a van containing two male officers and WPC Willems. At the front door of the squat Montgomerie made to knock, then he paused, hunched his shoulder and burst the door open. It was locked, nominally: a single barrel lock in a rotten door in a rotten frame. It gave easily.

  They found Sadie Kelly and Nicholas McQueen lying on the same mattress, under the same blanket. They blinked as Montgomerie switched the light on.

  ‘Wakey, wakey!’ he said.

  ‘Do you have a warrant?’ said McQueen with an imperiousness that all the cops found comical, but only Elka Willems couldn’t stifle a laugh.

  ‘Do we need one?’ Montgomerie glanced around the room. Dirty clothing lay in two piles on either side of the mattress. A cardboard box contained other clothing. ‘Get dressed. We’re taking you for a nice ride to the police station. We’d like to talk to you about knocking two old ladies down and stealing the princely sum of four pounds.’

  ‘How did you know it was us?’ Sadie Kelly blinked and sounded genuinely puzzled.

  Nicholas McQueen lay back and pulled the blanket over his head, making a low moaning sound as he did so.