by Bud Craig
“Gus Keane,” I said, “from Ordsall Tower.”
“Ian Jamieson,” he said after the most cursory of glances at my photo.
The way he crouched made him look small but I reckoned he was medium height, with very little fat on his bones.
“I wonder if I could have a word about Mr Tattersall.”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out smoke. I hoped it wouldn’t make me sneeze.
“Edward? You know he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
He replaced the roll up in his mouth.
“Come in,” he said, “there’s bugger all on the telly.”
Marvelling at the thought that a visit from me was a rival to daytime TV, I followed him as he walked painfully into a cluttered living room. With a gesture he invited me to sit on a sagging armchair. He took the settee and picked up one of three remote controls.
“Right, what’s it all about then,” he asked as he switched off the flat screen television.
How to explain why I was here?
“I’m trying to find out how the news of Mr Tattersall’s offences got out.”
A coughing fit delayed any response from Ian Jamieson.
“Sorry about that,” he said eventually, “I’m on invalidity, you know.”
“That’s OK. I was wondering if you knew he was...”
“A kiddie fiddler? Not until I read it in the paper.”
“You didn’t receive a leaflet outlining his record of abuse?”
Outlining, Gus, what are you on about? I had a sudden fear that I had written so many reports I was starting to talk like one.
“Not that I know of. We get all sorts of things through the letter box. Anything I get goes straight in the bin.”
He puffed on his cig. Feeling I was getting nowhere fast I ploughed on.
“Had there been any talk? You know, rumours? Gossip?”
For a few seconds he concentrated on breathing, an activity he found difficult.
“If there had been I wouldn’t have heard it. I hardly set foot out of this place from one day to the next.”
If you packed in smoking you might get out a bit more, I was tempted to say.
“How well did you know Mr Tattersall?”
He shrugged.
“Not that well. He used to come round with Simon sometimes.”
“Right,” I said.
“Simon keeps an eye on me, makes sure I’m all right. He does bits of shopping for me.”
The fug of smoke finally got to me. I sneezed and pulled a tissue from my trouser pocket, holding it against my nose. I muttered an apology. Ian went on with what he was saying.
“He generally brings a drop of whisky. It’s the only thing that eases my chest.”
He wheezed as if to illustrate his point.
“He lets me have stuff cheap and all,” Ian went on. “Sold me these for a fiver.”
He lifted his feet up to show off his trainers. You’d have to pay me much more than that to get me to wear them, I thought.
“He always keeps an eye on the place when I’m away. I do the same for him.”
I was trying to adjust my mind to the idea of Simon Natchow being a good neighbour, while thinking of a way to get back to the subject I had come to talk about.
“Right. Did your friend Simon know Tattersall?”
“He used to go for a pint with him now and again. I don’t think he knew anything about his record with kids.”
“No?”
He shook his head.
“Well, he wouldn’t have gone boozing with anybody like that, would he?”
“And where might I find Simon?”
He pointed to his right.
“Next door, Flat 13, upstairs.”
“Dedby Mansions?”
He nodded. Should I go and see Simon? He was or could be a link to Tattersall but I couldn’t see him being pleased to see me. Each time I’d met him so far had ended with him being asked to leave. On one occasion he’d been literally thrown out. On reflection I couldn’t face Simon today. I’d get round to him some other time. What I did know was that Mr Jamieson was not much use to me. I thanked him and left, grateful to get out into the air. While not exactly fresh it was at least tobacco free and wouldn’t get me sneezing.
* * *
That afternoon I was at home reading the Guardian, pleased at the thought of earning some money and thinking about Tony and Brenda. When my mobile rang I thought it was her. I answered with record speed.
“Hello.”
“I was wanting to speak to Gus Keane,” said a man with a southern accent.
Not Brenda then, I said to myself. Well spotted, Gus.
“That’s me.”
I thought I heard a sigh of relief.
“I have got the right number then. This is Larry Finch, Josie’s brother.”
What could he want?
“Hello, we were all sorry to hear about Josie.”
“Yes, thanks. Josie told me you helped her when Natchow came looking for her.”
“I didn’t do much.”
“I just wanted to say we appreciate your trying to help.”
I was touched that he would take the trouble to ring me about that.
“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about,” he went on before I could come out with another cliché.
“What’s that?”
“I, well, the whole family, would like to hire you to investigate Josie’s murder.”
I wasn’t expecting this.
“OK,” I said.
“Josie told me you were a private investigator.”
I recalled the conversation with Hannah and Josie googling my name. It seemed ages ago now, so much had happened.
“It’s not something we can discuss properly over the phone, Gus.”
“No.”
“Do you think we could meet soon?”
After some indecision about where and when we hit upon the next morning at 10.30.
“Josie and I shared a flat. So if you could come here?”
I agreed and wrote down the address and directions. I put a trip to Whitefield in my diary.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next day I arrived at Whitefield. I’d thought about the case all the way on the tram, hoping to no avail that the journey would give me time to develop some insights. With my brief case in my hand, I walked to Preston Lodge. It had the look of a minor stately home that had been converted into apartments. I noticed a To Let sign as I walked along the gravel driveway. At the cumbersome front door I looked down the bell pushes at the side and pressed the third one along with Finch written in block capitals in red biro. After a short wait the door opened.
“You must be Gus,” said a balding man of thirty-five or so, who held out his right hand. “Larry Finch.”
He was solid looking, not very tall. After shaking his hand, I followed him along a short corridor to the door of a ground floor flat. Once we were inside the living room, I took off my waterproof jacket as Larry invited me to sit down. I declined the offer of coffee. He sat in a chair opposite mine. The flat, I could see, was smart, bordering on the luxurious.
“I was a bit surprised by your phone call,” I said.
He squeezed his hands together, swallowing hard, then smoothed down his grey trousers. One of his slippers hung loose from his bare foot.
“The thing is, the police are no nearer to making an arrest.”
He took a moment to get himself together, pulling at the cuffs of his open-neck shirt. “We know and they know Natchow did it.”
What he said didn’t surprise me, but did Natchow do it? He looked at me as if expecting me to say something. So I did.
“You’re convinced it was Natchow?”
“Completely, but the police say there’s no evidence to place him at the scene of the crime at the right time.”
Natchow had, I remembered, left the Park Hotel a good while before Josie was killed. Then I thought of all the women killed b
y a partner each year; how often domestic violence escalated to murder. He was still the obvious suspect.
“He made her life a misery, Gus,” Larry went on. “We kept telling her to leave him, but she went back every time.”
A familiar pattern, I thought.
“At first she thought he would change,” said Larry, “then she started saying she daren’t leave: that he’d kill her.”
At that moment I really wanted Natchow to be guilty of the murder. It would be so satisfying to see him put away. At the same time a warning voice urged me to be objective.
“Just when we thought she’d got away from him, he followed her up here from London.”
Again he struggled to contain his emotion.
“And now she’s dead.”
I waited, wondering if he’d be able to go on with what he wanted to say.
“We – my parents, sister and I – can’t leave it like that. Which is why we’ve called you in.”
I didn’t know what to say so kept quiet.
“We’d pay you the going rate, of course.”
“I’d be happy to take the case,” I said.
I’d feel guilty if I refused. There was a more worldly reason: I needed the money.
“That’s great,” he said, almost smiling. “I know you’ve had success in the past and if you could find something to put that animal behind bars...”
His determination to prove Simon did it would make my job more difficult. But if somebody had killed my sister would I keep an open mind?
“I can’t guarantee anything,” I stressed, “but I’ll give it a bloody good try.”
I opened up my briefcase and took out a notebook and pen.
“I’ll need some information about Josie first of all. And an up to date photograph. Two would be handy.”
“Photo? Right,” he said, “I’ll go and have a look.”
He left the room while I looked round at the paintings on the wall, a Matisse I thought I recognised and a watercolour of a canal scene somewhere. I had no idea who had painted it, but it looked bloody good. When Larry came back he handed me two almost identical pictures of Josie with long hair and no glasses.
“They’re the most recent I’ve got. They were taken on New Year’s Eve,” he explained, “we had a bit of a party.”
What struck me most was how happy she looked.
“Thanks,” I said, “now if I could have Josie’s full name.”
I wrote down Josephine Elizabeth Finch, remembering that DI Ellerton had already told me the name. Her date of birth came next: I worked out she was twenty-nine. She hadn’t even lived to celebrate her thirtieth birthday, I thought. These facts would probably not be relevant but it helped to start with something concrete. Next Larry gave me a potted biography of his sister.
“She was born in Barnes, south west London, same as me. Mum and Dad are both GPs. So am I. Josie was the youngest of three. Cassandra is the oldest – she’s a consultant psychiatrist.”
He stopped again as if wondering what to say.
“Josie didn’t fancy a career in medicine. She did accounting at Manchester University, where I studied medicine.”
I wrote all this down. Maybe allowing Larry to talk would get him onto something important to the case.
“She always liked it up here, but she went back home after uni.”
Another pause while he psyched himself up to go on.
“A mistake as it turned out. If she’d stayed in Manchester she’d never have got involved with Natchow.”
The regret and longing in his voice was hard to bear.
“When did she meet him?”
“Three, four years ago. They worked together. He was a bit of a high flyer at the time. Josie was besotted with him. Within six months they had bought a house together. They were both earning good money.”
“What did you think of him?”
He shrugged.
“I should explain when I finished university I stayed in this area. I married a local girl, but we split up a while ago.”
That explained the flat. Larry looked lost for a while, then re-focused.
“The point I’m making is that I didn’t really see a lot of him. When I did meet him he seemed pleasant enough at first.”
“At first?”
“Yes. Quiet, thoughtful. He was the kind of guy who considered everything carefully before committing himself. A planner, I’d say.”
That sounded so unlike Simon I wondered if we were talking about the same person.
“As time went on,” continued Larry, “I began to notice he’d been on the booze every time I saw him. I mean whatever time of day it was.”
I wrote this down. If Natchow did kill Josie, his drink problem would have played a part.
“He was totally different when he’d had a drink,” Larry explained. “impulsive, touchy. Act first, think afterwards.”
That was more like the Natchow I knew and loved. I jotted down Larry’s comments. Two sides of the same coin, I thought.
“Then I began to notice the bruising,” he went on.
He stopped again, making me feel guilty for putting him through this.
“He didn’t just use his fists. He’d hit Josie with anything that came to hand.”
I made another note. I would go over what I’d written down later.
“Anyway, one day last year, September sometime, she turned up on my doorstep with a couple of suitcases.”
He sighed, near to tears again.
“By that time she’d left him. He lost his job and they’d had to sell the house, so she saw that as an opportunity to get away.”
I wrote down more details and waited for him to finish.
“She walked out one day and moved into a flat somewhere. Saw a solicitor, got an injunction...”
“Yes.”
“She decided to move to Manchester without telling anyone, even me.”
She must have thought that was the only way she could be safe.
“And she’s been here ever since?”
“Yes. She got a job with Judson Mainwaring. She really liked it there.”
There was still lots more I needed to know.
“Have you any idea how Simon Natchow found out where Josie was?”
He shook his head.
“No idea, it could have been a lucky guess. He knew I was here and Josie knew the area from days at uni. He could have come to Manchester on spec, then maybe he asked around when he got here. I really don’t know.”
That didn’t get me very far, but maybe it didn’t matter. It was difficult to know at this stage what did matter. Natchow did know she was in Manchester and had found her, that was the thing to hold onto. In any case it might not be a good idea to focus too much on the violent ex-boyfriend.
“Though I’m not restricted like the police,” I said, “I do need to check the facts.”
This was as good a time as any to raise the question of how Josie knew Marti.
“One thing has been puzzling me for a while,” I went on, “perhaps you can help me.”
“I’ll try.”
“A couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend and I met Josie in the Temple pub in Manchester.”
I explained about what I had heard Josie say on the phone in the Temple car park.
“Any idea what that was all about,” I asked.
He screwed up his eyes in concentration.
“Yes, she was phoning me. It goes back to when Josie was about fifteen.”
Could that be the connection with Marti?
“Was this in London?”
“Yeah, but...I’d better explain. Mum and Dad had high expectations of all of us. It was kind of expected we’d do well at school and follow in their footsteps.”
I wondered where this was leading but let him get on with it.
“Josie was a bit of a rebel, I suppose you’d say...”
A rebellious accountant? Whatever next?
“She felt under pressure, I guess, you know what it�
��s like at that age...”
He stared into space, no doubt remembering his bolshy sister, who wouldn’t be rebelling any more.
“She was arrested for possession of cannabis. Her and a few girls from school, you know, just experimenting. No big deal, looking back.”
I wrote down what he told me then asked a question.
“What happened?”
He shrugged.
“Not a lot,” he said. “A fine, maybe probation for a while, I was at university by that time. Josie was in the dog house with Mum and Dad for a while, but it all blew over pretty quickly.”
“And Marti was her solicitor?”
He nodded.
“I can remember Mum saying ‘she’s a coloured lady actually, from Liverpool I think’. I’m afraid a black woman from the provinces was a bit of a shock to the system for Mum.”
“Presumably,” I said, ignoring Mrs Finch’s prejudices, “Josie wouldn’t want to be reminded of her youthful indiscretion?”
“Hardly.”
That explained that.
“Did anyone inherit anything from Josie?”
He ran his hands through what was left of his hair.
“Mum and Dad get a few thousand, Josie’s savings.”
“Not Natchow?”
“No.”
“This will be hard to talk about, but I’m afraid I must ask you about the events of 28th February.”
He breathed in and sat up straight as if in preparation for an ordeal.
“What do you want to know?”
“Well,” I began, “tell me what happened when you got to the Park Hotel car park, what you saw, who you saw.”
He looked at the wall behind me as he spoke.
“Well, I was running a bit late. Traffic was worse than I’d anticipated. By the time I pulled into the car park, it was pretty empty, just a couple of cars there.”
He seemed to think for a bit.
“No people about. I got out of my car and went towards the pub. I couldn’t remember whether I was supposed to meet Josie inside or outside.”
Was he concentrating on the mundane aspects to blot out the full horror of the experience?
“It was academic in the end. I walked past a dark Fiesta on the left. Something made me stop; there was what I thought was a bundle on the ground.”
He swallowed hard.
“I realised it was a woman lying flat on her back. I leant down. That was when I knew it was Josie.”