by Jason De'Ath
“Well, we don’t want a lengthy investigation – you don’t know what they might uncover.”
Dickie pondered this – he was none too keen himself to be smeared with this one, or do hard time: “What are y’u suggestin’?”
“I don’t know...We need something to incriminate him...But you said all the evidence was gone?”
Dickie suddenly remembered that he still had the cartridge cases in his pocket: “There is something.” he said producing them.
“Give us ‘em?” Ewan firmly requested; Dickie momentarily paused, but then handed them all over.
“Make sure y’u clean the prints off ‘em.”
“Yeah. I’m not stupid...Where would be a good place to leave these?”
“Well, somewhere ‘e’s stayed recently...That don’ implicate us... I think I know. There’s this ‘otel in Maida Vale: I know ‘e stayed there the uvver night....I dunno which room, though...It was a big room with sev’ral beds... You’d ‘ave to get a look at the guest book t’find out which room it was.”
“Okay...What’s ‘is name?”
“Arfur Jameson...But ‘e might be under an alias.”
“Oh great.”
“I know ‘e uses ‘Johnson’, sometimes.”
“Okay. Where exactly is this place?”
“Lanark Street, in Maida Vale...Do y’u know that?”
“No, but I’ll find it, don’t you worry.”
Ewan stood up and was about to leave when Dickie optimistically asked: “I don’t suppose I could ‘ave the money?” Ewan turned and stare with eyes like machine guns – Dickie got the message.
Chapter Forty-Seven
(12 & 26 October 2007)
Arthur’s funeral took place on a Friday morning – not quite the 13th, which would have been the most apt – seven months after his murder, when the pathologist finally decided to release the body: there certainly hadn’t been anyone pushing for it. It was suitably gloomy, though surprisingly mild for the time of year.
Joanne arrived at the Cambridgeshire County Crematorium – which was sufficiently removed from her place of residence to make it completely anonymous – alone and dressed in a dark blue dress and matching coat. She did not consider that Arthur deserved the distinction of the usual black reverence: there would be no celebration of Arthur’s life and the service would be nothing more than pure formality. She walked to the crematorium waiting room with a sense of morbidity about the whole affair. She wasn’t sure whether she was there to say goodbye to her father – despite his obvious faults – or whether she just wanted to be sure he really was gone forever. After a few minutes, a policewoman entered wearing the uniform of senior officer – it was DCI Cartwright.
“Hello.” she greeted Joanne with a slight awkwardness. “I presume you are Joanne Clayton?” “Yes...No question what you are, is there?” commented Joanne with a hint of sarcasm.
“I am attending in an official capacity...” Michelle began.
“What, to make sure ‘e’s really dead?”
“In a sense...I can assure you we do not derive any joy from this. We would much rather have caught him and retried him...We don’t hold with vigilantism.”
“No, I guess not. Sorry.” Joanne finally yielded to a hint of contriteness.
“Quite a nice day, considering...” said Michelle in a vain attempt at friendly conversation.
“Thunder and lightning would be more appropriate, don’t y’u think?” Joanne quipped; DCI Cartwright just sighed. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Joanne decided to drop the defensiveness: “I never really knew ‘im; I only met ‘im thirteen years ago. My mum never spoke about ‘im...except to say he was in prison for armed robbery. I just assumed that was the reason she didn’t like ‘im...He managed to con me into thinkin’ ‘e was just a decent bloke who got in with the wrong crowd. He hid his true self well, that’s all I can say. I realise now that ‘e got that bungalow near us, so ‘e could use me as his skivvy.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Joanne; Arthur Jameson conned a lot of people over the years, including a jury.” Michelle gently grasped Joanne’s arm in a comforting manner. The icy atmosphere seemed to evaporate at that moment. Shortly after, the funeral director notified them that the hearse had arrived and they were ushered into the chapel.
The simple coffin sat on the conveyor belt, while the Celebrant [BHA Officiant] waited solemnly by the lectern. The chapel was not particularly large, but with only the two “mourners” it certainly seemed vastly excessive. Michelle followed Joanne into the seating area and stopped short of sitting down:
“Are you happy for me to sit with you, or would you...?” she politely asked.
“No, no – it’s fine.” assured Joanne and they took adjoining seats on the front row. What neither of them noticed was the appearance of Ewan Williams at the very back of the chapel.
The officiant had been painstakingly versed with the details of the deceased, so she was aware this could not be an ordinary address: there would be no tribute and most definitely no committal, just one simple combined [opening/closing] oration, with not much in the way of sentiment. She obtained permission by eye contact with Joanne and the subtlest of facial gestures to begin her speech:
“We are gathered here today to respect the life of a fellow human being, Arthur Jameson... Arthur may not have led the most moral or ethical of lives, but in death, we are all equal and we should endeavour to forgive the transgressions of the deceased during their life on this Earth. Human beings have but a transient existence in the eternity of time; perhaps too short for some to achieve atonement for their Earthly deeds, but they have an eternity in death in which to be absolved. We therefore commit Arthur Jameson’s body to the bowels of the Earth from whence we all originate and will all inexorably return.” With that the officiant turned on the conveyor and Arthur’s body slowly disappeared into the curtained opening in the wall. Joanne thanked the lady from the Humanist association and the two women walked quietly out of the chapel and into the fresh chill air.
“I think she did that rather well.” Michelle kindly noted.
“Yes...Yes that was...perfect.” said Joanne turning to face the detective and offering her hand in a gesture of conciliation; Michelle shook it, smiled and then promptly took her leave.
As Michelle walked back to her car, she couldn’t help notice the one old man loitering near the chapel. She suspected who it might be, but was content to pretend otherwise. Ewan had been waiting for Joanne: he was exceedingly grateful to her for not turning him into the police, though he had been prepared for it. When she noticed his presence, she immediately recognised him; after an initial hesitation, she decided to approach him.
“Come to check it was all over, did you?” she asked passively.
“I just wanted to thank you for not dobbing me in.”
“Why would I? You did us all a favour...You didn’t need to come here to thank me.”
“No, you’re right: seeing that coffin disappear into oblivion was a cathartic moment...I’ve had this millstone dragging me down for 42 years. I can’t deny that it is a relief.”
“Well, you can move on with your life and do your best to forget that Arthur Jameson ever existed.” she blithely asserted.
“What’s left of it.” Ewan added rather poignantly.
During the days following the funeral, Joanne gradually began to return to her normal cheerful self. Her son celebrated his fifteenth birthday with a riotous party at a local municipal hall, which ended with the police breaking up a mass brawl that had spilled out into the street – something which her son regarded as absolutely hilarious. She feared that he was turning out to be a chip off the old grandfather’s block, but he did have one huge advantage over Arthur Jameson, and that was a semblance of intelligence that would stand him in good stead for the future.
On the 23rd of October several national newspapers and the BBC reported that DNA taken from Arthur Jameson’s corpse had been analysed and proved to be an exact match to
the DNA from the rapist in the Marsholm Wood murder case, confirming that Arthur was indeed the Marsholm Monster. For Joanne, that was the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, in respect to any remaining sense of loyalty that she had toward her father. She even contemplated having her own DNA tested, in the hope that it would prove that they were not actually related at all – she only really had his word for it, anyway. However, the fear that it would only confirm what she had come to believe, and therefore negate any possibility that he was not her father, prevented her from pursuing that particular course of action, so that she at least could still maintain the hope that he had been mistaken or lying. [The police never revealed the result from her DNA, which proved to be inconclusive.]
The Metropolitan Police were initially shocked by the result, as over the years, even despite John Leggett’s change of heart, many had tried to console themselves with the idea that Jameson had been innocent, after all. Once the truth had sunk in, there was general elation that DSupt Ackroyd, his team, and the Metropolitan Police as a whole had been vindicated; however, some elements of the press were not so forgiving with their insinuation that it was the police’s historical incompetence and corruption that directly led to Jameson’s acquittal. The reality though had more to do with a singular lack of evidence; only modern forensic techniques would ever solve the crime definitively.
Two weeks after the funeral, Joanne (again, alone) returned to the crematorium on a Friday afternoon to witness the burial of the ashes. A crematorium attendant carried the lidded bucket with the contents of her father’s remains down to the Rose Garden, which was a fair distance from the crematorium office. A hole had already been prepared in readiness and small twig with a polythene bag tied around its roots, which was (apparently) a befitting blood-red rose – deliberately chosen by Joanne – lying on the ground by the hole. The attendant had brought along a hand spade to aid the process.
“Would you like to put some of the remains into the hole, madam? I can complete the burial if you wish.” enquired the attendant. Joanne nodded affirmatively. The attendant opened the bucket and placed it by the hole, offering the small spade to Joanne. “Madam?” Joanne hesitated for a moment before taking the spade and proceeded to shovel several loads into the hole, after which she stopped and stood up to stare down into it, while the attendant stepped back reverentially. Then, much to the shock and dismay of the attendant, Joanne spat, with venomous bitterness, onto the ashes and aggressively trampled the poor rose into the ground.
“You can chuck the rest in, now.” she growled turning back to face the attendant before marching defiantly out of the garden, leaving the unsuspecting and nonplussed attendant completely flabbergasted. Getting back into her car, a sense of closure descended upon her; she switched on the radio, whereupon the CD player unceremoniously blasted out AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells: after listening for a few seconds and finding the track to be highly appropriate, she drove off with a screeching vengeance. (The next track on the CD was Shoot to Thrill.)
The End.
Nota bene: The author can be contacted via the following email address
[email protected]
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
PART TWO
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
PART FOUR
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
PART FIVE
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven