Falling into Crime

by Penny Grubb

  Annie wondered what the colonel had said.

  We’ll leave him in the hole. Pretend he fell from the scaffolding. Look, there’s a loose bar up on the platform.

  But Tremlow had seen the colonel up there. The shock of it all had made him a wreck.

  Annie thought back to what Scott had said about Tremlow’s confession. ‘The way he told it, it could have been an accident. He hit out. Didn’t realize what he’d done.’

  Didn’t realize because he hadn’t done it. The colonel must have had a terrible shock when Doris Kitson turned up so suddenly and promptly. Luckily for him Tremlow was in too bad a state to unburden himself to Doris and her version backed up the colonel’s story.

  Annie thought she might have a final cup of tea in Doris’s immaculate kitchen. She’d like to bet it was the colonel himself who told her Mally’s father had been seen heading for the ex-marital home the day of Annie’s first visit. Annie hadn’t seen the small blue car because it had never been there to see. It was the colonel who’d upset Mally by claiming his ex son-in-law had talked to Laura. All along he’d strewn the seeds, just in case.

  And it might have worked.

  Yes, she’d prise some dates out of Doris. When did Mally’s parents’ marriage hit the rocks? When was it clear they were about to slide into the financial mire? She’d like to bet there was a correlation with Elizabeth Atkins’s promised legacy. Doris had been right. Annie felt ashamed now she’d ignored her theories about a suspicious death just because the victim was in her nineties.

  ‘The man who killed our Terry, he’s dead now? He fell off the cliff?’

  ‘Uh … yes.’ Annie didn’t meet Bill Martin’s eye. ‘Yes, he lost his footing when he tried to push me over the edge. There’ll be media interest in all of it,’ she went on. ‘But if you want to you can refer the newspapers to me, I’ll verify the facts with them.’

  ‘How will the papers treat him now?’

  Annie thought of all the things she’d uncovered about Terry Martin, about all the ways the truth might be spun. She thought about the main players. How would pensioners from the rural wasteland to the east of Hull fare against news stories from the more accessible parts of the country? Terry Martin couldn’t compete for coverage in the nationals. There was too much real news about. And as the slightly unsavoury character he’d been, the respectable local press would ignore him, but Pat had contacts. Annie felt confident she could seed a good local interest angle with them.

  ‘As a dedicated journalist who died for his craft,’ she said.

  It wouldn’t last. It wasn’t real consolation. But Annie would remember the smile of satisfaction on Martha’s face that had found some reflection in Bill’s when he looked at his wife. And she knew she’d done the best it was possible to do for them.

  When she arrived back at the flat in the small hours, Annie found both Pat and Barbara in the living room sitting opposite each other with a tray on the table between them. It was clearly one of Barbara’s creations with a lace cloth, neatly arranged biscuits on a plate and coffee in a pot.

  Barbara looked Annie up and down. ‘Coffee? Or d’you want to get showered first?’ Although she didn’t quite smile, she managed not to look unfriendly.

  ‘Uh … thanks. I’d love a coffee.’

  ‘She’ll clog the drains,’ Barbara said to Pat as she leant forward to the tray. ‘Go on. Tell her.’

  Pat sat up straight. ‘Barbara and I have had … what shall we say? A frank exchange with Vince. We’re parting company.’

  ‘What’s happening to the agency?’ Annie surprised herself at how much she cared what became of Pat’s family business.

  ‘Unfortunately Vince gets to keep the business and the name, but we had enough of a legal stake left to screw a financial settlement out of him.’

  ‘Another few months leeway and we wouldn’t have got that.’ Barbara narrowed her eyes at Pat as she spoke, and handed Annie her coffee.

  ‘Well, don’t look at me. It was never my bag to keep an eye on that side of things. You were supposed to do that.’

  ‘Not after I’d left. Don’t be ridiculous–’

  Annie interrupted. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to set up on our own, go for the jobs that the big boys aren’t interested in. It’s what Dad did in the first place. He always said there was a market to be carved out if you worked at it. Vince isn’t bothered. He just wants the money to keep rolling in.’

  Annie pretended not to see the glance that speared between Pat and Barbara. She thought about the roof of the tower block. With aerials that size, their transmissions could reach out to the estuary and beyond, but she’d bet if she went back to the roundabout now she’d see nothing on that roof. Vince would have shifted the whole operation. And right now she could see the sense in leaving him to it, but maybe one day the sisters would go head to head with him again. For now, it was enough that Pat had seen through him.

  Pat glanced at Barbara and nodded towards Annie. Barbara cleared her throat before she spoke. ‘We’ve no security to offer, but the money we’ve screwed from Vince’ll keep us afloat a while. We’re going to give it a go. If you want to come on board, you can, but all we’re offering is hard work, crap money and no security.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Don’t answer now. Have a think. Oh, and by the way, the law’s after you.’

  ‘The law …? Oh right, yes, they’ll want a statement, I suppose.’

  ‘Your faithful plod was going spare; thought you’d done something stupid.’

  ‘Why would I do something stupid?’

  ‘I told him he was being a prat. Anyway, I said I’d ask you to call him when you turned up.’

  ‘Well, it’s far too late now. I’m knackered. I’m going have a shower and go to bed. I’ll go down tomorrow.’

  Annie gave her statement the next morning to a police sergeant she didn’t know and an unsmiling PC Greaves.

  Scott turned up at the flat soon after she arrived back. She assumed he’d been waiting for her. He’d taken the trouble to change out of his uniform. Even his trousers looked normal. He sat in the chair next to Annie. Pat sat opposite them rummaging through her big bag, not looking inclined to move.

  After a moment, he spoke, his tone diffident. ‘Uh … I’m sorry, Annie. I said things I shouldn’t have.’

  He didn’t quite manage to meet her eye, but then she couldn’t quite meet his as she said, ‘That’s OK, I expect I deserved some of it. Um … how are those girls? Kay Dearlove wasn’t well at all.’

  ‘OK. They’re all OK.’

  ‘And what about Mally? Has anyone found her mother yet?’

  ‘She was never lost. Her grandfather was in daily contact, so was the girl. They didn’t breathe a word to her of what had happened. Melissa told us it was so her mother wasn’t worried. That was the line her grandfather gave her.’

  ‘So her mother wasn’t a part of it?’

  ‘Oh no, doesn’t look like it. Ludgrove handed her the chance of a break when he decided he had to be rid of Terry Martin. Told her to go off for a fortnight with the new boyfriend. I don’t think he’d acknowledged the guy before so she snatched at it. She should have been back this weekend but he told her to stay on, said that Melissa was going to spend a week with her father.’

  Pat looked across at Scott. ‘I wonder why he didn’t send Melissa with them.’

  ‘I doubt they’d have stayed away five minutes crammed in a mobile home together. I gather the mother’s boyfriend was daggers drawn with the girl. She wouldn’t acknowledge his existence. And I think her grandfather found her useful. She did as she was told. We won’t dig too deeply there. She’s only a kid.’

  Annie digested this without comment and asked, ‘Where was her father?’

  ‘He’d been away on business.’

  ‘Just like he said. I heard the colonel imply to Mally that he’d made that up so as not to have to take her.’ And he’d seeded various sightings over t
he week. He’d had his fall guy prepared if anyone veered away from the idea of Terry Martin having died in a fall and Tremlow being a suicide.

  ‘How far away is Mally’s mother? Will it take her long to get back?’

  ‘She’s back already. She was on a campsite further up the coast. A bit of a dim cow, if you ask me. The daughter has more to her.’

  She certainly does, thought Annie, remembering the chaotic scenes at the cliff top. Aloud she said, ‘That’s hardly fair, Scott. It must have been an awful shock for her. What about the exhusband, is he on his way back?’

  ‘He’s back, too. He got some garbled message from his ex father-in-law about his daughter being in trouble and rushed back.’

  ‘He was supposed to be on the spot to take the rap, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Annie let the sequence of events run through her mind. She wanted to move the conversation away from Mally. ‘Did Colonel Ludgrove know what Balham got up to in that shed?’

  Scott shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘So Terry Martin hadn’t really sussed it out, had he? He’d come close, then he’d been sidetracked by what he found up there on the cliff.’

  ‘He’d come too close for the colonel to let him go.’

  Annie felt a hollow inside her that was partly anger at the damage the colonel had wrought and partly sorrow for those to whom he’d caused the most devastation. ‘Terry Martin never stuck at anything,’ she said. ‘If the colonel had just kept his head down, some other cause would have taken him right out of Milesthorpe.’

  Pat heaved herself to her feet and fixed Scott with a stare. ‘That letter the old guy Tremlow wrote, it was a confession wasn’t it, not a suicide note at all?’

  He nodded. ‘Looks like it.’

  Annie wondered if the colonel had persuaded him to write it or found he’d done it and pounced on the opportunity. She thought of the words Tremlow had spat out. ‘I didn’t know what an evil man he was … he took money.’ Of course, he’d meant the colonel, his trusted old friend, not Terry Martin.

  Pat embarrassed Annie with a knowing wink as she stomped off to the kitchen where Barbara was busy. Their muffled guffaws and low-voiced chat created an awkward backdrop.

  Scott glanced uneasily over his shoulder and kept his voice down as he said, ‘When did you cotton on it was Colonel Ludgrove? Jen said you figured it before he died.’

  Annie thought for a moment. Information should flow both ways. ‘Will you tell me who the woman in that building was?’

  ‘OK, but you go first.’

  She looked into his eyes, decided he was on the level – he’d better be – and told him about the false trails the colonel had laid for her. ‘The village grapevine had it all over Milesthorpe that I was looking into Terry Martin’s death. He had me sussed from the off, but it didn’t fall into place for me until I was up there with him. Another metre and I’d have been over the edge before I’d figured it.’

  He reached out to grasp her hand. ‘Oh Annie, I’m so relieved you’re safe. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.’

  She let him hold her hand while an awkward silence grew between them. He broke it by saying, ‘Will you talk to Jen? She says she wants to resign.’

  ‘Resign? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. She won’t say anything except that she doesn’t know what happened up there on the cliff. She doesn’t think she can stay on.’

  Annie slid her hand out from Scott’s grasp and sat still for a moment. When she spoke, she picked her words with care. ‘Will you tell her that I know what she thinks? And tell her I don’t think it happened that way. I was on the spot. I saw everything. She shouldn’t resign. She’s good at her job.’

  He looked baffled. ‘But what’s it about? And can’t you tell her yourself?’

  ‘And can you also tell her that I don’t want to talk about that night. Not yet. So I’d rather you took the message. And I’d rather not talk about it now.’

  She saw his puzzled expression and braced herself to resist his interrogation. Then his gaze became unfocused as though he was working it out for himself. Annie held her breath. Could he piece it together? No, he could only guess.

  ‘OK,’ he said at length, and gave her a nod as though they’d sealed a bargain.

  She made him repeat her message to Jennifer word for word until he had it right. Then she said, ‘Now come on. You promised. The body in the shed. Who is it?’

  ‘It’s who we thought it would be all along. Balham.’

  ‘Edward Balham?’ She stared at him. ‘But … but it can’t be … It was a woman. The clothes …’

  He shook his head. ‘I thought it was a man’s body all along.’

  ‘Is that what you saw on the film that first night?’

  ‘Not first time through,’ he admitted. ‘I thought I saw the glimmer of a wire above the body. It hadn’t been strangled. It had been hanged. Then I thought if it’s a guy, wearing all that lacy stuff, then it’s pretty clear what’s happened. It’s not the first one I’ve seen. It’s more common than you’d think.’

  ‘Auto-strangulation? Is that what it’s called?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  It rang vague bells with Annie. Odd reports here and there. ‘So that’s why he went walkabout. To wear women’s knickers and semi-strangle himself in a dark shed?’

  ‘Yep. We even found the chair. A rickety old thing. The more rickety the chair, the greater the thrill. That’s why so many of them end up hanging themselves. Balham’s chair was textbook.’

  ‘And people get turned on by it?’

  ‘So they say. I don’t see it myself.’

  ‘Why the delay?’

  ‘We’ve had a real hassle getting a firm ID. No family. Decomposed corpse. But we have now. It’s definitely him.’

  ‘So it was never a murder then?’

  ‘Not even suicide. The verdict’ll be accidental death.’

  Annie remembered the hard look Jennifer had given her that day in the coffee bar when she’d referred to odd sorts of deaths that turn out to be accidents. Jennifer thought she was fishing about the body in the building. An idea occurred to her. ‘The Milesthorpe grapevine was right all along. They always had it as Balham’s body.’

  ‘Speaking of grapevines, I heard that you persuaded Sleeman to use some muscle to clear out a drug problem in one of the blocks on Orchard Park.’

  Annie owned the achievement with a nod of her head, but when he pressed for detail of who, where and when, she said. ‘It’s settled now. Let’s just leave it at that.’

  She almost congratulated him on his grapevine, but decided it was too flippant at this delicate stage.

  It took her thoughts to Vince. Impulsive, dangerous … livid at the revelation of what his nephew was mixed up in. Not that he wanted him on the straight and narrow, she was sure. It was that he didn’t want him involved in something so sordid and small.

  ‘Look, I know I said things about Sleeman,’ Scott said, ‘but I don’t mind you working for him if that’s the sort of influence you have.’

  Bloody cheek, she thought. Who’s he to mind or not?

  Mrs Earle, the Martins, Laura Tunbridge. Her three cases. What would it be like to have a secure berth to launch her career from? She needn’t get involved in the dodgy stuff or stay with Vince any longer than she need to get herself on her feet. Of course, he’d only ever made his three-cases comment to Pat. He hadn’t actually offered her a job yet.

  As for Scott, well, it could be worth allowing herself to accept his apology and seeing if she could educate him into the twenty-first century. He had the raw materials in him.

  ‘I might be staying on,’ she said.

  At once, his face relaxed into the smile that had attracted her even before she’d seen it. ‘That’s good. Maybe we could … uh … meet up sometime?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘If you’re staying on, you’ll need someone to show you round the place.’

  She s
miled back at him. ‘I suppose I will.’

  After he’d gone, she reflected on what he’d said about Jennifer and how much she’d seen. It had been dark, stormy. Jennifer couldn’t have been sure. Scott would say to her that Annie didn’t think it happened that way and Annie was there on the spot. She saw everything.

  Hopefully Jennifer would leave it at that. Annie couldn’t see what might be gained from raking it over. It had been a traumatic night for them all. For some, like Mally, it had been the culmination of several traumatic years. And what she’d said was the exact truth. She knew what Jennifer thought might have happened. And she, Annie, didn’t think it happened that way. She’d seen the small foot flash into view, kick the colonel’s leg from under him so he lost balance there at the top of the cliff. No, she didn’t think Mally had pushed her grandfather over the cliff, she knew for sure the girl had done it.

  Annie slipped through to her room to sit in peace and sort her thoughts. She lay on the bed, only wanting to relax, and didn’t realize she’d slept until an hour later when voices roused her.

  Almost before she woke, she sensed the atmosphere of hostility.

  Pat’s voice shouted, ‘And I’ll have those bloody keys back.’

  From the jangle of metal landing on a hard surface, it sounded as though she’d got them. Annie smoothed down her clothes to the background of Barbara’s raised voice, and then Vince’s.

  ‘It’s not your car, it’s mine. You’ve got plenty out of this settlement to get your own transport.’

  Annie made no attempt to keep quiet as she shut her bedroom door and approached the living room. She stepped into a silence, aware they’d all reined back at her entrance.

  Pat on the settee, cradling an unopened packet of biscuits, gave her a nod of acknowledgement. Barbara tossed an all-purpose surface cleaner spray from hand to hand. Vince took in a breath and paused before turning to her as though he needed a moment to change gear.