Salton Killings

by Sally Spencer

  “Do you? Do you indeed?” he asked. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do, Constable. I’m goin’ to give you a little test, ask you about somebody in the village. An’ I’ll put the same questions to this lad when he arrives. If, at the end of it, you can’t see his value, I’ll give him the boot.”

  Davenport looked down at the floor.

  “That’s not necessary, sir.”

  “Oh, but it is,” Woodend said. “I need a team I can rely on, an’ I can’t rely on you while you’re harbourin’ a grudge. Tell me about . . .” the first name that came into his head was Liz Poole, but he quickly rejected it, “tell me about the people who live in the big house on the corner of Harper Street.”

  Davenport smiled confidently.

  “The Wilsons, sir. Mr Wilson was born in the village, moved away to Manchester, made his pile, then came back and had that house built.”

  “Why did he choose to return to Salton?”

  “Maybe he was homesick, sir. Anyway, he’s a very serious feller, doesn’t drink.”

  “Why?”

  “Very strict C of E.”

  “And Mrs Wilson?”

  “He married her while he was in Manchester. She’s very retirin’. Rarely leaves the house.”

  “Children?”

  “They did have one daughter. She died. They don’t talk about it in the village.”

  “Anything else you want to add?” Woodend asked.

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Davenport said smugly.

  As if he had been listening for his cue, there was a knock on the door and a tall young man with an unlined, cherubic face and curly hair, walked in. Had it not been for his police cadet’s uniform, Woodend would have taken him for a well-developed fifteen-year-old.

  The youth gaped around the room, looking first at Woodend, then at Davenport, and back to Woodend again.

  “Ph . . . Phil . . . Cadet Bl . . . Philip Black Cadet reportin’ for duty, sir,” he stuttered.

  Woodend, who had seen even experienced officers unbalanced by meeting a Yard man, was not surprised at Black’s nervousness.

  “Take a seat, Cadet,” he said.

  Black sat down next to Davenport and clasped his knees with his hands. It wouldn’t do to give the young man the test just then, Woodend decided, better to break him in gently.

  “Tell me where you were when you first heard about the murder,” he said.

  The question seemed to confuse Black more than ever. His mouth flapped open, but no words came out. Finally, he said, “It was my day at the Magistrates’ Court,” and then dried up again.

  Woodend noticed Davenport’s superior smile.

  “What’s a police cadet doin’ at the Magistrates’ Court?” the Chief Inspector asked.

  “It’s the Super’s idea,” Davenport explained. “Every cadet has his day in court once a week. It’s supposed to be so that they can see the law in action, but if you ask me, it’s to learn ’em early how to field the defense lawyer’s questions when the evidence is a little bit iffy.” He caught Woodend’s expression and realized he had made a mistake. “What I meant, sir . . .” he said attempting to backtrack.

  “I know what you meant, and I know it goes on – but that doesn’t mean I approve of it,” Woodend interrupted. He turned back to Black. “Carry on, lad,” he said encouragingly.

  “Well, sir, after the court had finished for the day, I walked home. I knew there was somethin’ wrong as soon as I got to the church, because of all the folk standin’ around. Then old Mrs Hawkins come up to me and said they’d found a girl in the salt store, with her throat cut from ear to ear. Well, I didn’t pay much attention to her, her whole family’s barmy. Her brother’s in the loony bin and her uncle Arthur was so round the twist he put pictures of the Kaiser up in his window durin’ the First World War.” He chuckled as though he had seen it himself. “Didn’t make him very popular, I can tell you.”

  That’s better, Woodend thought, he’s gettin’ into the swing, buildin’ up his self-confidence.

  “Anyway,” Black continued, “I am a policeman – well, nearly – an’ I thought I’d better find out about it from somebody more sensible. I mean, old Mrs Hawkins is so daft that she once . . .” His mouth froze, his eyes widened, his face flushed red. It look him fully twenty seconds to recover. “I’m sorry sir,” he said. “I know you don’t want to listen to village goss––”

  “It’s exactly what I want to hear,” Woodend said.

  He had heard enough to be sure that Black was the man he wanted. He glanced across at Davenport and saw that the constable was far from convinced.

  “Forget the murder for a minute,” he told Black. “What do you know about the Wilsons?”

  “I have personally known Mr and Mrs Wilson since I was a child,” Black began, attempting to compensate for his earlier lapse. “Mr Wilson made a considerable sum of money, I believe in the chemical indust––”

  “No, no, no!” Woodend said in exasperation. “Talk to us like you were talkin’ just now. Give us the dirt. Pretend you’re gossipin’ with your mates in the pub.”

  “I don’t drink, sir.”

  “All right, then, chattin’ to your mum. Can you do that?”

  Black gulped.

  “I’ll try, sir. Well, Mr Wilson ran away from home when he was not much more than a kid an’––”

  “Why did he do that?” Woodend asked.

  “Oh, his dad was a real bad bugger – sorry, sir. Not at first, not when this Mr Wilson was a little lad, but later on, when he got taken by the drink. His wife and children lived in terror of him. He was forever givin’ them hidin’s. He stopped goin’ to church an’ all, except once he went when he was drunk an’ tried to piss in the font – sorry, sir.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Woodend said impatiently. “Go on with your story.”

  “Anyway, nobody heard of Mr Wilson – Paul – the present Mr Wilson, for thirty years. When he came back, his mum and dad were dead. He bought their old house and the four next to it.”

  “Were they all up for sale at the same time?” Woodend asked, surprised.

  “No, sir, but Mr Wilson was offerin’ good money. He paid four or five times what they were worth. He had his own house – the one he used to live in – knocked down first, an he had all the rubble collected in wagons. Then he got them to dig a big hole over by the railway track and had it buried.”

  “Buried?”

  “Yes, sir. When that was done, he had the rest of the houses demolished and used the rubble as hard core for his new house. He’s dead strict now, doesn’t believe in dressin’ up or holidays or owt like that, but they say he wasn’t like that as a kid. They say it was what his dad did that turned him.”

  Woodend looked across at Davenport again. The constable was frowning, then he smiled and nodded his head.

  “Mrs Wilson was a different kettle of fish,” Black continued. “When she first came here, she was really lively – wearin’ bright dresses, holdin’ ladies’ tea parties. Mr Wilson didn’t like it much, but his wife was a very determined woman. She’s nothin’ but a shadow of her former self now, seemed to lose all her energy after her daughter was killed.”

  “Killed?” Woodend demanded. “Not died? Killed? Was it an accident?”

  “Oh no, sir.” Black sounded surprised that Woodend didn’t already know. “She was murdered.”

  Chapter Five

  It must have been just like this after Mount Etna erupted, Rutter thought, recalling his mind-improving thirty-nine guinea trip to Italy the previous year. Frozen bodies, stopped dead in the middle of whatever it was they were doing.

  Except that none of the three men in the room were dead, just still and silent. Woodend sat with his elbows on the table, chin in his hands, oblivious to all around him. The two uniformed men, Davenport and the young cadet, sat uncomfortably in the other chairs. Woodend was not moving because he was thinking, the others because they daren’t. Rutter coughed discreetly, and the Chief In
spector looked up.

  “Oh, you’re back, are you, Sergeant?” he asked. “Find out anythin’ useful, did you?”

  Rutter had been thinking about how to present his findings all the way from Maltham. He had a bombshell to drop, but he wasn’t going to release it yet. He deserved to get credit for the other work he had done before he revealed his main discovery. He wanted to avoid seeming like an eager young recruit, running to his chief with the news. And a tiny devil inside him was eager to see if anything could shock Woodend out of his stolid calmness – he hadn’t got to be Head Boy of a middle-class grammar school without a sense of theatre.

  Rutter pulled out his notebook and looked around for something to sit on. Black, as if awoken from a dream, suddenly jumped to his feet.

  “Have my seat, sir . . . er . . . Sergeant,” he said and coloured.

  Rutter almost blushed himself, he couldn’t have been more than five or six years older than the cadet. He hesitated, then sat. Black stood awkwardly in the corner.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Woodend said heavily, “we’re conducting a murder investigation, not playin’ bloody musical chairs. Go an’ get us another seat from your livin’ quarters, can you, Davenport?”

  The constable rose, and Rutter opened his notebook.

  “You asked me to find out about the narrow boat people first, sir,” he said.

  All the way through his report, Rutter was aware that Woodend was looking at him oddly. It was as if he was being tested, without knowing the rules of the game or the final objective. And the strangest thing of all was that, for the first time in their association, he got the definite impression that Woodend approved of him.

  “Right,” the Chief Inspector said when he had finished giving the details of Fred Foley, the local pervert who had done time for throwing a girl in the canal. “Now we’ve got that out of the way, perhaps you could tell us about Mary Wilson.” And he smiled.

  How had he found out? The local boy! Rutter had thought the Chief Inspector had been mad to insist on Black, but already the cadet had proved useful, uncovering something that he might have missed if he had not been so tenacious.

  He saw now what Woodend had meant about demanding results. He had expected his sergeant to uncover the details of the second murder. There would have been hell to pay if he hadn’t. And the Chief Inspector had let him play his game, only bursting his bubble at the end.

  “It was in the war,” Rutter said, trying to sound as if he had not been knocked off-balance. “In 1942, there was an American training camp just the other side of the woods. Mary Wilson was seventeen. She got friendly with one of the airmen, a lieutenant called Ripley.”

  “A lot of girls did,” Woodend said. The Americans had nylon stockings, chewing gum, cans of meat, all kinds of goods unobtainable elsewhere. “We used to say that the trouble with the Yanks was that they were over-paid, over-sexed and over here.”

  “This was much more than a one-night stand,” Rutter continued, “but they were very discreet. They had to be – her father would never have approved.”

  “But you can’t hide that sort of thing from everybody,” Woodend interrupted. “Not in a village.”

  “Exactly, sir. It was common knowledge, especially among the young people. Anyway, on the night she died, she met Ripley in the woods. He didn’t deny it. He claimed they were together for about half an hour, then he went back to the camp and she set off for home. She never made it. Her body was found at the edge of the woods the next day. She’d been strangled.”

  “Any evidence of sexual assault?”

  “That’s the strange thing, sir,” Rutter said. “There was no PM report on file, and no mention of it in any of the other documents.”

  “But the rest of the record was in good order?”

  Rutter shrugged his shoulders.

  “It wasn’t how I would have . . . yes, I suppose it was all right, sir.”

  “Something stinks,” Woodend said. “Go on, Sergeant.”

  “Ripley was the obvious suspect. As soon as the police found out about him, they went straight to the camp. He met them with his arm in a sling, said he’d hurt it in a jeep accident the day before Mary Wilson died. He couldn’t have strangled her one-handed.”

  “And the local bobbies let it go at that?”

  “No, sir. They questioned his commanding officer and the camp doctor. Both swore blind that the accident had happened when he said.”

  “How did they feel about it in the village, Black?” Woodend asked.

  “Most people thought the Yanks were coverin’ up, sir, protectin’ their own. An’ they did say that this Ripley feller was rich.”

  “He was,” Rutter confirmed. “At least, his family was. Oil wells. They had political connexions as well.”

  “So the police just let him go?”

  “They had to. And he was the only real lead they had. They never came up with anything else.”

  Lunch – dinner, as Woodend insisted on calling it – was served in the police house, a meat and potato pie baked by Mrs Davenport, whose ample form was testimony enough to her cooking. Woodend demolished the stodge with gusto, swilling it down with two mugs of tea, but the moment he had finished he was back to business.

  “Two murders, both strangulations, sixteen years apart,” he said. “We can’t assume it’s the same killer, but we can’t assume it isn’t, either. An’ if it is one man, that narrows down the field quite a lot. For a start, he’ll be at least Davenport’s age. Where were you when Mary Wilson was killed, Constable?”

  Davenport shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Don’t know exactly, sir. Somewhere in the Western Desert.”

  “Aye,” Woodend said. “Most of the able-bodied men round here ’ud be in the army. So we’re lookin’ for someone who wasn’t or – like Lieutenant Ripley – was stationed close enough to Salton to have done the murder.”

  He passed around his untipped cigarettes, noting with amusement that this time Rutter took one. Cadet Black shook his head.

  “I don’t want to get started, sir.”

  “Very wise,” Woodend said, lighting his and inhaling deeply. “Now, we’re goin’ to have a problem with the press. They’re letting a stringer from the Maltham Chronicle cover it so far – I had him on the phone this mornin’ – but if they once get the idea it’s a double murder, they’ll be crawlin’ round here like ants. An’ they’ll do nothin’ but get in the bloody way. So I want us to move quickly on this. I don’t like the fact that there’s no PM on Mary Wilson. I’ll go down to Maltham this afternoon an’ sort that out.”

  “With respect, sir,” Rutter said, “if speed’s important, I think you’d be more use in the village. I can handle the Maltham end of things.”

  “There’s been a cock-up down there,” Woodend said. “I can feel it in my bones. They’ll put every obstacle they possibly can in the way.”

  “I can handle it, sir,” Rutter said firmly.

  Woodend thought for a second. He had admired the way Rutter had conducted himself that morning, holding back the second murder until the end. Showed a bit of spirit – and he had nothing against cockiness as long as it was combined with competence.

  “All right, Sergeant,” he said, “you’ve got it. Now, movin’ on to the narrow boat people,” he handed Rutter’s list to the cadet, “what can you tell me about them?”

  Black eagerly scanned the piece of paper.

  “The Walkers, I know, sir,” he said. “Nice couple, they had two kids a bit older than me. I used to play with ’em. An’ the Craigs – no children, but very friendly, they are. They used to keep a supply of sweets to give us if we were passin’– even when rationin’ was on.” He chuckled. “We made sure we passed quite a lot. The McQueens, I don’t know. Must be new – or at least have started comin’ since I grew up.”

  The cadet coloured again.

  About a Number Three on the Black scale of blushes, Woodend thought with amusement. As if he’s expectin’ me
to challenge the fact that he is grown up.

  “I don’t know this Mr McLeash, either,” Black confessed. “Wait a minute – that wouldn’t be Jackie the Gypsy, would it?”

  Rutter nodded.

  “He’s the one with form, isn’t he?” Woodend asked.

  Rutter nodded again.

  “Oh, I know him,” Black said. “He was the favourite of the lot. He was always lettin’ us kids play around his boat, or taking us for rides up the canal.”

  “Boys or girls?” Woodend asked.

  “I never really thought about it, sir, but now you come to mention it, it was girls more often than not.”

  The big house on the corner of Harper Street had a solid oak door.

  “What do visitors usually do?” Woodend asked. “Knock on this, or go round the back like they do in the rest of the village?”

  “I don’t think the Wilsons have any visitors, sir,” Black said.

  Ignoring the heavy brass knocker, Woodend rapped on the door with his knuckles. There was a sound of footsteps in the passageway, and the door swung open to reveal the tall, gaunt man in black.

  “I know you,” he said accusingly. “You are the sinner who lurks in the portal of the den of Satan.”

  “That’s right, sir,” Woodend said pleasantly, producing his warrant card. “I’m also a Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard, and I’d like to ask you some questions. May we come in?”

  Wilson did not move.

  “What questions could you wish to ask me?” he demanded.

  “About the death of your daughter, Mary. And we’d like to speak to your wife as well.”

  Wilson’s face went red, not with a blush, as Black’s was wont to do, but with rage. On his forehead, a prominent vein began to throb.

  “I will not have it!” he said. “My daughter has been dead and buried these many years, and I will not have it.”

  He made a move to slam the door, only to discover that Woodend’s size nine boot was preventing him.

  “This is an outrage,” he said. “I am a county councillor.”

  “And I am a police officer,” Woodend replied quietly, “carrying out an investigation. I must talk to you – either here or in Maltham Police Station.”