‘Why do you think she reacted like that, Paul?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, we hadn’t parted on good terms.’
‘After you slept with her?’
‘Yes. It wasn’t . . . I mean, she was drunk at the time, when she came round, like. When she sobered up a bit afterwards she laid into me for taking advantage of her.’
‘Did you force her?’
‘No way. It just, you know, it happened.’
‘But Mimosa wasn’t quite the slut everyone thought she was?’
‘She said she didn’t want to be around me again. That I was like all the other men who just took from her. But I wanted to give. I tried to tell her but she wouldn’t listen. I tried to talk to her the next time I saw her with Albert, but she just cut me, as if I wasn’t there. I wanted to help her. I thought we could really get somewhere together. It didn’t matter how old she was.’
‘Is that what all the phone calls were about?’
‘Yes. I wanted to tell her that she meant something to me.’
‘So why didn’t you help her when she needed it most?’
Warner hung his head. ‘I don’t know. She was on drugs, strange drugs, not like she usually was if she was high or pissed. I couldn’t get her to calm down. I couldn’t make sense of her. And I couldn’t help myself. I snapped. Simple as that. I slapped her, just to try to snap her out of it, like, and she tried to slap me back. There was a bit of a scuffle. She called me some names. I saw red. Called me a perv and a paedo. I mean, me, when she was with them Pakis. Next thing I knew she was on the ground, not moving. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. Really.’ He put his head in his hands.
‘So this was the girl you loved. Maybe? Someone you wanted to help, wanted to be with. And when you saw her naked and dirty and hurt, instead of lust you felt rage, and instead of pity you felt anger. Is that right?’
Warner nodded, his head in his hands, crying now. ‘It came out all wrong, all fucked up.’
‘She was coming down off ketamine, Paul,’ said Annie. ‘It’s a bit different from roofies. Much harder to control people on K. And she’d been gang-raped by three men. Did you know she was dead when you drove away?’
Warner sniffed and looked up, wide-eyed. ‘No. I didn’t know anything. Only that I’d lost it.’
‘So you just left her there, to die naked in the road,’ said Annie. ‘Good one, Paul. I’m sure Albert and his family will be proud of you.’
‘They’re a waste of space. They didn’t care about her. At least I tried.’
‘To do what, Paul? Do what everyone else did to her except her family? Take advantage of her? Use and abuse her?’
‘No. To give her a better life. The life she deserved.’
‘What route did you take back to Wytherton? You didn’t go the same way you came.’
‘I took a longer route, back up the lane then left and over the tops.’
‘Why?’
‘No CCTV.’
‘So by then you were thinking clearly enough save your own skin?’
‘Of course I was. I knew what I’d done. I’m not an idiot.’
‘No, of course not.’ Annie put the papers back in the file folder and closed it. She and Gerry both shook their heads. Jessie Malton looked as if she’d rather be anywhere else. Then, while Paul Warner sobbed into his cupped hands, Annie and Gerry left to consult Banks and the CPS about the specifics of the charges. On their way out, Annie asked the PC outside the door to take Warner back to his cell. It was Monday before he’d come in front of a magistrate, so they had plenty of time to get things right.
There was no way Banks or Adrian Moss could keep the media at bay when Danny Caxton was brought into Eastvale Police Headquarters by two plain-clothes officers, shortly after the Paul Warner interview. There wasn’t even any point going around the back or in at the side. Adrian Moss threw up his hands in despair when he saw the mob. Caxton himself seemed to take it as a publicity stunt and smiled for the cameras, waving his handcuffed hands in the air triumphantly for his public. Anybody who didn’t know him better would guess that he was mad, thought Banks, staring down at the crowd in the market square from his window.
On the Strip in Wytherton Heights, or so he had been told, angry mobs were throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails through shop windows, and the terrified members of the Asian community hid in cellars and attics if they couldn’t leave town quickly enough to stay safely with relatives far away. Banks wondered if the tide would turn when it came out later in the day that the person responsible for Mimosa Moffat’s murder was white.
Banks and Winsome let Caxton wait in the interview room with Bernie Feldman. Banks had read Linda Palmer’s memoir of the holiday in Blackpool, and while it hadn’t furnished many hard facts, it had given him a couple of points to pursue and a lot of insight into the way her mind worked.
When they finally entered the room, Caxton rubbed his wrists theatrically. ‘Bit tight, those cuffs,’ he said. ‘I know a lass or two who’d appreciate that.’ He winked at Winsome.
Winsome ignored him, went through the formalities and set the voice recorder and video going.
‘So what is it this time?’ Feldman asked.
‘We’ve got some new evidence, if you’ll bear with me,’ said Banks.
‘Evidence? I doubt that very much.’
Banks ignored the lawyer and looked directly at Caxton. ‘And I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you now, Mr Caxton, that the other investigations are coming together. We have strong rape and sexual assault cases for you to face from Brighton in 1965, Leicester in 1968, Bristol in 1971 and Newcastle in 1973. There are plenty more in the works, too.’
‘Get to the point, will you,’ Caxton said. ‘I want to go home. I don’t feel well. I’m an old man. You can’t keep me cooped up here.’
‘Then we’ll move right ahead. First of all, I want to talk to you about Tony Monaghan.’
‘What about him? I told you he worked for me. He was a homosexual. He got killed in a public toilet.’
‘As a matter of fact, Mr Caxton, he wasn’t actually killed in the toilet, and there’s no evidence that he was gay.’
Caxton glanced at Feldman. ‘What do you mean? That’s what I was told.’
‘Mistakes were made.’
‘Not my fault.’
‘Going on evidence of the position of the body and blood loss, we have determined that Mr Monaghan couldn’t have been killed in the Hyde Park public toilets but that his body was placed there after his murder.’
‘So what?’
‘It wasn’t a gay killing,’ said Banks.
‘I don’t really see what any of this has to do with my client,’ said Feldman. He turned to Caxton. ‘Danny, this was going on for fifty years ago. There’s no way this is solid evidence.’
‘I think it will become clear soon enough,’ Banks said.
‘And what is this evidence you’re talking about?’ Feldman went on. ‘Where is it? I assume you have some crime-scene photographs, forensic reports, a post-mortem perhaps?’
This was where Banks knew he was stumped. He didn’t have any of those things, only Simon Bradley’s slightly unreliable memories and the things Ursula Pemberton had told him. That might be declared hearsay, though a good prosecuting barrister might successfully argue for its admittance on the grounds that Tony Monaghan was unable to testify himself. Even so, it was a long stretch from getting Ursula Pemberton’s evidence admitted to proving that Danny Caxton had anything to do with her husband’s murder. ‘You know we don’t,’ said Banks. ‘But we do have witnesses, one of whom was involved in the investigation at the time.’
‘A boffin, is he?’ said Feldman. ‘Home Office pathologist, perhaps?’
‘He was a serving police officer, now retired.’
‘Long memory, then? And honest with it?’
‘We also have another witness.’ Banks moved on quickly. ‘A witness who saw two burly men half-carrying and half-dragging someone towards the toilets the ni
ght Tony Monaghan died.’
‘This gets better,’ Feldman said. ‘Two someones carrying a third someone in the dark.’ He folded his arms. ‘Please go on. I’m intrigued. I assume you can produce this witness?’
Caxton wasn’t saying anything, but Banks had noticed him getting progressively paler, an anxious look in his eyes. He pressed the advantage. ‘We think those two men were the Stott brothers, well-known criminal enforcers at the time and, we understand, acquaintances of Mr Caxton.’
‘They worked at a club I had an interest in,’ said Caxton. ‘I—’
‘Danny, be quiet,’ said Feldman, raising a hand. ‘Don’t say another word. Leave this to me.’
‘We know where they worked,’ said Banks. ‘They were bouncers at the Discothique nightclub in Bradford. You first met them at a boxing club you had also had an interest in, and we have it on good authority that they were employed from time to time as your minders, Mr Caxton, and that on at least one occasion they faced criminal charges for GBH.’
‘That was nothing to do with me,’ said Caxton.
‘Are you saying you have a positive identification on these two gentlemen?’ Feldman asked.
‘Maybe not,’ Banks went on. ‘But their victim in the GBH case was the boyfriend of a waitress who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Mr Caxton at the Discothique nightclub shortly after closing time one night.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Caxton, though he was looking paler. Banks noticed a tic developing under his left eye. He seemed worried by the direction the interview was taking.
‘There’s nothing to worry about, Danny, they’ve got nothing,’ Feldman assured his client. ‘And even if what they’re saying about these Stott characters is true, there’s no positive identification, no way they could be linked to the body found in the public toilets.’
‘You think I don’t know that, Bernie?’ snapped Caxton.
Banks leaned back and turned to Winsome. ‘DS Jackman.’
‘Let me tell you what we think happened,’ said Winsome. ‘Tony Monaghan was with Mr Caxton in the Majestic Hotel, Blackpool, when the assault on our complainant occurred. In fact, she was raped first by Mr Caxton and then by Mr Monaghan.’
‘So you take the word of a rapist—’
‘Danny, be quiet,’ said Feldman. ‘Let’s hear the lady out.’
Winsome inclined her head. ‘Thank you, Mr Feldman. I’ve done a lot of hard digging on this case, so I think I can spell things out clearly for you. One thing Mr Caxton might not have realised was that Mr Monaghan was a man of conscience. He’d done a foolish thing, a serious thing, committed a crime, but he couldn’t live with it as easily as . . . well, as easily as some people seem able to do. He felt the need to unburden himself, so after a great deal of soul-searching, he told his wife all about what happened and what he intended to do about it. Monaghan’s widow is still very much alive and was able to fill in a few blanks for us.’
Caxton shot Feldman a frightened glance. ‘What is this, Bernie? What are they saying?’
‘Let the lady talk, Danny. They tell a good tale, but they still have no evidence. Witness to the crime, was she, this wife?’
‘Though she wasn’t present when the crime was committed, we do have a strong witness in Mrs Monaghan,’ said Winsome. ‘Her husband told her what happened that afternoon in the hotel. She was horrified, of course, that someone she loved could commit such an act, but she also saw that he was genuinely repentant and wanted to atone. His atonement was to confront Mr Caxton with his decision to go to the police. Apparently, he also had in his possession a number of compromising Polaroid photographs of Mr Caxton with young girls, some of whom are also in the process of telling us their stories. Needless to say, these photographs disappeared long ago.’
‘Pity,’ said Feldman. ‘It’s a touching tale, but no evidence there, either. Hearsay. And from the man’s wife. In fact, it seems that stories are all you have.’
‘Perhaps so,’ Banks cut in. ‘But juries love a good story, as I’m sure you’re aware, and we think we can put together a good narrative of events. Carry on, DS Jackman.’
Winsome turned over a page in her file. ‘So Mr Monaghan crossed Mr Caxton in a serious way. It wasn’t so much the threat to tell the police that worried him, or even the photographs. He could easily have squared all that through his establishment contacts. It was his right-hand man’s betrayal. He couldn’t stand that. Either he lost his temper and killed Mr Monaghan himself, then got the Stott brothers to get rid of the body in a place where it would be assumed to be a gay killing, or he had the Stott brothers do the lot. Either way, Monaghan was killed and his body placed in the toilet. Sad to say, police at the time didn’t exactly pull out all the stops on homosexual victims. After a cursory initial investigation – which we do know revealed that Tony Monaghan most likely hadn’t been killed in the toilet and that two men had been seen half-dragging a third towards that very place on the night in question – orders came from above that there was no case, nothing more to be done. A short while later, the few case files that had been kept – including medical and forensic reports and witness statements – simply disappeared.’ Winsome took the enlargement of the newspaper photograph from her file and slid it across the table so that Feldman and Caxton could look at it. ‘As you can see,’ she went on, ‘here Mr Caxton is handing over a large cheque to Chief Constable Edward Crammond. Also in the photo are a number of other high-ranking police officers of the time, including Detective Chief Superintendent Dennis McCullen, who was immediately in charge of the Monaghan case. Both Chief Constable Crammond and Chief Superintendent McCullen were dismissed from the force in a corruption scandal over accepting bribes some years later.’
‘I take it this scandal has nothing to do with my client?’
‘It was a separate incident, drug-related, but it indicates the characters of the men concerned. Mr Caxton and the chief constable were known to be good friends. They dined together, played golf together and even, on one occasion, went on a holiday in Majorca together. All paid for by Mr Caxton.’
‘I did a lot of charity work for the police,’ said Caxton. ‘You can’t accuse me of bribing Ted Crammond with—’
‘But isn’t that exactly what you were doing, Mr Caxton?’ said Winsome. ‘This photograph was taken on the twenty-seventh of October, around the time the Monaghan investigation came to a full stop.’
‘You can’t possibly think that such a senior police officer would cover up a murder,’ said Feldman.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Banks. ‘Though stranger things have happened. It’s possible that, despite his later troubles, Chief Superintendent McCullen had no idea that Mr Caxton had killed Mr Monaghan, or arranged to have him killed. What he was covering up was his friend’s involvement with a man who, it appeared, had turned out to have homosexual inclinations. The fact that Mr Monaghan worked for Mr Caxton was never mentioned in any of the media reports at the time. That, I think, would have been a far easier thing to do, and easier for Chief Constable Crammond to settle with his conscience than murder.’ Banks glanced at Caxton, who seemed to be slipping further and further away from the conversation, looking puzzled and confused, as if he couldn’t understand what he was being accused of any more. It was either arrogance, Banks guessed, or another act, an attempt to put the faltering mask of innocence back in place.
‘All you’re really telling me,’ said Feldman, ‘is that Mr Caxton’s press officer did a good job. I don’t see anything criminal in that.’
‘Let’s get back to the allegations of rape, then,’ said Winsome. ‘When we asked our complainant if she would immerse herself in the difficult and painful process of trying to remember as much detail as she could about the assault, there was something specific that she remembered, and we think it will link her most effectively with Mr Caxton. Would you roll up your left sleeve, please, Mr Caxton?’
‘What . . .?’
‘Your left sleeve.’
Caxton looked at Feldm
an, who nodded like a man who knew it would have to happen inevitably at some point, even if they objected now. Slowly, Caxton pushed up the sleeve of his jacket, then unfastened the button at the cuff of his shirt and pushed that up, too. The inked numbers were plain to see. Banks noticed that Caxton’s hand was shaking, and his skin had turned even paler, looking dry, like parchment. He began to worry there was something more serious going on than nerves.
‘What are those numbers?’ Winsome asked. ‘What do they mean? We know that you were in England during the war, not in Auschwitz. Can you—’
Banks tapped Winsome gently on the arm to indicate that she should stop. ‘Mr Caxton,’ he said. ‘Are you all right? Do you need me to call a doctor?’
‘Ggggah bbrrridddd ahh.’
Caxton couldn’t get the words out. His face looked oddly lopsided, Banks noticed, as if the right half had fallen away from the cheekbones, and spittle drooled from his lower lip. His right arm hung limp, and that whole side of his body seemed to sag. Banks knew what was happening. He dashed to the door to tell the officer outside to call the paramedics immediately.
Danny Caxton was having a stroke.
By Saturday night, when Banks again knocked on Linda Palmer’s door in Minton-on-Swain, a great deal had happened. Paul Warner was in custody for the murder of Mimosa Moffat, and the forensic evidence was fast building up against him. They also had his confession. Sunny and his colleagues were all under arrest and facing a number of serious charges, though DNA tests showed that none of them had any connection with Mimosa’s murder. The DNA of the three cousins from Dewsbury, however, was a clear match for the semen samples found inside Mimosa, and they faced a whole lot of charges, though they continued to deny rape and insist that the sex had been consensual. Mimosa had been under the age of consent, so it didn’t matter too much, but their sentences would certainly be a lot longer if a jury believed they had also physically assaulted her and forced her to perform sex acts against her will. The problem was that there was no one to say Mimosa wasn’t willing, though the three men who said she was had every reason to lie. The five other victims of Sunny’s grooming gang were being cared for and were all giving detailed statements of their own experiences, though the whereabouts of Jade, aka Carol Fisher, were still unknown. The Strip had quietened down a lot, but there were still isolated incidents and rumblings of unrest around the Wytherton Heights estate. Two more women had come out with complaints against Danny Caxton since he had made his grand entrance and exit to and from Eastvale Police HQ, one in Great Yarmouth and the other in Weymouth. Caxton was still in hospital, still hanging on by the thinnest of threads.
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 45