The Dead Squirrel (The Mac Maguire detective mysteries Book 2)

by Patrick C Walsh

  He’d actually kept a little notebook like this himself before the age of computers and found that, to save time, he invented his own shorthand. He hoped that was going to be something along those lines. He decided to start on the first page and concentrate on that. It almost looked like it was in a foreign language at first and it being handwritten didn’t help. However he eventually realised from the justification that he might be looking at mirror writing. He’d seen it once in a case some fifteen years before.

  He locked up the office and went home. He got his laptop fired up and placed his shaving mirror on the table. While he was looking at the page from the notebook in the mirror he entered what he saw on to the computer –

  ARW cm

  Ickst sc w t 6-8

  L – Sol n19 L

  W-bk bwy mf 9-5

  b/o sw cc mgts f 8-10 p gl / or tr s 12-1 h gl

  jd 17/7 TI2 SO4

  aobtd

  At least now it looked a little more familiar. He decided to try and decipher the bits he could. ‘Ickst’ he wondered if this could be ‘Ickleford Street’. This was the street that Mac went down to get to the town centre in Letchworth. He made a note. Except for the formula for Thallium Sulphate the rest made no immediate sense. The numerals ‘6-8’ and ‘9-5’ suggested times but there was also a 17/7 – a date perhaps?

  It was the final sequence of letters that bugged Mac as he was sure he’d seen it before. He Googled the term and soon had his answer ‘another one bites the dust’. He wondered if the late Mr. Corning had been a Queen fan. Whatever he was Mac was beginning to get a bad feeling about the notebook. ‘ARW’ made Mac think that this must relate to a person as they were capitalised. Was someone with the initials ARW poisoned on the 17th July? If this was the case then it had to be 1989 or before as John Corning died in December 1989.

  Mac did some digging on the internet and found that archived copies of one the local papers were kept at a library in Baldock. He decided to start there. He rang the library and they said that the information was held on microfilm, if he wanted to give them half an hour they’d set it up for him. At the library a helpful young lady showed to him to an oversized, clunky looking machine with a large screen.

  ‘It’s getting on a bit now, all optics rather than digital but it’s the only way we can view microfilm at the moment,’ she explained.

  She showed him how to move the film back and forward and how to zoom in and out and left him to it.

  The microfilm covered the Letchworth and Baldock Citizen for the years 1980-1991. Mac eventually found the edition covering the 17th July 1989 and read the death notices carefully. Nothing. He read the edition for the week afterwards. There was no-one with the initials ARW or even AW.

  He rolled back to the previous year and tried again. Again there was nothing for the 17th July edition or the weeks after. He was beginning to wonder if he was on the right track. Then he looked at the 1987 editions. In the edition for the twenty third of July his eyes were immediately drawn to –

  ‘Letchworth on July 19th 1987 after a short illness Arthur Reginald Wordsworth of Sollershott North. Dearly beloved husband of Helen. The funeral will be held at St. Thomas Church at 11 am on 25th July followed by interment at Wilbury Hills Cemetery. No flowers please.’

  Mac looked at his laptop. The notice explained another part of the puzzle. ‘L – Sol n19 L’, it probably meant ‘Lived – 19 Sollershott North, Letchworth.’

  It was a long shot but he decided to Google the name and was surprised when he got several recent results. Wordsworth’s name had cropped up as part of a police investigation into historic child abuse allegations in Hertfordshire called Operation Alder. On the surface he seemed to be a respectable man, manager of a local bank and a scout leader but in private he was part of a predatory paedophile ring that included other ‘respectable’ men including a couple of police officers. One of these was still alive and was currently facing prosecution.

  Mac looked at his notes. He worked in a bank and that might explain the next line ‘W-bk bwy mf 9-5’ which might mean ‘Worked – Bank, Broadway, Monday – Friday 9-5’. The note seemed to be a précis of a person’s life, where he lived and where he worked. Mac needed to know more.

  He now had an idea of what ‘Ickst sc w t 6-8’ meant – Ickleford Street Scouts Wednesday and Thursday 6-8’ and the ‘cm’ next to the initials could be ‘child molester’. It also occurred to Mac what ‘jd 17/7’ might mean ‘job done 17/7’.

  This just left the line ‘b/o sw cc mgts f 8-10 p gl / or tr s 12-1 h gl’ to explain. He now knew that ‘f 8-10’ and ‘s 12-1’ probably referred to days and times but he’d need to give the rest some thought.

  He went back home and picked another page at random. Using the shaving mirror again he got this –

  MV wb

  L – Sum r 94 L

  W- m gar, wks r m-sat 8-5

  b/o b newc br way home

  jd 19/11 TI2 SO4

  aobtd

  Mac knew from this that someone with the initials MV lived at 94 Summer Road, Letchworth. They worked in Works Road Monday to Saturday eight until five and, as this was mostly an industrial area, Mac guessed that ‘gar’ probably meant ‘garage’. They were killed on 19th November again using thallium.

  The fourth line interested Mac most as it gave him a really good clue as to its meaning. ‘Newc br’ could only mean Newcastle Brown and the ‘b’ must then mean ‘bottle’ which was the only way it was sold anyway. ‘Way home’ did this mean on the way to the victim’s or John Corning’s home? Mac couldn’t be sure. What he was fairly sure of now was what b/o meant – ‘best opportunity’.

  He looked again at the same line in the first note. He now understood that this line related to the modus operandi for the killings. It still took him a fair amount of thinking to arrive at a reasonable guess - ‘b/o sw cc mgts f 8-10 p gl / or tr s 12-1 h gl’ might mean ‘Best opportunity swap coca-cola Magnets Fridays 8-10 pint glass / Orange Tree Sundays 12-1 half glass.’

  The poisoner was noting where and when the victim drank and also what they drank, presumably so that he could buy exactly the same. It was simple, just add the thallium and then swap glasses.

  He decided to take a punt and go to 94 Summer Road. A woman in her sixties answered the door.

  ‘Yes dear?’ she asked.

  He introduced himself.

  ‘I’m helping the police out with an enquiry. How long have you been living here?’

  The woman thought for a moment.

  ‘A long time dear, must be well over thirty years now.’

  Mac felt like he’d just put his week’s wages on an outsider and it had come in first.

  ‘Your name is?’

  ‘Maureen Caulderwell, dear,’ she replied. ‘Won’t you come in?’

  She showed him into a comfortable, warm living room.

  ‘Cup of tea, dear?’ she asked.

  Mac found he was thirsty.

  ‘Yes please.’

  While she was making the tea he ran his eyes along a mass of framed photos that covered the top of a large sideboard. Most of them were of her with two boys. From the earlier pictures it was clear that one was about six or seven years older than the other although as they got older this disparity wasn’t so obvious. A few were of Maureen and a man of about the same age. His eyes lit up when he saw one of Maureen with two women, one of which was definitely a young Peggy Corning.

  ‘Looking at my photos, dear. I find them a real comfort, they remind me of all the good times,’ she said cheerily.

  ‘Do you know anyone with the initials MV who might have lived here in the eighties?’ Mac asked.

  The smile abruptly left her face.

  ‘Yes, my first husband Mike Vaughan.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Mac asked.

  ‘Oh, he died dear and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mac asked.

  ‘I was an idiot when I was young. Mike was good loo
king, a bit of a bad lad too but I didn’t realise then just how much badness he really had in him. He was drunk all the time towards the end. He was working and I was too but every penny we earned got spent on drink.’

  A little look of shame crossed her face.

  ‘He used to knock me around sometimes too, quite a lot towards the end but it was when he started on Eddie, our son, that I started dreaming about killing him. Eddie was only five at the time. Anyway luckily I didn’t need to bother as he died soon afterwards.’

  ‘What did he die of?’ Mac asked.

  ‘The doctor thought it was probably the drink although he said he couldn’t be absolutely sure.’

  ‘Was his favourite Newcastle Brown Ale by any chance?’ Mac asked.

  ‘I don’t know how you’d know that but yes. First thing I used to have to do every morning was throw out his empties. Hate seeing a bottle of the stuff nowadays, brings it all back.’

  ‘How did you know Peggy Corning? I saw her in one of the photos.’

  ‘I thought this might be something to do with Peggy, I heard all about the poisoning on the news. Tragic, dear. Anyway I’ll never say a bad word about her, she really helped me just before Mike died. She was the only one I could talk to about it at the time.’

  Mac would bet that Peggy might have also mentioned it to her husband.

  ‘I saw a man in some of the photos...’

  ‘Yes, that’s my husband Derek. You know I thought that all men must be like Mike, my dad certainly was, but Derek was different, always treated me like a queen he has. He took Eddie on as his own child and then we had another son Tom. They’ve been really good sons to us. They’ve both gone to university and got good jobs and they’ve got families of their own now.’

  ‘It seems like things turned out really well for you.’

  ‘It did. I know I shouldn’t but I say a little prayer of thanks every day that God saw fit to take Mike when he did.’

  Mac knew however that it wasn’t God but John Corning who had done the taking. He thanked her and said goodbye.

  Sitting in the car he took the notebook out and leaved through it. He was especially interested in the line that contained the address. ‘L’ he knew meant Letchworth, there were a couple of ‘St’ entries, probably Stevenage, four or five ‘H’ entries, presumably Hitchin, and the majority of the rest were ‘Ln’ which Mac took as being London. One entry towards the end made him catch his breath. He drove home and got straight on his laptop.

  He carefully noted down the entry using the shaving mirror –

  L St W MP sw

  L – Hpdn mnr hse

  W –HoP

  b/o str b smw macallan

  jd 02/10 C21H22N2O2

  aobtd

  Whether it was because he’d now got a feeling for the way John Corning noted things down or because there were a couple of giveaways, ‘MP’ next to the initials and the full spelling of ‘macallen’, Mac wasn’t sure.

  He put ‘Lawrence St. Winterley’ in the search bar and then selected the Wikipedia entry. Mac remembered the case as it had caused quite a stir at the time. A sitting MP for one of the Hertfordshire constituencies had been suspected of being behind a country wide insurance scam. However evidence supporting this claim mysteriously disappeared from police custody and there was a big stink when it was discovered that St. Winterley had recently proposed the Chief Constable of the very same police force to be a member of a very exclusive gentleman’s club. The papers started calling him the ‘Teflon Toff’ as nothing from his numerous and increasingly risky financial escapades ever seemed to stick.

  The insurance scam had been a bad one though, not just hitting wealthy investors who could afford to lose money, but many ordinary people who found they had no cover at all when a husband died or a house burnt down. St. Winterley was found collapsed in a side corridor at the House of Commons in London on the 3rd October 1989 and he died shortly before reaching hospital. The cause of death was established as strychnine poisoning. Mac guessed that it had been administered in a drink, Macallen whisky, in the Strangers Bar.

  He wondered why John Corning had used strychnine and looked it up. Once taken the poison had no antidote and the victim only died after undergoing terrible muscle spasms and convulsions. He guessed that John Corning hadn’t just wanted St. Winterley to die but to die in great pain.

  Mac had met many wrongdoers in his time, a few who he might even describe as being truly evil, but he’d always been happy to leave the judging and sentencing to others. John Corning had appointed himself as judge, jury and executioner and Mac felt there was something every bit as evil about that as anything his victims might have done.

  He arranged to meet Andy at the station an hour or so before he was due to meet with Tim. The Villa had just got knocked out of the cup in the fifth round by a club some three divisions below them and a full inquest had to be held.

  He gratefully passed the notebook back to Andy.

  ‘So did you find anything?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Too much,’ Mac replied.

  He picked out the page for Arthur Reginald Wordsworth and took him through the notes.

  ‘You’re joking! Each one of these pages relates to a murder? How many are there?’ Andy asked.

  ‘I counted forty nine in all but I think that there were only forty eight murders as there’s no ‘job done’ or ‘another one bites the dust’ on the last one. My bet is that he died before he could carry that one out.’

  ‘Bloody hell, I still can’t believe it. I’m holding a notebook belonging to Hertfordshire’s biggest serial killer.’

  ‘You’ll never be able to prove it though, unless you can get Peggy Corning to testify, which I doubt in the extreme. John Corning was very clever and, after all this time, there’s unlikely to be any evidence other than what’s contained in this notebook.’

  ‘You think Peggy Corning knew about this?’ Andy asked, his finger tapping the notebook.

  ‘I’d guess that she didn’t know everything that her husband was up to, probably because she didn’t want to know. However I think she knew enough. One of the entries in the notebook relates to the husband of one of her friends. He was a drunk and a wife beater and, from what his ex-wife told me, it was a blessing to her when he died. I’d bet that Peggy Corning, at the very least, gave her husband a big hint that here was someone who didn’t deserve to live.’

  ‘Do you think it was being diagnosed with leukaemia that made him do it?’

  Mac shook his head.

  ‘He’d already committed eighteen murders by then but it certainly accelerated his efforts, thirty murders in just over six months.’

  He passed the notebook to Andy.

  ‘Thanks Mac. I know we probably can’t do anything about it after all these years but somehow it’s still good to know the truth.’

  Andy stood up and shook hands with Mac.

  ‘Mind if I call around if I need you or maybe just for a chat?’

  ‘Please do, especially if you’ve got a case you need some help with.’

  As he walked towards the Magnets Mac thought about John Corning’s little black book. He decided that life wasn’t just weird but was often weirder than you could ever know.

  ‘What a load of wasters!’ Tim exclaimed with feeling as Mac arrived at table thirteen. ‘I can’t believe it. I really thought this year might be different. Oh well, just the league now but as we’re fifth from bottom there’s not much bloody hope there either. Anyway I’ll get them in.’

  They spent the evening tearing their favourite team apart and putting it back together again. It was definitely a more enjoyable experience than watching them play. While they were doing this he looked over at Tim and thanked God that he was his friend.

  In his research he’d come across one of Jane’s quotes that had stuck in his head.

  ‘My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.’
>
  Mac looked over at his good friend. He couldn’t have put it better himself.

  Three months later -

  ‘This is BBC Three Counties Radio with the news at five o’clock. The top story is that the four week trial of local resident George Parker has ended. Mr. Parker, who is from Letchworth, has been found guilty of bribing foreign government officials and in aiding and abetting terrorists. Mr. Justice Haining said the charges were serious in the extreme and that the defendant knowingly funded terrorist organisations in order to gain contracts for his company. He warned Mr. Parker that he was facing a lengthy custodial sentence. Sentencing will take place next week.

  On a lighter note we can report that a local woman who recently died has left just over six and a half million pounds to a local group of Jane Austen fans. The Letchworth Society of Janeites were bequeathed the money by Mrs. Catherine Gascoigne in order to provide a permanent base for students and others researching nineteenth century literature and also to hold a bi-annual international conference.

  Mrs. Anne Holding, the chair of the Society, said that Mrs. Gascoigne’s incredibly generous gift would be put to good use and that it would put Letchworth on the world map with regard to the study of authors such as Jane Austen, the Brontes and Elizabeth Gaskell. She announced that the conference centre, which is due to open in three years, would be named after Mrs. Gascoigne who has also bequeathed a further six million pounds to be split between a local autism charity and cancer research.

  And now some news just in. It’s been announced that a celebrity wedding took place this morning in the village of Willian near Letchworth. Billionaire financier Alix Stefanovic has re-married his ex-wife Diane. The couple famously split up in a very public and acrimonious divorce that ended with Diane Stefanovic being awarded one of the biggest settlements ever by an American court. It’s being reported that a reception is being held at a secret location somewhere in Hertfordshire.

  In other news a Stevenage man and his dog were found drunk in a…’

  THE END