As Mitchell waited in the church, he looked around the place. Nothing much had changed. His brother, if it was his brother… But that’s not possible, Mitchell thought. I killed him, spent seventeen years in prison for his murder.
The church was empty, as Mitchell knew it would be. He and his brother had sung in the choir as children and attended Sunday service with the Boy Scouts. They both knew the church intimately, and they knew the vicar, a man who retired to the rectory every day for an afternoon nap.
A voice echoed through the church; Ethan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It was his brother; no one else had that distinct tone, that lisp.
‘Martin, it can’t be,’ Ethan said.
The unmistakable voice again. ‘It’s time to pay for what you did.’
‘You’re dead. I killed you.’
‘That you did, but I’ve waited for my revenge.’
Unable to move, Ethan Mitchell stood transfixed where he was standing. In front of him, the altar; to the right, the organ that his mother used to play; and somewhere the spirit of a long-dead brother. He remembered back to that night when they had both been drunk. Choirboys they may have been, even Boy Scouts, but in adulthood the recklessness, the crime, and the closeness they had shared had dimmed to disdain. Even so, they were still inseparable, and nobody had expected that one would murder the other. Martin had thrown the first punch, caught Ethan on the face. Ethan had retaliated with the added force of a rock he had picked up. He had hit his brother full-force in the chest before pulling out a knife from inside his jacket and stabbing him. Martin lay dying at Ethan’s feet, Ethan proclaiming at the top of his voice, ‘You bastard. I’ve finally killed you, and you deserved it.’
‘I told you I’d come back as I lay dying on the ground,’ the voice inside the church said.
Ethan looked around, tried to ascertain the direction it came from, but the acoustics were deceiving, the voice echoing off the walls of the empty church. ‘Where are you?’ Ethan shouted.
‘You’ll see me soon enough.’
‘We were angry and drunk. I didn’t mean to kill you.’
‘I would have killed you if I had had the chance, so don’t pretend it was an accident.’
A man appeared at the front of the church. He sauntered down the aisle, heading towards Ethan Mitchell, a man who had been released just one day earlier from prison. Ethan looked forward, trying to see the man’s face. ‘I can’t see you,’ Ethan said. ‘Are you dead?’
‘You’ll see me soon enough,’ the man said. He wore a heavy coat with a large scarf wrapped around his face. On his head he wore a hat, its brim pulled down at the front. At ten feet from Ethan he stopped and reached into his right-hand jacket pocket.
‘No, don’t.’
‘It’s only right,’ the man said. He levelled the gun that he taken from the pocket and emptied three bullets into Ethan, the noise echoing around the church. The man then put the gun into his pocket and walked out of the church and onto the busy street.
***
‘Not an easy face to forget,’ Detective Inspector Keith Tremayne said.
‘Why’s that?’ Clare Yarwood, Tremayne’s sergeant in Homicide, asked.
‘Eighteen years ago, I arrested the man. Salisbury’s a small place, everyone knew Ethan Mitchell and his brother, Martin.’
‘Why’s that?’ Clare asked. They were a good team: Tremayne closing in on retirement, his sergeant just turned thirty. They’d been together for a few years now in Salisbury, a city southwest of London, close to Stonehenge.
‘Identical twins. You couldn’t tell the two apart.’
‘Where’s the brother?’
‘Ethan killed Martin, spent seventeen years in prison for the crime. He was released yesterday.’
‘I thought twins were meant to be close,’ Clare said.
‘As children they were, but as they grew older they started getting into trouble, and both of them used to get drunk. If no one else were around, they’d argue with each other. I knew them both. Martin, he was the more easy-going, but you could never be sure who was who.’
‘There’s a letter in the man’s pocket. It seems relevant,’ Jim Hughes, Bemerton Road Police Station’s crime scene examiner, said.
Tremayne opened the letter and read it. He then showed it to Clare. ‘What does it mean?’ she said.
‘It seems as though his brother invited him to the church,’ Tremayne said.
‘His dead brother?’
‘I saw the body, arrested Ethan for his murder.’
‘Macabre,’ Clare said. ‘Whoever killed the man was not back from the dead.’
‘Then why was Ethan here, and who was it?’
Clare could see that Tremayne was pleased to be busy again. There had been a few quiet weeks at Bemerton Road, and Tremayne without a murder enquiry was being subjected to their senior’s attempts to retire him. Even though the retirement package was excellent, Clare knew that Tremayne would never retire voluntarily.
‘I’ll be the last one out of this station,’ he had said on a few occasions to Clare.
They were a good pair, a man in his fifties, cynical, seen-it-all, and occasionally cantankerous, and his younger sergeant. Tremayne would never tell his sergeant that he liked and respected her very much. As for her, Tremayne was almost as important as her own father, who was a good man but cold. To Tremayne, she was always Yarwood, and his disparaging, verging on sarcastic, comments did not come with a barb, but a genuineness. She had learnt how to deal with him some years before, give him back what he gave. Some outsiders thought the relationship strange, but Clare did not, nor did Jim Hughes, the CSE. He wasn’t much older than Clare, and Tremayne had initially given him the treatment, but Hughes had stood his ground, proved his worth, and now the detective inspector only needed his evaluation of a murder scene to be confident he had enough information to proceed.
‘Ethan and Martin had plenty of relatives in Salisbury,’ Tremayne said. ‘We’d better start visiting a few of them.’
‘Good people?’ Clare said.
‘Middle of the road. Some are no better than the Mitchell twins, others are honest.’
‘Did you like the brothers?’ Clare knew that even though they were villains, that would not preclude Tremayne from liking them. He wasn’t a man who saw those on the side of the law as good, the others as bad. He judged people on their merits, not their criminal record.
‘Sober they were okay. Always willing to enjoy a pint of beer as long as someone else was paying.’
‘You!’
‘Don’t look at me like that, Yarwood. I pay my fair share, even buy you the occasional glass of wine.’
‘The brothers when they were drunk?’
‘Difficult drunks, always wanted to argue, take you outside and teach you a lesson. There were a few pubs in Salisbury that barred them, but to little effect.’
‘If the two came in, no one was willing to stand up to them, is that it?’
‘A double act. You take on one, you get the other, and you saw Ethan. He wasn’t a weakling.’
‘No.’
‘The two of them had been in trouble with the law a few times, stolen cars, breaking and entering. Small time hoodlums, the pair of them. None too bright, either. They married sisters. We should meet them first.’
‘You know where they live?’
‘After nearly thirty years in the city, I know where every villain and his family lives, you know that.’
‘A warm welcome?’
‘Martin’s wife, probably. Ethan’s wife, she’ll not be so easy. She wasn’t fond of him, divorced him years ago, and his reappearing will only stir up old memories, old conflicts.’
‘And more murders?’
‘Yarwood, I don’t know. There’s enough hatred flowing around, and there is still the van they robbed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ethan and Martin, they attempted one job too many. They robbed a van carrying gold bars. Somehow
they had found out about it. It was out on the Andover Road late at night. They managed to stop it, somehow gain entry into the vehicle, cosh the driver, point a rifle at his offsider. Then Martin, he’s in the van and off. Ethan’s following behind.’
‘The men in the van?’ Clare said.
‘They’re sitting in a ditch, trussed up and in their underwear. Martin, he had more brains than Ethan, is wearing one of the uniforms. They drive down a country road, empty the van, set it on fire, and take off.’
‘The car Ethan was driving?’
‘Stolen. Once the van didn’t call in as scheduled on the radio, the alert went out. The Mitchells had timed it well, and their car was found in ten feet of water not far from Salisbury. After that, nothing. The guards hadn’t seen anything, other than two men who said little and wore balaclavas. They were even suspected of being in league with the robbers, but later on they were just found to be incompetent. The driver of the van had a girlfriend down the road, no more than ten miles. He wanted to get there and spend a couple of hours with her.’
‘And the other man?’
‘He was hopeful that her friend was coming over. They were going to make a night of it, but Ethan and Martin upset their plans. Anyway, as I was saying, Ethan and Martin had pulled off the perfect crime.’
‘Why did Ethan kill Martin?’
‘Ethan and Martin had hit the big time. They have all this gold, and they don’t know what to do with it. You can hardly walk into the local bank and deposit it. The two brothers, ecstatic and confused, stop at a pub to talk it through, make a few phone calls.’
‘Did they get drunk?’
‘It’s in their nature. Within two hours, they’re standing outside next to a car with a fortune in the boot. They start arguing. Some of the locals come out from the pub to watch. Ethan tells them to clear off and mind their own business. Martin, he’s a bit calmer, telling Ethan to take it easy. Some of the locals take the hint and leave the two men to it. One of the locals, not a good witness, as he was on his eighth pint of beer, leans against the pub wall. The two brothers debate what to do, their voices raised again, and Ethan hits Martin and then thrusts a knife into his brother’s stomach. The drunk who was watching vomits on the flowers, and then rushes inside to raise the alarm.’
‘You took the call?’
‘I was out there within fifteen minutes. Martin’s dead and on the ground, Ethan’s inside the pub and restrained. The man’s unapologetic.’
‘He’s not concerned?’
‘The drunk told us that Ethan had told Martin that he was going to deal with him and that he had had a lifetime of being one half of a comedy act.’
‘A clear declaration of premeditated murder?’
‘The man was drunk, didn’t know what he was saying, but the judge didn’t see it that way. All he saw was a villain who had overstepped the mark. The prosecution was crash-hot, the defence was weak, and Ethan Mitchell was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years.’
‘And the gold bullion?’ Clare asked.
‘Half was in the car; the other half the brothers had hidden somewhere, and Martin’s dead and Ethan never told anyone where it was. It may have helped with his sentencing, but he was keeping quiet.’
‘Does anyone know?’
‘Ethan’s murderer might.’
Chapter 2
‘Tremayne, what are you doing here?’ were the first words that he and Clare heard on the door being opened at the council house.
‘Betty, long time since I’ve seen you,’ Tremayne said. Clare looked over at her senior, not sure of what to make of the welcome. She had known him long enough to realise he seemed to know everyone in Salisbury. Thirty-five thousand inhabitants, and every villain and his or her family appeared to know her DI, and most, at one time or another, had felt his firm grip on their collar.
‘And who’s the person you’re with?’ the woman said. From her mouth hung a cigarette, around her waist, an apron.
‘This is Sergeant Yarwood.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Clare said.
‘There’s no point in you two standing out there. You’d better come in. I’ve heard by the way.’
‘Ethan, it was always going to happen,’ Tremayne said.
‘I’m surprised he lasted this long. Any idea who it was?’ Betty said.
‘You were married to him for a long time, what do you reckon?’
‘I divorced him over fifteen years ago, found myself another man, hardworking and honest.’
‘The opposite of Ethan.’
‘Not totally. He likes to drink, as much as Ethan and his brother did, but he’s a harmless drunk.’
‘No fighting, no roughing you up?’
‘Not him. He just wants to sleep after a few drinks. He suits me fine, and he’s looked after Ethan’s kids, better than he did.’
‘How’s Gerry and Marcia?’
‘Why ask me? Your lot arrested Gerry last week for that jeweller’s in the High Street. Marcia, she’s doing well, her own shop.’
‘We go back a long way,’ Tremayne said, looking over at Clare.
‘Oh!’ Clare’s only comment.
‘Ethan and Martin, before they went off the tracks, used to go down the pub of a night. Betty always came along.’
‘Someone had to get them home,’ Betty said.
‘Good times,’ Tremayne reminisced.
‘Good times, but then Ethan’s and Martin’s attempt at crime became more ambitious.’
‘They were always small time,’ Tremayne said. ‘Until they stole that gold.’
‘A curse that’s been. If they had stuck with pilfering, the most that would have happened would have been a few years in prison. With that gold, Martin ends up dead, and Ethan’s in jail for seventeen years. It was you who arrested him.’
‘I had no option. Martin’s lying dead on the ground, Ethan’s admitting to the crime. Even so, twenty years, out in seventeen, was a stiff sentence.’
‘It’s past history,’ Betty said. ‘And besides, what are you here for? To offer condolences to the grieving widow?’
‘Are you grieving?’
‘I’m sorry he’s dead, and he was the father of my two children. I feel numb at the present moment. No doubt I’ll sit down later and shed a tear. Do you need someone to identify him?’
‘If you could?’
‘It’s been over fifteen years since I last saw him. Gerry kept in touch, so did Marcia. She used to visit him every couple of months.’
‘We’ll use her,’ Clare said. ‘Do they know?’
‘They’ve heard. Marcia will be coming up here later on. You can wait for her if you want.’
‘Ethan and Martin hid some of the gold,’ Tremayne said.
‘Are you here because of that?’ Betty said.
‘Not us. We’re Homicide. Ethan’s dead, and we need the person responsible. The gold, it was worth a lot of money, always seems relevant.’
‘None of us have it. There were no tip-offs from Ethan as to where it was. As far as we’re concerned, it destroyed us as a family, and none of us saw any of the benefits.’
‘We found a letter in Ethan’s pocket, the reason he was in the church.’
‘From who?’
‘That’s the problem, Betty. It was from Martin.’
‘An old letter?’
‘It was written recently.’
‘But that’s impossible. You were there when he was killed. You even attended his funeral, saw him lying in his coffin.’
‘Forensics are checking the letter. It has to be a forgery, but someone knew Martin’s writing, and the bait to lure Ethan to the church.’
‘Someone after the gold?’
‘From what we can see it was someone who wanted Ethan dead. There’s no sign of a fight, only someone walking up to where Ethan was and shooting him three times. The letter implies revenge by Martin.’
‘What’s the point?’ Betty said. ‘Martin’s dead, we all know that, and it’s not as
if he had anyone who cares about him, not after all these years. Gerry was fond of his uncle, but he was just a child back then. If someone was after the missing gold, why kill Ethan? I don’t get it.’
‘Nor do we,’ Tremayne said. ‘You’ve a large family, some villains in there. Anyone you can think of?’
‘Not for killing Ethan. There were a few who were angry after he stabbed Martin, spouted vengeance, but that was just the heat of the moment. And the relationship between the twins was always tense. They were always together, almost conjoined, but they had grown to hate each other, although they couldn’t stand being apart from each other for more than a few hours.’
‘When you were married to Ethan, how did you handle it?’
‘Martin was always over. He stayed too often for me in the spare room. A damn nuisance, really, but what could I do? You marry one, you got the other. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that’s what I used to call them. Mind you, Martin hated it, but it wasn’t enough to make him move out.’
‘Could you tell them apart?’ Clare said.
‘Are you worried that the other one would be in bed with me and I wouldn’t know?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I could tell. Don’t ask me to elaborate.’
‘Betty, getting back to something serious,’ Tremayne said. ‘Martin’s dead and Ethan’s on trial for his murder. What was the family’s reaction?’
‘Shock, then anger. Their older brother, Gavin, he’s upset, wants to rip Ethan’s head off. Their sister’s never spoken about it much.’
‘I still hold that it was one of your extended family who killed Ethan,’ Tremayne said.
‘It was the gold we’d have wanted, not Ethan dead,’ Betty said.
‘That was the problem in the first place. The two brothers had a fortune, didn’t know what to do with it. Do you think that Ethan had told someone where the stash is hidden, and his being alive would only complicate the situation?’
‘You’re the policeman. But why kill him in a church? Why not anywhere else?’
‘That’s for us to find out,’ Tremayne said.
The DI Tremayne Thriller Box Set Page 94