The Murder House

by Simon Beaufort

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Titles by Simon Beaufort from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Titles by Simon Beaufort from Severn House

  The Sir Geoffrey Mappestone Series

  MURDER IN THE HOLY CITY

  A HEAD FOR POISONING

  THE BISHOP’S BROOD

  THE KING’S SPIES

  THE COINERS’ QUARREL

  DEADLY INHERITANCE

  THE BLOODSTAINED THRONE

  A DEAD MAN’S SECRET

  THE MURDER HOUSE

  THE MURDER HOUSE

  Simon Beaufort

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2013 by Simon Beaufort.

  The right of Simon Beaufort to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Beaufort, Simon.

  The murder house.

  1. Policewomen–Fiction. 2. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8327-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-463-8 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For our favourite policeman:

  Commander Ralph S. Riffenburgh

  ONE

  My name is Helen Anderson, and I’m a murderer. This is my story. It isn’t a confession, as those tend not to make very interesting reading. It’s my story – how I came to do the things I did, and why. For all their diligence, I don’t think the police fully understand what happened, and this is my chance to explain – for myself, as much as for anyone who happens to read it.

  It won’t be easy to write, given that I’ve learned things that no one should ever have to know: how to kill, how to conceal it, and how to lie to protect myself. There was a stage when I exulted in the power that brought – to offer a hint and watch the police doggedly follow the road I had selected, knowing their efforts would be wasted. But mostly, I was just scared and confused.

  I suppose I should start at the beginning. It sounds trite put like that – all stories should start at the beginning. But when did mine start? The first time I met James Paxton? Our single, fumbling, sordid date years later? The point when he realized that a friend in the police might be good for more than a few cheap jokes about handcuffs? I think I shall go back to the very beginning, when we were still young, although even then there was a sharp distinction between his world and mine.

  The distinction became clearer as we grew older, and perhaps that’s where the problems started – my ridiculous gratitude at being noticed by the bright star that was James; my pathetic pleasure at being invited into his exclusive world. But, of course, that was before I learned that all that glitters isn’t gold.

  James and I were at school together in Bristol – or rather, we were in the same school at the same time. He came late, when we were fifteen, but he made his uniform look as if it had been styled in Savile Row, and he quickly became the school pin-up. All the girls were aware of him, whether with the usual adoration for the exotic and handsome, or a sort of fascinated unease, where we pretended not to notice him but were nonetheless flattered when he smiled in our direction.

  James quickly became Redlands School’s star pupil. He passed his GCSEs with flying colours, was Head Boy, captain of the cricket team, took the leading role in all the plays, and had a set of friends who basked in his reflected glory.

  Meanwhile, I worked hard and made respectable grades. I was an average athlete, and a reliable backstop on the rounders team. I took care with my appearance, although photographs show me with no sense of style, and a thatch of fairish hair that would have looked better short. My parents owned a shop. They were good people, who were proud when I scraped through enough A-levels to win a place at a provincial university.

  James had a mother with Thatcher hair and the confident attitude of someone used to getting her own way. His father was apparently dead, but he never talked about it. I suppose bad things happen even to boys like James, who had everything he could want and a good deal more besides. He caught the bus to school with the rest of us in the mornings, but sometimes a man would collect him in his mother’s Mercedes. We joked that the driver was his mother’s lover, and sniggered at the thought of that stiff, uncompromising lady rolling around with the monkey-faced, unshaven fellow in the car.

  So, that was James. Destined to go to Oxford, where he continued to excel, while I studied psychology in Newcastle.

  One day, when I was in the university careers service – I was there because I didn’t have the faintest idea what I wanted to do with my degree – my advisor ran late. To pass the time, I filled in an application for the police. When a letter came inviting me for an interview with the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, I was stunned – I hadn’t imagined they’d reply. I went along, and the next thing I knew I’d been accepted and was due to start training. So I became a police constable. I bought a terraced house in the Hotwells district of Bristol and prepared for my new life.

  At first, I was assigned to pleasantly rural Midsomer Norton, where we dealt with minor thefts, the odd case of incest, and the kind of vandalism that always happens when bored teenagers have nothing else to do. But the uniform still meant something to the people of that nice country town, and getting the job done wasn’t difficult. For the next three and a half years, I was happy.

  Then the force decided that more officers were needed in urban areas, so I was re-assigned to the Bristol West district, which covered the main shopping areas, the harbour, and much of the ‘inner city’. Bristol West HQ, known as New Bridewell, was a nasty, multi-storeyed affair with grime-encrusted windows set in grey concrete, which had not been updated for years. Home Office reviews, stupid legislation and constant public criticism had demoralized and embittered the people who worked there, and I disliked it from my first day. Time did nothing to make it any better.

  In the country, I’d shown an aptitude for handlin
g frustrated farmers and angry motorists, and I’d even demonstrated a modest talent for dealing with bewildered livestock. At New Bridewell, I was lost. I had no ‘feel’ for the criminal side of the job and found it hard to tell the difference between strange truths and accomplished lies. Moreover, I disliked the confrontational encounters with the rough, violent, persistent offenders who were regular faces at the station.

  There was another problem, too. I found myself landed with more boring traffic duty than was fair, given my age and experience – Britain’s police forces may have policies on sexism, but that means nothing when there are officers like Sergeant Barry Wright in positions of authority. Wright was what my colleagues generally – and usually admiringly – called ‘an old-style policeman’. To me, he was a bigot.

  If work was dismal, so too was my social life. Shifts and unscheduled overtime play havoc with relationships, a problem compounded by the fact that not everyone wants a police officer as a friend. It isn’t just that we make unreliable acquaintances, who often cancel long-standing arrangements at the last minute, but there seems to be a belief among the public that off-duty officers have nothing better to do than catch them breaking the law.

  I had no real friends at New Bridewell, although I always joined the post-shift drinks in a local pub. The men were either married or on the prowl – or both – while the women were either struggling to juggle the job with home life and children, or wanted to party hard. I was at a particularly low point in my life when I stopped James for running a red light.

  I’d had a really bad day. I was on an early shift, which meant getting up before four a.m., and my in-tray was full of petty burglaries and thefts to ‘investigate’. Cars were in short supply, so I’d had to walk, and I was hot, tired and irritable. I was trudging back to the station in a foul frame of mind when a black BMW shot through a busy exchange after the lights had changed. I leapt off the pavement, arm raised in an imperious gesture for the driver to stop.

  I confess I was flattered when James declared himself delighted to see me. He took the ticket I wrote with good grace, then told me about himself. Needless to say, he was successful. He’d left Oxford with a First in law, and a number of high-paying firms had offered him a position. He’d chosen Urvine and Brotherton, where he specialized in criminal law. They had offices in Queen Square, one of Bristol’s loveliest areas.

  Then he told me he was meeting some old Redlandians at a harbour-side cafe that Saturday. He mentioned several names I recognized – Colin Fairhurst, Gary Sheldick, Frances Moorfield – and suggested I join them. I smiled politely and told him I’d try, in the way people do when they have no intention of trying at all. Such exulted company wasn’t for the likes of me.

  Yet when Saturday came, and I was settling down for a night of mediocre telly with a bag of Thornton’s ‘continentals’, I realized there was no reason why I shouldn’t meet up with them. The harbour wasn’t far; I could walk there in less than half an hour. So I went, nervously fiddling with my keys as I approached their table, but relaxing when I sensed that they were genuinely pleased to see an old schoolmate, even if it was only one of the ‘average girls’.

  I was relieved to find that the youthful arrogance had gone from Gary, Frances and Colin – they were normal people, who talked about mortgages, ageing parents and where to go on holiday. Colin was a computer programmer, while Frances and Gary worked for an insurance company. I didn’t feel overawed or bedazzled by them, as I had at school.

  I met them several times after that, becoming particularly good friends with Frances and Gary. They’d been a couple at school, and had kept their relationship going through different universities and demanding jobs. James, meanwhile, was always charming and attentive, and I was foolishly flattered that a good-looking man seemed interested in me. When he suggested a date at a wine bar on Park Street, I accepted, although there was a part of me that wondered, even then, why an ambitious lawyer would want to go out with a plain police constable with scant chance of promotion.

  Our date was a disaster. Without the relaxed bonhomie of the others, our conversation was stilted. James took me back to his designer-furnished flat, where our sex was no more satisfactory than our discussions about wine, politics and work, and left us both uncomfortable. I slipped away while he was still asleep, and walked for two hours in the dark to get home. He didn’t call me, and I avoided the Saturday night gatherings for several months, opting instead to see Frances and Gary during the week.

  And that was that. When I finally returned to the old Redlandians’ fold months later, James wasn’t there, and enquiries revealed that he’d slipped out of the habit at about the same time as me. The story of my association with James Paxton should have ended there. I wish to God it had.

  TWO

  Detective Inspector Neel Oakley was used to people misspelling his name. It had been chosen by his Indian mother because she thought it would fit nicely into the two cultures that comprised his heritage. Oakley had never visited India, and with his mother dead and contact long since lost with her family, nor was he likely to. The only reminders of his ethnic background were an olive complexion, dark eyes and a fondness for curry. And the name, of course, which often caused confusion. One such occasion was currently in progress, as he stood in the witness box at Bristol Crown Court to give evidence against one Andrew Brown.

  ‘There appears to be a mistake,’ drawled James Paxton, the defending barrister. ‘One of the clerks has spelled Neil with two ‘e’s. That’s the disgrace of our education system, My Lord – it teaches people to spell phonetically.’

  Patiently, Oakley explained the origin of his name. He disliked Paxton, having watched him in action before, belittling witnesses and using his sharp mind to confuse and undermine them. He knew the remark about his name was an effort to get under his skin, to annoy him and make him incautious.

  Brown had already served time for burglary and, if there was any justice, was about to spend a fourth spell behind bars. He had snatched a bag from an old woman, clubbing her to the ground in the process. It had frightened the wits out of her – literally. Mrs Harris was now so confused that Oakley suspected her testimony was going to lose them the case. Paxton obviously thought so, too, because he was already gloating.

  Paxton’s smirk faded to irritation when Oakley declined to be needled, but returned when Detective Sergeant Mark Butterworth took the stand – the younger man’s anger and indignation were palpable, and Paxton soon manipulated him into blurting that, yes, he would love to see Brown behind bars, and of course he would use all the methods at his disposal to see justice done.

  ‘We should have hired an actress to be Mrs Harris for the day,’ Butterworth muttered, as he and Oakley sat in the corridor, waiting for the verdict. He was from Yorkshire, a small, fair-haired man devoted to his job and his baby daughter in equal measure. ‘She was crap, which means Brown’s going to walk – Paxton’s going to get him off.’

  ‘Very possibly,’ sighed Oakley. ‘Just like he got Gordon Noble off last year.’

  Butterworth glowered. ‘Noble! I spent weeks on that case, only to see the bastard go free. I still think Paxton nobbled the jury.’

  Oakley didn’t. Paxton seemed altogether too sure of his own skills to resort to anything illegal. He had simply given the jury reasonable doubts about Noble’s guilt, and that was that.

  ‘Bloody Noble!’ muttered Butterworth. ‘Still, we’ll have him sooner or later. He won’t stay clean for long. Nor will Brown – because he is going to walk today.’

  He was right: the jury returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’. With only circumstantial evidence placing Brown at the scene of the crime – and suspicions that Mrs Harris’ pension had been planted on Brown by overzealous police officers – the defendant was free.

  ‘Can’t win ’em all,’ taunted Paxton as he gathered up his folders. ‘Better luck next time.’

  ‘There ought to be a law against gloating,’ said Oakley to the prosecution barrister, S
imon Ingram, as he watched Paxton strut away. He wondered how the man’s suit could look so elegant after a day in a humid, stuffy courtroom. Oakley himself felt sticky and soiled, although the sensation had as much to do with the proximity of Brown as it had the heat of the building.

  ‘What goes around, comes around,’ said Ingram, dislike clear in his voice. ‘Unfortunately, Paxton is blessed with the luck of the Devil. I haven’t seen him lose a case yet.’

  ‘What, never?’ asked Oakley.

  ‘No – and he’s had some tough ones.’ Ingram snapped his briefcase closed. ‘But no one wins forever. Good morning, gentlemen. The next time you bring me a villain, perhaps you would remember to provide some decent evidence as well.’

  ‘The evidence was good,’ muttered Butterworth resentfully. ‘Brown was in Dean Lane when the old lady was mugged, and her pension was in his pocket. What more does he want? Well, maybe Brown will mug Paxton’s mother next time. That’ll give the smarmy git something to think about!’

  I first heard James’ name mentioned at New Bridewell when DI Oakley and DS Butterworth lost the Brown case. In the following months, many more villains were freed thanks to his quick brain and clever words, and although I was tempted to mention casually that he and I had been at school together, I had the good sense to hold my tongue. And thank God I did, considering the way things turned out.

  October

  New Bridewell’s CID had so much work that Oakley was often obliged to beg the uniform branch for help with routine surveillance. Overtime was inevitable rather than optional for his detectives, and the teacher who had been delighted to move in with him six months earlier had moved out, declaring she wanted a relationship with someone who would be home at least one evening a week. Oakley knew his life was a mess when he didn’t find her letter until three days after she’d gone.

  The current reason for Oakley’s lack of a personal life was Gordon Noble, a vicious thug with fingers in many illegal pies. Noble had previous convictions for robbery and aggravated burglary – including a time when he had almost severed a security guard’s arm with a hatchet. During the previous decade he had eliminated his competitors to become a major player in Bristol’s criminal underworld. Although now wealthy, he refused to sit back and supervise his underlings, such as his two heavy-set ‘enforcers’ – Justin Castle and Mike Gray. Instead, he continued to lead his operation from the front, actively participating in a variety of crimes. Yet, despite being caught several times, he remained free, thanks to James Paxton’s courtroom skills.