The Murder House

by Simon Beaufort

  After the first couple had ticked past, I started to panic. What if someone arrived and caught me with the body? But it was late – after ten – so it was unlikely that anyone would come now. Then I thought: what if James had told Yorke that he was meeting a policewoman named Helen Anderson, who would plant evidence to free him because he could control her?

  I felt near tears again, and forced them away – I had to concentrate. What I did tonight would determine the rest of my life – and perhaps even whether I lived at all, if Yorke’s friends were involved. I considered the last question rationally and concluded that James wouldn’t have told Yorke my name: a bent copper would be a valuable commodity in his line of work, and he wouldn’t want to share such a prize. He’d keep me for himself, so that I’d always be there to foul the cases he wanted to win.

  I glanced at my watch, appalled to see that only six minutes had passed. Then another thought occurred: what if someone else was in the house – someone who’d watched me murder a man in cold blood? I’d have to check. It wasn’t a big house, and it would kill some time anyway. A distant part of my mind noted that I would never feel the same way about that particular phrase again.

  I went to the kitchen first, tiptoeing. It was empty. I picked up a tea towel, and used it to open the cupboard under the stairs. Then I checked the back door, which led to a dismal little concrete yard overlooked by neighbouring houses. No one was in it, and anyway, the door had been bolted from the inside. There was no back way into the house – a garage occupied the space between number nine and number eleven, so there was no side path, while the gardens of the adjoining houses ran along the back.

  The upstairs loomed dark and sinister, lit only by the toxic ochre glow from the street lamps outside. I was suddenly afraid again. I pulled out my nightstick.

  I began to climb, my heart thudding painfully. My mouth started to water, as it always does when I’m about to be sick. I stopped and took some deep breaths. My DNA would be found for certain if I vomited everywhere. I started to walk again, hoping that the movement would distract my queasy stomach.

  There was a tiny bathroom at the top of the stairs. No one was in that. It was next to a bedroom, where I opened the wardrobe and even peered under the bed, but the room was empty. The door to the second bedroom was closed. Was someone hiding there, waiting for me to go before dialling 999? What was I going to do if there was? Brain them, like James? Ask them to forget what they’d seen? Or put up my hands and surrender? Perhaps I should just leave while I still could. The chances were that I hadn’t been recognized.

  Against my better judgement, I put the tea towel over the handle and began to turn it, wincing as it squeaked. I pushed the door open bit by bit, revealing the darkness within. At first I saw nothing. And then my eye caught the figure standing by the wardrobe.

  In a different part of the city, Oakley was standing in the hospital, staring at a diminutive figure that lay surrounded by wires, cables and plastic tubes. A monitor flashed to one side, and even the scented disinfectant couldn’t disguise the stench of encroaching death. Emma Vinson, eighty-two years old, and the defiant, courageous defender of her home, was losing her grip on life.

  She’d been in hospital since the Yorke gang had left her unconscious four weeks before. At first, the doctors thought she wouldn’t last the night, but she’d held on doggedly, and a week previously had rallied enough to give Oakley a few small scraps of information. But it had been a vicious attack, and shock was taking its toll. Her cheeks were sunken, her face was grey, and what had once been a fine head of zinc-coloured hair was greasy and lustreless. Oakley was more than sorry. He’d come to know the feisty old woman through her family, friends and neighbours, and joined them in admiring her tenacity and inner strength.

  Her eyelids flickered briefly, and he moved to the side of the bed, ready to push the call button. He was surprised when she recognized him.

  ‘Still here?’ she whispered. ‘Don’t you have a home to go to? A wife? Children?’

  ‘It’s late,’ he replied softly. ‘You should sleep.’

  ‘I’ve been sleeping all day. And you didn’t answer my question.’

  He smiled. Dying she might be, but Emma Vinson still had a sharp mind. ‘I live alone.’

  ‘But there is someone.’ Her eyes were piercing. ‘There wasn’t, when we first talked, but there is now.’

  He didn’t hide his astonishment. ‘Nothing escapes you, does it! I met a nurse while I was waiting to see you once. We got talking …’

  ‘So something good came out of this? My inspector found himself a wife?’

  ‘Hardly!’ Three dates didn’t warrant booking the wedding bells, yet he was smitten with Catherine, and was looking forward to building their relationship.

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’ Her expression was distant. ‘The man who went to the safe had big ears. They stuck out through his stocking mask.’

  ‘Big ears?’ Oakley’s pulse quickened. Yorke had extremely prominent ears.

  ‘Big round ears. And the man who hit me had a Bedminster accent.’

  ‘That’s very precise.’ Oakley had lived in Bristol for twenty years, but he couldn’t isolate accents from different areas within the city.

  She smiled. ‘I taught linguistics at the university once. I wish my grandchildren were interested in linguistics. One was, for a while, but then he went off and became a lawyer. I suppose there’s more money in law.’ Her eyes began to close, but she gave a tired smile as someone appeared in the doorway. ‘Here’s someone who’ll sit with me. You go.’

  Oakley nodded at the man – one of many grandsons – who entered the room, and walked briskly away from the dying woman to where Catherine waited in the brightly cheerful canteen.

  I barely stopped myself from screaming, which was just as well, given that the ‘figure’ was a spare curtain hanging on the wardrobe door. The house was empty – James hadn’t wanted witnesses to his sordid business any more than I did. I walked back down the stairs and glanced at my watch. Fourteen minutes had passed since I had switched off the lights. Now I had to go home, making sure that I wasn’t seen or followed, especially if Yorke’s friends were watching the house.

  Stuffing the towel I’d used to open doors into my pocket, I stepped outside, grateful for the cool air against my face. I turned, pretending to lock the door, so that if anyone was watching they’d think I was leaving in all innocence. I glanced around as I strode away, looking for twitching curtains or silhouettes in back-lit windows, but there was nothing. Most houses were dark, and the few where lights showed had their curtains drawn.

  I looked into the cars I passed, too, to see if any might contain hidden villains, but all were empty. I reached the end of the road, turned left, then left again, so that I was on the street parallel to The House. No one followed. I turned left a third time and then a fourth, so that I was back in Orchard Street.

  My legs faltered, and for a moment I thought my courage would fail, but I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other until I’d passed number nine and reached the end of the road a second time. I passed no one and saw no one. I was safe. I began to walk home.

  There was a pub on Cornwallis Crescent, which was about three streets from Orchard, and a man came out of it as I passed. His attention was on a yappy little dog, which had apparently misbehaved itself inside, and he didn’t give me the briefest glance, although the dog barked its head off. Perhaps it could smell what I’d done.

  I reached home after several more detours, even ducking into someone’s garden for a while. Gratefully, I inserted the key into my front door and closed it behind me. Then I only just made it to the loo before the French beer reappeared. I retched until my stomach hurt. And then I retched some more.

  When I was done, I took off everything I was wearing – plastic mac, headscarf and shoes included – and shoved them in a black dustbin liner with the tea towel. Then I dived into the shower, putting it on as hot as I could stand. I stood there for
a long time, crying and shivering. Eventually the hot water ran out, so I switched it off. I still felt filthy.

  I wrapped myself in my favourite dressing gown and switched on the telly, wanting voices in the house. It was the news, so I changed the channel, even though I knew it was far too soon for James’ body to have been found.

  Inevitably, I began to go over the evening’s events in my mind. Could I be sure that James hadn’t mentioned me to Yorke? Was someone watching my house right now? I snapped off the lights and went to look out of the window. It all looked quite normal, with my neighbours’ cars parked outside. I wondered whether I should have a medicinal drink, but even the thought of alcohol made my stomach churn. I told myself it was going to be all right. Then I told myself that it really hadn’t happened, and that my imagination had run away with me. But there was the dustbin liner in the hall, containing my murdering clothes.

  Overcome with exhaustion, I fell into a sort of drowse. When I awoke, two things occurred to me. The first was that there was a subtitled film on the telly, because the room was full of what sounded to be Hindi. The second was that all my careful planning had been for nothing, because James had phoned me half an hour before I killed him. The police would not take long to discover this, and then they’d be knocking at my door.

  Wednesday, 1 August

  I was in a daze at work the following day. I couldn’t believe I was even there. Murderers aren’t supposed to go about their daily business as though nothing had happened. Or are they? I listened to Wright summarize what was going on in the division, which didn’t include James’ murder, but did include that Oakley and Evans were going to remand court the next day to request that Yorke be held in custody until his case came to trial.

  Afterwards, Wright assigned me to traffic duty, directing cars and lorries at a busy junction in Broadmead where the lights had broken. The workmen promised they’d have it fixed within an hour, and weren’t apologetic when it took them three. I didn’t really care, grateful to have something to take my mind off the horrors of the night before. I made a lot of mistakes, though, and more than one motorist shouted abuse at me. Still, I managed to get through the morning.

  There was a report of a body on my radio at twenty to one. My stomach clenched painfully, and my senses began to reel. This was it! But it wasn’t. The body belonged to an elderly woman who hadn’t been seen for a couple of days, and concerned neighbours had peered through the windows to spot her dead in her armchair. I heard no more about it.

  The afternoon was spent in Southville. A pensioner who’d had her purse stolen made me some tea, and I felt wretched when she expressed the wish that there were more officers like me. An Indian-run corner shop had had a window smashed. Some washing had been removed from a line in someone’s garden. And so on. I could have written the details in my sleep, as I’d recorded these crimes many times before. The only thing that changed were the faces of the victims and, occasionally, those of the culprits.

  I walked back to New Bridewell, entered the details on the computer, and lurked in the locker room until it was time to go home. A revving engine in the car park made me peer out of the window to see a council dumpster emptying the station’s waste into its cavernous maw. With it went my murdering clothes. There’d been no point finding anywhere clever to dump them, when it was only a matter of time before the phone call pointed the CID in my direction. Still, the clothes had gone now. And if I hired a clever lawyer, then perhaps even the phone call wouldn’t be enough to convict me.

  SEVEN

  That evening the numbing shock wore off and I came out of my daze. In my five-plus years I’d dealt with two ‘murderers’ – or rather, because I was female, I’d been detailed to sit with them while they were questioned. Both were jittery, terrified women who couldn’t believe what they’d done, and were so overwhelmed by remorse that they didn’t care what happened to them. In both cases, intolerable husbands and alcohol had been involved. I couldn’t claim either of those: James and I had not spent years in an abusive relationship, and one bottle of weak beer was hardly going to drive me wild.

  I sat on the sofa with my legs tucked under me, wondering what Wright would say when he learned that I had calmly gone to work the day after killing a man. ‘She came in here as though nothing had happened. Talk about callous!’

  But I wasn’t callous, and I hadn’t gone to work as though nothing had happened. I was only too aware that something had happened, and it plagued my every conscious moment. I felt as though I was standing at the edge of a great black chasm, and that if I so much as blinked I’d fall down it. Anyone who’s had some really bad news will know the feeling I mean.

  I went over the horrible events in my mind yet again. How much evidence would they really have, other than the phone call? I’d been very careful, and unless a witness came forward who’d seen me, there was no way anyone could prove I’d been at Orchard Street. Then my stomach did a painful flip-flop, which almost had me throwing up on the carpet. I went cold all over, and there was an unpleasant buzzing sensation in my head. I suddenly realized that I’d left the murder weapon at the scene. The purple rock would have my fingerprints all over it!

  I racked my brains, desperately trying to recall what I’d done with the thing. I didn’t remember seeing it when I had thought at the time about what I had touched. Had I left it by the body? Had I taken it with me, along with the tea towel? But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t bring it to mind. I supposed I must’ve dropped it after I’d hit James. Or had the cool, rational part of my mind – the part that had told me to use a cloth to open doors – also made me dispose of the rock? But the truth was that I simply couldn’t remember.

  I sagged. My fingerprints on the murder weapon and the phone call were more than enough to implicate me. With a sick resignation, I saw it would be best to go to Oakley straight away, and tell him the whole sordid story. He would arrest me, of course, but at least he would make sure everything was done properly, and I knew he’d treat me fairly.

  But I didn’t get dressed and stride to New Bridewell to make my confession. I sat staring at the blank television screen. Perhaps I’d do it tomorrow.

  Thursday, 2 August

  Oakley and Evans spent all morning at remand court. It should have been straightforward, with the seriousness of the charges and Yorke’s previous convictions counting against him. But with Paxton working for the defence, nothing could be taken for granted.

  The courtroom was full – Yorke had plenty of friends and family to support him. There was his brother, Michael, looking like an overgrown public schoolboy with his dark floppy hair, summer blazer and loose white trousers, and his chief henchman, Dave Randal, a thick-set man with no neck, a shaven head and the kind of nose that had been hit too many times in brawls. Oakley was sorry he hadn’t managed to nab them too, as he was sure Michael had helped to collect the valuables while Randal had dealt with the victims.

  He looked at the spectators. There were several high-ranking villains, all wearing smart suits and brandishing mobile phones. There were a couple of respectable middle-aged women whose charities had benefited from Yorke’s munificence, and there were men Oakley had seen playing golf at Bristol’s most exclusive clubs. Yorke was a gutter thug no longer: his wealth, however obtained, had launched him into outward respectability.

  There was a murmur of consternation when the hearing was postponed because Paxton hadn’t arrived, and Yorke grimaced when he was led back to the cells. By one o’clock, Paxton still hadn’t appeared, and a breathless junior from Urvine and Brotherton respectfully requested that the hearing be postponed. The expression of annoyance on the magistrates’ faces was mirrored in Yorke’s, and Oakley watched him give the junior a piece of his mind. The hearing was duly postponed and Yorke remanded in custody until the following Monday, much to his outraged indignation.

  ‘Odd,’ murmured Evans. ‘Paxton doesn’t seem like the kind of man to forget a wealthy client.’

  ‘Tha
t’s what Yorke thinks,’ said Oakley, amused. ‘Look at him! He’s furious that his expensive lawyer doesn’t think him worth a few minutes in court. It was worth wasting a morning just to see the bastard inconvenienced.’

  I saw Oakley several times that day, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him, let alone tell him I was a murderer. No one can know what it’s like working in a police station when you’ve committed a terrible crime. It’s as if the building is bearing down on you, threatening to suffocate you, and everyone is looking at you accusingly. It was hard not to feel I was going mad.

  I’d had to deal with a distressing case, too. The body of a teenager had been found in the river, and Paul Franklin and I were detailed to investigate. The boy’s name was Shane King, and he’d been fourteen. The police surgeon said that he’d probably got trapped in the mud that lined the Avon, and had drowned when the tide came in. Footprints higher up the bank and some scraps of rope indicated that friends had probably tried to help him, but the mud was thick and the water more powerful than they.

  Shane’s death had been late Tuesday or early Wednesday, and I found myself wondering whether he’d died before or after James. It was a gruesome thing to be pondering, but when you’ve killed someone such considerations play a large part in your thoughts.

  Anyway, Shane had been in the river for two days, disguised by the grey-brown mud and unmissed by his family. Although his mother wept when we broke the news, she couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him. She thought it was Tuesday, because that was when she got her benefits and he’d been after her money. Shane’s father was unknown, and his half-brothers and sisters seemed indifferent to his fate, although they all perked up when the mother asked whether she’d be able to claim compensation for her loss.