The Murder House

by Simon Beaufort

  I blinked, bemused. ‘I thought he told you about that at school.’

  ‘He did – after he’d been arrested for shoplifting. He thought criminal behaviour might be in his genes, and told me why.’

  I was getting confused. ‘Why should the business with his dad have anything to do with me, our one-night stand, and Noble?’

  ‘He was being a bastard, of course. He knew I liked you and he used it to get something he wanted – namely me never to say anything about his villainous sire. If I did, he said he’d put about the tale you slept around. He knew that would hurt me because … well, I was falling in love with you, you see?’

  ‘You didn’t kill him, did you?’ I tried to laugh, but the sound that emerged was about as far from humour as you can get. Colin was right: James was a bastard.

  ‘I almost wish I had, but I was at a conference at the time.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ I said lightly. ‘But please don’t mention this to Oakley. I’m not kidding – I will lose my job.’

  ‘I have to, Helen. He’ll find out anyway, and then we’ll both be in trouble. He’ll find out that James stole files from you, too, including the one that saw Noble walk free, so if you haven’t already confessed, I recommend you do it soon.’

  ‘James told you that, too?’ I gulped. Damn him! How many other people had he blabbed to?

  ‘He did, although he told me how upset you were, so I’ve never mentioned it before. But I’m glad it’s in the open at last. It’ll be a clean start for both of us, with no more secrets to hide. And Oakley will understand – he seems a reasonable sort of chap.’

  Yeah, right! Showed what he knew about the police, the sanctimonious little prick. This was the twenty-first century, not a novel in which honesty was rewarded with a happy ending.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ I said, not disguising the desperation in my voice. ‘I’ll be finished.’

  ‘Then that’s a chance you’ll have to take,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t lie, and neither should you. Not to the police. It wouldn’t be ethical.’

  Bugger ethics! I thought, standing up and lurching forward. With both hands I gave him a good solid shove in the chest. His eyes opened wide in shock, and then he was gone into the blackness. I crawled as close to the edge as I could and peered over it.

  He was there, his face just a foot from mine! He was scrabbling at the grass as he tried to pull himself back up again.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘I could have been killed!’

  Thank God for rocks. I rejected the first one I grabbed and seized a lump that fitted neatly into my hand. His face filled with terror, and I saw appalled understanding flash, just before the rock came down on the top of his head.

  He just slipped away. He didn’t scream or flail with his arms; he just vanished. I climbed down a few feet and peered over the edge. The cliffs were sheer there, and I could see rings of white where the surf crashed against their feet.

  It was late, and I was getting cold. I started the long walk back to my car.

  FIFTEEN

  Wednesday, 29 August

  Killing Colin was horrid. I’d been fond of him, and hoped that we’d have a future together. I was hurt to learn that he put honesty before my wellbeing, and his silence hadn’t been too much to ask, had it? As I stumbled back across the downs, the enormity of what I’d done began to hit me and I found myself weeping, huge, uncontrollable sobs. They threatened to overwhelm me and, when they reached a point where I was finding it difficult to breathe, I knew I had to pull myself together. I couldn’t walk along wailing like a banshee or someone would call the police.

  I eventually reached the car park. It was well past eleven, and only three cars were left, one of which was mine. I found a place to hide, out of a wind that had actually grown quite bitter – or perhaps it just felt cold because I couldn’t stop shivering – and settled down to make sure no one had seen me. I spotted a scrap of paper on the ground near my foot. A cinema ticket. I picked it up and kissed it. It was for the 7.30 p.m. showing of the latest James Bond in Weston-super-Mare. I hadn’t seen it, although Colin and I had planned to go together the next week. It would be my alibi.

  By the time I’d driven home the Colin incident already seemed unreal. Had it really happened, or was it just another nightmare? I realized I always did this after a murder – wondered whether I’d imagined it all. But, of course, I hadn’t, and Colin was dead. Coolly, I called his phone and left a message, telling him that I’d enjoyed the James Bond flick, but where had he been? Why hadn’t he met me at the cinema as we’d agreed?

  I phoned at one o’clock, too, managing to sound irritable, and asking him to call as soon as he got home. I tried again at one forty-five and said curtly that I was tired of waiting and was going to bed. I informed him I’d call in the morning. Maybe. I was pleased with the ‘maybe’, because it sounded as though I was cross enough not to shower him with concerned calls every few minutes through the night. As it would be established that Colin had died somewhere around nine o’clock, my irritation developing after midnight would clear me of suspicion.

  However, familiarity with murder made me over-confident, because it wasn’t until the following day that I realized that there would be marine experts who could probably pinpoint exactly where Colin had gone into the water. Then the police would find the plateau where we’d made love and there’d be fibres, hairs and bodily fluids all over the place. Still, there wasn’t much I could do about it now, and I could always say we’d been there the previous weekend. Nevertheless, I got rid of the clothes I’d worn, including my shoes. I shoved them in a bag and dumped them in one of the bins behind my local off-licence.

  Then I had the rest of the day to get through. I didn’t know what I was going to do as I’d planned to spend it with Colin. I phoned him again and made myself sound weary when I asked where the hell he was.

  I was in the garden with a book that afternoon when there was a knock at my front door. I wasn’t reading: I was imagining a scenario where Colin had agreed not to tell Oakley facts that could see me locked away for life.

  I opened the door and my stomach lurched when I saw Oakley. Dave Merrick was behind him. I wondered what they’d do if I slammed the door and made a dash for the back lane. Would they be able to catch me? I pulled myself together. They weren’t there to arrest me. How could they be? They didn’t know what I’d done – to Colin, Wright or James.

  ‘Colin didn’t come to see me this morning,’ Oakley was saying. ‘I don’t suppose he’s here, is he?’

  ‘No,’ I said crossly. ‘We were supposed to see the James Bond film last night but he didn’t show up. I suppose he went out with some of his work friends instead and crashed out at one of their places. I don’t mind, but he should’ve called me.’

  ‘OK,’ said Oakley pleasantly. ‘It was just a thought, and we were passing anyway. I suppose he’ll call us when he remembers, and I don’t expect there’s much more he can tell us. The important thing was the name of Paxton’s father, and he’s already told us that.’

  I wondered whether I should offer them a cup of tea. Policemen always appreciate tea when they’re working, and it seemed rude to keep them on the doorstep. But I didn’t want them in my house. I wanted them to go away – permanently. But manners got the better of prudence, and they followed me along the hall and to my sitting room, where the sun streamed through the branches of the apple tree outside, making dappled patterns on the carpet and the suitcase that stood packed and ready for my getaway.

  Oakley browsed my bookshelves while I made the tea, and Merrick flopped into a chair and closed his eyes, as though being with the inspector had worn him out.

  ‘How did Birmingham go?’ I called from the kitchen.

  ‘Not well,’ Oakley replied. ‘Pullen claimed he hasn’t had any contact with his family since the trial. However, the prison governor said he got plenty of letters from his son, and that Pullen replied to them. Paxton also visited. Pullen
lied. Perhaps he just couldn’t bring himself to cooperate with the police.’

  ‘Doesn’t he want his son’s killer caught then?’ I asked, a little indignantly.

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’

  I carried a tray with three mugs, milk and a teapot into the sitting room and set them on the table. I didn’t have any sugar so they’d have to do without. Merrick grimaced when he tasted his and looked around for the bowl, but apparently decided not to make a fuss.

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked. ‘Such as a connection between Pullen and Yorke?

  Oakley frowned. ‘How did you know there’d be one?’

  I hoped I hadn’t made a faux pas. The truth was that I hadn’t slept well the previous night so tiredness and strain were making me dull-witted. ‘Because of the anonymous note you pinned up, which linked the body in Orchard Street, which was Pullen’s son, to the Yorke gang.’

  ‘Oh.’ Oakley waved a dismissive hand. ‘Not that.’ He sat on the sofa and fiddled with the ticket stub that lay on the coffee table. Good. I wanted him to see that. ‘The connection is that Pullen employed security guards to protect his building sites, and that’s how Yorke started out – a security guard for Pullen. Yorke moved to Bristol at the same time as Mrs Paxton and James.’

  ‘The man with the monkey face!’ I exclaimed, remembering the ‘chauffeur’ who had sometimes collected James from school. And, I thought as something else clicked into place, the man who’d been with him on the train to Newcastle. The train where all my troubles started. I almost clapped a hand to my head when I remembered that the Bristol-to-Newcastle train stopped in Birmingham – James had been going to visit Pullen! I’d never seen Yorke that I knew of, but I was willing to bet I was right. I decided to look at his mug shot when I was next at the station.

  Oakley was staring at me. ‘Monkey face?’

  Obviously I couldn’t mention the train incident, or even allude to it, lest he started putting facts together.

  ‘There was a man who drove James around occasionally,’ I explained. ‘We figured he was Maureen’s lover, but perhaps he was just looking after the family while his boss was inside.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ said Oakley, nodding. ‘There’s no evidence that Yorke has anything to do with them now, of course, other than James taking his case, perhaps as a favour.’

  Wrong, I thought. Yorke had a good deal to do with James. An emotional link between them explained why James had been prepared to go to such lengths to get Yorke bail. I wished I could tell Oakley about the false confession James had asked me to plant, but I couldn’t.

  ‘James Bond,’ said Merrick, picking up the stub that Oakley had dropped back on the table. ‘Any good? I fancy seeing that.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said with a noncommittal shrug. ‘Plenty of car chases and gunfights.’ That was certainly a safe bet.

  ‘Is there a plot?’ asked Oakley.

  His Catherine probably wants to go, I thought, but he doesn’t seem like a Bond kind of man, so he’s wondering if he’ll be bored.

  ‘Not one that interfered with the cars and guns,’ I replied, hoping the current release hadn’t broken the mould and gone for intelligence.

  ‘Good,’ said Merrick with relish.

  Oakley went to stand at the window with his mug. The light made patterns on his blue shirt, and his trousers brushed against my suitcase. ‘The Tirana police have finally sent Kovac’s fingerprints.’

  ‘Did they match any in the house?’ I was sure they would, because the man had lived there for three weeks. Oakley’s reply astonished me.

  ‘Yes – on the tape and the black plastic. On the inside, where they couldn’t have got just from him pinching the stuff from the university. He’d have had to unfold the plastic and cut the tape for them to be where they were. There were others, of course, all over the house.’

  ‘Really?’ I felt myself gaping. I’d had the wrapping down to the Yorke gang. What was Kovac doing in the picture?

  ‘So it looks as if he’s our killer after all,’ said Merrick. ‘He was going to remove the body but ran out of time. Or perhaps he realized that lugging a corpse around wasn’t going to be easy and abandoned the idea. It explains why he left duff keys for the cleaner on Tuesday morning – he was going to come back and meet Paxton after she’d gone. Then he killed him there.’

  ‘You’ve solved the murder?’ I asked, stunned. Why hadn’t they mentioned it sooner?

  ‘We have other leads to follow first,’ said Oakley, although Merrick rolled his eyes. ‘The fingerprints alone aren’t enough to convict Kovac.’

  ‘But it’s looking good,’ put in Merrick stubbornly. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have an extradition treaty with Albania, so unless the lure of the university’s physics equipment becomes too great, Kovac stays free. But we’re nearly there, and we know one of two things happened. First, Paxton was meeting Kovac, perhaps to discuss patenting some aspect of his nanotechnology work; or second that Paxton was due to meet someone else, but found Kovac in the house instead.’

  ‘Or perhaps all this is coincidence, and there’s another explanation,’ countered Oakley.

  As was usual in such moments, I wanted to throttle him. Why couldn’t he just jump to a few wild conclusions like everyone else?

  ‘I can’t see what,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable. ‘Of course Paxton met Kovac at the house. Why else would he be there?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Merrick. ‘DI Davis was right. She had Kovac in the frame from the beginning.’

  Oakley shook his head. ‘Something about this solution doesn’t feel right. Perhaps I’m looking for logic where there may be none, but I believe that anonymous note – that the Yorke gang is involved. Especially if Randal’s partials may have been found at the scene.’

  Damn that note! I’d implicated Yorke when it had been Kovac all along!

  ‘Superintendent Taylor was never happy with the note,’ said Merrick, bless him. ‘He told us to ignore it, and he was right. Kovac is our killer. He probably killed Barry, too.’

  Was this it? Was I finally near the end of all my troubles? I didn’t see why not. After all, it had to conclude somewhere. Oakley finished his tea and set the cup on the table, but suddenly reached out to pluck something from my hair.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked, showing me a piece of grass that must have been there since Colin and I made love on Brean Down the previous evening. ‘Rolling in the hay? I thought you didn’t see Colin last night.’

  I laughed gamely and he walked away. Damn! Damn! Damn!

  Thursday, 30 August

  It was evening and Merrick sat in his car outside the Clifton bar, pretending to study a map as he watched people arrive. He had his mobile poised, ready to snap a shot if he saw the man who’d been with Paxton. Superintendent Taylor had dismissed the bar enquiry because Oakley had refused to say where the information had come from. But Oakley didn’t like loose ends, and felt it important that they establish the identity of the man. Merrick thought it a waste of time, but he’d gone along with his DI. He owed him that, at least, for being discreet and understanding.

  He gave up at half past nine and drove back to the station. He entered the reception area, and waved to the civilian on duty, signalling that she was to push the release button to let him in. She was taking details from a motorist, who’d been ordered to produce his driving licence, insurance, proof of ownership and MOT certificate at a police station. The man happened to glance around as the door snapped open, and Merrick forced himself to keep moving. It was the man who’d been with Paxton in the bar.

  Merrick collided with Oakley as the inspector was trotting up the stairs from the incident room. He blurted out that Paxton’s friend was actually in the station, and they dashed back to reception, but it was empty. They raced outside, just in time to see the taillights of a car flash before its driver turned towards the city centre.

  ‘Shit!’ shouted Merrick. ‘I should have grabbed him, not raced off to tell you
.’

  Oakley hurried back into the station and asked for the details the receptionist had just taken, to be sure of his facts before he told Merrick what he had already surmised. The name was there: Michael Yorke.

  ‘It’s just as well you didn’t demand to know what he was doing with Paxton that night,’ said Oakley thoughtfully. That’s not the way we should play this.’

  ‘Shit!’ muttered Merrick, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘Shit, indeed. How come you didn’t recognize him? I thought everyone knew Michael.’

  ‘I’ve only recently transferred here, remember? I don’t yet know all the local villains.’

  Oakley was unmollified. ‘But there are mug shots of him. You told me you’d checked them, and decided that no one in the Yorke clan was your man.’

  ‘I did,’ insisted Merrick. ‘Michael’s photo shows a spotty-faced youth with an adolescent pout and a crew cut. No one’s bothered to update it. Fuck it! I should have realized that he’d look different now. But where does this leave us? I thought we were happy with Kovac as our killer.’

  ‘I’m not. I knew there was something in that note.’

  ‘But Kovac bound the body and prepared to get rid of it.’

  ‘Randal’s fingerprints were found on the wrapping, too.’

  ‘Not necessarily – you yourself pointed out that the probability of the partials belonging to Randal is low. You can’t have it both ways, Guv.’

  ‘Maybe Kovac and Randal wrapped Paxton on Michael’s orders. Regardless, I can’t believe that Michael meeting Paxton a few hours before his death is innocent.’

  ‘What shall we do about it?’

  ‘I want to question Michael and Randal.’

  ‘You can’t, Guv. The Three Horsemen have forbidden it because of the Wright murder.’