by Norma Hanton
Cotton turned and put his hand on the door knob then turned back to his senior officer.
“If you don’t think I’m up to the case, sir, feel free to allocate it to someone else”
Without waiting for a reply he left the office and closed the door none too quietly.
One look at the girl’s body was enough for Cotton; he knew they were witnessing the work of the same killer.
There was no mistaking the figure of Maria Hernandez which lay in the bottom of the rowing boat dressed in a flowing white negligee with wilting flowers adorning her hair. Only half of her face, sliced clean down the centre, had been mutilated making identification slightly easier than it had been with the other body.
David Belford, age thirty five, had been walking his dog along the canal path when the animal had raised his hackles and charged into a group of bushes where he stayed barking and growling. Brutus wouldn’t heed his voice so Belford was forced to go in after him. He found the dog looking into a boat that was moored to the canal edge. It was just out of reach but by pulling on the mooring rope Belford pulled it closer. What he saw in the craft made him let go immediately and pick up his dog and run to the nearest telephone box.
When Cotton and Broom arrived, Mr Belford was huddled into a blanket shaking and shivering while he tried to tell the officers what he’d seen.
He told them how he’d found the body lying in the boat but the body had half its face missing, and at this point he vomited all over Broom’s shoes.
“We’ll get someone to take you home in a moment sir, but first are you up to answering just a couple more questions?” Cotton waited while Belford pulled the blanket closer round himself then nodded.
“Was there anyone around as you came along the path, anyone at all, in either direction?” Cotton watched his face. His eyes were closed as if he were trying to picture the scene. “Was there anyone out in a boat - or fishing on the bank - perhaps someone riding a bike – or anything?”
Belford opened his eyes, “No Inspector, nobody, just me and my dog.”
“Do you walk here every day sir?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Did you and the dog pass by here yesterday, and did the dog show any signs of distress?
“I walked this exact route yesterday with Brutus running free. He didn’t bark or growl. I even remember him going into these bushes.”
Belford seemed, Cotton thought, to be getting a grip now.
“Was there anything out of the ordinary yesterday?”
Belford frowned and after a short silence replied,
”Nothing I can remember, Inspector, nothing except a couple of kids playing on that bridge there. They were swinging on a piece of rope.” He pointed to a footbridge over the canal, up from the place where the boat had been moored. “I thought at the time it was bloody stupid to play in such a dangerous place. Little did I know, eh?” He stood up, “I’d really like to go home now, please. It’s been quite a shock believe me. How you people can ever get used to things like this I will never know. It’s beyond me.”
“We never do get used to it sir, we just have to learn to cope the best we can.” Cotton gave two officers instructions to drive Mr Belford home. “We may need to talk to you again, sir. I’m sorry, but it is necessary.”
Belford nodded, “Just give me a little time, Inspector, and I’ll be happy to help you in any way I can. Unfortunately, at this moment in time, I feel like shit, if you’ll pardon the expression, and I want to go home.”
As the car left, with the witness slouched in the back seat with Brutus at his feet, Cotton gave Broom instructions to find out all he could about Mr Bedford.
Post mortem results showed no clues to speak of. Maria, like the others, had been given drugs and was dead before the mutilation of her face. She’d not died in the boat, but had been carefully arranged there to look as if she were just sleeping. The door to door enquiries pulled nothing out of the hat. No strangers, no visitors, nothing, and Maria had not been at Mulberry Court long enough to have known Patrick Donovan.
Chapter Nineteen
“I want to go back to the university, Joe. I think we should interview some of the male students and find out who her mystery boyfriend was”, Cotton slumped in his chair, “Who knows we might have missed someone who can move this case on”.
“Boyfriend, guv, isn’t that impossible given the Miss Jameson scenario? Surely you mean ‘girlfriends’?”
“You’re forgetting something, Joe, the things we found in the book of poems, remember?”
“Of course, the condoms, I’d forgotten that. You could be right then. Are we going now?”
The quicker the better, we’ve nothing else to go on”, Cotton looked downcast, “Who knows, we might find another lead”.
Broom shook his head.
“I doubt it, guv, I doubt it very much”.
The tutor gathered the curious students into an empty classroom. As they waited to be interviewed the stood around in groups, the noise of their conversation growing louder and louder. It increased to such a level that the tutor from the art classroom next door stormed in.
“Will you lot please keep the noise down to a dull roar. It may have escaped you notice but some people are actually here to learn and they can’t hear a bloody word I’m saying”. He looked around the room. “What are you doing in here anyway, and why is there no tutor with you?”
“The police are questioning us, Mr Dodd, they want to ask us about the dead French piece”, the bespectacled youth grinned.
Broom was hidden from the tutors view by a tall, thin, young man. He watched and waited.
“That’s no way to speak of the dead, pea brain”, said tall and thin, “so keep your mouth shut”.
“Where are the police officers”, enquired Dodd.
“I’m right here, sir,” Broom stepped forward. “Apologies for the noise, but we do have a job to do”.
“I am sure you have, constable, but I also have a ‘job to do’ so try and keep the noise down”. At this he turned on his heels and left.
“Now I have your attention”, Broom grinned, “Did anyone here know Miss Hernandez personally, friend, girlfriend, lover, put it anyway you like, but if you knew her speak now”.
It was the youths with the spectacles that spoke first.
“Well, she certainly knew how to put it, mainly putting it about”, he sniggered.
“What’s your name, and what was your relationship to the deceased?” Broom dislike the disdainful look the boy gave him. “Did the two of you ever ‘put it about’ together?
The youth flushed crimson.
“No we certainly did not”, he squeaked, looking around the room, “She wasn’t my type”.
“Yer mean you weren’t her type, Brooksy, yer spotty oink, she wouldn’t look at yer twice”.
“And your name is?” Broom asked the denim clad man.
“Watkins – Darren Watkins, and before yer ask, no I didn’t sleep with her neither, but I know a couple of lads here that did”. Watkins turned to face a very boyish looking youth, “Don’t I Willy Wanker?”
“OK, so I had a one night stand, so what, she practically begged me to. But the following night she didn’t want to know me, she was too busy with Carl over there. Wasn’t she, Carl?”
Broom look at the tall, well-built student standing with his arms folded.
“Carl?” he raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“Dodds. OK. I did sleep with her a couple of times.”
“Did you ever visit the home of her employer at Mulberry Court?”
“OK. So we shagged on the Wilson’s bed, so what. That doesn’t mean I go around killing people.” He unfolded his arms and they hung by his side, fists clenched.
“We need to talk more, Carl, so if you’ll go with this officer down to the station I’ll be with you shortly”. He waved PC Smith over, “Make sure his parents are informed.” As Carl was led away Broom turned back to the others. “Watkins and Brook wait here”
, he pointed to chairs placed at a table, “And if anyone else would like to come forward, please do it now”.
The room was silent as the students looked around them to see who would step up next.
“Is there anyone else? Very well, you can all go for now. If you would like to talk to me just ring the station and ask for Sergeant Broom, or Detective Inspector Cotton.” He smiled at them, “Thank you for your time, gentlemen.”
Broom interviewed Watkins and Brook but got nothing more from them. Broom returned to the station.
“They knew nothing, guv; they’d only met the deceased at parties or in the pub. Davidson only went the once to Mulberry Court, he says Hernandez dropped him a couple of days later. Then a rumour started that Hernandez was seeing a woman old enough to be her mother, he never heard the woman’s name. He admits it riled him a bit at the time because it made him a laughing stock with his mates, but a week later he began seeing his current girlfriend.” Broom sighed, “He swears he knows nothing about Hernandez’s death or the others in Mulberry Close. He went there only that one time and that was months before the deaths”.
“Do you think he was telling the truth, Joe?”
“Yes I do, guv, he seems quite smitten by the girl he met the night Hernandez dumped him and, according to his mother, an engagement ring has been purchased”.
“Let him go”, Cotton rubbed his hands over his face, “It was worth a try, if only to find out what type of woman she was. She was no innocent, was she? It’s her poor parents I feel sorry for. They thought the sun shone out of her backside. What a let-down eh? Trouble is they are really nice people.”
“I don’t think any parents knows their child once they reach puberty”, Broom sighed, “You call them one morning and this surly, bedraggled, bone idle, alien emerges from its pit and eats its breakfast in silence. Is it all down to the hormones, or some kind of voodoo spell? Who knows, cos I don’t? Just think, guv, you’ve got all this to look forward to with your own little ‘uns one day, so make the most of the early years”.
Cotton didn’t reply.
Cotton interviewed Winifred Jameson again in the early morning.
Win had been removed to a safe house close to the station. The woman who’d given her heart to Maria had changed into the sad wreck who now sat before him. Her eyes were dull and lifeless, and she’d lost weight. She looked even more scared than she had on their last meeting.
“I just want to run through your statement again, Miss Jameson. You’d known Maria Hernandez since her arrival in Britain two years ago. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“How did you first meet her?”
“I met her when she first came to Uni. I was already there.”
“You’d been lovers for about eighteen months, is that right?”
“Yes. Are you thinking of arresting me for that now?
“No. What did you do when she disappeared?”
“I told you, I paid my greedy brother to speak to her employer for me. That hateful woman would have recognised my voice. I had telephoned Maria once before and that woman asked so many questions my money ran out in the telephone box. It was like she was Maria’s parent or something. She asked who I was and what I calling Maria for and did I not realise Maria was at work and wasn’t paid to sit chattering to her friends. I thought it was she that was preventing Maria from seeing me. It was part of her contract, actually written in it, that she would not see ‘boyfriends’ while in the employ of the Wilson’s. Can you believe it, in this day and age? Shackled to the upper classes that’s what she was. There should be a law against people like them.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Then I called every single person I could think of. I even called her mother pretending to be an old friend that was coming to France for a couple of days who would like to call on Maria. Her mother told me Maria was in England and had not contacted her for two weeks, but she would pass on my regards when Maria did phone her.”
“Then what did you do?”
Jameson lowered her head.
“What could I do? I’d tried everything. I just sat around with my finger up my bum waiting for you lot to find her. I knew in my heart she was dead. It’s hard to explain, but I could feel it. She would have called me. I know she would, if she’d been able to.”
The distraught woman started to cry.
“I loved her so much. We’d made such plans for the future. We would finish uni, fully qualified, and earn a packet, then get a house somewhere magical and spend the rest of our lives running barefoot on our very own beach or lying in hammocks outside our home.”
She looked up at Cotton, cheeks wet with tears.
“Such things that dreams are made of, eh!”
Chapter Twenty
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Woodward, but we noticed you were home and wondered if we could ask you a few more questions?”
“If you must,” Anna Woodward replied, “I’ve got nothing better to do as it happens.”
WPC Watson stood in the not so tidy sitting room and wondered why it didn’t look as clean and tidy as it had been on her last visit.
“Take a pew, anywhere you like it doesn’t bother me,” the woman seemed to be on a short fuse, her red hair looked uncombed and her face was free of make–up of any kind, making the lines of age more noticeable. She threw herself into a large armchair and lit a cigarette.
“Thank you,” said Watson, perching on the edge of a magazine littered sofa. “We were puzzled to see you at home; you did inform us that you’d be away for six weeks.”
“That’s right, but it all fell through, so here I am,” she laughed and ran a hand through the red tangle of hair. “I was supposed to go to America and show my designs to a top company, but they phoned to say they’d been told I was unreliable when it came to deadlines so they had gone elsewhere, and my services were no longer required.”
“So you came straight back here?”
“No, I went over to Belfast for a week to look up some old friends.”
“Could you give me their address?” Watson took out her notebook.
“What the hell for. What’s it got to do with you who I go to see?” She shot to her feet, “Are you telling me that I’m a suspect to those hideous murders just because I didn’t get the job in America?”
She started pacing the floor.
“We need to know where you go and who you see, Miss Woodward, simply to keep you safe. We usually find that the killer is someone close to the victim and whoever it is may be still lurking around here, who knows.”
“I’m sorry, you’re right of course, but stop calling me Miss Woodward for God’s sake, I’ve had enough of that lately, and put the kettle on I’m choking for a drink.”
Watson watched from the Formica clad kitchen as Anna swept magazines from the sofa and chairs and threw them into a box. She then ran a brush through her hair before sitting down and lighting another cigarette.
“I went to Belfast to see an ex-boyfriend, if you must know. He’s got a property he’s giving up and I had an idea about moving in to it. The lease on this place is almost up and I have to find somewhere cheaper until I get back on my feet,” she took the mug of coffee from Watson and raised it in silent thanks. “The truth is I seem to be out of favour on the London scene at the moment and need to try and get my designs accepted elsewhere,” she sipped the hot liquid and sighed. “If you really need to know, I’ve been having an affair with the boss of a well-known fashion house, who will remain anonymous, for two years, and now he got someone younger and dumped me, end of story. Trouble is he’s put the word around that I’m unreliable and a trouble maker, all because I thumped him on the nose and smashed up a couple of very expensive paintings belonging to him.” She laughed, “So you could say I’m up shit creek without a paddle because my ex wouldn’t entertain me either, sent me away with a flea in my ear because he’s getting married again soon and doesn’t want any trouble. Trouble seems to be my middle n
ame at the moment.” She laughed a harsh, brittle laugh and turned moist eyes to Al, “So, my dear Watson, is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“I can see you’ve had problems of your own but I wondered if you’ve thought of anything else about the dead girls that may be of help to us, visitors, boyfriends, anything?
Anna sat quietly and Al waited.
“All I can think of was the night I was woken by a squeaking noise. It only lasted a couple of seconds but it was annoying, a bit like a wheel that needs a drop of oil. Do you know what I mean?”
“When was that, Anna, the day the bodies were found, or after that?”
Watson’s hand shook as she waited for Anna to answer.
“I think it was a couple of days before the bodies were discovered. If you wait till I look through my file o fax I’ll be able to tell you.”
The ticking of the clock and the rustling of the pages were the only sounds in the room.
“Here it is,” Anna’s shriek made Al jump, “It had to have been four days before, that’s the only time I had free at that time. One day off to go to the doctors for a tetanus jab. I remember it now. The sound woke me at three fifteen in the morning and it took me a while to get over to sleep again, so I was pretty annoyed. But, like I said, it only lasted a few seconds and I just forgot about it.”
“Thanks for your help, Anna, and good luck on the job front.” Al Watson tried not to smile too broadly as Anna walked to the front door with her. “I’ll probably see you again; my boss will want to talk to you.”
“That’s OK, I’ve nothing better to do for now.”
Chapter Twenty One
Cotton was headed back to the station when he got the call. He drove to Mulberry Court where the body of a man had been found while work on the pond in the garden of flat one was being carried out. It seemed the pond had been drained away and the workmen, while in the process of removing the old liner, had discovered a piece of checked cloth sticking out of the ground and decided to dig it up before making the soil level again. As they pulled at the cloth a partly decomposed hand had risen from the soil making both men scream with fright.