Purple Death

by Brian L. Porter

  She'd been a cool customer had Tracy, and she'd wanted to `do' Tolliver as well, but the man had insisted on doing that one himself. The old judge knew him of course, and welcomed him into his house without realising that he was about to die. The man had waited until DeVere had gone to the shops before presenting himself at the house and had then easily convinced the old judge to share a drink with him, and had offered Tolliver a drink of his own `special reserve' scotch whisky that he carried in a hip flask in case he needed a shot of the stuff. As he poured it into two whisky tumblers it had been easy to slip four of his specially prepared aconite capsules into the judge's drink. They dissolved quickly, though the aconite would take some time to enter the judge's bloodstream and begin its deadly work. It had been the last drink the judge ever took. The man was long gone by the time the poison took effect soon after DeVere had returned.

  His reminiscences over for the time being, he returned to the present. Not only had he almost completed what he'd set out to do, but sooner or later the police would manage to work it all out, or at least enough to bring them closer to him than he would find comfortable. He couldn't allow that to happen of course. He'd come too far to be caught, had waited and planned too long to exact revenge on those whose stupidity and lies, deceit and duplicity had led to the eventual mental break down and the death of his beloved Elizabeth.

  He allowed his mind to stray again for a few minutes, remembering the times he'd spent in the arms of the only woman he'd ever truly loved. His mind left the present and became a window to the past as the recollections of another time flooded his thoughts. He'd entered her life when she being ridiculed by the press, her neighbours and work colleagues, all of whom thought she'd gone too far in trying to ensure that her husband's murderer was brought to justice. Nobody had understood her properly, at least not until he arrived on the scene. Even the local press reporter who should have been more sympathetic to her story had eventually walked away, the arrogant sod! Now the police had him squirreled away somewhere for his own safety while he presumable filled their heads with his own twisted version of the story concerning Elizabeth. Ah, Elizabeth. He thought of the long days and nights together, the passion of her love-making and the warm afterglow as he'd lain in her bed, her head gently resting on his shoulder as she drifted off into a peaceful sleep. Then of course the ridicule had begun, and Elizabeth had begun to change. She'd become twisted and bitter at the world, but never with him. She knew he believed in her and in the righteousness of her campaign against those who'd wronged her, and her husband. He'd promised her that if anything happened to her he would never rest until those she felt responsible for her husband's death, and for her subsequent torment were punished.

  It was a promise that had taken him a long time to fulfil, as he'd progressed in his career and made a good a life for himself, while waiting and planning, always planning. Eventually the time had come when he felt confident in putting his plan into operation. Some of those involved in the original case were dead of course, but that didn't matter, they had families, and he'd destroy them the way their fathers or grandfathers had destroyed his beautiful Elizabeth.

  Now, all that was left was to dispose of Cahill, the last of the mockers, the doubters, but first of course he had to find out where the police, or Detective Inspector Connor to be precise, had hidden the old man.

  The fact that his own mind had gone down exactly the same road to madness as his once-beloved Elizabeth's had never once entered his head, and was highly unlikely to do so as he studiously began working on the problem of locating the unfortunate final target for his wrath.

  The River Gives up its Dead

  Connor and Clay breezed back into the station and made their way straight to Connor's office without speaking to a soul. They barely acknowledged the “hellos” or the “good mornings” that emanated from various officers as they passed through the room. During the drive back from the late Judge Tolliver's house Connor had filled Lucy Clay in on his conversation with Roger Cahill. The two of them now eagerly awaited the report that they hoped to receive from Harry Drew who was still where they'd left him, working behind closed doors in Connor's office. It was a novel experience for Sean Connor to have to knock on the door of his own office and to have it opened from within by a junior officer.

  “Well Harry? Any luck” he asked the young detective.

  “I did as you asked, Sir, and accessed the computer files for the original Prentice investigation. Unfortunately they were incomplete in as much as the age of the case meant that only the barest of details were recorded on the file. Witness statements, interview records and the names of every officer who was involved in that investigation are still in existence but I had to go to the central archives to obtain them. This is the full case file.”

  He pointed to an extremely large brown cardboard box on the floor beside the desk that bulged at its seams. Connor looked aghast at the mounds of papers that Drew had so far extricated from the box and which were now positioned in obvious piles of varying meaning on his desktop.

  “Go on Harry, tell me if you've come up with anything yet.”

  “I'm afraid not. All the witness statements are present and correct but they make no reference to what you're looking for. The individual officers who took the statements are there of course but there's no complete dossier on the others. All of the senior officers who were involved at the time have now either retired or died. Judging from what you told me earlier you wouldn't be looking for them anyway, would you, Sir?”

  “No Harry, I wouldn't. Look, you're doing a great job, keep at it, don't give up, there's a good chap.”

  “I won't give up. There's a lot of paper here but some of it is easily discarded as being irrelevant to what you need. It'll still take some time though, maybe a day or two to sift through everything.”

  “Right then. The sergeant and I are going to grab a quick lunch, then we'll be back to check on your progress. Have you eaten yet?”

  “I had a sandwich a while ago. I'm fine thanks.”

  As Connor and Clay ate a frugal lunch and sipped hot coffee in the police canteen they were joined by D.C.I. Lewis. Their boss seemed to have softened his attitude since his earlier rebuke to Connor about keeping him in the dark over the matter of the safe house.

  “Well Sean, how's it going? Any progress?”

  “Not much Sir. Cahill was able to give us plenty of background information on McLean, but nothing that would help us in trying to track him down. Most of his intelligence relates to the McLean of thirty years ago, and is well out of date.”

  “Yes, of course, it would be wouldn't it? Well, never mind Sean, I'm sure something will turn up soon, you mark my words.”

  “Thank you Sir, I'm sure it will too,” Connor replied as Lewis rose from his chair and made his way from the canteen, presumably heading back to his office.

  “He's mellowed a bit, Boss,” said Clay.

  “No-one can be angry for ever Lucy. Lewis is under pressure to get results so he's allowed to vent his spleen from time to time.”

  “He's been on the force a long time hasn't he Sir?”

  “Yes he has. He'll be retiring in a year or so, or at least that's what I've been led to believe, so he won't want to go out with an unsolved murder case on his record will he? He must have been on the force for over thirty five years by now and he's seen a lot of comings and goings over the years.”

  Their lunch concluded, the two walked back to Connor's office where Drew was still employed in going through the reams of paperwork that lay strewn across Connor's desk. Leaving him to it, Connor and Clay moved into the main office section of the incident room where ten officers were still hard at work collating and checking every piece of information on the case in the hope of finding something of help in tracking down the elusive McLean. The only news so far that day had been of a neutral variety. It would take at least three or four days to recreate the deleted files from Forbes's computer.

  As they moved from
one to another of the officers Connor was suddenly hailed from one corner of the room. Sergeant Gareth Jones was waving a piece of paper in his hand as Connor approached.

  “What is it Sergeant?” asked Connor as he approached the Sergeant's desk.

  “This has just come in Sir. It's an e-mail response to the call we put out to all forces to be on the lookout for McLean.”

  “You've found him?” asked Lucy Clay, unable to disguise the excitement in her voice.

  “Well, yes we have,” said Jones, “but I don't think you're going to like it.”

  “Go on Sergeant,” said Connor, a sinking feeling appearing in his stomach.

  “It's from the City of London Police. Apparently a body was fished out of the Thames three months ago. It was in a pretty bad state of decomposition, having been in the water for an estimated month or so but there was evidence of the man having been shot twice, with a high powered rifle. There was no identification on the body, which was fully clothed, but here's the thing Sir. When you gave us the description of McLean to circulate, it included reference to a tattoo on his right forearm?”

  “That's right. A sword with a pen running through it.”

  “The pen is mightier than the sword, a good one for a reporter” said Clay.

  “Well Sir,” Jones continued, “when the City boys saw our request a Sergeant Musgrave put two and two together and called me right away. This e-mail is from him and shows the tattoo from the arm of the man in the river.”

  Connor grabbed the piece of paper in the sergeant's hand and peered intently at it for a minute. When he spoke again, the anger and frustration in his voice was heard through the length and breadth of the incident room.

  “I knew it; I just bloody well knew it! That bastard has fooled us again!”

  “Sir?” was all Lucy Clay could say as she saw the rage building in her boss's expression.

  “We thought Andrew Forbes was the first victim didn't we? Well, I think we were bloody wrong, just as the killer intended us to be. I'm guessing that he killed McLean a long time ago, knowing that he could then use his identity to fool everybody and leave us a false trail leading to a dead man, and d'you know what Sergeant? We damned well fell for it, hook line and bloody sinker!”

  “But he was shot, Sir. There was no aconite present in the body, was there, Gareth”? asked Clay.

  “None reported in the autopsy,” said Jones.

  “Of course there wasn't,” Connor snapped. “If there had been and the body had been found sooner there'd have been a chance we'd have been on to him earlier. This way, the body stayed unidentified for months and we've just got lucky in identifying the remains. He probably hoped the body would drift downriver and end up in the sea, and then we'd never have found it, and would have gone on searching for McLean for ever and a day.”

  “Excuse me Mr Connor, but there's more.” This was Sergeant Jones once again.

  “Go on Sergeant, you might as well ruin what's left of my day completely.”

  “It's the ballistics analysis. The other day a woman's body was washed up on the banks of the Thames, just inside the City police's jurisdiction. The River police picked her out of the water and she'd been shot too, also with a high powered rifle. Now here's the funny part. When the bullet taken from her was analysed it cross referred straight away to the ones taken from the male body that we now assume to be McLean. The woman has been identified, though they had to do it from fingerprints and dental records as the bullet used was a high velocity soft tipped one that exploded on contact and took her face apart. Her name was Tracy Willis and she'd only been out of prison for a couple of months after doing a ten year stretch for manslaughter.”

  Jones fell silent and waited for the D.I. to respond. When he did Connor had a knowing look on his face, though that look was mixed with one of frustration.

  “Sergeant, I think we've just found out what happened to The Chocolate Woman. That's why we haven't been able to trace her and why she hasn't been active since the last killing. He used her to do his dirty work and then disposed of her like a piece of junk. He shot her in the face so that we wouldn't be able to link her to the description we received from the hotel.”

  “D'you really think it's her?” Clay asked her boss.

  “I'm sure it is Lucy. I told you this bastard was clever. He must have recruited her when she left prison, unless he knew her already, and promised her something in return for helping him. That's why she was so hard for us to trace. She had no connection at all with any of the victims as far as we know so we'd never link her to the killings unless we got very lucky.”

  Connor was as yet in the dark about Tracy's connection with Sam Gabriel and Arminder Patel, and so was still working on the theory that the victims were all connected to the Prentice case. So, just when he'd thought that his case was coming together at last the trapdoor had been pulled from beneath his feet and the investigation was back to square one, or, was it? Somehow, though his face was etched with disappointment, Connor knew that the solution to the case lay not in the murky waters of the River Thames, in the cold-room of the City mortuary or in the mind of the elderly Roger Cahill, but much closer to home; in his own office in fact, somewhere in the mountain of papers that Constable Harry Drew was wading through even at that moment.

  The Key

  The mound of paperwork on the left hand side of Connor's desk had grown considerably since they'd last visited Harry Drew. The height of that mound corresponded roughly with the decrease in the size of the one on the right side of the desk. Obviously Harry Drew was working to a system and a methodical one at that.

  “Anything for me yet, Harry?”

  “I'm afraid not Sir, but I'll get there eventually, I know I will.”

  “Listen Harry, I want you to change direction a bit. The files will tell us a lot, but they only concern the direct investigation of the case. They'll give us the forensics, the dates and times of the interviews of witnesses and suspects and who carried them out, and the commanding officer's report at the end. What they won't tell us is the one thing I really need to know, and I need to know it fast.”

  “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  “I'm not sure how you'll go about this Harry but I think you may have to go back to the computer for the information we require. I want to know the names, the ranks and the present locations if known, of every officer who was stationed at this police station at the time of the Prentice murder.”

  “Am I allowed to know why I'm looking for that information?”

  “Find it for me first young Harry, and then I'll tell you everything I know.”

  “Right Sir, leave it with me,” said Drew as he once again fired up the computer on Connor's desk. As Connor led Lucy Clay back out of the office, allowing Drew to work in peace he turned and spoke to the man at the desk.

  “And Harry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Remember what I said. Only myself or Sergeant Clay are allowed in that office and I don't care who you have to upset in order to enforce that order; understand?”

  “Perfectly Sir.”

  “You know something I don't, don't you?” Clay asked him two minutes later as they sat opposite each other at one of the spare desks in the incident room.

  “Maybe Sergeant, and then again maybe not. When I'm sure one way or the other I'll let you know but for the moment I want to play my cards very close to my chest. I'm nursing a suspicion based on what Cahill told me the other day as we were leaving him, remember?”

  “Right,” said Clay in comprehension of her boss's thinking. “I'll say no more until you're ready.”

  The sergeant had an idea where Connor was going with his theory, but she also knew that to voice it at this stage would be too much for her to expect from him. When and if he had the confirmation he required he'd make his move, and Lucy Clay would be with him by his side as always. She looked up at the clock on the wall and watched the second hand as it ticked its way around the face of the timepiece.
Each second seemed to last an eternity and the minute hand appeared to be on a go-slow, and in such a fashion she sat and passed the next ten minutes, wondering when Connor would rouse himself from the almost trance-like fugue he'd fallen into. Lucy was too good and too experienced a sergeant to interrupt her boss when she knew him to be deep in thought so for now she just sat there, watching the interminable seconds ticking by, and she waited.

  Eventually, Connor roused himself, and he stared at his sergeant intently before speaking.

  “If I'm right Lucy, then the solution to this damned case is within our grasp. If on the other hand I'm wrong and we move too soon, then my career, yours and possibly every officer who's worked closely with us on this case could be in serious danger of evaporating before our very eyes.”

  “Do you want to share your theory with me now then?”

  “I'll tell you as much as I dare for the moment, and then the rest if it's confirmed, as I suspect it will be by Harry Drew. He's the one who holds the key to cracking this case now Lucy, believe me, but I can't tell him exactly what to look for. He has to find it by himself because if I'm wrong then at least the reasons for me being wrong will have some independent back-up and credibility.”

  “It's not like you to be this mysterious.”

  “I know Lucy, but listen. Do you remember when we first spoke to Roger Cahill, the elder one I mean?”

  Lucy nodded and stayed silent, waiting for Connor to continue.

  “We were so wrapped up in his story concerning McLean and his involvement with the Prentice widow that we both overlooked one small sentence in his statement. That was the thing that came back to haunt me, the thing that kept nagging at me for days until I could recall where I was when I'd heard it and what it was I'd heard. He told us that after Elizabeth Prentice had ended her relationship with McLean she began dating a police officer! If I'm right Lucy, that police officer was probably a young constable at the time, possibly one who'd been involved in making house to house inquiries during the investigation rather than someone directly involved in it. I think that in the course of his daily beat patrols he met Mrs Prentice and that they eventually became lovers. He's the one who became bitter and twisted and ended up with the vendetta against all of those who'd slighted Elizabeth Prentice, and that probably included her ex-lover Sandy McLean. It's always bugged me throughout this case that the killer always managed to be one step ahead of us, as if he knew exactly what we were doing and when we were doing it. Now I have a good idea how and why.”