The Murder Diaries_Seven Times Over

by David Carter

  Karen pulled a face and shook her head. Whispered, ‘Could be anyone, must be hundreds...’ as her voice tailed away.

  ‘Yeah, but this guy’s got a bigger grudge than the usual nutters.’

  She frowned and shook her head.

  ‘Beats me,’ he said, ‘there must be something.’

  He glanced into her face. Was there a hint of recognition there? She tried to speak. An otherworldly breath escaped her lips. She turned to the bedside table, pointed to a pad and a blue felt tip pen. There was ample writing on the pad: need loo, need water, terrible headache, another pillow, hungry. He placed the pad in front of her and the pen in her right hand. She was cack handed, he’d forgotten, took it from the right, slipped it into the left, she half smiled, began writing, slowly, shakily.

  H...

  Harris?’ he said.

  Shook her head. O...

  ‘Hooker?’

  Impatiently shook her head.

  He gave up trying to guess.

  L...I...D...A...Y.

  ‘Holiday, when I was on holiday?’

  Karen bobbed her head.

  Walter never took holidays. He hated going away. He hated leaving his station to come back to find other people sitting at his desk, other officers dealing with his cases, poking around, he hated missing the day to day things, tiny facts that could later build into a case, clues that once missed were gone forever, and you could miss so much in two long weeks. It took ages to get back up to speed afterwards. Holidays were for amateurs.

  The spring before last Mrs West had lost patience with him and ordered him away from the station for two whole weeks. She said he was tired, jaded, and not the Walter of old, all facts he hugely decried. Reluctantly he’d gone home where he’d sat alone in his house for forty-eight hours, before ringing her and pleading to be allowed back.

  She’d bluntly said: ‘You come back and you collect your cards.’

  Quite why he did what he did next he couldn’t explain, but he jumped a train to London, then the express commuter to Heathrow, and caught the first plane to Kingston. Had to pay through the nose for a stand by ticket and that annoyed him, he recalled that well enough. He hadn’t been back for twenty years and most of the people he knew were dead. His parents had been dead when he’d left the island as a nine-year-old, packed off all alone to go and see his aunt Mimosa in Brixton. He thought he was on a holiday treat back then, only to later discover he had a one-way ticket. He wouldn’t be going back. He’d never gone back, not permanently. His aunt Mimosa was his new mummy, the only thing he had in the whole world. She was dead now too.

  Throughout the ten-day stay he revisited all the haunts of his childhood. Reminiscing, seeing fleeting ghosts from his past, playing with his schoolboy pals in the fields and on the beach with Jackie Nurse. Jackie had later gone to the States and fallen in with the wrong crowd. Got busted for car theft, drug running, possessing an illegal weapon, he was now in the FSP, the Florida State Prison in Bradford County.

  And Wellworthy Griffiths, Welly, as everyone called him, Walter tried to find out what happened to Welly but no one knew. They just shrugged their shoulders and said ‘He’s gone away,’ as if he’d vanished. ‘He’s gone away,’ no one knew where, no one knew when, hadn’t been seen for years. No one seemed to care much either. Walter wondered what happened to his friend, the tall skinny happy kid who would bowl at him all day long, as Walter frantically tried to copy the main man, Everton Weekes, Sir Everton DeCourcy Weekes, to give him his full title, the greatest batsman ever to pick up a cricket bat, according to Walter Darriteau, even if he was a Barbadian.

  Maybe when Walter finally retired he could return to Jamaica and use his detection skills to find out what really happened to Wellworthy Griffiths, though even as the thought occurred to him, he knew that he wouldn’t.

  The holiday had taken ages to run its course, and when thankfully it was through he was glad to be going home, for Britain was his home now, it had been for almost fifty years, for more than five sixth’s of his entire life. It was where he belonged, where his work was, where his friends were, where the he-she thing lived, where he wanted to be. Especially right now.

  He glanced back at Karen.

  ‘What happened when I was on holiday?’

  Karen gulped, tried to speak. Pointed at the glass of water. Walter handed it to her. She noticed his hand shook. Took a big pull on the glass, emptied it. Walter refilled it. Set it on the table. Karen nodded her thanks. Started writing again.

  D...E...A...

  ‘Death?’ he said, unable to stop himself.

  Karen half smiled and nodded.

  O...N

  ‘Death on the Nile?’

  Karen smirked and shook her head. Began again.

  R...A...

  ‘Radio? Range? Race? Rally?’

  Karen shook her head, carried on.

  I...L...

  ‘Rail? Death on the railway?’

  Karen stopped and nodded.

  ‘Like at Mostyn?’

  ‘Ya,’ she said, one short, sharp syllable.

  ‘Where?’

  Karen shook her head.

  ‘You can’t remember? You don’t know?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What about a death on the railway?’

  She looked spent, close to tears, looked in need of a week’s sleep.

  ‘I need a name, Karen, I need a name.’

  She closed her eyes, thinking, resting, sleeping, maybe.

  Her blue eyes popped open again. Recognition, memory, fighting through whatever drugs they’d pumped into her. Began writing again.

  H...O...L...L...O...

  It took an age to write.

  W...A...Y

  ‘Holloway,’ he said aloud. It meant nothing to him, and yet, there was something there, but what? He couldn’t remember. He wasn’t even sure he’d ever known.

  ‘What about Holloway?’

  She shook her head, closed her eyes.

  Walter became aware of the doc hovering in the doorway. Glanced over his shoulder. Whispered, ‘One more minute, it’s all I need.’

  The doc didn’t say a word, just looked angry.

  Walter glanced back at the girl.

  She was writing again.

  The doc came over to see.

  T...H...A...N...X

  ‘Thanks? Thank you?’

  Faintest of nods.

  ‘Thank you for what?’

  F...O...R

  ‘Yeah? What for?’

  X

  He glanced at the doc, then back at the girl. Her eyes were closed; the pen had fallen from her hand.

  ‘That is quite enough, you really must go now,’ said the doctor, and the hand on Walter’s shoulder, urging him to stand and turn and leave brooked no argument.

  ‘But what is the X?’

  ‘A kiss of course, it’s not an X, it’s a kiss.’

  ‘Ah, that,’ said Walter, ‘I see,’ he said, annoyed at his slowness, smiling to himself, as the doc waved him off down the corridor, as his medipager started beeping.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Three years before.

  Desiree’s rapid progress was confirmed the day she received a letter from the Scientists’ Society, advising her that she was to be the year’s recipient of the Sir Fred Berrington Memorial Trophy, a huge silver cup that most young scientists coveted. Everyone knew the Memorial Trophy was presented to the best young scientist of the year, though the Society was far too conservative to repeat that.

  But, as with awards that came from the Palace, she was forbidden to tell anyone of her prize, not even her nearest and dearest. It had to remain a secret, a total surprise to everyone but the winner. Desi was desperate to broadcast her news, not least to Professor Mary Craigieson, who had in her day won the trophy twenty years before. Somehow Desi bit her tongue and kept the secret.

  The award would take place at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, London, before a thousand of her contemporaries. T
he Chancellor of the Exchequer himself would present it, amidst a blaze of smiles and flashlights.

  Desi couldn’t wait.

  The clock seemed to slide backwards; days felt like years, as she counted them down toward her big day.

  Finally, it arrived, and Desi set off for London by train.

  Chester to Stafford, change there, jump on the Glasgow to London Euston service.

  It was a crushing bright morning as she stood on Stafford’s Platform One, close to the rails, waiting for the connection. There were plenty of people about and Desi knew the train would be fairly full when it pulled in. She didn’t want to be at the back, she didn’t want to miss out on a seat; she didn’t want to have to stand all the way to London.

  Later that evening, she’d have to make a big thank you speech, and though she had rehearsed and refined it time and again, standing before her long hall mirror, rehearsing her gestures as much as the words, she still felt the need to go over it all again, memorising things one last time, making slight alterations too, cutting out a phrase here, adding something there, trimming the silly jokes that had sounded fine and dandy when she was daydreaming in the Red Caves Social Club with Professor Jim McClaine. Some of his antipodean cracks were incredibly funny in the club, but probably not suitable for an occasion such as this. No, she would add something topical that was in the news, something in the papers that very day, and she couldn’t do all that standing up, she couldn’t concentrate when standing on a train.

  She wanted a seat.

  She needed a seat.

  She must have a seat.

  Please stand clear. The train now approaching Platform One will NOT be stopping at this station. Please stand clear.

  She heard the tinny announcement well enough, and was pleased to see everyone else taking a backward step. Desi did not. She stooped and grabbed her new maroon case and edged closer to the track.

  She could hear the train approaching. She couldn’t miss it. A Manchester London non stop express, hurtling past the signal box at the end of the platform, entering the station, closing on the main buildings, closing on Desi, no hint of slowing down, thundering through.

  The whole place shook.

  The voice in her head returned.

  Jump bitch! Jump!

  Go on!

  Jump bitch! Jump!

  From nowhere she felt dizzy, unsteady on her feet.

  Perhaps she had been working too hard.

  She lifted her right foot to take a step... and stepped backward.

  The train whistled through, less than two feet away, puzzled faces streaming by, as if Desi was flicking through a roll of film. Coloured, blurred faces, anxious faces, as if they weren’t real people at all, fleeting spirits, as if in a movie, or a dream.

  From behind, an elderly lady stepped forward and said, ‘Are you all right, dear? You look awfully pale.’

  Desi glanced down and focused on the lady’s grey haired face.

  ‘I’m fine thanks, must have been something I ate.’

  A mischievous glint formed on the lady’s phizog.

  ‘I’ve seen that body language before,’ she said. ‘In the way, are you?’

  ‘In the way?’ asked Desi.

  ‘Yes, you know, expecting good news to come?’ and she glanced at Desi’s trim tummy.

  ‘Oh God no!’ said Desi, her hand going to her mouth. ‘God, I hope not. Impossible.’

  The lady smiled and nodded at her knowingly and said, ‘You wouldn’t be the first girl to say that,’ still believing that she was right.

  The next train arriving at Platform One is the eleven sixteen to London Euston, stopping at Nuneaton, and London Euston.

  ‘That’s me,’ said the lady.

  ‘And me,’ said Desi, and five minutes later they were sitting happily together, chatting, as they watched the gentle, green Staffordshire countryside rolling by.

  The award ceremony went perfectly. The Sir Fred Berrington Memorial Trophy glistened in her arms. She’d collected it to thunderous applause. She embraced it as a long lost lover; it was the second most prestigious prize of the night, only the all-embracing Golden Scientist of the Year Shield ranked above it in importance. Desi had already thought about that. She was determined to return next year and bag the Gold Shield. She possessed the ammunition to do it too, for she was on the verge of a mind-altering breakthrough. Literally.

  Her speech had gone well; the audience laughed where they were meant to laugh, and more importantly, in her mind, listened intently to the serious passages. Desi had a talent for it, for speaking in public, she’d always known that, but that night it was truly reinforced.

  Desi could hold an audience like an osprey gripping a slippery sea trout. She wasn’t about to drop them, not until she was good and ready.

  The next day she would return to her riverside maisonette where she would set the glittering silver trophy down among her other spoils of war, like a magpie, in the spare bedroom, now crammed with the weird and wonderful flotsam and jetsam of her experiments. She would polish the cup every month, and when the day came to return it, it would be in better shape than when she’d collected it.

  In the meantime, she would occasionally glance at the prestigious names engraved there; going back fifty years, fifty eminent people, the best young scientists Britain had to offer, and there at the bottom, the very last name, freshly engraved, was Desiree Mitford Holloway, only the second woman ever to bag the prize, following in the pioneering footsteps of her tutor and mentor, Professor Mary Craigieson. How neat was that?

  Desiree inwardly smiled. She was at peace with the world.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The moment Walter left the hospital he took out his phone and rang base. Jenny Thompson answered. ‘Is Gibbons there?’

  ‘Gone out, Guv. Had a bit of an alarm.’

  ‘What kind of alarm?’

  ‘A woman in a big house over at Curzon Park reported a maniac in the kitchen threatening her. We all thought it was another, you know, he-she thing attack. We’ve been trying to contact you.’

  ‘Phone’s off. I’ve been with Karen.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Rough. What happened?’

  ‘Nah, false alarm, it was that idiot Davey Seed.’

  Jenny didn’t have to say anymore. Davey Seed was a basket case who should never have been walking the streets. Made a habit of wandering into other people’s houses, usually in the summer when side gates were unlocked and conservatory doors were thrown wide open. He’d stroll in and sit down and gurn at the householder and say, ‘Tea? Tea? Any tea?’

  ‘The lady’s very shaken up,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I’ll bet. The sight of Davey Seed would upset anyone who didn’t know him. Forget about that. I want you to do something for me. Urgent.’

  ‘Sure, Guv.’

  ‘There was a case a couple of springs ago.’

  ‘I wasn’t here then.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Walter, just about keeping the irritation from his voice.

  ‘Sorry, Guv.’

  ‘Something about a death on a railway? Something to do with someone called Holloway. It must be on file somewhere. I want an address. Got that?’

  ‘Sure, Guv. Holloway.’

  ‘Find out all you can about it, oh, and can you drive?’

  ‘Yes sure, Guv.’

  ‘Arrange an unmarked car, and change into civvies. You do have plainclothes?’

  ‘Sure, Guv, in my locker.’

  ‘OK, Jenny. Get on that, top priority. I’ll be back as soon as I can grab a cab.’

  Jenny was sitting at Karen’s desk when Walter hurried in.

  ‘Well?’ he said, before he’d even sat down.

  ‘Desiree Holloway met her end under a Glasgow-Euston express at Crewe Station. Several witnesses stated it was suicide, though there were allegations that she had been pushed.’

  ‘Allegations by whom?’

  ‘Don’t know, Guv. The records are not great. Think
there was a big admin shake-up shortly afterwards.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ he mumbled, remembering the Mrs West big shake-up spring clean, John’s shake and whack, the lads called it, he’d almost forgotten about that. It had to be done of course, but by God she milked the moment. ‘Have you got an address?’

  ‘Not Holloway’s, that seems to be among the lost data, but I do have an address for the next of kin.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Iona House, Wrexham Road.’

  ‘Good girl. We’ll try there. Car organised?’

  ‘Yep, though it’s a bit crap.’

  ‘Don’t care, so long as it’s in civvies and gets us there.’

  ‘Shall I tell Mrs West where we are going?’

  Walter gave her a look that said everything.

  He unlocked his desk drawer and retrieved the Glock 22. Slipped it into his raincoat pocket. Jenny watched him do it and wondered what was going down, and what she had let herself in for.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, striding for the door, Jenny hurrying to keep up.

  For a fat man with a limp he couldn’t half shift when the feeling took him.

  Walter was a good driver but he preferred being driven. It gave him thinking time whenever they were coming or going. Sometimes when he was driving he still thought about cases. Sometimes it had almost brought double trouble to his door. Hence Jenny was driving, and anyway he liked company, especially young company, especially on a case like this.

  Jenny pointed the car south, past the Roodee, crossed the river, headed toward Wrexham.

  ‘So what’s this all about?’ she asked.

  ‘Not sure. Just an idea I had. It’s not far now.’

  He was right. The building was coming up, set on a brow on the right hand side, you couldn’t miss it, a late Victorian or early Edwardian detached house. As they drew closer he stared up at the fascia. Built into the gable were the words Iona House, picked out in blue Mucklow bricks. It must have been a heck of a property in its day. Now it was divided into four spacious flats, as they discovered when they pulled into the driveway, set to the right side of the house.

  There were two cars sleeping in the small rear car park, an old rusting Jaguar and a green Ford saloon that badly needed a wash. No smart Japanese hatchback. Disappointing. They went round to the front, their feet crunching on the gravel drive, and peered up at the four white bell pushes set beneath one another in a neat line. Before he could ring any of them the front door opened and an elderly lady peered out.