The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  ‘And the money was his?’

  ‘Everything was his – me and the girls included.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Funny thing is, I knew he was controlling, but I couldn’t see how far from normal it all was until he died. Now, suddenly, everything is up to me. My choice. So I keep thinking about what he’d done that had pissed someone off that much. DC Kincaide asked me if either of us was having an affair, and I said no.’ She frowned and tapped the tips of her first two fingers against her lips. ‘I really don’t think he was, but there was something.’

  ‘You refer to the money as being his, but did you know where it all went?’

  ‘More than he realized, actually. I kept the books on the business and, yes, there were times when we received cash for jobs and didn’t declare it. Mostly small amounts, though: a few hundred here and there.’

  ‘That’s not everyone’s idea of insignificant, you know.’

  ‘Not mine either, but he spent sixty thousand on that car. It’s like he wasn’t always in the real world. I knew he had a chunk of money from selling a rental flat we owned, but it wasn’t that level of money, so that’s when I realized he had to be hoarding it somewhere. A few weeks later I found five thousand pounds in a watertight container, at the bottom of our cold water tank. He was a plumber so it was an obvious place for me to look. I didn’t want it, just wanted to know him better.’

  ‘So you weren’t planning to leave him?’

  ‘No, I think our marriage was good. We all keep secrets, but do they make us bad people?’

  Goodhew didn’t answer. He’d come back to that question in his own time. ‘When was this?’

  ‘A year ago.’ She shrugged. ‘Give or take.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I checked again a few times, then one day it had gone. Gradually he built it up again until it hit almost five thousand pounds. This was about a month ago, then it vanished again.’

  ‘Perhaps he was being blackmailed?’

  ‘You don’t know Paul.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Just, no, it wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘OK.’ If Carmel Marshall had an answer, she wasn’t going to share it. Most likely she didn’t, but either way it wasn’t worth pressing for right now. ‘Can you be more specific with the date on which the most recent stash of money went?’

  ‘Yes, easily. Paul worked over a weekend, a rush job in London, he said. He left on the Friday, and I went up into the loft on the Saturday morning. That would have been . . .’

  She began counting back the dates but Goodhew answered easily, ‘27 July.’

  ‘That’s right. How did you know?’

  ‘It’s in his appointments diary. He booked a full weekend for that rush job and invoiced only a couple of hours. You spotted that, right?’

  ‘Sure.’ She reached for the coffee cups, and picked up the cafetière, as if ready for him to leave. ‘He said he’d invoice the rest later.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘I liked to think he didn’t lie to me.’

  ‘Really? I thought everyone kept secrets.’

  She took the crockery over to the sink, making no attempt to reply.

  ‘Mrs Marshall, where do you think he went?’

  Still no reply. Goodhew changed tack. ‘Did you know he used cocaine?’

  She began rinsing the mugs. ‘Before the police told me?’ She picked up the tea towel and only turned to face him as she was drying them. ‘Yes, I knew he’d dabbled. But I could always tell when he’d used it. We did it together a few times when we were first dating.’ Carmel stopped speaking abruptly, as though she was still in mid-sentence. If she had planned to say more, she’d clearly just decided against it. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just have a couple more questions. Also you will need to make a statement covering our conversation today. I can type it up and bring it back for you to sign. You clearly wanted to tell Kincaide about the money today?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘No.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Because the money was gone before he died, it puzzled me, but I didn’t think about any connection to his murder. That’s why I didn’t mention it earlier.’

  A lie. The words rang hollow compared to everything else she’d already said. She turned away from his gaze and stared out at the rear garden. She’d been smart enough to find the money in the first place, and Goodhew guessed she’d been desperate to know how it was being used. Yet she’d kept quiet until she’d given up in frustration.

  ‘I understand your confusion, Mrs Marshall.’

  ‘I’m not confused.’ She turned to him sharply, her expression defensive. ‘I’m merely adjusting. Who wouldn’t be?’

  Goodhew didn’t respond, waiting to see if deliberate silence would prompt her to say more. Instead she crossed to the hallway and waited there for him to follow. They were at the open front door before she finally spoke. ‘I loved him for a long time, despite his shortcomings.’

  ‘But not recently? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘I can’t see recently very clearly at the moment. So I don’t know the truth of it. But I will grieve, Detective, when I know what I’m grieving for.’

  ‘Then tell me where he may have been that weekend.’

  There were only inches between them, not the width of a kitchen, and that made the question harder to escape. Finally she gave up. ‘Point Clear, Essex. He had a small cabin cruiser moored out on the estuary. He told me he’d sold it, but I don’t think he did.’

  ‘It hasn’t come up in our background checks.’

  She shook her head. ‘Why would it? He paid cash for the mooring and Marshall’s not an uncommon name.’

  ‘So what else do you know about it?’

  ‘It was blue and white. No name on it, just a number.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  She reached past him and opened the door wide, and for the second time he heard her lie. ‘Yes, it is.’

  TWENTY

  Goodhew returned to Parkside and spent the next few hours digging for information. Then phoning and hassling in order to dig up some more. He tried to blot out the frequent updates that kept coming in from Pound Hill, though he listened closely when DC Young announced that they’d started using ground-penetration radar, and would use the resulting data to decide whether to excavate.

  Maybe this was a good day for unearthing.

  By the end of the afternoon he had collated enough information to fill an A4 envelope. He hoped it would be enough to convince Marks, so he picked it up and headed out.

  Pound Hill had by now passed the tipping point of more bystanders than residents, and amongst all those gathered Goodhew could pick out reporters, a medical officer and new arrivals from the forensic team. A man holding a clipboard and a grey moulded plastic case of gadgets stood close to Marks’s car.

  Marks was in the driver’s seat, making notes as he ended a call on his phone. Goodhew opened the passenger door. ‘Mind if I have a word, sir?’

  ‘Get in, then.’ Marks continued to make notes. ‘Wait.’ Then, when he’d finished, he closed his pad. ‘Go.’

  ‘I’ve been to see Carmel Marshall.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Paul Marshall had a boat moored in the Point Clear Estuary. I’d like to take a look.’

  ‘Goodhew, I heard about the boat, too. You and Kincaide have been acting like a man and his shadow all day. It’s not productive. But, unlike you, Kincaide has no burning desire to dash off to Essex. And I have no burning desire to send you there unless you can explain properly.’

  ‘Well, it might be nothing.’

  ‘Goodhew, just level with me.’

  ‘Paul Marshall took off for a couple of nights, on 26 and 27 July. He’d told his wife that he was away working on a property in London, but she caught sight of an invoice that he’d raised for just a few hours’ labour, so she was suspicious that he had been doing something else.’

&
nbsp; ‘Such as?’

  ‘Either she wasn’t sure or was avoiding facing up to it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I contacted the customer in question, a company called Flat-Great. They have property in Cambridge and also Highgate, London, and have always used Marshall. He hadn’t done the work for them over the weekend at all, only nipped down on the Thursday afternoon, completed enough to keep them happy, then went back there during the following week to finish the job.’

  ‘Leaving his weekend free.’

  ‘Exactly. Then I ran through the ANPR check on the movements of his Lotus over that weekend. Three hits: one on Trumpington Road, one on the M11 and the third as he travelled cross-country from Bishops Stortford.’

  ‘The route to Point Clear, but from Cambridge, not from his home.’

  ‘Yes, and there were no card transactions or phone calls made throughout that weekend. The last time he refuelled was the Tuesday afternoon, which was 23 July. He usually filled up completely when it reached quarter-full, but on that occasion he only added about fifteen litres. Assuming he was topping it up and the tank was then completely full at that point, then the car could have covered a range of about four hundred miles. Point Clear is about seventy-five miles away, so he would not have needed to make another fuel stop during that weekend.’

  ‘And why do I need to know what he didn’t do?’

  ‘Because the alternator packed up on his van on the Thursday morning, so he used the Lotus to get to Highgate and back. He obviously hadn’t thought about topping up the tank again.’

  ‘And driving to London would have eaten through the fuel. So where did he stop?’

  ‘A Gulf garage, Pump Hill Service Station, St Osyth. He put in forty pounds’ worth of petrol, paid cash.’

  Goodhew finally opened the envelope and slid out a bundle of documents. A print-out of a low-resolution photograph of the garage forecourt lay on top. The date and time appeared in the corner: 26-07-2013 18:41:20:00. There were two rows of pumps and at the back of the centre aisle, despite the poor quality, the Evora’s number plate was easily identifiable.

  ‘We have shots taken at five-second intervals for the full six minutes the car was there.’

  Marks immediately pointed to the passenger side of the windscreen, where the blurred face of a woman was visible. The image was almost like a child’s drawing, two big dark eyes and a painted mouth. A block of yellow hair. In a photo like this, 79-mm-high black-on-white digits were a whole lot easier to read than facial features.

  ‘And is there a clearer shot of her?’

  ‘Not really.’ Goodhew shook his head. ‘But look at this.’ He pointed to the bottom of the shot, where the top of a man’s head was just coming into view. ‘That’s Marshall himself. Now watch.’

  He flipped over the top sheet to reveal each consecutive shot in turn. Marshall, his back to the camera, striding towards his car. Then his arm extending. Surprise on her face.

  In the next shot his arm was fully outstretched with his forefinger pointing directly towards her.

  The next was the same, but now he was at the car itself, still pointing at her as he returned to the driver’s side. She had folded at the waist, her face lowered to her knees. Recommended crash position, except her hands weren’t clasped behind her head but somewhere in front of her seat. It was impossible to see more. Goodhew had been trying to from the moment he’d taken it from the printer. He wasn’t sure why he felt so uneasy just looking at it.

  The final group of shots showed the Evora driving off from the forecourt and the girl’s head still pressed to her knees. The last image only caught a partial shot of the passenger door, the back of her head, and Marshall’s left hand clutching her hair right down at the roots.

  ‘God bless digital security cameras,’ Marks muttered. ‘So what do you know about her?’

  Goodhew picked the clearest of the photos, the one where her eyes were wide and lips forming an ‘O’ of surprise. ‘Do you remember some reports of a girl up on the Gogs?’

  ‘Those sightings that led nowhere?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘If there’s a connection, Goodhew, I’ll need to see how strong it is.’

  ‘Technically it’s circumstantial.’

  ‘Marvellous.’

  ‘But it has reasonably probability.’

  Marks looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘Sell it to me, Gary.’

  ‘OK, the day Marshall came back from Point Clear was Sunday 28 July. We know he had a passenger with him on the way there, and that he’d started his journey from Cambridge. It is reasonable to think that she got into the car in Cambridge itself, and it’s therefore highly likely that she needed to get back there at the end of the weekend.’

  ‘All possible,’ Marks conceded.

  ‘However, something happens, a fight or something, and he throws her out of the car, abandoning her to walk home over the Gogs.’

  ‘And, judging by these photos, he’s clearly prone to violence. Although there’s no history of anything like that at home.’

  ‘Which could just mean that he was never exposed.’

  ‘Even if enhancing these pictures was possible, I think that establishing a positive ID would be a long shot. It is clear, however, that she has the same hair colour and build and is of a similar age to the woman I’ve been looking for.’

  ‘The woman you’ve been looking for? What happened to “There’s no evidence of a crime, therefore don’t spend any more time on this one”?’ Goodhew recognized the rhetorical question and stayed quiet. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘There isn’t much else, except that it explains the location of Paul Marshall’s body. Think about it, if he did something nasty to her and then dumped her there, doesn’t that make it the perfect spot to return the favour?’

  ‘And the Marshall attack had revenge written all over it? Hmmm.’ Marks closed his eyes in thought. ‘We can’t get far with that line of inquiry without first knowing who she is. But we can’t ignore it either.’

  ‘The local police are currently trying to locate details of his boat – someone in a pub or restaurant might remember the pair of them. I could start there.’ Goodhew paused, knowing that sometimes heart-on-the-sleeve honesty was the most productive way forward. ‘I’d really like to. I think it’s important and I’d like to see it through.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Point Clear village stood in the parish of St Osyth, apparently famed for witch persecutions and having the lowest rainfall in the country. Goodhew knew nothing about either the witches or the supposedly dry climate. The rain had begun about ten miles south of Cambridge and seemed only to intensify once he hit the outskirts of the village. There was a lake near the centre of St Osyth, where a moored ski-boat jiggled about in the water, buffeted by both the wind and a heavy downpour.

  A PC Beales from Clacton had left a message saying that he’d wait outside the grocer’s on Point Clear Road. That had sounded vague, but the small shop turned out to be one of the more noticeable landmarks on the long straight road. Goodhew pulled alongside the patrol car and wound down his window. Beales did the same, and Goodhew shouted across the gap between them: ‘Shall I follow you?’

  ‘Leave yours here and we’ll go in this one.’

  ‘I don’t know how long I’ll need to be.’

  ‘You can have as long as you want.’ Beales was probably a similar age to Goodhew, but his expression still brimmed with the excitement that came with new experience. ‘And I’m a better person to row you out there than anyone else you’ll find at this time of day.’

  Goodhew nodded and lifted his rucksack across to the other vehicle.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem. Bet you didn’t bring a life jacket, either? But don’t worry about it, I have two with me.’

  Goodhew hadn’t even considered the logistics of reaching Marshall’s boat. He’d imagined it being tied to some kind of jetty, so that he would be able to reach it on foot and step aboard from something s
olid.

  ‘It’s out in the channel leading up to St Osyth Creek, moored out in the middle but easy to reach.’

  ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘I checked all the names of people who’d paid for moorings. I went to school with Artie Hallam’s grandson, so I know Artie’s been dead for a good ten years. As soon as I saw his name on the list, I guessed.’

  ‘That’s a lot of local knowledge.’

  ‘Not really. Everyone knew Hallam because he was your standard waster and bastard – only the brewery would have missed him. And maybe his widow.’ Beales pulled a face that implied he felt doubtful even about that. ‘Anyhow, I went to see her and learnt she’d sold it to a man who wanted it as a surprise for his girlfriend.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Old Mrs Hallam didn’t have a name or date but said it was right after Artie’s death in ’98.’

  The light was fading quickly, mostly due to the rain. Beales turned down a lane which was flanked on one side by the perimeter fence of a holiday camp and on the other by a ribbon of exposed houses. The road then deteriorated into a crumbling concrete track, but Beales seemed to know the potholes well and wove deftly around them, barely slowing.

  ‘I arranged for a dinghy to be left at the Point Clear ferry station. With any luck it’ll have a motor, so I was joking about the rowing.’

  ‘How long have you been in the force?’

  ‘ ’Bout two years. Before that I was a lifeguard in the summer, and volunteer lifeboat crew all year round. So you probably won’t drown but if the worst does happen to you, I’ll know what paperwork needs filling in.’

  Goodhew looked away and smiled to himself. The constable was good company and, when he thought about it, he actually preferred Gully’s company to no company at all; though even a year ago he probably would have felt differently.

  Beales reached the end of the track and pointed out a wooden walkway that stretched from the hard standing to the water’s edge. ‘Grab your kit, then.’

  ‘That’s a ferry station?’ It looked as though the full service here might consist of a man in a cable sweater with a coracle under one arm.