An Unnecessary Murder

by P. F. Ford

  With that, he organised everyone into the armchairs and sofas he had earlier arranged into a small circle, careful to make sure Dave Burnham had his back to the bar, before making a little announcement to start the proceedings.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Alfie Bowman, your entertainment for this evening.’

  Being blessed with an enormous sense of fun, whatever the occasion, and only too happy to join in the atmosphere Pete was creating, Jelena began to clap enthusiastically and Daphne, who seemed to be loving every minute of the evening, quickly joined in. This was no time for levity really, but Jelena and Daphne seemed to have hit it off big-time, and I wasn’t going to spoil that.

  It was time for me to tell my story.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My story began with an evening in this very pub, where I had intervened to save a young lady from some ugly great thug, only to get a pretty bad beating myself outside my own flat. At the time, no one knew who had paid to have me beaten up. Even the guy who had arranged everything didn’t actually know who was behind it or why. But now I had a theory.

  I now believed that I had been selected because the unfortunate murder victim, Marie, had been telling people I was a wife-beater.

  Now just suppose, I suggested, that someone had fallen in love with my ex-wife Gloria? Let’s call him Mr X. Now suppose this guy believed what Marie was saying and the thought of me beating up the love of his life was just too much, and he thought I should be taught a lesson?

  The thing is, the beating hadn’t been quite as bad as it was supposed to be and I had only been in hospital overnight. Mr X didn’t think this was punishment enough. He needed to find a way to make it worse.

  But then a happy coincidence occurred. Or at least it was happy for Mr X. It was anything but happy for Marie. She had found out Mr X had organised the beating and that he was having an affair with Gloria. She threatened to reveal all, and so she had to be silenced.

  Then Mr X realised he had a golden opportunity to solve two problems in one go if he murdered Marie, but made it look as though I was the murderer.

  I was stood centre-stage as it were, facing the group. Dave Burnham was directly in front of me, with the bar behind him. Dave Slater was sat to my right, eyes glued to the bar. Just as I finished talking, Jane appeared behind the bar and gave Slater a thumbs-up.

  So far, so good.

  ‘How exciting. Can you prove any of this?’ asked Daphne.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But I’m working on it.’

  Dave Burnham had been staring at me all the time, a look of total contempt on his face. Now he spoke.

  ‘Is this one of your stupid novel plots? It’s a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?’

  ‘You reckon?’ I said, a lot more calmly than I felt.

  ‘It’s just a load of bollocks, isn’t it? I mean, what makes you think you’re so special someone would want to get even with you. Sounds a bit conceited to me.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing special about me, Dave. It’s just that Mr X thinks I’m a threat to his relationship with Gloria. But he’s mistaken. You see, he knows that Gloria would have me back tomorrow, but he doesn’t understand that I wouldn’t have her back if she was the last woman on earth. As far as I’m concerned, he can have her and keep her.’

  ‘I thought you loved her,’ he said. ‘That’s what you used to say.’

  ‘Yeah. Exactly. Past tense. I used to say that, until I finally understood I couldn’t love someone I could never trust.’

  His face was starting to turn an interesting shade of red. ‘But you sent those seven texts to Marie. That must prove something.’

  ‘Ah. So you know about that,’ I said. ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Everybody knows about that. It’s all over town.’

  ‘Does everybody know there were seven?’

  That stopped him. I could see he was struggling to keep control of both his mouth and himself.

  In the brief silence that followed, a figure appeared at the bar, beckoning Slater over. As he walked over, Dave Burnham turned to follow his progress. There was a brief murmur of conversation at the bar and then Slater turned back. He nodded at Steve Biddeford, who stood up.

  Dave Burnham was standing now too. ‘Who’s that behind my bloody bar? What’s going on?’

  ‘David Burnham,’ began Slater, ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder-’

  ‘Arresting me? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Sorry, Dave,’ I said, ‘Did I forget to introduce you to my friends? Meet Detective Sergeant Slater and Detective Constable Biddeford.’

  His face was a real picture. At that moment, the door to the bar opened and two uniformed officers came in. A woman followed them in. It was Gloria.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and here comes the star witness.’

  ‘She can’t prove anything,’ spluttered Burnham. ‘She doesn’t know anything.’

  ‘She knows she was with you the day the hospital called. That’s why she picked me up. She saw how upset you were that I was alive and kicking.’

  He turned to her. ‘Gloria! What about us?’

  ‘Us?’ she said, aghast. ‘Us? There never was any “us”. It was just about sex. Surely you understood that? You were just a shag, that’s all. I didn’t ask you to beat anyone up, and I certainly didn’t ask you to murder my bloody sister.’

  Desperately, Burnham turned to Slater. ‘You can’t prove anything. Not the murder. Not the text messages. Nothing.’

  ‘With what we’ve found upstairs, Mr Burnham,’ said Slater, ‘I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble proving enough to get a conviction.’

  ‘Upstairs? You’ve been upstairs? But you can’t do that? You need a search warrant.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ agreed Slater, clearly enjoying himself. ‘And we have one.’

  ‘But I haven’t seen it. You never showed it to me.’

  ‘No, that’s true. But the young lady we all heard you appoint to run the pub earlier was quite happy to accept the search warrant on your behalf, and she was most helpful with showing my officers around.’

  Dave Burnham slumped onto his seat, well and truly outwitted and defeated. Then, with an evil grin, he looked up at me.

  ‘How’s your mate?’ he asked. ‘That interfering old writer twat. Still clinging on to life is he?’

  ‘Dry Biro?’ I said. ‘What do you know about that?’

  ‘So you haven’t worked it all out then? Not quite so clever after all, are you?’

  ‘What did you do? He was just an old man. You didn’t need to hurt him.’

  ‘He was just another job, that’s all. I took the money and did the job, simple as that. I should have done you over myself instead of trusting it to some local idiot. Then I could have made sure you were in a bloody coma as well.’

  ‘A job?’ said Slater. ‘What do you mean he was a job? Who paid you?’

  ‘Now that is for me to know,’ said Burnham. ‘Just in case I need to bargain. I’m sure you understand, officer.’

  He winked at Slater then, and I could quite happily have punched him right in the teeth. In fact, I think we all could have.

  It was a good half hour before Dave Burnham had been carted off to the police station and the assorted collection of police officers had gone. I had watched with great interest as Detective Sergeant Dave Slater had sought out Jane behind the bar and actually kissed her goodbye. I was quite sure that wasn’t normal police procedure. I made a mental note to ask him how long they had been an item.

  During all the comings and goings, Gloria had tried to appeal to my better nature by suggesting that she had known all along I wasn’t a murderer and that maybe now we could try again. She had foolishly tried to do this in front of Sophia. I suppose she thought she could make Sophia uncomfortable. To be honest, at one point Sophia was actually going to move away, but I wanted her to hear what I had to say to Gloria, so I held on to her to keep her close.

  I pointed out to
Gloria that this had all started because she had allowed Marie to start spouting lies about me. I told her that I had had enough of her lies and her ability to change like the wind if she thought it would be to her advantage. And if she had really believed I wasn’t a murderer, why had she been so keen to accept what Nash had told her?

  As for starting again… well, where could I begin with that one? In the end, I told her what I had told Dave Burnham.

  ‘Gloria, if you were the last woman on earth I still wouldn’t be interested. Don’t you understand? We both know I’d never be able to trust you. I don’t want to live like that. I’m sorry, but you need to accept it and move on. It’s not going to happen.’

  Daphne had driven off with a slightly tipsy Positive Pete in the passenger seat, but not without first thanking me for a wonderful evening.

  ‘I haven’t had so much fun in years,’ she had said. ‘I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be in the final scene of one of those Poirot films on TV. Well, now I know.’

  And, d’you know, I couldn’t tell if she knew this was for real, or if she thought it had all been staged as some sort of entertainment. But that’s the wonder of Daphne – you never really knew for sure what she was thinking.

  Now I was slowly walking, tired but happy, back in the direction of home; Jelena on one arm, and Sophia on the other. As we walked, I was thinking.

  ‘You’re thinking about what he said about DB being just another job, aren’t you?’ asked Sophia.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to ignore you, but if he’s telling the truth I’d put my money on Nasty Nash as the one behind it.’

  ‘Yes. You’re probably right. It seems Inspector Nash has a lot to answer for, but let’s worry about that tomorrow. Right now, I need your full attention.’

  With that, she lifted my arm high enough to go around her shoulders and snuggled up close.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home.’

  ***