Money Can Kill

by Wonny Lea

  It had only been her second week of working there when she was introduced to DCI Martin Phelps and her whole world had changed.

  Her father claimed to remember the day when his daughter came home from work wearing the look of a woman in love, and had been surprised not to be visited by the object of her affection for over a year! It wasn’t that Martin hadn’t noticed Shelley, but they had met at a point in his life when he was not looking for a special relationship and certainly not with someone who worked in the same place that he did.

  Consequently they were afforded the time to become good friends before moving on, for Martin to realise that Shelley was the love of his life, and for her father to decide that administering his own injections was a small price to pay for his daughter’s happiness.

  Martin knew that he had reached a crossroads in his life and that his career and his personal circumstances were in the process of a big shake-up. Just over a month ago Chief Superintendent Colin Atkinson had been transferred to Cardiff from the Greater Manchester Police, and was proving to be a no-nonsense man and someone whom Martin could both work with and respect.

  The two men had met at the conclusion of a case where a serial killer had been caught by Martin’s team virtually at the point of stabbing to death what would have been his fourth victim. The identity of the killer had been a shock for the public, but even more so for the police force, as the murderer was a former DCI, Norman Austin, someone with whom Martin had worked.

  Each of Austin’s killings had been heralded by a bizarre poem giving clues to the identity of his victim. From the beginning it had been obvious that Martin was one of the killer’s intended victims, but absolutely no one had suspected his old boss. As soon as the killer’s identity had been realised it had unleashed a flood of memories from Sergeant John Evans and others, regarding cases that the former DCI Austin had managed.

  In particular Evans had remembered his concerns regarding the conviction of Vincent Bowen for the murder of young prostitutes in Cardiff. The cruel ritualistic killing of these women had happened over a period of time, with the first one being six months before another three separated by just a few weeks.

  The murders had caused a public and political storm and DCI Austin had been under enormous pressure to bring an end to what the press called ‘the terror of the ladies of the night’.

  At the time Martin had only recently been appointed as a detective sergeant, and although he had been partly involved with the investigations surrounding the second and third killings, he now realised that he had been deliberately left out of the fourth murder and its subsequent investigation that had led to the arrest of Vincent Bowen.

  All four murdered prostitutes were considered to have been killed by the same man, but only three had been proven to be the work of Bowen. It had been one of those euphoric moments when, with the arrest of the serial killer, the whole country had applauded the efforts of DCI Austin and his team. The discovery of a knife stained with the third victim’s blood in the suspect’s home provided the copper-bottom evidence of guilt and Vincent Bowen was convicted of the murders.

  Just twenty-three years old at the time, Bowen was known to have moderately serious mental health problems but had never been considered to be of risk to himself or others. His psychiatric workers were lambasted in the press for not recognising his evil potential but his main caseworker had always held her belief that Bowen was not capable of carrying out these killings and had joined his mother’s campaign for her son’s release.

  Sgt Evans had always considered that the finding of the knife in Vincent Bowen’s flat was loaded with doubt as he had been part of an original search of the property when no knife had been discovered. He had voiced his concerns at the time, but the then recently appointed Superintendent Bryant was basking in the glory of his new team solving such a high-profile case and agreed with DCI Austin’s convenient view that Evans was as blind as a bat.

  The recent murders, and the revelation that Norman Austin was the killer, had given Sgt Evans new-found courage to take his previous concerns above the head of Superintendent Bryant. This time the concerns he revealed to Chief Superintendent Colin Atkinson were taken seriously, and were part of the reason that DCI Phelps had spent the past three weeks looking at the circumstances surrounding the conviction of Vincent Bowen.

  Colin Atkinson had appointed Martin to head up the new enquiry and had raised the issue of a possibly unsafe conviction, due to police corruption, with the chief constable and Home-Office officials. Consequently the manpower and facilities needed for a thorough review were thrown in Martin’s direction, and an area of the sacred top floor of Goleudy turned into a major investigation unit.

  Teams worked around the clock checking and re-checking every detail of the case and finding a number of anomalies. Witness statements were re-examined and members of the original investigation team, some still members of the force, were interviewed.

  One of the first people that Martin had spoken to was Vincent Bowen’s mother. His initial contact had been a telephone call and he had followed it up with a meeting at Mrs Bowen’s home, where he had not been surprised to see Emily Wiseman waiting with her.

  In fact it had been Emily who had let him in after he had spoken into the intercom system that linked the main entrance of the building in Fairwater to the individual flats. As soon as she had realised who he was, Emily had released the locking mechanism, something buzzed loudly, and the door literally burst open.

  ‘Third floor, flat number nine,’ she told him as he stepped inside and the heavy external door snapped back into place behind him.

  The building was built in the mid-seventies and was fit for purpose but not a pretty structure. The front faced the main road, separated by just a footpath, and the area to both sides and at the back was concreted over and used for parking. In spite of the uninspiring appearance it looked well cared for, with a number of strategically placed litter bins actually being used for the correct purpose, and the area had recently been swept clean. It looked neat and tidy but without soul.

  Martin had the same feeling about the inside of the building as he looked at a number of bikes and pushchairs chained to a central bar just inside the door. Everything was well ordered and the place had a vague smell of pine-scented disinfectant. The lift looked as if it was in good working order but Martin decided to take the stairs. On the first floor was a good-sized square landing and four doors numbered 1-4. Here was the first sign that individual tenants were making an effort to put some personal stamp on their surroundings. Different coloured doors had been decorated with a variety of bells, handles, and door-knockers and outside two of the flats were tubs of plants that looked to be thriving.

  It was a similar picture on the second floor and when Martin reached his destination Emily was waiting for him.

  ‘I wondered why I hadn’t heard the lift,’ she remarked. ‘Not many people use the stairs – come through, Cora is anxious to meet you.’

  Outside Cora’s front door Martin caught sight of a six-foot-high rubber plant with shining leaves standing in a gleaming copper container, and Emily saw that he had noticed it.

  ‘It’s an amazing specimen, isn’t it? Vincent bought that for his mother for her birthday about six weeks before he was arrested for the murder of those women. It didn’t look like that then – it was just a small plant in a plastic pot, but in the absence of her son Cora has cared for his last gift to her. She calls it her “plant of hope” but from what I can see the more it grows and flourishes the more her hope diminishes. My own hope now is that you’re not going to give her any more cause for despair.’

  Martin followed Emily down a short passage into a light and airy lounge where Cora Bowen sat in an armchair that was positioned so that its occupier could look out over the nearby tree-tops. She didn’t get up but turned her head as Martin approached her and made his usual official introductions. She shook his hand with a faint smile and confirmed that Emily had previously been her so
n Vincent’s primary caseworker.

  ‘I don’t know how I would have got through the years of Vincent’s incarceration without Emily,’ said Cora. ‘Apart from me she has been the only one who has always believed in his innocence and has never faltered in her support.’

  ‘That’s not difficult when you know that what you believe in is the truth,’ responded Emily. ‘Have you met Vincent?’ she asked Martin. ‘He got into a whole heap of trouble when he was in school, and sniffing solvents over quite a long period led to changes in his behaviour, and indeed his whole personality. There were issues at the time that led to him being referred to the community mental health teams and that’s how I first met him.’

  She looked at Cora as she continued. ‘Despite his problems Vincent never showed any tendency towards violence, and even when he had left home to share a flat with a friend he still spent a lot of his time back here with his mother.’

  Martin accepted the offer of a coffee and Emily left Cora to talk to the DCI in more depth about the time of Vincent’s arrest.

  ‘It happened when I was beginning to see some signs of the return of the Vincent that he had been as a young boy. He had always been fun loving, always up for a laugh, and too adventurous for his own good. Look at that photograph over there, Chief Inspector, it was taken when Vincent was eleven and was in the days when he woke up every morning with a smile on his face, and was so much alive I could barely keep up with him.

  ‘I haven’t seen my son smile in years, and the man that I visit once a week has had every ounce of life sucked out of him. I have never doubted his innocence but a few years ago even I tried to persuade him to confess to the killings and express profound contrition. The only reason I suggested it was so that there would be a chance of his release sometime in the future. It would appear that the first step towards that has to come from Vincent owning up to the crimes and demonstrating how sorry he is for his actions.’

  Cora stood up and looked through the window, and then with eyes brimming with tears she turned back towards Martin. ‘The thought of even his own mother apparently believing he was guilty of such horrendous acts of depravity were too much for Vincent to bear, and he attempted to kill himself. He had no weapons or pills at his disposal and so he simply kept banging his head against his cell door until he lost consciousness.’

  Emily put three mugs down on a central glass-topped coffee table and put her arm around Cora’s shoulder. ‘I don’t think Vincent really intended to kill himself, and like Cora I have never believed he could be guilty of killing those women.’

  Emily looked directly at Martin as she handed him his coffee. ‘Like everyone else we’ve been following the events surrounding the recent murders in the area, and we were shocked more than everyone else to find that the killer turned out to be Norman Austin. He was the DCI leading the investigation into the murder of those women, but then of course you will know that.

  ‘What you may not know is the number of times in the early years following Vincent’s conviction that we tried to get him to take a fresh look at the evidence, and we even asked his superior officer, Superintendent Bryant. Our case was not helped by the fact that there were no further killings and the police and the public were convinced that the killer had been caught and justly punished.’

  ‘Cora rang me this morning after getting your call and we are both anxious to know why you are here, and Cora had even suggested that maybe Austin killed those prostitutes and framed her son.’

  Martin took a mouthful of coffee and the three of them settled down for what Martin suspected was going to be a long session. Cora’s last comments had rung alarm bells with Martin but mainly because they mirrored some of his own thoughts. Once he would never have come close to suspecting his former DCI of slitting the throats of those prostitutes, but the past few weeks had shown Austin to be a psychopath with an incredibly unbalanced mind; unbalanced but clever. Who knew what would come out of the re-investigation of this case?

  For the moment Martin was more concerned with investigating the evidence that had led to Vincent’s arrest, and although he still had material to check and witnesses to interview it was becoming more and more obvious that Vincent’s conviction was unsafe.

  He didn’t want to raise the hopes of Vincent’s mother and her devout friend too much but he did explain to them that certain things had come to light following the arrest of Norman Austin and that a number of his old cases were being re-examined.

  ‘I have been specifically charged with undertaking a comprehensive review into the murders of the prostitutes. We realise that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and want it remedied as quickly as possible, and that is why an unprecedented level of manpower and support services have been put at my disposal.’

  Although Martin had specifically warned Cora about not getting her hopes raised too high the level of excitement in the room was palpable. When Martin had entered her home he had seen a worn-out woman who looked to be in her mid-sixties and whose eyes were almost bereft of life. Now, looking at her, he realised that she was probably ten years younger than he had first thought and it was the new light in her eyes that had caused the transformation.

  ‘Please try and contain your expectations,’ he begged. ‘My only purpose here today is to tell you that the case is to be re-opened and not to give you any indication that my findings will be any different to those of the original investigation.’

  ‘That’s all we have ever wanted,’ responded Emily. ‘We both believe in Vincent and we both believe that your investigation will get to the truth; we can’t ask for any more. What will happen now?’

  Before he left Martin explained that his next job was to review all the witness statements and examine all the evidence that had been documented. He added that the team expected to be able to make a decision within days.

  ‘If we conclude that Vincent’s conviction appears to be unsafe we will apply to the courts to have it overturned. There is interest in this case at the highest level: hence the speed at which it is being moved.’

  ‘If you find the conviction unsafe and the courts agree, what will happen then?’ asked Cora barely able to contemplate the answer.

  ‘Vincent will be released and your fight for compensation regarding his wrongful arrest and years of imprisonment will begin,’ Martin told them. ‘I have arranged a session with your son tomorrow morning and it’s possible that even as soon as that I may be able to give him some news.’

  As he left Martin handed a card with his direct phone number to Cora with a special plea that she keep things to herself for the moment and in particular avoid any contact with the press.

  Thinking back now Martin remembered how, when he had left those two women and driven his Alfa Romeo back to Goleudy, none of them could have envisaged what the next three weeks would bring.

  He had visited Vincent in Cardiff Prison the morning after meeting his mother and had been introduced to a man in his early thirties with dark hair that emphasised the pallor of his gaunt face. He could have been good-looking, but he was far too thin and had a totally blank expression. Martin introduced himself and received no indication of whether or not Vincent even knew he was there.

  It took just half an hour for Martin to tell Vincent what he had previously told his mother, but the news did not appear to have the same effect. Throughout the meeting Vincent remained motionless and didn’t say a word, but he’d managed a simple nod of the head when at the end Martin asked him if he had understood what had been said.

  On the way out Martin had spoken to one of the prison officers who told him that Vincent rarely spoke and was such a gentle person that she and her fellow officers often quizzed over how he could have committed such appalling murders.

  By the end of that week Martin and his seconded team had shown numerous reasons why Vincent’s conviction was unsafe and in fact left no doubt that he was totally innocent of all the charges that had been made against him. The court supported the findings and Vincent
was released amidst a fever of media activity.

  Hours after his release and in line with the arrangements organised by Martin the reunion of Vincent with his mother took place miles away from the glare of the media. The only other person who knew that they were staying at a cottage in Dorset was Emily and she joined them after a couple of days.

  The press, as expected, had camped outside Cora’s flat in Fairwater for almost a week following Vincent’s release but had to be content with the sightings of Vincent leaving the prison, as after that he had seemingly disappeared.

  Martin guessed that what lay ahead of Vincent and his mother would be years of struggle as they attempted to return to some sort of normality. He was pleased to think that they had the support of Emily Wiseman and he knew that in the fullness of time there would be a mega payout to Vincent, ostensibly to compensate for his wrongful arrest and years of imprisonment.

  No amount of money would ever be able to give him back his young years, and if Vincent had been a damaged man at the time of his arrest it was likely that the harm had deepened during his time inside. It could only be hoped that the love and devotion his mother had shown would continue and would bring her son to a better place.

  Martin felt really good about Vincent’s release, but of course it had begged the question as to who was the real killer of those prostitutes. Although his brief had been to concentrate on the conviction of Vincent Bowen, it had been agreed that the team should take things further and their efforts took them to Bristol.

  It had been a year or so after the murders in Cardiff when a fifty-year-old man had been arrested for the slaughter of two sex workers on a large housing estate fairly near Bristol city centre. Although these women had been killed by having their throats cut, in the same way as the prostitutes in Cardiff, there had been no reason to link the crimes.

  After all, the perpetrator of the Cardiff killings was behind bars and this was just another man who, in his own mind, had a reason for ‘cleaning up the streets’. What had led Martin to Bristol was the fact that the review team had brought to his attention: that all the women killed in Cardiff had links with Bristol. He had learned from the local vice squad that it was not uncommon for sex workers from Cardiff to work for a period in Bristol and vice versa.