Guilty Consciences - [A CWA Anthology]

by Edited by Martin Edwards

  ‘Heard you run some sort of repair shop, Jack. Might bring my Morris Minor in for you to give it a going over.’

  To hear Jack Colby’s Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations so described set my gears grinding. We do not give cars a ‘going over’. We patiently and lovingly restore them to their former glory. But I couldn’t say no to Matt Redwell, and mustered what cordiality I could.

  ‘Bring it in, Matt.’

  He brought the Minor in, and a sorry sight it was - rust, faded paint, you name it. I set my trusty team of two to work, and after they had crawled over it, fixing everything from sloppy gearbox to perished wheel bearings, he came to Frogs Hill to collect it.

  ‘Good job,’ he said, casting a casual eye over its now immaculate appearance. ‘How much do I owe you, Jack?’

  I nerved myself up for my grand confession. ‘Nothing. I owed you.’

  He blinked a bit but didn’t comment, so I explained.

  ‘Remember when you lost your Dinky post office van? Well, it was me who nicked it, and I still feel bad about it.’ An understatement. It had nagged uneasily at the back of my mind ever since.

  Matt gave me what one might call a sideways glance, nodded his thanks, and drove off, together with the albatross of guilt that had been hanging round my neck. I’d lost sight of that Dinky van over the years along with several others in my childhood collection, including a treasured Dinky Ford GT40. But that’s life, and now I was free of Matt for good. Or so I had thought.

  The second phone call was rather different.

  ‘Jack? It’s me, Matt.’

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘I am. For murder.’

  ~ * ~

  No joke. A white-faced Matt came hurtling along to Frogs Hill in the Minor to tell me he was out on police bail for murdering his wife and I was his first port of call for help in proving his innocence.

  ‘Why me?’ I asked. I didn’t like the sound of this.

  ‘Heard you’re a car detective.’

  ‘Right. But I hunt down stolen cars, not murderers.’

  He sounded hurt. ‘But you owe me, Jack . . .’

  I looked at him, I looked at the Morris Minor, remembered all our careful work on it, sighed and surrendered. With the Matt Redwells of this world logic doesn’t work.

  I’d read about the case - who hadn’t? A row had broken out at a Greek taverna by the River Medway. An initially unnamed woman had been stabbed, her husband arrested for murder. There had been heavy press hints that there was more to it than that.

  ‘I’ll have a nose around,’ I told him reluctantly.

  ‘That’s good, because I’ve already fixed it with Dimitri. The taverna’s closed on Tuesdays so he’ll see you then. The other four are coming too. I told them it’s a sort of reconstruction, but I know it was one of them who killed my Shelley. Should be simple enough to work out which.’ He gazed at me hopefully.

  I must have missed something. ‘What four? And why aren’t you coming?’

  Matt looked as near embarrassed as his jaunty cocky self would permit. ‘There were six of us there that night and I’m not coming because they said there was no way they’d talk to a murderer, meaning me. I know what they’re up to. They’ll convince you I did it. I know that lot.’

  ‘You’d better tell me what the police have on you.’

  He shuffled a bit. ‘It’s not good,’ he admitted. ‘I found Shelley’s body, but did a damn fool thing. Shock, I suppose. Pulled the skewer out of her and got blood on me.’

  My stomach suggested I wasn’t going to like this story. ‘Skewer?’ I asked weakly.

  ‘One of those metal things - we’d all ordered kebabs that night.’ Matt sounded as matter-of-fact as though death by such means was a natural consequence. ‘About a foot long. They had biggish heat-resistant tops to them and they found my fingerprints all over them. Only my fingerprints, so they’ll find only my DNA too, most like. Trouble is,’ he added, ‘Shelley and I had had a flaming row, which doesn’t help.’

  How could I put this? ‘Otherwise your relationship with Shelley was good?’

  He considered this. ‘No, can’t say it was. How would you like to be married to a rampant nympho? Sex among a few friends is one thing, throwing it around is a different ball game.’

  I’d been right. I didn’t like this story. ‘Take it from the beginning, Matt.’

  ‘Right. OK. The six of us - we call ourselves the Sextet - have been going to Dimitri’s Taverna for yonks. It’s our regular.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Give me a break, Jack. For sex, of course. Sextet. Short for Sex-Tête-à-Tête only it weren’t our heads knocking together. See?’

  I did. And I liked the story even less. It was going to be one heck of a repayment for nicking one Dinky toy when I was nine years old.

  ‘I’ll tell you like it was,’ Matt offered. ‘Shelley and me went in the Morris Minor, Tony and Rose in their Morris Major, Sue and Rob in their thirties’ Bentley. We did the regular draw during the meal; the three women each picked a car out of the hat, then the three men did.’

  ‘And guess what,’ I finished for him. ‘You would all drive back with the allotted drivers and passengers for each car and take a nightcap at an agreed home.’

  ‘Yeah. Only this night we didn’t get that far, because it all went wrong. We did the draw after the mezze but Shelley and me both picked the Minor and she started shouting the odds at being stuck with me. Sue was upset at being paired off with Rose’s hubby Tony and not me, Rob kicked up a fuss because Tony’s a rotten driver and he was worried about his Bentley, and Rob and Rose were in the Major, which set me off, because I fancied Rose and I was stuck with Shelley.’

  I gulped, marvelling at the way some people take their pleasures. ‘That kind of situation must have cropped up before, though.’

  ‘True enough, Jack, but that evening Shelley and me were seriously on the outs. We’d had this row the way over because she was spreading her wings far and wide, if you know what I mean.’

  Again, I did. It wasn’t difficult.

  ‘We were at a table in the garden, and during the kebabs the next row broke out. Shelley preferred the Bentley with Rob driving it, and she made her feelings loud and clear that she wasn’t going to put up with third best man, her loving husband, and that the vote had been rigged. Shelley was right actually. I had rigged it, but I must have mucked it up, and it looked bad for me when the police heard that. None of us was happy and while we polished off the kebabs the row got worse and the noise level shot up.

  That brought Dimitri over to the table. He couldn’t get a word in edgeways for a while and stood there fuming over what to do about it. He told Stavros - he’s the waiter - to clear our plates away and then kick off the Greek dancing on the terrace earlier than usual so that we could do our shouting and yelling up there. Stavros always starts it off, because he does the best jumping around. He’s a good-looking lad and flaunts what he’s got, so it gets the ladies going. Shelley said it couldn’t start soon enough for her because what she wanted was a real man, not one out of a hat, and off she marched to the terrace, did a twirl or two with Stavros and the other customers began to gather, along with us.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ I murmured. It sounded a nightmare. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Dimitri’s plan was a good one and I thought we’d all cool off. The non-drivers amongst us were all tanked up on Dimitri’s Greek plonk, and the Greek zither and lyra music was blaring over the sound system, and there was Stavros doing his Zorba act while we all circled around him. Once we got going, everyone started having a good time again. When Dimitri called time at eleven o’clock, we all paid our bills and came back for the final dance with Stavros doing his stuff. I’d swear Shelley was there then, but when it ended I couldn’t see her. I assumed she was in the toilets and hung around; the others wanted to get away and Sue said Shelley hadn’t been in the loo so I went to join the others in the car park thinking she might have
shot off in the Minor in a huff to leave me stranded. But the Minor was still there. So back I went.

  ‘I did find her this time, and it wasn’t pleasant, I can tell you.’ He gulped. ‘I panicked. I could see she was dead and I . . . well, I remembered the good times we’d had and all that. Dammit, Jack, I loved her even though I wanted to kick her to kingdom come and back -’ he caught sight of my expression - ‘not literally,’ he added hastily. ‘It was seeing her like that, Jack, that’s what made me act so stupid. There wasn’t much blood on her when I first saw her because the skewer was still in but she can’t have been dead for long because when I pulled it out, I got some on me. I must have yelled a bit, because Dimitri turned up and called the police.’

  It didn’t look good for Matt - and that meant it didn’t look good for me. I could feel that albatross round my neck again.

  ~ * ~

  Dimitri’s Taverna was tucked away at the end of a lane leading down to the river, and had of course been thoroughly checked out by the police. By Tuesday I heard nothing through my police contacts that suggested their searches had yielded any other thesis than that Matt Redwell was guilty of Shelley’s murder. He’d killed her on the spur of the moment and shock made him stay put and then pull the weapon out.

  I arrived on the early side in the hope of having a scout round and chat with Dimitri before the other four arrived. It didn’t look a large establishment but the prices on the menu seemed to compensate for that. Certainly it was a pretty spot. The front of the taverna had a view over the river, but the gardens where the Sextet had been sitting last week were behind the building, as was the terrace. The car park was on the far side of the lane opposite the garden and I was able to walk straight through the gate and have a quick look around. The toilets were to my left, a modern extension to the restaurant, which looked as if it had been converted from two or maybe three cottages.

  The garden looked delightful, with a central path and tables on either side; each one was screened by tall bushes for privacy. I had gathered from Matt that Dimitri was not only Mine Host but also the chef with Stavros as live-in waiter, and someone who could only be Dimitri himself came striding towards me - dark-haired, moustache, and a brash confidence that the Greeks put over so convincingly. I almost expected him to strike a pose and start dancing, but he didn’t. He must be in his forties and probably left all flaunting to Stavros.

  Dimitri regarded me with deep suspicion. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you think we kill our customers here, eh, Mr Colby?’

  ‘I hope not,’ I replied amicably. ‘I’m just here to find out what happened and need your help.’

  He glared at me. ‘I help you see it was Mr Redwell who killed that lovely lady. I will show you where she lay dead.’

  He led me towards the gate, but turned before we reached it into another bush-secluded area. This one did not have a table in it, but several benches around the sides, each with a low coffee table before it. In the grassy centre I could see the remains of police chalk marks which brought the reality of murder very near.

  ‘Here we serve drinks to customers who wait for tables to be cleared,’ Dimitri told me.

  ‘So what was Shelley Redwell doing here so late in the evening?’

  ‘She liked gentlemen, Mr Colby. Any gentleman.’

  ‘But why linger in here? She was in a party with three of them.’

  ‘I do not know.’

  Fair enough. ‘She can’t have been dead for very long before you found Mr Redwell with her body.’

  ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘He only just killed her, that’s why. Passion, Mr Colby. Drinks, drugs, knives; this is a bad world.’

  Noises from the car park suggested the remaining Sextets had arrived, less Matt of course. I don’t know quite what I expected. They certainly weren’t wearing labels reading Sex Maniac; they looked like four adults tired after a day’s work. It was easy to pick out who was who from the descriptions Matt had given me. Rob was tall, rather serious-looking, his wife Sue a long-haired blonde with a supercilious air; Tony was shorter and pugnacious; and the demure dark-haired witch at his side was Rose whose dancing brown eyes made me see why Matt fancied her.

  ‘You know what Matt’s up to in sending us along to meet you,’ Tony began belligerently. ‘You’re in with the Old Bill, aren’t you, so he’s hoping you’ll accuse one of us of having killed Shelley.’

  ‘Only if it’s the truth,’ I said mildly.

  ‘And who decides that?’ Sue asked imperiously.

  ‘The police. Look,’ I said, ‘I owe Matt a favour which is why I’m here. I just want you to tell me what happened and where. It could have been more or less anyone on the terrace at the end of the evening, as far as I can see. There were other customers as well as you six.’

  A look flashed amongst them, and they all quickly agreed with this diagnosis. Dimitri noticed it too. ‘I call Stavros,’ he said firmly. ‘He there, he help.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Sue said, rather too quickly. Perhaps Matt was wrong about his being her preferred date.

  Summoned by Dimitri’s walkie-talkie, Stavros rapidly appeared. Good-looking he certainly was, but the sullen expression and the impatient flicks of his elegant hips indicated that he was not happy about being here, even when Sue edged nearer to him. And then I began the reconstruction, feeling somewhat out of my depth. I reconstruct cars not murders, but I supposed that the principle was the same: study the whole, pick out the flaws, apply logic.

  Rob led the way over to the table where the party had sat that night. It had a sad look because the crime scene had only just been lifted and the chairs looked as though they remained just as they had been left when the Sextet sprang up to rush to the terrace.

  ‘This is all rubbish,’ Rob said impatiently. ‘Shelley wasn’t murdered until well after eleven o’clock. What’s the point of going through this rigmarole of what happened earlier?’

  ‘Every point,’ Tony retorted. ‘This is where Matt got riled up enough to kill her. The draw went wrong. Shelley didn’t want Matt, and that started it all off.’

  This emphasis on Matt seemed to give the others confidence and they grew more cooperative. An imaginary draw took place, imaginary dishes were delivered, Dimitri arrived, and then a sulky Stavros removed the imaginary empty plates. It didn’t tell me a lot, but I pretended it did by nodding sagely.

  ‘I’m told Shelley really wanted you, Rob,’ I said. ‘Was that OK by you?’

  ‘No way,’ he said hastily as Sue looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘Rob hated the idea, didn’t you, darling?’ she cooed.

  ‘Shelley wanted the Bentley,’ Tony growled. ‘Not Rob.’

  ‘Thanks, Tony,’ Rob snapped. ‘Anyway, Matt took the hump and began yelling at her.’

  ‘Was there any suggestion that the draw result should be changed?’

  The four seemed uncertain about this, so Dimitri decided to join in. ‘Mrs Redwell say she not happy. She not want man drawn out of hat.’

  That was true, the four speedily agreed, led by Rob, I noticed. Nevertheless, so far it was a fairly united front, and I needed to break it if I was going to save Matt - if of course he was innocent. I plunged into battle again.

  ‘So you sent Stavros back to the kitchen with the plates, Dimitri. Were the skewers on them?’

  ‘I do not remember that,’ Stavros answered.

  ‘Does anyone?’ I asked.

  Apparently not. I was stuck in the slow lane and I needed to pull out and get moving if I was to overtake the opposition.

  ‘Then I begin dancing.’ Stavros illustrated the point for us with a sophisticated twirl. ‘Mrs Redwell comes up to join me and the others followed.’

  ‘Very keen on Greek dancing was Shelley,’ Tony said meaningfully, with a slight pause before the word ‘dancing’.

  Dimitri got the message. ‘You thinking Stavros killed the lady? Not possible. I call for the finish at eleven o’clock; I get them to pay bills, and then they go out to have a final dance. Stavr
os there all the time.’

  ‘What then?’ I asked.

  ‘I go to kitchen to do washing up like Dimitri tell me,’ Stavros chimed in crossly, clearly seeing this as an unmanly role. ‘He see me there,’ he added, and Dimitri nodded.

  ‘Were you all present during the final dance?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sue said firmly.

  ‘Except for Shelley,’ Tony said. ‘I told the police that. She was there during part of it, but not right at the end. She could only have been gone for a minute or two. I thought she had gone to the loo.’

  ‘All of you see Matt at the end?’ I asked.