by Dawn Brookes
‘In that case, I’m going to take a seat.’ Fiona plonked herself down in one of the armchairs.
Carlos walked slowly around, reading notices and getting a feel for the place and the woman in charge. Highly efficient and professional, was his conclusion. After fifteen minutes, he was beginning to wonder if Josie was playing mind games with them, but didn’t mention it to Fiona. She was impatiently flicking through a magazine, huffing and puffing.
‘You’ll give yourself high blood pressure,’ he said.
‘I hate waiting. Never been any good at it. One of the reasons I’m always late. At least that way, you don’t have to wait for anyone else.’
He laughed. ‘I’ll remember that next time I arrange a meeting with you.’
As they joked around amicably, the woman who’d let them in earlier joined them.
‘Sorry, I was called to help someone to the toilet and got waylaid. Follow me, I’ll take you to matron’s office.’
They followed the bustling woman along a wide corridor and up an even wider spiral staircase covered with thick maroon carpet, exposed polished wood at both ends of the steps. Eventually they arrived at the end of the first-floor corridor outside an office labelled simply: ‘Matron’. The door was closed. The nurse knocked and waited.
Josie opened. ‘Thank you, Sheila, I’ll take over now. Mr Jacobi, good to see you again, although I don’t know what I can do to help you.’
Josie wasn’t fooling Carlos for a moment. The flushed face, wide eyes and cautious tone told him she knew exactly why they were there.
‘Call me Carlos.’
‘DS Cook.’ Fiona introduced herself. ‘We’re here about a note Carlos received, but I think you know that, don’t you?’
Cut to the chase, why don’t you? Carlos thought.
Josie reddened more. ‘You’d better come in. Take a seat,’ she said and positioned herself behind a large polished ebony desk. Carlos and Fiona took the seats opposite.
‘I received this note a few days ago. I was hoping you could explain what it means and why you sent it?’ Carlos placed the note on the desk.
Josie cleared her throat. ‘What makes you think I sent it?’
‘Please don’t play games, Mrs Reynolds. We know you sent it, we just need to know why.’ Fiona was playing bad cop.
‘Okay. Look, I read about Matthew Sissons’s remains being found and thought it might be helpful for you to speak to Colonel Webb about them. He can tell you what happened. I didn’t want to get involved. That’s why I sent it anonymously.’ She glared at Fiona.
‘I’m afraid Colonel Webb has been difficult to speak to,’ Carlos countered.
‘You can say that again,’ she snapped. ‘I heard what happened, but you should be able to speak to him now. He’ll be at home.’
Fiona’s head shot up. ‘What? When?’
‘He was released on bail on Christmas Eve. Called to tell me, not that I was interested. He’s a pest.’
‘How well do you know the colonel?’ Carlos tried a different tack.
The blush that had all but disappeared returned. ‘I cared for his wife when she was dying, that’s all.’
‘Look,’ Carlos persisted, ‘we’re not here to judge you about past or present relationships, and you’re not going to be reported for any professional indiscretions, but we do need to know the facts.’
Josie sighed heavily. ‘I used to do sleepovers to care for Mrs Webb when she was dying. She was a lovely woman – suffered terribly. Martin was a ladies’ man, I’m sure you’ve heard. One thing led to another, and yes, against my better judgement, we had a brief affair.’
‘While you were staying in the woman’s house as a nurse?’ Fiona’s disgust was evident.
‘It wasn’t like that. I still did my job. I liked her. I feel guilty enough about the whole sordid affair, and I thought you weren’t going to judge.’
Josie glared at Carlos, who intervened before Fiona said something else that might close Josie down.
‘Did Martin tell you what happened to Matthew?’
‘Goodness, no! He never spoke of it. He doesn’t speak much, to be honest. Our relationship was passion, nothing else. As I said, rather sordid, but the sex was good. I’d been divorced for a few years and he could be charming until he got his way.’ A bitterness surfaced in the green eyes.
‘So he ended it?’ suggested Fiona.
‘Not really. It fizzled out. After his wife, Valerie, died, he became obsessed with Meg Sissons. He went through the motions with me. Not that I was the only one. Once the sex was no longer satisfying, we gradually drifted apart. Every so often he tries to rekindle what we had, but I’m not interested. He’s as cold as an ice cream in winter, if I’m honest. Except with Meg. I came to my senses and now I detest the man.’
‘Is there any truth in the note or is this just revenge?’ asked Fiona.
Josie stiffened. ‘Of course there’s truth in the note. He knows what happened, I tell you.’
‘I’m sorry, Josie, I’m not following,’ said Carlos. ‘You say he never mentioned Matthew Sissons.’
‘He didn’t. She did.’
Carlos leaned forward. ‘Are you saying Valerie Webb knew something?’
‘She had drug-crazed dreams and murmured during her sleep. Occasionally I could make out what she was saying. I used to sit with her, mopping her brow, trying to settle her.’ Josie frowned at Fiona.
‘And?’ Carlos pressed.
‘There was one topic that became a regular feature of the nightmares. She would rail about a boy; she never said his name. I thought it was the delirium. Again and again, though, she would say, “He shouldn’t have got rid of the boy. Martin shouldn’t have got rid of the boy.” That’s what she said.’
‘So why didn’t you come forward earlier?’ asked Fiona.
‘It didn’t make any sense; I believed it to be drug-induced psychosis. That was until you found Matthew’s remains. It was only then I realised with horror that Martin may have had something to do with the death of Matthew Sissons. I swear, I had no idea up until that point. If I had, I would have asked Valerie about it when she was awake. What I assumed was end-of-life delirium turned out to be deathbed turmoil. Almost a confession. She never mentioned it, except in her sleep or near-sleep.’
‘Thank you, Josie. You’ve been most helpful. We won’t take up any more of your time.’
‘Well that’s a turnup,’ said Fiona as they climbed into Carlos’s car. ‘So he was the one who killed Matthew after all.’
‘It’s still hard to imagine why Harold Sissons and Martin Webb worked together on this, unless the theory of Webb hiding the body and later planting it in the house is right.’
‘That’s making more sense to me.’
‘I suggest it’s time to interview Martin Webb,’ Carlos said. ‘Do you think we need backup?’
‘I’m under instructions not to disturb the DCI. I daren’t contact him on the hearsay of a delirious woman implicating Webb in a murder that happened twenty years ago. The rifle’s been removed from the property. I doubt the spade’s been returned yet, so we should be able to defend ourselves against an old man unless he’s got a house full of garden implements. A scythe, perhaps.’
Carlos rubbed his head. ‘If so, you’re on it.’
He pulled up outside Webb’s house fifteen minutes later, deliberately leaving the car on the road for anyone to see, just in case. This time, he wasn’t going to be lured round the back; he hammered on the front door.
The door opened almost immediately and a pale and drawn Martin Webb left it ajar, walking back inside. They followed.
‘Now what do you want?’ Webb snapped.
‘We’d like to ask you a few questions about the death of Matthew Sissons, Colonel,’ said Fiona.
Enough of a flinch crossed Webb’s face for Carlos to notice, informing him Josie Reynolds had been telling the truth.
‘Such as?’
‘Such as, did you kill him?’ Fiona pressed.<
br />
The colonel remained standing and leaned on his mantelpiece in front of a coal fire. Carlos scanned for anything that might be used as a weapon while Fiona engaged the man, who was distinctly frailer than the one he’d been accosted by a few days before.
Webb laughed cynically. ‘You people don’t know anything, do you? You didn’t investigate when he died and now you’re like blind men scrabbling in the dark.’
‘Why don’t you enlighten us?’ suggested Carlos.
‘Why should I?’
‘Because your wife believed you killed the boy.’
The colonel stiffened. Pulse visible in his neck, he swallowed hard.
‘What are you saying?’
‘That your wife took a terrible secret to the grave. She confessed it to someone.’
The colonel was visibly shaken. He reached for a chair arm and lowered himself down into it.
‘She remembered?’
‘Yes,’ said Carlos.
‘The truth always comes out. That’s what they say, isn’t it?’ The haughty demeanour cracked and a haunted look followed.
‘Tell us how it happened. Was it an accident? Why don’t you fill in the gaps?’ Fiona’s voice was gentler, and she sat close to the colonel. Carlos remained standing, prepared to ward off any sudden attack.
‘My wife had attended the hospital that afternoon. I was with someone else – a woman. The doctors gave Valerie some strong painkillers. On her way back from the hospital, she got one of her spasms.’ The colonel choked back tears. ‘She called home from a phone box to ask me to collect her, but I wasn’t there. Then she called again, left a message to say not to worry, she was not far away and would take some of the morphine the doctor had prescribed.’
He put his head in his hands. ‘If only I’d been home.’
Carlos and Fiona waited for him to regain his calm.
‘Matthew was always flying up and down the road on his bike. He careered out of the Sissons’ drive just as my wife passed in the car. I was walking home; I’d waved as she passed, but she didn’t see me. There was an almighty loud crash, but she carried on towards our home. I didn’t think she knew what she’d done.
‘I raced over to find Matthew lying there on the road, crushed. I could see straight away he was gone. Killed outright. Sissons came out. I yelled at him to call for an ambulance. He stood there as if it was a dead sparrow lying on the ground, not his son. The man had a heart of stone. I tried to run into his house to use the phone. He stopped me, told me my wife would go to prison for a hit and run. I didn’t have the full story then, but Sissons said he’d seen everything.
‘Then, right there, with his son lying dead in the road, he came up with a proposition. He would deal with the body as long as I paid him £5,000 to keep quiet.’
Carlos’s jaw dropped open. ‘And you agreed?’
‘My wife was a sick woman. What would you have done?’
Carlos didn’t answer. Not that, he thought.
‘I got home and found Valerie asleep on the couch. Even then, I was going to call the police until I saw the answerphone machine light flashing. I listened to the messages and her desperate call for help, and realised it was all my fault. Guilt overwhelmed me and I knew I could never let her pay for my indiscretion.
‘I didn’t know what Sissons did with the body. I never asked. I paid him the money, deleted the answerphone messages and Valerie never said a word about it to me. I didn’t think she remembered or even knew what had happened – Sissons must have told her in some sick, twisted moment of retribution. He was always jealous, knowing how much I had loved Meg.
‘The blackmail didn’t end there. There were numerous payments over the years. If I hadn’t loved Meg so much, I would have told the police after my wife died, but I didn’t want to see her suffer any more than she already had.’
‘You mean you didn’t want her to hate you,’ accused Fiona.
‘No, I didn’t, Sergeant. I thought we could make a fresh start once Sissons was out of the way.’
‘You were the one skulking in the garage that day, weren’t you?’ asked Carlos.
‘I remembered that Sissons had mentioned a few times how he’d kept evidence in case he needed it. I saw the bike and was going to dispose of it. You disturbed me and I ran. I suppose you’ve got it now?’
Carlos looked at Fiona who shook her head.
‘We’ll need you to make a statement and sign the confession,’ she said. ‘And did you also kill Harold Sissons?’
‘I’d love to answer yes to that question, my dear, but no, I did not kill Sissons.’
Fiona beamed at Carlos. ‘Perhaps you can accompany me to the station in the morning?’
33
The next morning, there was a knock at Sophie’s door. Carlos answered to find an attractive brunette on the doorstep.
‘Mr Jacobi?’
‘Carlos. I assume you’re Lorna Milnthorpe?’
‘Can we take a walk?’ she asked.
‘Why not?’ He grabbed his coat and whistled for Lady to join him.
‘I just want to ask about Matthew. My father told you I’m a journalist, but that’s not why I’m here. Matthew was my friend. I never believed he ran away, although no-one at school would have blamed him. He showed me the bruises.’
Carlos gasped. ‘So Harold Sissons was violent?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’
‘No, I didn’t. Did Matthew tell you about it?’
‘He swore me to secrecy. He was scared of being taken away and leaving his mother alone with his father. I kept his secret out of respect. He would never have left his mother. He adored her.’
‘Did Harold hit his wife?’
‘Not as far as I know. Matt – that’s what I called him – said his father hit him whenever he could. I don’t think Meg knew about it.’ Lorna grabbed Carlos’s arm, tears brimming over. ‘I’ve carried this for over twenty years, and now I feel so ashamed. Could I have prevented Harold from killing him?’
Carlos stopped and turned to face her, laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘Harold didn’t kill him. It was a tragic accident. Nothing you could have done would have changed the outcome. All you did was be a loyal friend.’
Lorna stood back and stared up at Carlos. ‘But I heard Matt’s remains were found in the house. How could it have been an accident?’
Carlos explained what had actually happened on the fateful day. This woman deserved to know. How many more lives had Harold Sissons damaged?
‘I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know the truth after all these years. I was terrified something awful had happened at the hands of his father, but I was a twelve-year-old girl, and shy to boot. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about it. When I heard about the remains, I was physically sick, thinking I could have saved my friend if I’d been braver.’
They turned back towards the village in comfortable silence.
‘I’m pleased Matthew had a friend like you,’ Carlos said eventually.
She smiled for the first time since their meeting, a sparkle lightening up the dark lines beneath her eyes.
‘You’ll be pleased to know I have no interest in the murder of that evil man. There will be no press intrusion from me.’
After breakfast, Carlos took the door key to Sophie’s house back around to Meg’s. He let himself in and hung the key back in its allotted space. Next to it was a small bunch of keys labelled: ‘Allotment’.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, dialling Caroline’s number.
‘Have you discovered anything?’
Carlos hesitated before explaining about Colonel Webb’s part in covering up the death of Matthew all those years ago.
‘There was a statement in Matthew’s file, taken from Martin Webb, confirming your father’s story. It seemed to validate that he’d run away and threw the police off the scent. Colonel Webb was a well-respected pillar of the community. No-one would have suspected him of lying. Harold blackmailed
the colonel to cover up what had happened, although Webb only did it to protect his wife. As for Harold, I’m afraid he didn’t seem to have a conscience.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that, I know. Poor Matthew. At least it’s comforting to know that he died instantly. For all these years, I imagined he’d been abducted and feared all sorts of dreadful things had happened to him. I’m sorry the colonel colluded with the hateful man, but I can understand how he’d want to protect his wife in her condition.’
‘That’s very forgiving of you.’
‘It was a tragedy of errors. What’s the point now? I’m sure the colonel’s suffered enough. Will he be charged?’
‘That’s down to the police.’
‘Not that I care, but have you found out who killed Harold?’
Carlos turned over the allotment key in his hand, weighing up his options.
‘I fear it wouldn’t be in Meg’s interest for me to pursue the case any further. Your mother’s suffered enough.’
There was a pause at the other end of the phone.
‘You know who did it then?’
‘I believe I do. Yes.’
‘And it’s someone you don’t think should pay for the crime?’
Carlos drew in a deep breath, wrestling with his conscience.
‘I feel the person has suffered enough and justice has been served. I’d rather not pursue this any further.’
‘And what about the police? Do they suspect this person?’
‘No. There’s no reason for them to do so. As far as they’re concerned, it was a robbery gone wrong. The Peak District has thousands of visitors every year. Anyone could have killed him. The trail’s gone cold. A new man’s on the case who’s likely to put it to bed sooner rather than later. I think your new lawyer has connections in high places.’
‘I see. You will please send me your bill for the work you’ve carried out. You’ll be happy to know that my mother’s decided to sell up and move up here. She’s had far too many years away from me and the grandchildren.’
‘I wish you and her every happiness, Caroline. It might be better if you deal with the sale and clearing yourself, though. In particular, I believe you might want to clear your father’s allotment shed. I found a key on the hook when returning Sophie’s key.’