The Frame - from the author of the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series (A Feyer and Drake Mystery Book 2)

by David W Robinson

  “Too fast for my liking.”

  “You may be right. Anyway, your father, brother and sister are all lawyers, and you must be aware that the police are under obligation to disclose significant evidence to the defence. That constitutes evidence which may support the prosecution and anything which may support the defence. It was Oxley’s responsibility to ensure that all disclosures were made. He left it to Landshaven CID. Hacton was coming up to retirement. He had only a couple of months to go, so Neville Trentham suggested leaving the administrative work to him. In other words, he was responsible for ensuring that evidence which required disclosure was dealt with. Hacton was quite happy to take it on. Two months to retirement what better than a pen pushing job in the office every day? Plenty of time to sit twiddling his thumbs, playing with his dick or whatever.”

  She paused by a free bench, sat down. Drake sat alongside her, and she went on with her story.

  “Hacton held back a piece of evidence which should have been disclosed. It wasn’t critical. It was no more than a partial fingerprint on the murder weapon, the baseball bat, and to this day it’s never been identified. The general feeling is that it probably belonged to the shop assistant who sold the bat. But it doesn’t matter. The defence were not made aware of it, therefore the jury were not made aware of it, and the appeal court judgement came to the decision that had the jury known of it, they might just have brought in a not guilty verdict.”

  It was legal and logical to Drake’s analytical mind. An unsafe conviction, not a declaration of innocence, but enough to have the conviction quashed, and institute a massive investigation on all fronts.

  “You said Hacton held back this evidence. How? Why? Clerical error?”

  “It’s bizarre, and it’ll take some believing, but trust me, it’s what happened.” She licked her lips, ready to go into another, lengthy explanation. “Tom Hacton was unmarried. He lived alone, had no family. He died of natural causes last year. Heart attack. He was, I think, sixty-nine years old. According to Frank Barker, he wasn’t the fittest of men. He smoked too much, drank too much, and took as little exercise as possible. His will was lodged with his bank. They were the executors. He didn’t leave much, and what he did leave was gifted to various charities, military and police. When they opened his will, they found a sealed envelope inside, addressed to Hayley Killeen and marked private and confidential. Naturally, the bank passed the letter to her. She opened it and found a handwritten letter from Hacton telling her to go to the police station and ask them to check a specific file – one relating to a burglary from about 2010 – in which they would find evidence which might prove Rachel Jenner innocent.”

  Drake considered himself unshockable. Over the years he had listened to many confessions of fraud, violence, outrageous sexual practices, and so on; too many for him to be stunned by any revelation, but this was beyond the pale. “He deliberately buried the evidence?”

  Sam nodded slowly and gravely. “Now do you see why IOPC are being called in?”

  “Obviously.” Drake reined in his tumbling thoughts. “When did this come to light? You said he died a year ago?”

  “That’s right.” Sam picked up the story. “I have to digress again. Hayley was one of Rachel’s biggest supporters. Ever since the trial, she has maintained that Rachel was innocent. It’s not just a professional stance. She fervently believes that Rachel was wrongly convicted, and that the police, both Landshaven at York, were guilty of a cover-up. The moment she received this letter, she was on the warpath. She didn’t trust anyone in Landshaven, not even Neville Trentham, so she went to York and demanded a meeting with Iris Mullins. Iris managed to persuade her to keep it quiet for the moment while an internal investigation could be carried out. The DCC sent two clerical officers from York to Landshaven, and ordered them to audit a couple of dozen files. It was apparently random, but of course, the relevant file, the one Hacton mentioned, was amongst them. No one Landshaven was told what was going on. As far as they were concerned it was a routine audit. They found exactly what Hacton said they would, and at that point Trentham was called to York and told of the findings. The IOPC were called in and they instituted an audit of all files over the last ten years. Massive job. Took the better part of four months, but fortunately for Trentham, they were given a clean bill of health. There was just this outstanding incident, and because Hayley insisted that they would be part and parcel of a fresh appeal, it was declared sub judice. No one could discuss it until the appeal was decided. The rest you know.”

  “The IOPC’s conclusion?”

  “They interviewed several officers, amongst them Frank Barker and John Jenner. Both men were dumbfounded. They found it hard to believe that Tom Hacton would pull such an underhanded trick, and they were at a complete loss to explain it.”

  Drake got to his feet and held out his hand. Sam took it and she stood too. They turned right and ambled further along the seafront. On the beach, the tide ebbing, hardy souls played games, walked, some with children, others with pet dogs, some of which frolicked in the shallows. An ordinary Saturday in an ordinary, British seaside resort, and yet, for Drake it was anything but ordinary.

  “Hacton. A plodder, you said. Honest as the day is long?”

  “His record was fine. Only one question mark against him and that was about five years before the Shawforth case.” Sam waved at the seafront area. “This part of town has a problem with prostitution. It’s not as serious as it is in cities like Leeds, Bradford, or even Middlesbrough and Hull, but it’s there, and now and again, the townsfolk protest to their councillors or write indignant letters to the local newspaper, and Neville orders a crackdown.” She pointed back the way they had come and across the road. “The girls usually congregate in the Trafalgar Inn. So, during one of these crackdowns Hacton brought in a woman, and she protested that he used the services of other prostitutes. Nobody took the accusation seriously, but he was suspended pending an investigation, and they couldn’t find any other working girl willing to support the allegation. In the end, they concluded that it was this single woman, irritated at being arrested and charged, making scurrilous, mischievous accusations, and the business was forgotten. It’s no more than a note on his personnel file. Aside from that, Tom Hacton was a bog standard copper. Good at his job, knew how to handle the rowdies, the users and dealers, not afraid to get into a ruck if he needed to, but preferring the softly-softly approach. He’s the kind of man I would have got on with. A bit like my sergeant, Paul Czarniak.”

  Drake disregarded the reference to her current sergeant. “But he buried evidence relevant to a serious crime, and he smothered it in such a way that it would come to light only after his death.”

  “All true. And somewhere along the line, I have to account for that… If I can.” She stopped, turned to face him and looked up into his eyes. “I can see which way you’re going, Wes, but you’re wrong before you even set out on that track. He did not murder Barbara Shawforth. On the day, he was out in the morning, and brought in a couple of dealers. He spent most of the morning and afternoon interrogating them, along with Dominic Larne. The rest of the afternoon, he was at his desk, and there is no way he could have left, got down to the Bellevue, murdered Barbara, and got back without anyone noticing. Aside from anything else, he would have been covered in blood.”

  “And yet, he was implicated. And your last remark leads me to another problem. Barbara was murdered early in September, busy time for this town. How did Rachel get away from the Bellevue while she was covered in blood? Surely someone would have noticed?”

  Sam could only shrug. “You’re asking questions I can’t answer. Not yet. And I don’t know if I ever will.”

  There was a sadness in her voice which telegraphed her thoughts to him. “Don’t beat yourself up, Sam. I know how much you dislike police corruption, and I know how you struggled with the last time, but you came through it. You won and yet you didn’t need the answers to all the questions.”

  “I was gratef
ul for the work you did with me earlier in the year. But it’s still there, you know. It still hurts. The way Don betrayed me and everything we were supposed to stand for.”

  He took her hand and she did not resist. “Come on. Let’s get a drink.”

  She smiled thinly. “Soft drink only. I’ve already had a glass of wine, and you’ve had a glass of lager. I can’t afford a drink-driving conviction and neither can you.”

  They spent most of the afternoon together, popping in and out of shops, amusement arcades, taking a turn around the fairground (but declining to try any of the rides) and at half past four, with the prospect of rain threatening to develop further, they made their way back to the harbour car park.

  “You know, I think this is the first day I’ve truly enjoyed since…”

  Her face fell at his comment. She looked away. “I-I’m sorry, Wes, for the way things are between us, but—”

  “So am I, but I accept that it’s mostly my doing. So let’s just agree to be friends for the time being.”

  With a wry smile, she stretched up and pecked him on the cheek. “I’ll see you on Monday morning if I don’t see you before.”

  Chapter Ten

  At one o’clock on a Sunday night/Monday morning, Landshaven seafront was deathly quiet. Traffic had dried up a couple of hours earlier, when the pubs closed. The drinkers were all either back in their digs or up in the town centre, where the nightclubs were located. During the peak season, the funfair shut down about half past eleven (noise pollution whiners were responsible for that) the pubs, restaurants, and fish and chip shops were all closed by midnight, the promenade was a ghost town, and the only sign of activity came from the harbour, and only then when a fishing boat or small cargo ship was plodding its way in.

  Olivia Bradley wouldn’t normally be in this part of town at this hour, but she had business on the beach. It had been a lively night. One of her regular clients rang just before the Trafalgar closed, and she spent an hour with him. A fat, sweaty old fart, and she’d had to do all the work, but it was still an easy fifty. Better than working for a living, and it suited her to be dropped back in the seafront area. Better here than at Ruth Russell’s where the old cow might search her room and find the missing truncheon.

  For a woman of Olivia’s age (26) there wasn’t much doing in a hick, seaside town like Landshaven. Not without qualifications, anyway. All right if you went to university or copped a shed load of GCSEs from school, but Olivia hadn’t. Truth was, half the time, she bunked off school and hung around places like Limes shopping mall or the castle. When it came to employment, most jobs were boring, and she had no chance trying to crack those that weren’t.

  She lost her virginity young, and by the time she was eighteen, she knew what men wanted. After one joker told her she’d be good on the game, she gave it a try. It was disgusting. Some wheezing old twonk who could only get half a hard on and then struggled to get it off. She had to finish him off by hand. And all for a lousy twenty quid.

  It got better, but not much. The money was good but the sex was never better than a shag, and she had to fake interest. Plus, she had to be prepared to do just about anything for it. Even cater for women. But needs must, as her gran used to say, and how else could she make fifty dabs for an hour’s work?

  She’d often considered moving abroad, maybe to one of the Spanish resorts like Benidorm or Magaluf, but from all she understood, most of the street girls were actually pickpockets, and she’d be lucky to get away without a pimp. Also, she had an idea that the law was much less kind over there. In Landshaven, she worked without a pimp, and although the filth cracked down occasionally, by and large there was little hassle.

  The night sky had clouded over, and the threat of more rain hung in the air. She emerged from the bottom of Harbour Passage, checked both ways and hurried across the promenade, stepping down onto the beach, where it hugged the rough, stone wall of the harbour. It was almost pitch dark here, and they were safe from the prying eyes of the traffic cameras. There was a security camera on the dock up above, but it was concentrated on the path and safety rail close to the shed. From all she had been told, it did not look over this part of the beach, but even if it did, the black shadow cast by the powerful arc lights on the docks, would hide them from view.

  Her contact was there, waiting for her as had promised, almost invisible in the dark, especially in that black, hooded get up (necessary to prevent the traffic cameras getting an ID).

  “You have it?”

  Olivia opened her bag, and took out the implement. “Fifty, you said.”

  “Let me see it. I need to know if it’s the right one.”

  She hesitated a moment, and then realised that it made sense. It was supposed to be an antique. No one would pay £50 for a cheap copy. She handed it over.

  The other took it, hefted it in one hand and then the other, testing the weight. Half turning away from her and swinging it from side to side.

  “It’s good.”

  Olivia held out her hand. “Pay up.”

  She should have expected it. With hindsight, it was obvious, but she had less than one second to consider the terrible realisation before the weapon slammed into the side of her face, breaking her jaw, and sending her reeling, spinning to the sand, and diving headlong into the vortex that was coming death. She felt the second blow to the back of her neck, and beyond that… nothing.

  ***

  The bleating of Sam’s phone woke her.

  Eyes bleary, she swept a finger over the smart phone’s lock screen, checked the time at a few minutes after half past six, and calculated she’d been asleep barely six hours. Muttering to herself, she read the menu: Barker. She made the connection. “Frank, what do you want at this time of day?”

  The chief inspector sounded as if he were yawning. “I have a stiff on the beach.”

  Sam clucked impatiently. “Well, what businesses is that of mine? You were duty officer for the weekend, and I don’t sign on until nine. Surely you can handle it?”

  “I appreciate that, Sam, but the way the girl’s been done…Well, I think you’d better take a look at it. Her head’s been smashed in… Just like Barbara Shawforth’s.”

  Chapter Eleven

  After taking a shower and pulling on a pair of denim jeans and a woolly jumper, Sam rang Drake and he too was irritated at being forcibly wakened so early on a Monday morning.

  “I’m sorry but something happened overnight, and I think you need to know about it. Can you make sure you’re at the station for half past eight?”

  “What’s so urgent that I have to move that quickly?”

  “A body on the beach. Apparently the victim has been killed in exactly the same manner as Barbara Shawforth.”

  Drake’s attitude changed abruptly. “I’ll be with you on the seafront. Where exactly?”

  “Wes, there’s no need. We can handle—”

  He cut her off. “There’s every need. If I’m to be of any assistance, I need to look at these things first-hand, not study a set of photographs. Now where is she?”

  Sam delivered a resigned sigh. She knew better than to argue when he was so determined. “By the sea wall, alongside the harbour. The beach side of the car park where we were on Saturday.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  He cut the connection and Sam made another quick call to Czarniak, instructing him to get down to the harbour and report to Barker.

  She was in her car, driving down to the seafront by seven o’clock.

  Her irritation with Barker was no more than a token gesture. Deep down, she was happy to have some kind of distraction, and that simply spelled out how poor her quality of life had become. In truth, she was as lost and lonely as Drake… Well, as lonely at least.

  Hers was a solitary existence. She had been in Landshaven for half a year, and made no friends. Aside from the odd drink after work, she did not socialise with any of her colleagues; she did not socialise at all, full stop.

 
; Working her way round the complex one way system that circled the town centre, she asked herself whether her loneliness was the reason she was so annoyed with Drake. He was not the same man she had met at the police convalescent home in January. Then he had been easy-going, breezy, mock-arrogant, but interested and interesting, supportive. Now there was an aura of gloom about him, and it manifested in occasional outbursts of anger. His candour – which had always been a facet of his personality – had a challenging edge about it, as if he were daring others to take him on.

  Sam understood. He lost his partner in one of the most brutal murders she had ever come across, a killing at least as violent and abhorrent as that of Barbara Shawforth. Sam had lost her husband, but Don Vaughan (she had reverted to her maiden name after divorcing him) was still alive, serving a life sentence in a high security prison. His betrayal of their marriage and the founding principle upon which police officers were supposed to stand (i.e. the serving and protection of the community at large) had rung the death knell to their relationship, and her life. Her trust in others was destroyed, and the sense of loss was just as great as if he had been killed in the line of duty, but it left her in the position she was in now: senior officer with control of CID, but living a life which was a void filled only by work.

  The moment she turned right from the bottom of Town Hill, she could see the blue flashing lights, and a sentry posted by the steps to the beach. She killed her self-pitying thoughts, parked behind a Scientific Support van, climbed out, pulled on a pair of rubber boots, sank into her high-visibility topcoat, and with a curt nod of acknowledgement to the sentry, walked onto the beach.

  Close to the rough and rugged stone wall of the harbour, a white tent was set up, the stark glow of arc lighting from within turned yellow by the material of the tent. Under more widely spread lighting, uniformed constables, shrouded in high visibility coats, were taping off a ten-yard area around the location of the body, where CSI would carry out their work.