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

by David W Robinson

  “I saw you with Paul Czarniak and Dom Larne yesterday, when Livvy got done. You’re not local, but you are filth.”

  “Wrong. I’m working with the police, true, but I’m not one of them. I’m—”

  Once again the redhead interrupted him. “Get lost. Piss off. We don’t want—”

  Drake cut her off this time. “Where I come from, the whores don’t tell potential punters to piss off.”

  She cast her acid glance at the landlord. “We don’t trade in this bar.”

  Drake downed his glass of beer in one. “There’s a bench across the street, overlooking the harbour. If you wanna make a few quid, I’ll be there for the next fifteen minutes.”

  He placed his empty glass on the table, turned and marched out of the pub.

  Back out on the pavement, he considered her response. The other women had muttered an agreement with the speaker, but suspicion was a way of life for these women. Whatever had driven them to their dubious and dangerous profession, taking care could literally be a matter of life and death. He had only to think of Olivia Bradley to confirm that.

  He crossed the road, ambled along past the main access to the harbour, the entrance where vans and lorries would collect and deliver their cargo, and a little further on reached the bench facing the marina, where he sat down.

  The pleasant feeling which had come over him when he parked up, enveloped him again. It was stronger this time, more insistent, telling him that he was in the right place, perhaps at the wrong time, but definitely where he should be.

  A range of private boats bobbed on the slight swell, some with tall masts swaying to and fro, most of them no more than tiny launches. On the far side of the marina, close to the dock, The Empress of Yorkshire was moored, one of the crew standing on the dockside, inviting passers-by to join them for the forty-five minute tour of Landshaven’s twin bays.

  Drake had fond memories of the town’s famous pleasure boat, weekends from his undergraduate years, when he and his fellow students were out for a day’s drinking and debauchery in Landshaven. Back then, the pubs closed at three, and the Empress sailed at quarter past. The moment the Empress was out of the harbour, the bar opened, and they could carry on drinking while the boat took them North or South. He could recall almost nothing of the craggy, Yorkshire coastline as seen from the boat.

  And amongst this unashamed nostalgia, thoughts of the young women in the Trafalgar came back to him. He had absolutely no idea whether any one of them would join him on the bench, but if not, he would make a point of returning, perhaps with Sergeant Czarniak in tow.

  He need not have worried. Less than five minutes after he sat down, the redhead, now wearing a pale grey fleece joined him.

  “Forty quid for the fuck or suck, fifty for both, you want pictures, I can fix it, but the price goes up to eighty. If you don’t got nowhere, we can go to the Bellevue, but you pick up the bill. Lenny charges twenty quid for the hour.”

  “Is that a standard deal?”

  “It’s my deal.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Emma.”

  Drake remembered that Rachel had said she got into a fight with a woman named Emma Kraal, and it occurred to him that this might be the same woman.

  “I don’t want your services. I want information, and I’m willing to pay for it.” He took out his wallet and withdrew two twenty pounds notes.

  “We don’t talk to filth.”

  Drake sighed. “For the last time, I am not a cop. Yes, I’m working with them, yes they get to know most of what I say, but they don’t get access to my sources.”

  Emma shook her head and stood up. “We look after each other. We don’t grass.”

  “So you don’t want to know who killed Olivia Bradley?”

  The question stopped her. She glared down at him, but now the brow beneath the windswept, red hair was creased. She sat down again.

  “You’re a stranger here.”

  “Yep. I’m from proper Yorkshire. West Yorkshire. A town called Howley.”

  “What do you care about Livvy?”

  “Murder is one of my specialities.” It was nonsense. He had only ever come across a few cases of murder his entire life, all of them the work of The Anagramist, and he remembered them with no pleasure. “Tell me what happened the other night.”

  “We already told plod.”

  “I’m not plod. Tell me.”

  She reached into a small bag, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Putting away the pack and her lighter, she reached for the money, but Drake held it back.

  “You talk, I pay. That’s how it works.”

  She blew out a cloud of smoke “You’re trying to play hardball? Well, I can play harder than you.”

  “I don’t think so. Screw me around, and I’ll simply call the filth, and they’ll drag you to the station, but one way or another I’ll get answers to my questions. I’m not particularly interested in Olivia, but her death touches on the case I’m working on, and I need information that you won’t likely give to the police. All I’m asking, Emma, is honest answers.”

  She blew a fresh stream of smoke into the air and watched the light wind take it away. “What do you want?”

  “Remember Barbara Shawforth?” He waited for her silent nod to confirm. “Was she one of your lot? Was she charging for it?”

  Emma laughed, the bark of a playing dog, made all the harsher by her smoking habit. “Her? Why would she charge for it? Good-looking, worth a fortune, she could have any dick she wanted.”

  Drake accepted the analysis. “A few years ago, one of your people – I assume she was one of yours – went missing. Kylie Griffiths. Barbara Shawforth was in the Trafalgar that night. Kylie’s never been seen since. About a month later Barbara was smashed to pieces in the Bellevue, and a couple of nights ago Olivia Bradley was beaten to death.”

  Emma whistled. “You’re saying that Jenner is beating tarts to death?”

  Suddenly aware that he was still holding the two twenties, Drake handed them over. “Tell me about Kylie.”

  Emma took another pull on her cigarette, dropped the remainder on the ground, and crushed it underfoot. She put the money in her purse, and as if the interlude had given her time to construct her tale, she answered.

  “She was with the rest of us in the Trafalgar that night, and she got a call from a regular. She went out to meet him, and that was the last any of us saw of her.”

  “You don’t know the client’s name?”

  She took another cigarette and lit it. “We don’t do names. We’re best mates, all of us. We look out for each other, but we don’t give out names. Let’s say you was one of my regulars, and you rang me in the pub. I’d agree to meet you in Harbour Passage, and I’d say to the girls, ‘easy forty’ and that’s a code which tells ’em I’m meeting a regular. But if I was to tell ’em your name, what’s to stop one of them tracking you down, and saying, ‘Emm is charging you forty for a suck and fuck. I’ll do you for thirty’? You see? No names.”

  It made absolute sense, and taught Drake a lesson. These girls might sell sex, but when it came to business, they were every bit as cautious and professional as he and many a corporate executive he had known.

  “Go on about Kylie. You said she was meeting a regular that night?”

  “She got a call. She said to us, ‘easy ton’ and that told us it was a regular. Like I said, she left the pub and we never saw her again.”

  Drake frowned. “A hundred? What did she do for a hundred?”

  “Anything complicated. In this case, the guy was into scarfing. He liked to half throttle her while he was giving her one. He got off better like that.”

  The scenario drew itself in Drake’s mind in an instant. A client hooked on erotic asphyxiation, he went too far and Kylie was dead. How did he dispose of the body?

  “Where did they go? His place? I mean, if he was a regular, he had to be a local.”

  “Nah. He must’ve been married or
something, because they always used the Bellevue. Listen, you should ask the filth about this. They looked into it, and said there was no evidence of any kind. And Lenny at the Bellevue, swore she’d never been there that night.”

  Privately, Drake thought that if Pearson swore black was black, he would feel the need to check.

  Dark and ugly visions were forming in his mind. A man kills a prostitute, perhaps accidentally, and suddenly finds that it is an even bigger turn on than semi-asphyxiation. But where did Barbara Shawforth fit into this? There was a world of difference between strangling a woman and beating her to a pulp, and not just one woman; two if he counted Olivia Bradley.

  “All right. Thank you, Emma. I can’t promise anything, because technically I’m here to look into Barbara Shawforth’s murder, but if I can turn up anything on Kylie, I’ll make sure you get to know.”

  “I won’t hold my breath. Is there anything else I can do for you? I mean, you’ve already given me forty. I’ll give you a good time for another thirty.”

  Drake smiled bleakly. “Thank you, but no. I’m all right in that department.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Unpalatable though the food was, Drake grabbed a bite to eat and a cup of tea in the Blue Dolphin, and from there, retraced his route up Town Hill, but instead of pulling into Landshaven House, he carried on, making his way round the inner ring road, and into Limes shopping mall.

  The town was busy, the only available spaces were on the rooftop, open-air car park, and as he made his way down to the shopping level, and further to the ground floor, he reflected that he might just as well be back in Howley, York, or even Leeds. All the familiar high street names were there, plying their wares in the shopping centre, and there were the familiar, freestanding sale points for satellite and cable television, mobile phones, electronic cigarettes, and the National Lottery.

  He emerged into the pedestrianised area outside the shopping centre, looked around, and his eyes fell upon the Duke of York pub, at the lower end of the street, near its junction with the inner ring road and the top of Town Hill. According to Rachel Jenner, the place was one of her favourites.

  He stepped into the bar and found it as busy as the Trafalgar. He bought a glass of lemonade (a single beer was enough when he was working) looked around and sure enough Rachel was sat in a corner booth with a well-dressed man of about her age. Drake had never seen him before, never even seen pictures of him, but he knew instantly that it was John Jenner, her ex-husband.

  She looked up as he approached the table. “For God’s sake, haven’t I seen enough of you people?”

  Drake smiled nonchalantly. “I could say that it’s pure coincidence, Rachel, but it isn’t. I do need to speak to you. First, aren’t you going to introduce me to your gentleman friend?”

  He stood up. He was at least the same height as Drake, broader in the shoulder, stocky, hiding a lean and muscular figure beneath his shirt and jacket. His black hair was neatly combed, coated in gel, and gleamed with the same intensity as his dark eyes. His hands and face held the deeper tan of someone who had recently spent time in the Mediterranean. He wore a dark blue business suit, with matching shirt and tie, but the jacket had not been pressed in some time, the trousers bagged around his ankles, and his black shoes were in need of a good polish.

  The eyes narrowed along his eagle’s beak of a nose, and his rough, local tone, matched Rachel’s antipathy. “I’m her husband, pal, and—”

  Drake grabbed one of the large hands and shook it vigorously. “Pleased to meet you, Jenner. I’m Wes Drake, civilian consultant to the police, here to see if I can prove your wife innocent.”

  The statement was deliberately misleading, and it had the effect of throwing Jenner off kilter.

  Drake smiled down at Rachel again. “I need to talk to you about an old case, Rachel. Something that happened about a month before Barbara was murdered.”

  “Ask your girlfriend.”

  “One, she is not my girlfriend, and two, she doesn’t know any more about it than I do, and three, if I ask anyone in Landshaven House, I’ll get stock answers.” He settled into a seat opposite her, and switched his attention briefly to her husband. “You might be able to help, Jenner, because you were senior man in CID at the time. Kylie Griffiths.”

  Rachel groaned. “She buggered off home, didn’t she? She was one of those tarts who moved in over the summer, found she couldn’t make as much money as she expected, so she cleared off back to Birmingham or wherever she came from.”

  Drake nodded, looked to John Jenner, and raised his eyebrows.

  “I barely remember the case, but no one would get a head of steam up about a missing pross. It’s always happening in towns like this.”

  “You don’t suspect that she might have been murdered, then?”

  John Jenner shrugged. “You got any evidence? Cos we never did. We couldn’t even track down the guy she was meeting. All she told the rest of those whores in the Trafalgar was that she was meeting a regular. They reckon she took him to Lenny Pearson’s place. He denied it, and Pearson’s not stupid. If she’d been there, he would have said so.”

  Drake looked across at Rachel for confirmation, and she nodded.

  “Your attitude to the prostitutes, Rachel? You’re not particularly charitable, are you?”

  “They’re a headache. A pain in the arse. Always were.”

  “Since biblical times.” Drake chuckled. “But it’s never made the problem go away, and that goes for anywhere, not just Landshaven. What’s the possibility of someone shuffling them off their mortal coil one by one?”

  The question met with stares from both, and Drake carried on before either of them could comment.

  “You hinted to me that Barbara could have been selling sex. What price someone hit her for exactly that reason? And what price that same someone hit Olivia Bradley early on Monday morning?”

  Rachel proved more than a match for her husband, who was still thinking about the problem when she replied.

  “And what price that someone was Alex Walston? And what price someone found out about it, and made him confess? But if you think you can pin it on me, you can jog off. I know where I was all night last night, and on Sunday night.”

  “I’m not trying to blame you, Rachel. But you are in the frame.” Once more, he continued over their attempted protests. “Ever since I got here, I’ve been generous to you. I have a suspicion you were framed four years ago. As I said to Sam Feyer earlier today, mine is not a precise science. I could be wrong.”

  “You’re not.” It was John Jenner who challenged him this time.

  Drake held his gaze steadfastly. “You were there when Barbara Shawforth was murdered, were you, John? Maybe you were the one who battered her?”

  The husband’s voice lowered to a furious hiss. “You say that again, and you’re likely to find out what it’s like to be battered by someone like me.”

  “And if you threaten me again, you’re likely to find out what it’s like to fly through the air and off the end of my fist.” Drake drank his lemonade and got to his feet. “You want to know about me, look up The Anagramist. It’ll tell you who and what you are dealing with.”

  ***

  It was after three when Drake returned to Landshaven House, to find an irritated Sam waiting for him.

  “I’ve been trying to get you for the last four hours, ever since you left Walston’s place. Where the hell have you been?”

  Drake recalled that his phone had rung several times, but he ignored it on every occasion, and when he tried ringing back from the Blue Dolphin, Sam did not answer. “I’ve been here and there. You were busy out at Harmiston, and I had other bits and pieces I needed to chase up. Did Larne follow up that business with Christine Villiard?”

  “Why do you think I needed to get in touch with you?” She fumed for a moment. “Christine and her husband are dead. Shot late yesterday afternoon is the pathologist’s best guess.”

  The scenario unfolded once
more in Drake’s head. The killer visits the Villiard’s smallholding, kills the husband, holds Christine at gunpoint while she calls Walston, who hears how frightened she is, and how desperately she needs to see him, and he plays the dashing white knight, driving out to meet her, only to be ambushed on the way, his tyre shot out, taken prisoner, held somewhere until it was properly dark, and taken to Landshaven Castle, and executed after delivering his video confession.

  “We are running round in bloody circles, and quite frankly, Wes, you’re no help at all.”

  Drake chewed his lip and drummed thoughtful fingers on the desk. “This may be worse than even I suspected.”

  Her brow creased. “What do you mean?”

  He gave her a rundown of his afternoon’s adventures, his call to the Trafalgar, his discussion with Emma, and his debate with the Jenners in the Duke of York.

  When he was finished, Sam was amazed. “You’re telling me we might be dealing with a serial nutter who was busy getting rid of the tarts by murdering them? Based on what? A case girl who went missing four years ago? Are you losing the plot?”

  “No. I’m only just getting it. You have to take all the strands and pull them together, Sam. A girl who disappeared never to be seen again, Barbara Shawforth murdered a month later, and she was possibly selling sex, and then… What? Nothing for four years, and the moment Rachel comes out, it starts again. Two conclusions. It could be Rachel, or it could be someone else who conveniently pinned it on her, and as for nothing in four years… Well, you’d have to check into that. How many other prostitutes have disappeared in that time? If none at all, then you need to spread the net further. Don’t concentrate purely on Landshaven. Take a look at the towns and cities between Hull, York and, say, Middlesbrough.”

  Sam nodded indulgently. “And I will look into it, but has it occurred to you that you might be extrapolating a series of unrelated events, and bringing them together in an unlikely theory?”