Six Years Too Late

by Phillip Strang

Why Stanford was talking now baffled McIntyre. He had to speak to him.

  He phoned Grantham. ‘Throw Gareth to the wolves,’ he said.

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘I’ve no time for fools.’

  ‘Samantha will do it.’

  ‘I knew she would. I’ve one more job for you. Set up a meeting with Stanford.’

  ‘If you’re seen?’

  ‘Neither of us has been charged with any crime. I’ve considered being secretive, but that would be suspicious. Make sure it’s very public.’

  At eight that evening, McIntyre left his mansion in Grantham’s BMW. The police had no authority to restrict his movements or to follow him. It was clear to Homicide that the man was up to something.

  In Brighton, a taxi pulled up in front of Charles Stanford’s house. No one saw it arrive or pull away, except for one small dog and its owner. One could not tell anyone; the other wasn’t interested.

  ***

  Isaac and Wendy sat opposite Samantha Matthews. It was the same room where she had met with Grantham less than twenty-four hours before.

  ‘I want to make a new statement,’ she said.

  ‘Your lawyer?’

  ‘I don’t need him to hold my hand. I took the woman’s car.’

  ‘Why tell us this now?’

  ‘Fergus Grantham counselled me. I didn’t kill Liz, not intentionally. It was an accident.’

  ‘Do we rip up your previous statement?’

  ‘Not totally. I was confused, wanting to harm the woman, not sure why. And then I’m in St Austell, and there’s a car next to me, the keys in it.’

  ‘Why not use your car?’

  ‘I was disturbed, mentally unbalanced probably. Marcus had been found, and I realised how much I missed Stephen and how he had preferred her to me, or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever it was, she had been in the way. I had to continue with Marcus over the years, and then he disappeared. I can’t say I missed him very much, although he was like an old piece of clothing. You don’t want to wear it, but you can’t throw it out.’

  ‘Had you intended to harm the woman?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘When I saw her there, I wanted to scratch her eyes out.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was sunny, boats out at sea. It was so tranquil. I just sat down beside her. At first, she didn’t recognise me, but once she did, she was alarmed.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘We just talked for a while; we had a mutual history. It was convivial, but then she spoke about her marriages and how her first husband had died, and the other two had disappointed. Melancholic, that’s what she was. Anyway, we’re talking, not as friends, not as enemies, but something’s niggling her. She started pushing me, and before I knew it, we’re at the cliff edge, not that I was looking. In the end, she fell, almost took me with her.’

  ‘You could have gone to the police,’ Isaac said.

  ‘And said what? I had arrived in the village in a stolen car.’

  ‘You panicked?’

  ‘Not panicked. I was in shock, I think. I don’t know how but I walked away, got in the car and drove to St Austell. The reality didn’t hit home for a couple of days.’

  ‘And you expect us to believe this?’ Isaac said.

  ‘It’s the truth. I’ll admit that I was there when she died and that it was an accident.’

  ‘Your lawyer’s hand is involved here. Is this his strategy to get you out of a murder charge?’

  ‘It’s the truth. Charge me with stealing a car, but I didn’t kill the woman.’

  Isaac and Wendy left the prison. Wendy had glanced back to see a smile on the woman’s face as they left the room where they had met her. ‘She thinks she’s got one over on us,’ she said.

  ‘She has,’ Isaac’s only reply.

  ***

  Two men, both getting old, sat in a nondescript pub to the south of London. One was drinking a whisky; the other a half-pint of beer. Neither liked the other, even though their lives had been intertwined over the years.

  ‘You’ve caused me trouble,’ McIntyre said.

  ‘No more than you’ve caused me. I had hoped that I would never see your face again, to be reminded,’ Stanford said.

  ‘You agreed to our meeting.’

  ‘I had to know what you intend to do?’

  ‘I protect my own, always have, always will.’

  ‘Even if the evidence is damning?’

  ‘Why does it concern you? I would have thought you’d had enough of that.’

  ‘The screw is turning. Your time is rapidly drawing to a close.’

  ‘Stanford, you might have been a good barrister once, a mediocre judge, but you’re wrong. Grantham’s as good as you once were. You helped me out then; he’ll help me now.’

  ‘Marcus Matthews?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Why was he in that upstairs room?’

  ‘I thought we had come here to talk, not to indulge in verbal fisticuffs.’

  Fergus Grantham sat over the other side of the room. He watched the two old men, not sure what McIntyre’s plan was.

  ‘I gave you the house, not that I had wanted to.’

  ‘You had no option. What did you tell the police? That you are innocent of all charges?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You knew what would happen to that witness. Wet behind the ears, you might have been, but you knew.’

  ‘Even if I did, murdering a man in cold blood in my house was a mistake.’

  ‘Marcus, blood! Pure yellow ran through the man’s veins.’

  ‘Stephen Palmer?’

  ‘Why do you want to go there? The police told me about this Devon Toxteth. That’s how I knew it was you who had been talking, and then they mentioned Yanna.’

  ‘Toxteth, did you kill him?’

  ‘If I had, I can’t remember the name.’

  ‘Are you admitting to killing?’

  ‘What if I am? What are you going to do about it? You were responsible for Yanna being found guilty. The woman was mixed up, unable to talk about her life, to throw herself on the mercy of the court.’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘She’d had a rough life.’

  ‘No conscience?’

  ‘None at all. And besides, Yanna didn’t suffer with me. In the end, I wished her well and sent her on her way. How was I to know that she was going to top her husband?’

  ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘Six months to a year,’ McIntyre said. ‘Not enough time for us to argue, is it?’

  ‘Jacob? He was your friend when you were young.’

  ‘Yours as well.’

  ‘I can’t remember him. Fred Wilkinson, I can.’

  ‘He’s family on my mother’s side, you’re not.’

  ‘Are you going to have me killed?’

  ‘I should, but I don’t think so.’

  The two men continued to drink, even to enjoy each other’s company. After all, they had been the closest of friends until the age of nine, when Stanford had left the area, eventually adopting his mother’s new husband’s surname.

  ‘It’s a quiet life that I want now,’ McIntyre said.

  ‘What you sow, you reap, to quote from the Bible.’

  ‘You were always smarter than me, even as children. I barely scraped through school, not that I was much interested, but you graduated from university with honours, became a respected man.’

  ‘Soon to be derided.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll be condemned due to you regardless.’

  ‘No one needs to know about our childhood. Fred’s the only one who remembers, and he won’t talk.’

  ‘Marcus Matthews?’ Stanford repeated.

  ‘I never used Bedford Gardens, not often anyway.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘Not for that, and believe me I wasn’t involved, not that much. Sure, there was a time when I didn’t care who was hurt, only that the money came rolling in.
Give me a good old-fashioned English criminal anytime. Foreign criminals, especially the Romanians, are a whole different breed; it took me a while to find out how treacherous they were.’

  ‘Yanna?’

  ‘She told me some of it. It was the day I wished her well. Admittedly, I’ve been a savage bastard in my time, but what she told me sickened even me.’

  ‘You had grown fond of her?’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it? A man like me, but underneath the exterior, there was something for that woman. I wished her well, gave her enough money to find a place to live.’

  ‘Did you ever see her again?’

  ‘Never. I knew she had married, a couple of kids, a dull and honest man for a husband. I never expected you to convict her.’

  ‘I had no option. She never denied that she had killed the man.’

  ‘If you had known?’

  ‘Unless it were put forward as evidence, then it wouldn’t have helped. Yanna was determined to pay for her crime.’

  ‘The depth of the woman, to hold that in,’ McIntyre said. ‘A unique person, not like us.’

  Stanford had to admit it was good to see his childhood friend one last time.

  ‘The police will solve your son-in-law’s murder,’ he said.

  The charmless pub had filled up while they had been sitting there. Over near the bar, a group of youths out for the night were bragging to each other about who they were going to chat up, who they were going to take home. Sitting at the next table, three women in their early twenties. McIntyre had looked over, smiled at them; they ignored him. A drunken old lecher, they would have thought, not realising they had given the cold shoulder to one of the most violent men in London.

  ‘It was Marcus. He believed a man’s word was his bond,’ McIntyre said.

  ‘You just said that’s what you admired about the English criminal.’

  ‘To an extent, but with Marcus, it was an obsession. When he had made Samantha pregnant, he visited me in prison, asked my permission to marry her. Can you believe it?’

  ‘It’s the decent thing to do.’

  ‘Decent, it might have been, but Marcus knew my reputation. He knew I could have put him six feet under, or organised a savage beating.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I don’t know who killed Marcus, that’s the truth. If, as the police reckon, the man sat there and allowed himself to be shot, then it must have been someone as obsessive as him.’

  ‘Why did you phone me to tell me about the drugs in the basement?’

  ‘I knew Marcus was there.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘If you want to get the police off our backs, you’ve got to tell them the truth.’

  ‘The whole truth?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It was a few months before the man was shot. He started to change, became more furtive. Before that, he was impulsive, making mistakes.’

  The three women left, the young men at the bar casting glances as they went, none saying anything. McIntyre knew their sort: the sort who had come into the strip clubs he had once owned, full of themselves, big mouths, money inside the skimpy underwear of the women on the stage, but when it came to a decent woman, they were tongue-tied. The only women they’d be taking home that night would be ones they’d paid for.

  ‘He had something on his mind?’ Stanford said.

  ‘He wanted me dead.’

  ‘How could you know?’

  ‘I know the look of hate; I’d seen it before, not with him, but with others.’

  ‘Do you know why he hated you?’

  ‘I trusted the man. He had seen things, done things which he abhorred. Toughening up as I saw it. After all, someone had to take over from me when the time came.’

  ‘And now, you’ll die in your bed, an old man.’

  ‘I played hard. Someone else could have got to me.’

  ‘Killed you?’

  ‘Yes. But Marcus didn’t want to take over. At heart, he was a petty criminal; I never contemplated Samantha taking over, not even now.’

  ‘She’s still in prison.’

  ‘Grantham will get her out.’

  ‘If you had known that Matthews hated you, why did you keep him close to you.’

  ‘Hate’s a powerful weapon, especially if you can direct it.’

  ‘And then he died.’

  ‘He had a plan, not that I knew what it was. He couldn’t have been acting alone.’

  ‘Do you know who?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘We didn’t meet here to just chat about old times, did we?’ Stanford said. He looked up at the clock on the wall, realised that it was past ten in the evening; two hours in the pub with a man he had previously hated, but not any longer. For whatever reason, he was the friend that he had known as a child.

  ‘I knew Marcus was up there.’

  ‘A phone call? Did you recognise the voice?’

  ‘I couldn’t go to the house, but you could.’

  ‘The voice?’

  ‘It told me that Marcus was in the top room. At the time, I wasn’t focusing that much.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone close, but I’ve no idea, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘The man who had shot him.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘He wanted my fingerprints in that room. He wanted to implicate me.’

  ‘Is this what it’s all about? Marcus had wanted to kill you?’

  ‘He couldn’t have done it, but I knew that he wanted to. I had known that for years. I had forced him to do something a long time ago. He never forgave me.’

  ‘He killed Stephen Palmer.’

  McIntyre put down his drink and stood up. ‘It’s been good seeing you, Charles. We’ll never meet again, I’m sure of that. I’ve told you all I know, now I suggest you use it wisely.’ And with that the man walked out of the pub, the group of men still bragging, getting progressively drunker.

  Outside the pub, Fergus Grantham stood at the passenger door of his BMW. ‘Good to see an old friend?’ he said.

  ‘A friend, yes, I’d have to agree with that,’ McIntyre said as he sat in the car and drew the seat belt across himself.

  Chapter 36

  The Stag Hotel, usually empty apart from a few regulars, was full, standing room only.

  Isaac stood to one side and looked around the room. In his hand, a pint of beer; the occasion, a get-together of friends and acquaintances of the late Jacob Wolfenden.

  ‘Good turn out,’ the barman said. ‘Where’s Inspector Hill,’ he asked.

  ‘His night off,’ Isaac said.

  ‘There are a few I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The drinks will start flowing; someone will stand up, offer to buy drinks for everyone. There are a few freeloaders, not that they’ll stay long.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Look around, what do you see?’

  ‘Most of them are getting on in years.’

  ‘The freeloaders want young women, and there are none in here, just geriatrics.’

  ‘Was Wolfenden a geriatric?’

  ‘The man was getting on, not in the best of health, but you know what I mean?’

  Isaac did indeed, although the term ‘geriatric’ was used unwisely. Apart from the pacemaker, Wolfenden had been in reasonable health for his age. The acid hadn’t had time to damage his internal organs, although his skin had been peeled, the consistency of gel. He had been there when the pathologist opened the body up, the smell of sulphur still noticeable. He’d seen the Y-shaped incision, the removal of the organs, the grinder removing the top of the man’s skull, the brain coming out.

  After he had finished, the pathologist’s assistants had stitched the body together, attempted to make it look presentable. But no funeral home, no matter how skilled, could ever make the man’s face recognisable. It was good that Wolfenden had lived a
lone, his wife having died nine years before, and there had been no children.

  No one had come forward as a relative, no one had claimed the body. A sad ending, Isaac thought.

  ‘Here’s to good old Jacob,’ a man said. He was standing on a chair.

  ‘It won’t be long,’ the barman said.

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘A round of drinks on me.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ Isaac said to the barman over the general hubbub.

  ‘Alex Bridge. He’s never paid his round, always outside when it’s his turn.’

  ‘A friend of Wolfenden?’

  ‘Not that I know. He’ll make a rousing speech, sing the man’s praises and wait for someone else to pay.’

  For the next twenty minutes, a succession of people stood up, offered a comment or two about the dead man. The bar was busy, drinks were selling quickly, and the barman was struggling to keep up.

  ‘I knew Jacob well,’ a man, better-dressed than the others, stood up and spoke. He did not stand on a chair as he was taller than most.

  ‘That’s Fred Wilkinson,’ the barman said. ‘He was in here when Palmer was a nuisance.

  ‘We went to the same school, although we were two years apart. He made his mark there, as he did in the area,’ Wilkinson continued.

  ‘Nonsense,’ the barman said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Isaac said. He was on his second pint; the mood of the pub was having an effect on him.

  ‘Jacob was a decent man, I’ll grant Fred that, but make his mark? The man came in here, had a few drinks and then went home. Nobody knew much about him, and he never came in here with anyone else.’

  Wilkinson shouted over to the bar. ‘The drinks are on me.’

  ‘There we go,’ the barman said. A surge from the freeloaders. Isaac moved away and went over to where Fred was downing the last dregs of his beer.

  ‘DCI Isaac Cook,’ he said as he shook Wilkinson’s hand.

  ‘Inspector Hill?’

  ‘He’s busy trying to wrap up the investigation.’

  ‘All because of Palmer, that’s what this is.’

  Two pints appeared: one for Isaac, another for Wilkinson.

  ‘Stephen or Bob?’

  ‘Both. The first one couldn’t keep away from McIntyre’s daughter; the other one stuck his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Jacob’s dead because of them.’