Rope Enough - The Romney and Marsh Files #1

by Oliver Tidy

  Avery gave his best impression of deep thought. ‘The day that my girlfriend committed suicide,’ he said. ‘Last Wednesday.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘At my girlfriend’s flat.’

  Crow nodded. ‘Have you had any contact with her since then?’

  Avery had been expecting this question. His face gave him away. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I have. We spoke on the phone about her coming to collect Claire’s things from the flat.’

  ‘And when is she coming to do that?’

  Avery clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead in his lie. ‘We haven’t decided, yet.’

  ‘Really? Four phone calls over the weekend and you haven’t managed to work out when she can collect her daughter’s effects? I hope that you’re a little more decisive in your business affairs.’ Avery’s nostrils flared. ‘Is that all you discussed?’ said Crow.

  ‘We talked about Claire. We talked about our shared loss and when she could collect her things. That’s all.’

  Crow said, ‘I imagine that you were a great comfort to her, Mr Avery.’ Avery stared maliciously at the policeman. ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’

  Romney admired Crow’s method. The way he was toying with Avery, his thinly veiled insults, sarcasm and sudden pounces of pertinent enquiry all seemed practised to disorientate and bewilder the thinking of his prey.

  ‘Yesterday afternoon? I was here and at Claire’s flat and in between.’

  ‘I take it you have witnesses who will testify to that?’

  ‘I do for here, but I was alone at the flat. Someone might have seen me there. Why are you asking?’ Avery didn’t deliver it very well, and Crow treated the false question with the contempt it deserved by ignoring it.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Avery,’ said Crow, abruptly concluding the interview and standing. ‘It’s been very revealing. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon. We’ll see ourselves out.’ Crow had finished with the man and turned for the door. When he reached it he turned back to Avery and gave him a deeply suspicious glare. ‘You should have asked me why I was questioning you about Helen Stamp. You didn’t. Sometimes it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees.’ Romney followed him out.

  As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Avery came out of his office and stood looking down at them, his hands spread wide on the spindly railing – Lord of his grotty little fiefdom. ‘Show these gentlemen out, Lennie,’ he called down to the man behind the small bar. It was a pathetic show of misplaced bravado that was to backfire on him.

  Crow turned back, not wanting to disappoint the captive audience. He acknowledged Avery with a small gesture and called out in crystal clear tones, ‘Goodbye, Simon, and thanks very much for the information. Much appreciated.’ He tapped the side of his nose. Romney noticed that all eyes looked up to where Avery stood, but, like Crow, he didn’t look back himself.

  Outside on the street Crow turned to Romney as he pulled his collar up to protect his neck from the elements. ‘If I had any doubts of his involvement in her death before I went in there his performance didn’t dispel them. What we need now is proof. We should have test results back in a day or two of the paint samples taken from her clothing. Then we’ll have to find the vehicle that it belongs to. Unless we have any other evidence to tie him to it we’re going to be a bit challenged.’

  ‘Keep in touch about any developments, will you?’ said Romney.

  ‘Likewise, Tom. I like to think that Mr Avery’s world is going to come tumbling down around his ears in the near future.’

  ‘It will, if I have anything to do with it.’

  They shook hands and parted by Crow’s vehicle, Romney choosing to walk the short distance back to the station. Crow had shown himself a cool and smooth operator. Romney’s professional respect for the man had increased significantly.

  Romney trudged off into the falling gloom of dusk. As he walked, he phoned Marsh and told her she could release the two men anytime she liked, but separately.

  Although Romney was pleased regarding the corner that Avery was being painted into, there was still no evidence to link him directly with Claire Stamp’s death. As he walked, this feeling weighed heavily on his mind. The most that his time consuming investigations could hope to show was that Avery might have had the opportunity. He wouldn’t get that past his superintendent; the Crown Prosecution Service would never entertain the idea of a prosecution on such flimsy ‘evidence’. Romney needed to find a motive and then something that tied Avery to the scene and time of death with a Gordian knot.

  *

  Romney arrived at the station cold and despondent. He returned the call made half-an-hour before by PC Harker. Harker sounded young, articulate and alert. Romney explained the reason for his call and asked Harker to trawl his memory for the smallest recollections he had of his arrest of Avery.

  ‘Yes, sir. I remember it quite clearly actually,’ said the constable. ‘By the time I arrived the incident had fizzled out. Arrests had been made, and there was no continuation of the brawling. The man who I arrested, Simon Avery, sort of appeared from nowhere. He just walked out of the darkness towards me. I remember thinking at the time that it was very odd. Normally, as soon as we turn up most people run off, as you know. I could see that he’d been involved in the incident. His clothes were torn and there was blood on his shirt. I did wonder if he’d been concussed. I collared him, and he came as meek as a lamb. No arguments, no fuss.’

  Romney felt a cocktail of satisfaction and frustration seep through his thinking. This would bring further reliable testimony to his assertion that Avery was not even there for the fight until it was all over. However, it didn’t necessarily lead to anything concrete. There was still a huge obstacle to overcome to enable him to place Avery at the scene of Claire Stamp’s death. Even with what he had learned that day, he was still well short of being able to clear it.

  Romney said, ‘How specific can you be about the time of arrest?’

  ‘Very, sir. I always make a note of the exact time that I make an arrest, if it’s logistically possible. Just a moment please.’ Romney waited while the officer consulted his notebook. ‘Eleven-thirty, sir. Give or take a minute.’

  Romney breathed out feeling that another small piece of the jigsaw that would net him Avery had just been placed on the table. He thanked the constable and asked him to write up in detail what he had just relayed, specifically focussing on the timings, and send the report to him at Dover.

  DI Crow was not particularly interested in the why? Why would Avery run the woman over and leave her for dead? Crow was interested only in proving that it was Avery. With that limited interest Crow wouldn’t be concerning himself with whether Avery got back what was his – something which Romney was as certain as he could be without actually knowing it was behind everything. Romney, however, was.

  Romney rocked back in his chair and massaged his temples. He was convinced that everything pointed towards Claire Stamp having given something of Avery’s to her mother and that her mother had spoken with Avery about it. Why else would she speak four times to a man who she had freely admitted distaste for – a man the police had suggested could be involved in her daughter’s death?

  It followed then, for Romney, that among the few remote reasons Helen Stamp would be where she’d been found on a winter’s Sunday afternoon – he checked the incident report again: not dressed for country walking – the only plausible one was that she was meeting someone. Romney didn’t know anything about her social life, but he would guess that she hadn’t had much use for country lanes in the middle of winter.

  Romney’s train of thought led him to believe that if she had been out there meeting someone, that someone could only be Avery.

  Avery had admitted spending much of Sunday afternoon alone. He would have had ample opportunity to drive the fairly short distance to where Helen Stamp was killed. And the only reason Helen Stamp would meet Avery – a man implicated in the death
of her daughter – would be to trade whatever it was that Claire Stamp had entrusted to her mother. Assuming that Helen Stamp had it for trade and that the appointment was kept by Avery, Romney believed that whatever it was was now back in Avery’s possession. And with that disheartening thought went any chance of tying Avery tighter to the death of Claire Stamp. What he had to hope for now was that DI Crow and his team would be able to make something of a case against Avery for Helen Stamp’s death.

  He rubbed his tired eyes, looked at the clock and thought about going home. His phone rang. He answered it.

  ‘You sound tired,’ said Crow.

  ‘I am, Malcolm.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ said the older man. ‘But I don’t know how you’ll feel about this – Helen Stamp’s house was broken into this afternoon. It doesn’t appear to be a normal robbery. TV and such like are still there. Our boys reckon that whoever it was was looking for something. Thorough job, apparently. Sound familiar?’

  ‘Too familiar and the bastard has a strong alibi for it. I told you he wasn’t a complete idiot.’

  ‘They only have to be part idiot to get caught. Mr Avery definitely fits that bill.’

  The two men spent the next ten minutes discussing Romney’s theories. Romney was glad to have an objective, wise and experienced officer to bounce it all off. Crow agreed with most of what he theorised. The events suggested – if all that went before was accurate – that Helen Stamp didn’t have whatever it was that Avery was looking for when she’d met him on Sunday afternoon.

  ‘So why kill her?’ said Romney.

  ‘Perhaps they traded something, but it wasn’t what he wanted.’

  ‘She duped him do you think?’

  Crow laughed gently down the phone. ‘We could spend all night coming up with ideas, theories and counter-theories. It wouldn’t get us anywhere. The one big question that remains, however, is, if everything is as you suggest so far, was, whatever he was looking for, recovered?’

  *

  By the time Romney had repeated it all to an attentive Marsh in the canteen over coffee he had reasoned himself into a position where he couldn’t entertain any other scenario, despite the fact that virtually everything he had so far to link Avery with anything was a construct of his own biased and fertile imagination.

  With his sharing of the conversation he’d had with PC Harker, Romney could sense that Marsh, who had displayed a noticeable reluctance to fully commit to Romney’s theory that Avery was directly involved in Claire Stamp’s death, was beginning to warm to it.

  When everyone else had gone home, he sat in his office and brooded. He was overwhelmed with his lack of real progress and his irritation with the cases. To further darken his mood, on his desk he had found Spicer’s idea of what a definitive list of ways to get hold of someone’s mobile phone number looked like. The myriad of possibilities from the straight forward to the convoluted threatened to give Romney a slight headache. Despite, or in spite of, his weariness and gloomy mood, he left for his gym to give vent to some of his frustrations.

  ***

  20

  Julie Carpenter called a little after nine. Seeing her name illuminated on the screen of his mobile phone did something childish to Romney’s insides. His exertions at the gym had invigorated him and, as exercise would often do, awakened that animal instinct within him that craved physical contact with the opposite sex.

  The teacher had not been far from his thoughts since they had spoken last. It had been almost a week since they had last lost themselves in each other. The thought that it wouldn’t happen again had had its impact upon him. More than once since their last phone conversation, he’d been tempted to risk his pride and call her, but always he’d managed to suppress that inclination. And, if it really was over between them before it had properly started, he didn’t want to know. He’d rather go on hopefully ignorant until his emotional investment had been diluted by time.

  ‘I want to see you again,’ she said.

  A warm and satisfying sensation flooded his stomach. ‘I want to see you too, Julie.’

  ‘I want to believe your explanation for the other night. Maybe you don’t feel that you should have to explain yourself to me?’

  ‘I understand why you need an explanation. I like you Julie. I can only say that I’m not the kind of man that would mess a woman about like that. It’s not in my nature.’

  ‘I hope so, Inspector. I really do. Come over.’

  ‘I can be there in half an hour.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  Romney put down the phone, acutely aware that his blood was pumping more fiercely. Julie Carpenter’s words and the way she had delivered them left no part of him in any doubt that she wanted him physically.

  In his sexually agitated frame of mind, Romney hurried to change from the sweats he’d thrown on after his shower. He collected what he must take with him, and in fifteen minutes he was on the road.

  *

  The Dour Nursing Home had been named after the Dour River that runs through the middle of Dover. Rising at Temple Ewell, just outside the main settlement, the little watercourse meanders the four miles or so through the town to exit into the English Channel.

  Often, during its ten year existence, the title of the home for the elderly had been used in an adjectival sense to describe the ambience of the retreat.

  The home – a converted grand Victorian building built by a successful local merchant around the turn of the century – sat on land that fronted the Dour. Situated on the outskirts of the town and surrounded by mature woodland, it was more secluded than remote.

  The Dour Nursing Home had a maximum capacity of twenty residents. All rooms had their own bathroom and pleasant aspects of the adjacent woodland, the fields or the river. Four of the rooms were currently vacant.

  Borne of routine, at ten o’clock residents – who presently ranged in age from a seventy year old woman to a ninety-two year old man – who hadn’t already taken themselves off to their rooms and their beds were gently encouraged to do so. By eleven o’clock whoever was on duty would do the rounds making sure that everyone was in their right place and that there was no one standing confused in their nightclothes in the middle of a darkened corridor.

  The proprietors of the home – Mr and Mrs Logi – retained a couple of rooms on the ground floor. This was not their main residence but a home from home. The nursing home was their primary business concern, and they were both actively involved on a daily basis in running the place. But as the business had returned decent profits over the years they had bought themselves a home in the town so that they didn’t feel constantly confined at the nursing home. That, they had agreed, had become depressing over time. The smells and sounds were a constant reminder of what the future probably held for both of them. At nights, particularly, the Logis were happy to pay the minimum wage to have others watch over the residents.

  A little after eleven o’clock, Jane Goddard – the thirty-six year old in charge of the home for the night – completed the first of her nightly rounds. Mrs Avis had been her usual tiresome and surly self, but apart from that all was as it should be.

  Jane Goddard walked into the kitchen to find Peter Roper sat in front of the television, as usual. Peter had been with the home for five months. He’d come from an agency in the town, and he proved satisfactory enough to be offered a regular position at The Dour. Even though he was young, he didn’t seem to mind the kind of work or the anti-social hours. He was friendly enough, and he got on well with most of the old folks. He kept himself to himself mostly; he just got on with whatever was asked of him.

  Goddard made them both a tea. While Roper seemed content to sit staring at the little screen, she heaved her text books out of her bag and on to the table. She began organising herself for the couple of hours study she hoped to be able to fit in before her mind refused to absorb anymore.

  Jane Goddard was enrolled in a local college course that could see her eventually ga
in a qualification that would get her into Kent University as a mature student. There she intended to complete a nursing degree. She was, if a little late in her life, determined to improve herself and her lot.

  At about eleven-thirty Jane Goddard looked up from her books. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Eh?’ said Roper.

  ‘I thought I heard a noise.’

  ‘Want me to go and have a look?’

  ‘Yes, please. It might be Mr Clark again. You know what he’s like. You’ll be able to get him back to bed quicker than me. He doesn’t fancy you.’ She smiled at the youth. He got up, stretched and went out of the kitchen.

  A minute later Peter Roper walked back into the room. The first thing that struck Jane Goddard when she looked up from her books was the look of sheer terror on his face. The second thing she noticed was the person who came in behind him, a pistol extended in front of him. He was dressed in dark clothes and was wearing the kind of latex gloves that they used at the nursing home. He had his hood pulled up, and he was wearing a balaclava type mask.

  Jane Goddard would later remark to the police that when the intruder barked out his few instructions, she was sure he was affecting an eastern European accent rather than speaking as a native of that region. She felt strongly that there was something definitely fake about him.

  *

  When Romney arrived at Julie Carpenter’s home he’d been surprised to find no lights on. As he raised his hand to tap on the front door it opened a fraction. From the orange light cast by the street light across the road behind him, he caught a glimpse of a vision that quickened his pulse. Her eyes glinted in the shadows. Her black hair framed her pale face and fell over her shoulders. The silky fabric of the one-piece lingerie she wore shimmered as she shivered with the influx of chill night air. The white flesh of her long, slim legs was exposed from high thigh down to her bare feet. Romney thought he might actually moan.

  She said, ‘Are you just going to stand there and let me freeze to death?’

  He stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind him. Further words seemed unnecessary. They embraced. Their open mouths met. He inhaled the fragrant cleanliness of her freshly bathed body. He ran his hands over her thinly-sheathed firmness. He felt her tense against the cold of him. She let out a small sound and fumbled with his clothing.