by K. J. Frost
I shake myself out of those thoughts and cross the room towards them.
“Inspector Styles?” I say as I approach. He turns, as does Thompson, who gives me a smile of acknowledgment, which I ignore.
“Stone,” Styles replies. “Good morning.”
“Not particularly.” I glare at him. “Can we speak privately? In my office?”
He pauses for a moment. “Mine’s just here,” he replies, nodding towards an open door to my right. He turns back to Thompson. “Call the owner and ask if the cleaning lady was there at the time of the fire,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” Thompson replies, although he’s still looking at me.
“This way,” Styles says, leading me into his office and closing the door behind us. “What’s wrong?” He doesn’t beat about the bush.
I decide to follow his example. “I discovered yesterday evening, over the course of dinner with my aunt, that there had been another rape and murder just a few weeks ago, not far from the one I’m investigating.”
He goes around his desk and sits down, offering me the chair in front of him. I take it and face him, noticing that his room is significantly larger than the one I’ve been allocated, that his chair looks almost as comfortable as the one I have in my office in Scotland Yard, and that he clearly likes African violets, being as there are no fewer than four in the room, two on the wide window ledge, one on his desk, and another on top of a filing cabinet in the corner, beside a photograph of an attractive middle-aged woman, who I assume to be his wife.
“Yes…” he replies slowly, clearly thinking about the matter.
“So, why did no-one tell me?” I ask.
“We should have done.” He shakes his head. “We should have seen the connection…” He picks up his telephone and waits. “Get me the Ursula Franklin file, will you?” he barks, and replaces the receiver. Then he looks up at me. “I feel like such a blithering idiot.”
“It’s a bit late to be worrying about that now. What’s more important is that you tell me about this other young woman.”
He leans forward. “Her name was Ursula Franklin,” he says. “She was in the WAAFs, and she’d been raped and strangled, just like Beth Templeton.”
I stare at him. “Just like Beth Templeton?”
“Bare hands,” he replies.
“And who’s investigating this?” I ask him.
“I am… well, was… alongside a DS named Riley. Except he’s not here anymore.”
“For any particular reason?”
“Nothing to do with the case,” Styles replies. “He was a reservist, so he had to go back into the army, literally days after the murder took place. We’d been trying to keep hold of him, because we’re so dreadfully short of men, as I explained yesterday, but they weren’t having it… and besides, he wanted to go.”
“I see. And the case?”
“We got absolutely no leads… nothing. Everything we looked at was a dead end. And then our arsonist got a bit lively, and we had the burglaries and the bank robbery to deal with, and as we had nothing to follow up on the Franklin matter…” His voice fades and he looks a little sheepish.
“You let it slide…”
There’s a knock on the door and a young uniformed officer enters, carrying a file, which he hands to Inspector Styles, and then leaves again. Styles holds onto the plain beige coloured folder for a moment, before offering it straight to me.
“You may as well take this,” he says. “I’ve hardly covered myself with glory on this one.”
“Thanks.” Just what I needed. A cold murder to follow up on, as well as the high profile one I’ve already got.
“I’m sorry about all this.” He gets to his feet and coughs loudly. “It’s just that we’ve had a couple of deaths as a result of the latest arson attack, the press are all over it, and I’m getting a lot of pressure.” He points upwards. “I still shouldn’t have overlooked the connection though.”
He’s right, he shouldn’t have. He also shouldn’t have let the case drop, but I can tell how strained he is. Anyone can see they’re short-staffed here and, while that’s no excuse, Styles looks about ready to collapse.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, soothingly. “I doubt it would have made any difference if I’d known about it yesterday.” I get to my feet. “There’s nothing else I don’t know, is there?”
He smirks. “Not that I can think of, no.”
“Good.”
I leave his room and go back out into the main office. Thompson is on the telephone, but Ellis is sitting at a desk on the far side of the room, writing, his head down, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, and I call his name as I get closer.
“Sir?” He stands.
“Sit down,” I tell him. He does, and seems to relax a little. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just making a note of the contents of the victim’s handbag.” He points to the items displayed on his desk. I take a quick look myself, although there’s not much to write home about. A purse, which seems to have contained no more than a few shillings, a lipstick in a pale pink colour, a handkerchief, with the initial ‘B’ sewn into one corner, in purple thread, a silver compact and a house key.
“Her clothes?” I ask, knowing that all of this will have been returned by the doctor, who will have removed her clothing prior to carrying out the post mortem.
He points to the bag on the floor. “I haven’t been through them yet,” he says.
“Okay. Don’t forget to check that button, will you?”
“No, sir.”
I perch on the edge of his desk and look down at him. “I’ve just been made aware of another rape and murder that happened a few weeks ago… Ursula Franklin?” I offer the victim’s name in the hope he’ll remember – I’m sure everyone in the office must have been vaguely aware of the case, even if they weren’t working on it.
“Oh, yes sir?” A look of recognition slowly dawns across his face. “I was working on a burglary when that came in. Do you think the two cases are connected?” he asks.
“We’ll have to look into it properly, but I think it would be a minor miracle if they weren’t.” I stand and I turn away, but then look back. “Have you typed up the notes from yesterday’s interviews yet?” I ask him.
“Not yet, sir.”
“Get that done as soon as you can, will you? I want to be able to compare these two cases.”
“What about the notes from your interview with Miss Cooper and Mr Templeton? I wasn’t with you for those…”
“No. I’ll type those up myself.” I didn’t actually make any notes, but then I rarely do. Not that I think I could forget anything Amelie Cooper ever said to me. I won’t be putting that in the report, though.
“Very good, sir,” Ellis replies, and gets back to work.
I settle down in my office and reach into my pocket for my cigarettes, only now remembering that I smoked the last of them after dinner last night. I meant to buy some more this morning but was too distracted by this earlier murder to think straight. I’ll have to manage without for the time being, and pick some up later. For now, I’ve got reading to do, and I open the file and start going through the scant details it contains on the Ursula Franklin case.
The victim, it seems, was twenty-three years old, she’d recently joined the WAAF and, according to her mother, she was out celebrating with friends in The Swan public house on the night she was killed. Her friends, who’d spent the evening with her, remembered an RAF pilot, who gave his name as George. He sat with them for some time, and offered to take Ursula home, but their descriptions of the man are so varied, he could be anything from five foot eight to six feet tall, with either brown or black hair and may or may not have a moustache. I’m fairly sure we can ignore the name he gave. If he intended harm to Miss Franklin – which seems likely – he’d never have given his real name. The barmaid, a woman called Trudy Jennings, spoke to Styles and recalled Ursula Franklin having an altercation with a man earlier in the
evening, but said that the man had left at least two hours before closing time. She couldn’t remember his face at all, even when pressed, but reiterated that he’d left a long time before Miss Franklin and her friends departed. When questioned about the RAF officer, she said she remembered serving two of them that evening, but couldn’t give adequate descriptions of either. Throughout her interview she was at pains to point out that she wasn’t being unhelpful, but that it had been her first evening working behind the bar, and she was concentrating on getting the drinks and change right, not people’s faces. Photographs taken at the scene look quite similar to those of Beth Templeton’s murder, other than the fact that Ursula Franklin was in uniform. There were no fingerprints on anything at the scene of the crime. Unlike Beth, according to the medical report, Ursula was not a virgin when the assault took place, although further enquiries showed she did not have a regular boyfriend either.
As with Beth Templeton’s murder, there seems to be nowhere to go with this case, and there are certainly no obvious suspects.
I close the file and pull forward the typewriter on my desk, inserting a piece of paper from the drawer, before I stand and take off my jacket, putting it over the back my chair. Sitting again, I start to type up my report of yesterday’s interviews. As I’m typing, I recall Templeton’s reactions to his daughter’s death, and his responses to Amelie. I’m also reminded of Ellis’s suggestion that there might be some kind of link between Beth’s murder and either her work, or her father’s. I can’t believe anyone was using Beth to gain information. It’s just not feasible, given that she hadn’t even taken up her new role yet. As for her father… I still need to think about that.
It takes me over an hour to complete my typing, but I’ve just finished, when Styles knocks on my door and comes in. “Sorry to trouble you,” he says. He’s being a lot more deferential than usual, I think because he feels guilty for not having alerted me to the Ursula Franklin case. “Chief Superintendent Meredith wants to see you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I’m going to tag along, if that’s okay with you… In light of recent events.” He nods towards the closed file on my desk. Perhaps he’s worried that I might tell Meredith of his slip-up. I won’t, but Styles doesn’t know me well enough to realise that’s not how I operate.
“That’s fine,” I say, getting up and pulling my jacket back on. “Lead the way.” I know the way, of course, but I want to let the man feel a slight superiority over me, after his earlier mistake. It’s only very slight though.
He takes me up a flight of stairs, through an open door on the right and into an office in which there’s a large desk, and several filing cabinets, with four chairs placed against the wall.
“The chief superintendent sent for Inspector Stone,” Styles says to the woman behind the desk. She looks up from her typewriter, glancing first at him, and then at me, over the top of her glasses.
“Take a seat,” she says. “I’ll let him know you’re here.” She stands, revealing a slim figure in a sensible dark blue business suit, befitting her position.
Styles and I turn and take our seats, as requested.
“I always feel like I’m waiting to see the headmaster,” Styles whispers once the door to the superintendent’s office has closed.
“To be caned?”
“Naturally,” he replies, grinning.
The door opens again and the woman comes back out. “The chief superintendent will see you now,” she says, standing to one side, to let us enter.
Inside, the room is reminiscent of Chief Superintendent Dale’s office at Scotland Yard, but with a different view. Behind a large mahogany desk, I see the familiar figure of Chief Superintendent Meredith. Unlike Thompson, the years haven’t been so kind to him. His hair has greyed and his abnormally long, thin nose now looks even more like a beak than it ever did. He looks up immediately, but doesn’t stand, then motions towards the seats in front of his desk and Styles takes the one on the right, leaving me the other.
“Stone?” he says, as though he doesn’t recognise me.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand you got down here yesterday morning?” He keeps his eyes fixed on me.
“That would be correct, sir,” I reply.
“And you didn’t come to the station?”
“No, sir.”
He leans forward. “May I ask why not?”
“It seemed more important to get to the scene of the crime, sir.”
He sits back again. “I see. I thought your superior officer had told you that I was going to assign you a sergeant,” he continues, looking at me down his elongated nose in the way I remember so well.
“He did, sir. But that was dealt with at the scene.” I don’t mention that Styles handled it. I don’t want to land the man in trouble. “It didn’t seem worth bothering you with such trifles,” I add.
He glares for a moment. “How’s the case going?” he asks eventually.
“Not very well, if I’m being honest.”
“I would hope you’re always honest, Stone,” Meredith replies, and not for the first time in my career, I’m almost tempted to wipe the gratuitous smile from his loathsome face. Almost, but not quite.
“Naturally, sir,” I reply, returning the smile with the same lack of sincerity.
“What have you got then?” Meredith pushes.
I let out a long sigh, because I hadn’t wanted to reveal my hand on this until I’d been able to check it out further, but I’m not being given much choice. “So far, apart from a former boyfriend of Beth Templeton’s, who I frankly don’t think will have any involvement, the only lead we have is her father’s position in the government.”
“Gordon Templeton’s position…?” Meredith looks confused, his brow furrowing deeply.
“Yes, sir. I haven’t had the chance to look into it fully yet, but with Gordon Templeton working at the War Office, we’re wondering if someone might be blackmailing him to reveal some state secret or other, perhaps over a misdemeanour in his past, and whether they might have used his daughter as bait.”
“But that’s… preposterous,” Meredith blusters, turning red in the face.
I half expect Styles to mention the earlier murder case at this point and query Templeton’s involvement in that, but he stays quiet, presumably because he doesn’t want to draw attention to his own mistake in not telling me about it. I’m rather relieved about his silence, because until I can prove a connection, one way or the other, I am skating on rather thin ice here.
“Look, I know that what I’m suggesting is probably quite unlikely,” I say, trying to sound conciliatory, “but at the moment, it’s all we’ve got.”
“I agree that it’s worth following up though.” Styles joins in after a moment’s pause, while Meredith huffs at him, shaking his head.
“I’ve never heard such poppycock. Gordon Templeton is an MP. He’s an upstanding member of the local community.”
“And?” I challenge him.
“And you’re wrong about him.” He slams his hand down on the desk defiantly, just as the penny drops.
“Excuse me, sir,” I ask, grabbing the bull by the horns, so to speak, “but do you know Gordon Templeton? In a personal capacity?”
Meredith falls silent for a moment and sits back in his chair. “Yes,” he murmurs. “We were at school together.”
“I see.” I lean forward now, as does Styles.
“I know Gordon would be horrified if he thought Beth’s murder had anything to do with his work, but I’m positive he’s not being blackmailed. He’d have told me…” Meredith’s voice drifts off inconclusively.
“Would he?” I can barely conceal my scepticism. “Surely that would rather depend on what he was being blackmailed about, wouldn’t it, sir?”
He glares at me again, but then looks away. “Gordon would never do anything to endanger his family,” he says resolutely, avoiding a
nswering my question. “I think it’s far more likely that her death was connected to her own work at Hawker’s, rather than being anything to do with Gordon.” Now who’s clutching at straws?
“Even so, sir, I’m going to investigate Gordon Templeton.”
“You’re going to what?” he spits.
“I’m going to go back and see him again later on today.”
“What? And just ask him outright if he’s being blackmailed?” Meredith blasts at me. “You can’t do that.”
“I’m not going to. Give me a little more credit than that, sir.”
He leans on his desk. “I think you should put this to one side,” he says, in a placatory tone. “Why not try focusing on the daughter’s position instead, especially as she’d just been promoted, hadn’t she? She’d have had access to top secret documents, I’d imagine,” he adds, attempting a smile.
“Very possibly, but she’d only been promoted immediately before her death. I can’t see how anyone could have known about it, other than her colleagues, and I can’t see why any of them would have murdered her. They mainly have the same or similar levels of access to her,” I reply. “And besides, if they’d asked her for information and she’d refused to deliver, why rape her?”
“Well, why rape her if they were blackmailing Gordon?” he asks.
“To make him suffer a bit more, perhaps?” I suggest.
“Whatever the situation, we still don’t know who the culprit is,” Styles puts in, helpfully.
“No. That’s why I need to speak to Gordon Templeton again. I need to find out if he’s got any secrets that are worth him being blackmailed over, and if there’s anyone who might be interested in seeing his downfall.”
“Half the opposition, I would have thought,” Styles says, trying to lighten the mood.
“Very probably.” I look back at Meredith. “Being as you’re familiar with the family, I wonder, what can you tell me about Mrs Templeton?”