The Marlow Murder Club

by Robert Thorogood

‘To our faces.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘That’s where you come in,’ Judith said. ‘What can you tell us about her?’

  ‘Well, for starters, you know she’s got an Olympic silver medal, don’t you?’

  ‘She has?’ Judith said, knowing that the achievements of a person weren’t how she’d have started an explanation, but also guessing that it was exactly these external badges of merit that defined people for someone like Becks.

  ‘She’s got that winner’s attitude. So focused. So determined.’

  ‘What’s her medal for?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘She’s a rower. Or she was. It’s how she and Danny met. He was a rower as well. But only at a junior level, I think. Liz told me Danny had all the talent in the world, but he didn’t have the necessary drive. I’ll be honest, she could be a bit scary when she talked about what you needed to be a top-level athlete. It was all about the tiniest margins, she’d say. Being committed to your goal and not letting anything get in the way. Which is how you end up with an Olympic silver medal, I suppose.’

  ‘What was her class?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Class?’

  ‘What sort of rowing did she do? Was she in an eight?’

  ‘No, I think she was a solo rower. It was her on her own.’

  ‘Which is interesting,’ Judith said. ‘So she’s a bit of a loner, would you say?’

  ‘I don’t know I’d say that. I don’t really know her.’

  ‘But she comes to church every week,’ Suzie said.

  ‘I know, but you have to understand, when I’m at church, I’m always representing Colin, so I have to talk to everyone who wants to talk to me. And Liz keeps herself to herself a bit. I get the impression her faith is a very private thing to her.’

  ‘But you’d say she was a Christian?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And had Christian values?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Even though she killed her dog,’ Suzie said.

  ‘What?’

  Suzie explained how she believed Liz had paid a vet to kill her dog.

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘It’s not just possible, it happened.’

  ‘Look, I’d agree with you she can be a bit grand at times. She’s something like Marlow royalty with her Olympic medal. You can see it in the way she holds herself when she comes to church. She very much thinks she’s Queen Bee. But then, everyone flutters around her and makes a fuss, so it’s no surprise I suppose. Now, I’ve answered your questions, I’m afraid I have to ask you both to leave.’

  ‘We’re only having a cup of tea in your kitchen,’ Judith said.

  ‘I can’t be seen gossiping about locals.’

  ‘Locals who might have committed murder.’

  ‘You have to stop saying that!’

  ‘But it’s true! Someone murdered Stefan. And then murdered Iqbal. We have to find out who it was.’

  ‘Well, it won’t have been Liz,’ Becks said with finality. ‘I can tell you that much. There’s no way she’d commit murder.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Suzie said. ‘But not everyone’s quite what we thought they were, are they? Judith here thought her neighbour Stefan was clean as a whistle, but we now know he stole a painting worth hundreds of thousands from under the nose of Elliot Howard. So there’s no knowing what dark secrets lurk in the past of anyone. Isn’t that right, Judith?’

  Suzie was surprised that her question seemed to catch Judith off guard and the older woman spilled her tea down her chin as she was taking a sip.

  ‘Look what I’ve done!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘No worries,’ Becks said, yanking yards of the thickest kitchen towel from a dispenser and handing them over to Judith.

  Becks attended to Judith, and Judith was so busy scolding herself for her slip that neither of them noticed that Suzie was looking at Judith somewhat askance. If she wasn’t mistaken, and she knew she wasn’t, Judith was behaving as though she had something to hide. Suzie had a hunch it was linked to the time Judith had blushed when they’d talked about her husband. And, now she was thinking about it, the memory of the locked door in Judith’s house also popped into her head. Why did Judith, who was so open and upfront about so much, have a locked door in her house?

  Everyone was startled by the sound of a mobile phone ringing. Suzie eventually realised it was hers and fished it out of her back pocket.

  ‘I don’t recognise the number,’ she said as she looked at the cracked screen.

  ‘Hello, this is Suzie Harris,’ she said, answering the call.

  Suzie listened for a few moments, and then lowered the phone from her ear.

  ‘It’s Iqbal’s imam,’ she said in a theatrical whisper that was some degrees louder than her normal speaking voice. ‘He says the police have released his body, so the funeral’s going to be tomorrow. He wants to know how many people I’m bringing.’

  ‘You can count me in,’ Judith said without a moment’s hesitation.

  Suzie turned to Becks, who tussled with her conscience only briefly.

  ‘Look, I can’t help you with your investigation,’ she said. ‘I just can’t. But of course I’ll come. It’s the least I can do.’

  Suzie put the phone back to her ear.

  ‘Thanks for the invite. There’ll be three of us at Iqbal’s funeral.’

  Chapter 19

  Iqbal’s mosque was situated on the edge of High Wycombe, surrounded on all sides by terraced houses. It was a 1980s red-brick building, but it had a grand white dome and minaret on top.

  As for the funeral service, a ceremony that Becks explained to the others was called a ‘Janazah’, it was both nothing like a funeral the women had been to before, but also a lot like all of them.

  The main difference was that they had to remove their shoes and put on head coverings before they entered the mosque. Judith had brought a rather splendid 1940s Hermès silk headscarf that had belonged to her great aunt. Becks had a pretty dupatta in red and gold, and in her handbag were two spares in case anyone hadn’t come prepared, which turned out to be the case with Suzie.

  Once inside, they were directed to a large prayer room that had a dark red carpet with thick golden lines woven into it that ran the full length of the room. There was also a midnight blue curtain strung down the middle, dividing the space in two. Apart from a few plastic chairs by the walls, there was no other furniture.

  At the front, an elderly man in a salwar kameez was reading tonelessly from the Quran into a microphone as half a dozen men mingled. To the man’s side, Iqbal’s coffin lay under a clean white cloth on a trestle table.

  One of the men saw the women enter and headed over, anger furrowing his brow.

  ‘You can’t come this side,’ he hissed at them, indicating the curtain. ‘Women are on that side.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Becks said, defusing the situation with the well-practised smile of a vicar’s wife. ‘We’re going straight there. Thank you.’

  Becks led her friends to the other side of the curtain and saw a solitary woman waiting at the front. The woman noticed them and nodded a smile of welcome. The three friends smiled back.

  ‘We’d better sit here,’ Becks said, indicating some plastic chairs lined up against the wall.

  As they sat down, the imam appeared at the front of the room and started the service. While the various prayers and chants were in Arabic, a language they didn’t understand, the shape of the ceremony felt reassuringly familiar. It was also pleasantly brisk in comparison to a Church of England funeral, Becks found herself thinking, seeing as it came in at only twenty minutes long.

  At the end, they saw the men from the other side of the curtain step forward, gather around the coffin, lift it up onto their shoulders and start to carry it out of the room. As they did so, Imam Latif crossed to their side of the curtain and approached.

  ‘I take it one of you is Suzie Harris,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ S
uzie said, offering her hand. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘I am so very sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Suzie said, touched by the imam’s words.

  ‘And it’s good to see you, Mrs Starling.’

  ‘Salaam, Imam.’

  ‘How are your flock?’

  ‘My husband’s flock. They’re well. And yours?’

  ‘Oh, the same. But I want to apologise to you. I saw how one of my congregation spoke to you when you came in. His tone was unacceptable, and he was wrong to make you move.’

  ‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ Becks said. ‘And it’s not so different in our church. You should see the looks Major Lewis gives if someone he doesn’t know dares to sit in his family’s pew.’

  Imam Latif smiled.

  ‘You always know what to say, Mrs Starling. The sad truth is, one tries to be progressive, but some people feel they have to cling to the old traditions, don’t they? Now, why don’t we walk together?’

  Imam Latif indicated the door through which the men had carried the coffin.

  The four of them started to follow.

  ‘Now you I don’t know,’ Imam Latif said to Judith.

  ‘I’m Judith Potts,’ Judith said. ‘Thank you for inviting us to your mosque.’

  ‘The pleasure is all mine.’

  ‘But could I ask you a few questions?’

  ‘Of course. How can I be of service?’

  ‘Well, it’s just the awful way he died.’

  ‘Indeed. A tragedy.’

  ‘Would you say you were surprised, though?’

  ‘Do you mean, did I think Iqbal was perhaps mixed up in malfeasance?’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  Becks and Suzie looked at Judith to translate, which she was happy to do.

  ‘Malfeasance. Wrongdoing.’

  ‘Oh,’ Becks said, impressed. Suzie shrugged as if to say, ‘what use is that to me?’

  ‘To be honest,’ Imam Latif said, ‘I can’t say I knew Iqbal well. We rarely saw him here. Which is fine by me. Better to welcome someone infrequently than pressure them into not coming at all. But he always struck me as a sincere and thoughtful man. Maybe a little too inward. Too private. And there was a bit of anger there as well.’

  ‘You thought so?’

  ‘Perhaps I mean frustration. The one proper conversation I had with him, I remember him telling me it was his dream to travel by boat all around the UK.’

  ‘He said the same to me,’ Suzie said.

  ‘But he said he’d had that future taken from him.’

  ‘When was this?’ Judith asked.

  ‘About a year ago. Sometime last year anyway.’

  ‘And did he say why his future had been taken away from him?’

  ‘It was something to do with an inheritance, I think.’

  The women exchanged glances. This sounded promising.

  ‘From his neighbour,’ Imam Latif continued.

  ‘That’ll be Ezra, I imagine,’ Suzie said.

  ‘That’s right. He said his neighbour was called Ezra, and he’d died and left him all of his money and his house. But when it came down to it, someone else had made his neighbour change his will at the last minute. So this other person inherited from his neighbour and not Iqbal.’

  ‘Oh,’ Becks said. ‘Poor Iqbal.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Was this other man called Elliot Howard?’ Judith asked eagerly.

  ‘I don’t know. Iqbal didn’t tell me the person’s name. But I once saw him,’ the imam said, brightening at the memory. ‘Yes, it was the last time I saw Iqbal. Earlier this year, I bumped into Iqbal leaving the shopping centre, and when I went to speak to him, he was looking across the road at the car park. I asked him if he was all right, and he got very angry, pointed to a man who was getting out of his car and said that I was looking at the man who’d stolen his inheritance from him.’

  ‘Was this man very tall?’ Judith asked. ‘In his late fifties? With long grey hair down to his shoulders?’

  Imam Latif thought carefully before answering.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say he was tall, although he might have been in his late fifties. In fact, now I think about it, he was short. And very podgy. Like a big ball of dough,’ he said, pleased with his simile. ‘He was a very short and very fat man.’

  The women were nonplussed. They’d not met any man involved in either Stefan or Iqbal’s case who was very short or very fat.

  ‘Do you remember what car he was driving?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Oh no,’ the imam said, chuckling. ‘I don’t know anything about cars. But I can picture it now. This very short and fat man, wearing a suit and a tie, and carrying a briefcase, got out of his car and left the car park. Iqbal was insistent that this was the man who’d stolen his inheritance from him by making his neighbour change his will. I didn’t know what to say. Iqbal was so agitated. But that was the last time I saw him.’

  As they’d been speaking, Imam Latif had led the women out onto the steps of the mosque, and together they’d watched the men help some undertakers load the coffin into a black hearse.

  ‘Thanks so much for talking to us,’ Becks said, ‘but don’t let us keep you.’

  ‘Thank you. I need to accompany the coffin up to the cemetery. And thank you again for offering your support today. You are welcome here any time.’

  With a warm smile, Imam Latif went over to talk to the undertakers by the hearse.

  ‘That’s something of a bombshell,’ Judith said.

  ‘There’s a short, fat man out there,’ Suzie said, ‘who stole Iqbal’s inheritance.’

  ‘But he wasn’t just short and fat. He was wearing a suit and had a briefcase, so that suggests he’s a businessman of some sort. But before we get too excited, how much money are we talking about?’

  ‘Well,’ Suzie said. ‘I can tell you, Ezra’s house is in a right old state. I don’t reckon it can be worth that much.’

  ‘But it’s currently for sale?’ Becks asked.

  ‘There’s a board outside the house.’

  ‘And where exactly is it?’

  ‘Halfway up the Wycombe Road, on the way out of Marlow.’

  ‘Oh I know the one. Three-bed bungalow, plenty of potential for development, on for six hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

  The other two women looked at Becks, surprised.

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Or nearest offer, but it will make the asking price. A local builder will snap it up, I imagine, knock it down and build something more substantial.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Suzie asked.

  Becks had the good grace to look a touch embarrassed.

  ‘I’m interested in the local property market.’

  ‘But you knew the exact amount it’s selling for!’

  ‘Yes, well it’s like I say, I’m interested.’

  ‘Do you know all of the house prices in Marlow?’

  ‘Of course not. That would be stupid.’

  ‘But you know the price of a bungalow on the Wycombe Road.’

  ‘A lucky coincidence,’ Becks said modestly.

  ‘What about the house that’s for sale on the High Street?’ Suzie asked. ‘Next door to the pet shop?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ Becks said, but the other two women could see she was lying.

  ‘Go on,’ Judith said, grinning. ‘I bet you know exactly what it’s on for.’

  ‘Well, since you’re asking, eight hundred thousand, but I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole. It’s not got off-street parking, and none of the bedrooms are en suite, not even the master bedroom. And these days, that’s the least you’d expect for a family home.’

  Judith clapped her hands together in delight.

  ‘It’s like having Google right here, isn’t it? What about that glass monstrosity that’s for sale further down the river from me? I’ve always wanted to know how much that’s on sale for.’

  ‘You mean the “architect-built fa
mily home”, five bedrooms, each with en suite, over two hundred feet of river frontage? It’s on for three point one million.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money,’ Judith said. ‘But it explains why Iqbal was so angry, doesn’t it? If he missed out on inheriting a house worth six hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It would make anyone angry.’

  ‘Especially someone who was saving up to buy a nice boat. That sort of money would have paid for a real beauty.’

  ‘So who was this doughy, short, fat man?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Oh that shouldn’t be hard to uncover,’ Judith said.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘It should be quite straightforward. The fact that Ezra’s house is on the market suggests that his will has cleared probate. And once a will does that it goes into the public domain.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I learned all this when I inherited from my great aunt Betty. But the thing is, once the will is in the public domain, anyone can order a copy of it. So all we have to do is log onto the relevant government website, order a copy of Ezra’s will, and then we’ll discover who inherited his money instead of Iqbal.’

  ‘And hopefully he’ll be the short, fat, doughy man,’ Suzie said.

  ‘Agreed. The short, fat, doughy man,’ Judith said. ‘Whoever he is.’

  Chapter 20

  Over the next few days, life returned to a semblance of normality for Judith. She managed to compile and submit a crossword to her editor at the Observer, she completed her jigsaw of the West Highland terrier before returning it to the charity shop she’d bought it from, and she swam every evening in the Thames. She felt she had no choice. The weather continued to be swelteringly hot all day, every day.

  As for her new friends, Suzie was able to throw herself back into her work, but she couldn’t shift a nagging feeling that she was missing out. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to solve Iqbal’s murder, it was more that she’d enjoyed the sense of camaraderie that working with Judith and Becks had given her. The sad truth was, despite being surrounded by dogs, getting out every day for long walks, and even having people constantly coming and going in her house, Suzie was lonely. She had Emma, of course. Suzie had grown to like her new Dobermann a lot. But the truth was, she’d spent so many years as a single mother raising her two children to the best of her ability while also holding down a job that she’d lost touch with whatever friends she’d once had. And now that her children had left home, she felt stranded. Like an old boat that had been marooned on a beach as the tide went out.