Suzie realised what the link was first.
‘No way!’ she said, returning to the page from the Borlasian.
She ran her finger down the column of names listed in the obituaries.
‘Spencer Chapman and Faye Kerr died last year!’
‘Got it in one,’ Judith said, delighted that her friend had worked it out.
‘Are you serious?’ Suzie said. ‘They’ve both died since they witnessed Ezra’s will? What happened to them?’
‘Oh, it’s so much better than that. Look at the dates they died.’
Suzie looked back at the page in her hand.
‘Spencer died last year in March, and so did Faye. They both died in March.’
‘Now look at the date of Ezra’s will.’
Becks looked at the dates that had been written under the signatures.
‘It says here, May the fifth last year,’ she said. ‘Hang on, that doesn’t make sense.’
‘Oh, it makes perfect sense,’ Judith said.
‘But how did these two manage to witness Ezra’s signature a month after they’d died?’
‘Because they didn’t, did they?’ Suzie said, now realising what must have happened. ‘Those aren’t their real signatures. Andy Bishop forged them.’
‘Exactly!’ Judith said. ‘But he couldn’t risk choosing the names of people who might later stand up in court and say they’d never witnessed the will. So he got two people who’d recently died. And faked their signatures.’
‘Which is why he needed to shred this page after he saw you,’ Suzie said, finally understanding. ‘He was worried you’d find out.’
‘But how did he manage to trick Ezra?’ Becks asked.
‘That’s the easy part,’ Judith said. ‘Ezra’s will is dated two weeks before he died. He would have been in terrible pain towards the end. And drugged up on morphine and confused. I’ve seen someone die of cancer. The last two weeks of great aunt Betty’s life, she didn’t know who she was, or what day of the week it was. She spent a lot of the time hallucinating from the drugs she was on in the hospice. I’d have been able to get her to sign anything if I’d been minded to.’
‘Just like Andy Bishop did with Ezra.’
‘He wrote a new will that left Ezra’s whole estate to him, got Ezra to sign it, and then faked a couple of signatures afterwards to make it look as though it had been witnessed at the time. And who’d ever find out?’
‘Until their names were published in the obituaries column a year later in the Borlasian magazine.’
‘So it’s like I’ve been saying,’ Becks said. ‘Andy Bishop’s our killer. He has to be.’
‘I think you could well be right,’ Judith said. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘But how did Iqbal find out about the forged witnesses?’ Suzie asked.
‘I’ve got a theory about that,’ Judith said. ‘And if I’m right, it will explain why he had to die, and why Andy was the person who killed him. Hold on.’
Judith went over to her mobile, picked it up and dialled a number.
‘Tanika, I hope you don’t mind me ringing,’ Judith said.
‘Not at all,’ Tanika said on the other end of the line. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘More than all right, thank you. But I’ve got a question to ask.’
‘Okay, but you know you can’t ask about my meeting with Elliot Howard, don’t you?’
‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s got nothing to do with Elliot Howard.’
‘Or the murder cases.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You also can’t ask about any of the murder cases.’
‘What makes you think I’m going to do that?’
‘Because why else would you ring me?’
‘Did Iqbal Kassam go to William Borlase’s Grammar School?’
‘That’s to do with the case.’
‘Of course it’s to do with the case!’
‘Then I can’t tell you.’
‘It’s a simple yes or no answer, it could be very important. But he did, didn’t he?’
Judith waited what felt like an eternity before Tanika replied.
‘I suppose it’s reasonably public domain information,’ she eventually said. ‘But you’re right, Mr Kassam’s parents spent one year in Marlow when he was twelve years old. He spent all of his Year Seven at Borlase’s Grammar School. I guess it’s why he moved back here after his parents died. He had a connection to Marlow.’
‘Then you need to go to Mr Kassam’s house as a matter of urgency. And if you look hard enough, I think you’ll find a copy of the most recent Borlasian magazine. And it will have precisely one page missing. Page 74.’
‘I’m sorry, you want me to do what?’ Tanika asked.
‘It’s the proof that Andy Bishop faked Ezra Harrington’s will, because that page lists the names of two people who died the month before they apparently witnessed Ezra’s will.’
‘Andy Bishop forged the witness’s signatures?’
‘Got it in one. But Andy was unlucky, from his point of view. Because both of the people he’d chosen had gone to Borlase’s Grammar School back in the day, which is hardly a surprise. There are only two local schools here, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that anyone in Marlow went to Borlase’s. So, a year after Andy had forged Ezra’s will and got away with it, and was about to pocket six hundred and fifty thousand pounds from the sale of Ezra’s house, little did he know that the latest edition of the school magazine would list the names of the two witnesses to Ezra’s will in their obituaries section. And that it would say clear as day that they’d died the month before the date of Ezra’s will. Even worse for Andy, Iqbal was sent a copy of the magazine because he’d spent a year at the school himself.
‘As to what happened next … I suppose we won’t ever know exactly. But I can well imagine Iqbal idly flicking through his copy of the magazine when it arrived and seeing that the two people who’d witnessed Ezra’s signature had both died. Remember, Iqbal already believed there’d been foul play. Ezra had promised to leave his estate to him but, at the last minute, had left it to his solicitor. And now, over a year later, Iqbal found himself holding evidence in black and white that both witnesses of Ezra’s will had been dead at the time.
‘So what did he do? Well, I think he must have contacted Andy. Told him he knew about his crime. And then what? Did Andy offer to share some of Ezra’s cash to buy Iqbal’s silence? Or did he flat-out deny everything? Who knows? But what we do know is that Andy now had a cast iron, copper-bottomed, gold-plated motive for wanting Iqbal dead. He had to kill him to silence him. To keep hold of the six hundred and fifty thousand pounds inheritance he’d tricked out of Ezra.’
‘Okay, give me a few seconds, Judith. This is quite a lot to take on board. Are you serious about all this?’
‘Deadly serious. Forget Elliot Howard, for all of his bonfire of the vanities. Whatever beef he had with Stefan has nothing to do with anything, because Andy Bishop’s our killer. Which makes sense, when you think about the medallions he left with each body. As I told you, “Faith”, “Hope” and “Charity” are the Masonic virtues, and I’d be very surprised if Mr Bishop attained his position of prominence as a local solicitor without joining the funny-handshake brigade. What’s more, he let slip to Becks that not only had Stefan been shot, but he knew an antique gun had been used. So how could he have known that if he weren’t the killer? You need to arrest him. At once.’
‘I’m impressed. Really, I am. The only problem is, Andy Bishop didn’t kill Iqbal Kassam.’
‘But he must have done. I’ve just explained.’
‘He didn’t. You see, he wasn’t in the country when Iqbal was killed. He was in Malta.’
Judith wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
‘Say that again?’
‘After you told me about him, I got my team to check him out. And according to both the UK Borders Agency and the Maltese Department of Immigration, Andy Bishop was at t
he end of his annual two-week holiday when Iqbal Kassam was murdered. Which means he was also in Malta when Stefan Dunwoody was killed.’
‘He was on a two-week holiday throughout all of this?’
‘I’m sorry, Judith, but he was about a thousand miles away at the time. There’s no way he could be the killer.’
Judith was rendered speechless. If Andy wasn’t even in the country for the first two murders, then it didn’t matter how much of a motive he had to kill Iqbal, he didn’t do it. As for the murder of Liz Curtis, it was still possible that he’d killed her, if he’d acted swiftly before arriving at his place of work that morning, but if he hadn’t carried out the first two murders, then why on earth would he have carried out the third? Especially when they’d not been able to find a link between him and Liz Curtis.
Judith realised they were back to square one. They’d already ruled out Elliot Howard, and now they’d have to rule out Andy Bishop. And if neither of them had done it, then who on earth had killed Stefan Dunwoody, Iqbal Kassam and Liz Curtis?
And why? What on earth was the link between the three victims that meant they had to die?
Chapter 31
If Judith and her friends were at something of a low ebb, so was Tanika. The sad truth was that with the murder of Liz Curtis, and the subsequent exposure in the international press, she and her team had become overwhelmed. There was no way an officer as inexperienced as Tanika could lead three such public murder enquiries. Her Superintendent had spoken to the Regional Crime Commissioner about getting an experienced detective inspector brought in to head up the cases, but it was taking time to arrange.
For the time being, Tanika was on her own.
To make matters worse, her team could see how out of her depth she was. It’s not that she wasn’t up to the job, far from it. Her diligence and desire to do everything ‘by the book’ meant that her team knew exactly what they were doing and when they were supposed to do it. It was more that there was simply too much for her to stay on top of.
Tanika saw it in the glances from her team when they thought she wasn’t looking, and in the way conversations would sometimes stop when she walked into the room. They were losing confidence in her.
‘Have you any active leads?’ her Super asked at his daily meeting with Tanika in his office.
‘Which case, sir?’ Tanika asked.
Her Super could see that for once she wasn’t sitting bolt upright and putting on her best face. She looked exhausted.
‘Liz Curtis.’
‘I’ll be honest, sir, we’ve almost nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No leads, no witnesses, no motives.’
‘What about her husband?’
‘Multiple witnesses place him at a roadside outside Nottingham when she was killed. We’ve also pulled his life apart, and we can find no link, be it email, phone, text, message, you name it, between him and Stefan Dunwoody or Iqbal Kassam.’
‘So he’s not our shooter?’
‘He can’t be.’
‘Then what about the weapon that killed Liz Curtis?’
‘According to ballistics, it was the exact same Luger pistol that killed Iqbal Kassam and Stefan Dunwoody.’
‘So the press are right? We have a serial killer on the loose.’
‘We have.’
‘In Marlow?’
‘I know. In Marlow.’
Tanika’s boss could see how bewildered she was. He well remembered running his own homicide cases. How easy it was to get swamped. Nonetheless, he had a job to do.
‘I must insist you step up your efforts, Detective Sergeant, until we can second a more experienced officer to head up at least one of these cases, perhaps all three,’ he added ominously. ‘Do everything in your power to move the cases on.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Everything in your power. You hear me?’
Tanika nodded. She understood.
Tanika didn’t immediately return to the Incident Room after her meeting. Instead, she slipped out of the fire door at the back of the building to get some fresh air. This wasn’t the easiest of tasks, as the back of the station abutted a dual carriageway.
Seeing the cars and lorries roaring past, she allowed herself to give in to her frustrations. As she saw it, her Super was setting her up for a fall. Or, at the very least, making sure that if she messed up, he’d have his back covered.
Do everything in your power to move the cases on, she thought to herself. She was already doing everything in her power. The problem was money. Her team wasn’t anywhere near large enough. Nor was her budget. But years of government cuts had left the police overstretched almost to breaking point. It’s why there wasn’t a detective inspector covering for DI Hoskins while he was off sick. And, Tanika suspected, it was also why her Super hadn’t yet managed to get a DI seconded to help. He’d be trying to make sure the significant extra costs wouldn’t come out of the Maidenhead budget.
And on top of everything else, Shamil, Tanika’s husband, was increasingly ratty at home because of her constant absences. He understood that her work was critically important to her, and he tried hard to give the necessary support, but, as he’d often say, he had his own dreams too. He’d always wanted to be a DJ, and being a stay-at-home-dad was getting in the way of his career, especially when he had to be out late at the weekends. The fact that Shamil had been pursuing the same dream for the last twenty-plus years without ever making any meaningful progress or earning any money was something Tanika had stopped mentioning years ago.
But what broke her heart was the look on her daughter Shanti’s face every morning as she asked if Mummy would be home to read her a bedtime story that evening. It had been even worse in the last week, because Shanti had stopped asking. She already knew the answer.
And as well as all of her responsibilities at home, Tanika also had to do the lion’s share of looking after her father, despite the fact that she had two brothers who were perfectly capable of helping, but didn’t. They didn’t explicitly say it was ‘woman’s work’, but then they didn’t have to because their father did. As far as he was concerned, since Tanika’s mother had died, it was his daughter’s duty to take over as his cook, driver, social secretary, cleaner and washerwoman.
Tanika scrunched her fists and eyes shut and allowed herself an internal scream. She wanted to do her best, to be a good police officer, a good wife, a good mother and daughter, and she wanted to deliver justice for the three murder victims, but there was nothing more she could do.
That wasn’t quite true, was it? she thought to herself. Because, for all that she knew she’d done her best, she couldn’t stop thinking about Judith’s comment about ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ being the motto of the Freemasons. And how, if she’d only told her about it earlier, she’d have been able to tell her what it meant sooner.
She opened her eyes, startled by an idea as it popped into her head.
It wasn’t a sensible idea. And it was by no means ‘doing things by the book’, but her Super had told her to do everything in her power to move the cases on, and there was no doubting that there was still one resource she hadn’t fully utilised. One that had been coming up with solid leads ever since the murder of Stefan Dunwoody.
Tanika fished out her phone and dialled a number before she could change her mind.
‘Hello?’ Judith’s voice said as she answered her phone. ‘Any news?’
‘I think you could say that,’ Tanika said with a smile in her voice.
‘How very exciting! What have you got for me?’
Tanika took a deep breath, and then she said a sentence she never thought she’d ever utter.
‘Judith Potts, I’m bringing you in.’
Chapter 32
Tanika met Judith, Suzie and Becks as they arrived at Maidenhead police station.
‘I still don’t understand,’ Becks said as Tanika handed passes to each of them.
‘I’m asking the three of you to join my team as civili
an advisers. If you can spare the time.’
‘Oh we can spare the time,’ Judith said, putting her lanyard over her head.
‘Is there any money in it?’ Suzie asked.
‘Sadly not,’ Tanika said. ‘As you can imagine, I wouldn’t be asking you to help if we were lavishly funded. But one of the things a Senior Investigating Officer can do is co-opt civilians onto her team if they have an expertise that the SIO judges will help.’
‘And the regulations really allow that?’ Judith asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tanika replied, knowing that Judith was teasing her. ‘I’ve checked my copy of Blackstone’s Senior Investigating Officers’ Handbook. This is all above board. It’s another way we’re supposed to save money. By getting in civilian experts as and when.’
‘But I have no expertise,’ Becks said.
‘I wouldn’t agree with that at all,’ Tanika said. ‘The three of you are about the only people who’ve moved any of these cases on at all. I’d say you have considerable expertise.’
‘Do we get access to the case files?’ Judith asked eagerly.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Pathology reports, ballistics, witness statements, the whole shebang?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then lead on.’
‘Just one thing,’ Tanika added. ‘This is still quite an unorthodox move on my part.’
‘You can say that again,’ Suzie said breezily. ‘I’ve got a criminal record.’
Everyone turned and looked at her.
‘You have?’ Becks asked.
‘Nothing to write home about. Just fraud.’
‘You don’t think fraud’s anything to write home about?’
‘It was a suspended sentence in the end. All spent.’
‘I’d keep that under your hat, if I were you,’ Tanika said. ‘But the point is, my team won’t take too kindly to three civilians joining our ranks. Not that they’ve got any choice. But don’t be surprised if you meet with a degree of resistance.’
The Marlow Murder Club Page 21