by Faith Martin
The CRT tended to be a repository for old and outdated equipment passed down from above — not quite like manna from heaven. Not that they weren’t grateful.
‘Download digitally whatever you can,’ she added with a sigh. ‘I’ll start the Murder Book going, and make my own notes. By the end of the day, I should have a list of assignments for you. As usual, most of it will be tracking down up-to-date info on our witnesses and suspects. But let’s see if, after a decade, we can’t unearth something new that’ll help us get justice for Michael.’
‘Guv,’ Claire said amiably.
‘Ma’am,’ Gareth said crisply.
Hillary retreated to her office to devour all the notes she’d been given from the original investigation and the rest of the day passed quickly. She tried to put herself back in 2011, but when it came to remembering what had been important in her life ten years ago, she couldn’t come up with anything specific. But she assumed that her work had been her priority.
She only hoped that others had a better memory of that time than she did, and that the people who knew him hadn’t forgotten Michael or what had happened to him.
But if they had, they were about to be reminded — and in no uncertain terms.
* * *
Six months ago
Simon Newley unlocked the back door of what he always referred to as his antique shop, stepped into a dingy passageway, and punched in the alarm code on the machine on the wall. It was something he did automatically, although when he stopped to think about it — which wasn’t often — he wondered why he bothered. The system was ancient, none of the CCTV cameras actually worked, and even if they did, he’d never been robbed in all the years he’d owned the shop.
There were many reasons for this. For a start, the shop, situated not far from the worst estates the city of Oxford had to offer, was full of total tat. His more law-abiding customers regularly brought him knackered stuff and received mere pennies in return. Old radios that didn’t work, sofas with springs that had given up the ghost before the turn of the millennium, Aunty Mary’s vase with the crack a mile wide down the side and shiny yellow metal trinkets that had about as much gold content as a daffodil.
Nobody ever came in to buy. But that was all right, it was only for show anyway. Although he kept a fictitious set of books to show the taxman or any coppers that might come calling, indicating that he managed to earn a very modest living from his ‘antiques’.
But many knew that the real service that Simon provided had nothing to do with second-hand goods. Which was another reason why he was never robbed. The locals all needed him too much.
The token ‘security’ measures seen to, he slouched wearily into the front room of what had once been a regular house. Years ago, he’d knocked a sizeable hole in the wall and installed a large single window (back in the days when you could do such things without historical societies and planning officers throwing a hissy fit), which was now so dirty it barely let in the daylight.
A doll (minus a leg) sat in the front windowsill looking out over the narrow street beyond, its dress long since bleached into an indeterminate colour.
He wound his way through the narrow and cramped central aisle, where old wooden kitchen chairs were stacked in piles that almost reached to the ceiling, and through the far door into his office, where he deposited the ledger that he’d been carrying under his arm.
Formerly the kitchen of the house, it still retained the old kitchen sink, and a kettle stood on the draining board nearby. But rows of old-fashioned filing cabinets now lined the walls, along with smaller, card-index cabinets, testimony to Simon’s distrust of computers. He didn’t want his online movements tracked, thank you very much, and he knew far too many hackers to risk getting himself caught up in blackmail. No, pen and paper suited him just fine, as did the big, old-fashioned ledger.
Although he was only fifty-five years old, Simon was aware that in appearance he could pass for a good ten years older than that. But that’s what inhabiting the sleazy side of life did for you, he supposed. Bald, with watery blue eyes, he tended to dress as his grandfather had, in warm woollen trousers, a thick check shirt, and a chunky cardigan. Nice and warm on a cold autumn day, they lent him the totally misleading appearance of a harmless old man.
Underneath his desk, though, he kept a sawn-off shotgun, and out in the attached garage was a very large dog that didn’t take kindly to strangers, but had been trained not to kick up a racket unless urged to by its master. He couldn’t have the dog barking every time someone knocked on his door. But being within easy call through a huge dog-flap, he knew that he could always rely on Brutus to come running whenever he whistled.
Not that he ever had much call to use the dog. People in the neighbourhood knew all about Brutus and his nasty personality. They also knew all about Simon Newley, and his nasty personality.
That chill October morning was like any other for Simon. He’d left his wife and the three of his five kids that still lived at home behind in their former council house in Kidlington, and driven into the city, cursing, as always, at the amount of traffic.
He set up his cash box and then turned the notice on the front door to indicate that he was open for business.
His first customer was a teenage likely lad from Blackbird Leys who had twenty iPads he needed to offload sharpish. There was the usual haggle about price, with the kid finally and ungraciously accepting Simon’s terms to come and collect his money later, and cash changed hands.
The moment the disgruntled teenager slouched out, Simon was on the phone to a man he knew in Milton Keynes who would be very happy to accept the merchandise on offer and would send someone round for it after dark.
He noted the transactions in his ledger (which he always took home with him at the end of the day and slid under his mattress), marking down both the buyer and seller only by the nicknames he gave them. He was careful to use a code of his own devising for telephone numbers and other pertinent information — that way, if his system ever fell into the wrong hands, nobody would be dropped in the shit — least of all himself.
In all the years he’d been in business, Simon had never served prison time, and he didn’t intend to. His reputation for being clever, dependable and — within limits, fair — had stood him in good stead for nearly thirty years, making him something of an institution in his neighbourhood.
Not that he always had things easy. Right now, business had been going downhill for a bit, a fact that Simon had been very careful to keep well hidden. It didn’t do for the jackals in this world to scent blood. But he also knew that the downturn was only temporary — he’d been through lean times before, and they always picked up, so he wasn’t really worried.
But he had just had to reorder his finances somewhat and take out a ‘loan’. Unfortunately, the loan had recently become more of a pressing problem than he’d anticipated, leading him to have to make some painful choices.
But he was confident that it was all sorted out now, and his loan shark had been happy with the compromise he’d suggested. If nothing else, Simon knew he was a natural born survivor. Maybe not a noble predator such as a lion or a tiger, but something far more useful — something indestructible — like a cockroach. Didn’t they say if the bomb ever went off, cockroaches would inherit the earth?
And like all born survivors, he knew that if you had to throw someone else under the bus in order to walk away unscathed yourself, well, that was just life, wasn’t it? Everyone — well, at least everyone who lived in his kind of world — knew that you had to look out for number one first and foremost.
It was getting on for eleven when Simon put on the kettle and settled down with the morning paper, his eyes running thoughtfully over the horses running at Haydock, mentally checking their form, the record of the jockeys riding them, and which nags preferred soft ground and which didn’t.
The second caller of the day was a woman with a wedding ring for sale and a black eye that Simon was sure he could actually s
ee was still throbbing.
He bought the ring cheap (the gold was the lowest carat there was), and wished her the best of luck. He knew her husband, and if she didn’t get away free and clear before he staggered home from the pub when his money ran out, the black eye would be the least of her problems.
Outside, the October day grew a little darker as storm clouds blew in, and soon the gusting winds were blowing raindrops against the dirty windows.
Someone thumped on the back door and Simon sighed. Not everyone, for obvious reasons, liked to be seen going into his establishment, and he felt no presentiment of foreboding as he left the office and shuffled through the passageway towards the rear.
The glass in the rear door was pebbled (to stop nosy coppers peering in and spotting something they oughtn’t) so all he saw was the vague outline of a male figure.
He opened the door on its chain with his usual caution, but seeing only the face of a long-time and lucrative customer that he’d nicknamed Teddy Bear, he slipped the chain off the latch, and pulled it open.
‘Ah, it’s you again. The usual is it?’ He stepped back, watching his visitor thoughtfully. He wasn’t unduly concerned, since he was sure that Teddy Bear could have no idea — yet — of what Simon had been forced to do in order to keep his loan shark happy. He’d only come to the arrangement with Lionel Kirklees yesterday, so he doubted Lionel would have put the bite on him this soon.
But in that, as it soon turned out, Simon was mistaken.
The first indication that something wasn’t quite right was when Teddy Bear made an odd movement with his right arm — raising it to chest level. The second indication was when Simon heard this strange noise and felt his whole body convulse with pain and a strange, hot, alien sensation racing across and through him like liquid fire.
He found himself on the dirty floor of the passageway, his limbs jerking in an odd, macabre dance. He felt utterly disorientated and totally confused. His brain didn’t seem to have control over anything. He couldn’t even open his mouth to yell for Brutus. He felt pain, but also a sensation that he knew he’d never felt before. Most bizarrely of all, he was sure he could smell something burning.
Was he having a stroke?
Then Teddy Bear was standing over him, and when Simon looked down the length of his still jerking body and saw two small metal pins, with their telltale wires sticking out of his chest, he finally understood what had happened to him.
He’d been shot with a taser, and his body was still paralysed by the electric current that had knocked him off his feet and out of touch with reality.
He tried to open his mouth, to plead, to try and make amends, to promise Teddy Bear anything he wanted, anything at all, if only he would let Simon be. But he could produce no sounds other than a kind of silly ‘uh, uh, uh’, and his eyes widened in fear and panic as he saw his visitor lean back through the open door and reach behind him for something.
The moment he saw what it was, Simon Newley finally had to accept that he was wrong about being a natural born survivor after all.
Dead wrong.
CHAPTER TWO
By the next morning, Hillary’s team were all well on their way to being up and running on their latest case. Most of the really important documents had either been photocopied and distributed as hard-copy files or else downloaded onto their digital devices. Better yet, Gareth and Claire had tracked down the latest addresses or contact details for a good percentage of the witnesses and suspects involved in the original investigation.
Arriving dead on the dot of nine o’clock for once, Hillary found both Claire and Gareth already in and raring to go. For a moment she stood in the doorway, regarding them both, and then smiled.
‘Claire, feel like coming with me to talk to Michael’s parents?’
She’d telephoned the Becks yesterday afternoon to warn them that their son’s case was being looked at again, and had arranged a visit with them for ten o’clock that morning.
‘Great,’ Claire instantly accepted. In her view, anything that got her out of the office for a few hours was not to be sniffed at.
‘On the way there, we can stop off and take a look at where the body was found,’ Hillary suggested.
Although the medical evidence hadn’t been able to determine one way or the other if the place Michael Beck’s body had been found was the same as where he went into the water, it seemed to her to be unlikely. Given the current in the river, the original team had theorised that the murdered man must have entered the river somewhere upstream. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, they’d been unable to find the spot. The surrounding fields for some miles around had either contained cows, sheep or horses, most of which regularly went to the river banks to drink, and thus might have obliterated any evidence.
‘It probably won’t tell us anything useful all these years later, but it’ll at least give us a feel for things and get the lie of the land fixed in our heads.’
‘Good idea, guv,’ Claire agreed happily. ‘A walk in the countryside won’t hurt, either!’
Hillary knew how she felt. She gave Gareth an apologetic look. ‘Gareth, I need you to get in touch with the original SIO and pick his brains. I doubt he’ll have anything to add to what’s in the files, but we can’t overlook it. Who knows, a call out of the blue might jog his memory about something.’
Claire rolled her eyes at the likelihood of this but wisely said nothing. In her experience, once retired coppers got the smell of sand and sea in their nostrils, then their old life might just as well have never existed.
Gareth accepted his less-appealing assignment with no visible expression but a calm nod.
Since Hillary didn’t like to ask too much of her ageing car these days, they set out in Claire’s more recent and reliable little runabout, heading out towards the villages of Islip and Woodeaton in a brief burst of bright spring sunshine. Early daffodils gave the Kidlington roundabout a daubing of cheerful yellow, and through the clouds, now and then, a blue sky promised better things to come.
There was still a chill breeze blowing, however, when fifteen minutes later Claire pulled the car off onto the side of the road opposite a water meadow and switched off the ignition. Over beyond a stand of trees lay the attractive village of Islip, and as they set off walking towards the riverbank, Hillary could hear a colony of nesting rooks kicking up their usual racket.
The fields were bare of wild flowers so early in the season, and the trees were yet to don their mantle of green but the river still managed to look beautiful as it wound its way towards Oxford. It didn’t take the women long to find the weir where Michael Beck’s body had been caught up by the detritus that had congregated in the lower section of the water. Painted a rather utilitarian grey, the protective railings stretched over the waterway, with a central concrete partition in the centre, sending the river flowing either side of it.
‘I love the sound of rushing water,’ Hillary mused out loud as the two women stood together, regarding the unlovely structure thoughtfully. ‘He was killed in September,’ Hillary swept on more briskly, ‘so the water would have been much more overgrown with vegetation than it is now. Both river weeds, like water crowfoot, which grow in the actual flowing water itself, and things like river mace or rushes, rosebay willowherb and meadowsweet would all have infringed down from the banks and colonised the outer edges.’
Claire, also a country girl, nodded. ‘Yes — it’s easy to see why his body would have snagged here. You’re thinking he didn’t travel that far?’
Hillary sighed. ‘It’s impossible to say. Because his home is only a short distance away . . .’ she turned, getting her bearings, and then pointed vaguely, ‘over there, it’s tempting to assume that he was killed near to home and then dumped in the river at the closest point to Woodeaton, if only because his killer would have been anxious to get away from the proximity of a dead body as soon as possible. But there’s no real way of knowing. We mustn’t get lured into one-dimensional thinking,’ she said
, warning herself as much as Claire. ‘For all we know he could have been killed miles away, and then driven back here in the back of some vehicle and dumped close to his home just to lay a false trail or confuse the issue.’
Claire nodded. For a moment, the two women stood companionably in the field, watching the hypnotic motion of the river flowing over the weir. Somewhere a yellowhammer called, and a chiff-chaff, probably newly arrived from its impressive migration from much warmer climes, was encouraged to join in. With the grazing cattle in the next field, the place looked bucolic, calm and innocent.
‘Not the sort of place you expect to find a dead body, is it?’ Hillary said quietly.
‘Not really, no,’ Claire agreed, then shivered in the chill wind. ‘Seen enough, guv?’ she asked hopefully.
Hillary smiled. ‘Sure. Let’s go and warm up.’ With a bit of the luck, the Becks would offer them a hot cup of coffee.
* * *
William and Martina Becks, according to Claire’s research, had both retired relatively early from their respective professions, and had not moved away from the family home.
Hillary didn’t read anything into this. Sometimes, the relatives and loved ones of murder victims couldn’t wait to move away from the place where they’d suffered such a traumatic loss. Others felt the need to stay close by, perhaps because the familiar surroundings helped keep their memories more vivid.
William Beck, who’d sold his business providing greenhouses and conservatories to the well-heeled barely two years after losing his son, turned out to be a tall, thin man with fine pure white hair and pale brown eyes. Dressed in elegantly tailored black slacks and a warm cream woollen pullover, he answered the door with a strained smile and invited them in the moment they showed their identification.
The Becks’ house was a large detached cottage situated in a small lane by the church, just off the main street. Much extended and built of the local stone, it was wonderfully warm inside and decorated in muted pastels. He showed them through the small entrance space and straight into a newer kitchen-cum-diner, where a sofa at the far end sat facing a log burner, flickering with flames.