No Spoken Word

by David Menon

  ‘Has the gun been fired, June?’ asked Barton.

  ‘No’ said June. ‘It’s loaded but it hasn’t been fired. And I know what your next question is going to be. Was the gun that killed our friend here the same one that killed Maria Taylor? I’ll let you know when I get back to the lab and check but what I can confirm to you here and now is that Maria Taylor was killed by multiple bullets from the same gun. I was going to call you about it later today’.

  ‘Which would confirm why the gun of our friend here wasn’t fired’.

  ‘Correct’.

  ‘So what was he doing here and why did he end up like this?’

  ‘It’s anybody’s guess at the moment’ said June.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ said Barton, smiling playfully. ‘Welcome to Mastermind. Our first contestant tonight is the highly esteemed pathologist Dr. June Hawkins whose specialist subject is stating the bleeding obvious’.

  She smiled ruefully at him and then stuck her tongue out. ‘They say the old ones are the best but maybe not with that one’.

  ‘You’re so naughty’.

  ‘Well I would be if you gave me the chance’ said June. She then turned and smiled at one of her team who brought something to her and said it had been found in the victims back pocket.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well it looks like his wallet’ said June peering at the object in the clear plastic bag. ‘Looks like you’ll be able to make a positive ID’.

  With protective gloves on his hand Barton opened the wallet and picked out a couple of bank cards. He read out the name on one of them. ‘... Mr. Tony Ward ... ‘ He then handed the card to DI Ollie Wright. ‘Get this run through the system, Ollie. I want to know everything about our friend Mr. Ward here’.

  Louisa Pilkington arrived home at her flat in Salford Quays after her third day in her new job with the police. She was knackered. She loved her job and the people she was working with but she was knackered. She was also hungry. It seemed like hours since she’d had her lunch which had comprised of a ham salad in the canteen. It was all very well these modern day chefs going on about the way to stay slim was to avoid carbohydrates but she needed to replace the energy she’d used up during the working day and that meant going for things that were supposed to be so bad for you.

  She opened a bottle of South African red wine and took a large gulp. That felt better. She didn’t have much in the way of food in but she did spot a large potato that she could roast in its jacket. Then she sighed. If she did that she’d have to get a knife once it was cooked and slit it open. Then she’d have to go to the fridge for the spread and use some of that on the potato. Then she’d have to get a tin of tuna out of the cupboard, open it and empty it onto the potato. Then she’d feel obliged to go back to the fridge for the mayonnaise and put a spoonful on top of the tuna. It all just sounded far too complicated and she couldn’t be bothered.

  Then she thought she might fancy a cheese sandwich. She took two slices of bread and put some spread over one side of each. Then she realised that the only cheese she had was the Greek feta variety which she loved in a salad but wasn’t sure about in a sandwich. She sliced it as thinly as she could but it only took two bites for her to appreciate that feta cheese just didn’t work in a sandwich. So she gave up and decided to finish off the wine instead and drool over the actor James Norton who was starring in a new series of Grantchester on TV at nine o’clock. He wouldn’t have to ask her twice. He wouldn’t have to ask her. She’d just throw herself on him.

  Before his programme came on she gave in to an impulse to phone her mother. Her family only lived down the road in Swinton but they may as well be on the moon. She knew she’d hurt them and yet she just didn’t accept that they should feel that way and that’s where all attempts at a reconciliation had floundered. Sometimes she wondered why she kept on charging down a one way street in the opposite direction. But this was her Mum, her Dad, her brother. This was where she would maybe one day have nieces and nephews. She wasn’t going to let them cut her out of all that.

  ‘Mum? It’s me, Louisa? Please don’t hang ... ‘

  Too late. Her mother hung up just like she always did. And even though she’d done it over a thousand times it still made her break down in tears.

  It was a while later when she thought that the best thing she could do was to get herself to bed. She sat at the mirror in her bedroom and started taking her makeup off. She tried not to think of her family and the pain they’d caused her and instead focused on everything that was happening in the case that she and her new colleagues were working on which now amounted to two murders. Keep focusing on work. The rest would work itself out eventually.

  NO SPOKEN WORD

  SIX

  The Chorlton area of Manchester had been competing with near neighbour Didsbury for many years as one of the most desirable suburbs to live in on the south side of the city. Its housing though was more mixed than its more famous contemporary with many of its residents having lived there for many years before the bright lights of the upwardly mobile had taken over. And so it was that Tony Ward and his wife Kath had lived in the same council flat since the seventies when they got married. The ownership of it had long been relinquished by the council but a succession of housing associations had kept up the principle of rented housing to be available to people on low incomes. The Wards’ flat was on the second floor of a two storey purpose built block and DS Adrian Bradshaw, accompanied by DC Joe Alexander, could hear several people’s voices inside as they knocked on the door. It was one of those old-fashioned style of front door with four windows made of frosted glass forming most of it, with the number ‘96’ at the top and the letterbox at the bottom. The red paint covering the wood parts was peeling and when the door opened and the people who’d been inside filtered past, Adrian and Joe could see immediately that the whole place looked like it was in need of a makeover. It didn’t look like it had been decorated for centuries. Alexander felt his mobile vibrate in his pocket. He knew what it would all be about. He lifted it out and sure enough, it was a text from his girlfriend Erica-Jane demanding to know why he hadn’t yet responded to her text of five minutes ago and reminding him that she was at her most fertile time of the month and that should be more important to him than his stupid job. He’d have to deal with all that later after at least another half a dozen messages.

  ‘Mrs. Ward?’ Bradshaw called out as he stepped over the threshold. ‘Mrs. Ward? I’m DS Adrian Bradshaw and my colleague here is DC Joe Alexander?’

  Kath Ward was sitting in her living room in an armchair with a high back and wooden legs. She was wearing a knitted cardigan over a high neck white blouse and slacks of a nondescript dark colour. The room had a darkness to it that belied the sun that was high in the sky outside. There were thick net curtains at the windows that were more or less impossible to see through, even up close as Alexander found out, and dark red velvet floor to ceiling curtains. The whole place was rather dark.

  ‘Let’s see your badges then’ said Kath. ‘Even though I knew you were police officers before you announced yourselves’.

  ‘How did you know we were police officers?’ asked Adrian. He knew the question was particularly naïve to say the least. Kath Ward knew what a copper looked like. Her face showed defiance and yet she looked totally lost at the same time. It was like she had to use up the last dregs of her now late husband’s well known belligerence against the establishment as a kind of credentials card for herself and out of respect for him and his memory. He’d looked up the file on Tony Ward. He’d been arrested twice for breach of the peace disturbances, once in a protest against the poll tax back in the late eighties and once in a similar demonstration against the Bush and Blair led Iraq war. He’d also been in the background at numerous other public protests but his behaviour at those had not led to his arrest. Tony Ward could write a good letter though.

  ‘My politics are and always have been on what’s regarded as the far left’ said Kath. ‘I�
�ve got to know what you people look like. Besides, if you’d really looked at all those friends of mine who just left, and I’m sure you did because that’s your job, but you should’ve noticed that none of the men were wearing a jacket and tie like you two are’.

  DC Joe Alexander couldn’t help smiling at the woman’s candour and after they’d both held up their badges he said ‘We’re very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Ward’.

  ‘Are you? I find that very hard to believe’.

  ‘There’s no need for that tone, Mrs. Ward’ said Bradshaw.

  Kath Ward turned her sharp eyes on them both. ‘Now you look here’ she said. ‘I don’t need any soft soap. My husband was murdered. I know that’.

  ‘He was also in possession of a loaded firearm at the time’ said Bradshaw. ‘Do you happen to know anything about that?’

  ‘Cut to the chase why don’t you’

  ‘You give me the impression you prefer the direct approach’.

  Kath stopped and looked at him. ‘And so I do’ she said although she’d grown rather tired lately of being her usual radical belligerent self, intolerant of anyone’s perspective except her own. She’d started to listen to herself at times. Sometimes she’d talked the biggest load of crap she’d ever heard but it had pleased her husband Tony. But Tony wasn’t here anymore and that meant that she no longer had to defend evil regimes like the one in North Korea simply because they were the enemy of the US and capitalism. Tony wouldn’t be around to chastise her for it. She hadn’t quite worked out yet how to deal with supposedly ultra feminist left-wing women who place all Western men on the side of the devil but who are happy to defend an Iranian misogynist cleric who says that girls should be ‘allowed’ to wear jeans. She didn’t have to defend that stupidity anymore if she didn’t want to. What she would do though, and ferociously if necessary, was defend her husband’s reputation. She’d fallen in love with Tony the first time she’d met him and that wasn’t going to change with his death.

  ‘Well look, sit down’ said Kath gesturing towards the sofa. ‘Let’s get on with it’.

  ‘Have you noticed anything about your husband’s behaviour of late, particularly yesterday afternoon, that would lead you to presume something like this was going to happen?’

  ‘Absolutely not’ Kath stated firmly. ‘When he left here yesterday afternoon he said he was taking some of our leaflets to Maria and Sylvia because they were one of the businesses that like to carry our stuff’.

  ‘Your stuff?’

  ‘Leaflets about our activities as hosts of political meetings that don’t exactly fit into the mainstream’ said Kath. ‘That’s where he said he was going and that’s what he said he was going there for and I had no reason to disbelieve him. I stayed behind to look after our second hand book shop on Market Street’.

  ‘But he was going just to the home and shop of Maria Taylor and Sylvia Clarke?’

  ‘Yes and that wasn’t unusual. As for his mood, look all I can say is that he’d been a bit quiet of late, that’s all, just a bit quiet. I’d asked him if anything was wrong and he said that there wasn’t. I knew that if there was something he’d tell me eventually’.

  ‘What about the loaded firearm, Mrs. Ward?’ asked Bradshaw.

  Kath breathed in deeply. ‘It was planted’.

  ‘You’re sure about that?’ asked Alexander in a disbelieving tone.

  ‘It must’ve been!’ she insisted angrily. ‘My husband wouldn’t have known one end of a gun from the other’ she reasoned with more anguish creeping into her eyes than she’d have liked.

  ‘So you’d never known him use a firearm?’

  ‘Look’ she began. ‘If he’d been involved in anything like that I’d have definitely known’.

  ‘So someone went to all the trouble of planting a loaded gun on your husband after he’d been running from a murder scene?’

  ‘Look, you can make it sound as ridiculous as you like’.

  ‘Well it does sound ridiculous, Mrs. Ward. It doesn’t make any proper sense at all’.

  ‘Look, you stupid Neanderthal, Tony and I were as close as close could be. They used to call us Paul and Linda McCartney because we were never apart and we were vegetarians. But anyway, Tony abhorred guns, he abhorred violence. He got arrested those times because he was so passionate about what he was protesting about and he was an aggressive pacifist if you like. He would’ve fought passionately for peace and for everybody to get a fair crack of the whip. That’s what’s so damned unfair about all this’. Her voice faltered but she didn’t want to break down in front of them. She had too much dignity for that. ‘Dying like he did … well it just doesn’t fit with who my husband was or what he stood for. And I should know’.

  ‘Mrs. Ward, how did you and your husband get to know Maria Taylor and her partner Sylvia Clarke?’ Bradshaw asked.

  ‘Well of course we knew them’.

  ‘Why do you say of course?’

  ‘Well didn’t you know? I mean, I’m sitting here trusting the likes of you two to find my husband’s killer and that means I’m trusting the police for the first time in my bloody life and yet you’re saying you don’t know how we knew Maria and Sylvia?’

  ‘What is it you say we don’t know, Mrs. Ward?’

  ‘Sylvia and Tony were together back in the day’ Kath revealed. ‘They never got married but they lived together for a fair few years before Maria came along and snatched Sylvia off Tony. He was bitter for a long time as anybody would be when your partner goes off with someone else. But then he met me and somehow he found a way of reconciling with Sylvia and then the four of us became really good friends. And that’s what’s so baffling about this whole saga. We saw a lot of them and yet I didn’t know that something must’ve been going on that at least Tony didn’t want me to know about. I don’t know where Sylvia’s gone to but I can say categorically that she hasn’t tried to contact me’.

  ‘Do you think … ‘

  ‘ … that they were having an affair? No, I don’t think that. But clearly something was going on that I didn’t know about that led to the death of my husband who was a thoroughly good and decent man. And if I could get hold of Sylvia I wouldn’t be too kind about demanding to know what that was’.

  Diana Matthews sat in the interview room with her solicitor Julian Rankin sitting beside her. She was absolutely seething. On the other side of the table were DSI Barton and DI Ollie Wright. Julian Rankin was sitting there in a light blue Italian made suit over a crisply ironed white shirt with cufflinks, a buttoned down collar and a dark blue tie. He was in his early forties and over the years had become increasingly hated in Manchester police circles which made it come as some surprise to Rankin that someone like Diana Matthews could be enlisting his services. How could they have possibly crossed paths? Rankin worked at the very top end of the northwest celebrity circuit. He’d successfully fought on behalf of the likes of sportsmen and women, soap stars and the like and got them off everything from underage sex with a minor to assault causing GBH to traffic offences but, in the case that really stuck in the throats of Greater Manchester police officers, he successfully defended a football player who’d been driving whilst drunk and caused the death of an off-duty police officer. The officer’s three children will now all have to grow up without justice for him because of a lawyer who would take the shilling of the devil himself and a football player who thought he was entitled to be let off anything, including the death of another human being, just because he gets paid a small fortune for running round a pitch once or twice a week. A very dubious silence had fallen on the station when Rankin arrived to see his client but by the look on his face he was wearing it as a badge of honour. Either that or he couldn’t have cared less.

  So what were the likes of Diana Matthews doing hiring the likes of Julian Rankin? Barton wondered how their paths could possibly have crossed?

  ‘Mrs. Matthews, you understand you’re being interviewed under caution which is why you have the right to legal representation?�
� Barton wanted to clarify.

  ‘I do’ Diana replied through clenched teeth.

  ‘We have a warrant to search your property and that’s being undertaken now as we speak’.

  ‘This is not just an outrage it’s a complete travesty!’

  ‘The travesty, Mrs. Matthews, is that two people are dead and certain information has come to light which leads us to believe that you may know enough about at least the murder of Maria Taylor for us to build a case against you for accessory to murder’.

  ‘What do you mean by certain information?’ Diana demanded. ‘You’ve got nothing on me that would connect me to Maria’s murder! Or that of Tony Ward’.

  ‘We’ll be the judge of that, Mrs. Matthews’ said Barton. ‘Or maybe even a jury if we find what we’re looking for’.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘You answered a call to a mobile phone that was in your possession. You talked as if you knew exactly who should’ve been calling and yet it was the one being used by Maria Taylor in the days leading up to her death to take suspicious calls from a stranger. But we were the ones calling this time and we now have your voice on tape revealing information that would bury your innocence in a court of law ... ‘

  ‘ ... now look, I must insist on some time with my client’ Rankin interrupted.

  ‘Shut up!’ Barton snarled. ‘You see, Mrs. Matthews? That mobile phone is what we’re searching your house for. And before it was in your possession our bet is that it was in the hands of the killer. Or maybe that’s the same person?’ He checked his watch at the same time as he watched the colour drain from her face. ‘Interview closed at 11.12 am. You’ll be held over for the rest of today and we’ll resume our little talk tomorrow morning’.

  ‘But you can’t!’

  ‘Yes, I can, Mrs. Matthews. But don’t worry. If you turn out to be guilty then you’ve got one of the best lawyers in the business to get you off scot free. Isn’t that right, Mr. Rankin? Isn’t that your speciality?’ He stood up and then leaned forward towards Diana Matthews with the palms of his hands on the table. ‘But if I was you I’d have a good long think whilst you’re here and then be willing to co-operate in the morning. Otherwise, I’ll just keep you a little longer until you are’.