by David Menon
‘Yes sir, although she’s been in quite an emotional state since she learned of the death of her boss Kath Ward. She’s in the interview room now’.
Wendy Pritchard had no previous convictions and hadn’t ever been issued with so much as a parking ticket. They’d already delayed the start of her interview because of her distressed state but she now said that she was ready. It had already been planned by Barton and DI Wright that DS Bradshaw should take Wright’s place in the interview since it was he who first noticed the possible chink in Wendy’s armour and it would give Bradshaw good interview practice. Barton impressed on him though that he wanted a result and he didn’t want to waste any time getting it. He was fresh from the crime scene where Kath Ward’s body had been found. He wanted answers.
‘Do you know who this man might be, Wendy?’ asked Bradshaw as passed the photo-fit picture across the desk to her.
Wendy started to cry. ‘He told me that he loved me’ she whimpered.
‘Who did?’
‘Yuri’ she answered, her breathing rapid. She took a deep breath and it started to settle down again. She cleared her throat and wiped her face with the back of her hand. ‘Yuri Kuznetsov is his name’.
Bradshaw wrote down the name. ‘So tell us about Yuri Kuznetsov’.
Barton looked at Wendy for a moment. Apart from the pasty skin and the fingernails that were nicotine stained, she was also shaking slightly. What was that all about? Could it be alcohol dependency or drug addiction? More likely from the way she looked to Barton’s trained and experienced eye that it was to do with the booze. Or maybe she was just frightened of this big Russian bear called Yuri Kuznetsov and if he was the murderer of three people then perhaps her fear is justified. But when would girls like her ever learn? So bloody lonely and desperate they allow themselves to get taken in by any old murdering snake tongued fuckwit.
‘It was about six months ago when he first started coming to meetings of the Anglo-Soviet society that Tony and Kath ran’ said Wendy who was constantly fiddling about with the paper tissue in her hands. ‘There were always a fair few folk around at those meetings so I wasn’t surprised when Kath didn’t recognise him outright. But I’d noticed him straight away. He’s tall and beefy like those Russian gymnasts and I felt an instant physical attraction to him’.
Oh puh-lease, thought Barton. He could cope with her eyes filled with tears. He could understand that. But lustful descriptions of a man wanted for murder he could really do without.
‘I couldn’t believe it when he smiled and came over to talk to me. I told him I worked for Tony and Kath. He asked me to go for a drink with him after the meeting and after that he came home with me and stayed the night. I couldn’t believe my luck. Men like him don’t happen to women like me. I should’ve known he was only using me’.
‘Keep going, Wendy’.
Wendy pushed her hair back behind her ears with her fingers but it didn’t do much good. It came flapping back to shape her face and she didn’t bother trying again.
‘He asked me to get him details of all the membership but he especially wanted to get to know about Tony and Kath and also about their close friends Maria and Sylvia’.
‘Why did he want to know about them in particular?’
‘He wouldn’t say’ said Wendy who was beginning to sob again. She drank the rest of the water they’d given her earlier and Barton filled up the cup for her. ‘Thanks’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about pausing, Wendy’ said Bradshaw. ‘We’ve got plenty of time’.
‘I got him addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and everything’ Wendy confessed in a weak voice. ‘But it was those four he wanted to focus in on. Tony and Kath and Maria and Sylvia’.
‘How did you feel about giving him this information?’
‘I felt rotten but it was all part of what he needed from me in terms of our relationship. That’s how I looked at it. My love life has always been a disaster. I really thought that this time ... ‘
‘ ... even though he was asking you to do the dirty on your employers and their friends?’
‘I just didn’t think about that side to it’.
‘Wendy, did Yuri murder Maria Taylor and Sylvia Clarke?’
Wendy started rocking back and forth on her chair and then finally blurted out. ‘Yes!’
‘You know this for sure?’
‘Yes, I do’ she spluttered. She was finding it difficult to breathe again.
‘How?’
‘Because ... because I drove him there and back again! I drove him to the other side of the woods behind Pennington Way and I waited for him. Then I drove him back to mine’.
‘Wendy, do you understand the implications of what you’re telling us?’
Wendy nodded her head. ‘Yes. It’s why I haven’t slept these past few nights. You see, Maria Taylor was always the target and I didn’t really know her. It was Tony that cracked me up. I couldn’t stand to think that I’d played a part in his death. He was one of the most decent men I’ve ever met and I could hardly look poor Kath in the eye afterwards knowing that Yuri had killed him. You see, Tony had caught wind of what was happening. He overheard a conversation between me and Yuri and somehow, I don’t know how, he managed to get hold of a gun and he followed us that day ’.
‘Did Yuri kill Kath Ward too?
‘Yes. It was a precaution against her finding out too much and talking’.
‘And you drove him there too?’
‘Yes’.
‘So she was murdered because she might’ve got to know too much?’ Bradshaw questioned in a firmer voice than before. ‘And you were in on it?’
‘I’m not proud of myself!’
Bradshaw almost laughed. ‘I’m glad to hear it. And there’s a lot more for you to tell us, Wendy. Like who was Yuri was working for and why Maria Taylor was targeted?’
Wendy ran her hands through her tangled mass of hair and she thought she’d go mad. She knew that once the police turned their attention on her she wouldn’t be able to avoid telling them the truth but now she was desperate to know exactly where Yuri was and what he’d do when he found out that she’d been talking to the police. And the fear of the consequences of that was starting to overwhelm her. But she couldn’t stop now. The police would be sure to keep her here until they were satisfied that she’d told them everything.
‘Maria had been sent an anonymous letter telling her all about what really happened to her father back in the fifties. She was apparently going to go public with it but if it did come out then it would cause a huge political scandal and threaten the sale of Arrow Aviation to the Russian company MISP. That’s why they got to her’.
‘So the politics from yesterday mixed with the financial interests of today led to an innocent woman being murdered?’
‘That’s about the size of it, yes’.
‘So who was Yuri working for, Wendy? The Russian government?’
‘He may have been working for the Russian government in some way but the person he was working for here was James Matthews’.
Diana Matthews had been distraught since her husband James had left her, in the middle of the night, without saying a word or leaving any kind of note. Her two children had rallied round and given her plenty of support. They were so disgusted with their father and his behaviour towards their mother that even if he came back with his tail between his legs they would never forgive him for what he’d put their mother through.
But they couldn’t be there all the time.
Like in the middle of the night when all she could hear was her own heartbeat and the smell of fear that someone might come and use her to take out a grievance that may have against her husband. She felt isolated on her own, like she was on the end of a very long limb. Both her kids had offered to come and sleep over at her place until the dust may have settled but she didn’t want to potentially put them in danger and besides, there never was any dust in her husband’s game. Everything was clean cut and no jagged edges
should ever be left for others to find.
She regretted so much sending that anonymous letter to Maria Taylor. It had set off a chain of events that had led to the cold blooded murder of innocent souls that had not been tarnished by what she and her husband James had surrendered to. The guilt she felt over Maria and the others was killing her. Why hadn’t she just left well alone? Because she felt that Maria had a right to know and that a share of any money from the sale of Arrow Aviation should go to her. She was the only one left in the real bloodline of the Taylor family so it was only right that she should share in the proceeds.
She really should’ve left well alone.
It was halfway through the morning when she took some clothes upstairs to be put aside for ironing later. When she went back downstairs she had an unwelcome visitor standing in the kitchen pointing a gun at her.
‘Yuri!’ she exclaimed. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘You are the last one who knows’ said Yuri. ‘So do you really think I can let you live?’
‘Put the gun down, Yuri’.
Barton had placed an armed officer in Diana Matthews house because he’d suspected Yuri Kuznetsov would try and get at her and it was also a way of drawing him out. And it had worked on both counts.
‘I said put the gun down, Yuri’ the armed officer repeated. He’d already alerted the three fellow armed officers that were waiting in a car nearby in case Yuri did turn up.
‘I don’t take orders from you’.
Diana was face to face with Yuri and could see right into his eyes. The chill they gave off almost made her shiver. This was a moment from Hell.
Yuri’s attention was then taken by the sound of police sirens nearing the house. He began to turn around and the armed officer took that as his opportunity to open fire. He shot at the lower halves of Yuri’s legs making him drop his gun and scream out in agony. The officer then cuffed him and when Barton arrived a few minutes later he charged him with multiple murder.
NO SPOKEN WORD
TWELVE
Mary Fleming arrived at Euston station in good time to get her Virgin train to Manchester. She was accompanied by her two daughters and two out of her three grandsons who were all protesting about her going.
‘Why are you going all the way up there just to rake up the past, Mum?’
‘What good is it going to do after all this time, Mum?’
‘Look what it says in the papers about it all, Mum? A woman shot dead in broad daylight, another woman disappeared without trace, the possible involvement of the Russian mafia. It’s like the wild bloody west up there’
‘Oh and of course everyone in London in above board and law abiding aren’t they’.
‘Mum, I’m just talking about the particular situation you’re going into’.
‘I know love and I know you’re all worried but I have to do this’ Mary insisted. ‘I can’t let him get away with it a second time’.
‘Well let one of us go with you, Gran?’ offered her grandson Theo.
‘That’s very sweet of you my love but I’ll be okay, really. Besides, you’ve got your studies to do and you can’t afford to fall behind’.
Theo smiled. ‘You know Gran that whenever you talk about up North your northern accent comes back’.
‘And I’ll bring it back with me in a couple of days time, my love, all freshened up’ said Mary. ‘And in the meantime I’ll stay in touch on the mobile’.
They’d packed her up with a sandwich, a bag of crisps, a bar of chocolate and a bottle of water all in a paper carrier bag. She had a small suitcase, her handbag and a small bag for her newspaper and other bits and pieces. Her grandsons carried everything as far as the platform and the point at which ‘visitors’ weren’t allowed any further. So they handed everything back over to her and they all hugged and kissed before waving her on her way. She smiled with such an inner sense of joy and peace. She was so lucky to have such a genuinely close family around her.
The closer the train got to Manchester the more excited and nervous she became. She’d been more than happy living in London all these years but she’d always missed the great northern landscape of rolling hills and valleys and the Peak district and the Cheshire plains. It all fitted into that place in her heart that she’d never let go of.
Barton gathered his team together and although the investigation wasn’t quite wrapped up they’d pulled in a good result so far.
‘Our Mr. Kuznetsov has been trying to claim diplomatic immunity but sadly for him that doesn’t cover murder charges and besides the Russian authorities are claiming that they don’t know anything about him’.
‘So what’s the unofficial line, sir?’ asked DS Adrian Bradshaw. ‘Because I don’t buy any of that’.
‘It’s what they do when one of theirs gets caught’ said Barton. ‘Nobody is going to admit having its security service operatives being active in another country, especially one that’s supposed to be on the same side’.
‘Except that we’re not, are we’ said DS Joe Alexander. ‘Russia and the UK, I mean? We’re supposed to be on the same side but the government seems to spend all it’s time saber rattling Putin and his cronies. If we all got together, us, the US, France, Germany, Russia, we could see to ISIS if we put all of our resources together. Instead of which we spend our time chasing ways we try to undermine each other’.
‘Yeah, I’d agree with all of that, Joe’ said Barton who sometimes wondered where the otherwise sanguine Joe got his flashes of insightful wisdom from but this particular one could be picked up in the pub later. ‘But back to the case. Now we know that Vincent Taylor is not the same man who’s been living as Vincent Taylor since his surprise return from having defected’.
‘No surprise there’ said DI Ollie Wright.
‘Absolutely’ agreed Barton who then pinned a picture of Vincent Taylor before his defection and one of the man who’s been claiming to be him since 1969. ‘Now the one of the original Vincent Taylor is sketchy to say the least but it is possible to see a pretty striking resemblance and if you hadn’t seen him for ten years you might be forgiven for thinking it was the same man as the one who appeared in 1969’.
‘Except his own mother didn’t’ said Louisa. ‘I think the shock of seeing that it wasn’t her son was what killed her when he went round to see her after he returned from Russia’.
‘I agree’ said Barton. ‘Now we’ve got Taylor under surveillance for the time being so that he doesn’t abscond before we’ve had chance to speak to him but I’ve been contacted by a woman called Mary Fleming who’s coming to see me this afternoon. Now she owned the house in Mallingham Road, Chorlton that is believed to have been used as a KGB safe house at the end of the fifties when it’s also alleged that a murder took place that may have a link to what’s been happening here recently. And in the meantime we have the continued disappearance of Sylvia Clarke and the now added disappearance of James Matthews who is a suspect that we seriously need to talk to. It isn’t over yet, people’.
The Moscow correspondent of the Times caught the metro line that would take him closest to his rendezvous. Once he’d made it to the 14th floor of the, from the outside, nondescript apartment building that had been built during the time of Brezhnev in the seventies. It had come a long way since then however and the furnishings reflected the fact that Russia now traded with the wider world and was free from the previous constraints of trading only within a communist world that had rapidly shrunk when the end came. Now the apartment boasted a mixture of Scandinavian and Italian hard and soft furnishings mixed with fabrics from Thailand. How times change.
Sylvia Clarke was getting used to her new surroundings and was even beginning to pick up a little bit of Russian. The journey over here had been hard. She’d never travelled on a false passport before under the name of ‘Barbara Leyland’ and the whole experience had terrified her. But she’d made it. She’d managed to board the plane and get through passport control without passing out or thro
wing up. She’d even managed to eat something on the plane and keep it down which was a miracle in itself considering how wound up she was feeling. But the hardest part of the whole thing had been the agonizing wait here for James to arrive. A few days had felt like weeks but she’d placed her faith in him throughout the years they’d carried on their affair and when he had arrived it had felt like magic. She’d never loved anyone as much as she loved James and nobody had ever made her feel as complete as James did. It was a love that had carried no guilt. She hadn’t been able to care less about doing the dirty behind the backs of both Maria and James’ wife Diana.
She had lurched however when James told her what had happened to Maria. She’d never have wished death on the woman she’d shared her life with for so many years but James had assured her that it would’ve been quick and that Maria wouldn’t known anything. It didn’t quell her anxiety about it but she trusted James. She had to. She had to trust him when he told her that it was the only way for them to be together.
She sat with James on the sofa in the living room of their apartment and waited for the Times journalist to begin the interview. They went through the early preliminaries and then it was straight down to business. James confessed to having been a double agent for MI5 and the KGB for most of his diplomatic career after being recruited by the KGB. ‘My ego mixed with my sympathy for the other side and the thrill and the money meant that I couldn’t say no’. But it also meant that he was kept in Moscow by MI5 for more years than was usual for that reason although he had to make a show of going for promotion. It was only when they did allow him to move up to the top post and become UK Ambassador to Estonia that the FSB, successor to the KGB following the break-up of the Soviet Union, threatened to expose him because he’d left Moscow without their agreement. That’s when he thought it would be the right time to retire from ‘active’ diplomatic service.