The murder quadrille, p.14
The Murder Quadrille, page 14
‘You were recognised, Mr Beaumont. And it was noted you were reading a book about the decomposition of corpses.’
Martin flushed, a deep maroon.
‘That bloody Yank, I suppose,’ said Martin, aggressive now. ‘Her book was crap actually. I was being kind before.’ He suddenly clapped his hands and sat forward. ‘Of course! She’s a novelist. Don’t you get it? She writes fiction. She makes a living inventing stories.’
‘You were seen reading a book about the decomposition of corpses.’
Max did not like it when detectives started repeating themselves like this. It generally signified they were going in for the kill.
‘I might have accidentally picked that book out…’ Martin gave a theatrical shrug, but couldn’t disguise the trembling of his jaw. ‘But that was research for something else. Not for burying the librarian.’
Max had to fight not to close his eyes, slump down and start banging his head on the table.
‘You admit to burying her then?’
‘I have had nothing at all to do with any librarian whatsoever in my whole life, ever.’
‘Jane was her name, you know, Martin. The librarian.’
‘Well, I didn’t bury Jane…’
‘No, you just dumped her on a rubbish tip on the common and covered her with a pile of debris. But despite having gone missing ten days she had only been on the common for less than a day. So naturally, Martin, I was wondering where you kept her before that? In your garden, was it?’
‘No!’ shouted Martin
Gauging the eruptive violence of Martin’s response, Max could see that the garden certainly had something to do with it.
Max decided to avoid looking at his client, for despite the vocal bravado of his responses, Martin now was shuddering from top to toe. The table was clattering from the tremors emanating from the man’s legs.
Why had he not spilled the beans earlier? How the hell was Max meant to defend Martin when he was always operating on the rear foot, not to mention in the dark with his hands tied behind his back? A thought flickered through Max’s mind that perhaps Martin was attempting to challenge the claim Max had vainly made over dinner that he could get anyone off, whatever dastardly crime they had committed. But that was just silly. Max realised he was being an egotist to even consider it. This librarian woman had already gone missing by then—Max remembered discussing the case, while Sarah sulked.
‘So who was buried in the garden under that little row of plug-plants, Martin? Jane Grimshaw wasn’t your first victim, was she?’
Max groaned, then tried to disguise the sound as a burp. He made an elaborate pantomime of patting his pockets, searching for an indigestion pill.
Things were way out of control and Max did not like things being out of control.
‘Excuse me detective inspector,’ Max stood up and made a little bow to the cocky bastard, Butler. ‘I need to have a few private words with my client.’
Neither detective moved.
‘No.’ DI Butler smirked and shook his head.
Max held on to the man’s gaze. It was all a game. And Max had no intention of losing. He always won. He turned to Martin and spoke as firmly as he could without betraying the worry that was flooding his mind.
‘You do understand, don’t you, Martin, that you don’t need to say anything at all. You mustn’t let them bully you into making up absurd things which are not true simply to appear clever.’ Max turned away from Martin now, and, in the hope of salvaging some of his professional stature, whispered to the detectives. ‘Martin’s wife left him a couple of days ago. The whole sorry business with that female has distressed him considerably…he has not slept for days. He is naturally on edge.’
At this moment the water jug started to jiggle against the wall, emitting a loud jangle. Max raised his eyebrows in response, indicating the jug with his brow. ‘As you can hear.’
Max was relieved when the detectives laughed at his deadpan joke. Martin was now shaking so badly he looked as though he was entering the later stages of malaria.
‘It was in the papers.’ Martin blurted, without warning. His voice carried the tinny edge of hysteria. ‘If it hadn’t been in the papers I wouldn’t have even known there was a librarian called Jane or a ditch in that thicket on the Common or anything. I…I…’
‘Talking of the Common…’ DI Butler reached into the cardboard folder and pulled out another thin file.
Max felt the juddering emanating from Martin speed up, rather like the spin on a washing machine. What piece of incriminating evidence was coming now? He slumped back into his chair and perched his spectacles on the bridge of his nose, looking down at the photograph the Detective lay before them: Martin sitting in a car on the Common, gazing forward. It was time-date stamped.
‘It’s a public place. That’s why it’s called a Common,’ whispered Martin through chattering teeth. ‘Common land. Since medieval times. We’re all entitled to go there.’
‘So you chose to go and park your car in front of the exact spot where only hours before the body of Jane Grimshaw had been found. And you sat there staring at the spot for some time before driving away.’
‘I think you will find, Detective Inspector,’ said Max, defiant, ‘that many men sit in cars in the car park on the Common during their lunch breaks. There is no crime in that. It’s a way of getting out of the office, and getting some air into their lungs. I think you’ll find it had nothing whatsoever to do with the young lady’s prior disappearance.’
DI Butler slipped another photo out of the folder and across the table. In it Martin was still in the car, but now holding up the evening newspaper, seemingly engrossed in reading about the body just discovered on the Common. His car was parked next to a sign indicating the facilities available on the common. Martin was clearly oblivious to the police photographer.
Max exhaled. Then took a long breath in. Bravado, bravado. Keep the façade going even when the earth had cracked open beneath your feet.
‘Circumstantial, circumstantial!’ Max slid the photos away with a theatrical gesture. ‘There is nothing at all here, Detective Inspector, that shows you anything more than the prurient interest of an inhabitant of the area, fascinated by something sensational which had recently taken place in his locale. It’s the ghoul instinct. If we are honest with ourselves, we all possess it. Any car crash produces a jam on the other side of the carriageway while onlookers rubber-neck. This is the same thing.’ He turned and gripped Martin by the shoulder, hoping it might arrest the shivering fit. ‘When you have even one piece of what I would call evidence against my client, Detective Inspector, and I mean something which would stand up in court, give it to us, but for the moment I don’t think you have nearly enough.’ He rose, indicating that Martin should also get up. ‘Look at it! Every single thing you have is circumstantial. You’re grasping at straws.’ He looked at his watch, worth more probably than either of these grubby gumshoes earned in a year. ‘It’s late and I am certain you will be wanting to let my client go home now and get a good night’s sleep. For one thing is sure, Detective Inspector Butler, you haven’t one single thing here which would give you occasion to charge Mr Beaumont.’
Martin gulped, making a loud glugging noise.
Max raised his voice slightly to cover the sound. ‘In Great Britain a man may park his car in a public car park on the common. Where’s the offence in that? In Great Britain a man may take out any number of nasty library books. If they are so detrimental to a person’s psyche, what are they doing in a public lending library in the first place? Some spiteful neighbour makes a phone call telling you that my client is a killer, and then you break into his home and discover him digging at his rose beds. Is there a law against gardening at dusk? Frankly, no case! Charge him, detective. Charge him now, or let him go.’
‘I never said it was Mr Beaumont’s neighbour who made the call.’ DI Butler exchanged a glance at his colleague then looked up at the wall clock. ‘And, legally we still have quite a few hours left.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Max with a theatrical sigh. ‘But you have nothing on my client. Why not let him go home and sleep in a comfortable bed while you grub around for just the teeniest bit of evidence against him?’
As he watched DI Butler slowly put all the photos back into the folder, Max knew that his people had to track down Martin’s bloody wife first thing in the morning. She could clear it all up, provide an alibi, whatever…She was obviously the key to the whole thing.
The detectives stood up.
Hoorah.
Max smiled.
With a bit of luck he’d be at home and snuggled up in bed within the hour.
‘You’ll have to stay at your home address, Mr Beaumont, and Mr…’
‘Blah, blah, blah,’ said Max, grabbing Martin by the elbow. ‘I know the gen.’
As Max marched Martin towards the exit, the door opened and a uniformed policewoman came in.
She was carrying a folder, which she handed to DI Butler.
‘Hold your horses.’ The Detective Inspector flicked through the pages and ran his eyes quickly up and down the cover sheet. He thrust out a finger and pointed it towards the graffiti covered plastic chairs. ‘I think you might need a seat. Both of you.’
Max’s heart sank.
One second too late.
Max could feel Martin’s shivering start up again as he shunted him, zombie-like, back towards the table.
DI Butler leaned back, cocky, and folded his arms. A winsome smile rippled on his lips. He addressed Martin as though the man was an infant.
‘Any way of explaining all the blood in your kitchen, Martin? All round the edge of the laminate it is, and seeping down the cracks, and on the grouting round the wall tiles, also some smears on the telephone in the hall. And please don’t start on about a nosebleed.’
Max’s heart lurched.
No bed tonight.
The detective reached inside the folder and pulled out a see-through plastic evidence bag. He threw this down in front of Martin.
The bag contained a ring. He poked at it with a pencil.
‘An eternity ring. Perhaps you’d like to tell me who it belongs to?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Martin. ‘I’ve never seen it before in my life.’
Max gazed down at the stones—sapphire, agate, ruby, amethyst and something or other blue, which no doubt started with H. And with that Max realised he had a client who was not only hiding things from him but also lying.
Max watched as Martin stared down at the ring and started to cry.
Although Max had already opened his mouth ready to make an observation, luckily his brain kicked in before he found himself saying aloud: “And what has that ring to do with any murdered librarian? The gems clearly spell out the name of my client’s wife, Sarah.”
Surreptitiously Max glanced down at Martin’s fingers which were fretfully plucking at the fabric of his trouser legs.
His client may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance of a frumpy librarian, but one thing was sure: The fucking idiot had only gone and chosen this week to stand up to his overbearing shrew of a wife, and something very serious was afoot.
Max popped open a blister pack of indigestion tablets, downed two and sat back, ready for a very long night.
CZARDAS—Hungarian dance which starts slowly and finishes with kicking out and fast leaps and whirls
Tess tightened her grip on the car’s door handle, and started pressing downwards, ready to make a run for it.
She could see a junction ahead. The light was green. There was every possibility it would turn red before the car arrived at it. The best thing to do she decided was to start up some conversation which would demand an answer just before the car stopped, so that this “Stuart”, or whatever the hell he was really called, would, for a moment at least, be off his guard when she jammed the handle down, and leaped out.
Tess waved her hand across at a fast food restaurant she had never seen before in her life. The neon sign showed a cartoon man in a huge Stetson.
‘Bet you don’t know something weird and wonderful about that place, Stuart?’ She spoke in as confident a tone as she could manage.
Stuart grunted.
The traffic light ahead duly turned red and the woolly-hatted driver decelerated.
‘The folks who ran it were pulled in for serving rat meat. They sold it with fries; rat, deep-fried in savoury crumb.’ She laughed and pointed again. ‘Right in there. Can you imagine—Southern Fried Rat?’
Instantaneously, as the car stopped, Tess slammed her hand down and shoved at the door.
Nothing.
She pumped away on the handle.
‘Child lock,’ said Stuart calmly. ‘You have to realise that we frequently have to transport some very difficult types. It would never do if they just leapt out every time we hit a red light.’ The smell of his tobacco breath, or was it fright, made her gag. ‘You can’t get out till I let you out. But then why would you want to?’
Tess’s heart pumped like a drummer in a heavy metal band. It was all she could do to keep her voice level.
‘Who are you, Stuart?’ she said. ‘Who are you, really?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’ he replied. Then he spoke to the driver. ‘Wouldn’t they all like to know, the arseholes!’
This made the driver laugh maniacally. As the amber light went out and green came on, he screeched like a witch and the car lurched forward.
Tess looked forward into the rear view mirror. In the strobe of passing streetlights, she caught sight of the driver’s eyes—mere slits, lined with tears of laughter. He raised a finger to wipe them away and caught eyes with her in the mirror. His eyes darted back to the road and he pulled out into the fast lane.
So she was right.
She was being abducted.
She knew the most important thing was to keep her head clear.
From her research into true life murders and kidnappings Tess knew all about the types of men who did this kind of thing.
There were those who did it for ransom. The strategists. They usually had some plan which fell apart the second something unforeseen popped up: the wrong weather, a car running out of petrol, the ransom payees refusing to co-operate. But they had a plan and an objective—money.
These two were definitely not from this group.
Neither were they the types who picked up women on the spur of the moment, for rape. This type usually used weapons—knives, guns, a broken bottle and acted out of some sudden lust, easily sated.
The type of abduction she found herself victim to was, she believed, the worst possible scenario. From what she’d seen so far it was obvious that these two were the very nastiest, and least controllable profile imaginable: Tacticians on a spree. They had loose plans which they could easily adapt. They knew ultimately what they wanted, and had things well planned out, but in a twinkling could adjust the methods they used to achieve their goal. But the worst thing was they were doing it for fun, excitement, power.
She ran her mind back over what had happened so far—the way Stuart introduced himself, and then got into her apartment; how he got a call from the driver after a while, worrying things weren’t going as smoothly as he wished, and finally how she herself had practically offered herself on a plate, their sacrificial totem.
It was all she could do not to weep at her own stupidity.
She remembered Stuart’s signal to the driver that the plan was indeed a live one, and that he should prepare to drive away, and (how this must have multiplied their fun) it was all performed right under the noses of scores of policemen.
Though the driver was obviously the more nervous of the two, this pair were also clearly afflicted by the psychiatric syndrome know as a folie à deux, or shared psychotic disorder. Each of them reassured the other and also spurred the other on. They would operate in a mutual spiral of self-confidence, like Leopold and Loeb, the Menendez brothers, The Hillside Stranglers.
Oh fuck.
Tess’s mouth was dry.
The car streamed through a green turning light and onto a large main road.
These two men had her captive; they were essentially boogiemen, unpredictable, unbalanced. When it suited them, she figured, they indubitably intended to kill her.
Tess looked out of the window, trying to seem unperturbed. She knew the only way to play this baby was to keep utterly alert to the pair of them and calmly take opportunities where and when they presented themselves.
She toyed with the idea of making faces at people in passing cars or adjacent buses, but then decided that to do this with Stuart at her side was madness. He would surely shove her down into the footwell and who knows what else. What would it be to them to dispatch her straight away?
The worst thing Tess realised, was that they now knew she was onto them, so they would be on double alert.
She had to make her encyclopaedic knowledge of crime and the criminal mind work for her in a whole new way.
She was amazed at how fast her brain was operating, and how she seemed to be able to carry on three completely comprehensive conversations with herself and never lose the thread.
She was remembering the route as best she could. Marking in her mind memorable buildings and road signs for future use. Though if these men were who she suspected they were, the killers of two women, one more than six months earlier, the other last week, and if she failed to find a method of escape there might be no future in which to use these darned memories.
Meanwhile the other side of her brain was in overdrive. ‘If they do murder you, Tess Brandon, it’ll be all over the newspapers and TV…’ (her professional mind had this maddening way of constantly searching out opportunity) ‘…imagine the peak in book sales!’
Hahahaha! Pity she wouldn’t be alive to see that.
The car was passing into an area of London Tess didn’t know at all, currently a divided highway, with signposts to ‘Croydon and the M23’. There seemed to be many fewer cars on the road out here. Lots of trees, takeaway restaurants, superstores, industrial parks, sports fields. Where were they taking her?
