Death Penalties Read online

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  Paula Gosling

  DEATH PENALTIES

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  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

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  ALSO BY PAULA GOSLING

  A Running Duck

  The Zero Trap

  Loser’s Blues

  Mind’s Eye

  The Woman in Red

  Hoodwink

  Cobra

  Tears of the Dragon

  Jack Stryker series

  Monkey Puzzle

  Backlash

  Ricochet

  Luke Abbott series

  The Wychford Murders

  Death Penalties

  Blackwater Bay series

  The Body in Blackwater Bay

  A Few Dying Words

  The Dead of Winter

  Death and Shadows

  Underneath Every Stone

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  This one is for Tess Sacco . . .

  . . . and thanks to Ralph Spurrier.

  A crime writer couldn’t have two better friends.

  ONE

  ‘Dad! You’re driving too fast!’

  He didn’t answer the boy. He was driving too fast, but he didn’t know what else to do, because the dark green hatchback that had been following them since they left the house was gaining ground. He couldn’t make out the driver’s face, for light glared in his rear-view mirror, reducing the man in the car behind him to a menacing silhouette. He could just see the pale hands where they gripped the wheel.

  Whoever he was, he drove very well, keeping pace, and closing the gap a little, every minute or so.

  Maybe he was after Max.

  They wouldn’t. They couldn’t be that angry. Could they?

  He put his foot down harder.

  It was a long, straight street, unusual in this part of London. Cars lined each side of it without a break, squeezed together right up to the crossing. Large ash trees overhung it, their branches thick with leaves. The warm summer rain that had been falling all day had ceased only moments before, leaving everything dripping and sparkling in new sunlight. The sky was opening, the gunmetal grey splitting like curtains to reveal vibrant blue. The sudden, unexpected illumination seemed even greater against the retreating clouds, each crest a cauliflower billow of fire-edged white.

  Their brightness blinded him.

  That was why he didn’t see the old man step out.

  When Max shouted, he straight-legged the brake and clutch pedals, twisted the wheel hard, too hard, felt the wheels lock and the tyres skid on the wet surface, felt the jolt as they hit the front end of the last parked car, felt the roll begin, saw the street become the sky with the astonished face of the old man drifting past like a pink and white balloon, heard the incredible screech of metal scouring the asphalt with a scream not unlike his own, high and thin. The car landed on its side, still moving forward.

  Clockwork, running down.

  A film, frame by frame.

  Suspended in his seat belt, he saw the rush of gutter water surge towards him across the bonnet, followed by the approach of the yellow-painted edge of the kerb with its overhanging fringe of grass, each muddy green blade sharp and distinct. Then came the cracked cement of the pavement, with a crumpled crisp bag, bright blue and red, lying on it.

  The bag caught in the edge of the windscreen.

  He stared at it.

  Read the words ‘Ready-salted’.

  It was all so clear.

  And then they hit the tree.

  TWO

  Detective sergeant Tim Nightingale stood with his back to the window. Outside, a chilly late October rain was curtaining across the overgrown rear garden of the house, pushed by a fitful wind. He felt an annoying draft on the back of his neck, and moved to one side. The room was cold, and growing steadily colder. That might discomfit a junior investigating officer from the CID, but it didn’t matter any more to its owner.

  The old man was dead.

  A limp wing of grey hair had fallen forward, obscuring the upper part of his face, and below it the jaw had drooped slightly sideways, giving a sardonic twist to the otherwise blank expression. He lay curled on the floor, making a comma beside the easy chair, his thin body curving around a bouquet of flowers still visible on the worn and faded carpet. His head was tipped forward, his hands caught between his knees as if to warm them. A pipe weighted the drooping pocket of his beige cardigan, and some shreds of carefully hoarded tobacco had escaped from a brown plastic pouch, trickling slowly out to make a tiny pyramid on the floor.

  Cartwright, the police surgeon, knelt next to the body. He was a burly man who always seemed on the verge of bursting out of his clothes, and his present position emphasized the unequal struggle between burgeoning flesh and grey gabardine. Beside him the local GP, a neatly-dressed Pakistani, was like an exotic exclamation mark, dark and thin and tense with impatience. It was past time for morning surgery, and his usual partner was on holiday, so the patients had been left to the ministrations of a rather young and inexperienced locum. But he hadn’t been happy about certifying death – hence Cartwright’s presence. The tension between them was obvious.

  The rush of traffic in the road beyond the walled garden was like a mechanical estuary, ebbing and flowing with the change of lights at the corner. It had been raining all night, and the passage of tyres through the puddles made admonitory whispers that filtered into the room, so that the two medical men unconsciously lowered their voices in deference to what seemed like municipal disapproval.

  Despite his apparent calm, Tim Nightingale was eagerly waiting for the verdict concerning the cause of death of one Ivor Peters, first floor on the right, 78 Morstan Gardens, London Wl l. It was a large bedsitter, but even so it was crowded by its contents. A full-sized double bed with carved mahogany head and footboards stood in one corner and beside it a matching double wardrobe. The bed was neatly made up with a duvet, the contrast between Victorian and modern made even stronger by the pattern on its cover – a subdued tribute to Mondrian in blocks of brown, black and tan. One corner of the large room had been fitted out as a kitchen. On the sink lay a plate, some cutlery, a grillpan and a saucepan, washed and left to dry. A tea-towel was neatly folded over the ladder-back chair that stood with its rush seat tucked under a round mahogany table. In one corner was a large roll-top desk, so stacked with papers and notebooks that there seemed little room left for actual use. All the furniture spoke of having been culled from a larger house. The room was very clean, and its curtains and carpet were of excellent quality but worn and faded – like their owner.

  While waiting for the two acolytes of Hippocrates to come to judgement, Nightingale had been trying t
o deduce the man from the room, looking for clues to Peters’ life and death in the objects that surrounded him. It was something he did whenever the opportunity presented itself, trying to train his powers of observation and deduction. He had been in plainclothes for just a few weeks, and so far had done absolutely nothing to deserve the title of ‘detective’, except pass his qualifying exams and find the shortest way to New Scotland Yard from his tiny flat in Putney.

  He was tall and angular, with light brown hair, dark eyes, and a serious mouth not easily given to laughter, although he had a wry, dry sense of humour. Under his wool-lined mac he wore – as casually as possible – a new outfit of grey flannels and tweed jacket. He had tried leaving the jacket under the mattress at night and bashing it against the door of his wardrobe several times before putting it on each morning, but it remained stiff and unyielding, betraying both its recent purchase and his own lack of confidence. He had decided that on his next day off he was going along to the Oxfam shop to find something more lived-in. No suspect was going to be intimidated by such a newly-emergent detective, pegged out to dry in new clothes and naïveté. You had to obtain authority where you could, these days, and he was convinced it lay in a casual air of having been on the scene for years. Of not caring whether he lived or died one day or had his shoulder cried on the next.

  Being a detective was important to him – it was one of the reasons he had joined the police in the first place, and everything he’d done from the moment he’d joined was to reach that end. Now here he was, at the scene of a sudden, unexplained death, ready to be brilliant in the unlikely event that someone asked his opinion. He continued his surveillance of the room.

  The difficulty with his secret practice of Holmesian exercises was that he had few opportunities to verify his conclusions, so he kept them simple. The late Mr Peters had served in a uniformed capacity at one time – from his age probably World War Two – for both he and his surroundings were impeccably maintained and each item gave the impression of being aligned precisely for inspection. He had been a man of intelligence – the bookshelves were well-filled with books that looked as if they had been read and reread, and a chess board with a game in progress sat on a low table in front of the cold electric fire. Peters had been married and had fathered at least two children – photographs on the mantelpiece. He’d been a methodical man – witness the orderly if crowded desk, the very particular arrangement of tins and other items in the kitchen area, and the neatly ticked-off television page of the previous day’s Evening Standard (he liked thrillers, wildlife programmes, and had heavily underlined the entry for a police documentary series). Perhaps he’d been a birdwatcher (the nature programmes), or a voyeur – there was a pair of binoculars by a rear window. He wore false teeth (denture powder on the shelf above the basin), which gave him trouble (soft foods dominated his store cupboard and refrigerator), and was a little vain (a tube of hair cream and a bottle of expensive after-shave sat beside the denture powder). He was reflective and quiet by nature – no bright colours in furnishings or wardrobe, not even a red tie kept for Christmas. He’d suffered from insomnia and migraines – both prescription and proprietary medicine bottles were crowded onto the table by the bed.

  Nightingale noticed a framed certificate of some kind on the wall above the desk, and moved over to read it. As he did, Cartwright stood up. ‘Natural causes,’ he announced. ‘Myocardial infarction, probably.’

  For a moment the local GP looked as if he still might argue the point. His skin darkened slightly from either annoyance or embarrassment, but Cartwright’s official presence looming above him, massive with the weight of experience, carried the day. He pressed his lips together, nodded, sprang to his feet, signed the appropriate form, and started out of the room to return to his waiting surgery.

  ‘Excuse me, doctor,’ Nightingale said.

  The man turned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Was it you who prescribed the sleeping capsules for Mr Peters?’ Nightingale asked.

  ‘Yes, he was my patient.’

  ‘Had he been using them for a long time?’

  ‘Oh, no – this trouble was recent. He witnessed a road accident some months ago, and it rather upset him. He was not eating or sleeping well. I prescribed only mild sedatives, of course, nothing addictive.’ He did glance at Cartwright, then. ‘No barbiturates,’ he said, firmly.

  ‘Because of his heart condition?’

  There was a flash of something in the doctor’s eyes, and he very obviously stopped himself from glancing towards Cartwright again. His chin lifted, but he spoke in an even tone. ‘He had no previous indication of any heart condition,’ he said, carefully. ‘Aside from his migraines, from which he had suffered all his life, Mr Peters was a relatively healthy man for his age. Time was beginning to tell, of course, the little problems of digestion, fatigue, and so on. He had arthritis in the knees and hips, quite painful but not requiring surgery yet, and a troublesome bunion for which we have been awaiting a hospital appointment, but no overt indications of heart illness or circulatory problems.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ the doctor said, politely, and left.

  Cartwright gazed at Nightingale with some disapproval. ‘What was that all about, then?’ he asked.

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘I wondered why he had hesitated to give the certificate, that’s all.’

  ‘Didn’t want the responsibility,’ Cartwright snapped.

  ‘Mmmmmmm.’ The fact that the GP had stayed on indicated otherwise, but there was no point in arguing with Cartwright. He was a truculent man who made up his mind and that was the end of the matter. Nightingale indicated the certificate on the wall. ‘Mr Peters was one of ours.’

  Cartwright scowled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Metropolitan Police – retired as a sergeant in 1965, did the full thirty.’

  ‘Hence the crooked knees and the bunion, no doubt,’ Cartwright growled. ‘Well, he died peacefully enough. Not bashed by a drunken lout or shot by some bankrobbing villain. Just look at the lips and fingertips. Heart failure – which is what it all comes down to, in the end.’

  ‘Heart failure,’ Nightingale echoed. So there would be no need to ask the Chief Inspector to call in the Scene of Crime team, after all, or to set up an Incident Room, or to prepare statements for the Press. While he wished violence on no-one, certainly not on what appeared to be a blameless old man, there was no denying the disappointment in his voice.

  ‘That’s it. Last night, obviously. Rigor is established, but he was in his late seventies, rather undernourished, and probably hypothermic, judging by the temperature in this room.’ Cartwright shivered and glared at the rather splendid electric fire which they had found switched on but cold. It had apparently gone off sometime during the night, when the money in the meter ran out. ‘Unless I find something extraordinary in the autopsy, I still say it was just a matter of his heart giving out. It happens.’ He was gathering his things together, snapping his bag shut.

  ‘He seemed—’

  ‘Damn it, hearts stop when they stop. They don’t always blow whistles and send up flares ahead of time. No history of heart disease doesn’t mean a damn thing. It just stopped. All right?’ Cartwright was getting cross.

  ‘Then why were we called in?’ Nightingale asked.

  ‘The landlady got over-excited,’ said a bland voice from the door. Detective Chief Inspector Abbott had returned from interviewing the lady in question. ‘She says the old man had a visitor last night. This morning she noticed he hadn’t come downstairs for his milk, so she sent someone up with it. When they found Mr Peters like that, she immediately decided his mysterious visitor had murdered him, and dialled 999.’ He grimaced. ‘She watches a lot of television.’

  ‘Does she know who this visitor was?’ Tim asked.

  ‘No. The front door is left unlatched until eleven at night, apparently, so the tena
nts can have visitors as and when they like. Although the rooms are bedsitters, there’s no system for separate bells. There should have been, but her late husband never got around to it. Hence the open door policy.’

  ‘Dicey,’ Nightingale observed.

  ‘Well, she has arthritis and claims she can’t be bothered to get up and down all evening to let people in and out,’ Abbott said. He had the knack of mimicry, and for a moment the old lady seemed to be in the room with them, creaky and exasperated by life’s unfair demands. Abbott went on. ‘She heard the door open, heard footsteps going up the stairs, heard them again going down the stairs about twenty minutes later, but she was watching Coronation Street and didn’t bother to look out. She heard voices overhead in the old man’s room – that’s why she realized it was he who had the visitor. She says the voices were loud and she had to turn up the sound on her television, but doesn’t think there was an argument. It was just that Peters was rather deaf.’

  ‘Man or woman’s voice?’

  ‘Man’s. She’s absolutely certain about that.’

  ‘Anybody else in the house hear anything?’

  ‘There are only four bedsitters in the house, two on each floor. There’s a basement flat, but it has a totally separate entrance. A middle-aged couple live there in exchange for doing the cleaning, maintenance and so on. The woman also shops for the landlady, who can’t get out. She’s the one who found Peters dead, but she claims she and her husband heard nothing unusual during the evening. The other room on this floor is empty at the moment, being redecorated. The two lodgers above on the third were both out. Peters and the old lady were the only two people in the house itself at the time.’

  ‘And this didn’t worry her?’

  ‘She says it’s often like that, and claims she’s not bothered, but I think it does frighten her.’

  ‘It should. This isn’t the most salubrious of neighbourhoods.’

  ‘No. But they get like that in the city, don’t they? Either they put on ten locks, five steel bolts, and a drop-bar, sit shivering in their shoes expecting to be throttled at any moment, and then die because the firemen or the ambulance men can’t get to them in time. Or they leave everything wide open because they can’t be bothered. She’s the last kind, partly because she’s naturally bolshie, mostly because she’s so disabled by the arthritis.’