The Wychford Murders Read online

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  Paula Gosling

  THE

  WYCHFORD

  MURDERS

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

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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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  For my parents, Paul and Sylvie Osius,with love and gratitude for a happy childhood filled with books.

  Chapter One

  ‘The DCI is here.’

  The small crowd of police and forensic officers parted, as a tall, angular, well-dressed man scrambled down the bank and came across to the roped-off area. His expression was intent, and his eyes were everywhere, taking in the terrain, the activities of the police on the spot, the position of the corpse, and possibly the barometric pressure adjusted to sea level. Luke Abbott’s reputation preceded him. If you were a crook, he was a relentless enemy. If you were a colleague, it was good to stand behind him. (He appreciated your support – and that way you wouldn’t get hit by whatever was flying in his direction.) He was one of the younger DCIs in the region, and he’d achieved that position with a combination of professional scepticism and dogged persistence in solving his cases. He just kept going until he got to the end – and he almost always got to the end successfully.

  He’d been assigned to this case in a hurry, but took his time assessing all that he wanted to consider at the scene: Finally, his grey-blue eyes came to rest on the Area Medical Officer.

  ‘Well?’ he barked.

  The MO shrugged. ‘I need time for tests . . . ’

  ‘Come on, Cyril.’

  The MO tried to scowl, but failed. ‘Damn you, Luke, you’re always so damned determined to get an answer. You make me say things I regret afterwards.’

  Abbott grinned, and waited. Cyril usually gave him something to start with. It might not be big and it might not be important, but it was something, it made the motor start and the gears mesh, and that’s all he asked. A toe in the door, even if it was the corpse’s toe, would do.

  ‘Female, middle-aged, grabbed from behind, throat cut,’ Cyril Franklin said, tersely. ‘No struggle, unconscious almost immediately, died in minutes from blood loss.’

  ‘Any idea about the killer?’

  Cyril shrugged. ‘Victim’s not particularly tall or particularly well built. Killer was probably taller – certainly not shorter. Five foot nine, say, maybe more. Right-handed. The oesophagus is cut through as well as both main blood vessels. That’s not easy. When the head is tipped back like that, both main vessels slide in behind the oesophagus, which protects them. Could have been a woman with a very, very sharp knife – or a strong man with a dullish one. I’ll be able to tell you more after microscopic examination of the edges of the wound. Speed was as important as strength, here. Came up behind her, put an arm under the chin, lifted and cut, probably all in one motion. She never had a chance to run or defend herself. The killer wouldn’t have got much blood on him – or her. It was all over in a minute.’

  ‘That’s how. I want to know who and why,’ Luke said.

  ‘That’s your job, my friend, not mine,’ Cyril Franklin said, with obvious relief. ‘I just take them apart and put them back together again.’

  A stocky, dark-haired man came up to stand beside Abbott. Paddy Smith was his sergeant, long overdue for promotion. Abbott had just signed his fourth personal recommendation, and he hoped the Promotions Board didn’t have any more excuses left. An old enemy had been blocking Paddy’s way, but the man in question had recently been indicted for fraud, much to everyone’s relief. What would happen to Paddy’s ambitions as a result was yet to be revealed.

  ‘They found her handbag in the bushes over there.’ Paddy produced a plastic bag containing an open handbag, its contents spilled out. ‘Purse empty, no loose money. Lipstick, pressed powder compact, eyeliner, so on.’ He manoeuvred the items through the plastic bag. ‘Little address book, diary – looks like she mostly used it for shopping lists.’ He fiddled some more. ‘Cards, here – library, cheque card, some kind of ID.’ He turned it over. ‘Name Beryl Tompkins, worked for the photo-processing plant as a cleaner, apparently.’

  ‘Could be someone else’s handbag,’ Abbott said. ‘We’d better have a look.’ They went over and Franklin lifted the canvas sheet. The picture on the ID card from the plant was in black and white, which made comparison with the whey-white face of the dead woman easier than it might have been. Franklin looked up at him, waiting.

  ‘Okay,’ Abbott said.

  ‘You don’t suppose she was some kind of spy, do you?’ one of the local men asked. ‘I hear they do a lot of work for the Ministry of Defence over at that plant.’

  Abbott looked at the dead face. The features told him nothing, but the clothing spoke of a conventional woman with ordinary tastes. Beryl Tompkins, secret agent? Did secret agents have library cards and wear hand-knitted cardigans? He doubted it, but the KGB were supposed to be good at that kind of detail. He made a mental note to contact the Home Office, but he felt the solution to this killing would prove to be far more prosaic. ‘Was she raped?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but sometimes they rearrange the clothes . . . after. I told you, I need tests,’ Franklin sighed, heavily. ‘I don’t think you’ll have to dig deep for the motive on this one. No money in that purse, is there? People around here mostly get paid on Thursdays. Whoever did it was strong, determined, quick – and cold-blooded.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Abbott asked, quickly.

  Franklin shrugged. ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Just cut her throat and dropped her where she was. No attempt to cover her up or drag her away or hide her. Just left her lying here on the path, as if the poor woman was just a piece of old rubbish he had no more
use for.’

  Abbott smiled, gratified. ‘There,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d come up with something.’ He turned on his heel and started to walk away.

  The Medical Officer stared after him. ‘What? What did I say?’ But Abbott just waved a hand and went on. ‘Breezy bastard,’ Franklin muttered, and then he grinned at a nearby constable. ‘Somebody ought to nail his shoes to the floor, that one.’

  The constable looked a little shocked. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Franklin said, going back to the corpse. ‘Nothing at all. Come on, Beryl, old girl. Time somebody looked after you, and I’m afraid it’s going to be me. Sorry, and all that, but . . . ’ He shrugged. ‘My job, you know.’

  The constable turned to one of his colleagues. ‘Do you suppose he talks to them all like that?’ he whispered. His colleague, a younger man, fixed him with a beady eye.

  ‘If he does, I reckon he’s hard up for conversation,’ he said. ‘They ain’t none of ’em going to answer back.’

  ‘She was a reliable woman, very uncomplaining, although the work here is hard, for the money.’ The Personnel Manager of Jiffy PhotoProcessing leaned forward, confidentially. ‘I believe her husband has been out of work for some time now, and she was the sole breadwinner for the family. I know she did other cleaning jobs, but I never enquired too closely about them. I think for some of them she was paid in cash, you see, avoiding the taxman. Considering her position, it was little enough extra, God knows, and they needed every penny. I’m not the kind to carry tales, but I thought the less I asked the less I’d know, so to speak, and the less I could be expected to tell – if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I see.’ Paddy made a note, as Luke leaned back in his chair. He glanced around the office. Obviously the job paid well, for the room was spacious and well furnished. The Personnel Manager, a large sleek man named Grimes, was apparently fond of military history – presumably his own, for the walls were covered with framed photographs of his service days. Groups of uniformed men in front of various places and pieces of artillery proclaimed what this particular Daddy had done in the war. There were also family photos on his desk and on the bookcase beneath the window, but they were few compared to those on the wall.

  Grimes saw him looking at them, and smiled. ‘I was in the Photographic Section during the war,’ he explained, proudly.

  ‘I see,’ Luke said. He could also see that Grimes was prepared to elaborate on this, so he hurried on. This was no time for reminiscences of How I Won the War With My Box Brownie. ‘Did Mrs Tompkins have any special friends here, among the cleaning staff?’

  ‘Oh, she was well liked, Inspector, you could certainly say that. Yes, Beryl always had a cheerful word for everyone. I know one of the women, Hilda Stanwick, was her particular friend. Would you like her address?’

  They thanked him and took it down. After phoning to make sure she would be at home, they drove away from the photo-processing plant and down the hill towards Woodbury, which was a small village about a half a mile away.

  ‘You’re from this area, aren’t you?’ Paddy asked, as they approached the village.

  ‘From Wychford itself,’ Luke said. ‘But it’s been a long time since I was here. There have been a lot of changes in . . . ’ He paused. ‘My God, eighteen years! Hard to believe.’

  ‘A lot has happened to you in those years,’ Paddy said, as he turned, following the Personnel Manager’s rather vague directions. ‘University, marriage, the boys, moving up to DCI, learning all you know from me . . . ’

  Luke smiled. ‘More true than you think. They say you can’t go home again, and I suppose it’s true. The Luke Abbott who left Wychford full of high hopes all those years ago isn’t me.’

  ‘No,’ Paddy agreed. ‘You’re the raddled, cynical old copper, beaten down by the forces of crime and disorder, soured and—’

  ‘—Oh, shut up,’ Luke said, amiably. ‘I’m not all that soured. Just a little turned at the edges.’ He looked around at the huddled houses of Woodbury. ‘This place hasn’t changed. It was always a secret from the tourists. Wychford took all the traffic, and made all the money. I always wanted to bring Margaret back here, but once the twins arrived, there was never a moment we could call our own.’ His face grew grave as he remembered how few moments he and his wife had ultimately had, shared or otherwise. Their closest time had been during the terrible months when she put up her brave fight against cancer – a fight she eventually lost. He wondered if he would ever win his own fight against the ache he still felt at her loss, and the way her memory shone out of the boys’ eyes.

  ‘Is this it?’ Paddy said, recognising the pain in Luke’s face, and wanting to distract him.

  ‘I reckon so,’ Luke said, looking out at the row of terraced cottages. ‘Number twenty must be the one at the end.’

  Mrs Stanwick proved to be a heavy-set woman who smoked continuously. That might have been the explanation for her red-rimmed eyes, but Luke thought otherwise. Her front room was crowded with furniture and dazzled the eye with conflicting patterns. Every surface shone with polish, and she herself was tightly tidy in her flowered dress.

  ‘Poor Beryl.’ Mrs Stanwick sniffed daintily into a crisp white handkerchief that still had the traces of a stick-on price tag clinging to one embroidered corner. Stuffed into the waste bin beside the fireplace of the little terraced house he could see a mass of discarded, rumpled tissues. ‘If only it hadn’t been for my veins.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Paddy asked, momentarily caught off balance.

  ‘My veins.’ Mrs Stanwick extended a fat, mottled leg. ‘They were playing me up something terrible last night, and so I didn’t go into work. Beryl and me always walked down together to catch the last bus but one after work, regular as clockwork. I carried the torch, well, you need one along there, and Beryl, she pushed aside the bushes, like, because of me not being able to stand spiders and that? I don’t know why she went down there alone, should have gone around the road, even though it is longer. Did she have a torch?’

  ‘We didn’t find one,’ Paddy said, making a note.

  ‘No? That’s odd. You could break an ankle quick as a wink on that path, without a torch. Not a proper path, anyway, just a way we go through down the field and that. Maybe she did go with someone else. Maybe it was a man went with her and turned funny along the way. Oh, dear.’ Her eyes rolled at the thought.

  ‘Was she friendly with any of the men at the plant?’

  ‘Beryl? Oh, no. Oh, no, not at all. Beryl wasn’t the type to encourage that sort of thing. Anyway, we didn’t go into the plant much. We did reception, the labs and the offices, Beryl and me did. Mr Grimes, the Personnel Manager, he give us the offices because of my veins and Beryl’s bad back, said it was lighter work. Well, and it was, not like that nasty business down on the plant floor, all them chemicals and such . . . ’

  ‘Who did that work?’

  ‘The other girls. Younger, most of them. They don’t care, that lot, only rough work they do, not fussy enough to do offices. Beryl and me, we didn’t mix much with them. No, she must have tried it without a torch, all on her own. I blame myself that she’s dead. I do. She counted on me, did Beryl, and I let her down, and now . . . now . . . ’ Tears welled up in Mrs Stanwick’s eyes and overflowed down her already chapped cheeks. The new handkerchief collapsed into a ball under the assault, and Mrs Stanwick searched her pockets for tissues. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure,’ she apologised. ‘I do feel her death so. She was a lovely, lovely woman.’ Mrs Stanwick sighed deeply. ‘I’ll have to go around by the road, now, and every time I pass the path, I’ll think of Beryl, lying there . . . alone . . . ’

  They eventually escaped the trembling bulk of Mrs Stanwick, after assuring her that life was like that and we never know what’s ahead, do we, and she shouldn’t blame herself, nobody could have known.

  They will do it, these idiot women, Paddy grumbled to hi
mself. Go down the damnedest dark ways just to save a step or two. Then he thought of Mrs Stanwick’s veins and was a little ashamed. A policeman’s lot was not the only unhappy one.

  Especially where feet and legs were concerned.

  Mrs Stanwick had told them about Beryl Tompkins’ other two cleaning jobs – for a Mrs Dyson in the town, an elderly lady who lived alone, and for Mr Pelmer the chemist. She had shared the latter job with a Mrs Teague, doing alternate afternoons. Mrs Teague was one of the ‘other girls’ who worked at Jiffy PhotoProcessing, doing the plant area, although she was older than Mrs Tompkins and Mrs Stanwick. She did the rough work at the chemist’s, too. (‘Beryl dusted the displays,’ Mrs Stanwick confided to Paddy. ‘Beryl knew how to keep things nice. Not like some.’)

  A painful interview with Mrs Tompkins’ bereaved husband confirmed her goodness and her fastidiousness. Mr Tompkins, a large, slow-thinking man, felt badly about the fact that he had not gone up to the factory to meet his wife the night she died. He’d wanted to go when she phoned him to say that Hilda Stanwick hadn’t come in, but she had told him not to, for someone had to stay home and keep an eye on the children. They weren’t a family to let their children run wild or be left. The children, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve, sat wide-eyed and stricken into silence on the sofa. Their clothes, though well worn, were clean and tidy, as was the house itself. Everywhere they looked they saw evidence of love and care – and a sudden, cruel emptiness. Obviously Mrs Tompkins had been the heart of the family, and now that she was gone, they were lost and bewildered.

  Luke knew that feeling only too well.

  ‘Of course, when the time for the last bus had come and gone, I began to get worried,’ Mr Tompkins said, in his slow, deep voice. ‘I called the plant, but the watchman said everyone had gone. I called the hospital, thinking of an accident, like, but they said no. Finally, at midnight, I called the police. Around seven this morning, they come to tell me.’ His eyes began to overflow. ‘They was kind, like – I knowed one of them from the pub and all – but . . . ’ He shrugged, unable to express the pain he obviously felt.