Murder of a Dead Man (35 page)

‘Files from Sergeant Bradley’s house.’ Chris Brooke dumped a pile on the desk that had been Anna’s, and was now Sarah’s. ‘They’ve been passed on by forensics.’ He glanced at Peter who was slumped on a chair reading the computer printouts as they spewed from the machine. ‘I – we – all the boys, sir.

We’re very sorry about Sergeant Bradley.’

Peter continued to thumb through the printouts.

If he’d heard Brooke’s condolences, he made no acknowledgement of them. ‘Any news on Valance?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Tell them to look harder.’

‘Sir.’ Chris left.

‘That drama college phoned back yet?’ Peter asked Sarah.

‘You know they haven’t. You’re sitting right next to the phone,’ Sarah retorted.

It was the sort of thing Anna might have said.

Hurting more than he would have believed possible, Peter picked up one of the files Chris had left on the desk. A file Anna had looked at only yesterday.

When he flicked it open, newspaper cuttings and lists spilled out.

‘Anna was evaluating the information collected by the team who investigated Weaver’s escape from prison,’ Sarah explained when she saw him looking at the cuttings.

‘They, like us, must have been looking for holes he might have bolted to.’ Peter picked up a sheaf of yellowing pages clipped from a stage magazine.

“
Student play attracts interest of film-maker
”, was the headline that had grabbed his attention.

Above it was a photograph of a group of young people in seventeenth-century costume. The girls wore long, lace-trimmed dresses with plunging necklines, the men knee-breeches, flowing shirts and thigh-length embroidered waistcoats. He studied the faces and picked out Adam Weaver.

He was centre-stage, holding the hand of the leading lady who had supposedly attracted the film-maker’s attention. Relegated to the second row, behind him, Peter recognised Laura Weaver’s pert and pretty face, framed by an elaborate wig festooned with ringlets. Nigel Valance was at the end of the last row, dressed in the rough apron of a blacksmith. He stared long and hard at the features of the girl next to him. There was no mistake. Anna Bradley smiled at him from beneath a maid’s white mob cap.

He remembered her transformation when they had gone undercover into the factory.

“I was an actress. I have a college certificate to prove it. A season in a chorus… ”

He tossed the photograph to Trevor. ‘End of the back row. Anna took care to keep the connection between herself and Weaver away from the computer.’ Hands shaking, he picked up a typewritten sheet that proved to be a list of names copied from the drama college’s student register.

‘Anna knew Weaver?’ Trevor said after studying the photograph.

‘Looks like it,’ Peter snapped.

‘I had no idea.’

‘She took care to see none of us did.’ Peter scanned down the list of names. As it was alphabetical it didn’t take him long to find the ones he wanted. Anna’s name came first, Laura Davies’

second, and Adam Weaver’s halfway down the list.

And close to the bottom was Valance, Nigel. Four people tied together by murder, ten years on.

‘No wonder she wouldn’t let any of us near her house for the last couple of days,’ Peter snarled.

‘You can’t think she was sheltering Weaver?’

‘What else could it be? The only wonder is we were too bloody stupid to see it. Forensic said his fingerprints were all over the place. The bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, under the stairs –semen stains on the sheet. How many murdering rapists would stay in a house long enough to leave their fingerprints everywhere, and then rape a woman upstairs on her bed before dragging her downstairs into her kitchen to kill her?’

‘He’s here.’ Andrew Murphy stuck his head around the door of the incident room where Trevor was sifting through papers.

‘Valance?’

‘In room two. The super’s in there with Dan now. All the man’s done since we cautioned him is squeal for his lawyer.’

Trevor dropped the file he was holding, and joined Andrew in the corridor. ‘Have you told Peter?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Tell him I’ll see him in the viewing box.’

Andrew hadn’t exaggerated Valance’s hysteria. He was sitting, purple-faced and seething with indignation, across the table from Bill Mulcahy who was outwardly relaxed. Two officers stood inside the room in front of the closed door.

‘Solicitor arrived?’ Andrew joined Trevor in the viewing room.

‘No.’ Trevor glanced over his shoulder as Peter walked in with Chris. Time dragged on. The colour drained from Valance’s face as anger was replaced by fear, but no one in the interview room, or the viewing box, said a word.

Eventually a short, tubby man wearing a creased suit bustled into the interview room.

‘Sorry I took so long to get here,’ he apologised.

‘Turn the sound up,’ Peter barked.

Trevor leant forward and did as Peter asked.

The solicitor sat at the table, between the super and Valance. He looked up when Dan cautioned Valance before asking him about the arson attack on the old factory.

Loudly protesting his innocence, Valance rose from his chair and went to the door. His solicitor urged him to return to his seat. Dan repeated his question, but the commotion Valance was making drowned him out. Waving his arms, Valance demanded to know why they were even asking him about the fire. It took the combined efforts of Dan, the two officers and the solicitor to return Valance to his chair.

Trevor watched Peter grip the pen he had laid on the table in front of him. He ran his fingers from the bottom to the top, turned the pen over and repeated the performance – again – and again – and again. And all the while, Dan continued to grill Valance. About the fire in the factory – the speed at which he’d appeared on the scene – and his relationship with Blanche Davies and her niece.

Suddenly and remarkably composed after his earlier outburst, Valance fielded every question.

‘Damned actors,’ Trevor swore. ‘It’s impossible to know when they’re telling the truth and when they’re lying through their teeth.’

Bill interrupted Dan, faced Nigel Valance and hinted that he might have had an ulterior, possibly perverted, motive for continuing his friendship with Blanche Davies and her niece after Laura’s murder.

If Bill had hoped to provoke an emotional response, he succeeded. Nigel Valance’s self-control cracked, and he reverted to the raving, screaming lunatic he had been when Dan had first began to question him. Another ten minutes was wasted while they attempted to calm him. A tray of tea and biscuits was brought in and Nigel returned to his seat at the table next to his solicitor, opposite Dan and Bill.

Bill shuffled his papers and produced the college photograph Peter had found in Anna’s files, and pushed it across the table. ‘You studied drama alongside Adam Weaver and Laura Davies.’

‘I’ve never denied it.’

‘A simple yes or no will suffice, Mr Valance.’

‘You had an affair with Laura Weaver?’ Dan picked up the questioning.

He looked at his solicitor. ‘Do I have to answer that?’

‘You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to, Mr Valance.’

‘But if you don’t answer us, Mr Valance, you leave us to draw our own conclusions,’ Dan said.

‘So I had an affair with Laura Weaver,’ he said angrily. ‘So what? Her husband was sleeping with half of London, and Laura wanted to get her own back. I wasn’t the only one she was bonking on the side.’

‘Are you saying Laura Weaver had other lovers besides yourself?’

Peter leaned forward in his chair, his hands closing around his pen.

‘Dozens who didn’t matter to her, and one who did. She threw me over for him, but he didn’t want her. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. He was happily married before she came on the scene.

He saw her as a passing diversion – nothing more.’

‘Do you know this other man’s name?’

‘Yes. She used to tell me everything. It was all a big game to her. If Adam Weaver slept with twelve girls in a week, she’d want thirteen men. And I was happy to be one of the crowd until he came along and she became infatuated with him. It made no difference that he only wanted a fling. She became obsessed by him. Probably because he was the only man who ever tried to leave her. When he told her he wanted to break it off, she began telephoning him at all hours of the day and night. At home, in work – it made no difference that his wife was the jealous sort – or that she was ruining his career. If anything it added spice to her obsession.’

Valance shook a cigarette out of a packet and pushed it between his lips.

‘His name?’ Dan lit Nigel’s cigarette with a lighter he took from his pocket.

‘Tom Morris. She met him through her sister, Blanche. He and Blanche were both social workers.

That was one of his attractions. Unlike the rest of us, he did a serious job, infinitely more worthwhile than entertaining the masses. The first time Laura saw him, he’d just returned from his honeymoon. But as I said, she saw every man as fair game. She wanted him, and she got him – for a while. But when she fell in love with him, I think they both got more than they bargained for.’

‘What exactly do you mean by that, Mr Valance?’ Bill asked.

‘Two weeks before Laura died she told me it was over between us. That she couldn’t carry on living the same empty life she had been. Morris had shown her that there was more to life than drink, parties and casual sex. He was the first man she’d ever really loved. Enough to give up all other men, her career, Adam, even her daughter, if need be. She told me she’d persuaded Tom to leave his wife and go away with her, but the next thing I heard, she was dead.’

‘You weren’t a witness at Adam Weaver’s trial.’

‘I don’t know what happened the night she was murdered. I did wonder if she told Adam about Tom and he lost control. Their fights were legendary, even in college. I’ve seen both of them wearing shades to hide the black eyes they’d given one another.’

In the viewing booth, Andrew said, ‘Which lady killer are you going to put your money on?

Weaver, Morris or Valance?’

‘Perhaps Morris decided he wanted to stay married to his wife,’ Chris suggested. ‘And perhaps the mistress threatened to tell the wife the full story.’

‘Morris was in Jubilee Street the night Matthews was murdered and in the old factory the night it burnt down.’ Trevor looked around for Peter, but the door to the viewing booth was swinging on its hinges. He’d left.

Peter drove into Jubilee Street at twice the speed limit. Slamming on the brakes, he screeched to a halt, abandoning his car a foot from the kerb. He flung open the door and jumped out without retrieving the keys from the ignition. Trevor, who’d raced after him to the station car park, extracted them before climbing out after him. Having used the radio and locked the doors, he pocketed them. He was determined to stop Peter from driving again that day.

He followed Peter into the hostel, and saw him banging on Morris’s office door.

‘He’s not in,’ a volunteer called down from the landing above.

‘Do you know where he went?’ Trevor asked.

‘No idea. But he always takes Sunday afternoon off.’

Peter looked at Trevor.

‘I put out his description on the radio, but Sarah said Dan got in before us. It’s already gone out to all cars and beat constables.’

‘I’ll kill the bastard. So help me God, I’ll…’

Peter kicked the front door on his way out.

‘We can’t be sure it was him. Let’s call on Sam Mayberry. He might know where Tom Morris spends his Sunday afternoons. If we find Tom we’ll take him in and let Dan question him.’ Trevor decided that the best course for both him and Peter was to keep busy until Anna’s killer – whoever he was – was safely in custody. But he dreaded the aftermath when there’d be nothing left for either him or Peter to do.

‘Trevor, Peter, it’s good to see you. Any progress on your missing man?’ Sam Mayberry stopped them in the street. He was loaded with plastic carrier bags containing donations of food from the local church congregation.

‘We think we’re getting close, Sam,’ Trevor answered.

‘You’re here. You’re not there.’

Trevor turned to the tall, gangling youth with yellow hair and missing front teeth who’d been walking along behind Sam.

‘You’re coppers, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Peter snapped.

‘I thought you’d be with Mr Morris.’

‘Why should we be with him?’ Peter demanded.

‘Because – it’s a secret,’ the youth took a step away from them.

‘You can tell us your secret, lad. It will be safe with us,’ Peter urged.

‘You’ll arrest me. You’ll lock me up,’ the boy gibbered.

‘I promise, we won’t.’

‘Tell the sergeants what you know, Bobby,’

Sam reassured him. ‘Then we’ll make ourselves a slap-up meal. I’ve everything we need in here.’ He held up a carrier bag.

‘You promise I won’t go to gaol?’

‘We promise,’ Trevor assured him.

‘I saw him. The one everyone’s looking for.’

‘This man?’ Peter pulled the photograph of Tony from his pocket.

‘Yeah, that’s him. Only he doesn’t look like that any more. His hair is short and yellow. And he’s hurt bad. There’s blood on his face and all down his arm.’

‘Where did you see him?’ Trevor cut in.

‘I told Mr Morris to tell you because I shouldn’t have been there. That’s why he said he’d tell you for me.’

‘Where shouldn’t you have been?’ Peter’s temper was breaking.

The boy began to blubber.

‘Bobby, you have to tell the officers what you know.’ Mayberry dropped one of the bags, and put an arm around the boy.

‘The old cinema.’

‘The one at the bottom end of High Street?’

Trevor had already opened his car door.

‘How did you get in there?’ Peter shouted over his shoulder as he ran towards Trevor’s car.

‘There’s a window. It looks boarded up but it isn’t. Toilet window at the back.’

‘I’m sure Tom Morris would have phoned the station if it was important…’

Sam was speaking to the rear end of Trevor’s car as it sped up the street.