Chapter 5

They didn’t get to talk to the daughter on Friday. When Sally rang her in her shop, she refused to discuss anything over the phone. She would only talk to Sally, and only on Sunday, in Saint Georges Park, near the centre of Manchester, by the slide. She said that she would be there at one and have her toddler in a black stroller.

Sally asked who had Sunday free, and Ben put his hand up.

“My partner, Anne, has a toddler, about five years old. We could take some recreation time there, after a fast-food lunch. Is it on overtime?”

“Yes, Ben. I’m sure overtime is on the cards; I’ll double check with Cuz. Have you had training in monitoring a clandestine meeting?”

“Did that in training. I’ll go down to the stores and see what they have. Any preference on the microphone?”

“Something that’s small, with a range of about a hundred yards, in open air. She may want to check me over for a bug, so a hairgrip would be good.”

“Right, I’ll go and see what they can offer. We’ll need to record this, it looks like the woman is scared, and we have to find out why.”

Charlie was looking through the file on the latest case.

“Boss, the big guy on the top of the hill is listed as Horace Warmington. He’s been in the climbing club more than fifteen years. I looked him up on the system and he has a minor rap sheet, nothing too bad. He was last listed as a removalist and handyman. Lives in a good area of Macclesfield, a pricey road for a handyman.”

Sally looked at the screen and then at her notes.

“Good one, Charlie. He lives two doors down from the singer from Cultz, the last band that used the garish van. The centre is starting to harden on this one. We just have to get the links set and we are still a long way to taking them in. So, far, it’s all conjecture.”

She went to her desk and rang Barry Blake.

“Mister Blake, can you tell me when Cultz are playing next, I would like to go and see them.”

“Let me see. They are near you on Wednesday evening, at the Brookside Community Centre to the south of Telford. It’s a dance, not a sit-down affair, although they’ll probably be seats around the edge.”

“Thank you, I don’t have to book, do I?”

“No, lass, it’ll be packed with teenagers, though, so you might need to take a gas mask.”

She was smiling when she put the phone down.

“Charlie, do you have a significant other who would like to go to a dance?”

“Sure do, boss. She just loves to dance.”

“Right, make a date for Wednesday evening, at the Brookside Community Centre, near Telford. Make sure you take your phone and get as many pictures of Cultz and anyone else involved with them, as you can. You can pretend to be taking pictures of your girl. I’ll be there, with my husband, but don’t talk to me unless you have to. This will be information gathering only, and I’m curious to see if a big guy with a beard is one of the roadies. He would be a good fit to be the one hoisting a body up to have the rope put around its neck.”

Ben came back, a little while later with a white hairgrip and a portable radio.

“The hairgrip has a transmitter with a hundred-yard range, and the radio will play actual radio programs but also has a receiver tuned to the microphone. It will record to cassette and to a USB drive. I’ll find the park and get there early and set up a way away from the slide.”

Sally went to Sue and got permission for both overtime sessions. Then Sally and Ben went out to the carpark to test the equipment, Sally walking away, reciting nursery rhymes until Ben shouted that he was losing her. They made sure that everything was turned off to save the batteries and took the two items to their cars.

“On Sunday, Ben, don’t do anything to bring attention to yourself. If she tells me something momentous, no whooping or shaking a fist. We’re cool, man, real cool. Charlie will be going to a Cultz show on Wednesday evening, with taking pictures of the Cultz entourage as his task. Hopefully, by the end of the week, we’ll have something solid to take to Cuz. If we manage to clear this up, and cast doubt on three other cases, we’ll be doing well.”

Back in the office, they gave a precis of the case to the Friday meeting and then Sally sat, quietly, and read every note that had been left. On the face of it, they all looked good, but with what she now knew, they all seemed a bit odd. They were, she realised, a bit flowery, not something a guy about to top himself would write.

Sunday morning, Sally and her husband took their pre-teen to Manchester. They had to promise him a tour of United’s stadium, as long as he followed orders to play on the equipment until they were ready to go. They stopped for lunch at the KFC on Chester Road and then arrived at the playground at around twelve-thirty. Sally saw Ben, sitting on a blanket on the grass, while his partner was escorting her toddler around the various playground items, with much squealing and laughter.

Sally’s son took to the slide with delight, and she allowed her husband to look after him, as she walked towards the woman who had come down the path, towards the slide, with a toddler, about four years old, in a stroller. Sally stood her ground as the woman came close, then nodded to her. They moved to a vacant bench and sat down.

“Laura, I’m Sally Brown. I spoke to you on Friday. You seem scared?”

“I’ve been scared for two years, Sally. It’s all my mother’s fault!”

“Because she had organised someone to kill your father and frame another man for it?”

“How on earth did you know that! It’s been more than I could bear for two years. I had no idea that she had been involved until a month after her death. I was in the supermarket and had left my baby in her pram as I went to pick some vegetables. A guy came and stood beside me and told me that I needed to tidy up an account that my mother owed. When I asked what account, he told me that it was payment for having my father killed.”

“That would have been scary.”

“It was scarier when I told him that I knew nothing of the account. He pointed at my baby in the pram and told me that the account would be paid, or else I would lose my baby first.”

“Was he a big guy with a black beard?”

“No, that was the one standing by my baby’s pram. How do you know all this?”

“We are closing in on the guys you saw, the big guy is already on our radar. How much did you pay?”

“It was fifty thousand Euro. He wanted a cheque made out for cash, on the spot. I had the business chequebook so wrote it for him. He even gave me an invoice. Horse and Cart Removals, fifty grand for services rendered.”

“Did you ask him for any proof?”

“Yes, and he told me that the last words that my mother had said, before she started taking the pills, was ‘Tell Laura I love her’. She would often sing that to me when I was a child.”

“Did you save the invoice?”

“No, I put it in the fire when I got home, then transferred the money from my own bank into the business account. Considering the size of the insurance payout, it wasn’t a huge amount, and the business is doing a lot better with me in charge. I had always known that my parents weren’t seeing eye to eye. Mother had become almost frantic when the insurance wasn’t paid out. It got worse, one day, when there was a card in the post. She fainted. I put smelling salts under her nose but sneaked a look at it. It just had ‘Remember that promise that you made’ in typed letters. It all made sense, that day in the supermarket. I’ve worried that they’re still watching me.”

“That’s highly unlikely, Laura. They have other fish to fry at the moment. Can you describe the man who spoke to you?”

“He was a short version of the big guy, a mini-me without the beard. Stocky, like a wrestler. The big guy was just big. Have they done this afterwards?”

“They have, and twice before your father, as far as we can tell. I promise that you’ll read about them in the paper inside a few weeks. Tell me, did your mother ever go out, on her own, say, to pubs and dances?”

“She had a group of friends who were all single, so she acted as if she was single, as well. She could hold her drink, but I remember smelling it on her breath.”

“Thank you for being frank. Here’s my card. If you think of anything that adds to what you’ve told me, please ring. I should have, hopefully, pictures to show you later in the week. Now I have to take my lad to the stadium tour. It was promised so that he would behave himself, but it looks like I’ll have to drag him off that slide by brute force.”

“I’ve got that to look forward to. Are you likely to be charging me with anything?”

“No, Laura, you’re a victim of a demand for money, with menaces, so you’re clear. What your mother did, on the other hand, was to pay someone to murder her husband, or, should I say, promised to pay someone. If I can prove that it was murder, but committed by someone else, the insurance still stands.”

Sally collected her husband and son, nodding towards Ben as they left. The smile on his face told her that he had heard, and recorded everything that was said. In the car, she took the hairgrip off and let her hair down. She would never tell her son, but she was really looking forward to the tour experience at Old Trafford.

On Monday morning, she asked Sue to join them, and Ben played the recording from Sunday. Then they told her what they had found out, during the previous week, in more detail.

“It looks like you’re on the right track, but there are no positive links. Keep on with what you’re doing. What do you expect to get on Wednesday?”

“Pictures of the band, and any roadie that we see, to show Laura to see if she can pick someone out. Also, there’s Oliver, who saw the big guy at the top of the hill. We know who he is, but a positive identification will help. In the meantime, we’ll stay away from Hazel Prentice, she will be stewing now, not having enough money to pay them. I’m sure that she’ll get a reminder, sometime, and, who knows, she may call on us for help. She’s self-centred enough.”

They worked on tidying up the evidence record, laying out the timelines, and noting what they knew for certain in all four cases. It was all good work towards what would be needed when they reviewed the case for the prosecution, as well as presenting to other divisions to reopen the earlier cases. Sally could feel it, in her bones, that they were closing in on the end game.

Wednesday evening, Sally, her husband, and son, went into the Brookfield Community Centre. Sally was immediately aware of the odd smelling smoke outside and was happy that smoking wasn’t allowed inside. She saw Charlie, with his girlfriend, snapping pictures as the band was setting up. She took a couple of pictures of the stage. She couldn’t help but see the big guy, with the black beard, easily carrying in the amps and speaker boxes. The little version of him wasn’t bad at the heaving and lifting, either.

When the band came onto the stage, Sally was suddenly aware that she was female, and the lead singer was definitely a man. She had to admit that they were good. She listened as they ran through a set of recent hits, by a variety of bands, with them sounding just like the band they were covering. That’s when it hit her. Zak was able to sing with the voices of the other singers, or so close to it you would think that it was the original band on stage.

She and her husband gyrated on the dance floor and her son, as far as she could tell, was dancing up a storm with a bunch of girls, about his own age. In her day, she thought, the boys would all be off to one side, talking about football.

The second set was all classic rock, more her speed, and she could sing along with the words. During the second break, she could see her son was tired, so suggested that they leave. She had seen enough. Charlie was still out on the dance floor. Between them, she knew, they had the pictures they had come for. That night, her husband received the pent-up emotion that watching the lead singer had generated in her.

Thursday morning, they were huddled over the pictures, as they came off the printer. Charlie was raving on about the second set, with the classic rock. Sally, stopped what she was doing and went to the evidence boxes, pulling out the notes. She read each one, quickly.

“Bloody hell, that’s it!”

They all stopped and looked at her.

“It’s in the notes that were left. There was something odd about them that’s been bugging me. Here’s the first one. He was supposed to have written, ‘I’m ending it now. Take a long holiday’. The second one has, ‘with your recent actions, I’ve been like an actor all alone, on a stage, waiting for you to take your place with me, but you never show.’ The third one, the love letter, has ‘I’ve found an island in your arms.’ The one that Harrison left has ‘With your drinking, all your love has gone’ and the note that Laura’s mother got was ‘Remember that promise that you made.’”

She looked at them, staring at her.

“They’re all lines from Doors numbers. Cultz played them all, last night. They’re the codewords that showed the wives that the deed that they had promised to pay for had been carried out.”

Ben and Charlie whooped and that brought Sue over.

“All right, you three, what’s all this noise about? You should know that we don’t do whooping in the office.”

Sally picked up the pictures.

“Here’s a picture of a big guy, with a black beard, humping amps onto the stage. We think we already know who he is, as he was named in the case files that was sent to us from Manchester as the man who saw Oliver sitting on the ropes. That little guy, wheeling in a speaker, is the smaller version described by Laura on Sunday. He was the one who spoke to her and I’m certain that she will confirm that when I show her this photo.”

“That’s great work, but not good enough for whooping.”

“The notes that had been left for the widows bothered me. In places they were flowery. Here’s the first one, from Sheffield, I’ve highlighted the line. The words that count are ‘Take a long holiday’. That’s a line from Riders on the Storm, Cultz plays a lot of Doors numbers. The second one has ‘an actor all alone’, That’s also from Riders, and is, actually a mondegreen.”

She could see Ben and Charlie looking blank.

“A mondegreen is a line which everyone knows but is wrong. The most popular is the Hendrix line ‘Excuse me, while I kiss this guy’. The actual lyrics are ‘kiss the sky’. In this case, the lyrics are ‘like a dog without a bone, an actor on a loan’. Got it, now?”

They smiled and nodded.

“The third note has, ‘I’ve found an island in your arms’ which is almost exactly the line in Break on Through to the Other Side. Our case had, ‘With your drinking, all your love has gone’. ‘All your love is gone; I sing a lonely song’ are from Love Her Madly. The card that Laura said upset her mother said, ‘Remember that promise that you made.’ That’s from Touch Me and the actual line is ‘What was that promise that you made’. It all makes sense.”

“In what way, considering the cases, Sally?”

“All right. Let’s surmise a bit. Our widow-to-be goes along to a Cultz show, falls madly in love with the lead singer, Zak Jackson. Believe me, that wouldn’t be difficult.”

She pulled a photo from the pile and showed it to Sue, whose eyes lit up.

“He looks good in the picture, but he smoulders in real life. Now, she and he get together, and he finds out that she is unhappy in her marriage to a rich man, or even an ordinary man who could have a good insurance policy taken out on his life. He offers her a way to rid herself of her husband, and to inherit his money. This happens up to two years before the death, as we found out with the policy that was taken out on Prentice. She gives him the keys to the house. Then the two of them stop seeing each other. Later the husband is found dead or has an accident. The notes left have the code words that makes sure that the grieving widow now has an account to pay.”

“What went wrong in our case?”

“It’s a comedy of errors. If his friends hadn’t spoken up, it wouldn’t have gone to CID. If Ridley did have a racing yacht and used those sails and rope, we could have taken him for the murderer. The previous three cases were taken as open and shut, for whatever reason, and the files successfully closed with someone in jail. I’m guessing that Hazel must have given them wrong information. We’ll know when we have her in a cell.”

“What now?”

“Now, Cuz, we take these pictures to Leeds and get Laura to sign a statement that these two are the ones that spoke to her in the supermarket. Ben, can you find a book of statement forms for us to take. Then we go to Stoke to see Barry Blake to get the details of the little guy. We’ll have to make sure that he doesn’t let on about that visit. Cuz, could you organise a camera on Mount Road, looking towards the Prentice house? It should only be temporary just in case they pay Hazel a visit before we have our ducks in a row.”

“That’s not a problem, I’ll put it to Traffic that someone has complained about speeding down that road, and get the feed sent to Doggy.”

Sally went to her phone to call Laura, and she agreed to see them, that afternoon, in her shop. Barry Blake told her that he wouldn’t be in the office, but his secretary would be there. Armed with the pictures and statement book, they all got into Sally’s car to go to Leeds.

They stopped for lunch, just north of Sheffield, and then went into Leeds to the shop. Sally went in with Ben, while Charlie waited by the car to fend off any parking inspectors. Laura went pale when shown the pictures and was happy to sign the statement that the two men shown in the photo were the two men who had spoken to her. The back of the photo was marked and signed by both Laura and Ben as the one that she had seen. They were in and out in twenty minutes, and left Leeds to go south again.

In Stoke, Sally asked Ben to go and take pictures of any vans that were in the yard. It was close to five when they arrived, so she expected that any that would be going to a gig would have left, by now. In the office they were met by a young girl.

“Hello, I saw you the other day talking to Dad. He told me that you were coming by. How can I help you?”

“This is just a follow up with the case were on. Can you confirm that the big guy in that picture is Horace Warmington?”

“You mean Horse? Yes, that’s him. The little guy is his friend, Jack Cartwright. Everyone knows them as Horse and Cart. They must live close to each other, as they always arrive in the same car. It’s the Fiesta in the yard, they’re heading for a gig in Manchester, tonight.”

“Thank you, miss. That clears something up. I went to see Cultz the other night. They were really good.”

“They are one of our better cover bands. They could be household names if they ever find a songwriter to give them original material. All my friends are in love with Zak, but I don’t swing that way.”

Outside, Sally told Charlie to get a picture of the Fiesta, showing the number plate, and Ben trotted back to the car with a grin on his face.

‘Got the pictures, boss. How did you go?”

“We got more than we needed, Ben. I’ll drop you at the station and you two head home. I’ll put you down for a couple of hours overtime, today. Tomorrow, we do some research on mini-me and start planning next week. Hopefully, it will be the final chapter of our little crime novel.”

On Friday, they got down to work. Jack Cartwright had a record that went back many years. His address just happened to be next door to Horace. There were a few minor arrests for drunk and disorderly, but much of his prison time had been spent for breaking and entering, with one of them including a safe being opened. They called Sue over and told her about him.

“That’s the lock and key man. The women only had to lend him the house keys and he could have had copies made. He could have supplied a small case with gel in it, so that all that was needed was for a key to be put in, with the case pressed together.”

“I think you’re right there, Ben. The only thing that we don’t see, now, is how Zak fits in, or even if he’s at the murders.”

“He may just be the mastermind and leaves all the wet work to the others.”

“Sorry, Charlie, he’s an alpha male. He wouldn’t stay home for the main event. I have the idea that he may be the one to ring the bell and tell the victim that he’s had an affair with the wife. The victim could be pushed back into the house and then killed. Either that, or they just open the door and surprise the victim inside. With the Leeds case, he may well have been on the ledge at the top of the hill, but Oliver didn’t see him.”

“So, how do you flush them out?”

“We only have one way of doing that, Cuz. That’s through our grieving widow, Hazel. What say we go and see her on Monday, to see how she’s getting on.”

“If you want to bring her in, afterwards, we can set up a trap, in her house, for when they come knocking. That should give us enough to charge them with suspicion for the Prentice murder. That will also get us the right to search their homes. Who knows what they may have kept. If Laura was correct, there may even be a wad of those Horse and Cart Removals invoices. We can only hope that they kept carbon copies.”

Sally laughed.

“I doubt that. boss, nobody would be that stupid.”

Marianne Gregory (C) 2023