A Well Kept Secret (48 page)

In very short time he ingratiated himself with May, and in the interests of keeping peace with as many people as possible, I never told her what I really thought of the man. If I had realised at the time where this acquaintanceship would lead I might have acted differently, but in those days I was reluctant to think ill of anyone. Undoubtedly it was the wrong decision, yet it is unlikely the eventual outcome would have been much different. He came to the house at frequent intervals, and unbeknown to me made it his business to learn everything about the place. At that juncture I still failed to appreciate that not only was he devious and unscrupulous, he was also a highly ambitious individual, and to that end he was hatching a scheme that required my co-operation.

He came to me one day, and in the privacy of my study calmly and methodically told me that he was planning a major robbery, and required my co-operation. Initially I thought he was attempting some elaborate leg-pull at my expense, but I soon realised that he was in deadly earnest. When it dawned on me how serious he was, my stinging retort and demand that he leave my home immediately merely caused him to smile, and I still recall his words he then uttered right down to this day.

“I think you will change your mind when you have seen these,” he said, and pulled from his pocket an envelope from which he extracted some photographs. He placed these on the desk in front of me, and sat back in his chair to watch my reaction. With great reluctance I looked, and for a few moments the true significance of what I was seeing didn’t really sink in. The pictures showed a couple of young men in partial state of undress, and most clearly engaged in homosexual activity. I looked closer, and with a sudden nauseating wrench in the guts I recognised the figure of the victim of attempted sodomy. It was me!

“That’s right,” he said. “I took these pictures at that party we attended at uni. I knew they would be of value one day, and that day has now arrived. Tear them up if you wish, they are only copies.”

It was blackmail pure and simple. It was the party where I had drunk myself insensible, and during the time that was a blank to me, somebody had attempted anal intercourse upon my unconscious person. I’d been so ill as a result of all I’d drunk that the symptoms of that interference became blurred with the others resulting from the king-sized hangover I had suffered. Phillip had been there, he had photographed what was happening, and now he was going to use it as a lever over me.

“I wonder what would happen,” he remarked as he saw dawning comprehension on my features, “If May was to receive a copy of these through the post? Perhaps a set to the local paper as well? Somehow I doubt that either your career or your marriage would benefit particularly.”

And that was how my nightmare started. He didn’t want money; in those days I didn’t have anything like enough to attract his interest anyway. What he demanded was my co-operation in the crime he was planning, and his silence was the price he would pay to get it. I look back at that time, and with the benefit of hindsight I wish I had called his bluff and done my best to weather the storm, but at the time I knew that I couldn’t. Professional ruin I could have faced, yet I knew in my heart that those pictures would permanently alienate May, and I simply couldn’t risk her seeing them, and Phillip knew it.

I tried and failed to buy him off; he would have none of it. From that point my life became increasingly difficult, and I sweated tears of blood trying to keep the true state of affairs from May. Perhaps I misjudged her, perhaps if I had reacted differently, but then life is full of doubts and wrong decisions. Rightly or wrongly I went along with it, believing his assertions that once matters were complete the pictures would be destroyed and I would never see him again. I desperately wanted to believe him, yet instinctively I knew that I would never be wholly free. Call me naïve if you will; blackmailers rarely keep their word about such matters, yet I still hoped desperately that he would. In my efforts to escape the trap I was heading into I actually threatened to expose him to his superiors, and he just smiled, and my blood ran cold when he told me that a number of underworld characters who owed him favours would be quite happy to organise fatal accidents not only for my wife, but for anyone else who might be interested in seeing him in trouble. Maybe it was an empty threat, only I had a gut feeling he meant exactly what he said, and it was a risk I dared not take.

It was at that time that I made the decision that not only did I need to protect May; I needed to protect my only sister and her family as well. In order to do this I had to concoct a story that would satisfy both May and your mother. There is no need to go into details of this, for it is all history now. Briefly, I admitted to them both that Phillip Burton had told me of a threat to kill me by a leading underworld figure, and that whereas he could protect me and my wife, your parents and yourself were a different matter. It was difficult, and it took some ingenuity not only to persuade May, but your parents also. From that time I severed all direct communication with you and your parents because to my way of thinking it was the only way I could be assured of your safety if things went wrong. I set up a trust fund to contribute to your education, and this was not quite as philanthropic a move as you may imagine; it was my hope that when at last you attained adult life and matters reached the conclusion I fear inevitable, your natural curiosity would sooner or later lead you here, and to the resolution of this whole terrible business.

But I am getting in advance of myself; I truly believe that with the passage of years Phillip genuinely forgot your existence, if indeed he ever knew of it, for to the best of my knowledge he never met you or your parents. Certainly you were never referred to when he needed to put additional pressure on me to ensure that I would go along with matters. Through highly discrete intermediaries I kept a watch on you and your parents for years, and never once was there any suggestion that Phillip or anyone associated with him ever attempted to get close to you.

You need to understand that He only disclosed to me as much of his criminal scheme as he deemed necessary for me to know. Basically, he was planning to rob a car, which he knew would be carrying a huge sum of money in used notes. I never knew how much was involved, although I believe it was well into six figures. After the event I learned that the money was part of some underworld transaction that he had got wind of. The details of how he acquired this information, or how he planned and executed this crime I never discovered, yet I have no doubt that being in the police force gave him the advantage he needed to carry it off.

With such a huge sum of money involved, and knowing that the people from whom he had stolen it were unlikely to use civilised methods to effect its recovery and exact vengeance, he needed to secrete the money somewhere until the furore had died down, and the place he selected was Springwater House. This was very deliberate deception, because it was known to be the home of a respectable physician with absolutely no connections with criminals. Not only that, it naturally possessed the perfect hiding place. It was important to his scheme that the house be deserted apart from myself on the day of the crime, and to that end I had to arrange for May and my then housekeeper Mrs Jefferson to visit my in-laws. I think May guessed that something odd was afoot, but I kept the details from her. Phillip had meanwhile enlisted the services of a man called Carpenter as a driver, and at a pre-arranged time he came here, and the two of them set off for a rendezvous in a third vehicle I had never seen before. With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect it was a car stolen especially for the job, and disposed of later. Carpenter seemed a pleasant enough man, and told me that he was happily married with a young daughter not so much different from you in age.

What I never appreciated until it was too late was that part of Phillip’s scheme included cold-blooded murder. The robbery went exactly as he had planned it, and the men in the car were ruthlessly gunned down. I knew when they returned to Springwater House that something terrible had happened; I could read it on Carpenter’s shocked face. He helped to bring the money into the building, yet was obviously only interested in quickly getting as far away as possible. With the money stored away they left again to dispose of the vehicle used for the crime; they were gone for maybe half an hour, and I never knew what they did with it, although my own suspicion was that they took it to Castleman’s; the fellow had a reputation for skating very close to the wind. When they returned a second time I could see that Carpenter was still looking very green round the gills, and of course at that point I did not know exactly what had happened. Without doubt Phillip saw Carpenter as a threat, and after everything was completed to his satisfaction, he handed the man a wad of money and told him to leave. Carpenter was only too happy to comply, and as he walked away and towards the front door, Phillip coolly took out a gun and shot him twice in the back of the head.

I could scarcely believe what I had just seen. Phillip placed the gun on the table and walked over to satisfy himself that life was extinct. Shocked as I was, I just knew that matters had now gone too far. I dived from where I was standing and seized the gun. Phillip looked up at me, still just as cool as ever.

“And just what do you think you are going to do with that, eh?” he asked.

“You will either do what I say, or by God I swear I will shoot you just as you’ve shot Carpenter!”

“Don’t make me laugh, you haven’t the nerve!”

“Then you don’t know me as well as you think,” I shouted back, still frankly quivering with shock, but now determined that matters had gone too far for any personal considerations to sway me. “Get down on the floor, face down. I’m going to phone the police right now, and to hell with the consequences!”

But this wasn’t a television drama; where waving a gun automatically made someone do exactly as you want. He stood upright, put his hands casually into his pockets and looked at me.

“Just put the gun down,” he said in a weary voice. “You know you can’t go through with it.”

“Don’t push me!” I cried. He just laughed and took a step towards me. So help me, I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, he continued walking towards me, and I pulled the trigger again and again. Suddenly he reached out and chopped down over my arm, and the gun went spinning away.

“Now, sit down before you fall down,” he advised in that irritatingly calm and assured manner he affected when he knew that he was going to have everything his own way. “You have played your part to perfection; I knew that I only needed a couple of bullets to finish off Carpenter, and I also needed to get your fingerprints on the gun, for as you will no doubt observe, I’m wearing disposable gloves. Ergo, mission accomplished.”

Before my stunned brain could react he stooped down, picked up the discarded weapon with a clean handkerchief, wrapped it carefully, and put it back in his pocket

“My insurance,” he remarked. “Should you ever be foolish enough to try anything, this will be ‘discovered’,
 
and with your fingerprints all over it you will be well in the frame for murder. Right, so now the next thing is the disposal of Carpenter. Stop looking at me like a startled bloody rabbit and come and give me a hand.”

I tell you; it was like a waking nightmare, being physically no match for him I had no choice other than to comply. I admit that I was in a state of shock as I helped him carry the body out of the hallway. He had everything worked out, even to the place he had selected for the disposal of Carpenter’s remains, and I knew then that he had planned the man’s murder right from the outset. I had always feared and disliked him since he had re-entered my life, but the events of that night served to convince me that he was a man who would stop at nothing. I knew that if I put one foot wrong, it wouldn’t be the simple blackmail he had threatened at the outset; my life, May’s, and even yours and your parents were all to obviously at risk.

As you may already know, there is an old disused well, and that is how the house came by its name, because the well was fed by local spring-water. It had never been used from the time I acquired the house, the water table having been considerably lowered when the pumping station was put in to supply Wellworthy and the surrounding area with mains water a few years earlier. Without hesitation Phillip took the body to the well, and there it was unceremoniously dumped.

“There,” he said callously once the job was done. “Along with the firearm complete with fingerprints, that should effectively establish your guilt if you should ever think of stepping out of line. Right, now get back to the hallway; you will need to thoroughly wash and clean the place, you don’t want Mrs Jefferson to be suspicious when she returns with May, now do you?”

He had me exactly where he wanted me, and there was nothing I could do about it. When he was satisfied that everything was how he decided it should be, he drove away in Carpenter’s car. Some while later somebody drove him back to Springwater House to collect his own vehicle. With hindsight I know there were many things I should have done, but you need to understand that I was mentally paralysed with the shock of all I had witnessed. I sat up for the rest of the night trying to come to terms with things; to find a way out of the terrible situation I was in, yet to no avail. Before I had really started to come to terms with the reality of the situation, I discovered that worse was to follow; I was called out in my official capacity of police surgeon to investigate the horrific discovery of two corpses in a car. These had been ‘discovered’ by Sergeant Phillip Burton, who professed to be as shocked as everyone else by what he had stumbled on! I was like a man living in a waking nightmare, yet somehow I managed to go through the actions required of me without betraying the true state of affairs. There was a tremendous furore over that hideous crime, and Phillip played the part of the traumatised police officer to perfection. In all my life I have never met such a cold, calculating and utterly ruthless person as him. He dictated to me the wording of my preliminary medical report, and any possible evidence that might help the subsequent investigation in a way he wasn't happy with was distorted or removed.