Shades of Murder (37 page)

‘Mickey reckons, Joss put up a good front but underneath it, he’s shit-scared. If we keep working on him, he’ll crack eventually.’

Minchin finished on a comfortable note which made Markby a little uneasy. The man from the Met might well be right, but how long was he prepared to wait for Joss to speak up? Though the visitors had not caused the disruption in the office Markby had feared, he was still looking forward to the day they declared their enquiries closed and took themselves off.

‘As for the rest of Meredith’s ideas . . .’ he began.

‘Nice of her to come in,’ said Minchin easily, ‘but she didn’t have anything new to tell us, did she? I mean, I’d pretty well worked all that out for myself already and I dare say you had, too.’

This took Markby’s breath away for the moment and all he could think was, thank goodness Minchin didn’t say this to Meredith’s face. He could imagine the probable reaction.

‘I’d formed no opinions,’ he said at last, hoping he sounded dignified, rather than just pompous.

Minchin shook his massive finger at him. ‘Who stands to benefit?
Cui bono?
That’s the Latin for it, isn’t it? Comprehensive-school boy myself, so I don’t have any Latin, but you’re a public-school man. You’ll know all these phrases. That’s what I asked myself.
Cui bono?
’

Again Markby was left bereft of speech, or at least of the ability to make an intelligent reply. How much research had Minchin done on him before coming here?

‘Whoever took the poison from the shed, did it because he had murder in mind,’ Minchin went on. ‘So it was someone who’d benefit from the death of at least one other person. I considered the old ladies. They’d be heartily relieved if Jan dropped dead. But they’d got everyone including their solicitor on their side so really, they were probably capable of seeing off Jan without resorting to lacing his grub with arsenic. On the other hand, when you have two elderly people and one younger relative who’s strapped for cash and thinks the old folk are sitting on a pile, well, there you do have a motive,’ Minchin concluded appreciatively. ‘One of the
oldest in the world. The heir who can’t wait.’

‘He wasn’t named in their wills,’ said Markby, feeling he ought to lodge at least one objection to this feasible but annoyingly complacent explanation of events.

‘No, but he was the only member of the family left, wasn’t he? Any court would be sympathetic to his claims. So I reckoned Jan helped himself to the poison but somehow or other, muffed everything when he came to use it. What I haven’t worked out yet is quite how – but there Joss could well provide the key.’

Minchin slowly became aware of Markby’s stunned expression and had the grace to look a little apologetic. ‘Look, I appreciate your girlfriend’s input. I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her feelings by saying all this to her, but best leave the detection to the professionals, eh?’

Though Markby had frequently made similar observations to Meredith himself, he knew he couldn’t agree now without feeling traitorous, so he contented himself with a nod and returned to the safer subject of Kenny Joss.

‘It’s your show,’ he said carefully to Minchin. ‘I would just like to make a suggestion.’

Minchin gave an unexpected grin. ‘If I thought this was my show, I’d be a fool. You’re the gaffer here and everyone’s very keen to let me and Mickey Hayes know it! What’s your idea?’

‘I know the Joss family. We all do. They’re a mix of petty crooks, wheeler-dealer traders and the fairly legit. Kenny, as far as we know, has kept his nose clean. However, the same can’t be said of his relatives and if we bring Kenny in for questioning, he’ll know the drill. He’ll ask for a solicitor straight away and then sit there, refusing to speak a word.’

Minchin rubbed his chin with his thumbnail in the habit he had, and asked, ‘They’ve got a regular solicitor?’

‘Oh yes, indeed they have! Bertie Smith. Bertie has represented the Josses for years. They’re the type of client in which he specialises, if I can put it like that. He’s a familiar face in interview rooms around the county, is Bertie. No client is too seedy. A string of convictions as long as your arm won’t prevent Bertie insisting that his client has been framed. Bertie’s skill at finding loopholes in the law is unmatched.’ Markby spoke with the bitterness born of experience.

‘I know the type,’ said Minchin in gloomy sympathy.

‘I’m sure you do. Under Bertie’s guidance, Kenny Joss will keep his secrets as effectively as the Sphinx. So what I’d suggest is that, instead of bringing him in here, we go to him. Yes, I know he’s had other visits
from the police and has seen them off. But we can turn that to our advantage. He’ll be congratulating himself on having outwitted both Dave Pearce and Hayes. Maybe he’ll have got a tad complacent? On his home ground, where he thinks he did so well before, we’ll stand a much better chance of getting him talking before he decides he ought to phone Bertie. And as we know, the more often someone has to repeat a fabricated story, the greater the chance he’ll start to contradict himself or slip up.’ Markby smiled apologetically. ‘I’m saying “we”, but I should, of course, be saying “you”. You and Inspector Hayes, I mean.’

Minchin was silent for a moment or two, tapping his broad fingertips on the desk. Then he said, ‘Why don’t you and I go together? It’s unusual, I know that, but it might work. Faced with the two of us, he might just be overawed enough to lose his presence of mind and cough up the truth. How does that sound to you?’

‘It sounds good,’ Markby said promptly. ‘After all, he’s lied to Dave Pearce and he’s lied to Mickey Hayes. But he hasn’t lied to us, not to our faces. It’ll make it easier for him to change tack if we can persuade him it’s in his interest.’

But Kenny Joss was at work, somewhere in Bamford, driving his taxi. That was clear from the empty garage.

‘What do we do?’ asked Minchin, staring morosely through the windscreen of Markby’s car. ‘Go in and ask his wife, or whoever it is he’s got manning the phone, to call him up?’

‘If we do, the second person she’ll call will be Bertie Smith. No.’ Markby backed the car into a convenient gateway and turned back the way they’d come. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

He drove them back into town and turned into the car park of The Crown Hotel.

‘Going for a pint?’ asked Minchin, raising his eyebrows.

‘Going to make a phone call.’ Markby took out his mobile phone. ‘Hang on, I need Directory Enquiries first. Hello? Yes, Bamford, please, a taxi firm – K. Joss . . . Right . . .’ He scribbled the number on a notepad. ‘Stage One,’ he said to Minchin. ‘Now for Stage Two.’ He punched in Kenny’s number. ‘Hello? Yes, we need a taxi to pick us up from The Crown, to go to the railway station. How soon can he get here? . . . Fair enough. We’ll wait by the hotel entrance.’

Markby put down the phone. ‘Concepta Joss – she’s his teenaged daughter not his wife – has called him on their radio link and her dad’ll be here in ten minutes.’

‘Concepta? Blimey,’ commented Minchin.

‘The Josses like names that roll off the tongue. Kenny was lucky.’

They wandered round to the front of the hotel and positioned themselves by its pillared porch.

‘It don’t look so bad, this place,’ observed Minchin, glancing up at it.

‘It’s all right but it isn’t home from home. I thought you’d be more comfortable in Meredith’s place.’

‘Nice little cottage, that. She says you’re going to sell up both places and buy a house somewhere. You ought to get something pretty good with the money from both sales in your pockets.’

‘It’s not so easy, though,’ said Markby. ‘Good property costs the earth. A lot of people fancy living in this part of the world. That’s why Dudley Newman is so anxious to get his hands on Fourways.’

Minchin searched in his pocket before taking his hand out empty and giving a mutter of discontent.

‘Given up?’ asked Markby sympathetically, recognising the reflex action of the recently reformed smoker.

‘Trying to. I was starting to wheeze. Mickey Hayes smokes like a chimney. It doesn’t help.’

Markby pointed. ‘Here comes our man. Stage Three.’

The taxi drew up and Kenny Joss got out. He looked across the car roof at the two men by the portico and his expression became first puzzled, then wary.

‘You call for a taxi?’

‘That’s right,’ Markby said.

He opened the rear door and slid on to the back seat. Minchin walked round to the other door and joined him. Kenny, even more unhappy, clambered back into the driver’s seat. He looked into the mirror, seeing their reflected faces.

‘You want the railway station, right? That’s what our Connie said.’

‘Actually, we’ve changed our minds.’ Markby leaned forward and reached his ID over Kenny’s shoulder. ‘How about we go somewhere private, Kenny?’

Kenny twisted in his seat aggressively. ‘Am I being fitted up here or what?’

‘We just want to talk, Kenny. Anywhere you like. Here, if you want.’

‘We’re not going back to my place,’ Kenny told him. ‘My missus would hit the roof if she found out the fuzz had been there again. “Police coming round all the time, Kenny, what you been up to?” I’ve been getting enough of that. And I’m not going with you to the nick, neither!’
He considered the situation. ‘We’ll go down by the river, OK? Not that I’ve got anything to say to you.’

He let in the clutch and they lurched forward.

Markby thought Kenny had chosen the spot cleverly. There was a path along the riverside, a popular stroll in summer and at weekends, but deserted now except for the occasional dog-walker. At intervals there were benches interspersed with wooden tables with fixed seating for the use of summer picnickers. The aspens rustled above their heads and from time to time, out on the water, a spreading ring of concentric circles marked the spot where a trout had surfaced briefly. A pair of swans glided past. On the further bank beyond another line of trees, lay pasture land grazed peacefully by black and white cattle. It was a scene straight from a Constable painting and one in which it was difficult to pile on serious pressure, not when everything around them soothed the eye and lulled the senses.

They settled themselves at one of the picnic tables, Kenny on one side, Minchin and Markby facing him. Looking at the empty space beside Kenny, Markby wondered how long it would be before Kenny suggested it was filled by Bertie Smith. One of the swans, seeing people settling down in an attitude it associated with food, changed direction and paddled closer to the bank. When no lump of sandwich came its way, it paddled away again in clear disgust.

Either letting Kenny choose the place of their talk or the peaceful nature of their surroundings had already resulted in the man looking more relaxed than he had while driving. He was possessed of distinctive looks and probably cut a dashing figure among his associates. His complexion was swarthy and his thick black hair overlong but carefully tended. A regular Jack-the-Lad, thought Markby, and wondered whether, born two hundred years earlier, Kenny might have been a highwayman holding up travellers, rather than driving them about as now. As he watched, Joss leaned his forearms on the table and his dark gaze met Markby’s.

‘Go on, then,’ he invited. ‘What do you want to ask?’

‘We want to go through Saturday afternoon with you,’ Minchin said. ‘I’m speaking of the day Jan Oakley died.’

‘You’ve got all that on record. I drove the old girls into town and I brought them back. I’ve got nothing else to do with it.’

‘When you came back with the women—’ Minchin began.

Kenny interrupted. ‘I went through that with the copper who came to
my place. Not the London feller, the local chap. Then the London feller came and took me through the whole bleedin’ lot again. I can only tell you what I told them. I carried the shopping round to the kitchen and then I left.’

‘And you saw Jan Oakley?’ Minchin prompted.

Markby fancied Kenny’s confident attitude slipped a degree or two. He clasped his hands, unclasped them, looked from Minchin to Markby and said, ‘I saw him as I was taking the shopping into the kitchen. We passed. We exchanged a word or two in greeting, that’s all. I never saw him again.’

Very few people saw Jan again, thought Markby. He glanced at Minchin and took up the questioning. ‘Kenny, we need to know every single thing Jan did that day. We’re questioning you because we think you can help us fill in details which might not seem important to you, but may be to us. Now, when you returned from the shopping trip with the Oakley sisters, you told Inspector Pearce that they entered the house through the front door, whereas they’d left it through the kitchen door at the rear of the premises.’

‘Ye-es,’ Kenny agreed, his eyes cautious.

‘I know that house quite well,’ Markby said. ‘If the front door is open, the quickest way to reach the kitchen is simply to walk through it and down the hall. The inner kitchen door is at the far end of the entrance hall. But you, so you claim, chose to walk all the way round the outside of the house to reach the outer kitchen door at the back, despite the fact that you were carrying heavy bags and the front door was wide open.’

‘They weren’t that heavy,’ muttered Kenny sullenly.

‘I think,’ Markby said, ‘on your return from the shopping trip, you went to the kitchen through the house. You didn’t go round it to the back entrance as you did when you called for the fare. I can check quite easily. Either Damaris or Florence Oakley will remember.’

There was a silence. Kenny said, ‘I may have gone through the house. Perhaps I misremembered. I wasn’t paying that much attention. Look, I didn’t know it was going to be important, did I?’

‘It is important, Kenny. This is a murder investigation. It’s not a question of stolen goods or counterfeit designer wear – it’s murder. We never close the file on an unsolved murder. It stays open and we stay with it, year in and year out, until we’re satisfied. We’re not going to leave you alone. We’re going to keep coming back and we’re going to have this conversation over and over again until we’re satisfied. And I,’ added Markby, ‘am very far from satisfied and I doubt Mr Minchin is.’

Kenny said sulkily, ‘I remember now. I went down the hall. I carried the stuff through the front door and to the kitchen that way, through the house.’