A Fatal Obsession Read online

  So he’d had his team checking out the current whereabouts and status of the victims of the fire who had survived, the families of those who had died, as well as all those who had worked at the warehouse at the time and been particularly vociferous about the company’s fire precautions and paltry compensation paid out to the injured. Anyone, in fact, who might feel they had a grievance. It was always possible – if a shade unlikely – that, in the intervening years, someone might have developed a mental fixation that had allowed them to view Sir Marcus Deering as the man to blame for all their ills.

  Perhaps some poor sod who had escaped injury from the flames and avoided the worst effects of smoke inhalation had gone on to have nightmares. Nightmares that had lasted for years, resulting in his becoming too tired to do a job of work and hence becoming long-term unemployed. Which, in a poisonous domino effect, might have led him to lose his family as the wife left and took the kids with her.

  And perhaps this mythical someone had simply woken up, some twenty years after the event, seen the ruination of their lives and just snapped, deciding to take revenge? It was easier to blame someone else for all your woes, wasn’t it? Especially if that same someone had then gone on to make a vast success of their life, ending up owning their own business empire, and living on a beautiful country estate.

  But the list of possible suspects was a long one and covered a lot of people who, in the intervening years, had become dispersed throughout the country. And it took time, not to mention the cooperation of a lot of other police forces, to track them all down and investigate their current status.

  So far they hadn’t found anyone who looked good for it. But DI Jennings hadn’t given up on that line of inquiry just yet. Because, barring any other evidence coming to light, it was hard to see why anyone would have taken such a murderous dislike to Sir Marcus Deering. And yet clearly someone had, and if they didn’t find out who, and soon, they might well have another death on their hands. And this time, the blame for not preventing it would rest squarely on their shoulders.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The day after the inquest on Jonathan McGillicuddy had been held and quickly closed, Trudy found herself blushing deeply as she walked into the station with the topcoat of her uniform wrapped firmly around a naked man’s waist.

  As expected, she was instantly greeted with hoots of derision and a few catcalls from her colleagues – the loudest wolf-whistle coming from that clown Rodney Broadstairs. The desk sergeant on duty, an old-timer called Phil Monroe, who’d seen it all, merely gave her a weary smile as she trooped dejectedly past.

  ‘So, you caught the flasher then,’ Walter Swinburne said as she frogmarched her defiant captive into the open office area and tried to steer him towards a free desk. The oldest PC in the station looked over her specimen without much enthusiasm.

  A sorry-looking, fifty-two-year-old named Charles Frobisher, he was skinny as a rake (save for a surprisingly rounded pot belly), balding on top, and so pale and – given the cold weather – goose-pimpled that he reminded Trudy of nothing so much as a plucked chicken.

  Exactly why he thought the good housewives of Oxford would be interested in seeing him in all his naked glory, she couldn’t imagine. Nevertheless, for the past few weeks, he’d taken to jumping out of the evergreen bushes in their local parks and then streaking off down the paths to the bemusement of the local dog-walkers.

  She knew DI Jennings had only given her the job of patrolling the local parks to keep her busy, and probably hadn’t ever expected her to be in the right place at the right time, so she felt absolutely chuffed to prove him wrong. Not that this particular episode was likely to cover her in glory. Even now, she could see how amused her colleagues were.

  And when the sorry-looking specimen went before the judge, he’d probably only be bound over to some sort of mental-health facility to see if the psychiatrists there could cure his exhibitionism.

  Which would hardly cause her star to shine any brighter with her superiors!

  As Charles Frobisher strutted around the office like a cock bantam, his nether regions safely cocooned in her overcoat, she sharply ordered him to sit down in the chair opposite her desk and began the painstaking task of typing up the paperwork.

  Not that it should take her all that long to type out her report. After all, she’d simply been standing under a large, bare horse chestnut tree, trying to keep out of the worst of the cold January wind, when she’d heard a startled shriek. Turning around, she’d observed an indignant, middle-aged lady, who’d been walking a little West Highland terrier, trying to hit a naked man with her handbag.

  The little dog had started nipping valiantly at the man’s bare ankles as he’d tried to dance away from the gnashing canine teeth. And since he was barefoot, when he’d taken off on seeing Trudy’s approach, she’d been able to catch him easily. Needless to say, he hadn’t put up any struggle, much to her relief. (She’d not been quite sure which bit of his unprepossessing body to grab first. Some things just weren’t covered in police training.)

  Now, as she typed furiously, her cheeks still burning, she wasn’t sure whether she should be admiring the exhibitionist’s stamina and fortitude in going naked in the middle of January, or cursing him for making her the butt of station jokes for the next month (at least) to come.

  ‘Can I have a cup of tea then, lovely lady?’ Charles Frobisher asked her politely. A single man, who lived with his mother on what he called ‘a private income’, he’d listed his occupation as ‘poet’.

  ‘No. Sit down and keep quiet,’ Trudy hissed, casting a quick look over at the DI’s door.

  ‘Don’t worry – he’s not interested in what the cat dragged in. He’s got the vulture in with him,’ PC Swinburne reassured her amiably.

  Trudy blinked at him. ‘Who?’

  ‘Our beloved coroner, Dr Clement Ryder,’ the old PC told her. ‘You’re new, so you haven’t had a chance to come across him yet, but you will. We all have to run that particular gauntlet sooner or later. One day you’ll have to testify at one of his inquests and when you do, my girl, just you make sure you refer to your notes and don’t slip up. The old sod will have you, if you do.’

  From the way he spoke, Trudy guessed the old constable was talking from bitter experience.

  ‘Oh,’ she said nervously. ‘He sounds a bit of a nightmare.’

  Walter grunted. ‘He was one of those bigwig fancy heart surgeons up in London before he quit. And you know what they’re like,’ he added grimly. ‘Think they’re closely related to God Almighty, most of them. Having the power of life and death in their hands, and all that rot. Now he’s coroner, he thinks he’s bleeding Perry Mason and Dick Tracy all rolled into one. Trouble is, he’s well respected in this city – invited to dine at a lot of High Tables and all that. Like this with the mayor,’ he said, crossing his fingers in demonstration. ‘So we have to indulge the big-headed old coot. Even if he does like to stick his nose in where it isn’t wanted.’

  Trudy blinked. ‘Sorry?’

  Walter Swinburne sniffed angrily. ‘Thinks he can tell the police what’s what. That’s probably what he’s doing now, I shouldn’t wonder. Trying to tell the boss how he should be handling the McGillicuddy case or something. Not that that’s any business of his, mind, but you can’t tell him that. None of the other coroners give us half as much trouble as the old vulture does. The boss won’t like it,’ he predicted with savage satisfaction, pursing his lips. ‘Nope, the boss won’t like it all.’

  As it turned out, the old constable was only half right. DI Jennings didn’t much like having Dr Ryder breathing down his neck, but the coroner wasn’t there to tell him how he should be running his latest murder investigation.

  Instead, he seemed to have some sort of bee in his bonnet about an old case.

  When the coroner had called in that morning, just expecting Jennings to drop everything and make time for him (which, of course, Jennings had, damn him!), the DI had sensed trouble ahead. After he’d li
stened to what Ryder actually wanted, he’d become even more displeased. Because the damned man only wanted him to reopen and investigate an old case, a death by misadventure, dating from nearly five years ago.

  ‘Like I’ve been trying to tell you, Dr Ryder,’ Jennings said now, his patience wearing thin, ‘I simply don’t have the authority to reopen a case just on your say-so, especially one that seems to have brought in a perfectly adequate verdict. And before you carry on…’ He held out a hand as if to physically ward him off. ‘…I don’t believe my immediate superiors would allow it, even if I were to ask them,’ he said shortly.

  He paused as he heard a sudden laughing roar outside, and glanced through the internal window that screened him from the rest of the office, just in time to see the pretty new probationary WPC come in with a naked man.

  He drew his breath in sharply. Bloody hell, she’d actually caught the flasher, he thought blankly. Then he scowled as he watched her steer a skinny old man, covered by her overcoat, to a chair. There was something distinctly seedy and vaguely nauseating about the scene, and he only hoped nothing untoward would come of it. It would only take one silly matron on some influential committee with the ear of City Hall to complain about how wrong it was to expect respectable young women to catch dirty-minded perverts to cause one hell of a big stink. She’d complain to her civil-servant husband, who had the ear of the Chief Constable, and before you knew it, his immediate superior would be hauling DI Harry Jennings over the coals for…

  ‘I only want someone to help me do a little discreet digging.’ The caustic and precise tones of the coroner brought his mind snapping back to the problem at hand.

  ‘I believe the Fleet-Wright case was seriously flawed. And given the connection to your latest murder victim, I can’t understand why you’re deliberately dragging your heels, man,’ Clement Ryder put in cannily.

  Harry Jennings sat back down behind his deck with a sigh. ‘The fact that our murder victim, McGillicuddy, once knew someone who died in what you insist on calling mysterious circumstances hardly makes for much of a connection, Dr Ryder,’ he pointed out wearily.

  Clement drew in a long, slow, patient breath, and the policeman felt his spirits sink ever further. Clearly the older man wasn’t going to give up on this, and the last thing he needed was Dr Clement bloody Ryder running loose on some sort of a crusade.

  ‘I’m not asking you to officially reopen the case yet. I’m not even asking you to assign a team to it,’ the coroner said magnanimously.

  Harry Jennings smiled grimly. ‘Kind of you, I’m sure, sir,’ he muttered sardonically.

  ‘In fact, I’m perfectly willing to devote my own spare time to it,’ Clement said, hiding a satisfied smile as the DI’s eyes grew rounder and wider than those of an owl, and the younger man nearly rocketed out of his chair in alarm. ‘But naturally, I can’t do that,’ Clement carried on mildly before the DI had a chance to protest, ‘without some sort of official status or help from the city police.’

  Jennings, who’d slumped back in his chair in relief, quickly shot up out of it again. ‘That’s impossible, man,’ he snapped, finally at the end of his tether. ‘My team are all busy with the McGillicuddy murder case. Surely you must realise that?’

  As he spoke, he wandered back to the internal office window and looked through, relieved to see his team busily working. ‘And as you can imagine, my superiors would prefer we solve it sooner rather than later.’

  ‘I understand that, naturally. But surely you can spare me one person? Just a body in uniform is all I need to give me a bit of official status when I re-question some witnesses,’ Clement cajoled. ‘And who knows, it’s possible the Fleet-Wright case just might connect back to your McGillicuddy case. And think how stupid you’d look if that turned out be the case and you hadn’t followed up on it – especially since I’d even offered to do it for you! Just think of it as killing two birds with one stone, man. What have you got to lose?’

  ‘You have no authority to go around questioning anyone,’ Jennings snapped, pushed beyond endurance.

  ‘Exactly,’ Clement Ryder said smugly. ‘Which is why I need an actual police officer. Someone to work closely with me and follow my lead. Surely you have someone unimportant you can spare me?’

  Instantly, as he said this, Harry Jennings thought of PC Swinburne. The old man was just putting in time until his retirement anyway. And by now, he was willing to do almost anything in order to get the old vulture off his back. But when he looked back into the outer office at his team, the first person he saw was WPC Trudy Loveday.

  Who’d just caught the flasher.

  And would need to be reassigned to some other case where she couldn’t come to any harm or get in his way.

  And suddenly he began to smile.

  ‘You know, Dr Ryder,’ he said, turning back to smile through gritted teeth at the trouble-making coroner. ‘I think I have just the person for you…’

  When Trudy returned from depositing her prisoner in the cells (Frobisher having been clothed by a kindly Salvation Army colonel who’d come in with some donated items), she was surprised to be called into the DI’s office. She could almost count on the fingers of one hand the number of times her superior had actually wanted to see her, and secretly suspected he wished he hadn’t been assigned any female staff at all. It was almost as if he didn’t know what to do with her, and so he usually left it to the Sergeant to assign her details.

  And when she stepped inside his office, she was even more surprised to see that the DI’s visitor – a rather distinguished-looking man – hadn’t yet left. Dressed in a smart charcoal-grey suit, with an imperious thick sweep of silver hair, he regarded her from beneath bushy eyebrows with obvious curiosity. Although his grey eyes looked somewhat watery, the expression in them was razor-sharp as they observed her.

  Under their influence, Trudy could feel her spine begin to stiffen, and she became instantly alert.

  ‘WPC Loveday, this is Dr Clement Ryder, one of the city’s coroners,’ Harry Jennings said dryly.

  ‘Sir,’ Trudy said. But whether to her superior office, or to the man lounging in the chair watching her, nobody in the room could tell – including Trudy.

  ‘Dr Ryder has rather an interesting proposition that he wants to put to you,’ DI Jennings said, slightly mischievously. Because, of course, he knew it was actually up to him to give the police constable her orders and that she really had no say in the matter.

  He just didn’t want to make it easy for the old vulture.

  And as the coroner shot him a chastising look, Trudy, with Walter Swinburne’s words of warning about this man still echoing in her ears, said cautiously, ‘Oh?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mavis McGillicuddy stood at her sink, listlessly washing up the breakfast things. Marie had gone back to school. The poor mite now only had her grandmother to look after her, and Mavis felt the responsibility keenly.

  She stared out of her kitchen window vaguely as she automatically began to dry the teacups. Her neighbours and friends had been wonderful, rallying round, but they couldn’t be with her every minute of the day. And the house now felt so empty and quiet and nothing felt normal.

  Even the people passing by out on the street paused to look at her house now. As if expecting to see something… What? Interesting? Frightening? Mavis didn’t quite know. But at the least the reporters had stopped bothering her for the moment and she was being left in peace.

  But no sooner had she thought this than Mavis noticed the woman at the bottom of the short garden path. She seemed to be walking up to the gate, as if trying to make up her mind to open it, but then she’d veer off, as if losing her nerve.

  Slowly, Mavis McGillicuddy’s hands stilled on her tea towel. The woman was a stranger, she was sure. Nicely dressed, by the cut of her tailored coat and… yes, her nice leather gloves.

  Although, since Jonathan’s death, she’d become used to casual ‘gawpers’, as she thought of them, this woman didn
’t strike her at all as one of the usual, run-of-the-mill curiosity-seekers.

  Almost curious now, Mavis watched the woman thoughtfully. And frowned. Did her appearance ring a faint bell?

  She looked to be nearly two decades younger than herself, and was still attractive. And now, again, she had marched back to the gate with a determined step, her back ramrod-straight, as if steeling herself for something unpleasant. And this time, her elegantly gloved hand even got as far as reaching for the gate latch. But then, at the last minute, she turned away again. This time there was the slope of defeat in her shoulders as she turned and walked away.

  And didn’t come back.

  With a shrug, Mavis reached for another plate and slipped it into her washing-up bowl, not realising she’d washed and dried it once already.

  ‘So, have you got all that clear?’ DI Jennings asked Trudy, who was standing straight and alert in front of his desk.

  The coroner, Dr Clement Ryder, had just left and her superior was watching her closely.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Trudy said, feeling both excited and vaguely puzzled. ‘You want me to read the inquest file Dr Ryder has left, give you a summary, and then work closely with Dr Ryder as he pursues his inquiries. And at the end of each day I’m to give you a written report of our activities.’

  DI Jennings nodded. The girl had a quick mind and good grasp of things, he’d give her that.

  ‘And I’m to report to you at once if I believe Dr Ryder has overstepped the mark in any way.’ Here, Trudy began to feel a shade uneasy, since she wasn’t quite sure what the DI had meant by this. What would her boss consider overstepping the mark to be, exactly? ‘And when we interview any witnesses, I must be the one to do the questioning.’ She parroted his instructions back at him.