CATHERINE
MOLONEY

1

Clouds on the Horizon

Like Sheila Birtle, DI Gilbert Markham always felt his spirits lift with the arrival of spring.

  Saturday 21st March found him taking a turn in the terraced graveyard of St Chad’s which overlooked the back of Bromgrove Police Station.

  ‘You’ll end up with your own statue in there, you visit it that often,’ DS George Noakes was wont to observe. And it was true that the DI invariably sought out this favourite refuge before plunging into the sordid realities of a homicide investigation.

  It was a beautiful morning, white clouds scudding across a sky so intensely blue that it almost hurt the eyes to look upon it. The daffodils tossed their little trumpet heads in true poetic fashion and sunshine softened the austere grey of monuments and crosses which crowded the paths in serried ranks. Clusters of dog violets, windflowers and saxifrage stippled the foot of the cenotaph like exotic pincushions while thrushes and blackbirds chirruped contentedly from somewhere in the tall old elm-trees that had protected the church from time immemorial.

  It would have been utterly perfect but for the consciousness of his profession. The canker in the bud.

  Markham sat on a bench next to the cenotaph and turned his thoughts to the previous day’s discovery….

  There had been something truly horrible about the spectacle of Michael Dominguez’s battered corpse as the paramedics extracted it from beneath the railcar banquette. Worse than everything was the contrast between the man’s mashed and bloodied features and the perky red cravat around his neck.

  ‘It was his trademark,’ Sheila Birtle sobbed. ‘He liked to send himself up…. said you couldn’t be a stationmaster without a bandana.’

  Arriving amid the usual vile squealing of brakes, DS Noakes lost no time in steering the hysterical woman away from the gruesome scene, keeping up a stream of soothing prattle which contrasted sharply with the bullishness he reserved for his own sex.

  ‘You don’ want to remember your friend like that, luv,’ he told her with gruff solicitude, his own innards twisting at the thought of that mangled head dripping pulpy matter onto the floor of the train compartment. ‘You an’ him helped out here, right? Well, I reckon he’d want you to get that café open so we can have a brew all round.’

  Crashingly tactless with the rest of the world, Noakes invariably struck the right chord when it came to dealing with the stricken and vulnerable. In no time at all, Shirley was busy making hot drinks and sorting biscuits for the ambulance personnel, pathologist Doug ‘Dimples’ Davidson and police. Strictly speaking the café should have been cordoned off, but Shirley swore it and the waiting room (with interconnecting ticket office) had been locked when she arrived for cleaning duty and there was no sign of Michael Dominguez or his assailant in its vicinity.

  ‘It was deliberate, you know,’ she said softly just before Markham arranged for a uniform to drive her home. ‘Putting the scarf round his neck after doing…. that to him.’ Her voice was thick, the blue eyes brimming once more. ‘Downright wicked,’ she added with vehemence.

  Once she had gone, Dimples withdrew a plastic evidence bag from his pocket with gloved hands and handed it to the DI.

  ‘I think the poor woman was right about it being a sick joke,’ said the bluff ruddy-complexioned doctor who had more of the farmer than sawbones about him. ‘This bookplate was in there as well, pinned to his jacket like the man was some kind of exhibit.’

  ‘What’s it say?’ Noakes squinted at the blood smeared evidence bag with disfavour.

  ‘Calder Vale Book Club,’ Dimples replied. ‘Only someone’s drawn a skull and crossbones in the corner.’

  The DS scowled, pudgy bulldog face full of concentrated disgust.

  ‘Great,’ he muttered, ‘so we’re looking for a clever dick nutter.’

  ‘You’re looking for a psychopath,’ came the blunt rejoinder. ‘It’s a while since I’ve seen a body mauled about as badly as that.’

  ‘Time of death?’

  ‘Now you know better than that, Markham,’ the pathologist tut-tutted before relenting at the DI’s sombre expression. ‘I’d say between eight and ten on Thursday night.’

  Noakes cleared his throat.

  ‘Was he…. well, tortured or owt?’

  ‘Battered with, at a guess, a steel jack or treadle.’ It was Dimples’ turn to swallow. ‘The victim put up quite a fight, but it was such a frenzied attack he stood no chance.’

  ‘Never saw it coming, then?’ Markham probed.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’ The pathologist took a long gup of tea as though to clear his mouth. ‘I recognize the name,’ he said at last. ‘Michael Dominguez, yes?’

  ‘You know him, doc?’ Noakes asked eagerly.

  ‘The wife dragged me to a couple of his talks at the art gallery…. Spanish painters or some such malarkey.’ Dimples clearly felt aggrieved that those were hours of his life he would never get back. ‘Could’ve been worse, I suppose…. bucketloads of ham, but the ladies lapped it up.’

  ‘What was he then…. an art expert?’ The DS was evidently no fonder of the breed than Dimples.

  Between replacing items of kit in what Noakes irreverently called his ‘bag of tricks’, the doctor offered up some nuggets about the dead man. ‘Retired from the university…. big cheese in academic circles apparently…. published a few books into the bargain…. house in Grasmere Park.’ Now the medical man looked sad. ‘Actually, as I recall there was something quite endearing about him…. a sort of childlike enthusiasm…. and he wasn’t totally up himself like most of that lot at the university.’

  Noakes nodded grimly as though to say, I know what you mean.

  ‘Was he a dago then?’

  Markham winced but the other, inured to the sergeant’s contempt for anything resembling a PC lexicon, didn’t turn a hair.

  ‘Spanish ancestry…. Quite swarthy looking…. big sprawling nose that took over half his face…. good head of hair, mind.’ He winked at Noakes. ‘Helped along from a bottle, I’d wager.’ Another swig of tea. ‘Handsome enough in a continental sort of way…. seemed a bit too exotic for the university, though no trace of a foreign accent…. pure BBC.’

  ‘You said the ladies liked him,’ Markham observed delicately.

  ‘Not sure he liked them back, if you get me.’ Dimples was thoughtful. ‘I could be barking up the wrong tree, of course, and the women certainly went gaga for him….’

  ‘Keeping his options open then,’ Noakes grunted.

  Amused, the doctor nodded. ‘Quite possibly, Sergeant.’

  A cloud passed over his face. ‘He was a bit over the top for my taste, but there was something open and trusting about him….’

  A naïveté which could have prevented him seeing the danger rushing towards him until it was too late.

  ‘Whatever the man was, he didn’t deserve to die like that.’ Dimples snapped his medical bag shut with unnecessary force. ‘Be sure to get whoever did this, Markham.’ He paused impressively. ‘And do it fast. I’d say he could develop a taste for it.’

  After he was gone, Markham and Noakes watched the uniforms as they cordoned off the railway sidings with yellow crime scene tape.

  ‘Looks like ole Dimples took a shine to the vic,’ Noakes ruminated.

  ‘Yes.’ Markham’s face was shaded with melancholy. ‘Quite a character by the sound of it.’

  ‘Grasmere Park’s poshville,’ the DS volunteered. Then, with a hint of pride creeping into his voice. ‘One of the missus’ pals from the Women’s Guild lives there.’

  ‘Indeed, Sergeant. That could be very useful.’

  The pouchy features radiated gratification.

  ‘The missus says it’s all very nicey-nicey on the surface, but you wouldn’t believe the bitching that goes on.’

  ‘Oh but I do, Noakes,’ the DI said gravely. ‘A closed community is a like a petri dish for all manner of hatreds and resentments…. and when a virus breaks loose, all hell follows in its wake.’

  …. Remembering his words, it occurred to Markham that he had sounded melodramatic. Certainly DCI Sidney (whose moniker ‘Slimy Sid’ was justly earned) would baulk at talk of petri dishes and viruses. ‘Save the poetry and twiddles for when you write your first novel, Markham,’ he had said with ill-concealed jealousy of his subordinate’s cultured erudition.

  And yet, for all the DCI’s rancorous agenda, Markham knew he must keep a check on the philosophical streak that formed such a strong part of his makeup.

  But it was hard not to feel a sense of acute foreboding as the thought of that scrap of red cloth round the dead man’s neck…. the jaunty calling card badged with blood and gore.

  Downright wicked.

  He rose to his feet and, casting one last fond look at nature’s outspread tapestry behind him, headed towards the station.

                                       …………………………………………….

The outer office in CID was quiet as Markham passed through to his own glass-walled corner sanctum with its unrivalled view of the station carpark. Sighing, it occurred to him that his workplace looked staler and shabbier than ever by contrast with the glowing panorama of St Chad’s. But in the current economic climate, the chances of his superiors sanctioning a splurge on interior décor were vanishingly small.

  As he passed DS Kate Burton’s desk, he smiled at the sight of the miniature bonsai tree set in a gravel tray with its own tiny bamboo rake. In the wake of her broken engagement, this earnest capable member of his team had developed a passion for all things Zen. God help her if Noakes decided to lend a hand with the watering….

  He shut the door of his office and sat down heavily in the supposedly ‘ergonomic’ chair behind his desk.

  How do you solve a problem like DS George Noakes?

  The grizzled veteran had long been in DCI Sidney’s crosshairs as an ideal candidate for redundancy due precisely to those very qualities which made him so indispensable to Markham: an outspokenness and capacity for politically incorrect gaffes which left the liberals aghast; lack of reverence for authority in general and ‘the gold braid mob’ in particular; a dogged determination to fight for the underdog and devil take the hindmost.

  Despite being polar opposites, a strange affinity had existed between the DI and Noakes right from the beginning of their association, only deepening as the years went by. Noakes’s truculent loyalty to his boss never faltered, rendering him impervious to the machinations of those who envied Markham’s meteoric rise and would be only too happy to see him humbled.

  The DS might be CID’s resident dinosaur, but he was unusually sensitive to undercurrents which lay below the surface. Without the need for words, Noakes had guessed the tragedy of Markham’s adolescence – the stepfather’s abuse that had blighted his formative years and made him bury his emotions deep inside.

  Markham’s lover Olivia Mullen, an English teacher at Hope Academy, had clicked with Noakes from the start. Their inexplicable mutual admiration was an ill-disguised source of irritation to Mrs Noakes. ‘I think she must have bewitched my husband,’ Muriel Noakes was wont to say with a brittle laugh that deceived no-one.

  But when Noakes dug his heels in, that was that. Despite his undoubted devotion to the snobbish overbearing wife whom he had met (bafflingly to those who knew them) on the ballroom dancing circuit, he regarded his boss’s willowy red-haired partner with all the reverence of a medieval squire sprung from the pages of Arthurian legend. Teasing and roguish with ‘George’, Olivia relished his unvarnished honesty and knew he would always have Markham’s back.

  Somehow Kate Burton had never been admitted to this magic circle of intimacy.

  Dedicated and conscientious, the psychology graduate’s path into the police had not been easy. Eventually overcoming parental opposition (‘no job for a woman’, her father said), Burton had worked hard to reach her present position in CID. It took a while before she and Noakes surmounted their ‘personality clash’ – his political incorrectness versus her right-on sensibilities and eager beaver impulses – but somehow they had reached a mutual understanding, united in their allegiance to Markham and equally tenacious in hunting down murderers. Recent investigations had brought out Noakes’s protective streak when his colleague blundered into danger, so their truce looked set to hold.

  There was a curious restraint and self-consciousness in Burton’s manner towards Markham these days that bothered the DI. He knew she envied the closeness between himself and Noakes but somehow didn’t think that was the root of the problem. The broken engagement had made her withdraw still further into her shell (‘she’s well rid cos the guy’s a no-mark, if you ask me,’ was Noakes’s withering verdict on her stolid ex-fiancé) and she showed no appetite for taking her Inspector’s exams.

  Somehow he would have to get to the bottom of it…. couldn’t allow a talented detective like Burton to drift.

  But Noakes posed the more troubling dilemma.

  A cloud hung over the relationship with his wingman and the DI didn’t know how to dispel it.

  Their most recent murder investigation at the Bluebell Dance Studio had seen a skeleton tumble out of Noakes’s closet, namely the fact that Natalie Noakes – the apple of his eye – was most likely not his biological daughter but the result of Muriel’s youthful fling with a man who had left her high and dry. To make matters worse, it was eminently probable that Noakes had discovered the truth and took the law into his own hands.

  Now an enquiry was underway, and the police watchdog involved. The DI never doubted that his number two would eventually be exonerated, not least since the IOPC wasn’t privy to Noakes’s family history, but it hurt that the man who was closer to him than just about anybody else had failed to confide the story leaving Markham to piece it together from other sources.

  ‘It’s chivalry,’ Olivia tried to reassure him. ‘George’s code of honour, you see…. he can’t bear the thought of anyone looking down on Muriel…. or knowing that Natalie isn’t his.’

  Markham did see, but these days a shadow still hung over the relationship leaving him to wonder if things would ever return to the way they were.

  Noakes had no idea that Markham knew his secret and the DI didn’t know how to broach the subject.

  ‘He’ll talk when he’s ready, Gil,’ was Olivia’s opinion.

  Markham could only hope she was right. Somehow it felt contrary to the natural order that there should be any constraint between them.

  At least DC Doyle, the fourth member of the team, caused the DI no anxiety. A tall, lanky carrot top with an easy-going manner that belied keen ambition, he was approaching the end of his distance-learning degree in criminal law and studying hard for his sergeant’s exams. Proud to be in ‘Markham’s gang’, he enjoyed a relaxed friendship with Noakes whose avuncular affection somehow survived their heated discussions about Bromgrove Rovers. Doyle’s attitude to Kate Burton was respectful, though he and Noakes indulged in expressive eye-rolling whenever she ‘went off on one’, as she was prone to do when it came to her beloved psychology. Indeed, the two men had bets on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders being their colleague’s preferred bedside reading.

  All in all, the DI prized his little team highly and strongly resisted all attempts at infiltration…. not that DCI Sidney hadn’t tried!

  Idly, he wondered who was behind the series of leaks that had plagued the Bluebell case and made a mental note to keep this latest murder investigation firmly under wraps.

  Michael Dominguez had sounded like someone worth knowing. While according to the poet, “any man’s death diminishes me”, Markham could not help feeling that Dominguez was no ordinary character and vowed with more than usual intensity to see that this brutish killing was duly avenged.

  It occasionally happened in the team’s investigations that a victim’s personality impregnated the case to such a degree that it seemed almost as though strings were being pulled from beyond the grave. It had been like that with the George Baranov ballet murder, and the DI had a suspicion the same thing was about to happen again….

  There was the sound of voices from the outer office.

  ‘If you over-water them, it’s fatal.’ Kate Burton’s voice was tight.

  Markham suppressed a grin. More than likely, her fellow sergeant had been interfering with that poor little bonsai. Just because he donated the odd yukka plant to CID, the DS now seemed to regard himself as being on a par with Monty Don.

  Indeed, as Noakes shambled into the DI’s office, he bore more than a passing resemblance to a park groundsman or gardener, sporting a grubby arran sweater and sludge-coloured cords with his salt and pepper thatch standing wildly on end as though it had been currycombed rather than brushed. Somewhat less chunky these days owing to what he bemoaned as a ‘crappy’ diet of chickpeas and couscous imposed by ‘the missus’, he still fell far short of a lean mean crime-fighting machine but had miraculously squeaked through his recent appraisal (Markham having called in various favours in the process).

  Yes, Noakes would require sprucing up before they attended Grasmere Park. Perhaps Kate Burton could see her way to the necessary hint….

  The other DS, needless to say, was smart and well-groomed even in her civvies. Despite a lack of sparkle in her demeanour, Burton looked the epitome of laid-back professionalism in straight leg jeans, dark polo neck, ankle boots and blazer. The chocolate pageboy with old-fashioned bangs offset intelligent brown eyes and a tip-tilted nose, lending her features a certain quirky charm.

  Doyle too ‘looked the business’ in well-pressed denim and button-down shirt, so Markham would have no cause to blush for him should the DCI suddenly materialize like an evil genie.

Two out of three wasn’t bad going and with it being Saturday he could only hope Sidney was safely hitting the fairway at Medway Golf Club.

  His subordinates settled themselves round the DI’s desk in their usual fashion, Kate Burton with her soy latte and the other two with cappuccinos and muffins from Dunkin’ Donuts. Markham sent up a silent prayer of gratitude that he was spared the usual grease-fest from Macdonalds.

  Burton reached into her blazer for the spectacles which made her eyes look like enormous lollipops before flipping open a pristine notebook and regarding Markham with the rapt attention of a religious acolyte.

  Her male colleagues contented themselves with an inner eye-roll, Noakes slouching into his chair in implicit rebuke to such bushy-tailed enthusiasm.

  ‘So, what’s with these poshos at Grasmere Park,’ was his opening gambit. ‘Cos it’s got to be one of them seeing as there was that bookplate thingy pinned to him.’

  ‘One of the reading group, you mean?’ Burton asked eagerly.

  ‘Book club,’ Noakes amended sourly.

  ‘Yes, I think we can narrow it down to members of the Calder Vale book club which I believe met at Mr Dominguez’s house once a month,’ Markham said.

  ‘What about the railway volunteers?’ Doyle enquired. ‘Wasn’t he some sort of train buff?’

  ‘They’ll have to be checked out, obviously,’ came the reply. ‘But that bookplate suggests to me his neighbours in the Park represent our prime suspects.’

  ‘Could be a double bluff, of course.’ Noakes’s lips were pursed. ‘A train spotter trying to make us look at the neighbours when it’s ackshually one of them Thomas the Tank weirdos.’

  Burton frowned at hearing the railway enthusiasts thus described, but she wisely kept her counsel.

  ‘Do we have a list of the book club members, sir?’

  ‘It so happens I have one here, Kate.’ The DI smiled at her. ‘I’ll make sure you each have a copy…. It looks like having been quite an intimate set-up, so only a half dozen or so names.’

  Burton’s fountain pen hovered over the immaculate notebook. Typically, she was keen to record her own marginalia. Noakes meanwhile tapped the side of his forehead as though to say, ‘It’s all in here, mate.’ The DC merely grinned.

  Markham scanned his list.

  ‘Fenella Staunton, retired academic…. The university history of art department.’

  Noakes’s mouth turned down at the corners. He’d had enough of bleeding art historians after that series of murders at the art gallery.

  ‘The Reverend Derek Worthington,’ Markham continued smoothly, only too aware of his wingman’s malevolent inner commentary. ‘Vicar of Barnabas…. That’s the little church at the entrance to the Park.’

  ‘Rosemary Kernan –,’

  ‘Hey, she’s the M.P.’ Doyle was alert and interested.

  ‘Correct, Constable.’

  ‘Not that ordinary folk ever see much of her,’ Noakes groused. ‘Too busy brown-nosing people in high places.’

  ‘Then there’s Bernard Gallagher, retired principal of Calder Vale F.E. College.’

  ‘Sounds like they’re all wrinklies,’ Noakes scratched his chin viciously. ‘Hard to see how any of ’em could’ve battered Dominguez to death.’

  ‘Age-wise, they range from late forties through to early seventies,’ Markham pointed out. ‘All vigorous enough to have done it, particularly with the element of surprise.’

  Burton cast a reproving look at her fellow sergeant. Evidently, she wanted to hear the full roll call.

  ‘Andrew Boughton is a local amateur organist,’ the DI went on. ‘There’s a librarian from Bromgrove Central Library…. Judith Lockyer…. Plus, we’ve got a teacher from Hope Academy –’

  ‘Oh chuffing Nora, not that place again.’ Noakes sounded anguished, no doubt at the remembrance of the role played by the local secondary in various previous investigations and his own prickly encounters with school managers.

  ‘Afraid so, Sergeant. One Susan Caldicott from the Maths department.’

  ‘At least she’s not a pigging art freak,’ was the tetchy rejoinder.

  ‘Finally, we have Timothy Appleyard, retired accountant.’

  Noakes sat up straighter. ‘That name rings a bell.’ Another scratch of the chin. ‘Yeah, I’ve got it.’ He sounded excited now. ‘He’s the one whose wife went missing an’ they never found her…. our lot thought he was good for it but couldn’t make owt stick….’

  ‘Yes, Mr Appleyard is connected to one of our cold cases.’ Markham’s tone held a warning note. ‘But let’s not make any hasty assumptions.

  Despite this admonition, it was all too obvious from Noakes’s baleful expression that Appleyard had shot straight to the top of his shitlist.

  ‘Oh yes, and I nearly forgot. There’s Nerys and Simon Wynne, mother and son…. live next door to Mr Dominguez. He’s a surveyor with the council…. I believe she’s a widow….’

  Markham looked at them steadily.

  ‘So there we have it.,’ he concluded. ‘And I propose to get started this afternoon…. Noakes, you’ll be with me taking a look at Mr Dominguez’s house before we have another word with Sheila Birtle…. I want to hear her take on the residents before we move to interviews.’

  Seeing that Burton looked slightly downcast, he added, ‘I need you to set up the incident room with DC Doyle, Kate…. Your matchless efficiency means we can hit the ground running.’

 She brightened at that, though the youngster looked somewhat as though he had drawn the short straw. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see everyone gets a slice of the action,’ Markham added wryly causing the DC to crimson to the roots of his hair.

  ‘What about the rapes, sir?’ he asked tentatively referring to CID’s investigation of a string of sexual assaults.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll speak to DCI Sidney about that,’ Markham reassured him. ‘I’m sure he won’t mind my poaching you from DI Gregg.’

  Too bloody bad if he did.

  ‘Right, team. We need to pull out all the stops on this one. Mr Dominguez deserves nothing less.’

  Burton noted the formality. Markham was never casual in the way that he referred to victims. Never disrespectful. And woe betide anyone who exhibited gallows humour in his hearing. Then their austere chilly boss could turn glacial in a heartbeat.

  ‘There will be a pattern here,’ the DI concluded as they rose to their feet. ‘A criss-cross of human motives. And it’s our job to make it out.’