An Urgent Murder Read online

  AN URGENT MURDER

  ALEX WINCHESTER

  Copyright © 2018 Alex Winchester

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  Matador

  9 Priory Business Park,

  Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

  Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

  Tel: 0116 279 2299

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  Twitter: @matadorbooks

  ISBN 9781789012019

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  This book is dedicated to all the Police personnel who still believe in and strive to abide by the principles as laid down by the founder of the Police himself, Sir Robert PEEL.

  The primary object of an efficient Police is the prevention of crime: the next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed. To these ends all the efforts of Police must be directed. The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity, and the absence of crime, will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful, and whether the objects for which the Police were appointed have been attained.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

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  Prologue

  The End?

  He had planned to die peacefully and painlessly in his own bed at a time of his choosing. Not lying face down in front of his fireplace in agony with the sole of a shoe resting on the nape of his neck gently holding him in place as his convulsions grew. The pain was coursing through his body and he felt the throbbing in his head growing stronger. His pupils were dilated, his eyes wide open, watery and staring unseeingly at the fireplace. Slowly they closed as the excruciating pain shut everything down and he drifted into a merciful unconsciousness.

  It was to be a short respite. He came to and was immediately aware of the torture being inflicted upon his body by the small amount of ingested poison. A groan escaped his throat. No one heard. The foot had left his neck some minutes earlier. His hazy eyes alighted on a small pocket diary covered in dust from years gone by that was lodged under the electric fire that stood on the hearth. An arm appeared in his eye line reaching for it. A Herculean effort considering his discomfort.

  They had to pay for the torment he was going through. They had to pay. Fighting the pain, his hand slowly inched towards the diary. Latching onto it with his little finger he watched, as if an outsider, as he dragged it back towards his face. He pulled the small pencil from the diary freeing its pages which flipped open spraying dust into the air. Focusing hard on the page from about 6 inches, he attempted to write. A short black squiggle appeared on the virgin page. Too much exertion! The pain was growing and starting to rack his body with intensifying impulses. Twisting his torso, he lifted his arm and dropped it onto a flat stone slab breaking the pencil in half.

  His body started to jerk in uncontrollable spasms. As he lay there, the pain seemed to envelop him. Thoughts flew through his mind of how it had come to this. Not much longer. It had been a good life. Ups and downs like everyone else. Would he be remembered? He passed willingly into unconsciousness for the second time.

  Liberation!

  1

  The Beginning

  George was very slightly built. Those who had passed him by in the street and noted the hang of his clothes often thought he looked emaciated, but they were unkind. The previous war with its lack of food had taken a toll on all it touched, especially the pregnant. Some war babies were taking longer to thrive than others. ‘A great war to end all wars’ was how it had been promoted. Even the most uneducated realised they may have been conned. As the second war loomed, and rationing was on the horizon, it was even harder to build up weight. Accepted, his facial features were drawn and collected shadows in some lighting, but it was more the norm to be thin than fat.

  George had suffered dreadfully from asthma since birth and had often collapsed when under acute stress. His parents had blamed the constant
smog that had enveloped London as industries and transport had begun to burgeon without consideration for the inhabitants. Then again, health issues were not a priority when profit and progress were the order of the day. As he had grown, he had managed most of the time to keep it under control.

  Charity was the supplier of most of George’s clothes, and his objective was always to grow into them. He had tried. His parents had done all they could putting as much food on the table as they could afford. They were proud of their son who in turn was immensely proud of his parents, and would do anything for them. When he began teaching, his Mother took great pride in letting all and sundry know that he was not a manual worker, but someone who used his brain for the benefit of others. Then she would fold her arms and her chest would puff out like a preening pigeon awaiting a cooing response. Woe betide anyone who did not comply!

  England had lost many of its prime young men to the ravages of the first world war. Yet most who returned were fiercely loyal to the throne, as they had seen the righteousness of their course rewarded whatever their commanders had said or done. Those left at home had remained patriotic and supportive as the war had ebbed and flowed. The older survivors now watched with trepidation as the second world war seemed to become an inevitability as would the deaths of millions more young men. The majority of the young watched with impending fear that it was their turn to step forward and stand up to tyranny. Some with unrestrained bravado relished the fact that they would acquit themselves valiantly on the field of battle and others saw it as a point of duty. George was amongst them. All believed sincerely that whatever happened, they would survive.

  At the outbreak of war, George, against his Mother’s wishes, had immediately responded to the call to arms and had gone to the recruiting office with the honest intention of signing up. Cyril had served with distinction during the first war and was now the sergeant recruiting officer. Some questions posed by potential recruits he answered straightforwardly as if their surrogate Father, but mainly he embellished his replies in order not to put anyone off. He watched George enter from the street. No one had been rejected at his office, and he could see that George was going to be a challenge.

  He appeared skeletal with a deathly sallow complexion and his short mousey hair looked lank and lifeless against his sunken features. Shaking visibly because of his nerves, he tried to enlist for what he believed was his patriotic duty to serve his country in a just cause. He collapsed. A medic who was present soon realised it was no pretence, and that was George, out of the war.

  2

  Saturday 14th December 1940

  There are days in everyone’s lives that people seem unable or unwilling to forget, whether they want to or not. They can remember detail in minutiae. George seemed to know this more than most even though it is different for everyone. It could be a religious occurrence depending on one’s faith, a challenge overcome, a birth or death, or even some pointless minor event. He had had a few of these days already. Trying to put them out of his mind was futile. They were there and going to stay there forever. One such day was just prior to Christmas, in December of 1940. George remembered it as though it were yesterday. Saturday 14th. He could recall everything he had done and said from the time he heard the first birds chirruping in the morning to: well when he fainted.

  During an air raid on the docks of East London, a large mine had landed at the entrance to the purpose-built shelter he and his parents had constructed at the bottom of their garden. It was their retreat from the little terraced house they had lived in for some 18 years prior to the outbreak of war. His Father, a Docker for his entire working life knew that any stray bomb aimed at the docks was likely to hit one of the hundreds of similar homes that were scattered around the East End and Essex. So, with George’s occasional indifferent help, he had spent the first months of the war reluctantly digging into his prized vegetable patch and laying the concrete foundations on which he put an Anderson shelter. Then he laboured alone feverishly covering it with sandbags and tons of earth. He thought his family would be safe. Technically he was right. Even if a bomb had landed right on top of it, those inside would have probably been shielded from the resultant explosion. But it didn’t land on top of it, it landed at the entrance.

  The first wailing of the air raid siren had sent his Father and Mother scurrying from the back door of the house. Quickly traversing the winding garden path that led between some hoary, but productive fruit bushes they descended into the shelter. They had made it as comfortable as possible. Two worn out old fireside chairs and several threadbare blankets that George’s Mother had no other use for. A single Tilly lamp swung from some twine that had been affixed to the arched roof and a rickety upturned box, which had been purloined from the dockside, supported an old primus stove in one corner. This was essential in order that they could make a pot of tea and wait for the all clear: which this day they would never hear.

  George was at the market making some small purchases for the minimal preparations he and his family could afford for Christmas under war conditions. Like all those about him, he had run for cover at the sound of the first siren. The same one that had sent his parents scuttling to their shelter. George knew, like most people in the area where the safest place was. He soon plunged into the entrance of the underground station surrounded by several hundred others all with the same intention of reaching the lowest point which was the station’s platform. A giant air raid shelter in all but name.

  Although he had lived in the area for such a long time, George had no real friends, nor for that matter, many acquaintances. His parents’ friends became people he knew, but that really was as far as it went. As he looked about the platform, he recognised several people, but didn’t have the confidence to speak to them or even give a polite nod. He found a small space by the wall at the rear of the platform near the mouth of the tunnel furthest from the entrance stairs. Sitting down with his back against it, he let thoughts of the future drift into his head. His eyes slowly glazed over shutting out the movement of everyone around him, and his ears closed to the hubbub that several hundred people caused when they were crammed so tightly together.

  The parachute mine didn’t detonate as it should have done at about 40 feet from the ground. Nor did it immediately explode on impact. It’s 25 second delay failsafe detonation kicked in. It bounced on the concrete path into the sunken entrance of the shelter slamming into the door before coming to rest. Hearing the loud noise, and believing George had arrived home and wanted to get into the shelter swiftly, his Father unlatched the door just as the mine exploded. Both his parents were dead in the blink of an eye. They didn’t suffer or even know they were going to die. One minute they were happily chatting over the kettle which had yet to boil, and then they were no more: incinerated by the mine.

  George didn’t actually hear the all clear, but was brought out of his musings by the people about him all moving off in one direction. Rising from the safety of the seat he had by the wall, he brushed imaginary dust from the back of his trousers and sauntered slowly towards the exit. Joining the rear of the horde, he queued patiently awaiting his turn to climb the stairs to leave the underground in order to resume his hindered activities. He had most of what his Mother had asked him to get, but was desperate to see if he could find some fruit. Nothing. No one had any. Dawdling slowly, he made his way down the street towards the terraced house he had called home for the last 18 of his 20-year life.

  Both his parents, he knew, would have got to the shelter at the first drone of the siren. He wasn’t unduly worried as he had spent time in the shelter himself and liked to believe he had helped his Father construct it. That’s what he wanted to believe although he knew his Father had done at least 95% of the actual work. He knew it was as safe as possible as they had dug it deep and covered it well. As he sauntered towards his house he could see a few of the neighbours standing huddled on the pavement outside the front door. One of them, who was looking in his direction, saw him coming, and wit
hin seconds, all the others turned to watch him approach. George began to worry. The house was still standing there between other identical terraced houses; no sign of any destruction that he could see.

  Still, he quickened his pace anyhow, and reached his front door as a neighbour uttered the dreaded words, “I am so sorry”.

  Within seconds, George had been told his parents were dead and that there was a worry he had been with them in the shelter. The lights went out for George as he collapsed on the threshold of his little home.

  3

  Friday 4th April 1941

  George had never been late for anything in his whole life. Even arriving in the world a day before the prescribed time to his happy Mother in the house that his parents had shared with his widowed Grandmother in Stratford. He wasn’t going to be late or miss the train either. The early, and final departure from his parent’s small council house to reach the station on time was not delayed even by the incessant wailing of air raid sirens. Wistfully, he looked back twice as he left the house he had called home. In the distance, he saw the tops of the dockyard cranes that often appeared to him to be dancing, albeit to sundry tunes. They were still now. The sirens ensured that. Barrage balloons appeared to be drifting aimlessly amongst the frothy white clouds in the tranquil sky. Not a plane in sight!

  George stood on the platform with his two battered suitcases standing upright on the floor, one either side of him, together containing all his worldly goods. There was at least another 20 minutes to wait. After the death of his parents, George had decided to give up his job teaching infants in the East End and seek employment a long way off where he could start life afresh. Littlehampton, which his parents had once taken him to as a child, was on the coast and seemed the perfect place. The air would do him good and the war, he hoped, would be a long way off.

  The train steamed backwards into the station slowly pushing its four carriages towards its allotted platform. As it reached the shelter of the vaulted station roof, the steam it was emitting started to pervade the platform’s length. Large sections at a time were obscured as it puffed effortlessly at regular intervals. One of the clouds of steam obliterated George’s view of the locomotive itself, leaving just the four coaches eerily moving slowly as if by themselves. George had been the first to arrive on the platform, but it was busy now with people saying their farewells to friends and relatives – not knowing if they were to ever see them again.