Murder Comes Calling (10 page)

“What’s happening about her house now? I see the sign’s still there.”

The woman removed her gloves and shook off the loose earth. “I haven’t a clue. Nobody’s been round that I know of. But it can’t just stay empty, can it? Somebody, if not the bank, will claim it. And yet,” she said, frowning in thought, “I seem to remember Valerie saying she paid cash for it.”

Magic, patiently dozing in the sunshine until now, uttered a faint whine at Rex’s feet and shifted into a sitting position, clearly keen to get off home. Rex patted his sleek black head, thinking of a way to see John Calpin’s business card. He could admit he was conducting a private enquiry. After all, it was no real secret and word was bound to get around, but he should have done so upfront. Now it was too late. Finding that people spoke more freely in casual conversation, he hadn’t wanted to put the resident on her guard.

“Did you try to contact the young writer after Valerie Trotter’s death?” he asked innocuously.

“I thought about it, but finally decided he’d probably see it on the news. What a shock it must have been if he thought Valerie was his mother!”

“Indeed. Ehm, if you like, I could contact him when I get back to Edinburgh. Did he say where in Scotland he hailed from?”

“Glasgow, I think. It’s kind of you, but it would probably be better if the call came from me. Yes, I might just do that. He’s been rather on my mind since her murder.”

“Well, let me give you my card,” Rex said. “I’d be interested to hear the rest of the story.”

She fished out a pair of reading glasses from the deep pockets of her housecoat. “Rex Graves, QC,” she read aloud.

“At your service,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Geraldine Prather,” she reciprocated.

He bid her goodbye and took Magic home, eager to return to Malcolm’s and relay the strange coincidence of a young writer by the name of John Calpin seeking out a woman who had turned up dead a week later.

fourteen

“This takes our investigation
in a new direction, doesn’t it?” Malcolm said gleefully after Rex had filled him in on his encounter with Geraldine Prather.

The two men sat at the kitchen table over tea and ginger-nut biscuits as the sun peeped through the top half of the window above the red gingham curtain.

“I imagine the police questioned Ms. Prather after Valerie Trotter’s murder, since they lived next door to each other,” Malcolm continued. “I wonder if she told them about your fellow countryman asking all those questions.”

“I should have asked. But I hadn’t told her I was actively interested in the case. I don’t want too many people knowing.”

“It’s only a matter of time. Gossip is as rife here as in any other community.” Malcolm nibbled on a biscuit. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That being?”

“That this man murdered his mother and her lover in a fit of rage over being abandoned at birth?”

“We don’t know that she was his mother,” Rex pointed out. “Or that she was romantically involved with Vic Chandler.”

“Let’s say that she was. This Calpin chap kills Ernest Blackwell because he’s in the house, and he has to kill Barry Burns because he may have seen something, living across from Chandler.”

“Why murder the woman when she was at someone else’s house?” Rex objected. “Seems rather risky to me.”

“Maybe he thought she was seeing Ernest as well.”

“Ernest Blackwell was an old man.” Rex dunked his biscuit in his tea. “I’ll search the Glaswegian’s name online, see if I can come up with any hits. Geraldine Prather said he was a writer. He may have made up the story aboot trying to find his mother to get sympathy and elicit more information.”

“You mean, like you made up the story about trying to find your non-existent daughter?”

“
Touché
,” Rex conceded. “But strange that this John Calpin should find his mother and she dies so soon after.”

“Also strange that an unlikely foreign couple should be looking in Notting Hamlet as well.”

“That’s at least three suspicious people other than Chris Walker. Did you make any headway with your enquiries concerning Yvonne Callister?” Rex asked, recalling his friend’s proposed trip into Godminton.

“That didn’t take long. Covington’s, the only other estate agent’s in Godminton, sold her the bungalow she was strangled in. She paid cash, presumably from her divorce settlement. I told them I was the forensic pathologist in her case and had a personal interest. Callister was her maiden name, which she retained or reverted to after her divorce. Her ex-husband, I gleaned from old newspaper articles online, was a Paul Cardona.”

“She could have looked at properties listed by Chris Walker before deciding on the bungalow.”

“True,” Malcolm said. “But I asked Lea at his office whether they had an Yvonne Callister on their books from about four years ago. She seemed very suspicious when I enquired, but looked it up and told me no. And she asked if you had found your daughter—in a way that suggested she didn’t believe us.” He winced as he said this.

“That Lea is no fool.” Rex sat back in his chair and let out a vehement sigh. “The police might have mentioned fingerprints belonging to her boss if such had been found in the three Notting Hamlet homes.”

“They didn’t tell me about his previous police record. Lea divulged that. But Walker was in the victims’ houses on business, so it wouldn’t be surprising to find his prints on doorknobs and furniture. But his wet shoe print is significant because it puts him at one of the scenes at around the time of the murders.”

Rex nodded thoughtfully. “If the police didn’t find suspicious fingerprints, the perpetrator must have worn gloves or wiped any prints clean.” As was the case with the victims’ foreheads, he thought, biting his tongue. “The apparent lack of evidence points to a professional killer or someone familiar enough with police procedure to avoid the obvious pitfalls. And if the killer was Walker, why did he leave a wet shoe print and blood scrawls for the police to find?”

“Search me. He may have missed the wet print when putting his shoes back on. But the letters make no sense if it was him unless he was trying to implicate me or the Russian gang. But that would be dangerous. If word got out, they could come after him if they’re still active.”

“He’s looking less and less like a suspect, as far as I’m concerned.” Rex drummed two fingers against the side of his teacup. “His trouble with the law in the past was nothing akin to multiple murders. And I still fail to see what he hoped to gain by killing his own clients.”

“Perhaps he snapped,” Malcolm said, breaking a ginger-nut in half for emphasis. “He may’ve decided his ex-wife wasn’t going to get any more of his money. What he wrote on the victims might hold special meaning for him. Perhaps the letters stand for her initials or the title of their favourite song. You know, a touch of irony.”

Rex regarded his friend with one eyebrow raised. “Perhaps just a wee bit far-fetched?”

“No more so than your Russian space station theory,” Malcolm challenged.

“Every theory so far, including that of Chris Walker’s guilt, is preposterous, in my view. They all boomerang to the same question: Why would anyone want to kill two old duffers and a middle-aged pair who, by all accounts, kept to themselves? And Chris Walker has other properties. Why restrict himself to offing his Notting Hamlet clients?”

“I’ll take that as rhetorical,” Malcolm said, reaching for another biscuit in the packet.

“I learnt something else on my walk this morning, aside from what Geraldine Prather told me,” Rex said. “Your friend Lottie informed me the barking dog at forty-seven had been taken care of.”

“Sounds ominous. Murdered?”

“You look shocked.”

“Well, I am. I don’t subscribe to murdering animals, however much of a disturbance they might be. And I certainly don’t like the sound of another murder around here. Murdered how?”

“Poisoned.”

“Lottie didn’t tell me any of this!” Malcolm seemed put out.

“Perhaps she phoned while you were in the garden.”

“Perhaps,” Malcolm relented. “I’ll check my messages. What else did she say?”

“Only that the owners took it to the vet and have requested an autopsy.”

“It’s that character at forty-five, I’ll bet; their neighbour who slammed the door in your face.”

“Well, they’ll need proof he did it.”

“He’s a chemistry teacher at Will Ballantine’s school. Was. Not sure if he’s still there. He’d know about poisons.”

“Lottie also mentioned that a resident on Fox Lane saw a prowler in the wee hours of this morning loitering on the west side of the street opposite Charlotte Spelling’s house.”

“Which resident saw this?”

Rex consulted his notes. “A Mrs. Jensen. Is she credible?”

“She’s a stalwart churchgoer and runs a thrift shop in Godminton. I eventually took Jocelyn’s clothes there. They weren’t doing anybody any good hanging in the wardrobe. And I can’t abide the smell of mothballs. Mrs. Jensen was very grateful for the donation. Did she get a good look at the prowler?”

“Too dark. And I can’t be sure she or Lottie were not elaborating for dramatic effect. In any case, Charlotte looked just fine when she drove by this morning while I was talking to Lottie. Oh, and I ran into Will again on his way to the farm across the river.”

“You did have a busy morning.” Malcolm lifted the pot of tea. “A refill?”

“Thank you. As I’d hoped, the sun brought oot the good people of Notting Hamlet. Geraldine Prather is a delightful woman. I wasn’t able to talk to the lad, though. He was listening to his iPod. He barely made eye contact. I don’t think it’s just shyness. He seems altogether very introverted.”

“I told you he wasn’t sociable.” Malcolm got up and started clearing the table. “What do you want to do for lunch?”

“We’ve just had elevenses!”

“I know, but I always have lunch at twelve-thirty.”

Rex privately thought his friend was much too set in his ways. He toyed with the idea of bringing up Charlotte again, but was anxious to get on his computer and discover what he could about John Calpin before lunch. “Sandwiches would do me fine,” he told his friend.

“Right-oh. Well, I’ll go finish up in the garden, unless you need me for anything?”

“You go ahead.” Rex set up his laptop, already engrossed in his thoughts.

He hoped Geraldine Prather had remembered the young man’s name and place of residence correctly, since that was all he had to go on. How many John Calpins lived in Glasgow, and did any of them exist in cyberspace? Just as well he wasn’t John Calvin with a
v
, Rex thought with relief.

He need not have worried. Within minutes, he struck gold. The time flew by in Malcolm’s absence. He tapped away on the keyboard and jotted down notes in his lined pad, busying himself in this way without distraction until his host reappeared an hour and a quarter later to make lunch.

“I see you made some headway,” his friend remarked, eyeing the filled notepad at Rex’s elbow.

“I think I found Ms. Prather’s writer.” Rex rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “There are two John Calpins in Glasgow, one a carpenter, the other a journalist. The journalist has a website and had an article published in the
Scotsman
last month. He’s the right age to have a mother of forty-seven, as Valerie was, judging by his photo.”

He turned his screen around so Malcolm could see the face displayed on the site. The man in question was in his late twenties, wore designer glasses, and sported dark, fashionably spiked hair.

“Looks like a journalist,” Malcolm remarked. “Sure he’s the right person?”

“Can’t be absolutely sure, but something interesting came up in his newspaper article, which could tie in with the Russian connection.”

Malcolm spun around from washing his hands at the kitchen sink. “So there really may be something to your Russian theory? You never cease to amaze me.”

Rex sat back in his chair and flexed his fingers. “Let me give you the gist of the article first to put things in context. This John Calpin is an up-and-coming investigative reporter and in his piece on British mobsters he draws parallels between the Ice Cream Wars of the eighties in Glasgow and those in Essex.”

“Ice Cream Wars?” Malcolm let out a pouf of laughter. “Vanilla versus strawberry?”

“All right, Malcolm. I know it sounds silly, but the feuds between the rival ice cream van operators grew very deadly. Literally. It was really a drug war. The Scottish public eventually got impatient with the police when they failed to control the situation, and began referring to the Serious Crime Squad as the Serious Chimes Squad—after the jingles played on the vans’ loudspeakers.”

Malcolm burst into full-blown laughter. “You’re having me on!” he said, holding his stomach.

Rex shook his head. “I kid you not. Mobsters in the East End of Glasgow ran the operations. The vendors distributed cocaine on their routes, using the ice cream sales as a front.” He saw from Malcolm’s expression that he had his friend’s disbelieving attention.

“You mean they sold illegal narcotics out of their Mr Whippy vans while serving ice cream cones and ice lollies to kids?”

“Exactly so.”

“I don’t remember seeing that in the news.”

“You were probably too busy studying for your medical exams.”

“I never seemed to have time for much else.” Malcolm gave a regretful sigh. “Alas, my misspent youth.”

“Remember those blue-and-white vans?” Rex asked, lost in memories of his own. “You could hear those tinny tunes a mile away. One of my most vivid memories of early childhood is the scent of mass-produced ice cream mingling with the smell of road tar on a hot summer day.” He stretched out his arms, which were stiff from being at the computer. “Anyhow, it was a lucrative enterprise and conflicts arose over drug turf. The ice cream scam was adopted by some gangland figures in Essex, namely the Cruikshank Twins. By the nineties, they were selling ecstasy along with the cannabis and Colombian cocaine.”

“Did they ever get caught?” Malcolm asked over his shoulder as he prepared sandwiches at the counter.

“No, at least not the twins. Business boomed for Frank and Kevin until a Russian gang spilling over from East London decided they wanted a piece of the action and started arranging nasty accidents for the Cruikshank drivers as they peedled around in their vans with their loudspeakers going at full chime.”

Malcolm laughed outright again, and Rex went on more seriously.

“The rival gang, headed by a character aptly named Ivan the Terrible, was downright ruthless. His associates sabotaged the vans, slashing tyres and shooting through the windscreens. They even attempted to kill the Cruikshank family in their home by posting a firebomb through the letterbox. The twins and Kevin’s daughter escaped from an upstairs window with only minor burns and smoke inhalation. The arsonists were never charged due to lack of evidence. According to Calpin’s article, the Cruikshanks decided it was time to retire. It’s widely believed they forged new identities and moved to Australia.”

“That’s where we sent our convicts in the good old days. Nice of them to save us the trouble. But what does this have to do with our case?”

“While the Cruikshanks were in business, Kevin’s daughter Sylvia kept the books. A fourth member of the gang, Fred Forspaniak, aka Fred the Spanner, was their main enforcer. He served two years inside for GBH.”

“That’s a light sentence for grievous bodily harm at the mob level. Oh, I get it now.” Malcolm brought two side plates to the table. “You’re saying the twins, daughter, and this Fred chap didn’t go to Australia after all, but hid out in Notting Hamlet. Well, they’re Down Under now,” he said with jocularity.

“Aye, it seems the past caught up with them. There’s a nephew too,” Rex continued, “but he’s still in HMP Belmarsh for extortion and money laundering. That’s a photo of him.” He pointed to the article onscreen. “There’s none depicting the rest of the gang, unfortunately. But why would they turn up dead after all this time?”

“I’m sure you’ll find out,” Malcolm said, grinning with just a hint of condescension. “Doesn’t look like much, does he?” he jeered at the nondescript nephew in the photo.