Postscript to Murder

POSTSCRIPT TO MURDER

M. R. D. Meek

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperFiction

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Collins Crime

Copyright © M. R. D. Meek 1996

M. R. D. Meek asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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

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Source ISBN: 9780002325790

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2017 ISBN: 9780008252700

Version: 2017-03-28

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Keep Reading

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About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

‘Someone is trying to kill me’, Lennox Kemp remarked conversationally to Detective Inspector John Upshire.

‘Oh, aye? D’you want the other half?’ Without waiting for an answer, the inspector scooped up both their glasses and ambled over to the bar, using his big shoulders to get through the crowd but without unnecessary impact, easy as an animal in thick undergrowth. Kemp watched him with mingled affection and exasperation, and sighed. The laconic reaction had been much as he’d expected.

‘So, what’s new in that?’ Upshire’s baby-blue eyes were bland as milk. He put the two half-pints down smoothly and settled his bulk into a chair designed for someone of lesser size. ‘You’ve been an unpopular bastard in the past, and there’s probably still folk around would be happy to see you interred.’

‘Thanks, John. How well you put it …’ Kemp took a long drink of the beer which somehow tonight didn’t taste so good. ‘But I meant what I said.’

‘Not threatening letters again?’

‘Those, too … But they’re common enough.’

‘Disgruntled clients? What else do you expect? You know, Lennox, it always surprises me that you lawyers don’t get more of them. Look at it this way … Every time you’ve a court case there’s bound to be a loser. You’ve said so yourself. Even in what you call civil suits – and pretty uncivil some of them are the way I hear it – one party comes out feeling he’s been kicked in the teeth.’

‘That’s just our adversarial legal system,’ said Kemp, doggedly, ‘and they should know all about that before they even get into court. We do warn people if they’ve got a weak case. If they insist on going ahead against our advice it’s no use them foaming at the mouth and vowing vengeance on all lawyers when they lose the battle …’

But Upshire had warmed to his theme, and ignored the comment.

‘Same thing in criminal cases … You get one of my known villains off the hook on a technicality and the men on my patch who’ve sweated their guts out just to bring him up before the bench, they’re mad as hell … They’d like to see you roasted …’

Kemp looked startled. ‘Not to the extent of trying to set my house on fire?’

John Upshire drew the back of his hand across his lips, and gave Kemp a sharp glance. ‘H’m … I think you’d better tell me about it.’

‘Somebody pushed petrol-soaked rags through my letterbox this morning, followed by a lighted match. Luckily I was in the kitchen at the time and saw the flare-up. I stamped out the fire and we only lost the doormat. I did report it, John. Your desk sergeant has the details, and the debris. You weren’t around.’

‘I’ve been up at the Bailey all day helping to put away the Clayton brothers. My God, Lennox, why didn’t you tell me straight off?’

‘I’m telling you now. And it wasn’t the first attempt. My car was rammed out on the London Road on Saturday night. An unidentified van drove into me, reversed smartly and accelerated away leaving me on the edge of a ditch. It was a wet night, and I thought he’d just skidded, didn’t want to face the consequences and got the hell out … Now I’m not so sure. My car’s still in dock, that’s why I walked here tonight.’

‘We’re both walking,’ said Upshire, tersely, ‘and this calls for something stronger. Whisky, eh?’

‘Sounds like a good idea. I’ll get them.’

As he threaded his way through the brass-topped tables Kemp was reminded of the many other nights he had spent with John Upshire in the Cabbage White, turning the small coin of their shared experience. For it was only here, away from the strictures of their respective offices, that they could, as it were, unbutton and let their tongues go free. Lawyer and policeman, they might be said to have the same end in view, but Kemp’s way was not Upshire’s and they both knew it, warily skirting the difference when occasion arose.

It had been a long friendship of benefit to each of them in their lone years when neither had other companionship, the inspector a widower, Kemp unmarried and with no clear plan to alter that state. Despite careful adherence to, on the one hand professional ethics and on the other the rules of police procedure, such meetings were mutually enlightening and sometimes their outcome had played havoc with the lives of those socially malfunctioning members of the community who had criminal tendencies. It was of these that Upshire now spoke.

‘You’ve helped put away a few in your time, Lennox. Their families, now, they’ve not liked it. When some of our old East Enders came out here for a new start they thought they’d find us less on the ball than our colleagues in the Met. Well, they learned different … But when someone we’ve nabbed is doing his stretch he gets to brooding … Mebbe he comes out with a grudge …’

‘You know we solicitors don’t prosecute nowadays, John. That’s all up to the Crown Prosecution Service …’

‘Five or six years ago you were doing it. Put a few behind bars in those days. Some got ten to twelve … With remission, they’re out now, prowling the streets, God knows what in their twisted little minds. You thought of that?’

‘I’ve not had time to think of much … Anyway, it would be your lot who finally put them away, my part was small … Why don’t they have a go at the police?’

John Upshire grinned – a rare occurrence. It split his chubby features like a half-opened bun. ‘Because, my lad, we embody the law. We’re a force to be reckoned with. They can’t point the finger at one individual in a team. But you, you’re out on your own …’

‘Which I feel most acutely,’ said Kemp, not heartened by the turn in the conversation. ‘Believe me, I’ve been searching my conscience since this morning

‘Then you’re in the wrong area. Conscience has nothing to do with it. If you’ve nailed some rogues in your time, and even a few murderers, you did it in the course of duty …’

‘And in answer to the call for justice … I know all the high-sounding words, I just wonder sometimes as to their meaning …’ Kemp felt it was probably the spirit of the grain which was beginning to fuel their terms of expression. John Upshire was normally a man of some reticence in speech, more at home with official prose than abstract concept. Only with Kemp did he sometimes relax sufficiently to reveal an inner depth of understanding, a cognisance of other issues beyond those contained in police dossiers. Kemp was surprised that he had not been made superintendent by now. The local force respected him for his fairness, the knack he had of seeing their point of view, his sympathy with raw recruits doing a difficult job in hostile circumstances, he backed them to the hilt against all criticism while at the same time upholding strict discipline, that first tenet of his belief in the system he had to operate. Perhaps the powers that be had never interpreted correctly Upshire’s inherent loyalty to the men serving under him, and his refusal to bend even when it went against the wishes of his superiors. There would have been conflict there; perhaps it had not helped him in the promotion stakes.

‘I’ll run a routine check,’ the inspector was saying, ‘to see if there’s anybody just released or out on parole who might fit the bill.’ He paused, and shook his head. ‘But it’s a long shot. Most of them steer clear of trouble – at least for a month or two. And we keep a close eye on them if they’ve been part of one of the organized-crime rackets. This kind of petty revenge isn’t nearly as common as you might think …’

‘I don’t see anything petty in an attempt on my life. It’s the only one I’ve got and I’d like to hold on to it for a while yet.’

‘I bet you do – particularly now it’s changed. You got married …’

Upshire could not keep a slight resentment from edging into his tone. He too had savoured these nights spent mulling over cases, the relationship which had brought comfort to them both when neither could find it at home. Now things would be different. Kemp had acquired a wife – and not one John Upshire would have chosen for him. Mary Blane, her name when she was single, though she had had others, had a past which the inspector considered to be dingy if not downright disreputable. He could not help commenting on it, even at the risk of putting strain on a friendship he cherished.

‘Have you thought that it could be your wife they were getting at? She had some pretty weird connections back there in the States.’

‘Come off it, John. Matrimony hasn’t quite blighted my wits. Of course I’ve wondered about that, but it just isn’t on … These letters I’ve had, what they say, they’re aimed at me alone. They hint at things that have happened only to me, either here in Newtown or even further back … I haven’t any ideas yet as to what they’re getting at but I’m working on it. But it has nothing to do with Mary.’

Upshire grunted. ‘Whatever you say … I’d better have a look at them. I suppose you’ve kept the stuff?’

‘Have you ever known a lawyer throw away anything that’s written down? And, talking of Mary, she’d like you to come to supper on Saturday night. She feels it’s time she got to know you better and, frankly, I think a closer acquaintance with her will modify your view.’

If John Upshire’s acceptance of the invitation was grudging that was only to be expected. Kemp was well aware that the inspector’s opinion of Mary Madeleine Blane, now Mrs Kemp, was bound to be coloured by her involvement in a recent case which had put her by Upshire’s reckoning in that grey area between legal right and moral wrong, or perhaps the other way round. As an upholder of the law, the inspector didn’t like grey areas; he preferred to see people in black and white, and possibly with little captions under them saying guilty or innocent. Kemp’s work, by its very nature, forced him to dig deeper into the character and motive of his clients so that his attitude to their frailties tended to be tolerant and sometimes even ambivalent.

The two men parted at the corner, Upshire to go back to the empty suburban house he and Betty had bought when he was first posted to Newtown. His daily housekeeper would have left him his supper, and be gone till the morning. He would eat it in the kitchen, lock up and go round putting out the lights, but the bedroom would be cold and unwelcoming … Kemp watched him stride off, and felt a pang. He knew that life only too well. For years he also had returned late at night to a sterile lodging, the flat above the builder’s yard he had inhabited for so long with its folk-weave curtains drawn against the dark and the drab furniture staring up at him …

All that had changed, and Kemp had sensed the undercurrent beneath the inspector’s guarded: ‘Well, if nothing comes up I’ll be round on Saturday … Seven-thirty? Right

It was inevitable that the relationship between them would never again have the old easy familiarity. Professionally they would meet as before and have the same respect for each other’s work but that other bond that had drawn them together, two men of single status in a society seemingly composed of couples, that bond was broken.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a friendship had foundered on the rock of a marriage … Kemp’s mind was caught up by a half-remembered jingle, something from the Chinese:

‘The single man can never know

The ins and outs of marriage …

The envy that the coachmen know

For those within the carriage.’

Despite the serious nature of the matter which had made him seek out Inspector Upshire tonight, Lennox Kemp was smiling as he went home to his wife.

CHAPTER 2

As Kemp put the key in his own front door he was reminded of another complaint by John Upshire.

‘I don’t know why you had to stick yourself in this end of town anyway … It’s too near the centre – what with that bowling alley and that so-called youth club – a lot of mindless do-gooders doing no good at all to them that’s going to the bad anyway, like rotten apples in a barrel

Upshire’s rare excursion into metaphor owed more to the quality of the malt being drunk than an attempt at humour, but again behind the words there had been resentment. ‘Why didn’t you and your new wife take a nice house in a quiet suburb instead of down there in that troublesome spot … It’s no wonder you get things put in your letterbox.’

The inspector probably guessed that it had been Mary’s choice, the large Victorian leftover in a terrace beside the station.

When the railway had first come to Newtown it had not impinged on the original village but discreetly held to the banks of the Lea where the river-barge traffic had once flourished. But the Victorians too were entrepreneurs in terms of their future and soon houses were needed to accommodate those whose business interests might lie in the City of London but whose horizons encompassed a wider land of England beyond the green woods and sleepy hamlets of the home counties. Railways brought trade and prosperity till even the squat little widow of Windsor was moved to approve, and with that blessing of crown and country, villas rose fast along the new steel lines which conveyed not only freight to the Midlands but also ladies eager to sample the delights of shopping in Oxford Street.

George Meredith’s heroine, Diana of the Crossways, complained to one enthusiast: ‘How I hate your railways … Cutting up the land and scarring its countenance for ever, its beauty will never be the same again

If these, not unmodern, sentiments had echoed over the century they had never struck any chord in Newtown, which had gone on grasping at commercial straws, both long and short, right down to the present recession. However, No. 2, Albert Crescent had not been one of the victims of this particular turn of fortune. There had never been money enough to convert it, unlike its neighbours, during the upsurge of the eighties, into a gold brick of plush offices for financial consultants and insurance brokers. Under the heel of circumstance these now had a tarnished look, gilt peeling from gingerbread, while No. 2 still stood in all its decayed splendour, an honourable relic.

‘I like it,’ Mary had said as soon as she saw it. ‘Far better-looking and half the price of those awful boxes on the estate where your friends the Lorimers live, and just look at the length of the back garden … Why, it goes right down to a river …’

‘Once you’ve fought your way through the undergrowth, yes, that’s the Lea, all right. A puddle of slime enriched with beer cans …’

‘You’ve never seen the Liffey,’ said Mary, complacently, ‘nor the East River for that matter. I guess we can clean up a little brook like the Lea. If we buy this house, Lennox, I’ll go half on the purchase price …’

‘You bloody won’t …’ But of course he’d been overruled, despite the fact that when she had stood up at the altar Mary Madeleine Blane had promised to obey.

He should not have been surprised, for this woman he had married – perhaps against his better judgement – was still an unknown quantity. When he asked her to marry him he knew it went against all his reason to do so; had he stopped to think he never would have made such a proposal …

But he had not stopped to think because he was caught up in the age-old folly which had nothing to commend or excuse it, except the fact that he was in love.

She came out from the drawing room when she heard him in the hall. Her kiss of greeting was by no means perfunctory.

‘You told John Upshire?’ she asked. ‘What did he have to say?’

‘Not a lot. You know what policemen are like.’

‘Oh, I do, I do …’ When she smiled, as she did now at the thought behind his words, her plain features lit up like a glint of sun on a cloudy day. ‘They’ve the face on them puts us all in the wrong. Let’s have some coffee, it’s just made.’

‘Does he think it’s me that’s to blame?’ she said later, as they sat by the fireside.

Kemp held nothing back from this new wife of his. ‘He did wonder about the possibility but I soon scotched that one. You and I have seen those letters, it’s me they’re aimed at.’

‘But why now, Lennox? Whoever’s writing them, they’re obsessed with some grievance against you.’

‘Well, I only wish they’d come out in the open with it.’

‘But that’s not the way it is with an obsession. It blocks the light of day for people, like a great wall. And it’s a wall that’s maybe been building up over a long time.’

Kemp looked across at her. She sat holding her coffee cup in both hands, frowning slightly at the effort of putting thoughts into exact words because when she was serious only the right words would do. It was one of the first things he had noticed about her during the short time she acted as his secretary, her way with words. Later, of course, he had realized that such adroit handling of the tools of speech could be put to many uses.

‘That’s why I’m wondering why they’re being sent now,’ Mary went on, ‘because something must have triggered them off, and the only thing I can think of is that you got married. Is there some woman in your life who might resent it?’

‘Whom I have cast aside like a worn-out glove?’ said Kemp, airily. ‘Oh, they must be thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa, the women I’ve abandoned … Come off it, Mary, the only woman who has been affected by my marriage is yourself, and if I may say so, you’ve taken it rather well.’

‘You mean I have bettered myself, being rescued from a life of crime and marrying the boss into the bargain? Sounds quite a romantic fiction …’ But he could see she was only laughing at him as he went over and sat on the hearthrug at her feet. She curled her fingers in the tufts of hair on his forehead. ‘You’re getting a bit thin on top,’ she said. ‘I don’t see you as a breaker of hearts, Lennox, but I was serious about the letter-writer maybe being a woman, it’s a way women have …’

‘Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike … I don’t think that was said of a woman.’

‘Oh, you and your quotations … I’m serious, Lennox. You’ve been involved with women in a lot of your cases, not only the matrimonial ones. There must be someone out there who is bitter.’

‘It wasn’t a woman in the van that skedaddled the other night, and I don’t see a woman pushing firelighters through a door at seven in the morning. Much too obvious.’

‘She would have help, of course. Women don’t often act alone.’

‘You did, Mary Madeleine …’ Kemp could not see the point of never alluding to her past life; it was there before them both and, as he had accepted her, so it had become part of his life also.

‘I had grown used to being alone. It was the only way to survive … then …’

‘And now?’

Her face glowed in the firelight as she looked down at him.

‘Ah, now I’ve found a better way …’

‘No more talk then …’

But when he kissed her eyelids he saw first the fear in her eyes and knew what she was thinking. As he had once been afraid for her life so she was now for his.

Perhaps he should take more seriously what she had been saying, perhaps he should look back over his past cases, ransack his memory to find cause enough for someone to send him such poison through the post. He knew many of the phrases by heart, so often had they been repeated.

‘You’ll get your comeuppance, never fear …’

‘You wrecked lives, Kemp, let’s see yours get wrecked …’

‘I’ll get even if it’s the last thing I do …’

‘Vengeance is mine. I’ve waited long enough …’

Such sentences recurred over and over again in the six letters he had received during the last months, interspersed with more specific threats, a knife in the back, a breaking of bones, death by a variety of methods, all violent, couched in language not easily identifiable. There were misspellings, of course, but they could have been deliberate. ‘Comeuppance’ – not a word in everyday use – had been spelt correctly, as if a dictionary had been used but if so, why make other mistakes? There was a certain literary quality about the style, even semicolons were scattered about, and the grammatical errors looked false. Despite such contrivances the words flowed as if the writer knew very well what he or she was about, and feeling came through almost too well – a spillage of hate bursting its banks.

The letters were typewritten on plain paper torn off the kind of pad available at any stationers. The typing had the pepper-and-salt look made by a two-fingered typist, but that too could be misleading – any expert can imitate an amateur. The machine was manual not electronic, black carbon ribbon, the alignment fairly even with no smudging of the e’s and o’s … Someone who kept the keys clean or did not use that particular typewriter very often?

Except for this kind of muck … Kemp sighed. He would hand the lot over to John Upshire tomorrow and let the police get on with whatever analysis they could make of such unpromising material. He had already made photocopies for himself. He shovelled the letters back into their envelopes, plain brown manilla, all addressed to himself, Mr Lennox Kemp, at his new home. He studied the postmarks, all different, all districts of London from the City to outlying suburbs, the malevolent missives had obviously been simply popped into pillar boxes wherever the writer fancied. None had been posted here in Newtown, but there was local knowledge; references to ‘your posh office’ … ‘I seen your glossy girls go in and out’ … (That had an almost poetic ring to it.) ‘Choke you to death in a gravel pit’ was an obvious pointer to the main industrial activity along this stretch of the River Lea …