Blood is Thicker Than Water (4 page)

“In what way was he not very nice?” Warren took care not to spill crumbs from his fruitcake on his trousers, not least because he was supposed to be on a diet and Susan, his wife, would probably spot them and demand an explanation.

“I already told that young PC that he was domineering and ungrateful to his children, but he was rude as well. He made ever such a fuss when his daughter, Kathy, was a few minutes late one morning. I could hear him shouting at her through the wall.” The old lady sniffed. “That poor girl does so much for him and never gets so much as a thank you.” She leant forward, lowering her voice. “He’s a mean old man, that’s for sure. He worked for decades as a design engineer in the same firm as my Stanley. Stan reckoned he was earning three times what he did—but we live in the same street. They rarely went on holiday and when he used to drive, he had a clapped-out old thing that he’d spend hours keeping on the road.

“That’s why he never got any help from the social services. He must have a fortune stashed away, he was too tight to spend it, and so he doesn’t qualify.” She took another sip of her tea, before starting up again on a topic that clearly exercised her.

“I know it’s wrong—that folks who work hard to save a bit of money shouldn’t be penalised whilst the lazy or spendthrifts get everything paid for—and I understand why he would resent paying for the care that he should have gotten for free from paying his taxes, but it isn’t fair on his kids to make them do everything when he could afford to pay for somebody to help them out.”

Warren nodded neutrally, he was waiting for the paperwork to clear so that the bank would release Michaelson’s financial records and they could confirm what everyone had suggested. “How was his relationship with his family generally?”

“Well they put up with a lot, Kathy especially, but they were pretty tolerant of him. They took it in turns and never missed a day. Tommy worked full time, so Kathy probably did a bit more during the week, but Tommy was there at the weekends.”

“What about extended family?”

“I don’t think he had any any more. He used to have a couple of brothers but they died years ago, heart attacks, and Vera, his wife, passed away about twelve years ago.”

“What about Kathy’s family?”

“Her husband, Ian, is a good man. He works all sorts of hours to support those kids; he’d do anything for them. He doesn’t come around as much as he usually looks after the little ones, but he does do a bit of shopping and I’ve seen him bring his toolkit around.”

“So Kathy didn’t bring the children around?”

The old lady’s face fell slightly. “Not so much these days. It’s a shame. They’re such lovely children. The oldest, Callum, would be seven now. He used to have such a cheeky face on him. And little Poppy must be about five; she’ll have started school now. Such a pretty little thing.”

“It sounds as though you miss them. How long has it been since you last saw them?”

“Would you like some more tea, Chief Inspector?” She made as if to get up.

“No, I’m fine thank you. When did they last come around?”

“It’s been a while.”

She bit her lip slightly. It didn’t take a trained detective to see that the old lady was hiding something.

“Did something happen?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was quiet, unsure.

“Did you see something? Perhaps something that we need to know about?” Warren had no idea what was bothering her, but he wanted to know what it was.

She gave a sigh. “About a year ago, Kathy turned up one morning with the kids in the car. It used to be that she’d leave them with their granddad whilst she went shopping and that. They seemed pretty happy. He even used to sit in the garden with them if the weather was nice. He clearly loved being with them and Callum in particular seemed to enjoy sitting on his knee and listening to stories.”

She paused again, clearly reluctant to continue.

“Well that morning, Callum refused to get out of the car. He was having a huge big temper tantrum. I had my windows open and I could hear him screaming. I thought he was just in a strop.”

“But?”

“He was shouting that he didn’t want to go in, that he hated Granddad and that he never wanted to see him again. He was in floods of tears. That’s the last time Kathy brought them around.”

“Do you know what it was about? It seems a bit strange to go from seeing their grandfather regularly, to suddenly refusing to see him.”

The old woman looked uncertain again. She was clearly torn about whether she should say any more. Finally her conscience won out.

“Nothing was ever proven, you understand. It was just gossip and you know how people like to talk, so it might be nonsense.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you think and I’ll decide what to do with it?”

“OK. But I think you also need to speak to Bertie Truss.”

* * *

Albert Truss was a robust man with broad shoulders and large, calloused hands. White hair and wrinkles aside, Warren found it impossible to believe that the man had recently celebrated his eightieth birthday. However, the large framed photograph on the mantelpiece showed him blowing out the candles on a huge birthday cake, surrounded by dozens of beaming people of all ages. The youngest looked to be about eight or nine and wore traditional cub scout uniforms not too different to what Warren remembered wearing himself at that age—although closer inspection revealed that at least some of the young children were girls. There were also girls amongst the older children in scout uniforms and the teenagers in tan venture scout shirts. The remainder of the attendees were mostly men, some in leader uniforms, many of them in late middle age themselves.

“I’ll have been a scout leader for sixty years next spring; the club records show about eight hundred boys and girls have come on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in that time.” He smiled proudly. “Wish I could remember all of their names!”

“Tell me about Charles Michaelson.”

Truss’s face darkened slightly. “What’s he done?”

“I’m afraid that he’s died, Mr Truss. We’re trying to build a picture of what sort of man he was and your name came up as a former acquaintance.”

Truss gave a tight-lipped smile. “I haven’t seen the man for the better part of a dozen years and I only knew him for a few months.”

“But you knew him well enough to talk about him.”

Truss scowled slightly. “I’ve never said anything that was untrue. I just stuck to the facts.”

“So why don’t you tell me those facts?”

He sighed. “It was all hearsay and rumour, I grant you, and I never saw anything untoward or had any complaints from the boys, you understand?”

“Understood.”

“Charlie Michaelson came to the Fifth Middlesbury Scout unit in about 2000 as a volunteer leader. He was pretty enthusiastic. He was an engineer and he’d been in the army, so he had a lot of really useful skills. We were a leader short at the time, so we really valued his help.”

“But not enough to keep him on?”

Truss sighed. “Look the Scout Association has had an unfair press in the past. There have been some pretty hurtful stereotypes bandied about concerning men who want to give up their time unpaid to help kids. But we’re not stupid or naïve, especially these days. Charlie started helping in 2000, before criminal record checks came in, but we were still pretty careful. I’ve been in this game long enough to smell a bad egg when I come across one.”

“So what did you see?”

“Not a lot. Certainly not enough to call the police—at least not back then when things weren’t as tight as they are now. Besides, none of the kids ever complained, in fact they seemed to like him.”

“So what did you not like?”

“He was a bit too hands-on.” Truss rubbed his eyes slightly. “I’ll be honest, there are those of us who feel that the child protection guidelines have gone a bit far these days. Years ago, you never thought twice about putting your arm around a lad who was a bit upset or who had just hurt himself. I regularly used to drive boys home if their parents couldn’t pick them up and I’ve shared tents with boys who’ve had a bit of a tummy bug when we’ve been away for the weekend. But we all recognised what was appropriate. Yes, we’d get stuck in with the lads when they were playing football or British bulldog, but there was a line.”

“And Charles Michaelson crossed that line?”

“Yes, in my opinion.”

“How?”

“It was little things. He was quite good at unarmed combat from his army days and he used to teach the kids self-defence. I encouraged it at first, but he was a bit too involved. He’d have kids in headlocks or judo holds. I had a word but he insisted it was just clean fun.

“He also used to play rugby and again, he’d be getting in the scrum with the boys and demonstrating tackles. Again, nothing concrete, but it got my radar twitching, you know?”

Warren knew what the man meant. That instinct that told you regardless of what people said or what they did, something wasn’t quite right.

“So what happened?”

“He’d been with us about a year, when we went away for the weekend. Again nothing I could ever prove, but on the last morning the boys had gone off to use the shower block.” He smiled slightly. “We always tried to send them back to their parents reasonably clean—anyway Charlie was supposed to be off extinguishing the cooking fires. I was walking towards the car park to move the van up to start loading, when I saw him coming out of the shower block. He was all red-faced and embarrassed when I saw him and claimed he’d gone to use the toilet.”

“So what did you do?”

“There wasn’t much I could do. I hadn’t seen anything and nobody had said anything, so I had to bide my time. Anyway, eventually, he applied to become invested as a leader. I phoned the district commissioner and told him my concerns.”

“What happened?”

“Like I said, we might not have had CRB checks and all that, but we weren’t daft and the commissioner knew me well enough to trust my instincts. So he wrote to Charlie thanking him, but said that there weren’t any suitable vacancies.”

“How did Michaelson react?”

“Not well. It was clearly bullshit. We were desperate for leaders and he wasn’t stupid. He threatened to sue me, claimed I had defamed him and all that, but in the end I called his bluff. I knew that he’d never make anything of it. He’d be too scared that we might start digging a little deeper and asking questions. So he got the hump and stormed out and never came back.”

“And was that the last time you saw him?”

Truss shook his head.

“About twelve months later, we were doing the St George’s Day parade, alongside the Guides and several other youth organisations. And who do I see marching alongside the local Boys’ Brigade? Charlie Michaelson.”

“So he’d joined them?”

“Yes, and the really interesting thing is that the Boys’ Brigade is a Christian organisation, but in all the time I knew Charlie, he was a vehement atheist.”

* * *

The evening briefing was a sparse affair, with several members of the team out conducting inquiries. Nevertheless, Warren had everyone’s attention.

“It looks as though Charles Michaelson may have liked young children.”

Mutters went around the room as Warren outlined his conversations with Albert Truss and Gladys Blenkinsop.

“I just got off the phone with a leader from the Boys’ Brigade who remembers Michaelson. He turned up unexpectedly in 2001 as a volunteer. They were desperate for help and Michaelson could drive a minibus so they took him on.”

“Do we have anything in the computer about him?” asked Sutton.

“No, he’s never come to our attention and as far as both the Scouts and the Brigade are concerned there were never any complaints from the kids.”

“So what were their worries?”

“Nothing concrete. Mostly gut feelings. Albert Truss contacted the Boys’ Brigade after seeing him at the parade and they had a chat. Apparently, Michaelson claimed to be a born-again Christian, although he didn’t strike them as especially religious. They agreed to keep an eye on him, but within a few weeks of joining he had his stroke. Michaelson was far too ill to be a menace anymore, so they just filed it and forgot about him.”

“So he had no access to kids, until his daughter had her own?” Sutton grimaced in distaste.

“It looks that way. I’ve flagged it as a potential child protection issue and contacted social services. They’re going to arrange for his grandchildren to be interviewed. I especially want to know why Callum suddenly took a disliking to him.”

“What about his own kids?”

“I think we’ll have to bring them in again and ask them about the rumours. I have a feeling we may be about to open a big can of worms here.” He turned to Karen Hardwick and Mags Richardson. “Whilst we’re on the subject, have we any information on the whereabouts of his son that evening?”

Richardson took a swig of her ever-present water bottle and glanced at her notebook. “He claimed in his interview to have been home asleep that evening.”

“Corroboration?”

“He lives alone, no partner, but we have spoken to most of his neighbours who remembered seeing his car that night and again in the morning. The neighbours either side said they heard the radio playing that night and the people opposite think they saw his light go off at about the usual time, probably about eleven.”

“OK, it’s something. Keep at it.”

Sutton looked thoughtful. “If he was abusing his grandkids and the parents got wind of it, that’s a bloody big motive to kill the bastard. We should take a look and see what Kathy Mackay’s husband was doing that evening also.”

Warren nodded his agreement. “According to Kathy he works night shifts. I’ve sent Gary out to his workplace to check out his alibi. We’ll bring him in for questioning as well. We also need to see if Kathy Mackay’s alibi holds up. She was supposedly at home with her kids but she could have sneaked out after she put them to bed.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“If he was somehow being deliberately poisoned and they knew about it, then the fall may not have been accidental. A shove in the dark and he goes down, smacking his head on the fireplace. His blood is so thin that if he doesn’t bleed to death from a cut, he dies later from a brain haemorrhage. A bit convoluted, I grant you, but it would look at first glance like an accidental death.”