Hell Hath No Fury (20 page)

Deborah Jackson answered the door in a stunning black velvet dress, sheer black stockings and high-heeled court shoes. Her make-up was flawless, and it was obvious she was all ready for a special evening out.

Her green eyes grew bright with unshed tears, and she pushed back her shoulder-length hair in a dramatic gesture of shock and despair when they broke the news of her husband's murder to her.

He had all the attributes of a saint as she described him to Ruth and Paddy. She painted a glowing picture of a devoted husband – not a man who flirted outrageously with almost every woman he met.

Because Paddy was a local man, and knew Dennis Jackson's reputation, he disbelieved almost every word she uttered and wondered why she was so very much on the defensive. He questioned her, and soon the truth came out, amidst floods of tears.

‘You surely don't think she had any part in her husband's murder?' Ruth queried, after they'd spent a gruelling hour listening to Deborah Jackson's diatribe.

‘She had every cause to murder him,' Paddy told her dryly. ‘Even as a schoolboy he had a reputation as a sexually devious monster!'

‘I suppose she could have arranged it,' mused Ruth. ‘Even have planned it so that it fitted into the same pattern as the other three murders . . .'

‘. . . and had it carried out by a hired killer? Now that's a thought. That would account for the many similarities.'

‘And for the variances which don't fit into the previous pattern?'

‘You mean the fact that he had been coshed and tied up as well as stabbed? It would need a man to exert that sort of strength, wouldn't it?'

‘But you said you couldn't conceive any man carrying out that sort of mutilation,' Ruth reminded him.

‘Perhaps we're not looking for just one person. It could be a couple. The man strikes the blow . . . the woman does the mutilations!'

D
etective Superintendent James Wilson was beside himself with anger. Judging from the contents of the Home Office letter he was reading, he was in no doubt that heads would roll unless some positive progress was made on the Benbury murders.

From the tone of the letter, he suspected that even his own position was in jeopardy unless there were satisfactory developments in the immediate future.

It had been a mistake to put Detective Inspector Ruth Morgan in charge of the case, he reflected. Not because she was a woman. He wasn't sexist. But she had come in through what his generation would describe as the back door.

First-class university honours and Police Training College were all very well, but it wasn't the same as hands-on experience. That was why he had assigned Paddy as her sergeant. Paddy was a product of the old school. He'd started on the beat, and worked himself up by study, and practical application. He had an invaluable wealth of experience.

James Wilson sighed aloud. If he'd been able to convince the board to think the same way as himself, the post of detective inspector would have gone to Paddy.

The position could still be his if Inspector Morgan didn't shape up, he thought grimly as he opened the file containing all the information so far assembled on the Benbury murders.

Detective Inspector Ruth Morgan waited in trepidation to be summoned to Superintendent Wilson's office. He had become increasingly tetchy with each new murder, and this fourth one would further justify his unspoken criticism that she wasn't right for the job.

She only hoped that Dennis Jackson wasn't another personal friend of the inspector's, or a fellow Mason. Since he was a prominent local businessman, owner of the largest estate agency in Benbury, it was more than likely that he was both, she thought gloomily.

If only there were more clues. At present she could list what little they knew about this murder, and the three earlier ones, on one side of a piece of paper!

A red car that could be a Ford Escort, a Vauxhall or even a Mini had all been seen in the vicinity of one or the other of the murders. There was a hard to define logo taken from the instep imprint of a trainer. A parking ticket from the car park near the Masonic hall where the second murder had taken place, the time and date so blurred that they hadn't been able to ascertain when it had been issued.

Hardly the sort of evidence to convict a serial killer on, she thought ruefully. The only other deducible link was that all the victims were the same age, and they'd all attended Benbury Secondary School. She had sent Paddy along to the school to see if they could turn up the attendance registers for twenty years ago and check who else had been in the same class, to see if that offered any lead.

As the owner of the largest newsagent's in Benbury, Sandy Franklin was known to at least half the town's population. Brian Patterson, they had discovered, was not only Sandy Franklin's solicitor, but he also undertook property conveyancing for Dennis Jackson. John Moorhouse seemed to be the odd one out. Although he'd been at school with the others, none of them seemed to be linked to him. He didn't move in the same circles as any of them. And yet he had been the first to be murdered.

Ruth found it puzzling. She wondered if this was some sort of clue. If she could establish the link between Moorhouse and the others would it lead her to the killer? Always assuming that it
was
the same person who had carried out all the attacks. Namely, a serial killer. If they were copycat killings then they really were in trouble. It might even mean they were looking for four murderers!

She didn't think they were, though. Even the last killing followed the same basic pattern as the three previous ones. It was more sadistic, though. As if the killer had reached a peak, a crescendo of madness that had carried the murders into the realms of atrocity.

Ruth shuffled through the papers, picking out anything she could find that related to the four wives – or, in Sandy Franklin's case, to his most recent girlfriend, Tracey Walker – convinced that there must be a link there somewhere, some vital clue that she was overlooking.

She spread the information out on her desk in four separate piles and studied them. All the women seemed to have known Sandy Franklin – along with half the female population of Benbury, if rumours were to be believed, she thought dryly. So was there any evidence against any of them?

On the night Marilyn Moorhouse's husband had been murdered she had been wearing black jeans and trainers, which Forensic reported had no blood stains on them, and the trainers didn't tally in any way with the imprint they'd found.

Tracey Walker had appeared genuinely surprised and distressed by the news of Sandy Franklin's murder. She had apparently been in bed when he'd left and had not heard anything at all suspicious. Furthermore, Ruth reflected, the flat had revealed no trace of a disturbance.

Had she followed Sandy Franklin out of the flat when he left, stabbed him, and then dashed back indoors, changed her clothes, and been able to act surprised when the police arrived to alert her that he had been killed?

It seemed unlikely, Ruth decided. What could Tracey have gained by killing her boyfriend? It was far more probable that Mrs Agnes Walker had been waiting outside when he left the flat, and that she had been the one to stab him. Except that she had been able to account for her movements on the evening in question, while Tracey could not. Agnes' alibi was absolutely watertight. She could produce a dozen witnesses to the fact that she'd been in Dorset, over a hundred miles away.

Sara Patterson didn't seem to be the type to murder her husband, either, although she had been extremely evasive about why she had been absent from home the night her husband had been murdered.

She also favoured jeans and trainers for everyday wear when taking her two small daughters to school, but neither her shoe size, nor the manufacturer's logo, fitted with the one footprint they had as evidence.

Ruth would have liked to eliminate her name altogether from the list of suspects, but since Sara Patterson did drive a small red car she was afraid it might be considered precipitous by Superintendent Wilson, and one thing she couldn't afford to do was antagonize the superintendent by letting it appear that her investigations didn't explore every possible avenue.

Like Deborah Jackson!

Ruth sighed deeply as she picked up the sheaf of papers relating to the wife of the latest victim. From the information gleaned it would appear that Deborah Jackson was a lady who had some very good reasons for murdering her virile, handsome husband.

After some initial reticence, Deborah Jackson had made no secret of the fact that her husband was a womanizer. She'd also admitted that this time matters had reached a point between her and her husband when she intended to ask him to decide between her and his latest paramour, a Spanish lady named Martina Carpenter.

Had one of Dennis Jackson's discarded mistresses been the mysterious Margaret Maitland who had phoned the Jackson Estate Agency under the pretence of wishing to see over the Willows in Englefield Drive so that she could meet him there?

That had been the second time that an eyewitness had reported seeing a red car in the vicinity immediately following one of the murders. Only this time they insisted it had been a small car, possibly a Mini.

Ruth tabulated the various sightings of red cars the vicinity of each murder. The woman who had been in her garden next door in Englefield Drive had claimed to have seen a red car follow Dennis Jackson's green Mercedes into the driveway of the Willows at around four o' clock. She had also seen it leave about an hour later, and she thought it had possibly been the same red car that had returned at about six o' clock.

They had checked out the times and knew that the six o'clock caller had been June Lowe, Dennis Jackson's PA. Her car was red, and since the woman was unsure of the make Ruth wondered if the woman had confused the two different cars and thought it was the same one each time.

So had it been June Lowe the first time? Had she lured her boss to the Willows, knowing it was an empty house, killed him, driven away, and then returned again an hour later on the pretext of telling him his wife wanted him to be home early?

But why come back? Could it have been in order to assuage her conscience? Or even to make sure he was discovered?

Perhaps she hadn't meant to kill him and thought if she raised the alarm, and he was ‘found' in time, he would be rushed to hospital and recover.

Remembering the nature of his wounds, and their severity, Ruth thought that was highly unlikely. She gathered up the papers she had spread out over her desk and stacked them up into a neat pile. It was no good. She was getting nowhere, simply going round in circles.

She picked up her suit jacket, which she had removed and hung over the back of her chair. Perhaps a cup of canteen coffee might help clear her brain. And by then Paddy might be back, and he might have discovered some background link from the four men's schooldays that might throw some light on to why they had been killed. Even if he hadn't, then she'd test out her own theories on him, and that might lead to something.

She felt it undermined her authority having to depend on him so much, but he had grown up in Benbury; he knew things about these people that she didn't. It also gave him an advantage when he was interviewing suspects. Because he was a local man, they seemed to open up to him more than to her. As if they trusted him. They seemed to be suspicious of her motives, and that put them on their guard.

As she collected a mug of coffee from the dispenser in the canteen and carried it across to a window seat, she wondered if Paddy thought of her as an outsider. Would he have been more cooperative if she had been a local person, even though she was his superior, she mused as she sat with both hands around the mug.

She knew it was partly her own fault. The first few days she had been at Benbury he had been almost chummy. He'd gone out of his way to be helpful! She'd rebuffed him. She hadn't been cool; in fact, she'd been absolutely icy!

Superintendent Wilson had told her when he'd assigned Paddy as her sergeant that he was the most knowledgeable and experienced CID officer in the Benbury force. She had expected a grim-faced man in his late fifties, not someone only in his thirties who was tall, broad shouldered and handsome into the bargain, with vivid blue eyes and a slow, contagious smile.

When she'd learnt that he was a bachelor she had let him know, right from the start, that she held the higher rank, and that she was his boss. She didn't want him to think he could chat her up as he might any rookie policewoman. Now that she knew him better she realized that he was far too much the professional to think of doing such a thing.

He'd been quick to read the signs, she'd say that much in his favour. When she'd declined to even have a coffee with him when they were on duty, his manner towards her had changed immediately. He'd remained courteous but distant. There was absolutely nothing she could fault in his manner, but she suspected he wasn't going out of his way to draw on his local expertise, even though he must know that it might make their job a whole lot easier if he did. He seemed to respond to the superintendent more than he did to her!

She frowned and took another mouthful of coffee as a germ of suspicion circled in her mind. Was that deliberate, she wondered. Was Paddy trying to make a point, trying to show Superintendent Wilson that he would have made a better detective inspector than her, and that he should have been promoted?

She drained her mug of coffee. She couldn't let that happen. Her career was on the line; her ability to prove herself depended on the way she handled this case.

It was imperative that she had Paddy's full cooperation; essential that they worked as a team in solving the Benbury murders, she decided grimly.

She would have to convince him that teamwork was in both their interests. She would start by changing her attitude towards him, she resolved.