A Death in Autumn Read online

  ‘Clark thinks I’m pulling you down to my social level.’

  ‘That’s the thing about being upper class my dear, you don’t have to care what the hoi polloi thinks,’ said Agnes and laughed. ‘Anyway, are you going to tell me what’s in your Superintendent’s file?’

  ‘I will as soon as I’ve made us a cup of tea. Go and sit down now.’

  ‘Yes, O great master, your wish is my command,’ laughed Agnes.

  With Agnes sitting in her favourite armchair, her feet tucked under her, Collins picked up his notes and said, ‘The Super’s got a lot of speculation, a few names and a couple of odd decisions at various council meetings. However, he has no hard evidence that anything significant is going on in the Council. But something feels wrong. I’m not sure what it is, but my gut tells me that the Boss is onto something.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What Clark and I usually do. Go blundering about until we annoy someone enough for them to show their hand.’

  ‘Where will you start?’

  ‘Well there are a few characters mentioned more than once. I think we start with them.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Collins looking at his notes. ‘I have John Reece, a friend of his called Chris Thorne, Martin Cunningham, and a couple of councillors by the names of Hill and Robbins. Do you know any of them?’

  ‘I know Hill and Robbins. I wouldn’t trust them to help me cross the road. Some people are in politics for the power, a surprising number because they want to help people and a few for the money they can make. Robbins and Hill definitely fall into the last category.’

  ‘Why haven’t they been drummed out if it’s so obvious that they’re on the make?’

  ‘Because they are very clever. They look after the people in their wards, are never too greedy, and cover their tracks wherever they go.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘I’ve met Martin Cunningham. He’s a builder with a reputation for treating people fairly. No one has a bad word to say about him. I’d be surprised if he were involved in anything illegal.’

  ‘And the other two?’

  ‘I’ve never met either Reece or Thorne but there are stories about them.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The usual. Nothing specific. Just rumours of strange decisions made by councillors and committees. But that’s all they are, just stories. No one has any proof.’

  ‘From what you say I should probably start with Martin Cunningham. It sounds like he might be willing to point me in the right direction. When I take Sheba for a walk tomorrow, I’ll call in on Clarkee, see if he fancies a drive out to Solihull on Sunday.’

  ‘Why Sunday? We’re having dinner with them.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘He’s going to a football match tomorrow.’

  ‘Not just any old football match,’ said Collins. ‘It’s Wolves at the Hawthorns.’

  ‘Well, give little Mickey a kiss from me.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Saturday 21st September 1968

  Handsworth, 09.30hrs

  Collins and Agnes were tidying up after breakfast when the telephone rang. Picking it up, Collins just about got his name out before Clark’s familiar voice interrupted him. ‘Had a call from O’Driscoll earlier. There was another burglary last night, but this time the owner came down and got hit over the head with a poker.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘He’s in hospital with a cracked skull. He should be OK, but he were hit hard.’

  ‘Did the wife see anything?’

  ‘No. The bastards had scarpered before she made it downstairs.’

  ‘OK, are you at the scene now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Give me the address.’

  ‘It’s 3 Endwood Avenue. Just before you get to the island.’

  ‘I know it. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  Endwood Avenue was the last turning off Hamstead Road before it crossed the roundabout at Church Lane and continued on to Hockley Hill two miles away. It took Collins less than five minutes to reach the house. Clark’s green Morris 1100 and the van of the new Scenes of Crime Officer (SOCO), Gary Dobbs, was parked outside.

  The SOCO was dusting the interior kitchen window for prints when Collins walked in. Clark was in the dining room talking to a woman in her late sixties. It was easy to see that the forty-year-old woman beside her was her daughter. The family resemblance was unmistakeable, both had green eyes, long slim noses and thin small mouths.

  Clark stood up when Collins walked in. ‘Ladies, this is Detective Sergeant Collins, he’ll oversee the day-to-day investigation. Sarge, this is Mrs Robinson and her daughter Mrs Monroe. I’m just taking Mrs Robinson’s statement.’

  ‘Ladies, I’d like to say how sorry I am that this happened to you. A violent burglary in your own home is a terrible shock to the system.’

  ‘Thank you, Sargent,’ said Mrs Monroe. ‘My mother is very shaken. I’m going to stay the weekend and my husband is coming over later.’

  ‘Good. If you don’t mind, I’d like to look about the house and garden while Detective Constable Clark finishes taking your statement. Is that all right, Mrs. Robinson?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ came the whispered reply.

  The semi-detached house had a single flat-roofed garage that extended to next door’s fence. The rear garage door was about six feet from the kitchen window that the thieves had climbed through. Collins noticed gravel on the pavement between the kitchen door and garage. Moving one of the dustbins, he stood on it and inspected the garage roof. The gravel near the edge had been disturbed where someone had slipped or had lowered themselves over the edge before dropping into the garden.

  Stepping down, he inspected the kitchen window. It opened in the middle and each side was divided into two rows of three panels, each about a foot square. The central panel on the left had been removed entirely but the window lock had not been damaged. Either a kid or a very skinny lad got through that, thought Collins.

  He was about to move to the back of the house when he spotted a slip of paper lying on the drain grating under the window. Using his handkerchief, he picked up the ticket and examined it. It was a 10/6 ticket stub for a concert by the Beach Boys at the Birmingham Odeon, dated Saturday, the fourteenth September.

  Collins tapped the window and Dobbs looked up. ‘Have you done outside yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just found this. Can you dust it for prints pronto and run anything you find against the records?’ said Collins handing the stub to Dobbs through the pane less window.

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Ta.’ Collins continued around to the back of the house where he examined the French windows. They had been opened from the inside by whoever had crawled through the kitchen window. Clark had finished taking Mrs Robinson’s statement and she and her daughter were waiting for the SOCO to finish in the kitchen so that they could make another pot of tea.

  Standing by the door, Collins asked, ‘Mrs Robinson, did you or your husband attend a concert at the Odeon last Saturday?’

  Mrs Robinson appeared confused by the question and shaking her head said, ‘No.’

  ‘Has anyone visited you in the last week?’

  ‘No. Just my daughter and her children.’

  ‘No young callers at the door?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s this all about, Sergeant?’ asked the woman’s daughter.

  ‘I’m just looking to eliminate some possibilities.’

  Clark waited until they were both outside before he asked, ‘How do yow want to handle this?’

  ‘The sods crossed a line when they hit the old man with a poker. Next time they could kill someone. Why don’t I go to the station and write up the report and you can push off to your match? Who are you playing?’

  ‘I’ve already bloody told yow.’

  ‘Yeah, you did. It’s Birmingham, isn’t it?’r />
  ‘God help me from prats and Irishmen. It’s the bloody Wolves.’

  ‘Are they the ones who play in claret and blue?’

  ‘Now I know yam just trying to piss me off.’

  Collins smiled and said, ‘Afterwards, I’ll go to Dudley Road and see if Mr Robinson saw anything.’

  ‘That sounds good to me. I’ll chase up Alf for the info I asked for. See if wi can get it first thing Monday.’

  ‘Now seeing as I’ve done you a favour, I have one of me own to ask. I’d like to go and see a bloke called Cunningham tomorrow. He’s a builder in Birmingham and is mentioned in the Super’s file. Lives in Solihull.’

  ‘Fair enough. Pick me up around 11.’

  Collins collected his car from home and drove to the station. Sergeant Ridley was coming out of the CID office just as Collins rounded the corner. ‘Morning, Jim,’ said Collins. ‘Looking for someone?’

  ‘I was looking for O’Driscoll but he’s not in.’

  ‘What do you want him for?’

  ‘I’ve got a Mrs Lafferty in reception reporting a missing daughter. I think the girl is on the game but the woman is worried.’

  ‘OK, show her into Interview Room 1 and I’ll be with her in five minutes.’

  ‘Thanks, Mickey. Appreciate it.’

  Collins made it to the interview room long before Mrs Lafferty did. Breathing hard, her gait unsteady, she was led by Sergeant Ridley into the Interview Room. She sat down heavily and said nothing as she tried to bring her breathing under control.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs Lafferty?’ asked Sergeant Ridley.

  ‘No, I’ll be fine, thank you, Sergeant,’ came a hoarse whispered reply.

  Mrs Lafferty was a small woman just a little over five foot, with very little weight on her. She had high cheekbones, an aquiline nose and dark blue eyes. If she had weighed another two stone, she would have been very attractive. As it was, she looked seriously ill.

  Collins rose and shook her hand. He was surprised at how cold her hand felt, ‘I’m DS Collins. Sergeant Ridley tells me your daughter has gone missing. Would you like to tell me about it?’

  ‘Are you from Dublin?’ she asked.

  ‘’Yes. And yourself?’

  ‘Drumcondra. You’ve lost some of the accent but it’s still there,’ she said with a smile which lit up her entire face. ‘Well I’m a bit more hopeful now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well you’re young, you’re Irish and you’re a Detective Sergeant. You must be good.’ Collins felt his face turn red. Mrs Lafferty saw the effect her words had on him and immediately apologised. ‘Here’s me running off at the mouth. I’m a terrible one for saying whatever comes into me mind.’

  ‘It’s all right. Why don’t you tell me what’s happened, Mrs Lafferty?’

  ‘My daughter Claire is missing since May time. She moved to Birmingham about two year ago. At first, she wrote to me regular like. Late last year she told me that she’d been signed up by some modelling agency, which was what she’d always wanted. Really excited about it she was. But then her letters got fewer and fewer. When I didn’t get a letter in May or June I came up and went to see her. But she’d gone from the flat which she’d shared with another girl, Christina. I don’t know her surname.’

  ‘Where did this Christina say she’d gone?’ asked Collins.

  ‘Well that was the problem, she was gone too. Both just vanished into thin air.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I went to the landlord, but he had no address for them. He tried to stiff me for a month’s rent, cheeky sod. I didn’t want to bring the police into it, so I went to a private detective.’

  ‘Why didn’t you want to bring the police into it?’

  ‘I was afraid that she was into something illegal.’

  Collins didn’t ask what the something might be. Instead he asked, ‘Did your private eye find anything?’

  ‘Yes, he did. He said that he’d made enquiries and was sorry to tell me that my daughter had been working as a prostitute for over a year before she disappeared. He suggested that the most likely cause of her disappearance was that she had moved to London. He said a girl could earn a lot more there than in Birmingham. He also said that a lot of girls, when they get involved in the business, cut off contact with their families. Like they were ashamed of what they were doing and afraid that the family would find out.’

  ‘I’m sorry but that is often the case,’ said Collins. ‘Sometimes it’s the girl’s pimp that forces her to cut contact. It gives him greater control over her.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. I’m not daft. Claire was always a bit wild. But she was intelligent. She had her head screwed on and knew the value of a pound. A grand little businesswoman, she was. I’ve heard it said that prostitution is the only job where the young start at the top and work their way down. Well, if my Claire did become a prostitute, she’d have had too much sense to start at the bottom working for some slimy pimp.’

  Collins realised that the woman in front of him was not your usual worried parent. Whether it was the proximity of her death or just her nature she had few illusions about her daughter or what she might be willing to do to earn good money. ‘Do you know when they left the flat?’ he asked.

  ‘Well that’s what convinced him that the pair of them had gone off willingly. You see, when they didn’t pay the rent on the thirty-first of May the landlord went around.’

  Collins interrupted the woman’s flow and asked, ‘When did the landlord go around?’

  ‘Two weeks later, I think. He found they’d done a moonlight flit and taken everything they owned with them. Me PI— you know, I’ve always wanted to say that,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘Anyways, he said he didn’t have the resources to investigate beyond Birmingham and gave me the number of another private detective in London, but he was too expensive for me. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Did your PI find out when they were last seen?

  ‘No. But he told me that Claire and her friend had been to some do at the Council House on June first for some Saudi Arabian prince. I think that might be the last time she was seen. He sort of implied that she might have gone off with him.’

  ‘When was the last time that her friend was seen?’ asked Collins.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you Mrs Lafferty. I think that your PI was probably right. If Claire and her friend were on the game they may well have gone to London. And if she had signed up to a model agency it might be the kind that deals in pornography. Now the centres for such work are London, Amsterdam and Hamburg. She could easily be in any of those cities and if she is, it will be extremely hard to find her.’

  ‘But you’ll look into it for me, won’t you?’ The woman’s voice was low and pleading and Collins could see the desperation in her eyes. ‘You’ll look for her, Sergeant Collins, I have to know what’s happened to my little girl before I…’

  Collins asked,’ How long do you have?’

  ‘The doctors told me last Thursday that I have a month or two at most.’

  ‘Look, Mrs Lafferty, if she has gone off with her pimp or girlfriend and doesn’t want to be found we could be looking at a long investigation. I may not be able to find her within a month.’

  ‘But you’ll try, won’t you? Please.’

  ‘For a fellow Dub I will. I’ll do everything I can to find her. But what about her father? Is he still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. We split up fourteen years ago. I’ve not seen him for twelve years. Even if he is alive he won’t be interested. All he’s interested in is where he’ll get the next drink from.’

  Picking up his pen Collins turned to the missing person report form he had in front of him and said, ‘All right Mrs Lafferty, let’s take down some details. Can we start with your contact details, the address of Claire’s flat and a recent photo of your daughter, please?’ Mrs Lafferty gave her address near Coventry and Claire’s address on
King Edward’s Road, off Grove Lane, Handsworth.

  After Mrs Lafferty had left, Collins examined the small black and white photo of Claire Lafferty. She was certainly a beautiful young woman. Small and slim, with a face undamaged by age or illness. She reminded Collins of Audrey Hepburn, with the same dark silky hair and mischievous eyes. She was standing by the monkey house at Dudley Zoo and was laughing as she tried to control her skirt from being blown up over her waist. Rising he headed back to his office and wrote up the missing person report. Only then did he turn his attention to the report on the burglary.

  It was nearly 3pm when he called Dudley Road Hospital and asked for Mr Robinson’s ward number.

  Handsworth, 16.19hrs

  Crick Lane ran from Holly Road, across Broughton Road and up towards Ivy Road. It was something of an oddity in Handsworth, a named road with no house frontages. Plenty of back garden fences and garages abutted onto the lane but no front windows overlooked it. Although it was a recognised shortcut, few adults used it after dark, which made it a perfect place for teenagers to hang about in.

  Sixteen-year-old June Gregg sat with her back against a garage door playing with a six week old black and white kitten. The little fella was busy chasing a piece of wood tied to a length of dirty string she was holding. Every time the kitten got near the lure the girl pulled it away and laughed.

  A noise at the end of the alley made her look up. It was one of the lads who worked at the HP Factory in Aston. He was new to the area, but her mates reckoned he was 17. They also thought he looked great; with his collar-length black hair he was the spitting image of John Lennon. As she watched him walk closer, she forgot the kitten and the lure which was now resting in her lap.

  The kitten took its chance and jumped at the sliver of wood. One set of tiny claws grabbed the lure. The other set sank into the back of Marie’s hand. She screeched at the sudden pain and backhanded the tiny cat away. It flew across the alley and landed in the middle of the lane. Looking down June saw four claw marks, each less than an inch in length, which had barely broken the skin. ‘Fucking cat,’ she said and sucked the back of her hand.