Faith Martin - A Fatal Obsession

It was only then that she began to cry.

Sir Marcus Deering rose that morning with a cheerful whistle on his lips and ate a hearty breakfast. The whole mood in the house was jubilant now, and faintly shamefaced, as if acknowledging they had been silly ever to have worried.

Anthony was once more out on his beloved horse, since he was due back in London soon and was determined to make the most of a dry, if cold, day.

By nine-thirty Sir Marcus was seated behind the desk in his study, reading the morning post. There had been no green-inked missive to worry him, and if any more came, he would simply toss them, unread, into the bin. The poison pen had shot his arrow and missed by a mile. And never again would Sir Marcus be foolish enough to be conned into worrying about ‘doing the right thing’.

When the telephone on his desk rang he reached for it absently. He heard his secretary telling him there was a woman on the line who insisted on speaking to him but wouldn’t give her name.

‘Oh?’ Marcus frowned. ‘That’s odd.’ His daytime calls were invariably with other businessmen or their secretaries – none of whom was unwilling to identify themselves. ‘Well, put her through.’

‘Yes, sir,’ his secretary said. There was a short delay, a beep, and then he heard a tentative, tearful voice.

It took a moment for him to realise who it was on the other end of the line, and when he did so, his first instinct was to look furtively at the closed door of his study. ‘I told you never to call me here,’ he hissed angrily into the receiver, getting automatically to his feet. ‘If my wife were to…’

But the voice frantically overrode him – something that had never happened before. And as he finally took in what was being said, all the anger washed out of him, along with the colour in his face, leaving him sitting white and shaken in his chair and fighting the urge to be sick.

At St Aldates police station, DI Jennings looked gravely at the faces turned towards him.

‘Let me repeat, this is a murder investigation. Sometime yesterday, somebody brutally killed Jonathan McGillicuddy by bashing him over the head with his own spade.’

He went on to give details of the deceased, his work as a gardener in a house where the owners were absent, his failure to return home and the missing person’s report filed on him by his mother as a result. He then went on to relate the discovery of his body in the morning by the PC sent from Kidlington, in response to the request from the desk sergeant on duty at Cowley police station.

‘He subsequently found the victim dead in the orchard,’ DI Jennings concluded heavily. ‘He’d clearly been working clearing out the old trees, and our police surgeon reckons he’d been dead at least twelve hours – possibly fifteen. Probably longer, but he can’t be sure. He’s also given a preliminary cause of death as blunt-force trauma to the head – but again he won’t sign off on it until after the autopsy.’

Trudy Loveday, along with the others, listened to all this dry-mouthed. It wasn’t often that they had a murder case to deal with, and such a cold-blooded, savage attack was very unusual. Around her, everyone else was also tense and alert, and listening intently.

That poor man’s mother, she thought, swallowing hard.

‘The lad who sometimes worked with him as casual labour has been traced, but he confirmed he wasn’t working that day with Mr McGillicuddy, but at a warehouse in Bicester instead. His alibi has since been confirmed. According to Mrs McGillicuddy, her son had no enemies, wasn’t a drinker or troublemaker, and had always been a responsible, respectable lad. Widowed young, with a little girl to take care of, he’d lived with his mother all his life. And he’s certainly not known to us,’ the DI confirmed heavily. ‘But it’s early days yet. Somebody had a reason to kill this man. And that’s where we need to start. Since the killer used the victim’s own spade, one theory is that the murder was unpremeditated. Our MO confirms the initial and primary wound was to the back of the head, with several more blows as he lay prone on the ground. Now I want you to sort yourselves into teams and find out all you can about our victim. His mother says she knows of no female friends.’ The DI paused and smiled at this. ‘But that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist – only that her son played his romantic cards close to his chest.’

The DI shrugged. ‘Then we need to find out all about his finances. He was basically a gardener for hire, so his overheads should have been low and his income easily traceable. Is it? Does he have debts? Maybe he’s a bit of a gambler? Find out.

‘Then there’s the mother. Yes, I know, on the face of it she’s an unlikely suspect. But families can be tricky things. We need to a do a house-to-house around the area where he was killed. Unfortunately, according to the PC who found the body, the house and grounds are large and relatively private. Plus, yesterday was a damp and cold day, and it’s doubtful many people would have been out and about, but we need to find any that were. Did they notice the victim’s van and, more importantly, were any other vehicles seen in the lane that day. If so, we need to trace the owners of those cars and speak to them. Did anyone hear loud or raised voices, or notice any strangers lurking about? We need to interview those who were in the vicinity – the postman, any tradesmen or callers. Was it rent week, or the day the man came around collecting the pools? We need to know anything and everything about that lane and what went on in it yesterday.’

‘Sir…’ A young PC shuffled up and handed him a message from the desk sergeant. He read it briefly, lips thinning slightly in irritation, then nodded at the Sergeant. ‘O’Grady, carry on. I’ll be back shortly.’

‘Sir.’

But DI Jennings wasn’t back for quite some time.

When he’d got the message that Sir Marcus Deering was in the station and was demanding to speak to him, DI Jennings had intended to deal with him quickly and shortly. While he was willing to pander to his superiors’ insistence that the man be treated with respect when times were slow, he had no time to hold the entrepreneur’s hand when he had a vicious murder inquiry just getting underway. Especially since the threats in the anonymous letters had proved to be so much nonsense.

But when he went into his office the businessman’s first words floored him utterly.

Sir Marcus, sitting slumped in the chair in front of his desk, looked visibly haggard, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably.

‘We were wrong, Inspector. They did kill my son, after all,’ he said, his voice thick with emotion.

DI Jennings blinked and sat down heavily in his chair. Another murder inquiry, coming so fast on the heels of the McGillicuddy case? His first thought was that he’d need much more manpower.

‘How did it happen?’ he demanded at once. ‘I was told nothing happened yesterday. When was Mr Deering attacked? Are you sure—’

‘My son Anthony is fine.’ Sir Marcus interrupted the barrage of questions flatly, leaving the Inspector slack-jawed and stupefied into silence. The older man stared down at his hands, unable to meet the DI’s gaze. ‘Fact is, er, Jennings, that in my younger days, well… I was rather fond of a young girl, a local girl, very pretty and perfectly respectable, but a bit… er… below us on the social scale, I suppose you’d say. A decent girl, and all that… but well, when she fell pregnant, my father… Well, let’s just say my father and hers came to an arrangement…’

‘I see, sir,’ DI Jennings said briskly. Although he felt vaguely shocked and a little embarrassed by such revelations, it was not his place to judge. ‘And this… er… local girl, I take it she had a baby boy?’