Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

The Plea Bargain by Peter Turnbull

York, England, might seem an unlikely setting for stories of organized crime and professional hit men, but Peter Turnbull makes it all seem real, not only in this new story in the series starring DCI Hennessey and Sergeant Yellich, but also in his August ’05 novel in the series entitled Chill Factor. Other new Turnbull books are Sweet Humphrey (Severn House) and Trophy Wife (Allison & Busby.)

The man walked his dog, as he had always walked his dog, every day at seven A.M., in the park — each day, every day, because, he would explain, dogs don’t know when it’s Sunday or Christmas Day. And so at seven A.M. each day there he was with Basil in the park. Man and friend going for a walk together. “The park” was so called because it was cultivated and had benches and statues and concrete pathways, but also had no boundary, no gates that were locked at sunset each day, as all other parks in the city of York do. And as such, the park, the real name of which was Millington Stray, a “stray” in Yorkshire meaning an open area of land, often attracted the “less savoury” people of York, as the man was wont to call them. The people of the night who sit up in the park in the hours of darkness, often even up in the branches of the trees, finding solace and company in the darkness, and who melt away with the dawn to sleep the day away in damp, miserable bedsits. Many such are mentally ill, a few merely eccentric, a few dangerous, but mostly such people, in the man’s experience, are placid and harmless, and really quite fearful of life. By seven A.M., especially during the summer months, most of the night people had vanished from the park, just a few stragglers might remain, a few content to sit under the trees until they felt forced out by the “normal” people, who eyed them with hostility and suspicion. Some of the night people the man had gotten to know by sight. On that morning in mid July, the man saw a man he had not seen before, not a night person, his dress was that of a man with self-respect, his shoes were polished, his blue jacket seemed to gleam in the low morning sun and contrast jarringly with the greenery. The man in the blue jacket smiled at the dog walker as they neared each other.

“Don’t go down there.” The man with the blue jacket jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the direction from which he had come, and the direction the dog walker was going towards. “Not unless you have a strong stomach. Wondered why there were no ‘nighties’ about; now I know. They’ve all been scared off.” And he walked on without stopping.

The dog walker walked on, concerned, curious, alert, and he also sensed a change in his dog’s attitude; there was a certain reluctance in his small black collie crossbreed, but nothing he could see seemed to be out of place. He glanced across the park, left and right of the path... no movement, just a girl with yellow hair in a red tracksuit a few hundred yards away jogging down another path. He had seen her before, many times, and if they both kept to their usual routes they would meet and pass each other, with a nod and a smile and a merry “Good morning.”

But nothing, nothing out of the ordinary.

Then he saw it.

Two men. Well dressed. No “nighties” there.

Dead.

Laid out side by side on the grass at the side of the path.

Their heads inclining away from each other.

But very, very dead.

George Hennessey parked his car behind the line of police vehicles, and the mortuary van, and a distinctive red-and-white Riley at the entrance to the park. He left his vehicle and nodded in response to the constable’s salute as he passed and followed the concrete path into the park until he saw the police activity: the white-shirted constables, the tall form of Detective Sergeant Yellich, and the slender form of Dr. D’Acre. He approached Yellich and saw that in front of Yellich were two long mounds, covered in plastic sheeting. A blue-and-white police tape tied to trees and shrubs, at waist height, formed a cordon round the two mounds.

“Three-nine call just after seven this morning, sir,” Yellich said. “Member of the public found them... they are two men, lifeless when the police patrol arrived. The police surgeon pronounced life extinct at...” Yellich consulted his notepad, “at eight A.M. CID called Dr. D’Acre.”

“Ligature marks round the neck,” Dr. D’Acre picked up her cue. “Suggests death by strangulation.” She was in her forties, short hair, black, greying at the roots, no makeup save a trace of pale lipstick. “And the time of death, very reluctant to be drawn on that one, but a corpse has five stages: fresh, bloated, decay, post-decay, and dry, by which we mean skeletal. These corpses are both fresh, so death was a matter of hours ago.”

“Found by a fella walking his dog,” Yellich said. “I have his name and address and proof of ID if we need to talk to him again, but I don’t think we will. He just saw what he saw and phoned three nines, said a guy in a blue jacket warned him of something but didn’t say what, but something that made all the ‘nighties’ quit the park. The referrer didn’t get the impression the man in the blue jacket was involved, just a bit detached with an unpleasant sense of humour.”

“Any ID on the deceased?”

“Well...” again Yellich consulted his notepad, “they appear to have been stripped of all ID, no wallets or anything, no rings or watches that might have an inscription. Strange, really... leaving them like this, laid out, as if wanting them to be found, but removing all ID.”

“Strange, all right,” Hennessey conceded.

“But there was something.”

“Oh?”

“In one of the pockets, an appointment card for a dental checkup. White’s dental practice, second April at three-thirty P.M. Probably just stuck it in his pocket and forgot it was there, and whoever rifled his pockets missed it. Tried to phone them but all I got was an answering machine telling me what to do in an emergency and what their opening hours are...” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll phone them again in a minute or two, let them open the curtains and put the kettle on for that first vital, necessary cup of tea.”

“Let’s have a look at them, then.” Hennessey stepped forward, underneath the blue-and-white tape, and peeled back the plastic sheeting just sufficient to expose the faces of the deceased. Both appeared to be in their forties and, allowing for postmortem stubble, were clean-shaven. Both had neatly groomed hair, and peeling the plastic back further he saw they appeared to be smartly dressed within limited means: jacket, tie, but threadbare. He replaced the sheet noting how similar they appeared.

Yellich walked to the edge of the park where he thought he’d get a better signal for his mobile. He phoned the dental practice. The receptionist was polite but firm. She would not give out such details over the phone, but she did agree to fax the information to Micklegate Bar Police Station for the attention of DS Yellich. As he was phoning, Dr. D’Acre walked out of the park and got into her red-and-white Riley and drove away. The bodies were removed on covered stretchers to the mortuary van, which then also drove away. When Yellich returned to Micklegate Bar Police Station he checked his pigeonhole and found that the dental appointment in question had been made in respect of one Charles Lovejoy, The Mount, Headon, York.

“I wondered.” The woman seemed to be staring into the middle of the room, not focusing on anything. “When he didn’t come home, I wondered.” She wore a housecoat, beneath which a long nightdress protruded. Her hair was uncombed and hung over her left eye. She was clearly, to Hennessey and Yellich, still only half-awake and also in a state of shock: not the best frame of mind to be of assistance to the police.

“He was with another man, if indeed it is your husband, Mrs. Lovejoy. Would you possibly know who that would have been?”

“Did he look like my husband?”

“He does... did... yes.” Hennessey spoke softly. He read the room: cluttered, unclean, a settee which had the sort of tacky quality about it which said “don’t sit on me,” which he hadn’t noticed because of the gloom in the room and which now felt sticky beneath his trousers. He envied Yellich his caution and wisdom in remaining standing.

“That would be ‘Bad’ Charlie McQueen. They were so alike they were taken for brothers.”

“Would you know McQueen’s address?”

“No, but you would.”

“Really?” Hennessey shot a glance at Yellich, then he turned again to Mrs. Lovejoy. “McQueen, you say?”

“Charles McQueen, he’s not bad so much as sad. Always in trouble with the law since he was at school, but always petty stuff, never anything really big. Pathetic really is Bad Charlie, but he likes his nickname, makes him feel like a real gangster. He lives behind the railway station. Holgate? Is that the area?”

“Yes. You’re not from York?”

“Manchester. Only been in this city for eighteen months. I wed for the first time at the age of thirty-five and I’m a widow at thirty-seven.”

“If it is your husband.”

“Oh, it’ll be him. I knew when he didn’t come home. He’s always home.”

“Does your husband work?”

“Unemployed. Chronic unemployment, that’s his lot. Hardly had a job in his life. I mean, look at this... is this the house of a man with an income? Two Charlies, knew each other a long time. That McQueen, though, he was a bad influence... always knew no good would come of it, but they were inseparable. When they were together you couldn’t get between them. Strangled, you say?”

“Yes... so it seems. Both men.”

Mandy Lovejoy shook her head. “I’ll get dressed. Do the identification.”

Later she just nodded as she looked at the man through the pane of glass, neatly wrapped in bandages so that only his face was visible and who, because of some trick of light and shade, appeared to be floating peacefully in a void. “That’s him,” she said. “That’s my man.”

Criminal records showed “Bad” Charles McQueen to have accumulated a lot of track, but all, as Mandy Lovejoy said, petty stuff — drunk and disorderly, small-scale theft... no TV licence, driving whilst disqualified. “Made a career out of it.” Hennessey handed the sheet of McQueen’s track to Yellich.

McQueen’s address in Holgate proved to be a neatly painted terraced house. Inside it was also neat and clean and tidy, wherein everything seemed to have its place, evidently including Mrs. McQueen. She was a small woman in Hennessey’s view, very small, but was neat like her house, well dressed, as well as a small budget could allow. She responded to the news of her husband’s death with floods of tears. It was some minutes before Hennessey realised he was witnessing floods of tears of joy and relief.

“He was a rat,” she said. “My troubles started twenty years ago when I married a rat.” She glanced up and then stood up and swept her hand along the mantelpiece, sending photographs and brass items crashing to the floor. Then she sat down again. “For twenty years I’ve dreamed of doing that.” Then she yelled to the room, “Now make me pick it up... now make me tidy it...” Then she turned to Hennessey. “Like he was in the army... inspecting everything, ruled this house like a tyrant. We had two children, left home as soon as they could... and never came back.”

“He had enemies?”

“Plenty. Me included.”

“Any particular enemies? Anyone that would want to murder him?”

“Well, I wanted to murder him, that’s one name for your list.” She stood and wound herself into a lightweight summer coat. “Come on, let’s get this identification over with. I’ve been praying for this day for twenty years. I’m going to bury him so I can dance a jig over his body.”

The identification was, as Hennessey predicted, positive. Mrs. McQueen declined the offer of a lift home and left the hospital chuckling to herself, telling the officers that she was going to wet her whistle “good and proper.”

Hennessey and Yellich sat in Hennessey’s office. They sat in silence. Hennessey allowed his gaze to be drawn to a solitary figure walking the medieval wall of the city, a local man, Hennessey thought, not looking from side to side like a curious, excited tourist, but walking the walls as any citizen of York would, knowing that the walls are the quickest way to cross the city on foot. Then he turned to Yellich. “Two men,” he said, “one not known to us... he isn’t known?”

“Lovejoy? No, sir. No Lovejoy of that age or address.”

“All right. One known to us, quite well, one not known. They looked alike, which may or may not be relevant, both murdered, at the same time, at the same location, placed side by side, and both murdered in the same manner, possibly by strangulation. Dr. D’Acre will be doing the postmortem this afternoon. I’ll observe for the police.”

“Very good, boss.”

“So... make an observation?” Hennessey smiled.

“Well, it would have taken more than one man to murder them. One man couldn’t have strangled both at once... and one man couldn’t have carried them to where they were laid out.”

“So who, what, are we dealing with?”

“Well, I don’t suspect either wife.”

“Nor do I. I think we’ll wait until we hear what Dr. D’Acre has to say. So what are you doing for lunch?”

“Canteen, boss. Cheap.”

“Yuck! But as you wish. I’ll see you later.” He stood and put on his straw hat and walked out of Micklegate Bar Police Station and walked the walls to Lendal Bridge and the fish restaurant, where he enjoyed breaded haddock with chips — much, much better than the food in the police canteen, no matter how inexpensive it was. After lunch he strolled the sun-baked city, mingling with the tourists and the street entertainers, and walked down the graceful curve of Georgian St. Leonard’s Place. In St. Leonard’s, he saw a red Rolls Royce waiting patiently in the traffic behind an open-topped horse-drawn carriage. In the Rolls Royce, in a matching red blazer, was Big John Meldrum, a huge man, shiny, utterly bald head, one henchman at his side. Now there, thought Hennessey, there is one villain I want to put away. He is the biggest villain in the Vale of York, but he never gets his hands dirty. Not that I ever knew. It was rumoured Meldrum even had diamonds embedded in his teeth, just for show. In the rear of the Rolls Royce sat a boy, about seventeen, a pale, frightened-looking youth with a sloping-back forehead, a pointed nose, and a very weak chin. He didn’t appear to be in distress, but looked very clearly as though he wanted to be a long way away, anywhere but where he sat at that moment.

“They were stabbed to death.” Louise D’Acre spoke softly but authoritatively.

“Not strangled after all?”

“Well, they were strangled. The ligature marks round their necks were pre-mortem, bruising like that is not possible after death.” Louise D’Acre extended a slender arm to one of the bodies, which lay side by side on separate stainless-steel tables. “But that didn’t kill them. Death was due to a single stab wound. Here and here.” She pointed to a small cut underneath the left rib cage of each corpse. “That was made by a type of knife I believe is known as a stiletto. Very long and very thin. A small wound on the surface of the skin, and little mess because the bleeding was internal.” She nodded to the open abdomen. “All the blood drained into the stomach in both cases, where it congealed, as you see.”

“Gangland,” Hennessey hissed angrily. “Has to be.”

“You think?” Dr. D’Acre smiled. She rarely smiled at him when on duty. Any attempt he made to smile when on duty was always frozen out.

“I think so.” He didn’t return the smile, knowing it would not be appreciated. “The calmness of it, the ritualistic nature of it... the laying of the bodies as laying a trophy, or as a warning. It all speaks of organised crime, and that means a cold trail. These people know how to cover their tracks. This is one to be placed in the Pending box, and if we get a break, we get a break. If we don’t, we don’t.”

Yellich returned home early, earlier than usual. His wife hugged him with a powdery arm, and his son, now far too big to be picked up, slobbered a kiss over him and was keen to show him how he could spell the words “paper” and “pencil.” He was proud of “pencil.” It had taken him all week to learn to spell that word.

Hennessey drove home, too. He was met by an excited Oscar, who barked and ran in tight circles at his homecoming. He made a cup of tea and walked into the garden, where the ashes of his young wife had been scattered many years earlier, and told her of his day. He ate, fed, and exercised Oscar and then packed an overnight bag. He drove to Skelton, to a half-timbered mock Tudor house. He parked the car at the curb and walked up the crunching gravel drive and tapped gently on the door. It was opened by a woman who smiled at him, warmly. “Come in,” said Louise D’Acre. “The children have settled. We can go straight up.”

The remainder of that year passed without moment. Lovers of cricket delighted at the victory of England over the feared and formidable West Indies in the final test of the series at Headingley. The autumn brought rain; the Ouse swelled but the flood defences held, and York wasn’t flooded. Yellich watched his son continue to thrive within his birth limitations, and Hennessey spoke to his wife daily, visited Louise D’Acre twice or thrice weekly, took an interest in his son’s career at the bar, and remembered the birthdays of his grandchildren. It was, he recalled, two weeks before Christmas of that year that it happened, when the weather was cold, and the bright lights hung in the streets and the shops sold goods, mostly on credit, if the news was to be believed. It was then, that time of year, when he was at his desk, writing a report, that Yellich came and stood on the threshold of his office, tapped on the doorframe, and said, “Boss, I think you should hear this. Interview room number four.”

Hennessey, curious, followed Yellich to interview room four. A young man sat in the room at the table next to a broad-chested man in a silk shirt and expensive-looking suit. The youth looked nervous, he had a distinct “pointed” face, and Hennessey knew he had seen him before, but couldn’t place him. The youth looked frightened.

“This is Tom Cook,” Yellich said, “and his lawyer, Mr. Sheridan.”

“Of Sheridan, Sheridan, and March,” said the broad-chested man. He had, by contrast, a full face, bearded, warmth and confidence in his eyes.

“Tom has just coughed to malicious wounding,” Yellich said. “Nasty attack with a broken bottle.”

“Well done, Tom.” Hennessey smiled. “It’s always best to play with a straight bat.”

“Tom wants to plea bargain, boss.”

“No deals! We don’t plea bargain. I’m surprised at you, Detective Sergeant, our policy is plain: A guilty plea will earn a reduced sentence, and we inform the judge that the defendant has been of help in other issues, that will further reduce the sentence, but no plea bargains. That’s up to the CPs anyway, but we will charge and send the papers to them.”

“Well, my client hasn’t exactly ‘coughed’ to anything, Mr...?”

“Hennessey.”

“Mr. Hennessey. The tape has been switched off. This is off the record.”

“I don’t like talking off the record.” Hennessey shot an angry glance at Yellich.

“Might be worth listening to this, sir.”

“Very well, I’ll listen.” Hennessey remained standing.

“The case against my client cannot be proved.” Mr. Sheridan spoke softly. “If you charge him, he will plead not guilty and you will lose the case. But his criminal record is such, and the nature of the crime is such, that it is likely that he will be remanded in custody pending trial, in which case he could spend as much as three years in jail.”

“It’s a slow-moving system,” Hennessey growled. “I wish it was speedier at times.”

“But my client fears jail. He has been in before and it was his lot to be victimised by the other inmates.”

“Yes?”

“He does have information about a double murder which took place in this city during the summer.”

“The two guys in the park,” said Yellich.

Hennessey smiled and sat down.

“Thought you’d be interested, boss.”

“I’m listening, Tom.” Hennessey continued to smile.

“Those two guys in the park... one was a crook called McQueen.” Tom Cook spoke earnestly, as if eager to please. “And the other guy, same age, needed cash. They stole a whole load of cocaine from Big Johnny Meldrum.”

So that’s where I saw you, Hennessey thought, in the back of Big John Meldrum’s Rolls Royce, looking sick with fear. The image had stayed with him.

“He has a big house outside York. Dogs. High fence, heavies to guard the place, minders to look after him.”

“We know him. He is of considerable interest to us, and has been for a long time.”

“They were murdered by Meldrum.” Tom Cook looked directly into Hennessey’s eyes. “They were not in Meldrum’s league, out of their depth. Meldrum used McQueen as a gofer. McQueen got greedy, hatched a plan with the other guy to make it look like McQueen had been robbed of a load of coke he was delivering... but you could see through that plan with a glass eye and it didn’t fool Meldrum any. That guy is serious. He’s as mean as he looks.”

“Go on.”

“Meldrum had them both brought to his house, tied to a chair, cord round their necks, choking them till one of them broke and told Meldrum where the coke was. Meldrum said the first one to tell him where it was would live, the other wouldn’t, but they both got it in the end. Once the coke had been recovered Meldrum murdered them, stuck a long, thin knife into them, just once each, under the rib cage. They didn’t die quickly.”

“They wouldn’t, their blood drained into their stomachs.”

“But I know where he keeps the blade. You could turn his house upside down and inside out and you wouldn’t find it. But I know where it is. He didn’t clean it and he didn’t wear gloves. I saw it all. I was one of his gofers, too. Still am.”

“My client, you see, gentlemen, is involved with Meldrum and he too is out of his depth. You have the authority to remand him for three years pending a trial you will not win, but the three years will be difficult for my client. He, on the other hand, witnessed a double murder and will direct you to corroborative evidence which will put Meldrum away for life. My client will make a statement, tell you where the knife is hidden, and... and, gentlemen, give evidence against Meldrum at his trial should it come to that.”

“Very brave of you, Tom.”

“It is exceedingly courageous, Mr. Hennessey, because his life will be at risk. He won’t be safe anywhere.” Sheridan paused. “Drop all charges, relocate my client to a different part of the U.K., in housing which is acceptable within reason, and give him a new identity. Then you’ll get your statement, your corroborative evidence in the form of the murder weapon with Meldrum’s fingerprints and the victims’ blood all over it, and you’ll get your strong witness for the Crown.”

Hennessey turned and smiled at Yellich.

“Thought you’d be interested, boss.”

Copyright © 2006 Peter Turnbull