Invitation to Die Read online

  “Right! Cocking a snook, I’d call that. Taking the Mickey! And in Cambridge? Nah! Assassins operate in London. And their ‘clients’ tend to be foreign governments, business enterprises or criminal organisations clearing out spies, rivals, traitors . . . other professionals who understand the risks and play the game. They don’t bother with a tuppenny-halfpenny dancing instructor, however annoying he was. And what sort of an assassin treats his target to a three-course dinner immediately before doing him in?”

  He passed a sheet of paper with a short handwritten message to Redfyre.

  “Finally! Here we have it. Contents of stomach: foie gras, turbot, beef Wellington. Three courses. No dessert, it would seem . . . probably watching his waistline. Plenty of wine and a large measure of brandy. Hmm . . . sir?”

  “I know what you’re going to ask. How in hell can they specify ‘beef Wellington’ rather than ‘beef stew,’ ‘turbot’ rather than ‘cod’? Well, they can’t, at least not definitively. That’s the doc being helpfully imaginative. For our eyes only, this sheet. The page we actually filed is this one, listing the results item by item and in order of distance travelled down the tubes.” He presented a further sheet bearing the heading of the Cambridge Medical Forensic Department. “Tedious but essential. A list compiled by a forensic scientist of the first order—Beaufort. He identified individual ingredients from the internal gloop and—bon viveur that he is—was able to reconstitute them into a credible menu. Beef in conjunction with the elements of pastry—flour and fat—amounts to beef pie, but when a soupçon of black truffle is also present in the same stratum—well, that’s your beef Wellington.”

  MacFarlane replaced the sheets and photographs in Chiqui’s file and selected a second file.

  “This one is less spectacular. But it’s not so cold as the one you’ve just seen. Still on the books, in fact. I’ve parked these copies in here because I thought there might be a connection. The murder occurred just before your arrival on the force. I gave it to Inspector Beattie. Poor bloke—he had a lot of interference from me, and even more annoyingly, the War Office. Or a section of it that’s a little bit hush-hush. You’ll see why. Again, we got a good shot of the crime scene before the press were aware and managed to clear up in double-quick time. You’ll appreciate the need for that.”

  Redfyre looked carefully at the photographs, again admiring the clear eye and skill of the police photographer. He was looking at a very familiar Cambridge monument, and one much loved by him. A seven-foot-tall figure cast in bronze atop a plinth stood in the middle of the Hills Road at its junction with the short road that led to the railway station. The memorial to the men of Cambridgeshire who fell in the Great War.

  Redfyre had seen many war memorials put up in the years after 1918 in France and England, and, unsurprisingly, they had all been sorrowful and restrained. Some were sculpted with such a depth of feeling and personal involvement that their beauty brought tears to the eyes of battle-hardened men. Nearly every family in the land had its known warrior, its own story of loss, injustice and sacrifice and their grief found expression in these respectful works of public art. But this one was the exception. Every time he passed the jaunty figure of the young soldier up high on his slab of Portland stone, Redfyre caught his eye and returned his triumphant smile. Sometimes he winked.

  The private was striding out, bareheaded and rather dishevelled, with the joyous freedom of natural movement that could only have been captured by a Canadian artist, Redfyre thought. Here was no stiff British solemnity, no elegant French ceremony. The lad’s helmet was in his left hand, held out in a gesture of offering to whoever was greeting him. It was decorated with a single rose and a garland of laurel leaves. Over his left shoulder, he carried his rifle from which swung a German helmet—the Tommy’s favourite trophy of war—and a second victory wreath. The handsome lad was loping eagerly towards the town, flinging a last look back over one shoulder at the railway station where he had just left the crowded troop train bringing him back from France. Flinging off his old life and eagerly confronting the future. Job triumphantly done. It represented, for Redfyre, hope, energy, and indomitable resilience.

  “Taken some time after the third of July 1922 when the Duke of York unveiled it,” Redfyre commented, unsettled by the silence and the knowing eyes scanning him for a reaction. “And judging by the presence of ceremonial poppy wreaths, this would have been on or near the eleventh of November, Armistice Day. Before my time, so it must have been the same year—1922. Wasn’t there a bit of a problem with the ceremony? Troublemakers louting about with tomatoes and paint? An antiwar group? Communists?”

  MacFarlane nodded. “They had a point to make. Usual boring, naïve rubbish from inexperienced young twerps. Away-from-home students, for the most part . . . They’d never try it on in their own hometowns. They were quickly seen off by a contingent of hot-tempered old survivors of earlier wars armed to the teeth with walking sticks and ear trumpets. A couple of our uniform boys judged their moment carefully, then strolled onstage and mopped up.”

  Redfyre pointed an unsteady finger at the base of the memorial. “So this little tableau made its appearance some time during the dark hours of Saturday night and Sunday morning? If you’d missed it, it would have been found by ladies and gents heading for the Botanic Garden for their early Sunday constitutional, or worshippers on their way to the Catholic church a few yards away. You did well to clear up in the time.”

  “Yes. Not difficult. There was no blood spilled. It was just a matter of calling up an ambulance and stretcher from Addenbrooke’s, which is all of a minute’s drive away down the road. I think we weren’t meant to notice it until much later.”

  “How did you hear of the incident?”

  “We were alerted by one of our beat bobbies. The night shift. He was on his way back here to clock in and file his report, sun just up. A fine, clear morning. Good lad! He remembered that there’d been trouble here earlier in the day and made a detour to check that no one had sneaked back and done something silly. He walked straight past at first, did a double take and went back to have a closer look. He decided to stay on guard himself at the memorial to preserve the scene and managed to stop a passing messenger boy on a bike. Paid him sixpence to cycle to the station and raise the alarm. Another sharp lad. He bustled in and gave the constable’s name and number first so we knew he wasn’t having us on. And this is what greeted us when we arrived.”

  There was a second man in the photograph. He was not smiling, nor was he striding out towards a rosy future. He sat at the far end of the monument, facing the past, his back to the town, slumped against the plinth, head bowed over his chest.

  “How did this one die?” Redfyre asked.

  Chapter 13

  Cambridge, Monday, the 19th of May, 1924

  “Broken skull. The Mourner at the Memorial died from the effects of a broken skull. Neat, quiet job. If you’re a killer, it’s a good technique to use against a target who is as strong as or stronger than yourself. What you do is tap your victim on the point of the jaw first to render him unconscious, then when he slumps to the ground, you sit on his chest, grab his head by the ears or the hair and bang it against a hard surface.” MacFarlane illustrated the tapping, grabbing and banging sequence using his own meaty fists.

  “Hard surfaces have accounted for more victims than knives or guns, I reckon. And there’s always one to hand when you need it. Fireplaces and table legs being favourites, of course.”

  “Plenty of them around the area of a war memorial . . .” Redfyre suggested to move him on.

  “Exactly. I set the lads to combing every inch of the pavings. Moving all those bloody wreaths about! Nothing untoward. But then, there wouldn’t have been much of a sign. The subject had thick hair, and the skin of the scalp wasn’t breached. Bruises and swelling had begun to gather, that’s all.”

  “So he was killed elsewhere?”

  “N
o. Right here on the spot! One sharp-eyed beat constable helping us out, thought of examining the plinth. He looked first all around the stonework at the height of a man’s head, and there it was! On the western side, facing away from the road. Discreetly in shadow. The smear!”

  “I thought you said there was no blood?”

  “Brilliantine! He’d clearly been out on the town that night. Snappy dresser, our friend. Took good care of his appearance. Hair as thick as his, it needed a bit of restraint. There was a round patch—a stain on the stonework, and the gunk contained several hairs matching the hair of the dead man. He’d been lured round the back of the memorial and had his skull cracked, then was lowered and dragged the short distance round to the stern end.”

  Redfyre sighed. “And his last supper?”

  A paper-clipped sheaf was put into the inspector’s hand. “Read this in your own good time. You’ll find the formula is becoming familiar. Wine and brandy again, following some fancy soup or other. My ma would have called it leek and potato, but I see the doctor has it down as vichyssoise. Then venison—appropriate for the time of year, November being well into game season, and after that, a blackberry tart and cheese.”

  “And his identity? Who was he, this man about Cambridge?”

  “Again, all forms of identity were removed to slow us down. Odd, that! This killer apparently likes to suppress distinguishing facts about his victims. To allow himself the time to get away? But he goes to a lot of trouble to make sure their corpses are displayed, making them identifiable to anyone who knew them. There’s no distortion or damage to any facial features. They all looked pretty enough for our photographer to take a portrait of them. We were getting the prints ready to take all round Cambridge to the hotels and restaurants seeking identification. They wouldn’t have frightened the horses. But in the end, we didn’t have to bother.

  “We identified this one quite quickly. His wife came to the desk at the station and reported him missing by lunchtime. Ernest Jessup. Working for a London firm of accountants. Big one. Ernest had brought his wife up with him on a remembrance weekend. A sort of keep-their-memories-bright reunion with old army pals. Cambridge this year because of the unveiling of the monument, which he’d duly attended that morning while his wife visited the shops. Mrs. Jessup was distraught, of course, and keen to be of assistance, but not very helpful. She didn’t know her husband’s army friends, wasn’t interested in that part of his life at all. Couldn’t consign the war and all who fought in it to the dust soon enough! She’d been lured to Cambridge with the promise of a trip to the theatre. She’d chosen a ‘Music Box Revue’ at the playhouse. It started at six. The husband left her half an hour later, sliding out, saying he felt a bit queasy. He’d come back before the end to walk her back to their hotel, he promised her.

  “No surprises there—he’d done it before. He got bored and fidgety after five minutes. Claimed he couldn’t stand confined spaces. But Mrs. J. claimed the only confined space that affected her husband was the one between his ears, though other parts of his anatomy came in for their share of criticism. Mrs. Jessup had remained at the show because she was having a good time and preferred to stay there on her own rather than have her gloomy husband ruin a perfectly good evening. Strapping lass, well able to take care of herself. Bit of a good-time girl before matrimony set in, I should judge. I gathered that all was not well in that ménage.

  “Before you ask, Redfyre—yes, she did stay on for the whole performance. No chance she followed him out and did something lethal to him round the back of the war memorial.” He paused for a moment, mouth twisting briefly in distaste. “Ahem! We know that because she ordered up two gin and tonics for the interval and the steward delivered them to her seat.”

  “The other seat remained unoccupied?”

  “Oh yes. Right through from conjurer to audience sing-along finale, she was alone. The steward was quite certain on that point. He’d been keeping an eye out. Probably fancied his chances . . . Anyhow, the husband didn’t reappear. She stomped off back to the hotel for a gin-induced good night’s slumber and came to report him to us as missing next morning. She identified him from one of the prints we’d had rushed through. Shrieks and screams!”

  “Did she give anything away at all?”

  “You’ve noticed people often say more than they realise in the stress of the moment? She did say something a bit odd. It sounded no more than the typical ‘I told you so!’ outburst you sometimes hear. But I followed it up.

  “‘I told him! I said time and time again, “Ernest, you’re keeping bad company! You’ll rue the day you took up with those scoundrels!”’ she said.

  “She regathered her wits about her, though, pulled herself together, shut her mouth and thought a bit before feeding me some cock-and-bull story about gambling debts he owed to a London mob. He’d come away to Cambridge thinking they were on his tail that weekend. She was lying. But I had no way of denying it at the time. Could just have been true. It only begins to look like a string of porkie-pies when taken in consideration with past—and future!—cases.”

  “Let’s take stock, sir,” Redfyre said hurriedly, watching his boss select two more files from the black box with enthusiasm. “We’re looking at three unsolved cases so far: a Cambridge tramp, a London accountant and a South American tango teacher. A throttling, a skull-cracking and a stabbing. Who on earth would connect them? Apart from the oddity of the final meal, which I believe we can discount in view of the many hostelries in the city, there are two elements they have in common. One I don’t yet understand the reason for—the bodies were flaunted, not hidden or disguised. Second, there’s a military flavour to each. Working backwards, the tramp, Dunstan, we know to have been a soldier of some sort. The Londoner still maintained links with a group of old brothers-in-arms, according to his wife, and indeed, it was at a war memorial that the killer chose to place his victim. The tangoist—though not himself a warrior—we could argue was the victim of a military man. An officer who served in Afghanistan, I think you said?”

  “Good man! You’ve been paying attention. Now take a gander at these two.”

  He slapped the two further files he’d selected in front of Redfyre. The inspector noted that they were of relatively recent date—opened and closed in the six months before he had joined the Cambridge force. MacFarlane went to the door to bellow for tea, leaving him to check the files for himself.

  In the more recent of the two, dated June fifteenth, 1921, a distinguished figure, General Sanderson, had been discovered floating in solitary and perfectly dead state down the River Cam in a punt an hour after dawn, following the evening of the Trinity May Ball. He had been carried along by the current, lying apparently at ease on the cushions, eyes closed, hands tucked up casually beneath his head. The punt on its undirected course had been spotted by an early oarsman in a skiff who had stuck out an oar and manoeuvred it to the bank, where he’d engaged a student on a bike to summon help.

  “Odd that it travelled so far downstream without getting stuck, sir?”

  “I don’t think it was ever expected to reach the North Sea. But its course was eased—the banks along that stretch are relatively frictionless. It’s well kept, with all obstacles routinely removed and a strong current flowing. We even had punters come forward who remembered seeing the old bird, taking him to be asleep or drunk and giving his boat a helpful nudge off the bank back into the main stream.

  MacFarlane’s immaculate investigation involving measuring and timing the flow and linking it with the estimated time of death had borne little fruit. The ownership of the punt had been traced back to Clare College, where it had been reported missing when the two occupants, a Clare undergrad and his girl, had tied it to the bank whilst they went for a walk in the meadows bordering the stream at Coe Fen. The lad was adamant that he’d secured it firmly and thought it was taken deliberately. That stretch of river had been busier than Piccadilly Circus th
at night of the year, both on the water and the riverbanks, thick with raucous students trying to make it upstream to Grantchester for breakfast.

  Passing by Redfyre’s chair, MacFarlane commented, “Can you imagine the answers I got when I asked if they’d noticed anything unusual going on in the neighbourhood? Bloody smart alecks!”

  Again, Redfyre found himself considering a military connection. “This general, sir, was he still active?”

  “No. He retired straight after the war. He wasn’t sacked—no one in the British army had the stomach for all that button cutting and epaulette chopping with all the real carnage still fresh. But he seems to have got up some people’s noses, though no one would give the police any information. And their records are sealed to the bumbling plod.”

  “What was he doing in Cambridge? He’s from Somerset.”

  “Came up with the lady wife to celebrate their oldest son’s graduation, or end of his three-year stint, as doting parents do. Staying at the Garden House Hotel. Told Mrs. General that he was going out for a drink with some old college friends and she wasn’t to wait up. That was the last she saw of him.”

  “He’d had a lot to drink, according to Beaufort, and a copious meal,” Redfyre said, riffling through the sheets at speed.

  “In view of the other cases, we followed this up. We wouldn’t have bothered normally—people eat well when they’re letting their hair down in Cambridge. But with the general, we checked every hostelry, restaurant, guesthouse and college kitchen in town. Not one had offered roast swan and all the regal trimmings. Not one! The nearest we could come to it was coq au vin.”

  “He died from a knock on the back of the head? Like Jessup?”