A Matter of Murder Read online

  A Matter of Murder

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  A Campbell and Carter Mystery

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  This book is for my grandson, William. Good luck in your studies, Will, and in everything you undertake in the future.

  Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

  Dr Samuel Johnson

  Chapter 1

  Miff Ferguson had been living rough for two years now. He had managed pretty well, in his own judgement, but still each day seemed to present another hurdle to clear in the obstacle course called survival.

  Today he was contemplating the coming winter, a little way off yet, but it never hurt to plan ahead. Winter could be a real Becher’s Brook of a hurdle if you were without a permanent roof over your head. It had been raining a lot recently. His small tent, just big enough to let him crawl into a sleeping bag and curl up like snail, was rainproof up to a point; but wet trickles found their way in, if the deluge was persistent. It certainly wouldn’t protect him in snow and ice, should either arrive. When that happened, he’d need some form of more solid shelter. Nothing fancy, he told himself as he padded along the pavement at first light, gripping a cardboard cup of hot coffee from an early-opening garage. The staff there knew him. If the manager was around, he had to pay for his coffee. The girls never charged him. An empty warehouse, the upper floor of a vacant house, anything bricks and mortar, that’s what he sought. There were several empty shop premises in the area, but they tended to be well protected by an alarm system.

  Early though it was, there were already quite a few people about. Some were going to work, some returning home from night shifts. Shopkeepers, newsagents in particular, were opening up their businesses. One old dear was clearly on her way to some early church service. It was surprising how many people there were out and about as soon as it was light. The great thing about them all, as far as Miff was concerned, was that they generally ignored one another. That was why it was a good time for someone like Miff to suss out the possibilities.

  If you prowled around during the hours of darkness, there was a good chance some busybody would pick up a phone and call the cops. A lot of people stayed up late in their own homes. Miff sometimes speculated on what they were doing that kept them from warm, comfortable and dry beds. They were at their computers, perhaps, playing games, watching porn, using gambling sites. Or they had been summoned by a fretful child, a hungry baby, or they couldn’t get off to sleep and thought a cup of tea might help. Whatever they were doing – and frankly, Miff didn’t care what it was – there was always the possibility one of them might decide to go to the window and stare down into the shadowy streets. A lone figure ambling along and studying the buildings made them nervous.

  It was not that he envied the householders in any way. Miff had no desire to join them permanently in a desirable residence with double glazing, and perhaps a former garden, now concreted over to provide off-street parking. Most of all, he didn’t want to be part of a fixed community. He’d tried that and had hated it. Neighbours meant other people knew more about you than they had any right to do. They marked your comings and goings. They wondered what you did for a living. They invited you to little supper parties that turned out akin to being invited to appear before the Grand Inquisition. The less they knew, the more suspicious they grew. It stoked the fire of their Great Fear: falling property prices. All of this Miff had experienced. All of it had finally become unbearable. That was when Miff decided to walk away. So far, he hadn’t regretted it. Although, to be honest, last winter had been tough. This coming winter he’d make better plans.

  If Miff felt kinship with any kind of living creature it was with the foxes that came out under cover of darkness to scavenge. Or with cats. Miff liked cats and felt he had a lot in common with them.

  At night, cats stopped pretending to be domesticated moggies – part of an ordered world – and turned feral. They popped out through flaps kindly owners had installed in their back doors, leaving the home as well-groomed, well-fed affectionate family members. They were transformed, before they reached the nearest flower bed, into predatory hunters, small but quick and ruthless. They were alert to every tiny sound or movement, catching the most elusive of scents, and endowed with that other, nameless sense that warned of danger. Then they were off, consummate athletes, scrambling easily up a wall, fence or tree, and slithering through narrow apertures that a human male could just slip a hand through.

  When any cat and Miff passed in the gloom, they ignored one another, each going about his own business. But once their wild instincts were satisfied, most cats turned back into domestic moggies and trotted off to comfortable homes to snooze the day away, unlike Miff. Yet he didn’t envy them. He sometimes thought that, by accepting even a part-time domesticity, the cats had sold out.

  By day, he was always cheerful and chatty with passers-by who stopped to commiserate with him on his misfortune at being homeless, occasionally to offer a little money or a sandwich, or sometimes to berate him for being work-shy.

  ‘You try it, mate!’ he would always advise these last. ‘You try and survive on the streets.’ Mostly they would mumble and walk off when he told them this.

  The only time he’d tucked in his head and pretended to be asleep was the day he’d spotted a guy he’d been at school with, marching towards him with all the confidence of the successful. The old schoolfellow had marched on by, oblivious, and Miff had breathed a sigh of relief.

  After that, he’d left London and found himself a refuge in this Cotswold town of Bamford, where surely he’d avoid meeting anyone he knew. If word got back to his former work colleagues that he was living rough, that would be bad enough. But if it made news at the next school reunion, the governors would probably erase his name from the list of alumni. His parents would be mortified, because they’d told everyone he was volunteering in a refugee camp in some unvisitable spot on the globe. They’d also taken the precaution of moving to Portugal.

  In truth, he was really happiest at night. At night, there was no need for pretence. You could be yourself. He avoided drunks – always unpredictable, you never knew with them. Sometimes they were lurching homeward, reliving the evening, and more concerned with fellow revellers than with rough sleepers. Sometimes they fell out of the pub or club in a tangled mass, and immediately set about those nearest to them for reasons they wouldn’t remember in the morning. Sometimes the drink released a cruel humour and a sleeping body became a target. Miff hated the drunks the most.

  You saw all sorts of things at night, of course. But you kept your mouth shut. That was understood. He was on nodding terms with quite a few professional burglars. He didn’t bother them and they didn’t worry about him.

  He had reached a neglected area of the town. Once there had been a busy estate of small manufacturing businesses here. They had long ceased to operate. While the planners argued over what to do with the site, and its deteriorating buildings, it sank slowly into dereliction. Rain entered through damaged roofs; t
he windows were broken and patchily boarded up. At ground level the weeds crept in, together with wildlife. There was also the human kind from time to time: those who wished to avoid authority and awkward questions; and people like Miff. Or not exactly like Miff, who did not want to share his spot with those who could be a danger, whether druggies stoned out of their skulls, or schizophrenics abandoned to non-existent ‘care in the community’.

  Miff was not on the streets because of drug abuse, or fleeing justice, or suffering from a mental illness. He was here because, one day, he had simply opted out, out of the rat race, of other people’s expectations, of responsibilities to other entities. He hadn’t suffered what doctors called a ‘mental breakdown’; only a complete mental change of viewpoint. He’d simply, as he explained to himself, woken up, as from a long, disturbing dream, and set out to find an escape.

  To return to present practical objectives, he had been sussing out this area for a week or more. So far, it had seemed reasonably deserted and as safe as could be expected. If a few drifters like him moved in over the coming winter, that didn’t matter. There was a kind of safety in numbers, provided they stayed small. If the residents grew too many for chance visitors or passers-by to ignore, some busybody would inform the authorities, and they’d be turned out. But he had marked this place down as a distinct possibility.

  Nevertheless, he discovered to his annoyance that he wasn’t the first visitor that early morning. Not that the first arrival on the scene was there for the same reason as himself. No, the other visitor – whoever he was – had arrived in a clean, shiny black BMW, with new registration plates, looking as if it had just been driven away from a dealership. The sight of it in these surroundings was incongruous, its presence inexplicable.

  He should, of course, have turned round and left the scene with all haste. Unfortunately, for once, he didn’t trust his instincts. He stayed. Miff sometimes wondered later why he didn’t just take to his heels. Human curiosity? Or because he found the car’s presence somehow offensive? It had no business here: that was for sure.

  The driver had parked up by an opened side door into the building. Miff knew that, normally, the door appeared to be shut fast. He also knew that the solidity of the obstacle was an illusion. The lock was broken. He hadn’t broken it – someone else had done that, a little while ago. If you wanted to gain entry, you just had to put a shoulder to the door and push hard. Then it would scrape open enough to allow you to squeeze through. It didn’t open all the way because there was a heap of junk stacked up behind it. But it was enough to let you in. Simple trespass, as Miff understood it from wet afternoons spent in the local library reading about such things, was a civil offence. Wonderful thing, the public library system. You could sit there with book and, with luck, no one would bother you. Trespassing was also what the driver of the BMW was doing, or so Miff deduced.

  How he (the driver) knew about the door Miff couldn’t say. But the unknown visitor was inside the warehouse: that much Miff was pretty sure about. But what was he doing in there? Not looking for a winter bolt-hole. Not someone driving a car like that. But why sneak around the place, taking advantage of previous vandalism to get in?

  ‘Bloody developer!’ muttered Miff. Someone was making a private dawn recce to weigh up the possibilities before making a business proposition to the site’s owners. That was Miff’s guess. This was someone who wanted to tear down the whole rickety edifice and build a mini estate of starter homes, or a block of retirement flats, a gym and recreational facility with indoor bowling and squash courts… Well, it could be any of those options, or something else entirely.

  Curiosity drew him closer. He edged past the gleaming body of the BMW. ‘Capitalist!’ muttered Miff to its empty driver’s seat. ‘Bread from the mouths of the starving poor! Enemy of the homeless!’ For good measure he added, ‘Burning up fossil fuels! Polluting the atmosphere and pumping out greenhouse gases!’ That seemed to be enough to be going on with.

  He had reached the partly opened door, where he stopped and listened. At first, he could hear nothing within and wondered whether whoever it was had already left, and was wandering around the general site. Miff had as much right to be there as him. In reality, probably neither of them had any right to be there. Either way, as Miff judged it, they were equal. He edged nearer and put an ear to the gap. He couldn’t hear any movement. He decided to take a risk and slipped silently through the opening and into the dark interior.

  It stank inside. Funny, thought Miff, the smell hadn’t bothered him the last time he’d been here. Now it seemed overpowering, with the reek of damp, rat urine and decay – as well as a foul miasma formed from everything rotting. Old graveyards sometimes gave off a similar odour after heavy rain, as earth turned to mud and began to sink down to what lay beneath, and the gases started to rise. Someone should pull the whole place down, he thought. Maybe the BMW owner had the right idea, if he was indeed a developer on the prowl for a project. Bulldoze the rickety dead thing that was the warehouse until it was just a pile of rubble, then clear it out and throw up a block of flats. Why not?

  But where was he, the driver of the flash car? Miff withdrew into the darkest corner and waited, listening, watching for a movement. And it came: the slightest ripple in the shadows ahead of him; the faintest sigh that he knew was a human breath. BMW man was in here, and Miff – who must have been crazy to give way to curiosity – was in here with him. Instinct kicked in at last and he knew that this was a bad place.

  Had he reached this decision too late? Did the man know that Miff had joined him? You bet he knew. He might have seen the outline of the newcomer as he slipped through the doorway. He might have heard a step, a creak, something so slight that it was hardly there and yet, just as Miff knew BMW man was there, so the man knew of Miff’s presence.

  What now? wondered Miff. Just go back the way he’d come and get away from here altogether? The shadows rippled again like a silk curtain in the breeze. BMW man was moving. Miff’s eyesight was adjusting to the darkness. The form had been bulky, hunched, but, as Miff watched, that shape changed. It grew taller, narrower and its breath made more noise, a low rasping sound. The man had been crouched and now he had risen to his full height, about the same as Miff, who was a little less than six feet tall. He’d been engaged in something requiring effort and, despite his best attempts to control his breathing, the man could no longer silence the ragged gasps of lungs drawing in extra air. Whatever had been the object of his efforts lay at his feet: another shape, not moving. Had the man disposed of something unwanted by leaving it in here? A sort of concealed fly-tipping? One thing was confirmed in Miff’s mind: BMW man was indeed a trespasser. Otherwise, he’d have been in Miff’s face by now, telling him bluntly to clear off.

  A thought suddenly occurred to Miff. Perhaps the man was afraid of him, of Miff. The man could not have expected to find anyone else here at this early hour. Did he think Miff was a caretaker or watchman? Did he see Miff as a threat or challenge?

  Miff made a decision. It must be his day for making bad decisions, he later thought. He called out, ‘It’s all right, mate, I’m not here to make any trouble. Just passing through, as you might say!’

  What on earth possessed him to attempt a feeble joke? Miff wondered. Because he was scared, that was why.

  Suddenly, the man was moving, and very fast, moving towards Miff. His form was growing ever larger, becoming distinctly human, with arms swinging, breath hoarse and desperate. One outstretched hand held a weapon of some sort, stick shaped, but whether made of wood or metal, Miff couldn’t tell.

  He didn’t wait to find out. He turned and ran to the opened door behind him. But he couldn’t dart through its narrow gap. He had to negotiate it. He was two-thirds out into the open air and freedom – escape – when the man reached him and the weapon struck him a painful blow on the shoulder.

  Miff threw himself forward, stumbling and, in a moment of panic, finding himself falling. He was scrabbling in the dirt when
the man reached him again. Another blow struck him but he was able, just, to throw up his arm and deflect its full force.

  Miff scuttled on all fours across the ground, and then managed to get to his feet and turn. For a split second, the two of them faced each other. Miff saw the features, white, twisted, filled with a terrible rage and resolve. He thought: he wants to kill me. He bloody wants to kill me…

  For a moment the blood in his veins turned to ice. He was frozen in terror. Then Miff ran. He ran as he’d never done before. He’d been in a few tight corners, living on the streets. But never before had he feared for his very life. He must either outrun or outmanoeuvre the attacker: or else he, Miff, was a dead man.

  Out here in the open he had the advantage. He was familiar with this urban wilderness, knew its odd corners, blind alleys and gaps between buildings, and he scurried through them like a fleeing cat. He was making for the area beyond the abandoned site, heading for the back gardens of houses in the sizeable estate next door. Miff knew he had to avoid the roads, because his pursuer could go back and get into his car and then just drive round until he saw Miff and run him down. But on foot, no chance, mate! Miff told his pursuer silently. He scrambled over fences, knocked garden ornaments flying, crashed into a barbecue stand with a clang and clatter, and splashed through a fishpond.

  His noisy progress had been heard in at least two houses. Upper windows were thrown open and angry shouts followed him. But the presence of witnesses was enough finally to deter the pursuer. Miff was thankful to stop in the shelter of a garden shed, gasping for breath, with aching lungs and ribs, and know he had won the race.

  * * *

  It had been a bad experience and he couldn’t put it out of his mind for the rest of the day. What the devil had the other man been doing there? He hadn’t been the likely developer scouting for a new project, as Miff had first thought. What had that other shape been, the one huddled at the man’s feet in the shadows of the warehouse? There was a corner of Miff’s curiosity that made him want to return and investigate. But caution was stronger. Now he had time to think, he realised that not only could he identify BMW man – as he still called him in his mind, for want of a better name – but BMW man could identify Miff, too.