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111 pages

English

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It should have been me,' cries Chief Inspector David Warne, over his wife's broken, dead body, the price for putting a London crime boss inside. Now, in the Garden of England, he searches for the killer of the gay heir of a prominent local family, headed by an industrialist from his Lancashire home town. North/South, past/present, white/black, gay/straight, justice/injustice are the themes. The 2003 invasion of Iraq is imminent, and Warne has just been on the big London demo against it. Who is the killer he seeks? What's the connection between the industrialist and the crime boss? What horror will the past reveal? Will Warne ever again find love?

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Publié par	The Conrad Press
Date de parution	01 janvier 0001
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839780172
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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WHATSOEVER IS JUST
STUART HUTCHINSON

Whatsoever is Just
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2020
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com   info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-839780-17-2
Copyright © Stuart Hutchinson, 2020
The moral right of Stuart Hutchinson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

To Dorothy

1
‘T urn the showers off,’ chief inspector David Warne ordered, knowing it would be the fresh-faced PC who would have to step over the body into the powerful jets of water to reach the back wall of the wet-room.
They’d already photographed everything: Mark Farmwell-Pembury’s naked body lying face down, water spraying the lower half of his legs, blood spiralling from his heart.
‘Looks like a single stab wound,’ Sarah Barnes, the pathologist, said, when she and her assistant had carefully turned the body over. ‘Blade like a stiletto; he’d be dying as soon as it pierced his heart. Judging from the wound, the blade’s been pulled out at an angle towards his right-hand side and the killer’s left. The killer pulled the blade out and got out of the way as the body fell forward. All the bruising on the face is from when it hit the tiles. Six to seven hours ago, I’d guess. I’ll be certain, when he’s in the lab.’
Looking at any dead body, Warne still saw his wife, Clarice, lying in Sarah’s lab ten months ago, following the hit and run ordained by Maurice Sewell from a cell in Belmarsh prison. Life changed forever, he saw himself standing over her in his red motor-bike leathers, after they’d cut the cleaner leathers, and all her clothes, off her, and covered her with a sheet.
‘Killed this morning,’ he said to Sarah, determinedly focussing on Mark Farmwell-Pembury. ‘Call came in from his cleaner at ten past nine, just over an hour ago.’
‘Special this,’ he said to himself, as soon as the message reached his desk in Canterbury. Everybody knew the Farmwell-Pemburys were one of the county’s most prominent families. Instantly, he phoned the chief constable’s office in Maidstone and put a team together. Siren blaring, blue-light flashing in the Monday morning February gloom, DS Liz Ezeoke-Bruce, now in the lounge with the cleaner, cut through the city’s crawling traffic like a Grand Prix driver starting from the back of the grid. She hurtled the two of them to picture-postcard Chilham, the village seven miles from Canterbury, where Mark Farmwell-Pembury, an heir with his younger sister, Gillian, to the family’s farming and brewing fortune in Kent, and land and industrial wealth in Lancashire, lived alone in a luxurious dwelling transformed from two late nineteenth-century semi-detached villas.
‘We need to find Mark’s car,’ Liz said, as Warne returned to the designer-furnished lounge, still strewn with the debris of Mark’s fiftieth birthday party on Saturday night.
‘Aston Martin DB7?’
‘That’s it. The cleaner brought me a photo from Mark’s desk, him and the car, a framed present from the dealer; personal plate, MRK 1. She says the car always stands at the side of the house on the paved area under the pergola. The killer probably took off in it.’
‘He’s ours, if he’s still in it. No hiding in a car like that. Phone the station. Get them to organise a search. God knows how we’re going to find evidence here, sifting through all this rubbish from Saturday night’s party.’
‘The cleaner only does light work; did some Sunday afternoon. She came in this morning to let in a professional firm with all their gear; steam-cleaners and chemicals. I’ve just cancelled that.’
‘Great.’
‘There’s more.’
‘Yeah?’
‘No sign of a break-in, the cleaner says. The door was just closed on its latch. Security lock wasn’t engaged. Alarm system was off.’
‘So the killer was let in, or brought in, by Mark. Could be one of his pick-ups.’
‘Dover patrol, a man off the ferry?’
‘Could be. Or it’s somebody Mark knows, somebody who has a key to the house and knows the code for the alarm. We need to find out who has keys.’
‘I’ve already asked the cleaner. She only knows of one other person as well as herself who might have a key. It’s a Vincent Clements, who was Mark’s lover for about fifteen years. And you know what? The cleaner tells me there’s a paper-knife missing from Mark’s desk; thin blade, about ten inches long, with an ornamental handle, all metal; a present, specially made in Marrakech, from the same Vincent Clements.’
‘Clements’ Antiques, Sandwich, Tunbridge Wells, Tenterden. Best antique shops in Kent. When you’ve lived here longer, you’ll buy something from them. Phone Sandwich straightaway. That’s where Clements lives. Find out where he was last night.’
Leaving Liz to make her calls, he contacted Maidstone again to keep the bosses up to speed. He was put through to assistant chief constable Cunningham, appointed at the time of Clarice’s murder. Three years Warne’s junior, minor public school, married with three kids, father a knighted civil servant, Warne saw immediately he was on heat to score big.
‘Why you getting nowhere with the killing of DCI Warne’s wife?’ he demanded on his first visit to Canterbury nick last May. ‘Maurice Sewell should be nailed for it, no question, even though he’s inside. You haven’t even found the car. Crime against one of our own; you’re making us look like losers!’
‘We’re checking every car-breaker’s yard in Kent, Sussex, and into London and Essex,’ Warne countered, ‘every likely garage that might have fixed a Mondeo with a damaged wing.’
‘We need some luck,’ a DC muttered, as Cunningham was on his way out.
‘Get some,’ Cunningham barked, turning round to face them all again.
Now, on the phone, he challenged, ‘Be sure you get this right, Warne.’
‘We’re on it. I’m on my way to Mark’s parents, Sir Christopher and Lady Farmwell-Pembury. I’ll call at Mark’s sister, Gillian Edmondson. She lives here in Chilham, about twenty minutes walk from Mark’s house. I’m expecting she’ll come with me to her parents’ place, Nystole, four miles away.’
Local knowledge Cunningham might not have.
He brought everybody together in the lounge.
‘The Farmwell-Pemburys don’t know about Mark’s death yet. I’m just on my way to tell them. So everybody schtum, until the body’s been formally identified, and there’s a formal announcement. Anybody leaks anything, they’ll answer to me, personally.’
He let that sink in, before gesturing towards Liz. ‘More people are coming. When they’re here, DS Ezeoke-Bruce will organise a finger-tip search of this house and the immediate surrounding area, and there’ll be some door to door. There’ll be massive publicity about this case, locally and nationally. We all need to be at the top of our game.’
To Liz he said, ‘I’ll come back here when I’ve finished with the Farmwell-Pemburys. I’ll drive there with a WPC.’
‘Clements Antiques,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been in touch. Vincent Clements has been in Marrakech since November.’
‘I bet he didn’t take his key with him. Do we know where it is? Are we really sure nobody else has one?’
Could be a gay-basher, he said to himself, as he slid into the passenger seat of one of the cars parked alongside the wall of Chilham’s Jacobean castle. Then he recollected the public disagreement (row on Mark’s part) between Mark and his sister Gillian over the sale of a nineteenth century brewery building belonging to the family, near the West Railway Station in Canterbury. Mark, he recalled, had wanted the building more or less preserved as a themed restaurant, but Gillian, a chartered accountant, and the brains behind Farmwell-Pembury in Kent for well over a decade, though always withdrawn, had seen the building’s immense potential for fundamental re-development as luxury apartments, and she’d won. All Mark had as consolation prize was the London builders he and his father, unusually allied, insisted on for the conversion, rather than the local Kent builders favoured by Gillian.
Nothing there for Gillian to have a murderous grudge about, Warne thought, even though the London builders were labelled ‘cowboys’ by the Kent firm.
Since Clarice’s death, he’d considered quitting his large four-bedroom family house in Canterbury and moving into one of the Maltings apartments himself. Liz already lived there, alone, in one of the more affordable, one-bedroomed apartments with windows looking onto the railway lines. She was the only non-white person in the entire complex.
Life changed forever.
For what?
Two days ago he’d been in London on the demo against the invasion of Iraq.
Saturday, 15 th February, 2003, the largest political demonstration London had ever seen.
Millions across the world also protesting against the invasion.
Pissing in the wind.
Blair wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
In too deep with Bush.

2
F rom behind the half-opened front door, Gillian Edmondson’s pale, strained face peered at them.
‘Good morning, Mrs Edmondson,’ Warne responded, hesitantly. ‘I’m Chief Inspector David Warne, Canterbury CID, and this is WPC Emily Graham. May we come in? I’m afraid we have some very bad news. Perhaps we could all meet inside with you and your husband.’
‘My husband’s away, visiting his old college in Cambridge,’ she said immediately, the door still half opened. Then, as if her statements would resolve any possible issue, she added, ‘We are shortly to leave for New Zealand to visit his family. His father is very ill.’
‘Please let us come inside,’ Warne insisted. ‘It’s terrible news about your brother Mark, and we need to tell your parents.’
‘Oh, Mark!’
She opened the door wide, showi