Deadly Serious Read online

  DEADLY SERIOUS

  JEAN CHAPMAN

  To Richard Johnson, Landlord of The Cock Inn, Peatling Magna, Leicestershire for his help. The pub may be in Lincolnshire but the cellar is certainly in Peatling.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  John Cannon had not liked the look of Jim Maddern when he had first walked into his pub early in the evening, even though the police sergeant was a friend, and in civvies. He liked the look of him even less when he was still there at closing time, slouched over a third untouched pint in one corner of the pub’s dining area. He had ordered a meal, which he had never done before when on his own. He had an excellent wife, whose cooking had sustained him for the last twenty-six years, plus three lively teenage daughters, two at high school, one at university, all he idealized.

  In ex-Met Chief Inspector John Cannon’s opinion, Sergeant Jim Maddern was of the salt of the earth variety, a man respected, even loved, by the community he served. Big, warm-hearted, loyal, smart and upstanding. Tonight he had sat in The Trap public house with all the elegance of a down-and-out, all the conversation of a Trappist monk and the looks of a lost man.

  ‘I’m not letting him go home without finding out what the trouble is,’ John told Liz, his life and business partner. ‘Keep your eye on him, make sure he doesn’t leave without me seeing him.’

  ‘Jim!’ Cannon finally caught up with the sergeant, one of the last customers to leave, as he walked across the car park to his blue Peugeot estate. If he had not been convinced there was something wrong before, he was now. The smart military-style walk, like a guardsman’s slow march when he was on duty, had become a slouch and the man appeared to have shrunk about six inches. Ignored the first time, he called again.

  Maddern was unlocking his car door as Cannon reached him. ‘Goodnight, John,’ he said, a note of finality in his voice as he got in behind the wheel, his hand on the door handle.

  ‘Just a minute,’ Cannon said. ‘Come on, I thought we were friends, something’s obviously wrong and I wondered if I could do anything to help.’

  ‘No,’ Maddern said, and with a gentle but firm action brushed Cannon’s hand from the door, adding as he closed it, ‘not you of all people.’

  Cannon stepped back, shocked and surprised by the remark. Then, as if he saw the hurt, Maddern raised his voice to call, ‘Take care, you and Liz, look after each other.’

  The car was driven away with a jerk and grind of gears. Everything about the man: his looks, his manner, his remarks – his very driving – was wrong. Cannon’s concern deepened as he walked slowly back towards the front door of The Trap. He could not just let this go. He paused on the step, turned and lifted his head to inhale the freshening breeze from the sea, and beneath that the heavy odour of fen marshland, drying a little, perhaps the February rains were finally over. His heart lifted at the thought of spring, new growth, the renewal of life, sap rising, the very opposite of the sergeant.

  He went inside, locked and bolted both sets of doors and walked through to the bar. As always he had a sense of the lingering atmosphere of a busy night even when the last customers had gone, as if their presences and laughter still remained, echoing in his mind, needing time, and probably several cups of tea in the kitchen, to fade away, allowing him and Liz to relax.

  Tonight, Jim Maddern’s brooding presence was paramount – and there was something else. Cannon frowned, suddenly sure he had glimpsed something, something meaningful, seen but not registered, not remembered. He was not sure whether it had been in the bar, in the car park, or as the sergeant had driven away.

  Liz had already cleared the bar and was putting the last of the glasses through the sterilizer. ‘Is it serious?’ she asked. ‘Not one of the girls, is it? It’s his Katie’s second term at uni,’ she said. ‘Usually it’s the first term if there’s going to be trouble, or the first exams. What did he say?’

  Cannon shrugged, still plagued by the mysterious something – something or nothing. He wasn’t sure and Liz was chattering on.

  ‘You know, I remember asking him some weeks ago if he was all right,’ Liz said, switching out the last of the bar lights and leading the way to the kitchen. ‘He wasn’t quite himself then, seemed to have something on his mind, and tonight he looked worse than ever, dreadful.’

  ‘When did we last see his wife and the girls?’ John asked.

  ‘Margaret came with him and the girls early January, before Katie went back to uni. Yes, you remember, it was Jim’s birthday, we did a cake for him—’

  ‘—and the girls brought those candles that were like sparklers, and the whole pub sang happy birthday to him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Liz laughed, ‘he was embarrassed for a start, then got up and took a bow. He was quite a star!’

  ‘A different man from the one that’s just left, that’s for sure,’ John said, remembering the happy family, three daughters with long, shining blonde hair. The happy memory made the contrast starker.

  ‘Can’t believe he’s got family problems he can’t handle, even if …’ Her mind strayed to teenage pregnancies before she added, ‘Whatever, he’d stand by his girls.’

  Cannon nodded deeply and positively. ‘I might go to see him at home,’ he said at length. ‘If he throws me out, at least I’ll feel I’ve really tried to help,’ then he remembered, ‘but—’

  ‘But what?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Well, apart from saying he did not want help,’ Cannon straightened up and stood very still, ‘he added, he didn’t want it from me … of all people.’

  ‘Oh, so …’ Liz stopped, watching her man as he still stood motionless, and her breathing suddenly became shorter, sharper. She had seen her man freeze like this in his Met days. It was what she had come to call his moment of epiphany, a moment of insight into a course of action, usually involving some act of indiscretion, (and indiscretion might be a mild description) to get to the truth in one of his cases. ‘So?’ she repeated.

  ‘So, it’s me he probably really needs,’ he said softly. ‘He’s involved in something he can’t extricate himself from.’

  ‘Something illegal, you mean? Hardly likely,’ she said, rejecting the idea.

  ‘No, not likely at all, unless his strict moral and legal ethics have become tangled with his private life.’

  ‘That would be a matter he should take to his commanding officer,’ Liz said. Then her face took on a new concern.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, following and confirming her thoughts. ‘His immediate commanding officer, Chief Inspector Helen Moore is now Chief Inspector Helen Jefferson, on maternity leave, and Jones—’

  ‘Inspector Jones is in charge.’

  ‘Yes, Jones, who once pooh-poohed Jim’s local knowledge and told him he did not believe in Fenland folk tales.’

  ‘But Jones has been here a time now,’ Liz said. ‘He’s got himself a partner, moved to a bigger house, and Jim says he excels at the paperwork.’

&nbs
p; ‘Sure, that pleases head office, but policing’s about people not paperwork,’ John growled, scornful, disapproving, ‘and as far as Jim Maddern is concerned, Jones is still as unapproachable as an African despot when it comes to needing a sympathetic hearing.’

  Liz poured tea, the ritual of teapot, loose tea, cups and saucers she had introduced on pretence of personal preference, but in truth to slow John down. He had tended to pace the kitchen with tea made in a mug with a bag, now he sat to talk. ‘We could be on quite the wrong tack,’ she suggested. ‘He could for instance be physically ill himself.’

  ‘He ate well enough,’ John said, ‘finished his steak, not exactly with pleasure, but he cleared his plate.’

  ‘Yes, he did.’ It was now Liz’s turn to reflect. ‘And for some reason he had me thinking the condemned man ate a hearty meal.’

  ‘His parting shot was for us to look after each other,’ John told her, ‘the kind of remark you make if you are not going to see the other person for a long time, as if he was going away … oh!’ he exclaimed and banged the side of his fist on the table, making the china teacups rattle and Liz jump. ‘Now I know what it was!’

  ‘What what was?’ Liz let her open hands fall wide on the table in a gesture of despair, awaiting a new offering of news she instinctively knew would not in the long run bring joy to their immediate world.

  ‘I know what I saw that was bothering me. On the back seat of Jim’s car he had a big holdall with a civvies mac draped over it, as if he was leaving, going away, perhaps for some time.’ He paused then quoted, ‘“Take care, you and Liz, look after each other.”’

  ‘That almost sounds like a man emigrating, or going away for good,’ she said, then laughed at herself. ‘But we know that can’t be. We’re reading too much into this.’

  ‘I need an excuse to go to his home.’

  She shook her head, unsure why she should try to help him on the path to interference Jim Maddern clearly did not want. ‘He’s a gardener of course,’ she said. ‘I suppose you could …’

  ‘Ah!’ He seized on the same idea before she could voice it. ‘Bulbs!’

  They had lifted all their daffodil bulbs from the edges of the pub garden in the autumn and had been amazed how they had multiplied.

  ‘I’ll sort some of the best out and take them over,’ he said, ‘tomorrow morning. I’ll go early, be back well before lunchtime.’

  She shook her head; it was a promise she had heard before.

  He left immediately after the morning’s cleaning and breakfast, reached the far side of Reed St Thomas shortly after nine. The Madderns had moved to this village just over a year ago, and they had speculated Jim was beginning to think of his retirement; he had completed over twenty years in the force, and this cottage had an acre of land.

  Cannon had timed his arrival for shortly after the departure of the bus which would have taken the two younger daughters to their high school, so if anyone was going to be at home it would be just Margaret, and possibly Jim if he was not on duty.

  As he cruised to a stop and parked his jeep, he saw Margaret come from the side of the cottage and go to the recycling bins lined up against the far fence. She dropped a pile of newspapers into the appropriate box, then bent over and retrieved a double page. Clearly she had spotted an item of interest. He grinned – he had done that often enough himself. He called a greeting from the front gate, but the neat middle-aged woman – a slight five-four, he judged, to Jim’s tall burly six-feet, her blonde hair cut in a short, practical style – was too engrossed to hear.

  ‘Margaret,’ he said gently as he approached. She started violently, her hand to her throat, her face stricken with extreme shock. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  She took a moment to focus on him. ‘John? John Cannon? Oh, hello, what brings you here? I … well,’ she seemed to be trying to bring a lot of emotions under control, ‘if it’s a joke its in bad taste.’

  He frowned and took the sheet of newspaper from her.

  ‘Jim,’ she whispered, ‘in the death column, where the black ink’s come through the paper, that’s what made me notice it.’

  Cannon saw where a printed insertion had been made at the top of the column announcing deaths. In crude capitals it read, “Maddern, Sergeant Jim. Only remaining member of his family.”

  ‘Jim …’ she breathed, leaning, needing the support of the fence, and he saw on her face the same desperate concern he had felt for his partner when she had been in imminent danger.

  ‘“The only remaining member of his family.”’ He contained a surge of anger and said evenly, ‘Well, we know that’s not true.’ He put a supporting hand under her elbow. ‘Let’s go inside. Where is Jim?’

  ‘Had to go off on a course early yesterday,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I …’ he wondered how tactful it would be to tell his wife her husband had been four miles away having a meal at The Trap late yesterday evening. She looked at him sharply as he hesitated. ‘I’d brought him some daffodil bulbs,’ he said, thinking Maddern was getting on in his police career to be sent on courses. He supposed, as always, a lot of procedures were being changed, updated. It did explain the holdall in the back of the car, but why hadn’t Maddern gone straight to his course, wherever it was?

  ‘Who delivers your newspaper?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s a point,’ Margaret replied, a positive question bringing back some control. ‘Yes, when was that written in, and who by?’

  ‘Where do you get your newspapers from?’ he asked.

  ‘Local newsagent in the village. Well, he’s everything really, grocer, greengrocery, the lot.’

  ‘And you get it delivered?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s a local lad – Jim said as soon as he saw him that he was from a local family. He always has a word or two if he happens to see him.’

  ‘How does the boy take that word or two? I mean, is it all good-natured?’

  Margaret frowned. ‘When he first began delivering I know Jim had serious words with him because he was hurling the paper, American-style, from the front gate to the porch.’ She shrugged. ‘He seemed to take it in good part, the paper has always been through the letter-box since then, and I know Jim gave him a generous Christmas box, though he hadn’t been delivering very long.’

  ‘So he wouldn’t bear a grudge, or write this in for a joke?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He’s quite cheerful when he sees Jim, shouts, “Mornin’, Sarge”, and Jim calls back “Mornin’ young Jakes”, which always makes the boy laugh, I don’t know why.’

  ‘This,’ Cannon said, giving the newspaper a corrective straightening-out shake, ‘has to have been done either at the shop, en route, or here.’

  ‘Not here,’ she stated emphatically. ‘The girls rarely touch the paper and anyway they think too much of their dad, and why would they put “the sole remaining member of the family”?’ She paused then added, ‘I’m not sure what to do.’

  He was remembering Jim’s remark that he did not want help and especially not from Cannon, as he said, ‘I could take the paper and have a quiet word with your newsagent?’

  ‘I’d like to find some answer to this, put my mind at rest, and …’ She stood, shaking her head a little. ‘I wonder, should I tell Jim? He’ll ring me every night.’

  ‘He rang last night?’

  ‘When he was there and settled in,’ she confirmed, ‘about eight.’

  ‘Where has he been sent?’ he asked, aware Jim Maddern must have been at The Trap when he rang his wife.

  ‘Big place in Hampshire,’ she said.

  The only training college Cannon knew of in Hampshire he believed to be for international police students and senior officers.

  He glanced at the date of the paper. ‘This is three days ago. Have you got the others?’

  ‘Jim took one with him, I saw him put it in his mac pocket.’

  ‘And yesterday’s?’

  ‘Still in the house. I sh
all keep them for him to read when he gets back. Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘do you think there’s anything in that?’

  ‘Let’s go and see,’ he suggested.

  There were no words, but Cannon saw something Margaret did not, and as she drew a sigh of relief he closed the paper and refolded it, asking, ‘How did Jim seem when he left?’

  ‘He wasn’t too pleased being sent on this course, said there was plenty to do here. I wasn’t sure whether he meant at the police station or in the garden….’

  ‘We haven’t thought he looked too well lately,’ he ventured, still holding the folded paper.

  ‘I’ve thought the same,’ she agreed, ‘but when you ask him he says he’s all right – as he always does.’

  ‘How long is this course?’ Cannon asked.

  ‘A week,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t mention anything to him when he phones tonight, let me have a discreet word with your newsagent first,’ he said. ‘I’ll go now on my way back to the pub, then phone you?’

  ‘Oh thanks, John, obviously Jim can’t do anything about this while he’s away, so I do appreciate it, and I know Jim will when he knows.’

  I hope so, he thought, as he left, pausing only as he passed the bins and recycling boxes to lift the lid from the paper box, scoop up the top handful of newspapers. He took these and the newspaper from the house with him.

  He drove out of sight of the house, then stopped. He went through all the other newspapers to see if there were any other added announcements. He concluded there had been, for in three of the papers the strip containing the death column had been torn out.

  Then reopening the newspaper he had purloined from Jim’s house, he re-examined the tiny drawing Margaret had missed. It was of a tombstone in the space above the word ‘Deaths’ and on it was written ‘No.1.’

  Chapter 2

  Occupying a prominent position on the village green, the shop Cannon saw was also the post office. It was obviously like the village pump of yore, the meeting place for residents. A dozen or so had split into men with newspapers in their hands or under their arms, and women busy with handbags and carriers, talking on the pavement. They moved aside for him to enter.