Page 49 of Murder in the Winter Woods
24
Julia went to bed early after a busy day at Second Chances, but she slept badly. Ken Payne visited her in her dreams, draped in tinsel and playing a banjo, which even while asleep she knew was not his instrument. She woke late feeling poorly rested, the twanging banjo ringing in her ears, and her mind mulling over the previous day’s events and discoveries. She had an uneasy feeling about the circumstances around Ken Payne’s appearance – or reappearance – in Berrywick.
Chaplin jumped onto the bed with a ‘prow’ of a good morning, and rubbed his head against her. She stroked him, enjoying the feel of his warm, rumbling body under her hand. Chaplin’s good morning head-butting was becoming more insistent as the minutes passed. Now, he wasn’t so much saying good morning, as reminding her forcefully of her duties – of which cat feeding was top of the list, obviously.
‘All right, all right, I’m getting up,’ she said, pushing the cat gently aside, and swinging her legs to the floor. She had slept late, and she had things to do. The week had run away with her. Between the deaths and the Christmas season, she had been so busy and distracted that she’d hardly shopped or cooked. She’dhave to get to the shops unless she wanted egg on toast for supper.
Julia got up and padded to the kitchen to let Jake out, closing the door behind him quickly against the chilly morning. While the kettle boiled, she poured biscuits into Chaplin’s bowl. To the soundtrack of his determined crunching, she set the tea tray, the sequence of movements happening automatically, without her conscious thought. While her hands found the teapot and the cup and saucer, her brain ran through the list of what she knew about Ken.
He had only been in Berrywick for a couple of months or so, after an absence of many years, following the death of his mother. On his return, he had reconnected with his old friends Dominic, Matthew and Lewis over a long lunch. Dominic’s brother, Anthony Ardmore, had gate-crashed the lunch to pitch his dubious investment scheme. Ken had come into some money and property when his mum had died, and had invested in the scheme, along with Matthew and Lewis.
The whistle of the kettle brought Julia back into the present. She poured the water over the tea leaves and took the tray back to her bed. When she had settled in comfortably, she added a few more items to the mental list of what she knew about Ken.
He had been angry about the band breaking up all those years ago. According to what she’d heard from David, whom she’d met at Christopher’s birthday party, he had been quite aggressive, even threatening. And, of course, Lewis and Matthew, his fellow investors and his old friends, were both dead.
It all seemed like rather too many coincidences, frankly. Was Ken somehow responsible for the other deaths? He certainly didn’t look like the murderous type, at least not based on their interaction in Second Chances. If anything, Ken had seemed defeated. A fellow who had had some hard knocks inlife, starting with the almost-success, but ultimate failure of the band. The knocks seemed to have left him weakened and downhearted rather than aggressively angry.
Of course, Julia had been witness to enough violence to know that looks could be deceiving. The mild-mannered could be murderous, and the openly furious could be harmless. But still, from the little she’d seen of Ken, she didn’t peg him for the violent type.
In fact, she had another, contradictory, idea. If Ken wasn’tinvolvedin the men’s death, might he be in danger himself? The men all had one thing in common – aside from a youthful friendship – and that was their connection with Anthony Ardmore and his investment. Were investors being bumped off? And if so, was Ken in the firing line? If it was a possibility, she should warn him.
The only way that line of reasoning would make sense was if someone – presumably Anthony Ardmore – stood to gain from their deaths. Ordinarily, an investor’s heirs would inherit their stake in the business. She wondered what DI Hayley Gibson’s financial fraud people had discovered about Ardmore Accelerated Investments. Were there any unusual clauses? Any new life insurance policies? If so, might he have killed the two men for financial gain?
There was only one way to find out.
Handily, Julia had a completely legitimate motive for dropping in on Hayley. Hayley was an ardent and speedy reader, so Julia was always on the lookout for books for her. She had spotted a book by one of Hayley’s favourite authors at Second Chances, and had gone to purchase it as a gift for the detective inspector. In fact, Wilma, who had seemed to be having a generous day, had told her to take it, and bring in another book when she had one going spare.
Julia messaged Hayley now:
I’ve got a little something for you. I’m going out soon to do some errands. Can I drop it by the flat?
Ah! Intriguing! But I’ll be at work.
On a Saturday?
Paperwork.
Ugh.
Can you pop it in the post box?
Easier to drop it off at the station. I’ll be coming right past. I’ve got to do some shopping. See you later.
Cheers.
The road safety protesters were nowhere to be seen when Julia pulled up outside the police station some hours later. Maybe they had decided that the two deaths were attributable to something more than just bad driving. Perhaps the ominous clouds and the stiff breeze had put them off. Or perhaps they had taken Saturday off to get a move on with their Christmas shopping.
Hayley was delighted with the book. ‘It’s one of the few I haven’t read! I’d better let Sylvia know there will be no sparkling conversation from me tonight.’
‘Just the weather for a good read, isn’t it? I heard on the radio that there’s another storm coming in. I’m pleased you haven’t read this one, although I could have taken it back to the shop if you had. Oh, and Hayley, speaking of the shop, there was astrange coincidence yesterday, something I think you might be interested in.’
‘Really?’ Hayley’s cheerful pleasure in the book was replaced with a suspicious narrowing of the eyes. ‘What “coincidence” exactly?’
Julia could hear the invisible inverted commas around the word ‘coincidence’ but pressed on regardless. ‘A man came in, a chap by the name of Ken Payne. He’s an old friend of Lewis and Matthew, who recently moved back to Berrywick. It seems he was also a potential investor in Ardmore Accelerated Investments.’
‘Well, I hope he didn’t put in his last ten quid, because I don’t think he’s going to be making his fortune in this scheme.’
‘I hope not. He seems even more of a babe in the woods than the other two, poor chap. What did the special investigators say? Is it a scam?’
