Making A Killing (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 2) (31 page)

Emerson and Masters were petitioning the golf course to sell them a terrace of four cottages and accompanying paddock area. The block of property sat along the northern edge of the golf course. The cottages were originally built as accommodation for employees of the golf c
ourse. The provision of housing at a peppercorn rent enabled the golf course to pay the men who worked for them a minimal wage while ensuring that the overall package of accommodation and guaranteed labour and income on their doorstep would prove to be an attractive proposition to local unskilled men of the period.

With the advent and availability of machinery that could do the work of several men in half the time, didn’t need paying and required no more accommodation than a secure shed the cottages came to lose their purpose. The golf course was able to reduce its work force, withdraw its facility of subsidised housing and, with the population growth of the area outstripping property development and availability, use the cottages to generate rental income which would go towards paying for the upkeep of the club.

In recent years the cottages, exposed as they were to the elements on the high ground, began to succumb to the influence of nature and the absence of investment for maintenance. They were nearing a time when they would either require substantial investment, be abandoned to fall into disrepair and eventually fall down, or the club could benefit from the current upturn in the property market and apparent lack of available building ground and sell the land off for a decent sum which could be ploughed back into the club. Marsh had a good enough grasp of economics to gather from a study of the enclosed projected figures involved for each option that for the club the decision was a no-brainer. They would sell. They would have to.

Emerson and Masters were making a significant six figure bid for the title to the land. Both must have been supremely confident in several equally important factors: their figures; the chances of their development proposals being favourably received by the council planning authorities; the property market and the potential of the land. Both men were offering to put their homes up for collateral as bank security. It was evident that Masters had already done so to cover his share of costs thus far incurred for solicitor’s legal fees, elaborate sets of drawings and planning submission fees. Even Marsh could see what a gamble was being taken. As far as she could tell many thousands had been spent so far and the men didn’t even own the land. Marsh wondered with a sinking feeling whether Faye Masters knew the extent of her husband’s current financial commitment; what he had already risked. With an ominous feeling, she doubted it.

A look at their overall projected development costs and anticipated returns showed that both would have profited handsomely from a satisfactory outcome. But this would be little consolation to anyone now.

Marsh closed the file believing she now understood why Masters may have taken his own life. With so much already spent and so much more committed to a project that was essentially as dead as his business partner the future would have looked unenviable and bleak for Elliot Masters, especially if his wife didn’t know the half of it. Marsh didn’t know his character well enough to judge whether the position had pushed him into suicide, but she did know that people had killed themselves for less. On closing the file, Marsh also wondered if she may, at last, have a legitimate suspect for the murder of Phillip Emerson.

*

Romney returned from the pathology department with his own personal crusade occupying his thoughts. It seemed that the DI had made Lillian W
est’s prosecution for something – anything – the primary goal of his immediate professional future. From the way he covered the distance between the department door and his office, Marsh got the impression things had not gone well.

‘He basically suffocated. Oxygen starvation. The canister
which provided his supply had run out. It should have been changed but wasn’t.’

‘Whose responsibility was that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Romney sounded tired and defeated. ‘Maurice suggested it would be a very difficult thing to prove negligence on the part of anyone. As everyone keeps telling me, he was a weak, sick old man. They could all swear that the responsibility was the old man’s and I couldn’t disprove it.’

‘I might have some good news.’

‘Really? That would be a novelty. Let me enjoy it. I’ll buy you a proper coffee across the road if we can sit outside.’

*

Romney insisted that Marsh delay her good news until the sun was on his face, a steaming mug of black filter coffee was in front of him and his cigarette was smouldering between his fingers. Expelling a lungful of smoke, he eventually said, ‘Off you go then. Let’s hear your idea of good news. I don’t suppose you’re going to provide me with irrefutable evidence that Lillian West killed Emerson then Masters and is hatching a plot to assassinate the Mayor of Dover?’

‘No,’ said Marsh. ‘I think I have a good idea of why Elliot Masters committed suicide.’

‘Blimey, is that what passes for good news these days? We can’t even prosecute him.’

‘I also have a suggestion for who might have killed Phillip Emerson, assuming he wasn’t already dead when Lillian West left him.’

‘Could this mystery person have planted the clubs in Masters’ golf bag?’

‘Quite possibly.’

‘What are you waiting for then?’

‘Masters’ and Emerson’s business plan was very ambitious and very expensive. It involved purchasing property from the golf club, developing it and making a killing – if you’ll forgive the expression. They needed to
invest heavily to finance it. They had also already ploughed a lot of money into the project to get where they were with it. Masters had put up the marital home as security. Emerson’s death effectively ruined him. It might have tipped him over the edge into suicide.’

‘OK. I’ll buy that
but only because we have nothing else to offer.’

‘The property lies alongside the golf course. All of the cottages are let on short term leases, except one: Bill Thatcher’s, the head green-keeper. He has a legal right to stay in the cottage he currently occupies at a peppercor
n rent for the rest of his life – whether he’s working for the club or retired – providing the property is still owned by the golf club. The day the property ceases to be an asset of the White Cliffs Golf Club, Bill Thatcher loses that right. How old do you think that he is?’

‘Mid sixties.’

‘Does he strike you as a wealthy man?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither. I doubt very much he has earned enough over the years he has been with the club to provide for an expensive old age. It’s the way it was in the days he was hired. Accommodation was the part of the package that enabled the club to pay workers peanuts. Back then no one could see the day when that land would be considered prime development land and worth a potential fortune – something to be sold off.’ Even though she couldn’t fit Lillian West in anywhere, she was sure that Romney was liking it. ‘If the club sold the property on, especially to people looking to develop it, Thatcher would likely find himself with notice to quit and maybe he has nowhere to go.’

‘It’s a strong motive. I’ll grant you that. Remember him on the days we found both men’s corpses? He wasn’t taking the news of either very badly was he? Tell me how it happened?’

‘Perhaps he sees car lights stopping at the course from his home and goes out to investigate. Perhaps it’s a habit of his to walk the course at night. I wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, in his position I would probably do the same myself. It must be beautiful up there on a summer’s night.’ Romney gave her a strange look. ‘He sees what’s going on, maybe just watches them and then Lillian West knocks Emerson out as she says and drives off in his car. The answer to Thatcher’s uncertain future is literally laid out in front of him. All he had to do is act, finish the job. He didn’t just kill him. He took out all his anger, frustration, hatred on the man who was proposing to put him out of his home, a place he had occupied for decades.’

‘And the clubs in Masters’ bag?’

‘Easy. After he’s staved Emerson’s head in, he washes them off in one of the water hazards on the course and hides them. When Masters does away with himself, he thanks his good fortune and seizes the opportunity of the perfect place to get rid of them and implicate someone else, someone who can’t defend themselves. He’s been a fixture around the course for a long time. I’m sure he would have had no trouble getting into the pro-shop unnoticed to shove the clubs in Masters’ bag.’

‘It makes a kind of sense. How do you propose to prove it?’

‘We should wait and see if forensics finds any prints on the clubs that don’t belong to either of those two from the pro-shop.’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘We could get a warrant and search his home.’

‘Looking for what? There’s nothing missing.’

‘He might have a garment that he wore on the night that could give us some evidence. You said yourself it would be difficult to imagine someone doing that to a body and not getting something on themselves.’

Romney looked dubious.
‘If he did do it, do you think he wouldn’t have disposed of anything like that? Anyway, he was one of the first on the scene; he could always claim that he went for a closer look and that’s how anything we might find got on his clothing.’ Romney thought and smoked. ‘Maybe we should bring him in and sweat him, but he’s a tough old bird.’

*

By the middle of the afternoon CID received news that the only clearly discernable prints found on any of the clubs were those of the new golf professional and Simon Draper. A partial unidentified thumb print was also found on the shaft of one of the irons. Whoever had wiped the clubs off before secreting them in Masters’ bag had been quite thorough, even if they had left traces of evidence of the devastation they had caused in the slits of the clubs’ blades.

With time to ruminate over Marsh’s theories
, Romney had gradually come around to grudgingly accepting that maybe Lillian West was not the assassin and that Marsh could just be right about the head green-keeper. With little else for it, he decided to have Thatcher brought in for some bluff and bluster and finger-printing.

Marsh was sent in a noisy patrol car with two shaven headed uniformed officers who looked more like football hooligans than those dedicated to the upkeep of law
and order to invite Thatcher to come voluntarily to the station to answer a few questions. Marsh had instructions to arrest him and bring him forcibly if he declined. Marsh would report that Thatcher proved a cool customer, only smirking slightly when the invitation was extended. He strolled to the police car flanked by the towering constables apparently unconcerned at the turn of his day’s events.

This description would go some way to explaining the relaxed and confident man
who sat opposite Romney and Marsh in the oven-hot interview room of Dover police station. While the DI had his collar undone and tie loosened for the heat the head green-keeper, although tie-less, wore a collared shirt buttoned to the neck and what looked like a pure-wool jumper. Romney would have bet money on him wearing a vest underneath it all. He looked the type. His one concession either to the heat or the occasion was to remove his hat and place it on the table between them. Romney’s eye drifted to the band of grime that indicated where it fit the man.

‘Am I under arrest then?’ said Thatcher.

‘What for?’

‘You tell me, you’re s’posed to be in charge aint yer?’

‘Maybe we just want you to help us with our enquiries, Mr Thatcher,’ said Romney.

‘Oh aye. I’ve heard that one
afore. When do the rubber ‘oses come out?’

‘They don’t let us do that anymore,’ said Romney, ‘unfortunately.’

Without obvious nastiness, Thatcher said, ‘That’s right. You strike me as the type who’d get a kick out of hitting a defenceless old man.’

‘You’ll probably have heard,’ said Romney, ‘that two days ago some clubs were discovered in a golf bag at the pro-shop which belonged to Elliot Masters and that they weren’t his. They were the clubs that were used to kill Phillip Emerson. We found bits of him in the slits of the face of the blades. Whoever tried to wash them clean didn’t do a proper job of it. They also left a few nice finger prints for forensics to find.’

Bill Thatcher sat still and quiet. His bright beady eyes stared out from beneath his untrimmed eyebrows and contrasted starkly with his summer-stained leathery skin.

‘Do you know anything about those clubs, Mr Thatcher?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know how they came to be in Elliot Masters’ golf bag?’

‘No.’

Theatrically, Romney made a confused face and then leaned forward on his elbows. ‘Can you think of any reason why your fingerprints would show up on the shaft of one of the golf clubs that had bits of Phillip Emerson’s head stuck to it?’

Thatcher showed no visible reaction to the
half-accusation. He stared levelly back at Romney, his eyes penetrating the policeman’s, seeking out the truth. Finally, he said, ‘No.’

Romney changed tack. ‘How well did you know Phillip Emerson?’