Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection

Chapter 31

“Okay everyone, gather round. I want us to take a long, hard look at where we are with this case. Let"s see if we can start to add some of the pieces together.”

Detective Inspector Andy Ross and his team were assembled in the small murder squad conference room. The team had spent three days assembling and collating every scrap of information they could find on both Brendan Kane and Marie Doyle. As Izzie Drake had pointed out to her boss shortly before the team meeting, trying to "join the dots" as she put it, to a case so old, with no witnesses and with those involved at the time not necessarily able to trust their memories, they really were chasing shadows, with little hope of being able to pull the whole thing together.

“I"m well aware of that, Izzie,” Ross had replied in response to her quite valid point. “The thing is, I feel as if we"re missing something, something that may be so simple we just don"t recognize it yet. When we do, I think the case will open up before us and we"ll be able to put together all these small bits and pieces to form a complete picture of what took place thirty three years ago.”

“You know, sir, if there"s one thing I hate, it"s a bloody mystery without clues to follow.”

“Ah, but that"s just it,” said Ross. “The clues are there, Izzie. It"s just that we don"t see them yet.”

“Oh, very cryptic, sir. You been doing the Daily Telegraph crossword again?”

They both laughed, the mood lightening for a few vital moments before they returned to the serious business of unsolved murder and a young woman missing for over thirty years.

Now, they stood either side of a large white board, with Nick Dodds, Sam Gable, Paul Ferris and Derek McLennan seated in the uncomfortable plastic chairs around the white-topped table which occupied the centre of the room. At the back of the room, Press Liaison Officer, George Thompson stood, nonchalantly leaning against the pale green painted wall, his briefcase positioned at his feet, resembling an obedient puppy, waiting for its master"s next instruction.

On the left hand side of the white board, Izzie had taped a large blown up photograph of Brendan Kane. Paul Ferris had worked hard, managing to find an old and faded photo of Brendan Kane and the Planets in a now ancient copy of the Echo, taken when they"d won a talent contest in their early days. He"d used computer technology to isolate the head of Kane, and had blown it up as large as was possible without losing too much definition. At least the picture gave Brendan a more "human" face than the photo displayed side by side with it, of the skeletal remains that were all that remained of the one-time pop singer and guitarist. Displayed on the opposite side of the board was a photo that depicted an eighteen-year old Marie Doyle, pictured in a happy pose with her best friend, Clemmy De Souza, now of course known to be the wife of Phil Oxley. Sam Gable had borrowed the photo from Clemmy"s parents during her abortive trip to find and talk to Marie"s best friend. Clemmy"s Mother had explained that it was taken on the occasion of her eighteenth birthday, when the two girls celebrated by visiting their local Berni Inn Steak House, where Clemmy enjoyed her first legal alcoholic drink. Apart from growing her hair an inch or so longer, Marie hardly changed at all over the next two years, Clemmy had explained, so the photo was a good representation of how she would have looked at the time of her disappearance.

Echo,Beneath the photos, Paul Ferris had noted down all the relevant facts relating to each of the couple in one column and items of conjecture or open questions in another. Unfortunately, for the moment, the conjecture column contained a lot more than the factual one.

Ross surveyed the faces in the room as they waited expectantly for his next words. He knew from past experience that this was the type of case that could soon breed frustration, due mostly to the age of the case, the lack of direct witnesses, few clues as to motive for murder and even fewer clues relating to the disappearance of a young woman who seemed to have everything to live for. He"d admitted to himself that in all probability, Marie Doyle was dead, quite possibly murdered and her body disposed of at the same time as Brendan Kane met his death. He was loathe to voice that thought to his team, however. Better that, for now, they kept an open mind and worked on the very faint possibility that the girl had survived, but, if she did, then what the hell had become of her? Choosing his words carefully, he began the morning briefing.

“Good morning,” he began, receiving in turn various acknowledgements and greetings from the members of his team. “As you can see, our collator has been hard at work. Well done, Ferris. You"ve done well here, given us a good background to both victims, if indeed we want to view Marie Doyle as a victim. For now, I"d prefer we did just that, until we know otherwise. How"s that boy of yours by the way?”

“He"s doing okay, thank you, sir,” Ferris replied, grateful that his boss had taken a few seconds to think of him and his son, still waiting patiently for the kidney transplant that might never come. “I tried to put as much relevant info on the board as I could find, without muddying the waters with pure speculations.”

“Yes, like I said, good job. I like the fact you"ve got a photo representation of Brendan up there. I want you all to look hard at that picture, and remember this was a young man, healthy and ambitious at the time of his death, who was brutally murdered, and not just a pile of bones as he was when the builders dug up his remains.”

“Sam,” he said next, looking directly at D.C Gable, “I"m sorry you had a wasted trip to try to find Clemmy De Souza, but at least Sergeant Drake and D.C. Dodds got lucky, finding her married to Phil Oxley. And, you did get the photo of her and Marie from Clemmy"s parents, plus a little more background information on the girls.”

“Thank you, sir. Yes, I must say I was shocked when Mrs. De Souza told me her daughter was married to Phillip Oxley, but she was very helpful in answering my questions, not that her information will go far towards helping us find a solution to the mystery. She did say that Marie was a very pretty girl, with a sweet and trusting nature. She added that Marie could be a little naïve at times, easily taken in, and could understand how she"d be enthusiastic about Brendan"s plans to go to America. Clemmy had told her that Marie was besotted with Brendan, and would go along with whatever he suggested. Clemmy was disappointed that her best friend was planning to leave Liverpool, so she said, and was even more crestfallen when it appeared Marie had left without even saying goodbye. Mrs. De Souza"s enduring memory was that for weeks after Marie"s disappearance, Clemmy moped around the house, both worried she hadn"t heard from Marie, and angry that Marie might have run off without a word.”

“Okay, Sam, try following up with Mrs. Oxley. See if she or Marie had any other close friends, someone either of them might have confided in. Also, ask if there were any particular places that meant something special to her or Marie, somewhere Marie might have run to if she was in trouble or needed to get away from home for a while.”

“Okay, sir,” Gable replied.

Ross moved on to the information gathered by Drake and Dodds so far.

“You two seem to have made some progress in your talk with Marie"s parents.”

“We do?” Drake said, surprised her boss thought that way.

“Yes,” Ross replied. “I"ve been thinking through everything you were told, and it strikes me that the mother was very close to the girl, but the father was more of an old fashioned patriarchal figure, and liked to rule the household with something approaching a rod of iron, pushing his own principles and beliefs onto his children. The two boys, Mickey and Ronnie appear to have been tough enough to live their lives around their father"s code of discipline, but I believe Marie may have retreated into a kind of fantasy world of her own as a kind of coping mechanism. Hence her love of music, the fact she carried her transistor radio almost everywhere, and also, perhaps why she fell for Brendan"s almost impossible scheme to emigrate to the USA and become a huge rock star. That fits with what Sam heard from Mrs. De Souza, and is probably the first piece of tangible and substantiated evidence we"ve received about her state of mind at the time.”

“There"s something else about old James Doyle that"s bugging me, sir,” Drake said.

“Go on, Sergeant. Let"s hear it.”

“Well, I think D.C. Dodds will agree that James Doyle is not a particularly nice person,” Izzie said, and Nick Dodds immediately agreed, saying, “You can say that again. What a bigoted and objectionable bastard he is, for sure.”

“Yes, but sadly we can"t arrest the man for being a bigot, at least not yet,” Ross laughed. “Tell me what it is you find unsettling about the man, Izzie.”

“Well, he obviously didn"t give a damn about what happened to Brendan Kane, even though he was his daughter"s boyfriend, and in all likelihood Marie suffered the same fate as Kane. If it was me in his place, I"d want to know just what happened to young Brendan, but all he seemed bothered about was his daughter being romantically involved with a protestant. The man"s a real religious dinosaur. He belongs in the middle ages.”

“Or on the Falls Road in Belfast,” Dodds quipped, referring to one of the notorious areas of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

“Funny you should say that,” Drake went on. “Clemmy De Souza, sorry, Oxley, told us one of Doyle"s Irish cousins, who Marie referred to as "Uncle Patrick" came to Liverpool a week or two before Clemmy"s disappearance. Clemmy told us Marie didn"t like the man and was glad he wasn"t staying at the house with them. Patrick stayed in a B & B or hotel as far as she knew. The thought just struck me, I wonder if this "Uncle Patrick" could have had anything to do with both the murder and Marie"s disappearance?”

Ross suddenly realized that Drake and Dodds might have stumbled on an important clue.

“Did Clemmy have a surname for this "Uncle Patrick" character?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Dodds spoke up, as he referred to his notebook. “Mrs. De Souza thinks it might have been Price, or Bryce, something like that.”

“Ferris,” said Ross, and Paul Ferris looked up expectantly, “when we"re done here, I"d like you to run a full criminal records check on anyone with the names Patrick Price or Bryce, or any similar sounding names you can think of, probably from the Belfast area. Let"s just see what comes up when we go looking for Uncle Patrick.”

“Right you are, sir. I"ll get on to it as soon as we"re finished here.”

“Good man,” said Ross, who now turned his attention to young D.C. McLennan.

“I"ve got a tricky little job for you, McLennan. I want you to do your best to go back in time and find out if any cars, possibly Hillman or Vauxhalls, were either reported abandoned, or were picked up and impounded by the old City Police between August and September in sixty-six. It means wading through lots of old records and you might not find anything, but Brendan Kane owned a vehicle that, as far as anyone knows, simply disappeared along with its owner on the night of his murder. That car must have ended up somewhere. See if you can find it.”

“Okay, sir,” McLennan replied. “Er, sir?”

“Yes?”

“What"s a Hillman, sir?”

Ross laughed and said, “A bit before your time. Great cars, My Dad had one once, a Hillman Hunter, I think. Try the Hillman Minx. That was a popular model back then. Look it up, Derek.”

“Right, sir”

“If you need help with all that, ask D.C. Ferris. He"ll probably know exactly where you should be looking for the information we need, isn"t that right, Ferris?”

Paul Ferris nodded and said, “I"m here if you need me, Derek.”

McLennan thanked him as Ross carried on,

“Dodds, I want you to look into the backgrounds of both Mickey and Ronnie Doyle. They"re not out of the woods yet, in my book.”

“But sir, they"d hardly have walked in here saying they thought the skeletal remains were Marie"s if they"d killed Kane and left him there, would they?”

“Think about it for a minute,” said Ross. “It"s possible one of them is guilty and the other innocent. Let"s say the innocent brother sees the newspaper article and wants to come and see us because he thinks it might be Marie. Now, if you"re the other, guilty brother, what do you do?”

Dodds hardly hesitated before replying:

“Go along with the innocent one, sir. Pretend you"re as innocent as he is, and play it clever. That way, you not only make yourself look innocent, you also find out how much the police know, if you"re lucky.”

“Good. I see you"re thinking, that"s great. Check "em out, make sure neither of them"s hiding any skeletons of their own in their cupboards, okay?”

“I"ve got it sir.”

“Izzie, you"re with me,” he said to Drake. “We"re going to see your friend, James Doyle. I have a feeling the time has come for me to meet this cantankerous, bigoted old man. There"s something "off" about him from what everyone"s telling me. And don"t forget the kneecapping. Maybe, just maybe, Doyle and his Irish connection had something to do with all this.”

“You have anything to say, George?” he asked, as all eyes in the room turned to look in the direction of George Thompson.

“Not at present, thanks Andy. I just wanted to keep up to date myself. I only hope the press releases bring you something useful eventually.”

“Me too, George, me too,” said Ross, bringing the briefing to a close. When the others had left the room he said to Drake, “Well, Izzie, we"ve got a real mix of unrelated odds and ends, bits and pieces here, and we have to pull them all together. When we do, we"re going to find a killer, I mean it.”

“I hope you"re right, sir,” she replied. “It would be a pity for Brendan Kane"s remains to resurface after all this time and still fail to find justice.”

“That"s where we come in, Izzie. We"re going to be the instrument of that justice, I promise you. I intend to do what I can to find out if those visas issued to Brendan and Marie were ever used. I know it"s a long shot, but the Americans may have records that go back that far.”

“But, why, sir? We know Kane never got to the USA, so what"s the point?” Drake asked.

“Because, it"s possible someone killed the pair and then faked their own identities, became Brendan and Marie, and used those visas to effect a very clever getaway.”

Drake looked impressed at her boss"s line of thought, and said so.

“I"d never have thought of that, sir. Rather an inspired piece of thinking.”

“Thanks, but it is just a long shot, though we seem restricted to those at present.”

“What about me, sir? Anything specific you want me to follow up?”

“Yes, Izzie. Gretna Green has been mentioned more than once. I"d like you to check back and find out if a marriage was recorded at any time during nineteen sixty six, between our couple. I haven"t had time to check on the actual residence period required back then. It"s possible they intended to go to Scotland and get married before doing a runner, and maybe they did or did not make it.”

“Will do, sir. I"ll get started then, if there"s nothing else?”

“Carry on, Sergeant,” said Ross. “I"m going to get on the phone to our American cousins and try out my long shot, or maybe should I call it my very long shot.”

very