Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection

Chapter 17

“Well, Paul, any progress?” Izzie Drake asked D.C. Ferris as he took a seat in the chair at the end of her desk.

“Of a sort, Sarge,” he replied, “though I"m not sure it"ll get us very far with the case.”

“Okay, just tell me what you discovered in deepest, darkest Wavertree.”

“”Strange place, Sarge. Lots of nice houses and yet there"s loads of students from the university living out there, too. Did you know lots of well-known people lived there at one time, and some still do?”

“Go on then, I know you"re dying to tell me who.”

“For a start, John Lennon and George Harrison lived there at one time, and Kim Cattrall, you know, the actress?”

“Yes, I do happen to know who Kim Cattrall is, Paul, thank you.”

“Leonard Rossiter, and lots more.”

“Thanks for the celebrity guidebook tour,” Drake grinned. “I take it you looked all that up on your trusty computer before you even left the building this morning?”

Ferris smiled back at her and replied, sheepishly, “Well, yesterday afternoon actually. Just wanted to check out the territory before hitting the streets, like, you know?”

“Bloody hell, Paul. You sound like something out of "Hill Street Blues". Come on now, what did you discover from the surviving brother?”

Ferris pulled his notebook from his pocket, opened it up to check his notes as he spoke, and began:

“Frederick, he made me call him Freddie by the way, Cole, is the last surviving member of his family. Seems he and his brother Walter, who he referred to as Wally, were always close and worked well together after the death of their father, Josiah. Freddie became sole proprietor of the business after Wally"s death from a heart attack, and he carried on running the business successfully, according to him, until his wife, Mary died in a road traffic accident five years after Wally"s death.”

“Any suspicious circumstances surrounding the wife"s death, d"you think?”

“I seriously doubt it, Sarge. He was in the car with her at the time. Poor bloke was left blind in one eye and with one leg shorter than the other as a result of the crash. Still has a limp and walks with a stick. Didn"t stop him running the warehouse though, until Mary died and he told me his heart just went out of it, and he tried selling up but there were no takers.”

“So, what did he do with the place?”

“He handed redundancy notices to his ten staff, paid them off more than generously, sold off the fixtures and fittings and placed the warehouse in the hands of a commercial letting agent. Over the years a few small companies and individuals rented it on short term leases but the cost of continually maintaining the fabric of the building itself made the whole thing a financial liability. When the redevelopment of the docklands area began and the council approached him with a view to him selling the warehouse and land for future redevelopment, he jumped at the chance to offload the place. He sold up, over a year ago, and as far as he"s concerned, the council will probably be selling it on to some property developer who"ll build luxury apartments on the site.”

“And that"s all you found out?”

“Well, yes, and a couple of names of the companies who leased the place, but they all seem to have come along well outside the time frame we"re looking at for the murder.”

Izzie Drake leaned back in her chair for a few seconds, lost in thought. Finally, she spoke again.

“It may not seem much, but you"ve managed to eliminate certain people and organisations from the investigation.”

“I have?”

“Yes, it"s now that obvious none of those who used the warehouse after Frederick Cole closed the place could have been involved if they came into the picture years after the death of the victim. If what Cole told you is true and we don"t seem to have any reason to doubt his word at this point, the warehouse was closed, standing empty and mothballed at the time of the murder so the chances of the murder having anything to do with the goods that would have been stored in a bonded warehouse are also zero. Whatever happened on the wharf outside Cole and Sons" warehouse took place long after the closure and had no connection to the business previously carried out there. That may not seem much, but it is progress of a kind, Paul.”

“Glad you see it that way, Sarge. How did your hospital visiting go?”

“Pretty much inconclusive, I"m afraid. I"ve managed to narrow the list of potential victims down to about forty five, but don"t see how we can possibly trace every former kid who broke his leg back in the sixties. Some will have left town, others may have died, and some will just have dropped off the radar. I don"t want to sound negative, but I"m just not sure if this case is going anywhere. If we can"t identify the victim, what chance do we have? It happened over thirty years ago according to forensics, and I don"t see the Chief Superintendent letting us spend too many hours on it, what with all the current crimes on the books that need resolving.”

Drake knew their chances of success in the case were virtually non-existent without that vital piece of evidence that might give their victim a name. Until they had that, the remains in the old dock were just that, a set of bones, remains of a nameless victim of violence who would probably never be identified, a crime forever unsolved.

Detective Chief Inspector Harry Porteous looked across his desk at Andy Ross. He"d been unable to give his D.I. much to go on with regards to the subject of terrorist activity in the city in the nineteen-sixties. He knew Ross was fighting what appeared to be a losing battle with the skeleton case, as he thought of it, and wasn"t sure just how long he should let his murder squad spend time on the problem of the bones in the dock.

“Like I said, Andy, when you first called me I spoke with my contacts at the Anti-Terrorist Squad, and as far as they"re concerned, there was nothing going on in the city around that time. Of course, it"s possible the IRA and the Loyalist groups used us a point of entry or exit to the mainland, but no evidence exists to suggest any terror cells were actually active here at the time.”

“Right, sir, so my question is, just how far do you want us to take this inquiry?”

“I can"t afford to let you spend much longer on the case, Andy. We need our people working on active cases, rather than a murder that took place thirty-odd years ago. I know every victim is entitled to justice, but if we can"t I.D. the victim, we can"t possible catch the killer. You say Dr. Lewin is going over the site of the discovery once again, so let"s see if her search uncovers anything else. If not, and if your people haven"t found anything during the inquiries you"ve got them conducting at present, I think we need to gradually wind this inquiry down.”

Ross fully understood his boss"s point, and for the most part, agreed with him, though it rankled with him that a murderer would appear to have got away with a violent killing and had managed to escape the retribution of the law for over thirty years.

“Just give me a couple of weeks, sir, please. I don"t want to give up without giving this a really good try. Someone killed that young man, and I want to find the bastard who kneecapped and bludgeoned a young man and probably threw him alive into the Mersey to drown in agony.”

Porteous swivelled his high-backed executive chair round until he was facing the large plate glass window that gave his office a great view over the city he and his men and women did their best to protect. He stared off into space for a few seconds, as Ross patiently sat waiting for a decision. His mind made up, the D.C.I turned his chair back to face Ross.

“One week, Andy, that"s the best I can do. If you can"t make any progress in that time, we close the case, and mark it unsolved, Okay?”

Ross nodded, pleased to have been given some time, at least, to pursue the case. The nameless victim still had a chance to find justice. Leaving Porteous"s office, he made his way back to his office, suddenly feeling an urgent need for a strong cup of coffee, and a crisis meeting with his team of detectives.