Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection

Chapter 25

“That"s it? That"s all the contact you had with Brendan after the time you"d met at the flat?”

Andy Ross had hoped Ronnie"s recollection of the last contact between the Doyle brothers and Brendan Kane might prove to be a little more revealing. In truth, he found it rather odd that the brothers appeared to have had minimal contact in the run-up to their little sister"s perceived departure for the New World. He said as much to Ronnie, who replied,

“Honest, Inspector, that"s all, right Mickey?” his elder brother nodded in confirmation and added to his brother"s words. “We wanted to go and see him again. We were a bit worried by these "problems" he was supposedly having with the whole emigration thing. We thought we might be able to help him, but Marie said it was best not to keep going round there, to his flat that is, in case someone saw him and Ronnie going there a lot and maybe word got back to Dad. She told us she"d pass on any messages between us and Brendan, and that Phil Oxley was doing what he could to help. He was good at paperwork, filling in forms and stuff like that, was Phil.”

Ross shook his head and fell silent. He found it hard to accept some of the Doyle brothers" story, but then remembered that back in the nineteen sixties the world, and Liverpool in particular was a very different place to today"s fast-paced, technology driven metropolis. There had been a naiveté, a sense of being involved in the beginnings of a brave new world, almost, as the rapid rise of the British pop music industry walked side-by-side with the technological and lifestyle revolutions that went along with it. For people like the Doyle brothers and Brendan Kane, all children of the immediate post-war years, a set of old-fashioned values and standards, alien in many ways to those of a similar age as the millennium dawned, were the norm, and despite their claim to the contrary, the teenagers and young adults of those days were in fact far less "street-wise" than their modern-day counterparts. Perhaps the current familiarity of the music and the groups who made the Liverpool of the sixties such a throbbing, vibrant environment in which to grow up somehow masked some of the realities of those times. Andy Ross just couldn"t imagine the kids of today being quite so "unworldly" as the boys from Brendan Kane and The Planets appeared to have been back then. Today, a few minutes on the internet, a few calls on the phone, and today"s youth would have all the information they needed at their fingertips.

“Sir? Do you have any more questions?”

Izzie Drake broke into Ross"s reverie. The inspector hadn"t realized he"d allowed himself to drift away from the conversation and he quickly pulled himself together again and faced Ronnie Doyle.

“Yes, sorry Sergeant, sorry gentlemen. I was lost in thought for a minute there. Thinking about what you"ve told me so far. So, Ronnie, I"m presuming things went along quite normally from that time until Brendan and Marie suddenly disappeared, right?”

“Yeah, well, no, not really "normal", Inspector. Over the next couple of weeks, we could see Marie was getting edgy, nervous, like. I tried to get her to tell me exactly what Brendan had arranged but she was a bit…what"s the word? Evasive, that"s it.”

“In what way?” Ross asked.

“She just kept saying that Brendan was taking care of things and we"d know about it all when the time was right. I know Mickey tried as well, to get her to talk to us, but she just clammed up and we both thought things weren"t going just as they were supposed to. Tell you the truth, we, that"s me and Mickey, we thought perhaps the whole plan had fallen through, didn"t we, Mickey?”

“Yeah, we did,” the elder brother agreed. “I phoned Phil Oxley the next day, and he said he"d been in touch with Brendan, helping him to get things sorted out. He said he didn"t think Brendan"s plans were workable but he was trying to help Brendan get tourist visas for him and Marie. Brendan thought he might still find a record company or producer to represent him even if he was only there for a short time. If he succeeded, according to Phil, a U.S record company would be able to help him get whatever permits he needed to live and work over there. A couple of weeks later, me and Ronnie knew something was in the offing. Marie was definitely acting odd, like, and I waited outside her work one day and met her when she knocked off. I told her I wasn"t going to just leave things as they were, and that even Mam and Dad had mentioned she was acting weird. Dad even wondered if she"d got herself pregnant by "some scally" as he put it. She just laughed and told me not to worry about things, that she and Brendan wouldn"t be around much longer, and then, just a week after that, she went out late one afternoon, a Saturday, I remember, and that was it. We never saw our little sister again after that day.”

Mickey fell silent, looked at his brother, and the two men seemed to be sharing an intense sadness as the recollection of the last time they"d seen their sister came flooding back to haunt their collective memories. To Andy Ross, none of this seemed to add up., however. Even back in the nineteen sixties, people rarely just vanished without leaving a single piece of trace evidence behind them. How could Marie Doyle and Brendan Kane simply disappear from the face of the earth? Of course, Ross now felt sure he knew what had happened to Brendan, but what the hell had happened to Marie, and why hadn"t the police at the time of their disappearance done more to try and find them? It was time to move on. Despite his interest in the saga that the Doyle brothers had laid out before him, he needed more if he was going to solve the murder of Brendan Kane and the disappearance and perhaps also the murder of Marie Doyle. For now, he didn"t want to raise that spectre too highly in the two Doyle"s minds. He turned to Ronnie again, and decided to move on to the alleged lack of investigation by the old Liverpool City Police.

“Ronnie, I want you to tell me why you first became suspicious that something was wrong, and why you went to the police, and then, please try to recall exactly what happened when the police became involved. Take your time. Gather your thoughts. I know it all took place a long time ago, but anything you can tell us could be important, even now.”

Ronnie Doyle nodded and pursed his lips as he once again allowed his mind to wander back in time. Ross waited patiently as Ronnie"s brow furrowed as he concentrated hard, doing his best to dredge up even more details of events that took place over thirty years previously. At last, after an interminable pause, and after taking a deep breath, he began.

“Well, Inspector Ross, you need to understand that when Marie didn"t come home that night, me and Mickey didn"t think she"d run off with Brendan, not at first. We thought she"d maybe been with a friend, and missed the last bus home or something, and maybe stayed overnight at the friend"s house, didn"t we, Mickey?”

Mickey nodded his agreement but remained silent.

“So, Marie didn"t come home, and Mam and Dad were going frantic. They were convinced she"d been r***d or murdered by a nutter or something, you know? Anyway, they wanted me and Mickey to go look for her, so we did. We went to Clemmy"s house first, on Huyton Road. Marie hadn"t told either of us where she"d been going that night, no hint that she wouldn"t be coming home, or that she"d be seeing Brendan, anything like that. Looking back, that"s what she must have done of course, but we didn"t know it then. Clemmy said she hadn"t seen her all day, but said that when she"d seen her the day before, Marie had seemed excited and on edge at the same time. Clemmy asked her if she and Brendan had made their plans but Marie clammed up. We knocked on a couple more doors of friends of hers, but no one had seen her that day.

We found a phone box and called Phil, but he hadn"t seen either Marie or Brendan that day. He admitted he"d been a bit worried about Brendan lately, that he didn"t seem to accept that going to America wasn"t as easy as he"d thought at first. He kept telling Phil he was going to make it one way or another and Phil was getting exasperated with him. I was running out of coins so instead, agreed to meet Phil in person the next day. We couldn"t do any more that night, we had no more money and so couldn"t ring Brendan"s number, though Phil said he"d try and make sure Marie contacted us somehow if she was with Brendan.

Our parents worried all night, and Dad was ready to call for the police right away, but we knew the police wouldn"t do anything about someone who hadn"t even been missing twelve hours. Next day, I went alone to see Phil, "cause Mickey had to go to work. We met on the waterfront in the city, and sat on a bench outside The Cunard Building. I thought Phil looked uncomfortable, but that was maybe because he"d worked in that place until a few months earlier, but had been made redundant when Cunard moved their centre of operations from Liverpool to Southampton. Poor old Phil wasn"t enjoying unemployment, but work wasn"t easy to come by. Thank God he had the part-time job in the dance band in the evenings, or he"d have been stony broke. Anyway, we sat there for a few minutes, watching the world go by, feeling a bit uncomfortable with each other. Then, Phil sort of coughed, and then told me he"d tried ringing Brendan the previous night and received no answer, so he"d been round to the flat first thing that morning. He"d knocked, rung the doorbell and knocked again, but no one answered. He"d had to assume there was no one at home after knocking on the door of Brendan"s flat, then tried the flat next door, and the woman who answered the door said she hadn"t seen or heard anything of Brendan for a couple of days. Phil admitted he felt a bit guilty by that time, for helping Brendan, who he now believed had "lost the plot" a bit. You can imagine how I felt when he said that, Inspector. My sister was, as far as I knew; with a man who Phil thought might be so obsessed with his American dream that he"d maybe lost touch with reality.”

Ronnie paused at that point, and appeared to Ross to be struggling to control his emotions. Ross asked a question at that point, in an effort to take some of the pressure off Ronnie and give him a break from his retelling of his sister"s disappearance.

“Mickey, tell me, do you know if Phil Oxley is still living in Liverpool? Are either of you still in contact with him?”

“Haven"t seen or heard from him for years, Inspector Ross. Last I heard, he was living in Fazakerley somewhere. Don"t know if Ronnie"s heard from him.”

“Not for a long time. I saw him in town about five years ago, as he was leaving the main post office. I tried to cross over and say hello but by the time I got there, he"d disappeared into the crowd of shoppers and pedestrians,” said Ronnie.

“You"re sure it was Oxley?” said Ross.

“You don"t forget someone you"ve known since you were about six years old, Inspector Ross. He"d lost a lot of hair over the years, but his face hadn"t altered much at all, and he had a way of walking that was pretty unmistakable. I think it was something to do with the way he used to sit at his drum kit. He walks kind of bow-legged. It was Phil alright, I"m sure of it.”

“Right,” said Ross, “we"ve established that Phil Oxley is still somewhere in the local area. Sergeant Drake?”

“I"ll get someone on it as soon as we"re done here, sir.” Drake replied. Izzie knew McLennan would soon be able to find an address for Oxley, probably from the local electoral roll.

“Ronnie, go on with what happened next, please,” Ross prompted Ronnie to continue his story.

“We waited two days, Inspector,” Ronnie quickly went on, eager to get things out in the open. “Two full days and not a bloody word from her. Mam and Dad were going out of their minds with worry and us two were mad at Marie and Brendan for just taking off without a word after we"d kept their secret for them. In the end, me Da insisted on going to the police station to report our Marie as missing, and it was Mickey, not me who went with him. Tell the inspector about it, Mickey, what happened at the cop shop.”

“Yes, Mickey, and please, try to remember everything that was said to you at the time, and what action, if any, the police took at the time,” said Ross.

A little like his brother before him, Mickey took a couple of seconds to compose himself, his mind working on recalling the events that had transpired over thirty years in the past. Before he began, Izzie Drake interrupted the flow of the interview with a question of her own.

“Just one question before you carry on, Mickey. Do either of you know if Brendan"s parents are still alive, or if he has any other family in the area? If I"m going to try and locate Phil Oxley, I can search for Brendan"s family at the same time.”

“Good idea, Sergeant,” Ross added. “Anything you can tell us, lads?

Mickey replied instantly.

“Brendan"s Dad was already ill at the time he left Liverpool, Inspector. We heard it was cancer, and he died about a year after Brendan disappeared. His Mum never got over Brendan leaving home and then losing her husband within a year and I saw her death notice in the Echo one night about five years after that. When we were growing up together, Brendan always told us he had no other family in the city. His grandparents died during the war in an air raid, and he apparently had an Uncle Michael in the Royal Navy who died when H.M.S. Hood was sunk by the Bismarck. Me and Ronnie spent quite some time with his Mum and Dad after Brendan and Marie disappeared. They were as worried as we were, and I think his Dad died sooner than he should have from the worry of it all. Honest, nobody could understand why Brendan and Marie never got in touch with anybody.”

Ross nodded as Mickey fell silent again.

“Right then, Sergeant, just Oxley to locate if you can.”

“Yes, sir,” Izzie replied. “Sorry for the interruption Mickey, please carry on with what you were about to tell us.”

“Oh yeah, right, the police back in sixty-six. There was a big row at home before we went to the police. Me and Ronnie couldn"t keep the secret any longer and we came clean to Mam and Dad. I thought Da was going to explode when he realized we"d misled and deceived him, as he put it. Me Mam cried and cried, and told me and Ronnie she was ashamed of us, that we couldn"t be trusted any more. We couldn"t blame them, deceiving them like that and all. We only meant to help Marie, Inspector, we never thought it through properly, I suppose. We sure as hell never meant to hurt our Mam and Dad. Anyway, they calmed down eventually and we were surprised that Da seemed to be the first to accept what we"d done, but he told us that there was now no alternative to going to the police. He said it was obvious that Marie had run off and something had to be done to find her. I can remember he went upstairs to the bathroom and a few minutes later he came back down to the kitchen. He"d changed into his best suit, his only suit to tell the truth and had his best white Sunday shirt and tie on, that he normally only wore to church, or maybe for weddings and funerals. Not that we got invited to many weddings, and we certainly didn"t go to many funerals in those days, not at our ages, anyway. He"d shaved and even used some of Ronnie"s after shave, a bit too much as I remember. When he walked in the room the smell of Old Spice nearly knocked us out.

I remember going to the police station with me Dad on the bus. I think it was on St Annes Road or something like that. They kept us waiting ages, even though Da told "em we were reporting a missing person. Eventually a sergeant came out and saw us and took us into an interview room.”

“Was this a detective or a uniformed officer?” Ross asked.

“He was in uniform. Big bloke, name was Carson. I remember he had a mustache, looked a bit like a bloody RAF Wing Commander in a war movie. He asked us a few questions, well, he asked Dad mostly. I felt bad for Dad. He hardly said a word.”

“Okay then, Mickey, in your own words, try to tell me everything you remember about that interview with Sergeant Carson and what subsequently took place following the day you and your father made the initial report.”

“Eh?” Mickey sounded a little nonplussed by Ross"s terminology. Ronnie decided to help his brother out.

“He means, tell him what happened when you and Dad met with Carson and then as much as you can remember about everything the cops did from that day onwards, for what it was worth.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Got it. I were never right impressed with Sergeant bloody Carson, inspector, right from the start. Sorry, I know he was one of your lot, but that"s the plain truth of the matter. The bloke was friggin" useless, so he was.”

Ross simply nodded in response to Mickey"s remark and replied

“Don"t apologise, Mickey. If the investigation wasn"t carried out properly back then, I need to know about it. Try and recall any details that come into your mind, however small and insignificant you think they might be. It could be important today in helping us ascertain what happened to your sister and to Brendan Kane.”

Ross turned to Izzie Drake.

“Could you please organise some more tea and coffee please, Sergeant, and maybe some biscuits? I think we could all do with a little refreshment before we continue.”

Drake nodded and closed her notebook, placing it on Ross"s desk as she moved to the door.

“Right sir, won"t be long.” She smiled at Mickey Doyle, having decided there was something rather likeable about the elder Doyle brother. Despite his rough and ready exterior she sensed a vulnerability about Mickey, a fragility of temperament his brother Ronnie certainly didn"t suffer from. From the moment the brothers had begun relating their story to Ross and herself, Izzie had been using her intuitive prowess to weigh up and analyze the two men. Both she and Ross were aware that it wouldn"t be the first time a potentially psychotic murderer had walked into the hands of the police, often with a view to taunting the law by appearing to help the investigation, inserting themselves into the case as willing witnesses while at the same time using their inside connection to discover how much the police knew, and often being able to deflect the investigation from the truth. After over an hour spent in the company of Ronnie and Mickey Doyle she felt reasonably certain that neither of the brothers had been involved in the murder of their friend, Brendan Kane, or the subsequent disappearance of their sister. If anything, she thought they"d been naïve and a little too trusting of their friend and of the so far unknown quantity that was Phil Oxley, but she could feel no malignant hostility coming from either brother. Returning to Ross"s office soon afterwards with a tray containing the requested beverages and a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits, Ross"s favourites, Izzie poured drinks for all of them, and pulled a stool from under the computer desk in the corner of Ross"s office and sat down, her feet growing tired of standing as she listened to the men"s story. Izzie took up her notebook from where she"d left it on the desk, looked up and out of the window, where the earlier clouds had given way to heavy rain, falling in almost horizontal sheets, driven by a strong wind blowing in from the Irish Sea. She felt the weather suited the mood of the interview they were conducting. Ross took a drink of his coffee allowing the hot liquid to refresh his throat before speaking again.

“Right Mickey, I apologise this is taking so long, but I"m sure you both realize by now how important your information is proving to be. Please, take your time, clear your mind again and then, do your best to take me back to the interview with Sergeant Carson.”

Mickey Doyle nodded, coughed once and cleared his throat, and allowed his mind to once more return to nineteen sixty-six, as Ross and Drake listened intently to the next installment of the story of Brendan and Marie.