The Whitby Murders (A Yorkshire Murder Mystery) J. Ellis (distant reading TXT) 📖

car, which no one knew was in Whitby. I rented a garage near to where Elaine was staying. We dressed him in the clothes Elaine had worn earlier in the evening and in the middle of the night when everything had gone quiet, we drove down and waited until there was absolutely no one around. Then we got the body into the water.’

‘What about the gun?’

‘We kept it. I knew you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find it at the bottom of a muddy harbour. I thought by the time the body was recovered from the sea, the forensic evidence would be poor and it wouldn’t be possible to tell that he’d been dead for a few days. There would not be much water in his lungs, but that would be consistent with him shooting himself first and being dead just as he fell into the water.’

‘You were right about that but it was a mistake not to put his mobile phone into his pocket; that made us suspicious. Surely he would have had his phone with him?’

‘I realised that later but it was too late.’

‘And that was it. There was a couple who had a history of having arguments. The man went crazy and stabbed his partner, probably not meaning to kill her. He ran off into hiding but his guilt and his instability led him to kill himself a few days later. All you had to do was volunteer to identify Holgate’s body. This earned you more sympathy with the group and you were already in high esteem with them because you’d apparently tried to save Andrea’s life.’

‘Yes . . . how ironic is that? But it worked beautifully in my favour. They were so sympathetic to me and put my tiredness down to the trauma I’d been through, whereas it was really because I had to sneak out in the night to meet Elaine and complete important tasks like getting rid of bodies and going over to Leeds.’

‘With Andrea and Dominic out of the way, you were clear to remove the painting and nobody would miss it,’ said Granger.

‘Yes. I got the keys from their room at the Whitby flat. I’d made sure she had a set with her. I’d asked her if I could have another look at the paintings in the flat while we were up here. The plan was for us to call in Leeds before going back to London. So I went over in the night and got the painting.’

He stopped and let out a deep breath. At that point, thought Oldroyd, he must have felt the plan had succeeded.

Morton looked at Oldroyd with an expression which combined anger and admiration. ‘I don’t know how you got onto me. If it wasn’t for you . . .’ he said again and then put his hands up to his face. The reality of his position had reasserted itself.

Oldroyd was under no obligation to explain his thinking in the case, but as Morton had been so open about his plan he felt a professional urge to explain how he had responded. With ruthless criminals like this it was like playing a deadly game of chess and they always had the first moves.

‘I was never convinced by the story we were meant to believe. Neither was Louise, although she never thought you were responsible. It seemed unlikely that Holgate would kill Barnes in a row as everyone spoke of them as basically happy together even though they had arguments. Holgate apparently had a knife with him, which suggested he had premeditated his attack and not just lost his temper in the moment. Discovering the trick sarcophagus and Holgate’s blood inside it led to more doubts. We were meant to think that Holgate had just blundered out of the building, but if he was hiding in the sarcophagus he must have known about it beforehand and planned to use it. Furthermore, he must also have known it was a trick, because we found his blood in the compartment that was concealed from view. We thought he must have used the mechanism to turn it but in reality he didn’t know that the sarcophagus had two compartments; in fact, that was part of the way he was duped. On the face of it there seemed to have been a degree of planning on his part, which was very odd if this was indeed a crime of passion. If he wanted to kill Barnes, why choose a strange, overly dramatic method like this? It also suggested that other people were involved. When I saw the CCTV, I thought it seemed unreal. They looked like actors in a film. It was this sense that everything didn’t quite ring true that was at the heart of Louise’s refusal to accept what we were presented with.

‘However, I have to hand it to you, the apparent facts we were still faced with – that he stabbed her in front of everybody; that there was blood; that he went out of the emergency exit door into that storeroom and that poor Andrea Barnes was dead – were seemingly inescapable whatever we felt about it all.

‘The next stage was less convincing. Nobody got a clear view of Holgate either up at the church or by the pub when he apparently went mad and fired off his gun. He stayed at a distance from his friends in the churchyard that night and ran off before anybody could get near. He left a watch to prove it was him and garlic to confuse people and confirm the idea that he’d lost it. Of course we now know it was Pesku. She could easily impersonate Holgate when dressed in a goth costume and she did the same thing the night Holgate apparently committed suicide, concealing her features with a hood and mask. I wondered how Holgate had managed to conceal himself during this three-day period, from the murder of Andrea Barnes on the Wednesday through to the Saturday, especially given that he didn’t know Whitby