Dead Centre

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Pretty young university students Rose and Poppy Matheson are keen golfers. But one night Poppy is attacked on the footpath near the golf course and her sister, following behind, mistakenly kills the attacker in trying to rescue her twin. The girls cover up the crime by making it look like a hit and run car accident, but are overheard by another golf club member, Betty Russell, who wants to go to the police. Unfortunately her husband dissuades her and starts blackmailing the girls instead. As Inspector Govern and Sergeant Beck try to disprove the hit and run theory, first Betty, then her husband Barry also disappear. Meanwhile Rose's boyfriend John cannot understand why her manner towards him has changed. For her part Rose still loves him but is overwhelmed with guilt. And it is not until after the discovery of two more dead bodies that all can be resolved.

Release date: March 27, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

It started to rain, the clouds obscuring the moonlight so that Poppy was now guided only by the glow of the solar lamps spaced at intervals along the path. When she reached the spinney to the left of the path, a gust of wind sent the branches of a rowan tree swinging across her face. She put up her arm to protect herself, but too late to avoid a blow across the back of her shoulders, knocking her off balance. Hitting the wet ground, she felt a swift stab of fear as she realized it was no branch but the heavy weight of a man’s body now falling on top of her.

She opened her mouth to scream but her assailant’s hand quickly covered her mouth.

‘Shut up and I won’t hurt you!’ The voice was a hoarse whisper. She thought it was familiar but she couldn’t identify the owner. It was an educated accent and although most of the breath had left her lungs when she hit the ground, she managed to jerk her head sideways and gasp, ‘Please, let me go! I won’t scream, I promise. Please!’

There was no reply but now she felt her arms being twisted behind her and what she took to be a belt fastening her wrists together. She knew then that, whoever the man was, he intended either to rape or kill her, and she started to struggle. He turned her over on her back and she tried to kick out at him but the weight of his body made movement of any kind impossible.

Suddenly, without warning, the cloud that had covered the moon moved away and Poppy saw the man’s face. With a shock, she recognized the elderly golf club member with whom she had been dancing earlier.

‘Gordon!’ she gasped. ‘Please, Mr Rivers … Gordon … let me go!’

Even as she spoke she knew it was pointless to do so. His breath reeked of alcohol, his face was suffused with colour, and as he straddled her she was no longer in doubt as to his intention. He was going to rape her.

‘You deserve this!’ he panted as with one hand he pulled up her skirt. ‘You and that twin sister of yours ask for it, don’t you, exposing your bellies, tossing your heads and flirting with those gormless boys. The pair of you have been asking for it … and I’m going to give it to you …’

He prised open her legs with his knee, still using the upper part of his body to prevent her retaliating. His face came close to hers. His breath was hot on her cheek as she tried to turn aside.

‘Don’t pretend you don’t want it!’ he hissed. ‘You’re all the same, you women, flaunting yourselves, asking for it. I’m going to—’

They were the last words Gordon Rivers ever spoke. The weight of a golf club struck him with considerable force on the back of his head. His body sank on top of Poppy’s.

Twisting her head frantically to one side Poppy saw her identical twin sister, Rose, staring down at her, the club still in her hand.

‘Get him off me! Get him off!’ Poppy shouted hysterically. ‘Get him off me, please!’

Rose had heard the man’s voice before she saw him; heard his threats and run forward. She then saw the two figures, the man’s body on top of her sister. Beside their feet, clearly visible in the moonlight, was the golf club which, unbeknown to Rose, Poppy had used as a makeshift crutch and dropped when she was attacked. Hearing the noise of Rose’s approach, Rivers had turned, and without hesitation Rose had picked up the club and swung it with all her strength against his head.

His body twitched and, afraid he was about to move, Rose struck him again, this time missing his head and hitting him across the shoulders.

Poppy now struggled out from beneath him. Rose undid the belt round Poppy’s wrists and they clung to one another, sobbing hysterically. After several minutes Rose calmed down sufficiently to whisper, ‘I don’t think he’s moving, Poppy. I may have killed him.’

‘Don’t touch him! Don’t!’ Poppy pleaded as Rose bent down and, rolling Rivers over on to his back, felt the pulse in his neck.

‘Why, it’s Gordon Rivers!’ she whispered. ‘He’s dead, Pops. And I don’t care. He was going to rape you!’

Unable to speak, Poppy merely nodded. She was still too terrified to think clearly, but Rose was now fully alert.

‘The boys will have guessed by now that I came to find you and they will be looking for us. I’ve got to stop them coming here.’

Poppy and Rose were strikingly pretty girls with their father’s Irish colouring, dark hair and violet blue eyes. Not only were they pretty with tall, slim figures, but the twins were fourteen and thirteen handicap golfers, good tennis players and much in demand by the other first-year students at Sussex University, where they studied.

Earlier that evening Poppy had tripped over someone’s golf bag in the locker room of the Cheyne Manor Golf Club where a party was in progress to celebrate the tenth year of its inception. Poppy had been dancing with her current boyfriend, Fred, and he had looked at her with some concern when she told him she had twisted her ankle and would like to return to her room in the nearby Cheyne Manor Hotel, take a painkiller and go to bed.

Not wanting her twin to leave the disco in sympathy, she’d refused Fred’s offer to drive her and, unaware that she was being followed, she had taken the footpath, which was only three hundred yards across the golf course.

Rose now drew her mobile from her jacket pocket and called her boyfriend, John McNaught.

John, a tall, fair-haired American, was in the entrance way regarding the worried expression on his friend Fred’s face. Shorter by nearly half a metre, Fred Clark decided that although he had promised Poppy not to tell her twin she’d left the party, there would be no harm in telling John now that Rose, too, had departed.

‘Pops twisted her ankle and, as it was hurting, she decided to go home,’ he said. ‘You and Rose were snogging on the dance floor and she made me promise not to tell Rose she’d left as she knew Rose would leave the party and go after her.’

John stared at Fred’s bespectacled face, partly in relief now he was pretty sure he knew where Rose was, but also in some annoyance.

‘Even if you didn’t tell Rose about Poppy, you should have told me,’ he said. ‘Poppy didn’t walk, I take it? You drove her back to the hotel?’

The twins had a grace-and-favour apartment at Cheyne Manor, which had once been their family home. Their father, Julian Matheson, had been unable to find the money to pay the exhorbitant inheritance tax levied on the estate when his father died, and, being unable to get planning permission to develop the land for housing, had sold it and moved his family to the south of France. When his identical twin daughters had opted to go back to England and to read Sociology at Sussex University, he had negotiated a lengthy lease on the attic rooms in the Manor, which he had paid to have converted into a delightful three-room apartment.

Fred returned John’s gaze uneasily.

‘I wanted to drive her but she wouldn’t let me. You know what those girls are like, John. Poppy got it into her head that if Rose saw me around the place, she’d suppose Poppy was with me and at least enjoy herself for a while longer.’

‘She walked back – with a bad ankle?’ John queried. ‘That sounds real crazy!’

‘I said so, too,’ Fred agreed. ‘But, as Poppy said, the short cut across the golf course to the hotel only takes five minutes at most – and that path is lit, as you know.’ He paused before adding: ‘She took her driver as a sort of crutch. I’m sure she’ll be all right.’

Nevertheless, John considered that golf courses were not the safest place to be at night and the short cut to the hotel was likely to be deserted. Granted it was only a short distance running the length of the 18th fairway, but there were trees and shrubs on either side where it neared the boundary wall of the hotel garden.

‘Despite what you say, I’m worried, Fred!’ he said. ‘Those two girls are so alike they even seem to share the same thoughts, and about ten minutes ago Rose and I were having a drink when she suddenly stood up and went rushing out of the room without a single word. I supposed she’d been caught short, and, after a minute or two, I went round to the changing rooms to see if she was okay. That’s when that creep Armitage told me he’d seen her dashing out through the front door. I’m sure something’s wrong, Fred. I’m going to telephone the hotel. There’s bound to be someone about.’

There was, however, no need to do so. As he was reaching for his mobile phone it rang. Despite the noise coming from the dance floor, he could hear Rose’s voice quite clearly.

‘They’re safely back at the hotel,’ he mouthed to Fred. ‘Poppy’s fine.’ He turned back to his mobile. ‘Love you, honey!’ he said, his tone casual because he knew Rose was not ready yet for any kind of commitment. Together with her identical twin they were thoroughly enjoying university life. They’d become a foursome of friends, playing golf, and tennis whenever they wished on the hotel hard court. All four had been pretty inseparable since their arrival at the university the previous October, parting only during the Christmas vacation when the girls had gone back to France to their parents and John went to stay in Glasgow with Fred.

‘You had me worried for a bit,’ Fred said as they went back to the bar. ‘But you know how stubborn Pops can be and she really didn’t want me with her.’

As Fred was voicing his concern, Poppy was saying almost the same words to Rose.

‘I wish I’d let Fred come with me – he wanted to!’ she said. ‘Perhaps I should have been more wary of … of Mr Rivers!’

Both girls stared down at the body. The breeze was blowing his wispy grey hair and they were momentarily terrified lest he had moved.

‘He has … had …’ Rose corrected herself with a shiver ‘… a horrible way of staring at you! But I never imagined … not rape! Oh, Pops, I can’t bear to think what it must have been like for you …’

Both were shivering as they turned once more to stare at the body.

‘What are we going to do, Rose?’ Poppy whispered. ‘We can’t just leave him here. Someone may come along and … Fred knew I was taking the short cut …’

Her voice trailed into silence as Rose said in a voice that trembled despite her attempt to remain calm: ‘You didn’t kill him, Pops. I did!’

‘But if I say I did, it would be self-defence,’ Poppy said quickly, adding almost inaudibly, ‘… not murder!’

Rose bit her lip, unaware of the rain now falling on them both – and on the body.

‘We’ll have to move him somewhere – we can drag him … over there by the wall.’

Poppy followed Rose’s pointing finger.

‘He’d be seen there in daylight …’ she said doubtfully. ‘If we could get him over the wall, Rose, into the hotel shrubbery. They might not find him there for ages and then they’d suspect someone in the hotel had killed him.’

Rose nodded. Both she and Poppy were reluctant to touch the dead man, but, knowing it was dangerous to leave him lying there, they finally did so. Surprisingly, there was no blood coming from the back of his head where the golf club had hit him. They replaced his belt and, with Rose at his feet and Poppy supporting his shoulders, they struggled with great difficulty to carry him towards the dry stone wall. Both were breathing hard as finally they managed to heave his body over the wall where it disappeared into a heavy growth of rhododendron and azalea bushes.

‘Rose – my golf club – its still lying there …’ Poppy whispered.

‘I’ll get it,’ Rose said. Rejoining her twin, she noticed with a fresh stab of anxiety that they were both covered with mud.

‘We’d better go in the staff entrance. There won’t be anyone around at this time, and Miss Cahill doesn’t do her lock-up round until midnight. We’d better hurry though – it’s a quarter past eleven now.’

Fortunately for both girls, the servants’ entrance and staircase were deserted. Some of the staff had gone down to help at the club, and the kitchen staff had long since gone back to their homes in the nearby village of Ferrydene. It was not until the twins were back in their own sitting room, the door to their apartment locked, that they allowed themselves to consider their situation.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t have moved him,’ Rose said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we should have called the police.’

‘But, Rose, it was murder!’ Poppy whispered. ‘They would arrest you, put you in prison, and if there was a trial …’

‘There’d have to be, even if we both said we’d done it. I could pretend I was the one who Rivers attacked and you hit him and you’d say the same and then they couldn’t prove which one and—’

‘Rose, the club. It might have blood or something horrible on it. Thank God you brought it back with you.’

‘We’d better hide it!’ Rose said thoughtfully. ‘We could put it down in the cellar with Papa’s clubs. He won’t be using them this Easter holiday, and when everything’s blown over we can put it back in your bag. You can borrow his so no one notices yours has gone.’

‘I feel sick!’ Poppy said, leaning back in her armchair and drawing deep breaths. ‘I don’t think we can confess, Rose, even though we didn’t mean him to die. Think what awful publicity there’d be – hordes of reporters all over the hotel and golf course and Fred and John would get involved and then there’s Papa and Ma … they’d be devastated. Pa’s last words were “I know I can trust you both to behave!” Rose, we can’t tell the police. We can’t tell anyone – ever!’

Rose remained silent, her eyes thoughtful as she regarded her sister. Then she said in a low, firm voice: ‘I’m not sorry for what I did, Poppy. That man was going to rape you. I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved to die if that’s what he does to people. If I’m sorry about anything it’s that one of us had to do it.’

Poppy jumped out of her chair and running across the room to her twin she put her arms round her and they clung to one another, weeping quietly.

And so they finally slept, clasped to each other, fearful of the nightmares that might beset them, and with visions of the dead man lying under the rhododendron bushes in the rain.

As the revellers left the clubhouse in jovial high spirits, not one of them realized April 3rd would be remembered in future not for the club’s inception but for being the first of the Cheyne Manor Golf Club’s murders.

It was Deborah Cahill, the assistant manageress of Cheyne Manor Hotel, who found the body. As was her unbroken custom, she always took her beloved Yorkshire terrier for a last walk at night before locking up and retiring to bed. Even if it was pouring with rain, although she might shorten her walk, Deborah still kept to the routine that her dog expected. Tonight, because of the threatening rain, she took him only to the boundary of the hotel garden where it adjoined the golf course rather than making a circuit of the moderately extensive grounds. It was therefore exactly midnight on the Tuesday evening when she reached the boundary wall and Rusty’s furious barking halted her in her tracks. Following the dog into the shrubbery, she was horrified to find Rusty pawing at the prone body of a man.

At the age of fifty-seven, unmarried and with no relatives or dependents, Deborah Cahill had become a disciplined and resourceful woman as well as an indispensable and highly efficient PA to Kevin Harris, the owner of Cheyne Manor Hotel and Golf Club. Now, despite her certainty that the man lying on his side half in and half out of the undergrowth was dead, she did not have hysterics as might other less confident females, but caught hold of Rusty’s collar with one hand, and, tucking him under her arm, dragged the man’s arm from beneath the bushes in order to feel for his pulse with the other. Although none was to be felt, she noticed that the body was still slightly warm despite the drizzle of rain which had curtailed her walk that evening.

The dead man’s face was partly obscured by his damp grey hair, which straggled across the pale cheeks, and by the horn-rimmed spectacles that had slipped down over his mouth; but as the initial shock began to lessen, Deborah realized who he was – one of their permanent guests who had a single room on the first floor of the hotel. A Scot by the name of Rivers, he had been living in England since his retirement. He kept himself very much to himself but was a fanatical golfer who spent most of his time on the course and only appeared in the hotel to sleep and for meals.

Standing up, Deborah peered across the night-darkened lawn and flower beds with the first feeling of fear. Was there someone still out there in the darkness, watching her perhaps? Of a certainty, unless a person like herself was walking a dog, they would not be walking for exercise or pleasure at this time of night and especially not distant from the gravelled paths. Unless the unfortunate Mr Rivers, at whose body Rusty was still furiously barking, had stumbled accidentally into the bushes and suffered a heart attack, some unknown person must have harmed him by unknown means.

She bent to look once more at the body. A sudden shaft of moonlight revealed a large swelling on the back of his head; so it was not a heart attack, she realized.

‘Come along, Rusty,’ she said sharply as she felt another frisson of fear. She attached his lead, which was always a necessity once she turned for “home” and he realized his walk was nearly over. ‘We must go and find Mr Harris.’

Despite the three decades she. . .