Chapter 2

They walked into the office to see most of the team already studying computer screens. Marilyn went into her own office and spent two hours working on administrative paperwork, to clear her mind. At around ten, she had a call on her mobile.

“DI Houseman.”

“Marilyn, it’s Keith Russell. I’ve spoken to my boss, and he is going to talk to your superiors about a joint operation. The mug shot of a younger Anderson is a better than sixty percent fit with the lad on the bike. It may have been a coincidence, but it’s the first real lead that we’ve had in that case. I’ll be reworking the Leeds side and will set up a meeting with your team when we have something solid.”

“All right, sir. I’ve got my team trawling through the records. His later arrest suddenly doesn’t seem right. It’s as if he rolled over and took all the blame.”

“I’ll send you what I get if you send me your information. I understand that the double murder at your end is your priority, just as solving the double murder in Leeds is mine.”

When she put the phone down, Ginger was tapping on the door.

“Email from Thirsk, ma-am. Jacob has sent over his preliminary findings.”

“Right! Time for a meeting.”

She gathered her thoughts as Ginger called for attention. Standing next to the ‘Rascal Wall’, now with pictures of the two Andersons, she asked Ginger to give the forensic report. He stood.

“This is preliminary only. A search of the house found a burner phone with a dead battery, which was why he had used his own phone Thursday evening. The gun had fingerprints on the stock and triggers, enough to match with Anderson. It had another set on the barrel, about eight inches from the muzzle. Jacob is certain that these are from Esme Anderson and were probably from her grasping at the barrel when it was poked into her stomach.”

Ian raised a hand.

“No other prints, sarge?”

“None. Otherwise, the victim had no marks on him to show resistance, so he must have known his assailant. He had three separate identities, one his own and two fake sets, but good enough to have credit cards in both names. We will need to talk to the banks to get the records, but receipts found showed that they had been in use since he had been released and the balances paid on time. His stomach contents were consistent with the packages found in the house, and there were no traces of drugs in his system.”

He looked at the paper in his hand.

“The bike in the garage had his fingerprints all over it. Jacob says that it was a popular model for bike couriers ten or more years ago. A pizza delivery bag found hanging from the handlebars was from a Leeds business that closed its doors in 2019. It contained the usual debris of old food and cardboard flakes. It also contained some fibres which Jacob is working on. There was no sign of a cricketers bag.”

They went around the room with the results, so far. They had tracked him back to his schooling in Leeds and had approached the schools to get the pupil names from that time. They had received the visitor list for his time in prison, as well as the list of inmates that he would have been in contact with. Marilyn looked at them.

“Good work, you lot! Ian, set up a spreadsheet to enter all the names we get to see if there are any duplicates. This case has been now linked to one back in 2020, in Leeds. I’ve spoken to the DCI in charge of that case. It was a diamond robbery that was so slick, nobody even knew it had happened until the next day. The shop was under CCTV from across the road the whole day, and there was nothing out of the ordinary, except for customers trying the door and leaving after seeing a closed sign.”

She looked at their interested faces.

“Inside, there were two females, bound and gagged and then killed with a knife across their throats. The haul was estimated at over a million, and none of it has been recovered. The link is the bike and bag found in the garage. CCTV at the time showed a cycle delivery lad come from the side road by the crime scene and turn onto the main road. The bag is a duplicate of the one Jacob has, and I had a call from DCI Russell, in Leeds, this morning. The enhancement of that lads’ face is better than a fifty percent match with the mug shot of Anderson, taken a year or so later.”

There was a buzz around the room as they took it in.

“This makes what we’re doing doubly important. The victims are now four, over nearly a ten-year gap. If Anderson was involved with that earlier robbery, he would have been on a good cut. He didn’t need to go off on a lark with a bunch of teens. We need records of his house and the place in Youlton. We need the names of those teens from the juvenile records. We also have to go back on our own case and start from finding Esme in her home. Double down on all the witness statements. Find out who first mentioned the cricket bag. Ginger, we’re going back to look at the first crime scene again. Tim, take Helen with you and look at Youlton with fresh eyes, then talk to the others in that area.”

Marilyn and Ginger went to the original crime scene and let themselves in, new gloves on. They first went to the sitting room, where the body had been found. The chair was still at Thirsk but the pellet splatter on the wall showed them where it had been.

Slowly, they went through the entire house with a fresh outlook. Marilyn was looking in the bedroom drawers. They had a disturbed look, as if someone had been pawing through the items. There were two separate bedrooms, one for her and one for him. His room also had the look that someone had been searching for something. She knew that it hadn’t been the crime scene team, because they usually dumped everything on the bed and left it there after checking it, although Jacob was usually neater.

On his chest of drawers, there was a car key with a leather tag that had a Toyota emblem on it. There was also a small rectangular piece of plastic with a different card suit in each corner and ‘Ace Taxi’ in the middle with a phone number. She placed them in an evidence bag and went down to see how Ginger was getting on.

“Found anything, Ginger?”

“There was a drawer in the kitchen, with the household accounts and his receipts. He was driving a cab.”

She showed him the evidence bag.

“If he was keeping the keys, the cab was his.”

“We need to see it, then.”

They locked up and drove a few streets to the taxi depot. Going in, Marilyn held up her warrant card.

“DI Houseman. Is the boss around.”

The lad she had spoken to turned and shouted.

“Jock! Police here to talk to you.”

An overweight man came out of a small portable and came up to them.

“Jock McBride. I’m the manager, what can I help you with.”

Marilyn held up the bag.

“Alfred Anderson. He had a car here?”

“Yes, he did. Is Alf in trouble? We haven’t seen him for a while. We put his Toyota down the back.”

“I’m sorry to tell you, sir, that his body was found before the weekend. I’m going to have to take his car. Do you have a key here and move it around?”

“We do. It’s in the ignition, we are here twenty-four hours a day, so nobody can come in and just take it. We have a few other contractors with their own cars.”

“How long has he been working with you?”

“About seven years. His wife was driving while he was otherwise detained. Good worker, too. He came back a few months ago. I was sad to read about her death and wondered if that was why we hadn’t seen him. She was such a sweet little thing, had a regular set of parents who let her take their kiddies to posh schools and pick them up. Alf had passed that business on to Karen, preferring to work the hotels and tourist spots.”

“We’ll need to collect the car for examination. Don’t let anyone in it and I’ll get it picked up. Thank you for your time. By the way, what did you think of Alf?”

“Nice guy, maybe too easy-going. Always ready to help if we were overloaded. I liked him but wondered what troubled him, at times. He was very jumpy before he was arrested.”

Marilyn went to the Toyota and put her gloves on before taking the key out of the ignition and locking it. She put the key in the evidence bag. Going out to her car, she rang Thirsk.

“Jacob, we have found a car belonging to Anderson. It’s at Ace Taxi in York. Can you send a recovery truck to pick it up, please. I’ll get a uniformed to watch over it until you get here. They’ll have two keys in an evidence bag. One was in the ignition and the other was at his house.”

She turned to Ginger.

“Can you call the local station to send over a uniform to guard the car until it gets picked up. I’ve noticed the lad we first spoke to was looking worried when I locked the car. He may have been using it as a safe place for something. I’ve got to call the office.”

She stepped away as he was making his call and phoned the office.

“Ian, I’ve got a little job for you. We’ve just found a taxi that Anderson was using. He’s listed with the company as a contractor, so the car is his. I’ve just been told that Esme was driving it while he was inside, so, whoever told us that she was on the game was mistaken. See if you can find his company records and the first time he registered the car.”

She gave him the registration number.

“Now, is Shirley around?”

She waited until Shirley came on the line.

“Shirley, I have a job for you. We’ve been given a wrong impression of Esme Anderson. It seems that she’d been driving Alfreds’ taxi while he was inside, and I’ve been told that she was very good at it, with a solid customer base ferrying kids to and from posh schools. I’ve had a look in her bedroom, and she looked like a good dresser. What I want is a background search on her. Where she was brought up, schooling, who her friends were. If possible, I want you to contact her parents and find out who her best friend was. Going further, I’d like to know where they met and where they married.”

“Got it, ma-am.”

Marilyn then made another call to Thirsk.

“Jacob, I know that it will take a while to get the results, but I would like an answer to a little problem. Can you please do a DNA set for Esme Anderson, Alfred Anderson, and what bits you have of that foetus. I want to know if he’s the father. If not, we will have something to check against someone else.”

“I had a look at the house, Marilyn, and they didn’t sleep in the same room.”

“Even you would have trouble sleeping with someone else if you’d spent five years inside, Jacob. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t have sex. I’m getting a lot of information that points to them being a genuine partnership, despite his arrest. When you checked the house, why didn’t you bag the car key in his room?”

“There were no keys in his room. Where did you find it?”

“On the chest of drawers, in full view. If someone put it there in the last week, that means that someone has a key to the house.”

They waited until a constable was dropped off by a police car. Marilyn showed her the warrant card.

“Good morning constable. That white Toyota up against the back wall will be picked up by forensics with a truck. Here are the keys. Make yourself comfy but don’t take your eyes off it. When it’s taken away, get yourself picked up.”

“Yes, ma-am. Is there something I should be aware off?”

“Good girl. You see that lad washing the blue taxi? He’s been acting strange as soon as I locked the Toyota. He may ask you if he can get his lunch out of it. If he does, get his name and address from the manager and tell the forensic team.”

The constable looked around the workshop.

“Not many places to stash a bag of weed in here.”

“You’ll go far. If you ever get a desire to get off the beat, give me a call.”

Marilyn gave her a business card and got in the car.

“Where to, now, ma-am?”

“Back to the office. We need to go through all the witness statements from the day Esme was found. There are a lot of oddities. We were told that she’d been on the game, yet there’s no record of her on the system. She was working hard while her hubby was inside. We were told about a cricket bag, yet it wasn’t at Youlton. There’s too many red herrings. The original door to door smells fishier by the day. After that, you and I are going to talk to them ourselves, without preconceived ideas.”

When they went back to the street, the first call was the lady who had reported the sighting of Anderson with the bag. They knocked on her door. When it was opened, they had to look down at the elderly woman. Marilyn held out her ID.

“Mrs. Patterson? I’m Detective Inspector Houseman and my companion is Detective Sergeant Kidman. We would like to talk to you about the day that Esme Anderson was killed. Can we come in?”

“Come through to the kitchen, dears. I’ll put the kettle on.”

When they were settled, with cups in front of them, Marilyn spoke.

“Mrs. Patterson. In the statement that was taken, that day, you said that you saw Alfred Anderson leaving the house with a cricketers bag. Is that what you saw?”

“I didn’t see anything. I was at the doctors for most of the day. It was Molly from number seventeen who told me that he had been carrying a bag. That nice young constable suggested that it could be a long one, like those cricket players use.”

Marilyn smiled.

“So, to paraphrase a saying, you weren’t here, you didn’t do it, and you saw nothing?”

“I suppose that’s right, Inspector. Molly is always good with the gossip, although she’s sometimes wrong. I don’t usually repeat things that she says.”

“Esme lived at number eight, across the road, you’re here at number eleven, so Molly will be three houses further away. I think that we’ll need to talk to her. Nice cup of tea, by the way, I do like a good Darjeeling. Did you speak to Esme much?”

“She used to take me to the hospital in the taxi. She would wait for me and bring me back on the one voucher. Such a sweet woman.”

“You’re not the first to say that about her. Did you get driven by Alfred?”

“A few times. I don’t need to go to the hospital as often as I did. They’ve done all the tests that were needed. He would go off and then come back for me. I sometimes had to sit for half an hour, and he would take the second voucher. He was a nice man. They were both good people. They were only here about a year before he went to prison. He was a different man when he came back. He had a haunted look.”

The next stop was Molly at seventeen. This time, they refused the offer of a cup of tea.

“Molly, Mrs. Patterson has just told us that it was you who saw Alfred Anderson leaving his house with a large bag, on the day that Esme was murdered.”

“I didn’t see him. It was Rosey, across the street who told me that she saw a bloke coming out of the house and get into a car.”

“Would that be fourteen or sixteen?”

“Sixteen. Rosey works late in the Minster, cleaning. That’s why she’s around during the day.”

“Thanks, flower. We’ll just go and speak to her.”

They crossed the road and rang the bell, which had a ‘Do not disturb’ sign next to it. A little while later, the door was opened by a woman in her dressing gown.

“Can’t you lot read! I don’t want to buy anything and I’m happy with my place in heaven, thank you!”

Marilyn held out her ID.

“We’re sorry to bother you, Rose, but we’re doing follow-up calls about the day Esme Anderson was killed. Our original house to house didn’t come this far up the road, and Mrs. Patterson gave a statement which was taken as gospel, but we now know that it was a Chinese Whisper, which you may have the original.”

“Come on in, Inspector, I don’t get in until the early hours. That Minster takes a lot of cleaning after a day of sightseers.”

“Thank you. This is Detective Sergeant Kidman. If you don’t mind, we’ll like to record this interview. I doubt that you’ll need to sign a statement, but we will transcribe it for our records.”

“That’s all right, come on through. I need a coffee. Do you want one?”

“No, we had a cup of tea with Mrs. Patterson. She was the one who gave a statement about what she saw but didn’t.”

“She’s a lovely lady, as kind as you would ever want. I’m sure that if you asked her about the Teletubbies down the road, she’d do her best to tell you about them.”

“You have Teletubbies in the street? All I have are talking rabbits.”

They were chuckling as they sat down, while the kettle went on for an instant coffee. Ginger took the recorder from his pocket and placed it on the table, switching it on when their hostess sat. Marilyn smiled.

“Now, for the record, could you please tell us your full name and what you saw that day.”

Rose took a sip of coffee, stated her name, and started to tell them what she saw.

“It was a day like today. The Minster was messy from a couple of busloads of German schoolkids. I got home after one and was awake around ten. I heard a sound that was like a door slamming and wondered about it. I went out the front and looked both ways along the road. There was a car outside number eight, or thereabouts. As I looked, a guy came out and got into the passenger side. He had a fishing rod bag, which he put in the back. Thinking about that, the car must have been closer to number six, as his back was towards me as he left.”

“Are you sure it was a fishing rod bag?”

“Yes. My father was a keen fisherman, and it was very similar to his.”

“What about the car?”

“It was an Astra. One of those bright red ones. My brother-in-law has a blue one.”

“When he was reaching in the back door, he would have been in profile. What was your impression? I’m not asking for a description, as those are notoriously all over the place. First thoughts?”

“Black tee, ripped jeans, long hair and in his early twenties. As soon as he closed his door, they were away.”

“They?”

“It must have been someone else driving him.”

“Thank you for that. It’s been a great help. I hope that you and your companions sing while cleaning the Minster. My husband is the audio guy in the University halls, and he reckons that the Minster has some of the best acoustics in the city.”

“Oh, yes! We sing hymns and carols to get through the evenings. It’s better than singing in the shower.”

On the way back to the car, Marilyn rang the office.

“Ian, we have a solid sighting of a red Astra outside Andersons’ house on the day of the murder. Can you get on to the camera boys to see if they have anything in that area, as well as in the Youlton area when that murder happened.”

Ginger chuckled.

“What’s so funny, Ginger?”

“Chinese Whispers and preconceived ideas, ma-am. Every day with you teaches me more. At this rate, I may go for the inspector exam before I retire.”

“Don’t do that while I’m around, Ginger. I need you beside me to give me gravitas.”

“Where to, now?”

“Now, my young padawan, I’m buying you lunch, and then we go and talk to the man with the lock-up. The one who told the constable that he thought Esme had been on the game. Now, we know, for certain, that she wasn’t, I wonder why he needed to give her a bad name.”

They stopped at the nearby pub and had pie and chips with soft drinks. Ginger wiped his lips.

“So, a late teen or early twenties, with a fishing rod bag and a red Astra, driven by an accomplice. Do we now have an idea about the unknown gunner?”

“Depends on the cameras, and whatever else we find out. I’m off to powder my nose, and then we’ll talk to Mister Bernard Tapper.”

Bernard Tapper lived one street over, with the lockups running between the two streets. They knocked on his door and waited. When the door was opened, they saw a man, probably around thirty, wearing dark glasses.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m DI Houseman and this is DS Kidman, may we come in, Mister Tapper.”

“All right. I’ll have to take your word for who you are, my sight isn’t much good, unless I have a spotlight and a magnifying glass.”

As they walked to the kitchen, following him as he guided himself with the walls, Marilyn was keen to ask him the leading questions. When they were seated, without an offer of a drink, she asked her first while Ginger quietly put the recorder on the table.

“How did you lose your sight, Mister Tapper, or is it something from birth?”

“I was always short-sighted and didn’t do myself any good in my teens. I was a computer nerd. On top of that, I was a budding scientist. What did the damage was an experiment that I was doing, with magnesium and other things. The flash took away most of the sight that I had. Luckily, I had a bit of money, and went on welfare.”

“Is that when you moved here?”

“No. I was already here. The experiment was being done in my lockup.”

“How did you know Esme Anderson?”

“I was a year ahead of her when we were at school in Leeds. I was there on the night she met Alf. He was then a year behind her. I already knew him as the lad who delivered pizza when we had video games evenings.”

“Did you like Esme?”

“I did. As a geek, I didn’t have many normal friends, especially girls.”

“Why did you tell our officer that you thought that she had been on the game? We know, for a fact, that while Alf was in prison, she was driving his taxi.”

Marianne Gregory © 2026