Murder on Primrose Hill

1

May 1977

The spring sunshine warmed Susan’s face as she pushed the pram up Fitzroy Street, crossed Regents Park Road and went into the park. The cries of the animals in the zoo replaced the noise from the traffic, they were calling to her but today she needed to feel the breeze in her hair.

At the top of Primrose Hill, she put the brake on the pram. The sun glistened on the Post Office Tower rising above the London skyline. The view always calmed her. She took the postcard from her coat pocket and rubbed her finger over the picture of the Empire State Building. She turned the postcard over.

‘You wouldn’t like it here.’

How dare he send it, a reminder of what might have been. She should tear it up, but she clung to the hope that he still thought of her, and it brought solace in the ever more frequent moments of despair. She shoved the postcard back into her pocket, turned the pram around and headed back down the path.

The sound of angry voices reached her as she came to a crossroads. In the distance two men were arguing. As she neared, Charlie’s face came into focus. He staggered backwards as the other man shoved him, then walked off, head down and hands deep in the pockets of his jacket. The way he walked sparked excitement, dashed when reality sank in. Jamie was in New York. Peter wriggled and gave a mewing yawn. She wrapped the blanket tightly around him and jiggled the pram. Charlie should be at work, he’d be angry to be caught out, but she wasn’t going to be cowed - she wanted answers.

Charlie was no longer in sight as she hurried down the path. She rounded a corner and he was sitting on a bench, his head tilted back as if searching the sky for a plane. She pushed the pram into the shade of a tree.

‘Charlie what are you doing here?’

There was no sign he heard her question. A gust of wind caught his jacket, revealing a blood-soaked shirt. His face was ashen. Dizzy with shock, she slumped onto the bench beside him.

A man carrying a briefcase stopped in front of her. His eyes widened at the sight of the knife protruding from Charlie’s chest as several other passers-by formed a tableau around her.

‘Someone should call 999,’ a woman in a Barbour coat said.

‘I’ll go.’ The man with the briefcase marched off towards Regent’s Park Road.

How good it would be to escape like him.

A pregnant woman pointed at the pram under the tree. ‘Oh my god, what about the baby?’

The woman in the Barbour coat went over to the pram. ‘Sleeping soundly.’

‘Oh, thank goodness.’ The pregnant woman swayed and clutched the arm of the man standing next to her.

Susan could offer up her place on the bench. She clamped her lips together, preventing a hysterical laugh escaping at such a ridiculous idea.

Two ambulance men pushed through the group of onlookers. One placed his fingers on Charlie’s neck then turned to his colleague and shook his head.

The second ambulance man asked her. ‘Are you hurt?’

An aura of kindness emanated from him, a sensation Susan hadn’t experienced for a long while. ‘No.’

The woman in the Barbour coat walked over to the pram. ‘Where’s the baby gone?’

The words struck like an electric shock. Susan leapt up, her legs buckled and she collapsed into the ambulanceman’s arms.

2

The walls of the stark interview room were a watery green. A fluorescent light buzzed like an angry bee trying to find its way outside. The door opened and two detectives sat down opposite Susan and her solicitor.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Mark Wilson, and this is my colleague Detective Constable Helen Barton. We have a few more questions for you.’

The policewoman pushed a plastic evidence bag across the desk. ‘This is the knife used to stab your husband. It’s a match for the one missing from the set of knives in your kitchen.’

A brown stain covered the knife blade. Bile rose in Susan’s throat.

‘The only fingerprints on the knife are yours. Can you explain that?’

Susan clenched her hands into fists. It would serve this heartless woman right if she threw up all over the table. She stared at the detective. She wasn’t going to be intimidated.

‘If you say it’s from my kitchen it would have my fingerprints on it, wouldn’t it.’

DC Barton held her gaze. ‘Did you take the knife to the park?’

‘Why would I take a knife with me when taking my baby out in his pram?’

But she had put something in her pocket before setting off towards the park. ‘Why are you wasting time questioning me? You should be trying to find Peter. He’s been missing for two days.’

‘We have every available officer out searching.’ DS Wilson said.

‘But you’re not.’ Susan stared at the two detectives. ‘Why aren’t you looking for him?’

Susan’s solicitor put his hand on her arm. She shrugged it off.

‘None of the witnesses in the park reported seeing a man arguing with your husband.’ The woman detective consulted the file in front of her. ‘You told us yesterday you didn’t know the man, is that true?’

Her resolve not to tell them about Jamie ebbed away. Nothing mattered apart from getting Peter back. ‘He reminded me of a friend from university.’

‘This friend, what’s their name?’

The two detectives leant forward. There was no going back.

‘Jamie. Jamie Dankworth.’

‘Tell us about Jamie.’

Memories of Jamie were locked away like a treasured possession in a box, only to be viewed on rare occasions. His crooked smile when he gazed into her eyes, his hand holding hers as she dreamt of a future with him. ‘He was an exchange student from Cornell University. We went out for a while. It can’t have been Jamie in the park, he went back to New York last June, and anyway he didn’t know my husband.’ It made no sense that he would be with Charlie.

‘And you’ve had no contact with him since then?’ The policewoman raised her eyebrows.

Susan clasped her hands together to keep them from betraying her. ‘No. He had a fiancée, and Charlie and I got married after I graduated.’

The two detectives exchanged a glance, but they couldn’t know what she’d kept from Charlie, that the baby wasn’t his.

‘We found this at your home.’ DC Barton placed a postcard with the image of the Empire State Building in front of Susan. She turned it over and pointed at the postmark. ‘It was posted in London and is signed from Jamie. Can you explain that?’

‘No.’ A pulse throbbed in Susan’s neck. Whenever she looked at the postcard all she saw were the words, ‘You wouldn’t like it here’. The message so final, crushing the last hope of seeing Jamie again. Over the last few months, when she thought someone was watching her, could it have been Jamie? She shouldn’t have told them about him.

‘Was your husband involved in any criminal activity?’ DS Wilson asked.

‘Charlie worked for a reputable auction house.’

DC Barton smirked. ‘Your husband lost his job two months ago.’

Susan’s stomach knotted. Possible he hadn’t said anything in case it upset her so soon after Peter’s birth, but knowing Charlie, it had more to do with his pride. ‘I don’t understand. Why did he lose his job?’

‘His employers suspected he was passing on confidential information to criminals. Do you know anything about that?’

If she dared question him when he bragged about finding an antique whose worth others failed to appreciate, a spark of fury would appear in his eyes, and she would drop the subject. ‘Of course I don’t. But what about the man who came to our house?’

A scowl appeared on DC Barton’s face. ‘In your statement you say the man told you to tell Charlie he’d run out of time. What did Charlie say about this message?’

The colour drained from his face. When she asked what it meant, he took a step towards her, the smell of beer on his breath. The stinging blow, a terrible shock, he’d never hit her before. They didn’t need to know she had a reason to fear him. ‘He said it was nothing and I shouldn’t worry.’

‘We need to find out whether your husband’s murder and your son’s abduction are connected. Can you think of anything that might link them?’

Susan moaned. What could it mean for Peter if there was a connection?

3

Weariness washed over Detective Inspector Keith Rawlings as he stood in front of his team. Their expressions ranged from boredom to fevered expectation. The latter on the face of Helen Barton, whose enthusiasm for the job persisted, despite the misogynistic culture she found herself in.

‘We now have an official case name, Operation Chert. We have a fatal stabbing and a child abduction. As yet, we don’t know if the two are connected. The victim’s wife gave us a name for a man she saw in the park. Mark, what have we on Jamie Dankworth?’

DS Mark Wilson consulted his notebook. ‘Jamie Dankworth has been making regular visits to London over the last four months. He entered the country two weeks before the murder and is still here.’

‘Good work. We need to track him down and bring him in for questioning. Anything else?’

‘Yes, boss. Jamie Dankworth’s wife travelled with him. She’s the daughter of a New York businessman. According to my contacts in the NYPD, he has links to OCGs. So far, he’s managed to evade prosecution. Jamie Dankworth works for him.’

‘Well, that’s opened up our list of suspects.’ It would be a relief to discover Susan didn’t murder her husband whilst their baby slept in his pram. He must be getting soft. ‘Right, everyone, we need to crack on.’ He turned to his deputy. ‘Jack, take over. I’ve got a meeting with the AC.’

The Assistant Commissioner had a visitor in his office when Keith entered. The man’s suit, old school tie and polished shoes screamed MI5. His presence signalled Keith’s murder case was about to become more complicated.

4

The smell of stale air hit Susan as she opened the front door. She went into the kitchen at the back of the house. Traces of the police search were evident, open draws and jars put back onto shelves in the wrong place. The knife rack was missing, but if they found anything else of significance they hadn’t told her. She ran her hand across the surface of the wooden kitchen table. She was home, it wasn’t a dream, but it didn’t provide the relief she craved. The empty house only emphasised Peter’s absence. Sitting around wallowing in self-pity wouldn’t bring him back.

She banged the table with her fist. Damn Charlie for bringing this horror down on them all. It must be connected to the man who forced his way into the house when she was pregnant. She saw the fear in Charlie’s eyes when she told him what the man hissed in her ear. She never imagined Charlie capable of hurting her until that night. He’d never apologised or made any mention of the incident, but she didn’t want him to try to justify what he did. From that moment she avoided antagonising him when he came home in one of his black moods. The last few weeks, though, he seemed excited and even took more interest in the baby. He hinted he expected to make enough money to pay for a holiday. Perhaps he closed the deal and hid the money, but the police didn’t find any cash.

Susan went into the back room. A walnut escritoire stood in the corner, Charlie boasted about buying it for a knock down price. He told Susan there were seven hidden compartments. He could never resist showing off and demonstrated how to get into each one of them. Susan opened the lid, pulled out the top drawer and reached into the space behind to pull out the secret compartment. A figurine wrapped in velvet cloth lay inside, difficult to assess its worth but it had to be valuable for Charlie to hide it and likely stolen. Susan stood back and studied the escritoire, there were another six hiding places. Twenty minutes later, after a few false starts, she found the remaining compartments and in them more figurines, gold coins and antique jewellery. Charlie’s collection of books about antiques would help her to gauge their value.

Surrounded by books on the kitchen table, words and pictures danced before Susan’s eyes. It was impossible to stop imagining what might have befallen Peter and concentrate. She must do everything she could to get him back, the antiques from the escritoire would be useful if a ransom was demanded. She went upstairs and packed a small bag. She returned to the kitchen and hid the artifacts from the escritoire amongst her clothes. She’d rebuffed her mother’s suggestion that she should remain at her parent’s home, saying she wanted to be alone. She would call and say she’d changed her mind. She went into the hall and picked up the phone.

5

The report on the front page of the evening paper named Charlie as the man stabbed in the park. Jamie’s hands shook as he read on. The police were appealing for anyone with information about the kidnapped baby to come forward. The door of the apartment slammed. Jamie flung the paper onto the coffee table. Mary came in, dropped two shopping bags onto the floor and kicked off her shoes.

‘You’ve been busy.’

‘I needed an evening dress that doesn’t make me look like I’m wearing a tent, and I had to replace the coat I’d left in that cab the other day. Harrods was so busy, I’m exhausted. Be a sweetheart and hang them up for me.’

‘Put your feet up and I’ll make you some tea.’

‘I’d rather a martini.’ Mary smiled at him. ‘Don’t look at me like that, I’m joking. I can’t wait to get this baby out, I feel like a beached whale. I’ve got another eight weeks of this.’

‘Remember what the doctor said, you need to take it easy.’

‘I’ll have days to take it easy when I’m stuck on that boat all the way to New York, if I don’t go out of my mind with boredom. Why can’t you come with me?’

How he hated the whiney voice Mary used when she didn’t get her own way. She’d insisted on travelling over to London with him, even when the doctor advised against flying home.

‘I’ve some unfinished business for your father.’ Jamie went into the bedroom with the bags. He didn’t want to get into another argument.

Jamie put Mary’s new clothes in the wardrobe. A dress had fallen off its hanger. He picked it up and underneath, poking out of the top of a black bag, was the fawn-coloured coat Mary said she’d left in the cab. Lying was second nature to Mary but there was no reason for her to lie about losing a coat. The last few days had been a nightmare. He just needed to get through the next forty-eight hours. He pushed the bag to the back of the wardrobe.

When Jamie returned to the lounge, Mary put the evening paper down.

‘They’ve released that woman being questioned about the guy stabbed in the park. I bet she did it.’

The gleam in Mary’s eyes made him want to shake her.

‘They haven’t found her baby. Makes you wonder if the guy she killed wasn’t the kid’s dad. Maybe the real dad took him.’

Jamie’s throat tightened. ‘More likely an opportunistic thing. During all the chaos some childless woman desperate for a baby saw her chance and grabbed him.’

‘God, I can’t imagine wanting a baby that bad. Still at least it would spare getting your body wrecked by the little blighter.’

‘I can’t believe what you come out with sometimes. I’m going out.’

‘Off to see your friends in the zoo?’

Jamie snatched up his leather jacket. He closed the door, shutting out the sound of Mary’s laughter.

The sad brown eyes of Guy the gorilla stared at Jamie through the bars.

‘I know how you feel, mate. You and me, we’re both trapped.’

Guy lumbered off to the back of his cage. Regent’s Park Zoo had become Jamie’s sanctuary. The gorilla brought him comfort, despite his fearsome appearance, the gentleness of his nature shone through. The opposite could be said about Charlie, whose good looks and charm concealed a menacing personality. Jamie’s cowardice forced Susan back to Charlie. He yearned for Susan, to feel the softness of her hand and see the smile that lit up her eyes. The first trip to London in January seemed like serendipity, but instead it brought anguish. The burning pain in his gut returned with the memory of seeing her heavily pregnant, walking with Charlie.

‘I don’t believe in coincidences, do you Guy?’

The gorilla continued to chew on a bamboo shoot.

The suspicion of father-in-law Danny setting him up returned. Jamie’s involvement in the dodgy deals with Charlie might be part of Danny’s warped plan to punish Jamie’s indiscretion. Charlie’s death raised the stakes. ‘What am I going to do?’

Guy gave him an inscrutable stare.