The Frame - from the author of the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series (A Feyer and Drake Mystery Book 2) Read online

  The Frame

  A Feyer and Drake Mystery #2

  David W Robinson

  Copyright © 2020 by David W Robinson

  Cover Photography: Pixabay

  Design by: Services for Authors

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books/darkstroke except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are used fictitiously.

  First Dark Edition, darkstroke, Crooked Cat Books 2020

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  The Author

  David Robinson retired from the rat race after the other rats objected to his participation, and he now lives with his long-suffering wife in sight of the Pennine Moors outside Manchester.

  Best known as the creator of the light-hearted Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, and the cynically humorous Midthorpe Murder Mysteries, he also produces darker, more psychological crime thrillers.

  He, produces his own videos, and can frequently be heard grumbling against the world on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dwrobinson3 and has a YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/Dwrob96/videos. And for more information you can track him down at

  www.mysteriesaplenty.blogspot.com/

  By the same author:

  The STAC Mystery series:

  #1 The Filey Connection

  #2 The I-Spy Murders

  #3 A Halloween Homicide

  #4 A Murder for Christmas

  #5 Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend

  #6 My Deadly Valentine

  #7 The Chocolate Egg Murders

  #8 The Summer Wedding Murder

  #9 Costa del Murder

  #10 Christmas Crackers

  #11 Death in Distribution

  #12 A Killing in the Family

  #13 A Theatrical Murder

  #14 Trial by Fire

  #15 Peril in Palmanova

  #16 The Squire’s Lodge Murders

  #17 Murder at the Treasure Hunt

  #18 A Cornish Killing

  #19 Merry Murders Everyone

  Tales from The Lazy Luncheonette Casebook

  The Midthorpe Murder Mystery series:

  #1 A Case of Missing on Midthorpe

  #2 A Case of Bloodshed in Benidorm

  The Feyer and Drake Mystery series:

  #1 The Anagramist

  The Frame

  A Feyer and Drake Mystery #2

  Chapter One

  Seedy. That was the best way to describe the Bellevue Hotel.

  Situated at the bottom of Town Hill, where it turned sharp right to meet Landshaven seafront, the Bellevue’s glory days had been in the 1930s and early post-war years when the great unwashed of Yorkshire’s industrial heartland flooded the town for their annual holidays. By the late 60s, with the advent of cheap, package holidays abroad, the town’s fortunes began to decline, and the Bellevue went downhill even faster. Nowadays, even at the height of the season, holidaymakers, genuine paying guests, were few and far between, and most of the hotel’s visitors were prostitutes who worked the nearby harbour and seafront, and brought their clients to the hotel where the proprietor would let them rent rooms by the hour.

  And of course, lovers looking for a suitable place for illicit, afternoon sex.

  Barbara Shawforth was well aware of all this, and yet it did not matter to her. Indeed, the shambling seediness of the Bellevue was to her advantage. She was the wife of the Honourable Marc Shawforth, the duly elected Member of Parliament for Landshaven and District. She routinely dined with civic dignitaries, important business people, politicians local, national and foreign, she was frequently pictured and quoted in the local press, and she was a stalwart of the WI, a vociferous advocate working on behalf of many charities. Would she be seen meeting a lover in a dingy, downmarket dump like the Bellevue?

  Every time she met with a man there, the thrill of the shambling rooming house hyped her senses, ignited her libido, heightened the excitement, and left every nerve tingling with a promiscuous fire which screamed for relief. She became a slut, a whore, as lowly as the harbour girls who frequented the place, and the sum of her being was to be found in that small portal hiding snugly in the forest between the top of her shapely thighs.

  And Alex Walston sensed it. She knew he did. He was no stranger to the Bellevue, but rumour had it that he also took his lovers to other places, sometimes outdoors (but secluded, obviously) or classier, more upmarket hotels and country clubs (all a minimum of ten miles from Landshaven) and yet he had admitted that the blaze of his passion, like hers, was never as intense as it was in the slovenly rooms of the Bellevue.

  When she stopped to think about it, she supposed that from her point of view, the risk also added to the piquancy. This was a dangerous game. If the news ever leaked out, her life would probably self-destruct. The ramifications of an MP’s wife caught in bed with another man were too awful to contemplate. Marc’s career would teeter. He would be tainted with poor judgement. After all, any man who could not keep his wife satisfied, could hardly be trusted with affairs of state, could he? Divorce therefore would be as inevitable as he often threatened… a threat which he had never carried out. It would serve him right if she walked out and went to the press with her wayward tales. But she knew her husband too well. Like most politicians, he was a stranger to the plain, simple truth, and it would not be sufficient for him to simply divorce her. He would ruin her, cut her off with as little as he could get away with.

  The advantages of marriage to an MP outweighed the disadvantages, and the major downside was a lack of the physical adventure so necessary for a woman still at the peak of her sexual prowess. Thirty-six – almost fifteen years her husband’s junior – was no age to hang up her suspender belt and begin working on her memoirs.

  It was one of those quirks of life that the cause of her frustration also provided her with the solution. Marc Shawforth spent most of the week, most of the month, in Westminster, leaving Barbara free to seek out liaisons with others. Carefully selected men who assured discretion, and in the case of Alex Walston, that went double. He stood to lose almost as much as her if word ever got out.

  This was their first time together and if she had been eager to see if he lived up to his reputation, she suppressed her excitement in the interests of security. She had booked the room. She had arrived early, settled the bill and gone to the room. Walston turned up about half an hour later and… yes, he was as good as he claimed. Better. He was nothing short of magnificent. After their brief interlude of raw, mutually satisfying fornication, he left, and she hung back, waiting until it was safe to follow.

  Pearson, the proprietor, knew, but Pearson was easy to shut up. She had the capacity to put him out of business if he so much as dare breathe a word.

  September ninth was a safe date, too. Parliament was in session for the first time after the summer recess, and her husband had gone back to Westminster early in the morning. He was due to sit on some committee or other. She had arrived at half past two, and they had the room until half past four. In the half hour they were to
gether, he had indulged her every whim, and when she left no one would recognise her when she stepped out into the windy, rainy streets.

  Rachel was a bit of a worry, true. She and Barbara had been friends for almost fifteen years, and she had been screaming her fury in the café two hours previously. That was before the management asked her to leave. And Barbara was glad to see her go. It was embarrassing, being the centre of attention, and some of the things Rachel said were really hurtful.

  Not that it stopped Barbara from meeting Alex. Rachel, she knew, would eventually calm down, and within a day or two, they would be best friends again.

  And it was with that thought, and with time to kill before leaving, that she drifted into a shallow, dreamy, post-coital sleep.

  Sex with Walston in this dingy, dirty room, with its boring view over the roofs of the nearby buildings, had left her drowsy, and as she had done with other lovers, she set the alarm on her smartphone, making certain that she would be no more than half an hour behind him. And when she left, she would not linger. Pearson was unlikely to be in reception. That little creep preferred to spend most of his time in his living quarters at the rear of the building. It didn’t matter to Barbara. If he wasn’t there, she would leave the key (what kind of lowlife hotel still used keys rather than key cards?) on the counter and let herself out. If anyone should come and steal the key, it was no business of hers.

  But today the fates would not leave her to sleep off her excitement. She was in that state, drifting into deeper sleep when a soft click permeated her hearing, announcing that the door had been quietly opened.

  Not Alex surely? He couldn’t possibly be coming back for seconds, especially so close to the time when they were supposed to vacate the room. It was a risk too far.

  She stirred, rolled onto her back, her thighs parting, as if she were trying to tempt him, offering a glimpse of the promise surrounded by her dark foliage.

  And then she felt something move against her leg: something soft, something smooth and silky. Almost inconsequentially, she realised it was her underwear, those frilly panties she kept hidden from her husband, but which switched on her men friends. He was gently taking them off, trying not to disturb her. A lascivious smile of lusty anticipation crossed her lips.

  It soon faded. Taking them off? She wasn’t wearing them. Her eyes flickered open and her lascivious smile disappeared. Fury enveloped her. She opened her mouth, ready to scream obscenities at him.

  She never said a word. The hand which had been taking the knickers, clenched into a fist, swung across and landed with a smack on the side of her face.

  The pain of a broken jaw lanced through her. She would have cried out, but she could not. To make any sound would cause her more intense agony. The blow dislodged a tooth. She spluttered, spat it out, along with a lot of blood. Her fury dissipated rapidly, and in its place came fear.

  The fist came in again, and this time darkness closed in upon her.

  And then came the baseball bat, its repeated blows consigning her to a dreamless sleep from which she would never wake.

  Chapter Two

  Four years later

  “Before we begin, did you not think it necessary to shower and shave before contacting me?”

  Wesley Drake scowled at the image of Iris Mullins in the centre of his laptop screen. As always, the Deputy Chief Constable was immaculately attired, the silver buttons and epaulettes of her navy blue tunic gleamed in the late summer sunlight beaming into her office. Her dark hair was neatly brushed into place, contrasting sharply with her pallid skin. But where her small mouth would usually be set into a welcoming half smile, the thin lips were pursed, prim, disapproving.

  With the time coming up to noon, he had not been out of bed long. A marked change from those days when he would be up, showered, shaven, dressed by eight in the morning. These days he had nothing to get up for, and he spent most of the day in the first floor room he rented at his father’s farmhouse.

  The laptop was on a workstation at the back of the room, beneath and to one side of the only window.

  One corner of the workstation was heaped with correspondence, dumped in an untidy pile, all of it (theoretically) read… By which he meant, he had scanned from ‘dear sir’ to ‘yours faithfully’ and paid only cursory attention to the bit in between. Some was from clients, others from the bank, credit card companies, and at least one from her – Samantha Feyer. He had no interest in it.

  A text message from Iris asking for a video-conference call, insisting that she was waiting, had prompted him to crawl out of bed, and switch on the laptop. He did not really want to speak to her (he never wanted to speak to anyone) but down the years she had provided him with a lot of work, and simple courtesy compelled him to acquiesce.

  When the laptop finally came alive, he first checked his emails. Clients dropping out with varying degrees of irritation; missed appointments, promises not kept, solutions not delivered, and another from his bank urging him to do something about his overdraft. He had money in other accounts, and one day, when he could be troubled, he would transfer funds into his current account.

  Buried amongst the list of emails, was a message from Howley College, formally dispensing with his services, and apologising for the electronic communication but he had not replied to the letter they sent him.

  Do as you will, was his final thought before dumping the message.

  From the wall above the workstation a photograph beamed down upon him. Rebecca and him enjoying a two-week holiday on the island of Kos.

  They smiled into the lens, and he recalled that he’d taken the photograph by the simple expedient of setting a ten-second delay on the shutter of his digital camera.

  They were on a shopping expedition, calling at the markets and souvenir shops of Marmari, and took a short break at a street café, a brief respite from the Greek sun beneath the shade of a friendly awning. It evoked so many memories: the air permeated with the tempting aroma of grilled fish, the outdoor cafés, the savoury tang of taramasalata and ouzo exciting the taste buds, the fresh island air and subtropical heat washing away the ingrained pollution of Great Britain’s towns and cities, and the hot nights of passion in the hotel room.

  The sheer joy of simply being together. Rebecca Teale and Wesley Drake: inseparable. Wesley Drake and the… late Rebecca Teale: separated for eternity.

  The single thought sent him into a downward spiral, reliving that terrifying afternoon when he came home and found her, the almost uncontrollable fury aimed at her maniac killer, the agonising solitude turning him almost overnight from a successful businessman to a recluse.

  He shook the mood off; not completely. He never could. But he had Iris Mullins to deal with.

  The moment she appeared before her webcam, her disapproval was evident, hence her opening remark.

  Drake remained unimpressed. “Did you ask me to call so you could criticise my appearance and hygiene, or was there something more important?”

  The video connection wavered slightly under the raised volume of his angry voice.

  “We’ll come to that in a moment. First, however, I had an interesting chat with your father a few weeks ago.”

  Drake sneered. “Daddy rang you, did he, to complain about his youngest son’s lack of motivation?”

  “Wrong. I called him. I was concerned about the number of times you were taken home drunk and disorderly.”

  There was no change in his attitude. “Perhaps I was looking to go to prison. Perhaps I wanted to be near the Anagramist so I could do the job properly this time.”

  “Stop it, Wesley. For God’s sake, man, you’re not the first young person in this world to lose a partner, or to lose a partner in such violent circumstances. It’s a part of your stock in trade to counsel people through such difficult times. Don’t you think you should help yourself?”

  Every word was a scythe through his heart. His lip curled. “I can’t be bothered.”

  “I know. Howley College didn’t wait for
you to work out your notice, did they? They decided to do without your services after you consistently refused to do your job. Your private clients are deserting you in droves, we’ve had a comparatively peaceful summer, and we haven’t put any work your way. If your father is right, it won’t be long before you’re bankrupt.”

  “Iris—”

  She talked right on through his attempted interjection. “I have urgent work for you. What I don’t have is the time, patience or inclination to deal with a self-pitying tramp. You need to work, and I need you, but I need you smartened up and looking something like the Wesley Drake I’ve known these last five years.”

  There was no escaping the essential truth of her finely targeted arrows. He pulled in a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve just told you—”

  “Yes. I heard. What exactly do you want me to do?”

  Iris took her time. He could see her burying the anger, replacing it with enforced patience. “You’ve heard of Rachel Jenner?”

  Had he? It seemed like many months since he had last paid any attention to the news. There was never anything in it to interest him other than self-centred politicians alternately praised and castigated for one policy or another, upheaval in various parts of the world, the usual war of words between East and West. The world was its usual, filthy mess.

  But somewhere in amongst it all, the name of Rachel Jenner rang a bell.

  He forced his stultified mind into a higher gear. “Jenner? Didn’t she go to prison for murder? Isn’t her appeal being heard right now?”

  “Correct on both counts. What you don’t know, what no one knows other than the MoJ, the Home Office, the Chief Constable and myself is that her sentence will be quashed later this afternoon, and Rachel will be released first thing tomorrow morning. She’ll be back home by six o’clock tomorrow evening.”