DEAD ON HER FEET

Detective Inspector Millicent Hampshire absent mindedly took a sip of canteen coffee. Then she stopped, gave her attention fully to the drink and sniffed at it before taking another, more appreciative sip. This was certainly better than she remembered the stuff from before she had gone on holiday three weeks earlier. More correctly, it was three weeks less one day earlier: she wasn't officially due back until the next day.

Millicent glanced at the pile of folders in her 'IN' tray. It could have been a lot worse, she reflected, and there was just one folder in her 'CASES PENDING' tray. She was considering whether to start with the new case or to grit her teeth and look at the paperwork, when there was a brief knock on the door and Detective Constable Tommy Hammond came in, without waiting for an answer.

"Hello," he said. "I heard you were back early, but I didn't believe it."

"Just a day early," Millicent said. "I wanted to have a quick look at what was lying in wait for me." Millicent grimaced. Tommy knew that she hated the paperwork that went with her rank."Anyway," she added, "You're a day early yourself."

"Well, while you were away sunning yourself in Spain …" he glanced at her dark, part Afro appearance, "trying to look even more Afro than usual …" He grinned. "I was getting weather beaten in Scotland and turning up a very interesting puzzle for you."

Millicent perked up. "Go on," she said.

"I saw someone I shouldn't have seen," Tommy said. "Someone I couldn't have seen - but I did."

Millicent was very interested now. "Who?" she asked.

"Belinda Dyson."

"Belinda Dyson," Millicent repeated, frowning. "Belinda Dyson. That name rings faint bells."

"It should," Tommy agreed. "I think you'd rejoined the CID by then. Noel Dyson is doing time for murdering her."

"Yes," Millicent said slowly. "I remember the case now, though it wasn't mine back then. It must have been three years ago she died in a car crash that he arranged. You must have been mistaken. She's dead."

"Dead on her feet," Tommy said. "And not very dead, at that. I spent three days at the same hotel as her last week, waiting for the rain to ease. The first day the face seemed familiar. The second day I recalled where I'd seen it. The third day I was sure."

"But you've only seen her picture."

"No," Tommy answered. "I saw her after a burglary a couple of months before she was murdered. Or before she wasn't murdered. It was almost my first case after I joined the CID. Might have been before your time, though. Anyway, I brought you a souvenir of our meeting." He held up a plastic evidence bag containing a wineglass.

"She was drinking from this glass," he continued, holding it up for Millicent to examine from a distance. "All you have to do is get forensic to check it for prints and have them compared. If they match you have an interesting problem."

"I don't think we have her prints. If I remember rightly there was a fire and the body was only identified by dental records."

"Ah," said Tommy, "but, like I said, there was a burglary at her home a couple of months before. We still have her prints taken then for elimination purposes."

Millicent raised an eyebrow. "You've got a good memory," she remarked.

"Between getting weather beaten and sheltering from the rain, I had plenty of time to think about it."

"Where, as a matter of interest, did you see her?" the Inspector asked, taking the evidence bag and looking at it. "And how did you come by this exhibit?"

"Fort William," answered D.C. Hammond. "The dining room of a small hotel. As for how I got it, I waited until she left her table and just picked it up."

"You were sure it was her, then."

"I was sure long before that. She hasn't changed much in three or four years."

"Okay," Millicent decided, handing the bag back. "Have forensic do a run down on the prints . I'll bet it's not her, though, just someone who looks like her. Belinda Dyson is dead."

"How much?"

"Eh?"

"How much do you bet?"

"I was speaking metaphorically but, since you ask, I'll bet a two Euro piece to a Scottish one pound note."

"Not much," Tommy observed, "but you're on." With that he left the room grinning confidently and D.I. Hampshire pulled a face, opened the first folder, and took another sip of coffee as she began reading.

As Millicent walked through the main office two days later, D.C. Hammond stopped her. "You owe me a quid," he said, and passed a thin file to Millicent.

There was just the one sheet of paper and a brief glance told her that Tommy had been right. The fingerprints were indeed those Belinda Dyson, supposedly murdered three years before.

"Dig out the Dyson file and bring it to my office," she told the Detective Constable. "I'll see if I have any change."

Tommy Hammond came in some time later with four bulging folders which he left on Millicent's desk.

"Here's your two Euros," she said, handing him the coin . "I'll call you back in later, when I've had time to look through the file and remind myself of the details," she told his retreating back and picked up her phone.

"Chief Inspector? Millcent Hampshire here. … Yes thanks, very nice. Look, young Hammond has come up with a strange one. He thought he recognised a woman called Belinda Dyson and picked up a wine glass she'd been drinking from. Sure enough, the prints match. Trouble is, Noel Dyson is doing time for murdering her. I'm giving the file a preliminary once over right now, but were obviously going to have to re-open … Yes, I'll come in and discuss it with you as soon as I've familiarised myself with the case."

Later D.I. Hampshire and D.C. Hammond sat in the Chief Inspector's room. Cooke sat back, his fingers steepled together. Millicent dumped the files on the corner of his desk, sat down and motioned Tommy to do the same. The chairs were luxuriously appropriate to Cooke's status, but Tommy looked uncomfortable.

"I brought Hammond with me since he worked on the case and knew the supposedly murdered woman from an earlier burglary case."

"You didn't work on the case yourself?"

"No, sir," Millicent told him. "I came to the division just after the murder. I did odd jobs on it, but it wasn't my case."

"Before my time, too," said Cooke. "There are times when this rule about doing something different for the first couple of years after a promotion is a real pain." He turned to D.C. Hammond.

"Right," he said. "Give me an outline of the case as it seemed at the time."

"Belinda Dyson was supposed to have gone away for a few days to stay with friends. A couple of days after she left home her crashed and burnt out car was found in a quarry close to the Grassington to Pately Bridge road. She was identified from dental records."

"They matched?" Cooke asked. "Exactly, not just similar?"

"No question about it," Tommy said. "Forensic turned up evidence that the car's brake pipes had been cut and there was some brake fluid on the floor of the Dysons' garage. Dyson had transferred a large sum of redundancy money to an account in Gibraltar in the name of Carol Walker, though I don't think we ever found her …"

"Did he do the transaction in person?" Cooke interrupted.

"I'm not sure," Tommy said, "but I think it was a telephone banking account and he did it over the phone."

"Hmm. Still, the bank would have used passwords and security checks, I suppose," Cooke observed. "They didn't find Carol Walker?"

"No."

"And the money?"

"I think," said Tommy, "that the money disappeared as well. Everyone thought she was an accomplice who got away with it."

"Go on with the story," Cooke indicated. "What other evidence was there?"

"He had taken out a large insurance on Belinda Dyson's life only a week or so before and forged her will as well."

"As a matter of interest," Millicent interrupted, "it's my reading of the file that no one bothered to prove it was Dyson himself who did the forging, just that the will leaving everything to him was a forgery."

"I think that's right." Tommy said. "I suppose everyone thought it was obvious who had done the forgery. Anyway, there was an earlier will found, dated from before her marriage, leaving everything to a cousin, Tony Chapman. That will was genuinely written in her own writing, all of it."

"Where was it found?" Cooke wanted to know.

"Among some papers the solicitor had in his keeping," Hammond answered.

Cooke didn't say anything for a while. Then he sighed and said, "The case seems to have relied a lot on circumstantial evidence, but there was plenty of it. I suppose the investigation team thought they had the right body and there was a lot pointing to Dyson as the killer."
He paused again and Millicent remarked, "Until D.C. Hammond saw the woman herself, we had no reason to suspect there was anything wrong with the facts as they appeared."

"No," Cooke agreed, "How did that happen, Hammond?"

"I was staying at the same hotel as her in Western Scotland a couple of weeks ago, sir. I was convinced it was her, so I pinched a glass she'd been drinking from and brought it back for forensic to check the prints."

"And they matched?"

"Yes."

"Now we know for certain she's alive, we know we got someone for the wrong murder," Millicent remarked. "We don't know for certain we also got the wrong murderer, but it's pretty likely by my reading of the case."

"I suppose you didn't think to check the registration book at the hotel and see what name she was using," said Cooke hopefully.

"Yes," D.C. Hammond answered. "She signed in as a Carol B. Chapman from an address in Gibraltar."

Millicent glanced at him, alertness sharpening her expression. "Did she, now?" she said, and added again, more slowly, "Did she, now?"

"I think," Cooke said, "that you two can drop whatever else youre doing and reopen the investigation. Do the preliminary work and let me know what additional help you need. Then we'll have a good laugh and I'll tell you what we can spare."

Back in her office Millicent thumbed more systematically through the files, making a list of questions needing to be answered.
"Question one," She said, "How did that will get to be among the papers held by the solicitor? It's too convenient that she left everything to Tony Chapman and then became Mrs Chapman herself. Number two, who is or was Tony Chapman and where is he now? Three, what became of the money paid into the account of Carol Walker in Gibraltar? Thats another coincidence I don't care for."

"I don't follow," Tommy said.

"Belinda Dyson went to live near the money," said Millicent, somewhat sardonically. "You said she gave her home address as Gibraltar."

"That's right, she did," Hammond agreed, seeing the point. "Shall I start looking for some background on Tony Chapman, while you try to get the solicitor to come forth with some details about the will?"

"The will!" Hampshire said. "That will is the stumbling block. Yes, I think that's a good idea. I'll start with …" She flipped the file "… Wentworth and Collier."

Wentworth and Collier was now Collier, Khan and Collier and, sod's law operating nicely, it was old Mr. Wentworth who had dealt with Belinda Dyson. Mr Khan, however, was friendly, cautiously helpful and very astute. He saw the significance of the will and, more importantly, the date on which it had come into the care of Wentworth and Collier.

"Usually when we're given anything to look after we just date stamp it and file it away," he told Millicent. "It stays in the archives in the basement until somebody wants it."

"What happens when the client dies?" Millicent asked.

Khan thought about it briefly. "I suppose the next of kin as indicated by the will or by the Probate Division get anything left in our hands," he said.

"In this case the police only seem to have taken the will to photocopy and produce at the trial," Millicent remarked, "and I don't suppose anything went to the husband, because he was in jail."

"If you don't mind waiting I can have my Secretary check the archives," said Khan. "I have to consider our client's interests, of course, but our client is officially dead and I don't want to be party to a miscarriage of justice."

There were various envelopes and a package of papers with an elastic band round it in the archive and Khan went through them while D.I. Hampshire watched. As he examined the various envelopes she watched him grow more puzzled.

At last he said, "Right, there are two groups of papers. One from about ten years ago which include a couple of small insurance policies and an old share certificate. These have the date stamp on each envelope. Then there's another bundle, linked by an elastic band to a note about being worried. Khan frowned. There must have been a burglary or something and she decided to leave everything important with us."

"Makes sense, I suppose," Millicent said.

"Except that there doesn't seem to be anything important here. The letter is dated and stamped by the firm as well, but there's nothing on the envelopes. There are notes of two dates on the letter, recording items handed over. The will, to the police for examination and copying and then for filing with Probate. Also some share certificates taken, presumably in accordance with the will."

"There's no indication of when you received the will itself, I suppose," Millicent said.

"No. Except that the note is on the letter, implying that the will was in that bundle. But there's no way of proving it. I suppose you could go to the Probate Division and look at the will. If the envelope's there, and it should be, you can see whether there's a date stamp on it. If not you could be reasonably certain it was with the second bundle."

"Would Probate let me have it, just like that?"

"The information's in the public domain," Mr Khan said. "Normally you just look at an abstract, of course, but you should be able to persuade them it's important enough to examine the original."

"Well, you've been most helpful, Mr Khan," Millicent said, rising. "Thank you for your help."

"My pleasure," he said.

"What was Dyson's defence?" Millicent asked Tommy. "Did he ever admit the crime."

"Denied all knowledge of it. Said someone had impersonated him to the bank and the insurance company but couldn't suggest how they knew his bank pass code."

"His wife would have known it," Millicent pointed out. "Of course, they all thought she was dead. Now we know she isn't, I think she has to be the number one suspect. What I can't see is how she fixed the dental records. Did you find anything out about Chapman?"

D.C. Hammond didn't answer. He had a startled expression and his mouth hung slightly open.

"I asked whether you found out anything about Chapman," Millicent repeated.

Tommy Hammond shook himself slightly. "Yes," He said. "And I can see how now how she did it."

Millicent raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Tony Chapman was a dentist."

In the Chief Inspectors office for the second time in just over a week D.C. Hammond looked a lot easier. Again Cooke was listening and Millicent doing most of the talking,

"I'd say we know pretty well what happened and how to go about sorting it out," she sais. "There are some loose ends to tie up and some things to prove, but the main points are clear enough."

"Run through it," said Cooke.

"Belinda Dyson and Tony Chapman must have arranged it between them," Millicent said. "The victim, we'll call her Ms. X., would be a patient on Tony Chapman and probably chosen because she looked generally like Belinda. We have three possible identities from missing persons and we're trying to get DNA samples to match with an exhumation, but it may prove impossible. Anyway, Ms. X was drugged or killed, put in the car which was crashed in flames and Belinda's dental records swapped with those of Ms. X."

"Well," Cooke said, "There's probably enough there to approach the DPP and set in motion a release for Dyson. In theory he could still be guilty of the actual murder, but there's no case against him. What about the forged will?"

"Hammond turned up the original in probate. No date on the envelope, but the manufacturer was using that brand name on envelopes only in the last five years."

"The original team ought to have spotted that," Cooke observed.

"They wouldn't have been looking for it," Millicent said. "I saw it because I was trying to prove a point. Anyway, I don't think it would have made much difference then. It's now we're considering."

"It does sound conclusive today, I agree. Now, Hammond here is due a compliment or more: that was a sharp bit of work in the first place and the right course of action afterwards. Have you thought about applying for promotion?"

"Well, yes," said D.C. Hammond. "I have thought about it. Trouble is, I'd have to go back to the uniformed branch and I like it here in CID."

"Only need be for a couple of years, then you could apply to come back," Cooke said reassuringly.

"I'll think about it," Hammond promised. "But it's a shame I can't stay with what I'm good at."

"I'll certainly miss him if he goes," observed Millicent. "Incidentally, he discovered the most interesting bit of information by liasing with the police in Gibraltar. Carol Belinda Walker used her passport and birth certificate, presumably false ones, to get married to Tony Chapman, dentist, three years ago. And," she added, "He had a fatal boating accident last year."

"We'll need a stronger case for extradition," Cooke observed.

"I'm working on it," said Millicent.

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