Chapter 30
Jim’s car was in the car park outside the offices of Murdoch Enterprises. Julia felt a wave of relief. Goodness, but you can get yourself worked up over nothing, Julia Bird.
Of course there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for Jim being late.
He had probably had to wait to see Zelda Murdoch.
And he would turn his phone off in the meeting.
Or the phone might be out of battery, knowing Jim.
He was on the phone so much that his battery was often dead by the end of day.
If he remembered, he took a spare battery pack when he knew he was going to be out and about.
The front door was closed but not locked.
Julia went inside. There was no sign of the nice receptionist who had been so sweet to Jake.
The place was neat, the pens and notepads lined up, as if she’d tidied before she left for the day.
The offices still smelled faintly of glue and new carpets, as she remembered.
There was no sign of Jim, or of Mrs Murdoch.
‘Hello?’ Julia called out.
From the depths of the offices came three thuds, as if someone was banging on a desk or a door, and then came a muffled shout. A man’s voice, she thought. Was it Jim?
‘Jim?’ she called.
Julia walked briskly down the corridor, stepping into Mrs Murdoch’s office but finding it empty. The banging was loud, now. It was coming from the supplies cupboard on her right, the one she’d walked into when she’d been in the offices earlier in week.
She tried the door. Locked.
‘Jim? Is that you?’ she called. The key was in the door, but Julia’s hands shook in her haste, and she fumbled to get the door open.
‘Julia! It’s me! I’m in the cupboard. Open the door!’
‘I’m trying,’ she said. The lock turned. Thank goodness! Jim was already wrenching the door handle and pulling at the door in his eagerness. She stumbled into the large supplies cupboard, almost losing her footing. Jim grabbed her arm, steadying her.
‘Jim, what the—?’
He cut her off. ‘We need to get out of here now.’
Julia put her hand on the half-open cupboard door, asking ‘Why? What’s going on?’
‘I’m not entirely sure but that woman is crazy. We need to get out of here!’
Julia was about to step out of the cupboard into the corridor, when she came face to face with Zelda Murdoch, who was standing in the doorway, legs planted firmly, one hand on the door, filling the doorway entirely.
‘You’re not going anywhere, I’m afraid. Neither of you is.’
Julia made a move to push through, but stopped in her tracks, causing Jim to crash into the back of her.
Mrs Murdoch was an imposing figure at the best of times – large and blonde and statuesque and somehow innately powerful. This impression was significantly reinforced on this occasion by the fact that she was holding, in her hand, a large, gleaming ornate silver knife.
On instinct, Julia raised her hands, like someone in a movie being held up at gunpoint.
She had to try very hard not to look at the knife, which she recognised, now, as the knife that had sliced off a wedge of Candy’s delicious chocolate cake at Esmeralda’s sing-along memorial.
For a moment, Julia found herself completely distracted by how Mrs Murdoch came to have it, but she realised this wasn’t the most important issue at hand.
‘I’m sure if we all sit down and chat reasonably, we can work this out,’ said Julia. ‘Jim’s doing an article on property development. No need to get violent about that, is there? Let’s just talk.’
‘I tried that,’ muttered Jim, from behind her. ‘That’s how I wound up in this cupboard.’
‘That ship has sailed, I’m sorry to say,’ said Mrs Murdoch, in answer to Julia’s suggestion. She did, indeed, sound quite regretful.
‘I asked her if Basil’s death had cleared the way for her housing development,’ said Jim. ‘I don’t know how it came to this!’
Julia wasn’t sure if Jim was genuinely confused, or if he was trying to bluff his way out of the cupboard and back to safety. But her years of experience had taught her not to act stupid in front of an angry person who was running out of options.
‘You hoped that Basil’s death would be the end of it, didn’t you?’ said Julia. ‘You were only trying to protect your family business.’
‘Believe me, I didn’t want it to go that way,’ she said. ‘If only he would stop about the damn birds.’
‘The Lesser Spotted Squawkers?’
Mrs Murdoch looked taken aback that Julia knew the name.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Stupid name, squawkers. Anyway, they don’t need to be in the very place where we’re developing West Woods.
They’ve got the whole of the Cotswolds to nest in.
Everywhere you look, there’s nothing but nature, nature, nature.
’ She spat out the word in disgust. ‘They are birds. They can fly. They can move on somewhere else.’
‘You make a fair point. Jim, don’t you think you might be able to write something about that in the paper? Open up the debate?’
‘Oh, yes, absolutely,’ said Jim. ‘Very interesting story, actually. Make people think. I mean, why don’t the birds just fly away and make a home somewhere else?’
Mrs Murdoch didn’t lower the knife, but she did look at Jim with a little less hostility.
‘That’s a good offer. That was the trouble with Basil; he wasn’t prepared to think, to be reasonable.
He came to the office to discuss the matter of the birds and the housing development, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. ’
Julia took the opportunity to glance around the supplies cupboard. There was a jumbo pack of forty-eight rolls of loo paper. A stack of neatly folded wash cloths. And bottles, lots of bottles. Washing-up liquid, bathroom cleaner, furniture polish.
Mrs Murdoch went on. ‘If only he’d listened when he came here to meet with me, but no, he was a squawker himself. Squawk, squawk, squawk. It was almost impossible to get a word in. On and on about the birds, the habitat. Until…’
Until you killed him, thought Julia. Mrs Murdoch had smacked Basil on the head with a heavy object.
Julia realised, suddenly, that he must have been killed right here, in this very corridor.
That’s why the new carpets had been installed.
It wasn’t down to Zelda Murdoch’s impulsive, do-it-now character, which Marcia had described – the carpets were likely stained with Basil Crow’s blood.
The body had been dumped in the meadow, where Julia had found it, and new carpets had been laid at Murdoch Enterprises.
‘I can see how frustrating that must have been for you,’ said Jim.
‘I imagine you had invested a great deal of money in that property,’ said Julia, turning away from the shelves to face the door.
‘I bet the farm on it, as they say,’ said Mrs Murdoch, addressing Julia now.
‘West Woods was my big play. My chance to save the company and make a name for myself. We’d already lost out on the shopping development, thanks to Eco Evolve.
Stupid council, and its rules. What’s wrong with two shopping centres, I ask you?
And this housing project was the one that was going to turn things around.
Prove I was the right woman for the job.
And it seemed that one silly, bossy man and a few birds were going to scupper the whole thing.
You can see why I couldn’t let that happen. ’
‘But that wasn’t the end of it, was it? Esmeralda knew about the birds. I heard her saying that with Basil’s death she needed to be even more careful.’
‘He’d called her. I didn’t realise. She encouraged those bloody bird people to set up watch for the stupid squawker.
Then at choir she was talking about her job and she mentioned that she was the only person in the department who still really worried about the birds after Basil died.
She didn’t realise that I was in the property business.
I was only Zelda from choir to her. I knew if I could get rid of her, then there was a chance everyone would forget about the stupid squawky squawkers. ’
‘You went with her to the river.’
‘I pretended an interest in birds, and said we should go for a walk. I took her to that part of the river, where I knew it would look like an accident.’
‘Where did you get the insulin?’
‘My dad was diabetic. We had some of his meds left in the fridge. I wasn’t sure it would still work, so I used it all.’
‘She must have fought?’
‘She did. But I’m strong. I injected the insulin so that it would look natural, and then I pushed her.’
‘It was risky.’
‘I was desperate. My whole family is watching me, waiting for me to fail. I can’t fail. Daddy trusted me with the business. Me, not my brothers. I can’t fail. I won’t fail.’
‘It’s never too late to turn things around,’ said Julia, with a brightness she didn’t feel.
‘That’s what I’m doing, turning things around,’ said Mrs Murdoch, twirling the knife around alarmingly close to Julia’s face.
‘I thought that was the end of it, and it would have been if it wasn’t for you two snooping around.
If you’d only minded your own business, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
’ Mrs Murdoch sounded quite cross about it.
‘You’re right,’ said Julia, in a pleasant tone, as if they were simply having a conversation, and they were not in a supplies cupboard, and there was no knife.
‘My family would agree with you. They are always telling me the same thing. To mind my own business. And you know what? You’re all right.
As far as I’m concerned, this never happened, and you’ll hear no more about it from me. ’
Julia hitched her handbag up on her shoulder, in the universal posture of a woman about to leave, and took a step forward.
‘No!’ said Mrs Murdoch, lifting the knife. Julia shivered at the sight of its glistening blade, its handle clutched in the woman’s tight fist. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’
‘Maybe it can still be salvaged. There’s a lot of popular support for reasonable, sensitive residential developments in the area. And if Jim’s prepared to write a story’ – Jim nodded eagerly – ‘this could all play out differently.’
Mrs Murdoch looked wistful. For a moment, Julia wondered if she might agree to release them.
‘No,’ she said coldly, raising her knife. ‘You’ll go straight to the police with this. I’m afraid the only way this whole sorry mess can be salvaged is for me to get rid of you two. And this time, I won’t do it on the carpet.’
Julia followed Mrs Murdoch’s gaze as she looked down at the linoleum on the floor of the supplies cupboard.
Julia reached for the furniture polish, shouting, ‘Now, Jim!’ as she did so.
She wrenched off the lid and sprayed at full force into Zelda Murdoch’s face.
The woman screamed as the chemical hit her eyes, and there was a flash of silver as she raised the knife, slashing blindly in front of her, missing Julia by inches.
Jim shoved her hard with the broom he’d grabbed from his side of the cupboard.
She staggered. Julia pushed the door hard, smacking it into her head.
It made a sharp, sickening crack. Mrs Murdoch fell to the floor.
Jim pounced upon her, holding her shoulders. ‘Find something to tie her up with,’ he said.
‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ said Julia sadly, watching blood ooze from Mrs Murdoch, and her eyes open wide in surprise.