Accused, p.1
Accused, page 1
Richard Underwood
ACCUSED
FENECHTY PUBLISHING
First published in UK 2022
By Fenechty Publishing
https://fenechty.com
Copyright © Richard Underwood 2022
The right of Richard Underwood to be identified
as the author of this work has been asserted by
him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patients Act 1988
ISBN 9781739949051 (paperback)
ISBN 9781739949068 (ebook
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
in the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in
it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise) without the prior written permission of
the publisher.
Book Two in the
Ann Perkins Detective Agency Series
Chapter One
Ernie Wright was a man in a hurry. A potential client had asked to meet at a city centre café and he was already late. Although he had finally mastered walking in women’s shoes without wobbling, experience had taught him running was best left to those with a lifetime of practise. He was pretty comfortable disguised as a woman in every way apart from his shoes, which he’d generally found to be both higher and narrower. They were pinching his feet, and walking in them still didn’t come as natural as when he was in his own trainers. He was concentrating more on his feet than on his environment, and the parked van barely registered as he passed it. Ernie didn’t notice the two men until they grabbed hold of him.
“What the…?” He struggled as hard as he could, but they pinned his arms on each side and propelled him forwards.
He didn’t know who the men were or what they wanted, but the way they forced him towards the side door of the van door left him in no doubt he was in trouble. The van itself offered no clues. An old, white, battered Transit, with no names or logo on display. It could be anyone’s van. They could be anyone, but they certainly weren’t friends.
“Help me!” he shouted, and a man about fifty yards away started running towards him in a gallant response to the lady in distress.
They were holding his arms tightly, but his feet were free. He stamped on the foot of one of his captors to slow them down, but made no discernible impression on the Doc Martens the man was wearing. His heart sunk as he realised they would have him in the van before his potential rescuer could reach him.
“Get in the fucking van.” It wasn’t a request. Both men hurled him into the side of the van, smashing both shins against the bottom of the door as they bundled him inside. They forced a hood over his head and he heard the door slide behind him as the van drove away.
“Out the fucking way.” The driver swerved to avoid the man running towards him.
“What the hell’s going on?” Ernie could no longer see, but he could hear the heavy breathing of the two men who had got into the back of the van with him. Their silence only intensified his fear.
“What do you want?” Apart from the sound of heavy breathing, the only other sound he could hear was the roar of surrounding traffic.
“Who are you?”
“Where are you taking me?”
The near-silence was as oppressive as the darkness, and Ernie could hear the tremor in his voice as he called out.
He could see nothing straight in front of him through the hood. There was some light coming from the bottom where it flapped loose around his neck, but whenever he looked towards the light it disappeared as the material of the hood folded around his chin. He moved his head to one side, and he could just make out the unpainted ridges on the floor of the van on which he was sitting, but there were no other clues.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” he asked again, but again there was only an ominous silence.
He wondered if the men had abducted the wrong person by mistake, but disguised as Ann Perkins, the private detective, he thought it unlikely they’d mistaken him for someone else. Ann had been responsible for the arrest of several high profile members of Manchester’s criminal fraternity in the past, and Ernie feared his abduction was the start of the gang’s revenge.
They had been waiting for him. The phone call from the potential client asking to meet in the city centre was obviously a set-up, but he didn’t know why they had grabbed him, where they were taking him, or what they intended doing with him once they got there.
It was obvious the van was still in the city centre somewhere from the noise of the surrounding traffic, and from the way in which they kept stopping and starting. He knew he would have the best chance of escaping when the van was stopped in traffic, or at traffic lights, before they left the city centre. Once they reached a major road on the outskirts, they’d be travelling too fast for him to jump out and make a run for it. He needed to see if he was to have any chance, but his hand was firmly swatted away as he tried to remove his hood.
“Keep your fucking hands still and don’t touch the hood.”
“Who are you?” he tried again. At least they had broken the silence and spoken to him, but he was still no wiser who they were, or what they wanted.
The van wasn’t high enough for any of them to stand, and Ernie could feel the two men sitting on each side of him swaying as it manoeuvred through the traffic. Their bodies protected him from the worst of it, but he could feel them struggling and having to hold on to sit upright whenever the van halted.
Ernie bided his time, and when the van next lurched to a sudden stop, he quickly ripped his hood off and made a lunge for the door handle whilst his captors struggled to regain their balance. He pulled it as firmly as he could and almost lost his own balance as the door slid open easier than anticipated. One of the men had just recovered enough to grab him as Ernie jumped, but he lost his grip as the momentum carried Ernie into the roadway. Turning, Ernie slid the door shut with such force that the man would have lost some fingers if he’d not snatched his hand back in the nick of time. The closed door would slow them down. For a split second, Ernie debated whether to run in shoes, or to kick them off and run in bare feet. Just a split second, but it was enough. He was still facing the van and holding the door handle when he saw the second man out of the corner of his eye. He looked at him, as the man calmly withdrew a pistol from his pocket, tapped the end of the barrel against the darkened glass, and pointed it directly at Ernie’s head. The pistol filled Ernie’s vision as he focused on it, but beyond it he could see the blurred shape of the person holding it shaking his head. The message was unmistakably clear. The door had no sooner finished closing than Ernie opened it again, climbed back into the van, and sat back down on the floor.
“That’s better,” the man with the gun said. “Our boss told us to say as little as possible to you until he’s spoken to you himself, but our silence has obviously spooked you. He wants to use your services, but he’s currently wanted by the police, so doesn’t want you to know where he is. That’s what the hood’s for. We’re taking you to see him, but you need to put the hood back over your head until we get to where we’re going.”
Ernie looked at the hood on the floor, but hesitated before picking it up. The darkness had been frighteningly debilitating. “Can’t I just close my eyes?” he said.
“If you’re anything like me, curiosity will get the better of you and you’ll try to see where you are without us knowing,” said the man. “You have our word. Neither of us will harm you.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” said the other man who, until now, had not spoken.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Ernie said. “You’re not the one with the gun being pointed at his head. If you’re both so harmless, why the gun?”
“Sorry about that,” the man with the gun said, “but it worked, didn’t it? I wouldn’t have shot you, but you didn’t know that, and it got you back in the fucking van. He’d never have forgiven me if I’d let you escape.”
“Who wouldn’t?” said Ernie.
“You’ll see when we get there,” the man said.
“Okay,” said Ernie, “but if you do shoot me, I’ll never forgive you.” He reached for the hood and put it back over his head. Now they had broken their silence and assured him he wouldn’t be harmed, he was no longer as scared. More intrigued to know who this mystery client was. His curiosity had almost trumped his fear. Almost, but not completely. He considered there was still a possibility he was being lied to. Given a load of bull to keep him quiet till he got to some secluded place of execution or torture.
“Don’t worry, we won’t be long,” one of them said, as though reading his thoughts. “You’ll still be in Manchester. We just don’t want you to know exactly where in Manchester. We can’t take the chance of you leading the police to where we’re going.”
“I won’t be able to do that if I don’t know myself,” Ernie mumbled through the mask.
“Exactly. That’s the whole point, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
It was difficult for Ernie to enjoy the ride despite the reassurances, and he imagined the two men in the back
Eventually, the noise of the traffic decreased, and there was a longer period of smooth travel before the van stopped. Ernie could hear shutters opening before the van backed in, and then heard them closing behind the van as it stopped for the final time.
“We’re here,” the man with the gun said. “You can remove the hood now. We’re in the garage.”
It took Ernie’s eyes a few seconds to adjust to the brightness. The van had been reversed into a well-lit garage large enough for three vans of a similar size, but the bare whitewashed walls gave no indication of where they were.
The driver got out and slid the side door open. “Follow me,” he said. “It’s through here.”
The three of them followed the driver as he took them through a door at the rear of the garage, and into another room of a similar size, which had a door on the far side but no windows. Three men were sitting on a battered settee against the whitewashed wall on one side, and two men were playing on the full-size snooker table.
“Glad you could come, Ann.” The man who had put his cue down appeared to be in his mid-thirties and was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt. “I’ve heard so much about you. It’s nice to meet you at last.”
Ernie didn’t recognise the man, and as far as he knew, they had never met. He thought it unlikely the man knew Ann Perkins and Ernie Wright were the same person. He didn’t think anyone knew. His employees at the detective agency had been told Ernie Wright was Ann Perkins’ twin brother, and the police didn’t know otherwise they would have done him for perjury when he had given evidence disguised as Ann.
Ernie’s life had taken a downward spiral with the death of his wife from the stroke that had also killed his unborn child, and it had continued its descent when he was made redundant. His deepening depression had only increased his anger about the cards fate had dealt him, and whilst he knew nothing would ever bring his wife and unborn child back, he became determined to improve his future by robbing his way to millionaire status. He had planned to commit two robberies whilst disguised as a woman, but both robberies had gone wrong and Ernie ended up being hailed as a hero despite his criminal intentions.
He had used the fictitious name of Ann Perkins when the police asked him to give a statement whilst still in disguise, and it was Ann who had become the hero. When she was offered a cash reward for her heroism, Ernie stayed in character and used the money to open a detective agency. The Ann Perkins Detective Agency had been born from the fiasco. Things had quietened down since the initial publicity, and today’s phone call asking for a meeting in the city centre was only his second potential client. He had been making his way to the meeting point when he had passed the van and been forced inside.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked.
“No,” said Ernie, “but I would like to know what’s going on. I don’t recognise you, and as far as I know, we’ve never met.”
“That’s good,” said the man. “I hoped there was no connection to link the two of us together. I think you know my father-in-law, Alf Sidebotham.”
Ernie’s stomach felt suddenly empty as he realised the assurances given in the van were meaningless. He felt strangely light headed as his arteries diverted blood to his muscles in preparation for action. Alf Sidebotham had been the leader of a Manchester Gang whose bank raid Ernie foiled whilst in disguise. Before Sidebotham retired to Spain, he had made several unsuccessful attempts to kill Ernie in revenge. His extradition back to the UK had largely been due to Ernie, so he had even more cause to hate Ernie now he was in prison.
“Yes, I know who Alf Sidebotham is.” His knees were trembling, and he tried unsuccessfully to keep the tremor from his voice.
The man approached and slapped him on the shoulder. “No need to look so worried, Ann. I’m not going to harm you.”
Ernie noticed the man referred only to himself in the singular, and he looked warily around the room. His words did not necessarily mean the man’s henchmen wouldn’t harm him, and he already knew at least one of them had a gun.
“Neither are any of my men,” the man added.
Ernie gave a half-hearted, but audible, sigh of relief as the man continued.
“My wife had no idea what her father was involved in, but I knew he was a crook. I disapproved of almost everything he did, but I kept quiet for the sake of my wife. It was better she didn’t know. When we got married, her dad tried to rope me into his plans, but I told him in no uncertain terms I wasn’t interested. As far as my wife knew, he was a property developer. Until he was arrested, she was never aware his legitimate business was all tangled up in his illegal enterprises.”
“They would have been,” said Ernie. “He funded all his businesses from crime, even the ones he later made legitimate. They were all the same as far as he was concerned. The legitimate businesses were just his way of investing the money he made from his criminal business. A way of laundering his money.”
“That’s been part of the problem,” the man said. “Now he’s in jail, I’ve been left to sort out the mess. Her dad made my wife a director for tax purposes, so she’s nominally been in control of the companies since he went to prison, and she’s asked me to untangle things. Like me, she wants nothing to do with his criminal activities. She wants us to run his legitimate business whilst steering clear of all the illegal stuff. I owe it to my family to sort this out, but it’s not been easy.”
“And you want my help to sort it out?” asked Ernie, finally getting an inkling of what this was all about.
“Not exactly,” the man replied. “I’ve been struggling to separate the different businesses, but they are horrendously tangled, and it’s taking up a lot of my time. I’ve upset some of my father-in-law’s colleagues and ruffled a few feathers along the way, too.”
“I should imagine you have. They won’t have been too pleased about not having access to the legitimate side of their business. They’d have to find alternative ways of laundering the money from their crimes. What is it you want? Protection?” Ernie looked around, making a mental note of the number of men in the room. “You seem pretty protected already.”
“I am. That’s not what I want. Telling you my name will help you understand. I’m Trevor Morris.”
“Trevor Morris! You’re wanted for murder… Andy Jones, wasn’t it?” Ernie remembered reading the newspaper reports about a man in his thirties who had knocked on the door of a former gang member named Andy Jones whilst he was at home. The papers had been full of the story of him being shot in cold blood in front of his wife, and all of them had published the words she’d remembered him saying before shooting her husband at the door. “I’m Trevor Morris, and this is a warning to all your mates.”
“I didn’t do it,” Morris said. “My wife and son were both visiting a friend at the time of the shooting. I was alone at home, so don’t have an alibi. Luckily, the opposite was true when the police called. My wife and son were in, and I was out. She phoned and warned me, and I’ve not been home since. I want you to find the real killer.”
“But surely there must be more than one Trevor Morris in Manchester. What made them so sure it was you?”
“It’s not public knowledge, but according to what the police told my wife, the killer dropped one of my business cards as he ran off. No idea how he got hold of it, but I’ve given loads of them out at one time or another so he could have got it from anywhere. Anyway, he gave my name at the door and dropped one of my business cards as he ran off. That was enough to convince the police I was the killer, and they’ve been searching for me ever since. I’m trying to stay out of their way until I can prove who the real killer is.”
“So, what do you want from me?” said Ernie.
“You’re the detective, Ann. The police have stopped looking for anyone else, but the real killer is out there somewhere, so I need you to find out who it is. I need you to find enough evidence to convince the police it wasn’t me.”
