Chapter 21: A Matter of Honour

DAY 11

1230 hrs Thursday 11^th March 2019. Interrogation room, Thurston Hall.

I stared blankly at Eloise Donizetti for several moments as I took in the full implication of what she had said.

“Ashby will confirm what I said, Ajay. Of course, he will never stand trial but will probably spend the rest of his life in an establishment for the criminally insane. He is not insane, but the variant of autism he has renders him impervious to the natural feelings of guilt or shame for what he has done.”

“That is all very convenient for you, Eloise. Placing the blame on a brother who will never face trial, although I suspect you will spend the rest of your life in custody as an accessory to murder.”

“I will give you all the details concerning the killings when you return with the letter, and will confess to being an accessory to murder. The legal team that defends me will be the best money can buy and I estimate I will be sentenced to between fifteen and twenty years, and probably be released after eight.” She gave that infuriating, self-satisfied, smug smile of those who think themselves special because of their birth, influence, or wealth, and I supposed it was the last of those attributes that she possessed. “Only after I have the letter in my hand will you, and only you, learn the truth of the affair. I will say no more until you return from the Funeral Home.”

I sighed in resignation. “OK, so where is this important letter?”

She leaned intimately towards me and I caught a glimpse of cleavage and a whiff of Shalini perfume. “You remember the painting of Ebenezer Fowler, my great-grandfather, hanging above the fireplace of my office?” I nodded, and she continued. “My grandfather, Alfred Fowler, was a skilled carpenter and made all the coffins, as caskets were known in his day, used in the business. He used some leftover pieces of oak from constructing a coffin to frame the portrait of his father and incorporated a concealed drawer in the frame. You will see a brass plate inscribed with the name of my great- grandfather screwed on the lower frame. Pressing down on the brass plate will cause a section of the frame to swing open, revealing the drawer. Bring me the envelope in the drawer and I will tell you all you want to know, and much you probably will not want to know!”

I called for the PCSO to transfer Eloise back to her cell. Out in the corridor, DI Warren buttonholed me. “Has she confessed to the murder yet, AJ?”

“No Ma’am, but she has accused her brother Ashby of killing Betty Smith and the four other missing girls. She wants me to retrieve a letter from her office and when she has it she will answer all our questions.”

“Ashby Fowler is confined in a secure unit at West Suffolk Hospital. When his sister was arrested he went berserk and had to be tasered,” she said. “Search teams have examined the Funeral Home and Donizetti’s house from top to bottom but didn’t find anything incriminating. She may still be playing for time, so don’t do anything that might compromise her trial, AJ.”

“Such as, Ma’am?”

“Concealing or destroying evidence that might lead to a conviction. I don’t trust Madam Donizetti and if it were up to me I would have refused her request to speak to you but DCI Brownlow overruled my objections.”

“You can be sure I will not flout the rules for Eloise Donizetti, Ma’am.”

“I have complete trust in you, AJ, but none in that arrogant bitch!”

That thought was mutual, but I kept the observation to myself.

Sammy was in the office so I asked her to drive me to Fowler’s Funeral Home. Once in Eloise’s office, I stood in front of the portrait and pressed down on the brass plate of the frame. Nothing happened. I swore, and then pressed with all the force I could muster. There was a click, and a section of the frame with the brass plate attached swung out and down, revealing a cavity containing a C5 sized envelope. I removed the envelope and placed it in my jacket pocket before closing the concealed drawer. Sammy had stared in amazement when I revealed the secret hidey-hole.

“I was here yesterday with the search team. We took the painting off the wall expecting to see a wall safe behind the portrait; we had no idea there was a concealed drawer in the picture frame. It is a fine piece of carpentry.”

I asked Sammy to make a detour on our way back to Thurston Hall. There was something at #27 Castle Road that I needed, and it was not just the swift snogging session I had with Molly before continuing on to Thurston Hall.

I had to submit to the same checks that I was not wired for sound and my mobile phone was switched off when I returned to the interrogation room at Thurston Hall. I handed the package to Eloise, who opened it and revealed two DL size envelopes inside. She placed the envelopes on the table and I saw that both were addressed to Betty Smith @ Camper and Down, Solicitors, with the same message written on them in the same handwriting and dated 1/Oct/2018, the day I celebrated my 26^th birthday and also had applied for a transfer to the East Anglian Constabulary.

Written on both envelopes was, To be opened if I do not contact you on the first day of each month. Kate.

I looked at the envelopes and then back at Eloise.

“So?”

She held up the right-hand envelope. “This letter is the original, written by Kate Hodge. This one,” she held up the left-hand envelope, “is a fabrication written by my brother Ashby, who is a highly skilled forger. His variant of autism gifts him a photographic memory and he can produce a replica of any handwriting after seeing a sample. In fact, autism gives Ashby many skills denied to a ‘normal ‘person.”

Eloise regarded me for a few moments as if deciding what to say next.

“To explain fully what I did and why I did it I need to go back several years, to World War Two to be more precise, and my grandfather Alfred Fowler and my father Albert Fowler are involved. You will have to bear with me.”

‘Hellfire,’ I thought, ‘another stroll down Memory Lane. I wondered if Glenn Miller would be the soundtrack to this story?

I won’t give a word for word account of what Eloise told me but here follow the salient points.

Britain and France declared war on Germany when that country refused to withdraw its troops from Poland, which they had invaded on the first of September 1939. However, Britain and France did nothing more to help Poland other than carry out leaflet raids on German towns. Poland, ravaged by Germany in the west and the Soviet Union in the east, was left unaided, whilst Britain and France sat doing nothing other than wringing their hands. Many Poles escaped their homeland and came to Britain where they helped to beat the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Polish fighter squadrons #302 and #303 were credited with shooting down over 260 German aircraft during the battle. Poles also served in RAF Bomber Command and over 900 died on active service.

Several thousand Poles remained in Britain after the war, and many had their families join them before the Polish People’s Republic became a vassal state of the Soviet Union in 1952. Most of the Poles living in Britain were Roman Catholic, and it was customary as a part of their funeral ceremony to display the deceased in an open casket at the wake, which is quite costly as the body has to be embalmed. Both Alfred and Albert Fowler had been disgusted by the way Britain had treated her Polish ally and Fowler’s Funeral Home gave Polish funerals a twenty-five per cent discount in recognition of the courage and resilience of the Poles during WWII.

Podpułkownik (Lt Colonel)Piotr Gorecki, a Polish former Battle of Britain pilot, and a friend of Albert Fowler, died in 1970. His dying wish was to be buried in Poland. Albert Fowler embalmed the body and then spent several months obtaining the fistful of documents required to export a body from Britain, and the cabinet of documents needed to transport a body across a divided Europe. When Albert eventually had all the necessary documentation he hired a refrigerated van and transported the embalmed corpse to Poland where the veteran Polish fighter pilot was laid to rest in the cemetery of the Church of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mary in Lodz. Albert Fowler, who had became the owner of the funeral home after his father’s death in 1958, bore the entire cost of the enterprise.

The Polish community in Suffolk, indeed of South East England, rewarded Albert’s generous gesture by making Fowler’s their Funeral Director of choice. This reaped dividends in 1985 when Fowler’s nearly went out of business. It was only the funerals of Polish clients that kept the business afloat.

Eloise returned from the USA in 1985 to take over the firm on the death of her father, and used the money inherited from her husband, Mario Donizetti, to keep Fowler’s solvent and in business. Over time, under her professional guidance, Fowler’s rebuilt its customer base. Eloise qualified as an embalmer and mortician and had also become a member of the Association of Funeral Directors and the British Polish Friendship Association. Her brother Ashby is also a registered embalmer and mortician and the titular head of the company. The transportation of corpses overland to Poland continued throughout this time; Eloise saw it as a duty not only to the Polish population of the UK but also in honour of her grandfather and father. Even with Eloise’s business skills these transportations did not make a profit but did break even.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 led to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and to Poland regaining its freedom in 1990. Many more Polish-born inhabitants of the UK then wished to be buried in their ‘home’ country and Fowler’s business boomed. Eloise made a contract with a small independent airfreight company, Norfolk and Suffolk Air Services (NASA) to fly out the corpses from Norwich airport to Poland, and as long as the paperwork – death certificate, export licence, and the other UK and Polish bureaucratic bumph – were complete there was little problem importing the bodies into Poland. The corpses were airlifted to Lodz and then handed to a local Funeral Director for the burial ceremony to be carried out in whatever region of Poland required.

I looked at my watch. “Well, it has taken an hour to go from the start of the Second World War to the end of communist rule in Poland and I am still no nearer knowing the reason for five deaths...”

“Shut up and listen, Dolihaye!” Eloise spoke with a steel-edged voice that sent a shudder through me. “Do you think I’m talking just for the sake of it? It is important you listen carefully to everything I say, as you will have to make a decision that will have consequences far beyond anything you can imagine.” She glared at me, saw the effect her tone of voice had on me and smiled, although the smile didn’t extend to her eyes. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Ajay. Being locked up is not conducive to congeniality and I apologise for my shortness of temper.” She leaned across the table and took my hand. I tried not to flinch but failed. “Did I tell you I have a son and two beautiful granddaughters?” She said with the sweet and gentle voice of a doting grandmother. I shook my head and slid my hand from hers.

“My son is called Mario, the same name as his father --” She paused and smiled. “To be more accurate I should say he has the same name as my late husband. Mario senior was twenty years older than me when we married and although quite vigorous for his age I found he did not reach those particular parts that his brother Antonio, fifteen years his junior, could and did reach regularly. It was a toss-up as to which brother had impregnated me, but as I was married to Mario I decided he should have the honour.”

“Did your son accompany you when you moved back to England?” I asked, wondering if Mario could be involved in the kidnapping of the girls. I hadn’t thought about Eloise having offspring.

She shook her head. “No, he was much too young to travel when I first returned home. I left him in Antonio’s care; he had married a cousin although it had been mooted that he marry me after Mario Senior’s death. However, the Bishop of Boston vetoed the idea as I was the widow of Antonio’s brother and it was forbidden in Canon Law. Of course, I popped back to the USA regularly. Via Concorde I could be in Boston in less than six hours of leaving London Heathrow. When Mario was older he visited England during the summer holidays, but when he reached the age of fifteen he decided he had had enough of castles, museums, and an England with no air-conditioning. His actual words were ‘English babes are hot but the burgers suck and soccer is for pantywaists!’”

“Pantywaists?”

“What you would call a wimp or a wuss, Ajay. A term of contempt.” She smiled to herself. “Mario is, was, an All American Boy. He excelled at the American version of football, which is definitely not for pantywaists. He is hunky, handsome, and hung like a stallion, as were his putative father and uncle, and had to knock the girls off him with a stick. He didn’t knock them all off and aged nineteen he knocked-up the head cheerleader of his college. He had already humped, screwed, shagged, and fucked his way through the entire squad of cheerleaders and most of the female sophomores by then. The girl’s father was a member of a notable, one might say notorious, Italian ‘Family’. They were married before she showed. Mario works for his wife’s family, who have business interests in Las Vegas, and he now has two beautiful daughters. His eldest daughter is Sofia, who is aged sixteen and is a Fowler rather than a Donizetti. She is completing a business studies course at school and is interested in the Fowler family business. I intend getting her a place either at the London School of Economics or at a Cambridge College, and I have high hope that she will eventually take over the management of Fowler’s Funeral Home.”

I managed to keep quiet while Eloise meandered through her family history but reasoned her granddaughter’s future would be influenced by what Eloise had done.

“The branch of business management I excel in is contingency and forward planning,” she said, breaking the silence that had hung for a moment. “Contingency planning is looking into the future and assessing what might happen in global markets, politics, economy, and all manner of occurrences that could impinge unfavourably on one’s business, and then formulate plans to counter any negative effects. All businesses large or small and all government departments have, or should have, dedicated contingency planners. Who knows when one or more of the Four Horsemen will come galloping through our cosy, settled lives bringing flood, fire, famine, or plague, conquest, war, hunger and death.” She sighed. “No one could have foreseen the financial crash of two thousand and eight, mainly because the bankers who caused it didn’t allow any of their nefarious actions to be known until it was too late to do anything. The bank presidents and CEOs salted away their ill-gotten gains and pretended the financial meltdown was nothing to do with them. They should all have been stuck up against a wall and shot for treason.” She gave a wicked smile. “At least in Russia some were, and probably in China too. What happened here in Blighty? One bank president lost his knighthood. I expect he cried all the way to his off-shore bank!”

I remember my father expressing similar opinions as hers when his money, ‘safely’ held in a Reykjavík bank, disappeared overnight. He has not eaten cod since and never shops at Iceland.

“I had extended, overextended, I suppose, but had no reason to suspect the supply of credit would suddenly cease,” Eloise continued, more to herself than to me. “I tried everywhere, went on bended knee, literally, and sucked dick to get a loan but no deal. In desperation, I asked Mario to have his father-in-law contact me, and after a week or two of emails back and forth I was introduced to a firm in London who loaned me the cash and I saved the company from financial ruin, but at a price.” She stared into space for a second or two before continuing. “I was paying back the loan and was asked to do them a favour to show my gratitude. I thought I was going to have to open my legs for the Managing Director and the Financial Secretary and other members of the board and was fully up for it. I’ve never been known to refuse rumpy-pumpy and the more participants the merrier. However, the favour was to smuggle blood diamonds into Poland. They knew I shipped corpses to Lodz and asked that I secrete a hoard of diamonds in the casket when I dispatched the next body. Naturally, I agreed. Although the people I was dealing with were not la Cosa Nostra they had links to them and I thought it prudent to do whatever they asked. I hid the diamonds inside the body of a corpse bound for Lodz, placing the diamonds into condoms and then secreting the loaded condoms in all the body’s orifices; mouth, anus, and vagina. Fortunately, the corpse was female, allowing more diamonds to be packed than had it been a male.” She saw the look of distaste on my face. “I couldn’t just hide the diamonds in the casket, Ajay, customs sometimes open caskets to check that there is a corpse inside. It is not unknown for coffins to be used by smuggling gangs.”

“How many shipments did you make a year?”

“It depended on the number of Poles who wanted to be buried in Poland; it averaged about three a year. It was quite lucrative because the smugglers rewarded me with a small percentage of the worth of the diamonds and Fowler’s made a profit on the trade for the first time. Unfortunately, last year there was a hostile takeover of the firm I dealt with and the new owners were not smuggling diamonds but currency. The amount of money they wanted to be shifted could not be accommodated in the orifices of a corpse and they suggested I open the bodies and remove the internal organs and then put rolls of banknotes in the space provided. I refused outright. The bodies were sometimes people I had known, and I would not disrespect them in such a manner. The new gang were adamant, and they were not only smugglers but also killers, so they provided a warning. One of Fowler’s hearses was vandalised hours before a funeral. I then received an email telling me to pick up a corpse from a private hospital in Colchester. The body was of a man who looked as if he had been living rough, although his death was probably due to a broken neck. It was clear what would happen if I didn’t do as ordered. While I’m not registered as a pathologist, I have the surgical skill to perform an autopsy. I exsanguinated the body and then cut open the corpse and removed the intestines. I then stuffed plastic bags containing rolls of $100 banknotes – I estimate at least a million dollars‘ worth -- into the vacant space. After sewing up the incision the body was embalmed and made ready for shipment. Of course a death certificate and an export licence for the body had to be produced for the authorities and Ashby forged the documents, even the signature of the doctor who signs most of the death certificates of the Polish dead. To add insult to injury I had to pay the gang two grand for the corpse and made no profit on the transaction.”