A Well-deserved Murder (Trevor Joseph Detective series) (16 page)

‘Not to mention finger him as his daughter’s murderer.’

‘Trevor’s hoping for some answers tomorrow.’

Dan left his chair. ‘Want a coffee?’

‘Please, if it’s only for the joy of seeing a superior officer bringing it.’

‘One more quip like that and you’ll be bringing it.’ Despite his grumble, Dan left. He returned a few minutes later with two full china mugs and a plate of Danish pastries.

‘Oh joy. Where on earth did you get these?’ Peter grabbed an iced cinnamon roll.

‘My office, I have a hidden store.’

‘I might ask for this posting to be permanent. The only thing in the food line Trevor keeps hidden in his office is the odd health biscuit.’ Peter stared at Alan’s statement on screen again.

‘Take a break. You’re addling your brains,’ Dan advised. He picked up his own coffee.

‘And you’re going home I suppose?’

‘Going to take a last look at all the evidence we have to see if I can mine some nuggets of information.’

‘Happy mining.’ Peter continued to study the computer screen.

‘Please … please … I didn’t say nothing to no one … I didn’t do anything … I know it’s more than my life’s worth … please … please … you can’t do this … you can’t kill us … you can’t … we did everything you asked us to …’ Snaggy was terrified beyond words. He didn’t know what he was gibbering behind the gag that that had been pushed into his mouth. Could they hear him or were the words only in his head?

He didn’t even know what he was saying. Only that he didn’t want to die. He looked across at Lofty. Not even the gloom of a cloudy night could conceal the fact that the big man had been so badly beaten his face and hands had been reduced to bloody pulp.

‘Lofty, wake up,’ Snaggy pleaded, thrashing around, fighting to loosen the plastic ties that held his ankles together and his wrists firmly behind his back. It was hopeless. He was trussed like a chicken for the oven. ‘Lofty, they’re going to kill us. Don’t you care …’

Snaggy stared at Lofty. Was he already dead? Was that it? They’d killed Lofty, and now they were going to kill him?

Snaggy tried to scream, he managed a grunt and earned himself a boot in his face for his trouble.

‘We’re going to die, Lofty. We’re going to die, you stupid bastard, don’t you care? Help … help …’

The subsequent grunts earned him another blow to his head.

Snaggy fell whimpering, next to Lofty. The big man was warm, breathing. He was still alive. They hadn’t killed Lofty after all. A warm tide of relief flooded through Snaggy’s veins. They were teaching him and Lofty a lesson; that was all.

A lesson not to talk to policemen. He’d promise not to do it again and they’d let him go. That’s all he had to do – promise …

Strong hands picked him up and thrust him next to Lofty. They were hauled to their knees, their bodies pressed together and held steady while a chain was wrapped tightly around their chests, binding them together, face to face. When Snaggy felt he’d never be able to draw breath again, a padlock was snapped on to the links of the chain.

Strong arms lifted them, bundled together as they were, and pushed them over the side into the water.

Seconds later Snaggy managed another sound as cold water seeped through his clothes to his skin, freezing the blood in his veins. He tried to fight, but, immersed in water, his hands and feet bound together and his chest tied tightly to Lofty’s, he was helpless.

He sank downwards. Water closed over his head. Lungs bursting he struggled but he was hauled upwards before he had time to save himself.

A second padlock clicked.

Snaggy creased his eyes against the glare of a narrow blinding beam.

The chain cut painfully into Snaggy’s chest, he felt as though ice-water was swirling inside as well as outside his numbed body. Lofty was a dead weight that pulled him downwards again. The torch beam still shone directly into Snaggy’s eyes.

‘You can’t … you can’t …’ Snaggy was aware of a face staring at him beyond the narrow beam of light.

All around the beam of light was shadow, water and – bitter darkness.

Was it his imagination or was the tide already creeping upwards? It was at the bottom of his chin. This was it! The end of his life! The end!

His mouth filled with water. Desperate, he tilted his head back. Lofty wasn’t moving. He couldn’t hear him breathing any more. His weight continued to pull them both downwards. A grey ceiling closed over their heads. Heavy, oppressive. His lungs were bursting. Pain – hot agonising pain filled his body. He was pain.

When it ceased a soft, gentle warmth stole upwards blotting out the cold. His last thoughts were of escape. They would be rescued. It couldn’t be the end. Not for him. Not for Lofty. It simply couldn’t be.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘Good morning, sleeping beauty, you can carry on your nap in your own office.’

Peter woke to see Trevor clearing his mug and plate onto the windowsill. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

‘It’s difficult to know who was snoring louder, you or Dan. I need this space. Sarah is bringing in the files and photographs of the clothes that were found in the Howells’ sewer and I need to go through them before I interview Sam Jenkins.’

‘Lying Sam Jenkins.’ Peter groaned as he lifted his legs down from Trevor’s desk. ‘I’m stiff.’

‘Serve you right for sleeping in my office when you have your own.’ Trevor opened the window.

‘Bloody freeze me, why don’t you?’ Peter griped as a blast of fresh morning air whipped in.

‘Have to get rid of the whiff of eau de Peter.’

‘Dan awake?’

‘Not sure, why don’t you go and see?’

‘I can take a hint.’ Peter recalled the events of the previous night. ‘Has Lofty or Snaggy been brought in?’

‘No, desk sergeant said neither has been seen.’

‘Buggers have gone to ground.’

‘Don’t they always when you are looking for them. But, given what Snaggy’s saying about Lofty, wouldn’t you go to ground if you were him?’

‘Snaggy’s word of mouth isn’t proof.’

‘No, but up until now it has usually pointed us in the right direction.’

‘Good luck with Sam Jenkins.’

Sarah knocked and entered and Trevor took the photographs she handed him. ‘Ready for the interview room again?’ he asked her.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll make a prediction.’ Peter stretched his arms above his head, levered himself out of Trevor’s chair and moved his feet over the floor in a search for his discarded shoes. ‘Sam Jenkins will open with, “I went to see my daughter because I was worried about her …”’

‘Why would Sam Jenkins be worried about his daughter?’ Trevor asked.

‘Because he’d seen the ad offering her services,’ Peter explained. ‘“And when I got there, Mr Policeman”,’ Peter continued in a fair imitation of Sam’s rustic accent, ‘“there she was lying on the deck with an axe in her head. I did what any father would do. I tried to help her. By the time I saw she was past help, I was covered in her blood. Then I panicked. I thought what if the police suspect I killed her …”’

‘And why would we do that?’ Trevor demanded.

‘“I was shocked, Mr Policeman, I wasn’t thinking straight. And I had to get Kacy’s blood off me. So I went to the outside tap, took off my blood-soaked clothes, lifted the manhole, dumped them in, washed, then went into the house to borrow a change of clothes from my son-in-law …”’

‘Get out of here,’ Trevor ordered.

‘A week’s wages say I’m right.’

‘Out!’

‘I’m going, I’m going.’ Peter backed out of the door.

‘And consider your colleagues. Go home, shower, shave and change for the sake of everyone who has to work with you today.’ Trevor pushed his window wider.

Peter grinned, stubble dark on his cheeks. ‘You’re not my boss any more and I bet Dan’s in a worse state than me.’

‘What don’t you understand about the word “out”?’

Ten minutes later, Trevor was sitting alongside Sarah, opposite Sam Jenkins and his solicitor in interview room 3. He listened as Sam Jenkins stammered out his revised alibi.

‘I’d come across the porn magazine with the advertisement and our Kacy’s photograph. I thought it had to be a mistake. A girl who looked like her. So, I went to talk to her about it and I found her lying in her garden with an axe in her head. I tried to help her, got covered in her blood and without thinking what I was doing stripped off my clothes threw them down the drain, washed her blood off me under the garden tap and went in the house to borrow my son-in-law’s clothes …’

If Peter had been with him, Trevor would have thumped him.

* * *

Peter was in Dan’s office when Trevor emerged from the interview room and joined them. Trevor saw that they had both shaved and changed and, judging from the dampness of Peter’s hair – and what was left of Dan’s – showered.

‘Am I a fortune teller, or am I a fortune teller?’ Peter grinned at Trevor.

‘You bastard, you were listening in.’

‘I didn’t have to. Given the size of the clothes it was obvious what Sam Jenkins was going to plead. And, when we interviewed him in his home he and his wife were both wearing George clothes.’

‘You recognised the brand?’ Trevor was amazed.

‘Where do you think I get my working clothes from?’ Peter asked.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Some of their designs aren’t bad.’

‘What have you done with Peter Collins?’ Dan smiled in amusement. ‘I want a police officer not a fashion guru.’

‘Daisy’s educating me in shopping. Another six months and I’ll be ready to sit my NVQ examination.’

‘Don’t joke,’ Trevor said, ‘the way things are going it’ll be on the school curriculum along with media studies next week. My blood runs cold at the thought of what Marty might be studying.’

‘Nothing useful if the educational pundits have their way,’ Peter suggested.

‘Any sign of Lofty?’ Trevor changed the subject back to business.

‘No, but he’s never been easy to find whenever he’s been implicated in a case,’ Dan said.

‘Snaggy’s usually easy to find.’ Trevor sat on the windowsill.

‘I probably scared him off last night when I asked him to identify the Red Dragon.’ Peter picked up a pen from Dan’s desk and unscrewed it.

‘But the Red Dragon is our problem, Trevor, not yours.’ Dan retrieved his pen and picked up the mountain of paperwork in his in-tray. ‘Sergeant Collins and I are going to spend what could be our last day on this case brainstorming. I can’t justify any more officer hours on a case that’s stalled. You?’

‘Off to see the farmer.’

‘And Kacy Howells’ father?’

‘We’ve charged him with the same offence as her one-time live-in lover.’

‘We police officers hate witnesses who waste our time. But I doubt the magistrate will give them custody like Alan.’ Peter failed to keep the bitterness from his voice.

‘There is a difference between lying, perverting the course of justice and admitting fraud. Alan held up his hand when we asked him about the credit card and advertisement in the porn mag, remember?’ Trevor reminded.

‘There is such a thing as mitigating circumstances.’

‘I’m not in the mood for splitting hairs.’

‘Think the farmer will be able to tell you something you don’t know?’ Dan handed over the files he’d taken from his in-tray to Peter.

‘Possibly. John Evans said she was dead when he arrived in her garden at four forty in the afternoon and Mrs Walsh last heard her working out the back at three fifty-five. That puts Kacy Howells’ death in a forty-five minute time frame.’

‘Either one or both could be lying,’ Peter warned.

‘I just wish …’ Trevor hesitated at the door.

‘What?’ Dan asked.

‘That we had less forensic evidence and fewer suspects.’

‘If you gave us one of your suspects and a little of your evidence, we might get somewhere with our case.’ Peter opened one of the files Dan had given him.

‘Pity it doesn’t work that way. If it did this station would have a great clean-up rate.’ Trevor walked out of the door, but instead of going into the incident room to pick up Chris Brooke, he went into his office.

He re-read Mrs Walsh’s diary and he didn’t leave his chair until he was almost word perfect.

Chris bumped the police car along the track that led to the farm behind the Howells’ house. ‘You’d think the farmer would put chippings down to fill some of the bigger potholes, wouldn’t you?’ he complained when his head jerked against the ceiling of the car for the third time in succession.

‘Farmers are too busy to think about the comfort of anyone who has time to waste visiting them. And you don’t feel bumps in a tractor the way you do in a car.’

‘We must have taken a wrong turn. The farmhouse can’t be this far along.’

‘We haven’t passed any turns.’

‘Perhaps it’s set back behind a gate.’ Chris slowed as they passed a field of grazing sheep.

‘Farms need tracks or roads of sorts if only for deliveries. There’s a slate roof ahead.’

‘I hope there’s a turning point in the farmyard. I don’t fancy reversing up this lane.’ Chris drew up beside the entrance to the farmyard and they both climbed out. Trees surrounded the old stone buildings that enclosed the yard and Trevor heard the cry of a falcon. The sound generated a sudden, unexpected wave of longing for the farm that had been his childhood home.

He walked the few yards to the end of the lane and looked down. The farm had been built on the crest of a hill that bordered a steep-sided valley. To his right a lake stretched in the distance, below him a stream meandered through thick undergrowth and on his left he could see the back of the Howells’ garden and the skeletal remains of the oversized deck and shed. All that remained after the forensic team had taken it apart and removed pieces for testing in the laboratory.

‘You looking for something?’ A short, square-built ruddy-faced man demanded suspiciously from the entrance to the yard.

‘Yes, the farmer.’ Trevor turned and walked back.

‘You’ve found him.’

‘Inspector Trevor Joseph, I’m investigating the murder of Kacy Howells. This is my colleague, Constable Chris Brooke.’

‘Bob Guttridge.’ He shook the hand Trevor offered. Two sheepdogs moved in behind the farmer and growled at Trevor and Chris as they approached. Bob snapped an order and they retreated to the barn. Half of it was piled high with bales of straw. Half a dozen had been left in a corner near the door, and a nest of new-born kittens were attempting to crawl on the topmost one under the watchful eye of their mother. Chickens scratched the dirt floor and a piglet ran loose.

It wasn’t a picture of streamlined, modern hygienic farming. More like the chaotic old-style farming his brother practised on the family farm in Cornwall, following in the footsteps of generations of their forefathers. Trevor loved it. But only in small doses. He’d recognised early on that farming wasn’t for him.

‘Nice place you have here,’ he complimented Guttridge.

‘I like it, but I was born here. Farming is in my blood.’

‘Mine too, but I walked away from it. Too much like hard work.’

‘Your family farm round here?’

Trevor knew Bob Guttridge was fishing for information. The farming families were well acquainted in any given area. Most intermarried at least once in every two or three generations. ‘No, Cornwall.’

‘Dairy?’

‘Mixed arable and livestock, including tourists.’

The farmer laughed then became serious. ‘Kacy Howells’ murder is a bad business, not that she didn’t have it coming to her.’

‘You gave one of my colleagues a statement, saying that you saw Mrs Howells on the day of the murder.’

‘Like I told the young girl who came here, I saw Mrs Howells about four o’clock. She was chopping branches from trees on my land and tacking bird boxes on to the trunks. Frankly she’s a bloody nuisance. Never stayed in her husband’s garden from the day she moved in. But that’s women for you. Nothing but trouble.’

‘You’re a bachelor?’

‘All my life and I intend to die that way.’ The farmer spoke with the vehemence of a man who’d been crossed in love.

‘You told my constable that you last heard her about four o’clock?’

‘About then, although I don’t wear a watch so I couldn’t tell you the exact time. I intended to go down and have a word with her after I cleaned out the pigs. But just as I finished in the sty, the feed lorry came. There was a car blocking the lane. He had a devil of a job to get past it.

‘Did you notice the make?’

‘A Vauxhall Astra. Convertible.’

‘Do you know who it belonged to?’

‘Haven’t a clue. I’ve seen it here before. But whoever drives it down the lane never walks past the farmyard. Always avoids me, sneaky bugger that he is, probably afraid I’ll tell him off for parking on private land. God knows he deserves it. I assume it belongs to someone who comes here to do a bit of shooting in the woods. Illegal of course, but you can’t watch everyone all the time and if they stick to crows I don’t mind – provided they park somewhere that doesn’t annoy me. Bloody birds kill at least a couple of lambs every spring, and that’s without the damage they do to my soft fruit crops.’

‘You hear shots when the Astra’s parked in the lane?’

‘Not particularly but then I hear them so often, they hardly register. The man who owns the golf course on the other side of the valley is always shooting something or other. Shot himself in the foot one day. That pleased the dog walkers. He’s always threatening their dogs whenever they come near his land, even the ones who keep their dogs under control.’

‘You don’t mind people walking on your land with dogs?’ Trevor asked in surprise.

‘I can’t object seeing as I have three rights of way over the land. And provided the walkers treat my land and property with respect, stick to the path and keep their animals under control, what is there to object to?’

Trevor was amazed. Most farmers he knew did everything in their power to stop people rambling on their land, which only served to illustrate how easy-going Bob Guttridge was and how much Kacy Howells had annoyed him as well as Alan Piper and Mrs Walsh. ‘Don’t suppose you noted the number of the Vauxhall?’

‘Didn’t think to. I’ve been hoping to catch him and give him a piece of my mind but only about his parking. Like I said, I don’t mind people walking down the lane but I do mind them blocking it. The feed delivery lorry had to drive into the hedge to avoid it, and it ended up damaging the bushes. Whoever the car belongs to, I hope the bugger doesn’t come back. Not on feed day anyhow. But by the time I’d given the driver a hand to unload and fed him tea and biscuits the car had gone.’

‘You’re sure Mrs Howells was using a saw when you spotted the car parked in the lane?’

The farmer scratched his head. ‘If it wasn’t then, it was shortly before. Come to think of it, it was before I started cleaning out the pigs. I was fixing the hen-house when I heard her. Foxes are a problem and the bloody things had got in and killed four chickens the night before.’