A Well-deserved Murder (Trevor Joseph Detective series) (5 page)

‘Who do you socialise with?’

‘Friends.’

‘From the office or neighbours?’

‘Sometimes both,’ George replied evasively.

‘And your wife?’

‘Since she had the children she has been very busy between working part-time and taking the children back and forth to school. I am not able to help as much as I’d like to and she spends a lot of time in the garden …’ He buried his face in his tissue.

Trevor recalled his first sight of the garden the night before and the photographs that had been taken of it in daylight. It wasn’t the garden of a keen gardener. Rather one that had been laid out thirty or more years ago, neglected and allowed to go to seed. Its only concession to current outdoor fashion, the decking platform and oversized shed.

‘So while you attend football, rugby and cricket matches, your wife works in the house and garden.’

‘It’s her choice.’ George hesitated then added. ‘I take the children to matches sometimes.’

‘That wasn’t intended as a criticism, Mr Howells. I am trying to form an impression of your wife’s daily routine. What about friends?’

‘She saw her parents and brother occasionally. As we both work there isn’t much time for socialising outside of her family.’

‘Her family. What about yours, Mr Howells?’

‘I only have one brother and a couple of cousins. I don’t see much of them.’

‘They live away?’

‘No, but it’s difficult to keep in touch when you have a young family.’

‘Does your wife have any special friends, male or female?’

‘Not really. No.’

Trevor unrolled the magazine he was holding and flicked through until he came to the full-page spread of Kacy Howells’ head tacked on to an obscene cartoon body. He turned it around so it faced George. ‘What can you tell me about this, Mr Howells?’

The blood drained from George’s face. He stared, mesmerized at the page. ‘This is – it’s obscene.’ He closed the magazine and thrust it back at Trevor.

‘Have you seen it before?’

‘In the office. Someone sent copies there and left one open on my desk.’

‘Did you ask your wife about it?’

‘No, I assumed it was a sick joke.’

‘And, believing that, you still didn’t ask your wife about it?’ Trevor questioned incredulously.

‘I decided it was best to ignore it.’

‘Have you any idea who might have done such a thing?’

‘No.’

‘An article like this in a pornographic magazine would be covered by the libel laws. You didn’t want to see whoever placed it punished?’

George fidgeted nervously. ‘I told you, I thought it best to ignore it.’

‘Has anything like this been printed about your wife before, Mr Howells?’

‘No!’ George shouted.

‘The magazine was printed three days ago. Did your wife have an argument with anyone during the last few weeks that might cause someone to want to annoy her or get back at her by doing this?’

‘No. Kacy never argued with anyone.’

Trevor allowed the lie to pass.

‘It’s just a magazine,’ George whimpered. ‘I thought they’d soon be binned and forgotten.’

‘Is it a magazine that is delivered regularly to your office?’

‘If it is, I’ve never seen it before.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘I don’t know if Mr Howells is aware that an online version of that page has been put on a public-access website.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ George acknowledged. ‘But I don’t surf the internet. I think it’s a waste of time.’

‘You don’t have a computer in the house?’

‘Two. Kacy uses hers for delivering learning programmes to the children. And I have one I use to keep our financial records and business and personal correspondence.’

‘And neither can be connected to the internet?’ Trevor asked.

‘We have internet access. But only Kacy uses it – for shopping.’

‘The officers who searched your house found a number of floral bouquets and boxes of chocolates that had been sent through the mail to your wife.’

‘What do you mean a “number”?’ George was instantly on the defensive.

‘You didn’t know about them?’

‘I left the house yesterday before the postman arrived. If there are “a number” of things Kacy would have taken them in.’ George’s defensive attitude was hardening into aggression.

‘I’m sorry I have to ask these questions, Mr Howells,’ Trevor apologised. ‘But we need information if we are to apprehend whoever is responsible for murdering your wife. Did you and Mrs Howells participate in wife-swapping?’

‘How dare you!’

‘I am investigating the murder of your wife, Mr Howells,’ Trevor reminded him forcefully.

‘Kacy and I are – were – a normal couple, Inspector. I don’t know where you get your filthy ideas from.’

Trevor reached for the magazine and again opened it at the full-page spread of Kacy Howells. Kacy’s face smiled up at them from the obscene, cartoon body beneath the headline

“
Want fun? Send me a present and your phone number and if the gift is large enough, I’m yours. Cheese on toast can be arranged.”

Trevor slid it in front of George again.

George’s face crumpled and he stifled a sob.

‘Could your wife have placed this advertisement without your knowledge?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was your wife secretive?’

‘We spent time apart, she in the house, me in work, but that’s normal in a marriage once you have children.’

‘Do you know what the expression “Cheese on Toast” means?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a euphemism for wife-swapping. Did you and your wife have an open marriage, Mr Howells?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Did you and your wife have sex with other partners, Mr Howells?’ Trevor asked bluntly.

‘No, most certainly not.’

‘Then we can assume that if she was responsible for placing this advertisement, the “cheese on toast” referred to her and another man?’

‘How dare you! How dare you …’

‘I think this is a good time to take a break.’ Trevor announced that he was stopping the tape and switched off the recorder. ‘Constable Merchant, would you please get Mr Howells a cup of tea?’

CHAPTER SIX

Trevor found Peter waiting for him outside the door.

‘Do you think George Howells really didn’t know about his wife’s collection of salacious toys?’ Peter asked.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘My money’s on his ignorance. I doubt he’d know what to do with them.’

‘Did you look through the witness statements?’

‘The ones Sarah has inputted on the computer – yes.’ Peter opened the door that led into the corridor. ‘There’s nothing in them.’

‘Speed-reading again?’

‘You think I missed something?’ Peter challenged.

‘I came to the same conclusion. I hate the onset of an investigation,’ he added feelingly.

‘When we can’t make a move because we’re waiting on results,’ Peter agreed.

‘It’s the not knowing which way to proceed that gets to me.’

‘You only like the exciting bit when you can stand in the middle of a room of suspects and say “One of you is a murderer”?’

‘Been watching too many Agatha Christie stage plays lately?’ Trevor mocked him.

‘You going to ask George about his wife’s credit card next?’

‘Do we have their bank statements and personal papers?’ Trevor checked.

‘The search is ongoing at the house. George Howells signed a waiver stating that we can take whatever we need. But that was before your little set-to.’

‘It was questioning, not a set-to.’ Trevor led the way into his office to find Sarah Merchant making room on his desk for a tray of tea and biscuits.

‘You, Sarah, are an angel of mercy and all I do is give you extra work. Set up an interview schedule with Kacy Howells’ parents and brother will you please? And any other visitors to the house.’

‘When do you want to see them, sir?’

‘Tomorrow morning, I’ll call in on Kacy Howells’ parents on my way here. It would be convenient if the brother could be there as well as her mother and father.’

‘I’ll try and arrange it, sir.’ Sarah left the office and closed the door.

‘You’ll have to sit in on the interview with Alan unless you want it off the record,’ Peter warned.

‘It’s going on the record and I will sit in.’ Trevor lifted his feet on the desk. ‘But now I am taking a break to make a personal call, and I want you out of my office.’

‘Does that mean I can make a personal call too?’ Peter looked at his watch. ‘Daisy should be at the airport by now.’

‘You can telephone the world provided you pay for the calls.’

‘Give Lyn and Marty my love.’

‘Close the door on your way out.’ Before Trevor could dial out, the telephone rang. He picked it up. ‘Trevor Joseph.’

‘It’s your favourite pathologist.’

‘Patrick. You have more information – time of death –’

‘Can’t you bloody police officers think of anything other than the time of death?’ Patrick complained.

‘It would help …’

‘I don’t have anything on the time of death, end of discussion.’

‘Then, why ring?’

‘Jenny is thorough, bless her. Does all kinds of unnecessary tests in the name of furthering her experience and knowledge.’

‘On Kacy Howells?’

‘No, Jack the Ripper,’ Patrick retorted, ‘who the hell did you think I was talking about? She froze a section of her brain, sliced it and examined it. The results were surprising for a fifty-year-old woman.’

‘Do I have to come over there and beat it out of you?’

‘There were regions of brain atrophy, increased water content in the white-matter areas and high ADC values in the hippocampus, temporal lobe grey-matter and the corpus callosum …’

‘English, Patrick,’ Trevor pleaded.

‘We can’t be one hundred per cent certain but Jenny’s findings indicate Kacy Howells was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s or dementia.’

Trevor struggled to recall everything he knew about Alzheimer’s. ‘Short term memory loss …’

‘Obsessive compulsive disorder, aggression …’

‘Thanks, Patrick, that would explain a few things about her anti-social behaviour.’

‘If we find anything else, I’ll let you know.’

Trevor replaced the receiver, looked at his coffee, decided he didn’t want it and made his way back to the interview room.

George Howells was red-faced and damp-eyed, but as a result of Sarah’s efforts, he was noticeably calmer.

Trevor sat down pressed the record button, logged the time and continued the interview with an innocuous question. ‘Tell me about the committees you sit on?’

‘They are civil service committees. Social clubs, cricket teams …’

‘You go out several evenings a week?’

‘Five evenings, but only for an hour or two.’

‘Your wife knew what time you would leave the house and when you would return?’

‘Yes. But this magazine is disgusting rubbish …’ George thumped it with his fist leaving a damp patch. ‘We have – had – a happy private life.’

‘You really have no idea how this advertisement came to be placed?’ The pain on George Howells’ face was so acute; Trevor hated having to pursue the matter.

‘No.’

‘Payment was made by a credit card in your wife’s name.’

‘Kacy was a good wife – a good mother, she hated what she called the sleazy side of life. She wouldn’t watch …’

‘What, Mr Howells?’ Trevor persisted when George fell silent.

‘Dirty films on television.’

‘And what did she consider dirty?’

‘Anything to do with naked bodies, sex – you know the sort of thing.’ George tried to peel apart the layers of his damp tissue.

Sarah took a pack of tissues from her pocket and handed George a clean one.

Trevor turned to Sarah. ‘Would you get the photographs forensic sent over. The ones of the items we found in the chest, cupboard and behind the panel in the shed, please, Constable.’

Sarah left the room.

George continued to dab at his eyes, nose and mouth.

‘Can you think of any reason why someone would want to kill your wife, Mr Howells?’

‘No.’

Trevor sensed that George was close to breaking down. ‘Please, think again. You have no enemies? No one you or Kacy annoyed in any way?’

‘No one that I can think of.’

Trevor found it odd that George Howells didn’t mention their ongoing dispute with Alan Piper given that Alan had contacted the community police. ‘Your wife was killed by an axe blow to her head. Do you own an axe?’

‘Kacy has a lot of gardening tools.’

‘She uses an axe for gardening?’

‘She likes to chop wood. We have a wood-burning stove. We don’t light it very often because of the smoke. She has an electric saw as well. She uses it to trim the trees outside our garden.’

‘Your trees, Mr Howells?’

‘You’re entitled to cut trees that overhang your garden provided you keep the branches and hand them back to the owner,’ he recited as if he were repeating a phrase he’d learned by heart.

‘And the owner of the land that backs on to your garden is happy with that arrangement?’

‘No one seems to own the land at the back of our garden. Kacy …’ George bit his lip, and Trevor recalled Alan mentioning that Kacy Howells had torn down a boundary fence between their gardens and tried to claim a section of his land.

‘If you work land for seven years you can lay claim to it,’ George said lamely. ‘The land doesn’t seem to be registered.’

‘It doesn’t necessarily follow that land isn’t owned by someone just because it isn’t registered, Mr Howells. But we were discussing axes. Do you own one?’

‘I’ve seen Kacy using one. She keeps her tools locked in a chest in the summer-house, away from the children.’

‘Summer-house?’ Trevor questioned quizzically.

‘On the patio in the garden.’

‘The wooden shed on the deck?’

‘Kacy called it the summer-house.’

‘Would you be able to identify the axe if I showed it to you?’

George shook his head. ‘I don’t use Kacy’s tools and one axe would look very like another to me.’

‘You didn’t help your wife with the gardening?’

‘I cut the grass with the lawnmower when it needs doing. I leave everything else to her.’

‘So you never go into the shed or open the chest or the cupboard we found behind the panelling?’

‘No, but I know that she keeps her tools in the chest and the cupboard behind the panelling.’

‘She didn’t keep tools in the second cupboard.’

‘There’s a second cupboard?’ George looked at Trevor; his eyes bloodshot as well as watery.

‘We found one.’

‘As I said, I had no reason to go into the summer-house. The lawnmower is kept in the garage.’

Sarah returned, closed the door behind her and gave Trevor a file. He opened it, removed a sheaf of photographs and handed them to George.

‘You’re looking at a photograph of items we found in the second concealed cupboard in your shed.’

‘I keep telling you we don’t have a shed.’ George’s voice grew shrill in anger.

‘Summer-house – whatever you call it.’ Trevor had no intention of getting side-tracked into a discussion on the shed or patio which had been a point of contention between the Howells and Alan Piper.

George was nonplussed. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do we, Mr Howells,’ Trevor agreed. ‘I doubt a sex shop has this many sex aids in stock at any one time. Was your wife offering sexual services to men for money?’

‘You’re being disgusting …’

‘You’re very fond of that word, Mr Howells. I take it that if your wife was offering sexual services you were unaware of it.’

‘She was doing no such thing. And you are
disgusting
.’

Trevor moved on to a less provocative question. ‘Did your wife have a credit card?’

George refused to be mollified. ‘Yes.’ He spat out the word.

‘Do you have independent cards or joint cards on the same account?’

‘Both. Kacy has one of her own, as I do. We also have a joint card.’

‘Any reason why you have independent as well as joint cards?’

‘We use the joint card for household expenses. The independent cards for personal expenditure.’

‘Expenditure you don’t want one another to know about?’ Trevor suggested.

George was instantly on the defensive again. ‘I don’t like your inference, Inspector.’

‘Most couples on a fixed income have a joint card to simplify their expenses.’

‘Married couples are entitled to a personal life.’

‘But in my experience rarely personal finances, unless they are both high earners.’

‘That’s certainly not the case with me and Kacy.’

‘The two credit cards we found in your wife’s purse in her handbag have been checked against the card that was used to pay for the advertisement in the magazine. Neither was used, so your wife either had a third card, or someone held a fraudulent one in her name.’

‘You searched my wife’s handbag?’

‘You signed a waiver, Mr Howells,’ Trevor reminded him. ‘Did your wife have any other credit cards that you were aware of?’

‘No, just the two credit cards and a banker’s card.’

‘Can you think of anything else? Any snippet of information? A name of a friend or relative your wife might have confided in who could give us information that might help us to further this enquiry?’

‘I told you we lead … led … lead,’ the dam finally burst and George sobbed uncontrollably.

‘Would you like me to call a doctor, sir?’ Sarah Merchant asked.

George waved her away.

Sarah and Trevor waited for him to compose himself.

‘I want to return to my children,’ George said as soon as he’d recovered enough to speak.

‘Constable Merchant will arrange a car. I apologise again for having to question you so soon after your wife’s death, Mr Howells. But whoever killed her is violent and dangerous. We need to apprehend the person or persons responsible, quickly before they attack someone else.’

George looked up but he had difficulty meeting Trevor’s eye.

‘I will need to question you again after we have received the results of the forensic tests that are being carried out in your house and garden,’ Trevor warned him.

George mumbled unintelligibly.

‘One thing I can assure you; is that we will do everything in our power to apprehend those responsible for murdering your wife. I would also like to warn you that withholding information during a murder investigation is a serious charge but one I wouldn’t hesitate to bring, if it was warranted.’

George allowed Sarah to escort him out of the room.

Trevor returned to his office. He sat behind his desk. As he hit the button on his computer to disperse the screen-saver there was a knock at his door. Trevor shouted, ‘Come in,’ and Chris Brooke entered with a tray.

‘Lunch, sir.’

‘I didn’t order any.’

‘When the rest of us ordered sandwiches from the canteen, Peter – Sergeant Collins – added an order for you because he said you’d most likely forget.’

‘He did, did he?’ Trevor took the top sandwich and opened it. ‘Ham and salad, thank you. Any more information come in?’

‘Not yet, sir. But we’ve sent the family’s fingerprints to forensics.’

‘I’ve gone through the statements Sarah inputted. Have the teams who are interviewing the neighbours discovered anything new?’

‘Not much, sir. No one has reported seeing or hearing anything above the usual noises.’

Trevor took a bite from his sandwich. ‘What are the usual noises?’

‘A farmer who owns the land behind the Howells, and lives on the hillside above it, said he heard Mrs Howells using her electric saw around midday. He looked down and saw her felling trees on his land. He said he intended to have a word with her about it.’

‘A grateful word for managing his woodland?’

‘More like an angry “stay your side of the fence” word according to the officer who interviewed him. Apparently Kacy Howells was always walking on his land and couldn’t leave it alone. He is convinced that she was under the misapprehension that if he did nothing with the land, she could cultivate and eventually claim it. From what the interviewing officer told me when he came in, Kacy Howells appeared to be obsessed with her neighbours’ lives and frequently stole their property.’

‘As Alan told us.’ Peter joined them; sandwich in one hand, coffee in the other.