Michael Fowler - Secret of the Dead

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Tell me about that.”

“When the phone rang, I’d only just poured myself a glass of wine and put my feet up. I let Amy stay up a little later on Saturdays, so it was just after half past ten. To be honest I’d not long tucked her up and got out of the bath myself so I was going to ignore it, until I saw Dad’s name displayed and I thought he might have taken a turn for the worse. I was surprised when I answered because he seemed quite chirpy. He apologised for the time it was and then asked me if I could take him for a run out, the next day, to The George and Dragon pub in Wentworth, he had to meet up with someone Sunday lunchtime. I told him I couldn’t, I had a couple of private work appointments. He said no worries and that he’d get a taxi. I asked him if it was anything important and he said no, that he felt a little better and wanted to sort something out with an old colleague. I feel a bit guilty about it now especially because of what’s happened.”

Tony guessed that when they checked the records, the timing of the phone call to Katherine would follow the one with Barry Newstead.

“He finished the call by saying something strange. I can remember now the exact words he used.” She looked at Tony over the rim of her cup. “If anything happens to me Katherine I want you to look in the safe. That’s what he said. Not ‘when’ anything happens, but ‘if’, as if he expected this to happen to him.”

“Look in the safe?” Tony repeated.

“Yeah, the safe in the back room. He has a small safe hidden beneath a panel in the back bedroom’s fitted wardrobes. It’s covered by his shoes.”

“Have you seen what’s in the safe?”

“He showed me where it was not long after he was diagnosed. He said I would have to deal with everything in there and that he would leave me instructions inside it which he wanted me to follow. He said the house deeds, insurance policies and important papers were all in there. He opened it up and let me glance inside, but that’s all. I never saw exactly what was in there. There were a few large brown envelopes, I can remember that.”

Tony’s eyes lit up. He reached into his suit jacket pocket and retrieved the clear plastic exhibit bag that contained the brass key, removed from Jeffery Howson’s stomach. He held it up to Katherine. “Do you recognise this key, by any chance?”

She screwed up her eyes as she looked at the contents of the forensic exhibit bag. “Yes. That looks like my dad’s safe key.”

* * * * *

Despite the background heating being on inside 12 Woodland View, Detective Constable Mike Sampson shivered. Half an hour earlier he had discovered that the white forensic suit in the boot of the CID car was on the small size for his frame and no matter how hard he had tried he had not been able to squeeze it over his suit jacket. He’d had to leave his coat in the car, and now he was cursing, because the coldness of the early winter morning had finally crept through the thin fabric of the protective over-suit.

How he wished he could lose some weight.

He had tried to take his mind off the cold by busying himself around the crime scene. For the past half hour, using the forensic floor plates as stepping stones, he’d mooched around the house, upstairs as well as down, trying to fend off the chill in his bones. Now he was back in the lounge trying to get an insight into the life of Jeffery Howson. He’d checked out the reading material, including a small pile of various national newspapers many of which were folded open at the horse-racing section. The only magazines lying about were those with TV listings. In a low level bookcase he had cast his eye over the spine titles of various hardback and paperback novels. There was a mix of authors and genres. He spotted Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, mentally ticked off those he had read, and tried to recall their plots, but moved on when he found himself blurring one into the other. Picking past Harold Robbins, Clive Cussler and Wilbur Smith, he found the bottom two shelves contained a large selection of hardback Enid Blytons The Famous Five; Secret Seven and Mallory Towers adventure stories, which he guessed belonged to Howson’s daughter Katherine.

Then he’d checked out the half dozen or so photographs on the walls. Most of them were black and white images of Jeffery as a young man, either hugging, or with an arm around a gangly, dark haired teenage girl. There were shots taken at the seaside and in the rear garden, and two, taken at different angles, were of the pair posing on the bonnet of a saloon car on the front drive of this house. These two were in colour, though yellowing drastically with age. He recognised that the car was a 1981 registered 3 Series BMW. Memories flooded back. That had been the first make and model of car he’d driven after passing his test. His dad had bought it for him. It was metallic blue and twelve years old. He didn’t have it long. One Sunday morning, less than six weeks into owning it, while blasting along the A170 towards Scarborough, he blew the engine and damaged the cam shaft and the last he saw, it was being towed to the nearest scrap yard. He smiled as he pulled himself back to the present and focused again on the photos. Mike guessed from the resemblance that the girl with Jeffery was his daughter Katherine, the woman he had met and interviewed with Tony Bullars the previous day.

He couldn’t see any of Jeffery with his ex-wife.

Moving away from the photos, he turned his attention to the back of Scenes of Crime Manager Duncan Wroe, who was overseeing the work of a pretty dark haired girl member of his team. She was running a light source along the surface of a mahogany writing bureau looking for fingerprints; Katherine had pointed out the previous day that she thought it showed signs of being searched. She said that before she had left on the Saturday afternoon she had tidied up the few bits of paper which had been left lying about and rolled down the bureau flap to secure it. After she had found her father dead, she noticed it open and papers and envelopes strewn around.

The sudden ringing of his mobile brought him back to the present. He fished through the gap in the forensic suit and pulled out his phone.

It was his buddy Tony Bullars. He hit the answer button, listened to him talking for the best part of a minute, not interrupting, nodding occasionally. Then he ended the call.

Mike turned to the Scenes of Crime Manager. “Duncan, has any of your team found a safe upstairs?”

Duncan Wroe straightened himself, shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips.

“Seems as though Jeffery has a safe secreted inside one of the wardrobes in the back room.”

The detective stepped onto the next light-weight plate and followed the route into the hallway and up the stairs. He knew the bathroom was the first on his right of the landing and next to that was the second largest bedroom, overlooking the rear garden.

He poked his head around the door. Another female member of the forensic team was pulling back the sheets of a three-quarter size bed.

“Have you been through the wardrobes yet?”

She shook her head.

“Mind if I take a quick look inside?” he asked pointing towards the dark wood floor-to-ceiling fitted wardrobes.

“Try to touch as little of the surface as you can,” she replied.

Most of the bedroom floor was covered with plastic sheeting. It crackled as he stepped across the room. Opening the right hand door of the first set of double wardrobes with one finger through the handle, he spied a row of well polished shoes lined up in two rows along the floor space. He took them out carefully. There were six pairs in total and he laid them out along the plastic sheeting. Then he smoothed his latex gloved hand over the flat veneer surface, searching for a way to lift the board. Within seconds, he had found a hole drilled in one corner, just large enough to slot his forefinger inside. He gave a quick yank and the board shot up.