Michael Fowler - Secret of the Dead

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Jockeying his way through heavy traffic, Hunter managed the journey to Woodlands View in less than twenty minutes and he tucked the CID car behind one of the SOCO vans parked at the head of the cul-de-sac.

A TV camera crew team had set up this side of the first taped cordon slung across the road, the backdrop of their focus being Number 12. A reporter appeared to be in the middle of a shoot.

He nudged Grace. “Make sure your lippy is on girl, you’ll be on Look North tonight.” He flashed a wink as he pushed his driver’s door to and popped the locks.

Approaching the top of the drive of number twelve Hunter saw that a large blue canvas had been erected against the side door, protecting as well as hiding the entrance. He flashed his warrant card, gave his and Grace’s names to the uniformed scene-logging officer and trooped off down the crumbling concrete drive, squeezing past Jeffery Howson’s ten-year-old Volkswagen Polo, as he made for the way in.

They found Tony and Mike in the dining room at the back of the house, hunkered over an oval mahogany dining table. The well polished surface was littered with a raft of papers, many of which appeared to be official police forms covered in handwriting, all sealed within clear plastic forensic evidence bags.

Hunter noted that this room, although slightly musty, had none of the stale tobacco or urine smells which had disgusted him during his visit the day before. And it was a lot brighter. A double-glazed set of patio doors, overlooking the overgrown rear garden, took up half of one wall, allowing bleached light from the pale mid-afternoon sun to filter in.

“I thought you might want to see this little lot before Forensics take them away,” said Tony Bullars, looking up. He pushed a couple of the bagged pages towards Hunter. “They’ve all been photographed and Duncan’s promised me he will have the images e-mailed to me for tomorrow morning’s briefing, but I wanted you to read this interview record and cast your eye over these documents we found.” Tony tapped the manila envelope with its handwritten inscription. “They were inside this envelope addressed to Barry. It’s pretty interesting stuff. If it’s the real deal, then it certainly opens up our investigation!”

Hunter stared at the array of documents across the table. There must have been at least twenty pieces. Six of the clear plastic forensic bags contained newspaper cuttings, yellowed and pitted with age. Hunter saw that someone had taken the patience to cut out, organise and neatly paste a series of different tabloid articles onto separate sheets of paper. He took in a couple of the headlines ‘DISAPPEARED WITHOUT TRACE’; ‘THE LAST PERSON TO SEE LUCY’; ‘LUCY BLAKE-HALL MAN CHARGED WITH MURDER.’

Several black and white photographs were dotted throughout the articles. He recognised a shot of The Coach and Horses pub in Barnwell town centre, which he knew from reading the Daniel Weaver prosecution file earlier was one of the last places where witnesses saw Lucy Blake-Hall.

Another was a head and shoulders shot of a smiling young woman, blonde hair piled up and fashioned into a bunch at the crown. Dark mascara ringed glistening eyes and a thin slender nose complemented cherub-like features. The caption gave Lucy’s name, with the addition of ‘where is she?’

Very pretty woman , Hunter thought to himself. It was his first sighting of Lucy; previously she had just been a name on paper.

He would like to have read them further but out of the corner of his eye he could see Tony anxiously beating a tattoo over one particular piece of evidence.

Hunter slid the plastic bag from beneath Tony’s forefinger. Spinning it around to its correct way up, he saw that the exhibit pouch contained the first sheet of a formal record of interview form identical to the ones he had seen in the murder file that morning. Reading his way down, he picked out that it was the contemporaneous account of an interview with Daniel Weaver, conducted by Detective Sergeant Alan Darbyshire and Detective Constable Jeffery Howson on Monday 29th August 1983. Questioning started at 2.20pm and was concluded at 3.25pm that same day. He began reading the script, penned in black biro and still very clear and legible after all this time. In fact, unlike the clipped out foxed newspaper articles, it looked as though it had never seen the light of day since it had been written.

As he inched his way down the text, he felt more and more confused. Why had such an important document been locked away in Howson’s safeI? It should have formed part of the prosecution file against Daniel Weaver.

For the next twenty minutes, Hunter meticulously read every handwritten sentence of the chronicled interview. As he put aside each separate sheet, Tony Bullars fed him another, until all the twelve pages had been digested.

Taking in the last sentence of the final page, Hunter, set it aside with the others. He let off a low whistle and pushed himself up. Supporting himself on his straight arms, he said,

“I think this is what got Jeffery Howson killed.”

DAY THREE: 26th November.

A gloomy early start to the day meant that the overhead fluorescent lighting in MIT had to be on for morning briefing. The bright lights bathed the room in a warm glow, masking the cold outside.

Detective Superintendent Dawn Leggate stood beside the incident whiteboard at the front, looking around and feeling uncomfortable. She took a deep breath and clenched her stomach muscles. Her insides were churning. It was at times like this she really could do with a cigarette. She had stopped smoking 10 months ago, yet there were still occasions when the craving came back and this was one of them.

She exhaled slowly.

“Good morning everyone,” Dawn said in her soft Scottish voice, gratified when no nervous inflections came out.

Casting her eyes quickly around the room, she could see that everyone was seated at their desk, with the exception of Family Liaison Officer DC Carol Ragen, who was perched on one corner of Grace’s desk nursing a steaming mug of coffee.

Most of the team had fresh hot drinks and some had even made themselves a slice of toast. It was such a familiar sight, she thought to herself as she gazed around. In spite of the faces being different and the Police Forces being hundreds of miles apart, this briefing scene could have mirrored the many that she had conducted with her old team back in her native Scotland.

“Mr Robshaw has had to start at Headquarters today, to sort out the budget for the investigation, so he’s asked me to take briefing. We have quite a lot to go through this morning especially the revelation yesterday so we’ll run this from the top.”

She tapped the incident board with her pen.

“We all know that sixty-three year old retired detective Jeffery Howson was found murdered at his home on Monday and the likelihood is that he was killed late Saturday night. We also know that before his death he made a phone call to Barry here, stating he wanted to meet and tell him about the murder of Lucy Blake-Hall in nineteen-eighty-three. That the wrong person had been convicted of it and that he knew who had done it. Have I got that right?” She turned to the Civilian Investigator she’d heard so much about but had not had time to get to know yet. In fact, such had been her baptism, thrown immediately into this murder enquiry, that with the exception of Hunter she hadn’t had the time to get to know any of her new team.

Barry nodded back.

“I can also see from the notes on the board that we now have the background to the Lucy Blake-Hall murder. Hunter, you and Grace had that enquiry. Can you expand on the information on the board?”