Michael Fowler - Secret of the Dead

“So when was the last time you saw him?”

“The Monday or Tuesday of the week leading up to his murder. He was killed over the weekend, right?”

Hunter nodded. “Late Saturday night, we believe.”

“I was at home with Pauline, my wife.”

Hunter thought he caught an awkward look on the retired DCI’s face, then noted how quickly he had retrieved his composure.

Alan said, “That’s the ex-detective in me, answering like that. Everyone you interview is a suspect, right?”

Hunter masked his thoughts by returning a forced smile. He recalled what Barry had told him about the nights that Alan Darbyshire and Jeffery Howson had spent together in the strip club, and the holidays with their wives, courtesy of an unknown businessman and wondered if he should raise it as a series of questions. He also remembered what Detective Superintendent Leggate had said at the morning briefing. Keeping on track with what he had rehearsed inside his head he asked, “What was he like as a detective?”

“Brilliant. Good thief taker, good interviewer. Worked hard and played hard. Everything a good detective should be.”

“Sorry to have to ask you this Alan, but you were his DS and his friend. Did he get up to anything dodgy?” This was his opportunity to mention the strip club.

“I don’t mean to be funny, but where is this going?”

Hunter hadn’t managed to throw him off guard. “I’m not trying to draw you into anything Alan. I’m trying to establish if you were aware of anything untoward in Jeff’s past. We haven’t got a clue at the moment as to why he was killed.”

“Depends on what you’re hinting at. We did things differently back then. We didn’t have all that fancy forensic help that you lot have got today. We had to do things the hard way. We took more chances to get our results. Let’s just leave it with the fact that Jeff was a good detective.”

Hunter sensed an edge to his voice. “I’m not trying to accuse him of anything, or you for that matter. I know policing was different during your era. I know that from working with Barry Newstead when I first went in CID. I’m working with him now. He’s a civilian investigator with us and I have to listen to his ranting on about how the job’s not what it used to be on almost a daily basis.”

Alan Darbyshire’s face creased into a smile. “I remember Barry as a fresh-faced detective. He was a good thief-taker himself, from what I remember. Not as good as me mind, but if you were taught by Barry then you can’t be all that bad.”

The retired DCI’s response triggered what Barry had told him earlier about Darbyshire’s boasting. Hunter continued. “Going back to that last question. Did he have any enemies, or do you know of anyone he’d come up against in the job who could have held such a grudge against him to do this.”

Alan Darbyshire dipped his eyes down to the carpet. A split-second later he raised them again. That diversion of his gaze was enough for Hunter. He knew he had hit on something. Under different circumstances he would have gone for the jugular. But now wasn’t the time to push. He’d store it for later and see first what Alan was prepared to tell them.

“I’ve been thinking about that since I found out about Jeff. You could say all the collars we felt became our enemies. It’s like I said, we did things differently when he and I were around in CID. There were no custody suites like there are now. Just a couple of cold cells and if the villains didn’t play ball they got banged up for the night without a blanket. They were so cold, the next morning they’d sell their grandmother for a cup of warm tea. And I know a couple of the lads in the office would give their prisoners a bit of a slap to make them confess. That’s just how it was.”

“Was that Jeffery’s style?”

“Not giving anyone a slap. I never saw Jeff ever hit a prisoner. He could talk the hind leg off a donkey. His villains would cough just to shut him up.” He gave off a short laugh.

“What about any cases he worked on?” There. He’d given him the opening. It was his ideal opportunity to introduce the Lucy Blake-Hall investigation. He watched him slowly shake his head, lips set tight.

“We worked on so many over the years and you always got the odd villain whingeing or threatening to make a complaint about you because they weren’t happy with their treatment.” His eyes danced between Hunter and Grace. “You know how it is?”

“Any high profile ones that spring to mind?”

“Well there was one I recall. The Terry Braithwaite arrest brought lots of publicity.”

Hunter’s brow creased. He couldn’t bring that case to mind.

“The papers referred to him as The Beast of Barnwell.”

Hunter remembered it now. The case was an old one and he had often heard Barry talking about the job. He nodded.

“It was before your time, probably before you were born in fact. There were a number of indecent assaults and rapes on women in the late sixties and early seventies. Always in late autumn and winter and during a full moon, that’s how he got his nickname. For five years he ran amok, and then late one night in the woods he was disturbed by one of the night fishermen at Barnwell Lakes. The man heard screaming from inside a van parked in one of the car parking areas. It had always been a haunt for courting couples, but by good fortune such was the man’s concern at the cries that he went to investigate. He disturbed Terry Braithwaite in the middle of carrying out a rape on a young girl and he started banging on his van. The fisherman ended up in a scuffle with Terry but he managed to get away, but not before the witness had banged his hand one final time on the roof as the van was taking off. The next day the body of seventeen year old Glynis Young was found in bushes at the edge of the wood.” He lifted his arms, intertwined his fingers and rested them on his distended belly. “Terry Braithwaite had been one of our suspects for a couple of the assaults because he matched the descriptions of a couple of the e-fits the victims had given us, and he owned a van like the one described. The next day Jeff and I locked him up. He’d cleaned the inside of his van but he’d forgotten to do the outside as thoroughly as the inside and SOCO found the fisherman’s handprint still on the roof. It was one of Jeff’s first big jobs; he’d been in CID about a year. The upshot was that Braithwaite got life in nineteen-seventy-three with a minimum thirty year sentence. He sent word out from his cell that he was going to get us back for that. He said we had stitched him up even with the evidence from the witness. He had two appeals turned down. He did over thirty in the end and was released two years ago. You might recall there was a big splash about him in the local paper. The Chronicle got wind of his release and didn’t know if he’d come back to Barnwell to live. I read that the Probation Service stated Braithwaite was in a bail hostel in another county.” Alan Darbyshire diverted his eyes again to the floor then glanced back up at Hunter. “Terry Braithwaite would be a good start for your enquiries. He was a nasty piece of work and never forgave us. Jeffery and I visited him in prison on quite a few occasions over the years because we were always convinced he had done more rapes than he was convicted of, either in neighbouring forces, or because some of the women hadn’t come forward; but he refused to talk to us. Yeah, if you can track him down he would be worth talking to. He’ll be in his sixties himself now, but he looked after himself inside.”

Hunter spent the next half an hour teasing out aspects of Jeffery Howson’s career, and although he freely talked about Jeffery’s working style and about their drinking sessions together Alan Darbyshire avoided mentioning the visits to the strip club and gave away no revelations which would take the enquiry forward. Bearing in mind what Detective Superintendent Dawn Leggate had said, he decided to bring the interview to an end.