Michael Fowler - Secret of the Dead

“And let me throw something else into the mix.”

Grace set aside her mug, looking puzzled.

“You might wonder where this has come from, but it was something that came into my head yesterday. I tried to dismiss it, but it’s still niggling away.” He paused and met his partner’s gaze. “Lucy might not be dead.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“I know Grace. I can see by your reaction what you’re thinking. And if I try to rationalise things, that suggestion doesn’t make sense. After all no one has seen her for twenty-five years. Everything says Lucy is dead. However, you and I know that stranger things have happened. Especially after finding those contemporaneous notes in Jeffery Howson’s safe. It means Daniel Weaver’s confession is false, so all we have is the last sighting of her in Barnwell market place.”

Hunter tented his fingers and looked across at Grace. “I’ve gone back over the prosecution file. The original murder investigation never found an attack site. And though we have witnesses who saw and heard Daniel Weaver and Lucy arguing, we have no one who actually witnessed any assault upon her. And there was never any blood found on Weaver’s clothes, or at his flat. All we have is that the confession made by Weaver is probably false, and if that is proved to be the case, we are left with the puzzle of finding out where Lucy disappeared to on twenty-sixth August nineteen-eighty-three.”

* * * * *

Tony Bullars and Family Liaison Officer Carol Ragen rang the front door bell of Katherine Edwards’ home and waited. From deep inside, they heard a shout to ‘Come in’ and so let themselves into the hallway. Carol called out again and a woman’s voice answered from the back room. As the two detectives entered the kitchen they found Jeffery Howson’s ex-wife, Jennifer West, standing half in, half out, of the open French doors. She was taking a long draw on her cigarette. She acknowledged them with a raised hand, and then flicked the smouldering remains out onto the paved patio.

Tony and Carol watched her shiver as she took a last look out across the rain-sodden garden before stepping back into the warmth and closing the doors.

“Gosh, it’s brass-monkeys out there today,” she said as she stepped towards the sink, filled a glass with water and took a mouthful. “You won’t tell Katherine you caught me smoking, will you? I’ll not hear the last of it if you do. I’ve told her I’ve quit since Jeffery was diagnosed with lung cancer.” She took another sip of water and then set the glass down on the drainer. “It’s easier to tell a white lie than to argue with her. I’ve been smoking since I was fourteen and it’s hard to break a fifty year habit.”

“Cross my heart,” Tony replied, drawing a sign over the left side of his chest.

She smiled, fixing him with twinkling grey eyes.

As she leaned back against the work surface, Tony couldn’t help but notice the striking similarity to her daughter. She was tall and slim with dark collar length hair, though unlike her daughter’s natural colour, Jennifer’s hair was dyed. And also unlike her daughter’s fresh complexion, her features were heavily lined and creased. Despite the newly acquired tan from her recent holiday, she looked somewhat older than her sixty-four years. Tony guessed that was down to her half-century of smoking, yet he could definitely see where Katherine got her looks from

“Katherine’s already filled me in. You want to know about Jeffery?” she said.

“If you don’t mind. We’ve obviously got some recent stuff from Katherine, and we’ve talked to some of his ex-colleagues, but as his parents are now dead you’re the person who probably knew him the best during his younger years.”

“Only until nineteen-eighty-four. That’s when I left him.”

“Yes we know, and that’s the period I want to focus on, if you don’t mind?”

Jennifer looked puzzled.

Tony continued. “You appreciate that I can’t go into things in any detail, because the investigation is still in its infancy, and we haven’t arrested anyone yet for Jeffery’s murder, but a few things have cropped up since we started this enquiry which makes us want to look into his past, and the nineteen-eighties are a period of his life we are interested in.”

“Oh I see. I realise you have your reasons why can’t say too much but it’s during that time that he and I had our differences.”

“Yes we know. That’s why I want to ask you a few questions about that period of his life.”

“Yeah okay, I can understand that. But you’ll have to appreciate this is not going to be easy. I don’t want to paint Jeffery in a bad light, especially for Katherine. I’ve never really told her anything about why me and her dad split up. She’s only really just got to know him.”

“Don’t worry Jennifer, we’ll treat what you tell us with confidence. We’re only interested in anything which may point us in the direction of his killer. Having said that, it is also important that we have the right picture painted of him. Especially his background.”

“This is going to be awkward. Do you know, I’ve never sat down and discussed with anyone what went on in Jeff’s and my life before I left him? Don’t get me wrong, when I first left, I told snippets of it to a couple of close friends, and I have mentioned the odd thing here and there to Derek, he’s the man I’m married to now, but I didn’t even tell my solicitor some of the stuff Jeff had done, because I knew it would lose him his job.” Jennifer West wrung her hands.

Tony could see threads of broken veins close to the skin. Suddenly she appeared frail. “All I can say, Jennifer, is that we’ll do our best with what you tell us. But it is important that we get to know everything about Jeffery. It might give us our best clue as to who killed him.”

She nodded. “Yes I know. Do you know this is so weird? So many times in the past I have listened to Jeffery’s stories of some of the enquiries he has been involved in and how he has interviewed witnesses. Never did I think I would be one of those witnesses myself.”

“Strange world we live in eh, Jennifer?” Tony exchanged a quick glance with Carol. He could see she had her pen poised over her journal. “Tell me a bit about yourself and Jeffery, when you married et cetera, just for background. Speak freely. I’ll interrupt if I want something different okay?”

She nodded again, switching eye-contact between Tony and Carol. “I first met Jeffery in nineteen-sixty-four, not long after he’d joined the job. He was nineteen and I was twenty. I worked at Woolworth’s and I’d caught a young lad shoplifting. Jeffery came to arrest him, and he actually asked me out while he was taking a statement from me. It was so spontaneous and he was so handsome. A man in uniform and all that.” Her solemn look suddenly transformed into a smile. “He took me to the cinema to see Goldfinger. I know it’s corny and all that but I saw a resemblance in Jeffery to Sean Connery. And that was it, I was smitten.” For a second her gaze was distant, as if lost in her thought. Then she blinked and said, “We went out together for just over a year and I got caught with Katherine. It was a real blow for both of us. We had talked so much about what we wanted to do before we settled down, but that put paid to both our dreams.” She glanced between Tony and Carol. “Don’t take that the wrong way. Once we got our head around things we were both overjoyed, and Katherine’s made my world perfect, but it was just at the time you understand?”

Never having had a child, Tony didn’t understand. Nevertheless he nodded.

“We had to get married before she was born, because the job frowned on it. But they gave us a police house to live in. A three-bedroom semi. It was better than what both our parents had. Those early years were good times. Short of money, but we had such happy times as a family. And then he went in CID.” She glanced at Tony. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like it did, because we still had some good times even in his early CID days. The extra money he brought in from his overtime was more than welcome. It helped us get together the deposit for the house at Woodlands View. But it also meant he was spending a lot of time at work. Sometimes I didn’t see him from one day to the next, especially if he was on a murder. And especially when he got in with that Alan Darbyshire.”