Alice considered this. “There was a boldness to both crimes which marks them out. Wynne felt he’d been badly treated by Trelawny. The man had sold him a faulty vehicle, failed to make recompense, denied him the attention he felt he deserved. Coming to the front door suggests an element of self-justification in the act.”
“Do you think the murderer of Richard McGill was emboldened by a similar sense of righteousness?”
Alice rested her head on his shoulder. “If he did, then it brings us back to the victim again. What had he done to incur such hatred?”
“I think Mark Vogel may know the answer to that. After finding the torch, we can be fairly certain he was involved.”
“Yes, but we can’t interview him formally. The DCC would throw a fit.”
Fergus shrugged. “Without more evidence, your hands are tied.”
She shifted up, gathering the notes into a neat pile. “Perhaps the motives of Bradley Wynne could give us a better insight into the reason behind Richard McGill’s murder. I’m going to read through the psychological assessments again.”
“Fine,” Fergus placed a kiss on her forehead. “But don’t tire yourself out on this. Wynne’s case was resolved long ago.”
Alice grunted a reply, already lost in the scientific language of the documents.
Chapter 23
The iron-grey building appeared abruptly, as if superimposed on the sweeping landscape. The rows of neatly spaced, tiny barred windows which filled every wall made Ravi shudder under his fleece-lined jacket. Looming from out of this lonely moor, under a leaden sky, the place was creepy. There was no other way to describe it.
The DI had never visited Devon before. When Alice Mann had told him of her interest in a case which bore striking similarities to the McGill murder, he couldn’t resist asking for leave to follow-up on her good work. There was no way she could have made the journey herself, not in her condition. She’d been wistful at the idea of missing out on the trip, he’d seen it in her eyes. He’d flown to Bristol and hired a car to reach Dartmoor. The journey lasted less than a day, but it still seemed like a bloody long way from Glasgow.
Ravi passed through a security checkpoint where he needed to show his ID and visiting papers to a guard manning the barrier. He parked in the shadow of the menacing building, taking a deep breath before pushing through the double-doors into the entrance lobby.
Ravi felt the place was reminiscent of a Victorian institution, which historically, was exactly what it was. But he knew the prison now predominantly housed category ‘C’ inmates – those preparing for release or interned for non-violent offences.
A surprisingly wiry prison officer escorted Ravi to a corridor which reminded him of a hall of residence at a university. There were communal kitchens and recreation areas positioned at regular intervals. The room he was taken to was neat and well-appointed. A man was seated at a desk, with his back to the door, apparently writing in a journal of some kind. He turned at the sound of their footsteps approaching.
“Bradley, your visitor has arrived. You can stay and talk in here, but I’ll leave the door open. Give me a shout if you need me.”
Bradley Wynne was a small-set man of early middle-age. His mousey hair was tinged with grey. The eyes scrutinizing Ravi from under a wispy fringe were a deep blue. “Please take a seat, Detective Inspector.”
Ravi pulled over a plastic chair with what looked like a handmade cushion covering the seat.
“One of my fellow inmates makes them,” Bradley dipped his head towards the cheery piece of craftwork. “They like to send us away with a skill.”
“What have you learnt whilst you’ve been here?” Ravi asked politely, thinking it worth striking up a rapport. The man was under no legal obligation to talk to him, although his upcoming parole hearing would no doubt make him more inclined to be cooperative.
Bradley shifted his gaze towards the tiny, high-set window, a feature the modern interior couldn’t do anything to improve. “We have a market-garden in the quad area. I was a farmer before I was convicted. I’ve helped umpteen men learn how to grow their own produce. We even supply a local farm shop. I’ve accompanied the delivery van a few times. Our vegetables are a good seller for them.”
Ravi raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“I will be released in a matter of months, Inspector. They have to get me ready for the outside world.”
“Of course.”
“Now, why are you here? The Governor said it was in relation to a case unconnected to mine, one that occurred in Scotland? I don’t see how I can be of any help to you.”
“A man was killed at his home in the Highlands. It happened a month before your arrest. I was on the investigating team. He was shot on his doorstep in the middle of the night. We never found out who did it.”
Wynne leant forward in his seat, his expression inscrutable. “Well, it wasn’t me.”
Ravi was taken aback. “No, I wasn’t suggesting that.”
A smile creased the prisoner’s face. “It was a joke. You learn to develop a sense of humour inside. Albeit a warped one at times.”
“In the interviews you gave your lawyer’s psychologist, you tried to explain your state of mind on the evening you killed Trelawny. You said the crime was the playing out of a fantasy you’d had of confronting him about the way he’d treated you. The scenario had run through your mind many times before the event itself. That was very honest of you. Do you still view the killing as a form of confrontation?”
Bradley seemed to consider this. “Yes, I suppose I do. Now, of course I see how wrong it was. I was living a lonely and isolated existence at the farm after my parents died. I’d not made decisions without them before and one of the first decisions I made was to buy that truck from Trelawny. When it turned out to have been a bad one, I was overcome with anger and humiliation. It felt like I’d let Mum and Dad down. It isn’t easy to keep a farm going and I wanted to make a go of it for them. The place had been their life.”
“Was there any other reason for your fixation on Jack Trelawny?”
“You mean, was I in love with him?” Bradley rubbed his smooth chin. “I’d not explored my sexuality properly before the death of my parents. They were deeply traditional people and my life was sheltered. I had suppressed my homosexual feelings for a long time. It may well have played a part in the strength of the hatred I felt for Jack. It was certainly what the psychologist thought. I’ve had countless sessions with the prison service counsellor about it since.”
Ravi leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m really here to find out why you chose the method you did for killing Jack Trelawny. You could have chosen a way whereby you’d have had a better chance of avoiding detection.”
Bradley shook his head solemnly. “Whatever the jury decided, the shooting wasn’t pre-meditated. I went to the house that evening to confront Jack. I felt I had a grievance that he’d ignored. The idea of him preparing for Christmas, without a care in the world made me livid. I took the shotgun to give me courage, a sense of power over a man who was larger and stronger than me. It was only when he opened the door that everything changed. I saw the horror and disgust on his face as he recognised who it was on his doorstep. The red mist descended. I wanted to obliterate that expression forever.”
Ravi nodded. “Thank you for being so open with me.”
“I’ve grown used to it. We are given intensive counselling in the run-up to a parole hearing. It isn’t a given that I will be released. Murder is a hard thing for most people to forgive. But I am sorry for what I did. I feel terrible remorse for the children, because I understand the grief of losing a parent.”
Ravi reached out his hand. Bradley shook it. “Then I wish you luck,” the detective stated genuinely, before leaving the room to find his escort out of the disorientating warren of cells.
Chapter 24
2003
It was Colin Bell who had the idea. If the man knocked over by the side of the Cleland road was in
jured, as he must surely have been, then he would have required medical assistance.
A couple of DCs were ringing around the hospitals and drop-in medical centres within thirty miles of the site of the accident. They were querying if anyone had been brought in that night or within the following days with injuries corresponding to a vehicle impact.
Shorter was pacing up and down the incident room, he paused when he reached Ravi’s desk. “Maybe the killer’s accomplices were able to patch him up themselves. This might be a blind alley.”
“But it’s worth pursuing, boss. There are only two major hospitals with an A&E department within our search area.”
Tony rested his bulk on the desk. “If we draw a blank with those, maybe we should make an appeal through the press again. Perhaps a business noticed one of their employees missed a couple of days at work following the murder - or turned up with unexplained injuries.”
“Or a partner or family member,” Ravi continued the line of thought. “This man may have refused to go to the doctors, making a loved one suspicious.”
Tony got wearily to his feet. “I’ll prepare a press release. The last appeal we made bore fruit, it’s worth trying again.”
They were interrupted by DC Hawkes, who had pushed back his chair and made his way across the room, he was shaking his head. “No joy with Stirling or Fort William, sir. We’re going to extend the search area now.”
Tony sighed. “Good work, son. Just keep trying. It’s all we can do.”
*
Ravi was lying in bed beside Rupali. He observed the way her long, silky hair splayed out over the duvet between them. She was fast asleep. Ambika had been playing her up all day. His wife was exhausted, as she was most of the time, with a toddler and baby to look after.
His mind wandered to the meeting he’d had with Richard McGill’s widow. The woman’s raw grief and wide, appealing eyes had made him drawn to want to help her. He yearned to ease her suffering. But their investigations were getting nowhere.
By the end of the day, Hawkes and Benson had contacted every major hospital in Scotland. They’d identified a couple of possibilities, but further phone calls and checks had eliminated these individuals as potential suspects in the murder of McGill.
Shorter had also received a call from a police officer at the local station in Bearsden. Eleanor Tasker’s son, Boris, had played truant from his expensive day school. Because of his age, the headmistress contacted the police. A search was launched. He was quickly found in a local park, sitting on the swing eating a bag of sweets he’d bought from a corner shop. Knowing about the murder case, one of the bobbies had decided it was worth informing Cleland CID of the incident.
Ravi felt deeply sorry for the lad. Firstly, he’d had to contend with his parents’ nasty divorce, then his father gets brutally murdered. Despite the money they’d inherited, he wondered if those kids would ever fully recover from it.
Ravi tried to put these thoughts from his mind. Sleep stubbornly would not come. There was so much about the case which remained unresolved. He knew that peace would only be found when these questions were finally answered, and the murderer brought to justice.
He turned over, sliding his arms around his wife, resting his hand on the curve of her stomach. She gently stirred, leaning back into his embrace. Ravi placed his lips against the softness of her dark hair, filling his mind with images of her and the children until the light of dawn finally filtered into the room.
Chapter 25
Present Day
The clouds had lifted by the time Ravi reached the village of St Torbin in Cornwall. The sun was blinking its rays across the windscreen. His impression of the area was improving by the second.
It didn’t take him long to drive the length of the village, as the place consisted only of a main street, a church, and a sprinkling of houses along the road leading out of town. He pulled onto the grass verge outside the final property in St Torbin, the one he knew had belonged to the Trelawny family back in 2003.
The front garden was no longer secluded by Conifer trees. In fact, the entire plot had been cleared and a large, executive new build sat at its centre. The detective assumed the old bungalow must have been bulldozed to make way for it.
Ravi eased the hire car back onto the road. There was no one living here any longer who could provide him with information about Jack Trelawny’s murder. Instead, he made a U-turn, powering away from the moorland village and towards the coast.
*
Waves were crashing onto the shore below. Ravi stood on the clifftop for a while, absorbing the unrestricted view of the Atlantic Ocean. In this moment, he imagined bringing Rupali here, perhaps to stay in one of the whitewashed hotels by the sea.
Turning his attention to the task in hand, Ravi crossed the clifftop road and approached one of the pretty cottages that enjoyed this wonderful vista. The door was answered at his knock.
Diane Trelawny stood on the threshold. She wore a fitted cotton dress, with a thin scarf wrapped around her shoulders. “DI Stevens? Please come inside.”
The sitting room was at the front of the property and took good advantage of its commanding position. A padded window seat curved round in a crescent-shape and Ravi was drawn to sit there.
“I’ve made a pot of coffee,” she explained. “But I can make tea if you’d prefer?”
“No, coffee would be great, thanks.”
Diane returned minutes later, placing the tray on the table between them.
Ravi glanced about him at the bright, pleasant surroundings. “Do you live here alone?”
“Oh yes, the children moved out a few years ago now. Nicola is working in the United States. She’s got a boyfriend out there, so I’m certain they’ll stay.” She offered him the milk jug. “I’m very pleased for her. I can understand why she wouldn’t have wanted to remain here. A fresh start was needed.”
“I can appreciate that.” He sipped the coffee, which was very good. “But you have stayed close to the old family home yourself, Mrs Trelawny?”
She smiled sadly. “It’s different for me. After Jack was killed, all I had were my memories. It was too late to start again. I needed to be near to him. He’s buried in the churchyard in Castleford, you see.”
“You weren’t particularly old when your husband died. Nobody would have blamed you if you’d moved on.”
Diane shivered, pulling her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “Jack was the love of my life. To see him so badly injured, his life leaking out onto the floor of our own house, was too much for me to overcome. There will be those who think I’m a weak person for not making more of my existence in the years since he was killed. I’ve devoted my time to making sure the children have as good a life as they can under the circumstances. As for me, I have my books and my view. It’s all I need.”
Ravi was suddenly put in mind of Holly, locking herself away in her parents’ big old house, simply tending the garden and eschewing the hustle and bustle of the outside world. He shook the thought from his head. “Mrs Trelawny, I really appreciate you agreeing to meet with me. I know it can’t be easy.”
“It’s been a long time since Jack was killed. I don’t mind talking about it. In fact, I’m always glad that people still remember him. The world seems to move on so incredibly quickly, sometimes I feel left behind.”
Ravi was relieved. “If I’m honest, I’m not even sure what I hope to achieve by re-examining what happened to him. As I explained on the phone, the case I worked on in Scotland had similarities to the tragic death of your husband but also many differences.”
She nodded. “Yes, I looked it up online after we spoke. I agree it doesn’t seem exactly the same, but certain common factors did jump out at me.”
Ravi crinkled his brow. “Such as?”
She leant forward in her chair. “The article I read was an interview with the widow, published several years after her husband was killed. She described how they heard nothing of the killer’s approach. It was a
s if he had appeared out of nowhere, which had seemed so odd, considering how remote their cottage was.”
“Did that ring a bell for you?”
“Yes, I was in the bedroom at the back of the house, but I heard nothing until the gunshot itself sounded. I rushed out immediately, but Bradley Wynne was no longer in sight, nor could I hear him making his get-away.”
“Wynne arrived and left on foot. He knew the area well, even at night.”
“Exactly, our bungalow was set back on the moor itself. We had no working outside light. It would have been pitch dark in late December. The murder could only have been carried out by someone familiar with the property and the landscape surrounding it. Bradley Wynne had grown up in St Torbin, he instinctively knew his way around, he didn’t need the light to lead him.”
“So, you’re suggesting the killer of Richard McGill may have been the same? Should we have been looking for a local man, someone who knew the cottage well, for example?”
Diane nodded. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”
Ravi considered this. “But the difference in our case was the use of the torch. The killer asked for it and then removed it from the scene. We took this to mean he needed it for his get-away, to find his way in the absolute darkness of that remote place. We also believe he may have been hit by a vehicle and wounded on the road leading away from the cottage.”
Diane frowned. “I didn’t know that. This information puts a whole new perspective on things. Your killer didn’t know the terrain at all, he may not have realised he was on a dangerous road. Bradley Wynne cut across country as soon as he fled our house. He would have known there was only one road in and out of the village. If he was on it, the police would have found him straight away.”
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