by Ted Tayler
Traffic cops termed it ‘double bubble’ because as well as getting a driver for speeding, they could pile on charges for driving while disqualified or without a licence. The vast majority of drivers they stopped didn’t have insurance either. As they sat in the car filling out yet another piece of paperwork, the officers slipped in the ‘have you had a drink today’ question. That was another tick in the box. But their best opportunity to get a full house was when they stood by the driver’s window at the initial stop. They didn’t need to concoct a reason to search the car. Almost every young driver they pulled over had a strong smell of cannabis inside his vehicle. So, even if the lad passed the breathalyser, there was a good chance the drug wipe would come up trumps with a fail, then the search uncovered various amounts of weed.
Maxine ticked off the possible offences on her fingers. On a good day, traffic could get six ‘results’ from a stop that tied them up for a mere few hours. The courts let most offenders off with community service or a suspended sentence, so what was the point? Still, the ‘results’ counted towards an improving picture when compiling annual statistics that included every conceivable type of crime.
Meanwhile, Maxine had lost count of the number of hours she’d worked on the Guthrie case. Someone must have logged the whole team’s hours somewhere, plus the input from forensics and the computer nerds. They must have been astronomic.
Maxine reflected on how Keith had run the investigation and whether she would have done things differently. She’d attended the autopsy first thing on Monday, just two days after the murder. The police surgeon confirmed the victim died from blunt force trauma. Kendal Guthrie received two severe blows to the top of his head from behind and one to the right-hand side just above the ear. They never identified the murder weapon, but the surgeon described it as likely to be a heavy, cylindrical instrument with no perceivable grooves or raised parts.
Maxine had never understood why he couldn’t call it an iron bar and have done with it.
Kendal Guthrie suffered bruising to both sides of his torso. The bruising was consistent with Guthrie having fallen forwards following the initial blow to the top of his head and struck the corner of the chest freezer on the right of the mudroom. The police surgeon thought Guthrie could have regained his footing and been hit on the top and the left-hand side of the head.
As the attacker was now facing him, it opened up the possibility the attacker was left-handed. The bruising on the other side of his torso could have occurred when he fell for the last time and struck the metal workbench on the left-hand side of the mudroom.
Maxine was about to risk questioning that comment when the police surgeon added that, of course, the sequence of events could have been quite different. He couldn’t say for definite whether the attacker was right-handed or left-handed.
Keith Porter always believed the attacker followed Guthrie through the mudroom door, whacked him three times over the head, and the bruising occurred as the big man hit both objects on his way to the ground. There was hardly room to move. Adding several other permutations was unhelpful. If they had found the weapon, it would have been far more beneficial.
Keith’s view was that there was no specific evidence of a struggle having taken place. There was nothing to prove Guthrie saw the face of his attacker before he died. Forensics found nothing clutched in his hands, no incriminating material under his fingernails. The only evidence that someone other than Kendal Guthrie was in the mudroom that night were the three wounds to his skull that resulted in his death.
Maxine flicked through the notes provided by WPC Sarah Saunders and PC Zak Drake. Keith had taken one look at Zak’s report and decided it supported his version of events.
“There you go, Max,” he said. “When Drake looked inside the mudroom, he noticed the light wasn’t on. Saunders missed that. It was broad daylight when they arrived at the farm. But when Guthrie got home the night before, the first thing he’d do as he walked into the mudroom would be to flick the light switch. It was pitch black and blowing a gale outside.”
“The killer could have turned it off again as they left, Keith,” Maxine had reasoned. “The security lighting would have stayed on long enough for Guthrie to get indoors. Once he’d locked the door behind him, surely, Guthrie would have been able to negotiate his way to the kitchen door, into the hallway, and upstairs? He’d lived there for donkey’s years and no doubt made it through the house in that fashion a hundred times before.”
“My bet is he didn’t turn it on, Max,” Keith had argued. “Yes, I agree the security lighting allowed him to get the key in the lock and get inside, but those lights would have gone off during the attack. The way I see it, Guthrie got struck three times in the darkness. That’s why the three blows weren’t in roughly the same place. Guthrie was staggering or falling, and the attacker caught him on the side of the head. The surgeon couldn’t prove the sequence of blows, anyway. Because it was dark, Guthrie couldn’t avoid hitting something on the way down. The narrow gap between the freezer and bench would allow a fit person to walk to the inner door without mishap. But it would prove nigh on impossible for a tall, heavy, elderly man reeling from a sustained attack with an iron bar.”
Maxine had conceded that Keith’s version was the most plausible.
Results from forensics on items collected outside the mudroom were as useless as those gathered inside. The deluge on Friday night obliterated any footprints or tyre tracks left behind. If there had been anything on the lane leading from Netheravon Road to the farmhouse, they were long gone. More than half a dozen vehicles had used it since Wes Guthrie arrived to check on his father.
Kendal Guthrie had lived in the area all his life, so the number of trips he had saved on his satnav was negligible. He knew his way around without the aid of a box on the dashboard. Forensics found nothing to tell them where he’d been on Friday night. Keith got a couple of Detective Constables trawling through CCTV footage. As Maxine predicted, the only cameras capturing the Bentley in the week before the murder were on major roads. There was little coverage on the wide-open areas of Salisbury Plain.
Keith produced a list of names he wanted to tackle while the trail was still warm.
“Wes Guthrie and his wife,” he’d said. “Then the two farmers on either side of Guthrie’s farm, Lawless and Meaden. That will be the schedule for tomorrow.
So, on Tuesday morning, Wes Guthrie arrived at the station for an interview.
Ten minutes in, Keith and Maxine had thought they saw a chance to solve the case. Wes Guthrie admitted lying to them, just as Keith suspected. He had left his drinking buddies at eleven o’clock. Maxine had asked him where he went after that. Wes gave the address and telephone number of a girlfriend, Tamsin Meredith. When Keith asked why he hadn’t told the truth when they spoke to him on Saturday afternoon, Guthrie had said he didn’t want his wife to find out he was playing away.
The surprise revelation interrupted the flow of Keith’s questioning. They needed to check Wes Guthrie was now telling the truth. The bright light they’d seen several minutes earlier was fading. Keith suspended the interview and decided to resume after they had spoken to the girlfriend. He chose to talk to Millie Guthrie next and called Reception to get her brought to the interview room.
Wes Guthrie wanted the final word before he returned to Reception to wait for his wife.
“You went to a lot of trouble for a dodgy number plate, DI Porter. Did it give you a buzz, hearing your pals pulled me over less than two minutes after leaving the farm?”
“I don’t know what you’re on about, Mr Guthrie,” Keith had replied.
Maxine had kept quiet. She thought what Keith had done was sneaky and vindictive.
Millie Guthrie had told them she suspected Wes was having an affair for weeks. She confirmed Wes got home at two o’clock in the morning. Wes had told Keith and Maxine on Saturday he and his father rarely socialized. Mille said they saw Kendal more when his wife, Poppy, was alive. Poppy doted on her two grands
ons, as Helen and Guy didn’t appear to have any interest in starting a family.
Millie wanted to know when the police would release her father-in-law’s body so that the family could arrange the funeral. Helen was flying from Melbourne once they could confirm a date. Maxine told her it wouldn’t be this week. It was more likely to be the following Monday or Tuesday.
“That tart Wes has been seeing had the nerve to call the house and say she was sorry for our loss,” Millie had said. “If she turns up at the funeral, that will be it. I’ll be walking out and taking the kids with me.”
Maxine wondered how the marriage could survive, even if Ms Meredith stayed away.
Keith didn’t think there was anything useful Millie Guthrie could add to the investigation at this stage, so he told her they would be in touch if they had further questions.
“Let’s take a break, Max,” he’d said. “Where’s that phone number for the girlfriend?”
Keith had called Ms Meredith and invited her to attend the station first thing after lunch.
The second Tamsin Meredith entered the interview room, Maxine knew Keith Porter would be like putty in her hands. Tamsin had the lot. A great body, legs that went on forever. And although she wasn’t a classically beautiful woman, Tamsin oozed sex appeal.
Maxine watched Keith change from a competent and responsible Detective Inspector and turn into a puppy rolling on the floor in front of its mistress, begging to have its tummy rubbed.
“I have been seeing Wes for three months,” said Tamsin. “It’s not a casual fling. We’re very much in love, and when the funeral’s over, we’ll be together. We had arranged for him to drop by my place after saying goodbye to his old school friends. He arrived at ten past eleven and left my bed at twenty minutes to two. The poor dear walked home in that rain. Maybe I was silly to call him on Sunday morning, but he wasn’t picking up his mobile phone. Why his wife got so stroppy with me, I don’t know.”
When Keith realised what a piece of work Ms Meredith was, he stopped drooling. After Tamsin left the room, Keith had sighed.
“More negative results, Max. I don’t see us shaking Wes Guthrie’s alibi, and the wife and girlfriend didn’t murder Kendal Guthrie. Let’s hope we can get a lead to follow when we speak to Guthrie’s neighbours.”
Doug Lawless and Harry Meaden told much the same story. Maxine wondered whether they’d sat up last night running through it together. Kendal Guthrie was a tough, uncompromising business person who didn’t let anyone get in his way. Both farmers were surprised it hadn’t happened years ago.
After what seemed a lifetime, they received a report on the contents of Guthrie’s mobile phone. Their victim had many business and personal contacts, and Maxine had generated a list of interviewees, starting with those people he’d spoken with most recently.
Lists were a constant thread in the method Keith adopted.
He and Maxine traced the contacts, crossed off any they had already seen, and one by one eliminated them from their enquiries. Once they had exhausted the frequent flyers, they passed the list of casual contacts to more junior team members. The minions had no better luck than their superiors.
Three weeks into the investigation, Keith called a halt while they undertook a review.
“What haven’t we done?” he’d asked.
“We haven’t asked the public for information, guv,” one of the DC’s had offered.
“What, and get swamped with calls from idiots who always confess to a killing? Or the time-wasters who will follow our cars on a wild goose chase and post the pictures on Instagram. No thanks.”
“We just need someone to tell us they saw him Friday night,” Maxine had said. “If we phrase the question correctly, we may get enough sensible responses to make it worthwhile.”
Keith had reluctantly agreed to Maxine’s idea.
The first person to call Maxine at the station was Wade Pinnock. He said he knew precisely where Kendal Guthrie was on Friday night. She invited him to drop in after work that day.
Keith wasn’t expecting miracles when he saw the young lad. Maxine took the lead. She might get more out of him.
“So, Wade,” she said. “How do you think you can assist us with our enquiries?”
“I took my girlfriend out for a drink on Saturday night, the day after the murder,” said Wade. “We went to the Traveller’s Rest out Tilshead way.”
“Are you even eighteen?” asked Keith.
“Nineteen, actually,” said Wade. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Just take your time, Wade,” said Maxine, “and tell us in your own words.”
“I found us a table in the corner and went to the bar to get the drinks. I heard the girl behind the bar ask an old chap sat on a stool whether he’d heard about the excitement at Durrington. He said no, and the girl said the landlord had heard that you lot were at Kendal Guthrie’s farm. The old chap made me sit up and take notice because he said he hoped it wasn’t anything trivial. I thought that was disrespectful, as my Dad had seen a body coming out of the house on a trolley. That was at six o’clock when my Dad was driving home. Then the barmaid said Guthrie had been there last night and was rude to everyone. She wanted to know how he died. I said nobody knew for certain at that stage whether it was natural causes or something else. The landlord spoke to the old chap and said that Guthrie being dead changed things for him. He mentioned another bloke too, but I can’t remember his name. When the barmaid asked whether the police would visit the pub, I told her they should call you. So you knew what time Guthrie left, and you could work out what time he should have got home. Oh, yeah, the landlord said he’d closed early because of the weather, and it was ten minutes after ten when everyone left. Then the barmaid reminded the landlord he’d told Kendal Guthrie he was barred. I told them again you would want to hear from them about that, but nobody noticed. The landlord suddenly realised I still wanted drinks and took my order.”
“Do you know the names of the customers that were in the bar?” Maxine had asked.
“Alf is the landlord, but I don’t use the pub often enough to know customers by name. Another bloke came in later on and was chatting to Alf. My girlfriend reckoned they were talking about me. They looked over to the corner where we sat. That’s all I can tell you. We haven’t been back since.”
“You’ve been a great help, Wade,” said Maxine. “Thank you for coming in.”
“It was the right thing to do,” said Wade.
When Wade left them, Keith hadn’t seemed that interested in what they’d learned. Maxine thought it typical. As it wasn’t Keith’s idea to ask the public for help, he wouldn’t accept it could be significant.
“Think about it, Max,” he’d said. “Kendal Guthrie made enemies wherever he went. It stands to reason there would be similar conversations in every pub on the Plain that Saturday night.”
“But Wade Pinnock heard that Kendal Guthrie was in the Traveller’s Rest at around ten o’clock. We’ve been desperate to learn where he was, and now we know you dismiss it as irrelevant.”
“It might be relevant, Max,” Keith said, “but not everyone who wanted the bloke dead was in the pub that night. His killer might have planned this for months. They could have driven from outside the county to Glenhead Farm and hung around for a couple of hours, waiting for Guthrie to get home. Don’t build up your hopes. We’ll visit the pub, speak to the landlord and get him to identify the others in the pub that night. Let’s see where it leads.”
Alf Collett, the landlord at the Traveller’s Rest, had been surprised to see them. Yes, Kendal Guthrie had dropped by the pub that night for one drink. He wasn’t a regular visitor. Kendal had left the bar at around ten past ten, along with the others. Alf told Keith and Maxine that he’d closed early to let poor Rosie get home to Salisbury.
“Rosie is your barmaid, is that right?” Keith had asked. “Why did you say poor Rosie?”
“Rosie Ritchens?” Alf Collett had replied. “Don’t you recall the nam
e?”
“The young girl who died in Majorca ten days ago,” Maxine had said. “It was her first foreign holiday. She got hit by a car as she walked along a road outside town in the early hours. Police believed Rosie staggered into the path of oncoming traffic because she was drunk.”
Alf Collett told them Rosie stopped working at the pub two weeks after the murder. She had wanted to find a job closer to home to save the cost of driving backwards and forwards, and the murder had unsettled her. She didn’t feel safe travelling home at night alone.
Alf had spoken to Rosie on the phone just before she flew out to Palma. Rosie had booked a fortnight’s holiday to top up her tan, and relax, before starting work at a pub in Salisbury city centre. Alf said she was excited about the future.
Maxine had asked if Alf made a habit of making social calls to staff after leaving his employment. He replied that he wanted to hear if she’d found a new job. He had been sorry to see her go. Rosie was a good worker, and they were thin on the ground.
Keith pressed Alf for the names of the other people drinking in the Traveller’s Rest that Friday night. Alf said Dave Vickers had cycled over from Shrewton. Vickers was the manager of a building society branch in Amesbury. He was single and in his early fifties. He added that Jim Thornton and Oscar Wallington had also stopped by for a while.
Maxine made a note of the names and details of where they lived. She asked Alf Collett what they talked about that night. The landlord was vague on what people discussed. He said he wasn’t always listening. Maxine asked what caused him to tell Kendal Guthrie he wasn’t welcome in the pub in future, just before everyone went home.
Alf told them he ran a happy pub, where people knew there wouldn’t be any trouble. However, at the first signs of a customer looking ready to start a fight, he threw them out. He did the same if someone upset others with vulgar language or unwelcome comments. Zero tolerance was his motto, and Kendal Guthrie wasn’t the type of customer the place needed.
