Dead Reckoning: The Freeman Files Series: Book 14

by Ted Tayler

  “What was Operation Overlord,” asked Blessing.

  “The D-Day landings in June 1944,” said Alex. “We keep forgetting how young you are, Blessing.”

  “Didn’t you study WWII at school, Blessing?” asked Gus.

  “History wasn’t my favourite subject, guv. We studied Joseph Lister and the American Plains Indians.”

  “I think I saw them at the Corn Exchange,” said Neil. “Terrible name for a band.”

  Alex shook his head. Neil loved a joke.

  “All roads in the area around the deserted village are closed, I imagine, guv?” said Alex.

  “Yes, because they lie within the Imber Range live firing area,” said Gus.

  “So you can’t get near to the village except on those special occasions?” asked Lydia.

  “If you know the way, it’s possible to cover the complete perimeter of the range on public footpaths,” said Gus. “Suzie told me last night she could ride around the Copehill Down facility on her horse. No doubt she could find a way around Imber, too, if the need arose.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Luke and Divya stood to one side with their cups of coffee while Gus and the others discussed the maps.

  “So, you’ll ask Arjun if he knows of any eligible bachelors seeking a cuddly, intelligent, and ambitious young Nigerian lady?”

  “I will, Luke,” said Divya, “but if he’s as busy as my husband, Blessing might only see him once every couple of weeks.”

  “We do have a backup plan,” said Luke.

  “I haven’t known Blessing for long,” said Divya, “but she wouldn’t agree with tricking her father with a pretend suitor.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Luke. “We need the genuine article or nothing.”

  “I’ll ask Arjun when I see him next. He’ll do his best, and I’ll call you with an update. Thanks for the coffee, Luke; I’d better get back.”

  Divya handed Luke her empty cup and crossed the room to the group of people huddled over the murder file and Suzie’s handheld map.

  “Thanks for inviting me up to your office. If you need anything more from the Hub to help with this case you’re working on, you know where we are.”

  “These maps are superb, Divya,” said Gus. “We’re just finalising where everything needs to go. For the rest of the morning, this office will resemble a Blue Peter challenge. Pins, rulers, and lengths of string. We can make inroads into the case now.”

  “No sticky back plastic then, Mr Freeman?” said Divya. “Gosh, that takes me back.”

  With that, Divya gave Blessing a smile and a wave and headed for the lift.

  Lydia went to the stationery cupboard and retrieved the items Gus had mentioned.

  “Right, guv,” she said. “Where do you want to start?”

  Luke fetched his notes from his desk. Alex and Neil prepared to help Lydia.

  “What shall we do, guv?” asked Blessing as she and Gus appeared to be surplus to requirements.

  “I haven’t studied the interview schedule Luke prepared for me yet, Blessing. A quick check to ensure I’m happy with the order, and then you can call people to fix appointments.

  “Got it, guv,” said Blessing.

  Gus noticed her envious glance towards the others standing by the map on the back wall.

  “Don’t worry, Blessing,” he said, “you’ll get your turn.”

  “It’s okay, guv,” said Blessing. “Andy Carlton, my old DI, told me when a team is successful, it’s as much because of the efforts of those who handle the mundane tasks as to the detective who makes the arrest. I just realised how much I would miss this if I were to marry Ekene Kanu.”

  “Tomorrow evening with soon be here,” said Gus. “Don’t forget to ask your mother for the young man’s number. It can often help to get your retaliation in first.”

  Blessing wondered whether Gus would ever run out of proverbs or adages. She didn’t always understand them, but this one felt appropriate.

  Gus searched through the folders and papers on his desk.

  “Here we are. Wade Pinnock, the young lad you thought was the place to start. Where did he live? Did it say in the murder file?”

  “Netheravon, guv,” said Blessing. “Wade still lived at home back then. His father witnessed the activity at Glenhead Farm on Saturday evening as he returned from watching football in Andover.”

  “That fits,” said Gus. “He would have used the A303 as far as the Amesbury roundabout, then taken the third exit towards Durrington. Wade said his father drove past at around six o’clock. Right, find out whether Wade has moved out, fix a time, and we’ll go from there to speak to the two detectives, Porter and Devereux.”

  “What if Wade Pinnock isn’t immediately available, guv?” asked Blessing. “Do I threaten him with uniformed officers collecting him from home or his place of work?”

  “Use your judgement, Blessing,” said Gus. “I’ve got nothing to do except sit on my hands until you arrange my first interview. I’ll use the time preparing the questions I want to ask each of the people on this list. Shout, when you’re ready to leave.”

  Blessing knew what she needed to do. A call to Wade’s home address in 2015 revealed that he and his girlfriend, Hannah Rose, moved in together six months after the murder. They lived and worked in Salisbury, where Hannah was a reporter with the Salisbury Journal. Wade Pinnock worked for a car body repair firm. Wade’s mother told Blessing the couple had at last fixed a date for the wedding next April.

  Blessing rang the garage. The man who answered nearly deafened Blessing when he yelled for Wade Pinnock to come to the phone.

  “Wade Pinnock speaking. Who is this?”

  “Detective Constable Umeh, from Wiltshire Police Crime Review Team,” said Blessing. “Can you ask your boss to let you use his office for an hour from half-past ten, please? We need to talk with you concerning the Kendal Guthrie murder.”

  “I’m busy, working on a car. The customer’s hoping to pick it up at lunchtime.”

  “I know what it’s like to wait for a car to get returned to you in good working order,” said Blessing. “If we have to send someone to fetch you and keep you hanging around at Bourne Hill police station for half a day, your customer’s joy will get delayed even further. My boss and I will see you in one hour. Goodbye.”

  Gus carried on sketching out questions for later use and risked a smile.

  “All set, guv,” said Blessing, gathering her things ready to accompany her boss on a trip to the cathedral city.

  “That was lucky, Blessing,” said Gus. “We’re off far quicker than I thought.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it, guv,” she replied with a grin.

  As Gus eased the Focus into Church Street, he asked Blessing where they were headed.

  “It’s on Churchfields Road, guv,” she replied.

  “Not the Industrial Estate again?” he asked.

  “Not quite, guv,” said Blessing, “four hundred yards past the entrance if I’m reading this map correctly. My sense of direction isn’t great.”

  “It runs in the family,” said Gus. “I remember.”

  Fifty minutes later, Gus turned off the Churchfields Road into a small car park in front of a single storey building. The dashboard clock read twenty-five past ten. The addition of office space to the original building looked to have taken place in the Sixties. The high-roofed black corrugated iron workshop behind it was where the hard work had happened since between the wars.

  “Wade Pinnock should be in the offices somewhere,” said Blessing.

  Gus led them into the office building and, as expected, came face-to-face with a receptionist.

  The young girl stopped filing her nails and sighed.

  “Yes?”

  “Wiltshire Police,” said Gus. “We’re here to see Wade Pinnock.”

  “He’s in Mr Peter’s office, over there,” said the girl, nodding towards a large room in the building's corner.

  “Don’t get up,” said Gus. �
�We’ll find our way, I’m sure.”

  The receptionist went back to filing her nails. Gus and Blessing found a nervous-looking Wade Pinnock sitting on the window sill of his boss’s office.

  “You can sit in Mr Peter’s chair if you wish, Wade,” said Gus. “I’m sure he won’t mind, I’m Mr Freeman, and you’ve already spoken to DC Umeh.”

  “I thought I’d put the Guthrie business behind me,” said Wade. “What’s happened for you to dig it up again?”

  “The original enquiry didn’t find the killer, Wade,” said Gus. “No unsolved murder case is ever closed. We review cold cases, hoping to find answers to questions that remained unanswered. We’ve both read the interview you gave to DI Porter and DS Coleman three years ago. Take us through it again, and we’ll see whether you remember something new, or we can ask a question the detectives didn’t think of at the time.”

  “What made you respond to the appeal the detectives issued, Wade?” asked Blessing.

  “I thought it was the right thing to do,” said Wade. “I was in the pub, listening to the landlord asking a customer if he’d heard about the incident at Glenhead Farm.”

  “Can we go back, Wade?” asked Gus. “How long had you been in the pub before you heard any of that conversation?”

  “I picked up Hannah, my girlfriend, fiancée now, and we drove out to the Traveller’s Rest. I suppose it was between eight o’clock and a quarter past when we arrived. The bar wasn’t crowded, but there were enough people inside that you had to wait to get served. It was too small to have over two people serving anyhow. The Traveller’s Rest has closed now, did you know?”

  Gus nodded.

  “Alf, the landlord, was serving a customer ahead of me, and he acknowledged an old bloke sat on a stool at the bar. He must have just walked in the door because Rosie, the barmaid, called out that she’d get his pint of bitter in two ticks. She called him Mr Thornton. Then Rosie asked if he’d heard about the excitement in Durrington. Mr Thornton said nothing exciting had happened there in his lifetime. Rosie explained Alf had heard the police were at Kendal Guthrie’s farm. I was eager to get our drinks and get back to Hannah, but something Mr Thornton said annoyed me.”

  “Can you remember what it was?” asked Gus.

  “He said he hoped it wasn’t something trivial,” said Wade. “That’s what made me butt in on their private conversation. I mean, someone had died; that’s not trivial. I told him my Dad saw people carrying a body to a van, and police were at the farm gathering evidence. My Dad saw people dressed in those protective suits they wear, you know.”

  “As the afternoon progressed,” said Gus, “the detectives realised they were dealing with a murder. Forensic evidence must get gathered as soon as possible at the crime scene. Carry on, Wade. You’re doing well.”

  “Rosie carried on talking to Alf and this Jim Thornton. She spoke about Friday night and the storm. Only half a dozen people were in the bar, and one of them was Kendal Guthrie. He turned up at around half-past nine and spent every minute he was there slagging off the others one by one. The landlord said something to Jim Thornton that made no sense to me that Guthrie dying changed things for him, and a bloke called Bob too.”

  “Bob Ellison?” asked Blessing.

  “Yeah, that could be the name,” said Wade. “Alf wondered whether Wes Guthrie would follow in his father’s footsteps. Rosie asked whether the police would visit the pub. I told them to call you and say what time he left. Alf said it would take Guthrie twenty to twenty-five minutes to drive home. That’s when the three of them started discussing the last few minutes the pub was open the night before. I heard Rosie remind Alf he’d told Guthrie to get out and banned him from coming back. She mentioned several names and what they were doing at five to ten past ten. The names meant nothing to me, so it went in one ear and out the other. I commented on Alf banning Guthrie. Several places had done the same thing after they got fed up with his behaviour. I told them again to call you and tell you everything that went on that night. That’s when Alf asked what I wanted to drink.”

  “What did you make of that?” asked Gus.

  “It felt like he wanted to get rid of me,” said Wade.

  “Interesting,” said Gus. “What happened next?”

  “I took the drinks back to our table,” said Wade. “Hannah and I got chatting to a couple sat next to us. It was good to talk about something else, to be honest.”

  “Did you stay for another drink?” asked Blessing.

  “We made the ones we had last as long as possible. I told the other detectives that a chap came in thirty or forty minutes later who Alf and Jim Thornton knew. Several others in the bar knew him too, but I’d not see him before. Hannah and I were too far away from the bar to hear what they were discussing, but it must have been the murder.”

  “What makes you say that?” asked Blessing.

  “The new chap turned around and stared at us after Alf nodded his head in our direction. Jim looked our way, too. Hannah wanted to drink up and leave after that. She went to the loo, and I saw Rosie come from behind the bar to collect glasses, wipe over the tabletops, and put chairs and stools back where they belonged. As I sat waiting for Hannah, I noticed the three men were watching Rosie. She seemed distracted as if she had something on her mind. Perhaps, she was making her mind up about leaving. Only a few weeks later, she was dead. I suppose you know that too, don’t you?”

  “We do,” said Gus. “You never returned to the pub after that night, did you?” asked Gus.

  “We had a hundred bars to choose from,” said Wade. “It wasn’t the easiest pub to get to, and Hannah thought the place boring, and those three blokes spooked her.”

  “Did you hear anything else from other people not in the pub that night relating to the murder?” asked Gus.

  “Not really,” said Wade Pinnock. “The odd rumour that led to nothing. Somebody reckoned Wes Guthrie did it. Then they found out that he was in bed with another woman when his Dad died. The gossip mongers then switched their attention to a farmer near West Lavington who thought Guthrie cheated him over a business deal. That might have been the case, but half a dozen other names got thrown in the ring. Each man held a grievance against Guthrie for doing the same to them.”

  “Any of them might have wanted Guthrie dead,” said Gus. “But the police checked their alibis and found they were nowhere near Glenhead Farm in the tiny time frame that defined the fatal attack.”

  “That’s right, and two months later, everything went quiet. Life went on. The only excitement was hearing of Wes Guthrie’s divorce, then that of his sister, and the fuss made when Wes married his girlfriend.”

  “It wasn’t popular,” said Gus.

  “You can say that again,” said Wade. “I can’t remember people getting so animated on the Plain as when we heard they planned to marry and emigrate to New Zealand.”

  “What did it have to do with people who live in the region?” asked Blessing. “It’s a free country. Wes and Tamsin were at liberty to marry and go wherever they wished.”

  “People in the countryside don’t think that way,” said Wade. “They’re concerned for the environment, conservation, protecting rare species of birds, butterflies, and moths. We must reserve the land for agricultural use at all costs. Where will youngsters who live in the middle of the Plain work if people like Guthrie continue to buy up farm after farm? His family had farmed there for generations. Wes could have carried on the traditions, helped to protect the future, but Helen was never interested right from the start. She didn’t even get a pony when she was five years old. That’s not natural around here. Why do you think she disappeared to Australia as soon as she married? She hated farming. Now she’s overseeing the whole business. Any chance Helen Guthrie gets to sell to a developer will be it. She will take the money and run. One of the last semi-natural dry grassland and scrubland areas in the world will get bulldozed into the ground.”

  “Conservation is a subject close to your heart then, Wade
,” said Gus.

  “Not really,” he replied. “Hannah writes nature and wildlife features for the newspaper. I get what we’re doing to the planet drummed into me every day at home. The part about a lack of jobs and homes for local young people was me. A cottage up the road from my Dad would have suited us, but we’re paying through the nose for a box on a soulless housing estate. The places my grandparents would have moved into are selling for silly money and are second homes for Londoners who only come here at weekends.”

  Gus knew the truth of that. What he didn’t know was whether someone would kill Kendal Guthrie to prevent the lands his forefathers had farmed for generations from getting sold to a developer. The case was suddenly heading in the opposite direction to the one he’d thought.

  “Thanks for your time, Wade,” said Gus. “Thank your boss, too. If you remember anything you think could help us with our investigation, please get in touch. You can get back to fixing that car now.”

  “The boss put someone else on it,” said Wade. “I hope you find whoever did it. Nobody had a kind word to say about Guthrie, but what happened wasn’t right.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Gus.

  They left the office together. Wade Pinnock turned left and headed through a door into the main garage. Noise levels in the office increased significantly until the door closed. Gus and Blessing turned right and passed the girl in reception on their way to the front door. She was touching up her make-up.

  “It must be lunchtime,” said Gus as they reached the Ford Focus. “I reckon she’ll follow us outside in a minute.”

  “I’ll make the calls for your next appointment, guv,” said Blessing.

  They sat in the car, and Blessing called Bourne Hill to speak to DI Keith Porter.

  The office door opened, and the receptionist came out. She didn’t spot Gus and Blessing, the blue sky, or the car park's rough surface because her smartphone was more interesting than the world surrounding her.