Silent as the Grave

by Paul Gitsham

  Her grief had turned to a palpable anger. “It’s not just the money; it’s the stain on my record. My credit file is an absolute mess; nine months on and I’m still writing letters every week trying to sort it all out.”

  “Where is this Mateo now?”

  “The bastard is back with the mother of his two kids—two kids I knew nothing about. It turns out that when I thought he was out at work, he was around there playing happy families, trying to get back with her.” Her voice quietened. “I don’t know if I should be angry with her or sorry for her. I’m sure he’s fleecing her just like he did me.”

  “And Reggie knew about this?”

  “Yes, he helped me move all of Mateo’s belongings out. In fact it was his idea to give all of the stuff to the bailiffs when they turned up.” She smiled grimly. “A small victory I suppose, but you take them where you can.”

  It was another ten minutes before Tabitha Williamson’s best friend arrived and Warren and Hardwick were able to make their excuses and leave.

  “Well at least we have one name for the whiteboard,” Karen Hardwick said as they left the flat and headed back to the car.

  Warren was thoughtful. “Maybe. The question is: if this Mateo Menendez was the killer, what made him snap nine months after he split up with Reggie Williamson’s niece?”

  Chapter 4

  Mateo Menendez was much the way that Tabitha Williamson had described him—dark, tightly built and rather too flash for Warren’s taste. Despite his supposed Spanish upbringing, he spoke with a local accent. What she hadn’t mentioned was how small his head was. It was all that Warren could do not to stare openly at him. Karen Hardwick fussed with the tape recorder, studiously not looking his way.

  Warren knew that the science of phrenology—the diagnosing of a person’s intelligence by the shape of their skull—had long since been discredited. Similarly, within reason a person’s hat size had no bearing on their intelligence. Still, Warren found himself wondering how a full-size human brain could fit inside such a small skull. Up close the man’s mass of tight, black, curly hair did little to hide it.

  “Do you know this man?” Warren slid a recent photograph of Reggie Williamson across the desk. Tabitha Williamson had described an arrogant man, self-assured and full of self-confidence. True to form, he’d declined a solicitor for the interview, claiming he had nothing to hide. Therefore, Warren had decided against arresting the man. He would do so if he was unsatisfied with the man’s answers, but until now Menendez was merely helping with inquiries. Just as importantly, the twenty-four hour time limit for charging a suspect didn’t start until he was formally arrested and read his rights.

  Menendez barely glanced at the photograph. “Sure, Reggie Williamson. I dated his niece for a while.” The answer was smooth, unhurried. Warren’s hope that he might catch the man out in an easy lie had yet to bear fruit.

  “And would you say that you and Mr Williamson had a good relationship? How did he react when you and his niece broke up?”

  Menendez shrugged. “Reggie’s a nice enough bloke. He wasn’t very happy when Tabby and I split up, but that’s to be expected, I suppose.”

  Assuming that Tabitha Williamson was to be believed, that was a significant understatement of how Reggie Williamson had felt about Menendez. However, it wasn’t an overt lie. The jury was still out on the man’s honesty.

  “Can you tell us why you and Ms Williamson split up?”

  For the first time, Menendez’s cocky façade cracked. “Is this about Tabby? Is she OK? Has something happened to her?”

  Warren ignored Menendez’s question and repeated his own.

  “We weren’t getting along for a while. I got back with the mother of my kids—we decided to make a go of it again.”

  Again, something of a deviation from Tabitha Williamson’s version of events, but he wasn’t really lying, just downplaying some of the more unpleasant details to show himself in a better light—hardly an indication of guilt.

  Warren decided to change tack.

  “Tell me, what state were your finances in when you left Ms Williamson?”

  “I don’t see that’s any of your business, Detective.”

  “No, you’re right. I apologise.” Warren smiled briefly. “What I meant was, are you employed at the moment or were you back when you dated Ms Williamson?”

  “I’m unemployed at the moment; I’ve been out of full-time work for about two and a half years. I’m signed up to an employment agency, but there’s bugger all around here. I work when I can.”

  Still no obvious lies.

  “Did Ms Williamson know about this when you started dating?”

  Menendez licked his lips. “Sure, I guess so. We never really spoke about it.”

  “Seems strange that you dated all of that time and it never came up in conversation.”

  Menendez squirmed slightly. “Well we had a very passionate relationship.” He turned his gaze on Hardwick and smiled, showing a suspiciously white set of teeth. “You know how it is, everything’s exciting and you’re in love. You don’t talk about the little details.”

  “Like paying the bills or taking out payday loans in somebody else’s name?”

  Menendez returned his attention to Warren. “Is that what this is all about? We had an agreement and now she’s trying to claim that I set it all up in her name without her consent.” His voice dropped. “I feel really bad about hurting her.” He turned his attention back to Hardwick. “I loved her and didn’t want to upset her, but I also love my kids and when I got a chance to become a part of their lives again, well I had to take it. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “No, not really.” Hardwick’s tone was unyielding.

  Menendez turned his attention back to Warren, giving up on Hardwick for the time being. “Look, we were short of cash at the end of the month. The bills were all in my name, so when we arranged the loan, we transferred it directly into my account so that it could be paid out immediately, rather than having to wait for Tabby to transfer it from her account.”

  “So why didn’t you just arrange the loan in your name?”

  He snorted. “I’m unemployed. Even payday loan companies have some standards.”

  Warren doubted that the man’s story would stand up to serious scrutiny. He was sure that there would be a voice recording somewhere with Menendez’s voice making all of the arrangements. It was interesting how a male caller had managed to set up the deal on behalf of a female client. However, that wasn’t what he and Hardwick were here for.

  “Tell me, Mateo. Where were you Thursday evening?”

  The man thought for a moment. “I took the kids out to Maccy D’s then they played in the park until it got dark, then we went home. Candy—that’s my girlfriend, Candice—was out doing her Zumba class, so I put the kids to bed and watched TV.”

  “Which park was that?”

  “The kiddie play park up on the common.”

  “And can either of the children vouch for your whereabouts?”

  Menendez stared at him. “Tyson is three and a half. He can just about string a sentence together. Jayden is two. She still sleeps in nappies. What do you think they’re going to tell you?”

  Despite the man’s protestations, Warren felt a slight thrill. Menendez had been on Middlesbury Common on the night that Reggie Williamson had been killed and so far had no alibi.

  * * *

  Questioning of Reggie Williamson’s drinking partners had revealed nothing of interest. He and Smiths had been regulars at the Merchants’ Arms for as long as anyone could remember, popping by most nights for a pint after a brisk walk. Few people like to speak ill of the dead, but it truly seemed nobody had a bad word to say about Reggie. Sociable, but not too loud; generous enough to get his round in and pop a quid in the charity box, but not flashy; willing to chat about current events and engage in a bit of bar-room philosophy, but with fairly mainstream views and not too opinionated. A useful darts player who’d won more than his fair
share of pub quizzes, he was usually gracious enough to share his winnings—a round of drinks—with the runners-up.

  A few of the regulars had known him as he’d nursed his wife, when his trips to the pub had dwindled to once week. When she finally passed away, everyone had given a few pounds to Alzheimer’s Research in her memory, at his request. Since then there had been nobody special that anybody knew of.

  His conversation and demeanour in the past few weeks had been apparently unchanged. The only source of concern he’d mentioned was Smiths’ advancing years—she’d been slowing down lately and had a couple of accidents.

  “All in all, a pretty normal bloke who it seemed got on with his life and didn’t rub people up the wrong way,” summarised Tony Sutton.

  “Thanks, Tony. Pete, what have you got for us?” Detective Sergeant Kent was the unit’s resident expert on the use of the various databases that the force had access to. A squat man in his mid fifties with thinning hair that was more than compensated for by a full beard, he was edging close to retirement and had been helping train Detective Constable Gary Hastings in recent months. He was the officer in charge of coordinating information that came into the major incident desk that he’d help set up the previous night.

  “Not a lot. He was basically unknown to us. Our only contact was a naughty drivers’ course after being flashed by a speed camera on Hills Road in Cambridge—but then haven’t we all had that?” There were a few smiles, some sheepish, around the room. The stretch of road alongside Homerton College and the sixth form was notorious for its rigorously enforced thirty miles per hour limit—a necessary precaution given the number of darkly dressed, drink-addled student cyclists without lights wobbling up the road at all hours.

  “I contacted the council who confirmed that he worked for them for many years until taking early retirement to care for his wife, when he drew a reduced pension. A fair few in the Estates department remembered him and they’ve given us a list of people he worked with regularly.

  “On a similar note, forensics are still searching his house. Nothing of interest yet, but they have found the box file that he used to keep track of his part-time gardening jobs. Documents analysis are going through it and compiling a list of customer contacts.”

  “Good, pass them on to Tony when you have them to set up interviews. Anything else?”

  “The remainder of the mobile phone data from the cell dump is being collated as we speak, but there’s not a lot we can do with it until we get a more precise time of death. Those cell towers serve hundreds of houses each. We’re looking at over a million individual network access requests for the twenty-four hours between Thursday afternoon and Friday alone. Bloody smartphones, pinging Twitter every ten seconds to check if Beyoncé’s changed her hair.”

  Warren thanked him quickly, knowing that if he didn’t cut him off now they could be in for a lengthy grumble about the frivolous use of modern technology and its impact on modern policing.

  So far nothing. Were they looking at a random stabbing after all? Warren hoped not. With no extrinsic motive or apparent link to the victim, such a killer would be hard to find. The explanation gnawed at him, however. The careful hiding of the body and the fact that no witnesses had come forward suggested that if the killer was mentally disturbed, they were still in possession of at least some of their faculties. It seemed a fair degree of planning and forethought had gone into the attack.

  They needed a motive.

  “Then it looks as if our best bet so far is Mateo Menendez—an unemployed love rat and small-time fraudster who did the dirty on Reggie Williamson’s niece, Tabitha, and saddled her with large debts before going back to the mother of his two kids. A real charmer.” He smiled slightly. “He made quite an impression on DC Hardwick.”

  “Not a good one. I need a shower.”

  “Any reason to suspect him, other than possible conflict with her uncle?” asked DS Hutchinson after the chuckles had died down.

  “By his own admission, he was with the kids up the common Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, he claims to have gone home when it got dark, which is a good hour before Reggie Williamson’s mobile phone lost contact with the network. He says he was in McDonald’s before he went to the park, feeding his two toddlers something appropriately healthy and nutritious. We’re waiting for the restaurant’s CCTV footage to see if he was there when he said he was.”

  “Where is he now?” asked DS Margaret Richardson, a mother of two, her expression clearly conveying what she thought of Menendez’s dietary choices for his young offspring.

  “Downstairs. I’m going to bail him for further questioning. He’s co-operating so we haven’t arrested him yet and he still hasn’t asked for a lawyer, despite being advised of his rights. Either he’s as arrogant as Tabitha Williamson says, he’s incredibly naïve or he’s innocent. Maybe all three. As soon as we get a time of death, we’ll start picking away at his alibi.”

  * * *

  A cause and time of death became available late that evening. Professor Ryan Jordan was one of a number of Home Office Certified Pathologists used by Beds and Herts Major Crime Unit and Warren was pleased to see that he’d picked up the case. Not only was the middle-aged American highly competent and easy to work with, he didn’t insist on holding meetings in the morgue.

  It wasn’t that Warren was particularly squeamish—he wouldn’t have been staring at the A4 colour photographs spread across his desk otherwise, he told himself—however, he’d rarely seen the need to see the victim’s dissected remains up close and personal. He’d much rather have high-resolution photographs, pre-interpreted by experts far more qualified than he.

  “The cause of death was fairly straightforward—single stab wound to the heart. Dead before he hit the ground. There would have been lots of blood, so the attacker’s clothes would have been soaked, although the heart will have stopped pumping pretty much instantly so once he dropped there shouldn’t have been a huge puddle.”

  Warren remembered the blood smears on the grass and the relatively small patch on the tarmac pathway. “Given the lack of blood spatter on the path away from the pool where we think he fell, would that be consistent with his attacker standing in front of him?”

  “I’d say so. If he’d been attacked from behind—” Jordan mimed a stabbing action towards his own body “—he’d have sprayed at least some blood forward, leaving marks on the sidewalk. It looks as though his killer caught the brunt of it.”

  Warren made a note on his pad. A search was already underway to comb bins and possible hiding places for discarded garments. There might also be spots of blood leading away from the scene of the attack. There hadn’t been any rain and so they might still be visible. He made a note to request a fingertip search to find any such trace.

  Assuming they found a suspect, perhaps they had been seen trying to clean clothes or dispose of rubbish unexpectedly.

  “What about defensive marks?”

  “None that we can find.”

  “So his killer took him by surprise. Do we have any information about the murder weapon?”

  “From the size of the laceration, we’re talking about something sharp with a five- to six-inch blade. Not too wide, but pointed. No serrations. We’ve not found any traces of rust in the wound and, unfortunately, the nature of the attack means that it missed any bones or ribs, so there aren’t any metal fragments that would allow us to identify the knife more precisely.” Jordan shrugged. “I suspect that we’re looking at a run-of-the-mill stainless steel kitchen knife, unused, or at least well cleaned before the attack. Assuming there was any premeditation, it may have been bought anywhere from a supermarket chain to a hardware store. Find me the weapon and I might be able tell you more, but until then I’m speculating.”

  Warren sighed. They’d found the victim’s wallet, but nothing else. “So it could still be a bog-standard, mugging gone wrong?”

  Jordan shook his head. “I’m not so sure.” He picked up the folder that he’d bro
ught the photographs in. “Leaving aside all the inconsistencies, the precision of the killing worries me—a single stab wound to the heart. It’s very clean. Straight into the diaphragm, missing the sternum and ribs, but angled upward directly into the heart. Ordinarily, I’d be happy to dismiss that as good luck. But there’s also the dog.”

  “How was it killed? I didn’t see any blood.”

  Jordan pulled out another sheet of paper. “According to the vet, its neck was broken. A shattered jaw suggests a single kick, snapping its head back with such force the cervical vertebrae were fractured.”

  Warren felt a chill go down his back. “What are you suggesting, Professor?”

  “A perfectly targeted, instantly fatal single stab wound to the heart with no opportunity for the victim to defend himself and a precisely killed dog, both concealed quickly with little trace evidence left behind—I think we’re dealing with a trained killer.”

  Tuesday 27 March

  Chapter 5

  Warren was back at his desk well before seven a.m. Tuesday morning. The proverbial ticking of the clock had weighed heavily on his mind the previous night, resulting in broken and restless sleep. By late afternoon Menendez had been getting impatient and making noises about getting a lawyer so Warren had authorised his release, knowing that if Menendez was innocent, the suspect column would soon be empty. Before he left, Warren broke the news of Reggie Williamson’s murder to him. The man’s look of incredulity, then horror as he realised that he had been a suspect, strengthened Warren’s suspicion that he was not who he was looking for. Regardless, he had been unable to resist one last dig at the man who had caused Tabitha Williamson so much misery and was probably fleecing the hapless Candice even now.

  “I have my eye on you, Menendez. If your name comes across my desk in future, I’ll remember. And I’ll be happy to pass on the details of anyone else you’ve been ripping off.”