by David Beard
‘Indeed it does,’ Smalacombe concurred in a bored manner, ‘but not for your wife I’m afraid.’ He paused to check Hillman’s reaction and added suddenly, ‘Or Anna Turle. I’m investigating two violent murders, sir and you can’t put a price on that. Seeing that the second victim was your wife I would have thought you would have understood it.’ He paused to let it sink in and for Hillman to be clear that his interrogators were on very sure ground. ‘I can’t see that you will be able to travel abroad tomorrow, I’m afraid, or for the foreseeable future. So, you would be well advised to make other arrangements and in your best interests get your lawyer down here as quickly as possible. When we have all the information we require we can think again can’t we?’
‘You can’t stop me going. Are you charging me with anything?’
‘Well, I can if you like, I’m sure I could find something.’ He looked him in the eye, deliberately goading him, ‘Would you like me to?’
Hillman was perplexed and he looked it. ‘I don’t like your attitude,’ he asserted with considerable vehemence.
‘The feeling is mutual I can assure you. Let’s say we go for a disorderly house. That would do for a start. Perhaps I could hold you on suspicion of murder. I could get an injunction for you to surrender your passport. I can hold you for questioning; no problem! Husbands are usually the prime suspects in these cases. The press are on the lawn waiting for a story.’ Hillman slumped into his chair.
Smalacombe took a plastic envelope from his pocket and carefully removed from it another plastic envelope that had yet another plastic sachet inside it. He put it on the coffee table that stood between them. ‘Of course, I could charge you with some other offence, which would be even worse.’ He pointed to the packet in front of them, ‘From the bedroom, Mr Hillman. Class A,’ he explained.
‘That’s not mine that is Rebecca’s,’ he answered hurriedly. He picked up the packet, looked at it cursorily, and tossed it back on the table. Smalacombe was pleased; that action had saved him an awful lot of time with the fingerprint department.
‘But your fingerprints were found on it,’ he lied, as, until that moment he had no means of checking them. Hillman was too het up to pick up on the deception. ‘No! Forensics have shown Rebecca was clean, Mr. Hillman. She wasn’t a user and I doubt she was a pusher. There’s enough here to drug a herd of elephants. Now, which course shall we take? One which will be very embarrassing or can we return here and interview you in the presence of your lawyer friend?’
By now Hillman was not so relaxed. He was sitting forward, his forearms on his thighs; his hands clasped tightly showing white knuckles. It was a picture Smalacombe carefully stored in his analytical mind.
‘You’ve overstepped the mark, Inspector…’
‘Chief Inspector,’ Smalacombe corrected with a broad smile.
‘I have influential friends in high places and you are going to regret this. I have powerful support,’ he threatened.
‘Funnily enough, Mr. Hillman, so do I. It’s called the law.’ Smalacombe rose to his feet. ‘Well, I think that’s all for now. We’ll see you at say, ten o’clock tomorrow morning. That should give your lawyer friend time to sort himself out and get down here. We’ll see ourselves out.’
He walked to the door but then turned and came back into the room. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ he said, as he picked up the envelope from the coffee table with thumb and forefinger, pinching its corner. He placed the whole thing back into the original bag and dropped into his coat pocket. ‘Quite important, don’t you think?’
Smalacombe raised a finger as if he had just remembered something of great import. ‘There is one final thing I have to advise you, because I expect you will be worried about staying here alone after all this violence.’ Smalacombe deliberately made his reasonableness sound pretentious so that Hillman would be under no illusion as to who was calling the shots. ‘After all, you may be the next on the killer’s list,’ he reminded him. ‘So, I have arranged for two officers to remain with you tonight as a precaution. We wouldn’t want a third murder now, would we? I wouldn’t recommend you leave the premises either, it could prove to be highly dangerous and my men have instructions to follow you, just in case. I’m sure you understand. I shall tell the press that we are giving you round the clock protection. They’ll be impressed by that. Good day to you.’
Shortly after their confrontation with Hillman the two detectives were sitting in the Dog and Rabbit in front of the ever-glowing fire and tucking into ham egg and chips, which was the cheapest fare on the menu. Eli was sitting in his usual place on the high stool by the bar.
‘Bloody good menu, Clive.’
‘That’s just what I was thinking. I might bring the missus down when we’ve cleared all this up.’
‘You’re always telling me that. What do you do? Take her out on scene of crimes outings?’
‘No, this is just a nice place, she’ll love it.’ Tiley looked over his shoulder to the chalkboard above the bar. ‘Local steaks, fresh salmon, local brown trout, venison, moules marinier.’
‘What the hell’s that?’ asked Smalacombe as he dunked a piece of ham into his egg yolk.
‘Mussels, I think. They’re not local.’ Tiley turned back to the table and thought about the morning. ‘That didn’t go according to plan,’ he commented.
‘Not as far as Hillman was concerned, but it was pretty good from our point of view. The bastard knows a lot more than he’s telling us; that’s for sure.’
‘Do you reckon he’s mixed up in it somehow?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Just because he’s a smarmy git, doesn’t make him guilty.’
‘No, but why lie about Anna Turle? And, he wasn’t exactly the distraught husband, was he?’
‘He’s got a lot on his mind to be fair.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘I don’t understand why his wife told us he was in Spain and he says he was in France?’ Clive Tiley made the point that Smalacombe had already wondered about himself.
‘Perhaps she didn’t know. Perhaps they don’t… didn’t speak to one another. I don’t think it was as cosy as we have been led to believe.’ Smalacombe paused whilst he took another mouthful. ‘Perhaps it just doesn’t matter,’ he tried to explain. ‘Open marriages, my ass, they’re crap, recipes for disaster.’
Smalacombe finished his meal and started up again. ‘You know what really pisses me off about this job?’ Tiley looked up from his meal and studied his boss waiting for some words of wisdom. ‘Nobody ever gives you more than twenty percent.’
‘I bloody do.’
‘No, I mean witnesses. You have to squeeze every last bit of info out of them. We had a four hundred mile round trip and how much more could Golding have told us?’
‘Lots, I’m sure.’
‘How many times have we got to go to Heathrow before she tells us all she knows? And that prat this morning…’
‘We have this conversation with every case, Dexter, you know that.’
Dexter looked across to the bar to see that Eli had a full pint in front of him. It seemed an opportune moment to see if he could find another lead without costing too much. He wandered over. Tiley followed. Smalacombe knew Eli was no friend of the police but he might have something for him. Eli seemed reluctant to talk but he couldn’t resist a dig.
‘Caught ‘en yet?’
The chief inspector shook his head. ‘Dunno what you mean Eli. Like I told you the other day, it might be suicide.’
‘I might look daft but I hab’m bin out in sun that long, boy. Anyway, you’d better ‘urry up or there’ll be no bugger lef’.’
Smalacombe ignored the remark. He figured that Winsom probably associated with other moneyed people in the area. ‘Who owns most things around here Eli?’
‘Charlie.’
‘Charlie who?’
Eli took another swig, emptied his glass this time much to Smalacombe’s consternation and smiled, ‘Duchy. Prince Charlie. Most of it ro
und ‘ere belongs to Duchy of Cornwall.’ Smalacombe nodded. ‘You don’t reckon ‘ee don’ it do ‘ee?’
‘This is Devon,’ Tiley responded.
‘Maybe, but the Duchy owns much of Dartmoor.’ It’s going to cost another round, thought Smalacombe, ‘Who owns the land next to the manor?’
Eli hesitated.
‘We can easily find out. I just thought you could save me some time, that’s all.’
‘Johnnie ‘empson. He’ll be ‘ere dreckly. Comes in every day for ‘is dinner.’
Around ten minutes later Johnnie Hempson arrived dressed in a checked cloth cap, a crumpled Barber jacket, corduroys and a pair of ubiquitous green wellies. ‘Right bloody squire this one,’ Smalacombe said to Tiley sotto voce.
After all of the preliminaries, Hempson sat with them in the corner with his back to the bar. The inn was now filling up with tourists and the chief inspector was keen to gain as much privacy as he could.
‘Is the grub always this good, Mr. Hempson?’
‘Good pub fare you know; plain but wholesome. I like it that way.’ Smalacombe nodded to save the bother of raising a conversation over something inconsequential, with which he probably disagreed. Moules marinier wasn’t exactly traditional fare and neither was venison.
‘I’m single at the moment, so it’s convenient.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Smalacombe commiserated, picking up the reference to his marital status.
‘I’m afraid she walked out on me recently. Bad business! You know how these things are.’
‘Well, luckily I don’t.’
‘No, well! It’s a pretty unpleasant and unhappy experience I can tell you.’
Smalacombe decided to move on, as it was clearly painful for the man, so he asked him about the inhabitants of Longtor Manor.
‘In the first place, Chief Inspector I don’t like them; I’ll be absolutely honest about it. Well, you’ll find out soon enough. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I can’t pretend to be sad at yesterday’s news.’
‘You’ve seen the papers?’
‘The papers didn’t actually say did they, but nothing is secret round here …. I’ve heard the rumours. How did it happen?’
The detectives ignored the question as they had decided not to release any further details. ‘Did you fall out with them?’ asked Tiley. Smalacombe could not suppress his laughter. Tiley looked across to him with a hurt expression.
‘I was never in with them really,’ Hempson explained. ‘When they bought the manor they hadn’t sorted out the boundaries properly. It was their solicitor’s fault to start with, but they wouldn’t back off. They were claiming about three acres that belonged to me. Their smart Alec London lawyers thought they would put one over on me. They had a bit of a shock.’
‘You won the day?’ Smalacombe asked.
‘And costs! It cost them a fortune. I don’t think they have ever got over it.’
A waitress came over with a large plate of steak and chips. ‘‘Ere you are, Mr. ‘empson, I’ll bring the mustard over in a minute.’
The policemen decided it was time to leave. ‘We’ll leave you to have your meal in peace. Thank you, Mr. Hempson, there’s a real possibility we will need to see you again. It seems you know most of what goes on around here.’
‘Pretty much,’ he confirmed.
‘Have you got a card or something so we know where to contact you?’ Hempson obliged.
As they cut across to the car park something was troubling the chief inspector. ‘Clive, what were you looking at when we left the bar?’
‘Nothing much, really. I just thought I knew the bloke talking to the barman, that’s all.’
Back in the parish hall Dexter Smalacombe began to write down on the white board all the anomalies that were confusing his investigations. There were quite a few. He didn’t write them in any order, just as they came into his head.
· Did Hillman go to Spain or France?
· Why did the murderer make so much effort to hide Anna Turle’s identity and then leave the body where it could be easily found?
· What is the significance of Turle’s earring in the pool?
· Why did Hillman pretend not to know Anna Turle?
· Was Rebecca Winsom’s murder a second attack or committed by someone else?
· Who impregnated Anna Turle?
· Did she have the abortion in Devon and if so why?
· Was Hempson’s hatred of Hillman and his wife reciprocated?
· What about the Hillmans’ finances?
· How good was the relationship between Hillman and his wife?
Smalacombe was quite sure his list was incomplete but there were a few things on it that clearly emerged as priorities and there were a number of things he wanted his sergeant to address. He sat back at the nearest desk with his feet up, as always, and studied it. Every so often he would get up and re-arrange the sequence to try and obtain some sense of order but he found that time consuming, so he then put asterisks against the points he felt should be prioritised.
For Sergeant Tiley’s part, he had discovered that DC Sheldon had come up with something that was definitely missing from his boss’s list. He walked across to him and began to speak before Smalacombe could start dishing out orders.
‘You know we couldn’t find any private bank accounts for Rebecca Winsom,’ he began.
‘What of it? Is it important?’ he asked checking his list.
‘Well, I think it is. Winsom is her stage name. Right?’
‘So, check Hillman.’
‘That’s a bloody stage name and all.’ Tiley explained. ‘His real name is Piggman.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No, with two g’s; Horace Piggman. Wouldn’t look good on the hoardings would it?’
‘Doesn’t have the same ring as Tyrone Power.’
‘Who the hell is he? You’re showing your age again.’
Smalacombe realised Tiley was probably going to come up with something worth listening to. He put his feet down and leaned forward.
‘You’ll never guess Winsom’s real name.’
‘Queen Elizabeth?’
‘Cooper. Joan Cooper.’
‘Where have I heard that?’ said Smalacombe checking his list again.
‘The old lady who found the body; Mrs. Cooper. Right?’ He paused to watch his boss’s reaction. Smalacombe was irritated by Tiley’s use of ‘Right?’ for the second time. He also knew it was a habit of his when he was sure about something. Smalacombe remained passive, as he was a past master at covering his emotions.
‘What’s more, she’s Winsom’s mother,’ Tiley added delivering the coupe de grace.
Smalacombe didn’t answer at first, as he was busy adding it to his list as the eleventh item.
‘So, you reckon Mrs. Cooper must have some idea who the victim was?’ he queried, as he returned to the desk again.
‘She must have. I mean, she wouldn’t have been privy to the entire goings on, but unless she spent every weekend in Africa she must have known something. In any event, the old lady isn’t telling us all she knows.’
‘True! Another bugger holding something back.’ Smalacombe had written on the board, “Winsom’s maiden name is Cooper. Her mother found Turle’s body.” ‘That’s good Clive. Check my list. I’m particularly concerned about six, eight and nine. See what you can do. I’ve got to get back to Exeter to see Helen Mirren; she’s worrying herself silly with all the publicity over this Winsom woman.’
CHAPTER 6
Saturday July 1st
As the two detectives drove down to Longtor Manor on the Saturday morning it gave them time to deliberate without interruption. Tiley had done a great deal of investigation during the Friday and was anxious to tie up any loose ends with his boss who had also spent the previous day catching up on his paperwork.
‘Anna Turle booked in at the Harewade clinic in Exeter on the Wednesday before she died,’ Tiley told his boss.
‘Did she
arrive there alone?’
‘As far as I’m aware, yes and she paid by credit card. So, we’ve nothing much to go on except, why down here? There are plenty of places she could have gone to in London.’
‘She must have had good reason to come down here. It must be to do with the Hillmans. Either to get reassurance…’
‘Or the all clear to have it done,’ Tiley interrupted.
‘Or to get the money,’ Smalacombe added.
‘But that might suggest that Hillman could be….’
‘Don’t jump too far, son, we haven’t got a bloody clue. Yet! It might just be that the clinic is run by an old friend or an ex client or something,’ he said with a wry smile.
He checked his rear view mirror, signalled and turned off the A38. Today he would take a different route. Soon they would be climbing towards Haytor and be able to enjoy the magnificent view across Torbay and the Teign estuary and further on they would suddenly have spread before them the breathtaking panorama of the Widecombe valley.
They both thought for a while and finally Tiley spoke up again. ‘Trouble is we can find no link with Hillman at that time. No phone calls, anything like that. Golding has got to know about it. There’s something she hasn’t told us. That means another trip to Heathrow I suppose.’
‘No, she’s coming down to identify the body. We can interview her then.’ Smalacombe directed the conversation to his own tack. ‘What about the finances, Clive?’
‘Hillman is in trouble.’
‘What, with all his money?’
‘Well, I expect there’s plenty of cash flow now, what with his present employment, that’s if we let him carry on with it. There’s always royalties coming in and it’s big money but he isn’t asset rich, well not anymore.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, in his last two films he took a cut in the profits instead of a fee and he also helped to finance them as a major contributor. It’s not unusual apparently. Unfortunately they were awful and one never even saw the light of day whilst the other bombed at the box office. He didn’t cover himself properly …you know, set up a company, insure against losses, that sort of thing, and he lost a fortune. We’re talking millions. He also got burnt very badly in the stock market crash of 2002 and 3 and the dot com fiasco a while before.’
