The DI Tremayne Thriller Box Set

by Phillip Strang

  ‘Have you seen his sister?’

  ‘She comes here sometimes, doesn’t speak to any of us. What’s she done?’

  ‘Have you seen her today?’

  ‘Not today. She was here the other day, but not for long.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Not me. I don’t become involved. I’m only interested so I can keep my children away.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘They’ll scream at the children if they go too near.’

  ‘Is the brother married?’ Tremayne knew the answer to the question, just wanted to check what else he could find out.

  ‘There was a woman there once. She used to chat, but then she disappeared. One day she’s there, the next she’s gone. It was very suspicious; he was seen digging in the garden that night, as well.’

  Tremayne noted what the woman said, but did not place too much credence on Barbara Winters’ brother slaying a woman and burying her in the garden. It was too melodramatic for him, and a small village was a good place for gossip. However, he’d have it checked out.

  Clare walked around the house. The back garden was the same as the front, neat and tidy with no flowers. The edges of the lawn were precise, the gravel paths freshly raked. She could see the family trait: the symmetry, everything in its place. Inside the house, there was no sign of movement. Clare heard a sound on the driveway. She peered around from where she was standing.

  Tremayne moved over into the driver’s seat of Clare’s car. The neighbour was excited that she was there as the action unfolded. The local pub would be buzzing that night with the story of how the police had come to the village and arrested the woman.

  Clare moved away from her hiding place; Barbara Winters got out of her car. ‘Mrs Winters, we’ve a few questions for you.’

  The woman, panicking, got back in her car, started the engine and reversed, stopping abruptly on seeing Tremayne blocking the driveway with Clare’s car.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ Barbara Winters said on getting out of her car for the second time.

  Tremayne handcuffed her and put her in the back of the police car. Clare sat to one side of her, as Tremayne was driving. The woman could not be left free. On the other side of the road, the neighbour busily talking to another woman, taking in the scene, talking on her phone at the same time.

  At Bemerton Road Police Station, Barbara Winters was taken into the interview room. Her legal representative was on his way, expected within five minutes. Outside, Dean Winters waited with Mavis. ‘I want to see her,’ he said to Tremayne.

  ‘We’ll need to interview your wife first.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘It’s a crime to stab someone with a knife; manslaughter if you had died.’

  ‘But I haven’t. Can’t we forget about what happened?’

  ‘Dean, shape up. She may be your wife, but if you keep whimpering around, she’ll continue to make your life a living hell,’ Mavis Winters said.

  ‘But I love her; I need her. Without her I’m nobody.’

  ‘You should have thought of that earlier before you stood up to her,’ Tremayne said.

  Barbara Winters’ legal representative, Graham Davies, arrived.

  In the interview room, Tremayne went through the procedure, informed Barbara Winters of her rights, asked everyone to state who they were and the time of commencement.

  ‘Mrs Winters, you went to the house of Alan and Mavis Winters. Once there, you stabbed your husband, Dean, with a knife that you had found in the kitchen.’

  ‘It was unintentional. I love my husband.’

  ‘Are the facts correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ Barbara Winters said after conferring with Davies.

  ‘This is a criminal offence. If your husband had died, you would have been charged with manslaughter, probably involuntary, and the punishment for such a crime would be custodial. Were you aware of this when you visited the house?’

  ‘Not at all. I was angry. He had shamed me in front of his family.’

  ‘A family you hate.’

  ‘I do not like them, that is true.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They are common people, unbelievers. They are not my kind of people.’

  ‘Your husband is one of them.’

  ‘With me, he was not. At home, before his brother died, we were close.’

  ‘And your husband defied you by drinking alcohol, by talking to one of his brothers, a criminal serving time in prison.’

  ‘I do not want him associating with unworthy people.’

  ‘But he is one of them. You were aware of the bond that exists between the children of Betty Winters.’

  ‘Children of the devil, that’s what they are. It is my duty to save Dean from them, to make him a better person.’

  ‘Why do you feel that you can separate a person from his blood relatives? You are aware of the abuse that they suffered as children?’

  ‘You knew them, and you were a police officer. Why didn’t you do something?’ Barbara Winters said.

  ‘I’m asking the questions here, Mrs Winters. You have stabbed your husband, that is a crime that needs to be addressed. I put it to you that you came up to Salisbury fired up with anger after a night without your husband. You were angry; you wanted him dead. You approached him in that kitchen hoping that he would acquiesce and come back to you, the lost sheep that he was. And when he would not, you took the only action open to you. You stabbed him, you wanted him dead.’

  ‘I was hurt, angry, but I did not want him dead.’

  ‘This is intimidation,’ Davies said. ‘It is not within your right to conduct the interview in this manner.’

  ‘I apologise,’ Tremayne said. ‘Alan Winters has been murdered, a knife in his heart; his brother Dean has also been stabbed. The crimes are similar.’

  ‘I did not kill his brother,’ Barbara Winters said. Clare could tell the woman wanted to get across the table and scratch out Tremayne’s eyes. Davies had his hand firmly on his client’s arm.

  ‘Mrs Winters, Alan Winters was killed at Stonehenge. It has all the signs of a spiritual death, an offering to a god of a worthless man, an act of atonement.’

  ‘He was worthless. All that money, not through toil and hard work but through a weakness of people to waste what they have earned. It was the devil’s money, not his, and not ours.’

  ‘That is why you refused the hundred thousand pounds?’

  ‘Dean refused, not me. He understood the true way, the way of purity, the way of the Lord, until his brother with all his money tried to corrupt him.’

  ‘Mavis Winters has offered all of the children of Betty Winters two million pounds. Your husband is going to accept. Did you know this? Did he phone you up to gloat? Is this when you decided to kill him?’

  ‘He would have refused it if he had been with me.’

  ‘Mrs Winters, I’m charging you with attempted involuntary manslaughter. You will be held in custody pending a trial. Is there anything that you want to say?’

  ‘I did not mean to kill him. I swear on the Bible that it’s the truth.’

  ‘My client will defend herself against this charge,’ Davies said.

  ‘That is her right,’ Tremayne said.

  Chapter 18

  Tremayne had to agree with Clare that Barbara Winters was a strange woman, with her attitude, her contradictory comments during her interview at Bemerton Road. On the one hand she was crediting her husband with refusing the hundred thousand pounds from Alan Winters, and on the other she was taking credit for her ability to convince him of right from wrong. Tremayne could not see evil in the occasional bet on the horses. And Yarwood, he knew, would regularly buy a lottery ticket, not in the belief that she would win sixty-eight million pounds but more as a diversion from the routine of life, a chance to joke if only I had, not believing that it would ever occur. It had for Alan Winters, one of the most undeserving. Tremayne had to agree with Barbara Winters on that score, but not much else. He had remain
ed impartial during the woman’s interview, so had Yarwood, and then her husband was pleading for her to be released.

  Tremayne couldn’t remember Dean Winters from his childhood; he would have only been ten when Mavis was sixteen, just twelve when Tremayne had finally moved away from there and rented a flat above a shop in Fisherton Street. After that one night when Mavis had turned sixteen, he had not made love to the woman since, nor had he wanted to. Tremayne had hoped at the time that no one would find out.

  Mavis had been over the age of consent, but only just. She was still in school uniform during the week and looked like a child. It had been up to Constable Tremayne to set an example, to uphold the law, to be a beacon of decency, and there he had been, seducing a young woman barely past puberty. The department’s superintendent, not his inspector, would have hauled him over the coals, given him a severe dressing down, probably a written warning, and if Mavis’s father had found out, he could have found himself back behind the counter of his father’s shop.

  He’d had a nervous few days after Mavis had seduced him; not a defence, but the truth. He had had more than his fair share of beers mixed with a few shorts. All of the young policemen drank too much, although they knew how to handle their alcohol back then, not like it was now. Five pints of a night was Tremayne’s maximum, and even that would give him a thick head in the morning. He knew that a woman like Barbara Winters would have driven him mad, and he’d have ended up wanting to throttle her, not that he would have. He wasn’t a Dean Winters, never had been, never would be, and with Jean, they had always been equals. He wondered why it was that two people who had been so close could have drifted apart; why being a member of the police force was so important. He knew that Yarwood was falling into the same trap of the balance between the life of a police officer and that of a regular member of the public, the ability to just enjoy other people’s company without trying to analyse, to figure out their backgrounds.

  He knew he wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes, he didn’t have that attention to detail, but he had developed an ability to observe. He had studied Barbara Winters in the interview room, also at Alan Winters’ funeral and wake. She was not a bad looking woman, dressed sensibly, although not unfashionably, probably appreciated the occasional humour, the usual amount of affection, yet she held views which others would have regarded as extreme. He wondered how she could go through life with such hostility towards others. Life was about getting along with your fellow citizens, not acting as if they were enemies. And then that woman, the gossip in Landford where they had arrested Barbara Winters. What was it that she said? If the local children kicked a football into her brother’s garden, it would come back with a knife through it. What sort of people would do that, he thought.

  Back at his house in Wilton, the local children had no fear of him. One of them had broken the window at the rear of his house with a cricket ball, almost hit him fair and square as it whizzed past him, but what had he done? Nothing. He’d given them their ball back. Even had a bowl and a few hits after one of the young children had bowled at him, pretending to let the ball get through and knock over the stumps, or in their case a few sticks propped up between two wooden boxes. The offender’s parent had apologised, offered to pay for the broken window. In the end, he and the parent had gone halves on the repair, not that it cost much, and here was Barbara Winters’ brother slashing footballs. For what reason? The man was probably as much as zealot as her; he needed to be interviewed.

  ***

  Clare observed her senior in his office, mulling over the case, his eyes closed. She thought that he looked like a cuddly teddy bear, not that he would have appreciated being told so. But there he was, arms folded, leaning back, running through the case, weighing up all that they had. Even she had found benefit in the ability to sit quietly and evaluate her life, inside and out of the police force. She knew she was lonely, missing the touch of a man. She was young, and at an age when a woman thinks of children, yet she had no one, not slept with another man since Harry had died, and she wanted to, though she couldn’t be a Polly or a Liz. For them, sex and love were detached. Clare knew that the women regarded the act of procreation as a means to an end. They were both attractive, yet they slept with a man, not their age, not in good condition, purely because he was wealthy and willing to spend money on them. And then there was the brother they were sleeping with as well, supposedly because he could help them. Clare would admit that Gerry, a man who could be violent, was not unattractive: muscular, a firm handshake, a pleasant manner, and willing to take her out if she agreed, not that she ever would. Harry had been her ideal man; Gerry Winters would never be. And besides, she could admit to liking Mavis and Rachel, but their DNA was not pure Winters, whereas Gerry’s was.

  A date with a fellow officer had been agreeable enough. He had treated her well, held the chair back at the restaurant for her to sit down, even insisted on paying, not going halves. Yet, no spark. He had attempted to kiss her at the end of the evening, went through the accepted seduction routine as if a decent meal and a bottle of wine automatically concluded with two people naked and in bed. The man who she saw on a daily basis had taken her negative response with grace, accepted a kiss on the cheek as payment for a pleasant night.

  Clare had cried that night for the man she couldn’t have. She wanted to forget, to get on with her life, yet Harry remained firmly implanted, almost as a ghost from the past.

  ‘Yarwood, are you going to sit there all day?’ The voice of reality, the sound of her senior, arisen from his chair.

  ‘Waiting for you, guv.’

  ‘There’s plenty for you to be getting on with. You don’t need me to hold your hand every minute, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked so peaceful.’

  ‘Thinking, that’s what I was doing. You thought I was asleep?’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘You’re becoming too quick with your comments, you know that?’

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  They both knew the routine, the harmless rubbing each other up the wrong way. To an outsider, it would have appeared disrespectful to her, abusive by him; it was neither.

  ‘I thought we were visiting Pathology, checking on Betty Winters.’

  ‘The mother of the family.’

  ‘Did you know her from before?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Mavis’s parents?’

  ‘Her mother was a pleasant woman, similar to the daughter. Her father, respectable, working-class, drove an old Vauxhall. He didn’t say much, but he’d acknowledge you. He always seemed sad.’

  ‘Any reason why?’

  ‘Just an observation on my part. He wasn’t a drinker, and most weekends he’d be washing the car, or out in his garden, not that he had much success. I can remember it being cold back then. Maybe it wasn’t, but that’s what I remember. We even had a white Christmas.’

  ‘I’m driving?’

  ‘What do you reckon, Yarwood?’

  ‘I’ll get the keys.’

  Pathology was not far away. Stuart Collins, the pathologist, took one look at Tremayne as he walked in the door and sighed. ‘Tremayne, the bane of my life. What do you want?’

  ‘Purely social,’ Tremayne’s reply.

  ‘What is it with this man, Sergeant? Every time I’m busy, he’s here.’

  ‘He’s a taskmaster, you know that.’

  ‘What is it?’ Collins asked. The man appreciated the chance to indulge in some banter, a chance to remove himself from the gruesome task of examining dead bodies, though it didn’t worry him anymore, impervious as he was to the whole process.

  ‘Betty Winters.’

  ‘Seventy-nine. No medical condition other than ageing. She had taken a few sleeping tablets, not enough to kill a younger person. I can’t see suicide, definitely not murder. Her death will be recorded as natural. Is that sufficient?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll need a medical certificate, a release of the body.’

 
‘You’ll have the certificate today, the body tomorrow. Is that all?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Sergeant, get him out of here, will you?’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Clare said.

  ***

  Two days passed. Clare had found out from Barbara Winters the details of her brother. He had been flying between England and Australia. Clare had sent out a request to his airline to pass on a message to him. The man presented himself at Bemerton Road Police Station at eight in the evening. Both Tremayne and Clare were in the office.

  Clare went downstairs, met the man and escorted him upstairs. She had to admit to being impressed. Barbara Winters’ brother, Archie Garrett, was tall with jet black hair. He was dressed in his pilot’s uniform, British Airways. ‘I’ve just arrived back. I came here straight from Heathrow. I’d like to see my sister.’

  ‘That will be arranged. We’ll need fifteen minutes to deal with the paperwork.’

  ‘What paperwork? She’s my sister, I’m entitled to see her.’

  Clare sensed the change in the man’s attitude.

  ‘Where’s that fool of a husband?’

  ‘He’s been here every day. We’ve not restricted his access.’

  ‘And good to hear. The man’s a snivelling imbecile, but Barbara seems to like him.’

  Tremayne met the brother, had a brief discussion. Barbara Winters was brought to a visitor’s room. The brother and sister were allowed to embrace, to sit next to each other, a police officer in one corner of the room, far enough away not to hear their conversation. Neither of the two was regarded as antagonistic to each other, hence the restrictions were relatively few.

  ‘What happened?’ Archie asked.