The Darkest Lies: A Gripping Crime Mystery Series - Two Novel Boxed Set (The DI Hogarth Darkest Series Boxed Sets Book 1)

by Solomon Carter

  Hogarth nodded. “I believe you’re right, Mr Grave,” said Hogarth. “Heritage doesn’t count for a thing, these days. Birthright means nothing. It is only the last will and testament that counts…”

  “And the living will of the owner too, let’s not forget” said Goodwell, smugly. “And as for a court case, Inspector. I’ve not seen any sign that you’re anywhere near a court case. Not unless it’s one for police negligence and worse.”

  Hogarth grinned. His time was coming. “Birthrights. Wills. Living wills. You’ve spent a long time thinking about this farm, haven’t you, Mr Goodwell? And ever since you worked out there was a question over the birthright issue – ever since you saw that there was a chance to make a grab, you’ve pondered how you could get it. You saw a hint of opportunity, and so you studied it closely. You’re retired. You had all the time in the world, after all. While Neville Grave spent his time working, trying to find a practical solution to the farm’s woes in the here and now, you were busy concocting other ideas. Business arrangements, like the ones Miss Decorville exposed with her own investigation. You spoke to Crump Agro Industries with the future of this farm clearly in mind. It wasn’t even your farm to discuss.”

  “Come on!” said Goodwell. “Someone has to take charge and use their brain. All Neville came up with was a bloody woodchipper! I was doing the decent thing before he sent the farm to ruin,” said Goodwell.

  “Oh, you always do the decent thing, Mr Goodwell. Don’t you? You were the one with the business brain. You were the smart one. You were the one who knew how to turn this farm into multi-millions, and you sincerely believed Neville Goodwell would squander the opportunity and lose the whole farm. You believed in your abilities and denigrated your nephew’s. Which gave you two reasons to hatch the plan you came up with. One, by obtaining control of the family farm you would be serving the old man’s memory. You would be honouring him by ensuring the farm thrived for future generations, just as he wanted. But that story was a lie only you believed, because it justified your actions. Because you were prepared to go into partnership with a firm which has a history of asset stripping and taking farms from farmers hands. You weren’t so stupid as to think that wouldn’t happen here. But you didn’t care. In the end all you wanted was the money. On that count alone, you stand guilty of every insult and accusation you have tossed at Miss Decorville.”

  “Lies! Terrible, horrible, lies!” said Goodwell, shaking. “You can’t prove them, and I’ll make sure you pay for them.”

  “You can try, Mr Goodwell. You can certainly try. But I’m really not worried.”

  “Well, you should be,” said Goodwell.

  “Your influence with the police is about to wane dramatically, Mr Goodwell.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everything we’ve said so far underlines one thing not yet said.”

  “Which is?”

  “Nigel Grave would have never given you this farm if he had lived. Grave Farm was his. There was a tradition of passing this farm down the family line, from father to son and grandson, and so on.”

  “But Neville is not Nigel Grave’s son,” said Goodwell.

  “You bastard,” said Neville, quietly.

  “But we’ve already heard how Neville loved his father,” said Hogarth.

  “He would say that now, wouldn’t he?!” said Goodwell.

  “And now we have written proof of his father’s intentions for the farm.”

  “What?” said Neville.

  Goodwell blinked and shook his head.

  “Someone – one of you, I believe – went into that shed very recently – looking for Nigel’s missing notes. The ones which revealed what his announcement was to be in advance. I don’t think they found what they were looking for. I think they knew about Nigel Grave’s announcement, because they found some of his notes after they threw the poor man’s body into the woodchipper. The killer was in a hurry. He didn’t take all of the notes from the man’s pockets or we wouldn’t know about them. And so those notes are probably gone forever. But the killer panicked thinking there were other notes hidden elsewhere. They didn’t find them, but they tried, alright.”

  Neville frowned. “But to open the shed they’d need the key and the key is…” Neville went to the cabinet where the key was kept and opened the door. His fingers traced over the empty hook. “It’s not there.”

  “No. I think someone borrowed it. Who might that have been?” Hogarth’s eyes traced Goodwell’s face.

  “Nigel Grave liked to hide his thoughts until he was sure of himself. With all your separate plans and agendas, I can well see why. But the man wrote down in these notes that he wanted his son to inherit the farm. That is no longer beyond doubt.”

  “What does that matter now? He’s dead,” said Goodwell

  “Yes, Mr Goodwell. You said the words already. It’s the living will of Mrs Grave that matters now. Because her husband is dead. Because the killer feared that Mr Grave’s announcement would ruin all his plans, so the announcement had to be stopped. And seeing as we all know Mrs Grave’s feelings towards her son, I think it’s clear that she was open to consider offers from different parties about the future of this farm which excluded him. And it’s got to be obvious to everyone here why Mrs Grave is open to manipulation.”

  “How dare you,” said Goodwell. “Have you no respect?”

  “Yes. And with all due respect, Mrs Grave has been at least three sheets to the wind every time I’ve been here. According to what I’ve seen, heard, and read, she’s spent most of the last thirty years the same way. And she’s been in and out of rehab for alcohol abuse.”

  The old woman shook her head and looked down. “I believe Mrs Grave’s drink problem is probably rooted in an old and damaging lie, but that’s not my business. My business is catching the killer. Do you see where this is going, Mr Goodwell?”

  Nancy Decorville gave an emphatic nod and stepped into the middle of the room. “You did it, didn’t you? You killed Nigel, so you could persuade Mrs Grave to hand over the farm into your hands.”

  “Rubbish. Pure evil rubbish,” said Goodwell. His face was red, his eyes bright. But this time his face rippled with emotion. Hogarth saw nerves alternating with defiant rage.

  “You all of people, how dare you?! You harlot! Don’t you ever accuse me of…”

  “It doesn’t matter what anyone says, Mr Goodwell,” said Hogarth “You know that.”

  Goodwell stopped his raging and gathered himself.

  “That’s right. It doesn’t matter what anyone says…” he said. “All that matters is that I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. I went to the shop when poor Nigel was killed.”

  “Yes, you did. And it’s very a strong alibi, sir. I tested it. The shopkeeper remembers you. You argued with him about the price of butter.”

  Goodwell blinked at Hogarth and maintained a brittle smile.

  “Good. There you are then.”

  “It’s a good alibi. But when I remembered your keenness for cycling, I realised you might have seen creating an alibi as something of a sporting challenge. You had a near impossible mission, but you were up for it. Creating an alibi for the short timeframe of the kill would have made you safe as houses. But, I decided to see if I could follow your route and beat the time slot – to make it back to the house, butter argument and all, and still have time to kill.”

  Hogarth let the implication sink in.

  “The butter argument was a stunt, Mr Goodwell. It was designed to show you were calm. Unhurried. To ensure you were remembered, you even argued about the price of butter. It was clever, I’ll admit that. But if I was a sportsman like you, I could have done it. There was just enough time to buy the butter from Pradesh stores, to come back here and hurl that poor old man, that frail man, into the woodchipper, then to get rid of your bloodied clothes and come back into the house here as if nothing had happened. That takes a very cold, calculating brain. That takes the commitment of a man who will stop at nothin
g until he wins.”

  “Preposterous. And impossible,” said Goodwell. “I could never have had the time to do that.”

  “Yes, you had enough time. Just enough. And then shortly after that, you disposed of your old cycling gloves – the gloves which you used to protect your hands and prevent leaving DNA and fingerprints. And you disposed of the trainers which you wore when you went into that barn and killed him.”

  “Lies. Fabrication. I swear I will…”

  “Yes, yes. You’ll have my job. I’ve heard it all before now and it’s getting boring. The neoprene fibres of your deteriorating neoprene gloves were all over the barn. And they were still in your car. The ones in the barn and in the car, contained your sweat, your DNA. And you used to wear a pair of Fiafora Speed Lite trainers didn’t you?” said Hogarth.

  He saw the stunned look appear on Goodwell’s face.

  “Yes, Mr Goodwell. The news is, Mr Goodwell that if you hadn’t have been such a bloody skinflint, you wouldn’t have kept those running shoes going for so long. That made them much more identifiable. The forensics people said they are rare these days. They’ve not been in production for six years.”

  “I don’t understand…” said Goodwell. Everyone in the kitchen watched the man as his voice weakened and his eyes turned glassy.

  “Forensics are better these days than many give them credit for. The cheap mini-valet of your Porsche looked good enough to the naked eye. For a while there, I thought we were stuffed. I knew it was you, but I couldn’t prove it. I thought you’d gotten away with it. But my colleagues in forensics located almost invisible dirt prints from your old Fiaforas – in the footwell and in the boot. There were microbes and particles of mud in those prints which match the material in the barn. And the prints match the areas where the struggle took place. It was you, Mr Goodwell. You had been making your plans for a long while, hoping the old man would die so you could talk Mrs Grave here into giving the farm away.”

  “No, no, no,” said Goodwell.

  “Yes. But when you heard about the coming announcement, you were terrified that you were about to lose your chance. Maybe the old man had decided to hand the farm over to Neville before he died. Maybe he’d had another idea which would have seen your hopes go up in smoke. Either way, you couldn’t risk it or your long-held plans would have never come to fruition. You had to win. You had to get this farm. Even if it meant killing your brother-in-law to make it happen. You don’t have to listen to accusations anymore, because we’re well past that now. Your alibi has been broken, and the evidence says it was you. You went to the barn and you confronted him. I think you’d already made up your mind to kill Nigel, but you wanted to hear it from him. You needed to know, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You confronted him, and he told you. And after the confrontation started, you were never going to get your way. By then you had to kill him. But you could have chosen a better way, a nice way to do it, Mr Goodwell. A quick knife wound. A simple farm accident. They would have been feasible.”

  “Horrible lies…” said Goodwell.

  “But you were furious, weren’t you? The old man wouldn’t see sense, so you lost it. You became cruel, and vengeful. And that was why you decided to use the woodchipper. It was symbolic for you. You were punishing the man with his own mistakes…”

  “How can you invent such hideous lies?” said Goodwell.

  “Lies?” said Hogarth. “Nigel Grave’s blood was found in the back of your car, from when you dumped those gloves and trainers out of the way just moments after his death.”

  “No!”

  “Mr Goodwell, it’s time for you to stop the lying. You’re as guilty as sin.”

  Goodwell looked around the kitchen. Nancy Decorville’s face was marked by a sneer. Neville’s was a mask of wide-eyed shock. The old woman looked up from the table, her voice croaking and weak.

  “I was afraid to ask…” she said.

  Hogarth looked at her. “I saw you, Trevor,” she said. “But I was afraid to ask why. I thought I’d imagined it. I saw you a moment before you came back with the butter, but you were coming the wrong way,” said the old woman, in a croaky, lisping voice. The old woman looked at Hogarth. “You know why I was afraid? I was afraid if I asked why, that I’d be next.”

  Goodwell turned away and wrenched the door open into the hallway.

  “Palmer! Guard the back door!” called Hogarth, before he broke into a run. He ran into the hallway to find Goodwell snatching at the latch of the great front doors. In his hurry his hand slipped and Hogarth caught up with him. Hogarth slapped a hand on his shoulder, and spun him around. Goodwell was wild eyed. He threw a punch, his knuckles lashing across Hogarth’s jaw. Hogarth grunted in pain and fell back to the floor, but scrambled back up to his feet as fast as he could. Goodwell wrenched the doors, and flinging them open stepped out into the cold grey light. But as soon as he stepped outside Goodwell stopped. Two uniformed police officers in their hats and stab vests were walking purposefully towards him. They were close. And further away at the front gate, a second police car swung through the gate between the two vast brick pillars. Hogarth leaned forward and grabbed the man again, this time he held him hard. He yanked him close and stared into his eyes.

  “You used that harassment word a bit too much for my liking, Mr Goodwell. Now I’ve got a few words for you. Premeditated murder. And not only that, but assault on a police officer. And don’t think I won’t bother with the assault charge, old bean, because I most certainly bloody will. Just so you know, that’s fifteen to life for murder, and twenty-six weeks for my jaw. Trevor Goodwell, I am arresting you for the murder of Nigel Grave. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if…”

  Hogarth grinned as he gave the man his rights, and looked deep into his eyes.

  “One more thing…” said Hogarth, as he pushed the man into PC Jordan’s grasp. “Did you know?”

  Goodwell looked back, his face blank with shock.

  “I don’t think you did, did you?”

  “What?” said Goodwell.

  “Nigel Grave was going to die anyway…” said Hogarth, as he pushed the man into PC Jordan’s grasp.

  “What?”

  “He was becoming frail. You said it yourself. Think about it, man.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nigel Grave had cancer, Mr Goodwell. Greed made you hurry. You killed a man who would have been dead soon anyway. I’ve seen the evidence. Something else to ponder, eh, Trevor? You’ll have a lot of time for pondering now.” Hogarth saw the man’s arrogance was gone. His defiance was gone. All Hogarth saw was an empty husk whose life was all but over. Justice was hard but fair. And it had finally been served. With a sigh, Hogarth walked back into the house, rubbed his jaw, and nodded at Marjorie Goodwell. The woman was pale and still, hands clasped, head turned towards the floor.

  “The very least you are, is an accomplice. Do the honours, will you, Palmer.” DS Palmer nodded and duly obliged in reading the woman her rights. Hogarth joined Neville Grave in the corner of the room. The shock had faded from his face. At Neville’s side, Nancy Decorville wore a triumphant, preening smile as she threaded her arm through his. Hogarth ignored her and nodded at the man in respect. The case was closed. Neville nodded back in acceptance and thanks. Hogarth was set to turn away when he heard the young man call his name. He turned to see Neville pull his arm away from Nancy Decorville. The girl’s smile faltered as Neville approached him.

  Hogarth narrowed his eyes.

  “Yes, Mr Grave?”

  “A word if I may…”

  There was a look in the young man’s eye. His shock was more than understandable, but Hogarth saw something else too.

  “Of course,” said Hogarth. They walked to the stable door, leaving Nancy Decorville and the old woman looking at one another as Palmer dealt with Marjorie Goodwell.

  “What?” said Decorville, as Neville shut the door.

  The old woman
didn’t answer.

  Nancy Decorville folded her arms and stood an isolated figure in the farmhouse kitchen. Her eyes trailed after Neville and Hogarth as they walked away talking. Inevitably, her eyes fell on the old woman once again. Susan Grave had been watching her the whole time, and when their eyes met, Mrs Grave offered her a deeply unpleasant smile. Her smile soon became a laugh.

  “I’m sorry about that, Mr Grave. There can’t be much worse than discovering that your own uncle killed your father. I can barely imagine what you’re going through right now.”

  “But in the end, it always had to be one of us, didn’t it?”

  “There were other suspects,” said Hogarth.

  “Peter Venky?”

  “Yes. Briefly.”

  “And then there were Igor and Borev.”

  “They were quickly ruled out. Maybe too quickly at first.”

  “It had to be one of us though…” said Neville.

  Hogarth nodded. “The people waiting for the lunch announcement had the most to gain and the most to lose by whatever your father had planned to say. There was plenty of motive in that room. But it’s still hard to believe that a family could do that to one another.”

  “As you know, Inspector, ours is not a normal family.”

  “The truth, Mr Grave, is that I believe there is no such thing. Every family has a past, has bitter regrets, and has skeletons in the closet. But thankfully, not every family has a Trevor Goodwell.”

  “Yes. And at least I now know for sure that I was the biological child of a man I will never meet. I know my mother too well. She’ll never ever tell me who it was. She never speaks of it except to allude that she detests me for ever having been born.”

  “Maybe she does. But I’ve seen a few glimpses of affection from her too. I think her bitterness comes from the bottle. Either way, she has no one else to turn to now, apart from you. And now you have written proof your father wanted you to inherit the farm and no one else, that must count for something.”

  “It counts for a great deal, Inspector.”

  Hogarth held the slim sheaf of notes in his hand. “And it says a lot more in here than that. No matter the bloodline, you were his son, Mr Grave. There is no doubt about it. And your father’s legacy to you is a plan to make this farm a success again. He discovered a crop which could bring in a good income for decades, so he said. A crop with global demand – soya.”