Strange Beginnings: The Freeman Files Series: Book 13

by Ted Tayler

  “I don’t think I ever met him. Had he been at Bourne Hill long?”

  “Baker moved back to Salisbury from Southampton early in 2010. He was born in Bemerton, went to university in Winchester, and then joined the forensics team at Southampton. Warren has continued to live in Salisbury throughout his career. He married a local girl from Bemerton. They never had kids, and the scuttlebutt around the nick was that they had a certain circle of friends. Neither of them was easy to get to know.”

  “A certain circle of friends?” asked Gus. “That’s an odd phrase. Was Warren Baker a Mason?”

  “I don’t believe so, Gus,” said Matt. “Warren was an odd character. There were rumours when he first arrived at Bourne Hill.”

  “Rumours that suggested he left Southampton under a cloud,” said Gus.

  “Something which never resulted in a censure that appeared on his record. We wouldn’t have employed him if it had. The younger female uniformed officers and forensic staff avoided getting left in a room alone with him. Nobody ever made a complaint, but Billie overheard comments in the ladies' toilets that Warren gave them the creeps just by the way he looked at them.”

  “How did he relate with the guys at the station?” asked Gus.

  “Warren kept himself to himself. He never socialised with anyone from the station during my time at Bourne Hill. He was peculiar; Warren would collar a married officer in the canteen and show him photos of his wife on his mobile phone. She wasn’t much to look at, but Warren doted on her and thought she was beautiful. He’d ask whether the bloke had a photo of his wife he could see. It could have been innocent enough, but after a while, the blokes were doing the same as the young women and keeping their distance.”

  “What happened after you and Billie arrived at the white tent?” asked Gus.

  “The Crime Scene Manager fetched us from the external cordon. We’d already suited up while we were waiting. He took us to the tent, and we found Warren Baker and two of his forensic team gathering evidence inside. The police surgeon leaned in from the driver’s door, carrying out his black arts on Marion Reeve’s body. We heard him detailing every step as he went. His recorder sat on the dashboard.”

  “Had forensics removed evidence from inside the car already?” asked Gus. “Could you see the victim’s handbag?”

  “I couldn’t see much at all because the police surgeon was in the way. Billie made her way around to the passenger side for a better look at the body. I couldn’t get further than the bonnet for a while because one of the forensic guys was still working there. When I joined Billie, the only thing left inside the Lexus was Marion’s dead body.”

  “Someone removed the handbag before you reached the murder scene. Was it properly bagged and recorded, with separate bags for each item it held?”

  “Everything was by the book according to the crime scene logs we studied later.”

  “When was the last time anyone saw the phone?” asked Gus.

  “We never saw it, Gus,” said Matt Price. “The Crime Scene Manager’s logs listed everyone in or near that car from the second Phil Youngman and his PC arrived. As Billie remarked when we stood at the bottom of Stephenson Road, when you added up the uniformed officers, Baker and his forensics people, and the police surgeon, there were a lot of people in the vicinity.”

  “So, the handbag and its contents supposedly got entered into evidence and stored away at Bourne Hill,” said Gus. “When did you realise it was missing?”

  “I don’t need to tell you what it’s like to work on a murder case such as that one, Gus,” said Matt. “You get on with interviewing people connected to the victim as soon as possible. Forensic analysis can take hours, days, or even weeks, so you concentrate on what you have at hand. When results started filtering through later, Billie queried why there was nothing on the phone’s call history. We sent a young Detective Constable to the evidence room, and he spent hours hunting for that phone. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be, but time is always against you. We couldn’t leave the guy there opening every box looking for a phone that got misplaced. It could still be there, for all I know. We just didn’t find it before we got assigned to a new case. That was five or six weeks later.”

  “When did you and Billie Wightman stop working together?”

  “She moved to Gablecross after her promotion came through at the end of 2015. My elevation to DI came through in May in 2016, and I secured a post here at Portishead.”

  “The rumours suggest you haven’t stopped smiling since,” said Gus.

  “Billie had a rough deal with her husband, Gus. It became tough to work alongside her. I was always walking on eggshells in case I said something to set her off.”

  “Did either of you review the case before you left Salisbury?” asked Gus.

  “We had another stab at it together in 2014. That would have been in the summer, June, or July. We couldn’t put a dent in any of the alibis we got during the first investigation. The evidence, or lack of it, didn’t point us towards having missed an obvious suspect. We spent two or three days on it and moved on.”

  “What did you make of Martyn Street when you interviewed him in 2014?” asked Gus.

  “He wasn’t much help on the original investigation, nor the review. His alibi was rock solid. Martyn is a bit backward if that’s the right term to use these days. He answered our questions with as few words as possible. Martyn looks like the strong, silent type. The sort that many women might go for until he opens his mouth. Sorry if we’ve left you with an even harder nut to crack by losing that mobile phone, Gus. I hope you and your team find something we missed.”

  “I don’t blame you or Billie, Matt. Let’s hope the phone is misplaced and not lost. Thanks for your time.”

  “That didn’t sound good, guv,” said Neil after Gus ended the call. “Do you think Marion Reeves’s phone got lost in transit?”

  “Before they had the chance to retrieve the call history, which could have identified our killer,” said Blessing.

  “Losing evidence is a rare occurrence, thank goodness,” said Alex.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not always human error,” said Luke. “It makes you wonder whether everyone who handled that evidence was trustworthy.”

  “I’ll pass the information on to DS Mercer,” said Gus. “He can investigate whether there was foul play or just carelessness. It’s not something I can tackle myself. If the phone’s gone for good, we’ll need to manage without it. I can’t deny it’s a body blow.”

  “As big a body blow as perhaps losing Graham Street, guv?” asked Neil.

  “Get to the hospital, Neil,” said Gus. “I want you there in case he comes around long enough to talk. Luke, or Alex, will relieve you at midnight.”

  “I’ll go,” said Luke. “Alex can take over at eight in the morning.”

  “We should know one way or another by then,” said Neil as he headed for the lift.

  “Where do we go from here, guv?” asked Lydia.

  “We stick to the schedule I had in my head, but Graham Street is on hold until we hear from the hospital. So, Stephanie Reeves is up next, followed by Martyn Street. For the benefit of the rest of you, Arthur Jackson is Martyn’s line manager at Wilton House. Theo Reeves suggested his name as a responsible adult to sit in on our meeting. Martyn has a few issues. Theo Reeves talked about his stepson being a slow learner. Theo didn’t want Martyn in the house after Marion died. We’ll learn more when we speak with Stephanie, but Theo suspected Martyn had acted inappropriately with Stephanie. He might have taken advantage of her when she used alcohol to blot out the trauma of losing her mother.”

  “We don’t have confirmation of that,” said Lydia. “It could be Theo was over-protective of his daughter. Although Theo said he was happy to take on Marion and another man’s child at the start of the marriage, it appears the issues Gus mentioned proved too hard a burden to carry.”

  “Did you do a walkabout?” asked Blessing.

  “We did,” said Gus.
“I wish I could tell you it was informative. Without having seen the industrial estate, I thought it impossible to drive there, park the car for almost two hours, and a vicious stabbing to take place without someone noticing. Lydia and I found a quiet spot on the edge of the estate, on Stephenson Road. No foot traffic, hardly any passing vehicles, but two dozen cars and vans parked on either side of the road. Every unit was in operation, with factory noise, music, and people moving about their business inside the premises. A nuclear bomb could have exploded, and nobody would have poked their nose outside to see what was going on. Perhaps they’ll rewrite the manual on how to commit the perfect murder. Find a quiet corner in a place that’s busy all year round, and you’ve got every chance of getting away with it.”

  “We asked a funeral director about the gym that used to operate out of the premise they now occupy,” said Lydia. “It was a run-down shell of a place when they took it over five years ago. At the time of the murder, there was every chance it was closed for maintenance.”

  “The light engineering outfit next door is still going strong,” said Gus. “I can visualise the Lexus and its surroundings now, but that’s about it. We don’t know whether Marion met someone on Stephenson Road at nine-thirty. I had hoped to learn something from her mobile phone.”

  “Who do you want to speak to after the children, guv?” asked Luke.

  “Milligan and Preston, the builders,” said Gus. “Other than that, I can’t see anyone from Marion’s printing firm or Theo’s design company offering up a suspect.”

  “I suggested we look at the schools, guv,” said Lydia.

  “A long shot,” said Gus. “No, we must concentrate on Graham Street. Even if we can’t talk to him, we can still learn a lot by talking to his friends and colleagues. We might learn even more by having a word with his enemies. I want to know what makes that guy tick.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Gus drove home to Urchfont after a busy but frustrating day. The last thing he’d done before leaving the Old Police Station office was to call Geoff Mercer.

  “Did Matt Price think it was possible someone tampered with evidence in the Marion Reeves case?” asked Geoff. “Why didn’t he flag it up at the time? Why wait seven years?”

  “Matt was still a Detective Sergeant back then, Geoff,” said Gus. “It was his DI, Billie Wightman, who should have pulled the trigger.”

  “What do you think happened?” asked Geoff.

  “Because of the number of people clambering over the crime scene, it’s possible the phone didn’t make it back to the evidence room. Maybe it got mislaid between the car and the forensics vehicle assigned to transport everything collected from the murder site. Or the switch occurred in the evidence room itself—human error. If we had a month of Sundays to spare, we could keep opening every box in the evidence room until we found it. A job you could assign to Geraldine Packenham to get her out of everyone’s hair.”

  “Geraldine is far too busy. The other alternative doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?” said Geoff.

  “Someone close to the case put the phone in their pocket?” said Gus. “I didn’t ask Theo Reeves whether his wife had a top-of-the-range smartphone or something basic but serviceable. Marion kept the same number from her first-ever mobile by the sound of things, so it’s hard to tell which model she owned.”

  “Many people hold on to the same number,” said Geoff. “It saves the hassle of having to notify people of a new one every couple of years. Let alone try to remember it when people ask. A theft wasn’t the alternative that concerned me. What if someone removed it because they feared Marion’s phone held information that could incriminate them?”

  “That’s a stretch, Geoff, surely?” said Gus. “Did any of the police or forensic people working there that afternoon even know Marion Reeves? Apart from the fact that we know she was married before she met Theo Reeves, we’ve got nothing to suggest Marion ever got involved in any dodgy business before she met Theo.”

  “Check with Theo Reeves,” said Geoff. “Show him a list of names, without revealing the background, and check whether he recognises someone Marion mentioned. Was there anything else?”

  “You mentioned Marion’s first husband,” said Gus. “Neil Davis told me when we got back from Wilton Graham Street suffered a heart attack last night. It’s touch and go. Neil has gone to Odstock to see if we can question Street if he pulls through. Neil will stay with Street until midnight. My other two lads will cover the following sixteen hours. The doctors told Neil the next twenty-four hours were critical.”

  “Why do you need to speak to Graham Street, anyway?” asked Geoff. “He wasn’t on the scene when Marion died, was he? They got divorced twenty years earlier. Did the investigating team even check whether he had an alibi for the time of the murder?”

  “Billie Wightman and Matt Price never found a viable suspect with the evidence they uncovered,” said Gus. “I believe the answer lies in Marion’s past; therefore, it could revolve around her relationship with Graham Street. The murder file held practically no information on Street. Perhaps you’re right. Billie Wightman didn’t bother with Graham Street because she thought he was old news and irrelevant. I’ll call Neil and tell him to watch the situation and report back. We’ll hold off on interrogating the guy as soon as he regains consciousness.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Gus,” said Geoff.

  Gus had prepared everything for their meal when Suzie arrived home.

  “You’ve got time to shower and change,” said Gus. “Have you changed your mind about the grilled cheese?”

  Suzie wrinkled her nose and went into the bedroom.

  “All the more for me then,” said Gus, putting the steaks onto the grill.

  After they had eaten, they spent an hour relaxing in the back garden.

  “Next summer, this will be a glass of wine rather than lemonade,” said Suzie.

  “I’m enjoying my lemonade. Did you hear from Vicky Bennison yet?” asked Gus.

  “Not yet,” said Suzie. “I plan to call her before the weekend if she doesn’t get back to me. How did it go in Wilton?”

  Gus outlined the various meetings and conversations he’d had during the day

  “What did you think of Theo Reeves’ behaviour towards his stepson?” asked Suzie.

  “It might seem harsh,” said Gus, “but we don’t know the full story between Martyn and Stephanie. I found Theo’s account of their first meeting of interest. What did you make of that?”

  “What, because Marion didn’t want to give Theo an insight into her failed marriage?” said Suzie. “I can understand that. She didn’t hide the fact she had a child by marriage, though, did she? Theo knew what he was taking on from the off. He could have walked away.”

  “From what he told us this morning, Theo didn’t realise Martyn would pose the problems he did,” said Gus. “After twenty years, perhaps he’d had enough. Theo couldn’t face dealing with it after losing his wife and seeing his daughter suffer a breakdown.”

  “No matter how we view the way matters got handled after Marion’s murder, I can’t see how Theo, Martyn, or Stephanie could figure in it. They had solid alibis, but what possible motive did they have? I haven’t heard you say you’ve found evidence they weren’t the happy family everyone saw from the outside.”

  “Apart from Theo’s unproved suspicion over Martyn and Stephanie, Marion and Theo are squeaky clean. Maybe when I speak to the builders, I’ll discover the couple had a dark side.”

  “Neil didn’t call with news on Graham Street,” said Suzie. “What a terrible shock for his lady friend.”

  “Luke took over from Neil at midnight last night,” said Gus. “Graham Street is ten years older than me. I’ve lived a sheltered life, and at my last medical, the doctor said I had the heart of a fifty-year-old.”

  “When was that?” asked Suzie.

  “Just before I retired,” said Gus.

  “Idiot. Why did you say your life was sheltered in comparison, anyw
ay?”

  “Theo Reeves told us Graham Street had several children with different women. One might call his life unconventional; it certainly wasn’t sheltered. Sooner or later, that lifestyle will catch up with you.”

  “How do you plan to avoid that happening to you?” asked Suzie.

  “I’ll rely on you to help me eat well, restrict my alcohol intake, and have as many early nights as possible.”

  “Is it worth the risk?” asked Suzie.

  “With you, always,” said Gus.

  Tuesday, 21st August 2018

  The alarm rang at seven o’clock, and Gus rolled out of bed. You can’t beat a solid eight hours’ sleep. As he stood in the shower, Gus heard Suzie moving around in the kitchen, Waffles for breakfast unless he was mistaken. He towelled himself dry and ticked off the list of questions he wanted to ask Stephanie Reeves.

  “Coffee and waffles?” asked Suzie when Gus reached the kitchen.

  “The perfect combination,” he replied, “as long as they’re separate.”

  They sat and ate in companionable silence. All was right with the world.

  Gus knew on days such as this that things couldn’t last. It had started too well.

  Suzie was in the shower at a quarter to eight when the house phone rang in the hallway.

  Gus prayed it was his old friend asking after Dorothy. No such luck.

  “Morning, guv,” said Luke Sherman. “Graham Street didn’t make it. He passed away at around six-thirty this morning without regaining consciousness. I sent Alex a text telling him not to bother driving over from Chippenham. He’ll be in the office at nine. Do you want me to hang around here to talk to the doctors or make a note of who they notified as next-of-kin?”

  “No, don’t bother, Luke,” said Gus. “Get home to bed. We’ll expect you in the morning. I want you with me when we interview Martyn Street.”

  “I slept for four hours after I got home yesterday afternoon, guv,” said Luke. “I’ll sleep until lunchtime, and then I’ll be in the office by one o’clock or half-past. I’ve asked Alex to confirm those meetings for you today. See you later.”