A Time to Kill Read online

  ‘I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘Do you admit that you smashed the windscreen and dented the panels of her car?’

  Fiona nodded.

  ‘You’ll need to say something for the recording.’

  ‘Yes, I smashed her car.’ Fiona used a tone that suggested she didn’t quite believe it herself.

  ‘I’m sure you agree, Inspector, that these are extenuating circumstances.’ Dafydd Upton made his first contribution, which wasn’t really helpful or constructive. He should have known such a comment was for the magistrates’ court and not for the police interview.

  By the end, Fiona Jones had made a full confession, making it one of the easiest interviews Drake had ever completed. He found himself feeling oddly sympathetic towards her. She knew her husband to be a serial philanderer, but his relationships had never been as intense as the one with Penny Muller. Somehow for Fiona it had been different and self-destructive. Before completing the interview, Drake asked one further question.

  ‘Do you think Penny or Wolfgang Muller was responsible for killing Harry?’

  ‘They were ruining our lives.’ It didn’t answer the question.

  ‘Do you think Wolfgang Muller killed Harry? To stop him from having a relationship with his wife?’

  Fiona gave Drake another of her confused, damaged expressions that he couldn’t read. Had the thought not occurred to her?

  The custody sergeant accepted Drake’s recommendation that he release Fiona Jones on bail. Drake had no doubts the Crown Prosecution Service would press charges for criminal damage. In due course Dafydd Upton would get a chance to impress the magistrates with his plea in mitigation – maybe even get a mention in the local press.

  ‘You’re going to interview Wolfgang whatever-his-name-is?’ The sergeant asked.

  ‘I need to talk to my team first,’ Drake said, heading out of the custody suite.

  Winder was finishing a stale-looking Danish pastry when Drake arrived in the canteen. Luned was talking with Sara, empty mugs on the table in front of them.

  Drake detoured to the counter for a bottle of water and returned to join the rest of his team. Winder dabbed a tissue to his mouth, a contented, fat-induced look on his face.

  ‘So what did the guests at Bryn Hyfryd have to say?’ Drake said.

  Winder was the first to reply. ‘There were a dozen guests – all a bit weird.’

  ‘New-age people, sir.’ Luned clarified.

  Winder ignored her and carried on. ‘They were all hippies. A yoga session run by Penny Muller finished about ten o’clock on the night Harry Jones was killed. A couple of them remembered Wolfgang being there. Some of them stayed around for chamomile tea – they made a point of telling us that.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with herbal tea,’ Sara said.

  Luned nodded. ‘I quite like the raspberry one myself.’

  Winder grimaced, floundering as to how to react. ‘Most of them were in bed by midnight and none of them recalled seeing Wolfgang afterwards. They were all staying there for a “wellness week”, enjoying walking in the country, alternative pursuits and getting in touch with their inner selves.’

  ‘So he could have left in the middle of the night. We’ll need to establish if there are any traffic or CCTV cameras nearby.’

  ‘Come off it, boss,’ Winder said. ‘It’s like the wild west up there. There are lots of these hippy communes in the mountains. Nobody knows what they get up to. And I wouldn’t trust any of the witnesses to be reliable. Wolfgang could have slipped out any time.’

  A search of the database of traffic cameras would give Drake the answer quickly enough. The Range Rover Evoque would have been too recognisable; Wolfgang might have used another car, a motorbike or a bicycle even. Drake made a mental note to get the route calculated. They needed an approximate time of death from the pathologist before they focused on Wolfgang Muller as a possible suspect.

  Drake and Sara returned to the office they had used earlier. Wolfgang Muller was twiddling his thumbs in one of the conference rooms while communicating his impatience several times through the civilians working at the main reception.

  Drake read Penny Muller’s statement. It covered the basic facts and agreed with the sequence of events he had heard from Fiona Jones. Drake could have delegated the task of recording Wolfgang’s statement to Winder and Luned. But his connection to Harry Jones made this different.

  ‘We haven’t got any evidence to suggest Wolfgang Muller is a suspect in the murder of Harry Jones,’ Sara announced.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll want to make a formal complaint about the damage to his property,’ Drake added.

  Sara raised a carefully manicured eyebrow.

  ‘And we can have a discussion with him about his relationship with Harry Jones at the same time.’

  ‘It sounds like a fishing expedition,’ Sara said.

  Sara’s comment signalled her growing confidence. After several years of working with Caren Waits, it had taken time for Drake to become accustomed to Sara Morgan. There was a harder edge to her than Caren, not always as resourceful but tough nevertheless.

  ‘We can’t keep him waiting any longer.’ Drake stood up, gathered his papers together, and nodded to Sara before leaving.

  Wolfgang Muller was standing by a window when Drake and Sara entered. A china mug sat on a table, a distinct improvement from the plastic containers used in the custody suite. He frowned at Drake.

  ‘Why the hell am I being kept waiting?’

  ‘I am most terribly sorry,’ Drake gave Wolfgang his best smile, waving a hand to the chairs around the table. ‘I’m sure you can appreciate that investigations like this can take time. You know how it is these days. We have to handle things sensitively and be conscious of Fiona’s role as the widow of the victim in a brutal murder.’ Drake even surprised himself with his gushing obsequiousness, but it did the trick – Wolfgang’s body language and challenging attitude dissolved into a matter-of-fact, cooperative expression.

  ‘Is it going to take long?’

  ‘Not at all. We want to formally record your complaint. It’s all a matter of procedures, getting the protocols right. I’m sure you understand.’ Drake rolled his eyes and gave him a man-of-the-world shrug.

  Wolfgang read the time on his watch lazily.

  ‘What time did Fiona arrive at Bryn Hyfryd?’ Drake opened with a simple, softening-up question.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I don’t remember.’

  ‘It must have been quite a shock when she smashed up your cars?’

  ‘I told the guests to stay indoors. She was quite clearly deranged.’

  ‘How long did her vandalism spree last?’

  ‘A few minutes I guess.’

  ‘It must have been very upsetting for you?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But I was more concerned for the guests and their safety.’

  Drake sat back in his chair for a moment. ‘So why did you think Fiona decided to smash your cars?’ Drake kept his eye contact firmly on Wolfgang’s face, searching for any tell-tale signs, an indication of what was going through his mind.

  ‘Obviously the loss of her husband is having a profound effect on her mental stability.’

  Drake reached for a ballpoint on top of his papers and turned it through his fingers. ‘Mental instability… and what do you think might have caused that?’

  ‘I take it you are alluding to the fact that Penny had a brief…’ Wolfgang fluttered his left hand in the air. ‘… affair with Harry Jones.’

  ‘And what did you think of that?’ Drake tried to make the question sound conversational.

  ‘Penny and I agreed years ago not to make conscious moral demands on each other. In that way we can each fulfil each other’s potential without being hidebound to the other. Loyalty and love mean so much more than simple fidelity.’

  Drake spent time teasing out of Wolfgang as much information as he could about what he knew of his wife’s relationship with Harry Jones. Occasionally Drake p
aused, retreated and regrouped until he could focus his questions on getting a clear picture of what Wolfgang really felt. By the end Drake wasn’t certain he had achieved anything other than to listen to an explanation of a convoluted relationship that made no sense.

  ‘We’ll need full details in due course of the repair cost to your vehicles,’ Drake said.

  ‘I’ll organise it in the next few days.’

  Drake stood up and reached out a hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Muller.’

  Drake and Sara watched as Wolfgang left the police station. It had been a tortuous turn of events that day. The wife of a murder victim had been arrested for criminal damage. Her interview had taken place before Drake had completed taking statements from one of the complainants – Wolfgang Muller. Not that it made any difference; Fiona had made a full confession – enough for any CPS lawyer to decide that she be charged.

  ‘What did you make of that boss?’ Sara said.

  ‘I think Gareth was right – we don’t know what these people get up to. I want the mobile telephones of Wolfgang Muller and Fiona Jones triangulated for the day Harry died.’

  Sara nodded. ‘Conscious moral demands, it’s like something those celebs said a few years ago when they split up – “conscious uncoupling”.’

  ‘It was Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin from Coldplay.’

  Drake disliked Coldplay: their music always struck him as so melancholic.

  Drake and Sara said little on their journey back to headquarters. He pulled into the car park and once Sara had left he drove home. In the kitchen, he noticed the bleeping of the landline base, showing him there was a message. He listened to his mother telling him that Sian had contacted her about the weekend, and it piqued him that she had called his mother. Sian’s plans must have been important enough to justify calling her. And that annoyed him. It made him speculate what she was doing, who she was seeing and where she was going.

  He could always call Sian on the pretext of speaking to his daughters; ask some innocuous-sounding questions about her weekend. But it had been a long day and sitting by the kitchen table he finished a ready meal, and then polished off a bottle of German lager. Flopping into a chair in the lounge he flicked through the channels on his television before watching the news. He woke a couple of hours later to a documentary about the likelihood of a volcanic eruption around Naples. He switched the programme off and went to bed.

  Chapter 9

  The following morning Drake arrived at headquarters early. He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time to the empty Incident Room and his office. After draping the jacket of his suit over a wooden hanger on the coat stand he settled down at his desk. The columns of colour-coordinated Post It notes were shorter than usual but by the end of the day they would have lengthened as Drake got to grips with the investigation.

  The rest of his desk was neat and tidy. He reached over and moved the photograph of Helen and Megan a few millimetres. Before switching on his computer, he pulled a duster from a drawer and cleaned the keyboard. Removing the dust gathered between each key and along the top rim above the F command keys before he could start work had become a recent habit he found comforting. Once satisfied it was clean he booted up his computer and waited for the monitor to flicker into life.

  He deleted various emails from his inbox – but he lingered on the request from Superintendent Price for a meeting later that day. It would be his first opportunity to bring his superior officer up to date. He could imagine Price’s reaction to Harry Jones’ reputation. It would be a mixture of disgust tinged with an edge of jealousy.

  The noise from bodies congregating in the Incident Room broke his concentration and he left his office and joined Winder and Luned as Sara entered and greeted everyone.

  ‘Good morning,’ Drake said to his team nearing the board.

  ‘Any luck with Wolfgang Muller?’ Winder said.

  ‘We interviewed him yesterday as a witness. He admitted his wife had a relationship with Harry Jones and implied he was relaxed about it. He called it an absence of conscious moral judgements.’

  Winder guffawed. ‘You mean he was happy knowing that another man was shagging his wife?’

  Sara made her first contribution. ‘That seems to be the case.’

  ‘I told you they were all hippies and dead weird.’

  ‘We make Wolfgang Muller a person of interest in our inquiry. For most people family infidelity would be a perfect motive. So, I want to know a lot more about him. Dig into his past, establish full background details. And find a photograph for the board.’

  Sara again. ‘And the same for Penny Muller?’

  ‘Yes, we treat everything she and Wolfgang told us with suspicion.’

  Drake looked over at Winder. ‘Were you able to check Fiona’s alibi?’

  ‘I spoke with her mother who confirmed the details Fiona gave you, boss.’

  ‘One of you will need to take a formal statement from her in due course.’

  Winder continued. ‘It still means she could have killed Harry Jones when she got back.’

  Drake thought the same. Fiona lived close enough to the crime scene for her to have lured her husband to the Quarryman’s Hospital after arriving back from her mother’s home. And a cuckolded spouse has the clearest motive in the world. It was a case where they had more than one.

  Winder piped up. ‘Perhaps Fiona simply got tired of his philandering. She snaps and kills him.’

  ‘It’s a bit too premeditated for that,’ Drake turned to the image of Fiona on the board. ‘We need to find out if Harry Jones made a will.’

  ‘Is Fiona going to be charged with criminal damage, sir?’ Luned said.

  ‘She was bailed last night. We’ll send the file to the Crown Prosecution Service; one of their lawyers can make the final decision.’

  ‘And it would have been easy for Fiona to find a gun,’ Sara said. ‘She probably knew about Harry’s collection’

  Gun crime was practically non-existent in North Wales and when it did occur it made the headlines. The sort of coverage Drake had seen on the television where the reporters had interviewed the terrified residents of Llanberis – older citizens cowering behind their front doors, young mothers drawing children into a protective embrace.

  Drake continued. ‘He probably brought one home to show her.’ Drake looked over at his team. ‘We treat Fiona as a person of interest, too.’

  Drake spent the next ten minutes allocating tasks. Winder was to coordinate the house-to-house enquiries. There would be dozens of statements from well-intentioned members of the public. The investigation might depend on some snippet of information from a jogger or a dog walker or secret lovers in or around the slate museum and the Quarryman’s Hospital. Winder’s shoulders sagged as he jotted down notes.

  Luned was tasked with establishing the finances of Harry and Fiona Jones. Debt and the financial pressures it created were an obvious motive and Drake didn’t want to dismiss the possibility that Fiona Jones killed Harry without a complete investigation.

  ‘One of the local shopkeepers rang yesterday boss,’ Luned said. ‘He saw Harry Jones leaving his shop at about 6.20 p.m. and he said he was heading to a council meeting.’

  Winder moved his head to get Drake’s attention. ‘We had the preliminary financial reports on Harry Jones in too. He used his card in a supermarket on the day he was killed. I called them and apparently he bought flowers and wine.’

  ‘And the time?’

  ‘2.30 p.m.’

  ‘Talk to the assistant on the till. You might get more details. And find out if he was with anyone.’

  Back in his office Drake reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a pad before moving the Post It notes carefully to one side. He started by drawing two columns and scribbling ‘time’ on the top of the first and ‘details’ on the second. Then he read the details of the statement from the eyewitness who had seen Harry Jones leaving his shop.

  Once complete, he rechecked the details and read th
em again.

  Time

  Details

  12.30

  HJ seen in shop by FJ and Michael

  2.30

  Supermarket – buying flowers and wine

  5.00

  Back in shop for closing – spoken to by Michael

  6.20

  Seen leaving shop by local shopkeeper

  8.00

  Council meeting concludes

  The absence of any details for the morning didn’t trouble Drake. They had to establish where Harry Jones had been and, more importantly, who he had been with for two and half hours that afternoon.

  There were flowers and wine involved so Drake guessed it meant a tryst. Drake sat back in his chair. Should he make a public appeal for witnesses to come forward with details of Harry’s whereabouts that day?

  He was still contemplating the answer when the telephone rang. He recognised the voice of Mike Foulds.

  ‘I’ve been looking at those guns you recovered from that storage locker. They all look to be the genuine article. I was expecting them to be replicas or at least disabled. But they all could fire live ammunition.’

  ‘Why would he keep those sorts of firearms?’ Drake said.

  ‘I’m going to send the bullet to a specialist forensic analyst I met at a course last year. He specialises in firearms and has a particular interest in World War II memorabilia.’

  Drake imagined Fiona Jones finding the old revolver in the house; it gave her the ideal opportunity to kill Harry Jones.

  ‘Yes, of course. Whatever you think best.’

  He ended the call and his mind turned to the historian at the army museum he’d been referred to yesterday. He found the contact details and dialled the number.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Ian Drake of the Wales Police Service. I need to speak to Mr Edwards on a police matter.

  ‘I think I’ve got a number somewhere.’ The receptionist dictated the details Drake scribbled down on his notepad.