Secret of the Dead (14 page)

“Cross my heart,” Tony replied, drawing a sign over the left side of his chest.

She smiled, fixing him with twinkling grey eyes.

As she leaned back against the work surface, Tony couldn’t help but notice the striking similarity to her daughter. She was tall and slim with dark collar length hair, though unlike her daughter’s natural colour, Jennifer’s hair was dyed. And also unlike her daughter’s fresh complexion, her features were heavily lined and creased. Despite the newly acquired tan from her recent holiday, she looked somewhat older than her sixty-four years. Tony guessed that was down to her half-century of smoking, yet he could definitely see where Katherine got her looks from

“Katherine’s already filled me in. You want to know about Jeffery?” she said.

“If you don’t mind. We’ve obviously got some recent stuff from Katherine, and we’ve talked to some of his ex-colleagues, but as his parents are now dead you’re the person who probably knew him the best during his younger years.”

“Only until nineteen-eighty-four. That’s when I left him.”

“Yes we know, and that’s the period I want to focus on, if you don’t mind?”

Jennifer looked puzzled.

Tony continued. “You appreciate that I can’t go into things in any detail, because the investigation is still in its infancy, and we haven’t arrested anyone yet for Jeffery’s murder, but a few things have cropped up since we started this enquiry which makes us want to look into his past, and the nineteen-eighties are a period of his life we are interested in.”

“Oh I see. I realise you have your reasons why can’t say too much but it’s during that time that he and I had our differences.”

“Yes we know. That’s why I want to ask you a few questions about that period of his life.”

“Yeah okay, I can understand that. But you’ll have to appreciate this is not going to be easy. I don’t want to paint Jeffery in a bad light, especially for Katherine. I’ve never really told her anything about why me and her dad split up. She’s only really just got to know him.”

“Don’t worry Jennifer, we’ll treat what you tell us with confidence. We’re only interested in anything which may point us in the direction of his killer. Having said that, it is also important that we have the right picture painted of him. Especially his background.”

“This is going to be awkward. Do you know, I’ve never sat down and discussed with anyone what went on in Jeff’s and my life before I left him? Don’t get me wrong, when I first left, I told snippets of it to a couple of close friends, and I have mentioned the odd thing here and there to Derek, he’s the man I’m married to now, but I didn’t even tell my solicitor some of the stuff Jeff had done, because I knew it would lose him his job.” Jennifer West wrung her hands.

Tony could see threads of broken veins close to the skin. Suddenly she appeared frail. “All I can say, Jennifer, is that we’ll do our best with what you tell us. But it is important that we get to know everything about Jeffery. It might give us our best clue as to who killed him.”

She nodded. “Yes I know. Do you know this is so weird? So many times in the past I have listened to Jeffery’s stories of some of the enquiries he has been involved in and how he has interviewed witnesses. Never did I think I would be one of those witnesses myself.”

“Strange world we live in eh, Jennifer?” Tony exchanged a quick glance with Carol. He could see she had her pen poised over her journal. “Tell me a bit about yourself and Jeffery, when you married et cetera, just for background. Speak freely. I’ll interrupt if I want something different okay?”

She nodded again, switching eye-contact between Tony and Carol. “I first met Jeffery in nineteen-sixty-four, not long after he’d joined the job. He was nineteen and I was twenty. I worked at Woolworth’s and I’d caught a young lad shoplifting. Jeffery came to arrest him, and he actually asked me out while he was taking a statement from me. It was so spontaneous and he was so handsome. A man in uniform and all that.” Her solemn look suddenly transformed into a smile. “He took me to the cinema to see Goldfinger. I know it’s corny and all that but I saw a resemblance in Jeffery to Sean Connery. And that was it, I was smitten.” For a second her gaze was distant, as if lost in her thought. Then she blinked and said, “We went out together for just over a year and I got caught with Katherine. It was a real blow for both of us. We had talked so much about what we wanted to do before we settled down, but that put paid to both our dreams.” She glanced between Tony and Carol. “Don’t take that the wrong way. Once we got our head around things we were both overjoyed, and Katherine’s made my world perfect, but it was just at the time you understand?”

Never having had a child, Tony didn’t understand. Nevertheless he nodded.

“We had to get married before she was born, because the job frowned on it. But they gave us a police house to live in. A three-bedroom semi. It was better than what both our parents had. Those early years were good times. Short of money, but we had such happy times as a family. And then he went in CID.” She glanced at Tony. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like it did, because we still had some good times even in his early CID days. The extra money he brought in from his overtime was more than welcome. It helped us get together the deposit for the house at Woodlands View. But it also meant he was spending a lot of time at work. Sometimes I didn’t see him from one day to the next, especially if he was on a murder. And especially when he got in with that Alan Darbyshire.”

Tony straightened up from his slouch at the mention of that name. “What about Alan Darbyshire?”

“Oh don’t read too much into that comment, he was just a bad influence. Jeffery was never one for drinking, but when he got in with Alan they seemed to be never away from the pub. It was putting a strain on our marriage and I told him so. And I told him that he had a daughter to think about.”

“Can you remember roughly when this was?”

She glanced away momentarily, a look of concentration on her face. For a couple of seconds she started worrying her bottom lip, then said softly, “He went in CID in the summer of nineteen-seventy-two, and he was probably three or four years in, when he started with the regular late drinking sessions with Alan. He didn’t come in rolling drunk, or anything like that, it was just that it’d be the early hours of the morning before he got home. He always used to say he’d been working late. It caused quite a few rows, I can tell you.”

“Did you get to know Alan Darbyshire well?”

“Oh yes. I saw a lot of Alan. We used to go out as a couple, me and Jeffery and him and his wife Pauline. She was nice, and he was quite a character.”

“It’s been mentioned that you used to go on holiday together?”

“Oh yes, that was in the early eighties. Alan knew someone who had a place in Benidorm, and so it only cost us for the flights and our spending money. We’d go there a couple of times a year. It worked out cheaper than a holiday in England.”

“What kind of place are we talking about in Benidorm?”

“It was a two bedroom villa with its own pool, lovely place.”

“Do you know who it belonged to?”

“To be honest, at first I didn’t think anything about this. As cops, and you’ll know what I mean when I say this, you get to know a lot of people, from all walks of life, and Jeffery used to tell me it was a case of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. He told me that he and Alan had done a businessman a favour and in return he was letting them use his holiday home when he didn’t need it.” She fixed on Tony’s expression. “And before you ask, no I don’t know what that favour was. But I don’t believe it was anything underhand. Jeffery wasn’t the kind of man to do anything wrong. He loved his job. I have to say though, I was never too sure about Alan. I always used to say to Jeffery that I thought he was a flash git. You see he got promoted and he had a bit more money and used to throw it around a bit.”

“What do you mean by that comment Jennifer throw it around?”

“Well, things were a bit tight for us even with the overtime. I didn’t work and we had Katherine. Alan and Pauline didn’t have children, and she worked, so it always seemed as if he had a lot of money, and he liked to show off by flashing it around.”

Tony swung his gaze towards his FLO colleague. He could see Carol feverishly scribbling away in her journal.

“Did you ever get the impression Alan would do anything dodgy?”

Jennifer rolled her head from side to side. “Not to my knowledge, but Alan always acted the Jack the Lad, and after a while it grated on me. I felt as if Jeffery was a bit of a lap-dog around him, both at work and when we were out, and I didn’t like it. I told Jeffery my thoughts on quite a few occasions and we’d end up rowing over it. It wore me down in the end and I deliberately forced some space between us when it came to going out as couples. I used to make excuses about not feeling well, or say we couldn’t get a baby-sitter, and then I told Jeffery I couldn’t face going on holiday with them. I guess that’s when I realised our marriage was in a mess. I did try to make a go of it but I could tell Jeffery wasn’t happy and that’s when he and Alan started boozing regularly together. We started to drift apart. And I started to re-evaluate my life. The final straw was when he came home with the new car. A brand new BMW, I ask you. I went spare because money was tight enough as it was, but he told me that the businessman Alan and he had done a favour for brought them over from Germany, because he fiddled the VAT, and he’d got the car on a nought per cent interest deal. It was at that stage I felt something wasn’t quite right. I know the police are sticklers when it comes to accepting gifts, or even credit, and I wanted him to give it back. I told him he could lose his job if anyone found out. All he kept saying was that it was all above board and he was paying for it but without the added interest, and that Alan had got a similar deal as well.”

“Is that what caused your marriage to break up?”

“Not exactly. It was well on its way by then, in my eyes. I started to get suspicious about Jeffery’s late night jaunts. I’ve already mentioned about his drinking sessions. Well, on a couple of occasions when he came home I could swear I smelt women’s perfume on him, and I fronted him up about it, but he just told me it was because of this night club he and Alan went to. I got a friend of mine to follow him one night and I discovered he was visiting a private club in Wakefield, which I found out was a strip club. That was it. I dolled myself up one night and turned up at the club. I found Jeffery and Alan entertaining a couple of women at the bar. They were dressed like whores, and for me that was the last straw. I came straight back home, packed two suitcases, got my dad to pick me up, and I left with Katherine and stayed at my parents’ caravan in Skegness until I could fix myself up with a place for us both. Then I filed for divorce. I never came back. Jeffery came to the van and pleaded on bended knees, but by then I’d really had enough. I knew I’d be better out of it. Jeffery had changed so much as a person.”

“When was this, Jennifer?”

“Nineteen-eighty-three. And I got divorced the following year on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour.”

“That year’s important to our enquiry Jennifer. You’ve mentioned earlier that Jeffery used to tell you about some of the jobs he was involved in. Can you recall him ever mentioning the name Lucy Blake-Hall?”

Jennifer West nodded. “I certainly do. It was splashed all over the local papers as well. He and Alan played a big part in that job. Jeffery told me that they had arrested the man who had murdered her.” She pushed herself upright from the work surface she had been leaning on. “In fact, that was the night I caught him and Alan with those women. He tried to tell me, once I’d caught him out that he was celebrating because they had charged Lucy’s killer with her murder. You see, the strip club belonged to Lucy’s husband.”

- ooOoo –

DAY SIX: 29
th
November.

The only sound in the house came from the crackling logs burning in the grate. Hunter had lit the fire the moment he had got downstairs, having seen the state of the weather when he opened the bedroom curtains that morning.

Taking a spell out from his paperwork he stared into the dancing flames and day-dreamed for a brief moment. It reminded him of his and Beth’s very first viewing of this house; the image before him prompted the recall every time. Passing by after a shopping trip, they had spotted the owner’s home-made sign and he had stopped the car and reversed to get a better look. They had lingered at the top of the drive for a good five minutes, Hunter taking in the well appointed three-bedroom semi. He could remember thinking that this was too good to be true. They knew the location well from walks they had taken together in the fields at the rear of the property when they were younger, and both of them, at one time or another, had talked and dreamed about living in such a house. They decided to knock on the owner’s door - it was too good an opportunity to let slip. By sheer chance they were the first viewing, the sign had only gone up that morning, and the minute they had entered the brightly lit hallway they knew this was a house with potential. Once they had been shown into the richly furnished lounge and had been greeted by the roaring fire, Hunter had looked into Beth’s eyes and knew this was the place for them. That was ten years ago and since then it had become a family home with the births of Jonathan and Daniel.

Hunter returned his gaze to the documents spread out over the large oak coffee table. The previous evening, he had brought home the Daniel Weaver prosecution file and photograph exhibits. At work he had already read through all of its 500 pages twice but he wanted to fully ingrain the important elements of it to memory before he and Grace visited Daniel Weaver later that day: Grace had earmarked a visitors’ slot for 4pm at Wakefield Prison where Daniel had been held for most of the twenty five years inside.

He pawed at the bound file, searching for the first statement he wanted. He had four hours to plough his way through the file before Beth came home from work to join him for lunch; it was her half day today, and she had dropped the boys off at school on her way to the surgery, leaving him to get on with his task.