Destruction of Evidence (16 page)

‘I’ll have the same.’ Trevor closed the menu and set it aside.

‘Pamela,’ Tim Pryce bellowed at her through the open door as she scribbled on her notepad.

‘It’s all right, Tim. They’re the coppers you’ve agreed to put up in one of the cottages.’

‘That right?’ Tim entered the dining room and walked over to the table. Patrick had chosen one in the corner of the room, well away from the passage and – as it was too early in the evening for most of the forensic technicians who had worked late and were still showering – private.

Trevor introduced himself and Peter. ‘Inspector Trevor Joseph and Sergeant Peter Collins.’

‘They brought police in to work on a local murder?’ Tim managed to sound both incredulous and disgusted.

‘These two officers are very experienced,’ Patrick assured the landlord solemnly. ‘In fact so experienced I have wondered if murderers follow them around to test their skills.’

Tim’s face darkened. ‘The Pitchers were close friends of mine…’

‘No one meant any disrespect, sir. What happened to Mr and Mrs Pitcher and their sons is an appalling tragedy.’ Trevor left the table and pulled out an empty chair. ‘We can do with all the assistance we can get to apprehend whoever killed them. If you knew the Pitchers, you could help us with our enquiries. Please, join us?’

Mollified, Tim hesitated. ‘Later perhaps. I’ve a bar to run.’ He left them.

Pamela finished taking Trevor and Patrick’s order and disappeared in the direction of the kitchens.

‘Dinner rules,’ Patrick sipped a whisky he’d brought into the room with him. ‘No pre-guessing the outcomes of the PMs, no pre-emptive ideas, no shop talk…’

‘The last thing Trevor and I want is to be stuck here, in the Welsh sticks for weeks on end, so how about a few forensic facts? Is the house really as clean as everyone’s telling us?’ Peter asked.

‘From what I’ve heard, the only fingerprints and DNA traces found so far, not that there’s many, belong to family, and people who had reason to visit the house.’

‘But we’ve found a couple more things that may interest you, Inspector Joseph, Sergeant Collins.’ Ted Gant walked into the dining room with Terri Langstone in time to catch the tail end of the conversation. ‘May we join you?’

‘Please do.’ Trevor rose and lifted a chair out from under the table for Terri.

Peter lifted his glass to Ted. ‘Please, tell all.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘We found the remains of a battery wall clock in the cellar,’ Terri sat opposite Patrick. ‘Burned, but the face was comparatively intact. The hands had stopped at two fifty seven.’

‘Which means? Peter demanded impatiently.

‘The fire in the cellar was set around the same time as the one in the attic. Apart from the witness who saw it blazing just before three, a mechanical alarm clock was piled on top of a bonfire of books and clothes in the studio flat. It had stopped at two fifty three.’ Jen sat back in her chair so Pamela could set her garlic mushrooms in front of her.

‘What about the kitchen?’ Trevor asked.

‘The only time we have for that is when the flames were spotted by a witness at two fifty five. The fire was too intense for the granite worktops to survive, so there’s little hope of finding anything left of a clock. That’s if there was one besides the ones on the stove and microwave which have both disintegrated.’ Jen speared a mushroom with her fork and dipped it into a pot of garlic sauce.

‘Can you estimate the exact times the three fires were lit on the different floors?’ Peter asked.

‘Certainly, as soon as you buy us a reliable crystal ball that can look into the past,’ Jen nibbled the mushroom.

‘Point me to the shop,’ Peter quipped.

‘If all the fires were set alight by one person he must have been nimble to get them going so close to one another four storeys apart,’ Patrick chipped in.

‘Nimbler than a thug with the alcohol level of Larry’s,’ Peter observed.

‘Thank you.’ Trevor took his and Peter’s smoked salmon pates from Pamela.

Ted waited until Pamela had served him, Patrick and Terri the seafood cocktails they’d ordered in the bar and left. ‘There weren’t three separate fires, there were nineteen, all started in different rooms and on different floors. The only floor that didn’t have a fire lit on it was the ground floor that housed the office suite. All the damage between the attic and kitchen floor was caused by the fires below and above.’

‘Was anything flammable thrown around the attic?’ Trevor asked.

‘No traces of flammable liquids just combustibles heaped together,’ Jennifer replied. ‘Clothing, books, cologne, after shave, deodorant cans… mechanical alarm clock…’

‘It takes time to build bonfires. I take it the arsonist or arsonist used whatever was at hand,’ Peter spread his pate on toast.

‘Except in the cellar. There’s no evidence to suggest heaping of combustibles,’ Ted ferreted around in his seafood cocktail and extracted a king prawn. ‘Only traces of petrol in glass bottles and Alun Pitcher’s employees insist he didn’t store any there. So we’re back to the petrol bomb theory.’

‘Patrick…’

‘I warned you Trevor, no guesses. You want hard facts you can have them after I’ve done the PMs.’

‘This isn’t a PM question. The bodies were wrapped in brown paper and string before they were burned?’

‘You saw them.’ Patrick said impatiently.

‘Was anything poured on them?’

Patrick nodded. ‘Why do you think I’ve spent two days examining the bodies in situ?’

‘To piss us off,’ Peter suggested.

‘Another remark like that, Sergeant, and I may leave them there for another week.’

‘What was used?’ Trevor ignored Peter and wished Patrick would.

‘Alcohol.’

‘A lot?’

‘It’s difficult to estimate but I’d say enough to get a fire going. Don’t quote me but possibly a bottle of brandy on each,’ Patrick answered.

‘Were the Pitchers drinkers?’ Trevor asked.

‘We found the remains of a number of bottles in the kitchen. There was also a well stocked cocktail cabinet in the living room,’ Terri answered. ‘You’ll get our reports in due course.’

‘In the meantime we sit and twiddle our thumbs,’ Peter complained.

‘Have you been on a police course that taught you to do that clockwise as well as anti-clockwise?’ Jen enquired in a patronising tone.

‘Forget twiddling. We’ll be too busy interviewing witnesses, and checking statements,’ Trevor corrected Peter. ‘Starting first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘What I don’t get,’ Patrick contemplated a shrimp on the end of his fork, ‘is no one has a bad word to say about any one of the Pitchers. Father, a well liked businessman, mother, a tireless charity worker, good looking young sons, bent on making their own way in the world.’

‘Some people are good,’ Jen murmured. ‘It’s just that we don’t generally meet them in our line of work except as victims.’

‘Another month and the boys wouldn’t have been in the house,’ Ted Gant said. ‘The three of them had just closed on a deal to buy an old rectory. They intended to move in together and convert it into flats.’

‘How do you know that?’ Trevor asked.

‘Local priest. He came round to pray for their souls. The Catholic church is at the end of the street next to the opening to the back lane.’

‘Were the Pitchers Catholic?’ Peter asked.

‘Not that I’m aware of.’ Ted finished the seafood in his cocktail and pushed the salad base away.

‘Did you find out anything else from the priest?’ Trevor asked Ted.

‘No. He prayed for the Pitchers when I told him they were still in the house. That’s when he told me that the boys were hoping to move out at the end of the month. He mentioned he’d frequently enjoyed Alun’s hospitality and whisky and the Pitchers more or less kept open house and had a large circle of friends who called on them at all hours.’

‘That coupled with the absence of an obvious break-in suggests they knew their killer,’ Patrick commented.

‘Which rules out the man in custody,’ Ted said thoughtfully. ‘If they knew anything about Larry Jones they wouldn’t have allowed him into their house.’

Peter made room on the table when Pam entered with a tray of drinks ‘As all Trevor and I’ve had from the locals since we’ve arrived is “everyone here knows everyone else in the town” it stands to reason the Pitchers knew their killer unless he parachuted in. As to whether knowing everyone in town, is a good or bad thing, I defer to those with experience of a commune-style lifestyle. What do you say, Pam?’

‘It depends on whether or not you have secrets or bad habits you want to hide.’ Pam set bottles of wine on the table and pints of beer in front of Trevor, Patrick and Peter, adding a whisky chaser to Patrick’s place setting.

‘I’ll give you a hand with these,’ Trevor offered when Pam cleared their starter dishes.

‘There’s no need.’

‘I’d like a word with the landlord anyway.’

‘We’re in the middle of dinner, Trevor,’ Peter prompted.

‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’ Trevor heaped the last of the cocktail dishes on Pamela’s tray and picked it up, leaving the pate plates for her. He followed her down the passage.

‘Tim doesn’t allow guests or the public into the kitchen,’ Pamela warned. ‘I’ll take the tray as soon as I’ve dumped these.’

When she returned, Trevor said, ‘Do you remember telling us Alan Pitcher kept his more valuable stock in his cellar?’

‘That’s no secret,’ she murmured guardedly.

‘You also said something about the house he’d just cleared.’

She nodded. ‘The Harvilles’ place, the old rectory. Now they had money – the Harvilles. Old inherited wealth going back hundreds of years. The family lived in the castle until the 1940s when the war office requisitioned it. They never moved back. My gran used to clean for the Harvilles and she told me Mrs Harville insisted she’d never known what it was to be warm until she moved out of the castle and into the rectory. When they left the castle, the Harvilles took what they could fit into the rectory and sold the rest. They had beautiful paintings, sculptures and antiques. Mrs Harville was the last of the family. She went ga-ga, poor thing. There wasn’t even a will. Her entire estate went to the crown. Shame really. Alun Pitcher was going to bill the auction of the rectory contents “the sale of the century” and it would have been. There aren’t many families who have possessions dating back eight hundred years.’

Patrick succeeded in banning current “shop talk” from the dinner table. Instead he and Ted Gant regaled everyone with stories about cases they had worked on together and, separately. As an entertainer, Patrick outshone Ted; as the Irish inevitably do in less expansive company.

‘… there we were, in this mortuary in the hills of central Ruritania. Rumour had it as an early design by the architect who built Stonehenge. Problem was; it had deteriorated over the centuries. The floor and walls were crumbling and we were up to our ankles in rubble and puddles from the leaking roof. “We” being the legendary Norman Robbins, me and a poor lamb of an attendant who looked as though he should be adding up sums in junior school, not laying out the dead. Poor child had never seen a body more than a week old, never mind an exhumation. Norman gave the gravediggers the order to drop the coffin next to the only slab, a piece of granite that had been left out in the rain since St Patrick had preached to the heathen English.’

‘St Patrick was Welsh and the only preaching he did was to the heathen Irish.’ Ted cut into a roast potato.

‘So you English say, we Irish know better. Anyway… Norman found a stretcher and gave the poor boy a hand to lift out the contents…’

‘Dead long?’ Jenny splattered her plate and the tablecloth with blood when she cut into her steak.

‘Fourteen months in a cheap pine coffin.’ Patrick contemplated a piece of liver he was ferrying to his mouth.

‘Embalmed?’ Ted checked.

‘No.’

‘Ripe then?’ Jenny carried on eating her raw steak.

‘Very,’ Patrick took a moment to chew his liver. ‘This kid went ballistic when he saw the maggots. They were wriggling and squirming as maggots do when they sense freedom. He was yelling his head off about them fouling his nice clean mortuary. Norman spotted a can of paraffin in a corner. The Lord only knew what it was doing there; probably they used it to heat the place in winter. Norman told the boy to sprinkle it in a circle around the corpse and light it. Everyone knows that even after the fire dies down the maggots won’t go beyond the limits of the circle.’

‘Everyone?’ Peter looked around. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Now you do. That’s the point of life, Peter, you live and learn.’ Patrick winked at Trevor. ‘By the time the boy’d finished his sprinkling, the maggots were off the slab, out of the coffin and looking for new territory to colonise. The boy must have thought that one of the places they were making for was him, although maggots only like dead meat… come to think it perhaps…’

‘Get on with it, Patrick,’ Jen played the long suffering colleague, although she had worked with Patrick for less than a year.

‘The boy lit a match, dropped it. Pouff!’ Patrick grinned, his dark, aquiline features appearing even more sardonic in the flickering candlelight. ‘But the poor lamb had sprinkled the circle around himself. He was caught in the middle of the fire. He panicked and climbed on top of the corpse. And did he stink afterwards? Mother of God, even the rats ran when he approached.’