Kith and Kill (11 page)

Amos became aware that Mary was still watching intently, though she was probably not close enough to see the writing on the stubs. Either she knew exactly what was on them already or she was telling the truth when she professed to have no financial acumen.

A batch of bank statements fitted into another pigeonhole. These were issued quarterly. For most of his life Joseph Wilson had not needed more frequent statements. Only the most recent quarter had run to more than one page.

Like the house title deeds and the savings book, the current account bank statements bore only Joseph Wilson’s name.

There was no sign of a will, nor any other communication from the firm of solicitors that had handled the closing of the mortgage, presumably because the firm had been appointed by the building society and had never acted for Wilson himself.

“Did your father ever use any firm of solicitors?” Amos asked.

“No,” Mary replied. “He never had need of any, being a law-abiding man.”

“There’s no will among the papers,” the inspector said.

“I didn’t think there would be,” Mary replied. “No need. Matthew was dividing it all up. I suppose Mark will do it now.”

“I suppose he will,” Amos concurred.

“We’ll need to take these documents,” he added, scooping up the papers in the top of the bureau quickly before Mary could object. “I’ll let you have them back as soon as possible.”

Amos glanced at his watch as they left the house. Somehow the game of musical chairs had run on longer than he had realised.

“Let’s go back to HQ,” he said to Swift, “and see if anything else has cropped up.”

Amos decided it was his turn to drive. Detective Sergeant Juliet Swift lived up a little too close to her name when driving, which was great when they were in a hurry but could be somewhat disconcerting when Amos was trying to think.

The inspector had cause to regret this decision, however, when the pair arrived back at Lincolnshire police headquarters in Nettleham, just to the east of the city of Lincoln.

“You’ve just missed Mr Slater,” Detective Constable Susan Smith said cautiously as the two superior officers entered CID. “I’m surprised you didn’t bump into him in the car park. He said he’d performed the post mortem and he’d let you have the report in the morning.”

Smith saw Amos’s face fall.

“I’m really sorry, Sir,” she gabbled anxiously. “I tried to persuade him to hang on for you, Sir, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Brian Slater never listens to anyone,” Amos assured her. “He is a law unto himself. If he was intent on leaving, nothing you could say would have prevented him from doing so.”

”He did say the results of the blood tests would be back in the morning and he’d give you those as well.”

Amos’s face brightened noticeably, much to Smith’s relief. She took the opportunity to switch the subject.

“There is some new information, Sir,” she said hurriedly. “None of the family have any convictions, Sir. However, Luke Wilson was involved in a fracas at the bottom of Steep Hill a couple of years ago. No-one was actually charged. Three or four other men disappeared pretty smartish when the police sirens got near and only Luke Wilson remained when the officers reached the scene.

“He was lying on the ground pretty badly beaten up but he refused to go to hospital for treatment. He said he didn’t know who the assailants were and he reckoned he had been picked on by muggers. It was all very suspicious because his wallet hadn’t been taken and a couple of witnesses who were cowering in a shop doorway said he seemed to know the attackers.

“They said he was arguing with them for two or three minutes before it came to blows. But without identification of the assailants there was nothing more we could do. Finally we put him in a police car and drove him home.”

“OK, let’s take an early cut,” the inspector told the team, “and start promptly in the morning. At last we’ll know for certain how Matthew Wilson met his end.

“Susan, go straight to Matthew Wilson’s house in the morning and see how his wife is getting on.”

Amos glanced round as he left. There was no sign of Jennifer nor, for that matter, the pile of paperwork that had adorned her desk the last time he had looked.

Chapter 20

Brian Slater, the pathologist, was at police headquarters bright and early next morning but he was in one of his doleful moods.

Amos could never decide which was worse, Slater cheerful and whistling tunelessly or Slater miserable and uncommunicative but mercifully devoid of attempts at music.

Not that there was ever any choice. Slater’s mood was always self-inflicted and he could rarely be deflected from his chosen path by anything anyone else said or did.

Amos made straight for Slater’s office. The pathologist glanced up mournfully.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I suppose it would be. You want to hear about Matthew Wilson, who was once and never more shall be so.”

“Spare me the philosophy, Brian, and stick to the facts,” Amos said wearily, though he knew Slater would deliver the facts only in his own good time.

“In a bad mood, are we, this morning? ” Slater remarked, ignoring his own demeanour.

“No, I’m not in a bad mood,” Amos said irritably, “but I’m sure you can put me in one with a little effort.”

“Been to Skeggy recently?” Slater asked without enthusiasm, ignoring Amos’s need to get on with the murder investigation. “Your old stomping ground, wasn’t it?”

Amos had indeed been based in Skegness, 40 miles further east, before fate had plucked him to Lincoln and promotion.

“Dead in winter, drunken fights in summer, petty theft all year,” Amos replied rather unkindly considering the many fond memories he had of the place but attempting to match Slater’s mood in the hope of speeding things up. “Now can we get on with it?”

“Went down for the day with the wife on Sunday for the first time in ages,” Slater remarked.

“And how was it?”

“Full of holidaymakers.”

“It’s a seaside resort, for heaven’s sake,” Amos blurted out. “What did you expect?”

“Is it my imagination, or are people getting fatter?”

At this point Slater patted his ample tummy.

“The only good thing about it is it made me feel slim.”

“Matthew Wilson,” Amos reminded him.

“Ah yes, the good Matthew,” Slater mused. “I’ve cut him all up and sewn him back together again. And a fine specimen of manhood he was, too. Very fit. No illnesses. Just like his dad, only 23 years younger.”

“You knew his father?” Amos asked eagerly.

“Not personally, just professionally,” Slater responded. “Another of my recent clients. There had to be a post mortem because he hadn’t seen a doctor in years. I wasn’t surprised. He was pretty fit for an old man. He’d just lost the will to live.”

This surprised Amos. He had had the impression from family members that Joseph Wilson was pretty decrepit by the time he died. It seemed that his afflications were mental, not physical.

“If he was so fit,” Amos cut in, “could he have been poisoned? You wouldn’t have been looking for it.”

“Are you questioning my professional judgement?” Slater demanded truculently. “It was as clear a case of natural causes as I ever saw.

“Unlike our friend Matthew,” Slater continued with the first signs of enthusiasm he had shown that morning. “You’ll never guess what he died of, and I’ve seen some odd cases in my time.”

Slater paused for effect.

“Ketamine poisoning, I take it,” Amos said with a smirk.

Slater was utterly deflated.

“You’ve seen the lab report,” he said accusingly.

“No,” Amos replied. “Just good police work. That’s why I wanted to be sure his father wasn’t poisoned.”

“Well he wasn’t,” Slater insisted. “There were absolutely no signs of poisoning and we did the same blood tests as we did on his son.

The pathologist handed Amos a plain white envelope.

“The report on Matthew Wilson is in there,” he said mournfully. “You’d better do a bit more good police work finding out who gave it to him.”

As Amos returned triumphantly to CID his heart sank when he spotted the burly figure of the Chief Constable barring his path. Was this God’s punishment for the juvenile pleasure he had taken in scoring one over Brian Slater?

However, God and Sir Robert Fletcher were both in a better mood than Slater had been.

“I’m glad to hear you’re getting right on top of the paperwork, Amos,” the Chief Constable said cheerfully.

“Jennifer tells me there’s a whole batch all done and just waiting for your signature. I’m really pleased you’re putting her to good use. I was afraid you might try to be difficult.”

Fletcher clapped him on the shoulder and stepped into the lift that had just opened, thus sparing Amos from finding the correct response.

So he was still on the Chief Constable’s right side, though Amos noted he had slipped back from first name to surname. The minister at the church where he had attended Sunday School used to assure him that all good things do not have to come to an end but in Amos’s experience they invariably did.

Back in CID, Jennifer was seated at her desk, sorting papers into separate piles. She gave him the smile that Amos half yearned for, half feared for the effect it had on him.

The door of his office was wide open as usual. Five neat piles of paper were lined up across the desk.

“I think you’ll find everything there sorted, Sir,” Jennifer said sweetly. “You just need to sign each one and I’ll deal with it.”

Still unsure whether Jennifer could possibly be as good as she looked and suspicious that she might report back to Fletcher, Amos sat down and, within five minutes, cleared the paperwork, which he collected up carefully and handed back to Jennifer in one pile.

“As you’re a civilian,” he told her, “you don’t have to call me Sir. You can call me Paul.”

“OK, Sir,” Jennifer said cheerfully, accepting the pile of papers from Amos and putting them down carefully to avoid mixing them with the documents she was still sorting.

Amos noticed that she had dusted the two shelves on the wall behind her and had started to stock them with books. They were books on Lincolnshire, mostly out of date but potentially of use. He was beginning to feel that Jennifer was genuinely trying to help. Perhaps she was not a spy, just the temptation of the devil.

Chapter 21

Jane Wilson was still in shock when Detective Constable Susan Smith called round to see her. Smith, having got on quite well with Mrs Wilson at the hospital, was assigned to liaise with her in case any leads could be teased out of her.

Smith soon discovered, however, that the two women had nothing much in common except an interest in discovering who had murdered Matthew Wilson and why, so small talk was getting nowhere.

Jane kept falling back on asking “why Matthew?” and the inexperienced Smith found no way of steering her away from the pointless question.

After ten minutes of going round in circles they were mercifully interrupted by a loud rat-a-tat on the front door. Smith readily acceded when Jane Wilson excused herself to answer it. There was little to talk about other than to wallow in misery.

Smith heard the door open and Mrs Wilson say: “Yes?”

“Mrs Wilson, I take it?” a female voice asked. “I’ve just heard about Matt.”

“Matthew,” Jane corrected the caller. “I take it you mean Matthew. I gather you knew him, then,” she added in a slightly distracted voice, “though not very well, I assume. No-one called him Matt. He hated it.”

“Well I did,” the caller said grimly, “and yes, I knew him. I knew him all right. Can I come in? We have things to talk about.”

“Well, yes, I suppose so,” Jane muttered in a confused tone. “I don’t really know who you are.”

Smith craned her neck round the corner of the kitchen where she and Jane had been sitting to see who the caller was. She saw a woman who had clearly been passably beautiful in her youth and was still quite striking as, Smith estimated, she approached 50.

The caller was pushing Jane aside firmly, though not with undue force, and entering the hallway. Jane, still bemused, closed the front door.

“We’re in the kitchen,” she said.

“We?” the caller repeated, catching sight of Smith for the first time. “Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose I was just assuming you would be on your own as usual. You might prefer to have this conversation in private.”

“Don’t mind me,” Smith said, anxious to know what light this woman might cast on the murder. She looked at Jane Wilson and gave the merest of nods.

“You can say what you have to say in front of Susan,” Jane said, still sufficiently confused at the arrival of an unexpected visitor to accede without demur to Smith’s signal.

“As you wish, the visitor said, plonking herself down on a kitchen chair and leaning forward over the table. “I gave you the chance.”

The visitor looked round the kitchen, evidently curious to see the home that Matt, as she called him, had shared with his wife.

Jane sat down and looked at her uninvited guest without saying anything.

“My name’s Anita,” the visitor began. “Your husband and I have been having an affair for the past 20 years. You see why I thought you might prefer to hear this on your own.”

Jane Wilson gasped, and Smith was hard put to avoid doing likewise. Anita took the ensuing shocked silence as an indication to continue.

“I take it you hadn’t a clue,” she said. “Matt said you never cottoned on but I wasn’t sure anyone could be quite that gullible. It seems he was right and I was wrong.”

This gibe roused Jane from her stupor.

“I don’t believe you,” she uttered. “It’s a wicked lie.”

She looked as if she was about to rise from her chair and smash Anita across her smug face but before she could do so the visitor quickly resumed what she had come to say.

“Did you not wonder where on earth he was when you rang up and were told he was out of the office meeting clients? Some of his colleagues got a bit fed up with covering for him all the time. They knew where he was.”