The Determined Widow (The Matthew Holland Mystery Series)

by Adam Melrose

  ‘They killed him Max. He didn’t die accidently. For sixteen months I have been trying to prove my husband’s death was not accidental, and I keep being met with official people telling me in gentle tones that there is nothing suspicious. I’m afraid I need your help to find out what really happened to my husband.’

  ‘Of course we will; well, we’ll do our best.’

  ‘That’s all I’m asking.’

  Bella forced a smile. Her brain was releasing happier chemicals now that she was with Max, but they were going to take a moment to outwit the bad ones. She stepped back and dried her eyes with the now damp hankie.

  ‘Is there somewhere I can freshen up and sort myself out before the meeting?’ Bella glanced at the clocks dotted around the walls of the office, it was nine-fifteen. ‘I know you guys will be busy, and I don’t want to keep you waiting.’

  Max smiled, ‘There’s no rush, we allow half a day for these meetings; it’s your meeting, your time. Come with me, I’ll show you where you can freshen up. Just take as long as you want OK? We’ll start when you’re good and ready, not before. This meeting is going to be tough on you; there’s no way around that. So like I say – no rush, just come over to the meeting room when you’re ready.’

  As Max led Bella across the office, his thought was that there really wasn’t any pressure for time with this particular meeting; he had already looked at the relevant information she had forwarded to them. The coroner’s report found that there was no evidence of foul play; it was just an accident, or misadventure to use the official jargon. The only troubling issue was the subject of the missing tattoos, though there was no doubt a very simple explanation for that aspect of the case. The real difficulty with this case was going to be how and when to assure a grieving widow who was convinced of foul play, that her husband’s death was actually just a very unlucky accident.

  They stopped outside a pair of large brown doors.

  Max pointed to a room on the other side of the office; the wall of which, on this side was all glass.

  ‘We will be in there, when you are good and ready.’

  Some ten minutes later, after composing herself and freshening up in the bathroom; it was Bella who took in a deep breath, pushed on the glass door, and walked into the meeting room. She managed to get her head up high and smile.

  As she did so, Bella gave herself one last talking to. I may not be able to get through this meeting without crying, but I sure as hell am going to start it with dry eyes and be professional. They need to believe I’m being rational and level-headed when I tell them my husband was murdered. I need them to help me, and they will only do that if they genuinely believe me.

  Max stood up and came across to meet her.

  ‘Ready for this then?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  Bella was rooting around in her bag for something. Her hands were still shaking a little. Max thought it would be a good idea to distract her with a trivial question for a moment and get her mind off what was coming, and then once she was distracted, just jump straight in.

  Max gave Bella a moment more to rifle about in her bag, then he took his moment to divert her mind, ‘I meant to ask how you knew I was working here?’

  The trick worked. Bella stopped searching through her bag and looked up at him.

  ‘Err...’ she gave it some thought then her face lightened; she had obviously remembered, ‘A flyer came through the office mail from you guys advertising your services, and I recognised your name. My boss threw it in the bin, so I took it back out and kept it in my drawer just in case the authorities screwed up their investigation into Pete’s death; which they did, and here I am.’

  Max replied after a moment, ‘OK, cool. I’m just sorry it is under such unpleasant circumstances.’

  Before Max could suggest beginning the meeting, Bella lifted her shoulders up tall.

  ‘Right… I think I’m ready… thanks.’

  She gave a knowing look that let him understand she appreciated his thought and concern; they had been separated for a good couple of years now, but it had ended amicably and by mutual agreement. Their connection was still there, they could still read each other at least.

  Max walked forward into the room towards the table and Bella followed.

  Chapter 2

  Max cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention and began the meeting.

  ‘Right, good morning. Bella this is everyone… everyone, this is Bella Stone. Don’t worry about names Bella, as things progress you’ll get to know everyone and what they do.’

  Bella looked around the table; including Max the team consisted of six people in total. She made sure she nodded to each one in person. They all smiled back, and there was a ‘Hello.’ or ‘Hi.’ or ‘Welcome.’ from each of them.

  Bella was put at ease almost at once.

  ‘Bella, why don’t you just tell us in your own words why you are here, and then provide the back story for us? Leave nothing out. I know you’ve provided us with some very detailed notes and a report on the case, but it helps us to hear it all first hand from you.’

  Bella nodded.

  ‘We may interrupt at any point just to clarify something. We find it is easier to ask straight away rather than leave it to the end, especially whilst the point is still clear in your mind. At any time you want a break you just say so. OK?’

  Bella nodded again.

  As she tried to speak she felt the back of her throat instantly dry up. Before beginning she picked up the glass of water and took a drink; all the time telling herself she had nothing to fear here, she was amongst friends. She let the water linger in her mouth, its coolness and wetness providing a much needed natural tonic. Bella put the glass down on the table, looked in the direction of the middle of the room, smiled, swallowed, then took a calming breath and began.

  ‘Hi everyone; firstly, thank you very much for seeing me. Right I will jump straight in… I met my husband three months before we were married, and we were then married for three months exactly to the day I saw him in the morgue. Apart from the end, those six months were some of the most magical months I have ever enjoyed in my life.

  ‘We met at a fashion event. I was working there in my role as a PA to the head of a model agency. Pete was there in some security capacity, I forget what. We just got talking and didn’t stop.

  ‘I had to get back to work after a while so Pete left me alone. When things calmed down and I had a moment I went looking for him, but I couldn’t find him, and no one seemed to know who he was or who he worked for.

  ‘It was the following Friday, when I was leaving the office at the end of the day that he approached me in the street with some flowers. I was totally blown away; we then spent a blissful weekend together and more or less, that was that.

  ‘We both knew it was rash to get married so soon, but the weird thing was I didn’t feel scared by anything related to him; even though normally I’m a cautious person when it comes to big decisions. That total lack of fear told me I should go for it and to hell with the consequences.’

  Bella tried to subtly look around the room and carefully gauge whether she had everyone’s attention, and whether these people seated before her would give any indication as to whether they would believe her and take on her case. The momentary glance told her that she did indeed have everyone’s attention. Good, she thought.

  ‘Probably we should have found out a lot more about each other’s backgrounds before tying the knot, but the simple fact is we didn’t, and I do not regret that for a moment. The marriage ceremony was just us and the required witnesses in a registry office. It was great; we could just focus on each other. We then had a short honeymoon in the Channel Islands on the Island of Jersey. To keep costs down we stayed in this amazing pink country house as guests of the elderly owner who Pete somehow knew. We then came back, and I moved into Pete’s flat. It was bliss; we felt like we had known each other our whole lives. We then slipped back into our daily life routines. Pete wen
t back to his security job in Reading, and I went back to my work as a PA.’

  Bella was about to continue when a man’s voice stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘Hi Bella, I’m Bruno. Sorry to interrupt; you say Pete worked in security. Can you elaborate on that for us? Who for example? Whereabouts etcetera.’

  Using this breathing space to take a sip of water from her glass, Bella then turned to face the owner of the voice; a lithe framed man with sandy coloured windswept hair.

  ‘I don’t know much really. He said it was a large tech firm based in Reading or just outside; I forget which. We had been so wrapped up in our romance that we didn’t talk about work much.’

  Bruno continued with his questions.

  ‘Do you know for sure it was around Reading that he worked, did Pete tell you that or did you just assume it for some valid reason?’

  Bella’s stomach began to tighten a little. Was she losing them? Answer calmly, she told herself.

  ‘Yes, Pete specifically told me, and I have seen a couple of petrol receipts lying around the kitchen that have a petrol station with a Reading address on them.’

  Bruno nodded, ‘OK, thanks. Please carry on.’

  ‘Other than that, the only remarkable thing about life for the following weeks was that it was very unremarkable in the day-to-day element of it. We were both pretty blinkered by each other, so nothing has stuck in my mind as odd or suspicious. I have been over and over it in my head. I can’t come up with anything that stands out as odd.’

  Bella proceeded to provide some day-to-day information of places visited, jokes shared and other memorable moments from her short time together with Pete. Bringing everyone up to date did not take long given that their time together had been so short.

  It was now the turn of an elegant looking woman with raven hair sitting on the same side of the table as Bruno to chip in, ‘Hi Bella, I’m Ava. I just wanted to ask; why are you so sure that this was not an accidental death?’

  Bella’s stomach felt like it had been instantly struck with a large bat. She nearly doubled over. It was a very valid question and asked nicely, but it still nearly floored Bella, such was the grip of terror in her mind that these guys would not take her case.

  Smiling at Ava, Bella felt all her hopes and wishes were pinned on these next few sentences. ‘I’m afraid this is where I need and hope you will take me at my word. I say that because I have no physical proof or eyewitness testimony to offer up to you, I just have my intuition and my knowledge of Pete and his consistent behaviour.’

  Bella paused for a moment to draw breath and to pace herself before continuing.

  ‘If Pete was one thing in the time I knew him, he was consistent. If he said he would do something, he would. If he was going to be late, he would let me know. We had made plans to go out for supper the day he went missing. If his plans had changed, he would simply have called me to say we had to take a rain-check. I know he would’ve known that I would’ve been alright with that; so he would’ve had no reason not to let me know.’

  Again Bella paused in order to deliberately regulate her rate of speech and to let what she was saying sink in.

  ‘Pete not calling me didn’t fit with the nature of the man; it changed his narrative, and his narrative didn’t change once in any other aspect in a very intense six months. I work with models in the fashion industry; I’m good at looking under the image a person presents and seeing the real person. For six months I saw the same man day in day out, no change. That lack of a short text or phone call just does not track; it’s an exception to the norm, so it’s wrong. Also; my gut says so. Sometimes you just know a thing’s wrong without clearly knowing why it’s wrong. His body was found sixty something miles away from work in the wrong direction in a place he had no business being; if he had a legitimate reason for going that far out the wrong way on a night we were going out to supper he would have let me know. His not letting me know tells me he was taken there against his will and that something bad happened.’

  Bella took a moment for her information to sink in before continuing.

  ‘One other point; there is one thing I believe to be the real key that will unlock this whole mystery. I haven’t told the police because after their ignoring the tattoo business, I know they won’t give it the relevant consideration it deserves, but I will tell you. I only ask that you give what I’m about to tell you the attention I feel it rightly deserves. I wanted to wait to be face to face to tell you.’

  Bella looked around the table making sure she had everyone’s full attention. She did.

  ‘It’s something I heard my husband say to his work colleague a couple of times when they were talking on the phone. On the surface it will seem to be nothing, but it has to very much be something, or else it’s been said out of context, and if that was the case, it would make no sense and everything Pete said did make sense, so this needs to also.’

  Bella paused to take another look at everyone in turn. They were still giving her their full attention. She was worried she was talking too fast. She tried to calm herself down once more.

  ‘On more than one occasion I heard Pete say, “OK mate, I’ll see you at Underworld.” He would then laugh and finish the call.’

  As silence filled the room Bella spoke gently to herself. There, I’ve said it. However stupid the word Underworld sounds, it is out there and I can’t unsay it. I’ve been honest and said part of this is just my gut. If they won’t help me then they won’t. I have done my best.

  A sense of relief washed over Bella, she had said what she was afraid to say, and with that, any fear about whether to say it or not vanished the instant she had uttered those words.

  ‘I have a question Bella.’

  The next voice in the room caught Bella off guard. It sounded like Max and then again it didn’t. Bella turned to look in the direction of the confusing voice. On seeing who it was, Bella’s eyes lit up. It was Joe. In all her trying to hold it together and introductions being a blur, she had not looked closely enough to recognise him. Furthermore, it had been a fair few years, and even then they had only met a couple of times. Joe was Max’s twin brother. They were not identical looks-wise, and yet you could tell they were brothers.

  ‘Hey Joe.’

  ‘Hey Bella.’

  Joe continued, ‘I’m sure I speak for all of us in saying thank you for that detailed walk through your time with Pete. That can’t have been easy, but it does help us a lot, thank you. I appreciate that you provided us with some very detailed typed notes and history, but nothing helps like hearing things first hand.’

  ‘Firstly, do you have any idea what Underworld refers to? Is it a joke or a code?’

  Bella folded her bottom lip in under her top one and gave a gentle shake of her head.

  ‘No Joe, I’m sorry. I have wracked my brains about it, but nothing has come to mind. The only thing that I can come up with is I guess it’s a nickname they have given to something.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because,’ Bella paused for a thoughtful moment, ‘Pete said “Underworld”. He didn’t say “The Underworld” so it must have been a name of a place not the place. I just assumed it was something to do with work. I’m guessing she would know.’

  ‘…She would know?’

  ‘Sorry, didn’t I say… the person he was talking to on the phone.’

  ‘Why do you assume the person he was talking to was female?’

  ‘Because he used the other person’s name.’

  ‘You heard him call her by her name?’

  ‘Yes … might that help?’

  ‘It might, what was her name?’

  ‘He called her Sharon.’

  Joe sat up in his chair, ‘You heard him say Sharon?’

  ‘I did,’ nodded Bella, ‘He said, “I’ll see you at Underworld” there was a pause when I assume she was speaking, and then he finished with “OK Sharon.” he laughed and then hung up. That was the last call I remember like that. Do
es it mean something?’

  Joe shook his head, ‘I thought it did, I thought a lightbulb came on in my head when you said Sharon but…no it's gone. It’s probably nothing.’

  Matt was next to talk, ‘So Bella, you think this reference to Underworld is the key because it must be linked to the only other unexplained things with Pete, namely his missing tattoos, and how he died? Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes Matt, that and the missing tattoos have to be where the truth of what happened to my husband lies because everything else was normal and explained; there were never any absences, odd calls, odd people or holes in any of his stories. Everything except the odd references to Underworld and the tattoos vanishing fits together. Only these two odd things stand out, so to my simple logic, they must be connected to the third odd thing; my husband’s death. However insignificant and trivial they seem, they must be relevant, because nothing else is.’

  ‘OK Bella, we hear you, thanks.’

  After a moment, Bruno spoke, ‘I would like to address that other odd thing as you describe it, namely this business with the tattoos. So, you don’t think they are as important a key to solving your husband’s death in the way the mention of Underworld is?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Can I ask why not?’

  ‘It’s mainly because he had them, I saw them daily and so I know them to be real. Everyone knew he had them, so I don’t think there can be any mystery in a thing when everyone knows about it. Therefore if it holds no mystery, then it probably holds no clue. The only mystery is why and how they were removed; but as everyone knew about them, their removal can’t hide anything. It may seem an odd thing to say, but I don’t think it’s going to be the key to unlocking how or why Pete died. That said of course, it strongly proves to me that his death wasn’t an accident.’

  Bruno made some notes on his tablet, ‘Can you give us a quick overview of the tattoo situation then?’

  ‘It’s very simple and it’s totally unexplained. From the first day I met Pete he had a half tattoo sleeve down both his left and right arms from his shoulders down to his elbows. And when I went to see him in the mortuary, both his arms were free of tattoos. It was a real shock. If my husband’s death was accidental his tattoos would still be there. It is completely negligent of the authorities to ignore this fact. They either have something to hide, or they think I am a liar. ’