Chapter 27: Like a Nest of Vipers
Wednesday Afternoon
Barry Marsh looked across the interview room table. Opposite, Tim Brotherton fidgeted in his seat, looking tense and nervous.
‘I don’t fully understand why you’re detaining Mr Brotherton,’ his solicitor said. His demeanour wasn’t very different from that of his client. ‘What actual evidence do you have?’
‘He was the group leader, Mr Clarke. He was in a relationship with Katie Templar, one of the murder victims, when the group first moved to the farm. In fact, they planned the commune together when they were both students at Durham. After she inherited the farm, the group moved in. We know she became pregnant within a year or so. I’m trying to clarify when and why the relationship ended. Your client was also far closer to the other murder victim, Paul Prentice, than he’s led us to believe. We’re also aware that he lied in our earlier interview.’
‘But is any of it relevant?’
Barry looked at him. Was he serious or was he just playing a game? ‘Of course it’s relevant. Katie Templar became pregnant and had an abortion. I want to know if that abortion was the cause of the break-up of their relationship, or if it happened the other way round.’ Barry turned to Brotherton. ‘So, which came first, Mr Brotherton? The abortion or the split?’
‘The split,’ Brotherton said sullenly. ‘I didn’t know she was pregnant until they came back from London, after she’d had the abortion. I felt bad enough about us breaking up. To then find all that . . . well, it just seemed incomprehensible.’
‘Was the baby yours?’
‘How should I know? How do I know who else she was sleeping with?’
Barry leant back in his chair. ‘Do you really believe that? More importantly, did you believe it at the time? You knew her better than almost anyone. Was she the kind of person that would have cheated on you? It doesn’t fit in with what other people have told us about her.’
Brotherton shook his head. ‘I s’pose not. No, she wasn’t like that.’
‘So how did you react when you found out?’
‘I was bewildered. It seemed like everything was falling apart. All we’d dreamt about. It was the end. That’s how it felt.’
‘But you’d already split up, from what you’ve said. Why did you take it so badly?’
‘She still meant a lot to me, even if we couldn’t make a go of it. We’d been together for four years by then.’
‘What caused the split?’
He stared down at the table. ‘I think we’d known for some time that our personalities just didn’t mesh. We argued about it. But it wasn’t just that. She just couldn’t see. She couldn’t see the way the group needed to go. She wanted it to focus on the creative side — writing, art, crafts. I felt that stuff was all a bit twee. I wanted to concentrate on attaining enlightenment.’
‘Religion?’
‘You could say that, but not tied to any one religion, more to do with self-development through spirituality. And that was why we argued. And, finally, it got to us. Paul was on her side. He jumped in pretty quick.’
‘Did you resent that? Katie and him getting together?’
Brotherton shrugged. ‘I did at first, I suppose. But he could offer her what she obviously needed, some close emotional support. I was never any good at that. I’m still not. But I didn’t harm either of them, Inspector. That would go against everything I believe in.’
Barry decided to change tack. ‘What about drugs, Mr Brotherton? Our understanding is that they were freely available in the commune, judging by what people have told us.’
‘That’s an exaggeration. Some people smoked grass. I did, sometimes. But we weren’t a drug cult. We tolerated it but we didn’t promote it.’
‘Wasn’t it another cause of the split between you? The two of them were unhappy with the level of drug use, but you encouraged it? It’s easy for you to deny it now, twelve years later, because it doesn’t suit the picture you want to paint. But the reality is that you were happy for the group to go along that line. They weren’t. And that caused another problem for you because Katie owned the farm.’
‘The trust owned the farm. She transferred it at the start.’
‘So you may have thought at the time. But wasn’t the reality that she always had the final word on who became a trustee? Didn’t that become a problem for you once the disagreements began to surface? You couldn’t manipulate the decision makers as much as you’d have liked? By the way, what was your degree subject at university?’
‘Ancient history.’
‘Whereas Katie had a first-class degree in economics. And, as far as we can gather from the recollections of her fellow students, she did a short unit in law. Maybe she knew her stuff, Mr Brotherton. Maybe she always had her doubts about you and the long-term viability of your plans. And maybe that’s why she died.’
‘I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill Prentice either. I keep telling you.’
‘So why were you in Dorset that weekend a couple of weeks ago? Don’t deny it. We know you were there. It really doesn’t help your situation, Mr Brotherton, when you keep telling us something we know is a lie.’
Brotherton remained silent for almost a minute and Barry wondered whether he was digging his heels in. Would it be no comment from this point on?
‘I went to try and warn him. That’s if I could have found him. I never did though. I asked around the town centre in Wareham and got a rough idea of where he might be, but it was a wasted effort. I was only there for a few hours on my way back from Portsmouth.’
‘You told my boss that you went by train.’
Brotherton shrugged. ‘That wasn’t true. I drove.’
‘Why lie about it?’
Again, a shrug. ‘I knew it would implicate me if I told the truth. I guessed you’d jump on the fact that I was in the area and use it to nail me unfairly.’
‘So what did you want to warn Prentice about?’
‘That Trent Baker was out of prison. He needed to know. I’d come to realise what a thug Baker was after his trial for attempted murder, when he tried to kill that woman. It all began to make sense at that point. I took him on trust before, when he first appeared. That’s why Prentice left the farm. Trent Baker threatened to kill him. I thought he was joking.’
Barry frowned. ‘I don’t understand the reason for the conflict between them — Paul Prentice and Katie Templar, on the one hand, and Trent Baker on the other. Why was there so much hatred?’
Brotherton lowered his eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But I think you do, Mr Brotherton. Or even if you don’t know for certain, you have a pretty good idea. Was there more than one reason? Maybe Baker fancied Katie Templar and was jealous of Prentice? Or was it his general attitude?’ Barry stopped. An idea had just begun to form in his head. ‘Or was it that he wanted the farm to go in a different direction entirely? Was he pushing for the commune to start being producers of cannabis and other stuff, rather than just consumers?’
Barry saw Brotherton’s eyes flicker. He looked up. ‘I’m not saying any more.’
*
Polly Nelson had been watching the interview via a video link.
‘What do you think?’ she asked when Barry returned to the incident room.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to think. He’s still hiding something, but I can’t say what it is. The problem is, we don’t have any direct evidence. He’s fingering Trent Baker for it all, without saying so directly. And, let’s face it, Baker has a track record of extreme violence.’
‘Your boss wasn’t particularly impressed by the other one, Atkins, this morning. Could all three of them be implicated? But where’s the motive? What was so bad that your tramp needed to be silenced, now after all these years? Had a new threat shown up? Had he discovered something that might have nailed them for the girl’s murder?’
Barry shook his head. ‘Remember, no one knew what had happened to her. Apart from the killers, no one kn
ew she was dead until we found her body on Saturday. Maybe Prentice guessed. And that begs the question: if he guessed she was dead, why didn’t he do anything about it until now?’
‘Have you got any other lines of enquiry on the go?’
‘Rae’s following up on the Katie Templar back-story. At the moment she’s the great unknown. The boss is working her way through the Trent Baker trial material from twelve years ago, trying to get to the bottom of what went on between him and Catherine Templeton. We’re hoping she’ll pick up some more people to talk to who were members of the commune. And we’ve got Lydia looking at this stuff I discovered about Prentice and his trips to Taunton. A lot of it is financial stuff, banking records and all that. She’s still stuck at the Bournemouth CID offices because of her injuries. I think she’s frustrated and angry because it’ll be a couple of weeks yet before she’s able to get out and about, so anyone she phones had better watch out.’ He laughed.
‘What are your thoughts about it all, Barry?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a real knotty one. You know, I wouldn’t really trust any of them. The boss is convinced they’re all hiding their own secrets, but each of them for different reasons. She described the whole lot of them as being like a nest of vipers, and she’s right.’
‘Maybe Katie Templar and Paul Prentice were the only normal people in the commune. Oh, we’ve got the results of the dental records. The body definitely is Katie Templar. She registered with a dentist in Bridgwater all those years ago. For some reason her records were still on file and matched perfectly. Probably broke some data privacy law, but useful for us.’
Chapter 28: Liar
Wednesday Afternoon
The trial records gave Sophie a fascinating insight into the characters of the two protagonists, Catherine Templeton and Trent Baker, although much of it came from reading between the lines. Sophie wondered how two people with such antagonistic personalities had ever got into a relationship in the first place. Baker came across as devious in the extreme, stirring up trouble whenever he could, coupled with a liking for violence. Catherine had a hot temper that she made little effort to control, and Sophie wondered if her sense of right and wrong was more than a little suspect. Or was she reading too much into the words of witnesses called by both sets of barristers? There was no doubt that the jury had come to the right verdict. It had been unanimous. Trent Baker had attempted to murder Catherine Templeton one spring evening, ten years earlier, on a footpath close to the White Unicorn pub in a village near Taunton. Catherine had been there with a group of work colleagues celebrating a birthday and Baker, along with a friend, had called in after they’d been fishing at a nearby river. After some heated exchanges, he’d followed her out and stabbed her with his fish-gutting knife. His fingerprints were on the handle, fish slime was still on the blade when it was recovered from the undergrowth nearby, the slime matching the gutted fish in the rucksack found in his car. Copious amounts of Catherine’s blood had soaked into his clothes. It had been a straightforward case for the police and an easy decision for the Crown Prosecution Service to rule on.
The judge’s summing up had been very clear: Baker was unquestionably wicked and prone to violence when his temper was roused. The victim was fortunate to have survived and Baker was similarly fortunate not to be facing a murder charge. Nevertheless, there was no doubt he was a danger to the public and needed to be taught a lesson. A long sentence was required because of the savage nature of the attack and his previous history of assaults. The judge gave him a minimum of ten years behind bars.
Sophie went back and studied the trial records more closely. The court had been told something of the on-off relationship between the two, although Catherine consistently maintained that the on part had only lasted three weeks, whereas the off part was rather longer, at three years. Sophie was rather surprised at the lack of any detail regarding their time together at the farm. Was it down to careless cross-examination by the respective counsels or had it not been considered important enough? Or had both of the main players chosen to be deliberately vague for reasons that were never made clear? She had hoped to learn more about the friction between these two jaggedly interacting personalities. It must have been observed by other commune members, so why had so few been called as witnesses? It was puzzling.
The argument in the pub had broken out when Baker had passed the table of partygoers on his way to the bar. He’d claimed not to have even spotted Catherine in the group until he’d overheard the phrase slime-ball Baker, spoken by Catherine to one of her friends. She denied this, stating that he’d made a vile comment to her first, calling her wonder-whore as he passed by. A slanging match had ensued, only brought to a halt when both parties were restrained by their respective friends. It flared up again when Baker returned to the bar for another drink and he was asked to leave by the landlady. He did so with bad grace and a great deal of seething anger. The conclusion of the prosecuting counsel was that he had dumped his gear into his car at the riverside, but then turned back and lingered in the shrubbery in the pub garden. Traces of his presence had been found on the foliage of several bushes and a set of footprints, identified as being from his shoes, were spotted on the surface of the soil.
Complaining that these altercations had ruined her evening, Catherine had decided to set off for home early. At the time she only lived a short walk away from the riverside pub, little more than a five-minute stroll along a footpath through a small area of woodland. Trent Baker had followed her, spun her round and stabbed her four times in the abdomen. He’d then hurried off, back to his car. One of Catherine’s friends, concerned for her safety, had decided to go after her and had stumbled on her body, sprawled across the path and losing blood. She owed her life to the quick reactions of her friend and the speed with which an ambulance arrived.
The forensic evidence was clear, and the witness testimonies were conclusive. It had been an open and shut case. There was no doubt: Trent Baker’s behaviour was intentional and ruthless. He was ruled by his own vicious temper and found it impossible to hold back once his blood was up. The important question for Sophie in the here and now was this: had the ten years he’d spent in prison altered him? Was he still that same hot-headed individual, governed by irrational rages? And, therefore, could Paul Prentice’s death be due to a similar loss of control on Baker’s part? Moreover, had he played a part in the death of Katie Templar while he was living on the farm?
It would be easy to ignore all the other bits of circumstantial evidence that they’d recently accumulated, assume it was down to the Baker temper, pull him in and charge him. But there were too many discrepancies. The man asking about Prentice around the time he’d vanished from Wareham town centre didn’t fit Baker’s description. Neither did the man seen by Jade poking around Prentice’s campsite and by Pauline Stopley nearby on the foreshore. The small, white car, twice spotted on the Arne road, didn’t match the description of his vehicle. There was also the fact that Prentice’s dog had survived the attack. Sophie had the feeling that Baker would have been merciless towards the small mongrel, though she might be mistaken in that. Maybe he had a soft spot for dogs. Complicating it all were two major sticking points: Baker had been working during the weekend in question and there was no evidence from his employers that he’d skimped on any of his overnight shifts. His electronic tag had not registered him leaving Somerset or Bristol at any time in recent weeks. And, finally, Sophie couldn’t dismiss the feeling she was having that the murder of Prentice had been thoroughly planned, leaving little evidence. It was, of course, possible that Baker had, for once, worked it all out carefully during his long spell in prison, but it didn’t mesh with what they knew about him. Anyway, what would his motive have been?
As for Catherine, there were hints from witnesses called in her defence that she could show a prickly and slightly irritating side to her character at times. Maybe she should pay Catherine another visit. Sophie suspected that she’d been extremely economical in her accoun
ts of both the time she’d spent at the commune and the relationships she’d had with the other members.
Sophie continued to scan through the trial documentation, not knowing quite what she was looking for. When she saw it, it hit her like a sledgehammer. Trent Baker’s fishing companion on the evening of the assault on Catherine had been Andrew Atkins.
*
Rae was trying to build up a picture of the long-dead Katie Templar. She’d grown up in Bath and had been a hard-working and intelligent pupil at school. The death of her parents when she was ten had caused her to move some fifty miles south, where she’d lived with her uncle and aunt on the small farm in the Quantocks. She’d attended the local school where she’d continued to be her year’s star pupil, winning prizes and awards. She’d also been involved in voluntary work as a teenager, looking after disabled members of the local community. She’d headed off to university on a high, but it wasn’t long before another set of tragedies struck. First, her aunt died unexpectedly from an aggressive brain tumour, then her beloved uncle was killed in a motoring accident on the narrow lanes near the farm. Katie took a year out of her degree to deal with the will and to get herself back into the right frame of mind for academic work. It was when she returned to Durham that she met Timothy Brotherton.
This information gave Rae pause for thought. Had Brotherton manipulated Katie while she was still in a vulnerable state? Had he quickly spotted the opportunity she offered for realising his embryonic plans for a commune? Who might know? Maybe she needed to trace some of Katie’s close school and university friends in an attempt to gain some sort of insight. It wouldn’t be easy, though. Fifteen years had passed since Katie’s university days, twenty since she’d been in her last few years at school. No time to lose.
*
Lydia couldn’t quite believe what she’d discovered. It just didn’t make sense. Paul Prentice still had more than fifty thousand pounds in his bank account. Where had it come from? Why had he spent most of the previous decade living rough as a tramp when he had that kind of money at his disposal? He’d only taken cash out on his visits to Taunton and the sums largely matched the contributions to the hostel, close to the amounts that the manager had described. Only a few card payments were recorded and these seemed to be for the purchase of rail tickets. It looked as though he’d made eight journeys in total, all at about the same price and all in the first five years after the failure of the commune. Could they be the visits to Berwick that Barry had mentioned?
Silent Crimes Page 18