Fatal Decision

by Ted Tayler

  Emergency services were called and the crime scene was contained as swiftly as possible. The weather that evening was dreadful and there was no doubt vital clues got washed away by heavy rain or were trampled underfoot.

  A huge murder hunt was launched and officers took hundreds of statements, but no one was ever charged for the savage attack. Culverhouse’s attention focused on identifying a youth seen running into Lowden Park from the woods seconds before Miss Dean found the body. Did Mrs Tolliver know that person? Was it a teenage male or indeed, a female? Could a young girl have carried out such a vicious attack and what could have been her motive? The police were baffled.

  A witness from Braemar Terrace, where the victim lived for many years, saw Mrs Tolliver walk past her window with her dog, Bobby just before seven o’clock. The two were a common sight in the neighbourhood. The young mother recalled this occasion because the lad next door, Carl Brightwell almost collided with Mrs Tolliver as he left his home on his mountain bike.

  “They had words,” she reported, “but I couldn’t make out what was said, on account of the new windows we had installed in the Spring.”

  Even ten years ago, Carl Brightwell had a reputation in town for being a little toe rag. He was fast becoming a person of interest to the police. The witness confirmed Carl wore a sky-blue hoodie when he rode past her window. The lad was in town at the time of the murder. Over a dozen witnesses placed him in McDonald’s with his mates. They were annoying the other customers and at half-past seven the shift-manager Kief Dariwhal lost patience and asked them to leave.

  As soon as they stood outside in the pouring rain, Carl and his cronies overturned the outdoor furniture and emptied the industrial-sized wheelie bins. They then started throwing chairs against the windows and found it amusing to smear rotting food on the advertising boards. Customers trapped inside with their young children pestered Mr Dariwhal until he rang the police.

  The county’s finest were busy responding to the incident in Lowden Woods and two hours passed before anyone visited the fast-food outlet. A frantic second request for someone to attend had been ignored.

  Just before DI Culverhouse moved to Portishead and the Avon and Somerset force in 2013, he organised a reconstruction of the Tolliver murder. Another potential witness came forward. A man bird-watching high on Lowden Hill had seen someone in Battersby Lane. He was following the flight of a sparrow hawk with his binoculars when it swooped towards the ground. He lost it for a second, and as he searched left and right, he spotted a man and woman in the lane with a dog. They appeared to be chatting amicably. The man was playing with the dog. He had no doubt the couple knew one another. The bird-watcher had switched his attention back to his hunt for the sparrow hawk and didn’t see the couple again.

  Culverhouse knew the man in Battersby Lane couldn’t have been Brightwell. He was convinced the person in the blue anorak in Lowden Woods was the killer. His team spent hundreds of hours looking for the suspect without success. There were no other credible leads after five years. The Detective Inspector had given an interview to the crime reporter from the Wiltshire Times.

  “We reckon Daphne’s killer was a local lad who knew the area well,” he said. “A number of items of clothing are being re-examined by forensic scientists for evidence that we didn’t have the ability to test for back in 2008. That might lead to a breakthrough. I would urge any of your readers with information about the murder to come forward. Particularly, anyone who may have been confided in by the killer since June 2008.”

  Dominic Culverhouse moved onwards and upwards within months of that interview. Nothing significant had been added to the case file since that time. There was a report from a national newspaper in which an investigative reporter suggested Daphne Tolliver could have been a victim of a serial killer. He believed there were similarities to unsolved murders in Devon, Dorset and Hampshire.

  Truelove had flicked through that article and decided against casting it aside for now. Like Culverhouse and his murder squad, he was convinced these deaths were unconnected to the killing of Mrs Tolliver. Whether they were themselves connected was for officers from other forces to determine. The main similarity was that they were women, all of whom were killed while out walking their dog. Their ages ranged from sixteen to fifty. A knife was involved in those other three cases. One couldn’t rule out a serial killer using a different method to dispose of this potential fourth victim but it didn’t feel right.

  From the outset, the lack of an obvious motive hampered the detectives. Daphne Tolliver hadn’t been robbed. There was no sign of sexual assault. She didn’t have an enemy in the world. If you believed her family, ex-colleagues from the Post Office, and the primary school where she was a cleaner. Add in the glowing terms used by volunteers at the charity shops and in the letter from the Manor House then it was certain the lady was loved and well-respected.

  So, why did someone pick up a rock and bash her brains in? It was a mystery to ACC Kenneth Truelove. But he knew just the man to unravel that mystery.

  Gus Freeman was sixty-one years old. The retired Detective Inspector lived in Urchfont, a village five miles out of Devizes towards Salisbury where Freeman had worked for much of his career. The ACC knew his reputation as a thief-taker. An honest to goodness copper considered these days as ‘old school’. It wasn’t a compliment. It marked them down as a dinosaur. Many other competent detectives had been effectively tattooed with ‘not wanted on the journey’ across the forehead. The results were there in the headlines of every daily newspaper to show the folly of that policy.

  ACC Truelove knew the tune for the police service’s new anthem, but he sometimes struggled to remember the words. If he played things close to his chest, he hoped to convince his superiors this idea of his was a modern initiative with all the diversity and forward-thinking they could wish for.

  Kenneth Truelove reckoned Freeman’s dogged determination and a knack of winkling out that important nugget of information others missed would work well on a case such as this. He had to convince the old bugger it was a proper job and not one created out of pity.

  Freeman's wife, Tess, died from a brain aneurysm six months to the day following his retirement. He was still coming to terms with his enforced solitary existence. She hadn’t had a day’s illness throughout their thirty-five years of marriage. The ACC took a deep breath, picked up the phone and dialled.

  After four rings the answerphone kicked in.

  “Patience is necessary. One cannot reap immediately from where one has sown. I’m not here, so leave your number and I’ll decide whether to bother calling back.”

  Truelove shook his head. He knew Freeman’s reputation as an oddball. He gave him ten out of ten for originality though. Then the beep ended the existentialist philosophising and not so warm, welcoming message.

  “It’s Truelove here,” the ACC said, “call me when you’ve got a minute, Gus. I’m sure you don’t need a reminder of the number.”

  The message was delivered. Now he had to wait. An Assistant Chief Constable’s duties didn’t allow time to muse over Freeman’s call message. He had to create the vision and set the direction and culture for the county force. He was part of the Chief Officer Team building public and organisational confidence and trust. It was the responsibility of that Team to enable the delivery of an effective policing service.

  There was never a dull moment, but it was all bollocks.

  Truelove knew it, deep down, but he wasn’t old enough yet to take his pension. It was time to do a John Redwood and at least try to remember the tune. There were meetings to attend and visions to be created. Freeman would call back sooner or later. Of that he was confident.

  Gus Freeman sat in the lounge of his retirement home. That was what Tess termed the two-bedroomed bungalow when they moved here from Downton just over five years ago. They had planned for his police career ending as the dinosaurs were made extinct.

  Her own pastoral role at the Wiltshire College in Salisbury had be
en something she enjoyed too much to quit for the foreseeable future. The College had been formed in 1992 as the merger of a College of Art & Design and a Technology College. The Campus was situated in Southampton Road. It offered degree courses in association with Bournemouth University and vocational courses for school leavers.

  Tess was a Wellbeing Advisor and required to work a combination of twilight and night shifts on a rolling shift pattern. The fact Tess might work from three to midnight, or ten to half-past eight never inconvenienced the couple. Before she took on this role, Tess suffered over two decades of Gus being called away at a moment’s notice when another crime was committed on his patch.

  Anyway, it was only ever the two of them to take into consideration. Neither of them wanted children.

  What mattered most to both of them in their career was job satisfaction. Gus got his satisfaction by solving those crimes and seeing criminals in prison. Tess had taught for many years but gradually felt stifled by constant changes in curriculum and teaching methods. She got more fulfilment from the responsibility for providing a safe and secure environment for her students on Campus.

  At Christmas and the end of every school year when many left altogether, she returned home with a hundred cards from students who came to think of her as a surrogate mother. Someone they confided in when things got on top of them.

  Tess took it in her stride. It didn’t make her any more maternal. She shrugged when those cards were scooped up to be recycled.

  “I don’t think I could even put a face to most of these names,” she would sigh. “I was just doing what the job entailed.”

  Gus wondered how prepared those kids were for the outside world. He could never recall any of his own teachers providing a safe and secure environment when he attended school. He couldn’t imagine sending any of them a card at Christmas either. They may not have remembered his name after he left at sixteen. But he would never forget the names of those who wielded the cane with glee, or whacked pupils with a blackboard rubber.

  It seemed so long ago now. He couldn’t wait to leave school. After six months labouring on a building site, he’d started evening classes to help gain the qualifications he needed to join the police at eighteen. His father warned him against it.

  “You’ll never be off duty, son,” he cautioned, “and forget any friendships you’ve formed. They will never last once you put on that uniform.”

  Gus wanted to prove his father wrong, but within six months he knew he was right. Then, within a year the opportunity to change things disappeared when his father died of lung cancer at fifty-three.

  He completed his training in August 1975 and his first posting was to Amesbury. Two years later, he moved into the City of Salisbury. It was a good time to be a young copper on the beat. There was plenty of variety. He was encouraged to take his sergeant’s exams. Despite being reticent about his academic prowess, Gus surprised himself by passing the first time and decided he had just been a late-developer. If those cane-happy teachers could have seen how he turned out.

  Gus Freeman was minding his own business, taking a leak in the toilet one morning when someone stood next to him. They said a vacancy was about to be advertised in the team of detectives.

  “You should apply, young Freeman.”

  “I’m not on the square,” he told them.

  “Even better,” he was told. “Mark my words, that job has got your name on it. Nobody else need bother to apply.”

  Gus didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed an application form as soon as the advert appeared on the notice board. Detective Sergeant Gus Freeman began thief-taking in February 1978.

  Gus met Tess in The Swan at Stoford that summer. He was enjoying a few drinks with colleagues on a warm July evening. Tess arrived with a group of teachers celebrating the end of the summer term. The new one began not much more than six weeks later yet Tess returned to work wearing an engagement ring.

  Tess and Gus saved hard over the next eighteen months. She had been a late arrival and her parents were already in their late sixties. They had next to nothing put by and were unable to contribute much. It seemed they faced a long engagement. Almost two years to the day after they buried his father, Gus found himself stood by the same graveside and watched his mother’s coffin lowered into the ground.

  “No big mystery to solve for the cause of death,” he said to Tess later, as they stood in the bar of The Duck Inn in nearby Laverstock. “She smoked forty a day Capstan Full Strength since she was fourteen, the same as Dad.”

  The modest home in which he had grown up was left to him in his mother’s will. Gus and Tess set about re-decorating and ridding the place of the effects of decades of nicotine. She continued to live with her parents. Times may have changed but Tess was adamant.

  The couple were married in Salisbury Registry Office on Bourne Hill in 1980. The detective and the teacher then manoeuvred their way through thirty-five years of marriage avoiding the icebergs that brought disaster to so many others on the same journey.

  Tess lost both her parents within the first five years.

  “It’s the two of us against the world then, Gus,” she would say, whenever a problem arose.

  Then, after forty years’ service, Gus had been called into the ACC’s office. He was asked whether he had considered retirement. He was three weeks into an investigation concerning allegations of sexual assault over a number of years at a care home. It had been a traumatic experience and promised to get even murkier. In a moment of weakness, Gus hinted that once this case was wrapped up, he might be glad of the chance to spend months scrubbing himself until he felt clean again.

  CHAPTER 3

  Tuesday, 27th March 2018

  The message from the ACC came as a surprise, Gus had listened to it when he returned home yesterday evening after a tiring day. It made a pleasant change to hear a human voice behind that nagging red light flashing on his phone display.

  Gus had been pestered in the past by so many computer-generated calls. He often let the number of stored messages reach the maximum thirty before blitzing the lot without even a cursory check. The chances of missing a vital call were miniscule. It was almost certain to be PPI; his computer would crash the next day or another wrong number.

  There were excellent reasons there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of the first two applying to him. As for the third option, Gus didn’t enjoy conversations with people who thought he was their best friend or loved one.

  The last episode had lasted seven or eight minutes. Time lost he’d never get back.

  “Hello?” he’d answered brightly. He always tried harder to be jovial on a Sunday evening. It made him feel better about not attending church.

  “Hello? Is that Dorothy?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, is she there?”

  “No.”

  “When do you expect her back?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh, has something happened to her?”

  “It’s possible. Perhaps you should call her to check.”

  Gus ended the call and made it as far as the drinks cabinet before the phone rang again.

  “Hello,” less jovial this time. More unimpressed of Urchfont.

  “Dorothy?”

  “Still not here.”

  “That is 01380…”

  “I know my number and that’s not it. You must have mis-dialled.”

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I’m sure I wrote it down correctly.”

  “Don’t worry. I think you may have switched the sixth and seventh numbers. Take care when dialling again.”

  “Thank you. You must think I’m a silly old fool.”

  “Not at all. Good evening.”

  He got further this time. As the single malt had slid from the glass and across his tongue, the phone rang again.

  “The sixth and seventh numbers,” he answered.

  “How did you know what I was going to ask?”

  “A lucky guess.”

  �
�I don’t know you, do I? Your voice sounds familiar.”

  “It may be because we’ve spoken several times this evening.”

  “You’ve been so helpful. Gosh, look at the time. Dorothy will have gone to bed by now. Would you mind awfully doing me a big favour? Could you tell her I can’t make our bridge club this Thursday?”

  That might be difficult Gus thought, but the caller had gone. He had poured himself a generous measure. He felt he deserved it. After five minutes standing by the phone, he decided it safe to sit and enjoy his undisturbed drink. That proved impossible.

  He kept wondering how his phantom caller ever mastered counting cards to achieve a tricky five no-trumps on a Thursday afternoon. These bridge clubs involving elderly ladies were hotly contested affairs.

  When he wasn’t analysing that thorny problem, he scribbled on a scrap of paper names of any potential Dorothy that had crossed his path. Women who lived in villages between Devizes and the parts of Salisbury Plain covered by the 01380 STD code.

  Once a detective, always a detective. No matter how hard he racked his brains, it remained a very short list.

  Gus gave up after his second drink and went to bed having resolved to buy a phone with caller display. He never wished to entertain another wrong number while at home. Most numbers got short shrift these days anyway, but if they seemed familiar, then he could at least weigh up the pros and cons of returning their call.

  Weeks later, on a breezy Tuesday morning, the sun did its utmost to brighten his mood. He had to admit he was intrigued by last night’s message. A call back wouldn’t take much out of his morning. He planned to get across to his allotment. It was imperative he continued the work he’d put in yesterday.

  They were on the threshold of Spring and a new gardening season. It didn’t always feel it earlier in the month when the UK endured the tail-end of ‘The Beast from the East’. It had been exceptionally cold with daytime temperatures failing to get above freezing. The strong easterly winds had delivered widespread snow to many parts and as usual, everything ground to a halt.