by Wonny Lea
‘From there we have CCTV evidence of him getting into a taxi, and interviews with the taxi company have led to the same garden centre from which we tracked the killer of Ali Addula – result or what?’
Martin slapped Alex on the back. ‘What a team!’ he shouted. ‘What a team. Everyone here deserves a medal but the best I can do for the moment is to suggest that if anyone wants a coffee then the drinks are on me.’
The room cleared quickly, but very noisily, as everyone expressed their own opinions and commented on the evils of human nature. Charlie, Alex, and Martin remained, along with DC Davies who was standing in for Matt and who told the others the latest news about his DS.
‘About half an hour ago DS Pryor was transferred safely to the University Hospital of Wales and is making an excellent recovery. Since he arrived there, he’s phoned six times and my guess is that we will continue to get a call every five minutes or so until someone tells him what’s going on.’
‘That’s a pretty fair guess,’ laughed Martin. ‘I promised to keep him informed of progress so that will be down to me – thank heavens he’s been transferred and a visit won’t mean another trip to Bristol. No offence, but I’ve seen enough of that city for a while.’
Martin turned to DC Davies. ‘I’m just tidying things up in my mind, and no doubt the clothes Jack Thompson had on at his house can be traced to his purchases in Cardiff so can you make sure that we have that sorted. I’ll spend all day tomorrow putting everything together and then be very pleased to hand the whole thing over to the Crown Prosecution Services. But for now I have three house calls to make, and then I’ll be taking myself home.’
Martin chose to make his three calls alone, although he asked DC Davies to let the relevant people know he was coming. His first call was on Elaine Philips and was the one he was most concerned about.
She invited him into her home and he was pleased to see her daughter there. Over a cup of tea, he told her that they had arrested a man for killing her husband. He went on to tell her that her husband’s killer had been charged with the second murder at the shop, and with the murder last Saturday of Mark Wilson. Martin told her a bit more. ‘In addition to that, the police in Bristol now have proof that the same man killed two other people in their area.’
‘Why? But why? Is he crazy?’ Mrs Philips had every reason to be shocked, and Martin felt he had to answer her questions as honestly as he could.
‘To answer the second part of your question first – no, I don’t believe he is crazy, in that I believe that he is totally aware of everything he has done, but there are those that will always put forward the mental health argument. As to why, we believe that most of his murders were pre-arranged, and may be revenge or punishment killings linked to his father and his father’s associates. His father is serving life for murder in Bristol Prison, and the only murder that wasn’t pre-arranged was that of your husband. We believe on that occasion it was Mr Addula who should have been killed – he was the original target – but your husband intervened.’
‘From what you’re saying, the people that this man killed, with the exception of my Daniel and Mark Wilson, were all involved in some sort of criminal activity.’ Martin nodded and Elaine Philips continued. ‘So my kind and gentle husband, who was a wonderful father and a truly special man, was killed by what amounts to a paid assassin who was out to teach some villains a lesson?’
This was exactly why Martin had dreaded this meeting, as he knew from their past sessions that Mrs Philips had the knack of hitting the nail right on the head. He said nothing but took her hands and she allowed him to sit with her for a few minutes while the awful truth sank in.
It was her daughter Lucy who broke the silence. ‘Look, Chief Inspector Phelps, I know I’ve have given you a hard time over the lack of progress about my father’s murder, but my mother has found your support to be of enormous benefit. We thank you for coming here today. We had to find out the truth and it was best coming from you, so again thank you for that.
‘My father taught us a lot, and even if he had realised that Mr Addula was not all he appeared to be he would still have intervened. We all know that – it was his selfless nature that made us all love him so much. Now that we know the truth, we can work it through as a family.’
She sat down next to her mother and took her hands from Martin’s, allowing him to stand up and take his leave.
The image of the two women sobbing together would not go away as he drove towards his second visit and shortly afterwards pulled into the drive of the Hardings’ home.
As arranged, Paula and Suzanne were there, as was Helen Cook-Watts, and it was she who opened the door. She had been fully briefed and told to answer as many questions as she could, and to allow Paula to tell Norman, Sandy, and Suzanne about her meeting with Amy Wilson.
‘They can’t take it in,’ Helen said as she greeted DCI Phelps. ‘It’s hardly surprising, when someone they knew as Anne, and had befriended for years, turns out to be Mark’s sister Amy. And although we know she didn’t actually murder her brother, they have all come to the conclusion that she set it up.’
‘They almost certainly right,’ responded Martin as he followed her into the lounge. The first person he saw was Paula, and he asked her if she had recovered from her shock of recognising Amy Wilson as being Anne.
‘It’s not something I’ll ever forget,’ she told him. ‘It was that twitch she did with her eyebrow that did it – we’ve all seen her do it a thousand times. I think I would have recognised her anyway but that was certainly the trigger.’
Sandy invited Martin to sit down and he did, remaining there for the next hour and a half while the four people who had been closest to Mark talked and talked and talked.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and between them they came up with lots of clues that Amy had given them over the years, and wondered that if they had been more observant they could have realised who she was. They were all aware that she was still a patient at the BRI and Sandy asked what would become of her.
‘At present there is nothing for us to do, as she has been transferred back to the ICU and they are very concerned about her condition. If she recovers, she may be arrested for conspiracy to murder, but even that will depend on her mental health and that’s a very big question.’
‘The poor girl,’ said Sandy, much to everyone’s surprise, and an indignant Paula responded heatedly.
‘You can’t mean that, Sandy – she duped us for years, all the time hating us and wanting Mark dead. And you were always so good to her.’
‘Yes, but to live your life like that! She must have been filled to the brim with jealousy and hatred. If only she could have let us know who she was from the beginning, perhaps we could have turned all that around and helped her build a more meaningful life.’
There it was again: that willingness to help others, and for a moment Martin returned to an image of Helen Philips.
He took his leave of Mark’s family and friends and suggested to Helen Cook-Watts that she stay for just a while longer and then head for home herself. ‘You’ve done a great job with this family,’ he told her, and was rewarded by a beaming smile as she closed the door behind him.
Grateful that the first two of his meetings were behind him, Martin headed for the hospital. He was pleased to be going to visit Matt Pryor – it could have been so different.
‘At last, guv!’ Matt complained. ‘I thought I’d been forgotten, what’s going on so that it’s taken you all day to get here?’
‘Shut up and just listen for once,’ said Martin, as he pulled up a chair and went systematically through the investigation as it had unravelled that day. For once, Matt actually did just listen, and he didn’t even ask any questions until Martin had finished.
‘What a result,’ he said finally. ‘What a boost for the crime figures! Could be a gong in there somewhere for you, guv!’ He grinned at Martin.
‘Not for me,’ replied his boss. ‘But if they are giving them awa
y for team efforts, then we should be in with a shout.’
Both men laughed, and then the conversation turned to Matt’s injury, and then to rugby – and then to women. It seemed to normalise the world, and that’s what the people who investigate such horrors need in order to keep themselves sane. Martin laughed as he heard how many female visitors had already been through the doors of Matt’s side room. There was only one female visitor that Martin wanted to welcome – and he found himself hoping that her second visit to the cottage would be pretty soon …
The DCI Martin Phelps Series
Wonny Lea
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Cover Picture
I took the photograph shown on the front cover, one that shows a brooding Cardiff Bay with the iconic image of the Norwegian Church. Cardiff Bay is the site of Goleudy, the base for DCI Phelps and his team.
The building of Cardiff Docks in the 1830s, by the second Marquis of Bute, changed Cardiff for ever. In 1868 the Norwegian Church, founded by Herman Lunde of Oslo, was built on land donated by the marquis. The church provided the thousands of Norwegian sailors who visited the docks with a place where they could get spiritual and social care. It was funded by the Norwegian Seaman’s Mission and soon became famous as a place where the seamen could relax in an atmosphere that reminded them of their own country.
As coal exports declined, so did the need for the church, and despite attempts by local worshippers to retain it, the costs were deemed too high and it was deconsecrated in 1974. It was a time when the whole of the dockland area had become a shadow of its former self, which lasted until plans for the redevelopment of Atlantic Wharf were finally agreed on. To avoid the destruction of the church during the regeneration of the area, the whole building was dismantled with care and a great deal of it put into storage.
The author Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff to Norwegian parents and was christened at the Norwegian Church. He became the first president of the Norwegian Church Preservation Trust and actively campaigned for the cause. By 1992 the church had been rebuilt, and was re-opened by Princess Martha Louise of Norway. The church recently underwent major refurbishment, and was established in 2011 as the Norwegian Church Arts Centre. Today, the striking white building stands proudly on Cardiff Bay’s waterfront and once again attracts visitors from all over the world.
Wonny Lea, 2012
Copyright © Wonny Lea 2012
This edition published by Accent Press 2013
The right of Wonny Lea to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 9781783754595
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN
The stories contained within this book are works of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the authors’ imaginations and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental