BURIED CRIMES: a gripping detective thriller full of twists and turns

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  ‘I think I can. My background isn’t exactly ordinary.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Oh well, maybe I should stop making assumptions about people. I suppose everyone has a story to tell,’ said Pauline.

  ‘Did you see Richard Camberwell at any time that week?’

  ‘He called me a couple of days later with the news about his wife. I visited him just to offer some support, and I ended up getting the children their tea. Everything just clicked into place for us. I didn’t plan it, whatever you might think.’

  * * *

  ‘Did anyone ever seriously consider whether Li Hua’s death was anything other than a simple accident?’ Sophie was sitting in a small office in a police station a mile or so to the north of Bristol city centre.

  Detective Inspector Polly Nelson took a sip from her cup of herbal tea, leant back in her chair and said very guardedly, ‘what do you mean?’

  ‘It became obvious pretty quickly that it was a hit and run. You probably all assumed that it was an accidental one, and that the driver panicked and kept going. But did you ever consider that her death might have been deliberate? That she might have been targeted by someone?’

  Polly Nelson looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Of course it was a possibility. The investigation was thorough. Are you implying otherwise?’

  Sophie smiled at her. ‘No. I’m not. But I’m aware of how much pressure can be brought to bear from above to get a case wrapped up quickly, particularly when there’s no obvious counter-evidence.’ She took a small mouthful from her own cup. How should she play this? It was obvious that she’d touched a nerve. ‘Look, I’m not trying to stir something up here. It was twenty years ago, for goodness sake, and things were a bit different then.’ She picked up the file that related to the incident. ‘I just get the feeling that this is a shade on the thin side, and even the case notes that are in there seem padded out. To my mind it tends to pay only lip service to the possibility of a deliberately targeted act. Was her husband happy with the outcome?’

  Nelson stared at Sophie. ‘Yes, as far as I know. You have to realise that I was only a DC then. It was one of my first cases. I didn’t meet her husband personally. I only saw him briefly at a distance a couple of times.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘It tallies with the recollections of his work colleagues. But they did say he seemed confused by it all, apparently broken-hearted and with two young children at home. He had no family to call on for help, so maybe he felt overwhelmed. The trouble is, Polly, that their marriage may not have been as happy as it appeared on the surface.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I spoke to some ex-colleagues of Li Hua this morning. My mother is the practice manager of a neighbouring medical centre, and she got the contacts for me. Li Hua wasn’t as popular at work as this record seems to suggest. She could be a bit of a harridan, apparently.’

  ‘Why didn’t you inform us? Isn’t that unprofessional, to go behind our backs? I could make a formal complaint against you.’

  ‘Let me explain how it looks from my angle. Li Hua is killed in a hit and run. Her husband remarries within a couple of years. Several years later he suffers a fatal fall down the stairs at home. Six months after that, the twins somehow die and are secretly buried in a garden. Within the last two weeks, and after the discovery of the twins’ bodies, the man who was the gardener at the Dorchester house at the time this all happened is himself found dead from cyanide poisoning, looking like suicide. Come on. How does it look to you? You and I both know that coincidences happen. But all this? Absolutely not. So I’m going back to the first death in the sequence, and I don’t like what I find in the files. It wasn’t taken seriously. You know it and I know it. And I’m asking you about it. I’m not going to make an issue of it if that’s your concern. I just need to know why it was just that wee bit slapdash.’

  The silence lasted for nearly a minute. Finally Polly Nelson said, ‘there was a change of command in the unit at about the same time. Someone new came in with his own priorities, wanting to make a mark, ready to shake us all up, changing all of our areas of responsibility. If you must know, I made waves about it. I said that more investigation was needed, and I nearly lost my job because of it. After that I just buttoned my lip and kept quiet.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘An all too common story,’ she said. ‘I’ve been there myself. A very junior woman detective dares to object to operational decisions made by some macho, self-obsessed, furrow-minded bloke. And gets an earful in response. Is that how it was?’

  Polly nodded.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s a chief constable but not here, thank God. Due to retire next year. He’ll probably get a sheaf of honours. Look, in some ways he was a good cop and got results. That’s why he is where he is. But this case was in limbo when he arrived and it just disappeared down the cracks during the transfer of power. There was meatier stuff going on at the same time, major crime initiatives and the like. As far as he was concerned it was a question of putting the resources where they’d have the greatest effect. What else could be done? We’d staged a reconstruction. We’d done everything by the book. He lost interest.’

  ‘I can imagine. So assumptions were made on the basis of convenience rather than close scrutiny, and the whole team moved on.’

  Polly nodded.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘The fact that the circumstances surrounding her death were never explained in a satisfactory way always bothered me. I didn’t like leaving things in limbo. I still don’t.’

  ‘So if my boss asked your current powers-that-be to reopen the investigation, there’s a chance that it could be looked into again? Would you be happy with that?’

  The two women looked at each other. ‘Yes,’ Polly finally answered. ‘I’d be happy to allocate someone if I get the go-ahead.’

  They shook hands and Sophie left.

  She glanced at her watch. There was time to meet her mother for lunch.

  * * *

  ‘It’s been a worthwhile morning, Mum. It was so useful to be able to meet some of her ex-colleagues in the practice. Written records can tell us a lot, but there’s nothing to beat a face-to-face with people who knew the victim.’

  Sophie was in a Clifton café with her mother, who was reading the menu.

  ‘It’s all too ghoulish for me,’ Susan replied. ‘I’m proud of what you’ve achieved but I’ve never been sure where you got this obsession with probing into murder, violent crime and the like. It certainly isn’t from me.’

  Sophie laughed. ‘You’ve told me that often enough. From my dad, maybe?’

  ‘I don’t think so, not from the brief time that I knew him.’ Susan stared down at her plate.

  ‘Sorry, Mum. Have I put my foot in it? I thought things were going well with Bill.’

  ‘I don’t know. He wants me to commit, to go through a ceremony of some kind. So I’ve hit the same barrier I always hit. I thought things would change after your dad’s funeral last year, but clearly they haven’t.’

  Sophie reached across and put her hand on her mother’s. ‘Maybe you just need to give it more time, Mum. You’re still grieving. I’m sure Bill understands. He’s always come across as a considerate sort.’

  Finally Susan spoke very quietly. ‘I don’t think things are ever going to change for me. I think I’m coming to accept that my emotional life was determined by that two-month period forty-four years ago. Is there ever going to be anything else? I wonder.’

  ‘Mum, if you take that line you’ll be fulfilling your own prophecy. You’ve got to take chances occasionally. If you really like and respect Bill, and I think you do, it’s worth giving it a go. I hate to see you like this, so full of self-doubt. You’re never going to feel the same level of overpowering emotion that you felt for Dad. It’s impossible. You were a teenager, for God’s sake, when everything is so charged. And added to that, you obviously felt something rare and special. I always felt strongly attracted to Martin, b
ut I don’t think I ever experienced it as powerfully as you’ve described with Dad. But over time even that level of passion fades away and is replaced with a much more comfortable kind of love. I’m only in my forties and, really, I’m not sure I’d want that level of overwhelming, aching desire running through my life now. It would just get in the way of everything and leave me a wreck.’ She paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘Mum, you’ve got decades of life still in front of you. You’re fit and healthy. As far as I can tell, Bill is by far the most pleasant of all the boyfriends of yours that I’ve met. I know he stays over occasionally, and you do the same at his place, but it’s not the same as living under the same roof most of the time, not for most people and probably not for him.’

  Susan said nothing.

  ‘Why don’t you go for something fairly low-level to start with? Just a simple ceremony of commitment, like a blessing of some type? Or move in together on a trial basis? You won’t know until you try it.’

  ‘That’s what he’s suggested,’ Susan murmured. ‘He can’t see the problem.’

  ‘More than anything else, Mum, Dad would have wanted you to be happy. Surely you realise that? We’ve all told you so, including gran and grandad. You have everyone’s blessing to move on finally.’ She got up and walked around the table, crouching down to put her arm around her mother. She put a finger on Susan’s forehead. ‘Close your eyes and clear your mind.’ A pause. ‘I’m his daughter, his only child. I am what is left of him. He is in me, and he and I both need you to be happy in your life. Trust us, please. You must start to finally put him behind you.’

  Susan started to cry.

  ‘Would it help if you came to Wareham and stayed over this weekend? Hannah will be paying a flying visit on Sunday.’

  Her mother nodded, unable to speak. The waitress hovered in the background, unable to decide whether to give the two women a few more minutes. Sophie smiled and beckoned her over.

  * * *

  Back in the incident room later that afternoon, Sophie had a review meeting with Barry Marsh, Rae Gregson and Theresa Jackson. Rae had brought in a tub of fruit scones that she’d baked the previous evening, along with a jar of raspberry jam and a pot of Cornish clotted cream.

  ‘You wicked, wicked young woman,’ Sophie said, spreading thick cream onto her second scone. ‘This has to be a sackable offence. Why did I save you from the evil grasp of he who must no longer be obeyed if this is what you go and do?’ She bit deeply into the scone. ‘Oh, heaven! It’s a good job I had lunch with my mother. She watches what I eat like a hawk and kept me to a slice of quiche, some salad and a solitary bread roll. My stomach was gurgling all the way back from Bristol.’ She finished the scone and wiped her fingers.

  ‘Right, let’s get on. More and more I’m thinking that the key to all these deaths is the marriage of Li Hua and Richard Camberwell. Pauline Stopley says that the marriage was made in heaven, and the two doctors were deeply in love. That was enough to make me suspicious, and this morning I did a bit of digging. Sure enough, there were some signs of friction and a couple of suggestions that Li Hua did not have the angelic temperament we thought she had. Quite the opposite. Even at work she could be bad tempered and downright awkward at times. Someone even speculated that she’d trapped Richard into getting married by getting herself pregnant. This was one of her own work colleagues. They seem to have felt more sorry for Richard than her.’

  ‘So Pauline told us the opposite of what was probably the case?’ Marsh asked.

  ‘Par for the course, don’t you think?’ Sophie smiled wryly. ‘We’ve now got an ally in the Bristol Major Crime Squad and she’s going to be doing a bit more digging from the inside. It’s a DI Polly Nelson, so if she phones or messages, make a note of it and bring it to me. She admitted that the original investigation into the hit and run was a bit lax. I’ll put in an official request for a collaborative approach via the ACC, but it might take days. Polly will try to make a start before then, if her workload permits. Meanwhile we dig into Richard Camberwell’s history before he went to Hong Kong. Childhood, teenage years, university, everything. We know about his link to Pauline Stopley, but my gut feeling is that there’s more. We can get started now, and continue tomorrow. We double check everything that our esteemed ex-actress has told us about her husband. Some of it will undoubtedly be true, but much will be false. The trouble is, we don’t know which is which.

  ‘Theresa, I know you’re due to visit the Freemans when the children get home, but see what you can find out about John Wethergill from a local perspective. You’re a longstanding Dorchester resident so you might be able to tap into sources that the rest of us don’t know about. Find out what you can about his background, going back to his school days. Pick Barry’s brain for ideas if you need to. Is that okay?’

  ‘Of course, ma’am.’

  ‘Rae, you spend some more time on the financial records. Wethergill and Camberwell.’

  Sophie stood, deep in thought. Finally she said, ‘there is something we need to follow up, isn’t there? Wethergill was a Dorchester man. We know he had a relationship with Pauline’s sister, Dorothy. Presumably they met while he was a gardener at Finch Cottage, when the two sisters owned the place. We also know that Pauline was in an on-off relationship with Richard Camberwell, dating back to their school days. Could those two men have ever met? Do we know where they went to school? Can you work on that, Barry? And remember, all of you, there’s a possibility that someone followed Wethergill home from the restaurant the evening he died. If you come across anything that might give a clue about who it was, let me know right away.’

  Rae was tracking back through financial records and bank statements from two decades ago. It hadn’t been easy extracting such dated information from the various banks and building societies. John Wethergill’s records in particular were a puzzle. He’d come from an impoverished broken home. He’d worked as a jobbing handyman and gardener for many years, yet somehow had managed to save enough money to set up a hardware store business. Rae could see that he’d secured a business loan from one of the local banks, but surely they’d only have awarded such a sum if convinced that he would be putting in a substantial sum of his own? And how would he have come by the kind of deposit required, considering his background? She pored through the reams of paper looking for an explanation, and found a partial one. He had had a deposit account containing twenty thousand pounds, opened in the winter of 1996, and left untouched, gaining interest, for almost three years. Where had that sum come from? She continued to study the statements. Nothing else came to light until the money was withdrawn towards the end of the decade. She walked to the desk where Marsh was sorting through a different lot of papers.

  ‘Do we have a date for when Wethergill opened his shop, sir?’

  Marsh took a sheet from one of the folders on his desk. ‘Here’s what Theresa has found out so far. According to her it opened just before Christmas, 1999. A good time to start, I’d imagine.’

  ‘Okay. It matches with the withdrawal of money from a savings account of his that I’ve discovered, so I can see what the money was used for. But where did he get it? He could never have earned that much. Do you think he was left money in a will at about that time?’

  ‘There’s no evidence for that. Everything we’ve found says that his family had next to no money.’

  Rae pondered. ‘Where did he grow up?’ she finally asked. ‘Do we know? Was he born and bred in Dorchester?’

  ‘Yes, as far as we know.’

  ‘Any other family members still alive?’

  Theresa had traced an aunt of Wethergill’s, a resident of Blandford Forum. Marsh phoned her. She used to run a pub in Blandford, she explained, but had retired some years earlier. He asked her what she remembered about John as a boy. The young John Wethergill’s life hadn’t been a happy one. Beaten by a drunken father, in and out of trouble at school and too ready to mix with the "wrong sort." Marsh wondered whether the aunt was being over-judgemental
. After all, Wethergill hadn’t had a criminal record, not even as a youngster. Still, it was useful background information.

  ‘Where did he go to school?’ he asked. ‘Did he live in Dorchester as a youngster?’

  John had attended local schools, but had been hopeless at academic work apparently. Maybe he’d been a late developer. Marsh knew all about boys who failed to take education seriously until it was almost too late. He’d been a prime example of that. He thanked the aunt for her help and added the information to the file.

  Rae had also been studying decades-old transaction details from Richard Camberwell’s bank and building society records. They showed nothing of interest. There were no large sums unaccountably appearing or disappearing from any of the accounts. Where had Wethergill’s lump of money come from? It had changed his life, and it had appeared in his account at about the same time as the twins had died. Coincidence?

  Chapter 33: Chinese Whispers

  Friday evening, week 3

  ‘I saw that Dorothy woman again today, Mum, in Weymouth.’ Jade was spooning fruit trifle into her mouth while studying some revision cards spread out on the table in front of her. A school chemistry test.

  ‘In Weymouth? Are you sure? What were you doing there?’

  Jade nodded. ‘It was her, though she looked very different. Asli and Safiyo both play in the first year netball team and they had an after-school match against a Weymouth school. I went along to support them. We drove back along the front in the minibus so that some of the girls could get fish and chips and I went into the chippie with them. I nearly bumped into her when I was coming out. She looked very different. She had a new hairstyle and was wearing make-up.’

  ‘Really? Could it have been someone else?’

  Jade surveyed her mother gravely. ‘You doubt me too much, Mum. Actually, I suppose I might be wrong, but I don’t think so. Even though she was much better dressed she still had that nervous look. That was what I first spotted.’