Under Orders

where, just a week previously, a mere seven days ago, I had sat with Bill. It seemed like a lifetime since. It was.

‘I thought you might still be with your mother,’ I said.

‘I wanted to come back here as soon as possible. The police wouldn’t let me in until Saturday. They were doing tests or something.’

And clearing up, I thought.

‘How about the horses?’ I asked.

‘All gone,’ she said, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘The last ones went yesterday. Nothing else for it.’

I took her hand. ‘How’s the house?’

‘Oh, fine. Have to sell it now, I suppose. I don’t really want to stay here any more, not after what’s happened. I wanted to come back to feel closer to Bill, but I haven’t been into the den, and I don’t think I want to. Just in case there’s…’

In case there’s a mess, I thought.

There was a long pause.

‘I was brought up in this house. Only for the first three years after getting married have I ever lived anywhere else. Bill and I moved in here together when Daddy retired. It will seem strange to sell the place and leave permanently.’ She paused again. ‘How could he have done this to the children?’ said Kate. ‘I’m so bloody angry with him that I’d shoot him myself if he was still here.’

She started crying so I put my arms round her and held her close.

‘Kate,’ I said into her ear, ‘I am absolutely certain that Bill didn’t kill himself. And I’m sure he didn’t kill Huw Walker either. And I intend to prove it.’

She pulled away from me and looked into my eyes. ‘Do you really mean that or are you saying it to make me feel better?’

‘I really mean it. I am sure that Bill was murdered.’

‘Kate,’ said Marina, touching her arm, ‘I’m sure Sid will find out who did it.’

Kate smiled. ‘I do so hope you’re right. At first, I couldn’t think why Bill would have killed himself. I am sure he would never leave the children in that way. It must have been a mistake or an accident but the police have kept telling me that he did it because he couldn’t stand the guilt for having killed Huw.’ She hung her head in her hands. ‘How I so wish that I hadn’t got involved with Huw.’

‘Would it be all right, Kate,’ I said, ‘if I were to have a look in the den?’

‘What for?’ she asked, raising her head. ‘I never want to go in there again. I locked the door when we got home and none of us have been in since. But, yes, I suppose it’s all right. I mean, the police haven’t said we can’t go in.’

‘I want to go and look for something.’

‘What?’

‘Something that might show that Bill didn’t kill himself.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Go on, then.’ She got up and took a key from the top shelf of the Welsh dresser and gave it to me. ‘But I’m staying here.’

‘Fine.’

‘And I’ll stay with you,’ said Marina.

‘I may be a while,’ I said.

‘That’s OK,’ said Marina, ‘take your time.’

I left them making themselves another cup of coffee and went through into the hallway, and then into the den.

It was much the way I remembered it. A leather sofa lay along the wall next to the door and the far end of the room was filled from floor to ceiling with bookcases containing racing books of all sorts, together with one shelf absolutely crammed full of videotapes. A large flat-screen television sat in one corner with video and DVD players beneath.

There was only one armchair where there used to be two. The other, I suspected, had been removed for forensic testing and then had probably been disposed of. Quite apart from the blood staining from the back of Bill’s head, there would have been a pooling of fluids in the seat due to the natural processes that occur at death. I shivered, whether from cold or from the thought of too much knowledge, I wasn’t sure.

There was a paisley-patterned rug covering about half the dark wooden floor and a few occasional tables dotted about.

I looked at the wall where I had seen the blood last Wednesday morning. Someone had done their best to get rid of the redness from the cream paint but thorough redecoration would be needed to remove completely the brown deposit that remained.

I looked carefully at the stain. I could see, near the top, where the police must have dug the bullet from the plaster. It had passed right through Bill’s skull and embedded itself in the wall, but not very deeply.

If Bill had not shot himself, then how did the gunpowder residue get on his hands? His hand had to have fired the gun. On the assumption that the gun wasn’t forced into his mouth with his finger on the trigger, then there had to be a second shot. In my opinion, this would have had to have been fired after Bill was dead. The murderer would have put the gun into Bill’s hand and used his dead finger to fire it.

So where is the second bullet?

I moved the remaining armchair into the place where I had seen Bill sitting when he died. I sat down on the chair. I was looking at the bookcases and the television. The bullet clearly hadn’t gone into the television because the screen was unbroken, so I started with the books.

I removed the contents of each shelf in turn, checking both the books themselves and the wooden bookcase behind them. It took me ages and I turned up some surprising finds. One of the books was not a book at all but a secret hiding place. The centre of the book had been hollowed out and Bill had used the space to keep some gold coins. Behind a row of racing Time-forms, he had hidden a couple of men’s magazines with well-thumbed pages, and there were two old-style fivers neatly pressed between the pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. There were also a couple of old letters to Bill from people I didn’t recognise, one concerning a horse for sale and the other about a holiday villa in Portugal. But no bullet, and no bullet hole.

I scrutinised all the surfaces of the bookcases and where they met the walls. I looked into the flap on the front of the video player to see if I could see any damage. I lifted the rug and looked at the wooden floor to see if a hole existed. I pored over every square inch of the leather sofa and inspected every thread of the cushions. I moved the sofa and the tables and looked under them all for a tell-tale bullet hole in the floor or a wall. I searched behind the curtains and in the pelmets, even though these had predominantly been behind Bill as he sat in the chair. I examined every nook and cranny that existed in that room. I missed nothing.

In the end, I had a few coins and a ball point pen from down the back of the sofa, a piece of a jigsaw puzzle and dust from underneath it, and some fine, gritty, sand-like material from the paisley rug. No bullet. No cartridge case. Nothing. Not a thing that could indicate that a second shot had been fired.

I sat down again in the chair, exhausted and fed up.

Was I wrong?

I had been so sure that a second bullet existed. I’d thought I just needed a quick search to find it and that would be enough to convince Inspector Johnson that I was right and he would reopen the case.

But now what?

Was there any other way of getting the gunpowder residue on to Bill’s hand and sleeve?

I looked out at the garden. Had the second bullet been fired out through an open window?

I went back into the hall and let myself out through the front door. I spent some time looking but could find nothing. It was a hopeless task, I thought. If the bullet had been fired out here, it could have gone anywhere. But it would have been risky. Quite apart from hitting something that couldn’t be seen in the dark, it would have been much noisier out here than with the windows closed. There would also have been the risk of someone hearing the noise and investigating before an escape could be made.

I didn’t know the answer. Was I even asking the right question?

I went back inside the house and through to the kitchen.

Kate and Marina had been joined by the children who were sitting at the table, ready for their lunch.