Fatal Decision Read online

  Fatal Decision

  (The first case from ‘The Freeman Files’ series)

  By

  Ted Tayler

  Copyright © 2019 by Ted Tayler

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please buy an additional copy for each recipient.

  All rights are reserved. You may not reproduce this work, in part or in its entirety, without the express written permission of the author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: - www.thecovercollection.com

  A Harmsworth House publication 2019

  Other books by Ted Tayler

  We’d Like To Do A Number Now (2011)

  The Final Straw (2013)

  A Sting In The Tale (2013)

  Unfinished Business (2014)

  The Olympus Project (2014)

  Gold, Silver, and Bombs (2015)

  Conception (2015)

  Nothing Is Ever Forever (2015)

  In The Lap of The Gods (2016)

  The Price of Treachery (2016)

  A New Dawn (2017)

  Something Wicked Draws Near (2017)

  Evil Always Finds A Way (2017)

  Revenge Comes in Many Colours (2017)

  Three Weeks in September (2018)

  A Frequent Peal Of Bells (2018)

  Larcombe Manor (2018)

  Where to find him

  Website & Blog: – http://tedtayler.co.uk

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  Table Of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About The Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Saturday 28th June 2008

  “It’s not right, is it?” muttered Daphne Tolliver, “a widespread ground frost last night with the school summer holidays upon us. Global warming, my backside.”

  Bobby looked up at her from his position on the comfortable couch in their front room.

  “Nothing to add, little man?” said Daphne, shaking her head. “Thought not. As long as you get fed and watered, taken out to do your business, you don’t give a toss, do you?”

  Conversations were limited when you were widowed and spent long periods alone with only a Cocker Spaniel for company.

  Daphne Tolliver was sixty-eight years old and had been widowed a decade earlier. Her late husband, Wally keeled over in the bar of his favourite haunt, The Ferret in Newton Bridge. It turned out that Cribbage League matches could be as tense as a Champion’s League Football Final. Who knew?

  Wally’s sudden heart attack wasn’t fatal, but the induced coma he was treated to on arrival at the Royal United Hospital in Bath only delayed the inevitable. Daphne’s younger sister Megan ferried her back and forth to sit by his bedside for five days. Megan never complained, despite the small fortune it cost to park. She knew Daphne would remember to offer to contribute in time. Her sister’s head had been all over the place for several weeks. It was difficult enough with time to prepare for a loved one to pass, but Wally’s death came as a shock to everyone.

  Daphne’s parents always showed their daughters the love that went hand-in-hand with being part of a close-knit family. Mum and Dad had set the tone while they lived and the Sumner girls continued the theme throughout their own lives.

  Both daughters married young. Megan Morris, as she became, raised three children with husband, Mick. All three were now married, with five grandkids between them. Daphne doted on them, whether children or grandchildren, especially when babes in arms.

  Daphne and Wally were never blessed with children. Not for the want of trying. Whether pure bad luck or a problem with one or the other they never bothered to find out. They accepted it as their fate and played the cards life had dealt.

  The couple spent an equal amount of time together and apart anyway with their various hobbies and interests. Children would have been a bonus, but they had each other and that was more than many others they could think of who lived around them.

  They came from a different generation, her sister Megan often remarked. If couples today had trouble getting pregnant, they called straight round to the fertility clinic chasing an appointment. Always too keen to find someone to blame, Daphne thought. Somehow, she and Wally survived forty years of marriage without extra mouths to feed.

  Wally followed his father’s trade as a printer. He talked of retiring at sixty-five as his father had done and planned to spend his well-earned days of leisure with Daphne. Those days never came. Maybe fewer pints of lager in The Ferret and other pubs might have helped in that regard. A Mediterranean diet could have benefited him too; instead of the traditional English grub that served his ancestors well over the generations.

  Days after his sixtieth birthday he was halfway into his third pint of Stella Artois with the cribbage match evenly poised. He picked up the five cards dealt from the table. The Jack of Spades, the Four of Hearts, the Five of Diamonds. Wally couldn’t believe it. He spread the remaining cards in his fingers. It couldn’t be, could it? He held the Five of Clubs and the Five of Hearts too. Ever since he’d played with his friends in this Cribbage League, he’d always struggled to hold his place on the team. As often as not, he was a reserve and fetched and carried drinks for the warriors at the table.

  In this vital game within the overall match, he had a chance to shine. He watched the dealer reveal the cut card. As the Five of Spades landed on the table, Wally’s heart leapt. The highest-scoring hand in this format of the age-old game.

  “Come on, Wally,” came the cry, “get on with it.”

  Sadly, Wally’s heart didn’t carry on leaping. It stopped.

  The landlord called Daphne with the dreadful news. She had rung Megan straightaway. Mick Morris drove them to Bath. They arrived to discover the ambulance still waiting to hand over its patient. The crew inside were working on Wally in the meantime.

  Daphne had never accompanied Wally on his nights out with the boys. She preferred to stay at home and watch her choice of TV programme without him grabbing the remote to switch over at a critical moment to check the latest football scores.

  As she walked this morning from the living-room they shared for so long to the kitchen, she realised today was another Saturday. When you retire, every day is the same. It’s so easy to lose track. When they were first married, Wally played football in the winter, and cricket in the summer. Every Saturday he dashed off with his mates.

  Several of those friends were in The Ferret the night he keeled over. He always referred to those occasions as nights with the boys. Strange to think that each of them had been approaching sixty, or a few years older when he died. Yet, because they had known one another for fifty-odd years, they were still boys in their heads. Over the decades those young sportsmen matured into armchair experts who now kept active playing skittles, bowls and cribbage.

  Daphne had resigned herself early in the marriage t
o having three or four evenings every week left to her own devices. There was the cleaning to do, and many a night she stood as she watched a film while she caught up with their ironing. Megan’s little ones enjoyed Auntie Daphne arriving for a spell of babysitting too, so Mick and her sister could have a night out. Filling her evenings had rarely been a problem.

  When her niece and nephews grew older, Megan and Daphne travelled into Harrington End for a Quiz Night at the Waggon & Horses or to play Bingo in the village hall. A simple life. No dramas. Typical of how country folk muddled through in their quiet corner of the West Country for generations.

  As she peered through the net curtains at the kitchen window on that late June morning, Daphne saw clouds gathering. The darker variety that suggested a rain shower might be due. No guarantees, except if you decided against taking a coat, or an umbrella. Daphne knew a downpour would start at the furthest point from home on those occasions. Regular as clockwork. Just as she and Bobby turned to head home to Braemar Terrace.

  The phone in the living room rang. Daphne scuttled back to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Only me, Daphne,” said Megan, “just checking. Are you still okay for tomorrow?”

  “Sunday lunch at the Waggon & Horses?” replied Daphne. “When have you ever known me to resist the chance of enjoying their scrumptious carvery?”

  “Righto,” said Megan, “we’ll pick you up just before twelve. What have you got planned for later today?”

  “Keeping an eye on this blessed weather,” Daphne told her. “My bet is we’ll have a shower this afternoon. I might wait until it’s blown over and take Bobby out for a long walk this evening.”

  “Don’t forget to take your umbrella, will you? To be on the safe side,” laughed Megan and ended the call.

  Daphne didn’t admit to her sister that the extra exercise today was in anticipation of another inch on her waistline after tomorrow’s Sunday Big-Plate Special. It never ceased to amaze her how much food other people piled on their plates. The ones who could least afford to be eating to excess often sneaked back for second helpings.

  Daphne was well aware these occasional lunchtime treats were Megan and Mick’s way of checking she looked after herself. Not just that she ate a roast dinner on a Sunday but seeing she wasn’t depressed not having Wally around the house. Fat chance of that Daphne thought.

  Phone calls like the one just ended had become the norm following his funeral as Megan suggested new interests in which they both could get involved. Daphne knew Megan meant well. She was just being sisterly, but sometimes, Daphne yearned for peace and quiet. That’s why Bobby had become so important.

  When she and Wally worked, it wasn’t sensible to own a dog. It wasn’t fair to leave it at home for hours on end if one or both of them dashed out again as soon as they arrived home. After she retired from her full-time job in the Post Office, Daphne asked Megan to go with her to the local kennels to pick out a puppy.

  “I just want a friendly companion,” Daphne said, “not one of those ferocious, fighting dogs, or one that’s been mistreated.”

  “A rescue dog, you mean?” Megan had replied, “I thought you might enjoy that.”

  “I haven’t got the patience,” said Daphne. “Something not too big, that’s good with children. I couldn’t stand the grandkids not visiting because it barked throughout the day, or worse still, nipped at their ankles.”

  They had spotted Bobby, the Cocker Spaniel within minutes of their arrival at the kennels in Clatworthy. He gazed at the two humans walking his way and at once endeared himself to the newcomers. Bobby’s amenable, cheerful disposition soon made him a joy to have in the home. He was never more content than when pleasing Daphne. As the weeks passed, he proved to be as happy to snuggle on the couch with his mistress as he was to race around the garden with Megan’s family.

  It was only natural Daphne found adjusting to life without Wally difficult. Megan and her family did what they could and her work colleagues were brilliant in those early months. In a small town Post Office, everyone knew everyone else. So, the posties had a cheery word and the counter staff did their best to raise Daphne’s spirits and involve her in any social evenings they organised. That left other nights and weekends when she might have moped, but Megan usually covered those.

  Every Royal Mail branch across the country could have done with more customers in the latter years of the last century and Daphne’s was no exception. Her retirement was accelerated by the announcement that their branch was scheduled for closure in 2002. That prompted the usual wail of protests from people most affected. The elderly and infirm. Those on benefits who could least afford the six-mile bus trip to the next town. Concerns were expressed to the authorities.

  Their response was sympathetic, if non-committal. Akin to the now-familiar reaction to sudden death of saying ‘sorry for your loss’. After two years with the axe hanging over them, her former colleagues learned the site was being sold. A branch with a much-reduced staff would open in one of the small units in a precinct on the Westbourne Estate.

  “Poor devils,” Daphne thought when she heard the news, “moving from a popular site on Church Street to a precinct on a run-down council estate.

  Daphne wandered from the living-room to the kitchen. She had been right. Those clouds held rain. It rattled insistently at the windowpanes. She decided to prepare herself a meal and wait for those white, fluffy clouds she saw in the distance to blow across the valley. In an hour what remained would be a fine drizzle. The sort that hung in the air and got you wetter than a downpour. When she and Bobby left the house, the showers would be over. Her view of the distant hillside held the prospect of a fine evening.

  Wally had always loved this view from the back of the house. He never spent much time at the kitchen sink, where she now stood; but from the upstairs bedroom and in the garden the valley stretched before them to the hills separating the town from Shaw Park and Clatworthy.

  The couple rented a flat in town for the first two years of their marriage. When they moved here to Braemar Terrace in 1960, the two-bedroomed mid-terrace property had been as much as they could afford. They always planned to move to a bigger place. No children meant that a move became a lower and lower priority as time passed. So, they stayed put.

  Their row of six cottages on the main road out of town had been built just before the outbreak of the First World War. Different neighbours came and went over the years. At the outset, the cottages were occupied by elderly couples in no rush to go anywhere. Their next stop was the churchyard in town or the crematorium four miles away. It was a waiting room. Wally and Daphne used to chuckle over it.

  Before they knew it, they became an elderly couple and found the other cottages changed hands more rapidly as younger couples moved in, improved them and turned them over at a profit. Wally didn’t see the point of adding refinements to what they had. He was content to keep everything as originally intended. His one concession was to keep it in good decorative order, inside and out.

  There were always lots of cars parked outside her front windows these days. Wally cycled to the print works, and often when he went to his various sporting activities. Wally couldn’t see the point in learning to drive. His father never did. He relied on one of his sporting pals to give him a lift when they played out of town. He and Daphne caught the bus if they needed to visit the bigger shops in Bath.

  Years had passed since that rural bus service stopped. Daphne couldn’t remember when. After it disappeared, Megan or Mick always helped if she needed to travel further afield.

  After she retired in 2002, Daphne realised it wasn’t just Wally she missed. She had bought Bobby for the company but felt she ought to do something positive with this spare time. So, she volunteered at one of many charity shops that opened in town. They took in items donated by the public to be sent to areas seeking Emergency Disaster Relief.

  At first, Daphne worked two hours on a Monday morning. When news broke of a natural disaster on
the other side of the world, she joined others pitching in for the hours required to cope with the rush. It was heart-warming to see that despite the troubles at home the British public still dug deep to help those in trouble. On Boxing Day, 2004 an Indian Ocean tsunami was caused by a massive earthquake. Within hours, killer waves slammed into the coastlines of eleven countries. Despite a lag of up to several hours between the earthquake and the impact of the tsunami, a large percentage of the victims were taken by surprise. No tsunami warning systems had been in place. The death toll approached a quarter of a million.

  Shoulder to shoulder, Daphne and the team of volunteers, prepared emergency food, water and medicine packs. The donations came from the public and various organisations across the West Country. When the big rush ended, she returned to Braemar Terrace and curled up with Bobby on her lap and wept.

  “I wanted to make a difference, Bobby,” she said, “but so many people never lived to receive the help we’ve sent out there. It was too little, too late. I’ll look for something less stressful.”

  So, she placed an advert in the window of Patel’s the newsagents, offering a cleaning service. Soon, two other part-time employment opportunities presented themselves.

  Despite the huge influx of immigrant labour in the big cities and agricultural heartlands of the UK, this corner of the West Country was largely ignored. There wasn’t much call for Lithuanian car-wash staff in Harrington End. Husbands still washed the car themselves at the weekend or left them dirty.

  Daphne noticed the occasional Polish barmaid in the Waggon & Horses and a girl from the Balkans often begged on the High Street, with her three kids in tow. That was the sum of it. It just went to show. The grass wasn’t always greener on the other side.

  The first response from her advert came from the caretaker at the local primary school. They wanted someone for an hour every weekday in term time. That little job kept her busy from three o’clock to four in the afternoon. Then, one evening she received a phone call from a lady with a very posh voice.