All Things Bright Read online

  All Things Bright

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

  By

  Ted Tayler

  Copyright © 2020 by Ted Tayler

  This ebook is licensed for your 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 its entirety, without the author's express written permission.

  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 2020

  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)

  Fatal Decision (2019)

  Last Orders (2020)

  Pressure Point (2020)

  Deadly Formula (2020)

  Final Deal (2020)

  Barking Mad (2020)

  Creature Discomforts (2020)

  Silent Terror (2020)

  Night Train (2020)

  Where to find him

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

  Facebook Author Page: – https://facebook.com/AuthorTedTayler

  Twitter: – https://twitter.com/ted_tayler

  Instagram: - https://instagram.com/tedtayler1775

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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

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Monday, 16th July 2018

  The first sixty minutes of the working day can often set the tone for the week ahead.

  As soon as the team had arrived in the office, everyone sensed today was special.

  Gus had hardly had time to get comfortable at his desk when the phone rang. It was DI Dai Williams from Cardiff Central.

  “Good morning, Dai,” said Gus, “I’m praying it’s good news?”

  “It is, Gus,” said Dai. “I don’t like Mondays, as a rule, but this feels a decent start to the week for us both. We found Vaughn and Shaun Corbett yesterday evening. They were in Tredegar making a nuisance of themselves knocking on doors just when good folk were on their way to chapel.”

  “I can update you now on my team’s visit to South Wales on Saturday, Dai,” said Gus. “After chatting to people in the village who knew Sally Kendall well, we had received copies of more recent photographs which helped us locate Ivan’s widow in Crickhowell. As you suspected, Sally hadn’t strayed far from her roots. A change of name and hair colouring and she was now Sammy Prosser, handling a responsible job with an estate agent. When questioned, Sammy admitted that their daughter, Alexa, or Lexie, had told her about the two Staffie cross puppies on Sunday afternoon; the day after Ivan disappeared.”

  “Why on earth didn’t she tell us that?” asked Dai Williams. “It would have helped us concentrate our attention further afield from the start.”

  “Maybe,” said Gus, “but Lexie only mentioned it after your officers had left. So, unless you found someone in the village who had seen the Corbett brothers trailing Lexie Kendall and her dogs, or in conversation with Ivan, you wouldn’t have been any closer to linking the matter to Westbury. Certainly not before Monday morning, when police found Ivan’s body. I won’t deny it would have been vital information in the twenty-four hours that followed; but, what’s done is done. We can’t turn back the clock.”

  “So, mother and daughter moved to Crickhowell?” said Dai. “It’s amazing how parochial villages like Pontyclun can be. Mrs Kendall only moved twenty miles away, and yet she may as well have flown to the moon. People from your side of the Bristol Channel have no appreciation of how insular the valleys' old mining communities were. So many houses tightly packed together, as close as possible to the industry they served. Disease and gossip spread like wildfire, men faced death underground with every passing minute, yet the spirit of the community remained greater in those areas than anywhere else in the world.”

  “I’m beginning to understand their history,” said Gus. “Sally Kendall told my detectives it was her fear of dogs that prompted Ivan to house them in a secure shed on the allotment near the rugby club. That was one secret that came to light after his murder. Lexie revealed another on Saturday afternoon. It was that which caused Ivan to appear quiet and distant in the hours before he left home. The Corbett brothers wanted to buy the puppies. They had offered Ivan five hundred pounds at the rugby club the previous Wednesday when Ivan cleaned the club’s windows. He refused their offer. While her father was on his usual Saturday morning task, collecting money from customers, Lexie went to fetch the dogs for their run in the park. They were gone. Lexie found Ivan and got him to call the mobile number on the business card the brothers had left. They were already across the Severn Bridge with the puppies in the back of their van. Lexie was desperate to get them back. The brothers weren’t prepared to return them. If Ivan wanted them, he could collect them from Westbury station in return for one thousand pounds in cash.”

  “Why didn’t Ivan report the theft to the police?” asked Dai Williams.

  “Because he’d acquired them from a customer who couldn’t afford to pay their bill, and kept them secret from his wife for a year, I suppose he thought that was out of the question,” said Gus. “He hoped to get them back without Sally being any the wiser. Then, Lexie dropped a bombshell as she stood in tears by the phone box after her father heard what it would cost to get the puppies back. She admitted that Martin Jones, who owns the newsagents, had sexually abused her from the age of fourteen to fifteen. Jones caught her shoplifting, and well, you can guess the rest.”

  “I’ve made a note of the name,” said Dai Williams. “You can rest assured that we’ll be calling on Mr Jones before the day’s out. What a mess.”

  “There’s more,” said Gus. “Lexie moved to Crickhowell with her mother but never settled. She left after her eighteenth birthday and moved to Bridgend. My lads found her in a nightclub, where she appears as Satin, an exotic dancer. Your officers believed her to be a ‘wild child’ who was always in trouble. Martin Jones and several others may have played a part in the persona Lexie portrayed. If your pen is still poised, you might wish to speak to Gethin Hughes. He’s the boyfriend who was with Lexie at the station in Pontyclun on Saturday night when Ivan left the village. Whether they had sex before her sixteenth bir
thday is debatable. In an interview under caution at Cardiff Central, Hughes might provide you with names of other men who knew Lexie before he got involved with her.”

  “Knew her in the biblical sense, you mean,” said Dai Williams. “I’ve heard that name before. I’m sure Hughes used to play football for a local team. He must be in his mid-thirties now.”

  “There was a pattern,” said Gus, “as my lads discovered when they spoke with Lexie. She ditched her ambitions to be a hairdresser when she left school. Jones, Hughes, and others made her believe that the job she did in Bridgend was all she was good for.”

  “A sad outcome,” said Dai Williams, “does that mean the mother and daughter are no longer in contact with one another?”

  “My lads believed that to break the cycle of self-loathing her lifestyle perpetuated; it would benefit Lexie if they reunited her with her mother. The whole sordid story will come out in time. They persuaded Lexie to return with them to Crickhowell.”

  “We’ll do everything in our power to help them through the inevitable trauma that a case such as that attracts,” said Dai. “I can’t promise they’ll come out the other side unscathed, but it won’t be for lack of trying. We didn’t do a great job in 2014, but we have an opportunity to put matters right. Thanks, Gus. I’m sure I’ll be in touch again soon. We’ve got enough evidence to proceed with a murder charge. Leave it with us.”

  “One final question, Dai,” said Gus. “Did your officers learn anything further about those dogs?”

  “The Corbett brothers had no dogs with them when apprehended,” replied Dai Williams. “We’ll learn more when we interview them. I don’t hold out much hope of Lexie Kendall seeing them again. Ivan Kendall took them to settle a debt, but we would be naïve if we thought it was a selfless gesture. Ivan realised that in several areas close to Pontyclun, those dogs would fetch a sizeable sum. The Corbett brothers knew that too, and they might have engaged in the murky world of dog fights. The odds are stacked against those puppies surviving four years and more. I’ll update you in due course.”

  Gus thanked Dai Williams for his help and ended the call. He wondered who he could talk to with inside knowledge of the dogfighting business. It was light years away from the world that Mark Malone frequented in one of their earlier cases. The sad fact was that man’s best friend was used to smuggle drugs into the country on that occasion. Now, the nation’s favourite pets were getting torn to bits in illegal meets for entertainment. When you thought that criminals couldn’t stoop any lower, they proved you wrong time and time again.

  Gus picked up the phone. He remembered he’d promised to call Eddie Sinclair in Shaftesbury with any news.

  “Eddie?” said Gus, “We finally got your men in the Ivan Kendall case.”

  “That’s great news, Gus,” said Eddie, “Was it someone from the traveller’s site that I pointed you towards?”

  “It was,” said Gus. “Vaughn and Shaun Corbett visited an uncle, Jack Ayres, every spring. Ayres came from North Wales, but the family tree had branches everywhere. The brothers spent much of the year in and around Cardiff. That’s where they spotted Ivan Kendall’s daughter exercising two potentially valuable dogs. At first, they tried to buy them from Ivan, then they grabbed them and brought them to the site near Westbury. To cut a long story short, Ivan travelled to Westbury station to collect the dogs. The brothers demanded one thousand pounds for their safe return. Ivan raised the cash, and when he reached Westbury at a quarter to midnight that Saturday night, the brothers met him with a different outcome in mind.”

  “They bludgeoned him to death in the toilet, and dropped his body in the fishing lakes,” said Eddie Sinclair.

  “They kept the dogs and the cash, leaving an amount in Kendall’s pockets to confuse you. Why would you think it was a robbery if Kendall still had over sixty quid on him? No wonder you couldn’t establish a motive.”

  “We didn’t cover ourselves in glory, that’s true,” sighed Sinclair. “At least, you got them, that’s one more case that won’t keep me awake at night. Thanks, Gus.”

  As Eddie was speaking, Gus spotted DS Neil Davis giving him the thumb’s up. In his other hand, he held the folder relating to the samples he’d collected from the Dilton Marsh traveller's site.

  “I might be able to help you sleep even better tonight, Eddie,” said Gus. “One of my lads was a motorcycle pursuit rider before he joined the Crime Review Team. He queried how Dyer’s accident happened at the point it did. Even in inclement weather, the lorry driver should have been aware of contact with the 125cc motorcycle. The forensic report on samples collected at the roadside after the accident couldn’t help identifying the vehicle. We knew where the Corbett brothers parked their van during their visits, so another colleague asked forensics to compare samples from the caravan site with material believed to have transferred in the collision to the motorcycle and Dyer’s clothing. We’ve just got confirmation that forensics found a match. Your former colleagues at Westbury can follow up on those findings. It seems clear that the Corbett brother’s van forced Sid Dyer off the road that morning. Sid Dyer’s local knowledge pointed you towards the fishing lakes far sooner than they had hoped. On their next visit to the area, the brothers took their revenge.”

  “Another cold-blooded murder solved,” said Eddie Sinclair. “D’you know, I’m tempted to call Clive Trainer with the good news, but on second thoughts, I reckon I’ll enjoy it alone for a while.”

  Gus smiled to himself. He wished Eddie Sinclair ‘Sweet Dreams’ and ended the call. This morning, his team's essential task was to complete the Freeman Files work on the Kendall case. They needed to collate the information Gus wanted to deliver to the ACC.

  Blessing Umeh crept across to Gus’s desk and sat beside him. She couldn’t keep her secret any longer. She leaned closer so the others wouldn’t hear.

  “You’ll think I’m a hopeless case,” she whispered. “No matter how I try to excel at things, something always trips me up. Do you remember I mislaid the Freeman Files and Lydia had to set everything up again? I’ve just found a folder with a heading I couldn’t remember creating.”

  “Did it contain that missing file?” asked Gus, “and the NCA goons missed it?”

  Blessing nodded.

  “I could kiss you,” said Gus.

  Gus rang Kenneth Truelove at London Road and asked for their meeting to be delayed until eleven o’clock. He needed to secure the contents of that file. Gus couldn’t act yet, but he didn’t plan to retire with an open cold case against his name regardless of the obstacles.

  Lydia Logan Barre and Alex Hardy had joined the rest of the team at the start of the new week with plenty to tell them after a weekend in Rotterdam. Somehow, they had to curb their enthusiasm; work came first. While Gus Freeman dealt with DI Williams in Cardiff, and DCI Sinclair in Shaftesbury, they updated their copies of the Freeman Files and ensured that everything relating to the Kendall case was watertight. The files Gus passed to the ACC later that morning must offer the Crown Prosecution Service every chance of a successful outcome.

  Lydia and Alex left Chippenham early on Friday evening to drive to the port of Harwich. Tucked away on Essex's east coast, Harwich is one of the county’s most historic towns. The ‘Mayflower’ set sail from there in 1620 on its voyage across the Atlantic to the New World.

  After a journey that took the best part of four hours with the high volume of summer traffic on the motorways, they were tired. Ahead of them lay another seven hours aboard the car ferry that delivered them to the Hook of Holland. Alex was asleep within minutes of the ferry leaving port. Lydia dozed for a while, but it was difficult not to think why she was there.

  It had taken several years to find her birth mother, Eleanor Scott, and they now enjoyed a warm, friendly relationship. Neither demanded too much from the other. Lydia would always consider Mr and Mrs Logan’s as Mum and Dad. They had adopted her within weeks of Lydia’s birth. Nothing could weaken that bond. Lydia accepted Eleanor’s reasons fo
r giving her up for adoption, and they were moving forward.

  On the occasions they met after initial contact through a mediator, Eleanor gradually told Lydia more details of her father. Chidozie Barre. He was twenty-one, a sailor from Yaba, near Lagos, Nigeria. He’d wandered into the gift shop in George Street, Edinburgh, searching for a souvenir for his mother.

  Eleanor and Chidozie had two days together before he sailed from the port of Leith. The handsome young man who stole Eleanor’s heart had no idea that their brief liaison produced a bonny baby daughter that Eleanor called Lisa Marie nine months later.

  As soon as she learned her birth father’s name, Lydia wanted to discover where he’d gone after leaving Edinburgh. With Alex’s help, they’d traced him to Rotterdam. When the ferry landed in the Hook of Holland, the A20 highway would take them into the city within half an hour.

  Alex had booked them into a floating hotel on Bierstraat, only a five-minute walk via Wijnhaven from the ‘Lady Eleanor’ where her father lived and worked. Chidozie Barre had opened a bar in April 2016, just around the corner from the Maritime Museum in Leuvehaven.

  Lydia knew that sometime on Saturday, she would meet her biological father for the first time. Alex had warned her not to expect too much. They hadn’t given Chidozie any indication they were coming to Rotterdam. He didn’t know he had a daughter of twenty-five. He might not want to know.

  Lydia listened to Alex’s words, but she had made up her mind. She was curious to see the face of the man whose DNA determined the way she looked. What similarities were there in their physical make-up? Eleanor said he was tall. That was something they had in common. Chidozie had a smile that lit up the room, too. What kind of person was he now, after the trauma he’d suffered in the shipwreck? Was he quiet, loud, moody, or full of life?

  Lydia wanted to ask why he never came back to Edinburgh. Was it a deliberate act to stay away, or just chance? She needed to understand and allow him to explain himself. It was important to hear his side of the story. Everything she thought she knew came from Eleanor. If he’d realised he’d fathered a child, how would he have reacted? Would he have been like Eleanor and thought he wasn’t ready for the responsibility at that time?