A Time to Kill by Stephen Puleston

Author:Stephen Puleston
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2018-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

After texting Annie to apologise that he couldn’t keep their date that evening Drake spent the first few hours of the afternoon reading the Muller papers. Sara had the Perdue file while the rest of the team were coordinating the immediate work needed following the discovery of Heulwen Beard’s body.

Drake found a twenty-page document signed by Wolfgang Muller with a large scrawl that stretched over most of the final page. Legal jargon and complex phraseology made the court documents heavy going so reading Muller’s statement was straightforward.

Harry Jones had persuaded Muller to invest £30,000 in a company that owned a high-tech piece of equipment used in the car industry to prevent thefts of vehicles. Muller alleged Harry Jones had personally guaranteed he wouldn’t lose his money. When the business went bust all the investors lost out, including Muller and Jones. It wasn’t clear from the paperwork how much Harry Jones had invested but if it was the same as Muller, Drake guessed Harry wouldn’t be troubled by losing £30,000. From the tone of Muller’s statement, he wanted his money back, really badly.

At the end of the afternoon Drake spent an hour with Philip Hughes, a lawyer from the legal department. Hughes complained like hell that Drake’s insistence he attend at headquarters to read the papers ruined his participation in a golf tournament.

‘This looks like the classic case of one person’s word against another,’ Hughes said. ‘Muller betted the judge would believe him and not Harry Jones. There is nothing in writing. The claim relies on the judge deciding which of them is telling the truth.’

‘So, Wolfgang Muller is left out of pocket to the sum of £30,000. And presumably he has a lot of costs to pay. It must have made him incandescent when his wife started an affair with Jones.’

Hughes was on his feet. ‘Both those things together would give Wolfgang Muller a motive to kill Harry Jones.’

Before they could justify an interview with Wolfgang Muller the team would need to dig into the financial background of Mr and Mrs Muller.

Hughes turned to Drake by the doorway. ‘Unless Wolfgang Muller was really pissed off with Beard for cocking up the case, you don’t have a motive for him to be her killer.’

‘There’s nothing to suggest both deaths are linked at the moment.’

Hughes gave Drake a doubtful eye-roll.

* * *

Sara struggled to block out the activity in the Incident Room. Winder’s voice grated as he spent all his time on the telephone or so it seemed. Even Luned’s presence irritated Sara although she was guilty only of incessantly clicking on her mouse.

Sara removed the contents from one of Richard Perdue’s files they had taken from Beard’s office. She placed the various sections on the desk. There was a bundle of correspondence, some legal-looking documents and a sheaf of papers produced by one of the local councils.

Richard Perdue bought land speculatively with a view to gaining planning consent and then selling at a profit. But things hadn’t gone according to plan.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.