Silent As The Grave. Paul Gitsham

have any kids of his own. We have a few other aunts and uncles that we see at Christmas and New Year, but we don’t really keep in touch.” The tears were back. “He was all I had.”

      The young woman put her head in her hands, mumbling apologies as her shoulders shook.

      Warren glanced at Karen Hardwick, who got up and placed an arm around the distraught woman’s shoulders.

      “Do you have anyone we can call? A friend perhaps, a partner maybe?”

      She shook her head and laughed bitterly. “No boyfriend if that’s what you’re asking. That boat sailed long ago and Uncle Reggie would never forgive me if I called him up. I don’t even have a cat.” She suddenly looked up. “What about Smiths? Has anyone fed her?”

      “Smiths?”

      “Uncle Reggie’s Border collie. He always calls his dogs after his favourite pint at the time they were born. Unfortunately she was a bitch and he couldn’t really call her John, could he?”

      Warren shifted uncomfortably. Clearly nobody had told her the full story of how her uncle had been found. “I’m very sorry, but Reggie was found with the body of a dog. It looks as though he was walking it when he was attacked.”

      It’s funny how it’s sometimes the smaller things that are the trigger. Tabitha Williamson let out a low moan, before slumping forward. This time there were no apologies for her perceived weakness as the tears finally flowed freely, sobs shaking her slight frame.

      It was several minutes before the young woman was able to regain control long enough to select the number of a girlfriend from her phone’s contacts and pass it over to Karen Hardwick to arrange for her to come over.

      Whilst they waited, Warren boiled the kettle again. He didn’t want to leave the young woman alone until he was certain that somebody else could take over. However, on the face of it, hand-holding wasn’t really the best use of a senior detective’s time. Fortunately, he still had more questions he wanted to ask.

      “Tell me about this boyfriend,” he said once the coffee had started to perform its magic.

      She snorted. “Not one of my better decisions. I should have ended it long before I did—God knows Uncle Reggie didn’t mince his words.” She stared into space. “What can I say? I was in love—or at least I thought I was. I know now, looking back on it, I was just afraid of being alone.” She smiled tightly. “It’s a funny birthday thirty—makes you think about life and the future.”

      The speech was smooth, well-thought-out; no doubt the relationship had been dissected thoroughly in the past few months, probably in this very kitchen with the help of friends and wine.

      “So Reggie didn’t like him? Why?”

      “No big mystery. He was a bit of an arsehole.” She shrugged. “We met in a club in town about two years ago. It was lust at first sight as they say.” She sighed. “Dark hair, Spanish, looked great in a tight T-shirt. He even had the right sort of name: ‘Mateo Menendez’—what can I say?” She looked over at Karen Hardwick who smiled sympathetically.

      “Anyway, it was your classic whirlwind romance. Expensive meals, presents, weekends away; I thought I’d really found the one. I guess I should have listened to Uncle Reggie.”

      “He didn’t approve?”

      She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see me happy—quite the opposite—but he didn’t trust him. Said he was too flashy. I just assumed that he was being over-protective.”

      “What went wrong?”

      “Uncle Reggie was right. He was too flashy. All style and no substance—or as Reggie put it in the end, ‘all flash and no cash’.”

      “He took advantage?” Warren could see where this was leading.

      She nodded. “After about six months, he said that the lease was up on his flat and so he moved in here. The funny thing was, although he was no longer paying rent on his own place he never really contributed here. When I brought it up, he offered to pay the bills, you know, gas, electricity, council tax and all of that. It was probably about equivalent to half the rent, so I agreed.

      “Everything seemed fine for about six months until one day the broadband stopped working. Mateo said he’d deal with it, but a few weeks later it went off again. It was the school holidays and I was at home during the day whilst Mateo was out. I picked up the post. There was a red demand from TalkTalk and another from the electricity company.

      “I asked Mateo about it again and he said it was a bank error.” She shook her head. “I actually took him at his word; can you believe that?”

      “He wasn’t paying the bills?”

      “Oh it was worse than that. When he did pay off a bill, he was using one of those payday loans companies—you know those loan sharks that lend you money, no questions asked, then charge you thousands of per cent interest? Want to guess whose name was on the account? And of course I hadn’t been making the minimum payments because I didn’t know about it. When the bailiffs turned up I had to use pretty much my entire life savings to stop them repossessing the flat and everything in it.”

      Her grief had turned to a palpable anger. “It’s not just the money; it’s the stain on my record. My credit file is an absolute mess; nine months on and I’m still writing letters every week trying to sort it all out.”

      “Where is this Mateo now?”

      “The bastard is back with the mother of his two kids—two kids I knew nothing about. It turns out that when I thought he was out at work, he was around there playing happy families, trying to get back with her.” Her voice quietened. “I don’t know if I should be angry with her or sorry for her. I’m sure he’s fleecing her just like he did me.”

      “And Reggie knew about this?”

      “Yes, he helped me move all of Mateo’s belongings out. In fact it was his idea to give all of the stuff to the bailiffs when they turned up.” She smiled grimly. “A small victory I suppose, but you take them where you can.”

      It was another ten minutes before Tabitha Williamson’s best friend arrived and Warren and Hardwick were able to make their excuses and leave.

      “Well at least we have one name for the whiteboard,” Karen Hardwick said as they left the flat and headed back to the car.

      Warren was thoughtful. “Maybe. The question is: if this Mateo Menendez was the killer, what made him snap nine months after he split up with Reggie Williamson’s niece?”

       Chapter 4

      Mateo Menendez was much the way that Tabitha Williamson had described him—dark, tightly built and rather too flash for Warren’s taste. Despite his supposed Spanish upbringing, he spoke with a local accent. What she hadn’t mentioned was how small his head was. It was all that Warren could do not to stare openly at him. Karen Hardwick fussed with the tape recorder, studiously not looking his way.

      Warren knew that the science of phrenology—the diagnosing of a person’s intelligence by the shape of their skull—had long since been discredited. Similarly, within reason a person’s hat size had no bearing on their intelligence. Still, Warren found himself wondering how a full-size human brain could fit inside such a small skull. Up close the man’s mass of tight, black, curly hair did little to hide it.

      “Do you know this man?” Warren slid a recent photograph of Reggie Williamson across the desk. Tabitha Williamson had described an arrogant man, self-assured and full of self-confidence. True to form, he’d declined a solicitor for the interview, claiming he had nothing to hide. Therefore, Warren had decided against arresting the man. He would do so if he was unsatisfied with the man’s answers, but until now Menendez was merely helping with inquiries. Just as importantly, the twenty-four hour