filling with tears again. “Uncle Reggie and Aunty Una never had kids of their own and I was an only child.” She laughed quietly. “I was so spoilt! Two sets of parents doing my every bidding!
“Anyway, Mum and Dad died when I was at college. A car accident in France…” Her voice broke off and she took a fortifying gulp of coffee. “I’m sorry.” She placed the mug down with a thump, her hands shaking.
Warren and Hardwick waited patiently until she regained control.
“I guess I’m lucky really. Nobody could ever replace Mum and Dad but Uncle Reggie and Aunty Una did their best. Anyway Uncle Reggie had a job with the council as their senior gardener and landscaper, but about six or seven years ago Aunty Una started getting forgetful. They tried to shrug it off at first—people always do, don’t they?—but pretty soon she was losing her keys, getting on the wrong bus and leaving the gas on.
“One afternoon we got a call from the police, who said that she had been found distressed outside their old house, wanting to know why she could see strangers through the living room windows and why her keys wouldn’t work in the front door. They hadn’t lived there for nearly thirty years.
“Anyway, pretty soon she wasn’t really safe to leave on her own—she had always been a fit woman who loved to go for long walks and you never knew where she’d end up—so he gave up full-time work for the council and took his pension early. He used to do a bit of handyman work and the odd gardening job when he could find someone to sit with her for a few hours, but in the end even that was too much.
“I finally persuaded him to consider moving her into a care home and we were in the process of choosing one when she died suddenly in her sleep.”
She drained her coffee and sighed deeply. “It was a mercy I suppose. We were all very upset of course, but I think in the end we were mostly relieved.”
“That was three years ago. What did do Reggie afterwards?” asked Karen Hardwick.
“He went back to gardening. Aside from Aunty Una it was his true love. I was a bit worried at first about how he’d cope, but he told me one day that he’d been grieving the loss of his wife for years before she died and she wouldn’t want to see him moping around. Anyway, he didn’t go back to work full-time—he said he was too old for that—but he has a few regulars in the local area and he does a couple of days most weeks.
“He missed her terribly of course, but he was generally pretty happy.” She turned to Warren and her tone became pleading. “Why would anyone kill him? He was a lovely man. Nobody had a bad word for him.”
“We don’t know yet. That’s what we hope to find out.” He paused delicately. “Do you have a list of his clients? What about friends and family who didn’t drink with him down the Merchants’ Arms?”
“I don’t know all of his clients, but he was pretty scrupulous about his accounts. I imagine he has a list somewhere. As to his friends, I’m not really sure. He’s lived here pretty much all of his life and most of his friends are regulars at the pub. I suppose he may have kept in touch with people he worked with at the council, but when he was self-employed he worked alone.”
“What about family?”
“Nobody close. My dad was his only immediate family and like I said he didn’t 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
