“What happened?” I asked.
She said that it had been an ordinary day up until about three o clock when she heard noise coming from upstairs.
“Well it was just then that I realised that there were more people than just my daughter Victoria upstairs. There was a loud crashing sound and she screamed! I had not any idea that my daughter had just been murdered”.
“Murdered you say”.
She was still sulking as she said yes
“Did you see the murderer?” I asked.
She did not reply but just broke down in tears. Immediately our attention was drawn to the skid marks we had seen on our entry to the house. We examined them and David, being a vehicle expert recognised that they had been left by a transit van. The name Gary popped into mind when he said transit van as he had been known to speed around the local village, and I have arrested him on many occasions. He was a short black haired chubby man who had a distinctive scar down the left side of his face. He always wore jeans that were ripped at the bottom, and he had small brown boots. He was in his middle thirties and was not married.
David and I sat in our car and decided to ring the police station and tell them to look for the name Gary Myers in the police record books. Surely enough when they looked they said that he has been in and out of the local police station on suspicion of illegal drug-dealing but has never been proven guilty. We went back inside where we found the woman in bed crying.
“Now Miss Hutton, did your daughter have any connection with a man named Gary aged around his middle thirties”. I asked
“Why, yes. He was a friend of Victoria’s and saw him very occasionally”.
David then asked her if her daughter had been involved with any drugs.
“No!” She shouted angrily. “My daughter has nothing to do with drugs in any way”.
Just then David received a call on his mobile phone and he left the room so he could speak. I sat there with Miss Hutton and comforted her, She was sobbing and I could feel her tears soaking through my new jacket. David re-entered the room.
“Gary Myers has been caught speeding by one of the policemen and is being held at the Police Station”. he said. “There is no time to lose” He ran downstairs and started the car. I helped Miss Hutton to the car and we went as fast as we could.
On the way to the station I used David’s mobile to notify all the relevant departments dealing with murders and starting the investigation. We got to the police station and saw Gary Myers sitting in a cell. Miss Hutton gave him an evil stare and the policemen let him into the interview room. We were in there for hours with Miss Hutton waiting anxiously outside. Sooner or later we squeezed the information out of him and he admitted to murdering Victoria. He said that he had been a friend of Victoria’s for a long time and he was planning a holiday to France.
Before he went he asked her to look after his cat, as he only lived a few blocks away from her. Her mother knew about this and she didn’t seem to mind. When he returned he found a kilogram of cannabis had been left out. He thought that if she told anyone about it, then he would be locked up for the illegal dealing and use of drugs. The only way to prevent this from happening was to remove the evidence, by destroying the cannabis and killing Victoria.
He killed her using a bowling pin, which would explain the loud crashing sound from upstairs. They also found the bloodstained bowling pin in the back of his van. However, in the end he was locked up not for just a few years, but for life. When I saw Miss Hutton she was devastated, she couldn’t believe that this had happened. She was upset that a crazy drug addict had ended her daughter’s life that she had always been nice and trusting to. David and I were pleased that we had solved this case so very quickly. But we couldn’t help not to be sad for Miss Hutton who lost her only daughter. We stayed in touch with Miss Hutton and she decided after a few months to go and live with her mother in Dorset and we heard nothing from her again after that.
