Silent as the Grave Page 11

  “You kept these close to your chest,” remarked Sutton, clearly somewhat offended that Warren hadn’t shared them sooner.

  “You could say that. Why do you think I kept my stab vest on so long?” The attempt at levity fell flat, eliciting little more than a grunt as Sutton scanned the sheets.

  “So who are this Mr and Mrs Liebig?”

  “Read the reports, first. Keep an open mind.”

  Warren knew that he was biased; he wanted Sutton’s honest opinion before he complicated matters by revealing more. Sutton shrugged and carried on reading.

  “OK, the crash investigation was pretty cursory, I can see that, but it was New Year’s Eve. Mags knows her stuff, but I’m not seeing anything that screams conspiracy. I don’t see the relevance here.”

  “Dr Liebig was the coroner who presided over my father’s inquest and declared it a suicide.” Warren passed over the newspaper clippings. “It’s legitimate. I went and checked the court records online.”

  Sutton looked thoughtful. “You know that I have to point out that if you could access the court records, so could Gavin?”

  Warren fought to keep the frustration from his voice. “It’s a pretty big coincidence though, don’t you think? Vinny Delmarno is released from prison swearing revenge. Gavin Sheehy, the man who stitched him up, gets charged with corruption. Reggie Williamson, who provided the gun used in the stitch-up, is stabbed to death. The third person involved in the conspiracy, my father, died in a mysterious suicide whilst Delmarno was trying to avoid conviction. And the man who pronounced that death as a suicide dies in a suspicious traffic accident some months after Delmarno’s release.”

  “I agree that it’s a hell of a coincidence—but it’s also bloody convenient.” Sutton raised a hand to stop Warren’s argument. “Gavin’s had a year cooling his heels to come up with this. Taken individually, these are all interesting but otherwise unrelated incidents. The only glue that binds them together is Gavin’s story. We need real evidence linking Delmarno to these events, more than just suspicion and the word of a self-confessed corrupt copper.”

  It was the use of the word “we” that convinced Warren that despite his bluster, Sutton was willing to investigate further.

  “So what do you suggest we do next then, Inspector.” Sutton grimaced; he still wasn’t happy.

  “We need to find out what we can about Dr Liebig.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Chapter 18

  Warren and Sutton pulled into the small village of Risby to the west of Bury St Edmunds. It had taken the two men the better part of an hour to negotiate the ever-congested A14 eastwards into Suffolk.

  David Liebig, the only son of the late Dr Anton Liebig and his wife Rosemary, lived in a smart, one-storey cottage near the river. Before setting out, Warren had called the forty-year-old and arranged for him to meet them at his home.

  David Liebig was clearly his father’s son. Tall and spare, with a receding hairline, he possessed the same sharp features and generous nose. However, the hollowness of his eyes, with their dark smudges beneath, spoke of sleeplessness and recent weight loss.

  “I don’t understand why you are here,” he started after inviting the two officers into the airy, well-lit living room that overlooked the tree-lined waterway only a few paces beyond his garden wall.

  “The inquest was concluded last month. Case closed.” His mouth twisted into a grimace.

  “There are a few details surrounding that night we would like to clarify,” said Warren, trying to be vague; everything so far was little more than speculation and the last thing he wanted to do was to pique the man’s interest. If his suspicions were correct, they would need to proceed with caution. Discretion at this stage was essential if they were to investigate any foul play without alerting any guilty parties. But it would be a difficult balancing act—the man in front of them was the son of a former coroner. He could very well know that the presence of two such senior detectives was irregular. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps it would have been better not to have brought Tony Sutton along with him; however, now that Warren had finally brought him in to his full confidence, he wanted the man’s impressions and insights.

  Liebig regarded them for a few seconds, before shrugging wearily. “Go ahead.”

  “What do you know of the events of the thirtieth of December?”

  “Just what I was told. I was woken at six a.m. by two uniformed police officers on the Saturday morning—the thirty-first—who told me that my parents had been killed in a car accident shortly before midnight. They left the road at high speed on a winding country lane and hit a tree.”

  The man closed his eyes in pain, but his voice remained steady. “No other vehicles were involved. Both died at the scene. A few days later the autopsy revealed that Dad had been over the drink-drive limit.”

  Warren watched him carefully. “According to our records, your parents lived near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, but the accident took place in central Hertfordshire, about fifty miles away. Why were they so far away from home?”

  “They had been to the annual awards dinner at Dad’s golf club. He was team captain for the seniors and was making a presentation and a speech. Mum didn’t play, but she was friendly with a lot of the other wives and women players and it’s a pretty big shindig: formal dress, silver service and live music. They went every year. It was a really big deal.”

  “So your father was familiar with the route he was driving?” asked Sutton.

  “Very. He’d played a couple of times a week for the past twenty-odd years. Obviously, he usually drove home earlier in the day, rather than at midnight, but the accident occurred on his usual route. He knew those roads like the back of his hand.”

  “According to the golf club’s website, the clubhouse is actually a hotel and guests can stay over after such an evening for a modest fee. Why did your parents decide to drive home that night?”

  Liebig sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Ordinarily they would have stayed, but this year they needed to be back home.” He paused, his voice turning bitter. “My wife and I split up last year. It’s been a bit…unpleasant. She took the kids with her. Mum and Dad didn’t get to see them at Christmas, but Rebecca—my wife—agreed to let us have them for the day on New Year’s Eve. Mum and Dad were going to come over and give them their Christmas presents—spoil them a bit.”

  He bit his lip. “Telling them that Nanny and Granddad wouldn’t be coming and trying to explain to a four- and a seven-year-old that they wouldn’t see them again was almost as bad as the knock on the door that morning.”

  Warren waited respectfully for a few moments as the other man composed himself.

  “Forgive me, but it seems quite a drive to play a game of golf. There are plenty of good clubs nearer to home, surely?”

  Liebig snorted. “Yeah, that’s what Mum used to say. In fact, part of the reason they moved down to Huntingdon when he retired was to be closer to the club. Dad used to be a coroner in Warwickshire and it must have been a four-hour round trip. I spent my teens living in the village of Kenilworth near Coventry—your accent sounds familiar. Do you know the area at all, DCI Jones?”

  “Yes, I’m familiar with it.” Warren didn’t elaborate. It was getting a little too close to home. “So how did he come to join a club down here?” he pressed.

  Liebig frowned. “I’m not really sure. I know that one or two of his colleagues were members. I think some of his friends from his Cambridge University days also played at the club.” He smiled slightly. “That was the only reason Mum agreed to move back to Cambridgeshire, I think. They met at Cambridge when they were students and they still have lots of friends around here. Whilst he was off playing golf, Mum would catch the bus or the train into Cambridge or Ely and spend the day with them. I don’t think she really enjoyed living up in the Midlands. I don’t know what she’d have done with herself if they’d stayed there after retirement.”

  “Did your Mum not drive then?”
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  “No not really. She had a licence and occasionally she’d take the car to the shops but she never enjoyed it and never had her own car. Dad deliberately bought an automatic with all of the driver’s aids you can think of to persuade her, but she wouldn’t drive at night or anywhere she wasn’t familiar with.”

  That explained why Dr Liebig had driven that night, even if he’d had a drink. But so far, they’d uncovered more questions than answers. Exactly why Dr Liebig had joined a golf club several counties away remained a mystery in Warren’s mind. Was it significant?

  Warren decided to change tack. “The circumstances surrounding the accident—what do you make of them?”

  Liebig’s face hardened slightly. “I have trouble believing them, to be honest.” His right eye twitched slightly and his voice tightened.

  “Dad was a coroner for years. He presided over thousands of inquests, including those caused by drink-driving. He was evangelical about it. He made me and my friends attend an inquest when we started driving lessons to scare us into not drink-driving.” His mouth twitched. “It worked. Anyway, eyewitnesses said that he had two small glasses of red wine with his meal and then socialised for several hours before they left. There would have been pretty much no alcohol in his blood when he drove home.”

  “The pathologist stated that he was over the limit. He also said that he thought there were traces of spirits in his stomach.”

  Liebig shook his head in frustration. “That’s what doesn’t make any sense—Dad didn’t even like spirits. The autopsy also said there was lots of what appeared to be Coke in his stomach. That makes more sense. Dad used to drink Diet Coke when he was out. He was diabetic, so he didn’t drink anything with sugar in it.”

  “That brings us onto another finding—your father’s blood glucose levels were rather high. How well did he control his diabetes?”

  “Again, that’s weird. Dad had been diabetic for years. He was pretty careful with his diet; he made sure that his levels were stable. I was really surprised to find out that his blood sugar was so high.”

  “Did he take medication to control it? For example did he inject insulin?”

  Again Liebig shook his head. “Dad was a type II diabetic. They call it ‘insulin-resistant’ these days. Insulin had no effect. For the most part he just made sure that he ate a low-sugar diet. He’d been going to the club for years and he wasn’t the only person with special dietary needs. The chefs would prepare him low-carb dishes. And like I said, he didn’t drink sugary drinks. He did take a drug before eating sometimes to help keep him on an even keel. Glinide, I think it was called, but he didn’t like to use it if he was driving, since it can sometimes lead to hypoglycaemia—low blood sugar.” He snorted again. “Ironic really—maybe if he had taken it he wouldn’t have been hyper and maybe he wouldn’t have crashed.”

  The questions were continuing to stack up. He could see from Sutton’s face that he too was struggling to process the information. With nothing else to ask, Warren rose to his feet and thanked the grieving son for his time, apologising again for the intrusion.

  As he led them to the door, Liebig was quietly contemplative. “I guess you coming here wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’ll spur me on to finally deal with their affairs. I’ve only been back to their house once since the accident. And I couldn’t stay in there after I saw the place.”

  Sutton nodded sympathetically. “I guess it holds a lot of memories for you.”

  “Some, although it wasn’t my childhood home. I think it was the desecration and the damage that had been done that really upset me. I’d barely had time to accept Mum and Dad’s death and tell the kids when the neighbours rang to tell me about the break-in.”

  Warren stopped so fast that Sutton bumped into his back. “What do you mean, break-in?”

  Liebig looked at him curiously. “Didn’t you know? The night they died, they were burgled. The bastards tore the place apart, stole all of Mum’s jewellery and set fire to the living room.”

  Chapter 19

  The crash site looked very different to the photographs taken at New Year. For a start, somebody had taken heed of the inquest’s recommendation and put up crash barriers on the bend and for the twenty or so metres either side. Secondly, the trees and shrubbery lining the route were now in full bloom, in stark contrast to the leafless, wintery scene in the pictures.

  Nonetheless, it wasn’t difficult to orient the photographs correctly and identify where the car had swerved off the road. Tony Sutton and Warren had parked in a lay-by a couple of hundred metres past the bend and were now standing on the side of the road dressed in high-visibility jackets. Dusk was a couple of hours away, but the dense canopy overhead cast dark shadows.

  “You know that we should probably close the carriageway off for this.”

  Warren said nothing.

  “But that would require permission and we’d have to file a report.” Sutton looked at Warren. “I don’t think you’re ready to file a report about this yet, are you?”

  “Is that a problem?” It was a genuine question; he was relying entirely on Sutton’s goodwill.

  “Just try not to get run over. The paperwork’s a bitch.”

  Warren smiled.

  Even with the newly grown foliage, it was easy to see where the car had come off the road. The trunk of the oak tree that it had impacted was heavily scarred, fresh wood easily visible where the bark had been smashed off. The large branch that had shattered the windscreen and all but decapitated the two occupants was still broken at the end and split. In contrast to the rest of the tree, it remained leafless.

  Sutton was comparing the tree’s position to the diagram of the crash scene. “He was well past the apex of the bend and would have been travelling in a straight line for thirty-three metres, before the skid marks start and the car swerves to the right.” He paused as he did some quick mental arithmetic. “At fifty miles per hour, that’s about a second and a half. Whatever caused him to swerve happened after he had exited the bend.”

  “A sudden obstruction? Something ran out into the road?”

  “That seems most likely. But what? There are no deer reported around here. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have panicked too much for a rabbit or a hare. A badger maybe, they’re pretty big I suppose.”

  “A late-night reveller wandering home? They cause the car to swerve off the road and they’re so panicked they leave and keep quiet?”

  “Well it wouldn’t be the first time, but we’re several miles from anywhere—hell of a walk home, even after a skinful.”

  Warren stared up the road thoughtfully. “Let me read that report again.” He took the sheet off Sutton and scanned it quickly. “This eyewitness report. She claims to have seen two cars at about that time, travelling fast and close together a mile or so before the accident scene.” He pointed to a sentence in the interview.

  “She says that she couldn’t make out any detail, in part because the car behind had its main beams on and dazzled her.” He paused. “A few years ago I read a thriller about the death of Princess Diana. The book claimed that her driver was blinded by somebody using a flash gun from a camera, which caused the crash.”

  “But they were travelling in the wrong direction. I can see that an aggressive driver flashing his lights and sitting on his bumper may have forced Liebig to take the bend faster than he should have, but why would he swerve?”

  “What if it was a team effort?” Warren pointed up the road to the lay-by. “How do you think you would react if you exited a sharp bend at high speed, with some arsehole right up your backside, before suddenly being confronted with a pair of main-beam headlamps sitting in the middle of the road, especially if you’re a little the worse for wear from booze, fatigue and too much blood sugar?”

  Sutton grimaced. “Impossible to say, but probably not well.”

  * * *

  “We should have worn plus fours and signed out the unmarked Aston,” commented Tony Sutton as Warren’s eight-year-old Fo
rd Mondeo turned into the long, sweeping driveway that led towards the Allingham Golf Course and Hotel. The club of the late Dr Liebig was certainly a step up from Allesley Park Pitch and Putt where Warren had spent his childhood summers. A sprawling stately home, Grade-I listed according to the website that Tony Sutton was currently navigating on his phone, it looked more like one of the National Trust houses that his grandparents had used to drag him around as a child.

  “What I’d like to know is how a retired coroner could afford to play at a place like this on a government pension.” Sutton carried on reading. “The green fees alone are thousands a year. It doesn’t even say how much membership costs. You have to ask.”

  “That’s certainly something I’ve been wondering,” admitted Warren. Their earlier visit to the late coroner’s son had failed to answer questions about why Liebig had chosen to join a club so far away from his home; the inflated membership costs just added to the mystery.

  “Staff parking is around the back.” Sutton pointed out the discreet sign.

  “We aren’t staff,” said Warren firmly. The slight smile on his colleague’s face suggested that he approved of Warren’s decision to park his decidedly middle-class family car alongside two Bentleys, a Porsche and a vintage Jaguar.

  By the time the two detectives had exited the car, a smartly suited man in his mid forties with a thin moustache and a slightly dubious French accent was pacing towards them.

  “I’m sorry, gentlemen. That parking is reserved for members.”

  Warren ignored him and flashed his warrant card. “We have an appointment with Mr Molinie.”

  To his credit, the valet’s faux smile hardly faltered as he ushered the two men through the hotel’s ornate doors. Warren barely had time to take in the wood-panelled splendour of the beautifully appointed reception before another, older man appeared through a partially hidden door next to the main desk.