Letting out the Worms: Guilty or not? If not then the alternative is terrifying (Kitty Thomas Book 1 Sue Nicholls (best short books to read TXT) 📖

time. She glanced up at Kitty. ‘Mr Thomas was brought here to the station and placed in one of our cells, through there.’ She waved a hand at the door through which Kitty and Sam had entered. They had noticed no cells, but Kitty let that go.

‘What about Max Rutherford – Will Owen I mean?’

‘There is no mention of Mr… I am sorry, what name would he use?’

‘Owen, I think. He had a double-barrelled name, Owen-Rutherford, but I believe my mother was Mrs Owen when she died. I don’t think she knew his other name.’

‘Well, this is your father’s arrest report and there is no mention in it of a Mr Owen but,’ She held up a small cassette tape, ‘There is this.’

Kitty and Sam sat up in their seats and Kitty said, ‘What is that?’

‘The label says it is three separate interviews with Paul Thomas.’ Edouard slotted the tape into a machine and a voice blurted from the speakers making Kitty jump.

The first voice introduced himself as Inspector Kipling and he went on to say that he was with Sergeant Gopaul and they were interviewing Paul Thomas. Paul gave his name and address then Kipling asked him to explain what happened on the cliff.

‘I was worried about Fee,’ Paul’s voice came from the speakers with compete sincerity.

‘Who is Fee, please?’ Kipling asked.

‘My wife. Ex-wife.’

‘And why were you worried about her?’

They hear Paul hesitate before saying, ‘It’s a long story but basically, I’d found out that she was planning to marry Max Rutherford. He was my counsellor and I realised I had given him a lot of information about my wife, which he could have used to trick her into marrying him.’

‘And why exactly would he want to do that?’

Another pause, then, ‘I don’t know. It was a feeling. He had hidden the relationship from me. I felt duped. I didn’t want her to be tricked or misled.’

‘OK. So, what happened next?’

‘Paul explained that he had hidden in a bar to wait for Fee to emerge from her hotel, then followed her towards the restaurant where he watched from behind a bush as she sat down on top of the rocky promontory.

‘You must have been incredibly angry.’

‘I suppose so, but mainly I was trying to understand what was going on.’

‘And?’

‘And I saw Max come out of the restaurant and look around for Fee. He saw her sitting there and walked towards her, still holding the glasses. She was enjoying the sun. Her eyes were closed, and her face was to the sky. I don’t suppose she heard him because of the waves. Max carried on, walking towards her, then suddenly, he dropped the glasses and ran at her and pushed her over the edge of the cliff.’

‘And all this time you stood and watched?’

‘I didn’t expect him to do what he did. I started towards him when he dropped the glasses, but I was too late. I had the number of the police on my phone. I looked it up on my flight over here, just in case of trouble, so I dialled them and told them what I’m telling you, now.’

After that, the questioning became much more detailed: Why was he watching, where precisely did he stand, did he recognise Fee and much more. Soon, Paul became angry and belligerent and a chair scraped on the floor. He shouted, ‘Why are you wasting time with all these questions? You should be arresting Max Rutherford. Get him behind bars before he kills someone else.’

Kitty shook her head. It had been many years since she had heard Paul yell like that.

Kipling’s stern voice said, ‘Please sit down, Mr Thomas. We will interview everyone concerned, but you would be well advised to co-operate calmly.’

After some shuffling, the interview continued. Questions bombarded Paul, posed in varying ways to catch him out, but he was clear about the events every time.

Once again Kipling hammered the question, ‘Why did you follow your ex-wife to Mauritius?’

Paul was now yelling. ‘I told you. I thought she was in danger. I’d only just found out she was getting married, and then, to top it all, found her husband-to-be was Max Rutherford, my Counsellor. And I was right, wasn’t I. She lost her life because I wasn’t there to save her.’ Paul’s voice wobbled, and that convinced Kitty he was telling the truth. The interview ended then, with Kipling’s promise that it would continue the following day.

In the next interview, Paul sounded weary. The questions were the same, over and over until he lost his temper again and yelled, ‘Why are we going over this again. You should be out there arresting that Rutherford bastard. He’s the one who killed Fee. Can’t you see? He gained my trust and plied me with questions, pretending he was helping me, and all the time he was learning all about Fee, so he could…’ There was a pause then he continued, ‘Murder her.’

‘And remind me why he would want to do that, Mr Thomas?

‘I have no idea. I’m not a mind reader. I know what I saw, that’s all.’

‘Mr Thomas, we have spoken to the police in England, in Lee-mee-shire.’ Kitty smiled at the man’s mispronunciation of Lymeshire, and Paul’s sarcastic correction of it. Kipling thanked him for his help with the English language and said that police in the UK had advised him that Paul was a suspect in the murder of Twitch. He continued, ‘We are becoming more and more convinced, Mr Thomas, that you killed your ex-wife out of anger. You have demonstrated this anger here, and I believe on more than one occasion at home in the UK.’

Paul’s voice was loud and determined. ‘No comment,’ he pronounced, and thereafter, this was all he said.

The third session shed no further light and at the end,