WENDY DUNBAR, THE MAIN SUSPECT

WENDY DUNBAR, THE MAIN SUSPECT

Wendy Dunbar woke up that December morning, covered by blood, in her bedroom of the hotel where she had spent the night in Bournemouth. She had met Steve Yates seven weeks before and they had begun an extramarital relationship. Now, that winter morning, she had discovered his corpse beside her and she didn't know how to carry that happening.

She was the DCI Arthur Buchanan's wife and also the mother of those beautiful, sweetie and happy fraternal twins named Cedric and Serena Buchanan. For this reason she had to think a lot about what to do before calling the police which arrived quickly led by the Southernshire Police DI Jasmine Tomkins, who had been a Special Agent in the California Bureau of Investigation before becoming the new DCI Alan Bakewell's right-hand woman.

The problems hadn't finished for her given that they just started: first of all the scientist police found her fingerprints in the assumed murder weapon, in second place his death had happened around midnight, in third place the security cameras had filmed her committing the crime, and the last evidence they had against her was a witness who had testified that Steve Yates had argued with Wendy Dunbar during the dinner and that Mr. Yates had decided to go upstairs to the bedroom without finishing the dessert.

Jasmine Tomkins decided to arrest her to interrogate Wendy in the police station. She also confiscated her police badge and handcuffed her to prevent an escape of her prisoner. Wendy phoned his lawyer Samuel McBeth who advised her to ask if her husband could carry on the case despite the Northernshire Police hadn't jurisdiction in the Southernshire county.

When Arthur knew about his wife's affair with Steve Yates he accepted to help her despite the fact that he would divorce from Wendy after finishing to solve the case. He would help his wife only for his children. Arthur took the first train to Bournemouth that afternoon and he met with Alan Bakewell in the railway station.

"Hi, Alan! This is my Detective Sergeant Peter Shankland, my right-hand man, and I am Arthur, Wendy Dunbar's husband!" he said when he saw Bakewell waiting for them on the platform. "What's about the case and the victim?" he also asked him while he was taking his luggage to the taxi that Alan had paid for them.

For Alan the case was easy to solve: they had a lot of evidence which demonstrated the guilt of Wendy Dunbar. Nevertheless, for Arthur, that case was not easy as it was seeming to be. They had only one thing clear: the victim was a poet who was forty years old and whose name was Steve Yates. He was employed also by the Secret Intelligence Service as an agent.

Steve Yates was also married to Mary Faber, a novelist from the north of England whose parents had founded a press named Faber & Yates Editors. She had arrived there when she had received the news about Steve's death. She seemed extremely sad for her husband's death despite knowing about his affair with Mrs. Buchanan.

Arthur supposed that Mary Faber had murdered her husband because she had known about Steve Yates affair with Wendy before the news of his death and now she was playing to avoid the suppositions of the police and that she had planned the killing to incriminate Wendy of the murder.

In that hotel were lodging Gerard Hayes, a fifty six years old man who was the owner of a Bank in Ireland, Olivia Caldwell, a lady who was the same age of Gerard Hayes and the owner of a Bank in England, and Phil Kearns, an owner of a hotel in Cork, Ireland who was dealing with Ollie Dashwood the purchasing of his hotel, too. Phil Kearns was thirty five and Ollie Dashwood was sixty three.

The witness who had testified against Wendy Dunbar was Ollie Dashwood's bellboy named Daniel Wadlow, who was forty years old as Steve Yates and Mary Faber. Those who had an alibi for the time of the crime were Mary Faber, Ollie Dashwood and Gerard Hayes. So Arthur decided to interrogate Olivia Caldwell, Phil Kearns and Daniel Wadlow again whilst Peter Shankland was interrogating Wendy Dunbar and Alan Bakewell was helping his subordinates to find the murder weapon.

Later on, when the forensic surgeon report arrived and Arthur discovered that Steve Yates had been poisoned with cyanide, all the investigation changed and he thought that at midnight, knowing that he had been poisoned, Steve Yates had taken his handgun and he had shot himself provoking his death to not to live an agonizing death. For this reason the forensic surgeon had also found a bullet inside his heart. But why did the security cameras filmed Wendy committing the crime?

As he had a friend in the Secret Intelligence Service he phoned him to ask about the missions they were carrying out. Darren Albert Bancroft agreed with Arthur Walter Buchanan that the following day they would meet in London to have a coffee and talk about it calmly.

After the dinner they went to sleep. At midnight a yell awakened Arthur who walked to Phil Kearns bedroom. He knocked the door and as noone opened it he knocked down the door and he found Phil Kearns corpse lying on his bed. Then the bellboy arrived to know what had happened and Arthur ordered him to call the law enforcement whereas he was looking for the murder weapon.

That time, when the forensic surgeon told him that for the scars he had deduced a fight between the killer and the victim and that the killer had stabbed Phil Kearns, Arthur ordered his companions to find a knife or something similar covered by blood hidden in any place of the hotel.

Now Ollie Dashwood seemed to be suspicious of the crime. Arthur wished to talk to him whilst Peter was looking in the Steve Yates bank account if Steve finances were in the red. He discovered that the poet had asked for a loan to Caldwell Bank some weeks before and as he couldn't pay the debt, his house had been seized.

When Arthur knew that he decided to interrogate Olivia also. However, another scream they heard and when they arrived at Olivia's bedroom, they found Mary Faber beside her corpse. Arthur ordered to arrest Mary for Olivia's death and he took a taxi to the railway station to take a train to London.

Darren said Arthur hello when he saw him getting out of the train. As the rain began to fall, Darren opened his umbrella while Arthur asked for a taxi to go to the city centre. A taxi stopped and took them to a café near King's Cross. They paid the fare to the taxi driver and they got into the coffee shop.

"Well. First of all, happy birthday, Darren. I remember when we were students at Saint Andrew's School and we finished the classes before the Christmas holidays celebrating our birthdays that were both nearer. I celebrated on the 21st and you celebrated on the 23rd!" said Arthur. "Now, why have you wished to meet with me in person?" Arthur asked.

"Because we think that someone in the Secret Intelligence Service is also working for the Russians. And as you told me that Steve Yates, one of my fellows, has been killed in an hotel in Bournemouth and I sent him to investigate there because we suppose that the Russians have established their base of operations in the Southernshire county, I think that the crime has been committed by a Russian spy!" he answered, eating a biscuit.

"What's the operation about?" Arthur asked again when he received the forensic surgeon report in his phone and he opened it to know the cause of Olivia's death. He discovered that someone had choked her in a fight too, because her body was covered by lots of scars on her wrists, neck and legs.

"Traffic of biological weapons and illegal immigrants, most of them prisoners of war, between the Govern of the UK and the Kremlin!" Darren said. "Yeah! Our spies are trying to stop it because we think that someone in the Govern of the UK is an accomplice of the Russians who is working without the permission of the Prime Minister in this traffic to begin the third world war, committing mass attacks in every part of the UK!" he added.

Darren gave Arthur the names of his subordinate agents too. One of them turned out to be familiar for him: Daniel Wadlow's name. Arthur thanked Darren for the information and he came back to Bournemouth where he met with Alan to tell him what he had discovered.

Alan released Wendy when she affirmed that Steve had ordered her to shoot him because he had been poisoned with cyanide and she also helped them with the operation to arrest Daniel Wadlow. When he was arrested and Arthur interrogated him telling that they had discovered all the truth, Daniel confessed his guilt and accused Ollie Dashwood to be at the back of all the deaths, that he only had done the dirty job as a simple pawn.

"Three months before, when I lost my job, I found one as a bellboy in this hotel. Ollie Dashwood employed me. One night I found him speaking by phone to someone. I heard all the conversation!" he said and he put a sound recording where Ollie was talking in Russian with a possible Russian spy. "Unfortunately he saw me and he promised me that if I worked for him, I would never be in danger and he would never kill me. I accepted. Afterwards, three months passed, Steve Yates arrived at the hotel asking for a bedroom. He was accompanied by Wendy Dunbar!" he added.

Wendy came into the room and she continued with the interrogation supervised by Arthur, Alan and Peter. Daniel asked for a cup of tea and to see Mary for the last time before finishing his statement. They discovered later on that Mary and Daniel were lovers, that they had begun an affair when Mary had discovered that Steve was meeting with Wendy.

"Ollie began to plan how to kill Steve. He told me that Steve was an MI6 spy and that he had orders from his supervisors to murder him!" Daniel continued. "Then, when the other guests arrived we carried on the plan where I had to do the dirty job. Before committing the first crime we looked for the state of Steve Yates finances with the help of Mary Faber, who didn't know our plan, to incriminate Olivia but Olivia saw how I put the cyanide inside Steve's cup of coffee and I had to murder her also to prevent her report to the police about what I did. I told it to Ollie and he decided to kill Phil Kearns too!" Daniel finished his statement.

When Daniel and Ollie were judged and jailed, Arthur and Wendy came back to North Shields with Peter, where they were living for that epoch, and Arthur get divorced from Wendy. Six months later, after meeting often with Jasmine Tomkins, Arthur got engaged with DI Tomkins. The sun was lighting up again in his life.