Antiques in the Attic - Why and How did Kevin die?

Extract of Police Interview....

"I don't know," she responded doubtfully.  "What a good job I wasn't here," she added as they re-entered the living room.

"I doubt if he would have come in then."

"You mean someone has been watching me?"

"Yes.  Whoever is responsible for those antiques obviously isn't into violence."

"But what about Kev?  They might have killed him!"  She sat heavily on one of the armchairs.

"We don't know why that happened but I doubt if they want to harm you.  They don't strike me as people who do violence for violence sake.  They're what I call high class thieves."

"As in they only steal high-class stuff?"

"Exactly.  And I think they do have a market for what they steal.  Some of it goes abroad so they probably have a storage unit."

"You said there was one in Kev's name so does that mean he was one of them?"

"Maybe," the DI said off-handedly.  "Until we know why he was killed and can catch them we won't know."

"I hope you catch them quickly.  If I stay at Zelda's for too long I'll start to feel like a refugee.  And there's no way I can begin to think about the future now."

"We'll do our best, Sarah.  Now, have you thought of anything else about Kevin?  Something he might have said?  It may not have seemed relevant at the time."

She slowly shook her head.  "Not a thing.  We haven't been in touch since the divorce."

"Have any mutual friends said anything?"

"I don't think he had any friends.  That was one of our problems.  He didn't like Zelda because she and I would sometimes go out.  He felt that I should only go out with him.  Except that he didn't want to go out anywhere."  She added ruefully, "It would have cost money."

When she said that the DI experienced a twinge of doubt.  Perhaps she had killed her former husband?  What if she knew about the antique thefts?  Maybe all she had been doing was setting it up to make her look innocent.

Then he thought about the way her husband had died and felt she wouldn't have done that.  Couldn't have done it.  It would have needed two strong men to hold him down while he had been tortured.  Cigarette burns were painful and there was no way he could have driven the car.  And who would have suspected that he had a bad heart?

"Sarah, did you know that Kevin had heart problems?"

"He what?"

"Had heart problems.  He actually died of a heart attack."

"So he wasn't murdered?"

"Aggravated.  He was tortured, which caused the heart attack."

She paled and whispered, "Tortured?"

"Mostly cigarette burns.  They obviously wanted to get some information from him but I have no idea whether he was able to tell them what they wanted to know.  That's why I'd prefer it if you stayed elsewhere."