“What can you tell me about Simone’s relationships with the other staff on the island?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Her line manager’s Natasha. She’s good, looks after her team. I’m not aware of any problems. But I’ll check, if you—“
“My DC will speak to her. Anyone else? Who did she socialise with?”
Another shrug. “The members of her team, as far as I’m aware. I don’t keep tabs on that kind of thing.”
Lesley gazed towards Gail, who was examining the ground around Simone. This was a small community, only forty-two people. She found it hard to believe the man who managed it wouldn’t make it his business to know that kind of thing.
“Have you got a key to Simone’s house?” she asked.
“I can get one,” Ed replied.
“Good. We’ll need to search it, in case she left anything behind that might shed light on her death.”
Ed nodded, his fave grim.
“I’ll send Brett over,” said Gail. “Gav and I can join him when we’re done here, if it looks like there’s a lot to search through.”
“Thanks,” Lesley replied. She turned to Ed. “And I also need a list of all the visitors who came here in the last three days,” she said.
“Three days?” he asked.
“Probably the last twenty-four hours,” she said. “But we can’t be too careful.”
“We don’t keep lists,” he said. “I can identify any Trust members who were on the island, but non-members…” He shook his head.
“Give me what you can,” she told him. “We can use credit card receipts if people paid for anything while they were here. Is there a café or a shop?”
“Both,” he told her. “I’ll speak to the relevant managers.”
“Thank you.” She looked back towards the body. This was a complex crime scene, despite its apparent simplicity. This particular stretch of beach was narrow and shallow. There was no sign of footsteps other than their own, and those of the two Uniforms. But Simone could have gone into the water anywhere. She could have gone in under her own volition, or somebody else’s. There was also the possibility that she didn’t go into the water from the island, but from somewhere else in Poole Harbour.
Lesley looked over towards the Isle of Purbeck. There were miles of shoreline over there, even more if you followed the coast round to Poole. They needed to narrow things down.
It was most likely that Simone had gone in from somewhere on the island. She lived there. She worked there. But Lesley wanted to check the woman’s habits. And for any missing boats.
Gail’s phone rang, the noise echoing across the space and sending a flock of small wading birds into the air. Lesley watched her answer it, expectant. Gail spoke and nodded a few times, and then shoved the phone into the pocket of her protective suit.
Gail stood up. “Good news. Whittaker is on his way.”
Lesley raised an eyebrow. Henry Whittaker was the local pathologist. Not known for his reliability or speed, Lesley was surprised that he was already en route to such a remote crime scene.
“We’re in luck,” she said.
Gail gave a grim laugh. “Lucky for Simone she was found on a weeknight.”
Chapter Nine
Lesley turned away from the beach. “I’ll make sure he knows where to come,” she told Gail. “Besides, I want to get a feel for the geography here.”
She beckoned for Ed to come with her, and together they walked back towards the old farm buildings they’d passed on the way in.
“Tell me about your team,” she said to him.
He nodded, his face stern. “I’ve got four team leaders reporting to me. Natasha runs the conservation team, Simone worked for her. And then there’s the catering team, the volunteer manager, the maintenance team, and the shop.”
“That’s five teams,” Lesley told him.
He closed his eyes. “Sorry,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I think I’m in shock.”
Lesley eyed him. The man’s reaction seemed genuine enough, but until she’d spoken to everybody on this island, she wasn’t making any judgments.
They reached the expanse of grass in front of the church. There was no sign or sound of the peacock this time.
Lesley pulled out her phone. “I need to brief my DS,” she said. “Can you go ahead and tell the pathologist where we are?”
“No problem,” Ed replied. He trudged on towards the castle and the quay beyond, his footsteps heavy.
Dennis answered on the first ring. “Boss,” he said. “What’s happening?”
She looked up towards the church, admiring the stained-glass windows. “Got a body washed up on a beach on the southern side of Brownsea Island,” she told him. “Gail’s going to look into the tide patterns, but if one of you could get a start on that it would be helpful.”
“No problem,” he said.
“Can you put me on speakerphone?” she asked him.
“Ummm…”
Lesley chuckled. Dennis wasn’t the most technical of sergeants.
“Hand the phone to Mike,” she said. “He’ll do it.”
There was rustling at the other end of the line and then Dennis’s voice came over. It was tinny and distant.
“We’re in your office, boss,” he said. “I’m with Mike and Tina.”
“Good,” she told him. “So what have you got? Have you done any research?”
“I’ve got the names of the staff you need to talk to,” Tina said.
Lesley clutched her phone closer to her ear. “Ed Rogers, Natasha Williams.”
“Oh,” Tina replied, sounding deflated.
“It’s all right, Tina,” Lesley said. “I’ve got Ed with me, or did have until a moment ago. But anything you can get in the meantime is helpful. Get everything you can on the staff. Who works for who, who lives where on the island, and in particular, we need to know who was here during the last twenty-four hours.”
“Can’t you ask Ed that?” suggested Dennis.
“I’ll be asking quite a few people that question,” she replied. “But we need to know if there are any official records. Do they keep records of the boat when it goes out, who travels on it?”
“No problem, boss,” said Dennis. “The National Trust office in Poole will be able to answer that question.”
“Good,” she said. “Whittaker is on his way, so hopefully we’ll have a cause of death soon. And a time.”
“Surely drowning?” Dennis replied.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Lesley told him.
“You think it’s suspicious?” he asked.
“I don’t think anything just yet,” Lesley said. “We’ll base any conclusions on the facts. But in the meantime, we’ll need more manpower. This is a big island and we’ve got forty-two people living here. Johnny and I can’t cover them all on our own, at least not before they get the chance to share their stories with each other. I need more uniformed officers, and I need one of you.”
Lesley considered the team’s skills.
“Tina,” she said, “you get on the next boat over to the island.”
“Er, boss,” Dennis said. “Surely Mike would be better placed…”
“Send Tina. You and Mike gather evidence back at the office, get background information. I’ll keep you posted.”
“No problem, boss,” Dennis said. His voice sounded tight.
Chapter Ten
Frankie opened her door to find a skinny blonde man in his mid-thirties standing on the path outside. He wore a badly fitting blue suit and a look of queasiness.
“Hello?” she said. “Are you OK?”
The man looked pale and sweaty, like he might pass out at any minute.
He blinked at her and fumbled in his inside pocket. “Detective Constable Chiles,” he said as he pulled out his ID.
She bristled. This man wasn’t what she’d been expecting. “You’re here to talk to me about Simone?”
He nodded. “Can I come in?”
“Of c
ourse.”
She turned away from the door, leaving the constable to follow her, and walked through to the kitchen at the back of the house. Adam was already there, sitting at the kitchen table. He was on his laptop – reading the news, no doubt. He’d been obsessed with it since they’d found Simone, searching for any mention of what had happened.
The police officer nodded as he entered the kitchen.
Adam half-stood from his seat. “Hello,” he said, looking wary. “You must be—?”
“DC Chiles,” the officer replied.
Adam looked him up and down, clearly thinking the same thing as Frankie.
Frankie gestured towards the table. “Take a seat,” she said. “I’ll get you a coffee.”
Adam stood up and put a hand on her arm. “It’s OK love, I’ll do it.”
She gave him a grateful smile and sat down.
The constable sat opposite her. He cleared his throat and swallowed.
Just don’t throw up on my kitchen table. She wondered if he’d come straight from the quay.
After a moment’s uncomfortable silence, the constable brought a notepad out of the same pocket from which he’d extracted his ID earlier.
“I need to ask what happened last night,” he said. “When you found her.”
“Simone,” she replied.
He nodded. “Sorry, yes. Do you work with her?”
“I do,” she told him. “Or I did.” She felt her stomach grow heavy.
At the sink, Adam was rattling around, as if he was trying to drown out the sound of their voices. But he’d been there too, he was a witness. They might as well do this together.
The constable looked at Adam as he put a cup of coffee in front of him.
“I’m told you both found the body,” he said.
“It was Frankie who spotted her first,” Adam replied. “Then I…” He retreated to the sink, his voice thin.
“I’ll need to speak to the two of you separately.” The constable looked at Frankie. “Do you mind if we go into another room?”
She exchanged glances with Adam.
“It’s OK,” Adam said. “You two stay in here, I’ll go upstairs.” He grabbed his laptop from the table and left the room.
Frankie heard his footsteps on the stairs above their head. Hurried, anxious. She imagined he’d keep a door open to listen in.
She wrapped her hands around her mug of coffee, which was going cold. “Go on, then,” she said to the officer. “Ask your questions.”
“I’m sorry to have to do this,” he told her. “I know it must be traumatic for you.”
She shook her head. “For all of us,” she said. “But I know why you’re here.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t believe me,” she said. “You think that by saying I found her body, that’ll cover up any suspicion that I might have done it.”
The officer frowned at her. “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I just wanted to get your account of what you saw.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her mug.
Stop being so nervous. It wasn’t her fault she’d been the person to come across Simone. It wasn’t her fault they’d fallen out. But the detective didn’t know that.
She looked into his eyes, forcing herself to hold his gaze.
“It was after the team meeting,” she said. “Simone hadn’t turned up, she’d been off sick for the day, at least that’s what Bernard told us.”
“Bernard is…?” he asked.
“Sorry, he’s Natasha’s husband. Natasha is my line manager, she supervises the conservation team. Bernard, he lives with her.”
“And does he work here as well?”
“No,” she said. “He’s a freelance journalist. Works from home, mainly.”
“OK. So you were at Natasha’s house, and then you left at what time?”
She thought back. “About ten, just before. Adam was outside when I left, he’d been waiting for me. We go down to the beach sometimes at night.” She smiled. “It’s our place.”
“And that’s where you found Simone,” the officer suggested.
She swallowed. “It was getting dark,” she said. “Cloudy. We were almost on top of her when I saw her.”
“And it was you who saw her first?”
“Yes. Adam was behind me. I told him to come and see, and then we went back to Natasha’s house.”
“So you left Simone’s body where you’d found it, and you went back to Natasha’s?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you touch the body at all? Did you move it?”
She stared at him, blinking. “No. No.”
She shivered. The thought of touching Simone, the way she’d been, filled her with horror.
“She was on the edge of the water, the waves were washing over her. But still, I couldn’t bring myself to…”
“It’s OK.” The constable put a hand on the table, a few centimetres from her own. She stared at it, resisting the urge to pull back. “It’s good that you didn’t touch the body,” he continued. “It preserves any evidence there might be on it.”
“Evidence,” she repeated, looking down into her mug.
“Did you see anyone else, on your way to the beach?”
“No one. People are all in their houses by that time of night. We rise early, like the wildlife.”
He nodded. “So you went back to Natasha’s house. And then what happened?”
“We knocked on the door. It took a few minutes to get Natasha’s attention, I think she was going to bed. We told her what we’d seen and she insisted on going down to the beach.”
He looked surprised. “Any idea why?”
She shook her head. “Maybe she didn’t believe us, maybe she wanted to see for herself. We wanted to call the police or the coastguard, but Natasha wanted to see.”
Another frown. “So the three of you went down to the beach?”
“Yes. And then Natasha saw, and we hurried back to her house while her husband called the police.”
“Was anybody else with you? Natasha’s husband?”
“No, he stayed at the house.”
“That’s fine,” the officer said. “I know this is difficult for you to talk about.”
“I’m OK,” she told him.
She hated the way she’d collapsed into herself since finding Simone’s body. Frankie prided herself on being strong. Since leaving her first marriage, she’d had to fend for herself, to forge her own way in the world. Even now she had Adam, she wasn’t relinquishing her independence for a second.
But now… here she was, a gibbering wreck.
“How did she die?” she asked him.
“We don’t know yet. The pathologist should be on his way and then we’ll know.”
“You think she killed herself, or…?”
“Like I say,” he replied, shifting his fingers on the table. “We don’t know yet.” He took a breath. “So after you called the police, what happened then?”
“They told us to wait.”
“In the house?”
“No,” she said. “They told us to go somewhere we’d be able to stop people going down there.”
“So where did you go?”
His eyes searched her face. She could tell he was hoping they hadn’t gone straight back to the beach. Frankie had watched enough police dramas to know that disturbing a crime scene was not a good idea.
“We went to the farm,” she said. “The abandoned farm buildings at the top of the path that leads to the beach. Anybody going down there would have to go past us.”
“And did anybody try to pass?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “The first people to arrive were the Coast Guard.”
“Good.”
He stood up from his chair. “So can you tell me who else is in your team?”
“There’s Natasha and then there’s Anya.”
“What does Anya do?”
“She works on habitats, she sometimes helps out wi
th the volunteers as well.”
“It was just the three of you at the meeting last night?”
She nodded.
“Where can I find Anya?”
“She lives in one of the houses over by the quay,” Frankie told him. “Simone lives next door to us. Or she did.” She felt her stomach lurch.
He went to the door, glancing upwards. Adam’s turn next. “Does anyone else live here, apart from you and Adam?”
“My son, Cameron. He’s not here right now, though. He’s in London, with his dad.” She didn’t like Cameron staying with Howard, it made her jumpy. She sniffed and looked at the officer. “Do you need anything else from me?”
He shook his head. “I’ll go and talk to your partner now, if that’s OK?”
She rubbed her eyes. “Of course. I’ll call him down.”
“Thank you.”
Chapter Eleven
Lesley turned to see a commotion behind her. Dr Whittaker was scrambling down the steps towards the beach, looking out of place in a pale grey suit that hung off him. The man had lost weight. She wondered if he was ill, or maybe trying to get healthy. Two pathology assistants followed him, both looking stern and business-like.
Lesley stood up. Gail was in the process of placing squares on the beach, recording the areas that had been examined for forensic evidence.
“Dr Whittaker,” Lesley said. “Thanks for coming out.”
He grunted. “The chaps from the National Trust brought me. You do like dragging me out to these far flung places don’t you, Detective Chief Inspector?”
She gave him a grim smile. “Not my fault where people die.”
He grunted again and pushed past her. “So, let’s take a look.” He crouched over the body. He sniffed and tilted his head to get a better look.
“What do you think the cause of death is?” asked Lesley.
He glanced up at her. “Give me a moment, won’t you?”
She tapped her foot and folded her arms. Whittaker was never easy to deal with, but today he was even grumpier than usual. She wondered if the weight loss had something to do with it. A diet would make him irritable, and so would an illness.
“Hmm,” he said, leaning back.
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