by Fiona Leitch
‘Sorry, old girl,’ I said. ‘No dogs allowed on the beach. You’ll have to stick with me.’
But what was I going to do now, left to my own devices? That little voice in my head piped up again, asking, Aren’t the council offices two streets away…?
The Penstowan Municipal Building was one of those fine examples of civic architecture from the 1970s. It had taken all the lessons learnt from the brutalist buildings of the 1960s and completely ignored them, sticking with the tried and tested concrete box design, lined with rows and rows of windows which made them really uncomfortable to work in, whatever the weather – like a greenhouse in the summer and an icebox full of whistling draughts in the winter. At six storeys high, it was one of the tallest buildings in Penstowan. Outside, there was a weird bronze sculpture that was meant to represent a lifeboat in a third-rate Henry Moore kind of way, now green with verdigris and splodged white with seagull droppings. It stood on a short plinth in the middle of a concrete pool. It was supposed to have water in it but I could only remember it being full once, when it had been topped up for the Queen’s fiftieth anniversary in 2002, just before I’d moved to London. There had been a big street party in the town, and by the end of the night I think half the partygoers (who had fully enjoyed the cheap ‘Golden Jubilee’ scrumpy laid on by a local brewery in honour of Her Maj) had peed in it. It had been drained the next day and left empty, save for the cigarette butts, chip wrappers, and beer cans that inevitably gathered there until periodically removed by street cleaners.
I ignored the ‘No Dogs’ sign (I still felt like I was just looking after Germaine for Mel, and I didn’t want to risk anything happening to her; Mel would never forgive me) and went inside.
The reception area was high-ceilinged and my footsteps echoed on the tiled floor as I approached the desk. The woman behind the desk was deep in concentration, looking at something on her computer, and did not look up as I reached her. I cleared my throat.
‘Hello,’ I began, then stopped because I realised I didn’t know the name of the person I was after. The woman behind the desk looked up, frowning, but her face suddenly cleared when she saw me.
‘Nosey Parker!’ she said, smiling. ‘I heard you were back.’
‘That’s me,’ I said, trying not to give away the fact that I had no idea who she was. ‘Nice to see you.’
She laughed. ‘You have no idea who I am, do you? Nina—’
‘Nina Falconer! Oh my God!’ I was relieved when her name suddenly popped into my head. She’d been in my year at school, and had been goal attack in the netball team (I’d been wing defence and had hated it).
‘Nina Matthews now,’ she said, smiling.
‘No! Not you and Liam?’ Liam Matthews had been a Fifth Year bad boy when we’d been gormless Third Years, suspended numerous times for smoking in the toilets and fighting.
She nodded. ‘Yep. I tamed him,’ she said proudly. ‘I heard you were back, I ran into Louise Gifford—’
‘How did she know? I haven’t seen Louise for about ten years.’
‘She said her mum had heard it from your mum.’
‘Of course. The OAPs’ coffee morning has a lot to answer for…’ Germaine tugged at the leash and I nudged her with my foot, hoping to keep her quiet. Of course, it didn’t work. Nina raised her eyebrows and stood up, looking down at the carpet where Germaine was doing her best to look cute but inconspicuous.
‘Isn’t that poor Mel’s dog?’ asked Nina.
I nodded. ’Yeah, there was no one else to take her. Terrible business, innit?’
‘Yeah, terrible business. You think Tony did it?’
‘Tony? Ha! We’re talking about the boy who passed out when we dissected a frog in Biology. I don’t think so, do you?’
Nina looked doubtful. ‘I dunno. I heard the police arrested him…’
‘He’s helping them with their enquiries; he’s not been charged,’ I said firmly. ‘Anyway, that’s kind of why I’m here…’
Mel’s cousin Trish worked in the Planning Department. They hadn’t expected her to work that day, not after such a tragic family event, but she was diligent and, as she had told Nina that morning, the Machiavellian workings and twisted logic of the local council planning regulations were just about the only things in the world able to take her mind off it.
Trish came down to the foyer and took me into a nearby side office. She was pale and she had dark shadows under her eyes, but her face lit up at the sight of Germaine, who gave a little bark and jumped up at her. I felt a pang; Trish had a much more legitimate claim to Mel’s dog than I did, and if she decided she wanted her I could hardly refuse.
‘Hello, Germaine! Who’s a lovely girl?’ Trish fussed over the Pomeranian, smoothing her fluffy white hair and gazing into her eyes.
‘You’re obviously old friends,’ I said, and she nodded.
‘She’s a lovely dog,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much for taking her in. Is that why you’re here? I would love to take her for poor Mel’ – her voice choked a little, and I could feel my own throat constrict at the thought of telling Daisy I’d given the dog away — ‘but I’ve already got two of my own, and I just don’t have room.’
Sweet Jesus, thank the Lord, I thought, relaxing. ‘No, no, we love having her! She and my daughter are best friends already. No, I wanted to talk to you about Mel.’
She looked at me, warily. ‘You’re not police, though? This isn’t official?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m a private investigator. Well, sort of. I’m a caterer. But I’m also ex-police, and I was there, and I don’t believe for a second that Tony did it.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t know what to believe. But no, Tony would not be the first person that sprang to mind as a … a murderer. Even after what she did to him – which she really regretted, by the way.’
‘I know, she told me. She told me several things, actually, just before she was murdered. And that’s what I’d like to ask you about.’
Chapter Nineteen
I left the council buildings feeling slightly more confused than when I’d entered them. Trish had given me a lot to think about. Whether it had any bearing on Mel’s murder was anyone’s guess, but it could have been used to put pressure on Cheryl. Roger Laity had made it perfectly clear that he had not been keen on her marrying ‘that idiot’ Tony (I bristled indignantly on Tony’s behalf), but maybe he’d found a way to turn the undesirable match to his advantage.
Whatever, from what Trish had told me, Roger Laity’s dealings with the council had not been illegal as such, but they’d sailed close enough to the wind to draw attention and been subjected to something of a cover-up. At the very least he was guilty of being unethical, but then it seemed to me many successful business people were.
My phone pinged with a text message from Daisy. She was having a great time with her new friends and she’d see me at home. I smiled and went to put the phone back in my bag, when it rang.
‘Oh dear, that didn’t last long, did it?’ I said to Germaine, who looked at me as if to say, You do realise I don’t speak English, right? I laughed and went to answer the phone, and was surprised to see that it wasn’t Daisy. It was a local number I didn’t recognise.
‘Hello?’
‘Jodie, it’s Brenda.’
I looked at my watch. Almost 1pm. They’d be releasing Tony soon, I thought.
‘Have you heard from the police?’ I asked her. ‘I’m just down the road, if you want me to pick him up?’
Brenda sounded distraught. ‘No, Tony’s solicitor just rang me. They’re holding him for another twenty-four hours…’
I strode along Fore Street and turned into Orchard Lane, no longer home to any orchards but the location of Penstowan Police Station. There was an exhausted bark behind me and I slowed down, guiltily; Germaine was game for a run, but she had shorter (and rather hairier) legs than me, and she was finding it hard to keep up.
‘Sorry, sweetie,’ I said, but I didn’t stop. My blood was
up.
I bounded up the ramp to the door of the police station just as DCI Withers came out. He put out both hands to stop himself knocking me over, steadying me as my momentum came to an abrupt halt against his (muscular) frame. I couldn’t help noticing that he had quite large hands and a reassuringly firm grip, before pulling myself together and glaring at him.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ I said.
He smiled arrogantly. ‘I’m off to get some lunch. Wanna come?’
‘No, I don’t bloody want to come! Why aren’t you releasing Tony? If you don’t have enough to charge him then you have to let him go.’ I realised he still had hold of me and I shrugged him off.
He did that irritating thin-lipped smiley thing again. By now it was starting to make me want to slap him.
‘New evidence has come to light,’ he said shortly.
‘What new evidence?’
‘You do realise I’m not obliged to tell you everything, don’t you?’ He looked at me and I got the feeling that I kind of amused him at the moment, but it wouldn’t take much to change that to irritation. Did I care?
‘You do realise I won’t stop pestering you until you do?’ I said, and he sighed. He looked at his watch.
‘I really don’t have long and I need some food. Come and have lunch with me.’
And that was how one minute I was glaring at Withers in front of the police station, and the next I was sitting outside the Kings Arms with a glass of wine and a ploughman’s lunch while he sat opposite me tucking into a prawn baguette and a pint of lemonade. Germaine sat under the table with a bowl of water, looking up hopefully now and then in case any scraps were forthcoming. She’d already had a go at a pickled onion that had resisted my attempts to spear it and shot off my plate, and her face when she bit into it had made both my lunch companion and me laugh.
‘Come on, then,’ I said, slightly bewildered at the turn events were taking. He was (I told myself) the last person I wanted to have lunch with. I wondered how many times I would have to tell myself that before I believed it. ‘Spill.’
Withers chewed and swallowed a mouthful of baguette. ‘All in good time. I’ve been hearing a lot around the station about your dad since you came back. Why did you move away?’
‘A lot of people who grow up in places like this can’t wait to leave,’ I said evasively. ‘It’s so quiet.’
‘You wanted to go where the action was?’ He sipped his drink, regarding me closely over the rim of his glass. I shifted uncomfortably.
‘Something like that…’
‘Didn’t you get on with your dad?’
‘Oh, was your nickname at school “Nosey” as well?’ I asked sarcastically.
He laughed. ‘I’m just interested.’ He took another bite of food, still watching me.
I sighed. ‘Okay, if you must know, it’s hard when everyone thinks your dad’s a hero. I mean, he was – to me, as much as to everyone else. He made a difference to a lot of people’s lives round here. Anything I did was bound to suffer by comparison.’ I toyed with my food, remembering the argument we’d had when I told him I was joining the Met. ‘I told him he was a big fish in a small pond, and I wanted to be a big fish in a bigger one.’
‘Oh…’
‘Yeah, “Oh.” And then when I got to London I realised that little fish actually achieve more.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘The big fish spend all their time fending off the sharks. The little ones just swim about undetected and unbothered, getting on with the job. I liked being left to get on with it. And that’s when I understood why my dad had never left Penstowan. They wanted him to move up the ranks, but that would have meant being tied to a desk in Exeter or somewhere, and he just wanted to stay here and look after the place.’
‘But of course you couldn’t come back and do the same, because you’d have been admitting he was right.’ I was surprised to see sympathy on Withers’s face, and felt tears spring to my eyes. I’d missed my dad (and my mum, of course) when I’d been in London, but now I was back – properly back, not just for a visit – and I was walking the streets that he used to walk, and sitting in the pub where we used to come for the occasional Sunday lunch, and driving the road where … well, anyway, I had been getting ridiculously emotional and I really needed to pull myself together. He’d been gone for seven years, for goodness’ sake. Why the hell was I telling DCI Withers all this? This man with his sardonic eyebrows and his chiselled abs and his nice hair—
‘Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge. You said new evidence had come to light?’ I said firmly. The subject of me and my dad was closed. End of.
Withers nodded and swallowed a mouthful of prawns. ‘We’ve pinned down the exact time of death.’
‘I thought the doc was struggling with that?’
‘She was. But Mel was wearing one of those.’ He inclined his head towards the fitness tracker on my wrist. ‘It tracked her heartrate.’
I looked down at my tracker. My heart was beating slightly faster than it should have been. I put it down to my speedy march to the station earlier, rather than my close proximity to Withers.
‘It tracks your heartrate and sends it to an app on your phone,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘The information also goes into the cloud,’ he said. ‘Of course, the companies who make these trackers have all these privacy policies in place to reassure you they’re not going to sell your information to a third party, which makes it a pain in the posterior for us, but eventually they were able to look at Mel’s stats and tell us when her tracker stopped reading a heartrate.’
I was impressed that he’d thought of that, but I didn’t want him to know. ‘Oh, right. But how does that strengthen the case against Tony?’
‘Mel’s heart rate spiked at 10.27pm, which we assume is when she was attacked, then slowed down and stopped at 10.42pm, when she…’ His voice trailed off; he didn’t need to finish that sentence.
‘But Tony said he only spoke to her for half an hour, which puts him back at the party around 10pm.’
Withers shook his head. ‘Only it doesn’t. We have witnesses who saw him leave around 9.30, but he didn’t come back until 10.45pm. And when he did, he was wearing different trousers.’
That threw me for a minute. But I was still convinced of his innocence. ‘So he was off changing his pants, not murdering Mel. But you’re implying that he changed them because they were covered in Mel’s blood or something.’
Withers looked at me steadily. ‘We found Mel’s DNA on Tony’s shirt, but the lab thought it was weird that it just kind of stopped at his trousers. Malcolm Penhaligon took some photographs earlier on in the evening, and it was only when we saw those that we realised the trousers Tony gave us for forensics weren’t the ones he had on in the photos. We went back to his house and found them in the washing basket. There doesn’t appear to be any sign of blood on them, but why would he change them?’
It didn’t look good, I had to admit that.
‘What does Tony say about it?’
‘He hasn’t said anything yet. He’s talking to his solicitor.’ Withers took another big bite of baguette. ‘We also got hold of Cheryl’s phone records for the evening. She sent him a text message telling him they needed to talk at 9.37pm, which is around about the time he left the party.’
‘And just after I spoke to her,’ I said. ‘Oh…’
‘Oh what?’
‘I told her that Tony was a good bloke, and if she had any doubts…’
‘And then she immediately got on the blower to him. Sounds like she did have doubts. No one actually saw him in the garden with Mel. Hegone up to Cheryl’s room and heard she was dumping him, then gone straight outside to find Mel and kill her for stirring up trouble.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Except by the sounds of it, it was you that stirred up trouble…’
I didn’t want to think about that. ‘Tony did tell me she’d texted him, but he said he didn’t see it until later, by which time she’d sent him another one saying not to
worry about it and she was going to bed.’
Withers nodded. ‘Yes, but that wasn’t until 11.20pm. Maybe she had already left, and she wanted to stop him discovering she’d gone. Or maybe he sent it to himself after disposing of her to stop himself looking guilty.’
I sighed wearily. ‘You’re doing it again. There’s no body; this is not a double murder investigation—’
‘Not yet it isn’t,’ he said. ‘Come on, Jodie, what else can have happened to her? Where is she? She left everything behind, her money, her passport, everything, in fact, except her phone. Even if she’d left Tony, why wouldn’t she be in touch with her uncle and aunty to let them know she was all right?’
I thought about telling him everything I’d learnt from Trish today but decided against it. I didn’t know myself yet what it could mean, and when he found out I’d been investigating Roger Laity he would go ballistic.
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ I asked him, keen to get him away from the subject of the Laity family. ‘I mean, I know I said I’d pester you into submission, but…’
He laughed softly. ‘You know the saying, pick your battles? Well, you’re a battle I’d rather not have. I can shut you out of this case and then have to put up with you stalking me and demanding answers, or I can let you know what’s going on and’ – he gave me a cheeky grin which literally made me go hot all over; I didn’t know it was possible for your toes to blush, but mine did at that moment – ‘and have you stalking me for entirely different reasons…’ I pulled a face and threw the half-dog-eaten pickled onion at him. He dodged it easily and I was mortified to see it land in someone’s beer two tables away.
Germaine sighed and shifted under the table, resting her head on my feet. I knew that within a matter of seconds my trainers would be covered in dog hair.
