‘Okay, stay where you are, don’t touch anything, they’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
Keri stood staring at Roy a moment longer. He was wearing a waistcoat she and Nathan had bought him. She remembered he’d put it on straight away, professing it to be his favourite.
He wouldn’t be happy that it was ruined.
With a sob, she turned away.
19
Keri kept the phone in her hand and went to help Nathan. He was lying among the debris of the smashed table, tears running down his face, a look of terror in his eyes. She pushed broken pieces of the wood and glass out of her way and reached a hand down to help him to his feet. He pulled her into his arms and they held each other tightly in the eerie silence.
They didn’t move, even when the scream of sirens got louder and armed police burst through the door, ignoring them, ignoring the body, moving quickly through the offices, kicking open the locked doors at the rear of the building. The noise, the chaos. Roy’s bloody body. All of it was so unreal.
When the commotion died down, Keri and Nathan separated slightly. They stood together with his arm across her shoulder giving the impression he was comforting her. She could feel the tremble in it, and the pain as his hand gripped and released her arm.
A slim, unremarkable man with thin brown hair stepped away from the armed police and walked towards them. He was wearing a tan suit, white shirt and the most luridly coloured tie Keri had ever seen. It was a bizarre addition to a surreal morning.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Sam Elliot.’ He held his identification forward as if they might doubt he was telling the truth.
Keri didn’t look at it, she was searching his face, looking for answers he couldn’t possibly have. It was pleasant and unremarkably bland. If he knew anything, he wasn’t giving it away.
‘Who would have done such a thing?’ Nathan’s voice held the same tremble Keri felt in his arm.
Rather than answering, DI Elliot pointed to the offices behind. ‘This area will be sealed off soon. Perhaps we could go into one of those?’
Keri’s keys were in her pocket, she took them out. ‘We can go into mine.’ She stepped away from Nathan’s arm and navigated the edge of the room to her office. Thanks to the glass walls giving a clear view of the interior, the police hadn’t needed to break the door down. She unlocked it and went inside, Nathan and the detective following behind.
It was automatic for Keri to take her seat behind the desk but she got to her feet immediately and walked to a chair on the other side, facing away from the traumatic sight of Roy’s body. She was relieved when the detective seemed to understand, taking the chair himself, leaving the other spare chair beside her for Nathan.
‘Not sure I’d like an office with glass walls myself,’ Elliot said.
‘It was the interior designer’s idea. It was supposed to reflect our ethos of transparency.’ Keri shrugged. Never did it sound more pretentious than at that moment.
‘I suppose she wasn’t expecting this particular situation.’ The detective’s eyes drifted over her shoulder to the scene behind, then back to her face. ‘Tell me about Roy Sheppard.’
Keri darted a look at Nathan. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d seen poor Roy’s body. His expression was fixed into a cartoonish depiction of shock: wide eyes, mouth slightly agape, body held rigid. She slipped her hand into his and looked back across the desk.
‘Roy has been with us for about eighteen years. He’s… he was the nicest guy you could meet. Reliable, professional, kind, generous…’ Her voice faltered as the enormity of their loss hit her. She lifted her free hand to her trembling lips. ‘I don’t think you’ll find anyone with a bad word to say about him. The other staff, suppliers, customers, everyone liked him.’
‘What about his personal life?’
‘He was living in the US for a few years before he came to work with us. I’m not sure what he was doing there. He never really spoke about it. We speculated that it might have been a failed romance but–’ She shrugged sadly. ‘–we don’t know for sure. He lives alone but he has lots of friends and is always busy doing something. He liked taking up new hobbies. Mixology was his latest. Making cocktails,’ she said in answer to the puzzled look on the detective’s face.
‘Mixology, right.’ He shook his head as if rejecting this as a reason to be killed. ‘He lives here in Walthamstow?’
‘Yes, he has an apartment.’ She gave him the address.
‘Thank you, I know where that is.’
‘He has an allotment too. He’s a keen gardener.’ Memories brought a quivering smile. ‘He’d often arrive with bunches of carrots or big misshapen marrows and give them to anyone who wanted them.’ She spoke of other memories, other good times they’d spent together.
DI Elliot listened intently and when she’d finished, said, ‘Thank you, you’ve painted a good picture of Mr Sheppard.’ He glanced at Nathan, then kept his focus on Keri. ‘The front door was unlocked when you arrived?’
‘Yes, Roy always opened up. Nathan and I were usually in by nine, and the rest of the staff around nine thirty.’
‘And this morning?’
She looked at him blankly.
‘You said you were usually in by nine, what time did you arrive this morning?’
‘Oh.’ She looked to Nathan who shrugged helplessly. A dart of angry resentment that he was leaving it all to her made her pull her hand from his. ‘I think it was a few minutes after nine.’
‘And Mr Sheppard arrived at what time?’
‘Officially he didn’t have to be here till eight forty-five but he was always in way before that.’ Her expression brightened when she remembered. ‘The alarm. He’d have turned it off when he arrived. It’ll tell you what time it was deactivated.’
‘Good, thank you, I’ll have it checked.’ He frowned. ‘If you and your husband usually arrived at nine, and he was in at eight forty-five at the latest, it only gave someone a small window of opportunity to kill him.’
Keri wouldn’t ever forget her first sight of Roy’s blood-soaked body. ‘He was sitting where he always did. It looked as if he was engrossed in his computer. Until we were quite close, we didn’t realise there was a problem. Then we saw the blood.’ Her face creased with the dual attempt of handling her sorrow and processing what she’d seen. ‘It looked as if he hadn’t known what was coming.’ She looked at the detective, trying to read his expression. ‘He knew who killed him, didn’t he?’
Another thought hit her. ‘Oh God.’ She pressed her hands over her face.
‘What is it?’
There were tears in her eyes when she took her hands away. ‘Yesterday, late in the afternoon, Roy said he’d wanted to talk to me about something but I’d had a difficult day and brushed him off. I told him we’d talk this morning.’
Elliot’s frown returned. ‘He gave you no indication what it was about?’
‘No. But I wondered if it was about Tracy.’ Keri held a hand up to stop the questions she knew would follow. She took a deep breath before she could continue. ‘Tracy Wirick. She’s doing work experience for a month. Yesterday was her first day. I noticed she wasn’t here when I got back from my meeting yesterday and wondered where she was. That may have been what he wanted to talk about but I’ve no idea. It could have been about one of the suppliers, anything really.’
Elliot reached into his jacket pocket for a notebook and pen. ‘We’ll have a word with the young woman and see if she can tell us… Tracy?’
‘Wirick.’ Keri spelled out the surname.
He scribbled the name down, shut the notebook and put it away. ‘Is it usual? Taking on people for work experience?’
‘Not really.’ She wasn’t surprised when the detective’s eyebrow rose in question and heaved a sigh. ‘We get schools ringing us wanting us to take students who are either interested in the stonemasonry side of the business or the surveyor side. It’s unusual for someone to want to do work experience in reception, and very unu
sual for someone to walk in off the street like Tracy did.’
‘But you checked references, I assume?’
Keri gave him a sharp look. ‘Of course. In fact–’ She pointed towards the corner of the desk. ‘–if you open that top drawer, her CV’s there somewhere as I’d not got around to giving it to Roy to file.’
And she never would now. How were they going to cope without him? Over the last few years, they’d spoken about getting a junior office administrator to relieve Roy of some of the heavy workload, and to cover for him when he was off on holidays. But he’d resisted, saying each time that he preferred working on his own. He took holidays when the office closed for the first two weeks in August every year and the week over Christmas, plus he took the occasional day now and then. He’d never, that she could recall, taken a day off sick.
The detective was rifling through the drawer. ‘Here it is,’ he said, pulling stapled pages out. He put them on the desk, took out his notebook again and jotted down the details before returning them.
‘There have been no issues with suppliers or customers. Nobody who would have had a gripe with the company, Mr Sheppard, or either of you?’
‘I can’t think of anyone.’ She looked at Nathan. ‘Can you?’ When he looked at her blankly, she turned back to the detective. ‘We’ve a particularly good relationship with all our suppliers and customers. I can’t think of anyone.’
Elliot reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a business card. ‘You’ve had quite a shock. Later, you might think of something. If you do, you’ll get me here.’ He slid the card across the desk. ‘Final question, what about next of kin?’
‘He said there was nobody.’ He’d left it blank on his application form. She remembered querying it with him at the time and had felt sorry for him when he’d admitted to having no relatives. ‘I suppose we’re the closest to family he has. We’ll take care of the funeral, of course.’
‘Okay.’ The detective got to his feet. ‘That’s it for now. If you want to leave, I can have one of the officers lock up when the team are done and drop the keys to your home address.’
Keri, who had pictured having to hang around for hours trying to avoid looking at the body of a man she’d been so fond of, slumped in relief. ‘Oh, thank you. I think it would be better if we could get out of here.’
‘I might be able to get a car to take you home.’
‘Thank you, but no, that’s fine.’ She took her mobile from her pocket. ‘I’ll order a taxi to meet us outside.’
DI Elliot escorted them from the office, past the area that had been cordoned off. Keri knew he was trying to protect them from the hideous sight of Roy’s bloody body. She appreciated the kindness but she needed to say goodbye, and letting Nathan walk on with the detective she stood and stared across to where Roy still sat.
At his post to the end. He’d have liked that idea.
20
At home, Keri rang Abbie and Daniel. They were at a students’ union meeting in Edinburgh but they needed to hear about Roy from her before they heard it on the news or read it in the papers.
Both were shocked: Daniel stunned, Abbie distraught. Roy had been part of their lives for so long. He’d been at every birthday party, every Christmas and New Year celebration.
‘Who would have killed Roy?’ Abbie asked, her voice thick with tears. ‘He was the most unassuming man you could possibly meet.’
The same thought had been in Keri’s mind. ‘I don’t know. It’ll probably turn out to be a case of mistaken identity.’
Daniel agreed. ‘There’s no other explanation. It wasn’t as if you kept money or valuables in the office either. No reason for anyone to kill him.’
No reason at all.
Keri was wracked with grief and guilt. If she’d simply given Roy five minutes the previous day. Maybe she’d know why he died. Maybe… and this was the worst thought of all… she could have prevented it.
It would have helped to have been able to talk to Nathan but he’d closed in on himself as if the pain of loss were his alone.
Abbie and Daniel had wanted to come home immediately but she persuaded them not to, unable to handle their grief on top of hers. There was no guilt in keeping them away, they’d be with their friends, away from the tense, painful atmosphere that had settled around Keri and Nathan like a winter duvet. ‘Your dad and I will be okay,’ she told them when they asked was she sure. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow.’
The news of Roy’s murder had leaked and the phone rang all afternoon, one shocked voice after the other offering sympathy, expressing horror and dismay, asking unanswerable questions. Finally, Keri took the house phone off the hook and turned off her mobile.
She changed into thick winter pyjamas, wanting the comfort of their softness and their warmth to melt the chill that had settled in her core when she’d seen that blood-soaked body. She made a mug of hot chocolate and stretched out on the sofa in the living room with it cupped in her hands.
Every now and then, she heard the faint sound of Nathan’s mobile ringing and wondered why he hadn’t done as she had and switched it off. The vague notion that maybe he was waiting for a call from an unknown person… a female unknown person… flitted in and out of her mind. Perhaps tomorrow she’d bring herself to care.
She still hadn’t spoken to Nathan by the time she trudged upstairs to bed and lay awake waiting for him to join her. He didn’t and she wasn’t sure where or if he slept. She lay in their bed, tears rolling down her cheek to soak into the cotton pillowcase, wishing she could turn the clock back to that moment where she’d said no to Roy’s request, to have the opportunity to say what she should have done, that she always had time for him, for a man she’d held dear for so many years.
It was too late.
Guilt didn’t make a good bedfellow. Neither did grief. Sometime in the early hours, she pulled a robe over her pyjamas and went downstairs. She made coffee, opened the French doors, and headed out into the garden. Early morning dew wet her feet as she crossed to the furthest of the seating areas tucked away behind tall grasses that shushed in the slight breeze.
In the murky half-light, she sipped her coffee and let her thoughts wander. She’d tried to explain to Nathan once that this was her way of coming up with solutions to problems… letting her imagination run riot, bouncing from one vague idea to another until the pieces finally clicked into place.
But nothing made sense and she couldn’t come up with any explanation for why someone would want to kill Roy. It was easy to think of it as a case of mistaken identity but the more she considered that the less likely it became. Roy was… had been… an astute, clever man. He wouldn’t have let an unknown person into the building that early, certainly wouldn’t have turned his back on them.
It had to have been someone he knew and it followed, since they’d known each other so long, socialised together at times, it was also likely to be someone she knew.
That horrifying thought drowned out her worry about Nathan. Roy would have laughed at the thought that his death had given her something more important to think about. She could hear that strange raspy laugh of his now, it brought a smile and tears. She’d miss him so much.
Someone she knew.
Barry Morgan. She tried to laugh the thought away but it curled tendrils around her brain and no matter how hard she tried to shake it away, the idea stayed. Barry Morgan. Was it possible?
Keri put her empty mug down on the seat beside her. The breeze had picked up. She pulled her feet up and wrapped her arms around her knees for warmth as a shiver ran through her.
Guilt over her affair was making her paranoid, turning Barry into a monster. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it. Could he? He’d been so angry. And the wreath and the mangled rat were pretty gruesome… but murder… would he go that far to make her regret ending their affair? She’d like to be able to say he wasn’t that kind of man, but the sad truth was that she’d no idea what kind of man he was.
But Barry
was a stranger to Roy. He wouldn’t have let a stranger into reception that early, would he? Or, like Keri, had he been fooled by a sharp suit?
If only she knew what Roy had wanted to speak to her about.
Was it about Tracy? She hadn’t been in the office so it was logical to think it was something to do with her, but what could it be? And whatever it was, was it linked to his death? Keri shook her head at the far-fetched notion that the rather browbeaten young woman was somehow involved in Roy’s murder.
That detective, Elliot, his tie had been ludicrous, but his eyes were sharp. If there was something connecting Tracy to Roy’s death, he’d find out.
And if Barry Morgan were involved, he’d find that out too.
And Keri’s sordid secret would be revealed.
21
The sun had come up but there was little warmth in it, and none in the shady spot where Keri had chosen to sit. She was shivering by the time she went inside.
There was no sign of Nathan. She stood in the kitchen and debated whether to make more coffee or have a hot shower to warm up. The shower won, and it worked.
Thirty minutes later, warm and cosy, she went back to the kitchen for breakfast.
She’d heard Nathan moving around in their home office. When the kettle boiled, she went up and stood at the door. In a different time, she’d simply have pushed it open but now, uncomfortably aware she was nervous of what she might find, she rapped her knuckles against it and waited a second before turning the knob slowly.
She peered around the edge of the door. ‘Hi. You coming down for breakfast?’
When he turned from the computer to look at her, she was shocked at his pallor and the dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes.
Quick sympathy rushed through her. ‘Did you get any sleep?’
‘A bit.’
Less than she had, she guessed. She crossed to him, put an arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek. ‘Come and have something to eat.’ She took his hand and tugged. ‘Come on. Coffee will start your engine.’
The Couple in the Photograph Page 7
