“The SIM card is gone.”
Hang on, this was no lost phone—it had been interfered with. Would removing the SIM card erase any trace of Clara’s calls and texts? And if so, who would want to do that?
“My,” I said with a lightness I did not feel, “this is a puzzle. You’ll tell the police, won’t you? You should probably go right down there this minute. I’m sure it’s something they would want to know.”
I hoped to gauge Clara’s guilt in the matter by her reaction, but her eyes had fallen on the flip chart that lay across the desk.
“Did Mr. Berryfield have another idea?”
“No.” I picked up the flip chart to put it away. “I don’t know why I looked inside. Morbid curiosity, I suppose.”
“Let me see it again.” She set her jaw firmly. “I shouldn’t have reacted that way. I should be more professional. This is a decision about the exhibition, not my personal feelings.”
“All right. But you don’t need to look at all of them.”
Clara took the flip chart and took charge, going through each page from the beginning until she paused when she arrived at the highly shaded, gloomy scene with the figure at the top of the staircase and the shadowy form in the doorway behind. She squinted, and then removed her glasses and got quite close to the drawing, her nose almost touching it. She twitched an eyebrow.
“What do you see?” I asked.
She straightened up with a sniff. “Why did he draw it that way? Put a real person in the picture? Is that supposed to represent the actual crime?”
So, she thought the figure on the landing looked like Oona, too.
I moved the flip chart back behind the desk. “Zeno has a vivid imagination.” Except when it comes to exhibition displays. “There’s no need to concern ourselves with this. I’m going back to Middlebank— sorting through old furniture to see what we might be able to use. Let me know how you get on with the police, won’t you? Because you’re going to the station directly to tell them about your mobile, aren’t you?”
* * *
* * *
Clara promised she would and I believed her—although I’d left her standing in the middle of Oona’s office looking a bit at sea. I would follow up later.
At Middlebank, I ran up to my flat to change clothes—the cellar was not the place for a skirt and blouse and tights. I rummaged in the fridge and the pantry for a bite of lunch and ended up with buttered cream crackers and a morsel of cheese even a mouse might overlook. I searched for signs of Val and Bess’s morning meeting. They had tidied up the coffee service. I took this as a sign that the conversation ended well, and he would resign himself to losing a daughter to the big lights of New York City. And to a man. Now all Bess would need to do was explain it all over again to her identical twin.
Val had a class later in the afternoon on Wednesday, but I thought we’d still have time for the cellar. I sent a text.
Ready when you are.
Five minutes later, the front door buzzed.
I listened at the landing and heard muffled voices below. Then Mrs. Woolgar came as far as the first floor, saw me leaning over the railing above, and said, “There’s someone here to see you, Ms. Burke. A Mr. Kilpatrick. I’ve shown him to your office, but he didn’t stay there.”
Dom?
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Woolgar. I’ll be right down.”
Dom waited for me in the entry, arms locked at his sides and his hands flapping in a more agitated fashion than usual.
“Hello, Dom. Lovely of you to stop.” Unusual, too—Dom broke his routine only reluctantly.
“I saw his shoes,” Dom said.
“You saw his shoes?” I repeated. I was reminded there were times when the subject of a conversation with Dom had to be discovered in an oblique fashion, because a direct “What the bloody hell are you talking about?” would get you nowhere.
“Whose shoes did you see?”
“Zeno Berryfield. I saw Zeno Berryfield’s shoes. He went into the Charlotte. On Thursday.”
The most curious feeling came over me—a queasy sensation in my stomach combined with a lightness in my head as if I stood at the precipice of a great abyss, my toes hanging over the edge.
“Which Thursday, Dom? Last week? When Zeno was working at the Charlotte?”
“No, Thursday the week before. The day Oona was murdered.”
25
Mrs. Woolgar, I’m going to the police station with Dom. I’ll return . . . er . . . I’ll let you know when I’ll return.”
“Is everything all right, Ms. Burke?”
Did I look as if I was about to be sick? Because that’s how I felt.
“Fine. It’s . . . I’ll let you know.”
I almost took Dom’s arm as we hurried out the door and down the pavement, but I caught myself in time.
“The thing is, Dom, Zeno wasn’t around on that Thursday. He was in Bristol. Police have confirmed that. So, couldn’t it have been someone else you saw who wears the same sort of shoes?”
“I saw his shoes.”
High shine, black oxfords—an integral part of Zeno’s overall persona.
“And he was wearing that teal suit?” I asked.
“No.”
My heart sank and my steps slowed. We had reached Upper Borough Walls and would pass the abbey and soon be on Manvers Street.
“But that’s all he ever wears. How do you know it was Zeno?”
“His shoes,” Dom insisted. “And . . . it’s a clue. Like on Midsomer Murders.”
“Oh, do you like that program?”
Dom launched into a description of his and Margo’s television viewing habits, which included watching countless reruns of the long-running Midsomer as well as the old American program Murder, She Wrote.
I respected Dom on so many levels, and he’d saved me from more than one computer disaster during my time as assistant to the assistant curator at the Jane Austen Centre. But he’d never been as aware of people as he had machines, and now—as we marched our way to the police station—I feared that his love of television murder mysteries had led him to believe he might hold the key to the case.
But there was no turning back now. At the station, I hurried up the ramp after Dom and into the lobby.
“Ms. Burke,” Sergeant Owen said in greeting.
Dom looked at his surroundings and leaned over the desk to peer at the sergeant’s computer screen.
“Hello, good afternoon. This is Dom Kilpatrick. We’re here to see Detective Sergeant Hopgood about the Oona Atherton murder enquiry.” Stating the obvious, but I wanted to set a good example for Dom. “Detective Constable Pye would be an adequate substitute. It’s quite . . .”
“Important. Yes. Let me see what I can do for you. Would you like to take a seat?”
We sat in chairs along the wall. New situations often threw a spanner in the works for Dom, so I thought I’d best prepare him. “When you tell the police what you saw, they might ask the same questions over and over again,” I said.
“In an attempt to break my story,” Dom said, nodding.
“No, only to find out if you might remember anything else. DC Pye says that happens often—witnesses don’t remember all the details the first time. Asking again can help to jog your memory.”
“Because of his shoes. I didn’t remember the first time you asked me. Well, I did remember, but I didn’t.” Dom frowned at what he’d said—too subjective for his own taste.
* * *
* * *
Introductions had been made, and we’d settled across the table from the police officers. Dom didn’t begin until DC Pye had his pen poised over his open pocket notebook.
“On Wednesdays at eleven o’clock and on Thursdays at three o’clock, I go to the Fashion Museum inside the Assembly Rooms to run a virus check. On Wednesdays, I have coffee and a
McVitie’s Penguin, and on Thursdays, I have tea and a fruit scone.”
He paused and watched Pye write in his notebook. Hopgood nodded and said, “Go on.”
“Hayley has told you about my sighting on last Wednesday week. That’s when I saw the man I know now as Zeno Berryfield walk down Circus Place and into the side door of the Charlotte. That door leads to offices and storage. We used that area five years ago for an exhibition called Jane and Siblings: The Austens at Home. We reported rising damp in the storage areas.”
Another pause while Kenny Pye wrote.
“It still smells a bit musty,” I said, filling in the silence. Dom continued.
“Last Thursday week, I walked up Gay Street as I always do and turned right at the Circus and right again on Bennett Street.” Dom shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose and watched as Kenny Pye wrote in his pocket notepad. “It was ten minutes before three o’clock. The courtyard in front of the Assembly Rooms was empty and there was no bus, and so I could see him across the road. He walked into the same door.”
“This was Zeno Berryfield—the man you’d seen the day before? The man Ms. Burke introduced you to yesterday?”
“Yes.”
This was the sticking point, because the police had confirmed Zeno’s alibi—he’d traveled by train from Bath to Bristol in the morning and returned that evening. They’d caught him on CCTV.
“And what made you think it was Mr. Berryfield?”
“I didn’t think that when I saw him, because he was wearing other clothes—brown trousers, brown coat, and a hat pulled down low. But his shoes are shiny, and the sun hit them when he walked. Those are dress shoes. Don’t wear dress shoes with everyday clothes. That’s what Margo says.”
Silence. Hopgood’s fingers drummed on the table. His caterpillar eyebrows crept closer and closer to each other—a movement so slow it was difficult to see—until they met in the middle. DC Pye jotted in his notepad. Dom cleared his throat.
“A witness often doesn’t remember everything the first time he is interviewed. When Hayley questioned me”—I did my best to look innocent of impersonating a police officer—“about seeing Zeno Berryfield the day before Oona was murdered, I did not associate it with the second time I saw him.”
“Mr. Kilpatrick,” Hopgood said, using his kindly-uncle voice, “We’d like you to take a look at CCTV footage of both Bath Spa and Bristol Temple Meads rail stations and see if you can find this person. I’m afraid it might take a while, and it could be rather boring work.”
“Will you do an E-FIT of my description?” Dom asked eagerly.
“An E-FIT of a fellow in a hat that covers his face and who is wearing high-shine oxfords? We’d better hold off on that—if you see him on the film, we can lift that and have an actual photo, not just a computer mock-up.”
Hopgood went off to set up the CCTV viewing. Dom rang the Centre to say he needed the afternoon off, and then he rang Margo, and his voice became more animated. “CCTV!” he told her. “I might be a vital witness—the one that no one knows about, just like in the episode last evening with . . .”
I stepped out of Interview #1 and caught Hopgood returning.
“Dom’s very observant,” I said. “He isn’t making this up.”
“I believe he’s telling the truth as he saw it,” Hopgood replied. “But we have quite clear evidence of Mr. Berryfield coming and going that day. And regardless of a person’s talents at computers and that sort of thing, it doesn’t mean he is the best witness. Still, I’m willing to give Mr. Kilpatrick the time to find this out himself. Pye will stay with him to go through the CCTV.”
“Will it take long?”
“They’ll have to look at the entire day again,” Hopgood said. “I’m not sure how quickly Mr. Kilpatrick can work through it.”
Dom was a perfectionist—if he could, he would take half a day to explain a software update before he ever installed it. I looked at the time—gone two thirty already. The immediate excitement at his possible sighting began to fade.
“Will it be all right if I go now? Will you text me if Dom sees anything familiar? I’ll be working in the cellar at Middlebank, but I can come straight back. Wait now—did Clara ring or stop by?”
“Ms. Powell? Not that I know of. Why?”
“She found her phone—the one she lost the day Oona was killed.”
“Where?”
“In her bag. The bag she carries every day and the one she had with her the day of the murder.” I didn’t need a detective sergeant to tell me how dodgy that sounded. “The SIM card is missing. She has no idea what happened.”
“Is that so?” Hopgood muttered. “That reminds me, Ms. Burke, about that paper in Ms. Powell’s coat pocket yesterday. We found fingerprints.”
“Hers? But you would, because she touched it yesterday—so did I.”
“Yes, quite a few partials due to the paper being crumpled up. But no, these were quite clear. Let me show you.” Hopgood cast his gaze round the corridor, spotted a paper recycling bin in an open office, and rummaged round until he came up with a single sheet of paper. “I’m going to give you this paper, and I want you to take it with both hands. Right?”
He held it out, and I did as I was told.
“There now, describe how you’re holding the paper—where would your fingerprints appear?”
I looked down. “All four fingers on both hands are touching the back side of the paper, and my thumbs are pressing on the top side. Clara’s fingerprints were the same?” I knew how bad that would be. Clara hadn’t wanted to touch the paper yesterday, so the fingerprints would’ve come from an earlier time.
“We found Ms. Powell’s fingerprints on the back side of the sheet, but nothing on the top side—no thumbprints at all.”
I lifted my thumbs off the sheet. “How would she do that?”
“If the page had been at the bottom of a stack—”
“Ah! Her thumbs would’ve landed on whatever the top sheet was—she wouldn’t’ve seen Oona’s notes at the bottom. These could’ve been planted!”
“Planted or planned, Ms. Burke.” Hopgood’s phone went off. “Now, mind—”
“Yes, mind how I go,” I said.
I walked out to the pavement buttoning my coat. What could I do now? I could get back to work—my own work, I resolved, but before I moved, Sergeant Hopgood came out the door of the station. “Ms. Burke,” he called, and stuck his hands in his trouser pockets against the cold. “One more thing. About that office Mr. Berryfield said he’d gone to in Bristol—any joy there?”
“Oh. What was it called . . .”
Hopgood took his phone out and checked. “TKB Events. Sound familiar?”
“Not really, but I’ll give it a think.”
TKB, I repeated to myself as I left. TKB, I repeated as I nipped into the newsagent at the top of Manvers for a packet of crisps. I crossed the road, turned my collar up against the cold, and stood looking over the Parade Gardens. TKB.
As I crunched on crisps, TKB changed themselves into another trio of letters—QAD. QAD—Queen Anne desk. I tossed my empty packet into a bin and continued on my way to Middlebank. QAD—Lady Fowling’s code for where the first edition of Murder Must Advertise lay. Soon we would know that for certain.
My feet took me the long way round. Clara had not gone to the police about her mobile, and so I would look for her in Oona’s office. I cut over and turned up Barton Street, which became Gay Street, turning right at the Circus and right again on Bennett.
QAD. Queen Anne desk, I repeated to myself. QAD. TKB Events. TKB.
From the other side of the road I saw him at the entrance to the Charlotte. Tommy King-Barnes. TKB.
“You!” I shouted, pointing at him.
Tommy looked round in bewilderment and then saw me striding toward him.
“Hayley?”
“Are you TKB Events?” I accused.
“Ah, now,” he said, his hands raised defensively, “that wasn’t one of Zeno’s references.”
“Do you have an office in Bristol?”
“TKB is an umbrella company for my many and diverse businesses that—”
“Did you let Zeno use your Bristol office on the day Oona was murdered?”
That shut him up—at least for a moment.
“Hang on, what are you asking?”
“You heard what I asked.”
“There’s nothing wrong with giving a mate a place to work that isn’t in a sea of hot desks.” Tommy lifted a forefinger. “He wasn’t working for you then, was he? So, you’ve no cause to complain where he spent his time.”
“He was in Bristol the whole day?”
“I’m not his minder,” Tommy said, holding up his hands as if to ward me off.
“In other words, you have no idea where he was.” My gaze swept the surrounding area as if a man in high-shine oxfords and brown trousers might be lurking behind one of the bollards. “Have you seen him today?”
“Zeno’s never one to hold still long—not when he’s possessed of an idea.” Tommy stepped aside to let a small group into the Charlotte. “Welcome to Druids Then and Now, I do hope you enjoy your visit.”
He watched them enter, and when he turned back and saw me, he flinched, as if he’d forgotten my presence. I kept my eyes on him and took a step forward. “Have you seen him today?” I repeated.
Tommy glanced at the scene behind me and screwed up his face in concentration. “Oh, wait now, he said he needed to nip up to London.”
“London?”
“For the exhibition. A good price on flat-pack display cases. They’re all the rage—but you probably know that.”
Tommy’s phone rang—Enya, Middle Earth. He looked down at it and gave me a sheepish grin. “Sorry, Hayley,” he said, and backed up into the Charlotte. I was about to follow, but a text pinged on my mobile.
From Sergeant Hopgood.
CCTV results. Can you take a look?
Murder Is a Must Page 27
