by Deborah Lucy
‘Why did she give up work, do you know?’ Temple asked.
Forrester looked vague and his eyes left Temple’s face to focus on a white fleck on his trousers, which his finger lightly picked at as he spoke.
‘She, she was fine all the time she was living with me, I didn’t notice any such behaviour. But when she married, she seemed to become increasingly highly strung; this is the only way I can describe it. Maxwell said she didn’t like him having to go away so often, being separated for days at a time. It made her moody. Got worse when she gave up work. He said she’d have mood swings, becoming depressed when they were apart but conversely, very happy as soon as they were together again.’
‘And this made her give up work?’ asked Temple.
‘Yes, Maxwell told me that eventually she found it hard to function at work. He actually got her professional help and she took anti-depressants as a result. She had to give it up in the end. She didn’t seem to change that much to me, she was still her normal self.’
‘I’ll check with her GP, thank you for that. Did you know her routine, the things she did during the day?’ asked Temple.
‘She shopped, she went riding, went to the local pub. When Maxwell wasn’t there, she did all this on her own and she was on her own more often than not. But we would meet on a regular basis.’
‘What about friends, acquaintances?’ Temple asked.
‘Well, she had Caroline, Caroline Black but then Caroline also continued working – she’s also a hostess – so they saw each other when they could. That’s why I think she may have been a little lonely with Maxwell still at work.’
‘Do you know if she was bothered by anyone, Mr Forrester?’ asked Temple.
‘What do you mean by “bothered”? Say what you mean, Inspector.’
‘Well, did she ever express any concerns to you about anyone – or did she confide any extra marital relationships to you?’
‘No, she didn’t. Why do you ask?’ said Forrester.
‘Well, if you think Maxwell was not responsible for her death, it means someone else was and I need to find that person.’
‘She certainly confided no such thing to me.’
‘Just one more thing; have you ever photographed Greta in Savernake Forest?’ Temple watched Forrester intently.
‘No, I haven’t, it’s not somewhere we’ve been together,’ he replied.
‘That’s enough for me at the moment, Mr Forrester,’ said Temple. ‘Do you have a contact number for Caroline Black? My officers will need to speak to her.’
‘Yes, I have her mobile number. I’ll ring her and break the news.’ Brett Forrester provided Temple with the number.
‘I’ll send my investigator to go and see her. James Ashton-Jones attends a boarding school, I understand. We will need to speak to him as well.’
‘I’ll contact the school. I think Maxwell’s friend, Jonathan Silvester, will need to be contacted too; between us we’ll make some arrangements to see that James is picked up,’ Forrester replied.
Temple could resist no longer.
‘And Alice, sir, was she a friend of Greta’s?’ he asked.
‘No, Inspector. Of course, I’ve explained what’s happened, but they didn’t know one another. Alice is a friend of mine.’ Forrester put an emphasis on the word ‘friend’; Temple pondered the forty-year age gap. He wanted to know how they met, how it worked but he knew he couldn’t ask without alienating Forrester, who, he felt, was already irritated by his questions regarding Greta.
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll call back in a day or so. If you have no questions for me, I’ll get back to the station.’
Temple drove back to Marlborough Police Station. What was it Forrester had said about the model? She had been very trusting. His thoughts were interrupted by his phone bleeping with a text message from Sloper, telling him he had finished with Dianna Forrester. Temple pulled over and rang him.
‘How did it go, Si?’
‘Got some good background stuff. She’s a strange woman, Dianna Forrester. She doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy for Greta, almost like this was her just deserts. Needless to say, they didn’t get on. Greta was convent educated at a day school near where they lived with Dianna’s father, after they were abandoned by Brett Forrester. That’s how she puts it, that he abandoned them and then they divorced. Dianna was a committed Catholic and between her and her father, the retired Major, they attempted to instil discipline into Greta’s life. Dianna Forrester thought this was necessary because it was obvious to her that Greta was very pretty but also very wilful. She says that she was trying to protect her as any mother would against the attentions of boys. She describes Greta as becoming increasingly rebellious as a teenager, make up, boys and so on, and they basically entered what she described as a battle of wills.
‘This came to a head when Greta told her she had had sex with a local boy; she says she had just turned fifteen. Dianna said that their relationship deteriorated as she tried to exert more control over Greta. Greta also told her mother that a priest at the convent had made a pass at her. Mrs Forrester says that this is when they had a huge row and Greta left to live with her father. She didn’t believe Greta about the priest. Thought she just said it as an attack against her religion. She was fierce when it came to talking about Brett Forrester. Said he was a bohemian type character, had no regard for the rules of society. In fact, near the end, she worked herself up into a right state, saying they were both pretty much damned by the devil.’
‘What prompted that response?’ Temple asked.
‘I asked her if she visited Greta when she lived with her father.’
‘Had she?’
‘Yes, once. The visit was not long after Greta first moved in. It was a flat in London by the way. She hadn’t registered with a school and was being left pretty much to her own devices. By the time of her visit, she said she sensed that Greta had changed to the point that she said their mother and daughter relationship was basically over. In fact, her exact words were – I’ve written it down – “evil had found evil.”’
CHAPTER 10
SITTING IN HIS car, Temple made a call.
‘Hello, Tara. It’s DI Temple.’
‘Hang on.’ He listened to stiletto heels clipping across a wooden floor almost in tandem with the beat of ‘Voulez-Vouz’ playing loudly in the background. Then he heard the sound of a door opening and shutting and a metal bolt being put across it.
‘What do you want?’ she hissed.
‘I need your help.’ He paused. ‘King’s out.’
‘I know,’ she said quickly. ‘He turned up here at the pub, looking for somewhere to stay.’
Temple had been banking on King sticking to old habits.
‘Where are you now?’ asked Temple.
‘I’m in The White Bear, at Trowbridge, I work here now,’ she said in a low voice.
‘I need to know what King’s up to, Tara.’
‘I’m not doing it again. I was fucking bricking it for months. Fuck off, I ain’t doing it.’ Tara grew increasingly nervous with the conversation. By talking to Temple, she was putting herself in danger, but at the same time, having King around was equally dangerous. She knew King saw her boyfriend, Zac Finch, as an easy touch and that Zac was intimidated by him. She knew all about King and the dregs he associated with and hated the way he exerted control.
Zac had inherited a nice little garage from his father and was himself a good mechanic. It had steady regular custom, which allowed it to tick over. She was proud of him. It was clean and legit, and then King had come along. Before Temple put him inside, King used the garage as a base which acted like a magnet for all his associates. When Temple pleaded for her help to put King away, she was ready to oblige. She knew far more than she let on, but it was enough to help convict King. Then, when he was let out, King made the garage his first port of call.
‘It’s too late. My house was set alight last night. I know it was him, Tara. You know what he’s like. This
isn’t a game. He threatened my family and you of all people know he doesn’t forget. Where is he now? Where is he?’
Tara sensed the desperation in Temple’s voice. She tried to hold out.
‘I don’t know,’ she lied. She shouldn’t even be talking to him. It was too dangerous.
‘Yes, you do, where is he, Tara?’ insisted Temple.
There was silence.
‘He’s with us. He’s fucking with us, in Finch’s flat, which is why I can’t do this.’
She was scared. Scared of King. He was premiership nasty and she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. But if he ever found out that she’d helped Temple put him away, she knew he would kill her.
Temple heard the rising panic in Tara’s voice. He needed her help and was desperate for her not to end the call.
‘All right, all right. Can you just do a favour for me? Can you just ring me and let me know what he’s up to? I need time to sort my family out, to get them out of the way. That’s all I ask. Get back to me later today.’
‘OK, but don’t ring me again,’ she said.
Temple ended the call, relieved that he had at least located King. He just had to wait and hope for Tara to keep her word. But he knew he couldn’t wait too long.
He drove towards the Medical Centre in George Lane at Marlborough, where Greta was registered. After explaining the purpose of his visit, he was shown into a waiting room and after a short wait, Greta’s GP collected him.
He introduced himself to Temple. ‘I’m Dr Williamson. We’ll go into the surgery. All the patient notes will be on my computer.’
‘I just wanted some background information on Greta, if you can give it.’
‘Of course, I’ll cooperate as far as I can.’
‘The post-mortem showed that Greta was nine weeks pregnant. Had she been to see you in the run up to her death?’
‘Yes. That would have been the last time I saw her. Three weeks ago, I gave her a pregnancy test here in the surgery.’
‘Don’t patients usually do that for themselves?’ asked Temple.
‘They do, but we need to be sure so we do another. Especially in Greta’s case.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, she came in to tell me her news and I wanted to check that she hadn’t misread her own pregnancy test. I’d have to book her in for a scan quickly if it was positive, which it was, of course. It was important for me to see the test for myself as she was on medication and we had to talk about that.’
‘What was the medication? Her father told me that she was on anti-depressants,’ Temple said. He looked back in his notes to the name of the medication he had found in the bathroom at Wedwellow House; the doctor confirmed them to be the same as prescribed.
‘Yes, she was. As I understand it, she had a mild form of cyclothymia.’
‘Which is what exactly? How does that manifest itself?’ asked Temple.
‘Her husband expressed particular concern saying that she was becoming increasingly depressed when they were apart. From memory, he’s a pilot. She displayed other behaviour too, such as excessive spending and paranoia. I referred her to a psychiatrist who diagnosed her as suffering from a mild form of cyclothymia which is often a precursor to bipolar disorder. It sometimes has a hereditary aspect. An ‘attack’ or ‘episode’ is usually triggered by an event, or experience, usually a sad or traumatic event.’
‘So would this be her general behaviour?’ asked Temple.
‘No, not by any means. This was how she might behave when going through an episode but this was treatable, manageable and in between these times, she was able to function perfectly normally. I mean, if you’d met her you might not even think there was anything wrong. Her husband was particularly concerned about the excessive spending, I remember. The key was recognizing the symptoms of an ‘attack’ if you like, before it took hold. She was determined to manage it, I mean, she understood what was happening. You might want to speak to the psychiatrist for more background.’
‘Yes, I would. This is really helpful. And the pregnancy, was she happy about that?’
‘She did appear to be, yes. We discussed ongoing support throughout the pregnancy and made a series of appointments.’
‘I take it there was no issue around who the father was?’
‘I assumed it was Mr Ashton-Jones.’
Temple left the surgery and went back to the police station to make contact with the psychiatrist. He found Sloper in the incident room and interrupted him looking at the photographs of the scene taken by the CSI.
‘Anything I’ve missed?’ asked Temple, suppressing his paranoia of Sloper constantly checking on him.
‘Just having another look-see,’ replied Sloper, as he thumbed through the photographs contained in a number of blue A5 sized books.
‘Have you got the photographs of the body there?’
‘Oh, you want a look at them too, do you?’ Sloper smiled as he handed the book he was looking at to Temple.
‘I want to check something,’ said Temple, as he took the photographs from his hands.
Sloper put on his jacket to leave. Temple leafed through the album of the photos taken by Jackie Newly. Yes, it was as he’d thought. The photo confirmed a birthmark on the inside of Greta’s right thigh. Temple had seen the same mark in one of the photos on Brett Forrester’s wall. Temple wondered at the circumstances in which Brett Forrester could come to take such intimate photographs of his own daughter.
CHAPTER 11
LATER, AT SWINDON Police Station, Sloper looked over the shoulder of a female PCSO as they viewed CCTV from The Palace night club in search of Marcus Hussain.
‘That’s him, that’s him leaving there. He’s alone,’ exclaimed Sloper, looking at the black and white, grainy image of Hussain. ‘It’s 1.15 a.m., he said he left The Palace at 2.15 or 2.30, that’s an hour spare. There’s still time for him to have gone to Ramsbury.’ They continued to watch the image.
‘He’s walking round the back to the car park, no sign of him being drunk. He’s getting in a car – that’s a Porsche. I bet it was Greta’s, the cheeky bastard. He told us he’d left it at the garage.’
Sloper’s inquiries with ANPR confirmed that Hussain had driven out of Swindon in the general direction of Ramsbury in Greta’s car. Sloper rang Temple.
‘He’s lied to us, so we need to interview him again. The super’s signed a twelve hour extension for us, so he’s not going anywhere,’ explained Sloper.
‘OK, set it up, get the brief in. Make sure his DNA has been sent up to the lab.’
‘It has, I’ve checked, Jackie Newly sorted that. We should have a result very shortly,’ replied Sloper.
‘Good. I’ll chase Jackie up again later if necessary. If it’s Hussain’s DNA, he’s lied about not being with her that night. It doesn’t necessarily make him her killer,’ said Temple.
‘He’s our man, I’m sure of it,’ replied Sloper, eager to put Hussain under pressure to explain his lies.
‘I’ve just had a call from the Financial Investigators so I’m going to HQ to see them. I’ll see you at Swindon in a couple of hours.’
Temple drove to the Headquarters complex. A financial profile of Maxwell and Greta Ashton-Jones was handed to him by DC Graham Mellor.
‘As I told Simon Sloper, they were pretty well off, so on the face of it, there were no apparent money worries. He has his British Airways income and other payments coming in. Maxwell Ashton-Jones had a large financial payout of life insurance about fourteen years ago, when his first wife, Olivia, died; £350,000 from Prudential Insurance. We’re going through the bank accounts. It’s taking a little time as there is a fair bit of activity and we’re looking for anything unusual amongst the usual utility bills and so on.’
‘Look for a cash withdrawal for £2,000 in the last three months …’
‘Will do. There are a number of ISAs and offshore companies registered in Panama and Lichtenstein. There will be accounts behind these but we won’t be ab
le to penetrate the financial jurisdiction in these countries.’
‘Thanks, Graham. How much was Greta Ashton-Jones insured for, do we know yet?’
‘Yes, there’s a policy for £350,000 with Zurich Insurance. Two dead wives is pretty unlucky,’ said Mellor, sarcastically.
‘And financially lucrative. So he’ll have netted £700 grand from the deaths of two wives. I’ll go and speak to the Interpol liaison officer about getting me the case file on the death in Saudi. How long before you complete, Graham?’
‘Another twenty-four hours. There are a range of investments, the usual sort of thing. Looks like he could be your man, though.’
‘Give me a call soon as you know,’ replied Temple.
Impatient for news on the progress of the DNA, Temple rang Jackie Newly.
‘Anything for me yet, Jackie?’ he asked.
‘Not yet, boss, you must have read my mind. I’ve literally just come off the phone to the lab guys. They assure me it won’t be long now.’
‘I could do with it in the next few hours, keep on to them.’
With an appointment booked at Salisbury Hospital to see Greta’s psychiatrist, Temple also took the opportunity to see Dianna Forrester. Her comment to Sloper that ‘evil had found evil’ had kept him wondering and he needed to question her to compare what Brett Forrester had said about Greta. He drove to Harnham and found himself at a modest terraced house. Dianna Forrester answered the door to him and he went inside.
Facing Temple, as he entered the hall, was a large wooden crucifix that hung on the wall, with rosary beads strung through. Temple wondered if it was supposed to act as some sort of Catholic feng shui. The house was tastefully furnished and so tidy it was almost holy; Temple offered to remove his shoes.
‘There’s really no need, Inspector, come into the kitchen,’ Dianna Forrester instructed.
He followed her and they both sat down at a pine table. Her face was showing the strain of someone who was stoic and desperately trying to bear the pain of her tragic loss. Her swollen eyes were testament to the fact that she’d cried long hours in private when she was overwhelmed by rushes of grief. But now she sat across from him composed.
