“Will do.” Ben scuttled out, hiding his delighted smile.
“He’s showing promise,” Pru said once he was out of earshot.
“Reminds me of you.” Robin steepled his fingers in thought. All day he’d been waiting for something significant to happen. A stupidly superstitious feeling, one that would probably come to nothing, but it meant that when the phone rang, he immediately snatched it up.
“Got a call for you, sir.” The front-desk sergeant’s solid tones came down the line. “A woman, and she’s being cagey about her name, but she insists she has to talk to you and you alone, being the officer in charge of the case.”
Robin blew out his cheeks. Would his “something significant” turn out to be nothing more than a nuisance call from a person who brought little to the mix other than sharing a vision she’d had, or relaying a message from beyond the grave? “Okay. Put her through.”
Pru pointed at the door and made a phone gesture with her hand, then slipped out to take a call in the incident room.
“Sorry, sir. The bloody line’s just gone dead.” The desk sergeant huffed. “The system’s been a pain in the arse since they started the road works outside. I’ll try to ring her back.”
“Thanks.” Robin put the handset back, got up from his desk, stretched his legs, then peered out at his team. Alison, catching his eye, immediately jerked her computer mouse, maybe caught in the act of viewing something she shouldn’t. The others appeared to be doing what they were supposed to, although from Pru’s expression, he guessed her phone call wasn’t what she wanted to hear. When she’d put the phone down, he strolled over and perched on her desk. “Bad news?”
“Sort of. That was forensics, coming through to me as you were occupied. Whoever our dead woman is, she’s not Becky Bairstow. Dental records show no real similarity.”
Robin drummed the desk. “Bloody brilliant. Back to square one.” The harsh ringing of his phone rescued him from the ensuing discussion, as people began moaning about a case that seemed to be going nowhere.
“Hello?”
“Got the lady back again.” The desk sergeant sounded pleased with himself. “Second time lucky.”
“Inspector?” The voice was brisk, efficient, and younger than Robin had expected.
“Speaking.”
“I’m Becky Bairstow. I believe you’ve been looking for me.”
Robin swallowed hard. “We have indeed.” But clearly in the wrong place.
Becky Bairstow had been en route to Abbotston—and to present herself live and kicking for inspection—when she’d rung to ensure somebody of appropriate rank was there to see her. She’d been briefly apologetic and had promised to explain everything when she arrived. Robin and Pru waited for her in reception, hoping that the odd representatives of the media who’d been lurking about on and off wouldn’t spot and recognise her until they had the answers they needed. That mop of auburn hair could be a giveaway.
When she did appear, the hair wasn’t the only striking part about her. Dark eyes, legs up to her armpits, she was the sort of woman capable of making a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from White Stuff look like haute couture.
How had she managed to hide herself away for so long?
They made the introductions and took her to an interview room, where Robin assured her she wasn’t being interviewed formally.
“Thank goodness for that. I seem to have caused you a lot of trouble, for which I apologise, but I didn’t realise what was going on until yesterday when I saw something on the web. I’d have rung, but face-to-face is better. I’ve just flown in from Stuttgart.” She paused, leaving Robin with the feeling he’d been steamrollered by words and force of personality. He resisted saying that it wasn’t only them she owed an explanation to, not wanting to risk putting her back up, but he couldn’t drag his thoughts away from Andy Hales and how the bloke must be feeling, and would feel when he knew the truth.
“Have you been in Stuttgart all this time?” he asked with a smile he hoped didn’t look too forced.
“No, although I’m likely to be there a while longer, as my partner’s doing some work there. I’ve been travelling to the places I had on my bucket list, ending with the Mercedes Benz museum.”
“You’re lucky to be able to do that.”
“Lucky’s the word, all right. Believe it or not, I won the lottery.”
“Lottery?” Robin and Pru shared a disbelieving glance.
“Yes. Enough to buy myself a sabbatical. Easy when you’re self-employed.” Easy to check too. “I opted for no publicity, though.”
“Didn’t want friends and family to come calling?” The sarcasm in Pru’s voice rang through.
“That makes me sound rather harsh. I’m not, I promise you.” Ms. Bairstow shook her head bleakly. “Look, I have no immediate family—I was orphaned in a car crash when I was fifteen—and my relationship with Andy was in the doldrums. It came at an ideal time to break free.”
“You didn’t bother to say goodbye to him?” This beggared belief. “Has he spent all this time thinking you were dead while you were living the life of Riley?”
“No, it’s not like that.” She drummed the table. “I didn’t say goodbye at first. He’s very clingy and I didn’t want him trying to dissuade me from going. We didn’t live together, so I decided I should simply pack up where I was renting and send him a letter after a few days to say I’d gone for a short break. Those days turned into weeks.”
“During which he reported you missing and the police wasted time trying to find you? Don’t you think we have better things to do?” Ms. Bairstow was winding Robin up almost as much as Howarth did, and with more valid reason.
“Of course. When I found out he’d reported me as missing—I guess he couldn’t believe that I’d ditched him—I rang to say I was safe and told him to get off my back.”
“Then why the hell didn’t he tell us so we could take your name off the list?” Pru, clearly fuming, slammed her notebook on the table.
“You’d have to ask him that. I assumed he’d done so, up until yesterday.”
It sounded unlikely, but was it true? Even the most rational of people could act irrationally. They’d have to let the Met know so they could pursue a charge of wasting police time—if the CPS felt it was worth it—although Andy Hales would be the one in the firing line, not Becky Bairstow.
Robin was convinced they hadn’t been told everything. “Okay, I’m finding it really hard to believe that in this age of social media, you didn’t make a single post or comment about your bucket-list tour. Or put a single photo on Instagram.”
She snorted. “I’ve done social media, and I’m fed up with it. If it isn’t nastiness, it’s people tweeting about being on the bus going past the baker’s or what they’re having in their sandwiches. Pathetic trivia.”
Robin, much to his disappointment, had to agree. He despaired about the constant stream of pictures of people’s cats that friends were supposed to drool over, or posts giving every little detail about their wonderful children.
Pru rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. As bad as Christmas letters. You know, ‘Our Olivia is taking her A levels though she’s only eight.’”
Robin let the conversation carry on. Pru, who appeared to have calmed down—or at least pretended to—had put on her most sympathetic smile and was evidently taking this somewhere, even if he couldn’t immediately identify the destination.
“Them as well.” Ms. Bairstow groaned. “I thought I was the only one in the world who hated those things. People boast in a way they never would face-to-face. Because you’re not there to give them a mouthful.”
Had Andy Hales got a “mouthful” from this evidently belligerent woman? And maybe he’d kept the missing-persons report active as some sort of revenge at being dumped in such a casual, heartless manner? She certainly provoked strong reactions, and Pru’s thoughts were clearly running down the same line, given her next remark.
“True. And it’s the same with
the negative stuff. People make remarks in a Facebook comment they’d never say face-to-face.”
“Tell me about it.” The interviewee winced.
“Have you been trolled?” Pru’s voice, calm and considerate, would have put the wariest person at ease.
Ms. Bairstow shrugged, wrinkling her nose and obviously trying to find the right words, or at least attempting to give the impression that was what she was doing. “A bit. Also subjected to a bit of unwanted interest. When you enter the land of the nerds, you come across some weird people.”
“Enough to make you want to disappear for a while?”
“No!” The reply verged on the lady protesting too much. “I can look after myself.”
Robin intertwined his fingers, then clenched them to the point they hurt. Why was his sergeant asking about things which didn’t seem relevant to the case? He had a dead, still-unidentified woman to find justice for and a living, named woman in front of him.
Named. Of course. That’s where Pru was going.
“Anyway,” Ms. Bairstow continued, “I’ve always used a username online rather than my real name. It’s easier.”
“A username like ‘Trowelgirl’?”
Ms. Bairstow flinched as though she’d been slapped, looking from Pru to Robin and back again as though following a rally at Wimbledon. “How the hell did you know?”
If this was The Woman, Robin could understand why she’d got the metal detectorists in a flutter. Just because he was gay didn’t mean he couldn’t recognise a pretty face or a good figure or undeniable sex appeal. Having seen the investigational light on the road to this particular Damascus, he picked up the questioning. “How do you think we know?”
“Charlie sodding Howarth, I guess. Can’t keep his big gob shut.”
Robin caught Pru’s astonishment, swiftly hidden, out of the corner of his eye and hoped their interviewee hadn’t registered it. “He’s certainly voluble. Let’s have your side of the story.”
“I’d be glad to. I suppose it isn’t quite what he told you.” She raised a quizzical and immaculately shaped eyebrow. “He’s an old pal. Friend of mine used to go out with him, back in uni days. He got in touch and asked for a favour. Culdover’s not so far to get to on the train, and I thought it would be a laugh. He wanted to know what was going on among the amateur community.”
“But why would he need a spy in their camp?”
“He didn’t trust them. Suspected they were at risk of spoiling some of the local sites, poking around where they shouldn’t. Somebody has been digging at a couple of scheduled sites locally, and he had his money on it being the Culdover mob.”
Trying to catch somebody digging would be an explanation for why Howarth had been up at Culford out of hours, although it could equally be an effective cover story. And it would have been imperative to put people off if he’d been planning to put a dead body there.
They had no evidence of a connection with the dead woman, Robin reminded himself. Whoever she was. “And was it the Culdover mob who were poking about where they shouldn’t?”
“Not so far as I could tell, and I had my ears wide open.” There was no shifty flicker of the eyes to suggest dissemblance. “And anyway, that wouldn’t be their style. They’re all too obsessed with playing by the book and the proper way of doing things. They take themselves far too seriously. Rules and regulations and procedures—those are the things they used to argue about most.”
“Before they argued about you?” Pru chipped in again. “Or should I say about Lydia Oliver?”
Ms. Bairstow flicked her hand. “Okay, okay. It was all part of the game, all right? I didn’t want to use my own name. Just in case I had to ditch—I didn’t want them trying to find me.”
“They’d have had every right. You would have left a lot of people wanting answers.”
“Only among the detectorists. That Tuckton bloke’s a right nerd, and he winds the others up. Some of them aren’t so bad.” The innocent air in the witness’s voice, belied by the flush on her cheeks, might have fooled a child, but Robin and his sergeant were one step ahead in this game.
“You mean Jerry?” he asked. “Was part of the game running off with him?”
The flush deepened, suffusing Ms. Bairstow’s face. “That wasn’t meant to happen. I swear. I didn’t anticipate that they’d actually have somebody fanciable involved with them. Howarth said they were all anoraks. You know”—she rallied—“types who like to watch the trains going past, although they’d never have the courage to hop on board one.”
“Jerry clearly did.”
Ms. Bairstow wriggled her shoulders, bridling at Pru’s bluntness. “Well, he’s a nice, normal bloke.”
“And are you still an item?” Pru asked, a touch waspishly.
She bridled again, giving Pru an old-fashioned look. “Must you use that word? It sounds like something you buy at a car-boot sale. We’re living together, very happily.”
“Does Sian know that?” Robin cut in.
“Sian? Oh, Sian.” Ms. Bairstow didn’t seem to be a good actress. How she’d managed to fool the Culdover detectorists about her motives was becoming a mystery, although maybe her being so attractive had deflected any suspicion. People did still judge by appearances. “She’s cool about it. I mean, she was upset at the time, but she settled down. She volunteers at the villa now, I believe, so she must have come to terms with things.”
“You’ve not exactly made yourselves popular, have you? Exes everywhere.” Except making those enemies hadn’t led to her being killed, nor her boyfriend, one assumed. “So you and Jerry have been living the life of Riley on your lottery win?”
“That’s putting it crudely too. I prefer to think that the money meant we could buy ourselves some space. He worked on a contract basis, so we just packed up and went.”
Robin looked at the witness, then studied his notes, letting her stew in her own juice for a moment, but the strategy didn’t produce anything. He’d have to get the team to check all the details of this story, but the only crime that he could pin on Becky Bairstow or any of her men was the wasting of police time.
“One last thing,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on his notes until the conclusion of the question came, “perhaps the most important. Have you any idea who the dead woman might be?”
He caught the tail end of something—guilt? Shock at his abrupt introduction of the murder?—in her eye.
“No. No idea. I’d have told you if I had.”
“Hm.” Robin let her squirm some more, but nothing further emerged. “You say that you took the advantage of coming into money to make a new life for yourselves?”
“I don’t think I quite said that,” Ms. Bairstow corrected him. “Just that it was a well-timed opportunity for us to go off and lie low for a while. Away from pressures from other people.”
“Not a case of lying low because you’d killed someone?” Robin noted her renewed look of unease. “You see, I don’t like the coincidence of dates. Somebody got buried at Culford, a place you have connections to, around the same time as you did a runner.”
“I understand your suspicion; I really do. Maybe. But I’m not the kind of person who’d be daft enough to come back when the body was found. You didn’t know where I was, so I could have simply maintained that state of affairs. Unless you think this is some elaborate double bluff?”
“Perhaps you had no choice. We’d already linked the case to you, so guilty or not, the wise course was to get in contact.” Robin let her squirm further before continuing. “So we’re to believe that the timing is just coincidental?”
“Look.” She leaned forwards, jabbing her finger at him. “There’s a world of difference between playing spies and running off with some woman’s bloke and committing murder. I swear to God I know nothing about this girl.”
Even though he’d heard witnesses lie through their teeth with a huge degree of credibility, this sounded depressingly like the truth, so why had she reacted? He stared her out unt
il she had to look away, then said tartly, “We’ll be back in touch.”
They concluded the interview with some formalities, including getting contact details for Jerry, whom Robin—perhaps unfairly—suspected would say anything his girlfriend told him to. After she’d gone, he and Pru went back to the interview room to compare notes, the sergeant having also spotted Ms. Bairstow’s shock at Robin’s question.
“Guilt, do you think?” Robin asked.
“Not quite.” Pru frowned. “But she knows more than she’s letting on.”
“I agree.” Robin, yawning, stretched like Campbell did after a hard day of gnawing bones and cocking his leg. “Well done for making the connection. I was about a minute behind you. Coincidence of dates?”
“Not just that. You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“You know I like old movies. She reminded me of the sort of femme fatale you get in black-and-white pictures. Veronica Lake type.”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about, and I don’t need to be enlightened. Well done for taking a punt.” He stifled anther yawn. “Can you arrange for me to see Sian tomorrow? I still want to interview her. Hell hath no fury and all that, so maybe there’s lingering resentment and she’ll be willing to dish a bit of dirt on Becky Bairstow.”
This wasn’t clutching at straws. No way. Copper’s instinct that something was amiss, and he was going to find out what.
“Will do, sir. She does have a surname, by the way. Wheatstone.”
“Like the bridge?” Robin, amused at his sergeant’s blank look—didn’t they teach people proper physics down in Wales?—ploughed on before he was asked to explain. “And then there’s an itch I need to scratch at the first convenient moment. An itch called Howarth. Would you be offended if I took Ben with me instead of you?”
Two Feet Under (Lindenshaw Mysteries Book 3) Page 8
