When she’d finished, Robin—forcing himself to sound gentle—prompted, “What happened then?”
“We checked her over, but it was clear she was dead. We got scared someone might come to the door, so we hauled the body into the garage.”
“How did you know where the garage was?” Pru chipped in.
“We didn’t then, obviously.” Pippa bridled before visibly making herself calm down. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. This isn’t easy. We’d spotted the garage as we parked, and we guessed there’d be an internal door. There was a bit of a mess in the hall, where she’d fallen. Blood and that. We rolled her up in a rug to make her easier to move—that was horrible—and then we had to try to clean the carpet. I don’t think we were entirely successful.”
Truth? Or Pippa’s attempt to cover all the bases with what might show up on the forensics? “And then?”
“And then we found the kitchen and made a cup of tea. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s all I could think of. A nice cup of tea and trying to work out what the hell to do next.”
Pru rolled her eyes. “Was this the point you decided to take Sian’s place?”
“Not then, and not me. It was Jamie’s idea. When he was out in the car, he’d noticed that both the house next door and the one opposite had been sold and were empty, so he wondered why. He did some Googling and discovered that they were about to build a waste-recycling facility next to Sian’s house. We found a story about people selling up and leaving the area. He also found out from one of those house-selling websites that Sian couldn’t have moved in that long ago.” Pippa shrugged. “It meant there was less chance somebody would notice the switch of owner.”
Was it far-fetched to wonder if Warnock had come into the house with that thought already in his mind?
Pru spread her hands in an eloquent gesture of disbelief. “It seems ridiculous. Simply taking over somebody else’s life on the spur of the moment. The longest of all long shots.”
“Actually it turned out to be pretty low risk, as you’ll have to agree by the fact I was able to keep it up for so long. And we always had the option of just disappearing if it looked like we’d been rumbled.” Pippa turned to her solicitor, who was shaking his grizzled head. “I know you don’t want me to say all this, but I’m determined to get the truth out. I’m tired of living a lie, and I’d rather be thought of as a fraudster than as a murderess. I admit to being one, but not the other.”
The solicitor glanced at Robin, shrugged in a way he’d never seen a solicitor shrug before, and let the witness continue.
“Looking back on it, things almost started as a game.”
“A game?” Pru fumed. “When is murder a game?”
“Not the murder. Never the murder.” Pippa furiously shook her head. “The impersonation. Jamie was pumped with adrenaline or something, and I guess I was running on fear. It all seemed so unreal, like I’d wake up in a moment and it would have been a nightmare.”
Robin had experienced that feeling himself, but the explanation was coming a touch too pat. “What did you do after you’d had your cup of tea?”
“We rummaged through all her papers, and her diaries. She wrote everything down. Medical records, the lot. We discovered she was estranged from the rest of her family, and that she was pretty lax on security, leaving a list of passcodes and user IDs for all the sites she was on.” Pippa rolled her eyes. “Everything seemed to be in our favour. Jamie was sure we could get away with it.”
And they had, the bastards. “It couldn’t have hurt that she was so well off.”
“Of course it didn’t!” Pippa composed herself before continuing. “Sorry. Look, I come from a family you’d describe as middle class but poor. Always been too keen to serve others and forget themselves. Very noble, but you have to look after your own. I hardly had two pennies to run together after uni—and a pile of student debt. That’s why I got involved with Howarth and his business: to earn some extra cash. And that’s why I didn’t dob him in when he wanted things to get dodgy. I couldn’t afford to.”
Yet another version of the fakes-business history, one Robin had little patience with. “Plenty of people without two pennies to rub together get through without turning to crime.”
“I know. But I was weak and Jamie’s very persuasive. And can you blame me for taking up the opportunity of having a house of my own and some money to spend?” As the tears started to well, the solicitor produced a handkerchief, but Pru just gave a snort.
“And whose idea was it to bury the body at Culford?”
“Jamie’s. Do you remember the summer storms? They shut the place to visitors, and he thought it was an opportunity too good to miss.”
“How did you transport her there?”
“In the boot of my car. It was a horrible experience. Her face. While she was in the garage, she’d been— I don’t want to talk about it.” The witness shuddered.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to talk about it,” Robin said with a sympathetic tone he didn’t feel.
“We left her in that garage too long.” Pippa held her fingers to her brow. “Something awful had happened to Sian’s face. Like an animal had got at it. When I saw that, I forgot about how violent she’d been. I felt horribly sorry for her. And the smell . . .” She covered her nose, as though it filled her nostrils afresh.
“The scent of decay,” Pru remarked bluntly.
Pippa flinched. “How can you be so callous? We couldn’t let her stay there, in the garage, so we took the carpet off and wrapped her carefully in some black polythene sheets. That’s when Jamie suggested the disturbed ground at the Roman site. He’d got a key for the gate. Said he’d found one lying about and got a copy made. Just in case it might be useful.”
“What about the mosaic?”
“The mosaic? We found that in the garage. It was one of the artefacts I’d mistaken for a real one, so I wanted to get rid of it. Two birds with one stone.”
Pru, silently fuming, stared at the witness as Robin continued the questioning. “And you volunteered to work at Culford so you could keep an eye on things?”
Pippa nodded. “Not just keep an eye on things—keep an eye on her. I owed it to Sian not to let anything else bad happen.”
“That didn’t work, though, did it?” Pru remarked through gritted teeth.
“No. I didn’t hear about the university dig until it was about to start, and that threw us into a panic. We’d already tried writing to the local papers and trying to stir up controversy, like had happened before, but that hadn’t done the trick.” Pippa put her handkerchief to her eyes again. “I wanted to let her rest in peace.”
“You should have thought about that when you denied her proper burial.”
“I know. I’ve beaten myself up about it time and again. But Jamie said we had to stay and ride out the storm. That if we ran, then people would know it was us.”
Robin opened his mouth, then shut it. There seemed no chance of breaking this story, not until they had Warnock’s side of the tale. And maybe, just maybe, she was telling the truth and he was the danger man.
Robin was struggling to think of the most effective question to ask next when the arrival of a constable with a message gave him the opportunity to get some thinking time. To Pru’s evident surprise, he terminated the interview, leaving Pippa to either wallow in genuine pity or stew in her own juice.
“What’s up, guv?” Pru’s question was out the minute they were through the door.
Robin eyed the wall of the interview room as though it might suddenly turn into a lens through which Pippa’s memories could be examined clearly, rather than the present glass in which the truth was reflected darkly, if at all. “They’ve got Warnock. He’s on the way here. And I want to get his angle on things before we talk to her again.”
“I don’t blame you.”
They grabbed something to eat while waiting, being updated by the constable who’d somehow got all the gen on the arrest. The story didn’t suggest W
arnock was the quick-thinking genius he’d been made out to be; he’d apparently gone to the Palmers’ house in Bedford, where the police, calling in ostensibly to update the family, had found him tucking into a steak-and-kidney pie—and whisked him down to the station before he’d had a chance to mop up the gravy. Although, given the way people in this case had managed to create convincing personas to hide behind, the fecklessness could be a front.
Robin was grateful they’d not have to hare up to the midlands; he needed his brain clear, and English roads weren’t always amenable to that, even when travelling as a passenger. They should be able to interview Warnock later that day, traffic willing, although the chances were they’d be spending more nights in Norwich than anticipated, but as Robin had plenty of clothes packed, he needn’t panic just yet. At least not about clean underwear.
“Are we charging him, sir?”
“We’ll be charging them both. For as much as I can make stick. In the short term we’ll go with aiding and abetting, fraud, and illegal disposal of a body, and we can increase that once we have the bigger picture.” Robin, swallowing too large a mouthful of too-hot tea and immediately regretting it, avoided the amused gaze of his sergeant.
“When you’ve finished choking, sir, would you mind telling me which of them you think did it?”
“Cheeky mare.” Robin carefully wiped his mouth. “At this point, I have no bloody idea. Maybe I could do with Campbell here. Take the two scenarios we were told, write them on paper, stick them on two lamp posts, and see which one he cocks his leg against. At the moment, it’s as likely to produce the right answer as logic.”
Pru giggled. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Neither would Robin, but the dog had saved the day in his two previous murder enquiries, so asking for a third intercession would be stretching credulity. A nagging voice at the back of his mind asked what would happen if they couldn’t pin the murder onto either of the pair. Was there a chance one or the other could wangle being released on bail, and how much of a danger—to Howarth or Becky Bairstow or anyone else who’d got in their way—would they be in that case?
When they eventually got to interview Warnock—in the interview room only recently vacated by Pippa—it seemed impossible to believe he was the hard-nosed murderer she’d depicted him as. Although looks, as Robin reminded himself, could be deceptive; Pippa certainly didn’t look like a scheming cow. Another solicitor was present, from the same firm as the one who’d represented Pippa. Had she been paid for in advance by Sian Wheatstone’s money while they could still access it, assuming the Palmer family was as poor as Pippa made out?
Ben’s description of the witness as having a huge chip on his shoulder was borne out by the sulky expression plastered all over his face, and the general hunched-shoulders demeanour of a man out of sorts with the world. They got the formalities over and done with, and then Robin launched straight in.
“Did you murder Sian Wheatstone?”
“No.” Warnock, arms crossed over his chest, faced Robin out defiantly.
“Did Pippa murder her?”
“No.”
Robin snorted. “Are you really expecting us to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth.”
“Okay, let’s go back to the start.” Robin kept his voice calm. He’d have bet fifty quid that Warnock was going to accuse Pippa, but this response had wrong-footed them. What story was the witness going to produce? “You and Pippa went to see Sian Wheatstone on the day she died.”
Warnock nodded grudgingly, and Pru reminded him to answer aloud for the recording. “Yes. We did. She’d been making threats, and we wanted to ask her to stop.”
“What happened when you got there?”
“She—Pippa—asked me to stay in the car. Said it would be best if only one of us tried to handle things. I waited, fiddling about on my phone.” Warnock shifted in his seat. “She was in there ages. Then suddenly she was at the front window, looking like she’d seen a ghost, face all scratched. I legged it from the car; luckily, the front door wasn’t locked.”
Robin clasped his hands in his lap, attempting—and suspecting he was failing—to present a cool exterior. “What had scared her?”
“Sian. She’d gone loopy and turned on Pippa. It must have been some catfight—Pippa’s face was all bloody.” Warnock shuddered. “I hadn’t realised what had been going on.”
“Didn’t you hear them fighting?”
“No. I had the car radio on.”
Pru shook her head, obviously incredulous. “Why didn’t Pippa simply run out of the house when she was attacked?”
“I don’t know. She was in a right state, didn’t seem to know what to do. Shock, I guess.” Warnock clamped his arms tighter. “She said Sian had run out into the back garden; I could hear her screaming and shouting. I grabbed Pippa, tried to get her to move, but by the time I’d dragged her into the hall, Sian was there. She went for Pippa again.”
“And what did you do?” Robin waited as the witness appeared to gather his thoughts.
“Nothing. I was sprawled on the floor, where she’d pushed me over. I’d cracked my head on the skirting board. Next thing I know there’s a bloke coming through the door, telling Sian to shut the fuck up.”
“What?” Pru gave Robin a What the hell’s this about? look.
“A bloke. Barged into the house and pushed Pippa out of harm’s way. Sian leaped onto his back and pulled at his hair, so he shoved her off. She reeled back and he went for her, effing and blinding and saying she was a vindictive cow and how he’d give her a taste of her own medicine. He slammed her against this fucking great iron monstrosity in the hall. Hatstand or something.” Warnock leaned forwards again, elbows on the table. “One minute she was fighting like a tiger —next minute she was dead. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Robin shared a glance with his sergeant. What the hell was going on? “Let me get this straight.” He fixed the witness with a cold stare. “You’re saying that this bloke simply ran in off the street and attacked Sian.”
“Not just some random bloke. A colleague of Pippa’s, who’d heard she was meeting Sian and thought she might be in danger, so he came along to play the ‘white knight’ bit.” Warnock sneered. “Charlie Howarth.”
“Howarth?” Robin and Pru chorused.
“But Pippa insists—” Pru was cut off by a warning wave of Robin’s finger.
“What happened next?” he asked, keeping their powder dry for the moment.
“Howarth panicked. Forced us to cover everything up.”
Robin snorted. “Pippa says that was your idea.”
“She what?”
“Said you were behind the cover-up.” Pru, hands folded demurely in her lap, but with a voice like cold steel, kept her eyes fixed on the witness. “And you suggested burying the body at Culford.”
The weighty, increasingly uncomfortable silence following Pru’s statement worked. “Yes. Okay, I admit that I had a part in it. But it wasn’t just me.”
Pru’s voice flipped into soothing mode. “We’d better hear your version, then.”
“Right.” Warnock took a deep breath and slightly relaxed his arms. “We were there, with this dead body and blood everywhere. Like I said, Howarth went into panic mode, and we weren’t far behind. So first thing we had to lock the front door, move the body out of the hall, and then tidy up. Once that was done we made a cuppa.”
So far that part of the story tallied with what Pippa had said, even if the key elements were in dispute.
“Made a cuppa?” Robin snorted. “Rather than call for an ambulance or ring for the police and report an accident? Isn’t that cold blooded?”
“There was no point in ringing for an ambulance,” Warnock countered. “I’ve done first aid and I knew she was dead. As for the police, Howarth said if we didn’t keep quiet, he’d go to you lot and tell them he’d come to visit Sian but found us with her dead body. That people would believe him,
given his position, rather than us, given that I’ve got a criminal record. Wouldn’t you have thought that one of us had done it deliberately? I’d done nothing but try to protect Pippa, and I’d ended up in this mess.”
There were glasses of water on the table, which Robin would sometimes use tactically to aid thinking or create a pause. He used one now, taking a long sip while keeping his eye on the witness. “So instead, you got yourself deeper embroiled in the cover-up?”
“I was scared. Scared of what had happened and scared of both Howarth and Pippa.”
Robin noticed that Pippa was now coming in for some of the blame, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I realised they might have planned all this, and I’d been set up. I didn’t want to get smacked against the hatstand as well.” Warnock shuddered. “While I was in the car, I’d been looking up the local area, wondering why so many of the local houses were for sale or recently sold. Turned up some dodgy stuff about a waste site that was going to be built. I also discovered there was a chance Sian couldn’t have lived there that long, either, according to the date the house was last sold, which got confirmed when we found things still unpacked, in the kitchen. I said the fact the houses next door and opposite were both empty might work in our favour. Less chance we’d been spotted.”
“So why build up this big pretence? Why didn’t you clean up, shut the door, and run?”
“I wish we had, but both Howarth and Pippa were worried someone would connect them to Sian. Because of the public threats the woman made.” Warnock grabbed a glass of water and swallowed half of it at a gulp. “You know when you’re nervous, you just start gabbling? Well, I developed verbal diarrhoea. A load of crap about how we could cover our tracks, including the thought that the longer we could hide the fact of Sian’s death, the better it would be. By then we’d moved from tea to a bottle of vodka we found in the cupboard.”
“Go on.”
Warnock knocked back the rest of the water, as though it might be as fortifying as the vodka had been. “On the wall there was a picture of Sian, with her family. I made the fatal error of saying that, apart from the build, she and Pippa could have passed for sisters, certainly from a distance. Same hair colour—at the time Pippa had hers dyed auburn—and stuff like that. Then Howarth made a daft joke about how Pippa could pretend to be Sian for the next few days while we worked out what to do. I had no idea it would go on so long.”
Two Feet Under (Lindenshaw Mysteries Book 3) Page 26
