Kennedy 03 - Where Petals Fall

by Shirley Wells

  ‘What happened then?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Nothing. Someone called the police but she calmed things down. She didn’t want to press charges so she made up some story about it being an accident. Afterwards, she refused to see me or answer my phone calls.’

  ‘Five months ago,’ Jill said, ‘you sent her champagne and chocolates. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ Max asked.

  ‘It was her birthday,’ he answered simply. ‘There wasn’t much point sending her flowers, was there? I always sent her champagne and chocolates on her birthday.’

  ‘Did she acknowledge them?’ Jill asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Yates,’ Max said, ‘can you think of anyone who might have wanted Mrs Blakely dead?’

  ‘You mean other than her husband?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Max asked.

  ‘All that ever interested him was her business and how much money she was raking in,’ he muttered. ‘He was a total bastard with a vile temper. He had loads of women in his life and he didn’t care if Carol knew about them or not. All he wanted from Carol was handouts. Well, now he’s got the lot, hasn’t he?’

  Yates was under the impression, understandably perhaps, that Vince Blakely had inherited everything.

  ‘Did Carol ever mention the contents of her will to you?’ Jill asked.

  ‘No. The only time she mentioned money was when her husband was making demands. Otherwise, she never spoke of it. Obviously, she’d got a fair bit. A lot more thanme,’ he pointed out, nodding at their surroundings, ‘as you can guess, but it never seemed to matter to her.’

  ‘Did she have enemies, other than her husband?’ Max asked.

  ‘None that I know of.’

  Jill looked around the room and counted eight framed photos of two young children.

  ‘Your son and daughter?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes, Adam and Cherie. Twins. I get to see them for a few hours at the weekend,’ he added. ‘Aren’t I the lucky one?’

  ‘When did you last see Mrs Blakely?’ Max asked.

  ‘To speak to? About three months ago.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I tried to talk to her. It was a Friday and she’s usually at her shop in Harrington on Friday afternoons. There’s a café opposite and I had a couple of coffees there and waited for her to leave. We had a brief chat –’

  ‘About what?’ Max asked.

  ‘Oh, I tried to get her to talk to me. To have a coffee with me. Anything. She didn’t want to know. She drove home and so did I.’

  ‘Have you seen her since?’ Jill asked.

  ‘I’ve seen her about,’ he said flatly, ‘but only from a distance.’

  ‘You’ve followed her? Sought her out?’

  ‘A couple of times,’ he admitted, colouring.

  It would have been more than a couple, Jill suspected. He would have stalked her at every available opportunity. So not only had he lost his wife, his kids and his home, he would also be putting his job on the line.

  ‘Who did she see?’ Jill asked. ‘When you were watching her, did she meet people?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Usually, she went straight home. There was a chap she saw a couple of times – scruffy bloke who wore tatty jeans and T-shirts – but that was about all.’

  That would have been Finlay Roberts. Yates would have followed them and, if he said she only met Roberts a couple of times, that was probably fact.

  ‘Where were you on Friday and Saturday, the seventh and eighth of July?’ Max asked.

  ‘What? Now look here, you don’t think I had anything to do with her murder, do you? Why the hell would I?’

  ‘Where were you?’ Max asked patiently.

  ‘In Liverpool,’ he answered, and he was panicking. ‘I sell bathroom suites and we had an exhibition on. Three of us – colleagues – stayed over. You can check it out.’

  ‘If you’d be so kind as to give us the details, we will,’ Max assured him.

  He was quickly hunting through his briefcase, and soon gave Max literature for the exhibition, the address and number for the hotel, and contact numbers for his boss and colleagues.

  ‘That’s where I was. I swear it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Max said.

  ‘I was,’ he insisted. ‘The first I knew of it was when I heard about it on the local news. I swear.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Max said again.

  Shortly afterwards, they left him to his dog, his loneliness and his bitterness.

  ‘Could he have wanted her dead?’ Max asked Jill as he drove them back to headquarters.

  ‘It’s possible. He’s very angry, but whether it’s enough to send him over the edge, I don’t know. He blames Carol for the lonely life he has now. At the time, he would have walked out on home, wife and kids without a second thought for their welfare. All he would have thought about was the life he was to have with Carol. Now, he blames her for the fact that he only sees his kids at weekends.’

  ‘So revenge might be a motive?’

  ‘Could be. Also, with her dead, he might be able to pick up the pieces of his life again. There was no hope of that when he spent every available minute stalking her. But,’ she reminded him, ‘he was in Liverpool at the time.’

  ‘So what?’ Max scoffed. ‘A few hundred quid in the right pub would get the deed done for him.’

  ‘A chat with his ex-wife might prove useful,’ Jill said thoughtfully.

  It was rush hour and traffic in Harrington was almost at a standstill. Fortunately, they were going against the worst of it.

  They were almost back at headquarters when Max’s phone rang. He hit the button to answer it.

  ‘Guv,’ Fletch said, ‘the night Atkins’s house burned to the ground?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve got the CCTV from the filling station just down the road from The Laurels. At a little after 11 p.m., Finlay Roberts filled up his car there.’

  Max shared a brief, surprised glance with Jill.

  ‘Just the car, Fletch? He didn’t have cans or anything with him?’

  ‘No, just the car.’

  ‘And his car’s definitely diesel, right?’

  ‘It is, guv, but it’s odd, don’t you think? He said nothing about going out that night. Quite the reverse. He was adamant that he was at home all evening.’

  ‘It is bloody odd, Fletch.’

  Max ended the call and glanced briefly at Jill. ‘It keeps coming back to Roberts, doesn’t it?’

  She had to agree that it did.

  Chapter Twenty

  Terry Yates’s ex-wife lived in a pleasant detached house at the end of a small cul-de-sac. The front garden was colourful and neat and, from the little Jill could see, the back garden was large, mainly set to lawn, and dotted with children’s toys.

  Jill had Grace with her and, although she was a marvel at interviewing suspects, Jill would have preferred Max’s or Fletch’s company. The main objective was to coax Beverley Yates to talk freely about her husband and Grace could be a little intimidating.

  Jill rang the bell and they heard ferocious barking coming from the other side of the door.

  ‘A good job we’re not breaking and entering,’ Grace muttered beneath her breath.

  They heard a woman telling the animal to be quiet, which had no effect whatsoever, and then, as the door opened, a huge yellow dog hurled itself at Jill.

  ‘I am so sorry. Lily, get down. She’s only young and she thinks everyone wants to be her best friend. Are you all right? Lily, get down!’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Really.’ As Jill regained her composure, the dog bounded around the three of them all as if it were on springs.

  ‘Mrs Yates? I’m Jill Kennedy. We spoke on the phone earlier.’

  ‘Yes, come in. And I’m so sorry about Lily. I’ll put her out in the garden.’

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s fine.’

  But Jill was relieved to see Lily banished to the garden and the p
atio door firmly closed behind her.

  ‘She’s a lovely dog,’ Grace said, and Mrs Yates smiled.

  ‘I’ve called her a lot of things since we got her, but lovely hasn’t been one of them. She’s chewed the dining table, four pairs of shoes and the phone cable so far.’ She gazed through the patio door to where Lily was demolishing a football. ‘People promise me she’ll grow out of it but there’s no sign of it yet. Still, the kids love her.’

  That, Jill guessed from the smile on her face, was all that mattered.

  The house, or the lounge at any rate, was stylish yet homely. The furniture wasn’t expensive, but it was well cared for. Children’s toys sat neatly in one corner of the room.

  ‘The twins, Adam and Cherie, are having a couple of days with their grandparents,’ Mrs Yates explained, nodding at those toys, ‘and I’m having a well-earned rest.’

  ‘I bet you miss them,’ Grace said.

  ‘I do,’ she admitted softly. ‘Sit down,’ she went on. ‘I’ll sit here with my back to the window. That way I won’t see what Lily’s doing. The garden’s secure so she’s perfectly safe.’

  She was a very attractive young woman, fresh-faced, and casually dressed in white jeans and a red T-shirt. Her smile seemed relaxed and friendly.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘I gather you want to talk to me about Carol Blakely. I assume that’s because of my ex-husband’s affair with her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jill replied, grateful for the opening. ‘You knew about the affair then?’

  ‘Not at first,’ she replied. ‘He’d been seeing her for six months before he told me he was leaving me.’

  ‘We had a chat with him yesterday,’ Jill explained, ‘and he told us he’d intended to live with Mrs Blakely? Did you know that?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He had it all planned. Five years of marriage down the drain just like that.’ She clicked her fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask such personal questions, but –’

  ‘I understand,’ Mrs Yates said.

  ‘Had he been unfaithful before?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ she answered, ‘but I wouldn’t guarantee it. When we first married, he was besotted with me. I thought it was love but, looking back, it was more of an obsession.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Grace asked.

  ‘He showered me with gifts and hated every second we were apart. He hated me going anywhere without him. I was quite touched.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Six months later, when I was pregnant with the twins, he was constantly picking fault. Everything I did was wrong. If we went out, he’d criticize my appearance, my clothes, my conversation, everything. You don’t see it happening, but he really dented my self-confidence.’ That smile again. ‘For all that, I was distraught when he told me he was leaving me.’

  The dog ran up to the patio door and barked hopefully. Realizing she wasn’t about to be let in, she raced off and did several circuits of the garden.

  ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t come to hear me complaining about him,’ Mrs Yates said. ‘Exactly what is it that you need to know?’

  Jill liked her openness.

  ‘As you know,’ she began, ‘we’re investigating the murder of Carol Blakely. We know your husband had an affair with her, and we’ve also heard that he followed her regularly and smashed a window at her shop. What we’re trying to do is build as big a picture as possible. We need to know as much as possible about Carol’s life and anyone she came into contact with.’ She paused. ‘Did you ever meet Mrs Blakely?’

  ‘Only once,’ Beverley Yates replied. ‘I was in town with the twins and we bumped into her and Terry. Terry introduced us all. God, it was embarrassing. For her, too, I think. Humiliating as well. She was everything Terry had told me she was.’

  ‘And that was what?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Attractive. Intelligent. Friendly. Smart. Sophisticated.’ She rattled off the adjectives as if she’d been forced to learn them parrot fashion. ‘I felt like the village idiot by comparison.’

  ‘When was this?’ Jill asked.

  ‘About a fortnight after he left me,’ she explained. ‘Shortly after that, I heard she’d walked out on him, too. I can’t say I was sorry. She must have seen the light. He was obsessed with her just as he’d been obsessed with me, but it wouldn’t have lasted.’

  ‘How’s your relationship with him now?’ Jill asked, and she blushed.

  ‘Poor,’ she admitted. ‘He sees the twins for a few hours each weekend and, for their sakes, we’re civilized towards one another. Other than that, we rarely speak. Occasionally, usually when he’s had a drink, he begs me to take him back.’

  That surprised Jill. She had believed he was still in love with Carol. She hadn’t thought that it was, as Mrs Yates believed, an obsession that would have passed.

  ‘No way,’ Mrs Yates went on vehemently. ‘He hurt me badly and he abandoned us. It took me a long time to get over that. Now, I’m happier without him. We’re all better off without him.’

  Jill thought how sad it was that so much bitterness existed between them. Civilized or not, it couldn’t be good for the children.

  ‘How’s his relationship with the twins now?’ she asked.

  ‘Adam’s OK with his father. He takes everything in his stride, but Cherie’s very hurt. She sulks and says she doesn’t want to see him. He accuses me of turning them against him. I don’t. I never utter a bad word about him in front of them. He abandoned them. How does he expect them to feel?’

  Jill smiled and nodded sympathetically as an answer. Really there was no answer.

  She was having to revise her opinion slightly. Mrs Yates was likeable, but there was a hard edge to her. She mightnot utter a bad word about her ex-husband in front of the children, but Jill presumed they knew all too well how she felt about him.

  ‘But we’re OK, me and the twins,’ Mrs Yates added. ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Jill said. ‘Your husband smashed a window at Mrs Blakely’s shop. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Not really,’ she replied at last. ‘He put a brick through my kitchen window one night. He’d been phoning me at all hours of the day and night and I said that, if he did it again, I’d call the police. The next thing I knew, he threw a brick through the window and told me to call 999.’

  Was that a man making a cry for help? Jill wondered. Had he believed he was out of control?

  ‘And did you?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No. I thought they had better things to do with their time and I knew he’d soon sober up. Besides, for the sake of the children, I didn’t want him getting into trouble.’

  A scratching at the window had them looking to see Lily with a piece of football in her mouth and a pathetic expression on her face.

  ‘I usually take her for a walk about now,’ Mrs Yates said. ‘Or rather, she takes me for a walk.’

  ‘Then we won’t take up any more of your time,’ Grace said, getting to her feet.

  Jill supposed she’d finished. All the same, she’d like another chat with Terry Yates. Obsession, and his ex-wife had used the word several times, could be a dangerous thing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Later that afternoon, Jill caught up with Max just as he was nipping outside for a smoke.

  ‘Have you got a minute?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes, of course. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing really, but I’d like another chat with Terry Yates.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She told him of the chat she and Grace had had with his ex-wife that morning.

  ‘We’re talking of damaged lives,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Mrs Yates was distraught when he told her he was leaving her. She claims she’s over it now and better off without him, but feelings are still running high there. He’s as bitter as hell because he’s been left with nothing. Their children must be aware of the feelings that exist between the two of them. Life can’t be easy for any of them.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We can call on Yate
s when we finish here if you like. His alibi checks out,’ he added.

  ‘I know, but as you say –’

  ‘It means nothing,’ he agreed.

  ‘He’s never been in trouble before?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Apart from a telling off when he smashed the window at Carol’s shop, he’s as clean as a whistle. No unpaid parking fines, no points on his licence, nothing.’

  ‘Did someone talk to Ruth and Cass at the shop?’ she asked, and he nodded.

  ‘I did. I was out that way anyway so I thought I’d call in. Cass had never heard of Yates, but that’s not surprisingas she hasn’t been there long. Ruth only started working for Carol a month before the accident that killed her sisters.’

  ‘Mm. And the two wouldn’t have been close enough to share confidences then.’

  ‘Exactly. Ruth said she’d had an inkling there had been someone, but Carol hadn’t spoken of it, and she hadn’t asked. She couldn’t remember a window being smashed.’

  ‘Carol felt guilty about her relationship with Yates,’ Jill pointed out, ‘so she wouldn’t have mentioned it. She certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it to Ruth when they were relative strangers. Later, when the two became good friends, Carol would have wanted to forget the affair ever happened.’

  ‘We’ll have a chat with him,’ Max promised. ‘I’ve got a couple of things to sort out and then we’ll go.

  Unannounced?’

  ‘Definitely. We’ll just have to hope he’s home . . .’

  Jill went to her office and found a huge pile of paperwork waiting for her. She had staff assessments to sort out and a dozen other things to deal with. They’d all have to wait.

  She returned several phone calls, sent a dozen emails and then headed off to find Max.

  As she walked along the corridor, it surprised her to realize that Terry Yates’s relationship with his ex-wife interested her just as much as, if not more than, his relationship with Carol.

  Max was ready to go and they walked down to the car park.

  ‘I’ll follow you,’ she told him, ‘and then I can go straight home. I’m due at a concert this evening.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘One of these fundraising things that the primary school is so fond of doing,’ she enlightened him. ‘You’re welcome to come along and be bored to death.’