by Faith Martin
Well, he wouldn’t let them. But now that they’d planted a seed of doubt, he knew he had to root it out before it could do any serious damage. He had to make sure, just for his own peace of mind.
He thought about the CRT and Hillary’s team, looking for a possible weak link.
It didn’t take him long to find it.
Hillary returned to the station with Sam after talking to Rowan’s landlady, and went straight to the small office shared by Jimmy, Sam and Vivienne. ‘Sam, type up your notes and give them to Jimmy for the murder book. Vivienne, any word yet from the Drugs Squad?’
‘No dice,’ Vivienne said sourly. ‘The prat I talked to said it was hardly top priority. The case is donkey’s years old, and without the ME giving a clear indication of what the drug might have been, he thought we was having a laugh.’
Hillary sighed heavily. ‘OK, leave it to me. I must have an old pal on the squad somewhere who owes me a favour. You can get on to the next thing on your list. And if you’re actually serious about joining the service, don’t let anyone hear you call another officer a prat. Even if he or she is one.’
Jimmy grinned but didn’t look up from the folder he was reading.
Vivienne rolled her eyes at Hillary, but wisely kept her pretty, bright-red-painted mouth firmly shut.
‘Sam, who is there on our list of witnesses who still lives locally?’
Sam quickly reached for his notebook. ‘Most of them, actually, guv. Well, localish. Darla de Lancie’s the nearest. She’s just in Botley.’
‘Right.’ Hillary checked her watch. If the woman was at work, they wouldn’t catch her in, but she was willing to risk it. ‘We’ll take her next.’ She hesitated, then glanced reluctantly at the younger girl. ‘Vivienne, would you like to come with me on this one?’
Although she was sure that Vivienne wouldn’t be with them for much longer, and that she was already bored with the idea of being a policewoman, she still felt obliged to fulfil her unspoken role as mentor with an even hand.
‘Sorry, Hillary, I can’t. I’ve got too much on.’
Again Jimmy grinned, but didn’t lift his eyes. He knew as well as the others that the only reason the little minx didn’t want to leave the office was because she wanted another chance to run across the boss and make yet another play for him. Sooner or later she’d get the message that he just wasn’t interested. And then there’d be tantrums!
‘OK,’ Hillary said quickly, visibly relieved. ‘Sam, you stay and do the notes, and get on with the background checks I asked for. Jimmy, fancy getting out of the office?’
‘I always do, guv, I always do,’ Jimmy reassured her cheerfully.
Seeing as it was lunchtime, they stopped off in the Black Bull for a sandwich and half a pint of shandy, before heading towards the Oxford suburb of Botley.
Darla de Lancie was now Mrs Pitt, and lived in a nice little detached residence in a small cul-de-sac of similar new-builds. Each plot had a driveway with a carport against one wall, and in Darla’s small patch of lawn the other side stood a dwarf cherry tree, with spring bulbs planted around it.
Modest, but nevertheless probably still expensive enough, given house prices, Hillary thought, as she walked up the path and rang the doorbell. Darla had obviously done well for herself.
She waited, almost half-expecting her summons to remain unanswered. Even if Mr Pitt had a good job, nowadays most couples needed two incomes just to survive, and she was about to turn away from the door, resigned to having to make an appointment and thus lose the element of surprise, when the door suddenly opened.
The woman who stood there looking at them uncertainly hadn’t aged much in the ten years or so since she’d been a student. The petite figure was perhaps a little more rounded, but the riot of red hair, the freckled face and big green eyes were all the same.
Before she could speak, there came the wail of an infant from the depths of the house behind her, and the reason for the slightly thickened waist, as well as the explanation for why they’d found her at home, was made suddenly clear.
‘Sorry, can you make this quick?’ Darla said, waving a vague hand behind her. ‘I don’t buy at the door.’ Her gaze flickered nervously to Jimmy. ‘And I don’t want to talk about religion either.’
‘Sorry,’ Hillary said, holding out her ID card. ‘Please, go and see to your child, Mrs Pitt. We can wait outside a bit until you’re ready.’
Darla blinked at the information on the card and gave a quick glance around. ‘Oh no, that’s all right. Please, come in. You’re the police?’
‘We work for the police, yes,’ Hillary corrected her, as they stepped into a small, rather anonymous-looking hall, carpeted throughout in beige. ‘We work with the Crime Review Team. We’re currently taking another look at the Rowan Thompson case.’
Darla’s freckled face visibly paled. ‘Oh. I see. Can I just….’ She indicated the stairs to the left, as yet another fretful wail wafted down from upstairs.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Please, go on through to the lounge,’ Darla said, pointing vaguely towards a half-open door. ‘Make yourselves comfortable. Have a seat – I’ll make a cup of tea in a minute. Sorry, Terry’s teething. I’ve been trying to settle him down for his afternoon nap.’
She suddenly turned and bolted upstairs, clearly nonplussed and upset by their presence, and Hillary shot Jimmy a quick, speaking look. Careful not to be overheard, they made their way to the lounge and shut the door behind them.
‘We’ve certainly thrown her for a loop,’ Jimmy said, glancing around. The lounge was small, and again carpeted in beige throughout. A neutral magnolia wash covered the plastered walls, and a substantial three-piece suite in coffee-coloured hard-wearing cotton took up most of the room. A large-screen television hung on one wall, and a large bunch of rust-coloured chrysanthemums sat in a pot on a windowsill.
‘Yes. We’re an unwelcome blast from her past all right,’ Hillary agreed, taking one of the armchairs and finding it surprisingly comfortable. Jimmy took a seat on the sofa.
Eventually, the noise from upstairs abated, and a few minutes later, Darla joined them. In spite of her promise of tea, none was forthcoming as she somewhat reluctantly took the armchair opposite Hillary.
‘So this is about Rowan, you say?’ Darla began diffidently. ‘I have to say, all of that seems like another lifetime ago now. Uni, and all that. We were all so young.’
She was only in her early thirties now, Hillary thought with amusement tinged with envy. Wait until you’re fifty. Still, Darla did look tired, and there were rings around her eyes. No doubt motherhood had made her feel far more mature than her actual years would indicate.
‘You got your degree?’ Hillary decided to ease her into the interview gently. ‘English lit, wasn’t it? That’s the same degree I took, but I expect the texts were very different.’
‘Yes. I’m a teacher now. Well, on maternity leave at the moment. I work at the Forsyte Academy. You may know it?’
Hillary did. It was a private school for girls between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. Its sole purpose was to take the brightest and the best and groom them to Oxbridge standard. Or Durham, at a pinch. No doubt the pay was significant, the work hardly arduous, and the kudos of working there would delight the most snobbish of standards.
‘Very nice,’ Hillary said, and meant it. ‘And your husband?’
‘Oh, he works for the Oxford Times. A financial correspondent.’
‘Does he know about Rowan?’ Hillary probed carefully.
Darla jerked a little in her seat. ‘No. Well, I mean, not really. He knows I had boyfriends before I met him, of course. Terence is a bit older than me. I met him when his daughter from his first marriage attended the academy. But I never told him about Rowan, I mean, all the trouble…. It just seemed so long ago.’
Hillary nodded. ‘Yes, I understand. He’s maybe a bit conservative in his outlook, and you saw no reason to go into details?’ she guessed, careful to keep h
er voice non-judgemental.
Darla flushed guiltily. ‘Well, there was no reason to. Not really. I mean, we don’t know what really happened to Rowan, do we? I mean, no one was ever caught. And it was really nothing to do with me.’
Hillary’s eyebrow lifted slightly, but she made no comment, and Darla, as if sensing that her last statement might have sounded, at the very least, disingenuous, again shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
‘I just mean that I didn’t have anything to do with it, or know what happened, so it was nothing to do with me in that sense,’ she expanded on the theme nervously.
Hillary nodded.
‘Terence doesn’t have to know, does he?’ she went on breathlessly. ‘His mother is the daughter of a Tory peer, and, well, she’s a bit of a dragon about some things. She hates scandal, and fuss, and, well, she’s never really liked me. Terence’s first wife was the daughter of her old schoolfriend, and they’re still very close. She never approved of the divorce, and blames me for it, which is silly, because I hadn’t even met him then. She only puts up with me at all because she knows she’d never get to see little Terry if she didn’t, but I know she’d just jump on it, if my name gets dragged into the papers again.’
Hillary nodded with every evidence of sympathy. Of course, the Thompson case would have been widely reported in the local press at the time. Supposedly, her husband either hadn’t been living in the city at the time, or else had a poor memory for names. She wouldn’t be surprised, though, if the mother-in-law from hell hadn’t already had a PI check out her son’s second new trophy wife, and already knew all about it.
‘There’s no reason why we would need to speak to your husband, Mrs Pitt,’ Hillary said, adding craftily, ‘so long as you co-operate fully with us, of course.’
‘Oh, I will. Obviously. I mean, I want whoever killed Rowan to get caught. Of course I do,’ Darla said quickly.
Scribbling down his notes, Jimmy didn’t think that she sounded all that sincere, but then it was understandable. If they solved the case, there’d be a murder trial, and the chances of Darla being able to keep her past a secret from her older, snobby husband would be practically zero.
‘All right, then. So, at the time of the murder you and Rowan were an established couple, yes?’ Hillary began.
‘That’s right. We’d met when we took rooms at Wanda’s, so we’d been together for a couple of months.’
‘Was it serious?’
‘Yes. Well, no. I mean,’ – Darla took a deep breath, making a visible effort not to ramble – ‘I thought at the time it was, but looking back on it now, I could see that it would never have worked out.’ She smiled a shade grimly. ‘You tend to see things differently at thirty than you did at twenty. More clearly.’
‘Yes. But at the time you were in love with him. Or thought you were?’ Hillary pressed.
‘Yes. But even then, I sort of knew at the back of my mind how he was. Even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself.’
‘And how was he?’ Hillary asked gently.
Darla Pitt looked down at her hands, twisting nervously in her lap, and took another long, slow breath. ‘Rowan was one of those men who could tie you in knots. Sometimes he seemed almost like a boy, and could be cheeky and charming and exasperating, all at the same time. And then it was fun. At other times, he could really sweep you off your feet. I mean, really make you feel special. Like this was it. The kind of way that every woman dreams a man will make her feel.’ She flushed slightly, and glanced quickly at Jimmy and then away again, her voice lowering confidentially. ‘You know – he could be genuinely passionate. Made you feel like you were living in one of the big romances. Wuthering Heights, and all that.’
She sighed somewhat wistfully. ‘And that was just magical.’ Her pretty face suddenly fell. ‘And then there were times when he could be like any other man, and be just a little shit,’ she added, with more sadness than bitterness. ‘Just shabby and ordinary and disappointing. He’d turn from Heathcliffe to just another bloke who’d climb into anyone’s knickers, given the chance.’
Hillary nodded. A typical young male, still more adolescent than adult, by the sound of it.
‘He hurt you?’ she said softly.
Darla shrugged. ‘Once or twice. And I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t kill him because of that. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t,’ she stressed tensely, rocking a little back and forth on the chair now.
‘I understand you used his room to make clothes,’ Hillary said, making no comment on her protestations of innocence, but keeping her voice quiet and level.
Darla slowly subsided back against the chair and nodded dully. ‘Yes – his was the biggest room. We all four of us applied to the house at around the same time, and it was typical of Rowan that he charmed the old lady into letting him have the biggest room.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I liked making my own stuff – I’d always done so, and sort-of had ambitions to be a fashion designer when I was younger, until common sense took over and told me the chances of success in that cut-throat field were pretty low. Which is why I went to Oxford – to have a second fiddle to my bow. Glad I did, now, I can tell you. But back then, I was still really into it, and it was much cheaper than buying real designer gear. And Rowan didn’t mind my using his room. And again, I know what you’re thinking. The scissors that were used to … to … stab him, were the ones I used to make my outfits, but that didn’t mean it had to be me who killed him, did it? I mean, they would have been just lying around in plain sight for anyone to see. I’d been using them the night before, and I hadn’t packed the stuff away. I told all this to Inspector Gorman at the time.’
She was becoming more agitated as she rambled on, so Hillary said smoothly, ‘Yes, and that’s a point well made. I’m here to take a fresh look at things, Mrs Pitt, not to go over the same ground as DI Gorman. Tell me about what you did that morning.’
Darla ran a somewhat shaky hand through her red curls and sighed. ‘I went out about nine o’clock that morning, I think. I ran into Marcie on the stairs and we went down together. She was due to take the train back to her parents that afternoon, and had some paperwork to drop off with her tutor. We chatted a bit as we went, then parted company outside on the road. I had some last-minute gifts to get. It was Christmas. I went to Debenhams and bought some silver ear-rings and some perfume. When I came back, the police were already there. At the house. Wanda had found him.’
Hillary nodded. Gorman had, of course, gone over Darla’s alibi, such as it was, meticulously, but the results were inconclusive. It was Christmas, and Debenhams, not surprisingly, had been busy. Neither of the sales staff at the perfume and jewellery counters remembered her specifically, but there was no reason, in the crush of shoppers, why they should. The store’s CCTV picked her up a couple of times, proving that she did indeed buy the items she claimed to have done, but that in itself meant nothing. The store was only a few minutes’ walk from the house. Darla could have returned to the house unseen and killed Rowan at any time. Or indeed, he might already have been dead when she left.
‘When you left the house that morning, did you notice anyone hanging around?’
‘No.’
‘Was Rowan nervous of anyone? Did he ever say that he was having trouble with one of his women, or the ex-boyfriends of any of the women he’d known?’
Darla smiled grimly. ‘Not to me, but then he wouldn’t, would he? He always denied seeing other women after we got together, even when it was blindingly obvious that he was. He seemed to think that he could just give me one of his cheeky grins and somehow that would make all the hurt go away, or charm me into making it not matter. He could always make me laugh, too, like it was some kind of medicine. But the truth was, he didn’t really care if I liked it or not – me not having exclusive rights to him, I mean. If all else failed, and I called him on it, he’d just shrug.’
She stared down at her hands, and gave a sad, twisted smile. ‘You know, I don’t think he would have cared if all t
he women he’d cheated had got together and ganged up on him in one big, hissing fury. He’d just have gone on to the next one with a blithe grin. And as for the boyfriends – forget it. He wouldn’t have cared a fig what they thought or felt about it. It was like it was all a big game to him: if they couldn’t hang on to their girlfriends, then that was their look-out, you know? If he saw an opportunity to sneak in and raid the hen-house, it was almost like he saw it as his duty to do so. He loved a challenge; he liked taking risks and didn’t seem to care a toss if he was hurting someone, or might get hurt himself in the process. But he wasn’t nasty about it.’
Darla shook her head in frustration. ‘It’s no good. I just can’t quite describe what he was like. He lived by a set of rules that was entirely his own. And if you didn’t understand them, or approve of them, or like them, well, that was just tough. But even that isn’t quite right. That makes him sound aggressive or utterly selfish – and I don’t think he was either of those – not really. He liked people to be happy. He was always happy himself. He seemed to see life as one great big adventure and a bit of a lark. Perhaps he would have grown out of it if….’
Suddenly her pretty, freckled face crumpled, and she began to cry.
Jimmy made a gentle tut-tutting sound, and reached into his jacket for a handkerchief.
Darla waved it away, and reached under a small coffee table for a box of tissues. She extracted one and wiped her eyes, staining them black with her running mascara. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed.
‘Take your time. There’s no rush,’ Hillary murmured. ‘I’m sorry if this upsets you. We won’t be much longer.’
‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’ She took a long, wavering breath, and leaned back in the chair again. ‘It’s just that it suddenly hit me: he’d be the same age as me now. Who knows, he might even be married and have kids, too. Instead he’s…. It was all taken away from him, wasn’t it? That’s what suddenly got to me. And he didn’t deserve to have that happen to him – no matter what he might have done.’
