‘Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we’d more or less arrived at the same conclusion. Natasha Ainsworth was certainly in that same loop even though we’ve trawled through her computer and can’t see anything that would explain why anybody should murder her. Callendar Logistics is basically just a courier service, with a hand in some of the pharmaceutical side of things. They transport drugs, semen, blood – all pretty hi-tech, with dry ice and all that. They have refrigerated vehicles and their own generators, keeping everything at the right temperature. All three of the sons are connected to the business, which is pretty unusual. They all get along, and have their own areas of responsibility. It’s a textbook set-up. The only hiccup was when the middle one – Sebastian – turned out to be defrauding some of the customers. That nearly wrecked the whole business. But they came through it, and after he’d done a stint in an open prison they took him back again. Everyone believes he’s a reformed character. Nobody has a word to say against any of them. We spoke to a couple of the big stables with fancy expensive racehorses, and they can’t speak highly enough of the efficiency and customer care and all that stuff.’
‘Even the ones Sebastian swindled?’
‘They took their business elsewhere, not surprisingly. Except the one that went bust.’
‘Was that down to Sebastian?’
‘Probably. We didn’t get into the detail.’
‘But why not? If Natasha and Eva were both somehow involved as well, that would be a motive for killing them, wouldn’t it?’ Thea watched the detective’s face closely. ‘Well, wouldn’t it?’
‘You’re going too fast,’ Gladwin told her. ‘Making too many leaps. It’s much too tenuous to support any sort of arrest or prosecution. And why would the killer wait till now? Why focus on such peripheral people, instead of going for Sebastian himself?’
‘Mr Callendar wasn’t peripheral. What if he was murdered?’ Drew interposed, with a hint of impatience.
‘It’s too late to have a view on that. Unless someone confesses, it’s going to remain an accident forever.’
‘And Eva?’ Thea asked.
‘No idea. It’s the first I’ve heard of her.’
‘Somebody – it turned out to be Juliet, actually – stole the flowers from her grave on Saturday. Ask Higgins. He went to investigate. Or rather, he probably sat in the car while Kevin went to talk to the family.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, against the throbbing pain in her head that persistently impeded her usual logical processes.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Drew.
‘My head. Every time I think it’s getting better, it comes back again, worse than before.’
‘Have you taken a paracetamol?’ asked Gladwin, already fishing in her capacious bag.
‘Not recently, no. Things keep happening to distract me. And I’ve forgotten where I left them.’
‘Here. Have this with a mouthful of tea, if there’s any left.’
There was a tepid half-inch in Thea’s cup, which she obediently drained, to chase the pill down. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Marian Callendar,’ Gladwin pressed on. ‘She still has to be top of the list. Except nobody saw her here on Saturday afternoon, and she’s got a reasonably tight alibi. If she hadn’t come back here yesterday, like somebody needing to finish off a job, I’d have cleared her by now.’
‘The thing is, she must have known I’d tell you about it, with everything that implies. So she’s either insanely overconfident or innocent.’
‘You did say she’s got leukaemia, didn’t you?’ Drew said. ‘That might mean she feels she’s got nothing to lose. That she’s impervious to the usual laws and punishments.’
Gladwin shook her head emphatically. ‘She’s a magistrate,’ she said. ‘Law and punishment are central to her life. She’d never be able to just ignore them.’
‘I think that makes it even more likely, actually,’ Drew argued. ‘She knows the limitations, the sort of mitigating circumstances that count for something. She sounds rather dangerous to me.’
‘Hmm,’ said Gladwin.
‘But I’m still most interested in the man next door, Dennis Ireland. He phoned here an hour or so ago, and sounded very miffed when I answered. He had easy access to Natasha’s house through the gardens, according to Thea. Even if he’d simply walked up to the front door, Natasha would have let him in without a second thought. And he could just have slipped home again without being noticed. It all seems to fit very neatly.’
‘Apart from motive,’ objected Thea. ‘And he’s just a fussy old buffer. I quite liked him. He’s almost as nice as Ralph Callendar.’ She turned to Gladwin. ‘I’ve seen all three Callendar sons now, you know. Sebastian drove past us when we were talking to Juliet, on that little road that runs through Charnal Plantation.’
Gladwin moaned gently. ‘I have no idea where that is,’ she pleaded.
‘Well, I dare say nobody really calls it that. It’s what it says on the map, that’s all.’
‘Thea, I know I’ve said this to you before, and I’m sure other people have as well – but the whole thing about a murder investigation is about evidence. We need facts. Admittedly it’s important to have some sort of hypothesis to go on, but the moment a fact contradicts the theory, you change it. And gut feelings take a very minor role.’
‘Yes, I know. What’s your point?’
‘You saying you like Dennis Ireland,’ Drew answered for the police detective. ‘That’s got nothing to do with anything.’
‘Except I would be interested to know who you don’t like,’ teased Gladwin. ‘Just in case.’
‘Rosa Wilson and Cheryl Bagshawe,’ came the prompt reply. ‘Both angry women. Rosa’s got a whole lot of emotional problems, which are probably a nasty mixture of cause and effect of her daughter’s illness. She’s not very nice and I can’t see that she’s at all good for Juliet. I’m surprised the authorities let them live together, to be honest.’
‘And Ms Bagshawe?’
‘She’s dishonest. Evasive, anyway. Slippery. I thought she was being friendly when she came here on Saturday, but really it was just nosiness.’
‘Higgins interviewed her,’ said Gladwin thoughtfully. ‘She seemed fairly normal, I think. He didn’t flag anything up.’
‘It’s a fair old list of suspects, isn’t it?’ said Drew with relish. ‘A wife, three sons, a mother and daughter, a woman with a Great Dane and a smarmy man next door. And we’ll never know if he killed one person or three.’
‘He or she,’ said Thea firmly. ‘There’s as many women as men on the list.’
Drew ticked his fingers. ‘Four of each, I make it.’
Gladwin snorted. ‘Those are just the ones that Thea’s met. It doesn’t have to be one of them at all.’
‘True,’ Drew nodded solemnly. ‘Perfectly true.’
Gladwin eyed him suspiciously, as if doubting his sincerity. ‘So tell me about meeting Juliet Wilson and Sebastian Callendar this afternoon. What happened?’
‘Actually, before that we met Cheryl Bagshawe and Rosa Wilson in the pub,’ Thea said. ‘And Ralph Callendar was there as well.’
‘Did any of them say or do anything you think I should know about?’
‘Hard to judge. Rosa shouted at me for drawing Juliet to the attention of the police – which I didn’t do. Cheryl seemed furtive. Ralph was far too relaxed for a family man on Christmas Eve.’
‘I thought he was the one you liked,’ Drew accused her. For a crazy second, it occurred to her that Drew might be jealous; that he found it disagreeable to hear her favouring another man.
‘I did like him, yes. He was kind and sensitive and understanding. But now I think he might have been a bit too good to be true.’
‘So you’ve seen everyone today except Marian and Edwin Callendar,’ Gladwin summarised.
‘And Dennis Ireland – although Drew spoke to him on the phone, so maybe that counts.’ Thea glanced at Timmy, bent avidly over the electronic toy. What did they so
und like to a child, with their bantering tones and obsessive tossing to and fro of people’s names? It was a bizarre conversation by any standards, and she had little confidence that it was furthering the investigation into Natasha’s murder.
‘So what did Mrs Callendar take from the house next door?’ Gladwin went on.
‘Haven’t you asked her?’
The detective huffed an explosive breath that indicated shocked denial. ‘Did you want us to?’
‘Why should I care either way?’
‘Because she would know where we got the information from and be unlikely to react kindly towards you.’
‘Gosh! You were protecting me? As your informant?’
‘That surprises you?’
‘It does rather. What do you think she’d do to me?’
‘That’s not the point. It doesn’t work like that. There are protocols, guidelines. You don’t just confront a person with something another person has said about them. Not if you can avoid it, anyway. It seldom gets you anywhere.’
‘It’s not evidence,’ said Drew with something approaching sarcasm.
‘Isn’t it? Surely it is, if I testify to something I’ve seen? That must be evidence. What else is it?’
‘We discussed it,’ said Gladwin, ‘and decided not to take further action. Mrs Callendar has a strong alibi for Saturday afternoon. The only way she could be implicated is if others in her family are lying.’
‘A conspiracy!’ crowed Drew. ‘All in it together. So you just need to wait for one of them to crack and drop the others in it. Isn’t that what happens?’
Gladwin regarded him with diminished liking. She frowned. She pursed her lips. ‘Generally not,’ she said tightly. ‘When a number of people have a great deal to lose, they tend to very successfully deceive the police and conceal evidence for as long as necessary.’
‘But you’d still really like to know what she removed from next door,’ Thea said. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Among many other things, yes I would.’
An electronic buzzing made Thea look at Timmy, assuming it was his Nintendo, but Gladwin reached for a phone in her bag and answered it. Within seconds she was on her feet, flapping her free hand at Drew, giving wordless instructions that he failed to interpret. Thea was quicker. ‘She wants something to write with,’ she said, recalling a device Gladwin had used before – a sort of electronic notepad. Drew widened his eyes helplessly.
‘Hang on,’ Gladwin told her caller. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Thea and Drew. ‘I’m being terribly disorganised. I don’t really need to make notes. There’s some sort of incident at the pub. Higgins thinks I ought to go and see.’ She replaced the phone to her ear. ‘I’m only a minute away. I’ll meet you there, okay?’
‘Can we come?’ Drew asked like an eager child, when she’d finished.
‘Of course not. What about Timmy?’
‘What’s happening? Did Jeremy say?’ Thea was sharing some of Gladwin’s impatience with Drew’s flippancy. He seemed to grasp this, and subsided with a resigned expression.
‘He didn’t know. Normally we – CID, I mean – wouldn’t be concerned with something like this. It’s only because of what happened here that Higgins got the call.’
‘Poor old Stanton,’ Thea realised. ‘They’ll be getting special treatment until the whole case is closed. It’s probably just a rowdy Christmas sing-song.’
‘Probably,’ Gladwin nodded, pulling on her jacket. ‘I suppose I’d better drive there.’
‘It’d take ten minutes at least to walk it. And it’s up a steep hill at the end.’
‘That clinches it. See you soon.’ And she was gone before anyone could say another word.
‘It’s four o’clock,’ noted Drew, a moment later. ‘We can only stay another hour at most.’
‘And it’s dark already,’ sighed Thea, feeling an inner darkness that matched the world beyond the windows. ‘I suppose you’ll be getting excited about Christmas any minute now,’ she said to Timmy, who was still bent over the toy, but threw increasingly anxious glances from one adult to another.
‘We’re not going home yet, are we?’ he asked Drew. ‘The lady must be coming back.’
‘Why must she?’
‘She said I had to give the DS back.’
‘So she did. I think she might have forgotten about it.’
‘Keep playing while you can,’ Thea advised.
‘Somebody at the door,’ Drew observed, as a light tap was heard.
Timmy gripped the Nintendo more tightly, and adopted a mulish expression. ‘It’s okay,’ said Thea, peering out of the window. ‘It’s not Gladwin.’
‘I’ll go and see, shall I?’ Drew said, with another dash of his earlier sarcasm. Before Thea could apply herself to the question of exactly what was annoying him, he had gone. Had she been patronising him somehow? Had she missed some important remark, or inadvertently said something hurtful? She couldn’t think of anything.
He returned followed by a young man who Thea found familiar, but could not immediately place. ‘Hello,’ he said shyly. ‘I’m Richard. I was here on Saturday. I mean – in the street. When—’ he looked worriedly at Timmy, ‘you know. When there was that trouble next door.’
‘Of course! Now I recognise you. The student,’ said Thea, still staring at him. ‘What do you want?’
‘How do you know I’m a student?’
‘Oh – I just guessed. Home for Christmas?’
‘Actually, no. I live in Scotland.’ Only then did she register his accent. ‘And I’m a postgraduate, doing a doctorate.’
‘Good Lord! How old are you?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘You look nineteen. What subject?’
‘Biochemistry.’
‘Why am I not surprised?’ said Thea, with a well-worn sense of impending drama.
Drew fidgeted in the doorway, uncertain of his role. Richard had barely glanced at him once he was inside the house, fixing all his attention on Thea.
‘You tell me,’ he said. ‘How can you possibly have expected me to say that?’
‘It just seems to be a theme around here. The Callendar connection, basically. I just bet your thesis has something to do with horses.’
‘Not directly. It’s at a much more molecular level than any particular species. It’s essentially to do with the deterioration and preservation of blood cells.’
‘Fascinating. So why are you here on Christmas Eve?’
‘I wanted to talk to you about Saturday.’ Again he glanced at Timmy. ‘Except you’ve got people, so I suppose I should go. Can I come back later in the week?’
‘Did you know Natasha?’
‘A bit. We did some lab work together a few months ago.’
‘What were you doing outside her house that afternoon?’
‘Um – I was rather hoping to be the one to ask the questions.’ He spoke diffidently, but there was a determined look in his eye. ‘I was wondering whether Mrs Callendar has been back here, since the … since Saturday?’
‘Why?’
‘There were some … samples … that Natasha was keeping safe for me. It’s nothing sinister, but I didn’t want them to get muddled up with anything in the laboratory, so she kept them in a special storage unit she had upstairs. Marian Callendar knew about it – the samples sort of belong to her, in fact. I doubt whether the police would have found them, so they might well still be there. But if the power gets turned off in the house, then they’ll be ruined. I tried to ask Marian what we should do, and she brushed me off. That made me think she’d already been here ahead of me. And if she had, it would make sense for her to go round the back, via this house. I’ve been all round, and that’s the only realistic way to get in.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Laverton. I’m lodging with a family.’
‘Not the Wilsons?’ Thea could not resist asking.
‘No. They’re called Perkins. Why?’
‘Just checking,’ she smiled
. ‘It would be a coincidence, but I’ve learnt that coincidences are really very common.’
Richard had no answer to this, but shifted from one foot to another like an awkward teenager. ‘Um …’ he began.
‘We can’t let him, can we?’ said Drew slowly. ‘We can’t be party to a completely illegal forced entry into a house that’s been sealed by the police.’
Thea quailed inwardly at this reminder that she had already committed exactly such a misdemeanour when she let Marian Callendar use the back way. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Gladwin could come back at any moment and catch us.’
‘Who?’ asked Richard.
‘She’s the SIO, Detective Superintendent Sonia Gladwin. She’s been called to some sort of fracas at the pub.’
‘Fracas?’ It was Drew picking her up on the word. ‘Is that what it is?’
‘Shut up,’ she told him, none too gently. ‘It’s the word the police use.’
‘Sounds as if you know a bit about the way the police work,’ observed Richard. ‘And you’re matey with the top banana lady. Just my luck.’
‘Banana lady?’ came a little echo from Timmy. He smiled tentatively as if noticing a joke that the others had missed.
‘You can sit down if you like,’ Thea invited ungraciously. ‘If you’re staying, that is.’
‘Why would he?’ Drew looked directly at her, searching her face. ‘If we won’t let him do what he came for, he may as well go again. Unless you want to ask him some more questions.’
She frowned at him in puzzlement. Something had been getting him increasingly irritable for the past hour or more. Ever since Gladwin had turned up. The penny dropped with an almost audible clatter, bringing with it a surge of warm emotion. He wanted her to himself! He wasn’t really interested in murders or mysterious samples or even fights in the pub. He just wanted to spend time with Thea on this difficult Christmas Eve when his wife was dead and his daughter unwell.
Except he had been the one to stop and worry about the pale woman in the woods. He had asked Gladwin if he could go with her to the pub. He had given total attention to Thea’s account of events since Friday. She’d got it wrong, then. Something else was bothering him.
Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) Page 21
