“And he rang you when he was done?”
“He told me he’d found the suitcase with her clothes in it in the boot of the car.”
“Why couldn’t Brian simply have phoned the police instead of killing her? She would have ended up getting the blame anyway.”
Suzanne looked at him as if he was dense. “She had a head wound. He’d pushed her against the side of the worktop and she was unconscious. I believe he also told me that she’d wet herself, which was a detail more than I really needed, but it served to tell me that she was quite badly hurt. We couldn’t risk Brian being charged with her murder, or GBH, or whatever it would have been.”
“I guess not.” It was hard to focus. All this information—the thought of all this running around in the middle of the night, Brian cycling from Briarstone to Morden—no wonder they hadn’t found his car on the ANPR when they’d looked. And the small nugget of consolation—he’d been right about that bike. The one in the ditch, covered in mud and tufts of grass. Brian had cycled back from the quarry.
“It was all fine until Brian was on the way home. He phoned me, all out of breath because he was cycling through a field, and he said we should have got something more concrete to link Barbara to Polly, to be on the safe side.”
“Why couldn’t Brian sort that out when he got home?”
She sighed. “Because there was a limit to what I could trust Brian not to fuck up, Inspector. Pushing Barbara off a cliff edge was one thing, going into Polly’s house when he didn’t need to was something else entirely.”
“So you did it yourself?”
“I did it myself.”
“Polly was—dead?”
“Very much so.”
“Weren’t you worried about leaving forensic evidence?”
“Of course. I was quite careful, but you would have needed a reason to link me to the scene, and there wasn’t much chance of that. Besides, I believed that once your lot had found Barbara covered in blood, then you’d stop looking for anyone else.”
She smiled at him, completely calm. It dawned on him that she was mentally unstable, might actually be a complete psychopath, and she was telling him all of this because she knew he wasn’t going to survive to share the story further.
A second later and he had dismissed the thought. He was a good judge of character, always had been, and he had a nose for trouble. He was always the first to spot the fight that was about to kick off, the disagreement that was going to escalate to the use of a weapon. He was famous for it. And she was telling him all this, the whole story, because she trusted him. She was afraid of Brian, wasn’t she? Brian was the one who’d killed his wife. Suzanne had been terrified, had turned to Andy for protection, for advice. He couldn’t go back on it now. There was no path back the way he had come, there was only the path ahead. His head spun, his stomach growled and churned.
“So you took the shot put?”
“I took a bag with me. It was quite obvious that it had been the weapon. It was lying right next to her head, covered in blood. I’m assuming they found it, by the way?”
He nodded, deliberately choosing not to add that they’d worked out quite quickly that it had been thrown from the top of the quarry after the car had gone over.
“So, you see, I don’t really see that there’s cause to worry. What can they prove? That Brian phoned me several times over the course of the evening.”
“Is that what you’re going to say in interview? Your solicitor will probably advise you to go no comment. Just so you know.”
She considered this. “I’ll worry about it when it happens. I’m good at thinking on my feet, you know.”
Really? he thought. I’d never have guessed.
“What would happen if they knew what I’ve told you? And that you didn’t share that information?”
“I’d get the sack. Lose my pension. Probably face criminal charges.”
“Criminal charges, really? Goodness, how dramatic.” She laughed again and her voice was light when she spoke. “It puts you in a very tight situation, doesn’t it?”
“We trust each other. You’ve trusted me, and I trust you,” he said. His voice sounded as if it came from a long way away, as though he were under water.
“And it’s working fine so far, isn’t it? So let’s just carry on as we are.”
That was clearly the end of the discussion. Andy was worried for a moment that he had made her angry, somehow, but there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it.
She said to him, her voice low, “Aren’t you going to finish your coffee? Or do you want me to make you another?”
12:15
The MIR was empty. A few minutes later Lou found Jason in the canteen, halfway through a sandwich. He waved at her, waited while she queued up to get a coffee and a Cornish pasty.
“Good to see you eating properly,” he commented, when she sat down opposite him.
“I’ll have a vegan stir-fry later, all right?”
“How’s it going up the road?”
She lowered her voice, but there was nobody within earshot of them. “We charged Brian. He admitted pushing Barbara’s car over the edge of the quarry. He came out with this long explanation of how she fell over and hit her head, and he thought he’d end up getting into trouble for it so he went to the effort of trying to make it look like she’d killed herself.”
Jason nodded. “It’s crazy enough to be true.”
“Les contacted Adele Francis, who did the PM—she said that the open skull fracture could well have masked an earlier head injury. She’s going to take another look. We should hear back by tomorrow.”
“What about Polly?”
“He still claims Barbara must have done it, but he’s wavering. In all honesty I don’t think he knows what happened to her.”
“And Suzanne Martin?” Jason asked.
“Interesting, but frustrating. He went ‘no comment’ every time her name came up.”
“You think he’s protecting her?”
“Quite possibly. I’m going to go over his interview now and see if there’s anything in there we can use, but for now I think we should bring her in for questioning and see what she has to say for herself.”
She bit the end off the pasty and blew the steam out of the interior of it.
“You’re gonna enjoy that,” he said.
“Absolutely.”
“What kind of meat is it?”
“No idea. Could be anything.”
He shook his head slowly. “It’s not like there aren’t some healthy choices up there.”
She put the pasty down slowly and decided to change the subject before she got seriously pissed off with him. “I’m also worried about Flora.”
“How come?”
“She was at the nick when it opened this morning, asking to see whoever was in charge. I went down, but she didn’t seem that keen to talk. Then we had to start things off with Brian, and when I got back to the interview room Flora had gone.”
“That could have been about anything,” Jason said.
“You didn’t see her—she looked like she was falling apart.”
Jason considered this while Lou chewed.
“She seems to have taken Polly’s death particularly hard,” Jason said. “I don’t think there’s anything weird about that. Love does that to people.”
He had finished his sandwich and was watching her eat with an intense interest that Lou found disconcerting. Eventually she put the pasty down, wiped her hands and mouth on the paper napkin. “Why are you so obsessed with what I’m eating?”
Jason had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “Well, you know. Your arteries. You kinda need them?”
She had finished, anyway. The rest of it didn’t look nearly as appetizing.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?” he asked.
Lou drank half of her coffee in one big gulp. “I need to go and see Mr. Buchanan. Get that out of the way as quick as I can. Then I’m going to ta
ke someone and go and look for Flora Maitland.”
“Isn’t Andy Hamilton supposed to be watching out for her?”
“It’s his day off. Isn’t that typical?”
12:25
“What if I told you it was me?”
Andy Hamilton was lying stretched out on Suzanne’s bed, fully dressed, although she had undone his jeans, taken off his shoes. He was feeling queasy. Definitely coming down with something. And he felt so tired—exhausted. His eyes were closed and it felt like an overwhelming effort to open them.
He hadn’t fully heard what she said, but registered it as somehow important. “What? What did you say?”
“I said, what if I told you it was me?”
“You said you’d always tell the truth, Suzanne,” he said, his tone measured.
“And so I do,” she said. “So I’ll tell you. I killed her.”
“We’re talking about Polly?”
“Of course.”
There was silence for a moment. He stared at her, trying to focus. So many things he needed to ask, and how to handle this? How to deal with it? And he could have been cleverer with his questions, but all he could manage to ask was: “What happened?”
“She was such a nuisance. I was fed up with it. After she turned up at the flat uninvited I was just so angry with her. I went in to the cottage, up to her bedroom. We talked for a little while. She wanted me to tie her up, I refused. She wanted me to choke her. I did that for a bit but then she got upset again, so I stopped. She was getting to be so difficult, so tiresome—she didn’t know what she wanted. If I left things as they were I had no idea what she might do. I tried to leave, and she began screaming and flinging herself at me. We got down the stairs and she was holding on to me. I reached for something to get her to let go, and in the end I hit her with that shot put just to get her to shut up.”
Hamilton felt sick. So casual. She was so fucking casual about it, it was terrifying.
“You must have been covered in blood” was all he could think to say.
“Yes, it was a little messy. I took a pair of Polly’s jeans and one of her sweaters from the laundry basket in the kitchen. When I was getting changed I heard Barbara coming in. She was swaying and I could see she was going to get the fright of her life, but it was really rather funny to watch. She didn’t even see me because I’d gone into the downstairs cloakroom. She ran out again a few moments after that.”
“What did you do with your clothes?”
“I put them in a big brown paper bag and hid it in the middle of the pile of bonfire pallets they set alight in the park yesterday,” she said. “I’d be surprised if there’s anything left. Big effigy of the prime minister on top of it, I believe.”
She had drugged him, somehow. The thought came to his awareness teasingly, hovering out of reach, and then, when he grasped at it, the realization made his heart beat faster, made him start to panic. There had been something in that coffee. Was it all part of her game, her fetish?
He tried to focus, tried to put all his efforts into sitting up, getting the hell out of here.
“It’s all right,” she said, soothingly. Her hand was on his chest, pushing him gently back. “You don’t need to move. You don’t need to worry about a thing. I need to go out in a minute, and I want to make sure you’re safe while I’m gone.”
“Where’re you going?” he said. His voice was slurred, like he was beyond drunk.
“It doesn’t matter. I just have some errands to run. But I need you to stay here and sleep, and then, when I get home, we can continue your training if you like. I have so many delicious things to teach you.”
“I need to go . . . to work. They’ll come looking for me . . .”
She laughed. “No, it’s your day off, remember? Your ‘rest day.’ So you can rest here.”
The tiredness was like a heavy blanket, covering his whole body. Something over his face, too, something soft, the breath of something brushing his cheek. Somehow it was too much effort to open his eyes.
He could feel something pulling, moving him about, his body inert. There were noises, too, someone else breathing. He fought through the glue in his brain, trying to think, trying to concentrate. Her. It was her.
“I’d like to say I’m sorry,” he heard her say. “I should be sorry, shouldn’t I?”
He tried to move a hand, lift the hand as she had told him to, if he wanted it to stop. He wanted her to stop whatever she was doing, let him rest, let him sleep.
“I’m running out of options,” she said. “This is the only way left . . .”
He murmured.
“It’s all right,” she said, soothingly, her voice close to his ear. “I’ll take good care of you, Inspector Hamilton.”
It would be so easy to sleep.
For a moment he drifted, warm and quiet and left alone, and everything was fine.
Minutes passed.
Something happened that made him aware again. The warmth had gone and there was a chill, a breeze moving over his skin. His face was hot, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. The air around his face was warm, damp. He could not move his limbs. Something about his breathing sounded odd, enclosed. He forced his eyes open and saw only a pale light, diffused, foggy, in an odd oval shape with darkness at the edges. Like looking down a tunnel. They said death was like this, didn’t they? He needed to head toward the light if there was a tunnel, and the thought of it made him want to laugh. He tried experimentally to move but nothing worked. His chest so heavy that even breathing was hard work, so much hard work.
Easier to sleep. Easier to just let go.
12:25
The visit to Buchanan’s office had been mercifully brief: the superintendent had gone for an emergency dental appointment. Lou left a message with the assistants that she would brief him whenever he was free, then raced back to the MIR, phoning Sam as she did so.
Of all the people to take with her, Sam Hollands was probably the one she should not have chosen. She was busy going over this morning’s interview, checking things, preparing for the trip to the Magistrate’s Court in the morning. But Sam was the one Lou trusted the most. And she was probably in desperate need for some fresh air.
A few minutes later, Sam was behind the wheel of a Ford Focus belonging to Area CID. All the Major Crime job cars seemed to be in use. Despite the rules about keeping cars clean inside and out—you were supposed to run a vehicle check before you got in one, for heaven’s sake—this one looked like the inside of a high street litter bin on a Saturday morning. Crisp packets, takeaway bags, newspapers—all shoved into the backseat.
Lou opened a window slightly to get rid of the scent of burger and testosterone.
They went to the farm first, and nobody seemed to be home. The farmhouse was locked up, the offices all closed and empty. No sign of any cars. For a few minutes Lou looked down the drive back toward Yonder Cottage, the stables on her left.
“Where is everybody? Place is like a ghost town,” Sam said.
“Do you know where Flora’s studio is?”
“Not offhand.”
Lou turned and headed back toward the car. “I’ll look it up while you drive,” she said. “It can’t be far.”
In the end, they never made it to the studio. They were heading through Briarstone when Les Finnegan phoned Lou’s mobile.
“Ma’am. Where are you?”
“London Road, stuck in traffic. What’s up?”
“I’m just ahead of you at an RTA. Cause of your traffic jam. Can you get here quick? It’s Flora Maitland. You won’t believe what she’s got in her car.”
Deploying the blue lights and siren scared the crap out of the young lad in the stationary car immediately in front of them, but to give him his due, he moved neatly onto the pavement and gradually a path through the traffic opened up ahead of them like parting waves.
It wasn’t far. About half a mile further up the road Flora’s car was embracing a lamppost. An ambulance was already on the scene, as was
Eden Fire and Rescue Service, who were in the process of preparing to cut the roof of the car away to get to the driver.
Sam pulled the car to the side of the road, as far out of the way as she could. Two patrols were already on the scene, one of them managing traffic, the other collaring as many witnesses as they could get their hands on. And on the pavement, grinding a cigarette with the toe of his brown leather loafer, was Les Finnegan.
“Is she conscious, Les?” Lou said, as they got close to him.
“In and out,” he said. “Hard to say how injured. She stinks of booze, though. I reckon she’s paralytic.”
Lou looked across to the remains of the car, but there were so many fluorescent jackets grouped around the driver’s window she couldn’t see who was inside.
“What were you saying about the car?”
“All over the backseat: files, passports, credit cards—and this.” He held up a brown envelope and opened it enough so that Lou and Sam could see the contents.
“Jesus Christ!”
A black handgun, inside one of Les’s handy clear plastic evidence bags.
“What the fuck are you doing with that?” Sam said. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Couldn’t bloody leave it in there, could I? Not with that lot all over the car. Anyway, don’t worry. I’ve put in a call to Firearms, they’re coming to collect it.”
“I need to talk to her,” Lou said.
“They won’t let you near,” said Les.
But she was already crossing the road, opening her warrant card and holding it up for the fire and rescue team leader in his white helmet on the way past.
“Not a good idea to get close,” he said. “Can you stand back?”
“I just need a minute,” she said. “Less than that. Please—it’s really important.”
“We need to get her out. You’ll have all the time you need after that.”
Lou changed the tone of her voice from one of friendly camaraderie to one that permitted no further argument. “This is a police scene. We’re just waiting for Firearms support, and I need to speak to the witness. I won’t take long.”
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