Millie gave Tony a smile. “Bye, Tony.”
“Bye, kiddo.” He gave her a mock punch on the ear.
She grinned. Millie liked Tony. It was one of the things Susan loved about him. In the lead-up to the weekends Archie was home, she’d spent hours panicking that Millie would tell her dad about Tony, but Archie had never been around long enough for the subject to arise. And they’d been careful never to let the girl see them behaving like anything other than friends.
Susan closed the door.
The FLO was coming out of the kitchen, a question in her eyes. “Who was that?”
“Nobody.”
“It was Tony,” said Millie. “Our friend.”
Millie put a hand over her daughter’s mouth. “He was worried about me.”
The FLO raised an eyebrow. “It’s good to have friends’ support. You taking your daughter up to bed now?”
“I am,” said Susan. “I’ll stay up there.”
The FLO nodded. “That’s fine.”
Susan trudged up the stairs, all but dragging Millie up with her. As she did so, she heard the FLO in the kitchen, speaking to someone on her phone.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Lesley tapped her fingertips on her knee as she waited for the phone to be picked up.
After three rings, Zoe answered. “Evening, Ma’am.”
“Zoe,” Lesley said, “I already told you, I’m not your boss anymore.”
“Sorry.” Zoe cleared her throat. “Lesley.”
Lesley laughed. “That’s better.”
“What can I do for you?” Zoe asked.
“I just wanted to say thanks for your hospitality last night.”
“It was the least I could do. You looked…”
“I looked like a drowned rat, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t want to say.”
“Anyway, thanks. And thanks for not asking any questions, either.”
There was an awkward pause.
“No problem,” Zoe said in a small voice. “Anything else I can do for you?”
Lesley considered. She had a new team, she was supposed to be loyal to them. But…
“Zoe,” she said. “Can I run something past you?”
“Always.”
“So, my predecessor down here, DCI Mackie, they told me he’d retired before I took the job.”
“OK,” said Zoe. “So far, so normal.”
“Thing is,” Lesley said, “he hadn’t retired. Well, he had, but then he died.”
Zoe sucked her teeth. “Ill health retirement?”
“Not as far as I’ve heard. And people are being weird about it.”
“How so?”
“Whenever I ask about him, they clam up. I’m wondering if there’s something dodgy.”
“Oh, God,” said Zoe. “Not another Randle?”
Lesley grimaced. “Heaven save us from David Randle and his like.”
“You can say that again,” Zoe replied. “So, d’you want me to do a bit of digging for you?”
Lesley gazed out of the window of her temporary house. It was starting to get dark, traffic dying down in the sleepy town. She wondered how long she’d have to live here. Maybe she should find her own place, pick somewhere a bit more alive.
“I’m not sure,” she said to Zoe. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“I’ll be discreet,” Zoe said. “You know me.”
Lesley smiled. Zoe was right. She’d spent six months investigating Detective Superintendent David Randle and nobody had known about it apart from Lesley. Not even Zoe’s friend DS Uddin.
“Go on then,” Lesley said. “Just see what you can find out about him. How did he die? Is there an official record?”
“You sure you can’t get all this?” Zoe asked.
“I could,” said Lesley. “But I don’t want anybody knowing that I’m poking around where I’m not wanted.”
“Fair enough,” said Zoe. “Leave it with me.”
“Just a bit of investigation,” Lesley said. “I know you’ve got work to do, and I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“You can trust me,” Zoe replied. She hung up.
Lesley rubbed her forehead. The pain in the back of her neck was returning, from her injury after the bomb in Birmingham. She’d told her doctor she was feeling fine, that she didn’t need physio. She’d told the psychologist that she was fully recovered. She’d been lying to both of them.
At night she found it hard to close her eyes. The last thing she saw before going to sleep each night was the memory of Inspector Jameson coming towards her. The doors to the shopping mall exploding, the inspector’s body flying out through the shattered glass.
Lesley took a deep breath. She should eat, but she wasn’t hungry. Another Mars Bar, maybe. Or she’d go to the pub. She needed people, distraction.
“Right,” she told herself and pulled her coat on.
Five minutes later, she stood at the bar of the Duke of Wellington. The woman was behind the bar again, the attractive one with the long dark hair. She whistled to herself. Lesley smiled as she held out a tenner for her drink.
“You seem happy.”
The woman nodded. “I’ve been offered a promotion. Named partner.”
Lesley raised an eyebrow. “Sorry? In this pub?”
The woman laughed. “Oh, no. I’m just helping my brother out, while he finds someone permanent.”
“Partner in what?” Lesley asked.
The woman mopped the bar. “A law firm, in Bournemouth.”
“You’re a lawyer?”
“Criminal law.”
“Then our paths might cross one day,” Lesley said. “I’m a detective.”
“Oh, OK,” the woman replied. “Are you the new DCI, in the MCIT?”
Lesley put down her glass. “How did you know?”
“News travels fast around here. Anyway, welcome.”
“So you’ll be defending the people that I’m arresting,” Lesley said.
The woman chuckled. “I’m sure we’ll face each other across an interview table sometime.”
Lesley picked up her drink and walked away. As she turned, the woman spoke. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you don’t seem very happy yourself. I mean, new job and all that?”
Lesley stiffened. There was something liberating about confiding in a stranger. But this woman might not be a stranger for long. She turned back to her.
“Family problem,” she said.
The woman’s brow furrowed. “Sorry to hear that, can’t be easy.”
Lesley shrugged. “Yeah, men, you know.”
The woman shook her head. “Not really.”
“Well, you’re lucky,” said Lesley. “You don’t have to put up with a rat like my husband.”
“Sorry to hear that.” The woman held out her hand. “I’m Elsa, by the way. Elsa Short.”
Lesley shook it. “Lesley Clarke, pleased to meet you.”
“You want to tell me about your husband?”
“Oh, the usual,” Lesley replied. “I caught him shagging another woman.”
Elsa grimaced. “A rat, indeed.”
Lesley gave her a sad smile. “Yeah.”
She turned towards her table. She didn’t feel like confiding any more.
Chapter Fifty
Lesley rubbed at the back of her neck as they crossed the Clifton Suspension Bridge, heading towards Susan Weatheron’s house. She’d called ahead and told them not to make Susan go to the local station. It was hard enough for the woman already, without dragging her out of her home and forcing her to find childcare for her daughter. And Lesley wanted to put her at ease, as well as seeing more of Archie’s home situation.
“Here we are,” Lesley said to Johnny, who was driving. The route had become familiar more quickly than the rural ones, and it felt good to drive through a city again.
As they pulled up outside Susan’s broad Victorian house, the curtain next door twitched. Lesley wondered what it must be like to
live next door to someone like that.
“You noticed that?” she asked Johnny.
“The old guy next door?”
“Maybe we should knock on his door. Find out what there is to know.”
“You reckon he’d know anything useful about Archie?”
“He might know something useful about Susan,” she replied. “You go and talk to him while I talk to Susan.”
He nodded and walked up the next door path.
Lesley had no sooner lifted her finger to Susan’s doorbell, when the door was flung open. A slim woman with curly blonde hair and an expensive suit stood in front of her.
“You must be DCI Clarke.”
Lesley held up her ID. “And you are?”
“Jacinta Burke, Susan’s solicitor.”
“She doesn’t need a solicitor,” Lesley said. “She’s just a witness. Barely even a witness.”
The solicitor shrugged. “Never does any harm to be thorough.”
Lesley liked thoroughness herself. Building a case. Compiling evidence. Except she wasn’t expecting to build a case against Susan. Should the fact the woman had hired a lawyer make her suspicious?
The solicitor led her through to a generous dining room towards the back of the house. Lesley could hear voices in the next room: the Family Liaison Officer talking to a child. The child didn’t sound happy.
Susan was already sitting at the dining table. Her sister, the one who’d been here last time, sat next to her. The two women held hands.
Lesley gave Susan a kind smile. “Sorry to have to do this again, Mrs Weatherton. But we just need to get whatever background we can on your husband. It might help us find the person who killed him.”
Susan sniffed. “I know.”
Fiona’s grip on her sister’s hand tightened. “Do you need me to stay with you?”
“I’ll be fine,” Susan said. “You go. Stay with Millie. I don’t like her on her own with…”
Lesley wondered what the FLO was like. Being from a different force, she wouldn’t have met the woman. Although to be fair, she hadn’t met many members of the Dorset force yet. She settled herself into a chair opposite Susan. Jacinta sat next to her client, pulling out a file.
Lesley folded her hands on the table and sat back, trying not to intimidate the other woman. “Can you tell me when you last saw your husband?”
Susan nodded. “Just over two weeks ago. He came home for the weekend. Millie had a netball tournament, he wanted to see it. It was nice, family time.” Her face clouded over.
“And when did he head back to Dorset?”
“The Sunday night about seven or eight o’clock. We had tea here, the three of us. And then he had to get back to the dig site.”
“I’m sorry again to have to ask this. But did you see him at all after that?”
“He was supposed to be coming home this weekend. But…”
“Did he tell you he wouldn’t be coming home?”
“No.” Susan looked into Lesley’s eyes. “Nothing.”
“Was it common for Archie not to come home when he said he would?”
“There were odd occasions when he didn’t make it, but generally, he’d be home every fortnight. Sometimes more often, sometimes a bit less. But he normally rang me on the Thursday if he wasn’t going to make it.”
“OK.” Lesley made a note in her pad. The solicitor was doing the same thing.
She took a breath. “Susan, can you tell me if there was anything troubling Archie? Anything giving him problems at work?”
Susan shook her head. “Nothing I know of. Why? Do you think somebody at work…”
“We’re not jumping to any conclusions yet. But I need to know if he’d fallen out with any of his colleagues. Particularly the colleagues on the dig, the people he was living with in Corfe Castle.”
Susan sneered. “You’re talking about that girl, Laila.”
“I’m not talking about anybody in particular,” Lesley replied. “I just need to know if there were any problems.”
“You think one of those people might have killed him? You think Laila might have killed him?”
Lesley took a deep breath. “What did Laila say to you when she phoned you on Thursday?”
The solicitor brushed her hand over her client’s arm. Susan frowned. “I don’t have to answer that.”
“You’re not under caution, Mrs Weatherton.”
“Susan, please.”
“You’re not under caution, Susan. And you’re not a suspect. But it would really help if you could answer my questions. I’m just trying to get background information. Are you aware that Laila has also died?”
Susan looked horrified. “The girl?”
Lesley nodded. “She was found yesterday morning, on a hilltop not far from the cottage.”
Susan paled. “Was she… murdered too?”
“We believe so, yes.”
“Do you think the same person did it? The same person who…” Susan couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We don’t know that yet,” said Lesley. She felt desperately sorry for Susan, but at the same time had to remember the woman might be somehow responsible for her husband’s death. “We just need to get as much information as we can before we can draw any conclusions.”
“You want to know if she was suicidal, don’t you?” Susan asked.
“I just want to know how she sounded when she called you. Was she angry? Upset?”
“She was calm. She was too calm.”
“Can you remember what she said to you?”
Susan sniffed. She was wearing a blue cardigan, threadbare at the elbows and damp at the cuffs. “She told me she was in love with him. Well, first she asked me if I was Archie’s wife. I said yes. She told me her name. She told me he loved her. She loved him. She told me she was sorry.”
“Anything else?”
“Then she hung up. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. Not about the affair. About him loving her.”
“Did you speak to Archie about it?”
“I called him. But he wasn’t picking up.”
“So you didn’t manage to speak to your husband, between the time when Laila called you and the time that he died?”
Susan stared back at her, her face stiff. “No,” she whispered.
Lesley felt her heart dip. It occurred to her that Terry still hadn’t tried to contact her. It had been two days since she’d arrived home and encountered him with Julieta, but not once had he tried to make contact.
Bastard.
Stop it, she told herself. Focus.
“Susan, can you tell me what your movements have been since Saturday?”
“Yes, I can.” Susan turned to her solicitor, who withdrew a sheet of paper from under her notepad. The lawyer pushed it across the table. It contained a list of dates, times and locations. Places that Susan had been since Thursday night when Laila had called her. It ended on yesterday morning, when the police had turned up. It listed shopping trips, another netball game, the school run and work on Friday.
“Is there someone who can corroborate these?” Lesley asked.
“Yes,” Susan replied, her voice tight. “My manager can vouch for the fact I was at work on Friday. There will be other mums who can say I was at the netball game on Saturday afternoon.”
“What about Saturday morning?” Lesley asked.
“I’ve already told you I was on a shopping trip with Millie. I can’t provide evidence for that. But there’s no way I could have got to Corfe Castle and back in time for the netball game in the afternoon.”
Lesley nodded. “Thank you for this.”
There was a knock at the front door, and then voices.
That would be Johnny coming back. Lesley wondered if he had anything useful from the neighbour.
She gave Susan another smile. “I know this will be difficult, but can you tell me about the nature of Archie’s relationship with Crystal Spiers?”
A shadow passed across Susan’s face. “I
never liked that woman.”
Lesley waited.
“It’s OK,” Susan said, seeing the look on Lesley’s face. “I know she slept with him. It was back when I was pregnant with Millie.”
Lesley noticed the solicitor wincing. She was learning more about Archie, and the more she learned, the more she disliked him. Were all men like that, if they got the chance?
“But it ended before Millie was born,” Susan said. “It was only a couple of months, they were on a dig together and, well, that’s what Archie did.”
Lesley raised an eyebrow. “He did that a lot?”
Susan shrugged. “You already know that. Archie liked to meet women at work. Young women. Never students, he was always careful. And I never had enough evidence to actually confront him with it. I’m not sure if I even wanted to. I mean, there’s Millie to think about. But then when Laila called me…”
“How did that make you feel?” Lesley said.
“I’ve already told you, I couldn’t have got to Corfe Castle in time to…”
“I’m not asking you if you killed your husband, Susan. I’m just asking you how you felt when you discovered that he was having an affair with Laila Ford.”
“How do you think I felt? Shocked, betrayed, hurt, angry. Protective of our daughter. What do you expect?”
Lesley nodded. She heard a knock at the dining room door.
Johnny poked his head around. “Er, boss.”
She turned back to Susan. “Thanks for this. Obviously, we’ll check out all these locations. I’ll come back to you if we have any more questions. But thank you. I understand this was hard for you.”
Lesley joined the DC in the hallway, closing the door behind her. Johnny was about to speak, but she put her hand up and checked for open doors. None.
“Go on then,” she muttered, when she was certain that the coast was clear.
“The next door neighbour, boss,” he said. “He told me Susan’s having an affair as well.”
“She is?”
“Guy called Tony, comes here all the time. Friendly with the little girl, practically lives here.”
“How did we not know about this?”
“Presumably Archie didn’t know, he was away all the time.”
“Right,” Lesley said. “So who is this man she was having an affair with?”
The Corfe Castle Murders (Dorset Crime Book 1) Page 18
