by Adam Croft
Caroline let out a small chuckle. ‘One thing you learn quite quickly in this job, Dex, is there’s no such thing as normal. Just because you or I might describe someone in a certain way, or because we’d have our own methods of doing things, it doesn’t mean everyone else would agree.’
Dexter looked at her. ‘Is that you trying to be philosophical?’
‘Maybe. Why?’
‘Because it was terrible.’
Caroline laughed again. ‘Alright, I’ll keep it to myself next time. You’re right on one thing, though. Something doesn’t quite seem to be adding up, does it?’
Dexter put his hand on his chest in mock offence. ‘What? Secrets, rumours and hidden scandals? In Rutland? Well I never.’
‘I know. Who would’ve guessed?’
‘So what’s your theory?’ Dexter asked. ‘Amie and Martin have been shagging, they’ve had a falling out, he’s threatened to tell her husband and she’s finished him off?’
‘Nice choice of words. But I doubt it’s that straightforward. Why would Martin want to reveal all? He had as much to lose as she did. More, if you count his affair with Monique and god knows who else on top.’
‘What’s that you were saying about nice choice of words?’
Caroline smiled. ‘You know what I meant. Rare to get a woman killing a man, too, and almost never violently.’
‘I’d like to see a non-violent murder.’
‘Yes, but I mean women tend to poison or set up accidents.’
‘Sounds pretty violent to me. What if Amie was being coerced or forced into stuff like Monique was? Maybe Amie’s husband found out? Got jealous, killed Martin, Amie worked out what’d happened and decided to cover for her husband to hide what’d happened.’
Caroline chuckled. ‘I think we should probably meet him and speak to him first, before accusing him of murder, don’t you?’
Dexter made a murmuring noise in return. ‘Alright, spoilsport.’
18
They arrived at Amie Tanner’s house in Market Overton about twenty minutes later, the low sun bright in the sky as the frosty start to the day had begun to thaw.
They parked up in a bay opposite the Black Bull pub, the Church of St Peter and St Paul just visible through the bare branches of the trees between. The car fell silent as Caroline switched off the engine and the sound of the hot-air blowers suddenly stopped.
‘Walk from here?’ she said. ‘Good to get some air in the lungs. Plus we can sneak up like Cagney and Lacey.’
‘Which one am I?’ Dexter asked.
‘I’ll leave that to your filthy imagination.’
The pair walked down Thistleton Road towards Amie Tanner’s house, their hands thrust in their coat pockets as the biting cold threatened to worm its way in.
‘Christ, it’s even colder here than it was in Uppingham,’ Dexter said. ‘How’s that even possible?’
‘Because that was Uppingham. We’re up north now,’ Caroline replied with a grin.
A couple of minutes later, they reached Amie Tanner’s house and Dexter knocked on the door. They could see the edge of the TV screen through the living room window — a kids’ programme Caroline didn’t recognise. A few moments later, the door opened.
‘Amie, hi,’ Caroline said. ‘DI Caroline Hills and DS Dexter Antoine. We spoke yesterday.’
‘I know. Hardly going to forget that, am I? Can I help you?’
‘We just wondered if we might be able to pop in and have a quick word.’
‘Have you found out who did it?’
‘Not yet. We need some more information.’
Amie let out a sigh. ‘Alright. But I warn you, the place is a mess.’
They stepped inside and closed the door behind them. Dexter glanced into the living room, briefly locking eyes with Amie’s husband. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Sorry to trouble you.’
‘It’s fine,’ he replied. ‘I’ll keep the girls in here. They’re glued to the telly anyway.’
Amie led them through into the kitchen and gestured towards the table for them to sit. ‘Tea? Coffee?’
Caroline raised a hand. ‘We’re fine, thanks. We’ll try not to take up too much of your time. We can see you’re busy. We just wanted to ask you a couple more questions about Martin Forbes. Somewhere private, perhaps?’
Amie looked at them for a moment, then poked her head round the door into the living room. ‘Gavin? Can you take the girls upstairs for a bit please?’
They listened as Amie’s husband did as he was asked, before Caroline spoke quietly enough to ensure they wouldn’t be overheard.
‘I’ll get straight to the point. We’ve had some reports that your relationship with Martin wasn’t always strictly work-related. Is that true?’
Amie laughed. ‘Is that what you wanted to ask me? Jesus Christ, of course not. No chance.’
‘There was never anything other than a working relationship?’ Caroline asked.
‘Absolutely not, no. If someone’s tried telling you that, they’ve got the wrong end of the stick completely. He tried coming on to me a few times, but I always brushed him off. I’m married with kids, for Christ’s sake.’
‘And it never went any further than Martin’s advances and your rejections?’
‘No. Categorically no.’
Caroline nodded as she wrote in her notebook. ‘Okay. Sorry. You understand we have to ask these things, of course.’ Amie didn’t reply. ‘Ooh, I like those,’ Caroline said, nodding her head towards the vase on the kitchen windowsill. ‘Are they roses? They’re very dark.’
Amie’s demeanour seemed to change almost immediately. ‘Yes. Rosa Black Baccara.’
‘You seem to have quite a lot of admirers.’
‘Actually, they were my dad’s favourite. He used to be a gardener at Barnsdale. Every year he used to send me a dozen of them on Valentine’s Day.’
‘Used to?’
‘He died. Ten years ago. I think my mum sends them now, but she’ll never admit it. I thought it was Gavin at first, but it’s not. I can always tell when he’s lying. I suppose I might never find out, but that doesn’t matter. It’s sort of a reminder of Dad. It’s nice.’
‘It is. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s fine.’
‘They’re an interesting colour. I’ve never seen roses that dark before.’
Amie shrugged. ‘I guess that’s why he liked them. He loved anything that was different, out of the ordinary. He was a bit of an old hippy, in many ways.’
‘Man after my own heart. So, let’s go back to Monday night. You weren’t at work, is that right?’
‘Yes. I’ve got the week off.’
‘Were you at home?’
‘Yes. We went into Peterborough on Saturday, but we’ve been at home since. Gavin’s been out to walk the dog a couple of times, but that’s about it.’
‘In the village?’
‘Yes.’
Caroline nodded and noted this down. Market Overton was a good half an hour’s drive from where Martin’s body was found. ‘And what time did he go out on Monday?’
Amie laughed. ‘About lunchtime. Sorry, but you’re on the wrong track if you think Gavin had anything to do with it.’
‘We’re just trying to ascertain everyone’s whereabouts, that’s all.’
‘Okay, well in that case we were both here, at home. All evening.’
‘What were you doing?’
Amie sighed. ‘We put the kids to bed, then I had a bath for an hour or so, then I came downstairs, we opened a bottle of wine and we had sex on the sofa. Is that enough information for you?’
‘Where was he while you were in the bath?’
‘Downstairs, watching TV. And before you ask, yes, I know he was because he’s allergic to the dog and he was sneezing almost constantly. Besides which, the car’s parked right below our bathroom window so I would’ve heard him if he’d gone out, and it’s a bloody long walk to Seaton.’
‘Okay, I think we all need to
take a breather for a few moments,’ Caroline said, trying to sound as soothing as possible. ‘I understand it’s a difficult time and we might not be coming across in the right way, but I just want to assure you that all we’re trying to do is get all the information we can as quickly and efficiently as possible so we can find Martin’s killer.’
Amie nodded and looked up at her. ‘Well in that case, you’d better get back out there, because you’re not going to find them here.’
19
‘We can verify everything with cell site info,’ Dexter said as they walked back to Caroline’s car. ‘We’ll be able to see if either of them left the house. The car’s brand new, too. That’ll have a tracker on it.’
‘We won’t get authorisation to access that. We’re nowhere near the evidence threshold.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Afraid so. Vehicles are classed as premises, so it’d count as property interference. We’d need part 3 RIPA authority. Chief Constable territory, that. We won’t get it.’
‘If the car’s classed as premises, can’t we just get a search warrant under PACE?’
‘Only if you fancy convincing a magistrate that we’ve got solid grounds for suspecting Amie.’
Dexter raised an eyebrow. ‘Does that mean you think she didn’t do it?’
Caroline sighed. ‘Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t think she was lying. But that doesn’t change the fact that something doesn’t quite seem right.’
‘Yeah, but if Martin Forbes definitely died on Monday night and Amie and Gavin Tanner definitely didn’t leave their house on Monday night, what else can we do? If the evidence says it can’t be them, it can’t be them.’
‘It doesn’t mean they’re not involved. Monique Dupont was a solid suspect too, until an alibi popped up. What if that is the connection? What if they’re working together? We need to dig deeper. Find out more about them, their connections. They could’ve paid someone else to do it.’
‘I don’t think that’s likely, do you?’ Dexter asked. ‘There are plenty of angles here. Martin Forbes seems to have pissed enough people off along the line. We had Monique Dupont pretty much nailed on at one point, don’t forget.’
‘None of this is likely, Dex. Nothing. It’s not likely you’ll go out for a jog and get beaten to death under a viaduct, but try telling that to Martin Forbes.’
‘Even so, I don’t think I’m fully on board with the Tanners being gangland kingpins who can just drop twenty grand and phone in a hit. They’re not the Market Overton Mafia.’
Caroline picked up the pace, wanting to get back to the relative warmth of her car, desperate to return to the office and fill up on black coffee. The peaks and troughs of energy and fatigue were proving difficult to get used to, but there was no way she was going to let on to anyone that she was anything other than absolutely fine.
It’d taken a while for her to work her way around it, but she’d grown adept at managing her symptoms and masking the severity of her exhaustion from just about everyone around her. She knew it probably wasn’t healthy, but then again neither was lying around in bed all day. The sheer boredom had left her on the verge of going mad, and she was in no doubt it’d be far healthier in the long run to get back on her feet.
‘As much as I’d love the Market Overton Mafia to exist,’ she said, ‘I’m inclined to agree it’s probably not going to be our primary line of inquiry. Would certainly make the job one hell of a lot more interesting, though. I can just see you sliding over car bonnets and gunning down speedboats full of drug-runners on Rutland Water.’
‘Never say never,’ Dexter replied, beaming.
‘You agree there’s definitely something up with the Tanners, though?’
Dexter shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe they’re just a bit weird. You get people like that, where something seems off but they haven’t actually done anything wrong. That’s half the fun of the job.’
‘Fun? Frustration, more like.’
‘Yeah, but we can’t just go around nicking people because they seem like wrong’uns. That’s why we deal with evidence and facts rather than old-school coppers’ instincts.’
Caroline grunted. ‘Yeah, alright. I don’t need the lecture. I’m not suggesting we ignore evidence and facts. I just… There’s definitely something not right there. And I don’t want to lose track of that, then find out later we’ve missed something really obvious.’
Dexter smiled as they reached the car. ‘Okay. I promise you I won’t forget you think Amie Tanner’s a wrong’un. How about that?’
Caroline returned a wry smile. ‘Hmmm. Deal.’
20
The black coffee almost scalded her throat, but she didn’t care. Warmth was warmth, and right now she would take anything she could get.
She’d lost quite a bit of weight over the past weeks and months — more than she could account for through simply lying in bed for much of it — and it’d shocked her to see how much the treatment had taken out of her. It was cold — abnormally cold — but Caroline was in no doubt that she was feeling it more than she would have done in any other year.
She’d joked with her colleagues about London being perpetually five degrees warmer than the rest of the country, but it’d only been a partial joke. Snow and frost had been rarities, and where they occurred they tended to be gone before breakfast. The cold had been damp, dreary and miserable. Here, it seemed to bite. It was a bitter, inescapable cold. A thin, sharp chill that managed to creep its way into every crevice of your clothing. Unrelenting.
She supposed it was the openness of the area. London was built up, buildings crammed together, central heating seeping out of walls every few feet; sunlight bouncing off glass towers and warming up the streets; cars and trucks sitting in traffic jams, their warm exhaust fumes defrosting the tarmac. There was none of that here. This was pure.
The cold was one thing. She could deal with that. But, try as she might, the one thing she couldn’t quite get used to was the quiet. Even in the middle of Oakham or Uppingham — as busy as the county got — it was nothing compared to what she was used to. Things were still. Calm. And now she was more convinced than ever that everything was somehow interlinked. Causational, even. It was as if the calm, still air had frozen far harsher than the boisterous, moving air of London ever could.
It was almost ironic, the family moving to Rutland to escape the noise and enjoy the great outdoors, only to spend weeks and months on end in the house — or, in Caroline’s case, in bed — the second the weather turned.
She told herself she’d suggest to Mark that they start walking or cycling again, provided she could summon up the energy. There was a certain attraction in bare trees and frost-glazed fields that couldn’t be matched by even the most sumptuous of summers. Besides which, she needed the exercise. She was sure a large part of her lethargy and fatigue was due to having done very little for weeks on end. For now, though, there were more pressing matters to attend to.
‘Okay,’ she said, as she perched on the edge of a desk. ‘Welcome to today’s afternoon briefing on Operation Cruickshank.’ It always felt a little daft in her mind to speak so formally to just three other officers, but years of Met training and habits were hard to shake off. ‘First things first. You’ll be aware by now that the suspect we had in custody, Monique Dupont, has been released without charge. She’s got a solid alibi for the night of the murder, which has been backed up with CCTV evidence.
‘Dexter and I have been out and about this morning speaking to people who knew Martin Forbes. We went back to the offices of Allure Design to speak to their IT manager, Tom Mackintosh, primarily to obtain potential digital evidence, but also to speak to him as a work colleague of Martin’s. The most interesting part was the revelation that Martin Forbes had been trying it on with Amie Tanner. Tom said it was something that was never actually spoken about, but which a few people had cottoned on to. We spoke to Amie Tanner again, and she said Martin had tried coming on to her a few times, but that she’d always
rejected him. Then again, she was saying that while she was sitting in her kitchen with her husband and kids upstairs. Between the four of us, I got the distinct impression there was more to it than Amie Tanner was making out. Whenever Dex and I’ve spoken to her she’s been cold, clipped, almost rude. Everyone else seems to think she’s friendly and bubbly. There’s something not quite right there, and I don’t think it’s just a dislike of the police. For now, she remains a definite person of interest.’
‘A suspect?’ Aidan asked.
Caroline took a deep breath before speaking. ‘At this stage, I’m not willing to rule her out. She has an alibi in her husband, but we don’t know they’re not in on it together. I don’t imagine for one minute they both went out and killed Martin Forbes, because they had the kids asleep in the house. Aidan, can you check cell site data for their mobile phones? Let’s see if we can at least prove where their phones were. Let’s arrange for the neighbours to get a knock on the door, too. Covertly, if you can. See if any of them saw one of the Tanners coming or going from the house on the night Martin Forbes died. Dex?’
‘Nothing much to add, other than — for what it’s worth — I don’t think Amie or Gavin Tanner did it. My reading of the situation was similar, but I wonder if perhaps Amie disliked Martin Forbes so much she’s actually quite pleased he’s gone. That’d explain why she was keen to prove she wasn’t involved, but not too bothered about helping identify his killer.’
‘No, but even so, keeping information from us is an offence in itself,’ Caroline said. ‘So we need to make sure what she says is absolutely watertight. If she’s keeping something from us that could prejudice the investigation, we’ll come down on her like a ton of bricks. I know she’s hiding something. We just need to get to the bottom of what that is.’
21
Caroline headed home early that afternoon, having told her team she had another appointment. It wasn’t strictly true: the only appointment she had was with her sofa and a glass of wine. Even so, she could legitimately argue it was a medical appointment, and there was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that she absolutely needed the extra rest if she was going to be able to see out this investigation.
