Not a Very Nice Woman Page 13

‘No, I didn’t know him.’

  Their interviewee shown back to reception after offering that final answer, the officers and support staff were now huddled around a video screen in the hidden room behind the mirrored glass watching a playback of the interview.

  ‘That’s a smile there, I told you there was a smile.’

  ‘It might be a smile,’ one of the others said; but Grey was adamant,

  ‘I promise you that was a smile, the second before he said he didn’t know Charlie Prove. And listen to how he answered it – “No, I didn’t know him.” – not, “Who’s Charlie Prove?” or even, “Why ask me about some guy I haven’t seen since I was a boy?” That answer’s all wrong.’

  ‘Well, you don’t need to convince me that there’s grounds for suspicion at least.’ – In the conversation were Sergeant Smith, Sarah Cobb, Inspectors Glass, Rase, and their boss, the Superintendent, who was now speaking – ‘If we’d have conjured up a suspect from our suppositions of what this killer must be like, then we couldn’t have come up with a better fit.’

  ‘But if it’s him,’ asked Glass, ‘then why come in? Why just hand himself to us?’

  Grey suppressed the urge to shake his head, acknowledging that for all Glass’s abilities, this was why he, Grey, ran the investigative wing of the operation,

  ‘If it is Mars who killed his mother, then to not come forward now would have been suspicious in itself. He could reasonably delay coming forward only till the news of his mother’s death was all over the local paper. At that point any normal person would get in touch.’

  ‘And he might still be a “normal person”,’ cautioned the Super, though to little acknowledgement. ‘Till we know any more he remains a grieving relative; and this conversation stays between us.’

  ‘He timed it perfectly too,’ added Sarah. ‘We’d have had his number in minutes.’

  ‘So, logistics,’ thought Grey aloud. ‘We’re sure of the details we have for him?’

  ‘The DVLA and electoral roll both give the same address on the Mansard Lane,’ answered Sarah.

  ‘Rest assured,’ added Glass. ‘We’ll have an unmarked car go down his road in ten minutes and every hour after.’

  ‘Okay, but keep it light,’ – this was the Super again – ‘we can’t have him know we’re keeping tabs on him.’

  Grey resumed, ‘So, the paper?’

  Cori answered, Sarah popping out to find copies from the office, ‘From what I remember of yesterday’s Sports & Advertiser, there was only a short report of a death at the care home; not till this morning have they picked up that it was suspicious and given her a photo and larger story on the cover – even now they haven’t linked it to the Prove death.’

  ‘These murders are happening too late each evening for their print deadlines,’ added Glass grimly.

  ‘So,’ surmised Grey, ‘an innocent Mars could very easily have missed a short report yesterday; but not reasonably missed the larger story this morning.’ By now Sarah had returned, and Grey scanned the cover story again, ‘There’s more than enough here to get the memories going.’

  Superintendent Rose then asked, ‘Now, he says he didn’t know Stella lived at the Cedars till reading it this morning – can we confirm that?’

  ‘We can’t prove a negative, sir,’ answered Grey, ‘only to say that we know she didn’t have any visitors at the Cedars bar her students, and that even her best friends there…’

  ‘…and at Tudor Oak School…’ added Cori.

  ‘…knew no more than that she might once have had family.’

  ‘So at the very least he didn’t visit her at either place. Could they have written, but not met?’

  ‘We found nothing amongst her papers,’ answered Grey; Cori confirming,

  ‘And if she did get back in contact with her son and kept it a secret, then we’re assuming someone as canny as Rachel Sowton didn’t spot this. Which throws up another question: did Stella know her son was still living so close to her?’

  Grey pondered, ‘But she’d have had the advantage of knowing he did once live in town – in the family home – and might do still. I wonder, is his current house the one he was bought up in?’

  To which no one yet had an answer.

  The Superintendent broke the silence,

  ‘Come on people, think. So what can we say for certain now? He runs a security company, doesn’t he? So could he have tracked her down himself?’

  Glass answered, ‘His boys are more strong-arm than intelligence gatherers. I’d call them the industrial equivalent of pub bouncers, if that wasn’t an insult to the bouncers.’

  Grey took up Glass’s lead, ‘Sir, a man like Mars or one of his staff lurking around the Cedars for weeks, even a few days preceding the attack, would have been seen by someone. And he’s hardly inconspicuous, is he – he’s heavily built and has a certain intensity about him.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because you think he’s the killer.’

  ‘No, he caught my eye crossing the green before I even knew who he was – are you telling me that if he’d been past the Cedars more than once or twice in the days before this chaos erupted that he wouldn’t have been clocked by Derek Waldron or one of the others?’

  ‘After all,’ recalled Cori, ‘he spotted the schoolgirls outside, didn’t he.’

  ‘Well, who knows why they caught his attention.’

  ‘Easy…’ the Super chided Glass; before Grey summed up this part of the discussion,

  ‘No. We must assume, no more than a best guess, that if it was Mars who killed Stella, then whether he had known she was living there all along or not before that day, then he hadn’t stalked the place very thoroughly before he struck.’

  ‘And that goes for any outside suspect,’ added Cori, ‘as no strangers had been sighted lately.’

  ‘There’s woodland opposite,’ their boss remembered. ‘Couldn’t you hide in there, and what would you see?’

  Cori wondered, ‘Well, you’d see the front of the building, everyone’s rooms who haven’t had their curtains closed, and comings and going along their side service road.’

  ‘Get a Constable down there, will you Glass. Look for recent cigarette butts, coffee cartons, burger wrappers.’

  She continued, ‘But you’d have to have stayed pretty well hidden: you’ve got people at home all day looking right back out at you.’

  ‘Anyway,’ asked Rose, ‘when was Mars finding the time for all this lurking in the cedars? Wasn’t he being missed at home?’

  As the others had continued discussing this, so Inspector Rase had gone distant, the Super noting this and asking,

  ‘Grey? Questions? What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Time, sir.’

  ‘The time of evening?’

  ‘No, time in years. If it was her son who did this, then I’m damned if I can figure out what his beef was with how his mother was living now. The only thing that needled him was his parents’ divorce.’

  ‘For which he seemed to find his mother wholly responsible,’ said Rose

  ‘With no little encouragement from his father,’ lamented Cori.

  ‘History is written by the victor,’ Grey reminded them.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ cursed their superior.

  Grey rested his chin in interlacing fingers in a look of concentration,

  ‘So, the knot we seem to be in is this: that if it does turn out to be Mars who killed his mother, then why, when his obvious motive was an event in his childhood that he could have gotten her back for any time since, did he leave it till now?’

  ‘Perhaps he did only just recently learn she was living there?’ suggested Cori.

  ‘But that meant he found out two days before he claimed to read it in the paper.’

  ‘And as for the second murder..?’ she asked rhetorically.

  ‘…then we have to ask what harm had Charlie Prove ever done him.’ Grey was almost despairing as he said this.

  Rose tried to regain some focus, ‘So what els
e was out of the ordinary Monday night?’

  The Inspector attempted to gather himself, ‘Only one thing, and that’s that the schoolgirl was there late that evening, when she shouldn’t have been there after about six.’

  ‘And maybe another thing, sir,’ added Cori. ‘That Stella was dressed for bed but kept up later than she’d normally be.’

  ‘Yes,’ he remembered, ‘Rachel Sowton’s observation that Stella would have normally been in bed by the time she was attacked. There seems no doubt that there was something happening with her that evening; but not a one of them who lived with her for all those years knows what it was…’

  ‘Grey, before we’re completely diverted by Patrick Mars, what other loose ends are hanging?’

  He answered wearily, ‘The schoolgirls to be spoken to; and there’s the victims’ time as Councillors to look into; nothing much else that seems very essential, sir.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘Well,’ Grey struggled to think. ‘The Cedars’ Duty Manager, Rachel Sowton, was caught up in a raid on a nightclub last summer, a place called Sophia’s.’

  ‘A drugs den,’ shot back Inspector Glass, ‘forget whatever else is rumoured to go on in there; though if you want to read the complaint file about that raid, it’s still open and a hundred pages thick.’

  ‘Any connection, Grey?’ asked the Super.

  ‘Seriously? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Anything else? Have we checked Charlie’s rooms?’

  ‘I did right after he vanished, sir,’ answered Cori. ‘There wasn’t much personal to him there, as if he didn’t have much input in how it was set out; and messy too – I got the feeling that anything the orderlies didn’t put away didn’t get put away.’

  ‘Any photos, even of Eunice?’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t think it was a good idea for him to be reminded?’

  A woman officer approached them,

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she offered the group before turning to face Grey,

  ‘Inspector, you had a call, the man said it was urgent.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘A Campbell Leigh.’

  ‘Lord, they’re all coming out of the woodwork today,’ muttered Glass.

  ‘He said to tell you that, “She’s at the Berlin Wall Memorial”. He thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So what did that old trouble-maker want?’ Glass asked of Grey after their messenger had left them.

  ‘Another lead, Grey?’ asked the Super.

  ‘Sir, Cori and I need to be on this: it’s one of the girls Stella was tutoring.’

  ‘The one on the staircase the night she was killed?’

  ‘No, we think the other one; but they are best friends, one leads to the other.’

  ‘Okay, but I need you back here A.S.A.P. Everyone else on Mars.’ The Superintendent was decisive: ‘Sarah, I want that man’s life story on my desk before we meet this evening.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Glass, I want his whereabouts known and kept tabs on; also, whatever we have on this cowboy security outfit he’s running.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Regroup at my office at five. Good afternoon.’

  Chapter 14 – Stacie Kehoe