“He said she liked to kill people,” Taryn said quietly.
“Who? Barbara? Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. We’re all bloody better off without her.”
21:42
Jason had barely paused for breath all day, and now Sam was back with the warrant for Brian’s arrest; barely five minutes passed before the officers who’d stayed behind had their coats on, ready to go out to the King Bill.
Sam, the only one still on duty, was staying in the office to prepare the morning briefing for the arrest and interview team. Lou spent a moment debating what to do, stay or go. But then she saw Sam’s face and realized that actually she preferred to get on with things on her own. Besides, Jason had already left with Ali and Jane.
“Don’t stay past your hours, Sam,” she said. “You’ve done enough.”
“Ma’am. I was hoping I could swap shifts and do an early turn tomorrow?”
Lou looked at her. Sam already knew what the answer would be; she was just trying her luck. “I really appreciate what you’ve done, Sam. You’ve been brilliant. But you’ll have to wait until your shift, all right? You need your rest the same as everyone else. And you never know, we might be able to bring Suzanne in, and I’ll need you for that.”
By the time Lou got to the King Bill, she had promised herself she was only going to buy a round, maybe two, and then make sure everyone buggered off home. They weren’t celebrating, not yet, anyway. This was all about putting a barrier between the case and going home. It was a transitional phase, involving beer.
And at the bar, the crush of people from the team along with every other random punter, most of whom were job themselves, she found herself standing next to Jason, who was pressing against her like some frotteur on a crowded underground train. As she necked the bottle of beer someone had lined up ready for her, alongside Ali and Jane and Les Finnegan, who smelled as though he’d sneaked in a couple of whiskey chasers already, she felt Jason’s hand on her waist. She looked round at him, his green eyes so close to hers, closer than they’d been since the night she’d spent tangled round him on his sofa.
“How did you get that black eye?” she asked with a smile.
“What?”
It was loud in here, music from some local band coming from the function room upstairs—and they sounded good, too—so she repeated her question, a little louder, a little closer to his ear.
“I got a stick in the face, of course.”
“Don’t you wear some sort of mask thing?”
“Yeah, on the ice. This was in the changing rooms.”
Lou laughed because it was quite funny after half a beer and an improbably long working day, and he laughed too. “What, on purpose?”
“Maybe. Who knows.”
“Someone from the other team?”
“Does it even matter?”
“I’m just interested.”
But he didn’t answer, distracted by Les Finnegan talking about the pornographic pictures of Brian and his lovely lady friend on the phone and what he could sell them for, if he had half a mind to get started in the granny porn market.
Lou felt for Jason’s hand, gave it a squeeze, intending to let go. He held it.
21:53
Flora was sitting on the floor of the kitchen, a small windowless room at the back of the studio where she made cups of coffee and washed out her brushes. The main studio, a large room with big windows overlooking the car park at the front of the building, was in darkness. Her car had been moved round the back, behind the second warehouse, and it was partly concealed by two large Dumpsters full of cardboard for recycling. To the casual passerby, nobody was home.
She had shut the kitchen door before turning on any lights, boiled the kettle, turned on the radio with the sound low so that the thought of being here all on her own was not quite so scary.
Now, with her third mugful of black coffee in hand, she had almost reached the bottom of the first box.
The contents had been by turns eye-opening, confusing, and, frankly, terrifying.
Large brown envelopes containing bundles of cash, fifties in great wads, bound with elastic bands. There were files, too, in three thick lever arch folders. One marked “Leeds,” one marked “Liverpool.” The other with nothing on the spine at all. Inside the files were plastic sleeves, each one containing personal details, photocopies of passports, birth certificates, phone numbers, addresses from all over eastern Europe, North Africa, Asia. One plastic sleeve in the unmarked folder contained nothing but credit cards, new looking, all in different names.
Then there was a large carrier bag containing passports, lots of them, different sizes, different colors. Flora pulled one out at random. The picture was of a young girl, dark haired, aged about twelve. The date of birth on the passport would have put her at seventeen. The name on it—in a Cyrillic script and in roman letters too—Ekaterina Ioratova.
Flora pushed the passport back inside the bag.
Underneath the bag she’d seen something else. Something black, solid: a handgun, and next to it a cardboard box with ammunition.
She had been removing everything and laying it out on the floor, but when she got to the gun, she stopped. This had suddenly got crazier.
She got to her feet and turned her back on the boxes. This was no good. She had to think.
Whatever her father was doing—and she knew it had to be bad—unless it had something to do with Polly, she wasn’t interested. And he had lied to her. Despite his clever explanation of the way he’d spent that Halloween evening, something about it didn’t ring true.
They weren’t seeing each other anymore, were they? So why would Nigel go and spend two hours with Polly in the cottage on the night she died?
The second box was still unopened. She sat down on the floor again, opened the box. Inside was a file which she recognized as relating to the farm business. Everything in it was a copy of a legitimate document that was filed in the stables office. So why had he given this to Connor to look after?
She lifted the file and underneath it was another carrier bag. A sudden chill ran through her as she understood. The file was Nigel’s final line of defense. Whatever was in the bag, he’d used the file to disguise it, as though someone raking through the contents would somehow hesitate over the file and decide that this box was somehow unimportant.
Flora lifted the bag clear of the box. It was surprisingly light. She looked inside, at the same moment as her phone started buzzing on the work surface above her head. She reached up for it. Taryn.
Where are you? Everything OK? Just checking up on you T. xx
She sent a swift reply.
All fine. Will ring you later. Xx
She opened the bag and looked inside, and then tipped the contents out into her lap. And here was what she had been looking for. Another wad of cash, bound up with elastic bands, and a small, black mobile phone.
23:45
Karen was asleep, the kids were asleep, and he’d gone out to his car in his stocking feet, not wanting to make a sound. Driving away as quietly as he could. Back to Waterside Gardens.
Back to her.
She opened the door to him after what felt like an age. It had crossed his mind, waiting on her doorstep and hoping once again that Flora or anyone else for that matter wouldn’t see him here and wonder what he was doing, that she might have someone else in her flat. She might have any number of people who called on her. Not just guys—family, friends maybe.
But she was alone. “It’s very late,” she said.
She didn’t look especially pleased to see him and he was nervous about her reaction when he came inside.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“That sounds ominous, Inspector,” she said. She followed him into the living room, got a second glass out of the cabinet, and poured him some wine from the bottle she’d been drinking.
“My name’s Andy,” he said.
“I like calling you Inspector,” she said with a smile. “I find it a t
urn-on, fucking a policeman. Especially one with a rank.”
“Please,” he said. “Don’t tempt me, not now. This is important.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, making an apologetic moue. “Go on.”
“You said you had information for me. Something that would help.”
“I thought you’d forgotten all about that. I certainly managed to take your mind off it this afternoon, didn’t I?”
She handed him the glass of wine and sat on the sofa, crossing her feet neatly at the ankle. “You might as well sit down,” she said.
Andy started to get his phone ready to record what she had to say, but she picked it up off the table and turned it off.
“Can I at least take notes?” he asked.
“No.”
He gave up, then. He had a feeling that it was all shit anyway. She was still playing with him, teasing him. Anything she told him would be on her terms and would likely be fabrication. “How about we start with you telling me how you met Brian,” he said.
Suzanne gave him a slow smile. Her eye contact was direct. “We met through mutual friends, earlier this year.”
“Mutual friends? Who?”
She drank some of her wine, watching him over the rim of her glass. When she had finished, she put the glass down on the table in front of her. “That’s not relevant to our discussion.”
“You and Brian—what was the nature of your relationship?”
“Very similar to the one I’m having with you.”
“You were lovers?”
“He is my sub. Do you understand what that means?”
Andy took a big gulp of wine to try and help him swallow the facts she was offering him—or rather, the comparison of their brief association with what she had done with Brian Fletcher-Norman.
“You did that—that thing you did with me?” he asked. “You suffocated him?”
“The term for it is breathplay. Yes, that’s one of the things we enjoy.”
“So you’re—forgive me, this is all new to me—you’re in control of him? You tell him what to do?”
The smile faded from her lips. She smoothed her skirt, reached forward for her glass of wine. As she did so her blouse gaped and he saw the curve of her breasts, smooth, white. “You have to understand the nature of control. Brian is a very strong man, a very controlling man. In his career and at home he is completely dominant, focused, authoritative. In order to relax he likes to relinquish that need for decision making. But that doesn’t mean I am taking control.”
“What does it mean?”
“You remember I told you to indicate if you’d had enough by raising your hand?”
Andy remembered. The thought of it, even now, made him inexplicably aroused.
“Yes.”
“You were in control, then, weren’t you? All you had to do was signal that you wanted to stop. So, effectively you were telling me what to do.”
Something she’d said had made him feel uneasy, but he couldn’t think what it was. Her turning the conversation round to the things they’d done, the way she was sitting there, curled around herself, was distracting him from Brian. Then he had it.
“You said Brian was dominant at home as well as at work,” he said. “What do you mean?”
The smile was back. “Exactly that. He’s confident, arrogant, and utterly selfish. Why do you think his wife was planning to leave him? Why do you think his daughter hadn’t spoken to him for months? He’s ruthless and doesn’t care for anyone but himself.”
“His wife was planning to leave?” He knew this already, of course. But he wanted to hear her take on it; if she was telling the truth about this, it would be easier for him to assess if she was telling the truth about the rest of it.
“She was going to run off with her tennis coach, according to Brian. He wouldn’t have stood for that, of course. Brian never tolerated anything that didn’t happen under his terms.”
“What do you mean?” he asked again.
She tipped the last of the wine into her mouth and swallowed, her eyes on him. “You want me to spell it out for you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Barbara was going to leave. Brian wasn’t going to let her get away with it, with stealing his money and humiliating him, but he couldn’t do anything to harm her, of course, could he? Because then he would have got the blame. He couldn’t just do away with her. And he couldn’t force her to stay, nor did he want her to. He loathed her by that stage.”
Andy was feeling cold, all of a sudden. The chill of it was traveling through his body like an anesthetic, paralyzing him with horror, as he saw the facts of the case being revealed as though she were a conjuror dramatically pulling away a silk cloth.
“What did he do?” Andy asked, trying to keep his voice light.
“What do you think? He set her up. He made it look as though she had committed a violent murder because she was jealous of his relationship with the girl next door—which of course never happened—and then he pushed her car over the edge of the quarry as if she had been suddenly overcome with remorse. He’s very clever, you know. He’s been thinking this through for a long, long time. The only thing he didn’t bank on was his own dicky ticker, the fact that his heart couldn’t take all that running around in the middle of the night.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked, his mouth dry. The wine was all gone.
Suzanne smiled at him again, got to her feet. He looked up at her as she placed a hand on his shoulder. “Because I don’t want anything more to do with him. If he can do that to his wife, control or not, I’d rather not be anywhere near him, Inspector.”
He stood, towering over her, looking into her eyes. He wanted to kiss her but he was starting to understand that she had to make the first move. He didn’t want to frighten her, especially given everything she’d told him. It had to be true. The most logical explanation of all—and sooner or later, now he knew where to look, there would be forensic evidence that would substantiate what she’d said.
“How do you know that’s what happened?”
“He came here that night and told me what he was planning to do. I tried to talk him out of it but he had his mind set on it. He wanted her out of the way so he could be with me, and that poor girl was going to be the one who would pay the price for Barbara’s mistake. I was afraid. It went beyond the boundaries of our association, and I told him that. But he went ahead and did it anyway. He knew I would never be brave enough to tell anyone.”
“You just told me,” Andy said, touching her cheek.
“I told you in confidence,” she said. “And because I know you can do the right thing with this information, which will get a murderer locked up and therefore mean I am safe. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I can only use the information to look for evidence, Suzanne,” he said. “Unless you’re willing to make a statement and support a prosecution.”
She looked away, clearly thinking about this. She took hold of his hand and squeezed it, like a little girl seeking comfort. “If you arrest him,” she said, “and if I know he’s definitely not going to be let out, I’ll consider making a statement. Is that good enough?”
Hell, yes, Andy thought. This had gone from his worst nightmare to a dream ending to a case that had been heading down the toilet along with his marriage, his career, and his life. He could say he’d come here looking for Flora, which was true, that Suzanne had given him the intelligence in confidence and he’d been trying to persuade her to trust him, make a statement. He’d not wanted to share the information with the team because of the risk to her life if Brian found out she’d talked. Suzanne had all but told Andy that she was terrified of him. It could work. It could actually work.
Suzanne led him out of the living room into the bedroom, as though she had said everything that she needed to say and that now the time for talking was over; he would be able to comfort her, provide her with reassurance that Brian was gone and that she had no need to fear him
anymore.
“I need to go,” he said, without enthusiasm. “It’s really late.”
“Stay,” she said, pulling him closer. “For a little while.”
Moments after that he felt a swell of satisfaction that this clever, gorgeous, and sexually insatiable woman was now, with Brian out of the way, all his.
23:52
It was a mobile phone, just a mobile phone. It lay, black and inert, on her knee, until she picked it up and pressed the button to turn it on. It was a cheap handset with a keypad and a small display. For a moment she had thought it was Polly’s phone, that this was what the police had been searching for, that Nigel had it and that must mean that he had killed her. But a glance told her it wasn’t Polly’s expensive smartphone at all. So whose phone was it?
She worked her way through the menus to find the list of contacts, hoping that would give her a clue as to who it might belong to, but that proved to be even more confusing. They were mainly initials: B, F, R, CR, J, and a few brief names and nicknames: Dev, Kel, Ken P, Dozer, Legs, Ian, Psych. She looked for “Polly” but the name wasn’t there, not even a “P.” Then she had a thought, started to type in Polly’s number, and before she had got too far the predictive text suggested she might like to dial “Y.” Polly’s number, definitely, stored under a single letter, Y.
She tried the same thing with her own number and her mother’s, but both drew a blank.
Flora left the contacts list alone and turned to the stored text messages. There weren’t many; whoever owned this phone either didn’t like texting or believed that deleting as you went along was a sensible policy.
There were no text messages sent to or received from “Y.”
There was one text, received on Thursday from “Dev,” with a mobile number and nothing else. Two texts on Friday from “J,” and one just said “ring me.” The second was another mobile phone number. The third, and final, text message, received at 08:56 on Saturday morning, was from “F”:
Coming to collect, be ready 20 mins
Nothing made sense, nothing! Flora could feel the frustration and anger rising inside her. All of this effort, all her subterfuge, and it was for nothing! Whoever had this phone had Polly’s number, but that was no help at all.