She’d done it for him and for their future. Because of this, he could no more turn her over to the coppers than could he climb to the farmhouse’s rooftop and take to the air. But there had to be truth in all things between them, and especially there had to be truth in this. What had occurred could not remain lying like a dead dog in the room, for it would eventually destroy what they had together, and he wasn’t about to allow that to happen. Everything would be in the open, he thought. It was the only way if they were to go forward.
When Sharon came into the kitchen, then, he was ready. He’d started the coffee and she’d smelled it upstairs. Like a siren’s call, it had brought her down to him and she wandered sleepily into the room, wearing a dressing gown that was fraying at the cuffs and slippers that were tattered.
She said with a smile as she stretched her arms above her head, “What’re you about then, my fine man?” She took in the items on the work top that he’d not yet returned to the cupboards, and she said, “What’s to do?” And then she seemed to take in the baking powder sitting alone on the kitchen table, and she frowned at this, picked it up, examined it, and said, “Didn’t I toss this in the rubbish?”
He said, “Aye. That you did. But we best be rid of it in a better way. Leaving it in the rubbish like that . . . ? It makes no sense asking for trouble, Shar.”
“What’re you on about?” She asked this with a perplexed little laugh, and it was the laugh that made him certain.
He took the container from her and he tucked it into his trouser pocket. He said, “I’m taking this . . .” And then he paused for he hadn’t thought it all through. He looked at the time—just after six, now—and he said, “To Sherborne. There’s the supermarket, and they’ll have wheelie bins behind it. We got to get this far away and at this hour no one’s likely to see me.”
“But Alastair, why are—”
“It’s the best-by date, Shar. Everything else out there . . . ?” with a nod towards the back door and the bin outside of it. “Its best-by date and use-by date . . . they’re passed. But this—” Here he tapped on his pocket where the powder was tucked. “We’re not close to the date.”
“So put it back into the cupboard,” she said.
“We can’t have it there,” he told her. “No matter the date. Cops aren’t going to concern themselves with dates.”
She was silent, and he could see her thinking. He could imagine her calculating and worrying, with anxiety driving her into a state of nerves. He couldn’t have this. What she’d done . . . It was for them, it was for their future, it was for their life together. He said, “You’re not to worry. I’m taking care of it, and then I’m taking care of you. Now and always. I know you’ve meant well towards me since the day we met. It’s down to God that you’re in my life and you are my life and the point is I don’t even care. What I’m saying is I know what this is—” Again he tapped his pocket. “And what I’m saying is I’m taking it away. And from the moment I walk out of the door, we won’t talk about it ever again. Only just now . . . It’s that I can’t have a lie between us, not after last night and what it meant that I stayed and Caro knows I stayed. I’m saying I don’t want there to be something not said, something not quite right, something others might see as evil but I never will cos, like I said, I know what you did you did for us.”
She licked her lips. He could see that they were dry as a twig. She said, “Alastair . . . What’re you saying?”
“Them laburnum pods. There, I’ve said it. But no worries cos I swear on everything that’s ever been holy that nothing you do can part me from you.”
She rose in a movement so slow it was as if her bones had aged her to ninety years. “You think there’s poison in that container?” She extended her hand. “Give it to me, then. I’ll show you the truth.”
“I’m thinking only that nothing matters, just you and me. I’m thinking that everything’s out in the open now and everything there is begins with this: I love you. I’m telling you that I got not a single regret, and no one is parting us. That’s what you thought would happen, isn’t it? That she would part us. And I c’n see why because of everything that’s involved in ridding myself of her. Only it doesn’t matter what I lose in a divorce, cos the only thing that matters is you.”
“I’m not a poisoner,” she said.
He said, “Shar, I rang you. I told you the cops—”
“I was cleaning my cupboards. I always do. Twice each year I do it.”
“The best-by date, Shar.”
“Give it to me then. Give it to me.”
He began to walk out. He knew they would go round and round about this unless he rid them of the poison. He knew he needed to get it to Sherborne, to put it into the bins behind the supermarket there, and to walk away. It was only in this manner that they could put the past behind them and make their way into a future together.
She cried, “Alastair! You mustn’t! Don’t leave me. Please.”
He understood how worried she was that he would be caught doing what needed to be done. But he had no intention of being caught. His only intention was to return to her.
SHAFTESBURY
DORSET
DI Lynley had been as good as his word. He’d managed the paperwork, laying out the facts and circumstances in such a way as, Barbara hoped, to persuade a magistrate to grant them a warrant to search Caroline Goldacre’s house and the bakery that stood near it. But tracking down a magistrate hadn’t been as simple as it might have been. Once Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata had everything in hand for a search warrant—with a compulsive attention to detail and language suggestive of Dorothea Harriman’s competent involvement—they rang the local nick for the magistrate’s location. As the hour was early, they’d gone to his home, only to discover that the bloke was on holiday in Croatia. So they had to dig deeper to find a judicial official who could authorise a warrant. This involved a trek down to Dorchester, where they’d cooled their heels for an hour in the institutional reception area of the magistrate’s court while Sylvia Parker-Humphries finished up business in another part of the building.
Barbara had received an early-morning call from a Shaftesbury solicitor called Ravita Khan who’d briskly announced that any further dealings with her new clients—Mr. MacKerron and Ms. Goldacre—would have to go through her, so Barbara knew from that phone call forward, everything would have to be on the up-and-up. Still, she was in a lather to get back to MacKerron Baked Goods and the house that faced it. She could well imagine what was going on there inside those buildings while she and Winston waited to be escorted into the presence of Sylvia Parker-Humphries: a team of removal men doing their bit to empty the house of all its contents, followed by massive cleaning and scouring during which anything having to do with Clare Abbott’s demise was carefully and thoroughly removed or destroyed. She told Winston this in a hushed tone. He advised her to step outside and “Have a fag, Barb. It’ll settle your nerves.”
She did so, but didn’t feel much better afterwards. He suggested next that she spend the time getting Dorset Constabulary on board. He was fully confident that they’d have the warrant in hand soon enough, and they were going to need more than just themselves to sort through everything at the bakery and in the house. This seemed a productive plan, so Barbara stepped outside again to make contact with the county’s chief constable. He’d have the manpower they needed. What remained to be seen was whether he would lend them out for a romp in Shaftesbury.
By the time this was all in hand, they’d made it into the office of Sylvia Parker-Humphries, whose fresh face made her look far too young to be a magistrate but who also knew her way round a search warrant request. A Q & A followed. Barbara could have done without this—as well as without the magistrate’s scrutiny of her leopard-print high-tops, Barbara’s bow to dressing for the occasion—but Winston was as ever imperturbable, and his good-mannered confidence seemed to assuage whatev
er concerns the magistrate had.
They arrived back in Shaftesbury late in the morning to find four Dorset constables hanging about in the parking area. They quickly discovered that Alastair MacKerron was at present in parts unknown but suspected by Caroline Goldacre to be, as recounted by one of the constables, “in Sharon Halsey’s undoubtedly unwashed bed because I haven’t seen him”—while Ms. Goldacre was now locked into the house with a Mrs. Khan advising her not to open the door.
“Not even to let Stan here use the loo,” the other constable said, indicating a beefy red-faced police brother who had apparently been forced to do his business down the road and behind yew and hawthorn hedge, no bathroom roll provided. He’d had to use leaves, such and as they were. Ouch, Barbara thought.
Having heard all this and acknowledged their grievances, Barbara and Winston went to the door and rapped smartly. A stunning Indian woman opened it—Ravita Khan herself, Barbara supposed—and held out her hand wordlessly. Into it, Barbara laid the warrant. “House and bakery as well,” she said.
The solicitor closed the door and bolted it. One of the constables said, “Hang on there,” but Barbara told him that reading the warrant was in order. It would take a few minutes. She and Winston had even been the recipients of a compliment from Sylvia Parker-Humphries on the depth of its detailed explanations. Barbara reckoned she owed Dorothea Harriman a pint for having done such a fine job of ensuring their entrance into Caroline Goldacre’s digs.
The door opened again. Ravita Khan nodded. “Search as you will,” she told them. “But keep your distance from my client as she’s not—I assume—under arrest.”
“Cross my heart,” Barbara told her. “You, Winnie?”
“Hope to die,” he finished cooperatively.
The solicitor did not look amused. Nonetheless, she stepped back from the door.
They used a division of labour: with Barbara and two of the Dorset constables taking the house and Winston taking the bakery with the other two constables. Before they began their search, though, Barbara brought the Dorset team into the picture of what they were looking for and its inherent danger to their health. Anything remaining sealed by the manufacturer they weren’t to bother with at this juncture, she told them. Anything whose seal was broken they were not to open at all. Bag it, mark it, document it for analysis at the lab, she said. And be aware: This was a nooks-and-crannies job. What they were after could be in plain sight and merely disguised as something else—“It’s crystalline, so think salt or sugar,” she told them—but it could also be hidden away: under floorboards, in the garret, in a hollow behind a picture on the wall, tied in place to the sofa springs, buried in a mattress . . . God only knew. What she didn’t add was that it might also be entirely gone at this point, carefully spread along a country roadside in the dead of night over a period of miles so that it dissipated into the wind. Who knew what was actually possible?
Caroline Goldacre was nowhere to be seen, for which Barbara thanked her stars as she and the constables ducked into the house. Ravita Khan informed her that her client was above stairs and there she would stay until the search reached that part of the house, at which point she would retreat elsewhere.
Barbara doubted that Caroline would manage this feat of keeping herself away from what was happening, and this proved to be the case. Once one of the constables set to work in the kitchen, another in the sitting room, and Barbara herself in the laundry room, pantry, and what appeared to be a home office, Caroline’s footsteps sounded in the upstairs corridor and quickly afterwards they came down the stairs.
“Ms. Goldacre,” spoken by Ravita Khan went completely unheeded.
“I want to see what they’re doing to my house” was her sharp reply.
“Please be advised,” the solicitor said.
“Oh, I have no bloody intention of saying a word to them, but if they’re taking anything out of my home, I intend to watch them do it and you’d do the same.”
“I’m here to monitor—”
“You’re here because my husband’s a fool. I am not. And as he’s not present at the moment, you’ve little enough to do, so don’t block the stairway or I’m afraid I’ll have to elbow past you.”
The silence that followed might have indicated anything from Ravita attempting to control her temper to a bout of arm wrestling between solicitor and client. As things turned out, it indicated that Ravita had stepped away, giving Caroline access to the officers who were conducting their search.
Her commentary followed: “You can’t be thinking I’d be so stupid as to put something there . . . Hang that picture back properly . . . If you break a single plate from that collection . . . They’re pre-World War I and they’re extremely valuable and . . . Really, would anyone hide something up a chimney? . . . Do not overturn that sofa! . . . A hollowed-out book? This is unbelievable . . . What on earth could be hidden in a fireplace poker?”
Barbara reckoned that the constable was thinking what to do with the poker, not what was hidden in it. She popped into the sitting room. She said, “You can bang on as much as you like, Ms. Goldacre, but you’re slowing the process which is only going to result in our being here hours longer than this would’ve taken if you kept your distance.”
Caroline, she saw, was stylishly dressed for going out in a tea-length skirt, soft-looking leather boots, a large pullover worn to hide her girth, and a handsome scarf to tie everything together. Dorothea Harriman couldn’t have managed it better, but Barbara wondered what the message was supposed to be: a busy woman whose day has been interrupted by the local rozzers or a visual distraction intended to throw the coppers off their game.
“What is it exactly that you’re looking for? And do you think I’m so stupid—if I did anything, which I did not—as to keep evidence lying round this place? I’ll tell you this much, if you’d care to listen, if you stumble across—”
“Ms. Goldacre.” Ravita Khan made an heroic attempt to gain control of the situation. “You have to understand that in the presence of the police, anything you say—”
“They haven’t cautioned me,” Caroline argued. “I watch the telly. I know my rights. I can say anything I please in my own home, which I intend to do.”
Barbara wanted to get on with things, but this was too interesting to walk away from. She leaned against the doorway as one of the two constables made for the stairs to begin above. She said, “Go on.”
“Ms. Goldacre,” the solicitor said, and then to Barbara, “You’re being warned not to encourage this.”
“Why do I think she doesn’t need encouragement?”
“I’m asking you to get about your search and get off this property immediately afterwards,” Ravita Khan said.
“I have something to say,” Caroline told her, “and I won’t be stopped by you or anyone.” When the solicitor did not reply, she shot Barbara a look that seemed triumphant. She went on with, “There’s nothing here. Do you understand that? Neither of them would be so idiotic as to hang onto whatever it is they used in the first place, and even if they were both of them completely mentally incompetent, they’d at least be wise enough to keep this . . . this stuff at her house, which is where you ought to be conducting your search.”
Barbara nodded. “I’ll take that on board.”
“You’ve got a warrant for that, don’t you?” Caroline persisted. “Because if you’ve come here without the intention of going there next, you’re more stupid than—”
The front door opened. Winston came in and gave Barbara a head jerk indicating a word was in order. She excused herself to Caroline, asked the second constable to finish up in the sitting room and head into the kitchen to take up where she’d left off, and joined Winston in the garden.
He said to her, “Didn’t take long, Barb. There’s not much. Most is sealed up proper back where it came from. We got everything from the fridge, we emptied the pellets from the h
eating unit, we bagged whatever was left unsealed.”
“Loose floorboards, a garret, chimneys, a safe, cupboards too shallow to be reasonable?”
He shook his head. “Nuffin. An’ I got to say: Way I see it, not likely anyone’d hang on summat so dangerous.”
“If they knew exactly how dangerous it was.”
“They got to or they’d be dead themselves, innit. This’s the wrong tree, Barb, you ask me. We c’n bag stuff and cart it off and have the lab do its bit, but I say the proof of who did what is goin to come from where everything else’s come from in this case.”
“Which is?”
“Words. What got written, what got read, what got said, what got recorded, what got heard. Tha’s what it’s been from the first. You ask me, the answer’s at Clare’s digs where it’s always been.”
“That’s what the inspector thinks as well. Sumalee’s words, in his case.”
“Well?” Winston said.
Barbara didn’t disagree, but once again they were caught in a t’s-and-i’s spot. So she thought about words from every direction, and she considered where they were with the case because of words. Ultimately, she could see that aside from checking every inch of the property for a sign that sodium azide had ever rested upon it, there was another route to go and they even had the search warrant to go it.
She said, “Pack up every computer, then. There’s at least one in the bakery’s office. There’s probably others in the house as well. An’ she’s got a laptop. If it’s words we’re after, we might as well go straight to the source and see where else they lead us besides her nibs’s emails.”
He nodded. “Will do, then,” he said.
“It’ll take bloody hours,” she warned him. “Christ, Winnie. It could take days.”
“Not like we have much choice,” he said. “I know you got the super hanging over your head, wanting a result and all that. But . . . what else we got, Barb?”