by Jan Newton
Julie and Swift exchanged a glance. ‘My husband tells me that if you aren’t going to arrest me, then I’m free to go at any time.’
‘That’s true, but we can help you.’ Swift’s tone was desperate now.
‘I doubt that very much, Inspector.’
‘Where is he, Lizzie, where is Sean?’ Julie asked.
Lizzie turned on her heel and scurried down the corridor. Julie followed close behind, with Swift bringing up the rear. Lizzie crashed through the doors into reception and, without stopping for the automatic doors to open fully, she jinked through the gap and was outside and gone. John Slaithwaite looked up from his phone and glared at Swift.
‘I’m letting her go for now, Mr Slaithwaite, but I need you both to go back to the hotel and wait for my call. If you can’t guarantee that, then I will have to arrest her and bring her back. Is that understood?’
Slaithwaite nodded. ‘For today, Inspector, and only for today, I will make sure she stays in the hotel. If we hear nothing from you by the end of the day then we will be making arrangements to leave first thing tomorrow, and I will instruct a colleague who is better-placed than I am to assist my wife.’ He turned and hurried after Lizzie. Julie went to follow him, but Swift put his hand on her arm.
‘There’s nothing we can do, Julie. We don’t want to arrest her for kidnap because she says she removed Sean with Rosa’s permission. We’ve absolutely nothing that links her to either Quigley’s death or Rosa’s. If we arrest her now, we’ll show our hand too soon.’
‘I wish I thought we had a hand to show, Sir.’ Julie opened the folder and Quigley’s face glared back at her. ‘Should we not keep an eye on where she is, just for now?’
‘She’s been hiding since November, she’s in the habit of being careful and suspicious. There’s no way she’ll lead us to that child.’ Swift watched John Slaithwaite weave through the traffic and disappear, just as his wife had done.
‘Why didn’t you tell her about the body we found at Mal’s?’
‘We don’t know yet if it is Quigley, do we?’ Swift said. ‘I noticed you didn’t categorically confirm that Rosa is dead either.’
‘Fair point,’ Julie conceded. ‘There’s something about her that I don’t trust, Sir. I can’t tell you what, but I think she has more information than we have at the moment.’
‘Agreed. If you’re right, though, it’ll have to come out soon or she’ll be on her way back to Blackpool.’
‘That’s another thing. That map bothers me. Why would you have part of an Ordnance Survey map in your bag with your own house circled on it? Did Rosa put it there, or did someone else? Did they want us to find it?’
‘Now you’re into the realms of female logic, Sergeant. I’ll leave that one to you. We need to know who the body in the cess pit is and quickly, before John Slaithwaite spirits his wife away.’
‘I’ll get back onto Kay Greenhalgh and see if she’s any more to tell us.’
‘Go and have a coffee first, Julie. You look as though you could do with five minutes to yourself.’
Julie succumbed to a warm scone. Nerys was wasted in the canteen. She could persuade anyone to do anything. Maybe she should have been the one in there with Lizzie Slaithwaite. She couldn’t have done a worse job on her, could she?
‘I’ve got some strawberry jam for that, brought it in special. Mam made too much, we’ve got jars and jars of the stuff and I don’t want to offend her by not taking it do I?’
‘Go on then, I could do with a dollop of sugar.’
‘You look shattered, lovely. Are you all right?’ Nerys pushed a mug across the counter. ‘I don’t know how you cope with all the blood and guts you come across. I’ve just had Morgan in here, white as a sheet he was. He said you don’t seem bothered by it all.’
Julie shrugged. ‘It’s just a machine really, the body.’ She counted out change into Nerys’s hand. ‘If you don’t teach yourself to think of it like that then you can’t be objective.’
Nerys counted the change into the till. She didn’t look convinced. ‘But all that mess you have to see, and then knowing what horrible things people can do to each other. You can’t unsee it, can you?’ She grimaced. ‘I’d never sleep again if I had your job.’
‘I’m not very good at sleeping to be honest.’ Julie gave a small smile. ‘But in my case, it’s usually trying to work out how things fit together that keeps me awake.’
Julie took her mug and her plate and went to sit down. If only she could see it, whatever it was, never mind unseeing anything. She took a bite of scone and a blob of bright red strawberry jam landed on her blouse. That made a bad day slightly worse. She dabbed at the jam with a serviette and transferred crumbs to accompany the preserve. Scone crumbs. She frowned. Would someone else’s crumbs left on the table be enough to make someone with coeliac disease ill? She stared at the remains of the scone on her plate. And was there a way of passing coeliac disease on to someone else? She gulped down her coffee and left the canteen at a trot.
Would it even be possible? Kay Greenhalgh would be bound to know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Day Seven
‘Well you’ve excelled yourself with this one, lady.’ Julie could hear the smile in Kay Greenhalgh’s voice. ‘What a mess.’
‘I don’t envy you the smell, let alone anything else.’
‘I’m not talking about the detritus. That is pretty grim, but this one’s a real beauty in the live fast and die young department. He’s got the body of an eighty-year old.’
‘That’s just how I feel.’
‘Well, unless you’ve got a perforated ulcer, lecture-noteworthy sclerosis of the liver and a suspected brain tumour, you’re not even trying.’
‘Blimey. That’s quite a selection. Would he have known about any of it?’
‘Well, there’s a chance he’d have known about the ulcer. It was pretty nasty and had left him with raging anaemia. As for the rest, it’s anyone’s guess. He was PhD level in terms of substance abuse, so he probably wouldn’t have felt a thing. He had virtually no septum left. I can’t decide whether that would make snorting the stuff impossible or twice as efficient. Then there was the empyema.’
‘That’s a new one on me.’
‘Lucky you. Trust me, the smell was worse than anything in that cess pit. It’s where pockets of pus collect in body cavities. In this chap’s case, it was mostly in the space between the lung and the chest wall.’
‘And that was caused by the drugs?’
‘It was. As was the knackered heart valve. He was a walking time bomb. It was a wonder he’d lasted as long as he did.’
Julie whistled softly. ‘Is it wrong of me to suggest he would have done several people a favour if he hadn’t?’
‘It would be completely unprofessional of you, Sergeant Kite. But on this occasion I’d have to agree with you.’
‘And the garrotte was the cause of death?’
‘Partially. He would have bled to death almost instantly, with that amount of trauma to the throat.’
‘I’m sensing there’s a but coming next.’
‘But there was also a huge amount of fluid in his lungs.’
‘Fluid from the pit? So he drowned?’
‘It’s difficult to tell the absolute order of things, but there’s no way that amount of fluid would have reached his lungs if his throat had been sliced open before he hit the water. Conversely, he could have still been alive when the garrotte was applied, but only just. There was some blood on the clothing, but not enough for his heart to have been pumping efficiently when his neck was sliced. I thought initially that there had been more blood and it had been washed off, but now I’m inclined to think he was more or less deceased from drowning before the wire was used.’
‘Someone wanted to make sure.’
‘Well, either that or the garrotte was more of a prop, to make the death more theatrical perhaps, or to leave a warning.’
‘Bloody hell, this case just gets more
and more bizarre.’
‘By the way, that cess pit is illegal. Building Regulations state it should be covered.’
‘Mal said he was doing a bit of maintenance on it at the time.’
‘Even so, he was breaking the law leaving it unattended and uncovered.’
‘You’re a hard woman, Dr Greenhalgh.’
‘Just a stickler, Sergeant Kite. And wait for it, you’ll like this bit… the blood we found on Rosa’s clothes was Quigley’s. His blood was also on that knapsack of hers you sent Morgan back with this morning.’
Julie closed her eyes. ‘So he had to have died, or at least bled onto Rosa’s clothes while she was still alive. Rosa could have fought with Quigley, she ended up with a head injury and he ended up drowning with a severed head. This is turning into an episode of Midsomer Murders. All we need now is a trebuchet and we’ve got the full set. Does he have any other wounds?’
‘Nice try, but that’s the only one. But there’s more. We did find Rosa’s blood on the gatepost at the cottage.’
‘So she made it all the way up there? But then Lizzie must have seen her there, surely?’
‘I’m glad the speculation is your department, Sergeant. I’m much happier with hard facts.’ Greenhalgh smiled. ‘Good luck with that one.’
‘Thank you so much.’ Julie sighed. ‘Do you think Rosa would have been strong enough to apply the wire to Quigley’s neck?’
‘Not a chance, I’d say. Even if she’d had the strength to do it, that arm of hers would have meant a much more one-sided wound. This was someone with two working arms.’
‘So we’re looking for a man, do you think?’
Kay paused. ‘Not necessarily. There are a number of ways he could have ended up in the pit, and that wire was absolutely lethal. It wouldn’t have taken a ridiculous amount of force to slice through the victim’s windpipe with it.’
Julie groaned and put her head on her desk.
‘Are you still there?’ Dr Greenhalgh asked.
‘I’m still here. But suddenly I’m wishing I was on a beach in Lanzarote.’
‘Tell you what, make it Tuscany and I’ll come with you.’
‘You’re on. And I might do a Lizzie Slaithwaite and just not come back.’
‘You don’t mean that, Julie. You love it really.’
‘Sometimes I love it.’ Julie laughed. ‘But today I’m having my doubts. I wanted to ask you something about coeliac disease. It’s just a thought and I might be barking up the wrong tree entirely, but is it hereditary, by any chance?’
‘It is, well, there’s more chance of having it if a parent has it. You need the right genes to be susceptible. Why, what have you found?’
‘You know we’re looking for Rosa’s little boy, well, I saw a lad about the same age in Llandrindod today. He was as skinny as Rosa and like a little ghost he was so pale.’
‘That might be a needle in a haystack thing. Are you adding two and two and coming up with eleventy-seven?’
Julie laughed. ‘It’s quite possible, although there might be a connection. Granted it’s a tenuous connection.’
‘Well, failure to thrive is a sign, and sometimes an evil temper, but I wouldn’t know the difference. I don’t do kids very well.’
‘Neither do I. Do you think we’re missing something?’
‘Speak for yourself, Julie. I intend to go straight from motorbikes and fast cars to the adults-only retirement village.’
Julie was still smiling as she put the phone down. Swift sauntered over to her desk.
‘What’s making you so happy?’
‘Dr Greenhalgh. She’s a star.’
‘She did really well to get those fingerprints back to us so quickly. It turns out Jason Quigley is only one of half a dozen aliases. It’s no wonder we couldn’t pin him down. He must have been pretty bright to keep up with all the different names and contacts. Rhys and Goronwy are going to be checking that little lot for days.’
‘She’s done better than that.’ Julie explained the latest findings and watched Swift’s smile grow wider with every revelation.
‘I think, Sergeant Kite, that it’s about time we asked Lizzie Slaithwaite to stop lying.’
‘I’ll phone the hotel and get them to come back in.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Sergeant, follow me. I feel an imminent arrest coming on.’
The girl on the desk had no hesitation in directing Swift and Julie to the Slaithwaite’s room on the first floor.
‘There’s something a bit odd about those two, if you know what I mean,’ she said, as they hurried past her.
John Slaithwaite opened the door and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Swift and Julie were still there.
‘Oh come on, this is bordering on harassment, Inspector.’
‘We’ve come to speak to your wife, Mr Slaithwaite,’ Swift replied. ‘I’d be grateful if you would let us in.’
Lizzie was gazing out of the window, apparently oblivious to their arrival.’
‘Elizabeth Slaithwaite,’ Swift said, ‘I would be obliged if you could come with us. We would like to talk to you in connection with the kidnap of Sean Quigley and the disappearance of Jason Quigley.’ Lizzie turned to face them and for a second she stared at Swift before crumpling into a tidy heap on the plush carpet.
*
‘The doctor says Lizzie’s fit to be interviewed.’ Julie leaned on Swift’s door and smiled. ‘And, despite assurances that Lizzie hasn’t been arrested yet, Mr Slaithwaite has insisted on the assistance of the duty solicitor until he can instruct his own brief.’
‘And who is the duty solicitor?’
‘It’s Eurig Powell.’
Swift nodded. ‘Good. He’ll help her.’
Julie smiled. ‘I’m not sure that’s how you’re supposed to think about a possible suspect, Sir.’
‘I’m still not convinced she is a suspect, but I do think she holds the key to this whole thing, and I really don’t want her to run away back to Blackpool. And don’t forget, we still don’t know where the child is.’
‘I’m not so sure about that, Sir.’
‘Well let’s see if we can sort that one out while we’re at it, shall we? Are you ready?’
‘I’m ready.’
Eurig was fussing, making sure Lizzie had water, that she was feeling well enough to proceed. Swift readied the tape and each of them announced their presence. Swift reminded Lizzie that she was not under arrest and was free to leave at any time.
‘You know why you’re here,’ Swift said. Lizzie nodded.
‘You have to say it out loud for the recording,’ Eurig smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Lizzie, it’s just a formality.’
‘Yes. I know why I’m here. But I had nothing to do with Quigley’s disappearance. Not that I hadn’t wished him all sorts of bad luck. I used to pray every night that he would overdose on the crap he used to sell to kids and poor sad losers, pray that he just wouldn’t wake up in the morning.’
‘But he did,’ Julie said. ‘He just kept on waking up, and you were worried for Rosa and for Sean.’
‘Of course I was. Who wouldn’t be?’
‘Worried enough to do something about it?’ Julie asked.
‘What could I do? I couldn’t tackle Quigley. The man was vicious. I did the only thing I could do.’ Lizzie shuddered. ‘Rosa arrived on my doorstep one afternoon out of the blue. She said Sean had been whingeing all day, yet again. Quigley had hit her because she couldn’t get him to stop. She was convinced he’d start on Sean, so she asked me to take Sean away and hide him. I begged her to come with us, but she was too terrified to leave him, too petrified of what he might do to her.’
‘Was Rosa a drug user, Lizzie?’
Lizzie nodded. ‘She’d tried so hard to stop, but Quigley forced her. She said he even injected it when she was asleep. That kept her dependent on him didn’t it? She could never have afforded to buy the stuff, so she had to stay with him.’
‘So you took Sean and you ran away.’<
br />
Lizzie nodded again. ‘Yes. I took Sean away.’
‘And you took him to the cottage in the Elan Valley, Pwll Bach?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how did you know about the cottage, Lizzie? It wasn’t advertised for rent anywhere, we checked. It wasn’t in newspapers, on the internet or with an estate agent. How did you know, all the way from Blackpool, that this cottage was available, and that its isolation suited your purposes so beautifully?’
Lizzie glanced at Eurig, who nodded. ‘I know the person who owns it. They told me about it.’
‘And who would that be, Lizzie?’
Lizzie looked at Eurig again and he bent towards her and whispered something to her behind his hand. She shook her head.
Julie sighed. ‘Come on, Lizzie, help us out here. Was it Mrs Pritchard from Bryn Awel Bed and Breakfast in Llandrindod who helped you?’