‘Wouldn’t they wonder why other people’s houses were selling for more?’
She looked dismissive. ‘You can always find something about a house to bring the price down. The punters don’t know any better.’
‘And presumably you’d only be doing it on really top price houses,’ Atherton said. ‘So a small percentage worked out at a nice commission.’
She seemed to take this as a criticism. ‘We didn’t do it very often,’ she protested. ‘It would’ve been too risky to chance anything but the occasional property. And the circumstances had to be right – the purchaser had to be on board. But Poole being what it is . . .’ She shrugged.
Yes, thought Atherton – the most expensive real estate in the country, hitched on to a top-whack marina.
She looked unhappy. ‘But just lately I’d been feeling that the risk wasn’t worth it. I was on at Scott to stop while we were ahead, and for him to make the break with London, move down here. I wanted us to set up as independent estate agents. We had all the skills between us, and the contacts, and I couldn’t see why Hatter and Ruck should get all the benefit from our hard work and expertise. With the money we’d already made we could cover set-up costs, and there’s plenty of scope for a new player in the field. Frankly, Hatter and Ruck are a bit stodgy and old-fashioned. I mean, they’re OK for selling Georgian vicarages, but for the new sort of client that’s coming into the market now, people with lots of cash money to spend, especially for the newer properties, places like Poole, and the luxury flats that are going up in Bournemouth . . .’
‘And Scott wasn’t willing to go along with your plans?’ Atherton asked sympathetically.
‘Oh, it wasn’t that. But he wanted us to do one last job, a big one, make a big killing before we stopped. And I was a bit nervous about it. It was outside my comfort zone, if you want to know. But he said he’d be doing all the hard work and taking all the risk. Well, I didn’t quite see it that way. But anyway, I said that if we were going to do something like that, he should make the break with London, he should move in to my house, we should get married.’ She looked to see if he understood.
‘You wanted some kind of assurance that you were in it together?’ Atherton said.
She looked relieved. ‘Yes, right. Well, even though we’d been going out for over a year, we didn’t see all that much of each other, and I didn’t feel I knew everything about him. Which proved to be true,’ she added bitterly, ‘because when I said that about getting married, he told me about being involved with someone. Actually living with her.’
‘How did he explain that away?’ Atherton asked.
‘He said it was all over between them before he met me. He said he’d been going to leave her for a long time, but she was very neurotic, and he had to pick the right moment because she might self-harm. He said she was anorexic and she’d been having psychiatric treatment so he had to be careful. He promised he would sort it all out and we would get married, but he couldn’t control the timing.’ Now she lifted to his face eyes that were haunted. ‘I never knew,’ she said, ‘I swear to you I never knew that he was going to kill her. That wasn’t what I thought he meant. If I’d had any idea, I’d have gone straight to the police. That poor girl . . .’ She shuddered.
‘But you’d seen in the papers and on television that she’d been murdered?’
‘I’d seen it, yes, but I wasn’t that interested. I mean, there’s always someone being murdered, isn’t there? I don’t read the gory stuff, I just skip over the headlines. And of course, I never knew her name, so I never connected it with Scott. Why would I?’ she appealed for forgiveness.
‘He hadn’t contacted you, then, since the weekend? Not to tell you she was missing or anything like that?’
‘No, I never heard from him – but that wasn’t unusual. He wasn’t a great one for talking on the phone. Usually I’d just get a call when he was planning to come down again. I never even knew when he turned up here Thursday night. I mean, he looked terrible – unshaven, dirty, smelling of drink. He’d just really let himself go to the dogs. Obviously something bad had happened.’
‘Didn’t you ask what?’
‘I started to, but he said, “Leave me alone. I can’t talk now,” and I could see he was in a real state, so I thought I’d leave him alone till he was a bit more together. To be honest, I thought he’d finally broken up with this other woman and it had been a bit difficult, so I thought a bit of sympathy on my part would—’
‘Point up the contrast,’ Atherton supplied.
She looked a little reproachful, but didn’t contradict him. ‘But then he started watching the news all the time, and I saw the police were looking for him. I said, “What have you done?” and he said, “Nothing.” But then he said, “They’re after me for Mel’s murder.” Then I got the connection. Well, then I knew what I had to do. I gave him a lot of scotch, to try to make him fall asleep. But he just wouldn’t go off. But he was so into the telly and looking at himself on the news, I thought he wouldn’t notice anyway. So I told him his clothes needed washing – which they did – and took ’em away so he couldn’t make a run for it. And I phoned the police. And they came round and took him away.’ She looked distressed. ‘You should have heard his language! And then he started crying. I didn’t know where to look, I was that ashamed.’ She shook her head, musing. ‘I don’t know how I could have been so wrong about him. I should’ve known from the beginning he was no good. When I first met him, at Earl’s Court, and we went to my hotel, instead of his house.’ And she added in a burst of angry frankness. ‘Going up to my room, he farted in the lift.’
‘That’s wrong on so many levels,’ Atherton murmured.
Mrs Wiseman was beyond being of any help to anyone. She seemed to have sunk and spread into the armchair she sat in, like a jelly on a plate beginning to melt. It was Bethany who answered the door, and hurried Connolly into the living room as if she hoped she could save them both; and she hung around the back of her mother’s armchair looking by turns scared and defiant.
‘D’you want to go and make your mammy a cup of tea?’ Connolly urged, to get her out of the way.
‘She’s not my mammy,’ Bethany objected, ‘she’s me mum. You don’t half talk funny. And she’s had cups of tea all morning.’
‘I bet she could do with another,’ Connolly said.
‘You want me out of the way so you can talk about Dad killing Mel,’ Bethany said. ‘Well, he never. He wouldn’t do that. My dad’s the best, and when he gets out he’s gonna sue the lot of you for false arrest, then you’ll be sorry.’
Connolly looked at her kindly. ‘I know you’re upset, and no wonder, but we’re not going to hurt him. We just want to ask him a few questions, that’s all.’
‘Then why d’you have to arrest him for? That’s like saying you think he did it.’
‘Not a bit. We arrest a lot o’ people. It’s a process we have to go through. We ask them questions then they’re free to go. We only want to find out the truth about what happened to Melanie. You must want that too.’
‘I don’t care,’ Bethany said, close to tears. ‘She’s dead. I just want my dad back.’
‘Well, hop and make your mum a cuppa, and let me ask me questions, so. The sooner that’s done, the sooner we can sort it all out. Ah, g’wan, that’s a good girl.’
She extracted herself by unwilling inches, and all this time Mrs Wiseman had been sitting staring at nothing, only her fingers moving as they screwed and shredded a damp tissue between them. Connolly hunkered down by the chair so that she was at face level, and said, ‘Mrs Wiseman, it’s me, Detective Constable Connolly. Rita. We talked before, d’you remember?’ There was no response, and no eye contact, but she thought the woman was listening. ‘I just want you to cast your mind back to that Friday, the day Melanie disappeared.’
‘The day she was killed,’ Mrs Wiseman amended harshly. So she was listening.
‘Your husband was out all evening, is that right? Until what ti
me?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. What does it matter anyway? Mel’s dead. She’s not coming back.’
‘But you still have Bethany,’ Connolly said. ‘You’ve got to be a mother to her, poor wean. You’ve got to make the effort to hold on.’
The tortured eyes came round, red-rimmed and exhausted. ‘You think Ian did it? You think he killed her?’
Connolly had to take the opportunity. ‘Do you think he could?’
‘I don’t know.’ She stared, her mind revolving like something trapped in a space too small. ‘He was out that evening,’ she said at last. ‘But he was often out, after school. Only, he was later back that night. He didn’t come in until after I was in bed. That couldn’t have been school stuff, could it?’
‘Where did he say he’d been?’
‘He didn’t say. He didn’t speak to me. I was in bed. I heard him come in and go straight to his bedroom.’ She shook her head wearily. ‘We never talked about his work any more. In the beginning he’d sometimes tell me what he’d done at school that day, but not lately. Not for years.’
God, what a sterile life, Connolly thought. ‘Could it have been private coaching he was doing that night? Did he do private coaching?’
‘No. I don’t know. Maybe,’ she said. ‘He never said he did.’
Connolly tried, ‘Could he have gone out again after he’d gone to bed? Would you have heard him if he did?’
‘I’m a sound sleeper. I wouldn’t hear.’ Still she stared into the mid-distance, but not in the dazed manner of before, but as if she were watching something unfolding, a movie of events being replayed for her private torture. Her eyes widened as if she saw a new scenario she had not yet contemplated. ‘A father wouldn’t kill his own child,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘It’s not possible.’ Suddenly she gripped Connolly’s forearm with fingers that hurt. ‘Did he do it? I have to know. Did he kill my Mel?’
Connolly tried gently to unlatch the fingers, but they were like steel bands. This poor tormented woman deserved the truth, but what was that? Connolly didn’t know. ‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know. We’re trying to find out, that’s all.’ She put a bit more effort into prying the fingers loose as her arm was going dead under the pressure, and the next moment something flew at her and hit her round the back of the head, not hard, but heartfelt.
‘Don’t you hurt my mum!’ Bethany cried as Connolly, her arm released, fell awkwardly on her behind on the carpet. ‘I’ll kill you! Don’t you touch her.’
‘I didn’t hurt her,’ Connolly said, wondering whether to rub her arm or her head. It was only the rolled-up Radio Times, she saw, in the child’s hand. If she’d come from the kitchen, lucky it wasn’t a knife. Did homicide run in families?
‘You get out! I knew I shouldn’t leave her alone. You get out now!’ Bethany shouted, elevated above the childish by her furious defence of her stepmother. Connolly moved towards the door, with Bethany ushering her like a sheepdog. Connolly almost expected to have her heels nipped. At the front door she paused with her hand on the latch and said, ‘Bethany, we have to find out where your dad was, so that we can cross him off. There has to be someone who can say where he was. Only, he wasn’t at soccer practice, you see.’
‘If you knew where he was, would you let him go?’ she asked, suddenly sharp.
‘Yes, if we can find someone who can swear to it. Did he have private pupils? You know, for sports coaching?’
Bethany suddenly looked very young, and frightened. ‘I don’t want to get into trouble.’
‘You won’t, I promise.’
‘But you won’t tell Dad I told?’
‘No, pet, I won’t.’
Bethany chewed her lip. ‘Only, my friend Georgia’s dad does some work in the evenings he doesn’t want anyone to know about, ’cos of the taxman, and she says he’ll go to prison if anyone finds out. You have to tell the taxman everything you do, and he doesn’t.’
‘So your dad is teaching private pupils in the evening, is he?’
‘I dunno. I think so. Only, you won’t tell him I told you? And you won’t tell the taxman?’
‘Neither one nor t’other,’ Connolly swore solemnly. ‘How d’you know about it?’
‘I heard some sixth-form boys at our school talking about someone seeing one of the teachers after school, and then one of them said my dad’s name, and one of them said, “He’s working on her forehand grip,” and then they laughed. I don’t know why – it wasn’t funny.’
‘No, alana, it wasn’t. Is her name Stephanie?’
‘I don’t know. I never heard. It was me dad’s name that made me listen. He must be giving her tennis coaching.’
‘Is that where your dad was on that Friday?’
‘I don’t know. But this time, Georgia was in her mum’s car coming home from her gran’s, and they passed our car on the A40, and there was a girl sitting beside me dad, like, older than me. He never looked round so he didn’t see, but Georgia said it was definitely him but she didn’t know the girl. And that was a Friday night.’
‘Did Georgia’s mum see him and the girl?’
‘No. She was looking at the traffic lights, saying, “Don’t change, you bastards, don’t change.” Dad doesn’t let me say bastard. He says it’s swearing. But Georgia says it isn’t really, it just means someone you don’t like.’
‘Well, you’d better not say it if your dad doesn’t like it,’ Connolly said judiciously, glad the child had calmed down. She didn’t like to leave her all alone with a whacked-out mum. ‘Would your mum’s friend not come in and mind yez both?’ she asked. ‘That Mrs Sutton? She seemed nice.’
‘She’s all right,’ Bethany said listlessly, and then thought of something. ‘Would she cook us some dinner? We haven’t had anything to eat today, except cornflakes, cos I can do those.’
‘I bet she would,’ Connolly said with utmost sincerity. ‘Wait’ll I ask her. Number forty-eight, isn’t it?’
She was eager to get away and track down Stephanie Bentham, but she could not in conscience leave this waif to cope alone. But she felt sure that Margie would be only too willing to get back on stage, and negotiations would take only as long as it took her to grab her handbag.
Slider left Wiseman to stew for a bit, and went to see if Scott Hibbert was back from the land of the fairies. He looked terrible, and didn’t smell any too good, either. Obviously his stay first at the hotel, and then at Valerie’s, with no work to go to and nothing to take his mind off his sins, had sent him on a downward spiral, for he was sporting several days of beard and did not seem to have bathed for the same length of time. He was wearing a nasty pair of sweat pants and a zipped fleece top over a T-shirt, his hair was matted and his feet were shoved bare into a pair of battered-looking trainers that were adding something of the ripe Gorgonzola to the olfactory mix in the cell.
Slider looked at him through the wicket. His eyes were inflamed and rather crazed-looking, and he sniffed constantly and wiped his nose on his cuff. ‘Is he all right for interviewing?’ he asked O’Flaherty, the sergeant on duty.
‘If y’ask me,’ O’Flaherty said without sympathy, ‘him and reality’s never been on first name terms. But he’s no worse than the average headbanger we get in here. Sure, you can talk to him if you think it’ll help. The doc’s signed off on him, and he’s about as able for’t as he’ll ever be. Tape Room One?’
‘Trot him along. I’ll be there in five minutes,’ Slider said, and went to collect Norma, so as to have fresh ears on the case.
Hibbert scrambled to his feet as soon as Slider entered, and was gently pushed back down by Gostyn, the uniform minding him. ‘Are you the boss around here?’ Hibbert asked, his eyes flitting nervously to Swilley and back. ‘I want to talk to the boss.’
‘I’m the investigating officer,’ Slider said, and introduced himself and Swilley. ‘Are they treating you all right?’
‘Yes, yes, but I want to talk to you,’ he said urgently.
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‘You can, son, just settle down. I’m going to ask you some questions and I have to ask you if you want a solicitor to be present.’
‘They’ve already asked me that,’ he said almost petulantly. ‘I don’t want a solicitor. I just want to talk to whoever’s in charge.’
Slider managed to shut him up for long enough to get the tape rolling according to protocol, and then he was off.
‘You’ve got to understand, it wasn’t the way it looked. Valerie. It was just a business arrangement. Of course I had to keep it secret from Mel because she wouldn’t have understood. Women never do. But Val was good, the best in the business, and she had the contacts, so I needed her for that end of it. And she was – well, you saw her. She’s not a bad-looking woman but she’s a lot older than me, and a bit desperate. Anyway, she made it clear enough I was going to have to give her a bit more than just money to get her on board with it. What was I to do? I had to keep her sweet or she could have blown the whole thing and landed us both in trouble. She wasn’t that bad, actually,’ he said, his mind wandering. He stared vacantly at Swilley, who stared back blankly, not to disturb him. ‘I mean, she knew a thing or two – you know, in bed – and I’m not saying I’d have needed my arm twisted in normal circumstances. But I didn’t set out to be unfaithful to Mel.’
‘What was the nature of this business arrangement you had with Valerie?’ Slider asked, to get him back on track.
Hibbert explained it pretty much as Valerie had to Atherton, but with a lot more detail. ‘But the thing was,’ he went on, ‘she was obviously more interested in me than the job, and she’d started hinting about me moving down there with her. Then she started talking about marriage. So I knew I didn’t have much longer before I was going to have to dump her. But we had this really big job coming up. It was a developer thing, the biggest job I’d ever had a hand in. This row of houses with big gardens. The developer wanted to pull ’em down and put up blocks of flats. He didn’t mind saving a bit of money wherever he could. If we could get the owners to sell, and get the prices right, we were sitting on a million quid for our trouble – and all cash, tax free. You don’t get chances like that every day of the week. So I had to keep her sweet, Valerie, until it was done. I had to pretend it was her that mattered to me. I even had to pretend I might marry her. But I never wanted to be unfaithful to Mel. It was just business.’
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