‘What about her?’ Sean gestured to where Marty Keats was sitting with her head in her hands, doubled up as if she was still feeling sick.
The inspector shrugged. Sean had known him slightly; they weren’t friends but Jack Chorley wasn’t so much hostile as resentful, envious, a little touch of the green eye over Sean’s success and suspected earning capacity, perhaps. Sean saw it in all their faces, the policemen who knew he had once been one of them but was now famous, and, by their standards, rich.
‘We still need to talk to her, she’s hardly told us anything yet, and if they were sleeping together she must be a suspect, you know that.’
‘So you do see it as a sex killing?’
Chorley ignored the question. ‘We’ll take her down to the station in a minute and see what we can get out of her. She must know more than she’s admitting. At the moment, we’re checking her alibi for last night and this morning.’
‘If I were you I’d look for her ex-husband, too.’
Chorley’s eyes narrowed, hard and bright. ‘Oh?’
‘She was sleeping with Fenn, and her ex, Roger Keats, was a nasty piece of work. They’re divorced, but he’s the type to turn vicious if he found out she was planning to marry again.’
‘Was she going to marry Fenn?’
‘No idea. I’m still just speculating. It would be worth checking it out. Oh, and if you find Keats, could you let me know? I’d like a word with him myself.’
‘You’ve got a nerve. I’m not handing police evidence over to you. Go home, Halifax, and stay out of my hair.’
‘If you need me, this is my number,’ Sean said, handing him a printed card. ‘I’ve got a mobile phone. I’ll get your call wherever I am.’
Chorley eyed him sardonically. ‘Snap,’ he said, producing his own phone from his pocket. ‘These days you don’t have to be a bigtime TV scriptwriter to have a mobile phone. Even us poverty-stricken coppers get issued one!’
‘Don’t be so bloody touchy!’ Sean grated. ‘Just let me know if anything interesting turns up, won’t you?’
‘Will I hell,’ said Chorley. ‘Leave the policework to the professionals, Halifax; you concentrate on writing far-fetched stories for TV.’
Sean didn’t bother to retort; he turned and walked over to Marty, explained that he was leaving but she would be wanted to help the police with their enquiries. She gave him a distraught look.
‘They don’t suspect me, do they? I didn’t do it. I was at home with my children.’
‘If they can give you an alibi you’ll be OK, won’t you?’
She wailed, ‘I want to go home to my kids!’ Sean watched her thoughtfully; she didn’t look to him like a killer.
Derek was hardly a heavyweight, but he was a man, and wiry enough; could a woman have overpowered him? It didn’t seem likely.
But if they had been having sex she might have taken him off guard. Pretty kinky sex, from the look of it. There had been something comic and revolting about the satsuma in the gaping, red-lipsticked mouth.
It had made Derek Fenn an object of cheap mockery. What sort of mind could have thought of that?
And the drugs in the satsuma … that was something Sean had never come across before – he hadn’t credited it when Dr Kent told him about the drugs which had been injected into the fruit.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Fairly sure. I’ve seen it before – they increase the sex drive. Give more of a kick to the orgasm when it comes.’ He had given one of his little sniffs. ‘Amazing what the human mind can come up with. What’s wrong with straightforward sex, I’d like to know?’
‘Works for me, every time,’ agreed Sean. ‘You’re the professional, Doc, you tell me – why the need to dress up something so natural and powerful with drugs and kinky stuff?’
‘Maybe the victim couldn’t do it otherwise? Well, he was getting on a bit; maybe he’d been having a problem in that direction. If his libido was on the blink, he might have needed help to get an erection, let alone orgasm.’
‘Maybe,’ Sean had said, thinking … but a satsuma in his mouth? It was far too comic. No, Sean couldn’t believe it. It must have been put there after Derek was dead. Must have been, surely, or it would have rolled out in his death throes. Strangling was a violent business unless the victim was unconscious already, and Derek clearly hadn’t been. He had struggled, made quite a mess, kicking stuff off the coffee-table, having an orgasm, urinating at the same time, his bodily functions totally out of control in his last agony.
Poor bastard, thought Sean, mouth wry. An undignified way to die, and Fenn had been a man obsessed with his image, with the way he looked. He always dressed well – even when he was wearing casual gear it was usually expensive, designer stuff.
‘Maybe I’d better get a lawyer,’ Marty said, breaking in on his thoughts, and Sean looked at her and, as he took in what she had said, nodded.
‘Might be a good idea, at that. Do you know one?’
‘Guy, who did my divorce, he’ll come, or send someone else to sit in on the interview.’ Marty looked up at Sean, her orange hair dishevelled, her eyes smeared with tears and mascara. ‘They don’t really think I did it, do they, Sean?’
‘I don’t know what they think.’
She didn’t believe him, her eyes wild. ‘Oh, come on – you’re one of them, they talk to you, you were a policeman.’
He gave her a dry smile. ‘Once. No more. And when you’re out, you are out, as far as the force is concerned, believe me. Oh, I still have friends there, but the guy in charge here isn’t one of them. Chorley probably suspects me more than he suspects you, but then Chorley suspects everyone.’
‘So long as he doesn’t suspect me,’ Marty said with a smothered sob.
‘He may suspect your ex-husband,’ Sean softly said, watching her intently.
‘Roger?’ She blinked at him, rubbed a hand over her wet, black-ringed eyes. ‘Oh, my God … I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Was he capable of murder?’
‘Roger was a sadistic bastard, he was capable of anything; he once stubbed a cigarette out on my arm because I laughed at him at the wrong moment.’
Sean drove straight to Annie’s flat and found Harriet sitting outside in her car. She got out to meet him, her sheepskin coat wrapped round her, shivering in the cold wind, her face pale and her eyes anxious.
‘She still isn’t back. Sean, what on earth is going on? Derek murdered, Annie vanished God knows where. I’m worried. I’ve got a bad feeling about all this.’
‘So have I. Join the club. Marty is petrified they’ll suspect her.’
‘Well, she was seeing Derek, wasn’t she?’
‘But was she the only one? He was out every night at clubs around town, drinking and gambling – there must have been other women in his life besides Marty. Maybe men, too.’
Harriet stared. ‘Men? Derek wasn’t ambi, was he?’
‘Could be. The way he was killed could easily be.’ Sean broke off as a taxi drew up on the other side of the road. ‘Hang on, I think this is Annie … yes, it is.’
He strode across the road with Harriet on his heels. The taxi drove off just as they got there and Annie turned to face them, flushed and contrite.
‘Oh, hello – were you waiting for me?’
‘And worrying ourselves sick!’ Harriet indignantly told her.
Sean’s narrowed eyes were searching Annie’s face. She looked different. Something had happened to her, something so powerful it showed even at a casual glance. Her colour was high, her eyes fever-bright. Sean felt the clutch of jealousy, and was shaken by it. He had never felt like that before about anyone. He had always been a loner, a man who walked by himself and didn’t need anybody else. What was the matter with him? Was she beginning to matter that much?
‘Where have you been?’ he broke out hoarsely and she turned to look at him, the glance betraying her mood even more. Annie was walking on the wind, high as a kite. She had been making love, his first i
nstinctive awareness of it backed by the evidence of his searching eyes – her pink mouth faintly swollen, a small love-bite on her throat, under her ear. He could almost smell sex on her, and his stomach clenched. He felt almost as sick as he had when he saw Derek Fenn’s body.
‘I was with someone,’ she admitted, defiance in her face.
Harriet was instantly distracted, her brows going up. ‘A man? Annie! Who? Is this someone new? Or do we know him?’
Annie laughed, excitement glittering over her. Both Harriet and Sean were taken aback by the change in her. They had never seen her look like this.
‘I’ve known him for years, but we’d lost touch – I met him again yesterday, he came to interview me. He works for the real-life crime magazine, remember that interview? And this morning he rang me and we met up at the hospital, after I’d seen my mother.’
‘Who is this guy?’ demanded Sean curtly.
She gave him another defiant look. ‘I just told you. A journalist, a reporter, someone I knew years ago.’
Sean drew a sharp breath. ‘This is him, isn’t it? The old flame who got you pregnant?’
Her eyes widened in surprise; she had forgotten that she had ever told him about that.
When she didn’t deny it, Sean said curtly, ‘I told you to rest today. You shouldn’t have gone out!’
‘Oh, stop ordering me around!’
Sean and Harriet did a double-take, their eyes meeting in surprise. Annie had never snapped back at them like that before.
‘We’re not ordering you around,’ Harriet protested. ‘We’re worried about you, Annie.’ She put her arm round her and Annie shook her off.
‘Well, just leave me alone, will you?’ Annie walked away towards her front door and they followed her.
As she opened the door Sean bit out, ‘Fenn is dead, murdered.’
Annie turned, going white with shock. ‘Derek? Dead? Murdered?’
Harriet gave Sean an incredulous, furious look. ‘What a way to tell her! What’s the matter with you?’
Sean shrugged grimly; he hadn’t meant to break it like that but his temper had got out of hand. He’d wanted to hit her for looking the way she did, for the sensuality you could see throbbing in her body, in her eyes and mouth.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Who was this man who could make her look like that? Was he the reason why there had been no man in her life before? Had she just been waiting for her old lover to return? All these years?
What annoyed him most was that he’d stupidly thought she must be waiting for the right man, had never met him and wasn’t prepared to compromise with anyone else.
He’d even begun to think it might be him, the right man for Annie – hope it might, anyway. He should have known better; dreams were just that, dreams. They didn’t come true. His whole life had told him that. You couldn’t work in the police force for years without realising what a bloody awful world this was, and how unlikely you were ever to get what you dreamt about.
But he had had one dream come true – he had become a writer, a professional, highly paid writer at that, something he had never dared hope for at one time, and he had let himself begin to hope another dream might come true. From the minute he met Annie he’d been stunned by her delicate beauty, by the sudden radiance of her smiles, by her soft, clear voice. Even her coolness towards him had pleased him. Sean didn’t like women to be too eager, to flirt or come on to him before he showed a sign of being interested. If there was any chasing to be done, Sean wanted to do it, but he liked to take his time. He hated making mistakes about anything, especially about women. So he’d been slowly working his way round to asking Annie out. How was he to guess she was going to meet this old flame again?
Harriet put an arm round Annie and took her into the house. Sean followed angrily and found them in the living-room, Annie half sitting, half lying on a couch, shivering, while Harriet piled cushions behind her head.
Annie looked at Sean, her eyes huge with distress. ‘What happened to Derek?’
‘He was strangled.’
She drew breath audibly. ‘God.’ She shivered.
Sean did not fill her in on the more lurid details. No doubt when the press got on to the story she would read all about it. He grimaced at the realisation that this was all going to hit the headlines. The press would have a field day. For once Billy Grenaby wasn’t going to welcome the publicity. Billy! he thought. They’d have to tell him and at once before he heard it from someone else. Billy would want to get the studio publicity machine into operation with a damage-containment programme.
‘Billy!’ he mouthed to Harriet above Annie’s head and Harriet shut her eyes, gave a smothered groan.
‘I’d better ring him now. He mustn’t hear about it from the press first. If he did, and then found out we knew and hadn’t told him, he’d fire us both.’
How was she going to tell Billy and avoid an outburst of rage? She was going to need all her powers of tact and persuasion to stop him going spare.
Grimacing, Harriet hurried out. Annie hardly noticed her go. She seemed too dazed to notice anything.
Sean looked down at her and took a grip on his temper. It was pointless being furious with her; she had no idea how he felt. He hoped she didn’t guess, anyway. He hated to think of her knowing, being kind, because Annie would be kind; he had seen her with her mother, with Harriet, or Jason, her driver, with others in the cast when they were hurt or upset. She was one of those people who noticed if someone was having a bad time and he didn’t want her feeling sorry for him. His pride couldn’t stand it.
Trying to sound calm and patient, he asked, ‘Are you OK? You’d better have a drink, some brandy.’
She shook her head, said shakily, ‘Who did it, Sean? Do the police know?’
‘We only just found the body.’
‘We? You mean, you did?’ She looked startled, stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. ‘Where? Where did it happen?’
Sean told her tersely and she listened in shocked silence.
‘I’ll make us all some coffee,’ offered Harriet from the door. As Sean looked round at her she added, ‘I talked to Billy, he’s coping.’
Billy, as she expected, had exploded at first into violent emotions: shock, then horror, then rage. Billy was given to such eruptions; for a shrewd, hard-headed businessman, he was deeply emotional. Harriet couldn’t help wondering what sort of lover he would be – he wasn’t good-looking but he had all that emotional power dammed up inside. What would it be like to be the one to break that dam?
She knew his marriage was on the rocks; he and his wife had separated and he had allowed her custody of their children. The gossip around the company was that Billy’s wife was dull; everyone who had ever met her said she was good to look at, a tall, elegant creature with blonde hair which was always perfect, an enamelled face, long red nails and polite smile. But she was jawbreakingly tedious to talk to – all you got from her was small talk, automatic questions about how you were, was your work going well, what did you think about the latest news?
No wonder Billy spent every waking hour at work and very little time at home.
It had taken her nearly ten minutes to soothe him down, but she had finally got him into the right sort of mind to take practical steps to deal with the fall-out from Derek’s death.
Sean smiled at her. ‘Good girl.’
Harriet gave him a dry look. Men could be patronising jerks! And they didn’t even seem to realise it. But she liked Sean a lot, so she grinned forgivingly, and vanished to make the tea; when she was upset it always calmed her down to have something useful to do. She and Billy had that in common.
She had a lot of thinking to do. If Annie had taken up with someone else now, would Sean be looking for comfort elsewhere?
Harriet always liked to keep her options open. ‘Wait and see’ was her motto.
When she had gone, Sean insisted on finding Annie a drink in the sideboard where her mother had always kept s
herry. While he was pouring some of that into a glass, he glanced along the framed photographs of Annie which stood on the sideboard; Annie as a baby, wearing a frilly dress, with dimpled knees, her blue eyes already dominating her baby face; Annie aged about five or six in a swimsuit at the seaside, Annie in school uniform; Annie with a middle-aged man’s arm around her, leaning confidingly on him. Her father? wondered Sean, turning to take the glass of sherry to her.
Annie’s lower lip was trembling, her small white teeth gnawing at it as she accepted the glass. She didn’t drink the sherry, just held the glass, staring up at him, her blue eyes glazed with unshed tears.
‘Oh, God, I feel so bad … Sean, it was my fault, I did it.’
Sean looked at her in startled shock, a coldness invaded his limbs. ‘What? What the hell are you saying?’
‘He told me he owed money to a nasty crowd who were threatening to kill him, and I didn’t believe him, I wouldn’t lend him any more money. If I had, he’d be alive now!’
Sean gave a long-drawn-out sigh of relief. Oh, that was all! Women were such inveterate victims – how typical of Annie to try to take the blame for something Fenn had brought on himself!
But it gave a new perspective to the murder. He thought aloud, ‘That never occurred to me, that it could have been a professional murder. Or to the police, I expect. They’ll have to be told about this. I suppose he didn’t mention a name? Did he say who he owed the money to?’
She shook her head. ‘Only that it was a gambling debt.’
Sean whistled. ‘That can be a very nasty crowd. Maybe Marty Keats will know exactly who he owed the money to.’ But Sean had handled crimes involved with gambling before, and they rarely killed someone who owed them money – that would merely make sure they never got it! No, their idea of a warning was to break your arm or a leg and warn you to pay up or next time it would be worse. Sean thought of the murder scene and doubted if Derek’s death had been a professional hit. There had been something nastily personal about the way the body had been arranged. Someone had hated Derek Fenn, had taken time and trouble to make him look ridiculous in death. Professionals didn’t play games. They made their hit and left quickly, they didn’t hang around dressing the body up.
In the Still of the Night Page 22