“Why would she though, sir?”
Brock shrugged. “Maybe jealousy? Maybe Isabella wasn’t a fan of Ella getting involved and Jarvis forced her? Maybe she took it out on her?”
“Bloody hell.”
The phone hung limply by his side as he stared into space.
“The phone, Poole?” Brock said, waking him from his thoughts.
“Oh, yes,” Poole said, raising it and beginning to dial.
“Hold on though, sir,” he said, lowering it again. “There’s someone else who could have made that call. Gina Glover.”
Brock nodded. “She could have, but I don’t see why she’d then want to kill the woman afterward. Unless someone else did it and the two cases being connected are just a coincidence. Let’s start with finding Isabella Lennon. She’s the one who’s run off, after all.”
“My client cannot be kept a virtual prisoner in some dusty old hotel indefinitely!” said Isabella Lennon’s lawyer, a thin man whose head appeared to have grown up out of his hair like a small mountain.
“So, you’d like us to just let Miss Lennon here go about her business while we know she’s been lying in a murder enquiry, do you?”
The man looked toward his client, who had suddenly looked up from picking at a hangnail.
“And what is it I’m supposed to have lied about?” she said in a mildly amused tone.
“On the night before Jarvis Alvarado was murdered, you spent the night with him in his hotel room, is that correct?”
She shrugged in a bored manner. “So?”
“Who else was there?” The inspector’s voice was suddenly quiet, and all the more menacing for it.
“What do you mean who else was there?” Isabella replied, looking confused.
“I mean, Miss Lennon, who else was there in the room with you and Jarvis Alvarado the night before he died?”
“No one else was bloody there. What on earth are you talking about?” she said, sitting up, her eyes narrowing in anger.
“I’m talking about Ella Louise,” Brock said flatly.
“Don’t say another word,” Isabella’s lawyer cut in as she began to reply. “I need to confer with my client in private.”
“I bet you do,” Brock said, standing and walking from the room.
“Sir!” Davies called to them as they stepped outside of the room. They watched his wild, gangly run come to an untidy halt which caused his helmet to slide down over his eyes. He pushed it back and looked at them, excitedly.
Brock and Poole both immediately recoiled at the sight and smell of Davies, who appeared to have been dipped in something gooey and then rolled in litter.
“We’ve found the sheets, sir!”
“Good. What sort of state are they in?”
“Well there were loads of bins, sir. I had to go through three before I found it!”
Davies was beaming with pride.
“Excellent work, Davies,” Brock said, making Davies’ grin spread even wider.
“And you’ve dropped it off at the lab?”
“Yes, sir, but they say it will be at least a day.”
“Right. Well, I think it’s best you go and have a shower, get your uniform cleaned.” Brock paused. “Maybe shave your head?”
“Yes, sir!” Davies said, turning on his heels.
“That last one was a joke, Davies!” Poole called after him. Brock chuckled before his face turned grim again.
“I’d put money on the fact that Ella Louise’s DNA is going to be all over those sheets. I say we use this to try and squeeze Miss Lennon in there, don’t you?”
He barged back through the interview room door without knocking. Poole stepped into the room just in time to see Isabella’s lawyer land back in his seat from where the inspector had made him jump.
“Right, Miss Lennon,” Brock started, sitting down heavily in the right-hand chair which sat opposite her. “I hope you’ve had enough time to confer about whatever it is you needed to confer about?”
She said nothing, but eyed him as though he was something she’d stepped in, her large, doll-like face showing nothing but contempt.
“You see, Miss Lennon, we’ve just found the sheets from Mr Alvarado’s bed that he tried to dispose of.” Brock let the statement hang in the air, waiting for her to digest it.
Her face switched from anger to a blank confusion. “What do you mean tried to dispose of?”
“Jarvis Alvarado handed the sheets from his hotel room bed to Mike Hart to throw in the bins behind the hotel.”
Isabella stared at him as though he was speaking a different language.
“Then we find out that Ella Louise was an escort and was hired that night by someone in the hotel. A woman.”
“Oh my God,” Isabella said, her face turning pale despite the hours in the tanning salon. “You think I called this woman?!”
“I think that when we find Ella’s DNA on Jarvis’ sheets we’ll be able to derive that she was in his room that night, and if you were too, then you were part of it. You made the call. Why did you kill her, Isabella? Was it just jealousy? Did you not know what you were getting into when Jarvis asked you to make that call?”
Isabella said nothing, her eyes wide.
“And then what happened? Did Jarvis find out what you had done the next morning? He must have realised that Ella had been killed at least because he got rid of the sheets.”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Isabella said. All the cocky brattishness had gone from her demeanour. Her thin frame, which she normally held with an assertive grace, was pulled close. She now looked like a scared young woman.
“Then how do you explain it?” Brock asked simply.
“I don’t know,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know why Jarvis would get rid of the sheets, but I didn’t call that woman. I didn’t kill her.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Something’s not right about this,” Brock said as they sat in the canteen with a coffee in front of them.
They had taken a break from interviewing Isabella Lennon and had been looking over the case notes from the Ella Louise murder. There wasn’t much to go on. She had been found, hit over the head and then strangled with a cloth, in a side alley that was on the other side of Bexford from the hotel and theatre.
“I just don’t think Isabella Lennon is that good an actress,” Brock continued.
“If you’d seen the show, you’d know she wasn’t,” answered Poole. “But if she’s telling the truth and she didn’t call the escort agency, who did?”
They fell silent as they both sipped at their drinks.
“Gina Glover’s the one who’s benefitted the most,” Poole said. “She could have called her.”
“She could have called the escort for herself, but then why would Jarvis have been desperate to get rid of those sheets? Him sleeping with Ella Louise is the only thing that makes sense. I can’t see Gina calling an escort for him; from what I’ve gathered she didn’t even like him. Unless,” Brock said, looking up at the ceiling, “Gina was trying to leverage Jarvis into giving her a role and this was part of her bribe? No,” he said suddenly, shaking his head. “I can’t see it.”
“OK, so maybe it’s unrelated?” Poole said. “Maybe it was some other guest at the hotel and Alvarado was getting rid of his sheets for some other reason?”
“Maybe, but it’s too much of a coincidence.”
Poole stared at the sheets in front of him, his eyes unseeing, when something occurred to him. He stood up quickly. “Wait here a minute, sir. I won’t be long.”
He left Brock staring after him with his eyebrows raised and headed toward the main office, where he almost walked straight into Sanita Sanders.
“Oh, hi,” he said awkwardly, remembering that the last time he had seen her he had rushed off when on the phone to his father.
“Sir,” she said with a nod. They stood for a moment in silence before Poole remembered the task in hand.
“I’m sorry, but I�
�ve got to go,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Shall we talk later?”
“OK,” she said, looking slightly confused.
Poole moved away before his mouth said anything else his brain would instantly regret.
Why on earth did he find himself so awkward around her when they were alone? He was a grown man! And why had he said they would talk later, as though there was something they needed to discuss just between them?
He closed his eyes and swore as he made his way to the back of the building and the small row of holding cells.
“Hello, sir,” said a large, forlorn figure sat behind the desk which sat on the right before the short corridor which led to the holding cells.
“What are you doing here, Roland—I mean Constable?” Poole asked, his head still reeling slightly from his encounter with Sanita.
“Apparently, I didn’t handle the press enquiries very well on reception, so they’ve thrown me back here until this case is all sorted and it’s quietened down.”
Despite himself, Poole was curious. “What did you do?”
Roland grinned. “I kept giving them little bits of false information, sending them all over town.”
Poole couldn’t help but smile.
“Which cell is Isabella Lennon in?”
“Cell four,” Roland answered. “The first celeb we’ve had I here, I think. She doesn’t seem happy with it, that’s for sure.”
Poole headed down to the cell and slid the metal viewing plate across.
“Isabella? It's Sergeant Poole. I need to know the exact time you arrived at Jarvis’ room.”
“I’ve already told you!” Isabella said, standing up from the plastic, padded bench. “I got there around ten, I was on the phone with my agent before that and then I got a message from Jarvis.”
“Right,” Poole said, sliding the plate back and setting off back down the corridor.
Once back in the main office he turned right, through the door which led into the offices of the inspectors and knocked hard on the door of Inspector Sharp.
‘Come in!” came a voice from the other side.
Poole hesitated. The voice wasn’t Sharp’s, as he had expected, but Anderson’s.
He opened the door reluctantly.
“What do you want?” Anderson said with a sneer.
Poole glanced at the empty chair behind the larger desk at the back of the room before turning back to Anderson.
“What time was the call made to book the escort? What time did she go? It wasn’t in the case notes you gave us because you only found out afterward.”
“Why do you want to know?” Anderson said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head, his muscular arms straining against his shirt sleeves.
Poole stared back at him but knew he needed to share what they had on the case which seemed to be now linked with Anderson’s.
“We know that someone, a woman, called the escort agency and hired Ella Louise to come to the hotel. We also know that the next morning, Jarvis Alvarado gave his hotel bed sheets to his producer to throw them in the bins out the back.”
He watched Anderson lean forward, his expression changing to one of alert interest.
“But we also know Isabella Lennon spent the night with Jarvis Alvarado, and she doesn’t seem to know anything about Ella Louise. So, I need to know what time the call was made to the escort agency and what time Ella Louise went to the hotel.”
Anderson paused, as though deciding whether to give up this information or not, and then spoke.
“They got the call at seven and she went straight over there. The body wasn’t discovered until the next morning, but time of death would have been around ten or eleven.”
Poole nodded. “Thanks.” He turned to go and realised that Anderson was following him out of the door. He turned to look at him.
“Sharp’s off having drinks with the chief. I’m coming with you.”
“That’s not how this works,”
“Look,” Anderson said, “I don’t like you, but I want to solve this case and it looks like we’re now working the same one. I need to be part of it.”
Poole took a deep breath. “OK, but you can explain it to Brock.”
They stepped out into the main office and headed for the canteen when Sanita called across to Poole for her desk. He changed his direction and moved toward her, cringing inwardly as Anderson did the same and came up alongside him.
“What is it, Constable?” he said, far more snappily than he would have if Anderson hadn’t had been there. He cursed himself for being weak and influenced by his presence.
“We haven’t found anywhere in Bexford that sells the brand of whiskey Jonny Turnbull had when he died. We’re still looking farther afield but I suddenly thought to check the hotel.”
“The hotel? That’s the first place we looked,” Poole said. “They don’t sell it.”
“No, they don’t, but they have it,” Sanita said, smiling. “They don’t have any behind the bar because it’s some crazy expensive single malt that they only reserve for the special guests.”
“Like Jonny Turnbull?” Anderson chimed in.
“Well, no,” Sanita replied. “Apparently none of the staff gave Turnbull a bottle and neither did the manager or anyone else.”
“Where was this stuff kept?”
“In a store cupboard out the back by the kitchens. It wasn’t locked or anything, but you’d have to know where you were looking.”
“So, Turnbull might have found his way back there on his own, or someone from the staff either showed him where it was or got it for him and is lying?” Poole said.
“Looks like it, sir.”
“Good work, Constable.” Poole nodded before turning back toward the canteen.
“Sexy little thing, isn’t she?” Anderson said quietly next to him.
“Shut it, Anderson,” Poole hissed back, his fists balled at his side.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Poole glanced to his left at the inspector who was squashed into the passenger seat as usual. His face was as hard and unreadable as granite, but there was a coolness emanating from him which was making the hairs on the back of Poole’s neck stand up.
The reason for this frosty atmosphere was clear: their new team member.
“You don’t drive then, sir?” Anderson said from the back in an amused voice.
“No,” Brock growled.
“Shame that. Must make it difficult getting around.”
Brock emitted a low noise that could only be compared to a growl and Poole found himself accelerating harder in an effort to reach the hotel more quickly.
A few minutes later he swung the car into the now familiar carpark at the back and the three of them stepped out.
“So are we going to ask Gina Glover if she called for the escort?” Poole asked as they began walking to the back entrance.
“We are,” Brock grumbled. “That’s if she’s finished with her adoring crowd.” He paused at the doorway.
“Now listen, you two. We’ve got bugger all to go on here against any of them and I find that in that situation it’s best to just go in and do a lot of talking, accusing and riling and see what sticks. So just go with it, OK?”
They nodded and followed him through the door.
When they reached the lobby it was clear that the party was over. It was empty apart from a middle-aged couple talking to the receptionist. Brock veered toward the bar area and stepped through the door.
Gina Glover, Mike Hart, Eli Patrick and Jane Marx were sat around the same table the cast had gathered around previously.
“Inspector!” Gina said, her arms wide, one hand containing a gin and tonic. “Why don’t you join us? We’re having a little celebration!”
“I’m afraid, Miss Glover, that we’re more interested in a little celebration you might have helped with the other night.”
“I’m sorry?” Gina said, her pale, freckled brow wrinkl
ing.
“Did you make a call to an escort agency on Wednesday night and hire a woman named Ella Louise?”
Gina’s expression changed slowly, as though her frown slid from her face to be replaced by a wide smile. She laughed, throwing her head back.
“You think I did what?! Honestly!” she said, shaking her head. “You are hilarious! Why on earth would I do that? I mean, come on, Inspector, I’m not exactly desperate. I don’t need to pay for it.”
“Maybe you called her for someone else?”
Gina laughed again. “So now I’m some kind of high-class pimp?!”
“We know she was in Jarvis’ room that night, Gina.”
The laughter vanished as quickly as it had come.
“You’ve seen the news, Gina. That girl died.”
“What girl?!” Gina said, putting her drink down on the table in front of her and sitting upright.
“Ella Louise, the escort that you called and hired. She was in Jarvis’ room the night before he died, and now she’s turned up dead as well.” Brock folded his arms and stared at the group, all of whom were dumbstruck by the exchange.
“It wasn’t Gina,” a voice said quietly from the left of the group. They turned as one to look at Jane Marx, who sat with her head bowed, staring at the drink in her hands.
“Miss Marx, are you saying you called the escort agency?”
She nodded.
“What?!” Eli Patrick said next to her. “Why on earth would you call an escort for Jarvis?!”
“I’m sorry,” Jane said, turning to him. “But Jarvis was very persuasive and he said he’d call off the whole launch if I didn’t help him out.”
“Help him out? What does that mean?!” Eli said, his cheeks reddening.
“Miss Marx,” Brock said, stepping forward. “I think it might be best if you came back to the station with us to give a statement.”
Jane stood and nodded, a tear rolling down one cheek.
“Miss Marx, just start from the beginning and tell us exactly what happened on Wednesday night.”
Jane blew her nose and then looked up. Her eyes were red with tears as she glanced at Brock and Poole opposite her and then behind her to Anderson, who stood in the corner.
A Staged Death (A Brock & Poole Mystery Book 2) Page 12