by Deborah Lucy
‘Ah, who told you about that?’
‘Her GP,’ replied Temple.
‘Greta’s medical condition, as you put it, did cast a bit of a shadow on her life, our lives. She was beautiful but not always easy to live with, at least, not from my perspective. All the time she worked, she was fine, but when she gave up work and we parted company, sometimes for weeks at a time, she found that challenging. My fault; I guess I made her feel insecure. It started not long after we married. She would miss her shifts and turn up to meet me at the airport when I got back. The purpose of this was to see who the other crew members had been, the women of course. But when she gave up work, her behaviour became increasingly erratic every time I went away. Frankly, it quickly became tiresome.
‘She started to spend her way through our bank account. She’d go on spending sprees, spending huge amounts on clothes, shoes, bags, jewellery, things – anything. I’m talking thousands, in one hit sometimes. Tens of thousands all told. I had to move money out of the current account in order to limit the damage she could do. I had to get help for her to see what was wrong with her and to see what could be done.’
‘So, what did you do?’ asked Temple.
‘Went to the GP who put us onto a psychiatrist. He diagnosed her and she’d been on anti-depressants since,’ replied Maxwell matter-of-factly.
‘Did she have any other conditions that you know of?’
‘None that I know of.’
He’s got no idea of the pregnancy, thought Temple. He wanted to keep it that way for the time being.
‘DNA evidence has been left at the scene, so I’m currently trying to find a match for that. Can I please have a sample from you after we’ve spoken so that I can compare with that found at the scene?’ Temple withheld the fact that there was a mixed profile.
‘By all means, I’ll give you a sample, but I wasn’t even in the country at the time of Greta’s death.’
‘I’ll still need a sample. It will be a process of elimination. I understand that increased sexual activity can be a symptom of the medical condition your wife had – were you aware of this?’ Temple asked, watching for Maxwell’s reaction.
‘Yes, I am aware that can be that case,’ he replied.
‘To your knowledge, was Jonathan due to visit Greta the night she died?’
‘No.’
‘How can you be so certain?’
‘Jonathan told me that the relationship had run its course,’ replied Maxwell.
‘But he could have?’ asked Temple.
‘No, I don’t think so. The relationship was over.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Someone gained entry to your home and killed your wife,’ said Temple.
Maxwell nodded.
‘Had the house been burgled? Was there any sign of forced entry?’ asked Maxwell.
‘Apparently not. Your cleaner, Irene Cresswell, is clear that things were normal in the house when she turned up that day,’ Temple replied.
‘What are your thoughts, Inspector?’
‘That Greta knew her killer. That it was someone she trusted, someone she let into the house. It is, of course, entirely possible that death occurred following an initial consensual act which went wrong. As you see, I need to continue this line of the investigation.’
‘Of course, I see.’
‘Your son, sir, will he be joining you at some point? We will need to speak to him,’ said Temple.
‘James? OK. Jonathan is looking after him at the moment. Why would you want to speak to James?’
‘He was due to stay at home that weekend, I understand, but went to a friend’s instead. In any case, again, as I’ve explained, we need to build up a picture of Greta’s relationship with him and she was his stepmother.’
‘Of course. Of course. We shall both be staying with Jonathan, so by all means, make contact.’
‘That’s all I want for now, I’m conscious of the long journey you’ve had, but if I could direct you downstairs to take the DNA sample, I’d be grateful. The FLO will take you to where you want to go.’
Temple had never seen someone so intent on holding their composure as Maxwell had. Perhaps he was already making space in his bank account for the insurance payout. There was no display of anger, rage or tears of despair; no plea to find her killer. Temple was convinced the answer to this was close to home.
The DNA sample acquired, Temple instructed that it be fast-tracked to the Forensic Lab.
CHAPTER 19
SLOPER PULLED UP into a builder’s yard at Ramsbury. His arrival was noted by a man talking to two others on the far left side who were loading a flatbed van. As Sloper parked, the man approached him.
‘Michael Cooper?’ Sloper asked.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Simon Sloper, I’m conducting an investigation into the death of Greta Ashton-Jones and I wonder if you could help me with my inquiries?’
Michael Cooper looked around him.
‘Why don’t you speak a bit louder, I’m sure the blokes over there didn’t hear you,’ he said sarcastically, referring to the two men he had been speaking to, who had stopped what they were doing and were now interested in what was taking place.
‘Well, it was either come here or go to your home address. Now, which would you have preferred?’ said Sloper, not lowering his voice.
‘All right, all right. Come in the office.’ He’d been expecting a visit since hearing of Greta’s death.
The office was a beaten up portakabin, with two desks and filing cabinets. As Michael Cooper extinguished music blaring out of a radio, Sloper looked around. Heavily stained tea cups sat on a tray on one of the desks, along with a white hard hat.
‘I’m not sure we can talk here,’ ventured Sloper, ‘won’t the men be in and out?’
‘I’ll shut the door. They won’t come in,’ said Cooper, not wishing to give the men outside the spectacle of seeing him leaving with a police officer.
Michael Cooper was a big, muscular man. Dressed in denim jeans and a short-sleeved torn t-shirt, his broad shoulders, biceps and pectoral muscles bulged through the cloth. Why did builders seem to wear clothes that were too small, mused Sloper. He could see why Greta would have been attracted to the man, especially stripped to the waist on hot days. He had a mass of untidy blond hair, bleached by the sun and a deep, outdoor suntan.
‘Did you know Greta Ashton-Jones, Michael?’ asked Sloper, perching his weight on the corner of a metal desk.
‘Yeah, we did some work on their house, so of course I did. From May last year till the end of January.’ Michael Cooper leant his back against a steel filing cabinet and faced Sloper, arms crossed.
‘How would you describe your relationship with her?’ asked Sloper, as he cast his eye around the portakabin.
‘Oh look, shall we stop wasting each other’s time? I know what you’re getting at. They’ve been talking down at The Phoenix. Look mate, they’ve put two and two together and come up with six.’ As he spoke, he walked across to an adjacent desk, clearly uncomfortable in the confined space.
‘Michael, I don’t know who “they” are. We haven’t got our information from The Phoenix but thanks, I shall be going there next. Now, you and Greta, what went on?’
‘Look, mate, I just did a job, a good job and they was happy with it.’
‘Were you and Greta shagging – because a little bird tells me you were?’ asked Sloper.
‘Hey, hang on a minute. Are you supposed to talk to me like that?’ said Cooper, rising to Sloper’s bait.
‘Well, I can piss about going round the houses if you want and we can do this down the station. I just thought, you being a busy man, that you might thank me for getting straight to the point.’
Cooper acquiesced. ‘Yeah, all right, all right. Look, I fancied her, she fancied me, her old man wasn’t about much, she was lonely …’
‘What were you, Michael? Were you lonely? Oh no, you�
�ve got a wife and kids, I understand …’
‘All right, steady on. Look, we fell for each other, you know. And I admit, for a second I did think about leaving the missus, but after the job finished, having to sneak round to her place, it all got a bit much. It just ended.’
‘Is that what you do, Michael? Is that your MO, your modus operandi, wherever you go, you shag the missus of the bloke that’s paying you?’ Sloper was goading him, pushing Cooper to lose his cool.
‘No, it isn’t. She, she was lovely, never met anyone like her. It was like, she knew what made men tick, well, me anyway. She was good company, not like a lot of women who keep on for things. She’d tell me about the places she’d been to, the things she’d seen. We’d talk about travelling together, where she’d take me – she seemed to know all the best places and she’d describe them to me.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Sloper sarcastically.
‘It was to me, yeah,’ said Cooper.
‘You sound like you’ve never been out.’
‘We go on beach holidays, to Menorca with the kids, but that’s pretty much all we do.’
‘Very nice. So when did this relationship end?’
‘About four months ago.’
‘You’re sure of that, are you?’ asked Sloper.
‘Yes, not long after the job finished.’
‘How come it ended then?’ Sloper asked. ‘Did the wife find out?’
‘No. She never suspected. I got spooked,’ Cooper said, looking down momentarily.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said. Not long after the job there finished, one night, I said to the missus that I was going down The Phoenix. I was also going to see Greta. I would go in the pub. I’d have a pint and then leave and walk round to Greta’s. I wouldn’t go by the road, I’d go by the field at the rear of her house, there’s a footpath – if you’re local, you know it’s there. This night, there was a man sitting in a van up the footpath, like he was hiding, sitting in his van, reading a paper.’
‘Did you see what he looked like, get a registration number at all?’
‘No, it was dark. I just didn’t like the feel of it so I didn’t go to see her and I rang her mobile, told her he was out there. This is an out of the way footpath, with a bloke sat in a van, not a local, pretending to read a newspaper in the dark, in the cold – it was all wrong. And there I am, sneaking around going into someone’s house. I thought he might be waiting for me.’
‘Big bloke like you, you could have anyone,’ Sloper observed.
‘I didn’t know who or what he had in his van, did I? And my wife and kids are a couple of streets away. Anyway, as I said, I just got a bad vibe. Suppose I got a wake-up call. Stopped seeing her, ended it.’
‘How did Greta take it?’
‘She was upset. I was upset – but it was like, that night, well, I saw it for what it was.’ Cooper shrugged.
‘So how long would you say you saw each other?’
‘Probably the best part of nine, months, I suppose. All the time I had the job and a few weeks after.’
‘What – and she let it go just like that?’
‘After a few calls to my mobile and she turned up here once, but I told her it was best for both of us. There was no animosity, she wasn’t threatening me, threatening to tell the missus or anything. She just backed off.’
‘Did you know she was on anti-depressants?’
‘Yeah, so what? Mate, most the women at the school gate are on anti-depressants, my missus takes them now and then,’ replied Cooper. ‘Look, I wasn’t horrible to her, I didn’t have to be, didn’t want to be. As I say, after a few phone calls and coming here on one occasion, she didn’t bother me again.’
‘And you say your missus didn’t know?’
‘No.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I am. She’d soon let me know if she thought anything was going on,’ replied Cooper.
‘Did you not recognize or remember anything about the guy in the van?’
‘No, only that it was a dark blue transit. I didn’t know if he had a van load of blokes in it or hammers or whatever. And he definitely didn’t want me to see who he was because he was just looking into his paper, using it to cover his face. Sitting there in the bloody dark.’
‘If you’re telling me a load of old shit, I’ll come back for you, you know that, don’t you?’ said Sloper. ‘While I’m here, I’ll have a DNA test off you.’ Sloper went back to his car and returned with a buccal swab kit.
‘You’re barking up the wrong tree here, mate,’ said Cooper as Sloper bagged up the sample. ‘You want to get on and find out who did it, so don’t waste your time on me. She didn’t deserve that.’
Sloper left. His next call was at The Phoenix, one of the local pubs. Situated in the centre of the village, its modern interior provided nooks and crannies in which to either sit in sofas, or at tables around a central bar area. Planting his bulk on a bar stool, Sloper leant on the bar and looked at the menu which contained offerings such as sea bass and puddings sprinkled with bee pollen. Pretentious shit, he thought. He held an outstretched hand containing a five pound note to get the barman’s attention. Lunchtime trade was brisk.
‘And what would you like, sir?’ a barman enquired.
‘Half a 6X, please,’ Sloper replied.
‘What are you,’ said the barman as he poured the drink, ‘a hack?’
‘No mate, police. Had the hacks in, have you?’ asked Sloper.
‘Yeah, yesterday. It’s all anyone here can talk about. We’re not normally this busy at lunch times but the murder seems to have brought in a load of rubber necks.’
‘Come in here, did she, Greta?’
The barman gave him a look.
‘Yeah, her and Maxwell were good customers.’
‘How did you find them, then?’ ventured Sloper, glad to have stumbled upon an unexpected source of information.
‘Easy going. They spent loads, they’d come in regularly when they were about together. The three of them would come in for an evening meal on a Friday – Maxwell, Greta and young James. Just Greta and James when there was no Maxwell. You could tell she loved the kid, even though he wasn’t hers, more near his age group, I suppose. Loved their champagne they did. We started serving it by the glass because of them.’
‘When was the last time they were in?’ Sloper asked.
‘Friday last week.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yep, Greta and James, the boy. Sat over there.’ The barman pointed to a table in the bay window. ‘He had lasagne and she had a Caesar salad. They came in most Friday evenings.’
‘What time was this?’
‘’Bout 7 p.m. They left after about an hour or so.’
‘They seem all right?’
‘Yeah, perfectly all right.’
‘And Greta, what was she like in general?’ Sloper asked, looking out over the top of his glass, taking a long sip of beer.
‘She was all right, nice bit of stuff mind, not that she’d look at the likes of me, but she was nice enough, not snotty either, considering they must have loads of money. They drove around here in their flash cars but she was pretty down to earth. Liked the men. Liked the attention. Not too popular with the women, though, the wives.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, bit of class, wasn’t she? You could see that. She could wear a bin bag and still look like she’d come off a catwalk. Not that she ever wore a bin bag – expensive stuff, it always struck me.’
‘Seen a lot of catwalks, have you?’ asked Sloper sarcastically.
‘No, mate, I haven’t,’ replied the barman, rising to Sloper’s sarcasm, ‘but you know what I mean. Anyway, when are you going to get anyone for it? Got suspects, have you?’
‘Working on it, mate, working on it. Let us know if there’s anything you can help with,’ said Sloper.
‘Yeah, I will.’
Sloper turned and surveyed the cu
stomers, making short work of his drink. He wondered what they would read in the local paper.
Graham Mellor had been looking into Curtis Coleman Ltd., and rang Temple with an update.
‘We’ve done the usual checks, Companies House and all that. As I said, they’re a security firm with an office based in London, in South Kensington, one in Melbourne and another in Kuwait. Their CEO is a guy called Adrian Coleman. He’s ex-military, the website quotes that he retired as a Major in the Grenadier Guards.’
‘Who’s the Curtis in the partnership?’
‘Well, that’s what’s interesting. Charlie Curtis is a pilot, ex-BA. Curtis Coleman also provides a private plane chartering facility, offering a world-wide service. Perhaps Maxwell Ashton-Jones was moonlighting on the quiet.’
CHAPTER 20
TEMPLE MADE AN early afternoon appointment to see James Ashton-Jones and travelled just outside Newbury to where he and Maxwell were staying with Jonathan Silvester. It was a large, new executive-type house, one of four in an exclusive culde-sac. Temple was greeted at the door by a woman in her mid-forties, dark hair piled up with a clip, clad in white jeans and teetering on red heels.
‘Hello, Inspector, I am Rachel Hurst, Jonathan’s girlfriend.’
‘Hello, Rachel, how’s everyone doing?’
‘Oh, you know, bearing up. James is taking things very hard. He and Greta were close.’
‘Did you know Greta?’ Temple asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I will need to speak to you as well, while I’m here, if you don’t mind.’
Rachel took Temple through the house to the garden. They walked through a large open plan kitchen/living space, where they stepped out onto a large paved area that framed a rectangular shaped pool. The late May sun was high in the sky and with no clouds to act as a filter, the sun had an intense heat. Temple saw Maxwell, James and Jonathan stood around the far corner of the pool, their heads together, talking quietly amongst themselves. You had to hand it to them, thought Temple – another pool – a seemingly innocent mechanism by which to look at practically naked women. He was curious to meet Jonathan Silvester; Kelly had told him about her meeting. What was it she had said – she’d never met a more arrogant bastard and believed Caroline Black’s version of events.