by Mel Sherratt
As she pulled up at traffic lights, she thought back to Esther’s irrational behavior the week before. She wondered if Jack had upset her at the book launch party. Esther had been a bit strange since then. Had she been seeing him before that and it had made her feel awkward?
The gates were open when she arrived at Jack’s house. Tamara drove into the drive and parked up next to his Audi. Before she had killed the engine, Esther came rushing out of the house.
She burst into tears as Tamara got out of the car. ‘It’s worse than I thought,’ she cried. ‘He’s collapsed and I can’t get him to wake up.’
Tamara rushed after her as she went back into the house. ‘But you’ve called for an ambulance now?’
‘No! I told you, I can’t.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because I’m not supposed to be here.’
‘But if Jack is injured, then the consequences of your actions don’t really come into the equation. Are you—’
The front door was open. Tamara caught her breath when she saw Jack lying at the bottom of the stairs. Then she ran inside, dropping to her knees. She touched her hand to his forehead, felt how cold he was, saw the blood at the back of his head. There was a gash at the side of his head too, the blood congealed slightly.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Esther said.
‘I – I don’t know.’ Tamara took out her phone and dialed for the emergency services.
Esther dropped down beside her. ‘Please don’t call anyone yet.’
‘I have to! You said he was concussed. He does look like he’s – he looks … Ambulance, please.’
Esther sat quiet while Tamara gave details to the operator. She pressed a hand to Jack’s face, talking to him, telling him everything would be all right.
Tamara needed to know what had happened.
‘I was out in the garden,’ Esther told her. ‘We’d been there for a couple of hours, had a bite to eat and got through a fair bit of wine. Jack had come indoors to use the bathroom.’
‘But there’s a cloakroom downstairs.’ Tamara pointed to it, having used it when she was at the launch party.
Esther nodded. ‘He must have popped upstairs for something. I don’t really know. I was sunbathing and it was about ten minutes before I wondered where he was. I came in from the garden, and when he wasn’t in the kitchen, I went into the hallway and I – I found him there.’
‘Was he conscious?’
Esther shook her head.
‘You told me he was concussed!’
‘I panicked, okay! Oh, Tamara, I don’t want his family to find out I was seeing him. It would ruin everything they had together. I don’t want to be that woman.’
‘But that’s not going to wash with the police when they get here.’
‘The police?’
‘It’s a sudden death. They’re bound to be called.’
Sirens sounded in the distance. Tamara stood up, and walked towards the door. But Esther pulled her back.
‘You could say you were here too.’
Tamara’s eyes widened in disbelief as Esther continued.
‘If we were both here, it would look like we were having a meeting and we could say he fell down the stairs while we were out in the garden.’
‘You said he did fall down the stairs.’
‘He did! I mean that it will stop anyone from finding out we were – we were having an affair. Can you imagine what this will do to his family? Whereas if you were here too, it would be a legitimate thing to be happening.’
‘On a Saturday?’ Tamara wasn’t convinced.
‘Yes! You could say that you were thinking of this new idea for the campaign and that you were so excited about it that you rang Jack and he said to come over and—’
‘You want me to say that you weren’t here at all?’ Tamara sensed the panic building up in Esther now. But that was a ridiculous notion.
‘No, if we were both here it would seem less … intimate.’ Esther’s shoulders dropped. ‘I know what we did was wrong, but I – I love him.’
‘You barely know each other!’
‘It just happened! But no one need ever know about it, if you say you were here too. You could say you were working later than planned. You got here about two, we were in the garden. Jack went inside and we came in and found him there.’
Tamara shook her head. ‘I can’t lie to the police.’
‘Please!’ Esther pleaded, tears pouring down her face.
There was movement behind them as two paramedics came rushing in.
‘What happened?’ said one of them as he dropped to Jack’s side.
‘We were having lunch in the garden and Jack nipped inside,’ Esther said. ‘When he didn’t come back, we came in and found him there, didn’t we, Tamara?’
The paramedics were too busy attending to Jack to notice that Esther was nodding her head vehemently behind them. Her eyes were pleading.
Tamara paused for a moment. She’d always thought that Jack had been a family man. It had shocked her to learn something was going on between him and Esther. But that was none of her business.
She didn’t want to be the one who broke a family’s hopes and dreams if Jack was dead.
‘Yes,’ she decided. ‘Yes, that’s right. We found him here.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Carley had been the first officer on scene at Jack Maitland’s house. She spotted Max as he parked the pool car in a tiny space next to hers and walked towards him, meeting him at the gates.
Every sudden death was treated as if it were a crime scene. When she’d questioned Max about this, he’d told her she would want the best if it were a member of her own family who had died. The words had never left her.
‘We got a call at quarter past two, sir,’ she told him as he donned the appropriate protective gear of suit, shoe covers and gloves. ‘Thirty-seven-year-old Jack Maitland. Fallen down the stairs and cracked his head on marble tiles. He died in the hallway. Terry says on close inspection he’s taken a bump to the temple too. It could have been as a result of the fall but we’ll have to wait for the forensics.
‘I’ve managed to contact his wife. There was an address book in the kitchen drawer with a list of emergency numbers in the front. There’s also a mobile phone in the kitchen but it’s locked. Mrs Maitland was away with their children for the weekend in Kent. She had gone to visit her parents and was due back tomorrow evening but is now on her way home. She’s heading over to her sister’s and is going to ring us when she arrives.’ Carley moved to one side to let a forensic officer pass them, taking the time to consult her notebook. ‘Maitland was with Tamara Parker-Brown and Esther Smedley at the time. They were working in the garden. You’ve seen the novel that everyone is talking about – Something’s Got to Give?’
‘Can’t really miss it,’ Max muttered. ‘It’s everywhere.’
‘Well, he’s the publisher of that and they’re the PR team. Parker-Brown owns the company and Smedley works for her.’ She looked around. ‘Makes a difference coming into such a palatial home. Our usual inhabitants live in far less glamourous places.’
The body was lying on its side at the bottom of the stairs, eyes wide and staring at nothing.
‘Looks like he took a heavy fall,’ Max said aloud.
‘He did.’ Terry, who was kneeling over the torso, stood up to his level.
‘Anything you can tell me?’
Terry pointed to the man’s temple where a bruise had already formed, blood congealed around a half-inch split to the skin. ‘I can’t be sure if that caused him to fall so heavily on the marble tiles at ground level. It’s possible he tripped at the top of the stairs, hit his head halfway down which rendered him unconscious. Either way, he took one hell of a bump at ground level to the side of his head. I’m guessing death was immediate.’
Carley looked around the hallway. The family photos on the wall showed their man with a woman and two identical schoolboys. She sighed inwardly. It was always t
he children she felt the most sorry for. Losing a parent at any age can be terrible but to be robbed of one when you might not yet be in double figures was a tragedy. She hoped they had shared many happy memories before today.
Carley moved into the kitchen, checking out everything on the worktops. The forensics team would take a couple of days to get it all to them, see if there were any anomalies. She pointed to three glasses, and two wine bottles on the worktop.
‘There’s one empty bottle and one half full.’
‘Where are the women?
‘Taken to the station. In separate cars.’
He frowned.
‘It was the way they were parroting off each other. Their stories were identical.’
‘They should be.’
‘I know, but something didn’t sit right with me.’
Carley knew that Max always enjoyed hearing about a hunch. He’d had many during his twenty-year career in the Met, most of them completely relevant.
Max opened the door of the large American fridge. He pulled out a small bottle, half full of soda water and then put it back. ‘There doesn’t seem anything out of place,’ he noticed.
As Carley continued to look around, Max completed his walk downstairs and around the garden. After a quick look upstairs, he came back to her.
‘There doesn’t seem anything untoward that I can see,’ Max said. ‘I’ll get uniform to do a better search while the house is empty. In the meantime, I’ll wait for Terry’s report to come through.’
‘You’ll be lucky to get anything back soon,’ Terry shouted through to them. ‘I’m flat out as it is with the attempted double murder.’
Carley sighed. One member of a gang had shot another the previous week and this had been the revenge for it. It always took a while for evidence to be processed. No matter what the crime, everything had its pecking order, and its budget allowance. They still had the unsolved murders of Jamie Kerrigan and Ewan Smith outstanding too.
‘Can you lead on collating all this as it comes in?’ Max said to her. ‘Cross reference it, and see if it needs to be escalated or if it’s as cut and dry as it seems to be?’
‘Will do.’
THE COFFEE SHOP
Today
Esther was surprised by Tamara’s hostility towards her. She had thought they were friends, but Tamara seemed more concerned about herself rather than how she was feeling. It wasn’t on. And she shouldn’t be questioning her. She needed to remember where her place was. Esther wasn’t after looking out for Tamara as well as herself.
‘Do you think it’s wise that we go to his memorial?’ Tamara asked.
‘We must,’ Esther replied. ‘Imagine how it would look if we didn’t.’
‘I don’t want to be questioned by the police again.’
Ah, she was only worried about being caught out lying. Esther reached across the table for Tamara’s hand. ‘It will be fine, as long as we stick together.’
Tamara snatched her hand away, almost knocking over her cup. She put it straight again before glaring back.
‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘You need me there to back you up and I can’t do that.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘I can’t!’ Tamara’s voice rose again. People turned to stare for a second before looking away. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ she continued. ‘Because looking back, it doesn’t seem feasible that you would get me to lie to cover up your affair. Are you involved in his death?’
Esther ignored the question. ‘He tripped, fell down the stairs, and hit his head twice.’
‘You said you didn’t see him?’
‘I’m going by what the police told me! Why are you questioning me so much?’
There was a pause before Tamara spoke again. ‘Because I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t have to believe me,’ Esther snapped. ‘You only have to keep quiet.’
‘About what?’
‘About what you think really happened.’
‘What did happen?’
Esther was getting tired of the game now. She studied Tamara, wondering how she was feeling inside. She was visibly shaken up but it was time to start playing with her emotions, her weak side, her vulnerability.
‘You wanted him dead, didn’t you?’ she said.
Tamara’s eyes widened in horror. ‘How can you say that?’ she hissed. ‘And what reasoning do you have for it?’
‘It was your idea to cover it up.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’ Tamara shook her head.
‘You’re the one who’s lying, so who will they believe?’
Tamara sat forward. ‘You think you have this all worked out, don’t you? Well, I don’t know what you did but I do know that the truth always comes out.’
Esther paused for a moment. ‘When you came to help, you didn’t stop to think about why I would have needed you there, did you?’
Tamara’s brow furrowed.
‘I wanted your fingerprints in the house as well as my own. It means that the police can place you there as much as me.’
‘But I came because you were upset!’ Tamara said. ‘You told me Jack was alive and concussed.’
‘He was.’
‘So, there is no problem then?’
‘Well, not if the police don’t see us on any cameras.’
‘You said they were off at Jack’s house.’
‘They were, but they could still pick us up from the roadside. There’s CCTV covering Holland Park.’
‘That isn’t relevant.’ Tamara shook her head in dismay. ‘What’s going on, Esther? One minute you say that Jack fell down the stairs and the next you’re trying to blame me – for what? If it was an accident, then you have nothing to worry about and you should have come clean straight away.’
‘So should you.’
###
‘He was dead when I got there …’
‘Was he?’
Tamara’s eyes widened again. ‘You know he was.’
‘Not if I wasn’t there.’ Esther shook her head, a sly smile emerging. ‘I don’t appear to be the kind of woman he would have an affair with.’ She raised her eyebrows suggestively.
‘What?’
‘Oh, come on. You were sleeping with him, weren’t you?’
‘No, I was not!’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Of course, I’m sure! Why are you twisting everything?’
‘I’m only looking at things from both points of view – you know, if I was Detective Carley.’
Tamara couldn’t take everything in. Did Esther know that the police could be on to her, and was she trying to get out of it? She shook her head.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
Esther sighed dramatically. ‘Why do you keep saying that when all I’m trying to do is cover your back? If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place.’
It was no use. Esther was letting Tamara know what would happen if she did go to the police. She would say that it was her having an affair with Jack. And once the police had gathered their evidence, plus the things Esther was lying about for her own benefit, Tamara knew she could be in terrible trouble. It could be her word against Esther’s.
She wasn’t certain she would win but she needed to play the game. She had to get Esther to think she was in agreement with anything she was going to do or say. Then she could think about when would be the right time to come clean.
‘What do you really want?’
‘Money.’
Tamara gasped and drew back her head.
‘You’ve always thought you were superior to me because you were born into it. But that’s worked out fine now. You have lots of it. You won’t miss a few grand.’
‘I’m broke!’
‘But you have Mummy and Daddy to help you.’
‘I haven’t had help from them either. I’ve been trying to keep afloat for months by myself.’
‘Why?’
/> ‘Because I wanted to do this on my own.’
‘Well, you’ll have to ask them for a loan.’ Esther folded her arms and glared at her. ‘Because if you don’t then I’m going to the police and I will say that you killed Jack.’
‘The evidence won’t stack up.’
‘Want to chance it? You’ve already lied to the police.’
‘Because you lied to them first!’
‘Well, I think they’ll have to work out which one of us did it, won’t they?’
Tamara paled again as she tried not to be intimidated by Esther’s glare, but she failed miserably. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, swallowing down her anxiety.
Esther folded her arms. ‘Who will they believe, Tamara? Me, or you with your track record?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Saturday, 15 July
The last time Esther had been in a police station, she’d been held inside a cell until it was time for her to appear in court. Even then, she had gone straight on remand until she’d been charged. Now, she was shown into a small room with a beige two-seater settee, armchair, and a pine coffee table. She’d been there for half an hour and wondered if they were talking to Tamara or still at Jack’s house.
She sat at the edge of the settee, her hands in her lap, all the while her eyes scanning the room. She knew there might be people watching her so she was keeping up the pretence of being upset. Then she relaxed. There were no cameras, only a panic button. And as far as she knew, she was only being interviewed. Neither her nor Tamara were under arrest. If she kept her cool, she could be out of there in no time.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she wasn’t upset about what she had done. She hadn’t meant to kill Jack, but she had got so angry at the situation. Jack had not been willing to sleep with her because of being loyal to his wife, even after all the hard work she’d put in flirting and keeping up the pretence that she had been attracted to him. It had put paid to her plans.
She had been so surprised when Tamara had lied for her. Esther didn’t think she’d be the sort to fabricate a story, especially where the police were concerned. She hoped she wouldn’t crumble under pressure when they spoke to her.