by Celina Grace
Chapter Five
Olbeck was in his office when Kate arrived back in the incident room. He caught sight of her and waved, and she headed over, chucking her jacket over the back of her chair as she passed her desk.
“Got a minute?” she asked.
“I was about to ask you the same question. We’re to head on out to Simon Farraday’s workplace, see whether his colleagues knew anything that was going on.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. Why, have you got something else to do?”
“No, it’s just—” Kate stopped, not quite knowing what she was going to say. It would have been nice to have been able to sit down for five minutes, grab a hot drink and check her emails.
“Well, let’s get going, then.”
Rolling her eyes, Kate went to retrieve her jacket again. She passed Rav, hunched over his keyboard and pounding away at the keys, and remembered her question. “Did you get Mia Farraday’s alibi confirmed with the councillor, Rav?”
Rav looked up, distracted. “What? Oh yes, it all checks out. Dorothy Smelton said Mia left about eleven o’clock, normal time for her to leave when she went round, apparently. She seemed quite normal.”
“Who? Mia or Dorothy Smelton?”
“Mia, of course.” Rav went back to his keyboard bashing. “Dorothy Smelton’s dead posh. Posh people are never normal.”
Kate couldn’t help laughing. She said goodbye, reminding Rav not to hunch over for the sake of his posture, and then hurried for the exit, where Olbeck was just disappearing from sight.
Once in the car, she updated Olbeck on Rav’s news.
“Well, that’s something,” he said. “Although that would have been nice and neat, wouldn’t it? We could have had it all wrapped up by now.”
“Things are never that nice and neat.” Kate was pushing at the buttons of the radio, trying to find a decent radio station.
“There’s CDs in the glovebox.”
“No thanks,” Kate said with a wink. “Not with your musical tastes.”
Olbeck snorted but said nothing. The sky was beginning to cloud over, and Kate relaxed back into the passenger seat, glad of the powerful car heater. She remembered her dinner appointment with the Stantons and asked Olbeck if he’d like to come.
“When? Tomorrow? Oh, sorry, Kate. That’s the one night I absolutely cannot do. Jeff and I have got another adoption information session that evening.”
Thoughts of the Stantons forgotten, Kate sat up. “Oh. Great. So you’re definitely going to go for it, then?”
Olbeck looked both happy and scared. “Yes, I think we actually are. Bloody nerve-wracking.”
“You’ll be fine.” Kate lapsed into silence for a moment, thinking about what he’d said. She never spoke anymore about her own experience of adoption, and she’d had enough therapy by now for it not to be quite such a painful memory as it had been but...there was always a ‘but’.
She sensed, rather than saw Olbeck glance over at her. He cleared his throat and she tensed. “Do you ever – do you ever—“
“No,” Kate said, cutting him off.
“How did you know what I was going to ask?”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Call it women’s intuition.”
Olbeck huffed and they drove on in silence for a while. Then he said, “So, what was I going to ask?”
“Look, can we just leave it?”
Olbeck looked over at her again, half smiling, half frowning. “Kate...” Kate raised her eyebrows and he half laughed and said “Okay, okay, we’ll leave it.”
They drove on, out of Abbeyford and into the countryside, heading for Wallingham, where Simon Farraday’s consultancy firm was located. Despite the gloom of the grey clouds gathering above them, the rolling hills and fields looked fresh-minted, in part due to the bright green of the new leaves unfurling on the trees and bushes that lined each side of the road.
“No, I don’t think about contacting him,” Kate said, so softly she wasn’t even sure Olbeck had heard her. He gave no sign that she had spoken, concentrating on the road. “No, I don’t think about that at all.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Doesn’t matter.” Kate stared out of the window, blinking a little.
Wallingham was a bigger town than Abbeyford, missing out on the title of city only by virtue of the fact that it had no cathedral. Simon Farraday’s firm was located right in the middle, in the central business district that abutted the main shopping thoroughfare. Parking, unsurprisingly, was at a premium. Luckily, the Porthos Consultancy Group had its own small car park, and as Olbeck drove in, Kate pointed out that the space marked ‘Managing Director’ was empty.
Olbeck half laughed. “Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?”
“So park there,” said Kate. “He’s not going to care, is he?”
Olbeck gave her a look but rolled the car into the late Simon Farraday’s parking space. Kate half expected a scandalised receptionist to come running out from the glass and steel framed entrance hall but she was disappointed. Getting out of the car, she realised the whole building had a strangely empty look about it. The blinds were pulled down at every window, and she could see no sign of anyone behind the reception desk.
“They are actually open, aren’t they?” she asked, uncertainty edging her tone.
Olbeck looked a little uneasy. “Yes, they are. I phoned earlier.”
They advanced towards the front entrance to the building and then Kate saw a black-suited woman pop up into sight behind the reception desk, rather like a sombre jack-in-the-box.
As they introduced themselves, and handed over their warrant cards for inspection, Kate looked at the woman – girl, rather, she only looked about twenty – for signs of grief. But there was nothing there, no red eyes, no expression of shock. Perhaps the black suit was standard wear for her, rather than an expression of mourning.
While they waited for the deputy managing director of the company, Kate took a short stroll around the reception area. It was standard issue for a high-end business: glossy magazines and freshly folded copies of The Financial Times on the square glass coffee table. Black leather sofas and armchairs. Two large ficus trees in pots, which could have been either high-quality fakes or very well looked after real plants. Safe, expensive, boring. Kate wondered briefly what it was like to work in an office like this. Clock in every day, spend the day sitting at your desk or in meetings, clock out at the end of the day. Do it again day after day, year after year. She repressed a shudder. No thanks. She’d take the bad coffee and the tatty carpet of the incident room any day, over this luxurious but soulless workplace.
A man arrived in the reception area and shook hands with Olbeck. He was much older than Simon Farraday, or looked older: white haired, somewhat stooped and wearing a pair of silver-framed spectacles. Kate went over and was introduced.
“Good morning, DS Redman,” said the man, shaking hands. It was more of a brief handclasp than a shake. “I’m Ewan Askell, the deputy managing director. Please, do come this way, we’ll go up to my office.”
His office turned out to be located on the top floor, four flights up, and next to a much larger, corner office with Simon Farraday’s name on the door. Kate and Olbeck exchanged glances.
“We’d like to have a look at Mr Farraday’s office once we’ve finished our chat,” Olbeck said to Ewan Askell, who looked a little startled and then nodded, rather nervously.
They seated themselves in Askell’s office and the usual pleasantries and words of condolence were exchanged.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what an awful shock it was to hear the news.” Ewan Askell sat in a shaft of sunlight, and the gleam of it turned the surfaces of his glasses opaque. Was that deliberate? Kate wondered. She made a mental note to ask Olbeck if Askell had an alibi and whether it checked out. They could discuss it on the way back to the station.
“I’m sure it must have been, Mr Askell.” Olbeck was long versed in this kind of interview. “
We’re hoping you might be able to tell us something of Simon Farraday, help us get a handle on the kind of man he was, whether you have any theories as to his death, that sort of thing.”
“Me?” Askell sounded surprised, if not aghast. “Theories?”
“Well, you worked with the man for some years, isn’t that correct?”
Askell nodded. “Yes, we’ve been working together almost since the inception of the company. I suppose I did know him quite well, but you know what it’s like – a working relationship isn’t quite the same as a friendship, is it?”
“So you wouldn’t say you were friends then? Despite working together for so long?”
Askell sounded awkward. “Well – I suppose – we weren’t close. Perhaps that’s what I’m trying to say.”
“I understand.” Olbeck looked down at his notes. Kate knew he was doing it to let the silence drag on a bit, to see if Askell was prompted to add anything more. He remained silent.
“So what can you tell us about Simon Farraday, Mr Askell?” Olbeck appeared to reconsider. “Let’s qualify that, it’s a bit vague. Would you say you had a good working relationship?”
“I – I suppose so.”
“You suppose so?”
“Well, I—” Askell shifted a little in his chair. Kate watched him with slightly narrowed eyes. The man was nervous. More nervous than a visit from the police would warrant? She wondered a little about Ewan Askell. “It’s not that – it’s just that Simon was – well, he had a very strong personality, shall we say. He didn’t suffer fools gladly—” Askell appeared to realise how that sounded, in relation to himself, and shifted again in his seat. “We quite often disagreed on the best way forward, but we always worked it out. We could respect each other’s point of view.”
“I see.”
“He was very driven. Work was almost everything to him. It wasn’t so much the money; it was almost as if he constantly had to prove himself. I don’t know why that was, I never asked him.”
“You didn’t have that kind of relationship?”
Askell blinked. “No. Like I said, we weren’t close. We had a strong and respectful working relationship but we weren’t – weren’t emotionally close, I suppose you’d say.”
Kate broke in, knowing that Olbeck wouldn’t mind. “Would you say he was emotionally close to anyone else? Anyone who works here, perhaps?”
Askell looked uncomfortable. “Well, I – I’m not sure.”
Kate glanced at Olbeck. “Would you say Simon Farraday was happily married?”
Askell did more than blink at that question. He reared his head back, as if Kate had shouted in his face. “Oh, my word, miss – I’m sorry, Sergeant – I – I suppose so. They seemed happy enough to me.”
Kate wasn’t sure whether he was being deliberately vague or whether he was just the kind of man made extremely uncomfortable at the thought of having to talk about emotions. She suspected the latter, given his earlier answers. “Do you know his wife, Mia Farraday, well?”
Askell seemed to have recovered his composure a little. “Mia? No, not very well. I like her, she seems like a nice woman. A good mother, always there for her children. Very devoted. Of course, Simon had very long working hours, so it was good that at least one of their parents was on hand.”
Kate nodded and scribbled a meaningless doodle on her pad, away from Ewan Askell’s eyes. She saw him look nervously at her pen. “So, you didn’t know her well? Did she come here to the office very often?”
“No, not very often. Not much more than every few months, I suppose. She didn’t really have a lot to do with the business, although, of course, she is a minority shareholder.”
That was something they would have to take a look at, thought Kate – Simon Farraday’s business. In fact, they’d have to take an in depth look at a lot of things – the board of directors, the clients, the financials. She stifled a yawn at the thought. Business really didn’t interest her in the slightest.
Olbeck asked Askell about the last time he had seen Simon Farraday, the day before his murder. As Kate scribbled down her notes, she listened with half an ear. Farraday had apparently been quite normal - ‘chipper’ was Ewan Askell’s word - and had mentioned he was planning to play a round of golf at the local course at the weekend. Askell said that he himself had hoped to get in a round or two if the weather had held.
“Do you play together?” asked Kate.
Askell looked a touch embarrassed. “No, no, not as such. But we do tend to run into each other at the club, because we’re both members.”
Kate got the particulars of the golf club. She recognised the name – it was the most expensive and exclusive of the local courses. That figures. Something else to check out and, with an inner sigh, she added it to her list.
“So, what did you think of Mr Askell?” Olbeck asked as they drove away forty minutes later. They had quickly checked Farraday’s office, and found nothing of suspicion or interest, and had a quick interview with his personal assistant, Claire Young, a twenty-something blonde with the slight tinge of an Australian accent. She’d been the only other person to have shown visible signs of grief for Simon Farraday, apart from his wife. At one point in the interview she’d broken down in tears. Kate and Olbeck had ascertained her movements on the night of the murder – Claire had been out with a large group of her girlfriends – and taken her contact details.
“Askell? Not sure.” Kate read through her list of notes once more, in short snatches, as reading too much in a moving car made her feel sick. “Not sure. Really not sure, actually. He seems – evasive. Or at least uncomfortable with answering questions about – well, anything to do with Simon Farraday.”
“Yes, I know what you mean.” Olbeck glanced at the sat nav screen, checking the route back to Abbeyford. “There’s something, isn’t there... Do you get the impression that he and Farraday weren’t exactly on great terms?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“Hmm.” Olbeck pursed his lips. “Well, he’s staying on the suspect list for now, at least. Although we don’t have a shred of evidence and he’s got an alibi—”
“Oh, he has, has he? I was going to ask about that.”
“Oh yes. He was at some local history society meeting that night and gave one of his fellow historians a lift home and didn’t get back to his own place until well after midnight. So, it’s unlikely he was involved, but...”
Kate knew what he meant. “Yes, I know. Remember Jack Dorsey and Alexander Hargreaves? That whole set up there reminded me a bit of that.”
“Yes, I agree. Now—” Olbeck glanced over at her. “What do you think about calling into Farraday’s golf club? It’s on the way home, and we could see if anyone can tell us anything useful?”
“Concurred, Captain.”
Olbeck said nothing but he grinned as he accelerated away down the road.
Chapter Six
It was raining heavily by the time Kate and Olbeck got back to the office in the late afternoon. Kate shrugged off her wet coat and hung it over the radiator, which some enterprising soul had turned on and up to full heat. She collapsed in her chair, feeling as if she’d been gone for four days, rather than a matter of hours, especially when she opened her mail box and groaned at the long line of unanswered emails. She and Olbeck had grabbed a quick sandwich on the way back from the golf course but that seemed an inadequate lunch. She’d stock up on some vending machine crisps, and when she got home, she’d order the biggest pizza it was possible to buy. And extra garlic bread.
“Bird. Where’ve you been all day?”
Kate looked up at Chloe, who was standing by her desk and munching on a chocolate bar. Her stomach growled. “Out interviewing Simon Farraday’s work mates and golfing buddies.”
“Get anything?”
“A few possibilities. Nothing earth-shattering, though.”
“Oh well. Theo’s found something interesting on the CCTV from the square.”
Tiredness and hunger were forgo
tten for a moment. Kate sat up a little. “Oh, yes?”
“Yes. Come and see.” Chloe obviously caught sight of Kate staring hungrily at the remainder of her chocolate. “Want a bit?”
“Yes, please.”
They gathered around Theo’s desk while he found the appropriate file on his computer, dropping crumbs of chocolate on his keyboard as they finished their snack.
“Oy, women. Stop.” Theo turned his keyboard upside down and shook it. A quantity of fluff, crumbs and other assorted detritus fell out.
“Ugh,” said Chloe. “You know that there are more germs on a keyboard than there are on the average toilet?”
“There are with you two around.” Brushing the fluff and dust onto the floor, Theo turned back to his computer. “Now, look here.” His slim, brown finger traced the flickering progress of a dark figure on the footage playing on his computer screen.