by Elena Forbes
Zofia was staring at him disapprovingly. ‘What does she want?’ she asked.
‘To help, I guess. At least that’s what Alan Peters said.’
She spread her hands. ‘But why?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. He’s paying her, not us.’ She was still staring at him. ‘What’s your problem? We need all the help we can get.’
‘What do you think of her?’ Her tone was matter-of-fact as usual, but the remark was loaded, accompanied by a sideways glance, as she crossed the room to her desk.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s very pretty, isn’t she?’ She peeled off her coat, swung it over the back of her chair and sat down.
He was aware of her eyes again upon him, searching and critical. Even without her, the voice in his head was saying the same unspoken things: You’re a fool if you think Kristen will take you back. You’ve blown it for the last time. She’s gone for good. Wake up. Get real. Pull yourself together. Sean Farrell deserves better than you can give. Yes, Eve’s more than pretty. Almost as beautiful as Kristen. But it wasn’t the sort of beauty that brought peace or happiness or pleasure, in his experience.
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ he lied.
‘Really?’
‘Actually, I don’t think she’s very pretty, so shut up about it. It’s irrelevant anyway what she looks like.’ Did Zofia really think that he would allow a woman’s looks to cloud his judgement? Anyway, the last thing on his mind was sex.
‘If you say so.’ Zofia turned back to her screen.
‘Have you managed to track down Mickey?’ he asked sharply.
‘No. He’s not answering his phone. I leave messages for the last three days but no reply.’
‘Shit.’ He banged his fist on the desk.
Zofia looked around. ‘If he wants his pay, he will have to come in sometime.’ When he didn’t answer, she leaned forwards, eyes narrowed, and peered at him. ‘Dan? When you last see him?’
‘Last week. I bumped into him outside the Tube. He was on his way over here but I was running late and couldn’t stop.’
‘You give him money?’
He left the question unanswered for a moment, then closed his eyes and nodded wearily.
‘Dan, how could you? I tell you not to trust him. Kristen never gives him money unless job is done. You know this.’
He let her words wash over him, then opened his eyes and blinked several times. They felt sore and dry. ‘Yes, but we owed him some. And, as you damn well know, Kristen’s not here any longer.’
‘No we don’t owe him. We are up to date. I keep record.’
‘Well, he said we did, plus he needed some float for travel and expenses, and you weren’t here. Anyway, when he’s good, he’s very, very good. He finds things out like nobody else. He’s a wizard.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘He’s a drunk wizard. He’s no good now, Dan. He smell of drink when I last see him. I tell you this many times. Why you give him money?’
He sighed. Like all real geniuses, Mickey was erratic and needed tight management.
‘He said his mother was in hospital.’ It sounded so lame. ‘He also said something about going to the races. To do with Jane McNeil.’
‘Jesus, Dan. Are you born yesterday? How much you give him?’
‘Five hundred.’
‘Jesus.’ She waved her plump hand in the air. ‘You totally crazy, Dan. In future, you let me deal with Mickey, please. I take care of him.’ She made a gesture of slitting her throat.
He closed his eyes again and sighed deeply, as much out of exhaustion as for the physical relief of expelling the stale air from his lungs. His head was still throbbing and he felt like shit. The last thing he wanted to do was trail around London looking for wherever Mickey had gone to ground, then try to extract the money from him. If he still had it, which was doubtful.
‘OK. OK. I agree it was a mistake.’
‘You need to find him, Dan. Now. We need this information now and maybe we get some money back. You want me to come too?’
NINE
‘I swear to you, I didn’t kill Jane,’ Sean Farrell said, for the third time, holding Eve’s gaze as though his life depended on it.
‘I believe you,’ she repeated, just to shut him up. She also wanted to placate him, so that he would talk to her openly, but underneath, she was far from convinced. In the back of her mind was what Dan had told her about the charges of rape, even if nothing had come of them. According to statistics, two women a week were killed in the UK by their partners, or former partners, one fifth of all homicides each year.
They were sitting opposite one another in the main visits hall at Bellevue Prison, just a table between them. The cacophony of noise and smells was distracting. She had no idea why they hadn’t been given a closed room, like her interview the previous day with John Duran. Maybe Farrell was considered less of a security risk. Or maybe Duran had the power to request such a thing. But the place was full, Farrell was quietly spoken and, against the background buzz of voices, she had to strain to hear what he was saying. He was at pains to emphasize his innocence but she could tell nothing from his words and body language. It had been over ten years since his arrest and his lines were too well rehearsed. It was impossible to know if he was speaking the truth. Even with newly arrested suspects, she had long since given up trying to intuit innocence or guilt from a face-to-face interview. Some people were great actors and liars, others were not. And some, totally innocent, appeared guilty as hell. It was difficult to read anything much from body language, or the look in someone’s eye, or the fact that their hands were sweating, or that they were crying. The evidence spoke louder and more reliably than any human could. The only thing she could say in Sean Farrell’s case was that the evidence was sorely lacking. Until she had a clearer, fuller picture, she was making no assumptions. But if he wasn’t guilty, who was?
She leaned forwards towards him, placing her hands flat on the table in front of her. ‘I’m sorry to make you go over all of this again, Sean, but we need to come up with something new. If you were trying to find Jane’s killer, where would you look?’
The fire died in his eyes. Maybe he had thought that just saying he was innocent would be enough, or maybe he realized he had failed to convince her.
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled.
‘Come on. We need to find something.’
He shrugged, as though it were all meaningless, and shook his head. ‘There’s nothing new.’
His voice was surprisingly deep with a light, West Country accent. Even though he was seated, she could tell he wasn’t particularly tall, with broad shoulders, short, muscular arms and strong, workmanlike hands, which he kept clasped tightly in front of him. The shell-shocked man in the police mugshot from ten years before was barely recognizable. His short hair was now thinning on top and almost entirely grey, his face and neck thickened, the strain of prison life and his various appeals showing clearly in his exhausted eyes and the deep lines of his face. He had one final chance to prove his innocence and it was probably all that was keeping him going.
‘So where would you be looking, if you were me? You must have some idea, after all these years. I imagine you’ve been thinking of nothing else.’ If you’re innocent, she wanted to say.
His face hardened as though he read her mind. ‘I told the police she was seeing someone else, but they wouldn’t believe me. That’s where I’d look.’ He started to drum his fingers impatiently on the table.
He was like a stuck record, the same version being trotted out over and over again. He had been dumped. He had done nothing wrong. It had happened without warning. Rather than admit the possibility that Jane had just had enough of him, he was still fixated with the idea that there must have been somebody else. Maybe he was right. She reminded herself that seminal fluid had been found on Jane’s thigh and that it wasn’t Farrell’s.
‘Forget what you’ve told everybody in the past. As I said,
I’m looking at this completely fresh. I know you were feeling very hurt by the way she treated you. You followed her around on a few occasions, didn’t you? She even made a complaint to the police.’
‘Doesn’t mean I killed her,’ he said belligerently.
‘Who did you see her with?’
‘Just Holly and Grace, mostly.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘A woman from the office. She was a bit older. I think her name was Annie, but I don’t think they were great mates.’
‘What about men?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘What about the man you saw her with in the bar in Marlborough, where you made a scene?’
‘Don’t remember his name, but the police checked him out. They told me he had an alibi.’
She made a mental note to speak to Dan Cooper again to make sure he had double-checked this. ‘OK. Tell me what Jane was like? Tell me everything you know about her.’
He frowned, as though not knowing where to start. ‘I dunno.’
‘What was so attractive about her?’ she prodded.
He gave her a blank look. ‘She was nice-looking.’
‘I meant her personality.’ He looked puzzled, as though it wasn’t what he had been expecting. Maybe in his book, looks were everything. ‘Was she lively, easy to talk to?’ she continued when he didn’t say anything.
‘She was quite quiet to start off with, a bit shy, but friendly when you got to know her. I used to see her at the yard a lot and we just got talking.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘The horses, I suppose. And racing. It’s hard to remember, now. So much has happened.’
‘What were her good points? Was she clever? Funny? Silly? Tidy?’ He had gone out with her for three months; there must be something useful buried in his unconscious. If nothing else, she needed to understand Jane McNeil better.
This brought a weak smile. ‘She was very tidy, I’ll give her that. Liked things just so and neat as a little pin, never a hair out of place. But she gave herself airs and graces, like she was something special. Lady Muck, I called her sometimes. Miss La-di-da. She liked her breakfast in bed. Liked me to bring it to her, like a bloody servant. And she was sharp. A lot sharper than me, at any rate. She knew what she was up to, if you know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t. Can you explain?’
He rubbed his chin for a moment. ‘She was full of ideas of what she wanted to do and she knew her own mind. She told me she had a plan. To be honest, I wasn’t sure where I fitted in.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, her parents had money, or so she said. She didn’t like being seen in my van, I can tell you. If I was taking her out, it had to be the car and it had to be clean before she’d get in it. She told me she wanted to be a journalist, and write about racing and stuff to do with horses. She said she wanted to be on TV. That’s why she was working in a racing yard, to get background experience.’
‘Anything else about her?’
He frowned again, as though he didn’t see the point of it.
‘Anything at all?’ Even the clearest memories faded with time and she didn’t want to push him and make him feel that he had to come up with something. But she wasn’t learning anything much from him.
‘She was real nosy,’ he said, after a moment.
‘In what way?’
‘You know, always asking questions.’
‘What sort of questions?’
‘She wanted to know about the other yards where I worked, for starters.’
‘Why would that be?’
He shrugged. ‘Search me. People used to tell her things.’
‘Her friends?’
‘The people she worked with, mostly. She used to tell me some of the stuff she’d heard around the office and I was gobsmacked. But that’s women for you, I guess.’
‘Can you remember anything in particular?’
‘It was right silly stuff, but she found it funny. You know, stupid gossip, like who’s shagging who, who had too much to drink, who’s got money problems. That sort of thing. She was quiet and kept her head down and people just talked in front of her. One of the girls in the office split up from her husband and Jane knew before anyone else. I told her more than once to keep her trap shut. Telling tales gets you into trouble. But she said she didn’t gossip, she just listened and she couldn’t help it if people said things they shouldn’t.’
‘Was she particularly friends with anyone?’
‘Not really. She didn’t like the girls she shared with.’
‘Why was that?’
‘She said they weren’t very nice. I’d say she preferred male company to women.’
Blackmail was as good a motive for murder as jealousy and she made another mental note to check with Dan Cooper if this aspect had been checked out. ‘Did the police ask you about any of this?’
A look of anger crossed his face and he folded his arms tightly across his chest. ‘They weren’t interested in what I thought of her character, or anything else much. Apart from my being jealous, and stalking her, and all that shit.’
‘Well, I am. You went out together, what, was it three months?’
‘More or less.’
‘It’s enough time to get to know someone. What did you think of her?’
Again a blank, taciturn look. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What was she like, as a woman, I mean? Was she nice? Was she kind? Was she a warm and friendly type? Or was she selfish, just thinking of herself?’
His face hardened. ‘You mean like most women?’
She sighed. ‘OK. So from a man’s point of view, was she a flirt? Was she a tease? Or was she the sort of girl to sleep around? Was that the message that came across?’
He stared at her sullenly. ‘She wasn’t a tart, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘Look, I’m sorry if you don’t like this, but it’s important.’ She decided she had to spell it out for him. ‘Traces of seminal fluid were found on her thigh. We know it didn’t come from you, so there had to be somebody else. Even though her body was in a pretty bad state when it was found the pathologist’s report said there were no signs of her having been raped, so we must assume the sex was consensual. What I’m really getting at is, was she choosy who she slept with, or was she an easy lay?’
He looked down at the floor for a moment, rocking back and forth slowly in his chair, then he met her gaze. ‘She wasn’t easy. Took me several weeks to get her to go out with me, and more than that to get her into bed. I had to get her drunk. Tell you the truth, I’d almost given up on her.’
She smiled, wanting to encourage him. ‘Thanks. That’s very helpful. So what did the two of you used to do together?’
‘We’d go to the gym, or to the Horse and Groom near where I live. Sometimes we’d go out for a meal, but during the week we mostly stayed in and watched TV. I used to have to cook for her, she couldn’t even boil an egg.’
‘Did she like going out?’
He nodded.
‘Did she like expensive things and presents, or did she save her money?’
‘All women like that stuff, far as I know, and she weren’t no different. I took her to Bicester Village once, as a treat. I was going to buy her something nice, but before I had a chance, she’d blown eight hundred quid on a handbag and another couple of hundred on a pair of shoes. I kept my money in my wallet after that.’
‘Where did she get the money? Her salary at the racing yard couldn’t have been that much.’
‘Search me.’
‘I know it’s a long time ago, but do you recall how she paid for them?’
He looked blank for a moment, then said, ‘Cash. I remember now. I thought she was stupid carrying so much in her bag.’
‘You weren’t curious where she got it from?’
‘I asked her. She said she won it on a horse.’
‘And you believed her?’
He l
ooked blank again, as though it was all too long ago.
‘Did she often have a lot of cash on her?’
He sighed. ‘Don’t remember. It was usually me paying, not her.’ He rubbed his chin again, then added, ‘Maybe her dad give it her. I told you, he was rich, or so she said.’
‘Did you ever meet her parents?’
He shook his head. ‘She told me she didn’t get on with them.’
Eve looked at her watch. She had been there nearly an hour and it was time to go. There was nothing remarkable about Sean Farrell and nothing likeable either. The flickers of stubborn, macho cockiness were particularly off-putting. Maybe it was because she was a woman and that was his default response even after ten years in jail. But the members of a jury were only human and she imagined how he might have come across badly in court. She still had no idea whether he was innocent or guilty, but it didn’t matter for the moment. She merely had to go through the motions for Duran and she had managed to learn something new about Jane McNeil. What Farrell had said about Jane’s nosiness, and the cash that she had flashed around, offered up a new possible motive for her killing. But what intrigued her more than anything was why Duran had taken up Farrell’s cause in the first place. From the little she had seen of Farrell, and what she knew of Duran, she couldn’t imagine them getting along as people, chatting over a cup of tea and a biscuit, or fish and chips, in the prison canteen. Yet not only had Duran been inspired to donate money to the Farrell cause, he appeared to have embraced it wholeheartedly. For someone whose motives had previously been entirely selfish, it was out of character. There had to be something more and she was determined to find out what it was.