by Anita Waller
‘Then you leave us with no choice but to arrest you. Grace Earle…’
‘Whoa!’ she said. ‘Give me two minutes to see to Mrs Bird’s needs, and I’ll go with you. You’re not bloody arresting me for anything, whatever you might think.’
They followed her into the house, and through to where Pam Bird was on the sofa. She was awake, but it was clear they had woken her. Hannah apologised immediately, then explained they were taking Grace Earle in for questioning.
‘Do you need assistance, Mrs Bird? Is there someone we can call for you?’
Pam shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine. How long will Grace be gone?’
‘We don’t know.’
Grace intervened. ‘I’ll be back later this afternoon, Pam, so don’t worry about your medication. I’ll sort it when I get back.’
Pam stood and walked to the front window, watching as they held the top of Grace’s head to put her in the back of the squad car.
She felt strangely liberated, unusually wide awake. The car drove away and she headed back to the sofa. She put her hand in between the seat cushions and removed the two small white tablets she had dropped down there earlier.
Imipramine. To be taken at night. So why was Grace giving them to her during the day as well? She walked into the kitchen and flushed them away, before filling a glass with water and taking a long drink.
It felt good to be able to walk around her house knowing she was there on her own, nobody to answer to, nobody asking if she was okay, nobody leading her back to that damn lounge that was starting to resemble a prison cell, and nobody to help her to bed at night.
She smiled as she briefly gave thought to ringing DI Marsden and asking her if she could keep Grace overnight.
She walked along the hallway to the office, determined to look up the side effects, the warnings, the instructions around stopping taking the drug Imipramine; she wanted to take control of her life. This had to be done while she was having a good day, and today she could feel very little pain. Bad pain days flattened her, but she had been given this opportunity by Grace being taken for interview…
It suddenly hit her. Grace being taken for interview by the police? What on earth could she possibly have done that would cause her to be taken to the station?
Pam sat down at the desk and looked around. She had always enjoyed her time in this office, sharing William’s work, listening to him explaining things. Her awful illness had taken most of that away from her, but those times had been exciting as they had built his business. He had once tried to explain that it was spending to accumulate; he bought rundown businesses that were simply being mismanaged, turned them around while keeping as many of the same staff as practical, and phoenix-like, supervised their rising from the ashes. None of the businesses failed once William waved his magic wand.
She lifted the laptop lid; it was open at the last of the businesses he had bought. She could hear his words now, ‘Pam, this could be a cracker of a business. This is the big one, and this is the last one. Our next adventure is to retire, and enjoy what we have.’
The business had been a driver agency called BD Recruitment, the B and the D being the initials of the surnames of the two men who had started the business. William had slashed the massive salaries paid to the two original owners, increased the salaries of the administration workers who had been working for minimum wage, and increased the rates of pay for the drivers on the books. He then set about bringing other ventures to the business, specialising in wide loads, EU deliveries, and a variety of other sub-divisions.
He changed the name to BirD Recruiting, and turned it into a premier-level driver recruitment agency. Their reputation grew; she knew how proud he had been of the fact that they had never let any customer down, not once.
Eight months later came the first stroke. She took up the reins, coped with the increasing pain, and they decided they needed somebody else to help out with everything.
Grace Earle.
Pam stared at the name on the screen, BirD Recruitment. She felt tears prickle her eyelids; of all the businesses, he had been most proud of this one. She clicked on the Departments tab, and saw the list had grown from the last time she had been on the website. She clicked through all the other tabs, and saw that everything seemed to be thriving. William would have been thrilled that his prediction about the business had so spectacularly been proved correct. The second stroke that took him from her had robbed him of knowing the details she could see on-screen.
She came out of the website, and logged into the business accounts at the bank.
Grace felt uncomfortable. She had been sitting in the godawful interview room for nearly an hour, gazing at the darkly depressive walls, waiting to see why they wanted to speak to her.
When the door opened admitting Tessa Marsden and Dave Irwin, Grace almost felt relieved. Marsden placed a file on the table, recorded the names for the tape, and initially sat and stared at her.
‘It’s true,’ she said slowly. ‘If you had your hair done in the same style as your sister, the sibling relationship would be obvious.’
Grace shifted uneasily on her chair. She didn’t speak.
‘When I came out to break the news of your sister’s death to Mrs Bird, you didn’t flinch. Why was that, Grace?’
‘It’s Mrs Earle. And why should it bother me? You came to tell Pam, didn’t you?’
‘But you must have known I was speaking about your sister, and you never said a word.’
Grace’s mind was whirling. For the first time in many years, she didn’t know how to handle something. She hadn’t imagined for one minute that this was why she had been brought here, she had somewhat naively thought it was connected to Marsden’s last sarcastic comment about the medication given to Pam.
‘I did realise who Judith Carpenter was, yes. But it’s a long time since I’ve had anything to do with her, and her connection to Mrs Bird had never been raised between Pam and myself. I’m sorry she’s dead. As you say, she was my sister, but for all that, she wasn’t a close acquaintance.’
‘And you didn’t think to mention this at the time?’
‘No, it had nothing to do with the rather strange circumstances surrounding Judy’s connection to Pam. You hadn’t come to see me, you had come to see Pam.’
Marsden stared at Grace. A cold fish indeed, her brain said.
Tessa pulled the file towards her and opened it. She read through the transcript of the recording made with Bobby Outram’s permission, and then looked up at Grace. ‘So, Mrs Earle, you presumably don’t want to talk about Roberta, your other sister, either?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I’m going to talk to you about her. She has given us quite a lot of information about Judy. She’s told us about Judy deciding to track down Mrs Bird, knowing that she was Tom Carpenter’s birth mother. Judy also knew Pam Bird had a lot of money, and that was her primary reason for getting involved with Pam. Roberta didn’t like what was happening, knew it wasn’t fair on Tom’s birth mother, and decided to tell somebody about it before it escalated into a criminal act.’
Grace shrugged. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘You’ve never met up with Judy, or spoken to her, or had any contact by email or letter, giving her information about the wealth of this rather poorly woman?’
‘No. I haven’t seen Judy for…’ Grace paused to think. ‘…Around fifteen years, I guess. I left home to live with my then boyfriend, nobody approved of him, so I cut the whole family out of my life.’
Her reaction to Tessa’s request for an alibi for the time Judy was killed was met with derision. ‘I was, of course, at my employer’s home in Buxton, keeping her alive and doing my work. You think I killed her?’ She laughed. ‘I didn’t even know her, certainly didn’t know where she lived. You seem to think I should be grieving, but I’m not. She was always a devious little cow when she was a child, so I’ve no reason to think she would have changed over the years. Now can I go home, please?’
>
‘Not yet.’ The door opened and Hannah Granger walked in. She handed a note to Marsden, who stood, notified the recording that she was leaving the room and switched it off.
‘I have to take a phone call, Mrs Earle. I’ll arrange to have a drink sent to you. PC Irwin will remain with you while I’m gone.’
Chapter 29
Hannah filled her in on the conversation she had just finished with Pam Bird, and as soon as Marsden reached her office, she immediately rang Pam.
‘Hi, Pam. You’ve spoken with Hannah, I understand. Can you start at the beginning and explain everything to me, please?’
It was a long conversation. Marsden listened carefully to everything Pam Bird said, taking notes, asking the occasional question so that it clarified everything in her mind before she went in to the interview room again.
‘Approximately how much are we talking about?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pam responded. ‘I’m going into the bank tomorrow, along with our accountant. I think we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds. DI Marsden, I need to stop her coming here tonight. I’m alone…’
‘Don’t worry, she can be our guest for tonight. I’m going back to the interview room now, and we’ll see what she has to say. On my team I have available to me a DS who has specialised in financial crime. I’d like to send him to you tomorrow morning to accompany you to the bank. Will you agree to that?’
‘Oh, I definitely will.’
Marsden could hear the relief in Pam’s voice. ‘Good. I’ll fill him in on everything you’ve told me, then he will be ringing you to arrange a time to come over. His name is DS Carl Heaton. He’ll look after you.’
Marsden waited another hour before heading downstairs to the interview room. She guessed Earle would be getting close to chewing her nails, and she wanted to prolong the waiting.
She logged herself and Hannah into the room, and sat down once more, facing Grace Earle.
‘Do I need a solicitor?’
‘Do you want me to get you one, Mrs Earle?’ Tessa checked her watch. ‘It’s getting pretty late but we can call one of your own choosing, or bring in a duty solicitor.’
‘I want my own.’
‘Fair enough.’ She closed up the file she had opened seconds earlier, and stood. ‘DI Marsden and PC Granger leaving the room, 18:05 hours. Somebody will be here shortly to facilitate your call to your solicitor. I’ll see you later if you can get one to come to you now. If not, you’ll be taken to a cell and detained until your solicitor arrives tomorrow morning.’
She gave Grace no chance to respond, and she and Hannah walked out once again, leaving a very young PC in the room with her.
DS Heaton was waiting for Marsden in her office. He eyed their cups of coffee. ‘You get that from the machine?’
‘We did, Carl. You want one? Hannah, pop back down and get one for Carl, will you? Milk, no sugar, if I remember correctly.’
‘Good memory, boss. It must be nine months since we last worked together. The Leon Rowe case, wasn’t it. His accounts needed a bit of checking, if I’m remembering correctly.’
She laughed. ‘A bit of checking is about right. He goes off to Canada tomorrow, his parents have requested his body. His wife agreed, she just wants him out of her life for good.’
‘Seems you’ve picked up another one that needs some financial checks put in place. I’ve had a chat with Mrs Bird, she seems quite knowledgeable.’
Tessa ran her hand through her hair. ‘I need to tell you that she’s quite ill. She has ME. It’s one of these illnesses where to look at her you wouldn’t think anything was wrong, but it’s a chronic pain illness, and some days she can’t even get out of bed. Be aware of that in all your dealings with her. Plus she has the added problem of having been overdosed on her pain medication, I think for some time, so she could be a bit non-functioning.’
‘She sounded clear enough to me. It seems that the business her husband thought was the big one that would see them secure for the rest of their lives is on the failing/dead stop route now, and money has been siphoned from the accounts over a lengthy period of time, probably since Mr Bird died. I’m meeting her at her home in the morning, nine o’clock, and we’re heading off to the bank. She seemed really grateful that I offered to drive, but in view of what you’ve told me about her health, that makes sense. She’s spoken to their accountant, and he’s said he raised concerns in an email to her about ten months ago, saying that BirD wasn’t performing as well as it had been doing six months earlier. It seems that he received an email back from Mrs Bird, which she knows nothing about, saying that it was going to be sold on because of the poor performance. You have a devious suspect downstairs, DI Marsden.’
‘I certainly do, Carl. I’ll need a full report as soon as possible, after you’ve driven Mrs Bird back home.’
Hannah returned holding his coffee. ‘There was a queue!’ she said, sounding quite put about. ‘Don’t these people want to go home?’
‘Do you?’ Tessa smiled.
‘Not on your life, not till we know where we stand with Grace Earle. Do you believe she’s not seen her sisters for years?’
Marsden frowned. ‘Not sure. She certainly didn’t react in any way when I said Judy was dead, but it just seems too much of a coincidence that Judy is looking for Pam Bird, and Grace is working for the same woman. I’m really thinking that Judy told Grace about her plans, because let’s not forget she knew who Tom’s birth mother was before Tom died. Grace was already working for the Bird couple at that time, and I suspect Judy knew that. I think they were in cahoots from the beginning, and if that is the case, then I’m looking at Grace as a potential suspect for Judy’s murder.’
‘Sounds complicated.’ Carl laughed. ‘I think you need to write everything down, force your brain out of first gear and see what happens. Sometimes, when you’re reading things on reports on the computer, you miss bits. If you’ve actually written it down, it might become clearer.’
Marsden reached around her computer to some paperwork on her desk, and waved it at him. ‘Done,’ she said, ‘and in this instance, you’re wrong. Nothing looked any clearer.’
It was quiet in the Rowe household. Doris was reading, Kat was working on her sermon, delighted to be back in the saddle at church, and Mouse was on the computer, putting in names and seeing what came up.
When her mobile rang she answered it quickly, not wanting it to wake Martha.
‘Hi, Beth. Tessa Marsden. I just thought I’d fill you in, out of courtesy. It seems that your ferreting around really paid off. Grace Earle has admitted to being the sister of Judy and Bobby, but insists she hasn’t seen them for years. She says she walked away from the family when they disapproved of her boyfriend, and she hasn’t seen any of them since. However, that’s not all we’re finding out. Quite apart from keeping Mrs Bird heavily sedated so that she has no clue what day it is, let alone how her businesses are performing, she’s been cleverly siphoning off money from one of the companies and putting it somewhere else. We suspect that somewhere else is a healthy bank account with her name on it.’
‘Oh no! That’s awful for Pam. How is she?’
‘Not too bad. She hid the sleeping tablets that Grace tried to give her this morning, and she’s a bit groggy but not as bad as she usually is. She’ll have to discuss things with her doctor though, I think, you can’t just stop taking such strong medication, it has to be reduced gradually.’
‘Were they working together, Judy and Grace? Playing the long game to get everything?’ Mouse’s thoughts were spiralling, and she rubbed her forehead. ‘Grace siphons off from the companies, Judy becomes Pam’s best friend who inherits the personal fortune because she’s the daughter-in-law, and while they’re waiting for all this to happen, they’re slowly killing the woman who is going to provide all these riches.’
‘That’s my take on it. Anyway, we have Grace Earle in the cells certainly until tomorrow morning. She rang her solicitor, but luckily for us the woman c
ouldn’t come tonight, she was already with another client. Apparently Earle really showed off when they locked her in the cell. Tomorrow a DS from our fraud squad is taking Pam to the bank for discussions and to try to find out roughly how much has gone, and hopefully where it’s landed, then he’ll report back to me. I just wanted to thank you, or thank Connection anyway, for your help with this.’
‘You think Grace is connected to Judy’s death? With Pam permanently asleep, as she pretty much was, Grace could easily have done it and made it back to Buxton before she was missed.’
‘That’s the part I’m going to be concentrating on. The financial side I can safely leave to Carl. I want the collar for the murder.’
Chapter 30
Saturday morning dawned with bright sunshine, and the three of them, along with Martha in her pushchair, decided to head down to the Village Green café for breakfast. They had a leisurely stroll down that turned into a bit of a gallop as the rain came down in torrents.
They were laughing as they pushed open the door, rain dripping off their noses, their clothes spectacularly wet.
Lisa handed them a towel to dry their faces and arms along with the menu, and they eventually sat themselves in a corner so that the sleeping baby in the pushchair was out of the way.
‘Full breakfasts?’ Lisa asked, and they all said yes, each one of them wanting their eggs done differently.
‘Kat Silvers, you were always awkward,’ Lisa laughed. ‘One poached, one scrambled for you then.’
She finished taking the rest of their orders, and Doris looked over the top of her glasses at Kat. ‘Kat Silvers?’
‘Means nothing,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve known Lisa since we were in the infants together, back in the days when I was Kat Silvers. And let’s face it, I was Kat Silvers for a much longer time than I’ve been Kat Rowe. However, as we’ve kind of brought this up, I’ve been thinking things through about the name change.’