by Lisa Cutts
It hadn’t made him feel any better, but he guessed that she was trying her best under the circumstances.
While Aiden attempted to scrub the grime of the last day from his skin, under a temperamental shower head placed so far up the wall its water pressure was all but useless, he made his mind up about one thing.
Today, he was going to tell the police the truth about Linda.
Chapter 41
‘We need to speak to you again, Sasha,’ said Doug Philbert. ‘Sophia is busy interviewing at the moment so DCI Venice is with me instead.’
Sasha Jones’s face peered from behind the door at the detective inspector and Barbara Venice. She looked as though she had only got out of bed when Doug rapped on the door.
‘I’m not dressed,’ said Sasha, ‘but come in.’
She opened the door to reveal herself wearing only a T-shirt that was attempting to cover her backside as she turned to go up the stairs.
Neither Doug nor Barbara could fail to notice, as she took the steps two at a time, Sasha’s remarkably long shapely legs, leading to a very pert bottom.
‘Go on through to the kitchen,’ she called over her shoulder, just as her naked derrière made an appearance.
Barbara smacked Doug’s arm to get his attention, and shook her head at him when he mouthed, ‘What?’ at her.
Still shaking her head, she made her way to the kitchen and gave it the once-over.
‘This is an impressive kitchen,’ she said to Doug as he pulled out a chair at the wooden table in the centre of the room. ‘Wouldn’t mind one like this myself. Wonder how she can afford this?’
Keeping his voice down, Doug said, ‘Remember what we agreed on in the car: less Jack Regan and more Jack Frost. She’s a young girl.’
‘You’ve changed your tune now you’ve seen her killer pins. Bloody men.’
‘She was in bed. How is she supposed to dress?’
‘Don’t try and steer this away from you gawking at her.’
Barbara got the last word on the matter as they both became aware of the sounds of Sasha coming back down the stairs.
She appeared in the kitchen doorway barefoot and dressed in sky-blue leggings and a long white sweatshirt. Her long dark hair was draped forward over her shoulders, making her appear demure. Barbara wasn’t sure if it was deliberate and this was part of the act, or if the young pale-faced woman in front of them really had simply been caught up with the wrong man. No one could help who they fell in love with.
Barbara introduced herself, stressing the Detective Chief Inspector part.
‘How are you feeling today?’ asked Doug.
‘I’m OK, thanks.’ She smiled at him, head cocked to one side.
Sasha padded across the tiled floor, took the lid off the kettle and filled it from the tap. She turned and waggled the kettle at them. ‘Tea? We wouldn’t get far in our job without a cuppa, would we?’
‘Thanks,’ said Doug.
After she pressed the switch on the kettle, she took a seat opposite Barbara and placed her hands on the table.
‘Listen. Thank you for coming back to see me. I’ve been very stupid. I lied to you about where I was that morning. The morning that . . .’
She broke eye contact with Barbara, glanced towards the kettle on the worktop where it was quietly performing its sole function.
‘I think I’m over the tears and they just keep on coming.’ She laughed at her own attempt at a joke. No one else joined in.
She took a deep breath and said, ‘The morning that Milton died, he’d been here with me. On Mondays, he used to go into the office early to catch up on weekend crime and so on, get ahead of the game. He told his wife that due to pressure and cutbacks, he had to go in earlier and earlier. The truth was, he used to come over here for about five-thirty, six a.m. and we would at least get an hour or two together.
‘I panicked when you asked me where I was when Milton was injured and his wife was found. As a police officer, I really should know better. You’ve got to see it from my point of view – if you’re having a relationship with a married man, you get used to lying. It doesn’t make anything go away or justify it, but it becomes habit sooner than you’d think.
‘We got used to lying, and I didn’t want anyone, especially his son, to know that I’d been the last person he was with. When you came to see me, I already knew that his wife was dead. It was all over the nick and impossible not to know. Anyway, I knew that she’d been found and it was being investigated. I was hoping it was a sudden death rather than a suspicious one. You know, like a heart attack or she’d fallen down the stairs or something. I simply wasn’t thinking straight.’
She chose that moment to get up and make the tea, sniffing into a tissue she plucked from a box next to the tea caddy, boiling water sloshing into the mugs lined up beside the draining board.
‘You didn’t tell me her injuries when we last spoke, sir,’ she said. ‘You did tell me it was a murder investigation and I said the first thing I thought of. I haven’t spoken to my mum, yet I know only too well that she would have been on the phone the second you’d walked out of the door if you had been to see her.’
Sasha turned to the drinks, her back to the two detectives at her kitchen table. Barbara glanced at Doug and raised an eyebrow at him; he gave a tiny shrug.
They waited until she got the milk from the fridge, added a little to each mug, returned the carton to its place inside the door, and sat back down opposite Barbara.
Sasha pulled her drink towards her and placed her hands around the blue stoneware mug, peeking out at Barbara from under the safety of her fringe.
Doug watched Barbara leaning forward in her seat, about to strike. He wanted to get in first with some more details about the morning of Linda’s murder before the DCI said something that was likely to jeopardize communication.
‘What we need to know,’ said Doug, leaning forward himself, ‘is exactly what time Milton got here, how long he was here and at what time he left. Don’t leave any detail out, no matter how small or insignificant you may think it is. We also know that you called Tom Delayhoyde and we need you to explain what you told him too.’
‘OK,’ said Sasha, smiling at him, showing on her face some sense of relief that she could at last get this off her chest.
‘There is, however, one more thing,’ said Barbara. ‘Making accusations – possibly criminally related accusations – about officers, especially those who are deceased, is a very serious matter. I want you to think very carefully in relation to what you know, or think you know, about the Wolfram Street murder and Milton’s involvement in it.
‘Mr Bowman was at the forefront of a campaign to reduce drug dealing in East Rise, with, may I add, considerable success. The operations he organized and trialled have been taken up county-wide and mean that there are fewer dealers on the streets, there’s a massive drop in anti-social behaviour and the community feels safer. So, Sasha, don’t leave anything out of your statement, just be mindful of what you tell us you think you saw and heard at Wolfram Street.’
Chapter 42
‘So, Aiden,’ began DC Pierre Rainer, everyone seated in the same places in the interview room, ‘that’s the introductions and caution explained. We’ve got more questions for you. I’d like to start with—’
‘I need to tell you something,’ said Aiden.
His solicitor shot forward in her seat, abandoning the pad she had been preparing to make notes on for the next hour or so.
‘I think this is a good time for me to speak to my client without—’ she began but Aiden interrupted her once again.
‘No, I need to tell you something and I thought about it all last night when I couldn’t get to sleep and when I did some bloke was wailing and moaning, someone else was banging, and was still at it when I got in the shower first thing. I need to tell you this. It won’t go away.’
He paused, unsure how he was going to backtrack on what he’d told them the day before, the hours they had spent
going over and over the detail of his visit to Linda that morning.
He had no idea, of course, that they hadn’t believed him anyway. Pierre and Sophia weren’t the only two working on Linda’s murder. A team of over fifty were working away behind the scenes, taking statements, examining crime scenes, downloading electronic equipment, talking to people.
Aiden was clueless that the officers listening to him knew his story didn’t add up; they had been paying attention but hadn’t once hinted at disbelief. He couldn’t possibly know that because this was a murder investigation and nothing was left to chance. Add to that the thing detectives excelled at in such circumstances – biding their time.
What they hadn’t expected was for him to start telling the truth – that didn’t usually happen halfway through an interview.
Everyone waited for Aiden to speak.
He took a sip of water, hand grabbing the thin disposable cup too hard and wrinkling the sides of it. He put it back down.
‘I went to see Linda, but Milton’s car was still on the drive. She’d told me beforehand that she’d leave the side gate unlocked and I should go to the kitchen door. She was going to get up and leave it open as soon as Milton left. She didn’t want the neighbours to see me on the doorstep at that time in the morning, you see.’
His comment was met with a nod from Pierre.
‘Well, I wasn’t expecting him to be there, so I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I left and waited around the corner, at that time in the morning, I’d stick out like a sore thumb if he then drove past me. I knew their kitchen didn’t look out onto the pathway to the side of the house, and I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I was trying to overhear their conversation.
‘I knew that they weren’t getting on from what Travis had told me, as much as hearing it from Linda. She may have been leading me on, getting me to feel a bit sorry for her, only Travis had nothing to gain from it. It was just two mates talking about stuff.’
The mention of Travis seemed to make him sink in his seat, shoulders rounded, head hanging a little lower.
Aiden shuffled forward in his wooden chair and said, ‘I opened the gate and walked along the side of the house. There’s only the side of the garage along that wall, so I knew no one would see me until I got to the back of the house at the edge of the garden. The top window above the sink was open and I could hear them talking. They weren’t exactly shouting but Linda said that she was disgusted with him and his behaviour. How everything he did was for appearances and their life together was a miserable one, all based on a lie anyway. She sounded so angry, but it was that kind of measured angry. Do you know what I mean? When someone is so annoyed, they’re calm. I don’t know how else to describe it. She didn’t sound like herself at all, it was like a different Linda.’
He looked from Pierre to Sophia and back again before continuing.
‘I heard a noise like someone slamming a cup down or something like that, and Milton said to her, “If you don’t like your life here, you know what you can do. Don’t let me stop you leaving, but you’ll find out exactly how unpleasant I can make life for you.” He didn’t exactly threaten her, just got really nasty.’
Aiden put his head in his hands and said, ‘I didn’t tell you this before because if Linda was fine before Milton left, I was the last person to see her before she was killed. And I know how that looks.’
Chapter 43
As soon as Jenny Bloomfield woke up alone, miserable and mother to a murder suspect, she recognized that the best way to feel better was to tend to her own needs. Only momentarily did she pause to wonder how her own sexual gratification could improve the situation in any way. Nonetheless, she certainly didn’t envisage it making things any worse.
She showered, changed into what clean clothes she had, put yesterday’s dress back on, and left the hotel for the most expensive boutique she could find. Most of her shopping was done miles away, usually in London, but today East Rise would have to do. Jenny didn’t want to dwell too much on the implications of her impending actions when her son was in police custody for murder and her husband flying home from Dubai on the next flight that had an available first-class seat. Her friend Linda was after all dead. Having sex wouldn’t make her any less murdered, so she might as well try to forget her own anguish.
Within an hour of leaving the Premier Inn, Jenny stood in the lobby of the Grand, lift on its way to her, about to take her to the fifth floor. The fifth floor would undoubtedly take her much higher.
That delightful thought on her mind, she stepped into the lift and made her way to her lover’s hotel room, smoothing down her new silk dress as she went.
It hadn’t entered her head that he would have anyone else with him. They had never discussed exclusivity; she was married at the end of the day. Neither had a claim on the other, although it still took her a second to recover from the look of hesitation on his face as he opened the door.
‘Were you expecting someone?’ she said as she leaned a hip against the door frame.
A sly smile tugged at his mouth and he said, ‘No one else I’d rather have knock on my door,’ before he pulled her inside and kicked the door shut without releasing his grip on her.
Despite Jenny’s desire to see him, feel his body on top of hers, she was clear-headed enough to glance around the room and notice that there were no obvious signs of another woman. As he threw her onto the bed, pushing the scatter cushions to one side, the last thought she had for the next hour other than of what he was doing to her was that the made bed was surely a good sign.
Jenny lay on her side, flushed face towards her lover. He ran his hand down her cheek. A caress that made her shudder.
‘Sorry I dropped by unannounced,’ she said.
‘Well, it worked out very well for me that you did.’ He smiled at her, beautiful green eyes staring into hers. ‘I do have to go out soon. I’ve got a lunchtime meeting I was about to leave for.’
‘I didn’t mean to stop you.’
‘Stop apologizing, although I am going to have to get back in the shower and leave before very long.’
She closed her eyes and said, ‘I get that you’re busy. I just wanted some company, your company.’
‘Everything OK?’ he said.
‘It’s my friend, well sort of my friend, who I told you about. You remember that I mentioned I knew a woman whose son is best friends with my son?’
‘Yeah, I remember,’ he said as he stroked her hair. ‘She’d been a bit crappy to you over time and you’ve not seen much of her lately. Is that the one? Lisa or Lindsay or something?’
‘Linda, Linda airs and graces Bowman.’ She touched the corners of her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, especially those taken so violently.’
‘Bloody hell,’ he said, leaning up on his elbow, hand now moving to her chin. ‘She’s dead? What happened?’
Jenny allowed a tear to escape and said, ‘Someone murdered her in her house. My son’s been arrested for it.’
‘Your son?’
The tone of his voice made her snap open her eyes. She didn’t like the expression he was showing her.
He threw himself back on the pillow. ‘Your son. Fucking hell.’
‘Don’t think bad of me being here, please.’
She stretched out to grab his wrist just as he pushed himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Jenny left her hand in the air, unsure whether to caress his back. The last thing she needed right now was someone else to turn away from her and abandon her.
‘I’m getting in the shower,’ he said. ‘See yourself out.’
For a minute or so, until she heard the sound of water running, Jenny remained motionless.
She refused to lie on the bed and cry. The scorn of another man wouldn’t destroy her. She would do what she had always done: get herself dressed, muster her dignity and harvest anything she could for her own survival.
By the time
she was dressed, earrings picked up from the floor and her shoes back on, the only things she needed were her abandoned handbag and her holdall containing yesterday’s clothing. As she bent to pick them up, paperwork on the desktop caught her attention.
In her present state of mind, the content of the paperwork didn’t alarm her as it should have done.
She gave little thought to the name ‘Sean Turner’ printed at the top of a Visiting Order for prison inmate TD1548 Jack McCall.
Chapter 44
‘How long have you been standing there?’ asked Doug, catching sight of Barbara Venice in the doorway.
‘Only for a few seconds. I didn’t want to interrupt you – you looked so lost in thought. Is this a good time to run some things by you?’
Inside the office with the door closed, Barbara made herself comfortable in the chair next to her DI’s desk.
‘What’s the matter, Barb?’ he said.
‘I’m getting a real battering over this one: the press are particularly interested, unsurprisingly. Witness Protection stuff aside, I’m already worried. Perhaps I should have dealt with Sasha Jones differently. It’s not as if I don’t want to find out that Milton might have murdered his own wife.
‘And I’ve got to go and ask for more funding and get an update together for the chief. That aside, I wanted to go through who we’re looking at for Linda’s death. Hazel was right to be concerned that she had no history or family; the McCalls were one of London’s biggest criminal families and changed their identities. It hasn’t passed me by that we could be looking at someone settling an old score so we need to make sure the inquiry team aren’t walking into anything dangerous. And let’s not forget that this could be down to a completely unrelated passing stranger killing her. I’d appreciate you lending me your ear for few minutes.’