by Faith Martin
‘This is about Wayne,’ she said abruptly, almost accusingly, her voice breaking on the first syllable of his name. ‘Come in, then,’ she added, with obvious reluctance. She stood aside to let them pass, and led them, not to a lounge or living area, but to the kitchen.
It was a well-appointed kitchen, and had obviously been arranged by a designer’s hand. An old Aga, lovingly restored, stood cold and aloof in pride of place. Copper-bottomed saucepans, that looked as if they’d never been used, hung down from a low, black-painted beam. An oak ‘island’ stood in the middle of a terracotta-tiled floor, and it was to this, and the tall chrome and black-leather stools placed around it, that Denise Collier headed. She drew up a stool and with a little hop that reminded Hillary of a robin, seated herself.
Hillary followed suit, and, after a moment’s hesitation, so did Keith Barrington. Denise Collier rested her slim white hands in front of her on the counter. Hillary noticed her nails had been painted plum, to match her lipstick. She could see that this woman probably spent two to three hours, at least, on grooming herself before starting the day.
‘I loved him, you see,’ Denise said at once, looking out of the window to where a small patio gave way to a seating area incorporated into a small garden wall. ‘I was the only one who did.’
Hillary settled down to watch the performance. That Denise Collier was acting, she was sure, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was being untruthful. Some women, Hillary knew, needed to play their own starring roles in a melodrama, and the death of a lover was simply too good an opportunity to pass up. And Hillary didn’t mind being the audience. You could learn some interesting things from watching a performance.
‘Oh, I know all about his other women,’ Denise went on, still without looking at her, and waving one hand limply in the air, as if swatting at a vaguely annoying fly. ‘They meant nothing. An artist needs fawning sycophants. And women especially flocked to him. Well,’ she gave a short, sighing laugh, ‘why wouldn’t they? He was an Adonis. But I was his only true lover.’
Hillary let her get on with it, and glanced around. As she expected, a large canvas hung on the main wall, above a small dining table and chairs. It was a painting of the sky. Nothing else was in it. Just blue sky and a variety of white clouds. But the clouds, of course, weren’t clouds. They were double decker buses, spanners, dustbins, hubcaps, washing machines, computer keyboards. All white and fluffy.
‘He called it Skydiving,’ Denise said, finally dragging her tragic gaze away from her patio, and finding the eyes of the detective not on her, but on the painting. ‘I have others of his. Do you want to see?’
Hillary, now that she’d got her full attention, wasn’t about to let it go. ‘Perhaps later, Mrs Collier. Let’s start with a few basic questions first,’ she kept her own voice firmly matter-of-fact. ‘Where were you on the night of the thirtieth of April, from say six, until midnight?’
Denise Collier laughed dryly. ‘So I’m a suspect, am I? How Wayne would have laughed! He had a wicked sense of humour, Sergeant, really wicked.’
Hillary let her demotion down a rank, slide past. She had no doubts at all that Denise Collier knew exactly her correct title, but didn’t intend to get drawn into any little power games. ‘I’m sure,’ she said blandly, instead. ‘Were you out that evening?’
Denise Collier blinked, then turned her gaze back to her patio. ‘No. Not that night. I was here.’
‘Alone?’ Hillary persisted patiently.
Denise sighed heavily. ‘Yes, alone. I saw Wayne mostly on the weekends you see. Friday and Saturday. Sometimes we’d go away, book into a quiet hotel somewhere.’
Hillary didn’t bother to ask who paid the bills. ‘Do you know of any enemies Wayne had, Mrs Collier?’
‘Oh, not really. I mean there were people who were jealous of him, of course there were. His silly women, and their even sillier husbands. And other so-called artists, who were eaten up with envy of his talent. But nobody who’d want to kill him.’ Her voice broke on the last two words, and she hung her head and sobbed.
Barrington started to look around for tissues, but Hillary, after a quick glance, could see that, though the narrow shoulders were shaking up and down, no actual tears marred the make-up on her face. Keith eventually settled for a roll of kitchen towels, which he awkwardly placed on the work top beside her. Denise took a strip off and daintily dabbed her eyes – careful not to smear her mascara.
Hillary pursed her lips thoughtfully. Of all the people in the case so far, Denise Collier was the only one she could see leaving a red paper heart on the corpse of her lover. It would no doubt appeal to her sense of the dramatic. But was she the kind actually to kill?
Well, if Wayne Sutton really had been the ‘love of her life’ and if she’d found his cavalier womanizing too much, Hillary supposed it was possible. Sutton wouldn’t ever regard Denise as a threat, so she might just have taken him by surprise. But was she tall enough to have committed this particular murder? To swing a stone at a tall man’s head and reach his temple, even in high heels, would have been an effort. And did she really have the physical upper-body strength necessary then to drag his inert dead weight to the stream, hold his head down until he was drowned, and then drag his corpse back on to the river bank?
It didn’t seem likely somehow.
And if she had been wearing high heels, even with the sun-scorched ground trodden by cattle, wouldn’t SOCO have found some trace of tell-tale little round indentations?
‘Tell me about his girlfriend, Mrs Collier,’ she said flatly, deciding on shock tactics, and saw Denise’s whole body go rigid. A moment later, she shot her a scornful look.
‘He didn’t have a girlfriend.’ She said the word as if it was something vile.
‘Monica Freeman?’
‘Never heard of her,’ Denise hissed. And there was something just a shade … demented, just a bit … touched … about her voice that gave Hillary pause for thought. She was trembling, very slightly, all over, her pretty made-up face almost snarling.
She’s crazed with jealousy, Hillary thought. Utterly possessive. Maybe just a little delusional? No doubt Wayne Sutton used her as a never-ending source of money, but he’d have had to earn his pay with this one. She must have clung like a limpet. Had he finally had enough and told her it was all over?
Maybe. But she had the feeling he liked his easy money too much. Still. If he had dumped her, it could have been enough to send Denise over the edge and …
The sharp, shrill sound of a mobile phone shattered the moment, and Hillary glanced around sharply. She’d turned her own phone off automatically before ringing the doorbell. It must belong to the suspect. Then she saw Keith Barrington’s pale, freckled face blush red with mortification, and she shot him a half-angry, half-disbelieving look.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, stepping off the stool and hurrying outside into the hall. Hillary, turning back to Denise Collier, was just in time to see a look of relief cross her face. Evidently, she must have realized that she was in danger of loosing control and giving herself away, and was quickly burying the rawness of her emotions behind a vague smile.
There’d be no getting to her now. She was too alert to danger. Hillary mentally cursed Keith Barrington and his mobile. Time to take the witness through her movements the night of the killing.
In the hall, Keith pressed the answer button, lifted the gadget to his head and heard a familiar voice.
‘Kee, listen, I’ve got to talk to you. Something awful’s happened.’
‘I can’t talk now,’ Keith said brutally, glancing anxiously towards the kitchen. ‘I’m in the middle of something.’
‘But it’s urgent. I have to see you. Meet me somewhere during your lunch hour. The plod do let you eat, don’t they?’
‘OK, fine,’ he whispered quickly. ‘The Bread Oven at one-thirty. Now I gotta go.’ He hung up and returned to the kitchen, where Hillary Greene was writing something up in her notebook.
‘And did y
ou receive any telephone calls, or did a neighbour drop by to visit you? Did you go out in the garden at all and see anybody walking past, perhaps taking their dog for an evening stroll?’
‘No, no, nothing like that, I’ve already told you,’ Denise Collier said peevishly. ‘I just stayed in, listened to some blues, a little jazz. Read a few magazines.’
Hillary sighed, not believing a word of it. But with Denise Collier in this sort of mood, there was no point pressing it. She’d have to come back and try again later. ‘Very well, Mrs Collier, that’s all for now,’ she said flatly, and Keith felt his heart plummet. He knew it was his own fault the interview, that had begun to get so promising, had fizzled out so abruptly.
He was in for the high jump. And deserved it. Never before had he let his personal life interfere with the job.
‘If you can think of anything at all that might help, please phone,’ Hillary said, handing her a standard card with the HQ phone number and her own extension listed.
Denise Collier took it with a moue of distaste, then showed them to the door. It was closed behind them before they’d even reached the garden gate.
‘Next time we go into an interview, Constable, turn off your phone. Yes?’ Hillary said sharply.
Keith swallowed hard. ‘Sorry, guv. I normally do. I don’t know why I forgot this time.’
Hillary glanced at him as they walked back to the car. He looked distinctly miserable. ‘I’ve noticed you seem a bit distracted lately,’ she said, not so much a question, as an opportunity for him to talk.
Keith ducked his head and said nothing.
Hillary sighed, and dug into her handbag for the keys. ‘You can drive, Constable. But keep your mind on the road, please.’
Keith slid behind the driver’s wheel feeling about two inches tall, and knowing he had no one to blame but himself. It was only when he’d started to drive back to Kidlington that he felt suddenly anxious. Before, he’d thrust the contents of the phone call to the back of his mind, wanting only to get his lover off the line. But now he wondered. What was the ‘something awful’ that had happened? Dammit, he didn’t need any more hassles in life. Not now!
He was careful to drive at a sedate fifty miles an hour all the way back to HQ.
Back in the open-plan office, Hillary found the desks empty. Frank Ross had apparently been in, and, finding the boss gone, had quickly taken the opportunity to nip back out again, leaving behind only a pile of badly-typed notes on his activities of yesterday, and a hand-written scribble that he was following up on a lead.
Yeah, right. At the nearest betting shop, Hillary supposed. She sighed and crumpled up the note and tossed it into the bin. She scowled at Gemma Fordham’s empty desk, got on the phone and dialled her number.
‘Fordham,’ the voice that answered sounded as if it was suffering from a bad cold. Only someone who actually knew the DS would know it was her normal speaking voice.
‘DI Greene. Where are you?’
‘Kidlington, guv, talking to another Ale and Arty member. Want me to come in?’
‘When you’ve finished. Then I want you to concentrate on Denise Collier for me. You know who she is, right?’
‘I read the murder book last night before I left, guv. She’s the lead Barrington dug up, yeah? One of the vic’s women?’
‘Right. I’ve just finished talking to her, and I got a definite whiff of instability from her. Do a bit of deep digging. Find out why her marriage failed, talk to the hubby, past lovers, you know the drill. She’s the clinging, possessive type. I wouldn’t be surprised if there hadn’t been some trouble somewhere. We know she’s not got form, so it never came to our notice, but even so.’
‘Think she did some stalking?’ Gemma cut straight to the chase.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Find out who her GP is, see if she has any history of mental trouble as well. The doctor probably won’t want to tell you, so lean on him or her, stress the murder inquiry angle, and if you still get no luck, see if you can find out via the back door.’ Hillary knew there was always more than one way to skin a cat, especially for a clever and resourceful girl like Gemma Fordham.
‘Right, guv,’ Gemma said, unfazed, and Hillary hung up.
Slipping her phone back into her pocket, Gemma smiled at the middle-aged man perched on the edge of his sofa. And Gerald Heydon, 52, semi-retired boat-builder, gazed back at her, all but drooling.
‘So you sculpt in wood,’ Gemma said. ‘That’s how you came to hear about Ale and Arty?’
‘That’s right. Sure I can’t interest you in a class of merlot, Sergeant Fordham. It’s a vintage year. One glass won’t hurt, I’m sure.’
Gemma smiled and let him pour her a glass.
It was, after all, a very good year.
*
Back at HQ, Hillary watched Keith Barrington glance at his watch for the fifth time in the last half hour, and wondered what was biting him. Whatever it was, she hoped he’d get it sorted out soon. He was driving her crackers.
‘Why don’t you get off to the canteen, Keith,’ she said, a shade impatiently. ‘Take an early lunch break. I’ll hold the fort down here.’
To her surprise, Barrington looked almost stricken. ‘No, it’s all right, guv. I mean, I’m not hungry yet,’ he glanced at the wall clock desperately. It was barely twelve fifteen. ‘But if you want to get off and have a bite yourself …’
Hillary slowly leaned back in her chair and narrowed her eyes. Keith Barrington flushed.
‘Lunch date, Constable?’
‘Only a quick one, guv. I need to see someone. Afriend. He’s in a bit of trouble.’
Hillary blinked. ‘Our kind of trouble?’ she asked sharply. Keith Barrington was already here on sufferance, and with one big black mark against him. The last thing he needed was to be mixed up with people on the wrong side of the law!
‘Oh shit, no, guv,’ Keith said, spontaneously, and truthfully. ‘Nothing like that.’
Hillary instantly believed him, and relaxed, but when his eyes drifted away from hers oh-so-casually, she also knew that something was definitely eating him.
She deliberately let the silence lengthen.
Keith fiddled with his pen, fighting the urge to confide in her. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Hillary Greene would be sympathetic. Nor did he fear her being judgmental or, even worse, antagonistic. But he’d always kept some things secret, instinct telling him to do so, and he didn’t feel happy breaking the habit of a lifetime now.
‘All right, constable,’ Hillary said at last. ‘I’ll be in the canteen if you need me.’
She was just about to rise, when her phone rang. She grabbed the receiver. ‘DI Greene.’
‘Hillary. I hear from my assistant that you’re breathing down our neck?’
Hillary smiled, recognizing the voice instantly. ‘Sorry Steven, didn’t mean to. I just need to know what that note on Sutton’s body was all about. I take it it’s dried out by now?’
‘It has. I was about to photocopy it and send it over when I got your message. You want me to read it out over the phone?’
‘Might as well. Unless it’s particularly sensitive?’ she said cautiously.
‘No, I don’t think so. Nor is it pornographic, so we wouldn’t be corrupting any delicate little ears that are listening in that shouldn’t be.’
Hillary laughed, knowing the lines in and out of HQ were as secure as they could be, in this IT age. ‘Fine, go ahead then.’
‘OK. The paper is bog standard note paper, can be purchased at any W.H. Smith’s in the country. The ink, likewise, the pen used just your average biro.’
Hillary sighed. It didn’t sound promising so far.
‘I take it you want me to send it on to the handwriting boffins?’ Doc Partridge asked, just for form’s sake.
‘Yes, please,’ Hillary agreed. Usually, experts could gather all sorts of information from a handwriting specimen. Whether the author was right- or left-handed, male or female, sometimes even age, and
occasionally, from the language used, punctuation, and so on, details as to the writer’s education or even birthplace.
‘Hmmm. Don’t know how much joy they’ll get, though,’ the doctor warned. ‘The immersion in water didn’t help any. But at least it’s legible. Got a pen?’
Hillary, her own biro hovering over her notebook, nodded. ‘Shoot.’
‘OK. First line – Wayne darling – no comma. Second line – We have to talk. The worst has happened. Third and fourth lines – Meet me at our special place by the stream, I’ll try to be there by eight. Fifth line, I love you. I trust you. And it’s signed, Annie.’
Hillary scribbled furiously.
‘Oh, and the name “Annie” is ringed in a big heart.’
Hillary looked across at Keith. ‘Go through the files. See if we have any suspects or witnesses by the name Annie. Include anyone called Anne, Ann, or Anna. Make that Hannah, as well.’
‘Right, guv.’
‘Sounds like someone was desperate,’ Steven Partridge’s voice sounded again in her ear, and Hillary turned her attention back to the pathologist.
‘Hmm. I wonder what “the worst” was?’ she mused.
‘Pregnant?’ Steven guessed. ‘That’s what women usually mean by it.’
‘Or the husband’s found out,’ Hillary said dryly.
Steven Partridge laughed. ‘Or that,’ he agreed, and after a few more pleasantries, rang off.
Hillary put the phone down thoughtfully and filled Barrington in.
So, their victim had been going to the stream to meet someone. Obviously, they’d met there before if it was their ‘special place’. And it made sense as a rendezvous point – it was quiet and out the way, somewhere where they couldn’t possibly be overheard, and some serious talking could take place. At eight o’clock at night, it wouldn’t yet have started to get dark.
So did they now have the killer’s name? Had Annie, whoever she was, lured him there not to talk, but to kill? Or had someone else come instead? If this Annie had a jealous lover or husband, could the message have been somehow intercepted? Or had it even come from Annie at all? No, that wouldn’t work. Presumably, Wayne Sutton would have known her handwriting. Unless someone had forged it. Perhaps Annie had been forced to write it, or maybe she’d deliberately set him up?