Scimitar (A Kate Redman Mystery

by Celina Grace

  It worked. After another half minute of silence, Rosamund spoke up. “It’s… Well, you know about me and Nick. I—I couldn’t use my normal phone, obviously. So I—I got another one. That one. Well, he gave it to me.”

  Kate waited. After another minute, Rosamund said, painfully, “I—I don’t use it any more. I should have just thrown it away.”

  “So why did you keep it?”

  Rosamund was silent for so long that Kate was about to ask again when she spoke. It was as if the words were being dragged from her, through an agonisingly sore throat. “I—I wanted to remember. Remember what we had. He was… He was so lovely, so lovely to me and I—I miss him.” Tears were beginning to track down her face.

  “But you see him every day,“ said Theo.

  At Theo’s words, and the spasm of pain that passed across Rosamund’s face, it was as if a bolt of lightning shot through Kate’s head. She even jerked in her seat. Of course—of course!—that’s how it was. Of course. Why hadn’t she seen it before? What was the matter with her! Now she could understand the sincerity of Rosamund’s earlier words, the oddness of Nick Riley when addressed on the subject of their affair, even the words she’d used to Theo on the very day of discovering Samir’s body. That kind of violence? That’s probably, what, a crime of passion, right?

  Kate didn’t know the details or the exact motive, but that didn’t matter at this time. She pressed her foot discreetly against Theo’s, wishing she had the intuitive relationship with him that she had with Olbeck and Chloe. But it couldn’t be helped.

  Rosamund was looking at her, aghast, her entire face wet with tears. She was shaking. Kate felt an unexpected spasm of pity for her. But she had to do what she had to do.

  Rising, she looked at the woman in the eye. “Rosamund Kite, I’m arresting you on the suspicion of the murder of Samir Minhas. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Rosamund said nothing. Her dark eyes stared at Kate, but they were just dark holes punched in her face. Her long hair hung around her face, thick and lustrous. Incongruously, a phrase jumped into Kate’s head. Widow’s weeds.

  Theo, who had twigged the situation commendably quickly, also stood up. “You’ll have to accompany us to the station, Mrs Kite. If you’d like to get your handbag or coat, or anything you might think you’ll need…”

  But Rosamund had gone beyond handbags and coats. She said nothing, she sat as if carved from stone. Kate and Theo exchanged glances. “Doctor?” Theo mouthed and Kate nodded.

  Theo reached for his phone but Kate remained where she was, keeping the still and silent woman in her sight.

  Chapter Forty

  Rosamund Kite had remained silent all through the journey to the station, through the processing of her details at the reception desk. Kate had had to give the desk sergeant all the relevant details, those that she knew, anyway. She remained silent through the examination by the on-call doctor, ignoring his questions about her health and how she was feeling. The doctor had taken Kate and Theo to one side and given his opinion that she was fit to be interviewed. Kate bit back the remark she had wanted to make—that if Rosamund was this silent during the preliminary proceedings, she’d not even be giving the usual repetitive ‘no comment’ during her questioning.

  There Kate was wrong. Almost as soon as the interview room door closed, Rosamund began to speak, feverishly. Her solicitor tried to get her to refrain but she told him to shut up, in such a tone of ferocity that he shrank back away from her. Kate could suddenly see how the murder had happened; how passion had turned to rage, from love to murder, almost in the blink of an eye.

  “I love him. And he loved me.” Rosamund glared at Kate and Theo. “Oh, I can see what you’re thinking. How could he someone like him love someone like me, but he did, he did, I tell you.” She gasped for breath. “It wasn’t a case of him using me for sex or anything like that, no it wasn’t. It was true love.”

  Kate and Theo remained silent. Kate felt something for Rosamund that she’d rarely felt for a suspect before: embarrassment—and pity.

  “We were going to run away together. That was the plan, I mean. That’s what we were thinking. I didn’t even need to ask him because, well, we were so close and so in love, we could almost read each other’s minds.”

  Reminded that this was supposed to be an interview, Kate spoke up. “Where did you two meet?”

  Rosamund looked away. “Online. We met online. It’s perfectly respectable nowadays, everyone meets online.” She looked back at Kate. “Of course, we had to be careful meeting up. I mean, I’m married and—and Samir lives with his parents. Lived, I mean. So, it was hard to find places to meet. We couldn’t be seen in public.” Pink tinged her cheeks and she went on, hurriedly. “It wasn’t because of my age, it was because he couldn’t be seen with any white girl.”

  Kate could feel Theo twitch beside her. She was torn between wanting Rosamund to go on incriminating herself and wanting her to stop before she heard any more delusions. It was almost painful.

  She didn’t need to say anything. Rosamund went on speaking, almost gabbling.

  “It was summer when we met—this summer I mean. We used to go for picnics. Once the house shuts, it’s quite private. So, we used to meet in the woods.” Kate remembered the picnic basket she’d found in Rosamund’s office and thought, ah. She was beginning to see how the crime had happened, but the motive was still unclear.

  Rosamund’s solicitor tried once more to get her to stop talking. “Mrs Kite, please. You are incriminating yourself—”

  “Shut up! I told you to shut up. I don’t care anymore, don’t you see? I don’t care.” Tears welled up and began, once again, to spill down Rosamund’s face. “Nothing matters anymore, can’t you see that?”

  Kate and Theo exchanged glances. Kate was torn between suggesting a short break—she could see that Rosamund was on the verge of breaking down completely—and wanting her to go on speaking for the tape. Before she could come to a decision, Rosamund resumed her story.

  “Like I said, we were completely in love. I trusted him. Even though he was—well, young—I knew what we had was enough to see us through. I was sure his parents would have come round to the idea—”

  She stopped speaking abruptly. Kate felt a spurt of unease at the look on Rosamund’s face, the look of someone relieving something dreadful.

  There was silence for a moment. Kate could see the solicitor relax a little. Time to stop, or time to prompt?

  Professionalism won out over compassion. “Rosamund, what happened? What happened on the night of Samir’s… Samir’s death?”

  Tears glazed Rosamund’s face. She said nothing.

  Kate pushed, very gently. “Rosamund? What happened?”

  Rosamund had been crying quietly but at this, she let out a huge sob, at once angry and pained.

  “I think my client would like a break,” said the solicitor.

  Rosamund shook her head. Tears were dripping onto her lap by now. “No. No, I wouldn’t.”

  Kate felt the pressure of Theo’s foot against her own, under the table. Trouble was, she wasn’t sure what he was suggesting. With Anderton, with Olbeck, she would have known instinctively. “Go ahead. We’re listening, Rosamund.” Kate had used this line effectively before in interviews. It became less of an interrogation, more of a therapy session.

  Rosamund put a shaking hand up to her mouth. “He… I…” She put her hand back in her lap and looked at Kate. “I… Well, I wanted to know more about him. Because I loved him. That’s what you do, don’t you, when you love someone, you want to know everything about them. What sort of things they like, what kind of jobs they’ve had, where they live…” Her voice failed for a moment. “I knew… I knew he lived with his parents. But I di
dn’t—I didn’t know where that was. I wanted to know. So, I… One day, we’d…we’d met and when he left, I—I followed him.”

  Silence. Kate, heart thumping, wondered whether she should offer Rosamund a tissue to wipe her face, but she didn’t want to break the moment of recollection. The air in the room seemed to still. They were all in the slipstream of Rosamund’s memories.

  Rosamund started to speak again, haltingly. “I followed him. And…and I couldn’t believe it, he lived…he just lived in a—a flat, not a house, like he’d said. Not even a flat, a bedsit, a studio.”

  “I know,” Kate said gently. “I’ve been there.”

  Rosamund looked at her, almost gratefully. “There were no parents, there wasn’t anyone. I thought… I thought he might be living with—with a girl—and I—I was so angry, I was shaking all over. I waited there for ages, it must have been hours but nobody else came, nobody else came in or out. So that… That calmed me down a bit.”

  Theo cleared his throat. “Mrs Kite, can I ask, what did Samir tell you he did? As a job, I mean?”

  Rosamund looked at him as if bewildered. “Job? What do you mean? He was a student.” There was a beat of silence and then she asked. “Wasn’t he?”

  Nobody answered. After a moment, she spoke again. “Anyway, I thought, I must ask him—must ask him why he lied to me. I thought he must have had his reasons, because he would never want to hurt me.” She gulped and went on. “That was the day…the day before… Well, anyway, we were due to meet the next day. After I finished work. We were going to have a picnic.” She stopped again for a moment. “I made it up the next morning. The picnic, I mean. I knew just what he liked, we’d had so many. He was vegetarian, and of course, he wouldn’t eat pork, so it was just sandwiches and—and crisps—and I’d made a cake, he really liked my cakes… He wouldn’t drink, so I got some lemonade…”

  Kate had conducted many interviews with suspects that she’d found painful. This one was turning out to be one of the worst of the lot. Her stomach knotted, knowing what was coming.

  Rosamund went on, speaking more quietly now. Her gaze was unfocused, or rather, focused on a time just weeks ago, when the trees had still had their leaves, the sun had shone with warmth and Samir, her love, her boy, had been still alive.

  “We met in the afternoon, the late afternoon. It was one of those golden days, you know, the sun is so warm and golden it soaks into everything.” Her face twitched. “We met in the woods, where we always did if we were having a picnic. He… He wanted to—make love, like he always did.” A pause, a painful swallow. “He couldn’t get enough of me. And I thought, I’ve made a mistake; he wouldn’t have lied to me, that flat belonged to his friend, or something…”

  Rosamund stopped speaking. Kate felt the pressure of Theo’s foot against hers again and fought off the urge to kick him. “Go on, Mrs Kite,” she said, as gently as she could.

  Rosamund gulped. “We’d… We’d got dressed. I asked him. About the flat and—well, whether he was being honest. About wanting to run away with me. And he… He—” She stopped and looked at Kate, and the look in her eyes was enough to raise the hairs on the back of Kate’s neck. “He laughed. He… He laughed.”

  She stopped speaking. Kate could see it now; the crashing realisation that it had all been a fantasy, a mirage, an escape from reality. And now reality was here again, the same grey, meaningless, boring reality, along with a huge wave of humiliation, of pain, of something not to be borne. The knife to cut the homemade cake, crafted with such care and attention, ready to hand…

  Kate felt the touch of Theo’s foot against her own again, and this time, she pressed back.

  Chapter Forty One

  “What a weird case,” Theo said, shaking his head and lifting his pint at the same time.

  “You can say that again,” Olbeck said with feeling.

  Kate shook her head. She had to speak fairly loudly because of the hubbub of The Arms. They had all retired there for a restorative drink after the events of the day. “There were so many red herrings in this case. So many.”

  Chloe nodded. “The whole undercover thing. I mean, obviously that’s the first line of enquiry, isn’t it?”

  Martin had clearly been thinking this through, in his methodical way. “Well, we weren’t even aware of that side of the case for days. Seeing as we thought our victim was someone completely different.”

  “True.” Kate looked up at a cold draught of air eddied through the crowded bar and saw Rav easing his way through the crowds from the saloon door. She waved. “Rav! Over here.”

  They’d saved Rav a seat next to Chloe, who shifted over to make room. Rav had been the only one not at the office. He’d gone straight home after the search at Bucklesbury ended, as his wife had been slightly worried about their baby son. He was the only one still ignorant to the killer of Samir Minhas.

  Olbeck leant forward. “How is Ali, Rav?”

  Rav waved a hand. “He’s fine. Absolutely fine. Little bit of a temperature but a bit of Calpol soon sorted that out.” He grinned. “You know what Jarina’s like about our precious firstborn.”

  “You’re just as bad,” Kate said, laughing.

  “True. Anyway, what the hell happened?”

  As they all rushed to fill Rav in, Kate felt her mobile buzz through the leather of her handbag. She fished it out, seeing with a thump of her heart that Ricky Khan had texted her. When are we going for lunch next? Looking forward to seeing you. A winking emoji. Two kisses.

  “So, Nick Riley had nothing to do with it?”

  Theo shook his head at Rav. “Nah. Still think we’re going to be able to prove a few links between him and the jihadi group. But, with Rosamund? Nah.”

  “But why did they both say they were having an affair?” Chloe asked, while transferring the latest round to the table, littered as it was with beer mats, beer spills and glasses.

  “I think they both realised that both of them were up to no good. Thanks, Chloe.” Olbeck took his fresh pint. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Rosamund actually did know what Riley was up to. But the last thing she would have wanted was interest, let alone police surveillance, at Bucklesbury House. That was her place to meet Samir.” He paused, and added, sadly, “It was sacred.”

  Theo scoffed. “Not that it matters. We’ve got him for multiple offences and her for murder. I’d call that a success.”

  Kate, who’d been silent, spoke up. “I agree.” She smiled around the table and got up. “Anyway, the little girl’s room calls. Excuse me.”

  In the privacy of the one of the loo cubicles, Kate looked at her phone and at Ricky Khan’s message. Two kisses on the end.

  After a moment, she slowly tapped out her return message, with many deletions and retyping. Thank you so much for your help, Ricky. It was lovely to get to know you and I’m sure you have a glittering career ahead of you. She hesitated once more. I wish you all the best. Goodbye. Another pause as she reread her draft message. She added two kisses.

  Her thumb hovered over the send message. Come on, Kate. She pressed it, watch it turn green on her phone screen. Then, without stopping to think, she blocked his number.

  After a moment of hanging her head down, breathing deeply, Kate raised it. Then she typed out another message, this time to Anderton. So, house-hunting this weekend? Love you. She added a house emoji and a love heart. She pressed send. She put the phone away.

  Then she opened the cubicle door, washed and dried her hands at the sink, and went to join the others.

  THE END

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  Want some more of Celina Grace’s work
for free? Subscribers to her mailing list get a free digital copy of Requiem (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 2), a free digital copy of A Prescription for Death (The Asharton Manor Mysteries Book 2) and a free PDF copy of her short story collection A Blessing From The Obeah Man.

  Requiem (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 2)

  When the body of troubled teenager Elodie Duncan is pulled from the river in Abbeyford, the case is at first assumed to be a straightforward suicide. Detective Sergeant Kate Redman is shocked to discover that she’d met the victim the night before her death, introduced by Kate’s younger brother Jay. As the case develops, it becomes clear that Elodie was murdered. A talented young musician, Elodie had been keeping some strange company and was hiding her own dark secrets.

  As the list of suspects begin to grow, so do the questions. What is the significance of the painting Elodie modelled for? Who is the man who was seen with her on the night of her death? Is there any connection with another student’s death at the exclusive musical college that Elodie attended?

  As Kate and her partner Detective Sergeant Mark Olbeck attempt to unravel the mystery, the dark undercurrents of the case threaten those whom Kate holds most dear…

  A Prescription For Death (The Asharton Manor Mysteries: Book 2) – A Novella

  “I had a surge of kinship the first time I saw the manor, perhaps because we’d both seen better days.”

  It is 1947. Asharton Manor, once one of the most beautiful stately homes in the West Country, is now a convalescent home for former soldiers. Escaping the devastation of post-war London is Vivian Holt, who moves to the nearby village and begins to volunteer as a nurse’s aide at the manor. Mourning the death of her soldier husband, Vivian finds solace in her new friendship with one of the older patients, Norman Winter, someone who has served his country in both world wars. Slowly, Vivian’s heart begins to heal, only to be torn apart when she arrives for work one day to be told that Norman is dead.