Kendall read from the file. ‘Dale Ritchie. Required thirty-eight stitches to his face, was unconscious for three days, ruptured spleen … need I go on. I don’t wonder Ellen was scared of you and wanted out.’
‘I never laid a finger on Ellen.’
‘You don’t need to hit someone for them to live in fear of you,’ Yolanda said firmly. ‘You can intimidate and undermine another person without resorting to outright violence.’
‘So she waited until you were safely locked away and then did a runner,’ Kendall said.
‘No, she left before it came to trial. And I let her go. I never followed her, never bothered her again.’
‘Is that because you knew you were in enough trouble without breaking the terms of a court order? Wouldn’t have looked good at the trial, would it.’
‘And it seems that Ellen applied for the order only days after the fight with Dale Ritchie. That she’d tried to break up with you weeks before that. In fact this Mr Ritchie had been her date for that particular evening and not you. That you saw them together in the Black Horse pub and as one witness puts it “went ballistic”.’
Soames shrugged, but Mac was again aware of the tension and the anger he was trying to control. ‘Like I said, she was trying to make me jealous. Anyway. Like I also said, that was a long, long time ago.’
‘Odd, though, that you suddenly turn up down here and Ellen Tailor suddenly winds up dead. What are you doing in this neck of the woods, Mr Soames?’
‘Working,’ Soames said flatly. ‘Like you well know seeing as how you dragged me out of my place of employment.’
‘We called your employer and requested your presence, if that’s what you mean. And it’s not as though Marsden is ignorant of your past, is it, Mr Soames. They’ve taken a fair few ex-cons in their time. Mr Marsden works closely with the probation service.’
‘Is that what you call it? I call it cheap labour at the minimum wage.’
‘Which is more than you’d get in a lot of places. I understand you told Marsden that you wanted to work down here to be close to family. What family is that, Mr Soames?’
Silence for a moment or two, then Yolanda took up the questions once again. ‘What did you talk about that night, when you made your unexpected visit?’
‘Who said it was unexpected?’
You could practically see the man preening, Mac thought.
‘You’re suggesting she invited you to come and see her.’
Soames shrugged. ‘A woman on her own, you know what that’s like I’m sure.’ He smiled at Yolanda.
Dangerous ground, Mac thought, hiding a smile of his own, even though he knew she could not see him.
‘Really?’ Yolanda returned. ‘It’s been what, fourteen, fifteen years since you saw her. She’s been married, had two kids, been widowed and suddenly she wants to catch up with the man she ran away from? Pull the other one, Soames.’
‘I can prove it,’ Soames said quietly. He opened his jacket and felt in the inside pocket. Produced what looked like a notecard and an envelope and lay them down on the table. He paused, hand resting lightly on the card and then pushed them over to Kendall.
Mac craned to see. The card had a bird on the front of it and some kind of company logo on the back.
‘I hear you’re down this way. Come and have a chat sometime. I might have some work for you. Ellen.’
‘And if you notice, the address and mobile number are written on the other side.’ Soames leant back in his seat, evidently satisfied.
‘So, if she knew you were coming, why did she call the police and report an intruder?’
‘Because I didn’t tell her I would be. I wanted to scope the place out first, see what I might be getting into.’
‘In the dark?’
‘Only time I could borrow a car, wasn’t it.’
‘And when you got there, what work was she going to offer you?’
‘Don’t know, do I. Your lot interrupted and she seemed distracted after that. Said she’d talk about that later.’
‘And so? You left? You stayed? You talked about …’
‘Old times. You know, like old friends do when they’re catching up? Though, no. I don’t suppose either of you do know about that, do you.’
‘And how did she know you were working locally?’ Yolanda demanded.
Soames shrugged. ‘She didn’t say, I didn’t ask.’
‘Not curious?’ Kendall asked.
‘Just glad to see her again, I suppose. I didn’t stop long, though. She seemed eager to get shot of me after your colleagues had showed up. That boy of hers came downstairs and wanted to know what was going on. She said I should go, she didn’t want to upset the kids.’
‘So?’
‘So I went. And I never went back. She said she’d be in touch but I thought at the time I wouldn’t be holding my breath. She always was one to blow hot and blow cold, you know? And I had enough of that the last time. She’s not worth going back inside for.’
‘And why would you think that anything to do with Ellen Tailor would put you back inside?’
‘Let’s just say I’m the cautious type these days. A feeling I had.’
‘Even though she never discussed what work she might have had in mind. You think it was something illegal?’
‘How would I know? I never went back.’
Yolanda had picked up the notecard and envelope and was examining both closely. ‘Must have been a surprise, hearing from her?’ she said. ‘An envelope lands on your front door mat and you recognize the handwriting of someone who used to be so important in your life. Someone you ended up doing time over? Me, I’d have dumped it straight in the bin.’
‘Well, we’re not all that cold, are we? Anyway, I didn’t recognize the writing. Like we said before. It was a long time ago.’
Nice question, Yolanda, Mac thought.
‘And she’s signed it Ellen Tailor, like you’d need telling which Ellen it was – though I’m forgetting, she wasn’t Ellen Tailor back then, was she? How did you know who it was, sending you a mysterious message like that?’
‘Because I called her. I’m not that stupid. I called her, recognized her voice right off. Then I asked her. Had she been Ellen Emmet when I knew her and she said yes. Mystery solved.’ Soames shrugged. ‘I rang off as soon as she’d confirmed who she was.’
‘Why was that then?’ Yolanda asked.
‘Because I didn’t know how I felt about it, that’s why. This was a woman who’d caused me nothing but trouble back in the day. She’d done a runner, I’d gone inside.’
‘Hardly Ellen’s fault was it?’
‘I never said it was, but it was the start of bad things happening. I got into a bad place. It’s taken a long time to climb back out again.’
‘My heart goes out to you,’ Yolanda said, coldly. ‘The second spell inside was nothing to do with Ellen though, was it? Seems you got into another fight, over another woman, more stitches, more time inside.’
‘Like I said. I was in a bad place.’
‘So you called this woman you’d not seen in a decade and a half and you asked if she was the woman you thought she might be and then you rang off before she’d got a chance to say anything else. Can you imagine how that might have made her feel? How vulnerable?’
‘Look, so far as I was concerned. So far as I am concerned. She sent me that card. She opened the conversations. I thought she’d realize it was me. I figured I was just returning a call she’d already made, so to speak. But I still wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved again. In whatever she had in mind.’
‘So you thought you’d just go out there and take a look.’
‘Like I said. I’m cautious these days; I want to know what I’m getting into.’
‘Wanted to see if there was likely to be money involved,’ Kendall put in. ‘One look at the farm would have told you she was just getting by. Nothing to spare for the likes of you. Nothing to make it worthwhile anyway. And I have to ask. Did it ever occ
ur to you that Ellen might not have been the one to send you the card? That someone might have been setting you up?’
‘Like who?’ Soames shrugged. He scraped his chair back and stood up. ‘Are we done now? I came in here to set you straight so unless you’ve got something to charge me with, in which case I want a solicitor, then I’m off back to work.’ He held out a hand for the envelope and card. ‘My property, please.’
Mac saw Yolanda hesitate and then look at Kendall.
‘I’m sure you won’t mind if my constable takes a copy,’ Kendall said. He nodded at Yolanda who rose and left the room, Kendall announcing the fact for the tape. Soames did not sit down again. He waited in silence, staring at the door until Yolanda returned and handed his letter back. He snatched it from her hand and made for the door. Yolanda skipped aside.
‘Mr Soames has now left the interview room,’ Kendall intoned for the tape.
TWENTY
‘What do you want, Inspector?’ William Trent stood aside and allowed Mac inside. ‘You’d better sit down.’
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Trent, but I need to follow up on a couple of things.’
‘I’m waiting.’ Trent flopped down in his favourite chair and looked intently at Mac. ‘But I know nothing about Ellen’s death. I know very little about Ellen’s life.’
‘Did you ever meet her sister or her mother-in-law?’
Trent sighed impatiently. ‘The sister, no. Ellen talked about her a lot but we never met. Daphne Tailor, yes. Twice. I didn’t fancy a third encounter.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Because in addition to a lack of intelligence, she struck me as a shallow, spiteful woman who didn’t consider Ellen good enough for that dolt of a son of hers.’
‘Dolt? You never met Ellen’s husband, did you? Isn’t that a little harsh?’
Trent shrugged. ‘I’m making assumptions based on evidence,’ he said. ‘As you yourself do all the time. Anyway, what about them? Daphne and Diane?’
‘I’m trying to get the measure of their relationships with Ellen,’ Mac said.
Trent laughed. ‘And you consider me a good source of information? Inspector either you are seeking to flatter me or you are clutching at straws. Look, Ellen disliked Daphne. Daphne interfered. A not unusual situation in families I believe.’
‘You never wanted to find out?’ Mac asked. ‘You never married?’
Trent’s gaze skittered over to the photograph on the bookshelf, then back to Mac. ‘I was engaged,’ he said. ‘She died. The rest is not your concern. I believe Ellen was very close to the sister but beyond random gossip, she told me very little of consequence.’
‘And what would be of consequence?’
Trent gestured his impatience.
‘Did she ever mention a man called Philip Soames?’
Trent frowned and narrowed his eyes as though trying to access a memory and finding it a physical strain. ‘Ex-boyfriend,’ he said at last. ‘She mentioned him once, a few months before she … before she was killed. Said he’d suddenly reappeared in her life and she didn’t seem too happy about it.’
‘So, if I suggested that she’d invited him back into her life?’
‘I’d say you were mistaken. Grossly so.’
‘How did she seem when she spoke about him. Did she give any details?’
Trent looked closely at Mac. ‘Is he a suspect? No, you wouldn’t tell me even if he was, of course. I’d say she was shaken by him. Uneasy. Not scared, exactly, but certainly not happy to think he was close by and might come visiting.’
‘And did she give any impression that he had? Come visiting I mean.’
Trent thought about it. ‘I got the impression that she’d seen him and that he’d seen her. Beyond that, I really couldn’t say.’
Mac nodded thoughtfully. ‘A couple of weeks ago the children stayed over at Daphne’s house and Ellen was alone. Something frightened her enough to make her run out of her house and across the fields to the Richardses’ cottage. Do you know the Richardses?’
Trent nodded. ‘Frightened her? What frightened her?’
‘She never mentioned this? According to the Richardses she arrived at their door in a very distressed state.’
‘Never. She never told me anything about that.’
He seemed, Mac thought, very put out. ‘She was scared, they said. But didn’t want them to call the police. The thing is, this incident happened only a couple of weeks before someone killed her.’
‘Did the Richardses say what frightened her?’
‘Silent phone calls, then someone prowling around the house. A window was broken and she was almost certain that someone got inside.’
‘And the Richardses never called the police? Ellen didn’t summon help?’
‘The phone was in the kitchen. She thought she heard someone in there so she got out through the living room window and ran.’
‘And she never told me. Why didn’t she tell me? I thought she counted me as a friend. Why didn’t she come to me that night? I’m as close as the Richardses.’
‘But the route across the fields is easier in the dark,’ Mac said.
Trent nodded but didn’t seem much mollified.
‘She didn’t seem disturbed. She didn’t mention this at all?’
William Trent thought about it. He seemed truly upset, Mac thought, as though he’d somehow let Ellen down. ‘She seemed a little down that last week or so,’ he said. ‘Not quite herself, but nothing I could put my finger on. I asked if she was all right on several occasions and she just said that it was coming up for the anniversary of her husband’s death and as I understood what that felt like, I didn’t press. I should have done. I should have asked more questions. I should have been a better friend.’
Mac had left just a little later. He had asked for the letters and notebook itemized in Ellen’s list of loaned artefacts and Trent had handed them over without comment. He seemed utterly distracted.
A little later, Mac got a call from Kendall asking him to talk to Soames’ probation officer and his employer. Soames had offered no alibi for the night Ellen had fled from her house and on the day she was killed he claimed he must have been in work.
Mac was intrigued. This was normally the sort of routine check carried out by uniform.
‘Marsden, Soames’ employer, he’s an important man round here, supports a lot of ex-cons as part of his back to work and rehabilitation scheme. Does a lot of work with young offenders too and we’ve just turned up a link to Ellen Tailor.’
‘Oh?’
‘Seems she volunteered for a group called Youth Scape. Youngsters at risk of offending and a few that have already found themselves in the system for drugs-related or petty offences. The Breed Estate lets them use one of their old farm buildings to camp out in and as a base for orienteering and whatever.’
‘So it’s possible Soames might have had contact through that?’
‘Possible if unlikely but as a courtesy to Marsden and because it’s possible, I’d like you to have a chat. There’s a second, more direct link to Ellen through Marsden’s mother, Celia. It seems she’s part of the church flower-arranging committee, but I can’t see Soames having anything to do with that. But it’s possible Ellen might have said something relevant to one or the other of them. Oh, and Mac, Marsden is, shall we say, a little intense about his projects.’
‘Thanks,’ Mac said drily. ‘And the probation officer?’
‘You’ve got an appointment with him at four fifty. He can give you ten minutes, apparently.’
Mac laughed. ‘Good of him,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure to be on time.’
TWENTY-ONE
Still day four after the murder
Dan Marsden wasn’t what Mac had been expecting. After Kendall’s comments about Marsden being a little intense about his projects, he’d anticipated an older man in some posh office, pontificating about his duty to society. Instead, the room he was shown into, at the back of a large warehouse, was a hast
y looking construction of stud wall and plastic panels housing furniture that had once been cheap flat pack and looked about set to revert to that state. The most solid looking things in the room were a couple of steel filing cabinets and an old pine table on which were set an equally robust looking all in one printer and copier and a kettle and mugs.
‘Inspector MacGregor? Pleased to meet you. Dan Marsden.’ He held out a hand, which Mac took. The palm was calloused and dry as though Dan Marsden was as used to manual labour as he was to executive office. He guessed Marsden was in his mid-thirties.
‘Please, sit down and have a coffee, it’ll give me an excuse. I don’t seem to have stopped today. You’re here about Philip Soames, I understand.’
Mac agreed that he was. He accepted the mug of instant coffee and was relieved to see that a tiny fridge had been tucked beneath the table and he would be spared the synthetic creamer.
Dan set the mug down on the table. ‘I’ve checked his work records. He was working on the day Ellen Tailor was killed. I’ve also checked that he was actually here and he shows up on the CCTV for the hour between three and four so …’
‘So, on the face of it, he’s off the hook for the murder. Did DI Kendall ask you to check for the evening of the twenty-third August?’
‘He did, but Phil wasn’t on the night shift that week, so I’ve no idea about that one. Sorry. I’ve got the CCTV records for you and you’re welcome to talk to his work colleagues, but—’
‘Thanks,’ Mac sipped his coffee. ‘I’m surprised you keep your recordings for so long. Most companies overwrite after a week or a month at most.’
Dan shook his head. ‘All stored on a hard drive. Inspector, I may be more than happy to employ ex-cons, and very happy to give anyone deserving of it the chance to start over, but I’m not stupid. There’s always going to be someone who tries to take advantage. They all know that there are cameras and I don’t take any shit from them. If they do good work they’ll get the rewards, otherwise …’
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