by Rena George
For the first time since the murder Loveday realised the effect her behaviour must be having on the people around her. She’d been so worried about Lawrence, and now she seemed to have got herself involved with Magdalene Bentine. If she had thought about it she would have been more aware of the worried glances her colleagues were sharing. She’d been selfish…maybe now was the time to unload some of her thoughts. Another point of view might help. ‘Actually, Merrick,’ she said, ‘There is something I would like to run past you.’
They went into his office giving nods in response to the curious glances as they passed through the main office. Merrick slipped off his coat and hung it carefully on the hanger at the back of his door. He went to his desk, indicating the chair opposite for Loveday. Then he sat, fingers steepled waiting for her to begin.
‘Lawrence has done nothing wrong, you know.’ She hadn’t meant to sound so defensive.
Merrick shrugged. ‘Did I say otherwise?’
‘No, but you’re looking as though you’re feeling sorry for me.’ Her teeth caught at her bottom lip. ‘He’s a sweet, gentle guy, Merrick…and he doesn’t deserve all this. It’s just that there were things in his past that the police wanted to check.’
Merrick raised an eyebrow and Loveday wondered if Sam had discussed the case…discussed Lawrence…with him. They were friends, certainly, but surely a police officer was bound by some sort of confidentiality regarding the people they interviewed – especially when they were innocent? She could see Sam’s face, his uncompromising dark eyes. He might be arrogant, certainly annoying, but she couldn’t see him discussing a case with anyone other than a colleague.
‘There are things I can’t talk about; things Lawrence told me in confidence. But I am absolutely certain that he had nothing to do with Bentine’s death.’
She studied Merrick’s face for some indication that he believed her, but his expression was confused. How could she expect him to understand any of this when she wasn’t sure herself what was going on?
Merrick was sitting back in his swivel chair, hands now clasped behind his head, as he considered the situation. He frowned and pressed his lips together. ‘If the police have released Lawrence then why are you still so worried, Loveday?’
‘Because,’ she said with a sigh, ‘There is a connection.’
She saw Merrick’s back straighten, but it was too late now to change her mind about telling him. ‘You may as well know,’ she sighed. ‘Lawrence knew Bentine. When he lived in Cambridge, he knew him.’ She paused. ‘Oh, what the hell, it’s all out there on the Internet anyway, if you know where to look. But for the moment, Merrick, I need your assurance that you won’t repeat what I’m going to tell you.’
Merrick looked stung. ‘Do you have to ask?’
‘No, of course I don’t. I’m sorry. It’s just me getting paranoid about this thing.’
Over the next ten minutes she recounted the details of the horrific accident, and of how Lawrence had served five years in prison after admitting a charge of causing death by dangerous driving.
She told him about the anonymous note that took Lawrence to Borlase Cove that evening, placing him at the murder location at the very time when Bentine was reported to have died.
But Loveday didn’t mention that Lawrence’s confession at the time had been perjury. She was still trying to get her head round the fact that he had taken the blame for the tragic accident when, in fact, it had been his alcoholic wife, Anchriss, who had been driving that night.
Merrick listened, his expression thoughtful.
‘So you see,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I have to help him. We have to prove he is completely innocent.’
Merrick’s sigh was long and deep. ‘You’re on a crusade here, aren’t you, Loveday?’
He leant across his desk to take her hand, and then remembered the rest of the editorial floor was probably keeping an interested eye on the pair of them.
‘I suppose it’s no use telling you not to get involved?’
Her look confirmed this.
‘Don’t antagonize the police, Loveday. Leave it to Sam and his crew. They know what they’re doing.’ He smiled wryly, ‘Sam really is quite competent, you know. If it’s there, he will find it.’
‘Actually,’ she said innocently. ‘There is more...I think they have arrested Bentine’s wife…widow.’
Merrick’s eyes widened and Loveday continued, ‘I was up there this morning and saw them driving her off in a police car. She didn’t look very happy about it.’
‘I suppose it would be too much to expect you to tell me what you were doing there?’
Loveday told him about the keys to the Blue Lady as she fished them out of her bag.
‘For goodness sake, Loveday,’ he exploded. ‘Why have you still got them? You have to hand these keys over right now! Take them to Sam…immediately!’
Loveday bit her lip and stared at the keys now lying on the desk between them.
‘Don’t even think about it!’ he warned. ‘Whatever is in your mind just forget it!
‘I just wanted a quick look at the boat again before handing them over.’
‘You know, Loveday,’ Merrick hissed, ‘…Sometimes I just don’t believe you. Have you any idea what trouble you would be in if you went to that boat?’ His eyes rolled to the ceiling. ‘It could be a murder scene, for heavens sake, and you are considering stumbling in… contaminating everything…’
Loveday stared at him. ‘You think Bentine could have been killed on the boat?
Merrick’s hands spread in an expressive gesture that conveyed he had no idea. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘…But the point it…neither do you!’
Loveday was biting her lip again. ‘You’re right,’ she said reluctantly. ‘…But I have to let Cassie know first. She’s the one who had the keys, after all.’
‘Do it now,’ Merrick ordered. ‘Then take the keys to Sam…and don’t give him any hint that you even considered doing otherwise.’
Truro’s Piazza was buzzing. Since its rebirth as a community space from the city’s former bus station, the vast area was used for all kind of public entertainment, from carnivals to charity events.
The annual food festival was to take place that coming weekend and a big green and white marquee had been erected overnight in readiness. The area was littered with contractors’ vehicles and men in dark blue overalls were hammering together staging, erecting scaffolding poles and unloading tables into the marquee.
Resisting the urge to join the growing audience watching the activities, Loveday skirted round them and cut down into Green Street on her way to the police station.
If DI Sam Kitto was any kind of copper he would be grateful to her for handing over these keys. So why did she have this nagging feeling that her turning up out of the blue would only antagonize him again?
The young constable at the reception desk eyed her with disinterest as she walked in. ‘DI Kitto, please.’ She told him curtly.
‘Can I say what it’s about?’ he said, trying to sound like he cared.
‘Just tell him Loveday Ross is here…about the murder.’
The constable’s head snapped up and he stared at her. ‘Murder?’ he said. ‘What murder would that be?’
‘Oh, for heavens sake,’ Loveday snapped. ‘Is he in or not?’
The officer picked up a phone punched at a keypad, and after a few seconds said. ‘A Miss Ross to see you, sir. Something about the murder investigation.’
He looked up at Loveday and nodded as though the person at the other end of the line could see him. ‘Very good, sir.’
He opened a drawer under the counter and produced a red visitor’s badge. ‘Pin this on,’ he instructed. ‘…And somebody will be down to collect you.’
After five or six minutes, a woman a few years older than herself, strode into the reception area. She arched an eyebrow in Loveday’s direction. ‘Miss Ross?’
Loveday nodded and stood up.
; ‘I’ll take you up to the CID room,’ she said.
They walked side by side along a corridor and up a flight of stairs and through another set of doors before stopping and entering what looked like any busy office.
If she had been a different kind of journalist, working on a newspaper, she would probably have been familiar with the inside of the local police station. But neither she nor her colleagues at the magazine had any call to visit here.
The office she was being led through was noisy and buzzing. Some people had phones clamped to their ears, others tapped busily into computers, while the rest seemed to be reading or thumbing through papers on their desks. Loveday recognised a few of the faces that turned in her direction as she followed the woman through the CID section, and some of them nodded to her.
The door to DI Kitto’s office was open and she could hear his voice as he sat at his desk talking to someone on the phone. He looked up as they entered and signaled for Loveday to take the vacant chair opposite.
Loveday imagined she had seen the trace of a smile as he ended his conversation and put the phone down, but his look was curious. Loveday fished the keys out of her bag and put them on the desk between them. Sam raised an eyebrow.
‘They’re the keys to the Bentine’s boat…I thought you should have them.’
Sam sat up, staring at the two small keys on the key ring, but made no move to touch them.
‘Just how did you come by these?’ He met Loveday’s eyes and his expression was hostile.
‘Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just delivering them.’ She shuffled uneasily in her chair. The keys were obviously important. ‘Cassie, my landlady,’ she explained, ‘worked for Magdalene Bentine - or Carruthers, as she calls herself professionally. Anyway she runs this design business refurbishing the interiors of yachts. Magdalene was a client. Cassie had the keys last weekend to put the finishing touches to the refurb but forgot to hand them back when we went to see her that day.’
Sam’s look was incredulous. ‘You’re telling me that your landlady has had these keys all this time and never thought they might be important?’ His voice was rising and he was making an effort to control his anger.
Loveday looked up. Was it possible that DI Kitto had not known about the Blue Lady? Surely not. His team was questioning everybody concerned with the couple. She stared at the angry brown eyes.
‘You did know about the Blue Lady, didn’t you?’
The muscles along Sam’s jaw were working. He was trying to control his fury. ‘You still haven’t explained how you come to be in possession of these keys.’
Loveday shrugged. ‘I was delivering them for Cassie, but when I got to the Bentines' house this morning Magdalene was being driven away by some of your lot.’
His eyebrows rose a fraction and Loveday jumped to the defence of her friend. ‘Cassie’s very good at what she does. She showed me a picture of the Blue Lady’s interior before the makeover. The difference she made was amazing.’
Sam shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’ve been on this boat?’
‘Cassie took me down to Falmouth Marina to see how the other half live.’
He was watching her, his brows knitted, and Loveday continued uncomfortably, ‘She had a few things to check out on board before handing the boat back to her client. She just wanted some company. What was the harm in that?’
‘Are you forgetting that the owner of that boat has been murdered?’
The significance was not lost on Loveday. ‘But we didn’t know then about the connection with Bentine,’ she reasoned. ‘At that point he had not been identified as the murder victim…and in any case, Cassie only knew her client as Magdalene Carruthers.’
‘So,’ Sam said, his eyes still glinting fury. ‘The pair of you were stumbling about on the boat…touching things…moving things about?’ he released a long exasperated sigh and reached for his phone.
‘Jenny? Can you come through?
He replaced the receiver but the phone immediately rang again. It was the front desk. He looked at Loveday as he asked the caller to hold. ‘You’ll have to be fingerprinted – you and your friend…if you don’t have any objections, that is.’
His tone left little option for objection. Loveday knew it was necessary to eliminate her and Cassie from the police investigation. She nodded as the officer he addressed as Jenny appeared, and was instructed to organise the taking of her fingerprints.
Sam watched his detective lead Loveday out of his office. ‘Send him up,’ he instructed into the phone. But a tiny pang of guilt had crept in as he watched the women leave. It wasn’t the Loveday’s fault if his team was so blundering they couldn’t even discover basic facts…like the affluent Bentines owning a yacht! They should have known about the boat. He should have known about it. Heads would roll for this one, and he had a feeling his would be first.
The keys still lay where Loveday had placed them on his desk. He got up and went to the door and beckoned to Will to come through.
‘Boss?’ Will said, following Sam back into his office.
Sam pointed to the keys. ‘The keys are for Bentine’s boat. He has a bloody boat, Will…and none of us knew about it!
Will hissed an expletive and put up his hands defensively. ‘Sorry, boss. How did we miss that?’
‘That’s what I’ll be asking…I promise you,’ Sam warned, ‘…not to mention them.’ He jerked a thumb upwards in the direction of the top brass who resided on the top floor of the building. He took a deep breath to control his temper. ‘Get these checked for prints – and every other bloody check you can think of. Then I want you and the rest of the team down at the Falmouth marina.
‘What about Magdalene Bentine?’ he asked. ‘What do you want us to do about her, boss?’
Sam had been on the point of going through to interview Magdalene himself, when Loveday turned up. ‘Well for a start I’ll be asking why she didn’t tell us about that damned boat. Has she said anything else yet?’
Will shrugged, ‘Not a thing. She’s got her solicitor with her now…refused to be interviewed until he got here.’
Sam frowned. ‘The front office is sending someone up to see us. Says he has information about the case. He’s a vicar.’
Will’s eyebrows rose.
‘I think we should see him before I interview Mrs Bentine,’ Sam said.
CHAPTER TEN
The man in the dog collar gave Loveday a cursory nod as he passed her in the corridor. Her eyes fell to the visitor’s card pinned to his jacket lapel. The Rev Martin Foyle.
She frowned, trying to work out why the name should seem familiar. There would be plenty of men called Martin in Cornwall, but she’d seen the name recently. Then it came to her… Magdalene’s mobile phone that day in her house. The name she had moved so quickly to cancel before Loveday or Cassie saw it was, Martin. But she'd no reason to believe it was this man. On the other hand, it had been a vicar she’d noticed sitting outside Magdalene’s house that morning. It had to be more than a co-incidence.
‘Mr Foyle?’ Sam smiled as he stood to greet his visitor, extending his hand to indicate he should take the chair so recently vacated by Loveday. ‘You have some information for us?’
Martin cleared his throat and glanced uneasily at Will, who had taken a place by the window. The tiny office seemed crowded and Martin felt a rising sense of claustrophobia. He ran a finger around the inside of his dog collar and gave Sam an appealing look. ‘Can we speak…’ he glanced again at Will. ‘…in private?’
Sam nodded for Will to leave the room and he went out, closing the door behind him. Sam settled into his chair. But for the dog collar he would never have taken Martin Foyle for a clergyman. He was too big for a start. Vicars in his day were older…smaller. He chided himself for the ridiculous notion. But the man was too tanned, too good looking…and a lot younger than Sam. Things were different now and dusty old academics in the pulpit were a thing of the past. Young clergymen attracted young congregations. As he watch
ed him, the Rev Martin Foyle steeled himself to explain the purpose of his visit.
Sam raised an eyebrow. ‘How can we help you, sir?’
Martin cleared his throat again and pressed tanned fingers to his temples. ‘It’s about Mrs Bentine,’ he said.
Sam inclined his head, inviting the man to continue.
‘We’re friends, you see.’ He spoke hesitantly.
‘Friends?’
Martin’s mouth was dry. He felt uncomfortable under the policeman’s scrutiny. ‘She’s here, isn’t she…here at the police station?
‘You think she had something to do with her husband’s death…Well, she didn’t…she couldn’t have.’
Now that he’d started he seemed unable to halt the torrent of words that poured out.
‘I should have come in days ago to tell you this. I let her down…let everybody down…my family… His eyes looked wet and he swiped angrily at them.
Sam said nothing. He knew that to interrupt the man now might result in his clamping up.
‘She couldn’t have had anything to do with Paul’s death because…she was not even in Cornwall at the time.’
He looked up and waved a hand at Sam. ‘Oh, I know she told you she was staying with friends in Bodmin, and they probably backed her up…but that was rubbish.’
He paused, as though trying to select the right words. Then looked up defiantly. ‘She lied to you because she was trying to protect me. You see, we were together all last weekend, at the Bell Hotel in Frome. We hardly left our room.’ He shot Sam a guilty glance. ‘I think the staff will remember us.’
He sat back heavily, as though the revelations had exhausted him. But there was a spark of triumph in his eyes, as if telling his story had somehow purged his soul. He’d come clean about his affair with Magdalene and was feeling better about it.
‘Lying to the police is never a good idea,’ Sam said sternly, as he scribbled the Bell Hotel, Frome, on his notepad. ‘Especially when those officers are conducting an enquiry into a particularly callous and vicious murder.’
Martin flushed. ‘Don’t blame Magdalene…blame me. She lied to protect me…I’m…I’m married.’