by Jane Isaac
They traipsed past a red Jaguar XJ on the drive. ‘What is it with this family and Jaguars?’ Warren said.
Beth ignored him. ‘Phoebe Carter?’ she checked as they approached.
The woman nodded. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
Beth held up her badge. ‘Thanks for taking my call. Why don’t you come and sit in the car a minute?’
Phoebe cast a puzzled glance back at the house. ‘Why?’
‘There’s something we need to talk to you about.’
Phoebe narrowed her eyes. She was a slim woman with a clear complexion. Tousled blonde hair hung loose to her shoulders. Even in the half-light the similarity in bone structure between her and her mother was striking.
‘No, we’ll do it inside,’ she said. ‘Just keep your voices down. I don’t want my children disturbed.’
They walked through a carpeted hallway and into a kitchen. A man sitting on a high stool at the breakfast counter looked up as they approached. He wore a bright-coloured sailing sweatshirt, open at the neck, and track bottoms. His dark hair was streaked with grey.
‘What can we do for you at this late hour?’ he said.
‘And you are?’ Warren asked.
‘Jason Carter. Phoebe’s husband.’ He didn’t smile or extend a hand of welcome.
Beth introduced them both. Jason made great play of examining their badges.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ she said to Phoebe.
Phoebe eyed her suspiciously and took the stool beside her husband. It was a vast kitchen that ran the length of the back of the house. A vase of carnations decorated a table at the far end, beside patio doors. The workstation in the middle, where the Carters sat, doubled up as a breakfast bar. A couple of spare bar stools sat idly but Beth decided against them, preferring to stand with Warren.
‘Are you going to tell us what this is about?’ Jason said, glancing from one to another. ‘I’m guessing it’s something serious to knock us up in the middle of the night.’
Beth drew a deep breath and delivered the news with as much compassion as she could muster. Phoebe might be estranged from her parents, their reputation in her eyes soiled by recent incidents, but still, her father, the man who raised her, had been killed. When she reached the part about the hit and run incident, Phoebe’s face paled.
Jason reached out and took hold of his wife’s hand. ‘Do you know what happened?’ he asked.
‘We’re just establishing the details,’ Beth said carefully, mindful of Freeman’s words. Of all the people to be wary of, the son of the local newspaper’s editor-in-chief was definitely one of them. She turned to Phoebe. ‘When did you last see your father?’
‘We haven’t seen him for months,’ Jason answered for her. ‘Not since last October. We didn’t want them near the children, after… well, you know.’
‘I was asking Phoebe.’
‘He’s right.’ Her voice was barely a whisper.
‘What about your mother?’
Phoebe shook her head.
‘You haven’t exchanged any messages or texts?’
‘No,’ Jason said. ‘We thought it best—’ he looked at his wife ‘—not to speak to either of them. For the sake of the children.’
‘I’m sorry, but I do have to ask you another question. Where were you between the hours of 9 p.m. and 12 a.m.?’
Jason’s face contorted. ‘You’re not suggesting we were involved?’
‘We’re not suggesting anything,’ Beth said. ‘It’s our job to ascertain the facts. And that includes eliminating people from our inquiries.’
‘We were here together,’ he said. ‘All evening. We had friends around for dinner. They left about eleven. I can give you their details.’
It was common practice to separate couples, interview them on their own so they couldn’t influence each other’s accounts, but seeing Phoebe’s desperation, Beth decided against it. It was unlikely they’d get much out of her right now and she needed her husband’s support. They would send detectives out to obtain a formal statement in the morning.
‘That would be helpful, thank you.’
He pulled a leaf of paper off a pad to his side, jotted down the details and slid them over.
‘Do you know of anybody that might want to hurt your father?’ Beth asked Phoebe. ‘The quicker we can draw up a list of possible suspects, the quicker we can concentrate the investigation in the right area.’
‘Good luck with that. You’ll be searching for a needle in a haystack.’
Beth shot Jason a glance. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘People like him are sick.’
‘Jason!’ Tears swelled in Phoebe’s eyes. She tugged her hand back.
‘What? I’m sorry, love.’ He moved to wrap his arm around her, but she pulled away. ‘I know he was your dad. But I’m clearly not the only one who thinks that way.’
‘What about other family?’ Beth pressed.
Phoebe brushed a tear from her cheek. ‘There’s only us. Mum was an only child, like me. Dad’s family live in Leeds. We’ve never been close to them.’ Another tear meandered down the side of her nose. She wiped it away with the back of her cuff.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘How’s Mum doing?’ Phoebe asked, sheepishly.
‘She’s on her way to the station to assist us,’ Beth said.
A distant look filled Phoebe’s face, accompanied by an innocent longing. For a moment Beth expected her to say, “I’ll come down to the station in case she needs anything.” Instead she stared at the floor and the expression faded.
‘I’ll let you know how it goes,’ Beth said. She handed over her card. ‘You can call me anytime.’
The rain had finally stopped when they stepped outside. The air was still heavy and damp though, and the sky thick with the promise of more to come.
‘Did they seem odd to you?’ Beth said to Warren.
‘Who isn’t odd at 3 a.m.?’
She looked back at the house and thought of the similarities between Gina and her daughter, the sadness of their separation, when a thought nudged her. If, for whatever reason, Gina had driven out that evening and mowed down her husband in his own car, where did she leave the Jaguar? Rothwell was at least five miles from their home in Great Oakley. She’d needed to have left it somewhere. And how had she got back? Unless, of course, she’d had some assistance.
8
Gina smoothed her trousers and sat tall. There was a time when she felt uncomfortable in the presence of police officers. Slowed if she passed them in traffic, even if she wasn’t exceeding the speed limit. Checked herself if she saw them in the street. When Phoebe was little, another vehicle had jumped the traffic lights at a junction and crashed into their car in town. No one was injured and she clearly wasn’t responsible, but she still remembered sitting at the kitchen table when a policeman came to the house to take a statement. Gripping the edges of her chair, the varnish cool and sticky against her palms, as if she still expected to be blamed.
But recent events had changed everything. Shifted her paradigm.
The police were there to investigate a crime, gather evidence, identify the person they felt responsible and collate a file for the CPS. It was for the courts to decide, on the balance of the case put before them, whether or not an individual was guilty.
The police were only human. They made mistakes. Occasionally things were overlooked, missed. Small pieces of evidence, nothing on their own, but crucial when part of a whole case. This was what had happened with Stuart, she was convinced of it. How else could he be innocent? And now, as she focused on the detective opposite her, with the slick hair and dark eyebrows that framed his face, this thought built and swelled.
‘Let’s go through this again, shall we?’ The detective clasped his hands together on the table between them as he spoke. Strong veiny hands, lean muscled wrists. She looked up at his square jaw, his manicured beard. He was young enough to be her son. ‘When did you last use the Jaguar?’
‘I don’t know. We haven’t used it in months,’ she repeated.
‘Has anyone else driven it?’
‘No. As I told the other detective, we’ve been using my car, my Audi, while Stuart has been…’ She coughed. ‘At home. It’s cheaper to run. And less recognisable.’ She cringed, recalling a trip to the supermarket in the early days after the charge. She’d decided to take the Jaguar, give it a run, and come out of the store to find broken eggs smeared across the windscreen.
The red-haired detective sat beside his colleague, reached up and scratched his temple as he penned another note. There were no windows in the room, no natural light. She couldn’t be sure whether night had yet turned to day, although it felt like hours had flown by since she arrived at the police station. Hours in which she’d been photographed, her fingerprints taken, her mouth swabbed for DNA. Did they really think she might be capable of murdering her own husband?
Oh, she’d considered killing him, in the early days after the charge. Child abuse was such a heinous crime, the most abhorrent, and to view images of it… She’d even worked through scenarios during those dark hours, when the doubt crept in and she pictured him sitting on the armchair beside her while they watched Blue Planet, the laptop angled so that she couldn’t see the screen. Him tapping at the keys, sending emails and reviewing documents while surfing the net for sites showing disgusting photographs of children. Those dark hours repulsed her, sending a rush of blood to her head, a pool of bile to her mouth.
It was his defence team that finally convinced her to bury those awful misgivings, at the meeting she’d attended with his barrister, Mr Ormsby, who looked barely out of law school, but who, they were assured, had the most impressive credentials. He’d sat there in his Hugo Boss suit and slicked dark hair, slats of morning sun streaming through the blind in his office as he told them he believed they had a strong case for defence: Stuart wasn’t the only one with access to that computer. It was often left unattended on his desk at the estate agent’s, and it wouldn’t have been too difficult for someone else to guess his password. There were no images found on his phone or any of the other devices he used.
But as convinced as she might be, the uncertainty was never far away, hovering close beneath the surface of her skin where it would remain until the trial was over.
‘Explain to me in detail where you presumed your husband to be this evening,’ the detective said.
‘He left at 6.30 p.m. to go to his bowls club meeting in St Mark’s church hall in Kingsthorpe, Northampton. They were scheduled to finish at 9.30 p.m. Stuart usually called in at Rothwell for a curry and got back shortly after 10.30 p.m.’
‘That’s quite a way to travel for a bowls club.’
‘Stuart was raised in Kingsthorpe. He joined the club with some old school friends, several years ago.’
‘Where were you this evening?’
‘At home, as I’ve already said.’
‘Did you have any visitors or speak with anybody, perhaps on the phone? Someone that could verify this?’
Gina swallowed and shook her head, desperately hoping the lie wouldn’t show on her face. She hadn’t been alone. But she wasn’t able to share why either.
‘Did you speak with Stuart at all, after he left?’
‘No.’
‘So, you didn’t speak with him or see him after 6.30 p.m.?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘What about your husband’s car? You stated you last saw it in your garage on Saturday.’
‘Yes, when I went to get some vacuum cleaner bags.’
‘Has anyone broken into your house or garage since Saturday?’
‘Not that I know of, no.’
‘Has anyone else got access to your garage or car keys?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you explain the disappearance of the car? You said…’ He paused, looked again at his colleague’s notes. ‘The Jaguar’s keys are missing.’ The emphasis he placed on that last word made her shudder.
‘I can’t.’
‘I’m sorry, could you speak up for the recording?’
‘I can’t explain it. Somebody must have taken the keys and the car.’
‘Is the garage secure?’
‘Yes.’
‘The lock isn’t broken?’
‘No.’
The detective raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re suggesting somebody took the car from your garage and drove it away. But how, if they didn’t have a key to either the house or the garage?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You see, I have a difficulty, Mrs Ingram. This car that only you and your husband had access to, we believe was involved in a collision this evening. A collision that left your husband dead. The driver made off at the scene. You knew Stuart’s habits. Knew he was likely to be in Rothwell around 10 p.m. this evening. You claim you were at home, but state there is nobody that can verify this.’
An army of ants crawled down Gina’s back. Stuart was killed with his own car? So, that’s why there was such a commotion about it being missing.
‘Did you argue at all before your husband left this evening?’
‘No.’ Gina’s stomach twisted. So many questions. So much intrusion. For so long. Constricting her insides until something snapped. ‘What possible motive could I have to kill my husband? Now. Right in front of a trial that would clear his name.’
The detective sat back, but his gaze was anchored on her. ‘We’ve spoken to your neighbour at number forty-four. They reported hearing raised voices between three and four o’clock yesterday afternoon. Male and female voices shouting. Doors slamming. I’ll ask you again. Did you and your husband have an argument before he left last night?’
She closed her eyes, jamming her eyelids together. She hadn’t mentioned the argument because it wasn’t unusual. Over the past months, they’d increasingly bickered over trivial items like stacking the dishwasher, television choices, chores in the house. Yesterday it had been about his cigarettes. Shortly after the charge, Stuart had started smoking again and his discarded dog-ends littered the patio where they’d been lifted by the breeze and scattered around the garden.
Although surely any woman would be irascible if they’d had to put up with what she had? Petty quarrels didn’t make her a murderer.
But, to the police, an argument yesterday was significant. Coupled with the fact that Stuart’s car was missing from their garage, the car used in his own murder, which wasn’t reported stolen, it was enough to spark their suspicion. She hadn’t ventured out that evening and the only person who could confirm she was home was the one person she wasn’t able to give up.
She straightened her back, looked the detective defiantly in the eye. ‘I didn’t kill my husband.’
9
‘This was a shocking attack in the centre of a small market town.’ Beth switched up the radio volume, allowing Freeman’s voice to fill the car as she navigated her way home through the early Friday morning traffic. He went on to reassure the public that officers would be working around the clock to find the person responsible. ‘I would ask any members of the public, if they saw or heard anything, to come forward.’ A description of the Jaguar car, seen in the vicinity last night, was followed by an appeal for the media to work with the police to bring this person to justice. The channel cut back to the newsreader who relayed a telephone number for witnesses to call with information.
Beth flicked off the radio, turned into Mawsley Village and made for home. Freeman had been quick to arrange a press release, gone for maximum effect to broadcast it first thing in the morning, filling television screens and bleating on radios as the public awoke and readied themselves for the day. She imagined him standing there in his best suit, delivering a message that was more about reassurance and a public appeal for witnesses than about murder. He’d taken no questions, unsurprisingly. The press would be drawn to the incident like moths to a night lamp. Stuart Ingram’s case was already well reported by the local pre
ss. The news of his murder, only two weeks before his trial was due to begin, was front page material.
She wondered if Jason Carter had contacted his father after they’d left last night and filled him in on the details he was told. Although they were scant, and now no more than anyone else knew, thankfully. His relationship with Phoebe appeared odd, uncomfortable, and she couldn’t fathom why. Phoebe was clearly fragile and leaned on her husband. Was that because of the news of her father’s death or for another reason? Colleagues would interview them separately today, take formal statements. Their movements would be confirmed, but if they were, as they said, with friends, they weren’t the killers. Although that didn’t mean to say they weren’t still involved in some way, especially in view of their troublesome relationship with her parents. She made a mental note to keep an eye on the inquiries into Phoebe’s family.
Beth recalled Gina Ingram’s ashen face as Nick led her out to the police car. A PolSA team had been despatched to the Ingrams’ to do a systematic search of the garage and inspect the rest of the house. Once again, they’d seize all the computers and devices, this time to examine who Gina had been in contact with. Right now, detectives back at the office would be scrutinizing her bank account and checking her phone contacts. Did Gina Ingram kill her husband? If she did, and enlisted someone to help, perhaps their details would show up there.
But… Beth thought of the myriad photographs of Gina and Stuart in their living room and couldn’t ignore the niggling doubts fluttering inside her head. What she couldn’t fathom was the timing. If Gina wanted to kill her husband, why would she do it now? Unless, of course, something else had come to light. Something they weren’t aware of yet.
Myrtle, Beth’s grey tabby, slunk over and joined her at the front door. The cat wove in and out of her ankles, rubbing up against Beth’s boots as she slid her key into the lock and clicked it open. They wandered inside together.