‘Yes, under Section 57, Offences Against the Person Act. I must admit it is seldom prosecuted unless it is done with intent to defraud.’ He stood. ‘We will be questioning him on a number of things, it will certainly be one of them. It’s one o’clock. We need to get some sleep and make an early start back to Dublin tomorrow.’ He hesitated before looking down on her. ‘No more running away, eh?’
‘I wasn’t running away,’ she bristled. ‘I told you what happened.’
‘Okay, okay, we’re tired, let’s just get some sleep.’ He took both glasses and put them on the bar and returned the almost empty wine bottle to the fridge. Opening the door, he waved her through. At her bedroom door, he handed her the key, holding on as she reached for it. For a moment they stood silently, joined by the key, each weighing the other up
‘Goodnight, Edel,’ West said, releasing the key and turning away, hearing her soft, ‘Goodnight, Sergeant’ as he opened his bedroom door.
13
West made an early call to Andrews, filling him in on the previous night’s events and outlining the plans for the day. He hoped to be back in the office by early afternoon, he told him finally, and rang off as both Edel and a very well-laden plate arrived. He tucked in appreciatively and they breakfasted together in almost companionable silence.
‘What happens next?’ she said, cradling a coffee cup in her hands.
He looked up from his breakfast in surprise. ‘I go back to the station and get on with the investigation and you… well, you go home, and wait until we find Cyril Pratt.’
‘My husband, by any other name, or should I say every other,’ she commented with some bitterness. ‘Although, legally, we were never married, so I can’t really call him that anymore, can I?’ Her eyes widened. ‘I’ve just had a horrifying thought. If I’m not married, the house isn’t mine, is it?’
He frowned, putting down his knife and fork. ‘Are both your names on the deeds?’
It was her turn to frown. ‘I don’t know. The purchase all happened so quickly. I remember signing whatever I was asked to but, to be honest, I never read anything.’
He opened his mouth to ask how she could have been so stupid as to sign something without reading it but there was no point. It was done; damage limitation was needed now, not criticism. ‘If both your names are on the deeds, you can argue you have a right to stay in the home as you entered into the relationship in good faith. If your name is not on the deeds, well, then that’s a bit of a problem.’ He refilled his coffee cup. ‘There is the bigger problem of where the money came from. It may need to be repaid. When you get back, get yourself a good solicitor, give him the whole story. If you know where the deeds are, take them with you.’
He finished his coffee and stood. ‘We’d better get going. I’ll settle up with the landlord and meet you out front in ten minutes.’ He waited for her nod of agreement, picked up his bag and headed to where he could hear the landlord chatting to a delivery man.
Tossing his bag into the boot beside Pratt’s overfull briefcase, he settled himself behind the steering wheel for another long journey. Minutes passed. Finally, with a hiss of frustration he got out of the car to head in search of her. He had just banged the car door shut when she appeared at the door of the inn with the landlord. He watched as she rose up on her toes to give the much taller Murphy a kiss on the cheek.
When they were both sat in the car, he gave her a quizzical look. ‘You told him everything, didn’t you?’
‘An edited version,’ she admitted. ‘He deserved an explanation; he’s been very kind to me.’
West’s Ford started with a diesel growl and he turned out of The Inn’s car park onto the narrow main street of Come-to-Good. He predicted making good time, the weather was good and there were no roadworks on his planned route to the airport. Just as he had finished this mental prediction his mobile rang. He slowed, pulled to the side of the road, and stopped. ‘West,’ he answered and listened. Years of practice had taught him how to acquire a poker face when he needed it, so that a listener couldn’t tell if he were hearing good or bad news. He tried hard, too, to resist a sideways glance at the woman sitting so unconcernedly at his side, even while the fingers of one hand white-knuckled on the steering wheel as he muttered an agreement to what he was being told. Hanging up, he kept his eyes averted from Edel who had turned to look at him, an arrested expression on her face. But he couldn’t put it off any longer and turned to her. His poker face mustn’t have been any good because he saw her eyes widen and her hand moving to cover her suddenly trembling mouth.
‘It’s Simon, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Or Cyril, I suppose, to be absolutely correct, maybe I should just refer to him as my husband, although I suppose…’ She stopped and slapped a hand over her mouth again, holding it there as tears gathered and started their slow descent. ‘Please,’ she begged, taking her hand away. ‘Just tell me, whatever it is.’
West drew a breath. He had had to give bad news many times, but never before in the too close confines of a car. ‘They found your car,’ he started gently. He saw that for a minute, she thought that was it, and there was the beginning of relief that it was no more than that, and then the dawning realisation that of course there was more. ‘They found the body of a male answering the description of your husband, Edel, I’m sorry.’
Tears ran down her cheeks, but she stayed eerily quiet. ‘Do you know, I’d just been thinking of the times we had laughed together; long romantic walks, trips to the theatre, leisurely breakfasts, dining by candlelight; a million moments that were, each of them, precious. And I was thinking, that it didn’t matter what name he went by or that we weren’t legally married; he was my husband, I loved him and had felt loved by him in return.’ She lifted a hand and brushed away the tears. ‘Nothing is going to change that; not the things I have found out, nor the law that will dictate that our marriage was void. I married him, missed him and now, I will mourn him.’
He reached over and took her hand. ‘I am so sorry for your loss,’ he said simply. What more could he say? He held her hand another moment before letting it go and restarting the engine. ‘I’m afraid they have asked for you to identify the body. Do you feel up to that?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I need to see him, to say goodbye. What’s that overused expression? Oh yes, closure. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to look for now? I’ll go and see his poor, dead body, get closure and it will all be okay.’
West heard the bitterness lacing her voice and knew the reason. She’d never get the answers she needed now. He bit his lip and looked away.
Her voice was suddenly stronger, sharper. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Sergeant West, you’re thinking you’ll never get the answers you want from him, never be able to solve your case now that he is dead. That’s all you’re worried about now.’ Her voice rose as she spoke, growing shrill. Her eyes were filled with anger and hatred as she looked at him.
He considered saying nothing, letting her believe what she wanted. It was mostly grief talking anyway, he knew that. But he couldn’t let her believe his only interest was the damn case. ‘I was thinking that you won’t get the answers you wanted, Edel. My case will be ongoing; your husband’s death just makes it more complicated, that’s all.’ His calm, gentle tone of voice seemed to work. He saw the anger and hatred fade as quickly as they’d come, replaced by sadness and weary resignation.
‘There’s no point in shooting you, is there?’ she muttered, then sniffed and searched her bag for a tissue. He indicated the glove compartment; she opened it and pulled out a handful of tissues, rubbing her eyes and blowing her nose. ‘It was a car crash, wasn’t it? That’s why he never came back to the cottage. That’s why he didn’t come back to me and explain. He drove away from the cottage so fast; I saw the car speeding down those narrow roads, saw the tail lights flashing.’ She blew her nose again and gulped. ‘He always did drive too fast. I was constantly asking him to slow down. Poor Simon. I’ve been criticising him, condem
ning him for not having come back and, all along, he’d been lying injured and dying somewhere.’
She turned away from him, burying her face in the wad of tissues.
‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ he said, getting out and walking out of earshot to make some calls. To his annoyance, he couldn’t get hold of Andrews so he was forced to ring Inspector Duffy and fill him in on his late-night dash to Cornwall. He interrupted the inspector’s tongue-lashing to tell him of the discovery of Cyril Pratt’s body.
‘At least, I am here on the spot, Inspector,’ he offered. ‘He was our main suspect in Simon Johnson’s murder. We will need the continued cooperation of the Devon and Cornwall constabulary in order to identify any suspects they may have.’ He paused and then offered a very large olive branch. ‘I know that is your forte, Inspector, so I would be grateful if you could make some calls.’
Inspector Duffy wasn’t immune to flattery and agreed. West, who had learned the hard way to lick ass if he had to, finished the conversation and hung up as quickly as he could before he was asked for an explanation as to why he’d gone careering off to Cornwall in the first place. Duffy would think of it later, be aggrieved that he’d been played and take it out on West in some form. Probably with more damn paperwork or one of his interminable audits. Shaking his head, he tried Andrews’ number again, inordinately thankful that it was answered on the second ring and to hear the reassuring Tipperary accent of his partner. ‘Peter,’ he said quickly, ‘Where are you?’
Andrews had just returned to his car after visiting Bareton Industries, and was still in the car park. He turned off the engine. ‘Just leaving Bareton Industries, Mike. Something wrong?’
West gave him a quick rundown on the evening and morning’s events culminating in the news that Cyril Pratt had been found murdered.
‘Bloody hell,’ Andrews retorted. ‘I only left his wife a couple of hours ago. Do you want me to go back and break the news?’
‘No, leave it to the locals, they can handle it. Give them a buzz and fill them in. Devon and Cornwall will probably be in contact with them anyway, if they haven’t already. I need you back in Dublin to stop Duffy going ballistic.’
‘Great,’ Andrews said sarcastically. West chuckled and hung up.
Climbing back into the car, he cast a glance over Edel who appeared calmer. Ignoring her for the moment, he concentrated on turning the car in the narrow road. They had to drive to Falmouth, to the Divisional Headquarters whose morgue now held the body of Cyril Pratt aka Simon Johnson.
‘Where did it happen?’ she asked, once the car was heading in the right direction. ‘I can’t get it out of my head, him lying injured, maybe calling for me.’ She closed her eyes tightly on the image.
He flicked a look in her direction. There was no point in leaving her with that idea torturing her. ‘It wasn’t a car crash,’ he said. There was no easy way to tell her, as there never was when bad news needed to be told. She was going to find out soon enough. ‘Your car was found on the outskirts of Falmouth, yesterday evening. Simon was sitting in the front seat. He had been strangled.’
‘He was murdered?’ She gave a high-pitched hysterical laugh and wrung her hands together in distress, tears now flowing freely down her face. ‘Simon was murdered.’ Her voice caught on a cry, a sad sorrowful sound that seemed to echo inside the car.
He threw a glance her way and then with a soft inaudible oath, he pulled the car over again, and parked. Undoing both their seatbelts, without ceremony, he pulled her into his arms where she sobbed against his shoulder. Words were superfluous; he just held her until the sobs became soft snuffles.
With a final gulp she pulled herself away, sitting back in her seat and wiping her face with the quickly disintegrating wad of paper tissue.
West watched her withdrawing into herself, her body instinctively going into self-protection mode. He had seen it too many times to be surprised – shutters and barricades going up; the polite charade of civilised behaviour, the stiff upper lip so beloved of old-fashioned manners. He was never too sure if he didn’t prefer the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that were its polar opposite. Holding it all in or letting it all out, why was life lived in extremes? He heard her gulp and clear her throat; now would come the apology. Sorry for being human, for having emotions, for daring to show them in public, in front of a stranger no less, how vulgar. He could almost hear his grandmother’s voice echoing in his ear, boys don’t cry, be a man, when he had fallen and returned with painful, bloody knees looking for comfort that never came. Not from her anyway. His own mother, as if in reaction to her mother’s ideology, had cosseted and loved him, cried over him, for him and once, just once, with him. His own philosophy was a combination of both his grandmother’s stoicism and his mother’s compassion; it worked for him.
Once again, however, Edel proved she wasn’t going to fit into that round hole he had chosen for her. Instead of an apology, she fastened her seatbelt and blurted out tersely, ‘Let’s get it over with,’ before turning her face to the window and sitting silently until they reached Falmouth.
He parked in the visitor car park outside the mortuary building. The drab old building did nothing to disguise its function. Utilitarian and grey, it fused with the dark storm clouds gathering sullenly behind it. He opened the passenger door and Edel stepped out, her eyes puffy from the constant tears that waited furtively to slip out from under her control like an errant child and wind their way down her cheek. She held onto the door a moment as if clutching onto a solid mass in her shattered world, before she stepped away from it with a look of grim determination held firmly, if precariously, in place.
West, ignoring her first withdrawal, held her elbow in a supportive grip and walked with her to the reception desk, feeling her tremble as they approached it.
‘Sergeant West,’ he introduced himself to the middle-aged receptionist. ‘DI Pengelly is expecting us.’
Experienced and sympathetic, but unfortunately ill-informed, the receptionist looked at the sergeant and then at the pale, distressed lady beside him and jumped to the wrong conclusion. ‘I am sorry for your loss, Mrs Pratt,’ she said politely, continuing oblivious to her faux pas, ‘I’ll let DI Pengelly know you’re here. Please,’ she indicated seating behind them, ‘take a seat.’
Edel sat, leaving West to have a discreet word with the receptionist who blushed scarlet and stumbled an apology before looking over to where she sat. He shook his head emphatically before returning to take the seat beside her.
‘I’m sorry about that, she should have known.’
‘That the dead body in their morgue is a bigamist, how could she have known? I think, Sergeant, I have more to be worried about than a receptionist’s well-meaning mistake.’ She turned on the uncomfortably hard seat to face him. ‘I feel like an imposter and I know I have no reason to, but somewhere, there is a woman with two young children who is being told that her husband is never coming home. A woman who then has to explain to those children, that their father is never coming home.’
One of those annoying tears slipped down and she dashed it angrily away. ‘Do you know the worst thing? I hate her.’ She shuddered. ‘I hate her because she was really married to him, she had his children. I’ll never have that. All I am left with is questions.’ Her voice, rising sharply as she spoke, failed on a sob and she held her hands over her face.
Unaccustomedly speechless, West was relieved to see the approach of a large-boned, well-fleshed man that he recognised immediately as Detective Inspector Pengelly. He rose to shake his hand, drawing him away as he did so, giving Edel a moment to recover.
They’d met, several years before, at a conference on international crime in London and over the course of the three days had developed a friendship that had survived infrequent meetings. He gave him a quick precis of the case and Edel’s part in it. Watching her from the corner of his eye, he saw she had pulled herself together so he turned and introduced her to the detective.
‘Detect
ive Inspector Pengelly, this is Cyril Pratt’s wife, Edel Johnson,’ West said smoothly, determined to avoid any further confusion or embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, Ms Johnson,’ DI Pengelly said in his Cornish burr. ‘Are you sure you are able for this?’ he asked, looking at her keenly.
‘This is something I have to do, Detective Inspector, so perhaps we could just get on with it.’
He didn’t appear to take umbrage at the sharp words. ‘If you’d like to follow me.’ Without further ado, he walked ahead of them, through double doors and on to a room reserved for the purpose.
It was all very straightforward and almost matter-of-fact. West knew they tried to make it as unemotional as possible, as painless as they could; cold, clinical and scientific rather than an emotional maelstrom. He wondered how many railed against the clinical coldness of it all; how many screamed this is the person I loved as they tore at their clothes and hair and ran into the cold sterile walls until their bones cracked, shrieking their pain and loss until the echoes joined in the chorus, to bleed, break and lay with their beloved. He knew it would be that way for him, if he ever lost the woman he loved. He knew this despite never having met her.
From the corner of his eye, he watched Edel’s rigid body. She seemed to be numb, her face set and cold. It was only when she turned to him that he saw the pain etched in it, the tight line of her mouth, the tear-filled eyes, the tightly clenched fists held stiffly by her side. ‘Yes,’ she said, and then, lifting her chin, she added firm words of affirmation, each word carefully pronounced. ‘That is my husband.’
West escorted her to the visitors’ room, a small airless place well supplied with the paraphernalia for making hot drinks, plus a cold-water dispenser. ‘I need to have a quick word with the inspector,’ he said, as she sank into a chair and rubbed her eyes with a tissue. Filling a glass with cold water, he left it within her reach. ‘I won’t be long.’
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